It was just an accident in the beginning. Gaia was playing around in Alkali’s lab while he was away for the day. There wasn’t anything actually dangerous around to mess with. The most dangerous things had been locked up in a private area of the lab. Gaia wasn’t even interested in that stuff though; he just wanted some more time with one particular experiment.

The Weight Gain Ray. Alkali had shown the handheld gun to him earlier, tested it out too. The shots it produced tasted like cinnamon rolls and made whoever was hit gain weight uncontrollably. The otter’s lab was full of experiments similar to this. A phone app that controlled someone’s weight… candy that would add hundreds of pounds instantly… magic books that would bloat your body just by reading it. Most of the time Gaia was the one who got to test out these experiments. Seeing as he was already a tubby deer it only made sense. Plus, he loved to feel himself getting wider, squishier, heavier. It worked out well for both the otter and himself. Gaia suspected that all these experiments were the reason he hadn’t been able to lose weight in months. And Alkali was starting to look chubby too.

Good thing that it made them both even cuter. Gaia kept volunteering for each and every weight gain experiment. It never seemed like it was enough. This time, he was going to take matters into his own hands. Alkali had only given him a small dose of the ray but the deer wanted more. He pulled down gently on his jacket as he snuck through the lab, trying to pull it over top his gut’s overhang. It didn’t fit anymore; it was time for yet another wardrobe update. But that could wait until after he’d used the ray.

Originally he’d only meant to use it for a short time. Just enough to add a dozen pounds or so. But as soon as that science fiction-esque ray was firing between his lips, Gaia knew that wouldn’t be enough. For some reason it tasted like… Reese’s candy instead of cinnamon rolls. But not just normal Reese’s cups. The sweetest, most filling Reese’s he had ever tasted before. Gaia vaguely remembered something Alkali said, about the ray picking its owner’s most favorite flavor for each blast’s taste. But he hadn’t realized just how perfect it could actually get.

Gaia was practically sucking on the ray like a lollipop now as he fired it into his mouth. He never actually let go of the trigger, just letting the taste rush into his mouth. The jacket and pants he’d worn in were getting tighter, trying to stay on as he passed an extra 50 pounds of weight. He moaned happily. That settled it. He was going to steal this weight gain ray and use it to make himself as big as he wanted. The biggest, fattest deer ever.

Accidents tend to happen at the worst possible time of course. As Gaia began to leave the lab, still suckling on the ray’s barrel, he wasn’t paying any attention to where his hoofs were landing. All it took was one stray wire catching his leg to send him flopping forward, landing with a thud atop his gut. It didn’t really hurt him anymore; his front side was so well padded that it wasn’t possible for a fall to injure him. But it did cause a different problem. Gaia’s eyes went wide and he gagged momentarily as he felt metal push to the back of his throat. He gulped involuntarily and felt something heavy land in his belly.

He’d eaten the Weight Gain Ray.

It took Gaia a few moments to process just what had happened. What… did this mean exactly? Alkali sure wasn’t going to be very happy about losing his brand new experiment, that was for sure. But even worse than that was the sinking feeling that something really, really bad was going to happen. He waited a few minutes to see if anything would change. When nothing came, the green deer started to get back up. Only then did the ray turn on though, jostled inside the weighty cervine’s gut. Damaged slightly and with its trigger now pressed, Gaia instantly tasted the chocolate candy in his mouth again.

He couldn’t help but moan when his clothes ripped straight off his expanding body. Shoot, now he really did need to find bigger clothes. Assuming the weight gain would stop so he could pick an accurate size. And assuming that any store would ever have his size again. That was looking less and less likely as the deer easily passed a whole ton in poundage. He tried to escape through the lab’s front door only to find it wasn’t wide enough anymore. It’d take at least two of those doors side by side to fit him… no, two and a half now.

Things weren’t looking so good. Gaia was having trouble standing up; it was so much easier to just sit down and let his gut roll out in front of him on his lap. This had to stop soon. He pressed into his belly, trying in vain to find where the ray might be in that massive ball. All he succeeded in doing was giving himself a belly massage though.

It wasn’t long at all before the room was getting cramped. Gaia pushed and wobbled against the walls, attempting to get free if he could. But there wasn’t quite enough pressure on them yet. His movement did get a slight gurgle from his belly though… and then, he hiccupped. A rush of chocolate flavor assaulted his tongue and he suddenly bloated to twice his size all at once. The house practically exploded in a wave of green fur and flab.

The ground was starting to crack beneath him now as the neighborhood was overshadowed with the silhouette of an enormous deer. That hiccup had somehow sped up the growth. Not just that either, his whole body was growing too; he wouldn’t be turning into a blob. Or at least, not as much of one as before. The growth still hadn’t stopped after all.

He waved bashfully at all the people on the ground and muttered a weak “sorry” with each car and house smooshed under him. If he could just get the growth ray to slow down, or to stop, he could finally enjoy the size. That didn’t seem likely though as he covered up the neighborhood .

News vehicles and helicopters arrived to track the slow progress of the creature bulldozing over miles of the suburbs. Each helicopter that landed atop the mountain of white furred belly was immediately caught in the pudge, sinking in too deep to escape again. Any cars that tried to report couldn’t find a way to stop far away enough to avoid the tidal wave of deer blubber constantly approaching.

It also didn’t help that Gaia was, well, enjoying himself quite a bit. Deep in the folds of his gut sat his crotch, and a hard on that was being pressed down to the ground with all the soft fat. Warmed up by his own body he’d been gently grinding against the ground. He was too embarrassed to do much more than that though; it was bad enough that everyone in the world was paying attention to his wide green behind without the added embarrassment of showing how much he was getting off to it. Just how could he get the growing to stop?

Hiccup.

“Oh. That’s not good,” Gaia mumbled as his body started to tingle anew. He was already being hit with chocolate and peanut butter Reese’s taste at all times, but for whatever reason each hiccup seemed to make the taste more intense. Which was accompanied by an equally high spurt of growth. Plus it seemed to speed up… he really couldn’t afford to get the hiccups right now.

Hiccup.

The ground quaked beneath the deer, skyscrapers toppled as he grew into a bustling metropolis’s limits and easily knocked over everything in his path. It almost made him proud in a way.

Hiccup.

Suddenly, Alkali’s face appeared in an enormous hologram above Gaia. It looked like the otter was angry at first, then surprised when he got a proper look at Gaia. The deer blushed a deep red, not really sure how to explain himself to the scientist friend.

“So… what happened? It’s a good look for you, but… that’s a mighty large body you have there Gaia,” Alkali said, his voice slightly electronic from being put through the hologram.

Gaia’s ears flicked. “I uhh… ate the weight gain ray. Is there anything *hiccup* that can stop it?”

Alkali was quiet for a moment, looking over the wall of green and white fur. “You ate it? Hmm. Well, you’re not against space travel are you Gaia?”

“What? A-Alkali, do something!” Hiccup.

Gaia’s growth had sped up so much by this point that he outclassed mountains for size easily. Granted he couldn’t actually see them but he did feel them running into his rump. They poked at his green fur but didn’t last long before being broken beneath him. The country was starting to look at lot less like a landmass now and more like a blob of green deer mass.

By now the cervine’s face was a bright shade of red, looking down at the ground worriedly. Gaia really did want for the weight gain to stop. I mean, at this rate he might keep growing and fattening forever. Getting heavier and heavier, wobbling all over the planet… and more. His green and white butt was slowly steamrolling the entire hemisphere of the planet. There was no way to get to the ray anymore. As hard as it would’ve been at the beginning, now it was downright impossible to find in the moon sized belly he was sporting.

But, it just tasted… so, so good. The taste of Reese’s in his mouth was starting to outweigh all other things really. He wanted more of that taste. More size. To feel himself start to fill up everything and outgrow the whole planet. Or more. He gradually started to stop worrying so much. Why stress if it couldn’t be fixed?

Hiccup.

Each hiccup got the deer to moan a bit as his pleasure increased. Yeah. He could really come to enjoy just growing forever if it meant he got to taste this sweet candy heaven. Millions of tons of chocolate and peanut butter mass flowing into his body at all times, for the rest of time? There were definitely worse fates in the world. The planet was looking more like a soccer ball as it was slowly taken over by the deer’s butt. Gaia had gained enough gravity that he’d started to float away from the planet. Slowly turning around he looked at the little planet there and grinned. Even as embarrassed as he was, the fact he’d turned the sky into a cover of white and green rather than black for the planet filled him with a bit of pride.

Gaia picked up the gumball sized planet between two fingers, feeling it continue to diminish in his grip. No need to waste something like that before it got too small after all. He popped it between his lips like a tiny jawbreaker, mixing nicely with the Reese’s taste there.

Hiccup.

Now the solar system was feeling positively tiny. The planets had started to rearrange their orbits around his rump, which did make it very easy for him to pick them out and start to munch. None of them were quite as good as the sweetness of the growth ray. But it was the thought of continuing to add to his own mass that was starting to make the deer happier than anything. He’d really grown into his new form now, and wanted nothing other than to keep getting bigger forever. All embarrassment at his enjoyment of the growth was gone now. Only thing left to do was to shoot for the stars.

Hiccup.

Or perhaps the galaxy instead. As the minutes passed he saw stars begin to get caught in his fur, lighting him up like sparkles. It was quite beautiful if Gaia was honest with himself. But it would take a whole lot more than just a few stars to keep him lit up if this continued. Gaia opened up his mouth and leaned forward with his tongue, catching hundreds of them all at once. He didn’t even really need to move anymore. The growth itself propelled his mouth forward into star clusters. And soon even that wasn’t enough. One hundred billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy were nothing but snacks for the cervine now. He just had to grow big enough to get to them all.

By this point all galactic races across the universe had been sent into high alert. Some sort of massive object, bigger than any black hole, was tearing its way through a galaxy and still growing. Every civilization unleashed every super weapon, everything in their arsenal, every possible way of stopping the wall of green and white starting to overtake the blackness of space. But nothing slowed Gaia down. And each hiccup was getting louder, muted by the vacuum of space but still able to completely rearrange the cosmos. Gaia moved on to tasting his very first galaxy. Soon it would need to be handfuls of galaxies all at once.

Hiccup.

Gaia moaned, deep and booming, rubbing both hands at his expanding gut. Whole lightyears of distance packed into that tum with each second, and only speeding up from there. It would’ve been enough to give anyone else a stomach ache but not Gaia. He was going to keep getting bigger and nothing could stop him. He squished his own gut, dopily sticking his tongue out as he let the feeling of sweet candy in his mouth wash over him along with a blanket of galaxies being drawn to him by sheer gravity alone.

Hiccup.

Nothing would ever be bigger than him again. Nothing ever could be bigger than him again. The weight gain ray had years’ worth of charge on it. He’d grow out into the infinite darkness for the rest of his days. Future universes would grow within a sea of green and white rather than black from now on. Never ending growth.

Gaia smiled and his tail wiggled. If only he could get just a little larger…