Quotes / Painful Transformation

Rogue: When they come out... does it hurt?
Wolverine: Every time.

— X-Men

Something is happening — I can't explain
Something inside me — a breathtaking pain,
Devours and consumes me
And drives me insaneAAAAAAGH!
Suddenly — uncontrolled
Something is taking hold!
Suddenly — AGONY!
Filling me — killing me?
Suddenly — out of breath
What is this — is this death!?

— Dr. Jekyll, Jekyll & Hyde, "Transformation"

Sarah: Did it hurt? I mean, the regeneration? That last body of yours, was he OK in the end?
The Doctor: ...It always hurts.

— The Sarah Jane Adventures, "Death of the Doctor"

Graham: You don't look like an alien.
The Doctor: You should've seen me a few hours back! Every cell in my body, burning. Some of them are still at it now, reordering, regenerating...
Grace: Sounds painful, love.
The Doctor:: You have no idea. There's this moment where you're sure you're about to die, and then... you're born. It's terrifying.

— Doctor Who, "The Woman Who Fell to Earth"

The pain begins first inside, as your intestines are, quite literally, rearranged. As a lyncathrope, you've got a lot to change between forms so you can digest that raw meat you love so much.

It feels like cramps at first.

— Howl

I started shaking / My legs were quaking / My stomach aching / My brain was breaking!

— Brain describing the transformation process in the "Jekyll and Hyde" song, Arthur - Arthur and Friends: The First Almost Real Not Live CD (or Tape)

“Agony” is really too human a word to describe what it went through. It was tearing its body apart and reassembling it from the center outwards, squeezing and ripping organs, crushing bones and forcing them to knife through flesh, but pain was just another sense to it, not a signal to modify its behavior. Besides, it was nothing new. It had been hundreds of people by now.

—Camouflage

He should be dead within 30 seconds. The werewolf heart is about two-thirds the size of a human's; but, in order to shrink, first, it has to stop. In other words, he has a heart attack. All the internal organs are smaller; so, while he's having his heart attack, he's having a liver and kidney failure too, and if he stops screaming, it's not because the pain has dulled: his throat, gullet, and vocal cords are tearing and reforming. He literally can't make a sound. By now, the pituitary gland should be working overtime, flooding his body with endorphins to ease some of the pain, but that, too, has shut down. Anyone else would have died of shock long ago, but it won't let him. And that's the thing I find most remarkable: it drags him through fire and keeps him alive and even conscious to endure every second. Nothing like this could just evolve; this is the fingerprint of God, an impossible, lethal curse, spread by tooth and claw. Victim begets victim begets victim. It's so cruel, it's... perfect.

— Being Human (UK), "Tully"

---