Artemis' Bow, Part 15 (Patreon)

Hey folk! Don't think I've forgotten about Artemis and her plight! I'm aiming to get back to posting these on a regular schedule, now that my other work commitments have cleared out. This time I only have two choices for you, but they may effect more than you'd think >:3

Artemis' Bow is going to go up here before it reaches public access! I hope you enjoy this early access, and I hope you like where the story is going <3

As always, I both write and illustrate Artemis' Bow, you can find the complete collection of works I participate in, here 

Thank you Firefox for editing my work! Without you, I'm sure my stories would be a lot more ruff! <3

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 Part 15:

Julius had a modest shack on the edge of town. From there, Aava could see clearly the intricate details of the massive dome that kept everyone alive. In addition to glass and plasteels, she could also see the rods and projectors for the low power energy shield that did the majority of the work filtering out poisons from the atmosphere. The shack itself was remarkably less impressive, though no less strange to the rabbit’s eye. It looked as though it were a large house, built upon the side of a refining plant, but Aava suspected that the majority of the space within was taken up with whatever process required so many air ventilation systems. As she approached, licking sugar dust off her lips and cheeks and trying not to pant, she saw a beat up looking camera turn to track her movements. Several more covered all angles on approach to his house.

Julius was a careful man. 

Frowning, Aava tried to recall the details of her mission. It wasn’t that she’d forgotten, or that she was absent minded, but it seemed like every bit of calculation at this juncture would help. A satchel on her waist held a specimen for Julius to examine, but she very clearly did not have the full crate. Artemis had no intention of handing over the whole thing until she knew more about what it was, and if Julius could tell her, then so much the better. Aava, for her part, had felt sorry for the wolf. He sounded alone, and desperate, and though both of those made him dangerous, they also made him vulnerable. 

Approaching what she assumed to be the door— although it looked like little more than another segment in the rusty iron wall— Aava smiled up at the camera and patted her stomach close to where her satchel sat. 

“Delivery!” she chirped. 

“Where’s the rest?” came the gruff sounding reply from the intercom. It sounded like Julius had been coughing again. 

“Safe.” Aava’s tone left little room for question, nor did her expression, as she stared levelly at the camera lens. “Now, are you going to let me in? It’s awful cold out here.” 

A blatant lie, if ever there was one. In fact, Aava was looking forward to sitting down someplace nice and cool, and perhaps away from the hungry eyes of the town’s populace. She got another grunt in response, but the door in front of her opened into what looked like a very small closet. After a few moments of squinting, Aava determined the room to be a small airlock which she slowly squeezed her way into. She could feel the room compressing her on every side, smooshing her own blubber against her, her breasts pushing against her chins as she panted and wheezed. Once she’d pressed her way in, the door behind her shut and the airlock itself cycled, blasting her with freshly recycled air. Then the door ahead of her opened up and the flustered rabbit nearly spilled through into the adjoining room. 

The room looked partially as though it had been modelled after the bridge of a starship, and partially as though it was supposed to be a surveillance room. Most available wallspace was taken up by huge ventilation ducts, and those that weren’t were covered in duraplast monitors displaying the feeds of what had to be over two dozen cameras. Most of the cameras appeared to be devoted to keeping an eye on the building itself, but a great deal were also situated in places of trade or busy roads in the city. Looking around, she couldn’t count the number of civilians that the wolf must be spying on. 

As her eye was drawn to the center of the room, Aava made out what must have been the silhouette of Julius. The wolf was sitting in the middle of the largest cluster of displays yet; his own personal command center. He was swivelling around on a squeaky chair in what might have been an attempt to look cool, were he a couple of hundred pounds lighter. As it was, Aava found it hard to take the wolf seriously when it looked like he was so full of hot air that he might just burst. 

“So you—” The wolf paused and proved to be just as gassy in person as he was in communications, letting loose a rancid smelling belch. “Made it,” he continued, unapologetically, pausing again as he narrowed his eyes. “Albeit light on my cargo!” 

Leaning forward, he was everything the communication promised him to be, and a little more. Aava couldn’t judge him for being topless, not when she preferred to be that way herself, but she was surprised he couldn’t at least scrape the energy to be decent for guests. The wolf was a little more rotund than she thought she remembered, too. Where as he’d been portly before, now his stomach pushed past his knees as a wobbling, yet full-looking sphere of a gut. 

“Calm your jets,” she tutted, pulling the small parcel she’d kept hidden in a pocket above her breasts. “Here’s your sample, the rest is safe until you tell us what’s going on. Why are we getting attacked?”

“A-hah!” 

Julius practically leapt out of his chair, at least so much as his size allowed. When he snatched the package from Aava’s outstretched hand she felt his gut press gently against her own and could swear she heard a faint ‘boing’ as he was pushed back by it. He belched again as he was waddling hurriedly to his chair, mumbling the whole time. 

“Will it be enough? Two? One sample, gills intact, minor bruising, stalk bent, minimal damage...” 

Aava rolled her eyes and tapped her foot loudly. “Answers, doctor, answers. I haven’t come all this way to listen to you mumble.” 

“Oh, uh, yeah.” 

The wolf gently laid his sample on a small dish beside one of his many, impressive looking computers. The computer itself whirred to life, extending a number of robotic arms to prod and poke at the mushroom as Julius lowered himself back into his seat. 

“What do you want to know? Why Wayfarer came after you? That’s easy.” He chuffed, and then looked a little concerned as a cloud of green gas appeared to have been exhaled from his muzzle. Shaking it off, the wolf continued. “They made these mushrooms! Not all by themselves of course; no they stole genetics from the mushrooms here on Amanita Beta. You’ve seen how all the colonists live down here, how they’re starved, cramped and dying within their bubble cities. Imagine if that could change, imagine if you could ingest a simple plant that would make it so that the poisonous spores that dominate this planet no longer hurt you! Suddenly, instead of being surrounded by a hostile forest, you’re surrounded by food. No longer starving, dying, and working just to make ends meet. Not to mention you’re no longer forced to live under a Wayfarer dome.” 

Aava looked skeptical. It sounded like a sales pitch, and she wasn’t all that convinced. “Why would Wayfarer make something that makes the planet easier to live on? Don’t they profit from all the colonisation measures being pushed this way? As long as they own the dome bubbles, they own the cities as far as they’re concerned.” 

“Exactly!” Julius snapped his fingers, turning his attention to the readouts on the computer beside him. The metal arms had begun slicing pieces of the mushroom off, and feeding them into a smaller tray. “That’s why you’re being attacked. If someone with half a brain gets a hold of these mushrooms, someone like me for instance, I could turn them into a medicine that would help the population of this world break free of Wayfarer tech. That’s why you were attacked, and that’s why it’s off the books. I’m guessing they came at you with hired mercs?” 

Aava rubbed her neck and nodded. It did make a little bit of sense. “Alright,” she mumbled at first, but picked up speed as the thought came to her. “But that still don’t answer my question; why would Wayfarer make something like this in the first place? You’re saying if I just take a bite of one of those ‘shrooms, I’ll be immune to the toxic spores?” 

The wolf in front of her immediately began to look sheepish. He blushed and looked away. “Uhm... no... not exactly,” Julius started, leaning forward to flick a switch on the console in front of him. 

The spread of displays around the room changed focus, now depicting one very big bunny. 

Although it was hard to see at first, once she learned to pick out the shapes from among the haze of floating spores, Aava saw that the room was practically dominated by a heaving, wheezing mound of brown and beige fur. There through the viewscreen was quite possibly the largest creature Aava had ever seen, with perhaps the only exception being Miranda. Around the creature— more of an orb than a girl— Aava could see the walls had been recently wallpapered, as though to make the accomodations seem more habitable. There were posters and a display screen for watching vids, a few containers for food, and a chest of drawers for clothing which had long since become a luxury. The rabbit herself had demolished the bed upon which she sat, surrendering her mobility along with her shape to become a heaving, wheezing, groaning balloon of fur and flesh. 

The longer she stared, the more Aava could make out, her mouth hanging open as she watched the girl who herself appeared to be lost in a VR game of some sort, with a visor resting lazily in front of her eyes. She had a cute, twitching nose, even if it sat upon a head that was half buried by the monstrous roll of her own neck. Her hair was long, and curled lazily around her visor, partially done up with a big, pink ribbon that had become stained with grease, or maybe the atmosphere itself. Her arms had become nothing more than nubs, small mounds either side of her massive body. The same could no doubt be said of her legs, though Aava couldn’t see them from this angle. As she watched, the rabbit unabashedly let out a stream of gas from her rear, a horrid farting which spiked the camera’s microphone and was followed moments later by a slightly contented little moan. 

“Caught her stealing one of my mushrooms,” Julius commented as Aava watched with a mixture of horror and fascination. “One of the ones I’d managed to smuggle off the Pit. “Of course by caught, I mean I pried half the thing from her damn mouth. Dumb bunny thought it was a carrot I guess.”

Aava shot him a quick glare, and he averted his gaze and cleared his throat. 

“She’d been one of the few colonists who hadn’t been hurting for food.She was a fat pig of a rabbit before, but now—” Julius trailed off, motioning to the video feed as though it explained itself.

As she watched, the rabbit released another belch. This one lasted a good ten seconds before it was done, and looked almost as though it were a geyser of spores erupting from her immobile form. Even after such a release, Aava noted, she didn’t look an inch smaller. If anything, she seemed to be growing visibly, her body emitting the faintest of creaking noises beneath the rabbit’s hushed moans. Aava felt a pang of jealousy, but quickly smothered it. 

“This is what happens when you eat one of the untreated mushrooms,” Julius explained with an uncomfortable frown. “It infected her, and she in turn infected me. It’s not like any normal mushroom, it can propagate its spores through living hosts, turning you into your own—” He paused to let loose another belch, and Aava saw the green spores floating on his breath. “Fungal colony.” 

Aava felt a little ill, though she couldn’t pull her eyes away from the expanding rabbit in the camera feed, biting her lip as she saw her stomach push out a little bit more. She could practically hear the spores inside her, the sound of her stomach, her whole body as it grew, belch by belch, into something else. 

“After the mushrooms reacted to her body the way they did, I contained her in one of the rooms under this refinery. If those spores were to reach the general public—” He shuddered. “Given the relatively small initial size the spores had to work with, I imagine she’ll burst before they achieve full conversion.” 

Aava almost didn’t feel bad for the rabbit in the other room, as she almost seemed to be enjoying the sensation. That, or the VR game. But the idea of seeing the other rabbit explode into a cloud of spores sent a shiver down her spine.

“Can you fix it?” she finally asked.

The wolf looked up and slowly spun back to his computer, tracing a chubby digit over the readouts. “That’s a good question,” he paused and glanced back at Aava, “miss?” 

“Aava.” 

“Well miss Aava that’s a very good question, because now that you’ve spent time in here inhaling the spores I’ve released,” he said as he gestured to her with a thick finger, “you’re infected with them too.” 

If she had felt ill before, now Aava felt like she was going to vomit. But not before she throttled the ever living shit out of the wolf in front of her. 

“You what?!” 

Nothing could have prepared Julius for the avalanche of surprisingly agile and incredibly furious bunny rabbit that followed. Aava held her two pudgy hands in front of her stomach, aiming for the wolf’s throat as the rest of her bore down on him. Most of his body was buried beneath her, computer screens pushed to one side and keyboards knocked off his desk, by the time she wrapped her hands around his neck. 

“I am not turning into a balloon!” she yelled, furious that she had been infected without a word of warning. 

She felt his body squished beneath her and thought she could hear bones start to crack as nearly half a ton of angry woman choked the air from his lungs. 

“I—” The wolf gasped, but Aava just tightened her grip around his throat. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to kill him, yet. “Can—” Still nothing of interest came out of that throat which had belched up so many spores. “Cure!” 

Aava felt her fingers loosen, and she could hear her heart beating out a steady, loud rhythm, but she wasn’t sure that if she snapped this creature, she could create a cure herself. Disgusted, she climbed off of him and pushed him back, limply, into his own chair. 

“That’s right you can Julius, because if you don’t, you’re not going to end up like her.” A chubby finger was pointed at the displays with the other rabbit on them. “You’re not going to make it that long.” 

Julius gulped and rubbed his throat. “I can cure you,” he repeated, as though convincing himself as well, “but I need the rest of the mushrooms.” His voice was croaky and raw. “Only with the full genetic profile can I synthesise the proper medicine.” Still rubbing his throat, the wolf continued, “I can cure you, me, and free everyone from these blasted domed cities...” 

Aava cracked her knuckles and glared at Julius. She wasn’t in the mood for anymore deceit, if Julius was lying about anything from this point forward, she’d snap his neck herself and be done with him. 

“Captain?” Tuning into her commsystem, she turned away from the now recovering, gagging wolf. “We’ve got a problem.” 

VOTING OPTIONS:

Visit the following link to vote: http://www.strawpoll.me/14962333 

According to Julius, Aava has been infected with a strange fungal disease that will blow her up like a balloon without treatment. He also claims that with access to the crate full of mushrooms in Artemis’ hold, he can cure the condition, and make a medicine that will allow the colonists of Amaneta Beta to live free of their domed cities. Given this:

A: Artemis decides she’s had enough of sending people on missions, it’s time to do this where she can control it. She recalls Aava and tells her to escort Julius to her ship, where the medicine can be synthesized under supervision.

B: It’s too risky to conduct this kind of operation on board her own ship, especially if Wayfarer are involved. Artemis decides that she and Alex will escort the mushrooms to Julius herself. It’s time to lock and load.