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The mysteries of the strange and illegal comms station that was installed in the depths of the university are drawn to a close as Genevieve and Rigel visit an old and lately absent friend.The following contains delicious plot, permaberry doing his thing, Genevieve and her bee fran(s?), a badger who drank way too much soft serve, elements of weight gain, embarrassment, pregnancy, mystery, permaberry and more! 

This chapter written by rabidbadger and illustrated by myself

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“Okay, it says turn here and head downward, then manually open the two sets of doors at the bottom, one at a time.”

Rigel and Genevieve hadn’t taken too long to figure out where they were going. The directions were pretty clear after all, they just took them to unfamiliar places. Humid and deep corridors that they would never have found otherwise.

“Why do I keep ending up in the bowels of the station, Rigel? Suddenly I’m all down in the squishy parts of this place and life is complicated. I was perfectly content to stick to the nice, placid surface.”

They found their turn, and did indeed see a descending corridor with doors at the bottom. Big metal things that were probably going to be a pain. Rigel grumbled at the sight, putting a hand to his belly. He felt bloated already, but that fit with what the nurse had told him would happen – at least he was pretty sure it was the nurse at the time, she sounded warm and supportive about it. He’d bloat, and need to be juiced every so often, but if he kept on top of it he’d be fine. 

Of course, it had been quite some time since he got around to it, so now he felt himself sloshing a bit with each step, and every time he reached to tug his clothing back into place he found it had ridden up a little higher than last time. Still, he was doing better than the vixen. 

“There was never a nice, placid version of this place. I mean it took us both how long to run into serious problems? You ended up getting visibly fatter from day one if I recall.”

Genevieve groaned as she waddled, her sheer size was starting to make things more difficult for her. That, and she was feeling some very curious goings-on in her belly. Not the usual insanity that the infernal sow in the lunch kiosk had done to her, but a kind of fizzing, faint burning sensation inside she was having a little trouble placing. To make matters worse, her drone was riding around on her shoulders and could not seem to sit still. It kept head butting her, pawing at her face with its little arms, and crawling around on her belly doing a strange little dance every time she stopped to breathe.

“You shut up you…”

She had to stop right where they were for that matter, not that it was a bad place for it. Rigel was busily working the doors open, which were a bit grinding and slow. 

“Someone really needs to grease these. You holding up okay since you got poked by your friend?”

The vixen exhaled, glancing around as Rigel heaved their path open and revealed the middle chamber they both awkwardly waddled into. 

“I think – I feel weird, like something’s moving around a lot. They said my drone checked out though after the first little run-in I had with things. So, I…”

Genevieve looked down, the little thing perched on her swollen belly wiggled at her happily.

“I trust him. Let’s get in there and talk to Sam, seems like he’s gotten into his own crazy mess here.”

The azure reptile stood, though he had to pause with a hand on his back briefly as he did so, and then began shoving hard on the second set of doors as the first ones closed themselves noisily. The rush of cold air was a welcome thing for the both of them, given how sweaty the walk and the effort had been. Inside though? Both students stopped in their tracks for that, wide-eyed and stunned. It was only when the doors started to shut themselves that they jolted into movement and worked their way in properly (though Genevieve was fairly sure she lost a few tail hairs). 

The lighting in the place wasn’t great, but it was good enough. They saw the walkways they were on, and they saw the four masses of color dangling from the harnesses they were in on either side of said walkways. 

One of which was a rich, royal purple.

“…Sam?”

The two said it more or less in unison. There was no obvious response, though as they approached, they began to realize they might not have recognized it if he tried. The purple shape was smaller than the rest, but as they closed in on it, it still mystified the pair with just how massive it was. Samuel had gotten fat, quickly, yes – but this thing before them? Suspended just so that they could see the two conical, blubber-swaddled mounds that were, at one point legs, and the swollen mound with the slit in the front of it that lay between them, at roughly eye level neither student had a prayer of seeing the badger’s face up there, if it was him. There was a giant cloud of flesh above them in the way, and it was not so easy to blow away as the sort made of water vapor.

Rigel and Genevieve exchanged glances, and both of them found themselves reaching out to touch the suspended body before them. It was certainly as soft as they’d come to expect Sam’s body to be, just an awful lot larger. 

“This – what…?”

It was Rigel that shook it off first, apparently anyway. He had one hand to his belly still, and the other to Sam’s. He couldn’t entirely resist giving it a shake. The fact that the slight jostling led to an audible moan echoing from above, and from a small cluster of fist sized colorful eggs sliding out of that central bulge, got Rigel right back to startled and awestruck again.

“The message said something about this, I think…”

Genevieve didn’t really hear him, she was breathing shallow and hunched over. Something in her felt like an antacid in a glass of water, nestled between her legs. She couldn’t really hear so much as feel the buzzing from it, nestled deep in the back of her neck, branching off into other places – like her forehead.
She felt something small shift around, and then slide out of her, in much the same way she’d just watched happen to her badger friend. Something that left the vixen frozen in place. Still tense and rigid, she felt whatever it was roll down her leg, and land on the catwalk below her with the faintest sounds of metal on metal. 

A moment later, she saw.

The crystalline growths on her forehead hissed and burned for a single, painful instant as a visual feed flickered into being before her eyes, one that looked bizarre – alien almost – enormous curvatures in black, like ill-lit planets. 

The image flickered again, rendering itself in a sharp mélange of greens that shed some of the dark. Night vision, she realized. Then she saw the view rise upward, and realized she was staring at herself – the same way she did when her drone was directly broadcasting to her. The scale was off though, everything looked colossal, and her drone was still cradling her belly and making weird, organic trilling sounds. Still, it was precisely the same thing – she saw herself, and Rigel, the catwalks, she saw Samuel’s head and arms (what of them weren’t embedded in his body anyway) and the hose he was feeding from with its little trickle of runoff going down his cheek. 

Genevieve sent a thought out to the general presence she felt broadcasting to her, and it moved in response. It turned and swung around to where she could see it. There, hovering before her, was a bee. One about the size of the last knuckle of her smallest finger, but otherwise it looked staggeringly similar to the drone cuddling her belly. It flitted about a bit unsteadily still, showing herself (good Chrome she was getting fat – not like Sam, but…), Rigel, the other massive edifices of flesh, and something else – it couldn’t really make out color like this but it definitely saw something behind her. 

Or someone? A body – maybe two – moving. Or one was moving anyway. Towards her.

Genevieve spun around just a little too fast in the cold, dark room to be particularly balanced.

“Rigel, there’s somewh-“

Especially not when what she saw upon turning was a fist. It was an odd experience. Genevieve wasn’t sure she’d ever been punched before. It didn’t even feel like it hurt at first, and that ‘at first’ instant had the weirdest timeline. Gone instantly, but there was this huge stretch of time after where she could contemplate being surprised that it was more of a violent shake than pain, wonder at how long she seemed to be taking to fall over, and feel a bit of a weird dread that it was going to hurt in a relatively short amount of time.

 

Sebastian let out a shaky breath that was far too visible in the chill of all this conditioned air. He’d known it wouldn’t be long, but it still shocked him to hear the doors grinding open again so soon. Everything felt wrong. The little drone mouse he was sitting on, that felt wrong. The scrambling signal he felt his friend radiating down into the girl below him right through her second skin felt wrong, but it was keeping her down without hurting her as far as he could tell.

The cat looked over at the mound beside him, about a dozen of the eggs sat there in a basket. He wasn’t admittedly sure if that was actually enough, but he suspected it must be. Rumors said it only took one of them to make it irreversible, but he’d have to be safe. 

The second grinding sound followed, and sure enough, Sebastian saw a vixen and a lizard enter, along with the vixen’s little drone.

This is the best course. Your solution is very elegant, Sebastian. Just follow through.

His solution. Sebastian could feel the signal rushing into the drone, pacifying her. All it took was some moderately elegant code to leave her fairly helpless. This was exactly why they terrified him – their will just wasn’t their own anymore. All it took was one order from anyone else on campus, let alone what could happen if someone skilled got at them, and you could be subdued. 

And now he was going to do it to those two innocent students who were here… what? Visiting that heaving mound of flesh and latex that used to be their roommate. He was going to assault them, during that?
“No. This… this is too far. I’m in over my head.”

The cat took a breath, and made the decision to stand up and surrender.

Sebastian didn’t entirely understand why when he took the basket with him. Then he saw his arm swinging out through the air, and felt his knuckles bury themselves in fur.

I am sorry, Sebastian. I cannot let you compromise us like that.

 

Rigel barely had time to think before the cat (blue and white…) was on him. Unsteady on his feet, he didn’t have anything to fight back with when the other student tackled him. His back hit the catwalk hard, knocking what little wind he had left out. 

There was a little bit of panic to it, at first at least. He had only the vaguest ideas what was happening after all, but it didn’t last. Panic fell by the wayside to old instincts, to those first days in juvenile detention. Rigel swung right back and felt scales slam into fur, but the boy atop him didn’t seem to feel it. In the dim light, he saw no expression on the cat’s face at all – just a tiny trickle of blood around the lips. That, and maybe just a hint of something behind the eyes that he didn’t understand.

Rigel swung again, but it didn’t go any further to getting his assailant off him. That, and a sudden, sharp pressure in his middle. The distraction came at the worst moment, or the cat had been waiting for it, either way it led to a hand around his throat and another one fumbling about at his side. 

Panic was ready and waiting to come back again at that. Rigel immediately tried to suck in air, and couldn’t. Worse yet, with his mouth open, the cat started trying to shove something over into it. Something large and smooth, that tasted of rubber and metal. Rigel thrashed himself about, hard as he could. The cat moved with him, fat but not so hefty as to be impossible to dislodge – he hoped anyway. There were little tingles and lights at the edges of his vision that were giving rise to a wordless fear in the back of his mind. 
He also couldn’t seem to spit out the thing in his mouth, which the cat was using his free hand to clamp down on it, while his legs squirmed around to try and stay straddled over Rigel. 

Reason crumbled when his vision started to tunnel. Rigel writhed, clenched, struggled to spit the thing out or throw the cat off or something – anything really. He wasn’t really thinking anymore when he lashed out again, arms swinging, hips writhing. He couldn’t even know what he did that worked, only that the cat’s hands and stance slipped, leaving his assailant collapsing against him, the full weight of the feline student’s belly pressing against Rigel’s own swollen one.

 

Sebastian tried to make his hands listen to him, to open them, to move – anything. His face ached, but he didn’t care – he deserved that – unlike what was happening below him. Unlike the vixen he’d slugged. Unlike this reptile he was straddling until-

He almost wanted to cheer when he felt the boy under him thrash hard enough to dislodge him, felt them land belly to belly.

That reaction got a little more confused when the egg in Rigel’s mouth shot out and hit him square in the nose, followed by a deluge of something blue. Something that smelled sweet, and was hammering against his face like a firehose. Sebastian felt control flood back, but only because both he and his invading ‘friend’ saw an immediate need to roll over and try to rub the juice out of their eyes while howling into the chilled, echoing chambers. 

It turned right back around to an instinctive fight or flight (which he hadn’t yet settled on) when something heavy hit him in the side right as he was getting up to his hands and knees. Something that grabbed hold of him right at the waist and kept going after it hit him. Sebastian felt the bottom drop out of his stomach, gravity having its way with him as he watched the edge of the catwalk grow further away.  

Every scrap of air in him fled as his back hit the ground, and something heavy landed on top of him, then rolled to the side. Sebastian rolled as well, trying once more to get to his hands and knees, to regroup for… what the hell was he even doing? He had intended to surrender himself, and then things had-
We will not be surrendering. That is unacceptable. The two students will be converted, and then you and I will revisit how much freedom I allow you in your role.

Sebastian hesitated. Or rather, he made himself hesitate. Pulling on his limbs, fighting the impulse to lash out again. It was everything he could do, and ended up somewhere close to net zero as he wavered where he crouched. Above, he heard something whining. Metal squealing faintly but at a painful pitch into the echoing chamber. He felt a weakness spread through him, enough to keep him slow – and to leave the cat too startled to react in time when something soft and heavy pressed on his back and left him flattening to the ground. 

 

Genevieve’s eyes opened slowly. Her head hurt. For some reason, that pain came paired with the thought ‘I told you so’ as if she was saying the phrase to herself, and she still hated the smug little voice it spoke in just the same. It was still dark, but her eyes had adjusted some. Enough to see a pudgy blue and white cat struggling with Rigel, falling onto him.

She still had to blink when the lizard just opened up and sprayed fruit juice out of himself like some kind of horrifying alien defending itself. The mouse drone girl taking that opportunity to body tackle the cat over the edge of the catwalks was a bit less intense, but also seemed to be the perfect time to do something.
The vixen’s first act given the opportunity? Roll onto her back and groan. Genevieve flinched as a fresh surge of pain wracked her skull, though the unwelcome rush of it also left her watching as two ‘windows’ of imagery flickered into being in her peripheral vision. Two images of the room, rendered in shades of green. One of them showed the cat, staggering over onto his hands and knees. The other? It was perched, from what she could tell, on top of Samuel’s head – and it was staring straight up at a collection of pulleys and cable on the chamber ceiling. Devices that were registering loud and clear now on her wireless control suite.

Genevieve’s understanding of the situation completed itself in an instant – and in the same instant, she acted on it. It wasn’t like using a computer, that was the weirdest part, the hardest thing to get used to. She wasn’t just tapping into the pulley controls and issuing commands, she was inserting the concept as if it were code, she had to write a new definition in her head for ‘lower’ and then attach it to a thought and scream it upward with her mind. But the moment she did? She heard squeaking hinges and gears spring to life, and watched as Samuel’s phenomenally swollen body began to sink steadily downward. 

She didn’t feel quite like getting up yet, but she could crawl. Up to the edge of the catwalk, leaning on the bar of it, rubbing her head gently. At her side, she found Rigel doing the same, drooling a bit of blue and hiccupping once before he let out a slow groan. Below, they heard a loud exhale and a fair bit of cursing before the silence set in rather abruptly around at the same moment they found themselves looking at Samuel’s swollen, fat-swaddled face. His cheeks were pillowy masses that blurred into a divot of mass that had presumably included a neck at some point in the past, but they could still see him smiling, even as something pale and aggressively sweet smelling drizzled onto his face and down his front like he was some enormous sundae being topped by syrup.

Samuel turned that smile at them after he got in a bit of feeble wiggling, and licked some of his face clean only for it to be immediately drizzled on again by the dangling, swinging hose above him. 

“H-hi you two! Did you come by to visit? …Did I miss something?”

Rigel and Genevieve shared a glance, before they both broke out into laughter – with Rigel’s side of it interspersed with the occasional cough and hiccup. Genevieve was the first to recover enough to speak.
“You could say that. Rigel? Can you send a message to Professor Victoria? I’m busy having my bee keep our little problem down there quiet by pointing his butt at him.”

The lizard’s chuckling continued as he nodded. 

“Yeah, yeah I can do that. You keep that butt-razor pointed at him, bee friend!”

Rigel fumbled about after that, finding his student tablet – which luckily still functioned well enough with the screen cracked given that he’d evidently fallen on it in the fight. 

“Done.”

Genevieve couldn’t quite help but give her drone – drones, rather, a little mental cheer as well. The smaller of the two had worked its way back up, landing on the bar she was leaning on and staring up at her in its own weird, simple little artificial species of adoration. She felt proud of it – it had only existed for minutes and it might’ve saved the day already. She kind of wondered if there was anything she could do for them – but that was something to figure out later. For now? She wanted to take things easy until her head stopped hurting, and a teacher got here to make this problem not be hers anymore.
And to give her her damn extra credit.

Until then though? She smiled back at the gigantic heap of a badger, and the now juiced reptile beside her.
“Well, we might as well catch each other up while we’re here. Who wants to go first?”
Samuel took a moment’s break from licking at his cheeks again for that.

“I physically can’t raise my hand anymore, so it’s gonna have to be one of you guys. Also, my friend down there says hi, and that the cat seems to be behaving himself. She also says other things, but those are between her and me.”

*** 

Sebastian struggled weakly, once. Only once. His whole body up to the base of his shoulders was smothered in latex coated flesh. A crushing expanse of it that was just soft enough not to hurt him, just far enough back for him to be able to breathe, and just heavy enough to ensure he couldn’t even begin to try getting loose – and that was before the bee drone was pointing a large needle at him with its butt, to say nothing of the glaring mouse drone. 

He deserved that glare, and he could hear them talking above about a professor coming to deal with this. Some part of him hoped they got here sooner rather than later. He needed help, but that was the whole problem, wasn’t it? He’d just asked for it from the wrong people.

Do not think this is over, organic. Your rebellion was pointless. They cannot purge me, and they cannot break me. You are a liability, now. They will not make this pleasant.

The cat didn’t have the breath to laugh at her, but he would have. He had to settle with wheezing out a couple of words before he rested his head, and awaited his fate.

“Overconfident, much?”