Seeking Sherwood - Chapter 3 (Patreon)

Fueled by new emotions and strange urges, Veronica seeks to extract a little vengeance! Will she succeed in crossing her captor? Can she change her fate? Or has she, already? 

Written by the wonderful Rabidbadger writing, illustrated by me!  

Characters/Owners:

Garth - Nackvixen 

Veronicas - Veronacus 

Temperance - Paris  

- - -     

“And you… trust this source? Whoever she is?”

The badger in the chair snorted briefly, shaking her head and running her one good arm’s hand through her hair. 

“Hell no, she’s the reason I’m in this chair. The reason I never leave the club. I had this place built as the most advance signal blocking haven in the entire Ashen Expanse for a reason.”

Another snort, this time dripping derision and spite.

“She’s the reason I’m in this chair. But her info might still be good, so screw it.”

The badger reached over to her non-working arm, picking at the back of her hand and revealing a small opening – like a service panel. One that contained a tiny data wafer just below the surface, which she placed inside a sealed glass case.

“Don’t let it touch the systems on your ship, or yourselves. I can’t be sure it hasn’t got her inside it, enough of her to do some damage. I had to shut down my entire internal nanotech structure to hobble her, and she hobbled me back. So, knowing how serious I am, do not stiff me on this Vice Regent.”

Temperance glanced from her benefactor to the woman, trying to read the tension, but all Amourres was doing was smiling. It wasn’t smug, though. More like the bird was attempting to be reassuring but didn’t have much practice in dialing her self-importance back, while having just enough genuine respect for their host to offset matters.

“I won’t. We’re after the same thing. If I find Sherwood, I’ll send him to you.”

Exhaling, the badger nodded. Her expression was painfully neutral, closing her hand up again and then shifting in her seat as if she wanted to recoil from all the parts of her that didn’t work, but was understandably hamstrung in the attempt. 

“I’d like to be alone, now. Take what you want from behind the bar, enjoy the club for the night.”

There was an immediate clattering from behind the bar at that, after which Garth stood clumsily up with his arms entirely full of packages of cookies, half pints of ice cream, a couple of wrapped sandwiches, and a bottle of wine. The bunny did not have a free hand to do any signaling with, and his face was occupied with half a sandwich already, but he managed to wave an ear in the badger’s direction before he began carefully and deliberately waddling toward the elevator while all three women watched. 

They shared a couple of glances afterward, two of three sported raised eyebrows, while the Vice Regent had a different reaction entirely.

“Honestly, legitimately proud of that one. Maybe even a tiny bit jealous. Anyway! Thank you for the hospitality, we’ll get out of your hair and be back as soon as we can manage it.”

Temperance heard nothing else from the badger then apart from the gentle twist and creak of the archaic chair, and instead started to rush off after Garth – only to stop short when her stomach reminded her of two things. How much it had grown in a short window of time, and that it was both empty and nowhere near done with this ordeal. Her glance to the Vice Regent at that was mostly a quick check about permission to make her own raid behind the bar, one Amourres instantly understood and agreed to with a little nod of her beak. Temperance was, as yet, more agile than Garth – able to reach things in the back he couldn’t – so she wasn’t left with just the dregs for her own indulgence. She mostly had arms full of the same kind of treats by the time they were all piling in the elevator together.

A surge of annoyance ran through Temperance when the Vice Regent plucked up one of her fruit filled deep fried pies, but it was something she quickly got under control. \

“You look like you sorted some things out while you were in there.”

Shuffling a bit to get a better grip on her bounty, Temperance found the scents of it all setting off her urge to indulge again. Her stomach was already complaining, compelling her to resume their recent and all too brief cooperation on the matter.

“I uhm, I think I may have, yes. It’s possible I was clinging to some old behavior structures that just… didn’t mean as much I as thought?”

Beak half stuffed, the Vice Regent gave Temperance a pat on the shoulder as the elevator doors opened back up to a thriving, thrumming club. 

“They never do. We’re leaving as soon as the doors open, but until they do? Have some fun in here.”

Temperance curled her lips a bit, then sidled to the nearest table. First, she had to satisfy her gut, at least for the moment, then she had every intention of doing just that.

*** 

It was some hours later that the trio were able to exit. Most of the people in the club seemed inclined to linger at least a little, but they had work to do. Garth, Temperance, and the Vice Regent eased themselves out of the doors – and the instant they excited Temperance winced as an alert sounded on her internal systems saying her quarters had been entered. Which was clearly the lighter of the potential results given that right next to her the Vice Regent had half collapsed and was holding her head in visible pain.

“Chrome’s tits! What – Dawn? Where are you?!”

Amourres shut her eyes, willing warnings and messages to close themselves while she reached out to Dawn, looking increasingly pensive and worried as moments passed and it became clear that while Temperance had cause to worry, the Vice Regent was flirting with panic.

“That – come on – answer! Oh, screw this, Veronica must know where she – where…”

Squinting, the Vice Regent’s eyes narrowed considerably in that next moment, after which she directed them right at Temperance in an unsettlingly intense glare and while prodding Temperance in the gut, which was thoroughly distracting as she realized there was enough of it for one of the Vice Regent’s fingers to vanish inside entirely. 

“Find Veronica! Right now! You know the tracking software better than I do.” 

Barely managing to mutter out a ‘right, yes ma’am’, Temperance immediately started work. The tracking wasn’t so much a live broadcast of any sort as a lingering disturbance in space/time she could follow, but only because she knew what to look for. The collars didn’t disturb things that much, but it was enough for an adept to do what she was doing now. Looking at the trail that started at the ship and moved around the colony. 

“Headed from the ship right to the market district, then… there’s so many people there! Too many individual signatures, if we go there in person I can fine tune this more.”

Nodding curtly, the Vice Regent took both Temperance and Garth by the wrists and started them moving. It wasn’t necessary per se, but it did convey the sense of urgency nicely. There were people everywhere was the problem, it prevented them from moving as quickly as the Vice Regent wanted. Even so, once she had let go of their arms, she pushed harder – enough so that Temperance could tell Garth was having a hard time keeping up. The bunny was panting, sweating a little, but unable to ask them to slow down even if he wanted to. Temperance wanted to say something, tried to even, but it seemed to fall on deaf ears. The best she could do as they rounded a corner toward the marketplace proper was look back and try to tell him they’d be back for him.

Temperance had to rush to make up for lost distance even for that brief moment as the Vice Regent hadn’t slowed down at all, which was a bit frustrating in itself as it was Temperance figuring out where to go. The signal was meandering, though. Confusingly so. It seemed to have gone all over the marketplace and crossed its own path a few times. Which was not the answer the Vice Regent wanted to hear. It was also stressing Temperance the hell out.

“P-please! Ma’am, we need to – we need to stop and figure this out or we could be wandering for ages!”

The Vice Regent let out a frustrated grunt, then more of a growl as she stopped at a stall and snatched up a handful of fried poultry to begin tearing into, stepping up close to Temperance and poking her in the chest with a drumstick.

“You have an idea, then?”

There was an awkward, intimidating moment that quickly deflated when the Vice Regent suddenly looked a bit guilty about the outburst and instead handed Temperance the chicken, letting a tense breath out.

“Sorry, I – do you, though?”

Exhaling, Temperance tucked the drumstick into her cheek and nodded, peeling off a bit of succulent meat as she drew it free of her lips.

“We’ve got to walk the perimeter. There’s one spot that’s gotta be where she came in, it’s at the right angle from the ship, but if we find a trail leading out of the market and it’s not at that specific point it’s probably the right way to go. Or…”

Amourres raised an eyebrow there, half scowling already.

“I don’t like or.”

Temperance’s brow knotted up some. 

“Or, if we don’t find that, it means she’s still in the market and we’re already in the right place.”

That answer was apparently better than the Vice Regent had expected. Amourres relaxed just a little, nodding and turning her head to the crowd.

“I’ve got this sorted out; I think. I can see the telemetry you’re sending. Let’s split up and get on this.”

Temperance nodded, then stripped the rest of the drumstick and watched as the Vice Regent turned to head off – snatching another bit of chicken in the process. It took Temperance a few seconds longer to do the same with the neighboring pastry stand, mostly because of the money involved. It wasn’t that it was terribly expensive, quite the opposite, she just didn’t find it easy to tap an account like that – even with permission. Her gut wasn’t hearing any argument about whether or not it would happen, though. It was just a question of silencing her anxiety, and when she found an intersection of trails sitting right by a stall with a giant cone of questionable meat being shredded by a green scaled individual missing an eye loading it into flatbread her anxiety died.

It was disturbingly easy. All Temperance had to do was wave her hand and let the Vice Regent’s accounts pay for everything. Which was, she realized, a bit of a risk in itself. The next time she looked over the trail her eyes weren’t on task, they were sizing up the available food, which there was far too much of. All of it smelling, looking delicious – all of it right there for the taking, which her belly was telling her was just the right amount. All of it. A wave of her hand aw-

The bat’s eyes shot wide. The idea was simple, but elegant. Figuring out where the account was being accessed from was simple, cross referencing it with the pings from the intake layer of her device gave her an exact direction to start heading in – one she alerted the Vice Regent to and immediately set off after – though it didn’t stop her from grabbing a bag of oddly exotic jerky on the way. There’d been something on it about rare truffle spices and it had smelled nice, which was all the more thinking she did about it. 

After that, Temperance set off at as much of a run as she could. The crowd made it a difficult prospect to get an unblocked path, and it was proving difficult to move that quickly. For one, she was underestimating how much thicker she already was – her hips kept catching on stalls, and people, and that meant stopping to apologize – while trying to eat. If she had something to gnaw on it made her stomach relax a bit, and the jerky was good for that, which had been the plan. Though between the simple peppering and the mouth-saturating tingling the truffle oil they were soaked in was setting off she was going through it faster than expected. Temperance’s belly tingled with each swallowed morsel, and then some. She had a growing suspicion it was spreading in fact – but no time to stop and think about it.

*** 

Some part of Veronica kept asking herself what had come over her, but it never got an answer, and she wasn’t sure she cared all that much. The thing doing the asking was mostly doing it out of habit, because it felt familiar and comfortable to lash out about the state she was in, but somewhere in the course of the last few hours the genuine dismay and indignation behind it had withered. Maybe, she mused, it had been all the delicacies she was feeding herself that had done it – she certainly felt better whenever she tucked one into her lips and swallowed it. One reason why she was still doing it even as she worked at the comms outlet she’d found.

All of it had been somewhat slow going, urgency was one of the things that seemed to be withering along with the rest. Veronica had put her access to the Vice Regent’s account to use every couple of yards since leaving the ship, she’d near ruined her track suit already – the thing was a mess of stains from the collar down to the now woefully inadequate waistline. She could recall the source of all of them clearly – the hot dogs with the works that she’d stopped to have six of until the fried chicken had distracted her from them. The bucket of that she’d torn through ravenously. The butter-drenched potatoes she’d gotten as a side that she used as a walking snack on her way to the next thing. The cheese stuffed bread loaf she’d torn apart like she was a wild animal. It had all seeped into her, made her bigger, left her belly hanging out from under the top half of the suit and across her hips. 

Of course, there was rather more belly than she was entirely responsible for. It had not escaped Veronica’s attention that she’d felt the Vice Regent feeding her all night too. Grunting in frustration, she wiped a bit of grease from her fingers and onto her pants while fiddling with the touch screen’s annoyingly clumsy text controls. Finding someone who was willing to listen to her and didn’t demand voice chat had been aggravating.  Getting people to sell her food without use of her voice had been far easier, all she really had to do was point and wave her hand, and when her face was already full, they didn’t even ask questions about it. This, though, was not so easy. Veronica would never have guessed bounty hunters were so damn picky with protocol.

Scale in the Wind: Yeah, got the codes right here. Just confirm the contract.

**%**: Patience. We’re confirming the information. Just keep the connection live.

Grumbling, Veronica clutched the journal under her arm and looked down. Partly at herself, partly at the supplies she’d brought. The supplies were dwindling while she did anything but – Veronica felt like Garth had looked when she first met him. Her waistline was taught and uncomfortable, her thighs were straining the sides of her pants, her belly was wholly exposed and being able to get a good solid handful of each tit was kind of nice, actually. 

As to the food, she’d bought a couple of full roast birds and a cart of fruit and dragged it along with her when she saw the terminal but now it was mostly bones, rinds, and cores sitting on the thing. There was no doubt in her mind that when it ran out she’d go in search of more, task done or not – the certainty of it was a little unsettling in fact, but it was there just the same. Which meant the idiots on the other end had better hurry up.

“What in Chrome’s shiny mirrored tits do you think you’re doing!?”

Snapping her head around, Veronica opened her mouth (which was full of some kind of cheese saturated potato biscuit delight) and intended to answer only to remember halfway through that she couldn’t speak with the collar’s gag function on. Instead, she was left staring at the advancing Vice Regent with Temperance right behind her, the former looking savage and furious. 

A half second later Veronica was asking herself why in Chrome she felt that woman deserved an answer to begin with. The Vice Regent promptly found herself with a cart of mostly eaten food and various other detritus hurled in her general direction while Veronica snarled, hammering a scaled fist against the wall the comm system was built into while the Vice Regent scrambled back, tripped, and then had to spend a few moments extricating herself from the pile that had formed, sputtering furiously in the process.

“Traitorous – ruined – really liked this – YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE SHIT!”

Veronica had half a mind to run, and half a mind to try to smother the Vice Regent with her increasingly bloated ass, which was the only reason she hesitated. It had nothing to do with second guessing her desires, just that she had two equally potent ones in conflicting directions. Neither of which came to fruition as she was distracted by the appearance of a reply coming from her contact, only to see the entire screen flicker with visible data corruption before going black, at which point she remembered the bat was there too. Temperance had a frightened yet determined look on her face and was clearly tapping into the system remotely given the way her delicate fingers were gesturing at it.

It was that that made the decision for Veronica. The Vice Regent wasn’t alone, and she had no idea where Dawn or Garth were – she wasn’t safe, and running wasn’t totally hopeless. Sure, she’d gotten alarmingly fat today, but she had a lot more practice at it than either of them – right?

By the third step Veronica was painfully, intimately aware of just how much harder it was going to be. Her feet hit the ground like rocks and the impact ran all the way up into her knees and hips, her belly flopped up and down against her thighs and her tits were sailing about wildly, but she still had the right form – the right breathing techniques. Also, she wasn’t wearing a dress and heels, which gave her enough of an advantage over both the others that when she darted off into the crowd, she gained distance quickly. That was all she needed – distance and time.

The damn collars couldn’t have infinite range, could they?

*** 

Garth was panting, sweating even, and he did not like that. Effort wasn’t his forte beyond the strictly necessary, though the walking about earlier had been worth it for the payoff. Now, though? Now he was trying to catch up with the bird and the bat, in part because he was curious and this seemed to be relevant to his situation, and in part because he had a little interest in whether the bat was doing alright with things or not. It had been an awkward task to try and offer her advice without saying anything thus far, but it seemed like it had happened just the same, and now?

Now he was stumbling around a corner, leaning hard on the wall, feeling his quaking thighs and undulating overhanging belly sway and wobble while he panted. He did this just in time to see the Vice Regent and Temperance looking very intently into the thriving crowd of people in the market.

“You shut it down though, right?”

Temperance nodded vigorously.

“I did, yes. I just – I didn’t think she’d try something so severely reckless… it’s-”

The Vice Regent shook her head, then produced a small capsule of something blue and tucked it into her beak. Briefly, Garth felt the collar tingle a bit like it always did. 

“Doesn’t matter. We’ll sort that out later, right now we just have to find her, and that’s just a matter of time. Come along, dear.”

Before he could muster the breath to try and stop them, or was even sure he wanted to, Garth watched the two head off ahead of him. They left behind something of a mess, food thrown about everywhere. Enough that he had to be careful stepping through it when he got to that. It would be all too easy to step on something slippery and end up on his ass, and it was a serious chore to get up again once that happened. It left him feeling a brief moment of panic when he stepped on something a bit too smooth, but the object didn’t slide or break. 

When the bunny had managed to back off a step and twist so he could look past his ever-expanding middle, which occupied most of his lower field of vision now, he saw a small leather-bound book on the ground. It looked profoundly out of place amid the horrid stew of half-eaten and mostly eaten disparate foods and had somehow avoided any soiling in the process of laying amid them. It took a bit of doing for Garth to bend over enough to reach it, but it had his curiosity solidly enough to be worth some effort. Which was always the key, whether it was of profit enough to bother.

Inside, Garth found himself looking at a rather mundane set of information. Mostly just logs it seemed, numbers, dates, maybe a few security codes but they didn’t look like they were for anything intensely important. He found himself wondering, quietly, what they could possibly be for as he thumbed through it. Why this little thing had been important enough to show up at this location at all. Garth yawned widely as he shut the book and looked ahead of him, finally breathing easily again, no stitch in his side berating him for going too fast. The yawn had come on rather suddenly, he noted – at which point he recalled the blue capsule.

Squinting a bit, Garth had to wonder – did the Vice Regent have that ready the whole time? Was it even measured to consider being split between two people? Did it take their increased body weights into account? If he felt drowsy, what was it doing to Veronica? And-

“Oh, there you are. Such a lovely little convergence, you finding that for me, being in the right place at the right time.”

The voice was familiar. It ought to be after the evening they’d had after she found him in the cargo hold. Garth felt Dawn nestle up against his rump, gripping each half of it and curling in to nestle her cheek against his tail.

“They’ve made quite the mess of things with this little indiscretion, I’m cross with that scaled one, but I can deal with that later. Why don’t you and I head back to the ship where you can sleep that off in a bit more comfort? I’ll call us a transport for it.”

Exhaling, Garth fought off another yawn and turned his head, holding the book back as far as his thickened arms would let him. He was fairly sure he remembered what he had to out of that – the security codes hadn’t been that complicated. Besides, a ride home after all this? One didn’t have to twist his arm to get him on board with that.

*** 

Veronica knew something was wrong. The running had gotten harder, but more still than that she’d stopped twice to grab something to eat already. Everything in her body felt sluggish and heavy, including her urges, and that was giving her the time to do something she hadn’t been doing for a while now. To ask herself just why she was having them, and not bothering to question them.

Not that this prevented her from wrapping her scaled fingers around the sunset hued fruits she’d found and tearing juice-laden chunks free, but she was noticing the phenomenon as she felt her lids grow heavier than they ought to be. That, along with her growing fatigue, which was also concerning, were leaving Veronica… not anxious – and acutely aware that she should be severely anxious, which was a thought that had been spinning in a circle like some kind of figure skater in her mind for the last couple of minutes.

It was still doing so when she found a wall to carefully slide down to the ground by, and finally let her eyes drift closed as she decided to put the remaining strength and focus she had to work on finishing the snacks she’d acquired. It seemed far more pressing than fighting a losing battle against a nap. Not even the sounds of footsteps approaching directly behind her and a familiar, angry voice managed to penetrate the haze. 

The last thought Veronica had before she let herself go was an important one, one she made sure she hung onto so she could get to it later. She had asked herself why, precisely, it mattered so much if she didn’t seem to be worrying about anything. That sounded kind of nice, and couldn’t possibly go wrong, could it?