Rachael’s Ascension Director’s Cut - Chapter 1

This story has been significantly overhauled to get it ready for audio. It will be voiced by the brilliant actor who did The Lake. The transformation scenes have been almost entirely rewritten, and the rest has been edited heavily by both Goose and myself. I hope you like it. It’s a good 30% longer than the original so far and we’re not done yet…

Rachael’s Ascension

By Hiker Angel and Au Goose

CHAPTER 1: GOOD IDEA? GREAT IDEA!

Rachael shivered. Her butt was cold. The adult-sized hospital gown they’d given her didn’t fit at all. Not that the flimsy paper things ever did, but on her tiny body, the flaps of the oversized garment didn’t seem to want to stay together at all.

The bored nurse had been largely silent while measuring her. Height: 4’10”. Underwhelming. And worse, unchanged from last year. Would she ever grow any taller? She was a senior now and her chances of making it to even five feet seemed bleak.

Bust? You’re joking, right? Puberty had evidently forgotten she might need one.

Waist? Imperceptible. Her silhouette drew a straight line from her shoulders to her hips.

Hips? Probably her best feature. But really, they only led the eye downwards to her soft, formless legs.

Then came the scale. 81 lbs. Tiny. Scrawny. Shapeless.

No one ever commented on her face, because there was nothing to comment on. If she had tried to describe it, she would probably have started with “plain”, “forgettable”, or maybe just “dull”. Even her eyes were a “dull” shade of grey.

She really hated “dull”.

She twirled a finger in her dry, gnarly red hair, lost in thought for the remainder of the check-up. Her twin brother was pretty small, too. But at least Chad had a genius-level IQ to make up for it! She was barely average as a student, no matter how hard she studied. Combine a below average mind with a below-average body and you got a below-average person, right?

Rachael sighed.

Something had to change, and that something was her. No matter what, this ‘ugly duckling’ had to find a way to be bigger. To be better. To be beautiful!

If she didn’t do something, she would be as she was for the rest of her life. Tears welled in her dull, gray eyes at the thought.

***

Returning home, Rachael barged through the front door, her slender shoulders set with purpose. Instead of going to her room to sulk, she marched straight toward her brother’s door, her small fist banging on it with desperate urgency.

“Chad, you have to help me! I’m freaking tiny! I’m going to finish high school without having gone on a single date!” Her tiny fist thumped against the fiberboard door, rattling it to punctuate each point. “What’s the point of getting a big fat biochem scholarship to MIT if you can’t help your favorite sister get over the damn five-foot-mark!? Maybe let me grow some breasts? You know, make a pill or something to give me the puberty I never had?” The final thump of her diminutive hands actually managed to rattle the door frame.

The door opened, a wide-eyed Chad looking startled by his sister’s sudden vehemence. “Whoa! Slow down, Rache! You want me to do what now?”

Rachael tried, unsuccessfully, to slow down the thundering beat of her heart. “I want you to make me beautiful and sexy and tall and AMAZING!” The undersized girl poured a lifetime of dreams and desires that this ugly duckling might one day become a glorious swan into one impassioned plea.

“Ahhh...” He nodded, processing her flurry of words. He knew all too well that his sister wasn’t happy with her petite frame or plain features. But she wanted him to experiment on her? He wanted her to be happy, of course, but he had never considered anything like what she was asking. Even with her consent, would something like that be ethical? He wasn’t sure. Still, it would be a fascinating theoretical puzzle. “Let me see what I can do.” He offered cautiously.

Rachael’s furrowed brow relaxed. She stepped through the doorway and hugged her brother in excitement.“Yes! Oh my God! Thank you so much for trying. Even if it doesn’t work, it means so much! You’re the best brother ever!”

***

For the next few weeks, Chad spent every evening curled up on his bed reading pharmaceutical briefs and running simulations on his computer, struggling to come up with a way to give his sister what she wanted. After countless hours of pondering, he had his “eureka!” moment. He was pretty sure it would either be his Ph.D. thesis or get him blacklisted forever for unethical research, but he knew instantly that it was a stroke of brilliance he had to act on.

Chad had devised a formula to trigger evolutionary acceleration. It should let Rachael enter a kind of automatic self-improvement trance. The concept was elegant. His sister would be able to ‘cure herself’ of anything she didn’t like about her body. If the critical reactions actually worked, his discovery had countless real-world applications. It could open entirely new branches of genetic medicine!

Rachael asked him about his progress now and then, particularly after having an extra shitty day at school. He knew she was pinning all her hopes on him. She called his work ‘the potion’ and joked he was spending all his time mixing bat wings and newt eyes in a bubbling cauldron. That always made him smile.

Right before midterms, he finally had something he thought would actually be able to help her. Months of work, distilled into a single small bottle of blue liquid. He found himself slightly reluctant to simply give it to her—it’s not like he could get FDA approval for a little do-it-yourself psychoactive gene therapy. The ingredients were benign, so he wasn’t worried about poisoning her. The real concern was that forcibly accelerating evolution would tap into Rachael’s genes and her idealized self-image might cause X-factors triggering unexpected changes as she grew into her ‘best self’. His sister’s simple craving for an extra helping of puberty sounded harmless, but what if she were harboring some hidden desire that only became known after changing her body in some unanticipated way?

Still, she was so desperate to take control of her own potential that it was a risk Chad was willing to take. He smiled as he thought of his sister’s joy when he shared his invention with her.

To celebrate the magic moment finally arriving, he put the first dose in a little cut crystal flask their mother used to keep perfume in. He knocked on his sister’s door after dinner. Rachael’s eyes lit up when she saw him holding what was obviously THE potion at last.

“Is that it? The potion that will make me better?” she whispered with awestruck eyes. After making her twin promise to help her, she’d felt so silly. But here he was, delivering something that she had only barely dreamt possible. Her wide eyes softened in appreciation for just how amazing her sibling truly was.

“Here’s hoping…”

He gave her the flask. She plucked out the stopper and drank it down in one gulp. She sucked in her lips to get every last drop. Rachael stood there a moment, her eyes growing distant as she seemed to concentrate internally.

After a long moment where nothing seemed to happen, his sister’s eyes rolled back in her head, her eyelashes fluttering closed as she slumped against the wall, body faintly quivering. She cooed softly as her breasts bulged from virtually non-existent to small, lemon-sized lumps under her top. She gasped as a second pulse shook her body, causing her ankles to thrust past the hem of her pants, her legs abruptly lengthening. Her lips parted, and she moaned softly, running her hands down her expanding flanks in one long sweep. She was still shuddering from the second pulse when a third rolled through her, the developing girl groaning as her hips visibly swelled, nearly bursting her child-sized jeans at the seams.

Chad was shocked. Her heightened evolutionary state had worked far faster than he had anticipated. But, it had worked! It actually worked!

Rachael’s eyes fluttered open, her irises lit with amazed delight. “Holy freaking heck. That felt incredible,” she whispered huskily. It had felt like... like sex. Well, what she imagined sex would be like, at least. Three distinct almost-orgasms, one to accompany each spurt of development.

“Well, you look incredible, sis,” Chad motioned toward her floor-length mirror. “Come see for yourself.”

Rachael stared open-mouthed at what she saw. She was still fairly small, but she looked cute for the first time in her life. Her eyes seemed larger, her eyelashes longer, her nose more elegantly shaped, the line of her jaw more delicately feminine.

Her gaze traveled to her small breasts. She cupped them in her hands. “No. Freaking. Way.” She was simply too entranced by the exploration of her new body to say more. Raising the lower hem of her shirt revealed a sleek, flat stomach with maybe even a hint of muscle. She ran her hand along the smooth flesh. It felt firm, toned. Her eyes traveled down wider hips and longer legs, noticing how much the hem had risen up her flared calves.

“I must be five feet now!” Rachael giggled in excitement. She turned back toward Chad and threw her arms around him. “Thank you so much, Chad! You are the best brother ever…” Glimmering tears welled in her grateful eyes.

“Just promise me that you’ll dress conservatively for a while, Rache, You don’t want people to notice so many changes all at once. Remember: no one can know or my whole future is screwed.”

“Of course! You got it,” Rachael squeezed him harder, her cheek pressing damp tears of gratitude into his chest. “Now, I’ve got to go shopping! I’ve gotta find something that actually fits this little swan.” She grinned.