Emma's Growth Spurt, Chapter 37 Complete (Patreon)

Hey everyone!  I'm so glad to be back posting again.  This past month has been very difficult for me, both health-wise and in my personal life, and a combination of factors contributed to me not being able to get much writing done.  Thankfully, I should now be able to resume normal posting, so I look forward to providing plenty of reading material for you guys.  Thanks so much to all who have stuck around and continued to support me.  It really means a lot <3

As part of resuming my writing schedule, I've decided to only work on one chapter at a time, until each one is finished.  This way, I can post a more reliable writing schedule that you all can refer to if you have any questions about which updates are coming next.  For this month, I'll be working on, in this order, Melissa's Breakthrough, The Reveries of Aaron Cooper, The Witches of Kappa Gamma Delta ($17 and up), The Abatement of Kyle Trinter, The Landmark Resort, and The Shrink ($17 and up).  If I get all those chapters done, I'll also be working on the next chapters of Reus Village and East of Eve, both for the $17-and up tier.

Please feel free to message me at any time if you all have any questions, worries, or anything else.  You guys really are the best, and I feel lucky to have such a group of support, even in harder times <3

Now enjoy the longest "Emma" chapter to date, lol!

Chapter 37

A few hours later, the bright, golden light of the rising sun was streaming in through the open hangar of the Facility.  Dr. Jeltzin, per usual, had opened the door, eager to rouse Emma and get her started on her morning exercises.  Usually, Emma would remain stubbornly in bed for a while, stretching and yawning, and sleepily insisting on cuddling with Daniel – whom she often woke up by snatching him up out of his bed on her nightstand to press intimately into her cheek.  Weeks before, Dr. Jeltzin had been more forceful and persistent in getting her up, since her mornings were strictly regulated, but lately, he had become more and more lenient…or rather, Emma had stopped responding to the external schedule imposed on her, and Jeltzin hadn’t been able to effectively assert his authority.  Once she had grown past 55 feet tall, there had been a silent, though clearly noticeable swing in power, and even though the scientists were uncomfortable admitting it to themselves, the fact was that they weren’t even sure that their “nuclear option” (the pink gas) could contain her anymore, should she overstep the Facility rules.

“Oh please, just…don’t even mention that!” Alison had responded, clearly upset, the day before, when Dr. Farley had expressed his fears about not being able to control her anymore.  “As long as we just, uhm…keep her fed and happy…which is much easier now that Daniel’s here…we should be fine, for…well, for a while, at least.”

“And if she keeps growing?” Dr. Ossford had countered, raising his eyebrows.

“Or if she keeps growing…at an accelerated rate?” Dr. Farley added with a challenging tilt of his head.

Alison couldn’t respond with anything but a long sigh and a shrug, and silence had reigned over the meeting.

Now, back to the present morning, that conversation was replaying over and over in Dr. Jeltzin’s head as he opened the hanger door.  There was no way around it: he was nervous about the future.  They all were.  But compared to where Emma had been, mentally and emotionally, months ago…it was like night and day.  He had never seen her so happy, in such high, playful spirits.  Jeltzin knew that Daniel’s presence was probably the main reason for her elevated mood, but he also knew that it wasn’t all because of Daniel.  Something had clicked in Emma’s mind, while at the Facility, that had fuelled her confidence, and…most unnervingly, her desire to keep growing, to keep getting bigger and bigger.  On one hand, Jeltzin loved it, loved challenging her to lift more and more weight, loved being her biggest cheerleader.  But on the other hand, he couldn’t help but join the other scientists in feeling a deepening sense of concern, and even helplessness, when they were around her.  They still had no idea why she was growing, and the prospect of an accelerated spurt loomed over their heads – they had no plan about what to do if this happened.

‘So why even worry about it?’ Jeltzin thought to himself, turning around from the hanger door to rouse Emma for her morning workouts.  ‘We’ll just cross that bridge if and when we come to it – and besides, Alison was right, we need to manifest positivity and confidence around her, otherwise she’s going to start thinking something’s wrong, and then she might revert back to –’

But just then, as he turned back to Emma’s bed, he stopped dead in his tracks.  A gigantic ankle was directly there in front of him, waist-level.  Jeltzin’s eyes went wide as he stared up the full pillar of the leg, 16 feet up to where a massive knee loomed over him.  Her thighs were so big that he couldn’t even see up to her waist.  Over 30 feet above him, he saw the dark, tight fabric of her underwear stretched across the bottom of her crotch.  Jeltzin looked back down, trying to compose himself.  Emma had played around with him like this before, but she had never managed to actually sneak up on him quite like that, without him even noticing.  She must have been awake the whole time, and used extraordinary care tiptoeing up to him.  But most strikingly, he could tell that she had grown bigger during the night…a LOT bigger.  Her foot alone was over three feet wide, and, from the back of her heel to the tip of her big toe, nearly nine feet long.

As Dr. Jeltzin’s brain tried to process what he was seeing, the gigantic, white-manicured toes sprang to life and began scrunching and tapping teasingly, sending palatable vibrations through the concrete floor.  Far, far above, an enormous, gusting exhale preceded the soft, deep wave of giggling laughter.

“E-Emma!  Woah!” Dr. Jeltzin exclaimed, and he reflexively took a couple steps backward.  He had already been startled by her sudden appearance behind him, but the gust and energy of her laughter had truly caught him off guard.  The scary thing was he knew that Emma was just giggling…but to him, it sounded almost like thunder.

“You, uhm…haha!  You snuck up on me there!” he added, calling up to her by cupping his hands around his mouth.  In the past, this trick had worked and allowed her to hear him, since he had one of those big, loud male voices that naturally carried.  But right now, Emma was just standing there, apparently gloating down at him.  In an impressive whoosh of motion, she put her hands on her hips, and again Jeltzin felt the power and energy from even the simplest of her movements.  Anything she did seemed to produce its own wind current, and he felt his hair brush back once more in response.  She was licking her top teeth now, glancing around the hangar, apparently still waking up.

‘She didn’t even hear me,’ Jeltzin thought suddenly.  ‘She usually hears something, and makes a joke if she can’t understand…but she didn’t hear anything that time…’

Then another thought suddenly came into his mind, a thought that made his stomach clench up uncomfortably inside – what if she hadn’t snuck up on him?  What if she had just been getting out of bed and…narrowly avoided stepping on him by accident?  No, no it couldn’t be…even though she had gotten much bigger, he was still big enough for her to notice him…right!?  But he didn’t have too much time to dwell on this unsettling thought, because the air was trembling again – Emma was speaking:

“How’s he reacting?  I can’t even tell – you’re way closer.”

Emma was apparently talking to her nightstand, but then Jeltzin saw that Daniel was sitting there on the edge, with his legs dangling.  It had been difficult to notice him sitting there (even though Daniel was about his size), since his senses were so calibrated to Emma’s gigantic stature.

“He’s…surprised, I think!” called Daniel.  Jeltzin felt a shadow pass over him, as the light from the rising sun outside was blotted out momentarily – Emma was leaning over him, forming an upside-down “J” with her body, as she crouched down close to Daniel, with her hand to her ear.  Her feet hadn’t even moved, and Jeltzin wondered if she was intentionally showing off her flexibility.

“Surprised!” yelled Daniel again, and Emma nodded and grinned over at Jeltzin, upside-down, from in between her legs, still in her arching, crouched position.

“Of course he is!” she laughed, finally straightening up and taking two 30-foot strides over Jeltzin towards the open hangar door.  Now foregrounding the morning sun rising over the jagged, icy mountains in the distance, she slowly brought her arms up above her head, deliberately taking her time, as her smile widened.  Since he was now standing far enough back to take her whole figure in at once, Jeltzin saw that Emma had squeezed herself into her pink long-sleeve cat shirt…and it looked absurdly small on her now.  To begin with, the “long” sleeves stopped in the middle of her forearms, and the sleeves themselves, which had been quite baggy just a couple weeks before, were now filled completely by the bulk of her arms…even stretched-out.  Jeltzin could see how one of the sleeves was even beginning to fray.  What’s more, that truck chain bracelet on her wrist, which she had only been wearing for, what – a week?  A week and a half!?  It had gone almost halfway down her forearm before, and now, as she raised her arms up over her head, Jeltzin saw how it didn’t budge from the smallest part of her wrist.  It actually looked like it was pretty tight.

All these thoughts and details were rushing through Jeltzin’s head, not giving him time to focus on any one of them, as one thing after another left him amazed.  The act of her raising her arms up over her head exposed the soft white of her belly – the cat shirt was so small that it was riding high up on her torso, exposing about three-quarters of her stomach, which was gently toned from her workouts.  The cat face, which had been etched in black across the front of her shirt, was utterly unrecognizable now – it just looked like a strange series of stretched-out symbols or etchings.  Jeltzin found himself wondering how on earth Emma had managed to fit herself into that shirt, and how uncomfortable it must be feeling for her.

“Look!” boomed Emma, forcing Jeltzin to take a couple panicked steps back (before he recovered, shaking his head at himself – this was Emma, after all!  What was he so afraid of all of a sudden!?).  “Whaddya think, huh?”

Jeltzin stood there, staring up and down at Emma’s body, a bit confused.  What did she want him to say?  The full, creamy pillars of her exposed thighs looked absolutely incredible, and strikingly imposing – her legs alone were over 30 feet tall.  Her stomach looked great; her shoulders sure did look extra-big in that silly shirt; her arms were looking nice and buff.  Was she asking how the shirt looked?  He arched his head to look up at her face, to try and get some sort of a clue what she meant.  But just then, the top of the sun broke out above the snow-capped pinnacle of the tallest mountain in the distance, and the entire hangar, complete with Emma’s statuesque pose, was bathed in bright golden light.  Jeltzin was stunned.  He had never been so struck by an image – he had always been her fan, her cheerleader…but he had never before been left open-mouthed like this.  The image of her standing there in her underwear, squeezed into that ridiculous shirt, grinning and stretching her arms up, with the sun rising above the mountains behind her…he had no words.

“Oh my god…” came Dr. Farley’s hushed voice from behind him.  “Do you…are you seeing what she’s…?”

“Yeah I’m seeing it alright,” replied Dr. Ossford, in an equally-astonished tone.  Jeltzin looked behind him, and saw that the entire array of Facility scientists (with the conspicuous exception of Dr. Clinebell) had gathered behind him, and were all staring up in awe (and something like fear) at Emma.

“Seeing…what, exactly?” Jeltzin heard himself asking, turning back around to gawk up at Emma some more.  It sounded to him like a ridiculous question, but he had the sense that he was missing something.

“Look at her hands,” Alison said next to him, pointing up.  Jeltzin glanced sideways at Emma’s therapist; she looked completely baffled…and afraid.  “She’s…she’s palming the ceiling.”

“No, she couldn’t be – she wasn’t even close to touching…” began Jeltzin as he looked back up, but the words died in his throat.  He could see the slight outline of the powerful tendons in her wrists stretching and flexing as she drummed her fingers on the ceiling.  She was palming it…effortlessly.  He looked back down at her feet, just to make sure she wasn’t “cheating,” but they were flat on the floor, barefoot.  How could she have grown so much taller…and bigger!?  In a single night??  It didn’t seem possible.

“This isn’t good,” muttered one of the technician scientists at the back of the group.

“Yeah,” returned another, a dark fatalism imbuing his words, “We can’t keep her here much longer.”

“There’s just…there’s just no way, no way…” came the chorus of muttering voices, building on top of each other.

“Now listen, we don’t need any of that talk,” Dr. Ossford snapped, turning around at the group and casting his eyes about reproachfully.  “Imagine if Clinebell heard you say that; we’ve gotta nip that kind of attitude in the bud.  She’s our responsibility – end of story.”  Jeltzin, Farley, Alison, and a few of the other head scientists gathered around behind Dr. Ossford, clearly backing him up, but none of them could think of anything more to say.  The assembled technician scientists, auxologists, and others grew quiet, even though the deep uneasiness remained etched in their expressions.  It seemed like a few of them were still on the verge of arguing back, but a powerful, rhythmic thudding brought everyone’s attention back to Emma.  She had lowered her hands off the ceiling, spread her arms wide (over 60 feet), and was bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, going up to her tiptoes and then down again – up…and then down once more.

“Ha!  Check that out!” she was smiling down to Daniel, “On my tiptoes my head’s not too far away from the ceiling – can you believe that!?  Remember when I had to bounce on the trampoline to even touch it with my fingertips?  Wait, here…”

She had bent down close to hear Daniel’s answer, but had then just made a snap judgment and swooped her hand down, fishing him up off the nightstand.  As she did so, she remembered to move her body slowly, just so Daniel wouldn’t get nauseous as he moved through the air.  Even in the midst of her excitement in showing off to the assembled scientists below, she wasn’t letting herself get carried away.  As she nestled Daniel into the snug neckband of her tight shirt, she took a moment to appreciate the progress she had made.  Her mind shot back to what seemed like ages and ages ago, to their old house, when she had first started growing, and how miserable she had been.  And then to the farm, and the…well, what still seemed like a nightmare in her mind, still garbled up into dark disjointed pieces in her memory…and then when she had first come here, to the Facility, and how new everything had been, and how drastically her moods still shifted.

But they really didn’t anymore.  She felt totally calm, collected, and in control.  The bigger she got, the more at ease with everything she became.  Of course, certain things were getting harder – clothes were a constant issue, she could barely hear anyone except Daniel when he was right near her ear, and she had started bumping into things unexpectedly again.  But everything else?  It was great – she felt amazing in her body, more so than she had ever felt before.  She felt hot.  That sex with Daniel from the previous night had been a revelation.  The whole time, she had been in total, absolute control of everything, keeping him on the edge, teasing him, tantalizing him, and showing him how good she could make him feel.  His precious little expressions were still stuck in her mind…and the way she had made him cum…mmmmmmm, she felt a shiver of pleasure go through her body as she remembered.

She gently plucked Daniel out of her shirt and held him up to her face.  He had been saying something to her, but that’s not why she was holding him up. She marveled at how tiny and fragile his gorgeous little body looked in between her fingers – to her, he appeared only 6 inches tall.

“Hrmm?  What’s that, sweetie?” she asked, pouting at him as she blinked her eyes lusciously.

“I was just saying,” Daniel repeated, feeling a liquid warmth go through him as Emma blinked at him, “That I think they’re gonna need to build you a bigger trampoline – and put it outside!”

“Oooooh yes you’re so right!” Emma practically squealed, though making it a point to keep her voice frequency lower to protect his little ears.  Then, without saying anything more, she did what she had brought him out for – bringing him even closer up to her face, when she had to cross her eyes to see him, she gave him a soft, tender kiss that spanned the entirety of his stomach.  Daniel, clothed in his nightshirt and underwear, couldn’t help but close his eyes in pleasure.  He had expected Emma to put him back in her neckband after, but she didn’t.  Instead, she opened her lips a little farther and kissed him again, encompassing his entire midsection, and then…she opened them even more and kissed him a third time, becoming a bit more aggressive, now latching onto his torso and beginning to suck gently.  He could feel his underwear and nightshirt start to tear from the sheer power of her mouth, and then the massive tip of her tongue slithered up his shirt, stretching it to its breaking point, and then flicking backward once, shredding it completely.

“Emma…E-Emma wait…not here…” panted Daniel, who was red-faced and rock hard instantly.  “Not in front of them…”

“Awggg who carrressssthh?” she moaned into him, and for a few long moments, she didn’t let him go.  She kept gently spearing his exposed chest and belly with her tongue, bit by bit working her way down to his underwear.  The massive tip of her tongue teased his waistband.

“Hahh…hahhh…Emma…” panted Daniel.  It wasn’t clear at this point whether he was embarrassed, or simply transported by desire.  Blowing a playful exhale out of her nose, Emma squirmed her tongue once into his underwear, scrambling his cock and balls in a quick flurry of hot, wet action, before slipping it back out again, and freeing him at last from her lips.  They stared at each other, with her holding him there, with his back to the scientists below.  He arched an eyebrow at her, and they both laughed.

“Emma!” called Dr. Ossford from below, through the megaphone.  She realized that he had been calling a few times, but had only registered it presently, now that she had had her little moment with Daniel.

“Oh, yes!  All of you down there!” Emma laughed, putting Daniel back in her neckband before stepping toward them.  As she expected, they all took a few steps back.  She smiled inwardly to herself; she wasn’t trying to scare them or anything.  It was just fun predicting what would happen, and then being totally right.

“Daniel and I agree that it’s time for a field trip!” she announced, bouncing up and down again on the balls of her feet.  “I think I need to jump around a little, and if I jump in here…” And she mimed getting ready to jump.

“Don’t!  Emma!” called Dr. Jeltzin through another megaphone, causing Emma to giggle again.

“I’m kidding, duh!” she burst out playfully.  “I mean, obviously I can’t jump in here anymore without cracking my head open on the ceiling.”  She turned out to face the mountains and pointed at them, feeling a sudden, strange, powerful sense of camaraderie with their icy peaks.

“So!” she demanded, turning back around to stare down at them as she pointed out towards the mountains, “I wanna go hike those!”  She had been very close to adding the word “today” at the end of her sentence, but something kept her back – things were lovely and bright right now, and deep down, she understood that she could darken everything with a single word or action.  And far from it giving her anxiety, the power made her feel proud and strong…and sexy.

The scientists hadn’t answered yet.  Their faces were all turned inward towards each other.  They were talking, conferring, debating – Emma felt a sense of tenderness towards them, even though she felt like rolling her eyes at the same time.  And then, after a few more seconds, Dr. Jeltzin stepped forward from the group, holding up the megaphone as he did his best to try and look natural and confident.

“Alright Emma, yes!” he called up to her, “A field trip!  Good idea!  But first, we need to get your morning measurements.”

Tightly secured underneath the neckband of Emma’s shirt, Daniel’s upper body actually started jerking forward slightly in a rhythmic cadence, as he felt his back heat up rapidly.  He immediately knew why – positioned this way, he had his back to Emma’s neck, and his body was directly pressed up against her carotid artery.  He had already been able to feel her blood pumping behind him, but as soon as Dr. Jaltzin had mentioned measurements, Daniel’s entire upper body started bowing forward in jerked motions to the rhythm of her heartbeat.  He needed no verbal cues to tell that she was excited to be measured.  But the next moment he was blinking, startled, as Emma clasped her hands together about 30 feet away.  He knew that she had purposefully avoided clapping her hands for his sake, but even the barely-contained excitement of her hand clasp seemed as loud as a sudden boom of not-too-distant thunder.

“Ooooo MEASUREMENTS!” Emma exclaimed, again shaking the floor by rolling up and down on the balls of her feet.  “Ever since last night I’ve soooo been looking forward to this!”

“Last night, huh?” said Dr. Jeltzin, as he and the other scientists began walking towards the “measuring station” at the corner of the hangar.  “So were you…I assume you went through another growth spurt last night?  And you were awake while it was happening?”

“Mmmmm, well yes I was awake,” Emma answered, easily beating the scientists to the station in two huge strides.  “But I was a little…distracted last night, hahaha…”

“Distracted?” Alison asked up through the megaphone, “By what, Emma?  Was everything ok last night?”

“OH…” grinned Emma suggestively, as she struck her tongue slightly out and to the side, biting it, “Everything was waaaaay more than okay.”

“Um, Emma?” piped up Daniel, twisting and gyrating his body a little so that he could speak up directly into her ear, “Maybe they don’t need to know all about…uh, you know…”

“What?” Emma retorted merrily, her brow furrowing a little as she inclined her head down and pulled in her chin so that she could see him, “Why not?  We had the best sex of our lives last night!  It was so good it literally made me start growing more!”

She turned to look back down on the scientists assembled far below, and she tilted her head slightly to the side, her eyes going a bit wide in humor.  She was still talking to Daniel, but she was addressing them now too.  “Don’t you think that’s all…what’s the phrase?  Clinically significant!?”

The scientists didn’t know whether she was just making a joke, or whether there was some darker sarcasm behind her words.  Either way, the expression on her face was making them more uneasy.

“Hehheh okay,” Dr. Jeltzin chuckled into the megaphone, eager to keep things moving, “Well of course we’re all glad that you and Daniel were –”

“Oh who am I kidding?” Emma’s voice rose up above the megaphone.  She was looking down at Daniel now, and talking only to him, and he could feel her blood rushing and beating behind his back even faster now.  “They’ve got their cameras on us 24/7 – I bet they were watching us on their little monitors in their control room!”

“Emma…shhhh!” Daniel admonished, privately acknowledging how silly it was for him to order her to be quiet.  But all of a sudden she had started treading on dangerous ground, and, more than anything, it was her jocular tone that was the culprit.  At her size, sarcasm was scary.

“Yeeeeah,” hummed Emma, looking back down on the scientists.  She raised her head up (so she wouldn’t knock into Daniel with her chin) and shook it slowly back and forth as she continued smiling.  “They were watching us.”

A strange, eerie silence followed.  Even Dr. Jeltzin wasn’t able to immediately respond through the megaphone.  It wasn’t at all clear whether Emma was still being funny or sarcastic…or not.  Her smile had dropped slightly, and for a few tense moments she was just standing there, staring down at the crowd of scientists, her eyes fixed on them, unmoving.  For an instant, no one really knew what was going to happen next.  Even Daniel was starting to feel the tension, both metaphorical and real – Emma’s heartbeat was truly pounding into his back now, and he found himself starting to worry about her blood pressure.

“Emma?” he asked into her ear, unable to hide a bit of desperation in his voice.

“What?” she whispered back to him.

“Y-Your…your heartbeat,” began Daniel, feeling a bit silly for bringing it up.  “It’s…it’s really fast right now.  I can feel it.”

“Oh I know!” exclaimed Emma happily.  “I’m just excited to get measured!”  She bent a little forward, and pointed straight down at Dr. Jeltzin.  “If a certain someone would practice what he preaches and stop shilly-shallying!  Isn’t that what you used to tell me when I didn’t want to work out?  Stop shilly-shallying, Jeltzin!”

“Ehaha, always down to get called-out by you, girl!” Dr. Jeltzin laughed back up at her.  A relaxation of the tension was tangible in his voice, and all the scientists seemed to breathe an odd sigh of relief as well.  None of them had really understood what had happened – if anything had happened at all – but at this point they were just glad to keep things moving, and normal.

Less than a minute later, Emma was standing with her back to the measuring implement.  Several auxologists were gathered around the control panel, making sure all the settings were correct.  It took them a bit longer than usual, since one of the technicians was having to alter the dials to account for some unknown vibrations that the instruments were picking up.  After several minutes, he was on the verge of restarting the whole measuring implement when Dr. Ossford, who was looking over his shoulder at the readings, stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“No need to restart everything,” Ossford declared, “I understand now – the vibration’s natural.  Proceed along.”

“Natural!?” the technician replied, perplexed.  “What do you mean?  The readings indicate that there’s 5.4 million joules of energy going into the floor, like…rhythmically every few seconds.  That’s 10 cars going 60 miles per hour!  We have to make sure that there’s no interfering frequencies with the –”

“It’s her heartbeat,” interrupted Dr. Ossford.  “That’s all it is.  As long as we account for it, no readings will be compromised.”

The technician stared blankly at Dr. Ossford, opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again.  He looked to the screen, and then, with a new sense of awe, up to Emma, who was in the middle of betting with Daniel how tall she had gotten.

“60 feet!?” she laughed, blowing out her air far over his head in a 50 mile-per-hour gust, “Are you kidding me??  Noooo, no I’m like…at least 62 feet now!”

“You want to be 62 feet now,” Daniel gibed.

“No I am 62 feet,” Emma countered, turning up her nose.  “I want to be 80 feet.”

“Are you…sure about that?” Daniel asked uncertainly, still smiling but now beginning to worry again.

“Sure I’m sure, cutie pie!” Emma laughed, extending her thumb gently up to his face and tapping him playfully.  Daniel felt a shift in her weight as the air current changed.  She was moving her arms slightly, and, far down below, he could see that she had put her hand in between her legs.  “When I’m that big you can crawl up inside me and go to sleep, and we’ll both be soooo cozy, mmmmmm!”

“Emma, quit itttt!” Daniel exclaimed, trying to push the pad of her thumb away from his face, even as he felt himself get aroused at how blatantly sexual Emma was behaving.  Part of him was embarrassed about all the scientists hearing her lewd talk down below, but Daniel reminded himself that Emma was surely right – they were being filmed 24 hours a day, and so, with that in mind, he could get on board with Emma just deciding to be openly salacious.  He wouldn’t have spoken it quite like that, but then again, she had always been the one who was more inclined to dirty talk.  And at her size, this kind of flirtation made an immediate impression on him; he was completely erect.

“All right Emma,” called up Dr. Jeltzin, giving no sign that he was distracted by her sexy talk, “Put Daniel down on the floor so we can get an accurate measurement, okay?”

“Anything for an accurate measurement!” she chirped, extending her finger and allowing Daniel to grip it tightly before pulling him out of her neckband and setting him carefully down at her feet.  She did all this without bending her knees, and Daniel knew that she was just taking advantage of another opportunity to show off her flexibility – it turned him on even more, watching her straighten back up from putting him down.  Even after all this time, it was awe-inspiring to watch such a gigantic body move with such agility and coordination.  And now, of course, she was bigger – much bigger.  But by how much, he really couldn’t say; that was about to be answered.  Daniel stepped about 30 feet to the side, making sure to get off the weight plate that was going to be taking her measurements.

“Ready when you are!” Emma announced, putting her hands on her hips as she drew back her shoulders and rose up completely, standing as tall as she possibly could.  Daniel could see the wide smile on her face, despite the fact that it was a bit hazy, since he was looking at it from so far away.  He had always been a bit nearsighted, but he hadn’t ever really needed glasses.  This was the first time he had actually noticed that her face was a bit blurred when he looked up at it, standing on the floor.  He felt a shiver go through him – she truly was becoming enormous, in an entirely new kind of way.

“Okay, so you’re backed into the wall,” Dr. Jeltzin was saying, “Now stand still, no cheating with your tiptoes, haha…not that you’d need to cheat of course…getting the reading now…aaaand…WOW.”

“What!?” Emma burst out, her voice causing everyone to shudder and cover their ears.  Emma seemed to notice and quickly added, in a more temperate voice, bubbling with excitement, “What’s it say!?  What’s it say!?”

“It says,” Dr. Jeltzin said slowly, “That you’re 755 inches, or, in other words…62 feet and 11 inches.”

Emma’s mouth dropped open, though the rest of her body remained stock-still.  Her eyes went wide and traveled slowly and deliberately down to Daniel, until they rested on him far down below, off to her left.  Daniel was laughing and shrugging, throwing up his hands, as if to say, ‘Damn!  I was wrong – you win!’  He could tell that Emma was feeling a strong inclination to physically react to the incredible news of how tall she had grown, but he also knew that she wanted to know how much she weighed too, and wasn’t intent on disrupting the measurement procedure.  She just kept standing there, unmoving, staring down at him with those beautiful wide eyes of hers, with her mouth still gaping open in unabashed delight.

“Aaaand…hold on, the weight’s still calculating,” Jeltzin muttered into the megaphone.  It was obvious, despite Jeltzin’s attempted nonchalance, that he was floored by Emma’s new height.  His voice had even wavered a bit as he had spoken.  All the scientists and technicians were gathered around, none of them speaking, their eyes fixed in disbelief at the measurements that were showing up on the control panel screens.

“755 inches…” spoke Dr. Oxford in a low voice after a few silent moments, “That’s already 20 percent outside of our maximum protocol…”

“For…what, exactly?” asked one of the technicians uneasily.  “Like, her diet?  Her clothing size?”

“No,” Dr. Ossford answered, his voice hollow, “The building.”

“The building?” whispered the technician blankly.  Dr. Ossford nodded grimly.

“The whole Facility.”

“Okay a-and…and it looks like we’ve just about got your weight, Emma,” Jeltzin was saying, trying to keep talking to somehow assuage the fear they were all feeling down on the floor.  Daniel could sense it, but he was too far off to hear what they were saying to each other.  In any case, he was too focused on Emma, and that beaming, open-mouthed smile she was still flashing him.  But his attention was briefly re-directed back at the scientists, because a palpable, audible shock had gone through them.  They were already agitated and flustered from the height measurement, but now that they were learning what Emma weighed, they were finding it more difficult to conceal their disbelief.

“And your…weight…now, Emma…” Jeltzin said, in his best attempt at a deadpan voice, “Is…177,933 pounds.  Or…uhm…or, in other words, 88 tons, and 1,933 pounds.”

“WOAH!” Emma boomed out, thrusting her arms high up into the air in a “victory” pose, before hopping off the weight plate with a reverberating, thunderous sound that shook the entire Facility.  In the midst of her little jump (which was no more than 6 feet off the floor), she had reached up and slapped the ceiling with her palms – the combination of her feet coming down on the floor and her hands smacking into the ceiling shook every aspect of the building’s foundation, and little clouds of concrete dust trickled down from all four corners of the ceiling.

“Emma!” warned Dr. Jeltzin quickly, his voice higher-pitched than he intended, “Please!  Don’t do that!  The structural integrity of the floor and the ceiling…!  We can’t have you doing –”

“Sorry, sorry!” laughed Emma causally, waving him off with a windmill motion of her hand.  “I was just excited is all – did you HEAR that, Daniel!?  Did you HEAR how BIG I am now?!”

She had immediately sidled up to him, so that she was standing directly above him, with her bare feet about 20 feet away.  And then, reaching up towards the ceiling again and arching her back sexily, she began to perform a series of suggestive, sensual dance movements with her gigantic body.  She swirled her hips side to side in languid, fluid motions, feeling herself up with her hands as she did so; without her feet moving, she lowered herself down, until her knees were almost completely bent, and threw her huge ass back, twerking it seductively in Daniel’s direction before standing up again.  Her ass cheeks jiggled and clapped the whole time she was standing back up, and once she had reached her full height again, she leaned forward, shaking her butt even more crazily while her giant thighs shook and gyrated in tandem.

Daniel didn’t know how to react to Emma’s blatant sexual display, other than getting aroused himself, of course.  When she had been twerking her ass cheeks from her crouched position, he had been struck by a crazy urge to reach up and give her butt a playful smack.  But, of course, despite her crouching down so far, he couldn’t have reached her ass if he had jumped.  And now that she had stood all the way back up again, all that was left was for him to flash two “thumbs up” signs at her, positively beaming.  He was happy for her – really he was.  By this point, he knew how much Emma had learned to embrace her growth.  He had never seen her so fresh and happy, and he couldn’t help but tap into this well of exhilaration and glee.  There was also something of a sense, in his mind, of smug satisfaction, seeing all those scientists huddled up together by their instruments, heads bowed in close together, speaking in low voices.

Daniel knew that they were all just doing their jobs, and he actually liked a few of them, particularly Jeltzin and Alison.  But he had grown to detest the way that they treated Emma, even though he knew that they were all just trying to find out what caused her growth spurts.  If they had been able to discover the cause, he might have felt more sympathetic towards them.  But they had discovered nothing, and meanwhile, were subjecting her to all these daily tests, many of which were invasive and difficult for her, and confining her to the Facility hangar, which was fast becoming too small for her.  In Daniel’s mind, they were treating her like some kind of giant lab rat, while stifling her blooming free spirit which, as each day passed, seemed to intensify.

“Well what do you think of that, baby?” Emma crooned from high above.  “Your girlfriend is basically 63 feet tall…and here you were saying that she was 60 feet, tops.  What do I look like, some kind of midget!?”

“I was wrong, haha, please don’t hold it against me!” laughed Daniel, putting up his hands.  He knew that Emma couldn’t hear him, but he also knew that she was acting out her own scene right now, both for him and for the scientists.

“Yessss, so now what do I get,” Emma asked, grabbing her stomach and shaking it playfully.  “Now that I won the bet?  Hmmm?”  Her abdomen, like the rest of her body, stretched her cat shirt to the limit, to the point where her belly was poking through in between where the shirt ended and her panties began.  Ever since her growth spurts had really taken off, Emma had developed a bit of pudge in her belly that hadn’t quite gone away yet – she was still gloriously proportional, but her stomach still protruded out just a bit.  Dr. Farley had told her that she had a running caloric surplus of 580,000 calories a day, which he had tried to explain as the cause of her slight belly.

“But I like it!” Emma had pouted at him, giggling as she shook her stomach in her hands high above him.  “It helps stabilize my deadlifts!”

And now, back in the present, Emma was jiggling her belly again, her eyes upturned to the ceiling as she thought out loud:

“Now I kind of forget some of the rules here – this place has a lot of them, haha, too many if you ask me – but I think I remember something about having to stay here at all times, and never getting to go outside.  Is that right, Daniel?  That’s one of the rules, isn’t it?

“Now Emma, uhmm, we need to keep you on the growth plate for a few more minutes,” Dr. Ossford called through the megaphone, taking it from Dr. Jeltzin, who seemed equal parts awed and uncomfortable.  “We’re n-not…not done with the tests yet, alright?”

“Because there’s something I don’t really get,” Emma continued breezily, completely ignoring Dr. Ossford’s words.  She still had her slight belly in her hands, and was now jiggling it playfully down at the scientists.  “Little Dr. Farley down there tells me that I have a…what was it called again?  Oh yeah – a caloric surplus!  Which is why I’ve gained a little weight recently, heheh.”

She turned down to Daniel, grinning at him as she extended her tongue out and bit it suggestively.  “You didn’t mind me being a little heavier last night…did you?”

Daniel shook his head.  He already knew where she was going with this, and, despite his admiration at her audacity, he began to feel uneasy again.  This uneasiness was not the same as it had been months and months before, when it was quite clear that she had lost her mind.  No – now, she seemed sane enough (despite the occasional inability to understand space and size in “normal” terms), but he could tell that she and the Facility were on a collision course.  And Daniel had no idea what that looked like, and feared what it would be.  She was getting bolder, and the ultimate power threat that the scientists had – the pink gas – didn’t really seem to be on her mind right now.  Daniel wondered if it even needed to be.

‘Does that stuff even affect her anymore!?’ he thought.

“So my significant other doesn’t seem to mind my weight,” Emma continued, and she lifted her foot up and put it down again 30 feet away.  At first it looked to Daniel like she was moving to stand in another place, but then it became clear – she had started walking in a circle around the scientists.

“And I’m stronger than ever before,” continued Emma, “Right, Jeltzin?”

Dr. Jeltzin took the megaphone from Dr. Ossford and replied, in an attempt to diffuse the tension: “Right as rain girl, but we really do need you to get back on the growth plate so we can run –”

“Mmm, yes,” persisted Emma, talking over him as she lifted up her arms and flexed her biceps.  Her forearms also swelled a bit as she flexed, and Daniel heard a metallic “twang” go off.  It took him a couple seconds to realize that one of the metal loops in the truck chain bracelet around her wrist had been bent.  Emma continued walking around the scientists in a circle as she kept talking:

“Bigger and stronger than ever…but still, it’s not enough for…certain people…who just looove to critique what I eat, and write it all down in their charts and diagrams every day.  That’s what you do all day, Farley, isn’t it?  Obsess over what I eat?  Pretty weird if you ask me.”

“Call him,” Dr. Ossford muttered to Dr. Jeltzin, as Alison looked on in growing fear.

“Oh I don’t, uh, she’s just playing around,” whispered Jeltzin, trying to wave him off, “I don’t think we need to go th–”

“Jeltzin,” Ossford hissed through his teeth, “Call.  Him.”

Alison was at Jeltzin’s arm, and he looked to her; she nodded.

“See, I would think the perfect way to burn some calories,” Emma laughed, “Is to go for a niiiice long hike…”  She stepped over the entire host of scientists, bringing her bare foot down with intentional force as she walked up to the edge of the open hangar and gestured to the snow-capped mountains in the distance.  “Out there.”

Daniel was right on board with her.  The bigger she grew, the more confined their space at the Facility had become.  Of course, it wasn’t much of a concern for him, but by this time he was certainly feeding off Emma’s energy, and he could feel her growing frustration with her confinement.  More and more, he found himself wondering when the scientists were going to have to do something – let her out to roam around, move her to another “Facility,” or something else…anything other than just making her stay here.

‘Because they can’t keep her here for much longer,’ he thought, as she stood there, towering over the tight, huddled, frightened mass of scientists down below her, gesturing with her huge, powerful arm to the mountains.  ‘Actually,’ Daniel continued, continuing the train of thought, ‘I don’t think they can keep her here at all, if she doesn’t wanna stay.’  He felt oddly detached from this possibility, like it didn’t worry him in the least, even though he felt that it should.  The truth was that he simply felt like Emma wasn’t going to do anything drastic with him there.

“I’m gonna climb that mountain,” Emma declared, raising her arm slightly and pointing straight at the highest peak in the distance.  “That one right there.  The tallest one.  And I’m gonna build a giant snowman on top, that you can see all the way from here!  And then I’m…and then…”

She had turned around, sensing something, and Daniel followed her gaze.  The other scientists were already all turned around.  Dr. Clinebell was walking slowly up to the group from wherever he had been before.  Daniel felt an initial jolt of fear when he recognized the figure as Clinebell; he realized now that he hadn’t seen him for weeks.  The head Facility scientist still managed to chill a gathering by his mere presence, but the longer Daniel looked at him, the more he realized that the doctor was going through a kind of transformation himself.  His normally-sharp and crisp white lab coat was disheveled and dirty, looking like it hadn’t been washed in weeks.  His hair, always neat and trim before, had grown out into a mess of bedraggled and unkempt tufts.  He clearly hadn’t shaved in days, or even weeks.  And the slow, leaden pace of his steps made it obvious that he no longer felt like it was important to assert his authority through his body language – with shoulders slightly slouched, he looked like a broken man.

And yet, it was still him…and there was something in the slow purpose of his walk that inspired confidence in the scientists…and fear in Daniel.  When he stopped, a bit of a ways off from the scientists, and looked up at Emma, Daniel could see that Dr. Clinebell didn’t seem afraid at all.  He just looked…exhausted…and beaten down.  Daniel turned back to look at Emma.  She had stopped talking, but not out of fear – she didn’t look the least bit afraid either.  In fact, she looked positively delighted to see Dr. Clinebell after so many days of his apparent absence.  She pursed her lips, in a playful attempt to act “tough,” and crossed her huge arms over her chest, staring down at him as she widened her huge legs, adopting a “power stance.”

“Clinebell!” she cried, with just enough volume to make everyone (except Clinebell) cower from the soundwaves.  “Where have you been!?  I haven’t seen you in ages!  Looking a little smaller since I saw you last…”

“I’m the same size, Emma,” Dr. Clinebell answered up to her through a megaphone, in a voice that was surprisingly strong despite his appearance.  “It’s you who’s been growing.”

“Oh I knowwwww, I know!” she laughed, clapping her hands and sending more ear-splitting waves through the air.  For a few moments, Daniel was focused on covering his ears, but immediately after, he realized that the scientists were all quickly moving toward the exit at the far end of the hangar.  The dark mass of their group moved strangely, like it was an independent organism, powered solely by fear.  Daniel’s heart started beating faster.  Was something about to happen?

“And I can’t wait to go on that field trip you promised me!” Emma continued, turning to point at the mountains.  “Remember that?  Like monnnnnths and months back?  You told me that, if everything worked out, I could go?”

“I remember,” answered Dr. Clinebell calmly.  “But you’re not going to go today, Emma.”

She turned slowly back around, raising her eyebrows.  And then, without moving any other part of her body, she turned and looked straight at Daniel, flashing him a smile, like she was saying ‘Get a load of this guy!’  Daniel tried to smile back, but he was really getting scared now.  Dr. Clinebell was so calm…so cool and collected down there, even though he looked like a little toy in her shadow.  What was he going to do to her!?

“Oh?”  Emma’s voice was calm too…somehow even calmer than Clinebell’s.  At least, hers didn’t sound exhausted.  It sounded like she was trying hard to keep from laughing.

Dr. Clinebell didn’t say anything more.  He just stood there, about 30 yards away from her, with his megaphone poised over his mouth.  Daniel suddenly realized that there was something bulky in the doctor’s lab coat pocket, and his fear deepened.  But Emma didn’t seem to be fazed in the least.  In fact, she upped the ante, and took a small but purposeful step closer, so that her toes were now only a few feet away from him.  Daniel was not at all encouraged to see that Dr. Clinebell hadn’t flinched.  He hadn’t moved back a single step.  But Emma didn’t appear to care, and put her hands on her hips, arching her head forward over her breasts, so she could see the doctor clearly.

“And how exactly,” Emma began, her voice a deep, quivering calm (from excitement, Daniel realized with a nauseous kind of wonder), “Do you plan to stop me, if I decide that I don’t care what you say, I’m gonna climb that mountain today?”

It felt like the air had been completely sucked out of the hangar.  There wasn’t a sound, a movement, anything.  Daniel was staring up at Emma, his mouth slightly open, totally dumbfounded by her brazenness.  He knew that she had been acting more casually toward the scientists, and had been taking advantage of her increased size to bend a few of the Facility rules these past couple weeks.  But never, ever, did he think that Emma was going to step up to Dr. Clinebell, loom over him like she was doing now, hands on her hips, and openly challenge his authority.  As all of this rushed through his mind, he realized that neither Emma nor Dr. Clinebell had moved…and that the scientists had left the hangar completely now, nowhere to be seen.  It was just Emma and the doctor now, facing off, with Daniel sitting on the sidelines, petrified.  His body felt so tense that he wasn’t able to take the deep breaths he needed to steady his heart rate.  He was terrified that Dr. Clinebell would take some device out of his lab coat pocket and shoot her with it…or that he would order the release of the pink gas, the “nuclear option” that Daniel had never seen, but had been briefed on.  He knew enough to be scared…very scared.

But Emma knew all about the pink gas too, far more than he did.  And yet there she was, standing fearlessly before the man who was supposed to have so much power over her – total power, in fact…and Daniel couldn’t help but feel, despite his terror, that Emma had the upper hand.  She wasn’t out of her mind like she had been so many months before.  This was different; she knew something he didn’t.

“Do you know what’s in my pocket, Emma?” Dr. Clinebell asked presently, breaking the silence.  It was almost uncanny how conversational his voice sounded.  Emma didn’t stand there thinking  how to respond; she reacted immediately.  Taking a gigantic step backward, almost impossibly light on her feet, she swiftly sank down to one knee, and then to two knees, accomplishing this all within a couple seconds.  Daniel had seen her move quickly when she was working out, but Dr. Jeltzin had always made it a point to stand a good bit aways from her, especially since that incident the previous week when she had accidentally thrown a 2-ton dumbbell when it slipped out of her hand in the middle of bicep curls.  But he had never seen his giant girlfriend move that quickly with someone so close by, and the effect was as mesmerizing as it was terrifying – it looked like she was about to utterly obliterate Dr. Clinebell, or at the very least crush him or injure him with an errant limb.  But Emma’s movements, though rapid, were deliberate and controlled, despite her enormous size.  She was kneeling down now, her arms at her sides, facing the doctor, who was now standing about 40 feet away from her, since she had taken her huge step backwards.

A second later, it became clear what Emma had planned to do all along.  The statuesque bulk of her upper body started to fall forward toward Dr. Clinebell, and, seemingly at the last second, she planted two gigantic fists into the smooth concrete, arresting her fall, so that she was leaning on the twin pillars of her arms.  Daniel saw the muscles of her forearms flex and ripple, supporting her weight, and, despite the nervous gravity of the situation, he couldn’t help but stare in wonder at the sheer strength in those arms.  She was effortlessly supporting the weight of the vast majority of her body, poised above Dr. Clinebell as she leaned over him, so that he was again completely in her shadow.  And then, Emma shuffled backward again, shaking her butt in the air, as she lowered herself down further, first to one forearm, then the other, until she was crouched down low on her knees and forearms, wiggling her butt in the air playfully as she grinned knowingly at the doctor.  Her expression didn’t change as her body slid smoothly down into a lying position, with her feet in the air behind her, and her thighs and stomach completely on the floor.  She raised her forearms to prop her chin up, and in this ridiculously relaxed and childlike position, she regarded the doctor, gently kicking her feet back and forth in the air as she chewed thoughtfully on her tongue.  It was incredible – it had only taken her a few seconds to assume this position, and she had done it so easily, so gracefully, that Daniel could hardly believe it.  Even Dr. Clinebell, usually unflappable to the extreme, had backed up another couple paces, looking genuinely flustered at her behavior.

“Gee I don’t know,” Emma mused aloud, still kicking her feet back and forth in the air like a little girl lying in a field of wildflowers on a summer day, “It’s hard for me to see such tiny things, but from here, it reminds me of that gas mask you wore in front of me, all those months ago.”

Daniel felt himself starting to seize up inside.  The scene before him felt surreal, poised in time, and terribly wrong – the tension was constricting, to the point where he began to feel sick.  Quite cheerfully, as if she didn’t have a care in the world, Emma had just brought up the pink gas, the final “nuclear option” that the scientists had briefed Daniel on when he arrived at the Facility. At the time, he hadn’t wanted to hear what they had to say, and had actually been very angry to hear that they had actually used it on her once.  But, upon being told to consider the scientists’ position, he had relented.  After all, he had reasoned at the time, Emma truly had been out of her mind.  As the weeks and months at the Facility had gone by, the muted threat of the pink gas had faded into the background.  Aside from the fact that no one had discovered the source of Emma’s growth spurts, life had been good for her and Daniel…very good.  The scientists’ ultimate deterrent weapon hadn’t been needed at all to maintain order.

Now, though, in an instant, the threat was back on the table…at the forefront of everything else.  Daniel desperately racked his brains, trying to remember what they had told him – something about it being a potent neurotoxin which worked specifically on the pain receptors, which didn’t cause organ failure or death, but which incapacitated its victims through the sheer amount of overwhelming pain it put them through.  They had told him before about Emma’s reaction to it, and about how she had screamed…and about how they had needed to do it, just to make sure she understood that she was not ultimately in control.  It was the only way for them to admit her, they had told him, without the risk of injury to their own personnel…the only way that they could keep her close and work to discover the source of her condition.  As much as he hated to admit it at the time, when he pushed through his anger at them hurting her, Daniel had to admit that this really did seem like the only option.  And they had only done it once, and would never do it again, so long as Emma continued to obey the regulations…and even if she didn’t, Dr. Clinebell had assured Daniel that the gas would only be used as a last resort, to protect someone’s life, or to prevent her from escaping.

And now, as Daniel’s mind snapped back to the present, his incredulity, fear, and bewilderment increased.  Emma knew, more than anyone else, what that pink gas felt like…what it felt like to have every neuron in her body seemingly on fire.  And she was just lying there on her stomach, her breasts squished in between her elbows, her feet kicking playfully in the air behind her, as she stared down Dr. Clinebell, daring him to try his most powerful deterrent against her.  For a moment, Daniel felt a sickening wave of fear flash through him, a fear that her madness had returned…that she had gone crazy again.  But this wave passed through him quickly and did not return; he knew it wasn’t true.  She wasn’t crazy…not like last time, at least.  Her eyes were bright and clear; she didn’t appear at all confused; she knew exactly where her body was in relation to everything; and, most importantly, she wasn’t having any of those unhinged mood swings, where it was very clear to those around her that her sense of reality was dangerously unsound.

‘She’s totally sane,’ thought Daniel, staring at her as he remained frozen on the nightstand.  ‘She knows the dark pall she’s casting over everyone right now, making them all nervous and scared, but she’s not doing it to be mean…she’s…she’s playing with them…she’s making a point.’

“Do you want me to put it on, Emma?” Dr. Clinebell said.  His hand had gone to his pocket, and, from his vantage point, Daniel could see him partially take out something, though not completely…a brown hood, with two skeletal glass eyeholes, and a ghastly-looking silver grate over where the mouth would be.  A gas mask.

Emma kept kicking her bare feet slowly up in the air.  She cocked her head slightly to the side, and pursed her lips.  It wasn’t clear what her expression meant, but whatever her thoughts, it was clear that she still wasn’t afraid.  Not by a longshot.  If anything, she looked mildly amused.

“I don’t see why you’d need to,” Emma answered, her eyebrows going up as she looked Dr. Clinebell dead in the face.  Even lying on her stomach like this, with her head propped up on her forearms, she was still almost 20 feet tall.

“You can’t go hiking today, Emma,” Dr. Clinebell said bluntly, though Daniel detected something else in his voice, a hint of desperation, that contrasted noticeably with Emma’s casual, playful tone.  “Not today.”

Daniel saw the muscles in Emma’s cheeks harden, and for an instant, it looked like she was about to do something crazy…something unspeakable.  But maybe it was just the sheer intimidation factor of her size – Daniel wasn’t sure.  All that he knew was that Dr. Clinebell took two very obvious steps backward, and kept his hand on the mask in his pocket.  Daniel could see that his hand had started to tremble.  Emma blinked slowly at the doctor, and then, still in the same position, she turned left and looked straight up at Daniel from across the room.  She inhaled a deep breath through her nose and let it out again, shrugging genially as her closed lips turned up into a kind of sad smile.  But as Daniel felt the sweet gust of air from her breath hit his face, he suddenly understood what she had wordlessly communicated to him.  She wasn’t just a little sad about the hike – she was sad that she AND HE were trapped together in the Facility.

‘If it was just her,’ Daniel suddenly realized, ‘She would’ve broken out of here a while ago.  She’s not scared of that gas…she knows everything was built for her being no bigger than 50 feet…she’s almost 63 feet now…there’s no way they could stop her…she wouldn’t feel a thing…she’d be out of here in a second.  But I’D feel the gas.  It would hurt ME.  And she’d never leave without me.’

It was amazing that Emma was able to communicate so much to Daniel with one look, but there was no doubt in his mind that this was exactly what she had meant.  Just because she COULD cause trouble didn’t mean she WANTED to.  Because she was looking out for HIM.  Daniel could feel himself getting a bit choked up, even as he felt a dull anger growing in the pit of his stomach, against the scientists, against Dr. Clinebell, against this whole operation that had imprisoned her without finding a cure.  But he reminded himself to not indulge his anger – if anyone had a right to, it was Emma, and she was as bright and cheerful as could be, even in the midst of that muted but profound sadness that she had communicated to him.

“Welllll,” Emma said, turning back to Dr. Clinebell and smiling pleasantly down at him, “Could we maybe agree on a day, then?  How about tomorrow?  Or…okay, what if we said, a week from now?  Hmm?  Would that be enough time for you to arrange all the, uhm…what do you call them?  Logistical stuff?  Making sure no one sees me, you know, diverting all the planes away?”

She giggled, cupping her pretty face with her palms, and turned her head sideways as she stared down at Dr. Clinebell.  It was clear that she knew, hands-down, that she had the power in the exchange…nearly all the power.  At this point, the only thing they could do was threaten to hurt Daniel, and she had noticed that Dr. Clinebell had conspicuously steered clear of that particular threat…wisely.  She had made her point, and now all she had to do was wait for the wounded pride to start healing.  But she was going to stay firm on this point – she was GOING on that hike.

Dr. Clinebell’s shoulders slumped slightly, and he slipped the gas mask all the way back down into his pocket.  He nodded, and Emma felt a warm, happy thrill spread out through her body.  She even noticed, with a light, surprised humor, that she had gotten aroused during the facedown.  The telltale heat was extending through her loins, and she could feel her clit throbbing through her panties against the cool, smooth concrete floor.  She grinned, almost laughing at herself for getting turned-on by such an encounter, and reveling a little in the endorphins rushing through her body, she gave her ass a little shake, glancing behind her to admire it for a moment before winking at Daniel and turning back to Dr. Clinebell.  She could feel the tension draining out of the hangar, out of her boyfriend, out of this poor little man in front of her, a man she had once feared.  And she knew why the tension was gone – it was gone because SHE had decided for it to be gone.

“So you’re saying a week from today, then?” Emma asked happily.  “In a week, we can go on a field trip to those mountains?”

Dr. Clinebell nodded again.  Emma let out a delighted squeal and thrust herself backwards, up off her elbows and into a sitting position, as she whipped her 30-foot legs around into a cross-legged pose.  Once again, Daniel could hardly believe the effect of seeing her huge body move so quickly when it was this close to another normal-sized person.  One errant move and she would’ve smashed Clinebell’s body to smithereens.  But she was showing off now…showing how much control she had.  Or, at least, that’s what it seemed like to Daniel.  ‘Maybe she’s just happy,’ he thought.

“Oh BOY, I can’t WAIT!” she laughed, drumming her hands excitedly on her knees.  “Daniel will tell you, I’ve been wanting to go on this hike for AGES!  Isn’t that right, Daniel?”

She turned to him, and he gave a big nod and a thumbs-up sign, feeling a bit silly and stupid in the midst of the emotional roller coaster he had just been on.  His body was still buzzing.  She held her hand up to her mouth, and blew him a kiss the next moment.  It was the first time in his life that Daniel actually felt a blown kiss – and it was from 30 yards away.

“I’m sorry, Emma,” Dr. Clinebell said suddenly.  He was standing up straight before her, looking up into her eyes as she sat there in a perfect-posture cross-legged position, her torso swaying back and forth a little in a kind of giddy dance.  The other scientists had cautiously emerged back from where they had fled to before, and they were beginning to gather behind Dr. Clinebell.

“Sorry?” asked Emma genuinely.  “Sorry for what?”

“That…we still don’t know,” Dr. Clinebell said simply, spreading his hands helplessly out by his sides.  “That we don’t know what’s causing…all of this.”

“Oh PLEASE!” laughed Emma, rolling her eyes as she bounced up and down on her butt.  “It’s not like you guys haven’t been trying!  Don’t feel bad!”

She leaned in closer, putting her hands down on the floor so that she loomed fully over them now from her sitting position.  Even sitting down, she was over 30 feet tall.  Her outspread hands on the floor, each well over 3 feet wide, began stirring, and her fingers began drumming in slow, deliberate animation to punctuate what she was saying.  The next words she spoke were tinged with the same fun, happy, almost-girlish amusement, and yet she had dropped her voice down an octave, so that her words reverberated profoundly through the floor, the walls, and the air:

“And honestly, at this point, even if you FOUND the cure to stop me growing…I wouldn’t take it.”

The rest of the day had a strange, whimsical feel to it – on the surface, everything proceeded along normally, just like it did every day.  Emma had a workout with Dr. Jeltzin, during which she set a new personal best by deadlifting 224,000 pounds, exactly 112 tons; she had a shower afterward in the corner stall, and it became obvious that she could now peek over the tall opaque glass walls of the shower.  She got a good kick out of standing on her tiptoes and making faces at Daniel as she cleaned off.  After an enormous meal (much bigger than usual, as Emma was notably hungrier), she lounged on the bed with Daniel, and they passed a couple fun easy hours watching youtube videos on her giant pad, which was like a huge flatscreen TV from Daniel’s perspective.  In the afternoon, she had her normal check-in sessions with Dr. Ossford, who examined her bone density, tendons, and reflexes, and Dr. Farley, who made sure to keep an accurate tally of everything she was eating, and of how she was feeling directly after lunch.  Emma didn’t have a scheduled session with Alison, but, as sometimes happened during quieter afternoons, she and her therapist sat out near the open hangar door, talking casually in fun little small talk about nothing in particular.  After a mammoth dinner (again, much larger than usual), Emma and Daniel cuddled in bed and watched a movie on her pad, before she kissed him tenderly on the face and put him to bed on her nightstand, then drifted off to sleep herself.

The whole thing had been surreal.  Everyone had simply gone through the motions, feeling like they were floating on some kind of cloud.  The truth was that, outside of Emma, everyone at the Facility had been desperately, dreadfully afraid that the day for the clash, the confrontation, had finally come.  The nervous energy had been building for weeks, even since Emma had surpassed 50 feet, and once she had reached 55 feet and 60 tons, many of the scientists had started quietly expressing their doubts whether the Facility’s structures were sound, whether the mitigating protocols to a potential escape would stop her, or whether the pink gas would work on her at all anymore.  When Emma had finally faced down Dr. Clinebell, most of the Facility staff had assumed that she would simply leave.  But now that she hadn’t, “ordinary life” went on in a bizarre, dreamlike kind of way.  No one knew what to do.

Emma, for her part, knew exactly what was going on.  She felt sorry for Alison, Dr. Jeltzin, and, strangely, even Dr. Clinebell.  The other scientists hadn’t personally gelled with her the way Alison and Jeltzin had, and she couldn’t help but feel that, in facing down Dr. Clinebell, she had left her two favorites behind.  But she hadn’t really left them – she was still here!  All that she had done was brush away any idea that they were keeping her here by force anymore.  She didn’t quite know when her mind had snapped awake to this new reality…maybe it was as late as the previous night, after that gorgeous sex with Daniel, when she had stood alone on the smooth concrete of the hangar, and palmed the ceiling…

In any case, from that morning onward, Emma had felt the change coming upon her, and it was very difficult for her to contain her eager excitement and expectation.  She knew that she was about to go through another spurt.  All the signs were there: a noticeable increase in her body temperature, sudden-onset dull aching in her bones (which she had conditioned herself to enjoy), telltale prickling sensations in her skin, and, last but certainly not least, a dramatic increase in her appetite.  Her caloric surplus for the day had been 620,000, substantially more than usual.  Dr. Farley had stared straight ahead at his notes when tallying the amount, not knowing how to react as Emma looked down at him curiously.  Later, when she was putting Daniel on her nightstand, she had sat up suddenly on her mattress, on her knees, and had cradled her conspicuous food belly – which bulged out from beneath her too-tight white sleep shirt – as she pouted at him in playful, mock-self-consciousness.

“You still like me when I’m faaaat?” she murmured, with a twinkle in her eye.

“Of course I – you’re not fat,” Daniel replied, changing course mid-sentence.

“Ha!” Emma laughed, shaking her belly, “Gotcha!  You were gonna go along with me!”

“Oh god,” Daniel moaned, rolling his eyes as his feet dangled from his nightstand bed, “You’d think having a 63-foot girlfriend would be different, but noooo – it’s really all the same stuff,” and here he purposefully looked her stomach up and down, before smiling up at her, “Only bigger.”

“Mmmm, I’m taller than 63 feet now,” Emma purred, extending her leg, which was well over 30 feet, all the way over to Daniel, with her big toe, which weighed almost as much as Daniel’s entire body, pointed directly at his chest.  And then she extended her bare foot up next to Daniel’s bed, placing her heel on the nightstand so that her foot rose up lengthwise above his head.  He stared up in awe, looking at her toes wiggling playfully over 9 feet in the air above him.

“You, uh…you sure about that?” Daniel asked, momentarily distracted by her huge, sexy toes teasing him from above.

“Positive,” Emma said quietly, almost in a whisper, which nonetheless trembled through the air like soft thunder, “I can feel it.  It’s about to happen again.”

Daniel didn’t know what to say, but he could hear the excitement in Emma’s voice, an excitement that her hushed sense of expectation could only thinly disguise.  At this point, he completely trusted her own sense of her body, and whatever was going on with it – and so he couldn’t avoid a bit of a heart-skip himself as he tried to imagine what on earth another growth spurt would look like.

“Don’t worry about it, baby,” Emma whispered to him, arching her sole above his head so that her toes curled high over him in a protective gesture.

“I just…I hope you’re okay,” Daniel murmured genuinely as he covered up for the night.

“Mmmm, better than okay,” Emma cooed, reaching her toes up, turning off the lamp, and nestling under her own covers, speaking her final words in the dark.  “You just get to sit back and enjoy watching me get bigger…and bigger.”

The next morning, Emma was up even earlier than usual.  She could tell that her heart was beating much faster than normal as she did her morning stretches in front of the open hangar, which Dr. Jeltzin had been happy to open for her.  He had been up early too – or rather, as Emma surmised, he had never actually been to sleep.  His characteristic warmth and jauntiness were still there, but she could detect an uneasiness about him as he opened the hangar door for her, a watchfulness.

‘He’s right on the same wavelength as me,’ Emma thought affectionately as, in the middle of her hanumanasana pose, she watched him sidle over to the huge weight racks to mess around and get some early lifting in himself.  But she knew he was there to watch her from a distance, not in any kind of leery way, but rather in a slightly awestruck, expectant kind of way.

‘He knows what’s about to happen too,’ Emma thought to herself as she winced slightly, the burn and stretch of her pose blending pleasantly with the dull pounding ache that had already been present deep in her bones.  ‘He’s been close enough to me every day to realize that something’s up.’

“Bit more of a strain than usual, sweetheart?” Jeltzin joked a few minutes later as he watched Emma impressively maintain an astavakrasana pose, her body barely trembling as she held herself vertically aloft.

“Hah, what are you talking about?” Emma shot back at him in the midst of the pose, “It’s easier now than it’s ever been!”

“Oh yeah?”  Dr. Jeltzin was obviously enjoying the “normality” of the exchange.  “Then why’ve you got those beads of sweat on your forehead?”

“Huh?” Emma asked, puzzled.  “I don’t have beads of sw–”

And just then, one of them dropped down into her eye.

“Auurrgh!” she laughed, trying to blink the pint-sized bead out, which ended with her losing her concentration and collapsing from her pose.  She didn’t fall very hard at all, but the weight of her body coming down, even from a mere five feet in the air, was enough to send a shiver through the entire Facility.  Her heel came down at a particular angle against the concrete, so that the rounded bone (which was the size of a wrecking ball) cracked the floor, sending a flurry of fractured lines six feet out in all directions.  Emma’s eyes went wide and she put her hand over her mouth, turning slowly to Jeltzin with a kind of girlish humor.

“Whoops!” she smiled through her hand.  Her legs were splayed out in front of her as she leaned on her other arm, and with an easy heave, she propelled herself up into a sitting position.  In the process, she heard the concrete groan under her hand – in a strange moment of sudden insight, she felt like she could almost feel the atoms crunching up against each other, threatening to crack and break again.

‘Only because I’m pushing on it with my hand?!’ she thought to herself.  The prospect was exciting.

“Oh!  Uhh don’t…don’t worry about it,” Dr. Jeltzin chuckled uneasily, coming over to inspect the crater her heel had made in the concrete.  He stared at it, blinking, apparently struggling to wrap his mind around what had just happened.  His next words were spoken almost to himself.  “You barely even came down hard…”

The sound of straining fabric cut through the air.  Emma was wiping her forehead on the sleeve of her cat shirt, which was now so small on her that it was truly beginning to look ridiculous.  Her slight belly stuck out underneath, but aside from that, the rest of her proportionally-shaped body was simply stretching the shirt to its breaking point.  Her huge arms, fit, toned, and rounded from all her workouts, stretched the sleeves so much that any movement made the fabric groan.  And her breasts, each over 4 feet wide, now jutted out well over 2 feet from her chest, completing a bust measurement that was 34 feet around in total.  Miss Bissett had originally made the shirt with additional growth in mind, but she clearly hadn’t planned for this – the shirt looked cartoonish on her.

“A little out of shape, huh?” Dr. Jeltzin teased Emma, watching her wipe her brow as she loomed over him, nearly 33 feet tall even though she was sitting down.

“I am NOT!” she retorted, cracking a smile as she held her arms up and flexed in a double biceps pose.  The fabric of her formerly-long sleeve shirt moaned out again, threatening to break.  “Does it look like I’m out of shape?”

“Heh, of course not,” Jeltzin nodded.  A moment of silence passed between them as they looked at each other.  They both knew what she was sweating.

*Rrrrrriiiiiiipppp*

The left bicep of Emma’s shirt tore straight down the sleeve, unable to accommodate her flexing muscle.  She looked at the ruined sleeve, genuinely surprised, and then turned to look at her other sleeve.  It hadn’t torn yet, but was audibly straining.  Emma bit her lower lip and flexed harder, bouncing her bicep once, then twice…and then –

*Rrrip….Rrrrrrrripppp*

The second sleeve snapped and came unraveled.  Emma stuck her chin out slightly and nodded, like she had just done good work, even as there seemed to be a kind of ambivalence in her expression.  It was obvious to Jeltzin that she was enjoying the fact that her arms were too big for her shirt, but he couldn’t tell if she was a little sad too…that was her favorite shirt, after all.

“There we go,” Emma muttered.  “Gotta at least be proportional.”  She reached over and carefully tore off the tattered remains of her sleeves from both arms, so that her cat shirt was now, for all intents and purposes, a tank top.  Emma sighed and stretched her arms up over her head, and Jeltzin watched in awe as he saw her muscles ripple through the stretch, before she lowered her arms back down.

“Feel a little freer, huh?” he quipped.

“Yep!” Emma nodded, tossing the remnants of her sleeves (enough fabric for a few large quilts) aside.  “I guess it was getting a little tight.”

“You think!?” Jeltzin laughed, but then he tempered it, noticing that Emma was pouting down at him, making a fruitless attempt to hide her protruding belly.

“Hey, you’ll…you’ll grow into that, I’m sure,” he said encouragingly.

“Oh I know I will,” Emma smiled.  It was clear now that she had just been playing around.  Jeltzin felt a bit silly – of course she wasn’t being self-conscious!  She had grown into the most confident person he had ever met!

“So, you know,” he added, pointing up at her shirt, “Maybe it’s time to wear something a little less…confining, you know?  That shirt’s not long for this world, I think.”

“Noooo, what are you talking about?” Emma complained, wrapping her arms around herself and squeezing tightly, as if to protect her shirt.  Her compressed boobs seemed to enlarge outward on all sides, nearly touching her chin.  “It’s my faaaavorite shirt and I’m always gonna wear it!”

Jeltzin didn’t quite know what to make of Emma’s tone here.  He knew she was just being silly, but he also knew how much that shirt meant to her; her deliberate childishness and pouting expressions threw a whole other wrench into the equation.  It was quite bizarre to see this literal giantess looming over 30 feet above him from a sitting position, hugging herself and acting like a little kid.

“Awwww I woke you up, didn’t I?” Emma laughed, still hugging herself as she stared across the hangar towards her nightstand.  Jeltzin turned to look where her eyes were pointed – he knew that she was talking to Daniel, who was presumably standing on the nightstand, having gotten out of bed.  But from where he was standing, Jeltzin couldn’t see up that high, since the wide corners of the nightstand blacked his view.

“Oh my god you are too adorable,” Emma declared, and promptly collapsed down onto all fours and, in just a few crawling paces, had covered the 50 yards to the nightstand.  In the process of falling down onto her hands in a crouching position, she had sent shockwaves through the floor.  Jeltzin didn’t just feel them in his feet – the sheer power of the vibrations knocked him off his feet.  But Emma hadn’t seemed to notice…and if she had noticed, she didn’t care.

“Gosh all this banging around and…cracking concrete this early in the morning?” Daniel yawned, rubbing his eyes as Emma crawled up to him.  He had gotten used to her huge face being close to his, but there was something in her expression this morning that was a little off-putting, even to him.  She looked so fierce and alive, almost to the point of concern…although Daniel knew that she didn’t mean anything by it.  She was just excited…just…excited…he was looking at the sweat on her forehead.  Hadn’t she just seen her wipe it off?

“I can’t help it, darling,” Emma purred, now bending down low from her all-fours position so that her face completely filled the panorama of his vision.  “I told you I’m getting bigger.”  She winced slightly and glanced down from his face momentarily.  Daniel could feel the heavy weight of her measured breaths; she was clearly taking a second to gather her composure.

“Is it happening right now?” Daniel ventured, stepping closer to the edge of the nightstand.

Emma nodded, still looking down at the floor.  It was unnerving to see her this affected, apparently to the point where she was in too much discomfort – or even pain – to speak.  Daniel was suddenly seized by a strong desire to embrace her, to hug her, to cuddle her and comfort her.  He wished he was as big as she was – bigger – so that he could engulf her in his arms and tell her that everything was going to be okay.  As he was thinking all these things, he had turned his eyes down to the nightstand, unable to bear looking at her in all this pain.  He had only woken up a few minutes before, but he already felt helpless…angry…because there was nothing he could do to help her.

A gust of mint-tinged air washed over him, ruffling his hair…Emma’s toothpaste smell…Daniel snapped his eyes back up and saw that Emma was now staring straight at him, smiling broadly, her eyes shining bright.

“Oh isn’t it wonderful?” she breathed down at him.  The beads of sweat sparkled on her forehead in the rising sun.  “I can really feel it this morning.”

“But…isn’t it…doesn’t it hurt?” Daniel asked, confused.

“It’s hard to say it hurts,” Emma sighed happily, “When I know what it means…when I know what’s happening.  But yeah, I guess it hurts.  More like a…haha what to even call it?”

Daniel waited expectantly as she thought it through.  He reminded himself that he needed to just go with the flow, and not let himself get tied up in emotional knots about things he couldn’t control.  He glanced down and saw Emma rubbing her wrist on her other arm…her truck chain bracelet was looking tighter than usual.

“A sweet burning in the bones,” she finished, nodding smartly at him, like she had found the perfect description.

“A…sweet burning in the bones?” Daniel repeated.  It was impossible not to let his uneasiness show.  “I–I don’t know, Emma, that…uh, that doesn’t sound too nice.”

“Well then thank goodness you’re not the one who’s gotta deal with it,” she smiled, bringing her face even closer to his, so that, unconsciously, he took a step back.  She was so beautiful, his lovely partner, yes…but when her face was this close, it was hard for his survival instincts not to kick in.  Her smile alone was about 3 feet wide, and right up in his face.  Her plush lips were puckering now…

“Come on,” she cooed at him, evidently enjoying his intimidation, “A little good morning kiss before they measure me?”

Daniel walked forward and, bowing forward a little, brought his lips up to hers.  It seemed almost absurd for him to pucker his lips, since his whole face was easily dwarfed by the awaiting, red, fleshy circle in front of him.  But this was a kiss, after all, and so he did.  Right as he moved in, Emma raised her head slightly, so that Daniel had to stand up on his tiptoes to reach.  They kissed, and Daniel could feel the hot blood pulsating through her lips as he touched them.  It was incredible – she was burning up.

“Mmmm I just love feeling your little mouth,” Emma giggled down at him as she rose back up into a squatting position on her huge thighs.  “It’s like a tiny little peck…but I can still feel it!”

“Heh yeah…” Daniel smiled, nodding. But again, he couldn’t hide his concern.  “Emma, I…I think you’re running a fever.”

“Duh!” she laughed, wiping her brow again as she braced herself on her knee and then, quite suddenly, rose way, way up into a standing position, so that her face was out of sight.  She took a few steps back so she could see him again, over the mounds of her breasts which were straining the remainder of her cat shirt to its breaking point.  “But don’t worry, it’s not because I’m sick.”

“I know, Emma, but I –” Daniel began, but Emma was already blowing him more kisses as she sauntered over to the measuring station, where a few of the other scientists had already gathered.

“You won’t be catching anything from me, sweetheart!” she called after him.  “I think if it was contagious, you’d be at least 20 feet tall by now!”  As she walked away, she lowered her palm to around her knee level, flashing him a flirtatious grin in the process.  Daniel grinned back, shaking his head – she was being extra-silly now, exaggerating and teasing him with her little games…But just then, it hit him.  Yes she was being funny and lighthearted; yes she was teasing him; but she wasn’t exaggerating.  If he had been 20 feet tall, that’s where he’d measure up to her now.  He’d be at her knee level.  The craziness of it was too much to contemplate.  Blinking, he turned around and sat back on his bed, watching as Emma strolled past the scientists, her bare arms swinging freely by her sides, as she ambled up to get measured.  The fact that she didn’t have sleeves anymore made her bare arms look even bigger.  Sometimes he could forget just how gigantic she had grown.  All those months before, when she had been 16 feet, 18 feet – she had seemed impossibly huge.  Her size then was shin-level to what she was now.

Emma didn’t hide her delight upon learning that she was now 64 feet and 7 inches…and well over 96 tons.  She clapped her hands and bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, making the entire hangar tremble again, and causing Dr. Farley to beg her to stop:

“Please, Emma, Please!” he cried, gripping the sides of the instrument panel as he and the other scientists held on for dear life, to keep from falling.

“What?” asked Emma innocently, stopping her bouncing and inclining her head down at them.

“You’re…you’re just so huge now,” Dr. Farley said apologetically through the megaphone.  “And, you know…when you bounce around like that it…I mean, the Facility can’t take it.”

“Well sounds like you guys should’ve made the Facility bigger!” Emma laughed, stepping off the scale as she spread her arms out wide, seeming to mock the formerly-spacious hangar.  “Like, what – did you think I was gonna stop growing!?”

Spreading her arms proved to be the last straw for her poor, beleaguered cat shirt – strained to the breaking point for so many days and weeks, it finally succumbed, tearing straight down the middle of her cleavage.  Her boobs sprang out and hung there, quivering and bobbing in perky excitement at finally being set free.  The rest of her torso seemed even bigger now, with her flesh no longer confined.  She still had a slight pudge to her belly, but Daniel could see that her increased height was already starting to absorb it.  More than anything, though, right now he was just concerned that Emma was standing there with her tits out, a pair of stretched panties now the only thing that was preventing her from complete nudity.  He was worried that she was going to be embarrassed, or at the very least unhappy about her cat shirt finally biting the dust.

For a few moments, it looked like his fears were well-founded.  Emma didn’t seem to care in the least that her breasts were out, but her lip had twitched as soon as she had heard the telltale ripping sound as her shirt tore down the middle.  She looked straight down at the tattered fabric hanging off her, arms still spread wide, and for an instant it looked like she was going to cry.  But whether that twitch of her lip was sorrow or surprise, a second later the expression was gone.  Emma let out a great gust of air through her nostrils and turned to Daniel, her eyebrows up, and her lips in an exaggerated pout.  He felt himself relax – she was pretending to be sad, but he could tell from that twinkle in her eye that she was proud.

“Oh noooo!” she whined, batting the loose flaps of her shirt with her hands, “What happened?”

“About time,” whispered Jeltzin to Alison, “That shirt had to be constricting her organs.”  Alison shushed him up, while also nodding in agreement.

“My favorite shirt,” Emma muttered, “All rags…”  For a few moments she played with the ripped fabric, almost like she was saying goodbye to it.  Her playful pouting expression had vanished, and she actually looked quite serious.  Down below, everyone watched…and waited.  But then after a little while Emma heaved another sigh, reached up with her forefinger, and swiftly sliced her sharp fingernail through the neckband of the shirt.  It snapped instantly, and the remnants of  the shirt fell away from her, descending down into a crumpled heap at her feet.  It was incredible – there was enough fabric there to cover a couple houses.  And the neckband that Emma had just effortlessly sliced with her fingernail had been as thick as a garden hose.

“Ssssssss!” she hissed, clawing like a cat down towards the heap of fabric.  “So long Maple…”  She glanced down at the scientists, who were all staring up at her inquiringly, and then she turned to Daniel.  “You know!” she added, gesturing to the torn shirt on the ground.  “Maple!  The cat’s name!”

“Oh!” Dr. Farley said into the megaphone, “So that was…you gave the cat a name, huh?”

“Of course!” Emma replied, shaking her head like it was the most obvious thing in the world.  “I had told you that, Daniel, didn’t I?  No?  Oh well…heh, guess I’m just crazy then.”  She wiggled her toes through the fabric on the floor.  “Poor little Maple…” she sighed, “We had some good times, didn’t we?  It was fun while it lasted.  But now –” and here she grinned broadly, looking back up and cupping her huge breasts with her hands and bouncing them, “On to bigger and better things!”

For the rest of the day, it took some convincing for Emma to put on another shirt.  She didn’t seem to want to wear any of her other t-shirts that were a bit roomier, but still tighter than they had been designed to be – instead, she was perfectly happy to go about her day topless, wearing only her black workout spandex shorts, to the immense embarrassment of the other scientists.  At this point, there wasn’t anything any of them could do, and everyone had to watch as Emma cheerfully went through her daily routine.  Her morning workouts with Jeltzin went by in a breeze, with Emma breaking a sweat from the hypertrophy training she was now engaged in – that kind of training was her only option now, since she had maxed-out the weight rack days before, and could go no higher.  Now she was deadlifting 140 tons, doing 3 sets of 12 reps each…and then, after a breather, she did the same weight again…for 16 reps.  And the whole time, Jeltzin was trying to ignore the fact that her enormous breasts were out and shining in the sunlight, quivering and bouncing with every movement.  But when she banged out the unprecedented fourth set, going 4 reps higher than before, his embarrassment was briefly obfuscated by awe.

“You just…h-how!?” he asked incredulously.  “You’re always beat after three sets!  And you…16 for a 4th set!?”

“It was easier that time!” Emma smiled, fanning herself with her hand as her bare chest rose and fell as she leaned her knee against the top of the custom-built tall weight rack.  “And anyway…I could actually feel a little spurt coming on in the middle of it.  Made it a whole lot lighter all of a sudden.”

“Oh…really?” Jeltzin inquired.

“Really,” Emma nodded, her eyes shining as she stood up proudly to her full height, thrusting her chest out.  “You’ll see tomorrow when you measure me.”

Jeltzin blinked up at her massive breasts and then stared off to the side, blushing.  He had always been a “breast man,” and this particular arrangement was proving difficult for him.

“Whaaaat?” Emma laughed down at him, putting her hands on her hips.

“I…just wish you’d put a shirt on,” was all he could manage to say.

She was finally persuaded to clothe herself when Miss Bissett showed up with a brand-new t-shirt, specially-sewed for her most recent growth.  Emma wanted to keep walking around topless, but she couldn’t bear to disappoint Miss Bissett, of whom she was very fond.  And so she threw the plain white t-shirt over her head (Miss Bissett hadn’t had time to adorn it with anything), and did a 360-turn to show off the fit.

“Woah!” Emma exclaimed, nodding, “It…actually fits perfectly!”  She shot Miss Bissett a sly look.  “How big did you think I’d be?”

“Well that’s for 65-67 feet, dear,” Miss Bissett answered through the megaphone, her venerable old voice sounding sweet through the crackle.

“See?” Emma shot over to Jeltzin, sticking her tongue out, “Told you I had another spurt!”

That evening, while Emma was cuddling with Daniel before bed, she gently wrapped her hand around him and placed him right in between her bare breasts, which were out again for sleep.  Each breast dwarfed his body, but of course Daniel didn’t mind.  He leaned against her left breast, amazed at how warm it felt.  Was she still running a fever?

“You didn’t mind, did you?” she asked him quietly.

“Huh?” asked Daniel, who had been distracted listening to her heartbeat through her breast.  “Mind what?”

“Me prancing around all day without a shirt.”  There was girlish humor in her voice, but Daniel could tell that she was still being serious.  She cared about his reaction, and she was watching him carefully.  Touched by her concern, he replied:

“No…heh, not at all.”  He paused, enjoying how her big eyes blinked softly down at him in the low light.  “Actually, I…I thought it was kinda hot.”

“Ohhh you pervert,” Emma chided, wiggling her pinkie finger underneath Daniel’s balls.

A few minutes later he was gasping out, spewing his load onto her awaiting index finger.  In the soft, velvet light, he saw her bring her finger up to her mouth, sucking his cum off it, before grinning at him.  It was an uncanny image, but deathly sexy – her eyes and teeth almost seemed to gleam in the light.  And Daniel could see that another sheen of sweat had broken out across her forehead…

The next morning, Daniel was startled awake by what sounded like thunderclaps…and, in a sense, he had heard correctly.  Rubbing his eyes and looking towards the noise, he saw that it was coming from Emma, who was standing upright against the wall at the measuring station.  Evidently, they had just gotten through with measuring her height, because Emma was clapping her hands happily, looking straight towards him.

“Oh nice, you’re up!” she called to him.  Daniel knew that, even though she was a good 50 yards away, that she was purposefully using one of her “quieter” voices.  “I’m waaaaay over 65 feet now!  5 whole inches over!”

“W-Wow…man!” Daniel called back, fumbling with the megaphone that he didn’t use too often.  “How…how’re you feeling?”

“Uhm…fabulous!?” she laughed back, spreading her hands out like it was the most obvious answer in the world.  “And they said I’m…wait, hold on, I have to be still for the weight…”

A few seconds more and they had announced the number to her, and Daniel could see her face brighten.  And then…she busted out laughing, and the air around them shook.

“Are you SERIOUS right now!?” she laughed down at the scientists, who were cowering and covering their ears.  “It can’t be THAT perfect!”

“Why would we tease you like that?” called up Dr. Clinebell, who had made a rare appearance to preside over this morning’s measurements.  “Of course we’re being serious!”

“Oh please!” Emma countered, rolling her eyes, “You’ve teased me before!”

“You wanna look at the number?” Dr. Clinebell shot back.  “It’s right here.”

“Nooooo, no, I believe you,” Emma giggled, turning back up to look over at Daniel.

“Oh my god, Daniel!” she laughed, clasping her hands together and pointing them at him.  “You won’t believe this…I am literally…get this…one HUNDRED tons…and one pound.”

“Emma!  That’s…geeeeez…!” exclaimed Daniel.  “That’s heavy!”  He felt ridiculous putting it like that, but really, what else was he supposed to say?

“Heavier than anything on Earth!” said Emma proudly, thrusting out her chest, “Or at least…land animals.  What’s the heaviest land animal?”

“Male African bush elephant,” Dr. Farley answered immediately.  “Maximum weight 11 tons.”

“Puny!” laughed Emma, indicating the “smallness” by making a box with her hands.  “I’d play with it like a stuffed animal!”

“But what about ALL animals?” asked Dr. Ossford.  “Blue whales?”  The other scientists looked at him, some of them like Jeltzin enjoying a bit of fun, but others looking unmistakably anxious.  Clearly, they didn’t see Emma’s weight as a laughing matter.

“Average weight 110 tons,” Dr. Farley replied.  “Heaviest recorded was a female who was 190 tons.”

“That bitch!” growled Emma, almost stomping her foot but then thinking better of it.  “Mark my words, she won’t be the heaviest for long.”

“Well let’s just try and take it day by day, right?” Dr. Clinebell said mildly through the megaphone.  “Little goals, Emma…baby steps.”

“You really are something else,” Emma smiled down at Clinebell, putting her hands on her hips, “You know that?”  It was clear to everyone that since their “confrontation” a few days before, both Emma and Clinebell had reached some kind of unspoken understanding.  He had relaxed, and was now the most comfortable – and even, some thought, the most blase – of all the scientists, and Emma was all here for it.  When it got right down to it, she enjoyed trading barbs with him, especially now that she knew he had no real power over her.

Emma’s high spirits continued on through the morning and into lunch.  It was a rest day for her, so she wasn’t lifting any weights, but Daniel noticed that she kept staring over at the weight rack.  Even though she was clearly enjoying her burgeoning size, he couldn’t help but feel bad for her – she was over 65 feet tall, and, aside from her workouts, there was no way to just blow off steam, to really get out and run around and stretch her legs.  Sure, she enjoyed her morning stretches, but Daniel got the distinct sense that Emma was longing to actually go run around, to truly relish in her body.  An image of her dancing in a field suddenly popped into his head, and he smiled.

“What’re you grinning about?” Emma inquired, a humorous eyebrow going up as she settled into her chair by the table, getting ready for lunch.

“Oh!  I uh, just…nothing,” Daniel replied, sitting cross-legged on the table.  They hadn’t brought the food out yet, so he was in the clear.  Once Emma started eating, though, he would take care to establish a safe distance between the two of them.  Her stomach had been growling all morning, less than half an hour after breakfast, and Daniel knew that she was ravenous.

“I was just imagining you…um…dancing around in a field,” Daniel added, figuring there was actually no reason to hide what he had been thinking.  “I can’t wait until the trip in a few days, when I can see you, uh, I mean, when you can really actually move around again, you know?”

“Oh my god,” Emma nodded, leaning back in her chair as she put her hands up behind her head.  “I’ve been trying not to fixate on it too much, because then I’ll be all mopey until then…and anyway, it’s not like I’m not having a blast here, right?!”  She leaned back in the chair slightly, and Daniel heard the sturdy, thick wooden beams beginning to groan out under her weight.  He started getting nervous, but Emma either hadn’t noticed the sound, or had noticed but didn’t care.

“But yeah, wow…” she continued, staring off into space.  “I literally can’t wait.”

“I mean, when was the last time you actually got to run around?” Daniel asked, but then quickly realized that the answer must’ve been when Emma was back at her parents’ farm.  He inwardly winced, hoping that he hadn’t brought up a painful time for her…for both of them.

“Must’ve been back on the farm,” Emma remarked casually, still rocking back and forth in her chair as she chewed on her tongue.  “And geez, I wasn’t in any kind of shape back then…not even as close to as flexible as I am now.”

“And not nearly as strong,” Daniel added, relieved.

“Haha that goes without saying,” laughed Emma, bouncing her biceps down at him in her pose.  This close to her, Daniel stared up at her arms, and he felt a sudden rush of awe go through him.  This kind of thing was beginning to happen with him more and more – when, in the middle of an ordinary conversation, he would just stop dead and gape at how huge some part of her was.  Last night it had been her fingers…and now it was her biceps.  He knew she was big all over, but he had never quite grasped how gigantic she had become.  Even for a 65-foot-plus giantess, she was jacked.

“You know I love it when I catch you staring at my babies,” Emma purred, the sultriness of her voice rumbling through the wooden table and straight into Daniel’s crotch.  She bounced her biceps with special intensity, making them jump up even more.  That shirt Miss Bissett had made for her…there was still plenty of room in the sleeves, but Daniel knew he wasn’t imagining that there was a good deal less room than there had been the day before.

“Yeah…I…yeah…” was all Daniel could manage as he gaped up at her guns.  Emma laughed softly and turned her head to the side to look at her arms, and as she did so, Daniel wasn’t able to help noticing that the truck chain bracelet was practically digging into her wrist at this point.  He had been so amazed by the rest of her body that he hadn’t even noticed that her right hand, on her bracelet side, looked slightly paler than her left.  He realized now that, of course, her hand was paler because the bracelet was cutting off her circulation.  His face fell a little with this realization, and he started worrying about how they were going to get the bracelet off her wrist.  Were they going to have to bring in some kind of a…buzz saw or something?  Would they accidentally cut her in the process?

“What’s wrong?” Emma pouted, still playfully bouncing her biceps.  “Don’t you like them?”

“I…of course I like them!” Daniel replied.  “I was just noticing, uhm…doesn’t your bracelet hurt?”

“Huh?” asked Emma blankly.  She lowered her arms and looked at her right wrist, turning her arm as she examined it.  Her lips broke out into a grin as she raised her eyebrows slowly – it was dawning on her how tight it was, and seeing how much she had grown, how much she had filled it out, was obviously pleasing to her.

“No, it doesn’t hurt,” she murmured, turning her arm back and forth, “But I can see why you’d ask that.”  She shook her arm, and the bracelet didn’t budge a smidgen.  “Like daaaamn!” she laughed, sticking her wrist out next to Daniel, “You’re right!  It’s so tight, oh my gosh!  It’s totally cutting off my circulation…and I didn’t even notice!”

“Yeah…” Daniel said, gawking at Emma’s wrist next to him.  It was as thick as a pine tree, and somehow the truck chain bracelet made it look even bigger.  Those thick, heavy steel chains that were coiled together would have looked imposing on their own, but on Emma’s wrist they just looked like a normal bracelet…and a tiny one at that.  And when Emma splayed her huge hand out (her palm alone was nearly 4 feet wide) and friskily wiggled her fingers, the truck chain looked even tinier still.

“I’m glad you mentioned this!” Emma laughed, drumming her fingers on the table.  “I literally can’t even feel my fingers right now…zero circulation.  Heh, that can’t be good.”  She certainly didn’t look bothered in the least; it was clear that she was enjoying the whole thing.

“Yeah, that…that can’t be good,” Daniel repeated after her, contrasting with his seriousness as he stared at the thick metal nearly cutting into her wrist.  “So I guess they’ll have to, you know…cut it off, then?”

Emma’s fingers suddenly stopped drumming.  After a few seconds of silence, Daniel looked up to see that she was gaping at him, her tongue in her lower cheek, like she couldn’t believe what she just heard.

“Daniel,” she asked, deadpan.  “Are you serious?”

“...Uh, I mean…yeah, just…wondering how they’re gonna get that off,” he answered, shrugging, feeling a bit helpless, like he missed something.

Lunch had been arriving over the past few minutes, with attendants stacking food boxes up on the table.  The whole current situation seemed so amusing to Emma, though, that she hadn’t even acknowledged the food, until now.  Grinning close-lipped, she slowly shook her head down at Daniel.

“What?” he asked, feeling slightly annoyed, but also like her humor was rubbing off on him.

“Think you might wanna get behind one of those boxes,” she advised, gesturing with her head behind him before staring down at him with wide excited eyes.  “I don’t know what’s gonna happen!”

“What’re you doing?” Daniel began, smiling warily as he did as he was told, taking up a safe position behind one of the huge wooden boxes that had just been forklifted up onto the table.  “Don’t hurt yourself, okay?”

“Oh please,” Emma scoffed dismissively, waving her other hand.  “Nothing’s gonna happen to me.”  She stared down at her bracelet, turning her arm over a few times, like she was trying to figure out the best way to go about her plan.  Daniel, from his safe spot, was beginning to feel a bit foolish now.  ‘Of course she can just bend one of the links,’ he thought.  ‘Like how she made the bracelet larger before.’  But somehow, he knew this wasn’t what she was going to do.

“Now let’s see,” she muttered to herself, “I could just…noooo, heheh, I’ll do it this way.”

Checking to make sure that Daniel was adequately hidden, she extended her right arm out on top of the table.  Her giant fingers tapped again on the surface, doing a little dance; Daniel got the sense that she was warming up for something.  And then, quite suddenly, her fingers all retreated under her palm and she made a fist.  Daniel saw the muscles of her forearm swell in all directions, as the tendons were pulled abruptly taut.  The bracelet nearly disappeared into Emma’s wrist, and Daniel glanced up at her nervously.  Wasn’t she in pain!?  But looking up at her face, he could see that she was frowning slightly…she definitely wasn’t in pain.  It looked like she was sucking on her tongue.

And then Emma released her fist, flexed her fingers for a few moments, and then tried again, this time squeezing a bit harder.   Once again, the bracelet almost seemed to disappear into her wrist.  Now that he understood what she was trying to do, Daniel thought about coming out from behind the box.  It was cute that she was trying this little trick…and of course it was very ambitious…but there was no way that she could break that kind of steel just by flexing her arm like that.  Now, if there had been a chain on her biceps – well, that would have been another story.  But even though her wrists were obviously thick and crazy-strong, he knew she’d be sitting there for a long, long time before her plan worked.  Even so, he still didn’t budge.  Something in the back of his brain told him to stay put.

“Guh!” exhaled Emma, shaking her head as she relaxed her fist again.  Her eyes were narrowed, and her eyebrows had become creased close together.  Daniel felt a little bad for her – at this point, she wasn’t used to physical limitations of any sort.

“I don’t think that’s gonna work!” he called out to her, not wishing to see her put herself through what looked like more pain.  But Emma just blinked and looked over at him, a sly grin creeping across her face.  Any exertion or disappointment that had been etched into her face vanished instantly.

“Oh yeah?” she laughed.  “You don’t think so?”  Screwing her mouth up into a determined, smiling grimace, Emma turned her attention back to the bracelet.  Daniel felt his chest tightening slightly as he watched her nostrils dilate in the midst of her redoubled effort; she was flexing her arm again…trying…trying hard…but still not able to make anything happen.  She relaxed her hand again on the table, breathing through her nose as she stared down at her bracelet thoughtfully.  For a moment Daniel thought that she was about to give up, but then she looked back over at him and bounced her eyebrows up and down, indicating full, cheery confidence.

‘How long is she going to go on like this?’ Daniel wondered.  ‘She’s gotta be starving…and the food’s all here!’  He again found himself hoping that she’d give up her little game.  But there she was, flexing her forearm again.

“You really don’t think I can do it?” she chuckled, looking back and forth between him and her bracelet.  “You think I’m getting a little feverish with all this growth, don’t you?”

“What?!  No!” laughed Daniel, beginning to emerge a little from behind the food crate.  “I just know your stomach’s been growling all morning, and I know you probably wanna just go ahead and –”

“You might wanna duck back behind that crate,” Emma cut in, grinning down at her wrist.  “I think I just heard something pop!”  She was obviously making an effort to keep her voice measured, but the excitement in her words was palpable, infusing the crates, the table, Daniel’s body, and the air around with rumbling authority.  It was so odd that such a powerful voice could sound so…girly at the same time.

‘No…no way,’ Daniel thought, but he did what she said, ducking behind the thick protective wood, and just in time too.  Dancing her fingers on the table in a playful patter, Emma had taken a deep breath and was curling her hand up into a fist again.  Daniel saw the quick flash of her tongue as she stuck it out of the side of her mouth, in between her teeth.

*BANG*

The shocked sound of exploding steel shivered out into the air, already seeming to retreat from the sudden thunder of its source.  Daniel had almost tumbled backward from the sheer surprise of the loud noise, and, crouching behind the crate in his stunned state, he heard the fragments of metal clanging down on the table.  A few of them landed close to the crate, and one of them might have even smacked into the wood, by the sound of it.  Daniel recovered himself and peeked out from behind the crate to see Emma smiling ear to ear, flexing and un-flexing her hand as her wrist enjoyed its newfound freedom.  All around her lay twisted debris of shining steel; evidently, the thick metal coils had been no match for Emma’s strength…her easy strength.  Daniel couldn’t help but shudder a little – she had hardly even been trying.  She hadn’t done anything except flex her hand.  Sure, her bracelet had been tight, but it was astonishing to him that she could have done such a thing.  He thought that maybe he wasn’t giving her enough credit…that all the time he had spent cuddling with her recently had made him forget how strong, how powerful, she actually was.  Her arm had seemed so soft and gentle when he was lounging on it last night; he had felt himself lightly sink into its pillowy, feminine flesh.  The fact that, with a simple flex of her hand, she could suddenly convert that flesh into a steel-busting pillar…well, Daniel knew that there was still a lot to get used to.  And on top of all that, she was in the midst of a growth spurt, a big one.

“I’m surprised you didn’t think I could do it,” Emma giggled, taking evident pleasure in Daniel’s surprise as she continued flexing her hand.  “God!  That feels great, actually – thanks for pointing it out.  I was too distracted to notice.”

“Too…distracted?” Daniel asked, coming out from behind the crate and marveling at all the pieces of thick, twisted steel coils lying around.  “By what, exactly?”

Emma looked down at him and arched an eyebrow.  “My thighs.”

“Your thighs?”  Daniel blinked up at her inquiringly, not understanding, wondering if this was another one of her silly little jokes.

She nodded, perfectly serious, and lowered her hands down to her quads, giving them a couple hearty smacks that reverberated out across the hangar.  “These babies have been on fire all morning.  And I can tell it’s not even really the muscle…it’s the bone.”

“Growing pains?” Daniel asked.  She nodded again, taking a deep breath and letting it out.  Not for the first time, Daniel almost felt overcome with pity for her.  Sometimes when she was being all silly or showing off, he could easily forget that she was probably in pain…possibly even severe pain.  Maybe that was one of the main reasons why she was so bubbly all the time, to present this girlish, carefree facade to distract herself from how much it all hurt.  As he watched her rubbing her thighs, slightly hunched over at the table, Daniel almost felt his eyes starting to mist over.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, forgetting that she couldn’t hear him when he spoke in a normal tone.  For a few moments he just stood there, watching her rocking slightly back and forth as she continued rubbing her legs, grimacing.  As he stared up at her face, overcome with pity, he could make out the sweat glazing her forehead; it wasn’t obvious to the eye at first, but after a few seconds of looking at her face, it was yet another sign of the immense changes happening in her body in real time.

A sudden loud and thunderous sound made Daniel jolt, and he actually jumped in place, startled.  Emma had slapped her thighs with her hands, and was grinning down at him, the pain gone from her face.

“But that’s just the price I gotta pay for getting bigger, right?” she laughed, throwing her arms up behind her head and leaning back in her chair, once again striking an unbelievably impressive pose.  “It’s worth it…totally worth it.”

‘Can she really mean that?’ Daniel thought to himself as he smiled up at her, trying his best not to look sad and concerned.  ‘Or is she just saying that as a defense mechanism?’  But it didn’t take him long to dispel those thoughts.  All he had to do was look up at her confident pose, her shining eyes, and that wide, relieving grin.  It really was worth it for her.  Over the past few months, she had arrived at a mental place where her growth, her size, truly thrilled her – it had almost become something like a sport in her eyes.  And even though, in the past, he had tried to rationalize her mentality as a response to the trauma of her undiagnosed condition, that line of reasoning couldn’t work for Daniel anymore.  At this point, for better or worse, Emma loved being big, being huge…being a giantess…and she loved that she was getting bigger.

But Daniel was suddenly roused from his thoughts by a foreboding sound…a woody creak was suddenly whining out into the air, and he knew that it was coming from the chair that Emma was lounging on.  She was leaning slightly back in it, so that the two front legs (which were both thick wooden pillars that were 4 feet wide) were slightly off the floor.  It was clear that Emma hadn’t noticed the sound (or didn’t care about it if she had), since she was licking her lips at the mounds of food crates that were stacked behind Daniel; she was eying them hungrily, taking time to size them up before she dug in.

“Mmmmm, it’s about time to feed this,” she intoned, rubbing her belly as she continued leaning back in her chair, like she was poised to strike.  “Although I don’t think they brought enough.”

Daniel glanced back at the mountain of food crates behind him and then looked back at her, unintentionally humorous.  He was more worried about the continued whining of the chair, but Emma had started laughing at him.

“Hey!  I know it looks like a lot to YOU!” she burst out, leaning forward and bringing the chair booming back down onto the smooth floor.  “But let’s be honest about the size difference here, huh?”

She placed her straightened palm up next to Daniel’s body, and her palm alone was over 4 feet tall.  But her fingers rose up well over his head, with her middle finger towering up over 7 feet tall.  With her manicured nail, from her wrist to the top of her middle finger, her hand was 7’4.  As she made the comparison, Emma brought her other hand up to her mouth, her eyes widening in wonder.  Evidently, even she hadn’t expected her hand to tower over him by this much.  Daniel swallowed, staring up at her fingers rising high above his head.

“Oh my god,” Emma whispered, giggling through her hand.  “I didn’t even…uh…WOW.”

“Y-yeah…” breathed Daniel, his brain trying to comprehend what it was witnessing.  “Wow is right.”

For another few seconds, Emma just sat there admiring the incredible size comparison, before suddenly collapsing her fingers down into two “legs,” her middle and forefingers, as she “walked them up to Daniel, extending her thumb as a “hand” for him to shake.

“Hi there!” Emma chirped in a silly, formal voice, pretending like her hand was a person, “Top of the day, sir, nice to meet you!”

“Nice…to meet you,” Daniel chuckled, holding out his hand and shaking Emma’s thumb.  Even as he was playing along with her joke, he could feel his nerves pricking all across his body.  The whole thing was so surreal – her two fingers were longer and thicker than his legs, and her thumb was massive…her “finger person” was tall compared to him.  As he shook her thumb, the creaking sound of the chair sounded out again, probably because Emma was leaning forward now, and Daniel couldn’t take the stress anymore.

“I’m…a little worried about your chair,” he declared, as Emma leaned back, took a handful of the food crates (about 11 or 12 in all) and tossed them into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully, wood and all.

“What about it?” she asked, swallowing down everything in an instant and getting another heaping handful.

“It’s just…it sounds like it’s about to break,” Daniel said, pointing down at the legs.  “You might hurt yourself.  Maybe you should just keep all four legs on the floor?”

*CRRRRUNCH CRUNCH CRRRUNNNCHHHH*

Emma had probably already eaten 30 or 40 crates of food, and she was taking bigger and bigger handfuls each time.  But to her, this incredible amount of food seemed to be nothing more than a snack.  Within a minute, the entire mound of crates behind Daniel was gone, and it wasn’t even that Emma was eating terribly quickly.  She would just leisurely reach over Daniel, stretching her huge hand to encompass a handful of crates, and then casually toss them into her mouth.  The crunching sounds of her teeth effortlessly splitting the wood were loud enough for Daniel, but to Emma, it just sounded like normal chewing.

“You know,” Emma observed after a few moments had passed, “I think it’s really cute that you’re worried about me hurting myself.  Hahaha, as if…”

“But are you really not hearing that?” Daniel asked, making an effort to keep his voice easygoing as her chair continued to creak and groan under her weight.  Daniel actually wondered if she was actively going through an especially strong growth spurt, like her body was directly responding to the food she was eating.

“I’m hearing you being a sweetheart,” Emma cooed down at him, tossing another 12 crates into her mouth, crunching them up in a few seconds, and swallowing them down.  She scrunched her nose up at Daniel as she bent down over him, shrouding him in her shadow.  Extending her pinkie, she gently petted the side of his cheek, smiling warmly down at him.  Daniel almost shuddered with surprised pleasure, marveling at how she could be so gentle with her fingers, despite being so gigantic.  But his pleasure was tempered even in the midst of the soft pad of her finger on his cheek – her skin was radiating heat, to the point that Daniel began to break out into a sweat.  She was definitely going through another spurt…right now.

“Sooo cuuuuute,” Emma murmured down at him, almost to herself, as she continued to caress his cheek with her pinkie.  “Soooo tiiiiny…”  She popped another handful of crates into her mouth, chewing them absentmindedly as she suddenly lined up her hand again with Daniel’s body, no expression on her face, as she seemed to be measuring his height next to her fingers.  She shifted her weight slightly in the chair, making it groan out again, as she continued silently comparing her hand to his body.  A minute later, reaching her other hand over Daniel, he saw her face fall, her hand pausing, with her lip curling up into a regretful pout.

“Awwww…” she sighed, tilting her head to the side.

“What?” asked Daniel, turning to look behind him.  What he saw – or rather, didn’t see – was astonishing.  The entire mountain of food crates, probably comprising at least 200 of them, was gone.  How long had she been eating?  Less than five minutes!?  She hadn’t even been going fast, like she sometimes did.  Daniel turned back around to look up at Emma, who gave him a playful, pouting smile as she shrugged, her stomach audibly growling out in unsatiated protest.

It didn’t get much easier for the furniture the next day, especially considering that Emma now measured a full 66 feet and 2 inches, and weighed in at over 103 tons.  Upon her insistence, the scientists had measured her hips, and found them to be just over 14 feet wide.

“Whaddya think about that?” she smirked down at Daniel, sauntering towards him out of the measuring station, her bare feet shaking the floor with each step.  The oversized white shirt that Miss Bissett had specially made for her was already looking rather ordinary, and her panties looked extra-stretched over her huge ass and thick thighs.  “You’ve got yourself a girlfriend with 14-foot hips!”

She turned her back to him, her hands on her hips, and started performing a playful twerking motion as she slowly began lowering herself to the floor, her giant ass cheeks bouncing, before she began standing up again.

“Can you handle these hips, Daniel?” she purred, glancing over her shoulder and winking at him.  “Can you handle all this ass?”

He gaped up at those jiggling, bouncing, megalithic cheeks, and had no response.  He knew she was kidding, but he was so taken by the sight of her impromptu dance that he forgot even to smile.

“If I could…uhm, just ask you to refrain from the pole dancing?” asked Dr. Farley through the megaphone.  “Until we get your triglycerides measured?”

“Psssshh, pole dancing!?” Emma laughed, rising up to her full height as she put her hands back on her hips and faced the scientists.  “Who’s pole dancing??  Do you see a pole anywhere around here?”

“Don’t mind him, Emma,” interjected Dr.Jeltzin.  “Dr. Farley doesn’t really know the lingo around all the…what do they call that now?  Twerking?”

“YES!” laughed Emma, spreading her legs open and shaking them, so that the flesh of her thighs and ass went back and forth, left and right, in a mesmerizing regular rhythm.  “Hahaha Daniel, remember back when I was like 5’8 and 130, and used to bitch about not being able to do this?”

“Y-yeah…” he nodded, his mind whirling.

At lunch, even though Emma didn’t seem to be in nearly as much growth pain as she had the day before, there was more drama.  Once she had eaten all the crates (even faster today), in the midst of standing up to leave the table, Daniel had seen her pause briefly and furrow her brow as she looked down at her hips, like there was something wrong.  After a few abrupt, jolting pushes, she was able to stand up fully, and she stared down at the chair, frowning.

“What the heck…?” she muttered, evidently a bit irritated, but then seemed to shrug it off as she gently picked up Daniel and walked back to her bed to relax for a bit.  It took Daniel a few seconds to realize that, in standing up, Emma had actually almost gotten stuck in her chair.  He swallowed nervously, and thought about bringing it up to her, but then decided against it.

The next day, though, it was impossible to ignore.  She was 66 feet 9 inches in the morning, and, Daniel figured, probably about 67 feet by lunchtime.  Everyone was in awe of how quickly her spurt had kicked in, and they were unsure how long it would last…or even, ominously, if it had truly “kicked in” yet at all.

“I just…I can’t understand it,” Dr. Farley said in a low voice to Clinebell Monica, Jeltzin, and others all gathered around, stunned at the new statistics.  “She gained over 2 tons overnight, and her food intake…I can’t square it.  Her cells seem to be spontaneously generating and regenerating themselves in perfect proportion, with or without adequate nutrition.”

“It’s impossible…” Dr. Ossford breathed, shaking his head.  “Impossible how controlled it all is, how proportional, how universal across every aspect of her body…the growth is spread equally across all systems.”

“Haven’t you all heard?” Clinebell quipped, lounging back into a chair, “That impossible is nothing?”

They all turned to look at him with blank expressions, and he met their vacant faces with a wry smile, arching his eyebrows as he sighed out and shook his head.  It was clear that the scientists didn’t know how to react to the newfound flippancy of their boss, and it was equally clear that he didn’t quite know what to make of himself either.  Faced with the apparently impenetrable problem of Emma’s growth spurt, and having essentially abdicated his authority over her, Dr. Clinebell was coasting through a strange social and professional landscape, where he found himself reverting to his naturally playful and jocular side…the side that Emma had initially found so creepy when she arrived at the Facility all those months before.  But now that she had realized he wasn’t really a threat to her anymore, Emma could feel free to laugh and joke around with him…much to the consternation of some of the scientists.

“I wish you would stop taking this so lightly,” Monica admonished him quietly, pulling him aside as they watched Emma preparing for lunch, playing around with Daniel with her “hand person” at the table.  “Just because we can’t arrest her growth doesn’t mean that we just get to kick back and…and abandon our responsibility to her.”

“Oh Monica,” smiled Clinebell, loosening his arm from her grip as he turned and sank back into his armchair, crossing his legs casually as he did so, “You know, I truly admire your dedication…really, I do.  You and Farley and Jeltzin and all the rest have done a fine job…done all you can, in fact.  But the benefit of leading this whole enterprise is that I’ve been the first to read the writing on the wall, so to speak.”  He sighed out and stretched back, relaxing, putting his hands behind his head.

“You’ve given up,” Monica said in a low voice, even though there wasn’t a chance that Emma could hear her.  “You’re leaving her to the ravages of her disease!”

Dr. Clinebell shrugged again, looking past Monica to the table where Emma was sitting, laughing as her “hand person” tackled Daniel and started tickling him.

“She doesn’t seem too bothered by it all,” he remarked, smiling faintly.

“And when she gets too big for this Facility?” Monica asked, putting her hands on her hips.

“She’s already too big for this Facility,” Clinebell retorted immediately.  A sharp edge had crept back into his voice.

“I mean…when she…when she…”  Monica couldn’t bring herself to say it, and tears started pooling in her eyes.

“When she can’t stay here anymore?”  Clinebell’s matter-of-fact tone sounded almost cruel, and yet Monica knew this was just how his attitude worked.  Silently, she nodded.

“Well, when it happens…” he said, taking a deep breath in through his nose, as he spread his hands out helplessly.  “It happens.  And there won’t be anything we can do about it.”

“But…I mean, for safety’s sake…” Farley cut in, having joined the conversation, also speaking in a low voice.  “The army…they’ll have to be warned…”

Their conversation continued, but high above them, at the table, Emma was having a grand time with Daniel, who couldn’t do anything to hold off the tickling “fingers” of her “hand person.”

“Aww, what’s the matter?” she teased him, “Come on!  She’s your size!  Push her off!”

“Hahahahaaaaa I–I…I c-caaaaan’t!” he laughed, twisting and turning fruitlessly on his back.  “She’s ahahahahaa…too strongggg!”

“Damn right she is!” Emma laughed, finally letting up, taking a few “steps” back with her hand person, and striking a playful “muscular” pose by bending her fingers slightly and exclaiming “GUH!” like a bodybuilder flexing.  “She’s been working out with all those weights!  Haha, I mean, look at her legs compared to yours!”  She leaned forward in her chair as she laid out her forefinger next to Daniel’s leg as he rose up into a sitting position on the table.  The comparison was truly incredible – not only was her finger longer than his leg, but it was thicker…FAR thicker…maybe over twice the size.  It was easy for Daniel to get lost in the absurdity of the size comparison, and it took him a few moments of gaping to realize that, to his relief, Emma didn’t seem to be radiating quite the same amount of heat today as she had yesterday.  Her wooden chair was still moaning and groaning like usual, but Emma seemed to have taken Daniel’s advice to heart, and wasn’t testing its strength by leaning back on its back legs.

“Hmmm, you don’t…uh, you’re not as hot as yesterday,” he remarked.

“Excuse me!?” she burst out, miming effrontery as she tossed her hair, “I’m HOTTER than ever, thank you very much.”

“I mean…your skin isn’t…heh, you know what I meant,” he grinned, seeing the playful glint in her eyes.

“Yeah, it seems to have calmed down a bit,” she nodded, feeling up her body as she struggled to adjust herself slightly in her chair.  “This morning I was, like, burning up, you know?  But the last couple hours everything seems to have calmed down a –”

*CRRRRRRAACCCCKKKK*

A series of earsplitting, popping bursts splintered through the air.  Daniel leapt up, his heart in his mouth, and looked up to Emma’s face just long enough to see her eyes widen in surprise, before she abruptly vanished from view, plunging down to the floor.  The sound of the gigantic wooden chair splitting apart had been loud enough, but it was nothing next to the booming, cratering reverberation of Emma’s 107 tons as her ass thundered down onto the concrete, smashing an enormous hole in it, and sending shivering cracks in all directions in a 70-foot radius.  Immediately, a host of calls and shouts echoed out from down below, and the sound of several alarms echoed out across the spacious hangar.  With a sickening drop in his stomach, Daniel crept over to the edge of the table to peer down, fearing the worst.

In the midst of the splintered, jagged rubble of the enormous chair, Emma was sitting flat on her butt, leaning back on her hands, a slightly dazed look on her face as she looked around, surveying the damage.  Daniel internally registered that she was okay, and felt relief, but his dread had not involved fears for her safety – he knew that Emma was going to be fine, maybe with a few scrapes or bruises.  What he was really afraid of was the prospect that other people had been standing close to the chair the moment before it had…imploded.  And, sure enough, as he anxiously scanned the wreckage, he saw three or four people – three attendants who he didn’t know, and Dr. Ossford – lying on the floor.

For a terrible moment, Daniel thought that they were dead, but then they all started moving slowly, rousing themselves up in the midst of their shock to dust themselves off.  Thankfully, aside from being horribly shaken, the three attendants appeared to be uninjured, even though several long, nasty pieces of jagged wood were lying close by them.  A few other people had been thrown off their feet farther away from the tremors of the cracked concrete, but they were all standing now.  Dr. Ossford was closer to the wooden wreckage, however, and when he tried to stand up, he immediately fell back, clutching his lower leg.  A number of people rushed to his aid, gathering around him quickly and attending to his injury.  Emma, though, didn’t seem to realize what had happened, and she looked up at Daniel, shaking her head.

“Well, the good news is I’m not gonna be getting stuck in that chair anymore!” she laughed, glancing down at her hips.  “Jeez, have I really gotten that thick!?”

“Emma…” Daniel said, overcome with a number of different emotions.  “Are you…are you okay?”

“Me?” she asked, blinking.  “Haha, I’m fine!  A little embarrassed, I guess,” she began, beginning to look around her, “Since my fat ass was obviously too much for the…oh…shit…”

“No, no, It’s okay,” Dr. Ossford was saying, nodding quickly to those around him.  “Just a broken tibia, fibula probably too…no compound fracture thankfully…I’ll just need to be helped up and get this x-rayed, set and put in a cast, problem solved.”

Emma was looking down at the assembled group.  It was clear that she understood that Ossford had been hurt, but that it wasn’t anything life-threatening.  She watched as the group helped him up and started to carry him away toward one of the back rooms of the Facility.  The alarms were still echoing out across the room, likely set off by the sheer shockwave of Emma’s body cracking into the concrete.  Daniel was marking her expression, to try and gauge how she felt, preparing to do damage control and remind her that none of this was her fault.  However, despite her obvious awareness of what had happened, she didn’t seem to be acting overly distraught or guilty.

“Sorry, Dr. Ossford!” she called after them kindly after a few moments.

“N-No…no problem at all, Emma!” he called back, managing a grimacing smile.  “I guess we just all need to…to give you a wide berth, heheh!”

“Yeah…” Emma mused, almost to herself, absentmindedly twiddling a sharp, jagged, 14-foot shard of wood in her fingers as she watched them carry him away.  “I…guess so…”

Later on that night, as Daniel and Emma cuddled in her bed (or, more specifically, Daniel laid out on her boob while she gently petted him with her finger), he raised his head up in the dark.

“You know…what happened today wasn’t your fault, right?” he ventured.

“Yeah…I know,” Emma said simply, not betraying anything in the deadpan sound of her voice, before she added, humorously, “Did you see that crater my butt left?”

“Hahah…oh god…yeah,” Daniel chuckled, gladdened that she was being lighthearted.

A few moments of silence passed by as she continued to pet him in the dark.

“I’m just glad he wasn’t closer to me, you know?” she said quietly, her soft voice washing over Daniel like an ocean wind.  “That wouldn’t have been…good at all.”

“No,” Daniel agreed, trying to think of more to say, but not able to alight on anything that wouldn’t have sounded unsavory.  The two of them lay there, silently understanding what the other was thinking.  If there had been any question before, there wasn’t any now – Emma’s time…and Daniel’s time…at the Facility was drawing to a close.  But what came next, neither of them quite knew.  In any case, they weren’t ready to talk about it yet.  In the midst of the silence, a noise broke in as Emma adjusted herself in bed: the steel bed frame was starting to groan now.

“Let’s get you all snuggled up in your bed,” Emma whispered quickly, bringing Daniel over to the nightstand after a swift torso-encompassing kiss.

The next morning, Emma measured 67 feet and 1 inch, indicating that her growth spurt appeared to have slowed down, but at this point, no one, least of all Emma, was operating under any illusions.  It was only a matter of time before it kicked up again.  A few hours later, after her workouts and lunch, Emma was sitting cross-legged by the weight racks, staring off at the mountains, fiddling with some of the 30-foot iron weight bars.  It had been something of a frustrating day for her, not least because, in addition to accidentally bruising her thigh against the table, she had banged her knee into the weight rack after she had tried to step over it when her workouts were done.  It was obvious to everyone that she was struggling to gauge where her body actually was, no doubt thanks to her rapid growth in the previous few days.  But most irritating to Emma out of everything was the fact that she had maxed-out the weight bars in her deadlifts – there was literally no more weight she could put on the bars, and after busting out 30-rep sets, she had barely even broken a sweat.

Now that she was sitting there, looking off into the distance, Daniel could see the sheen of sweat on her forehead, glinting in the afternoon sun, and he knew it wasn’t from the workouts.  Sitting 50 feet nearby, he could feel the heat radiating off her.  Her spurt had started again.  He wondered how much it hurt, but didn’t want to ask her.  She was rocking slightly back and forth again, rubbing her thighs like she had done before.  But this time, she was using the long, thick metal weight bar to massage her muscles…it seemed to be helping.

Out of the blue, Emma sat up completely straight and looked around her, like she was checking to make sure no one was close by.  And then, grasping the bar with two hands, she twisted.

*SNAP*

The steel bar, which was 3 feet thick, broke cleanly in half, sending a shockwave of sound out in all directions.  Daniel fell backward in his chair, and the alarms went off again, blaring out in all directions.  Dr. Jeltzin rushed forward to investigate what had happened, but it didn’t take much to realize what had caused all the commotion.

“Emma!” he called up to her with the megaphone, his voice rising up over the alarms, “What…!?  What’re you doing!?”

*CLANGGGGCLANGCLANG*

She tossed the broken steel bar away into a corner and turned to him, looking bored.

“What’s it look like I’m doing?” she replied, shrugging.  “Just…hanging out, heh.”

“Emma….girl…you can’t be – oh damn it, can’t we shut these alarms off!?” Jeltzin burst out.  “Or…re-calibrate them or something!?  Anyway, Emma…you can’t just be doing stuff like that!”

“Why not?” she asked innocently, picking up a couple 200-pound weighted plates in her fingers, twiddling them around, and then bending them into C-shapes between her thumb and forefinger.  “These weights are no good to me anymore.  Minus well just play with them, right?”

Jeltzin couldn’t think of anything to say to that, and turned to Daniel with a helpless expression on his face.  Even though Daniel had been startled by the loud sound of the weight bar being snapped, there was something funny about the way Emma was bending those gigantic iron plates with her fingers…and now she was stacking them on top of each other, C-shape down, until it was 10 plates high.

“Hey guys!” Emma giggled, picking up the stack in one hand, holding it straight between her thumb and middle finger.  “Watch this!”

Setting her jaw, she squeezed her fingers together, and a series of loud metallic groans sounded out into the air.  Daniel and Jeltzin both stared, incredulous.  She had just bent all 10 plates back into their normal shape, just using those two fingers.

‘Each of those plates…weighs 200 pounds,’ Daniel thought, stunned.

“Tada!” Emma laughed, “See, Jeltzin?  Good as new!”

She put the plates back down on the floor, and resumed her slight swaying back and forth, as she continued to rub her thighs, staring off into the distance.  Normally, Daniel knew that Jeltzin would have complimented Emma on her show of strength, but at this point, even he was on edge.

“Just…uhm…just please try and not make those loud noises again, okay?” he pleaded through the megaphone.  For a few moments, Emma didn’t respond.  The sweat was dripping down her forehead now.

“Emma?”

“Mhm,” she nodded, not turning, and still looking straight forward at the mountains.  Daniel had the distinct sense that, if the mountain trip hadn’t been scheduled for the following day, Emma might have just stood up and left the Facility, then and there.  The urge to run, to jump, to work off the growth pain, felt like it was reaching a breaking point – Daniel could sense it.

The doctors decided to do a second daily measurement later on that day, since she had clearly been going through another spurt.  Her once-baggy white shirt was now beginning to fit her tightly, so that her breasts were now clearly protruding outward, with the musculature of her stomach becoming clearly visible as well.  It wasn’t quite a tight fit yet, but it was getting there.

“68 feet, 3 inches,” Dr. Ossford read from his wheelchair, glancing meaningfully at the other scientists before looking up at Emma.

“Jeez, you weren’t kidding when you said you were going through a spurt!” Jeltzin laughed up to her.

“Aren’t you all glad we’re going on that field trip tomorrow?” Emma grinned, striking a couple joke poses before getting off the scale (which measured her at nearly 114 tons).  “I think we all need a breath of fresh air.”

Everyone couldn’t have agreed more.  Later that night, Emma was lying in her bed, and Daniel was sitting by her hip, examining one of the numerous bruises she had incurred through accidentally bumping into various pieces of furniture.  At this point, her stomach growling was so frequent that it had almost become like background noise.  Daniel had asked her before if her stomach had been hurting, and she had told him no, since the growth pains more or less canceled everything else out.  But he couldn’t help but wonder how hungry she really was.  Right now, though, he was focused on a bruise that was half the size of his entire body.

“I know it looks huge to you!” Emma chuckled softly, “But I barely even notice it!”

“So…you can’t even feel it at all?” Daniel asked.

“Not a bit,” Emma said, shaking her head.  After another minute or so, without saying anything, Emma scooped Daniel up with her hand, gently laid him out on her bare breast again, and started lovingly petting him with her finger, just like the previous night.  Something was different tonight, though.  If Emma had been overheating the night before, she was burning up now.  In less than a minute, Daniel was soaked in sweat, both hers and his own.

“Honey…?” he asked in the low light of her nightstand lamp.  “You’re…you’re really – ”

“Yeah, I know,” she whispered.  “I know…I just…I just want you close to me.  It’s not too hot for you, is it?”

“No,” Daniel answered immediately, although, if he had waited to think, he might have given a different answer.  He felt his legs gently nudged apart by something…her nipple…already hard, it was hardening further still.  Despite his own sense of impending anxiety, Daniel felt himself getting hard too.  Her body, her whole, huge body…it was a wonder to behold.

And then, suddenly, Daniel felt himself rising.  The soft boob flesh he was laying on seemed to be widening…expanding…burgeoning out beneath him.  Daniel exhaled sharply and glanced up at Emma’s finger, which continued to gently pet his back.  In the low light, he SAW it – her finger…it was actively lengthening before his eyes, just as the boob underneath him was expanding.  Not only was he FEELING her growth spurt, this time he could actually SEE it happening, in real time.  His breath was coming in short gasps now – it was incredible, dizzying, surreal, to witness…and frightening.

“E-Emma…?”  The fear was palpable in his voice.

“Shh…baby,” she purred, her voice somehow velvety-soft despite the evident strain in her exhales.  “Shhhh…I know, it’s happening…it’s okay.  I’ve got you here with me…shhhhh…”

For the next minute, the sudden growth spurt continued, unabated.  Daniel wondered how much pain she was in, but however much it was, she seemed to have mastered it.  Her breathing was very deliberate and deep, like she had trained herself for precisely this moment.  After a minute, Daniel had almost been lulled into a state of surreal torpor in the midst of this unprecedented spurt, when the sound of the bed’s steel beams groaned out into the air.

“Oh no…” Daniel muttered, feeling something like panic.  The metallic groanings sounded huge and dangerous beneath him.

“Easy,” Emma hushed gently, cupping over his body with her giant hand.  “Stay here.  I’ve got you…you’re safe.  Just…don’t move.”

The steel beams were now whining with new urgency.  Then they began clicking…then popping.  As Daniel felt Emma’s flesh expand all around him, from her breast below to her protective hand above, Daniel could hear the bed’s supports begin to break.  Then snap.   He felt Emma’s huge body gradually avert backwards.  Clearly, the beams close to the headboard had snapped first, angling the mattress backward.  And then –

*GRRRRRAAAAAACKKKKPPLLLLLAAAAAAAASSSH*

The entire gigantic bed structure collapsed to the floor.  Luckily, Emma had thought ahead, putting a bunch of pillows underneath the bed to soften the blow.  Even still, the latest furniture destruction made a massive dent in the concrete floor, cracking it all around for 100 feet.  But after the loud, sudden collapse of the structure, everything was quiet again.  No alarms had gone off, even though this was certainly the loudest event that had happened in the Facility.  The thick mattress had softened the blow above as well, so that Emma wasn’t hurt at all.  If anything, she was just lying on a mattress about 30 feet below where it had been before, framed by a constellation of broken steel.

“Huh,” Emma mused out loud.  “I guess Jeltzin had them deactivate the alarms…nice…”

“We’re okay!” she called out in her normal voice, which was plenty loud enough to be heard by anyone in the Facility.  “We’re both fine!  No need to come help us or clean up.  Just…leave us alone, please.”

Her growth spurt wasn’t quite finished, and Daniel felt her flesh expanding underneath him for another minute or so as she resumed petting him.

“Was I nice enough?” she asked him suddenly.

“What?” he replied, bewildered.  He was still processing the fact that the steel bed was just…gone.  But Emma didn’t seem to have cared in the least.

“When I told them to leave us alone,” she whispered down to him.  “Was that mean?”

“Huh…I mean…no!” Daniel exclaimed, trying to sit up.  But she kept him down with her petting finger, lightly pressing him into her breast.

“Okay…good,” she mused quietly.  “I’d just…hate to leave on a bad note.  They’ve been so sweet to us”

“Leave?”  Daniel had been waiting for this moment, but now that it had apparently arrived, he realized he wasn’t at all prepared for it.  “You mean…we’re gonna leave after – ”

“Oh I don’t know,” she sighed.  “Maybe not just yet…but…you know…soon.”

Daniel let her words sink in.  He was right with her; there was no way they could stay there much longer.  Someone was going to get killed.  But where…where would they go?  How would she get enough to eat!?  All the unknowns began to converge in his mind.

“Let’s not worry about it tonight,” she hummed down at him.

“Just something for us to keep in mind?” Daniel asked.

“Mhm,” she nodded, helping him up to his nightstand bed.  Even though the bed had collapsed, she didn’t need to move to stretch her arm all the way up and deposit him safely far away from her to sleep as she turned off the light.

“Maybe some fresh mountain air will…you know…clear our heads tomorrow,” he said, making an effort to end the night on a hopeful note.  The sound of a kiss broke out in the dark, and the next moment, he felt the gentle pad of her moist finger on his stomach.

“Exactly,” she smiled at him through the dark.

The next day, the much-awaited “field trip” was to commence.  Emma had stayed in bed as the Facility crew had cleaned up the debris from the bed, lounging and making small talk with them, even as they struggled to keep up a normal interaction.  It was clear that she had gotten bigger…MUCH bigger.  The size of her feet, her hands, her arms and legs…everything had so obviously burgeoned during the night.  When she put it on, her white shirt now fit her like a bodysuit, skin-tight.  And when she stood up to get measured before the trip began, everyone could see that something drastic had happened.  Almost no one spoke as she silently walked over to the measuring station.  She stepped lightly, taking care not to put too much weight down, but each footstep boomed out across the Facility hangar like a peal of thunder.

Once she got to the measuring station and turned around to face everyone, Emma was grinning.  Daniel felt himself melt a little inside, even amidst all the anxieties and fears about what the future held.  Clearly, Emma had navigated her way to embracing what was going on, so if she could, so could he, right!?

The scientists all gathered around the height measurement dashboard.  There was special energy in the air this morning.  And then, right as the readings were coming up, Emma’s voice, rolling with a new, deep power, issued forth from far above:

“Take your time,” she smiled, “And say it loud.”

The scientists all looked back down at the dashboard; Daniel stood poised.  Even Miss Bissett was there.  They were all waiting.  The scientists peered close into the readings…looked at each other…looked again, and then all arched their heads upward in awe.

“Seventy feet, Emma…” came Dr. Clinebell’s voice, clear as a bell through the megaphone.  “And one inch.”