Elizabeth searched her memory for where she had put the boxes of magic vials last night when she was done with them. She quickly came to the conclusion that she hadn't intentionally moved them from the table. 8 heads looked over where her table was... straining under the weight of several coils of her 14-inch diameter tail.
Well shit.
Must have knocked it off the table last night
It's gotta be on the floor somewhere
My big tail is probably crushing the vials right now...
But there's so much stuff I'm laying on I can't feel the boxes OR the vials
Maybe if I move the bulk of my tail out into the living room
I hope I didn't break anything
Although... being permanently stuck as a super sexy 4-torso 8-headed 16-armed naga does have a certain appeal
Since her latest change Elizabeth hadn't tried directly controlling the bulk of her tail. Every time she had moved, it had been using the sections connecting her torsos to her main tail. She hadn't even seen the new junction that joined her 4 torsos together, the last time she'd seen her tail sections join was when she had only 2 torsos. The realization made her feel foolish and ignorant of her own body but also incredibly grateful that she had been able to transform into this beautiful naga behemoth. She slithered one torso over to the door and slowly opened it. Noise from down the hallway suggested that Gina was watching TV in the living room. Which meant she should have a clear shot to the semi-spacious kitchen and entryway.
She didn't know the exact shape and proportions of her changed body. Elizabeth wisely decided to not try to directly control the bulk of her form without first knowing what its basic shape was. Instead her plan was to essentially drag herself out of her room by slithering down the hall 1 by 1 with her torsos, and then take musculature control of her main tail once she got a feel for her new proportions.
Elizabeth pushed the bedroom door fully open, scraping it past a coil of tail, and with 6 heads watched herself venture forward out of her room. The majority of her physical form stayed in her room and watched her torso with hair dangling behind her vanish out of sight around the corner and tail rapidly follow afterwards. She slithered into the kitchen and stopped when she reached the counter. One head turned and looked back, amazed at just how long her torso's independent tail section was. Back in the bedroom she didn't see the junction yet. About 30 feet of torso-diameter snake tail connected her between the kitchen and her bedroom.
She let out an echoed sigh and started to consciously coil her tail beneath her, creating a seat from her coils. After about 10 more feet worth of tail slid through the doorway, her heads in the bedroom spotted the junction. But it looked... wrong. She stopped pulling and a torso in the bedroom slithered over to look at it.
2 tails in... 1 tail out
So... What are my other torsos connected to?
Did the torsos I grew last night get connected somewhere else?
It's the only thing that makes sense
Unless my new torsos aren't actually connected to the rest of my body
That would be fuckin weird. But... magic...
I should find out how long between my waist and the junction
And also figure out what to call that distance
In the kitchen she pulled open the utility drawer and with 2 sets of eyes had no trouble finding the tape measure. She also grabbed a roll of masking tape and a pen with her second pair of arms. Then slithered back towards the bedroom door to uncoil and stretch her tail out. It only took her a few seconds to get her tail mostly straight, though it made a giant 180 in the kitchen, but she'd deal with that when she got to measuring that. She held the tape measure end to her waist with hand and then slithered back down her tail holding the measure. And stopped a second later, feeling very stupid as the tape measure didn't unwind in the slightest.
In the bedroom Elizabeth had been tracing the other tail connecting at the junction and determined which torso it went to. Satisfied that the 2 torsos were adjacent in terms of tail connectivity, that torso slithered out into the hall and headed towards the kitchen. On reaching her first torso, she grabbed the tape measure out of her own hands, rolled her eyes, and waited for her first torso to go back and straighten out so she could measure.
Without verbally communicating, or needing to, Elizabeth got to the edge of the tape measure's length: 10 feet. She adhered a small piece of masking tape to the tail, marked it with a 10 and retracted the tape measure then continued on, marking the next 10 feet. Without needing to communicate to the person she was measuring - herself, she straightened out the U-bend in her tail and started on another measurement.
"What are you doing?"
Gina's question shattered Elizabeth's concentration. She dropped the tape measure in surprise and it retracted violently, razor sharp and thread-thin metal grinding against her tail as it retracted. It was all over in just a second. With one head she looked up and spun around looking for Gina, spotting her sitting leaning over the back of the couch. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Quickly realizing she had turned her head around too tightly, she loosed her neck from a cramped 600 degree coil to a firm 240 degree coil.
"Oh, hey Gina. Sstartled me. Meassuring mysself. I don't know how long I am."
"Really? I'd think you'd need to know that. Like I know I'm 5 feet and 8 inches tall."
Elizabeth shook her head. Her inspection of the tail that had been victim to the measuring tape's retraction was fine. Some scales were scraped, but no blood drawn. She grabbed the tape measure and resumed measuring with 1 head while the other talked to Gina, "Uhhh... No? I would ssay I know how tall I am, but that's not really a sset height for me" She stopped herself before adding 'any more'.
"What do you put on forms that ask for your height?"
She shrugged. "Ssix feet?"
Gina laughed. "Wow that's a gross under-exaggeration. If we're counting lengthwise, then you're definitely at least as long as 10 of me lying down. So that's already at least 58 feet. Probably more."
Elizabeth flashed a grin. "Most formss don't have sspace for heightss above 9 feet."
"AAAH!" Gina shuddered and ducked down behind the couch back. "Don't DO that." She faintly sobbed.
Confused, Elizabeth stopped measuring and looked two heads towards where Gina vanished. "Do what?"
Gina's voice wavered as she responded, "Show your fangs. I know that you aren't poisonous and you aren't going to bite me, but... It's primal. Scares me shitless every time."
"Oh. I'll uhh... I'll try not to do that." She looked back down to her measurements. A moment passed before she turned one head back and asked, "Iss uh.. Iss normal talking okay?"
She was met by silence for a few seconds before Gina responded, "Yeah just talking is fine. It's just when you bare them or open your mouth really wide." Elizabeth genuinely felt bad for scaring her. Oddly enough, she had scared Gina not for any reason she had expected - not because she was part giant snake or had multiple heads or multiple upper bodies, but because she had snake fangs. Wait, when did she get snake fangs?
Back in her bedroom her remaining 4 heads opened their mouths and inspected their fangs. She remembered running her tongue over her teeth yesterday and her incisors hadn't been the 3 inch long fangs that now dominated her mouth. Behind and around them she still had her human teeth, but those fangs were something else. They even scared Elizabeth a little bit when she flashed a grin at herself. Then she tried opening her mouth really wide. At first it seemed normal, then right when her jaw reached its normal maximum a slight shift happened as she felt her jaw unhook from the rest of her bones... And her mouth swung open a staggering 90 degrees, her jaw stopped only by the presence of her neck. The forked tongue instinctively darted forward, flitting around like another creature entirely as her vision tunneled into the wide open maw before her. She barely suppressed her own scream of terror. In a panicked motion she swung her jaw closed again and felt it interlock back into her skeleton. All 4 torsos shook in fear and she took a few deep breaths to steady herself.
Oooooh fuck I nearly screamed
That's some horror movie shit
I definitely didn't have this yesterday
It must have been the snake vial
It made me longer but... snake mouth
Okay, need to make sure to never open my mouth wide
And never grin or smile with teeth visible
At least I can still kiss like a human
Elizabeth fully understood Gina's reaction. Out in the kitchen she focused on lowering her lips over her teeth as much as possible before speaking.
"Gina? I'm ssorry. I didn't mean to sscare you like that. It wass an accident." Elizabeth felt like she was pleading. She hoped that she hadn't just ruined her relationship with her roommate.
A few seconds passed before Gina reappeared from behind the couch. Her eyes were a bit red and her mascara had run a little, not much. "I know Liz. It's okay. Just please... try."
4 heads nodded vigorously in response to Gina. Gina forced a small smile with no teeth visible. Elizabeth slowly returned in kind, not used to keeping her lips shut when smiling. It took a couple of tries to get all 4 mouths smiling without opening her lips.
Gina laughed. "You're too goofy. Speaking of... Weren't you doing something silly with a measuring tape?"
Elizabeth nodded and returned to her measuring. She resumed from the 20 foot marker tape, which thankfully hadn't come loose. One measurement later and she sported a 30 foot marker taped to her tail. Another measurement later, this one getting close to the bedroom door and she was at 40.
Her other torso, the one being measured, retreated back into the kitchen and coiled her tail up beneath her once again. Then she pulled again, and the tail lying on the floor slid more and more out of her bedroom. She stopped when the junction between the 2 tail segments was through the door. Her coil had reached a comfortable height of 4 feet and by looking at the marker, could tell that there was 20 feet of tail wrapped into her loose coil. The coil was just large enough for her to lounge her torso across it, and level with the kitchen counters so when she raised her heads up she could see over it.
She lazily watched her other torso finish measuring and proudly proclaimed from the kitchen, "50 feet almost exactly from my waisst to where my tail segment joinss the main tail!"
Gina raised an eyebrow and glanced between Elizabeth's heads. "Holy crap. I knew you were long, but I didn't know you were that long. That's just to the point where you split, right?"
Elizabeth nodded. "Yup, now to meassure my main tail." Now that Gina was watching her, she didn't want to let on that she didn't actually know the shape of her own body. Gina seemed to think that this was normal for her, and she had no idea what would happen if she contradicted that - if the magic would stop, or something even weirder might happen.
She slithered her second torso, the one with the measuring tape, past the couch towards the apartment front door. On reaching it, she coiled her tail under her, effectively blocking the apartment exit, until both tail segments connected to the main tail junction were pulled taut. Then she focused on moving, not her individual torsos, but her main tail. A moment later the tail burst into motion.
Elizabeth had no idea how she was controlling the main tail as it surged towards the front door and one of her torsos much faster than she thought capable. It moved like an Olympic sprinter and covered a distance of 20 feet in just seconds. In her bedroom her remaining 2 torsos watched as the massive snake tail on the floor rapidly surged out the door, seemingly moving automatically on its own. The noise of the massive snake tail moving so rough and rapid on the wood flooring was like someone had filled a vacuum cleaner with rocks. Panic rose in her many minds as she recalled what it had done last night, and feared what it might do to her now if she couldn't control it.
Then her main tail slowed and stopped right where she wanted it to. She had no idea how she controlled it, but she seemed to have control of it. But the rapid movement had also thrown her tail sections around, and her neatly lined up tail sections were once again zig-zags and scribbles aross the floor.
From behind the couch Gina laughed. "Okay okay, fine. Ohh, the look on your faces. It was like you were watching a train bearing down on you! Ah hahaha! Oh, okay. You're forgiven. Now stop it, you're going to make me choke on my water if you keep making me laugh!"
From the kitchen she turned and forced a small no-fangs smile. "Couldn't let you sstay angry at me."
With her other torso she moved forward and watched as her main tail straightened itself just as she wanted. Not a conscious movement like when she moved her torsos around, but more like... taking a step to the left to get into a more comfortable position. Suddenly the realization hit home - her main tail was her new equivalent of her legs. Walking with legs as a human didn't require direct mental coordination. And neither did moving her main tail.
Much more confident in the control she had of this terrifying strong and large snake tail, she measured and marked her way down the tail. At the 50 foot marking she had traversed her torso back over to her bedroom door. She sighed and slowly started to "walk" out of her room some more. As expected, her main tail slithered along at a pace more akin to walking. Down at the door, she mentally commanded it to make a U-turn and head back towards the bedroom door to avoid coiling up into a big mess. She was very happy when it did exactly as she commanded.
Inside the bedroom she could tell that she had removed probably about half of her total body. As her tail continued to slide out the door, 2 heads carefully watched to see if there was going to be another junction. 2 more heads scanned the room for the boxes... And spotted them beneath the bed!
The torso that had spotted them dove towards the boxes. And hung there in midair, fully supported by her tail. The tail sections connecting her torsos to her main tail weren't controlled like legs, at least not with the level of familiarity she had with them. Maybe as she got more used to her body controlling them would become more automatic. She rolled her eyes twice as she directly controlled her tail segment to lower her torso down to the floor then forward under the bed to reach the boxes. Hovering about 6 inches above the carpet she reached out and picked up each box with a different set of arms then horizontally pulled herself back out from under the bed. She set the boxes down on the table and coiled her tail segment up on the carpet to create a makeshift but very comfortable self-chair that she lounged on as she opened each box and started checking to make sure no vials were broken.
Out in the living room she continued her measuring, pausing movement and straightening out to get a fairly accurate reading. She soon reached the 80 foot mark. Based on the sight she had from inside the bedroom, she felt she had to be getting close to the end of her main tail. As the main tail started moving again she saw it - the other junction! Instead of tapering down to a point and ending, the main tail's other end split into 2 tail segments connected to her other 2 torsos. She didn't have a front and a back. She had a front and another front, each with 2 torsos.
She was so happy to finally have a proper mental image of her body that the two heads on the torso in her bedroom that had been watching for the junction leaned in and gave each other a quick kiss. Then a longer kiss. But then she felt the junction slide out of her bedroom into the hallway and decided that was enough - she was about to measure this side of her body, and her other torso was busy inspecting the boxes for broken vials.
"Finally! Main tail is jusst an inch or two over 100 feet long. Let'ss jusst call it 100 feet for ssimplicity'ss ssake." Elizabeth proudly announced.
Gina let out a whistle. "Wow. I forgot you were this big. Almost never see your full body."
Elizabeth's third torso slithered around the corner and waved to Gina as she spoke, "Well, you sstill aren't. I'm sstill in my bedroom."
Gina rolled her eyes, "You know what I mean. Going to measure your other side too?"
6 heads nodded to Gina, "I want to be ssure. Would be kinda awkward for one sside to be sshorter."
Gina shrugged, "Fair enough. This is far more entertaining than reruns of Cheers. If anyone else was here I'd try to get a bet started that one of your sides is shorter!"
Elizabeth giggled at the joke and got back to straightening, measuring, and marking with masking tape.
Back in the bedroom, Elizabeth's 4th torso finished inspecting and returning the vials to the boxes. None of them showed any sign of damage, and the boxes themselves seemed perfectly intact. Even the empty vials and pen were fine, with no marks or scratches. She pulled the magic legalese paper from the blue box and put it in a pocket on her skirt then quickly returned the boxes to their designated hiding spot in the closet behind her clothes hamper. Then she left her room and joined the rest of herself out in the living room just as another torso finished measuring.
"It'ss official! I'm TWO HUNDRED FEET LONG!" Elizabeth's 8 heads happily proclaimed. Her final torso to enter the room waved to Gina. "Alsso, now I'm all here."
Gina laughed. "Damn girl. You big!"
"Yeah! I'm jusst happy to know a number. It givess me ssome persspective."
"Hmm. You're still not longer than a football field though."
Elizabeth laughed at her roommate's retort. "Damn! Don't know if being that long would be worth it. I mean... look how hard it wass for me to get my full body jusst in here..."
Elizabeth surveyed the common area. She had successfully left from her bedroom, and now her amazingly long body demanded almost all space in the kitchen and between the living area and the apartment exit. In her movement to finish measuring her body, she had unblocked the apartment door and they could now leave if they wanted. She had also secured the magic legalese paper and made sure the boxes of zodiac transformation potions were undamaged and safe. Elizabeth paused to decide what to do next...