FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

It was a clear night. The stars were out, the moon was “new,” and the insects were singing.

It was the perfect night for camping— if camping meant “roosting in a tree and falling asleep.”

Just outside the mushroom forest they called their home, Kona, the three foot tall bird, was nestled on a branch and fluffed up in their own wings. Their eyes were closed, their breathing was steady, and they looked at peace.

That peace was interrupted as a green light was shone into their face. Their expression scrunched up, and after stirring a bit they opened their eyes.

Staring at them was a bright green pixelated face. Its mouth jittered as it spoke up in a digitized, semi-robotic voice. “Hello!”

Kona squawked in terror and fell off of their perch, tumbling to the ground in a heap.

The face belonged to a green, half-organic, half-robot rabbitoid creature. It had a metal chest piece, shoulders, thighs, and legs that were extended like stilts to allow it to reach the branch the bird was perched on.

The cyborg retracted its legs, returning to its default height of three feet tall. It looked down at the bird, staring them down before a horizontal line of light traveled up and down its face.

“My scans indicate you are not injured… and your body is strange! Are you made of nanites?” It tilted its head, making its lop-ears sway a bit. “Wait, no…” It trilled a bit, looking as though it was thinking. “… slime!"

Kona scrambled up into a sitting position, panting a bit as they looked up at the stranger. “How did you- … what are you?”

“I’m Max! It’s an acronym. Have you never seen a protogen before?” It offered a hand to help them up— then retracted it upon realizing they didn’t have hands to accept its offer.

They stood up on their own and dusted themselves off, looking over at the similarly sized creature. “What do you want?”

“I find organic creatures fascinating,” it responded. “You’re an interesting specimen!”

They recoiled a bit at being referred to as a “specimen.”

“Are you a barrista?” it inquired, undeterred.

“… no?” The bird ruffled their feathers a bit, narrowing their eyes at the creature’s incessant inquiries.

“I suppose it would be difficult to make coffee without hands.” It stepped closer, sniffing in their direction. “Your scent, though…”

“Whaaaat are you doing?” They were growing more and more uncomfortable with the protogen’s strange behavior. They considered just taking off, flying away from it, but tolerated its interrogation for the time being.

“Do you taste like coffee, too?” It stepped closer again. At this point they could feel the warmth radiating off of its body, and hear the soft whirring of its robotic legs as it bounced gently with apparent excitement.

That was enough! They threw their wings to the side, preparing to take off.

They couldn’t.

Reacting with the speed one might expect from a cyborg, it grabbed their shoulders with its hands, and threw its legs around their abdomen.

Its legs extended, starting to coil around the bird’s waist and legs until they fell to the ground in an entangled mess.

They flapped and thrashed in a panic, sending a few stray feathers into the air around them as they tried to push the rabbitoid off of them. “L-let go of me! Get off!”

Max refused, hugging its arms around them and touching its screen-face to their beak. It gave off a static fuzz similar to a CRT screen. “I’m very sorry, but I can’t pass up an opportunity like this.” Its tone had shifted. Its playful curiosity was gone, and it sounded almost dour with its admission.

“What do you mean!?” the bird squawked at their captor, still giving the occasional, futile flap.

“You’re so small! Your bodily structure is also rather flexible! If my calculations are correct… you’ll fit.”

Its digital expression changed from an absent smile to a devilish grin.

Kona’s eyes went wide as the protogen’s screen formed an opening along the pixelated line that made up its “mouth", then opened into a sort of “beak” of its own. Saliva dribbled onto their face. Its mouth flesh had an eerie green glow to match its digital face.

Squinting at the light, Kona found their beak snapped shut as Max lunged forward and engulfed it in its jaws. They tried to scream for help, to beg it to let them go, even just to squawk in desperation, but the tip of their beak was lodged in the little rabbit’s throat.

They couldn’t even pull their head back, as its absurdly long tongue had curled out around it and wrapped tight to lock it in place and keep them from escaping.

Max continued to speak, not seeming to need its mouth to do so. It started to drool profusely. The bird had a candy-like blue raspberry flavor, completely unexpected given their scent. “You’re delicious! It’s going to be… uncomfortable, but I’m confident I can pull it off! It was very nice to meet you. Goodbye!”

Then, it swallowed. Their beak plunged several inches into its throat and brought them eyes-deep into its jaws. Saliva was dribbling down their head and over their shoulders now, soaking into their fur and feathers alike.

They closed their eyes in terror. Several thoughts rushing through their panicking mind.

“Rabbits don’t eat birds!”

“People don’t eat people!”

“I won’t FIT!”

Each point was being disproven as Max’s jaws slowly, but steadily started to creep over their head. The pressure caused their body to deform a bit, until with a fleshy pop, their head was completely tucked away into its throat.

Max flinched, its neck swelled out almost painfully around the obstruction of another person’s head. Admittedly, this was a first. It had never taken in something this big, but the desire of its appetite couldn’t be ignored. A chance to be this full couldn’t be passed up.

Steeling itself against the discomfort, it continued. Finding Kona’s shoulders to be a bit of an obstacle, the protogen loosened its leg-coils and threw a few loops around them. It began to reel its legs in again, pulling Kona’s body impossibly tight to compress their shoulders together.

Just as it had calculated, they didn’t pop, they didn’t break, they were squeezing like a stress toy and before long, Max was able to push down and stretch its relatively inflexible jaws over Kona’s shoulders.

With one of the wider portions of their body tucked in, it was now just a matter of squeezing and swallowing the rest down. Saliva poured down Kona’s back. Their sweet, blue raspberry flavor was driving Max’s appetite wild. Fortunately for it, this meant lubrication was handled and it could make progress that much more easily.

Kona’s body was tugged as the protogen’s throat rippled and clenched at them. The suction it created was starting to draw them in, pulling them deeper into the small rabbitoid’s gullet with each rolling gulp.

At a painfully slow pace, Kona was starting to disappear down Max’s throat. They were powerless to stop it, coiled up so tightly. If their mind wasn’t preoccupied with the horror of being swallowed whole, their next biggest worry was how tight they were being squeezed. Between feeling crushed by the fleshy walls dragging them inside, and how tightly Max’s leg-extensions were constricting them, they were starting to worry their slime-based body might just pop; splattering into several pieces like someone squeezed a fistful of gelatin.

They were still up in the air as to whether staying intact was fortunate, given the circumstances. They continued to fruitlessly wriggle and fight as their beak pushed up against the entrance of Max’s stomach. The bird flinched at this, getting a dreadful sense of finality that it was really happening. They were being eaten!

Max, meanwhile, was enjoying itself quite a bit. Between the flavor of its meal, the delightful feeling of fullness, and even the stimulation to its stomach entrance from Kona’s beak, it had trouble containing its excitement. Happy trills emitted from the protogen as it enjoyed itself. Loop after loop of the coiled leg extensions began to loosen and fall away from Kona’s body as more of it was forcibly crammed into the too-small embrace of the rabbitoid’s throat.

The bird was starting to curl up inside the protogen now. Their upper body was beginning to expand out and stretch the rabbitoid’s stomach, first simply filling it out like a big meal, but as their waist approached the chamber, things were starting to get more and more uncomfortable.

The protogen had to pause for a moment. Its stomach was swelling, so much so that it was pressing against both its groin-plate and chest piece as Kona’s legs were knee-deep in its jaws. For a few seconds it just stood there, ruminating on its calculations in its head as drool dribbled freely onto the ground beneath it.

Max gave itself a little mental pep-talk and resumed its meal. By now its legs had retracted completely, and it rose up onto its knees. Tipping its head back, Max’s tongue snaked out around Kona’s calves and, paired with some energetic gulping, began to drag them deeper into its gullet.

At an agonizingly slow pace, now, Kona was gradually starting to disappear into the protogen. Their legs kicked, their feet grasped, and none of it made a difference as the rabbit tried with all its might to pack them away.

By the time Max was at Kona’s ankles, it felt a bit queasy. Its stomach had never been this full. Without its hammerspace trickery, it was limited to just what its body could pull off, and it was approaching its absolute limit. The protogen didn’t think it was going to burst or injure itself, but it was starting to get creeping doubts about whether it could fit the bird all the way inside or not.

Looking down at Kona’s feet, it flicked its tongue out across their pads a few times. This prompted a little extra squirming. The bird barely had enough room to shift around inside the protogen. With just their feet free, they tried in desperation to latch their toes onto Max’s bottom “jaw” and hold it tight, as if to stop their progress into it.

Max actually chuckled at this. It used its tongue to lazily push at and pluck Kona’s toes, one by one, from grasping onto its visor. Each digit was wrenched free, pulled into its mouth and drenched in the cascade of drool that was still pouring out of its mouth.

Finally, the protogen snapped its visor shut. Max’s mouth disappeared as the visor fused back into a single piece, leaving the bird completely trapped within its body. Feeling this happen, Kona’s panic went into overdrive. They kicked, they thrashed, they squawked for help. Their toes scraped at the uniform walls of Max’s inner mouth, desperately searching for an opening that simply didn’t exist anymore.

Its body was rocking from the motion inside. Despite how tightly packed Kona was, they were still finding enough leverage to shift and twist around inside. This reassured the protogen, it meant there was still some room inside its stomach.

Starting to swallow more and more forcefully, Max’s tongue coiled around Kona’s feet and bound them together. Their toes were essentially tied up in the rabbit’s overly long tongue and being pushed toward the back of its throat.

As slow as ever, more of Kona’s body was packed into Max’s stomach. Their toes finally slipped over the back of its tongue and inched down out of sight after lingering in place for a few seconds.

One of Max’s hands crept up to its neck, and the other rest atop its tightly distended belly. It gave a few exploratory rubs, almost in admiration of what it had done as it felt its skin pulled tighter, each swallow bringing Kona closer to their fate.

Eventually, the neck bulge sunk far enough as to disappear behind its chest piece. It no longer had to swallow, the “smooth” muscles in its lower esophagus would do the rest.

Kona was nearly maxed out as far as how hard they were panicking. They were almost entirely in the rabbitoid’s stomach at this point, and could feel the walls kneading their feet closer and closer until, with a fleshy squelch, they joined the rest of them in the mostly smoothed-out walls surrounding them.

A loud squawk of terror emitted from the rabbit’s midsection. Its belly tossed and wriggled, nearly throwing it off-balance as it grasped both hands around its gut to keep it steady. The protogen started to pant after parting its visor just enough to do so. Its tongue hung out of its mouth by a few inches, still drooling like a hungry animal as it felt its prey thrashing for their life.

“Let me out! Please!” the bird cried out in desperation, kicking and rocking at the walls containing them. “What was… Max! MAX! MAX PLEASE!” Their pleas continued, interrupted by the occasional squawk.

Slime was beginning to coat their body. The stomach was “normal” despite being part of a cyborg. They expected RGB lights, maybe metal components or something— but it was just a stomach; a very real one, and they were trapped inside it.

The walls, which were pulled nearly drum tight, began to churn around them. The chamber grew more slimy, but only so much as to further coat its contents. There was no cartoony pool of slime at the bottom, at least not yet; just a constant oozing of gastric juices that were beginning to have an effect on the slime-bird.

They realized after a few minutes of struggling that they were starting to feel wetter; not just from the juices gradually soaking their body, but their body itself was beginning to soften, to drip like a popsicle left in the sun.

The bird’s panic was pushed further at this realization. This was really happening, they were being digested! They began to kick and twist more furiously, creating temporary lumps on Max’s stomach before its elasticity snapped them back into a ball. They tried pecking, but didn’t have enough room to do more than gently bump it against Max’s stomach lining.

The protogen began to coo with delight. It wrapped its arms around its distended, squirming gut and smiled devilishly. “Ooh… That feels nice! Keep doing that!”

Kona was starting to run out of steam. They were fighting for their life, putting all of their energy in to ultimately futile struggles as more and more of their body was beginning to liquefy and pool beneath them.

The bird didn’t need to breathe. Slime had no need to do so. Unfortunately, this meant they wouldn’t asphyxiate or drown. They were in for the “long haul” and were quickly coming to terms with the fact that they were going to dissolve, and they’d be conscious for the entire process until there was nothing left of them but blue soup.

The process was carrying on without mercy. Patches of fur and feathers were beginning to fizzle away. The bird whimpered helplessly, unable to see in the darkness of the protogen’s stomach, but clearly able to feel their body being eaten away. In the very least, the process was painless.

Max, through all of this, was a flustered mess. Slumped down on its knees, arms wrapped around its gut, it was drooling all over itself as it groaned and rubbed over its thrashing, taut midsection. It fruitlessly wiped its visor of the drool that was still dribbling out of it, only for it to be replaced by more.

The protogen gave a satisfied groan as its belly churned and groaned in protest around such a massive meal. Truthfully this was the most full it had been in its entire life. Having taken Kona in at full size, even Max was impressed with itself.

It yawned a bit, feeling the drowsiness associated with overindulging in food, as well as a strange feeling starting to creep into its mind as it digested the bird.

Kona was miserable. Their body was softening, they were becoming more fluid than solid with each passing second. The oppressive heat and pressure of Max’s body was unrelenting. Despite this, they were still conscious and very much aware of what was happening to them. They didn’t have the energy to fight anymore. Their limbs were getting weaker and becoming less capable of even pushing at the outer walls.

They tried again to push outward, to stretch their surroundings out and give themselves a little bit of “breathing” room as the slimy walls churned around them. They were beginning to come undone. The outermost layer of their body was starting to break away in areas and reveal the dense slime that made up their insides.

Kona shrieked one last time in horror as their wing, softened by the digestive process, folded over on itself and came loose; falling away and sinking into the growing pool of soup they were rapidly being reduced into.

Max began to lean back, growing incrementally more dizzy as something started to hit it. Unbeknownst to the protogen, Kona’s body carried a dose of one, perhaps more strains of hallucinogens from the mushrooms they enjoyed so much. The protogen started to giggle, falling onto its back and making its gut jostle and slosh.

The feel of its belly pressing down on its abdomen filled the protogen with joy. It eagerly mushed and kneaded at its noisy gut, beginning to pant with excitement as it felt its contents soften and shift around under the pressure.

It looked up at the stars, seeing them begin to twinkle and lose focus. They seemed to glimmer with varying shades of color. Everything seemed more colorful. Max didn’t realize it, but its pixelated face was starting to shift in hue, from green, to blue, to red, and cycling between all shades in between as though it had become part gaming PC.

The little protogen admired its hands for a few seconds, cooing in awe at the colors shining off of them as its body’s electronic illumination lit up its surroundings with an artificial cascade of light.

As more and more of Kona’s body was dissolved and absorbed, the effect was growing stronger by the minute.

They had stopped struggling at this point. There wasn’t enough of them left to push at the walls. Their body was almost entirely reduced to liquid in the time since entering Max’s stomach between the acidity and the constant pressure of its kneading walls.

Their consciousness was starting to fade. They were just a barely sentient mass of slime inside the rabbitoid’s body; floating in the liquefied remnants of their goo-based body until the acidity of the cyborg’s digestive system finally homogenized its stomach contents into a thick soup of its former occupant.

They were just nutrients, to be absorbed and converted into fuel as their hallucinogens crept into Max’s body and entered its bloodstream to further its trip.

Max continued to press and knead at its stomach, groaning with a little discomfort at how tight it was. Still, it felt happy; even euphoric. It was so very full, and that was great.

It grinned with delight as it could notice the gradual reduction in size as Kona’s liquefied remnants were starting to slowly drain into its guts. The sensation was heavenly, relieving the pressure in its stomach and gradually flooding its depths with warmth.

The protogen very slowly rose to a sitting position, wobbling a bit as it tried in vain to clear its head. That wasn’t happening, but eventually it found the will to try and stand.

It took a bit. Max swayed, stumbled and caught itself several times before finding its footing and digging its toes into the dirt. It paused, looking down at the feathers Kona had left behind from their desperate struggles.

To Max’s fascination, or possibly horror, the feathers melted. The resulting slime began to slowly jitter and approach its neighboring globs as it coalesced into a singular mass.

The rabbitoid took this as a sign to leave. It wasn’t scared, per se, but felt unsettled enough by the display that it very quickly came to the realization that there was something “funny” in that bird and it was having an experience.

Rising up to its feet, it looked at its hands again, giving a little groan of dismay as they too seemed to be melting. It waved them back and forth, expecting drops to come off, but they simply shifted and rippled in its vision.

Writing off both the feathers and itself melting as drug-induced hallucinations, it began wandering through the woods. The darkness of the night was fought off by the bright light emanating from Max’s face, shoulder and thigh icons.

With each step of its mechanical feet, Max’s gut swung side to side, giving a wet slosh each time. The protogen, though distracted by its growing drug trip, was still occasionally giving its swollen tummy the occasional grope or fondle.

The full color spectrum illuminating the surrounding plants and trees was doing wonders for the protogen’s trip. Its vacant stare had gone even wider, its jagged smile was broadened. Its face even jittered and glitched on occasion.

Max flinched a bit as a bright light shone in front of its face.

It was a warning on its HUD, but it was too blurry to read. Several more appeared.

Giving a little groan of dismay, it swiped at the air as though the notifications were a physical thing that could be pushed away.

It closed its eyes and shook its head as if trying to free itself from the flashing warnings it was getting. To its surprise, this seemed to work. When it opened its eyes again, the notifications were gone, and the pretty colors were back.

The protogen gave a little sigh of relief, taking another second to admire the colors reflecting off of its hands.

A realization hit. Max couldn’t feel its legs.

Looking down with alarm, it saw that they were, in fact, still there— after leaning over to look around its rounded belly. Being fully robotic, the limbs didn’t “feel” like organic limbs; only providing very rudimentary sensations of pressure and proprioception to work as prosthetics.

Max gave its toes a test wiggle. The metal digits whirred softly, still fully reactive to its efforts.

With another sigh of relief, the rabbitoid continued on its aimless wandering. The landscape was starting to change. The trees were growing thinner, and mushrooms were beginning to replace them.

At first, the fungus surrounding the protogen was simply bigger than standard mushrooms, but as it wandered further, they were growing larger and larger. Not literally growing, but to Max’s perception that was what was happening.

The rabbitoid started to pant. The mushrooms were huge, as big as the trees it had been looking at just a few minutes prior.

Max stopped for a moment, beginning to pant as it looked up at the enormous fungus. “Why am I so small? What was in that slime…?” it mused to itself as it began to walk again. The crickets were singing, and Max was, for a moment, enjoying their trilling songs.

Its eager tummy rubbing resumed at this point. The rabbitoid would occasionally lift its gut, then let it drop and bounce with a resulting slosh or gurgle, prompting a mindless giggle in response each time.

It stopped again, looking around. “Bugs must be huge now…” Beginning to hyperventilate, its eyes widened even further. “Spiders must be huge… Oh no… OH NO!” The lights dancing off of its body were casting shadows on the surroundings— shadows that began to spook the rabbitoid.

Giving a little whimper of terror, Max activated its leg extensions. It took a second to recover its balance, then took off into a sprint. Between the length of its legs and their springy consistency, it was able to reach a rather impressive speed as it bounded through the mushroom forest, fleeing in terror from perceived spiders.

Max’s belly rolled and bounced around with each step, sounding like an enormous water balloon.

—

The feathers Kona had left behind, now congealed into a single blob of slime, were on the move. It wasn’t a drug hallucination, but in fact the slime creature’s salvation, in a sense.

The baseball-sized ooze crept around the floor of the woods in search of one thing: food. It was taking in everything it could possibly absorb as it slid around on the grass. Mushrooms, wild vegetables, edible flowers, even insects unfortunate enough to be caught by it.

With each meal, it was beginning to grow larger. With time, higher thoughts started to come back. Its desperate hunt for calories began to grow more specific, the blob was slithering up trees in search of fruit, oozing over downed logs for mushrooms, even oozing its way through plants to get at their nutritious roots.

As the hours passed, and it grew in size, it started to develop facial features; eyes, a beak, and even feathery protrusions. With the addition of yet more calories, complex thoughts started to form before, finally, in a moment of realization it suddenly remembered who it was.

Kona, having achieved sentience once again, grew increasingly picky about what they ate. Still, the forest was bountiful, and there was no shortage of food to forage and add to their growing, slimy mass.

—

As Max ran full-tilt through the mushroom forest, it darted its head side to side in search of “giant” spiders. In the process, it failed to notice a sizeable rock in its path that caught its foot, sending it tumbling to the ground and into a tangled mess of its cable-like leg extensions.

Max screamed at this point, thrashing on the ground and trying to push what it thought was spider webbing off of itself. “NO! NOOO! HELP! HEEEELP!”

After a moment, it came to the realization that it was wrestling with its own legs. Taking a few seconds to disentangle them, it retracted its legs back into their sockets and shakily rose back up to its feet. It reflexively held its belly by the underside with both hands, giving the visual cue of a pregnant person for a moment. Feeling over its gut, it gave a few gentle presses into its fluid-filled mass and tilted its head, as if confused as to why its gut was so big.

In an attempt to get its bearings, it looked around and spotted a curious sight. The enormous mushrooms that had surrounded it were thinned out in this area. It was more open, still dotted with the massive fungus, but these mushrooms were different.

They had windows. They had chimney spouts. A few even had lights shining inside. It was some manner of mushroom village the protogen had ended up in.

A sense of intense relief washed over the rabbitoid. “Oh thank goodness…” it muttered between labored breaths. “The Smurfs… They’ll protect me from the spiders!” It stumbled for a moment, groaning at the weight in its abdomen.

Its belly was a bit smaller at this point; having processed a decent amount of the bird he’d so callously swallowed several hours ago. Still, it felt uncomfortably full as its liquid-filled belly sloshed with each step.

Seeking out a house with the lights on, Max tried knocking on several homes until, finally, one answered.

An older raccoon, one of the few nocturnal residents to actually be up at this hour, looked down with confusion at the protogen, tilting their head. “Err… Hi?”

Max’s electronic components were still lazily cycling through the color spectrum. Its face had a distinctly panicked, drunken expression on it as it latched onto the raccoon’s waist and started babbling incoherently about giant spiders.

The raccoon threw their arms up in surprise, looking around as if worried someone would see this bizarre exchange taking place, before reluctantly placing a hand on Max’s shoulder. “Hey, hey, hey. It’s okay. It’s okay. There’s no spiders here. No spiders.” They reached down and lifted Max’s head by the chin, trying to read its pixelated facial features. “Did you get into something? What did you eat?”

Max stared up at the raccoon for a moment, feeling a growing sense of relief at their reassurance. It tried to think, closing its eyes and rummaging through the absolute mess that was its memories of the previous hours. Between the hallucinogens still addling its brain, and the data from its scans and diagnostics being corrupted by their influence, it was drawing a blank.

It gave a few experimental slaps to its shrinking gut, listening to it slosh and trying its best to remember what exactly was in there. It felt nice, that much it was sure of, but what had it eaten?

It got a brief flash of Kona’s markings, then looked up at the raccoon again. “They were… blue?”

The raccoon’s face shifted to one of understanding. “Ohhh, okay. The blue mushrooms. My neighbor loves them.” They recoiled as they looked down at the rabbitoid’s distended belly, eyes going wide in shock. “Good gracious, how much did you eat!?”

The protogen looked down at its gut, giving it another little test poke. “I … I don’t know? A lot, I guess? I feel… melty… and weird? So good though… I kind of want more…”

“Okay, uh… Come inside, I think I have some trazodone. It’ll be okay, you’re safe little guy.” The raccoon stepped inside and guided Max in with them.

Max held the leg of their pants and followed them inside. It looked around at the interior of the mushroom home as they ascended the stairs to the spacious cap at the top where the majority of the expected furnishings were found.

The rabbitoid was gently placed atop the raccoon’s couch. “Wait here, okay? I’m not going far. I’m going to get you some medicine that will help.”

Nodding softly, Max began fondling over the couch cushions and admiring how soft the fabric felt. It lazily kicked its feet, wriggling its toes and listening to the soft whirring its mechanical legs made. Its attention then returned to its belly. It kneaded into its sides, rolling it around and sloshing its liquid contents around. Giving a soft coo of satisfaction, it leaned down and tried to give its swollen belly a hug.

After a few moments, the raccoon returned with a pill bottle a glass of water. “I’m not sure how much to give you, you’re tiny but… apparently part robot? Maybe just one or tw-” They were cut off as Max snatched the bottle of pills and emptied it into its mouth, trying to chew them despite its lack of teeth.

Its animated face glitched out. It shook a bit, then grabbed the water and flushed the mass of medication down its throat. “UGH! That candy was GROSS!” Max grimaced and poked its tongue out of the gap in its visor.

“That wasn’t… I really hope you’re going to be okay. Let’s just…” the raccoon gently guided Max to lay down, then pulled the throw blanket off the back of the couch and covered the rabbitoid. They sat down next to it, intent to keep an eye on the strange creature. After about half an hour, Max was soundly asleep.

As the hours passed, Max’s belly gurgled and groaned away, shrinking down inch by inch as its body processed its massive meal into fuel and a modest amount of padding on its gut.

—

Hours later, the sun had come up, the villagers had become active, and Max was finally starting to stir, looking up from the couch at the raccoon that “rescued” it.

The raccoon was fast asleep, one hand laid over the protogen’s chest. As it woke up, they too stirred and opened their eyes. “Hey… How are you feeling?”

Max sat up, groaning a bit and holding its head. Its facial features were solid green again, its shoulder and thigh icons had stabilized as well, back to displaying a static image of a plant. Despite the headache, it felt like it was finally starting to get back to normal.

The previous night was a blur. It remembered eating something sweet, colors, the wind blowing its ears back, getting tangled in its legs, finding the village; and running from spiders… but the details were fuzzy, and the events all felt disconnected.

Its belly had also reduced in size considerably. It was still noticeably swollen, but didn’t feel full to bursting anymore as its body had processed a great deal of the former bird into fuel for its energy stores.

It wasn’t much, but Max was visibly chubbier. Its swollen belly had acquired a thin layer of “pudge,” its hips had developed very modest “love handles,” and while it was covered by an armored plate; its butt had thickened a bit.

The hallucinogens also seemed to have stopped affecting the protogen’s body. The enormous dose of trazodone was filling it with a sense of calm, and being a cyborg it seemed as though it was resistant to overdose despite how much of both the hallucinogen and antidepressant it had loaded itself up with.

“My head feels… wobbly. Things still feel a little … not real, but I think I’m getting better. Did you save me from the spiders?” Max looked up at the raccoon.

The raccoon shook their head, giving the rabbitoid a little pat on the top of its head. “There weren’t any spiders. You had WAY too many mushrooms and were having a bad trip.”

Max looked down at its belly and gave it a little poke, tilting its head. “Is that what… Okay, I guess that makes sense…”

Both of them perked and looked to the window as there was some sort of commotion outside.

Shaking the sleepiness off, the raccoon headed downstairs with Max following closely behind.

Opening the door, they were greeted by the sight of their neighbors staring in fascination and perhaps horror as Kona— now a spherical, feathery blob of their former self, was gradually sliding through the village on their way home.

The raccoon held their hand over their mouth. “Kona? … What happened to you? Why are you… Where are your BONES?”

Kona gave a dismissive groan in response. “I don’t KNOW. I came to like this and—”

Max had stepped outside, and the two were staring at each other. The protogen stepped closer, looking over the tan and blue orb of a slime-bird.

There was a long, awkward pause as the two couldn’t shake a sense of familiarity, but for a variety of reasons; neither of them could place where they had seen the other.

After several awkward moments of blank staring, Max broadened its smile and gave a friendly wave to the feathery, bird-faced orb.

“Hello! I’m Max. It’s an acronym. … Have we met?”