Union Bar.

  Mickey was a great many things. A hothead. A troublemaker. A rabble-rouser. A Union-boy through and through. All things he wore proudly and on his sleeve. He would be the among the first to join the others in rallying for worker's rights.

  Hell, if it wasn't for an early season cold knocking him on his ass, he would've joined Bill and the others in storming the Duval Estate! Yet he didn't. Instead he was home blowing so much mucus out of him that he didn't know where it was all coming from!

  But he could make things right, he thought as he and the rest of the now former coal miners stood within a backroom of the union bar near a bubbling green pool as one of their own stood off to the side and watched the pool with them. Said pool was prepared just for this occasion. The union workers didn't trust the Duval and didn't want to end up as slaves in some sort of trap.

  "Y'all sure you wanna do this?" Jake asked in that low growly voice that he now had.

  "Hell yeah we're sure! Doin' what we've been doin' ain't done nothin' for us!" Mickey stated with all the piss and vinegar he could muster.

  But despite his tone, he and the others made no hurry to go into the bubbling pool. Even less so when those small green things that worked for Morty crawled out of the pool and gave them a glare and a hiss before darting away.

  "But, what's it like?" Mickey asked Jake.

  Jake frowned and stared deeply at the bubbling pool even as another goblin crawled out and darted away.

  "It's... different."

  "Different how?"

  "Just different. Hell, I can barely remember what happened. One second we were fallin' into it, the next we're runnin' through the woods like the dogs were after us." Jake replied as he tried to recall how it felt. How it felt for his body to be twisted and warped into the form he has now.

  But try as he might, he just couldn't dredge it up. The only thing he could even remotely recall from that time was some sort of burning or stinging on his skin. But even that was fuzzy and uncertain. He glanced at the three others who had joined him in prepping their fellow former coal miners. From the looks on their faces they weren't having any better luck in recalling their own transformation.

  He wished he could talk them out of doing this for no other reason than it being permanent. The hair-trigger was already bad enough for those of them that weren't quick to anger. Compared to those that were, all it took was a mild inconvenience in order to drive them into a maddened frenzy.

  That's not even counting the rather morbid quirks they all now had. Each and every one of them had at least a single skull tied to their belts. Mainly goblins or animals. But there were a few humanoid skulls among them that were taken during a wrong place, wrong time type of situation. That and the possessiveness they held towards these skulls was rather rabid, he tore a goblin's arm off just for bumping into the one on his belt. Oh, and there was the talking to them. He and the others have gotten strange looks, well, more than usual, by them almost compulsively chatting with said skulls as if they were still alive!

  Suffice it to say, physically he would bet money that he could compete in heavyweight championships and walk away more or less fine. Mentally? It was like he was balancing on an edge. One bad day away from ending up like Bill out in the hills. Foaming at the mouth, barely human, practically a wild animal. It got to the point that those few of them that went and checked up on his from time to time stopped doing it after he got too aggressive and violent.

  Yet here they were. Their former coal miners asking for the same fate. If he knew even half of them as well as he did Bill, he knew for sure that nothing but trouble would come from it. He wanted to tell them to leave. Either leave town and don't come back, or simply leave the estate.

  But how could he? He took the plunge, albeit involuntarily, and came out looking like a green haired bodybuilder. That's all his former coal miners saw. They saw the muscles, the height, the claws and fangs. But they didn't see the razor edge and the will to tightrope it just to not tear off the head of anyone that so much as side-eyed him!

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Jake sighed, even if he told them to piss off. Even physically threw them out. They'd just do this themselves. Where they'd then end up just like them and Bill what felt like a lifetime ago.

  "Are you sure you really want to do this?" He asked. Almost pleaded.

  "We gotta. Otherwise we may as well turn tail and run. And this is our town. We fought, bled, and even died for it. We're not leavin' without a fight!" Mickey declared with renewed vigor.

  Jake stared back at the pool. He's seen and heard of what the butler's been doing with them. Testing and experimenting with them. His reassurances that "goblinization" of humans was simpler didn't help. He still heard the bleating of that horrific sheep-goblin that he was told was put down yet still seemed to lurk about the estate.

  But at this point he wasn't sure he could stop them from just jumping in. Already Mickey and the braver of the lot twitched and looked ready to simply run and jump into the spawning pool regardless of what he said or did.

  He looked to the others and had a silent conversation. The type that you learned after being around one another for so long. It was in those silent words that they decided. Jake sighed and turned to Mickey.

  "A couple rules. The first is that if you can't handle it you crawl out fast! Don't try and play tough. The second is that y'all will be goin' to be takin' a quarantine period. And this ain't up for discussion. You wanna do this we do it right. Once you're out of there, you're goin' to be brought to an area where we can take things slow. Get you adjusted and what not. If you wanna do this, that's the rules. Don't like 'em? Turn around now."

  Jake was hoping that maybe giving them a lifeline, a way out, would be enough for some of them to take it. He even felt a glimmer of hope when a few starting mumbling to themselves and looking towards the door. But that was gone the second Mickey charged towards the pool with a rebel yell.

  He entered feet first into the bubbling pool that splashed, fizzed, and hissed at what it came into contact with. The pool started thrashing and bubbling for a moment before seeming to calm down once more.

  At first he thought that maybe it didn't work. That poor dumb Mickey had just thrown himself into a vat of acid and died. That is until, after about a minute or two, a thick, hairy, clawed hand shot out of the spawning pool and slamming into the floor, gouging ruts into the soaked and dirty bar floor.

  Then another shot out. Then both hairy green arms pulled the now hulking, hairy, green form of Mickey. He pulled himself and rolled onto the bar floor he breathed shallowly for a moment before slowly rising up to his new height of some seven feet. His clothes had dissolved in the pool, but his modesty was thankfully covered by thick green hair where it mattered.

  He opened his eyes, now colored an off orangish yellow instead of the former greenish blue. He made to take a step when he stumbled over his new gangly limbs and fell to the side. Mickey snarled and snapped before lashing out at anything nearby. Bar stool, keg, people. It didn't matter to him, he just needed an avenue to vent his frustration turned rage.

  Of course that was where Jake and them came in. Before he could hurt anyone, they dogpiled onto him and held him down and firmly as he thrashed and raged against their hold and weight. Bit it was four vs one.

  Mickey thrashed and raged with all his new might. But eventually his energy ran dry and he relaxed and plopped his head against the wooden floor with a sense of tiredness that Jake and them felt after they had ran out steam that first fateful night.

  The others slowly started to climb off one by one. Each going painfully slow before slamming down when it seemed like Mickey would thrash again. But eventually, the four of them stood over the now "goblinized" Mickey.

  "So?"

  Mickey just cracked open an eye and stared at them before speaking in a now deeper and growly voice.

  "So, what?"

  "How you feel?" Jake asked.

  "Like I just got out of a sauna. My skin feels raw, my arms and legs feel like jelly. And I have a headache. All in all, I'd say I need a drink."

  Jake gave a snort before two of them helped Mickey to his feet and helping him through the door and to a storage room where Mickey could sleep his transformation off with a cold one. When they came back, Jake turned to the others with a sigh.

  "So, whose next?"

  The others didn't react at first. Simply stunned and confused by what they had witnessed. But eventually they took the leap. One at first. Then two. Then five. After that Jake and them kept the others from going just because they didn't want to chance something going wrong.

  About the only break they took was when they were bringing the newly transformed to the storage room to sleep, and or drink, off their transformation hangover, or when they were killing goblins to refill the spawning pool that drained with each transformation taken.

  When it was all said and done? Some eighty union workers, those that stayed in town, were transformed into bugbears. Or bigfoots. Bigfeets? Whatever, the point was, the union workers got their wish, and Jake and them were going to ease them into their new bodies. Their new mood swings. Their new... peculiarities.

  He knew that it probably would work for some of them. Even now Mickey and some of the others were getting antsy and seemed like they were just going to leave the second their legs could hold them up long enough.

  Which wouldn't be any time soon with how much hootch they had given them. They had emptied several kegs by the time it was all over, but it was worth it if it meant getting them on the right foot going forward.

  "Alright. Now that you're all transmorgified, here's the rundown. You're angry. And not just angry, you'll be on the edge of pissed off and fuckin' furious from now on. Any little inconvenience or irritation will feel like a personal insult at best, and a call to blows at worst. The best thing you can do? Breathin' exercises. Either that or some sort of way to blow off steam without blowin' up on someone cause you thought they looked at you funny."

  "Second, you're big, strong, and fast. What that means is if you want to kill someone it's damn easy to do. Hell, you can rip a head off pretty damn easy with your hands now. So on top of those breathin' exercises, well also be goin' over ways to hold back so you put someone in the hospital instead of the morgue."

  "And lastly. You'll probably notice some... quirks. I'll just rip the band-aid off. You'll have a thing for heads. No not that type of head George stop gigglin'. The type of head on your shoulders. When, and I do mean when, you inevitably kill someone, you'll take their head as a trophy. You will either mount it on a pole or tie it to a belt or whatever have you. But the point is, this isn't somethin' you can control. At all. Believe us, we've tried. About the only thing you CAN control is talkin' to it."

  "So any questions?" Jake asked after a moment to let it all sink in.

  He wasn't at all surprised to find a great many hairy green hands shoot up into the air. Well, he thought, at least they're not just running off. Yet.