Exposure - 13 (1/2) - Downtime
02 Dec 2023Kasumi Goto
Previous - Part 12, 2/2
My chosen route through the city was hardly anything special, taking us across different streets and to, eventually, a park. Or, at least, that’s what I had in mind, until we crossed another individual using a female avatar, who whistled upon seeing me.
“Hoo! Damn, you’re hot! That body of yours natural?”, the ‘woman’ asked me.
I crossed my arms, unsure. “What interest is it to you?”
“You look damn good in it, that’s all. From one girl to another, take my word for it.”
I blushed, more than just slightly, the tone seeming genuine.
“Uh… thanks, I guess. And, uh, yeah, natural. Kind of. At least, no surgery involved.” I said, not really knowing what to put out of my mouth here.
The woman looked at Meowers, studying her with a slightly more skeptical look.
“Not gonna lie, your friend here is a bit… tall. Seems to hold herself well in it, though. What’s the story?”
Since there seemed to be no ill-will, and more just curiosity, I decided to not say anything further. And the question was not directed at me, anyway.
"I just like it that way, you know. Am I happy with it? Abso-damn-lutely. Do I care about looking awkward? No. I'm already weird beyond any acceptable boundaries." Meowers looked at the woman, smiled and shrugged. Then, making a deep breath, she looked around, with a sign of some intense thinking on her face.
"If you have an opportunity to become a better version of yourself, whatever that means, and no one gets hurt, why should you back down?" Meowers finally noticed me blushing, and nodded towards me. "It's good to be happy being yourself, you know?"
”You’re definitely right about that. Besides, we’re around here to have fun, right? Not like the world’s gonna care if you’re weird in a virtual space,” the woman winked, and looked at me again. “You might still wanna be careful with that figure. It’s gonna attract some attention you probably don’t want.”
“Oh, don’t need to worry about that. I’ve got a… bodyguard,” I replied, tilting my head in the direction of Meowers - with my tone giving away that I wasn’t quite over my moment of embarrassment yet.
“Okay, sure. And also fair. Not many are going to be tempted when they see that.” The woman held an arm out toward Meowers, seeming a little amused at… something, in her mind. “Anyway, I’ll move along. Maybe we’ll run into each other somewhere else. And I heard about some chaos at the water park… I’m sure you two wouldn’t know about that, though.”
She walked past both of us, leaving me… confused, and also pleased at the odd encounter.
“Well, that was… interesting,” I said, looking after the woman with hands on my hips. “And I forgot where we were going because of it.”
Meowers giggled innocently, holding her arms together in front of her chest with fingertips put together, hearing that 'bodyguard' part of the sentence, and then looked at the woman walking away.
"So... Where are we going... Where were we going? Ah. I don't know," she shrugged, "I thought about the centre... The main street of that... Place. To look at stuff, stroll back and forth aimlessly and maybe I might find myself a pair of utterly overpriced custom sunglasses. Phah. Maybe to get more familiar with the whole idea of aimlessly walking and relaxing. To enjoy being... Like this, you know. Both for you and me."
”You’re assuming you find anyone willing to make them that way,” I replied to that sunglasses idea.
“Though I was thinking about dropping by a shop and seeing what they have on display that might suit you… while attracting a lot of attention in the process. But you’ll probably need some in-game currency for that which you have to do completely random shit - or pay - for, and… yeah. Besides, I don’t know what kind of sunglasses you’d like. I’m guessing black or violet, maybe purple, and kind of square.”
I decided it was enough time standing in place and took us toward a park, after which we could visit the center and whatever places Meowers wanted to poke around in. Even if it was only to make people stare at an absurdly tall individual. And struck up a conversation on the way.
“So… have you already thought about how you might get… well, this?”
I held a hand out toward her body, since pointing to mine would have been slightly indecent, out where everyone could watch. And as a pair, we were gathering a lot of attention, most of the awkward glances being directed at what I still referred to as ‘uber-Meowers’ in my mind.
“I mean, I have my ways of… getting there, if I want to, and some failsafe options if that first one doesn’t work. But I’m not so sure how yours could.”
My question about 'getting this in real' apparently got Meowers thinking and we spent a minute walking in silence while she was processing the possible reply.
"Hmmm... All points at the fact that I'm totally hopeless," she chuckled sarcastically, "There's simply no feasible way to make all this possible without cybernetics, and, to that extent, it might as well be an entire body."
After a few more moments of silence, she added.
"And I just thought that... The demon is awake now and maybe it's going to slap me flat face down every time I'm back to the real world. Have to deal with that somehow. Luckily, you're the only person who knows that part of me."
Being in the open, in public, she started to notice many people openly staring at her, but the look on her face seemed... Contented.
"And what are your ways of... getting there?"
”My way, uh… kinda has something to do with that funny thing in my head,” I replied to that. “I could swear I mentioned that already, but I might just be misremembering.”
I looked around, making sure nobody was really within hearing distance. Even so, I kept my voice a bit lower.
“So, yeah, what I’m thinking is somehow getting it to restart that, uh, biological growth process in those parts through brain impulses. They all go through the implant, so maybe it can do that without prompting an immune response to destroy the new cells. Since it won’t be uncontrolled or some shit like cancer.”
I looked around again. Some people were quite obviously gawking, almost trying to spread their eyes between the oversized human next to me, and my curvature. I raised my voice a little again, feeling like it was less questionable to mention the rest openly.
“And if that doesn’t work… well, didn’t you say surgery with, like… what was it, fat tissues, could work? Anyway, when you feel good enough about just walking around the place, we can go somewhere more private and I’ll show you my… other ideas.”
Meowers leaned forward and smiled wildly, with her hands in front of her chest and index fingers impatiently tapping each other, in an obvious sign of curiosity... And maybe some impatience as well.
"Other ideas?! Hm," for a moment, she got back to her 'standing straight and rubbing her chin' posture which usually indicated thinking on something. "For a minute, I thought about getting myself a pair of sunglasses. But something tells me it's probably not going anywhere, phah. Like, we can try, but you may guess where it goes. Phah. So. What other ideas, mmm?"
“Well, we could pick the sunglasses up on the way to the apartment.”
I paused in my reply, for a second.
“Or maybe you’ll want to do that while we take a day’s break to look at what else we could do? But those ideas I mentioned… well, see, I don’t want to bring them up out here. Too many people that could watch.”
I looked at Meowers with a certain, inquiring look, and balanced back and forth on my feet. What we were going to do really didn’t depend on me so much as her, here.
Meowers lifted her foot, ready to go further to... whatever place we were going to, but then placed it back and looked at me with a visible confusion on her face.
"Waaaaitaminute. The 'apartment' was, kind of, my private place. Should I load it?"
“I mean, kind of?”
I shifted my weight onto the left leg, held even with my body, creating the impression that I was leaning back.
“I kinda remember reading you can sort of link servers together in an organic way… somewhere. Keeps the settings and all. Maybe it was one of those tutorial boxes. So we could load it into this… city sandbox thingy, and instead of loading out of the entire server and back into yours, some random building around here hides the loading phase. And it’ll only be us two that can enter it. Sound good to you?”
I let my arms swing back and forth while doing the same on my toes, careful to not let them brush up against my hips, which was rather distracting when it did happen. Being big like this felt great, but was also making my brain too focused on socially indecent matters, too easily.
"Looks like an idea to me," she nodded, "I'm... Sometimes not the smartest one, phah."
"You know? I totally can't remember the last time I liked walking around aimlessly. That... Should add to my scarce supply of pleasant moments," she added just after, making it sound like 'a comment', aimed to no one and nothing in particular. Then, she closed her eyes slowly and turned her head to the sun, enjoying the moment.
”Well, either we go straight to the apartment once you loaded it in, or maybe you’ll want to pick up those sunglasses before we do. Your choice, really.”, I said, and looked around a little bit.
“Or I guess we could go lie down on some grass in one of the parks for a bit. Wasn’t there one nearby? Could’ve sworn we passed one by not too long ago.”
My mind seemed to prefer the idea of heading back, but I wanted to have brought up the option of something other than ‘Go isolate from the exterior world again’, just to have it on the table.
"Hm," Meowers paused, thinking. "I guess we might head to the apartment and maybe we could stumble upon a place that sells sunglasses on the way there... Though, even if it's a virtual world, I'm a bit... You know. Skeptical. Phah. At least you can customise your stuff here fairly easily. Imagine me, like that, trying to get something to wear in the real world. That could've been a... Helluva misadventure."
She chuckled, spreading her arms and then pointing her fingers at herself.
"Anyway, given the nature of our... Explore-your-weirdest-parts experiment, I guess you're pretty keen on doing something in private," Leaning closer to me, Meowers changed her tone to a 'jokingly-playful' sort, "Can't imagine what exactly it might be!"
And, flinching back as if she was evading a slap in the face, she laughed. I balled my hands into fists and placed them on my hips, at that last statement, though the annoyance was partly faked.
“You’re just lucky you’re nearly a meter taller than me, or I would have slapped you. Of course it’s going to be all about this.”
I didn’t really need to point toward my body at this point, though my look wandered down for a moment regardless..
“Anyway, choice is still yours. We go back to the apartment and I tell you about my idea, or you try to find a place with sunglasses. And yes, it would definitely be one hell of a misadventure to try finding anything at your size - this size, here - in a real store. And they’d probably charge you double the price as an extra for a custom size.”
I rolled my eyes at the last sentence, while dropping my arms, clearly thinking of it as well as I thought of the Thargoids doing what they were in the Bubble.
"Hm!" Meowers raised a finger, "Well if it's 'or' now, then let's go see your stuff. Hehehehe."
"And as if I have something to lose anyway," she shrugged, "Finding something fit for my... well... 'Standard' body have always been a pain in the arse. So I'm simply... Embracing my madness."
"Okay, then. Let's go. Just get the thing active, and a marker for it should pop up for us both."
I decided to just walk in a random direction until I saw the nav marker come up, then led the way over to the building. And, of course, it was not on the ground floor. I turned and looked at Meowers, standing by the entrance door.
"Well, uh... go on ahead. I think I'll stay behind you in case you need help with getting up. Or maybe staying ahead is better so I can pull? You tell me."
Doors. Luckily, Meowers seemingly already knew what to do with doors already, so head and one shoulder go first...
"Ah, craps..."
She emerged back and looked at me.
"The elevator. We can't use it. Well... I can't use it. It's too small. So, the staircase it will be. Go ahead," she nodded to the doorway, "I don't want to land on you in case I slip or whatever. And you, much likely, want it even less than I do, pffff."
“Definitely not.”, I replied, in a dry, casual tone, before entering the building, imagining Meowers would be quite amused at my following remark. “I don’t think I have enough cushioning to take that impact.”
"We could try some lower-G environments for a start..." Meowers replied in a jokingly half-teasing tone, keeping her hands in front of her chest and making a gesture that looked like slowly squeezing something round. "Maybe that's not so bad after all, hmm?"
Keeping that act, she tilted her head and made a wink.
I stopped just shy of the staircase, taking the right foot off the first step to fully turn around to Meowers, and placed both hands on those widened hips as fists, my mouth open with an indignant expression, ready to throw something back at her - I knew exactly which part of the body was meant. But between the thoughts racing through my brain, nothing coherent enough formed to come out.
“Ugh. Fucking… forget about it. Definitely not tempted to try this, no. Hell no.”
Then I just shook my head, took the hands off my hips and began walking up.
Slowly turning to the staircase, Meowers stopped for a moment and pointed a finger-pistol at me.
"This is still an option, in case you... change your mind, phah."
"No, I won't.", I firmly replied, and kept a fair distance to Meowers in case she slipped and fell forward rather than backward. Landing face first on my oversized chest was not on my to do list, especially with no water to absorb the impact this time around, if one did occur.
Pros: ceilings were high enough to let Meowers stand without pushing her head against concrete. Cons: literally everything else. Steps were too narrow for her feet. Handrails were too low and she couldn't grab them, unless she crouched or leaned forward, and both options weren't exactly comfortable even for standing still, not to mention moving the legs. She tried. For a couple of minutes. Crawling wasn't an option either since she wasn’t very fond of the concept of sweeping the floor with bare hands. Finally, the solution was found: turning ninety degrees and moving sideways. Placing her left foot a few steps higher, then pushing her entire body upwards to place the right foot in front of it. Repeat until victory. And her backside served as a reasonable buffer to lean against the wall and support herself a little.
"Yeah! See?"
First two floors were a bit slow and difficult, yet, finishing them, she seemingly gained enough momentum, automatism and muscle memory.
“Yeah, right. Totally working fine.”
That unimpressed, somewhat sarcastic remark was all I could manage at the show that Meowers was putting up for me, just to get up the stairs. So, of course, I heard steps coming down from above. And rolled my eyes, while turning away, moving ahead again. I held out a hand toward the person coming down, palm held at a ninety degree angle to the wrist, indicating them to stop.
“You, uh, might not want to go down just yet,” I told them. Which resulted in a raised eyebrow.
“Why?”, the person asked.
“It’s… uh… hard to explain.”
I noticed that, much like Meowers and most others looking at me, this individual’s eyes were quite prone to darting lower, toward those certain, bigger features of my body. So I cleared my throat in a certain way to get the attention back up.
“Hm hm. Eyes. Not down there.”
I turned back to where I could very clearly hear Meowers coming up. If at a slowed pace, probably also realizing someone was coming down.
“What floor was it again? Fifth or sixth one, right?” Then back to the other person. “It’s going to save both of us a lot of time if I don’t have to watch that mess going on down there all over again.”
“Okay, fine. Just tell me someone’s bringing something big and heavy up. Couldn’t you just take the elevator?”
“It, uh, it wouldn’t have fit. That’s all I can say.”
I shooed the person up with my right hand and followed them up to the next door, leading into a corridor. Which was, annoyingly, also not quite tall enough to fit Meowers.
“So, what exactly is it that you’re bringing… up… oh.”
The answer came in the form of a two and a half meter giant squeezing up the stairs. Which resulted in a mild stare and open mouth.
“Excuse me, I’ll be going ahead again.”, I said… and accidentally bumped into the individual with my own sizable backside, making me stiffen and turn slightly to look. “Uh. Sorry.”
“I really need to learn how to watch that thing.”, I muttered to myself as I turned back to the front and went up the stairs further, blushing brightly, just assuming Meowers wouldn’t need my help any longer. Nor did I want to answer any questions why we were a curious duo of someone way taller than any human should be, and another woman with oversized features for her type of body.
The sight of a clearly surprised person was probably amusing enough for Meowers to chuckle a little and shrug, looking at them, yet she couldn't help but laugh loudly seeing my own accident. Once she finally caught her breath, she commented, addressing both to me and to the witness.
"Yeah... Believe me, I'm doing my best!" And, muttering quietly, she added: “Ah, I'd make an interesting neighbour."
I didn’t feel much of a need to further comment on that situation and just kept heading up the stairs until I arrived on the correct floor, and held the door into the corridor open for Meowers until she got there. Then I went into the apartment. By now, the blush of embarrassment from bumping into the person - not helped by Meowers breaking out in laughter from it - had at least faded a little.
… and the broken chair still lay there, desperately waiting to be fixed. I was thinking about showing it pity, or mercy, but this was technically not my place, so I just sat down somewhere that wasn’t the floor, or the bed, and it happened to be a sofa.
"Aaah, I'm getting the hang of it", Meowers slipped into the apartment without any problems, following the already established pattern of movements. "So cool, hehehe."
I was already sitting on the sofa and waiting for her by then. She dropped her boots next to the door, and hung her jacket after coming in.
“So, which part do you want to start with?”, I asked her. “The more appropriate, or less appropriate idea? Not that I’m sure which is which.”
"More or less appropriate... Hmm... And when was the last time we did something appropriate at all? Pfffffhah," she wanted to splash down on the bed but timely realised that it might've not been the best idea with her weight. So, she carefully sat down and leaned back with her hands clasped behind her head. "I'd say... Go with the less and then crank up the madness to the limits. Taste your insanity like a good wine! Pfff... What a weird poetry."
I’d silently observed Meowers sitting down on the bed, then looked at the chair that was still sitting there, almost begging to be fixed, when she was done.
“You should show that thing some mercy. Get it fixed. How you do that is up to you.” I rolled my neck, feeling a certain tension in it, while my hands were placed flat on the sofa, to either side of my hips. “Anyway, to that other stuff.”
I decided to open up a virtual interface and summoned another virtual me, but without AI in it. So it was more just a static model and stood somewhere between me and Meowers. And, rather than the bigger size, it was my ‘real’ proportions.
“So, I’ve got this… piece of clothing. I honestly don’t know why, since I’d never wear it, but… well, I do. So… I guess I just wanted to show it to you.”
And I changed it to being inside of what could best be described as a… very tight-fitting body suit with some patterns on the arms and thighs, mixing black colors on the softer fabric, and silver on some leather-like material. It wasn’t so tight around the breasts, though it followed their outline quite neatly, but there was very little left to the imagination around the hip area.
Showing this was still embarrassing enough for me to blush visibly and begin to feel hot, sitting on the sofa. I gave Meowers a minute or two to move around it before I changed the size of the parts to reflect my current - virtual - body, making sure the suit changed size with them. Not much had really changed in how revealing it was as a result, there was merely more material to show off in it.
"Ah, I think I'd rather replace all the stuff here with something identical, but on thick metal fra... Oh. Ow. Wow," first, she reacted to my 'duplicate-hologram' appearing between me and her, and then witnessed the suit change.
“Well... This looks... Rather hot," she looked at the duplicate with her eyes going up to down, following the shapes, then stood up from the bed and came closer to take a better look. "Definitely hot."
I changed the duplicate back to my regular clothing, and stood up.
“So… yeah. You might guess why I ended up never wearing that.”, I told Meowers. “And my other idea… it’s simpler if I show you in this clothing. Because it relates to the size of a very specific part. But tell me what you think of that suit first.”
As my view was partly divided between the upsized me and Meowers, I didn’t even notice that I had left behind a certain imprint on the sofa that would only slowly disappear, over the next few minutes.
Uncontrolled, neither by me, nor by AI, the lifelike duplicate mannequin stood in the middle of the room with its... her... whatever, head just a little below Meowers’ breasts, and, apparently, that fact turned out to be quite entertaining for her.
"This might be... Another reason why you don't want to bump into me accidentally. Or maybe you secretly want to, but can't say it. Phah," pointing a finger at the duplicate’s head and then flicking it back to point at herself, on the same level, she commented in an amused tone.
"Did you want to tell me that you're thinking of... Duplicating yourself and having fun? Well. Khm. Who am I to judge," she chuckled. "That's... Possible in the simulation. And rather easy, I think. And the suit is awesome. Like, really. Maybe not for going to public places, yet you may keep it... For those special occasions."
“If I was wearing that suit to public places, it’d just be to see how stupidly people would stare. Well, mostly.”, I remarked to Meowers’ final sentence. “But right now? Nobody I’d wear it for exists, so… yeah. Been gathering dust in a drawer. Only have it since… what, May, April maybe? Somewhere around those two months. It wouldn’t even fit if my body was as big as this. Or just barely.”
I moved to the back of the second me, and stopped there, contemplating the hips for a moment, before I looked back at Meowers.
“The other idea… well, there’s two more, but I want to start here first.” I turned toward the model slightly. “See, I like the shape, but there’s a little something I want to… add to. Down there. Like …”
I placed the sides of both hands around my back, just above where the outward curve started, and made kind of a gesture that followed it… but a little bigger, creating a slightly less smooth gradient between it and the thighs.
“You get the idea.”
Then, I remembered I could just use this model for that purpose too, and I had changed it to my current clothes already. So I pulled up size sliders, ticked off the box to scale thighs and hip width proportionately, and pushed the slider up a bit further.
Another quarter of a point looked like a bit much, since the increasing size seemed to be exponential even with the numbers staying the same, but a tenth was just a little short of my desired result, and not quite noticeable. So .15 it was, creating a less soft curve. And an even bigger backside to look at. Both from my position at the back, and Meowers’ on the side, but still within relatively acceptable limits.
“What do you think? Go for it?”
I wouldn’t have said it there and then, but I was very tempted to put my hands there and push inward with them, on the inert model. Especially since the pants hadn’t been adjusted yet and looked a little tighter.
"I guess peoples' stares are a thing we should be... Prepared for. Think of this VR place as of something... Like a training ground. In every sense of the word," Meowers thought aloud, while her eyes were in-between 'gazing' and 'inspecting' the changes of the duplicated model, with a smirk decorating her face.
She looked at the model from the side, then moved in front of it and crouched a little to mitigate the height difference, and then moved to another side.
"Khm. Kh-khm. Go for it," Meowers replied in a short, determined manner, then switching to the more 'contemplating' tone, nodding towards the noticeable mark on the sofa. "That does make you... happy. That bodily function can't lie, I guess."
”I didn’t say I’d go for this yet. Maybe thinking about it… but it’d be quite a big change. Pun not intended… I’d have to change my whole wardrobe, get my suits made bigger in those parts, try not to bump into people all the time… and the pilot’s chair does look a bit narrow.”
I put my hands on my hips, looking at the inert duplicate of me.
“So… anyway. I’ll be right back, after I get done… tweaking. And no, I wouldn’t be interested in landing face first in your breasts. That… it’s already weird enough being next to you when you’re way taller.”
With that, I disappeared into the side room with the mirror I’d found earlier, leaving Meowers to her thoughts for now. And with the inert me.
I stepped right in front of the mirror and wasted no time entering the character editor. Since I already knew what I wanted… I set the size of the backside to the desired level, while ensuring those other two lower parts remained at their previous setting. And turned to look at myself in the mirror.
“Yeah… much better.”, I murmured, definitely feeling, and seeing, how the pants hadn’t been adjusted. And… liking it? My heart began to beat a little faster, imagining… some rather indecent things I could put the pants through by not adjusting them. But I decided not to. Yet.
Instead, I just let my hands wander to those lower reaches to have a go at testing the extra mass, a quite satisfactory sensation, feeling it push against the fabric. Then I set the pants right. It had only been a test to feel that the size had actually increased, after all.
‘Definitely going to need a proper measurement instead of those numbers if I do this in reality …’, I thought.
As I walked back out, I realized that my slightly tighter pants test had been quite unnecessary, as I could feel the extra movement from the mass already. And a quite unexpected sight presented itself when I opened the door.