Deviant Downsizing (Chapter 20) (Patreon)

Everything went dead-silent after that. Eloise’s growth spurt ended up with the dining room a wreck of dusted drywall, messy food, and furniture snapped like twigs. The ceiling bore a heavy domed dent from where her uprising head had banged. Lori staggered up in a daze, stifling an automatic bodily response that made her eyes glow like magma and heat seethe from her extremities. Mason couldn’t even move, as his sibling’s now-gargantuan juicy-toed ped had rammed him right up against the sofa and pinned him there. He only escaped that pressure of her humid pink arch, after a few moments’ impotent wriggling, by shrinking himself small enough to sidle out.

Regrowing back to normal, then, Mason’s jaw hung limp and his stomach dropped in the wake of all this devastation, as he beheld his sister – who had almost-instantaneously climbed from her natural six-one stature up to no less than fifty feet tall. If she hadn’t instinctively rolled herself into a self-defensive fetal position, she might’ve demolished several walls, or even popped the roof right off the house. As it stood, unlike when Mason had accidentally grown Lori to half this size, the collateral damage was far greater. None of them even acknowledged the ravaged space, however, as the colossal Eloise herself demanded all their shock and awe.

“M-Mason?” Lori whispered. Logically, she looked to the child who was not only a known deviant, but had just recently taken control of his size-morphing powers. “Did… you-”

“It wasn’t me! I swear!” Mason blurted, and not just out of blame-shifting fright. Ever since that fateful day when his mother had worn him in her grungy flat until the sensory overload (and climactic gratification) pushed him into total command over his skills, there hadn’t been a single mistaken shrinkage or growth. But was it possible he hadn’t mastered that part of himself after all, he bitterly wondered? Was his family still in danger because of him?

“He’s right,” Eloise boomed, as if startled awake from a dream, but her voice quickly turned hysterical. “It… was me. I did this. I… felt it, right before it happened. I can’t even explain it. I just know. I j-just… oh, God. I… DID… this. Me. Oh, shit. MOM, p-please, is this really happening? Is this-”

“Yes, hon. It’s really happening. But I’m here for you. So is Mason. And it’s going to be okay,” Lori proclaimed, as she immediately leapt into soothing matriarchal mode, despite now being the size of a doll compared to her daughter. Clambering over the rubble, she stroked Eloise’s cheek just as the unexpected giantess began tearing up from shock. “Are you hurt? How do you feel?”

“N-Nothing hurts, Mom. I’m fine, I think. But… oh my GOD. MASON! Are you okay? I’m so sorry! I felt you stuck down there, while it was happening, but I couldn’t do anything to stop it, or even slow it down.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m okay,” Mason said, forcing a laugh to spare her feelings, though Eloise’s foot had knocked the wind out of him. Plus, on some sick level, he would’ve been hard-pressed to say he was bothered by colliding with the smooth putty-pithed underbelly of her objectively-pretty sole, but those perversions were the furthest thing from his mind now. Just trying to cut the tension, then, he joked: “But geez, did you really have to steal my exact same power? That was MY thing! And you know you’re already Mom’s favorite between the two of us!”

Unfortunately neither Lori nor Eloise seemed able to find the humor in this revelation.

“Believe it or not, this isn’t just some crazy coincidence,” Lori said, still hugging her gigantic offspring’s cheek and petting her hair. “There’s a history of deviants from the same family, mostly siblings, developing similar powers, with slight variations. That has to be what’s happened here. It’s just that I never thought… well, I was shocked enough when Mason’s power showed up when he was already eighteen, but to see one come out this much later in you, too… it’s amazing. YOU are amazing, Eloise. And so are you, kiddo. Both of you are perfect, exactly as you are. I’m so proud of you, I love you both SO much, and everything is going to be just fine with us all. Now, everybody just take a deeeeeeep breath for me, okay?”

Lori’s aggressively benevolent mothering style seemed to have quieted Eloise’s initial panic to a dull roar, as the giantess was still passively crying, but finally mustered a reluctant smile after she’d exhaled. Though aside from this treatment sweetly quelling his sister’s fears, Mason had a feeling that their pyro-parent’s affectionate encouragement was also intended to prevent a second manic growth spurt that might just shatter the whole house into splinters. But fortunately enough for them all, there was no need for Eloise to remain trapped this way for weeks on end, like he had after his own powers activated and regressed him smaller than a mouse. Because this time, there was already another adept size-changing deviant present under the same roof and ready to save the day, if necessary. Mason certainly hadn’t counted on his powers being the answer, when he’d earlier wished for a way to ease some of his sister’s burden, but here they were anyway.

“T-Thanks, Mom. I love you, too. And I know it’s going to be all right. Only… I don’t know if I can fix this. I didn’t do it on purpose, and I don’t know what set it off. It’s like what you said happened to Mason, while I’ve been gone,” Eloise nervously admitted. She shut her eyes and concentrated through labored breathing in an effort to shrink herself, but to no avail: a struggle her brother knew all too well. “It’s not working. W-What if I can’t undo it?”

“Then I’ve got you covered,” Mason said, focusing up. “Just relax, El.”

Yet nothing happened for him, either. Despite being able to effortlessly alter his own stature, as well as Lori’s, and dozens of random household trinkets he’d practiced with in the last month, Eloise’s fifty-foot immensity didn’t lose a fraction when he tried to correct her back down to normal. Confused, then frustrated, and a tad alarmed, Mason double-checked his powers hadn’t broken by rapidly transforming himself from eight feet tall, to a single inch, then back again. He made multiple objects in the bombed-out dining room simultaneously grow and shrink, as if performing a magic trick he could’ve pulled off in his sleep. But when he targeted his sister again, he couldn’t do a thing to her. And suddenly, Mason grasped why.

“I… can’t. Not yet. Not like this,” he grunted, still trying and failing. “I’m sorry. It’s… like she’s fighting back.”

“I’m NOT! It can’t be! I don’t WANT to be this size!” Eloise cried. “Whatever’s happening, Mason, I’m NOT doing it on purpose. You have to believe me!”

“It’s okay. Not the end of the world. Your powers must be interacting in a way we haven’t seen before. We just need a new approach,” Lori calmly assuaged, ever the problem-solver. Contemplating, she waved her son nearer. “C’mere, kiddo. I’ve got an idea. Look at it this way: we know your power works better the closer you are. You wouldn’t be able to affect something a mile away, or maybe even outside this house, right? That closeness, that connection, must be more important than we thought. So what happens when you hold your sister’s hand?”