Luxe Apartments, near Oceanside State University campus, 12:37PM

Come back to the apartment - incredible news for you guys!

Trixie, Sarah, Maya, and Jules had all arrived at the Luxe around the same time. It wasn't a coincidence--they'd all scheduled their classes at the same times by mutual agreement after Trixie's 8AM percussion class had interfered with their mutual sleep schedules. As they made their way up to apartment D1-N0.

"It's a new comic book," Jules said. "Five bucks. Remember Infinite Crisis?"

"Just as long as it's not her parents cutting her off," Maya said, uneasily--though not uneasily enough to stop commenting on an Instagram influencer's post. "If she stops paying her 90% of the rent, we're out on the street."

"Maybe she's going to tell us she's found her true love," Trixie swooned, with a mixture of hope and trepidation. "Who could it be? Maybe they're closer than we think?"

Sarah, munching heavily on her usual bag of Veganom-brand cruelty-free veggie snack chips, shrugged. "You never know 'til you get there," she said, philosophically.

"Thank you for that insight, Sarah," said Jules drily. "Sort of like how you're never full 'til you eat, huh?"

"Looking for fulfillment through food is like being a leaky jug, you'll never be full," Sarah said.

"Especially when all you eat is those," Maya said. "Man, I don't know how my parents can live that way."

Reaching the door, and letting themselves in, they were confronted by a figure seated on the couch, wrapped in mysterious black plastic.

"Hey, Brenda!" Trixie said, bounding into the apartment and waving excitedly. "What's the big news?"

"Something incredible has happened," Brenda said from beneath her refuse-recycled shroud. "Something you guys will not believe. Something wonderful."

Maya got her camera ready, framing Brenda and getting the Instagram interface ready. "Well, out with it!" she said.

"BEHOLD!" Brenda said, throwing off her ramshackle disguise. "Look what I've become!"

She stood up, dramatically revealing...a young human woman with only a few bits of designer clothing clinging to her ample figure.

Maya snapped the photo. "You've become a nudist," she said. "That's...cool."

Behind them, nobody noticed Trixie's eyes bulge wide before she slowly sank to the floor in a dead faint, a broad smile on her lips.

Brenda, wide-eyed, looked down. "Ah!" she yelped. "I changed back! Aww, man!"

"Changed back from what?" Sarah said.

"I was a really cool dinosaur girl! I changed right in the girl's bathroom, POW, just like the origin issue of a superhero comic!"

"Uh-huh," said Jules. "Brenda, I know you haven't been getting enough sleep lately, but don't bring us in on your hallucinations."

"Yeah," Maya said, making liberal use of the 'blur' filter to try and sneak the image of Brenda past IG's puritan content censorship. "Like that time you thought you were getting mental powers but it was just a fever."

"This was real!" Brenda cried.

"Or the time your clothes shrank in the dryer and you thought you were Mr. Stretchy from the Incredible Four," Sarah said.

"It's the Fantastic Four, and I'm NOT making it up!" Brenda shouted, visibly angry.

"Yes, that's the one!" Sarah said brightly. "It's the same cliched equivalence of difference with mutation, but with an orange guy instead of a green one."

"Look, Brenda," Jules sighed. "We're glad you had a superhero dream, but we need to-"

"IT WAS REAL!" Brenda screamed. And, at the height of her anger, suddenly she felt the changes roll over her again. Her spine swelled through the already-ragged hole in what was left of her pants, her hair did its magnificent feather-unfolding thing, and she grew a twelve inches taller, easily. Her words came out funny as her face rounded out into a murder-ready snout, and her bare feet changed to scythe-claws with such ferocity that the carpet was torn beneath her.

"-to seriously stop and say what the hell," Jules finished.

Behind her, Trixie stirred and sat up. Looking over and seeing Brenda-raptor, straight out of one of the fics she had posted to alt.fanfic.jurassicpark way back when, she keeled over afresh.

"See, I told you!" Brenda crowed. "I am AWESOME!"

Maya was lining her up for another snapshot. "I gotta share this."

"No!" Brenda snatched the phone and crushed it in one taloned hand, dropping the mangled remains to the floor.

"What the hell?" Maya cried. "All my stuff was on there! Brenda, you dick!"

"I'll give you one of my old πPhones, quit complaining," Brenda said. "But I can't let my picture get out! I'm gonna be a superhero, and my secret identity's gotta be safe, y'know? Mild-mannered college student by day, mutant raptor avenger by night."

Maya, cradling the remains of her beloved πPhone, looked up. "Then why would it matter if I took a picture?" she said. "You're already in your...your superhero form!"

"Oh." Brenda tapped a claw on her chin. "No, no. If it's on your account people might trace me from my roommate. We'll need entirely new social media for my superhero life. And a costume to boot."

At the sound of the word "costume," Trixie began to stir, and hauled herself, weak-kneed, to her feet.

"Why a costume?" Jules said. "I guarantee you there's no other raptor running around with her juggs out."

"Because that's just how it's done!" Brenda cried, impassioned. "I need a costume, a superhero name, a brand identity, and eventually a nemesis."

"I'm your nemesis until you get me a new phone," Maya sulked.

Trixie excitedly laid a hand on Brenda's shoulder, the warmth and the light pebbled texture sending a little squirm of excited electricity through her. "What about a sidekick?" she said. "I could sew up a costume. Raptor Woman and Raptor Girl!"

Brenda turned on Trixie, her inhuman yellow eyes ablaze and her slit pupils laser-focused. Trixie gasped, and took a step back. "That is a GREAT idea, Trix!" she said. "Terrible names, yeah, but a good idea. I can hold tryouts!"

Taking a step back, her heart pounding, Trixie admitted to herself she wasn't very good at reading velociraptor emotions.

"This'll be great," Brenda continued. "You guys can be my support squad! Trixie does cosplay, so she can make costumes. Maya does social media. Jules can be my physical trainer. Sarah can help me with nutrition."

"Not if you're eating murder," Sarah said, wrinkling her nose. "If you want to be a beacon to other dinosaurs that meat isn't the way, then maybe…"

"Hey, Brenda," said Jules. "I don't want to interrupt your plans for a superhero command center, but I think you're changing back."

Brenda looked down, and sure enough, smooth dark skin had appeared on her belly and was spreading, while the feathers on her head had begun to kink and curl back into hair.

"Dammit," she said, stomping her foot. It went up a wickedly clawed tool of disembowlment and came down rounded and soft. "I really need to figure out the rules of this whole thing."

"How do you know there are even rules?" Maya said, still clutching her departed πPhone. "Maybe it's just random."

"There are always rules," Brenda said, waving her hand dismissively and growing a couple of extra fingers as she did so. "I'll just have to learn them so I can go all killmonster when I have to and back to my mild-mannered secret identity when it's time to assess liability and property damage."

"This isn't a comic book, Brenda," Jules said, irritated. "What if it's 'Shadoweyes' rules and you only get so many changes before it's permanent?"

"Or if it was temporary and that was your last one?" Sarah said. "Is the vegetarian diet advisor thing still on the table?"

"See? This is why you're going to be perfect as my support team," Brenda said. She turned on her heel and started walking toward the kitchen. "Come on, help me brainstorm cool dinosaur superhero names."

Trixie, still wobbly, was directly in Brenda's path and got the full force of her now-human high beams as her roommate padded by her. She felt incredibly sweaty and a bit faint; something she hadn't felt so intensely since the wall of the men's gym visible from the balcony had collapsed.

"I'm just gonna go...lay down a bit, okay?" she said. "I...I think it might be breast for everybody. No claws for concern."

Brenda, who had already started a list on a napkin while snacking on a massive plate of pizza and pop tarts, waved her away. "That's fine," she said, dismissively. Then, to Jules: "Wouldn't it be cool if changing burned a bunch of calories too? I could eat whatever I wanted…"

Trixie stumbled into her room and closed the door behind her, breathing heavily. Brenda's rich parents, and by extension Vogel Industries, were good enough to subsidize a large enough apartment that each girl had her own room, and Trixie's was festooned with anime, anime-adjacent, anime-curious, and pop culture ephemera. She let out a deep, racking sigh that fogged up her glasses.

"Why do you have to ask permission for everything, Trix?" she said. "And apologize! You're never gonna get Brenda or Sean or anyone hot to like you if you're just wallpaper when you're not busy being a doormat."

The various buff dudes and dudettes in various states of cheesecake fanservice on the walls and door did not answer, and Trixie tottered toward her bed.

"She's just gonna keep taking advantage of you if you don't assert yourself, Trix," she continued. "'Trixie, could you sort these dinosaur bones for me?' 'Trixie, could you make me a super suit?'" Those bones had taken forever to sort, too, and more than a little googling to ascertain that it was a metatarsal group from T. horridus.

Tottering over to the bed, and pretty much resigned to hiding in her room to sulk, Trixie nevertheless couldn't help but notice how hot it was. She was sweating buckets, to say nothing of being hot and bothered by the still-fresh vision of Brenda's mammoth mammaries. Kicking off her shoes did nothing, so in a fit of annoyance Trixie simply yanked off her courderoy trousers and sat on her bed, breathing heavily.

She could feel the wet heat within her Naruto-branded undies brushing against the cool bedsheets; the sensation was electric even as images continued to swirl in her head. Visions of Brenda, scaly Brenda, Sasuke Uchiha, Seven of Nine, and Thor, mighty god of thunder assaulted her from every direction. It was too much, more than even as diligent a Fanfiction.net poster as Trixie was could handle.

"Man, I...I need some relief," she muttered, slipping her glasses off and setting them on the bedside table. "Gotta be like Vegeta or Boba Fett...never afraid to get their hands dirty."

Trixie started rocking back and forth, her dominant southpaw making tender circles on the imported anime skivvies, feeling the spreading moisture and a rising heat inside her. She didn't, however, notice that the fabric on her t-shirt was suddenly a lot tighter, or that she'd started to swell on her temples as if from a bad close encounter with a bee.

"Oh yeah," she said. Trixie's eyelids fluttered, but the shape and color within was different with each butterfly kiss, going from level 1 (stun) to level 10 (kill) in surprisingly short order. As sweat poured down her forehead, stinging into eyes that were looking a little bit inhuman, Trixie pushed past the now-soaked knit faces of Naruto with fingers that were definitely thicker and rougher than she'd ever felt them before.

What started as the usual gentle rocking and rubbing quickly became more rhythmic as Trixie leaned into the gripping single-player experience. The swelling bumps on her brows looked almost demonic, like horns, while something very small but very growing wriggled furiously at the base of her spine, seeming to add an inch and a pound with each rock and each roll. Her hands, one deep undercover in Naruto-land and the other clutching a thigh that was expanding by the moment, were both bigger and cruder now, with her gnawed-upon nails now thick and glossy.

She could feel herself changing and growing, but Trixie was far too enraptured to care, and as she let her fingers glide between her folds and rubbed at them energetically, the changed accelerated. There was a sharp twang as her bra gave up the ghost, and a weaker shrrp-shrrp as her striped shirt buckled under her expanding back. The designer Mario socks she preferred ("better for jumping!") were ripped apart as well, as some of her toes thickened massively to handle her new and emerging weight while others shrank meekly away amid the fabric.

Trixie kept grinding away, massaging herself, even as she felt a massive wave of pain, pleasure, and desire building up. As a fresh horn erupted from her nose and her pink-dyed hair began receding into her scalp, Trixie had a fleeting thought of pulling out, calming down, trying to shrink back to something resembling a human, but she was by now literally too horny to turn back.

" Ahh, ahh...AHH!" Adding another finger to the mix, then another...now up to four fingers inside herself, and a cavity that was suddenly more than spacious enough to contain them. As Trixie moved them in and out she quickened her pace and quickened her changes. Her breath rattled in strange sinuses as her nose stretched out, blossoming around her rapidly growing horns. The back of her head audible cracked with bones shifting to form a massive crest that grew even as the last of her hair faded away.

"Almost...AAL-MOOST…" With a final shudder and burst of mass, Trixie tore whatever clothes she had left into pitiful rags and pounded at the floor with both feet. Her tail shot out to full length, upsetting a tableful of gatchapon figurines. A few leftover bits of pale skin pebbled over with scaly flesh, and she was left gazing in her bedroom mirror at something that scarcely resembled the waif that had entered. The creature staring back was curvy, fabulous. The triceratip-top. And she knew exactly what she wanted.

"YESSSS!"

The triumphant trumpeting echoed throughout the apartment, causing Brenda and the others to look up, startled.

"Sounds like Trix is at it again," Jules muttered. "Does she really think we can't hear her?"

"It's natural and healthy, Jules," Sarah said. "If Trix needs to ride the battery beast once in a while...or three to five times a day...it's her business!"

"I recorded it once," Maya chipped in, happy now that she had gotten her data and contacts ported over to Brenda's old πPhone 12. "Went great as a wild animal sound effect for a video production class.

A sudden impact tremor rocked the entire apartment, knocking over the milk on the table as pieces of drywall rained down from the wall adjacent to Trixie's room.

"What the hell was that?" said Brenda as a second impact followed.

The third caused the wall to completely collapse, and a massive shape emerged from it, running on massive pillar-like legs with shreds of clothing trailing behind it like streamers.

"BRENDA!" it bellowed. "Look at me! Look what I can do!"

"T-Trixie? URK!" said Brenda. Before she could utter another word, she was being lifted up and squeezed by a massive, and buxom, triceratops that spoke with her roommate's voice.

"YES! It's me. I'm gonna be your sidekick, your wingman, the Trunks to your Goku. We're gonna be a superhero best friend couple forever, and you're gonna sort your own damn dinosaur bones!"