The short-haired brunette waved wildly, exuding a natural exuberance that only came from lack of responsibility. "Hello there! I'm Jordan."
The pony-tailed brunette nodded in acknowledgment, exuding a natural dignity despite wearing a skin-tight blue bodysuit that left precisely nothing to the imagination. "I am Flora."
"...and we are here," Jordan said, gesturing to the empty beach they were at, the gas cylinder a few feet away and another object covered with a cloth, "are here to do SCIENCE."
"What sort of science?" Flora asked. "For expositions sake, that is."
"Relevant science," she replied, pointing to the cylinder.
"I see. I'm a touch curious as to why this required me to wear a full-body suit, however," Flora said, gesturing to the matte blue outfit that was currently covering everything below her neck.
"We can't have you going around naked."
"True enough, I suppose."
"That and I like how you look like a brown-haired Samus Aran when wearing it."
"Who?"
"Anyway-"
"I'm also a touch curious as to how you found my precise measurements and body shape." Looking down at herself she raised the ball of her foot, wiggling her toes. "Most rubber suits don't have individual toes, much less subtle indentations in the chest for the wearer's nipples. Among other things." She lowered her foot and shot a look at Jordan. "As it stands this outfit is so revealing it may as well be painted on."
"ANYWAY," Jordan repeated, walking over to the cylinder, "I did some math and I just wanted to demonstrate something I found out about everyone's favorite noble gas."
"Something that you didn't inform me of the full details of but still demanded I help you regardless."
"Exactly." Picking up the end of the hose she walked back towards Flora, uncoiling it as she went.
"That's a long hose," Flora remarked.
"We're going to be doing a lot of science," she replied. "Now hold still." Leaning forward, she inserted the nozzle into Flora's navel, giving the hose a pull to ensure that it was in securely. Heading back to the gas cylinder, she placed one hand on the valve. "Ready?"
Flora looked down at the hose, then at Jordan. "Would you even listen if I said 'no?'"
She pondered this for a moment before giving the valve a twist. "Nope."
With a telltale hiss the gas began to flow through the hose and into Flora, who winced slightly at the sudden increase in pressure. Her stomach was the first to grow, going from full to bloated to gravid and beyond in the course of a few seconds. Her breasts were quick to follow, gaining a sudden perkiness as they began growing up and out, jiggling slightly as her belly grew beneath them. Shortly thereafter there was a rubbery squeak and Flora reached behind her, attempting to alleviate her new-found wedgie as her ass cheeks began to inflate.
"How you holdin' up?"
Flora wrapped her hands around her expanding gut, feeling the gradual growth. "Fine. How full is that tank?"
"It -was- full when I got it, but it's going pretty quick." The hissing faded and Jordan looked at the pressure meter just in time to see the needle hit "empty." "Oh, speak of the devil."
"They usually do," she remarked, drumming her fingers on her belly. "That's why I use air compressors; they're far cheaper."
Jordan walked back to Flora for a better look at her handiwork: Her stomach had swollen to the size of a beach ball, gently moving in time to Flora's breathing. Her breasts had grown forward more than they grew out, two foot-long blue ovoids bobbing above her belly, and her rear had gained at least three inches of padding in all directions.
"This," Jordan said, pointing, "is all you'll get out of one tank. You're not flying anywhere with this."
"Yes, because this is a genre utterly -obsessed- with realism." She paused. "Flying?"
"Fortunately for SCIENCE," she continued, running back from whence she came, "we have enough to achieve proper lift-off!" With a flourish she pulled a nearby sheet away to reveal nine more tanks, all connected to a single valve, which was in turn connected to the hose leading to Flora's navel. "Behold!"
Flora's eyes widened. "Oh dear."
Jordan gave the valve a series of twists, opening it as far as it could go. The blue-clad woman grunted as nine tanks' worth of pressure slammed into her belly, swelling it another foot before it began to flow through the rest of her body. Her wedgie returned with a vengeance as her butt grew outward, the size of her backside matched only by her breasts. "Jordan!" she shouted. "Dial it down a tad, would you?"
Jordan shrugged helplessly. "Sorry Flora, valve's stuck."
"Did you even -check?-"
"No, but you know how it is."
Flora sighed. As the tanks continued to empty themselves her back rounded out, her torso quickly growing spherical as her breasts were forced upward, blocking the lower half of her view. As Flora reached up to try and keep her now two-foot-wide breasts from bouncing around as they inflated, she felt her arms begin to fill and plump up from the helium. After struggling for a bit to keep her assets from moving about with her ever-bloating limbs she eventually gave up and let her arms drop, bouncing off the sides of her body.
She began to starfish, her limbs growing wider and spreading apart as she continued to swell outward. Soon the growth of her breasts slowed to a halt as they were stretched across her growing chest, becoming two prominent hemispheres stretched across her five-foot body. Her arms and legs continued to be absorbed into her form, becoming four smaller domes topped with her hands and feet. Suddenly Flora trembled slightly and let out a soft moan, clenching her hands.
"What just happened?" Jordan asked, concerned.
"The pressure is causing me to stretch."
"...that's the point, isn't it?"
"Down there, I mean."
"Ah."
"Yes, and it's-" Flora's cheeks reddened. "Oh my. It's causing the suit to rub against some rather sens-" Her eyelids fluttered, and she bit her swollen lip. "...sensitive locations as well, which is a bit more than I'm used to."
"Oh." A wicked smile crossed her lips and she sauntered over in front of Flora, looking up at her smugly. "Well, you learn something new every day, don'cha?"
Flora tried give Jordan an irritated look, but her as head was currently in a dimple atop a eight-foot sphere the best she could do was stare down the valley of her cleavage at where she supposed the top of Flora's head was. "Yes. Yes we do."
"You know, I never would have thought you were a latex person."
"Sort of like how they wouldn't have thought your long-term 'boyfriend' was a shower massager?"
There was a sudden jerk and Flora felt herself roll forward onto her belly, coming face-to-face with a very intense-looking Jordan. The stream of helium flowing into her continued to push her body outwards, inching her head towards her friend's until she was nearly nose-to-nose with her. "How. Long. Have you known?"
"Since college. Freshman year."
Jordan let out an anguished cry, stomping away. Folding her arms across her chest, she started tapping one foot on the sand. "I can't believe you knew," she said testily.
"Did you honestly think a robe could hide the fact that your hips were -sloshing- as you walked?"
"I kind of hoped, yeah."
"Sloshing -audibly-?"
"...yes. What's worse, I can't believe you just told everyone."
Flora shrugged, or at least tried to; when one has no shoulders and and one's arms are fat, immobile stumps, one's options for gesturing tend to be limited. "You have to give as good as you get. Besides, I think most of them expected that from you."
"You make me sound like some sort of pervert." She paused. "Okay, you've got me there, I guess." Turning, she added, "but you're not any bet- woah."
"Woah what?"
Crossing the sand Jordan again approached Flora, who was rapidly approaching the twelve-foot mark with no signs of slowing down. Even though Flora was lying on her belly Jordan found herself having to look up to meet her gaze. She pressed a finger into the top of her left breast, testing her elasticity. "I turn my back and you get big on me."
"I've been getting big."
"Well -yeah-, but it's like how pots boil faster when you're not looking at 'em." She fell silent for a second. "Wow, I can -hear- you getting bigger. How you holdin' up?"
"For one, my nose is itchy." Jordan reached out, scratching the tip of Flora's nose. "Thank you. For another, my hands are starting to feel stiff."
There was a series of soft "pop"s as, one by one, her fingers and toes began to fill with helium, ending with four simultaneous "pop"s as her hands and feet rounded out and began to swell with the rest of her.
"That explains that, I suppose. Are we almost done?"
"Almost," Jordan replied, walking around her and out of sight. "Don't worry."
"No worries there."
Now completely immobile, Flora closed her eyes and relaxed, focusing on the sensations she was experiencing: The warmth of the sun, the sand shifting under her, the feeling of growth, the tightness of the suit, the sound of her body creaking as it stretched and eventually, the gradual feeling of weightlessness. As her expansion slowed and stopped she felt herself lift into the air before a tugging sensation around her navel woke her out of her reverie.
"Gentlemen!" Jordan proclaimed, holding the hose connected to her friend. "BEHOLD! We have achieved flight!"
Floating above Jordan was none other than Flora. Her inflation at an end, she was nearly sixteen feet in diameter, a dark blue human balloon bobbing at the end of a hose. Her breasts were flat domes five feet across, each stretched across the curve of her massive body. All that remained of her arms and legs were squat three-foot hemispheres on the corners of her body, and her formerly slim hands and feet were swollen orbs two feet across, each dotted with five basketball-sized protrusions where her digits would be. "You're a century late for that," she retorted, her reply muffled slightly by her puffed-up cheeks.
"Yeah, yeah," she mumbled, reaching into her pocket with her free hand. "Let me get out my notes." Pulling out a handful of index cards she paused to read from them before continuing. "Right. Now you see all that?" She pointed to the helium tanks. "That's how much it would take to get the average woman airborne. Ten tanks, twenty-two hundred cubic feet of helium. Right now Flora is -literally- the size of a weather balloon."
"I certainly feel like one," she remarked.
Jordan tossed one of the cards away. "Also, if you wanted to you could pipe it into your breasts, just in case you wanted to be big enough to tit-fuck a smokestack or something." Another card toss. "If I used hydrogen she'd be a foot or two smaller, but there's that whole 'Hindenberg' thing to worry about."
"I should state for the record that I feel so much safer knowing that I won't explode violently should someone set me on fire."
Yet another card toss. "...aaaaaand if I used natural gas she'd need to be a whopping twenty-one feet around." She threw away the last card. "That's a lotta baked beans."
"You just know someone's going to take that as a challenge."
"They could try, but they'd probably just get really gassy and weighed down at the same time."
"Much like your cooking."
Jordan laughed. "That was a weird night, wasn't it?"
"Quite." Suddenly Flora became aware of a barely audible stretching sound, as well as the sensation of the helium inside her gradually pushing her body outward. Nowhere near as loud or as fast as when she was being inflated by the tanks, but still there. "Jordan," she said calmly.
"Hm?"
"I'm in a dark-colored latex suit, outside, and full of gas."
"Yeah, and?"
"Dark colors absorb heat. Gas expands and gets more buoyant when it gets warmer." She paused. "You didn't account for this, did you."
"...not as such, no," was Jordan's reluctant reply. "But don't worry, I've got your tether." She tugged on the hose for emphasis, only for the nozzle to disengage from Flora's navel. "Whoops."
With nothing holding her down Flora began her lazy ascent into the skies above the beach, the heat from the sun fueling her continued expansion as she swelled even larger. "JORDAN!!" Flora screamed. "YOU ARE BANNED FROM SCIENCE *FOREVER!!!* DO YOU HEAR ME?!"
Jordan stared upward. "Oh boy." She looked away sheepishly. "Don't worry folks, she'll be fine. Really."
The pony-tailed brunette in the shorts, sandals and tank top gave a short, dignified bow. "Good day. I am Flora."
The short-haired brunette in the red form-fitting bodysuit waved with all the self-control of an eight-year-old. "I'm Jordan. Today, at this beach..." She gestured to the beach. "...we're going to do more science."
"Or something vaguely connected to it."
"Are you saying that we didn't do science last time?" Jordan asked, hands on her hips.
"It was vaguely science-related, but not actual science. This, probably even less so."
She sighed. "Oh well. In any case, we're going to be doing science involving water. I'm going to be the subject this time because it was Flora's idea."
Flora looked over Jordan's back, holding a high-tech hose that trailed off to parts unknown. "Do you have a preference as to where you'd like the hose to be?"
"Doesn't matter."
Flora thought for a moment, then shrugged and pushed it through the bodysuit into Jordan, prompting the test subject to let out a yelp.
"You said it didn't matter," Flora said, "and I assumed that you'd be better off with it in the 'in' instead of the 'out,' if you catch my meaning."
"It was cold!"
"Sorry."
"...and you could have warned me!"
"Again, sorry. Now then," Flora said, producing a remote control. "Are you ready?"
She gave her a thumbs-up. "Ready."
Without much fanfare, Flora tapped one of the buttons, causing a distant motor to rumble to life and sending a flow of water through the hose.
Jordan cradled her belly beneath her hands as it surged outward, stumbling as she struggled to keep standing. Her knees shook before giving out entirely, and she fell onto her backside, legs splayed to the sides as her gut jiggled from the impact. She made an attempt to stand back up, but as her stomach began to expand over her thighs she quickly abandoned her plan.
Circling around, Flora took a seat on her stomach, sinking into it as the water inside of Jordan flowed into her backside and breasts. "Now normally one would think that she would be able to get up," she said.
"Not when you're sitting on me," Jordan retorted.
"Yes, well, I'm only doing it so the water is a bit more even in you."
"What do you-" She paused as she felt her backside swell, pushing her up off the sand. "Oh."
"As I was saying, normally one would think that Jordan would be able to get up. After all, we've seen larger moving about."
Jordan's ass crossed into volleyball-sized territory and beyond as her legs began to thicken. "We?"
"I'm speaking hypothetically. This, of course, would be an impossibility; water weighs eight and one-third pounds per gallon, taking up 231 cubic inches per gallon."
Her stomach rose higher and grew wider, spreading around to her sides and back before slowly merging with her rear. "So..."
"In so many words, a two-foot sphere of water would be over 260 pounds. Well beyond the weight that most people would be able to support suspended from their frames." Flora hopped off the top of Jordan's stomach before turning back towards her, arms out. "Give me your hands."
Jordan stretched her bloated, sausage-like arms out over her breasts, taking Flora's hands in hers. With a grunt, Flora pulled the test subject forward onto her stomach. The sudden movement set the water inside of her into motion, pushing both her breasts out by another half a foot as it sloshed forward. Jordan waved her arms and legs in a feeble attempt to keep her balance as she slowly came to rest again.
By her side, Flora pulled her sandals off, tossing them off into the distance. She took a few steps back and, with a running jump, scaled Jordan's side and hopped atop her. At five feet high it was a bit of a challenge, but it was only going to get larger from there; better now than never, she reasoned.
Jordan craned her head to the side to look at her friend. "Hi there."
"Hello," she said, standing astride her back. "Now in a few seconds you'll be reaching the six-foot point, whereupon you will weigh nearly three and a half tons."
She looked down her breasts, which were passing "exercise ball" size and heading towards "bean bag." "What about these?"
"Those would be several hundred more pounds. I daresay that Oompa-Loompas must be absurdly strong to do what they do."
"Maybe it's light water," she suggested.
"Light water."
"Yeah. Nuclear reactors use heavy water, right?" Jordan made an attempt to gesture, but thanks to the rounded cone shape her arms were taking on she only managed to wave her forearms slightly. "So they could use light water in this.
Flora stared at the back of her friend's head. "It doesn't work that way."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes." Composing herself, she continued. "Now then. What most people don't think of is that expansion isn't linear. It takes more of something to fill something - or someone - as they get larger. For example, with a steady influx of water it would take more time for you to go from seven feet to eight than it would to go from six to seven. Which is why, sometimes..." She nonchalantly pressed a button on the remote. "...you need to speed things up a bit."
From somewhere behind Jordan the pump began humming a bit louder and a second later she felt the nozzle of the hose widen, followed by an increase in the flow of water. Her limbs spread out in an "X"-shape, depriving her of motion as the last of her ass and back smoothed out, becoming one with her belly. From between her breasts she saw the beach grow more distant, but as she grew so did they, threatening to block her view entirely. The round cones of her arms and legs continued to fill, but at nowhere near the pace of the rest of her. "So how big do you need me?" she asked.
"How big do I -need- you?" Flora chuckled before pressing another button.
The nozzle widened further as the pumping continued. Larger and larger Jordan grew; she felt her limbs stretching apart, growing further from her head, her hands and feet sunk into deep dimples at their tips. Her stomach continued to fill in all directions, and the ground disappeared from her sight as her breasts consumed her field of view.
She lay down on Jordan's back, her head by her ear. "I believe you mean, 'how big do I -want- you?'"
"Okay..." she said warily. "How big do you want me?"
She clicked another button. "I thought you'd never ask."
The flow became a torrent, each stroke of the massive pump punctuated by a pulse of fluid surging into her womanhood, making her body tremble and shake. Jordan's growth came in throbs, her skin bulging out another few inches from the force of the water before receding, only to repeat it a second later. She squeezed her eyes shut, moaning in time to the piston's pumping.
"A wonderful place for a hose, isn't it?" Flora whispered. "Just like college, hm?"
"Please..." she panted between the pump's thrusts. "It's too... too hard... too fast..."
"Too hard?" She looked off to the side; despite her size, Jordan was growing fast enough that Flora could see the view change. "Aren't you always the one talking about how -big- you can get?"
Had anyone else been at the beach, they would have seen a giant red water balloon nearly forty feet high with two twenty-foot spheres hanging off the front and four ten-foot cones spread around the top, all fed by a thick hose trailing off into the distance. None would have noticed the head of the "balloon," nor the woman standing on top, but that it was still growing would not have escaped their attention.
Gradually, Jordan became aware of a rising pressure within her. Little by little her skin gave less and less. Even stretched to this size, she could still feel her navel and nipples pop out as her body struggled to continue to contain the sheer volume inside of it. Her cheeks and lips swelled dramatically, muffling her moans and grunts, and she rocked her head back and forth in a desperate attempt to alert her friend to her plight.
Mercifully, Jordan noticed and turned off the pump, standing up and pacing in a circle atop her. "I did the math on this before we started, you know," she said. "Right now you're fifty feet around, not accounting for deformation due to gravity. You are, literally, taller than a four-story office building and larger than the average hot air balloon."
"Th... that's nice..." she grunted, forcing the words through fattened lips.
She stripped off her tank top, exposing her bare breasts. "You hold nearly a half-million gallons of water, roughly equivalent to three-quarters of an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and weigh over two thousand tons. I'm surprised that you didn't sink into the sand by now." Pausing, she inhaled sharply.
"Can we... stop now?"
There was a hollow hiss as Flora blew into her thumb, and her bustline grew a foot in all directions. "Oh, I don't know." Another inhale, another blow. "You looked like you were enjoying yourself." Inhale, blow. "Nonetheless, if you want all of that water out of you, I supposed I can rid you of it the same way I rid myself of all that helium." Inhale, blow.
"As you floated up... it slowly... ngh... leaked out?" She forced a hopeful smile. "Then you... gently drifted back d... back down, perfectly safe?"
Now officially wider than she was tall, Flora squeezed her chest experimentally before leaping off the side of Jordan, her makeshift parachute slowing her fall. "No."
"But-"
The pumping began again, continuing to fill her with water that she couldn't hold. Her skin creaked and she moaned with every thrust, her body filling to the brink as she edged ever closer to the inevitable, one thought repeating itself in time to the pumping: "Gotta come, gotta come, gotta come..."
As the groaning of Jordan's overtaxed form rose to a crescendo she began to tremble, reaching her climax moments before her body reached an explosive climax of its own.
The short-haired brunette in a lab coat waved. "Hi again! I'm Jordan."
The pony-tailed brunette in a tank top, open blouse, and a skirt gave a polite nod. "I am Flora."
"...and today," Jordan said, "we are doing science."
"Again."
"Again," she repeated.
"Despite my stern warning against you doing so."
Jordan arched an eyebrow. "Why are -you- getting upset? The last time we did science you exploded me by filling me with an Olympic pool's worth of water."
"...and the time before that," Flora replied, "-you- filled -me- with helium and let me float off for most of the day."
"I didn't -let- you, it was an accident! What -you- did was deliberate."
"Though you seemed to be enjoying yourself towards the end."
Jordan blushed. "That's- that's not important!" She cleared her throat. "Anyway, I wasn't about to do more science, but we got a grant."
"From whom?"
"I dunno, Smash? Smush? Some company beginning with an 'S.' I was in a hurry to cash the check so I didn't really look." From the pocket of the lab coat she produced a device that, for all the world, looked like a cheap children's toy ray gun. "But they sent this along with it."
Flora eyed the device dubiously. "...and that is...?"
"It's a shrink ray," she said, adjusting the dial on the side.
She nodded, letting out a note of disapproval. "We're catering to the perverts now, are we?"
Jordan looked over at her. "How often is that joke going to be made?"
"Until it stops being funny, I would imagine."
"Wouldn't it have to start being funny for that to happen?"
They grinned and pointed at each other for a second before returning to normal. "But seriously," Flora said, "if this is going where I think it is, one of us is going to have to be the subject."
"You want to zap me?"
"No, I'll be your guinea pig." She gestured to Jordan, then herself. "Three to two. It's only fair. Plus you're the one in the lab coat."
Jordan nodded, taking a step back and aiming the gun at Flora. "Ready?"
"Ready."
The beam that emanated from the tip of the shrink ray and struck Flora looked so positively artificial that it had to have been a deliberate design decision on the part of the makers. Flora assumed it had some effect, however, as there was an electric tingling across her skin as her shoes suddenly felt a size too large, and her formerly eye-to-eye stance with Flora had become eye-to-nose. "Are we simply going to ignore that rapid growth and shrinking, as portrayed, require matter to be created and destroyed, respectively?"
"Yes." Pocketing the shrink ray, she pulled out several index cards. "You could say that a growth ray provided energy that was converted to matter, but if you did that, to double the height of the average woman, you'd be using enough energy to power the United States for a hundred and fifty years."
As her clothing grew larger on her, Flora was forced to hold the collar on her tank top up with one hand to keep herself covered. Her skirt began to slip off her smaller hips, and her other hand went to its hem to hold it in place. "Bit of a waste, I'd say."
"Yeah." She threw a card away. "Besides, the human body doesn't scale too good. A lot of the world's tallest recorded people needed crutches or leg braces to walk due to the weight being placed on their legs."
"Their bones had trouble supporting their body," she said, stepping out of her shoes and pushing them aside. Flora's hips, meanwhile, had trouble keeping her panties up; as they slid free she held her legs together, catching it with her knees. Realizing that she had no way to get them back up and keep them up, however, she let them drop.
"For -really- tall people they'd have problems all over. Their lungs wouldn't be able to get enough oxygen, their hearts wouldn't be able to pump blood through their body, and their muscles wouldn't be able to move everything. That's because-"
"The square-cube law." Her blouse slipped off one of her shoulders, looking more like an ill-fitting lab coat with overlong bunched-up sleeves on Flora's shrunken frame. She let her skirt drop - her tank top was starting to reach far enough down anyway - and shook one arm free of the sleeve, then switched hands on her top and pulled out the other, letting it fall away. "Their organs would increase by the square of the scaling factor, but the mass would increase by the cube of it. It's also why their bodies would be composed of more normal-sized cells compared to the average person, rather than a similar number of giant ones: Their cells would be subject to the same law."
"Exactly." Jordan tossed two cards over her shoulder. "Also, for the really, -really- tall people, they'd be so large that the signals from their nerves would take seconds to reach their brains. It would be like trying to play an online game with terrible lag."
"Fascinating, but I daresay that it's not really relevant to us." She looked down at herself; the bottom of her tank top was starting to bunch up on the ground, and she pushed the straps off her shoulders, leaving her nude. "By which I mean me."
"Well, smaller bodies have trouble maintaining body heat, and since people usually get lighter as they get smaller, it's safe to assume that they're losing matter and not just becoming more dense. So at this point you're losing brain cells."
"Are you saying that shrinking is making me less intelligent?"
"I dunno." She tossed the last card in her hands away. "Do you feel dumber?"
Flora looked up, and up, at Jordan. Proportionally she was still the same, but in terms of height she came up to just below Jordan's knees. She didn't seem to be getting any smaller, thankfully. "I volunteered for this, so I must be." She shivered before rubbing her arms.
"If you're cold I can find you some old Barbie doll clothes if you want."
"Thanks, but no, I think we're done here. You can return me to normal now."
Jordan averted her eyes guiltily for a second. "No I can't."
"I'm sorry?"
"It was a shrink ray, not a shrink-and-grow ray."
Flora folded her arms across her chest and glared at her. Despite being less than a foot tall and completely naked in the center a small pile of her own clothes she still managed at least a modicum of intimidation. "I'm stuck like this."
"No! No! I wouldn't have done this if it were permanent! It wears off!"
"Does it."
"Yeah!" She gestured, rubbing the back of her neck. "In a... few hours."
"HOURS." It was a surprising amount of volume from a small body. "I had -plans-, Jordan. Plans that didn't involve me being tiny for 'a few hours.'"
Jordan thought for a moment. "Okay, so..." She approached Flora before leaning over and gently picking her up, holding her under the arms and around the waist with one hand. "Oh wow, you're really light. "
As Flora's legs dangled, she clung to Jordan's fingers for dear life. She knew she was safe in her hand, but despite that she didn't want to take any chances. "Being small will do that to you. How do you propose we remedy this problem?"
She crossed the room, stopping beside a large air tank. Uncoiling the hose with her free hand, she gave the valve on the nozzle a quick tap and was rewarded with a burst of air.
"Oh."
Jordan held up Flora, fingers and thumb beneath her arms, before pressing the nozzle to her navel with surprising precision and holding down the trigger.
Flora went wide-eyed as a blast of air entered her, the force so powerful and the volume so great that she felt that she would burst then and there. Her body was shoved outward in all directions so quickly it may as well had been instantaneous to her, becoming a volleyball-sized sphere balanced in Jordan's free hand. Dazed, she moved one arm to try and test her elasticity, realization eventually dawning on her that she had mobility in her arms and, indeed, her head and limbs were completely untouched, dangling off the sides of her body.
Jordan quirked an eyebrow. "Well, that's new. Maybe I can..."
She gave Flora another long drought of air, pressing the trigger more gently. Her forearms and thighs went stiff, sticking straight out, before swelling with air. Their growth made them longer as well as rounder, the air concentrating in the upper arms and legs, thickening them to a more proportionate width before the thickness spread downward, stretching them out like a party balloon, until they stopped at her elbows and knees.
Jordan squeezed down on the trigger, trying to speed up Flora's inflation and accidentally giving her another full blast, her body rapidly blimping a few more inches before she turned it off. Pulling the nozzle free, she tapped it a few times to test the spring before placing it against Flora's navel and easing another slow stream of air into her. It continued along her forearms and lower legs, stretching them longer and thicker before pausing again at her ankles and wrists. Flora flexed her hands and wiggled her feet just before they swelled up, all at once, into nub-covered balloons. A second later her digits followed suit, becoming fat sausages for fingers and round balls for toes.
She continued to fill her, waiting for the growth to continue. Flora was certainly taller than she was before Jordan started pumping gas into her, and definitely rounder. She wasn't heavier, though, and despite her size that was the one saving grace that let her hold her one-handed. "You're almost done, Flora."
Flora went cross-eyed. "Jordan, I feel a little strange." Her lips suddenly grew plump and her cheeks fat, and she was aware of a hissing noise somehow coming from -between- her ears just before her oval-shaped face took on a more rounded, puffy look. It doubled, then tripled in scale, growing before finally becoming more proportional to her limbs, albeit much more spherical than it was before.
Jordan removed the hose, effortlessly setting Flora down. She was back to roughly her normal height, if not her normal proportions: Physically, she resembled no less than a flesh-toned exercise ball with swollen limbs and a head full of air. "See? Normal size."
Flora slowly patted her belly with half-bent fingers, not really sure of what she was feeling as she swayed unsteadily on rounded feet. "Thank you?" she slowly asked.
"You're welcome. How does it feel?"
She thought for several seconds. "Kind of good, but..." She lazily gestured with one hand towards her head. "...my head feels all disconnected."
"Like it's full of air?"
"Yeah."
"It is."
"Oh." Flora meandered away, moving in a slow, bobbing gait. "I'm going to lie down for a bit."
Jordan nodded. "Good plan. Just don't walk in front of-"
Flora glided back past her, slowly spinning in midair. "Wooooooaaaaaaah."
"...the fan."
"Hello once again!" The short-haired brunette in a lab coat and T-shirt gestured to herself. "I'm Jordan, and this-" She gestured to the pony-tailed brunette in a lab coat and pant suit beside her. "-is Flora."
Flora gave a polite nod. "How do you do."
"We're here to do more science."
"I couldn't help but notice that we're both in lab coats," Flora said. "Which one of us is the subject of this experiment, pray tell?"
"Neither of us."
Flora arched an eyebrow. "Really."
"Really. It's the sort of science that we need another person for." She turned, waving someone over. "Come on!"
A caramel-skinned young woman with deep brown shoulder-length hair confidently walked into view, dressed in green latex bike shorts and a crop top that left her toned midriff exposed. "The name's Kesia. How's it going?"
"Quite a bit better," Flora replied, "knowing I won't be getting very small or very large for once."
"But I will," Kesia said. She gestured to her abs. "I know you had me wear this to show off, but not in the usual way."
Jordan reached into the pocket of her lab coat, producing several index cards. "Usual for most people, maybe, but not for you. Flora?"
"I'll be right back," Flora said, walking off.
"Thank you. Now then, let's talk about food. Food has calories, but what we call 'calories' is actually known as a large calorie, kilogram calorie, kilocalorie, or food calorie, the symbol for which is 'Cal' with a capital 'C'. The symbol 'cal' with a lower-case 'C' denotes the small calorie or gram calorie, and is defined as the amount of energy needed to increase the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius at standard atmospheric pressure. So food calories are basically measures of the amount of energy required to heat one liter of water one degree Celsius."
"You brought me here for a lecture?" Kesia asked.
"It's for science." Jordan threw an index card away. "Now, the average woman needs 2,000 calories of food per day, and any calories in excess of that are typically turned to fat. One pound of fat is approximately equal to 3,500 calories so, for example, if Kesia or I ate 2,500 calories a day we'd be gaining one pound a week." Holding a card between two fingers, she sent it spinning away in a lazy arc. "Coincidentally, do you know what else equals 3,500 calories?"
There was a pregnant silence as Kesia stood there with her hands behind her back, waiting patiently for a few seconds before glancing over at Jordan. Jordan made an encouraging gesture with her free hand, to which Kesia replied by shrugging. Jordan rolled her eyes, though before things could continue Flora returned, wheeling in a large table stacked high with boxes and trays of thick, creamy white discs.
"Cheesecake," Jordan said.
"Oh!" Kesia laughed nervously. "Sorry, you didn't explain what was going on."
"She usually doesn't," Flora said, setting down a chair. "Enjoy."
Kesia's gaze went from Flora, to the table, to Jordan, back to the table, then back to Flora. "For real?"
"Yes."
"All of this-" She gestured. "-is for me?"
"Yes."
"For science," Jordan added.
Kesia rubbed her hands together, licking her lips as she sat down. Picking up a slice, she brought it to her open mouth, neatly inhaling it in two huge bites. "If'h goob!"
"I know, right?" She took a second to read the topmost card in her hand. "So let's say that Kesia here is a hundred and forty pounds, and she's interested in becoming three hundred pounds."
"She's certainly on her way," Flora said, watching her devour the food.
"She'd have to gain a hundred and sixty pounds, or take in 560,000 calories. That's the equivalent of three hundred and twenty cheesecakes." She let the card drop just as Kesia began working on the second cake. "Anyone could do it, just not in one sitting."
Kesia let out a muffled "mmf" and pointed to herself, holding a half-eaten wedge of raspberry swirl cheesecake.
"Don't worry, I was getting to that. Now, the average human stomach holds thirty-three ounces and can stretch to a hundred and thirty-five. That's a little more than a gallon."
"I'm reminded of the time," Flora said, "that you recorded yourself doing the gallon of milk challenge and acting like it was absurdly simple in order to trick others into doing the same and getting sick."
She laughed. "Yeah, that was great. Anyhoo, that's not a lot of room for food when you get down to it. If you wanted to eat all of that cheesecake in one sitting, by the time you were done your stomach would be four feet across and weight about six hundred and forty pounds."
Flora and Jordan looked over at Kesia as the latter threw another card away. She was making rapid progress; her abs had lost their definition, replaced by a soft bulge.
"We might be here a while," Flora said.
"Dnn wrr-" Kesia held up an index finger, swallowing what was her mouth. "Don't worry, I'm willing to do whatever it takes for science."
"That's the spirit!" Jordan replied.
Following that statement Kesia fell silent again as she ate unrelentingly, without pause. Her gain was both slow and fast, a gradual swelling that started out round, then became ever so slightly teardrop-shaped once it was large enough to be burdened by gravity. It grew onto her lap then, as she spread her legs, filled the space between them, curving around her as it merged with her newfound love handles. As cakes continued to disappear and be delivered by Flora and Jordan she sagged towards the floor, forced to sit bow-legged due to its size. Eventually they began stacking the food up on the shelf of her belly once it rested against the floor and, after what felt like hours, the last of the cakes disappeared down her throat.
Kesia smacked her lips. "That was good." She leaned forward, spreading her arms across the swell of her distended gut. "That was -so- good."
"I can't imagine you'd have the opportunity to do it too often," Flora said.
"Oh, no, I have a figure to maintain. Besides, food is more expensive than water or air."
"Now," Jordan said, putting away her phone and pulling the index cards out again, "let's talk digestion. The breakdown of food varies depending on where it is. Carbohydrates, like sugars, break down in the mouth, proteins in the stomach, and fats in the intestine. Digestion takes about six to eight hours, but that's for a normal meal. Something like this-" She patted the side of Kesia's stomach. "-would take several orders of magnitude longer to break down."
"As an aside," Flora added, "all of this is discounting certain... other bodily functions."
"Yeah, you'd need to go somewhere else for that." She threw the card over her shoulder. "Finally, the average human contains 110,000 calories, or about thirty pounds of added weight. But don't eat people."
"Don't tell me what to do with my life," Kesia retorted.
Flora and Jordan eyed Kesia warily before exchanging a glance and quietly edging away from her.