Over Troubled Waters

Story by iplank on SoFurry

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Due to some unfortunately poorly thought out rules for a local pokemon tournament the edges of a city are now getting hammered by flooding and some local trainers jump in to try to help as the bridges go down, preventing the actual emergency responders from being able to reach them. Using a unique setup- she is about to help bridge the gap, but not how she was expecting.


(F tf Archaludon)

Justine rushed to the end of the city to try and help but everyone was pre-occupied with frantically trying to get the situation under control themselves. She should just figure it out on her own so she does not have to try to interrupt anyone else. At this edge of the city- the inlet it borders is now flooding up onto the streets and has managed to demolish a bridge entirely... unfortunately the city is erected on both sides of a river leading in from the inlet and that bridge connects either side. With the bridge down- emergency services cannot reach the other half of the city. Justine's side is currently without official help, they cannot get to them.

An older woman is already knee-deep in the water rushing over the streets and quickly hurtles a pokeball as far as she can onto the collapsed bridge, hitting one of the steel beams to trigger the button and releasing her Milotic. This must be a pokemon preened for contests- the layered fins that make up its tail are unusually long to show off, but that means it makes an especially large fan to re-direct water. Being a water type; Milotic is perfectly fine and unaffected by how strong the tides are shoving against it, it follows its master's will and uses its tail to create a wave in the opposite direction- slamming into the existing waves and trying to negate as much of the force as possible to slow the flood. The older woman however got too close in order to do this- and her legs were swept out from under her! Her Milotic is too preoccupied now to help her! Milotic are not particularly fast- and it just used an action, it has to wait for its turn to come up again.

Justine ran along one of the slanted beams up onto the part of the bridge that is still rocking back and forth above the water and ran as far as she could before leaping just far enough to match the older woman's throw, tagging the Milotic as she fell into the water! The Milotic looked at her startled- not sure if she should try to help the human because her master hasn't given her any new orders, and currently cannot.

Justine swam with the tide- wanting the waves to push her so she could catch up to the woman who was swept away. Thanks to tapping Milotic on her way down though... her tail bone now erupts from between her pants and shirt and quickly grows enormous! The flesh and muscle grows a bit faster than the bone structure, so her tail looks very fat at first before growing to its proper dimensions. At first pale peach like her skin, then turning a diffused red, but then gaining some metallic blue and pure black stripes between... the patterns of a Milotic.

The moment Justine's tail bloomed into a fin on the end she slammed it down into the water to propel herself forward, grabbing the older woman in the water. Two very long, narrow tubes of flesh started to grow out from the front of her eyebrows to take on the shape of Milotic's whiskers. Using her enormous tail she was able to propel them both to the nearest, driest land in sight and put her down again.

"Glad to see everyone coming together to help- but make sure you are safe before you run in to help someone else."

The woman just looked at Justine in confusion. Justine then raised her hands a moment as if to stretch and... well, she did stretch. Her fingers got longer and bonier looking, but especially her ring and pinky became almost absurdly long- and a sixth 'finger' joined them growing off as her hand structure fanned out. She lowered her arms a moment and winced a bit at the odd feeling. When she raised them halfway up again- a ridge of skin tore out the sides of her shirt body and sleeves! When she lowered her arms; the skin somehow bonded between body and hand through her clothes. The webbing quickly changed color as she spread and stretched it- turning cyan below on the softer underside and black everywhere else, where the skin had more of a leather-like feel as it is composed of tiny, flexible scales. The wings of a Noivern! Her thumb, index, and middle finger remain as red claws at the crook of the wings. As a side effect of taking the wings- her ears also enlarged greatly taking the black and cyan striped inner sides and long pointed spikes off the top; her ears became shaped like giant speakers.

"Good to go!" She glanced around as to where she should go next.

The older woman just shook her head in confusion. "H-how on earth..?"

"What?" It took her a moment to pause long enough and realize the woman was looking over her bizarre body. "Oh! I am not actually here!" A ripple of pink goo appeared travelling up her body. "I am borrowing a friend's Ditto using the Synchro Machine to basically possess it. My actual body is four blocks away.

So Justine isn't in her own body- but since she is possessing the Ditto's body, the Ditto can transform itself to look exactly like her... or anything else, for that matter. Its default body doesn't look like much more than a wad of chewing gum. That also means she is technically naked right now. The Ditto did not swap outfits with her- what looks like clothing struggling to work with her new body shape is actually just still more Ditto. But while transformed, it essentially acts the same as clothing would because Ditto is copying it on a molecular level- which means it can still be taken or torn off.

Justine slammed her wings toward the ground sending out a shockwave of wind pressure and launching herself straight up into the air to get a better vantage point. A lot more people are starting to show up- trying to shout things at the emergency responders on the other side of the bridge. Their side of the flooding is much more under control because the emergency services can actually reach them- they have no way of crossing without the bridge. There is more than one bridge of course, but the next one a mile down is also destroyed. The third one is three miles away so quite a detour.

Justine spotted Fredrick among the people gathering near this bridge and flew to him. He is the actual owner of the Ditto she is currently possessing. She plopped down beside him and her transformed features turned bright pink, wobbling around and started to contract into her default human body as the goo reset.

"Well quite the clusterfuck, eh? Even with the ability to transform I sort of don't know how to approach this. Lots of people helping mitigate the damages with their pokemon but no one can actually stop it or fix the bridge..."

Fredrick nodded, taking out a tablet and quickly tapping through options, connecting remotely to the Synchro Machine. "I have an idea of how you can fix this, but it will be a bit awkward."

"Man- you see this chaos? I don't care how awkward it is, people's lives are getting messed up out there. Whose idea was it to allow Kyogre in the local tourny??" That had been the cause of all the flooding in the first place.

He shrugged. "They just thought it would be fun." She motions over all the destruction around them. "Okay, well no need to be a smart ass about it."

Justine flinched and cried out in surprise as her entire body and outfit turns bright pink for a moment before shifting back with an odd feeling- Ditto had gotten specific orders from Frederick directly, which overrides anything Justine is telling it to do because he is the Original Trainer.

Frederick took a bag off his back and started to rummage through it. "This is going to involve a few things in order to work- as versatile as Ditto is, even it cannot bridge the gap on its own."

Justine felt an internal pressure, but it was equal through her entire body so it almost just felt like her body was tensing up. It wasn't a pressure of anything on her body pushing against the rest of it, but more like her entire body pushing against the world around it. As soon as her point of view started to rise she realized she was growing! Her pant legs and sleeves started to slide up her arms and legs as she outgrew her outfit! As Justine's viewpoint lifted high enough she could see the items Frederick was futzing with in his bag and spotted the Dynamax band.

"W-why didn't you fully transform and THEN Dynamax; my outfit is going to rupture before I look like a pokemon!!"

"Er... wasn't really thinking about that. Because you are using the Synchro Machine on him- I can only give it direct orders through the app so there is a delay between when I tell it to do something and when it actually does it. Besides... didn't you just say you didn't care how awkward it is? Suck it up, princess."

"Grrrr..."

She wanted to dart away into a lane or something to get out of people's sight, but Dynamaxing will make her larger than all the buildings around her. You can't hide if YOU are the biggest thing in the area. The best she could do is stagger back so all the people gathered were facing ahead with her behind them all.

Justine's feet started to press into the insides of her shoes on all sides tightly, the seams started to groan. Her pants started to look like shorts, making her bow forward and push her thighs together to give as much fabric back so the crotch of her pants doesn't try to split her from the crotch up. Her lone sleeve started to look like a T shirt, but it also called her attention down when she seen two odd protrusions from her collar bone!

The protrusions grew longer and more angular, slicing through her shirt and tearing her collar open into a boob-window... which at the very least prevented her chest from getting strangled by the ill-fit clothing. Ditto has started to shift forms now, but Justine doesn't know into what yet. It has access to all the pokemon on her belt, but because it got orders from its true master; it could also be any of the pokemon on Frederick's belt.

The calcium of her collar bone bled into the skin, hardening it so by the time the bone itself rose up and out- the skin was already just as hard and the two became one. Calcium is a type of metal after all. It looked like her collar bone had grown a pair of perfectly straight horns- but the bigger they get the more angular they become, like slanted rectangular pillars.

Justine's shoes suddenly burst- the body of them tore free from the rubber soles. Her feet tingled from poor circulation- her ankles trying to get wider which was now being strangled by the actual opening of her shoes as the tops still cling to her. The bottoms turned back to pink goo once divided from the rest, melting and then re-joining the greater whole to be made into something else.

She bows forward and skin and bone at the back of her head fuse and start to rise up and off the back of her head, looking almost like two horns, but they are broad and flat, flanking either side of the vertebrae where her spine and skull meet; shielding the weak point. Justine grabbed her neck and made a gurgled cry of surprise which was echoed by hollow, dull pops as her throat suddenly became twice its width! Her spine starting from the skull down suddenly spread out! But it spread faster than the physical material could, causing it to collapse in the middle! Two spinal cords- connected by bone scaffolding and a sheet of cartilage to fill in the gaps.

While the freakish structure remained a mystery in the back- it became more blatantly obvious in the front, because it bled through to the surface level. Her lungs expanded suddenly which forced her to take a long, deep breath without even intending to- which then shoved against her ribs which were forced to expand! A rapid-fire series of pops followed as her sternum popped free from the tips of all her ribs, but then her ribs quickly expand to re-join it further out! The expansion was not entirely even; and her ribs gained a few unusually sharp angles to them. The material of her bone bled through the surface and bonded flesh and bone together, hardening it to steel type. The coloration of her angular ribs started to look... blue? It almost looked like blue scaffoldi- oh crap, she figured out what pokemon she is turning into!

The expansion of her ribs was the last straw for her shirt, tearing down the front thanks to the rip her collar already made. Her breasts regressed between the blue scaffolding and nipples and areola faded back to normal skin tone, fading away entirely. She tensed and staggered forward awkwardly a bit when the split in her spine went all the way through to her tail bone, but then the bone started to extend beyond that into a dual-tail as well. Even before it was properly developed- her tail already had the triangular blade-like horns her head had grown to match.

The crotch of Justine's pants blew out first, then her hips and thighs ruptured the sides too and tore down the pant legs. Her shoes finally completely lost the fight and the tops snapped loudly- her ankles becoming freakishly wide by now, making her lower leg structure look increasingly geometric as well.

As tall as telephone polls now and still growing! The emergency responders across the way can most likely see her at this point. Having her spine become abnormally wide and split into two points caused her back and the back of the tail to be almost perfectly flat- and thanks to the calcium saturating everything and turning her flesh itself to steel; it was making her abnormally sturdy too. That made her body shaped like a triangular prism for a moment before her ribs started to shift her torso's shape again from the top down. Wider but also more angular in the front till she started to look like a square prism.

The blue scaffolding frame that was her ribs now darkens to indigo. Justine shivers and lets out an unintentional giggle as a tickling, electrical current surges out from her heart and the tips of the prongs that grew from her collar bone shine with a bright light for a moment. After the light fades- the structure remains changed, it is now essentially an organically grown lightbulb, just, shaped to the end of the prongs. She struggled to stay on her feet now, getting taller than some of the buildings around her now so she could not even lean against them at risk of crashing through it instead. Her hands and feet were enlarging, but her wrists and ankles are too- the growth is tapered the further up it goes. Her thumbs and big toes regressed, melting away into the increasingly metallic, silvery skin as the other digits enlarge to the point where they force the structure of the limb to adapt.

Her form becomes so stiff and awkward that Justine actually tipped over- luckily at that point her tail was so hard and large enough that it stopped her fall, propping her up on it like a tripod. Her hands and feet become more angular the more they change, looking briefly almost like two cloven hooves before becoming too square to compare to any other creature. Now shaped like pyramids- her lower limbs are split horizontally and vertically into four blocky digits- but the horizontal cleft is deeper than the vertical. Though they turn to what appears to be solid steel; she CAN still move them, at least a bit.

Her limbs felt almost like anchors at this point. Justine leans forward to take weight off her tail and stand normally again, and even the one step she took was so heavy it unintentionally cracked the road under her! Several people busy trying to help the situation at the water side now turned to gawk at her- having heard the huge boom of a footstep behind them and turned to see the giant half-pokemon.

Justine concentrated a moment- her whole body still full of the gentle pressure against her surroundings as it grows, but she also had an odd congested feeling in her too-heavy limbs. It was hard to identify any one feeling in her body since so much was going on all at once. She fell forward onto all fours a moment- but forgot just how large she is and panicked over it when it was already too late to stop herself. Not only did the entire block shake violently, she cracked the road and Frederick had to scramble to get out of the way to avoid her crushing him on accident! Her body still bends in spite of looking like uninterrupted steel; but it only bends at specific points. It isn't all made from the same type of steel- there is still parts that are meant to function as bone inside her as the framework, and those parts do not bend. The fact she is still both growing and changing doesn't help her mobility any.

When on all fours Justine groans and shoves down against the ground, feeling the congested feeling in her arms building, like they needed some sort of release. To pop a joint or something. Several dull pops, cracks and then still duller clunks and a slight grinding sound- her bones grew out of the steel exoskeletal structure of her lower limbs! Her elbows and knees getting longer and taller, stretching the metal skin till they came to very long, tower-like points! But boy did it feel good. Like a good, long stretch! The congested feeling went away and the weight of her limbs became much better distributed! There was another pulse from her heart that made her gasp- but the sound she produced ended up sounding more like the pokemon's cry! The electrical surge was stronger than the first one, and conducted quickly through her metal body, tickling her and gathering now to six points- the prongs from her collar and the four tips of her protruding limbs! The tips of her extended limbs now converted to a crystalline material- making them beacon lights as well.

The blades off the back of her head grow still larger, stealing mass from her hair as it melts into pink goo before drawing into the blades to make still more metal. Her body and limbs grows faster than her head now! It almost feels like her own body is trying to swallow her- her neck vanishes into the angular metal shell of her body. The ridge that had been the collar between the two prongs fuses to her lower jaw, locking her head in place and also causing her teeth, lips, jaw, and the existing metal frame to all merge into a serrated metal ridge.

When her head started to change- Justine's lapse in concentration caused her lower limbs to temporarily collapse back inward. The latter half of them are retractable- once they collapsed into the bottom portion ridges appeared in the metal to allow it to fold in on itself easily to put them away. Her brow started to harden and grow out, turning to the dark blue metal, then her nose. The top of her head flattens entirely as the flesh turns to steel. The brain of this particular pokemon is actually below its head, under the lower jaw instead of above the upper jaw- because the lower jaw is locked in place. The upper jaw and upper portion of the head is hinged instead, which almost means its head is on upside-down; though the eyes are still on the upper part.

Because the entire torso is shaped like a square prism it is hard to tell one part from another. Almost the entire upper half of it is technically its rib cage- where the criss-crossed metal scaffolding is that used to be her bone ribs. It continues up and over past the shoulders- so she cannot put her arms down at her sides perfectly straight, and even occupies the space that was formerly her neck, so this section is a rather large block of inflexible framework.

What used to be her midriff now extends longer as well, and can be straight with the upper body or tilt separately backwards so... the reverse of how it could bend for a human. She doesn't really have hips in this form- at least any that are distinguishable from the rest of her body. Because her lower limbs are so wide, she doesn't even have visible ankles and wrists. Due to how both her head and tail end in the same light-tipped blades of metal, and the fact her body can only bend back, not forward... she actually sort of looks like a colossal staple-remover when viewed from behind.

Frederick nodded to her then motioned toward the bridge. "Time to go Godzilla mode. Get smashing."

Justine grumbled and was about to make a sarcastic remark, but it only came out as the cries of the Archaludon she had turned into.

Still growing, but slowing down now, she lumbered carefully toward the bridge. She was trying to minimize property damage but at this size she is incapable of even stepping down in this form without crushing the concrete of the road under her weight. She flexed a moment and the tall extensions off the joints of her four limbs slid out and up. An electric surge rushed through her causing her to shiver and chuckle as it surged up into the lights over her and caused them to flash a moment before blue-white bolts of electricity connected them all in a pattern that resembled the suspender cables of a bridge. She half did it to shock herself into motion- her form is so heavy it is easy to not want to move. The flash also served as a beacon- everyone still trying to help stopped what they were doing and cleared a path for her.

Clouds glowing a diffused red swirling over her head indicated her growth reached its apex- the clouds a manifestation of the otherworldly power the Dynamax bands tether. At this point the span of Justine's hands is the size of someone's entire garage on its own. Her back is slightly over that of a two floor building's roof, while she is down on all fours, if she actually stood up you'd be able to see her from the opposite end of the city.

She was nervous simply because this would be certain doom if she were a human, but stepped down off the edge of the broken bridge. Her hand hit the edge of the sunken bridge, smashed it to bits and then hit the bottom of the river! She walks out over the destroyed bridge- grinding its remains to dust between her steel hide and the riverbed and walked across the river! She is too big in this form for the water to affect at all. And, conveniently... Archaludon is shaped exactly like a bridge when its body and tail are laid flat. Justine is so large her head reaches the opposite side while her tail hasn't even started to leave the first shore. She bends her legs and plops herself down as flat as possible- and the emergency responders drive across her back like a road! Justine became the bridge!

Frederick walked up beside her, patting her colossal head. "You can bail as soon as this is all cleaned up. Don't disconnect from Ditto till then though- a lapse in his concentration may cause him to revert to pink goo and drop someone into the water."

Justine grumbled again. Well... she did want to help, and is technically helping. She just wished they would drive some larger vehicles over her- it's a good back scratch.