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Most people would probably describe finishing college as being a greater struggle than going to the gym, but as the saying went, Ronald wasn’t most people.

He was hardly noticeable as a person, if you didn’t look at him quite the right way.

The scrawny excuse of a human being was proud to have his degree in tow, but like so many other people, the college years weren’t kind to his physique; that said, there wasn’t much to it to ruin, the only thing keeping him from being gangly in nature was that he was a little too short to fit the bill.

He was determined to change all of that, and if Mauser was willing to put in the time with him at the gym, Ronald was willing to give it his best shot.

His biggest concern then was that his best wouldn’t be good enough, and like so many inexperienced gym rats before him, his thoughts turned to supplements, powders and pills before he ever gave his body a chance to grow on its own.

“Still, the guy behind the counter promised that this stuff would work,” Ronald was doing all he could to reassure himself as he pulled into a parking space at the campus fieldhouse. In the middle of the night, there would be almost no one there to tease him for his lack of progress, and Mauser could get away from the attention that followed him almost everywhere he went. “One per week, every week, to get the desired effect.”

There were so many things to avoid, even on the legal supplement market, that Ronald was taking a risk going with something that he’d never even heard of before. ‘Dream Bod’ was a promising name for a product associated with muscle growth, but like so many other over-the-counter products, it made promises that he didn’t think it could possibly follow through on.

The placebo effect was an amazing thing, however, and just a few curious sips of the drink had him feeling stronger as he stepped out of his car and jogged to the fitness center.

When he arrived, he wasn’t at all surprised to find that Mauser had been there for a few minutes already, taking advantage of the facilities as if he had no other obligations to deal with.

“I was starting to wonder if you were going to show up at all,” Mauser taunted him without breaking stride on the treadmill, even when he kept an impressively quick pace. “I’ll give you some kudos for showing up, though. I’ve been trying to get you to join me for a workout for two years.”

“Like I don’t know that,” Ronald groaned at him. “And I’m only five minutes late! Give me a break!”

“That’s five more minutes you could have spent warming up that we’re gonna lose.”

“Because there’s such a huge demand for the machines right now.”

“Two people means everything takes twice as long,” Mauser reminded him. “This is gonna be my workout, too.”

“Like this is even gonna be a warm up for you.”

“Don’t put yourself down,” Mauser lowered the speed on the treadmill until he was just enjoying a casual trot, cooling himself down with proper technique. “You’re here, and that already means that you’re doing more than millions of other people who decided to sit at home, eating chips and watching TV…you’ve gotta learn to give yourself a little credit and have some confidence.”

It all made sense to Ronald, who’d heard plenty about how much the right state of mind could influence the results of a workout. “I’ll do my best not to, but I make no promises for the first couple days.”

“I’ll give it a week before I start calling you out on it.”

“Starting now?”

“Starting now,” Mauser agreed. “Now get on the treadmill and start warming up; the last thing we need is you pulling something before we even get started.”

Normally, getting a locker and setting aside his gym bag would have been proper etiquette, but there was no need for such when the massive, students only gym was almost completely empty. It was just after midnight, and during the summer to boot, so the sound of Ronald stepping on the belt and firing up the motor echoed across the large, lifeless expanse with such volume that it almost hurt his ears.

“Just…start jogging?”

“Walk first,” the Doberman replied. “Walk for a couple minutes, jog for a minute or so, and then walk again for a minute. Get your blood flowing and your lungs working, but don’t go too crazy. You just wanna work until you start feel a little bit of struggle.”

Discovering a pace was one of the most important things for a first timer in the gym to do, and Ronald had a lot of different limits to discover. He’d never played sports or taken weight training seriously, leaving his body only a little better than the point of atrophy.

He was going to be embarrassed when they finally made their way to the benches and machines, but as he began walking, he took another swig of his new sports drink and continued to feel the same ethereal boost that he did in the parking lot; that would be enough to inspire to him at least try to lift a few weights, with Mauser’s instruction.

“What do I do if I start to feel winded after just a few seconds?”

“At least go for one straight minute of jogging,” Mauser told him. “If you really can’t make that, we’ve got a lot of work to do…but you’ve gotta start somewhere.”

Walking next to a canine that had just enough muscle to accentuate every part of his tight, gripping outfit, Ronald couldn’t help feeling completely inadequate, but just taking his first, literal steps toward fitness were enough to put a smile on his face. Another sip of his drink extended that feeling as he turned the speed up to a jog, and for a few seconds, he didn’t notice any struggle at all.

The endorphin rush of a positive change was a powerful thing indeed, but it wasn’t enough to keep Ronald going past the minute. By the end of that, he was already breathing heavy and wondering when someone had filled his lungs with rocks.

“So…we’re gonna have to go really easy on you to start,” Mauser was trying to sugar coat the reality of Ronald’s piss poor health. “But that’s okay! Let’s go ahead and start working on the free weights…once we set out a nice base line for you, we’ll know what you’re capable of.”

In order to reach his limits, Ronald had to know what he was capable of in the first place, but even a sip of his fabled sports drink didn’t do much to boost his confidence, at that point.

The rack of dumbbells he was taken to felt like a massive, impenetrable wall. His fingertips were trembling as he reached out for the 15-pound pair and hoisted them from their resting place, but even that was enough to make him sway backward.

Mauser wished there wasn’t a giant mirror behind the rack; he wouldn’t be able to hide the sight of his forehead resting in his palm.

**

Sweat was beading up on Ronald’s brow within seconds of starting, even when Mauser advised him to go with a lighter weight. He’d done so many repetitions that pulling the weights up from the rack was nauseating, and the burn he felt in his biceps and triceps was so great that he worried he’d black out from the pain.

He would have stopped long before then, if Mauser hadn’t assured him that everything he felt was perfectly normal.

“Two more…okay; one more! That’s it! ” Mauser was a great motivator, though he hated the incessant yelling of the canine when everything started, Ronald was grateful for it when he set the weights back on the rack for what he’d been assured was the final time. “Great job, dude! For a first time through arms day, that was really impressive!”

Motivational cheering and general praise were nice, but nothing erased the deep, aching burn that had become Ronald’s upper arms. “That means I get the rest of the week off, right?” he asked, even when he knew he wouldn’t like the answer.

The Doberman was already shaking his head. “We’ll be back here tomorrow, if you wanna keep making progress. You’ve got all kinds of other muscles to work!”

Slumping into one of the upright bench seats and groaning like he’d been kicked, Ronald looked at his arms with genuine frustration. “They don’t even look bigger yet,” he whined, wishing that anything would distract him from his pain; the taste of his sports drink would have to do. “I totally get why people give up on this after two days…”

“But you’ll be a lot happier if you don’t,” Mauser assured him. “Quitting right now is the worst thing you could do to yourself.”

Ronald was too busy downing the rest of his sports drink to reply. He ignored the fact that the label warned him to only have one bottle per week, evenly spread throughout the seven days: if he didn’t do something else to occupy his mouth, he was going to start groaning again, and there was nothing in the empty gym to drown out that sound.

“What is that stuff, anyway?” Mauser asked.

“D…Dream Bod,” Ronald gulped down the last bit of the bottle with a difficult breath. “The guy at the store promised me results in the first week. Everyone who endorses it says that it’s guaranteed to give you exactly the body you can see in your mind if you stick with it!”

Mauser rolled his eyes. “Sounds like a pretty average sales pitch,” He murmured. “You’ve got a college degree and you’re getting suckered in by that kind of stuff?”

Thinking about how he was going to look after a few months of this kind of training had Ronald a little distracted, especially with the title of the sports drink at the center of their discussion. He could just imagine what kind of a thick, powerful beast he would be: veiny, rippling arms and a broad chest would sit perfectly above the stereotypical set of perfectly chiseled abs, and down the sides of his body, his trapezius region would blow out to the sides like the hood of a cobra.

What he didn’t know was that he wasn’t the only person who had a different vision of his perfect body, and though he didn’t dare to say it out loud, Mauser was admiring not the version of Ronald that stood before him, but what he knew the scrawny human could be, if he stuck with the program.

The chemical aspect of desire was a stronger thing than either of them realized.

“Of course, if you keep at it…” Mauser carried on, “You’ll be anything but average. I dunno what potential you see in yourself, but I can see it in you…”

Utterly lacking in confidence before, Ronald wasn’t sure how to deal with the sudden burst of it as a new chemical flooded his endocrine system. He was sure that there was a cocky remark he could have made about how he was already closer to a chiseled body than Mauser would ever be, but he wasn’t quite feeling arrogant yet.

He couldn’t imagine it would be much longer, however, as his heartbeat slowed, and each pump of vitality through his veins sent a fresh wave of repressed self-confidence through his form.

“Took you long enough to see it…I was starting to get bored waiting for you to figure it out.”

Mauser cocked his head for a moment and gave Ronald a disbelieving grin. “I’m…sorry?”

“You’re something, anyway.”

Veins that only pressed to the surface of Ronald’s skin by virtue of his beanpole nature were growing abnormally thick for his tiny frame, and as his hands clenched into tight, angry fists, more trails of blue popped up across pale skin, like rivers bowling their way through a flood plain.

“ That can’t be healthy,” Mauser’s expression dropped into a pit of concern. “Are you sure you want to keep going tonight? We should probably call it quits.”

“Feels like we’ve only just gotten started,” Ronald argued. “No point in giving up when I’m only just starting to sweat.”

His tank top was already drenched by his previous efforts, but new life was bubbling up from the pit of his stomach as the cheap, knock off supplement spread through his digestive system. Chemicals that were never meant to be in a human body spread throughout his bloodstream and went right to his brain, sparking the change that both of them wanted to see, even if only one of them was brave enough to admit it, right then.

For all the confidence he lacked before, it was Ronald who decided to embrace the rapid growth of his forearms, as he tilted them in and flexed muscles that didn’t exist before.

If not for the rapid stretch of his skin, sinew would have burst through the surface as tendons contracted, and strength that he never knew he had radiated up into his biceps, pumping them out to a level that Ronald never could have imagined.

“I dunno what you put into your body, but we need to get it out of you, now ,” Mauser was done playing around, knowing he’d need to force Ronald to leave the gym, but grabbing him by the arm wasn’t the best way to go about it.

His digits tried to clench around the slowly inflating pair of his bicep and triceps, but even with his palm at the widest point, he couldn’t manage a proper grip. He shuddered as his pawtips fell away, trying to deny the paralyzing chill that ran down his spine as he literally watched Ronald evolve into the image that he’d created in his own mind.

“What was that all about? You touched me once and nearly turned into a puddle…you’re not that easy, are you?” Ronald was embracing his changes in stride, even when a part of his mind was still panicking at the sight of fur crawling up over arms that were once barren of hair. “Seriously, I feel like I could breathe on you right now and knock you over!”

I wish you would breathe on me…get a little closer, Mauser’s thoughts were poisoned every bit as much as Ronald’s body, and though he knew he shouldn’t have been getting swept up in a physical change, his concerns were already getting buried under a wealth of arousal. If you just make the move, I won’t resist it at all!

“You going deaf or something? You’re not usually this much of a space cadet.”

Ronald wasn’t used to having such an effect on someone by his appearance alone; though his confidence told him that he deserved to be revered, his reality wasn’t quite catching up to the idea yet.

He should have known that Mauser was falling to pieces for him, but that part of his mind was still catching up to the rippling muscles that grew across his body and forced his tiny frame to expand.

“L-Look, I’m just saying that w-we should really get you out of here,” Mauser wasn’t usually the aggressor, but knowing how timid Ronald was in the first place, this was the best he could do to make a move on the ever-changing human. “Until we figure this out, anyway, m-maybe we should just go back to my place?”

The mind was catching up quicker by the moment as Ronald rolled his eyes. “That was the flimsiest pickup line I think I’ve ever heard, Mauser. You can do better.”

“But, I…I wasn-

“Like hell you weren’t. You’ve been tripping over your own cock since I started drinking this stuff. You really think I didn’t notice?”

Was kinda hoping you would notice…but you didn’t have to stop there…

The pipsqueak of a young man that entered the gym was getting longer in the tooth as his muscles grew, as if the same amount of time it would take to build such girth was imposing itself on his expression, as well. Youthful eyes sharpened and a grin that was already sinister became jagged with overgrown fangs, creating a horrific scene that was only allowed to exist for a moment.

Those same chitin daggers were captured in the slow growth of a muzzle that emerged from the front of a once human face, but just as the rest of his body continued to bulge beyond the confines of a human frame, his teeth were packed in so tight that Mauser worried they would pierce his lips.

It made for a stare that he couldn’t escape from when Ronald shook his head from side to side, forcing his ears up toward the side of his head…but they never returned to their proper resting place.

“I don’t…believe it…wh…what the hell did you do to yourself, Ronald?!”

The name resonated with a certain weakness to the canine ears that received it, such that Ronald twisted his face in disgust. “Gotta come up with a better title, pronto,” he groaned. “That feels like a better name for you , honestly.”

Such arrogance would have come across as the insult that it was to others, but as Mauser’s thoughts toed a fine line between horrified and aroused, he tried to decide which side of the dichotomy had a louder internal voice.

He had the patience to deal with his own indecision. Ronald didn’t.

“If you’re gonna keep on standing there and going mute every five seconds, I’m gonna give you a good reason to keep your mouth shut.”

Clothes were reaching their bursting point, clenching down uncomfortably on a coat of fur that grew thicker and thicker with each passing second. The full beast of a canine was already standing as tall as Mauser and growing still, as hands that were once puny and weak slammed down on Masuer’s shoulders and pushed him down to his knees, right in the middle of the gym.

“So much for going back to your place,” Ronald teased. “Guess you better just get to work.”