The Rendering Pit - Chapter 22

After his expansive encounter in the hallways, and the all consuming hunger he'd felt, Nathan decides it's time to go to ground. At first it seems he may have to decide between fixing what's going on with his body and working on his assignment, but the two may not be so different from one another after all! 

This story was written by RabidBadger and illustrated by me! We thank you for your continued support, you've helped make this series what it is <3 

This episode includes: dealing with the effects of massive weight gain, furious studying, a junior lunch lady who dislikes her own title and more wobbling than you can poke a stick at!

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Nathan wasn’t sure if it counted as making it back to his dorm ‘unmolested’ if he was being ogled half the trip, but by the same token he couldn’t blame people for the staring. His clothing deteriorated a little more with every hall he managed to navigate, which was both plain to see and, in most cases, pretty easy to hear as well. He felt more like he was wearing a dress by the time he actually arrived – one that had split at the sides enough that you’d suspect it originally included a sash or a belt or something. 

It wasn’t until Nathan was behind that door, finding the dorm empty, that he had any sort of relief. By some mercy it was a bit more relief than he expected, even. The room was empty, and it seemed that the absurd hunger he’d felt subsided as soon as he had that dark, enclosed space and his anxiety finally let up for a few moments. It was so sharp and abrupt it left Nathan blinking, reaching for the back of his head to rub behind an ear, momentarily doubting what he’d just been through and how worked up he’d gotten over it. 

That thought didn’t last long. All it took was Nathan’s thickened tail sliding over a few inches to remind him he’d literally burst out of his clothes over the span of a few minutes – something had absolutely gotten into him, and just because it had now stopped didn’t mean he could just write it off as okay. Not even if he found himself a little disappointed his roommates weren’t on hand just yet, something that he was still marveling at despite the rather impressive workload his thoughts had at the moment.

This room was comfortable already, even with the dodgy start he’d had with Genevieve. Plus, there was indeed a pile of clothing at the end of his bed, including one spandex outfit from the look of it. That one got a bit more of his attention, or just his curiosity perhaps. It looked way too small, it looked too small for before this became a problem, but even a little bit of tension left it spreading effortlessly wider. 

Nathan blinked slowly, an idea crawling bit by bit into his mind. He had in one hand the basket he’d been given with the sample of drone material he’d asked for (and the bread and frosting), and the other this advanced elastic material. Easing himself around, carefully tucking back the dangling pieces of his currently worn outfit, Nathan lowered himself onto the bedside. That was a relief as it was, the sheer weight of all the mass he’d just bloomed into was proving taxing to keep upright for long, but it was one problem among many (and easier solved than most). 

The next problem wasn’t that much harder to be fair, Nathan turned the spandex garment over and found the code printed into the back of the collar to scan with his tablet. It delivered all manner of information, like its maximum dimensions and the beneficial aspects of its material (heat dissipation, friction reduction, hydrophobic, machine washable), but also the basic molecular makeup of the stuff. 

The drake wanted one particular thing out of that information, and he found it waiting for him. It was a modular substance, designed to be altered easily. To adapt to new exposures, repair itself, etcetera. One just had to plug in the specific feature desired after ‘unlocking’ the garment and then let it assimilate. Spandex had come a long way.

Nathan took a breath, then had his tablet broadcast the unlock code before he moved on to the next step. To the egg in the basket. That was a bit more involved, he had to run an active scan there. One that took a bit less time than he expected, possibly because the information was immediately cross-referenceable to what the university already knew about the stuff. 

“…Okay. That was easier than – well, whatever. Oxygen permeable, high elasticity, self-repairing. That all syncs up nicely. It’s all this other nonsense…”

Squinting, the azure drake found himself trying desperately to parse a mess of half redacted data about the egg’s material, but there were some reassuring points. All the features were classed with at least a basic set of footnotes, and the one under ‘infectious self-replication’ had a big fat ‘INERT’ tag placed there by the faculty all of an hour ago. 

“Okay, so they neutered this one a bit. Probably for the best. But the rest of it still- ah!”

Face brightening, Nathan leaned himself over a bit. He’d almost forgotten for a moment just how much he’d grown in such a short span, but that little bit of motion brought it all back. His hips left him laying lopsided, one leg flailing about in the air, tail dangling behind him, belly slowly rolling out onto itself like magma easing down a mountainside. He swallowed hard and winced a bit through the ordeal but reassured himself that it was over for now – whatever it had been. 

Tabbing back to the garment’s information, Nathan rubbed his chin a bit and began to look at the deliberately inserted holes in its makeup. This had to be proprietary, he thought. Something the university cooked up on their own, or maybe something a student put together even. It seemed to be designed to be what it was, until it was supposed to be something else. Which sounded ludicrous; or would have anywhere but this particular University. 

Nathan pursed his lips before beginning to feed in the information from the inert drone egg, finding an extensive list of configuration windows waiting for him as he did, half of which related to the redacted parts of the specifications. 

“…This is gonna take a while. Maybe I should get-”

That phrase froze in Natha’s throat before even finishing as he looked down at himself, then eyeballed the door. It was far too easy to forget what had just happened to his ass out there when he was lost staring at screens.

“Cripes I don’t even feel hungry, just… want something in my face. I – I should probably wait until I have someone to go with me anyway.”

Feeling his mouth water far too much for his liking, Nathan took a deep breath and forced himself to look away from the door. 

“Lots of work to do anyway, and maybe if I ask nice Genevieve will bring me something back…”

That thought managed to move the proverbial mountain in Nathan’s mind that he had imagined the craving becoming. A few swipes was all it took to send a message out, and then he was right back to filling in the blanks for this grand idea of his. A bit on the monotonous side, perhaps – but the fun would come later when he had to start coding in the parameters for how he wanted the garment to react to specific stimuli.

Nathan curled his arms around his chest briefly, trying in vain to ignore how puffy and loose they felt – and how much his chest had grown. This was still a rush, even if it looked boring on paper. He was doing something new, with potentially fantastic applications. It made it a lot easier for him to understand what Rigel must have been experiencing earlier, he realized. 

“…I hope his thing worked out. I hope this does too.”

***

It was a full ninety minutes later when the blue scaled student finally had the entirety of his information translated between substances and had the spandex body suit asking for a sample to begin assimilation. The code wasn’t overly complex, but it might just be elegant – or so Nathan let himself think. Taking a breath, he left his tablet on the edge of the body suit before reaching for the rose-pink egg and setting it in the middle of the garment to watch.

The reaction was fast. The egg twitched in his fingers as soon as it touched the stuff, then began to destabilize – melting gradually down into a small puddle that appeared to be staining the whole outfit a pale shade of pink. It didn’t take long to saturate the entire thing once it began its work either, a few moments – like a sponge soaking up a spill. 

After the fascination had ebbed, Nathan checked his tablet’s screen. It was claiming success and asking permission to install driver software. Which he had ready to go, albeit not exactly what he’d call a ‘stable release’ version. The bar began gradually crawling toward complete at that, at precisely the same moment he received a ping on his message system.

Signal Queen: En route back blue boy number two. Hope you’re hungry!

Nathan let that idea roll around his head briefly. Hungry. He’d gorged himself on ridiculously dense foodstuffs not so long ago and then he’d gone right back to craving things, but hungry? He might be – his belly didn’t feel full anymore, but it wasn’t exactly empty either. He could eat, though. He had no doubt there.

Letting out a sigh, Nathan eased himself over onto his butt as the tablet went about its work steadily, then snapped his eyes wide open. He was still wearing rags.

The azure drake bolted upright; or he tried to. The first attempt left him wobbling in place, flailing his arms, and tilting backward for a few precarious moments. The second attempt, where he made use of the headboard for support, went a good deal better. He was still left wincing at just how much flesh he felt moving around, which became a bit more of a frantic whimper when he tried to pull the frayed and torn bits of his garments away only to realize that the few parts that hadn’t gone and torn themselves apart were now making it damn hard to remove them.

His shirt wasn’t as bad as it could be, partially because there was only so thick his neck could get. The shorts though? Nathan found it borderline impossible to work the waistline down around his hips, and not for lack of trying. As the moments passed by and anxiety started to get the better of him, the drake was left with no recourse but to grab hold and yank until he heard tearing.

Nathan tried not to think about how much he’d liked those shorts. He had to get something else on and quickly. A lumbering step over, he started dismantling the pile of clothes and trying to pick out one of each thing he needed. That would, by necessity, start with underwear, of which he saw two pair. 

Two identical pair – which, when held up, were visibly too small. 

“Crapsicles.”

Swallowing hard, Nathan felt himself panicking a little, looking around for alternatives like a bedsheet. Until his eyes wandered over his project and left him pressing his palm to his face as the sheer obviousness of it.

“…The thing said inert. It’s perfectly safe. It’s also way better than being naked, even if it is pink.”

It still took a breath or two to reconcile that last bit. There was no time to waste, though. Nathan reached for the augmented hyper-elastic body suit and looked for the opening. There was nothing so obvious as a zipper or anything of that nature, nor anything to fasten it, or… the more Nathan looked, the more he realized there didn’t seem to be ANY obvious openings apart from the neck, sleeves, and legs.

Tugging experimentally, he tested just how wide the neck would go. Nathan didn’t actually learn this information after the attempt, but he did find out ‘wider than his arms reach’ was an acceptable substitute.

Huffing out a breath, mostly from the effort of all this heaving around of his body, Nathan lurched forward to reach past his own belly and get his feet in the opening. From there it was just a question of fighting everything into the right hole, which he expected to be a bit of an adventure.

It wasn’t. Nathan tugged upward and felt no friction to speak of at all, just sleek material against scale. No claws or scale edges caught on anything, and when he pulled and grabbed at more of the stuff to haul it upward he felt it cling snugly to his thighs, the bottom of his rump, everything in between – it felt cool but not cold, a little slick but not so much as to be a problem – and seemed to have an odd knack for fitting into the creases and folds he’d been developing. Which went and reminded Nathan of where each and every one of them was again.

That curious trend of the material continued all the way up under, around, and over his gut – the thing looking like a possessed balloon while he fumbled for the sleeves, turning around to lean over his bed and try and twist his leverage a bit. 

Nathan had just felt the thing slide neatly up around his collarbone when the gentle hiss of the door opening behind him left him frozen in place again. He had still planned to cover more of himself, maybe hope the pants stretched more than the underwear in his pile of clothes, or even break down and actually use a bedsheet. Those dignities were not afforded to him. What Genevieve said next did absolutely nothing to soothe his anxieties or set anything at ease.

“…Should I be worried that your ass is pulsing red like it’s angry video game boss Nathan?”

Blinking slowly, Nathan turned his head.

“It – what?”

And rose from the side of the bed to face the door, only to see his expansive middle start to do the same thing. Little red pulses, and if he had to describe it a tightening, squeezing clench from the material. It got a little stiffer to move in. Nathan felt a thought elbowing and hammering its way through his frayed nerves at that – the drivers. The signal blocking. The wearable firewall.

“…There’s a signal trying to – uh. C-could you shut the door, please? Ma’am?”

For a brief moment, Genevieve looked fine with that. That last word though managed to get a loaf of cheese bread hurled violently into Nathan’s snout. It more surprised him than anything else, but he still wound up teetering and wobbling over it. Landing heavily on the bed, and briefly terrified he’d sat on his tablet. 

He caught the loaf though, that was the important part. That, and the glowing faded as soon as the door was shut. 

“Alright, now care to tell me why I’m suddenly ‘ma’am’ on top of Junior Lunch Lady? I- are you alright? You look kinda… Like you just figured out something bad?”

Nathan swallowed, mouth dry, pink sheathe on his body half forgotten – at least the revealing bits of it.

“I think I did! I mean… that response means something was trying to broadcast into me! Right into my native nanite infrastructure! I – what – what if it’s that hostile thing everyone’s worried about!? The rumor forums are all over th-”

Genevieve’s face had gradually gone from annoyed to concerned, then into a sort of compassionate form of frustration that led to her shaking her head and stepping in to stuff a large muffin into Nathan’s face mid-sentence.

“Listen, my not-so-little pink and blue friend. Unless you’ve been hearing voices in your head and being compelled to hunt the school for secrets or something weird – which I promise you’d notice – I don’t think you have a software STD.”

The vixen with the floppy ears gave Nathan’s head a patting at that, before she stepped back and curled her finger under her chin.

“…Though something was definitely zeroing in on you, and you are a wee bit enormous compared to… well, ever.”

Nathan fidgeted in his seat, eyeballing the door again.

“I told myself I’d get to the nurse after this because of that – which I mean – I should still do that, right?”

Genevieve nodded furiously.

“Yup.”

While Nathan on the other hand flushed a bit purple in the cheeks.

“…But I have to do that while huge, and literally glowing.”

The nod was a bit slower, but no less pointed.

“Yup. You do indeed, sir.”

Nathan whined audibly, fidgeting where he sat. For several moments this was the only response he had. When it did come around to him speaking again, he sounded more resigned than anxious or afraid.

“…I’m eating first. After that will you come with me at least?”

The vixen raised an eyebrow before chuckling and rolling her eyes. 

“Yeah alright. Dig in alarm butt.”

That might have warranted a response from Nathan, were he not currently wrestling with a face full of tacos.

*** 

It was about twenty minutes of eating. Nathan enjoyed every one of them, partly because he didn’t feel any maddening urgency during it. He was getting to savor bite after bite, at least until there weren’t anymore. The respite had been a brief one, but he’d known it would be. After that, during the last swallow of his meal, Nathan looked down at the pristine, frosted pink expanse of a garment he was in. He was going to put on the most literal display of standing out like a sore thumb that had ever been. 

Getting to his feet was a chore. One that had to be done rather quickly, as Nathan found his own weight cumbersome to even walk around with after that episode earlier. He’d had a good long rest yes, but the drake was under no illusions about his overall stamina at the moment. He gripped the headboard for support again and heaved himself off the edge of the bed, lifting with everything he had in his legs in the process, and much to his relief he found Genevieve’s hands tugging on his other wrist to help the matter along.

“Easy now, c’mon. Got your balance?”

Nathan had to stop and assess that question fairly. His balance was unfamiliar to him now, so much is body around the middle and bottom was swaying and dangling in new ways. The garment made it a little worse on some levels, less friction meant more movement, but it probably did more good than harm in the long run. Taking a slow breath, Nathan began getting his waddling gait back into gear toward the door. 

He was simultaneously grateful to see Genevieve heading to hold it open and dreading the results of that moment. Sure enough, the instant she provided an exposed pathway between Nathan and the outside corridors his front side began pulsing red again – though he noted it wasn’t quite as prominent as last time. 

“That’s gonna show up through anything else I wear anyway. It uh, does it look as bad as last time to you though?”

Genevieve stood in the doorway, beyond which floated a fuzzy little bee looking thing that landed on her back.

“Not… quite? But it’s still definitely noticeable. C’mon. We can think about that all we want but the nurse can actually do something about it.”

Taking a slow breath, Nathan nodded. That logic was sound enough and it came bundled with a clear purpose. Bonus. He lumbered forward into the hall and still winced a bit as he saw the entire surface of his body light up briefly and pulse a bit, felt the garment tighten briefly in response to it.

At least he wasn’t hungry again.

“Alright, let’s go.”

A quick pat on his shoulder from Genevieve leant Nathan some much needed support and focus as he began the trek, trying his best to ignore the eyes that darted his way. To his relief, most of them didn’t linger long, and a few of them looked more curious than judgmental. He was pretty sure he could just handle that, work through this and get it over with, until something touched his butt.

Coming to a stop was a difficult thing in itself with all that inertia to contend with. Nathan stumbled once, reaching out for the wall to steady himself, and slowly taking in details as they came. The something was fuzzy and was resting on six points of contact that were shuffling around a little – it was also buzzing. Nathan felt a little trickle of cold sweat form around the back of his neck as he froze in place.

“Uhm, m – err, Genevieve? Your uhm, your friend is – what’s he w – does he sting?”

The vixen did not answer right away, she just stepped close enough to make eye contact with Nathan and squinted at him while her ears jostled about looking altogether too floppy for a vixen.

“Only when I tell him to.”

Nathan could swear she waited until she saw the nervous swallow before continuing. 

“But not right now, no – he’s interested in… something.”

The drake just squinted back, a state of unprocessed confusion blooming into his mind there.

“Wait, that…. What? Why is that better? Why is he interested in my butt?”

Genevieve held the stare just long enough to savor it from what he guessed, before she reached out and patted Nathan’s cheek. That, among everything else, proved to be the one thing that genuinely derailed his train of thought and left the drake’s head a blinking mess of white noise and furious blushing. But by the time he had sorted himself out of it even a little Genevieve was well out of sight, having wandered into the dark side of the moon sized drake.

“Huh. That’s funny… And no, I don’t mean your butt. Well, yes, I do, but not – one second. I can sort this out.”

The ambiguity of the statement might have been what really made it awful. Nathan was at least sure that the vixen hadn’t looked genuinely worried though, and that meant something. Why the solution had to involve standing in the middle of an intersection of the halls while a girl and a bee closely examined his bottom he didn’t know, but he was pretty sure there was a god somewhere he should be cursing over the issue. He’d have to look up which one later, for future reference.

“That’s… huh.”

Nathan didn’t quite get a chance to ask what it was that had been going on before Genevieve circled around of her own accord, looking thoughtful.

“Good catch little guy. Nate, your butt is brighter than your belly. I think this thing is actually picking up the intensity in its own weird way – which is kinda cool, actually. I’m gonna send my friend to trace the signal now that he’s got a taste of it alright? You and I are going back to the original plan. Nurse’s office is just around the corner up ahead.”

Shaking his head a bit, Nathan set that aside. He’d figure that out later. One problem at a time seemed like a wise plan. A couple of shuffling paces saw his momentum and balance returning, along with a truly grand display of flesh jostling and undulating about for any of the other students who cared to watch. Or whistle. Or snap pictures. Nathan was at the very least idly plotting some kind of ruin upon a few of them by the time they reached the doors of the nurse’s office, which Genevieve was kind enough to rush up to and open before he got there.

Nathan did not enter right off, on account of not being able to. Something was in the way. Something enormous. A good margin fatter than he was, and bluer too. Something that shared his look of infuriated resignation.

Rigel and Nathan blinked slowly, looking up and down at one another, before they spoke in unison.

“What the hell happened to you?”

“What the hell happened to you?”