The Haymaker, part 1

“Good morning. I’m Virginia Dawson, and this is a FlashNews-33 bulletin. FlashNews-33 has learned that a major breakdown of the Martian blockade has occurred. Hundreds are feared dead in the massive surprise attack led by several militant groups of Martian colonists. NASA administrators and spokesmen for the Earth Alliance say that there is no risk to the planet Earth at this time and reinforcements will be dispatched to the blockade location immediately. For more news, a recap of last night’s playoff games, and a look at your weekend weather forecast, stay tuned for FlashNews-33 at 6.”

“Shit.”

Cartwright saw no need to watch the whole news. He already knew what the weekend forecast was – snow, and blizzard-like proportions of it. He had watched the playoff games last night – they weren’t worth hearing about again. And that news blurb told him something he already knew.

So when James Cartwright turned off the TV in disgust, he merely stared blankly at the wall. “The natives are getting more restless by the minute,” he thought to himself.

The irony was that the “natives” weren’t even natives at all. The year was 2115, and only 20 short years ago, the first human colonists had arrived on Mars. This “giant leap for mankind”, as Neil Armstrong’s famous words from 1969 so adequately described it, was a joint effort from several of Earth’s prominent nations, mainly the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, China, and Japan. The original party of 60 colonists (30 men and women), spread across a convoy of five ships, was in space for over a year en route to the red planet. Upon arrival, they took only a few minutes to pop the cork and toast their new beginning, and then donned their environment suits and began setting up what would become their first city on the planet’s surface.

Over the next several years, more and more colonists were sent to Mars by the thousands, and by 2111 there were well over ten thousand colonists living in the bubble-like cities on the planet’s surface. To assist communication efforts between Earth and Mars, massive transmission beacons were erected on Mars’ moons, Phobos and Deimos. Before long, the colonies began taking steps to be more self-sustaining, although several vital things – namely water – still needed to be shipped in from Earth.

Eventually – some would say inevitably – the Martian colonies, far away from their home planet, sought to set up their own system of government. Leaders were nominated, elections were held, and bylaws were adopted, all without the home planet’s knowledge. With increasing demands from the colonists and decreasing cooperation from Earth, the festering sentiments of dissent held by the Martians boiled over into full blown rebellion. The colonists began to stockpile their water, knowing that the shipments would cease once the open revolt took place. Using their special knowledge of the Martian atmosphere and their existing technology, they were able to secretly design tremendous atmospheric weapons which could theoretically cut a wide swath through a group of space fighters using solar energy. These massive weapons consisted of power grids stretching across miles of landscape, but operated under the guise of solar power storage facilities. Being able to trust only their satellites and the words of the colonists, Earth bought it.

In August, 2113, a team of Martian pilots hijacked three water frigates en route to Mars. The pilots boarded all three vessels, murdered the crew, and brought the ships back to Mars, where the water was transferred to their storage tanks. NASA, which had already been growing suspicious of the Martians’ actions, had already set up a heavily fortified outpost about a week away from the red planet. When the news came in that the bait had been taken, 400 aerospace fighters launched from the outpost to make an unexpected attack the planet’s surface.

None of them returned.

Details on NASA’s end were sketchy, but they knew that somehow all of the fighters had been lost. Surely they didn’t burn up in the planet’s atmosphere; the simulations had been perfect for Martian atmospheric reentry (although field testing had not been started yet). It also wasn’t possible that the Martians had developed a weapon; they had nothing to build a weapon out of. Right?

Over the next several years, the emerging war continued to escalate as the newly-christened Earth Alliance was repeatedly trounced at the hands of the everyman Martian resistance. By the summer of 2114, the Martians had begun to capture Earth fighters and replicate their newest technologies, making the colonists’ upper hand that much more sizeable. Earth Alliance spacecraft from then on were outfitted with self-destruct routines, but the damage had already been done.

Which is why Dr. Cartwright had to listen to Virginia Fucking Dawson sugarcoat the latest news from the warfront every night. It was January of 2115, and the Earth Alliance was having its ass handed to itself. Pilots were dying faster than new ones could be trained. Spacecraft were being reduced to scrap faster than new ones could be built. Thankfully, such grim news was kept under extreme confidentiality, and the Alliance spoonfed to the media exactly what the people wanted to hear. If the people of Earth knew the real story, the ensuing pandemonium would be a best-case scenario.

Cartwright was the administrator of NASA’s research and development group, and was responsible for coming up with new ways to beat the Martians. Considering the Alliance’s success so far, it was no small wonder that Cartwright even brought home a paycheck anymore. Everything he had tried designing, from small agile fighters to heavily armed battleships, was a complete failure. The Alliance was running out of time, and Cartwright had almost run out of ideas.

Almost.

There was one idea that, theoretically, could be such a monstrous knockout punch, such a tremendous trump card in this pitiful hand the Alliance had been dealt, that the Martians could be defeated in short order if the Alliance Council approved the idea. Cartwright had been hesitant to propose the idea because it involved someone very close to him. That person was also oblivious to the whole thing, which made him even more hesitant. However, by this point he had no choice. NASA had already approved the proposal, and the Council’s decision was supposed to come down any day now.

With the TV off, Cartwright’s thoughts began to fly. Assuming his data on Mars from his simulations were correct, the plan would be flawless. Of course, considering his luck with simulations the past few years, it could just as easily fail in the early stages. It was indeed a long shot, as nothing of its kind had ever been tried before. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

As he contemplated the odds, his phone rang. “Cartwright,” he answered.

“Jim,” the voice at the other end replied, “the Council has made their decision.”

Cartwright drew in a deep breath. “Give me some good news.”

“Well… it’s supposed to stop snowing by Monday.”

“Dammit,” Cartwright muttered. The proposal had been approved.

“How soon should I begin making preparations?” the voice asked.

“Call the surgeon and have him lined up for tonight at 11. If you have to drag him out of bed, pull him out of his wife, pay him triple overtime, I don’t care. Just get him. We need to be en route to Mars by the end of next week. As for everything else, just do what we agreed upon before. I’ll take care of the personal matters – it’ll be easier hearing it from me.” Cartwright’s heart sank. “I hope like hell this works.”

“Me too, Jim,” the voice responded. “See you at 11.”

“Right.”

 

The person close to James was his niece, Aston Petersen. After his sister and brother-in-law were both killed in a plane crash, James became the legal guardian of their only child Aston, who at the time was only 13. Single himself, he took Aston in as his own daughter, and she looked up to him like he was her own father. Over the years the two of them became very close-knit, and Aston eventually entered college to pursue the same career as James. She graduated with highest honors and even worked directly under James before getting married at 22 and trying to start a family of her own.

However, things did not work out. Aston became pregnant three times, and miscarried each time. Not long after the news of the last miscarriage, the city’s strontium gas pipeline ruptured, and her husband Greg was killed in an explosion at his office. Aston herself became severely poisoned from a related leak at their home, and was in the hospital for two months afterward.

When she was released from the hospital, at the age of 25, she fell into a deep pit of depression. She attempted suicide twice – once with pills, once with a gun – and each time she ended up sobbing on the floor in a fetal position, unable to follow through. Upon James’s advice, she moved out of the house, sold all her possessions (including Greg’s car), and moved in with her uncle to start from scratch. Now 27, Aston had moved into her own one-bedroom apartment, worked as a lab assistant for a local doctor, and volunteered at the hospital she had stayed in during her recovery. Her life – emotionally, socially, and professionally – was finally on the mend.

Little did she know that she was the key to the Earth/Mars struggle. So when James called her on Thursday afternoon asking her to meet him at his office at 10pm that night to discuss an “important matter”, she was clueless.

When Aston arrived at his office, James was pacing behind his desk. Upon seeing her, they shared a hug and he offered her a chair.

“Aston,” he began, “I’ll cut to the chase. We have a big problem on our hands, and we need your help.”

“What’s wrong?” Aston asked, with a worried look on her face.

“Before I begin, I must ask that this conversation will not leave this office.”

“Of course, I won’t tell anyone. What’s going on?”

James sighed. “The Mars situation is in bad shape. REALLY bad shape. The truth of the matter is, we’re running out of time, and you are our only option left.”

“But I thought the Mars situation wasn’t that bad. I heard Virginia Dawson say—”

“Virginia Dawson doesn’t know SHIT,” James scoffed. “We’ve been lying to the press for months. Simply, if we keep getting hammered at this rate, we will be primed for defeat in two, maybe three weeks. After that, Earth could be in danger.”

“Oh my God,” Aston said, suddenly losing her breath. She sat silent for a few seconds, then asked, “What do you need me to do?”

James sighed again, now visibly ill at ease. “Do you remember the gas leak a couple years ago? The one that hospitalized you?”

“Of course, why?”

“As it turns out, when you were exposed to the gas for a few hours, it did some very strange things with your blood. It turned your blood very acidic, and it caused some serious damage to most of your vital organs. Before you woke up in the hospital, we had no choice but to give you an artificial heart.”

“What?!” she exclaimed, putting a hand over her heart and feeling a normal heartbeat.

“I know, I know,” he said, “I’m sorry you were never told. Of course, we had planned on disclosing everything with you, but there was a very curious development. The rest of your major organs were unaffected by your blood, which was an immediate red flag to us. So we took a sample of your blood, and found that it can be highly combustible in different forms. Because of the risk involved, we chose not to tell you until the appropriate time.” James paused. “Aston, that time is now.”

Aston was staring off into space. “Why?”

Another sigh. “Aston, we believe your blood could be used to build a powerful weapon. Some of the elements found in your blood are highly reactive to the gases found in the Martian atmosphere. If a bomb, built out of your blood, were to be detonated on the surface of Mars, it would be very devastating to the Martian cause.”

Aston stared blankly at James. “How much blood would you need?”

James looked her in the eye. “A lot.”

“What would that do to me?”

“What we will do is inject you with a reagent that will cause your blood to become even more acidic. The purpose of this is—” James took another breath, “—to liquefy your organs and blood vessels.”

Aston gasped and began to speak, but James continued. “Don’t worry, we will provide you with artificial organs of everything you need. Also, your blood will not be strong enough to damage or rupture your skin.” James inwardly kicked himself for the lie he was about to tell. “You should be fine.”

It took Aston a minute to find the right words. “Why would this do any good? It takes longer than two or three weeks to get to Mars. We will have already lost anyway.”

“If you agree to help us, we will fall back and try to begin diplomatic discussions, thereby buying us a good bit of time. There’s an experimental booster drive we’ve been working on that could get us to Mars in a little over three months. We will disguise the bomb and put it on a ship with that booster drive, which we will allow to be captured by the Martians. When they return to the planet’s surface, we will detonate the bomb. Game over.”

“And you’re sure it’s going to work?” Aston was no stranger to the many failures of the computer simulations.

James smiled and winked, trying to lighten up the mood. “95% sure.”

“And there are no other alternatives?”

“This is the fastest solution we can think of, and as far as we know, you are the only one in the world with this type of condition.”

“When would we start?”

“Tonight, in about 45 minutes. We will install the artificial organs and wean your body off of their biological counterparts. Then we will give you the injection and send you home. The process should finish in about three days.” He paused. “I’ll give you 45 minutes to think about it, but we really need to get started.”

Aston sat silent for a moment. Finally some sense of normalcy in her life, and now this comes up. She was worried. Hell, she was downright scared, not just because of the procedure her uncle described, but also because of the impending doom that Earth seemed to be facing. But she loved and trusted James, and finally decided that if her help was indeed needed, she would answer the call. After a minute or so, she looked up at James and said, “I’ll do it.”

James’s heart melted. “I knew you would. Now, let’s go upstairs to the lab and we can get a head start on preparations before the surgeon gets here.”

 

Three hours later, Aston awoke from the general anesthetic, not feeling any different inside. James was standing over her, smiling warmly. “It worked, Aston. You did great.”

“Good,” she answered groggily. “What… now?”

“Now? You get dressed, go home, and get some rest. I’ll drive you.”

“Ok.”

On the way home, snow flurries were beginning to fall. “Damned snow,” James thought. When they arrived in front of Aston’s apartment, James turned the car off. Aston, in the passenger seat, was having trouble keeping her eyes open. “Aston,” he began, “I can’t express how much this means.” Another lie: “Everything is going to be fine.”

Aston nodded in reply, too groggy to come up with the right words to say.

“Do me a favor,” James said. “Stay home and take it easy the next few days. We’ll call your boss in the morning and tell him you’re sick. If anyone calls and asks what happened, just tell them you got a stomach virus. You may experience some mild pain or discomfort, and possibly a little swelling due to blood collecting in different areas. If anything beyond that happens, or if you think anything is going wrong, just give me a call. Deal?”

Aston nodded again. Reaching for the door handle, she opened the door and stepped out shakily. “Do you need any help getting to the door?” James asked. She shook her head. Slowly she made her way up the sidewalk to her front door.

Entering her apartment, the door closed behind her and she shed her winter coat. Reaching under her sweater, she felt along her chest. No sign of any kind of surgery. Making her way to the bathroom, she pulled off the sweater and studied herself in the mirror. Sure enough, there was no visible evidence that a doctor had been poking around in her chest cavity only four hours before. She also was not in any pain whatsoever. “Amazing technology these days,” she thought to herself. Glancing out the bathroom window, she noticed the snow coming down harder. “Good thing I have tomorrow off.”

Moving to the bedroom, Aston pulled off her jeans, removed her bra, and pulled on a white tank top that she slept in. “Computer,” she called out, rubbing her goosebump-covered arms, “set inside temperature at… 85 degrees. Set alarm time… for 10am tomorrow. Lights off.”

As the lights faded out, the computer repeated, “Inside temperature, 85 degrees; alarm time, 10am Friday.”

Climbing into bed and pulling the sheets up to her head, Aston fell asleep quickly as the room warmed to her desired comfort level.

Outside, James drove away with tears in his eyes.

 

Aston awoke shivering the next morning. She was under three layers of covering and the air in her room was frigid. Sitting up in her bed, she could hear that the climate control system was off. “Computer,” she called out, “enable climate control, set temperature at 85 degrees.”

Silence.

Looking at a nearby clock, she noticed that it was 12:15pm – over two hours after the computer was supposed to awaken her. Wearing only the tank top and a pair of white panties, Aston pulled back the covers and yelped at just how cold the room was. She hurried to the living room to check the control panel. The panel, which was battery-operated, was on, and it showed that the system was unresponsive. After trying a couple of manual lighting controls, she surmised that the power had been knocked out.

Fortunately, the climate control system for each apartment had a backup generator underneath the apartment building that could be used for climate control in case of a power failure. Powering the entire apartment with the generator caused it to last only a day or so. Instead, the generators were dedicated to the climate control system and could sustain a week-long outage. After pressing a few buttons on the control panel, Aston could hear air passing through the vents, and smiled. Setting the temperature, she walked to the window and opened the shades.

She was greeted by a wall of snow that covered most of the window. She was used to snow, but rarely did it ever snow THIS much. Going to check the front door, she was unable to open it. “Well,” Aston thought to herself, “I guess that makes it easy to stay home for a while.”

Unlike last night, she was actually pretty coherent, so she returned to the bathroom to reexamine her chest in more detail. Removing the tank top, she looked closely at her chest and still saw no incision marks or sutures. Pressing her hand above her left breast, she felt her artificial heart pumping away at a normal pace. “Did they give me artificial lungs too?” she wondered, and drew in a deep breath to see. Nothing out of the normal; her lung capacity was the same as before, as far as she could tell. Her stomach? For someone who hadn’t eaten in about 18 hours, she was surprisingly not hungry. What about her bladder? She had no urge to urinate whatsoever. Aston pulled her panties down and sat on the toilet, trying to pee. She couldn’t. Something was wrong, and James hadn’t said anything about bodily functions shutting down.

Standing up, Aston pulled her panties up, put the tank top back on, and walked to the phone. The temperature was almost up to normal now. When she picked up the phone, the dial tone was absent. When she found her portable phone, the battery was dead, and there was no way to recharge it with the power out. Instead of panicking, Aston decided to wait the problem out. After all, panicking when nothing could be done was useless, and it wasn’t like she needed to pee and couldn’t.

Aston walked around the apartment to open all the shades and let in as much light as possible. Most of the windows were in the main living area, so she was able to get the living room and kitchen reasonably bright. Deciding that she needed a shower, Aston walked into the dark bathroom and tried to turn the bath water on.

To her surprise, the pipes had not frozen, and water flowed out of the faucet. Unfortunately, without an operational water heater, the water was ice cold. Deciding to shower anyway, Aston knelt over the edge of the tub to wash her hair first. After rinsing the shampoo out, she put her long brown hair up in a towel and stripped. With her liquid soap, she could apply the soap before having to step into the cold shower. She could be in and out in 30 seconds.

It was a good idea, but it was executed poorly. Once Aston had herself lathered up, she stepped in the shower and spent two minutes dancing around and screaming because of the water temperature. After another two minutes, she finally had her body rinsed off, and leaped out of the shower clawing for another towel. She rushed to dry herself off, shut the water off, and then ran to her bed and wrapped herself in the covers, not thinking to put any clothes on first. Aston lay shivering there for almost an hour, wrapped up like a human burrito, until she had finally warmed up enough to emerge from the bed.

With nothing better to do, Aston decided to put on some panties and a t-shirt and do some cleaning. She let her apartment get too messy too often. The closet was a pig sty, and she hadn’t cleaned the bathroom in a couple of months. As she scrubbed the toilet bowl, she was reminded that she still hadn’t had the urge to use the toilet at all. She had pretty much convinced herself that getting worried about it wouldn’t do any good, but she still found it odd.

By 4:30, Aston had finished with the bedroom, bathroom, and living area, and had moved to the kitchen. Upon a passing glance at the fridge, she remembered that she had not been hungry, even though it had been almost a whole day since she had eaten anything. Still, she decided not to get worried about it. Not yet, at least. After mopping the linoleum, she settled down onto the couch to read a book.

Three hours later, she had run out of daylight. The snow still covered much of the windows, and the front door was still stuck. Trying to think of things to do, she recalled that she hadn’t done her Yoga exercises in some time. Moving the couch and coffee table so there was sufficient floor space, Aston sat on the floor and removed her t-shirt. Clothes that didn’t stretch well weren’t very good for Yoga, and Aston didn’t feel like fumbling around in the dark for her sports bra. Besides, it’s not like anyone could see her right now anyway.

By 9, just as she was finishing up her exercises, Aston noticed that something wasn’t quite right. Her breasts almost seemed… bouncier? She was a C-cup to begin with, so they had already been bouncy to some extent. However, they simply felt… different. Inspecting them with her hands, she could feel nothing different about them. Of course, in the darkness she was unable to see anything. Standing up, she put the t-shirt back on and went to get a drink of water before she realized she wasn’t thirsty. “This is so weird,” she thought. “I hope the phones are working tomorrow.”

Having worn herself out with the activities of the day, and having exhausted all other things to do, Aston retired to her bed for an early night, and lay in bed until she fell asleep.

 

When she awoke at about 9am Saturday morning, she could feel that her body was different, and knew immediately what happened the night before.

Her breasts had grown. They weren’t noticeably bigger before she went to bed, but they had grown significantly as she slept. Peeling the covers back, she saw them, but would get a better picture in the mirror of the bathroom.

The morning light crept through the top of the bathroom window, the only part of the window still unobstructed by the snow. Aston’s breasts had easily grown eight inches outward. The t-shirt, which had reached to her hips before, reached just past her rib cage now. Aston pulled the shirt up over her breasts, causing them to bounce softly. They didn’t feel particularly abnormal, just bigger. Her pink areolas were about an inch wider than before, roughly the size of a golf ball. Each nipple was raised just slightly, a tiny nub on the surface. Pulling the shirt back down, Aston turned to the right to get a little more perspective. Then she noticed something else.

Her stomach was slightly bigger. Normally flat, it was now nothing more than a barely noticeable pooch in her midsection. It wasn’t unlike whenever she got gassy, but that usually only happened after eating certain kinds of food. In this case, she hadn’t eaten anything.

Aston again considered panicking, and then remembered that James warned of “a little” possible swelling. “Little” didn’t describe her breasts, that’s for sure. Walking to the phone, her breasts bouncing gently with each step, she picked it up and still heard no dial tone. “Damn,” she muttered. After a moment, she decided that if she was the only one in the world with this condition, maybe James couldn’t have accurately predicted how much swelling there would be. After all, Lord knows he’d been wrong before… not that that was any consolation. Aston decided to give it some time and read for a while.

As she read, she was too engaged in the book to realize how much she was growing. By noon, she put down the book and did a double-take at her breasts. Again, she got up and walked to the bathroom to see the changes. This time, she had a little difficulty walking, besides the bouncing breasts in front of her.

Aston looked in the mirror and dropped her jaw. Her breasts had almost doubled in size in the three hours since she last noticed them. The bottom of the t-shirt was just below the base of her breasts, and the collar was now being stretched downward to reveal cleavage. With the shirt’s threads stretched so much, her areolas, now as big as baseballs, were visible through the shirt. Aston also realized why it was a little harder for her to walk, for her stomach had also grown significantly while she was on the couch. She looked pregnant, maybe by about seven or eight months. She ran her hands up the sides of her stomach and up to her breasts. She had to stretch her arms all the way out to reach her nipples, which still stood erect underneath the shirt.

Her mind began to race. What if something was going wrong? Yeah, “a little” swelling, maybe. But when does “a little” become “a lot”? Aston decided to sit on the bed and think things through a little. The phone still wasn’t working. She was still snowed in. She couldn’t get to anybody, and nobody could get to her. “Why worry too much?” she thought to herself. “Whatever happens, happens. There’s nothing you can do about it now.”

Once Aston convinced herself to just let it ride, her heart rate went back down (amazing how an artificial heart responds to adrenaline!) and she returned to the couch in the living room to continue reading. After another hour, she fell asleep there, one hand holding the book, the other hand resting on her midsection.

She awoke at 5, and had trouble sitting up from her lying position. Once sitting up, she braced herself using the back of the couch, stood on her feet, and lumbered to the bathroom to check her size again. Daylight was already beginning to fade, but as Aston stepped into the bathroom, she could tell she was already much larger than she was before. Her breasts had seemed to slow down somewhat, but they had still grown, and were lightly pressing against the mirror as Aston observed herself. Touching them, they finally felt different… the skin was very tight, very stretched. The shirt was so tightly stretched that it was no longer completely covering her breasts, and the tightly-pulled sleeves were restricting the movement of her arms. Aston considered removing the shirt but probably would’ve needed to cut it with a knife. Instead, she just pulled the collar down until she could slip her arms out. Her hands couldn’t come within a foot of her nipples.

Her stomach had grown the most, however, and it became clear to Aston that she had better pick a room and stay there, or else she wouldn’t fit through doorways very easily. Her stomach bulged out in front of her, her widening belly button barely within reach. The curve of its expansion stretched from the base of her enormous breasts to her crotch, where her panties dutifully clung to her mass. She almost had to laugh at what she saw in the mirror, for her enlarging body had grown to almost comical proportions. Turning around to exit the bathroom, her breasts brushed against the sides of the doorway. “Am I really growing that fast?” she thought to herself.

Not knowing just how big she might get, Aston decided to set up camp in the living area, which was the largest part of the apartment. Before going there, however, she went to the bedroom and pulled a sheet off the bed to drape over herself during the night. She then carried that to the living room and placed it on the couch. Before she sat down, she wondered how she would be able to check her size. Then she remembered her three skinny hanging mirrors – two mounted in her closet, one on the inside of the pantry door. They were mostly full length, so she would be able to get a good glimpse of herself if she stood them against the wall facing the couch.

It took Aston five minutes to waddle across her apartment and retrieve the mirrors. For one thing, the size of her breasts exceeded the length of her reach, so she had to turn sideways to be able to reach and take down the mirrors. That was especially difficult inside the closet, which was barely wide enough to contain her anyway. When Aston had all three mirrors set up side-by-side, she eased herself onto the couch’s middle cushion and made sure she could see herself.

The light was better in the living area, so she managed to make out more of her features. Sitting down, she looked even more comical than when standing up. She had to spread her legs to sit comfortably on the couch, and her belly rested on the couch cushion, sticking three feet out in front of her. The only visible evidence of her panties was the sides of them still at her hips. Her stomach was getting so big that her breasts now rested comfortably on top of it. The shirt had begun to reveal massive upper and lower cleavage. Aston’s areolas were harder to see now, but they were the size of volleyballs. She could not see her nipples through the shirt anymore.

Her breasts, now supported by her massive stomach, provided an effective shelf to place a book, and she attempted reading until about 7, at which point it was too dark. For the rest of the evening, Aston merely closed her eyes and concentrated on her body, attempting to actually feel her body expanding. However, the growth was still too slow for her to notice, and she only took note of it when she tried to move. By 8, her butt had begun to grow, causing her to sit higher in the couch. By 9, she noticed that the growth of her stomach and butt were now beginning to affect her hips, and her body was growing wider, not just further out in the front. By 10, she could also feel her back beginning to grow, slightly pushing her forward in the couch and causing her to sit up straight. “I’m getting rounder,” she thought.

Aston tried to get up from the couch, but it required more effort than she wanted to expend at the time. She was getting too big. Settling down, she reached for the sheet and draped it over herself as best she could. Minutes later, she dozed off. Some time later, she awoke to the sound of her shirt ripping at the seams. When the last seam popped, her breasts sprung out from her body, causing her form to bounce and wobble on the couch and causing the sheet to slide a little bit. Aston lay there a minute, feeling the sheet slowly slide down her noticeably larger, noticeably rounder tummy until it fell to the floor. She then slipped back to sleep.

 

When the sunlight hit her eyes at about 10 on Sunday morning, Aston wasn’t exactly sure what to expect when she looked at the mirror. Testing her motions, she could definitely tell that she was less mobile. Gathering herself, she opened her eyes.

She was rounder, all right – almost as wide at the hips as she was from front to back. Her stomach was now the dominant feature of her mass, making a smooth curve from her breasts to her vagina and was presumably just as round on her back, which she could not see. Her belly button was not visible, probably stretched out too far to even exist anymore. Her legs were spread wide and had begun to swell as her stomach was likely going to expand even further. Her vagina had stretched out with the rest of her, now comprising a two foot long arc at the base of her body, her labia beginning to spread open and flatten out on either side. The panties still clung to her circumference, although they had slipped further down and no longer covered her vagina with any modesty.

Aston’s breasts had been reshaped completely. When her stomach expanded upward, it caused her breasts to stand straight up. As it continued expanding in that direction, her breasts lost their rounded shape and became gigantic mounds on the top of her stomach. Then, as her belly continued growing, it began to stretch and pull the mounds outward as they slowly grew smaller and flatter. Right now, they were still fairly large. Her areolas were very faint on the surface of her stretched breasts, and only a dark pink dot at the apex of each mound provided any evidence of a nipple. Her arms, like her legs, were beginning to swell, and her range of motion had been severely decreased.

“Wow,” Aston thought as she stared at the blimped figure in the mirror, “I’m HUGE.”

She was resting oddly in the couch, with her body slightly tilted upward. She tried to get up and remedy that, grabbing the back of the couch and pushing herself forward. That only succeeded in causing her upper half to tilt forwards, and she realized she was about to land on her head. Frantically, Aston began waving her legs and arms as much as possible. Her legs caused her butt to wiggle forward on the couch cushion, and she slid off the couch and miraculously landed on her feet.

It took a moment to regain her equilibrium. Her feet stood about six feet apart, and her vagina was only a foot or two off the ground. One wrong move and she could fall forward and be stuck on her stomach. Carefully, Aston began to take stock of her range of motion. She could only move her legs forward and backward, and only by about 5 or 6 inches at a time. Bending at her knees and waist was not possible. She could almost move her arms normally, but even they were somewhat limited due to her swollen biceps and triceps. Her neck seemed to be the only thing unaffected by her growth.

Aston considered trying to waddle around, but thought it too risky. Instead she took two small steps forward and fell backward, propping herself up against the front of the couch and allowing her butt to touch the ground. She would be able to see the mirrors between her breasts for a while. As she hit the ground, she bounced softly and rocked gently in place for a few seconds. “How did I get so light?” she wondered to herself. Then the answer came to her: James had said something about her blood being combustible in other forms. He must have meant a gas! Somehow, the injection she had received had converted her blood to some sort of gas.

Over the course of the next two hours, she watched herself intently, realizing that she could see the horizon of her inflated body slowly rising and billowing out in front of her face. Her breasts continued to be stretched further and further until they flattened out against the rest of her surface. She watched as her nipples steadily flattened and stretched until their color was dispersed too much to be visible. Returning her attention to the mirrors, she could see that her legs and arms had swollen up further, and did not respond to her attempts to move them. Slowly, her burgeoning surface expanded until her forearms and calves flattened, leaving only her hands and feet. Aston chuckled again, as her two feet looked tiny in the middle of the leg holes of her panties. Soon, her body had simply grown too big to accommodate the panties any longer, and they slowly slid down her southern hemisphere until they rested on the floor. Only a four-foot-long shallow crease at her south pole indicated that a vagina had ever been located there.

By noon, Aston’s body, save for her head, hands, and feet, was completely round from head to toe. As her mass continued its relentless growth, her hands and feet swelled up and flattened out as well, leaving her completely immobile; and yet, her head seemed completely unaffected. Now that all of her bodily features had been completely erased, Aston could only grow outward.

Eventually Aston had to crane her neck to see the mirrors over her rounded body. When she could no longer see them, she focused on the ceiling and how close it was getting. As the globe of her body continued to swell, it began to push the couch across the living room and toward the kitchen. This caused her to slowly roll backward until she was resting on her back.

After an hour or so, she felt something cold pressing against her distant crotch – at least, where her crotch had once been – and realized it was the mirrors. She had run out of space on that end of the room. Aston’s body began to flatten against that wall as it continued to expand in all other directions. Not long afterward, her blimping body pressed into the ceiling, and then the side walls. Aston had become impossibly wedged in the room.

After some time – Aston didn’t know how long – the growth of her enormous body slowed until she could no longer discern it. Staring lazily at the ceiling, with her hair dangling below her head, she was unable to move a single muscle in her distended, pressurized body. She had no idea how big she had grown, but she could make a simple estimate. “Let’s see,” she wondered aloud, “this room is 15 feet by 15 feet, and I’m filling most of it… assuming that radius, I have a circumference of about 90 feet! And a volume of… over 1500 cubic feet!” She reflected for a moment, then said to herself, “That’s pretty goddamn big.”

With the tremendous balloon of her body covering most of the windows, the only light coming into the room was the kitchen window, and eventually darkness settled in. Completely immobile, she closed her eyes and took in the feeling of her enormous blimp-like mass. Oddly, she found it very comfortable to be wedged so tightly into the room. In the twilight, Aston soon drifted off to sleep, with the only sound in the room being her breathing resonating throughout her body.

 

Ted “Toad” Marciano had always wanted to be a cop. At least, until he actually became one.

Toad wasn’t one of those cops who bought into the whole “protecting the public”, “defending justice”, “take a bite out of crime” stuff. He was more of the “look at my pretty gun”, “I can crush your skull”, “take a bite out of his donut” type of cop. It wasn’t that he was crooked. He just felt disenfranchised.

He’d joined the police academy right out of college (where he was a 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th year senior) and became intoxicated with the rush of it all. Target practice! Bulletproof vests! Riot gear! He wondered when he would get to use hand grenades. His nickname, “Toad”, stuck when a couple of classmates commented that, with his big gut, he looked like a toad or bullfrog when sitting in a desk.

Instead, the cop life slowed down tremendously for Toad once he got his badge six months ago. His duties were relegated to boring domestic disturbances and simple traffic violations. His beloved riot gear now collected dust in a corner of his closet, and he had resorted to shooting rubber pellets at his neighbor’s cats. And here he sat, in the wee hours of Monday morning, waiting in line at the Chinese drive-thru for some moo goo gai pan. Someday, Toad would have his day in the limelight. Hopefully, the limelight came with a lifetime supply of hand grenades too.

“Car 47, come in,” crackled the dispatch radio. A call for distress!

“This is Marciano, go ahead,” a hopeful Toad responded.

“47, please investigate a noise ordinance disruption at Ridgepoint Apartments at Winslow and Richmond.”

Well, god dammit. A fucking noise ordinance disruption. It was probably some drunk who was hooting and hollering while blasting some trance mix at 100dB’s. “Copy that,” Toad mumbled as he pulled out of the drive-thru line.

As he pulled up to the apartment building, Toad found an undersized man in white clothes operating an oversized snowblower. The machinery roared as it spewed snow several feet in the air. Toad turned on his lights and got out of the police cruiser.

“Hey!” Toad shouted at the man, who didn’t hear him at first. “HEY! SHUT THAT SHIT OFF!”

The short man finally turned around and, noticing the cop yelling at him, killed the snowblower. Toad walked closer and continued. “Hey, what the hell are you doing? Can’t this wait until daylight?”

“I’m sorry, officer,” the man replied, “but I got this permit by the Hudson River—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Toad interrupted. “It’s 2-A-fucking-M, people are trying to sleep here. Someone in that apartment building wanted us to come out and bust your ass.”

“Officer,” the man interjected, “you don’t know who I work for.”

“What’s your name, asshole?”

“Bud,” replied the man.

“Well, Bud,” Toad snorted, “who do you work for?”

“I answer to a higher authority.”

“Oh, that’s fucking great. What are you, a Christian Bible thumper? What’s next, Mormons planting fucking azaleas in my yard?”

“I work for the federal government,” Bud said calmly. “And I would suggest that you allow me to finish my work here. My work is very time-critical.”

“Oh really?” Toad asked skeptically. “What kind of work would that be?”

“Snowblowing this yard.”

“Right. So I’m supposed to believe that your work is SO goddamn important that the federal fucking government has you rattling peaceful citizens’ brains with that monstrosity at 2am?”

“That’s pretty much it.”

“Tell me,” Toad said, putting a hand on his holstered gun, “where’s your government identification, Bud?”

That moment, a tranquilizer dart whizzed through the air and struck Toad in the side of the neck. “Right there,” Bud said, smiling.

Toad slowly raised a hand to touch the dart. “Whaaaa…… gaghghggh…… yoooouuuuuuu… fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu…” he stammered, before finally losing consciousness and collapsing into the snow.

A van pulled up in front of the cop car, and a man dressed in black jumped out. “Your timing was perfect,” Bud called out to the other man, who was scratching his head. “Very poetic. I love it when I get the last word.”

“Yeah, whatever,” the man responded. “You didn’t use the Hudson River line again, did you?”

Bud grinned.

“Oh brother,” the man said as he rolled his eyes. “You really need some new fucking material, you know that?”

“Whatever works,” Bud said, shrugging. “Hey Scratch, why are you wearing black?”

“It’s a disguise,” Scratch said. “No one can see us in the dark.”

“We’re working in SNOW, you turd! Do you see any fucking black snow around here?! You know what, fuck it. How long will our friend here be out?”

“A couple hours. Should be plenty of time.”

“Good. I’ll keep clearing a path to the front door. You empty out the other apartments. Sedate the residents if you have to, just get them to the van.”

The snowblower roared back to life as Scratch headed to the upstairs units. Just above the racket, Bud could hear shouting and then silence, followed by a thud as Scratch took care of the other residents. Within ten minutes, the sidewalk leading to the door was cleared. Taking out his automatic lock pick (government employees got their fair share of gadgets), Bud compromised both locks and attempted to open the door.

It didn’t budge. Confused, he put all his weight on the door and it still didn’t budge. Stepping back, he tried to jump into the door, but it still didn’t budge. “Hey Scratch!” Bud yelled out. “Gimme some help here!”

Scratch, having finished upstairs, came down and met Bud at the door. “The damn thing won’t open,” Bud said.

Scratch tried pushing on it, and still couldn’t get it to open. Finally they tried jumping into the door at the same time. The door actually gave a couple inches, only to bounce back to its closed position. “What the fuck,” Scratch said, scratching his head.

Inside, Aston was jarred awake by pulses of pressure near her left foot. She tried to sit up and see what was causing them, and then remembered three things: she couldn’t sit up, her body was blocking her view of that side of the room anyway, and she didn’t really have a left foot anymore. The pulses steadily got larger, each one rocking her body slightly, until they abruptly stopped.

“Let’s try another point of entry,” Bud suggested. “I’ll take care of the snow along the side of the building. You get out the flashlight and check the windows.”

Aston then heard a gas-powered motor start up, and the noise steadily got closer. As it did so, she also began to feel similar pulses of pressure along her right side. Then the realization hit her – those pulses were roughly where the windows were located. Someone was trying to get in! Deep within Aston’s body, her heart began to pound.

“The fucking windows are stuck too!” Scratch yelled to Bud, who ignored him. Inwardly, Bud began to wonder if Scratch was opening the windows the right way. As he passed the last window, Bud turned off the snowblower and said to Scratch, “Try this one.”

Scratch reached up and, with a smooth motion, he swung the window pane inside. “As they say in the philharmonic, ‘Viola!’”

“You’re a putz,” Bud snapped. “You know that? A fucking putz. Now let’s get in there, get her, and then get the fuck out of Dodge.”

“But we drove a Ford over here—”

Bud smacked him on the forehead. “Shut. The fuck. Up. Can you please be a professional for just five fucking minutes?”

Scratch, scratching his forehead, repeated Bud. “Professional. Got it. I can be professional.” Pulling himself up through the window, he stepped into what looked like a kitchen. The area just around the corner was dark, but it probably led to the living area and bedroom.

Aston realized that she had grown even further, with her body now pressing the couch against the fourth wall. Just on the other size of that wall was the kitchen. “Will I ever stop?” she wondered. “I guess not, as long as I keep producing blood.” Returning her attention to the situation at hand, she had heard the first of two men – neither of whose voices she recognized – step into her kitchen. It was only a matter of seconds before they found her. Growing nervous and jittery, she tried to squirm a little bit, but the flexing of her muscles only caused faint twitches all over her body.

Scratch had his flashlight focused on a painting on the wall. As he turned the corner, he bumped into something large and bouncy. Stepping back he redirected his flashlight.

Aston screamed.

Now, it’s important to note that Scratch, like Bud, had always wanted to say the perfect thing when an unusual situation came up. He practiced in front of the mirror at home, coming up with a catch phrase for every situation he could imagine. He hoped to someday encounter an alien from outer space so he could use his favorite phrase, “Now that’s out of this world!” Unfortunately, he had never prepared for a situation such as this, and Scratch captured the brevity of the situation as only he could:

“HOLY FUCK-A-DUCK!!!”

“What the fuck?” Bud said, still climbing through the window. “Was that supposed to be funny? And you say I need new material.”

Aston screamed again.

Now fully inside, Bud walked towards Scratch and turned the corner. “You know, I ask you to be professional, and then you have to come in here and start shouting like a fucking banshee—HOLY SHIT SQUASH!!!”

Indeed, Bud had not adequately prepared himself for this situation either. What sat before them was a huge ball of flesh with a screaming brunette head protruding from it. When they had been briefed on the situation, they knew that the target would be incapacitated, but immovable?! Both men simply stood there trying to think of what to do next.

The brunette head screamed again.

Bud decided that the first course of action should be to stop the screaming. Stepping forward, he said, “Miss Petersen, please calm down! We’re here to help you!”

Aston stopped screaming. “How did you know my name?” she asked frantically. She tried to turn her head to see the two men but she was too high up.

“Your uncle, Dr. Cartwright, sent us,” Bud offered.

“What’s happened to me?!”

Bud and Scratch looked at each other, shrugging. Bud turned back to her. “Miss Petersen, I think it would be best if we let Dr. Cartwright explain that later.”

“Then what do you want with me?” Aston asked, beginning to regain her breath.

“We’ve come to get you out of here,” Scratch replied.

“How? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a fucking zeppelin. I can’t move at all.”

Bud thought for a minute, then had an idea. Tentatively, he reached out and gently placed a gloved hand on Aston’s bloated body in an effort to comfort her. Aston, uncomfortable with this stranger touching her, tried to struggle instinctively, but only twitched her muscles again. “Jesus Christ, her skin is tight,” Bud thought to himself. Scanning her surface, he came across a lone fingernail, the surrounding area devoid of any of its partners. “Incredible.” “Don’t worry,” he spoke, stepping back, “we’ll figure it out. Unfortunately, it’s probably best if you’re not awake for it. Scratch?”

Pouring some ether into a handkerchief, Scratch reached up and placed it over Aston’s face. “Sorry about this, Miss Petersen, but you’ll see your uncle very soon.” He held it there as Aston screamed and shook her head, her massive body twitching visibly. Within a few seconds, her head lay still and the twitching stopped.

Bud pulled out his phone and dialed a number. “Yeah, it’s Massey. I’m gonna need six chainsaw teams and a helicopter. Yeah, BIG. Yeah, as soon as possible. Yeah, ok. Thanks. Bye.” Putting his phone away, he turned to Scratch. “Let’s get the cop and those other people locked in the van before they wake up.”

“Ok,” Scratch said. “How are we gonna get her out of here?”

Bud paused and smiled. “We’re gonna raise the roof.” He walked back to the window pushing his hands in the air.

Scratch frowned with envy.

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The Haymaker, part 2

Aston awoke to her body rocking slowly in place. She was in a large, brightly lit room. The only sounds came from air rushing through circulation vents above and below her. After observing her body’s movements, she determined that the breeze from the vents was causing her to rock in place. The air was cold, and it made her very uncomfortable. Still working off instinct, she tried to rub her hands together to generate some friction. She felt nothing, not even the slight muscle twitches she had felt before. Had she grown even further?

When she had been transported here, they situated her in a “standing” position, with her head atop her mass. Even though her body filled most of her lower range of vision, Aston could get a pretty good glimpse of the entire room. She was sitting in the middle of it, with tons of room for further growth on all sides as well as up. Her body covered up her view of the floor, so she was unable to adequately guess how tall the ceiling was. All she could guess was that it was about 75 feet above her head.

“HELLO?” she called out. Her voice echoed off the sides of the room. “ANYBODY?”

A large ceiling panel opened above her, and a complex piece of machinery began to lower itself toward the stationary Aston. Looking up, four arms unfolded out of the machinery and began to open wider. “Hey, what are you—HEY!” Aston shouted at no one in particular. The arms continued their descent until they made contact with the top of her body, gently pressing down so she no longer rocked in place. “What are you doing?!” Aston shouted at the device, her head in the middle of its arms.

Another arm boasting a some sort of wide beam laser then lowered from the ceiling and passed over Aston’s entire body, and then back again.

“Initial synthesis Stage 1 complete,” a computerized voice echoed throughout the room. “Epidermal integrity higher than anticipated.”

“Well, I guess that’s good,” Aston thought to herself.

“Subject size larger than anticipated. Diameter at widest point, 23.74 feet. Growth rate of 0.02 feet per minute. Circumference at widest point, 74.58 feet. Volume, 7005.52 cubic feet.”

“Oh my God,” Aston said softly, looking down at herself.

The computer voice continued. “Calculated risk factors minimal. Proceeding with rapid synthesis Stage 2.”

The laser arm produced a small needle and began moving toward Aston. She wasn’t sure whether she liked the idea of anything sharp being close to her body. After all, by this point she was nothing more than a human balloon, and didn’t want to share the fate of the many balloons she had thrown darts at as a child. Calming her fears somewhat, Aston eventually saw that the needle was moving toward her head.

The needle stopped just below her jaw. There wasn’t much of her neck left by this point, but there was enough for the needle to do its job. Quickly and painlessly, the needle inserted itself into her neck, drained its fluid, pulled back out, received another dosage, and then reinserted itself. After four doses, the arm with the needle retreated up and out of sight. The four arms holding Aston still released their grip, causing her body to wobble slightly. Then, as the other three arms returned to the ceiling, the last one produced an oxygen mask. It moved in on Aston’s face and covered her nose and mouth, and the large arm held the mask in place.

Breathing inside the mask, Aston noticed nothing particularly special about the air being given to her. Why did she need the mask anyway? She was breathing fine before. And what were those injections?

A sudden spike in her heart rate interrupted her thoughts. Several more followed, and Aston began to worry that her heart was failing. She began to hyperventilate into the mask, and the flow of oxygen into the mask increased in response. Her heart rate continued to climb, and she tried her best to breathe as best as possible.

Then something new began to happen. The pressure on her body began to increase. Attempting to concentrate, she could not feel anything pressing on her. Her heart rate climbed again, and she found herself gasping for air. Her heart beat pounded in her ears. “So this is it,” she thought to herself as the pressure on her body continued to increase. “Another one of my uncle’s failed experiments.”

After a moment, however, Aston’s heart rate plateaued, and soon she was not breathing so desperately. The pressure on her body was getting intense, and she thought she heard a faint hissing noise, but assumed it was coming from the oxygen mask.

Then she felt it.

For the first time, Aston could actually feel her body growing faster. Every square inch of her skin – and she had plenty of square inches – was being stretched farther and pulled tighter with each passing second.

“Vital signs stable,” the voice announced. “Sustaining heart beat at 293 beats per minute for twenty minutes. Removing oxygen support.”

The mask removed itself from Aston’s face and the mechanical arm lifted up and away. She could only close her eyes and take in the sensations with intrigue. Eventually, with the mask gone, she realized the hissing noise was still present. Listening more closely, she could hear it emanating from within herself. She’d never heard that before.

Her expansion rapidly increased, first surpassing, then doubling, and doubling again the rate of growth she experienced in the apartment, until she was widening at a rate of several feet per minute. As the stretching of her skin and the pressure within intensified, Aston finally figured out what was happening. The injections had caused the arousal of her nervous system, causing her heart rate to reach an extremely high rate. As a result, more blood was being pumped throughout her body. More blood meant more gas being created inside of her.

Several minutes passed as Aston was caught up in her continued growth. Finally, she opened her eyes and jumped back (or tried to, at least). The ceiling was only about ten feet from her head and she was rising steadily toward it. Just as she began to wonder what was going to happen once her head reached the ceiling, she heard massive clunking sounds, and then a loud whirring sound as the entire ceiling started to retract.

Aston surveyed her surroundings as her head passed the plane of the ceiling. About 100 feet to either side were large platforms, where people were sitting at their desks. They were all looking at Aston, making her feel slightly uncomfortable. Looking up, the second ceiling was a long way up, calming her fears about getting wedged in here as well. Hanging from the ceiling was a large series of concentric circles, the widest one spanning the distance between the two platforms. Aston’s body continued to grow out and up, and after a while she felt her body pressing against the two platforms, now containing very wide-eyed workers. “200 feet?” Aston thought to herself. “That’s impossible.” Pausing a moment, she corrected herself. “It should be impossible.”

Suddenly, the hissing noise faded into silence, and Aston felt the pressure within her decreasing. With that, the stretching sensations subsided, and her heart rate began to slow down. She could hear a dull roar rise and echo off the walls and ceiling as the workers began to talk amongst themselves. However, she could no longer see them, as her body was so large that it obstructed her view.

The familiar laser arm lowered itself down and proceeded to scan her ridiculously globed body. It took much longer for it to make the round trip (no pun intended) this time. After what seemed like five minutes, the laser finally reappeared and retreated to the ceiling once again.

“Rapid synthesis Stage 2 complete,” the computer announced. “Vital signs normal. Epidermal integrity higher than expected.” A small cheer arose from the platforms. Aston bit her lower lip in anticipation of her size measurements.

“Initial larger Stage 1 size compensated for in Stage 2. Diameter at widest point, 251.19 feet. Growth rate of 0.0004 feet per minute. Circumference at widest point, 789.14 feet. Volume, 66,388,870.56 cubic feet.”

SIXTY-SIX MILLION.

A deafening cheer arose from the two platforms. Aston passed out.

Aston opened her eyes to a silent, darkened room. Only a few lights above her on the ceiling were lit, and therefore the curve of her body faded into darkness around her. This setting was quite a contrast from the previous one, with the employees toiling busily on the platform. Only a distant hum of the air circulation system resonated through the room. Aston felt at peace.

Suddenly, mechanical clunking sounds emanated from directly above her, and Aston looked up to see one of the hanging rings lowering toward her. As it grew closer, Aston thought she saw someone standing on top of the ring. It must have been a catwalk-type device, and then Aston realized that the catwalks must be to go around her. But why?

As the catwalk lowered to within ten feet of her, Aston recognized the person standing on it.

“Uncle!!!” Aston screamed. “I’m so glad to see you! What has happened to me?”

“Hello, Aston,” James said, smiling. The platform gently came to rest against her body, with James about ten feet from her head. However, because she was so big, her surface was almost flat at her head, and James had to kneel down on the catwalk to get closer to eye level with Aston. “I know this must be really confusing for you, but I will answer any questions for you.” Reaching out a hand, he pressed it against Aston’s tight body. Her surface didn’t give even an inch, and she chuckled slightly. “How do you feel?” he asked.

Aston laughed. “Like I should have a gondola hung from me. How did they get me out of my apartment?”

“They cut you out. I must admit, it wasn’t easy.”

“But I was on the bottom floor. There was an apartment above me.”

“I know,” James said, smiling.

“Huh,” Aston said, and then laughed. “I must ask, where did you find those clowns that came to get me? They were like Abbott and Costello or something.”

James laughed heartily. “Bud and Scratch have been our special ops liaisons for a long time.” James winked. “What they lack in brains, they make up for in comic relief.”

“Clearly,” Aston said, letting out a sigh. “You know, you said there would be a little swelling, but I never expected this.”

“No,” James started, “and you had no reason to. Aston, I was a little dishonest with you before we started this procedure.”

“What, because I turned into this? Honestly, I can’t say I dislike it that much. I’m actually quite comfortable like this.”

“No, Aston,” James said, hesitating, “it’s something more serious.”

Aston furrowed her brow. “Like what?”

James sighed. “You remember when I said that your blood, when converted to other forms, was highly combustible in different forms?”

“Yes, and it’s pretty clear that you meant a gas.”

“Correct. Now, what else did I say?”

“That you planned to make a bomb out of the gas created by my blood.”

“Correct again.” James paused. “Well, now we have the bomb.”

“OK, I’m ready,” Aston said. “So how is this gonna work? You hook up a tube or something and then transfer the gas over to the bomb? And then you’ll blow me up again when it’s time to make another bomb?”

James frowned. “Not exactly. The Martians would get suspicious of any large metal object we turned over to them. Like I said before, we had to disguise the bomb somehow.”

“So how would that work?” Aston asked.

James winced. “We’d disguise it as something organic.”

The room fell silent for a moment. Eventually, it became clear to Aston. “You mean I’m the bomb?”

Tearing up, James turned his head away and nodded.

More silence. Aston looked at James, and then herself. “There’s no other alternative?”

James shook his head.

Yet more uncomfortable silence. James began to sob quietly. Aston asked, “And if I say no, there’s probably no way for me to return to normal?”

James reached down and ran his hand delicately along her surface. Again, he shook his head.

“Why didn’t you tell me the truth before?” Aston asked.

James turned back, tears running down his face. “You have to understand, Aston. It’s not easy to tell someone that they have to sacrifice their own self. We were running critically on time, and you were our only choice. I so desperately wanted to tell you the truth, but I didn’t want to go this far without your permission.”

The room fell silent again. Aston closed her eyes and meditated, reflecting on her situation. Either she could turn her uncle down and merely stay like this forever (which was actually a pretty attractive idea), or she could do what she knew was best for her planet, at her expense. After a moment, she opened her eyes, and said, “Ok, I’ll do it, but for a price.”

James turned back to look at her. “What would that be?”

Aston smiled. “A hug.”

James studied the distance between him and her head. “You think you can support all 250 pounds of me?”

“The computer itself said that my ‘epidermal integrity’ or whatever was higher than anticipated.”

James thought for a minute. “Well… ok.” He began to empty his pockets, removing his keys, his pocketknife, and any other sharp items. He didn’t know whether she was that easy to puncture, but he didn’t want to find out. Slowly, James began to put his weight on his niece’s huge body.

“See? I told you,” Aston said, laughing.

James still moved tentatively on top of her, worried that he might be putting uncomfortable pressure on her. “Do you feel alright?”

“I’m fine,” Aston assured him. “Just get over here.”

James slowly crawled toward her head, amazed at how tight her skin was. Reaching both arms around Aston’s head, he buried her face in his chest.

“I love you, Uncle,” Aston said.

James got choked up again. “I love you too.” Sitting up, he said, “Now, let’s talk about final preparations.”

“Alright,” Aston said.

“First, we’re going to need to do a little maintenance on you, meaning that we need to remove any signs that you might be human. We don’t need to do anything to your head, since it’s unlikely anyone will ever see it. I’m talking about things like your fingernails, toenails, and any excess hair on your body. Then we’re going to give you a thorough washing, because your body probably picked up a lot of different particles in your apartment. Then we’re gonna give you a ‘paint job’ so that your skin will be effectively disguised. After that, we head for Mars.”

“Got it,” Aston said, nodding. “I still have fingernails and toenails?” she thought to herself.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” James said. Reaching back over to the catwalk, he picked up a small headset and its connected power supply. “This is so we can communicate back and forth with you without having to shout,” he said. “Everybody that is going to be working on you will have one of these as well, so if someone inadvertently hurts you somehow, you’ll be able to tell them.” Fitting the headset over her right ear, he adjusted the microphone so that it was next to her mouth. “Also, if it’s too cold, too hot, too bright, too dark, the computer will hear you when you speak into that. We’ll make the workers adjust to your preferences, since you can’t really adjust to theirs.” James stuck a piece of adhesive gel on the back of the headset’s power supply and pressed it to her body at the base of her neck.

“Alright,” Aston said. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” James said. “Get some sleep. Things are about to get pretty busy.” He crawled back over to the catwalk and stood up. “See you tomorrow.”

“Good night,” Aston replied, smiling.

“Computer, retract catwalk #1,” James called out, and the catwalk began to rise into the air.

Aston waited until the mechanical whirr of the catwalk stopped, then asked the computer to turn off the lights and raise the temperature to 85 degrees. In the darkness, she settled down to sleep.

 

Getting Aston prepared for the launch was no small chore. With catwalks hanging from the ceiling and rising from the floor to give workers easy access to her entire body, James commented that she looked like something under construction, as the catwalks served as scaffolding.

Removing her fingernails and toenails was painful for her, but there wasn’t much the crew could do about it. Aston could’ve asked to be put under before they did it, but she decided to tough it out. At one point, James had 5 different workers stand at each fingernail of her left hand, so Aston could get an idea of just how stretched out she was. The men stood about 15-20 feet apart.

After that was over, several robotic shavers were released onto her body. Aston giggled like a little girl as the shavers raced across her, tickling her to no end. She was even a little surprised to experience a slight rush of sexual arousal as the shavers reached what had been her vaginal area, now stretched over a large region of her surface and indiscernible from the rest of her. She shivered slightly, her face turning pink from slight embarrassment.

Then came the washing. The familiar robotic arms descended upon her, this time sporting water jets. Starting near her head and spreading out and down, the jets bombarded her with cold water. Aston screamed and immediately asked the computer to raise the temperature above 100 degrees. However, the cold water was running down her surface and reaching parts of her that were not yet being washed, and Aston was shivering momentarily.

Thankfully, the washing ended, and the catwalks returned so that the workers could adequately dry her off without a blast of cold air. Aston noticed that the workers that she could see were sweating profusely from the heat that she had requested. One woman had unzipped her jumpsuit, hoping to allow her sweat-soaked t-shirt to air dry somewhat. Aston studied this woman for a moment. Her build was similar to her own, at least before this change that Aston had undergone. In fact, except for the face and hair, Aston could’ve easily mistaken this worker for her own pre-inflation self. The woman eventually noticed Aston staring at her and uncomfortably looked away.

Once they were convinced that Aston was dry, the catwalks retracted once again and the mechanical arms swooped down again. A protective covering was placed over Aston’s head, and then the arms began to spray paint on her in the same way they washed her, except slower. The paint was a fine mist, and Aston noticed that it wasn’t dripping at all. The paint was black and silicon-based, so it was both stretchy and it wouldn’t glob up. It needed to be stretchy, since, after all, Aston was still growing, albeit very slowly. James had said that they expected her to grow 75-90 feet larger in the time it would take her to reach Mars. She was a little disappointed that they chose black as the color, but it was the most non-descript color they could’ve chosen, so it wasn’t a big deal.

The painting took a long time, maybe a few hours, and when that finished it was quitting time.

“Aston,” James said through her headset, “there’s a couple of people here that I’d like you to meet. Well, formally, at least.” The catwalk above her began to lower, and she could see three people on it, with James being the only one she recognized. One was kind of short, and the other was tall and lanky. Both were wearing business suits with photo IDs attached to them. Neither of them looked incredibly intelligent. Finally, the catwalk stopped. Motioning toward the short man, James said, “Aston, this is Bud Massey,” and motioning toward the taller man, “and this is Fred ‘Scratch’ Zimmerman. These are the men that retrieved you a couple nights ago.”

“Nice to meet you,” Aston said. Inwardly, she was laughing. “These guys really do look like goofballs!” she thought.

“Whoa,” Scratch said, scratching his nose, “you’re a lot bigger than you were last time.”

“You fucking numbnutz,” Bud retorted, “of COURSE she is. Any fool can see that.”

“What about someone who didn’t see her then? Huh?”

Aston swallowed to attempt to hold in her laughter.

“Shut up,” Bud said to Scratch. “Anyway, Miss Petersen, we just wanted to come and apologize for not exactly having the best bedside manner the other night. You were going through something that—”

“No apology necessary,” Aston interrupted. “That was a weird night, but I understand everything now.”

“Oh,” Bud said, pausing a moment. “Well… good. That’s good.”

Scratch knelt down to poke at Aston’s body. “Whoa.”

“Surfer Jimbo, ladies and gentlemen,” Bud said. “How many times do I have to remind your pea-brained ass that we are supposed to act professionally?”

“You know,” Scratch said, “I never had a trampoline when I was young.”

Bud looked from Scratch, to Aston, and then back to Scratch. “NO. Absolutely not.”

“Just once?” Scratch asked.

“I can’t believe—”

“Just once,” Aston said, allowing a smile to spread across her face. “But I can’t save you if you fall off. It’s a long way down.”

Bud and Scratch both looked at James, who merely shrugged. “Ok,” Bud said, “ONCE. But take off your shoes and shit first.”

Scratch dutifully removed his shoes and cleaned out his pockets. Climbing on top of the catwalk railing, he looked down at Aston’s body below him, then leapt forward in the air.

No sooner had he landed on Aston’s body than he was flying backwards in the air. Flailing all of his limbs, Scratch was a little surprised at just how springy she was. To his delight, he had cleared the catwalk railing on his return flight, but then he realized he was heading toward the catwalk deck headfirst. He landed with a resounding clank.

“Aw fuck,” he groaned, “I think I broke my eye.”

Aston couldn’t help but laugh.

“Learn by experience, I guess,” Bud said. “What an idiot. Anyway, we’d better get going. But we wanted to officially meet you and wish you luck on your… um… eh… ‘mission.’”

“Thank you,” Aston replied.

“Get some sleep,” James said. “Lieutenant Cunningham is looking forward to meeting you. We transport you at 10am and launch at noon.”

“Alrighty,” Aston responded. “Good night.”

The catwalk began to retract into the ceiling. “Get up and stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Bud said to Scratch, who was still lying on the deck.

“Hey,” Scratch retorted, “my eye hurts. Can you kiss it and make it better?”

“Fuck you.”

Their banter continued until they got too high for Aston to hear. Turning off the lights, she closed her eyes and slept her last night on the planet Earth.

 

The whirring mechanical servos of the catwalk jarred Aston from her sleep. The large room was still dimly lit. Aston wasn’t sure what was going on, since she wasn’t supposed to be bothered until morning. The catwalk stopped just above her body and she could make out a female figure standing above her.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” a soft voice said, “but things have been so busy lately, and right now would’ve been the only chance to talk to you.” The voice paused a moment, then said, “Computer, increase lighting 25%.”

The lights ramped up and Aston recognized the woman as the one whom she had seen earlier. She was wearing a full navy blue jumpsuit with her ID on her left shoulder. Her blond hair had been pulled back into a ponytail.

“Miss Peterson, my name–”

“Please,” Aston interrupted, “call me Aston.”

The woman looked almost embarrassed. “Very well. My name is Lieutenant Amy Lancaster. I will be the one transporting you to Mars.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Aston said. “I almost expected you to be a guy.”

“You aren’t the first,” Amy said quietly. Aston was a little shocked that someone of such high rank could be so introverted.

“I know how that goes. What’s a young up-and-coming officer like you getting assigned to a suicide mission like this?”

“I volunteered for this mission.”

Aston was shocked again. “Why?”

“This mission has instilled in me a sense of… intrigue, if you will. First of all, we practically had to break the laws of physics and biochemistry to get you to this point. Plus, I am considered one of the leading experts on the current affairs with Mars. I was in charge of the colonization effort at the time of the revolt.”

“What happened after that? To you, I mean?”

“I got demoted,” Amy said, looking down.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Aston replied. She noticed that Amy was looking at the surface of her body.

“Um… may I?” Amy asked.

“Of course,” Aston said, smiling. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Amy got in a crawling position and slowly transferred her weight onto Aston, marveling at how firm she was. She began crawling carefully towards Aston’s head.

“Whoa, careful! Careful!” Aston shouted, and Amy froze, turning white. Then Aston smiled and laughed. “Just kidding. I’m fine. You have nothing to worry about.”

Amy frowned at first, and then cracked a smile for the first time. She continued to crawl until she was within a couple feet of Aston’s head. To make herself at eye level with Aston, she slowly flattened herself against the enormous mass below her, propping herself up with her elbows. “Forgive me for asking,” Amy said, “but what was it like?”

“What?” Aston asked.

Amy looked away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you weren’t ready to talk about all this.”

Aston thought for a minute, then realized what she was getting at. “Oh, you mean THIS?” she asked, looking down at herself. “You can ask whatever is on your mind. It’s ok.”

Amy hesitated, then inquired, “What did it feel like? We all saw multiple computer simulations, but I can’t imagine something like that happening to my body.”

“Well,” Aston began, “it’s kind of hard to describe. I mean, the growth was so slow at first that I barely noticed it. And then, all of a sudden, I wake up and my boobs are huge.” Aston visually studied Amy again, then said, “I was about your size, so imagine your boobs being twice as big.”

“What did they feel like?”

“Pretty normal. Except for their size, they looked normal too. It wasn’t until they had doubled in size again that they really began to feel different. They slowly got lighter, and I could feel a difference in my skin as well.”

“What about the rest of the process?”

Aston paused. “Well, I can’t really say I disliked it. I was never in any pain or anything… I just kept getting bigger. Getting stuck between the floor and the ceiling was a little frustrating.”

“I can imagine,” Amy said. “I watched hundreds of simulations, and none of them ever predicted you would get that big during Phase 1. 6-8 feet tops. Getting you out was quite a chore.”

“You were there?” Aston asked. “I’ve been meaning to ask someone the details of that.”

“Basically, we just cut the top of the building off and lifted you out with a helicopter, which then brought you here. It took several hours.”

“Wow. What happened to all the other tenants?”

“They were relocated and reimbursed.”

“I see.”

There was an uncomfortable pause in the room.

“Do you miss being the way you were?” Amy asked.

Aston thought for a moment. “I miss having mobility. But you have no idea how comfortable this actually is. As long as I had someone to keep me company, I really could stay like this forever.”

Amy smiled and gently ran her hand along Aston’s body. “Well, you’ll have someone to keep you company for a while.”

Aston smiled back. “I’m glad.”

“Well, I’d better let you get back to sleep. I just wanted to introduce myself before tomorrow. There will be plenty of time for us to get to know each other during the trip.”

“Indeed,” Aston said. “It was nice meeting you, Lieutenan—”

“Call me Amy,” Amy replied, smiling. “Good night, Aston.”

“Good night, Amy.”

 

“Hey, check this out.”

“What?”

“Just look.”

“…Now those are some TITS.”

Pete and Roger, two of the newer colonists on Mars, never saw their planet much. As part of the seniority process within the planet’s social structure, the two were relegated to patrolling the outlying border of Martian space. One thing they did see a lot of, however, was the female mammary gland.

At least they got to pilot a good ship. Their ship, the Resistor, was not only well-armed, but it was also a versatile freight vessel capable of towing and carrying cargo. Designed for a crew of only two, they got to know each other well, and Pete had become well-acquainted with Roger’s extensive porn collection.

“You think they’re real?” Pete asked, staring at the bountifully-bosomed figure on the screen.

“Who gives a fuck?” Roger laughed. “Now, in this next scene, another chick with a cow fetish will come in, paint black spots on the tit lady, and milk her like the bovine she is!”

“That’s some weird shit, man.”

Roger grinned. “Just wait until she makes hamburgers.”

A look of disgust invaded Pete’s face. “That’s messed up, man. Where do you find that stuff anyway?”

“An expert of pornography never shares his secrets.”

“Whatever.” Pete stood up to get some dinner, but realized he’d lost his appetite and sat back down. Glancing over at the radar system, he noticed something. “Hey,” Pete said, “turn that shit off, there’s something out there.”

Roger looked over, then turned back to his video console and turned off the smut. The sound of two women moaning softly abruptly ended. “What is it?”

“Looks like a cargo ship,” Pete responded. “Probably doesn’t have any armaments.”

“Where is it going?”

“It’s coming toward us, but it seems kinda stupid to fly a cargo ship right into our hands.”

“Let’s intercept it and see what’s up,” Roger said, rolling his chair over to the helm controls. Bringing the ship about, he engaged the engines. “It’ll be another 20 minutes or so before we’re close enough to radio them.” Pressing another couple of controls, the moaning returned, and Roger returned his attention to the porn.

Pete sat there, tentatively watching the two buxom ladies. He’d had enough when the tit lady, feigning an innocent voice, asked, “What are you gonna do with that cleaver??”

“I’m gonna go choke some food down,” Pete grumbled. “Lemme know when we’re there.” Roger laughed.

Pete returned to the bridge some time later, and, thankfully, the video was off. Roger turned around and said, “The ship’s engines are off. Looks like they’re drifting, so it might be an easy tow. You wanna take this?”

“Sure,” Pete said, sitting down and opening a communications channel with the vessel. “This is the Resistor. You are crossing into Martian space. Please identify yourselves.”

There was a moment of silence before a female voice responded. “This is the transport Randall. We were en route to an outpost and ran out of fuel.”

“What kind of cargo do you have?” Pete asked.

“Supplies and equipment, mostly,” the voice replied. “The outpost has experienced problems with their oxygen generation systems.”

“I’m afraid your outpost will have to get its assistance from someone else. Prepare to be boarded in one hour so we can inspect your cargo. If you try anything funny, you will be destroyed. Resistor out.”

“Whose turn is it this time?” Roger asked.

“Yours, I think,” Pete said. “I had the weapons freighter last month, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.” Roger paused. “So, we’ve got about 45 minutes to kill. What to watch next?”

“Something normal.”

 

Aston sat in the cargo hold of the Randall, awaiting Amy’s return from the cockpit. She found that she missed all of the attention that she had received from the NASA workers back on Earth. Plus, the ship’s computer was not as sophisticated as she had grown accustomed to, so whenever she needed something, she had to call Amy for it.

When they had loaded her into the cargo hold three months earlier, there was plenty of room to spare. However, although she was only growing a few inches every day, after 90 days Aston only had a few feet before the once-cavernous cargo hold would become too small.

Thanks to autopilot, Amy was able to spend the majority of her time with Aston in the cargo hold. During their time together, Aston was able to learn a lot about Amy, and soon learned part of the reason for Amy’s fascination with her. The two women, having never met before, had led very similar lives. Although Amy had never married like Aston had, she had lost both of her parents at a young age. She quit school and went directly into the space program, hence her high rank at such a young age of 26. When this mission was first announced, she took a certain fascination to it, and began reading up on Aston’s profile. Amy knew she was on a one-way mission, but having someone with her that she could relate to made her very comforted.

“Ok,” Amy said as she climbed on top of Aston, “they’re boarding in about an hour, so let me explain how this should work.” She pulled out a small device with three buttons and attached it to Aston’s headset so she could reach it with her mouth. “This is the detonation control. It’s rather idiot-proof, so you don’t have to worry about accidentally setting it off. The first button doesn’t do anything. The second button will ramp up your heart rate again, so you can expect to grow a little more. After a couple of minutes, you press the third button, and then you’re a hero.”

“Got it,” Aston said.

“I have a control as well,” Amy continued, “but if I’m incapacitated, it’s all up to you. All you have to do is stay quiet. If you do that, then no one should ever suspect anything. Once we’re boarded, it’ll be another couple of days before we reach the planet if all goes well.”

“How will I know if it’s up to me?” Aston asked.

“If people start to unload you off the ship when we reach the planet’s surface, then it’s up to you. My plan is to detonate as soon as we reach the planet, before anyone has a chance to really get a good look at you. But I’ll start the process before that.”

“Ok,” said Aston.

“Well,” Amy said, “I’ve got some stuff to delete off the computers before they get here. Good luck.”

“You too,” Aston nodded.

 

The boarding party bought it. Amy was able to pass off the massive sphere as an organic “oxygen factory” and they didn’t ask too many questions. For a minute, she was even a little worried that they might not tow the ship back to Mars. Then one of the men grabbed her by the hair and led her out of the cargo hold, and she realized everything was going according to plan.

The next two days were not easy for either woman. Aston was alone in the ship the entire time, and was extremely bored. Meanwhile, Amy was on the other ship being forced to recreate some… unusual… porn scenes. Fortunately, she was kept in solitary confinement overnight, and they had not found her detonation control yet. The night before they were to land on Mars, she pressed the first two buttons, and soon after Aston began to feel her heart rate increase slowly. Since she was already so huge, it would take a lot to make her grow noticeably.

When Aston awoke the next morning, she felt numerous pairs of hands feeling along her underside. The sound of her heartbeat pounded in her ears. Slowly she realized what had happened – Amy had been incapacitated somehow, and they had landed on Mars. It was up to her.

Far below, on the deck of the cargo hold, Pete and Roger casually ate hamburgers while they oversaw the removal of the sphere from the cargo hold.

“This is gonna be a huge promotion,” Pete said. “No more graveyard shifts in the boondocks.”

“Actually,” Roger said, “I think I might quit this place and start a culinary school.”

“You’re a sick bastard.”

High above, Aston steeled herself, took hold of the control with her mouth, and bit down on the third button.

 

Nothing happened.

Aston began to panic. She bit down as hard as she could, but still nothing happened. The control was malfunctioning! She frantically began biting down on the controller in a blind rage, attempting to make something go right.

In the midst of her desperate masticating, something happened, and Aston paused. Her heart was beating faster. Her already labored breathing turned into canine-like pants as her heart rate increased far beyond what she had previously considered possible (my, how this whole experience had changed her preconceived notions of “possible” and “impossible”). As she put her entire focus on breathing fast enough to keep up with her heart, she barely noticed that her body was growing again.

Although this time, the growth was faster than ever before, and Aston was thrust into a state of sensory overload. Over her desperate pants, she could hear distant shouting coming from below as panic ensued. Catching a glimpse down, she saw the first two buttons lit on the detonation control. “So THAT’S it,” she thought, “the controls are independent!”

Aston began to see stars in her field of vision, and realized she was running out of time. She had not noticed that she was now wedged inside the cargo hold and still growing very rapidly. Reaching out with her teeth, she found the detonation button and bit down.

 

“This is Virginia Dawson with a FlashNews-33 news bulletin. FlashNews-33 has learned from various sources inside the space agency that there has been a devastating explosion on the surface of Mars. Our sources say that a majority of the colonies have been damaged and that the atmosphere in the surrounding area is extremely volatile.

“Our sources also say that NASA administrator Dr. James Cartwright was found dead in his home this morning of an apparent heart attack. Police say that foul play is not being investigated at this time.

“NASA declined to comment on either situation, but promised a full briefing within the week. We’ll have more on these developing stories for you during our 10pm newscast. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled program, When News Anchors Attack…”

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