It was a beautiful day. The air was cool but not chilly, the sun was high in the sky, and a gentle breeze blew just enough to keep the various surfaces the sunlight beamed down on from heating up too much. Those at the local university were particularly enjoying the weather. With the comfortable weather a sense of peace and tranquility seemed to settle over the otherwise stressful environment of higher learning. From the athletes and the part time students to the academics and the legacy layabouts everyone across the grounds were tranquil and relaxed. All save for a certain tiger and his purple dragon friend who was currently destroying one of the research labs on campus.

“I told you not to touch anything!” Tyler shouted. At least it sounded like shouting. His voice was elevated in growing panic but the lion’s share of the uncomfortable volume in his voice came from the fact that he was sitting flat on his ass in the middle of the room, a good portion of tables and miscellaneous equipment shoved out of his way, with his head pushing against the nine foot ceiling. “Undo it, quick! I can already feel another one coming!”

Before the lean tiger could offer any excuse or apology the dragon’s words came true. A slight green glow rose from within Tyler’s body to engulf him head to toe. An instant later his already unnaturally large body began to rapidly balloon outwards in every direction! The dragon’s head expanded even larger and shoved itself through the ceiling tiles to bang against the underside of the floor above before he had a chance to hunch down further. His legs, already stretched out across most of the room, lengthened and thickened along with the rest of him to push more furniture out of the way until one of his feet was pressed flat against the far wall behind Sun. His whole body ballooned to fill more and more space in the middle of the room while his ass swelled to bulldoze more chairs and fallen objects out of its path and his tail snaked out behind him until it was bunched up against the opposite wall from his foot. 

When what was now the second growth spurt for Tyler ended he was now forced to hunch forward significantly with his shoulders and upper back pushed up through the ceiling tiles and pressing hard against the floor above. The once barely five-foot-tall purple dragon now had legs almost as thicker around as Sun’s entire body. The tiger particularly found himself staring first at the gigantic purple foot pressing against the wall behind him that could now cover almost his entire body then at Tyler’s equally huge hands that could probably pick him up like an over-sized action figure now.

“Sun, focus!” Tyler shouted loud enough to cause the tiger to wince in pain from the unexpectedly loud noise. “Whatever you did to that machine you need to undo it now or I’m gonna destroy the whole building at this rate!”

“I don’t know how!” The tiger shouted back. Though his voice was far less booming than the enlarged dragon’s that didn’t make the panic in his voice any less prevalent. “I thought it was a computer monitor! All I did was press what I thought was the power button to turn it on! You’re supposed to be the smart guy that knows about sci-fi stuff, you need to do it! I can’t figure this stuff out. Everything on screen looks like gibberish to me!”

The now roughly twenty foot tall dragon glared at Sun; the look having a much stronger effect when the dragon was almost four times his size instead of over a foot shorter than the tiger. “Do I LOOK like I’m in any condition to use delicate machinery?” He growled in frustration. To demonstrate his point he held up one of his index fingers to demonstrate how that finger alone was almost as thick around as Sun’s upper arm. “I would probably smash the thing I tried to touch it.”

“Then come read the screen and tell me what to do!” The tiger demanded.

“Again, do I LOOK like I can come over there and take a look! I’m already getting cramps from sitting like this to keep from breaking the room! If I actually try to move over there I’ll probably collapse this whole part of the science wing by smashing through walls and support beams!” Tyler growled in response. After taking a deep breath the overgrown purple dragon tried to sound as calm as he could, which wasn’t much, Tyler told Sun “Just take a breath and read to me what’s on the screen. Quickly.”

Sun squinted down at the screen trying to decipher what it said. The tiger was far from an idiot but he was smart as in got pretty good grades in his regular classes not read technobable smart.

“I can’t even pronounce half these words, and some aren’t even words at all they're just equations or groups of numbers. Um… Ok so the first couple of lines say something about multiplicative parameter set then activation. With a 2 in brackets between multiplicative and parameter.” Sun explained haltingly, having to stop more than a few times to try and make sense of something he was seeing on the screen. “I’m assuming thats when I pressed the on button and it fired. Below that is a few lines of nonsense then it says implementation complete but has the word error following it. After that it gives a bunch of error codes I cant make heads or tales of. But at the bottom of what I’m assuming is this error report it says energetic deterioration parameter error, deterioration set to uh… some equation thats got like a couple Greek letters I don’t know the names of. I think its beta over that one that looks like an O with a dash in the middle equals uh the triangle.. Oh, delta! And behind the delta theres an open parenthesis that has a 14.3 in it but there’s no end parenthesis the 3 just keeps repeating for six straight lines on the screen then the next line says overflow error.”

Tyler tried to mull the information over as Sun gave it to him. He wasn’t some super genius or anything but he had at least taken a few advanced science classes and knew a bit of programming so the description wasn’t total gibberish to him. It had popped an error message when trying to set the energetic deterioration parameter and Tyler’s best guess was that must be when whatever the thing had done to him lost it’s effect. Whatever energy that weird machine emitted must have a specific time limit before fading that the machine set so it didn’t just go on forever. But if after that it had an overflow area in what he could only guess was that parameter then that means…

“Oh fuck.” Tyler whispered in a voice his enlarged body still made easily audible to Sun. “I’m taking a wild guess but if that means what I think it means, then the machine was supposed to set a stop point for these growth spurts… and if the result was an infinite repeating number that set off an overflow error that means it’s either going to go on so long the computer couldn’t calculate it… or its NOT going to stop.”

As if reacting to his ominous realization Tyler felt that familiar tingling warmth of energy building up inside his body. But what was worse still was that Tyler could feel the sensation was significantly stronger than before. His eyes went wide a split second before the return of his glowing green aura made Sun do the same. “Sun, run. Right now.”

“It’s happening again?!” The tiger asked, alarmed even as the glowing evidence was right in front of him.

“Yes.” Tyler growled through clenched teeth. His whole body was tensed as if he were trying to hold the more of him that the energy wanted to create in and stop the impending growth spurt. “It feels stronger. Fuck… I think it’s doubling me every time. I was five foot then I doubled to ten, I wasn’t quite twice your size. Then again to 20 which is why I couldn’t sit up straight when these rooms are only eight or nine feet tall. If that’s true then…”

The huge purple dragon trailed off into a growl of strain as his fists clenched hard enough Sun could see the tendons on his wrists bulge. More shocking was that the tiger could actually see Tyler’s body pulse a few inches larger before it stopped again. Tyler couldn’t hold it off much longer. But when Sun’s overwhelmed thoughts finally absorbed what Tyler said the number he had been trying to say popped into his mind.

Forty feet.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck. Hold on a bit longer, Tyler!” Sun cursed as he turned towards the door. He hesitated only an instant when he glanced at the fire alarm trigger near the door and decided to pull it before taking off. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon outside so there probably weren’t many people in the building but that was all that Sun could think to do for the few that were.

“Wait!” Tyler shouted, but he was too late. 

Sun’s tail had already vanished from the doorway as it followed it’s owner. Worse still was that brief moment of distraction caused Tyler’s effort to suppress his body’s growth slipped and he abruptly ballooned two feet larger in a single breath. Tyler looked down worriedly at the machine between his legs that had caused this situation; the machine that he hadn’t thought to tell Sun to take with him before it was too late. The device that Tyler thought was their best, if not only, chance of fixing this which was trapped inside of a building he was about to outgrow. The green-glowing purple dragon did his best to huddle himself around and over the device in a vain attempt to protect it before surrendering himself to the buildup of energy inside himself. 

If Sun had waited even a few seconds later to run for the exit he might not have made it. He only just managed to reach the hallway leading to a fire escape before the chaotic sounds of destruction sounded behind him. When he dared take a brief glance over his shoulder the tiger’s eyes widened when he saw a huge purple leg bulldozing it’s way through the walls just a few feet back from him; visibly growing with each passing instant. The walls to either side of him and even the ceiling overhead began to buckle as more and more of the support beams were snapped or smashed by the increasingly immense mass of purple dragon within. At the last moment Sun dove forward and slammed against the push bar of the exit before it burst open. He tumbled out onto the grass and sidewalk outside only seconds before the ceiling just inside the exit collapsed and blocked it with a pile of debris.

Eyes wide, Sun stumbled backwards as fast as he could without tripping. He wanted to get some more distance but couldn’t take his eyes off the building now that he could see what was breaking out of it. Tyler’s tail smashed through one wall and snaked its way out onto the lawn behind the building. Huge purple arms burst from either side of the building and equally massive purple feet and legs exploded through the front wall pointing towards the campus quad. It was like some perverse re-imagining of Alice in wonderland outgrowing the white rabbit’s house. Except instead of finding a drink to let her shrink back down and step outside, Tyler kept growing until half of the building was destroyed and laying on or around him in heaps of demolished building materials or furniture and equipment. 

When the now gigantic purple dragon’s growth finally came to a step he swung his head around trying to make sense of his new perspective. Even still sitting he was still looking down at the campus from over two stories in height. It was intimidating enough to see a behemoth like Tyler now was sitting in the remains of what had once been a sturdy building but it became exponentially more so when the giant stood from the rubble and let it fall off him like sand rather than the tons of debris it was. 

When Tyler finally spotted Sun he turned and took a single step closer before lowering on one knee in front of him. Even that single step caused a noticeable tremor in the ground and dug a foot-shaped crater into the grass and dirt that had to be a foot or more deep. All of which was secondary to the actual sight of someone as huge as Tyler getting so close to him. Even knowing intellectually that it was still his recently acquire friend the tiger still felt his instincts screaming at him to run in the face of such an overwhelmingly superior predator. Rather than let his body do as it wished Sun swallowed audibly before trying to speak to the giant version of Tyler instead of running away.

“Uh… I guess I don’t need to ask If you’re OK, do I?” Sun chuckled nervously. 

“I’m fine.” Tyler replied. Sun was visibly shocked and cringed when he heard how much Tyler’s even deeper voice seemed to rumble out like a low thunder. It was so different from the short dragon he had come to know he might not have even recognized it if he hadn’t seen it come from Tyler’s mouth. It was distracting enough Sun almost didn’t register what Tyler said next. “Though I don’t know how long everyone else will be.”

“What do you mean er… big guy?” the tiger asked, the altered nickname he used for Tyler coming out as much a question as the actual question he asked.

Rather than answer Tyler held out a hand and showed the now partially destroyed remains of the device that had grown him. Despite his best attempts Tyler hadn’t been able to stop it from being damaged by his growth or his subsequent extraction from the rubble.

“Well. Shit.” Sun cursed. “That’s bad. But not the end of the world. I mean, we can just find the guy that made it and have them fix this one or make a new one right?” Then, smirking and trying to ease the tension a bit with some playful ribbing and humor. “Something tells me you wouldn’t mind spending a few days being what? Four stories tall?”

Tyler didn’t react to Sun’s attempt at levity. 

“I don’t think you understand, Sun. I said I’m pretty sure this thing is doubling my size.” Tyler explained in a calm yet ominous tone.

“Yea?” Sun said, unsure what Tyler was getting at. “That’s why you’re like forty feet tall now.”

“Right.” Tyler acknowledged. “I’m forty feet tall NOW. It my guess is correct about what you read on the screen I’m going to KEEP doubling in size again and again and again.”

Sun’s eyes slowly went wide as the reality of the situation dawned on him. But when he started to open his muzzle to ask a question Tyler already knew what he was going to ask and answered preemptively.

“Forever. Unless we can figure out how to fix this device and stop this I’m going to keep randomly doubling in size… forever. Think about how big that'll make me after I double in size even just twice more. Or five times more. If I double in size ten times from where I am now, Sun, I would be literally MILES tall.” Tyler explained with concern.

The tiger took a few moments to let that sink in. A couple of times his brain tried to imagine Tyler at such extreme sizes but each time he just couldn’t picture it. It was literally unfathomable for him to imagine those kinds of sizes. So, he responded to Tyler’s concerning words in the most eloquent way he could think of.

“Fuck.”