Homecoming - Part 3 (Patreon Commission for Rychen)

TAGS: F/M, Growth/Expansion, Hyper

---===---

Of course they had to send him of all people to the middle of galactic nowhere. Any and all excuses about him being “the closest” were just that: hyperdrive technology was well and advanced enough that him getting there in his own ship likely took more time than if the company just sent someone via shuttlebus, and they knew it!

No, he was there because he’d made a mess of himself and now his boss needed him out of the way where he wouldn’t hurt the company’s image any more. Didn’t seem to matter to that man that the fox was barely holding on via a combination of hormonal suppressants and a compressor array that cost him a good chunk of a year’s wages; anything could set him off, and now he was being sent off to some remote corner of an almost unnavigated sector because of course there was a shortage for that particular part.

At least the constant annoyance served as a convenient inoculation against the more unfortunate side-effects of his latest run-in. The drink had some lasting side-effects that, despite Ry’s best efforts to revert, had stubbornly stuck to him, forcing the fox to adapt in some less-than-dignified ways. He was already a grower, but now that his baseline was increased as much as it was, he literally couldn’t afford to let himself go out of control again: if he broke that compressor, he didn’t have enough saved up that he could safely buy another one.

Mercifully, whoever was stuck in that region of space was more than likely going to offer a solitary, dull, and most importantly wholesome atmosphere… or at least a non-lewd one. Checking his charts, Rychen found out that, while traffic was low enough that it barely even counted as a secondary hyperlane, there was still regular activity in that section of the galaxy, mostly related to the mining sector: transportation from automated harvesting operations towards processing centres, the occasional maintenance run, even the odd visit by corporate execs wanting to make sure their investments hadn’t been taken over by privateers.

While he didn’t have the exact details for the ship, only the specific engine component that broke down, Rychen could only infer that it was a heavy-duty transport, as that model line wasn’t manufactured for anything but high-volume transport vessels. Thus, he was certain he was about to spend at least a couple of days working alone in an engine bay, with the nearest person to him likely being the ship’s mandated maintenance technician, the one other person in the pilot likely napping the time away. And frankly, that was all he could ask for: no stimulation, just the peace of engineering work, leaving him alone and isolated from anyone and anything that could ever threaten him.

So, naturally, things started to go wrong almost immediately after, when the fox dropped from the lane-assisted hyperspace tunnel and banked to his right, perfectly framing the stationary vessel in his cockpit. He had expected a colossal brick: most mining haulers were little more than a giant box with engines attached to one end. Instead, what he saw was without a doubt a fringehopper, bringing to mind a great many questions about why he was sent there instead of anyone else.

Part-transport ship, part-colony vessel, part-ramshackle conglomeration of random parts picked up in territories with wildly different standards for shipbuilding, fringehoppers were… a difficult ship to work with, to put it lightly. Normally home to secluded communities that eschewed planetary or station-bound living for a more nomadic lifestyle, these vessels usually began their life as repurposed colony ships and then were… expanded.

Maybe a salvaged combat frigate here, a derelict freighter there, bits and bobs repurposed either to repair broken systems or add new ones, until the resulting monstrosity became very much a sui generis thing that defied classification. Fringehoppers were unique, with even offshoots of the same original community more often than producing wildly different ships as a result of sheer necessity. The one commonality was that the ship had to be self-sufficient, or at least capable of supporting life on its own without the need for external supplies; exceptions were made for specialty components and, occasionally, fuel.

Ry did not like the idea of docking at a fringehopper. First of all, even finding the docking bays at all was a pain and a half, and the thought of having to deal with a bunch of insular spacers who likely hated the notion of an outsider stepping on “their” ship was giving him a headache already. Fortunately, that was exactly what he needed to keep it in his pants, so at least there was some silver lining to it all, even if a minimal one.

Sighing, the fox opened communications, receiving an automated response as expected. He was given directions to the nearest docking port, his autopilot accepted them, and after he left his ship to fly by itself, Ry turned his attention to the supplies he had on-board: three week’s worth of food and water, the component he was meant to be replacing, and his trusty toolbox. Nothing more was needed, hence why his own repurposed shuttle was barely the size of a car back home; hell, the engines outstripped the rest of the vessel by a wide margin.

Getting dressed and prepared for first contact, Ry didn’t stop to consider just who he might be meeting when the airlock opened. He half-expected people of a species he’d never met before, wearing clothes that conformed to no fashion, eyeing him down with murderous intent; he did not expect to step into the fringehopper proper and be met with three identical rabbits, all of which were at least a foot shorter than him, looking at him with an expression that… well, he would’ve preferred murderous intent over whatever that was. At least he could identify hostility.

“Senior Technician…” - the rabbit in the centre paused, looking at a dataslate in her hands - “Rychen. No last name given. We have been informed you were sent to repair our engines?”

Her tone of voice was distressing. It lacked emotional intonation, like the rabbit was reading from a script she had absolutely no attachment to, nor any energy to pretend to care about; it wasn’t helped by her two apparently identical twins at her flanks piercing through him with their eyes. Ry could swear that his very soul was being dissected, enough so that it became obvious to his observers.

“We apologise,” all three spoke in unison, making Ry take a step back before the trio was replaced with only the central rabbit’s voice alone, “we are a meta-synaptic collective colonial organism. A hive mind,” she added, on the fox’s clear confusion, “as your people call it. We do not share one consciousness, but our emotional burdens are a burden born by all. Thus, we make it our mission to refrain from experiencing heightened emotional states. We hope this does not cause you distress.”

Lot of information being thrown at him at once, not all of which was something Ry wanted to hear. Hive minds were dangerous… or, at least, so he was taught. He’d never actually interacted with one, but the idea of there being multiple people all governed by one single drive was so alien to him that, again, it became perfectly visible on his expression, given the rabbit in the middle spoke up again.

“We understand if this is uncharacteristic for your kind. This is why we chose a secluded, monastic life aboard the Varena. That is our vessel’s name. If you feel this is a task for which you are not suited, we understand, and would be content in calling another technician, provided you leave behind the components required for repair. We can assure you, we are capable of independent thought; we simply choose not to exercise our emotional responses for the good of the collective.”

“Think of it this way,” the leftmost rabbit added, taking a step forward, “imagine a day where you feel less than well. A day of sadness. Now imagine if every negative thought was transmitted to everyone around you. Now imagine if their thoughts, too, were transmitted to those around them, creating a cascade that would, inevitably, return to you, thus exacerbating the original condition.”

“Therefore, we choose to practise a form of self-discipline unique to our kind,” the third one concluded, speaking for the first time, “as long as it is maintained, the collective is kept well. This is our mission.”

“This is our mission,” repeated the other two, with the central bun directing her gaze at Rychen again, “please, come with us. We will show you to the engine room, and you may give us your diagnosis, or leave after providing repair components. We will not force you to stay, but none of our sisters possess the knowledge required to repair this engine piece. You should reconsider your policy on proprietary hardware; it makes field repairs difficult, if not outright impossible.”

Ry didn’t know what he loved the most: the sheer audacity of the rabbits telling him he should be changing company policy, or just how much he agreed with them. He didn’t even care about how it was more than likely a deliberate ploy to leave him more comfortable; with his guard down, he nodded along, chuckled to himself under his breath, and followed the trio down the nearest maintenance corridor.

He took care to observe as much of the ship as possible, even if this had to be done through small gaps in the plating and the very rare window set near the access hatches. As expected, the inside of the vessel was a disorganised mess of salvaged parts and rebuilt hills, though it all somewhat came together in a chaotic fashion; though Ry doubted he’d be able to survive in there for more than a month without having a breakdown from the sheer lunacy of the design, the many (disturbingly identical) rabbits populating it didn’t seem to have any issues navigating the halls.

Indeed, he was at the engine room within five minutes, despite the fact that he was only shepherded into three elevators and one conveyor lane. Much like the rest of the fringehopper, it was a chaotic mess of exposed wiring, hanging fuel lines, and far too many workplace safety violations for the fox to even begin cataloguing them; all in all, not unlike most large-scale vessels in operation, hence why people like him were still so sorely needed.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, even a cursory analysis made it clear that whatever happened with the engine, it wasn’t going to be fixed with just a quick whack of a wrench and a replacement part. In fact, the closer he got to it, the more Ry came to notice all the little details that made it obvious how utterly beyond repair the entire engine drive was, most noticeably the fact that half of the reflector array was just gone.

Now, how exactly one managed to do that without also blowing the entire ship into tiny dust particles was anyone’s guess, leaving the fox to scratch the back of his head as he tried to come up with any possible explanation. The three rabbits who led him down there, meanwhile, stood beside him, glancing from the engineer to the engine and back.

“We understand the situation is less than stellar,” the central one spoke up again, drawing a snort out of Ry, “but will it be possible to repair the engine regardless?”

“Well, uh… possible? Definitely. Easy? Well…” - there weren’t many ways he could tell the truth without making it be blunt, and he wasn’t really in the mood to soften blows at that point - “I could probably fix this up, but I’m gonna need to ask for supplies and… you’re looking at a two-week job at the least, and that’s assuming everything goes right and this thing doesn’t just fall apart midway through.”

“We can provide accommodation and food,” another of the hive-minded replied, followed by the third concluding, “as well as prohibiting traffic to and from this area of the ship to allow for maximum concentration. Will this be sufficient?”

Ry nodded, turning his attention back to the engine almost immediately after; given his situation, he figured the rabbits wouldn’t mind if he dove straight into his work rather than waste more time with pointless chatter. Indeed, not a minute went by before the three who showed him the way, after wrapping up a conversation between them in a language the fox didn’t speak, turned and left him alone, to try and salvage an unsalvageable engine.

Two weeks was optimistic to the point of naivete, but he had to say something and he couldn’t just give an estimate that was halfway realistic, lest he then hear the words and have to tell himself he was going to be stuck there for that long. Better if he took it one day at a time: rather than looking forward to a good third or so standard days (or more!) locked in a ship that was dangerously asymmetric, he could just wake up, see the next twenty-four hours, then repeat the cycle.

Plus, fixing an engine that beaten up provided for more than enough work to keep him well and truly distracted. There was no time for dwelling on anything other than technical specifications and whatever was needed to keep himself in one piece at any given time; for whatever reason, the hive mind decided the best thing to use for its ship was a miniaturised Penrose engine, when no one aboard knew how to fix one, and barely had the skills to operate it outside the automated systems.

Unfortunately for the fox, while his mind was busy with more important matters, his body still existed, and its own rhythms would not be ignored just because its owner had other things to do. The only reason why Ry had managed to keep himself at an acceptable (and, most importantly, controllable) size was due to a strict schedule of drainings and a steadfast avoidance of any pent-up periods, neither of which were possible during work hours… and, with “work hours” now effectively being all hours, Ry rapidly found himself in a position where he was painfully aware of how quickly he was careening towards an edge he couldn’t afford crossing.

He did try to do something about it, but lacking any real personal space outside of his own ship, which lacked the facilities needed to handle his needs, the best he could do were furtive expeditions to one of the dispersed bathroom areas. It didn’t exactly work, given that the drains weren’t nearly powerful enough for him, but some release was better than none, at least as far as Ry figured; he was still pent-up, and dangerously so, but at least he didn’t feel like he was literally going to pop at any given second.

Granted, the rest of the crew still existed as well. And that quickly became a problem.

As much as the first three rabbits tried to make it sound like no one there had any real interest in pursuing those sorts of personal projects, and indeed showed off how true they were to their word by having no one bother him, Ry wasn’t blind, and neither was the hive mind. He might not have any visitors beyond the periodic food deliveries, most of which he ignored anyway on account of being so bland as to be indigestible, but he did occasionally have to leave the engine room, and this was when things took a turn.

He wasn’t small. Or rather, he wasn’t tall, he was something on the short side, but he wasn’t small where it counted, especially after the last run-in back home. Much as he’d tried to hide it, and indeed did his best to keep the full scale of the incident under wraps, there was only so much that compressor wear could do, especially out in the field. The good stuff, the clothes he wore around the house, needed constant charging and access to a software linked to the rest of his smarthouse in order to make sure the fox didn’t bump into anything. What he wore out to that job, while technically functional and able to hold him down, was but a pale imitation.

If the repairs had been simple enough that he only had to spend a few days there, then it would’ve been fine. If he didn’t have enough time to start filling up, then it would’ve been fine. But even with his occasional forays into the bathrooms, even with his mental discipline being run ragged, even with him doing his level best to ignore the looks he was receiving, there came a point when his body put its proverbial foot down and insisted that Ry should start growing.

And, once it did, he couldn’t really stop it. It began with the same tightness between the legs, and spread out into an all-permeating warmth that only grew worse and worse as time went on. The first signs of swelling appeared a couple of days afterwards, and from there it was a slow, but steady progression where the bulge he kept hidden down there became increasingly obvious, until he wasn’t so much walking as he was waddling from place to place.

With the hive mind consisting entirely of females as well, the whole thing was made so much worse. He was informed that there was no danger of unwanted contact; all reproduction was handled in-vitro or through the occasional introduction of highly controlled “breeder specimens” during specific times of the galactic year, with unscheduled coitus being considered a grave breach of protocol. The hive mind did not need one of its elements going crazy with lust, lest every one of its components do as well; therefore, it was logical to assume that the fox had nothing to worry about.

Logical, but not quite realistic. At the very least, this was all the proof Ry needed to know that the constituent members of the hive mind were absolutely still their own individuals, because he definitely caught a few of them staring at him in ways that were not scientific or idly curious. Especially when his bulge reached to his knees, he caught glimpses of the rabbits around the vessel eyeing up him, sizing him down, occasionally whispering to one another before being promptly slapped back into compliance.

His continued presence slowly became a problem that the hiveminded rabbits didn’t know how to deal with. While they were reluctant to admit that there even was a problem at all, Ry started to notice that a greater and greater number of the rabbits had begun following him around whenever he left the engine room; all he had to do was set foot outside and suddenly there’d be a small group of them that only grew larger the longer he was outside of his sanctuary.

And while none of them did anything that left him worse for wear, their presence alone constituted a constant and very preeminent reminder that things were only going to get worse. The parts needed for the full repair job were still several light-years away, the amount of work he could do dwindled until the fox was left with nothing but time to think about things, and now he had a whole shop full of horned-up rabbit ready to jump him the moment the hive mind’s grip loosened enough.

They said they wouldn’t, but he knew better. Story of his life, really; if it weren’t for the fact that this had happened multiple times before (at least, in a general sense), then maybe Ry would’ve believed them, but he knew those looks, he knew those stares. He knew what was going to take place after enough time passed, and knew that he couldn’t avoid… worst of all, he knew he didn’t want to avoid it.

Much as he was intellectually aware that he shouldn’t want things to go off the rails, he was still a mortal soul, trapped in a physical shell that had needs. And his, as it turned out, were somewhat harder to ignore than most, given how much his endocrine system had been going on the fritz since his first growth incident. He had needs, and now that he couldn’t attend to them in the regimented manner which had kept him under control, he had to find alternative methods, even if this meant abusing his hostesses’ hospitality somewhat.

Or rather, allowing them to let him abuse their hospitality. As far as Ry was concerned, the rabbit started it; if not for the fact that the hive mind was clearly losing control over its supposed dominance of all emotional experience, then the fox would’ve been content to just make a mess of one of the bathrooms. Everything so far had been him trying to keep a certain modicum of decency, but, push come to shove, he could just cum all over the walls and clog all the drains in one of the lavatory installations to buy himself a few more days.

There though? The moment he lowered his pants, he would be assaulted with a tidal wave of horny bunnies, he just knew it; and while he was reasonably certain he wouldn’t be blamed for it, he was still stuck in a fringehopper controlled by a hive mind of rabbits who all very much could do things to him that he wouldn’t be able to resist or say no to. Hence, the safest option was to throw himself into his work further and just try his best not to think about things.

It didn’t take too long before the first knock on the door came. The one responsible, yet another bun indistinguishable from the rest, claimed they were there to observe him “doing his work”, spoken with such a complete lack of sincerity that Ry had to wonder if they expected him to notice. Didn’t stop them from standing there, staring at him as if they weren’t obviously looking at his bulge; in fact, the more he looked back, the more the rabbit’s eyes clearly veered downwards, until they were stuck between his lungs and no effort was spared to pretend otherwise.

To this one were added many more, in time. Over the course of the following three days, it went from one rabbit, to two, to ten, to suddenly having a good fifty or so of them all standing at an increasingly disrespectful distance from him, all while he still tried to work. He was pretending to do things most of the time; he couldn’t actually repair the engine until the parts arrived, but the rabbits clearly didn’t know that. Better to do so than to look back, to the mass of bunnies looking at him like he was a delicious morsel waiting to be devoured.

An accident was inevitable. Ry could try his best to avoid it, but in the end, simple math and statistics were against him: something would budge, and when it came down to it, all he could do was be proud that it wasn’t him, but the rabbits in need of his services. He was still keeping an air of professionalism about himself; he was still pretending to work on the engine to avoid having to notice he was being lusted over. It was the rabbits, the hive mind that, in its inability to deal with its own lust, decided to sacrifice one of its pawns.

Maybe it was an accident. Maybe it was deliberate. Maybe it was a weird mixture of both, but what truly happened was that, at one point, one of the rabbits in the front of the “observation group”, as they called it, was pushed by another behind them; pushed hard enough, in fact, that they didn’t stumble forward, but outright fall on top of Ry, sending the both of them tumbling down to the ground.

When he came to, having knocked his head on a hard enough surface to nearly be concussed, the fox found himself with his back to the floor and a rabbit on top of him, eyes locked on his, both hands firmly on his chest… for a moment. As soon as they confirmed their engineer was fine, the rabbit scurried back, throwing herself at Ry’s package too quickly for him to warn her off of it; only he knew what would happen if he was on the receiving end of such stimulation while still compressed, and it wasn’t pretty.

Of course, a few seconds later, everyone would know, when said compression failed catastrophically. Ry couldn’t help it: he had someone, even if a hiveminded someone, throw himself at his dick; it activated neural pathways that he had no control over and effectively rewired him on the spot to think about nothing else other than relief. He would need it, considering his cock and balls both surged with size at finally being given attention, ripping through his clothes and revealing their full size.

Definitely too big for the rabbit to take; the tip alone was about the same size as her torso, to say nothing of how she could fit inside one of the fox’s nuts. What that meant for any potential filling was anyone’s guess, but Ry wasn’t going to bother asking questions: he was horny, he had someone there who wanted to take him, and as far as his lizard brain cared, this was more than enough.

He didn’t know how he managed to get himself inside that bun, but perhaps it was incorrect to say that  he “fit”; rather, the bun themselves fit around him rather than the other way around, their body stretching out to an almost uncomfortable degree just to be able to withstand the ridiculous amount of cock it had to deal with. They were little more than a condom, a furred wrap around a shaft too large for anyone to really take, reduced to whimpering, moaning, begging for more, and rubbing their arms and legs over the shaft that had turned their belly into a thin layer around a pillar of cockmeat.

But it couldn’t last for long. Much as Ry wanted to go through the motions and have a proper rut, he was so pent-up, so wracked with self-denial, that his body’s primary focus was purely to achieve release and nothing else. Thus, he missed how the hive mind reacted to the sudden eruption of activity by… more or less collapsing in on itself, with every rabbit in attendance, and likely every other not directly there, falling to the ground with their hands between their shaking, quivering legs, moaning just as loudly as the one lucky bun who got to experience Ry firsthand.

He didn’t notice how the hold the hive mind had on its constituent members was so weakened that one could make out distinct personalities and voices; no longer were the buns speaking in unison, in a monotone and slightly off-putting manner, but they were themselves again. Granted, all they did with this newfound freedom was beg for Ry to fuck them as hard as he was their lucky sister, but it was something.

No, all the fox saw was the stretched-out rabbit condom in front of him, and the promise of climax and release that she held. All he saw were his own paws, raised in the air for just a moment before slamming down onto his nuts, the two spikes of absolute agony melting into rapturous pleasure as he quite literally kickstarted his overproduction and subsequent explosive climax. It was brutish, but it was what he had to do; at least that way, he didn’t have to wait.

Nor did the lucky rabbit stuck on his dick either. She got maybe a minute or so of being turned into a living cocksleeve before she was promoted to cumdumpster, as the full contents of Ry’s nuts, all three or so weeks of backed-up production, flooded into her. The first wave was even visible, the spurt stretching the skin at the very top near Ry’s tip, before the resulting load rounded the whole thing out and send the bun careening towards the ground.

Ry blacked out. He couldn’t handle it, not when he had so much in storage; his brain was merciful, letting him bypass most of the horrible middle ground so he could skip straight to the end, where he woke up and saw he was still stuck inside the same rabbit… albeit, one that had been transformed into a still-breathing, still-moaning, still-begging wreck of a cum blimp, their gargantuan, spunk-filled belly having bloated to the degree that their body was several feet off the floor.

His balls though, those were empty, and that was definitely something. For the first time in nearly a month, the fox could think clearly… and the first thing he saw was that, prompting him to start stressing out over the inevitable consequences. He wasn’t listening to the sounds coming from the rabbit herself, nor her still-affected sisters near the door; he was too worried about what would happen to notice they were all experiencing some form of collective, shared orgasm, signalled by a tiny fraction of Ry’s spunk oozing out from the lucky bun.

Then again, how could he have felt the shift that took place within the hive mind itself? Now bereft of the absolute control it had exerted over its members' emotions, it was saddled with a constant stressor, a single point in its network that it couldn’t get rid of, but would serve as an endless source of arousal. And the longer it was allowed to remain within the collective consciousness, the more it infected every other synapse with its overwhelmed state, until there wasn’t a soul aboard that vessel that wasn’t, in some way, experiencing intense sexual arousal.

Except, perhaps, for Ry, who was still too worried to really be horny again. But he would learn better.

The hive mind would make sure of it.