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A feline looking for a chance in a new sector decides to take up a job doing 'fuel production'. Some side effects may persist...

Involves weight gain, a lot of eating, some humiliation, petrol-gas, actual gas, farting just a bunch of farting and belching, huge furs and a sci-fi setting <3

Written by the wonderful Rabidbadger and fast becoming one of my favourite stories of his

Cameo by Luna the cat, and Naomi the skox

- - -

Luna winced a bit at her reflection in the silver doors in front of her, there was something unpleasant about the whole ‘medical procedure’ side of this trip. It always meant being exposed in front of people, though logically she knew it wasn’t a thing about being judged – but logic didn’t make her feel any better about the large part of her right ear and the back half of her tail being gone. Logic explained why she tried to use blue hair with purple highlights and her mismatched red and blue eyes to call attention away from it, and it explained the spiked collar that was more about trying to play to it as a strength if they were noticed, but the anxiety? That was all her.

The doors hissed quietly as they opened, revealing what looked for all the world like a hot tub in the center of an otherwise bleak and slightly dirty cargo hold. Small stairs up to a sizable basin which was, from what Luna could tell, filled with some kind of pinkish goo rather than water. Nobody else seemed to be present, not even to give instructions.

“Uh, so do I climb in, or-”

Yes, please immerse yourself and remain still.
The gene therapy editing gel will need at least an hour to work.

The voice had crackled in suddenly over a PA system and managed to make Luna jump near out of her skin, but it had at least answered her question. On the other hand, it meant she was being watched. Which was enough to cause the cat to curl her arms around her chest and wish her tail was long enough to do that with her waist. It made the gel a clear thought as well, that was clearly the best way to get out of being stared at sooner rather than later.

Rushing up to the steps, Luna winced a little as she stepped in. The stuff felt bizarre, soupy but not quite as thick as she expected, warm and yet causing a distinctly minty tingling on her skin the instant her foot went inside. Luna wondered, idly, why it had to be pink, but at least it would do the job of mostly obscuring her, and this was for a good cause.

When a second hiss came from across the room, she nearly startled enough to fall into the stuff but managed to salvage it as just sliding quickly in up to her neck to stay concealed.

The other door was, briefly, silhouetted by an enormous figure. Luna was a slender thing, part of why she’d agreed to do this to begin with, but the woman who was standing in that open doorway was hefty to put it lightly. A doughy, apple-shaped creature – black fur and a tell-tale white stripe but sporting small antlers that muddied the water a bit on what she was, though any way you cut it she was huge. Luna was quite sure the woman’s tail was as big as she was.

It took a few moments for the larger woman to step in awkwardly, and for Luna to realize she’d been staring and offer a small wave.

“Err, hi there. Seems I’m not the only one who signed up for this.”

A return to the wave came from the woman before she began to lumber over. Luna couldn’t help but keep staring as the thing – she looked mostly skunk – waddled up and paused at the stairs to climb in.

“Heh, nope. Not gonna argue with cheap travel, you know? And the side-effects didn’t sound that bad.”

It took the other woman a bit of doing to manage the steps, particularly with no railing. One shuffling foot at a time, each one taking visible effort, each one setting the skunk-thing’s body quaking and wobbling about. The last one even worked loose a bubbling fwrpphhmt that left her blushing visibly as she started to tip-toe into the gel. Luna was just glad it had happened before her partner joined her in the pool.

“I think they said they were supposed to be like… ninety percent gone by the time we got there anyway, right? Luna, by the way.”

There was a visible shiver that ran through that large, soft body as it entered the gel, but Luna knew why. The stuff felt weird, her body was still tingling ferociously, and she doubted that was going to stop given the circumstances.

“Naomi, and yeah I think so. Though, I mean, I’m not sure how much I’ll notice.”

Luna didn’t quite catch herself in time to avoid snorting in amusement at that, but luckily it didn’t seem to do much but add to Naomi’s already intense blush.

“I uh, sorry. Yeah. I mean, a free ride out of this useless crap system is worth a lot to me. I can deal with some pudge and a gas problem for a month or two over that.”

Naomi had begun easing herself onto the bench down in the gel, starting to sluggishly ease her hands around her body, when the PA system startled both of them this time around.

Do try to stay still please.

There will be food provided after the procedure.

After you have eaten, you will be shown to your harvesting and stasis chambers.

A shiver ran through Luna at that, though she couldn’t say for sure if it was over what was said or if it had more to do with the gel doing its work. She was feeling strange enough for it to be either, though all told she expected to feel stranger. There was a twisting in her stomach, and she definitely felt hungry, but other than that it was just all tension. A tightly wound feeling through her shoulders and fingertips and behind her eyes. It was bound to give her a headache at this rate.

“Chrome’s tits if that didn’t sound ominous. I mean I know it’s all a script and shit, but jeez.”

Across from her, Luna saw Naomi easing her sizable body down into the goo. Something that required her to slide off her seat and rest at an odd angle just on account of how much flesh the woman was sporting.

“I- yeah a little. We’ll be fine though! I read the terms and conditions and everything. It uh, it won’t exactly be dignified but we’ll just nod off, and-”

There was another smirk from Luna at that.

“We either wake up at our destination, or something goes wrong, and we don’t wake up. Win-win, really. Definitely beats the pants off of working in the argon mines or the company store like my family keeps pushing for.”

The initial attempt at a reply was interrupted, not from above this time, but below. Both women heard their stomachs twist and growl in an alarmingly loud fashion that left Luna and Naomi both looking a bit uncomfortable.

“Cripes, that… good thing we get free food for this. I hope it’s soon, I-”

A bubbling noise interrupted Naomi at that, one that appeared right behind the large woman and was alarmingly loud. Luna was mid-way through deciding on what kind of joke would be appropriate for not wanting to be too vicious about the eruption when a similar rumbling worked its way through her submerged hindquarters, entirely without her permission.

Exit the tank please.

Allow any residual gel to evaporate off your bodies.

In three minutes, the door to the mess hall will open.

Feel free to go nuts, this part is all covered by the company.

The last line, though it still had all the artificial echo and aural artifacts of the ship’s dodgy PA system, had a curiously personal sound to it. Likely some bored employee breaking protocol a little, Luna suspected. It was nice, though – it made the bizarre procedure feel a little less scary. Which was helpful at the moment given that, as she heaved herself out of the gel and felt it peel away from her body and rather quickly start to dissipate into the air (leaving her feeling quite cold in the process), her gut started churning again and threatening another outburst.

“Oof, I almost don’t want to feed that thing given how it’s behaving but Chrome am I ever hungry. Where’s that, ah!”

As if someone was listening, which was probably exactly the case, a door that was neither the one Luna had entered by nor the one Naomi had appeared in slid open and lit the room with a much brighter set of guiding running lights along the floor than the ambient glow the chamber had. A moment later, Luna watched the skunk-ish woman’s large ass jostling and leaping about as Naomi took off ahead of her.

“Oh, thank Chrome! I feel all kinds of hollow inside.”

Luna felt a little pang of self-consciousness about walking into the mess hall naked, but she had it on good authority only her, Naomi, and whoever was on the PA system were still active. Everyone else had already gone into the temporary stasis for the trip since these things tended to last at least a couple of weeks and the ships had zero amenities on them to save space and cut costs in every imaginable way. It was far simpler to just sleep through the whole thing than try to amuse oneself for that long. Far too many stories about nasty crimes happening during the stir-crazy months existed in the Expanse, and most of them were true. Both her and Naomi would be sleeping through it too, just a little later than the rest, and they’d wake up a bit plumper and somewhat windy for a little bit.

First, though, they had to get fuel in them – to start making fuel for the ship. One hand clutching her middle, Luna spilled past Naomi’s rear the instant space presented itself. She found something close to what she expected on the other side, cheap food everywhere. Cheap, delicious, hot, free food lined up on tables like a buffet for a small party – only just for the two of them. Neither Naomi nor Luna hesitated.

For the first few moments the whole room was silent apart from the sounds of wrappers and chewing and swallowing, not to mention the backdrop of noticeably gastric noises coming from the two women’s bodies, but (possibly to spare himself) some bland music began playing in the room just loud enough to offset that a few moments in.

“Fcggn…”

Luna swallowed before trying again at venting the thought that had come to mind, while already cracking open a large soft drink and reaching for a plate of mini sandwiches.

“Could’ve at least played something with some grind to it. H-hwourph-hey!”

It wasn’t as if she expected a response, but as Luna stuffed her face a bit, she left room for one to happen. It didn’t. There was just an awkward pause until she swallowed.

“You take requests? Got anything from Dark Matter Nebula or Unrisen Phoenix?”

The music didn’t change, and Luna didn’t find another chance to ask about the matter. Her partner in this endeavor wasn’t even listening it seemed, Naomi was gorging herself rampantly upon everything she could get her hands on. There was already a film of sauces and grease around the large woman’s face, and she was just a bit thicker than she had been a couple of minutes ago. Granted, it felt a bit like a drop in the bucket to look at but watching her sluggishly shuffle across the edge of the table and seeing her gut dig into its edge a bit deeper with each inch moved was an experience in itself. What’s more, the part-skunk had already begun ‘leaking fuel’ as it were. A nigh constant stream of small outbursts from that large ebon butt that smelled like equal parts methane, sulfur, and petroleum.

Any other day the scent would’ve been an appetite killer for Luna, but any other day she would’ve been full already. Instead, her belly was screaming for more and nothing else seemed to matter. She set upon the next nearest pile of available morsels, cramming handfuls of bread and juice-saturated meat into her maw, forcing herself to slow down enough to chew so she didn’t end up choking and ruining the whole ordeal.

While cheap food tended to taste better than it had any right to, neither woman was wholly prepared for the experience they were undergoing. Luna felt strange to say the least. No matter how much she ate, her belly felt empty, and yet it felt heavy as well. Then again, all of her was feeling heavy as the minutes crept by. There was a sensation under her skin she could only call greasy, like squeezing a fist full of room temperature butter between one’s fingers, only covering her whole self. It wasn’t as if she’d known what to expect when it came to how getting fat, rapidly, was going to feel – but as she clutched a slowly swelling muffin top and felt it gradually filling into the spaces around her fingers Luna was quickly figuring it out.

It was harder to keep her mind pinned to the feeling than she expected, but only because so much was fighting for her attention. Luna’s hands were too busy finding things to pile into her face for one thing, starting to desperately grasp at whatever caught her eye from moment to moment, with alarmingly little concern for any thought on the matter. Her body was just doing it, recognizing a need it had new and acting to fill that need. Which involved messy handfuls of cheese slathered French fries stuffed into her face and washed down by drinking from a gravy boat.

The two of them ended up moving in a systematic way around the available tables, Naomi and Luna on roughly opposite sides going in a circle, leaving little to nothing behind them. Every time Luna stepped over a bit to get to the next pile of available sustenance her constant gorging was interrupted just long enough to take stock once again of what she’d just done to her body. Every time it was a bit thicker, and for a moment Luna would feel a rush of fear and marvel at the sheer speed it was happening at. Moving to the second table was all the further Luna got before she felt her belly grazing the edge of it, sparking a momentary lapse in her gluttony.

Reaching down with both hands, not quite realizing they were covered in food at first, Luna grasped her belly with both. It took both, she’d grown enough of a gut that if she saw herself in a shopping district, she’d have made a sarcastic joke about looking pregnant. A big soft thing she could dig into that made moving just a bit more cumbersome than it had been moments ago, and more sensitive to boot. When she let go of it the sides curled against her plump hips, and that shuffling motion set her thighs pressing into each other and rubbing constantly.

All of which was distracting enough, and wholly failed to slow her down for more than a few seconds. A heartbeat later Luna was already leaning over to reach a stack of fried pastries toward the middle of the table and trying to ignore how she’d lapsed into a noisy fwrmmmphbbt the instant she did so. One that, for as long as she leaned, feeling her belly pressing against her waist, did not end. It was starting to turn the room a bit ripe, a bit too warm and humid, given that Naomi hadn’t really let up on the matter either.

Luna did, as things were continuing, see a problem developing. Her stomach felt painfully hollow and creeping up, a few tables ahead, was the place where Naomi had started. There was still a middle ground, a spot where they’d have to move some tables to get at the last of the prepared food, but that had its own downfalls – they’d be right in each other’s faces over it. On the one hand, she was thoroughly certain she could move faster than Naomi, but there was a problem with that. It wasn’t like the rest of the food was going anywhere, and she definitely wasn’t overpowering her ‘partner’ – and doubted that either of them was inclined to share.

Salvation presented itself just before Luna found herself forced to decide about whether or not she thought she could get to the rest of the meal. Against the far wall she spotted them – nutrient paste dispensers, for when there was nothing else available or you just had literally zero money to your name. The technical answer to food being a basic right. It wouldn’t be tasty per se, the stuff was mostly flavored like salt and the unique disappointment you feel when you eat something you know for sure you shouldn’t have bought which wasn’t as good as you had hoped it would be – which was an achievement for something that cost nothing, but it would fill her stomach. If anything here would make her stop feeling ravenous, it was that.

The moment came, and it became clear both of them had seen it approaching. Naomi hurled one table out of her way with a violent lurch that left the woman quaking where she stood. It was enough to distract Luna briefly, there was so much of her moving. What had entered that bath with her as an abnormally fat woman was now nearly as wide as she was tall, arms not quite able to rest against her sides, breathing in rapid shallow gasps as she leaned into the table and sent the whole thing tumbling down – along with herself. Luna winced at the sight of all that food and flesh clattering and clapping to the deck floors, but there was little she could do about it. Even if she could stop, and her body was getting shivers of weakness telling her in no uncertain terms she had to get to that dispenser now, it wasn’t as if Luna could lift that whimpering, flatulent heap off the ground with her distinct lack of physique.

Trying not to listen to the sounds behind her, Luna found herself limping as she walked the few feet up to the dispenser. Her aching stomach and weighty body combined to make walking a chore, left her with a stitch in her back before she reached the counter and collapsed her weight against it. It was a desperate moment, that. Luna tugged on the dispenser hose and put it to her lips, fiddling with the controls, finding them cold and dark. In that moment she felt a rush of raw panic settle in. Had she been wrong? Did she need to turn around and fight for-

Ah! Crap, sorry ladies. We shut the pumps down earlier.

I’ll get that turned right back on, both units.

The rush wasn’t quite instant, there was air in the hose that burst into Luna’s mouth first and left her in a furious and emotional state for a moment as she coughed and spat, but it didn’t last beyond first contact with the sustenance. Holding to the hose tip in a death grip, letting herself sink down against the side of the counter, Luna felt the fluffy paste seep in and shut her eyes. It was instant relief, channeling the creamy/savory substance along her tongue and down toward her ravenous middle, at least as far as the animal need dominating most of her thoughts was concerned. There were other wrinkles in her head, like how she’d already gotten quite big and this was starting to feel a lot more severe than she’d been led to expect, but none of them could get in around the dominating force of her hunger.

It wasn’t for lack of trying, Luna’s thoughts were already wandering to ideas like ‘how the hell am I going to lose all this’ as she sucked on the dispenser hose desperately trying to get it to go faster. The whole idea had been to come out of it a bit fat by the end – but maybe that happened during the trip, or the company paid to slim them down after? It was the best idea Luna had at the moment, and that was what she had to content herself with as her body refused to change courses on its drive to consume.

Luna only got that far on account of the sheer relief of having sustenance enter her rapidly changing body. The changes in it demanded fuel, and while the foamy paste entering her wasn’t a culinary delight it let her achieve a kind of ragged relaxation that she could tell Naomi lacked at the moment. Her ‘partner’ in this was still desperately stuffing her face on the floor, apparently not having heard about the hoses or just not being willing to give up on flavor yet, but Luna could tell it wasn’t fast enough. The woman was whimpering and grunting, making almost as much noise as with her feasting as her ass was enduring its end of the change.

Not that Luna’s was sitting quietly, in her capacity to relax she had found herself in a position to truly appreciate what was happening to her moment by moment. The paste was a light thing in terms of its texture, but nutritionally the substance was phenomenally dense. Every couple of heartbeats Luna could feel another crawling, squidgey sensation run through under her skin while a gurgling and incessant pressure meandered through her gut. She would swallow, breathe, and curl her fingers into her thickening body while every few moments a crawling rumble would sputter loose of her now pillowy ass. It grew to be so rhythmic she could rely on a fresh burst of fuel-laced stench filling the air around her as much as she could her next inhale and exhale.

Clutching at her chest, Luna found it equal parts annoying and amusing how her breasts had swollen to the kind of things she tended to wish she’d had before. The sort that got you the attention that promised you’d never have to work in a mine or behind a counter. They’d hit the realm of inconvenient double ‘D and better a while ago, and now she needed both hands to wrangle one for playing with as they kept growing. Luckily, her back didn’t have to support the things. They were resting just fine on her rapidly spreading stomach.

Spreading was the best word Luna could think of for it, all that flesh was flowing like someone had spilled a giant mound of bread dough and it was still rising. Creeping outward while she sat, legs spread, on an increasingly comfortable bare butt. It would occasionally move a bit more in bursts, like her body was digesting it in chunks instead of a steady stream, moments that would leave her gut twitching and jerking across the floor while Luna tried to cope with suddenly feeling a lot more of it than before. It was a bit much for her just to wrap her mind around the idea that it drooped down across her lap and touched the floor at all, and she still had nothing on Naomi. At least, mostly – for now.

Some part of Luna wondered at that as she watched Naomi scraping up the last of the catered food. The skunkish woman immediately began to make desperate, needy sounds from deep in her body that Luna painfully empathized with – she’d felt the same way moments ago. Of course, she’d been a good deal more mobile than Naomi now looked. Having been growing as well, albeit not quite as quickly, Naomi looked like she’d crested six hundred pounds. Ish. It was hard for Luna to be sure, beyond a certain point it all blurred together, but she knew the woman was at a size usually reserved for people with medical conditions and assistants or people with fetishes and devoted live streaming followers.

On some level, Luna wished she could help Naomi out with the woman’s desperate crawling toward the other dangling dispenser, but it wasn’t in the cards. Not that she didn’t try. Luna absolutely made an attempt to ease up from her spot on the floor, but her limbs felt stiff and weak to begin with, and her body was so much heavier than she expected it to be. Not to mention awkward, reaching her arm out to the side left Luna able to see the loose wrapping of flab around it that dangled down while she stretched it out and fumbled at the counter. The nozzle was just out of reach though, and her arm felt so heavy. Besides, Naomi (leaving a trail of grease and smeared sauces behind her) had crawled over by now and was using the counter’s side as a handhold to help her reach the hose.

It didn’t take long before both women were finally approaching contentment, though neither could quite achieve it entirely. Luna and Naomi both sat on the edge of it as much as they sat on the floor, gradually spreading and befouling the air around them. Luna had felt that seeping spread of blubber around her body for what seemed like ages now – felt it leaving every limb she had turning into an anchor, one swallow at a time. She couldn’t stop though, not even with an honest try, and she did manage to scare one of those up as Luna watched herself grow and realized there was no way this was ‘normal’ for the procedure. At least, she was pretty sure, Naomi sprawled out on her belly next to her looked close to the same size.

Close to – maybe. Alarmingly, Luna was having a hard time telling which of them was bigger at the moment. It left her with a fresh rush of fear to think of it, she had to be growing a great deal faster, which meant… something. There had been fine print, she hadn’t read it as well as she should have probably. Either way, the matter scared her, and Luna felt a need to at least try to stop. Surely, by now, her body had grown enough that the horrid gnawing ache wouldn’t come back.

Luna shut her eyes and tried to concentrate enough to stop swallowing, only to find she kept at it regardless. It had become automatic it seemed, or some part of her disagreed about her size, though it did suggest one more solution. Reaching up, the cat groped for the hose – or tried to. At her sides she felt thick swathes of blubber, dimpled and overflowing, a fold over having begun at her elbows. With the musculature of a slender young thing they refused to lift enough to even make the attempt and Luna found herself quite thoroughly stranded in her gluttony. Able to wiggle and whimper, and not much else. Even that pathetic showing did naught but cause her body to erupt into a hideously prolonged fvvweeeermphhhbbbt that drug itself across her nerves and dignity alike.

That outburst from her ass was far from the only one, Luna could only quiver where she lay, much like Naomi, and grow. The two of them reaching a point where there was hardly a moment that passed where one of them at least wasn’t filling the room with ripe, humid miasma. Luna was struggling to keep thinking through it all, feeling hazy and wondering if the air was thinning or if all this growth was just that exhausting, or maybe they drugged the food, or…

A fresh noise interrupted both women’s steady devouring, a soft hiss from a door opening and the quiet muffled breathing of someone wearing a mask. Luna knew Naomi and herself were helpless by now, that they’d just kept growing while she and Naomi sat there dazed, and she was loathe to even open her eyes and look at what she’d already become. Instead, she tried to ignore how her skin rippled and quivered with each indignant eruption her ass indulged in. Tried, desperately, not to feel a searing shame all across herself to be seen like this. She wasn’t supposed to be seen in this state, just stuck in tank somewhere and left to ride out the trip, but now there was some yellow-feathered bird hovering near her waving something through the air and staring at a data pad.

“Hrm, something funny about – oh. Oh wow. That – no way! Crap – uh. Right, corporate channel, authorization code was… uh. Three, then – that… Sir! Sir, we have a Type Four on our hands.”

Luna blinked slowly, glancing at the bird first, then at Naomi. It wasn’t easy for them to make eye contact, each of the two had swollen cheeks obscuring their view and they weren’t exactly at the right angle to make it easy to begin with.

“No sir, I’m afraid I can’t tell. Not with the instruments here. Should I – got it. Type four protocol, rendezvous with mobile fueling station.”

All attempts at pretending not to be aware of the young man in yellow, sporting some kind of filter over his beak, were wholly dashed when Luna felt something cold snake its way under her mammoth spill of a belly. Something that stung a little and left her feeling sluggish and thick inside – which was saying something given her state. Luna tried, desperately, to spit the house out and say something – to demand answers. She wasn’t able to manage it. In the end, she couldn’t even manage to keep her eyes open.

***

When it returned, consciousness was a sluggish and inconsistent thing for Luna. She heard and felt before anything else. A hollow rumbling and cold air on her body, someone’s hands probing her around the… it felt like her belly button, but it also felt shockingly far away. There were voices, too, albeit muffled ones. As she kept listening though, they grew clearer. By the time her eyes were open matters were obvious, and worrisome. She was in roughly the same spot, but Naomi was turned over onto her back beside Luna, both of them still muzzled by their own hunger while a trio of individuals looked them over. The yellow bird, something canine in imposing body armor and holding a rifle of some kind, and a hunched looking squirrel with graying fur wearing a white coat and holding a strip of some kind of paper up. A thick thing that was steadily turning greenish.

“Well, that confirms your instruments’ report. One of these two ladies is having a Type Four reaction to the process.”

Trying to struggle, all Luna managed was a feeble wiggling of her limbs and a rampaging torrent of gas spewing out of her body. The squirrel seemed not to mind, as he just raised an eyebrow and then paced over to Naomi. The horned skunk woman stared up in a state that Luna wasn’t sure of, there was a ferocious blush on those cheeks but that might have been embarrassment. Certainly, it couldn’t have been enjoyable when the old squirrel poked her sharply in the stomach and then held another of those paper strips right beneath Naomi’s gut and wafted it through the ensuing stream of flatulence.

Saying nothing, the rodent stepped over to Luna and did the same thing. A sharp, unpleasant jab in the stomach followed by a rough undulation in her gut that felt obscene for the little twinge of pleasure it caused. After that the little scientist did his waving about again, and everyone waited while he checked something out of Luna’s sight.

“That one.”

Luna felt a surge of frigid terror as she watched the rodent point directly at her.

“You sure it might not be both, sir? I mean, imagine the bonus on that!”

There was a quick glare from squirrel to bird at that, one that quickly shut the question down. The squirrel walked up to Naomi at that, giving the horned skunk a fresh shot to the stomach that left the woman quaking in place and whimpering as her constant gassing of the room intensified.

“Boy, this isn’t to be taken lightly. There are legal protections for us for type four that we will not jeopardize. This woman?”

Grabbing a handful of Naomi’s belly, the squirrel gave it a merciless shaking. It set the whole of the woman’s body jiggling and drew out more of those noises Luna wasn’t totally sure of the nature of.

“Is just a type three who started out a bloated lard-ass with a predilection for letting her bowels freely taint any air around them. Haul her gigantic body down to the fuel conversion pod and administer some amnesiatics before you squeeze her head into the orientation device.”

There was a quiet ‘yes sir’ from the bird there, and a last attempt at a look between Naomi and Luna. There had been words in that which were perfectly valid causes to fear what came next, like amnesiatic drugs being part of this, and ‘orientation’ probably being more ominous than it sounded. Those were far from the only questions, though.

“And you, my dear. You – Brutus – you get this one fixed with the levplates and relocate her to cargo bay six. It’ll be prepared by the time you have her there. I’ll read her the transition clause while you work.”

Whimpering and wiggling, Luna winced as the squirrel began to climb her heap of a body. Limbs wedged out to her sides, tits flattening and resting in the spaces between them and atop her belly, gut having forced her legs apart while it sprawled out as far as her toes reached, only able to stay kind of ‘upright’ because her ass had grown out behind her and she was still resting against the counter. Meanwhile, she felt a stinging heat around her left buttock as the guard did something in that vicinity – probably affixing whatever it was the squirrel had mentioned. The squirrel currently crawling up her body, causing fresh bursts of stink to waft out of her with each crawled step.

When he had reached her chest, the squirrel took Luna by the cheeks and gave them a shake, smiling in a distressing fashion. The rodent looked on her ‘fondly’, sort of, but she didn’t trust the expression at all.

“Glorious. Well, dear, I’m sure you didn’t see this coming. No reason to, really. Such a rare occurrence. A special opportunity.”

Talking was out of the question, but Luna managed to mumble and shift her tone enough to communicate something questioning, which the squirrel picked up on just fine.

“For us, that is. Your type are rare and useful, and we’re quite certain your body’s reaction to the gastric fuel repurposing gene therapy holds the key to something more. Now-”

An old, thin hand produced a small injector at that and stuck it into the meat of Luna’s left breast. A brief sting, a rush of something cold in her blood, then nothing. Once more, she looked at the squirrel with curiosity in her eyes.

“Stabilizing agent, to make the gene therapy treatment permanent.”

Luna knew she’d gotten something close enough to a shouted cry of ‘permanent!?’ out around her still guzzling muzzle, eyes wide and whole-body clenching – or at least trying to. Mostly it just wobbled a bit, and she was fairly sure a lot of that had to do with Brutus continuing to stick things to her ass.

“Yes, dear. Of course, we’ll be administering a second bath when we get you to our vapor derrick and providing you with a much nicer food source. You’ll be comfortable, entertained, healthy – apart from the minor inconvenience of being a prisoner in your own body.”

The panic grew like a cluster of frost around the little spike that word had created. Permanent. Luna watched as Naomi was being dragged out of the room by the bird, a trail of some kind of lubricant being left behind her, before she let her eyes drift back to the squirrel and his terrifying placid smile.

“Your contract under clause sixteen paragraph four stipulates that in the event of a type four reaction you surrender your rights as a free and independent citizen.”

A gentle pat on her cheek set Luna’s face wobbling precariously around her precious hose of sustenance.

“You, my dear, are corporate property now. By this time tomorrow you’ll be twice as big, have our logo color-branded onto your hips, and you will spend every minute of the rest of your life venting high-grade aerosolized fuel from your digestive system.”

Luna wanted to run, she wanted to scream or hide, to call for help. Literally none of those things were even possible for her right now, some of them would never be possible again if this rodent was telling the truth – and she had no reason to doubt him. As she watched the man reach for her neck with the injector after reloading it with something purple, Luna whimpered and struggled to move – but nothing came of it. That, she knew as her vision grew dark once more, would be the closest she ever came to rebelling against anything ever again.

***

Curiously, Luna felt light when her thoughts returned to her. Disconnected, comfortable, and light. Opening her eyes didn’t help much to speak of, there was just darkness around her. A warm, vibrating black that wrapped around her body like a thick and slightly damp blanket. Most of her seemed kind of numb, mostly – it wasn’t the right word for it exactly, but it was close.

Shuddering, Luna sucked in a breath. Her body tingled, her lungs filled with crisp and floral-scented air, and for just a moment she saw something. A flicker of light, of pink and black, and then the pangs began. A horrible emptiness that bit her in the center of her being and left her too weak to even flail or thrash like she wanted, to weak to even pretend to try. In that same instant, however, something hit her tongue and made her aware of the edges of a feeding mask nestled into her lips and jaw.

Luna recognized the taste of chocolate, rich and thick, flooding her mouth like a half-melted milkshake or thin cake batter. No thought was needed, she began sucking the fluid down as quickly as she could, silencing the agony within. It still left the cat whimpering for the moments of it she’d endured, her ragged and scattered thoughts flitting about in a chaotic mess in her head, until a familiar voice entering her ears as if it was right inside her head crystallized them.

“Welcome back, my dear little asset. Comfortable?

Asset. The word brought everything back to Luna in an instant, but while she was still in that burst of clarity her vision flickered. There was a screen right in front of her eyes, she realized. A headset probably built into the feeding mask. For just an instant she saw a security feed of a room. A large cargo bay dominated by a massive apparatus in the center. A clear cylinder, full of pink around its edges, and gray around the center. Inside was a lumpy sphere, a thing as wide as it was tall, with no defining features – no clear things like arms or legs, just a little nub of blue and pink at the top, and a half-mangled stub of a tail near the center of what must be the ass given the steady stream of large bubbles flowing up from it. Everything else was a collection of uneven, rippling curves and deep folds that shifted and flowed slowly in what she could feel as currents in the gel saturating her body.

“I’d certainly hope you are anyway, and your vitals seem to indicate as much. You’re already producing well, and the secondary treatment isn’t even over yet. I can’t wait to see how you do when you’re on the production farm with your new brothers and sisters. Though I suppose we can get you a head start on the new family thing while we’re en route, now that I think of it. We did bring a sample.”

A moment later the image flickered out, melting into a pattern of shifting colors that made it difficult for Luna to think, let alone concentrate. She heard a buzzing white noise to go with the video feed, a thing that left her mind feeling as soft as the warm, quivering mass of her body. In that sinking warmth Luna let go of something she’d been clinging to so tightly it hurt, quietly listening to the audio feed around her start to whisper to her about what a grand role she had to play in pursuing these new innovations.

“With any luck, dear, your children will have exactly what we need to really make something of this program. For now? Sleep well.”

The last little bit of tension in Luna’s body jerked and vanished as she felt something dig itself into the sea of flesh between her legs, snaking up the formless expanse of it all and probing for her deeply buried sex. A gentle twitch of pleasure rushed through Luna’s frame, accenting the subtler buzz spreading from her ass, as it nestled deep into her and began to fill her with something warm. Luna felt herself sinking into a kind of contentment, artificial or not, that she knew she wasn’t going to ever surface from.

She couldn’t even muster the will to try.