Seeking Sherwood Chapter 2 (Patreon)

Dealing with newly acquired weight isn't an easy feat, especially not when you're being dragged along by the Vice Regent! But the raven has a mission, and the consequences of it will settle across their waistlines! 

Written by the wonderful Rabidbadger writing, illustrated by me!  

Characters/Owners:

Garth - Nackvixen 

Veronicas - Veronacus 

Temperance - Paris  

- - -   

Temperance was huddled in her bed, much as she could be. The bat had curled herself into a ball, which was easy for her to emulate on account of her soft and rounded middle. Her quarters were cozy, which wasn’t a euphemism for cramped – which they also kind of were, but the place was so comfortable she couldn’t begrudge it. The bed was a soft, engulfing thing that took up a quarter of the floor space, and most of the rest was occupied by two large work benches now, but it also had a strangely hand crafted feel to all the walls and flooring – textures and warmth instead of cold metal – and of course the mini fridge. 

It was the desks she was staring at, occupied by a mess of tools and data pads, as well as one very large metal canister attached to a handful of devices she was mostly certain would do what she wanted, and with one intake line linked to the ship’s emergency nutrient paste stores. With permission, she’d had to ask for that – but that vixen, Dawn, had given her the go-ahead with no fuss at all. The only problem left was that it worked.

Sighing, Temperance reached up and touched her neck. Or rather, she touched the choker with the violet jewel resting around it at the moment. The design was a simple thing, a familiar one too – she’d built similar devices for the Vice Regent and her ‘pets’ after all. Some differences remained, though. Garth and Veronica had theirs hard wired to ‘receive’, and the Vice Regent’s was on ‘send’, whereas the one Temperance was wearing now was not restricted in any such fashion. And yet, she mused, it still felt like the collar was binding her. It was the necessity of it that saw to that. 

Vice Regent Amourres had given her that challenge to meet, and while Temperance did not know how she felt about it yet she knew she didn’t want to fail. So, she’d resolved to find some creative solution or another, which led to the contraption she was looking at and the silk shackle around her neck. She had, at one point, considered just shunting the extra food she ate into the receptacle. That had actually worked and had then been way too gross conceptually and in the cleaning process for her to continue doing. Popping it into space was also a thing, but that would stop working off the ship, assuming she didn’t want to just have chewed food materializing nearby her at random intervals. 

Overall, the thing was a technical success, and a practical failure. Temperance had tried it and then shut it down – a week of travel and she’d already failed to keep up with the Vice Regent several times, earning her disapproving looks and two dismissals from the dinner table so far. Those had been the first two nights – every night since she’d given in and dosed herself with some of that digestive accelerant again, which was why the bat was currently hugging her middle and not her knees. Her knees would no longer press up against her chest when she sat down. Instead, her gut was in her lap and her arms were around it. 

Technically the accelerants did the job. They just weren’t much of a practical solution, not in the long run. It got her out of being glared at by her benefactor, but it had led to her packing on a couple dozen pounds in a week being sat down to lavish meals two or three times a day. It had led to Temperance finding out there was a curious delight to it when she tried to get through the meal without one. She couldn’t, but she had tried her best – gotten almost painfully full in the process, then there’d been a few minutes of rubbing her distended middle and trying to coax some more room out of it. To rub loose a belch, or shift some of the bulk inside, anything that might help. It hadn’t worked, but she’d loved the way it felt – then the accelerants took it away. 

Temperance wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Using them made it impossible to get that full, though not for lack of trying, but they also spared her the Vice Regent’s ire. Only one solution had come to mind as far as getting the best of both worlds, if she had the courage to try it. Putting the tank contraption in reverse would, maybe, outpace the digestive assistance while it was active. Let her keep eating and be full, but never too full to eat more. Which the mere thought of was leaving her squirming a bit where she sat, making her more mouth hungry than stomach hungry. The problem, of course, was it would almost certainly make her noticeably heavier in just one meal, and that was creeping up on her too quickly as it was.

Indecision wasn’t anything new for Temperance, but rarely had she encountered a case of it quite so severe. She was nowhere near a resolution when the she saw her tablet update with a message from the Vice Regent. 

VR-A: Hey there! Get yourself dressed up a bit, we’re docking within the hour. If you can’t figure out what to wear let me know, I’ll come by and help. Make sure you’re ready to get in some mealtime too, I’ll need you ready with your technical expertise but that doesn’t mean we won’t be stopping for lunch. Possibly a couple of times. Depends on how good this place’s markets are, I guess.

Her answer was a brief thing, more an acknowledgement than anything else. Temperance didn’t quite trust herself to say more while so unsure of things. She glanced over at her workstation again – there were plenty of the accelerants, she’d have no problem on that front. Shifting herself off the bed, Temperance set her tablet down beside them and readied two doses, just in case.

There was no telling how long the Vice Regent’s business would take, after all. 

*** 

The procession they formed was a strange one, and far from inconspicuous. The only thing that was relieving about that for Temperance was that, as three of them exited the ship, she probably stood out the least. The Vice Regent was a glamorous thing compared to them, even if she had insisted on both her and Garth being dressed up for this. A floral, royal pink that was gradually shifting hues and turning iridescent in different lighting contrasted sharply with the Vice Regent’s dark feathers and drew many an eye – as did Garth’s enormous body. The bunny’s chocolate brown fur was wrapped in a skin-tight suit that covered every inch of him that wasn’t his face and was similarly non-specific about its details. If anything, it was more chaotic, the material kept manifesting art displays sprawling over curved layers of flesh that wobbled gently as Garth moved, leaving him looking a bit distracted by his own bulk.

  “Marvelous, isn’t it? Like a giant walking canvas that always has more room than it did the day before.”

It was definitely hard to stop staring at. Temperance was watching a rainfall over a lake that was traveling slowly to the left over Garth’s gut and onto his gently undulating ass, giving the whole thing a distinctly dreamlike feel to it. 

“It uh, it’s…”

Temperance tensed up when she felt hands close around her, the Vice Regent’s, across her waist and over her shoulder – the former of the two having slid over to her hip and given it a squeeze.

“I might keep him, unlike all his predecessors. Make him an art piece for my bedroom. Come along! Our contact is this way. Tempy, you keep those ears open for shenanigans.”

It wasn’t an easy thing to parse. Temperance had frozen the instant that hand had squeezed on her already plump flesh, and it took her until a full two seconds after being let go of to coax herself into moving again, let alone thinking clearly or paying proper attention to her surroundings. Not that the latter offered much beyond chaos. The Vice Regent took the head and people were by and large making way for them, but the chaotic mess of booths and stalls and people, of merchants and machines was a lot to take in.

Vice Regent Amourres did not take a direct route, that was obvious to both of her entourage from the beginning. There was no shortage of food around, the kind that people had actually prepared over a stove or in their home instead of gotten fabricated or out of a machine. 

Temperance couldn’t deny that it all smelled enticing, while the Vice Regent had been stopping at literally every stall to try some – and insist she did. There was a tiny bit of signal Temperance could more feel than hear whenever the collar did its work, which had been going off both near and far thanks to the skinnier one insisting she stay behind on their outing – not that it was going to stop the Vice Regent’s excesses from making their way to her stomach. Their entire outing was moving in increments of a few yards, then stopping while the ebon bird ate, the bunny taking on her burden and then eating for himself too, and Temperance did her best to keep up.

The trip was less than comfortable, for her anyway. Temperance couldn’t see any real hesitation or even thought on Garth’s behalf about joining in, which did something to explain why the rabbit was twice as big as she remembered him being already, but she didn’t make it far before she was feeling painfully full. With the kind of taut belly, demanding rubbing that she was blushing as she administered to herself, that she was sure would’ve taken her another half hour to get to, Temperance found herself reaching for the digestive enhancers and wrestling with a surge of concern about how this afternoon was going to go. 

Not that the concern was changing anything. Temperance took the enhancer, ensuring she’d spent the next three hours rapidly digesting anything that entered her body and losing none of it but for a few likely, embarrassing gaseous indiscretions that she prayed she could find somewhere to hide during. There was always a bit of unpleasant vertigo right after it, the sheer change in internal pressure amid all that gurgling and shifting inside herself was at fault for it, and then came the ravenous emptiness Temperance hated most about the whole thing. It didn’t exactly hurt, but she felt a visceral aversion to it and the only solution was gorging herself with the same enthusiasm the Vice Regent showed.

Maybe not quite the same intensity as Garth, though. 

“Ugh, I – hwurph – that… what was that?”

The Vice Regent was practically purring by then, wiping her beak clean with a visibly greasy handkerchief while Garth’s middle made uneasy gurgling noises.

“I believe it’s called a ‘double down’ or some such thing. Honestly the name doesn’t matter, it’s decadent and it’s real. Those are the best kinds of things for a treat to be. We’ve got hours of that to look forward to yet.”

Squinting a bit, Temperance looked down at her gut – the sandwich (if it could be called that) had hit her heavily enough to actually take the edge off the annoying, grating hunger for a moment, enhancers be damned. But that didn’t distract her from the statement just made.

“Hours? I thought we had someone to meet right away?”

The Vice Regent let out a musical little chuckle at that, punctuated with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“Oh no, not right away, just a very specific timeframe in the right place. We’ve got about two hours yet until we can meet her.”

Temperance found her belly, which was weathering its assault by hunger better than it usually did she found (she suspected the food was just that heavy), pressed against by that hand a moment later while Amourres curled her lips into a grin. 

“Until then? We’re eating everything we can find dears. Come on! I smell something fried and sugary down this way.”

While the Vice Regent charged ahead, Temperance and Garth shared a glance. The bat was a bit concerned, she expected to feel more intensely hungry than she did right now and was wondering if she was building a resistance to the appetite enhancers. Garth on the other hand appeared, though forcibly silenced by the collar she’d built, to be more amused than anything else. Excited, maybe. Temperance could swear the wobbling heap of a bunny hybridized with an art installation looked like he knew something, some secret he was squatting on that was just as satisfying as the gluttony, but it wasn’t as if she could tell.

It was probably the anxiety making her overthink things, though. Temperance let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, then nearly fell over as she felt Garth’s calamitous hips brush against her on his way past, even that casual contact transferring an immense amount of energy. Unsteady, uncertain, and blushing, Temperance gathered herself as best she could and began following the giant globes of bun-rump with their peaceful mountainside lake sprawled over the curved, wobbling surfaces toward whatever it was that smelled so damn enticing.

*** 

When the Vice Regent finally showed signs of having a clear and pressing need to be somewhere sooner rather than later, Temperance was almost relieved. Their business concluding meant she could get back to her bench, put more effort into figuring this mess out, which she had fresh motivation to do. Their approach of a rather plain looking building with an eccentric crowd outside it, waiting in a chaotic bunch near two battered metal loading doors, was hindered slightly in that both she and Garth were moving slower than when they had begun the day.

Garth’s growth was understandable, neither he nor the Vice Regent had stopped eating the entire time they were out. Granted, neither had Temperance, but she was only doing so with one mouth and with somewhat less enthusiasm than they had for it. Mostly. Temperance didn’t entirely understand why she was feeling closer to full than usual with the enhancer still in her system, she still had theories on that but they couldn’t be sorted out until she had herself back at the ship to do tests, but it was kind of pleasant. Instead of being hideously ravenous she was just nicely over-stuffed and compelled to always stay straddling the edge of painfully full. 

Twice already she’d caught herself thinking something akin to ‘I can live with that’ regarding the situation, and then immediately shaken the idea off as absurd when she didn’t have the data to understand what was going on yet. Which was a problem that extended to more than just her appetite.

“What are we doing here, Vice Regent?”

The ebon-feathered bird turned back to her companions and grinned a bit.

“Staring into the void, lovelies. Just watch and feel.”

There wasn’t a long wait to it. Within moments, the doors began to scrape open allowing the crowd to rush inside, the three of them included. Though truly rushing was out of the question for Garth, and Temperance was feeling very bloated and sluggish – more than she expected to be. Every step she took she felt her flesh rubbing against itself, and she kept spotting her hips out of the corner of her eye when they shouldn’t be there, like she was being shadowed by her own growing ass.

Temperance did find, as they approached, that something felt off. The closer to the building they got the worse the sensation became, though it was something Temperance couldn’t really place at first. Something that stuck in the back of her mind like an itchy throat, something that left her uncomfortable, almost panicky for a moment, and which made it hard to stay focused on the state of herself otherwise. She walked right into that mountain and lake landscape on Garth’s ass when they got past the threshold and the doors began grinding shut behind her. It was just before they heavily sealed shut that the thing bothering Temperance finally became clear.

All outside signals were entirely cut off. At least, mostly. There was always a little background buzz that one’s internal implant systems could hear, or feel, or something – and the absence of it was deafening. Communication devices, nearby broadcasts, everything – except the collars. Those, with her hand-made and hand-tuned hardware, seemed to be an exception. Everything else had gone dark, including the room around her. Though that did not remain so for long, lights flared up from the roof first – colorful things that bathed the room in a mélange of hues, then some specific areas around the edges. A stage, a bar, a dance floor. 

“…This is a club.”

As soon as the words left Temperance’s mouth the entire space erupted into noise. Deep, thrumming bass that she could feel in her chest – that she could swear she saw causing tremors to travel up Garth’s body, and a lot of rhythmic noise. She was too enthralled to do much else when that began, and Garth looked a bit bemused as well, but both soon found themselves with a wrist taken by the Vice Regent.

“Come on dears. We need to part the sea here and get to the back rooms, head downstairs. Our contact is waiting.”

Temperance and Garth shared a look of open disappointment at that. The bat caught more than a few eyes on them at this point, and a fair portion of them were of the inviting and appreciative kind. Immediately, she pictured Garth on the dance floor, people bouncing off him left and right. It was the first thing in a while that had made giggle, and even when she caught herself at it the smile wouldn’t go away. There was a very real chance she’d need to blow off steam by the time this was done – Temperance found herself hoping they could hang around a bit afterward. 

It was, in the meantime, a bit frustrating to have to walk past it all – but she was ‘on the clock’ as it was. Besides, she knew her employer at this point, Temperance had serious doubts the Vice Regent was leaving the premises without some grinding and bouncing.

*** 

It took a bit of doing to get through to the other end of the club floor, though Garth had some use as a fleshy battering ram there. Eventually they entered a dark, concrete hallway with flickering lights and a dodgy looking elevator that did not please Temperance to look into using. It was archaic. Purely mechanical. If the Vice Regent weren’t tugging her along she’d have protested, but without that opportunity she soon found herself carefully working to press her body into the space available, wedging in against Garth – which wasn’t avoidable under the circumstances – and trying not to grab anything she wasn’t supposed to. 

The Vice Regent was not so subtle nor reserved. The bird half climbed onto Garth’s side, chuckling and giving his bulky middle a rubbing that the muted bunny seemed to be enjoying, whereas Temperance was just too acutely aware of all the space her own belly was taking up on account of it touching Garth’s. Everywhere. Temperance could swear it was pressing against it harder every minute, and that she still felt shockingly full despite the enhancer in her body. Though, she thought, it might be wearing off – and knowing her benefactor this would still involve a lot of eating.

When the elevator doors slid open they all stumbled and spilled out, with the Vice Regent half riding Garth’s sloshing middle in the process. Once she’d recovered her footing, Temperance administered her second dose of digestive enhancer.

“About time you did that, love.”

Taking a moment to catch her breath (she’d sucked in her gut for a lot of the ride down), Temperance raised an eyebrow to that as she took in the room they’d arrived in. It was dark, but she could make out furniture – a smaller bar – it resembled a lounge. Just an unoccupied one. No sign anywhere of a contact, though. Temperance shook her head in confusion, glancing at Garth as if the bunny would have a chance at knowing more than she despite knowing better.

“What do you mean? I – what are we here to find?”

Amourres stepped through the gloom, finding herself a large egg-shaped seat to slide into, the intricate patterns on her beak playing in the dim light.

“She’s on the way, she doesn’t move very quickly these days. You might want to sit down though; you’re looking a bit thick around the midsection. Garth, you’ve been a good boy, you do what you like.”

Temperance felt a surge of heat in her cheeks – and of pressure in her middle. There was a tension, a gurgling that came after it, and a horrible mixture of that ravenous feeling from the enhancers and feeling full at the same time. Enough to leave her glancing around the dark frantically for something she could get in her mouth. 

“What – what did… why do I-”

The bar was the answer of course. Temperance stumbled her way behind it, slamming her hips into the side and knocking a couple of trays off it in the process. The bar was, thankfully, stocked. Not that she wanted to get drunk, but there were mixers – Temperance found herself acting on pure urge and need as she tucked a bottle of chocolate syrup into her lips and tilted it back like a water bottle.

“Because you need incentive to figure this out. You’ve been half-assing your way through my challenge so far, and that warrants punishment. Now?”

It was proving very difficult for Temperance to stop her consumption, thick sugary liquid running down her through and a rough instinctive demand by her body to keep doing it was making replying impossible. While sweet, the stuff wasn’t terribly dense.

“That little machine of yours is running back on the ship.”

Temperance’s blood chilled as her stomach went properly taut and the raw urge to consume ebbed a bit. Barely. She still kept suckling though, she was having a difficult time mustering the willpower to stop now that she’d begun, particularly with the distraction at hand. She fought to get herself up from where she’d half collapsed on the bar, gut sticking under the edge of it, feeling her clothing slide and squirm along flesh that was intent on not fitting inside it any longer than it had to.

“Mmfn – g-gotta go! I have to go turn it off-”

Vice Regent Amourres’ voice took on a sharp, commanding tone. Something that Temperance wasn’t familiar with. Something unsettling, maybe a bit frightening even as she realized what this meant. That the Vice Regent knew about the device and had managed to sabotage it. 

“Sit. Down. Temperance. Over here, behind the bar, wherever. The Void locks its doors for the entire evening, you couldn’t get out if you wanted – couldn’t even call the ship thanks to the way this place is built. For the next three hours you get to watch yourself grow, and then for the three after that? Your original test starts over again.”

Temperance sunk back against the back of the bar. Her body was screaming for more sustenance; it made it borderline impossible to think, while every bit of focus she could scrape up wrapped itself in knots around that squelching, greasy sensation under her skin and the gentle tug of her clothing easing its way away from itself. Her top sliding over her belly a tiny bit at a time, too slow to watch, more than quick enough to feel. Temperance grabbed at her belly with her free hand as if she could hold it back, but all it accomplished was to give her a uniquely vivid mental image of how much bigger it was going to be in a few hours.

That image came with an odd state of mind paired to it. Something laced with a bit of guilt, and a bit of craving that had nothing to do with hunger. At least not directly. Temperance had caught plenty of moments where the bunny was wrestling with his gigantic body, but she could swear Garth was enjoying every minute of it. 

When the lights in the lounge finally came back on, she was sunk to the floor behind the bar. Temperance couldn’t see what was going on, but she could now locate every bit of food stashed around her. Chips, breads, cheeses, a refrigerator full of pints of ice cream – which proved to be the thing she dove for when given the chance.

It was with one of those in hand, literally, scooping out a handful of it to eat given a lack of obvious spoons to use, that Temperance finally stood back up to see what the room looked like in the light, and who they were meeting. So it was that she had a hand stuffed in her face, coated in vaguely alcoholic tasting sweet and sticky chocolate ice cream, when she watched a middle-aged badger with a relatively hefty build and a thoroughly roughly treated body wheel herself in. Slowly. On creaking hinges and axels. The woman was probably around her fifties if Temperance had to guess, but with one arm clearly crippled and in an entirely mechanically powered wheelchair of all things.

The woman rolled her way in close enough to address the lot of them, one eyebrow raised, voice a bit rough and wheezy.

“Well, at least one and a half of you look like I expected. You’re ready to agree to my terms then, Vice Regent?”

Temperance watched as the Vice Regent steepled her fingers. 

“I am. You help me find Sherwood Fleet, I get you your princely rescue.”

Exhaling, the badger leaned back. It became clear as they watched that the woman’s limbs were, by and large, useless apart from the one she was leaning on.

“Welp, settle in. I’ll tell you what I know, but it’ll take a while to copy it the old-fashioned way – especially with just one hand. Unless your chocolate-soaked secretary there can handle the transcription?”

Grinning a bit, the Vice Regent turned toward Temperance.

“Tempy, dear? There’s bound to be a pad and pen up there somewhere. How’s your handwriting?”

Blinking, Temperance tried to answer at first, finding her fingers once more in her mouth. After a deliberate swallow and a clearing of her throat, she glanced around – and sure enough, there was actual dead-tree format paper and gravity reliant ink pens. 

“I uh, It’s… okay. I can read my own at least.”

The Vice Regent’s hands came together in a single clap.

“It’ll do. Try not to fall behind or get too much ice cream on the notes, dear.”

Temperance found herself scrambling to wash her hands clean even as more than half of her desperately wanted to squeeze the entire tub into her face – even if the little warm buzz from the alcohol content in it wasn’t lasting terribly long with the accelerants in her system. She still felt, anxiously, that everyone was waiting on her and getting steadily more annoyed – though when Temperance finished and looked up there was no obvious sign of that. Just the playful staring from Amourres and the sight of Garth laboriously hauling himself over toward the bar and grabbing her half-eaten pint to take for himself. Something she instinctively felt the urge to try and take back – but that impulse was brief. She was on the clock, for one thing. Besides, Temperance thought as she glanced below, there was an entire mini freezer full of the stuff. 

She could let Garth have her messy leftovers. Temperance had by then already located the silverware and had three cartons under her arm with a couple of wash cloths and a hand towel by the time she was half-waddling up to the table nearest the badger. She peeled open a lemon cream one and digging in with her off hand while preparing to write.

“Go ahead, ma’am.”

The badger raised an eyebrow, but didn’t react beyond that apart from a distant, pained expression.
 “Well, it started with a message from someone calling themselves Yaela…”