Data Corruption (Patreon Commission for Strowh/Renaspikes)

“I am reasonably certain this is not a good idea and we should probably not go ahead with it,” Tim said, just as they were getting ready to turn the Digivice on and make sure the updates were patched in, “I mean, I’m pretty sure it’ll work, but are you absolutely convinced you need this?”

“Not at all!” Spikes replied cheerfully, already flexing his non-existent muscles, “But I want it anyway!”

The lynx sighed, wrapping up the final preparations for the show the two had been preparing for the last two or so weeks. Fiddling with the electronics on that thing was, as usual, somewhere between “hazardous” and “actively suicidal”, and yet for some reason the couple found themselves constantly doing it for the sake of sating the Rena’s capricious desires. To be fair, the results were usually good enough that it justified the hassle, but Tim couldn’t help but shake the feeling that their luck was going to run out someday soon.

On that particular occasion, Spikes had requested that his Digivice be modified so that he could transfer data from the physical world into his body rather than relying on his homeworld for any upgrades. The stated intent was to minimize the hassle when the two wanted to “experiment” with sizes and proportions, but they both knew the real reason was so he could go overboard and utterly destroy their bedroom the next time they got frisky together; wouldn’t be the first time, won’t be the last, and despite all the pretend protestations, the feline still went ahead and did it anyway, secretly hoping this next foray into the realms of the obscenely excessive would be even greater than the last.

With a melodramatic sigh, they turned the device on and threw it back at Spikes, knowing better than to be anywhere near ground zero when the testing began. The Renamon, though he much preferred it when their partner stuck around, was polite enough not to say anything, instead focusing on trying out what he had in mind; the idea was that, if he could transfer data from regular sources in the physical world, then surely it would be simple enough to rely on his unique “biology”, if it could even be called as such, to transform anything he consumed into its constituent information. Now, admittedly, none of this made sense, but the last time he cooked up some brainless conjecture like that, both he and Tim ended up having to reboot the entirety of existence after the exponentials he stacked on himself went a bit crazy; comparatively, eating a blender to gain larger pecs sounded downright sane.

He wanted to start off simple though, with something that wouldn’t sour his taste for the rest of the day should it go wrong; to that end, he had just the thing: a bundle of chopsticks. They were soft enough that he could chew on them and slowly whittle them down, and close enough to his dreadful habit of chomping on pencils that it wouldn’t be too bad to take its logical conclusion. It was still slightly odd to pick up a packet of the damned things knowing he wasn’t just going to roll them around in his mouth for an hour before getting tired of them, plus it was difficult to shove all of the bits into his mouth even after he snapped the bundle in half, but everything took a turn for the better once he managed to snap his jaw shut. It was as if the pieces of wood just weren’t there at all, replaced by an indistinct blob of foodstuff that was both entirely tasteless and seemed more fluid than anything. He could chew on it, and indeed he did, but it didn’t feel like gnawing on wood so much as… well, he didn’t even know what it was.

But it was easy to swallow. And as soon as he did so, he felt warm, incredibly warm, followed by… his biceps becoming ever so slightly bigger, just barely enough for him to notice and not nearly to the degree where anyone else would. It was disappointing in terms of results, but considering the fact that it was a proof of concept, Spikes couldn’t be giddier than he was at that exact moment. Immediately he reached for the first thing he could a see, a bowl of fruit the two kept and barely ever used; the Rena threw the actual food onto the ground before taking a huge bite out of the ceramic, his teeth somehow remaining unbroken despite the hardness of what he was chomping on, before closing his mouth and feeling the same transformation take place inside of it: where once was a hard slab, now was an undifferentiated glob of pseudostuff that tasted of nothing and was about as malleable as melted caramel, making it delightfully easy to swallow down without thinking twice.

This carried on for… a while. The kitchen was filled with objects he could pick up and devour, from the utterly mundane, like all the cutlery, to genuinely useful appliances they would miss later, like the telephone and parts of the microwave’s internal electronics. Every bite brought him one step closer to his ideal self, one inch larger or thicker or more muscular, until his mouth, after a while much larger than it had been initially, could start taking chunks out of larger things, leading to a self-imposed vicious cycle that ended up with Spikes openly biting entire pieces out of the refrigerator right after he devoured the blender in a single gulp. Before long, Spikes felt his back bump against the ceiling, simultaneously being made aware of just massive it was; he took a moment to look down at himself, only to then notice how broad his torso had become, how well-defined and bulging his pecs were, hell, how even his legs had turned into girthy logs of muscle mass that took up whole doorframes by themselves. His head was sinking into his neckbulk, and soon he wouldn’t even be able to see past his muscles out in front.

So obviously, he had to keep eating.

Whatever was left of the fridge was quickly lifted up and plunged into his maw, resulting in a growth spurt that nearly had him break through the roof, and marking the end of their kitchen as a functional room. All that was left was taking care of the cupboards and counters, which was easy enough now that Spikes could physically rip them off the walls and crush them into sawdust and broken boards before gorging himself on what remained. Without much effort, the whole room was emptied out, leaving only the walls, ceiling, floor, and an extremely beefy Renamon that could barely move his arms without his bulk creaking all over the place. Naturally, this wasn’t nearly enough, prompting Spikes to yank the door itself off its hinges and stuff it down his gullet, before smashing his way through the wall in order to make seconds out of the rubble and dust. Once that was settled, it was time for the living room to be consumed; given that the lynx steadfastly refused to leave their bedroom, Spikes decided to leave it for last, already imagining how great it would be to burst into it looking like he’d just injected a year’s supply of steroids into his body. Tim was sure to give him what he wanted then… which at that point was getting off the bed so that Spikes could eat it.

The upholstery didn’t last nearly as long as the kitchen appliances, though admittedly they put up far more resistance individually than even the fridge did. The springs in particular were tricky to get around, seeing as they kept some of their… springiness… even in their goop form, but he managed by the end. It was fun, being able to lift his couch with a single hand and shove it into his gullet, all while bloating in every direction now that he could simply swallow down the mass from the objects he consumed, not needing to worry about chewing or anything as silly as breathing. The TV was broken in half like a chocolate bar and bitten off in large slabs, the wiring slurped up like spaghetti while the rubble produced by ripping it off the wall served as a perfect finisher, a sprinkle of sugar atop a delicious ice-cream, if one will. Even the walls weren’t safe anymore, with the Rena plunging his hand into them and removing bite-sized chunks for him to nibble on, until the roof began to groan as it was ready to cave in.

Sensing an opportunity, Spikes found the lowermost point, placed his head underneath it and then opened his mouth, patiently waiting for the attic to come crashing down into his throat. He didn’t have to wait for long, though the amount of clean-up required thanks to how much had crashed around his head gave him something to do afterwards; at least he was in sunlight again, just tall enough that he could see over the top of his house, and yet already too bulky to actually do it. His neck alone was so swollen that it was starting to swallow his head, with the Rena’s pecs being so tightly packed with sinew and muscle that it was a wonder how he even kept his balance. Spikes’ arms too were honed to perfection, even if his range of motion was limited; trying to swivel those logs around too much caused a lot of hard-to-ignore rubbing, at which point his ability to keep focused was… affected, to say the least.

Now that the house was ready to be demolished, however, it was easy enough to turn around, grab a large piece of it and then rip it off its foundations, trailing debris all throughout the air as whole divisions were raised above his head and then dropped onto the valley created by his neckbulk, giving the Renamon all the time in the world to slowly chomp down on the concrete, glass and whatever else happened to make up the structure, all while his body continue to swell outwards at an alarming pace. Every slice of the house made it easier to rip out the next one, and it didn’t take long before the only one left was his bedroom, their bedroom, inside which Tim was still pretending that things were perfectly fine. The lynx had been hearing all of the commotion, yes, but chose to pretend that things were exactly as they were, the screams of people outside weren’t really there, and the earthquakes caused by each of their Rena’s footsteps were a perfectly natural occurrence for that time of year. Really, they were surprised they hadn’t come sooner.

Unfortunately for Spikes, he was a bit too big to properly apply the finesse required to gently remove the bit of ceiling that still clung to the top of their bedroom; he had to exercise caution not to just rip the whole thing off the ground, let alone selectively destroy parts of it! It took until he was done with the shingles to truly appreciate just what was going on though. Why was he worrying so much? It wouldn’t be the first time he and Tim had gone down that route before, and the cat could always reform themselves if they truly wanted to. Besides, they hadn’t moved an inch ever since the Renamon began his rampage through their house, so clearly they didn’t mind having created yet another data-beast of immense proportions; therefore, it stood to reason that they’d be perfectly fine with taking an extended ride down Spikes’ gullet.

It was all so simple that he almost slapped his forehead for not having thought about it before; almost, because there was no way his hands would ever reach his head now that there was so much musculature in the way. With a chuckle, he lifted their bedroom, the last remaining part of their home that hadn’t yet been devoured, and tilted it into the vast drain that was the muscle mass around his neck, forcing all of its contents down and down into his waiting mouth, all of them, lynx included, handily transformed into something that was far easier to digest and add to his growing mass. Once that was done, all he had to do was crush the walls themselves and sprinkle the rubble onto his face, licking his lips as he felt the final burst of size hit him in every direction at once.

It was only after he was “done” with it that he realized he made a horrible mistake, because obviously there was no way Tim was going to take that transgression lying down. The lynx wasn’t going to just leave his body, but they had no incentive to sit there and do nothing either; Spikes therefore had no choice but to accept his face, when a massive wave of energy, seemingly appearing from nowhere, slammed into him all at once, his whole body feeling like it was about to burst from how little it could contain it. He felt like a balloon, overinflated and ready to pop, and if not for his inherently elastic nature, he wasn’t sure whether that wouldn’t have been a possibility!

Instead, he got to reap the benefits from being a data creature, especially one as corrupted as he was. Muscles packed onto muscles, multiplying exponents stacked unto themselves, height skyrocketing towards the lower cloud layer, all of it powered by an internal furnace emanating from where the lynx refused to be reprocessed into more “regular” mass. An endless wellspring of power forced the Rena’s body to continuously adapt, growing bigger, bigger, bigger until he was barrelling through the neighborhood, only helping to worsen the situation by way of absorbing those houses as well! Debris flew in every direction before being taken in by some part of Spikes’ body as it expanded outwards, the ground cracking underneath his weight, until finally, some ten amazing minutes later, the spurt was over, and the Renamon’s growth petered down until it stopped… or at least slowed down enough that he could lie back and get some much needed rest.

Spikes couldn’t feel Tim anywhere inside of him, but he knew the lynx would come back soon enough; they always did. It was just a matter of time and waiting to see how much their Rena hubby got to enjoy himself with the gifts devouring the cat had given him, which in his case was a body so egregiously overengorged with muscle mass that it was almost comical. Almost being the keyword, for even Spikes couldn’t picture or look at himself without feeling a pressing need to bring both hands between his legs for a long series of exploratory sessions.

Still, he had his time to recover, and now he was ready to take on the rest of the world. After all, his transformation wasn’t complete yet.

He was still hungry.