Upon making it to the ladies' room, Halle devoured her remaining cookies and reached into the duffel bag she'd conveniently remembered to bring.
The first thing she pulled out was a box of Camels. Next was a lighter. Placing the lighter in the hand with the box of cigarettes, she used her free hand to pull out a flask of liquor. Upon realizing that she didn't have the fucking patience to open the flask with both hands occupied, she placed the cigarettes and the lighter on the landing of one of the sinks, unscrewed the top of the flask, and looked herself in the mirror. Objectively, she didn't look half bad, but Halle knew a bastard when she saw one. The ink blots on her face moved around at that, to which Halle went for a quick sip of liquor. Just to be a bitch, Halle plucked out a stray cigarette, dipped a millimeter of it in the liquor, and lit it ablaze, lighting up the room before smoldering down to a steady stream of smoke. After a quick drag, Halle screwed the cap back on the flask and let her eyes drift to a close.
Halle fucking Mackinson was about to dance with an 8ft tall grey flaky skeleton corpse man. Before assuming the composure she would require to achieve that, she took a moment to let that sink in. But not too long. She had work to do, and a smoke to fit in between. She took another drag and let the ashy scent wash over her.
There was a reason she'd gone with the Camels. She couldn't have a breath of them without thinking of her mother. She used to reek of them, the woman. Despite her attempts to never let them near the house or the children, growing up Halle always used to catch a whiff of them off her clothes, increasingly so as she'd gotten older. Come to think of it, it was half the reason she'd quit smoking.
Tossing the smoldering butt down the drain and turning the water on high, Halle zeroed in on a memory in the lingering haze -- the museum with mom as a kid. Everything was so tall to her then, the dinosaur skeletons especially, but down even to the statues and recreations. Having practiced this trick once or twice before, she knew precisely which recreation to which she should draw her mind's eye. Gigantopithecus -- bigass orangutan. The marks on her face shifted to the thought -- looking up at the beast from down below. How taller it was in the then than now. When Halle revisited the museum as an adult, it was as if the world had shrunk a bit. Not by a terrible amount, but enough to make a mere Sasquatch of King Kong. That's what she was here to do today -- then an orangutan of bigfoot.
As she went through the mental motions, Halle could feel her body begin to shift. This point was the most crucial -- the first sign of change. The key was to never lose sight of what had changed. Halle was not growing taller. Rather, her world was growing smaller. She mustn't forget that, else the process be disrupted. All around her it shrunk, slowly, surely, until the change simply came, though not painlessly. The next stage was critical. If at any point she were to lose sight of her vision or proportions, there were a number of possible outcomes, many of which she had suffered through already in previous trials. One was organ failure. As the rest of her body grew in relative size, there was of course a risk that her internal structure in particular would shift, or grow at a disproportionate rate. This could not be allowed to occur. Another was polymorphing, or the taking on of undesired characteristics of the animal she was mimicking, such as a sudden outcrop of long orange hair. This was particularly difficult to control when mimicking prehistoric animals, as they were less of a concrete entity, and more of an idea. She would have to watch for, else she revert to who knows what. A final was consistency. Whatever form she wound up with in these next few minutes, it would do her good to perfect and retain it, else minor internal shifts and gradual polymorphing creep their way into her evening.
It was worth mentioning that all of this hurt like absolute hell, and that even with a heavy meal prior to all of this, she looked forward to chowing down on the three grilled steaks, green beans, and mashed potatoes she'd placed in tupperware and stored away in her bag with the cigarettes, flask, lighter, and some bottled water.
(( OOC: She might be in here a while. ))
