FSE

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Two stories in as many days? This is madness!... Actually, it's just cheating. I had this done for the longest time, and only just got around to finishing it up. This is the second part of my Steel Bunny series. As always, all constructive criticism is welcome. Enjoy!

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Pain, frustration and anger. Those words described what little Sandi Lane could remember of the last few months of her life, to the point that she was starting to forget what life was like without them. Even as she sat in the back of the delivery van Jason had stolen, the monstrously muscled bunny eating the protein bars within with at the same pace a normal person would eat potato chips, her entire body was crying out in pain with size and weight no normal person could support. It was also tiring, and she was thankful when exhaustion overrode the pain and she passed out a few minutes into their trip. She had no idea how much time had passed or where she was at first when she'd finally come to.

Sandi slowly rose, gently rubbing her eyes as she took in her surroundings, noticing at first the light grey blanket that covered her and the dark green couch she was laying upon. She noticed a few more comfortable chairs lining the walls, as well as several tables with plastic chairs around the. A few vending machines and a pair of doors for a men's and women's restroom suggested to Sandi she must have been in some kind of break room.

"Jason? Are you here?" Sandi called out. She got no response, but as she started to sit up she noticed a small pile of clothes sitting on a nearby chair. Pulling the blanket tight around her nude form, she slowly crawled over to them and quickly read the note sitting atop them.

Sandi,

You're in the teacher's lounge of the science building at Rockdale Community College. I'll be in one of the labs down the hall analyzing the blood sample I took from you. When you're ready, please meet me down there.

-Jason

P.S: I grabbed some clothes from my apartment for you. I grabbed the first things I could; sorry if they're a little big on you.

"A little big for me? Did he forget how huge I am now?" Sandi scoffed as she looked over the jeans and sweater in front of her. She tiled her head a little as more questions started to trickle into her head. How did Jason even get her in here? He wouldn't have been able to even fit her through the doorway of the lounge, much less carry her considerable bulk. As she glanced around the room again, she also wondered how everything in the room looked normal sized compared to how tiny everything looked before.

"Oh my God..." Sandi slowly lifted up the blanket and saw what had become the strangest thing she'd seen in a long time; her normal body. The steel blue fur and white hair were gone, replaced by her normal soft brown fur and blonde hair. Muscles that had threatened to tear through her skin had returned to the slight, slim size and firm tone years of working as a personal trainer had given her. She'd also lost well over two feet of height, going from a ceiling scrapping almost 8 feet tall down to her normal five and a half foot mark. "I'm normal again!"

Sandi giggled happily as she ran her hands over her body, almost not believing what she was seeing. She couldn't believe Jason had managed to fix her so quickly! She wanted to thank him immediately, and was halfway out of the lounge before she remembered that she hadn't dressed yet. Jason had already seen her naked, but now that she had some control of herself she decided some clothing would be a good idea.

Sandi pulled the plain white t-shirt over herself, noting the white bandage wrapped around her right arm where Jason must've drawn blood from her. She tied a knot into the t-shirt to make it a little shorter on her, but there wasn't much she'd be able to do with the oversized pants. They would slide down on her as she walked without a belt, but if that was the worst thing she had to worry about now she could manage. Now content that she wasn't going to running through the halls of a public building naked, she left and began to search for Jason.

She recalled Jason said something before about Sandi had disappeared nearly six months ago. That was in late January, so that meant it was July now? That would explain why it was so quiet as she slowly made her way down the halls. Most of the professors and students were probably off for summer break. After a short trip down the hall, she found Jason hunched over a microscope.

"Jason?" The wolf jumped a little as Sandi spoke, nearly knocking the microscope over in his surprise. "Sorry!"

"It's alright." Jason smiled a little as he looked Sandi over. "You're looking much more like yourself. How are you feeling?"

"Normal." Sandi smiled at Jason as she stepped into the lab. "Thank you for all your help. I can't believe you were able to fix me so quickly!"

Sandi had no idea what else she could say. She knew she knew Jason deserved more than a couple of kind words for curing her, but she was struggling to figure out how exactly to thank him as Jason pushed away from the bench he was working on.

"Well, as much as I wish I could take credit for it, I didn't do anything." Jason shook his head as he stood up from the bench.

"What?" Sandi was clearly puzzled, quickly looking herself over to confirm that she wasn't imagining her changes. "But if you didn't do anything, how did I get back to normal?"

"I think I can explain that. How much of last night do you remember after we left Mega Muscle?" Jason asked.

"Hmm..." Sandi tried her best to recall the previous night's events after she restrained the security guard. "I remember getting really hungry and thirsty as we headed for the loading dock where they shipped out the finished products. I remember grabbing one of those office water coolers and ripping the jug out of the dispenser and drinking it down. When we got the loading dock, I tossed the bottle aside and starting tearing into some of the protein bars they were about to ship out."

"Yeah; you carried almost an entire pallet's worth of them into the back of the delivery van I, 'borrowed'. Do you remember anything else?" Jason asked.

"Not much." Sandi said as she shook her head. "I just kept eating, but it felt like I was trying to fill a bottomless pit in my stomach. I started feeling tired, and I guess I must have passed out soon after. Next thing I knew, I was here."

"I figured. I swung by my apartment real quick to grab some essentials before coming here. You were normal sized and lying underneath a pile of protein bar wrappers, out like a light when I went to toss those things in with you."

"So I shrunk back down to normal on my own?" Sandi thought that over for a moment. "I know my body would have needed a lot of calories to maintain that size, and I could see it might have cannibalized some of the muscle in order to keep it going, but that much, and that fast? I didn't think that'd even be possible."

"I wouldn't think so either, and it also doesn't explain why your fur and hair changed color." Jason acknowledged. "Of course, I also wouldn't have thought you transforming into that thing was possible to begin with, but that happened somehow."

Sandi had to concede that point. The science behind what happened to her was well outside the realm of her career as a personal trainer, but it was also outside the realm of pretty much any logical explanation. Perhaps that's why Jason had taken her here, to try and figure out what happened to her.

"I meant to ask; why DID we come here, anyway?" Sandi asked as she looked around the laboratory. "A college biology lab isn't the first place I expected we'd run to."

"MegaMuscle does some sponsorships here, supplying college athletes and recruiting potential future users of their products. I've been here a couple of times to explain the science about how some of our products work, and I got access to the lab a while ago so I could come early and set up presentations." Jason explained as he held up a key. "I don't think anybody will come here looking for us for a while, and I needed someplace with some laboratory equipment so I can try and figure out what happened to you."

"Oh...thanks..." Sandi felt more than a little shameful for how she'd almost pulverized Jason back at the lab, only to plead for his help minutes later. She was just in so much pain, and so angry...

"Sandi?" She tried to shake off those thoughts as Jason questioned her again. "What happened to you? I know it's probably tough, but you fell off the grid for half a year, right after I asked you if you knew anything about who hacked my Ambrosia files. You said you might have known who did it, but you needed to check something and then you'd get back to me. If I'm going to help you, I need you to tell me everything you remember."

"Yes, I guess you do need a little context for everything, huh?" Jason nodded as Sandi took a seat on a nearby stool.

"It started about four days after I met you." Sandi began her story as Jason took a seat across from her. "I had already lied to your boss about you working on a secret formula for helping females grow muscles, and told him you were just a weird little nerd writing some fantasy story."

Jason blushed a little at Sandi's description. He'd been embarrassed enough to share his secret fantasy with Sandi when she visited him that night, and listening to her describe him in that way, even if it was just to protect him, only deepened that embarrassment.

"I was working with one of my clients at the gym that day. She's always been a bit of a man-basher, and I thought she might appreciate hearing about how some big, muscular lion had gotten so scared by a little wolf that he'd hired me to try and find out what he was doing." Sandi sighed a little as she recalled that session. "With some of my clients, our training sessions are as much a time for them to vent their frustrations as it a time to train and build their bodies. She'd told me things in confidence before, so I thought it would be safe for me to do the same."

"And what exactly did you tell her?" Jason asked. A part of him was upset with Sandi for blabbing about what happened, but it was a pretty weird story. He couldn't be too angry with her if she decided to share it with someone she thought she could trust.

"Well, I told her your boss' name and the company you worked for, but not you. I figured you'd been through enough already, so I just gave a little description of you. She was definitely interested in the story when I told it to her. Maybe a little too interested, in hindsight." Sandi added as she recalled how intensely her client questioned her for details. "When you called a couple days later and said your files had been hacked, it wasn't hard for me to guess who might have been behind it. She was the only person I'd told about it, after all. I was going to question her about it during our next training session the following morning."

Considering that was the last time Jason had spoken with Sandi before her disappearance, he assumed she never got a chance to ask those questions. Sandi confirmed that as she continued.

"I remember hearing a noise in the middle of the night and waking up in my apartment just in time to feel two people grabbing my arms and pinning me down while a third pressed a rag filled with something against my nose and mouth. It was dark, but I could tell that the two who had my arms pinned were really strong, and whatever was on that rag stopped me from fighting back pretty quickly." Sandi shuddered a little as she remembered how helpless she'd felt that night. "After that... I can't recall much of what happened to me, but from what little I do remember, that might be for the best."

"I see..." Jason could only imagine what could have possibly happened to Sandi in that time to change her from a slim, taut fitness trainer to a pumped up muscle monstrosity, but it was safe to say whatever it was, it was illegal and probably quite painful. He didn't want to push her to dredge up what were clearly painful memories.

"Well, I'll admit that it does seem a little suspicious that my files got hacked and you got kidnapped shortly after you told your client about coming to Mega Muscle." Jason said as he tried to get Sandi's mind off those painful memories. "Still, it's hard to imagine some random client of yours having both the resources and motive to hack my files, kidnap and perform extreme scientific experiments on you."

"True, but it wasn't just some random client who I told. In fact, you probably know her quite well."

"Her?" Jason was skeptical of Sandi's explanation. "Sorry, Sandi, but I really doubt I know-"

"Cassandra Cartwright"

Jason immediately went silent upon hearing that name. It was no wonder Sandi thought she would be interested about her visit to Mega Muscle. After all, the tigress was the CEO of Iron Body, Mega Muscle's biggest competitor in the supplement market.

"She's your client?" Sandi nodded in the affirmative. "Geez... well, she'd definitely have the resources to do everything you said. Still, do you really think she would go to such lengths?"

"It does seem a little extreme, but she's always been incredibly driven. And when I said she was a bit of a man basher, that was putting it mildly. Have you seen pictures of her before?" Sandi asked.

Jason nodded. "Sure. Her husband was the original CEO of Iron Body before their divorce. The few times I've seen her, she usually has her black hair tied back in a bun and wearing some sort of business suit. She always looked pretty professional and meek, but she took over her husband's company he'd built from the ground up and most of his assets in the settlement. I figured she must be a pretty fierce woman."

"You got that right." Sandi confirmed. "She doesn't show it off in public, but she's quite well built herself. That would be more than enough for most people, but Cassie was never satisfied. She always wanted to be stronger, more powerful than anyone, especially guys, and she could be really reckless in her pursuits."

"Reckless?" Jason tilted his head a little. "How so?"

"Hmm..." Sandi thought for a moment as she searched her memories for the best example to use. "During one of our sessions, some pretty buff guys were hitting on us while we were working out. They were trying to show off to us, using a bench press with somewhere around 400 lbs of weight. They only managed about ten reps between the two of them, but they made it seem like they were bodybuilding gods or something. They were annoying, and they left all the weight on the bar once they realized we weren't paying much attention to them."

"They do sound like jerks." Jason agreed. While never a gym junkie himself, he'd spent enough time working around bodybuilders to know it's proper gym etiquette to reset equipment when you're done, including returning all weights back to their original place.

"Oh, they were, but it was nothing I hadn't already dealt with before. Cassandra and I finished our set, and I told her to take five. I took my eyes off her for a minute to grab some water and dry off some of the sweat. She walked off, but I figured she was just going to the bathroom or something. When I turned around to find her again, she was on the bench press, trying to lift the same weight those guys were using."

"WHAT?!" Jason exclaimed. "If two fairly dedicated guys could barely lift it, what made her think she could? She could've been crushed!"

"She almost was; she'd just managed to get the bar off the rack by the time I raced over there and grabbed it myself. While the two of us are struggling to keep this weight up, she's getting so angry that she's completely ignoring how dangerous a situation she was in. Not just at the guys who were hitting on us, but me as well!"

"Yeah, I mean, how dare you try and save her life?" The sarcasm was practically oozing out of Jason's voice with that statement.

"That's what I was thinking, but she just saw me as interfering with her training to get stronger. She, 'knew' she was better, stronger than them, and she was going to prove it. We held that weight together for a good minute before she came to her senses, and even then we needed one of the gym staff who'd finally noticed the situation we were in to wrestle the weight back onto the rack."

"Geez..." Jason shook his head as he imagined that scene. "Did that near death experience scare any sense into her?"

Sandi shook her head. "I wish, but it had the opposite effect. She wanted me to push her even harder, to make her even stronger. She seemed annoyed when I tried to shake her back to reality by telling that it would take a professional female bodybuilder years to get those kind of results, if they were obtainable at all. She was a well paying client, but I think her attitude needed more of a workout than her body. It was only when I threatened to drop her as a client if she ever tried something like that again did she seem to come back to her senses."

Jason nodded. While there was no solid proof, it would've been easy for someone with Cassandra's resources to hire someone to break into his computer and steal his formula. Considering that Sandi was kidnapped and subjected to what she went through soon after, it wasn't hard to believe whoever was behind it wanted the ability to increase female physical strength for their own gain, whether it be for personal use or otherwise. Maybe she experimented on Sandi as revenge for being a roadblock in her crazy pursuit of power?

"Well, I agree with you that Cassandra's actions seem very suspicious. Still, without any kind of evidence it'll just be our word against hers." Jason shuddered at the thought of the two of them trying to go up against Cassandra alone. Part of the reason Jason had chose this lab to take Sandi was not just because of the access to scientific equipment, but also because it was unlikely that anyone pursuing the escaped Sandi would think to look for her there.

"I've been thinking that myself. If we went to the police with just a crazy story about science experiments and super muscular females, we'll just be embarrassed and treated like we're insane. No, wait..." Sandi corrected herself, "YOU'LL just be embarrassed and treated like you're insane. I'll probably be arrested for destroying a good hunk of Mega Muscle's labs and assaulting that guard."

"Right. Even if they don't believe that you were that huge rabbit that wrecked the place, they'll probably still be willing to hold you while they investigate..." Seeing that this was getting them nowhere, Jason tried to steer the conversation toward a more positive subject. "On the plus side, I think I figured out why you turned into what you did."

"Really?" Jason motioned Sandi over to the microscope he had been using. While not much of a scientist herself, Sandi could quickly figure out that she was looking at a sample of blood. "Is this mine?"

"Yes it is. I was hoping to figure out what had caused your transformation, but I wasn't able to find anything out of the ordinary at first." Sandi had to agree with Jason there. There didn't seem to be any strange things floating around in her blood; it was just a collection of red blood cells. "Watch what happens when I do this, though..."

A dropper filled with some sort of green liquid entered the scope as Jason added the mystery substance to the sample. He let a small drop of it drop around one edge of the slide cover. The liquid slowly seeped under the cover, slowly mixing in with the blood underneath. Sandi watched as the red blood cells began to react to the presence of the mystery substance. She shifted the magnification to a higher strength, and watched with wonder as the liquid seemed to be drawn into the cells like a sponge.

"What's going on?" Sandi asked as the liquid was all but eliminated from her blood sample, returning it back to its solid red color.

"You'll see; just keep watching." She turned her attention back toward the scope. Within a few seconds, the cells inside her blood started to...well, vibrate, was the best word she could use to describe it. They shook and shivered in a way that didn't seem natural. It started out slow and barely noticeable, but soon they were shaking like they had been caught in their own little earthquake.

"What's going on?" she asked, pulling back from the microscope. "I'm no scientist, but whatever's happening in there doesn't look natural."

"Well, you're right about that." Jason acknowledged with a slight nod. "The cells are oversaturated with energy and nutrients and seem to be looking for something to do with them. It's happened every time I've added this formula to your blood. At this point I can only hypothesize, but if this were to get into your body, I think it would trigger a transformation similar to how you were before."

"Really?" Sandi eyed the unlabeled plastic bottle in Jason's hand suspiciously. "And what exactly IS that formula?"

"It's..." Jason paused for a second, putting the bottle down behind him on the bench before continuing. "...Ambrosia."

"WHAT?!" Sandi understood Jason's caution now; if he'd still been holding it, she might have tried to knock it out of his hand. Even now she kind of wanted to shove him aside and dump it down a drain. "I thought you said Ambrosia didn't make me that... thing!"

"It can't!" Jason gulped a little at the death stare he was getting from Sandi, but he persisted with his explanation. "I-I mean it! Yes, Ambrosia's unique in its design because I made it specifically for female bodybuilders, but it's all scientifically proven safe ingredients and vitamins. It's not like I added pieces from a meteorite that fell from space or ran it through a nuclear reactor or anything crazy like that!"

Sandi's angry stare persisted for a few seconds more before she sighed and tried to relax a little. It WAS kind of a stretch to think Jason had access to anything truly radical or strange that would trigger that kind of monstrous change as an employee at a supplement producer.

"So why? If Ambrosia didn't make me that, why is my blood reacting like that?" Jason let out a little sigh of relief himself at Sandi's question, happy she didn't seem to be angry with him and his formula.

"Well, again, this is only a hypothesis, but I'm pretty sure Cassandra, assuming she is the one behind all this, probably did use and alter my Ambrosia formula to make you into that. I think that, somewhere along the way, your body must have made a kind of memory or imprint of that altered formula, and triggers that change in response to Ambrosia being introduced into your system."

"So, basically, if I drink that stuff, I'll become that thing again?" Sandi smiled weakly in response to Jason's nod of approval. "Well, so much for being the first in line to try it, then."

"Yeah..." Jason silently cursed his luck; the first female to show any genuine interest in his product would never be able to try it without turning into a muscle bound monster. He was pretty sure the FDA would never approve a product that had to have that kind of warning on the label.

"So, any thoughts on what we should do now?" Sandi asked. "I doubt I can just go back to my apartment and pretend like nothing's happened and hope nobody will come looking for me."

"Yeah, and considering they used my formula in some way to make you into that, I'm not sure they won't decide to come after me, either. I guess we're either going to have to run or hide, but either way, we need money. I was thinking of heading to the bank and getting some cash."

"You're not worried about going out in public or getting arrested for stealing that van?" Sandi asked as Jason started to put away the equipment he'd been using.

"No. Well, at least not yet. It's been almost 12 hours since you came into MegaMuscle, and no one's come looking for either you or me. Heck; I left my cell phone on this whole time, and it just occurred to me that no one's called from work to ask about the mess or why I stole a van." Sandi picked up Jason's nearby phone and confirmed that he had indeed not received any calls or messages.

"Something weird is definitely going on, but it also means that the police probably aren't involved, or at least not yet. While we can't go to the police and say what happened to you without looking like nutjobs, by the same token the people who made you that can't report their missing test subject/kidnap victim, either." Jason finished putting away the lab equipment and started packing a few scattered items, included the bottle of Ambrosia, into a nearby satchel. "If we're going to do anything in public, now would be the time."

"That's a good point. So, do you mind if I come with you, then?" That took Jason by surprise; he expected after her ordeal, Sandi would just want to stay somewhere safe.

"There's a lot going on, and I'm not used to being this scared and feeling so vulnerable." Sandi's arms crossed over her chest as she rubbed her arm, trying to keep the tension and fear out of her voice. "I have friends and family, sure, but I also considered Cassandra my friend, and look what she did to me. You're just as involved in this as me now. You're the only person I can really trust at the moment, and I really don't want to be alone. So can I come with you, please?"

"Of course." It wasn't like Jason needed an excuse to have a woman, the kind of woman he always wished he could find, to come with him. She didn't really need to tell Jason she was feeling scared and vulnerable; he'd picked on that pretty fast on his own. If her coming with him made her feel safer, he certainly wasn't going to push her away. Besides, he thought as he slung his satchel over his shoulder, it was just a trip to the bank.

What could possibly go wrong?