The Breakfast Food Affair

By Psion

An Adipose City Story

All Rights Reserved

Italiana Research Facility, SubCity, 11 PM...

Night had fallen on Adipose City, corpulent city of the future, once more. In the city above, the local nightlife flocked to the clubs or trudged into the nightshift at the factory, greenhouse, or 24-hour eatery. Megacorps focused on the production and preparation of food dueled one another for market dominance over an increasingly fatter population of humans and anthropomorphic "animen."

In an Italiana laboratory tucked away in the underground warrens of the subterranean arcology Subcity, the clock and the security shift change that came with it were the only signs that the sun had set long ago. In this concealed facility, the Italian megacorp was hard at work finding ways to conquer the one meal all their competitors had so far claimed dominance in, breakfast. Virtually all the other corps, from their archrivals Aristo to the Far Eastern Pan Asia, claimed a native collection of recipes for decadent carbohydrates and proteins perfect for starting the morning. Meanwhile traditional Italian cooking didn't place much of an emphasis on breakfast, at least not in the same way that allowed the other corps to market extremely decadent portions of everything from pancakes and muffins to sausages and fish. Subsequently laboratories under Italiana's golden chalice like this one were tasked with refining old recipes and developing new ones. The constant border skirmishes in Germany with Aristo had produced a number of Germanic dishes for Sicilian food scientists to experiment with and there were rumors that the company was approaching a breakthrough in its native cuisine.

The Subcity research kitchen was as small as it was remote, a former office space situated far away from the main roadways and subway stations running through the district, barely big enough for the ten to twenty Steel Chefs that operated the main test kitchen during the day. Confident in its isolation and populated by managers always looking for a corner they can "safely" cut, Italiana assigned only two security grunts to the facility's graveyard shift. Gorging themselves on huge buckets of cheap pasta and engrossed in an episode of Gut Gladiators, one would be hard pressed to call these mundane guards "attentive."

Samantha Fisherman, Burger World agent and Grabboid infiltrator, rolled her green eyes as she adjusted her visor and swept the area for electrical and thermal signatures. Two guards, both of them watching the television, and basic electronic surveillance... not even close to her most difficult infiltration. Did Italiana really want to burst onto the breakfast scene or not? The portly mink gave the front of the facility one more sweep to note camera positions and made her way across the deserted underground roadway, Expandex catsuit creaking seductively as the bottom-heavy mustelid waddled her way over.

Watched by several cameras with overlapping fields of view, not to mention that the guard station was right there, the front door was pretty much out of the question even if the two pasta guts had their eyes glued to the Iron Belles half time show. Being underground, accessing the "roof" was a similar impossibility. Fortunately businesses in Subcity still needed ventilation and maintenance workers still needed to access utilities...

The maintenance shaft was navigable but congested, meant more for remote-controlled repair drones then someone of the mink's generous proportions. But Samantha took a perverse pleasure in wiggling her big backend into places it wasn't supposed to fit. Concrete walls applied pressure against her thunderous hips, short brown hair hanging matted inside her helmet as she snaked her way through. Just one more access panel down and... she squeezed her way directly behind the plate that led into the test kitchen. Yet there was one more thing she had to do before she could breach the perimeter.

Slipping a free hand into the hip pouches at her side, she produced a small bug with a WiFi transmitter. Splicing it into a promising looking fiber optic cable leading into the building, she paused for a moment to signal Penelope Autumns, a Code Wader frequently partnered with her.

"Penny, I planted a bug. Are you getting anything?" The mink asked over the radio built into her helmet.

The equine hacker was silent for a moment, the sound of an office chair rolling across the floor could be heard as she put whatever she was doing aside to check the results of Fisherman's tampering. "Well... Are you sure you're in the right place Sammy? Because I've seen game consoles with better security then this. Wait never mind, I'm in the security system, I have the cameras playing a feedback loop to the mozzarella brains out front and I'm checking them now... yeah this looks like the place alright. You remember what you have to do right?"

Samantha smiled and licked her lips greedily. "Get in, access the research computer. Download all of their research notes before uploading that virus of yours to wipe the hard drive clean. Then destroy any test samples and ingredients I find before leaving out the way I came." The mink replied

"Don't sound so excited, you still need to go out the way you came in." Penelope giggled before signing off to let the other woman get to her work.

The portly infiltrator pulled out her Omni-driver and jimmied the clasp that was supposed to be opened on the other side. Sliding the panel aside, the brown-furred mustelid squeezed out through the access panel and into the spotless test kitchen. Filled with a collection of cooking and chemistry equipment, the room was prepped for all manner of culinary experimentation and tests. Most of the contraptions she could identify but some of the machines she would have needed her cohort Spoons, one of Burger World's Steel Chefs, to tell her what they were.

The research terminal was easy enough to spot, a desktop computer tucked away in a corner where it could be kept largely out of the way of a troop of cyber-cooks cooking and baking a variety of cuisines. And in another case of Italiana genius, someone decided that since the computer was kept completely offline, it didn't even need a password. In a minute she was in, perusing the recipes as she copied them to an encrypted flash drive. Once the download was complete, she switched flash drives and began to upload Penny's virus. A little Pacman appeared on the desktop screen, eating icons as the program devoured and reduced the contents of the hard drive to incomprehensible bits of code. Now that the computer was taken care of, it was time for Samantha's favorite part...

Slinking around a strange kitchen, there was a bit of pressure as she began to systematically search cabinets and drawers. Finally, towards the back of the kitchen, she found the pantry and the test samples. The test samples were a collection of German breakfast dishes tucked away inside refrigerators and cooling racks mummified with plastic wrap. Opening the first electric ice box, letting the cold air caress her face, Samantha leaned forward and began to unapologetically eat right out of the fridge. Chains of sausages slurped up by the link, strudel pastries filled with fruit jams greedily crammed in her mouth, a bowl of hard-boiled eggs served with a mustard-lemon sauce guzzled down and licked clean... her mouth and stomach were happily taking a lengthy culinary tour of Deutschland. Every sight that could be seen, every taste that could be experienced, was currently being loaded up into her cavernous gullet. Her belly bulged inside her Tank-X armor vest, becoming delightfully round and tight as it filled up with treat after treat.

Cleaning out one refrigerator and closing it behind her, she moved onto the next one and repeated the process. Used to being stuffed to the brim during her stealth binges, her gut began to digest the contents of her gorging to make room for more food. Her already considerable rump was beginning to acquire a little more jiggle as she lumbered along, her massive rear end blocking just a little more of the view of the next refrigerator as she bent over to empty it out. Her belly continued to bloat outward as well, unable to keep up with the torrent of food as she cleaned out the entire pantry and began to devour the contents of the cooling racks. Hundreds upon hundreds of delicious carbohydrates entered her mouth as she feasted on breads, bagels, and muffins...

Her stomach gargled happily as she demolished the last bagel with a triumphant belch. Twenty to thirty pounds of food earmarked for over a dozen gourmets and food critics, over a hundred collective man-hours for the research staff to perfect, devoured in half an hour by one stealthy glutton looking for a very early breakfast. Her ears perked up when she heard a door open at the other side of the cavernous kitchen... time to go.

Creeping the best she could, her body sluggish from the amount of blood redirected to her swollen beach ball of a belly, she carefully balanced her feet to try and avoid the ominous creaking of a floor tile protesting from having too much mink standing on it. Slowly, carefully... keeping to the opposite side of the kitchen and crouching against counters piled high with pots and pans, she stealthily guided her blimp-like frame back to the open access panel. Sliding in feet first, Samantha felt the sweat drip down her face when she realized the tunnel was a little snugger then when she came in. Squeezing and fussing her way through the access panel, she managed to get in and replace the plate before the guard walked by. Holding her breath, she listened to the heavy footsteps walk by less then a foot away from her hiding place, the guard obliviously walking past on his way back to the security room. Thankfully he clearly hadn't patrolled all the way to the back of the building otherwise there would definitely be an alarm right about now.

The rest of the way back passed by much slower then the way in. Threading her bloated gut through the narrow space, the tight squeezing and rubbing aided her digestion. Fisherman flashed a guilty grin to no one but herself as she felt her butt swell with fat and smoosh up against all four sides of the crawl space, reaching behind her to give her most prominent feature a loving rub. There was no denying it now, her ass was simply too big for anyone but her, the queen of the squish, to squeeze through. Another mission successfully accomplished.

About an hour later...

Bazooka Betty raised an eyebrow at her fellow overstuffed agent as she filled out an electronic mission report, the hyper-hourglass tabby cat twirling the stylus between her fingers as she went over the results of the mission with Samantha. "Okay, so Spoons double-checked the recipes you recovered, a line of German-inspired breakfast products like we thought. The virus upload was successful, pushing their research back to the beginning. So that just leaves the status of their pantry and any product stored in the test kitchen, did you take care of that?"

The mink opened her mouth to reply but instead of words, a loud belch erupted past her lips. Her stomach gargled happily as it began to audibly churn its contents, Fisherman grinned as she gave her bulge a gentle pat. Betty merely smiled and shook her head. "I'll take that as a yes then." She laughed, writing, "product successfully destroyed" on the form. "Well if there's nothing else then let's get you home so you can sleep that off. Next time though, you are definitely taking me in with you." The feline chuckled as the agents drove off into the night, confident that Italiana was going to have a very bad day in the morning...

The Breakfast Food Affair Part 2: Wheels and Steel

Despite being subject to some dastardly sabotage by an unknown megacorp a few days ago, Italiana had yet to be deterred from their plan to conquer breakfast. Fortunately for the Mediterranean corporation, their research facility outside of the city was still unhindered and had been working in concert with the Subcity lab in order to fulfill this particular company mandate. A shipment of materials and copies of the destroyed research notes had been sent by truck. Barring the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the project would continue on without a hitch. Unfortunately, it would seem that other factions were loading slingshots and drawing back bowstrings...

The midday sun shown like a bright orb on the highway leading into Adipose City, an Italiana armored van plodded along on its journey from upstate New Hampshire oblivious to the slender figure watching it from the relative safety of a nearby foothill before starting her motorcycle. The Consortium Speed Freak smiled wickedly and eagerly gripped the handlebars as she drove onto the highway and chased after her target. Jockey the squirrel animan tried to not to get ahead of herself but the excitement was building. Her first mission as an agent of the PhysEd Consortium, sabotaging those damnable fatties and break their artery-clogging chokehold on the world! Soon, so very soon, fat asses the world over would fear her name...

And then a bulky black car that was almost more SUV then sedan came up behind her and effortlessly passed her. The car appeared to be largely unremarkable except for its size and style, resembling the Rolls-Royce Wraith of the old petroleum economy. But it was the rear bumper that chilled Jockey's blood, boasting a vanity plate that read "LETHAL BULK" and a bumper sticker that said "I <3 Aristo." Seconds later a well-placed shredder mine was spat out of a slot beneath the car's vanity plate, blowing out both of her tires and sending the squirrel careering off a shallow cliff, wounding the idealistic agent and turning her into yet another tally mark for the Aristo Road Hog known as Pounds, a well-padded and well-bred lupine highway knight serving Queen and Corporation.

"Stupid Consortium rat, this lorry's mine." The black-furred wolfess grumbled as she sped along after her target. The Lethal Bulk's super-charged engines roared like a lion as she pressed on the accelerator, Hardlink goggles projecting an array of information from road conditions to the status of her arsenal of vehicular gadgets over her field of vision. Just needed to nudge her Bulk closer and... deploy magnetic harpoon!

From a compartment in the front of her car, an electromagnet attached to a steel cable shot out and latched onto the Italiana van in front of her. Then the laser turret cut the metal doors open, reactive nano-plating coming to life as they fell off and bounced harmlessly against the Lethal Bulk's bodywork. Finally, the car's integrated vacuum cannon came online, deploying a feeding mask in the passenger compartment. Setting the computer-assisted car on autopilot, she strapped the mask onto her face and fired the cannon.

Above the car, a small whirlwind condensed around the weaponized vacuum cleaner and began picking up one edible soy-plastic box after another, cramming ingredients and finished German pastries into the food pump's hopper before propelling them down into the wolf's eager mouth. Pounds felt her eyes roll up towards the ceiling in gastronomic pleasure as dozens of familiar flavors caressed her tongue on their way down to her greedy belly below. The well-dressed Road Hog felt her stomach bulge and briefly catch up with the colossal bottom defining her pear-shaped figure. Her abdomen creaked and greedily churned the torrent of food being pumped into it as her tan Expandex driving suit stretched to contain the ballooning black wolfess inside it. As the Italiana truck emptied, Pounds began to take up more and more of her car. The Bulk's suspension groaned in protest of the growing weight of its mistress but dutifully carried her on all the same.

The van was emptied all too soon for Pounds' taste, but a job was a job and this job was almost complete. Using the Bulk's sensors, she scanned for the flash drives packed away in the van's cargo bay... and belched with an embarrassed blush when her search pointed back at her bloated stomach. The drives had been packed in one of the boxes she ate. Sighing and shrugging, she tried to look on the bright side; at least she knew the data wasn't going anywhere until the drives passed through her system. Resuming control of her vehicle, she got off at the next exit and began making her way to Aristo's regional headquarters in Adipose City to make her report. Hopefully phase two went as well as phase one...

The corporate laboratory in the New Hampshire Mountains was more a case of hiding in plain sight then basing in a remote location. Located at the edge of a small farming town otherwise owned by Aristo, situated right off the highway with the company logo plainly visible, it looked like any number of company offices the world over. Yet this was the location Lady Nelson and her fellow knights identified as one of the labs responsible for Italiana's secret breakfast research program. Sir Bertrand successfully traced communications between this one and the one Burger World hit earlier in the week and the armored vixen just received word that Pounds was triumphant in hitting the transport vehicle they sent out earlier. Now to just clean up the laboratory and shut down Italiana's plans for good...

The roar of a chorus of methane engines caused the perimeter guards to look up and clutch their weapons nervously. At first there was nothing on the horizon then suddenly four figures clad in KnightWorks power armor and riding motorized trikes charged the facility. Crashing the gates, Nelson's knights opened fire on the base security. The barrel-chested vulpine female leaned back into her mechanized mount, firing her Safari Master at opportune targets while her teammates closed in with melee weapons. Electrified maces and flails cracked down on Italiana skulls while Sir Bart, an armored Steel Chef, chased after foes with his Plasma Cleaver held over his head, the ax-sized cleaver sizzling with intense heat from the plasma field cast around it. Within moments it was over, the guards were routed, the alarms were disabled, and the team quickly dismounted. Metal tower shields unfurled in a roll of interlocking segments as the Round Knights lumbered inside.

Sturdy polymer greaves tapped against the polished marble floor as the four techno-knights stomped through the front foyer. Decorated in a combination of modern Italian style and ancient Roman architecture, it would have been a magnificent reception area were the last of the guards not trying to put up a pitched defense. Bullets bounced harmlessly off their shields and armor as the intruders closed in to melee range and struck the last resistance down with whips, maces, and flails. With nothing holding them back, Nelson led the way into the laboratory proper.

"Excuse me, you can't come..." The lead researcher began, his protest dying in his throat when he realized there was no refusing a group of heavily armed intruders from a rival corporation.

Nelson and the others muscled the rival corporation's research scientists into a small conference room while Bertrand started hacking the laboratory's research computer, the fallow deer downloading the data into a storage device built into his gauntlet before wiping the hard drive clean. The vixen and her German Big Tool cohort, a sheep animan named Hilda, remained professionally quiet as they worked. But Bart had to get the last word in with his rival chefs. "Bah, now we see just how good your tomato-stained fingers are at OUR recipes." The nearly spherical knight crowed as he belly-bumped the last of the scientists into the meeting room and locked the door behind him. Behind her polymer full helm, the vixen shook her head and turned to Bertrand, the Code Wader nodding as his task was complete.

With the guards and the staff taken care of, Nelson removed her helmet and her team followed suit. "Alright then, the data is taken care of. Let's deal with the research materials and Hilda can tell us whether or not this Italiana rubbish successfully reminds her of home." She ordered, weapons sheathed and helmet resting in the crook of her arm as she marched into the kitchen proper in the general direction of the pantry.

The actual test kitchen was a fairly spacious room with plenty of space for about thirty of the Sicilian megacorp's generously cushioned food scientists to work comfortably. Three rows of "islands" in the center of the room either contained stoves and ovens or were covered in an array of mixing bowls and cutting boards. One whole wall was devoted to ovens, another to refrigerators and immobilized cooling racks, and the third lead to an open pantry with shelves upon shelves of fresh ingredients. Bart waddled right behind Nelson, tut-tutting as he inspected the kitchen equipment. Sectioning off a particularly large stretch of clear kitchen counter, Bertrand and the ladies cleared out storage units while the Steel Chef emptied bubbling pots and flash-chilled them till they were edible. Piling their findings up on the counter, each agent promptly began to dig in and devour the ingredients and test products. Declining to stand on ceremony, the knights settled for cramming food into their mouths as fast they could. Fruit filled pastries, spiced sausages, and creamed custards... all manner of ingredients were on display in this kitchen and Nelson wasn't sure most of them had anything to do with German cooking but their destruction was required and it was a shame to let good food go to waste.

Picking up a massive bowl of custard and not spilling a single drop, the vixen tilted the container up against her lips and started guzzling the contents as fast as she could. Her stomach bulged and stretched the elastic polymer of her chest armor as her belly filled with custard, then sausages and pastries. Her cohorts were becoming similarly overstuffed, Bertrand piling some serious weight on top of his normally chubby figure with a pile of fresh breads, Bart becoming almost completely spherical as he "tsk-tsked" and complained about the things he put in his mouth for his corporation, and Hilda... Hilda seemed to have even less of a bottom to her stomach then the big bellied Steel Chef. The domestic sheep was clearly fighting to avoid taking a trip down memory lane as dozens of familiar flavors were squeezed into her, this successful mission adding to the many, many pounds of tender mutton already packed away below her waist.

Plastic armored plating engineered to stretch with its occupant's waistline groaned violently as it was pushed to its limits. The four invaders bloated up as their midsections filled with carbohydrates, proteins, and sugars as their computer specialist ran a program to alert them when reinforcements were on their way, stuffing his face with bagels as he checked the electronics warfare equipment installed into his armor.

Within an hour it was all over, the kitchen was stripped bare of food. Nary a crumb remained outside of the bloated guts of Nelson and her cohorts. Weapons close and helmets back on, the overstuffed armored giants navigated their swollen abdomens out the facility and back to their vehicles. Nelson gave a sly smile behind her visor as she looked back at Hilda and Bart bringing up the rear. The waddling sheep had acquired significant weight to her already exaggerated stride while the smug canine chef looked like he could have been easily rolled out like giant squishy boulder.

Suspensions groaned as the weighty knights mounted their armored tricycles and rode off into the noontime sun. Engines roar and slowly built up momentum as the mechanical steeds dutifully bore their now larger riders. Just another day crushing the hopes and dreams of a rival corporation...