Go find your best friend, Nicole.

There's one person in the world you know you can trust, and that's your best friend. She's - well, she's not always the sharpest tool in the shed, you think to yourself, guiltily, but she's loyal to a fault. Ever since that time you two went on that egging spree on a Halloween years ago, and she got caught when you didn't, and she refused to give you up? You've been firm friends. And she lives just down your street, so it's not going to be a big journey.

Of course, right now, there's always the chance that she's as fucked up as your sister. In which case... well, you'll have to think of that later.

Your packing finished, you thread your arms through the small backpack's straps, and slide your window open - smiling a little to yourself as it moves silently - then slip out of it.

There's a rip as you hit the ground, and you groan.

Your boobs are, there's no other word for it, bigger. You probably wouldn't even have noticed it if not for the sudden tightness of your bra, the tiny rip in the front of your top and the fact that you've been half-expecting it for most of the day now, but they're definitely a little bigger than they were when you were inside. You spin in place, twisting your head, hoping no-one is looking at you right now doing this ridiculous dance. Yep, your ass feels a little bigger too. Great.

You didn't spot anyone before, but you look around you now. The side of your house has tall fence surrounding you on two sides, plus the wall of the house, and there doesn't seem to be anyone spying at you from the slice of street you can see. Slowly you creep up to the corner of your house and peer round.

To your surprise, you see.... people.

It could be a normal day, in fact. There's a few of your neighbours out on their lawns raking leaves, some strangers simply walking along - your street is on the way to the middle of town, so that's not what's so strange. What is is that there's no sense of urgency, no sense of panic. News must have spread by now - you can still see the two - no, four, now - plumes of dust on the horizon from where you are, which should surely mean people at least gossiping about what's going on.

No-one seems to care.

And when you walk out from the side of your house, everything seems.... depressingly normal. The sun shines warmly on your face, birds sing, and had you not seen what you'd seen today you wouldn't even guess that something could possibly be wrong. It's only as you walk along the street and your neighbours wave hellos to you, you realise that you're not the only one to experience this sudden growth spurt. Mrs. Henley, clipping the top of her hedges, certainly wasn't ever that busty. You don't even recognise the bimbo, in well-filled sports bra and short-shorts, looking under the hood of the car parked a few houses down from yours, until she pulls it down and the face of Georgia Lippett smiles over at you, before tugging at her bra in obvious confusion.

By the time you get to Nicole's house, you're almost goggled by all the growth you've seen around you. Surely someone like that guy can't just have run down here, changing everyone he saw? At the very least, if these were the changes they made, they'd surely want to - ugh - sample the results. You take one look up and down the street before you go up the path to her door, and that's when you spot it.

Up in the city skyline - right in the middle of downtown, on the tallest building - there's a group of antennae. You've probably seen them a million times before and never noticed them. Now, though, they're hard to miss. There's a tiny pinprick of purple light shining from one of them, and around it, hazy, the air has a darker purplish tint, too. As if....

As if someone was using this power to affect everything around them, not just those close. That's the first explanation you can think of. It would explain the changes to everyone, and you, and it's definitely the same purple light, somehow bright and sickly all at once. You're **** to turn away from it, and it's only then you figure you probably shouldn't have been staring so much. The tiny rip in your top has become a much bigger one, and you're having trouble seeing your feet unless you lean over.

Rolling your eyes, carefully not at the tower, you run up to Nicole's door and knock. It's not a shock when her mother answers the door, and the long, modest dress she usually favours is stretched out by hips and breasts she didn't have before today. She points over her shoulder when you ask after your friend - fidgeting with her bra strap as she does so, an action you find yourself copying - and through the house at the open door to the backyard.