Reiko set off to find Sophia. Sophia was the middle sister in the family. While the 12 year old was closer in age to Reiko, they was further apart in some ways - not the least of which was height. While Reiko was clearly the smallest in the family, Sophia was clearly the biggest, standing an unbelievable 85 feet (25.90m). Sophia wasn't just tall, she was strong too. Several years ago Sophia had fallen in love with all things related to athletics and sports, and she'd committed herself to being as good at gymnastics as possible. There had been several months with non-stop minor earthquakes as Sophia had started running, doing cartwheels, jumps and flips in the back yard. It got so bad that the people in town come over to talk to Mom about a way to stop it. They'd both agreed to build a special facility far away from town where Sophia could practice her flips and jumps, and had gotten a lot of outside commercial help in making the padding out of something that would dampen (but couldn't eliminate) the giantess girl's footfalls. On days when Mom wouldn't take Sophia to the facility, Sophia would exercise at home, making her muscles bigger and stronger so she could push herself harder and faster. In contrast, Reiko had to do so much walking just to get around the house that the idea of doing extra exercises had no appeal to her.
At some point Sophia had wanted to try some EMG bands, which had been a fad showing up in fitness circles. Reiko didn't remember if they were suppose to build muscle or to help with recovery time, but regardless they worked by giving an electric shock to the wearer's muscles causing them to contract a little. Since no company made bands in Sophia's size, Naomi had ordered some commercial ones, reverse engineered them, and built oversized versions. It'd been a long time since Reiko had seen them, so she knew Sophia wasn't actively using them, but she didn't know if they were still around.
Reiko made her way to the utility room, crossing the kitchen, staying in between brightly painted yellow lines what were basically cross walks (her Mom and sisters paid a bit more attention to the floor where the lines were painted). In Jessica and Kimmy's homes, a utility room would have a clothes washer and drier, heater, and maybe a water softener or chest freezer. She'd been surprised visiting their homes for the first time that they didn't generate their own electricity or grow their own food at home, but she'd since realized that those things were only necessary when your house used more electricity than multiple sports stadiums combined and when your family could eat the contents of an entire grocery store in one sitting.
The "food" grown here was... unique. There were dozens of huge tanks growing algae, each tank being exposed to sunlight outside and grow lights inside. Each tank's algae was genetically engineered to imitate the taste of different foods, like tomatoes, carrots, peas, meats, etc. Algae could be harvested from the tubes, drained of most of the water and be eaten in paste form (which was a bit like baby food), or dried until it was a more solid slab. It was nutritious enough, but Mom was still trying to figure out how to make it less monotonous in texture and consistency. Something Reiko had noticed having dinner with her friends was the air pockets in bread. She'd mentioned it to Mom, and Mom pointed out that the problem was scaling those bubbles up in size so that the rest of the family could notice them.
The electricity generation was why Reiko was here - or rather, why Sophia spent so much time here. The house generated a lot of it's power from renewable sources, but a conventional battery backup wouldn't have been practical. Instead extra power was stored in a large reservoir of water, using pumps to push the water up high when there was extra electricity, then spinning turbines the same way a dam would when that power needed to be used. Sophia had hijacked this system to make her own weight machine. It had started out with her bypassing the electric pumps and manually pumping the water up. It had slowly evolved, with pulleys and linkages allowing Sophia to work different muscle groups, and then finally adding electromagnetic resistance to the pump so that Sophia could dial up the amount of effort it took. Rather than the clang of weights found in other gyms, this home gym was full of the sound of rushing water.
Just as Reiko had expected, there was Sophia, her muscles bulging as she pulled on the cables that wound their way through pulleys to the pump. Sophia was massive enough when they were sitting at the dinner table together, but seeing her from ground level as she exercised made the 12 year old giantess seem far, far bigger. Reiko tried imagining what it would be like to be that tall and that strong, but despite often daydreaming of being as big as (or bigger than) the rest of her family, those thoughts escaped her now. She could only watch, mesmerized as her sister grew even bigger.
Reiko lost track of how long she stood their, just watching Sophia grow stronger. However eventually Sophia stopped her exercises and went to grab her water bottle from the ground. It was while Sophia was going to grab the 10 foot (3m) tall bottle that she noticed Reiko. "Oh, hey Reiko. You don't often come back here, do you need a hand with something?" Sophia asked, before raising the bottle to her lips and chugging down the protein shake inside.
"Uh... yeah..." It took Reiko a second to remember what it was she was after. "Oh, right! Do you still have those EMG bands? Naomi wants to use them for a project."
Sophia stopped chugging and nodded, her mouth still full of the drink. She walked to a corner of the room where a pile of discarded items sat and rummaged through it for a moment. "Here you go," she said, pulling a handful of bands in various sizes out of the pile and setting them on the ground, "Both forearms, biceps, quads, calves, and the abs... that should be all of them. They didn't do much for me, so if Naomi wants to part them out she can be my guest!"
"Great! Uh..." I pause, looking at the haphazard pile, each band at least 5 feet (1.5m) wide and 20 feet (6m) long, "Could you carry them back to Naomi's room for me?"
Sophia sighs, clearly unhappy to be interrupted from her workout, but knowing how she needs to help her little sister around the house. She shrugs and grabs the bands in one arm and offers a hand to Reiko. Reiko climbs up, noticing just how much bigger Sophia's hands were than Mom's. There was about an extra 1.5 feet (0.45m) across the width of the palm. In Mom's hand, if Reiko wanted to lay down she'd have to be at a 45 degree angle across the palm, but in Sophia's hand she could almost lay down horizontal. Not for the first time, Reiko wondered what it would be like if their roles had been reversed, if she was the tallest in the family instead of the shortest...
They were walking across the kitchen Sophia stopped abruptly. Reiko felt the inertia carry her into the air, off of her sister's hands, her gut lurching as she was unexpectedly in the air. Reiko cried out in fear, her cries joined far louder (but only startled) cries. Time seemed to slow as she saw a cage forming around her, Sophia reflexively closing her fingers around her tiny sister. Reiko's head and shoulders bumped into the sturdy fingers, which were firm enough to stop her freefall yet soft enough to not harm her.
"Sorry Mom, I didn't see you there," she heard Sophia say. There weren't many people who could accidentally overlook a 54 foot (16.46m) giantess like Mom, but said giantess barely came up to Sophia's belly button.
Mom sighed, more shaken than upset. "I suppose I'll just have to watch out for you more often. It's only going to get worse as that growth spurt of yours continues. How much have you grown this year so far, 6 feet?"
"It's closer to 7 feet now, maybe more," Sophia replied. "It's been a while since I checked."
Reiko swallowed, unwillingly reminded that Sophia had grown more in one year than she was likely to grow in her lifetime - and that Sophia wasn't done growing. She was full of a mix of emotions: jealousy, awe, despair, annoyance... and she needed to do something about them all. Before she could think any more about it, she blurted out:
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