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The Super Cruise

For Phealgud

By Shalion

The side of the ship loomed overhead like the side of a large building. Nura thought she would be inured to such things by now, but the sight of so much steel rising above the dock and knowing it was all simply floating on water forced a reflection on relative size the heavyset lioness was not used to. And she probably should have been, seeing as the young lioness was used to generally being the biggest person in the room at any given time.

"Come on, Nura, when you gonna stop starin' at it an' get in line?" came a voice, and Nura turned her back on the mighty ship, taking several steps across the wooden dock which caused the boards to creak under her weight, tail swaying over her gorgeous bubble butt. The lioness knew she had all the goods, and it had long since become habit to work them, even if no one was watching.

Nura walked - someone ungracious might say 'waddled,' but surely none would be so unwise as to speak that aloud to her face, and her claws more importantly - back towards the very long line of passengers waiting to board the ship. Her unconstrained belly shook gelatinously over the waistband of her tight leather pants with each step she took, but the young lioness was more than used to the looks of outrage and impropriety from fellow women as well as the more furtive glances of voyueristic interest or disgust from men, though the former were far more common in Nura's experience.

A crocodilian woman in line made room for the lion's substantial bulk as she deliberately unhooked the stanchion so she would not have to try ducking under it; the action drew more looks from the fairly posh crowd surrounding the two women who did not look like they belonged in the slightest. Like Nura, the crocodile was dressed not so much to attend a high social gathering, unless perhaps that gathering were down at the sloppy side of the beach around one in the morning.

"Will ya lay off me, Demetra?" said Nura sourly. She hated waiting in lines in the best of times, and from the look of the people gathered around her, she was beginning to think that she should have followed her initial instincts and thrown the invitation for this 'surprise cruise' right into the trash when she'd gotten it. "What's the use of jus' standin' 'round here anyhow?"

"Aw, quit bitchin!" said the reptile as she gave her corpulent companion a firm slap to her broad back. Nura growled, meaning to tell Demetra she needed to stop filing the spikes of her leather bracelets. "Jus' relax for a minute. We're on vacation!"

The lioness snorted. "We'll be on vacation once we're actually on the bloody ship." She crossed her arms as well as she could over her large chest, currently barely restrained by the last two buttons of her short top; Nura hated bras with a passion almost as strong as the one she had for music.

Despite her reptilian features, Demetra's expression was easy to read as her long, toothy maw parted slightly in amusement at the lion's irritation; Nura could barely detect the lingering traces of lightly seared meat under all the peppermint and fluoride her friend used each morning on those rows of flawlessly gleaming teeth. "Just chillax..." she said, leveling her scaly hands in the air about her flat midriff - her entire torso was flat at that, reptiles having no need for swollen mammary glands, obviously - "...and think of the buffet they'll have on board."

Nura liked to think herself more sophisticated than the stereotypes one might imagine given her size, and at a healthy 325 pounds, she was certainly the fattest person in line right now, however, her tummy had not gotten to look the way it did now by neglecting her appetite. The advertised buffet was indeed more than half of the reason the lioness had even opened the letter from her father after understanding the nature of his surprise gift.

"Don't go thinkin' you can butter me up!" frumped Nura as her face twisted into a scowl with a barely concealed half-grin. But her tone was undeniably calmer. Demetra always seemed to have that effect on her, the woman as cool as her body temperature where Nura was like a kettle constantly waiting to pop. They balanced each other out, and that was a big reason why Nura had chosen her over her other bandmates for her 'plus-one.'

"Like you need anymore butter, fat-ass." laughed Demetra, her acid-green eyes flashing as she reached over again and gave Nura a firm slap to her massive right butt-cheek.

The shockwave rippled across the tight leather fabric and through the lion's excess chub until she could even feel it in her thick cheek and wobbling double chin. Nura snarled as the fur rose on the back of her plentiful neck rolls and the top of her head, claws of her right hand already flexing out of their sheathes. People around the two musicians took a step back automatically.

"Cold-blooded bitch!" Nura snapped back quickly, raising her claws under the crocodile's massive jaws.

Despite the lion's display, however, the crocodile remained almost completely impassive, the crisscrossing leather straps covering her upper body barely shifting as her flat chest rose and fell. "Overfed house cat." she said levelly, staring Nura down.

The lioness raised her claw high and brought it down quickly...

...to clap on Demetra's shoulder. The crocodile, who weighed perhaps half as much as the obese lioness despite standing a good six inches taller, staggered under the weight of the impact. Nura slammed her a second time for good measure, ample upper arm chub wobbling in her loose sleeves as her temper broke like a spring thunderstorm. The two girls broke into laughter that left everyone around them standing about perplexed and pretending they weren't paying attention to the public display. Nura, of course, didn't care in the slightest.

As Nura recovered her breath, taking noticeably longer than Demetra, she said, "You better be careful. You don't wanna spend the first day of the cruise in th'hospital!" Then she stuck out her tongue, closing one eye with a plump cheek.

Demetra rolled her eyes, fixing a shoulder strap as she said, "You better be careful or we'll be rolling you off this cruiseship by the end of it." She finished by pointing down with a clawed finger at the lion's generous belly, wobbling free in the open air over the top of her waistband. Most women would be too embarrassed to show off that quantity of belly, but Nura had designed most of her outfits to accentuate that feature of her body along with her startling "H" sized rack. Besides, it was so much more comfortable to 'just let it all hang out' anyways.

Nura was about to respond, but just then a loud horn blew from the ship and a crewman at the head of the line finally pulled the velvet rope away from the stairs leading up to the ship. "See, Nura, just a few steps and we'll be sittin' in th' lap of luxury!" she snorted, "'Course, really you could do this any time you like."

"Ugh... stairs... My one weakness." Nura complained, ignoring the second part of Demetra's comment. She'd readily spend an hour swapping insults with her friend, but talking about her family always sucked the fun out of everything...

Nura would readily haul her band's 100-lb sound equipment on and off the stage, but somehow stairs seemed to just sap the obese lion's will to live. Really, even the promise of a world class buffet at the end of it barely enabled the panting feline to climb the long, long flight of stairs up to the access point set in the side of the ship.

"At least we don't have to climb up to the deck..." said Demetra lightly, patting Nura again on her plump back. But the lioness could only groan and shuffle her heavy body up the next step in the slow procession under the sweltering sun. Nura was just about ready either to kill someone or pass out by the time they entered the cool interior of the massive ship, so it was fortunate for everyone that Demetra quickly ushered her aside in the throng, directing them towards their room near the back of the ship...

---

The two bandmates spent some time getting comfortable in their cabin, a luxury suite by the look of things, complete with a balcony. Nura mostly spread out on her queen sized mattress while Demetra carefully unpacked everything, stowing their articles of clothing into the drawers and wardrobe. The lioness could not have cared one way or another and would gladly have stored all her clothes in her duffle bag for the entire nine-day sea trip, but Demetra, despite her punk attire, was actually kind of a neat freak, yet another way in which they were divergent.

"Will ya lay off for a minute, Demetra?" Nura complained loudly, "You're making me all anxious running around everywhere."

The croc paused long enough to glance at the inert feline who, rather deliberately, reached a paw down to scratch at the side of her large belly. It was pretty obvious to Demetra that her band's lead singer was just complaining for the sake of complaining, but having known her for three years now, she was pretty used to this kind of behavior. Demetra planted a hand on her scaley hip. "Want I should wait till you're not around to put things away, rich girl?"

Nura's cheeks warmed again, though she had been about to say that that was exactly what she would have liked. "Demetra, jus' cause we're on this cruise don't mean anything's changed. I told ya, I don't run with my old folks, never have."

"Oh, I know that." said the crocodile and she stepped forward along the bed, hips swaying along with her thick tail which she held at about ankle height above the ground. She sat down lightly next to Nura's more-than-chubby frame. "I'm jus' stoked I get to spend a lil' of your old man's cash!"

It did not escape Nura that Demetra would ordinarily never have the opportunity to go on a pleasure cruise let alone go on one in a luxury suite; it was not as though their band were exactly profitable. "Ah, don't listen to me." said Nura in the closest approximation to an apology she could manage, and turned her face away. "Just, this whole boat's got th' rich-stink on it. You know, I'm not like that."

Demetra leaned over and gave the fat lion a hug between her slim arms. "'Course you ain't like that, rich girl." she laughed.

Nura raised a paw, easily flexing the claws again. "Just you call me that again!" she growled, and the croc just chuckled as she moved back, emptying the last of their luggage into the drawers.

"There," said the reptile as she overturned Nura's third bag into the last drawer, shoving it closed on the pile of plus-sized laundry. "Sloppy, just how you like it."

"Good!" said the lioness sitting up finally, "That's how I want it." She threw her thick legs over the side of the bed. "Now can we get something to eat?!"

Demetra smiled wanely and rolled her slitted eyes. "One track mind as always." she threw her claws up into the air. "How about finishin' that song we need for Charlottesville?"

"Later!" said the lioness enthusiastically as she all but dragged her friend out of the suite in search of what would undoubtedly be the very best part of this all expenses paid cruise.

---

Two days later, Nura was awakened from a cat nap on the sundeck by a hard poke at her soft gut. "Ah, what the hell?!" she said angrily as she lifted her oversized sunglasses away from her snout.

"Din't you hear what I just said?" asked Demetra, her scales a slightly darker shade of olive green already from all the sun they had both been getting. At Nura's blank looked, she went on, "I says you're fit ta pop out of that bikini, fat cat."

"I ain't!" said Nura reflexively, however, she did recall the extreme difficulty she'd had squeezing into the slender straps back in the suite. The cords were biting into the creases under her love handles uncomfortably even now, and the soft flesh was brimming over the tops of her tight top in a way that virtually guaranteed a 'wardrobe malfunction' if she attempted any kind of strenuous activity, like rolling over.

But Demetra did not seem convinced by this scholarly argument. She grinned. "I bet Héctor that you'd come back from this thing fifteen pounds heavier, and you look like you've already packed in a couple o' ham's in that great big gut o' yours." But Nura only grinned. Far from annoyed, she delighted in these kinds of comments, wearing her gluttony on her sleeve. Still, for pride's sake, she thought she ought to wrestle the croc into the pool for talking to her like that, but she was still surprised when Demetra swatted her on her thick shoulder with an open palm.

"Hey!" Nura growled low, "If I've been chunkin' out so much, what're gettin' all handsy on m'body for?!"

Demetra responded by swatting the obese lioness again, the ripple traveling easily all across her soft body, jostling Nura's huge left tit where it was barely constrained in the inadequate bikini and making it slip ever so slightly. "I'm hittin' you 'cause Héctor bet you'd come back thirty pounds heavier!" With one final swat, the crocodile added, "So quit shoveling your gob full at all hours of the day wontcha, Nura, else I'm gonna be out eighty!"

Nura hissed and lurched to the side with a lazy swat of her paw, her claws catching harmlessly against the scales of Demetra's forearm. "Ah, buzz off. Shouldna be making bets if you ain't willin' ta lose."

Demetra stood at a safe distance as Nura heaved her heavy body out of the sun chair, the cat pulling at the fabric tugging at her tits, and crossed her lean arms. "Hmph, just like me to think you was less a pig than a cat." She tapped her foot carelessly, looking out over the endless ocean spreading all around them now.

Nura, now on her feet grinned menacingly. "That jus' goes ta show you got more to learn 'bout me." She ambled closer to the crocodile. "F'instance, I don't just let peeps get away wit callin' me fat to my face!" Demetra was fast, but happened to not be looking in the right direction, and the obese cat moved more quickly than her size would seem to dictate. All of a sudden, Demetra was being held between two arms that were clearly not composed entirely of soft, wiggly fat.

"Hngh!" Demetra breathed as Nura crushed her taller friend against her massive chest, the lean croc pressing hard between the huge globes of meat. Despite the clear size advantage, Nura was a lot stronger than the female reptile as was proven by her ineffectual shoves against Nura's fat shoulder, "Grr, g'off me" Demetra growled, her usually cool demeanor broken. Nura was just unpredictable enough that Demetra really couldn't guess what she was about to do next. Something slipped with her rough scrabbling, but that did nothing to help the croc escape Nura's iron grip.

Nura grunted heavily as she shoved the slim croc towards the edge of the pool, actually having to lean back a few times to get Demetra off of her stout legs, supported nearly fully on her large, soft belly. "Umph!" she exhaled as she virtually tossed Demetra in with a big splash that moistened several of the other sunbathers, earning sour looks from them in the process. "Eh, shove off pussies!" said Nura loudly, waving her paw at the gawkers. As Demetra's eyes and nostrils poked up out of the water, Nura added, "Enough of a fat ass for you yet, eh?"

"N-" started Demetra, but she slammed her jaws closed as Nura gathered herself at the edge of the pool. She looked up at nearly 340 pounds of lioness looming over her like an approaching meteor, her solid fat sloshing forward as she threw her arms back... "Eiyee!" Demetra shrieked and bubbled as she dove for cover under water as fast as she could. The pool ended up being barely deep enough to avoid breaking the croc's back as the boulder that was Nura landed on her, driving her to the bottom of the pool and smushing her lean body partly under her excessively padded rump. Demetra stayed at the bottom and fumed as the obese liones naturally floated back up to the surface; she knew that her band leader could not have even dived down that deep herself with her natural buoyancy.

After Demetra collected herself, she pushed off of the bottom, rising silkily to the surface where she found Nura paddling clumsily and splashing water onto her warm cheeks. "Nearly killed me." she yapped, knowing that Nura would just brush off her complaint anyway as she said it.

Nura indeed just shrugged. "You deserved it." she said and began waddling thickly in the water as she reached the spot where her toes would reach. Nura's massive tits loomed ahead of her as she walked, almost big enough to float on their own, like dual islands. She turned around, bracing her ass against the shallow steps. "You shouldn't be makin' bets on me." Nura felt like she wanted to express more, but she lacked the words. The lioness might sing for a living, but she definitely was no poet, hell, she'd flunked first year English.

Demetra said nothing, knowing she was in the wrong. She wondered what had possessed her to even tell Nura about the bet. Then again, the lioness had probably spent at least twenty of the last 48 hours in and out of the various buffets around the ship, so she was guaranteed to lose her eighty bucks if things kept on like they had. "Your tit's out." said Demetra flatly as she walked calmly out of the pool.

Suddenly, Nura became aware of the larger reason people were staring at her a minute ago, still staring in fact as some of the other women abrupted turned their kids around once they caught sight of her and her girls floating serenely in the clear water. "Bloody 'ell!" She exclaimed as Nura's paw shot up to cover up at least her nip; the boob was far too big to cover with one or even both hands. Demetra chuckled to herself and left Nura to attempt shoving herself back into her too-tight top. From the look of things, she might have needed help, but the croc just swatted her tail in her direction. "Bitch!" Nura yelled again as Demetra got out of the water, leaving her to pick at the flimsy fabric which had decided to lodge and crumple itself completely in the ample crevasse under her left tit; it was surprisingly hard to get at with one paw needed to cover herself. Eventually, Nura was forced to simply let go and go fishing with both hands, tugging the gossamer swimwear back into place with effort as the straps continued to bite into her flab. It rested in position tenuously, as if waiting for the next most embarrassing moment, her own flesh like a barely contained water reservoir.

Looking up, Nura confirmed that Demetra had left, and the lioness took a moment to touch herself, feeling especially the heft of her chest when she stood up in the water. She did feel a little bigger... That was bad news because Nura liked wearing tight clothes and showing off the shape of her body. It didn't take much weight to completely ruin her wardrobe and... well, Nura tended not to have many outfits that actually fit her at any given time as a result. Still, it did seem like she had put on a lot of weight in just two days...

Later, after Nura had relieved herself as needed after challenging her gastronomical fortitude for two days straight, the lioness inevitably found herself drawn back to the core of the ship. By this time, Nura had already eaten at each of the buffets located on the ship and several of its posh restaurants, though her clothing and appearance alone usually caused something of a scene at the latter; at least until she flashed her executive member card. Of all the buffets and casinos on the massive ship, however, Nura already had a decided favorite, and naturally it was the biggest one, located on the third deck right in the middle of the cruise liner.

The buffet was called Reynauldi's and it had a big stylized sign illuminated above the entrance bordered by animated crabs and other sea life. Nura had no idea who Reynauldi was, but he must have been a hell of a cook because she loved every piece of food she found inside the massive restaurant. It was actually a two-story affair, which was basically unheard of in Nura's experience, and she was a very experienced lioness when it came to buffets. She also had no idea how much the entrance fee cost since her premium cruise membership granted her free access as well as allowed her to skip ahead in line, but she supposed it must have been a lot given the general quality of clothing the other passengers were wearing as they waited to enter. Nura hitched up her too-tight shorts, the thong of her bikini riding much higher than her waistband as her jean shorts did not want to go up as high as they had before stepping aboard. With so much tawny fur spilling out of every seem in her revealing outfit, it was no surprise when Nura was stopped by some big guys at the front desk. But all Nura had to do was flash her little gold card and they were again powerless to stop her moving forward. Her tail swished happily behind her even as her stomach elicited a steady growl. The fumes erupting from the two-story buffet filled Nura's mouth with saliva before she could even see what was on display today.

Nura naturally told people she had a passion for music, but anyone who spent any amount of time around her knew that her real passion was food, eating it specifically; Nura had a tendency to burn water while trying to boil it. Her entire band had centered around a size-positive body message, and this was not just a necessity as their lead singer was about three times the size of your average pop starlet. Nura really couldn't give two fucks about how big or small she was, however, when the craving hit, she was powerless to resist the temptation of turning full predator.

Sure, she did load up her first plate with salad... that is, salad and ham, and cheese, and eggs, and crumbled bacon, and bleu cheese, more ham, and croutons before topping the heap with a single cherry tomato. However, this was more to observe the fundamental fact of eating that salad came before dinner just as dinner preceded dessert. If someone would have told Nura that salad might be used to help fill one up before dinner, the entire concept would have gone over the young lion's head. But of course, no one was foolish enough to get between Nura and any of the serving platters.

After assembling the towering salad, Nura walked by a platter in the cold section - still four long tables filled with goodies ranging from salad to pudding and chilled soup - she passed a handsome display containing half-shelled oysters on ice. It happened to be only three quarters full, certainly not more than 18 shells in all, so Nura just helped herself to the entire platter, hauling it off of the ice, and carried it to a nearby table along with her heavy salad.

Nura had just sat down to enjoy herself, inhaling three oysters in the span of a minute or so, before a familiar scaly figure sat down in front of her. The lioness lifted her head and finished slurping the cold, salty, oh-so-good shellfish in her paw. "Hey." she said simply. "'Sup?"

"Nothin'." Demetra sighed before lifting her chin slightly. "I jus' figured I'd find ya here."

Nura's hackles rose ever so slightly, remembering what their brief spat at the pool had been about, but honestly, the lioness was more annoyed about her currently ill-fitting clothes than anything the crocodile had said. "Yeah? An' how you figure that?" She lifted her eyebrow challengingly, waiting for more fat jokes.

She wasn't disappointed. "Well, see, I already checked the other three buffets and you wasn't in them, so naturally you had to be in this one." she tapped her knobbly temple. "That's pure deduction that." Demetra grinned toothily at her across the table as Nura savagely chomped the remains of her salad; they must have been losing their touch today in the kitchen because the salad had a strange aftertaste to it, like the lettuce hadn't been washed properly.

Nura swallowed hard and rolled her plump shoulders, "Look, I'll pay Héctor the eighty bucks..."

Demetra raised a scaled eyeridge, "What, you mean you just decided you're gonna put on thirty friggin' pounds during this cruise?!" She opened her jaws partly and closed them with a loud click, "You ain't gonna fit into none o' your costumes!"

Nura opened her own mouth, revealing her long canines, already slightly yellowed around the gums, unlike the croc's flawless choppers. "What're ya busting my ass for, Demetra? I was tryin' to be nice!"

Demetra snorted and crossed her arms over her flat chest. "I'm not bustin' anything, Nura." she looked off to the side for a moment, "I mean, if you'd at least try not to put on so much bloody weight..."

Nura sat back into her chair, which creaked angrily under her, and chewed her salad mechanically, not because she liked the taste of it, but rather simply because it was in front of her, and she had no intention of throwing any of it away. "An' what's it to you?" she said, mouth half full of greens, ham, and ranch dressing, "I don't care how big I am, an' you never cared before. Wassit matter?"

"Wassit matter?" said Demetra with a cock of her head, "It matters if people stop comin' ta see ya shakin' that big ol' blubber butt on stage, Nura!" her livid green eyes opened wider and she reached for Nura's paw, "I mean, there's plus-positive an' then there's..." The croc gestured with her free hand at Nura's generous shape, then pulled her own fingers back. "Ah, fuck it." Demetra frumped in her seat, looking out across the restaurant through the big bay windows to the ocean beyond. "Forget I said anything."

Out of all the players in her band, formed and sustained mostly with her dad's monthly allowance, Nura had known Demetra the longest. So while Nura was first tempted to snap back at her friend about the continued slights on her weight, seeing her like this took the wind out of her sails for a fight. And without the warm anger in her breast, Nura was left with surprisingly little, not much more than the will to keep shoveling food into her mouth. She raised another oyster to her lips and sucked it down quickly, actually that one seemed almost to fly down her throat as soon as she had raised the shell to her mouth.

"Demetra, we can talk about this. It's not like I'm gonna be waddlin' on stage like 400 pounds or anythin'." she said. "You don't need to worry about me."

The croc's eyes slid back over to the lioness, "Yeah?"

"Yeah!" Nura confirmed, eating her salad even faster now. It was mostly gone already, but Nura felt even hungrier than when she started, if anything. She swallowed a big mouthful, scraping the plate with her fork for the clumpy cheese and ranch remains. "I'll... go onna diet 'en I ge' 'ack." she said around the last heaping bite of her mockery of a salad.

Demetra could not help but chortle at that. The very idea of Nura on a diet! "Oy, what'll you bet me that you'll end up weighin' 400 pounds before you're back at 325?"

Nura's cheeks warmed again. "Hey, I thought you was done bein' a cunt for th'day?" she complained loudly, though around her nobody seemed to be paying attention like they normally would. In fact, there seemed to be many more people gathered around the buffet than was typical.

The lion's large belly let out an audible grumble even as Demetra spoke, but the croc raised her voice and spoke over it. "I bet you 500 big ones you'll be rolly pollin' it up wit great big floppin' belly an' tits 'fore you're back ta your ol' size again, Nura." the croc said confidently, resting her elbows on the table.

Nura scowled. Normally she liked taking bets, but not this one. "You ain't got 500 bucks..." she said, startlingly weakly. Demetra noticed her change in tone easily.

"Take it outta my pay..." she said easily, "Unless you know it's true o' course." And as she spoke, she reached across the table and snatched one of the few surviving oysters.

"Hey!" Nura cried, reaching for the tidbit, but Demetra slapped her chubby paw away.

"Croc's gotta eat too." she said, letting the oyster slid down her wide mouth. Swallowing, she said, "Shouldn't I be eatin' more'n you anyways?"

"Uh, no." said Nura flatly, unamused. She lifted her paw counting on her first digit, "One, lions is warm-blooded, so we need more food." she pushed down on her second finger, "An' two, you couldn't possibly eat more'n me even after all the junk I've been eatin' since I got here."

Demetra seemed to consider this. She opened her mouth partly but swallowed her words, looking down at Nura's oyster tray. It might have been the lion's imagination, but the croc's slit eyes seemed to dilate ever so slightly. "Damn, that was a good oyster..." she muttered to herself. After a moment, though, she seemed to collect herself, looking Nura straight in the eye as she said, "I'll take that bet too, I bet I can eat more than you, starting now. First girl to tap out loses."

Nura snorted, "I just ate more'n a dozen oysters and, like, two pounds o' salad."

Demetra shrugged, "You said you could beat me no matter what."

Nura smirked, she did feel really hungry still, actually. "Alright, I don't even care if it's fair or not." she wiped her snout clean with her thick forearm and held her paw out, "You don't know what you just got yourself into challenging me ta eatin'!"

Demetra reached forward and grasped the lion's soft paw in her scaly hand, "At least no one's askin' ya ta play bass again." She winked shrewdly at Nura and the lioness grimaced at the memory of the last time they had had a competition together.

Nura clenched her jaw, knowing that this at least, she had no possibility of losing. "How much?" she asked.

Demetra scratched the underside of her jaw. "A hundred. I know you're good for it." she winked again.

"Alright." said Nura instantly, raising her paws over her head and letting not a small amount of upper arm meat fall out of the bottom of her sleeves. "Don't say I dint warn ya."

Then Nura watched in shock as Demetra reached for the platter of oysters, scooping up the last one and tossing it into her jaws before crushing it, shell and all, between powerful jaws. She chewed thoughtfully, crunching all the while, before swallowing. "What's gotten into her?" Nura wondered before Demetra spoke. "Jus' cause you eat all the time don't mean you're gonna win jus' like that." said the croc smoothly. She leaned back in her chair and ran a hand down her flat midsection, the claws clicking over the large ventral scales. "See I gotta strategy."

Despite being slightly perturbed at the way Demetra was acting just now, Nura said, "Oh, and what's that?"

"See, like your stomach's all crowded in by fat, but me..." she ran her claws down her tummy again, "I gots room ta expand."

Nura wiggled her ears in amusement and pushed herself back from the table. "Well, we'll just have t'put that to the test then!" And with that, they both made their way back to the buffet tables.

For some reason, many more people were crowding around the steaming trays than usual, but Nura had no difficulty in simply shoving people aside who got in her way. The lioness moved on to appetizers, loading her plate with fried mozzarella, fried calamari, and cheesy seafood dip. She ignored sauces, though she was a big fan of condiments, loading up on bulk until her two plates were straining the muscles in her arms as she held them up above her boobs so she wouldn't burn herself.

Nura sat down heavily at her table, pushing her old plates aside, but was startled to see Demetra coming up behind her. The croc was not carrying two plates, but six! Two in each hand and four more balanced carefully on her forearms. She put everything down neatly with a clatter, not even spilling a drop of sauce. Nura could only gape at her friend.

"What?" said Demetra, taken aback as Nura continued staring, "I told you I used'ta work as a waitress."

"That's not..." Nura muttered, but ended up just grabbing her fork. "...nevermind." she said before beginning to plow into her own food, not looking forward to having to get up again so soon before Demetra would need to move again. Behind her, the buffet was only getting more packed...

The dual plates of mostly fried food fell like a heavy stone into Nura's midsection, emptied again in nearly record time. She looked up and grinned, seeing that Demetra was still working on her first plate. "Hmm, jus' cause you can carry a lot don't mean you can eat it." she said snarkily. She pointed a claw at the steaming plates gathered around the lean crocodile. "I bet you don't even finish half of those."

Demetra lifted her head. She had been oddly intent on her food, seeming to relish every bite. "Oh, jus' cause I bother to actually chew my food, eh?" she snorted, "It's not a race." Her tail rose from behind her shoulder gesturing towards Nura's empty plates even as she filled her mouth with hummus and pita bread. "We'll see how many empty plates there are on each side of the table when we're done."

Nura scowled but said nothing, wondering what in the world could have gotten into her friend just now. If this was part of some scheme to stop her from gaining more weight on this cruise, it seemed an odd way to go about it, unless she was trying to get her to make herself sick on purpose... But then, even with at least six pounds of food inside of her belly, Nura felt strangely at ease. She definitely wasn't full, but then she had eaten even more than this in one sitting before. What she was feeling now was like that nebulous absence of feeling one gets between hungry and the first sensations of fullness. The only thing was that Nura was pretty sure she should have at least started to feel full by now, but she didn't.

"Urmph! Ge'off!" the lioness grunted as she shoved aside a big man blocking the way into an aisle of the buffet, "What're you jus' standin' there for?" she barked as she passed the incompetent man to wade her large body into the throng hovering around the steaming platters. It was quickly becoming a whole ordeal just to get any food, Nura realized. The servers were coming out in one's and two's to refill the buffet, yet the crowd here seemed to be devouring everything nearly as fast as it was brought out. Nura emptied half of an entire platter of baked potatoes onto her plate because she didn't want to keep shoving people around to get a better selection. She huffed and waddled eventually back to her table, not sure how much time had passed already, however, it must have been a substantial amount because Demetra was polishing off her last plate already!

"How...?" gaped Nura open mouthed and then wiped a bit of sour cream off of her chin.

"Who's the slowpoke now?" said Demetra confidently, leaning over the table. She chuckled "Course you was gone forever, an' this food is jus'so damn good..."

But Nura was still dumbfounded. There was no way her slender friend could have eaten so much when she had yet to start on her third plate! "You better not be pullin' my..." Nura was about to say 'leg,' at least until Demetra stood up revealing at grossly distended midsection pushing out over the waistband of her battered blue jeans. Clearly she had not simply tossed her food under the table. Nura gaped, putting down her plates only out of necessity of burning her fingers. She watched as Demetra began to move back towards the buffet. "Where're you goin'?!" she demanded.

"To get some more o' this great grub!" she said enthusiastically and patted her swollen tummy. She gestured lightly with a wave of her claw. "You better hurry up, slowpoke." she said again, setting Nura fuming as she swished her thick tail sassily and sauntered away. Nura attacked her plate of baked potatoes with less gusto and more anger, practically shoving the taters down her throat, eventually getting up again in what must have been a personal best for herself.

"That damn reptile." Nura muttered as she noticed Demetra having as much trouble as she had had gathering more food, but, and this was unbelievable, Demetra seemed to be balancing another six empty plates on her arms again!

As Nura chewed on the last of her fourth plate, she could not help but think again that something was very wrong here, but since she had never particularly exercised her critical thinking skills, the lioness had no way of even approaching what was wrong with the current situation. All she really knew was that Demetra would be returning to the table soon, and she needed to at least match the six plates the crocodile had already polished off. She might not care about her size too much, but Nura would be damned to be shown up by a waif like Demetra when she had to put up with the daily hassle of weighing over 300 pounds constantly. What was the point of being a great big fatass if you couldn't even eat well? The universe could simply not be so unjust.

As Nura got up after polishing her fourth plate, really her sixth if you counted the salad and all those oysters, she felt her belly slosh heavily against her thick thighs, the organ buried deep inside gurgling as it churned. Nura placed a paw on her midsection, feeling a noticeable increase in her own girth. Just like Demetra, the food certainly was not just disappearing. In fact, she had rarely eaten so much for it to tell on her fattened frame, but again, she did not feel full at all... "Fuck it." she cursed and stomped not towards the buffet area near their table but towards the elevator. It was time to see if things were any better upstairs.

Things were a little better in the upstairs buffet, but also decidedly weirder. There were fewer people, and for that Nura was grateful as she squeezed herself into the aisles to start loading up her plates again. However, the people around her were not exactly behaving in the way the lioness expected; which is to say stuck up and standoffish. Rather, they seemed to be gathering into distinct cliques, which itself was not too unusual save for the activities they were engaged in. Nura slopped scalloped potatoes onto her plate, pushing aside a literal pig with her thick hip to make room. The man grunted but made room reluctantly, then Nura wrinkled her nose as she saw that he was just standing there and devouring the chinese-style sugar doughnuts one after another with both trotters and no plate in sight.

"Dude, what the 'ell are ya doin'?!" Nura growled, unable to stand the sight of someone so actively ruining the buffet experience. "At least use the fuckin' tongs!" Naturally the pink-skinned pig ignored her, so Nura decided to reach for one of the few remaining doughnuts herself despite the fact that their glistening oiled surfaces were hot enough to burn soft paws. Before she even touched one the pig grunted gutterally and shoved her bodily aside.

"Ah, hell no!" said Nura loudly as her temper reached a new pitch. She carefully set her half full plates aside and took a step back before bull rushing the weirdo. The pig was heavyset and taller than the lioness, however, she probably still had a good thirty pound advantage at least in pure mass. Concentrated on stuffing his face as he was, the pig was blindsided and stumbled.

The fat pig squealed and roared, "G'off me, you bitch!" He was slow in getting up though, and Nura stepped over him, her great belly wobbling on her thighs and claws extended to either side of her corpulent frame. Nura rebalanced herself and kicked him in the chest, rolling the heavy man over partially. He wheezed.

"Damn right I'm a bitch, so you better get that through your thick skull, piggy!" said Nura triumphantly. The pig seemed to be partially in a daze and offered no further resistance as he began crawling slowly away. Nura kicked him solidly in the rump for good measure before gathering up her plates. "Goddamn stuckup arsehole hogging the tray..." she muttered under her breath and then after a furtive glance reached into the tray of hot doughnuts. She popped a whole one in her mouth, relishing the flavor of sugar and hot grease exploding on her tongue. She swallowed before it had even cooled, feeling the hot dough travel down her esophagus, the next one was even easier going down. Nura actually did not want to feel like a hypocrite even to herself, but fortunately the doughnut tray was now empty, so she was able to move along. However, moving around, she did see at least three more people just standing and eating at the various buffet trays. Nura didn't actually want to cause more of a scene than she already had... Though she was vaguely surprised at how little fuss she had actually caused by knocking a man down. Sure, some heads were turned, but everyone seemed to be occupied in other activities, either at the buffet or at the tables surrounding it. Beginning to get a weird vibe, Nura headed back downstairs.

Nura sat down heavily, her chair creaking more ominously than ever and began to exercise her patented gluttony. Her strategy in going upstairs seemed to pay off as Demetra was still wandering around, squeezing between the other patrons despite the time Nura had spent waiting for the elevator. And despite now eating as much now as she had ever before in memory - obviously times when she had been blackout drunk or incredibly high had to be discounted - her stomach still felt like a nebulous pit, neither hungry nor full, even as she could feel the digesting meals slosh around inside her gut, swelling it visibly and making her body feel heavier when she was on her feet. Already the sensation on her knees and paws was like wearing a backpack with several large textbooks stuffed inside. Nura might have lost interest in eating anymore at this point, that is if there was not a hundred dollars on the line and the fact that the food itself was fucking delicious!

Nura was taking a break and picking at her teeth with a claw, letting her belly splay out over her thighs which were bulging against her tight jean shorts, when Demetra finally sat down, dumping enough food on the table in front of herself to feed the entire band normally (minus Nura of course).

"You really think you're gonna et' all that?" said Nura, feeling more confident now with her six plates matching Demetra's stack. She flicked a bit of gristle away which was clinging to the tip of her black claw, the slight motion still enough to jiggle the brimming surface of her vast right boob currently straining against her shirt.

Demetra looked up from her food and swallowed back her own tide of saliva, her expression similar to when she had tried out the 'orange juice' cleanse for three days before begging Nura to take her through the nearest Burger King drive-through. "Eat all this?" she scoffed, "I hope this will be enough!"

The snarky grin evaporated from Nura's face. The light in Demetra's eyes was entirely unnatural, and the croc did not even wait for the lion to say anything before shoveling her snout full of seared swordfish fillets and swallowing hard. Nura thought about saying something, but instead she got up again, her swollen belly sloshing heavily against her thighs. "I'm gonna make you eat those words!" she sniffed before waddling back into the frenzy at the buffet.

She decided to try the first floor again, wading into the mass of people which immediately felt warm and close as she brushed up against feathers, fur, and scales. There seemed to be a large number of big people around all of a sudden, and of course, Nura had not paid any attention at all to the people around her when she had come in, so there was no way to tell who had left exactly. What she did notice, as she increasingly had to push and shove up against people to get at the trays, many of which were standing empty now as the kitchen struggled to meet the increasing demand, was that the bodies she felt were quite a bit less firm now than before.

More than once, Nura found herself snacking as she waited to get at the food. Before she knew it, her first plate had emptied as if by magic before she got back to Demetra. "Have to stop that..." she muttered to herself because her now empty plate was not going to stack up against Demetra's for the bet. However, Nura found it impossible to stop herself from eating out of boredom as it was simply impossible to shove aside every fat ass in her way clogging up the aisles. Eventually, just to be able to return to the table with something worth holding on to, Nura resorted to stacking three big bowls of stew from the soup section and stealing the entire basket of dinner rolls along with the rest of the butter packets. The lioness waddled back to her table, grunting heavily because her calves were beginning to cramp.

When she sat down however, two things happened. First, she felt a jolt across her wide chest as the topmost button of her blouse suddenly exploded forward, striking Demetra just below her left eye as she was hovering above a plate of baked seafood casserole. "Oh, shi-" Started the lion in apology, but squawked as the chair under her gave up the ghost, tipping the obese lioness back to land on her ass. "Ah, Ow!" Nura hissed from her sudden prone position on the floor. Her right ass cheek had taken the brunt of the blow, and the blubber there smarted, but additionally, the seems of her shorts across both thighs seemed to have split wide open at once; Nura could feel the open air on her tawny fur there as well as her own flesh bulging out of the new openings. Grunting, Nura hauled herself up, bracing her heavy self on the table for support as her great belly dangled below her, massively swollen with food now yet still numb inside her.

"Goddamned piece of crap chair!" Nura huffed and she looked up to see Demetra staring at her, a faintly amused look on her face. Nura had seen the button smack her friend hard in the face before going down, so was ready to apologize, but the look on the croc's face now made the lioness sneer. "Coulda used some help, Demetra!"

"Eh, you was doin' fine on your own." said Demetra lazily. She was sporting a purpling spot on the scales under her eye where the button had struck, but did not seem to notice at all.

Nura huffed, too busy standing and wondering what to do next to call Demetra either a cunt or a bitch at the moment; there was still food on her plates after all! Despite the noise and the sight of a massive lioness quaking all over the floor, no attendants were coming to help. "Hell the whole damn place is getting shabbier by the second." thought Nura with a scowl, though that would not stop her from eating the food naturally. She scooted over to an empty table and stole a new chair, brushing the debris of her collapsed one aside with her ankle. Then, thinking things over, she stole a second. The two seats cupped each of her globular ass cheeks surprisingly comfortably.

"Mhhmm, Jus' love the way your ass fills both of those chairs, Nura." Demetra growled suddenly, looking up from her army of plates for the first time in what seemed like forever.

Nura gawped at her friend. What on earth was she supposed to say to that? She busied herself by carefully adjusting the straining fabric of her top, her chest now held under control by the sole remaining button; Nura could only hitch the fabric up a little higher to relieve some of the pressure, though she now noticed that the lowermost swell of both tits now hung out of the bottom of her short top. "Uh... thanks?" she said at length. Nura honestly did not know how to respond to being complimented for being fat.

But Demetra acted as if she had said something profound, and Nura noticed that her plates were all looking rather empty now which meant the lioness was not going to be able to leave the buffet anytime soon. "Ugh..." The croc hissed between her peg-like teeth. "The way your shirt's jus' cuttin' into your chest is amazing!" She leaned back and placed both of her hands on her flat chest. "I wish I 'ad big boobies like that, jus' for like a day, so I could feel how heavy they are!" Demetra was acting like she was half a case into a long night... also Nura noticed that the croc's chest was not exactly flat anymore, or rather Demetra's entire torso seemed to have swelled tremendously all around. Already she was almost half again as wide as she had been that morning, and there was the beginnings of a double chin below her jaw.

Well, given the sheer mass of everything she had been dumping into herself, that was hardly surprising, but Nura felt strongly that people didn't usually put on that much weight inside the span of an hour or so. Hell, she was literally close to bursting out of her own clothes herself...

Nura was about to ask Demetra if she was feeling alright, but the croc finished polishing off her dishes and stacked her tower of plates high over Nura's, grinning fiendishly. "I'm goin' back for more." She stood up, and Nura saw more clearly the extensive changes to her friend's physique, the softening that was all over her once lean frame. Demetra had curves now! She had a plump, juicy ass! "Jus' try to keep up alright?" she smirked down at Nura before raising a now chubby arm to wave lightly in the air before sauntering off. "Toodaloo!"

That infuriated Nura so much, she barely noticed how, leaning over her food, she barely had to move her arms to finish inhaling the rest of her own plates. When the lioness got back up again, her '40 lb backpack' felt more like 100 pounds. Her tummy spread low down on her rubbing thighs, supporting a huge mass of swollen abdomen above. It was a good thing she wore her belly above her waistband because Nura was sporting at least an extra twenty-five inches about her midsection. It should have been impossible to eat this much, her skin was actually beginning to feel a little tight from how much bulky food she had dumped into herself, but Nura felt strangely fine, immune to the effects of her impossible gluttony. The lioness did not know what exactly was going on, but just like Demetra, there did seem to be a warm haze settling around everything around her, like she was deep in her cups, but different also. She remained perfectly lucid, but as she looked around her, saw people collapsing more chairs in the dining area or even lying on the floor for no apparent reason, it was incredibly hard to care. The only strong emotion she had was the desire to win her bet with Demetra, and to eat as well, though the latter was merely for the sake of pleasure.

But as Nura continued to pile drive the other patrons of the buffet, all of whom continued to act bizarrely, she still found it tiresomely difficult to gather enough food to be worthwhile to carry back to the table; any hesitation she had felt about snacking freely while standing around had been left behind some time ago. But more than half of the serving trays were standing empty now or carelessly tossed around in the general frenzy taking place between the aisle. More than once, Nura saw a server assaulted by a ragtag team of obese diners, the tray taken from them as they carried it off, their shirts and blouses hanging open to reveal their dangling bellies. Rather than feel revulsion, however, Nura thought that was rather a good idea, but she always seemed to be in the wrong place when a new server would come out, half of the time being bum rushed for the food they carried.

Nura huffed and wiped sweat from her brow. It was still hot in the press of bodies and the new weight on her paws was uncomfortable to say the least. She took a break to lean against the asian food aisle, the passageway totally blocked off by other large-bodied eaters. She stared longingly at the big tray of fried rice which had somehow survived long enough to make it onto the buffet. Nura was only about two feet away but would have had to shove aside about a thousand pounds of angry, fattened patrons to get within arm's reach. She panted heavily, mouth salivating as she imagined what that delicious, fresh rice would taste like.

Then she wasn't imagining anymore. The rice was somehow in her mouth! At first just a few grains, but then a steady stream coming in, the bits of rice and onion landing against her tongue and seeming to drive themselves into the back of her throat. She swallowed eagerly even as she looked down and saw a bizarre sight. The topmost layer of the rice was trembling as if in a strong wind, the grains rolling over each other until, as if magnetized, flying towards Nura's open mouth in a rush! She inched her face closer, ducking under the sneeze guard and pressing her huge belly against the side of the buffet. The trickle of rice became a torrent as she got closer, the hot food not simply landing in her mouth but driving itself down her gullet! The lioness took a step back, hand flying to her mouth as she choked slightly and coughed. But a sip of water later and she was feeling fine. Nura pondered this revelation, noticing how the sight of food flying into her mouth had strangely not upset any of the other patrons in the slightest.

"Th'fuck is going on?" was the extent of her capacity to think on the matter, the warm haze seeming to suffuse everything. Then the taste of the fried rice as it had rushed down her throat returned, and Nura waddled back to where she had been standing, again ducking under the sneeze guard. Nothing happened this time, though, even as she stared intently at the remaining rice as it was shoveled out of the big tray in heaps by the other guests.

"Fuck..." Nura started, but as soon as she uttered the word, the rice began to tremble again, several grains flew towards Nura, but landed in empty trays as she shut her mouth in surprise. Shut her mouth...

Nura opened her mouth, and the fried rice became alive again. This time she welcomed the torrent, luxuriating in the ecstasy of flavor rushing over her tongue, depositing itself on top of the huge pile of food growing inside her belly. It was over too soon, the tray having been decimated in the time she had been dawdling. But now, Nura knew that she had a secret weapon to win her bet with Demetra.

The lioness moved to the next aisle, looking for something easy and found it in a half-filled tray of baked seafood, imitation crab swimming in its cream sauce. She ambled closer, keeping her mouth open until she saw the soft food begin to tremble, eventually leaping into the air and away from the grasping hands of the other guests. Nura sighed in contentment when she next had a chance to breathe. Yes, this was good, it was right, and not only that, it was fucking awesome! It was as though she had just developed some kind of superpower! And that was pretty much the case to be honest for the lioness had no other explanations in her hazy mind. And while it was true that she was not going to be able to stack plates eating like this, Demetra would have to admit defeat once she saw just how big her belly was getting from the sheer volume of food rapidly expanding the bulge she wore at her midsection. That was more or less Nura's line of thinking as she paced the aisles, emptying the remaining trays single handedly, clutching her stretching midsection with both paws all the while.

Eventually a few of the other patrons noticed that Nura was literally vacuuming up what remained of the buffet, however. A tall fox, at least six feet, which put him head and shoulders over Nura approached her, a huge belly falling out of slacks which had been unzipped completely to accommodate the recent growth and were still obviously too tight on him. "Hey! You're hogging all the food!"

Nura had to take several deep breaths before she could speak. Not too long ago she had emptied a deep bucket of clam chowder, at least twenty pounds worth, and even she had not quite fully recovered from that. Her belly stood at attention farther away from her now than she could reach, rounded in an obscene dome like she was carrying five or six cubs inside of her late term. A bulwark of soft fat pressed hard into her upper and middle thighs, supporting the terrible weight of all the food stretching out her midsection. The lioness felt abnormally heavy and slow, not really in the mood for a fight at all, and as she attempted to speak, she belched heavily instead, the massive sac stretched around the bolus of food inside of her readjusting itself.

The fox stepped forward, jabbing a finger into her chest, rippling the fat jiggling fluidly above where her breast was supported. "I've been trying to get at the potstickers for a quarter hour and you... you just sucked up everything!"

Someone spoke from behind the taller fox. "She looks like she's already had more'n enough!"

Nura shifted her weight on her uneasy, aching paws, trying not to think about what might happen if someone gave her a good shove to her bloated belly; the skin on her tummy and flanks felt tight... She reached inside herself for that old familiar anger. "I'll let you know when I've had enough! Now get out of my way, creep!"

Nura shoved her way past the fox, but was caught by surprise when she felt a hand on her shoulder, further surprised when the hand shoved her hard backwards. The lioness staggered, but her weight kept her mostly in place, the fox forced to take a step back himself. "I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to eat the whole buffet. If the staff were around, I'd have them kick you out!" said the fox drunkenly, though he wasn't swaying. Still Nura was bizarrely threatened; she knew she had been behaving badly, and she actually didn't want someone to, say, take her exclusive membership away.

"I..." she stammered, but everyone's heads turned at a commotion by the wide double doors of the kitchen. It seemed that about a dozen or so guests had taken it into their heads to storm the kitchen! Nura and the other guests nearby watched impassively as heavyset people rushed into the doors, battering aside servers brandishing trays like shields through sheer weight.

"Fuck! There goes all the food!" shouted the fox, rallying the few friends he had around him to head into the kitchen after the first wave. All too soon, Nura was left standing by herself, leaning her ass against the counter behind her to take some of the weight off of her paws; her belly was still sloshing side to side with each small movement of her body like a water balloon.

When Nura left the first floor buffet, there was nothing left but shining silver, even the dregs of sauce and all but the most burnt-on crumbs lifted themselves up into the air and down her throat as she walked by the emptied aisles, mouth gaping and leaving nothing behind for the couple dazed people still wandering about. Though they were mere dregs, the buffet was still huge and Nura must have collected at least another twenty pounds of detritus. The fat of her paunch was being liberally crushed under the massive reservoir of her belly as the tightness grew to extend all across her torso now, even her belly button felt like it might pop. "Let's see Demetra top this..." she chuckled to herself as she shoved her heavy self away from the last counter, the weight of her gains hitting hard on her knees and paws; she could have easily been wearing an extra 200 pounds and likely even more. And though most everything was resting in her grossly expanded belly, Nura found herself tugging and adjusting her shirt often as it seemed to tighten around her swollen boobs.

The lioness staggered towards the table, or at least she thought it was her table. She was expecting to see Demetra there, but instead there was this great big...

"What in the hell?" Nura shrieked as she recognized her friend, or barely recognized rather, for Demetra had undergone drastic changes since she had last seen her.

With her stupidly large meal thickening her frame, Demetra might have weighed as much as 200 pounds when Nura had left, but now, this... this behemoth sitting at the table in her place had to have left 600 pounds behind somewhere in a dumpster filled with Lane Bryant clothing that no longer fit. The swollen croc was sitting well back from the table to make room for a belly that rivaled Nura's in mass if not roundness, a huge scaly ass supported on three dining chairs. She still had no tits, but Demetra's torso was enormously thickened like a barrel all around, the tatters of her shirt long since split open at both chest and back. The remains of her sleeves were struggling to contain massive, wobbling upper arms, the scaly flesh bulging at her elbows like it was sucking at them. When Demetra turned her slit eyes towards Nura, a huge collection of hanging neck meat wobbled heavily under her long jaw.

"Oh," she quipped knowingly, the confident light of her superior bulk shining in her green eyes, one of the very few parts of her body that remained unaltered, "What's up... erp... Small Fry?" she asked, trying and failing to suppress a belch that Nura smelt from ten feet away; for some reason, Demetra's breath stank like a combination of metal shavings and furniture polish.

Mainly to take the load off of her paws, Nura sat down heavily into her chairs across from Demetra; there was no way a single seat was going to take her weight now. "Demetra... Wha' th'fuck happened to you?!" Nura slurred. And she tried to think about what was happening all around her, the clear sounds of people running around and furniture breaking coming from all directions, but it was like there was a block in her mind, making Nura feel even less intelligent than usual.

Demetra's arms were pushed out to her sides more than a little. She let one rest on the massive dome her abdomen was forming in front of her while she lifted the other to swat at the heavy wattle she was now wearing. "Wha'? This?" She gestured at herself, "I was just finishin' up m'dinner." She belched again, the air coming up smelling less of food and more like the inside of a foundry. "I guess I've been etin' a little... much." She heaved another sigh as if the weight of her massive frame was pressing down on her.

"A littl' bit?!" Nura exclaimed and threw her hand at her engorged partner, "You're a fuckin' whale!"

Demetra grabbed at her inflated torso, hefting the solid, dense looking fat filling her scaly hide. "Yeah, lookin' good aren't I? Now who's the real fat ass?"

"Fff-" Nura stammered, her head swimming. She felt only animalistic confusion and the surety that something was terribly wrong. Unable to connect any dots, however, Nura fled to the only remaining things that still made sense to her. She grabbed the front of herself, jostling the tight, spherical drum of her belly. "Lookit all this! I ate 'alf the damn buffet by myself, for Christ's sake!"

Demetra lazily examined the lion's proferred belly, unimpressed. "Yeah, I saw you's suckin everything up over there... damn rude that." The crocodile grunted as she shifted her weight to sit more upright. It seemed a challenge for her, and no doubt given how much bulk she had just added to her body. "Urmph... But I reckon I got at least a hundred pounds on you still, Nura." she said and jostled her abundant fat padding the front of her torso, waving her arm fat unnecessarily in the process.

Nura huffed. "We din't agree who was fattest would win! I ate the most and there ain't no food left, so I win!"

Demetra snorted, her hanging neck fat wobbling uncontrollably like a leather sac filled with strawberry preserves. "If I'm heavier n' you, that means I ate more... like by a lot, seeing as how much heavier you used to be n'me."

Nura found it hard to argue with that 'logic.' "B-but..." she fumed, "You can't have got so big! I went straight where the food was an' you can't have sucked up more'n me!"

Demetra chuckled softly, her breath wheezing in the back of her fat clotted throat. "Well, yeah. Like I said, you was being rude and sucking everything up. Leavin' nothin' for th'rest of us." Demetra leered at her and the lioness scowled right back, struggling to cross her arms without busting her top open at last. "Turns out, though, I found a new way to eat..."

Nura had not been paying attention, but just now realized that the entire surface of their table was almost entirely bare. All the plates and silverware were gone along with the table lamp, the drink sweeteners and even the table cloth. All of the other chairs were missing as well, hell, there seemed to be one or two tables around them missing as well.

Demetra picked up the last glass still resting on the table. "I saved this one so I could show ya..." she chuckled slowly. "Now watch..."

Nura watched. She started as the glass disappeared right in front of her eyes, Demetra's thick, fatty hide not so much as twitching. "What the fuck!" she jumped like a little kid seeing their first magic trick, only to be held down by the mass of her belly and the rest of her fatty self. Though Nura did think it was just that, a trick, at least at first.

"That too fast for ya?" Demetra laughed, seeming to get a kick out of Nura's befuddled look. "Here..." she grunted as she adjusted her weight again, crouching forward so that her thick legs were taking some of her massive weight. "I was savin' this too..."

Nura barely saved herself from falling as the table was swept out from under her elbows like someone pulling away a table cloth. The lioness staggered, but this time what Demetra did took long enough to actually see what was happening. The croc's plump fingers seemed to melt into the bare wood of the table and then all at once, the seemingly solid wood seemed to rush into her hands like water, absorbed through the skin of her palms and fingers. Nura actually saw Demetra's forearms bulge with mass as she absorbed the matter composing the table, audible wooden creaks and pops sounding as the table's shape deformed and flowed in, Demetra's bulky body becoming instantly more so. Her neck was hanging more than an inch lower down after consuming the heavy table, but that was the least of it as the croc sat before her, the better part of 100 pounds heavier in an instant. The tight fabric constraining her upper arms creaked and popped as the tattered cloth gave way to the heavy scaled fat. "Ooff, fuck... I feel fat..." Demetra sighed in contentment as she leaned back, the chairs supporting her 700 pound bulk groaning in protest as Nura could only gape. The croc's breath smelled even more strongly of furniture polish now.

"That's... impossible!" Nura managed at length as Demetra continued to wheeze, more loudly now, her belly grown to sag between her shins where she was sitting. The belly on her massive friend was big enough now to give the lion a run for her money, and she was now far, far fatter.

Demetra scoffed, at least when she seemed to gather enough energy to do so. "What? Like food flyin' into your mouth, vacuum-cleaner-like? That's impossible..."

Nura screwed up her face, feeling like she was on the verge of a panic attack. The sounds of chaos around them in the dining room and louder sounds from behind the kitchen doors were still all around and adding to her anxiety, despite the buffet now being nearly vacated. "D-Demetra, I... I don't really want to be here anymore..." That was all she could manage with her clouded thoughts.

Something clattered in the kitchen and a man screamed. Demetra opened and closed her jaws lazily. "Just as well, there's no food left, but I guess I can eat... pretty much anything now..." The crocodile struggled to get to her feet, Nura eventually stepping forward to help her lard-stuffed friend after half a minute or so of struggling, though the lion's own paws ached under her own staggering bulk.

"I wasn't talkin' 'bout food!" Nura chided as she led her less mobile partner towards the front doors of Reynauldi's; the line that was usually there was gone now.

Demetra lifted her head with effort, her thick collar of fat dragging at her as she waddled slowly, dragging a massively thickened tail behind her. Even as she walked, the rags of her jeans fell from around her tree-trunk legs save for the scraps lodged in her own fat folds. "So... I win then."

Nura paused, her belly crushing the fat of her paunch against her thighs. Just a few steps had widened the open holes on the sides of her shorts and the seat of her shorts was creaking alarmingly as the fabric struggled to hold back the growing orbs of her ass cheeks. "Win?" she looked Demetra up and down, "You didn't win!"

"Ah, huh!" Demetra grunted, struggling to pull herself up straighter, though the effort nearly took her breath away, so much of her body being dead weight. "I... ate more..." she wheezed and grabbed a fist full of belly fat from her side for emphasis.

"You..." Nura fumed, "I don't know what you did, but a table ain't food. I got practically all the food right in here!" she pointed with a claw at her pregnant-looking belly currently splitting apart her massive underboobs which were hanging even more heavily out of the bottom of her short top now.

Demetra gathered herself and managed a weak push against Nura's shoulder, mostly leaning against the engorged cat. "Nuh-uh, I got... twelve plates down... before the food ran out... That's like... half of what you... sucked up... An' th' tables n' stuff..."

"Tables ain't food, I said!" Nura cried again, tugging Demetra forward, but the croc was damably heavy now as well. Nura could only manage by leaning her own weight forward. The crocodile stumbled forward, breathing loudly by the time they exited the restaurant into the center of the ship.

"Should count for at least half..." Demetra was saying but Nura ignored her. The screams of rage and terror hadn't been left behind in the restaurant at all, they were still all around. Even as Nura stood by, a person leapt from four decks up to land with a sickening smack against the ground in the open plaza filling the center of the cruise liner. Nura stood slack jawed as Demetra caught up and placed a hand on her padded shoulder.

"You know... it's kinda hard movin' aroun- Ow!" Demetra started, but cried out as her plump hand suddenly flew into Nura's open mouth.

"Ack!" the liones choked as she grabbed Demetra's thick wrist, having to yank her friend's hand out of the back of her throat, fighting a strong pull of suction. Fortunately, the croc's scales had protected the back of her hand from Nura's fangs, but Demetra still rubbed her paw with her free hand. "S-sorry!" said Nura apologetically.

It hurt more than the lion would admit when the 700 pound Demetra took an unsteady step back. "Jus' watch where you're pointin' that thing..." she muttered.

Nura opened and closed her mouth, not sure what to say and almost afraid to say it. She covered her mouth with her paw and said, "Let's... let's jus' wait this out in our room."

Demetra finally looked up and around, someone two levels above ran away from a second person as fast as their quarter ton frame would allow. "...whatever this is..." she said mildly and waddled forward, seemingly in no particular direction at all. Nura guided her around the body laying on the floor and towards the elevators. There was no talk at all about heading for the stairs.

But they did not make it very far. Demetra, in particular, could barely support her own weight anymore as was made evident when she collapsed in the elevator, requiring Nura leaning back with her own weight and all her strength to right the massive croc again when the door chimed and opened. Demetra collapsed on the nearest bench, panting hard, and Nura was forced to make due with the second nearest bench since there was not nearly enough room for two wide loads on the one. But as it turned out, hanging out near the elevators was probably not such a good idea. It was not very long at all before the doors chimed again and three men got out, or rather two men and a massive wolf, the kind that walked on all fours, though rags of ruined clothing were hung around its shoulders for some reason.

All of them were fattened, the smaller of the two men, a bear, still round as hell and probably topping 500 pounds. The wolf waddled forward, the barrel of its padded body wobbling left and right above its ears. Nura got up, but the massive wolf's head was nearly chest high on her shorter frame.

"Looks like we got another snack!" said the man in front, a massive raptor of some kind, the feathers of his sagging body hanging like a turkey's, the finer points of his species lost almost entirely as the fat bulged around his beak. The wolf licked its chops as if in understanding.

"A snack and a meal!" said the quarter ton bear, noticing Demetra who was still breathing too hard to speak, through her eyes brightened, seeming to take in the situation.

"I like the one with the tits." said the bird, feathers rustling as he took a step forward, a gigantic belly filled with fat sloshing around his knees. "You two split the gator."

"Crocodile..." Demetra wheezed in a valley-girl accent. She always had been rather touchy on the distinction. The men ignored her, and all of a sudden, the brown-feathered man was looming large in her field of view. Nura was suddenly sure she knew why people were running around and screaming.

The man before her was not only huge, but unnaturally tall, he towered above the smaller feline, all of seven feet in height! He might have weighed twice as much as her own massively engorged frame. There was no way she was going to bull rush this guy let alone protect Demetra who was still just sitting there. Nura swallowed hard, thought about running only to realize how slow she had gotten, how much her knees and even her lower back were hurting her now when she tried to move.

"That's right, just stand there... Gore, those tits look fantastic... almost as good as that belly..." the man muttered, saliva pouring out of his beak and landing on his thickened chest and the ground. He reached his hand forward and Nura swatted it away, unveiling her claws. The man cried out, "Fuck! Kitty's got claws." He held his forearm close for a moment and then grinned down at her. Nura growled back, her tail lashing her thick buttocks. She wondered how on earth things had come down to this. "Gerald, help me." said the large man quickly, and the fat wolf stepped out from around his bulk, growling noisily.

Nura took another step back, though she could see the bear groping at Demetra, snuffling loudly as he bent over her.

"No!" Nura cried even as the wolf and the bird both came at her from different sides. The wolf moved faster, and the lioness turned to defend herself. Only... the wolf suddenly seemed to pick up speed, moving in a leap that should have been impossible given its bulk straight towards her face. Nura screamed and fell back as the massive wolf slammed into her face, her mouth filling with its fur. Fur and more. The wolf's thick fat flooded Nura's mouth and throat as she laid on the ground beneath the struggling animal. It took her a moment to realize that again, something was sliding down her throat, no, being crammed forcefully down. The wolf yelped and yipped in surprise and pain, struggling to tear itself free, but its flesh just seemed to lodge Nura's jaws open wider, and still wider. It hurt! But there was nothing she could do to free herself, the combined efforts of the wolf and her arms insufficient. The wolf let out a final cry of agony as the forward section of its body seemed to collapse into her mouth, not breaking so much as dissolving into a uniform, soft stream of flesh, like a thick sausage which continued to pour down Nura's throat. The skin on the lion's tummy stretched even more as the last of the wolf rushed inside of her, distending her even more massively in just a few seconds than all of the food she had managed to collect from the buffet had. Nura looked up, straining to see over the massive hill of her abdomen, but it was clear the large bird was already backing up towards the elevators.

"Fuck, this one's got some kinda weird power. Let's go, Greg.... Greg?" the bird looked to the side where he had been reaching for the bear, but it was already obvious that 'Greg' would not be following his buddy anytime soon. How could he, when he was half melted into the front of the crocodile's body? Already all that remained of the massive bear was a furry mass sitting on top of scaly flesh that was seeming to creep around his fattened frame like growing moss as she pulled him in, or perhaps spread herself around him. The bear let out a muffled shriek, his mouth and snout already submerged below the rising tide of crocodile flesh. Demetra lifted her chin above the bear's submerged face and pushed the rest of his head into her chest with a less than gentle nod. She grunted as the last of the thick fur disappeared from her front, the fat rapidly spreading to equalize around her even more massive frame. She had barely moved a muscle during the entire affair. She looked up at the birdman, "Oh? Did you bring dessert?"

The man screamed and ran for the elevators. Nura let him go and though Demetra lurched in his direction, she was in no state for a chase, unless it happened to be against a slug.

It took all of Nura's strength to pick herself up off of the floor. She felt like the wolf had added the equivalent of her old body weight to her new frame, again, all of it right in her swollen belly which currently resembled little more than a pale furred grape sticking out in front of her. Try as she might, she simply could not be gentle on her belly and found she needed to lean on it heavily just to get to her knees. But the expected wave of nausea did not come, she still did not even feel full in the slightest! Grunting heavily, Nura staggered to her feet, pushing on the front of herself for leverage as she picked herself up, her belly like a huge bowling ball pulling her forward. It's sheer mass was now resting on her knees, her old fat padding barely enough cushion for the mass of her stomach which her hide was stretched tightly across. Her belly button ached and she did not have to feel for it to know it had popped inside out; she would not have been able to reach anyways. She waddled heavily forward, leaning back to counter the massive weight on her front, hands on her lower back which was aching already. She heaved a massive breath for all the effort, and it happened just then that her last brass button gave out, pinging harmlessly above Demetra's head as Nura's massive tits flopped out of her ruined shirt, spreading out to either side of her pregnant belly.

They both looked at each other for a long moment and then burst out laughing simultaneously, Demetra's lard slathered body wobbling at every knobby roll and crevasse. Nura's titanic round belly jostled side to side like a medicine ball attached to her front, filled with food and flesh.

"You... you ate that guy!" Nura shrieked, half laughing but honestly more than a little horrified also. Only the threat of what had been about to happen to them added any levity to the situation.

"I guess," breathed Demetra, her neck meat having grown suddenly extensive enough to rest solidly on the plain of her rounded chest. The fat crowding her throat had altered the tenor of her voice also. "But you literally ate that other guy." She lifted a heavy arm wearily to point at Nura's unconstrained belly.

The lioness covered her snout in shock. "Oh my god!" she wheezed and only belatedly to face away from Demetra when she spoke; it might have only been her imagination that the croc's love handle had jostled slightly when she had shouted just before. She turned her snout aside anyways, but kept looking at the now walrus-like crocodile. "B-but that wasn't just a regular wolf..." she muttered, sounding less than half convinced herself.

Demetra did nothing to assuage Nura's fears, shaking her head side to side, fat now creasing both sides of her jaw heavily and now even rising to crest the crown of her skull behind her head, her back thickened and broadened massively. "Dint you see the clothes hangin' off the wolf?" she said after taking a deep, raspy breath. Nura had seen. "That was a regular guy!" and she waved her tubby arm a little, its motion seriously hindered by a heavy collection of fatty bulges and rolls, more than quadruple its former girth; her forearm itself was bisected by a deep crease due to the depth of lard, and the upper arm was barely recognizable as part of her limb, sagging both behind and in front of the elbow, the knobbly, thick skin dripping like melted and resolidified wax. Despite all that, Demetra did seem a bit more animated now as she continued. "'Sides, who brings a giant wolf onto a cruise ship, hm?"

Nura was more relieved than anything to see a spark of Demetra's old intellect return, if only in her bright green eyes, but she was still freaked out by what had just happened. She may have been a brawler by nature, but she had never killed anyone before! And worse, the wolf and likely former passenger was even now stewing in her ridiculously oversized and heavy belly! Part of her wanted to vomit, but she knew instinctively that it'd probably be impossible, even if she tried to force herself.

Seeing her partner in distress, Demetra waved her thickened arm again, moving it mostly from the elbow due to how heavy both arms had become suddenly. "Your tits're out." she said with a slow sneer.

Nura recognized the attempt to distract her, but welcomed it. Besides, she really wanted to sit down again already... "Jus' gonna havta hang free for a while..." She grabbed at her chest, hefting both of her massive boobs up, each overflowing her hands by a large amount. Both were heavier and softer by a large margin so it was actually a little difficult to balance the large globes in each palm, let alone lift the massive weight of her mammaries; she was definitely four or five cups sizes larger already... maybe the additional food in her gut was accelerating the pace of her own fattening? Whatever the reason, she let them drop, her round, tight belly separating the still-round tits, though they were both sagging to just above her waist now due to their sheer size... "S'more comfortable like this anyways." Nura added before stretching and rotating her arms, the entire length of her back was not coping well with the hundreds of pounds of weight strapped to her front. Even as she moved, however, the back of her shirt ripped from the bottom nearly to the nape of her neck. Nura and Demetra both heard it, but it honestly didn't seem worth commenting on.

Nura took a few steps and turned, leaning back against the wall. Her legs and back were aching fiercely with the 300+ pound wolf weighing down her abdomen as it jutted impossibly out in front of her. She spared a glance at the now titanic crocodile beside her. The addition of more than a quarter ton to her already obscenely obese frame had given her a sack-like appearance as her body was flooded with fat it could barely contain. Her paunch fell flat to the ground ahead of her, spreading massively over the ground between her feet which themselves were almost completely covered in the thick, melting flesh, only her black-clawed toes visible from under the overflowing calf meat. Nura could see pale skin in between the ventral plates of the croc's belly though the scales themselves seemed to have grown in both size and number. But again, Nura saw Demetra's more alert expression, calmly watching as the lioness examined her. The absorption of the bear seemingly having a restorative effect on her somehow.

"You feeling alright?" Nura asked around the pain blossoming in her back.

Demetra made an open expression with both arms, lifting them slightly before letting the limbs flop back into place with a wobbling wave that traveled visibly even on her thick-skinned body. "Better n' before..." she admitted. "Feels... cleaner now." The crocodile looked down at herself, wiggingly her toes and pushing her arms forward to feel the sides of her expansive barrel-like torso; she was so wide now it was not clear if she could even bring her hands together any longer. "But now I'm huge as fuck!" She laughed softly and patted the side of her egregiously expanded front.

Nura did not know what to make of her friend's comment save that she was fairly sure nothing good could come of absorbing things like wooden furniture, silverware, and ceramic plates into her body. Nura wanted to comment that she was indeed now the genuine fat ass of their group, but found the humor lacking in herself at the current situation. "Can she even move anymore?" She thought and had no ready answer. So, swallowing her joke, Nura said more insistently, "We've gotta get back to our room!"

For admitting that she was ridiculously huge, more than likely approaching 1300 pounds, Demetra still seemed calm. "Sure..." she said languidly, and she leaned forward at little, causing even more belly fat to spill over the ground. She grunted as she placed her hands on her splayed thighs, her gut covering almost the entire surface of her legs. She pushed up for a moment, but her body barely seemed to move an inch before she gave up and sat back down, not even having parted any skin from the seat of the stone bench supporting her. "...Huff, but I think I'm probably carryin' too much weight here..."

Nura wanted to berate Demetra for wanting to be a colossal fat ass like she was currently, but lacked the energy. Honestly, she just wanted to sit down herself, but also did not want to get jumped by anymore guys. "Ya think?" she still said loudly, but rounded on the croc, pushing her ass away from the wall. "Here, lemme..."

But even as Nura opened her mouth to speak, the front of Demetra's heavy, padded body rippled as if in hurricane force winds. "Keep that trap shut!" Demetra shouted, eyes lighting up, and Nura complied, biting down on her words. The crocodile smoothed the front of herself, some residual vibrations working themselves out through the nearly solid mass of fat she wore under the thick hide. The reptile let out a breath, feeling her heart racing. "S'alright..." said Demetra before wordlessly extending her hands.

Nura was pissed at the croc's presumption that she should help her when she could barely support her own weight, but she was dreadfully conscious of the possible repercussions of just opening her mouth; suddenly her superpower seemed a lot less cool... She grunted as she reached for Demetra's chunky hands, the fingers and palms heavy and round like an infant's. Their bellies pressed together hard, the firm mass of Nura's belly sinking like a stone into Demetra's softer front. She grit her teeth once their fingers were interlaced, leaning back for all she was worth.

Despite her lackluster attempt at getting up before, Demetra actually helped a lot now. It would have been completely impossible for Nura to budge her friend's half-ton bulk otherwise. The crocodile grunted and groaned as she heaved with her back and legs, pulling on Nura's hands like she was trying to throw the lion over her head. Their thick abdomens pressed harder together, almost forcing their arms apart due to the sheer quantity of flesh, and strangely, the pads of Nura's paws began to tingle, almost like like they were submerged in alcohol or hydrogen peroxide. Just as the tingling began to mount into a slight burning sensation, Demetra staggered upright. They let go of one pair of hands, but the croc struggled to remain upright, leaning on Nura first for balance, and then slouching forward over the mass of her front where her scaly paunch was dangling against her shins.

Demetra was less calm as she commented, "Fuck, feels like my knees are about t'give out..."

"Keep 'em locked then!" Nura growled, making sure to face forward and away from the croc, realizing that Demetra was probably only going to be able to move for a precious few minutes, if that. "Come on!" she added and tugged at Demetra's hand wich was still clamped onto herself as she struggled with a microscopic center of gravity. The burning sensation in Nura's paw mounted, but she kept bullying Demetra with her hand and the side of her stout body until she began to take tremulous steps forward, like a toddler learning to walk for the first time. The enormous quantity of blubber jiggled heavily everywhere across Demetra's body as she staggered, stiff-legged, one brutal step at a time, her swinging belly threatening to knock them both off balance. Nura's own titanic belly swept side to side as she braced Demetra up, rubbing constantly against the side of the croc's soft torso.

"Quit leanin' on me!" Nura complained as her own legs shook. Just like Demetra, the lioness felt like her legs were going to buckle with the addition of just a portion of the crocodile's weight on her.

"...can't... I can't..." Demetra gasped, mirth faded from her eyes as she was faced with the sheer difficulting of moving her enormous frame which was more than 1,000 pounds heavier than she had been that morning. Demetra was so heavy, it felt like the bones of her ankles and knees were grinding together.

"Fffuck!" Nura groaned, unable to take Demetra's collossal weight or the burning in her hand any longer. She would have pried her loose, but Nura could not even reach across the girth of her own body to use her free hand, and it seemed clear the croc would collapse almost instantly if she let go. Pushing Demetra hard, Nura steered her colossal friend to the next bench over from where she herself had been sitting, all of 30 feet from where they had started, the crocodile breathing hard and still wheezing loudly as her own fat pressed on her upper airways. She collapsed hard on her thick tail and ass, her own belly smothering all but the tip as it spread ahead of her between her legs, her pauch hitting the ground with a thunderous slap.

Hissing, Nura pulled her paw away and looked at it. Her paw pad was a livid red, as if she had just gotten an extreme exfoliation treatment. "What th'fuck is this?" she exclaimed, showing Demetra her hand.

Demetra looked alarmed, but was still struggling to catch her breath. "I..." she mumbled and looked at her own hands wordlessly.

Frustrated at their lack of progress, Nura stomped to another nearby bench directly across from Demetra. She wanted to rant, but had to be mindful of opening her jaws, the fact of which just annoyed her further. At the very least, they were not adjacent to the elevators anymore, but Nura still found herself looking in that direction, as if spotting trouble ahead of time would change matters much. Still, it did feel good to relieve the enormous pressure on her spine as she sat in forced silence. A full minute passed, the cruise ship still periodically breaking out in the sounds of violence or madness, then Nura's eyes happened to land on the bench where Demetra had been sitting. The stone bench had a very clear ass print on it. She might have thought it was designed that way, but this ass extended across three quarters of the three-person bench. The print itself was also really deep, at least five inches, and could be seen easily even at this distance. A thrill of fresh horror traveled up Nura's spine as she saw the divot in the ground directly in front of the bench, the exact place where Demetra's belly had spread over the ground.

Nura turned her eyes back towards her friend who was still breathing almost as hard as when she had first sat down. She didn't think it was her imagination that this bench now seemed to be extraordinarily well shaped to take her weight... Her lips parted, but Nura's hand flew to her face. Demetra raised her eyes towards her, but Nura shook her head, groaning into her hand in frustration. But she gave up the matter. "What would telling her do to help now?" thought Nura and she was too tired herself to try to help move her again. She sat and caught her breath, listening to the sound of her churning belly sinking between her knees and forcing her legs completely apart. Her own belly wanted to drag her forward off the bench, and she adjusted the way she sat almost continuously, it was hard to get comfortable and her feet still hurt! Time passed and Nura could feel her boobs and thighs getting thicker, pudgier as the tightness across her abdomen lessened. Across from her, Demetra got visibly thicker as her ass ate the stone bench under her. Her breath took on an odor like masonry dust and her existing flesh seemed to get even denser, wobbling less, and weighing her down even more. When she shifted her paunch over the ground with her foot idly, Nura sat that her gut had devoured the entire tiled floor underneath, past the grout even and into the steel foundation.

They couldn't wait any longer when there was only an inch or two left of stone supporting Demetra's ass. She had noticed for herself at some point what was happening as she sank into her seat. "It's alright." she volunteered, "It think it was the chemicals getting to me before. The stone's just... really heavy..." That seemed self evident as the collosal croc's flesh became less like sacs stuffed with jelly and more like thick, quilted padding. It was obviously getting hard for her to even move her arms anymore.

Nura looked to the side to avoid hurting her friend, at least physically. "'Can't believe you wanted this." she complained in sheer hopelessness. "Th'fuck am I supposed to do with you now?" She asked this because it seemed plainly obvious that they were not getting back to their room now.

Demetra's eyes narrowed over her wide, padded frame. "If things weren't fucked up, they'd be great! Look at me!" Demetra ran her claws down her front, or at least as much of her front as she could reach. 'Fuckin' hot! An' I don't even hafta move anymore, I can et' anything around me!"

The fact that Demetra was lucid now could not be denied, but Nura had thought that at least she would come to her senses. "An' since when did you want to be a great, big tub?!"

Demetra shrugged, at least a little bit, her fat solidifying around her torso. "I dunno" she said apathetically, "Since earlier I guess..." Nura snorted, pulling at the thickened skin and fat inside her forearm. "I jus'... when I looked at you at the buffet, I saw your tits an' how thick you was an'... " she huffed, though Nura was paying more attention now, "I wanted that, that an' more..." She ran her hands down her torso again, pushing her claws into her thick fat, the flesh only yielding a little, like a fattened boar's thick hide. "S'till ain't enough..." Then Demetra looked up, eyes focusing on Nura. "So you can leave me if you want. I'll do fine on my own." She moved her arms as if to cross them, but her own thick fat prevented her hands from getting anywhere close.

"I ain't leavin' you!" Nura shouted turning only to see Demetra's frightened expression, her claws held up in front of her titanic body. She clutched her still stinging hand in furious anger. "Come'on...!" she yapped and was about to add, 'you fat lump!' but started as Demetra's entire body lurched forward.

Demetra shrieked as she was pulled off the nearly wrecked bench and towards Nura, or more specifically, Nura's face, she dug her heels into the ground, but seemed helpless to resist the unstoppable force pulling her forward. She was halfway to Nura before the lioness slammed her jaws shut on the last syllable and Demetra's momentum kept carrying her forward, her feet stumbling just to keep up.

Nura reacted quickly, which was fortunate for both of them. There was more fat on her legs now, but the lioness still managed to bull rush Demetra, hitting her in the midsection; though really, with her weight more evenly distributed, the obese lion found balance a bit more natural. Even throwing her entire weight into the flying reptile, however, Nura still slid back several feet, her ass eventually brushing up against the bench where she had been sitting. She groaned as a mountain of crocodile lard piled up over her smaller frame, but she dare not open her mouth now. Slowly the pressure eased as Demetra straightened up, her legs like melting wax pillars and her belly hanging even lower towards the ground than fifteen minutes ago. The sheer mass of her shouldn't have been able to stand, but maybe some of that solidity had spread to her bones as well.

Demetra threw her fat-choked forearms about Nura's shoulder, the lion still facing towards the side because of the feline's mammoth belly; it felt almost like a hug, but she was also leaning on Nura very firmly. Her dense lard felt like clay rather than flesh. "Well, you got me up alright, ya cunt!" she chuckled, and Nura could feel her legs already trembling under the weight of herself. "Now where are we going?"

Nura had no idea, but really, there was only one option. Without speaking Nura pushed and bullied Demetra's stiff body towards the opening behind where they had been sitting, the first stall past the elevators. It was one of the other buffets naturally.

The buffet was smaller than Reynauldi's, but Nura was grateful for that as they did not need to walk as far to get inside. They shuffled along awkwardly, Nura holding onto Demetra's elbow with her uninjured hand to avoid touching the crocodile's claws. Her fur and the top layer of skin was still being steadily peeled off, but the effect was at least much slower. Demetra apologized constantly, at least until she ran out of breath to talk. One problem that immediately became apparent was that there was virtually no furniture in the room suitable to take the croc's enormous weight.

Demetra seemed to recognize this as well for she gasped, "...pillar...!" and indicated a big decorative stone pillar located in the center of the room. Nura helped Demetra stagger towards it. Nura let her friend lean against it and held onto her as she let herself down as gently as possible, which was not very. She plopped down, leaning her back against the stone and Nura was very conscious of the fact that she would not likely be moving from this spot again. However, the obese lioness could only stagger back herself, leaning back and feeling her spine pop from the effort of supporting the weight of several people in front of her. The pain of standing any longer, especially after helping Demetra, was too much. She barely managed to put three of the scattered chairs together before collapsing into them.

"Fuck..." she breathed, bending forward in a vain attempt to relieve her aching spine. She felt the bottom part of her belly brush against the ground; it was definitely getting softer, but was still very round.

Still breathing hard, Demetra chuffed, "Hmph, let me... know when you... break half a... ton, small... fry."

Nura still did not know what had come over her friend, but she was tired of arguing. She just wanted this nightmare to be over. It was not as though nobody could find them in here...

"I don't want ta weigh half a ton, Demetra!" she growled, frustrated she had to look off to the side just to talk to her, "I don't even wanna be this big!" She formed a fist with her hand and slammed it down onto the meaty surface of her belly extending far out in front. The flesh bounced and rippled, the skin smarting with the blow, but below, it was still totally numb. Nura cried out wordlessly in frustration, hitting her belly several times before the skin-deep pain was too much for her. She leaned back, chairs creaking under her still-formidable 800 pounds.

Demetra said nothing for a long moment, and in the stillness, a slight rustle could be heard, like fizzing soda as her body continued to absorb the floor and the pillar behind her. "Nura, I..." she started at last, but was interrupted by a clattering from the kitchen. Nura turned her head and Demetra tried to do likewise, but her face was crowded by too much solid fat locking her head in place.

The doors of the kitchen banged open and a small troop entered the buffet, alarming Nura who lurched to her feet with a groan. There were five people in all, two of which looked very out of place on a cruise liner. The three normal guys were obviously servers, and servers from this buffet, no less; Nura could tell by their uniforms. The servers spread out in front of the other two, stumbling as they walked drunkenly forward, all of them had familiar swollen physiques Nura had been getting used to seeing on the ship now. The two other men were extraordinary in their ordinaryness, both lean and only middling height. One was dressed in black, tactical body armor and carried an assault rifle like a black ops mercenary. The other man was dressed in a white coat and tie, buttoned in the front like a doctor, at least the kind that appeared on television or the back of books. He spotted Nura and Demetra quickly, and how could he not, given the amount of space they both took up in the room.

"That one there, that's the one!" cried the man in the lab coat and Nura felt a rush of fear as the three servers stumbled towards her like zombies, each a quarter ton themselves, but moving far more easily than Nura could with her extra 300 pounds. The man with the gun hung back, scaring her most of all. But Demetra was here beside her. Nura widened her stance, staring down the three approaching men.

"Just go, Nura!" Demetra cried from her seat on the floor, waving her arms about as much as she still could, "I'll be fine!"

"You won't be if that guy shoots you!" Nura shouted back. She had no idea how fast Demetra could absorb something like a bullet, but she had no intention of letting her friend try it out. "I got this..." she added quietly before turning to the lead man.

The server was a huge gorilla, a gorilla with an equally massive pot belly wobbling at his thighs in front of his split uniform. Maybe it was the added muscle that allowed him to move a little faster than his compatriots, but that also spelled his doom as Nura turned to face him, opening her mouth wide.

Again, she was struck in the face by the flying body, the quarter ton gorilla hitting harder than the wolf had. Nura was blown back off of her feet, landing hard on her ass as her tits flopped around wildly. She didn't have to do anything to pull the man in, he was shoved liberally down her gullet, grunting at first and then screaming towards the end. The skin on Nura's front stretched and groaned and she just kept on filling up. Her hide tugged painfully at her swollen sides, wrinkling and popping with the tension. Stretch marks appeared that were red like welts through the thinning fur, a few at first and then spreading massively over her sides and front. Nura groaned, suffocating as the gorilla blocked off her airway on the way down. The lioness was helpless to do anything but writhe on the ground, her head tilted back to where the gorilla struggled and finally just lay still as his body broke down and entered hers. Nura gasped and groaned when it was over, gingerly running her paws over her aching sides. Her skin hurt too much to touch. She couldn't do that again. She realized belatedly that she was not going to be able to do a lot of things as she tried and failed to get up, her enourmous belly towering over her prone body, pinning her to the ground. Her skin continued to creak as it settled, the musculature of her stomach visibly writhing beneath the paper-thin surface of her stretched hide.

"Stand back!" came the voice of the man, but Nura was left not being able to see much besides the ceiling. She groaned and twisted her legs. The sides of her body hurt so much! She was sure she would literally explode if she had to devour another of those men, even the skinny ones.

Nura heard the feet of the two remaining servers shuffle back, and then the men spoke quietly for a while. The lioness struggled to take more than shallow breaths, her stomach was pressing down on more than just her body. Laid out and helpless, she trembled when she heard feet approaching again from behind the monolith of her belly. "St-stop!" she cried weakly. "I'll... I'll eat you too!"

"Now that, my dear girl, would be highly disadvised." said the lab coat man, though Nura still could not see him even as he came up to where she was curling her thick legs against the bottom of her swollen abdomen.

"Leave her alone!" Demetra shouted. Nura turned her head slightly and saw the croc struggling to rise out of the small divot she had formed in the floor, but her body was far too heavy. She strained and only managed to exhaust herself, still shouting curses.

Nura renewed her struggles when she felt a hand on the bottom swell of her spherical belly, the lab coat guy must have been crouching because she still could not see him. He felt the taught skin with the pads of his paws, veiny protrusions in the stomach wall thicker than the skin or fat covering it. "I think you're about ready to pop, my sweet."

"Get your fuckin' hands off me!" Nura wailed, still trying to move, but there was not enough strength in her back or legs or arms to move the nearly 1,000 pound bolus filling her midsection.

"Still nasty I see, such a terrible child..." muttered Lab Coat as he took his hand back. "You realize if you eat anymore, you'll split right open?" His claw ran down the side of her belly, and she shivered. "Will you be a good girl and keep that trap of yours shut?"

Nura didn't answer, but she knew the truth of his words. Her hide was already stretched too far, the underlying structures and connective fat torn asunder and spread thin, if not the topmost layer... yet.

Lab Coat moved away. "Prop her up facing her friend. She'll be less likely to fuss that way..." Then he snapped quickly, "And don't touch that one! X-32 is still highly unstable. I want to get some baseline readings..."

Nura was helpless to do anything but let the men manhandle her, the two obese servers, two dogs of unidentifiable breed, doing most of the work with the mercenary stepping in when necessary. Nura could not even tell the black man's species from under his visored helmet. As for Lab Coat, when Nura was pulled up into a sitting position, her back braced against a heavy pile of spare tablecloths, he was clearly a spotted hyena, a flash of white and black tail showing between the tails of his coat. He grinned toothily as he moved around her body, mostly from behind still, and attached a pulse monitor and several electrodes of unknown function. The lioness breathed heavily. She was getting fatter faster now so she could almost feel her skin on her arms and legs stretching out. At the same time, however, the pressure eased on her still stinging sides, though the new red stretch marks didn't fade.

"What th'fuck d'you want with us?" Nura snarled after she had managed to catch her breath a little. Their situation was more than a little ridiculous. Her and Demetra's captors did not even need bonds to restrain them! Their own bodies did that for them. All the men needed to do was keep from getting between her and Demetra, and, much to Nura's annoyance, as the fat deepened around her head, her neck already mostly gone, it was getting harder to turn her head far enough to the side to avoid sucking in the crocodile across from her...

Lab Coat took his time in answering, busy with his monitors as he attached more things to Nura's body, wedging them into her fat rolls; there were a lot now that she could not even reach, not to mention the huge portion of her belly that extended way out past the reach of her arms. In fact, her gut was so enormous now that it sat solidly on the ground by itself. Nura could have leaned back and held herself somewhat in place by its weight alone. She felt like she was attached to the side of the huge mass inside of her which extended nearly the length of her leg past the ends of her toes; she had had to be careful of either of her legs getting crushed under the tawny furred bulk when they had forced her into a sitting position. The fact that this mass was composed mostly of ground up bad guy rather than actual food only added to the unease as she continued to digest rapidly.

"Us?" Lab Coat said finally, as if there had not been ten minutes of silence since she had asked, "Tsk, tsk." he clicked his tongue, standing behind the lioness, hands on her softening shoulders, "My dear, this is all about you." He lifted a finger, hand still on her shoulder. "Your friend here is just an extra catch."

Nura should have guessed her father's money would get her into trouble one day. "Me." she stated, taking another deep breath, her chest was getting heavy under the growing layer of fat and it felt like multiple organs were being shoved into her chest cavity. "You know who my dad is then. You know he'll give you anything you want to get us back!" Nura was frightened enough at this point to begin losing her long practiced accent, reverting to the way her parents had taught her to speak.

The hyena squeeze Nura's fat hard, making her wince. The humor was gone from his voice as he said, "I know exactly who your father is." he growled, grinding his teeth together audibly. "He is the reason we are in the current situation. You and I both." he inhaled sharply, still growling, still brutalizing her shoulder. A small keen escaped Nura despite herself. When he let go, a bruise in the shape of his fingers was already forming on the fat, already thicker and rounder than it had been when he had first held on. He inhaled through his nose, smoothing himself. Nura heard the rustle of his lab coat, and when he spoke again, he was fully in control once again. "You can tell him that when you see him again, little girl..." he chuckled, "or not so little..."

Lab Coat snapped his fingers and one of the servers stood at attention in a pavlovian response. "Go find our guest something to eat while I start on the other one. She looks famished."

Nura saw a tremor shake the obese canine's body and the server spoke for the first time, "No guest should be left hungry!" As if responding so some code word, the dog hustled off through the kitchen doors, neither Lab Coat or the merc paying him any attention.

The hyena moved around to where Demetra sat in the growing groove her body was carving into the floor and pillar. She was looking fatter and denser than ever, her breaths were coming in noisy rasps. "And what's your name?" he asked, leaning behind her and continuing to use her body as a shield from Nura.

"My name..." she wheezed, "How about... Fuck Off Faggot?"

The hyena clucked his tongue again, "Two nasty girls, I see." he rolled his eyes. "Do you think either of you would be in a better situation if I hadn't found you?" he looked over at Nura, "Well, you might, but..." and now he donned a set of thick leather gloves before laying his hands on the crocodile, squeezing her abundant fat, feeling its dense structure. Demetra tried to snap at him with her jaws, but it was ridiculously easy for Lab Coat to move his hand away, her head was held almost entirely in a fixed position now, held by her dense, clay-like flesh. "I'm a little surprised you haven't realized the extent of your predicament. The absorption gene you've ingested seems to have become completely unstable." he patted her shoulder which hardly wobbled at all, a padded statue, "You'll eat right through the bottom of this ship and then sink like a stone..." his face twisted into a hideous grin, "But maybe your heart will give out before you happen to meet that fate."

"You... you bastard!" Demetra cringed as the hyena held a stethoscope to the side of her chest, frowning as the diaphragm was eaten way by contact with her skin. "D-did you have... something to do with... all of this?" she managed, still struggling to breathe under the thick embrace of all her extra pounds.

Lab Coat rolled his eyes again. "Superpowers don't just develop on their own, do they?" He chuffed, "This isn't a comic book. It takes a little... trial and error." He laughed a loud belly laugh to himself, "And I'm so happy you two get to be the errors in this case! Couldn't have happened to a better pair, I'm sure."

The hyena continued to hover over Demetra, clearly having difficulty getting the information he wanted due to how contact with her hide eroded his tools like acid. But by this time, the one server dog was returning from the kitchen, and in his arms was a huge platter of food, mostly deli meat and cheese, by the looks of it, perhaps from some overlooked refrigerator. The dog practically leapt towards her, belly shaking thunderously on his thick thighs, and shoved the platter under her nose, almost on top of her swelling boobs. The dog's eyes were glassy as he prodded her gently, gesticulating for her to eat.

"I don't wa-!" she started, belatedly remembering the nature of her power. Every piece of food on the platter rushed into her mouth in a stream, cramming against the back of her throat. Nothing could have stopped the stuff running hellbent down into her cavernous confines, though at least now, she had made a little room for it... The dog wagged his tail happily and ran off, apparently to gather even more.

Nura coughed and sputtered, "That won't work on me again!" she shouted at the server's back, and her words did not even make him pause.

"It won't make a difference." said Lab Coat as he bent over Demetra, apparently measuring the circumference of her upper arm now.

Nura turned her snout away, but even as she spoke, some of Demetra's outlying fat trembled as if her voice were creating a sonic boom right next to her. "And why's that?"

The hyena didn't bother to look up from what he was doing as he recorded his measurements into his tablet computer. "That man is obsessed with feeding you now. He won't stop."

"He... what?" Nura gaped, uncomprehending, closing her mouth to stop Demetra's flesh from quaking.

"I could go on about mental conditioning and gene phages... but I doubt you'd understand..." Lab Coat withdrew some kind of instrument from his pocket which produced a high pitched whine and held it close to Demetra's fat flank; the scaly flesh vibrated in response. "...or haven't you noticed the change in your friend's behavior? Or your own?"

Nura pressed her lips together. Was everything that had happened really the doing of this one man? All the people who had died just now? And this was all about her? Or her father, rather?

The hyena hissed when his instrument gave its reading, "Yush! Far too dense! You'll be unable to breathe soon without an infusion of organic matter to even you out."

Demetra only continued to wheeze loudly in response, but her eyes followed the hyena's every move.

The hyena stood up, pacing towards the remaining server who had apparently decided to take a load off on one of the scattered dining room chairs. "You, go get one of the sprayers from the gardener's closet and then empty out the fryers. I think our other guest is also famished."

A keen light appeared in the other dog's eyes, but different somehow. "Heh, on it." he said and padded off. He returned sooner than Nura's server, this time wearing a backpack garden sprayer, perhaps one used to water the many planters throughout the cruise ship. It was filled to the brim with dark amber fluid. The hyena directed the dog with a finger, and the server paced over, aiming the nozzle at Demetra before unleashing a thick mist of oil that stunk of french fries like a McDonalds at the end of the day.

"Stop it, you freaks!" Nura cried, only to have to slam her mouth shut as Demetra's side wobbled, a heavy fat roll actually flopping over the ground several inches. Nura couldn't turn her head to the side anymore, and Demetra was still getting wider...

The crocodile's skin glistened as she was doused with oil, Demetra taking it surprisingly stoically. The spray continued unabated, the dog working a pump lever with his free hand to keep up the stream. Nura expected the stinking oil to run off and pool on the ground, but it didn't, beads shimmering on Demetra's scales, growing and then shrinking in size, but never falling in more than a sparse rivulet despite the downpour. The crocodile's body thickened and increased in girth even faster, but at the same time, her dense clay-flesh began visibly to soften, her rolls rounding out as her profile widened. She flexed her arms under the torrent and Nura heard her breathing more easily despite the increase in total weight. Demetra shifted her legs as her belly pushed out over the ground ahead of her. She sighed, touching her chest and running her fingers over her greasy body like it was tanning lotion, not seeming to care that she smelled like the bottom of a two-day old fryer.

"Ah yes..." Lab Coat drawled as the oil fell, "It feels better having more organic matter inside, doesn't it. Healthier even..." he said with an amused chuckle as the server emptied the last of his 20 gallon backpack onto Demetra.

The croc was still fluttering her eyes in contentment and no sooner had the mist stopped than her glistening skin seemed to dry, soaking the last drops in like a sponge, and like a sponge, her frame swelled with every drop; even the few drops that had missed her were falling downwards into the divot her ass had made in the floor where they too were absorbed. She lifted a heavy arm to her forehead, the thick, leathery fat dragging across the side of her torso as her arm moved. "M'headache is going away." She grunted again in contentment, grabbing at her softened fat with her other hand. "It... does feel better, much better."

"Dem-" Nura tried, but clamped her jaws shut, remembering. She moaned wordlessly instead.

Demetra looked at her, her eyes lucid and pained.

The hyena spoke. "I'm the only one who can give you what you need." he said to the fattened reptile. "You'll die if I leave you here. But if you cooperate, I promise you'll live." he said this flatly, with no trace of the insane humor of earlier.

Demetra shifted uncomfortably as Nura begged with her eyes, helplessly silenced unless she wanted to kill Demetra and herself both. The croc lifted her head as much as she could still, "I want more!" She said this clearly, no indication of haziness in her tone at all.

The hyena nodded his head deeply, grinning at her and then at Nura. "Then you shall have it." He snapped his fingers, turning back towards the server wearing the backpack. "Empty out the rest of the fryers, all of them. She's still eating the steel and concrete under her." he actually stepped forward and placed a hand on the dog's shoulder, "You're the only one who can save her life."

The dog's expression softened at that, becoming earnest. "I'll do my best!" he said, and like Demetra's, seemed more lucid than crazed. As he padded off out through the kitchen, the hyena sighed and took a seat, running a paw through the fur on his head. The merc stepped closer.

"Should I go get the stuff from the boat?" asked the man in black.

The hyena sighed wretchedly, "Oh, might as well." he looked back at the two girls, "We're going to be here a while..."

The 'stuff' turned out to be a variety of medical equipment whose use was not apparent at first, but became increasingly obvious as the hours passed. Demetra continued to positively bathe in fryer oil as her server doused her again and again. She luxuriated in her deepening flesh, seemingly fascinated by each new fat roll as well as the descending wattle of flesh under her jaw which she played with constantly even as it draped lower and lower down her chest. It did not seem to matter even as she lost all of the mobility she had regained in her arms as the limbs thickened, though this time with soft flesh instead of clay. Hell, she was looking downright watery now as her body took in the oil, some of her fatty creases disappearing entirely as the flesh swelled roundly, especially around her fingers and lower extremities.

As much as Demetra had turned out to enjoy her treatment, however, Nura resisted when her server returned at last, platter stacked high with hastily cooked hot dogs sans buns or condiments. She clamped her mouth shut as he placed the tray under her nose.

"Mhn-nnnh!" she mummed through pursed lips, trying to make herself clear to the clueless server.

"You have to eat." said the dog. And when she demurred again, he said more forcefully, "You must want to eat something, look at you!" The dog looked down at his serving plate, "I did my best making these..."

The hyena appeared at Nura's shoulder, "You better open up for him, sweetheart." he said lightly before reaching forward to tap at the side of her gut which was still tight like a drum. "You wouldn't want him to try sticking his fingers in your mouth..."

Nura looked up at her server, who unlike the other one seemed hazy, his eyes not entirely focusing on anything he looked at. "...just look at you!" he muttered and lifted one hand to bite at his nails.

Knowing that she'd explode if the dog did trying to pry her jaws apart did turn out to be a pretty good motivator. Besides... how much food could possibly be left after everyone had lost their minds in a massive binge eating contest?

Enough to swell one cat to preposterous size, as it turned out. It did take a long time, the scavenging trips taking the dog longer and longer to return, and sometimes his uniform would be further ripped and battered when he came back. One time he even had a massive blood-soaked claw mark on the side of his gut, but the server did not seem to care in the slightest as he single-mindedly brought food back that Nura reluctantly vacuumed up. But the pace that Nura was fattened with was not limited by the food supply so much as her ability to digest it all. The lion's body continued to get softer and to expand, though, thanks to her canine server, the huge belly grounding her in front barely shrank in size, if at all. Her sides eventually stopped aching as much as new fat layered over the stretched organ of her stomach inside of her, but her stretch marks remained, standing up even against her fur.

Passively, she accepted a heart monitor that Lab Coat shoved under her left breast, the hyena struggling to lift the 50 pound sack of meat with his free hand as he stuck it as close to her rib cage as was possible. Afterwards, Nura was forced to endure the soft beeping of her heart rate, listening as it increased in pace over the interminable hours.

At the start, Nura had no idea what the hyena wanted, but as more and more time passed and all he seemed to do was sit back, observe, and let the two servers continue to fatten both her and Demetra up to ridiculous proportions, she had to try to get more information out of the hyena, while she could still get the words out without Demetra's belly or some other fatty appendage flying into her black hole maw. She steeled herself, waiting until she was sure he was paying attention to her and spoke as quickly as possible. "What're you going to do with us?!" The syllables struck the right side of Demetra's wide, wide body like projectiles, causing her to grab hold of her own expansive flab with one claw in an attempt to hold it in place.

"Nura!" the croc scolded, her voice even deeper now as she continued her adventure into post-2,000 pound territory. Her rippling, watery flesh continued to bounce around her for some time, but the hyena turned his head as Nura had wanted.

"What am I going to do with you two?" he repeated dreamily. "Why, I'm just going to send you both home..." he spoke warmly, smiling with a grin that did not reach his eyes. "I'm just doing a little... gift wrapping first..." Demetra's server returned, sidling up to Lab Coat and whispering into his ear. "...out of oil? Did you check the bilge pantry? Surely they have a few drums down there." he grunted and shoved the dog aside with a polished shoe to his rump. "Don't come whining to me when you haven't even gone below deck!" The dog turned and the hyena shouted after him, "And if there's no oil, go get a few sacks of fertilizer, anything organic will do!" He finished with a smirk and looked down at Demetra who was rolling happily about in the ocean of her own body, her arms like inflatable water wings now. "You'll tell him when you've had enough, right?"

"Yes!" Demetra wheezed rapturously as Lab Coat bent over her, feeling for her pulse with a gloved hand.

When he stood back up, Nura heard him mutter, "...should give the antidote to this one soon..." He took out a small bottle of compressed air and held its attached mask in front of Demetra's nostrils. "Breathe in deeply, as deep as you can. Five times." he commanded as if he were her physician instead of the reason for her condition.

Nevertheless she did as he asked, inhaling even as Nura protested wordlessly. Who knew what that evil man had in that container!

Lab Coat caught her eye. "It's just oxygen..." he sighed. "Pretty soon, her heart's going to be insufficient to pump blood for all of this..." he swept his hand towards the heap of Demetra's body spreading over the ground not just in front of her, but also overflowing her legs and hips to the sides as well. "...all of her."

When the hyena pulled the mask away, Demetra seemed to breathe a little easier, at least for a short while. She used this time to speak almost normally. "Antidote, you said?" she said grabbing at her fat sides as much as she could reach with her nearly immobile arms, "But I'm... barely fat enough yet..."

"A high achiever, I see!" the hyena laughed. "Well don't you worry your little head-" he started, but was interrupted by a heavy snarl from the immobile reptile.

"Don't patronize me, you bastard!" she cried, her fat chest wobbling, its shape like a huge, smooth chest plate in front of her, extending past her long jaw now. "I wanna put on at least another 500 pounds before this stops!" She clenched her fat hands which were now shaped like green tangerines.

Nura chuckled silently as the hyena seemed taken aback for the first time. "Fine enough with me..." he said, sounding miffed before returning to Nura to continue his data gathering.

When Demetra's server returned, he was still empty handed and Nura could only breathe a small sigh of relief. Whatever Demetra wanted, she was more than fat enough already in the lion's opinion. Nura heard the dog say, "The system's gone down and my badge isn't working. I can't get below deck..." When Lab Coat asked about the fertilizer, the dog withdrew a half-gallon plastic jug from behind his back, already opened and half empty. "I guess they didn't need that much..." he admitted.

Lab Coat ripped the container away from the dog. "Useless! All of you useless!" he cried as he set the small jug onto Demetra's abdomen which spread hugely out in front of her.

"Hey!" the crocodile complained as the plastic bottom eroded and white powder spilled over the front of her, though none of it actually reached the floor at the lowermost swell of her belly.

"Don't make me start emptying out the garbage!" said Lab Coat testily, drawing a hand down his lean face. His large ears twitched as he thought, the remainder of the plastic jug dissolving on Demetra's ventral scales which took on interesting hues of bluish or yellowish green. The crocodile struggled to reach for the half-eaten container, but seemed pinned so completely that she could no longer even budge herself an inch forward.

She gave up visibly, letting her arm rest - though it also had hardly moved at all - and looked up at Lab Coat, dragging her neck fat over her chest with her jaw a little bit. "I don't want... fuckin' plastic... in me!" she wheezed loudly. "Feed me... real food!"

"I'm not here for the sake of your convenience, you addled-brained lard-reservoir!" Lab Coat shouted down at her. "You don't have a say in the matter!" he turned back to the dog who shrank under his glare, "And if you continue to prove useless, I'll just shove you right in-" His ears perked suddenly mid-sentence and he calmed instantly, a wide grin spreading over his narrow snout. He looked down again at Demetra who spread massively over the ground with her bulk. "Well, if you want more food, then I guess we'll have to go scrounge something up." He whirled towards the merc standing placidly in the corner. "Go get your tranq. And you," he turned to the dog, "Go down to the boat and get the crane. We're going to need it... heh heh." he laughed softly to himself, "We're going hunting!"

The men were all gone for about half an hour, but now that Demetra all but filled Nura's field of vision with her scaly bulk, they couldn't talk to each other. Cracks were beginning to spread across the floor from her body from a combination of her weight and her flesh eating at the support structure. Demetra seemed furtive also, as if she were slightly embarrassed at how she had been acting. She did not meet Nura's eyes very often and her breathing grew steadily worse without regular blasts from the oxygen tank. "I know... it might not make much... sense." she wheezed heavily from under the weight of her chest. She formed her hands into swollen fists and lifted her arms very slightly, each forearm carrying at least 40 pounds of lucious, swollen meat; she did not manage to part any of the skin from herself before letting them flop back down. "I can't... hardly move... anything... anymore." she licked her fang-filled chops, relaxing her hands and pressing the concave palms into her now oil-rich flesh. "...but being this big... it jus' makes... me feel so... so..." she growled softly, still running her fingers up and down the tiny portion of herself she could still reach with her hands. "...so sexy... so big!" she shook her head slightly, neck mostly immobilized. Her back flesh rose like a halo over her head, pushed at her swollen cheeks. "...big n' sexy... I can't explain..."

She couldn't explain, and Nura still could not understand why her friend wanted to be like this now, a huge blob unable to do anything, hardly able to breathe even. But she did understand that this was apparently her choice now, even if she was coerced by some chemical modification in her brain, some unknowable hormonal adjustment. Nura thought that she couldn't have argued with her even if she had been able to speak.

Despite wallowing in her rank obesity, however, Demetra's eyes still widened when she was able to see what the men wheeled into the dining room when they returned. Both of their eyes widened.

In through the restaurant opening was wheeled a familiar person, even if they had only met a few hours ago, and on less than agreeable terms. The huge brown bird was even larger than when he had been when threatening to eat and perhaps rape Nura, fatter and taller both. He must have weighed at least half a ton and the only reason he was able to be moved at all was because Lab Coat had him hoisted up on some kind of medical grade crane with big rubber wheels. Demetra's server and the merc both pushed on either side of the bird's wide profile while the hyena brandished a large bolt-action rifle. The bird wasn't moving in his bariatric sling, stunned and drooling.

"Come on, boys! Almost there, chop, chop!" Lab Coat encouraged, waving them towards Demetra as Nura starred in incomprehension.

"If you wanted this thing there faster, you could've helped push." grumbled the mercenary.

"I'm sorry, that's not in my job description." laughed the skinny hyena, and he posed with the rifle. "Besides, someone had to watch your backs... there! Right over her..."

The crane was pushed until its wheels were right up against Demetra's plush flank. Her hips and legs were completely buried under abdominal fat now, so it was hard to say what portion of her anatomy that fatty protrusion once belonged to. Demetra was only able to see what was coming at the last minute due to her inability to turn her head. Unlike Nura, she comprehended instantly. "Woah! That's a... a lot all at... at once!" she wheezed, wobbling her nearly locked in body with jerky movements. Lab Coat jogged over to where her back flesh was curling around the base of the pillar and reached over her shoulder to deliver a few more puffs of oxygen at arm's length.

Despite the care, when the hyena stood his tone was disdainful. "Hmph! You're the one who wanted more." he threw his hand at her rippling frame, her body still like a collection of thin-skinned, oil-filled sacs. "I was ready to leave things at one ton, but we might as well see what X-32 is capable of, eh?"

Lab Coat went behind the crane, making some final adjustments. The enormous bird, mountainously obese and probably nine feet tall at this point, drooled onto the surface of the crocodile's body, the fluid disappearing beneath her skin like everything else.

Nura finally comprehended the situation. "Nnnngh!" she moaned uselessly. She was so heavy herself now that her protesting body did little more than wobble her frame, just like Demetra's. The only difference was she could move her arms and legs a little more...

"W-wait...!" said Demetra nervously, still fidgeting in her flab, but her arms alone were too heavy to lift let alone any part of her awesome edifice of a body. "Can't we do this a bit more slowl-"

"You'll let me know if your heart stops, right?" laughed Lab Coat, and there was a click as the sling released.

The enormous bird landed on Demetra like a meteor, plowing into her liquid flesh and forcing the bulk of her mass out to the sides. The crocodile wobbled, her frame stretching and flowing weirdly, as if her bones and other tissues had lost cohesion, become liquid oil also. Demetra gasped and groaned loudly, crushed under the giant avian who was fully half her size and solid. In fact, his clawed feet were dragging off of the crocodile completely.

"I... can't breathe!" Demetra cried, waving her hands and feet helplessly. Her left foot in particular had been hugely displaced by the wave of her own fat, still compressed out to the sides as the bird sank in her midsection. Despite being at least five feet out from her body proper, however, the foot still waved wildly, as if the leg bones and muscles had not been distended beyond all possibility.

Lab Coat just stood by, recording everything with his phone's camera. "You better get to absorbing then, shouldn't you?" he laughed at her as he adjusted the settings on his phone.

Demetra grunted and gasped, but as Nura watched in fascinated horror, the crocodile did begin to regain control of the situation. Through some unseen mechanism, she pulled herself back together a little, her body firming up slightly and lifting the bird man at least enough for her to take a few breaths. On top of her, the fat bird began to stir slowly.

"Oh? Must not have used enough tranquilizer..." Lab Coat sneered. "What are you going to do about that, Crocodile-girl?"

"I ought to let him go!" Demetra yelled after a deep breath. Nura saw the big man move his arm over the surface of Demetra's body, the feathers on the underside were already all gone, red skin peeling underneath.

"Are you really going to let this opportunity pass you by, lard-girl?" asked the hyena confidently. He reached into coat pocket, pulling out an obscenely large syringe. "I have the anti-phage right here. If you want to stop, I'll just shoot this maniac and leave your body the way it is now..." he tapped the capped syringe against his narrow cheek thoughtfully, "Of course, who will ever know what you could've become...?"

Nura moaned and thrashed, grounded by her own body and gargantuan belly. Demetra couldn't!

But the croc did not even look at her, rather she took in the huge man on top of her, his fat beaked face resting nearly over her shoulder where it had landed, took in the sheer mass of the gigantic person crushing her to the point where her own body had lost cohesion. She seemed lost in thought, but only for a moment. "Hold on a minute..." she said before ambling her fat flooded jaws downward. She bit down hard on the bird man's lumpy shoulder, gripping the meat there between white fangs, and if in response to her intent, the rest of her body seemed to move into action.

Nura inhaled sharply in amazement as the configuration of Demetra's entire body altered again. She still seemed unable to move any of her fat consciously, but selective parts of her further lost density while others firmed up. The giant bird sank into the thick mass of Demetra, impossibly deep as if she hadn't any skeleton left at all. The man seemed to regain some consciousness, but it was already too late, and he moved too sluggishly even for the boneless, muscleless grip of scaly fat engulfing him on all sides. Demetra's flesh welled up as it toughened at the sides of his body, puckering like toothless gums. The bird's screams were mercifully muffled. "I guess this is dessert then..." Demetra laughed softly to herself before ripping her head back into her crown of flesh, the gobbet of meat in her jaws dissolving quickly. She sighed contentedly as her flesh rose further, spreading over the giant's back. He had stopped twitching by the time Demetra got around to sucking in the bird's clawed feet.

"Bravo!" Lab Coat clapped his hands together as Demetra's body stilled. "Quite a performance!"

Demetra swallowed. At the very least she was not so disconcertingly deformed as she had been in her oil state. In fact, Nura now could not tell any sort of unusual variation about the composition of her body now that she had enfolded an additional half ton of normal flesh. Only there was the matter of dealing with an extra half ton of flesh pressing down on her. Her rasping was redoubled, her eyes quickly becoming bloodshot even after it was done. However, really, the giant man was still pressing down on her, only this time permanently as part of her grossly enlarged frame. The crocodile twitched her claws experimentally, her hands not really resembling hands anymore, the sausage-like digits so swollen she could barely move them, fat rolls at each segment of her fingers and wrist flesh swelling up to the first knuckle of each thumb. Even the bridge of her nose had swelled up like a squash, her abdomen fusing firmly with the flesh under her jaw and locking her head in place. "I guess..." she swallowed again, seeming to have trouble. "...this is... enough." saliva oozed from the sides of her snout as her mouth opened wide, the sound of her breathing like a drowning person.

"I'm not doing that again." said the merc flatly. Then he thought about it, "Not unless you double my pay."

"Too rich for my blood, I'm afraid." said Lab Coat moving as close to Demetra's head as he dared, pulling the cap off of the big syringe in his fangs. Demetra was so obese at this point, he could get nowhere close without putting at least a knee against her overwhelming fat. "I swear, if you eat my pants, I'll let you drill a hole into the bottom of this ship!" he said sternly. "...if you last that long."

Some subtle motion of the crocodile's head might have indicated a shake. "...can't..." she gasped, "...too... much..."

Lab Coat moved swiftly and deftly, shoving the thick needle between two fat rolls on the side of Demetra's head as thick as his arms. He emptied a 500 ml injection into her body. A minute passed before Lab Coat draped an oxygen tube over her face, affixing it to her nostrils as the gas hissed softly; now the hyena was handling her with bare paws, and the plastic hose did not disintegrate in the minutes after he put it on her. Demetra relaxed, still wheezing loudly, but reclining into the grip of her own vast body; the only parts she could move anymore were her fingers and toes, and those only just. But Nura was hardly better.

The lioness slowly absorbed the mega meal her hide was wrapped around. In the end, her shape greatly resembling Demetra's save that the skin of her abdomen was stretched permanently out of all repair. Her gut eventually hollowed out some, but still spread over the ground in a gigantic wave of sparse fur and pink skin. Nura could only look in despair at her poor abused body, her belly so slack, she would have needed some kind of board to scoot it over the ground if she could even support her own weight, a possibility which seemed increasingly remote as she continued to be stuffed with more and more food.

Nura's back pressed more and more heavily against the piled table cloths behind her until she was certain that she couldn't have remained sitting upright without assistance as her weight redistributed itself from being in front of her to being more centered. The worst part of all, however, was that she couldn't talk during the entire affair, even as her tummy flattened out, forming rolls and shelves in front of her. Though it was something of a shock when first one and then both massive boobs sagged down to rest on the ground at either side of her body, still getting heavier as the skin pulled and stretched at her chest. Before long, Nura's entire body was so stretched out and stuffed with lard, she would not have recognized herself. At the very least, Lab Coat equipped her as well with an oxygen hose as she began to have difficulty breathing, her heart forming a staccato beeping in the background noise of the dining room.

"Dr. Gideon." said the merc just as Nura was beginning to doze off. It was already night outside the ship. "I've got the boat ready."

"Good." said Lab Coat. "I'll have the two stooges put them in the bariatric lift and we'll take them down one at a time."

"Want I should get rid of them after we're done?" asked the man in black, tossing his head to the two exhausted servers.

Lab Coat seemed to think about this for a moment, then looked down at Nura. "I think not... This little lady deserves to have a couple of snacks on the way home..." Nura gulped helplessly.

---

The door rang at the front of the lavish manner and Mr. Asif Abalone, father of Nura Abalone, went to answer it. The stout lion was slightly perturbed at the sound of squealing tires exiting his driveway, but paid it no heed, at least until he saw what had been laid upon his doorstep. He gasped in horror seeing his field of vision consumed by incomprehensible quantities of green, knobbly scales and tawny, pale fur. He stared, stunned for almost half a minute before he realized that he was looking at people!

"Oh my god!" he shouted, "Sana, get the police on the phone!"

He took a step forward only for his shoe to collide with something soft and malleable, a fatty protrusion from the lower belly of the lion. The mammal was so unbelievably obese, Asif could not tell what gender it was; it took two full minutes before he saw the skin stretching off to the side of the remarkable creature from its fat swaddled chest, a breast the size of a wrecking ball piling up on the floor; its twin must have been entirely crushed under the reptile's bulk because it was not visible at all.

Both of the fat-stuffed abominations struggled weakly, mumbling and moaning as their mouths were sealed with duct tape. Hospital oxygen hoses stretched from both sets of nostrils to tanks hidden in the countless fat folds that made up each of their bodies, all structures lost under the shapeless fat save for their heads, both of which were immobilized in cradles of fat that rose well over either's skulls. Asif was sickened by the sight in front of him. "Sana? Sana! Get an ambulance here too!"

A feminine voice answered from within, and as much as Asif was reviled by the mere sight of these grotesquely fattened females, he knew that their conditions must have been life threatening. "Prophet give me strength..." he muttered under his breath as he rolled up his sleeves. Both of the women's bodies gave off a distinctive odor of sickness like that found in a nursing home. And as fat as the crocodile was, the lioness was so much more so...

And then he was struck by the lion's eyes, her familiar eyes... "No..." said Asif, horror reaching a fevered pitch, "Oh god, no!" He rushed forward, but the lioness was so tremendous, he had to scramble onto her overflowing front just to reach her taped muzzle. He planted his knee on a tumorous growth of lard among the chaotic rolls and pushed himself up. "N-Nura?" he asked with a shaking voice.

The gator's eyes grew bright. "Mmhnn-nphn!" she groaned with her tape binding her jaw and she shook her head side to side, the flesh welling against all sides of her jaw so it could have easily entered her own mouth had she been able to open it.

The lioness seemed less lucid and had greater difficulty breathing. The fat rolls on either side of her jaw were drenched in saliva oozing from the corners of her mouth. She recognized the man climbing up the front of her only belatedly, eyes too growing wide with exhilaration, and then with shock as he grasped the corner of the tape sealing her mouth...

"Nnugh!" she groaned, weeping as the tape began to tear her whiskers painfully. The lioness grunted, and shook her head, but it was pinned by the colossal growths of fat surrounding it.

"Nura, Nura!" cried the grown man, weeping also, "What in the world has happen-" The tape tore free and the lioness yelped, joining father and daughter together permanently.

Asif Abelone never saw the note pinned into the meat on the underside of his daughter's left breast which read:

To Asif,

Please enjoy your homecoming. I doubt your daughter will be running around and causing trouble anymore. Please enjoy the gift. And thank you for cutting my funding. I have decided to pursue other business ventures. Good Health to you and your family!

-Dr. Gideon Gray

P.S. Please exercise caution in unsealing your daughter's mouth. She now has trouble controlling her appetite.