Barriers

"Juno Ternion, what are you doing," Kazumi Ishida said, teleporting into the suite while you and Tori mutually pleasured each other, Tori's tail pumping in and out of your slit while you used a glob of nanite-slime to stimulate her clit and labia.

You realised with a start that you'd subconsciously been growing larger as you relaxed, so that the relatively petite Kazumi, despite standing at her full height, wasn't even eye level with your nipples though you were sitting on the bed.

"Kazumi, I..." You trailed off as you realised that your lover was not going to be satisfied with some half-assed "can explain".

"You can explain," she said. "Look, I don't care that you're fooling around with Tori and Kelly, you know that. I don't even care that you've made yourself the biggest, bustiest towering hunk of muscle on the planet. I love you no matter what. What I care about is that you're just changing everything without any thought to the consequences. You need to get yourself under control, Juno."

You sighed. "I... this is..."

"We're going to be here a while, aren't we," Kazumi said, and paused the entire universe. She could even have paused you, if she wanted, though you'd know if she had once she unfroze you, along with what she'd done, which is how you knew she hadn't.

You disentangled yourself from Tori and gently laid her on the bed. She knew what you could do; it would be disconcerting, but not something you'd be unable to explain.

"I'm changing things. I know," you said. "I already had to intervene with Emilia, Safiya and Hala."

"I looked in on them when I realised what was happening," Kazumi said. "I could feel it too, you know, but you let me resist those urges. Didn't do the same for them, and I can still feel it, the desire to grow myself, look like you do. I'm just capable of not acting on it. But have you looked at the rest of the world, the rest of the universe?"

"I've been trying to block that out," you admitted.

"You have to take responsibility, Juno," Kazumi chided. "You made what you've got the ideal form, the perfect body. Everyone wants to be like you are, but they can't. Safiya found it irresistible and she could, and did. People are already scrambling for anything that might let them get close, or starting to despair that they never will." She paused, then tilted her hand back and forth. "Though social acceptance of BDSM went through the roof as you were playing with Kelly. I guess that's a good thing."

"This would have been easier if I'd just made myself all-powerful," you said. "But the way things went, I did more than that. Maybe I couldn't have done less; I can't undo it now."

"You've got to figure out how to stop imposing your whims on the rest of us. And I'm not saying you should just give everyone the same protection you gave me; that's a stopgap and you know it. You could just make me subject to your desires same as everyone else, if you really wanted to, couldn't you?"

"Yeah," you agreed. "Yeah, I could. It just protects you from my passive whims, but I could **** the issue if I wanted. Probably would, if I tried to protect everyone."

"So you need to control yourself," Kazumi concluded. "You need to stop forcibly imposing whatever you happen to want at any given moment on the rest of us."

"How?" you asked.

"I don't know," Kazumi admitted. "Not like there's a book called 'So You Merged Yourself With Reality And Now You're Controlling Everyone's Desires: Five Easy Steps To Stop That'. Sounds like the sort of thing that would have a market of one."

You focused briefly, but nothing happened. "Would've been easier if I could've made it exist."

"You don't know what it would say, so it's not something that can be made real by you," Kazumi noted. "It's not like big boobs or a detached pussy that way."

At those words your conscious desires overrode Kazumi's protection and a few seconds later your absurdly busty lover was holding her twat in one hand and had punched you square in the face with the other.

"This is exactly what we've just been talking about, Juno," she said, crossing her arms over her bust so as not to emphasize her newly gigantic rack. "I love you, but how can I trust you?"

"I'm... not sure that you can," you said, putting your face in your hands and trying to hold back a sob as thoughts of Kazumi abandoning you, even for a little while, flittered through your mind.

"Hey, hey," she said, voluntarily growing herself to your size, bigger, creating another bed, carrying you over to it, spooning against your back. "I'll never leave you, okay? Doesn't matter what you do, and I mean that. Even if you never get this under control, I'll never stop trying to help you. Because you're a good person, Juno. I know you won't do anything truly heinous. I know you won't stop trying. And if you change me, I won't get mad, I promise. Might even enjoy it. But for now let's work on solving the immediate problem, OK?"

You snuggled against Kazumi, enjoying being the little spoon. "Okay."

"So, first question: do you enjoy the body you've got right now?"

"Yes," you said, without hesitation.

"And do you enjoy me having this body?" she continued.

"Also yes."

"OK, now how about a body more like the one you had before?" Kazumi said, though not in her voice. She'd created a second body for herself, standing at the foot of the bed where both of you could see her, looking quite similar to the one you'd had when you confronted Reginald Brooks, perfectly duplicating your voice.

It was different, though; this Juno was markedly bustier, with a larger ass. She'd lost the panties, her perfectly bare labia on full display, and her sleeveless lab coat no longer stretched around her bust, hanging open and leaving her defined muscles on full display. Her hair hung down to her butt.

"That isn't the body I had before," you pointed out.

"No, but this is me showing it off," your voice replied, "and I'd find it pretty damn sexy if you looked like this."

"Maybe that would work," you said.

"What's wrong?" Kazumi asked, picking up on your change in tone.

"I..." You took a deep, shuddering breath as emotions you'd bottled up refused to be suppressed any longer. "I'm not really sure I like that body any more, Kazumi."

"Why not?"

"I've been doing enough stuff to try to avoid thinking about it, but, now that it's over... Kazumi, I was ****. In that body, or something close enough to it." Instantly Kazumi erased her second body. "You know that. Reginald Brooks fucking **** me, Kazumi, and I've been trying to suppress it, trying not to think about it, trying to just go on, fucking became reality itself in the process, and I'm glad I got him fired, I'm glad I fucking ruined his reputation, but... but..." You turned around, shrinking into a doppelganger of your lover's usual form, burying your face in her deep cleavage. You trailed off into sobs as you finally allowed yourself to feel what you'd been denying.

Kazumi held you, let you sob into her chest.

"I thought I'd worked through it, I thought, being with you, everything, I thought I could just get past it. But I can't. It's something that's going to stick with me for the rest of time." You extricated yourself from Kazumi's bosom and looked up at her, knowing she was seeing her own face streaked with tears, knowing she was seeing her visage twist into a determined grimace.

"Juno, what are you... this won't fix anything, this won't solve anything." Kazumi's voice turned just a little bit frantic as she started to realise what you were on the brink of doing.

You spoke in Kazumi's voice around deep, shuddering breaths, trying to hold your own panic, your own desires, at bay. "I... don't want anyone... to have to... go through that. I could... just stop it... Kazumi. You... know I could."

"I'm... not saying it's the wrong thing to do, Juno," Kazumi said. "I'm not saying it's the sort of thing I'd have thought was something you wouldn't do. But it's something that you need to consider when you're in a clearer state of mind."

"But what about this?" you asked, managing to divert some of your pressing desire into creating an image showing Brooks and others like him suffering horrific torment, a reflection of the pain you'd been denying feeling. "Is this something you thought I wouldn't do?"

"It's... something about which... I trust you'd be someone I could see as being fair about it," Kazumi said hesitantly.

"Then how far do I take it, Kazumi?" you asked. "If I go down this road, and god is it tempting to go down it, where do I stop?"

"Maybe you don't go down it at all," she suggested.

"But... that doesn't..."

"Change what happened? Not even you can change what happened. It's part of why you are what you are now, and that's not something you can change."

"It's not something I can change," you agreed. "Contradiction. Paradox. But I can't just keep ignoring it. I can't just keep denying that it happened to me, or I will do something like that, sooner or later."

Kazumi's strong hands gently massaged your back. "Then don't deny it. Use it. Use this, Juno. Use this moment, right now, to remind yourself of why you can't let yourself go down that path. Be a better person than the people you justly hate. But you've got to be honest with yourself, as well, so there's a question that you need to answer."

"What question?" you asked.

"Are you?"

The question hit you as you realised what Kazumi had done. Emilia and Safiya flashed in front of your eyes, the most visible evidence of what you'd just been doing, what you hadn't realised until those two simple words was tied in with what you'd just been talking about.

"I'm... not, am I," you said.

"You are," Kazumi assured you. "I know you can be. But it starts with fixing this." She gestured down the body she'd given herself, but you knew what she meant. "It starts by not using your power to impose yourself on everyone else. It starts..." She trailed off, not quite willing to push that far.

"It starts with being a better person than Reginald Brooks," you finished for her. "That's what you were about to say. It's not the same, but it's not all that different."

"Use what he did to you, Juno. Use what he did to you constrain yourself, because you don't want to do anything like that to anyone else." She shrank down, her body shifting to the one that looked so much like yours. "But don't let what happened control you. Don't let what happened make you deny yourself things that really do make you happy," she said, your voice coming from her mouth just as hers came from your mouth. "Would looking like this make you happy?"

"Maybe, eventually, it will again," you said, but shifted your form to match Kazumi's, your voice returning to your own. "But it makes me happy to know that it makes you happy." Your finger drifted down to brush ever so slightly against Kazumi's slit. "And that it turns you on."

Kazumi altered her own body, mostly returning to her own usual body, her voice changing back to her own, though you noted with a little surprise that, if anything, she'd given herself even more of an hourglass figure, despite you knowing that she preferred a slender body. "And does it make you happy when I look like this?" she asked.

"I... yes, but..."

"This makes you think I look really sexy, doesn't it?" Kazumi said, firming up her muscles, making her curves even more pronounced.

"Kazumi, is this really what you want?" you asked as her growth didn't stop.

"Right now it's not about what I want for myself," she said, still growing. "Right now I want to be whatever you want, Juno. Right now I want you to have some sort of happiness, in however many ways I can give it to you." She finally stopped her growth, her figure well past the realm of absurd. But somehow it all came together in a way that you hadn't thought you'd have found attractive, but nonetheless found intensely arousing. If anything, you wanted to grow her even more, trap her under her own flesh.

And you felt the desire to make everyone else look like that, too. You could feel just how easy it would be to make everyone want that, need it. But then Kazumi's words cut through: "Are you?"

The first brick in the wall was laid.

"Do you want to know what would make me happiest for you to do, Kazumi?" you asked.

"What?"

"For you to be comfortable with yourself," you told her. "I don't want you to be this self-sacrificing. Happiness isn't a zero-sum game."

Kazumi shrank back down, but stopped when her assets were the same size as yours. You quirked an eyebrow at her.

"What?" she said. "Are you saying I can't try this out? You're the one who gave me this, after all," she pointed out, holding up the hand with her ring before using it to tweak a nipple, immediately bringing herself to a shuddering orgasm as you noticed that she'd made herself ridiculously sensitive.

"Does it make you happy?"

Kazumi gave you a lascivious smirk. "Does it look like it makes me happy?" she retorted, bringing herself to another orgasm from just brushing her clit.

"Then it makes me happy," you concluded, inviting her to pleasure your body while you pleasured hers, which you both eagerly set about doing.

You knew you'd never truly get past what had been done to you. But if you couldn't get past it, you knew you could use it.

Mortar. Another brick.

Mortar. Another brick.

And by the time you were finally ready to deal with the universe again, the wall was as strong as you could make it.