Change of Heart

[The First One]

It began with the diagnosis.  Dilated cardiomyopathy.  Two years, at best, left to live if they couldn't find a donor.  When she had eventually received a call saying they had found one, Tanya was relieved.  She was nervous during preparations to go under the knife, but expected that this would ultimately just have been a chapter of her life that would ultimately be done with and she would be able to move on from.  She was wrong.

Two days after Tanya was released from the hospital, she started noticing changes.  She woke up with the incision scar gone.  The doctors had estimated it would take weeks to fully heal and even then would leave a visible scar afterward, but it was gone like nothing had ever happened.  After another week, everything looked slightly lower to the ground.  Her old bathroom scale confirmed that she was taller.  Only by about half an inch from her previous 5'1, but for someone in her mid thirties that was still a major difference.

Tanya checked the scale at least once a day after that.  After another week, during which she'd grown to 5'5, her once slender and unassuming figure started changing.  Her muscles began developing, making her look, by the sixth week since the procedure, like a woman who, while still slim, knew her way around a gym all the same.  This despite the fact that Tanya hadn't set foot in a gym since high school.  She kept growing both taller and more muscular from there, and by the time she had reached 6' even with muscles that would look more appropriate on a female bodybuilder (going by the ones she'd seen in a documentary once), she was curious enough about this to go to a gym a couple blocks from her apartment complex.  She could bench press 400 pounds her first time there, and her muscles and strength continued to grow until she decided she was drawing too much attention to herself and stopped going after a week.  She kept growing, increasingly tall, increasingly muscular, presumably increasingly strong, and increasingly grateful for the technological conveniences allowing her to work from home and order clothes and groceries delivered to her apartment. 

She was almost seven feet tall and too heavy for her bathroom scale to handle when other things started happening.  She woke up from a nightmare she couldn't coherently remember to twin beams of red-orange light spurting from her eyes for a split second, leaving twin scorch marks in the ceiling.  When trying to blow away a fly that had landed on her gigantic arm, she moved most of the furniture in her living room.  She could hear conversations across the street like she was there herself.  By the time she caused one of her mugs to fly from the kitchen counter and hit her face (which it shattered against without hurting her in the slightest) with a stray thought, she knew what must be happening.  Titan.  The world's greatest hero, the first superhero, who had died, killed by his oldest enemy, Miss Malice, a week before her procedure.  Miss Malice had been driven off by Titan's teammates in the Sentinel Squad before she could do much else, but the news had barely discussed anything else for weeks. That was who her new heart must have come from, and now it was changing her.  His physique, his powers... so far it all fit.

By the time she stopped growing, she was 8'3.  She had no way of knowing how heavy she was, but the floor trembled with every step she took, her stomach had evolved into a gigantic, shredded eight pack, and her back, shoulders and chest were so overdeveloped that she essentially didn't have a neck anymore, just masses of muscle running into each other.  Even relaxed, her shoulders came up to her ears.  Her biceps, already much larger than her head even relaxed, more than tripled in size when she flexed.  Standing on the roof of her apartment complex, she took a deep breath.  She stepped off the roof of her apartment complex, and sighed in relief when she just stood in the air, hovering above the street.  As she started actually flying, faster by the second, she tried to remember what she'd seen on Google Maps.  There was somewhere she needed to go.

[The First One]

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[The First One]

It wasn't until she had landed on the artificial island the Sentinel Squad's base was on and found herself right in front of Bombshell that it occurred to Tanya that she was naked.  "And you are...?"

Tanya stammered, "I-Heart transplant-Titan-his heart-". 

Bombshell pondered that for a few seconds.  "He did mention a couple years ago that he would donate his heart if anything happened to him.  I never really thought anything would, so I didn't pay it any mind at the time."  Her expression softened. "Come on in.  We've got a few copies of his costume."

Tanya may have been given a copy of Titan's costume, but ultimately had no choice but to wear it differently.  Not only did she have pectoral muscles on par with the costume's original wearer, but her breasts had grown massive along with the rest of her.  The end result was that the upper half of the costume looked more like a halter top, leaving most of her midriff exposed.  All things considered, she thought as she examined her reflection, she wore it well.  She donned a copy of Titan's white cape as Bombshell watched.  Titan's on-and-off girlfriend during his lifetime continued her appraisal of the woman now wearing his costume for almost a minute before saying anything.  "I should probably introduce you to everyone."

[The First One]

Titan's seat in the base's conference room was empty now, but the same couldn't be said for any of the others.  As Tanya stood to the immediate right of Bombshell's seat, she couldn't help but scan the rest of the room.  Or, more precisely, the rest of the Sentinel Squad.  Aegis, Ironclad, Jack Frost, Wierdwoman, Maglev and Aviara were all seated around the table, and staring at her.

"...so as it stands now, I strongly advise that one way or another we make dealing with this situation a high priority," Bombshell finished.

"Well," Jack Frost said a few seconds later, clearly doing his best to sound cordial, "Welcome aboard.  I-"

"Stop it, both of you!" Wierdwoman exclaimed.  "She may have his powers, but she's not Titan!  She's her own person!  You can't just force her to join, and she's not just a 'situation'!"

Most of the rest of the Squad were quietly stunned for a notable length of time.  They stared at Weirdwoman for a few seconds after that, then at Tanya.  "Honestly," Tanya admitted, "I would like to see how powerful I am now, and if joining is a good way to do that..."

Bombshell nodded.  "Understood.  We'll need to-" she was cut off by an alarm, and sighed.  "Well, no time like the present."