Duality - Chapter 20 (Novel Commission for Code-Shark101)

TAGS: Anthro, Transformation/TF, Slice-Of-Life, Milk/Lactation, BE, Hyper, F/F

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Rue and Beth stared at one another for a solid minute, nothing to be heard but the faint sloshing of the panda’s immense milk stores and the muffled, distant groaning of metal being bent and pushed apart, hoping that if they just stood there and did nothing, then they wouldn’t have to worry about the colossal bust attached to Linda doing something unexpected, like suddenly doubling in size. As soon as the latter began to snore quietly, both the other women and the intern let loose a sigh of relief, collapsing onto the milk-covered floor while overhead, the many alarms that had been set off by Linda’s growthsplosion began to simmer down and shut off one by one.

It was a disaster. There was no way that the project would ever be able to continue at that rate, not if the panda was at risk of undergoing a process like that whenever they got halfway stressed-out about anything. Something had to be done, something drastic that would solve things once and for all, and to that end, Rue resolved to… take things in a different direction. Up until that point, her many tentative approaches had been mostly founded on the idea that, push come to shove, there’d be no need to place either of the two young women in any kind of harm or discomfort deliberately, that they could fix their problem without having to resort to extreme circumstances. Now though… she wasn’t so certain. It seemed like, no matter what anyone did, Linda just kept getting worse and worse, and thus the only way they’d ever break the cycle and find an end to it would be to veer off in a different direction entirely and try and find a solution there.

The clean-up procedures took up most of the night, with the panda gal being placed in emergency milking until far past the point where she could remain awake. Beth was escorted to an examination room, while Rue had to report to the Board and improvise her way out of what was effectively a dead end. The good doctor knew that no one else in that company would do what had to be done; they’d either take a hands-off approach until Rivtech cancelled the project and handed Linda off to a subsidiary to be treated like a circus freak, or fail to realize that breaking some ethical standards was now, effectively, a necessity. Only she knew best, and to that end, she staked it all on a final, winner-take-all approach: the Board should give her another month, and if by the end she didn’t have any promising results, she would forgo any and all rights she’d have to a severance package and just leave of her own accord. While the company’s main heads weren’t at all enthused by this, the situation with the panda had reached such a critical point that they were willing to accept it. One month, and no more; no results, no job.

That night was the longest one in her entire life, spent between brewing extra-strength mugs (not cups) of coffee and taking so many measurements of Linda’s body that her laptop began to noticeably slow down from how much information it was having to process at any one time. Adams knew that if she overloaded her senses with data, if she just stared at it for long enough, then a pattern would emerge, and then she could follow it down its rabbit hole until she stumbled onto a solution. It wasn’t a perfect method, but it was something, and at that point, something at all was better than the big fat nothing they had. As the hours ticked away and Linda’s breasts refused to shrink down properly, Rue began to panic; not only was the panda gal becoming far larger than even their worst projections, but none of the data they gathered were giving her any inkling as to why that was… at least until she gave herself ten seconds to think when downing a mug in one go, with the ensuing epiphany hitting her so strongly she spat coffee all over a wall and two unfortunate interns carrying buckets filled with milk and waterlogged mops.

She wasn’t growing like they thought she was. Not because their models weren’t predicting the proper strength of the milk bursts, but because they weren’t modelling reality at all! Frantically, the young woman poured through a specific chunk of the database, pertaining to fat deposits over time, and sure enough, after fighting through multiple crashes and about fifteen minutes of a halted process from how many entries there were, she had it: a linear increase in fat content in Linda’s breasts, perfectly proportional to the length and strength of her milksplosion episodes. She felt like an utter genius after figuring that one out, mostly because it was the key to understanding everything; now, Rue knew what was happening with Linda, and since she knew it, then it was only a matter of time until an adequate solution was found.

Still it took her the rest of the night to come up with a workable theory, and well into the middle of the morning before it was anywhere near the point where it could be offered up as anything more than mindless conjecture. By that point, Linda had been hooked up to the milking machine for so long that her nipples were even more puffy and swollen than normal, yet completely and utterly dry; an enormous concern for everyone involved, as the panda gal was still absolutely enormous! The company had to break through from the warehouse above hers, drilling and grinding through the floor until they could conjoin the two empty spaces, and quite frankly, that was very much necessary, as Linda had become a behemoth of milk and breastflesh. Even at her smallest, it was impossible to see all of her at once, with her nipples alone being twice as big as Rue’s office, the formerly biggest size that her whole bust had become. The breasts those teats were attached to were each so massively gigantic that Linda could no longer be allowed to simply stand beneath them, but instead had to be moved ontop of their mass, resting on a bed of boob that stretched for so many yards around her the panda gal would most likely be unable to see where the curve started.

And this was before the pumps were turned off… after which her milk production kicked into high gear again, though thankfully for Linda, her breasts were now so unimaginably huge that it was going to take a while before they were ready to start bulging out again. No, the main problem now wasn’t the creamy production, but what it led to, and this needed a very delicate touch; to that end, Rue decided to meet with Beth, who had been oddly quiet in her room ever since the incident. The good doctor had tried to get updates on her situation, but received nothing but vague platitudes on how she was doing just fine, spiking her suspicion and leading her to think that Beth might very well have been injured severely. On entering the room, however, her worst nightmares were right there, waiting for her: Beth, naked from the waist up, with a pair of breasts big enough to rest on her lap.

“H-Hey Rue,” she called out meekly, the staff around her flinching when they saw their nominal supervisor approach. Not one of them dared to look the doctor in the eyes, “had a bit of an issue, but i-it’s solved now…”

“Oh my god, Beth!” Rue practically screamed, running towards her, “What happened? How did it happen, when?!”

The young woman on the medical bed cleared her throat, then recounted everything that had taken place ever since she was brought to observation. How her vital signs had been going out of control, how her metabolism was out of whack, and especially how her hormones and shot to wildly elevated levels… all before her skin began to grow coarser and develop what seemed to be thicker hair, something that Rue only then realized. This was followed by sudden breast growth, though it had stopped mercifully short of becoming genuinely immobilizing.

“Guess I’m turning into her, heh” - Beth chuckled, not looking like she was having a good time - “So whatever you have in mind, it better be good. Because I don’t think I have a lot of time left in me. Not like this. Not with the normal me.”

The moment of awkward silence was enough for Rue to be kicked back to reality after the sheer shock of Beth’s transformation had put her in a trance-like state. Now, more than ever, she was motivated to end it by all means necessary, and seeing as how her second patient was now clearly infected by the same genetic condition turning Linda into a titty monster, there was ample reason to believe that all of her suspicions up until that point had been correct; Rue made a mental note to order an immediate halt to all experiments with panda milk, pending further notice.

As for Beth, the good doctor explained at length what conclusion she had drawn from the data: that over time, the various exponential milkiness incidents had led to a continuous, repeating pattern of fluid-infused growth, followed by a settling period where fat deposits would form, thus increasing the baseline mass of Linda’s breasts. Or, in other words, the more milk she was allowed to produce before being drained, the more it would coalesce into breastflesh. The only way to “fix” it, for a certain definition of the word, would be a multi-pronged assault on the panda gal’s body: first, a continuous dosing of depressants and similar medication, meant to combat the hormonal storm going on inside of her body. Secondly, a moratorium on all milking, along with the complete blockage of Linda’s nipples, under the assumption that forcing her tits to build up to a maximum capacity would eventually make them stop producing altogether. And finally, a severe reduction in her caloric intake, meant to starve out her lactic production and bring it back down to manageable levels.

Any single one of these would be enough to make the panda gal’s life a complete hell, and all three would be needed at the same time if they ever wanted to have even the slightest hope of reversing her condition. Beth listened attentively until the very end, then preempted Rue’s final declaration by speaking before the doctor could:

“And you want me to deliver the news to her, as softly as I can. And I suppose be here for her for the whole process?”

“Precisely,” Rue concurred, “I would’ve insisted a return to a regular routine, but now? No, you two need to stay with us until it gets fixed. It’s not just you on the line anymore as well; if I can’t get anything done within a month, then I’m done for.”

“Best estimate for this time?”

“A week, tops. If it doesn’t work…” - Rue paused for a moment, deep in thought. There was no good way to finish that sentence, not without admitting that she had no backup plan whatsoever. Either Plan A worked… or nothing else did - “Well, we’re fucked, honestly. You two will be sent off to some subsidiary, I’ll be out of a job, and who knows what’ll happen to Linda at that point. The government would probably get involved, and everything would go to hell by then.”

“So let’s make it work then” - Beth nodded, determined for once - “We’ll do our best and try it our all. And if it turns out we’re fucked anyway, then we’ll go out with a bang and fuck Rivtech!”

Rue was certain this was meant to be encouraging, but given the presence of many, many company workers in the room… well, the awkwardness was best left unstated. She nonetheless agreed, then mentioned something about having to prepare her calculations, whatever that meant, and walked out of the room. Once in the hallway, she was met by a couple of medical workers who immediately offered her a smoke and a lighter, followed by wordlessly nodding and letting Rue know that yes, they knew exactly how she felt, and no, they wouldn’t blame her for any emotional outburst. But the good doctor had better things to do, better things to worry about, and though she took the smoking offer gladly, she managed to find some resolve within herself and focus her mind entirely on getting out of the mess that the company had made; for she made no mistake, this was Rivtech’s fault. Their lack of care, their mismanagement of company projects, their attempts at internal politicking, all of it ended up there, in that emergency crisis situation that herself, Beth and Linda were in, and now she had to be the one to dig them out. So she would. And then leverage that for a promotion to a position where she wouldn’t be bothered by nonsense like this ever again, preferably with a big, fat pay-off for the happy couple so they could finally live their lives in peace.

After her mind was made up, and a few ideas bounced around long enough to solidify, Rue walked back into the room and sat down next to Beth. For fifteen minutes straight, she instructed her on what she would have to do, from the word choices needed to bring the topic up, to the best way of organizing the various steps in order to soften the impact, to the importance of not using euphemistic language; it was important that she be able to tell the other, full panda gal the news in a way that was bearable, but didn’t obfuscate the importance of what had to happen. Beth, now fully convinced that they were in the home stretch and had to pull out all the stops to prevent a disaster from happening, listened about as carefully as she had to anything else in her life, nodding along and making mental notes herself, knowing that if she fudged up this one thing, then it would all be over. Once the two were done, they both stared at one another for an uncomfortably long amount of time before Rue excused herself again, asking Beth to let her know when she was ready before heading back to her office.

It was a long walk, not made any easier by the knowledge that she had two pandas on her hands now rather than just one. As much as she liked to pretend like things could be fixed, Rue… wasn’t so sure. It was up in the air what would even happen to the two of them if Rivtech terminated the project, assuming they even did so; whenever news of this made it out to the outside world, the company was utterly doomed, assuming Linda and Beth didn’t (rightfully) sue them into the ground. This, more than ever, was the best excuse for her to open a drawer she normally kept closed, crack open the bottle that was inside, and then take a long, deep swig of her aged whiskey that she’d bought some months prior. Several swigs, in fact, at least as many as it took for her to forget what was going on with her life for a few seconds, but not enough to cloud her judgement. The sound the bottle made when it hit the table again marked the end of the last moment of peace she’d ever get; it was now do or die.

Stuck on her bed, Beth’s mind was a million miles away, trying to comprehend what was happening to her. Truth be told, she had assumed that going down the same route as her partner would end up turning her into the same sort of tit-obsessed milk monster that Linda had become, and yet she didn’t feel that much different from her usual self, apart from the extra weight on her shoulders and back. It was… different, to put it lightly, and she’d be lying if she said she didn’t love every inch of her new curves; but it wasn’t overwhelming in the way she had expected it to be. Rather, it was just nice, a size goal surpassed several times over that mostly made her worry about how much more money she’d have to spend on bras and back braces; at least this way Beth was relieved that she had kept her wits about her, though now it was anyone’s guess what would happen next. One thing was for certain though: she had to nail that conversation with Linda. She ran it through her head, again and again, until the speech she had prepared, based on Rue’s suggestions, was burned into the inside of her very mind, repeating on loop and unstoppable. She was convinced that she could deliver it, even if Linda tried to interrupt her in the middle of it, though of course reality had a way of disagreeing with her expectations so often that she couldn’t be entirely certain.

Meanwhile, Linda was having a whole new class of problems of her own, mostly centered around trying to make sense of what the hell happened to her body. It was bad enough that it managed to knock her out of her usual funk and keep her well and sobered up to the point where she wouldn’t stop asking questions of the many, many attendants and interns that just didn’t know what to say. As far as they knew, Rue would be there “any moment now”, a phrase that repeated itself for hours on end until finally, sometime after Linda had convinced herself that salvation would never arrive, the good doctor appeared on the small mirror that had been placed above her head so she may see behind her… the good doctor, and someone else entirely.

This other person had Beth’s face, but it couldn’t be her, not with… those things attached to her. The Beth she remembered was lithe, slender; not exactly flat, but not carrying breasts that large either, not to mention the odd coating of… was that fur?! The panda gal’s mind was racing at a thousand miles an hour as she tried to convince herself away from what she knew to be the truth, preferring to live in a self-made fantasy than accept the fact that, at long last, their constant overindulgence had finally caught up with them in a meaningful way. As soon as that “stranger” began to talk though, it was all over; Linda broke down when she heard Beth’s voice, all of her fears come alive and made manifest in that half-panda hybrid behind her. It didn’t help at all that the first instinct her partner had was to hug her to try and make everything ok, at which point the surprising softness of the first stages of her fur just added to the pile of worries; Beth looked exactly the way she had all those months ago, back during the initial stages of the gene treatment, and given the way everything else had gone…

“Bethany has something she has to tell you,” Rue spoke up, respectfully stepping away and giving the two women the space they needed, “I’ll be outside the warehouse until you need me. Please let me know when you’re done.”

This simple statement didn’t make things any better, and indeed Linda was close to a full-on panic attack by the time Dr. Adams closed the metal door behind her, quickly followed by a throng of interns not wanting to be the ones in the room once the waterworks started; goodness knows what that would do to the panda giantess’ body, so as soon as they were done heaving Beth over to the top of the mountain of soft boob, they immediately filed out of there as quickly as they could. Once the two were properly alone, then the talk could begin; just as planned, her constant repetition allowed Beth to once again run through the whole speech she had prepared, at times having to hold up an index finger to let Linda know that she wasn’t yet finished. The not-yet-panda could tell that her partner was growing increasingly mortified at the suggestions that Rue had proposed, enough that she even tried to close her ears and pretend like she wasn’t hearing them at all; a childish move, yet one that her partner could fully understand, given what was being expected of her. It took a lot more out of Beth than she anticipated as well; by the end of it, the hybrid woman felt like crying her eyes out from how hard Linda had taken it, and the first thing she did after uttering the final word was to lunge forward and give her the tightest hug she could… coincidentally teaching her a very important lesson on the mechanics of having a bust of that size attached to her chest.

“How does she expect me to do any of that?!” Linda cried out, sobbing near-uncontrollably and having to take several breaths in between words, “I can b-barely move! I can… I can b-barely move…”

She was openly crying now, unable to control herself any longer. If the final growth burst had shocked her out of her lust for size, it had also made her acutely aware of the consequences of her actions; the Linda that lay there, atop her enormous bed of breastflesh, was not the same one that would demand that it become larger, but the same terrified young woman that first saw her bust expand all the way back in the diner, and didn’t know what to do anymore. Now the Beth wasn’t the same person that Linda remembered being, but some form of hyper-tittied hybrid that she herself had spawned… but she was still Beth. She was still as warm as that Beth, still as willing to hold her and tell her that everything would turn out alright. She was still the same person that knew exactly how to just be around her so that things magically felt better of all of a sudden. And she was still the same person that knew how to scritch and massage her ears in just the right way to let her sink back into a relaxed state; she was safe there, under her hands, under her touch, safe with the woman she had decided to spend her life with. Maybe things did go completely out of control, maybe Beth had turned into a small-scale boob monster too, but it was still Beth in there, and that’s what counted.

The two of them remained as they were, laying next to one another and unwilling to let go. How long did they stay like that for, minutes, hours? They spent as much time as they needed, as much time as it took for their bodies to melt into one another and for the warm memories of their shared moments back at the diner to resurface. Those were simpler times, when they didn’t have to worry about things that would be out of place in anything but the most extreme of fiction… and maybe, if they worked hard enough, if they just made the right sacrifices, they could go back to those days, back to when they could share a bed, an actual bed, without having to worry about spillage and leaks. Linda would like that. Beth would like that. Both of them would like that. Both of them could go back to the way things were if only they did what Rue needed them to do.

So why not go ahead and do it?