Chapter 6: "Attack of the Fifty-Pound Boobs"

Hazy, gauzy lights. Shimmering blobs of color. A single lit candle in front of me. I blinked. I was back in Wonderland. The tunnel. Cheshire moaned and howled on my shoulder. First time I ever saw him behave like an actual cat. I took two steps forward in the tunnel and waited. The bugs on the floor, walls, and ceiling retreated. I took another two steps. The bugs retreated again. Two steps by two steps I slowly made my way through the tunnel. Cheshire called my attention to two dark holes in the walls to the immediate left and right of us as we advanced through.

"Those are ventilation shafts, Alice. Hear that 'wump, wump, wump'? That's waterwheel-powered fans running continuously. They blow fresh air into this tunnel continuously. If it weren't for those fans, there might be methane buildup in this tunnel. You can't smell methane. Even I can't smell it. You don't know it's there until it explodes into a giant fireball because somebody has a candle or lit a match."

It dawned on me that I could have blown myself up when I put the candle inside the tunnel. I guess Cheshire never would have let me do that if it were dangerous. I'm dumber than a cat. What a horrible realization.

It took nearly an hour to slowly make our way through the tunnel. The candle actually burned down below the half-way point, and I started to nervously wonder if it would last until we exited. I heaved a great sigh of relief when I saw the end of the tunnel opening into Wonderland Woods.

Cheshire and I walked out perhaps fifteen feet, and I turned around to view our exit from the tunnel. In Wonderland Woods, it looked almost like a cave entrance. The wooden supports of the shaft were covered by vegetation.

"Cat, do you know where the Card Guard compound is in these woods?"

"But of course. I wouldn't have led you here if I hadn't known exactly where it is. You'll have to follow me closely, though. These woods don't have much in the way of landmarks. It is very easy to wind around in circles here and end up at your starting point. That mining shaft entrance is a very important landmark. It points directly toward a frog pond with a waterfall about a mile up ahead. That's our second landmark. There's a log in the frog pond that has its roots up in the air. The roots point to the Card Guard compound three miles away."

"So we have four miles to walk."

"Very good, Alice. You were listening to me."

"Anything to eat around here?"

"There's fallen nuts on the ground everywhere, but we don't have anything to crack them with. At the frog pond, there's some blackberry briars for you and maybe, if I'm lucky, a frog for me. Raw, of course."

Wonderland Woods looked very different from the last time I was there. There were no enemies to greet me coming out of the tunnel. There were no enemies in sight at all. The only creatures I saw were butterflies which were absolutely everywhere. There were so many butterflies that there always a few lit on my clothes. Cheshire ignored the butterflies that lit on him. I noticed that the butterflies seemed to have a liking for his ears. There always seemed to be one lit on at least one of his ears. I had a problem with butterflies lighting on my nose. I guess I was so skinny that my nose looked like a perch to them.

"Cheshire, are there any enemies in these woods besides the Card Guards?"

"None that I know of. Wonderland Woods is perilous if you're shrunken, but if you're full-sized, these woods are remarkably devoid of dangers. We do need to keep an eye out for Card Guard patrols, but they rarely stray far from their compound. We're still too far away to need to worry about them much."

Cheshire and I trudged silently for the next twenty minutes or so. When we reached the frog pond, I noted where the roots of the fallen log in the pond pointed and headed straight for the blackberry briars. No bugs on the bushes. None at all. I was amazed. It was tricky getting the berries without getting scratched. I spent the next few hours gorging on the berries until I was barely able to move. I walked back to the pond in time to see Cheshire ripping into a frog. He looked up at me, said nothing, and continued ripping flesh from the frog. I did not flinch at the sight. Cats are predators. Even house cats. Cheshire, of course, had long been pure feral.

"Finally got one, huh? Or is that your second?"

Cheshire finished off the frog. "It was my third. I usually do not have such luck hunting. I was getting hungry enough to eat Card Guard. They taste like a cross between cotton cloth and paper. Yuck!"

"Have you ever killed a Card Guard strictly for food?"

Cheshire looked at me, furrowed his brow, and grinned. "Yes, I have. That's why Card Guards treat me with respect. I can slash a Card Guard's guts open with my claws just as easily as you can chop one in half with your Vorpal Blade. I do recommend that you maintain your distance if possible, however. Card Guards are blithering idiots, but they can be deadly at close range. Large numbers of them are dangerous, too. We really need to find the Jabberwock Eyestaff. Right now, your only effective weapon against more than six Card Guards is the boob shrooms. Those are not something you want to depend on. I also don't know what effects repeated uses of those mushrooms can cause."

"They might actually give me boobs permanently?"

"I said I don't know. Who knows what side effects such weird drugs could cause. Those boob shrooms ARE a drug. Use them only when the alternative is dying."

"I'd settle for a pair of C-cups."

"Funny, I'd always thought you had a fetish for large breasts."

"It's men who have the fetish. We women have to live with it. If men weren't obsessed with breasts, we women would prefer cute little perky B-cups that don't get in the way and don't sag later in life. Any woman with F-cups is going to have her knockers hanging down past her waist late in life. Big boobs always turn into granny boobs eventually."

Neither one of us worried about our voices carrying because the waterfall drowned us out. Cheshire began to sing, and I alternated.

"Do your boobs hang low?"

"Do they wobble to and fro?"

"Can you tie them in a knot?"

"Can you tie them in a bow?"

"Can you throw them o'er your shoulders?"

"Are they big as fuckin' boulders?"

"Do your boobs hang low?"

Cheshire and I sang chorus on that last line of verse one. I started off the second verse, and Cheshire and I alternated lines again.

"Do your boobs sit high?"

"Do they point up to the sky?"

"Do they pimple when they're cold?

"Do they schwing each and every guy?"

"Do you wobble them in the mirror?"

"Do guys want to see them nearer?"

"Do your boobs sit high?"

Cheshire and I also sang chorus on that last line of verse two. We stopped singing at that point and prepared to leave. We had three miles to walk to the Card Guard compounds. Straight as the roots point. We agreed to maintain strict silence from that point on, and made an effort to watch where we stepped so as to avoid making any unnecessary sounds such a stepping on a dead twig. It was a long walk. Cheshire led the way.

Was it just one hour? Two? It felt like an entire day that we walked toward the Card Guard compound in featureless, wooded terrain with clumps of underbrush located everywhere. There was enough open space to walk unencumbered, but no more. Cheshire's ears and tail suddenly went up, and I knew to be on guard.

Far ahead between the trees was the Card Guard compound. I crouched down and began to crawl behind Cheshire. We advanced very slowly. We were able to see six Card Guards milling around outside the compound. We had no idea how many were inside. Cheshire motioned for me to move straight ahead, and indicated with motions of his paw that he was going to circle around to the back. He pointed to my pockets and motioned for me to take out a boob shroom and hold it in my left hand. I needed to keep my right hand free for my blade in case a Card Guard saw me. I considered the possibility of tossing a jackbomb inside the compound to rid ourselves of all the Card Guards inside in a single instant.

I hid behind some underbrush and waited for Cheshire to return from his reconnaissance. About fifteen very long minutes later Cheshire returned and air-drew the message "six more behind several inside." There were at least fifteen Card Guards. There was no possibility of taking them down one-by-one. Attacking them in the three groups that they were in was inadvisable as well. I came up with my own plan. We had to get them all in one space. To do that we needed a lure. Me.

I placed a full boob shroom in my mouth, but did not chew or swallow it. I brazenly walked up to the Card Guard compound and stood with my back to a tree as the Card Guards outside in view called to their buddies. In a few seconds I had around eighteen Card Guards approaching me. I took off my blouse and draped it on a nearby tree branch. I stripped off my bra and also draped it on the tree branch. The Card Guards came within maybe three to five feet and began laughing.

"Is she offering us a bribe?"

"Poor, deluded bitch thinks she's sexy!"

"No tits! No ass! No hips! I need a better offer!"

"Bitch, do you ever eat?"

"If she had any meat on her, she'd make a delectable dish!"

I really did not want to use that boob shroom. I really didn't. I was dreading the damn thing. I moved the shroom over toward my teeth and began chewing it like gum. That meat broth flavor again. Quite pleasant actually. I breathed deeply. I did not want to swallow it. I braced my back firmly against the tree and winced. I swallowed hard.

I felt light-headed and dizzy to the point of passing out. I felt a sudden yank on my chest as if someone had just attached two cannon balls to my breasts with very short chains and then dropped the cannon balls. I looked down and saw that my breasts were rapidly filling with a thick, heavy liquid. They slid farther and farther down my chest and grew continuously straight outward projecting more and more. My breasts reached my waist and seemed to float two feet out in front of me. The Card Guards stared open-mouthed and some dropped their weapons. None of them said anything. The ones in front of me stepped back a foot. The volume of the undersides of my breasts was massive and continued growing. The pull on my shoulders was staggering. My breasts continued to slide downwards and grow outwards even farther. They reached my knees and stopped. They waved and sloshed back and forth perhaps four feet in front of me. I struggled to catch my breath.

The Card Guards had all dropped their weapons by now. They were all staring with their mouths wide open. Speechless. I suddenly jerked my shoulders to the left and my breasts obligingly swung with me. I started to twirl to the left and smacked the first Card Guard to my left with one breast. He went flying backwards over the underbrush perhaps fifteen feet. I continued to twirl and caught another Card Guard in the side. He flew backwards about fifteen feet as well. One of my breasts dipped under the other, and I caught the third Card Guard with both breasts. He went soaring over the tree tops and didn't make a sound as he flew. From this point onward I caught every Card Guard with both breasts and sent him flying over the treetops. It took me perhaps seven full seconds to send every Card Guard flying. Only the last few had started to grab for their weapons, but none of them had time to poke me or fire.

The Card Guards gone, a new dilemma stared me in the face. My breasts completely covered my pockets and I couldn't lift them out of the way. I lay on the ground stretching out my breasts in front of me, opened my right pocket, and fished for my little metal shroom box. I opened it and found a light-orange mushroom. An inspiration hit me, and I tore off a small piece which was about fifteen percent of the mushroom and put it back in the metal box. I put the metal box back in my pocket and sealed it. I chewed the remaining part of the mushroom and swallowed. My breasts deflated, but not completely. My breasts now hung down on my chest a bit below my elbows and a bit above my waist. They floated perhaps eight inches in front of me. The pull on shoulders felt slight. These were manageable.

I checked inside the compound for more Card Guards with my jacks and jackbomb ready, but there was no one inside. All clear. Cheshire showed up and immediately asked why I hadn't taken the whole mushroom.

"An experiment, Cat. I wanted to find out what a reasonable-sized pair feel like."

"You call that a reasonable size? Those things are huge."

"This is what human men like. Breasts like these would be their wildest fantasy. They're manageable. Only a little pull on my shoulders."

I was still naked from the waist up. I reached my hands up into the air and clasped them behind my head. I shifted my shoulders back and forth to make my breasts wobble. They had a very nice sway. I cupped them from underneath and let them drop a few times. Perfect bounce.

"If I had any meat on the rest of my body, I'd be tempted to keep these. In a war zone, however, breasts like these would be a nuisance. At the very least, they would interfere with me using my Vorpal Blade. I suppose it would hurt considerably if I accidentally lopped off my right boob."

I opened my right pocket again and fished out the little metal shroom box. I pulled out the tiny piece of light-orange mushroom I had cut off.

"Bye-bye boobies. Parting is such sweet sorrow!"

I chewed and swallowed the little piece and was back to normal. I went back to the tree branch and pulled down my bra and strapped it back on.

"Back to flat!" I said to Cheshire. I put my blouse back on and followed Cheshire out into the woods to see if any of the Card Guards were still alive. Only the first two I hit - the ones I hit with only one breast - were still alive. I dispatched them with my Vorpal Blade. Cheshire and I headed back to the Card Guard compound.

"Look at all this food!" Cheshire exclaimed with his eyes bugging out. These Card Guards were well-provisioned, unlike the Card Guards of my previous trip through Wonderland. This Red Queen was obviously smarter than the last one. She knew to treat her soldiers well.

Cheshire and I took stock of all the food available in the compound, and concluded that it would take us three days of nonstop gorging to finish all of it. Meats, cheeses, eggs, bread, crackers, wine, nuts, berries, etc. It was quite a store.

"Let's not forget what we came here for," said Cheshire. "The key to the Gnomes' lockboxes and chastity belts should be in here somewhere."

In one unlocked drawer, we found a single key-chain with three keys on it. There were no other keys in the place. There were no locks on any of the doors in the compound, so we figured that two of the keys had uses we didn't know about yet. One of the keys had to be for the Gnomes. We decided to finish off the food before we headed back to the tunnel in Yur Mine in Pandemonium where the Gnomes were holed up.

The next few days were a haze of drunken gluttony. Cheshire stood guard over me when I slept. When the food was finally all finished, I remember lying on the floor of the compound rubbing my distended stomach. Cheshire was passed out on the floor with his paws up in the air and his tail trailing. His fur had actually started to grow back a bit. Must have been all those eggs that I had scrambled for him.

When Cheshire woke up, I looked over at him at him and grinned.

"Nice little binge we had, hmmm...? I'll probably gain ten pounds from this, if I haven't already."

"It'll take a lot more than that to make you look presentable again."

Cheshire and I started back for the frog pond and then the exit tunnel back to Gnome Village. Both of us burped and farted the entire way.

End of Chapter 6

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.