In-a-gadda-da-vida, baby, don't you know that I'll always be true?

“It’s been a while since I’ve had that much fun,” Carly chirped as they neared the hotel. She looked back at Nick with sparkly eyes, and curled her lips up into a smile.

Nick raised his eyebrow. “A while, huh? You seemed like you were having a lot of fun in that challenge yesterday,” he pointed out.

“…Fair enough,” Carly admitted with a shrug. “Let me rephrase… it’s been a while since I’ve had that much fun when it’s just the two of us.”

Nick nodded. “Okay, I’ll agree with that,” he said, smiling. “But the day’s not over yet. And honestly… I’m feeling really hungry.”

The hike had taken up their entire morning, and a better part of their afternoon. It was getting a little late for lunch, but neither really cared about specifics at this point.

“Want to get something to eat?” Carly asked as they entered the hotel. “I’m feeling tacos. I don’t know why, just a craving I suppose.”

“Sure, I could go for some tacos,” Nick agreed with a shrug. “Want to head over to one of the restaurants, or maybe-”

Carly shook her head. “Absolutely not,” she scoffed. “A restaurant’s fine and all, but… I was thinking something a little closer. More intimate, you know?”

Nick blushed a little. “More… intimate?” He asked, surprised. “You mean…”

“I mean…” Carly strolled forward, leaning in close, pressing her breasts against his chest, “you and me… together… …Eating tacos.” She lightly swatted him on the cheek to snap him out of his daze. “Come on, Nick. Don’t let your mind wander to… strange places,” she teased him. “We have all the time in the world for that tonight.”

“Oh, well, when you put it like that… alright, then,” Nick relented. He’d expected Carly to lay it on a lot thicker than that. She had an unabashed way about her that gave the impression that if Nick just reached out and touched her, she’d let him do whatever he wanted. But maybe that was part of her game. To tease him and tempt him, and get him to make the first move so she could keep playfully rebuffing him.

Then again… she did say that she didn’t want to play anymore games, Nick thought, reaching out a hand and lightly caressing Carly’s rear.

“Oh!” Carly jumped in surprise and turned back to Nick, giving him a bewildered look. “What exactly do you think you’re doing?” She asked, raising her eyebrow. Then her lips curled up into a grin. “Just one cheek? Come on, you can do better than that.”

Nick just laughed. “Well, I’m glad some things about you never change,” he noted with amusement.

“Just so we’re clear though, I do have some boundaries,” Carly said, poking him in the chest. “I’m not Gina or Holly here. While I don’t draw the line at some friendly little occasional spankings, don’t think I want you going wild on me. Not until we get back to your place, at least. …But with that in mind… a little handsiness on a date never hurt anybody.”

At least she was making her intentions clear. Nick could appreciate that, at least.

“Sooooo… about those tacos?” Carly looked playfully at him. “I had just the idea. You know what’s better than a restaurant?”

“…Two restaurants?”

“No, you dolt!” Carly playfully socked him in the arm. “I was thinking, what if we just found a nice, comfortable little breakfast nook or something in the hotel? …Or, a lunch nook, I guess. Just somewhere cool we can bum around and eat, like we did at school.”

“Mostly we just hung out in your room, if I recall,” Nick said, thinking back to those mounds of takeout boxes from the university cafeteria that littered Carly’s dorm.

“Yeah, but that place was cramped enough, it totally counts,” Carly replied. “It shouldn’t be too hard to replicate.”

As if the hotel was listening to them and had a mind of its own, it didn’t take long for the duo to track down precisely what they were looking for. At a turn in the hallway the corner bulged out into a little round chamber with a couple comfy armchairs and a small end table. A wide bay window stretched across the wall, showing off a breathtaking view of the sea.

“…Well that’s not so bad, right?” Carly laughed, flopping down in one of the chairs. She leaned back with a sigh and propped up her legs on the footstool, resting back on her hands. “Yeah… this is pretty sweet if you ask me.”

“It’s definitely comfortable,” Nick agreed, taking the other chair. “Like you said, a nice little nook away from the rest of the hotel.”

“When will you start to realize I know what I’m doing?” Carly asked, batting her eyelashes at him. “When it comes to comfort, I’m your gal!”

She definitely was making a strong case in her favor, Nick could give her that. And while he wasn’t sore from the hike, this was definitely a lot more relaxing.

Now if only they had some food.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got one of those faeries on speed-dial, do you?” Nick asked playfully. “You’re the kind of girl who knows everybody, after all.”

Carly laughed and rolled her eyes. “I’ll see what I can do. As long as I don’t have to stand up. I’m too comfortable for that!” She shook her head firmly. “If only one of them would come fluttering by- Oh! Hey! Nola!”

The leprechaun had been in a bit of a rush, hustling down the hallway, but she skidded to a stop when she heard Carly call out to her, and whipped her head around. Her green eyes widened in surprise.

“Oh my gosh!” She gasped, holding her hand over her mouth as her eyes dropped down to Carly’s chest. “Your breasts! They shrunk back to their normal size! …I mean, nothing’s changed about them. Because you’re Carly, of course. Why would your breasts need to shrink? Pardon me…”

Nola tried to beat a hasty retreat, but Nick grabbed her by the arm before she could get away.

“What were you talking about just now?” He asked, any thoughts of tacos forgotten.

Nola was sweating like a perp going down for a triple homicide. “What are any of us really talking about, when you think about it?” She said with the most **** laugh imaginable. “You know me! Always talk talk talking about something! Never a dull moment around Nola! I can go a mile a minute! Maybe even 50 seconds! By the way, did you know that I do a lot of running? It’s true! And not just from little kids trying to steal my cereal, either, that’s totally a stereotype. But I’ve got to be very good at running if I want to complete all my tasks for Dakota and impress the producers. And with that in mind, I really must keep training myself to be good at running, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to be going now, okay? Bye-bye!”

And yet when she tried to yank her arm free at the end of her tirade, she found that Nick’s grip was still as tight as before.

She looked helplessly at him, defeated, and let out a long and exasperated sigh.

“…Okay, fine,” she muttered, hanging her head. “I didn’t want to mess up your date, but…”

The door of the Garden Suite slammed open and Marley jumped into the air. She nearly fell out of bed, but held back, clutching the blankets to her chest.

She stared in shock at who she saw in the doorway.

“C-Carly!?” She stammered. “What are you doing here?! What about your date?!” She demanded frantically.

“Oh, date’s going just fine,” Carly said, biting into the hard shell of her taco with a satisfying crunch as she looked hungrily at Marley. “Right, Nick?”

“Uh, yeah,” Nick said, not sure what was to be gained by him being dragged along like this. He’d expected to get a little bit more private time with Carly. But then, if this was what she wanted, he wasn’t going to complain about it.

It was her date too, after all.

“We left you alone so you guys could get some privacy together,” Sylvia pointed out. She had been standing beside the bed, tending to some of the plants. But she ignored them and leaned forward curiously. “Everything good?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s fine,” Carly assured her, waving her hand. “But you see, a little leprechaun told me something happened today?” She gestured to her chest, while not taking her eyes off of her sister. “Something you might like to share, perhaps…?”

Marley turned pale. “You… you heard about that?”

“Nola, the little rat!” Sylvia scoffed. And yet, she looked delighted.

Almost as if she’d leaked the news to the motor-mouth of a leprechaun on purpose, or something.

But that would be unconscionable!

“When I heard, I just had to get a good look for myself,” Carly said, clearly on the brink of laughter. “Come on, Marley, let’s hug it out, like sisters.”

Marley pouted and glared at her sister. Carly shrugged that right off with a charming smile and a wink.

“Come on, Marley…” she tried again.

Marley could sadly sense the inevitable. With a long sigh, she shook off the sheets and climbed out of bed, showing her new “assets”.

Carly whistled loudly.

“And I always thought I was the bigger one of us, even if we were about the same size,” she said, clicking her tongue and shaking her head. “But wow, I mean… that’s really something! I’m surprised you found clothes that fit!”

“They don’t fit!” Marley wailed. “This isn’t a tube top! It’s a shower curtain!” She gestured to the improvised garment, which had been wrapped tightly around her massive mammaries to give them some semblance of support.

Nick was trying not to look at Marley’s chest, out of respect. Carly wasn’t having any of that, though, and elbowed him in the side.

“Come on, dude,” she hissed. “Give her a compliment!”

What was he even going to say?

Looking at Marley like this… damn. Her boobs had already been colossal. And he’d had a lot of fun with them in the past. But right now, they were bigger than words could describe. Each one easily dwarfed the woman’s head, and judging by her hunched posture, they were pretty weighty, too. He could just imagine getting his hands on them, giving them each a nice, firm squeeze as he-

“Okay, you’re starting to drool,” Carly said, covering her amused smile with her hand. “Don’t you think that’s a little much?”

Nick turned red. “B-but you’re the one who-!” This had all been Carly’s fault in the first place!

Carly just laughed. “Right, sure, whatever you say, buddy,” she said, patting Nick on the shoulder. “We both know that you’re imagining what I would look like with a rack like that, huh?”

“Oh, please don’t,” Marley groaned, shaking her head. “This is so inconvenient, you really don’t want anything to do with it.”

Carly whistled. “Inconvenient, eh? I heard a little something about that. So what was it, you pricked your finger on a cactus or something? Come on, sis, you’ve gotta be more careful than that! Aren’t you, like, a botanist or something? Don’t you know better than to touch strange plants you know nothing about? I thought they’d explain that to you in like, your first week of school.”

“I’m not, actually,” Marley said, her eye twitching in frustration as the cover story she’d dreamed up had been flung back in her face. “This was… something else.”

She was trying very hard not to throw Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin under the bus. But that was difficult to do, when the alternative was her sister thinking she was incompetent when it came to her passions.

“Actually, Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin poked her with it!” Sylvia cheerfully volunteered, completely ruining Marley’s attempt at good will.

Carly’s lip twitched. “…Oh, she did, huh?” Suddenly, Marley’s breast expansion wasn’t a funny little joke anymore.

“She didn’t know what it would do,” Marley quickly clarified. “She can’t even read the labels on anything, remember? She was just playing around.”

Carly calmed down a little after hearing that. “I suppose that makes sense,” she admitted, nodding. “Okay. Not gonna get mad at her. Too mad, anyway. But that was definitely **** for this morning, don’t you think, Nick?”

Nick blinked. “Huh?”

He was still lost in the mental image of Carly getting pricked by the cactus and her own boobs growing massive.

Carly rolled her eyes. “Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin was the one who did this to Marley. …And that’s bad, right?”

“Err… well, obviously that’s bad,” Nick stammered, confused. Did Carly actually expect him to say otherwise? Unless… wait, no, this was about him looking like a total tool in front of the two of them and acting like there was no problem, huh?

Nick felt his face redden and he looked away sheepishly. “Sorry,” he apologized, shaking his head. “I guess I got a little…”

“You were checking her out,” Carly said, finishing off the last of her taco and then elbowing him in the side. “What, you don’t like me anymore, now that my sister’s boobs are bigger, is that it?” She sounded hurt.

Nick turned pale and Marley started to panic.

“W-wait, Carly, he didn’t say anything like that!” She said frantically. “Nick! Tell her you don’t think that way!” The last thing she wanted to do was get in the way of their date! That would be the worst thing in the world!

“Of course I don’t think that!” Nick sputtered. “How could you think that I-?! …Oh. You’re just messing with me again, aren’t you?”

Carly doubled over with laughter. “You should see the look on your face!” She cackled. “Getting all panicked like that… it’s adorable!”

“Carly!” Marley’s cheeks flushed with frustration. “That was NOT funny!”

“I know, I know,” Carly said, sobering up. “But I wanted to see Nick deny it a little.” She beamed at him adoringly. “And as usual, he didn’t disappoint.”

“Still, you could always just touch the cactus yourself,” Sylvia suggested. She gestured over to where they’d planted the little thing. “One prick, and your boobs will get bigger! Pretty good, huh?”

“Wait, you guys kept that?” Nick asked, shocked.

“We didn’t really have a choice,” Marley grumbled, rolling her eyes. “The only way to reverse the effects is to eat the flowers that grow on the cactus. And the only way to get the flowers to grow is to plant it in the Garden Suite and cultivate it for a while. What a pain in the ass…”

“More like a pain in the back,” Carly joked.

Marley sent **** her way with a single glance. “Maybe you should get pricked by it,” she said sarcastically, rubbing her aching back as best she could. She had to sit down on the bed. “Since it’s such a joke to you!”

“Well, Marley, if it makes you feel better, your boobs aren’t the biggest I’ve ever seen before!” Nick always knew just the wrong thing to say to make an awkward situation even more uncomfortable.

Marley stared blankly at him. “Why do you think that would make me feel better?” She asked.

“Well… empathy?” He was just trying to ease the tension a little, that was all. But clearly he was still a little flustered. “I mean, on my date with Kim… never mind. That’s private.”

He’d said too much already. Marley sighed and rolled her eyes, then laughed. “Well, I guess you’re right, it’s not the worst thing in the world,” she admitted. “I definitely could have gotten even larger.”

“Hey! Now there’s a thought!” Sylvia brightened. “Marley, why don’t you poke yourself with it again? Let’s see if we can get your breasts to grow even bigger!”

Now that Nick was here, Sylvia was pulling out all the stops trying to arouse him.

Unfortunately for her, Marley was the reasonable one in her family.

“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ll just wait for those flowers, thank you very much.”

Nick noticed that Carly had fallen silent for a while, which was concerning. Normally she was the center of the party, but right now, she looked lost in thought.

“Everything okay?” He asked, turning to his date.

Carly turned to him and nodded. “Yeah, everything’s fine,” she said. “Just thinking about something, that’s all. …And before you ask, no, it wasn’t about touching that cactus myself and making my breasts get bigger.”

“You should!” Sylvia chirped. “I’ll be that plenty of flowers will grow anyway.”

Nick blushed and shuffled his feet awkwardly. “I-I wasn’t thinking about that,” he said in a futile attempt to keep his fetishes from leaking out.

Carly smirked and rolled her eyes. “Come on, Nick, everybody here knows you like big breasts. It’s no ‘big’ secret.” She laughed at her own dumb joke. “You wouldn’t be the first guy who came onto me because you were drawn to these babies,” she scoffed, giving her chest a shake.

Nick looked aghast. “That isn’t why I befriended you in college!” He protested. “That had nothing to do with-!”

“Oh, right, it’s because I had short hair back then, I forgot,” Carly said, smiling cheekily at him. Nick glared back at her.

“Carly…”

“Kidding, Nick, come on, lighten up!” Carly giggled. “I’m just messing with you. And you’re making it easy, as usual!”

She clicked her tongue and shook her head, like she was disappointed in him. But not too disappointed. “Besides- I was the one who reached out and befriended you first. Your conscience is clear.”

“My conscience was already clear,” Nick replied.

“Fine. If you must know, I was actually wondering about what you guys were talking about before, if there’s a maximum size or not,” she clarified. “Does the cactus cause your breasts to grow a specific amount larger depending on how big you already were? Or does it just pump you up to the size Marley is currently and just stop there? And if it does only pump you up a little bit above where you were previously, well, can you keep doing it? And if so, is there an upper limit?”

Carly sounded practically giddy. “Well, I feel like Dawn right now! Thinking of all kinds of fun experiments!”

Marley’s jaw dropped. This was the most she’d ever seen her sister contemplate the notion of cause and effect and the impact of her actions. It was downright surreal.

“I think that’s a marvelous idea, Carly!” Sylvia said, nodding excitedly. “I’d be happy to participate in any experiments!”

“Uh, could we not?” As nice as Nick found the idea of the girls experimenting with breast expansion, at the same time, he wasn’t sure they could entirely trust this cactus, or whether the effects could be reversed or not. In that regard, at least, he was on the same page as Marley.

“Another thought crosses my mind,” Carly mused, stroking her chin thoughtfully. “I wonder if this will work on boys?”

Yep. Nick really didn’t like where this idea was going.