Patrons' Prompt: Hunter's Labor 1 (Patreon)

“Beginning playback.”

A small burst of static sounded from the speaker, briefly eclipsing the sound of the wrapper being torn asunder by fat, piggy fingers. The fingers worked with a mind of their own, but in truth, they were thoughtless pawns.

Unwitting servants to an appetite that was as strong as it was fattening.

Samus’ mind hardly considered the width of her bite. It didn’t care about the ‘reasonable’ amount that a woman should take in as one mouthful, nor what the sugar and empty calories would do to her body. The fingers pushed the sandwich of vanilla cream and chocolate wafers past her lips, reaching almost to the back of her fat-covered throat before her teeth closed, and the loving taste left another mark of chocolate on her already stained lips.

But there was a glint of blue embers inside her languid eyes, watching as the searchlights of her gunship pierced the black midnight to reveal the massive hull of the transport starship.

“H-hello?” the speaker whispered. “Is this… oh, the red light’s blinking, okay.”

Samus took another bite of the sandwich. The blonde woman didn’t fit into her outfit. She didn’t fit into her damn captain’s chair, nor any of the chairs up here on the bridge. Samus’ body was built for her lounge, or rather, had been sculpted by the relaxing area. Pound after pound after pale, fat pound now filled out her body, brought on by the endless days of doing nothing and relishing in the peaceful calm.

Low-light travel gave her plenty of time to watch every program on TV, and to play all the games she could get her piggy hands on. Not those bombastic games, with wannabe heroes shooting big phaser guns that made Samus’ eyes wince until she got a headache. The games she played where those that showed a life she’d never gotten to live.

Games where you settled, built up your home, constructed a barn. Farming, ranching, meeting people and forming connections. Samus enjoyed games where she was able to create something.

That’s where she’d spent hour after hour, day after day, month after month, year after year, until Samus Aran resembled the ice cream she ate, her blue top and matching bottoms the chocolate wafers to her soft body made of creamy sugar.

“Hi,” the voice came up from the speaker.

“Hello, Kelig” Samus replied, knowing the recording couldn’t hear her.

Despite her bloated, bovine appearance, Samus was entirely focused. Her blue eyes glimmered against the sparkling starlight, reflecting an intelligent glow and a wealth of experience. The eyes of a bounty hunter still in her prime.

And the body of a woman who’d spent the last seven years growing increasingly fat.

“S-sorry,” the speaker said after a small hesitation. “I’m… I can’t remember the regulation. I think I’m supposed to start with Ship’s Log?”

Samus exhaled, only slightly aware how the puff allowed her great pale gut to reach all the way out to her fat-laden knees. “It’s a distress signal. You use whatever you can, sweetie.”

The blonde woman held the wrapper up to her double chin, lapping at the cream and the chocolate which had clung to the packaging, waiting for Kelig to find the inscription that surely sat next to the microphone. This was the fourth time she’d heard the message, but she listened again, making a special effort to pay attention to the background.

There was a tiny *bump* from the speaker, which must have been Kelig moving up closer to the desk. When it came back, she was quieter, as if looking down and reading under-her-breath.

“There’s a little bit here. Uhh, okay…” her voice became a touch louder, addressing the microphone. “This is the transportation starship Nosey-Da-Moose. Your rank & your name… oh, umm, Private Kelig Detnar reporting.”

A Private. That didn’t make sense, but Samus had already taken note of that. The ship wasn’t a Federation regular. For starters, it was too big, making Samus’ gunship seem diminutive by comparison. The hull was mostly wide and hard edges with slanted space, looking as if someone had taken the lower deck, flipped it over, and then used that as the top deck as well.

After a moment, Samus tapped a button on the recording to pause it. She brought the wrapper away from her tongue and looked again at the ship’s hull as she passed it by on the long port side.

“Eva,” Samus said, “take us up to be level with the top of the ship.”

“Aye, Miss Aran,” the AI replied.

There was a ten second gap between the reply and her taking action, which was common for the very much not ‘smart’ artificial intelligence. Eva was a program in the simplest terms, nothing more and nothing less. Able to keep a schedule or chart a course, but not exactly competent with situations that were a bit more complex.

Like takeoffs… or landings… or how to keep an irate fat woman from forcing her way into the freezer on day two of her ‘diet.’

Adam would have already caught what Samus had only just noticed. But he’d probably be a smug prick about it.

As the ship pulled back, Samus’ searchlight lit up more of the hull. The slowly drifting vessel was eerily silent, with only a handful of exterior lights.

Kelig had called it The Nosey-Da-Moose, further cementing herself in Samus’ mind as inexperienced, inept, or just plain old stupid. The emergency lights slowly pulsated over the name of The Nostradamus changed the white paint to an unnerving, blood-colored red.

The lack of lighting made the ship’s shape harder to see, but as her gunship pulled away from the hull, Samus struggled to lift out of her chair to get a better look. Then, she struggled more.

Turning down to look at herself, Samus’ fat face was filled with an irritated scowl. The scowl then deepened as she realized that she had looked down for no reason, since her torso completely covered the arms of her chair.

Leaning forward, she gripped one of the beams of her center console and pulled. Gravity had a much, much stronger pull on the near thirty-year-old woman than her arms could possibly muster, so it took a couple seconds before her hips popped free from the seat and the woman rose up onto her bare piggy feet.

The deck of her bridge was too cold on her skin, even though she’d put the heat up to a balmy eighty degrees. One of a few ‘gifts’ she’d been given after being fused with the last DNA of the baby Metroid.

Samus felt herself shiver, which was like placing a mixer on her wobbly white belly. She folded her arms across herself as well as she could, plodding around the center command console and approaching the stairwell to the curved pane of tempered glass that made up the bridge’s viewport.

“Eva, turn us fifteen degrees, starboard.”

“Fifteen degrees starboard, aye.”

Another short pause. Samus waddled to the center of the window, leaning closer. It was freezing here. Even if she knew that the viewport couldn’t actually let in the cold, her mind substituted it in… or maybe that was just the ice cream.

The gunship spun to face the transporter dead on, floating alongside it, and Samus finally understood what she was looking at.

“It’s a ship,” she said. “It’s a naval ship.”

“The vessel does not fit into Federation Navy stand-”

“Not space- ugh…”

Samus groaned as the AI continued about standard starship models. It would be futile to explain, Eva couldn’t learn or retain new information, so Samus just shook her head and talked to herself.

“I meant like on water. Some… screwball, must have taken the blueprints of a… battleship, maybe even a transport ship, and put two of them together. Look,” she pointed, still thinking out loud, “there’s the bridge. Towards the back, like a destroyer. All of the Federation ships have bridges towards the front, but this one’s towards the aft, above the thruster attachment. And I’ll bet that mess at the bottom is where the loading dock is. Maybe even a shuttle port.” She stroked her chin, thinking. “Run another scan searching for other vessels.”

They had run two already, but with tools like Eva, you could never be sure.

She really should just wake up… Reactivate, Adam. He- It, was beyond top of the line. Could think almost as if it was the real thing.

But it wasn’t the real Adam. It unnerved Samus more than she’d like to admit having something like that onboard her ship, but she couldn’t get rid of it either. It was his voice, his mannerism. Hell, it even used his terminology. But Adam was dead, and Samus was alone.

“I’ve found nothing in this region other than this vessel.”

Samus chewed on her lip, thinking. “Wish we had the blueprint. Would at least give me more of an idea about the interior. Eva, scan for signs of life aboard The Nostradamus.”

While the computer worked, Samus put one hand on her hip, using the other to point to the positions and try to figure things out. 

“Loading dock on the bottom. That’d be near… maintenance if they’re smart. Which…”

Well, they built what appeared to be a ship and a half.

The lower section was more complete, with the engines and thrusters attached to the back. It looked as if the top had been cut to make room for a refueling station.

“Whatever they had, they’d upscaled the construction a dozen times over. Looks almost as long as a mile from stern to aft…”

“Multiple life signatures have been detected aboard the Nostradamus. Ten in total.”

Samus nodded. “One in the bridge, the rest are scattered throughout the holds, right?”

“Aye, Miss Samus.”

Her blue eyes turned up to the bridge, as if they could pierce the blast plating which had been drawn over the viewport. If the window was open, she could just ride up to it, flash a light inside, and see if anyone was still alive.

For now, she was left with the chilling knowledge that there could only be one thing inside of the bridge.

Kelig… or the beast.

Lifting a beefy arm to run her fingers through her hair, Samus let out an overweight breath, which then caused a shiver as belly had puffed far enough to reach the cold glass. Her eyes fell down from the faraway bridge to the presumed loading dock.

“Quite a walk…” she respired, flexing her toes. “Hope I’m up for it.”

Scanning the ship, she wondered how many decks there were. At least two, that was obvious, but transport ships could be-

“Are you asking for a medical evaluation?”

The blonde’s blue eyes widened, and then the expression became a very fat glower. She looked at herself, light skin showing in the reflection of the glass. She could see her thick double chin, her hefty breasts, her gigantic belly, and her fatass hips. Her hair fell over her shoulders, largely obscuring the straps of her top, but leaving the totality of her flabby exposed biceps, with an extra roll of fat peeking through the armholes to expose fleshy armpits.

It wasn’t that her body was droopy. Sure, some of it was, like how her biceps bulged, still taking on weight even though there was no more room. However, the outline of Samus flowed outward as it lowered towards her waist and her hips, tucking slightly back in when it reached her thighs then her knees. Apples, pears… overweight pumpkins… The girl in the reflection was too fat to be shaped like a fruit.

Samus Aran was shaped like a bottom-heavy nuclear bombshell.

“No,” she said, leaning back and seeing just how deep her double chin was. “You gave me one last month, after I broke my last diet.”

“You’ve gained five pounds since then, Miss Aran. We can measure your oxygen levels on the treadmill, or I can check your cholesterol-”

“That’s enough, Eva,” Samus exhaled. “We’ve to focus on the mission. We can talk more about another diet later.”

“Aye, Miss Aran.”

Five more pounds. That would put her at…

“You stupid cow…” she murmured, shaking her head.

She missed her reflection having a neck.

“Resume playback of the distress signal.”

She turned and began the long waddle back to her captain’s chair, stopping along the way to kick the six opened wrappers off towards her trash cannister, where they joined two empty boxes and two dozen of their torn-open sisters. Then, noticing the mess and lamenting about the fracture of yet another vow, Samus plodded to the trash and used the nearby table for support.

With her focus on her body, Samus could quickly feel the mounting strain on her arm as she bent down to the floor almost as clearly as she felt the crack of her ass devouring her shorts. She came down onto one knee with an impressive *boof* flattening her weight against the deck. She tugged once on her shorts, which didn’t move, and then gripped the desk so she could roll a bit forward without falling onto her gut, finally able to retrieve the scraps.

As her body tidied up, her mind returned to work on their problem. Through her supporting arm, she felt the subtle vibration cause a jiggle before her speaker once more began broadcasting the signal.

“Private Kelig Detnar reporting,” the diminutive voice returned. “The other members of the crew are dead, including Captain Gunnah… I don’t think the rest of this inscription matters…”

Without seeing the speaker, Samus could almost swear the girl was in the room with her, and began to picture the girl based on her voice. She sounded like a small girl. Wide-eyed and innocent, as most Privates were, but this girl seemed too soft even for that.

Samus stayed on her knee, no longer looking at the trash, just listening for movement and trying to picture the scene.

“T-there’s something on board, okay?” the voice picked up a bit, somewhere between exasperation and clear panic. “One of the animals we were transporting. It got loose and it started… Oh no, I stopped counting. Was I at one-twenty-four or… damnit!”

A louder sound came across, and in Samus’ mind she saw the girl slapping her hands over her mouth.

The voice became quieter again, talking even quicker. “If you’re listening send help, okay? Pretty pretty please with sugar up top. I don’t think it can get through the bridge’s blast doors, but it’s trying. I’ve been able to distract it by opening the other cages, but I think it’s learn…”

Samus could feel her own stomach warble with discomfort, no longer used to the hollow sensation of worry that overcame the big blonde. The silence from the transmission was exceptionally loud, almost as if it were muffling the engine of Samus’ own ship. Straining, Samus heard the smallest ruffle of movement before Kelig’s scream pierced the speaker with enough force to make it tremble, punctuated by the easily recognizable sound of shattering glass.

“My mirror!” Kelig shouted before something else released a ripping shriek.

“Halt playback,” Samus ordered.

The cry continued for a moment before Eva did as commanded.

“Rewind two seconds. Play the scream again.”

“Aye, Miss Samus.”

Another beat passed before Samus heard the glass shatter and Kelig’s worried shout, “My mirror!”

Then, the recording abruptly halted.

Samus’ brow fell in confusion before, angrily, she pulled herself up from her crouch. “Not the girl’s scream,” she clarified, rolling her eyes at the moronic intelligence. “The creature.”

The clip rewound, then played once more. The shattering glass, Kelig’s shout, and then the shriek that sliced through the air like a raptor’s cry. It was undoubtedly bird-like, but it could be any number of things. It was a big galaxy.

Once you kill enough monsters, they all start to sound like same draconic screech.

“Continue playback,” Samus instructed, and the speaker emitted a terrific crash.

She pictured the small girl at the communication’s console. Kelig, hammered on the controls while she screamed, “Send it! Send it send it send it send-” before the voice cut out.

“End transmission,” Eva said.

“Eva, bring us down to the bottom, then switch over to manual controls. We’ll check out the loading dock and see if I can get you into the ship’s system.”

“Aye, Miss Aran.”

Samus nodded to herself, then walked past her captain’s chair to make for her bedroom. She’d need her holster, if the thing even fit. Her blaster… there wasn’t a chance in hell she’d fit into her armor, and a long glance at her stomach made her rule out the Zero Suit.

She still had to get the suit fixed after having the brilliant idea of trying to use it as an insulator because she couldn’t fit her hips into her pajamas.

Samus knew she wasn’t stupid. But, sometimes, she sure felt like she was.

Maybe she could use her arm canon. That didn’t necessarily have a size limit, right? If she could mash her arm into the socket, then she might be able to-

No. She couldn’t risk that. Breaking that would be even more expensive than having it upsized, and that was already something Samus couldn’t afford.

She passed through the lounge, stopping to snag a single cream pie out the stash of dry snacks she kept on the table next to the giant divot that had once been a couch. Her fingers unwrapped the chocolatey snack and she brought it up to her lips, barely aware of the flavor as she heedlessly added more mass to the mountain.

A more pragmatic part of her wondered if this job would have any reward. The transport clearly belonged to somebody. A logistics company, or an interplanetary shipping agency. They’d pay handsomely for recovering the transport. Might even pay more if Samus managed not to kill everything onboard.

Some people always ask a little too much.

However, beneath the knowledge that she had a ship to fuel and a stomach to feed, Samus felt something stirring. Beneath the sugar highs and the achy lows, beneath the weeks of loafing around in her lounge, Samus felt an emotion that she’d almost forgotten.

Anticipation.

She hoped that Kelig was alright. Her voice, her mannerisms, they all screamed to Samus that the Private was less than a rookie. She was green as grass, and grass doesn’t grow too well on its own stranded on a ship in the middle of space.

Samus was not a rescue specialist. She was a bounty hunter. She killed monsters, back when there were more monsters to kill. Apparently, the thing on the ship didn’t yet realize it was supposed to be extinct, but Samus would be glad to help it along. However, it was exceedingly rare that the hunter would ever have to deal with an… aftermath.

A survivor. If there was such a thing in this peace-packed galaxy besides Miss Samus Aran. If the girl was alive, she must have access to some form of water. Maybe even food, if she was lucky, but if the Private was lucky than she probably wouldn’t be on the dead ship.

Plan to be unlucky.

“Boots,” Samus breathed through a mouthful of cream, not noticing the smattering of chocolate crumbs that popped over her lips and rolled off her body.

Boots, blaster, holster, canteen, first-aid. If the girl was knocked out, or hurt and couldn’t be moved, it would be too far for Samus to carry her back to the ship. If nothing else, she had to be able to stabilize her.

Which meant she’d have to hope her first-aid pack could fit over her waist.

That thought turned into something that her selfish body was glad to indulge. Surely there would be food on the ship, likely still fresh in the fridges and freezers of a fully-stocked galley. If Kelig was hungry, Samus should at least be able to get her to the cafeteria…

Get aboard, fry the beast, save the girl. Then, sit down to have dinner in a floating graveyard. And pray to God that everything doesn’t start blowing up.

She swallowed a mouthful of her chocolate cream pie, shoving the last of the treat in all at once and then licking her fingers as she reached her bedroom. The door opened automatically and Samus crossed over the threshold…

Until she was forced to stop when her hips smacked either side with a quivering *pomp!*

Samus looked down. Rolling white hills were illuminated by the soft, welcoming dimness of her comfy bedroom, with a deep crevasse on either side of her waist where her pair of fatty love handles had permanently formed. She twisted a little, seeing where the weight folded into her back before rolling over a rear that was so large that it had formed a full shelf, with a doughy width extending just past either side of the steel doorway.

“You’ve got to be kidding…”

Samus grunted, moving one hammy leg to cross in front of the other. She felt the subtle squeeze lift up her sides and pinch her immensely round cheeks together, before she was finally released and allowed to stagger into her room.

Her heavy footfall became a slapping plod as she stomped over to her dresser and mirror, blue eyes glimmering in the soft light.

“Unbelievable,” she hissed at her reflection, though she was talking to the overweight missile that had once been slender hips and a strong middle, the rebellious blonde balloon who still had chocolate staining her lips. “Clothing, fine, but you can’t outgrow the ship, Samus!”

With a weary breath and a creamy puff, the blonde shook her head, poking her stomach.

Her tone became softer, more of a whine than bubbling anger. “I’ve got to make sure Eva limits me again. Every time I let you go over forty-five hundred calories a day…”

Wiping at her face, Samus pulled back her fingers to inspect how dirty she’d gotten this time. It wasn’t atrocious. More of a dusting of chocolate on her peachy plumpness, which she allowed herself to lick clean. Then, realizing that small act was exactly the attitude that had become her huge problem, Samus stomped one of her fleshy feet on the ground, and returned to her preparation.

With a grunt, the woman pulled the top right drawer on her dresser. Her blaster sat inside of a foam container, with the hip-holster set just beneath it. She took both out, then snagged a hair tie off of one of her stands.

In silence, with movement, Samus felt the frustration growing. It became hotter, like the furnace that pumped the constant sweat to where her skin folded together, the furnace which whined and wheezed and broiled.

Six-hundred-and-twenty-seven pounds.

How, the hell, was she still gaining weight?!

The less mature, overly fed, part of Samus wanted to scream. To cuss and to shout and to break her own mirror.

Rather, as if taking all of that frustration by its fat-covered throat, Samus strangled it inside of her lungs. She could feel herself growing hotter, physically rising as the temperature made her movements quicker, more aggravated.

Five-hundred pounds was a quarter of a ton. And she’d let herself grow more than a hundred pounds past. ‘Laugh, and grow fat.’

She couldn’t wait to shoot whatever was on that ship right in its damn face.

Color had ebbed over her cheeks, from the embarrassing pink to a strenuous red, and the sweat that’d begun to form made her more and more miffed as the woman struggled just to get ‘dressed.’

She couldn’t be bothered to peel herself out of her top or her bottoms. Nothing else fit any better, and if she changed now, she’d rather stop in the shower to clean the exertion she could feel beneath her huge arms and between her much thicker thighs. Instead, Samus fought with the nylon belt of her holster, tugging it wider and wider but to zero avail.

The hip-holster couldn’t be mounted on Samus’ hips, nor her waist, even when she tried tying it above her fat ass and through her love handles.

A single thigh stretched the belt to maximum capacity, a sized which the holster had helpfully labeled fit for ‘Plus-sized Hips.’

There were a lot of big girls out there in the galaxy. Samus Aran was now twice their size.

The stranglehold of heat in her chest was escaping, a low string of curses coming out of her mouth as she shoved her blaster into the holster, then a louder, “GAH! Sonuva…” hissed from between her gritted teeth when the pistol pinched the lip of thigh fat that spilled over the top of the belt.

Samus rubbed at the area, pink cheeks pouting and sweaty bangs fuming.

She snatched at her hair, growling, “- can’t believe you. Do you even know what a plateau is?!”

Her tummy responded with a warble that tried to inject the taste of chocolate, still clinging to her tongue, to appease the big beauty. The vanilla ice cream returned to her mind, immediately melting against the heat of her anger… but Samus had drank warm ice cream before.

Grunting, she patted at her hips, sending a rippling jiggle through her belly and breasts. She’d meant to grab another one of the sandwiches earlier, but she’d been caught up with cleaning. She still had more in the cooler back at the bridge. She could have one or two, help her calm down. Then, she’d park the gunship, and see if her ass could fit out the damn door.

With a final look in the mirror, seeing the mess that she’d made of her hair alongside the pink in her cheeks and the frown on her lips, Samus instead put her hands on the dresser. She couldn’t do so without her stomach slapping down on the top, but she tried really hard not to notice that bit.

Samus closed her eyes and forced herself to pause. To breathe and relax. After that, she checked her holster, saw that it wasn’t about to slide down her thigh. She checked the blaster, ensuring that it could still hold a charge. A flick of her wrist sent an orange plasma whip flashing out across her bedroom, the first use of the weapon in nearly four years.

When she put it back into the holster, she did so carefully, pressing into her thigh before sliding the pistol down. Then, she undid the rat nest that she’d made of her hair. Long blonde waves slowly shifted out as she pulled the tie free, falling over her back and her shoulders. Golden wheat on porcelain skin, her hair reached down past even her waist.

When she looked at herself, Samus didn’t look angry. She looked upset. Tired, sad. Her messy hair was too long, her chaotic curves far too swollen and fat.

But she was here. Nobody traveled at low light anymore. Nobody else would have found The Nosey-Da… The Nostradamus. There was a little green girl on the ship who was waiting for a hero.

But she’d have to settle for Samus instead.

She took her time correcting her hair, using both hands to pull gold tight around the back of her head, then held it pinched there with her left arm. Her right flipped the long braid over her shoulder, letting her work the red hair tie over and bring it all the way up to the back of her scalp.

When she finished, she felt better. She even looked a bit better, a soft body in the soft bedroom light. Her outfit didn’t fit, but she no longer cared. She’d probably look worse if she tried to hide her thighs or her love handles, her wide and deep belly button or the lips of fat that rolled over her knees.

This way, people saw what they got.

Six-and-a-half feet of butterball bliss.

Samus chuffed, jiggling her stomach before shaking her head and moving for the door.

“Come on, big girl. We’ve got work to do.”

If nothing else, at least the massive ship wouldn’t be such a tight fit.