As they slowly realized what was happening, the whole room descended into pandemonium. A few people tried to reassure Christina, although they had no idea how to actually help her. Most of them fled the room or cowered in the corner, trying to get as far away as possible from any potential contagion. But Marcella stood out from the rest of the crowd, not moving a muscle and in fact confidently smirking as she captured the whole thing on her phone.
Marcy alternated between watching through the screen and looking over the top of her phone at the real thing. She'd been around Animalians a few times before, but she'd never seen anything like this. It was incredible - seeing Chrissy's skin lose its lively pink undertones and turn into a dull wrinkly grey, watching her feet expand into big flat discs that crushed her flimsy little sandals underneath. And the wide-eyed look of fear on her face as her nose started to grow, before her very eyes, into a long fleshy trunk. Even the slowest girls in the crowd - and Marcy didn't hesitate to think of Chrissy's new friends as a bunch of dumb, air-headed bitches - must have understood exactly what was happening to her by now. Marcy grinned behind her phone. Christina wouldn't find it so easy to fit in with the hot crowd now, would she?
But the girl who couldn't hide her enjoyment stuck out like a sore thumb when everyone else was confused and panicking. Chrissy was quick to notice it, too. Her fear starting to turn into fury, she stomped over to confront her former friend, the whole floor shaking with every slamming step. Marcella watched in astonishment as a wall of gray flesh and muscle came to loom over her. Chrissy's beautifully tailored dress was now bursting at the seams, hanging on by its last thread as it struggled to contain breasts that were each twice the size of Marcy's head - and at the same height, too. She had to turn her head and stare practically straight up to meet the furious gaze that rained daggers on her from above.
"Marcy!" The deep, rumbling voice rang out over her head like a clap of thunder. "Are you fucking doing this to me?"
The girl below felt like she was bolted to the floor. Something deep inside her, perhaps an instinct from way back when humans were cavemen in Africa and hiding in trees, told her she was about to die. She might have actually wet her pants. In any case, Marcy was in no condition to respond to the hulking beast that was still growing above her. She just stood there, staring up at Christina's morphing face and the big sharp tusks coming in, her mouth agape.
As she waited for a pathetic reply, Chrissy felt another wave of uncontrollable changes coursing through her. Her half-formed trunk tickled, no doubt preparing to shoot out even further from her face. She tried to hold it back, but couldn't. Another giant, wet sneeze exploded out of her. And she didn't have time to cover her nose with her elbow, like she'd always been told to do. Not that it would have helped when her nose was two feet long.
Marcella felt the sticky mucus descend on her, a good portion of it landing directly in her open mouth. It tasted foul, just like the cloud of hot animal breath that had preceded it. But she realized quickly that the flavor of it was the least of her problems now, as a burst of energy flowed through every part of her body. She was afraid to even turn her head back down and look, but from the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of it - her thin, dainty fingers ballooning out into thick, meaty sticks, the pale skin turning rough and dark gray.
"No!", she cried out, her own voice now starting to grow deeper and huskier as her whole body started to change. "You can't do this to me! I can't be a f... freak like you!"
Chrissy, who was surprised to learn that the virus could spread that easily, who didn't really want revenge so much as just to be returned to her normal size, was already angry enough. But that last comment sent her into a rage, new instincts calling on her to fight rather than flee. "A freak like me?!? I'm gonna fucking kill you, Marcy!" She had no doubt that she could do it, too. How good it would feel to snap that little twerp's neck right now...
But Marcella felt a completely unfamiliar sense of strength running through her veins as the virus worked its way through her whole body. A part of her was dismayed to see her belly, her arms, swelling out to morbidly obese proportions, her legs crushing against each other as the flesh expanded around them. But all that bulk wasn't fat. It was muscle. As her height started to catch up to Christina's, she snorted in a very non-human-sounding way, determined to stand her ground against any rival. She felt like she could take on a whole stampede right about now. Her hands being one of the first things to change gave her the idea. She shoved Chrissy back with all her might. But she didn't get far - the other girl still weighed a whole lot more than she did.
Then it turned into a full-on brawl. Christina, without even thinking, let out a deafening trumpet as she prepared to fight back. That was enough to clear the rest of the room, including quite a few people who were now livestreaming all of this on their phones. She raised her thick, meaty fists in the air, prepared to give Marcy the beatdown of her life. But her hands slammed into the ceiling above, leaving big dents in the stucco. The ceiling was only a few inches above her head. Hopefully she was done growing by now. Soon, they were both throwing punches that would have been enough to incapacitate, if not outright kill, even the strongest of human beings. But neither of them were human anymore, and neither of them were going to be deterred.
Finally, Chrissy pinned Marcy to the ground, exhausted. The two-minute head-start she'd gotten in her transformation had been enough to give her the upper hand, but both of them had used up all that energy that the change had filled them with. Both of them fell onto a table covered in drinks, which crumpled like it was made of tissue paper under their combined weight. Christina looked around at the empty bar, the broken and ruined furniture that had been left behind by their rampage. Her head pounded. She didn't know much about Animalians, but she was pretty sure she was going to be stuck this way for the rest of her life. How was she going to explain this to... anyone?