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The Health Cruise:

Chapter Four

By Shalion & Gahtren

[Shalion]: If Serka gave any indication of how she was feeling so close to the leopard's vast body, Collin, naturally, was completely oblivious. Instead, he was judging the distance between himself and the narrow booth where people were being ticketed before walking up a short ramp leading into a hatch in the side of the cruise liner. Fortunately, he was not required to wait in line, very fortunate as that would have simply been beyond him right now.

"Sounds good to me!" said Collin as Serka helped him up, the big leopard grunting softly as again he loaded his legs up with his massive weight. The way that Serka's body seemed to be often pressing against his own was reminding Collin of how huge his body actually was, something he tended to slowly forget until he inevitably bumped into or knocked something over with his ass or belly. Although, Collin was amazed that he ever forgot his own dimensions, especially with the number of people always inevitably staring at him. And there were a lot of people around both Collin and Serka suddenly. The pier, in fact, was a veritable crowd and not just of people waiting in the zigzagging line behind the white fence waiting to board.

The crowd easily parted for the two huge people, but for less than noble reasons. Everyone seemed to want to get a look at either himself or Serka as they started moving into the stream of people. Collin sweated involuntarily and not just from the sun striking his brow.

They made their way forward to the podium, taking the shortest route to the ticketer, but as Collin became surrounded by people moving past his wide frame, he could not help but hear the voices.

"...Holy cow! Lookit that guy..."

"...Don't look now, but you have to see this fat..."

"...Mommy! Look at the fat people..."

Collin swallowed hard. It almost felt like his throat was closing slightly and he began to wheeze and breathe hard before he had to. Unconsciously, he reached out and squeezed Serka's hand, saying nothing, while he shielded his face with his free hand. He looked down at the ground over the round horizon of his tummy, screwing up his face like a child.

[Gahtren]: Serka kept close to him, ignoring the comments that went towards their direction. She muttered in his ear to not pay any attention, instead telling him to fetch the tickets out, which were in his luggage of course. Fortunately the two weren't the only hadicapped personnel to climb aboard the ship, the dragoness had to bend down and rummage through Collin's suitcase in order to dish out the tickets, which after momentarily worrying that they were lost, found them and handed them to the ticketer. Though they still received a shocking stare from the ticketer.

Fortunately they were slowly but surely getting away from the muttered voices, climbing up the ramp as Serka kept impressing him with her strength, hefting the leopard along and making sure he wouldn't lose any balance. "Keep going... don't lose yourself now..." Serka muttered and grunted as she had to keep the extra weight bearing against her, the sweaty and wheezing dragoness firmly gripped her friend, yet again digging her claws accidentally into his body to guide Collin up. It also didn't help that both of them were so wide, and the ramp rubbed up against Collin's incredible sides while the dragoness was pushing and edging him along.

Their bodies were touching each other still, and it didn't matter to both, their main priority was getting on and getting to their cabin. Finally they were on the ship, and Serka made sure not to let Collin look at the crowd, placing her fat arm around his non-existent neck and squishing his cheek against his eye. "Keep moving, just ignore them." She wheezed, trying to find their rooms on the ship as the rest of the handicapped were guided along the ramp.

[Shalion]: Going up the ramp was hard on Collin, despite it only going up a single story to let into the side of the ship on one of the lower decks. He had done all of his exercises on a level surface and even the slight incline was very noticeable to the leopard in the amount of effort that each step took. Lifting his body up the ramp was especially strenuous and the muscles in his legs started to burn early on in his familiar cascade of symptoms.

"*Huff... *Huff... Urgh...." grunted Collin like a large beast with each step of his heavy feet up the ramp. Serka was just behind him, but Collin amazingly took up the entire width of the ramp, his love handles rubbing one side of the ramp, then the other in his stride, touching both as he leaned left and right in his deep waddle. But even with Serka's less than gentle prodding and pushing, it was hard to maintain an even gait. The sides of the ramp were not only hot and uncomfortable to touch with his skin, but the metal ornaments dug into his plush sides, despite being mostly smooth. The people ahead of Collin disappeared very quickly to his eyes, while behind him, an elderly woman in a wheelchair waited patiently for him and Serka to make their way up behind them. Collin could hear her electric motor whine up, stop, then whine up again as he made progress.

Somehow or other, maybe with Serka half pushing him up, Collin made it to the top of the ramp, turned and entered the much cooler confines of the lower decks of the ship. He was already all over with sweat again; he could smell Serka's sweat too, just behind him.

Collin stumbled forward, catching his hefty self on a near wall with an arm as well as a lot of belly fat. He rubbed his drenched head on his broad, saggy forearm, and lurched around the nearby corner, half of his body rubbing against the wall in the process. He saw an opening and made for it blindly. It turned out to be some kind of nondescript staff room, clearly not for paying passengers, but there were chairs, blessedly arm-less chairs! Without even checking to see where Serka was, or if she was still behind him, Collin entered the room and quickly grabbed up three of the chairs, using his fatty ankle and his still rather deft tail in a practiced motion. With them spaced in a row, he was able to turn and carefully plant his wide rear end on the groaning metal and hard plastic. They bent just a little, but not in a way that Collin knew meant they would fold, at least immediately. He sighed in relief as he stretched his legs out under his paunch, the great furry mass took its favored position on the ground between his feet; the white fur that stretched in an elongated triangular love trail from his navel to his groin was stained with black sludge from under the table at the restaurant, but Collin obviously was unaware of that.

[Gahtren]: Seeing Collin immediately sit down in a few nearby chairs, Serka grunted in frustration, having a slight frown as she saw the leopard sit down when they had to get to their cabin. It didn't feel long ago when he had to sit down.

"Collin... we really need to get your leg strength up..." The huge dragoness sighed as she rested herself against the wall, part of her was tempted to just get to her room, she was tired, sweaty, and -really- wanted a shower. But her promise to Collin was something she didn't want to break, and had no intentions on leaving the big leopard in the dust like that. "Just don't take too long..." She wheezed, grunting as her stomach jiggled and sloshed with each deep breath.

"We just... need to get to our cabin, it's not too far I hope..." Serka tried to encourage him to get up, not to mention they would get in trouble if they lingered here for too long. Though it didn't seem like Collin was going to budge anytime soon until he was refreshed, she knew none of this was the leopard's fault, but it was still a little frustrating to deal with. At least she was able to get some air in herself, her feet were aching through her shoes, and it was very uncomfortable, her muscles were already starting to burn from the workout she had with the leopard. Resting her frame against the frame of the door as she waited for Collin, giving him a mild expression of tiredness and eager to get to their cabin.

[Shalion]: Collin felt bad that he was holding them up from getting to their cabin. He was hot and fatigued himself despite having only gotten up a few times since getting out of the cab a little over two hours ago. But then again, what was he to expect when he was hauling around the equivalent of eight extra people strapped to the various parts of his body? Most people could not even walk at his size, and Collin himself had been nearly bedridden just two years ago when he had been just under 100 pounds lighter.

"I'm sorry... Serka..." Collin breathed, moist eyed as he wiped yet more sweat from his face, "That was my first... time taking a... ramp though, I thought I... did pretty good, but I just can't... keep going after that... I'm sorry..." Collin mewled. It hurt worse because he knew that Serka's stamina was draining too, and she had not sat down since the restaurant either.

But there was nothing for it. Collin had not yet been able to break his 100 yard limit on his mobility yet and, as to be expected from real life outside the house, the world kept throwing extra challenges his way, either in the form of a leg cramp or an exhausting ramp up. Collin wondered about the potential energy needed to move his half ton body up one story, the leopard was not sure, but knew he could feel it in the way his leg muscles burned. But he recovered over the passing minutes, like he always did. He tried to be more productive with his sit down time by pulling out his phone and looking up their cabin location, sharing the diagram with Serka naturally.

[Gahtren]: "Heh... yeah... I kind of realized that, you did a good job..." The dragoness panted, patting the leopard's chest as she leaned against the wall, her ass and tail spreading against it as Collin let her borrow his phone to look at the diagram.

"Aw fuck... its up one level... fuuuuck..." She groaned, though she wasn't about to give up either. She noticed the ship had an elevator fortunately that led through the cabin floors, and with a sigh of relief, she found some ray of hope when worrying about going up a flight of stairs. "Well... *pant* there's an elevator just down the hall, I dunno what the weight limit is... but I'm sure we can fit in there, awkward as it sounds..." Serka handed the phone back to Collin, her feet were aching like crazy, she wanted to sit down, badly.

"Well we can't just... *huff* sit here all day, we're almost there..." She started to collect her breathing. Adjusting herself for more walking to come, "Well! I'm eager and ready to get in our cabin."

[Shalion]: Collin reached quickly back for his phone when Serka was done looking at it. He did not like having it out of sight, after all, and then stuffed it back under his wide, heavy man-boob inside his shirt. The tension in the plain little room continued to mount in the seconds after that, Serka waiting on him and Collin trying to judge if the receding pain, now just in his knees and calves, was sufficiently low to make the trek to the cabin. He wanted to hurry, but the more times he got up in a day, the longer it took for him to recover each time.

Collin thought that the situation in continuing to disappoint Serka by keeping her waiting could not get any worse, and he was about to get up despite not feeling completely ready, but was interrupted by the arrival of someone into the room. She was a smartly dressed bovine covered in soft brown and white patches, and she was carrying a load of towels in her arms so tall that at first she did not see either the huge dragoness or the leopard taking up much of the space in the small room. "Oh!" she exclaimed, noticing Serka first from behind the towels. "I-I-I'm sorry. Did you need help with anything?" The cow-lady's eyes were a little wide on seeing the sight that Serka made naturally, and she had not even noticed Collin yet, though she was unknowingly close to walking right into the wall that his enormous belly made as it spread across the ground, less than a foot away from her hooves. Collin was feeling too much self pity to make himself known, even as he recognized the situation unfolding.

[Gahtren]: Serka was no doubt surprised and almost flushed with red to see another person walk into this situation. It could have been the perfect opportunity or the most embarrassing moment of her and Collin's life. A few options presented themselves to her, she could say no, guide the bovine out, request that she assist both herself and Collin, or ask for where to go to their cabin. The latter of the two was obvious from the diagram, not to mention she was also tired from having to assist Collin up the ramp.

Serka wanted the best for Collin, but there was no doubt that she had to expend more energy to help him up to the cabin on her own. She was already worn out and nearing her limit, if she could convince her... well, the more help the better.

"My friend and I are trying to get to our cabins and are just resting." Serka panted, "He's... handicapped, and our cabin is just one floor above us. Could you perhaps assist me in helping him to the elevator?" Serka was preparing for the surprised shock that the bovine was going to have, and she hoped it wouldn't make Collin feel worse, but they could at least get plenty of rest when up in their room.

[Shalion]: The attendant nodded happily naturally. "I'd be more than happy to help you. Just let me set down these towels... And where is your friend exac-" That was as far as she got before she began to move forward, but her leg smacked solidly into a rather soft, plush wall of leopard. The attendant stumbled, letting out a surprised squawk and several of the towels from the high stack fell forward, landing on Collin's head and the front of his chest.

Collin himself was mortified, despite having frozen up in the moments leading up to this. He was even more frozen now, unable to so much as take a breath or even take the towels off of his head. His chest was so broad and thick that several of the folded towels rested there on the flat surfaces of his moobs, one on the left, two on the right. Another towel had landed on the dome of his wide belly where it unraveled and lay askew, rather more like a dinner napkin due to its relative size. But only a slight embarrassed wheeze escaped the leopard from under the towels. Childishly, Collin wished that he would just disappear from under them, or that the woman, even Serka herself, everyone would decide that suddenly leaving the room and forgetting any of this had ever happened would be the best course of action.

But with the top most towels now gone, the attendant could now see over them. She let out a choked laugh. "Oh, there he is..." She seemed remarkably resilient to the situation, despite having gone from speaking to someone over 700 pounds to all but stepping on someone weighing over 900 pounds.

[Gahtren]: "Heh..." Serka was honestly surprised the bovine didn't just scream, but fortunately that was just a worse case scenario. "Well you kind of tripped over some of him..." The dragoness playfully remarked, starting to waddle over and pick up some of the towels to give back to the bovine.

"You have time to help us out right?" The dragoness looked at the bovine with some difficulty, then back to the leopard to make sure Collin wasn't about to pass out seeing how reddened his cheeks and expression was. He was practically not moving, frozen in a state of pure shock, "Er... we probably can't do this without you Collin." She patted his back firmly to snap him out of his current state, causing the flab to wobble around and slosh idly.

[Shalion]: At the very least, the world did not seem to be exploding around him. But neither was it going away as he had hoped. Collin forced himself to take a deep breath, and then another. He'd been so shocked, he had forgotten even to breathe. "I... I'm sorry." he said reflexively.

The cow-lady just clucked her tongue and waved her hand at him after stowing away the large stack of towels into a cabinet in the small staff room. "Nothing to apologize for, young man." She walked back over and placed a hand gently on Collin's shoulder. "You know, my one of my sons is almost as big as you two, so I know what a hassle it can be. I'd be more than happy to help the two of you to your cabin."

Despite her good intentions, however, Collin still flinched at her touch. He moved away from her hand by leaning forward. He let out a heavy sigh as he pushed himself up onto his feet, back creaking as he lifted himself up while his stained belly dragged across the floor before eventually rising. Collin was standing freely and turned, slowly backing towards the open door to the room, hands out in front of him towards both the bovine attendant and Serka. He wore a nervous smile that squinched his eyes nearly closed. "No, no, no, I don't think that I need any help like that. I've already had more than enough today already, thank you." his smile faltered as his eyes passed over Serka. "But I wouldn't mind if you helped me with my luggage."

The attendant beamed, her eyes passing up from Collin's lower swell of tummy fat near the ground, up to his broad, full face and cute feline grin. Her eyes had a certain sparkle to them. "Certainly, young man. I wouldn't dream of imposing." She bent and grabbed the large duffel that Collin had inexpertly packed with his XXXXXXXXXXXXL's. She lifted it like it was nothing and set it on her shoulder. "My name's Ora, by the way."

[Gahtren]: The dragoness sighed with a huge relief as this went over better than she hoped. "Serka... nice to meet you Ora." She shook the bovine's hand, "I'm relieved we got someone helpful on our first day here." She was still panting heavily, and mostly out of how she held her breath from the tense situation that built itself up. The dragoness wheezed loudly, a little more so than Collin, she was definitely at her limit, and it was starting to show as her tongue was lolling out of her snout.

"Goodness, Serka! You don't look alright." The bovine offered her support, which Serka gladly took, not to concern Collin or anything.

"Just... hurgh... tired... feet hurt..." The dragoness whined even placing her fat hand against the wall to support herself, muscles burning as she briefly forgot about it when meeting Ora. "I just... mmnf..." She was forced to waddle in agonizing burn as they neared the elevator, it surprised the dragoness that Collin was actually doing better than Serka was.

[Shalion]: When Collin had gotten up, he had known that he would be fine to walk the distance to the cabin; it had not looked that far either to the elevator, or from the elevator to the cabin. But it was distressing for him to see Serka staggering. Her knew her pain all too well. He took a deep breath as they waited for the car to come, leaning against the far wall; his body stood quite a distance from it though, for the depth of his overgrown ass, so that his belly was still more than halfway out into the corridor. "We'll be fine once we... we get settled in the cabin, Serka." Collin tried to reassure Serka, feeling a little nervous having their roles reversed so suddenly, though he was acutely aware of his own tight limits. He would not have minded lying down for an hour or two himself. But he tried putting on a brave face for the dragoness, at least while he could.

It was not too long before the elevator dinged and the door opened. Collin stood back, making way for both Serka and Ora. The attendant moved in easily while Serka took in the width of the door with her eyes. There was just enough room for her to move in while brushing her sides. Collin would have to squeeze himself. However, before any maneuvering could begin, Ora cleared her throat. "I hope I don't cause any offense, but I feel like I should mention that there is a 2000 pound limit on the elevators. I'm 240 myself, not counting the luggage." Ora's voice rose a little as she volunteered her not exactly ideal body weight, though maybe she felt more at ease being around people who could drop her whole body weight and still be hundreds of pounds off of their 'ideal' weight.

To Collin, it looked like it would be hard to even fit himself and Serka inside the car at the same time, let alone Ora and their bags. As well, Collin knew exactly how much he weighed and about how much Serka was, and thought that with Ora and their luggage, they were almost certainly over the limit, regardless. "I'll stay down here and come up after you guys." Collin volunteered. He reached into his shirt and scrambled for the keycards he'd received when they had gone past the ticketer. He held one out for Serka, trying to seem at ease, though it did frighten him a little to be by himself.

[Gahtren]: "I... kind of overexerted myself... Collin..." The dragoness was still leaning on Ora for support, it was clear that she was probably close to falling on the floor, just not to the extreme that Collin did when going to the restaurant. The elevator closed and started to trek up to one level above them, the dragoness panting as her muscles were burning and close to giving out.

"My limbs are... about to go... limp..." She grunted and tried to straighten herself up, body and all jiggling against the bovine as the elevator thankfully stopped not too long at the floor. Which is there she was slowly guided to her cabin, the number was '205', having to pass through a few cabins before they arrived, the huge dragoness had to squeeze her way, wide belly and butt getting squished in the frame as she had to go in sideways to maneuver her body. "J-Just don't worry about be... *wheeze* Ora... just help Collin up here..." Serka wheezed at the bovine as she managed to squeeze her way through into her cabin with a huge sigh of relief. "Thank you so much for the help..." The dragoness took Collin's duffel bag as well when it was handed to her.

[Shalion]: Collin watched Serka and Ora disappear behind the doors of the elevator and although he knew that it was only going up one floor, he grew anxious as he looked around the empty corridor. He tried whistling feebly to himself, but recalled that he did not really know how to whistle after a few flat notes. He cleared his throat a couple times and shifted his weight.

How long had it been since Collin had been by himself? Sure, he spent a lot of time in his room at home, but somehow that was different from being outside, which was silly because he was inside a massive ship, literally surrounded by many tons of steel and machinery. But he was out in the world. Collin remembered how worried his mother had been when he had left with Jene on the taxi just that morning, but she was not merely worried about her spoiled adult child, she had gone over what to do if one of his many health issues suddenly flared up. Collin touched the medical alert bracelet on his left hand. It felt hard on his soft wrist, like a shackle.

Suddenly, Collin was interrupted in his reverie by footsteps coming down the corridor. Collin swallowed, obviously helpless as he not only had to wait for the elevator, but there was nowhere for him to go in the corridor anyways. Looking in the direction of the sound, Collin saw a heavyset man who matched his heavy sounding footsteps. He was smaller than Collin, obviously, but shorter by a head, though formidably tubby in his own right. The black panther had to be a good 400 pounds, but he walked proudly down the corridor as if he weighed much less. He wore gaudy colors, a tight pink muscle shirt and lavender sunglasses, emblazoned on his chest was a rainbow pride emblem. Collin wondered if he would just walk on by him, and hoped that he would, but the panther stopped just short of that, making for the gap that was available past Collin's bulk occupying the majority of the passageway and lowering his glasses to get a better look at the young man. He licked his chops with a bright red tongue as he noticed the massive belly falling out of his insufficient T-shirt.

"Mmurrr..." purred the panther. "I didn't know they made boys in your size, Big Guy."

The panther flaunted his sexuality, and while Collin had no problem with gay people, it was a little unnerving for him to be suddenly the object of someone's attention like that. Still, the strange man was not exuding any sense of disgust or hostility. The comment actually made him want to laugh more than anything, so he did. "I think they broke the mold on this one, actually." he smiled so hard, his eyes closed from his chubby cheeks and he flattened the fur on his head with one great, flabby arm.

"Well I'm happy to see men of all sizes here, us big people gotta stick together you know." The panther gave him an exaggerated wink. Collin was too nervous to do anything other than chuckle. "You have a name, Big Guy?"

"C-Collin." said the leopard, rather like a schoolboy called for attention.

"Well... Collin, I'm Samuel, Sam for short. Feel free to look me up anytime." He winked again at Collin and the leopard was at a complete loss. He almost missed the panther's extended hand, but managed to reach out and shake it at the last second. Collin's paw was so fattened that its curves seeped into the hollow portions of Samuel's palm. The panther squeezed him so tightly it almost hurt. But just then, the elevator dinged once more. "Looks like your ride's here, Big Boy." said the black cat and he walked past Collin without so much as a glance back. Ora did not even notice Samuel's back as she came out and greeted Collin.

Collin squeezed himself with effort into the elevator. The doors were not really wide enough, and the big leopard had to push into his belly with his hands and lean back into the frame as he shoved himself in. Ora wisely did not comment on Collin's difficulty. Though she offered a shoulder to lean on in walking to the room, Collin refused. His knees were hurting, but it was only a little further. Inside the air conditioned ship, he was starting to cool off finally as well, waiting had given him some time to stop sweating. He had just started breathing heavily by the time he stood in front of "205." "Thanks, Ora... You were really... a big help. Thanks for... getting my bag." said Collin as he leaned on the doorframe, fishing for the keycard with his big arm shoved down the neck of his tortured shirt.

"It really was not a problem at all. Please feel free to call on me, or any of us here on the ship if you need anything." her professional smile faded somewhat and she added in a more natural tone, "But please make sure your friend - Serka was it? - is doing alright. She seemed to have some trouble getting up here."

Collin could not stifle a chuckle. "I think she's just overdoing it on my account. Really, she's stronger than I am." It was easy for Collin to say that, it seemed like the obvious truth after all.

The key card opened the door, but Collin was immediately presented with another hurdle. Naturally, the opening into the cabin, even a duplex as requested for the two of them, was even narrower than the elevator doors had been...