2014.07.23 - Tigra Gets Brought Down to Size

Time has passed, and Tigra remains embiggened. Her condition is beginning to take a toll on her, as her system struggles to keep up with the increased demands placed on it. Her temper has gotten shorter, even as she hasn't, and she's become more of a recluse, staying in the warehouse as much as practical, and then some, so as to avoid hurting someone with a tantrum. At the moment, she's curled up dozing, a very large, very powerful great cat.

Bruce whistles sharply from fifty feet away, followed by a small legion of men in black suits. "Tigra!" he calls.

He holds the men off with a wave, approaching the napping tigress. "I've been racking my brain about your case of gigantism, and I think I've got a solution," Bruce tells the giant female. "It's not gonna be fun, but I think I can reverse what's happened to you."

It probably says something that Tigra's approached unaware, not stirring until the sharp whistle, and even then she's a bit sluggish. She looks up, then finally recognizes Banner, and sits up more properly. "Hmm?" she asks, brain lurching into motion. What's that? Oh, a solution. Oh! "Dr Banner, -this- isn't fun," she says, gesturing at herself and her surroundings. "And to be honest, it's been getting a lot -less- fun." She eyes the men in black curiously as she continues, "At this point, I'm willing to try just about anything."

Bruce gestures at the men, who start unloading gear and equipment. "Basically, it's a mass transducer," Bruce explains to Tigra. "You know, mass is energy? You can add energy to a construct and create mass, if you know what you're doing. So what I'm gonna do is basically use an inverse array and 'drain' the excess mass off. It's gonna create a lot of excess energy, but I think I've got the science worked out."

Tigra watches the unloading curiously, her tail thumping against the floor every now and again. She nods a little to the explanation. "THink I remember you mentioning that, when you first checked me out," she says after a moment's consideration. And then there's a small frown. "Excess energy. That sounds like it could be kinda dangerous. Or is that what you mean you've got worked out? I'm not gonna just go fwoosh and level the building am I?"

"I'm pretty good at things growing unexpectedly," Bruce says, dryly. He fishes in his pocket for some doritos and gnoshes down, watching the men set the array of lasers and scanning equipment up. "It's sort of 'my thing'," he reminds the tigress.

It only takes about ten minutes and the devices are in place. "Go ahead and stand over there while we get the lasers dialed in," Bruce says, gesturing at the center of a wide circle where a dozen of the devices are forming a perimeter.

"Ohhh, right. The whole...Hulk thing," Tigra says, a touch weakly. Is that something someone should talk about? She can't help but feel like maybe she should avoid talking about it, like you don't comment about someone's rash. She watches the set up curiously, and a touch frustratedly. A part of her thinks she should understand more of what's going on than she is, but it's just so hard to think right now. She grunts softly, and then at Bruce's direction, rises carefully to her great height and steps over to the circle with a thumping of heavy feet. "What was the line in TRON? Here goes something into nothing and back into something again?"

"Something like that. Now, this might feel a bit... weird."

Lasers glow and kick on, and start striking Tigra. It's a strange, numbing sensation, one that crawls across Tigra's body. Blue, cold lights, cold lasers, start their work, pulsing somehow in reverse and minutely pulling Tigra's excess mass away from her.

Tigra braces herself, which is quite a sight in her current condition. She gasps in surprise at the contact of the lasers, and ripples pass up and down through her fur. Her breathing gets a little ragged with anxiety, and then she brightens visibly, emotionally not luminously, as she feels herself beginning to slowly shrink. "Doc! I think it's starting to work!" she says with a mix of relief and hope.

It's not a fast process. Bruce is monitoring things from a control station, adjusting things and tweaking knobs and dials. He watches Tigra just as intently, his eyes focused in narrow concentration as the lasers begin to work their magic.

It's not a fast process, but it's a steady process, and most importantly, it's -progress-. Tigra has to resist the urge to jump up and down happily as she feels herself getting shorter and lighter, slowly but steadily. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, her current garments happen to be made from unstable molecules, and so are shrinking with her. Not that it still isn't quite a show, of course.

It takes about half an hour, but Tigra's eventually more or less her normal sized. Bruce shuts down the devices, and wandres over to the woman, looking her over. "Well? How do you feel?" he asks, considering the tigress. "A bit more like yourself?"

Compared to how she was before, certainly closer to normal, though she's some inches taller than she used to be, and a bit...larger in build in places. But after so long as a giant, Tigra doesn't really remember exactly what it was like to be normal, so she's not fully aware. And now that she -is- normal size, she grins great big at the doctor, and then does a quick backflip. "Oh I feel so much better!" she says, then rushes forward to pick him up in a joyous hug. "I'm back! I'm me again!"

Bruce acks and dodges away automatically. "No hug! Hugs make Bruce twitchy!" he declares, flinging a black-suited man in Tigra's path. "Just... stand there, and be happy!" he orders the Tigra, pointing at the ground in front of her. "Without hugging me!"

She laughs but doesn't press the hug. She knows some people don't like hugs. Of course, it doesn't occur to her, at the moment, that Bruce might mean -other- things by twitchy. So instead she hugs the man in black, even twirling him before setting him back down, to grin broadly towards Bruce, keeping her distance. "I owe you -big- time, Doc," she tells him. "I didn't want to worry people, but I could feel my system struggling. I don't know how much longer I could've survived like that."

"Three weeks, four days," Bruce says immediately. "You've got a strong heart, but the capillary action of your intestines and kidneys were never meant to handle the kind of pressure they were being put under. I think your kidneys would have started to go, and then your liver- the ratio of surface area to detox efficiency would hve eventually ended you."

Tigra blinks a bit in surprise at the precise estimate. "If I hadn't been superhuman to begin with, I'm sure they all would have given out by now. As is, well, I think I'm going to use this as an excuse to take it easy for a little while," she says with a crooked grin. She does bounce up and down a bit, exulting in being able to do so without breaking concrete. "I'm back, I'm back, I'm back!"

"Take lots of vitamins," Bruce advises. "Drink plenty of fluids. Eat, like, as much as you can at a sitting. We're got to make sure you're adequately fed and hydrated. Give me a call if you develop any odd pains or dizziness or headaches. Take two aspirin," he says, starting to break down the equipment, "and call me in the morning!"

Tigra snickers softly at the two aspirin, and keeps out of the way of the equipment breakdown. "You got it, Doc," she tells him. "I owe you one. A big one, pun aside," she adds. "Anything I can do for you, you be sure to let me know, 'kay?"

"Just don't let it happen again," Bruce chuckles at Tigra. He walks over and gives her a very friendly if very timidly awkward punch on the shoulder. "And be careful out there." He smiles affably and heads back to directing the breakdown of the gear, leaving the happy tigress to cavort and gambol.