It had barely been a moment when Shulk and Melia caught view of Alcamoth in the floating region of the Bionis Shoulder before they were attacked. A beam of concentrated, violent ether energy had ripped through the hull of Junks as the airship came into view of the capital city's central square, blasting the wing and sending the ship careening out of control just as Shulk had called Melia to the bridge. The two were sent tumbling as the ship had lost control, and the young engineer and High Entia princess had collided into one another, falling into one of the ship's control panels together at the same moment. Affected by the ether discharge, the control panel had shocked the two, sending a surge through their bodies that pulsated across their muscles - the two cried out in shock as the voltage startled them, feeling a constriction across their skin as the current ran through them. As the electrocution stopped, before they could properly react, the ship went careening into a nearby lake...
*CRASH*
And the two had arrived at the Bionis Shoulder.
Melia and Shulk had just helped themselves to their feet on the remnants of Junks' deck, wringing the water out of their clothing from swimming in the waterlogged ship, right as a Telethia flew overhead of them. The two took in the sights of the environment as the mix of liquid mist and cloudy fog cleared from across the floating island's plain, trying to shake off the jolt of energy that still yet surged through their muscles.
"Phew... Guess we're still in one piece." Shulk spoke to Melia, trying to ease the tension from their nasty fall.
"Quite. What in the world was that?" Melia responded.
"It happened so quickly that I didn't get a good look myself... I saw some flickering around the capital, then suddenly, a black beam..."
"A black beam...?" Melia put a ponderous knuckle to her lips, trying to remember the sensation she felt when she and Shulk were airborne. "Some new defensive measure, perhaps..." She didn't get quite a good look at what had struck her and Shulk's borrowed ship, but it certainly was ether-based in nature - her High Entia blood made her aware of that much, for sure. Even now, she could still feel the ether residue from the attack around her and Shulk... which should not be happening. Melia gazed at Shulk as the young scientist inspected the ship, staring at the machinery in a manner that the young (by High Entia standards) Empress-to-be wished he would share with her in adventures past. Melia focused, trying to determine the origin of the ether aura she could feel around Shulk.
"Some components of Junks sustained heavy damage. It won't budge until we..." Shulk trailed off as he noticed Melia surveying him, up and down his body. "Melia? Is there something wrong?" Melia caught herself staring at Shulk's surprisingly-defined form in that tight-fitting undershirt of his, and shook off the mental image that came of it.
"It's nothing, really. It's just..." As Melia closed the distance between Shulk and herself, she could feel the dull field of ether strengthen, as if it radiated from Shulk's body. "Shulk - do you feel... odd? Like something is amiss?"
"Now that you mention it..." Shulk rubbed a hand across his arm, involuntarily twitching his fingers in response. "I still can feel the shock from the control panel coursing through my arm. I expect it should wear off after an hour or two, I've shocked myself quite badly in plenty of mechanical experiments before. How are you, though - is the twitching still bothering you?"
Melia shook her head. "No, Shulk, that's not it. Whatever that black beam was, I suspect it was a highly concentrated stream of ether. I could feel it as it closed into the ship. It felt... chaotic. Powerful. Foreign."
"I see..."
"But the strangest thing, however, is I can still feel it now..." Melia touched her hand against Shulk's arm, gently caressing his flesh with his fingers. "Here... And here." Melia's fingers finished their travels at her breast, and Shulk immediately caught the subtext.
"Do you mean to imply that we're... generating this ether somehow?"
"It sounds odd, does it not? But my senses do not fail me." Shulk pondered, massaging his lip with his finger.
"No... No it definitely would make sense if there was a conduit for the ether to travel to our bodies and connect. A conduit, such as..." Shulk looked back into the ship, flooded with water, looking down the stairwell to where the bridge would be located.
"You mean to imply that that shock had us exposed to that black ether?" Melia gripped her arms - suddenly, the dull tingling sensation in her muscles seemed more worrying than she had initially suspected. Shulk caught Melia's flash of worry upon her face, and tried to ease her mind.
"Melia, it should be alright. We don't know what that black ether is capable of - true - but we have faced similar situations before, no? We should take it as it comes, and observe if any effects occur."
Melia's eyelids dropped for a split-second - not exactly a smooth response, but then again, Shulk was never a poet. She sighed, then spoke. "You truly have the mind of a scientist, Shulk."
"Sisterpon! Watch out on right!"
"I take care of it! Kino handle left side!"
"Gotcha!"
The battle cries of two Nopon had broken Melia and Shulk's conversation, and sent the pair into alert mode.
"Those voices!"
"A-are those...?" As the voices confirmed, it was truly Nopon, two Melia and Shulk knew very well - Riki's children. Shulk and Melia watched as volfves surrounded the two Nopon, as Shulk continued in exasperation. "It's Kino and Nene! What are they doing here?!"
"Shulk," Melia commanded, "We must help them!"
"Of course!" As the two sprung into action, trying to spring from Junks' bridge, Melia toppled over, feeling a pain of constriction around her ankles, traveling up her legs from around her feet. Shulk was immediately concerned, afraid Melia might have sprained something. "What's wrong?"
"I-it's nothing, I'm still able to engage in combat!" Melia tucked in her legs close, quickly removing her high heels, the source of her pain, and inspecting one of them. The footwear appeared to split a little at the edge of the vinyl shoe, showing visible cracks around the line of Melia's ankle, as if the shoe was about to break. Melia looked down at her legs, and could see her stockings were beginning to split - the sight of her feet beginning to peek through her splitting leggings bought Melia's attention immediately to a constricting tightness felt around her areas of still-wet, yet wrung clothing. With little time to think about it, with two Nopon children in danger, Melia immediately found a blame to attribute her constricting clothing feeling towards. "Confound this lake water! It must be shrinking my clothing, it's so saturated with liquid!"
"Is that all?" Shulk began to notice something about himself too, as Melia mentioned the word "shrinking". "Come to think of it, my attire's feeling rather tight as well. This blasted undershirt's hugging my chest for much more than I'm comfortable with...!" Melia looked up and caught a peek of Shulk tugging on his shirt, and could catch his fairly well-defined ab and chest muscles beginning to show more form behind his shirt, as it and his jacket looked to hug his chest, and his pants looked to be tightening to show the outline of Shulk's...
"A-a-anyways!" Melia shouted, shaking a blush off her face as she threw her shoes aside. She jumped into the lake and looked up at Shulk, urging him to join her. "We have to rescue Kino and Nene! We can worry about our laundry later!"
"Right!" Shulk wasted no time in jumping in after Melia, and the two began to swim to shore, ready to assist in fighting the volfves.
Unbeknownst to Shulk and Melia, the black ether and subsequent electric shock did more than put a pulse of voltage through their muscles. The magical, otherworldly qualities of the black ether had combined with the power supplying Junks, and had found its way into the pair's bodies, beginning to channel its way around the two heroes' circulatory systems without their knowledge. The chaotic energy pushed and pulled within Shulk and Melia's bodies, demanding its hosts change to become powerful enough to contain the power. And change they did, as their bodies began to mutate in an ever-so-subtle fashion, that completely by chance of circumstance, the two had not yet noticed.
As Shulk and Melia swam to shore, the constricting feeling did not leave them, as their clothing began to tighten more and more. Surrounded by water, and with the sounds of displacing liquid and creatures fighting in their ears, the two had not noticed the tearing in their clothing beginning to form, the sounds of fabric ripping, everything that was affecting the two of them. The two were focused on their mission, so focused that they may not realize before they get to shore - or maybe not even realize after reaching shore - the truth of the situation the two were in...
Shulk and Melia Antiqua were beginning to grow larger and larger as a result of the black ether's mutagenic properties.
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