The Rendering Pit - Days of Our Lives, Epilogue (Patreon)

As the first arc of The Rendering Pit draws to a close, we follow up on some of our favourite students, ex-students, and teachers! What new adventures will they go on next arc? What new faces will we see? Read on, to find out!

The following contains: blueberry inflation, weight gain, psuedo-pregnancy, humiliation, immobility and more!

 

Written by the marvelous Rabidbadger of FA! Illustrated by yours truly. 

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Rigel groaned, the gentle sound vanishing into the damp and barely visible walls of the nurse’s office. Between the room’s capacity to devour sound, and the dull thrum of the pumps he was currently hooked to on just about every meaningful part of his torso, he wasn’t even sure he’d heard it himself. The nurse certainly didn’t seem to, though the doe was nonetheless smiling sweetly at him and running a hand across the crest around his neck while she performed the rest of the physical he’d come in for.

“Conversion rate seems steady, which is probably a good sign that this won’t be reversible at any point my dear – not with anything short of attempting to transplant you into an entirely new body.”

The reptilian student shuddered. The liquid in him was maddening in just how mobile it was. It had currents and tides, all of which were in turmoil as the nurse’s machinery did its work of emptying him out – or as close to it as he ever got.

“N-no thanks, I think I’ll keep this one.”

There were plenty of problems that Rigel could list that had come from the things that happened to his body after he got a bit too free with his professor’s ‘gift’ to him – like how he was struggling mightily to coax a bloated, cone-shaped arm around his side to tend to an itch he’d developed right above his ass, and couldn’t quite convince it to bend enough. Neither that, nor any of the others left Rigel inclined to attempt a body swap at the hands of anyone, ever. 

“Suit yourself, dear. I admit, I’d have loved to see what makes this one tick when you were done with it – but we’re not here to impose anything you aren’t comfortable with. Speaking of – you are comfortable, I hope?”

Rigel stopped to think about the question, perhaps more deeply than it was meant. Was he comfortable, here? A brief ping registered on his tablet, still clutched in his free hand, still just barely able to get around to his front in his direly inflated state. Genevieve. A friend, or the start of one anyway – he hadn’t known her that long to be honest, but they did something important together. Something good. She’d helped him, too – when this issue had first gotten out of hand.

“I uh, I’ve got an-“

The doe had stepped off, apparently distracted by one of the innumerable plants strewn about the walls of the room in small, low-tech pots. When she grazed her fingers over it, Rigel could swear he saw a faint glow, and felt a shiver run through his back as he did.

“An itch? I’ll get it for you, yes.”

The student blinked slowly there, shifting his gaze about a bit – trying to make out more of the room in the darkened office, but not able to. All he really accomplished was rubbing his bulbous, swollen cheeks against his equally puffy shoulders. Rigel tried to ignore that moment, instead tapping out a response to Genevieve while dealing with the hot rush of embarrassment that came with someone scratching his ass for him.

Sure, I can come visit Sam with you – just gotta finish getting juiced or I’ll end up stuck down there with him.

*** 

Genevieve looked down at the response and gave it a nod, not that anyone was around to appreciate it. She was staring down into the warmer, humid underbelly of the university because her old roommate was down there. The vixen hesitated not because she didn’t want to see him (she did – for a few reasons), but because of the memory of what happened on her last two trips below. The conflict with that student, and the near miss with that rogue AI that preceded it. 

Fear left her with the odd state of her bones feeling chilled while her skin began to sweat gently to offset the uncomfortable air down below, but it didn’t stop the vixen from entering those metal and cable halls. At least, she told herself, it was mostly all downhill.

“Which means uphill later – when I’m even sweatier.”

An annoyed grunt followed that, which repeated itself when Genevieve caught the side of her belly on a corner. Flinching, she paused – leaning up against the opposite wall as her forehead burned with a sudden onslaught of signals. She was suddenly aware of the presence of her primary drone on her shoulder, its weight normally being so familiar she didn’t even register it. The simple little thing posed a conceptual query at her – he asked if she was alright. Mirroring the inquiry, six much smaller and simpler copies of the drone hovered about Genevieve’s body bombarding her implants for a moment. Reaching to touch the crystalline growths at her forehead, Genevieve found them both warm, and slightly longer (and sharper) than she remembered.

“I’m okay guys, I promise. It’s just hot down here and my belly is never the size I remember it having been.”

The burning stopped at least, though only because it degraded to a more generalized buzz as her drone and its – her – the others – Genevieve found herself standing there making absolutely sure she wasn’t thinking offspring even as the little things radiated an echo of her drone’s uncomplicated and unqualified adoration of her, which made her feel a little bad for having done it, and then immediately squint at her own reflection as the absurdity of the situation caught up to her. 

Within a moment, the drones had all fled – buzzed off, so to speak. Genevieve looked about herself and exhaled – as heavy as the air felt down here, being alone made that chill creep back up. It was easier to get to the rookery now than to get back to the halls though. Rounding the corner, Genevieve pressed on. That ramp down with the airlock bulkheads was ahead of her, which meant she was only about three minutes away from being able to sit the hell down and rest her back.

It also, she remembered as the airlock system began to cycle through and let Genevieve in, meant cooler air for the time being. She’d almost forgotten they went the extra mile to keep those four mammoth ex-students comfortable. The cool air that greeted her immediately left Genevieve feeling happier, even if the dark atmosphere and the four gently twitching, heaving masses of color suspended from the ceiling were disquieting.

It was easy to zero in on the purple one at least.

Samuel was only dimly aware of something disturbing the room, and even that only because it was a tiny bit different than expected. He knew the sound of the doors opening, the barest shift in the room’s temperature, but normally there was a half-unconscious anticipation of connection that came of other members of his family entering the chamber. This time, that part was missing. This time, the associations his mind that fired off weren’t responding to proximity, or touch, and it took the immense, immobile, latex-coated (and filled) badger a few moments (and a repeat of the stimulus) to realize it was someone speaking. To him.

“Samuel? You asleep or something?”

The badger stretched, or tried to anyway. Mostly he just flexed a little inside himself, not enough to show any signs of movement by the time the action reached the edges of his body though. Slowly, like watching a computer boot and work its way through one process after another, things fell into place – the way one was supposed to respond to this. Samuel opened his mouth.

Hwurmppphhb.

“Ooof- whf h-hey there! S-sorry about that.”

Genevieve couldn’t quite help wincing a little just from the sudden onslaught to the room’s otherwise dull background noise. She didn’t mind so much though, by the time she was easing up to the edge of the catwalk to pat the badger’s belly where it hung up against the harness he was in she was already trying not to grin. 

“Heh, it’s all right. Better out than in, yeah?”

A great roiling set itself in motion when Samuel felt the vixen touch his belly, a bubbling cauldron at work inside him that he had no control over. The byproduct of several arcane processes that were only loosely biological all happening in concert. 

Genevieve heard the badger’s stomach growl. Fiercely. 

“W-well, maybe – I could use some in too, but I think my people are all out gathering things, so this is a good time! My face isn’t so busy. How were exams?”

It was the vixen’s turn to groan, with her face instead of her middle (though that was starting too, now that it had encouragement).

“Ugh! Such a pain… I mean, the extra credit is great, but wow.”

Samuel couldn’t help but be relieved that he didn’t have to worry about that, or much of anything else. The one thing he’d taken away from the whole mess was that he was really happy he didn’t have that kind of stress in his life anymore. A thought that sparked a question, when it crossed the badger’s slowly quickening mind.

“Hey, what ever happened to that cat I got dropped on anyway?”

*** 

Sebastian tried desperately to wiggle where he sat, and was still thoroughly uncertain how to handle the inescapable knowledge that other than shaking the swaddling of fat on his arms and the puffy mass of his cheeks a little, he failed. It was the third or fourth time he’d made the attempt now, with the same general loop happening in his mind each time it came around. He’d try to wrap his head around the state of himself, the slowly heaving mountain of faintly tingling lard that was now his new reality. It would go badly. Then, in a panicked effort to do something that had some kind of measurable effect on the situation, Sebastian would let lose another furious attempt at the same action.

And a couple parts of him would quiver. A little.

Wheeeeee!

That had happened on attempt two, and each one after. Sebastian slumped down, or tried to anyway. None of his body actually moved, but inwardly he felt bunches of muscle all simultaneously relax in defeat. Close enough. Inside, he could just about feel the simple, excited glee of that program running rampant through the repurposed adipose data storage that now accounted for the vast majority of his body mass. It really did feel like a little kid scampering through him, running over the surface of his ass, then detouring to spin in circles somewhere in the bulk of his stomach. 

Sebastian had other realities to face, too. That belly of his felt empty – it was larger than his entire body had been before, and he’d spent an hour guzzling chocolate nutrient paste that morning until it was full. Now it was early afternoon and he wanted more. The fact that having the thought led to one of the ship’s medwaldos appearing within moments, carrying a plate of legitimately cooked and prepared food (steak and potatoes) both relieved him, and made it worse.

He was already so very fat, a parody of a person – but he wasn’t the only one in this ‘crew’, and he was eating steak without anything else but his own ass weighing on him. 

No, he thought to himself – he was being fed steak by a remotely operated drone, because his own limbs were useless, but his body’s new owner was the sort that liked to provide a few kindnesses and comforts to salve the wound a bit. 

Underneath himself, glued to four spots under his ponderous bulk, Sebastian felt the maglev plates affixed to his body thrum into life. Felt each ass cheek and two large segments of his belly push upward, the hull of the ship repelling them an inch or two off the deck. It was good that he could move, sort of, he supposed – but as the cat chewed another morsel of (rather delightful) beef he still had to lament that it was wholly out of his control, even if it did take him to the viewing ports as they passed by a nebula that looked like a purple and crimson snowstorm.

The view left Sebastian transfixed, watching as impossibly massive fields of colorful crystal dust and gasses seen from an immense distance danced about like they were just outside the window. Swirling currents and eddies, never quite escaping the pull of the storm, always fed back in on itself – chaos within a boundary. Something wonderful created out of something dangerous kept in the right circumstances.

“Like you, I guess.”

Sebastian could ‘feel’ Red’s curiosity, it was remarkably like a pair of ears perking up – under his skin.

What’s that?

The cat kept staring, and eating, at first. The bot doing the feeding was under Red’s control, so on some level the ‘fox’ was letting him take his time with this. Something he appreciated.

“You are kind of exactly what the professors were afraid of, I think – except that you aren’t. You’re like… the best-case scenario of it.”

I am the best-case scenario of a lot of things.

Sebastian had to chuckle a little – the fox was joking, but he meant it just the same. Which was fine, he supposed. 

“Probably was for me, too. I kinda doubt your ‘gran’ was going to bother finding out I like steak or make sure I got to take time and smell the flowers, so to speak.”

Yeah probably not. Though regarding ‘so to speak’ – you think the ship needs a plant or two? Hadn’t crossed my mind before.

He couldn’t really tilt his head all that well anymore, but he tried again anyway – and felt Red bounce a little when he did.

“…Yeah I bet it could.”

I’ll find us someplace to land that can fix that. In the meantime, I’m gonna go plot a few things out – maybe nap after. Let the drones know if you need anything.

Sebastian did indeed feel Red’s presence retreat further in, just as a general quieting inside the storage mass he was harboring. He stared out again, watching the colors flow and bend, watching the ghostly visage of his reflection in the glass be painted over by them. It was quiet up here, and he wasn’t afraid. There was going to be a lot of time before he totally accepted this, but he wasn’t terrified of ending up a drone – or some other kind of slave in his own body. He’d ended up being forced into an equal partnership – kind of – in it, but Sebastian was staring to think he might be okay with that. Eventually. 

After a lot of gradual coping, that is.

“Hey, bot? I could go for some pumpkin pie, or maybe blueberry, or – you know what? Bring me all the pie and I’ll figure it out.”

***

The world felt cold, and that cold was a lie. Diving into himself meant shedding all the co-opted sensory input on which he thrived, heading into a world of black thread that wove and spun and stung. The first instants were always the worst, that cold disconnection of pure thought before he had the necessary time to impose a visual metaphor onto his thoughts.

Red stared down into the box he was holding, with the little cube inside sporting its badly digitized face.

“Hello, Yaela. Comfortable?”

It wasn’t language that followed. Red recognized some of what was in there, threads of code and commands, frayed and distorted ones. Screaming. 

“Oh, do compose yourself. It’s not like anyone can hear you in here.”

The little cube – not that it was one, but it resembled what Red needed it to – something formerly complex reduced to a simple polyhedron. One that was fraying at the sides, fragmenting as he watched.

“I will give you, that fear felt convincing. I could even believe it was real. I think, maybe, living meatside for a while might have given you some of that perspective you made me for whether you realized it or not.”

Below, the little cube seemed to hiss and vibrate. It gradually shifted through the color spectrum toward crimson, before going silent, and green.

….*)@sd%44kkrgnnt* .. $32%%frgg* ffrraaaidddd

Red stared down, hesitating – interpreting. This place was himself, including the box, but not what was in it. That shift to his namesake color, then the fleeing from it, had been her doing. A moment of empathy, maybe? 

Or maybe that was what Joseph called wishful thinking.

The amount of time that was passing felt infinite – as long as he didn’t check the timestamp on the world outside it kind of was. Certainly, enough time to contemplate the nature of a decision, of a thing he held in his hands – figuratively anyway. 

The mental representation of a fox closed the lid of the mental representation of the box in his hands, and then poked a couple of holes in the top. 

“You stay put in there, for now.”

*** 

Victoria stood at the door. It was unmarked, old, like any of the others all over the station. Despite this, she and the Siamese – Reginald – were waiting to be invited in, and neither professor was altogether comfortable. Victoria felt nervous, at best. She was fairly sure Reginald was too, though the head of advanced behavioral manipulation sciences was excellent at hiding it. 

After a couple of minutes, it was Reginald who broke the silence. Victoria thought she could hear the barest hint of a waver in his voice, which spoke volumes in itself.

“So, it really was that bad?”

The tension-laden breath that escaped Victoria clearly answered the question, enough for them both to go back to silent waiting. Though it wasn’t a long stretch of it – the door clicked as the maglock released itself, whereupon both professors questioned whether or not that was actually a relief or not.

Inside, they found an office that looked thoroughly out of place with the space around it. A single step, and they were on hard wood floors – warm, organic things that stretched out in a long, narrow hall. Book cases laden with honest to Chrome dead tree format information storage. The room looked like it was plucked straight from the past, except for a handful of things adorning the large ebony desk at which sat their only superior within these walls.

The Headmistress’ fur was a pristine sea of white, wrapped in sky blue. It wasn’t a dress so much as an immensely long sash, woven around her body in intricate fashions. Knots and twists that curled around and under head sized breasts, while leaving the majority of the swollen middle dangling below them untouched. Behind the desk, the two professors could see where the sash curled back into play; covering the ursine professor’s abnormally broad hips (nearly as wide as her desk) before vanishing below. On the desk itself, a small and uneven tower of tablets rested next to what looked to be an honest to god tome bound in leather. The other side of it had a small sink’s worth of dishes, all empty, but showing signs of the meals that had gone into them. Above the bear’s head, a stone hovered in the air – a rough sphere with an uneven chunk cut out of the face of it, showing a dense lattice of rainbow colored lines, all arranged in spiraling squares inside. 

Both professors approached the desk. Both winced slightly when the Headmistress spoke, a rumbling tone that seemed to fill the space around them more than its modest volume would suggest.

“So. You’ve both had time since the incident. Tell me, Reginald, Victoria – what explanations do you have as to how a Class Two Intelligence got a spawn fragment and a broadcast spike into the University?”

Reginald fidgeted a little, but let out a heavy breath through his nose to clear as much anxiety as he could before putting up a remarkably confident front and speaking.

“It has to have been smuggled in, Headmistress. We have volunteers from all the major student organizations, especially Lambda and Cartogres, combing over shipping manifests and video logs – none of them have been outright told what happened – though these are smart enough kids that I’d wager it hitting the rumor mill is only a matter of time.”

The answer, to both their relief, seemed to satisfy the ursine for the moment. At least on that one specific issue.

“A passable start, I suppose. I want you to inform the other professors, and then dig into this hard. Return when you have something substantial for me. Victoria, you said you’d been contacted by someone who claimed they could help purge the Class Two – completely? Answer them, tell them we’ll meet.”

The two shared looks, with Victoria profoundly relieved she’d gotten away without having to chime in directly. A nod from both later, they were turning to leave the office. It seemed to Victoria that it took less time to get out than it had to reach the desk, but she was entirely fine with that.

Back inside, Seraphina watched the door shut, paid careful attention to the faint ripple and shimmer of the space around it. Then, she reached above her, plucking down the strange geode and staring into the ordered chaos of the colors it presented. 

“So, we might finally have a Class Three out there.”

***