Highland Hulk (Patreon)

For my suggestion box poll this month, the winning prompt was about a Highland Games contestant looking to bulk up quick to catch up with his rival! I borrowed a character from a friend for this, so enjoy!

 

“Mom!” Ewen whinnied. “You don’t need to fuss, I know how to wear a kilt.”

A tall, broad-shouldered mare had to reach up on the tips of her hooves to kiss the cheek of her much taller, broader-shouldered son. “Ewen, it’s the first year yer gunna represent clan McConnell, and I shan’t have ye goin’ out there unless yer wearin’ this right proper.” Leanne McConnell stepped back to examine her handiwork. Her son, Ewen, had flown in across the pond to come for the annual Highland games, and it wasn’t hard to see that the stallion had been training. A doctor back in the states, Ewen knew exactly what he had to do to get his body into peak athletic shape- well, and perhaps a little extra muscle, just to make sure. His blond and tawny coat had been freshly brushed, covering a body packed with strong, rippling, diamond cut muscle. Three hours in the gym, five days a week, a strict diet, and he was quite proud of the results. 

He smiled a bit in the mirror, bouncing his pecs as those two mounds pressed against the sash showing his clan’s green and orange tartan, stretching the fabric. He came from big stock; the McConnell clan always gave a good showing at the games, and he was now the biggest in the clan, with shoulders like weathered boulders cracked with definition, arms as big around as his own mother’s waist, and legs like the ancient standing stones the games were traditionally held at. With his blond mane braided, his coat freshly brushed, his kilt was the only thing he wore; he wanted to show off all his hard work, after all. He didn’t normally indulge in this kind of showboating, but it was a special occasion, after all. And he wanted to rub it in to cousin Douglas; he had been bragging about how he championed the family for years.

“Ah, just think of it, m’lad,” Leanna gushed, squeezing her son’s huge shoulders. “Ewen Robert McConnell, my son, a champion of the Highland Games.” She grinned, kissing his cheek. “Ye’ll be just grand.”

“Ach, ma…” Ewen whinnied, blushing slightly as his accent creeped in. “I’ll make ya proud.”

Just a few moments later, Ewen and a few of his cousins, the smallest of them still on the high end of “burly,” piled into a truck, driving out to the old Turaschan Stones. A huge fair-like atmosphere, with rows of tents and stalls sprawled across the hills the ancient stone circles stood on. 

Hopping out, the stallion filled out his chest with a deep breath, his heavy pecs inflating and bouncing as he took in the crisp, highland air. “It’s good to be home.”

“Oi! Is that th’ little pony Ewen McConnell, eh?” an all too familiar, thickly accented voice boomed. “Aw, ye grew up a bit, lad! Don’t ye look cute?”

Ewen’s eye twitched; he knew that voice. “Freddy MacNeil,” he said with a flat voice, turning around to face an old rival. Then his jaw all but hit the ground. Freddy MacNeil had always been just a little too small to provide a real challenge for Ewen, but that didn’t stop him from being a nuisance all throughout their school days. But now, he was clearly more than a nuisance.

Wearing his clan’s red and yellow tartan girded around his thick waist, the badger now stood a full head taller than the stallion. He strode over on legs thick as tree trunks, quads round as tires rippling and pressing up against his kilt, making it flutter with the slightest movement. He pec-bumped the horse, making Ewen snort as he stumbled backwards. He flexed his arm, a bicep bigger than Ewen’s head surging and inflating with each pump. “Ye weren’t hopin’ to come back fer a championship run, were ye, boyo?” Freddy smirked. 

“Oi!” Ewen’s cousins backed him up, even as the stallion snorted, looking ready for a fight. “Ye can’t just go bumpin’ people around at the games, Freddy! Have some bloody class.” 

“Hah!” Freddy prodded Ewen again, making the horse angrier. “Look at ye! Ye’re practically dainty. Gettin’ soft over in the States, yeah? That’s what American food’ll do to ye!” He thumped his torso, biceps grinding against his chest as he patted his swollen, oversized abs. The badger chuckled darkly, bumping his horseshoe shaped triceps into Ewen as he swaggered by. “Try ta keep up, McConnell! The Highland Games is fer real men!”

As the overgrown mustelid lumbered past, Ewen’s annoyance turned into astonishment. “How did little Freddy MacNeil get THAT big?” He demanded, turning to his cousins. “When I came here last, he did nae come up to me shoulders!”

“Ye hadn’t heard, Ewen?” one of his larger cousins, Charlie, spoke up. “He spent months livin’ at old Gregor’s gym, but he couldn’t get any bigger… so, ah. Word is he may have gone to see Old Maggie.”

The horse frowned. “Old Maggie? We’ve been warned about her since we were kids.”

His cousins shrugged. “All we know is that he left fer Maggie’s, and came back like that.”

“Well,” Ewen rolled his shoulders. He could still see the huge badger, lumbering through the fairground. “If that’s the case, then I’m going to see him too.”

“What?” Charlie gasped. “Ewen, ye can’t!”

“I came here ta win! I flew four thousand miles, worked out fer a year, ta carry the title fer Clan McConnell!” Ewen declared, palming his fist as he tensed his powerful arms. “An’ I’ll be buggered if I let that little shite show me up now!”

Old Maggie, a mad old doe, lived just at the edge of the Highland Games; she was something of a caretaker of the Turaschan Stones, but most people gave her a wide berth. Ewen approached her run-down shack at the edge of the woods, old superstitions gnawing at him as he picked a bit of white heather for luck, before crossing the threshold. 

“Ah… Maggie?” He peered into the dank, dark cabin. “Maggie, it’s, uh, Ewen McConnell.”

“Ahh! The wee McConnell lad, all grown up, are ye?” Old Maggie came out, dressed in what amounted to little more than rags. She reached up, pinching Ewen’s cheek, making the horse knicker. “Much bigger, aren’t ye, than when ye told me I was nothin’ but a mad fraud.”

“I’m… sorry about that, I was young and… spoke out of turn,” Ewen said, choking on his words. 

“‘Course,” Old Maggie chuckled darkly, smiling in a way that never reached her eyes. “Now, what do ye want, young McConnell?”

“I’ve heard ye gave something to Freddy MacNeil.”

“And what if I did?” Old Maggie cackled again. “If I remember, young McConnell, ye went to be a doctor, ta learn how ta do ‘real’ medicine. Ya wouldn’t want any of my, ah, what did ye call it now? Hocum?”

“It wasn’t hocum when I saw Freddy MacNeil waltzin’ around like William Wallace on steroids. Please, I need ta win th’ games, and I’m a far nicer man than Freddy!” Ewen pleaded.

“Ye might be, ye might be,” Old Maggie grinned, her dozen or so teeth showing. “But I want ta hear it. Hear ya believe in magic, young McConnell, and I’ll make ya bigger an’ stronger than any man th’ Highland Games have e’er seen.”

“I…” Ewen looked over his broad shoulder. He sighed, murmuring quickly. “Ibelieveinmagic.”

“What was that?” Old Maggie cupped her ear. “Speak up, young McConnell, these old ears aren’t much good anymore.”

“I believe in bloody magic, ye mad witch!” Ewen shouted. “Now give me whatever souped up steroids ye gave that bloody badger!” He caught himself, clearing his throat. “...Please.”

Old Maggie cackled. “Ahh, I forget what fire ye McConnells have!” She pressed a vial into Ewen’s hand. “Now begone. Ye’ve got some games to win, don’t ye?” She pushed the horse out with far more strength than the horse expected, the door slamming shut in his face.

Ewen grimaced as he looked at the potion in his hand. Part of him knew it was wrong to take a shortcut, that the length he was going to just wasn’t right. However another part of him was gnawing away, a desire to win, not just for himself, but for his family. He was representing more than himself, it was for his whole clan. Taking a breath, he steeled his nerves before lifting the bottle to his lips and tipping it back.

The sour taste almost made him retch, but he choked down the vile concoction before snorting and shaking his head. He’d drained every drop in the bottle and seconds were ticking by. Nothing was happening, and as the moments passed be, he wondered if he had been tricked. 

“Blast! I shoulda ne’er believed Freddy got big from bloody magic,” he sighed softly and ran a hand through his mane. In a flash he gasped as a lance of pain shot through him. It was gone just as soon as it hit, but in the wake of the pain came a crashing wave of hunger. No, it was well beyond hunger, this was a ravening, primal need for food, the stallion’s mind in a haze before he turned to the fairgrounds.

It only took seconds for the Clydesdale to find what he was looking for, hands snatching up a warm pie from a stand before he began to dig in. His normal decorum was completely gone, that raging beast inside him was louder than an embarrassment he may have felt. The stall’s vendor just stared in shock at the looming horse, the leopard trying to muster up the words to ask for payment when Ewen glanced down and let out a single, “More!” The feline yelped and pushed several more pies toward the horse.

The baked goods stood little chance against the ravenous stallion, pie tins licked clean and left in a small hill before his nostrils flared, following the scent of more food. Ewen fell upon another stall with reckless abandon, snatching up a plate of haggis and beginning to wolf it down. Normally he wouldn’t partake in much meat, let alone that particular Scottish dish, but today was not normal. The stallion’s middle was normally slightly domed from the sheer mass he carried, but as he stuffed himself it was growing larger. His limbs were looking thicker with each new scrap of food he demolished, arms rippling and bulging with new vigor, powerful thighs spreading his stance wide as his kilt lifted over their mass.

Stall after stall was emptied of food in the whirlwind of gluttonous rampage. Ewen didn’t even realize he was having to lift food up higher to get over his own chest, his pecs filling out thicker and heavier, soon brushing against his own muzzle as he chewed. His biceps crashed against his chest as he reached for a barrel of ale, easily lifting it off the ground as though it was light as a feather. Ripping the cork from the barrel he lifted it higher and tipped it to his muzzle and began chugging. With his arms up his lats flared out, the stallion was broader than barn doors at this point. His back was so filled by muscle that it looked like one of the tapestries hung in castles, shifting with the slightest movements. Biceps the size of boulders fought his chest for room as he gulped down the ale. The mass of his chest would have cast anyone shorter than him in a considerable shadow given just how much muscle was jutting off his torso. Or that would have been the case if not for the overpacked mass below his chest. What was one just a tight, firm was now a swollen hill of muscle padded by a layer of plush fat. It may have looked like the doctor had gone soft in the middle, but with a bit of tensing that monstrous muscle gut could have had a caber broken across it. Twin pillars extending from his kilt could only have been called thunder thighs, if only for the fact those massive quads colliding would have sounded like booming thunder.

    As the barrel of ale emptied he let it tumble to the ground with a thud before letting out a deep belch. The gnawing hunger inside of him was beginning to fade, the haze that had clouded his mind lifting. Blinking a bit he panted, grunting in shock as he found two brown-furred masses pushing up against his chin. The sensation shocked him until he realized that it was his own chest shoving on him. 

His jaw dropped, or would have if not for his own immensity, wedging into the cleft of his swollen, meaty chest. “What in the bloody Hell happened?!” Glancing downward as best he could he slowly began looking back at the fairgrounds, food stalls in disarray, all of them plucked clean. “Oh shite…”

“What the bloody…” Freddy MacNeil had come on to the scene, then his eyes all but popped out of his head. “Ewen?”

Ewen still felt bad. He made a point that he was going to pay for all the food he had just demolished. But when he saw the badger- when he had to lean forward, past the crest of his own bloated chest to see the badger, he couldn’t help but wide. “Ah! Me old mate, Freddy MacNeil!” 

He stomped towards the badger. “Ye said th’ Highland Games was fer real men, Freddy. Well!” The hulking stallion grabbed the badger by the belt of his kilt. His arms, tensing and rising up like mountains, rippled as he pulled the meathead mustelid up into the air with one clean swing. “Who’s the real man now?”