Kevin started to lightly scratch his chest through his clothes. At first, it was just a little bit, but then he started to scratch more.
"Sorry, folks, I have like 20 different allergies so I get pretty itchy sometimes..."
He couldn't stop, though. Before long, he was writhing around in front of everyone, fervently scratching every part of his body he could reach. Some members of the audience started to gasp, and Kevin started to feel embarrassed.
"I can't help it... Ach! What's happening to me? Why can't I stop--"
"Look at your arms, Kevin," said the Madame.
It was then that Kevin saw what the audience saw: his skin was dropping off in slabs all around him, leaving behind black, scaly hide underneath.
"MY SKIN!" he exclaimed. He couldn't stop, though, he had to get it off of him. And when he saw his hands, he noticed that he now had the claws with which to do it. Sharp ebony talons were jutting out of his fingertips. He had almost finished ripping himself out of his clothes without even noticing.
It was a good thing he was out of his clothes, too, when the last segments of cloth fell away. Kevin was starting to swell in size so that he would not have fit in his outfit anymore. By the time he was three times the height of the Madame, He couldn't keep his balance anymore and had to put himself down on all fours. His arms had lengthened and his legs shortened so that he was now comfortably standing on both his hands and his feet. In time, he would come to think of his hands as his "front feet" but for now he felt like he was just a scaly human who couldn't stand up.
Even on all fours, Kevin was almost as tall as the Madame, and he was still growing bigger. His spine stretched out at both ends, so his viewpoint started to tower over the her on top of a much more flexible neck even as he could start to flail part of his spine around out past his behind. Easily craning his long neck around to look straight out behind him, Kevin caught his first glimpse of the thick, scaly tail that was thrashing around according to his own muscle movements. His giant body was starting to look a whole lot like a dinosaur or maybe a ...
"Dragon?" he spoke tentatively in a deep, bestial voice.
"Yes, you are turning into a dragon of sorts," came a familiar voice from below him. "But you're not finished changing yet."
For some reason, six names spontaneously entered Kevin's mind: Kyle, Ethan, Vance, Iago, Nathan and Reginald. So did six broad personality profiles: polite, gloomy, boisterous, brooding, shy and intelligent. It was almost like he was making these characters up to write a story in a moment of inspiration, but it was more forceful than that. It was more like these entities were birthing themselves out of his own mind and shooting themselves down his neck where they could take root within in his shoulder blades. And just as though something really had taken root in Kevin's shoulder blades, the new dragon started to feel and see things growing out from the base of his neck.
The growths filled themselves out into six new necks with six new heads emerging from the ends. They woke up one by one and greeted the audience, much to Kevin's shock and awe.
"Greetings, ladies and gentleman. My name is Kyle, and I am honored to make your acquaintance," said the first new head with a smile.
The next head opened its eyes and sighed. "Well, I guess he can't hide the amount of weight we're putting on. My name's Ethan, everybody. Don't mind me, I'm just a head."
"Yo, yo, yo, Vance is in da HOUSE!" came a lout booming voice from another head.
The next head got a sneaky look on its face and a soft mumble came out. "Ah, so many humans all around us to do my bidding..." but then it quickly course-corrected itself into a perfect car-salesman-like expression. "I mean, what a beautiful, bright, and intelligent audience you are. And I'd like to take my moment on the stage to give a special thanks to the marvelously talent Madame Illusia for my existence. Iago, at your service," he leaned his neck down in a deep attempt at a bow as though to even outdo Ethan.
The next head gulped deeply through its own neck and looked down as though trying not to see the massive crowed beyond them. He said something in a shaky voice that no one could here, and the Ethan head looked over and critiqued the newcomer as tactfully as possible: "I apologize, Nathan, but I fear some in the audience may have missed your valuable addition to our intro. Might you be so kind as to repeat yourself with more emphasis?"
"Yeah go get'em Nathan you got this!" yelled Vance. Kyle just looked from one head to the other, completely amazed that they had all just grown out of his body seconds ago and that he had the same broad, toothy kind of snout that they did. The head they were calling Nathan spoke again.
"Uh, yeah so like the said I'm Nathan, it's just... I'm not used to being in front of so many people, so, um, sorry? ... um, yeah..." Nathan turned his head to the side so that he wasn't looking at the whole audience.
"And as you can see," said the newest head, "Kevin Rooste, our progenitor, has become a large communal reptile through the magic of the Madame Illusia. Well, the lay people handwave as 'magic' all the things which they do not understand the details. My name is Reginald, and I would like to treat you all to a short lecture on the in-depth processes of advanced matter-energy-information manipulation using Kevin's transformation as a key example with the emphasis on how our formation interacts with the naive physical law known as the conservation of mass. There will be equations for the curious..."
"LAME!" booed Vance.
"Perhaps another time, Reginald," offered Ethan. Nathan craned his neck to try to hide behind Kevin's (original) head.
"I'm... speechless..." worded Kevin uncertainly.
"Well, there you have it folks!" Madame announced theatrically. "Kevin's longing to share his life with others will be fulfilled as he begins his new life as the main head of a seven-headed hydra. His heads will keep him company on long nights in his new clifftop cave overlooking the ocean. Let's hear it for Kevin, Kyle, Ethan, Vance, Iago, Nathan and Reginald!" The audience erupted in a standing ovation.