The coarse leather of Trinity's work shoes buckled. With what little control he had left, he tried to drag the heels against the decking in an attempt to pull them off. Something in told him he should be naked for this. Except for the pressure enveloping his foot causing him pain and the roughened-up skin on his back aching with a dull throb, he wasn't entirely sure what he felt anymore. Trinity twisted his body, turning his head in time to see a quartet of claws pierce one of the shoes' steel tips. He barely had time to blink, causing him to furrow his brow from the light stinging his eyes when they opened again before the other was in a similar shape. The alien sensation of his remaining two toes migrating to his heels before the outer soles split apart to reveal a long and articulate talon should've sent him straight into unconsciousness.
Yet Trinity was at ease as he listened to the whispers in his mind. Frank was mid-way through his metamorphosis into a were-alligator. While everything else was still fuzzy, Trinity could see his coworker clearly. The metamorphosis had already progressed enough to envelope him entirely in scales and face lengthening into a flat muzzle. Those along his torso and lower chin were patterned in a lighter shade and smoother than the rest. And, like Trinity, he didn't react with horror as he opened his slitted, reptilian eyes. A low satisfied growl, coming from deep within the man's stomach, reverberated in the air. The sound deepened further as his body began to expand. The soft beer belly the middle-aged man had gained after too many decades of frequent drinking was swallowed up by abdominal muscles. He was becoming strong. Powerful.
Trinity groaned, clawing at his clothes. They felt so restraining suddenly. He understood why soon after as his mass expanded. Slowly at first, but each spine-arching surge brought him closer to how he always should've been. The muscled physique that he had been so proud of was dwarfed by the transformation overwhelming him now. Grunting, he made a good attempt at mimicking Frank's rumbling bass. After the abuse they had already endured, his boots turned into tatters first. Then as he tightened and flexed his massive muscles, his clothes made a satisfying ripping sound and tore themselves asunder as tried to contain him. Even as his growth eventually subsided, he could his feel corded muscles becoming denser. If he had possessed this boundless strength before, he'd never have lost another MMA fight.
The decking's floorboards screeched as he dragged his claws across them and pulled in his bulging legs. Trinity was slowly regaining control of his body and used it to pull himself up, leaning his entire weight on the steel tower housing the drill. It creaked ominously and curved from the pressure. Unused to the new posture forced on him by his digitigrade stance, the rig worker stumbled a few times before realizing he had to use his rear toe as a stiletto. He had to be conscious of it as he relearned how to stand, but it felt much more natural to keep the back of his foot raised. Trinity hunched as he surveyed the devastation the barge had suffered. If he didn't, he'd hit his head on the roof that sat eight feet from the decking.
The crew's tools and equipment laid scattered everywhere. And the pressure wave had shattered glass, exploding it inward, toward their housing units, offices, and common area. Small blessings since no one should've been inside. He watched everyone in various stages of transformation. A voluptuous ebony-skinned harpy sat in the place their chief should've been. The feather-haired woman was entranced with her appearance, a wild smile touching her full lips as she turned her slender hands over as if in joyful disbelief. Trinity could understand the emotion as he lowered his gaze, seeing the glossy black scales spreading in patches across his skin.
As he began picking away at strips of cloth still adorning his body, the hulking giant felt a pressure build in his armpits. Another pair of heavily muscled arms with biceps the diameter of a basketball emerged fully formed. Trinity would need them as the fingers of his upper pair of arms merged into an ungainly three-clawed hand. Skeletal outgrowths separated themselves from the length of the upper arms. Leathery muscle and elastic fibers wove between, becoming hybrid arm-wings capable of guided flight. The scrapes along his back had healed, but Trinity still felt his shoulder blades itch. He trusted the voice that told him not to worry and let out a trembling moan when the twin bulges on his back unfurled into a second pair of wings with a far wider wingspan than the first set. They still folded neatly behind him. But, before that, he spread them out their full glory! All of it was over in moments.
Trinity couldn't explain it but yearned to soar across the bayous and compete with their transformed chief. But so much remained.
As the scales crawled along his neck, Trinity stretched it out as if he was trying to keep his head above water. It lengthened, forming a curved S-shape before scales overtook it and began to creep over his face. Where Frank's reptilian maw was broad and flat, Trinity's took on sharp and angular features with a row of short horns running along the bridge of his nose. With jagged, backswept horns and fins framing the sides of his face. His ears were absorbed into his head, disappearing behind a fold of scales. The dried blood fell away in flakes. His hearing was far sharper than before. So was his sense of smell as his nostrils flared open. And his fluttering thick serpentine tongue opened up a world of new sensations. While the nictitating membrane covering his solid emerald eyes would let Trinity freely explore the waters of the Louisiana marshlands.
Luminescent green fumes flowed from the gaps between the fangs and poison-dripping incisors of his muzzle. His rib cage began to expand to make room for the inflating organ containing the unknown gas. Scales split at the seams across his body. He was surrounded by a faint and shimmering miasma as the gas leaked out from countless pores. With a conscious effort, Trinity stopped the production by no longer pulling on the overflowing reservoir of magic now within his grasp. Like this, the gas was inert and faintly sweet-smelling, but it could be imbued with the arcane might flooding and overwhelming his mind.
Trinity clutched his draconic head, violently shaking his sinuous neck back and forth. Something broke inside him as he tried to process the new information. This was wrong! He shouldn't be like this! A gout of acidic fumes was expelled from his third lung, melting and oxidizing everything in its path. Dangerous cracking sounds ran up the rigging's length. Both Frank and the chief tried to approach but kept their distance from the dragon. They feared for their and their friend's safety if they interrupted the transformation. But they were ready to intervene. Trinity reached down with his three-clawed hand and grasped the alien hemipenis hanging from his crotch. He barely resisted the urge to tear them off as a sliver of existential dread swept over him. Even his thoughts sounded wrong to him now.
A measure of calm returned to Trinity as he listened to the voice that had guided him so far. The air seemed to shudder with each powerful breath he took. He could hear nuances of it now: Reverberating, passionate, possessing a cavernous depth, unmistakably feminine. Hers.
Trinity almost cried with joy at the realization that she was a woman.
Another pressure built in her chest; her swelling breasts were relatively modest compared to the harpy's. But, the dragoness didn't care as she experimentally played and cupped her breasts. Spurts of milk shot out after putting enough pressure between her fingers. Then she gasped and was distracted as she felt her hemipenis and ballsack retreat into a deepening slit. The emptiness she felt before her vaginal passage filled out with soft flesh offered a hint of how huge a cock would need to be to reach her womb hidden underneath her tightly packaged trenches of abs. A pair of thumb-sized clit sat above her swollen netherlips, and a grinning Trinity far preferred them to the hemipenis. Both Frank and the chief instinctively take a step back as she smiled. They felt so sensitive, constantly rubbing up against each other. She yearned for them to be enveloped by a pair of lips to be sucked on, or having fingers milking them until she came.
Not much remained now. Further adjusting for partially aquatic life, a series of dorsal fins stretched from her back to the tip of her tapered tail-fin. And by flexing specific muscles in her hands and feet, she could extend a membranous webbing between her claws. Perhaps she could be
Trinity's frame took on a feminine curve, though lost none of the billowing expanse of chiseled scales that rippled with each movement and quiver she made. And with that, the last of her doubts settled. It'd take some adjustment, but she had both her sister and mother rely on. Same for the chief. Trinity also spied a few too many monstrous and animalistic women than their nearly all-male work crew would've suggested, including themselves.