-Chapter V-

New Home, New Life, and New Stress

A few days pass by peacefully as we finish moving into our new apartment. Everything is unpacked and Sky’s bedroom has been transformed into a shiny lair of hanging baubles and glass trinkets shining in the light from her window. Her bed as well has been turned into a huge nest of piled up blankets and pillows that she can crawl into and absolutely bury herself under.

My room on the other hand remains pretty plain, mostly just used to store my clothes and is otherwise being set aside as a guest room in case anyone wants to stay the night. Considering that I don’t sleep, I hardly even go in there except to change my clothes. Instead choosing to spend my nights in the living room doing any number of things while Sky sleeps.

Aside from moving in, it took a day, but we were finally able to get Sky some bigger clothes and some underwear. All of it had to be adjusted to accommodate her big fluffy lizard tail. Luckily the army has some people with experience in tailoring, so we were able to get her measurements -accounting for growth- and modify all her new clothes to fit her nicely. A couple pairs of pants, shorts, and a cute yellow skirt. Her nice short dress was taken by one of the tailers that developed a soft spot for Sky, they will work on making it bigger for her, so she doesn’t outgrow it. Which I appreciate, as cute dresses aren’t exactly easy to get nowadays, and Sky looked great when she was wearing it.

In regard to Sky, her face has apparently finished changing. Besides her floppy dog ears on the side of her head, her face looks entirely human now, with delicate rounded features and a little nose. Her eyes are big but sharp with small bushy eyebrows. She tells me that the pains in her face have stopped, but the rest of her body still hurts from growing pains. When I measured her height, I found that she had grown a whole centimeter over the last three days and doesn’t seem to be stopping. I’m honestly wondering if she is going to be growing taller than me at this point.

Aside from Sky and I, my family has been making sure to come over whenever they can after work, even if just to drop by for an hour or two. Although Anna has yet to come by alone yet, so I haven’t really had the chance to tell her how I feel.

And quite frankly that is just making things worse for me…

More and more, my family seems to be under the impression that Sky and I are together romantically or at the very least will be soon. There is also the issue of Anna and I being technically sisters now… But I try not to let that bother me too much. I’m not a fan of incest, but there isn’t any blood between us, so it shouldn’t be an issue… I hope...

The big problem is if I end up ruining things by confessing to her. Previously, she was just my best friend. I could confess to her, get rejected, and then things would be awkward for a while until we go back to being friends. Hells, I’ve sort of already done that with Rookie.

But now? Now we are family. If she rejects me, and gods forbid, my parents find out… I don’t even want to think about how that would go. Then there is obviously Sky. I kept trying to find an excuse for her obvious attraction for me, like out-of-control hormones or just a very serious case of puppy love, but no. She is most certainly in love with me… Even though I have been trying to avoid teaching her words related to the subject, I think that she has figured it out. She knows that I have been avoiding certain words and has taken the initiative to learn the words on her own. She even got one of the soldiers to bring her a dictionary and a thesaurus somehow. In fact, after an initial bout of shyness, she seems to have grown entirely comfortable with ordering the soldiers around. And it certainly doesn't help that the soldiers seem more than happy to do whatever she wants, so long as it isn't too crazy.

I am starting to think that she is mistaking our position with the army… We’ve only been here a few days but many of the soldiers seem to be more than happy to do whatever she tells them. Probably just the power of cuteness…

Meeting my family has seemingly made her more… bold I think, in a number of ways. Besides ordering soldiers around, I even caught her talking with mom and some female soldiers in the cafeteria on how she could better get my attention. I pretended not to hear them and chose not to enter the building, too embarrassed to intervene and stop them.

All and all, this has me feeling like a bit of a bitch. No matter how much I want to pretend, I know that Sky is in love with me romantically. While I do care for her deeply and want to answer her feelings, not really feeling averse to being with her. I am over here wanting to confess to my adopted sister and potentially ruin everything. Either Anna rejects me, and thing become weird with my family or she accepts me and I break Sky’s heart. The possibility of the second option already weighs heavily on me because I swore that I would be responsible for her, to take care of her and never leave her. She has nowhere else to go anymore because she is an exile. Other tribes won’t even take her in, they’ll trade with her quite happily, most certainly, but they won’t accept her. If she decides to leave, she would be living out on her own, stuck in a new body with no one to turn to.

And if she doesn’t leave, choosing to stay here? Would she be happy living with the person that went and broke her heart?

The more I think about it, the more I feel like a monster. I know that I should just be with Sky. It’s what everyone wants; hells it might even be what I want. But a part of me keeps telling me that I need to confess to Anna. That I will regret it if I don’t, and that thought is haunting me. How would I be able to live my life if every time I see her, I end up thinking about being with her, hiding my feelings like a dirty little secret?

It’s all too much for me right now; too distracting.

So, I shake my head and force myself to focus on what I am doing. They had finally set up some tests for me so I can get my current limits measured. Dr. Doe personally came by to pick me up from home, handing me some already modified gym clothes for me to wear. Sky had wanted to come with me, but I felt that it would be best if I have some space away from her for a bit. Thankfully, mom and Anna were over at the time and told me that they would take Sky to the park to get some fresh air and stretch their legs.

Back in the present, I am looking at a Humvee that has been rigged up to a pulley at one of their motor pools. They have a single towing cable running up through the turret well of the Humvee before heading up to the ceiling, through a large pulley bolted to the ceiling and then back down to the floor where a soldier holds the end of the cable. As we approach, he comes over and hands the cable to me.

“Alright Lain, previously you stated that you managed to flip a Humvee back onto its wheels. At about 5200ib you would have to exert around 2600ib of force to do so. We won’t get into the exact numbers here. So, we have a simple pulley system here set up to help you recreate that. This Humvee is currently weighing in at 5237ib, with this pulley, the amount of work necessary to lift it from the ground should be half.”

She points to a platform, “If you stand there and brace your legs, we would like to see you lift this vehicle if you can.”

Do they not think that I can do it? Honestly, I wouldn’t believe someone saying they could either, so fair is fair.

I shrug my shoulders, “Ok.”

Walking over to the platform, I can see some soldiers off to the side, slacking off and taking bets. Probably the guys that work in the motor pool. I choose to ignore them, and just focus on my work for now.

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Bracing my feet against a low wall of the platform, I take the line and pull it until it is tight, and I can stand on the wall. Bending my knees and lowering my center of gravity, I grip it tight and pull on the line. With a groan of complaining metal, the heavy vehicle is slowly lifted by a couple inches. Another pull and its tires lose contact with the ground. Another and it is in the air and slowly rotating. The metal in the vehicle is complaining loudly and the pully on the roof doesn’t feel all that great right now. I’m not sure how well it was installed, so I stop pulling it any higher.

I turn to the doctor, “Hey is this good enough or do you need me to do more?”

She stares with open shock at the now suspended vehicle and the spectators off to the side have started silently handing out their winnings from the bets.

“Uh, yes... Yes, that is quite good Lain. You can put it down now, thank you. Gently please…”

Doing as she asks; I slowly lower it back down before handing the line back off to the soldier. He looks like he doesn’t know what to do with himself as he looks at the cable in his hands.

“Hmm, I have to say, that was a lot easier than last time… I didn’t really struggle at all this time like I did then…” I say mostly to myself.

Getting curious, I walk over to the Humvee and grab it by its front bumper. Bracing my legs I lift it up until it is doing a wheely and I have my arms straight above my head. Feeling confident, I go ahead and drop my left arm, holding all it weight on my right arm. I don’t bother thinking about trying to lift the entire vehicle. I can’t guarantee that I would be able to balance it above my head, might drop it or break something expensive.

Looking over my shoulder, I call out to the Doctor, “Ya, I’ve definitely gotten stronger since then! I don’t think that I would be able to lift a tank or anything crazy like that yet, but I am definitely getting up there in strength.”

She looks at me a bit startled and quickly jots down some notes, “Uh… Thank you Lain. I think we can call it good on weightlifting for now. At least until we have a more solid system set up for you. Might require some specialized equipment… You say that you are getting stronger. Would you happen to have any idea why that might be the case?”

“Got it.” I say and gingerly lower the vehicle back onto it wheels.

“Uhmmm… No not really? It’s not like I am working out or anything. Off the top of my head, it could be that my mutation is still doing stuff under the hood or it could be the monster meat that I’ve been eating for breakfast. Sky’s not the only one that eats it.”

“You’ve been eating monster meat…” She says, her mind wondering off a bit.

Getting herself back into focus, Dr. Doe gives a cough, “Hnhm. Alright then, while we aren’t entirely certain if it safe for people to eat, we will certainly be looking more closely into that. Next, we will be heading to the park and having you run. We want to see how fast you are on your feet and how long it can take for you to cover one, two, five, ten, and then twenty miles as an endurance test. Luckily for us, the park was designed so that a single lap around its perimeter is one mile.”

As we walk to the park she continues, “After that will be a jumping test, standing and running, vertical and horizontal. Then for the last test we will be going to the pool to see how fast you can swim and for how long you can hold your breath.”

“Anything else?” I ask.

“As we think of more, we might have you test them, but for now this is all.”

“Cool. I’ve been meaning to figure out how fast I am.” I tell with a smile.

All in all, the tests go pretty well. Apparently, running at top speed, I am able to move at about a hundred and seventeen miles per hour. That’s going all in on speed, pumping with everything I’ve got. The only issue is that I can’t maintain that kind of speed for long. After about five minutes of going at full tilt, I have to stop and rest, my body literally steaming from overheating and sweat. Before I am able to go again, I have to drink a lot of water and rest for around twenty minutes.

Dr. Doe tells me that it shouldn’t even be biologically possible for anything to run that fast. I just tell her that I am probably magic or something and laugh while destroying another bottle of water.

Finally cooling down and catching my breath after a second full sprint, I tell her, “I normally only move that fast in short bursts, so over heating hasn’t been an issue for me yet. I don’t think I am actually supposed to use that speed just for getting around. It’s probably intended for closing distance and ambushing like a cheetah or something.”

Endurance on the other hand was easy; I can comfortably maintain a pace of thirty-seven miles per hour and finish the twenty mile run with no problems. A fun distraction during the endurance test was that as I was doing my laps, Sky would be waving and cheering me on as I passed her, Anna, and mom on their walk around the park.

For the jumping tests, they had set up a pole with markers for measuring height. I managed to reach twenty-two meters vertical from a crouching jump. Dr. Doe tells me that she will be taking special attention to examining the scans of my legs. People just aren’t supposed to be able to jump that high.

The other jumping test aren’t even worth mentioning. I blew them out of the park and they had to get more measuring tape to be able to record my running jump.

After getting some nice exercise at the park came a relaxing dip in the pool. Dr. Doe led me there and they even had a bathing suit ready for me to change into; a nice black and yellow two piece with racing stripes. The doctor said that I could keep it and that she would be trying to find one for Sky. Which is good, because I have a feeling that she would just swim naked and not give two flying shits about it if she didn’t have one. The girl has no sense of modesty.

As for the tests, I can apparently swim at about seven miles per hour. Its faster than professional swimmers, but I don’t have the best form -not having practiced swimming for sport- and abnormal strength can only take me so far without growing fins. My tail also apparently doesn’t help much. If it was shaped more like a lizard's tail, I could have used it as a rudder. But my noodle tail basically just dragged behind me in the water without doing much.

For holding my breath; twenty-one minutes. Dr. Doe gave me a weight and I let it pull me to the bottom of the pool and just sat there. At first it was really cool but it quickly got boring. It would have been better if I could have walked around down there, but that would have thrown off the results by having me burn more air from moving around. Dr. Doe estimates that I could swim and move around underwater for about fifteen to eighteen minutes depending on how much effort I am putting into it.

All in all, it ended up being a rather productive day and even helped to keep my mind off relationship related subjects for a while.

Finishing my day, I head home and receive a note from our guard that I will be getting to meet the teams that I will be working with in two days. They want me to participate in training with them so that we can all get to know each other better. Basic translation is that they want to make sure that I am not going to get anyone killed while we are out there. It’s just worded in a much nicer way.

Filing that away for later, I go for a shower. As I walk down the hallway to the bathroom, I catch Sky as she exits the bathroom. She ended up startling me horribly when she came walking out of there, not even bothering to cover herself with a towel. Just lazily drying the water out of her hair as she walked to go get a change of clothes from her room. Dangerous desires started to fill me as she walked by me in the hallway. She turned and said something to me with a big smile as she walked, but I couldn’t hear her words as they passed through one ear out the other. The sudden sight of her naked body was simply too much for me at the moment, I just wasn’t mentally prepared.

After she passes and I finally manage to rip my eyes from her backside- She really is growing… - I throw myself into an ice-cold shower and try to cool my head. The only problem is that cold water might as well be room temperature for me now. So, it didn’t work. I ended up leaving the shower full of shame and self-hate after having to manually release some pent-up frustrations…

I feel dirty…

It was a rather awkward for me to be in the same room with her after that, so I left her where she was in the living room, studying her words, while I locked myself in my room with all the lights off. Sitting on my bed, I close my eyes and try to clear my mind; to meditate on my weird darkness senses and my growth in strength. Anything to keep my mind away from Sky and Anna.

Some time passes as I try to lose myself in meditation. Sky at some point comes knocking on my door and draws my attention. Getting up from my bed I go over and open the door for her, and she walks into my chest, giving me a big sleepy hug good night. While I am holding her, I feel her sniffing me a bit. With a jolt, she suddenly pulls away from me with wide eyes and a blush on her face.

“Sky, what’s wrong…?”

“Ah! It, it’s too early for us to do that! You have to wait till I’m done growing!” She practically shouts.

“What are you talking about?” I ask curiously.

“S… Se, Sex!” She shouts, looking embarrassed as she turns and runs to her room, slamming her door behind her while I am left standing there flabbergasted and stunned.

When did she learn that word…?

Confused and shocked, I give myself a smell, “I don’t smell anything? Wait… could she smell what I did in the shower!?”

Shaking, I close my door while feeling shell-shocked and collapse on to my bed. Grabbing my pillow, I scream into it as I fight down my growing embarrassment, “Auhhhhh, I am such an idiot!”