Struggling Diet Warriors Chapter 8: Spreading Warmth (Patreon)

Author's Note: With the final release of Chapter 7's Revamp, we're now in the clear to continue on with the story from where we've left off! This will be the first new Diet Warriors content that's been released in some time, so I hope you are all able to enjoy!! 

Feedback is obviously welcome and, as always, thanks for reading! :D

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Ryuuji couldn’t take his eyes off of Minori Kushieda.

Not in the usual way, where he found himself watching her irresistible cheerfulness and charm, a moth drawn to a golden-red light.

Instead, Ryuuji watched her in the way one might gape as a train was derailed. He could almost hear the snapping of threads, the tears in her sweatpants seeming to grow larger while the tiny gaps of flesh grew ever fatter. The engine rolled off of the tracks and several storage containers leapt through the air before thundering down with an earth shaking *boom!*

“Miss Kushieda,” the teacher’s words were like ice down Ryuuji’s shirt, startling him away from Minori’s potbelly. “Your excitement is noted, but you don’t have to bounce in your seat just because you understand the topic.”

The pudgy pink sun glowed. “Sorry, teach! I’ve read some of these stories before. The Dancing Girl is one of my favorites.”

“Well then, it’d likely be best not to call on you, yes?”

Minori chuckled. “I-I guess you’ve got a point.”

A sheepish hand descended onto her belly, holding the swell in a way that made several other students back another inch away.

From the head of the class, the teacher rolled her eyes but didn’t address it, returning her tablet. On the whiteboard behind her, text continued to appear in a drop-down list, titles and authors written in English. “As Miss Kushieda has already made you aware, over the next week you will be issued several short stories. You will be expected to-”

Ryuuji stopped paying attention.

The words on the whiteboard twisted, changing from black on white text into a broken train carriage. The Silent Cry became Sweet Apple Pies, labeling the downed container as thousands of lines of script became tiny rectangular pies spilling out from the carriage. A flood of red came to the whiteboard, forming a horde of teeny red-headed girls diving into the pile with gleeful hunger.

The picture doubled, then had to make even more room to add another larger, fatter, container behind the first. The Doughy Doughnuts carriage had been ripped to shreds beneath its own weight, pastries now littered in a pile even taller than the storage of Sweet Apple Pies. Sapphire blue spilled into the image, accompanied with a whiny voice and a belly’s hungry rumble while dozens of bluenette beauties waddled to the sweets and began quickly eating.

At the very front of the screen, an overlap of red and blue washed over the calorific catastrophe. In the foreground of this wrecked locomotive, one pudgy redhead and one sapphire piglet came right up to the view, each making delighted noises while chewing their pastries.

Ryuuji blinked several times at the whiteboard before wiping at his eyes. The list reappeared and the teacher’s voice could be heard once again, without the noise of gibbering girls and wanting tummies.

The young man decided that he really, really needed to get more sleep.

Still, the visual stuck with him until he looked back to Minori, and the large doughball that was sitting behind.

Minori seemed to be doing her best not to acknowledge the space created around her in the center of class. She was smiling pleasantly, taking notes from the whiteboard while their teacher talked, lightly swaying from side to side. He couldn’t tell if she noticed the curve of fat that pinched near her shoulders, nor how her wiggling made her butt look so fat.

Ami, meanwhile, noticed everything. He could clearly see Kawashima’s gaze watching Minori’s chubby shoulders, dipping to the girl’s round waist and chubbified hips. Rather than gaping, the clarity was striking Ami past disbelief and turning reflective, her fingers roaming over her own fattened body.

She looked at Minori’s thighs, then patted her own and felt them jiggle.

She watched the pinch of jiggle beneath Kushieda’s arms, then squeezed the handful that was her own chubby fat.

Then came the belly, wobbling next to a well-earned gut.

In an astounding moment of visual clarity, Ryuuji watched Ami Kawashima place both of her hands around the swollen crest of her belly, jiggling herself. It was the final straw for the piglet’s waistcoat.

A soft, barely audible *snap* was followed by a precious *ding* as the bottom button of Ami’s jacket snapped free, striking the back of Minori’s chair. Ami’s face became as red as her jacket before she very quietly whispered, “Oh that’s just fantastic…”

She leaned forward, her skinny coat warping around her fat belly, using Minori as cover to look for her button. It only took her a moment to spot it, drawn to the small golden circle just as it was picked from the floor by the palmtop tiger.

Stuck in a half-standing crouch, Ami froze as her and Taiga locked eyes, staring at one another before Taiga hissed, “Sit down, idiot. And put that away!”

Ami looked down and nearly yelped, seeing how much of her muffintop showed from beneath her jacket, thudding back into the seat with enough weight to slide several inches backwards.

The girls at the rear of the room moved several feet further.

He turned away from the girls, trying to focus on the whiteboard.

“-moving on to problem solving. Using the English text, can anyone tell me-”

A small snuffle snapped his attention away from the board, catching Ami as the girl self-consciously sniffed her own arm before turning away with a tiny cough, settling on a defeated expression with a despondent whine.

He tried to see into her head, but Ami’s eyes weren’t communicating anymore. She sat with both hands atop of her belly, one trying to keep her jacket shut while the other kept poking her fatty pudge.

She’d hiked up her skirt, tucking her belly into the waistband and stretching the fabric to be as tight as her jacket. The waistband was tugged it all the way up to her ribs, which then left most of her thighs exposed.

When he’d first seen Ami, Ryuuji had noticed her thick thighs and curvy bottom. It was just how she was shaped, impossible to miss. But with her hidden garter now broken and her tummy unleashed, Ami no longer looked ‘a touch too curvy.’

It wasn’t helped by her wearing her jacket. Ryuuji wondered why she was wearing it all all. They’d moved onto Summer clothes. Everyone else was in uniform… well, almost everyone else.

Maybe there was some special clause. You didn’t have to be in uniform if you could be deemed distractingly fat.

The exposed skin of her pale legs had a healthy pink glow, tiny white marks descending down from her skirt. The marks of her gain, which surely decorated those overweight hips.

Was Minori’s belly also tucked into her sweatpants? His eyes roved the redhead’s middle, unable to tell.

He wondered what her legs looked like.

As if she could hear the thought in his head, Minori suddenly sat up a little straighter. She turned around, her lips puckering questioningly when her colorful eyes met with Ryuuji’s. Her chin looked so much smoother than it should, the expression giving him butterflies in his chest while setting off every siren and alarm bell. He was unable to look away as she stared at him, head tilted.

“Takasu? Are you listening?”

The world suddenly seemed so much bigger than the horde of girls feasting from the broken-down sweets-train. Ryuuji snapped forward, blinking rapidly at their teacher. He realized that most of the class was looking at him now, including a red-faced Taiga.

“U-uhh, sorry. What was the question?”

The teacher sighed, putting her hands on her hips. “Please, pay attention Mister Takasu. I asked you if you could answer the question on the board.”

He snapped to the whiteboard.

Written in English, the text display posed that a girl had collected twenty-five apples from a tree and wanted to share them with her three friends.

But that wasn’t right. Minori had only eaten fifteen apple pies, not twenty-five.

Twenty-five would be something that only a fat girl could manage.

Fifteen was much more reasonable.

It was only around three thousand calories in a single sitt-

His mind swam, watching the memory of golden filling bursting over Minori’s lips. He tried to focus, couldn’t, and was caught off guard when he heard a whisper.

“Fifteen…”

Automatically he replied, “Fifteen,” to the teacher.

“Yes,” the teacher nodded. “That’s correct. After giving sets of five, three, and two apples away, our example would only maintain fifteen apples for her own use.” She tilted her head, gesturing toward the center of the room with her tablet’s pointer. “You should thank Miss Kawashima for her quick thinking. Please do pay more attention to the class, Mister Takasu.”

“Y-yes Ma’am,” Ryuuji bowed, and she returned to her tablet.

He peeked over to see Ami looking at him now. She was blushing, looking almost uncomfortable, but nodded and tried at least a little smile before turning back to the front of the class.

He then noticed all of the other girls staring at her the same way she had been looking at Minori. It was as if a polarized magnet were shoving their classmates out from the high gravity field at the center of the room, but they couldn’t stop looking between the sapphire piglet and their own slimmer bodies.

Maya in particular was the most noticeable. Looking from Ami’s belly, down to hers, back to Ami’s legs, then tried squeezing her fingers around one of her own, as if testing how round it was. It was giving her troubles and her expression grew hot, trying to force the softness of her thigh to make room for fingers and thumbs to complete the circumference.

Taiga, sitting alongside Minori, glared at anyone that she caught looking in their direction. Unfortunately, more than a few stares were coming from behind, so she looked more like a territorial puppy than a discouraging threat.

Somebody whispered, “Leave it to her to know how to divide food…”

He saw Ami hear it.

He watched the cheerful blush vanish from her face, her cheeks instead becoming pasty white. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed, and the hands resting on her tummy were suddenly on her desk.

Ryuuji turned, looking at his classmates.

Each one looked away, and they didn’t look back.

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The lunch bell rang and Ami let out a reluctant sigh. She was trying to hold onto that good feeling she’d had this morning. Tried remembering the warmth of the water as it tumbled over her body.

Yeah, okay, so she was a bit overweight. She could accept that now. Sort of…

It didn’t mean she wasn’t attractive! The biggest part of looking good is looking confident, and the people who look confident always look like they’re right! Even a girl that was a little overweight!

God, why did that redhead have to waddle in. She was half Ami’s size, and she was waddling!! What did that mean Ami looked like?!?

No no, don’t freak out. Nobody’s really noticed. You just have to move with confidence.

Waddle with confidence.

“Uggggggggh,” Ami collapsed onto her desk.

They weren’t looking at her, she tried to convince herself. They were looking at Minori. All the tension of the morning was directed at her classmate’s sudden gain and fluffier appearance.

So why did Ami feel so reluctant to reach for her lunch bag?

She didn’t even realize that she had been dragged from her seat until she was halfway across the room, stammering pained cries as a finger and thumb were clasped around the lobe of her ear.

“Aiee!! L-let go, hey!!!” she called out, bent over at the waist as she was stumbling along behind a stick-figure wearing stockings.

She felt her full hip bounce off of a solid pillow, heard Minori’s pained wheeze call out from beside her. “T-Taiga! Owie owie owie!! W-what are you doing?!”

Ahead of the pair of fatties, Taiga growled something incomprehensible before both girls cried louder as their pinches redoubled and their bubbly butts bounced off one another.

Behind them, every girl in the class saw the stretched black and blue panties digging into Ami’s ass. They watched the white muffintop spilling out over Minori’s sweats. The famed Diet Warriors and the piggy-shaped model traipsed from the room, out into the hall, and into the nearby bathroom.

Taiga tugged both of the girls forward, launching them past her towards the nearby sinks. “Alright, what the hell is going on?!” she crossed her arms as the two warbled through tiny tears of pain, rubbing at their respective ears.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!!” Ami said. “What’s your problem, huh?!”

Taiga’s nostrils billowed, the tiny bull slamming her hands on her hips. “Minorin! What the heck happened to you? Did you go over to this piglet’s house after last night?” She advanced on Minori, not giving the wavering redhead any time to answer. “You didn’t follow me, did you? What did she do to you?!”

With a flourish, Taiga seized Minori’s waist, dragging the gym uniform up and up until, with Minori’s scream, her pale-pink tummy jiggled free. Minori tried to stammer something but was again cut off by Taiga, the tiger’s hands sinking into her stomach.

“You’re even starting to feel like her!” she shouted.

Minori had been pushed back all the way to the sink, her bottom leaning over the top. She lifted a hand to her hair, finger circling a cherry red lock. “Eheh… heeehh…. It’s not that bad, right?”

Taiga’s eyes sharpened before her neck slowly turned to stare at Ami.

The sapphire piglet waved her hands. “I didn’t do anything!” she complained. “After I got home, I had some ice cream and then… Hey, wait!” A billow of air swept into Ami’s gut and the fire had her loom over the tiny brunette. “You little troll doll, you broke into my house!”

“I didn’t break in, you stupid whale!” Taiga spat back. “I said in the note, I used a key.”

“That’s still breaking in!”

“P-please stop,” Minori gasped, gripping the sink rather than pushing Taiga back. “T-that’s starting t-t-to tickle!”

Taiga halted her jiggling of Minori’s belly, advancing towards Ami with murderous intent.

Righteous indignation kept Ami cool. “It’s your fault that I ripped my sweatpants too,” she claimed as she folded her arms over her tummy. “Now none of my bulky clothes fit. This is the only outfit I can wear, and you’ve even managed to rip the shirt! And my jacket too, look!”

In the heat of the moment, Ami was clearly not thinking quite clearly as she made the immense mistake of very softly tugging on her uniform jacket. The final button crumpled beneath the weight of the world, launched off at a near supersonic speed as her gut forced it free.

It moved so quickly that, when it struck Taiga directly between the eyes, it tilted her back on her heels and she took two steps away. This had the lucky effect of saving her from the mass of tummy that followed it outward, a blunt and heavy object that may have knocked her out cold at such rocketing speeds.

The tiny hooks of her waistband came next, the poor skirt unable to hold back the tide of her belly, tearing apart with a hideous chime. Several other shirt buttons whined in pain, the two on her chest emitting silent cries of horror before falling into complete silence while Ami’s skirt slowly slopped down her legs to the bathroom floor.

Shellshock kept the girls from moving. Ami’s open jacket framed her wide chest and wider tummy, jiggling to a blubbery halt. Color entered her pale cheeks as the young girl began to quickly stammer, seeing her sagging profile belly to belly with the soft Kushieda in the bathroom mirror.

She was so much fatter than her. How could this happen?! She wasn’t supposed to be this big! She wasn’t this big, how could she be?!?

“Jeez, how much damn ice cream did you even eat?! Look at your stomach!” Taiga poked Ami near her belly button, and the sapphire piglet fought down a bright shriek. “And you?!” she rounded on Minori, gesturing to all of her. “What the hell did you eat?!?”

There was an exceptionally awkward “EEP!!” that came from the door.

Moving as if she were a startled small mouse, Maya quivered over the threshold staring ahead at Ami’s fat ass. Her amber eyes traveled over the wide shelf and tiny chord of the panties that clung to her hips, the stripped fabric lodged between Ami’s butt cheeks like an ill-fitting thong, blushing so intently that she looked almost as if she were about to pass out.

Another beat passed before Maya’s mouth trembled open, then the girl spun on her heel, shoving the door shut and holding it closed.

“Are you people crazy?!” she hissed. “What if there were boys in the hallway?! They’d see your… your…” Maya waggled her head, her greasy orange hair flinging messily about before grabbing herself by the temple. “They’re all whispering about you! And then they were all looking at me, like I’m… like I’m…”

Ami leaned over, mushing her belly against her legs and snagging her skirt off the ground, trying to tug it upward. “W-wait a second, this isn’t what it-”

“Why are you putting it back on, idiot?” Taiga thumped her on the top of her head and causing her to stumble back, knocking into the sink next to Minori. “It doesn’t fit you. Hurry up and take the damn thing off so I can let out the waistband and fix your buttons. Your jacket will have to wait. Minorin, do you have my sewing kit?”

“U-uhh… speaking of… would you mind…?” Minori tapped her fingers together.

Taiga rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Hurry up, take off your shirt.”

“You’re a lifesaver! The absolute bestest, Taiga!” Minori unzipped her gym clothes, unleashing her small pillow-tummy from out from her unbuttoned white uniform. She wore a simple black bra that was pulled tight over her fleshy boobs.

“I can’t believe you two!” Taiga grumbled before she turned to Maya. “And what about you? Do you need something?” She blinked before releasing a grunt and covering her nose.  “Ulgh… Besides a shower. You’re covered in sweat.”

“I-I was working out before class!” Maya tucked her hands beneath her pits defensively. “It’s not that bad! Is it that bad?!?”

Ami’s grimace grew increasingly sour, beginning to suspect she might be the basis for everyone asking if they were ‘that bad.’

“Yeah, whatever,” Taiga snapped. “Do you need your clothes fixed or not? They look like they still fit… for now…”

Maya’s eyes widened in complete horror. She hurried to the mirror and looked herself over. “I-it’s not that bad!! No, no way, I can’t have gained any weight in a single day, that’s imposs-”

She abruptly cut off, looking at Minori and Ami before squeaking like a terrified mouse and turning back to the mirror, tugging her shirt out of her skirt and flipping it up to show her stomach.

It was like a spotlight for Ami’s trained eyes, and the ex-model realized just what had been so off about Maya earlier in the day. It wasn’t much, but it was there. The beginning of a belly.

Ami had to stop eating at that McDonalds.

“Hey!” Taiga thumped Maya on her back. “If you’re gonna be a nuisance, make yourself useful. I need Kushieda’s purse. Go get it.”

Maya blinked, dropping her shirt before swallowing. “R-right!” and she hurried to the door. She peeked outside to check it was clear, saving some unsuspecting boy from seeing the two marshmallow-women that were almost completely exposed, then hurried from the room.

Taiga spun around, raising a finger and pointing at the two doughy girls. “Don’t think you’re avoiding this! I want to know exactly what happened, got it?!”

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Maya returned with Minori’s purse. The girl had started to give it to Taiga but was rapidly intercepted by the purse’s red-headed owner.

It only took Minori opening the accessory for Ami’s nose to pick up the scent. She saw a tiny trail of still-hot steam rising from the bag before Kushieda pulled out a small orange and black sewing kit, handing it to Taiga while protectively clasping her bag tightly shut.

Taiga then advanced on both of the heavier girls, pushing them towards the nearest stall. “Hurry up, hurry up!” she complained, snatching their scrunched-up clothes. “I already missed breakfast! Like hell am I missing lunch because of you two!!”

The door banged shut as she left. Neither of the soft girls were in a position to protest to the palm-top tiger, but they weren’t quite prepared for the lack of space.

“I-it’s okay,” Minori whispered to a beat red Ami. “It’s just like the girls’ locker room. It’s not the first chest I’ve ever seen… even if they are probably the biggest.”

Braless, Ami hugged herself tight, making a tiny whining noise as she faced the opposite wall of the stall. It wasn’t just the bra, but even her panties! They were so bland, and the elastic was fading… they looked like something a frikin teenager would wear.

Ami wanted to cry. She was next to naked, butt to butt with another fat girl. A fat girl who was only a frikin fraction of her frikin size!

Instead, Ami made another snuffling whine and desperately tried to look on the bright side.

At least she was still had underwear. Another week and… ugh.

She was infinitely jealous of Minori’s full set, a simple black bra and cute black panties. It mixed really well with her pale skin and her red hair and her darned smile. Why did she have to smile all the damn time?!

Ami’s tummy pressed up against the cold, unforgiving plastic while her backside kept accidentally pressing against Minori’s backside. Two chubby girls standing back-to-back and butt-to-butt, each blushing madly and trying not to die from embarrassment. The only other space in the stall being the toilet, and Ami wasn’t going to go anywhere near that.

There was a zipping noise from behind her and suddenly a paper container was passed over her shoulder. “Here, uhh, maybe this will help?”

Ami looked at it for a moment, matching the brown and green package with the earlier scent before reading the script.

McDonald’s Apple Pie 2pk.

She took it and Minori’s hand retreated from sight. It was exceptionally warm. “You kept these in your purse?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Kushieda responded, speaking even more quietly. “After Taiga left to go to your place last night… Takasu seemed a bit,” she paused, “… put out. So, I decided I’d head home. That’s when I… uh… got… the craving again. Did you know that McDonald’s is open 24/7?”

“Really? Oh… that’s surprising,” Ami shifted holding herself a little bit tighter.

Minori giggled. “Liar. You did know, didn’t you?”

Ami sagged, dozens of pounds burgers and fries weighing her down. “Yeah…” But, for some reason, instead of feeling worse about that, Ami found herself breathing out the slightest chuckle. “Yeah, I did.”

“Mhmm. Well, now I do too. Cursed knowledge…”

Ami nodded, even though Minori couldn’t see.

“I got home late after that. The storm had passed, but I felt so full that I could barely walk. I stumbled inside before falling asleep on the couch.”

“Wait, how much more did you end up eating?”

There was a pause before a very uncomfortable giggle. She felt Minori swaying nervously. “I sort of lost count… Um… A girl always has room for dessert, right?”

Ami’s tummy grumbled. Her deep eyes looked at the sweet treat before she loosened her arm from her chest, her breasts spilling onto her stomach while she opened her pie. “Yeah… I guess so.”

The silence grew thick until Ami heard paper unfolding behind her. She glanced over her shoulder to see Minori opening up her own package, taking one of the buttery-brown rectangular pastries and chewing on it.

She did the same. Warm gooey pie filling spread over her tongue and dripped down her throat. Her belly sighed as fresh sugar and heat came to her hunger, and Ami felt the tension in her back slowly draining away. Her posture lifted, her tummy pulling away from the wall.

Together the two girls quietly ate, Minori seemingly trying to keep her satisfied sighs to a whisper. She ate faster than Ami, crinkling up the paper container when she finished and tossing it on the back of the toilet. Ami bounced forward in surprise, her tummy shocked by the cold of the wall when Minori backed into her as she reached into her purse and pulled out two more packs.

“Would you like another?” she asked.

Ami swallowed, having only finishing off her first of the pack. Still, she took the second set. “How many do you have in there?”

“Enough that they’re keeping one-another warm,” was all that she said, fingering her next package open and taking another extra-large bite.

Ami blinked, looking down at her pie. Guilt filled her even more than all the day’s pastries. “What about your diet?” she asked. “Aren’t you… a Diet Warrior, was it?”

The sound of chewing faded.

It was quiet in the stall for almost a minute before Minori spoke up.

“Ami, have you ever felt like… like you’re not happy?”

“… What do you mean?”

“With the way that things are. You know? That there’s just…” Ami felt Minori’s smaller ass rub up against her cheeks, but this time neither stepped out of the other’s way.

After another long stretch of silence, she felt Minori’s back leaning against her, then automatically shifted her weight to match. The garnet girl was surprisingly warm, and while Ami could feel just how much bigger her waist was, that hardly even registered.

Her mind was fixed, seeing Minori out of the corner of her eye, leaning back and staring into at the bright ceiling.

“That there’s got to be something better out there than how you feel.”

Ami opened her mouth to tell another chubby white lie, but the words wouldn’t come. She wanted to say that she was perfectly happy with her life. If it was Taiga, or Ryuuji, or anyone else, she might have been able to. But there was something in Minori’s tone that felt almost as if Ami were talking to herself. Finally, she replied, “Yeah.”

“Is that why you quit modeling?”

The question alarmed Ami, made her rise up on her tip toes as a bubble of anxiety burst in her belly. She hadn’t… she hadn’t quit modeling. It was just that guy! That man following her around, stalking her, taking her pic-

His face flicked before her eyes like the flash of a camera, looking disgusted and confused yet somehow abjectly terrifying as Ami screamed, ‘I SAID I’M DONE! I QUIT!’

Echoes of thunder in the center of a terrifying storm.

But there was no clap here. No lightning, no rain. The cold, too, was slowly fading away. She felt the warmth radiating off of her companion, the heat of her pies mixing into her tummy, and it battled the ice that was trying to form over her heart.

“Yeah…” Ami replied. She dropped her touch away from her breasts, placing the palm on top of her tummy. Her hand curved along with the slope towards the pinch of her love handle. The sapphire piglet… the sapphire sow, gripped her fatness, taking a large, indignant bite of her apple pie.

“I’m jealous of you, Ami.”

The piglet twisted. Their butts were shoved together now, with Ami’s wide hip pushing against her wall while Minori was pressed to the other. Ami stared at the bright garnet, unable to see behind the abrupt appearance of a familiar smile painted on a battered mask. Cracks ran up and down the surface, weathered and beaten, the smile totally unsure as it chomped again at her fourth apple pie.

Minori gulped, and Ami felt almost as if it were her own tummy that shook. “You’re so confident and you really know yourself,” she said without looking. “And you’re pretty, and… well, I’m not sure if you’re really nice or not,” she looked over her shoulder, grinning truthfully, “but you seem like you’d like to be.”

Ami didn’t expect to laugh, but the little glimmer in the red jewel caught her by surprise. She held a hand over her mouth, trying to stifle it, but still smiled. “Why do I get the feeling you’re speaking from experience?”

Minori returned her sloped grin.

Ami sighed, leaning heavier into Minori’s back. She felt the girl adjusting her stance, felt the comfort of her presence as she took the brunt of Ami’s weight without complaint. “Maybe not,” Ami admitted before the other words registered.

Pretty? She was obese. An extra-large piggy squeezed into a size four uniform.

Confident? Even now, she felt as if she were about to start shaking, but there was something there that kept her standing firm. And she realized it was because Minori was smiling.

“I wish I could be like you,” Minori said.

The flame that burned inside Ami Kawashima had nearly gone out. It’d been battered, beaten, kicked apart. The kindling had been stolen, it had had an ice cream sundae tossed over it, and what remained had been struck by a flash of lightning and all but imploded.

But something remained. Something different, changed, yet not unfamiliar.

A swelling blue ember.

Minori needed someone to believe in. So Ami lifted her head, put on a wide cheerful grin, and she told a truthful lie.

“Well, hey! It takes a lot of practice to be like me,” she said, turning fully around. Her hip struggled, caught for a moment, but she backed her butt against the wall and now faced Minori openly. “It’s not something I was just born with. Do you know how hard it is to look this good?”

She tried not to think about how she’d washed stale chocolate fudge out of her hair this morning. Tried not to remember that it’d been months since she’d used conditioner, or any sort of moisturizer, and was honestly lucky that her hair hadn’t started falling out. Her legs and tummy were marked with stretchmarks, packed with sugar and overloaded pastries. Yet Ami still took an extra-large bite of her pie, shoveling the last half into her extra-large mouth for her extra-large belly.

Minori turned around, looking at her with wide, shimmering eyes. Their bellies touched together, spread tight in their small space.

Ami flipped her hair over her back. “I work my ass off each day just to look half this hot.”

Minori looked down at her tummy and whispered, “So many pies…”

Not even a second passed before Ami put her hand on her hip, lifting her hips to poke Minori with her stomach. “Yup! I can eat way more than it looks, too!”

An internal voice began incoherently screaming, but Minori’s eyes went wider still. She reached down, eyes going to chest level, and took another container from her bag, handing it to Ami.

A moment’s hesitation before she laughed. “Oh gosh, Minori,” she hid her face behind the still wrapped container she already held. “You know, I have my own lunch. Would you like to share it?”

Minori numbly nodded, and Ami realized the girl was watching her fat boobs jiggle.

“My eyes are up here, Sunshine!”

Minori suddenly stood stock straight, rays of pink and red flashing through her cheeks with a tiny yelp loosed as she banged Ami’s tummy with her own before staggering back against the wall. “S-sorry, wait no I-I wasn’t!”

Again, Ami giggled, feeling a heady enjoyment. She stepped forward, touching Minori again with her belly. “It’s okay. You’re kind of cute when you’re embarrassed.”

Minori’s face was as bright as her eyes. She tapped her fingers together, shuffling before taking out another pie and holding it up. “To the end of diets!” she cried.

Ami blinked, feeling an overwhelming sense of déjà vu before Minori’s infectious grin spread to her. She raised her treat and knocked it against her companions. “To the end of… eh?”

A pair of blue slip-on shoes poked out from beneath the stall door, attached to the skinniest black stockings Ami had ever seen. Fear suddenly rippled through her belly and she held up her dual stacks of apple pies defensively as the door exploded inward.

“Just what do you two- WHERE DID YOU GET THOSE?!?” Taiga roared, stabbing a finger up towards Ami’s pies.

Ami blanched, her eyes connecting with Minori’s.

“AHHHH!! PUT YOUR SHIRT BACK ON YOU COW!!”

A bundle of white cloth slammed into her face with the fury of a baseball. She stumbled to the side, feeling Minori’s soft chub flop free of her belly, and nearly fell over before catching herself on the back wall. Gooey apple pie filling exploded over her hand.

“Get away from her, Minorin!”

“W-wait! Taiga!!! Ahh!”

Minori was pulled from the stall while Ami pulled herself back up, clutching her shirt over her breasts.

“She’s trying to sink her… her… piggy hooves into you!! She’s the reason you’re… Minorin…” A loud silence followed. “What’s that in your purse?”

“… Eheh,” she heard Minori laugh. “Ummmm… d-did you know that McDonald’s is open 24/7?”