After-Hour Drinking Binge (Commission for Zackbarzahd)

TAGS: Weight Gain, Sodaflation, Hyper, Macro/City Macro, Building Destruction

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As usual, Heapz heard his roomie approach the front door before he saw them; wasn’t easy to miss, given they lived on the fourth floor and the elevator had been out of order for quite some time already. It made for one hell of a climb, and they’d be lying if they said they’d gotten used to it, but at least they could earmark it as their daily exercise; after all, it was four floors worth of flights of stairs, certainly more than most people went through in a regular day… or so they kept telling themselves.

However, that day was slightly different. With his fine-tuned hearing for that sort of thing, Heapz immediately picked up on the fact that the fennec approaching the front door was carrying something other than his backpack, something made of rustling plastic with several metallic objects clanking about inside of it, which could only mean one thing: soda. The hippo never quite knew why exactly he had such a viscerally positive reaction to the mere idea of having a fizzy drink, but if there was one thing that always brightened up his and Gobs’ day, it was being able to sit back, crack open a soda can, and down both it and a couple dozen more while watching whatever random movie their shuffle function gave them. The only thing better than that was somehow incorporating it into a video game drinking contest that inevitably ended in the two deliberately trying to lose in order to be “forced” to down a whole can.

Just like Heapz expected, the first thing he saw when his fennec roomie turned the key and squeezed his way into the apartment was an exceedingly large plastic bag slung over his elbow, the many bulges poking out of it betraying just how much money was spent on an ungodly amount of soda. Heaps didn’t usually buy that much, especially considering they still had plenty in the fridge, which made the hippo think that something else was up; had his friend been planning something and somehow managed to sneak that past him? Because the vulpine really wasn’t that good at hiding secrets from him… or at least he assumed they weren’t; maybe everything up until that point had been one long con to lull him into a false sense of security.

“Bro, check this out,” Heaps called out, dropping the bag on the ground right in front of where the hippo was sitting; from within, dozens of metallic cans began to spill out, truly a marvel of engineering and space management, “I went to Z-Mart before coming home and they were just giving these out! Something about a marketing campaign or whatever, all we have to do is fill out a form and send it back to them once we’re done and they won’t charge us a dime!”

“Charge us a dime for what?” was Heapz’ retort, happy at least that he hadn’t been bamboozled and the sudden gift of soda had been a flight of fancy on the fennec’s part. He picked up one of the cans, squinting as he tried to make out the purple lettering marked out against a black background, barely able to read anything at all apart from the odd, cog-shaped logo on one of the sides, “What’s this supposed to be, some kind of sports drink or something?”

“Bro, do you think I care? Free soda!” the fennec declared, bending down to pick one up before throwing himself onto the couch, “Ain’t gonna say no to free soda.”

Flawless logic if Heapz had ever heard it. Just as the fennec was getting comfortable wiggling his wide ass into place, so too did the hippo go down to grab a drink of his own, having at least the decency required to take the whole bag and drop it onto the table they kept in between the couch and the TV; more than enough space to use and just close enough that they wouldn’t have to risk tumbling onto the floor whenever they wanted to get a refill, plus it gave Heapz the opportunity to sit back down on the other side of the sofa, for the sake of comfort.

At first, things didn’t seem to be going that much differently than usual. It wouldn’t be the first time that either of them had brought a large amount of fizzy drinks back home to be drunk in a capricious act of self-indulgent consumption, and as far as they were aware, it wouldn’t be the last; their fridge alone was proof positive of this, given just how much of it was occupied by a variety of different brand of soda that they cycled through whenever they wanted a different taste for change. Thus, just like every other time, neither of the two thought twice before cracking open can after can, downing their contents in just a handful of gulps with the sort of ease and expertise that could only really be gained through years of practice; assuming that things proceeded as they usually did, and there was no reason to think otherwise, they would go through the whole bag, give it a grade based on their super-scientific and not at all random and subjective scoring system, and then earmark the brand for “later” purchase. Within three days at best, they’d need to shuffle the insides of their fridge just to make room for even more soda.

However, what they were drinking turned out to have a few more surprises than they expected, chief among which was the taste and the “kick”. Being as used to drinking liquid carbonation as they were, both Heapz and Gobs were more than capable of downing truly staggering amounts without having to stop to breathe or even make room; if need be, all they had to do was burp in order to empty out some space just so they could shove more soda in there. The unfortunate consequence to this was the taste itself was often the least important part of the experience, what with their taste buds being so overloaded on a constant basis that most of the subtler notes eluded them; they were both fully aware that they couldn’t really “taste” something the way they usually did, but then again, the whole point of drinking such vast quantities of soda as they did was just to sate a habit. Thus, it was with no end of surprise that the two roomies found the new drink to be… sweet. Just sweet, really, nothing special to them, but surely if they were feeling it, then the drink itself had to be one of the most sugary ones the two of them had tried to date; even better, the taste seemed to get better and more pronounced the more cans they downed, until they were actually slowing down in order to appreciate the flavour, something neither of them had done in months by that point.

Truth be told, some part of them was legitimately worried that they might just be giving themselves some kind of sugar poisoning with how strong the taste was, but it was that exact same sweetness that made it irresistible to begin with. Why even bother themselves with the damage they were doing to their bodies when just indulging in the sudden infusion of flavour was a far better use of their time? Best if they just ignored those thoughts completely and kept downing can after can, from a bag that, for whatever reason, seemed to contain far more of the stuff than it really should; by all means, considering the amount of junk on the ground, they should’ve gone through the whole supply, and yet more soda just kept appearing from the plastic depths. Again, neither Heapz nor Gobs really bothered themselves with this; if it worked, it worked.

And neither did they bother themselves with the effect the soda was having on their bodies; why should they, when it was delicious and they could focus on that instead? At no point did they look down, observing how their shirts were riding up their rotund bellies even more than they used to, as their spherical guts seemed to protrude outward significantly more than normally did, to the point where they wouldn’t be able to see their toes even if they were trying. It was almost like a perceptual filter, where their eyes themselves were aware and relaying the information, yet their brains refused to process it properly, keeping the two roomies in a state of blissful ignorance that, at some point, they consciously chose to remain in; after all, the drinks were amazing and cost absolutely nothing, so why look a gift horse in the mouth?

The answer to that question lay somewhere in the same ballpark of the explanation for all that groaning they were hearing, that being the couch starting to complain about the additional weight it was being forced to hold up; this was quite the achievement, given that those two weren’t exactly the lightest people to begin with, hence why the upholstery was reinforced and supposedly designed to withstand extra-large, plus-size individuals without so much as a peep. Still, even something like that had its limits, and as Gobs and Heapz kept drinking their bloating drink without any regard for anything beyond their own enjoyment, they quickly approached their seat’s limits, with the sounds coming from the TV eventually being overpowered by the ones coming from below their fat and fattening asses. Even then, neither of the two cared enough to really pay attention to it, though at that point it was less because they didn’t truly notice it and far more a deliberate decision not to rock the boat too much, lest they be forced to face the reality of their situation: they were growing.

Or bloating, to be more precise, inflating if one wanted to take into account the fact that most of what they were being given was little more than gas from all the carbonated beverages they had so irresponsibly guzzled down; oddly enough, they didn’t feel any lighter, nor any heavier, at least for the time being, which served to give them that last boost needed to keep ignoring what was happening. This was, however, nothing but a desperate last move on their part, as their brains would eventually be forced to recognize what was happening beneath them, and once they did, there’d be no turning back from there; other, saner minds might’ve used that as an opportunity to try and stop whatever was happening, but when it came to the hippo and the fennec roommates, any opportunity to indulge in their guts growing even rounder was one to be exploited to the utmost, regardless of the consequences. Did it mean potentially breaking the couch? Absolutely. Was it reversible? Fuck if they knew. But was it good?

Oh, it was good. And they weren’t about to let go of it.

A short sideways glance was all it took for Heapz and Gobs to confirm that they were, indeed, experiencing what they thought they were, with a nod letting the other know that they weren’t simply imagining things; whatever was in those drinks was making them bloat outwards like a balloon, and for whatever reason their bodies weren’t popping despite the increasingly obvious pressure pushing on them from within. Oddly enough, they didn’t seem to have any trouble getting more soda from the bag, though they never quite seemed to reach that bag to begin with; rather, they moved their arms towards it, failed to clear half of their rotund bellies, and then pulled them back with a can in hand. At no point did they question why this was, nor how this was possible, but they weren’t about to complain when it worked so well into their plans.

If they could even be called plans, as opposed to a whim that simply grew out of control. They had their buttons pushed and now they weren’t going to stop, and that was all they could think of; luckily for them, they must’ve had someone looking over them and seriously approving of what they were trying to accomplish, because after a while they didn’t even need to bend down or try to reach for more drinks for them to simply appear in their hands. Granted, by that point, neither of them was in any rush to actually drink anything at all, given that their bodies still had plenty of backlog to go through… but, at the same time, things were never quite as simple as “needing” something or having an actual requirement for it; they did things because it felt good, and never quite went beyond this most primal of motivations. Drinking soda made their brains produce the happy juice, so they just kept drinking.

The effects were predictable, if not necessarily containable or even remotely convenient. The roomies’ sofa was the first thing to go, with even its reinforced structure unable to handle the increase in weight before snapping in half and ending up regurgitating its contents onto the floor: stuffing, springs, bits of wood, all of it mangled and in a disorganized heap that, under other circumstances, might’ve been a warning sign that the people responsible should stop. For Heapz and Gobs however, it was just the first step in their not-plan to thoroughly break through whatever limitations their minds still imposed on them: first the couch, and then literally everything else!

This was made significantly easier by the fact that their bodies seemed perfectly adapted to clear through upholstery without getting so much as a scratch on them, quite the feat given the myriad of sharp bits of metal poking out from most of the ruined sofa. In fact, they could actually feel the springs trying to poke into them, but despite their body composition being increasingly made up of fizzy gas, the clearly sharpened ends just couldn’t puncture them; like a balloon composed of extremely stretchy rubber, their physical forms had somehow been upgraded to be impervious to harm… or at least as close to it as they could be, as far as either of them cared. Truth be told, they might very well be just as vulnerable as they’d always been and everything they were experiencing was just an hallucination brought about by an excess of sugar in their system, but even if that were true, why should they care?

It was far easier to go with the flow and give their bodies the freedom they needed to truly explore their limits, if such things even existed at all. As far as either of them were aware, being big and round by default didn’t mean that they could turn into living gas canisters, and yet their heads were already dangerously close to the ceiling and their sides were pressing against each other so much that it was a wonder they hadn’t been sent careening off in opposite directions, rolling around until they were as helpless as a turtle flipped onto its back. Perhaps it was because they were destined to keep drinking, and as such needed to be in a position to do so, thus leading to both of simply occupying more and more space in their shared living room while never quite leaving their sitting position, growing into separate halves as each gulp they took added inches onto their already immense rotundness.

They were, in many respects, turning into perfect spheres; though their arms still stuck out enough from their upper body that they could move them around with only minor difficulty, moving was already out of the question after their roundness began to overtake their legs; thankfully, they could still open their mouths just fine, which was of course critical for their mission of consuming as much of the soda as they could. That they were rapidly approaching the size limit for their apartment didn’t strike them as altogether important, nor did the increasingly loud groaning coming from the structural frame all around them; they might be mostly fizzy drink, but they were still heavy, and judging from the way their apartment was complaining about it, they were most likely due for some heavy-duty demolition sooner rather than later, unless they did something about it… so, obviously, they just kept drinking without a care in the world, because why should they stop when clearly the universe wanted them to keep going?

If reality wished for them to stop, then maybe it should’ve thought twice before allowing their bodies to grow big and swollen with each can of drink they consumed; hell, considering they were still drinking from the bag even when they cleared enough stock to take up an entire shelf at a grocery store, then this clearly meant that the cosmos had some kind of plan for them that included them binging on that sweet, somehow sweetening drink until they couldn’t take any more of it. This was a hefty goal to set, seeing as the taste was only getting better the more they savoured it; rather than their taste buds developing a tolerance for the stuff like they usually did, Gobs and Heapz found that the more they guzzled down, the more the flavour intensified, until each can was less of a filling drink and far more the liquid nectar of the gods themselves. Just, well, with a lot more inflationary capabilities than most holy texts gave it credit for.

As for their neighbors, they would soon be dealing with something they presumably never thought to even think about: their ceilings and floors collapsing downwards and being pushed upwards, respectively, as the two roommates, insatiable in their desire to keep drinking, no longer fit into just one apartment. With most of their body mass now focused entirely on their gigantic guts, it was really only a matter of time before something budged, and that something ended up being the building itself; it shouldn’t have been, not with them still being as soft as ever, but if the universe had seen fit to give them the ability to grow unimpeded like that, then clearly it wasn’t going to stop because there were walls in the way. The pair of slackers were vaguely aware of what was happening around them, with screams and shrieks accompanying their invasion of others’ homes; caught by surprise, the other tenants in the building had nowhere to go but outside, running away from the sudden intrusion of two soft and very round… whatever those things were, no one was about to hang around for long enough to check.

Thus, with nothing there to hold them in check, and no one to worry about hurting, there remained absolutely no reason for either the hippo or the fennec to truly hold back anymore. It was only after they came to this conclusion that they “realized” they’d been holding back up until then, if such a thing was even possible to say; maybe it was a subconscious understanding that there were other people in the way, or some other competing cosmic force trying to hold them back, either option was equally likely at that point in time. What mattered was that the two of them were aware of it, and being so, they could work towards fixing that issue, by deploying their ultra-secret, patented double-drinking technique.

Truth be told, it was just something they did for when they were so completely lost in their binging that they lost all sense of shame; either that or they were throwing (or participating in) a party and it had reached that point where everyone there was contact drunk and ready to make bad decisions. Regardless of the reason why, the end result was always the same: the two guys would progress from merely downing one bottle of drink every couple of seconds, to throwing two of them down their throats at the exact same time, doubling their intake rate and making damned sure that whatever process was transforming them into overbloated, gigantic versions of themselves was stacked exponentially. That this resulted in the two of them breaking straight through most of the apartments around them was altogether completely expected, and indeed one could make the argument that it was the whole point of Heapz and Gobs abusing their soda-materializing power; what was unexpected was just how quickly it happened, and how easily they broke through their old apartment building like it was made out of wet tissue paper.

The crowd gathered outside (what remained of) the building were granted front row seats to the biggest show their world had ever seen, at least in the minds of those responsible for it. For the fennec and hippo, nothing could truly ever be better than the sight of their bodies, titanic and rotund in equal measure, bursting forth from within the ruined remnants of what used to be their home, immense and round and stuffed and just about ready to pop if only they weren’t such perfect specimens that they would never reach such macabre limits. No, they would keep growing for as long as they damn well pleased, even if it meant becoming larger than anything and everything around them, a thought that made them about as excited as it did aroused; for everyone else though, the utter destruction wrought by the pair was nothing if not disastrous and calamitous, enough that many were calling the police in the vain hope that it would do something to help contain the greed of those two burgeoning giants.

It wouldn’t though. No matter how many people shouted at them, threatened them, even pointed guns and fired at them, nothing really stuck with Heapz and Gobs, nothing but their own internal motivation: drinking more to get even bigger. That was the only thing they could think of, and therefore the only thing that truly mattered in their lives; if anyone else had a problem with that, they were more than welcome to get in line in order to be ignored by their new gods, for no prayers would be heard that wouldn’t have to do with making them even larger, or enabling them to do so without being impeded. Both the fennec and hippo were blissfully unaware of the reason for this, and for a very good reason; what would a mortal mind think, after all, if it was allowed to know that it was being blessed by a divine entity, blessed to do something that it wasn’t typically allowed to do? If both roomies were already possessed of a sense of self-importance as inflated as their own building-size bodies were, goodness knew where they’d end up if they knew their journey was blessed by the gods themselves; they’d probably start demanding tribute!

Not that they were far away from it anyway. Hell, the only reason those two weren’t demanding that the people around them find something to help sate their thirst was because they could do so themselves; despite being so massive that they literally broke through the entire apartment block they used to live in, despite their old apartment being naught but rubble somewhere on their swollen guts, they still managed to produce soda cans from absolutely nowhere. All they had to do was stretch out their arms, open their hands and suddenly, as soon as they blinked, their empty palms would be holding onto yet another metallic container full of the delicious drink, a gesture they had perfected to the point where they could perform it, empty the liquid contents of two of those things at once, and then repeat the process in under three seconds. Was it excessive? Absolutely, and neither of the two roommates would say otherwise. But was it right and deserved? Oh, even more so, as far as they cared; none else but them had unlocked these particular secrets of the universe, so clearly, if they could duplicate their favourite drink, they should do so as much as they could.

Far above them, looking down at her two newest playthings, the one responsible for their exponential explosion giggled as she had a drink of her own. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined it to be possible for something as dumb as that plan of hers to actually work, and yet there it was, clear as day and going far better than she could’ve ever anticipated. And all of her divine peers told her she was insane to think that something like a soda could help a mere mortal ascend to the ranks of divinity; they all laughed and poked fun at such an absurd idea, but who was laughing now? Certainly not them, worried as they were about the potentially two new gods being birthed through Big Z’s actions, all while Big Z herself did nothing but lounge about staring at her divination orb and congratulating herself on a job well done.

None of this would filter down to Gobs or Heapz, however, not while they were too busy with their ascension to really think about anything else. Things had taken a turn for the mechanical, in a way, with everything they did reduced the exact same sequence of events: extend arm, “collect” soda, bring arm back, empty can, repeat. One after another, their stomachs were filled to the breaking point and beyond every half-second or so, their endless swelling matched only by the destructive force of their bodies’ expansion; one would’ve expected concrete and steel to hold them back, but they cracked and bent just as easily as paper would crumble the moment either of the two roommates pushed against them. Entire buildings were consumed by their endless growth, and no matter how much anyone tried to stop them, nothing seemed to work: firearms were useless, barricades were simply upturned and flattened, even roadblocks accomplished very little but create fire hazards whenever there were fuel leaks. The whole city was at the mercy of those two, and there was nothing anyone could do about that.

This much the two knew, and this much made them enjoy their self-indulgent orgy of consumption even more than they already were. It started off as a kind of detached self-awareness, a realization their brains had subconsciously made that had yet to snake its way into the forefront of their minds, but very clearly was in the back waiting to be deployed. It was only after they opened their eyes and noticed their field of view was several dozen feet up in the air compared to when they were usually outdoors that they did the math and everything clicked into place; however, rather than stopping, or even bothering to slow down for a bit after having obviously achieved something that most mortals would never dream of, both the fennec and the hippo collectively decided there should only be one way forward: bigger. No ifs, ands or buts about it, if they were already that massive, then they could only ever get more enormous, at least until the sodas they were materializing ran out… if they ran out. Well, one if at least.

From there, it was surprisingly easy to allow the slow, dawning realization to take over their conscious selves, with each inch of their engorged frames being burned into their cerebral cortex as a way of heightening the sensations they were already experiencing. It didn’t strike them as odd that they were basically unable to move without triggering a cascade of sensations that made it difficult to keep it in their pants, nor did they find it at all strange that they could only really see the tops of buildings from where they sat, and even then only if they strained their necks to look down; with the kind of bodies they had, massively inflated and mostly spherical, doing anything other than staring directly ahead at the endless cavalcade of soda cans was far more effort than it was worth. After all, they already knew they were giants, so why bother confirming it again?

The same couldn’t be said for everyone else around them, who were effectively forced to evacuate the downtown area before it was completely consumed by two growing bodies with seemingly no way to stop them. Emergency services were directed to get everyone out of the epicenter of the disaster, and after it was more than proven that firing guns at the two titans didn’t really do anything, police forces gathered on the scene focused on directing civilians as far away from danger as possible. It wasn’t easy, given the sheer scale of the destruction; one moment the evacuation efforts had a couple of city blocks in between them and those two spheres, and in the next the buildings they were using as cover began to tremble, quake and crumble for a few seconds before a rotund belly pushed out from behind them, triggering a mass panic. This repeated itself throughout the city so many times that it was a wonder no one got hurt in the process; Big Z made sure to make it this way, as she had no intention of actually bringing harm to anyone during the ascension process.

No, the whole point was to give those two something interesting to do before she decided whether or not to “keep” that instance of reality or reset it back to before the whole thing began. Truth be told, looking at what she had done, the goddess was quite infatuated by the sight: two absolutely gigantic orbs composed mostly of carbonated drinks and gas, kept perfectly stable via her own intervention yet nonetheless possessed of an insatiable thirst for more. Two roommates, formerly people-sized and perfectly content with doing nothing of substance in their free time aside from watching movies, playing games and consuming copious amounts of soda, transformed into ravenous machines of consumption whose sole motivation was to take and take until there was nothing left for them to guzzle down. It was a spectacle of self-abasement that the goddess could only marvel at, especially considering her sole contribution was creating the soda and making it self-replicating; it wasn’t addictive, it didn’t trigger any sort of psychological effect on whoever drank it, it just… made them bigger. Everything else had been entirely Heapz and Gobs’ fault and no one else’s, and if they had to blame someone, they’d have no one but themselves.

But that was the whole point, and indeed why it was so delicious to see as things unfolded in the way they did. Given the tiniest of nudges, at least by her standards, those two had gone above and beyond in their pursuit of ever-greater amounts of pleasure, completely taken by their desire of more in a way that almost defied conventional logic and explanations. There was nothing in their heads but the constant demand for more, even this more required them to break the laws of physics in such a way that it couldn’t possibly be sustainable… but they didn’t care. They didn’t care, they didn’t care enough to bring themselves to care, and anyone wanted to tell them off for it, who were they to do so? Little souls, tiny ones who scrambled and ran away at the sight of magnificence, who looked upon two bodies overtaking their home city and chose to flee rather than embrace them as they should. They weren’t worthy of their attention, nor should they be given more than the most basic of lip service when they inevitably turned around to worship the two budding gods; they should’ve turned back around and joined the congregation when they had the chance.

Well, they said congregation, but perhaps it was more accurate to call it a group of people whose minds had simply been so warped by the sights they were subjected to that they really had no choice other than to stop, look up, and then immediately fall onto their knees in veneration of the two growing colossi in front of them. Big Z would make sure they wouldn’t be trampled or flattened; each one who gave themselves up for the worship would instead be safely transported to some place on top of either Gobs or Heapz, that they might carry on offering their words of encouragement and praise. It was only after the first couple of hundred people that the goddess up above realized that this could very well serve as a self-sustaining process; if divinity was fueled by worship, and these two clearly had people willing to throw themselves at them in order to adulate them, then why not just… let them? That way, the hippo and fennec could both carry on drinking until the whole planet was made aware of them, until every soul on that world was fully dedicated to endlessly glorifying them. Until, ultimately, they were the true new gods of that world.

It sounded fun, at least in her mind. And it was an interesting thing to do in order to spend the afternoon.

So why not?