The Rendering Pit - Chapter 17 (Patreon)

As his condition develops, and the space between juicings grows slimmer and slimmer, Rigel decides he has to view his condition as a challenge to be overcome, not something that will keep him down! The lizard goes about looking for things that might help him in his new, blueberry life and finds inspiration in the most unexpected of places. 

This story was written by RabidBadger and illustrated by me!  Nedak won the latest YCH, so this arc he'll be joining our students Genevieve and Rigel on their adventure!  We thank you for your continued support, you've helped make this series what it is <3 

This episode includes: Blueberry, expansion/growth, living with being a permaberry, immobility, rolling and implied juicing! 

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The azure scaled lizard rubbed his face and squirmed about in his seat. The fidgeting didn’t help much of anything, the classroom was still a dark, warm, humid place that despite the abundance of plants re-oxygenating the room tended to cause drowsiness.

“Observe, class. This mycology does not follow standard behavior upon entry into a living system. Ordinarily, fungus either breaks down dead matter, or it acts in a parasitic fashion to still-living bodies.” 

Rigel had been desperately struggling not to yawn, but he knew a losing battle when he saw one. After it had run its course he shook his head hard enough to try and get his blood flowing – though the residual jostling about got the pervasive abundance of juice inside him moving as well. Luckily, Professor Tenebrae didn’t look down from his lesson.

“This, as you can see, is behaving in a manner that skirts the line between parasitic and symbiotic. It nests in the digestive system amid the body’s natural bacterial colonies and augments the way nutrient processing happens in the subject. Of course, it has side effects, but that’s where skirting the line comes into play.”

In a further, slightly desperate effort to maintain his focus, Rigel glanced at his tablet just to see if he could spark a few more neurons into life. There were no new messages, just the same ones he’d had open since morning. Drafted into helping Genevieve with her task about that little incident, an ongoing conversation with Samuel since he could still email okay despite his size (though the badger didn’t exactly have an engaging tale to tell of his time lately), and a couple of side pages from the University’s guidebook.

Rigel had had time to think since their encounter with that unfortunate AI-infested cat, and time to get frustrated with how often he had to go back to the nurse to get his pressure levels reduced. It had left him holding a specific page open, the student organization contact page. 

He felt a little bad about how much easier it was to maintain focus on that than on his lesson, but the class was nearly over. Rigel shuddered again briefly as he snapped to attention, hearing something that sounded alarmingly like an assignment being described. It would probably have an email later, eventually, but he and the rest of the class knew that Professor Tenebrae could take a couple days to get around to those things and the head start was usually valuable.

“I want you all to come up with potential uses for the natural benefits of a fungus like this, or possible new engineerable benefits, or potential solutions to the problems it creates. I expect at least a clearly testable hypothesis from each of you within two weeks.”

It didn’t feel good to him, being glad to be out of Professor Tenebrae’s classroom. There’d been a few times he stopped and had arguments with himself about this, particularly when he was being juiced. He’d had at least one good row about this being his Professor’s fault, just like the state Samuel was in, but that hadn’t been right. The point was dealing with it, not whinging about it. 

Rigel stopped just outside the class doors, letting people file along past him, feeling a few brushes against his already swelling belly. He had whined a lot for a few days – maybe weeks – quietly. Then he’d quietly stopped when he stumbled on a video posted by someone named Rosalind Kretuzfeld. The sight of a fox talking about conquering problems had seemed like tripe at first, until the camera had panned back enough for him to see her total lack of limbs, and corresponding presence of attending hand drones. 

One little quirk of her nerves’ myelin sheathes, and they just refused to communicate with prosthetics – but a mental link to some drones worked just fine. It had left him in a bit of a state after he saw it, asking himself where he got off despairing of being normally functional. It was just a problem, and problems had solutions – in fact, one of the student groups probably had the solution, if he cared to ask. That had been where he’d left off, though. Exams and the shenanigans with Samuel and the cat had happened, but now?

Now he had time again, and now his bloated belly and butt were becoming an inconvenience once more. Rigel had something approaching a solution to this, though. Something that had worked just fine in the past.

Lunch.

*** 

Rigel found himself staring at Genevieve while he worked his way through the line, acquiring a small spread of fresh vegetables and fried meat. It wasn’t a fascinated stare, or a judgmental one, it was the kind of thing that substituted an entire conversation. They made eye contact, his raised eyebrow to her deadpan gaze. A little tilt of his head, answered by the vixen’s lips pursing just a little while she gestured at his tray. It got the message across clear as day.

I don’t want to talk about it. Order your food or I will use my butt to smother you in your sleep.

It did at least give Rigel a bit more reason to feel better about his day as he meandered to a quiet place to sit, up until the point when he actually sat down. His rump tended to suffer a bit more than most parts of himself with the swelling, which made sense. Big, fleshy spot with no major organs around. It meant he felt like he was sitting on a pair of overfull sponges when he put weight on them though, and he still hadn’t gotten used to the sensation of his belly bloating visibly when he did so.

The reptile exhaled heavily as he dug into his meal. He’d have to get into the nurse between some of his afternoon classes at this rate – and he could swear it was getting worse, not better. Which might, he reasoned, be because he still nibbled on the berries that banzai tree grew once in a while. Didn’t mean he was going to stop – that thought dredged up some of the same problems from earlier.

Professor Tenebrae had given him that plant, it must have been for a reason. Granted, some people had been trying to posit the possibility that the reason was ‘he wanted to turn you into a pet for his garden’ and he had to admit (uncomfortably) that he couldn’t prove a negative there, but science didn’t work by accepting data like that, and this was a place of science. Rigel looked down at himself, grabbing two handfuls of belly, and squeezing. Feeling all that fluid in him rush about in pleasant, tingly ways.

“It’s just a problem to solve… Probably like a thesis for my final year, or something. Solve this to graduate. Same as the stuff with the fungus, and Genevieve’s little extra credit activities.”

Rigel reached for his tablet and compulsively checked the time, spotting the page that he’d left open so often lately. Rosalind’s points were compelling, but all that metal seemed off-putting for some reason. That had proved to be what set Rigel hesitating the most so far – a bit too much focus on prosthetics and mechanical augmentation.

It all looked like it worked awfully well, but there had to be alternatives. Hence, lunch. Here, in the cafeteria, Rigel had a clear view of all the other student body. Or more specifically, their bodies. There was a definite trend toward hardware, he felt – at least when visible mods were concerned. Not all of them were, that had been obvious when he got around to that giant raccoon from Lambda. His talent lay wrapped up in software, which was in turn wrapped around his ass. 

No, it was the other few that Rigel had it in mind to peruse like a living catalogue of sorts. The panther that had grown himself a four-legged lower body with the (frankly adorable) saddle bags holding his notes and tablets, for instance. That had come through looking downright elegant. The bulbous cow with the second head busily chugging something somewhat less so. Rigel had pursed his lips in thought, albeit not terribly productive thought, when a presence on the seat beside him drug him out of the experience.

“H-hi there. I uhm, I hope me joining you is okay.”

Turning his head, Rigel found Nathan’s nervous, uncertain visage looking back from the space next to him. The other blue scaled student was half squatting, waiting for some kind of confirmation before he actually committed.

“Err, yeah? Yeah, go for it.”

Nathan did lower a bit, at least setting his (quite heavily laden) tray down, but he kept an eyebrow raised.

“You sure?”

Rigel reached out, putting a hand to Nathan’s shoulder and pushing him down the rest of the way onto the seat.

“Completely. If you were picking up anything there it was just me being distracted. Been thinking about how to deal with a problem.”

The act left Nathan blushing, but wrestling with a smile he wasn’t sure how to handle as well.

“Yeah, you and me both. And if I seem a bit more nervous than usual it might be the look Genevieve just gave me.”

A sloshing sensation accompanied Rigel’s chuckling response to that. 

“Like she was going to sic an armada of robot bees on you if you said anything?”

Nathan began furiously nodding at that, though his mouth was a bit too full of the first of many overstuffed soft tacos to speak. 

“Yeah, I got the same look, and I guess maybe I have a few things on my mind too. Who doesn’t, in here?”

Rigel raised an eyebrow slowly as he watched his plump roommate eat with precisely the kind of enthusiasm he usually saw in Genevieve, or Samuel if he had company. It was, at least, worth a little bit of concern. Nathan gulped down the first of many courses before answering.

“Monica Endak.”

Mouth stuffed with cruncy greens, Rigel tilted his head gently and made an inquisitive sound that would serve well enough as a response while his mouth was full. Nathan ended up delaying to get a little more food in, too – but it was a brief enough thing before the other reptile started talking around his food instead of between it.

“Bunny girl… massive pain in my butt. Wants to skate by on other peoples’ work. Seems to be good at it, too.”

Rigel felt his face twist up as if he’d bitten into something unpleasant.

“Screw that. I mean it’s one thing to take inspiration – I’m kinda here to do that. You’re still doing your own work and adding to the idea.”

There was a thoughtful, weary nod in response to that.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind that so much, but she really just wants to do nothing, like her worst fear is letting a Professor see her work. No idea why she’s here of all places.”

The notion seemed to strike Rigel as odd as well, drawing out a potent head tilt as he worked at his food.

“Huh… Yeah that’s downright weird. I mean, lots of people try and screw up here. Just look at that cow. But not trying at all? Unless it’s some weird social science project for Corona Absentia?”

Nathan shook his head slowly.

“Definitely weird, and – okay what the hell actually did happen with that cow?”

Rigel tried his best to suppress a chuckle into his food but didn’t do so well.

“Asked around once about it after the first time I saw her. I think the point was like… organ redundancy, or just assuming it’d be two of her and one could study while the other wasted time? But it turns out the other head was close to a blank slate on most things, except when it came to appetites.”

The blue drake raised a finger and waggled it in the cow’s general direction.

“So thus, the girth, and the drinking, and…”

A prompt nod answered him there.

“Right. Plus, it’s fused to her spine and that makes it totally unfeasible to remove. Almost anything else she could just get rid of if she really had to, ya know? So- oh Chrome, I just had that idea I wanted.”

Rigel stood slowly, while Nathan tilted his head at him.

“I… I have to go jump on this man. If you wanna come find me after lunch go for it, I’ll be in the dorms!”

The blue scaled drake watched the darker hued reptile run off, entirely unsure of just what had happened there. Part of him considered rushing off to catch up, but it didn’t make a convincing enough case against his growling stomach when presented with the open invitation to catch up after lunch.

*** 

Rigel wasted no time en route back to the dorms, though he could’ve made better time were he not already so bloated. Each step he felt his body slosh and sway around, like he was wearing a suit filled with drenched sponges – which he kind of was, if he thought about. Normally he tried not to. 

The reptilian student’s gait was getting rather clumsy by the time he reached his door, thighs scraping against each other and the sheer weight of them flying about side to side forcing him to compensate right up to the moment he pitched face forward onto his bed, landing at eye level with his little plant, and the small sheaf of notes he’d taken since it had become such a prominent part of his life.

Most of those notes weren’t actually significantly different from what you’d find studying a normal plant. There were a few crucial points though, like how the juice and fruit pulp behaved. 

They behaved just a little bit like fungus. Taking root in a body and reproducing as fast as they could. The majority of it gravitated to the most favorable environments available, which was why he could feel his ass gently spreading outward around him from moment to moment. So, the answer was simple.

“I give it somewhere more appealing to go. Something I can get rid of, unlike that cow and her floozy second head.”

Rigel grinned, slowly but steadily wider, shuffling about his notes and frantically adding them to a new file on his tablet. 

“I can solve my problem and probably make this my report to boot!”

*** 

It was about two hours later when the dorm door opened again, with Nathan hesitantly looking into the darkened room. His eyes were still adjusting while he fumbled for the control panel on the side of the wall, but they didn’t miss the sight of something large where it shouldn’t be.

Large and blue, once he got the panel working. And just to make the situation a tiny bit weirder, the half full balloonish mass (which he was just beginning to spot the details of – like feet buried in dimpled mounds) spoke.

“Mfrn… Ngh ugnh. Cheeks re’ huge… N’th – Nathan, could you hr- roll me out of hr?”

Blinking slowly, Nathan struggled to form a coherent thought about what he was looking at. That was a butt. He had gotten that far. He was looking at an enormous, bulbous, blue scaled ass. It sounded like Rigel was on the other side of the blue bottom, so some part of Nathan had started himself wandering over to that general area, but mostly he was still too stunned to figure this out. A state that was not helped when he got to the other end of the bed and saw his fellow blue scaled student’s face half devoured by its own billowing cheeks.

A little shaking and struggling on that face’s part led to Nathan pulling Rigel’s cheeks back, much to the lizardberry’s obvious relief.

“Thanks for that – freaking things get in the way. Look, uh – I’m… Crap, what time is it man? My tablet fell on the other side of me and I kinda can’t move my arms much.”

Nathan blinked again, still foggy, but that question was a simple thing.

“About fourteen hundred hours?”

Rigel’s face bunched up into a plump, squishy grumping that Nathan felt a curious urge to pinch the cheeks in his hands over.

“Crap. Well, my next class is pretty close to the nurse. I – err, do me a favor?”

The azure drake’s head tilted gently to the side.

“What… what can I – are you actually okay, man?”

There was a little wobbling gesture throughout Rigel’s body, especially around his neck, or the bulge that had replaced it.

“Enh, close enough. Anyway. Can you roll me to my next class? I’ll get someone else to take me to the nurse afterward.”

Nathan wasn’t sure how long he’d been slowly blinking. It certainly didn’t seem inclined to stop any time soon. Getting Rigel moving wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, there was a lot of heaving at first, a lot of loose mass until his room mate had told him to feed him a couple of the banzai bush’s berries and left Nathan marveling at how he rapidly firmed up and swelled. After that it was mostly just rolling a slightly lopsided ball that kept giggling every few seconds. 

Rigel was unsure about other things, like whether or not feeling giddy and euphoric was a side effect of the swelling or if he was just dizzy and enjoying this more than he expected. Also, why he was slowly coming to a stop – at least until he ended up face to face with Nathan looking strangely serious.

“…Hey Rigel? If I spot Monica on the way, can I cash in my favor by running her over with you?”

It took Rigel a second. Not to decide, but to realize his head wasn’t moving when he tried to nod. Once he sorted that out his eyebrows popped wider before he smiled.

“Go for it man.”

One thing he was sure about? This idea was going to work.