[b]A New Philippine Satellite[/b] [u]Written by Caelisto Amitas[/u] [quote](Word count: 1874) [Story contains: rubber TF, massive inflation (at most the size of Utah)][/quote] ------ If only Devant had been less clumsy, he wouldn't have spilled the flask of latex that had been sitting on the desk. In his defense, someone had left a puddle unmopped. Unaware as he was, he slipped and knocked it with his hand. Worse yet was when it spilled onto him and his clothing, though as he scrambled to get them off, they seemed to stick to his body like glue. With no one else around, he realized it would be futile to call for help, so he quickly went to the shower in the corner to see if it would come off. Even as water rained on him, the latex would not budge, and it advanced throughout his body as it ate away at his clothing and sank deep into his silicone flesh. The difference was not as apparent at a glance, but if one were to look at him more closely, his skin gained a sheen to it unlike silicon. A test with his right arm confirmed that it could bend farther back in ways that would have normally been impossible. He was familiar with the sight, at least, but he definitely felt dismay towards the rubber's resistance. As it crawled over his belly, he could feel the latex like it were his own skin, and as it engulfed his crotch and legs, he only lamented the feeling of his crotch being blanketed into a pouched bulge, feeling his sensitive genitalia still within it but unable to be freed. It was like a chastity cage of sorts. Once it stopped at his feet, the latex resumed at his neck, changing electronic components underneath to living rubber. He lost his sight for a moment only to regain it, but when he felt his face he only heard the sound of rubber on rubber. Looking at the reflective surface of the metal fridges, he saw himself. He was… mostly the same, but his entire body had been rubberized. Light reflected strongly off his body, and any movement he made elicited squeaks reminiscent of a pooltoy. Everything about him was apparently rubber— he opened his mouth and pulled down on his tongue to see that, yes, it had the same sheen as the rest of his body. The only thing that mystified him was the markings on his stomach: at the center was the Philippine flag, and underneath it were the words "Buntabay Goma". By the time he tried to recall that it meant "Satellite Rubber", an alarm buzzed throughout the lab. Devant turned his head nearly 180 degrees to see the source of the noise, as a speaker in the corner announced with a monotone voice: “Rubberized individual detected. Satellite project automatically initiated. Deploying gas hoses.” Just as it said, a pair of hoses ambushed him from the ceiling and under the floor. One charged into his mouth while another into his ass, both with such force that he lost his balance. However, just as he was about to fall, he felt a surge of gas from both hoses, and within the first few pumps, he began floating slightly. His belly had become almost gravid in appearance in seconds. However, from the strength of those pumps, it doubled in size. The mark on his stomach grew and stretched but remained its legibility, and soon Devant's feet began losing touch with the ground. It also seemed that, due to some weird property of his elastic body, whatever gas was added to his body began filling his other parts, spreading to his limbs. He lost his extreme flexibility, but his elasticity made up for it. More pumps kept him on the ceiling, which was fortunately devoid of fans, but his fear of popping would prove to be nonsensical the more and more he grew. After a few minutes, he could feel all four walls around him. The pressure inside his body was great, and it struggled to break free against these concrete walls that impeded its growth. Devant could only groan as he marveled in the back of his head the miraculous survival of this inflationary equipment. Even though much of the machines in the room were crushed or wrecked by his ever growing body, it still withstood him and continued pumping more gas with gusto. Devant hoped that the hoses would stop, but as he felt the concrete crack against his near-adamantium rubberized skin, he knew that the walls lost the struggle. The walls broke away— nay, [i]burst[/i] from the immense pressure as more latex flesh found more room to grow. Whilst the foundations started to buckle and hold, his body filled in those spaces where the roof would collapse, and even then that was moot as it too was ejected from his sudden expansion like volcanic rock. By this time, the gas had filled up nearly every space there could be inside Devant, save for his head. His limbs had been completely engulfed with only crevasses where they used to be. His hands and feet have bloated to almost comical proportions, having lost all degrees of movement, but even those were dwarfed by the rubberized robot’s massive size. He was as large as the adjacent laboratory, which was four floors high, but the continuing pumps in his body would surpass that. But with the gas threatening to fill out every internal square inch of his body, he felt the pressure in his cheeks. If the size of his body did not already block most of it, his light-gray cheeks would have already done so as he only stared at the sky. People would have definitely noticed the gigantic rubbery sphere bloating further and further as the adjacent laboratory building crumbled under the pressure. Trees were being uprooted and pushed out of the ground by his body, which was reaching a diameter of 250 meters. He was already shadowing the nearby mall, which was the second largest in the country, and at this point people from even several miles away were looking at the giant sight. Some were understandably running away from him, fearing his body might roll over and crush them in its path, but those hoses had a vice-like grip on his body as they continued their job. What was 250 became 300, 300 became 400, and so on and so forth until the flow subsided. Satisfied by their work with him, the hoses retreated, but not before applying a quick-drying, heavy-duty sealant over his orifices to prevent leakage. Free from their grip, Devant rolled a few hundred meters to the east till his head was directly staring towards the sun at its zenith, and then he stopped. Measurement was empirically impossible at the size he reached at sea level, but it was fair to say he was around 700 meters in diameter. There really wasn’t anything that could even compare to him, and he shadowed everything in size equally. His limbs almost looked nonexistent by how small those divots became in comparison. His head was nearly invisible from an on-the-ground observer’s perspective, but the gas had filled it up so much his visage became nearly unrecognizable. His cheeks have been bloated to hell to the size of cars, and his eyes bulged out so much they were among the only parts of his head that were visible outside the divot his head had sunk in. Even the angularity of his head was lost to the inflation, becoming smoothed and rounded in the end. But the most striking feature of his body was that belly mark, which had not lost its legibility even as he grew to the size of the elliptical park nearby. If anything, it only furthered the feeling that he was a mere object, and in his light-headed daze, he knew that he liked that. The only thing that didn’t grow through it all was his bulge, which had been smoothed by his belly to absence. If Devant had a single thought left in that gas-filled head of his, he might have asked that, if he had been floating from the gas before, how was he still grounded? Though he did not feel it, he was being held down by magen (or material-altering gluonic energy, as he once heard some Proteans call it) like a weight on his body. Simply put, someone cast a spell on him. From his size, he did not feel the tiny footsteps that were treading on the top of his spherical surface until he saw someone in a spacesuit, similar to that from NASA, except the flag on the shoulder was not that of an American flag, but a Philippine one. “Eyo, Dev, didn’t think that you’d be the one becoming the satellite!” the man said, “I would have volunteered to be one and have you be the astronaut instead, but it seems there was a change of plan because of your little accident.” It was Cal, the head of the Protean Society, talking to him. His golden visor was lifted so Devant could see his face, which was sweating due to the tropical heat. “I’ve had a few Proteans put a weight spell on you so you wouldn’t fly off prematurely until I give the go signal, but honestly I’m just impressed at how big you are. We expected the maximum size I’d reach if I were the satellite was around 400 meters, but maybe the latex had some… enhancing effect on you since you’re made out of silicon and metal and such. Maybe after this expedition we’ll do some more tests on you, but for now that just means you’re gonna be one hell of a satellite! You wouldn’t mind that, right?” Devant could not respond, but if he did, he wouldn’t object to such an idea, especially how turned on he was from this. “Anyways, time for launch,” he said before speaking to a comms device on his suit, “Lift the spell off him now, I’m already onboard.” A few seconds after he gave the order, there was almost a large tremor on Devant’s surface as the spell was lifted, and he was subject to the same buoyant forces that governed the atmosphere. Cal quickly got on top of Devant’s face and laid supine on one cheek while gripping at the sides. The amount of force that he would experience as the giant ball of gas-filled latex rocketed into the atmosphere glued him to his cheek as the pressure on it displaced the gas to his eyes, bulging them out even further than before. Though normal humans would not have survived the full trip from sea level to space while experiencing 8 or 9 G’s of horizontal force, Cal was definitely not human at least. By that time, Devant had grown to much farther sizes, reaching the diameter of 280 km by the time he hit the level where the International Space Station resides. Nothing about him looked remotely humanoid anymore, and even if one were to see the oddly shaped protrusions on top of him, his eyes and cheeks have swelled so much any semblance to his original form was lost. In Cal’s perspective, it felt like he was laying on a squeaky gray hill that was the latex bot’s cheek. Once the acceleration had somewhat subsided, enough for him to stand, Cal inspected his surroundings. He sure was in space now, alright, and he could see the famous blue marble from which he and Devant came from. "Cal to Brian," he spoke into his comms device, "what's the final size of our satellite? Over." A minute passed before a response came back. "Around 400 kilometers in diameter. Estimated volume is around 3.35 times 10 to the 13 meters cubed. Over." "How big is that, exactly…? Over." "Well… if the satellite had been at that size back on Earth, it would have crushed more than half the entire Luzon region, reducing the cities of Manila, Baguio, Vigan, and even Tuguegarao to nothing. Over." "Goddamn. Over." Looking at Devant, Cal was exhilarated at the thought. Perhaps if some adjustments could be made to the formula, the latter could take much more gas, and maybe he’d even rival the Moon in size. Devant had grown so big that, in Cal's perspective, his surface looked almost flat. His cheek had grown large enough that a house could be built upon it. Walking towards one of his eyes took some effort as it became a stroll, and he merely prodded it with his boot. No response whatsoever from the bot, but maybe he liked the objectification and humiliation. Cal could only feel a bit of envy towards him. But as he watched the Earth become smaller in the distance, he merely sat on Devant’s cheek and suddenly realized: “Damn. I didn’t plan how to get back to Earth.”