Bella vs Bobbi

Round 2

It was rare that Bella and Bobbi would have a direct confrontation. Over the years, the two shapeshifters’ rivalry had usually consisted of schemes and plans that were designed to inconvenience or embarrass each other. The original reason for the enmity between them had been lost to memory, and despite honours being even between them in their ‘war’, with neither one or the other being able to claim anything like victory, they never came anywhere close to burying the hatchet. In fact, they had barely spoken to each other in all that time. It seemed the only way they could communicate was by the series of ambushes and secret attacks that they had managed to maintain with a consistency that would be impressive it wasn’t so sad. They were so alike, even sharing Cochrane as a surname despite not being related. Their original forms were similar: feminine bodies with a full figure that Bobbi always returned to no matter what shape she ‘scrunched’ herself into, and Bella always relaxed back into after assuming one of her many animal guises. They even used to have the same colour hair, a deep copper red that Bella typically wore in a long plait and Bobbi kept short and spiky, but Bobbi had forgot to ‘unscrunch’ it from a dark brown alternative she had adopted one night and when she woke the next morning she found that it refused to ‘scrunch’ back to its original colour. In time, she had been able to ‘scrunch’ it back to red from its new brown default, but it had always itched and irritated in a way that other transformations – blonde, white or black – hadn’t and so she accepted this change in her normal appearance and made sure she was careful not to get stuck with any other permanent changes. But the quality they most shared between them was a deep and abiding hatred of the other.

But ‘rare’ didn’t mean ‘never’. Bella received the invitation through her letterbox – a pale green envelope with no stamp or address, only her name in intricate script. Had Bobbi been here without Bella noticing? Was she hidden here, disguised in some inconspicuous form, ready to attack? She had never taken this approach before, so Bella thought it was unlikely, but she kept a careful eye out just in case.

She opened the envelope. Inside was a card, a solid green, darker than the envelope with white writing upon it. It looked like it had been printed especially, like an invitation to an event of some sort. In fact, that’s exactly what it was, but it seemed that Bella was to be the only guest.

Danilow Park

8pm tonight

May the best shifter win

Danilow Park wasn’t far from Bella’s house. Bobbi must be back in town. Since she moved away a few years ago, there had been fewer clashes between her and Bella. But every time she had returned, a blow up was guaranteed.

It had just passed five o’clock. Bella had a couple of hours to prepare herself and decide how she was going to approach this situation. It had been a direct challenge. Maybe it deserved a direct response.

Dusk was settling in Danilow Park. The occasional howl from a local werewolf cut through the birdsong that accompanied the setting sun. Various paths led from the road, through the trees to a open space that in the day time would be where most people gathered – the sunbathers (weather permitting), the morning exercisers, the afternoon lunchers and Bella when she was practising her largest transformations. Bobbi would have known that particular fact and Bella was certain that this was the spot she had intended when she named it in the invitation. That suited Bella. She had no idea what form – or in what form – Bobbi’s attack would take, but she was determined that she was going to meet it in her biggest shape. She’d had enough of the sneaky digs they’d be taking at one another. Today she was going to defeat her old enemy with raw power.

It had taken her a long while to master the shape of an elephant. For years, she had been unable to reach full size, no matter how hard she’d strained. But a chance meeting with a dedicated macroshifter had revealed to her the necessary technique for achieving the huge sized beasts she’d always dreamed of becoming.

If you had the potential to grow to massive size, through whatever abilities you possessed, the macroshifter explained that unlike altering your shape or appearance, you couldn’t alter your size beyond certain limits by effort alone. Achieving gigantic proportions was a matter of perspective.

To this end, Bella began to transform, but she didn’t change her size. Instead, she fully concentrated on covering herself from head to foot in shaggy fur, coarser than any she had managed before. A twitch here to coax it out of her otherwise smooth skin, a small wiggle to send it spreading out from her navel across the whole of her torso. It only needed a slight flex to help the fur consume her arms and legs. That accomplished, she could concentrate on the greater work of shifting her body.

The move from biped to quadruped was a decisive one. As she tightened the muscles around her spine she fell forward onto all fours, while still retaining her humanoid shape. That didn’t last for long. Huge, impossible breaths inflated her body and the merest teasing pressure of her diaphragm caused her trunk to balloon out. She increased that pressure and the skin beneath the fur began to thicken and wrinkle. That thickness travelled down her arms and legs as she stamped each one of them hard into the ground in turn. Although she was only a little bigger than her original size, her shape was now recognisably elephantine. Only the still human - albeit furry - face betrayed this creature’s true nature. That was about to be remedied.

With the body, it had always felt like a form of contortionism, something to be endured. But for Bella, the face – literally pulling faces – was fun. She wriggled her nose and it began to grow. Raising her eyebrows caused her ears to expand. She gave the most outrageous grin and was rewarded with two tusks starting to protrude. The changes progressed as she continued gurning, pausing at one point as she let out a bellowing laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, before returning to her facial gymnastics to complete the transformation. A roll of her jaw and everything was in place. Except, maybe the ears were a little too large. She closed her eyes, feeling the brush of her hefty new lashes, and concentrated hard. Each ear shrunk an inch or so at her command.

Bella was a miniature mammoth, if that wasn’t a contradiction in terms. She had made no attempt to increase her size the way she had tried to do on previous occasions she’d attempted to become a large animal. That extra effort toward transformation had always been wasted. She’d never managed to fully attain her desired shape that way. But here she was, a complete mammoth, only this time she was no bigger than she would have been if she’d simply bent over in her regular human form. It looked slightly off, being as it was clearly an adult at reduced size, rather than an infant or some other smaller species. But Bella liked to be big, so big she was going to get.

She recalled the macroshifter’s lesson. It was all a question of self-awareness. A giant should be tall. An ant should be tiny. And a mammoth should be, well, mammoth.

With that idea firmly fixed in her mind, Bella felt her body responding. With only the minimum of effort, nothing more really than shifting her weight as her mass increased, Bella grew until her shoulder was a good three and a half metres from the ground. Proud and prehistoric, she revelled in the sheer power contained in her enormous body. She was ready for battle. Bring it on, Bobbi.

It was only as her she came to her senses after her transformation and began to watch out for her nemesis that Bella noticed something that had been their all along: a discarded pair of pink leggings and a purple crop hoodie lying at the foot of a nearby tree. Very similar to those often worn by…

Bobbi’s previous best for growing from an inch in height to 20 feet tall had been three and a half seconds. This time she managed it in two. From Bella’s perspective it was as if a giantess had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. A naked giantess – Bobbi had discarded the outfit that was capable of adapting to most of her changes in shape and size for fear of it being unable to cope with her instant immense growth. Not to mention the shock value of her gigantic nudity that she knew would put Bella on the back foot – back feet in this case. Before Bella could register what was happening and form any sort of defence, Bobbi scooped her up and tossed her like a makeshift shot put in the direction of the reservoir at the rear of the park. The dazed woolly pachyderm arced through the air, high above the bare autumn trees and over the tall railings that walled off the reservoir from the surrounding public space. Even though it was a good half a mile away, Bobbi’s enlarged ear could make out the satisfying splash as Bella’s mammoth form hit the water.

Bobbi congratulated herself on the quick win. Her attack had gone exactly to plan. Now she needed to get out of there in as unobtrusive a fashion as possible, ideally smaller and clothed. It wasn’t illegal for someone with extraordinary abilities to pit themselves against a similarly powered rival – as long as there was no property damage or harm to the public – but it wasn’t very popular with the authorities either. Best to get away before there was any fuss.

Bobbi concentrated on shifting her body into the state that would allow her to transform it. She felt the peculiar ‘fizzing’ sensation that she took to be her molecules loosening up and becoming what she called ‘scrunchable’. She tensed up and prepared to ‘scrunch’.

Her ‘scrunch’ muscles ached after the recent ordeal of her rapid size increase, but Bobbi smiled as she felt her body respond to her efforts. Every little tug of a tendon, every twitch of a flexor reduced her height by an inch. Until…

Suddenly, Bobbi became aware of the ‘fizzing’ fading away. She redoubled her concentration, causing her to relax her muscles, in turn making her stop shrinking. The ‘fizzing’ intensified for a moment, but then a wave of fatigue washed over her and she felt it dissipating again. Resigned to its dissipation, she quickly bunched all her muscles at once, hoping to complete her transformation before it was too late. In response, she immediately lost another couple of feet in height before a spasm of cramp stopped her from changing any more. She writhed and twisted, urging her body to obey her once again, but without the ‘fizz’ that made it possible, her form was as solid as anybody else’s. Twice as tall, mind, standing at a still-towering twelve feet in height, but just as unchanging and inflexible as a regular person’s. Cursing, Bobbi picked up her far-too-small clothes in one giant hand and thought about the quickest route back to her hotel. At least at twice the size it should take her about half as long to get there.

Bella’s thick, coarsely-furred skin took most of the sting out of her impact with the water. She was surprised to find that she floated with ease. Which was a relief, as the man-made lake of the reservoir was so deep that even her enormous body couldn’t touch bottom.

She gathered her thoughts in order. First, the disappointment of losing out in this latest bout with Bobbi. Next, the task ahead of her. She’d have to paddle to the shore in her mammoth form – it would be easier to transform back to her normal self on dry land. And besides, it would probably be quicker to make that journey at her current size. Safer, certainly, considering the depth of the reservoir. It was big enough to contain a herd of mammoths. Or something that was even bigger…

The disappointment of defeat quickly faded as Bella realised the opportunity she had here. The opportunity to get really big.

As before, she concentrated on the alteration of her shape only, trusting that the method that had allowed her to gain mass as a mammoth would work again. Mysterious muscles underwent strange movements and in response her body began to contort. Under her constant, yet gentle, pressure her shape simplified. The tusks and the trunk were pulled back into a much less detailed face. Legs dwindled under focussed effort, the rear ones disappearing altogether, the front ones flattening out. The already broad spine extended, and Bella’s existing tail was consumed within a swelling mass that resolved into a larger, more powerful version. A series of shrugs erased the shoulders and neck and now the head and torso formed one continuous body. The flattened limbs were extended into fins, and as part of the same movement a dorsal fin extended and the tail bifurcated into flukes. The final motions concerned the reshaping of her head. Eyes settled into position on either flank, and with no trunk or nose, her nostrils migrated upward to form a blow hole. For the second time that day, Bella had become a creature new to her. She plummeted below the surface, content in the shape of a whale. But like the miniature mammoth before, this was a small scale whale, a model of one. Bella had attempted this transformation because she had wanted to be big. So she set about becoming so.

Once more, she captured the obvious in her thoughts. A whale should be huge. A whale is the biggest thing there is. She was a whale, therefore she should be big. She twitched lightly to encourage the expansion to begin, but this time nothing happened. Frustrated at the lack of response, she lost some of her meditative state. That only made the lack of a result from her urging more obvious. Irritation overwhelmed her, chasing off any chance of achieving her goal. It had once seemed impossible, it was cruel to be denied when it was so close to being…

Still impossible. Bella was struck by the sudden clarity of the thought. She still thought it was impossible, that was the problem. Her confidence shaken by her defeat at Bobbi’s giant hands, she hadn’t really believed she could do this. That self-awareness calmed her, focussed her. She was about to consider the immensity of whales anew when she realised that she was already growing. A wave of euphoria enveloped her. She had never experienced so ecstatic a transformation before. At the moment she reached her full, gargantuan size, she beat her tail against the surface of the water, sending a huge plume of spray into the air. In the moonlight, the droplets fell as a thousand sparkles.

Bella thanked Bobbi for what had turned into the best night of her life.