"Ahah, yeah, that sounds like a hoot," you weakly enthuse, not even trying to sound convincing. Yet for some reason, he buys it.

"Yep! That newbie nurse is gonna be spending a lot of time in the kids' stomachs, there's just too many of them for him to deal with, I know it!" He begins to howl with laughter at imagining the results of his own prank.

"So, Mister, uh, I'm gonna actually go stuff myself a little bit more and make it even worse for the guy," you say as a way to excuse yourself from the conversation. This is really your only option other than waiting for him to leave, since he seems a bit too large for you to eat, even though you've observed your predatory abilities develop over the past weeks as you've continually eaten more and more people.

"Capital idea!" A phrase like that means he's old or he didn't grow up here in the United States. Or both. "Here, let me get out of the way so that you can pass me. That doorway barely fits one of us, let alone both of us. Although, I am highly impressed and quite amazed that such a young girl like you can already eat about, what, twenty-five or thirty students and you still have room for a couple more?"

"I'm a fast learner," you respond, and the old man roars with laughter. "A clever one. I should make you my prodigy, but you're not even my student this semester! I tell you what, take a class of mine next semester, and we'll have boatloads of good times as I teach you all about..." he makes a dramatic pause, "...fine dining."

He roars with laughter again, and you egg him on, saying, "that was a good one," lying like the terrible person you are.

He moves out of the way, wiping tears from his eyes, and you jog past him, giant stomach slowing you down significantly. He calls after you as you scurry down the halls, "Oh! I am Professor Crawford! Sign up for my class in December!"

You don't reply, and turn the corner. Already severely out of breath, you stop in the hallway, slump against the wall, and rest your arms on your stomach. Now listening for it, you hear your stomach loudly gurgle, and you focus on it. You try to will yourself to digest faster, to pack the humans into fat molecules and waste, imagining the process (probably completely incorrectly) in your head, and you push at your muscles trying to spur them into overdrive.

It seems to be a fruitless effort, until you hear the digestion noises becoming more frequent. But perhaps your body is just naturally speeding up its digestion process. You stop furrowing your eyebrows intently and pressing against your sides with your arms. Over the next minute, you hear your stomach slow down. Coincidence?

One last time, you concentrate hard on all of the muscles of your abdomen and surrounding area. Something in your brain, if you hit its synapse or neurotransmitter or something cranial (you are just making up explanations to yourself), maybe lets you manually control how much your stomach dissolves its contents. The stomach pounds its contents, you think you remember learning, so perhaps you will be able to flex that more or something.

You hope, you hope with all your will that you can try to speed up your digestion so you won't actually have to slowly waddle everywhere.

Not only were you grinding your teeth, but you realize you were clenching your eyes shut, so you open them. And see your stomach only half the size it was before you closed it. Success!

You were power-digesting!

Already, it's easier to walk, though you still have a person-sized gut spilling out in front of your nude form. You look around for a safe room to continue digesting in. Each classroom you pass is in session in some way, and eventually you go right into a bathroom and decide to digest there and then dump them out in one sitting. You need to get a clean colon and a vacant stomach as fast as possible because, late tonight, you will make a second visit to the nurse's office, and you will feast.