Self-Reflection

The door to the telepod opened, and Dr. Samantha Shepherd looked through it.

As she began to step out, her long ears brushed against the top of the door frame and flicked. She gave a smile to the assembled crowd, then stepped forward toward a nearby podium. One toe failed to clear the doorway as she exited, and she stumbled forward. Clicks and flashes filled her senses as she grabbed the podium to keep herself from falling, and a loud thud echoed through the room via the attached microphone. She smiled sheepishly as the gathered crowd briefly laughed, then began to applaud as she recovered from her gaffe. As she rose to her full height, her smile grew with her, and a few cheers added to the chorus of approval. After a time, they quieted, and the questions began. "How does it feel," one reporter asked, "being the first person to use teleportation to travel?"

Dr. Shepherd thought for a moment, then answered. "It feels like this is the start of a new age, a time of unprecedented change that will make the world a much smaller place." As the canine spoke, she leaned over further and further to keep her muzzle close to the microphone, yet her overall height seemed to stay the same. "The transformation began by this simple act will be colossal... monumental! And it will only grow faster...and faster with time!"

More clicks and flashes followed as Dr. Shepherd stood tall again, giggling at the reactions to her new--and still increasing--height. "Just like me!" she said before rising faster and faster, the panicking reporters scrambling to flee the scene. As she rose taller and taller, the giggles of amusement turned to gasps of panic, then to cries of negation as she began to thrash back and forth on the stage...

 ...Back and forth in the covers of her bed as she woke up with a start, eyes wide, heart racing. It took Samantha a moment to realize where she was. Her eyes darted around the room as her breath came in rapid heaves. Gradually, she relaxed, and as her breathing slowed, she fell back on her bed and stared at the ceiling. Another dream. At least that's all it was. She'd had them most nights since her first trip through the telepods. While they weren't great to wake up from, she thought, at least they'd helped tip her off to her current problem a bit sooner than she might have discovered it for herself.

She was, in fact, growing. Not nearly as quickly or dramatically as in her dreams, to be sure, but her height was steadily increasing by the day. 174 cm was what she heard during her physical a month ago, but now it was almost 190. It might even have passed that after this dream. She doubted more sleep would come, so she got up and walked over to the makeshift height chart she had set up on one wall. Placing her head against a half-dozen previous marks, she put a pencil up between her ears and added one to their number. Stepping away and turning around, she gauged the new mark's placement on the meter scale. She checked it again. And again. Not just 190 cm, or 191. Dr. Samantha Shepherd found that she stood 192 cm tall, eighteen centimeters more than just a week ago.

She stared at the newest mark for a few moments more before putting the pencil between her teeth and walking down the hallway to the room she'd been using as a home-based laboratory for the past few months. She was thankful to have it; it had helped keep things secret so far. The ritual of glancing from telepod to telepod upon entering the room was performed without thought. Perhaps she hoped to catch a glimpse of the solution to her predicament in the space between them, but the answer had yet to show itself, and she began to feel time running short. At her desk, she went over her notes from the past week. She understood a good deal more about her ongoing transformation now--the what, how, and why had been deduced. She was already intimately familiar with the who, where, and when. How was she growing?

The teleportation AI had done some creative editing on her DNA the last time through. This was something she had actually anticipated doing in the future, perhaps using the telepods for genetic disease diagnosing and repair in addition to travel. The constant machine learning she had been putting the AI through in order to speed up the development process had reaped that benefit sooner than she anticipated, and it had, in its newfound wisdom, decided to turn her growth back on. From what she could tell, the AI had determined that once an organism stops growing, it starts dying, and then it eventually ceases to exist. Therefore, growth was the optimal state of being. There was the why, but one final question remained. Could she turn it back off?

There was a copy of her DNA from before the incident in storage, and she felt that was the place to begin. If she could get the AI to use her original pattern when reconstructing her, she might be all right. She might even get to keep her extra centimeters. With that in mind, she began to instruct the AI to run a simulation of what would happen if she attempted to "reload" herself in such a manner. It wouldn't be a guarantee of success, but it would tell her if she was barking up the wrong decision tree.

The simulation ran, and Samantha's eyes darted from data point to data point on the screen, waiting for the ding of a warning indicator that never came. A green "program successful" message lit up the screen, and she clicked for more details. Encouraged, she read over the results. The simulation successfully fused her original DNA with her new added mass. She had been morbidly curious what the AI would decide to do with it, but it looks like she would get to keep it after all.

A new wardrobe might be in order after all this, but once she got all the bugs out of the system, she imagined she'd be able to afford one. Her tail flicked back and forth in a hopeful wag as she began to prepare the telepods for the real transport. As she readied herself to get into the telepod, the reality of what she was doing made its voice heard in her mind. It was a risky thing, doing this alone without a prior specimen trial, relying only on the fidelity of her saved pattern and the tweaking she'd done to the AI. Still, she hadn't told anyone of her...condition just yet, hadn't shown herself in public even since she'd noticed the height change.

The telepod door closed and latched behind her, and as the countdown dwindled, her doubts grew. A twinge of panic shot through her. She reached toward the override button, hesitated, and then the digits hit zero and made the decision for her. Her fur stood on end as the sensors whirred around her, faster and faster. She closed her eyes, hoped for the best, and with a sudden flash, she was no longer there. The process of disassembly, transmission, and reconstruction took nearly 2 seconds. For Dr. Shepherd, the journey was instantaneous. One telepod interior blinked into the other, and after a moment, the door opened.

She slowly made her way out, looking herself over as she moved. 192 cm, same as before. So far, so good, she thought. Smiling for the first time since the previous night's dream, she sat down at the computer to review the session data. As she scanned, three words caught her eye: Secondary Iteration Successful.

Her ears brushed the top of the door, renewing her panic for a moment as she remembered the dream. There was no podium to speak at; she instead made for the height chart on the wall. Standing against it, she put a hand on top of her head for a quick measure, then stepped away. She stared at the words for a few moments, unsure as to their meaning. She asked the AI for elaboration, and the answer came back: "Rejected attempt revised. Second attempt successfully integrated."

Samantha put her pencil in her mouth once again as she cogitated. After another review of the data, she thought she understood. The AI had taken her rejection of its first attempt as a suggestion to do better on the second, to reach its goals more efficiently. She began to feel uneasy as she realized she most likely made her problem worse. Did this mean she was going to grow faster now? She couldn't tell enough from the data. More simulations would be needed. Before she could start, however, a rumbling noise startled her from her thoughts, and she glanced down at her stomach. She realized suddenly how hungry she was.

She hadn't eaten anything since yesterday, and she'd been wrestling with her problem all day today. A break was definitely in order; some food would help her get refocused, perhaps. A few steps brought her into the kitchen. She stooped over a bit to look into the refrigerator. She grabbed a jug of milk and some cold cuts, then a loaf of bread from the counter. Her hunger intensified at the sight and smell of food, and she quickly went about making sandwiches. She made two sandwiches, then ate them ravenously in only a few bites. She then made another, and then a fourth and fifth, eating all of them as if she hadn't seen food for a week. Finally, she uncapped the milk jug and drank it down in a dozen gulps. Her quick meal finished, she put the jug down on the counter amidst the residual bread crumbs. Her breath came in rapid heaves as she gasped for air after the long draught of milk, and she surveyed the aftermath of the last few moments as she calmed herself.

She was taken aback at how quickly she'd gone from failing even to notice she was hungry to feeling outright starvation. At least she'd taken care of that; the pangs of hunger thankfully began to subside. A new sensation grew to replace them, manifesting as a strange warmth. Her stomach felt as if she'd drunk a cup of hot coffee too quickly, but everything she'd just consumed had been cold. She thought with increasing unease that she was about to be sick, but instead came a crescendo of warmth. She quickly moved to the sink, just in case.

As she grasped the edge of the sink to brace herself for whatever might come, the heat within her grew oppressive. It seemed to radiate out from her in waves, and with each pulse, a yawning sensation was pushed through her torso, arms, and legs. The sink seemed to shrink slightly with each pulse. She could feel her shoulders being pushed upward as her arms stretched, and her stance became less stable as her hips rose above the kitchen counter level. She stood quickly, nearly falling backward. She staggered from the kitchen as the pulses persisted. Everything seemed out of proportion, and the strange vertigo made walking difficult. She felt as if she were somehow slowly falling up toward the ceiling, but each step came with the possibility of crashing to the floor. Her unsure steps took her back to the bedroom, and she collapsed onto the bed heavily. Her arms and legs continued to move restlessly as the strange pulses flowed through them, and she grunted up at the ceiling in frustration. How long was this going to go on? After a few more moments, they mercifully began to subside, each lessening pang returning more control of her body to her.

She breathed without feeling as if she were trying to inhale an entire room of air. She sat up on the bed, then tentatively stood on the floor again. What just happened? She feared she knew, but she had to confirm her suspicions. Heavy footsteps brought her to the chart, and she did her height-check salute. After turning to look at the result, her mouth parted in surprise.

210 cm.

In the silence, her stomach growled softly.

The next few hours were spent confirming the reason for this new development. The AI had indeed taken it upon itself to increase her growth rate, and food was the fuel to make it happen. Knowing didn't bring much comfort, however, and the day's events had worn her out. Her hunger had returned--if it had ever left--and her ability to concentrate had nearly disappeared. She didn't quite dare eat again just yet, but she thought she could fall asleep in spite of a demanding stomach. With a yawn, she moved from her workstation to her bed.

Lying down, she felt twinges of soreness in her arms and legs, as if she'd overdone a workout recently. Stretching, she tried to relax and drift toward sleep. For a while, she found herself fretting at how much smaller the bed looked now that she was on it, but sleep soon came.

Thud. THUD. *THOOM*.

A pair of feet filled the front windows of the grocery store as shoppers gawked upward at their owner.

"If you don't want to be on my shopping list, you'd best leave. Now." came a booming voice from above as cracks spread through the ceiling and walls.

Giant hands came down, grabbed entire displays of produce, whole shelves of meat, and spirited them upward. Chunks of food rained down again, accompanied by thunderous mastication. Larger hands then reached down to begin the cycle anew. Most of the fleeing crowd escaped.

One unlucky soul found himself scooped up with the bread aisle in the third collection, carried up with dizzying speed into an impossibly huge muzzle with teeth big enough to hug.

A loud SNAP, and all went dark.

Samantha woke up screaming from between those same teeth.

Getting herself together, she got up and showered, stooping under the shower head to get her ears and face clean. She let the water pour over her for a moment as she thought more about her situation. Before hopping in the shower, she had taken another measurement: 215 cm. She was still growing in her sleep, then--that much hadn't changed. She supposed she was still growing throughout the day as well. She hadn't been taking measurements at regular intervals, something she made a mental note to start doing as she tried to relax in the warm steam.

She realized she needed a plan. Things were happening faster now. She would already have a hard time explaining her drastic height increase, but it dawned on her that she had a new worry, a looming intangible deadline to consider.

What if she got too big to fit in the telepods?

Returning to her workstation, she sat and began to organize her thoughts and data. Hunger distracted her at first, but she soon found herself in the zone she typically occupied when working. This would be a time when forgetting to eat would benefit her. It became clear that her next commands to the AI would be crucial. She had to make it understand that her growth was unsustainable, and that it needed to be turned off. That was the first order of business; she would deal with her extra 40-ish centimeters after. She tried the direct approach first.

>USE BASE PATTERN

>ITERATE 1000, PRIORITIZE GROWTH RATE = 0

She paced the floor as the computer ran her instruction, using her original DNA as a template to create a thousand versions of her in an attempt to find one that wouldn't grow. After what felt like a mile of walking, the results came back.

NO ITERATIONS FOUND WITH GROWTH RATE = 0

Her ears drooped. Maybe she just needed more attempts. Typing clumsily with long fingers she still wasn't used to, she instructed the AI to try 10,000 iterations. Knowing this would take a while, she leaned back in her chair, ignoring its creak of protest. With the pauses in her workflow, her hunger was returning to the forefront of her attention. She didn't think she was going to be able to ignore it much longer. Maybe a small snack? 

She got up from her chair and returned to the kitchen, leaving the computer to its work. Just being in the same room as food intensified the need for it. Remembering last time, she fixed her resolve on limiting the amount she'd consume--the world's most urgent diet, she thought.

She looked around in the fridge for something light and settled on a bag of apples, taking them out quickly and closing the door before she could be tempted by anything else. She tasted one as she put the rest on the counter, and made herself eat slowly, savoring the sweetness. The next bites came faster, and she'd eaten around the apple's core before she could stop herself. The second was gone completely--stem, seeds, and all--in three bites, and the remaining fruits met their fates in similar fashion. Eyeing the first core, she popped it in her mouth.

She felt the change coming as she chewed, and she took out her stress on the pulp in her mouth, grinding and chewing as her body grew from its newfound fuel. With a shallow, she grabbed the counter again and rode out the remaining seconds of her expansion. A few deep breaths, and she was herself again. That wasn't so bad, she thought. Maybe it was the smaller growth spurt, or maybe it was the fact that she knew it was coming this time, but she felt hopeful for the first time that she could manage her new condition. After wiping the apple mush off her kitchen counter, she returned to her workstation.

The computer was still working; it would need a few more minutes to process 10,000 growing canines. She decided to see how much this particular canine had grown in the meantime.

Standing in her customary measuring spot, she noticed for the first time how close the ceiling seemed. She made her mark and turned around, gasping audibly at the gap between her previous note and this one. How could it be so high? The spurt had felt quick and short.

240 cm.

It didn't make any sense to her; she'd eaten less this time. Her hopeful thoughts of management vanished as she tried to wrap her head around yet another variable. The idea that her growth spurts were themselves growing was unsettling, and it moved up her deadline considerably.

She walked over to the workstation. The computer was close to completing its latest set of iterations, and she sat down to wait for it to finish, squeezing between the arms of the chair as she adjusted the monitor upward. She hoped the AI would find something. The count spooled up toward 10,000, then reached it. A summary of results scrolled underneath. Dr. Shepherd craned her head forward to see it. Even her eyesight had changed as she grew.

ITERATION 7613 MEETS CRITERIA

BIFURCATION PROCEDURE PRODUCES ONE ZERO-GROWTH ORGANISM.

It took Dr. Shepherd a while to comprehend what the AI was describing, but she got the gist of it after reviewing the proposed procedure. The AI noticed she had grown to over twice her original mass; it would simply split her into two versions of herself on the next teleport. One of these versions would apparently be free of her current issue, but the AI was vague about the other. Wouldn't it...she...be the same? And which one would be the "real" Samantha? Would her mind and soul be split in two as well? The existential questions made her head spi 

She paced as she thought, and she eventually found herself looking over one of the telepods. They had been built small to save costs; she couldn't stand completely in one even at her original size. She really wouldn't fit in them much longer.

She felt she didn't have a choice.

Dr. Shepherd took the rest of the day to contemplate the decision she knew she had to make. She didn't eat, though her stomach complained, sometimes loudly. She didn't sleep, though the stress and lack of nourishment made her long to just lie down for a while. She couldn't take the risk of growing any taller, and a day's worth of thinking didn't present her with any other options. She was going to have to trust that the AI's plan would work, though the unknowns frightened her.

As the sun began to set, she started up the sequence. Squeezing into one of the telepods, she immediately felt cramped and claustrophobic after the door closed. Her heart pounded as she watched the countdown, anxiety rising as the numbers fell. She wanted out. She wanted out badly, but she forced herself to stay.

3, 2, 1...

Gone. 

Time wasn't like this stretching pulling yawning thinking here and there (there and here) how can I (I) think (think) out of sync (sync) am I still in the telepod (I'm stuck in here) oh god not getting out I can't (gotta get out) see I can't feel (get away from me)

Back.

The telepod came into being around her, and she darted through the door as soon as it opened, stumbling and crashing to the floor. She moaned and stood up, then walked on unsteady legs out of the room. She needed to be away from that confining space.

She also needed to eat.

Her hunger was back with a vengeance. Wasn't that supposed to be fixed? She had trouble remembering. She gathered everything she could find in the kitchen: bread, produce, even boxes of raw pasta. No time for finesse; she ate it all hungrily as it was.

And as she ate, she grew.

It no longer concerned her. In fact, she relished the feeling, simultaneously feeding her hunger and empowering her body. It only made her want more, and more she took, gobbling her hoard of food down to nothing in a couple of minutes

She felt her ears brush the ceiling.

Looking up, the ceiling filled her vision in its proximity, giving her mind a flashback to the cramped telepod. She doubled over reflexively as her growth continued for a few moments after her binge, holding her stomach as she watched her feet elongate on the kitchen floor. As her growth subsided, the influx of energy dissipated, leaving her feeling spent.

She went down one on knee with a heavy thud, propping herself up with oversized hands on opposite counters. For the next few moments, she caught her breath and tried to ride out the sudden crash. She soon knew that sleep was coming and would have its way now that her hunger was again sated. She didn't want to be in the bedroom with the horrible, curved box that trapped her earlier, however, so a few heavy steps to the living room found her curled on the floor, asleep.

-----

Dr. Shepherd shook awake and looked around. The teleportation had worked, then, though it felt off. She had never sensed any time passing during one before; they had always seemed instantaneous. She stepped out of the telepod and noticed cheerfully that her body seemed smaller.

Walking over to her height chart and taking a measurement, she sighed in relief as the new mark fell far short of the previous highs--she was 190 cm again! Taller than when she started, certainly, but this would be much more manageable. Would she start growing again, though?

The test, of course, would be to eat something. She didn't want to chance dashing her hopes so soon, but it was better to know. On her way to the kitchen, however, something stopped her in her tracks.

She saw herself sprawled on the floor of the living room, asleep.

Bigger.

This had to be a dream, she thought, but as she stared, the larger version of her insisted on its existence, stubbornly refusing to resolve its incongruency as a hallucination or the remnant of a vivid nightmare. Moving in for a closer look, she reached out to touch herself. Her hand met fur, then solid flesh before she drew it back quickly. The other-her's face unsettled her with its combination of intimate familiarity, skewed size and unmirrored angles. As her brain processed all she was seeing, one word flashed forward: bifurcation. This is what the AI had meant. She hadn't suspected it was being so literal about splitting her in two, but here she was. And there she was. Why was the other her so big, though? She didn't think the both of them could have fit in the telepod, and that lead to a troubling idea.

She watched her larger self on the floor for any sign of movement or wakefulness for a few moments more, then went back into the bedroom to search the teleportation logs for confirmation of her unease. She soon found it; the AI had divided her mass equally between her two selves.

They were the same size when they came out of the telepod, then, and they quite obviously were not now. She also now realized they hadn't come out of the telepod at the same time, though a glance at the clock indicated only a few minutes had passed. What happened in that time?

She decided to try her food experiment again while she thought it over, so she once again made her way to the kitchen. For the second time that morning, she was stopped dead in her tracks before she got there, this time by the remains of her other self's meal. Wrappers, boxes, and bits of food were everywhere. The refrigerator door was still open, but there was nothing left in it to spoil. She closed it as she stepped around the debris on the floor, being quiet to avoid waking her new roommate that had apparently eaten everything.

If that was true, then the growth condition hadn't been cured, really, just shifted to another--another that had been created to bear it for a reason known only to the AI. Why did that have to be the case? She felt a twinge of guilt; she knew how the other her must have felt.

Empathy brought more questions. Did the other her know what was happening? Did she think the cure had failed? Did she know there were two of her? What if she herself was thought of as "the other" by her larger doppelganger? That last thought shocked her.

Who was the real her?

There were things she needed to do. Now that she was small enough so as not to attract attention to herself if she went out, she needed to venture to the store for more food. It would also be prudent to check in at Bartok; they would be missing her status updates of late. She didn't, however, want to leave her new roommate alone in her home. The absurdity of not trusting herself drew a soft ironic chuckle from her, but she didn't, not after seeing the war zone the kitchen had become. And if she grew again? No, it was best to stay here for now. She'd wait for her other self to wake up, then they could maybe decide together what the next step would be. After all that had happened the past few days, the idea of literally talking to herself didn't seem so strange.

While she waited, she cleaned. And watched herself.

She looked at her arms and legs, comparing them to her larger form. Her other self had quite a bit more muscle, evident even in her resting state. She'd probably need it just to move around.

More and more time passed, and her visitor never stirred. The room began to grow dark. After getting the kitchen straightened up, Samantha sat down on the couch and continued the vigil over her larger self, taking advantage of the 3D magnified view of her body. Did her hair really look like that in the back? Hopefully not.

Samantha felt sleep coming on as the sun went down. She tried to resist, but the wave of lethargy was overwhelming. Maybe she'd just nap for a bit right here; she'd surely be awakened if anything happened.

With one last look at her bigger twin, she closed her eyes.

-----

Consciousness returned to the magnified form on the floor in stages, and as she entered the last one before full wakefulness, Samantha stretched her arms and legs, feeling their residual soreness. When she realized where she was, she snapped awake and sat up quickly. Her attention was instantly captured by the smaller version of her on the couch, stunned at the sight and fearful that she was somehow caught. She soon realized her other self was asleep, and she moved slowly away, still staring. Why was she there? It made her uneasy.

The kitchen was clean again; the other must have done that. It was dark outside. How long had she been asleep? Her unease grew, and the need to be away grew with it. She could feel her hunger building again, and she didn't think she could eat here, not with her other around.

Standing to her full formidable height, she made her way toward the front door. It would be good to get out of this place, she thought, out into a place with more...space to be in. Large hands twisted the lock open with a thud. Let her other hear her now. She was free.

The door opened, and the cool night air washed over her. There were so many smells on the air, good smells. She walked out onto the grass to bathe herself in them, and her stomach awoke as the scent of cooking meat filled her flared nostrils. Food was nearby, and she was hungry. After a few exploratory sniffs, she turned and made her way toward the nearest source. Her mouth began to water as each thudding step got her closer to her goal, and while the darkness hid her from discovery, she made no special effort to be stealthy en route to her prey.

Two teenage wolves exited the Chancey Chicken, arguing over their take.

"Hey! She gave you like three extra pieces! C'mon, at least give me one."

"Sure thing, Mr. Alpha, I'll hand it right ov--oh, no, sorry...I don't give out pity chicken."

A huge pair of hands interrupted. Samantha yanked the bags from both wolves as they gawked and stammered.

"Hey, that's ours!" said one as Samantha tore into the packaging, drooling a bit as she extracted the golden fried chicken within.

"Was," replied the tall canine before crunching down a handful of poultry.

Unsure how to protest further, and unwilling to challenge someone who looked like she could throw them across the parking lot, the wolves watched as she greedily downed the rest of their meal. As stunned as they were by her appearance, they were more unready for what came next 

Samantha tensed up as if she had a brain freeze from eating something cold. With a grunt, she dropped the bags and greasy chicken crumbs to the ground as her body began to rise. The two wolves followed her upward progress with tilting muzzles, too stunned to move otherwise.

That changed as Samantha took one heavy step toward them, her foot elongating after landing on the pavement. With a yipe, the two wolves skedaddled off into the night and left the way clear for her to enter the restaurant. She was still growing as she reached the doors 

Inside the restaurant, all eyes turned to see the enormous dog-woman yank open the door. She had to bend down to let herself in and could barely stand upright once she entered. The good smells were so strong in here. Here was all the food she could possibly want.

Another step.

She stepped up to the counter and leaned over it, sniffing at the kitchen. One of the employees on the register was having none of it; they bolted toward the back while the other at least attempted to serve her.

"May I...uh...help...you?"

Samantha leaped over the counter 

The remaining cashier retreated against the side wall, watching as Samantha walked around to the food prep area. The workers there screamed, joining the first cashier in a scramble out the rear exit. She wasn't concerned with them. Her growth had stopped, but her hunger hadn't.

She intended to have more, so she began once again to eat everything she could find. There was chicken, and lots of it. She ate greedily of cooked and raw poultry alike, and as she gulped it all down, her growth began anew. She felt the familiar warmth.

It was as it should be.

Those left in the dining area began to cautiously approach the counter, phones in hand, taking video of the growing Samantha as she gorged herself on chicken. Bits of it showed in the maniacal smile she briefly flashed to her audience before starting in on the buns and fries. The more she ate, the larger she grew, and there was so much wonderful food. Eating only seemed to make her hungrier, and she grabbed everything edible she could find, pouring it into her waiting maw. Entire packages were chewed, their wrappers shucked off by elongating teeth.

The only noise in the restaurant was that of her consumption; those that stayed to document her transformation were stunned into silence, watching her grow bigger and bigger on their screens. A clatter of cookware accompanied her as she hunkered down, now much too big to stand.

Inevitably, as the food ran short, she began to trash the kitchen in desperation. Her huge size and unmet hunger drove her to tear apart cabinets, to pull the doors off refrigeration units with one tug. Plates were thrown against the wall by hands big enough to palm them.

The number of those watching in person dwindled as Samantha's increasing size and rage began to make staying in the vicinity seem like a bad idea indeed. As the videos were posted online, however, her virtual audience began to grow along with her.

She was going viral.

Most who watched virtually didn't believe she was real. She was thought to be a well-made CGI hoax or perhaps part of a strategic marketing ARG for an upcoming movie or game. After a time, a local news crew saw the footage, recognized the location, and decided to investigate.

The news van pulled up to the Chancey Chicken. The beginning of a crowd had already started to form outside, each prospective member drawn by their social media feeds, hoping to catch a glimpse of whomever, whatever waited within.

A sudden rush of people exited the restaurant. 

The news crew hastily set up their shot, and the reporter stopped one of those attempting to flee the scene.

"Hello, were you just inside? Can you tell us what's going on in the restaurant?"

As the wide-eyed squirrel tried to find words, a loud thud came from behind them. The squirrel winced at the thud. After a moment, she looked at the reporter, then the camera 

"She's not stopping," she said simply, then continued her escape.

"Who's not stopping?" the reporter called after her, and another thud resounded from the restaurant.

The camera operator zoomed in on the chicken eatery as the crew sensed a story was indeed in the making. Cracks formed in the large windows of the restaurant after yet another thud--louder this time--was accompanied by the crack of overstressed bricks.

"What's happening in there?" said the reporter off-camera as still another thud set off a cascade of cracks in the walls and roof of the restaurant. Plaster and bricks tumbled down in small flurries as the reporter continued.

"Are you getting this? Should we go live?"

Before the camera operator could answer, a loud, splintering rip tore through the air, and two huge hands thrust upward into the night via the hole it opened. Wood and brick rained down as the crowd stared. Those hands were too big, far too big. The scale was disorienting.

The hands rose higher as the giant shepherd stood upright again, and her head, shoulders and chest widened the hole as they ascended. The camera zoomed on Samantha's face as she scanned the parking lot of the restaurant, and her gaze met its lens.

She smiled. They were so small. 

Her head rose higher still as she glanced back down to the roof of the restaurant. Her hips widened the escape portal to the point that the roof began to collapse away from her, allowing her to see her growing feet pushing away equipment in the toy kitchen below.

After a moment, Samantha's growth ceased. Quiet followed, an eerie contrast to the low rumble that had accompanied her birth through the roof. It was soon broken by another crash of cookware from within the kitchen, and then again by the shepherd herself.

"More." 

But more wasn't to be had here; she'd cleaned out the restaurant's kitchen of its food. She glanced down once more at her feet on the tiled floor below as if to make sure, then shifted to her gaze to the roof, beginning to work out how to complete her interrupted exit. While she did so, the news crew finally began its broadcast as bits of the roof tumbled down to the parking lot in the background.

"We're here at the Chancey Chicken on North Huntley Drive where a...very large woman has apparently grown from within the restaurant." 

A large brown leg extended over the side of the building, joined by another as the reporter continued.

"We have no information as to her identity or how this all happened at this time, but we at News 9 are here at the scene bringing you live footage as the situation unfolds."

Samantha let herself down onto the parking lot with a surprisingly loud thud, and the camera feed vibrated. The camera operator had to keep tilting upward at greater and greater angles to keep her head in frame as the monstrous shepherd closed the distance to the news crew. She stopped as she reached them, then looked down and put her hands on her hips, the streetlights glinting off her huge teeth in a growing smile. There was silence again briefly before the reporter spoke.

“Hello! Can you tell us who you are and what you’re doing here, ma'am?”

Samantha thought for a moment, considering both questions. “I'm a disappointed customer," she replied. "I came here for a big meal, but this place ran out of food too soon." The smile returned as she squatted by the news van, placing a large hand on top. "Maybe you can help."

There were many things "help" could have meant in this context, of course, but the sheen of moisture on those still-exposed teeth hastened each member of the news crew's arrival to the most unpleasant conclusion. Almost at once, they bolted back into the van. Samantha's smile didn't falter as the engine started and the van went into gear. Her other hand joined the one still on top of the vehicle, and she was able to hold the van in place for a moment as the driver pushed down the gas pedal. Tires squealed loudly in protest. As she leaned forward over the van, however, her weight shifted, allowing the tires to gain enough purchase to escape her lessened grip. Samantha watched her prey bounce and spark over the sidewalk and curb, then drive off into the night.

She also saw the store they drove past.

The sight of the well-lit grocery store with its glass façade stirred feelings of hunger once more. It beckoned, and Samantha began taking long, slow strides toward her new goal. A crowd tentatively reformed around the decimated restaurant as she left, and then began to follow.

Halfway to her destination, flashing blue and red lights distracted her. A momentary flush of fear ran through her, and she froze instinctively. They were for her, she had no doubt, but her smile returned quickly as she resumed her walk.

She figured they had come too late.

A few dozen steps brought her to the parking lot of the Food Colossus grocery store. Panicked shoppers had seen her coming, and they hurriedly got into their cars and drove off, some without their groceries. She glanced down at these hungrily, but more prizes awaited within.

She walked to the front of the store, sirens and lights contributing to the mounting chaos behind her. As she squatted and looked into the storefront, the sight of her enormous face pressed against the glass provided kindling for a similar round of panic for those within. The glass fogged as she sighed, and her tongue slipped out the side of her mouth while she took in the view. Aisles and aisles of glorious nourishment awaited her, enough to both feed her and make her grow to her heart's content. For now, at least.

The problem was getting in.

Her ears perked as a loud command came from behind her, demanding that she put her hands on the wall. She turned her head to see a row of police cars had made a blockade of sorts behind her. Smiling again, she decided to oblige. She put her hands on the glass.

Then she pushed.

The sound of stressed glass provided an overture to the cracks and pops that traveled through the panes beneath Samantha's hands as she pushed...and pushed. Those inside the store stopped and stared, rooted in place by their morbid curiosity as they waited to see what came next. One pane fell loose from its casing and shattered on the floor of the store. The other held firm for a few more seconds before shattering in place. She then quickly dislodged the pane between her previous targets with both hands, leading to another glassy cascade.

The finale performed, she began working her way into the store, careful of the shards of glass that remained and disregarding the shouted commands to halt from behind her. As she entered the store, her audience rewarded her with the applause of panicked footsteps. Any further commands to cease and desist were lost in the chaos that followed. While she forced herself through the newly-empty window jambs, frantic shoppers braved the exits to either side, flowing out to the parking lot and behind the police barricade there.

Samantha made way toward the aisles of the store on her hands and knees, far too big to stand up inside. The fresh food enticed her first, and she veered to the right toward the stacks of produce and the glass cases full of meat. She began to drool in anticipation.

The butcher on duty watched her approach like a great hungry lizard, seeing the sparkle in her eye as she pressed her nose against the meat display case and stared for a moment.

"I could really use some help with this," she said. "Glass doesn't taste all that great."

The butcher looked at her, cleaver in hand, still processing the fact that she was an order of magnitude larger than she should be. He realized she'd spoken to her, and his autopilot customer service skills kicked in.

"Er...yes, uh...hello there! HOW can I help you, miss?"

Samantha made a show of looking up and down the selections of meat within the case, past the briskets, the sausages, the steaks, and the hams. "It all looks wonderful. I really just need you to get it out of the case."

"Er, which would you like?" the butcher asked.

"All of it," she replied. "And in a minute I'll want those carcasses you haven't got to yet, too." She pointed to the back area where a half-dozen slabs of meat hung in storage.

The butcher thought it best to comply with her requests. Then he'd clock out. Quickly.

He spent the next fifteen minutes clearing out the meat display, putting tray after tray of the stuff up on top of the counter. Each time he did, Samantha quickly snapped up the tray's contents, her jaws making a loud clack that made him feel queasy upon hearing. He wasn't really surprised she was eating it all raw. He thought she looked like she was hungry enough not to care, and he watched her eat the first few trays in frightened fascination. What did surprise him, however, was the first time he noticed she'd gotten bigger.

He had just put the last tray of meat from the case onto the counter, and as he stood to look up at her, he bumped into her muzzle with a started yelp. Its length protruded into his workspace now, jaws working to shred his latest offering. They grew longer as he watched.

"Now the carcasses," she said in a deep, hungry voice, bringing him out of his trance.

"I can't...those are too big for me to move by myself," he replied.

She regarded him for a moment, then leaned forward into the room, her massive head and shoulders filling his view. She got her teeth around one of the sides of beef and tugged, tearing it from its hook as if she were plucking fruit off a tree. After a few bone-splintering crunches, she swallowed and repeated the process with the next slab of meat hanging on the line.

And again, she grew.

She grew quickly, each chunk of flesh fitting more easily in her maw than the previous one. As she pulled the last of them from its hook, it occurred to him that HE would now fit just as easily between her teeth as well. Yes, this was an excellent time to be somewhere else 

He thought he should say something before he left. The giant dog lady seemed nice, even if she was uncomfortably big, and only getting more so. Time was running out before she'd be looking for something else to eat, however.

"Uh...is there anything else I can get you?"

He winced at his automatic choice of phrase, and his inner voice berated him for saying something implying he was sticking around. Before it could get very far, though, he saw her teeth closing in on him, and he felt her breath on his face as she spoke.

"Yes, actually. Get in. 

The old adage that "the customer is always right" is rarely espoused by those that actually have the job of satisfying said customer, and with a shriek that echoed through the tiled meat market section of the store, the butcher added one more count to its violation.

He got out.

He was the last one out of the store, other than the giant shepherd herself. She was rather well stuck inside, too bulky to maneuver herself through the suddenly small aisles. She instead navigated around the perimeter, eating all she could reach of the produce and dairy.

Still growing, even that avenue was lost to her, and she steeled herself for an encore performance of "Music to Outgrow Buildings By, in (soon to) B-flat." A loud flourish of screeching metal opened the piece as she placed her huge feet against one wall of the store. Her hands pushed up against the ceiling while her body continued to expand and lengthen as she lay on the floor. The percussive notes of displays and aisles collapsing added to the symphony of expansion as her sides and shoulders pushed them down.

She was a canine crescendo 

Her volume increased moment by moment, and soon even her chest was compressed against the ceiling, which started to buckle upward. The feeling of being trapped in a box hit her again, and with another huge push, she sped the buckling along in a transition to the last movement. The ceiling and roof erupted upward in a volcano of particles that rained back down only to be thrown upward again in another thrust. Cracks of brick and squeals of metal were conducted by two enormous hands that finally made their way through the top of the building. As with the restaurant, she freed herself in spectacular fashion, but this time the effect was far more impressive. When she stood, she was tall, impossibly big, and a chorus of surprised screams came at her from below.

The 80m tall dog looked down, grinned, and took a step.

THOOM. The pavement cracked where she placed her giant paw, and those still in the parking lot scrambled away to give her space. Samantha enjoyed the reaction, and after stepping onto the pavement fully, took another booming step to give them something else to run away from. There was a mad dash to avoid becoming the first victim of her feet, with cars and people hurrying away from them. They all looked so small now, she thought. Even the cars looked like toys. Her eyes lit up at the thought. She wanted to know what stepping on one felt like.

Fortunately, a panicked fox abandoned a blue Mustang a few meters away from her. How loud those things are, she thought, waking her up in the middle of the night whenever some idiot felt the need to show off. Well, now it was her turn. She could make loud noises, too.

Keeping her eye on her target, she raised one foot off the ground higher than she normally would when taking a step, then brought it down quickly. The blue vehicle disappeared completely under her paw as it descended, and then a satisfying crunch echoed through the parking lot. She put her full weight on it for good measure, smiling as the chassis compacted further under the increased pressure. When the sound of crumpling metal ceased, she lifted her foot once more. Only some oil, a vaguely car-shaped spray of glass and a couple of tires remained 

She wiggled her toes, and the rest of the car dislodged itself from her foot, falling with a clatter to the lot once more. Just one step did that, she thought, before glancing back at the wreckage of the store behind her, ruins caused by the simple act of standing up.

Why had she been so worried about being bigger? The times she fretted about every centimeter increase in her height seemed so distant now. She was concerned about people seeing her, she remembered. Well, there was plenty of her to see now, and she found she no longer cared.

With her change in perspectives both physical and mental now complete, she decided to take a stroll downtown. It would be quite amusing to see how small it all looked, how she would stack up against the buildings that always seemed to stretch to the sky from below.

Goal in mind, she took a few more steps across the parking lot, cracks radiating out from her feet each time they impacted the pavement. The crowd once more became fluid in its attempt to stay out of her way, and she let it be. Cars that looked noisy, however, weren't spared.

A song heard long ago came back to her as she walked toward downtown. Perhaps it was the booming downbeats her feet provided that jogged her memory as she got closer and closer to the bright lights and buildings of the city center. As she approached them, she began to sing.

She changed the lyrics to suit the occasion, however.

"With a purposeful stride and a terrible sound, she sings a song that's heard for miles around. Helpless people in window panes Scream 'my god' as she looks in on them."

Selecting a nice eye-level window, she did just that. The room on the other side of the 21st-story window in question contained a red panda that was quite surprised to find her view of the city nightscape suddenly eclipsed by the huge green eye fixing its gaze on her.

"AAAAAAAAAAAH! WHAT THE HELL? 

Life doesn't always imitate art.

Her tail wagged as she saw the response, and she made her way closer to the city center.

"Oh, no...they say she's got to go. Poor, poor Samantha. Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo. Oh, no...how big can she grow? Poor, poor Samantha."

She stopped in her tracks. How big could she grow? She stood among the tallest buildings in the city, each of them easily twice her height. They no longer stretched up into the sky from her new perspective, but they still managed to make her feel small again. She didn't enjoy that at all. She'd have to put them in their place.

Back at the store, she had latched onto the sensation of growth, savoring it just as she savored the flesh served up by the frightened butcher. It felt like a tingling, yawning, stretching of her body and mind. What if she could conjure up those feelings herself?

With another signature grin, she decided to give it a try. She found a park nestled between the edifices downtown and stood in its center, closing her eyes and listening to the ambient sounds: approaching sirens, panicked voices. They weren't relaxing. They didn't need to be. She could sense her transformative power flowing through her being--the meat from the market had stoked it red-hot and set her ablaze with growth for a time, but plenty of embers still remained. She tried to link her thoughts to them, to tap into their remaining energy. Her muscles tensed as she got closer, her chest heaving with rapid breaths. She stretched, arching her back, and as she did, the mental tendrils with which she searched herself touched a hot coal.

Her eyes flew open in surprise. That surprise spread to the crowd as she grew.

Her growth was rapid, much faster than she bargained for. She nearly lost her balance as her mass increased, one foot repositioning itself with a thunderclap step. Her demeanor was apprehensive for a moment, eyes darting around nervously at the dwindling buildings of downtown. The euphoric rush of growth then kicked in, replacing her brief bout of timidity. After she regained her footing, she rode her empowering wave of size, tilting her head back and balling her hands into fists, her colossal mouth parted in bliss. Taller she grew. Taller.

Taller.

Soon she rivaled the mightiest of the city's structures, and moments later, she became their queen. If her size was frightening before, it was terrifying now--a being standing in the midst of the tallest buildings as if they were models or toys. Many things seemed like toys now.

Looking down, the largest smile yet graced Samantha's face. The buildings, the people, the ground, everything was so far down there. Her new perspective was dizzying in its sheer scale. That dizziness grew as she continued to gaze at the city below. Something wasn't quite right 

Something wasn't quite right. Swaying unsteadily, she repositioned a giant paw one street over quickly to keep from falling over, then quickly stood back to full height. Her vision lost its color momentarily as another disorienting wave hit her. Staggering, she fell against one of the taller buildings. Her heart raced as she tried to brace herself on the smaller structure. It held for a few seconds, but soon collapsed in a cacophonous cascade of bricks, steel, and glass, the first (albeit unintentional) victim of her new self. She watched it fall with blurred vision.

A chorus of noise erupted from below as the remains of the building spewed through streets and plazas and parks. They were shouts of alarm, fear, and terror, and they echoed the growing concern in her head. What was wrong with her? Another staggering step saved her from toppling. She felt completely drained; even standing was becoming more difficult. The world swayed and lost its color every few moments, a sickening rollercoaster ride made all the more spectacular from her viewpoint hundreds of meters up. She felt vulnerable. It was time to leave.

A wide boulevard offered the easiest escape from her predicament, and she took it. Huge feet thumped and smashed their way unsteadily away from the city center, and the noise followed her like an acoustic shadow. She didn't know exactly where she was going, simply Away. As she made her way out of midtown, the buildings shrank away, and she loomed larger and larger over the cityscape. There was nowhere she could hide here; she had made herself quite out of scale with the concrete jungle and its surroundings. She made herself keep going out, out.

Her panic-sparked bursts of energy were fading, and a distressing thought came to her. She'd grown for the first time without eating. Had she depleted herself? It certainly felt like she had. Each step took more effort. She had to get away, though. Had to get somewhere safe.

Her pace slowed as she reached the outskirts of the city, breath coming in huge heaves once more. There were more wooded areas here, neighborhoods with larger yards. More space. Just a little further, she told herself, just over the next ridge. Then she could rest. She crested that ridge and saw a patchwork of forests and farmland, her goal of escape nearly reached. She just had to find a place to lie low while she rested. Thoughts came that she was surely tracked and followed, but her waning energy didn't allow her to dwell on them.

She made her way toward a wooded area that offered the tallest trees and dropped down below the treeline quickly, lying down in an attempt to conceal herself. As she looked around from the forest floor, a sense of familiarity with this place struck her. She knew these trees. As her vision faded, it hit her that she knew where she was. Out of blind habit, she had come to this place, and it was not where she wanted to be. Just before unconsciousness took her, she turned her head to see a logo with blue letters shining through gaps in the trees.

BARTOK

-----

Samantha woke with a start in her chair in the living room. She looked around quickly, not sure where she was for a moment. She'd let herself doze off, and that had turned into full-blown sleep, complete with already-fading dreams. Ears drooped as she looked down at the floor 

There was no one there. She cursed herself for falling asleep and letting her strange roommate escape; she should have known it would happen. She wondered if her other self was feigning sleep to begin with and simply waiting for her moment to make a break for it. A quick look through her place let her know that no further damage had been done, at least. The front door was unlocked and ajar, so she assumed her larger self had made her exit there.

With a sigh, she went back to the living room. She needed to figure out what to do next. She could either wait for her other to come back, or she could go out and search. The thought of going out in the dark didn't seem like such a great idea, but with a sinking feeling in her stomach, she thought of another method she could use 

She glanced over at her computer. If her double had gotten up to anything, she reasoned, there might be a news story about it, or maybe something in her localized social media feed. She hoped not; that would definitely complicate an already weird situation. A few clicks showed her how complicated things were.

As the news site loaded, she thought her imagination had gone into overdrive. A gargantuan version of herself stood in the remains of a building, underlined by a headline of oversized letters proclaiming:

GIANTESS WREAKS HAVOC IN ATTACK ON CITY

Samantha herself had no words. After staring at herself looming over the ruined store for a few moments, she made herself read the attached article. Her double had gone to a chicken restaurant, then the store, then downtown, apparently growing all the while. This was beyond bad. How did she get so big?

Restaurant and store. Food in both places. That made sense, though the increase in growth rate that resulted was quite worrying. The store. Hadn't she had a dream about being big in a store a couple of nights ago? She wondered if her double remembered the same dream. 

She visited other news sites, all with similar pictures and stories. The giantess seemingly came into existence, rattled things around, then disappeared over a ridge. The latest updates were from just a few minutes ago, she noticed, so they must still be looking for her other.

Looking at the "Giantess Rampage Route" map handily supplied by one website, Samantha noticed that her double disappeared on the outskirts of the city, quite close to where Bartok HQ was located. As worrisome as things were already, that fact kicked things up a notch. What if people from work found her larger self and thought it was her? The blood ran from her face as she considered the possibility for the first time. What if anyone that had seen her other self tonight thought it was her? They wouldn't be wholly wrong, would they?

Her mind raced as panic began to set in. How close was their DNA? It obviously wasn't a 100% match--the telepod AI had tinkered with it in an attempt to fix her growth. She wasn't even technically the same person as when she started her experiments, for the same reason. As foolish as trying to find her larger self seemed, she decided it was the best thing she could do at the moment. She'd go crazy if she stayed at home after knowing what happened out there; she'd just pace back and forth in the living room with worry. Better to do something.

She went to her bathroom to get a good look at herself in the mirror before getting ready. She still wasn't used to the sight of herself so much taller than usual, but then "taller" was definitely a subjective measurement this evening. She thought she looked more or less normal. She put on clothes that would keep her mostly covered; it was probably best not to look much like the giant woman everyone would have on their minds tonight. Taking a deep breath, she headed toward the front door to leave.

She saw the lock turn as she reached for the doorknob.

Samantha pulled her hand back as the lock clicked and the door opened toward her. Three figures revealed themselves in the light of her front porch--her sloth landlord (who provided the key to get in), a canine police officer, and a tigress she knew as a higher-up from Bartok. She was surprised to see them, and they in turn looked surprised to see her. Stares and uncomfortable silence were shared until the police officer spoke.

"Good evening, ma'am. Can you identify yourself?"

"Er, yes. My name is Samantha Shepherd," she responded 

The tigress and canine exchanged a confused glance.

"Can you...prove that with some ID? And may we come in?" the officer asked.

"Yes, I can go get it. And, uh, sure...please come in," Samantha said nervously 

The tigress gave her a long, appraising look as she entered.

Samantha felt the twin gaze of authority on her as she went to fetch her identification, the police officer in his uniform, the tigress in her suit. There was really only one explanation why they were here, she thought. They must have found her larger self by the Bartok campus. She found her driver's license and her Bartok employee card, bringing them both to the officer. He took a look at the pictures, then at her. He motioned for her to remove the hat she'd worn to help conceal her features 

"It looks like we caught you on your way out," he said.

Samantha nodded. "Yes. I was, er, going to the store to pick up a few things." Thank goodness she'd cleaned everything up from earlier, she thought.

"Except you've already BEEN out to the store tonight, haven't you?" the tigress asked casually, all heads turning to look at her.

Samantha's heart sank as the tigress' words confirmed her fears. She recognized the striped feline as Briony Thakore, a high-level manager overseeing many of the R&D departments at Bartok. She could still tell the truth, at least.

"I haven't. I was taking a long nap. 

Ms. Thakore gave another of those long, appraising looks. "To be honest, we didn't expect to find you here, Miss Shepherd," she said at last. "But now that we have, perhaps you can fill in some blanks for us." She glanced over at the monitor where the news stories lingered. "You've been up long enough to see this evening's excitement, I see. Imagine OUR excitement when the DNA scan came up a virtual match to one of our employees...a Miss Samantha Shepherd, at this address, with a very long list of Bartok-supplied equipment requisitioned to her."

The tigress continued, "That's a problem. If it gets out that our technology somehow caused all this mayhem, we'll have a PR nightmare on our hands." A slight grin and a flick of her tail momentarily broke her stern demeanor. "Fortunately, I do not work in PR." Ms. Thakore stepped closer to Samantha, looking at her eye-to-eye. "I simply want to know what happened, how all of this was...possible. It's been a long time since you've brought us up to speed on what you're working on, Miss Shepherd. Far too long, from the looks of things." Another grin. "You know, speaking of looks, I don't recall you being quite so tall yourself when we met last. Nothing on your giant twin out there, of course, but there aren't many people I don't have to look down at. It's quite...notable. So! Catch me up, Miss Shepherd, please."

Samantha looked over at the police officer, who seemed to have gone silent for the last few moments. "Am I...under arrest or something? I haven't done anything wrong." Her eyes shifted back and forth once, quickly. "I...I've been busy working for the last few days."

The officer shook his head. "No, ma'am, not yet. I came here to secure a potential crime scene. We didn't expect to find you here. This situation is weird enough that I don't know exactly how to proceed, so I am going to radio for instructions. All of you stay put for now. 

Ms. Thakore continued to favor Samantha with her steely gaze after the officer left. "You're thinking of lawyering up. Not a bad idea, but talking to us would be easier. The computer logs will tell a story with or without your help. Cooperating will help avoid...mistakes. 

Samantha thought about her position, and she realized the tigress was right. Everything was laid out in the logs, which were backed up on Bartok's servers. Unless she wanted to try to lock herself in the lab and erase everything, they would have a good idea what happened 

After a time, she nodded. "I guess you're right. I wanted to keep all this under wraps until I had something I could demonstrate, but I was working on a matter teleportation system. It ultimately worked, but complicated organic forms were...problematic. And messy. The system couldn't reproduce a living thing with enough precision to have it survive, or even be...intact. I cleaned up the inside of that receiver pod so many times...I realized I couldn't just keep trying incremental fixes myself on lab mice. I needed a faster, cleaner way."

She rubbed the back of her head. "So...an acquaintance in datatech helped me out with adapting one of the machine-learning-based AIs to help with my experiments. I could run simulations all day and uh...do far less cleaning. Soon it could virtual teleport with no errors I tried a real rat, and to my surprise, it worked! I started relying heavily on the AI after that, and I had it learn birds, snakes, even little bugs...I guess that was kind of working backwards, but it got really good at figuring out how to encode and decode all that DNA."

"And that's when I got a bit lazy and foolish...I knew I wanted to make a big splash when I came forward with all this, so I knew I needed to teleport a person. I was under the gun for the next funding cycle, so I just went ahead and scanned myself...and let the AI work. I had it run the simulations again and again, over and over, for days. I mean, I didn't want to end up like those mice." She made a face, then continued. "Eventually I got up the courage to do it myself. It worked really well for smaller living things, why not me?"

"I chickened out a few times and ran more simulations before I finally committed--I wanted to get a bit...or a lot drunk beforehand, but I didn't know how that would affect the teleportation. Anyway, I went through, and I was OK! At least I thought so at first. The AI had practiced to the point that it could make little tweaks here and there as it saw fit, and it decided it was a good idea for me to be...growing. Growth denies decay and death, or something like that. I got bigger day by day, a centimeter or two at a time."

Samantha paused and took a deep breath. It was all coming out rather quickly now that she had started the tale. "That couldn't keep happening, obviously...at least I thought so at the time. I told the AI to get me back to normal...ish size, and it did, by splitting me in two. So...the version of me that you found at Bartok is the other me, and when the AI fixed me, it left her with the problem I had at the time. I, uh, grew whenever I ate. That seems to have gone away for me, but not for her. It looks like she's eaten...a lot tonight."

Samantha looked at Ms. Thakore fully for the first time since she started speaking. "I...had no idea she'd get THAT big or I would have tried to keep her here somehow. I never even got to talk to her. This was all just an accident--I certainly never meant for it to happen." As she finished, she noticed that the tigress' expression had changed subtly while she was talking. Ms. Thakore's icy blue eyes betrayed a poker face that had cracked ever so slightly, letting an emotion peek through. In those eyes Samantha saw something familiar: hunger 

With a blink, the tigress' demeanor returned to what Samantha had come to know as normal. "That's quite a tale, Miss Shepherd. I am prepared to believe all of it, though we'll have to verify it with the computer logs, you understand. Regardless, I'm impressed with your work!"

Samantha saw a flash of long, white teeth as Ms. Thakore squeezed her shoulder with a huge paw. She fought the urge to pull back, though she was unsure whether she was about to be congratulated or consumed.

"With my help, I can see big things coming from this...Doctor Shepherd."

The police offer returned, and Ms. Thakore put one finger in front of her muzzle as a "shhhh" gesture to Samantha.

"You're free to continue your evening, Miss Shepherd, but you'll probably be asked to come in to answer some questions soon. Be expecting that call," he said.

"Absolutely, officer, thank you for your assistance!" said Ms. Thakore quickly. "Dr. Shepherd will of course be accompanied by our legal team should such questioning be necessary," she added with a smile. The police officer nodded as if he expected as much, then left the room.

Ms. Thakore waited until she was sure he was gone, and her smile grew. "Such a shame he wasn't in the room when you said all that, hmmm? You'll tell a much more condensed version of your story should they bring you in. We'll keep you out of jail, don't worry. We need you." She reached out to touch Samantha's arm in what seemed a caring gesture at first, but soon she was subtly guiding her toward the door. "And right now, we need you at Bartok. You said you were on your way out, no doubt to try to find her, yes? Now you know where she is. With us. You also said you never got to talk to her. I think we need to rectify that. Yes, I think it would be a very good idea to have you there when she wakes up...a, er, familiar face, so to speak. You two didn't have a fight, did you? Hmmm, no, I suppose not if you haven't spoken." The tigress kept speaking as they inched toward the door, answering her own questions before Samantha could get a word in.

On their way out, they passed the sloth, who had just entered the living room. Samantha gave him an exasperated wave, and he slowly turned to follow them.

There was a company car waiting outside. Samantha was guided into it, and Ms. Thakore finally gave her litany of self-answered questions a rest as she told the driver to return to Bartok. It occurred to Samantha soon after embarking that she didn't have a way back home. Before she could bring that detail up, Ms. Thakore raised the partition between the front and back seats with a motorized switch. She then resumed her questioning, this time with pauses for answers.

"The size increase, it was accidental? Not something you were trying to do?"

Samantha nodded. "It was the AI's idea, as I said. I was trying to stop it." She started to wonder how closely the tigress had been listening to her explanation.

Ms. Thakore nodded back. "And the AI figured it out, leaving it in your double. Could it be given...parameters?"

Samantha stared at Ms. Thakore for a moment, but she was no match for the tigress' practiced gaze. "I...suppose it could. It could be given a goal and then go through its machine learning phase, getting as close to that goal as it could through trial and error."

Ms. Thakore purred softly. "Excellent. So if we were to recreate this process, we would essentially replicate what happened to you--scanning a subject, creating a goal for the AI, and then letting it do its thing. Am I correct?"

Samantha managed a longer stare this time. She was getting uncomfortable where things were going--the car, the situation, the conversation--all of it.

"Yes," she replied. "But...is that a good idea? Look at what happened tonight. It got out of control very quickly!"

"Then we simply need control," the tigress mused. She sat back in her seat, the flashes of streetlights ticking off a silent rhythm as she tapped her chin in syncopation. "It seems you've accomplished quite an amazing thing purely by accident, Doctor. The luck you've had with this project is rather astounding." Pulling out a tablet, she swiped the screen on and began tapping it. "I am making arrangements to bring all the equipment from your home to our facility. Once that's done, I will expect you to make sure that it's all hooked up correctly and integrated with our systems there. Once things are online, I will become head of this project. We will move forward with purpose and vision, and we will hone what was created by accident into a powerful tool for the ages. The patents alone on this..." she purred again. "But we also need to deal with other-you." The car slowed. "Speaking of whom...here she is."

Samantha quickly turned to look out the window. Her jaw dropped at the sight presented to her as the car approached. Seeing the footage of herself on the news site had in no way prepared her for the insane scale of her other.

Her double seemed to go on and on into the distance as the car stopped near her colossal feet, each of which jutted up into the air for dozens of meters. Trucks moved along her sides, some of them cutting down the trees she had partially crushed as she lay down. Others were attempting to secure her to the ground with what looked like gigantic tow lines. All of them looked ridiculously small, as if they would become nothing but toys should the sleeping giantess wake and grab one of them.

And how could she sleep through all this?

But sleeping she was, her chest stretching the tow lines audibly with each rise and fall. Samantha had trouble processing what she was seeing; looking at a slightly larger version of herself was strange, but self-reflection at this magnitude was downright unsettling.

The car stopped, and Samantha and Ms. Thakore exited. Samantha glanced around self-consciously as everyone in attendance gawked at what was essentially her naked body on display, larger than life, but the gawkers were far too focused to make the connection themselves. Ms. Thakore, for her part, had a dreamy look on her face.

"Doesn't she just look amazing?" she said quietly. "So large, so powerful...her muscles are more developed than yours, Doctor, is that part of the process?" A soft purr punctuated her question.

Samantha didn't like it. She also didn't think she was a slouch in the muscle department herself, and she wondered if the time might be coming when she would have to put them to use. For now, she answered her new boss. "I honestly don't know, but I can guess it was the AI's way of making her...mobile."

Ms. Thakore twitched her tail. "Ah, a good point. I'm thinking all that extra strength will require a few more restraint cables than we seem to have on hand. After tonight's uproar, we don't want her going mobile on us until we've had a chance to come to an understanding." She walked off to find the person in charge of the whole containment procedure, leaving Samantha to stare at herself some more.

"I guess they caught both of us," she said quietly. "I'm sorry I did this to you. Now that it's happened, I don't know what I was thinking." She watched another rise and fall of the gigantic torso, listened to the stretched cables creak ominously with extra tension before going quiet again. "I never really considered there would be another...me, another person that would bear the affliction I was getting rid of. I was just trying to fix myself before anyone noticed." She chuckled. "That didn't work out so well, huh?"

She took a long breath, matching the timing of her larger self. "But I'll do what I can to fix you, too. I don't know how just yet...you're way too big to teleport. Don't worry...I'll think of something. They can't just leave you like..." She looked up and down the length of the larger Samantha's form, still amazed at her size. "...this, surely. They'll want to help you get smaller, too. At least...if they want my help, they will."

Ms. Thakore made her way back over to where the smaller Samantha stood. "Making conversation, I see, hmmm?" she asked as she looked up again at the dozing behemoth. "I don't think she can hear you. If this racket doesn't wake her up, she's dead to the world. Maybe soon?"

Samantha nodded, then looked at Ms. Thakore with an intensity that caught the tigress off guard, a blink betraying her surprise. "We are going to help her, right? We're not...leaving her like this just to study her or use her for something horrible later on. I need to know."

The tigress' collected visage returned once she saw the needed response. "Of course, Dr. Shepherd, we'll look for a way to bring her back to normal." She smiled, not particularly reassuringly. "That might open up a whole new set of tantalizing possibilities. And patents!"

Samantha nodded, dejected. Even when she started all research, she'd known she wouldn't really own whatever came out of it. There was far too much of Bartok's equipment and software in there to make it anything but theirs. Her contract stipulated as much if nothing else. Still, she hadn't expected it all to be scooped up literally overnight by a patent-happy VP, and one that Samantha suspected had more personal designs on her invention at that. At least she could still keep an eye on things, though. She owed it to herselves.

And in order to do that, she needed to be in on the loop, so she turned to the tigress once more to ask about the next step, but something stopped her in the middle of her pre-question breath.

Ms. Thakore was on her phone, and she looked even less happy than usual. "I have things well in hand," the tigress said. "She's being secured as we speak...No, we've kept the media at arm's length, and the military's helped ensure there aren't any flyovers...Yes, I realize it won't last forever, but..." She then went silent, listening.

Samantha guessed that someone even higher up than Ms. Thakore must be on the other end of that call to be able to get that many words in.

"Isn't it going to raise a lot of questions if she just...yes, yes, I get it. I'll start the process. It's not going to be easy." After ending the call with a click, the tigress fumed for a moment at the large canine on the ground, then at her smaller double, tail flicking all the while. "It seems I wasn't fast enough," she mused. "Our trip continues, Dr. Shepherd. I hope you're all packed."

It was an answer of sorts to Samantha's question, but as Ms. Thakore predicted, it raised several more, some of which the canine managed to get out. "We're going somewhere else? We just got HERE a few minutes ago, and don't we need to be close by in case she...wakes up?"

"Oh, she's going with us," the tigress responded.

"You're joking," Samantha responded. "How do you move something...someone THAT big...and where?"

"It's certainly going to take some doing," Ms. Thakore said. "Fortunately it is not my problem to solve, only to delegate. As for where, the company wants her in a location with far fewer prying eyes while the immediate aftermath of tonight's misadventure continues to be dealt with. There will be a plane for us shortly...and several more for our large friend, at least, I'm thinking."

Wheels turned, machines moved, and preparations were made for the big move. Once Ms. Thakore was satisfied that things were moving swiftly enough, she motioned to Samantha to return to the car. As they drove off, she could see larger earthmovers entering the area.

Ms. Thakore then got on with her delegation, again finding the person in charge and explaining what was needed (more restraints, and get them under her too this time), and when (now). She saw her earlier disbelieving face reflected back at her momentarily, and then wheels turned.

It struck Samantha how long it took for her giant twin's size to dwindle as they sped away to the airport. She could still see herself easily even after a few kilometers, the now-tiny earthmovers trying to lift her feet so that support cables could be run underneath her legs. She continued to watch through the rear window of the car until she could no longer see herself, and then she turned her head forward, rubbing the back of her neck. Ms. Thakore tap-tap-tapped on her phone. Though curious, Samantha didn't quite dare look over at it.

The tigress satisfied her curiosity soon enough. "Good news, Dr. Shepherd, we've secured travel arrangements for your extra-big sister--a couple dozen helicopter transports from MacNeller Air Base. I do hope their formation flight training is up to date. We shall see."

Samantha asked a question that had been nagging her since they arrived at the Bartok site earlier. "The military seems awfully...helpful. How come?"

Ms. Thakore chuckled. "We keep them nicely supplied with inventions, of course. They are really quite interested in yours."

Samantha was quiet for the rest of the trip as the car made its way to the airport. Ms. Thakore, surprisingly, stayed silent as well, both of them focused on their inner monologues to parse the evening's events. Once they arrived, they were waved through to a private terminal.

A Bartok company plane was waiting for them. It was small, only meant for a dozen or so passengers. The two ladies boarded, and Samantha saw that they were the only ones in the cabin. The seats looked large and comfortable; the journey would be pleasant, at least. The whine of the engines grew more intense as the plane prepared for takeoff, and Samantha quickly found a seat as it began to move along the tarmac to the runway. She'd never cared for flying much, but she hoped the flight would last for a while to give her more time to think.

The flight turned out to be as quiet as the car ride, so to pass the time, Samantha found herself looking out the window at the city below. She let out a surprised gasp as she was once again presented with evidence of her larger self--downtown was still a chaotic mess. Her memory of the skyline didn't mesh with her view from above; one of the taller buildings was missing. Fires bloomed along the path her doppelganger (toppleganger? Her mind shook the word away) took through the city, and tiny helicopters swarmed near them like moths. Her chest tightened with the sense of scale the view provided. Even her other self would look small from here, yet the damage she brought forth was chilling. What if her twin kept growing, big enough to have this view herself?

Samantha shivered at the thought, but it persisted.

As the flight continued, the shiver-inducing sight of the wounded city diminished, soon only a dull glow of flame diffused by clouds of debris in the distance. The landscape became indiscernible in the darkness. Samantha had no way of knowing which way they were going. She looked out the window for a while longer, but the featureless view didn't offer much of a distraction from the events of the night replaying themselves in her mind. Nevertheless, watching the misty clouds and listening to the drone of the engines was hypnotic and soothing. As she watched and listened, her mind slowly quieted its incessant chatter of unwanted analysis and worry, and she thought it might be a good idea to take a rest while she could. Who knows what awaited her at her mysterious destination 

And so, she closed her eyes.

-----

Samantha was drawn from slumber by a jarring chorus of helicopter engines and blades. They'd found her, as she feared they would, and she snapped awake at the thought, eyes scanning the sky. There were a lot of them, and too close for her liking. She'd have to fight them off.

She tried to get up, only to find that she couldn't move her limbs. The ropes coming down from the helicopters were all attached to her, and she was bound with dozens more of like construction. Each movement she attempted only caused her to sway as if she were in a hammock. Looking down with some difficulty, she confirmed she was no longer on the ground. They'd somehow caught her, tied her up, and were taking her somewhere. She grunted in frustration, trying once more to escape. She could still only sway back and forth. Then a voice spoke to her 

"DR. SHEPHERD, PLEASE STOP MOVING. WE ARE TAKING YOU TO A BARTOK FACILITY SO THAT WE CAN HELP YOU. IF YOU CONTINUE TO STRUGGLE, YOU MAY SEND US ALL CRASHING DOWN TO THE OCEAN."

Samantha's ears flattened at the volume of the speaker blaring those words even above the rotor noise. If the words were meant to help her relax and accept what was happening to her, they didn't work. They only reminded her that she was caught, trapped. Why did everything always come back to restraint, to discovering yet another frustration that required an escape? And here was still another. She was taken in her sleep, kidnapped. That this could happen even at her exaggerated size was especially galling; that was why she went down this path, after all, to be free from the worry of control.

To be IN control.

Baring her teeth, she swayed. The helicopter formation stopped its forward movement and changed shape as the giant canine moved back and forth. As each vehicle spread from the center, Samantha was given less and less slack on the line with which to generate momentum, and the cables bound her more tightly. She gritted her teeth and tried all the more to move as she felt herself further restricted. The pilots' maneuver proved too effective, however, and she bellowed an exasperated cry to the heavens once she realized the futility of her attempts. The voice spoke again.

"FLYING THIS WAY IS MUCH MORE DANGEROUS, FOR US AND FOR YOU, DOCTOR. WE DON'T WANT TO CRASH, AND YOU DON'T WANT TO DROWN ALL TIED UP. HOW ABOUT WE GET ALONG UNTIL WE GET WHERE WE'RE GOING?"

Samantha snarled. The voice was right, as much as it angered her. "Fine," she growled.

The formation continued for a few moments in its expanded configuration, ensuring that its charge would live up to her word. Though she still felt trapped, Samantha fought the urge to struggle against her captors. Escaping now would do her no good if it led to a watery death.

Eventually, the helicopters reverted to their previous condition, and the journey continued. Since she'd resigned herself to being carried to whatever destination awaited her, she took the opportunity to look up the machines that were doing the job. There were a lot of them. The thought brought a smile to her face for the first time since waking up. So many helicopters just to move her! She again wondered how they'd managed to tie her up and connect her to them in the first place.

But she also thought about what would happen when they untied her.

She'd have to stay alert this time and be ready. She had foolishly used all of her energy last time making herself grow, and she'd been too tired to stop them from doing this to her, too tired to even know it was happening. That part of things still caused her concern. This time she'd play along and continue to rest while they traveled. They were certainly smart, she thought with another glance up at the helicopters. They knew what they were doing, but surely they couldn't anticipate everything she was capable of. She didn't know that herself.

As the flight continued, she thought about what awaited her. They must have wanted her alive, or they'd already have done away with her. No doubt they wanted to know how she'd grown so they'd be able to do it, too. Well, she'd be happy to give them a demonstration.

And as she smiled to herself at the thought of what she'd do, she felt her speed slow again. The helicopters spread out into a circular formation once more, giving her less slack. She snarled upward--she'd been cooperative, why were they doing this? A glance downward told her.

There was an island down below, dotted with lights. She couldn't make out much from her vantage point, but she supposed she'd see it soon enough; the helicopters were descending toward it slowly, carefully. Her heart began to race as she readied herself to make her move.

The island continued to grow beneath her for quite some time. It was larger than she had first guessed; they must have been quite high up. She saw several buildings lit up in its interior, and the helicopters seemed to be taking her to a large paved area near the coast. The descent slowed, and Samantha braced herself for impact. Before she landed, she looked around quickly for some clue as to what was about to happen. There were several vehicles surrounding the area she was being lowered into, and at least one looked like it had a weapon. She focused on this one as she landed, feeling the relief of the cables loosening a bit around her now that they weren't being stretched taut in flight. Her eyes widened as the long barrel of the weapon moved. It was being aimed at her, and a moment too late she understood why.

A thunderous boom echoed between the buildings as she felt a sharp pain in her leg. She started to struggle, raging against the restraints in a vain effort to escape. The enormous dart lodged in her thigh started delivering its payload of tranquilizer, and soon she was out again.

---- 

[One week later]

Samantha awoke in the middle of a dream, breaths coming rapidly as she sat up on her small bed. A few frantic glances around the tiny room brought her back to reality, and she held her head in her hands as she calmed down. She was OK, but she was still here 

And she was tired. The clock on the wall told her she'd only slept an hour and a half. With a moan, she flopped back on the bed. She doubted she'd slept more than three hours in a row since she arrived at the island facility, and it was starting to take its toll on her. It was getting harder to concentrate on what was going on in the labs, not that she had much responsibility. Ms. Thakore wasn't kidding when she said she was taking personal control of the project, and she had relegated Samantha to little more than a consultant on the sidelines 

Once they had her equipment brought in and reassembled with the AI running again, she wasn't really needed for much. She had offered the occasional piece of advice on tweaking the AI at first, but the crew running the system had gotten the hang of it pretty quickly. She was impressed by the computing power they had access to here, and she was more than a little frightened by it. They were going through thousands of iterations a second, calculations that took her homebrew system all night. She knew what going too fast could lead to.

And on top of all that, she still hadn't been able to talk to her larger self, who was always asleep when she visited. With each failed attempt to catch her awake, it seemed less like a coincidence that they could never communicate. She was afraid she might have figured out why.

Like she usually did when she awoke, Samantha got dressed in order to go for a walk to escape her tiny cabin. The blue work uniforms provided by Bartok were a pleasant change from her previous clothing in one major way; they actually fit her new, larger frame. She had also developed a routine of going to see her larger self as the first stop on her walk, always hoping to catch even a glimpse of her awake. It never seemed to happen, no matter what time these "morning" promenades actually took place. She made her way there now.

The epiphany came during her last visit as the thought crossed her mind, "It's almost like she always goes to sleep just when I wake up." She stood there, stunned. Is that what was happening? Was their ability to be conscious being traded between them somehow? It was the only thing that made sense. Even in their short time at the apartment, she had been asleep when her double ate all the food. Her double snoozed on the floor while she waited all day for her to wake up, only to conveniently be gone after she herself dozed off. If it were true, it complicated things. There couldn't be any direct communication, but could she leave a message? Another thought stunned her.

Could she leave a message big enough? A discreet envelope tucked in her giant self's hand wouldn't even be noticed. Visions of painting a billboard or showing text on a Jumbotron flashed through her head. Both were ridiculous, of course. Even if she could do such a thing, the message would hardly be private. Her instincts told her it would be a good idea to keep her situation a secret for now.

As for what she'd say in such a message, she was still determined to apologize in person for bringing her bigger self into existence in the first place. The apology she gave to her giantess twin a week ago was only really self-serving if the intended recipient couldn't hear it.

As she finally reached the enormous hangar that housed her big sister, she felt the enormity of the situation she found herself in echoed by the cyclopean form in front of her. A sigh of frustration parted her lips as she leaned on the nearby walkway railing. These frustrations cascading from an overreliance on software to do the heavy lifting in her project--she felt trapped by them. Each new wrinkle felt like another noose around her neck, like...

A fleeting sensation of being bound tightly beneath a cacophony of motors shook her.

Samantha gasped at the sudden impression of being tied up, and she stepped back away from the railing in surprise. A glance down at her arms and legs confirmed that she was unbound, but it had seemed quite real for a moment, as did the sound of a dozen or so motors, now quiet. Allready the sensation was fading to nothing, like a sense of deja vu, or the remains of a vaguely-remembered dream. It was enough to startle her out of her anger-inducing train of thought from before, and she looked at her giant self a little more contemplatively.

She thought back to the view of herself before leaving for the island, bound tightly in a myriad of stretchy cables. She remembered Ms. Thakore saying they were going to use helicopters to bring her larger self here. So was that sudden sensation her imagination...or a memory?

As she pondered, a new sound perked her ears. As if summoned by being referenced in thought, Ms. Thakore made her way along the metal walkway. Samantha could tell from the scent of jasmine perfume who was approaching, and she gave a soft sigh before looking over to verify.

Upon doing so, she was taken aback for a moment. The identity of the person before her wasn't in question, but the clothing she wore certainly caught her off-guard. Samantha had only ever seen Ms. Thakore in smart business attire; she would have believed the tigress slept in it. The tall feline that approached her, though, wore what looked like a green sports bra and leggings. The slow, measured walk she used to close the distance to Samantha gave even her simple exercise outfit an air of formality.

"Good afternoon, Dr. Shepherd," she purred.

Samantha nodded and responded politely. "Good afternoon, Ms. Thakore. Are you...taking the day off today?" she ventured, angling to find out the reason for the costume change.

The tigress' eyes seemed to sparkle. "Oh, hardly, dear doctor. I have rather big plans for work." She joined Samantha in looking at the latter's larger double for a moment. "One simply makes one's self comfortable when there's heavy lifting to be done. Your twin here has certainly taken that to heart, hmmm? And speaking of comfort..."

She turned to look at Samantha. "I don't think I've ever asked you what it was like, going through nothingness between telepods. Quite the oversight on my part, and one I intend to remedy here and now." She put on her best smile; it almost looked sincere. "So I can better inform our first test subject, hmmm?"

Samantha was taken aback by the question, and as she thought about the experience, she realized she hadn't talked to anyone else about it. Now that she had been asked, she felt a desire, a need to do so, and that led to her guard dropping as she prepared her answer.

"Most of the times I went through, there was really no sensation of anything happening," she began. "One instant I was in the transmitter, the next instant I was in the receiver. It was only that last time, when the AI split me into two...that things were different. It felt like my mind was stretched like rubber, trying to exist in two places, and then it felt like it snapped, and I could hear the echoes of...her thoughts." She nodded to her larger self.

Ms. Thakore looked at the smaller canine. "But the other times, no adverse effects? 

Samantha let out her breath in a slow sigh, one she tried not to make noticeable. Her desire to speak fell away as she realized the tigress' curiosity was born of concern over some upcoming experiment, not her. Were they really going to send someone through the telepods already? "No, unless you count the part where I was growing uncontrollably for a while. That was somewhat of an adverse effect," she finally replied, hoping the sarcasm hit its mark.

But the tigress' smile simply grew. "Oh, I DO count that part, Doctor, absolutely! We're ready for that. We've had the AI working on it all week, using your notes as a reference for what went wrong. I feel quite confident that we'll be able to avoid that sort of messiness again. But perhaps you'd like to come and see for yourself, hmmm?" And off she went, heading toward the labs 

Samantha watched Ms. Thakore sashay off toward the laboratory. Now that twin distractions of unusual clothing and unusual conversation topic no longer held her attention, she began to put the pieces of the latter together in a different context. What was going on here?

As the tigress' form dwindled with distance, Samantha frowned. The puzzle pieces made a picture she didn't think she liked, one that contained an awful lot of orange. The canine looked up at her funhouse-mirror self and asked, "She wouldn't, would she?"

Of course she would.

Samantha froze where she was, unsure what to do. She knew she should stop this, but how? Ms. Thakore wasn't likely to be dissuaded if she was up to what Samantha suspected, and a physical altercation probably wouldn't end well.

She'd been invited along, so she decided to follow 

The laboratory was housed in a hangar that had been repurposed as a workspace for the teleportation team. As Samantha entered the large space, she saw Ms. Thakore entering the telepod room at its far side. She picked up her pace, walking briskly toward the lab entrance. Half a minute's walk found her at the door herself. She hesitated once more briefly before opening it, steeling herself for whatever the confrontation inside might turn out to be. She then opened the door quickly and walked inside, scanning the room for orange and stripes.

It didn't take long to find her. She was conferring with a short ferret technician who quickly looked up from the clipboard he was holding, his eyes wide. Ms. Thakore kept her gaze at the clipboard for a few seconds longer before looking up with a smile 

"Ah, There she is!" said the tigress.

The ferret looked nervously back at Ms. Thakore, then at the newly-arrived canine once more.

"Oh, it's all right, Leland," purred Ms. Thakore. "Dr. Shepherd is a specially invited guest! I wanted her to see how far we've come with her work in such a short time." She smiled to Samantha. "Leland here is quite the AI wrangler! He's had such a compressed timeframe to work in, and he's come through spectacularly." The ferret blushed sheepishly as Ms. Thakore favored him with praise before resuming her businesslike expression.

"This project is going top secret soon, Doctor. I've seen the paperwork machine starting up. Fortunately, that machine is rather slow, and I've been busy during the delay. Before it's knocked up above all our paygrades and clearances, we'll have one last bit of fun with it."

"What...fun...might that be?" asked Samantha.

Ms. Thakore chucklepurred. "Oh, come now, Doctor. You know. Ever since I saw what happened to you because of your...affliction, and especially what happened to your larger-than-life self out there, I've been a little jealous. More than a little, if we're being completely honest. Such a gift you were given...and you couldn't wait to be rid of it, to pass it on to someone else...to create someone else to give it to in order to unburden yourself. What a waste...but at least she enjoyed it, hmmmm? Oh yes...she embraced her situation and made it her own. At the end, it looked like she was willing herself even greater!" The tigress trailed off in a momentary purr. "Mmmm. Now that’s the proper way to show appreciation for such a gift. Not fear. Not doubt. Not rejection."

"But I'm rambling!" said the tigress as she walked toward one of the telepods. "I'm ready to see what wonders you've worked, Leland. If all goes right, I'll have you both to thank for a very...uplifting experience." With that, she began to disrobe.

Two pairs of eyes stared.

As the telepod door opened and Ms. Thakore entered, Samantha remembered her purpose for being here. "W-wait! This doesn't make sense--you can't possibly want to...reproduce what happened to me? It was awful; I was hungry all the time, and I thought I'd never stop growing!"

Ms. Thakore favored Samantha with her most honest, truest smile from inside the telepod before nodding to Leland to start the process. As the machine sprang to life with its analysis, the electric fields made her fur stand on end, and her tail flicked back and forth excitedly. Her voice was muffled inside the confined space. "If that was an attempt to talk me out of this, Doctor, it had very much the opposite effect."

The timer ticked toward zero, as did Samantha's chance to act.

A flash of light. An echoing purr. A fading Cheshire cat smile.

The transference took longer than Samantha was expecting. Perhaps it was due to modifications the AI had to do to its "passenger," or perhaps it was just good old anticipation, but the canine stared at the door to the receiving telepod for what felt like a long while. Leland the ferret busied himself with watching the data compiling and scrolling on the monitor in front of him, but as the reintegration sequence neared its end, he joined Samantha in staring at the second telepod's door. 

There was a whoosh as the door unlocked, then opened. A thick haze oozed from the telepod, residual water vapor from the teleportation process. It obscured their view of Ms. Thakore, but her shape could still be seen in the mist, a nebulous feline shadow. After a moment, the shape stepped forward. It had glowing green eyes.

Samantha saw Leland shiver out of the corner of her own eye as the bright emerald orbs in the mist came fully into view, framed in orange and black. Ms. Thakore's signature purr returned as stepped into the telepod's doorway.

"You were right, Doctor...instantaneous."

Samantha didn't think the tigress looked any different. She'd never had this complete of a view before, of course, but it didn't seem as if the teleportation process had done anything to her. She had fully expected to see Ms. Thakore have to squeeze herself out of there. Any relief that realization brought was short-lived, however, as Ms. Thakore spoke.

"Were we successful, Leland?"

"We a-appear to be, Ms. Thakore," the ferret answered meekly 

With a wide smile, the tigress grabbed the doorframe of the telepod, her eyes brightening to a blaze 

Ms. Thakore looked around the room, her eyes darting to the other telepod, the computer monitors, the overhead lights. She tsked loudly, tail flicking in annoyance.

"It may t-take some practice," Leland offered. "I'm not sure how something like this would manifest itself."

She fixed her glowing eyes on the ferret momentarily, then nodded before closing them in concentration. When she opened them again, they blazed so brightly that Samantha had to bring one hand up in front of her face, shielding her own eyes from the twin verdant suns. As she did, she saw the lights above flicker once, then again. A strange, electric aura filled the room, making Samantha's fur stand on end. A bright light and a loud *pop* from her right drew her attention to Leland, who leaped back from the computer console.

He looked shocked.

The keyboard that shocked him sputtered once more then went quiet. Samantha felt a strange pull in the air as if the electric aura that permeated it was now flowing. The sensation drew a shiver out of her as she felt it move through her fur 

It was flowing toward the tigress.

She lowered her hand to see what was happening, and she was treated to the sight of Ms. Thakore's larger form in the doorway of the telepod. The tigress still had a deathgrip on its edge, and Samantha could see green tendrils of energy dance up her striped arms 

She was growing.

Samantha and Leland did little but stare as the tigress added half a meter to her height over the next few seconds, the pull of the aura strengthening as the tigress grew. At that point, she could no longer fit comfortably in the doorframe, and she was forced to step forward. The tigress' larger paws sent two booming thuds echoing through the large makeshift lab, drawing a squeak out of Leland. In the quiet that followed, the lights flickered back on to full strength, and Ms. Thakore stood up fully to her new height.

All three meters of her.

Ms. Thakore looked around again with an open, eager smile, and Samantha heard a motor rev itself up nearby, perhaps a generator to cope with the sudden power drain. It took her a moment to realize that it was the tigress' trademark purr shifted down to a deeper register. When she spoke, her voice had a low, resonant timbre. "Yes, Leland, you've done quite nicely. We'll need to experiment a bit more to see how efficient the process is, but I'll take care of that."

Green eyes shone. "Right now, in fact. 

Above them, a light bulb exploded. Samantha felt the electric pull as the tigress grabbed the telepod once more, this time wrapping her arms around it as if she were giving it a hug. More green arcs of energy jumped from machine to feline, fueling the latter's growth. She thought it wise to take a step back.

Ms. Thakore grew faster this time, her progress easy to track. Her height soon matched that of the telepod, and as she grew taller still, she had to lean over to maintain her "hug".

Under the flickering lights, Samantha turned to the awestruck Leland. "What did you do to her?"

Leland gave Samantha a distracted look, his eyes darting back to the rising tigress over and over as he spoke. "Do? I...did what she asked. She wanted to g-grow, like you...but she didn't want to be dependent on food to do it, so we f-found a way to use a different source..."

Leland stopped his explanation for a moment as Ms. Thakore lifted the telepod up off the ground as she stood back upright with a grunt. He watched it dwindle in her expanding arms. "...or r-rather to cut out the middleman in the process that caused you to, uh, get bigger. Food gave you energy, which your body converted to growth. All Ms. Thakore needs...is the energy, er...as you can s-see. 

Samantha could see, indeed. She could see the tigress hefting the telepod in one arm now, the stripes stretching over muscles that weren't there before.

A draconian purr rattled the bones of the two spectators as the tigress' eyes flickered out. The electric pull vanished from the air. "What a wonder both of you have made," she said 

Then, with a mighty heave, she threw the telepod against a wall. It shattered into bits.

The wall didn't fare much better; a huge dent caved outward from the point of impact, and a rough tear in the metal marked the center of the crater. The boom and short cascade of debris reverberated through the room like a brief thunderstorm.

Eventually, Leland spoke. "All that work..." he moaned, momentarily forgetting what his handiwork had wrought. "I only slept like two hours a night getting that thing to where we wanted, and you...just...bust it up?" His indignation died when he saw--and felt--the tigress step toward him.

"We don't want TOO many giants running around, do we? No, that wouldn't do. I was tying up a loose end," she purred, then reached down toward Leland, who froze where he stood. "Loose ends can come back to bite you."

Orange fingers grasped the ferret. "You have to bite first. 

Leland let out a squeak as the digital trap was sprung. He didn't try to escape, he didn't even move. He simply lost himself in those emerald eyes as he was brought up toward them, twin hypnotic orbs that sought to draw out his very soul. He didn't even feel the teeth.

Samantha watched in disbelief as the tigress grabbed Leland and brought him up to her mouth, pressing him inside after a moment's consideration. She turned her head away, but she still heard the crunch that signaled his fate. Feeling sick, she swayed a bit where she stood. She lost her chance to escape as her fight-or-flight instinct failed to overcome her continuing wave of nausea and her lack of sleep. As she turned her head back toward the giant tigress, she knew she was another loose end that required attention.

She was the next Leland.

Ms. Thakore looked back down at Samantha as she took another half a minute to fully dispose of Leland with a few more crunchy chews and a punctuating gulp. Her fanged smile afterward showed the disposal hadn't been quite complete. "Now then. What to do with you, Doctor."

Samantha betrayed her fear with an obvious glance back toward the room's exit, a gesture that drew a thunderous chuckle from the giantess. "A bit late for that, hmmm? Tsk, that curiosity of yours. It's what got you here...and out there...in the first place, isn't it? Yes, here and there. Maybe I should say here OR there. You never got to talk to your big self, did you?" she said with a widening grin. "I kept waiting for that moment, seeing if she'd communicate with you more than she would with us, but you were always conveniently...absent."

Samantha's ears sank a bit as Ms. Thakore revealed her observations; the tigress was about the last person she wanted to know about her dilemma, especially in her current state.

"It's as if only one of you can be awake at once," the giantess purred. "Is that true, Doctor?"

There was silence as the shepherd declined to respond. Ms. Thakore's tail flicked as she waited, but she smiled nonetheless. "Cat got your tongue, eh? Well, if my guess is correct, as long as you're awake, she’s asleep...and she'll be much easier to deal with that way."

The tall tigress stood to her full height and ambled toward the damaged wall of the hangar. "So it looks like today's your lucky day, Doctor! Come out and watch the fun if you like. I think I have quite a bit of growing to do before I can take on your double, even asleep."

With that, Ms. Thakore put her hands into the crater left behind by the tossed telepod. Muscles tensed as she began to widen the opening there. The screeching sound of metal being torn set Samantha's teeth on edge, and she covered her ears in an attempt to muffle it.

The increased strength Ms. Thakore had already achieved was worrisome, and Samantha saw her last chance to change things rapidly floating away. In a last-ditch effort, she called out to the tigress before she could enact her plan.

"Ms. Thakore!"

The screeching metal stopped.

Samantha nearly lost her nerve as the tigress turned to regard her. "You think you have this figured out...so did I. The problems just kept coming, and bigger each time. It only ended when my double exhausted herself, and look where she is now. How will you be any different?"

The tall tigress paused her metallic excavation, turning to face the smaller shepherd. "I aim to be quite different, Doctor. You grasped at straws to fix your accidental condition, and your giant double didn't have time to comprehend what she was before she ran out of energy."

 he favored Samantha with a smug expression, her whiskers bouncing once before she spoke again.

"I made sure that won't happen to me. Energy will be mine for the taking, and take it I will. I'll be grasping at much bigger things than straws after I make my exit. Speaking of which, I don't think the formal 'Ms. Thakore' fits my new stature. I've never cared for my first name, either, and my middle one...until now...was an embarrassing reminder of my parents' love of Shakespeare. I think it's time to embrace it.

"Call me Titania."

The newly-named Titania went back to her task of enlarging the opening in the wall, and the grating sound of tearing metal echoed through the hangar once more. Samantha felt she had nothing left to try; her poor attempt at persuasion had fallen well short of the mark. As the hole in wall expanded, Samantha looked around quickly for something, anything she might use as a Plan B. A few moments of searching rewarded her with the sight of a large white box on one of the interior walls of the lab. FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY, read red text on glass.

If a giant, growing tigress wasn't an emergency, Samantha wasn't sure what qualified as one. She flipped the front panel of the box downward, granting access to the long, metallic object inside 

It was a gun. She stared at it for a moment as she held it, then she loaded it 

Bright sunlight poured into the hangar as Titania widened the makeshift exit in the wall large enough to step through. Samantha saw she was going to lose yet another chance to stop the striped giantess' progress, and she clumsily finished loading the gun in haste. She wasn't sure she'd done it right; she only had limited training in such things, and she'd certainly never fired one at anybody before. She aimed the gun at her large feline target, then lowered it again, reconsidering 

Would it really have any effect on someone so large?

She had another option--one that she didn't really want to take--but time forced her hand. With a resigned sigh, she thought about where best to do it. What would be the most effective and least painful? She aimed the gun at the side of her head, then a little lower.

Click.

The canister of compressed air propelled the dart neatly into Samantha's neck, causing her to wince with pain. She resisted the temptation to pull it out, instead finding an open spot on the floor to sit in. She could feel the numbing tranquilizer spreading through her body 

She felt woozy after just a few seconds, so she reclined on the floor to make her transition to unconsciousness more comfortable. As the lights overhead began to blur in her vision, the image of her large self being transported to the island flashed through her mind again. As her thoughts became disjointed and everything faded to black, she used her last ounce of consciousness to see if she could send something to her larger self in return, some sort of warning of what was coming.

"Energy makes her bigger."

She hoped it was enough, then slept.

-----

Titania looked out of the hole she made in the side of the hangar, squinting in the sunlight to see if her handiwork had been spotted. She knew she'd have a limited amount of time before she was noticed; she planned to make herself as large as possible before that happened. She made one last adjustment to the size of the hole, grabbing and bending the metal with enormous hands. When it was finally large enough to comfortably step through, she made her way out. A smile blossomed on her face as she stood to full height 

Everything looked so small 

The view was enjoyable, but it wasn't enough. They still might be able to stop her at this size, she thought, and besides, she wasn't nearly as big as the island's current largest resident. She knew how to change that, however. What better way...than with a transformer 

With her typical directness, Titania marched toward the island's power station. Her footfalls were enough at her increased size to make a considerable racket, and she soon had a dozen or so very surprised workers watching a higher-up version of one of their higher-ups. She gave the ones she could see a wave by way of greeting, paired with a rather predatory smile. She had no time to stop and play with them just yet, but the looks on their faces was enough to give her a thrill as her huge paws thud-thud-thudded along the path toward her goal 

Her audience grew as she neared the power station, more and more workers drawn by the rhythmic booms of her steps and the spectacle of her promenade. Hushed whispers about what SHE was doing so big flitted from person to person as they followed, none daring to draw her attention.

After a couple minutes' walk, Titania reached her destination. She could feel the electricity coursing through the transformer even at a distance, and her purrs harmonized with the electric hum as she thought of its power soon being hers to use 

But first, her followers 

With a smile, she turned to greet them. "Good afternoon!" she roared. "You may have noticed this isn't my usual daily stroll. It's about to become rather more unusual. Watch if you like, but I would suggest doing so from a safe distance." Then came a toothy smile. "If there is one."

With that, the titanic tigress turned toward the transformer. She hesitated briefly, wondering for a moment if this was going to be too much for her to handle, but her drive for size guided her hand toward the metal housing.

The first spark hit her like a bolt of lightning. Titania's eyes widened as she screamed from the shock. Her hand drew back reflexively, but even as it did, a nebulous tendril of green energy bridged the gap between tiger and tower. Pain and shock quickly gave way to power and pleasure, and with a smile, she reached out again. The power flowed into her, suffusing her in a shell of green light. More tendrils joined the first, and the ground rumbled with the force of her electric empowerment, growing in force as the tigress herself began to rise in height. She eagerly reached out with her other hand.

Lights flickered off and on throughout the island as Titania drew more and more energy. Those inhabitants that weren't already aware of the show now knew something was happening, and many of them walked to their office windows or wandered outside.

"More!" a voice boomed.

The commanding word rattled nearby windows, and as the power transfer increased in intensity, they kept vibrating. The growing electric aura caused the fur of those outside to stand on end, and Titania's did so as well, making her look even bigger in the process. Not that she needed much help--her height was increasing at an amazing rate; even those watching from afar through the relative safety of an office window could see her growth. Their curiosity gave way to astonishment, and then to unease as she rose higher and higher.

In thirty seconds, she was already taller than all the buildings on the island, or would be were she standing. Her need to maintain contact with the transformer had forced her to bend over farther and farther as she grew, and now she looked as if she'd bent down to pick it up. Another few seconds passed, and the tigress had swelled so large that the overworked transformer couldn't add much more power compared to what she'd already absorbed. She looked as if she were bending over to touch her toes as her growth slowed down to a crawl.

A loud grunt resounded across the island. "I think you've given me everything you can," she purred down at the still-sparking transformer. "Almost."

Standing upright once more, she broke contact with the power grid momentarily before bringing one huge paw down on top of it. The transformer exploded beneath her foot, giving the tigress one last surge of power before going dead. Titania balled her hands into fists and shuddered with delight at the brief unfiltered jolt, and her form rose still higher over a now-darkened Bartok facility. The bright green tendrils of energy chased one another across her form one last time, and Titania took in a few deep breaths in the aftermath to recover before turning to look at the facility behind her. It pleased her to realize how far downward she had to bend her neck 

She remembered being shown a model of this place years ago at a company presentation, how it secretly thrilled her to lean over it and feel so much larger than life as she looked down on tiny buildings. Her tail flicked with excitement and wonder as she relived that experience.

Of course, it wasn't quite the same; this was like standing on the table instead of looming over the whole display. No matter, that would come later. For now, she needed to deal with her sister-in-size and catch her unawares. A mammoth paw started her on her way with a thud 

That first step sent a thundering rumble through the complex, rousing many of those nearby from their hypnotized state brought on by the display of her ascension. The show of wonder became a looming threat, and a new form of growth now began, that being a spreading panic. Workers began to flee, but not all were drawn from their contemplative state in time to escape those purpose-driven paws. Seeing their comrades disappear beneath house-sized feet only made the panic spread faster, now infecting even those who thought themselves safe inside. Fortunately for them, she was focused on getting to her rival's hangar and how she might get inside it. Best to pry the roof off, she thought, and as she bent over to do just that, a rumble from within the hangar surprised her.

So did the fist coming up through the roof 

Titania bared her teeth in frustration. Her plan to catch Dr. Shepherd's bigger half asleep was for naught, but at least she could let the huge canine wear herself out a bit getting out of the hangar, she thought. Let someone else punch through all that metal this time around. The tigress also decided to play it sneaky, stepping quietly (for a ~150m cat) out of the limited view Samantha would have as she began to make the hole bigger from the inside with additional punches. Titania crouched down low, readying herself for a world-record pounce 

Samantha, for her part, was hell-bent on escape. The powered restraints holding her down were finally loose by some stroke of luck, and weeks of pent-up frustration and claustrophobia at being in this metal coffin were being released with each pounding she gave the roof. Soon the giant shepherd had obliterated enough of the ceiling to be able to pull at her restraints by attempting to sit up without worrying about banging her head. Gritting her teeth, she worked her palms flat against the floor and tried to push her head and shoulders upward. Cables stretched and creaked while metal bolts and buckles squealed with the stress. She fell back down after a few moments, and then she tried again, then again, then again. With each attempt, she could rise a little higher. With each push, her bindings stretched and loosened 

Titania remained crouched outside the hangar, her ears taking in the sounds from within. She realized now that she'd inadvertently made her target's escape easier by depriving the island of its electricity, but it still sounded like the big dog was having a time getting loose.

Samantha could feel more and more give in her bindings, and after a few more moments, she was able to reposition her hands to prop herself further up. Finally, one of the metal fasteners gave way with a metallic clang. Another followed soon after, then yet another. Each of those lovely sounds gave her new hope and more resolve to free herself. This was more exertion than she'd managed since arriving at this place, and as a result she could feel the first stirrings of that familiar hunger building within her.

Escape first, then feeding.

Titania's pulse quickened as she heard her adversary's progress, ears flicking at the clangs of restraints giving way. The big doctor would be out soon, and she focused on that hole, waiting for a pair of long triangular ears to poke out like a gigantic jack-in-the-box.

Samantha pulled up with all her might, setting off another volley of clangs inside the hangar, and finally she was able to sit up enough to get her head out of the hole she'd fashioned into the roof. She did so, taking a huge breath of fresh air as she did. She smelled jasmine 

An orange blur in her peripheral vision caught her attention as she processed the strangely familiar scent, and she was just able to duck her head back inside the hangar in time to avoid feeling the twin sets of tigress claws that now scraped roof in a loud screech. A voice then came from above.

"Tsk. I'm not used to this size yet, that was much too slow. Hello in there, Samantha! I've had some fun with your invention, as you can see. Or, I should say, as you will see once you manage to get out of there. Do hurry, I'm waiting!"

Samantha snarled after retreating back into the building. It was that bossy tiger again, she thought, only this time she was BIG. She'd used the telepods; did that mean she had to eat half the island to grow so large? No...it was something else...

"Energy makes her bigger."

The thought seemed like hers, yet its presence in her mind felt alien somehow. How could she know that? As she considered it, fleeting images of the tigress emerging from the telepod, of her growth afterward, of her escape through the wall, all came as if from memory. It didn't make sense; she couldn't have seen anything like that in her current size and state, but it seemed so real. A loud bang on the ceiling interrupted her train of thought.

"Come out," said a deep, commanding voice, all playfulness gone. "NOW."

Well, if she insisted...

Samantha reached up to put her hands on the metal girder above her chest. She gave a few tentative shoves of increasing force, listening to the squeals of metal that resulted. She thought she could lift it, but it would certainly be easier with some help. She grinned at an idea. 

"I'm too weak," the shepherd replied in a strained voice. "You people have starved me for weeks, and I used up everything I had punching some air holes in this thing after the AC died. You'll have to get me out."

Titania's ears flicked as she considered the canine's words. She knew well the strategy of underselling yourself to an adversary; she'd used it on many occasions herself. However, the chance to strike while her opponent was weak tempted her sorely. What if she was telling the truth? Truth or not, she decided, the dog was coming out.

The tigress leaned over the hangar once more, listening for any hint of what the "weak" dog inside might be up to. Hearing none, she cautiously stepped over the hangar, straddling it as each gigantic paw found its purchase in the ground to either side of the structure. She paused again and listened. Still nothing. She looked down at the holes the shepherd had made, but she didn't quite dare lower her head to get a better view and leave herself open for a poke in the eye. She did, however, squat slightly and grab opposite sides of the hangar. 

Samantha saw flashes of orange, white, and black through the holes in the ceiling, accompanied by another whiff of jasmine. The light dimmed in the hangar as the tiger squatted, and Samantha readied herself to move.

The claws coming through the walls still surprised her.

The metal walls began to tear outward from Titania's extended claws as she tugged upward, and Samantha waited for the right moment, slowly putting her hands up on the still-intact portions of the ceiling above her. When it looked like the roof was about to come off, she shoved.

She wanted to spring up and keep shoving, catching the tigress by surprise and knocking her over, but she'd been stuck in the hangar so long that her limbs were stiff and slow. She still managed to send Titania staggering back a couple of thunderous steps all the same. Samantha made the most of the brief moment she won herself, getting up on her feet and stretching her arms and legs for the first time since being caught and brought to the island.

Titania peered at her through the holes in the metal roof she still held in her hands, snarling. With a growl, she cast the torn metal roof aside. It clattered and clanged over a small group of onlookers who had thought themselves safely away from the brewing battle. An even smaller group ran from the wreckage moments later as the tigress advanced toward her opponent.

As she stomped toward Samantha, the tigress sized her rival up fully for the first time. She'd done it, she thought joyously; it looked like she'd managed to make herself at least a head taller than the previous record-holder for enhanced height. She closed the distance smiling.

Samantha came to the same realization with more than a little trepidation, and her fight-or-flight instinct yammered within her to choose. With a snarl to counter the feline's smile, she widened her stance and prepared to receive the first attack.

Fight it was.

Titania pressed her size advantage; she grabbed Samantha's shoulders and tried to send her tumbling backward with a shove. Samantha countered by grabbing the tigress' arms to keep herself upright. The two titans locked hands and dug in heels, each trying to force the other down. While the feline had the edge in height, the canine made up for it with greater strength. Both sensed that they were evenly matched after each attempted a couple of overpowering attacks only to be resisted by the other. Any hope of a quick victory on Titania's part faded.

As such, the conflict became a chess match, each side trying to position themselves for a devastating blow that their opponent wouldn't see coming. They circled each other over and over, each step reworking the landscape below them, adding more cracks to the buildings nearby.

It was Samantha who first sensed an advantage. At first, she thought it was a trick of perspective; she was unused to seeing someone her own size, after all. As she watched the tigress opposite her, however, she became more convinced that something was up with Titania's height. More appropriately, something was down with Titania's height. Samantha recalled the tigress rising well above the buildings that marked the boundaries of their arena, tall enough to sit on them easily if she so desired. Now, the tigress' hips were even with their rooftops. Was Titania shrinking somehow? Samantha came to the conclusion that she was. A smile blossomed on her face as she made ready to strike.

Titania saw that smile and stopped her maneuvers. Something was off. The shepherd looked...bigger. She looked bigger still as she lunged.

Samantha closed the distance between herself and the tigress in a few steps, their echoes resounding off the buildings. Titania dug her heels in and braced herself for the impact, her eyes still registering surprise at the increased size of the canine lunging toward her. How could this be happening? The shepherd grew from being fed, but she hadn't eaten anything in the last few moments. There was that one occasion where she MADE herself grow, thought Titania as she reached out to meet her attacker, but it didn't look like she'd done that either.

As they began to grapple, however, it was clear that the canine was indeed stronger. Titania's eyes darted around; she needed a way to even the odds, but there was no power to be had after the destruction of the transformer. Gritting her teeth, she fought back with all her might.

For a few moments, Titania held her own with Samantha, muscles tensing and shivering with effort. As that effort was put forth, the tigress felt a strange sensation, a sudden tiredness that made it difficult to concentrate on keeping up her end of the struggle. She began to feel woozy, almost as if she might faint, and as the feeling ebbed through her, waves of disorientation weakened her resolve still further. A startled chuff escaped her throat as she saw the shepherd rise taller still. Damn it, she thought, how is she doing that?? 

Samantha felt the tigress began to give in, and it dawned on her that she didn't actually have a plan for what to do with Titania once she'd bested her. Before she could consider her options, though, her thoughts were derailed. 

She saw the tigress shrink this time in her grasp.

Samantha's head cocked to the side in the typical canine gesture of surprise, and the two combatants' struggle temporarily ceased. Each looked at the other for several long moments, both frantically recalculating their moves after a blunder changed the tempo of the game. Each thought the other to be the one changing size, though both recognized the same winner in their respective scenarios. Titania had always known when to avoid a fight in her career, and this one now looked ill-advised to continue.

She let go of Samantha and made a run for it.

The sudden shift in tactics caught the taller giant off guard, and Titania was able to get some distance from Samantha. As she ran with thunderous steps, she felt light-headed once more, and she very nearly stopped in panic.

The buildings before her were slowly rising taller 

That dog wasn't growing, she finally realized; she was shrinking. She could still feel it happening as she ran, though the sensation wasn't nearly as overpowering. What was going on? Was the effect of her growth only temporary? She chuffed again in frustration. It wasn't fair.

As she thought about her situation, a larger set of booming footsteps from behind her indicated that her adversary was now giving chase. She grunted in frustration and picked up her pace. As she did, the sinking (shrinking) feeling yawned through her once more. Her heart skipped a beat as a terrible thought occurred to her. Absorbing energy had made her grow; did expending it make her shrink? Leland hadn't said anything about that being a possibility, damn him. If true, fighting would be impossible now. Escape wouldn't be much easier.

And escape was her first priority now. The shepherd behind her would soon be above her, and she wanted to keep that first preposition in place. Hiding wouldn't do much good; she was still too big, and there weren't that many hiding places on the island to begin with.

Island 

She remembered she was on an island surrounded by an ocean of water, water that might be easier for her to navigate than her larger pursuer. She scanned ahead of her and veered left, hoping that she remembered where the docks were. At least it gave her a place to run 

Her instincts were true, and after a few more moments she arrived at the docks. In the chaos of the last half-hour, however, many of the island's denizens had seen fit to avail themselves of this method of escape as well. Fortunately, one boat remained, and she ran to it 

Unfortunately, it was a trawler, and she was still far too big to board. Even if that weren't so, she felt it would only serve as a convenient tiger carrying case for the shepherd still thudding closer behind her.

Its small crew looked like they'd reached the same conclusion. Their already-hurried preparations to leave shifted into overdrive, but Titania was still able to grab their attention as she walked to the boat's mooring.

"Which way is the closest city on the coast?"

After a brief stare, one of the crew gestured out toward the horizon.

Titania gave a thin smile. "Thank you. I'd watch out for this next one if I were you, she's hungry."

With that, the tigress jumped out into the water as far as she could. She was relieved to find it chest-high, deep enough to swim in. And so she did, as fast as she could 

The crew of the last remaining boat watched the tall tigress attempt to make her escape. Before they could do the same, however, the person everyone was currently trying to escape from arrived, and to their horror, her attention was fixated on them.

She did look hungry.

"Go! Just go!" shouted one of the crew before the motors roared to life.

Samantha walked out onto the docks, her weight barely supported by the wooden framework. The cracks of splintering wood added to the cacophony of the trawler's motor and its panicked yelling crew. As she reached the boat, the docks gave way with a series of firecracker pops, and she dropped down into knee-depth water. The resulting wave didn't capsize the trawler, but it did knock those onboard off their feet. As they righted themselves, they felt the boat...rising.

Samantha lifted the boat out of the water, her eyes drawn to the tiny figures moving within its cabin. She was only temporarily abandoning her pursuit of the dwindling tigress, she told herself. Here was a much easier catch 

It had been a long time since she'd had real meat 

She wasn't fed normally while she was captured; no doubt they wanted to keep her from getting any bigger. She was hungry all the time as a result, and it permeated her every thought. Even her dreams were steered by her desperate need for nourishment, depriving her of respite. No, she thought as she reached into the cabin, the little striped cat could wait. Better to take easy prey when she could. Her fingers found her first snack, and the wriggling form yelled in a crescendo as she brought it to her mouth. She was too hungry to bother chewing. 

She could feel the unfortunate would-be sailor slide down her throat, still wiggling. She shivered momentarily, and the thought of what she was doing raised an alarm bell of morality somewhere in the fog of her mind, but it went unheeded. Hunger would have its way.

She reached for another, eager to feel the surge of power again, eager even to feel like she wasn't about to waste away to nothing (again, like a certain tigress, she thought with a chuckle). She tossed the second seaman into her mouth, sending him on a different voyage. The sensation of eating again made her grow impatient, and she hurriedly dispatched the rest of the crew in short order, digging them out of the cabin with the same urgency with which she cleaned out her kitchen of food so long ago.

It wasn't enough, but it was a start.

Titania spared only one glance back at the docks as she swam away. She saw the gigantic canine stopping at the boat, just as she'd hoped. Lucky for her they were there, or she might be finding herself taking their place. Time to get as far away from their place as possible.

As she settled into a steady front crawl stroke, she could feel herself dwindling further, though thankfully the sensations were lessening with time. She had nothing to compare herself against in the water, she could only hope she was getting far enough out.

Could the dog swim?

Titania thought it unlikely, and certainly not at her level. She'd enjoyed it as exercise for years. Samantha might be big enough simply to wade out faster than she could swim away, though, and that also was a worrisome prospect. Nothing to do but hope for the best.

Samantha could feel a gentle warmth build in her stomach a few moments after finishing off the last of the crew. Yes, that was the feeling she remembered...almost. She hadn't eaten nearly enough to grow, she knew, but she was tantalizingly close.

So was the tigress 

After a last quick check of the boat, she placed it back down in the water and scanned the surface of the ocean nearby. The tide was bringing in gentle waves of water, but she thought she could see a smaller set cutting through them, making a line heading away from the shore. That must be her, she thought. She began to wade out toward the little disturbance in the waves, her hunger only increasing as the little bits of energy provided by the crew teased at the amount the larger feline would provide. Hopefully she hadn't become too much smaller.

Titania felt the tide trying to pull her back to shore, slowing her escape. This she hadn't counted on. How much did this change things? It wouldn't do to panic, but now she needed an update on what Samantha was doing. With a quick glance back, she saw the dog staring at her. Fighting the resulting twinge of surprise, she kept paddling for moment. She was spotted, apparently, but in her quick reconnaissance, the striped cat had spotted something herself. It gave her an idea--a risky one, no doubt, but all of her options now came with a hefty risk.

Titania slowed to a stop and waited for a moment, steeling herself for what was to come. She took deep breaths, holding each one for a few seconds before exhaling fully and taking the next. Finally, after taking the largest one yet, she let herself slip under the gentle waves.

Samantha found wading at this size frustratingly slow; she was sinking into wet sand that gripped her feet with every step. The water wasn't close to being deep enough for her to swim in yet, and worse still, she'd lost track of where Titania was headed. The water trail was gone. With a grunt of annoyance, she paused, waiting for another sign of where the tigress had gone. Her eyes scanned the water, and her attention was drawn more than once toward the cloud of sand and debris spreading out from her feet, the result of her first few steps from the shore.

Fifteen seconds passed, then thirty. There was still no sign of the little ripple she'd seen moments ago. No matter, she thought, cats big or small couldn't stay underwater forever. She fixed her gaze a little further out from the place she'd last seen her foe and started again.

While the two giantesses continued their cat-and-mouse (dog-and-cat?) chess match, tales of their recent exploits began to spread. Panicked reports from survivors on the island were relayed to superiors, to superiors of superiors, all the way up the chain of command. That chain ended, as Titania would have confirmed, with the military, and those in charge there were blindsided by the fact that there were now TWO larger-than-life outcomes of their project running around. Briony Thakore had been better at keeping secrets than they'd thought.

The success she'd had was incredible, they thought as they watched the shaky videos sent in from the scene. They were intrigued at how she'd incorporated a new power source. They were not, however, willing to endure a repeat of last week's urban cataclysm. At least not so soon.

Titania dove beneath the surface of the water, propelling herself down toward the sand below. She could see the clouds of debris expanding around Samantha's feet as the shepherd stepped away from the docks, and her hope grew. Her instincts had served her once again. She headed for those clouds, keeping as close to the ocean floor as she could. She hoped she could hold her breath long enough to be well away from where Samantha was looking for her when she needed to come up for air. Until that time came, she made her way back toward the docks.

Seconds passed, and Titania was met by the underwater sandstorm spreading from Samantha's struggling steps. The panic of being unable to see sparked brightly in her mind, but she ignored it. She would need to surface soon, and the breath she took would need to be inconspicuous.

A wave of pressure buffeted her soon after she entered the cloud, adding to her building disorientation. She must be close to one of those oversized paws, she thought. In an effort to right herself, she exhaled slightly, then followed the small trail of bubbles upward. The water was shallow, and her face broke the surface soon after she started her ascent. Her eyes quickly scanned for the giantess, and she was relieved to see that she'd managed to come up on the right rear side of the shepherd, almost certainly out of her line of sight.

She made herself stop and watch for a moment, continuing to keep panic at bay as she caught her breath quietly. A glance over at the boat helped her reorient herself toward her next objective, and with another practiced dive, she started to make her way there.

Her second submersion wasn't as long as her first; she ran out of breath much more quickly. She still couldn't see very far in her surroundings, but she was sure she was well behind the giantess looking for her, and so she risked another surfacing.

The tall canine had stopped.

Titania frowned. Her plan counted on Samantha being as far out in the water and as distracted as possible to have a decent chance of working. She would also have to be even more careful now if the taller giantess was quiet. Those big ears were all the better to hear her with.

<Come on, move...>

She repeated the words a few times in her mind, trying to will Samantha into obeying. After a few moments, she gritted her teeth in annoyance, amping up the intensity into a mental shout as her frustration grew.

A splash broke the silent stalemate.

Titania and Samantha both watched as a fin flopped up through the surface of the water, splashing back down underneath a second later. Samantha squatted and thrust her hands into the water where the splash originated; the speed with which she moved surprised the tigress. After a moment's struggle, Samantha stood up with her prize. Titania was no marine biologist, but it looked to her to be some sort of whale. Seeing it held in the colossal canine's hands was a reminder of how much bigger the dog was.

She kept watching as Samantha took a bite. The realization that the whale could very well have been her--and could still be at some point if she wasn't careful--prodded her back into action. With her adversary feeding, she dove back under the now-clearing water and continued making her way toward the boat.

Titania reached the boat after a minute's worth of swimming. A ladder provided a convenient method of boarding from the water, but the worry of being seen made her check on Samantha again before attempting to climb it. Her eyes widened at the scene unfolding amongst the waves.

Samantha greedily devoured the last remnants of the whale, now a sanguine skeleton in her grasp. As Titania watched, the giant dog suddenly shivered and grabbed her prize tightly; Titania could hear the bones snapping from the force, and then she could see Samantha was growing.

Ripples radiated out from her expanding legs where they met the water, and as the shepherd rose higher toward the sky, the look on her face was one of long-awaited bliss. Titania knew that feeling, and for the moment she relived it vicariously through her towering rival.

Samantha, for her part, rode the feeling of growth as fully as she could, forgetting all else for a moment. It felt like ages had passed since she'd been able to eat like this, to eat enough to cause such a blissful increase in size. She rose taller. And taller.

And all too soon it was over. The yawning, stretching sensation left her, and she looked down at the bones in her hands, breathing in great heaves. She eyed the messy skeleton hungrily, her body craving the calcium within to strengthen itself. With a few crunches, she obliged. As she finished her serendipitous meal, she looked out over the water once more from a higher vantage point. The cat was out there somewhere, she knew, but it occurred to her for the first time just what else lurked out there with her.

Food, so much food. An ocean's worth of it.

Titania continued watching as the giant canine grew still more so, unable to pull her eyes away as Samantha rumbled taller and stronger. Those eyes narrowed as she watched the ascent, a spark of jealousy setting her envy alight, squelching all remaining traces of panic. As the shepherd launched herself forward into the ocean, the tigress reached the boat and climbed on. Once aboard, her diminished stature became painfully obvious. She was less than a meter taller than her "normal" size, the size she thought she'd left behind. Her envy grew.

She hid herself as best she could, crouching in the cramped cabin of the trawler. She didn't think she had to worry about being found anymore, but she forced herself to wait until the giantess was too far away to see what she was up to before she went ahead with her plan.

Samantha pushed herself forward into the water in a first attempt to swim, sending waves out in all directions. Her size and lack of fat made this more difficult than all of her previous swimming experiences could prepare her for, and her dense form sank to the sand below. While underwater, the movement of the ocean wildlife drew her attention, eyes darting from fish to fish as she started to look for one large enough to serve as a second course to the whale. Spotting none, she awkwardly ventured out toward deeper waters to continue her search.

She got better at paddling to keep herself moving as she went, and taking deep breaths when surfacing helped her buoyancy. Before long, she was out in water that even she would consider deep, and she submerged once more to have another look around.

Her stomach rumbled.

As she swam, Samantha began to realize she might have a problem. Her size made it hard to see anything smaller than a ten-centimeter-long fish. She could see them in large groups as they flowed through the water, but those schools could also see her and move away quickly. The same was true of the larger fish. Her splashing telegraphed her impending arrival in plenty of time for them to alter course and swim away before she could even see them well enough to try to grab them. She was a too-big predator in a realm she already wasn't built for.

This left her, she figured, with two choices. One was to scoop up huge handfuls of the ocean floor and eat whatever she happened to catch there. The other was to emulate the donor of her recent meal and swim forward as fast as she could with her mouth open.

It was worth a try.

Titania watched from the cramped cabin as the canine giantess made her way farther and farther away from the shore. It appeared she had given up the chase--for her, at least. The whale must have whetted her appetite for more seafood, which meant she was safe for now.

She would make herself wait still a while longer. She doubted Samantha would come back to the island, and the farther out to sea she was, the greater the chance there was that the boat wouldn't encounter her when she disembarked for the city. She would wait. And plan again. She found maps in the cabin, and she spent the first part of her wait looking them over. There was indeed a city in the direction that the doomed sailor had indicated, one that sprawled over a pleasingly large section of the coast.

A big city would help make a big tigress.

-----

Interlude

Were you there when the tales

of the Eater of Whales

traveled from captain to captain?

 

Such a shock were the views

to each man in their crews

of the teeth that their ships might get trapped in.

 

For one night she appeared

just as twilight was neared,

with a shout of alarm from the bosun.

 

And all those by the mast

saw a creature so vast

that they stopped in their tasks as if frozen.

 

 

 

But before they could turn,

a great hand gripped the stern

of the whaler to keep it from fleeing.

 

"Now consider this choice,"

roared a terrible voice.

"Give your whales or my teeth you'll be seeing."

 

That she meant what she said

filled the thoughts in each head

of the crew as they raided the freezer,

 

All the meat that they'd caught

up before her was brought,

and they prayed it was enough to please her.

 

 

 

Then she grabbed up their haul

and she gobbled it all

while the shipmen watched with apprehension.

 

With each swallow and chew,

her height rose as she grew

Like a sea goddess spied mid-asencion.

 

While her size had been large

when she gathered their charge,

she'd grown dozens of meters still taller.

 

With her meal now complete,

Each man felt his heartbeat

strong and quick as she made them feel smaller.

 

 

 

The giant canine, she loomed,

the crew felt themselves doomed,

for a moment that lingered forever.

 

But at last she submerged,

and the water converged

o'er the space where she'd made her endeavor.

 

Once the danger was gone,

the crew waited for dawn

so the damage she'd caused could be reckoned.

 

Though the stern showed a rip

where she'd settled her grip,

they didn't despair for a second.

 

 

 

With great presence of mind

the bent stern was aligned.

They were anxious to get back to sailing.

 

But once on their way,

each spent most of the day

contemplating for whom they were wailing.

 

Yet from that day forth

as their journey drew north,

they saw no more sign of their pirate.

 

So her tale was passed down

once they anchored in town.

Now you've heard it yourself to admire it.

 

-----

Titania looked up at the stars as the trawler carried her over the sea, rising and falling in a soothing rhythm. She was exhausted, and each motion of the boat called her to rest. She didn't dare succumb to the siren song of sleep, however, being the only one aboard. She could no longer see the coast of the island she left a few hours ago, but she could make out a faint glow in the distance, the lights of her metropolitan destination. If she was reading the charts and GPS correctly, she'd be there not long after daybreak. A few more hours. 

She could hear another voice in the dark, one with a much more immediate promise, one that she'd been resisting just as much as sleep. 

The ship's engine.

She could feel the power flowing from it, a rapid back-and-forth of electric current in counterpoint to the waves below. She wanted to indulge in what it promised quite badly. Now that she was out of danger, the idea of experiencing another round of growth was attractive, to say the least. To let that energy flow through her, add its power to her own...to just be BIG again, her true state.

She walked the few steps toward the trawler's stern again, heeding the engine's call as she had several times previously that evening. She hadn't given into temptation yet, but each time she got closer, both in physical proximity to the engine and to taking what it offered.

Descending into the engine room, she stood before the motor as it purred and chugged. Closing her eyes, she reached out a hand toward it, licking her lips once as her own purr resonated with that of the machinery.

Surely a little bit wouldn't hurt. Just a taste.

She put her hand on the housing adjacent to the motor; now she could feel the vibrations course through her fully, rattling her bones. Her teeth clattered together a few times before she took a deep breath, and drew some of the energy toward her.

Just a little. Just a taste.

The even hum of the engine fell into chaos as it became irregular, coughing and sputtering as the tigress pulled too hard with her unpracticed ability. She shot up a dozen centimeters in a few seconds while the lights flickered in the cabin, then dimmed.

Just a little bigger.

Her pull relented briefly, and the engine and lights returned to full power momentarily before she delved again. She drew another size-giving bundle of energy, grunting with satisfaction as she felt herself grow bigger...bigger...bigger.

She felt a strong jolt shoot through her.

Titania's attention was turned away from the delicious consumption of power by the rising smell of smoke and the unhealthy wheezing of the overworked engine. She hastily drew her hand back as she realized that she was overdoing it, and a brief spark of panic danced in her eyes.

Without the extra strain, the engine soon returned to its rhythmic chugging, and the lights brightened to their normal levels. The tigress breathed a sigh of relief...and disappointment. It had been all too brief of a taste, but it wouldn't do to strand herself way out here.

A small grin blossomed on her face upon the discovery that she had to stoop slightly to get back out the engine room door. After she stepped up to the deck once more, she stretched her arms high above her head, rising up on her toes to accentuate her newly acquired height.

As the night went on, the stars turned overhead, and Titania kept watch on deck. Her experimental surge had made her restless, but at least the need to sleep had disappeared. The lights on the still-distant shore guided her toward the next stop on her journey in space and size. Her eyes darted from point to point, adding each one to a mental tally of the electric plunder that awaited her. Her eagerness rose with the count. Soon the only thing keeping her from draining the boat dry was the fact that it was delivering her to far greater glory ahead.

While the stars faded into the first hints of dawn, the tigress truly pondered for the first time just how far she could go with her ability. How much bigger could she be? Bigger than she'd been on the island, she was sure. Big enough to make even that size look small.

-----

Whalen liked to stroll along the beach on Saturday mornings. He was glad he was old enough and that he lived close enough to the edge of the ocean to be allowed to do so. He liked to get there before the crowds came with the rising sun's heat and spoiled it all. He liked to take his time as he walked, perhaps stopping to pick up a particularly interesting shell, or just watching the waves washing in and out along the shore. He liked the soothing sound they made, and he liked the quiet that took over in their brief absences.

No one bothered him out here this early; he could take his time and look for neat stuff in the sand. Besides shells, he'd found all sorts of cool junk--coins, watches, even a too-big ring that he kept for good luck.

On this particular morning, however, he found a whole boat.

It was a big one, too--large enough for several people to get on at once. He knew he couldn't really claim it, but it was neat to think about riding it around the bay and maybe going fishing off the side. He'd seen boats like this at the pier before, but not on the beach. It looked kinda like whoever was driving it didn't really know what they were doing; they ran it right up into the sand. He couldn't see anyone aboard. Maybe they all left once the tide ran out so they wouldn't get so wet.

As he got closer, he noticed a trail of footprints. They looked weird. They were deep and big. He put his own foot up next to one of them and saw that the footprint was twice as long! Forgetting about the boat for the moment, he followed the trail of prints with his eyes across the beach in the hopes of spying their tall creator.

Whalen saw no one immediately, but he kept following the tracks, fascinated by their size as he walked along with them. He hadn't truly expected to find their owner, but to his amazement, the tracks ended at a lady.

A tall lady. A very tall tiger lady.

"Hello there!" she said.

Whalen's parents had done their duty by teaching him to be wary of strangers, but those lessons were forgotten as he stared at her with a comically surprised expression. No wonder her footprints were big, she had to be at least three meters tall! He took a few steps closer.

Her clothing was odd. She had some kind of weird brown cloth wrapped around her; it looked like part of a circus tent. What if she was from the circus? Maybe she was the Giant Lady or something.

"Uh, hi." he finally replied. "You're pretty tall, you know?"

Her smile widened. "I am, aren't I?" the tigress replied, seeing the youngster's interest. "Am I the tallest person you've ever seen, hmmm?"

"Uh, yeah," said Whalen. "Are you, like, a giant or something? 

Titania purred. "Ah, that's precisely what I am, Mister...?"

"Whalen," said the young wolf.

"Whalen," the tigress repeated. "My name is Titania, Whalen. It's nice to meet you! Perhaps you could help me? I had to run my boat aground--I think you saw it right over there--because my batteries were running quite low. I need to get them charged up again before I can leave." She put on her most charming smile. "Would you happen to know where the power plant is in your city? I'm sure they can help me get charged back up in no time!"

"Can't you just buy a new battery at the store or something?" asked the wolf.

Titania's smile hardened.

"No, Whalen," she said in a more measured tone, "these are...special boat batteries. A regular store wouldn't have them."

The young wolf looked at the tigress' empty hands, then back in her eyes. "Where are they?" he asked.

Titania's smile began to look more like bared teeth. "They're still IN the boat, of course. I'll carry them to the power plant myself if you would kindly tell me where. It. Is." Her tail flicked in annoyance as she emphasized the last three words.

Whalen's face brightened at that idea. "Oh! Like a circus strongman? Er...woman?"

Titania was nonplussed for a moment. "I beg your pardon?" she asked.

"The tent you're wearing," said Whalen as he pointed, "you're a giant in the circus, right?"

The tigress chuckled and smiled again. "Oh yes. Tell me where the power plant is, and then the circus can begin."

Whalen was convinced. He cheerfully gave Titania directions, and as she turned to leave, he stopped her.

"Wait! Don't you need the batteries?"

"Not just yet. Be a good boy and watch the boat for me until I get back, will you? There's quite the surprise in it for you if you do."

Whalen nodded enthusiastically. "Sure! I can look for more stuff while you're gone. I'll stay closeby, though, so I'll be sure to see you coming when you get back."

Titania's smile returned full force. "Oh, Whalen. I daresay that won't be a problem."

And off she went.

Titania made her way to the power plant using the directions that Whalen provided. She soon realized she was lucky that it was Saturday; otherwise, her journey would have had quite a few more onlookers. That could come later, but for now she needed to get to her goal unhindered. Those that were out and about this early stopped and stared as one would naturally do at a too-tall tigress clad in nothing but a boat tarp. It was exactly the kind of thing that stood out, and her journey made more than one onlooker question if they'd overdone it last night.

Titania smiled as she walked by them. She could feel them turning their heads to follow her afterward, and her tail flicked in amusement and anticipation. More to look at soon, she thought, much more. More than the unfortunates back on the island had seen, she hoped.

After a few more turns and the cresting of a hill, she saw it--buildings and transformers nestled on the edge of a moderate huddle of downtown buildings. Giddy with expectation, she broke into a run toward the goal of her hours-long quest.

She could already feel its energy.

She tossed her makeshift clothing aside to allow for more freedom of movement, and if a three-meter tiger strolling through town turned a few heads, then one running naked through the streets nearly unscrewed them. Titania paid them no attention at all; the power beckoned.

After a few moments more, she arrived at the perimeter of the plant. A tall metal fence surrounded the facility, certainly meant to keep random citizens from wandering inside easily and causing mischief. It did little to keep out an oversized determined tigress who could climb. It only took a few seconds and a couple of long reaches upward for Titania to get herself up and over the chain-link fence. She dropped to her feet, then sprung back up into a run as her eyes darted to and fro. There were so many choices--where to go?

The closest, of course.

She could feel the air alive with electricity, making her fur stand on end, dancing against her skin. It flowed so thickly that she felt like she might be able to pull it inside herself without even having to touch the humming metal she still hurtled toward, but best to be sure.

Within a few seconds, she'd reached the transformer, and with a frantic grab of orange paws, added a new customer to its circuits. A bright green spark heralded its transition to a transformer of a different sort--one that changed electrical energy into more and more tigress. Titania held on as tightly as she could, feeling the full force of the energy enter her body. The world went green and gradually began to shift downward after she stood upright, as if she were riding an outdoor elevator with an ever-rising view of the city.

It took her a few more moments to realize that she was still growing despite having let go of the transformer. Lighting-bright arcs of green danced from the metal cage and continued to feed her the power she craved. A wicked grin crossed her rising face. This was an improvement. She let the tendrils of energy tickle and coax her taller, stronger, and greater in a wonderfully effortless shower of growth, The satisfaction it brought was a tremendous relief, like finally scratching a maddening, hard-to-reach itch.

But all too soon, it wasn't quite enough. The power flowing into her felt as if it were dwindling already, her growth slowing as she towered twenty meters tall. Shifting her feet, she moved closer to another nearby transformer, grunting as she felt the energy from the additional source find its way into her.

Titania shivered as ripples of verdant sparks buzzed up her legs, around her torso, up to her arms and head. Her size zoomed upward again at a formidable rate, soon passing thirty meters, then forty. Tilting her head back, she gave a roar, sparks dancing between her teeth. Need began to outpace satisfaction again. Breathing heavily, she went to her knees, reaching out with powerful, muscular arms to wrap them around as much of the power plant as she could, encircling a good portion of it in a deliberate, greedy hug of consumption.

And she grew.

Titania's fur became a fireworks display in green, each spark giving the rippling tendrils more real estate to cover and allowing her to reach more and more of the plant. Sixty meters of tigress could pull from most of the equipment, and she did.

Around the city, lights dimmed. Young kids watching their weekly block of cartoons gave whines of frustration as their TVs flickered. Breakfast cooking was interrupted by resetting microwaves. The annoyances brought forth by a malfunctioning electricity grid spurred phone calls to the electric company. Those workers present at the plant, however, let those calls go unanswered. They had a much bigger problem, one of the striped variety, and as they stood watching in perplexed disbelief, their problem grew bigger still.

Eventually one of them had the bright idea to shut it down.

Titania had been pacing herself in spite of her insatiable desire for size; she didn't want a repeat of the island where she took too much too quickly. Instead, she'd simply lost herself in the process, riding the ever-increasing wave of expansion and slowly upping her intake. And while she'd stressed the electrical grid in the meantime, she hadn't disrupted it. Her eyes opened in return to wakefulness, however, as she felt someone ELSE disrupting it. The turbines of the plant slowed, the current faded, the transformation halted.

The tigress growled. Standing to her full eighty-meter height, Titania turned to face the control building, her large paws rattling the fences with each thud. One of those paws kicked against the side of the building hard enough to leave cracks and shattered bricks.

"Turn it back on," she demanded.

Inside the control area, a debate began:

"Should we do it? We didn't even clear this with Silverton P&E...they're gonna get pissed at an unannounced outage."

"Were you watching outside just now? She was getting bigger from the power! Who cares about Silverton!"

"Looks like they've already switched everything over to draw from Ridgemont Nuclear. It'll be all right, nobody'll notice."

"I think they'll notice the very large lady outside."

"Well, yeah, but she's not our problem."

Another large thud from outside indicated otherwise.

"Start up the generators," boomed a voice from outside. "Whatever you're worried about your bosses doing to you, trust me, it's the preferable option. They can only chew you out metaphorically. I can pull the roof off that little box you're in and do it quite literally."

A few moments of silence greeted the giant feline's counterpoint.

"Maybe we'd better turn it back on," said a soft voice.

A quick consensus was reached with urgent nods, and the power up sequence was started. A red warning light flashed shortly afterward. The workers stared at it.

"Oh...looks like we're locked out since they've already shunted the load from Ridgemont in. Uh, we're gonna have to call the main and get them to..."

"CALL THEM," interrupted a chorus of near-panicked voices 

"Okay! Okay!" the dialer said as they scrolled for the number.

As Titania had grown, her patience had not. A large orange-and-white foot rested itself on top of the control building, and as its owner began to put her weight on it, she spoke again.

"Maybe if I press all the buttons in there at once, one of them will work. Turn it back on! 

The large tigress clenched her teeth in frustration; why weren't they giving her what she wanted? She was already quite used to people jumping to comply when she gave an order as an executive, shouldn't it be that much quicker now that she was thirty times their height? A bit more pressure, that's what they needed. She applied said pressure by leaning more heavily on her foot, watching the cracks spread through the brick and concrete. She could feel the fracturing masonry send little tickling twinges through her paw as it began to crumble.

This unexpected sensation of power captivated her, and she fascinated herself by putting more and more weight on the control building, feeling each snap, crackle, and pop of its rapidly deteriorating structure.

A terrified worker's dash out the front door startled her. Her eyes instantly tracked their movement, and her muscles twitched involuntarily as the predatory part of her brain made ready to chase after the escaping worker. As a result, she lost control of the amount of pressure she was putting on the control room.

Crunch.

She fell forward as the roof gave way beneath her gigantic paw, her eyes wide with surprise. She put her arms out quickly to keep her balance, and a colossal thud echoed through the complex as her foot landed inside.

"Damn it! Who said you could...ohhh..."

Another surprise.

Her foot now rested on the wrecked remains of the control building's equipment (and of those who recently ran it). Enough current was still running through the whole mess to give the tigress her most pleasant surprise of the three so far. The unexpected growth was delicious.

She took in a sudden breath as her foot wriggled in the rubble, growing to wreck the weakened structure from the inside with its expansion. Another ten meters taller the tiger towered as the building crumbled and the green sparks showered.

But all too soon the fun ended. Titania's paw finally made enough of a mess of the former control room that the power lines sheared and shorted out, leaving her without any source of energy with which to enlarge herself further. She looked down with a tsk, lifting her foot and shaking it clear of debris.

Afterward, she took in her surroundings from her new perspective. A bright smile denoted her pleasure at the realization she was the biggest thing downtown, save one brightly-lit office building nearby.

Lights. There were lights on. There was still power somewhere.

More power.

She walked toward the lone edifice that still outdid her in the height department, each step sending a booming thud through downtown. As she approached, she saw her distorted image reflected back at her in its windows, a messy, oozing smudge of orange, black, and white. Moving closer still, her reflection began to resemble her true shape more closely. Arms and legs took their proper proportions, and her face put on its proper distinctive mask of stripes. Now just a few meters away, she could see her larger self clearly for the first time.

The view captivated her. She was much bigger, obviously, but her energy absorption ability had worked its magic on her muscles as well. Her thicker limbs had swollen to the level of strength she'd always strived for at the gym but had never been able to achieve. Now it was hers.

Suddenly curious, she leaned in closer still, and her gigantic face stared back at her. Green irises opened as little verdant sparks danced within. An open, joyous smile lit up her face as she confirmed the observation that brought her this close.

She looked younger.

What a wonderful job this energy transference was doing on her, she thought. Size, strength, and youth, all in one fell swoop. It was all she could ask for.

Except for one thing. Her smile faded slowly as she remembered what would happen when she next exerted herself.

Always a catch, she thought, and sighed. As she did, she noticed the host of smaller faces staring back at her from behind the reflective glass. Behind the faces, there were lights. She could feel the energy; the whole building was humming with it.

She smiled again. "Hello," she said, her deep voice vibrating the window panes at such close range. "Thank you all for keeping up with your electric bills, but I fear they're going to be rather high this month." With that, she turned her head and reached around the sides of the building.

As she embraced the tall edifice, she felt the hum of all its circuitry and conduits, air conditioners and elevators, every last bit of flowing power. The hug tightened, and Titania purred blissfully as that power began to flow into her.

Those staring at her face saw it rise.

And rise the tigress did, her ears peeking over the top of the building after a few moments. Her arms rose up along the stories as she loosened her hug enough to allow them the freedom to do so, but they still left behind a trail of broken windows and stressed masonry. Her form soon overpowered the building in other ways; her burgeoning chest did its share of damage beneath the tigress' rising chin and shoulders. Massive twin growing globes of white pressed in windows and rebar like the world's largest and slowest wrecking balls.

And though it was not her intent, the building itself began to collapse from being in dangerous proximity to so much expanding feline. Her hugging presence kept it from falling over outright, but the structural failures compounded until it began to dissolve in her arms. Finally, as she had taken all she could from it, she threw her arms wide, letting it go and watching the pieces rain down in a cataclysmic shower of glass and concrete. The sounds of those remaining inside were quickly buried in the terrible cacophony of the collapse.

With her main rival defeated, the tallest tigress turned and surveyed the city. The dust from the recently-toppled building spread through the streets below and began to rise upward. Her feet disappeared in an ominous fog of that airborne debris.

She heard the first sirens. There weren't very many due to the early hour, but Titania could hear their approaching howls and whoops. She could see the tiny flashes of red and blue make their way through the grid of streets toward her location. She wondered what they thought they were going to do with her.

The blips of red and blue bled out into diffused smears of color as the police cars entered the still-expanding cloud of dust. She watched the lights stop as they reached the edge of the considerable pile of concrete and glass at her feet. She stood, looking down, and waited.

She waited for a minute, then another. Nothing happened. Finally, she broke the silence.

"Are you still down there? Want me to come out with my hands up? I think you'll find that all of me is up."

There was still no response from below, but from elsewhere, more sirens.

Ah, calling for backup, she thought, but as she located the flashing lights of the extra cars, she saw that they were several blocks distant and heading toward the beach from which she came. It didn't make sense. Why would they go there?

Suddenly, she felt her feet tingle. Thinking she'd been shot, she lifted one paw out of the haze. It looked fine. A vibration zipped through her other foot, then a jolt strong enough to be felt through her whole body as the ground shook. She looked at the beach, and her eyes went wide.

That damn dog. Again.

The color drained from the tigress' face as she saw Samantha make her way onto the beach, each step sending huge waves through the sand and into the seaside streets of the city. It was quite obvious she'd grown since Titania last saw her on the island.

She'd grown a lot.

The colossal canine's size was hard to gauge at this distance, but she looked to Titania to be at least twice as tall as she was during their previous wrestling match. Each step she took rattled the tigress' bones, including the teeth she now gritted in frustration 

Samantha saw Titania as well, of course, and she favored the tigress with a toothy smile while pivoting her progress toward her. Titania felt small again, and her previous hatred for Samantha flared anew, keeping fear at bay long enough for her to return a dagger-filled stare 

Samantha seemed to grow in size even as she walked toward downtown, the smaller buildings by the coast giving her an added sense of scale before some of them disappeared beneath her paws. Jealousy jumped fear's place in line in Titania's mind. How could she have grown that much?

"Well, look at that," said Samantha, her voice enough to break the few windows still intact nearby. "Thought I'd lost you in the ocean. Found some juice to grow on, I see. Good!" Her tail wagged, spawning a mighty wind. "I was worried I wouldn't find anything big enough to eat here."

Fear finally had its turn as the super-giantess came too close for comfort. Samantha looked bigger and bigger still as she closed the distance between them, and Titania saw with dismay that she wouldn't even reach the gargantuan dog's knees. Fight or flight? It was no contest.

Titania got control of herself enough to face the larger giantess as she walked backwards quickly. Her feet still fit inside one of the larger avenues that cut through town, and she made her way along. Samantha's progress slowed as she dealt with the larger buildings downtown. Orange and white paws flattened cars while larger tan feet dealt with whole blocks of spiky obstacles. Once she saw that Samantha had slowed sufficiently, Titania turned around and made a break for it, putting one foot in front of the other in a thud-filled escape.

All the denizens of the city were fully awake now--any that had managed to sleep through Titania's ascension were surely pulled into consciousness by the rhythmic counterpoint of each giantess' earthquake-spawning steps. Many of them soon wished to be back in their nightmares.

Titania once again found herself with a dilemma. No doubt this exertion would usher in another round of shrinking. While that would make navigating the cramped city streets easier, it would also make her even more bite-sized to the larger giantess currently in pursuit. But thinking on her feet is what she did best, and she used those still-huge feet to pound the pavement down the wide avenue, leaving a trail of rubble and flattened cars in her wake. Samantha added the avenue's buildings to that rubble as she passed moments later.

Scanning the horizon, a shape on a nearby hill caught Titania‘s eye--a tower with concave sides, like a chess rook without the turret. Her subconscious flagged it as important even before she realized what it was, but once she did, she sped toward it.

It was her key to victory. 

As she moved, her size dwindled slowly, and her additional speed only hastened the rate at which she shrank. Ten meters had disappeared by the time she reached the point where the avenue itself shrank in width to a smaller street, another ten as she reached the hill.

Samantha kept a close watch on the tigress; she didn't want Titania to pull off another disappearing act. She intended to capture her striped quarry and stave off hunger for at least a little while longer. Proper serving sizes were getting very hard to come by at her height.

Titania made it to her goal first, though it cost her another twenty meters in the climb upward. She could feel Samantha's footsteps more strongly, each thud a reminder that the canine was closing in. Still, a sign on the fence gave her hope:

RIDGEMONT NUCLEAR POWER FACILIT 

Titania was still quite large enough to step over the fence without difficulty, and she did so with the usual feline grace, even at this magnified size. Less graceful was her frantic, needy dash to the concrete structure that housed the inner workings of the power plant. There was no time for subtlety or ploy; she needed power quickly. She ignored the transformers this time, as her previous experience showed them to be unreliable. She didn't know much about nuclear reactors, but she knew one thing 

One doesn't simply shut off radiation.

Her level of desperation was such that she grabbed the roof of the control building and tried with all her might to break it. Unable to pull it off outright, she pounded it with her fists. While she made a few cracks, it soon became clear that such a method would take too long.

In the meantime, the giant shepherdess continued her advance, adding to the cracks that Titania started. A few thunderous footfalls later, and the structure caved in as terrified workers fled to take their chances outside 

The tigress' eyes darted around as she looked inside. She saw control panels and tons of wiring and pipes, but she could find nothing resembling a reactor. She'd gone for the most important-looking administrative control building instead of the industrial workhorse she needed. An executive to the last, she thought, and sighed 

The growing impacts of Samantha's paws finally stopped as she reached the area of the reactor. A deep chuckle came from above.

"Oooh, are we smashing buildings? That sounds like fun!" came a thunderous voice, as a Titania-sized paw hovered over the reactor building.

While the giant canine's paw floated over her true goal, Titania experienced one of those rare times where she didn't know what to do. Samantha delighted in watching the tigress freeze up, taking another opportunity to taunt.

"Meant to break into THIS one, didn't you? Too bad! Guess I can give you a hand. Or a foot." With a victorious smile, Samantha put her paw atop the domed structure and placed more and more of her unfathomable weight upon it. Cracks shot through the rounded top as Titania watched with dismay.

Then it gave way. Samantha's paw crushed the building flat, and the impact knocked Titania down to the ground as well. The huge dog chuckled deeply for a moment before an alarmed expression erased her smile. She lifted her foot off the rubble quickly, almost falling over in the process.

Samantha yelped loudly and caught herself before she fell, but her now-tender foot came down hard on the hillside, drawing another yelp of surprise and pain shortly after the first. Her paw felt hot, and she realized for the first time exactly what she'd done.

Something stupid.

The tigress was forgotten momentarily as she tended to her foot. She brought it up as far as she could in her standing position, looking at the pawpads. There was nothing stuck in them, at least, but her paw had definitely been exposed to who knew how much radiation.

Titania jumped back at the huge canine's sudden movement, and upon seeing her tend to her foot, realized what had happened. She looked at the rubble of the containment building, and she saw a faint blue aura emanating from one portion, barely visible in the daylight. That was it; that was what she was after. The big dumb dog had done her a favor by breaking apart the outer shell and leaving her the spoils within. She looked up again at Samantha and noted the look of pain on her face. It hurt someone that size. What would it do to her?

Titania knew her window of opportunity was likely closing as the dog recovered, and she reckoned the pain would make Samantha less playful and more direct once she did. Still, she hesitated. What if she was wrong about her body being able to use radiation as a power source? An even more painful end, most likely. Would it be more painful than being eaten alive by the larger giantess? She shook her head to clear the morbid thoughts and refocused on why she came here. It was right there. She just had to make a break for it. She ran toward the glow.

Samantha favored her uninjured foot as she stood and watched Titania take her chances with the radioactive mess that she'd helped expose. She cursed herself for making such a mistake, hoping that whatever process made her grow might also help repair the damage she'd done herself.

The tigress practically threw herself into the midst of the debris. The ruptured steam generators were venting their vapor, and dodged past them carefully. Focusing on the azure glow, she soon reached the reactor vessel with its exposed core. She felt a familiar tingling.

Samantha felt an urgent need to try out her theory, but she no longer thought a radioactive Titania would serve as a wholesome meal. If the tigress survived the reactor, she'd flatten her via proxy with a building once she was clear of it. If she didn't survive...

Boo hoo.

Titania put her hands on the reactor vessel, hands that to her delight were already expanding across its surface. While not well versed in the inner workings of a nuclear reactor, she no longer had to be. Brute force could carry the day. She began to pry the thing apart

As she grew, so did her strength, and before long, the already-damaged shell of the reactor broke apart completely, its core glowing like a ghostly geode set in metal and concrete. Titania felt the fresh wave of neutrons wash over her, and her body readily absorbed their energy. She almost dropped the core casing in surprise, such was the surge of growth. This was so much better than electricity! Her swelling body drank in all the energy the fractured reactor provided, converting it not to steam but to more striped cat.

Twice as much tigress. Thrice.

Samantha saw her small adversary become quite less so in a matter of moments, and she took a step back on her injured foot. The pain caused only a momentary wince as the shepherdess beheld the fiery orange tigress rising out of the debris of the containment building.

Titania could soon hold the reactor vessel in one hand, and still she grew...and grew. Here it was, a practically limitless source of power for her to latch onto, one that couldn't be taken away, one that would finally take her to the heights that she wished to reach! She continued to rise with frightening speed, and upon finally looking up at her taller foe, she saw that she was already half Samantha's height. Her gigantic hand now held the reactor core in its palm. She wrapped her fingers around it tightly in a desperate grip.

And grew.

A gigantic smile fit for a skyscraper-sized tiger lit up Titania's face as she continued to rise upward. In a few moments, she thought, she'd finally outgrow her underling's troublesome doppelganger. The look on Samantha's face told her that the canine thought the same.

For her part, Samantha finally realized that she'd made an error in allowing Titania to gain access to the power plant's core. She hadn't considered that things could go so wrong so quickly, but what to do about it now was the critical question. She was growing so damn fast. But so nonplussed was Samantha at her opponent's spectacular display of empowerment that she simply watched the inevitable. A striped face with its mad grin rose up to fill more and more of her view, and all too soon, she didn't have to look down to see it anymore.

Titania relished the sight of the giant shepherd seeming to shrink before her eyes, along with the landscape far below. A glance downward showed her orange paws covering more and more of the real estate formerly occupied by the power plant and sinking slightly into the ground. Her feet eclipsed Samantha's after a few more seconds, and as the giant tigress turned her attention upward, she noted with glee that her vantage point now required her to look down at her rival as well.

The cat that ate the canary had nothing on the one that outgrew the canine.

She was nowhere near done growing, of course, but there was something that needed doing before she could continue. Making a fist around the reactor vessel, she took a deep breath and brought her arm around in an arc, delivering a powerful right hook to Samantha's jaw.

Crunch.

Titania watched with intense satisfaction and a fresh round of euphoria as Samantha went down to the ground. The dog seemed to shrink even as she fell--had she managed to knock some of the size out of her? A glance at her fist gave answers. It was glowing.

And she was growing.

The blow had caused Titania's fingers and palm to squeeze what was left of the reactor into a smaller space, and that meant more reactivity, which in turn meant more tigress. And more. And more. She could feel how much warmer it was, how much more power it was giving her now. And with a booming roar of triumph, she knew her victory was assured. Not only had she given her rival a headshot dose of radiation, she'd found a way to turn up her own personal growth device.

Now it was time to enjoy the ride, the deliciously overwhelming feeling of becoming. The surge of power was intoxicating in the extreme. It was almost too much even for Titania's growing body to process, and her mind reeled at the sensation of empowerment. Now over a kilometer tall, she could see the whole city and surrounding area. It was all getting smaller.

Taller she grew, but also stronger. Her body routed a good portion of the incoming power into her muscles, using them as storage to keep from being overwhelmed. No one would ever have described her as lithe, even before all this madness, but now she was downright brawny.

Stripes ebbed and flowed as her pelt stretched to contain more tigress, more muscle, more power. Titanic paws below covered multiple city blocks, themselves flowing over buildings, streets, cars, and those that found themselves too close to the rising goddess' birthplace.

One of those was Samantha, who had finally recovered enough to stand. She had difficulty staying on her feet due to the blow and due to the fact that she'd taken another dose of radiation to the head, courtesy of the still-growing tigress. Weakly, she stepped away from danger. She didn't feel well at all; her jaw throbbed from being hit, and there was a metallic taste in her mouth. A burning sickness was already festering in her head, and as she looked up at Titania's glowing fist, she realized what the tiger had done to her.

Time was running out. Her thoughts were foggy and disjointed, keeping her from forming any sort of plan. The pain and distress awoke her baser self, however, and that version of her took charge, pursuing what had always worked in the past, the thing that had always brought satisfaction.

Food.

Titania was still the only food source likely to help in her rehabilitation, but the once bite-sized tigress was now much more than a mouthful. Samantha's reduced faculties didn't consider that an insurmountable problem, however. On the contrary, there was more of her to eat.

Her recent trepidation erased by the primal urge to feed, Samantha stepped toward her quarry, steadied herself as best she could, and jumped up onto Titania's thigh. With a snarl, she reared her head back slightly and sank her teeth into the firm muscle in a snake-like strike.

Titania was roused from her rapturous growth by a sharp pain. Looking down quickly, she saw the small canine latched onto her leg, tearing into her flesh like an overenthusiastic pup on its first kill. It would have been amusing if it didn't hurt like hell. A large, orange hand wrapped itself around Samantha, lifting her up and away from Titania's leg. Though her effort was valiant, the canine was comparatively too small and weak to come away with much more than a mouthful of fur and skin for all her trouble.

The hand squeezed.

Samantha found herself rising up at a dizzying speed, her fingerprison still growing around her as Titania neared two kilometers in height. A striped, green-eyed face greeted her at the end of her ride with a deep chuckle.

"You're on the wrong end of the food chain this time, Doctor. I seem to have developed a taste for scientists of late, eh? I'm not sure you completely qualify, but since your even smaller self isn't around, you'll have to do." A deep chuckle rattled Samantha's bones. "Speaking of even smaller, maybe YOU'D like to be bite-sized for once." Favoring her victim with an extra-wide grin, Titania held up her other fist so Samantha could see.

Samantha's eyes were beginning to fail her, but she could hardly avoid looking into the visage of her adversary. She saw the desperately triumphant look on Titania's face, the madness of unchecked power in her eyes. She'd felt that madness herself, but it had long since died. As Titania brought her other prize up for Samantha to see, the shepherd knew she'd lost. She had no doubt the tigress would make good on her threat to consume her whole, but she was far too tired, weak, and sick to continue. She braced herself for the upcoming surge of strength and size that the tigress was about to bestow upon herself; maybe she'd get crushed instantly and not have to worry about the rest.

"Let me finally show you what big is," Titania whispered, and then she squeezed the reactor's remains until they both heard the muffled crunch 

For a moment the world was nothing but light. The reactor core became too compressed too quickly, and more and more neutrons shot out to split more and more atoms, which in turn shot out still more neutrons. Titania had unwittingly created a low-yield nuclear fission bomb in her hand, and her last squeeze had set it off. Thus began a very short race between her energy absorption ability and the flash of supercriticality, each trying to consume the other in its quest for expansion. In the split second that followed, Titania and the light merged into a feline-shaped sun, which began to grow. If her grip had been a bit less enthusiastic, or if she'd been perhaps a few hundred meters taller, her empowered form might still have been able to process the overpowering amount of energy. Who knows how much more she could have been.

As it was, the race ended in a tie.

The tiger-sun burned big and bright in the midst of downtown for the briefest of moments, forged its image onto the retinas of those bearing witness for hours afterward. Having become the explosion she was absorbing, she promptly collapsed into nothingness, a star extinguished. Air rushed in to fill the recently-vacated space, drawing winds through the decimated streets. Though thoroughly ravaged by the two giantesses, Titania's final act had paradoxically saved the city from further destruction.

Parades in her honor, however, were not forthcoming. The only parades were those of the city dwellers cautiously emerging from their hiding places in the eerie quiet, searching for those still trapped, starting the process of reclaiming their home from destruction.

-----

Far away, Samantha sat bolt upright in bed, screaming as she felt the infernal heat of Hell itself wash over her 

She frantically threw off the covers and patted herself down, trying to quench the flames that burned alive in her...dream? Her hands dropped back down into her lap as she looked around. She was not being held prisoner in a large tiger's paw. She was in a hospital bed.

She struggled to think through the disorientation brought on by her unexpected surroundings and frighteningly realistic dream. She didn't remember this place she found herself in; how did she get here? Her breath finally began to slow as she thought. She had been on an island. She had gone there with Ms. Thakore and...

Her eyes widened as she began to remember. She had gone to help watch over her larger self, but Ms. Thakore figured out how to use the portals to enlarge herself somehow, and she'd tried to stop her by tranquilizing herself.

She'd attempted to pass along the information about what Ms. Thakore could do to her larger self. What if her larger self had passed information back to her? Perhaps what she just woke up from wasn't simply a dream, but a replay of her larger self's last conscious moments. If so, their content was troubling, to say the least. She tried to remember more of the dream, but it was hard to push past the intense sensations of fire, pressure, and pain.

Suddenly, an image jumped out at her. It was Ms. Thakore, filling the sky, reaching down for her.

Samantha shuffled back against the wall behind the bed, eyes wide, heart once again racing. If that really happened to her twin, then the tigress had gotten her wish. Was she still out there, growing ever larger?

A knock at the door gave Samantha her third fright of the day.

A fresh wave of disorientation hit her as she again realized she didn't know where she was. It looked she was in a like a hospital room, but she didn't feel any injuries. Still, she decided to call out "come in" in response to the knock instead of chancing a journey to the door.

She watched the door open with considerable apprehension, but she relaxed slightly when the sole visitor revealed himself to be a well-dressed, smiling wolf in a suit and tie. His smile faded when he saw Samantha's balled-up position in bed, her back still against the wall.

"Hello, Dr. Shepherd! Is, uh, this a bad time?" he asked, pausing at the door frame.

Samantha relaxed and changed position enough to appear less frightened. It was almost certainly a bad time, she thought, but she needed to know exactly how bad, and perhaps her visitor knew.

"It's fine," she said. "I was just...having something of a nightmare."

The wolf nodded sympathetically as he stepped into the room. "That's not surprising, considering what you've been through." He smiled again and continued toward Samantha, extending a hand in greeting.

"I'm Alan MacIntire," the wolf said, taking Samantha's hand for a moment. "Please call me Alan. It's very nice to meet you and see you awake and well, Dr. Shepherd! Everything is going well with you, doctor, nightmares aside?"

"I'm not sure," said Samantha. "Where am I?"

The wolf's gaze did not match his outgoing demeanor, and the pause before his answer was brief but notable.

"A safe place away from all the craziness, I assure you. We got you off that island."

Samantha didn't look particularly assured. "That just tells me where I'm not."

The wolf gave a chuckle in response. "Fair enough, doctor. You're in a hospital situated on a military base that I am not sure they want me to tell you the name of just yet. Forgive the secrecy, but we are not entirely sure of your level of involvement in recent events. I am here to change that, hopefully. I am with Bartok myself, serving as a liaison between the company and our current hosts. I believe you knew my predecessor, one Briony Thakore? Ah, that look says it all. Quite the big shoes to fill, I know, but I'll do my best."

Mr. MacIntire paused for a moment for effect, chuckling softly at Samantha's even expression. "Maybe not the time for jokes. In any case, considering what's happened, an exchange of information is in order. We need to know what happened with you and our oversized co-worker." Samantha considered the wolf's words. The need for information that they conveyed didn't sit well with her. It felt like the night her other self had first escaped from her home; the questions had come then, too. The stakes were even bigger now, and she felt vulnerable.

As the voices of doubt and fear spoke in her head, another added its say to the discussion. You did nothing wrong, it said. You tried to stop it all. You have nothing to hide. Tell them what they want to know, for all the good it will do them now. You want them to trust you. Samantha considered this new input, then decided to follow its advice.

"All right," she said. "I'll answer your questions, but I also want to know what happened after I...passed out."

"Fair enough!" the wolf said, his original smile returning in full. "Wasn't that easy?"

Samantha adjusted her position on the bed so that her legs dangled over the side closest to the hospital room door. It felt good to move them after lying down for so long.

"So how do we do this? I tell you what happened, and you send it along to whoever's in charge here?"

The wolf shook his head. "No, they want to hear this all directly from you. It'll be a hearing of sorts. Since you've indicated you're willing to participate, we can get it set up right away, quite possibly as soon as tomorrow. You'll have a bit of time to gather your thoughts."

Samantha's eyes went wide. "A hearing? Whoa, wait a minute, this sounds more serious than just an explanation. Do I need a lawyer for this?"

The wolf gave a sympathetic smile. "Things have progressed well out of the domain of lawyers, Dr. Shepherd. Just be ready."

As predicted, the hearing began the next day. News of the nuclear incident had spread all over the internet and broadcast media, and Samantha watched in horror as some of the footage was shown before her questioning. At least her other wasn't the sole star of the show this time. And then the questions began. She told her story once more, how she'd accidentally started herself growing, then accidentally split herself in two, then accidentally unleashed that second version of herself upon the world.

She talked about how Ms. Thakore took charge of it all. She stressed how, from that point onward, she was trying to stay close to the project so that she could stop it if needed. She spoke of her suspicions regarding Ms. Thakore's intentions, how she went to confront her, and how things went crazy.

She only left out one detail. Samantha declined to mention the fact that she and her larger self were never conscious at the same time. She had long since dismissed it as mere coincidence, and she was still afraid of what it implied, even more so after learning of the previous day's catastrophe. She hoped it would go unnoticed, or at least unremarked upon while she was being questioned.

It did not.

"Tell me, Dr. Shepherd," said one of the panel, a fox with a piercing, thoughtful gaze that Samantha found hard to meet. "Were you ever able to...speak with your double?"

Samantha's heart sped up. It was an innocent enough question, but she feared the next ones her answer would surely lead to. "No," she answered simply.

"Not once, in all the time you spent together?" asked the fox.

"No," she said again.

"Really..." mused the fox. "Why?"

She chose her words carefully. "One side effect of being split into two seemed to be that only one of us could be conscious at any one time. It's how she got away from me in the first place. I sat there waiting for her to wake up, and when I dozed off, she made her escape."

The fox nodded. "So only one of you could be up and moving around, and the other slept. Intriguing. Did you share a consciousness? 

Samantha made herself pause before asking for clarification. "What exactly do you mean by that?"

"Do you have memories of what she did?"

She shook her head. "No. I only discovered what she'd done when I watched the news later on, like the start of the session today." But that was a convenient, misleading statement, wasn't it? She had tried to pass herself information mentally.

And there were the dreams.

The fox continued. "You realize our problem, Dr. Shepherd. This double of yours, she was your twin, and she was responsible for the destruction of two cities and a research base. Who knows how many lives met their end because of her. She's gone, but you remain. At the very least, you created her. At worst, based on what you've just told us, you and she shared a consciousness, perhaps even a will, and--if I can wax metaphysical for a moment--a soul. We need to know the depth of your responsibility for this."

Samantha could feel her throat beginning to close up, her chest tightening. She didn't know what to say, how to deny that her larger self was just a big disguise for her own ego. Even she had her doubts that she was innocent.

A familiar voice spoke. "Stop it."

It was the same voice from yesterday, the one that reassured her she had nothing to fear from attending the very hearing she was about to have a breakdown during.

"Get yourself under control. They want a scapegoat. Don't give them any reason to think they've found one. You're worried you are responsible for everything that happened? That's survivor's guilt talking. Stick to the facts. You literally slept through everything they're hinting at accusing you of. That's what you tell them, and let them try to prove anything to the contrary."

The voice was right, Samantha realized, and she took its advice, calming herself before speaking slowl 

"She wasn't my twin. Our DNA was different thanks to the telepod AI's tinkering. I was trying to KEEP myself from growing bigger, not find a way to accelerate it. My mistake was in trying to fix it myself instead of seeking help, but given what's happened over the last couple of weeks, I think I would have been the one being studied and poked and prodded instead of my larger self. Still, I'd have done it if I saw all this coming. Having my life's work and greatest achievement corrupted and then stolen while spending half my time asleep has left me feeling helpless to a degree that I find hard to put into words. All the damage done and lives lost will now be forever linked with my name."

A few tears trailed down her cheeks as she paused briefly. "That's not the legacy I wanted. So no, I did not do all those things willingly through...her. I don't know how else you want me to say it, but they were not my choices. They were hers, and they caught up with her."

There was silence for a few moments after Samantha finished her speech. Eventually, the panel quietly said that they had no more questions for her, and she was excused from the chamber. As she left, Alan MacIntire gave her an encouraging smile. She declined to return it.

After she left the room, she searched for the nearest bathroom, then sat down and had a good cry, letting out all the emotional and mental tension that had been building up the past few weeks. She hardly felt good, but she did feel better after getting it all out. And now that she had done so in a private place, she could think more clearly about what she'd said. Her newly-discovered voice of reason had pointed her in the right direction, and the words had just come out. They were all true; she felt it in her heart.

But truth has levels.

More fragments of memory from her other were manifesting themselves. She stumbled across them like strange new pieces of furniture in the living room of her mind, pieces that insisted they'd always been there despite belonging to another. Those memories spoke another truth.

That truth spoke of biological hunger that grew into a psychological need, a desire to grow herself. It spoke of access to a power that no creature before (and only one since) had known, and it affirmed that partaking of it had been, at least briefly, the greatest bliss. That truth horrified Samantha because of what it led to, but the memories continued to insist on preaching its wonder. It slowly dawned on her that these memories were hers now, and that she might be hearing their siren song of rapturous growth for quite some time to come.

She tried not to think about them for now; it would be better to get herself composed and get out of this place, hopefully for good. As she left the bathroom, Mr. MacIntire was waiting for her.

"Well done in there," he said. "You definitely gave them something to consider. 

Samantha nodded briefly. "Thanks. What happens now? How long does this go on?"

The wolf considered for a moment. "Hard to say. I think they thought that all the blame would fall at your feet for this, but your testimony most likely threw a wrench into that plan, if so. Your part in it could end today, or they could decide to try again with a new angle tomorrow. I really don't know. Sadly, they're in charge full force now that they've seen what a wait-and-see attitude got them." He smiled. "You've earned a rest for now, though."

Later that evening, Samantha was taken to one of the barracks on the base and provided with a room. It wasn't much more cozy than her hospital room had been, but at least it was quieter. There didn't seem to be many other people about, and so she had some time to herself.

A new memory had planted itself in her mind; she was leaning hugely over the meat counter in a supermarket while a frightened butcher served her. The sheer absurdity of it drew a tired chuckle from her. She could feel sleep calling, but she resisted as long as she could.

She'd first noticed the new memories in her mind after she woke up at the start of the day. She wondered if they were being put there while she was asleep; perhaps some remnant of her other self created them as she dreamed.

Or perhaps it was something a bit more concerning.

She kept coming back to the fact that only one version of her could be conscious at once. She had thought it must be something like a quantum pairing effect where each Samantha had to have an opposite "spin" of consciousness--one awake, one asleep. Separate, but linked. These memories, though--they should have disappeared when her larger self was consumed in the blast. They were still coming, and that forced her to acknowledge the idea she'd been resisting.

What if she really had been jumping back and forth between bodies all this time?

It made more sense the more she thought about it. The telepod split her in two physically, but what if it had less of an idea how to do so metaphysically? What if its solution was to somehow create this flip-flop consciousness? That idea messed with her sense of self. She wanted to believe that had she been unable to stop her runaway growth in the first place, she wouldn't have leaned into it like her larger self had in the end. She thought she would have accepted it as her fate if it came to that, but she wouldn't have craved more.

The reality, however, was that she could feel her curiosity rising. Some of the memories that had made their way into her head so far were quite tantalizing--the euphoric rush of growth, the feeling of being bigger than everything around her. She could see the attraction.

That worried her. After everything that happened, it also disgusted her. If the lack of an ability to empower herself was all that was keeping her from becoming another monster, what did that really say about her? No, she was better than that, surely.

Wasn't she?

The hour grew late, and her circular reasoning had worn her out to the point where she didn't want to think about it anymore. It really didn't matter what she was capable of in a different body, she finally concluded, as she now only had the one. It was strangely comforting, and with that comfort finally came sleep. As she drifted off, she spared the quandary once last thought, wondering what else she'd find in her mind tomorrow that was both hers and not hers.

And then, just like that, she was towering over a familiar-looking city once more.

She was her giant self once again, stepping heavily on the buildings below. A twinge of panic gripped her in the few moments before she realized it was just a dream, that she was still herself. With that revelation, she stopped and looked around.

So this was what it was like.

The city was the one where her double met her fate, of course, and her attention was soon captured by a tall structure with mirror-like windows downtown. She made for it, stepping gingerly despite knowing she was dreaming

Upon seeing her reflection, she stopped cold. A smiling figure looked back at her with a face she had thought she'd never see again. The body reflected back at her was also not her own, its orange and white pelt peppered with stripes. She closed her eyes for a moment before opening them again, but the image remained.

Her false feline reflection said nothing at first; she simply continued to smile for a moment, then gave a wink before reaching her arms to the sky, a pose Samantha was forced to mimic.

"Biggerrrrr..." said the reflection, her voice trailing off in an echoing purr. 

And they both grew.

The feeling of expanding, of becoming, was intense. She saw her feline reflection match her growth in the mirrored windows for a few seconds, and then she was too far up to see more than a pair of orange legs, and finally, a titanic foot.

She kept going. Bigger. Bigger.

She could see for miles as her head pushed up through what clouds there were, and she looked around quickly to take it all in. The euphoric sensation of being infused with such energy, such SIZE--she wondered if that's how it felt for her larger self.

She didn't want it to stop.

And it didn't. She rose taller still, her feet covering the entire city below, her head up so high that she could see the horizon bending at the edges as it curved away. She was by far the biggest thing she could see, dwarfing even the mightiest mountains, and still she grew. The horizon's curve grew more and more pronounced, and when she next looked down, she was standing on a large blue sphere. She gasped as a wave of vertigo hit her, and just as she thought she somehow might fall off the world, everything went black.

She woke up in a panic.

It took her a few moments to get her bearings, but the reality of the barracks soon asserted itself, and she breathed a calming sigh of relief. What a dream! She relived it once again, trying to commit it to memory while it was still fresh in her mind.

As she did, she smiled.

 -----

Mr. MacIntire came to visit later in the day. He informed her that while she was cleared of any wrongdoing, she was expected to return to work on the now highly classified teleportation project.

"They have everything that's left," he said. "They need you to put it together."

She balked at the idea at first, but what she had come to think of as the voice of rescue spoke up in her mind again. "This was your life's work, how can you leave it unfinished? You know what went wrong before; this time you can improve. Just make sure they pay you well."

Samantha thought; she did want to see her magnum opus fulfill its promise. She agreed to Mr. MacIntire's proposal, and a very happy wolf went off to make the arrangements.

She was eager to start again...until she saw the large team of engineers she was in charge of. She'd never been a manager before, and the beginning was rough. Then the voice came to her rescue once more, guiding her through the ins and outs of being in charge and getting people to do what she needed them to do. Over time, she earned their respect.

She was happy.

Days became weeks, then months. Samantha put in a lot of long hours with her team and on her own perfecting the system, and after many successful trials and tests with objects and lab animals, again the time came to see if it could transport a person. Samantha volunteered.

Her bosses didn't like the idea, but Samantha was quite persuasive and insistent. She'd done it all before, after all, and she knew the risks better than anyone. Reluctantly, they agreed. A date was set, and preparations for the momentous event were put in motion.

And on the appointed day, bosses and team assembled to watch Dr. Shepherd enter the telepod once more. She told them she would save her speech for when she'd successfully made it to the other side.

"Don't worry! I'll have a lot to say in celebration," she said with a smile.

She gave a wave as she stepped into the telepod, and the small crowd cheered. The technician in charge of securing the door behind her wished her good luck, and then perked his ears, tilting his head in confusion for a moment.

He'd never heard a dog purr like that before.