Five Suns to Showdown

Act I

Nikki looked out the window and blew out a bored sigh. The early autumn sun beat down on the campus. Nikki looked at the stack of printouts before her, then at her watch. Three hours until quitting time, six to party time. She ran a hand through her black hair and blinked her clear blue eyes with exaggerated slowness. She adjusted her slightly-too-tight red and black horizontally-striped shirt. She lifted the next printout from the stack.

A crackling filled the air before her. A tendril of electricity reached out. Nikki looked, but while thought coalesced in her bored brain, more veins of electricity rolled from the thin air. Nikki stood slowly, her slightly-too-tight skirt riding up her bottom.

The tendrils of electricity pushed the air apart — a bright portal opened. A slender woman stepped out, dressed in gleaming armor of pure light. She looked imperiously about the room. She wore a strange headdress with flowing feathers that covered her head and the top half of her face. Almond-shaped eye-holes glowing white turned toward Nikki.

“So. This is where it all starts.”

Act II

Nikki stumbled backward, the printout forgotten in her hand.

The tall woman regarded Nikki. “Unbelievably, you must be the one. I depleted five suns to open this portal… so let’s be thorough. What’s that in your hand?”

Nikki backed into a file cabinet with a loud bang. “Who are you?”

The woman smiled cruelly. “I am Mistress of Light from the Dimension of Assemblies. I rule there. At least… until a meddler came.” The woman stepped forward to stroke Nikki’s cheek. “Are you that meddler?”

Nikki shuddered, and blinked her blue eyes without understanding. “I’m a grad student. I don’t….”

The woman laughed. “Ah! So it is you! My dear, I am here to take all from you before you can take anything from me.” She pulled the paper from Nikki’s hand and regarded it. “This is it! I came at just the right moment.” Reading, she laughed harshly. “Of course! Unbelievable that this escaped all our scholars in their millenia of forced labor.” As she read, her armor glowed and crackled.

Then her stomach surged out beneath her breastplate. Nikki gasped loudly.

The tall woman looked down at her swelling belly. “Oh dear! Too much of a good thing.” She stepped forward, and stood before Nikki. “Here. A taste of what you almost had.” She pinned Nikki against the file cabinet with the globe of her belly, and pushed a finger into Nikki’s mouth. Nikki’s cheeks glowed as power flowed into her. Her own belly instantly rolled forward and burst the zipper on the side of her tight skirt. It pushed out from under her red-and-black shirt. Nikki moaned.

The Mistress stepped back, her tummy smaller, but growing again. “Still more! Lucky we have a disposable planet here to absorb the excess.” She knelt down, and reaching around her swollen belly with one arm, placed a hand on the floor. She shouted loudly as the power flew from her into the ground.

A shock wave of white energy flowed from the building. Nikki struggled to the window, her arms and legs filling. Her cheeks filled out and made her mouth into a pouty “O” as she watched. Her striped shirt strained to stay intact. Her skirt had already given up, and her rounded butt pushed into the air.

The white shock wave passed through the campus, and every woman it struck swelled. The campus before her became dotted with growing co-ed spheres.

The shock wave kept going, through the city, where women in light dresses blew up. It passed the beach, where women in bikinis escaping the heat wave lay by the water. They too swelled. Across the continent, women felt the power of the wave and grew round. A pretty news anchor spoke urgently into the camera to inform the public as she filled her blazer and rolled backwards off the set. In France, party goers stared as young women dancing to electronica jumped, cried out, then swelled. Sleeping Indian women swelled in their beds, waking up as giant fleshy balls. Young women in China suddenly filled up inside their morning robes, greeting the sun over the curve of their inflated bodies.

Around the world, women were struck with the sudden swelling affliction.

Nikki blew up quickly, and with the extra power the Mistress put into her, grew taller and wider until her head bumped the ceiling. She looked helplessly at the Mistress as the pressure built. She squeezed her eyes shut as she reached the bursting point.

Act III

There was a rushing sound, and Nikki opened her eyes as someone came through the portal. It was a shapely woman in a tight red-and-black outfit.

“You!” cried the Mistress, now back to her sleek form. “Fivesun Lass! How…?”

The newcomer looked at the Mistress with clear blue eyes behind a black mask. “I told you I would thwart you wherever and whenever you tried to spread your evil!”

Nikki blinked her own blue eyes and groaned. Her skin creaked with the pressure inside her.

The Mistress held up the paper. “But what can you do? You are powerless in this dimension… and I have this!”

“I can do this: 30 second freeze!” The newcomer held up a small silver statue.

The Mistress gasped. “No!”

The statue flashed in the newcomer’s hand.

The woman snatched the paper from the Mistress’s still hand, and leaped to the giant ball that Nikki had become. She scampered up the curve of the young woman’s body, and held the paper out. “Read it!” she commanded.

Nikki blinked. The paper was a printout of a lab run, another boring failure like all the rest. Then she realized this one was different. They’d found it. The discovery of the “God Particle” had been a tremendous breakthrough, the key that united the particles of the quantum world, but what powered the “God Particle”? Here was the answer, on the printout before her.

Suddenly the link between the intense energy inside her round body and her own consciousness became obvious to her. Nikki found she was able channel that energy with her willpower. She felt her round body shrink.

The Mistress stirred just as Nikki concentrated and filled the room with a burst of energy. The other women in the room instantly started to swell, the Mistress most of all. Her armor burst off and clattered on the floor. The Mistress began to focus her own power, but Nikki threw out a hand. “Enough! Back you go!” Her hand flashed, and the Mistress bounced backwards and rolled through the portal. It crackled and winked shut.

Now back to normal size, Nikki walked over to the strange woman who had saved her. The woman, now a large ball herself, grunted, “Pressure. Too late… for me. Save… the Earth.”

Nikki reached over the woman’s round body and removed the mask. She gasped. She was looking at herself, a few years older. The other looked at her and smiled gently, though her bright red face strained from the pressure inside her.

Nikki smiled and placed a hand on the woman’s chest, drawing away the pressure. “No one will pop today. Besides, Fivesun Lass… you have some explaining to do.”