(Zenless Zone Zero TF, Zhu Yuan to Elephant)

"Sycophants like you make me sick!"

With that, the door abruptly closed in Zhu Yuan's face. Well, 'slammed' might be a more accurate term.

The veteran New Eridu Police officer sighed. She was, of course, fully aware that her boss had a reputation. Like any good cop, she made sure to keep her ears open for local gossip.

But that didn't mean she believed it.

Inspector Bringer was a hero to her, and he should be one to anyone in New Eridu. So really, it was her moral duty to try to get people to sign up to attend his latest speech.

"Sycophant!" Slam.

"Sycophant!" Slam.

"Ehn-nah! (Sycophant)!"

At least the little Bangboo didn't slam the door in her face... Probably because it was an automatic door, but she'd take a tiny reprieve where she could.

It was like every time someone called her a sychophant, her ears got a little warmer, and the slam got a little louder. Maybe she was starting to get self-conscious.

For that matter, her nose definitely tingled too. But it wouldn't do to have an officer out in public rubbing at her face, so she did her best to ignore the feeling of something stretching her sinuses.

Zhu Yuan sighed and dropped onto a bench, looking at her clipboard. She'd been through almost all of the names on it, and still nobody had-

"Just go back to the station, you sycoPHANT!"

Zhu Yuan stood up abruptly, crinkling her nose as the pressure in her nostrils grew. "With all due respect, I'm not sure why asking for signatures makes me a sycho-ffff..."

Her eyes watered. She was about to sneeze. Desperately, Zhu Yuan tried to hold it in. She held up a finger to hush up the civilian, squeezing her eyes shut.

"Fff... Whaah..."

Little did she know, her nose was bulging. It was like a balloon being inflated, though instead of stretching thin, her nose was thickening with tough gray skin.

"AAAACHHHOOPH!"

Not only was the sneeze dramatically loud, it was followed by the strange sensation of something warm thumping against her upper lip.

Her heart sank. Did she just cover her own face in snot? This was it. This was the last day she'd ever get respect from the public.

Sure enough, she could hear murmuring. Worse, there were a few gasps, and some phone cameras' clicks.

"Sorry about that," she opened her eyes, "I-what's wrong with my nose!?"

It wasn't that she saw anything in her peripheral vision, if only she was so lucky. No, her nose was so large that she could see it front and center. It looked swollen and gray, with a few unsightly wrinkles along the bridge.

And it wasn't the only thing that had swollen. Her uniform felt tight on her now, even though the ether-resistant fatigues were tailored to her body.

"Mommy, mommy! Manatee!" One of the nearby children pointed, excited.

"Sweetheart, there hasn't been a manatee in New Eridu for centuries now. If anything, she looks like an elephant... Though those aren't exactly common here either."

Zhu Yuan covered her nose with both hands. To her horror, a bit of her nostrils still poked out. Her ears felt even warmer, and she was worried people would notice how red they were.

If that child was right... She desperately tried to recall what elephants looked like. They were big, lumbering things, with gray skin... She remembered something about their noses being long... And their ears being big.

She gulped, lifting one hand from her twitching nose up to the side of her head. Sure enough, her ear was bigger, heavier. Larger. It was like she was touching a sailcloth, but she could feel it.

"No no no, this has to be a dream..." She stumbled backwards, only to trip and fall butt-first onto the bench.

The vivid sensation of her stretched ears whipping in the wind was soon replaced by a feeling of dread. A series of pops and tears greeted her oversized ears, and she realized that she could feel a lot more of the cool spring air on her backside than before.

Zhu Yuan was brave, but even so, she felt a cond sweat dew along her spine. She looked down to her fatigues, finding soft, doughy fat had split the seams of her clothes.

Her boots were worse off than that. They'd simply burst apart, leaving tatters of rubber and reinforced leather on the ground.

Her feet, once slender and well-manicured, were now thick, round stumps. Coarse, dull nails covered her toes, which she could feel compressing inside her changing body.

Changing. Every officer knew it could happen to them. The ether-rich territory called Hollows were known for that risk. She'd seen footage of good officers turning into savage Ethereals.

It was supposed to be sharp, crystallization forcing the inhuman change. She'd dreaded it, but had trained for it.

She hadn't trained for soft. If she were to try to distance herself from what was happening, she might even think the changes were comfortable. Every cramp of reforming muscle and every pop of bone was muffled by thick hide and jiggly fat.

Psychologically though, this was a different horror altogether. Her body wasn't her own. Her body wasn't even anything that science could prepare for. People didn't just turn into extinct animals.

Despite all evidence to the contrary.

Her tailbone ached and Zhu Yuan leaned forwards, squishing her fat thighs against the bench. Slowly, her skin tented, then stretched as a gray tail worked its way out of her backside. It itched, growing dark fur with red-orange highlights, just like her hair.

To her surprise, that actually centered her somewhat. It was an insult. The change was mocking her by keeping enough of herself to be recognizable. People could look at her and say "Oh, that elephant used to be officer Zhu Yuan, remember her?"

It was even happening now. Her huge ears flapped as new muscles twitched them towards conversations.

"Do you think she's contagious?"

"What's going on? I'm as bit late-is that Zhu Yuan?"

"Are you sure she's not a manatee?"

Suddenly, she started to feel claustrophobic. Her clothes were too tight. Everything was too tight. She was hot. Sweaty.

Zhu Yuan stood on her thick, stumpy legs. She wobbled a bit to catch her balance. And her sinuses tingled again.

"Gnhhahh... Haaah..." She felt her nose lift, bringing her nostrils over her head. Her fingers twitched, helpless to fight against their own changes. She didn't want to look, but could feel her slender fingers thickening, merging.

"She's gonna blow!"

"Get behind my umbrella!"

"Ehn-nah! (Duck! Cover!!!)"

"ACH-PHROOOMPH!" Zhu Yuan trumpeted, her whole body jiggling as a new wave of thick fat triumphed over her clothing's resistance.

The combat uniform that was capable of taking small arms fire, claws, and fangs was no match for Zhu Yuan's new bulk. It burst off her explosively, the shreds of her old life fluttering like confetti in the wind.

Despite being naked, she wasn’t cold. Her new hide was thick enough to shield her from the weather – but it did little to shield her from the eyes of the gathered crowd.

“Pleathe, evurryone!” She shuddered. Her voice had taken on a lisp, as well as a deep-pitched nasally undercurrent. She dreaded seeing what people would be posting of this on Inter-Knot. “Yoo’ave to… Tooo…”

In instances of spontaneous Etherealification, NEPS officers were trained to disperse a crowd to prevent recurrence. However, that was Etherealification, not spontaneous elephantitis… Or whatever this was.

A few more camera flashes made her keenly aware that her upstairs and downstairs were on full display. Cheeks burning, she thumped to her elbows and knees, trying to cover her nipples with her stubby hands.

Unfortunately, her breasts had gotten so large that at this point, she was mostly just squishing them together. More embarrassingly, her trunk flopped onto her new chest.

Funny, she’d never noticed how she smelled before. It was something that her brain normally filtered out. But here, now, she could vividly tell that she smelled like a zoo, and that her old flowery scent was fading fast.

“PhhRROOMPH!” She trumpeted again, trying her best to control her jiggly, fat body. Her hair, still mockingly crowning her big elephant head, kept getting in her eyes. The best way she could think of clearing it was to puff air from her trunk back in her own face.

“Well… I guess if the police are like this, it wouldn’t hurt to attend that speech…”

“I like the new mascot!”

“We just have to sign that form?”

Zhu Yuan couldn’t believe what she was hearing, despite how dramatically large her ears now were. She gawped openly as more and more people trotted over to her fallen clipboard, contentedly signing up for the speech she’d been trying so hard to advertise.

Perhaps that was the cruelest irony of this change. Now that everyone saw her as a mascot, suddenly everyone was crowding around to sign up for her presentation. Zhu Yuan gulped and dreaded that the station might see this as a positive, and drag their heels in finding a cure for her.

Unfortunately for her, she was very much correct in that regard… After they requisitioned a warehouse big enough for her newfound bulk, that is.