Switch, thanks to Vivian's urging, has completed the ritual to get a familiar of his own.
Shift is the name of his familiar, and they...had a rocky start at first. It turns out changelings really don't like being magically bound to a person, and Switch honestly doesn't blame Shift.
Vivian thought it would be a good idea to get Switch a changeling familiar because changelings are powerful, and she wanted to help her grandson get over his fears of magical creatures- changelings specifically.
She did not anticipate that Shift could also make Switch's life a spiteful hell.
i wrote a macro growth story for my partner, @bigbigmonsterfan!
summary: Shift (it/its) runs an experiment on Cosmic (they/them) to test their size-shifting capabilities. Destruction ensues. 2158 words
(18+ minors and ageless blogs DNI)
"Subject: Cosmic. Test: Pinpointing the source of dimensio-elastic energy. Hypothesis: Subject may store excess energy in the muscular system to convert into dimensio-elastic energy at will.
"I'd also, as part of this test, like to see just what your limits are." Shift looked up from the tablet they'd been writing on. In front of them stood a pale, reptilian monster not unlike a crocodile, with rows of multicolored spines along their back.
Cosmic already loomed over Shift, a seven-foot monstrosity even with their hunched posture. Shift stood at a comparatively puny four feet, and it had to crane its neck to look its test subject in the eye. Cosmic, noticing this, stooped down further so that their head was closer to the scientist's eye level.
"No need for that," chattered Shift. "I'll be having to look much higher to keep eye contact with you by the time we're through. Are you ready to get started?"
Cosmic stood back up to their full height and gave a low, barely audible rumble of approval. "Ready," they replied in their gravelly voice.
Shift wasted no time in scuttling across the room to a large device on wheels. It pulled a set of wires from it, each one ending in a small pad. Cosmic shot Shift a quizzical glance.
"We'll be using electromyography for this test," Shift explained, as it got to work placing the pads on the reptile's skin. They were sticky, but Cosmic could hardly feel them through their tough hide. Shift placed them along Cosmic's legs, arms, a few on their belly, and one on either side of their neck.
"Won't they pop off when I start growing?" Cosmic asked.
"They're designed to stretch," replied Shift. "I made sure of that. Anyways, we only need a little bit of data to determine whether my hypothesis is correct or not.
"Now…" Shift's eyes flickered to the door to the test chamber, considering leaving the room to observe from the outside. After a brief moment, it made up its mind otherwise. "I'll stay here to make note of any physical observations. It's safe for me to come close during the process, yes?"
Cosmic blinked in surprise. "I s'pose so. Just be careful around the tail."
"Certainly!" Shift scurried to a position in front of Cosmic and held its tablet at the ready, prepared to take notes. It signaled to an unseen assistant behind one of the test chamber windows, and then it gave Cosmic a clawed thumbs up. "Begin!"
No sooner had Shift signaled for the test to begin than Cosmic started to change. At first, it was subtle - had it not known what to expect, Shift would have thought they were just shifting their weight. Before long, though, it became clear that Cosmic was growing larger. Shift, once at eye-level with their chest, only came up to their waist now, and even that was starting to move upwards.
Each scale rippled and stretched as Cosmic grew, their muscles straining with the effort. They gritted their teeth. Looking closer, Shift began to notice each part of them as they grew – the way their fingers bulged outwards just barely before their hand caught up, their eyes blinking into a larger size. Their shadow grew to overtake Shift.
After a few minutes, Shift was now at eye-level with the top of Cosmic's thigh. Another minute, and it only came up to their knee. Cosmic's leg alone was wide enough that Shift couldn't have wrapped their arms around it. The kaiju took a step backwards to rebalance their weight, and when they did so, it shook the ground enough that Shift had to brace itself.
Shift looked on in awe as Cosmic continued to grow, its eyes wide. Before long, Shift came up to Cosmic's mid-calf. One big hand was larger than Shift's entire body, and their snout was nearly as long as a car.
Cosmic stooped, placing one massive, clawed hand on the floor. They slowly lowered themself near to the ground, resting their chin on the tile. Their eye fixed on Shift; it noticed that Cosmic's eye was so big now that it could make out each minute detail of the iris around their slitted pupil. It dilated visibly as Shift met their gaze.
The kaiju parted their jaws in a toothy grin, each fang half as large as Shift themself at this point. "You've been awful quiet," they bellowed, their voice so loud and low that Shift could feel the vibrations through the floor. "Everything good?"
Shift had been staring, its jaw hanging open. Realizing this, it shook the shock from its head and returned the grin. "More than good. Tremendous, even." It cackled softly at its own joke. "It'll take some time for me to analyze the data, but the electromyogram has been showing high levels of electrical potential, so I suspect my hypothesis is correct. That's a massive breakthrough and the first step towards recreating your powers." Shift tapped excitedly at the tablet it was holding, which displayed a line chart but was suspiciously devoid of notes. It had been too busy observing to write anything down, apparently.
"So we can end, then?"
"I wouldn't say that…" The corner of Shift's mouth twisted into a devilish smirk. "You remember this is a two-part test, yes?"
"It is?" Cosmic blinked in surprise.
"I mentioned I'd like to test your limits and see just how big you can get. What do you say?"
Cosmic took stock of their surroundings. Flattened out as they were, they nearly took up the entire length of the house-sized test chamber. "If I get any bigger, I'm probably going to break something," they stated.
"I'm willing to take that risk," replied Shift. "What's a little broken equipment in the name of science, after all?"
Cosmic laughed, a low hiss from between their teeth. The sheer force of their breath sent a few papers flying across the room, which Shift scrambled to pick up and place a paperweight on. "If you insist," Cosmic growled.
Cosmic pushed themself back to standing with their massive arms, and they peered over Shift, now several stories high. They began to grow again, this time the slightest bit faster than before. The wires embedded in Cosmic's skin began to strain from their growth, barely able to reach around their massive proportions.
Cosmic bared their teeth and strained their muscles once more, and the tension in the wires grew too great for the equipment to handle. The electrode in their left shoulder ejected itself with a soft pop and clattered to the ground. The right was soon to follow, and then several more down the length of their body. They didn't even seem to notice, their focus on the strain of continuing to grow.
Shift, meanwhile, certainly noticed and scrambled to collect the fallen electrodes. One of them had landed near Cosmic's hind leg, so it dove close to retrieve it. It considered, briefly, that it should try to get out of the way in case Cosmic tried to move. While the kaiju would never hurt it on purpose, they were lost in concentration, and this was dangerously close.
On the other hand… Shift couldn't resist the opportunity to get a closer look. When it had first picked up the electrode, the top of its head came up to Cosmic's mid calf, but after a minute passed, it only made it to the height of their ankle. It held out one hand, fingers splayed, to the scutes that it could reach - by now, its hand was smaller than most of them.
A sudden, ground-shaking thud interrupted Shift's observations, and it reflexively skittered back to the edge of the room. Cosmic was practically folded in half, the top of their snout against one wall and their tail against the other. Their face was contorted into a grimace. "What happened? Are you alright?" Shift called up to them.
"What?" bellowed Cosmic. Shift could feel the reverberations of their voice through the floor. "I can't hear you down there."
Shift cupped its hands around its mouth and repeated itself, shouting this time. “What happened? Are you alright?”
"I think I broke the wall," Cosmic replied. Sure enough, their tail had busted a sizable hole into a neighboring test chamber. "Also, I'm stuck."
Shift clicked its tongue a few times as it surveyed the damage. "Not to worry, we can fix that. And good thing, too. I think your best option here is to break more of it until you can move again."
"Are you sure?"
Shift nodded in response, but after noticing Cosmic squint to see them clearly, held its arms above its head in an O shape as a more visible response.
Cosmic drew in a sharp, low breath. "Alright, here goes nothing."
With a powerful heave, Cosmic lifted their tail as much as the now-cramped space would allow. Then, with another thud, they slammed it into the hole in the wall. The floor shook, the door rattled, and Shift nearly fell over from the force of the impact. The wall cracked and then crumbled, leaving a gaping opening. The scientist working in the neighboring chamber peered in through it, then quickly scrambled out of view as Cosmic's tail started to move again. One last slam, and all but the edges of the wall had collapsed. (The scientist, thinking better of trying to get involved with whatever this was, abandoned their studies and scurried out the door.)
Finally, Cosmic had enough room to maneuver. They shuffled backwards and let their tail uncurl into the neighboring room. In the process, they knocked over several tables and chairs, but it wasn't until hearing the shattering of glass - whatever unfortunate projects were on top of the tables - that they even noticed. Between their size and their thick scales, they hardly registered as obstacles at all.
Before long, Cosmic could finally lift their head away from the wall it had been pressed against. They did so a little too quickly, slamming the top of their head on the ceiling. A rain of plaster fell down, followed by a few fragments of ceiling tiles; Shift ran for cover underneath Cosmic's belly.
"Sorry, I--" Cosmic began, but was cut off by a crack from above. With the wall gone and the ceiling compromised, it was too much for the roof to handle. An alarm began to blare, and the ceiling started to collapse around them and tumble into pieces. Cosmic's size alone was enough to protect the scientist hiding under them from any debris, but they still curled around it reflexively, pulling it into their arms. Chunks of plaster, wood, and metal crashed down directly onto Cosmic, but they bounced harmlessly off of their scales.
As the last of the caved roof fell into the test chamber and the dust began to settle, Cosmic finished their sentence. "Sorry, I… didn't mean to do that. But I'm not stuck anymore." They spoke as softly as they could, but at their size, the sound still made the debris around them rattle.
Shift, cradled in Cosmic's arms (each much larger than it was) and pressed gently against their middle, grinned to itself. "I'd been wanting to install a skylight," it teased. "How bad is the damage?"
Cosmic poked their head out of the hole in the ceiling sheepishly. In front of the building, a small crowd of evacuating laboratory staff and clients had formed. The kaiju ducked back down, lowering their head to answer Shift. "Pretty bad. Maybe I should have just scaled back down, it would've spared you all the reconstruction you'll need to do."
Shift responded so quickly as to nearly cut them off. "Unthinkable. That would skew the results."
The corner of Cosmic's mouth twitched into a smirk, and they slowly lifted Shift away from their body so that they could see it better. "Of the test? Or just what you wanted to see?"
Shift didn't answer, and instead buried its face in Cosmic's hand. Cosmic was too big to pick out the faint blush on its cheeks, but they still knew all too well that it was there.
After a few minutes, Shift finally broke the silence. "How close did we make it to your limit?"
"Nowhere near it," Cosmic replied matter-of-factly.
"Oh my…" Shift blinked its wide eyes. "If that's the case, I have more data to collect on you."
"I'm lookin' forward to a second test, then," Cosmic rumbled. They lifted Shift up to their upper chest, and it took the opportunity to nuzzle into the softer scutes of their neck. "But let's try it outside next time."
"Yeah," Shift agreed. It reached its arms out to wrap them around Cosmic's neck, but its armspan hardly even reached around half the diameter. Instead, it just clung to their scales as if they were a rock climbing wall. "I'm looking forward to it, too."
'I can tell your confidence's growing,' Finn says as he staves off Shift's barrage of swings with some ease. He lets himself be pushed back, footwork light and steady as if he were treading a tightrope.
Their little game began to take the form of fencing as Finn's opponent traded slashes for stabs, cuts for thrusts. Gaining ground, the Outlaw began to force his advance. He takes a long stride.
'Maybe a little too fast...' the Corsair chuckled. He guides the assailing blade to the side with his own, leaving his opponent to stumble forward.
Finn's eye seems to flash as he locks on his victory. He extends a leg, and Shift crashes onto the deck.
With no intention of losing so poorly, Shift rolls onto his back to reach for the concealed blade in his coat. Before he can act, however, a boot slams into his chestplate, leaving him to let out a defeated groan as he's pinned.
'Overextended and playin' dirty... heh.' Finn holds Shift at his sword's point, a cocksure grin on his face. 'Never gonna learn, are ya, hotshot?'
