The Rendering Pit - Questionable Designs (Patreon)

Hey there! Short story for you today by the wonderful RabidBadger! This'll make more sense if you're a longstanding fan of the Fiber Optic Bundles of Joy series (found here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/fiber-optic-of-13120931 ) but is a fun little adventure for our trouble-making rabbit girl all the same <3 

No weight gain in this one! It's plot, cards and spooky shenanigans! <3 

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Monica had been pacing for a good fifteen minutes now, which wasn’t getting her anywhere to speak of – literally or figuratively. The act had started over anxiety, as it usually did. A blank patch on her tablet that ought to have been full of telemetry, and which she had spent a good while trying to restore on the chance that the problem was on her end. That hadn’t worked out, which likely meant the problem was with her software host, which might be a big deal. Then again, it might not. She hadn’t gotten any red flagged emails, which was something.

So, she paced, until it became impossible to ignore the fact that other than seeing herself look a little more stressed out each time she passed the mirror in her room – a little more tension in the myriad colors of her fur, she wasn’t actually accomplishing anything. Improving the situation meant getting out into the halls and doing something about this.

It probably meant tracking down Nathan and having a confrontation she wasn’t looking forward to. That wasn’t going to change matters though, her desire or lack thereof. She could either wait here or go do something about it. It wasn’t really a choice. The bunny grunted and plucked up her tablet, looking out into the halls with a mix of annoyance and worry, but with a healthy dose of determination layered over top of it all. 

The first thing Monica did after was look directly at her tablet again, squinting at it for not having decided to spare her the need to go by fixing itself in the time it took her to get out the door, but apparently the device was unimpressed by her ire. That left the only thing to do being the original plan, go out and look for the problem on a meat and hardware level. Not knowing precisely where Nathan was at the moment – which was a further part of the problem – Monica resolved to check the most likely places.

Like the cafeteria.

“Ooh I wouldn’t go there just yet if I were you.”

The ability to know when someone was talking to you without seeing the speaker was a skill like any other, one that you got better at with training. Monica had spent a fair bit of time (a couple weeks anyway) lording over a bunch of pirates in a gladiatorial paradise of gambling and excess. There were lots of loud people, she’d had to learn that trick rather quickly.

Twisting around, Monica found herself looking at a towering, bulky hippopotamus. The woman was as broad at the hips as some people were tall, but she made up for that to a degree by being a minor form of giant herself. The woman was seated, and still taller than Monica, at a bench on the corridor’s side – one with a small table by it that she had apparently been fiddling with a deck of cards on. 

The lazy grin the hippo wore confirmed to Monica that yes, this is the woman who spoke – and yes, it was her she was speaking to. The big heap of a woman looked a bit too old to be a student, and the luxurious red silk with gold trim only reinforced that further – that, and it made Monic a little jealous. She remembered a time when she didn’t have to deal with student garb and when her place wasn’t reliant on someone else’s judgment. Monica stared right back, watching the hippo flick a lock of auburn hair over her shoulder before waving a thick finger at the other half of the bench.

“You’re going to join me, might as well do it.”

Monica crossed her arms and stood right where she was.

“And why wouldn’t you go to the cafeteria right now?”

That grin on the hippo’s face widened as she patted the seat next to her, which Monica was at least considering occupying.

“You wouldn’t like how that thread ends. I can offer you some insight though, if you want.”

The bunny blinked slowly; but given that it was a potential distraction – something to do other than to go address her actual problem – she only let herself waffle about it for a moment or two before heading over and sliding herself into the seat (or some percentage of one) left next to the hippo.

“Alright… What the heck are you talking about, lady?”

The hippo leaned over uncomfortably close, nudging Monica with her elbow in what was probably meant to be a gentle manner but still damn near knocked the bunny off her seat.

“Your future, dear. I’ve had my eye on you – kinda hard to miss really! You look like the living embodiment of a kid coloring on the walls of their bedroom.”

Monica hadn’t looked too closely at the deck of cards before that, but the comment about her future seemed to demand it. Sure enough, rather than faces and suits she saw arcana on the things. 

“…Seriously? A tarot reading, here of all places? What, are the cards like… made of some weird material that tracks quantum entanglement or something?”

That got another grin out of the massive woman, and a breathy laugh. 

“Close enough I suppose. Come on, not like you have anything to lose by waiting here is it?”

There was a distinct urge to argue with that, and yet Monica couldn’t quite find the logical grounds for it. She had no illusions about her chances of doing something productive when it came to Nathan right now, she had no plan at all – just a burning itch to do more than nothing, even if nothing was likely the wiser course. So perhaps killing time with the bulky heap of a woman who liked playing with old superstitions was worth doing, if only for the sheer need of a distraction.

“I guess not… Or maybe just nothing clear to gain by leaving. Who are you anyway?”

Monica let out a little squeak as the immense, soft mass of the woman leaned over again, this time curling a pillowy arm around her shoulders and sandwiching her mercilessly into the wall of silk-wreathed flesh that made up the bulk of the woman’s side. 

“Junior Professor Girda, head of the department of Temporal Mechanics. Custodiet Supra Cartogres alumnus.”

Sandwiched as she was, Monica still managed to go still at that. She had to be considerably more careful than she had initially realized around this one – though it wasn’t like the hippo was actively menacing her. Rather the opposite, she was a little bit too familiar. 

“Err… pleased to meet you, Professor? I uhm, maybe I shouldn’t-”

Another squeak accompanied a fresh squeezing into the hippo’s side, but mercifully Monica found herself released afterward. She also found the deck being nudged by a thick digit in her general direction, followed by a single word that she knew was not a suggestion or a request.

“Cut.”

Monica was glad the pressure on her eased, the physical sort that is. Other kinds were still at play and had not been so merciful. Girda hadn’t lifted her arm off the bunny’s shoulder, she wasn’t going to manage to run even if she was inclined to try. Cutting her losses, and the deck, seemed like the better choice to go with under the circumstances she wagered. Overly friendly was still a species of friendly after all, so why assume this was a bad thing? Now if only she could stop feeling so nervous.

By the time she actually lifted part of the deck off and set it aside Monica was mentally shouting at herself to stop sweating. Girda on the other hand seemed pleased, ruffling the bunny’s ears fondly and plucking the deck up with surprising dexterity for someone whose fingers resembled overstuffed sausages. The shuffling was underway.

“I uhm, I’m not sure this – I don’t… I don’t want to sound rude, but-”

The shuffling abruptly stopped as Monica found herself under a withering glare, but one that was so brief in its intensity that she was too shaken to be sure she’d even seen it when a blink later the hippo was just smiling knowingly again.

“Yeah you kind of do, though. You feel like it, but you recognize it’s a bad idea. Which is relevant to this discussion, actually. Foresight.”

Girda punctuated the statement by plunking down a card, though in the span of time between Monica turning her gaze to the card and when she would have recognized what was on it a rush of vertigo left her gasping quietly and leaning hard into the massive Professor’s side.

She’d remembered something in that moment, fleeing down a hallway with that big draconic ‘augmentation enthusiast’ and his absurd baggage after things went wrong on the station. That memory was uncomfortable, it was the start of something that had gotten well and truly out of hand. A brush with a force far outside her understanding, a couple of such forces really. Something uncomfortable about that thought seemed to stick in the back of her mind like an itch in the throat.

Monica winced through shut eyes for what felt like an awkwardly long pause. She took her time opening them just the same, given that Girda didn’t seem inclined to hurry her along. When she did get around to opening them she saw the deck sitting right where it had been, and no sign of the card she’d drawn. Just the same hallway and people passing by, like that cow with the second head. 

The deck was just sitting there. The hippo with her arm around Monica’s shoulders gave her a squeeze.

“Cut.”

A creeping dread seeped into Monica as she saw her hand reaching for the deck. It didn’t hesitate, though her thoughts seemed to be moving sluggishly as she tried to at least get ‘I don’t want to’ across her mind if not out of her lips. It didn’t quite work. Instead, the bunny found herself laboring under a sense of déjà vu so heavy it guaranteed she had yet to finish that thought before her hand once more split the deck, and the hippo began a familiar motion in return. One that left a card showing face up on the table.

One that left Monica shuddering as memories forcibly hammered at her unbidden again. She’d gone so far in such a short time, found a curious little conflux of opportunity and seized all of it. Yeah, it had meant stepping on a few people – but since when did that not happen? The pirates had been keeping slaves and holding games since long before she showed up and won her short-lived throne at those gambling tables. The otter that had gotten broken out when the whole thing fell apart hadn’t just been shanghaied – he’d gotten his own giant butt in trouble! And-

Monica felt a sharp twinge through her nerves as her eyes shot open, and she saw a deck of cards sitting there before her. Uncut. Undrawn. Her breathing seemed to be coming shorter and faster as she watched the cow girl with the second head walk past. A brief squeeze of the hippo’s arm around her jarred her further, left her twitching – struggling a little even.

“Cut.”

The bunny shook her head sharply, trying to squirm back out of her spot but finding that hippo’s arm had a profoundly solid grip on her.

“No thank you! Think I’m ready to go actually!”

Struggle as she might, Monica found it wholly impossible to escape. That crushing pressure on her side sandwiching her into a wall of pillowy silk had her at its mercy, but she was a skeptic when it came to mercy in general.

“I doubt that. You wanna try again, or maybe let me offer you a pick and some insight if your hindsight is a little too bright today?”

The bunny squirmed again, not so much with intent to escape this time. The squirming was a response to the knot of anxiety that had taken root in her and was growing even as they spoke.

“Wh-whatever! Fine! You were gonna do what you wanted anyway you giant- y- you…”

Blood freezing in her veins as she realized what she’d said, and almost said, Monica went silent and tried her level best to shrink out of existence. It didn’t work so well, and when Girda leaned down to look into her eyes the bunny couldn’t muster the will to avert them. The glare was sharp, unlike the rest of the woman.

“Damn right I was.”

A thick finger came out and poked Monica right in the nose.

“And lucky for you. Now cut.”

Monica felt a withering inside her, but while she at first suspected it was her courage it turned out she was mistaken when she felt something fiery spreading. It was when the bunny took her writhing resistance up a not and squeezed out of the hippo’s grip, even though she ended up tumbling to the floor in the process, that she realized it had been her patience.

“No! I am not going to cut the stupid deck! Now leave me be you big heaving river cow!”

There wasn’t time for Monica to regret the outburst, her crumpled body on the floor felt a sudden shock, and in that moment her vision darkened. Mercifully, it was a brief lapse. Her eyes snapped right back open.

And saw the ceiling above her bed. Monica blinked slowly, looking around without moving. All she saw though was the familiar confines of her room, her tablet lying next to her, powered down. Hand shaking, she reached for it and thumbed the button at its side. No telemetry, but she’d known it was going to say that. It had been doing so since last night. She knew that, though she hated the idea, it meant she had to track down why the hard way. On foot.  

“Not that he’ll be hard to find… him and his giant blue butt.”

Exhaling, Monica rolled out of bed and took her tablet. She didn’t have time to waste on weird dreams and bad memories. Not that all of them were bad, but enough of them definitely qualified – some of them she was concerned might even follow her.

All that musing to herself as she slid out of her doorway was likely what led to Monica entirely missing the cow with the extra head, leaving both of them tumbling into an uneven heap on the ground that had Monica pinned squarely under a great deal of loose bovine flesh.

“Crap! That – sorry! I didn’t see you there, I was-”

Monica stared up, breath knocked clean out of her, wishing she could comment about how the blazes she didn’t see her with two heads to do the looking with when the first of the cow’s faces, the one that had been talking and had somewhat longer and better kept hair, had its eyes roll back vacantly. The other one with the scruffier hair and the already half vacant expression on the other hand just smiled brightly in Monica’s direction, and reached down to drag a broad, giant tongue over the bunny’s cheek.

Some distance down the hall, a very large hippo in a red silk robe with gold trim peeked precariously around a corner. Doing so in any fashion that actually kept most of her hidden required Girda to balance awkwardly on one foot and hang into the corner with both hands, with her center of balance telling her at all times she was in dire risk of tumbling onto her face but watching the bunny squirm underneath the cow’s confused butt was far too amusing to pass up. 

The appearance of an angry representation of a white bear’s face manifesting itself in her field of vision courtesy of her internal augmentation structure with the words SEE ME NOW superimposed over it led to that innocent observation ending in Girda actually falling onto her face after all, which would’ve been embarrassing if most people weren’t already either laughing at Monica’s predicament or working to help her out from under the cow. 

Girda squinted at the message briefly, enough to think back an obedient ‘okay’ at it and make it get out of her vision if nothing else.

“Should’ve known I was going to get the Headmistress’ attention with that one… Oh well, it’s for a good cause. The bunny will like the outcome of this much more now.”