Fiber Optic Bundles of Joy Part 15

WARNING

! The following includes aspects of liquid transformation, weight gain, inflation and all around amazing writing ! There are R rated themes and implications of sex!

Once more, this is written by RabidBadger from FAhttp://www.furaffinity.net/user/rabidbadger

Illustrated by me! Thank you as always, for your continued support <3

This image and the preceeding one is featuringThaminga! Thank you so much Tham for the amazing contribution to our campaign and I hope you enjoy your full time position in our crew!

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Thaminga stood in front of the self-displaying view screen once more, applying a little effort to re-refining hir image now that shi’d shed the newly developed mass into a storage canister. The golden fluid was odd, it still felt a little like part of hir, but the phantom perception was fading bit by bit. For one thing, there was the bizarre sensory alteration that came of having a body that wasn’t split among organs and nerves and the like, but was uniformly created from a single substance.

The parts of hir that weren’t still disconcerted by this state of being (and they were less and less each time shi checked) had begun feeling just a little proud of it. Shi coaxed hir hips into the proper shape, flexed hir wings and checked the sheen on hir horns. Shi was literally made of gold, or something damn close to it – granted gold wasn’t worth what it used to be but the symbolism was still strong. The fact that shi’d spent a good long while with an ass the size of a cargo pod soaking up rays didn’t put a damper on this at all – that was the best kind of sunbathing ever – quiet, solitary, and making oodles of money. Some part of hir was honestly considering going right back out when Red’s face appeared in the corner of the screen. He was smiling, but in a pensive fashion – something that left Thaminga wondering whether the AI was doing that on purpose, or if it was so socially adept that it could have flaws and tells like organic life.

“Hey there! We ah, we may have a small problem. One that mom isn’t exactly suited to tackling. I know you just got back in but would you be up to going off into the casino and looking for Joseph? His signal is being muffled – I’m still ‘in’ him but the data reflection is awful and I’m getting no useful sensory data.”

Not to say there was no data – the fox might be blushing about something – but this was clearly a real concern. Thaminga tilted hir head gently as if considering. Shi’d made hir mind up near instantly but it always did well to make them think you were either ambivalent or just not that worried about it.

“I’ll go look into it, with your help of course. I think though, when I return, we’ll need to talk about hierarchy, delegation, and rank. Agreed?”

The AI’s visage adopted a grin that was just a trifle disconcerting.

“Bargain.”

***

It was as if the events hadn’t even happened. Thaminga stood at the edge of the throng of pirates, slaves, and visiting slumming dignitaries and spies. They looked exactly like they had the moment shi boarded the station. A social collective with a four-year-old’s need for instant gratification – and moral development.

“Okay, so where do you hide an otter with an ass the size of a load lifter exoskeleton?”

The answer was ‘way more places than you’d think’ unfortunately. Red’s voice was in hir ear, nowhere else – shi had no desire to give the AI as much access as it had to the other two just yet. Trust had to be earned.

I’m trying to get into the surveillance networks here but there’s dozens, all at varying degrees of security, no two using the same protocols, all spread over multiple systems – it’s like they deliberately designed this badly just to make this impossible to do.

“Or we could ask people.”

Thaminga could ‘hear’ Red blinking slowly inside hir head. Eventually that awareness extended to a shrug of sorts while he continued attempting to break security his way, and shi looked through the rampant throng of insane (and always slightly damaged) people that made up this community. It meant everyone had some sort of vulnerable point, however well-guarded – Shi could work with that. Familiar faces were preferable for this, but that Mink could go blow herself out an airlock for all-

Then shi spotted something familiar after all – gold trim on black carbon fiber.

Thaminga rushed forward, hitting a wall of furs that were near impossible to navigate but struggling to keep herself close enough to that patch of cloth and color that she could follow it. The possum was small though, inconspicuous – easier to maneuver the crowd like that. Shi hirself? Not so much. There were hands everywhere, some of them impolite, and faces – eyes – people trying to get hir to stop and talk, to answer questions. But someone who was intent on asking them was ill-inclined to answer them in-turn often enough, and this did not suit Thaminga’s purposes. Soon enough the pressing chaos of those with their own things to do and those who wanted to make shi hirself the thing to do (for certain definitions of ‘do’) had left hir with no sign of hir quarry.

Shi grunted in frustration, something that hid a lot more anger than shi wanted to admit (and yet found comforting on some level – shi had been concerned her mentality might change with the new body – but this felt right so far). As it was though, what was there to do? Thaminga took another scan of the crowd, and nothing came to her. So instead of working toward hir goal as shi wanted, shi was fighting hir way through bodies and voices to reach the edge of the chaos. Find a bench maybe, someplace to stop and think. There were still hands everywhere too – like the one that was currently cupped around and squeezing hir left buttock.

“Back so soon? Looking a damn spot higher-res than you did before.”

Shi was not used to being snuck up on by any stretch, so the voice at hir back left the entire mass of Thaminga’s shoulders and wings clenching in a universal fashion that required hir to manually relax the whole mass as shi turned. And the groping, also the groping. Waiting for her was a rag-cloaked short form. Under it were matronly curves, and the sheen of carbon fiber with gold trim – that and a thick, muscular tail.

Thaminga didn’t miss a beat putting on that slightly golden hued smile. Shi even offered a slight bow to go with the respectful tone.

“The Grand Matron from the trial. Thank you for officiating, it was enlightening – and fairer than many I’ve seen in the inner worlds.”

The woman’s footfalls clanked softly, heavy limbs from the sound of it – probably combat grade on top of the style. She walked right past Thaminga, but tilted her head just a little to draw hir along after. There was a bench nearby the marsupial seemed intent on taking advantage of, hauling herself up carefully and seemingly a little weighed down by the prosthetics. She ended up patting the seat next to her before speaking again.

“The flattery is nice dear, but not necessary. You handled that well.”

Shi had no intention of letting on that the praise meant something, but lacking a heart – there was still something in Thaminga’s chest that felt a little lighter for hearing it. Granted, there was a chance that was a rogue air pocket.

“I’m supposing, given what I saw earlier, that as far as respected pillars of community go in a place like this you’d qualify as one.”

The possum shrugged the shawl and rags to her shoulders, pulling her augmented legs up and almost appearing to be stretching the joints like they were flesh and blood. The two limbs released a moderate rush of gas a moment later and slowly relaxed outward, with their wearer looking a bit more relaxed for it.

“Blasted things start giving me nerve feedback if I don’t vent the pressure – no idea why. Can’t find a half-decent tech to look at ‘em. You’re probably right – sort of – much as any of those terms exist in a place like this.”

Thaminga adopted a gentle grin for that.

“So if someone were to have-“

The possum raised her hand, the prosthetic one, putting a single finger up to Thaminga’s lips. The other four fingers promptly disassembled themselves into three separate spines of metal that set themselves up at points in the air and formed a small holographic screen inside – one that displayed blubbery, immobile contours of Joseph’s body.

“You’re looking for the wobbly otter, I know. Yes, I know where he is. Yes, I’ll tell you.”

Thaminga quietly waited for the-

“If you get something for me while you’re in there.”

Shi curled hir lip a little and nodded – this dance shi knew well.

“Good. It’s nothing too conspicuous, just a data crystal on a gold chain. Should be on the neck of whoever’s currently in charge inside the Liar’s Palace.”

Thaminga blinked then, slowly. Shi also peeled hir lips away from that finger so shi could look upward. The Palace, a massive establishment hovering just in the penumbra of the artificial gravity – it orbited the rest of the Coronet slowly, aided by thrusters. Expensive tastes, risky stakes – it had taken a scheme for hir to end up being claimed as property down here, up there it was standard procedure, among other, stranger games. Plus, it was usually invite only.

“So, you know where, now. The rest is your call. Breaking in is as good as getting in the legitimate way as far as the bouncers are concerned, but beyond that it’s your call. Theft is gonna draw attention and have consequences, so is negotiation, so is gambling for it.”

Getting in wasn’t the problem – shi had an idea already there – as to the rest?

“I’ll play that by ear, see how things look inside.”

Thaminga stood then, not taking hir eyes off where the Palace hovered above. Shi felt a buzzing in hirself, Red’s voice filtering into hir awareness.

Hey! I think I found-

“I know, Liar’s Palace. I’ll need-“

Helium. Medwaldo’s almost there with some small spheres of compressed gas. There’s a couple different ones, just in case.

The AI was continuing to impress. Thaminga turned and saw the floating bot with its two arms holding handfuls of little capsules. It slowed as it neared hir, turning the spheres over into hir outstretched hands, which promptly parted – giving Thaminga the queer sensation of having ‘swallowed’ the compressed gas orbs with hir arms. Each one seemed to be labeled with a simple scan pattern and with raised lettering which shi could feel through the mass inside hirself surprisingly accurately.

Sure enough, there were two of them that were labeled as helium. Thaminga glanced upward, the Liar’s Palace was nearby – if dozens of yards up. All this would take is proper aim.

Shi backed up a couple of steps, flexing hir legs – then paused. Of course, shi wasn’t working with muscle wrapped around a skeleton right now was shi? The principles were the same, generate lift, but practice might be in order. A gentle hop first, just to learn where to tense up hir mass to provide support and resistance. Those two spheres of helium left her feeling infinitely lighter, more floating down than falling. Two steps backward, a more potent vertical jump – with an identical trajectory. Landing was interesting, no bone structure to shock, but hir entire lower body felt wobbly and fluid from the force of it.

The important part though was the trajectory, shi got that the same – twice in a row – and eyeballing it put hir right on track for boarding the Palace if shi just led the ‘shot’ a little. Thaminga shut hir eyes, flexing hir wings a little – they ought to be useful to adjust things in-flight once shi was up there.

Shi took a further step back, crouched down, hardened the ‘joints’ of hir legs, and pushed.

Flight was always a dodgy prospect on most worlds, non-avian folk usually had too much mass to sustain it outside of lower gravity ratings, but Thaminga felt hirself soar the moment shi un-bunched hir legs. Shi felt the recycled air rushing through hir hair, sliding over hir wings, saw the ground growing smaller as people pointed at hir and stared – shi wasn’t slowing down either. The Palace grew ever closer, drifting right into hir path as shi rose. The momentary chill came when shi crested the outer wall, getting a proper view of the hovering edifice of greed and chance.

Thaminga immediately recognized why this place was off limits. Hovering above the crowd of dirty, chaotic pirates and scum was what looked like a proper resort class embassy – with some sinister additions. The grass fields made sense, as did the trees – more oxygen production. The whole lot of them were spotted with comfortable chairs, umbrellas, and little colorful drinks – mostly being sipped at by people who were at best scantily clad and largely clustered around each other in some fashion of contest – a few of which were shackled to their tables. Most of the serving crew were wearing collars for that matter, and shi was sure the domed building off in the distance was an arena. It didn’t hurt that assessment that there was a clearly labeled medical and gene-mod center right next door to it.

The sights were troubling enough in terms of how risky this might be, and shi did not see any obvious signs of Joseph (who really should have been obvious), but there might be more than one level. Or he could be in one of the structures. The sights were also, shi noted, getting a tiny bit smaller as shi watched.

Thaminga was still ascending. Shi had lifted off too forcefully, and while hir mind raced trying to guess what escape velocity was here for something hir weight moving at hir speed another thought interrupted it. Hir eyes narrowed, and inside the depths of the strange creature hir mass clustered around a sphere and pressed inward with dozens of tiny, diamond-hard points.

The sounds were simple enough, a couple of metallic zings and a loud ba-woomph. From the inside, it was considerably more engrossing; shi was aware that the casing of the sphere had burst clear out of hir body but it wasn’t painful per se – shi was moved aside by the pieces, but not exactly injured. Thaminga was also aware now that this form still had something that resembled instinctual reactions – hir body closed the channels torn free by the sphere nigh instantly, and it hardened hir outermost mass enough to accommodate the change in pressure inside just as quickly. Which directly resulted in the insanity that was feeling every cell in hir body move and stretch simultaneously. Some parts of it were easier to zero in on than others, like hir neck tensing up just enough to prevent hir head from ballooning outward, and the rapid loss of all trace of articulation in hir limbs. It felt a little like a combination of a fantastically pleasant stretch, and the buzzing nerves of hitting one’s funny bone – through hir entire body.

It set hir spinning in hir trajectory a little, and drawing eyes from the crowd below more so than ever, but just how much shi cared was up for debate. Thaminga found the pleasant aspects of the stretch lingering and only on the second rotation of hir body (noting that the ground was still getting further away) did shi begin to gently let a couple of pinpoint holes open in hir gold sheened hide and use the pressure to steer hirself. Hir actual loss of surface area was slow, but it stopped the spinning, and allowed hir to aim hirself downward. That arranged? Thaminga allowed hirself to smile through chipmunk puffy cheeks, eyes half-lidded as she settled in to enjoy the ride down.

Hir landing was gentle, right in the center of a large pool, and met with a handful of murmurs and giggles – and with hands seizing hir by the buttocks. The instinctive attempt to swat at the hand served little but to remind hir that shi was currently more or less spherical and not able to do a whole lot with hir hands. Certainly, she was not equipped to stop someone from bouncing hir across the pool like an enormous beach ball, into a waiting quartet of hands that balanced hir out and launched hir right back the other way.

“H-hey! Uhm, hang on – I…”

Thaminga felt hirself launched skyward again, but shi wasn’t harboring enough helium to take off and keep going anymore. At this point shi descended, just slowly – and with the aid of hir wings shi could steer just a little, but the people below could maneuver around just a bit faster than shi. The third time the little bikini clad giggling imps below bounced hir back up Thaminga’s patience faltered, and shi abruptly let loose the entire mass of gas inside through a large opening shi allowed to form in hir back – the net result of which was shi fell heavily into the pool. Sinking to the bottom, quite glad shi didn’t require oxygen – the muffled conversation above pleased hir a little given the disappointed tone as shi began walking casually along the bottom toward the ladder.

Water running right off hir hair was going on the list of perks this body had.

It took a thought to weave hir mass into a ‘bikini’ of sorts, slightly less attention attracted, not that she was going to lose that any time soon odds were. After that shi required a goal, and had two to choose from. The stone, and the otter – and of the two the otter should in theory be easier to locate, shi turned toward the buildings. Medical pavilion, or arena. Hope said one, realism told hir shi was better off with the other. Thaminga took a floaty step toward the arena, feeling the second helium sphere still leaving hir noticeably lighter than she ought to be and prompting a sort of moon walk. Given the choice of leaving the other reservoir of helium behind? Thaminga opted to keep it, and just make the moon walk look good.

Not terribly difficult when one can launch forward with a ballerina’s poise and balance with a pair of dark wings that still managed to shimmer gold in the light.

At least nothing stood in hir way en route – Thaminga’s delicate, floating prance of a gait felt a trifle dreamlike as she crossed the span, the size of a decent soccer pitch, between hir and the coliseum looking edifice. It did the job though, shi was soon enough striding through the open archway built into the side – the nearest entrance shi could see.

The walls danced with light, well-polished metal catching shreds of errant color from countless sources just past the tunnel Thaminga now traversed. They filtered in at the end, distorting and stretching until they passed out of sight. So, too, the sounds of a cheering crowd. As shi grew closer the glare intensified, making it impossible to be quite sure what was coming until hir footsteps broke through the edge of the tunnel and took hir into the open.

Shi was at the edge of a circular ring of sand, and inward there were yet more changes of material. Metal, dirt, turf, water – then a central pillar of smoke. Currently perched on the turf were twin Siamese felines wielding whips, squaring off against what looked like an armored cow – and a fat one at that. The whips the two felines wielded cracked menacingly, but they seemed only to irritate the bovine who took two lumbering steps back (feigning fear, she noted), only to wait for the next strike and charge.

Both cats went down under a rolling wall of flabby beef, and found themselves sat on for their trouble – an udder popping out of a loose plate just by their faces and spilling haphazardly between them. There came a great shout of ‘WINNER’ among the watchers, before everyone’s attention drifted the same way – toward a booth that took up a solid piece of the first three rows on one side. In it were three bodies. An otter who resembled an over-inflated waterbed mattress full of pudding, some kind of draconic looking reptilian fellow who seemed a bit vacant right now, and a multi-colored rabbit who was standing with her arm held out to the side. The rabbit wore a myriad mess of jewelry, stones and precious metals covering her from everything that would bear the load, and as the cheers rose to a crescendo she turned her wrist – thumbs down.

The cow’s thighs squeezed together, thick streams of cream shot loose and bathed both cats’ faces, prompting gasping yowls of defiance – that near instantly melted into whimpering mews. The blubbery bovine warrior woman worked her way up to her hooves with some great effort, both cats coughing a little and gathering breath as she did, and both immediately using the backs of their paws to wipe up and lick clean as much milk as they could before they began longingly staring at the cow’s udder. After the armor-plated cow adopted a smug, satisfied grin and began waddling away the cats meekly followed behind her, their eyes empty and pupils dilated.

Shi tried not to think too hard about that, it wasn’t near as important as having seen Joseph – the rabbit girl had him? Though the draconic fellow with the black scales was the one fawning over Joseph’s bulbous ass, and looking rather absent in the eyes himself. The otter for his part looked kind of greasy, as if his entire body was coated in shiny lubricant – possibly what was interfering with Red’s signals. Thaminga saw no clear way into the stands from where shi was, but there were other methods.

Really, all shi had to do was jump.

Gravity surrendered again, leaving Thaminga floating gently into the air, gasped at and stared at once more. (Shi was starting to appreciate that.) Shi alighted with little issue on the edge of the box, staring down at the kaleidoscopic fur of a smug looking, gold coated rabbit – wearing a pendant with a small crystal in it.

“Well aren’t we shiny and impressive. What? You want in the games? Could’ve just registered.”

Thaminga stayed on the rim of the box, the height left hir looking and feeling just that much more commanding – as did the spread wings – and feeling hir chest swell as shi took a breath didn’t hurt either.

“I’m here for something else, and single combat isn’t my game of choice. Plus, it’s you I want to challenge.”

The little lapine’s brows rose, adopting an oddly predatory look for a prey species. She crossed her arms, then tilted her head over at the empty arena.

“The games go on for another hour, then there’s a break. You and I can talk during the downtime, and maybe afterward we’ll have something new to show – or if you try something Glowy can wear you like a condom while he lays into his new toy again.”

Thaminga glanced over at the draconic brute, taking an honest, appraising look this time – the beast was hung for lack of a better word, and shi suddenly understood why the interest in Joseph’s empty-gazed body.

That was probably the only thing he could bury himself to the hilt in anymore.

Thaminga’s wings fluttered briefly as shi put on a show of making the decision shi’d made the instant the rabbit finished speaking, and then stepped off the edge of the booth to take a seat.

“All right, bargain.”