Exposure - 9 (2/2) - Playground
19 Nov 2023Kasumi Goto
Continuation of Part 9 (1/2)
"Having fun?"
I lowered my gaze with my eyes closed, unable to not smile slightly at the open display of almost child-like innocence and enjoyment. Deep inside me, it still existed, but bringing it out... not so simple, and the memory of it brought both positive and negative feelings. I looked up again.
"You're going to make me do this in the end. Though, to be honest, I'm not really sure how I could get those things inside me to do that. I guess they could restart those biological processes in those specific parts of the body... but knowing me, it's going to happen by accident rather than intention. But hell, I might just take it at that point. Because this - " I couldn't help but point right at my breasts with both hands, with a certain grin on my face. "- is fun. At least, for now. And if people think I'm doing it to show off or 'play with myself', they can. They damn well would if they looked like this."
"Yeah, like, totally!" Meowers nodded, or at least performed an equivalent of that which was possible considering her horizontal position. "Can't find a single reason not to."
I decided to stand up at that point, and struck something of a pose, similar to the one Meowers had provided me with earlier, in the private apartment - most of the weight on the right leg, left one slightly at an angle, right hand on hip.
"Who gives a shit about that whole 'average' nonsense anyway? I sure as hell don't. 'You don't fit into some arbitrary ruleset and box checking list that some idiot with pen and paper decided on over a thousand years ago. Now do something about it because it's a problem'."
The statement was accompanied by a strong mocking tone, as I fully enjoyed tearing into that idiocy.
"Yeah, no, idiot. You just made it a problem yourself by deciding that humans have to be perfectly like this and anything else is not acceptable, or whatever other bullshit those idiots spouted out. How many doctors do you think would tell me something is wrong with my body if it looked like this, but somehow naturally grew to those proportions with no underlying genetic problems?"
I rolled my neck a little, finding it stiff again after sitting for a while, while hearing Meowers giggling as a result of my mockery.
"And speaking of my body, if I do decide to try getting it like this, maybe it's not a terrible idea to figure out how much mobility I'm losing. Because I'm not sure I'll be doing the same running and jumping and dodging bad guys that have arms three times the size of mine, with those legs. And, you know, those things on my chest. Besides, we've only really been talking when we came here to look silly doing physical things."
"And if you can't squeeze anything out of your... implants, to say, you can always go to the clinic to get a few litres of lab-grown fat tissues made of your own samples. A day on the hospital bed, a new look for almost a lifetime", Meowers replied to me in an upbeat tone.
"Not that I'm trying to incline you...", she added as a comment. "But, yeah, options. I'd really like to see some for myself, except going full-cyborg mode, phah."
She had more on her mind to tell, judging by her facial expression.
"Yeah, those standards... Like, you saw those preset characters, haven't you? Everything just friggin' screams 'made to make some guy's pee-pee hard', and if you don't look like that in reality, you'd better go and waste shitloads of your time, money and effort to fix the 'problem'", Meowers made two quotation marks with her fingers saying the last word. "So that you should look not like you want to, but how they want to. Aaaargh, that's such a deep rabbit hole for rants."
"Anyway," she got back to sitting with her legs crossed in front of her. "If you wanted to give all that new... physique a test, lead the way. I'm sure I'll find something to do with mine too."
”Well, actually, I didn’t spend much time in the character creator.”, I mentioned, when she finished talking. “Just went straight for that ‘memory reconstruction’, or whatever it’s called again. Anyway, I meant, like, not having a ‘standard personality’ or some dumb shit like that. As if everyone has to be a perfectly sociable human that never gets tired of being near people. Ugh.” The sound I gave off really portrayed how much I was tired of that idea.
“But yeah, I guess this …” I placed both hands on my hips and looked down at my ample chest, plus those really nice hips, with a fair amount of bulk around the back too. “… isn’t really considered a ‘normal’ thing either, but like, it’s normal for the person that might have a body like this. So why do they have to be singled out, ridiculed and made to look and feel bad about it? What effect does it have on anyone else’s life if a woman has some big breasts and hips beyond the average?”
I took a breath to calm myself a little.
“You don’t know how much I could get upset over that. Anyway, what are those ‘options’ you’d want for yourself? And wouldn’t fat tissue just… get used up by the body over time?”
I began to look around for something to do while staying in place, letting my left hand hang down along the hip, leaving the right still placed on it.
It felt like a perfectly relaxed and natural position, even though my arm had to hang away slightly, since my hips were right in line with the outer edge of my shoulders, and the thighs, just slightly wider than that.
"Well, it shouldn't," Meowers shrugged, replying to the medical question, "Assuming you're going to stay in the same weight, keeping the intake and consumption balance. And, as for me..."
She let out a long sigh and spread my arms widely, shrugging once more, now in more 'I'm totally hopeless' meaning rather than that 'I'm not sure'.
"There are no ways to scale your existing body up or down entirely. And I don't want to become a cyborg tin can either. And, phah, you're the first person to know about that strange quirk of mine. Now, imagine other people seeing me like that. Anyway..."
Getting up onto my feet, she gave a work-out installation a look.
"Like, there's a running lane around all that," Meowers motioned towards the installation. "And something tells me you might want to try it. And I think I'll go find myself a barbell and a bench... Or two. Or three. You get it, phah. Kind of... Want to give those arms a try. The manual claims this VR thing can simulate human physique, such as strength and endurance. Of course you're not going to improve your body... out there by doing something here, but I think it's worth a try at least once."
"Well, you could always ask the Thargoids nicely. Providing there's a point where they're not inclined to shoot us in the face any further." I paused for a moment, thinking about how to make it evident that it was a joke. "Oh, and I don't take liability for any other side effects them screwing around with your body to make you taller might have."
I looked at the spot Meowers was pointing toward, with both hands on my hips, legs slightly apart.
"Well, anyway, I guess we were here to figure out how these bodies behave, so might as well. And if my thighs get in the way so much that I just fall over flat when trying to run, I'd rather know here and get used to it, than have that happen where I would actually get embarrassed about it."
And off I went, leaving her to do the thing with the weight lifting equipment. While I wasn't sure what I'd find, I had a suspicion it would likely be in pieces, as I walked toward the running lane. Where I would be in plain sight all the time. I sighed.
"Why does it have to be just where I can be seen all along?", I muttered to myself, and tried to look casual, or as if I was preparing myself.
Truthfully, I was, for some strange reason, feeling a bit nervous. I had no clue how I needed to run to not trip over my oversized thighs, nice as they were, and it began to enter into my mind that my, quite large, breasts, wouldn't be holding too still either, despite being supported.
"Okay... okay. Just do it, and see what happens. Not like there's going to be any consequences.", I muttered to myself.
Taking a deep breath, I started... only to stop after a few meters, quite irritated by the bouncing on my chest, which prompted me to lean forward and hold an arm under it.
"Damn, that's gonna be annoying! Why can't they just hold still?" A thought occurred to me. "Maybe I should've put on some kind of appropriate bra for this, instead of my normal one ..."
I wasn't about to change right in front of Meowers, though, and it didn't quite feel right to just 'change' it in an inventory screen. So I'd have to live with it. At least, it seemed like my additional thigh mass was of lesser importance, but I still looked hella awkward as I repeatedly started running and stopped again, trying to not trip over myself as a result of that.
I needed to adopt a somewhat weird walking cycle that was not easy to get the hang of as well, in order to not have my thighs clashing too much. Not that I was alone at looking awkward - when I threw a glance in Meowers’ direction, she was muttering something and putting three benches side by side.
So, of course, right as I thought I was getting the hang of it, both how the weight on my chest felt, as well as the bigger thigh size, and attempted to get a full lap without stopping done, I only barely avoided face planting into the ground and slamming into it with my breasts. While they were big, I doubted that they'd make for a good, or pleasant, cushion. The only thing I could hope for was that Meowers was too busy weight lifting to notice my struggling. Or, as another quick look at her revealed, busy scavenging every weight she could find, squeezing them on a poor barbell bar and grinning like an idiot.
'At least making myself bigger hasn't screwed with my endurance too much.', I thought, while trying to retain some dignity. 'Already never was the greatest at that, so I don't need it to get worse.'
The thought, once it left my center of attention, didn’t make that much sense - as I had simply upscaled my existing body, the muscle mass in those parts went up equally to their size, resulting in little loss other than some agility due to less ‘leg room’. Completing the lap, I stopped to take a breath and was quickly interrupted by Meowers’ voice.
"Hey! Look what I've got!" She waved her left hand, keeping the right behind the back, and grinning goofily as if she was about to make a funny present.
"Ta-daaam!", a bent bar appeared from behind her back, in a motion that people generally use to present flowers.
I looked at Meowers, then the bent bar, and back at her. Blinked a few times in the process, then facepalmed. Hard.
“Can’t I leave you alone for one minute without something breaking? First that chair, and now this? Makes me almost falling over and landing bo - ‘chest first’ on the ground look harmless.”
"Meeeeeh", she made kind of a meowing sound with a theatrically exaggerated expression of mild disappointment and lowered her arms, letting them hang freely, and relaxed the grip so the bar slipped out and fell onto the ground, with a clang. "It wasn't me! I didn't want to break this damn thing! Bah."
Meowers chuckled and switched back to sounding 'normally'.
"So, what's about your experiment? Since mine is... Let's say, I'm limited by imperfect equipment."
“Uh huh. Sure.”
I didn’t really buy into the excuse, holding my hands on my hips with an appropriate facial expression. Then I dropped my arms along their side.
“My experiment? Pft. Went about as well as a fish trying to survive on dry land. I was about to get a full lap done when I damn near landed on these.”
I made a gesture kind of in the direction of my breasts.
“You won’t believe how much these things bounce around… well, part of it is my fault. Forgot to put an appropriate bra on. I could say that there were none in my size, but really, I just forgot about it. If you need a demonstration, I can provide one.”
One of my hands - the right one - moved back on to my hips, while the left gestured at the track, as if to say I could run another lap. Then my gaze wandered to my thighs.
“I guess it should also be said that these don’t help it either. Who would have thought, making your thighs twice as fat makes them get in the way just a little bit.”
I paused shortly, myself lightly amused by the sarcastic tone.
“Or however much bigger they are, I can’t really tell. Point is, I’m really gonna have to get used to this.”
"Oh, well. You may guess what happened once I tried... Uh. These," Meowers turned and gestured towards a chaotic pile of weights collected next to her 'training installation'. "I think I'm going to need a... More specialised inventory. Phah. But I can't say I didn't like the experience... The general idea of it."
"So, what are we going to do next?" She tilted her head and rubbed her chin slightly, "Maybe... Getting back to the boring old world to check if everything is okay for a little while, and then trying something more... Social? Like, you wanted to know how people would react, so this is the chance. Or, any of your ideas."
”I think you’re going to need a specialized inventory for everything.”, I said, not without a hint of teasing. Standing next to Meowers this tall was still a little weird.
“I guess we could take a bit of a break and then go back to things. Maybe run that city sandbox thingy and see what it has to offer. Or see if someone is already running it. Though you might not fit through doors too easily …”
I paused, contemplating the ideas in my mind. There were things I wanted to try, but not yet - perhaps after the ‘social experiment’. So I voiced a question instead.
“You realize we’re going to attract a hell of a lot of attention looking like this, right? Oh, and I do think I want to demonstrate what exactly happens when I decide to run. Watch.”
I thought about doing a lap around the track again, but then realized it wouldn’t make the point as well, so I walked away in a straight line, some distance away, turned around and ran toward Meowers, at least a little, but not much, better, at controlling my balance with upsized thighs. If that didn’t show her the kind of trouble I went through between them and my bouncy chest, I wouldn’t know what could.
It seemed like the performance was making her choose: should she grin goofily seeing obvious and quite specific difficulties; or should she rather smirk mischievously while staring at that display of female features, maybe devising a not exactly appropriate comment at the same time. She kind of ended up doing both at the same time, and looking stupid.
"That... Um. That looks like something you'd better search for in a private mode on your home computer, if you decide to," she commented, once able to finally tame her hardly controllable facial expressions. "And I can't say that I'm completely ruling out the idea of doing so, phah."
"And, as for the attention...", she smirked, "Don't tell me you totally mind it."
“Pf. You don’t need to look it up in private browsing, you’ve got me doing it live for you.” I struck something of a pose as a tease to accompany that statement, before reverting to my usual neutral behavior.
“Well, anyway, I’m not sure I’ll be too happy about the kind of attention I’ll be receiving. Or maybe I’ll just end up ignoring it unless they get in my face about it. But I didn’t really do this so other people would stare at me.”
Having said that, I decided to stretch, holding my arms above my head while standing on my toes. Not quite intentionally, my chest wobbled just a little, when I let my heels hit the ground under the force of gravity.
"Hm. It's a wise decision of yours, to practice on me while honing your teasing skills. They do work, indeed," Meowers smirked and tilted her head playfully. "Aaaand..."
Approaching the end of the phrase, she shrugged jokingly, spreading her arms and grinning.
"If someone tries to get in your face, I might as well get in theirs, you know. Phah."
"We may as well encounter other players, not just those NPCs, so make sure your profile's private. Otherwise... Your inbox folder may turn into quite a funny place. Unless you want to make some fun of strangers... Which I'm, actually, kind of, thinking of doing." And that was accompanied by not exactly controllable movements of her pupils, namely up and down a little, a couple of times. Of course she was still staring at me.
“Actually set my profile private already, after you told me to.”, I said. “And found one of those ‘fine specimens’, as you called them. What are the chances it’s actually a woman behind those avatars? I mean, seriously, putting so much makeup on yourself it is like a second layer of skin is so outdated.”
I twisted my lower body slightly as I rolled my shoulders to relieve some tension in the muscle again, well aware that it unintentionally showed off my hips, and that quite sizeable mass behind the body, thighs included.
“I had no plans of screwing with random people, though. But I was going to ask you if you could play bodyguard. I’m sure I could defend myself, but watching you throw someone annoying might be more fun. The only thing I wouldn’t see going well is if we tried to play hide and seek.”
"Pffffffft," Meowers suddenly laughed in a quite mocking tone. "Of course they aren't women. Whatever drives them to play female characters is... To say, totally fucked up with their no less fucked up views on what 'women' are. I simply can't take them seriously. All that friggin' nonsense..."
She shrugged and then tried to imitate, mockingly exaggerated, a wacky 'summary' of those 'manners', walking in place on her tiptoes and wiggling her hands as if she had an invisible clutch bag hanging on one elbow, while also 'inspecting' the fingernails of her other hand, with head tilting left and right and lips pursed into something that held a suspicious resemblance to a chicken's butthole.
"Sorry idiots," she concluded in a spitting tone, dropping the act.
"And, well... You're going to have quite a bodyguard, phah," she smiled innocently, keeping her hands folded together on her chest. "Lead the way. Oh this is going to be fun!..."
“Well, let’s not rush it.”, I remarked, not wanting to go ahead with the next phase immediately. “Don’t think you said if you want to give it a short break before we move on, like… I don’t know. Ten, fifteen minutes to take care of… things. I don’t really have anyone out there waiting for me, but I’d rather not get interrupted by those stupid biological needs. And set up the thing, server, whatever, before anyone else joins. Or find someone else’s server to join.”
I paused, looking down at my body in a certain way, particularly at my chest, with hands on the hips.
“Or, I guess. I could take care of my brain telling me to have some, ‘fun’, in private, instead of getting distracted so easily. If you get what I mean.”
“Not that I’d stop getting distracted even if I did.”, I added to the statement, muttering.
"You know...", Meowers made a light smirk, shyly turning her look to the ground, "You're making me think of the same. Sounds better than falling back to our boring little world to check my stuff there."
She stopped for a little while, contemplating.
"Aaaaah I'm soooo going to regret that," Meowers sat on the ground, placing both hands on her head. Yet after a few moments of sitting like that she raised her head back to look at me, lifted her eyebrow theatrically and pointed a finger upwards. "But! But. This will happen in the future. Right now, I'd rather have fun."
"Well, why don't we just... go to our own private sessions then and 'do our thing' before we join back up, then?”, I replied to that. “I'm sure we could do without those distractions when we're doing public stuff... not that I can guarantee I won't get distracted again, as I said just now."
My body, if virtual, was certainly giving me a lot of signs to just do that certain thing. And while I was tempted to disconnect and load up the map inside the house again, but without anyone being able to join... doing so would have felt rude toward Meowers, so I waited for her response.
"Then... Off we go! Mwwwehehehehe!" She grinned jokingly and threw her right arm high into the air with the fist clenched, like a signal to attack.
"Alright, here goes. I'll be closing down this server, so it's gonna kick you out when I do. Just so you're warned."
I opened up the game interface and hit the 'Disconnect' button, which greeted me with a warning that all other players would be removed from the server as well. I hit 'Yes' anyway, seeing as I'd warned Meowers. A few seconds later, the view faded to black as the connection ended.