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Amber's 69 First Dates

---

The Fall Bazaar

by Dissident Love

All Rights Reserved May 2011

Like Anyone Would Try To Plagiarise This

Dear Diary

So I have a criminal record!

It seems that me being a teenaged hyper herm does not excuse me from

wanton destruction of property, vandalism and mental anguish.

All of the charges were dropped, because Principal Kinison is understanding,

and I have to volunteer for four hours every week with the janitors who

had to, you know, clean everything up. It's not like their job was that HARD,

I mean there's a FLOOR DRAIN in the art room! Most of it just sort of, you

know... whoop, all gone!

Oh well. Still TOTALLY worth it!

Not sure I'd do it again, it felt like I pulled a muscle that time, and I'm

REALLY not the revenge sort. I'm a lover, not a fighter, even if my lovers

sometimes have to fight. You know. To escape.

THERE IS NO ESCAPE!

I think I'm evil, Diary.

Anyways, that doesn't matter now, because it's almost time for the

Fall Bazaar! YAY! I am going with... staying home!

Seriously, there's no way I could show my face at the biggest dance

of the season when everyone knows just what I did to the art room.

I'm going to curl up on the couch, eat ice cream and Google

numbing cream.

"What?!"

Amber was taken aback by the vehemence in Cindy's voice. "What, what? What do you mean what, I just said-"

"I know what you said! Girl, you HAVE to go to the Fall Bazaar!"

"Have you been reading my diary?"

The two girls walked through the crowded hallways. Amber was keeping her calico head down while Cindy held her head high, both out of buoyant self-confidence and the knowledge that if she dropped her head even slightly she would be nuzzling the tops of her breasts. Famous throughout the school for their sheer size, and the great pains Cindy took to keep them elevated and prominent, it was revealed that her breasts had each received ten votes apiece for Prom Queen and King, respectively.

"What? No! Numbing cream? Girl, that's a lame idea, and you know it."

"Why do you keep calling me 'girl'?" She clutched her books tightly to her own chest, vastly inferior to Cindy's, but otherwise quite healthy and respectable. "I just don't... feel like going, that's all."

"What, no date?"

"Not... exactly..."

In fact, her locker that morning had been filled with so many slips of paper shoved through the slots in the door that when she opened it, she was briefly standing in an ankle-deep drift of invitations.

"I mean, that hardly counts, so many of them were duplicates. One guy calling himself 'La Zorro' put in, like, twenty invites! I mean, what the hell? 'La' is a feminine pronoun, 'Zorro' is masculine! Do some research, buddy."

"Whatever," Cindy said, waving the protests away feebly. "I'm in charge of planning for the Bazaar, you can't NOT come to something I've poured my heart and soul into! Look at the posters I made!"

"I already-"

"LOOK!"

They passed one of the posters now, ultra-violet purple and sparkling gold. Art deco figures danced under falling autumn leaves and disco balls. Explosion-backed headlines urged all guests to partake in the refreshments, dancing, date auction and door prizes.

"You remember what I said a few nights ago?"

Amber scrunched up her kitty brows. "It burns when you pee?"

"Bitch. No, I said I'd help you get back at the boys-"

Despite the height difference, Cindy towering nearly a full foot above the petite hyper-kitteh, Amber managed to get a hand around the cheerleader's slender muzzle, clamping it shut with the faintest hint of claw pressure. They stared at each other for a moment, before Cindy winked, and Amber realized that not only did the school already generally know Cindy had helped, and not only were they making a scene in a crowded hallway, but Amber's arms were struggling valiantly to reach around the vixen's incredibly voluminous school sweater (Go Whitefish!)

The feline burned with embarrassment, and let go. "Yeah, yeah."

"You said," Cindy continued with hardly a pause, "if I helped you, you owed me a favor."

"And you wouldn't say what it was."

"Well, all i want you to do is come to the Fall Bazaar."

She looked suspiciously over at her friend. "What, just pick a name out of the locker and come?"

"Actually, I'd prefer it if you came stag. Stagette. Doe? Whatever. Come by yourself. Just come and have a good time!"

"I can have a perfectly good time at home."

They ended up in a rapidly-emptying corridor. Cindy veered left into Home Ec, while, Amber veered right into Algebra. "No, you can't. Please, come to the Bazaar? Please? Pleasepleasepleaseplea-"

"FINE! Jeez." Amber chuckled anyways, though. Cindy could always get her to do whatever the taller girl wanted. "Just shut up about it, ok?"

"And wear something hot."

"Wha-" she started, but there was a click of a closing door, and she was alone in the hallway.

From the classroom behind her, an incredibly deep voice rumbled, "Miss Amber, if you're not too busy, we'd like to stop staring at your tail."

There was a hoot of dissent from the back of the class, and a gale of laughter. Face burning anew, Amber walked past the enormous polar bear bulk of Mr Carmichael, took her seat, and tried not to think about what maliciously mischievous plots her best friend had brewing.

---

"Is she going to do it?"

Several other cheerleaders huddled around a Home Ec table, vaguely trying to assemble a passable salad from the available ingredients, though none of them were really paying that much attention, and due to the visual blockage created by her bosom, Cindy had spent two minutes ripping up a damp piece of homework and tossing it into the bowl.

"I don't know. I mean, she PROMISED me a favor, and I didn't straight up ASK her to do it," she said softly, tearing a math equation in half.

"But she's got to do it! We've already spread the word, there's no telling HOW much we'll get!"

Cindy shrugged, feeling a little bad for duping her best friend. It wasn't as if anything BAD could happen from this, and realistically it was doing the hapless hyper herm a favor, but she didn't like trickery. Except when it involved boys. Then she was often the ringleader. "Look, I'll go with her after class, maybe take her shopping. Clothes shopping always cheers her up, if we go to the right stores."

"But you have to be there for the Bazaar Setup Committee at five o'clock!"

"Jasmine," she said to the afghan hound, "if I'm late, you'll know it was for a good reason, right? You guys can set up crap paper without me."

"Crepe."

"Whatever."

The girls continued to make a rather off-putting salad together, and one of the cheerleaders nibbled her finger thoughtfully. "Did she say anything about any invitations?"

"Yeah," Cindy said, rolling her eyes. "She said they could have saved a tree if they hadn't been sent. I swear, some of the boys in this school are mental if they hear 'hey, the art room got totaled by a CHICK'S CONDOM' and immediately start hounding after her like... like..."

The ripping science assignment slowed to a stop, and Cindy stared at the finger-nibbling panda girl. "Heather? YOU?"

The softly plump panda bit herself and winced. "Well, I... you know... it wasn't a BIG art room..."

Cindy stared heavenwards in exasperation. "I can't take you guys anywhere, can I? Look, you can totally chase her down and do whatever depraved things it is you want to do to her to her, but for now I need her single and open-minded. I've got big plans for her, and she's going to give us the biggest Christmas dance we've ever had."

"And new uniforms!"

"Yes, Heather, new uniforms."

"Squee!"

"Don't do that."

---

The day passed slowly for Amber. She was wearing a brand-new mail-ordered completely-customizable hyper-containment device that she had affectionately dubbed the Cockblocker, and she could feel it straining tautly whenever she shifted her legs. It was a significantly more expensive one than she had used on her date with Luis, and so far it was definitely doing the job without popping her hips out of joint anytime she saw a cute butt.

Right now, it was emitting little warning creaks as she tried to tolerate an interminable English class. Most of the other students were doing the same, as the class right before lunch was usually a wash from an educational standpoint, but while Amber was studiously ignoring the sounds coming from her skirt, the rest of the class was paying rapt attention. Her claws dug into her pencil as she fought the urge to tell them to fuck off.

She knew it wasn't going to be easy, being a hyper herm. Over the weekend, she had been forced to endure some chats with her parents that made English class seem like Free Meth Night at a rave. It wasn't that the chats weren't educational, no. They were extremely informative. She now had to live with the memory of her parents graphically explaining that hyper/normal relationships were possible, in excruciating detail. If her father says 'knot' one more time, she thought she'd scream.

Plus, there was the police investigation and the sexual paranoia, but those were minor compared to her mother's little speech about where it was and was not appropriate to catastrophically stress-test someones body.

Though the memory of that little 'bleat', coming from so high above her head...

She winced as another growth spurt was forcibly halted by the nanofibre restraints keeping her hyperness in check. Medical science had proven fairly consistently that this sort of device caused no long-term damage, and her father even had to wear one when he went out to 'with the boys', which was ANOTHER memory she prayed she could bleach out of her mind, but she had to be careful not to let the pressure build up, so every day when she got home from school she had a half-hour long shower, and her parents agreed not to say a word. It was mortifying, but it had to be done.

And, she thought, it wasn't entirely bad. She had been worried she'd never get a date once her endowments had really begun to develop over the summer, and she'd been proven quite conclusively wrong. Between Algebra and Physical Education, one of the guidance counsellors had invited her out for ice cream sometime on the weekend. The thought of frigid Miss Powler inviting her out for sweet treats made her cringe inside, but it did provide a sound basis for thinking that maybe this insane fetish some people had for what she could do was common enough for her to find real companionship, and not just... just...

"A fuckbuddy," she sighed softly.

The boy behind her coughed so hard he almost stabbed himself in the eye with a pencil, and it took two other students a minute to get him calmed down again.

---

The cafeteria was completely decked out with Fall Bazaar decorations in preparation for the night's festivities. Purple and orange streamers festooned the exposed ceiling trusses, cascading down and earthing themselves anywhere a bow could be tied. Balloons were taped in such quantities it seemed as if the enormous open room had some bizarre and colorful form of the plague.

"See, we've got so many people at the school this year we can't fit everyone in the gym at once, so we're gonna have food and games and stuff in here."

"I know, Cindy, you already told me."

Amber and her surpassingly stacked best friend shuffled along in the lunch line. Amber was in the lead, but every time she took a step and stopped, the much taller fox's prodigious assets bumped the back of her head. She grit her teeth, trying to ignore the giggles from the crowd around her. She held her tray low, nearly resting it atop her own distended skirt, trying to deflect the prying eyes. Cindy was virtually supporting her breasts on her own tray, and only when it came time to grab food did she slide it along the counter.

"Well, you didn't seem excited enough," Cindy replied, pouting. "Be more excited!"

"No."

Step. Bump. Giggle. Sigh.

"So you're coming toni-"

"YES! God, shut up, you sound like my auntie."

Amber grabbed a pair of sandwiches from the steel buffet shelves, a bottle of Sobe, and in a pique of feline fiestyness she angrily grabbed two boxes of roast chicken from the hot rack.

"Aren't you trying to be veget-"

"I'm having a bad day," she snapped.

They were closing in on the cash register when Amber felt a presence at her elbow that didn't seem to be going away. She turned and saw a very nervous-looking wolfboy, hands shoved into his pockets, bouncing up and down on his heels. He's at least twice my size, she thought to herself, why is he so nervous? Wait, what's in his pocket... oh, gods...

The ruddy red canine bared his teeth once, and showed that he was biting his lower lip. Amber's memory came up short, and she started to panic when at last she struck gold. "Martin, right?" she said, trying hard to sound casual. Behind her, Cindy was trying to stifle a giggle, and failing miserably.

Martin brightened. "Yeah! I.. look... are you... if you're busy, I can come back..."

Amber looked around. "Not going anywhere at the moment."

"Oh. Yeah. Heh. Right. Uhm."

She took another step forwards, and Cindy still seemed to be trying to unclog a drain. "Can I help you with something?"

Even as she said it, he was pulling his hands out of his pocket, and when she saw what he was offering, her stomach sank. Oh, gods, she thought to herself, I can't do this, I can't say no in person. He looks so cute, and nervous, and helpless, and he had a gods-damned flower in his POCKET...

She reached out gingerly and took the somewhat crumpled rose. "It's lovely," she said softly, meaning it. It was, ever since her date with Luis, the only positive public display anyone had made towards her. There were surreptitious invitations and notes galore, but always in secret. This was made in the busiest room in the school at the busiest time of the day. Martin's eyebrows were drawn so close together he looked like he had sprouted a third triangular ear on his forehead.

"WouldyougotothedancewithmeImeandomethehonorofgoingtothedancewithme?" He said, gasping by the time he finished.

Her fingers gripped the rose, a petal falling onto her chicken, and she quivered. She didn't notice that the cafeteria had gone almost silent. Heads craned to see, people were hoisted onto shoulders, and even the lunch lady was leaning out past the cash register, soup spoon in hand.

Her nanofibre support hose made little plinking noises as the lycra and cotton strands surrendered under the fantastic pressures being held at bay. Looking up at Martin, greys and reds mingling in a tapestry of sleek athleticism, she could only focus on the fact that he seemed so unsure of himself, and more nervous than her, and cute, and.. and...

Dear gods, she thought to herself, I'm attracted when they're afraid. How fucking sick am I?

Her body strained hard, tissue stretching and expanding, but still her device held. The belts dug into her hips, her tail was forced upwards as the strapping criss-crossing her rear drew tighter and tighter, but she whispered a silent prayer of thanks when everything held.

She leaned in closer, bringing her mouth up to his face. Amber twitched her head, gesturing for Martin to lower his, and he gratefully obliged.

Cindy watched her friend whisper into the wolf's ear. His ears fell, but a moment later went straight back up again. After a few more words, his eyes looked so big that she thought he might blow a blood vessel, and his tail had gone so ramrod-straight behind him that she wagered she could perch on it without falling.

Amber leaned back, patted his hand, tucked the sad-looking rose into the pocket of her blouse, and then moved on down the checkout line without looking back. Cindy caught up a moment later, passing the still-motionless Martin. With a dull roar the sounds of the cafeteria resumed, but there were hundreds of confused faces. The wolfboy was enveloped by a small crowd of people shaking his hand, patting him on the back, and asking what her response had been.

"So, uh," Cindy said, a little unsure herself, "what did you tell him? Are you coming to the dance? I mean, is he coming to the dance? With you?"

A confident smile on her face, Amber just looked back and winked. "I'll be at the dance, and I'll be by myself, don't worry."

The fox looked back, and saw Martin still standing stock-still, but now with a smile on his face.

"So what the hell did you tell him?"

"I just asked him if he wanted to go for a Slurpee on the weekend."

Amber paid and walked off, the same strange smile on her face, leaving Cindy standing at the cash register, scratching her head.

"Wait, what?"

---

As luck would have it, Martin and Amber shared the final class of the day, Social Studies. She was feeling infinitely better about herself, and she had no intentions of going back on her suggestion to Martin, but it seemed like a whole world had opened up for her today.

Waking up that morning, she had been dreading seeing how many invitations were in her locker. Getting dressed, she had winced putting on the nanofibre support, knowing that she would have to wear it perhaps for the rest of her life. Eating breakfast, she saw the future of her high school life before her as a laughingstock, or an outcast, or just a slut.

But now, from somewhere within her, she was starting to look at it in a different light. Some people might be laughing at her, but some people laughed at everyone. People kept asking Cindy who her plastic surgeon was, and Cindy was her model for self-confidence and popularity. The Cockblocker was a medical appliance, and really existed just to make her life easier, and it really was working. The heap of invitations had horrified her at first, but now it was the fuel that stoked the furnace of her self-assurance.

Deciding that she needed to start reminding herself of that, she turned around and winked at Martin.

She smiled hugely to herself when the wolfboy grinned in response, and fell out of his chair.

Her fingers drummed on the steel-hard bulges under her skirt while she watched the hands move on the clock. The pressure had built to a degree that was shocking, even to her, and she knew that her nethers were significantly heavier than they should be, even though the size had not changed. She decided that the manufacturers of her new device definitely needed a thank-you note. A cursory check in the girls washroom between classes had revealed several frayed seams, but the manual had explicitly stated that it was perfectly normal. The 'comfort panels' were made from much weaker materials, and could not survive the sorts of conditions plus-size hypers could produce.

The thought that she qualified as a 'plus-size' hyper was a little disconcerting, but not really surprising. She knew there were different grades of hyper, ranging from 'mild' to 'drastic', though no two sources could agree on where the boundaries lay. Most of the mentions of 'drastic' hyperness, also known as 'severe' and 'catastrophic', seemed to rely on ancient cases, urban legends and hearsay.

There was another plinking sound as more Egyptian cotton was destroyed, but the miracle of nanofibre continued to surpass her expectations. Each little twanging sound, though, was accompanied by the boys and girls within earshot twitching in startlement, and she decided to maybe look into some soundproof flannel shorts.

Her teacher finished up his irrelevant ramblings concerning trade tariffs between Turkey and Georgia and was in the middle of assigning homework when the final bell rang. Precisely which pages were due Monday would never be known, the cheering and stampeding drowning out all intelligible announcements. Amber was swept up in the mass exodus, as usual, and struggled to steer through the wide corridor tide when a small but strong hand fell on her shoulder.

"You," said Cindy's low, menacing voice by her ear, "are coming with me."

"Where?"

"Shopping."

---

Cindy's little Honda puttered to a stop near one of the mall entrances. Amber hopped out nimbly, but her overly-curvy friend required several struggling moments to free herself from the cramped compact vehicle.

"I seriously can't believe you picked this car out," Amber said, closing her door.

"It was all I could afford that got decent mileage," the vixen gasped, stretching her back out. She was forced to drive with the wheel firmly against her breasts, and if she took a deep breath the car tended to drift in odd directions. "Besides, I didn't look like this last year."

"Neither did I. Puberty sort of hit us like a ton of bricks."

"Yeah, but they keep adding bricks to you."

"Shut up."

They smiled to each other and linked arms, skipping gaily into the mall. They might argue, they might threaten, they might complain, and they might even bite, but they had still grown up together and so far nothing had caused a rift longer than a few hours that ice cream could not patch up in seconds, and Amber truly was looking forward to the dance. Why accept one invitation, she thought, when there was a small ocean of boys who wanted to dance with her?

A little artist in the back of her mind painted a picture of her dancing with Cindy, but she shut it away in a little dark room. More and more she found herself wondering what Cindy looked like naked, which was rather odd since she had SEEN her naked on any number of occasions. Heck, the week before they had been changing for gym class and Cindy had paused, fuzzy as the day she was born, to answer a call on her cel phone. Amber had gotten an eyeful then, and it was pleasing, but there was something different about the situation she saw in her head. Combined with her mother's overly-graphic explanations of undergarments, she was starting to see the appeal of lingerie...

"First up, hon: you need the dress."

"A dress?"

"THE dress."

"Oh."

They garnered some attention skipping through the shopping centre, Cindy somewhat more than Amber by virtue of sheer size, her white and purple cheerleading sweater bobbling precariously (Go Whitefish!) "You know I didn't mean to really harsh on you earlier about coming to the dance, right?"

Amber chuckled and squeezed the girl's arm. "I was a little bummed out this morning, but you know something? I'm feeling a lot better now, and I'm looking forward to the dance."

"Good!"

"But I just have one question."

"Shoot, girl."

"What are you going to do to me?"

Cindy tripped and nearly toppled, but managed to right herself without pulling a muscle. Nearby, a man walked into a decorative cement column while trying to observe the vixen's progress, and earned a smack on the head from his quite literally shrewish wife. "Er, uh, sorry. What do you mean?"

"You can't seriously expect me to believe that you innocently want me to come, single, to the Bazaar tonight for absolutely no particular reason than the welfare of your best friend."

Cindy opened her muzzle, then closed it, sighing. "Well, ok, you got me there. Really, I was just hoping you'd play along for a little while more."

They hooked arms and continued on their way. "Look, I... I don't want to tell you," Cindy continued, "BUT, I do absolutely want you to know that I love the hell out of you, girl, and that I'm not going to do anything that you won't like."

"What I do and do not like has been a topic of much discussion lately, often without my presence," Amber responded with only a hint of exposed fang.

Cindy slid her arm around and hugged Amber close, apparently unaware that the smaller feline was being smushed quite forcefully into the side of one enormous breast. "After this, you can bet I'll be 110% honest with you, and you can say no to this when it happens, but I really, really believe that you're going to love this, and it'll be just what you need."

Amber grimaced, trying to extricate her torso from Cindy's beachball-sized right breast, but her paws just sank into it like marshmallow, so she gave up and waited out the hug. When she was released she spent a moment fixing her hair, and then looked up at the statuesque cheerleader. "After this?"

"After this. Come on, you owe me a little bit of trust."

Amber sighed. "Things are going to change around here."

"Starting tomorrow, sweetie."

Cindy steered left suddenly, and Amber found herself inside the local Addition-Elle outlet. She looked up at the red neon logo printed in two-foot letters on every wall: 'Because Bigger Is Better'.

"Well, yeah," Cindy said happily, "where did you think I bought my clothes?"

The mannequins scattered throughout the store used considerably more plastic than Amber had seen in other stores, and each section had it's own motto as well. There were girls with bustlines similar to Cindy's (Be Proud Of Your Girls!), with staggeringly plump posteriors that had to make going through doors difficult (Pamper Your Plump Rump!), with overinflated bellies that could not possibly allow someone to put their own shoes on (You Can Never Be Too Pregnant), and, in the very back of the store, with skirts even more filled than Amber's (Happy Hyper Herm Help!)

"My mom sure didn't mention this place," Amber said wonderingly, admiring a pair of sleek and sexy red jeans that were cut to allow for a bulge the size of a watermelon.

"Well, they probably want you to be happy with your body, but not TOO happy."

Amber pondered. "Yeah, that sounds like them, all right. Damn, has this always been here? I've walked past the store a million times but I just see the boobie-girls up front."

"Well, they know how to advertise," Cindy said, putting her hand on her hip, arching her back, and posing alluringly. The effect was somewhat spoiled when her out-thrust ribcage rose up her chest so far that Amber completely lost sight of the vixen's face.

"I swear, I don't know why people let you behind the wheel of a car," Amber giggled, walking through the racks and seeing what there was to offer. Cindy looked thoughtful, then scampered off towards the front of the store again.

The kittygirl fingered the fabric on the pants, skirts and dresses, holding them up and admiring the extra folds of cloth they each had up front. Just think, she thought, a whole section of a store dedicated to fitting ME! Heck, some of these are for bigger than me! I wonder if I could let out the Cockblocker a few sizes, and then grow into it, maybe let me be a little bigger during the day...

Her skirt was emitting alarming plinking noises when Cindy returned, towing along a delicate ottergirl in a lime-green miniskirt and tube-top. The clerk didn't seem to be hyper in any fashion, but Amber wouldn't hold that against her. "Amber, c'mere a minute!"

Amber walked over, smiling at the store employee. "Hi. I, uh, don't really need much help, I'm just brows-"

"Sweetie, if you're gonna buy something, you gotta know your size."

"I'm a six!"

"Not that size."

Amber's eyes bulged when the otter held up a measuring tape, tugging it tightly like a garrotte wire. The feline gulped audibly. "Uhm, do I just go and... measure myself?"

"I'm a professional, miss," the ottergirl said, moving closer.

"Wait! How did you even know I don't know my size? I mean, how do you know? Did?"

"I've worked here long enough, I can recognize the look. Stand still."

Amber, now panicking a little, finally found the girl's nametag. "Listen, uhm... Julienne, I should probably just do this myself."

The clerk just smiled pleasantly. "If you're a spontaneous grower, ma'am, I'll be extremely careful, but I've handled bigger."

"I've heard that before. Wait, 'ma'am'? How old do you think I am?"

Julienne chuckled. "Sorry, it's just what I call everyone. We can go into a changeroom, if you want."

"Awww!" Cindy pouted.

"You don't get a vote!" Amber snapped, but she remembered her earlier promise to herself. "We can do it here, just... be careful, ok?"

It was Cindy's turn to go pop-eyed when Amber's hands vanished under her skirt, and she wriggled out of her white stockings. She tossed them into one of the plastic chairs that were always in ladies' clothing stores for bored husbands to use, and then took a deep breath. "Here goes."

She gripped the hem of her skirt, and hiked it up to her chest. Her creamy white-and-gold furred legs were quite long for a girl her height, but no-one was paying attention to them. The nanofibre restraint looked like a pair of dark grey boxer shorts, criss-crossed with thin bands of glossy reinforcing. Stray white strands poked out all over it, as though it were an extremely well-worn carpet.

"Ahh, that's a new one, eh?" the otter chuckled. "The white stuff will go away when you wash it a few times, that's just the regular fibres."

"Yeah, I know," Amber nodded sadly.

Julienne bent over, hands moving swiftly and surely. Amber couldn't see what was going on, but there was a sudden flurry of activity, of tiny hands seemingly everywhere at once. One even darted between her legs and she felt pressure against her rear, and she squealed in surprise, but then the clerk was standing again with a triumphant smile. "Good news!"

"Did you just grope my ass?!?"

"Store policy. Better news! I can't get a precise measurement without removing your restraints, and from the feel of it that would be a very bad idea, but you're in a popular size."

"Oof. This is popular?"

"Your sac is a 28-High, and you're lucky that you seem to have a sheath, so that really gives you more flexibility with pants and underwear."

Amber stared. "There's a real SIZE for... those?"

"Totally!"

The three girls were frozen for several long moments, until Amber began to giggle. The giggling swelled until she was supporting herself on a rack of bathing suits, one hand held to her stomach and laughing so hard tears were forming in her eyes. Cindy joined quickly, wrapping her arms around her bosom to keep everything in place, and Julienne was chuckling with relief.

Eventually, Amber wiped the tears from her eyes, feeling like she had been wrung out and hung to dry. "Sorry, it's... it's just been a sort of a weird couple weeks for me."

Julienne smiled sympathetically. "Just found out what your body can do?"

Amber nodded. "Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I knew I was big, and I grew a little bit, but a little while ago, I... was getting, uhm... intimate for the first time, and... and..."

Julienne made a whooshing noise and threw her hands out wide. "Fwoomped him?"

Amber's jaw dropped. "Uh... that... I..." She was blushing volcanically, her golden fur deepening to pink. "That's a word?"

Julienne nodded, grinning hugely. "You bet! You hear some stories back here, let me tell you. Here, see?" The ottergirl reached into a rack of shirts, and pulled out a bright blue baby-tee that said, in sparkly white letters, FWOOMP! "These are popular."

The kitty just shook her head in wonderment. "It's a very crazy world, Cin."

"Do they have that shirt in my size?"

"Cindy!"

"What?!"

Amber glared, then dissolved into giggling again. "I can't believe that's a word. Who the hell thought of that? It sounds like a parachute opening. ANYWAYS, we're sort of getting off-track here. I'm a freak of nature, moving on. I'm... looking for the dress."

"A dress?"

"THE dress. Apparently."

Julienne winked knowingly. "Ahhh. Big event coming up?"

"The Fall Bazaar," Cindy said proudly. "I'm organizing it! It's going to be epic."

"And you want to be the Belle of the Balls?"

Amber sighed. "I'm going to have to endure a few of these comments, aren't I?"

"No more than five, I promise," the ottergirl giggled.

Julienne started to head towards the tall display racks of dresses on the back wall, but Amber reached out and grabbed her shoulder. "Could you... just hold on a second? Actually... hmmm. Come here."

Amber steered the otter towards the dressing rooms. Cindy watched, brows knit, as the two girls vanished into one of the small booths, door clicking shut behind them. "Hey, what are you two doing?"

She followed and put her ear up against the door of the little room. She could hear shuffling noises, and rustling, and a few muted words. Amber seemed to be asking about something, and Julienne seemed to be trying to help.

The vixen started and took a step back when there was a sudden tearing sound, and a squeal of excitement. "What the hell was that?! Amber, are you ok?"

"We're fine! One second! Ok, now the other one, I can't see where the buckle is..."

Another ripping sound followed, with Amber's panicked voice repeating "Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!"

And then silence.

Cindy stared hard at the door, wondering if she should open it up, wondering if Amber needed help, wondering if Amber had done something really stupid (fun, but stupid) and if it was perhaps a pretty little ottergirl who needed help. She set her jaw and reached for the doorhandle, which swung open on it's own and the two girls came out.

Amber was smiling. "Sorry, I just needed a little professional help with something."

Cindy looked puzzled, until she turned to the side and glanced down at Amber's front. Whereas before Amber's skirt had been exceptionally well-filled, looking like a pair of well-filled volleyballs, that same dark red skirt now seemed to be merely draped over a pair of grey-clad spheres the size of pumpkins.

"What the hell happened?"

Amber blushed and patted Julienne's arm. "Well, my restraint is adjustable, and it was driving me MAD being squeezed in there, and I thought, you know, why do I have to be at my smallest size ALL the time? Why can't I get a nice dress that fits me when I'm actually in the mood to feel sexy?"

Julienne giggled. "And the safety straps anchor in the back. I do that at least once a week for customers."

Cindy was still staring. The restraint looked the same, just bigger, and now she was positive that the outer edges of Amber's hermness were wider than her hips were. This was confirmed when she little kittygirl turned and walked back towards the racks of dresses and Cindy could still see them swaying back and forth quite easily.

She caught up just as Julienne was re-measuring. Her small hands moved in a blur, and she stood up with wide eyes. "Well, now you're a 42-High, and we can accentuate the sheath if you want, since it's definitely gotten more prominent."

Cindy also confirmed this when Amber picked a black dress from the rack and turned around, the calf-thick bulge now more visible against the straining grey fabric than before. "I don't want to accentuate TOO much, just yet. This one says 6-42H on the tag, is that me?"

"You betcha! See, this one has pleats on the front with highlighting fabric, and... tell you what, just go try it on."

The vixen and the clerk watched the elated feline scamper off to the changing rooms. The ottergirl was grinning, and she elbowed Cindy gently in the ribs. "She's going to have fun, I can tell. We get a lot of hypers in here, even a couple hyper herms, and they're always like this at first, finally seeing the good side to a tough situation. Must have been the same for you when you started developing, eh? I remember seeing you in here a few times, you sure developed nicely."

Cindy smiled. "Yeah, I don't think a lot of hypers have much say in it. I'm not a grower like she is, though, I'm just big all day."

Julienne tapped her teeth and checked her measuring tape idly. "You like her, don't you?"

Cindy's head whipped around. "What?!"

"Hey, it's no fur off my tail if you do or not, and it might not be a romantic like, but I can see a protective streak in you a mile wide. You want her to be happy, and it goes beyond just helping her buy a slutty dress."

"Well, I... of course I want her to be happy, and we've been friends for YEARS, before either of us looked like this... wait, slutty?"

The changing room door opened and Amber emerged. The dress was actually a fairly small number, and quite a bit of leg was showing. A wide neck accentuated the tops of her full breasts, and the narrow straps almost vanished in her neck fur, giving it the illusion of being strapless. Both girl's attention was fixed lower-down, though.

"How do I look?" Amber asked, giving a little twirl. The black fabric hung mostly to her knees, but due to cunning artificery with cloth and thread, the hemline was uniform front and back. The pleats in her lap seemed to fold and wave, as if in a breeze, revealing a pattern of crimson vertical stripes behind which drew the eye to the enormous, taut orbs within. Amber's fluffy paws patted each clothed sphere self-consciously, and she smiled. "Is it too noticeable?"

When they finally left the store nearly an hour later, Amber was carrying several pink bags and a predatory grin that triggered deep, ancient evolutionary warning signals in passers by; wives gripped their husbands arms protectively, and single men suddenly found better things to do with their time than stare. Cindy carried one large, heavy bag, and was grumbling about the costs of underwire.

---

That night, Amber poked at her dinner while her parents made infrequent conversation. There had been some questioning stares when she had returned from the mall wearing the same outfit she'd left the house with that morning, but which was quite obviously not covering nearly as much anymore. With her white stockings stretched to the breaking point over top of the restraints, her skirt only covering the upper hemispheres, and the Addition-Elle shopping bags failing to completely cover her new and improved dimensions, her parents didn't need to ask what had happened.

To Amber's mind, that was worse. Putting her purchases away in the very back of her closet, coming back downstairs in one of her longer, more figure-muting skirts, doing her after-school chores, helping to prepare dinner, and not one word was spoken about her size. Meaningful glances were exchanged between all three, but the young feline wasn't sure exactly what meaning they were full of.

Finally, after nibbling a few pieces of fish and declaring herself full, she couldn't take it anymore. "It's not a bad thing!" she snapped, standing up angrily. Her dramatic outburst was punctuated by her oversized swells banging hard into the dinner table, rattling the plates and cutlery. Her body had not abated it's desire to grow, and her restraint was once again so pressure-tight that she didn't even feel any discomfort.

The forks and plates stopped their jittery dance, and her bravery evaporated under the shocked gaze of her parents. Her mother, a pretty middle-aged calico hardly taller than Amber herself, was slack-jawed, while her father, an enormous doberman that was nearly as large as the china cabinet behind him even while seated, was wide-eyed. Normally expressionless at the best of times, any sort of facial response from him was equivalent to a hysterical scream from anyone else. Her legs shook, but she stood her ground.

"Sweetie," her mother said gently, "sit down. We know it's not a bad thing. We know that better than most people, and... oh, don't make that face, you know your dad's a grower."

"MOM!"

"Well, he is, and that's where you got it from. It's a good thing, and sometimes it's a VERY good thing, but we're just concerned that you may be acting a little... brash."

"This is about the art room again, isn't it?"

"No. And sit down," her mother chided with a smile. "We know you loosened the restraints, and to be honest that's fine, I understand those can be very constrictive, but is that how you're intending to go out tonight?"

Amber sat back down, legs parting to rest on either side of her chair in order to give her sac enough room. That was one drawback to her current size that she didn't realize until they'd gotten back to Cindy's car, but she'd decided it was a small price to pay. "Well... yeah. I mean, it's a big school dance, and the whole school's going to be there, and I don't want to hide who I am anymore."

"Did anyone ask you to the dance?" her father rumbled.

"Uh... sort of. I'm going by myself, though."

Her parents exchanged glances, and she growled. "Stop doing that! I'm right here, don't be all 'oh, whatever shall we do with her?' when I'm sitting right here."

Her mother reached out and squeezed her hand. "Sweetie, don't be like that. We're not concerned what we're going to do with you, but what you're going to do with everyone else. You're smart, and you can take care of yourself and make your own decisions, but right now you've got a hormone cocktail going that would kill an elephant."

Amber sighed. "Trust me, I'm aware of that part."

"And if you want to be that big, or even bigger, just walking around all day as part of your image, well... we're fine with that if you are."

The young feline blinked. "Really?"

"Sure! In the big city they'd hardly even look twice, it's just that this is a town, not a city. There's not many hypers here, and even fewer hyper herms, and the ones I've met through Doctor Peyton all generally try to keep it to themselves."

Amber's mother worked at a general practitioner's office, but never talked about her work. "Are you allowed to say that? I mean, doctor-patient... something..."

Her mother waved away the protests. "I'm not naming names or anything, and I think any risks are outweighed by the benefits of you knowing you're not alone. Heck, most of them are married and a couple have kids. A normal life is easy, just as long as you know what to expect, and you can only know what to expect by... experimenting."

Amber watched her father wince slightly. "I... I don't... well, ok, I guess I do, but... you're really ok with this?" She stood up again, gesturing bashfully to the tremendous bulk under her skirt, which chose that moment to give a warning creak and a plink of separating strands.

Her parents, much to her surprise, smiled. "Honey, we couldn't be prouder," her father said in a rare display of affection.

Amber squealed with relief and pounced on her father, hugging him tightly. She could just barely get her arms up and all the way around his neck, but she sighed happily when he gingerly hugged her back. Her mother, meanwhile, just beamed with joy.

All of her stress finally gone, she bounced back and looked at the clock. "I have to go get ready! Cindy's gonna be here in, like, ten minutes!"

"Come on, sweetie," her mother said while her father just stared at his plate, somehow managing to lock abashed, "I'll help you pick something out. I want to see what you bought!"

Upstairs, Amber pulled the bags out of the back of her closet, careful to leave a small black-and-silver bag still hidden. She pulled the carefully folded dresses out, and laid them on the bed. The two felines, who could have been sisters were it not for Amber's kittenishly proportioned paws and ears, examined each one.

"Well, you made some good choices," her mother said, "but I think the red one is... maybe just a little bit too... risque for a school dance?"

The dress in question was a strapless, low-backed number that had only just barely reached the bottom of Amber's restraints, and rose even higher at her tush. "Yeah, Cindy sort of, uh, convinced me to buy that one. Gods, I don't know when I'd wear that one!"

"Well, when you do, get a picture of the boy's expression, ok?"

"Can do! What about the black one?"

"With the pleats? That sort of draws the eye down, doesn't it?"

"I thought that was the point."

"Let's maybe save that for the next dance. I like the dark green one, I think."

"That's the only one left."

"Exactly!"

Amber picked it up and held it against her body. It was a little more formal and a little less revealing than the other two, and had short frilly sleeves that she thought looked downright adorable. It tucked up under her breasts, presenting them more prominently than the other two, but the crinolined skirts were carefully designed to comfortably fit around her nethers, without being too obvious. "I guess no matter what I wear, it'll be a LITTLE obvious..."

"Sweetie, you'll be the belle of the-"

"Don't say it."

As Amber undressed, her mother perched on the foot of the bed, crossing her legs like any other teenager might. "So... I take it you got a few invitations? More than a few?"

"Yeah," Amber replied, divesting her blouse. "My locker was stuffed full of them. But a lot of them were duplicates."

"Teens are fickle and self-conscious. Probably half the school thinks you're gorgeous, but they don't want the other half to find out."

Amber's tights landed in the laundry hamper, leaving her standing in a plain white bra and a dark grey undergarment that looked like it was trying to conceal a pair of shoplifted watermelons. "Yeah, I sort of got that impression, but I some of them are starting to warm up to me. Martin gave me a flower in the cafeteria."

"Good for him!"

"Yeah," she said wistfully, remembering how rigid the boy had gone when she whispered into his ear. She tugged the dress on over her head and managed to wriggle it down to her waist. It took all of her strength to wrestle the rest of herself into the skirt, and she was panting with the effort by the time she was done. "Hey, on the bright side, I won't be taking this dress off very easily!"

Her mother laughed. "Not to put too fine a point on it, sweetie, but I'm more worried about the dress ending up not big enough."

Amber adjusted her outfit, smoothing everything into place and tugging at the wide neck to reveal her healthy, creamy, fluffy cleavage. "I'm not taking the restraint off for ANYTHING, trust me."

"I'll believe that when I read the newspaper tomorrow."

"MOM!"

---

Amber hugged both of her parents goodbye on the front porch as soon as she saw Cindy's car carefully round the corner. Hugging her father was easy, he simply had to hunch over, but hugging her mother involved the both of them bending considerably at he waist so as not to compress her already heavily-reinforced lap. "Bye, guys! Don't wait up!"

"Don't be home that late then," her father said softly but with all the gravity of a bank vault closing.

"Awww, dad, I'm not going to shack up with anyone! Promise! Scout's honor?"

"You were never a scout," chided her mother.

"Well, maybe I'll meet one and he can teach me a thing or two."

"AMBER!"

Giggling gaily, she skipped down the path and opened the car door as soon as it pulled to a stop. Hopping in, though, she wished she'd calculated her momentum better as she ended up shoulder-checking Cindy's right breast.

"Ow, girl," Cindy said brightly, "at least buy a me a drink before you get to second base."

"You're still wearing clothes, doesn't that just make it first and a half base?"

"You're rubbing your groin against my boob."

"You're rubbing your boob against my groin!"

"I was here first."

Amber stuck out her tongue, but then dissolved into more laughter. "God, what's with me today? I feel like a yo-yo. I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm angry, I'm horny, I'm scared, I'm giddy. I mean, mom says I've got the hyper-herm hormone condition which sort of makes me a little WOO HOO crazy, but this is ridiculous!"

Cindy, squeezed into the driver's seat and half of the passenger seat and with her arms nearly vanishing in the soft depths of her bosom, could only nod, lest she crash into a tree. "You're telling me. Half the time I don't even know who you are anymore."

"I'm Amber, Conqueror Of Worlds, Destroyer Of Boys!"

"That's gonna make a great grad speech."

Amber's hands rest on her green-clad bulges, which meant they were practically at the same height as her breasts with her new-and-improved size. Her legs were splayed to give everything enough room, and she still had to try hard not to bang into the gearshift. "Maybe I shouldn't have loosened the Cockblocker," she mused softly, beginning to feel the first twinges of apprehension. "I mean, there's going to be teachers here."

"I can't take my hands off the wheel, just pretend I'm swatting you. Look, babe, you'll be fine! You look fucking amazing, by the way, in that dress. You don't show off your tits enough."

"What?! Jeez! I don't try to show them off because you're ten times bigger than me."

"Twelve. And even if I'm bigger, so what? There's two thousand people at school, and I'm number one for boobs, sure, I'll agree to that. Then there's Mollykat, then there's Amurine, and then there's a couple of other girls, but you're, like, number fifteen? Twenty? Out of a thousand? That's... hold on, I suck at fractions, that's like two out of a hundreds..."

"Ninety-eighth percentile," Amber said, staring in amazement. "Seriously? Even so, no-one notices..."

"Now you're not just bi-polar, you're a moron. People stare at me, but that doesn't mean they stare at you! You love pizza, but you sure love other stuff, too, right?"

"We-e-e-ell..."

"Amber, you're sexy. Deal with it before I smack you."

"Bitch."

"Slut."

They stared at each other and smiled the knowing, easy smile of lifelong friends.

The dance was scheduled to start at seven, but even rolling into the parking lot at six-thirty was a bit of a traffic jam. They managed to park near one of the gymnasium entrances, but while extricating herself from behind her torturously tight steering wheel Cindy was bitching about how it would take an hour to get back out again once the dance was over. Amber hopped nimbly out of the passenger door, or at least she would have if her bow-legged stance hadn't caused her to trip over the curb. Both girls fell rather ungraciously to the ground, muttering under their breath.

"Do, uh... you need any help?"

Amber looked up at a pair of faded jeans. Who wore faded jeans to a school dance? A glance farther up revealed white fluffy hands with heavy nails, and she didn't need to look any higher to realize who it was. "Hi, Curley," she said, pushing herself up onto her hands, sac and one knee. "No, I got it, one sec..."

His strong fingers that she remembered oh so well from the week before gripped her shoulders and helped her up. She smiled in thanks, smoothing her skirts down over herself. "I sort of... misjudged where the ground was..."

He chuckled. "Yeah, I can sort of understand that."

The two students stared at nothing in particular for several moments, listening to Cindy swearing from the other side of the car as she tried to right herself. "Sorry about the-" Amber started to say.

Curley was already speaking, too. "Sorry about the... you first."

"You first."

"Well... sorry about the whole Luis thing. It was kind of stupid."

"Yes it was. But it turned out all right in the end."

The thought of Luis's end made Curley's ears go rigid, and Amber had to laugh. She leaned in close and gave him a peck on the cheek, pressing her nethers up against his own. "All is forgiven, sweetie, if you forgive me for what happened in the art room."

"I may be in therapy for the rest of my life, but that's only because my parents think I'm crazy. I enjoyed myself."

"You still owe me a coffee," she said airily.

Curley shuffled his feet and grinned sheepishly, something he was uniquely capable of doing. "It would be my pleasure."

"Oh, would you two just buy eachother promise rings and move on? We're due inside." Cindy had managed to right herself and was now futilely trying to straightened the alarmingly low-cut front of her black, full-length gown. Curley's eyes bugged out at the several square feet of exposed fuzzy flesh, and Amber had to sigh in defeat on that front.

"I'll see you inside," the feline said as the sheepboy backed away nervously.

"Big. I mean... bye." Before he could put his hoof any further into his mouth, he fled.

Heading into the gym, Amber eyed the vixen's dress critically. "Do your parents know you're wearing that?"

"Of course not! They'd never let me out of the house dressed like this."

"Then how did you-"

"I got dressed in the car."

"That just raises further questions!"

"Vixens are very flexible when we need to be. Now are you going to help or not?"

"What," Amber asked, joining the queue of cheerleaders-by-day that were hauling chairs out of the gymnasium storage room, "you helped me fwoomp the art room just so I could help set up furniture?"

"'Fwoomp'? And no, I just need to make up for being so late. I had to pick up your lazy ass."

"This lazy ass had to get into an argument with her parents."

Cindy winced as she started to unpack the coolers of refreshments that were stacked up against the bleacher wall. "Did they not want you going out like that either? I can understand that, you're frickin huge, but in a totally good way..."

"No, actually, they were supportive. I just didn't believe them."

The vixen goggled. "They were pro turbo-bulge? Damn, girl, how lucky can you get? My parents keep bringing up pharmaceutical breast reduction, and yours are all 'Be All You Can Be'! It's not fair."

Amber smiled. "I guess they are pretty awesome," she said, dragging out the last of the cheap and uncomfortable wooden chairs that all schools had an overabundance of.

They continued to chat back and forth when Cindy was available, but the curvaceous cheerleader was marching through the school like a general, barking orders to any and all available students, and even some of the teachers. As more and more students began to filter in, Amber took a seat in one of the quiet corners, behind where the DJ would soon be setting up. Ironically the speaker stacks shielded her from the general din of the steadily filling gymnasium.

Settling into one of the crappy chairs, which creaked under her slender size 6 bulk, legs forced out wide, she tried to psych herself up for the night. If the cafeteria had been any indication, people might be asking her to dance. If people were asking her to dance, there was every possibility there would be some physical contact with her... well, just with her. If there was physical contact, her already difficult-to-ignore hormones would probably try and take over, and then there was going to be trouble.

A tiny voice in the back of her mind cheered at the thought of trouble, but she silenced it.

"Cindy, I don't know why I listen to you," she muttered, fingers drumming on her forest-green bulges. Her feet tapped along with the vaguely techno background music. She glanced down and checked out her own silky cream-and-gold cleavage, and had to admit it did look bigger and better than most girls in the school, but she'd never ranked herself that high. Mostly she'd just known she was the biggest 'down under' such as it was, and left it at that.

Her confidence swelled anew, and was joined by a chorus of plinking noises from beneath her skirts. She set her delicate jaw firmly, ordering herself to cheer up. This was the first night of the New Amber, and she wasn't about to waste it hiding in a corner.

She stood up and was immediately besieged by a leg cramp due to her akimbo legs, and fell rather ungraciously to the floor.

"I think I see why they say to wear the restraints at my smallest size," she grumbled to herself, getting carefully back to her feet and massaging her hip. "This is starting to get really, really old."

Prominently overstuffed skirts leading the way, hemline swaying back and forth like a slow-motion bullfighters cape, she rounded the DJ booth and was greeted by the majority of the student body.

Normally sneaker-and-cap boys were wearing dress shirts or rented tuxedoes, and normally skirt-and-blouse girls were wearing dresses more risque than Amber's own, even if they didn't have the proportions to make them quite so indecent. Hair was piled, manes were groomed, tails were smoothed or permed or decorated with bows, but they all had one thing in common: all of the eyes she could see were aimed squarely at her.

And as if attached to invisible strings, the eyes lowered.

Amber put her pinkies in her mouth, inhaled deeply, and in the great literary tradition of giving hard-luck protagonists the occasional break, blew the loudest wolf whistle of her entire life. As one, the eyes snapped back up to her own.

"Up here, please," she said, smiling her most winning smile at the student bodies. "Thanks."

The crowd laughed , a little nervously, but loosening up when Amber moved through the throng, smiling and saying hello to those she knew. Her restraints were keeping her about as soft as a regulation basketball, and she was very nearly shoving people out of the way with her distended

dimensions, but she refused to blush or back down. New Amber was tough, and she was also thirsty, and she managed to make to the punchbowl without incident.

The lights dimmed, and even though people were still flowing in from every entrance, the spotlight snapped onto the platform at the far end of the gymnasium. Cindy, resplendent in the dress that left so very little to the imagination, stepped up to the microphone. The crowd reaction was instantaneous, with cheers and hoots and hollers and catcalls. The cheerleader blushed demurely, a practiced affectation, and grabbed the mike successfully on her third try.

"Hello, Circe High!" she boomed through the PA system, and the responding cheer was even louder.

"Welcome to the Fall Bazaar! Everyone who's still outside are a bunch of losers, right?" The peal of laughter drowned out the vague protests from the parking lot.

Cindy laughed, and Amber was amazed anew at how natural the vixen was in front of an audience. Cheering at football games, hosting fundraisers, even back in her Chess Club and AV Club days before the puberty train had run her over, Cindy was a natural speaker, and as long as Amber could remember she had been jealous of the taller girl for that.

"We've got a ton of excitement planned for you all tonight, kids! Special guest DJ Cupcake will be spinning for you shortly! We'll be handing out prizes all night so be sure to vote for best and worst everything! Blindfolded apple-bobbing is back by popular demand, and the Win-A-Date Auction starts at ten! There's food and drinks in the cafeteria, and the photography ninjas are everywhere, so watch out! The most embarrassing photo will be immortalized in the yearbook, so have fun!"

Defying gravity like a bad special effect, Cindy managed a pirouette and slammed the microphone back into the stand to thunderous applause, and several cries of 'take it off'. Amber clapped and hooted from the back of the gym, pleased that she remembered to put her drink down first for once.

DJ Cupcake, a rather plump young black bear that she recognized from a few of her classes, materialized at the stereo booth, and moments later the gymnasium erupted with synthesized thumping. She could feel the beat in her lungs, and had to cover her mouth to stifle a giggle when she also became aware that the thumping was resonating quite a bit lower as well. Her mind filled with images of her, tumescent to a shocking degree, and various other people that she had caught herself fantasizing about, and the throbbing bass beats were joined by a feeling of increasing, overwhelming pressure. The cramp in her thigh threatened to return when she felt the restraining garment squeeze around her anatomy.

"Crap crap dammit dammit," she muttered, scooting around the punch table and heading for the double doors that lead to the main hallway. Her skirts twitched and bobbed in front of her, though they showed no sign of the churning biological turmoil within. The indestructible undergarments continued to hold firm, but now she was finding that almost everything was arousing her in some capacity. If loud music was going to be a trigger for her, she thought to herself, the rest of the school year is going to be very painful.

Other students continued to stream into the gymnasium through the double doors, and she had to fight the flow like a salmon leaping upstream. It wouldn't have been that difficult for a person her size, which was generally short and slender, but no matter which way she turned the boys and girls were either trying very enthusiastically to avoid her, or get as close as possible. She felt like a magnetic pinball.

"Excuse me, pardon me, excuse me, one sec, let me get past, excuse me, hey you do NOT get to grab those," she said loudly, trying and failing to hide the grin on her face. Some of the expressions flying past her were startled, some were afraid, but many more glinted with interest. Managing to eke her way past the threshold, she shot sideways and paused, gasping for breath, resting in relative safety against the wall of the main hall.

She looked downwards, past the twin curves of her breasts, and tried to gauge the landscape of her lap. Nothing down there looked bigger than it had at home, but the insistent tugging at her hips and the groans of protest from her knees told her that something was definitely amiss. She wanted to get back to the dance, but she wouldn't be able to until she confirmed something.

Outside of the main hallway the school was virtually deserted, and she easily found her way to the nurse's office. The door was open and the lights were on, as the nurse had to be on hand for all school functions, but the towering nurse, a svelte giraffe-lady with an exotic accent, was nowhere to be found. "Thank you, small mercies," she said, slipping inside and shutting the door behind her.

Amber headed for the scale in the corner, hesitated briefly, and then hopped up. For several long moments the only sound was of her claws gently tapping the little weights back and forth, until she balanced the bar. Her eyes widened when she saw where it had settled.

"One-fifty-one? God dammit," she thought to herself, knowing full well she had barely been one twenty a month before.

But she knew she had to press on.

The feline closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Steeling her nerve, she placed her hands against the achingly compressed spheres of her sac, inhaling slightly. She explored herself, and was a little put out to feel just how awkwardly her sheath was being flattened. One hand moved slowly up her body, caressing her flat tummy and cupping her breasts. while the other inched downwards to heft the tremendous weight of her nethers.

In her mind, a scene formed. It was dark all around, but she knew the area with intimate detail. She saw herself leaning up against a tree, semi-naked and more painfully erect than she could ever remember herself being, and moving closer in the darkness was Luis, brave but tentative Luis. A hand reached out, touching her, stroking her, and then heat and pressure against the tip of her doghood, and then... and then...

Her eyes flew open when she felt her sheath beneath the nanofibre restraints plump and swell, yearning to breathe free. She could feel a tingle deep within each of her balls, and the pressure became more and more intense. Everything stayed put, and seemed to stay the same size, but that wasn't what concerned her.

She looked at the weight bar, and watched it tip up with a metallic clicking. Amber forced herself to breathe slowly, clearing her mind of the erotic memories, and mostly succeeding. Then the pulsing waves of tension eased, she tapped her claws against the balance weights again until the bar once more leveled out.

And she was not too surprised to see the result. "One fifty-six."

She stepped off of the scale and sighed, throwing her head back and staring at the ceiling. "Seriously? That's how you're going to play it? I can't get bigger, so they'll just get heavier? Gods, they feel like scuba tanks. This is a sick joke."

And yet, she thought, and yet I can't seem to stop smiling.

Kittenish ears flopping back and forth, kittenish paws resting comfortably on the upper slopes of her massive canine nethers, she sauntered back to the gymnasium with a good time on her mind.

---

"I said, are you having fun?!"

"And I said yes already!!"

Amber and Cindy were sheltered behind the retracted bleachers, panting from exertion. They had managed to find each other amidst the bounding chaos of the dance floor and, holding hands as though the other person were a life preserver, they had fled the press of bodies to get their breath back, if not their hearing. DJ Cupcake had somehow found speakers that really did go one higher than ten.

"How can you dance for three hours with boobs like that?!"

"How can you dance for three hours with your sac like that?!"

They looked into each other's eyes, and burst out laughing. They embraced, or tried to given their relative anatomies, until the giggling stopped. Wiping her eyes, Cindy smiled down at her diminutive friend, and squeezed her shoulders. "I'm so glad you're having a good time, girl!"

"I'd love some punch, thank you!"

"Ok, now you're doing it on purpose!"

"I never did it to a porpoise! I can't swim!"

"You're evil!"

"Thank you!"

"What?!"

The music faded briefly, and Cindy looked about to say something else, but she glanced up at one of the wall clocks and her eyes flew open. "ShitIgottagodon'tgoanywherebabe!" Cindy said in a single panicked breath, swinging her bulk around the smaller girl and darting into the crowd. "ShitIcan'tbelieveIforgotwhattimeitwasdammitdammit..."

Amber watched her go and shook her head in wonderment. What it must be like to live like that, she thought to herself. The music swelled again, but it wasn't nearly as deafening as before.

She found a stray chair that had wandered away from the back and sat down heavily on it. The last few hours had been a bit of a blur. A loud, sweaty blur. She had lost track of how many people she had danced with, and decided that was a victory. At the beginning, she had simply danced by herself and there had been a small area of bare floor around her, but then Curley had appeared out of nowhere and very obviously selected her as a dance partner, and that had started a chain reaction of "May I cut in?"

Many of the boys had kept a respectful distance. Some of the boys had danced dangerously close, but still avoided contact. A few of the more recklessly adventurous ones were virtually using Amber as a scratching-post, and although she felt a stab of post-feminist rage at this inappropriate behaviour it had been dwarfed by her post-pubescent surge of uncontrollable lust. The two cancelled each other out enough that, at worst, Amber got in a couple gropes herself but everyone involved escaped unharmed.

At one point she'd ended up in the cafeteria for a bite to eat and, against all logic, had received a cheer that bordered on a standing ovation when she entered. She smiled bashfully, blinked in confusion, snatched a few tiny sandwiches and retreated with her dignity intact but her expectations for the night shattered. What the hell had THAT been about?

And now, panting softly with an inexpensive institutional-grade chair groaning in protest beneath her, all she could do was try to reconcile her desire to be in control of her mind and body with her desire to pick a boy at random and do unspeakably unrealistic things to him. One hand massaged a sore teste, and she was not surprised to find out that it was like trying to squeeze a bowling ball. If her restraints got any tighter, she thought, she could use them to sharpen lawnmower blades.

"ARE WE ALL HAVING FUN, CIRCE HIGH?"

"HOLY CRAP!" Amber cried, almost tipping back out of her chair. Cindy's amplified bellow was like being suckerpunched by a giant pillow. The resounding roar of the audience drowned out the feline's further obscenities as she fairly scrambled over her own bloated sac to get back to a proper sitting position.

"HELL YEAH! ARE YOU READY TO HAVE SOME MORE FUN?"

The response felt as though the space shuttle was lifting off of the launch pad while singing a drunken lullabye.

"WHO WANTS TO GET LUCKY?!"

Amber's mind failed to come up with a cogent simile, so she just whooped along with everyone else.

"ALLRIGHTY! IT'S TIME FOR THE DATE AUCTION! I HOPE YOU ALL BROUGHT YOUR PARENTS' WALLETS!"

Amber could see the disapproving stares from the faculty scattered morosely around the room, and it only made her giggle harder. Cindy would never bow down to pressure from above, which was why she was consistently elected by overwhelming majority to be in charge of major school events, though she'd still get majority vote if she promised to do nothing other than show up in a bikini.

Amber stood awkwardly up, suddenly having sympathy for pregnant ladies who were prone to litters, and sauntered over to the edge of the crowd to watch the proceedings. The eligible bachelors and bachelorettes were always a hoot, as they got to split their costs with the school, and the best performers always got a good haul. She started counting up her money in her head, wondering if she could buy a little companionship. Just imagining the look on some poor boy's face when he realized who had just purchased his ass...

She shook her head, trying to clear out the cobwebs. Stop it, Amber, she thought to herself, those are NOT proper thoughts.

I don't care, came the casual reply.

Well, I do. Wait, who am I talking to?

"The first person for your pleasure tonight is a regular at all Circe football games! You've seen him at the track, and you can always find him at the gym! This beefcake is ready for romance, ladies!" Cindy was practically bobbing up and down with barely-restrained excitement, and parts of her would not stop bobbing. The crowd cheered heartily.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Rowly the Towelboy!"

The cheers became mixed with hoots and hollers of laughter and derision as the lanky, droopy and thoroughly nearsighted basset took the stage. He waved gaily to the audience, tail wagging. It was often considered good sport for the less conventionally popular people to take the stage and win a night with someone they ordinarily wouldn't encounter, and true enough there were cries of bids from all over.

"Ten bucks!"

"Twenty!"

"Fifty!"

"Fifty... uh... five!"

"GOING ONCE, LADIES!"

Rowly, normally quite bashful, seemed pleased with his haul.

"TWICE! SOLD, TO... who is that? TO AMELIA!"

The student in question hopped up onto the stage, and the crowd went wild again. Amelia, as it turned out, was a skunktaur even taller than Cindy, and with the combined length of her barrel and her fluffy tail nearly half as long as the entire stage. Rowly, in comparison, came up to approximately nipple-height, which he was currently enjoying. The well-built and buxom skunktaur gripped the hounddog like a carnival teddybear and carried him offstage to the sound of raucous whistling.

"ONE DOWN, A BUNCH MORE TO GO! PICK IT UP, FOLKS!"

For the next half hour, a steady procession of boys and girls crossed the stage and went for increasingly larger sums of money. Nerds gave way to geeks, geeks gave way to independents, and soon athletes and fashiongirls were shaking their booties and urging the audience on to greater and greater expenditures. One of the star track-and-field competitors went for a surprisingly high dollar value when two girls and a herm pooled their money, though Amber couldn't help but be a little smugly satisfied that she couldn't remember ever being as small as that herm appeared to be.

The smugness gave way to melancholy when she realized that there was just one more girl to go, and she hadn't bid on anyone. She told herself that it wasn't proper to try to win a date with someone who wouldn't be into what she had to offer, so it probably worked out for the best, and there was still some time left in the dance to meet someone, but she couldn't shake the nagging annoyance that there wouldn't be anyone in the audience willing to shell out money for HER.

Her cheers were among the loudest, though, when Cindy stepped up to the front of the stage and announced that the last girl of the night would, in fact, be Cindy. Numbers were screamed hoarsely from throats, and the tall, outlandishly buxom vixen soaked in all the attention like someone receiving life-saving medication. She twirled, she pouted, and at one point, before the teachers put a stop to it, she spent a full minute adjusting the neckline of her dress to reveal more and more fuzzy white fur.

In the end, she was won by a quiet, slender boy that Amber recognized as one of the studious background figured in Computer Sciences. "That boy's got some deep pockets," she murmured appreciatively when he managed to hit nearly six hundred dollars, defeating a desperate pair of soccer-pups and a very punk-rock doe.

Cindy hugged the victorious minkboy, who disappeared briefly beyond the event horizon her cleavage, and then turned back to the audience. "THANK YOU, EVERYONE! WE'LL GET BACK TO THE MUSIC MOMENTARILY, BUT RIGHT NOW, WE'VE GOT A SPECIAL SURPRISE!"

The crowd cheered, and Amber cheered right along with them, not even knowing why anymore.

"WE'VE GOT A SPECIAL GUEST BACHELORETTE TONIGHT!"

The crowd cheered louder, and Amber's applause petered off. "Oh, no..."

"YOU KNOW HER NAME, YOU'VE HEARD THE STORIES, AND YOU'VE DANCED WITH HER TONIGHT!"

Amber started to inch backwards, biting her lower lip so hard her eye watered.

"DUE TO OVERWHELMING DEMAND, MAY I PRESENT OUR LAST DATE: AMBER, GET UP HERE, GIRL!"

The nervous calico was nearly bowled over by the explosion of noise from the audience, everyone turning to stare at her and cheer. The press of bodies shifted slightly, and she found that a path was opening up between herself and the stage. Cindy was clapping maniacally, while, along the walls, many of the teachers whispered worriedly to each other. Amber was shaking her head side to side and trying to figure out who had moved the emergency exits when she felt a hand at her elbow. She looked up to see Curley, grinning shyly.

"Cindy told me to tell you not to skip out on your favor now," he called over the din.

Amber bit harder, winced, rubbed her lip in annoyance, and squared her shoulders. "Well," she said in resignation, "I guess I did promise."

Then her eyes sparkled and she leaned lewdly against the sturdy sheep. "And who knows, I might make a couple bucks if you give me a charity bid."

They walked together, like Prom King And Queen, through the parted crowd and towards the stage. "Amber, I really don't think my dad even makes enough money to win a date with you tonight."

"Oh, you can't seriously think I'll make that much..." she started to say, but then she was at the short flight of stairs, and Curley was beckoning her on with a broad grin. She took a deep breath. "Well, here goes nothing."

The top of the stage was a new experience for her, but Cindy's bravery was infectious and she found herself waving like a maniac. "Hi! Hello! Thank you! You're too kind! Seriously!" She had already reached the vixen's side before she remembered that she was bordering on critical mass up front, and the spotlight on her slight frame was only highlighting how large everything else about her had become. She looked down, gaped in shock, and then looked back up.

Looking back, she thought later, it could have gone either way. The audience laughed hysterically at her self-conscious pantomime, and harder still when Amber tried briefly to cover her bulges with her kittenish paws, which was akin to trying to cover a pumpkin with a coaster. She had considered bolting from the stage and running home, but something inside her refused to bend or break, and she instead just threw up her arms in victory, as though she had just crossed the finish line of a marathon.

"ALL RIGHT!" Cindy cried through the microphone. "LET HER HAVE IT!"

"FIFTY!"

"ONE HUNDRED!"

"ONE SIXTY!"

"TWO HUNDRED!"

In a matter of seconds, Amber had reached the top ten dollar values for the night, and her jaw dropped again when the numbers kept going up. With the spotlight in her eyes, she couldn't really see who was doing the screaming, but she did see a few scuffles break out among competitors. Her surprise only grew when female voices started to join the bidding war.

"FOUR FIFTY!"

"FIVE HUNDRED!"

"THAT'S NOT FAIR!"

"SIX HUNDRED!"

Cindy howled with delight, and slapped Amber on the back. "You're the record breaker, girl! Come on, wiggle your hips or something, we've got a long ways to go!"

Amber snapped out of her daze, and looked up at Cindy. "You knew this was going to happen?"

"I hoped!"

"Didn't wanna warn me?"

"Nope!"

"Bitch."

"Thanks!"

"SEVEN HUNDRED!"

The bids were coming slower now, but they were increasing by larger and larger amounts. Amber decided they needed a little coaxing. She turned sideways and placed her hands on her hips, making an exaggerated display of stretching her back out, causing her more prominent attributes to strain dangerously at the confines of her dress.

"EIGHT HUNDRED!"

"SHE'S MINE! NINE!"

"The world is insane," Amber cried through the noise, "but I like it!"

Cindy pumped her fist at the audience. "COME ON, YOU GUYS! YOU'RE MAKING HER FEEL BAD! PICK IT UP!"

"Cindy!"

"What? I'm advertising!"

"ONE THOUSAND!"

The crowd went nuts. The bidding now seemed to be between a female voice in the distant corner, and a male voice from by the punch bowl. She couldn't make out either figure, but the thought of being won by a girl was a little daunting, but also a little exciting. Some of the more pink-tinged thoughts in her daydreams had been getting more insistent...

"ELEVEN HUNDRED!"

"ELEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY!"

"ELEVEN SEVENTY FIVE!"

The bidding war was coming down to the lines now. Amber was leaning forwards expectantly, unaware that she was resting her hands on her groaningly prominent sac or that she was digging her claws into the restraints.

The crowd had hushed to near silence, and now the only sounds were coming from the two ends of the gymnasium. She could hear arguing, muttering, and pleading.

The male voice cried out "ELEVEN EIGHTY!"

And then there was silence. Cindy craned her ears, but there was no follow up big. "Eleven eighty, my goodness! Eleven eighty for the luscious Amber going ONCE! Eleven eighty for the dangerous Amber going TWICE! Elev-"

"TWELVE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FOUR DOLLARS AND SEVENTY FIVE CENTS!" screamed the female voice triumphantly from the shadowed depths of the dance floor.

Cindy's eyes bugged out. "TWELVE HUNDRED AND... UHM... SOMETHING GOING ONCE! TWICE! OH MY GOD, SOLD!"

The crowd erupted. Amber's eyes nearly fell out of her head at that, more than doubling the next highest earner for the night, and very nearly making up a third of all earnings herself. She looked down and released her dainty claws from herself in wonderment, and she could feel the weight within increasing again. The thought that someone wanted her that much was unbelievable, but she supposed no more unbelievable than what she could do to them in return!

Slowly the figure approached through the crowd, and the pair of girls strained to see who it was.

"Is that Britney?"

"No, it couldn't be. Shakira?"

"Nah, the hair is all wrong. It's not the nurse, is it?!"

"Nope, too short. Who IS that?"

It was Cindy's turn to gawk when the woman, and she was a women who seemed to be in her late thirties, climbed the stage. The crowd continued to cheer, but now there was a spreading murmur of confusion when it became clear that no-one recognized her. She was a bunnylady, taller than Amber and comfortably plump in all areas. She was definitely still pretty, and Amber was not surprised to feel the blowtorch of desire burn as brightly as ever for the winning bidder, but she still couldn't figure out who she was or what she was doing here.

From the very back of the room, though, there seemed to be a hubbub of some sort. Were the teachers even going to allow a stranger to win a date with a student half her age?

"Hello, miss, and congratulations!" Cindy said a little uncertainly. "You've won our star bachelorette tonight, for, uhm, some reason! What's your name?"

The lady stood confidently alongside Cindy, appraising the vixen's bosom. "My name is Dahlia, and I'm so happy, but I didn't win her for me!"

The voices at the back grew louder, and Amber could make out sounds of laughter.

"Oh, she's a present! Who is she for? Your son? Daughter?"

"For my husband."

The crowd gasped, hooted, hollered, and applauded. Amber's eyes bugged out. Husband? She had a date with a married man?!

"And who is your husband?" Cindy said in exasperation.

The bunnygirl grinned, obviously enjoying dragging out the suspense. "Royston Carmichael."

For a moment, you could have heard a pin drop. Amber thought her brain was going to explode. Cindy's jaw went slack, her foxy lower lip bumping into the upper swells of her chest. Dahlia just stood with her hands clasped behind her back, rocking on her heels and grinning foolishly.

"Mister.... Mister Carmichael, the... the math teacher?"

The bunny nodded.

Amber's head whipped around, and sure enough there was the tremendous height, and width, of Mr Carmichael. The dour polar bear had been teaching at the school for ages, and everyone simply knew him as a humorless soul that showed up, did his job, and went home. Right now various other teachers were either clapping him on the back or shaking their heads negatively, urging him to reconsider.

Mr Carmichael himself, though, was motionless, and if Amber was any judge, he was just as floored as she was.

"Well then, uhm... CONGRATULATIONS MR CARMICHAEL!"

Amber's last thought before the music came back on was wondering if she would be graded on her performance.

---

The night air was cool on her sweat-dampened fur, and she shivered, wrapping her arms tightly around her. It was nearly midnight, and the dance had officially ended about ten minutes before. The parking lot was a zoo, quite literally, and Cindy was off somewhere directing traffic to try and rescue her own automobile.

Mr Carmichael, or 'Royston' as he was apparently named, had vanished in a huff shortly after the proclamation that he had won quite a prize, but his wife had stuck around long enough to reassure the young hyper that he'd come around eventually.

"You'll understand when you two go out," Dahlia said when they left the stage. "This is just as unexpected for him, too."

"But... why? I mean, he's your husband! You're married! HE'S married! I'm a student!"

"Good to know the public schools still teach kids to embrace the obvious. Amber, sweetie, I don't have time to explain right now, but... well, you'll see."

And with that, the bunnylady hugged Amber goodbye, pressing her broad hips up against the feline's overexpanded groin, and then scurrying off. Now, an hour later, Amber was tapping her feet impatiently on the sidewalk, her back sore from all of the congratulatory patting she had received and her elbow weak from all of the furious handshaking. Several of the teachers had even given the unlikely pairing their blessing, saying they wished their wives were that understanding.

"My dad is going to kill me," she muttered to herself.

"Then what do you think he'll do to me?" came a rumble from behind her.

Squeaking with alarm, Amber spun around and looked up, and up, into the vast wall of Mr Carmichael. The polar bear looked down at her through small wire-rimmed glasses, brows knit a little worriedly. He was dressed in his standard fare, beige slacks and a sweater, and looked about as dangerous as a cloud. Amber was slightly more than five feet tall, while the imposing teacher was pushing eight, taller even than her dad, and seemed nearly half of that wide.

"I think it would be an interesting fight," she said with a faint smile. "You look like you could give him a run for his money."

He ran his fingers through his dark hair. "Would he really-"

She had to laugh. "No, no. Personally, I think he'd be happy that someone responsible was going out with me for once."

His eyes widened, and he shook his hands placatingly. "It's not that sort of a date! My wife just... well, she was trying to be funny, I think."

"She seemed pretty serious." It was strange, she thought, she had never seen him act flustered before. Or smile. Or do anything outside of math.

He opened his mouth to speak more, but a red sedan screeched to a stop a short distance away and Dahlia leaned out the window alarmingly far. "Honey, come on! You'll have plenty of time for that tomorrow!"

Two jaws dropped this time. As if in a daze, Mr Carmichael walked off, and the car's springs creaked and groaned when he eased himself into the passenger seat. The bunnylady waved pertly, winked, and drove off.

"Huh," Amber said to herself. She was still standing motionless when Cindy finally pulled up sometime later, and the busty foxgirl had to yank on the feline's tail to snap her out of it.

---

The ride home had been fairly uneventful, something that Amber was infinitely grateful for. Her parents had been asleep when she got home, and she had been too physically and emotionally exhausted to bother releasing all of her pent-up desire. She had been forced to remove the restraints, though, as the thigh cramping was becoming too intense.

She sat on the edge of her bed, paws clamped across her mouth, trying to stifle the simultaneous gasp of relief, groan of ecstasy, and scream of shock. Releasing one of the titanium buckles had caused her burgeoning assets to swell alarmingly on one side only, and that was vastly more uncomfortable than simply being strapped down. Releasing the second buckle, though, had been like a steel cable snapping, or at least that's what it had felt like. The entire assembly parted along the back and whipcoiled around her body hard enough to leave welts on her belly.

That had been the easy part.

The sudden growth had been like something out of a dream, or a nightmare. Whereas she was normally in the twelve-inch-diameter range, each heavy teste similar in size to a volleyball, she had spent the entire night in the sixteen-inch diameter range, somewhat larger than volleyballs, nearly twice her normal volume. Dancing, sweating, flirting, grinding,and endless innuendo had driven her body into a wild rampaging fervor which the nanofibre restraints had hidden, but now the constraints were gone, and her nethers had some catching up to do.

In moments her sac had inflated to something akin to a pair of novelty beachballs, each white fluffy sphere at least as massive as her entire body. Her sheath was stretched taut around an insistently throbbing member, but even though she was still soft it was bigger around than her thigh, with pinky-sized veins pulsing just beneath the deep burgundy fuzz. She winced when her sheath seemed to shift, lifting up slightly from the twin ski-slopes of her balls, and then fell back down again, the thin flesh almost drum-tight around her hardening shaft.

"Oh, this isn't going to be good," she said, standing up with exaggerated care, the stupendous weight tugging insistently at her unusual physiology. Luckily she was still able to fit through her bedroom door by turning herself sideways, though the bathroom door was a bit of a squeeze. Her sheath plumped up still further, and she knew the point of no return had been passed.

She got the shower nice and hot and hopped awkwardly inside as soon as the first curls of steam floated up to the ceiling.

---

"She's in the shower."

"Mmmm."

The enormous doberman shifted slightly, and the delicate feline readjusted her position, careful to keep her claws retracted. "That's a good sign, it means she didn't... you know... with anyone."

"Mmmm."

"She'll be fine, sweetie, you know that. She's a hyper and a grower, but she's a smart girl."

"I was a smart boy, too."

She spread-eagled herself and hugged her husband. "I know you had some bad luck with the girls in high school yourself, but aren't you glad you found me?"

The room was almost pitch black, but he didn't need to see. He shifted again, trying to work the kinks out of his hips. His legs had been pinned for the better part of an hour, and high above him, snuggled into the vast bulk that occupied most of the room, his wife was comfortably resting. "Sometimes," he said, trying to work one of his legs into a better position beneath his drastically overfilled and aching balls, "I wish I had gone a different route."

Amber's mother leapt down with the effortless dexterity of felines everywhere, landing lightly on his chest and peering into his eyes. "Are you-" she started, but her night vision allowed her to see the grin on his normally severe features, and she swatted him with a paw. "Jerk. You know you love it."

"Maybe, but I think my knees are starting to go."

"Well, then," she said, arching her back and rubbing her rump against the wine-barrel-sized bulk of his sheath, "perhaps it's time to move beyond foreplay?"

His growl of urgent desire was the only response she needed, but she paused for a moment, pressing a finger to his lips. "Listen, do you hear something?"

The enormous canine's ears perked up, and he sighed. "Trust me," he said, knowing all to well what his daughter was going through down the hall, "you don't want to know. This is why I insisted on a floor drain when she hit puberty."

"Oh," she said. "Oh my. That bad?"

"I just heard her swear. A lot."

"Oh my."

"She'll be fine."

"I hope so."

"Now back that ass up."

"Oh, honey, I love it when you think you're being suave."

It was odd, he thought as his wife sank her claws into his tough hide in order to provide enough resistance for him to actually become intimate with her, listening to both of the women in his life creaking with strain and moan with pleasure. He had been warned as a young pup that there was a very good chance of him producing offspring similar in proportion to himself, but the statistical probability of producing a hyper herm had been so low that no-one had bothered mentioning it to him. He'd never really considered it until that fateful day sixteen years before when the nurse had proudly and confusingly proclaimed "It's a boy! No, wait.."

And now, as his wife began the long and arduous task of satisfying the equipment she had spent so many hours teasing and taunting, he could hear his precious little girl going through roughly the same thing, and as much as he'd wished she had an easier life ahead of her, he had to admit that he envied the sort of adventures a girl like her could have in the modern world.

Then again, he thought, when the near-silence of his wife's furious concentration was broken by the sound of his ever-growing orbs knocking over the lamp by the window, there is something to be said for a normal life.

---

Amber spent most of Saturday in a daze. She woke up with a start and checked beneath the covers, but her wild and vivid dreams had not come true. Everything down there was still it's normal, if very above average, size. She plucked at the front of the pink lace panties that were stretched across her nethers, hiding absolutely nothing. Conventional underwear did not fit, and hadn't for a long time, but she still rather liked how they looked on her.

The rest of the day hadn't gone quite so simply. Her parents had been a little... strange during breakfast, and her mom kept mentioning how clean the bathroom looked. Amber had spent almost an hour cleaning it and had barely gotten to bed before 2am, and she knew damn well her parents knew what she did in there, but it was still unusual.

She didn't know when her date was with Mr Carmichael. She didn't know if he was going to pick her up, or if she was going over to his place. Was his wife going with them? That thought had taken her aback. Where would they go? What would they do? What exactly had HAPPENED the night before?!

Cindy called just before lunch. "Hey, I'm glad I caught you! I think I know what the hell happened last night!"

"You'd be the only one."

"No, see, there's a girl on my squad, Heather Li. You know her, right? Panda, big boobs? Like, bigger than yours, smaller than mine?"

"Everyone's are smaller than yours."

"Fuck yeah. But you know her? Doesn't matter if you do. Anyways, she's like you, right? Well, ok, not like you, she's just sort of a regular herm, doesn't do the whole Conquer The Universe thing when she gets a hardon. Anyways, she... you there?"

Amber's jaw was hanging. "You just... put that out there like that? If she's a herm and I never noticed, she's hiding it, and you just yell that over the phone?"

"She doesn't hide it to the cheerleaders, we shower together! Besides, I think most guys know. She's not exactly home every Saturday night like some people I know."

"Cindy!"

"Whatever. Anyways, you're getting me off track, shut up, ok? She goes to the same doctor as you in town, the guy who specializes in dominant genetic conditions. Oh, man, I heard some stories, but... ok, never mind, next time. Anyways, Heather goes to the same doc as you, and one time when she was there, you'll never guess who she sees?"

The feline blinked. "A sick person?"

"Dahlia Carmichael!"

The pause stretched out. "That's pretty thin, you know. My mom goes to see that doctor, too."

"Yeah, that's just because your dad's as big as a fucking Mack truck."

"CINDY!"

"Hey, you told ME where you got the lotion from, don't get all uppity. He's a big dude! Good for him. Good for her, too, I mean she's smaller than you!"

"You... just... what... fuck..."

"But it's sort of a coincidence, don't you think? Maybe Dahlia's a herm, too, and maybe ol Roybear's gotten a little too used to her! I mean, he's a BIG guy, and she's a LITTLE bunny, and-"

"I'm hanging up now."

"Sort of like jungle fever, only with GIANT DICKS-"

"Goodbye."

"Bow-chicka-bow-wow-"

The receiver slammed down, and Amber had to grip the table to control the shaking in her arms. Cindy meant well, she really did, but she had all the tact of a tactical nuke, and in her slightly emotional state it was more than she could handle at the moment.

"Sweetie?"

"GYAUGH!"

Amber was now leaning heavily against the desk, clutching her chest and panting. Her mother stood in the hallway, concern evident on her face. "Are you sure you're feeling ok, sweetie? You don't usually yell that much at Cindy."

"She was saying that... look, it's nothing."

"Something happened last night." It was not a question, and it was clear to her that Amber wasn't getting out of the conversation without divulging at least a little bit.

She recapped the night, editing heavily to play down her temporary sluttiness and emphasising how nice all the boys had been to her in spite of her obvious physical handicaps. She outlined the Date Auction, as well as the surprise special guest. Her mother winced, but chuckled. "Well, honey, it is about time you learned that girls like you cast a spell over normal people. It's not really a matter of gay or straight when it comes to herms."

"Mom! It wasn't even that bad that the girls were bidding on me. It's who won."

"Oh? Who won?"

"Dahlia Carmichael."

Her mother's face was blank. "Is she a girl in your class?"

"She's one of the teacher's wives."

Her mother's face stayed blank. "Oh. That is... something."

"And she says she won me for him."

The blankness was now taking all of her concentration. "Oh. That is... wow."

"And he's my algebra teacher."

Her mother's face seemed to be having some sort of seizure. "The... polar... bear?"

Amber nodded.

It started as a tiny snort, as though her mother simply had an errant hair lodged in her nose. Then came the deep, throaty chortling that all felines could pull off when they wanted to sound threatening. She played with her fingers nonchalantly, but her body continued to hitch and shake with the effort of remaining motionless.

"Mom?"

The chuckling became rhythmic snorting, and her mother had to blink away tears. Gusts of air whooshed from between her lips as the outburst struggled for freedom.

"Mom?"

And like a dam exploding, or like Amber's restraints coming off, her mother very nearly collapsed onto the floor in gales of laughter. She was gripping her stomach, nearly bent double, howling and cackling as though she had gone mad. She began to settle down somewhat but when she looked up at Amber's concerned face, and then down at Amber's prominent pyjama bottoms, she started laughing again.

"Mom! It's not funny! He's OLD!"

This only caused her to laugh more.

Amber pouted severely for a long minute, until her mother climbed back into her chair, tears streaming down both of her cheeks. She started to speak, but had to stop when another fit took her. Amber was on the verge of slapping her when her mother finally regained a little composure.

"I told you that herms had an effect on people, and then they go and prove my point. Honey, I want you to know there's nothing wrong with this. It's a little weird, and it's really really funny, but this isn't wrong. Two adults have given you their blessing."

"But he's a teacher!"

"So think about how hard he's had to think about this. I don't want to make any assumptions about him or his wife, but, well... look at the spectrum of guys out there. Is he a bad person?"

"Well, no, he's always been really nice and fair. He doesn't laugh or smile, though. Well, he did last night..."

"And is he good-looking?"

"Mom! He's a teacher! And he's old!"

Her mother stared at her expectantly.

"Well... ok, so he's really tall, and he has big... big shoulders, and he has these amazing green eyes which you don't usually see because of his glasses but they're a really amazing shade of green, and he's just a really sort of big, huggable..."

Amber looked into her mother's victorious face. "Oh, fine, so he's been in a daydream or two. Big deal! I've had daydreams about the fucking washing machine ever since I started growing."

"Amber! Language. But there you go. He showed you a personality last night, and you're obviously not against reciprocating."

"But he's married! There's no chance of a relationship, it's just... a date with no follow up!"

"What's so wrong about that? If I offered you sushi, and told you it was your last chance and you could NEVER have sushi again, but I could have it whenever I wanted, would you say yes or no?"

"I... I mean, that wouldn't happen, it... why would I never have it again? The metaphor doesn't... all right, fine, yes, I'd eat the sushi and I'd enjoy it."

Her mother leaned forwards and hugged her. "I think you'll do just fine, sweetie."

Amber hugged her back. "If you say so. This is still the weirdest year of my life."

"And we're not even at Hallowe'en yet."

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing."

"Mom!"

---

Amber's father had made several non-committal growling noises when the felines had broken the news about who the mystery date was. He had not forbidden her from going, and in fact had given her the same stipulation as her previous date, which was to be back by eleven, but she could tell that he wasn't exactly leaping over clouds at the situation.

"I suppose you're down to two dresses tonight," her mother said over dinner, and Amber had an unpleasant flashback to the previous night.

"Yup, the black one or the red one."

"What's Mr Carmichael's favorite color?"

Amber blinked, bemused. "I... don't think I'm exactly supposed to Dress to Impress on this one, mom. And I think the red one is out."

Her father nodded, but it was her mother who replied. "Probably for the best. He's old, his heart could go at any moment."

"And I'm sixteen, mom!"

"Oh, are you? We hadn't noticed."

She rolled her eyes, but had to chuckle a little bit. "Look, I'm not going to be doing any of THAT stuff with him. Maybe I should just wear regular clothes. No need to go all jailbait on him."

"That might be for the best this time."

Her father looked quite relieved, and the family finished their meal with talk of the upcoming camping trip to the Iridium Hot Springs, several hours away in the mountains. Her mother began to make offhanded remarks about what sorts of bathing suits Amber would require, and the younger feline fled to her room in exasperation.

Locking the door securely behind her, she then proceeded to rummage around in her closets, sifting through shirts and skirts and seldom-used pants galore. She tried to picture herself as seen by a teacher, looking for something that could be seen as attractive but not aggressive or sexy. Well, depending on his his tastes ran, anything she did could be sexy, and likewise there was probably a lot that he could do that could be sexy.

Her sweatpants shifted slightly and she felt her pink panties grow tighter. She had managed to go all day without wearing the restraints as she had spent the entire time safely at home. When she did find her thoughts drifting to the erotic, it was good practice for her to try and mentally clamp down on her growth, and she felt she was getting better at it, though it was like having an itch and concentrating on it, but not scratching it. She nibbled her lip and her faint swelling ceased, hardly noticeably bigger than normal.

"Well, that's working for once," she said with small satisfaction, settling on a long blue skirt and a bright pink short-sleeved blouse. She thought it made her look a little bit like a hippie, but the skirt was a mosaic of different hues and hid the outlines of her sac and sheath as well as anything she had at her disposal.

She eyed the items critically on her bed, and when she thought about it later she couldn't precisely explain why she did what she did next. She scooted into the depths of her closet, and came back out with the small black Addition-Elle bag. It joined the blouse and skirt on her bed, and she stood back, thoughtful.

A long moment passed, then two. She nibbled her lower lip while one hand played with her tail. Eventually she stepped forwards, and took the two items out of the bag. They were not very large, especially considering the person holding them, but they were specially designed, and she had thought they looked quite nice in the change room mirror. Cindy had not seen them, nor had the ottergirl.

They were her little secret.

She changed quickly and scampered downstairs, resplendent in her azure skirts and coral-pink blouse, and received the Parental Visual Stamp Of Approval. The butterflies in her stomach were charging around like Air Force jets, and her tail was whipping back and forth like a snake caught in a screen door.

"Honey, are you all right?"

"FINE! I mean, why?"

"Well, your ears."

She looked at her reflection in the living room window. "Oh, cripes," she said, trying to smooth down her left ear which was pointing skyward, while her right drooped almost over her eye. "Uh, no, I'm fine. Yeah."

"He's just a boy, like any other."

"Except for the age, marriage, and occupation."

"Right. Any other boy in your school could end up like that at some point in the future, so think of Mr Carmichael like a... quantum boy."

Amber stared. "As in, he may or may not end up hitting on me?"

"Exactly! Well, no, not quite... honey, do you want to help me out here?"

Amber's father sat on the couch, hiding behind his newspaper, and still towered over the other two ladies. He sighed, seeming to fill the room. "I don't want to talk to him."

"Dear!"

"At least not tonight. He's probably already upset and confused about the whole situation enough as it is, if his wife arranged for this, and anything I say or do will only scatter his mind worse. He's a smart person, and a creative thinker, and I don't want to give him any leeway one way or the other to rationalize his decisions. I want him to be a good person without me getting in the way, and I want you to be the girl we know you can be without us holding your hand."

That was the biggest speech either of them could remember him making. "Well, uhm... thank you dear. Does that help, sweetie?"

"I don't even know anymore."

Amber was surprised to find she was relieved when the doorbell rang, rescuing her from her parents. "Oh, well, he's here! Don't wait up! Not that I'll be home late. We'll probably just go to a museum or something. Are museums open late? I bet they're like the Book Barn, they probably have coffee and stuff. I should just shut up and answer the door before he gets nervous, right? Right. Bye, guys! Be good!"

Clamping one hand over her mouth to prevent any further inanities, she retreated downstairs, pulled open the door, darted through and slammed it shut before Mr Carmichael had a chance to say anything. "Hi!" she chirped.

His eyes bulged, taken aback by her sudden appearance and the slamming of the door behind her. "Oh, uh... hello. Amber. Do you... your parents..."

"No, they're going to stay out of the way."

"Oh. Well. That's. Nice."

They stood there, diminutive calico kitty with the bulging skirts and hulking bookish polar-bear that had to stoop just to get his head under the little eave above the front door. Amber twiddled her purse with her fingers, while Mr Carmichael tried to nonchalantly run his fingers back through his dark mane.

"So."

"Oh? Yes. Right. Uhm, my car is over here..."

"You seem a little nervous," Amber pointed out as they walked over to the sporty little sedan. "Your wife really is cool with this, isn't she?"

"What? Oh, yes. Definitely. Something like that."

"You seemed a lot smarter in school."

He turned to face her. "Young lady, my intelligence is not going to be called into question by someone who has repeated difficulties marshaling the fundamental rules of compound polynomials and the reduction of... are you laughing at me?"

Amber was afraid her giggling might squeak out her ears, it was so hard to repress. "Er, no, sir. But I seem to have fixed your speech problems. Snnrrrkt."

He opened his mouth to say something further, but a look of reluctant comprehension crossed his face, and he chuckled. "You did at that, young lady, you did at that. I apologize, this is a very untenable situation my wife has placed me in."

"You in? I have to go to school on Monday with two thousand kids thinking I shacked up with the math teacher."

"I would not..!" he started, then composed himself. "The situation is not so different for me. More than fifty faculty witnessed the event."

They stared at each other, and as one grinned. "Seems we're both in the same boat. Roy."

"Indeed, one that is rapidly sinking. Amber."

"Would this be a bad time to make a 'at least we're going down together' joke?"

"Yes, I rather think it would."

"I'll save it for later then."

"I was afraid you'd say that."

He held open the car door for her like a gentleman, and she slipped into the comfortable seats smoothly. She was glad that she had decided not to allow her assets any pre-date growing time, and she could fit her bulges around her thighs nicely, masking the effect by resting her purse atop her mounded silk skirts. The car dipped and squealed alarmingly when he climbed into the passenger seat, and it was even more cramped than Cindy's vehicle. "Couldn't afford a smaller car?" she asked pointedly.

"Sadly, teachers are not the globe-trotting trend-setting playboys that Kentucky Jones movies make us out to be. This is a reliable and fuel-efficient vehicle."

"The dome light is poking into your ear."

"Yes. Well. Are you comfortable?"

"I've been in tighter... er, yes, I'm fine, thank you."

They drove in silence for quite some time. Amber watched the street lights pass by overhead, the horizon a deep indigo strip between the inky black sky and the orange speckled landscape of lights as they approached downtown. She fiddled with her purse again, and unable to resist the urge to be a little bit naughty, slid one hand down in the darkness and adjusted her undergarments. Beside her, the towering Mr Carmichael... Roy, she reminded herself, was staring studiously at the road.

"Are we going somewhere fun?" she asked, wanting to break the ice.

"Museum," he responded.

"Wow," she giggled, "I thought I was just joking to my mom before. I mean, I'm sure it'll be neat, I haven't been there since, gosh, Grade Three? Four?"

He seemed to wince. "Yes, you were quite young."

"Still am."

"Rather."

"Do they have a coffee shop there?"

"I should hope not."

She frowned slightly. This wasn't quite going as she thought it would. Well, it was going as she thought it LIKELY would, which was pretty far from how she hoped it would, but there was still time.

"Why are you doing this?"

For the first time since they got into the car, he looked down at her as though surprised to find her there. "Well, because my wife-"

"Yeah, your wife won me at the auction, and said that she won me for you, but you didn't have to do it. You're a grown up, you can make your own decisions, and you clearly seem as uncomfortable about this as I do. More, actually."

His jaw worked for a few second. He faced the road again and drove for another two blocks before responding. "For two reasons. One, I love my wife, and I trust her, and this is something that she thinks will make me happy, and two, you're a young girl who might benefit from a little bit of help with your... predicament."

"Yeah, got me a real big predicament," she said, patting her skirts fondly.

"Predicament means 'problem'."

"Oh. Well, my answer still works."

She looked over at her burly escort for the night, and if anything he seemed even more tense than before. She reached out and patted his leg reassuringly, and was a little impressed at how her kittenishly oversized paws still seemed ludicrously tiny against his sheer size. "You need to loosen up, ok? We both know what I am and we both know nothings going to happen, so let's just try to enjoy ourselves, all right?"

He shied away from her touch as though she were made of molten lead, but as she spoke he eased back to his normal position. "I think that's for the best," he said, looking at her appraisingly. "You are quite a bit more self-possessed than I had been given to presume."

"Most of the kids around you are," she said directly, "but, and no offense here, most of the faculty has a hard time seeing us that way."

He nodded, slowly. "I think you're right."

They were now well downtown, and Mr Carmichael zig-zagged through the traffic with practiced ease. "Amber?"

"Yes, sir... Mr Car... Royston?"

"Could you please remove your hand from my thigh?"

"Uhm......... no." She gave him a few squeezes for good measure , and giggled when she felt his leg spasm with each one. "It's just a thigh! Do you think your wife really hooked you up with me thinking a thigh grope was going too far?"

She was impressed at his restraint when he refused to answer. The thick muscles under his sensible kakhis shifted and tensed as he worked the pedals, pulling them into the Natural History Museum parking lot. He turned off the ignition and cranked on the emergency brake, something she had never seen anyone do on flat ground before.

"Could you let go of my leg now?"

She squeezed him again. "So soon?"

"Amber..." he said warningly, but stopped when she pulled back, grinning.

"I'm gonna keep calling you Royston if you keep this up. Just think of Monday morning. 'Good morning, Royston. How are you, Royston?'"

"You're really enjoying this, aren't you?"

"I'm warming up to the idea," she said, skipping out of the passenger side of the car.

He caught up to her at the main entrance, where she was fiddling in her purse for admission. He rolled his eyes and tapped her on the shoulder. "You don't need to do that, Amber, I can handle this," he said, pulling out his wallet.

"Are you sure? It's two dollars. Two WHOLE dollars. EACH."

"You're very sarcastic, did you know that?"

"No-o-o!"

She got a few politely shocked stares when she swept through the lobby, as the general museum-goer was a slightly different crowd than she was normally subjected to. The polar bear followed swiftly, glancing anxiously about. "Are you in a hurry to get somewhere?"

Amber took two more steps, then stopped, staring blankly. "I guess not. Sorry, I was sort of on autopilot there. Just kind of a funny place to take a date."

Now his glancing about was positively panicked. "This isn't a date!"

"Well, your wife paid for me, so you can call it whatever you want."

"Amber!!"

"And you can call me whatever you want to."

One eye twitched with exasperation, and he moved brusquely towards the wide curving stairs at the far end of the lobby. "If it's not too much of an imposition, please come this way."

Wondering if she had pushed the burly but benign bear beyond his limits, she obediently followed. She slung her purse behind her back, the thin strap digging a surprisingly deep line between her breasts; at least, it was surprising to her. Maybe Cindy hadn't been so far off! Her tops had been a little snug lately.

She caught up with him along the grand red-carpeted promenade that stretched through the bulk of the massive building, with display halls branching off to the left and right. Arrows pointed every which way, and several of them seemed to direct people to the same topic by pointing in different directions. "Look, I was just trying to be funny down there."

He looked down at her, and wondered what he was thinking behind is inscrutable, frigid face. "I know."

"Wow, you could give my dad a run for his money with your Death Stare."

He cocked his head. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"Boy, wouldn't a compliment be a nice thing to get," she muttered under her breath, not noticing when he suddenly veered off to the side until she got the sudden impression that the room had gotten lighter. She darted backwards and caught up to him just as be passed by an unsettlingly lifelike statue of a primitive anthrocanid and a feral lionine figure, locked in mortal combat. "This is a great place to take someone. Am I supposed to be the savage, merciless killing machine?"

"Not at all," he said, and she blinked in puzzlement when he walked around a large display of a woolly mammoth fellow the size of a truck warming himself at a small fire, and knocked on a door marked 'No Entrance'.

"What are you doing?"

"Helping."

The door opened, and a matronly woman that Amber was surprised to note was also a polar bear, smiled at the pair of them. "Well, good evening to you both! Roy, you're late."

He jerked his thumb backwards as his sole reply, and the woman looked more closely at Amber, and more particularly down at her skirts. "Ah, you certainly weren't exaggerating."

Fed up with two solid days of this treatment, she stamped her tiny foot. The insignificant noise was lost among the great vaulted heights of the hall, losing the effect she was going for. "Why do people keep talking to me as if, as if, as if I'm one of these fucking displays? I'm right here! I have a brain! I have ears! I'M NOT A GODS-DAMNED OBJECT!"

"Which is exactly why I've brought you here," Royston said calmly, beckoning the furious feline into the darkened space beyond the steel security door. "If you'll just indulge me for one more second."

She glared challengingly at the woman, who simply smiled placidly back, Amber's blistering rage bouncing off of her like so much lint. "One more second, that's all you get," she seethed, stepping through the door, "and then I'm the fuck out of oh my god."

As soon as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, clearly intended for minimal usage and decidedly private study, Amber was gawking around in wonderment, unheeding as the woman inched backwards out of the room, closing the door behind her.

"Now do you see why I was bringing you here?"

"Fwuh."

The ceiling was low, the walls were painted utilitarian grey, and there were cardboard boxes stacked in several areas, but many of the unfinished displays were still more than recognizeable.

"They're... they're me."

She approached one such display slowly, hand up almost reverently to touch the glass partition. Behind it, rendered in one-third scale by an exceedingly skilled craftsman, was a scene with mud-brick huts, hyenafolk dressed in palm fronds and wielding spears, and a single comparatively enormous skunktaur. It was only three feet tall, but it was easily twice the height of the scampering black-dotted villagers, and it was extremely evident that the skunktaur was an exceptionally well-blessed herm.

"What sort of display is this?"

"This," Royston said gently, "is a sort of geneological history of the XYY and XXY hermaphroditic subgroups. They're trying to get it ready for the new year, but there's been a lot of pressure from religious groups and concerned parents to keep it hidden in the archives."

If the taur was as big as she looked, Amber thought, then those balls had to be like beanbags, and the fuzzy black sheath which extended a solid third of the skunktaur's barrel was as big around as a hot water tank. "She's so big..."

Royston nodded. "That was the second major macroevolutionary development of hermkind. We're sort of going out of order, so let's just move to the right for a second."

She lingered reluctantly, but moved as directed. The previous display wasn't well it at all, and was clearly still under construction, but it showed an obviously pre-village stage of anthro development. There were wolf-like males and females all around, but significantly more females than males. There was also one herm, taller than the others and even more developed than Amber had been the previous night. One powerful arm held a baby, and the other held a spear. "This was the first?"

"Warfare. Interspecies battles for domination created the need for an unusual form of reproductive advantage. Herms were originally larger and more physically powerful than the males, in addition to being significantly more virile and... productive. Not only that, but they could impregnate others when population pressure proved problematic, and they could bear young as well, with a significantly higher chance of the condition being passed on."

"So a species was almost wiped out... and they evolved herms?"

"That's... a very simplified way of looking at it, but the initial pressure was thought to be caused by an ice age, and then exacerbated by the return of warmer weather and a resurgence in competition for resources."

The skunktaur display was even more exciting the second time around, and she found herself nibbling her lip. Gods, she was enormous! And she wasn't even aroused! In fact, she looked like she was attacking. "Is she trying to scare them off?"

"Indeed. Taurs were even more dangerous when the condition was inherited, already larger and more aggressive than anthros, and prone to being more... developed. Genetic testing has hinted that the propensity for hyper sizes may have originated with a tauric substrain."

"With a size like that... who did THEY mate with?"

Royston coughed. "That is the next display."

The next display was a lot less graphic than she'd hoped, but there was was no mistaking the sight of the skunktaur surrounded by a little army of tiny skunktaurs, many of whom had inherited the trait. "Unusually large herms, it seemed, mated with whomever they wanted. As the pace of societies progressed to the point of cogent laws being recorded and obeyed, measures were taken to suppress the herm genes, to prevent population explosions, and further wars. The overaggressive herms were now driving the competition."

"Wow. Guess evolution fucked up there."

"Evolution responds to stimulus. People fucked up."

"Oh."

The next display was also partially built, and seemed jumbled. "Is that a badger, or a fox?"

"Yes."

The read the little plaque, which was finished, and learned that environmental pressures led somehow to genetic compatibilities being discovered, and exploited, by adjacent civilizations. "Crossbreeds!"

She felt an enormous hand at her back, and she did not shy away from it. "Crossbreeding ensured peace between two groups, in that their shared success was ensured by co-operation."

"But people HATE crossbreeds! I mean, not everyone. Well, not anymore. But that was what the whole Secession Riots were about! My dad told me all about them, and why crossbreeds like... uh, like some friends of ours were accepted nowadays." She suddenly remembered that only a few people knew that her feline body was adorned with a shocking amount of canine flesh.

He looked at her, but said nothing, simply guiding her along to the next display. "Crossbreeding eventually led to societally-reinforced beliefs about the purity of bloodlines, and the hyper gene was bred back into usefulness."

"Bred?"

"Early scholars had worked out that, much like plants that were harvested for crops, so could people have dominant and recessive genetic traits, and they managed to discover and manipulate recessive genes through careful selection. The return of the herms, and the repopulation of the taurs which had dipped below a tenth of a percent, came with a shock and a price."

"But why did they bring them back? Purity of bloodlines? What does... oh."

It hit her like a brick wall. "Bring back herms to breed with their own species... and outnumber the crossbreeds. Use population pressure... as a weapon. Gods."

He nodded. "Herms were produced as a genetic reflex to combat extinction, and were then harnessed as a tool to influence extinction."

Her nose crinkled, and she sniffed heavily. "That's...not exactly the nicest thing I've heard in a long time," she said softly, throat hoarse. "My DNA only exists because someone was fucked out of existence?"

The hand on her back stroked up and down reassuringly. "Amber, if you've learned anything out of Miss Miositis, hasn't it been that history is just a collection of good intentions that were only realized to be idiotic mistakes after the fact?"

"Well," she sniffled, "I mostly learned how to sleep in class by hiding behind the fat kids, but I guess you're right. Kind of a bitch to bear that as your legacy, though."

"It gets better."

She looked up at him, and he nodded encouragingly, all traces of hostility gone. Now he simply seemed open and friendly, invitingly so. His rakish black hair was actually rather dashing, when you took into account the small glass, the broad shoulders, the strong hands, the...

Stop it, she ordered herself.

The next display was missing most of it's key components, but there were sketches almost like a storyboard scattered everywhere. She quickly realized why someone might have a difficult time turning those sketches into something three dimensional! "That's not just a herm... that's a hyper!"

"Studies indicate that the planned use of herms to breed significant numbers of purebreds led to a brief population explosion, and there were far too many herms entering a given population. It's even estimated that in the ancient cities of the Roaming Delta, virtually every female of breeding age was pregnant simultaneously on at least one occasion. Without wars to fight, and without love to make, the herms migrated. That picture there illustrates one such resultant coupling."

Amber blushed, remembering all to well some of her previous dates. "Wow, that's... huh."

"Crossbreeding was now not only not being eliminated, but had been forcibly encouraged by poor planning. That right there is about to be a very respectable tribe of wolf-beavers, I believe."

"There's a combination I can safely say I never thought of. That poor wolf..."

"That was another evolutionary reflex that had been conditioned by the first wave of herms: a certain, shall we say, viscissitude when dealing with oversized mates."

"Is that... uh... common?" Amber asked, nibbling on a finger.

The towering bear looked down at her. "Surprisingly enough, yes, but it has been linked with the neurochemical triggers in the brain that can influence attraction to herms."

"So what you think you just explained to me is-"

"Correct: the people who think herms are sexy are also the ones generally more able to withstand their ardor."

It was only then that Amber realized that Mr Carmichael, her ornery Algebra teacher, was standing in front of a series of borderline pornographic images, rubbing her back. The wolf in the pictures was being loved into a spherical shape, while the beaver, it seemed, was balancing rather precariously on her own bloated assets. It was an unusual date, she had to admit.

"So this is why your wife won me at the dance? So I could get a self-esteem boosting history lessen, and feel like a confident, sexy and completely hormonally-driven woman again? You could have just asked me yourself. Hell, an e-mail would have been nice."

A thought suddenly struck her, and she turned to face him, staring intently into his eyes. "You know about this display because you're helping with the research, aren't you?"

His eyes tried to remain carefully neutral, but she could see the twitching in his muzzle. "I wasn't always a math teacher, you know."

Amber walked on. There were no more major displays, but there were more sketches on desks, open books, partially completed models, and so forth. "So what else is going to be on this thing? Where to herms go after developing hyperish tendencies and rampaging through the world, filling it up with little hybrid babies? What happened with the population explosion?"

"Well, the sudden influx of population, hybrid and otherwise, pressured cultures to become isolationist. It was barely fifteen hundred years ago when the borders started to come down again. Technological development had continued apace in various parts of the world, and then information started to flow again, everything sped up. The industrial revolution was, in a way, directly fuelled by the herm gene."

"Wow," she said, fingering a drawing that showed a rather comical horsetaur straddling a member that surely could have been used to span a gorge, "I guess we turned out all right, then. Herms are still in the population because there hasn't been time to... to breed us back out."

"Well, we like to think that there's no need to breed anything out of anyone. People are sensible enough nowadays, medical science has progressed with medications and devices to help herms control their own bodies, rather than letting society do it for them, and social mores are making it more and more acceptable to be a hybrid, or a herm, or even a hyper."

She nodded, smiling a little. "That does make me feel a little better."

"But," he said, patting her shoulder again, "a herm in puberty is still something that even medical science has a hard time dealing with. The art room is a good example of that."

"I didn't know I'd get so big, I swear!" she said, panicking again as the memories flooded her.

"No no no, I don't mean that, I mean the fact that you did it at all. Decision-making is never easy at your age, especially where romance is involved, and ESPECIALLY where revenge is involved, and triply especially when it's a herm involved. Frankly, I'm impressed you had the wherewithal to only do what you did, and not take it further."

"Further?"

"Herms aren't exactly known for taking 'no' for an answer."

She slapped her hand to her forehead and groaned. "Fuck, is that why I get turned on whenever a boy is scared of me? What the hell is that anyway?! What gene says, 'Ooooh, he's about to piss himself in sheer terror! Ramming time!' Er... did I just say that?"

"Yes," he said kindly.

"Sorry."

"It's ok. But now, I think you've had enough history for one night."

The main hall of the Ascent Of The Species was startlingly bright, and she rubbed her eyes. "So you never did answer my question," she asked, not asking him to remove his hand from her back. "If you weren't always a math teacher, what did you used to do that lets you work on something like this?"

He shut the door behind them and nodded to the polar bear woman that was quietly sweeping in the corner. "I first got interested in this when my sister started to go through quite a lot of what you're going through, a long time ago."

They were heading into the main promenade again when Amber looked back, and say the woman winking at them. "She's your sister? She's a herm?"

He sighed. "She used to be. She was part of the wave of herms that wanted to be 'accepted' at any cost, and she underwent some rather radical medical treatments. She is still a herm, and she always will be, but she's scarcely noticeable at all."

Amber frowned. "They... what, shrank her? It? Them? Those?"

Royston nodded. "At the time, she thought it was the greatest thing in the world, but public opinion began to change, and now all she can remember is what she's missing out on."

The night was filled with a faint drizzle when they stepped back outside. "I'm sorry to hear that," she said, placing her tiny hand in his enormous paw and giving it a squeeze. "It hasn't exactly been a marvellous time being different."

Amazingly, the big bear growled. "There's nothing wrong with different."

"Sing it, honey," she spat.

They were still holding hands when they got to the car.

They each climbed in, and when the doors were shut they simply sat and listened to the pitter-patter of raindrops on the windshield. Amber was thinking about all she had seen tonight, all of the incredible history of her kind that she never knew before. Why hadn't she known this before? Were these books not in the library? It was hard to discuss herms without getting into the vividly pornographic, since their very reason for existence was spectacular procreation, but surely that wasn't enough to keep the books out of the library, was it?

Maybe it was, she thought, imagining the picture of the inflating wolf lady.

"I guess I'll just go home now?" she asked, unsure what to think about the nights events.

Mr Carmichael looked down at her in surprise. "I never took you as the sort of girl to go home at eight o'clock on a Saturday night."

"Wait, what? You mean you want to show me something else? Gods, I don't know how much more science I can handle in one night."

"Me either," he said, starting the car and heading back into traffic. "In fact, I thought we could use a drink. I don't usually talk that much."

"Heck, that was a lot for me, too. I don't really get out that much."

"Amber?"

"Yes, Royston?"

"Your hand is on my thigh again, Amber."

"Yes, Royston."

"Ah."

The more Amber thought about the displays, the more she realized she was feeling that telltale tingle in her nethers. The thought that maybe, just maybe, her biology and her urges might be used for good instead of just for mindless desire or as a genetic weapon was indeed making her feel a little better about herself, and her ability to rationalize was breaking down some of her mental barriers. She chewed her lip, forbidding herself from growing, but the tingle refused to go away.

Her hand had managed to start rhythmically squeezing his leg of it's own volition by the time they pulled onto a short side-street and stopped at a barely-lit section of curb. The rain was coming down a little harder now, and there didn't seem to be anything open. Her stomach flip-flopped. "Uhm..."

"Oh, relax," he said, opening the door and stepping out. "Honestly, you read so much into every little situation."

The door slammed, and she was alone in the car. Her brows knit. "Hey, wait a second," she said, hopping out and immediately feeling her oversized ears growing heavy with precipitation. "What's going on? Where are we?"

"Right now, we're nowhere," he said, walking swiftly through the puddles and shielding his head with one arm, "but we're going somewhere."

"Where, exactly, are we GOING then? My skirt's getting wet. Well, the front of my skirt is getting wet, the rest of it seems to be doing ok."

He glanced back, coughed, nearly tripped, and then set his eyes resolutely ahead. "We're just around the corner... from... sorry, I thought I would have timed this better... ah, there we go, we're just around the corner from... here!"

Sure enough, they rounded the corner and found themselves at the back of a short lineup that was busy queueing it's way into a brightly-lit street-level storefront. Lilting music was drifting out of the open door and past the burly moose that was standing guard. Amber looked up at the big neon sign above them.

"'Flashbacks'?"

"Tell me, Amber, do you like jazz?"

It was a night of many new firsts for Amber, the most recent being the first time in a bistro. The walls were vividly colored with reds and yellows and oranges, strange quasi-African items hung from the walls amidst beaded shirts, musical instruments and poorly-composed paintings. It was the visual equivalent to being screamed at in perfect harmony by a barbershop quartet.

"So, it's like a bar?"

"Well, no a bar is usually darker and focused around... well, the bar, where the bartender has drinks."

"So what's a pub then?"

"A pub is sort of like a bar, except the pub usually has more food options."

"This place has lots of food options. There's, like, desserts and quiche and stuff in the bar."

"That's not a bar, exactly, that's more of just a counter. See, there's coffee machines. Bars and pubs don't have coffee machines."

"So is this a club?"

"A club usually has louder music and dancing."

"There's a dance floor here."

"Well, there's less dancing here."

Amber thought about it as the waitress found them a small seat in the corner, not too far from the empty but well-lit stage. "So a bistro is sort of like if a bar, a pub and a club sort of had sex, and exploded."

Blinking a little dazedly, Mr Carmichael sat down in the large chair that was dragged over, and nodded. "Lets go with that. People somewhat older than you might think of a bistro as a pub with an over-developed fashion sense."

"Just looks like hipsters and hippies."

"Potato, po-tah-to."

It took Amber a minute to realize the difference between a bistro and a restaurant. "No menus, eh?"

He gestured towards the certainly-not-a-bar counter. "It's up there on the chalkboard."

"Chalkboard? Seriously?"

"It lets them put up new things every day."

"Oh." She thought about it. "That's kinda cool, actually. Do you want anything? I'm a modern woman, I can buy my much older and married date something to eat."

His cheeks puffed out and he seemed on the verge of a protest, but he simply chuckled and rolled his eyes. "Surprise me."

"Oh, I love when a boy says that," she said, patting his hand and skipping off to the counter, leaving him to blush all by himself.

Standing at the counter and admiring the impressive assortment of desserts in the big glass case, something unusual struck her. She looked down at herself, feeling the cool glass through her skirts and through her under-delicates, since her nethers were brushing ever so slightly against the case. "Wow," she said, nibbling her lip.

The elkish bistro-goer in front of her turned around, smiled at her, then followed her eyes to where she was staring. She could just see through his mess of dredlocks that his eyes were in danger of falling out of his head, and she couldn't resist a coquettish blush. "It's actually not quite what I meant, but thanks."

What she had been surprised to notice was that, thus far that night, she hadn't grown. Between the leg-groping, back-rubbing and general feeling of self-awareness, she knew that she should have been more pent-up than any other night that week, except perhaps the dance, but although the tingling was still present, she had somehow avoided any spontaneous growth.

But why?

She moved sideways when the line moved, bumping into the elk-fellow again. She smiled politely, and he whipped his head around, staring straight ahead. She knew she was going to get hat sort of reaction anywhere she went, and it was about time she got used to it, and even learned to enjoy it.

Wait a minute...

She arrived back at the little round table a few minutes later, carefully balancing two little plates each equipped with an enormous slice of fruit-covered cheesecake, her other hand expertly gripping the handles of two extremely large coffee mugs. "It might be six bucks a slice, but they sure give you a lot!" she said, placing everything on the table and rubbing some feeling back into her fingers.

"You didn't need to get me anything, really," he said, but he could not help but admire the dessert.

"Oh, pshaw, you've at least done me this much good tonight. Which actually reminds me of something." She took a deep breath, sipped her coffee, winced, smiled, and took another deep breath. "Ok, this is going to sound kind of awkward."

"Awkward compared to the museum, or awkward compared to the art room?"

"Sort of and sort of, but only awkward because it's me coming right out and saying it. Uhm... there's no real polite way to say this, so I'll just go ahead and blurt it out recklessly: I should be huge right now."

His head inched minutely to the side, and he glanced down. "Some would say-"

"I don't mean huge for a normal person, I mean huge for me. I was groping your leg, you were rubbing my back, and I was seeing herms doing unspeakable things to people, even if it just was on a sketch, but... well, nothing. Ok, not nothing, but my body is usually knocking down the castle gates right now, so to speak. I'm not even wearing those armored underpants my mom thinks I'm wearing, and nothing."

His eyes widened rather like the elk's when she mentioned the armored underpants, but she didn't know if it was because he had heard of them, or shock at the fact that the only thing standing between them was a few layers of silk. "Well..." he said slowly.

"So what I think is, learning about my history and maybe learning a little more of my place sort of, I don't know, filled in some missing pieces in my head. Normally I would get all anxious and nervous and work myself into a frenzy when I felt horny, and I would be afraid, but excited, and then I'd grow and be more afraid and more excited, but now... now I'm not afraid anymore. I don't get the usual pang of terror when I think of growing that big. Maybe the fear was part of the trigger, and now it's gone."

She sipped her coffee again. "Mmmm, that is good here. Strong. So... thanks, I think. I don't know if it's permanent or anything, but right now I don't feel worried about being me anymore. And... well..."

She stood up slightly, pleased with her self-awareness enough to swing her bulging skirts out to the side before she knocked the table over, lifted one knee onto his thigh, gripped his shoulders, leaned up still more, and planted a delicate kiss on his cheek. by the time she's slithered back down his body and regained her seat, his glasses had fogged up.

"That means 'thanks'," she said helpfully, sipping her coffee.

She took a bite of her cheesecake, and mewled softly at the intense flavors. She took another bite. She took a bite of his, and decided that his was better, and switched plates. She nibbled a mango slice thoughtfully, then looked back up at her date.

"I didn't, like, give you a coroner or anything, did I?"

"The... the... fwuh.. the term is 'coronary', young lady," he managed to speak at last. "And no, it's just... well, that was a little unexpected. Unnecessary. Inappropriate."

"Inappropriate? Are you serious? After everything you told me, and after everything I told you, a little smooch is inappropriate? Gods, you are a hard nut to crack. No wonder your wife bought me."

"Stop saying 'bought!'" he barked, a little louder than he intended.

"Chill, chill. Rented for a reasonable fee, with half the proceeds going to the Circe High Event Planning Fund. Better? I saw the look in your wife's eye. My school has a couple other herms, there's no way she picked the Famous New And Improved Amber for you just so you could go to a museum and eat pie."

She chewed another piece of her cheesecake, enjoying the look of acknowledgement and dread on his face.

"Can we not just enjoy ourselves, enjoy the company of others, and enjoy some music?" he said at length, taking a bite of the recently-switched piece of pie before him.

She sighed and leaned back in her chair, arching her back in a distinctly feline manner and only realizing afterwards exactly how prominently she had been displaying her ample breasts. "I suppose," she said tiredly. "Doesn't seem much point in trying to get through to YOU, maybe teach YOU something."

They continued to dine on their desserts, watching a small weaselboi set up an eclectic assortment of instruments on the small stage. Amber could feel her forehead begin to sweat, and she wondered just how strong the coffee here was! It was distinctly, even with all of the cream and sugar, but still enjoyable. She smiled up at Royston, but he seemed distracted.

She opened her mouth to ask him something lewd when the weaselboi stepped up to the microphone and introduced the band for the night: Shambalah's Kitchen. Amber snorted and covered her mouth with her hands to stifle the giggles, drawing some annoyed and then appraising glances from those around her. Several people sitting in the bistro stood up and walked towards the stage, and she realized that several of the diners and coffee-drinkers were the night's entertainment. Disguised as they were by their unique yet strangely uniform attire, it just looked like the roadies were getting delusions of grandeur, and she began to giggle again.

The music was thoroughly enjoyable, she was surprised to find. The flutes and saxophones and drums and acoustic guitars and the myriad other instruments blended well, and everyone seemed to be taking turns singing songs, though for the life of her she couldn't quite figure out what any of the songs meant. Love was mentioned many times, as was the water, the sky, and the soul. She was reminded of Captain Planet cartoons.

"By your powers combined," she said to herself and snorted again, though luckily the music was loud enough to prevent anyone from hearing her, except Royston. He turned in his seat and shushed her. "Oh, don't you shush me."

"If you're not enjoying the music..."

"I am, I am!" she said, nodding happily. "It's toe-tappingly awesome, it just sort of struck me as funny. Look, are you gonna drink your coffee or not? I'm thirsty."

"I don't really drink coffee this late," he said.

"Awww, but it's special coffee!" she pouted, but snagged his cup and took a big sip anyways.

Mr Carmichael was enjoying the music for a few more seconds when two signals finally collided in his brain. His head snapped around. "What did you say?!"

"I said it was special coffee. Expensive, too. Good, though!"

He looked up at the menu, down to the cups, back to the menu, and then back to the cups. With a speed that belied his size he engulfed her entire hand in one paw and brought it to his lips, sipping the drink and pulling her almost out of her seat. "Hey, watch it!" she said, trying to keep her balance.

His eyes squeezed shut and his stomach twisted. "Amber," he said slowly and carefully, easing her back into her seat. "Did you mean to order Special Coffee?"

"Well, it looked like the fanciest, and this is a fancy date, and I felt like buying you something fancy to say thank you for being so nice to me..."

"Did you know that Special Coffee means alcohol?"

"And it's all creamy and bitter and... what?"

He tasted the bitter mixture of liqueurs on his tongue. "This is coffee, drambuie, frangelico and whisky, Amber, and you are sixteen."

She stared at the cup for a long moment, and licked her lips. "You know, I thought it tasted a little funny."

"It tasted illegal! You're sixteen!" he hissed. "Do you have any concept of what could happen if someone finds out about this?!"

She looked up at him. "I'm going to guess something bad."

"Bad... bad..." he choked on the words, and was so distracted by the understatement that he didn't stop Amber from taking another sip. He grabbed the cup out of her on it's way back to the table, downed it in a single gulp, and slammed the cup down. "We're going. We need to go for a walk and you need some fresh air."

"But the music is pretty, and come on, I'm not DRUNK, I'm just a little warm and my nose is numb. It's still pink, right?" She wrinkled her nose pertly and winked at him.

"Leaving NOW." He stood up, trying not to draw attention to them, and pulled on his coat. Amber stood up as well, misjudged some distances and her hyper attributes knocked the table over entirely. Eyes swivelled to face them, including those of the band, and saw her resting her kittenish paws on her clearly-visible testes, pulling the fabric tight and outline the bulky shape of her sheath.

"Wow," she said, giving herself a bit of a squeeze, "I didn't even feel them growing. These are totally bigger than when we got here..."

Royston grabbed her shoulder and piloted her out of the bistro. "Excuse me, excuse me, pardon me, it's all right she just isn't feeling well, excuse me, thank you..."

She was still trying to arrange her purse strap properly, her gait wobbling and unsteady from the combination of booze and greatly increased weight within her skirts, when she found herself back outside on the sidewalk. There was a wolf-whistle from the assembled crowd of smoking patrons, but it was silenced by a furious glare from the polar bear that could have melted lead.

"Yeah, I'm definitely bigger. Usually when I swell it's really, you know, noticeable..."

"Please hush for a few minutes," her date said, holding her elbow and walking them back to the corner, "and stop groping yourself."

"But it feels good!"

"That is more reason NOT to do it right NOW!"

He dared to glance down at her and his eyes widened. Before she had been quite obviously large, the outer curves of her impressive sac roughly as wide as her hips, swaying enticingly, but now they stuck out a hand-span on either side and had enough bulk to move her entire body back and forth with each step. Her skirt had been loose and flowing but was now snug and revealing, and her fluffy paws patting each orb down was making it harder to ignore.

They reached the car, he released her arm and leaned against the hood. "Ahhh, gods, this isn't good," he said to the sky.

She stood demurely on the sidewalk, hands clasped in her lap, staring at the ground. "Sorry," she said softly, "I really didn't mean to get you in trouble. You can count on me not to tell anyone, you know, and if we hang out for a while my parents will be in bed when I get back and they'll never know, and everyone in the bistro probably thought I was older because I've got pretty big boobs and, I mean, just LOOK at my junk."

"No! Junk? Is that what kids say?"

"I'm not a kid! Why do you keep calling me a kid? If you mean chronologically I'll give you that, I've only been alive for a decade and a half. If you mean physically, I'll put any of my assets up against any grown-up chicks, and if you mean emotionally I think I've gone through enough relationship and medical crap in the last year to vault me into adulthood. If you mean intellectually, I can hold up a hundred adults that are too stupid to breathe but they're running the world. You don't get to call me a kid, Roy."

His eyes were wide with shock and he actually inched away from her tirade. Her fists were clenched, her arms were quivering, and her eyes did not seem even slightly inebriated. "I'm sorry," he said, softly. "You are right. You are arbitrarily underage, but you are, most certainly, a well-developed young woman."

She breathed heavily, sweater straining in time with her heaving chest, and then smiled, her fury dissipating. "It's all right. I'll forgive you just this once."

He stood up, tapped the button on his keychain and unlocked the car. "I guess this night could have gone worse," he said, opening the passenger door and holding it open for her. "And you only had one drink. Well, one and a half."

"It could go better, you know," she said as she stepped around him, resting her paw firmly against his ass and giving it a squeeze, with only the tiniest bit of claw. "It's not even nine o'clock!"

He squeaked and twitched at her touch, stepping away. Her eyes widened and she frowned, settling herself into the passenger seat. When she realized he wasn't going to get any closer to her, she reached out and grasped the door handle. "Or fine, whatever, just take me home," she groused, slamming the door shut.

It took a minute for her date to gather himself, walk around the car and slip into his own seat. They were silent as seatbelts were clicked into place. Amber had to splay her legs much farther than before to give herself enough room, with one knee wedged under the doorhandle and the other almost touching the gearshift. In spite of that, her swollen sac was nearly brushing the undersides of her breasts, and she could feel her sheath pressing insistently against her belly.

"Are we going?"

He blinked, but did not reply. The key slipped into the ignition and the engine purred to life. Amber, still riding the unusual and nose-numbing high of her first drink, gasped softly and felt the vibrations of the vehicle reverberating through her body, focused on her nethers. The weight against her thighs increased, and she could see the pleats in her skirt vanishing as she inched larger again. The kitty bit her lip hard and ordered her body to stop.

At best, her body merely slowed.

That's probably not good, she thought to herself. She looked up at Royston, and sure enough he was keeping his eyes securely on the road. She glanced down at herself again, and felt the pressure against the undersides of her breasts growing. Her eyes almost crossed when the thin flesh of her sheath was stretched thinner as her body struggled to make it's desires known.

"Uhm, you might want to drive faster," she said evenly.

"The roads are wet."

"And so am I."

"Oh, that's just-" he started to say, looking down at her crossly, but the math teacher was well suited to noticing that her assorted spheres had indeed increased in volume. "Oh. Can you, uhm, hold on? We'll have you home in about twenty minutes."

"My body doesn't seem to be listening to anything my brain is saying right now," she said, resting her hand on his thigh in order to lift herself up slightly and try to spread her legs more. There wasn't enough legroom in the car for her, though, and the net effect was simply to rub her propped-up bulges against her torso, which only made everything harder to ignore. "I think I've figured out what alcohol does to hyper herms."

Royston ground his teeth. "Once again, something that you really can't tell anyone, despite it's potentially useful information regarding how your genetics were taken advantage of in the past. Those that were trying to use herms to breed for defense or offense could... could have... uhm..."

He glanced down and reassured himself that he was not delusional. Amber's fluffy, oversized paw was almost vanishingly in his lap, but her strong fingers were undeniably rubbing against the front of his slacks.

"And here I thought you didn't like me," she purred up to him, leaning sideways and resting her head against his upper arm. "I couldn't tell for sure, but you're definitely liking me a LITTLE bit. Well, ok, not a little."

"Amber," he croaked, "you can't do that. I'm married. I'm... I'm your teacher. The age difference..."

"I thought we covered all three of those points. One," she said, squeezing him firmly, "this was your wife's idea. Two," another squeeze, "on Monday, no matter what you say, EVERYONE is going to assume this happened anyways. And three," she concluded with a final firm grope, "I thought we determined I was old enough to make up my own mind."

His jaw worked. It was a miraculous effort of will that the vehicle did not careen off the road.

Her hand moved down his leg, feeling the pulsing hardness beneath his thin khakis. "Hmm, I think I see why small girls always seem to marry big bears," she said, but then she pictured the size difference between her parents and shuddered inside. Ok, she thought to herself, don't go down THAT mental road tonight!

Her hand continued down his leg, and she had almost reached his knee when she reached the end of the remarkably hard bulge. "My goodness, you're a big boy! Your mouth might be saying no, Mr Carmichael, but your body definitely seems to be saying yes."

"Focus, Amber, focus!"

"Oh, I am focusing..."

"No, not on THAT part!"

She blinked in confusion, but it didn't take long to figure out what he meant. She focused her attention back to herself, and realized that the weight in her lap had grown from ponderous to overwhelming. In a futile gesture she reached around her sac and tried to tug her skirt down, but the formerly ankle-length fabric would not even reach her knees now, and she knew shortly they would be hiding very little. She chewed her lip hard and sank her claws into her thighs, trying to stop her body's inexorable urges.

"Sorry," she said again, "this... isn't easy. I think... I gained a little respect for my ancestors tonight..."

Room in the passenger seat was rapidly growing scarce, but just before the side of her sac overflowed the central console and threatened to touch his arm where her shoulder had rested moments before, she managed to get a grip on herself. The tingle was still present, furiously persistent and seeming to gnaw at the very core of her, but she could feel the stretching of her skin reach equilibrium.

"For now," she mumbled.

Royston glanced down and swallowed audibly. "Does that hurt?" he asked, trying to sound nonchalant and failing.

"Oooooh, gods no," she said, slumping forwards, embracing herself and resting her head atop her twin beachball-sized mounds. "This feels really... really... really good. which is, of course, the entire problem."

She heaved a contented sigh and closed her eyes. Many times she had fallen asleep in a similar position, swollen with desire but alone, always alone in her bed. Her balls were always warm and cuddly, and there whenever she needed them. She purred and licked her lips, tasting the errant flavor of liqueur on her lips, and wondering why it had had no effect on her whatsoever.

"Amber?"

"Mmmmrr?"

"You're not focusing, Amber!"

"Mrrrewl?"

"Amber!"

Her eyes flew open and the first think she noticed was her back seemed noticeably straighter, and she couldn't feel her feet. "Oh, crap," she said, squeezing her arms as though by sheer force of will she could force her growth to reverse. "What did I..."

"I think you dozed off for a moment," he replied.

"How big-"

"I'm driving with one arm."

"I'm so sorry-"

"I'm pulling over."

"This has never happened to be before!"

"I think I would have heard about it if it had. Ok, hold on."

Amber sensed the G-forces of the car pulling hard to the right. She looked up and she realized she could see the dome light above her head, but her view to the front was somewhat obscured. There was a cramping pressure far on the other side of her bulges, which she guessed was the dashboard. "Can you give me a hand here?"

There was silence. Silence and a draft. She looked to the side, and where she had expected to see a large polar bear, and instead saw an open door, a drizzly night, and an empty seat.

"Hello?"

Her hand fumbled in the unseen spaces to her right, searching desperately for the door handle, but the weight of her flesh against the door made it impossible. "Dammit fuck dammit," she grumbled, straining her back and trying to shift some her mass to the side. At this stage, and pinned in the small car, though, it was a wasted effort.

"I can't believe he just got out of the car and left me here by mysel-E-E-EEEK!"

The door that had become her major loadbearing support gave way and she tumbled to the ground. Well, almost to the ground.

"Those are your hands, right?"

One enormous mitt covered her entire back, and the other was carefully gripping her rear. She felt it slide farther down the backs of her thighs, snuggling in between herself and the passenger seat, and then, as though she weighed no more than a feather, she was lifted high into the air. There was a moment where she felt herself being juggled, and her overly-inflated nethers were being cradled gently in his arm.

"Are you ok?"

His face was inches from hers, filling her vision. She fancied she could see little pink hearts floating around his face. She tried to bat at one of them, but just ended up bopping him on the forehead. "I think so," she said unevenly, giggling up at her burly savior. "Are you ok?"

He looked down at the fluffy parcel in his arms, a slender kittygirl who couldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds soaking wet, yet with an enormously ample skirt that was pushing the limits of what he could comfortably lift. "I'll be ok," he mumbled, trying not to look her in the eye.

"Are you trying not to look me in the eye?"

"No."

The one small blessing, she thought to herself, was that the drizzly night air was putting a damper on her hyper physiology that simple self-control could not. She shifted to the side and rested her head against his neck. "There, is that better?"

"A little bit, I suppose."

Royston began to walk. The bounce of his heavy steps was soothing, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, snuggling tighter against him. "Where are you taking me?"

"Somewhere safe."

She could smell cologne on his fur, and she found that she liked it. Perfume was always flowery and fruity, but this was a dense smell that seemed to tug at the back of her nasal passages. Her toes curled, and she nibbled tenderly at the skin just below his jaw. His arms spasmed, but he kept walking.

"Could you... please not.."

"Oh, don't tell me it doesn't feel good," she purred into his ear, pulling herself higher and running the tip of her raspy tongue along his cheek. "I remember in the car you didn't mind being this close to me."

"Amber, you're not... you can't... we..."

"Just hush. Just walk."

She explored what of him she could reach with her lips, while her hands enjoyed the feel of the heavy muscles in his shoulders tensing and relaxing. "You're a lot bigger than my other dates."

"Mmm."

With her ear against his chest, the sound of his faint murmuring filled her mind. "I didn't mean that part," she said, ruffling the front of his slacks with her tail.

"Mmm."

"I think I stopped growing."

"Mmm."

"That's probably just temporary, though."

"Mmm hmm."

"Going for the strong, silent type now?"

"I figure it's safest."

"For whom?"

"Mmm."

She tilted her head, but couldn't see very much of the world around them. To her right was Royston's expansive torso, her front was almost entirely blocked by the tense and bloated bulk of her maleness, and everywhere else was still cloaked by night.

"Ok, now I'm starting to get worried," she said, shivering slightly against the brisk air and cuddling up to him even closer. "Am I being dumped in the woods or something?"

He laughed. "Far from it. No, I thought it would be hard on you to drop you off at home in your current condition, especially if it's going to take you another hour to sober up and you're having some trouble keeping things under control in the meantime."

"I'm sure I have no idea what you mean," she said, hiccuppiung and growing another couple inches.

"I'm sure. So, I thought, we're not too far from a pretty safe place, and I could let you... er, get back to normal."

"And where, exactly, is that?" The thought of getting back to normal was strangely unpleasant to her. She found she rather enjoyed the feel of her current size, with such comforting arms holding her so close, and knowing that she still had a long way to go. She gripped his neck tighter.

"It has a lot of room and it has an, er, ahem, large capacity for drainage."

"You're being really mysterious, did you know that?"

"No-o-o-o!"

She steamed, wanting to sink her claws into the back of his head and make him tell her, but she still had enough self-possession to resist. Is this what it felt like to be one of the original herms? Aggressive, even dominant, and deriving pleasure from those around you that were weaker, or who just acted weak. It can't have been an easy existence!

"Can I get a hint?!"

"Hush, we're almost there."

"You said that five minutes ago!"

"Pipe down or I'll turn this car RIGHT around..."

In spite of herself, she smiled. "Ok, mister, but you're on notice. You've got two minutes, and then I start letting these girls loose again." She slid one arm from around his shoulders patted her skirts, which were now beginning to ride up on the far side, revealing soft, white fluff.

He gasped, and she laughed. "I mean, you gotta think, there's only one time in my LIFE I've actually TRIED to get bigger. Every other time I was holding back tooth and nail, sometimes literally, but in the art room, that was me going for the gusto."

"Mmm hmm," he said nervously.

"But you have to think, that was me going for broke, but I had a few disadvantages. I wasn't really aroused nor romantically inclined towards the situation; it was revenge, not love. It was cold, and I was a little self-conscious."

"About three boys seeing you like that?"

"Actually no, about... er, well, I had a little help that night and I don't want to get them in trouble, so I'll just say my accomplice."

"Oh."

"So even the art room wasn't ALL of me."

"O-oh."

"And I've only been hyper-ish for, like, six months. How long is puberty?"

There was no reply from above.

"Yeah, that's what I thought." She played her fingers all along her swelling and occasionally-gurgling sac. "I think you've got about thirty seconds lef-"

"We're here," he said with relief.

There was the sound of a door being kicked open with one enormous bearpaw, and from the way the background sounds suddenly faded she could tell they were inside now. She wasn't sure exactly where, but it felt big. "What is this, a curling rink?"

"No, it's... wait, why would your first guess be curling?"

In a moment she found herself lowered slowly to the ground. She didn't know what to expect, but she had definitely not expected to feel the plush resistance of a bed beneath her. Her hands felt around and sure enough, there was a blanket and everything. Legs splayed out wide and lap filled with a pair of beachball-like balls, she flopped backwards and sighed contentedly. "This feels pretty good after the car, I gotta say, but I still don't know where we are."

She heard retreating footsteps. "Hello? Royston? Where are... are you LEAVING me here?"

She took a deep breath and prepared to hurl a stream of insults that a girl like her simply should not know when there was an electric snapping noise from overhead and a small cluster of lights flashed on. She blinked in the sudden glare, but she had caught enough of a glimpse of the distant walls to make the final connection.

"We're at SCHOOL?!"

Most of the overhead lights were still off, but Amber and the makeshift bed were sitting in the middle of a pool of light. Hanging from the walls were the scrap purple and orange streamers from the night before, and there were discarded punch cups swept into the corners. She could see Royston walking back to her from the far side of the gym. "Well," he said, "it's big enough, and I thought if one thing led to another and... and you needed to release your, ah, pressure, then I could take you here."

"And the bed?"

"I wanted you to be comfortable." He stood a pace from the bed, smiling down at her but for some reason still not seeming to look directly AT her.

"Well, it is big enough for two," she agreed.

His eyes widened with alarm. "Oh, no! No no no, I just made this for you, it would be... I couldn't possibly take advantage of you like that! The age difference-"

"Oh, gods, not this AGAIN!"

She swung her leg over and managed to roll herself onto her hip. Body flooded with hormones of all kinds gave her a strength she never knew she had and she managed to push herself off from the bed with such force that she wobbled upright, pert rear-end balanced atop her sac. Tilting backwards, her feet touched down on the soft foam and she was standing once again under her own power, although most of the weight of her testes were being borne by the bed itself.

"Your wife arranged this date. You yourself accepted. You set up that thing at the museum to tell me all about my inglorious past, you took me to a jazz bistro which was completely filled with OTHER couples on dates, and ok, the special coffee was a fluke, but in spite of that you set up a GIGANTIC ROOM with a BED in the middle of it and you expect me to believe you didn't entertain even the slightest inkling of joining me?"

"I-"

"You," she continued, fingers slowly but deftly unbuttoning her pink blouse, "like herms. Heck, maybe you even like me. You enjoy the sight of me growing, but you won't look at me when it happens. You definitely enjoyed the sight of me in the car if that steel pipe in your pants was any indication."

"Amber!"

She reached the final button and let the blouse swing open, but she did not remove it. Instead she began to fiddle with the back of her skirts. "Hush. Big girl talking. Where was I? Right, you being harder than calculus. I know what it feels like to want something you know is wrong, to DO something you feel might be wrong, and to really really enjoy something that probably is wrong. Man, I know what that feels like. But I also know what no matter how much the big voice in your head tells you something is wrong, there's a lot of little voices who try to talk sense into it and convince it that it's only wrong because you're afraid other people think it's wrong."

She inched closer to him, having to stand up on her tiptoes in order to shift the bulk before her. "And if it feels good for me, and it feels good for you, and I don't think it's wrong, and you don't think it's wrong, and your wife had had that evil gleam in her eye when she winked at me, then what's stopping you?'

"We-"

With two claws she gripped at the back of her loosened blouse, and with two others she finished untying the last of the bands on her skirts. A swift tug was all they needed and they flew into the distance, vanishing outside the column of light around her. Her soft belly fur was an angelic white, fading to cream-and-gold at her sides and shoulders. Her legs were more golden than anywhere else, but Royston couldn't see them at all beyond the expansive display of her balls.

He was hypnotized by more than just the sight of her nearly naked body, however. She was clad in a scandalously sheer black bra that covered just enough of her breasts to provide lift, but he could see the faintest hint of pink areola above the lacy trim, and down below, somehow not strangling her nethers, more black lace. She turned to the side as much as she could, and swayed her hips, showing how the stretchy HyperPanties (patent pending) were providing substantially more support, and comfort, than she had expected.

"Don't you think I'm pretty?"

"Buh."

One hand caressed the front of her new undergarments, and he could clearly see the outline of her sheath extending nearly halfway over the horizon of her sac. The panties narrowed like a thong at the bottom, and nearly vanished between the fuzzy white orbs. Another squeeze and her sheath thickened noticeably.

"Don't you think this might be your big chance?"

"I..."

Another step and her waist-high testes were teetering on the edge of the mattress. Her heart leapt when Royston's defenses finally seemed to crumble, and he took a step forward to meet her.

"Are you going to come down here and give me a kiss," she said, leaning forward as much as she dared, "or am I going to have to come up there and take it?"

Hesitantly, as though he expected her to change her mind at any moment, he reached towards her. His enormous paw engulfed her shoulder comfortingly, and slid down her side. Eyes wide and anxious, his hand drifted sideways, cupping one of her quite substantial breasts. She smiled encouragingly, patting his hand and pressing it even harder against her flesh. "You do like me," she said softly, reassuringly.

He nodded a little dumbly, and took the final step, pressing his legs up against her scantily-clad nethers. He gasped, and his other hand found itself resting on her wildly-oversized bulges. Looking askance into her eyes, he gently squeezed.

It was Amber's turn to gasp. She had been with several guys, and had done quite a lot of things, but she had never seen such awe-struck desire in anyone's eyes before, and it translated to his every touch. His hand moved, and she could make out the pulsing and swelling of the veins just below the surface wherever he caressed her. She really was holding back now, not wanting things to progress TOO quickly, but it was still obvious that she was nowhere near finished filling up.

She placed her other hand atop the one exploring her panties and guided it further to the front. She was biting down on her lip hard to distract her body from it's goal, but that wouldn't last forever, and Amber needed to make sure that Royston knew what he was getting into. He sank to one knee almost reverently, his great paw slid overtop of her sheath, still just barely able to get his thumb and forefinger around it, but the long heavy mass surged with suppressed desire almost instantly, thin skin creaking as it was stretched from within.

"Are you ok?" he asked her, seeing the pained expression on her face.

"Just... trying... not to... scare you..." she gasped, forcing his hand to slide down along the length of her sheath, which bulged alarmingly wherever his fingers roamed. "I've never been this big... oooohhhhh, gods, this big before I even STARTED before!"

He opened his mouth to say something, but she was sure she didn't want to hear it. Both of her hands flew from his, gripped the back of his head and pulled him into a shockingly passionate kiss. Her tongue forced it's way between his lips and seemed to fight with his own. She moaned, closing her eyes and enjoying the tastes of him, raspy pink tongue twining around his, and his gasp of surprise faded into a soft rumble of pleasure, the last of his pretenses finally falling to the wayside.

She tugged back, hanging off his neck for a moment before he caught on. He made an affirmative noise through their locked lips and leaned forwards, easing Amber back onto the bed and then joining her, laying on their sides. One long arm reached around her bulk and gripped her slender rear, pulling her against him. She could feel his thighs, his hips, his belly against her balls, and she could feel his own rock-hard shaft against her own still-soft sheath. Not surprisingly, she was several times larger despite not having even emerged yet, which was becoming a bit of an issue.

She whimpered, and his eyes opened to see her pleading expression. "What is it?" he whispered.

"My... underwear..."

He glanced down their bodies and his eyes widened with alarm, seeing the strong but sexy undergarments had reached the limit of their ability to stretch and now looked on the verge of strangling her.

"One size fits all, my tight white ass," she grumbled, yanking on the waistband sourly.

Royston was still shocked at their size. Laying on her side as she was, her slender body was absolutely dwarfed by the twin spheres of her maleness, and her sheath had thickened until it seemed to be just as wide as the narrowest part of her waist. He shook himself out of his stunned reverie when her body was shaken by another wave of hormones and those colossal shapes creaked and groaned into even larger dimensions.

"One sec," he said, placing a paw on her shoulder and pushing her back onto the bed. Her legs vanished beneath the rondure of her sac, the black lacy lingerie almost vanishingly small amidst the swelling field of white. He moved his muzzle down her body, scattering kisses along her neck, her breasts, her belly and finally the little tuft of white fuzz just above the steel-cord-taut black waistband, before taking a deep breath and biting down hard where the waistband was being tugged away from her skin.

The snap was like being shot in the face with a BB gun, but he recovered admirably fast. With the waistband on one side severed, the outmatched undergarment retreated over the horizon of one massive four-foot diameter teste and ended up as nothing more than a slightly frayed garter. They were both quite surprised when her sheath, now freed from it's prison, fell against her body in slow motion like a felled tree.

"Fmmmumph!"

It had missed his nose by a scant inch, and he was unsure if his eyes would ever blink normally again seeing a taut, deep burgundy canine sheath not only resting against Amber's perfect female feline body, but seeing that sheath was as wide as her torso and so impossibly long that it extended right up to her twitching ears.

With no small effort she rolled her body partly onto her side, her legs and hips still quite thoroughly pinned to the bed by her balls, and shifted her sheath onto the bed with a soft, wet thump. "Well... that's embarrassing," she said with a chuckle.

Royston, kneeling on the only part of the bed that was not currently covered with the, as far as he was concerned, most stunning herm in the world, just stared. Her body was now merely a fraction of her weight, and that fraction was shrinking by the minute. Amber had her arms wrapped around her sheath, hugging and snuggling with it, the doghood within quivering and shuddering with barely-restrained potential.

"I've never been even CLOSE to this big before... you know," she said softly, reaching out with one hand and petting the twitching column of muscle in Royston's slacks. "You sure do something to me, Mr Carmichael."

She gasped again and clenched her eyes, her entire body vibrating like a violin string. He was dumbstruck to see her sheath thicken hugely at the base, nearly doubling in circumference, the bulge travelling upwards along it's length. Veins stood out in stark relief under the deep red peachfuzz, the skin audibly creaking as it struggled to contain the vast pressures within. "And... I can't... keep it... under control... for... much... longer..."

Amber's fingers were now just barely touching around her shuddering maleness, and his mind was filled with her heavy, musky odors as the very tip began to crest towards freedom, nearly a foot beyond the top of her head. Royston had never seriously entertained the possibility that she might ever reciprocate his feelings and he might ever end up on the mattress he had laid out for her, instead planning to simply play the role of concerned teacher, and now that he was here he was, like so many males throughout history who had been secretly enticed by herms, unsure of himself.

"You mean this is under control now?" he said hollowly, trying to sound nonchalant.

Another creak, this one backed up by a persistent whooshing noise as though a washing machine were on a full cycle of towels, and her sac expanded with such force that he felt the leading slope nudge against him like some sort of large farm animal. Her sheath was straining at the tip now, desperately trying to hold back, but continuing to bulge thicker. Her eyes were huge and pleading. "Take me.... now..." she mewled.

Despite the more normal imperative those words bespoke between a boy and a girl, he knew what she meant. He bent down and slid one hand beneath her body, wrapping his other around the twin shapes of her body and her twitching sheath, and slowly hoisted Amber up into a sitting position, and then with a little bit of work over her sac such that she could kneel on the bed with the creamy white spheres resting on the floor of the gymnasium behind her. Her pride and joy, though, was now nearly as long as the mattress itself. She lovingly stroked and pet what of it she could reach while Royston, too shocked to feel shame or embarassment, began to disrobe.

"I still can't believe," he said, sliding out of his pants, "that you're so big, so young. The histories I've read hinted at this sort of thing, but..."

Apparently freed for the moment of her explosive expansion, Amber giggled and blushed. "I just hope I won't be too big when... you know..." Her sheath lifted briefly off the mattress when he lost his shirt, the cuff tugging back again to reveal a deep red-black doghood with a tip bigger than Royston's head.

"I... whew... well, I'm not about to be shown up by some high school kids," he said, stepping out of his boxers and standing naked before only the second female in his entire life. "I see why you made special notice of the hybrids now."

Amber's eyes lasciviously drank it all in. He was enormously tall, and despite the baggy, dour clothes and quiet demeanor, he was powerfully built, if a little on the soft side. Her eyes settled on his own erection, which would have been extremely impressive had anyone else other than her been present, nearly two feet long, close to Amber's original size. "Wow," she breathed, and started to say more when she seemed to be struck by a small, private earthquake.

The feline leaned back against her sac as though it were an enormous beanbag, each teste now close to five feet in diameter and cresting well above her head. The delicate flesh was stretched paper thin and continued to emit sounds like tortured rubber as they inflated still more with each breath. Her sheath, though, could finally take no more. With one final surge, the cuff retracted with startling speed, and what had one been a solid six feet of fuzzy maroon sheath straining at beyond maximum capacity became three feet of fuzzy maroon sheath and close to six further feet of semi-hard dogcock as big around as Amber's chest. The tip slipped off the far end of the mattress, a thin but steady stream of precum beginning to pool on the floor.

"Gods... lay... down..." Amber moaned, at the mercy of her physiology now, thighs wrapped around the girth of her member as though riding a horse, and praying for ten more seconds of restraint. With each beat of her heart, several more inches of length were revealed, with the sheath tugging back slowly.

"I should have brought two beds," he chuckled, kneeling before her and sliding his padded paw underneath the tip, hefting it and marvelling at it's weight. His touch was instantly responded to by a spasm of skin and tendon, her shaft shoving forwards a full foot and almost thumping him in the belly. Realizing just how close he was to perhaps losing his only chance to fulfill a lifelong dream, he swung his body around, revealing his stubby little tail wagging with excitement, and his large, wintry rump.

The first major hurdle, so to speak, made itself evident when Amber leaned forwards and pressed her hands against the slowly-retracting sheath-covered base of her shaft, and managed to aim it down just enough to press firmly and insistently up against his cheeks. Unlike her previous paramours, though, Royston had given her more than enough time to reach an exceedingly advanced stage of arousal, and the end result was that she simply shoved his entire body forwards several inches.

"Oof," he grunted, feeling the pressure building quite literally behind him. "One second, I think that... ok, here we go..."

She couldn't see what he was doing, but she did hear the affirmative sound and needed absolutely no other prodding to take action. She thrust with her hips again, almost a useless gesture giving the size she had attained, but her body reacted in kind and her swelling doghood hardened still further, not yet even at full tumescence. This time the tapered tip nearly rammed against his snug tailhole, and he gasped with the force, but his body went no further. She felt a brief discomfort, but her physiology was not about to be stopped by something as petty as friction.

Royston clenched hard with his feet, long but fairly blunted claws gripping the base of the mattress with all the force he could muster. It felt like he was being pushed by a small car, and his ankles ached with the force necessary to keep his body in place, but he wasn't about to give up either. He willed his body to relax, particularly his prominent rear, trying to coax Amber on. He shortly discovered she needed no coaxing.

Her eyes rolled back in her head and the veins decorating the thin, glass-taut skin of her shaft bulged and roared with blood. All at once her shaft reached almost painful hardness, and her cries of ecstasy mixed with his groans of shock. Like a champagne cork in reverse, she grew against his rump, her shaft bending in the middle slightly, his own body bowing under the strain, until the weaker flesh surrendered and Amber's cock slammed home.

"Ohgodsfuckowowowfuckdamnwowwowwow," he rumbled against the floor, his arms collapsing, his entire body going limp as it was temporarily overwhelmed. Behind him, his hyper lover was growling and mewling nonsensical noises. His claws, he discovered, were still anchored securely under the edge of the mattress.

He was beginning to think that it might not be such a great idea, but he also discovered that he could not let go.

Second by second, inch by inch, she continued to fill him more than he should possibly have been able to contain. She was still hardening, forcing his opening wider, pushing his insides aside as if they were so much pillow stuffing. His stomach did not simply bulge out; his entire body, from hips to chest, had become merely a tightly-wrapped secondary sheath for her.

She thrust her hips again, and drove home another foot. The long white fluff of his underbelly was starting to show pink skin beneath as it stretched further and further, his belly now distorting and beginning to protrude beyond his chest. Another thrust, another twelve inches, and he could rest his muzzle on the bear-coated dogcock now powering not just into him, but very nearly through him.

He was beyond words now. He simply wrapped his arms and his legs around the shaft that he rode like a toddler on a log, nibbling and kissing his own drum-tight skin in an effort to please the powerful flesh beneath, his own shaft trapped between his underbelly and the floor of the gymnasium. Royston entertained a passing thought about what must be happening to his skeletal structure to allow this to continue happening, but he dismissed it outright... no sense overthinking things too much.

He looked behind himself, and moaned even louder than before. Amber was now quite visibly framed, her creamy golden fur in stark relief to the sac behind her which was now inching taller than she was, and the pulsing, twitching and glossy-tight column of canine that she straddled, her toes barely touching the mattress.

"What do you think?" she asked saucily.

His tongue merely lolled out and he grinned back at her. A shiver ran through her body, and he expected another growth spurt to stretch his insides out further, but none came. A confused look passed his face until he saw the predatory gleam that now shon in her eyes. Her grin grew wider, baring her teeth. He smiled nervously.

"Just need... to get... a little... closer," she said, and he cried out in shock and delight when she sank her own claws into the mattress and with a strength that she should simply not have possessed, pushed her own bloated form forwards. His legs protested loudly, and he felt one his ankles pop, but his own feet held their position as she simply shoved her way further into him.

As though she were walking into a hurricane, body held forwards, each step an ordeal, she closed the distance. Her canine shaft, now easily twelve feet long with her sheath fully retracted, was fully three-quarters buried in her teacher's rump, the bulk of it extending farther beyond his face than his arms could even reach. Her sac stalled her for a moment before it crested the edge of the mattress with a gurgling thud, pressing up against her tail once again.

"Gonna getcha," she giggled, leaning so far forwards that her face was pressed up against her own shaft. She marvelled at how incredibly hard she had become, not in a biological sense but in a 'boy this feels like cast iron' sense. She groped blindly for a moment, and then found what she was looking for. She rose triumphantly and, with the sort of adrenaline-induced strength only a hyper in heat can truly take advantage of, gripped his ankles and pulled him closer.

Settled squarely in the middle of the mattress now, Amber dragged her lover closer, forcing herself deeper. A part of her mind was shocked not only at the strength she now possessed, but also at her assertiveness, but the rest of her was reveling in it. A smarter or more introspective herm might wonder just how often this had happened throughout history.

"Just... need... to get you... a bit... tighter..." she grunted, thrusting her hips while she still had some grip with the mattress. She knew at any moment she would grow larger than she would be able to straddle and then would have far fewer options. Inch by inch her shaft vanished into his wildly overstretched tailhole, until one final tug settled his feet against the creaking and groaning masses of seed behind her, and his wiggling tail bumped up against her lower belly. "Mmmmmm, there we go..."

From her point of view, she seemed to be wearing a condom of pure white, which had strange little decorations at the base that looked like arms, legs, and a head. The head swiveled around now, eyes wide and rolling, unable to focus. "Amber," Royston breathed, "how... how much..."

"Mmmm, I don't know, honey," she said, leaning forwards again and snuggling up to his body, such as it was, "you've done so much for me tonight. I want to return the favor, and do so much to you."

"F-for?"

"I know what I said." Her hips twitched and she longed to be able to slide in and out of her incredibly tight sweetie, but so wrapped around her his body had become that she knew it would be futile to even try. That was when she discovered another innovation of the herm evolutionary path. "OOoohhhhhhh, gods, here it comes again..."

She squeezed him tighter with her arms as though he were the world's biggest carnival prize, nuzzling and nibbling at the base of his tail. Her whole body shuddered, and a fresh wave of delight and expansion tore through her body. Her sac, already swollen to twin spheres more than six feet in diameter apiece, seemed to boil furiously within and inflated not just larger, but she could tell heavier than they should have been, her delicately-furred flesh creaking with tension. The pressure was building up faster than before!

Her pride, her joy, her dogcock reacted even more strongly. Royston's moan was wordless, but it escalated in pitch and volume right along with her burgeoning endowment, growing thicker by inches and longer by feet. She could not see how far it extended beyond their circle of light, but when both of her toes left the ground she knew it had to be spectacular. It still pulsed and twitched within him, stimulating her in ways that she could not possibly have managed on her own. She wanted to write Darwin a thank-you letter.

Behind her, her sac rose higher as each teste assumed an even more spherical shape, the pressure within becoming almost achingly powerful. She could not see it, but she could feel her urethra bulging like a pinched hose beneath her shaft, trying to overcome the resistance of her date's overfilled tailhole. She wasn't surprised when herm power won out, and with a jolt of white heat she felt the first real flows of seed empty into her ursine lover. Given her already-tremendous size, the dozens of gallons now beginning the long process of filling him up hardly made a dent to his overstretched form.

"Are... are you..." he asked, but he suspected that he was being premature.

"No, no, no, no, no," she murmured against his lower back, stroking his flanks and bucking her hips uselessly. "This is just me, sort of... warming up, you might say, and... ooooohhhhh, you're going to like this."

He opened his mouth to ask when he felt his hips, already splayed out to near two-dimensionality around her girth, move still further apart as her knot began to expand. He lay there, wonderfully impaled, and mused at the futility of the knot on a hyper, as though the two were not already tired irrevocably together! His body grew more spherical as the knot grew to four feet across, and then five. The sheer size of it acted like a fulcrum and began to angle her shaft upwards, further blocking her view.

Royston somehow found the wherewithal to move his legs, doing his best to wrap them around Amber's lithe body. Her purring intensified, and he could feel her flow increase dramatically, beginning to actually fill his body up now, no longer wrapped tightly like a condom around her but beginning to plump out like a balloon.

"I hope... it's everything... you wanted it to be," she gasped, kissing furiously at his lower back, the only part of him she could reach. Her claws sank into his thighs and tried to draw him closer still, but even her temporary strength could not overcome friction anymore. The knot grew and grew until Royston's body, where it joined with hers, looked like a creamy white beachball larger than any beach had ever seen. Gods knew how long her shaft had become, stretching out his poor tummy beyond madness. "I... don't think... I can hold back... oooohhhhhhhhh, from this one."

"I don't want you.... to hold back," he said from above her. His brain felt as though it were swimming in battery acid, sparking here and shorting out there as it tried to interpret signals from his body that could not possibly be true. "You're.... ooooohhhhh, you're beautiful."

She clenched her eyes shut, burying her face in his fur. She grimaced with a mixture of pain and pleasure as the pressure mounted even more between her legs, the still-swelling mountains of white behind her yearning for release. "Talk to me," she begged, "please... tell me..."

He glanced behind and saw her body dwarfed now by her sac, a tiny little five-foot tall kittygirl attached to twin ten-foot balls, and even as he watched they seemed to rumble and quiver and stretch a little bit larger. Oooohhhh, he thought, this was going to be interesting.

"You're beautiful," he managed in his deep baritone voice, trying to help her, coax her to climax, "all the more so now that I see your true form. I... I..."

"Please," she whispered softly, her growth temporarily stalled, wanting nothing more than sweet relief.

He took a deep breath, no mean feat, and tried to harken back to his college days, and Language Studies. "Many was the day I sat in class, watching you read, watching you work, and admiring you from afar," he spoke, trying to keep the sing-song melodrama out of his voice. "Your eyes so wide and innocent, one ear up, one ear flopped over. Your slender neck, your... your wonderful breasts, always so eager to escape your simple shirts."

She giggled, but she could feel her urethral passage stretching larger, wider beneath her, in preparation. "I didn't know how big I was," she murmured.

"Your skirts would always try to conceal, and fail to conceal, what every real boy secretly desired," he continued, managing to hook his heels behind her lower back and trying to tug himself further down her shaft, even though her knot made that completely impossible. "Day by day last year I watched those lovely shapes grow, bigger and rounder and heavier, and when it was time for summer break I... I was sad to see you go, but when you returned, you were so much larger. I heard the talk, and some of the others were afraid of you, and I admit I was a little afraid, too, but that fear was nothing compared to my desire... and admiration."

Amber moaned, softly and repeatedly, squeezing him with her arms over and over again as the first electric stirrings of her orgasm passed through her body, her shaft twitching now with every beat of her heart.

"For years I admired hypers from afar, but I could never meet one, never get close to one, but you, you've been more than I could ever have expected, and... oohhhhh, gods, you're still showing me more and more wondrous beauty!"

Whatever sense of kinesthesia he had was being completely overpowered by the distances involved. He felt like a trampoline that had been put on too tight, and still she grew within him. Each passing moment wrought his shape rounder and fuller as she continued to pump precum into him at a rate that would have shamed most hypers he had seen on dirty websites, even at full eruption. His hands were no longer caressing the heavily-veined outline of her shaft wrapped in his own skin, but a creaking, wobbling mass that reminded him of his old waterbed in college.

She began to gnaw more vigorously at what of his body she could reach, stroking his sides, nuzzling the intensely sensitive border where she ended and he began. He could feel the humming, almost electric rigidity of her shaft, and knew that he was about to find out just what his limits truly were. "This... this can't become love, Amber," he said, hazarding that she was as mature as she seemed, "it really can't. But it can be love for one night."

Very nearly performing the splits over her own wildly distended nethers, completely unable to move from her position and nearly pinned between the masses of her white-furred sac and her bear-sheathed knot, his words still moved her heart. Her body heaved once, still instinctively trying to ram herself ever further within his rear. "I... love..."

Her back spasmed again, forcing her against the plush but still pressure-hardened orbs. "Ohhhhhh, I'm so sorry if anything bad happens," she said, rushing to get all of the words out, "but you've given me one of the best nights of my life and I've always thought you were really cute and sexy even if you never said anything to me in class and I think I love you for one... one night... one night... oooohhhhhhfuckfuckfuckfuck-"

Amber's final words were muffled when she buried her head against the base of his tail and screamed with ecstasy, all semblance of proper speech banished. Her sac swelled once mightily, pushing her body harder against him, and he bellowed mightily when her shaft seemed to pause momentarily and then somehow harden still further, stretching out a little longer and a lot thicker. The veins encircling the base of her shaft thundered, and her urethra doubled in size, tripled, and still more in anticipation.

The scene was frozen for a long second with the hyper-feline poised on the cusp of a devastating climax, with the bookish polar-bear already stretched many times his regular size by her overstimulated dogcock, neither of them daring nor able to breathe.

"A-" he started.

Amber's scream reverberated around the huge, empty gymnasium. She never thought she would be capable of a primal jungle shriek like that, but then again she never thought she would be capable of anything like what her life seemed to revolve around now. Liquid fire coursed through her veins, her vision became black and fuzzy around the edges, and it felt as though she were riding a bucking bronco that had been slipped meth, but each of these sensations paled to insignificance next to the crushing explosion of her orgasm.

Royston gasped when he felt untold gallons, a hundred at least, erupt within him with volcanic force. His general outline became less like a felled tree and more like a football, considerably thicker at the middle as he swelled. It was as though a creamy white hill was rising out of the ground before him. His hands sank into his own flesh, and the pressure against his insides rose alarmingly.

Again and again she spasmed within him, and soon the outline of her shaft against his increasingly-thinned skin was gone. He wobbled and jiggled, but his ballooning figure became tighter and firmer with each burst. Her scream rose and fell, crested and ebbed, but never faded away completely. The polar bear no longer felt as though he were resting on her knot, but rather as though he were stuck to the side of a mountainous sphere of kittygrrl cream. Burgeoning swells of his own inflating flesh pressed against his face, and even turning his head sideways did not entirely work. His arms and legs were being pushed back now, joints creaking, and still she came.

Bigger and rounder he grew, as well as higher; soon Amber and Royston could hardly see as his seed-filled body started to block out the four sodium lamps above. Soon the level of light was irrelevant; their bodies were pressed lovingly together between the colossal mound of his belly, and the unshrinking mass of her sac.

Royston could feel her breasts against the middle of his back, her nuzzling face against his shoulders, her hands roaming blindly, sometimes sinking her claws into his flesh and tugging. Everything around him was grey, the warm slopes of his condom-like body against one cheek, the creaking and rumbling of her balls against the other. He found that extending his tongue allowed him to lick both at the same time.

Amber struggled to remain conscious. She lost count of the number of times she had geysered within him, but her count had been somewhere around fifty when she forgot which number came next. Luis, poor sweet Luis had been merely foreplay compared to this, hardly an appetizer at Thanksgiving. Her legs were wet, soaked through with her own fluids; as big as her knot had gotten, even that could not form a tight seal against his tortured tailhole.

Her arms reached up, and she gripped his shoulders hard, using her hormonally-boosted strength to pull herself higher, or pull him lower. She didn't particularly care which. Pressed between his body and her own testes, she was blind but she could feel with her muzzle that she had to be somewhere near the base of his neck. She prayed it was close enough.

"Can.... can you hear me," she called as loudly as she could against the smothering weight around them.

She had thought him blacked out, or worse, when she felt one of his hands roam downward with purpose, eventually coming to rest against her thigh. It squeezed once.

"Are you ok?"

Another squeeze. Her heart loosened. She was still emptying hugely into him, feeling like a water main had burst, but it was no longer so forceful that she could not control her voluntary muscles. She couldn't tell how big he had gotten, but from the basketball-tight feel of his fur, she knew it had to be spectacular.

"I'm.... ohhhhh gods, I'm almost done. I... I don't think you'll be able to get out of the gym for a while."

He squeezed again, and it felt as though he were laughing. Behind them, the wall of her sac was slowly receding, like an inflatable toy with a slow leak. She felt a little bad for him, too, since his clothes were somewhere under all of that bulk, and no matter how good the drainage was in the gymnasium, she knew they'd be useless. She tugged at his shoulders, insinuating himself against his broad backside.

"You were amazing," she purred, licking her lips. She felt another gush against her lap, and knew her knot was finally starting to recede as well. His body was still exceptionally springy, though, and his snug and loving rear was still wrapped tightly around it. "Your wife probably expected this to happen."

He squeezed again, running his hand up and down the length of her moist leg. It was then he realized that the pressure behind him had eased off enough that he could make out a crack of light above, and he could move his jaw. "She... gods, I don't know what she was thinking, but I can only hope she expected this."

"Oh, don't worry," Amber giggled, hauling herself still higher and nibbling at the back of his neck. "I'll explain things to her."

His body stiffened even more, if that was possible. "What?!"

"Well, she called me before supper tonight, and told me that no matter what happens, she'll understand, and she just wants you to be happy." The feline slid her hands down and clawed playfully at his ass. "Are you happy?"

He jaw worked soundlessly, a thin trickle of creamy white dribbling from the corner of his mouth. "Yes," he eventually breathed, grinning contentedly and closing his eyes. "Very, very."

Amber was reclining now, her balls now small enough that she could hold her hands behind her head and stretch her aching muscles. She tried to gauge just how massive her ursine lover had become, but she was still too close to tell; he was little more than a solid wall of white peachfuzz. She stroked his flanks with her padded feet. "Monday is going to be a little awkward, do you think?"

He shrugged, looking like he was stuck to the world's biggest sheet of flypaper, arms and legs spread wide against his own belly. "It doesn't have to be. I spent a year admiring you from afar. With the... the mystery gone, so to speak, I think I can keep my mind on work."

Her toes touched the sopping mattress, and moments later her knot popped free with a wet sound like a champagne cork letting loose. Her arms pinwheeled as her center of gravity suddenly shifted, and she fell backwards, her shaft slipping free in one motion. She was barely four feet long now, and still softening, her testes little more than a pair of beachballs. She landed in a heap just off of the edge of the mattress with a squeak of frustration.

"Uh... cats don't always land on their feet, ok?" she said, standing up and brushing herself uselessly off. She looked up at Royston, and gasped. "Oh my fucking gods..."

In their frenzy the mattress, and themselves, had been pushed backwards and she found that she was standing right by the door to the boys washroom. There were basketball hoops above her to either side, and she could just make out the main fire exit in the distance. And that was all she could see of the building, because the phenomenally flexible polar bear was taking up the rest of it.

As far as she could tell he wasn't high enough to hit the overhead lights, but he had to have been damn close. His bulk stretched out to the left and right like an eleven inch water balloon in a twelve-inch box. From her vantage point the recognizable portions of Royston, the arms and legs, the wagging tail and twitching shaft, the long, broad head with the goofy grin, looked no bigger than one of her nipples compared with the full rondure of her breasts. He still leaked slowly from his normal-sized rump in addition to the ebbing flow from his own softening cock.

Amber stepped closer, raising her hand reverently and stroking his tail. "Wow."

"That big, huh?"

"Yuh-huh."

"So big that you yourself are amazed?"

"Yup."

He paused thoughtfully. "I'm really close to the lights, aren't I?"

"I think so."

"My fur feels really hot in one spot."

"I'll go turn the lights off."

She padded off, grateful that one of the two panels of light-switches was so close. The flicked the one that was up, and was plunged into near darkness, illuminated only by the dim red emergency lights and the large Exit signs. "Huh," she said, moving back to his side, "in the darkness you don't seem that big."

"Urk."

"Does it hurt?"

"Oh my goodness no," he said, unable to keep the giggle out of his voice.

Amber looked down at herself, glowing burnt umber in the faint light. "I, uh... I'm only wearing a bra," she said to herself.

"I think your clothes are somewhere near my belly button."

"Is that accessible?"

"Uh... not for a day or two."

She sighed and leaned against him, stroking his back, feeling the faint bumps of his spine and wondering just what was going on inside him, figuratively and literally. "So... did you... you know..."

"What?"

She slid her hand down to his rear, giving him a loving fondle, and then lower still, feeling the softball-sized heft of his balls and the outline of his semihard shaft, still nearly as big as her forearm and laying heavily against what had been his lower belly half an hour before. She squeezed. "You know..."

His body quivered at her intimate touch. "Oh yes. Twice, I believe. It was, uh, hard to tell exactly..."

She bent down low and placed a tender kiss somewhere that caused his entire body to ripple fluidly with delight. "Well," she purred, "I hope I haven't ruined you for... other women."

"I, uh... whuff, I think I might have to find some sort of special way to thank my wife for this, but I know she'll understand if I'm, uh, not in the mood for a few days."

She sighed, and continued petting his detumesced manhood as though it were a fluffy puppy. "I really, really hope you don't mind me leaving you here," she said sadly. "It's... sort of a requisite with my boyfriends."

His body shifted futilely, still suspended as he was with his feet dangling. "I don't think I can drive you home tonight," he chuckled. "I don't think I thought this date out too well."

"Oh, so it's a DATE now, is it?"

They shared a laugh this time, and Amber hugged what she could of the sweet teacher. "I really can't begin to thank you enough for this... for all of this."

"This is you before you've BEGUN to thank me?"

Her shaft was slowly retreating back into her sheath, her sac almost normal sized again, or at least normal for her. She knew finding her clothes would be a wasted effort, but she had a plan. "Well, I meant actual thanking, with words of appreciation and maybe a hug or two, you know? This... this has been by far the most sincere date I've ever been on."

"Amber, dear, there's more to life than what you'll encounter just in high school." It was strange to be given a lecture by someone she had inflated to nearly the size of a basketball court, but she found herself listening intently. "Right now, you're not the only one ruled by hormones and inhibited decision-making processes. The people around you are going to act and even think and feel different when you're present, and they won't know why or even be aware of it. Your very presence is intoxicating to a number of people, grownups included, and it might take time for the people in your life and the people you meet to have a more appropriate response."

She poked him where she thought his kidney might have been an hour before and giggled nervously. "And it might be a while before I respond appropriately, too, it looks like..."

"Well, appropriate is in the eye of the beholder."

"That wasn't your eye..."

"Point."

Amber cuddled up against him for a few more minutes, and they talked about what Sunday would hold for the both of them. Royston promised that only his wife would know the more salient details, and while he expected word to get out at the school, since the evidence would be quite literally everywhere, it could hardly harm her reputation, such as it was. Besides, she thought, it might scare off the less serious suitors. Almost the whole gymnasium!

She started to wonder what she could be capable of if she actually STARTED the date bigger than normal, and felt her now fully-rested sheath begin to plump and stir. She shook her head, dispelling those dangerous thoughts. Being a hyper was testing her patience!

She dragged a chair out of the storage room, hopped up on it, and passionately kissed her date goodbye, perhaps for the final time.

"On Monday, we're just a student and her teacher."

"Right."

"Nothing untoward."

"Correct."

"No blowjobs under your desk."

"Amber!"

"What? I still have to find SOME way to thank you!"

"An 'A' on a test would be thanks enough."

"I'm a hyper-herm, not some sort of math genius."

A bashful smile from her, a contented grin from him, a final quick peck on the cheek and they parted ways. She stole into the change rooms and managed to scrounge a football jersey from a boy's locker room and a cheerleader skirt from the girl's lockers that left very little to the imagination. It was after eleven PM, though, and the roads around the school were fairly deserted, so she wasn't too terribly worried.

She turned on some of the lights around the periphery of the room to give rescue workers some assistance, and placed a brief phone call from the school payphone located by the large marble sign that read Circe High School.

"I'm sorry, what did you say?" crackled the voice of the bored 9-1-1 operator

"I already told you, I saw some people breaking into the school gymnasium! They looked up to no good!"

"Ma'am, how old are you?"

"Old! Like, really old! Just go check on him, ok?"

"Him? I thought you said it was more than one person."

"Shut up!"

She scampered through a few of the alleys frequented by the students when they actually felt the urge to get to school on time and didn't see a single flashing light or hear a single siren on her trip home. Her damp fur made her shiver in the cool night breeze, and she was pretty sure that even if she did wash her illicitly-acquired clothing, the actual owners wouldn't want them back, so she felt fairly guilt-free when she stripped in her own back yard and tossed the garments into the trash.

She looked down at herself when she silently opened the back door and padded inside, and sighed. She still wore her brand-new bra, still black and lacy and sexy looking, and she felt a paing of loss when she realized that the matching panties were stuck under Royston. Then she felt another paing of loss when she remembered he had to bite through them to save her from a grevious groin-pull. "Well, that was forty bucks down the drain," she mumbled, though she was still pleased with how the remaining piece lifted and presented her bosom.

Ears raised for any possible noise, she crept through the dark house, climbed the stairs, closed her bedroom door behind her and slid between her sheets with a little purr of pleasure. Visions of white dancing teddy-bears filled her head while she drifted off to sleep, thoroughly physically and emotionally drained from her pleasant ordeals.

"Monday is going to be interesting," she whispered to herself in the darkness.

---

"Well, how do you propose to get him out of here?"

"Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a plumber."

"You know I hate it when you do that. My name is Steve."

"Cram it."

"Gentlemen, if I might suggest..."

"Sir, no disrespect, but we don't take medical advice from the patients."

"Strictly speaking, this isn't a MEDICAL situation, per se."

"You're as big as a gymnasium, sir. I fail to see how this is a political science situation."

"Oh, pshaw, I'm barely three-quarters of the representative volume of-"

"That's still more than enough. When you and your... accomplice were planning this little get-together, did it occur to you that you would, in fact, end up BLOCKING the emergency storm drain hatch?"

"Well... not as such, no."

"I didn't think so. And you're absolutely sure you don't want us to hook you up to the pumper truck? We could drain you in just a few min... well, ok, maybe an hour... two hours, tops. Maybe."

"I'm quite comfortable, actually. You can come back in the morning, if you like."

"Sir, you're being very uncooperative. And you're absolutely positive you don't remember who did this to you?"

"The name completely slipped my mind."

"I'm sure."

Silence.

"Would you happen to know if the person in question is single?"

Royston laughed.