ROYAL REWARD: Perverse Poolrooms, Part 3 (Gigantification, Transparency, 2nd Person)

It takes a little while for you to collect yourself. Standing there on the edge of the third pool, your fluid new body dripping and oozing around you, you breathe hard, struggling to hold yourself together. The more you panic, the more your altered figure seems to run away from you: big globs of green slime drip from your hands, striking the tile with emphatic splats, and you find your vision sinking as your legs collapse into a puddle. Soon, you’re in up to your waist, and everything you do seems to make the situation worse. 

To your horror, you realize things are worse: not only are you melting like ice cream in the sun, but your molten body is flowing towards the pool itself. If that happens, you’re not sure what you’ll do. How would you ever manage to separate yourself from it? 

For an instant, you consider crying out for help, but that seems unlikely to be effective. Instead, you summon every ounce of willpower you can muster and, with a great cry of effort, succeed in literally pulling yourself back together. Rising from the primordial soup of your legs, you hug yourself and sigh in relief. The last thing you want is to end up as part of a pool forever.

With much effort, you manage to get yourself moving again. At first, you try to walk like a human, raising one leg and placing it in front of the other, and so on. Unfortunately, this is a little less than effective now that your feet are 95% water. On impact with the ground, they pop and splatter, forcing you to swing your arms to keep yourself from toppling over and bursting yourself. 

Finally, you resort to the sluggish yet somehow more natural method of, well, sliding like a slug. It’s a little slow and more than a little embarrassing, but it’s more effective than reforming your legs each time you take a step. Admittedly, it feels uncomfortably like wearing a pair of water-logged pants, but you can deal with that. 

Slugging on towards the next room and whatever horrible pool of magic it has waiting for you, you can’t help but consider the assumptions you’ve been clinging to since you entered this awful labyrinth. Is there really a way out of here? Or are you just subjecting yourself to one mutagenic acid bath after another for the sake of it? Even if there is a way out, who’s to say you’ll be transformed back when you reach it? What if you’re sent back to Earth like you are, as a slime girl? How would you ever handle the paperwork? 

After what feels like half-an-hour of sliding, you finally reach the next room and the pool of bubbling yellow fluid that fills it. Standing on the edge, looking down at your reflection, you feel a fresh sense of trepidation. You think you’ve established the pools don’t contain acid now, but a terrible new thought has just occurred to you: what if it doesn’t matter? Who knows whether your slimy new body can hold itself together, or whether it’ll dissolve like that one raccoon’s cotton candy? Dare you take the risk? Even knowing it could be the end of you?

It’s not an appealing thought, but the more you consider it, the more you realize the algebra is unchanged. What choice do you have but to take the risk and press ahead? 

With a sigh, you trudge to the very edge of the pool and allow yourself to slide over. You can only hope it isn’t the last action you take. 

Mercifully, it isn’t. As you sink into the frothing yellow fluid, your strange new body seems to contract and congeal, as if instinctively reacting to the threat of dissolution. Flexing your fingers, you find them more stable than ever–when you rub their tips, they even appear to be solid. 

Satisfied, you start to kick, forcing yourself back to the surface, where you frontcrawl as fast as you can for the other side. As your arms strike the surface of the waters, green splitting yellow with a splash, that familiar sense of tingling passes through you, intense as ever, despite your change in form. Taking a deep breath, you hurry on–you want to get to the other side ASAP.

As you swim, however, you notice something strange, strange enough that you almost pause mid-stroke. Are you… are you moving faster than you should be? The pool is at least fifty meters across–you shouldn’t be this close to the far side already, should you? You really hope you’re not turning into some kind of freaky fishperson, but as far as you can tell, you aren’t changing at–

…Why does everything look so small?

Screeching to a stop, you look down at yourself and squeal. You are changing! You’re growing, getter larger and larger with the second. Like a sponge absorbing the water, you swell till your feet touch the bottom of the pool and your head rises towards the ceiling. 

With a squeal, you resume swimming, and when your hand strikes the water it almost catches the edge of the pool as well. With a couple of kicks, you’re there, grabbing onto it, and with a squeal of terror, you pull yourself out again. It’s trickier than it sounds–no sooner is your body out of the water than it loses its stability again, almost costing you an arm when you put too much weight on it. Fortunately, you’re pretty sticky, and by latching to the far wall, you’re eventually able to drag your swelling body out. 

You continue to grow till you’re fully removed from the water, bulging into a colossus of slime, so large you stretch from the left edge of the pool all the way to the right. When you try to move, there’s a noticeable lag now, as if the signals are taking time to travel from your brain to your limbs. …Assuming that’s how it works now that you’re a slime.

Pulling the last of your gloopy green body out of the water, you struggle to pull yourself together and make sense of what’s happened to you. In a way, this is almost worse than being turned into a slime. At least as a slime, you could still ride in an elevator! What are you supposed to do now? You could practically fill a swimming pool yourself! 

Hugging yourself to keep your endless supply of new body matter from sliding back into the pool, you groan in despair. What are you supposed to do now?! 

The exit beckons you forward, demanding you approach. It’s large, but not quite large enough for you to fit through at your current size. You suppose it’s merciful you were turned into a slime and not into a minotaur or something. At least this way, you have a chance of continuing. 

With much effort, you manage to gather your strength and force yourself on, flowing on out of this pool and into the next one in a tidal wave of gloopy green stuff. It’s a tight fit, even with most of your body shapeless, but with much effort, you managed to squeeze your way through to the other side. You don’t want to imagine what it looks like when you emerge.

Reforming, you pull yourself up to just short of the ceiling and stand there in the puddle of your feet, studying the next obstacle in your path. This one looks like, well, like normal water, really. It’s completely clear, like in those pics you see of tropical islands. Unlike the other pools, there isn’t a hint of color at all. Did someone forget to add the food dye? 

Ironically, the normalness of the pool makes it scarier than ever. Why is this pool different from the rest? What weird effect is it going to have on you? Who knows what it could do? It could turn you back to normal or erase you from existence. 

Well, there’s only one way to find out. 

Taking a deep breath (not that you really need to breathe anymore), you allow yourself to flow over the edge and into the clear water of the pool. It’s a lengthy process now, given your immense size–you feel like a tanker’s worth of oil being spilled all over some poor, innocent gulf.

Mercifully, as your body slips into the water, it congeals again, condensing into a tighter, stable, and ever so slightly smaller form. Assuming control of your gigantic new limbs, you kick yourself forward, frontcrawling for the far side. You feel a little like a grown adult trying to swim in a child’s bath, but at least the pool gives you some space to move in.

You reach the far side with incredible speed, though it doesn’t seem to make a difference. By the time you haul yourself out of the water, you’re already tingling all over again. Despite your hopes, it certainly wasn’t normal spring water you just swam through–your cells are shaking like they’re about to explode. 

Gathering yourself up into something as close to human shape as possible, you hold out your arm and study it intently, waiting to see what changes afflict you this time. You’re hoping to shrink–that’s the main thing you want at this point–but what you get instead is incredibly disappointing: 

As you watch, your body slowly loses its color, your green fading from a rich, healthy shade to something a lot paler. It takes you a moment to realize what’s actually happening: no, it’s not your color that’s changing, it’s your opacity! You’re turning translucent! 

The process continues for several more seconds, finally leaving your body so clear that it’s difficult to tell where you are. You’re like a gloopy, pale green ghost at this point, so translucent you’re practically invisible. If not for the fact you can feel your entire form, you’d be worried about losing pieces of yourself when you move. If you did, you’d never be able to find yourself again! 

You suppose you should be grateful, really. Compared to some of the other things that have happened to you since entering this accursed maze, being turned translucent is pretty tame, all considered. It might even be an advantage: if there are any monsters in here, they’ll have a much harder time finding you now! 

With a sigh, you gather your strength (and your mass) and force yourself to continue. You don’t know what’s awaiting you in the next room, but what choice do you have but to face it?