FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"So, y'know, this ain't the first time I've seen an act like yours."

"You've seen a class act like mine?"

"I ain't said it was a class act, and I ain't said you're classy."

"Thought an act like mine that lacked class got sacked. 'Sick as sick shit,' you said."

"Well thank the skies almighty y'ain't sick as sick shit, then, 'cuz I like havin' you around."

Instead of responding, Forty Days Fasted smiled. He was sitting outside on a wooden patio next to the hole in a wall that led down to his place of employment, The Gilded Chasm. He was talking with his employer and friend, Jef, the jacked rabbit. Forty, or Fasted, or Fort, or FDF, was a heavily muscled, chestnut brown, anthropomorphic wolf who liked to wear loose athletic shorts and a plain white tank top. Jef-one-eff, the jacked rabbit bouncer and co-owner of a literally underground exotic performance venue called The Gilded Chasm Bar and Grille, was, at least today, a slightly more muscular, several years older, fawn-furred, anthropomorphic hare who only wore black, body-hugging tees and hefty blue jeans. He was a fair sight taller and bulkier than the rest of his rabbit brethren and wore a permanent look of mild irritation. One of Jef's long ears lagged behind the other whenever they twitched, and dragged with it a pair of fine silver earrings that chimed on a perfectly tuned high C.

Jef, whose name had only one F, continued, ignoring the smile. In the few short months he'd known Forty, he'd refused to flirt with the other man, but admitting he appreciated the wolf's company was mighty close. "Now, of course, that's all s'posed to be impossible, except for when you in particular get involved, but I ain't know enough to know particulars, so I'll just tell you what I seen."

"Whatdja seen?"

"That's what I'll tell you, if'n yer listenin'."

"I always listen to you."

Jef shot his friend Forty a dirty look. "Y'ain't gotta."

Forty smirked softly. "But I'm gonna."

The hare looked him carefully up and down. They each occupied a crappy desk chair where they watched the sun come up, mornings after Forty had work, and shared a pot of coffee that sat on a low table. "Six-foot-one, two-twenty-two. When you showed up last night, you were five-eleven one-eighty-seven. Glad to see you're packing the pounds back on."

"You know I like to bulk."

"It ain't my style, but I ain't mind it. Anyhow, lemme tell you what I toldja I'd tell you I seen."

So Jef told Forty a story.

--

I was young and hot and dumb and we had this group of meatheads at college who liked to joke about the whole predator-prey thing like it was the Pleistocene. That's from back when I was dating Edgar, maybe ten, sixteen years ago, back before his bitch self revealed itself. Most of us were in the judo club, so y'know, we'd break each other on the mats and then go throw back beer 'til we couldn't feel the bruises. So I'm trading mugs with these fellas and one bloke cracks amateur wordplay about, "I'm gonna eat you alive out there next time, Jeff!" 'cuz at the time I hadn't earned all that much respect, and just as I was about to kick his teeth in for inaccurately duplicating the number of effs I have to give, some Tasmanian devil outta nowhere's sitting in our booth says, "Yo. For real, though?"

We all go flat, right, we stare. He's a friend of a friend of a friend, chilling with us, and the way he says it is so... cool. So dangerous. He says it like it's knives out on the table, claws red. He says it out a raincoat when it's dry out and sunglasses inside and too many rings on his fingers and every one of them suspect in a world with magic. And I'm not as tough back then, so this big burly bear name being Bär who's best buds with a badger name being Bajr both blast the man with looks, and Bär says, "What the fuck, obviously not."

Bajr backs him up, "Yeah, Jef ain't a whole meal - he's just a snack," and they're laughing it up again and I crack a smile. They know I'm a shy fella what makes out with Edgar a bunch at the time so they tease me. Normal shit. And this Tasmanian, this Tazz-man, we start calling him after that, he starts to lick his lips and stops.

"Right, but would you?" he says. "I've got some buds wh-"

And at that point Bajr punches a hole in the table with one claw and makes a statement: "That sounds sick."

"Sick as sick shit," I agreed at the time, scorn forward.

"We're not into sick sick shit."

A butterball of a rat, Bastard, placates us all. He says, "No, it's not snuff. Everyone makes it out alive. Let's not get off on the wrong foot. Right?" He makes a big gesture of it and glares one-eyed at his friend of a friend.

Tazz-man holds his stare a second too long for me to be comfortable. "Right."

"Listen to him a bit. And chill out. No one's showing bone," 'cuz that was a cool way we referred to claws and teeth as weaponry. It wasn't true, 'cuz Bajr'd shown bone, and not but one of us could retract the damn things, but we understood.

Bastard the rat gives one more sideways glance at our raincoat-wearing Tazz-man, and Tazz spins his spiel: "It's underground. It's called The Chasm" - y'see, that's where I got the name, when I bought the place, 'cuz I glitzed it up - "and it's looking for fighters. They tried to do it gladiator-style, but blood's a heavy currency." He licks his lips when he says it. I'm pretty sure by then he's eaten my kin before. I get twitchy, at the time. Also, it was a shit phrase that conveyed the sense but without eloquence. An halfpence piece of shit. "Y'see," he said, "I got the idea to do something lighter. Something televisable. Like what you guys do."

"We play a sport," says Edgar, eyebrows heavy and one raised high.

"Right, but sport's just a nice way of not killing each other. That's all this is."

And I know at the time that the slippery slope argument is a rhetorical fallacy, but all the same, I mention how slick that slippery slope sounds, sayin', "Still sounds like a way to end up dead."

"What's the game?" asks a lion, name of Arboreal Eclipse. I think he owns an art studio, present-tense.

The Tazz-man, who still ain't been introduced, looks straight at Arbor and says the wager first, 'cuz he's hungry, not game. "Ante up muscle mass. Gets kept inside a magical medical vessel. Teeth and claws get blunting spells like a lot of sports do. Best-of-one match, loser gets eaten." Table almost gets rowdy, and he hastens in with, "but gets let back out at the end. Obviously. Winner gets the pot." Faces wrinkle at hearing the meat called a pot. "Audience pays to watch. Everyone gets equal pay, but winner bulks out like a monster from the dark ages."

"That's cursed magic," Bajr snarls.

Tazz-man shoots him a look. It's a hungry one. "Blunting? Or medical mass transfer? You've never donated for cachexia? No different than a blood draw. Just isn't FDA approved."

"Mass transfer's illegal," Bär volleys back, but it's weak. "And we don't have those monsters anymore because of it."

"Yeah and naive snitches like you are why you don't know my name."

There is quiet interest as the arguments against gutter out. You can kinda feel the tide turn at the table. The predators are hungry. Me and the rat are the only prey there, and him not obligatorily so. Everyone else has grown up with the normal adolescent curiosities about why games of cat and mouse are restricted to the ones on four legs.

And me, I'm young and hot and dumb, and I figure it's my job, as the token prey, to say whether or not we're all gonna give it a go. So I ask him, "So how's the eating work?"

And that devil smiles like the gates of Hell. "That's where it gets real fun."

--

So we all show up. Right here, in this chasm. Gym bags, sports drinks, someone's brother left in the know so at least if we all get gulped someone knows where we'd gone. Edgar wanted to come, too, I said, honey, are you sure? and fella backed off, given the chance.

At the door, there's this alchemist ox fella with a cauldron. Real cauldron shit. Has a ladle, makes us each take a swallow and watches us do it, and takes a sip himself to show the brew's potable. Says don't barf, or if we do, get the fuck out, 'cuz this is our get out of jail free ticket, and jail's got digestive juices. Even though, I know, ain't should work given the sizes, but black magic's gonna black magic.

We ante up, weighing in twice to make sure the five pounds are gone. Tazz-man's right: it ain't different from donations, just a little weird. Registered nurse there doing and overseeing the whole thing, but sure as hell not repping a clinic or hospital with a name. It don't make no sense, but she does the whole chakra-calibration thing they do y'know for some of the spirit sicknesses? Yeah you know. Then, she sticks a probe like a golf ball up under my sternum. It shouldn't fit, but it DOES, and it should hurt, but it's just a little heartburn. Heard that chakra's called the city of gems once. Anyway, half a sense of vertigo later and my five pounds are in a black box with a blood red glow to it like some ancient artifact straight from Hades' personal hearth.

I clock a couple amateur camera crews out. Maybe more than amateur, 'cuz they've got armatures aplenty, but they all seem a little grungy. Tonight's the big event, Tazz-man told us. Tonight, they're recording prime cuts for previews. Still don't know how the production crew's gonna sell something meat market as this, but that's for them to figure; I'm there with my buds.

We get tossed in a changing room and all suit up, with the usual barbs 'bout bear balls and bun butts, but it's tense, like... Arbor and Bastard are carrying the charisma banner we're all following with different shades of uncertainty, and even they aren't charming, tonight. Handlers are in every room, making sure there's no funny business now that we're all enchanted up for the night. Feels better once I'm in my gi, though. The belt feels good and tight. The uniform's clean and proud. We step out and finally see what's set up as the tatame.

Two mats are lit by arena-style lighting on either side of where the runway is these days. If you ain't seen 'em, they're these big - you seen 'em? Ain't interrupt me, then - they're these big, square, yellow things with rectangles demarcating what's "in" and "out." Classic rules are easier, especially since this was back when you could still touch the other fella's legs. Land a man on his back while you're in control, it's ippon and you win. If you ain't in control or he ain't full on his back, that's a waza-ari and two of those'll getcha victor status. Finally, there's a buncha ways to get flagged or shido: Too passive, attack the head, stalling, illegal grips, kicking and punching, bad sportsmanship. Three of those, you lose. Oh, and if you're outta bounds or go to the ground to wrestle and no one can progress to a pin, that's matte and you just reset.

Mostly, the edible version is the same, 'cept instead of just blunting claws, they do all the bone weapons up with a rubbery, slick spell, and of course, well, if your nose touches the inside of their throat during the match, you lose. It's single-elimination, four rounds, but folk are being awfully tacit about what happens between matches. Everybody looks too dangerous, everybody's too quiet, and we're all there like college kids in too deep, 'cuz that's what we was.

Pairings go up. I'm against some gray squirrel named Phil that I swear I seen walking around in nothing but a jock. Bajr's got a Komodo dragon, Bär has a rhino, Arbor drew short straw up against a horse, Tazz-man's also short-shrift vers a timber wolf, and Bastard's got a raven. Couple other oddballs are around. None of them look like they belong in a mostly-mammal city like this. Golden eagle, crocodile, a king cobra naga, and something what calls themself a binturong. Mammal, but... weird.

So I square up vers Phil. Cameras are on. They call my name, they call his name, we bow, and he comes in fast. Knows I'm heavier so he can't let me have my time. He's going for a two-leg takedown, so I drop hard and sprawl with him, but I learn quick that's not smart in these rules: He opens his mouth and tries to catch my face with it. In a sprawl like that, you're both putting all your strength nearly horizontal. Can you imagine suddenly there's an opening right down the center to his gullet? Prey instincts work out, though, and I see the teeth coming and feel the weight lunge at me and pop, hop my legs forward, yank on his belt, and go for a classic sumi gaeshi, so I go to my back and he flips over top. Squirrel tail works like a rotor mid-flight, though, so the throw goes in but he ain't land on his shoulders, see, and that's a textbook waza-ari.

Ref's good and calls it, so we get up, fix our gis, and go in again. There's a timer, and he knows now he's gotta beat it 'cuz I'm up one. I'm playing defensive without trying to look it, scrambling for a grip and dancing out, 'cuz I want to see how the tactics change here.

And then I hear it. There's a roar, and a gagging sound, and I can't help myself and I swing to look and see Arbor's got half a horse down his throat. It boggles my head. It can't happen. They even warned me that was how it'd happen, but it can't. It's deformation of the body. It was illegal before it was impossible*. It's black magic, nasty stuff, reviled occult blasphemy bastardry, and for good reason in a society with obviously delineated predators and prey. And there's Arbor with his jaw stretched out like a snake, eyes like his feral cousins, gulping for all he's worth to put that other man inside him.

Phil flips me over with a one-leg takedown. I manage to half cartwheel out of it, but I still crash on my side, and now we're even. I ain't lose to half-class amateurs like a squirrel named Phil, though, so next "hajime" we hear, I step hard, grab him, and I know you ain't know what an uchimata is but I crank a leg up between his thighs, twist his jacket, and slam his ass on his back where he should be. Got my ippon, won the bout.

He hisses some loser line about, "can't do shit like that without a gi," then dusts himself off and starts stripping down. I figure it's some psycho bad sportsmanship thing to ruin the taping, 'cuz I'm too out of my element to remember what Tazz-man told us, but then I remember. I look over to try to see what's up with Arbor, but the mat's already been cleared for the next match. Tazz-man himself is waiting at the sideline of mine and his stare is too cold. It's icy. It's hungry.

"Well?" Phil says, like I'm wasting his time.

"Yeah," I sorta sputter. "I s'pose I'm s'posed to eatcha now."

"Fucking do it. And use the meat good or I'll claw my way out." He gets up right in my face. He's furious, but he whispers, "Bastard always goes seonagi. He's no flexibility, no skill, no reach, but he can drop that weight like a motherfucker."

"I fuckin' came here with Bastard. What about the others?" I ask, 'cuz I'm starting to feel like we're on a team.

"Big bird over there loves hand throws. The devil always goes for the kill. Rest is same as any match: Don't go to the ground with someone bigger than you, especially not the snake. Use those lucky fuckin' rabbit feet."

The announcer says something about the lettuce-eater not having an appetite. My heart's up in my throat, so I don't know how Phil's supposed to get in there, but I'm the idiot who said I'd try it, so I give Phil a look, shrug, and say, "Alright, get on in here."

He sneers and shoves his nose in my mouth the moment I open it. It tastes like sweat and oil and man, like it should. I open my mouth wider, and it just keeps going, and the taste starts to change. His head's in there, and his nose is tickling the back of my throat, and - stop gettin' off on this, jackass - I think I'm gonna choke, but the moment I swallow, there's a fire in me. I want it. I feel my body start to pull at him, not just physically, but on a holistic level. Soon as he's partway down, I know he's mine. Something about the magic. You can't back out if you're on the wrong end, and if you're on the right end, you don't want to. I get him in to his shoulders. People are cheering.

I can't possibly fit his shoulders, but I do, and now I'm the one who's like a snake, but I love it. I savor it. I can taste his strength, more than just the fur and the flesh. It's a new taste bud, maybe more, and my mouth and my body know that he's lean, that he's powerful but light. I can tell things about how flexible he is and how old he is. My body starts working on him and I almost freeze up because I can feel the parts of him inside me start to shrink, and his legs start to kick. But that awakens that fire again. I'd never been a predator before, but that moment, I became one. I flip the fucker upside down. I feel his body sliding in and spreading out my ribcage as he takes up residence. I gulp his ass down and his legs, I yank him into me hand over hand, I feel him curl up inside, and I grind my teeth after his toes because he's mine.

The crowd erupts. I'm half-deaf to it. I stumble with my weight and look down, and there's a curled-up man inside me. Someone finally realizes I'm not gonna get off the mat on my own and ushers me off next to some huge fuckers I've never seen. Someone takes my jacket off. "Come on, Jef, get these off. They'll cut off circulation if you don't." I look somewhere and see a wet pile of gis in a hamper, like they'd been spit up. My clothes are getting tight. I'm in a haze, but I let folk help me out my uniform. I'm muttering stuff like "what's happening" while a folding chair starts creaking under me. My whole body's burning, and I'm looking at Phil shrink away inside me. He twitches hard while he does. "He's dyin'," I mutter. Even though it feels... fuck, Forty. It feels good.

"He's gonna be fine," they say. "Just wait 'til the end."

"No, no, I'm killin' someone. I'm - I'm killing a man, Bär," 'cuz by then I knew the voice even if it came from someone nigh on ten feet tall, "I'm killin' this guy inside me." He was turning into more me and he was thrashing. It felt incredible. Fire, like coals, as muscle and bone crafted themselves up with the materials they'd gotten. I'm six and a half, seven feet tall. Seven and a half. I'm whatever it is when you add two people, and at the time I didn't know my numbers like I know 'em now, I was just too big. I'm feeling my skin stretch to make room for my chest and my arms and my thighs. It's not just muscle - my head stays on straight and it creaks as it joins the size of the skeleton necessary to carry a man my size. I rip off my jock 'cuz the whole package is getting too big for my cup and I ain't have time. The chair gives out under my bare ass with a crash, and people laugh. They laugh as I think I've killed a man. 'Cuz by then, I looked down, and there was a little lump left of Phil, and when I felt at it it was gone.

"Fucking hell. I can't. I can't do it, y'all, I can't."

I look up at Bär and see Tazz-man next to him licking his damn lips as he looks at me. He'd won in under a minute while I failed to get my bearings. Had to have. There was a body squirming inside him, but he ignored it while he stretched up and out against a wall. I stare back. He asks in that too-cold voice, "You gonna give me a bye, then?" Teeth wet. Eyes red. Claws out. Bone shown.

Bär, who's the size of a bear plus a rhino, elbows Tazz - the size of a devil plus a timber wolf - so hard he crumples into a wheezing fit, then picks me up like I'm a doll. He says, "I'm never coming back to this. People like it too much. I just know it's gonna go bad. But we all have our free passes, right? That potion. Bajr says he know what it is. You go to sleep. Your body gets all goopy, but the stuff's an extra life and can put it back together. The pred turns that goop into more of them, but it's temporary. Ox flips a magic switch, all the goo sorts itself out, 'cuz knows who it is, and the soul doesn't get stripped."

"Bär I ain't knew you knowed how to word good."

He chuckles. It's low like a mountain. I'll admit, I coulda done worse in life than getting cared for by five hundred pounds of barrel-bellied bear friend.

I say, "But I think that... I worry that goop's just a normal-ass digestive process. They're burning alive in there."

He pats my shoulder. "Can't be. The whole body shrunk down, right? Probably doesn't feel good, but I ain't think it burns. That aside, if you wanna forfeit, forfeit to one of us, a'ight?" His gaze goes dark. "'nless I forfeit to you, first. Next round won't be kind on you."

"How do you mean?"

"They paired us by weight class round one. No way they can keep doing that unless they want the finals to be one-sided. So they've gotta even things out sooner, and guess who here's the most bigger than who else?"

I get enough brains back to check the brackets. Sure 'nuff, they're averaging out the weight classes in round two, and aren't even being coy about it. I find myself a place to watch the remaining matches and try not to think about how soon I'll feeding Bär.

And twitching to death inside him.

I watch the crocodile try to alligator roll the binturong once they're on the ground for a choke hold, but that weird mammal's too bendy: he ducks out from under it, gets the croc's back, pins his neck in a worse chokehold, and just opens up wide. The croc's snout's so long his nose enters that throat easy, and the ref calls the match so we can all watch the rest play out. Down he goes, a foot at a time. Scales slide in smooth like the other fella's suckin' on a popsicle. Tail gets slurped in like a fat udon noodle, and there we have it, a double-sized binturong bundle.

The cobra's eager and takes out the eagle like he owes it to his family: wraps him in an arm lock, and just starts from there once goldy taps out. Bajr gets slammed so hard by a foot sweep from the Komodo we worry he's broken his neck, but lucky badger: instead all that happens is we have to watch him get swallowed whole by a lizard. And it makes me grind my teeth that in all this, more than one jock strap's stretched more than a flaccid fella could manage. Tails are hiked, crests are up, faces are flushed. Folk are getting off to this.

"Fuck," exhorts Bär. I concur.

The Tazz-man takes a minute to stand himself back up, and then swears at both of us and takes off to get a new jacket. I finally realize I've been butt naked and stared at, 'cuz there were weirder things going on than just being nude. An aide tosses me a new uniform and jock with a pint - you get me, like two times a cup - and I pull it on. It all fits too well to be comfortable. Of course they knew, but I didn't like knowing how well they knew, y'know? Folk shouldn't be up and prepared for something like this.

---

"So," Forty said, slowly. He seemed to know that Jef needed a break. Jef would, of course, have never in his life admitted that he needed a break. But his face had drawn up tight and he was making too much eye contact with the man reflected in the bottom of his coffee mug. "You and Bär. What about the other brackets?"

"Hmph. Lettin' me get my head out of it, huh? Like some kinda gentleman therapist? You'll make me like you, yet, Forty Days and a Dozen Shitty Wooden Bracelets Fasted." He poured another cup of coffee on top of a splash of heavy cream. "Gotta get you some new ones. I liked it better when it was in its prime at seventeen."

Forty ignored him. "The binturong, the cobra, Arbor, Bastard, this 'Tazz-man' guy, and the Komodo all pull through. If I know my numbers and none of these guys are too far off their respective bell curves, that means the binturong is on the cobra, your buddy Arboreal Eclipse is after your buddy Bastard, and the Tazz-man is eating the Komodo?"

"I ain't said the winnings, but yeah, Tazz-man lives up to his people and just opens wide real fast on the Komodo. It ain't natural, how easy it is for him, but I s'pose it's natural after all."

"Nasty as it is, it's a lot better usage of the magic than it's seen in the rest of written history, as far as I know. And I know... a lot about it. If it could be just a sport, that would be... well. Better."

"Yeah, but it's dangerous. I'll tell you why it's dangerous, 'cuz I'm a part of the dangerous part of it."

For the first time in a long time, Forty's eyes went wide in honest surprise. Jef smirked. His earrings chimed.

"I knowed you weren't believe me." He took a long swallow of his coffee and started again.

--

So you know how Tazz's match went. The other were alright to watch. I ain't seen it, but Arbor did to Bastard what cats do to rats and underestimated him by a mile: Bastard slammed that dropping seonagi - that's a shoulder throw - they rolled a bit, came up with Bastard holding guard - that's on his back with his legs around Arbor's hips, y'see, 'cuz hip control is dominant? - and then just sorta, trapped his arms, lifted him with his legs, opened wide, and started swallowing. Never been able to see guard the same again after that. Made Arbor slow somersault inside him. The bin-too-rong got a sick-nasty picture-perfect seonagi on the naga - that's a throw over the shoulder, to remind you from a moment prior - and lemme tell you, the crowd got reeeeeal heated watching a cobra get slowly fed inside a mouth.

And keep in mind, these are all with folk twice the size of regular folk. Some are all muscle, 'cuz you usually gotta be for judo, but Bastard's gotten away just being round and small for a long time, so once Arbor's stopped squirming around inside him, though you couldn't see him long 'cuz of all the pudge, now you have this eight-hundred pound fat rat bastard rat named Bastard and the crowd adores him, some of them screaming "eat them up yum yum" like a chant. And he slaps his belly as Arbor churns away and makes him taller and fatter and belches into the mic like he was born to do this shit. Fucking rats, man.

Which leaves me and Bär. We shake before we walk on the mat, and we bow, and we get to it. Bär's never been in the same weight bracket as me since we both were born and he knows it, but when we wrestle before, I've been able to take him with forward throws. It's how the shorter man fights his way past a taller guy's reach. Y'can't stick your leg out vers 'em, y'can't wrestle 'em, so y'gotta trick 'em into an attack and then shift the angle on 'em and either do a sacrifice - that's when you also hit the ground - or get under their hips somehow. So I'm looking almost two feet up to meet his eyes and trying to figure out a safe way to close. I can see he ain't want to do this, but he ain't want to lose, either. Bär's got class like that.

You get those moments of clarity. I look around and I'm taller than the whole crowd. Bigger than I could even imagine being. And I'm not someone who knows how to wield a belly, so I'm lean and hard as a bullet vers someone whose momentum' more like a mattress. I hop away once, twice, a third time as he grabs at me, and get a shido. I do the dishonorable deed and close in for throws I know can't work, that'll force the ref to call "matte" so I can reset, and I get another shido. I gotta start showing some spark, 'cuz the crowd's bummed out and I'll get DQ'd and I ain't wanna lose that way. But I look at Bär and he's just too fuckin' big.

We close in to grapple, heads locked up against each other. He can move me easy, but I've got a grip that keeps me upright and I keep blocking his leg with mine, so we're in a little stasis. "Will you hate me if I win dirty?" I ask him, low and quiet like.

"I don't wanna win vers you like this, Jef. It's dirty already. I'm up a hundred pounds or more." He sets his jaw. "But I don't wanna lose, either."

I say I'll make sure he wins, then. I make as though I'm stripping his grip off, which is dangerous, 'cuz it could give me a shido and make me lose that way. He fights me at it and we start to polar bear out - that means torsos horizontal, asses out, too stable to throw and too stable to be thrown. I pull on him once. He makes that grizzly growl and pulls back. I pull again. He pulls back. I pull and yank my head back and he knows I'm gonna switch it up on the third time so he pushes and he pushes himself right inside my throat when I open wide, just like Phil tried with me.

Fuck does it light me up. I'm a hungry inferno, Forty. That's gotta be a quarter ton of bear meat. I let him shove himself in me down to his neck before he even realizes it's happened. It hurts my jaws and throat, but my body, all doped up on whatever they did to make us all capable predators with proper predatory capacity has me eyes-red. I yawn my jaws apart and I stuff him in. My throat just gets huge to hold him, like I could swallow anything. He struggles hard, but I'm attached to him. He pulls, I follow. He's losing his grip fast 'cuz the angle is hard to keep up with someone's mouth ramming itself down against your shoulders, shoulders I ain't should could gape around, but instead I can, and my grip only gets better, wrapping him up inside me like inside a sweater. You'd think you'd get dry mouth, you know, what with all the cotton on the gis, but it's smooth - I think the same stuff's they blunted our bones with - and he just keeps going in.

Once the shoulders are gone, it's over and the ref shouts out an ippon. Bär can't hear it 'cuz he's laughing, but I can't appreciate the humor 'cuz I'm a hellfire consuming. I rip off my belt and jacket, and strip off my pants 'cuz I'm getting five hundred pounds heavier starting now. I don't know how they plan to televise this with all us gettin' naked every fight, but the crowd ain't seem to mind as I pump up, and out, and down, and as I yawn out around that belly I grab his belt and pull him in deeper and stand up, thinking like a man about to run a suplex.

My eyes go up at the lights and overhead cameras and I remember I'm on display. The surge, the thrill of it, it all goes through me. I didn't wanna perform. Naw, that's for deuces. I wanted everyone to know. I wanted everyone in that room to know I was gulping down someone half again my size at minimum and there weren't a stop to it. So I slam myself on my back like it was a suplex, hips up and all, and cram him the rest of the way in like that, lettin' 'em know who's in control. Lettin' 'em know I can slam a quarter ton and survive to eat it. Showin' 'em rabbit cannonballs on full display. And his feet slide down and I'm bigger than I could ever be with a belly fully the size of the rest of me.

I feel him in there. I rub at him, feeling him shrink inside me. "Bär, y'alright?" I ask him. Fucker nuzzles me and I hear him laugh again like it's some game. He growls a couple times and does a couple thrashes, 'cuz it ain't cozy in there as I learn later, but it's not like when Phil spazzed out. He feels like he's okay, to me.

Ref gets me to stand up and clear out so I can get dressed up for the next match. I bow out like I'm supposed to, what's left of Bär still hanging heavy on my middle. I get vertigo as I move, I'm growing so fast. I'm looking at my shoulders outstripping beach balls, I'm feeling half a ton heavy and eleven feet tall, thereabouts. I'm feeling Bär's padding set up around my lean-ass frame until I'm proper fleshed out. I'm looking around wondering how many of these adoring new fans I could fit inside me 'fore the magic cops showed up.

I finally feel Bär finish his disappearing act and start retching like a cat. Up comes his uniform and jock like a fuckin' trophy, and I swing the damn thing around like I know how to work a crowd even though I sure as hell ain't. It does things to a man, I tell you, to be that... big. I toss them aside like they're a thing of the past.

I shout out, "Who all wants in?" and they fuckin' erupt. Like I seen 'em do for you, Forty, when you hit the stage. These folk ain't right in their heads, but thing is, I ain't, either. At the time.

Bastard's next on my list, while Tazz-man scopes his next victim. We're the two semifinals, now, all up in uniforms looking like curtains and cups you could serve ramen in. Me and Bastard step on the mat and bow. Thing is, politeness ain't even a veil anymore. We're animals by then. I see that rat just wanting me to be more of him, and the sentiment is sent directly vice versa. And then, would you believe, the fuck tries to seonagi me? Me! I throw with the man every Tuesday-Thursday-Friday and halftime Sundays and he tries to seonagi me like some half-wit rat-ass-eatin' no-teeth-havin' bastard bucktooth-

--

"Jef, man."

"Humph."

"Jef I've forgotten what a seonagi is," Forty said soothingly, as though he were saying something else entirely.

Jef slurped at his coffee through a sneer. "Pay the fuck attention when I bless you with stories and martial edification, Forty."

"I guess I was too turned on by the thought of you being eleven-two and nine-nineteen and someone eating ramen out of your cup." Feet, inches, and pounds, that is.

"I'm givin' you the crotchal region details just for your thirsty ass alone, and you best thank me for it."

"I do."

"A seonagi is a shoulder throw, what where your shoulder's the fulcrum. You ain't gotta, but you oughta drop down on your knees and huck hard to throw 'em over you. 's popular among cowards 'cuz it's hard to tell if it's a false attack by the ref, see, so if you're stallin' you can pop one after the other and not get a shido." He took a long, deep breath and shook his head. "It's not a coward throw; it's just fine. Just gets abused by amateurs."

"Right, right." Forty let the silence hang for long enough for Jef to take another sip. "You were saying, bef-"

--

'Fore you so rudely ruined my redoubtable raconteuring, I was saying this savagely disrespectful rat had the audacity to hit me with a seonagi. Now I knows as you'd like me to regale you with another further detailed telling of how I swallowed another man, but this one was over too quick. Countering seonagi's one of the choreographed forms we learn, and if you know it's on its way, you step around it, jump like a monkey on their back a bit, hook a leg, and ride them to the ground like a polar does a tree it outweighs. Let me tell you, though, I will say that there's a mighty difference between doing that as a one-sixty-nine jackrabbit and doing it as a nine-nineteen one to a thousand pounds of fat rat. 'Cuz you know that by this time we take up near on most of the mat. It's getting closer to sumo than judo, especially with Bastard being spherical, and when we slam, shit breaks. His tail whips out and tears down a lighting stand, we roll too much and crush some chairs, I kick a folding table into some drywall. Thank god ain't no one dead from us, but he's down and we both know it's ippon, and I say, "You fuckin' know better, Third Course." Which the crowd loves.

You think I help him to his feet at that stage of where my head's at? No. Ain't a chance. I open wide and I have him pinned and yank him in while we're still on the ground. I hardly remember it, though the videos show I just barely held back from snapping his neck once it was in there. Folk are stripping us down, lots of little hands all over us to get us bare to make the whole process easier. No idea why they couldn't just enchant some clothes to fit us. Maybe it's for the pervs to get more than a glimpse.

Mostly, I remember just the sounds of swallowing and the feel of getting stretched out, stretched up. And, I remember how the lights made my shadow make so much of the place overcast. It emphasized that I was what mattered.

I think I grabbed a couple interns trying to pull them in with him. I was not completely unsuccessful. It took four or five of the handlers to get them free with telekinesis and muscle strength, though I nearly got the lot while they did. Once Bastard's fat ass has been crammed down my throat and his tail's been properly slurped up like a noodle, though, I stand up and get my bearings, and what with the growing, I keep going up a lot longer than I should. Towering over everyone. My body accepted some of his and Bär's padding, but it distributed as much as it could so I still looked mostly like me. Too hung to fuck a pothole - don't you do the math, that line's too good to get questioned - and so heavy I heard the floor tremble. Thighs I'd more use to jack up a big rig than assign to a single person. One-ton bun, they start shouting. One-ton bun.

I was, you might say, a pretty fuckin' jacked rabbit, so the chant sorta made me mad due to inaccurate taxonomy. But I also liked it.

That weren't even the end, of course. They have a waiting spot for me, back where the bar is now, where I can see Tazz like my twin titan a couple dozen feet away. They give us water buckets, or at least, they set them in arm's reach and stay the fuck away from us except to huck the tents that our finals uniforms are. Blue for him, black for me. Ain't standard, but I guess it's dramatic. I come to myself enough to see how they're moving the cameras up and back, resetting the whole area so that we have enough space to tussle in, though I'm sure we could each easily take out a wall.

It feels lonely, I start to realize. I don't think the Tazz-man realizes that, or if he does, he ain't care. If I'm a walking mini-Vesuvius, he's a glacier. Cold, like he ain't got seven folk inside him. Like this is Tuesday. And I know he's killed before, then. And I look in his eyes, and something shimmers. Something evil. Something, and I ain't know how, that I ain't here to enjoy. But I, at the time... I'm lonely. I wanted to chat with Bär or Bastard, 'cuz sure he's the bastard what brought Tazz into all this, but he's a friend. Hell, I wanted to learn a thing or three about Phil. I'm worried about the look in Tazz's eyes and the fact he's got Bajr in him, and that I've gotta get Bajr out safe or Bär'll have my hide once he's no longer wearing it.

I start holding my arm across my stomach, 'cuz that feels like that's where they all are. And I start to feel like that's a dangerous thought - could convince yourself sure as hell, I'm sure, that all the folk you'd eaten were still with you. Mine were, but this ring'd held matches where they sure as hell weren't. It was another moment of clarity that shook me. If Tazz-man had been telling the truth - and sure on, why ain't he? - then the blackest of black magics had seen folks end inside other folks in this very room. Now I ain't about to say all morality and all contests should be worn by blue uniforms and funded by the state, but I ain't think it was honor or raw tooth and claw taking lives down there. I ain't uphold there ain't a time for a life to end in red. But with the look in some of those eyes... it was something nasty. Something I sorta felt, along and along, I needed to stop.

And you will note I am now the owner.

Show has to move on, though, and we get called back to the ring. I stand up, all estimated fifteen feet of me, and I'm glad the place is called the Chasm 'cuz without that depth I'd be running short on headroom. The announcer gives his spiel about big names for big men and clashes of kings and shit, but I'm showing bone vers Tazz. I'm scared of him. Something's not right in the devil and I don't know what. I've seen cocky. This weren't cocky. This was gun loaded, sights set, no wind on a clear day and a rabbit looking the wrong way, to him. This was knowing.

The ref is too scared to stand on the mat, but he still screams us a hajime and we bow and close. Hopping around for positioning isn't as much of an option and it thunders indoors, but I do it as well as I can, 'cuz I know how to use my strengths. Hands play out a little plus-sized patty-cake, classic foreplay for a match, and then he snatches my collar hard. I block the other collar grip and get a worse one of my own, just enough to stabilize, and that locks us into the classic symmetrical stance with one hand on sleeve, one on collar. His eyes are too black. He's too calm in the storm he's got to be feeling from all the predating we've been doing.

And then he adjusts and jams his grip and I feel warm blood on me. His claws have dug in under my collarbone. I bark and shove out of the grip. He sneers. In the sneer, I see it. No smoothing on the teeth. He's found a way to undo the blunting.

That's 'bout the time I panic. If he's snuck a way to undo that, what else of the match has he undone? Are all my friends dead inside me? Are we two murderers looking to see who murders better? But with panic, there's only fight, flight, and freeze, and the bloodlust ain't let two of those happen. Skies red, if I'd thought I was seeing crimson before, I was kidding us all. I boiled. I sprang in with only a half-assed swing of a foot so it weren't a football tackle - that's illegal - and was so off-target I took out a whole mess of furniture near the edge, but I hit him as a truck made of rabbit meat.

We hit the ground in a way that made folk even far away scramble. Newaza - that's what's on the ground if there ain't a point called - is just wrestling, and most judoka ain't wrestlers so it ain't pretty. We scramble and slam limbs and fuck up locks until he starts to find my back and I'm forced to turtle up, 'cuz fighting a mustelid on the ground is its own circle of hell. Magic shields folk had been too shocked to throw up in prior rounds flare out around us to protect folk diving out our way. And I feel him breathing on my neck and sniffing. It's not like a normal newaza, where someone can turtle up, head down, arms in. 'Cuz if that mouth gets around something, it's the end. I feel his weight on me like a slow avalanche. It hits the prey instincts hard and I've seen the videos of how wide my eyes got and how I shook. But he can't find purchase, and eventually the ref calls matte.

We stand again and fix our uniforms. Ain't no one calls a pause for my blood. Normally, we'd get a couple-minute breather while a medic bandaged us up, but bandages as big as I'd've needed come in king and queen sizes and have a thread count, and normally, folk ain't trying to eat each other. 'Stead, it makes the room quiet and lip-licking.

We close again, but I can't. I'm in my eyes and in my ears, scared stupid. I circle him like he's got blades - 'cuz he does - and I get a penalty quick for avoiding. I get a second, again, real quick after that, 'cuz I can't make my heart or my head work. My friend Bajr's in there, Forty, but I can't help him 'cuz I might've said freeze weren't an option, but after feeling him smell me out, like I'd been down a one-exit hole in the dirt, I couldn't attack again. I'm in that moment hating myself.

Sins on sins, the next time we close, I hand him a waza-ari. I go for a bad uchimata just so he can throw a shitty counter and get us both on the ground again so I can spend time turtled up again, 'cuz I can't think. I'm a monster, I could take on half an army, and I'm scared fighting this quiet predator.

But then, skies above, when he gets back on top of me in that turtle pose I've taken, it's like I can feel the Bär-Bajr pair reaching out to each other through us. Best damn friends, those two idiots, and I've let 'em in a dangerous place those friendly giants ain't should be out of morbid curiosity.

It's a dumb illusion born of hopeful sentimentality. But I can't lose to this fucker. Not only I'm sure I'll die if I do, but so will the rest of 'em.

We slam in hard one last time. We don't play games for first grip, this time. We clench. He rakes me pretending at keeping the grip, and this time, I relish it. I don't know what makes a man need to cheat except fear. It ain't a thing I respect and the second time around, I have enough clarity to know it shows he might have more riding on this than I think.

I have grips, one on his arm and one low on his jacket, and he has up high on my neck and my wrist. Neither stance is good, but they're enough to start fighting for sweeps and reaps. I can feel this formality ain't his wheelhouse. He's just hungry. He just wants me dead and inside him. I decide to play the same game with him that Bär saw through, and count to three, knowing this amateur ain't as smart as the average Bär: left foot sweep, left foot sweep, left feint into a right reap. I hook a foot and he stumbles, but ain't fall. I follow hard with another sweep, but we're just dancing and crash into a protective prismatic wall that blossoms up from some thoughtful fool in the crowd. The thing shatters. Lights flash and shudder and a few go out, so the whole house is flickering.

We reset, and are back in it again, but now with half-shadows making us house-height demons. This time he's got two hands up high on my neck and I know that's extra bad here. It's what Phil said: he's been trying this grip every time because it controls my head, and that's what he wants. He tries to lift me up and opens up that hideous huge maw to tuck me in, but I've got hands on his jacket and hook a leg around his knee. He can't get control. My legs are stronger than his, and eventually I manage to get one on the ground and push off, to crumple his stance so we both come down, earning me a waza-ari. The crowd gets loud again as blood splashes the mat. It's such a different sound, the crowd in a sport versus that in a blood sport. It folds my ears back. More lights go out. They weren't built for a sight like us. But I have a job to do.

I'm up a waza-ari and we only have a minute left. He gets desperate and as dumb as the rat Bastard, and that's how you lose a match fast that otherwise seemed even. He rushes me, I swing him like hoedown and flip him with the prettiest uchimata you ever seen. Flat on his back, ippon, no contest. Him crashing down leaves us with the glitter of status lights and a couple safety strips on the floor, and one overhead like in an old-school interrogation room.

The match is called. Crowd's the roar of space in my ears, fuzzed out while I watch him. He's not cold anymore. He's angry. The light paints him blacker than his fur does. He looks nervous. Scared. Scared of me. I don't know what I look like in turn. Blood-streaked from his cheats. A predator in rabbit skin. We stand up so we can bow. The place is too close together 'cuz we're too big for it.

We bow. He lunges with that horror-huge maw the devils are known for. I'm sick of his sick shit, though. Uppercut the jaw, clamp it closed, pull hard, meet his fucking eyes, and then I opened wide and ate the fucker, Forty.

--

"I ate him whole, and it felt so much better than the rest. He wriggled the whole way down, and the whole time it took him to fade away. Nothing for show like Phil, no honorable defeat like Bär, no lazy resignation like Bastard. It's like I have to fight him all over again as he goes in, but as I described, I'm crimson eyes to ears and just want him in me."

Jef started rocking back and forth with his eyes forward. "And in he goes. He's inside me and I'm a two-ton champion, crowd screaming, cameras flashing, and me ripping through my gi to be a proper titan, sixteen men in one, head moving to the ceiling, feet making prints wherever they stepped, junk swinging like deconstruction equipment, foot stamps that snap the foundations, and growing up higher and higher still and leering down at the Chasm like it's a dinner plate, fuck."

Jef-one-eff tapped the deck they sat on with his famously broad foot hard enough to reinforce the crack he'd made there some time back.

Forty simply watched. He had the look of someone who knew what was coming next, and knew it wasn't pretty. "I'm getting the impression," he said slowly, "that all wasn't well with Tazz after that."

"Tazz was dead," Jef said, suddenly hoarse. He gently pounded his chest, as though to remind Forty of the scene of the crime. "He and that poor wolf he ate found themselves some place permanent."

"Damn." Then, Forty cocked his head. "Just those two?"

Jef leaned his elbows on his knees. "I worked it out later, while I was working out how to explain how I was seventy-five pounds plus two men more than the man I'd been when I entered. When Bär landed that heavy elbow, between the first and second rounds, I think he collapsed Tazz's lung and maybe popped his heart. Bär told me once he'd remembered his way back through all the feral sensations, he felt some structures give way but just ain't cared at the time. Fella's one-time accident forgiveness potion ran out on the spot, but he ain't said anything 'cuz he was a stone cold fuck."

"Well. Shit."

"Yep. And I'm sure you know, but I didn't at the time, but I know now that a potion like that? That weren't some silly turn-to-go boogaloo. Those were straight up lives in bottles. Sure, it numbed a bunch of how dyin' felt, is why folk went down easier than they should. Y'know how they made sure I used mine, is someone cracked me with weapons magic usually used on tanks, 'cuz I kept reachin' for the stands like snack trays. Wasn't even awake for when the ox flipped his switch and everyone crawled out of me. Might even've been set to combine with the blunting, so all the eating could happen.

"I can see it. I've worked, uh. Worked in that area."

"You don't say. All that aside, you don't get those from honest agricultural practices and charitable work, no sir."

"You do not," Forty agreed with a grave nod and a briefly distant stare.

"Tazz coulda said anything, y'know. Coulda saved that wolf's life. As I understand it, they shared a body at the time of Bär's accidentally deadly blow, and that body broke; but when the rest of his conquests went in, they still had their protection. I ain't a scholar, but I see you nodding so it must make some sense. But now, I've got one innocent and one damned man inside me for the rest of my days. And I think about 'em every one of those days. And thing is... heh." He smirked to himself. "Bär took some time to get over it, but thing is, most of me ain't fuckin' mind it. The pup ain't on my conscience, and I went accidental vigilante on a killer that needed burying sooner than later. And it makes me look fuckin' tight." He pounded his hard chest with a fist. Jef was, as he'd said, a jacked rabbit. He wasn't three people plus seventy-five pound's worth of jacked rabbit, and Forty guessed Jef must have later looked into the whole mass donation option he'd learned about, but he was a helluva lot bigger than the rest of his species. "I just do wish I coulda done something for the kid." He sighed low, and at last looked up at Forty, who was fixing him with a calculating gaze. "I would ask if I thought you could make it right, Forty. I know you ain't can. It's been too much time."

The muscle-wolf thought for a very long moment. He had a specialty in disentangling the corporeally complex, but Jef was right: This was an old, old event. Any chance left was vanishingly small. "I'm not gonna pressure you, here on the exit threshold of an excellent but hard-told story. But we can talk about it later."

"Alright." He grunted. "Imagine saying 'alright' to a man what mentions he might be able to bring back the dead."

"I don't have to imagine it, having just seen and heard it," Forty said. "How'd this all work out legally? Especially if there are tapes?"

"Oh, you know what happens when graves need diggin' even if there's not a body to put in 'em. Whole operation was scrubbed and if it came back around, it ended when I bought the place some years later. I filched a recording and then near lost an ear over it and decided the other weren't worth damning evidence." He twitched his pierced ear. As always, it took a few seconds to right itself. "As for me trying to ambulate the world like a mortal, I bought my own silence from the coordinators with access to one anti-grav earring what would mask the mass and one what would mask the muscle. Things ain't worked right since that magic blackout couple years back*, but notably, I have at least since then been working strictly underground. They been comin' back on slowly. Only 'round recently I can come out in daylight."

"You're... you're still a quarter-ton bun."

"I am a hare, and I both demand and appreciate your respecting the taxonomy." He leaned back. A ghost of a smirk spooked the edge of his lips for a moment. "But yes."

Forty shook his head. "You'd think I'd've noticed sooner. Wondered about that tic's backstory." Then, he asked a question before he realized he was making a mistake. "For that matter... why did you tell me all this now?"

Jef twitched his ears and went still, staring his wide golden jackrabbit eyes at Forty while the chime his earrings made dissipated in the morning sunlit air. "Well I can't very well go telling it to every Tom Dick and Harry what visits the Chasm, can I?"

"I wouldn't say-"

"I'd get arrested seven weeks before yesterday six years ago and that's if I waited ten years."

"Making you thirty-eight, ish? I tho-"

"You think I can offload a confession like that to every half-rat-ass flea fucker what walks in my house of pleasure and hedonism?"

"Jef, you could offload a cargo ship on me and I wouldn't mind."

"I'm out here spillin' beans and tea on myself like a Texas stakeout's stake gettin' taked out mid-cooking to a good-looking idiot wolf muscle-man what I like having around and he asks me why I'm sharing my victuals."

"I have disrespected your beans and your tea, and I apologize."

"I accept and appreciate your bean- and tea-related redress, and your condolences, as well."

"It is my great pleasure to be here for a friend."

"You shut your fuckin' half-kissable mouth, Forty Days Fasted."

"I love you, too, Jef-one-eff."