FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Rodney winced, even as his head bumped against the ceiling of the apartment below. The leopard's head caused Cooper's floor to bend and rise, the bookshelf wobbling for a moment before falling through the huge hole in the middle of his living room. A surprised mrowl shook the entire building.

It would have been funny if they weren't in so much trouble. Cooper sighed, hunching down to clamber down to the first floor. "Sorry about that, mate. I'm just completely out of my gourd with worry. Let me get out of here, and then we'll figure out what we're going to do."

"OK." Rodney's quiet reply rumbled through the room. Rodney found there really wasn't much room that wasn't taken up by the leopard, so he gingerly stepped on his arm and quickly shuffled off. He could feel his height rising with alarming speed; when he tried to rise from bending over double he bashed right through the small portion of ceiling that was left. It sent a small avalanche of furniture down on his friend.

"Ow! Geez. Sorry, mate. Guess I can't get out of here without bashing up the place either." He looked over his shoulder towards the leopard, who was towering even on his side. He tried to ignore the fact that Rodney was sporting an erection that was as big as a couch and growing larger all the time. He also tried to ignore that his sheath was fit to burst itself. Despite their predicament, he had to admit that the rising, impossible level of power felt incredibly good.

"It's all right. Don't you think we should? I mean, get out of here. I...don't think this is going to stop any time soon, and if we wait any more we're just going to take down the whole building." The cat's voice shook the whole apartment; Cooper could hear people racing out of the apartment now and pooling out on the street, wondering what the hell was going on.

"We might take down the building anyway! It's an old one, and I have no idea how well it'd stand up with a whole wall busted out." The kangaroo squirmed uncomfortably as he grew through the hole in his floor and back into his apartment. "It's a bit cramped, though. I think we might try and go for it."

Rodney's eyes were narrowing as he felt the haze of arousal washing over him completely. Before he even realized what he was doing, he wrapped one paw around his erection and stroked it once from root to tip. There was an electric tingle that raced up his spine, and he felt his body surge with growth. He mrowled as his head slammed through the wall of the apartment and into the narrow hallway beyond. His footpaw punched into the outer wall on the opposite end, no doubt putting a dent in the brickwork outside. "Yeah. You first. I...think I need a moment."

He opened his eyes to see Cooper turn his head quickly; he thought he saw the kangaroo's own shaft pulsing out of its overburdened sheath, and his purr deepened. How could he not be aroused after all this expansion? They were bigger and stronger than anyone who had ever lived, and they weren't stopping. By the time Dr. Fossle was able to mobilize any kind of response team, it would be too late; they'd be far too big to be kept a secret.

He briefly thought about finding more energy, through telephone wires or power stations. Then he heard Cooper grunt and smash through the outside wall as if it were foam. There was a collective gasp from the crowd outside as the kangaroo appeared, filling the hole he had just created with his bulk and then outgrowing it in the span of a few heartbeats. The sight was, in a word, delicious.

Rodney groaned and twisted onto his back. He felt his head slam through a few more walls, and his footpaws stretch out into the street outside. The building visibly shuddered and the walls around him cracked as the whole structure began to list, but he didn't care. His shaft pushed against the hole above him, and he watched it grow towards Cooper's ceiling. He was so big. He was so horny.

"Rodney, you'd better get out here!" The kangaroo's voice thundered, shaking the room so much that more cracks ribboned through the apartment. He was suddenly aware of where he was and what he was doing, jacking off in the ruins of his best friend's apartment. The bolt of clarity instantly shamed him; what the hell had gotten into him? He had ruined multiple lives tonight, and as far as he knew there was no way back from here.

"Sorry," he said, his voice a klaxon that rung the building like a bell. He squirmed and the entire world pitched around him. It was clear that the old apartment building wasn't going to take much more of this. He winced to himself, silently. All of these people were going to be out of a home, and it was all his fault.

There wasn't a place he could move without causing further damage. When he tried to turn to his side, his shoulder carved a hole out of the staircase in the hallway and most of the ceiling around it. He thought he could feel the top of the third floor before he turned onto his stomach and tried to worm his way out that way.

It took him several minutes before he was out of the building, and it was a minor miracle he didn't take the whole thing down. Even still, it was in bad shape. He rose to his feet, astonished to realize that he towered over the roof fifty feet above the street and his vantage point was still rising.

He looked towards Cooper and was shocked to see that the kangaroo was even larger than he was. He was big enough that his footpaws covered the street and the sidewalks on either side, his massive thighs brushing against the fronts of the buildings as he threatened to grow too wide for the narrow little side street he found himself wedged in. He grunted as he tried to move, every small squirm scraping brick and glass off buildings, sending a shock of growth that made the situation even worse.

Rodney felt awful. He looked up at his towering friend, felt the blood rushing to his shaft despite his predicament, almost heard his arousal whispering to him that he

should just fuck the wreckage of the apartment. This had gone way beyond what he had wanted. This was starting to get scary.

"I'm so sorry, Coop. I..." The leopard paused as he noticed movement off the roof of one of the buildings behind the kangaroo. He squinted, just able to make out a tiny figure carrying a very big tube. It knelt, shouldered the tube, and jerked; something flew at him, smacking him right between the eyes before he knew what was happening.

The world tilted, buildings giving way to sky. He felt his shoulders hitting the ground and then digging through the asphalt until he felt the road brushing against his cheeks. Cooper's booming voice sounded far away, light almost.

Unconsciousness was coming, and it was welcome. Maybe now he would be able to get rid of that damned hard-on.

* * *

Rodney woke with a start inside of a huge white room. He felt the floor and walls shake when he moved, and he felt even heavier and stronger than he did when he got hit with...whatever it was he was hit with.

He tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. His head felt like it was going to split open with pain, and he held his forehead in his hands before slowly sinking back down into a prone position. His groan was a rumble that the walls echoed. It was almost as if the room was moaning in sympathy for him.

"Good morning, Rodney." The voice that greeted him seem to come from everywhere. The leopard startled and looked around. There weren't any visible speakers, no windows or doors or even cameras. As far as he could tell, he was alone in an air-tight room.

"Uhm...good morning?" It felt strange, his muzzle moving, his voice rumbling in his chest. The sound of it was deep and heavy, a low thundering sound that didn't belong to him at all. "Where am I?"

"You're in a compound where hopefully we can keep you safe until we figure things out." The voice sounded calm, assured, and a little amused. Rodney would have guessed it to be an older male. "We need to keep you inside of that room just as a precaution."

"A precaution for what?" Rodney felt his heart thumping inside of his chest. He was definitely awake now. "I'm not dangerous. I'm not going to hurt anybody."

"Not intentionally, no. But the nano-machines in your bloodstream have not been doing what we've programmed them to do. And that's greatly concerning. We need to make sure we don't give them any further stimuli until we can determine what they're doing and how they're doing it. Once they've been disabled, then we can discuss what to do with you." The voice said all this as casually as one would talk about tailoring a shirt or finicking with a particularly troublesome mixed drink. But this was his life

that this stranger was talking about; something that was inside him, malfunctioning in ways they didn't even know about yet.

A pit formed in the leopard's stomach, and he curled up on himself as much as his new musculature would allow. "Oh God. What...what the hell is going on? Who are you people?"

"It's all right, Rodney. Please, don't be alarmed. I understand that this is a situation you hadn't planned on, but trust me. We're taking every step we can think of to resolve this as quickly and painlessly as possible. But it's a complicated problem. I'm afraid you're going to be here for a while. My name is Dr. Edmund Fossle. This is my experiment. I'm...sorry that it didn't go exactly as planned." That last sentence was delivered with a note that Rodney couldn't quite place. Was it sympathy, or something else?

"Dr. Fossle?" Rodney felt his nervousness ease. At least someone knew what was going on. And if he was in charge of seeing this through, then he hadn't gotten in too much trouble. "It's...all right. I'm sorry things got so fucked up."

The doctor chuckled. "There should have been further safeguards in place to make sure that what happened could never happen. If there's anyone who should take the blame for screwing things up, it should be me."

"Where's Cooper?"

"Cooper is in another room much like your own, but I'm afraid you can't see him just yet. I...have no idea if the nano-machines will react to another colony in close proximity, and his particular growth case has taken on some...unusual properties."

Rodney flicked an ear. "What do you mean?"

"All in good time. First, we'll need to take some diagnostics of you - basic measurements, blood samples, that sort of thing. I imagine you must be starving by now, so the quicker we can get the basic stuff out of the way, the quicker we can get you some food."

Rodney considered this. He wasn't sure if it was nerves or the nanites or something else, but the last thing he wanted to do was eat. "Actually, I'm not hungry."

"No?" Dr. Fossle sounded surprised. "Well, once we've finished the tests and you've calmed down some we'll revisit that. Now, if you could just lie down please..."

The measurements didn't take a whole lot of time - Rodney just had to lie still while they were being taken. He was, according to the doctor, 125 feet tall at present and over 1,050 tons in weight. The numbers blew his mind; he didn't think something that size should even be able to exist. Dr. Fossle agreed, and said that the nanites were obviously helping with that - but exactly how would need to be determined later.

Later came and later went. More tests were done, but answers weren't coming. Rodney had a long chat with Dr. Fossle about what was happening, and the scientist admitted that there was still so much they didn't know. When Rodney asked how long he could expect to be trapped in a featureless white room, the doctor got quite vague. The

leopard could tell that he was being treated with kid gloves, which he simultaneously appreciated and resented. He didn't know if he could handle the truth, which was that he was likely to be there for a very, very long time.

He didn't know how to feel about that, but what choice did he have in the matter? This was something he brought on himself (probably); if only he hadn't tried to get that second hit, chances are none of this would have happened. But then again, wasn't Cooper having trouble with the thing before? Hadn't there been some kind of issue where the Conversion Apparatus wouldn't turn off? What if the thing was faulty to begin with, and it had only been a matter of time until it malfunctioned anyway?

Rodney fell asleep and woke up four or five times before he decided that this was quite enough isolation for him to take. Food was waiting for him every time he woke up, and the doctor boomed through the room's invisible speakers for about an hour at a time to tell him how things were going in maddeningly vague terms. The other man was a master at dodging pointed questions and turning the conversation into something jovial but ultimately inconsequential. There were too many questions that weren't being answered, and he had been cooped up inside the room for far too long.

How on Earth could he get out, though? He had plenty of time to think about it; it only took him a little while to come up with an idea that he thought just might work.

"Do you think you might be able to turn out the lights when I'm ready to sleep one of these days?" Rodney knew that he was coming to the end of his time with Dr. Fossle; he had waited for just this moment to lob the question.

"Mmm, I don't see why not. Why, are you beginning to suffer from light sensitivity?"

"What do you mean beginning? It's really tough to sleep in a room full of fluorescent lighting." Rodney settled down in a corner of the room on his haunched, curling his tail around his paws. The room wasn't cold, and his thick fur would have kept him insulated from the temperature even if it were. But for some reason, taking up as little space as possible gave him some small measure of comfort.

"It just never seemed to bother you before." The doctor had this way of phrasing a statement like a question, encouraging you to elaborate on something he found interesting.

"It has; I haven't been sleeping well and I guess it's just now catching up to me. You must have noticed how cranky I'm getting." Rodney flicked his ears and forced a smile.

"Well...yes, but I only assumed it was a natural response to the situation. Nobody would handle this situation very well."

The answer caught Rodney off-guard. It was the closest that Dr. Fossle had come to acknowledging how much this sucked. "There's that too."

"I know. Thank you for being so patient, Mr. <Tibetan Name>. Your cooperation is really appreciated. I think we can definitely turn down the lights for you. Are you ready to sleep now?"

Rodney nodded, trusting that the doctor would be able to see the silent gesture.

"All right then," the voice buzzed through the room. There was a muffled beep from somewhere, and just like that the walls, floor and ceiling grew dimmer. For a brief second, Rodney was able to see exactly where the corners of the room were. It took a long time for his eyes to adjust; after what felt like a week of constant bright light, the twilight in which he found himself felt as good as pitch black.

"Thank you," Rodney said. He was shocked at the rapidity with which sleep came to him, and the panic that welled up inside of him kept him from closing his eyes right then and there. In order for this plan to work, he would need to stay awake.

"You're welcome," Dr. Fossle replied, with something approaching affection. "Good night."

Rodney settled down, feeling his tonnage relax and soften. He willed himself to take slow, deep breaths, to close his eyes, to pretend he was resting. To make sure he remained only pretending, he outlined the plan in his head over and over. In a facility like this one, chances are there would be absolutely no room for error.

The chance he had been waiting for came some time later. He was slowly and steadily losing the fight against sleep, reduced to focusing on tensing one part of his body at a time, when he heard another quiet beep. One ear swiveled towards it, and he heard the quiet woosh of air moving suddenly. He wanted to open an eye, but he didn't dare give away that he was awake yet. His eye would catch what little light there was and reflect it, and that would be that.

A rush of cool, fresh air ruffled his fur, and that alone was enough to make sure he was alert. The door was open at last, and he was awake to take advantage of it. This was his shot.

"Any idea when they're going to be done with this experiment?" An unfamiliar voice spoke quietly as someone entered the room, but not quietly enough. It was male, he guessed, but couldn't tell much else.

"No idea." This voice was feminine, with a clipped and punchy manner with her words. "Hope it's soon though. I'm tired of hauling all this shit around four times a day."

"You and me both. But I guess they're keeping these guys alive longer than usual for a reason. Maybe they're finally on to something."

"Pfeh. If they were on to something, don't you think that Doc would be pulling a few late nights, or there'd be a bunch more people here than just us in this shit-hole?"

"Maybe, but this is the biggest we've seen isn't it? And he hasn't even begun to melt yet. By now the experiments start to lose stability or something like that. The nanoes turn them into grey slop."

"It's nanites. And grey goo. You can't remember nothing. But you're right. This guy and the kangaroo are sticking around for a while. Maybe the Doc can't figure out how to deal with experiments that don't melt down on him."

The male laughed. "Yeah, you're--wait, shit, is he listening?"

Rodney's heart leapt into his throat. He forced himself to take a few deep, slow breaths, and for his ears to slowly sweep back to rest. He silently prayed that they hadn't gotten so suspicious that they'd be on their guard. He didn't know if he could take doing this for another night.

The two people were silent for what felt like forever. Then there was the thunk of food being loaded onto the floor.

"Nah, he's asleep. I'm guessing the nanites are doing a number on him right now. He probably doesn't have long, poor thing." The woman grunted as she lifted something, than slunk it down as quietly as she could. There was the faint sound of something tearing, and then the smell of food rushing to Rodney's nostrils.

"Yeah," the man concurred. "Where do you think the doc gets these people anyway?"

"Hell if I know. I don't ask questions, as long as I get paid. That's the last of it, right?"

"Yup. Now on to the 'roo."

The woman groaned. "Ugh, my back. Shouldn't they have some sort of fancy hovercraft for this mess?"

"You know, if you wanted someone to massage your shoulders..."

"I will bite your fucking nuts off if you finish that sentence."

"Damn, girl! I'm just trying to be friendly."

The voices were receding now, and Rodney heard another beep that probably signaled the door was about to close. This was his chance.

He opened his eyes to see two tiny figures walking through the enormous opening that had replaced one whole side of the room. It shocked Rodney just how small they looked; there was a huge cart rolling silently between them, emptied of its cargo. Right in front of him was a 'small' mountain of processed chicken and fish that had comprised his diet for the past several days.

There were so many more questions, but he didn't have time to ask them now. He could only think about escape at the moment; the implications of their snippet of conversation would have to wait. He rose silently on his hands and knees, put one foot beneath him, and launched himself at the opening as soon as he could.

It felt like he was moving in slow motion. The opening was closing from the ceiling way too fast, and the two little workers who had been feeding him all this time turned to stare at him with open-mouthed surprise before he had even made it halfway across the room. They turned to run and he leapt to slide himself through the rapidly-shrinking door. He just managed to get his tail through before it sunk to the floor silently, and the two people had thrown themselves to the side just before his mountainous bulk had come down on top of them.

The impact of his landing shook the entire building. If anything, it was even darker outside of his room; for a long time he couldn't make out anything as he looked

around. When his eyes adjusted, he saw that he had come from what looked to be some enormous egg speckled with what looked like needles all over its surface. It was in a complex of warehouses and open buildings that had looked abandoned.

Rodney rose to his full height and tried to ignore the pounding of his heart. His tail swept the ground in a lash, effortlessly tossing a full-sized truck off into the night. He had to find Cooper and get out of here.

"He's out! Press the panic button!" The woman's voice sounded even smaller out here in the open air, and he looked down for the pair that had been in his cell. Once he found them, all it took was a couple of steps to catch up to them. He bent down and scooped them up with ease, lifting them up to his muzzle. His paws were big enough to cover them completely, and he squeezed them together in a fist so tight they were barely able to squirm.

"Where's the kangaroo?" He heard himself growl, and his voice echoed through the complex.

"Let me go!!" The man - a squirrel - pushed feebly at Rodney's finger, unable to dislodge the tree-thick digit. The woman, a wolf, looked like she was seriously considering her options. She could bite him hard enough to hurt, possibly. But that fist was the only thing keeping her from plunging over a hundred feet to the concrete below.

"There's another building like yours about a mile that way." Her voice was curiously steady as she pointed to Rodney's right, and she met the squirrel's disbelieving stare evenly. "They don't pay me enough for this."

Rodney glanced around and set them down on top of the building he came out of, placing them right in the center. "Stay there. If I hear the alarm sound at any time in the next fifteen minutes, I'm going to come back and personally stomp you into the pavement."

The squirrel looked as if he might pass out on the spot, but the wolf simply shrugged. He caught her eyes long enough for her to know that he meant business, and then he loped off to find Cooper's cell.

He forced himself not to think about what the wolf and squirrel had said before his escape. Losing his structural integrity. Turning into grey goo. Dying a horrible death where his own body lost its shape and was no longer able to function. The very thing that had allowed him to wield such impossible power was the very thing that was probably going to kill him. And as far as he knew, there was nothing that he or Cooper could do to stop it. But maybe there was one person who might be able to figure something out.

He made his way through the narrow alleys and makeshift thoroughfares of the complex, stepping on vehicles and equipment in the dark. Their destruction barely registered; mostly, he thought about how to get Cooper out of his cell. What little brain power that was left was devoted to thinking about how much his life was completely over.

The egg-shaped building that he found down the slope of a hill he came to was shockingly large, easily three times the size of his. Rodney paused for a moment, wondering how they even built such an immense structure; then he slid down the hill, trailing a small avalanche of dirt and brush after him. The best plan he could come up with for rescuing his friend involved brute force; there were no visible mechanisms for opening the door, and even if there were he was probably much too large to use them.

He chose one of the narrow ends and started to punch his way through the wall. Much to his relief, the building gave easily; the wall crumbled away much like the shell of an egg. There was an empty space between the outer wall and inner, box-like structure where Cooper was presumably kept. He thumped it a few times, but the stronger metal wouldn't budge.

"Hey! What the hell is going on out there?" The voice, while lowered to an unnatural bass and loudened to earth-shaking proportions, was still recognizably Cooper's.

"It's me!" Rodney shouted, though he was plenty loud enough to be heard. "I've come to save you."

"Seriously?" Cooper sounded shocked. "Thank you. Did you shut down the power?"

"Uhm....I don't know. I guess?" Rodney looked around for an obvious source; there weren't any wires or towers leading to the building. "How do I do that?"

"You might have already; the lights are out in here. Hold on. Step back." Cooper went quiet after that, and Rodney obeyed, waiting for something to happen. He didn't have to wait long.

The inner wall of Cooper's cell looked like it was crumpling in, then thinning to the point of transparency. A hole had been created, the edges floating into the center of the building and towards the kangaroo...who was visibly growing.

It was suddenly clear why the building needed to be so large. Cooper's ears were flattened against the ceiling, and he was rising higher into it. Suddenly his shoulders were pressing, and then his entire back. He growled in pleasure, and Rodney felt the thrum of it under his feet. The kangaroo grew to fill and overfill the space he was in, at which point he simply shredded the ceiling and kicked over the walls, growing into the open air.

Even though the leopard towered over anyone else at 120 feet tall or so, the kangaroo loomed much higher. Rodney would have guessed he only reached Cooper's knee at this point, though that comparison was rapidly diminishing even now. Cooper straightened, rolled shoulders that looked like they were bubbling with muscle, and peered down at the shocked cat below him.

"I think we're in a bit of trouble, Rod." Cooper boomed. "Come with me if you want to live."