The Rendering Pit - Day 6 (Patreon)

Rigel's looking for friends, but in a place like The Rendering Pit even that is a dangerous prospect! Has our lizard trod lightly through the minefield of social cliques, or has he stumbled into a pitfall? You voted! Now let's find out!

Written by RabidBadger , illustrated by me

The following contains light themes of transformation, weight gain, body modification, sci fi and more!

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Rigel found himself out in the university commons, once again – it was the best place for watching the other students and continuing his study of just what kind of insanity the student body got up to here. Finding cliques among them hadn’t been strange - honestly, the opposite would’ve been far weirder – but somehow he hadn’t expected a full blown stable of student clubs dedicated to different facets of the ongoing craziness he was witnessing. Hell, one of them had left a little brochure for him tucked into the door of his dorm addressed ‘to the cute boy with the scales – not the fatties’. 

He hadn’t paid it too much mind thanks to that – ‘Sigma Prospero’ didn’t sound like a terribly appealing group anyway. The whole aesthetic modification business sounded alright, but between the lines Rigel was pretty sure he was seeing some elitism and prejudice in there – particularly how the letter had said ‘our pleasure to extend an invitation to someone who shows so much potential despite their lack of advantages’ – somehow he felt like the token… whatever he would be to them. No, that wasn’t going to work.

No matter how nice that gazelle’s crystalline horns looked.

“Looking’s only going to get me so far though, and- that…”

Rigel blinked slowly, he’d been scanning over the grounds, still finding the proximity to all this plant life, open space – all of it rather intoxicating – and there among the plants was a student. Not a student sitting among the plants, but rather among, and counted as one of, the plants. Rigel saw roots that were clearly feet, tied to a bulbous, bluish-purple mass – and then at the far end of said mass were two arms and a head. Currently, said head (sporting blue fur, but looking generally feline otherwise – and with leafy green hair) was staring at its phone and looked a bit bored.

“That’ll do.”

Rigel started over immediately, ignoring the disappointed look from the gazelle – curious ones from some of the others – he’d made his choice. Approaching the berry-cat-thing, Rigel tried to position himself so he’d be seen en route. Sneaking up on people was never good socially, especially not in detention centers – so he had some habits on the matter. Plus the cat couldn’t exactly turn around if he really was rooted to the ground, so this was probably just polite. Rigel walked up to a few feet shy, raising a hand.

“Err, hey there. I’m going to be blunt – this is the most interesting thing I’ve seen so far here for what the other students look like, and I’m curious what’s up with th- well, you.”

The cat looked up – definitely bored given the expression. Looked up, and then right back down to the phone.

“Group project – I drew the short straw. You wanna talk to the senior member, she’ll be by in… well she better be around within five minutes to charge my phone or I’m going to… something. I’ll figure that out later.”

Rigel blinked a little – the nonchalance was probably the weirdest part of the whole thing. This cat wasn’t even reacting to, as far as Rigel could tell, being a plant now. A little hesitation, some awkward silence, followed by the reptilian student coughing once and simply taking a seat.

“Mind if I lean on… well, you, I guess?”

The feline snickered a little, but seemed to shrug as well – much as Rigel could tell with the cat’s back being to the ground – or in it? Hard to say.

“Sure.”

He had two motives there – Rigel really did want to make himself comfortable, but he also was beyond curious about the way this cat’s body felt. The consistency, the smoothness, how taut the dome was – and most of those things revealed themselves when he nestled in against the feline berry boy. It was indeed smooth, hairless, shiny – just a little bit of give to the surface but he could tell the cat was ‘ripe’ in there. Now he just had to wait for-

“Helloooo Norman – time for your watering and charging, and – ooh, company!”

The voice startled him a bit, he hadn’t heard footsteps – and Rigel was listening for those. The reason for their lack was clear soon enough though. The voice was coming from a floating bot, a screen in its center and three snaking limbs coming out – one was deploying a cable into the charging port of the berry cat’s phone, and another seemed to be toting a watering can – and was… well, watering the cat’s feet. Something that the altered feline immediately started to blush a deep violet over, smiling in spite of himself. The face on the screen though? It looked smooth, furless – amphibious, maybe? 

“Err, hi there. You’re the ‘senior member’ I presume?”

The bot’s third arm began waving at that.

“Yup! Elaine Gray. What can I do for ya?”

Rigel hesitated there, he’d gone the blunt route with ‘Norman’ but it somehow felt more awkward to do that twice in a row. Yet what other way was there to do this? 

“I ah, I was watching people here – trying to decide who to talk to – new to the place myself. Then I saw Norman here and-“

“And you had to come ask about it, hah! Yeah, I get that. I guess our project looks obvious, doesn’t it? This isn’t even the big one, we’re going to have to do something a lot crazier to impress Professor Tenebrae.”

Rigel blinked slowly there again, glancing down at Norman – hoping some kind of reaction from the catberry might give him a little context to work with. All he saw of it was a blue face illuminated by a phone screen. And then came the bot’s arm tugging at his chin, drawing his gaze back to the amphibian Elaine’s face.

“So what’s your name, and your major?”

Another pause. Rigel could imagine all kinds of reasons for the catberry not to bother interacting – and the likely one (disinterest – he was probably the lazy member of the group) was benign – but there were those possibilities. What if his brain chemistry was altered by this change, or if he just had no energy or focus as a part plant creature? But he wasn’t going to just bluntly ask that question. No, he’d have to ease toward that idea.

“Rigel, and advanced chemistry.”

The visage on the camera grinned slowly.

“Rigel what, and how about making that biochem?”

Rigel’s brow raised slowly – he wasn’t bothering to hide the curiosity. After how this had started, what would be the point?

“Just Rigel, parents don’t want me using their surname anymore. As to the biochem… I could at least consider it. I’d want to know more, I think.”

The reptilian student felt a buzzing from his tablet at that point, just one – the new message alert, probably – usually.

“Totally fair – I just tossed you a one-time pass to my professor’s office hours. He’s the guy you’d wanna see about this. Oh! Also, maybe go check with the Ingen folks? I know that stuffy witch with the shiny horns was checking you out, but I promise I.N.T. is more fun than those ‘aesthetics are a worthy pursuit too’ half-assers.”

Rigel looked down at his tablet – there was indeed a pass of some sort attached to a mail he’d just gotten. How they got his student ID number he didn’t know. 

“That kinda helped, I think? Thanks at any rate. Though ah, who – actually no. One thing at a time. I’ll get the student groups here sorted out eventually, but narrowing my major comes first.”

The little bot ‘nodded’ after a fashion, then resumed its watering.

Rigel stood. Those office hours weren’t far away, and he couldn’t think of anything he’d gain by delaying. Besides, it might take him a little bit to find the place in a campus like this.

*** 

It did, of course. At first anyway. Rigel had a little difficulty locating the right wing of the campus, and then there was figuring out which floor it was on – the chem wing was sub-divided for biological, laboratory, and ‘other’. As soon as he got down to biological there was a clear path – things were humid and dank down one hall, and kind of earthy and green smelling the other way – albeit with a fair bit of corrosion in the grating underfoot either way. 

At least, Rigel told himself, this direction felt more welcoming – more wholesome. The green smells were welcome things, long-missed things he wasn’t going to get tired of any time soon. That, he mused, might be another point in this path’s favor all by itself. 

The office door looked simultaneously like the most unexpected thing one could find in a station based establishment, and the most appropriate thing ever. It was a tangle of vines hanging over an open archway. Of course, that created the problem of not being able to knock. Rigel had to muster up the courage to just stick his head in, and clear his throat.

He got about that far before he went slack-jawed and started staring. Rigel had read books about places like he was seeing now, but that was the end of it. He saw bushes everywhere, apart from a handful of lichen dappled stone pathways, and no ceiling could be seen for the dangling ivy. Every here and there were larger instances of color, some kind of bioluminescent moss on the walls in large clumps had replaced the station lighting with a nice, relaxing blue – and it reflected off a handful of smoother surfaces here and there amid the foliage. 

Rigel felt like he was stepping out of the station and into someplace else entirely when he crossed that threshold.

“This explains the fresh air, the excellent food… I never even saw places like this at home.”

“Indeed it does.”

The voice wasn’t unpleasant. Soft, maybe a little awkward even. It also came thoroughly out of nowhere as far as Rigel could tell. When he turned to face it though he found himself eye to – well, no – the cat he was looking back at was actually a little taller than he was (surprising in itself). The feline’s ebon fur was the darkest thing in the room, apart from the two triangular patches of white pointing down – one at his chest, one his belly – a shade of white far brighter than the dingy lab coat lined with the occasional twig that he wore otherwise. 

The man looked a little aged around the eyes, or perhaps just tired, but seemed to be a species of content that suggested it wasn’t a state of mind he often frequented. 

“Uh, h-hello there sir. Er – Professor Tenebrae.”

Rigel adopted a familiar pose, almost on instinct. Straight backed, hands behind his back, clasped at waist level. Normally they’d be on the other side of a set of bars. The lack of them made the familiarity spoil a little, fail to carry the usual comfort. 

“Relax a little, my garden doesn’t respond well to tension. Elaine said she’d extended an invitation to someone, though she gave me little else to go on. That said, given the reaction I’m guessing you’re from one of the juvenile detention sentence conversion initiatives.”

Relaxing was a bit tricky – not really the kind of thing one often did on command after all. It tended to only work at half-measures when done that way, if at all. Still, his shoulders slumped a little – that might be enough for now. 

“Err, yes. As soon as I turned eighteen I had the choice, and… well, I was tired of gray metal and no windows, sir. Been trying to sort out what to do with myself here – having so many options is a bit of a novel experience.”

The feline professor produced an extremely weathered tablet from his lab coat, one dusted with flecks of green and sporting an honest-to-god wooden case. 

“Good performance during orientation… advanced chemistry – and Elaine was pitching our biochemistry specialization in botany. Good girl. What do you think, so far?”

Rigel did feel a bit more genuinely relaxed the longer he looked around the place, all that color and the smells were easing him into things. 

“I think I really like your garden, sir. The thought of spending more time here, or growing my own, is… I want it.”

The professor chuckled a little at that, and smiled. The expression looked, as he did, a bit worn – but somehow earnest.

“Alright. I think we can arrange that. A good number of my students do spend a lot of time in here, for one reason or another. Now, if you’ll just let me get a look at you-“

The feline fished a pair of spectacles out of his lab coat, of all things. Rigel was bemused at the sight – with correction so easy to manage, there were very few who bothered. Only the truly destitute, or the deliberately retro. The cat put his hands on Rigel’s shoulders, squaring off as he squinted through the lenses, and taking a deep breath. The breath, Rigel noted, sounded a bit unhealthy – there was loud crackling at the end of it, and the cat’s chest seemed to puff out quite a bit.

As he exhaled, Professor Tenebrae seemed to breathe out a faint, hazy mist. Rigel, attempting to stay polite, managed not to react visibly. Probably an asthma issue being tended to by implants. The cat loosened his arms and patted Rigel’s shoulders then, smiling broadly, and reaching down into one of the bushes next to him. He pulled his hands back up with a small branch laden with some kind of small, purple berries on it.

“Excellent. That should do nicely. Here, take these then – just a taste of what’s to come in our program, young Rigel. I’ll look for your name on my registration requests.”

Rigel felt curiously light-headed for a moment there as his Professor spoke, but he gladly took the branch full of fruit while waiting for it to clear. The lunches here were pretty impressive, but fresh fruit? That was a hell of a thing.  

“Y-yes sir. I’ll have it in by the end of the night, Professor.”

“So respectful too. Alright, on your way son.”

Rigel nodded, not thinking to question that his new Professor would need to keep things brief. Probably a busy man. The reptilian student simply bowed his head, and backed away toward the drapery of vines.

Dagon Tenebrae watched his new student go, wondering just what would come of that one – but quite certain he’d be happy with the result regardless. Such manners, and appreciation – if only everyone who came by his program were that agreeable. The cat turned from the doorway then, pacing down a path and brushing his hands across a tree beside him, coaxing a shaky, creaking moan out into the rustling of the room. Dagon followed the sound up to a creased, mostly bark-covered snout, brushing his hand across it fondly.

“Honestly, the ego on those silver-spoon-fed simpletons is matched only by their blindness to the things that actually matter. I wonder if a term in detention would leave all of them a bit more polite.”

*** 

Rigel looked down at the thing in his hands as he walked, holding it like something precious. His mind hadn’t been able to really wrap around that gift just yet, he’d eaten one of the berries right away of course – his finger was still stained purple, and still tasted sweet when he repeatedly attempted to lick it clean. The rest he had stopped short of – this must be some kind of test too – everything here was. 

The answer came to Rigel as he passed by the school commissary – it was as simple as could be, but that was a thing in itself. Sometimes you had to be able to stop overthinking, and spot the obvious. The commissary had no problem fabricating him a small pot and some soil for the little cutting, and Rigel returned to his room confident – smiling – relaxed. More than he could recall feeling in some time. Why he had ever had doubts about Professor Tenebrae and the botanical biochem program he couldn’t quite fathom – it really felt quite alien to him to even try to remember the doubt, which was curious given how recently he’d been feeling it. 

Whatever. None of that mattered. Rigel tucked hi little plant, his symbol of acceptance here, into the windowsill by his bed – and allowed himself a second, delicious sample of the thing’s fruits. He couldn’t wait to see what he could do with this.

Maybe he should see what those I.N.T. folks could offer as help on that front?