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#non-Newtonian fluids
fuckyeahfluiddynamics · 10 months
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crewdlydrawn · 10 months
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if gender is a fluid, mine is def non-newtonian
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mothssmeat · 1 year
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almondemotion · 1 year
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Satori in the quicksand, the dimishing returns of a hospital admission
A new currency to understand health and social care - we kill with kindness; our processes are not fit for purpose. We need a re-doing, a changed focus and better understanding of who we are, what we do & what our patients want.
Oh-oh! MUD!Thick, oozy mud.We can’t go over it.We can’t go under it.Oh, no!WE’VE GOT TO GO THROUGH IT! And so, it begins. Michael Rosen’s words from We’re going on a bear hunt seem apposite. A couple of weeks ago I had a satori. That is, a sudden moment of realisation, awakening. It relates to my purpose, or, rather role as clinician and what I should be doing and how I should be…
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e-wwis · 6 months
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genderfluid but not in a "is it a girl day or boy day today" way but in a "my soul has lived here for too long. the doorframes are chipped and the walls are sun-faded; the wood rots and the nails rust. this house was once home but today it is no longer. will I ever be back? maybe one day. but come tomorrow this place is dead to me." on a random wednesday and then chopping all my hair off way
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undertalethingems · 9 months
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Unexpected Guests Chapter 10: Page 17
First / Previous / Next
Someone let Undyne get a driver's license, and she's made that Gaster's problem. And just in time too--Toriel's car won't be going anywhere except maybe through the map anytime soon. How do you even write an insurance claim for graphics errors...?
Oh man, finally got to some things I've been looking forward to drawing for a long time! Toriel's glitched-out car and Undyne's arrival have been pretty clear images in my head for ages, and at last! I could deliver. I hope it was worth the wait :>
Help has arrived at last, but the story continues July 20th! Stay tuned!
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svsss-fanon-exposed · 3 months
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All the hate you’re getting must be annoying. Just wanted to let you know that I really enjoy your blog, and I am certain others do as well!
To be honest it hasn't been that bad. Less hate really (and hardly anything on those lines that hasn't been a misunderstanding quickly cleared up) and more just... misinterpretation of my intentions or what I say sometimes, which is honestly half on me because I'm not always able to find the best words to convey my meaning, but still half on people for not reading and considering the psas and statements I've made.
So far, most people have actually been pretty chill!
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hazeltortie · 8 months
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May not be a Newtonian, but am definitely liquid, cat
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ovrarches · 9 months
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No one ever witnesses it, but sometimes Thomas will be curled up on his couch, watching a trashy TV show, eating mac and cheese and wearing unfashionable sweatpants
depression mealz
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familiar-bonds · 6 months
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Here's some more 'finalized' guys I was working on today.
These are always fun to work on when i am tired. (I am sick.. woops)
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fuqer · 3 months
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so i know nothing about metal gear but if theres a solid snake and a liquid snake is there a gas snake? plasma snake? non-newtonian fluid snake?
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Peanut butter is a liquid—the physics of this and other unexpected fluids
Those Transportation Security Administration requirements are drilled into every frequent flyer's head: You can carry on liquids that are only less than 3.4 ounces (100 milliliters) in volume each.
But when the TSA recently confiscated a jar of Jif under this rule, peanut butter lovers were up in arms. Some skeptics of security may suspect hungry officers just wanted to make their own PB&Js. TSA, however, contends that peanut butter is a liquid—and a full-size jar of Jif is over the 3.4-ounce limit.
Just like Americans' favorite legume-based sandwich ingredient, the story—and the outrage it inspired—began to spread. However, I'm a mechanical engineer who studies fluid flows, and the TSA action made sense to me. By the scientific definition, peanut butter is indeed a liquid.
Read more.
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choctalksalot · 9 months
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@tipsygnostalgy tg my good friend made the grave mistake of telling me their perceived shape is Cat and i had a field day on my notes app minutes before an exam
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violetcatt · 2 months
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Outwardly a cat. Inwardly a non-Newtonian fluid. She skillfully oozes. She insinuates herself into one's space.
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nonhumanresources · 3 months
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Late Night Snack
A while back I drew a dragonair who lives inside of a slushie machine. I loved the idea and eventually ended up with Ryuukah, a slime dragonair made entirely out of some kind of sugary candy sludge. Here's their backstory, alongside their friend Bailey!
This one is a personal favorite of mine. I think I did a good job getting down personalities and making them properly serious while still keeping the topic the absolute opposite of that. I had been doing mostly story-related TF at the time and I decided to indulge in some utterly ridiculous and excessively detailed transformation scenes because I am normal about certain topics. So, fair warning that it's dumb, but that's where I thrive, so it also happens to be some of my better writing.
Summary: Two urban explorers find out the hard way why you should not break into an abandoned Sinclair and drink strange glowing liquids.
What to expect: TF and TG (female to nonbinary). Lots of slime, goofy conversations between deeply unserious friends, and a little bit of crime.
Length: 7.9k words.
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Rika leaned against the gas pump, lips parted in a grimace, chewing on a toothpick. Her expression spoke of hard times. The creases in her face were deep canyons across its desert expanse, a simulacrum of the dusty ground she called home, cast in the harsh orange light of sunset. Her blonde hair was streaked with grime and pulled back against the nape of her neck. She spun the handle of the pump around a finger, flicked open the lid of her Chevy’s tank, and jabbed in it. 
The artistic illusion was only somewhat ruined by the pump nozzle dropping straight to the asphalt with a loud crack and the fact that the only thing that came out was dust and several spiders rather than gasoline. Not to mention that ‘sunset’ was just street lamps out by the road. Bailey raised an eyebrow at her, arms folded and foot tapping. 
“Done with playtime?” she asked. 
Rika gestured at the nozzle. “Clearly you weren’t imagining hard enough.” 
“I thought we were here to trespass.” 
“I’m here because my family has fallen on hard times during the Dust Bowl, and with my husband dead, I’m the only one supporting them. I’m filling the tank with the last of my money. I’ll have to pawn my mother’s ring to afford tonight’s dinner.” The orange light of fluorescent bulbs reflected off of Rika’s hand as she held it up, showing off a simple yet elegant diamond ring on one hand (that was really just a small band of polished stone). 
“Funny, I could have sworn that you were a scrappy young woman making her way in the big city for the first time, coated in grime from a hard day’s work on the farm and ready to protest.” Bailey waved her hands about, gesturing at, presumably, all the new-fangled high rises being put up by the day. What a strange time to live in, she seemed to say.
Rika smacked her forehead. “So THAT’S why!” 
“Why what?” 
Rika pushed off of the gas pump, the old plastic labels stuck to it crumbling beneath her touch, faded Sinclair green smearing on her trashy hoodie. “Why the pump fell, obviously. 30s Chevys have the tank inlet in a COMPLETELY different position than 50s models,” she explained, brushing past Bailey. “Hey, I thought we were here to vandalize stuff. What are you doing standing around?” 
There's your sneak peek! Rest of the story under the cut. If you prefer to read it on Google Docs, you can do that right here. As always comments, questions, and thoughts are always welcome! If people want it maybe I'll go add some author's commentary to the doc. Thanks for reading!
“Debating whether a crowbar or a Snickers would shut you up faster,” she replied, aiming an open-handed whack at Rika’s head. She ducked it, barely, and grabbed Bailey’s arm, pulling her towards the skeleton of the 6-Ten convenience store attached to the old gas station. Her friend let herself get pulled along, laughing. 
Gods above, Rika missed this. It had been AGES since they’d found a good dive. It was like no one went out of business these days, which was frankly just unfair. What were all the enterprising urban explorers supposed to do without abandoned places? She was positively wasting away. Fortunately, Bailey’s eagle eyes had saved the day once again, and within a few hours they were scouting out the abandoned Sinclair. It wasn’t really that old—two, three decades at most—but it appeared almost untouched, which was a rare commodity. This was just the thing they needed to get back into gear.
Rika and Bailey walked around to the back of the defunct convenience store, out of the dim orange light and into the darkness. They stepped up to an old employees only door, boarded up and spray painted over with dozens of tags. As one, they each pulled a crowbar out of their backpacks and swung it in front of the other, swapping them over to the other person. It was a ritual they’d come up with as kids and never quite dropped, despite all the other myriad handshakes and secret codes that had since fallen to the wayside. 
They worked in tandem, prying at the rusted nails until they snapped. Rika caught the first board when it popped off the door and set it on the ground carefully. Her clothes were quickly covered with splinters, but that was the reason for the old hoodie and torn jeans. Better to toss it in the garbage somewhere than go home looking like a cactus and have to pick all the splinters out later. She removed a particularly nasty chunk of wood from the crook of her elbow and stood back up, digging her crowbar into the next piece of wood, letting Bailey catch the next one. A few of the planks splintered into bits as soon as it made contact. How have these not disintegrated by now? Rika wondered, stacking the pieces into a neat pile. She laid each one down slowly, making sure to be as quiet as possible. You never knew who would be out and about at this hour. Of course, the sounds of nails tearing out of wood were already quite loud, but there was no need to make even more noise. 
Bailey popped the last plank off into Rika’s waiting arms. She set down her crowbar and tried the door. It was locked, of course, and she bent down to inspect the handle. 
“Think it’s too rusted out for a pick?” she mused, pulling a penlight from her pocket and shining it into the small lock. 
“Only one way to find out,” Rika said, reaching into her backpack once more. This time she pulled out a small plastic case. Inside was a set of lockpicks of various sizes and shapes. She grabbed two with clearly worn handles and snapped it shut, kneeling in front of the door and getting to work. Lockpicking wasn’t too hard, once you knew the theory; a set of pins kept the chamber from rotating, and your job was to get those pins to stick in their proper places. A torsion wrench kept them steady while a pick pushed them up and down, looking for that signature click. Simple in theory, less so in practice. Bailey waited with her back against the wall, keeping her eyes peeled for figures in the dark. 
This was what it was all about. A set of eyes watching the road, another focused on a lock. The constant threat of discovery sending a delicious chill down your spine. Deft hands working their magic. How had they gone so long without this? Rika relished it. They’d used to go urbexing all the time, a few years back. Sewers, tunnels, abandoned lots, construction sites, you name it, they’d searched it. Most weren’t strictly illegal, though cops tended to ignore that detail. Rika had learned to be careful, and despite the year or two without a jaunt in the dark, she hadn’t lost that skill. 
She didn’t really know why they’d stopped. It had been a few months before either one realized just how long it had been without an outing. There were only so many old houses one could break into before the magic wore off somewhat. Maybe that was it—too many trips all at once, and they’d just gotten tired. 
“You know, I think about how we got here sometimes,” she commented, glancing up at Bailey. Her friend raised an eyebrow at her. 
“The road?” she said dryly. 
“Not physically here,” Rika went on. “You know. Here. Doing this.” 
“If you wanted to second guess breaking and entering—”
“Stealing the Queen’s diamonds.” 
Bailey groaned. Rika grinned as her wrench suddenly twisted, the lock choking out specks of rust as it spun. 
“You first, Miss Bond!” she declared, pushing herself up to her feet. 
“I’ll leave a tiara for you to grab,” Bailey said, rolling her eyes. “You’re lucky I put up with your imagination, Lady Spy. Otherwise I’d leave you to the Royal Guard.” She tried to elbow Rika as she pulled the door open, the rusty hinges protesting. 
“I’d just come back for the sequel,” Rika declared, deftly avoiding the blow once more. Bailey shook her head and flicked on a much larger flashlight, slipping into the convenience store. Rika stowed her tools and grabbed her own, following.
The inside of the 6 Ten Quick Stop was, predictably, dilapidated. They’d entered into an employee lounge. Several hard-backed chairs and tables were scattered across the floor haphazardly, a few lockers sitting against one wall alongside a desk. Rika and Bailey quickly sifted through the few drawers built into it, searching for keys in case there were other locked doors, but the desk was cleaned out save for some paper clips and old balls of lint. A thankfully open door opposite to the exit led to a short hallway. There were bathrooms set across from the lounge, with the rest of the building down to the right. After opening a few lockers and finding nothing of note, they moved out into the hallway and into the convenience store itself. 
Shelves of assorted junk food, auto supplies, and random knick-knacks ran through the store’s center, with broken fridges and freezers along one side. The back wall held outdated soda fountains and coffee dispensers. Lights and panels hung from the ceiling like guts dangling from the chest of an enormous beast. Rika and Bailey stepped out of the hallway, avoiding the debris that covered the floor. It was a mix of animal droppings, trash, and glass shards, something seen in most places like this.
“Look at this stuff,” Rika commented, walking down an aisle. “This place really is old. I haven’t seen some of this candy since I was a kid.” Many of the plastic packages were still hanging up on hooks, though many had been knocked down by time and rats. She picked up a packet of Yogos, which had long since melted into a solid lump at the bottom of the bag. 
Bailey snorted from an aisle over. “I think putting this many bubble letters on anything should be a crime.” 
Rika laughed, replacing the Yogos and moving on. Many of the brands she recognized, still robed in their turn of the modern century garb, jarring fonts set against faded neon colors. Most of it was candy and junk food, of course. This place was a sugary time capsule. She gave the shelves of automobile oil a wide berth—the plastic cans had long since developed holes, leaving a noxious stain on the floor. The freezers had suffered a similar fate, calcified stalactites hanging from the bottom of the doors. 
Despite being nearly untouched, there were still signs of life. Some of the glass fronts on the fridges were shattered, especially those that used to hold alcohol. Those bottles were either gone or scattered across the floor. Bailey moved up behind the counter and reported that the cash register was broken and empty, most of the drawers ransacked. It was all typical miscreant behavior; the only abnormal detail was the lack of destruction. It seemed only a few people had set foot in here during the entirety of its abandonment. One or two windows had rings of glass on the tile below them, boards covering the holes left behind. Had no one else bothered to try and get in save those initial few? This wasn’t a busy place; maybe there just weren’t enough people around to care. 
Rika stopped her scan of the store, brows furrowed. She turned her light back on the ground. There, a trail of wrappers brushed to the sides led out of her aisle, towards the back of the small building. It wouldn't have caught her attention, save for one fact: each and every one was blue. 
She followed it, stepping carefully around a puddle of what looked like old cheese dip. Had one of the previous explorers had a fondness for a particular flavor profile? Why bother opening up this much old junk food? It couldn’t have all been edible, unless this was an especially old trail. The wrappers piled up against a counter on the back wall, and she raised her light up, looking for an explanation. There was even more plastic covering the counter, all surrounding an ancient slushie machine. A slushie machine that glowed. 
Rika nearly dropped her light in shock. She strode forwards, plastic crinkling underfoot. The glow was faint enough that their bright flashlights had masked it, and she had to aim her light away to properly see it. How did the thing still have power? Surely nothing in here had worked in years. But… no, the glow wasn’t coming from the usual lights hidden behind the plastic casing, it was coming from inside the tank itself. The slushie machine wasn’t anything special: rollers stained from years of use and subsequent disuse, plastic grimy, the paint flaking away. For some reason, though, it seemed to contain a pool of… something. It looked like some sort of mush, deep blue in color. It oozed out the nozzle, staining the tray beneath it. It was this strange ooze that was glowing, not the machine itself. The light was a soft blue, glimmering like some sort of strange bioluminescence. 
The sludge wasn’t perfectly smooth—it was full of bumps and ripples. Was that the fate of all the candy wrappers she’d seen? It was like someone had melted just about every piece of blue candy in the convenience store together inside the machine and tried to use it as a mixer. The result was a sort of lumpy mass of oozing sugar paste that was an incredibly vibrant blue. It was like an experiment gone wrong. Regardless of its strange, messed up origins, she still didn’t understand the glowing. Plus, it didn’t have a speck of mold on it, something that should have consumed this mess long ago. 
“Hey Bailey, come look at this,” Rika called. Setting her flashlight down on the counter so it could illuminate both the machine and the surrounding area, she fished around in the storage cupboard underneath it, pulling out a package of paper cups. Prying the lid off the slushie machine, she reached in and scooped up a bit of the sludge. Instead of a hard surface, it had a consistency like extra thick syrup, and she easily managed to gather a bit of goop in the cup. 
“What is that?” Bailey asked with disgust as she walked up to Rika. “You cooking up mad science back here?” 
“No clue,” Rika responded. “It was here already. Wanna try some?” She proffered the cup to Bailey. 
“Are you joking?” she spat. “Leave that stuff alone, it’ll probably kill you.” 
Rika grinned. She’d seen the wrappers of just about everything that had gone into the slushie machine—all of it was proudly nontoxic and full of preservatives. All of it that she knew of, at least; it could very well be full of rat poison. It could have even been a poor attempt at sugared moonshine, for all she knew. She somehow doubted it, though. Anyone who bothered to open up that much candy was clearly looking to eat something strange. “Come on,” she prodded. “It’s the Fountain of Youth! You could be young forever, free to break into buildings for the rest of time!” 
“If that’s the Fountain of Youth, I choose growing old.” Bailey crossed her arms. “C’mon, you did your food handlers permit. We both know that stuff has been out for way too long to be safe.”
Rika shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’m living forever.”
Then, she tossed the cup back and downed the glowing sludge. 
She knew it was a bad idea. Clearly the stuff was long since bad, if it was somehow giving off light. However, with the emotional high of getting back out into the dust and debris of a new expedition, she was already feeling a little reckless, and so she couldn’t resist her absolute favorite pastime: messing with Bailey. 
The scream Rika got from her made it all worth it. 
The sludge itself was an intense, sugary slap to the face. She coughed, surprised. She’d braced herself for something rancid and rotting, but the sheer force of artificial sugar was nearly as bad. It was the sweetest thing she’d ever tasted in a way that wasn’t necessarily pleasant. She coughed, spitting it back into the cup, but it clung to her teeth and tongue. She had to swallow a few clinging strands. 
Bailey was swinging her flashlight, yelling. “I can’t BELIEVE you’d be such an IDIOT! Do you even KNOW—” she ranted, grabbing a plastic water bottle out of her pack and tossing it at Rika viciously. Rika was only half listening. She fumbled the catch and the bottle smacked into her shoulder, bouncing across the ground. She snatched it up and twisted the top off, dumping water into her mouth and swishing it around. The cup had been dropped to the floor, abandoned. She spat water and slime onto the old tile, laughing. That only seemed to make Bailey more furious. 
“I am NOT paying for your stomach pump this time. Got it?” She fumed, accusing finger jabbed in Rika’s direction. 
“Fine, fine, I get it!” Rika relented, raising her hands in defeat. “Hospital bill is on me, if I even need one. Besides, you should have seen the look on your face, dude. That’s worth any bill.” 
Bailey actually growled at her. “Only you, Rika. Only you.” She folded her arms, the simmering rage cooling off somewhat. Throwing something at Rika had probably helped, even if it was ostensibly to assist her. “You’ve got garbage smeared all over your mouth. Wipe that shit off before it eats through your grin, god only knows how bad it is for your teeth.” 
Rika swiped her hoodie sleeve across her mouth, making sure to avoid the splinters in it. Bailey was right; she’d rubbed off a big glob of the stuff, making her sleeve glow blue. Her mouth was tingling slightly—probably the sugar giving her a whole spate of cavities. The sensation made her nose itch. She ran her tongue along her teeth, trying to dislodge any other bits of the weird glop, but something about her tongue felt off. It was like it had never properly felt her teeth before, and she shivered, pressing it against them to try and force the feeling away. 
“Not much else here,” Bailey sighed. “I’m ready to beat it when you are.” 
Rika nodded absently. She opened her mouth to say something, but the itch in her nose stopped her. She sniffed, rubbing it, but the sensation refused to eb. It built up more and more, the mint-like tingling in her mouth making it worse. She scrunched up her face, knowing where the feeling was heading. Indeed, it built to a crescendo in her sinuses, and she hunched forwards with a powerful ACHOO! The sneeze was dizzying in its intensity, feeling almost as if she’d launch her nose straight off her face. No time to cover it with an elbow; both hands flew to catch it, but they slapped against  something round and flat instead of the familiar, irregular curves of her face. It still felt like her nose and mouth, but they were swollen, misshapen. When she tried to pull them back, they seemed suctioned in place on her face, disconnecting with a small sucking noise. They were coated in the blue goop, clearly visible in the light of her flashlight, and strands of it stretched between them and her face.
“If this is another prank, I swear…” Bailey snarled, seeing the sludge in her hands, but the sight of Rika’s face made her peter off. Rika pretended to be an actor, with all her made up stories, but she hardly ever used actual props. Whatever had happened, it was enough to stop Bailey in her tracks, hand unconsciously reaching up to feel at her own face in shock. 
Looking around, Rika tried to find any sort of reflective surface. Her head swung heavily, its very momentum somehow altered with extra weight. Her eyes landed on the dark windows on the opposite side of the store—the  light of the flashlight left them impossible to see through, useful only as mirrors in the dark. Even in their layers of grime, she could tell that something was very, very wrong. 
Rika had a bright blue snout. 
It was quite large, taking up most of her face where her mouth and nose had previously been. The snout was squarish and rounded at the edges, slitted nostrils set on the front. The snout was slightly parted in shock. Its wide and blunt shape was most definitely reptilian. It reminded her of a ball python—a friend kept one as a pet, and she’d held it a few times. She tentatively wiped a finger across it, leaving a small divot where it disturbed the soft surface. She could feel the finger as it passed across the surface, sinking into it. It wasn’t only bright in color—it actually glowed, like the sludge in the slushie machine. 
“Wha…?” she tried to say. Before she could pronounce the ‘t,’ her tongue unfurled from the snout like a ribbon, drooping a few inches below her besnouted chin. It too was enveloped in a cerulean glow, and the end was now forked, like that of a snake. In her distant reflection, she could barely make it out. Bailey stumbled back, away from Rika, falling against one of the shelves of junk food. 
“What the hell is happening to your face?” she yelled. Rika could only shake her head in response; she couldn’t actually figure out how to get her tongue back into her mouth in order to talk. It just… wiggled, instead of doing what she told it. The whole snout felt strange to operate. It was like operating a long pair of tongs. She worked her face, snout twisting, hissing on accident as she managed to pull her tongue back inside and clamp her jaws shut. Her tongue and her snout. It wasn’t some strange thing that had attached itself to her face—her face had taken on an entirely new shape, now. 
That same tingling she’d felt in her mouth began to spread. She could feel her throat and stomach as if they’d been outlined in an x-ray, the strange sensation covering them like she’d swallowed menthol. It burned across her hands where they were slathered in blue slime.
Uh oh. 
Rika doubled over, holding her stomach, eyes watering. She tried to wipe the goop off, but no matter how hard she tried, it just seemed to smear across her clothes and leave them with a blue layer. She hissed again, still flexing her snout, trying to get it to do what she wanted. Bailey hovered nearby, face pale. She was finally able to squeeze out a few words through the snout. 
“Just… go get some paper towels!” Rika gasped, tongue flopping out again unbidden. Bailey nodded and darted towards the hallway and the bathrooms beyond. There probably wouldn’t be anything useful; Rika didn’t really care at the moment. Her stomach felt like a cold bonfire had been lit inside of it, icy flames licking the sides, sending chills through her body. It didn’t necessarily hurt, but it was nonetheless incapacitating. 
Rika lowered herself to the floor, back against the wrapper-covered counter. The icy feeling had her whole body shivering, now, her snout locked into a grimace. Her fingers and toes clenched, both responding sluggishly. She tried to ignore the changes to her face, but the blue lump in the center of her vision made that impossible. 
Some detached part of her mind pondered the situation. It revised her earlier assumption: perhaps eating glowing gunk she scraped out of a defunct machine in an abandoned gas station convenience store hadn’t been worth the prank. 
Something felt off with her shoes. They were sturdy tennis shoes, well worn and comfortable. Rika pushed at the heel of one with the toes of her other foot, trying to slide it off, but she’d tied them tight—important for quietly sneaking about. You wanted shoes that wouldn’t slip from your feet like flip-flops. Unfortunately for her, that made them nigh impossible to shove off when you were wracked with goo-induced shakes. The discomfort quickly became pressure and pain, as if her sneakers were shrinking around her feet, compressing them from all sides. She winced, pressing them against the floor, trying to lessen the squeezing pain in any way she could. It built and built, nearly enough to make her cry out. Either her shoe had suddenly become five sizes too small, or—
Riiiiiiip-POP! A sudden sound brought blissful relief on one side. The top of her left sneaker was torn completely from the sole in an impressively loud display. She expected a regular, if squashed, foot to emerge, clad in her white and red socks. Instead, as the sole ripped free and bent out of the way, four round, blue toes emerged so fast that they ripped straight through her sock, its sorry remains stretched between them to maintain a tenuous grip. The rest of an enormous glowing paw followed after, nearly twice as wide as the shoes that had managed to contain it. The sole had to be almost as large as her whole face, bodying the remains of the shoe as it escaped its confines. It slapped wetly against the floor, pressed onto cool tiles. The toes were larger, sturdier, and her heel was stretched backwards, still hidden in the shredded shoe. It was clearly animalistic, built for movement. As it pressed against the ground, she could feel a thick pad swell up on the ball of her foot against the tiles, squishier than the bulk of the paw. 
All that happened in one shocking instant. Rika yelped, kicking her other leg in shock, and an almost identical shoe-demolition ruined her other sneaker and released a second, equally gigantic paw. She could feel every crack and divot in the floor beneath them as she pushed herself backwards, as if to escape her own feet. Her legs felt strange. With her heel so far from the actual paw itself, they clearly didn’t fit the general structure. 
Definitely not worth it, that ridiculously calm voice in her head said wryly. 
The poor woman wasn’t given time to dwell on her utterly ruined shoes or the paws that had brought about said ruination. Another pain sprang up, this time in her lower spine. It made sitting nearly unbearable. She rolled over, hands detaching from around her stomach so that she could hold herself up on her elbows and knees. Her tailbone ached. She clasped her hands together and pressed her forehead against them, panting, her odd tongue slipping in and out, her snout nose nearly against the floor. A part of her noted that her hands were now rounder and larger—paws. Again. That must have happened while she was distracted by her shoes exploding. 
She feared what this new pain might bring more than she felt the pain itself. If the last source of discomfort had utterly altered the anatomy of everything below the knee, what might happen with this one? Her paws pushed against the floor as her thighs and calves began to ache, similar to the start of a charlie horse. She lifted herself up off her knees, trying to straighten her spine, standing on the toes of her new paws. The angle was awkward with their shape, but she couldn’t bear to lower her rear again and put more pressure on her aching spine. 
From her upside down position, between drips of goop from her snout, Rika could see her legs. Her torn jeans had been loose before; now, they were like tights, stretched against the skin. Instead of that skin, though, blue slime pressed through the threadbare holes on her knees. They were especially tight right at the top, her hips visibly straining against the fabric, outlined in near perfect detail from what she could see. That was made all the worse by a strange pressure centered on her tailbone, where the pain was most acute. Unfortunately, unlike tights, jeans were not meant to stretch like this, and she was feeling that to the utmost degree. Her mind was in a haze, sweat (or was that more goo?) dripping off her forehead from the sheer strain, that icy tingling filling her body, paws digging against the floor as she tried to focus through it all. Through the maze of jeans and paws, eyes squinting nearly shut, she saw incredible, normal, terrified Bailey rush back out of the bathroom, holding a roll of crumbling paper towels. 
She was just in time to watch as Rika’s jeans were torn to shreds. It started at the top, where the seams gave way, wide gooey hips erupting outwards with an enormous tearing. The utter explosion of the seat of her pants triggered a chain reaction that tore each and every thread down the sides of her jeans, her thighs and calves bursting through the denim with their sudden girth, muscles clenched. She was overcome with dizzying relief, legs shaking slightly from a combination of exertion, the slimy material, and their bulked up size. The indents of the seams were visible for a few moments before fading into their gooey surfaces. The ruined fabric was left in piles on the floor, her legs now bare save for clinging threads and torn up shoes. The entire skeletal structure of her legs seemed to have shifted in the sudden explosion of freedom; her knees were a little lower, joints more pronounced, matching the strange position of her ankles. As a whole they looked much more dynamic, all angles rather than straight up and down, and she was standing up on her toes, rather than resting on her heels. Even when not in a position like she was holding, she doubted she’d be able to lower her heels down all the way to the ground.
Rika nearly passed out as her spine seemed to shoot straight out of her back, whipping outwards. Her vision swam, but she was able to watch as a tail nearly as thick as her head slammed to the ground. More importantly, she could feel every inch of it extending from beyond her back, sliding across the floor, entirely new nerve impulses hitting her brain like a truck. The pain had been this incredible mass being kept back by her pants and undergarments. Beyond it, Bailey’s moonlike pale face was now flushed a bright red. 
Oh, Rika thought deliriously. My ass is out, isn’t it. Sorry, Bailey.
She groaned, wanting to collapse but holding the position for fear of actually passing out on the floor. Her brain was short circuiting under a barrage of sensory information that it was entirely unequipped to handle. The sheer weight of the thing attached to her rear end made her tip backwards, butt smacking onto the ground. Watching the floor rotate out from above her perspective to underneath made her sick. 
Rika grabbed the shelf next to her. Her hand… paw… thing squelched as she gripped it. Pushing herself to her feet took enormous effort, operating their strange new shape, her cloudy mind wondering what she was even doing. Why not just lay down? It would feel so nice….
Yet, she stood. Grasping the metal with both hands, Rika stood. Her legs shook. The feeling of her larger thighs pressed against each other was yet another foreign sensation that she’d have to adjust to. Her hair hung around her in wet globs, covered in ooze, though this was somewhat darker than the rest. It was a stonelike gray, making her hair seem more like a mass than individual strands. She twisted, spotting Bailey through the gaps in her mussed up hair, who was edging closer warily, holding the paper towels out in front of her like a ward. Her shoes made sucking sounds with each step through the sludge coating the floor, centered around Rika herself. She tried to show off one of her lopsided smiles, but it looked more like a grimace. 
“Th… thanks.” She panted out the words, her voice odd in her own ears, deeper and more sinuous with the consonants. She couldn’t imagine how she must seem to Bailey. A monster, something insidious replacing her longtime friend. To add a final touch to the unsettling image, Rika’s hoodie drooped, slime appearing through the threads. The hoodie, along with the shirt underneath, literally slipped through her torso, dropping to the puddle of ooze below. Her stone ring plinked off her fingers and against the metal shelving she held. Her chest was flat and white, a contrast to the blue that coated the rest of her body, like the underbelly of a shark. “Uh. Oops.” 
Pushing past the obvious fear, Bailey actually proffered the paper towels. They were nothing, of course; Rika herself was changed from head to toe. A roll of paper towels disintegrating under the weight of their own age would do nothing but make a mess even in regular circumstances. Here, it was almost like a peace offering, a symbol instead of a tool. Rika did her best to stand upright and walk forward to accept the roll, useless though it was. 
She couldn’t even make it a single proper step. The coils of tail caught her paw as she tried to move, and she stumbled, arms flailing wildly. Bailey didn’t have a chance to run as the mass of slime careened into her, sending them both to the floor. Bailey only narrowly avoided cracking her head against the tiles, instead falling on top of a length of Rika’s enormous tail with a loud SPLAT. Rika felt the impact, but it didn’t hurt—there was strange pressure, but everything was so strange already that it wasn’t out of place. She fell directly on top of her friend with another loud slap, getting goo everywhere as the two impacted each other. 
She panted, snout barely an inch above Bailey’s nose. Her forked tongue sprang out and flicked the tip of her nose. Her friend looked more than strained—she was on the verge of manic, and Rika couldn’t blame her one bit. She had a beast atop her, breathing in her face, taking in her scent. Possibly sizing her up as some sort of prey. 
“Help…” Bailey squeaked. 
That was all the push Rika needed to break through her haze. She responded immediately, untangling her arms and pushing herself up. Her hair hung around the two of them, separating them from the outside world. The blonde was now totally smothered by the sooty gray, the distant light of her flashlight making it glow around the edges, where it was somewhat translucent. 
“Hey, I’m still here, see?” she said, voice strained and awkward. “Still Ryuukah.” 
She froze. Bailey, despite the terror, looked confused. “I… sure hope you mean still Rika.” 
“That’s… that’s what I said. Still Ryuukah.” She gritted her snout, working it. “Ryuukah. Ryuukah. No, reee-yoooou-kaa. No! Stupid snout, work with me here!” Even slowly pronouncing it, dragging out each syllable with careful precision, she couldn’t seem to get the sounds right. Every time she started, whatever she was trying to say slipped from her head like water through a sieve, replaced instead with that strange new name. Her tongue stuck out of her muzzle in concentration, sliding across Bailey’s cheek without her noticing. She felt like her brain was repeating like a scratched record. 
She knew it was wrong. That wasn’t her name. Her name was… gods. she breathed out through her nostrils, concentrating. You couldn’t just forget your own name. It was right there, right on the tips of her tongue. She just… had to… grab it….
Ryuukah. 
“Goddamnit!” 
Well, at least that particular word still worked. 
“Lick me again and I’m strangling you!” Bailey’s angry voice brought her back to her senses. Much as she wanted to continue struggling with her mind, there were more pressing things to deal with. Or maybe it just frightened her so much that she was determined to ignore it and pretend it wasn’t a fruitless endeavor.
“Sorry for having a crisis,” she shot back automatically. 
“Have it somewhere that isn’t laying on top of me!” Bailey demanded, her hands pushing at Ryuukah’s shoulders. They sunk almost half an inch into them, but didn’t pass through, and she was lifted upwards and away from Bailey’s face. Ryuukah sat back the rest of the way, and with some focus, she actually managed to pull all the goo with her. She wasn’t sure how she managed it—she was mostly just trying to think of it being off of Bailey, instead of smothering her. She grabbed her friend’s extended hands, pulling her upright as well, scooting backwards so that they were sitting a foot or so apart. 
The pair stayed there for a while, both breathing heavily. Neither one seemed to want to speak. The puddle of blue slime pulled back from Bailey as if repelled, leaving a clean spot on the floor around her. She rubbed her hands together, fear and relief mixing on her face. 
Finally, Bailey spoke. “It’s like… you know that feeling when you’ve rubbed lotion into your skin, and there’s barely any residue, but you can still feel it?” Ryuukah nodded, and she continued, holding up her hands. “It’s like that. Totally dry, but… softer? More oily? I can’t really tell.” 
The comment was unimportant, tangential. The feel of the goo leaving one's skin didn’t matter.  Yet, it felt easier to talk about that than anything else. Ryuukah grinned, the expression strange on her muzzle. “What, I turn into a monster and all I’m good for is lotion?” 
Bailey snorted. “That and making a mess.” 
“Oh, how sorrowful am I!” Ryuukah said with mock despair. “A strange slime creature, locked away in the dark basement, used only to harvest the most rejuvenating of lotions! Forever cursed to do nothing but produce overpriced health goods!” 
Bailey laughed and shoved at a coil of tail sitting near her right foot. “Yeah, right. You’d just seep through the door, Miss Creature.” 
“I don’t even know if I am a Miss anymore,” she remarked, gesturing at her flat chest. “Now I’m just a…” A sudden tickle overcame her nostrils once more. “Ah… aaa-CHOO!” Ryuukah erupted into another sneeze. As it hit, her ears, until then covered by her hair, whooshed outwards. They looked like wings, pure white against the gray hair. The weird wing-things wiggled as she tried to talk again.
“I—” 
Achoo! This one came out throaty, and she coughed and hacked as a massive sapphire as big as her fist emerged out the front of her throat with a sucking pop, resting atop her collarbone. She grabbed it, feeling it squish. Was it made out of gelatin? Regardless, it seemed attached there, unmoving. 
“I was trying to say that I—”
Achoo! Once more, a sneeze wracked her body. Her chest made a gooey whump as it sprung back outwards. It made one solid shape, as if she was wearing a shirt over a large chest, but she most certainly had a chest once more.
“God, nevermind, forget I said anything!” 
Bailey actually burst out laughing. Ryuukah laughed along with her, hands falling back to her lap. The sound was good. Normal. Something they both desperately needed. Even as it faded, leaving only the light burble of slime, the tension faded with it, and Ryuukah knew that it was time to stop skirting the issue.
Bailey sighed. “Idiot.” 
“I know.” 
“The biggest fool I have ever met.” 
“Bailey, I can’t even say my own name.” Ryuukah clenched her hands. That wasn’t quite true; her name had just been fundamentally altered in her own mind, which was both more upsetting and more confusing. “Trust me. I know.” 
Bailey sighed. “Okay, well, you deserve it. You don’t get a free pass just because you turned into a goo monster. You’re clearly some sort of snake, but I don’t really…” Her eyes widened. “Oh my god, are you a Dragonair?” 
“Like the pokemon?” Ryuukah said incredulously. “No. No way. I have legs, that thing is a snake. How did you even make that connection?” 
“Explain the bling, then,” Bailey said, grabbing the end of her tail and holding it up, clearly showing off two enormous sapphires that matched the one on her throat. Ryuukah shuddered at the touch, but it wasn’t bad, just odd. The sapphires matched the one at her throat, though they were much larger. 
“Okay, fine! I don’t care about that right now.” She squinted and managed to wriggle her tail out of Bailey’s hands, partially pulling out of their grip and partially oozing through it. That was coming to her more naturally now. “Can we please focus on how I’m getting back to my apartment like this?” 
“You are not getting slime all over my car,” Bailey declared immediately. 
“I can’t walk!” Ryuukah retorted. “It’s like eight miles through the city, I’ll get the cops called on me ten times over by the time I’m halfway there!” 
“Then stick yourself in a Big Gulp or something! You made yourself into a mess, now you clean yourself up!” Bailey folded her arms, looking set.
Ryuukah clicked her tongue testily and looked around the store. She’d need a plus size body bag or something just to fit all her stupid tail and ass into if she wanted a solid container, and then it would be FAR too heavy for Bailey to carry. There wasn’t anything around that would help. Even if there WERE containers big enough for her to sit inside, they’d probably be long since useless for carrying liquids. Liquids. That’s what she was, now. No longer human—she was something else, something fluid. She wasn’t kidding when she said that she didn’t think she was female, even with the chest thing. When she looked inwards, trying to identify herself, what she felt she was, all she got was a taste of artificial blue raspberry flavoring in her mouth. 
Great. Not only had she turned into goop, she’d have to totally reevaluate her gender. And personal body image, she added, once again reminded of the sight of her pants getting demolished. That was a lot to take in about oneself. Bailey had gotten the full sight of it, too. 
Her eyes lighted on the slushie machine, sitting next to where she’d left her glowing flashlight. Something in her gut twinged. A connection, a sense deep inside. 
There.
She could feel what would happen already, and she didn’t like it, but that was her only choice.
__________
“Gods, you’re heavy,” Bailey wheezed. She crab-walked out into the cool night air, through the employees-only door that she’d shoved open with a large plank of wood. The slushie machine was clutched in her arms, power cord dragging along the ground. It was full to the lid with swirling ooze, blue white and gray twisting about inside. 
“Don’t call me fat when I’m basically just soup,” Ryuukah complained. Her voice came from the vibrating mass of goo that swished in the machine’s tank. She’d somehow managed to fit her entire body inside of it, despite the clear impossibility of size. The experience of slowly melting, body merging into itself, losing definition, had been utterly terrifying. She’d started with her paws, and those had easily vanished into the layer of slime still contained in the tank. Her legs had followed quickly, but her hips got stuck on the lid, and she needed to work herself back and forth to shove her ass down in. The huge, bulky tail attached to it didn’t help matters. Bailey had pointedly looked away during that part, but Ryuukah hadn’t missed the red tinge on her cheeks. At least the slime had covered up whatever had used to be between her legs; it was all a single smooth expanse now. The last dregs of hope she’d held, clinging onto her abandoned humanity, had shriveled up and died the moment her head had sunk beneath the surface. She still had some senses, but they were more focused on touch and vibration, and her brain didn’t know how to interpret them. She wasn’t blind—she was in a constant, dizzying confusion, which was far worse. 
“First of all, there’s nothing wrong with being fat,” Bailey grunted. She hooked a finger on the passenger’s side door of her car, yanking it. “Second of all—urf—you’re a fatass like this, so shut up.” 
“Yeah, you would say that, wouldn’t you? I saw you staring!” Ryuukah accused. She managed to reform one of her eyes and an impression of a snout, glaring out at Bailey, whose cheeks were turning pink again. She slammed the lid on the slushie machine and swirled the whole thing, dunking the eye back into the mess of sludge while she buckled it into place. 
“Bring that up ever again and you’re going in the storm drain,” she hissed. “I am NOT letting you think that was hot. I was horrified.” 
“Wasn’t me that thought it was hot!” Ryuukah’s voice called. Bailey’s response was to slam the car door. She cackled, the sound coming out like bubbles popping on a boiling surface of slop. Bailey had never shown any signs of deviance like that before, especially not towards other… okay, not other women, but other feminine beings. This was a fascinating new development, and one Ryuukah fully intended to continue investigating. Her penchant for mischief was far from gone, now; in fact, it almost felt stronger. She was cracking jokes easily, and her mind felt looser, more relaxed, despite the stress of the night. It was like a constant, background sugar rush, but it only seemed to be getting stronger. Maybe the new body was having an effect on her personality. One couldn’t be made out of pure sugar and have one’s gender be blue raspberry and not have one’s personality change, she figured. Maybe she’d have to swap pronouns….
Bailey returned a short time later after one last check through the convenience store, opening up the opposite door. Ryuukah could feel it unlock and swing outwards. She tossed a sopping wet bundle of clothes and two backpacks into the back and climbed into the driver’s seat. 
“I’m not a thief,” she informed the bucket of slime on the chair beside her. “You’re the one stealing that machine.”
“And I’m a giant bird.”
“I am an accessory to crime. This is your idea.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ryuukah said, her oozing voice communicating dismissal. “Have fun explaining that one to the cops. ‘My sexy goo friend made me do it, officer! I couldn’t resist their charm!’” 
Their charm, Ryuukah thought. Yeah. Yeah, that feels good.
Bailey groaned, twisting the key in the ignition and smacking the side of the tank to get Ryuukah to be quiet. The car sped off into the night, headlights on low. The night had been chaotic, and Rika had been left behind in the hubbub, leaving as someone new. Perhaps that could be a good thing. Behind, the Sinclair gas station and its attached 6 Ten sat silently. It was lit only by the light of a distant, orange street lamp, mimicking the coming color of dawn. 
Bonus note for anyone who has read this far: Ryuukah's gender is canonically artificial blue raspberry flavoring. Also, if they go through the tap on the slushie machine it shifts them from anthro to a regular Dragonair. Also also they are a very hot dragon and I don't think Bailey stands a chance, the poor girl.
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illarian-rambling · 25 days
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I love implying that changelings in my world are just giant single-celled organisms. Imagine the fuckin mitochondria on that thing
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