GroLabs

Buizilla groaned and shook his head. “What… happened?” he mumbled. Wherever he was right now, it was dark. Pitch black even. It was actually kind of impressive how dark it was; Bui couldn’t tell a difference when he closed his eyes. And even more than that, he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten to wherever this dark room was. If it even was a room for that matter. The Pokémon could only remember going out to a store with Alkali, something to pick up for an experiment. And then… nothing. That was odd. What could’ve happened there?

Suddenly fluorescent lights filled the room with painfully bright illumination. Buizilla tried to bring his hand up to his eyes to shield them. His arm didn’t move one bit though; it stayed pressed up against his back. Furrowing his brows Buizilla tried his other arm, but it too refused to move. Something was pressed into his wrists and holding them fast. Something scratchy and abrasive. A rope? It sure felt a lot like a rope. He looked down to see it tied around his chest, keeping his arms against his sides. The fact he couldn’t move his wrists meant he was probably tied up back there too.

This didn’t bode well. Can’t remember anything, and tied up in some room? Bizarre. Once his eyes adjusted to the piercing white light he tried to look around at his surroundings. He was standing in the middle of a room somewhere, with all surfaces covered in tiles. There wasn’t much distinguishing on the walls except for the one behind him. “GroLabs” was written there in large block letters, going horizontally up the wall. Apparently this place was GroLabs. And right next to that was a… ruler? Not quite a ruler. A set of measurements were marked into the wall indicating height. It went all the way up to the ceiling at 10 feet tall.

There was a door off to the side, but when he tried pulling at it the thing wouldn’t budge. Whether because it was locked or because he couldn’t get the handle to turn properly while his hands were tied, the end result was the same. He was trapped here. Calling out for help didn’t do anything either. No one came to check on him, neither to save him nor to check their captive.

“So now what then?” he said, slumping against a wall. No escape, no one to tell him what was going on, not even anything interesting to look at. Just boredom. The minutes passed slowly.

“BEEP”

Buizilla jolted awake, standing bolt upright. His eyes scanned the room but nothing had changed. So then what made that noise? Motors whirred in the background, and the ceiling tiles pulled away. As they did, a contraption started to lower from above into the room. It was red painted chrome, with a large base attached to the ceiling and a smaller arm descending from it. At the end of the arm was a gun that looked like it was pulled directly from a science fiction B-movie, with a pointy barrel and blue lights along the side. It rotated around the room, with the gun seemingly scanning up and down the walls with a red laser. As it rotated around its attachment base in the ceiling, Buizilla got a quick glance at writing along its side. “GroRay.”

“Uh oh,” Buizilla deadpanned. The red tracking laser finally landed square on the Pokemon’s chest and the machine ‘BEEP’ed again. It didn’t fire though; the light turned off and the blue lights along its chassis began to glow. He was safe for now, but the glowing sure did seem ominous. Coupled with the fact it was labeled GroRay he could pretty easily put together what was about to happen. Time to get the heck out of here.

His size changing collar was a non-option with his hands and arms tied up. If he couldn’t reach the shrink or grow buttons at his Buizel collar, there was no way he could change size. Maybe the door could be forced open if he hit it hard enough. Buizilla stepped back and took a running charge at the door, trying to side-arm it open. But Buizels were not built for strength and bounced off the frame. He wasn’t a Gogoat after all.

Shaking his head, he stood back up and scanned the room again for something, anything to use for getting out of here. To his dismay, it seemed the GroRay was following his movements as it rotated along its axis. Experimentally he tried running around, juking left and right to try losing its tracking. No such luck though. Even with his natural Buizel speed there was no avoiding its gaze.

“W-Wait! I didn’t sign up for this!” he complained as the machine hummed. Blue light fired from the ray’s tip and impacted Buizilla square in his chest. The changes started right away as a crackling, electric-blue energy arced through his fur. The ropes started shifting and moving across his body, and the tiles slipped under his paws slowly forcing him to readjust his stance.

Suddenly it made sense why there would be a scale for measuring height in the room. Buizilla watched as the inches piled on forcing his view of the room higher. He was plenty familiar with this sensation, and was equally thankful that his board shorts were growing along with the rest of him. There might not have been anyone else in the room right now but that wouldn’t have stopped his embarrassment if he lost his clothes.

The blue light didn’t turn off, instead following him as the Pokémon began to expand closer and closer to the ceiling. He’d started off at 6 feet tall, but with even this short time of exposure to the GroRay he was pushing 7 and a half feet. The ropes started to cut harder into his arms. Fibers stretched and struggled to handle the mass of orange fur and muscle that grew to fill out each bit of space it allowed. The growth pulsed through him, building with each instant. Eight feet tall now and he could look the machine square in the eyes rather than looking up. Maybe there was something sharp on it he could use to get the ropes off. But in the time it took him to look it over, the machine was already starting to look too small to be of any use. Buizilla grunted and pulled at his bindings trying to get them off. It felt like he was making progress too, though it was probably mostly thanks to his steadily increasing stature. His awkward steps and struggles were beginning to shake the room now, walls shuddering with each balancing movement or accidental brush of his tail into the walls.

Finally the ropes snapped apart and fell to the ground. Freedom! And just in time for him to get through the door-

Buizilla’s headfin ran into the ceiling, hard. “Ow!” he said, rubbing the top of his head. “Someone stop this thing!” But whoever was in control of this machine didn’t respond, and certainly didn’t turn it off either. The Pokémon was forced to hunch over as his shoulders and neck pressed into the ceiling shortly after. The measurements on the wall only went up to 10 feet; in the back of his mind he’d been hoping that meant he wouldn’t go taller than that.

As Buizilla’s growth continued unceasingly, he started to become aware of just how little room there actually was to grow into. It wasn’t like he’d been put into a warehouse somewhere. It looked like just a plain testing room, small enough to hold the machine and a test subject. Which in this case was him. The door was way too small to be used for escape now, but at the rate he was growing that might not actually end up being a problem. He’d sooner destroy the room, which was an escape in its own way but not one he was looking forward to.

Soon there was no further that he could hunch over. Fifteen feet of otter could only go so low. So he took a seat against the cold, tiled floor. The machine shook from the tremors of that much weight hitting the ground, but held steady still pouring blue growth energy into him. If there was no escape, then all he could do was try to turn this thing off. He adjusted his glasses and reached up to pull at the sci-fi looking ray, bringing it closer to his face to examine. No external wires or obvious Off button… just a ray and the machine it was attached to. That didn’t provide many options. His thick orange fingers couldn’t find any surface to pull on either, to try and get at the internal workings. Each second only made it harder for him to handle the machine delicately.

If it weren’t for his captivity, Buizilla might have even been enjoying the size change. Whatever was in that growth energy, it definitely made him feel good. Like getting a massage all over his body simultaneously. For just a second, the Pokemon let his focus slip, getting lost in the sensations. He closed his eyes and let the energy wash over him. Squirming against the ground to get comfy, he leaned up against the wall and pressed the GroRay into his chest. The wall complained with a loud creak but held fast against the growing tonnage of the otter. And the ray was so much warmer than the cold, sterile tiles of this testing room…

Then his head hit the ceiling a second time. Buizilla jerked back to life. Shoot! He only stopped focusing for a second and that was all it took to get this large? He looked up at the ceiling, then back down at the floor. Touching both surfaces while sitting. Things couldn’t get much worse than this right? As if in response, a ripping sound rang out in the room. He looked down at his board shorts to see the Velcro seam holding it together at the front wasn’t together anymore, revealing the red briefs beneath. And looking harder he saw they didn’t quite cover up his thighs all the way anymore either. For some reason it looked like his clothes weren’t growing quite fast enough anymore. All the more reason to fix the problem!

“How do I turn this thing off?” he wondered aloud, holding the now toy-sized ray in his hand. No matter how hard he pushed he couldn’t quite move the ray away enough to keep its beam off his body. There was only enough flexibility in the arm to keep it pointing at his chest. The longer that Buizilla took to look at the ray, the more his room’s walls closed in on him. It wasn’t long before he had to lay down further and further. His paws pressed against the far wall and his back pressed on the opposite.

He was starting to get frustrated now. What the heck was going on anyway? Put into an empty room and then grown to fill it up like this? Didn’t really make much sense. That frustration started to filter into how Buizilla was handling the growth ray too, poking at it with a huge finger. Finally the ray responded with a single beep. Hey, that was progress! Getting any sort of response had to be better than nothing. Especially with how tightly his white and brown board shorts were clinging to him. That sure didn’t feel comfortable… least his briefs beneath were still hanging on.

What at first seemed like good news in the ‘beep’ was soon proven to be quite the opposite. Blue sparks jumped out from the GroRay, landing on Buizilla’s arm. That didn’t seem good. He was no scientist, but he was pretty sure that flying sparks indicated something was probably wrong. With a tremble Buizilla’s fur stood on end. This time the energy was less of a massage and more of a flooding sensation of pins and needles all over. Where his growth was slow and steady before, it sped up immediately and in large bursts all at once. One foot added. Then two more. Then five all at once. It took minutes to get the Pokémon to 30 feet tall, mostly filling the room, and only seconds for him to properly fill it to bursting. He curled up against himself trying to avoid wrecking the walls or ceiling but that simply wasn’t an option. His tails pressed up against the wall and snaked its way outside with an explosive burst, opening the floodgates for his legs to expand past the crumbling walls too. Though he couldn’t see what was going on in the building beyond while his head was trapped, he could definitely feel furniture and walls breaking as his tree-like legs stretched far beyond its confines.

The growing Pokémon squirmed against the walls, turning around to face the GroRay as it pressed into his chest. There wasn’t any room between the ceiling and his cream colored fur, pinning the red metal against the ceiling. It sparked and hummed dangerously as the blue ray of energy that seemed so stable before started to shimmer and stutter, like a neon sign starting to turn off. Much as he tried to avoid squishing the contraption there was simply no more room for Buizilla to move now. With a final crunch the GroRay was smashed into the tiled ceiling, reduced to scrap. The blue ray turned off instantly, and with it so did Buizilla’s growth. He breathed a sigh of relief. Thank goodness. No more to worry about.

A burst of blue light filled Buizilla’s vision with what he could only describe as an explosion. Whatever had been powering the GroRay before was confined no more, as bolts of energy and sparks flew in every direction. Mostly into the direction of the otter’s chest that was covering it though. He gasped, and then groaned as pleasurable warmth enveloped all corners of him from head to toe.

“G-Gah, hang on, just… don’t…” the Pokemon grunted. He could tell there was a slight blue glow surrounding his body. He just needed to get out of the building somehow before things got any worse than they already had! He couldn’t stop the ray, or save the room, but maybe the building was still salvageable.

And then his board shorts split entirely, falling away to leave only his boxers behind. “Oh come on!” he yelled.

Hours later Buizilla’s naked form would be plastered across TV screens the world over, lying in the rubble of what used to be a respectable research lab. His friends teased him for weeks afterward about the incident, bugging the heck out of him. The only thing that really bothered him was how the heck it all started in the first place. The Pokémon would never actually find out just how he got taken to that lab, or for what reason they’d started growing him. All the people involved with GroLabs denied that they had ever signed him up as a test subject.

Which was really too bad. He’d never admit it out loud, but he sure would’ve liked to give it another try.