As Ash gave the whackbat a few practice swings, he felt his shoulder and arm muscles tensing up, as if they knew they were about to be used and were flexing all on their own. Strange, he thought. He stepped up to the basket, and the center tagger lit the pinecone, and gave it a hurl. While the pinecone was flying at him, Ash's entire body suddenly began to tingle. It was the exact same sensation he had down in the sewers...
Ignoring it for now, Ash took a deep breath, and then threw every bit of force he could into swinging the bat. With a tremendous WHACK sound, it made contact with the pinecone, cracking the bat in two, and sending the cone flying through the air. Ash immediately threw down the bat and made a mad dash for the cedar stick. With his tremendous size advantage, he was easily able to avoid the taggers and grabbers and knock the stick off the cross rock. At first, the twig runners were too stunned to dash back and forth, but they each eventually snapped back to attention and got to work. It took nearly a full minute for the pinecone to be retrieved and to burn out, and by that time, the twig runners were all nearly doubled over from exhaustion.
"Hotbox!" the umpire called out. "Uh... Divide that by nine, I guess."
"Wow!" Kristofferson said as Ash made his way over to the sideline. "That had to be a world record or something!"
"Well," Ash said, grinning smugly, "when you just happen to be a natural athlete like me--"
"Natural nothing," Kristofferson said. "Look how much bigger you've grown!"
By the time Ash had opened his eyes and took a look around, he noticed that everyone around him looked a lot smaller. The tips of Kristofferson's ears now only came up to the middle of his shins. He bent down, bringing his massive muzzle level with Kristofferson. "Hey, you're right!" he said. "Wow, how cool is that?"
Kristofferson chuckled uneasily. It was troubling to see that Ash was still growing even though he didn't have the fruit with him, but at the same time, he was getting some sort of thrill out of it. Almost like it felt good to have his cousin now leer over him. He felt an urge to lean up and grab a hold of Ash's muzzle, doing what he wasn't quite sure. But he was beginning to know that he liked it, and secretly was hoping that the growth wouldn't stop.
"Hey!" one of the animals from the field called out. "You broke the whackbat!"
"Yeah!" another one yelled, "that's our only one. How are we supposed to play now?"
Ash turned around, shrugging. "Sorry, guys I guess I don't know my own strength." He walked over to a tree at the edge of the field and grabbed a limb, snapping it off like it was a pretzel. The limb was much larger than a bat, but around the same flatness. "Here you go," he said, tossing the limb at one of the upset players, who had to jump out of the way to avoid being hit. The other animals looked up at Ash with an angry look on their faces, but everyone kept their mouths shut.
"Hey, Kristofferson, let's get out of here," Ash said.
"Okay, Ash," Kristofferson answered meekly. He felt Ash's long, warm fingers wrap around his torso as he was lifted up, then held against his shoulder. "Where are we going?"
Ash smiled, as he said...
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