In Delphox Delilah's class, students learn to use magical spells in present day and historical applications. Owen and Karla, a budding Vaporeon and Nidoqueen couple, quickly learn that skipping ahead a few chapters isn't always a good way to get ahead when one such spell is used by accident.

This is an illustrated series of pictures to serve as a preface for, and accompany, the collab story "Afterhours Absorption" I wrote with !

Art by eos9!

Original Story

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Owen’s throat bulged as he stifled what had the potential to be a raucous belch. A grunt, low and reverberating within his swollen cheeks, accompanied the warm puff of air that escaped from between his nostrils. “S-so. You know how on Monday we were… um. We were...”

The Delphox hmmed and swiped a hand across her desk. Stacks of paper wrinkled beneath the grip of her padded digits while she brought them before her. Chin tucked against her bosom, she hmmed and reviewed her since outdated schedule. “Ah, yes. We had a voluntary review session instead of class in preparation for our latest Ability Exam! Heh, I recall us getting wildly off-topic and going on at length about Grass-Type Moves there for a while. The ones that were, practically speaking, capable of being cast by any Pokemon whose body did not consist of naturally produced foliage in particular.”

“Y-yeah, that,” Owen managed. His fat fingers fumbled and drummed over one another like a stirring whisk. His lips pried apart to reveal a snaggletooth fang, then closed, then opened again before he finally spat a few words. “I tried one or two out…” He shuffled. “I was. Umm… s-see, I was going to practice one of the Absorb-related spells with my girlfriend, and, um, I kinda did, and…” It was there that he simply threw out his hands as if no further explanation was needed.

Subduing the urge to grin manically, Delilah simply nodded. “One or two? That doesn’t quite narrow down what specific Absorb spell we’re dealing with here, Mr. Owen. Those spells cover a wide variety of potential moves all with varying effects and nomenclatures.”

“...What? Karla, I--what do you mean ‘it’s comfy’ in there?” Owen meeped. His finlike ears dropped somewhat, then sprung back up. His eyes rose to meet with his professor’s. Delilah’s smile was ear to ear. “I-I can still hear her and talk to her. She’s not gone! It’s just I mean I don’t know what went wrong, and… can it be cured at all? How do I fix this?”

Thick fluffy tail undulating behind her, the fiery fennec fox maintained her professional composure. Utterly adorable as it was she sincerely doubted laughing in her student’s plump pinch-able face would alleviate his concerns. “From what little I’ve gathered I take it that you, by means affectionate and or otherwise, quite literally absorbed a friend of yours into your person? Their very form broken down to ether and saturating your now… ahem… swollen self?” Fluffy fingers steepled Delilah was eager to milk this for all it was worth.

Owen’s fidgets were telltale. His blue cheeks flushed a slight red at the Psychic-Type’s mention of affection. Ah, damn it, of course she already knows.

I was wondering when you’d gather as much, a husky and familiar feminine voice sounded out within his noggin. Oh hell. Yes, Mr. Owen, I am well aware of your plight. While I laud your efforts to advance your learning beyond what is listed out in rote detail on my syllabus… the results of your self-taught spellcasting leaves much to be desired. That aside, my role here is to encourage my students to learn. You were ambitious enough to seek out how to cast… Mega Drain, I believe it was, of your own volition. There’s nothing stopping you from finding out how to undo its more exaggerated effects in turn. I do appreciate you showing the initiative to take advantage of my office hours though.

Clearing her throat, Delilah arched her crimson colored eyebrows. “A simple ‘Geodoogle’ search should have you covered. Is there anything else I can assist you with, Mr. Owen?”

Bloated blue cheeks puffed out, crimson streaks creasing their soft wet shiny surface, the Vaporeon shook his head side to side. The fins running along the sides of his head contracted as he did so. “No, professor! I-I think I can handle it from here.” His eyes fell to their rims as he nodded away her question. “Thanks for the help!”

Owen turned for the exit, difficult though it was to resist asking for one of the sweet Jolly Poliwags in the bowl on Delilah’s desk. A little pick-me-up would be nice, but… he had better get going if he wanted to fix this the faster. One hand fell to his taut, full tummy, massaging the its apex as it groaned for attention, sagging past his waist at a weight that probably rivaled even Delilah’s. The floor beneath his thick, padded feet swapped from carpet to concrete as a rush of hot air swept across his face with the automatic opening of the office doors. He almost wanted to linger. Don’t let the heat in, please, Mr. Owen. Nevermind. Eager to escape the telepathic connection established between him and his professor, the voluptuous Vaporeon finally made it a point to step outside and allow the doors to shut behind him.

“Could’ve been worse,” a new voice wryly commented inside the Vaporeon’s increasingly congested skull. Owen grunted. A haze, accompanied by a gentle pressure, pressed against his eyes. “Sorry. Still getting used to all of…” A sloshing sensation circled through his shoulders. “This. ...You being unable to see me gesture makes getting my point across a lot harder than I thought’d be.”

Biting into his swollen lip, Owen hmmpphed. “I felt it.”

“Holy shit, you did? Huh. Not really sure what to do with that but it’s cool all the same.” The sultry female voice hmmed and hawwed while it fumbled for a thought. Its owner pictured herself over what she could see of Owen’s generous figure; no horns, no long ears, no poisonous spines and certainly no muscular physique to round it all out. The scuted scales, the thick, telephone pole-snapping tail… a part of her already missed being a Nidoqueen. It wasn’t a huge part, but just like Owen, she was acclimating. All things considered, being absorbed by her boyfriend, so huge and all-encompassing and handsome… really, really wasn’t all that terrible.

Brows furrowed, the Vaporeon plodded onward. His thick thighs slapped noisily against each other with every sidewalk filling step. That heaving gut bounced up and down in tune to his gait. The elastic of his shorts pinching at the folds of slick blue furred fat every time it did so. “Karla, aren’t you even a little worried about this?”

“Not really? I mean. Prof put whatever nitpicks I mighta had to rest. Owen, she knows her shit. If she says it’s fine then I’ll be fine.” A sharp giggle resounded through the male’s shared mind. “Besides, since when have you been the type of guy to get all nervous about something new?”

“Since it turned me into a two-ton behemoth who can barely keep his belly in check,” Owen breathed exasperatedly. Ach, this heat. Particularly minding his packed-on poundage, it sure wasn’t helping.

He mmfed when he felt the edges of his eye sockets strain. “You just rolled your eyes at me didn’t you?”

“Maybe,” Karla sassed back. “Two tons is exaggerating.I am only three hundred pounds of the half a ton you’re just barely scraping past, I’ll have you know. Or at least, I was. Not that I’m complainin’, mind you. Looks better on you than it does me.” Owen arched his brows when he felt a faint tingling sensation scratching at his chubby chins. “Though gotta admit. Pretty humbling havin’ a boyfriend with bigger boobs than me.”

“Humbling is right.” Owen placed his hands to his hips. At first he had to move them further to the side upon remembering how huge they were. “You don’t really sound all that upset about being in there. Or… here, I guess.” Brisk sunlight shone down from the gentle layers of cloud cover as the voluminous Vaporeon strolled down the sidewalk, each step pounding against the concrete and creating riveting thuds of sound and force. “What is it like in there that has you so… I dunno, not freaking out?”

A husky hmm echoed inside his soft and squishy skull. “I mean. I should be, don’t get me wrong. Just. Hard not to like it in here.” The Nidoqueen timidly trudged forth along the conjured mental landscape. Grains of sand pressed at the gaps between her scaly toes while she advanced upon a pristine beach. Tall wispy strands of grass, uneasily rooted in the sand, rustled against each other in the gentle breeze that swept along the Vaporeon blue ocean. “Remember you sayin’ you grew up in Alola. It’s… nice.” Clawed hands squeezing at her broad hips she inhaled deeply. Her nostrils flared and took a deep drag of the salt laden air that wafted round her.

The dreamscape Karla inhabited was tailored directly to her shaping--a hideaway paradise composed of both their thoughts and desires, if ultimately leaning on the end of Owen. The lush breeze kept thick, broad palm leaves swaying just so, with seas of sand comprising the interstice between a veritable archipelago of ethereal islets in the vast distance. All of it was as comfortable and inviting as she had wanted it to be, and Owen’s will for her safety kept the thread of this new world perfectly taut.

Karla looked up. The sky itself tapered away into a tireless meshing of worlds, ever mixing, ever swirling, like a whirlpool set in the sky. She scrunched her thick blue toes into the sand. As if willing Owen to see what she did, she spoke: “There’s a lot to like, really.”

“Really?” His husky voice echoed across the sky. He pursed his lips when he felt his cerulean colored eyebrows scrunch along his forehead.

“Well what did you think it’d be like in here?” Karla mouthed back at… her thick club of a tail slid side to side uneasily. Ehh. Clearing her throat she directed her replies at the soft blue sky for the time being.

“I dunno! How am I supposed to know what it’s like in there?”

“Owen it’s your head. I... think? Now that I think about it hell if I know where we’d tuck an island getaway in you.”

“There’s a what in me?!” Lips pulled flat, he flapped his fat thick lips against one another as he raspberried. Owen eyed the corner of the Pokemon Center; the last block that impeded his path home. A few more thundering steps and his dinky place would be within sight. “I mean, I guess? If you can show me somehow, that’d be great. It’s not like I’ve been able to focus enough to peer into the psychic energy that allows this crap to happen or whatever it is.”

“Not psychic energy, grass-type energy,” Karla sang from within, her lilting voice rattling his skull.

“Please stop that.” Owen rolled his eyes. Probably wasn’t even considered grass-type anymore since it had nothing to do with roots, vines, or god forbid, grass. Lifting his head, he saw the concrete walkway and miniature flight of stairs that tapered off into the light temporary place he called home. Autopilot had carried him far while he bantered with Karla.

“Those’ll hold you, right?” Finger tapping at her chin, the Nidoqueen watched on curiously while swarms of clouds sailed across the sky. They came to consolidate with one another as they melded into a billowing cumulus cloud that threatened to stretch across the horizon. Across its vast and puffy white form images flickered in and out of focus. Familiar sights of the entrance to their shared apartment played out across her wispy window into the outside world. She hmmed in delight at seeing swollen arms that were not her own fitfully trying tugging a shirt down past a distended blue gut.

“You’re trying to hide it!”

“It’s not working, I know,” Owen huffed. His thick fingers left the hem of his shirt and dove to the pockets on the broad, slightly torn seat of his pants for his keys as the tremendous Vaporeon hobbled his thick legs up the steps to his porch. With great difficulty his anything but dainty digits struggled to fit into the now practically nonexistent gap between the woven gap in his jeans. The blue denim was well beyond squishy skin tight. Owen eyed the outline of his keys against his thighs where they lay pressed between blue walls of denim.

“Oh I know. That’s a given. I’m just wondering why!” She paused at Owen’s very audible groan. Her fingers tapped gleefully to her eeeing chin as the sky’s vision bore a broad ocean of blue; the seat of his jeans being fumbled at by his fat fingers. “You don’t think you rock the look? Come oooon, Owen!”

“Pleeeease stop staring at my ass,” Owen cried out to nobody. “I just wanna get inside already!”

Karla growled lustfully as she used Leer to great effect. “You know. Probly have a whole hell of a lot more luck emptying your pockets if you were to… oh. I dunno. Remove ‘em?”

“Remove what? My pockets? ”

“No!” The Nidoqueen steepled her clawed fingers and swung her hips side to side. “The things that pockets go on,” she demurred.

Biting into his swollen bottom lip, the voluptuous Vaporeon hmmphed. “My… thighs?”

“Take off your goddamn pants. It will please me.”

“How does ‘no’ sound?” Owen said with a roll of his shoulders. Finally, his padded fat fumbling fingertips found solace in the touch of cold, light metal. He shuddered at the thought of being even less clothed than he was now, even if it was just for Karla. No. Out of the question. Instead, he slipped the key through its lock and twisted, as if in punctuation.

A weight, as if his very own arms were crossed about his chest, pressed down against his moobs to the accompaniment of a disappointed grunt that rumbled low between his finned ears. “Would you stop it.” Ruby red flares of color that seemed far more appropriate for a Flareon to flaunt creased his cheeks. “Just. At least let me get inside first…”

A shrill sound of squeeing hope echoed amidst his mind.