Chapter Text
“Aaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!” Mero wailed. The mermaid’s scream rattled the house and shook a flock of birds, along with one startled harpy, loose from the shingles.
“I know you love Darling just like I do, and I think I’m ready to share him,” Miia the lamia had said, tears in her eyes and a smile on her face. "I mean, mermaids are basically just lamias with fins, right?"
For months, Mero had previously been helping her win the affection of their homestay host, through the application of financial assistance and her delicately refined social graces. Things had been going well. She could feel it, the object of their desire had been just weeks away from fracturing like the duly elected government of a small, inconvenient nation under the pressure of her backing.
But then Miia had to go and ruin it. If she saw Mero as an equal, then how could Mero have an affair with Master behind her back? If Mero’s relationship with him was going to be that vanilla, then what was even the point? She had barely managed to keep her composure long enough to leave the room.
But, having screamed it out and taken some time to think things over, she now felt a lot clearer-headed. It would be a shame to start over... but she needed a new horse in the race.
- - - - -
“So, Centorea, you feel that the bond between man and woman should be something sacred, right? Something to stay absolutely, unwaveringly true to until you die?”
“Of course!” the busty horsegirl replied. “Just like the eternal bond between a centaur and their rider…” She blushed. “But if I may ask, what brought this up?”
Perfect, Merro thought. Miia had her charms, but Centorea had almost as much favour with the Master, and next to none of the risk.
“Well, I’ve seen the way you look at your rider, and he definitely is not completely oblivious to you, but you have a good heart, and a solid head on your shoulders. I think you deserve more from him, and with your permission, I’d like to help you get it.” Mero held out her hand. Centorea stared at it, then reached out her own. As always beside Mero, she felt small, as if in the presence of royalty. This despite the fact that she outweighed her more than fourfold, and how the mermaid was bound to her wheelchair when out of the water.
The deal seemed more like the kind of oath that led questing knights to their deaths, somehow, rather than a simple agreement between friends, but by the same token it also didn’t feel like refusal was an option on the table. She literally jumped as the salmon-scaled fishgirl assertively grabbed her hand. What shocked her most was not the warm, slightly oily feel of the appendage, but the sudden realization of her own audacity. Selfishly claiming to deserve ownership of her own lord, a man better and more noble than she could ever hope to be! How did she dare?
“You will not regret it! I have so many ideas…” Merro wheeled herself off to her room to make some calls.
- - - - -
“As per your request, we have been screening all observed compounds for cosmetic effects.” Given her wealthy and powerful familial connections, Mero had special influence in a lot of places in the human world. When her contact at the Fellowship for the Investigation of Subnautical Hierarchies had told her the lab had made a breakthrough on a longstanding project, she knew the timing had to be destiny.
“Mostly we’ve found nothing that can’t be replaced with an existing medicine. However, compound 8008 has a truly remarkable effect on vertebrates. Specifically, it results in expansion of the skin and vascular system in the mammary area, and increased fat deposition in same. A truly remarkable coordination of effects. In other words, it causes natural breast growth.”
“And you think the compound is ready for commercial distribution?” Mero asked.
“Oh heavens, no. We’re not even close to human or mermaid testing. In addition to possible unobserved side effects, there are concerns that by increasing metabolic activity and skin surface in the chest area it could ultimately diminish breast size, giving smaller, saggier breasts over time.”
“Then what is in those storage containers over there?”
“Well we did test a procedure for isolating the compound and putting it in a cream suspension. Those are waiting for hazard disposal to cart them off next Monday.”
“Why wait? I could handle that for you right now.”
“Respectfully,” the scientist said nervously, “we’re supposed to leave disposal of bioactives to the experts. If this stuff got into the water supply…”
“It’d be unforgivable, I agree. As a mermaid, I am an expert in the importance of preserving our natural water sources. I live in one!” She segued into a long speech on the importance of environmental preservation, managing to discreetly flash the head lab technician a large wad of cash at the same time. By the time she was back at the helipad, several tanks of the substance were packed in a crate and ready for loading.
This couldn’t be more perfect. If Centorea showed up one day with even more ridiculously massive breasts, it’d overwhelm the Master’s distinctly male mind. And then, once the treatment was perfected, the lithe, wily mermaid could aim to claim the title of largest floatation devices. She’d be crowned for sure once Centorea’s breasts withered like grapes, and his attention would shift. This plan gave her the shivers in all the right places.
- - - - -
Centorea was in a state of shock. The teamsters had surprised her, suddenly entering her room without permission, but luckily she’d just been combing her tail. However, now that they were gone she felt the contents of their delivery, a set of ominous steel cylinders, closing in around her. Each was about a meter tall and a third as wide, burnished and new, with something like a hose faucet near the bottom, and overall they took up much of the available space on her small tatami flooring.
“Is my lucky girl ready?” Mero startled her with a sudden wheelchair-bound appearance.
“Ready for what?”
“To win your human’s heart, of course. I said I had a plan. We know there are things he already likes about you. We should start by emphasizing those as much as we can.”
“I will do whatever I can to become virtuous enough to be worthy of Milord!” Centorea said passionately, her fist clenched and held aloft. “I will be brave, loyal, honest, generous-“
Mero cut her off. “Actually, I was talking about your breasts.”
Centorea’s hands flew to her chest, setting it to jiggling wildly as they tried in vain to modestly cover the large orbs. “My b-b-“ she stuttered, her lips trembling.
“Not that he doesn’t value good character,” Mero corrected. “And your virtuous personality is one of your best features,” she said soothingly, but berating herself mentally.
Why was she comforting this sad hoofbeast? If she wasn’t careful, they could end up as friends, and then everything would be ruined. But she couldn’t bring herself to be cruel. Centorea was genuinely a remarkably kind and just person, usually even in the presence of her one true love. If Mero couldn’t return that kindness here despite her own affections, she realized she wouldn’t be able to live with herself, evil schemes be damned.
“But that strategy sounds like it would take a long time, and there’s only so much room for improvement in your personality, honestly. However he is a man despite everything else, and part of his current admiration is for your body. I know for a fact that he is interested in breasts specifically.”
“Just think of it as one advantage that you have over Miia,” she continued. “An advantage we can increase using these,” she said, gesturing to one of the tanks. Carefully taking one of Cerea’s tea ceremony bowls from the table next to her, she placed it under the faucet and turned the knob, meteing out a large blob of thick cream, and passing it to her. “This is a revolutionary new cosmetic product. Apply it to your breasts once per day, and it will make them large enough to capture his eye permanently.”
“Well, if he’d really like that,” Centorea said hesitantly.
Nobody moved for about half a minute.
“Aren’t you going to try it out?”
“Right now!?!” Centy exclaimed, scandalized.
“There’s no way I’m letting you harpy out and lose him at this point, when all you have to do is take off your top and rub it in.”
Centorea knew she was right. Better to just get it over with. She unbuttoned her sleeveless top, slowly flexing to let it fall over her shoulders and onto her back. Her creamy, perfect breasts bounced free, each just a bit larger than her head, and only seemingly anything less than gigantic when viewed in parcel with her muscular hindquarters.
Mero admired them, as the centaur picked up a dollop of ointment and worked it between her fingers. She started at the nipples, which seemed proportionally petite next to her large flesh-coloured aereolae or the breasts as a whole, pinching them between her fingers and coating them, then working her way up the breast. Next she started doing the bulging flanks of her firm boobs in strips, each pass of her digits from tip to base pushing them together, making them bulge forward until they almost immediately sprung back to their original shape, practically pressing her fingers apart with their firmness. Stopping to re-coat her fingers occasionally, she worked quick and business-like over the large surface area of her tatas, only hesitating at the crevasse of her cleavage. She let out a small, high pitched sigh as her cold fingers swiped cleanly through the sensitive sun-deprived skin between the two orbs, like a credit card through the world’s most beautiful card reader.
Mero realized that her eyes had become dry as she had watched the entire display, enraptured and creepily unblinking. But that was normal, wasn’t it? She was a mermaid, her eyes were frequently dry when she forgot to take her midmorning swim. Centorea put her clothes back on and the two parted ways.