Growth Beyond Reason Re-post Parts 10-11

[JP71]

[COLOR=dimgray]GROWTH BEYOND REASON[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]BY[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]JP71[/COLOR]

[COLOR=yellow]Parts 1-3[/COLOR]
[COLOR=yellow]Parts 4-6[/COLOR]
[COLOR=yellow]Parts 7-9[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]10.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]With his energy levels replenished, Joel McIntyre, safe in the knowledge that Mark Stone was no longer ?of this world? (but for how long?), folded space around them and left the exposure of the sequoia forest far behind. His power was crude at the best of times and required tremendous force of will and concentration in order to achieve any measure of accuracy. But he succeeded in taking them both to an island off Ireland's West Coast. There was a cottage there that belonged to his late grandmother, and she had bequeathed it to him in her last will and testament. As a Briton Joel would use the cottage on getaway weekends, sex-romps as he'd once referred to them, back in the days when bodybuilding was just a pipe dream. When he wasn't using the cottage he would rent it out to immigrant families. That way he had been able to pay for his college fees, and just about keep his head above water following the death of his parents in a car accident when he was seventeen. The cottage would serve the bodybuilders as a temporary sanctuary, a place to plot their next move... ultimately to try to figure out what the hell had just happened to Mark.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]The cottage was small but catered to their needs. Currently it was idle and devoid of tenants. Times had improved for Joel, along with his incredible physique, and a one-year relationship with a dying ?old queen? had left him once again on the plus side of a last will and testament. The benefactor, one Ronnie Lang, had been in his fifties when inoperable cancer was found in him. He had been rich and lonely, in need of companionship to make his last months on Earth as pleasurable as possible. Ah, but Joel's caresses could hardly soothe in the way morphine could. But Ronnie, looking some fifteen years older due to the ravages of the tenacious disease, had been grateful nonetheless, and left three million pounds to Joel, his final ?companion?. Most of that money had been invested in Joel's rise to bodybuilding greatness. It had helped to get him started off in the early years, since when his meteoric gains in the beginning soon attracted the attention of someone in Mathias Redfern's employ. Metazeniosis was suspected and a business card baring the logo and details of the MR Utopian Collective's Body Enhancement Emporium had been slipped into his locker at the gym in Edinburgh where he had carried out the first year of his training. It was during this first tentative year that his incredible gains had surprised not only Joel himself, but everyone at the gym. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]The rest was history. Redfern quickly admitted him into the Collective and was made the study of Carter Yan, the fiend's new intern (Yan himself was a most promising bodybuilder in that his condition easily broke through the Asian genetic predisposition to be lean). Skipping forward a bit, when four augmented men had formed a sub-Collective of their own, the fact that Joel was stinking rich would help their cause greatly. For a start, they were able to acquire the semi and transform it into a mobile laboratory, which Joel could easily hide from Redfern thanks to the extra ability he had acquired as a reaction to Enerflex. But the semi was a long way away now, its secrets laid bare and its structure completely flayed open thanks to Mark Stone's sporadic rampage. The cottage would provide them respite and little else.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'The last time I was here I could just about fit through these doors,' Joel remarked, somewhat amused at how his shoulders were wider than the front door. He was still smaller than Trey (who'd decreased by fifty percent since his re-birth). The men just about managed to squeeze themselves inside and found that the living conditions were hardly suitable to their sizes. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'It's a tight squeeze but at least its better than that forest,' said Trey, carefully lowering himself on to the couch, a two seater that just about accommodated the girth of his tremendous thighs. He was extremely tired and felt like he could sleep for a week. The staircase to the second floor was ridiculously narrow, but Joel managed to get to the master bedroom above, where he kept a suitcase containing mostly clothing and other essentials, should he ever need to get out of Dodge at lightning speed. He dressed in a pair of sweat-pants that clung to his parts like a second skin, along with a simple green polo-shirt, which was also tight in places, but he reckoned it would hold. He found a pair of stretchy shorts for Trey and a wife-beater that he hoped would fit him. Thankfully Joel's feet still fitted into spare sneakers he kept at the cottage. Alas... as the heavier of the two, Trey would have to go barefoot for the time being. The House of Trione was not on their visiting agenda, and this was the only place where they could get replacement clothes that would fit them perfectly. But there would be time for that later.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]They stayed awake into the small hours of the morning, unsure of what day it was, but hardly caring. As Metazens they could usually go without sleep for up to forty-eight hours if need be, and there was a lot that they needed to discuss. Joel disappeared into the cottage's tiny scullery and produced a bottle of red wine that he knew was there. It wasn't expensive stuff by any means, and neither men usually drank as a habit, but habits were meant to be broken. In the glow of the cottage's small electric fire, with Trey stretched out on the couch and Joel just about able to fit in the matching armchair directly opposite, the scene was set for some necessary and interesting discussion:[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'What's the last thing you remember before waking up in the forest?' It was as good a place as any to start. Joel sipped his wine and found it pungent, with a pleasing aftertaste. It was nice. Trey thought hard about this, the wine making him heady despite he'd only downed half a glass at this point. 'I had a dream... only it felt like something more... as if it really happened. It's hard to explain. I was with Mark and he was growing huge. I wanted to fuck him so badly, Joel. 'Cos when we were together I could never violate him like that. He was too fragile to take it when he was scrawny. But since his metamorphosis, my lust for him intensified. I... I...,' Trey fought hard to make sense of what happened next, but he couldn't, beyond describing the sensation of being drained to the quick by Mark's insatiable desire to get way beyond huge.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'If you said that this happened in some dream dimension, we must assume that it's a real place and that Mark, as a Grade One Metazenic bodybuilder, has the power to access this place. And not only that, he can draw people there to do with as he sees fit. It wasn't a dream, Trey. This happened to you in the physical sense as well.' Joel was lost in thought for a time, wishing that Carter could be here to add some insight into the ever-developing series of bizarre occurrences that now seemed synonymous with their everyday lives.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I know that I used Mark's body to come back, and that to do so I tapped into Carter's shape-shifting ability, which is now very much a part of Mark's abilities,' Trey added after the silence had become deafening. 'Further to this, Joel, the fact that I seem to be half my size and weight suggests that it takes a great amount of power, will and effort to make this transference possible, if indeed it can be called that.'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Joel nodded and added his two cents: 'This all stems from Redfern. I get the impression that the fiend isn't one hundred percent sure about the effects of Enerflex, and the fact that the side-effects alone seem to have an agenda entirely their own. Mark has your former megalomaniacal tendencies, and that's why you now share his body and Carter is dead. I'm given to wondering if Redfern can resist the temptation of further experimentation. It could be an addiction of his... but to what end? What does he truly get out of this beyond the thrill of scientific discovery?' [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I can feel Mark, now Joel. He's trying to regain physical dominance. Now I know how Bruce Banner feels.' Trey shifted uncontrollably on the couch, its confines becoming uncomfortable. Joel immediately grew concerned. 'I have to hold him back, Joel.... but it's...it's... difficult....trying... to maintain....con....trol!' Sweat now dappled Trey's rippling skin, his back arching away from the couch as his body was seized by a violent spasm, one that literally took his breath away. Trey's body began to expand as the suppressed Mark, locked inside his altered cells, vied for dominance yet again. Should that be allowed to happen, Joel might not be able to resist him. [/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]'Trey, you have to fight this,' Joel cried, panicking. He stood up and swayed on his feet, for the wine had gone to his head and that didn't help matters. He watched, horrified, as a once passive Trey was seized by violent spasms that had him kicking and thrashing about, which did the living room furniture little good.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Cuh-can't stop thisssssss!'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]It was then that something unprecedented happened. Call it purely instinct, but it seemed that Joel suddenly knew what to do. He concentrated for all that he was worth, and instead of folding space around his body to snatch him from potential harm, he projected his talent towards Trey.... and not only that... it went into Trey as well. But to what effect? Suddenly Trey began to calm down, as the beast within him was mollified for now. The spasms quietened and his body returned once again to a completely passive state, although it could be said that each man's body was pumped with adrenaline. Not only that... Trey was pumped.... bigger than before, having regained quite a bit of the size that his regeneration had robbed him of. This was punctuated by the fact that the clothes Joel had lent him now fluttered to the floor in tatters.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'What just happened?' Trey was breathless from exertion and panic... they both were. Joel didn't have an answer, but he decided to stake a guess. 'I think I inverted my power somehow... projecting it at you.... and into you. This is metaphysics, hardly something I'm au fait with.' Again Joel wished that Carter could offer his analysis. But there was no time to mourn any losses. 'I think that I have folded space around Mark, somehow, trapping him, or at least the essence of him that tried to reclaim the space your body occupies. Maybe he's out of phase, now, and cant re-emerge. This is all speculative, Trey. But the theory seems to fit the facts.'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I need to cry for him, but I can't. I love him so much... or loved him. I don't know. I don't know much of anything anymore. I want to shed tears, but they just won't come.' Trey stood up and puffed himself up to full height. He remembered being this size so recently, and he longed to be massive again, but it didn't really bother him that he wasn't. He was just pleased to be alive. Still, he played with his muscles and both of them were glad for the show as it helped to settle their minds on something pleasant after the brief near-miss of Mark's attempted re-emergence. There was no way to fathom Trey's size at this time. With their Enerflex supply cut off... maybe permanently, sure they might still get bigger from bench-pressing oil trucks and such, but it would be harder work than just availing of Enerflex-glycogen bonding. Joel, too, had grown... he could tell by how snugly his clothes clung to him. And his cock and balls were bigger than ever. As Trey flexed in front of Joel, dominating that tiny living room, his head almost scraping the ceiling, Joel grew wet as precum started to soak into his sweatpants. His breathing once again became erratic, this time with lust. He quickly burst out of his clothing.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Look at my biceps,' Trey remarked, gracefully yet arrogantly arcing his arms upward to form two granite peaks that bulged up to his wrists. He remembered how they had recently formed secondary peaks, pushing their height higher, even beyond his balled fists. But it seemed that although his bizarre return had robbed him of a great deal of his size, nevertheless he retained much of his muscular aesthetics, even more so. Veins, like raised tree roots cracked across his flesh, driving energy into every fibre of his muscles. He made a full lat-spread and his muscles heaved upwards and outwards, the over-swell of his upper pecs glancing off his perfectly formed chin. His nipples expanded and pushed out from his pecs, each one only short of calling out to Joel's now eager lips. As Trey flexed harder and harder, both men got off to it, their once indolent cocks now twitching with vigour and growth of their own.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Damn, you're turning me on,' the Scot exclaimed, unable to suppress his lust at this time, nor did he want to. He needed this. They both did. Trey's cock expanded to about sixteen inches. It was huge and manly-thick, but fell many inches short of what it had been until so recently. Joel flexed off a crab pose, his definition, symmetry and separation even more pronounced than Trey's. Joel was one of the most aesthetic super-huge bodybuilders of all time and at around 800 lbs, were he to get any larger, his aesthetics would only improve. It was a thought that made him even hornier as his mind briefly dwelt on it.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I'm getting bigger, Joel. But how? We're out of Enerflex.' It was true. The more Trey flexed the huger he became. It was phenomenal. He was regaining his former 2000+ lbs of muscle-bulk and he was doing so in a matter of seconds.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Uhhh, so horny, Trey. It must be Carter's ability.... muscle memory and all that. It's allowing you to.... uhhh... re-imagine your former size.' Joel was stroking his huge, thick cock as he proffered yet another five cents explanation to Trey. The cottage was becoming too small for Trey as his height continued to challenge the ceiling for dominance. Trey did another double biceps flex and this time, his bis shot up higher than his balled fists, his beloved secondary peaks now returned to where they were meant to be. Every part of him filled out, blossomed with muscular magnificence... thicker... huger... heavier![/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'BODYBUILDING!! BODY-FUCKING-BUILDING!!!' Trey screamed and every pane of glass in every window frame of the cottage rattled, some on the verge of shattering. His power was returning... increasing. Joel's lust was rising. And as it augmented it caused massive muscle growth in him, too. How was this possible without Enerflex? Were the two men in the process of developing further abilities, ones that managed to bridge the gap between Enerflex dependence and the ability to expand without it? There was no way to know without tests being performed. Joel guessed it must have something to do with Mark, now suppressed and contained, as if both men could suddenly draw power off him to fuel their muscle-growth. Joel's body was thickening, getting heavier and heavier as his body found ways to trick his muscles into ?thinking? there was Enerflex bonding with glycogen.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Trey and Joel became locked in a passionate embrace, the heat of their bodies almost welding them together as one incredible mass of beautiful muscle. Trey opened his mouth to accept the eager offering of Joel's tongue whilst the Scot massaged Trey's still-expanding mega-chest, finding that he had to apply ever-increasing pressure to knead the pecs as they each grew bigger and harder... huger... HUGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!![/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]As the stronger man, extreme lust at its most masculine and primordial caused Trey to become the Alpha Male and he pushed Joel to the ground, the force of which sent him crashing through the floor. Both men fell through to the cellar below, a small earthen square in which preserves had once been stored. The cellar stank of something rotten, and organic... definitely vegetable in origin, but neither man gave it any notice. As debris from the destroyed living room rained down on them, the vast sweep of Trey's delta back afforded them ample protection as he took position over the wantonly lustful Joel.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Got... to... give it to you, Joel... need to... stamp you... with my Mark!' Trey's entire body quivered with anticipation, his gonads firing up in preparation to release their load. Both men continued to grow beyond reason as they engaged in this carnal fusion... one formed of two of the strongest, hugest bodybuilders in existence. Joel cried out in defiance of Trey's invasion. It wasn't that he didn't want it. It was just so difficult trying to push back against the bigger man's incredible strength. As Trey pounded against Joel, their combined weight compacted the earth beneath them, sending great tremors surging through the island's rocky mantel. It was as though the entire island trembled from the effort. Joel gave it his all... willing more size and weight onto his ultra-dense skeleton in order to simply make it through the sex. Both men needed the release so badly. This was a time that had to be relished.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Joel clenched his fabulous bubble butt and gritted his teeth as his overbearing dominator sent his seed deep into his rectal canal. Driving.... hammering... pulverising... Trey went with his meat, seeking no mercy, deriving no solace from the act. It was a rape of epic proportions, but one with Joel's utmost consent. Their bodies were physical works of art, living architecture upon which dark avenues burrowed deep between mountains and miniature fortresses of muscular exactitude. As the muscles heaved and flexed from the acts of sex and the extreme growth seemingly inspired by it, so the vein mazes that fed the colossal musculatures with nutrients thickened and propagated, turning each man into an incredibly sculpted leviathan.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Trey's cry was an ululation of absolute triumph as his climax caused a torrent of jism to flood Joel's innards. His hunger for Trey's cr?me had an agenda of its own and would not waste a single drop. Trey came and came, seemingly without letup, pumping litres of his spunk into Joel, who himself came in abundance. It was a glorious union in which they both wished they could forever remain. But this was just the lust of the moment doing their thinking for them. All good things had to come to an end. It was a natural law. Then again, to look at these two gigantic men, their combined weight now more than two tonnes, an innocent and ignorant by-stander would hardly see where anything natural might apply to them.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Trey withdrew from Joel, allowing the smaller man to turn onto his back. He was filthy from the dirt floor, his sweat and cum making the dirt into a paste that covered him almost from head to foot. Trey, likewise was filthy but he cared little for this as he lowered his head to once again kiss Joel. Their lips locked for what seemed like time immemorial. Joel noticed how the cellar was open to the sky and moonlight was raining down from above. Their love-making had completely collapsed the cottage, although debris that should have been falling from above seemed suspended... somehow.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Time had began to slow, its passage rendering down to complete chronological arrest. Both men became aware of this when their bodies were seized by a rictus of ?no-time?, a time-lock. Still in the embrace formed of the aftermath of sex, they were aware of the very dust motes in the air now seeming to hang in timeless suspension. The effects soon affected them both and they found themselves unable to move. However... as with time-locks, and the fact they were generated by their flexing bodies during a growth spurt, both Joel and Trey were aware of the non-passage of time. What's more, although they could not speak, they could still communicate... with their minds.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]This is incredible. We're doing this without Carter and Raul, for the first time, Trey.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]I know, how weird is that? It has to be Mark having absorbed my strength and Carter's ability. It's like we've been unified and now our powers are increasing.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]The time-lock would last just a few minutes. As the men came out of it, a huge discharge of electricity was released from their bodies. The time-lock would continue for just a little longer. It would be wrong to waste such an opportunity to strike while their man-irons were hot.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'The fortress. Now is our only chance, Joel,' said Trey, actually pleased that both of them had now stopped growing. Joel looked about the same size as Trey and they were far bigger than they'd ever been before. But there would be time for flexing and fun later, if they lived to see a new dawn.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Two massive hulks of men clambered out of the cluttered pit on which firm ground had once supported a quaint and cosy cottage. Thankfully this particular area of the island was somewhat isolated, therefore there were no witnesses to have the wits scared out of them at the sight of Trey and Joel, both naked as they day they were born, covered in dirt ̶ cum dripping off them in sticky, elongating beads ̶ and loping away from the devastation their sexual act had caused. But had someone actually seen them, they would have questioned their own sanity as both men seemed to disappear in the blink of an eye. Thankfully no eyes, human or otherwise blinked in disbelief in the aftermath of their departure. Time was still on their side, but for how long?[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]* * * * *[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Redfern was furious, with himself mostly. He should have seen this coming and raged in his mind as he struggled to focus inwartdly and call upon alien energies within him to break out of the time-lock. How was this possible, that the others could slow time without Raul contributing to the phenomenon? The answer was as plain as the forked tip of Redfern's serpent tongue: Evolution. The Metazens had arrived at a more advanced phase of their genesis and not even Redfern was sure if he was still powerful enough to revert them. He admitted to himself that he had performed in a manner most sloppy, one most unbecoming of the character he had spent decades moulding himself into. Ah, but he was only one character in three, a most unholy trinity festering in a body that had long since relinquished its hold on humanity.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]In one of many panic rooms, connected via bolt-holes and service passageways built into the skin of the fortress/clinic's underbelly, a massive discharge of electricity knocked out the main power throughout the edifice, plunging everything into complete blackness. It was the sign that Redfern and Raul had broken out of the time-lock. The darkness could never pose a problem to a creature that could see quite well in utter blackness, for as much as the blood of others provided sustenance to Redfern, there was another thirst in him that was in dire need of satisfying. And for as much that the blood was the life to a thing such as he, the darkness itself could often be the net he would cast to ensnare the purveyors of that blood.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Raul and Maury were different matters altogether. Raul Ortega hated the darkness, for he'd spent way too long in dark solitary confinement during his prison stretch. The prison shrink had believed it would pacify his rages and sexual proclivities. Well it did, to a certain extent. But it also freaked him out upon occasion, often reverting him back to a child-like state in which he would cry for his Mama during the night. Fortunately the emergency generators kicked in and the panic room was given light once more, only one of an extremely low wattage.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'They will come, Raul. We must be ready, although their statuses and strengths are unknown.' Redfern darted towards a large console spanning an entire wall in the panic room. It was decked out with all kinds of bells and whistles, but it consisted mostly of video monitors, each one displaying nothing but white static. Stooped over the console as he flicked switches and twisted knobs, his gray eyes: each tinged with a hint of scarlet as it darted fleetingly from one monitor to the next, Redfern resembled a nightmarish creature indeed, as though nature in its occasional mismatching of designs, had saw fit (or unfit?) to splice together a great desmodus bat and a scarecrow thing wrought from the disturbed imaginings of a dreaming child. Raul now realised his master was a monstrous thing indeed, for Raul wasn't the only one used to metamorphosis. Indeed, his Lord and Master was a master of metamorphism at its most convoluted and fiendish.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Donnie killed all of the gray thralls, Master,' said Raul, finding it was altogether too warm in the cramped confines of the panic room. He was more than 2000 lbs, maybe a lot more and he wished to teleport them all away to somewhere less confining. But his master could be into his mind so easily, and should Raul attempt escape via teleportation, Redfern would void him of the ability before he had a chance to step out of the portal on the other side. He would be trapped in no-where and no-when... forever. So much darkness was a horror too unbearable to contemplate.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Yes, I know that, Raul. Each of them were made from my blood, and I felt their ends one by one as Donnie wrenched the unlife from them.' Moving like a living shadow, Redfern now more elongated and hunched than before, oozed away from the console and almost hovered over Raul like the Angel of Death. Redfern's face was monstrous for his jaws had become those of a wolf, with huge incisors forming a malevolent overbite that caused his lips to gush with tacky dark fluids. His eyes seemed even more red in their orbits and his cheeks appeared to have collapsed inwards, creating hollows that fed on the scant light of the room. But in those hollows, something moved... nay... squirmed, seemingly on the threshold of life... or something that parodied life as we understand it. Tinges of their own, however faintly blue, where his eyes were red, the pits of Redfern's spectral countenance housed secrets of their own. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'There are just the three of us now, Raul, for I also felt Simon's true death, so keep your resolve. I sense that Trey and Joel are en route to the Alps even as I speak.' Redfern knew that he had Raul's undivided loyalty. There was something of his stuff in the Hispanic, but not enough to exact a fully vampyric transformation. In fact, Raul was still human... in the main. Maybe he would eventually turn, in a century or so, should Redfern ever permit him to live that long. Redfern bent his hunched, dark-robed body further as he drew close to the unconscious young Maury Rose Jr on the panic room floor. The boy was curled like a great fetus, naked and bloated as Redfern's taint worked its way through him at the cellular level. Redfern had changed him, made him his thrall, a fledgling vampire who would know his master for long and long, his ascension to higher status lost on the horizon of future time. Redfern needed a ?fractal lamina? in Raul... a halfling with no fear of daylight, to carry out Collective business when the main staffing body was sleeping in its dark niches. That is why Raul had never been made Redfern's senior lieutenant. Soon Maury Rose would awaken, changed irrevocably and he would rightly step into that role.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I am fully charged, Master. I will teleport us at the first time of trouble,' Raul resolved, flexing in front of Redfern in the hope that it could keep his mind from worrying about what was to come.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'A loyal sentiment from one such as you, Raul,' said Redfern, forming a loathsome half-grin/sneer. Cur-like lips were drawn back from a snout of needle-sharp teeth, but quickly became a cold frown as Redfern reshaped his muzzle into something more human-like. 'But we shall not flee this place... unless left with little or no alternative. Trey and Joel shall come here, aye. But as you have seen with your own eyes, Donnie has been re-born as something powerful, something I must know. He is straight in his gender orientation. If I can leech off him, he could make me far more powerful than I could ever dream of becoming. And I have a feeling that he will be anxious to meet Trey and Joel again, when they eventually arrive.'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Much of this flew right over Raul's head. There were things about Redfern that mystified him even now. He accepted that the gyms of the Utopian Collective were used to recruit young straight men into the Collective's hive, from which Redfern's bodybuilders would seduce them, fuck them and have them hating themselves in the morning. Indeed, Raul had fucked many a youth this way, the bullish college jock type being his particular favourite... the ones who resent homosexuality to such an extent, that to actually be a participant in a homosexual act would create one hell of a mental derailment. It was the conflict that arose from such derailments that Redfern had particular interest in. But as a source of... food? Surely not. This was as much as Raul knew about his Master. Sure, Redfern was a vampire in the truest sense. But there was something else in the fiend that even true vampires cowered from. That was the part of Mathias Redfern known only to himself. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Master, I saw what Donnie can do. I heard him slaughter six thralls armed with UMPs. He can be as of mist, invisible and more terrible because of it. How can you possibly apprehend him, much less rape him to conflict status?' Raul simply could not fathom such an act, although to see it happen would be impressive indeed.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Redfern drew away from the re-forming Maury, knowing that he would have a new creature up and about shortly. His face now restored to something ugly but vaguely human, Redfern managed a true grin, one that seeped sulphur and malice as his eyes flashed a deeper crimson than before.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Oh, I have every intention of tasting the conflict in Donnie, dear Raul. As of the rape of this one... I will leave that entirely to you.'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]11.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]The cavern into which they emerged was dark and cold. But despite that Trey and Joel were both naked, wearing only sheaths formed of drying bodily fluids and cellar dirt, their amazing physiques easily resisted the extreme low temperatures that would prove fatal to lesser men.. They'd both been in the cave network before, assisting Raul's raiding sorties into the heart of the fortress, but neither Joel nor Trey had ever ventured further. Still, Raul (although the others were unsure of his loyalties at the time but were cautiously willing to allow him to attempt the Enerflex snatches) was able to provide them with a rudimentary layout of the naturally occurring cavern network within the mountains which connected ostensibly with what could only be Redfern's tunnels of escape... his bolt-holes... lest the great vampyre ever need to slip away with his unlife intact.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'We don't have much time... five minutes at best,' Joel declared, wishing they'd brought flashlights and such. They chose a direction from which they felt a current of air and quickly noticed how the natural craggy passageway in which they moved was gradually becoming luminescent. The faint blue hue strengthened as they moved closer to the source of the air-flow. 'It's like Enerflex,' said Trey, pausing momentarily to touch a vague blue-lit patch on the rock wall, as if expecting it to provoke some kind of response from his extremely huge muscles. 'I wouldn't be surprised if Redfern bothers to dispose of his experiments as carefully as he should. Some of the Enerflex might have seeped out of the drainage system and into the sub-strata of the cavern system. Of course, if true, it will have spoiled long ago, and therefore is useless to us.' Joel was the first to arrive at the steel grille bolted into a seemingly man-made square-cut passageway through which fresh air could be felt. Joel had the grille off in a trice, crushing the metal into a ball as though it were tinfoil.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I'm stronger,' he admitted, quietly marveling at the feat. When all of this was over, and providing they both survived to flex another day, Joel and Trey both resolved to put their muscles and their increased strength to the test, and most importantly enjoy every minute of getting off to the experience. In the faint blue light Trey's smug grin was just about visible. He was slightly larger than Joel, now, maybe 100 lbs heavier, although at their current massive sizes and weights, 100 lbs made very little difference. Still: 'What you can crush like tin-foil, I can probably squeeze so hard the atoms will collapse', Trey declared with pride.' Joel did not care to be boasted to at this time. As if atoms could collapse, indeed. A quick examination of the bore of the square passage revealed two things: it gradually inclined upwards, probably extending into the very underbelly of the fortress itself, and also just about accommodated each man's incredible dimensions.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]It was their only way in and time was of the essence. Because Joel had never been this far, he had no space-folding coordinates to avail of. He began to regret their coming here, because they had no plan and were making it up as they went along. But didn't James Bond also operate in a similar fashion?[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]They advanced for what seemed like an interminable time, the passage seeming without end. The time-lock effects wouldn't hold much longer and Trey was given to thinking about what kind of hostilities awaited them above. They eventually emerged into a dark sub-basement, badly lit, with just emergency lights glinting wanly at two-metre intervals along the ceiling above. They loped along the corridor as stealthily as their sizes would allow. Joel noticed a closed-circuit camera overhead. Frozen in time it would be unable to capture signs of intruders. But that would soon change.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Curious... Raul talked of patrols this far down. He had to teleport every thirty seconds just to avoid them. But now, nothing,' Joel remarked, liking little that they were met with absolutely no resistance. It didn't sit well with him. Eventually they arrived at a flight of steel steps and cautiously took them up to the next level. The passages this far down lacked any kind of hospitable touches, for they were simply escape routes for a fiend. Lighting was necessary because the bolt-holes cross-connected with service ducts and passageways in need of frequent maintenance. Raul once mentioned having to teleport into some of the service tunnels, encountering some resistance on the way. What, and did Raul expect to make it in and out freely with every sortie? At its height Redfern's Collective was constantly upgrading its security in order to make it as impregnable and resistant to teleporters and space-folders as was scientifically possible.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'We should be below Redfern's workshops now... the cesspit of his meddling with nature. And still no resistance. I don't like this at all, Trey... something isn't right.' Joel and Trey had expected to find the time-locked minions of Redfern, his elite gray-skinned muscle-thralls, each one armed with an array of weaponry. It would have suited them to relinquish some of them of such weapons in order to protect themselves. But this level was as vacant as the one below.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Emergency lighting,' said Trey, stopping to review a small information panel on the wall to his left, showing the current status of the edifice's electrical systems. 'Redfern and Raul must have already busted out of the time-lock, for only an electrical discharge of that magnitude could have done this,' Joel offered, feeling his strength returning so he could at least keep a space-fold on stand-by, should they need to make a very quick exit. They came to a dead end, one formed of a ceiling cave-in. Who or what could have caused that? 'Damn, we can't go any further this way,' said Trey, picking up a piece of fallen masonry and crushing it to dust with hardly any effort. The action of doing this caused his manhood to twitch with delight.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I think I can get us above this level with my ability. Redfern spends a lot of time in his workshops and I have a pretty good memory of the fortress's schematics that Raul stole for us,' said Joel, glancing above him and trying to imagine what the room above might look like.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Assuming Raul was honest and didn't alter the schematics,' said Trey, feeling that such an assumption was worth a cent or two. Hearing this did little to bolster Joel's confidence. He concentrated on his talent and immediately the men were wrapped up in a spatial rift that temporarily bent reality around them. Real time and space quickly snapped back into place with minimum recoil upon their departure, displacing little more than dust motes hanging statically in the murky air. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]The effect was instantaneous. They arrived in the foul chambers above and immediately the smell contained within caused them to retch violently. 'Jesus, what the fuck is all this?' Trey covered his mouth and nose with a hand and Joel followed suit. The emergency lighting in this room was blinking intermittently in time to the sound of something electrical sizzling within its plastic housing. During the rapid exchanges of dim light and soul-searing dark, the companions caught glimpses of the aftermath of a bloody rampage. Every surface was stained with something slick and sickeningly organic, and lying in a heap on the offal-smeared floor were six of Redfern's gray thralls, their bodies riven apart... maddeningly defiled. Careful not to skid on the remains of these once-men, Trey picked up a couple of UMPs and ammo belts containing replacement rounds. Now, looking absurdly like two naked commandos engaged in some hilarious naked initiation ritual set by their peers, Joel and Trey made for the open corridor beyond, hardly pausing to acknowledge that the doors to the workshops had been reduced to so many wood-chips.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Why would Redfern have his own men murdered? This doesn't make any sense, laying his defenses so bare like this.' Joel was wrong to assume this, as Trey was only too keen to point out: 'Are we talking about the same Redfern here? Joel, think about this for a second. Would a man who wants to take over the world reduce down his defenses to beyond the bare minimum? He's gotten sloppy, maybe. But something tells me a force has been unleashed here, one that even he fears. It's handiwork is all around us.' He paused to look at the machine gun in his grasp. Next to his size the UMP looked ridiculously like a kid's toy. 'Judging by the state of our friends back there, even being armed to the teeth, they still ended up as dog food. Maybe we should turn back.'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'And do what?' Joel snapped. 'Keep watching over our shoulders for the rest of our days, wondering how, when and where Redfern might next see fit to strike out at us without warning? And what about the future of the world, should the bastard live to realise his Utopian Ideal? That's a euphemistic concept of an horrific reality I would rather avoid.' he slung his UMP over his immensely broad back, surprised that the gun's strap could be adjusted that much, and placed his hands concernedly on Trey's car-width-sized shoulders. He sighed... almost dismissively, but just about held on to his intentions. 'We're here now. We have to try to stop this. There's no turning back. Besides, the vertical plane space-fold consumed more energy than I thought. I won't be able to fold again for at least thirty minutes. So we might as well try to do what we can in the time allowed.' [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'You're quite handsome when you're being reassuring,' Trey admitted and formed a shaky smile. Joel smiled back and flexed his pecs a few times to work some blood into them. They swelled a little and made the gun strap groan in defiance. 'Come on, we need to keep moving,' said Joel, the first to make it through the doors along the undamaged end of the corridor leading to the ruined workshops. As they left the ruination in their wake, a creature rose up from aether that licked along the corridor in sluggish twists and whorls. The bodybuilders had failed to notice it, but Donnie had heard their every word. His body firmed up into its ?human? guise and his body flexed huge in the semi-darkness of the carnage he had caused. He began to walk in the direction of the doors used by Joel and Trey to further their investigation of the incident that seemed to have brought Mathias Redfern's Utopian Vampyre Collective to its leprous knees. His appetite having failed to be satiated by the blood of undead servitors, Donnie Drake licked his ice-cold lips in anticipation of a meal truly deserving of his untried hungers.[/COLOR]


[COLOR=dimgray]* * * * *[/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]Raul, upon instruction from his master, teleported to his quarters to retrieve the remains of the village youth he'd ravaged earlier, the one he had yet to dispose of in a proper manner. It had given Redfern an idea. The cadaver was only recently dead, yet to cool and stiffen. It would provide an insatiable lure to Donnie. Raul wasted no time picking up the remains, which he slung over his back and stepped into a portal back to the panic room. There he found Redfern stooped over Maury Rose Jr, for the young fledgling vampyre's sleep was at an end and he was already stirring with unlife. 'Put that thing down, Raul. Maury will need his first meal upon his full awakening. As for me.... I have other appetites in need of sating. And this one may still be able to provide me what I need.' Redfern was positively cackling with delight now.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Master, there is no telling what we're up against. Shouldn't you think about escape?' Raul had seen Donnie in the flesh... if it could be assumed that the altered youth still had flesh. He was a construct of Redfern's insatiable curiosity and tinkering. There was no telling what he was capable of. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Keep a portal open for me, Raul. Before I flee, I must sample what Donnie can offer me. That way my meddling with nature will not have been entirely in vain.' Redfern paused to consider his words before elongating an already nightmarishly exaggerated fingernail so that he could make a portal of his own, directly into the dead youth's gray matter. 'Alive and the energy of defilement and conflict simply flows into me. But dead... I need to tap the well at its source... aaaaaah.' Fused with the corpse in this way, something other than blood flowed into Redfern, causing his cheeks to flush blue with inexplicable tinges. He reared back his wolf-like head and pealed an annunciation of bliss.... 'soooooo gooooood!' The youth had died being ravaged sordidly and the pain in his body was stored as memories in his mind, ones that Redfern, for all that he was the freakiest of freaks, had the ability to tap into. If blood was the lifeblood of an unliving vampyre, then surely this ?defilement manna? was his ultimate narcotic.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Maury awakened fully, lusting for the hungers thats only a vampyre was capable of. His flesh was ashen gray, muscles huge and ravenous for a glut of blood. He knew his meal was nigh on fresh, for the dead youth's tripes steamed rancid vapours in the small confines of the panic room. No matter, upon instruction from his all-powerful master, Maury was allowed to settle down over the corpse to feed. He was allowed his fill, but only marginally, for the corpse must still prove tempting to Donnie. 'Maury, you are loyal only to me. My stuff is in you and that shall forever make you my creature. Do not harbour ill-will towards me, and you shall do well in my organisation.' Redfern allowed the naked vampyre to stroke the protoflesh cock of his master. As he did, the member, as if a separate entity, formed a rudimentary set of gnashing teeth on its tip and snapped at Maury's cold flesh. The young vampyre immediately drew back with a start and yet could not stare resentfully at the one that made him. 'Go out with Raul into the airlock and to the corridor beyond. Lay down this bait and wait in ambush for Donnie to approach. When he arrives set off this charge.' Redfern handed Maury a small, circular grenade containing a chemical stunning agent that would (hopefully) have a paralysing effect on Donnie. He turned to Raul: 'Once he is stunned you will open a portal in the floor directly beneath Donnie, one that connects with the stasis chamber in Panic Room Beta, one floor above us. Once contained, I can do with Donnie as I please.' The servants of Redfern had their instructions and so entered the airlock, laden down with the bloody remains of a once strong and vigorous Italian youth. Outside emergency lighting blinked erratically, casting intermittent shadows occasionally interrupted by flashes of electric blue. It was as if the entire mountain fortress had been charged with energy, physical and psychical as one. It was unnerving and hardly bolstered confidence out of Raul. Still, he had a job to do. He placed the corpse on the floor and nodded to Maury to prep the charge. The boy seemed so mindless right now, the traits of self-awareness and self-preservation still in the process of being re-written by the powerful psychic hold his master had over him. Still, it meant that Maury knew no fear and would gladly die the true death for the survival of the Lord Mathias Redfern. Raul envied him for his falsely-imposed sense of bravery.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Right. Step into a portal with me and wait for signs of approach. Get ready to throw that charge.' Maury, although in the running for Senior Lieutenant, nevertheless did Raul's bidding at this time. Both men were psychically linked to Redfern, so there was no opportunity for Raul to take advantage of the situation. It would be difficult keeping one portal open and forming another beneath the bait at the precise moment, but Raul would need to keep fear from marring his concentration. The portals were invisible but difficult to maintain. In this fashion Raul was trying to make them more like Joel McIntyre's space-folding/duck-blind ability. But the two abilities, were as dissimilar in their effectiveness as they were similar in their execution. The trap was set. All they needed now was to have Donnie make an appearance.[/COLOR]


[COLOR=dimgray]* * * * *[/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]A couple of floors below, Donnie Drake found suitable prey. From a pool of mist (looking like a miniature hurricane as seen from space) as it turned in whorls on a checkerboard tiled floor of the anteroom in which they had arrived, a large and leprous tentacle shot out and wrapped itself around Joel McIntyre's ankle. His finger poised on the trigger of the UMP, the shock of his ensnarement caused him to unleash a volley of rounds, narrowly missing Trey's right shoulder. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'FUCK!!!!' Joel screamed.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]As the creature hiding in the pool of mist tugged harder on Joel, further affecting his balance, he aimed the gunfire upwards, cutting a swathe of devastation into the ceiling above. Debris rained down into the anteroom (a small administration office and little else). Joel struck the floor as Donnie continued to reel him into the vortex formed of his own incredible powers of metamorphism. Joel clawed frantically at the floor with his free hand whilst his mammoth strength crushed the UMP simply out of the shock reaction to the attack. His fingers easily dug through the tiles and for a moment neither hunter or prey had an advantage. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Shoot the fucking tentacle, Trey!!!'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Shock riveting him to the spot, nevertheless Trey had to act and broke out of his momentary trance so as to take aim at the monstrous appendage. Several rounds of ballistic fury found their mark and completely severed the proto-flesh arm. About three feet of it remained clamped around Joel, but in the main the creature withdrew, although the swirling pool of eddying mist remained. Trey wasted no time in hauling Joel to safety before streaming a volley of white hot fire into the centre of the pool, emptying a UMP magazine completely. Inside the pool the thing that was Donnie howled in defiance of the assault and immediately put out a dozen more tentacles, this time ones with cartilaginous barbs to hook and maim. Fortunately Trey and Joel withdrew from the anteroom just in time, the tentacles succeeding only in hooking into the wood of the door slammed in defiance of its assault.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]The two bodybuilders, although winded had suffered no damage. They paused briefly in the dark corridor outside in order to reclaim their breaths. In a fit of rage Trey puffed up massively and launched himself back in the direction of the anteroom.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'What are you doing?' Joel's attention was completely on Trey now, so he forgot all about the three feet long proto-flesh worm that was still hugging his ankle and writhing with a filthy newfound independence. Screaming maniacally, Trey smashed through the door, reducing it to wood-chips and immediately brought the ceiling down on the mist pool still releasing more and more of Donnie's alien/vampyric limbs. The ceiling, along with the floor and most of the furniture in the room above rained down on the mist pool, burying the beast beneath several tonnes of wood and crumbled masonry. Trey, in the main, was unscathed, and still with inhuman adrenaline fueling his strength, pounded repeatedly on the debris pile, further pulverising it, hopefully killing the beast beneath. Only when a pile of sand and splinters remained did Trey stand down from red alert. Alas, yellow alert itself would last but a second or two. Returning to the corridor outside, he found Joel wrestling to resist the invasion of the proto-worm thing that had once been part of Donnie. It put out gnashing barbs and pseudo-teeth, a miniature array of hardware that easily sawed through a hide as resistant as Joel's.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Arrrrghhh!!!!' The pain was like nothing felt by the Scot before as the parasitic thing burrowed into and along his leg, cleaving its way through muscle and sinew, devouring as it went along, adding to its mass. Trey stood there, feeling helpless, not knowing what he could do to help his friend... a friend that meant more to him now in the wake of recent events than Mark had at the beginning of their true relationship. Mark Stone suddenly came to mind... literally.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]There's nothing we can do for him, Trey. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]The voice resounded in Trey's troubled mind, sounding like it was happening all around him. Could this be Mark, contacting him from that weird dream dimension he'd taken him to before?[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Mark? Can this be you?' [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Yes, there is no time to explain. But you are free of me now. I passed from you to Joel during the intercourse you shared. I'm not annoyed with you. This marks the return of me to independence. And I'm changed. I have... new powers now. My evolution is complete. I can return to life now but in order to achieve this I must use the parts of Joel that are still uncontaminated.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]It was amazing hearing Mark talking to him like this. But Joel was in so much pain as the proto-worm worked its way into the fleshy food reserve that was his massive quadricep muscle. The Scot squirmed in agony on the floor, tearing at his own thigh in a desperate attempt to dislodge the invader. But his efforts were in vain. The thing was taking him over, inch by agonising inch.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Trey watched in abject horror as the worm did its work and then marveled at the still-human parts of the dying Joel McIntyre as they began to emit a bright glow. The physical touched briefly with the metaphysical, creating a gateway of sorts, a means for a being without physical form to re-mould the untainted parts of Joel into a permanent new body. Whatever alien powers existed in the universe to govern such acts, Mark Stone could only be thankful. It was too late for Joel now... but his death need not be in vain. Flesh made into a soupy, flowing plasma broke away from the diseased leprous lower portion of Joel, even as the corruption had begun to invade the other leg.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Quickly Trey... accept this gift and do the right thing with it.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]As if those words had been an invocation, a beam of light shot from the flowing white plasma taken over by Mark's shifting life-force and struck Trey dead-centre of his chest, forcing him backwards where he struck a wall with enough force to destabilise it. Mark, now sole custodian of what was left of Joel, had taken his power to fold space and summarily transferred it into his boyfriend. But not only that. Also transferred was the ability to use the power on an instinctive level. As soon as Trey received it, he was able to immediately make use of it. He conjured a space-fold event and wrapped up the diseased vampyric leg-things in a bubble of no-space/time, effectively canceling them out from our universe entirely. When the danger had passed he settled back to gaze in utter disbelief at the plasma flow, as it began to solidify and take on layer upon layer of living texture. Within a couple of minutes Mark Stone breathed the first breath of a new life... a life made of another life forfeited: Joel McIntyre's. But perhaps something of him would live on in Mark Stone, as Trey had lived on in Mark for a time. But this was a Mark very much of old, untouched by the taint of Enerflex. He was his scrawny self once again, as he had been on the day when Trey had strutted into his uncle's store, effectively changing his life forever. It seemed so long ago, now... and Trey was huger than ever.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Naked as the day he was born, Mark reached out to Trey and the giant shed tears of joy to find them reunited. Okay, so Mark had a lot of growing to do now, but he was so very glad to see him. He scooped him up in his brawny arms and kissed him repeatedly for what seemed like an interminable moment. It was certainly a moment neither of them wanted to end, but they must be wary of the grave situation they were embroiled in.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I can't believe this has happened, Mark. I thought you were lost to me forever. I'm so relieved that I have you back.' Trey kissed him with all the enthusiasm of a puppy licking the face of its master. It was an absurdly fitting comparison.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'It's good to be back. And what a roller coaster ride its been. It's great that we are together again. And don't worry, I'm not about to turn into a 2000 lb psychopath again. I assure you, I've voided all traces of that persona, you'll be pleased to hear.' But for all that Mark had been restored physically to his original form, there was something about his eyes that didn't seem altogether normal. In the scant light of the corridor they glowed with a brightness that seemed unnatural, as though Mark had been to a place and seen things there that no ordinary man must ever gaze upon. But he seemed all the better for it. Trey hugged him some more, this time less zealously. He caressed him all over and then froze, as his hand touched something beneath the skin of Mark's abdomen that had no business being there.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Fuck,' Trey recoiled in fright and both of them acknowledged the proto-flesh globule squirming upwards beneath Mark's skin.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Damn, looks like some of the tentacle came along for the ride,' said Mark, showing little discomfort.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'We have to get it out of you. You will become like the host thing if we don't,' said Trey, panicking.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Mark was thoughtful for a moment. 'It's okay. I think this was meant to happen. I can control it somehow. Don't ask me how. Just watch.'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Trey watched as Mark coaxed the proto-worm remnant further upwards. It bored and squirmed beneath the skin, but could not acquire sustenance from the host body it had invaded. Trey was horrified and fascinated all at once. Mark continued to guide the creature upwards, across his chest and into his right arm. The thing obeyed mindlessly, for it was without mind, a thing of rancid vampyre filth that acted purely on instinct, only instinct that Mark seemed to be in complete control of. Only when the thing made it to the palm of Mark's hand, did it's journey cease. Trey only had one thing to say at this point:[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Well don't just stand there... eject it out of you.'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Mark smiled calmly, warmly. Then: 'No... it remains here. I feel it'll be of use to me. Don't worry, it can't grow, unless I command it.' Then he stood on his toes and kissed his gigantic lover who lowered his head enough so that their lips could meet yet again. 'Let's get to Redfern, Trey... and end this nightmare... finally.'[/COLOR]


[COLOR=dimgray]* * * * *[/COLOR]
[COLOR=dimgray]Despite Trey's efforts to stamp the ?life? out of a multi-tentacled nightmare, a creature that could be physical flesh one moment and clammy, licks of mist the next was not easy to exorcise. Donnie trickled ever upwards out of the pulverised mound of debris containing him, weakened but nonetheless hungry for sustenance. He leaked and trickled his way through pipes and conduits, drawn ever upward to the promise of a meal above. He soon found the remains of a ravaged youth and oozed his way spectrally towards it. He had to become physical to feed and became something of his human self again, although grossly bloated in places. He settled down and crossed two pairs of legs in front of him, then placed hands that formed suckers on the corrupted remains of the corpse-bait and threw his head back to relish the absorption of that which would make him strong again.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Aaaah....yesssss,' he hissed with serpentine delight. Not needing his mouth to feed, he began to drain the flesh and blood through contact with his sucker-hands. His powers of metamorphosis were still for the most part untried, but his desire was to feed and to kill the monster that had made a lesser monster of him. Lesser? Nay... Donnie was now in an entirely different league to anything Mathias Redfern could have initially conceived. Thinking this made him grin malevolently. His attention momentarily diverted to his inner lusts and hungers, it was time for Maury and Raul to make themselves known.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Raul collapsed his portal, the effort to do so draining as he immediately focused on a second portal directly beneath Donnie. 'Maury, throw the stunner....now!!!'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Maury, heavily in thrall to his superior, lobbed the primed chemical grenade and it appeared as if out of nowhere a half-second before the two bodybuilders became visible. The grenade stuck to Donnie's rapidly expanding body as he realised he was under attack and so galvanised himself against it. But it was too late to retaliate. Caught off guard Donnie was enveloped in a sticky, debilitating fluid upon the devices detonation, a fluid that rapidly solidified into a paralyzing gauze on contact with the air. He tried to put out fresh tentacles to lash out at his malefactors, but the chemical was all-containing and he couldn't metamorphose further. Raul immediately opened the second portal and Donnie, along with the remains of the corpse he fed upon, disappeared into the portal with a jarringly audible ?slurp?. In an instant he found himself in Panic Room Beta, secure in a cylindrical reinforced container hooked up to an incinerator. He was contained. The Master Vampyre was once again triumphant.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Raul, take us all to Panic Room Beta. It has enough batteries to run independently of this place for up to a year. A perfect place to examine our little pet project,' Redfern instructed as he gathered himself and prepared to be received by a portal. The transfer was instantaneous and he arrived just in time to observe Donnie, trapped in the glass cylinder, breaking out of the paralysis gauze. He thrashed about wildly, explosively enraged, but for all the good that would do him. The cylinder would easily withstand his attempts to break free.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Let me the fuck out of here!' He morphed back into a passable rendition of a human being, however his muscles were large and bloated but hardly aesthetically so. He would be considered handsome, were his eyes not blazing red and his mouth not ridiculously wide and home to teeth like scythes. He pounded on the glass using fists the size of small boulders. But the cylinder held. Then he tried to escape by transforming to mist once again, but powerful fans overhead kept him where he was.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'My but I got sloppy with you, didn't I?' Redfern drew up close to the cylinder and fixed Donnie with a sulphurous gaze. As an afterthought to his remark he added: 'But some of science's best discoveries were made accidentally and by throwing caution to the wind.' He turned to Raul: 'Speaking of which... step through a portal and into the cylinder. It's time Donnie got what's coming to him.'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Horrified, Raul remained tethered to the spot. 'Master, I try to obey... but... Donnie... he's more monstrous than ever. I duh-don't want to be like him.' Suddenly Raul was twelve years old again. He found it mentally draining to try to resist his master.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Fear not, Raul. I have subdued Donnie with a mental command. He will not put up... too much of a fight.' It was true, Redfern had stricken Donnie with a psychic bolt, causing him to return to as near a perfect human form as he could muster. His thrashing about ceased. He withdrew to the floor of the cylinder and curled himself up like a terrified child. But Redfern could feel him resisting and it really taxed his telepathy. Raul would have to act quickly. For this to work... for Donnie to produce ?defilement manna?, he would have to think and act most humanly. Keeping him in this state would not be easy. In fact... Redfern was already beginning to buckle under the strain.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Raul.... teleport in there NOW!!!!!!' Redfern briefly turned to his halfling servant and shot him with an acidic look, warping his features into a great bat/wolf-like visage that was horrific and chilling to observe. Raul had to obey.[/COLOR]


[COLOR=dimgray]Thirty metres south of a fiend's location, Trey and Mark space-folded their way to the same floor as Panic Room Beta. 'Raul is about to teleport. I can sense the build-up of his metaphysical charge. Once he activates a portal, I'll be close enough to ride in its distortion wave.' Mark spoke as though he'd been doing this all of his life. It seemed that being dead and confined temporarily to an entirely different plane of existence had enhanced him... made him way smarter than even Carter Yan had been.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Trey wanted to say ?when and where did you learn to do that?? but for the most part he was impressed by Mark's new abilities. He just wished he was huge again so that they could enjoy each other's physiques on equal terms.... assuming they made it out of here alive. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]The next few minutes would determine their futures, deciding whether they had ones at all.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]With a tear in his eye Raul Ortega stepped into a portal, powerless to resist his master's command. He vanished in the blink of an eye but instantly found himself inside the cylinder. With a diameter of just fifteen feet, there was little room for a behemoth of his size to move, but he would just have to fumble his way along. Donnie received him with a warning snarl. But before Raul could get to him the entire cylinder exploded outwards, bathing everyone in shards of super-thick glass. Maury bore the brunt of the shattering and was cut to ribbons as he flew backwards only to strike the room's control console, which summarily exploded in a shower of sparks. Gravely wounded, still, Redfern's stuff in him would begin to heal him straight away. Redfern was also stripped of a great deal of his flesh as he took in so much glass. He lost his footing, thrown backwards as the forces of mutated physics combined space-folding with teleportation, allowing Trey and Mark to emerge into the panic room. Raul was slammed backwards, completely crushing Donnie with over one tonne of muscle.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Deal with Redfern while he's flayed open,' Mark instructed Trey. Since when had the scrawniest of them all suddenly become the boss? But it made sense. He had a wisdom in him now that probably rivaled Redfern's own. Massively metamorphic, Trey knew that a vampyre of Redfern's pedigree wouldn't stay down for long. Even now his wounds were quickly closing and he was augmenting himself up to his most monstrous. Trey tried to extend a space-fold event around Redfern but the vampyre's psychic abilities easily fended it off. Meanwhile, Mark's attention was trained solely on Raul. Cut in dozens of places, bleeding all over, Mark bore his pain well and held up his infected palm, ensuring that Raul would notice the squirming infection occurring there. Beneath him a dazed but recovering Donnie Drake began to melt into mist in the hope of escaping and recovering elsewhere.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Remember a while back, when you stuck that mighty cock of yours up my untried ass, Raul?' Mark moved closer to the felled bodybuilder, treading on so much glass as he went. Raul was winded momentarily, his body having taken less injury from the glass than Maury and his master. The effects of the teleportal/space-fold crossover had depleted him. He was unable to rise to his feet, much less defend himself.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Do your worst, you fucking runt,' he panted. He was defeated and knew it. Mark smiled almost sweetly and willed an orifice to open in his palm.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Oh I'll do my worst all right. Say hello to my new pet!' The tentacle of vampyre proto-flesh shot out of Mark's palm and across the short distance to Raul. He tried to close himself up against it, but it turned to aether and put out branches of itself which easily hunted out Raul to the last of his orifices. Then the vapour became flesh once again and thickened... thickened impossibly.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Raul screamed as so much mutant flesh wormed its way into him, putting out hooks in order to latch onto his organs, nerves... into his very brain. More and more of the vile form issued from Mark as he stood there, almost gleefully bearing witness to an act of undeniable abhorrence. The tentacled mass was in Raul now... and it raped every part of his massive body simultaneously. And as it defiled him, so the flesh devoured him. Raul was rendered down into a bloody amorphous mass, shrieking from the worst kind of pain a man was never meant to feel. But the proto-thing didn't stop there. Acting purely on instinct, and having made a fast meal of Raul Ortega, it went for the thing beneath, the semi-solid mist-thing it had originally budded from. It was now too big to yield to Donnie's domination and so it began to devour him, sucking up his mist through a hundred thousand rudimentary mouths formed over its ever-shifting mass.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I have Raul's teleporting ability now,' Mark declared, almost jubilantly. Trey was glad to hear that, for Redfern was already reverting him to his original obese self. There was nothing Trey could do. He collapsed into a jellied heap in one corner of the panic room as Redfern, regaining his strength, his wounds healing rapidly, snapped to a standing position, his incredible mind re-shaping Trey Waters, making it seem as though he were dissolving him from the inside out... starting with his bones.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'When I've finished with you two I will heal Maury and together we will re-start the Collective. You boys have lost. I consider you failed experiments in need of aborting.' Cackling near-insensately, Redfern managed a massive metamorphosis, as if spreading out to resemble a great bat/human/wolf hybrid. Perhaps he would escape by taking to the air, for as a master vampyre with an alien symbiont along for the ride, he would prove formidable in the future once he'd gotten his full strength back. But for now... escape with his unlife, for the vampyre always was and always will be tenacious.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Mark fixed a portal in his mind... only one one a horizontal access, rather than a vertical one. He concentrated this new ability into as small a space as possible. It was a portal not designed to allow anyone or anything to escape from this room. It was one designed with one purpose and one alone: decapitation.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]The portal opened up inside Redfern's neck and was little more than a foot across. But it was enough. Suddenly Redfern's head was separated from his body across a gulf of no-where and no-when. The portal existed for less than a second, but when Mark collapsed it, the great vampire's head fell forwards, as if to nod. But then it continued to fall and roll across the floor where it came to a stop just inches from Trey, the disembodied face frozen into a rictus of despair and agony... the dying brain's last thought that of sudden and unforeseen failure. Redfern's torso continued to live for a time. It twitched and lashed about and from the gaping neck wound, hideous fluids, bile and viscera geysered upwards from his lower parts. It's still-mutating hands had become massive claws and tried to swipe at something, anything that still had blood in it. Again purely instinctive, the vampyre was nothing without a mind to power it.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Mark stepped to one side just as the torso and legs came for him. He landed it a boot in the back, sending it sprawling. It came to a stop inside the remains of the smashed containment cylinder now home to a writhing mass of insensate putrefaction. It immediately snatched up the body and made a fast meal of it, at which point Mark began to sway on his feet. He had lost a lot of blood and didn't have the healing properties of a vampyre.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]In a corner, Trey's metazenic nature managed to retain something of his former musculature, but by the time Redfern's horrid reversion process had voided itself, Trey was grossly obese, naked and shaking like a bowl of blacmange. But there was still something he could do to save himself and Mark from the rampage of the proto-mass monster that was fast swelling up to take up the entire room. Trey managed to fold space and time around it, containing the thing. It disappeared into the phenomenon, mewling and hissing in defiance. Then, knowing that both abilities could now work hand in hand, and on an instinctive level, Mark shot the collapsing space-fold event with a portal sufficient to short everything out. The monster was contained permanently, lost in the blackness of an alternate dimension. And there it would remain ad infinitum.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'We need to get you to a hospital. Try to hang in there,' said Trey, although at more than five hundred pounds, little of it muscle, he found it a chore clambering to his feet. He was just about mobile, but his bodybuilding days were now behind them... behind both of them. 'I think I can both teleport us to one. Hold on, Trey.'[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]A largely fat young man and his moderately scrawny boyfriend disappeared into a portal, but not before Mark managed one final feat. He made another portal blade, this time one that severed a gas main feeding the incinerator at the back of the containment cylinder. As the room filled with deadly gas, a still healing Maury Rose Jr, barely conscious, wondered why the smell reminded him of his father's cooking. He lingered on the threshold of dreams, his body slowly healing, and decided he could use a steak right about now.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]Seconds later Panic Room Beta exploded and a fire as tenacious as the passions of a vampyre quickly spread out to touch every room in the Utopian Collective. The building fell in upon itself and half of it tumbled down a mountain as so much ruined masonry. Anything that survived in that nightmarish place would succumb to the pull of gravity, dashed to pulp on the rocks below. That was that, as they say.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]EPILOGUE[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]3 months later.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=black][COLOR=dimgray]They had the secluded island in the South Pacific all to themselves. Impossible to reach unless by plane or boat, Mark and Trey had an easier way of getting there. They would enjoy breakfast on this glorious golden beach, possibly have sex afterwards and then maybe a swim. But they had to be in Paris by 1pm local time for wine and oysters at their favourite caf? before a leisurely stroll along the Champs Elys?es.After that... maybe shopping in New York or a trip to Cirque du Soleil. The world was their playground and they'd never been happier. Besides, they felt like celebrating. Trey had lost over 100 pounds since the end of the ordeal in the Italian Alps. That in itself was a milestone.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Mmm, I could stay here all day. Can't we skip Paris today and just have coconuts?' Mark could be whiningly insistent at times. It was one of several faults Trey found with his beloved boyfriend. But he had plenty of faults himself, and Mark was always quick to point them out. Such was young love.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'And how would we open them? I'm not the super strong hunk I used to be. Man, I barely got 80 kilos on the bar over my head yesterday,' said Trey, scratching under his ever-shrinking man-boobs to dispel a sweaty itch that had collected there due to the slight humidity. Despite that, the scene was picturesque and inviting. With the waves indolently breaking on the shore and a delicious warm salty breeze coming in from the Pacific, it would be easy to call this place Heaven.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Well, coconuts are probably better for your diet, honey, and I can always open them like I did Redfern's neck... with a razor-sharp portal of delectable design.' Mark shifted to behind Trey so that he could rub sun-tan lotion across his back. Trey's body was quickly improving, as was Mark's (who himself was up to 154 lbs, some of it muscle, some of it fat). Mark liked to maintain this ratio so as not to seem like he was physically leagues ahead of his corpulent lover, the man he so completely adored no matter what his shape: the man he would share his entire life with... and the entire world. They were both still metazenic, for they had been born that way. There was no more Enerflex... there never could be ever again. But they could still achieve bodybuilding greatness faster than a non-metazen. It would still take time, though, something they had a great deal of these days.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Dammit Mark. You had to bring him up. It's difficult trying to put that nightmare out of my head,' said Trey, frowning.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I know it's hard. But everything from that nightmare zone is now perished. Nothing could have survived. We got out of it with our lives and thankfully we're both free of vampyric stuff, otherwise that glorious sun above would make toast of us.' Mark kissed his lover's back. It was still quite fatty but a V-taper was beginning to form. In another three months he could be down to 300 lbs and muscles would begin to show better. They had quite a lot to look forward to. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I suppose we can thank him for one thing... it's because of him that events were shaped in which we met. Now all we need to do is continue to search for more metazens like us and teach them about their potential. Think about it. There could be hundreds out there like us, thousands even. They could live their entire lives and never know they possess this remarkable gift, unless they start to lift weights.' Trey mused off there for a second, zoning out for a time as his mind sought to make sense of all things metazenic.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'We exist for a reason, be it a natural mutation or something, dare I say it, artificial. Redfern didn't invent Metazenics, he just stumbled upon it. He used us to ill-effect, for his own amusement. We may never know what his true motivations to experiment on us were. Or maybe the answer is still out there somewhere. Carter knew a lot more than he let on. And his knowledge is now in me, somehow, although I can't yet access it. Also, I burned up his shape-shifting ability rebuilding myself out of Joel.' Both men were silent now, to remember fallen comrades. But their deaths certainly had not been in vain. They had contributed to Redfern's downfall and would be forever remembered for it.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'I'm glad that tentacle is completely out of you. Maybe we'll have a shot at something of a normal life. I just cant wait to get muscular again. If I could get back to 500 lbs, that'd be something. I'd be happy with that.' Trey reached into their picnic cooler and popped a bottle of cool white wine. He poured two glasses and the lovers toasted their new life.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=dimgray]'Here's to 500 lbs for both of us,' said Mark. They chinked their glasses together and enjoyed the rest of their morning in a tropical paradise.[/COLOR]


[COLOR=dimgray]The End [/COLOR]


[/COLOR]