“Just… one… more… “

With tremendous effort, the overloaded steel bar raised one last time accompanied by a near-feral snarl. The moment it reached its starting position once more, Yetshi let it slip from his shoulders and fall down behind him with a room- shaking thud. It was a good thing these floors were both padded and reinforced, otherwise the several hundred pounds would have cracked the floor.

“Yes! Hell yeah!” Yetshi exclaimed with a triumphant pump of his sore arms overhead. “New personal best!”

The blue gecko-like reptilian’s chest heaved as he struggled to catch his breath. That last squat had taken everything he had. Only once he had sucked in a few deep breaths did he then reach for the water bottle on a nearby bench to greedily guzzle down its contents. Letting out a satisfied sigh, Yetshi returned his attention to the mirrored wall in front of him.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.” He purred at his own reflection, unable to resist a bit of self-worship as he basked in the euphoric sense of
accomplishment. “That’s a big boy right there.”

As he spoke, Yetshi proudly pat his chest. His already impressive broad pectorals looked even more powerful than usual following such an intense workout. He couldn't resist the urge to stroke one finger down the visible cleft between his pectoral muscles, almost positive it was visibly deeper than last time

he had inspected it. He usually did a pretty good job keeping his ego in check, especially considering he knew plenty of other people as big or even bigger than him. Not to mention that any who weren't could be at a moment's notice with the right connections. But even then, sometimes he just couldn't help but bask in the sense of power and strength that came with being ripped.

After taking a few moments to dry himself off with a nearby towel, Yetshi returned to his place in front of the mirror. He knew he should go ahead and start cleaning up the weights he had left around the gym. He hadn’t bothered to re-rack anything until he was done, knowing that he had the gym to himself. But as he looked himself over again in front of the mirror, he couldn't help but be tempted. A quick glance around confirming that he was still alone was all the permission he needed.

Almost delicately, Yetshi raised one arm and slowly curled it into a single bicep pose. Though his movement was slow, he continued on relentlessly; increasing the tension more and more on his bulging biceps until they were rock hard and practically shaking from the effort. His other arm raised to stroke over the flexed bicep, admiring how even his powerful fingers couldn't so much as dent the tightly knit ball of muscle.

“Yeah…” Yetshi purred under his breath.

He dropped that pose only to repeat it with the opposite side and once more felt up his own bicep. Then he followed by flexing both arms at the same time before lowering them down to curl inwards and suddenly make his pectoral muscles bulge outwards. His lips twisted into a hungry, toothy snarl as he struck the most muscular pose he could and held it for as long as possible. He just loved seeing those thick slabs of meat straining against his flesh.

A clattering behind him made Yetshi jump in surprise, dropping the pose and spinning around to face the noise. When his eyes scanned the rest of the gym

though, there was no one else there. It was only after looking down that he noticed what had made the sound. Apparently, lost in the enjoyment of his own self- worship session, he hadn't realized his tail flicking happily behind him. In the process, it had knocked over his water bottle and nearly given him a heart attack. Suddenly, Yetshi felt his cheeks heat up in embarrassment at his previous self- indulgence and what any of his friends would have said if they had walked in on him at that moment.

Deciding that he had probably worked out enough for the day, Yetshi began collecting his towel, water bottle, and a couple of other miscellaneous items he had left haphazardly around the gym. Afterwards, he began putting away the free weights and readjusting machines back to their default settings. When he got to the overloaded squat bar though, he paused. He was already squatting down, ready to start taking off the weights, when he looked over at the mirror and saw himself.
The way his powerful thighs bulged and stretched out the fabric of his gym shorts left his eyes lingering on them for longer than he was willing to admit. He lowered himself a little bit further, putting more strain on his legs and causing them to bulge outwards another fraction of an inch. As embarrassed as he might be if someone walked in on him at that moment, he still couldn't help but continue admiring himself. He had gotten himself in a bit of a mood after his most recent feat of strength.

As he stood back up, leaving the squat bar alone for the time being, he turned back towards the mirror. Once more, he struck a most muscular pose. Though not quite as straining this time, it was still more than enough to make his body bulge outwards as impressive as any bodybuilder. Still riding high off his new squat record, Yetshi couldn't help imagining what his next best would be, then his next after that one. He began fantasizing about himself being even bigger. His pecs being broader, his arm beefier, and his legs thicker. He could imagine himself bulking, swelling, burgeoning larger until he filled the entire mirror with nothing but his enormity.

Then Yetshi paused mid-flex. Slowly, he looked to the side to where his gym bag lay, and a grin spread across his muzzle. He did have the place to himself… maybe he didn't have to imagine.

A moment later, he was rustling through his bag, tossing out extra water bottles and changes of clothes until he pulled out a six-pack of aluminum cans. The cans were brightly colored but had no nutritional information printed on them.
Instead, they simply had a single word stamped across them.

Power-Up

Self-consciousness warring with excitement, Yetshi glanced around the gym as if expecting a judgmental crowd to appear and chastise him. Despite his trepidation, he didn't hesitate to pull one can off the six-pack before setting the others down on a nearby bench press. A ubiquitous pop and hiss filled the otherwise silent gym as Yetshi popped the top open while walking back towards the mirror. Taking a deep breath, the blue reptilian lifted the can and, with a loud series of gulps, chugged the entire can in a matter of seconds.

The moment the liquid touched his tongue, it was like drinking electricity without any of the discomfort. His whole body shuddered in utter bliss as if it were getting a top-to-bottom electroshock massage starting at his mouth and working its way through him. He didn't even think about it as he crushed the can in his fist and tossed it aside before turning back towards the mirror.

“Oh yeah, that’s the stuff!” He snarled at his reflection. “That’s the good stuff right there!”

For a third time, Yetshi curled his arms inwards and struck a most muscular pose. His lips curled back to expose his teeth in a feral, grinning snarl as he pushed himself to flex as hard as he possibly could. Muscles bulged obscenely on every

inch of his body in response. It was a good thing he had been working out bare- chested because otherwise, any shirt certainly would have been ripped to shreds. As he ground his teeth and clenched his body, his muscles swelled and thickened to their absolute limit. Then swelled again. And again. Except he had already reached his limit. Yet despite that, his body was still expanding as if flexing harder and harder with each passing second.

The contents of the can were like liquid lightning through his veins, sending electrical shocks which pulsated through every muscle group and forced them to swell slightly larger. His shoulders broadened, his biceps bulged until they were pushing in against the side of his chest, and his pectorals swelled outwards until they were sticking out nearly as far as his chin! His abs hardened and the definition between them deepened, while his thighs bulged and swelled enough to begin pressing against each other and forced his stance to slightly widen.

“Oh YEAH!” Yetshi all but roared from both the sensation of the drink’s effect and the sight of his increasing mass.

He released his pose and stood up straight once more. Despite no longer flexing, his body hardly seemed to relax at all. It was as if it had simply maintained its flexed state and still continued to build on top of it! Once again, he struck a double biceps pose, this time not bothering to take it slow or casual. His arms clinched inwards with all the force he could muster as if he were trying to force his biceps to bulk straight through his skin. The already impressive swells of muscle ballooned into massive cannon balls of meat that easily could have rivaled, if not surpassed, a basketball in size! Even his forearms bulged with newfound muscle; tendons and sinew, normally too small and subtle to be noticed, straining against the skin as if clamoring for their own attention.

And then, suddenly, the sensation was gone. Like a light switch being flipped off.

For a long moment, the only sound in the gym was the heavy, heated panting of the newly enhanced, herculean reptile standing in front of the mirror. His body had overheated from the sudden expansion of muscle mass to the point that each breath was actually coming out as a visible puff of steamy air! Despite the growth having abruptly ended, he maintained his pose for several more seconds, simply drinking in every inch of himself… including all the new ones.

“Now, THAT is a beast!” He purred almost flirtatiously to his own reflection. “You’re an absolute monster, you know that?”

Yetshi began to move himself through several different poses just to admire the way they made his newly-enlarged-self bulge and swell at the absolute limit of what anyone should ever normally be able to attain. Sure, he had cheated a bit to jump the last bit of the line, so to speak, but the results spoke for themselves. He was pretty sure he was even a couple of inches taller! Although it was just as likely that it was only his imagination, the sheer amount of mass he had put on just making him seem bigger overall.

Just as he was about to strike another pose, his shifting leg bumped against the squat rack to the side. An eager chuckle rolled up from his throat as he walked around to position himself in front of the bar once more. Finger’s visibly thicker than before wrapped around the steel bar and in an instant, it was off the ground! Yetshi almost lost his balance and stumbled backwards from the abrupt speed at which he picked up the heavily laden piece of workout equipment. Before, it had taken almost everything he had to get the thing off the ground and onto his shoulders. Now, it felt so light that he wasn't even sure if he could get a light workout with it now! As if the sight of his new immense form wasn't enough to make him feel powerful, turning his personal-best squat record into child's play made him feel unstoppable.

Setting down the bar, Yetshi was about to turn back towards the mirror when something caught his attention. Out of the corner of his eye, a glint of colorful aluminum drew his gaze back to the five remaining cans of Power-Up.

“I really shouldn’t…” He said to himself out loud. “It would just be excessive, right? I mean, I’m already so big… “

Despite the debate, he found himself slowly making his way closer towards where he had left the cans.

“I’m already big enough. I’m bigger than anyone has any right to be.”

He froze after plucking up another can to hold it in front of his face. His own thoughts and impulses warred with one another for several long seconds. Then, finally, his mind was made up as five words seared through his head.

But you could be bigger

Before he had even consciously made the decision, his fingers were already popping the tab open and raising it to his lips. With his enlarged size, it took even less time to down the entire contents. When he crushed the can this time, he didn't simply collapse the empty space, but actually compacted and warped the more solid top and bottom into the shape of his fingers before it too was discarded as an afterthought.

Once more, that thrilling surge of electric power exploded through him. They say that lightning doesn't strike twice, but from the way it felt to Yetshi at that moment, that was a bold-faced lie. He swore he could actually see tiny little flickers of electricity arcing across his hide as he stared at himself in the mirror.

This time the height increase was indisputable. For the first few seconds, it felt like the whole room simply sucked in around him as everything save for the floor got a little bit closer. By the time the other changes distracted him from his

increasing perspective, he was already tall enough that he could easily reach up and touch the 10-foot ceiling! But the width of his body seemed intent on ensuring that it wasn't outdone by his increasing height.

His shoulders spread even further until his entire upper body was a massive V-shape from the twin barrels of his chest down to his comparatively narrow waist. The muscles along his back bulged and writhed like if snakes had somehow found their way underneath his skin. Criss-crossing chords of sinew thickened and hardened with the consistency of steel wire as his back transformed into an anatomical road map of muscle groups. His biceps again further enlarged to the point that his arms no longer could hang straight down at his sides. Their sheer girth caused them to push against the sides of his chest and make his arms hang slightly at an angle. His chest didn't help the matter as his pectorals bulged outwards until he could barely even see his feet past the massive overhang of his pectoral shelf!

Not to be outdone, his lower body ballooned right along with the rest of him. His feet swelled disproportionately larger, gaining several shoe sizes even relative to his new overall height, to help balance his increasing weight. His calves became solid bowling balls that you could have hit with a hammer and be lucky if he felt any of it. His thighs got the most of it. They simply inflated outwards like balloons someone had stuck an industrial air pump into. The legs of his shorts were stretched tighter and tighter, riding further up his thighs until finally surrendering to the inevitable and splitting open down their sides. Forget Hulk pants; he had long since outgrown those. These were struggling to survive as a Hulk speedo!

By the time that thrill of power shut off once again, Yetshi’s breath was coming in deep, heavy gasps that sounded like the rumbling of forge bellows. It took him several seconds to realize that his mouth had been hanging open, tongue lolling to one side with a small trail of saliva trickling down one edge of his chin. Having been so lost in the blissful, euphoric sense of power trip that he had been literally drooling!

Once he recovered, he turned his attention back to the mirror and grinned wickedly at what he saw. If he had started as a powerhouse and grown into a beast, now he was truly a monster. Nature simply wasn't capable of building body proportions like this! His thighs were almost as thick as his waist was, and he was forced to stand with his legs spread due to their sheer mass grinding against each other in a never-ending battle over space. His pectorals jet it out so far that if he tried to look straight down, his chin would end up buried in the top of his pectoral cleft! At this point, it was more like cleavage then a pectoral cleft. Except his breast were one hundred percent grade-A beef.

By now, his body was flooded with so many endorphins that he almost felt light-headed. Every sensation felt magnified twice over, from the feeling of his muscles straining against his skin to the lightest brush of wind from an air conditioner blowing across town. When he reached up to cup his enormous pectorals, the stimulation made him groan loudly from the mix of physical stimulation and the tactile realization of how massive his chest was! When he tried again to pick up his squat bar from earlier, he only needed to use one hand. The thing was so light to him, it barely even counted as a free weight now. It only made him more intoxicated when he dropped the bar and saw that the sheer power of his grip had actually left finger indents in the steel!

He was massive! Bigger than anyone had any right to be! He was powerful! Molding steel in his hand like clay! But more than glee at his size and elation at his strength, there was something else bubbling up to the surface.

His desire for more.

With the endorphins flooding his brain, he wasn't exactly thinking straight anymore. Had he been in his right state of mind, he would most likely have been panicking at how big he already was and if this would wear off before he got caught. Instead, the only thing on his mind was those brightly colored cans sitting just a few feet away.

It only took him three massive steps to cover the distance across the room. He couldn't help but chuckle in his new, deeper voice as he felt the floor literally shaking with each footstep. As he picked up the remaining four cans, he couldn't help but marvel at how tiny they felt in his fingers. His hand had more than doubled in size, and it hadn't exactly been small to begin with. Now he could easily down all four cans at once. He was all but drooling again as he lifted them up towards his face. His mind was racing with fantasies of what a third can would do to him…

He was going to be a Titan!

He was going to be Unstoppable!

“…Yetshi?” a familiar voice spoke up from behind him.

He was going to be in so much trouble.

“What is going on here?!” Yash all but shouted as he stepped through the gym entrance.

Trailing behind the green reptile was another, thinner one with a pale white hide that sharply contrasted with the brighter coloration of the other two. Unlike Yash, who showed a mix of shock and outrage, Syn became immediately flustered upon seeing the state of the room. Or more specifically, Yetshi’s.

Out of a sudden and instinctual fear of being caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar, Yetshi did the first thing that came to mind. When he turned his lumbering mass to face the two new arrivals, he stayed silent. He kept his eyes looking down at the ground rather than meeting their gaze in a clear show of guilt and understanding that he had been caught. Most importantly though, he was doing

his absolute best not to draw attention to the way his cheeks bulged from the four aluminum cans he had stuffed inside his mouth.

“Well, what do you have to say for yourself?” Yash demanded. When Yetshi made no move to speak, Yash continued. “I can only assume you've been sneaking into my stuff again and taking things without permission! Well, where are they? I'm sure you got more. Give them up.”

“Uhm, Yash…” Syn spoke up a bit nervously.

While Yash seemed perfectly content to shout at and reprimand someone who probably weighed more than an Abrams tank in all muscle, Syn was a bit less eager for conflict. Although if he was being honest, and he would never admit it out loud, he was far more interested in enjoying the spectacle over dishing out chastisement or punishment for whatever had brought about this titanic piece of eye candy. Though he was far more concerned with putting an end to the shenanigans before they got out of hand, Yash also had to admit to himself that Yetshi did look quite impressive. Not that it was hard to do so when you were so big you looked like you ate smaller bodybuilders for breakfast.

Yash was just about to shout another demand when he saw Yetshi's jaw begin to move. The hulking reptilian, still a bit light-headed and giddy from his recent transformation, started to respond with some kind of denial. Yash saw the strange shape of Yetshi’s cheeks and put two and two together, but it was too late. With the first syllable Yetshi tried to speak, his teeth shifted and ended up clamping down on the cans of Power-Up still in his mouth. Clearly having underestimated how strong even his jaw had become, his teeth tore into the metal cans like they were aluminum foil which, of course, led him to swallow reflexively. It was after a couple of seconds of coughing and gagging, as he spit out the now mostly empty cans and tried to clear his airways from bits that had gone down the wrong tube, when lightning struck.

Or at least, that's what it felt like. His whole body went rigid as if every muscle in his body was being electrified! This time his eyes started glowing slightly as small sparks crackled around their edges. The sensations were so overwhelming, he completely lost himself for the first few seconds. It was only when his head slammed against something hard that he shook out of his daze and realized what was happening.

“Whoa… I feel weird… why is everything shrinking?”

The question was ridiculous, obviously. From the way his head had just slammed into the concrete ceiling with enough force to leave a dent in it, it wasn't that everything was shrinking. He was growing. Alarmingly fast. And from the way his words had come out slurred and ditzy, it was clear the Power-Up was affecting more than just his body.

“We should go!” Yash said urgently.

“In a minute…” Syn replied, lost in his own daze as he watched the increasingly massive and increasingly confused Yetshi fall on his ass with enough force to make the walls rumble, only for his head to grow up to meet the ceiling yet again!

Gritting his teeth in frustration, Yash grabbed Syn’s shoulder and whirled him around. Then, he forced the white reptile right back out the door they had come through. It was a good thing too. Not thirty seconds after leaving, the whole building began shaking violently. Cracks began forming on the walls and several of the windows shattered simply from the shaking and vibration running through the building. Yash grabbed Syn’s shoulders and dragged him about a dozen steps to the side, just before a pair of car-sized blue feet smashed through the front of the building and landed where they had just been standing. A nearby car wasn't as lucky as them and the other foot slammed down on top of it and flattened the vehicle into a metal pan cake!

Arms bigger than school buses tore their way from the sides of the building, moments later followed by a head the size of a small house tearing its way free of the opposite end of the building! Yash and Syn were forced to backpedal further into the parking lot as the expanding legs and feet continued to grow in every direction. The building rapidly began to collapse entirely as a pair of monstrous pectorals tore their way through the roof as, even when laying down, the depth of Yetshi's torso outgrew the height of the building!

The two down below were forced to dodge out of the way of several pieces of debris as the monstrous reptilian abruptly sat up. Chunks of steel, concrete, brick, and wood weighing multiple tons slid down the giant’s torso and crashed onto the ground around him like it had been nothing more than a thin layer of sand he had been buried under. One of his hands came crashing down on a nearby truck in the parking lot as he adjusted his position and, like the car before, was crushed with so little effort he didn't even seem to notice. A brief glance around his surroundings was followed by Yetshi's voice booming across the surrounding blocks as if magnified through a megaphone.

“Whoa… I’m huge! Haha, this is awesome!”

His voice was still slightly slurred, and his body swayed ever so slightly even when he was sitting still. From the way that he looked around at his surroundings, it was clear that he was seeing everything but not really paying attention to anything. This was only further proven by his tail absent-mindedly swinging behind him and smashing a truck onto its side without him showing any reaction. The overload of endorphins and hormones surging through his body from the overdose of Power-Up up had left him in a state almost like inebriation. In a very literal sense, he was drunk on power!

“We should get to higher ground.” Yash commented while tugging on Syn’s
arm.

“Do we have too?” Syn protested absentmindedly, completely distracted by the spectacle of the herculean titan now standing up from the rubble of the
destroyed gym. “The view is nice down here.”

Sighing again, Yash once more began dragging Syn by the arm to put some distance between them and the drunken giant. It wasn't so much that he actually expected Yetshi to intentionally hurt them as it was that Yash severely doubted Yetshi's self-control at the moment. The behemoth didn't have to try to hurt them, he could just trip and fell on top of them. It only took a quick look around for him to spot a nearby building with what looked like a rooftop garden. It was all rather surreal as they ran through the lobby and to the elevator. The elevator music played as casually and calmly as always, despite the fact that every few moments the entire building seemed to shake, or a booming if muffled voice would rumble through the air commenting on how small things were or comparing various body parts of his to nearby vehicles or buildings. Just as they reached the top floor, they heard sounds of severe destruction that sounded far louder and closer than anything else up to that point. When the doors opened, Syn and Yash ran to the edge of the rooftop only to find themselves looking up at the titanic form of Yetshi looming like some disproportionately massive bodybuilder version of Godzilla.

From this new vantage point, it was easier for the two of them to notice both Yetshi’s monstrous size and the fact that he had continued growing, not just in height but in proportion, since they had run from the gym. They were both standing on top of the roof of a 20-story building and the roofline didn't even come up to the bottom of Yetshi's chest! A chest which, by the way, had bloated with so much more muscle that even with Yetshi looking straight ahead, the top of his pectoral cleavage was starting to brush against the underside of his chin. If he had been at normal size, each of those pectorals would be closer to the size of a beach ball then a basketball! His biceps had similarly ballooned in size almost disproportionately from the rest of him, to the point that each one was nearly the size of one of his pectorals! Not to mention that his trapezius muscles were so swollen with sheer mass along with the rest of his back that they were beginning to visibly rise up over his shoulders to frame the back of his head. His abs had hardened further and split into a seemingly impossible 12-pack of upper abdominal

muscles, each one by itself bigger than Yash or Syn. His waistline had actually widened a bit, but only out of absolute necessity. The sheer impossible width of thighs thicker than boats had forced his waistline to stretch wider, otherwise their enormous girth would have forced him to be in a constant state of half splits! If he had been at normal height, forget watermelons, he probably could have crushed bowling balls between those thighs.

But it wasn't even his enormous height or absurd body proportions that had them both staring. Rather, it was that Yetshi had ripped a smaller building out of the ground entirely and was holding it against him with the base braced on his waistline in a very provocative manner. His other arm was raised in a monstrous bicep flex showing off the absurd proportions of all that arm’s muscles! He was so overloaded with disproportionate mass that even muscle groups normally too small to be noticed were clearly defined and bulging outwards along with the larger ones. And as if that wasn't bad enough, his booming, drunken voice was thundering across the entire neighborhood with his own bragging and self-aggrandizement.

“Yeah, you lil buildings think you’re so tough? You’re not even as big as
my… as big as…” He paused, squinting his eyes a bit as if struggling to capture his train of thought again only to grin widely and flex his other arm harder. “You wish you had guns like these! This is real power! You all gotta deal with being little weaklings while I’m up here like a god!”

The spectacle had Yash grinding his muzzle into his hand after face- palming. He didn't even know where to start about dealing with this whole situation. Syn, on the other hand, was staring slack-jawed at the show put on by the titanic Yetshi in front of them. He didn't even seem to notice that his nose had started bleeding in response to the overwhelming sight.

“Geeze.” Yash sighed. “I can't believe he did this.”

After a moment of silence, Syn spoke up, not willing to look away from the view before him and his voice sounded distracted as if the question was just an afterthought.

“How, uhm… how long do you think this is going to last?”

“Hmm. I’m assuming he took at least two before we got there. Then four more… a few hours at least. Thankfully, at least he's finally stopped growing.” Yash responded.

There was another long moment of silence only broken by Yetshi's booming voice echoing again.

“WORSHIP MY HUGENESS!”

Syn finally spoke a few moments later. His words came out whispered, hesitant but with just the tiniest bit of hopefully eagerness. Eagerness that made Yash slap his hand over his face again in exasperation.

“What if, uhm… what if we gave him more?”