The fifth installment! And as you all had hoped, it looks like Darkwing has become the Terror That Fats in the Night! Enjoy the extra helping of duck, because there's plenty more where that came from!

Art by Yours Truly
Story by  WolfgoneWide

<<< PREV | FIRST | NEXT >>>

---

The door slammed on the bad baker’s bare behind, but his unbalanced laughter continued to echo around the store-room. It almost drowned out the rumbling from Launchpad’s stomach.

“Launchpad!” Darkwing said urgently, frantically fighting to free himself from the ropes that held him tied. “Spit it out!”

“Hlmmpmhh!” Launchpad replied indistinctly. The adipose-amplified avian’s beak was wedged open to almost its widest, a flowerpot-sized muffin wedged in it end-on like the stopper in a trumpet. His feathery, flab-filled features wobbled around the obstruction, and the super-duper-sumo-sized duck almost went cross-eyed in an effort to stare down his own beak. “Hi kaaank, hee-huggleoo!”

“Then whatever you do, don’t… hnnngh...! DON’T CHEW!”” Darkwing urged again, straining futilely at his imprisoning ropes.

“Huck hic hellh ho hoog, hee-huggleoo!” With his bill crammed full of confectionary, Launchpad’s voice sounded even deeper and slower than normal. A bead of sweat rolled down from the chubby crease between his brows, balanced briefly on the flat of his beak and then dripped off.

“WILLPOWER, LP! That deranged dough-puncher put something dastardly in that delicious-smelling delicacy! If you gulp that down, you’ll become fatter than you can possibly imagine!” Though this was hard to credit- Darkwing’s overfed fellow-fowl already looked like the Stay-Puffed Marshmallow Duck- after a Thanksgiving dinner. Just how much more humungously hefty was it possible to get? Were there any documented details of ducks bursting from out-of-control obesity? But what DW could envisage, all too clearly, was being steamrollered pancake-flat beneath Launchpad’s ballooning belly. Or-worse- his butt. “And what have I told you about speaking with your beak full?” Years of habit as a foster-father chipped in suicidally before his ears caught up with his beak. “DON’T SWALLOW!” he yelled as his slow-witted sidekick habitually made to clear his mouthful.

“Uhhh… ‘orry, hee-huggleoo.”

“Just… hang in there, LP. I’ll think of a way to get us out of this!”

Easier said than done- well, perhaps not for Launchpad, right now. That blue-eyed basket-case had left them in a perilously poised position, Darkwing realised. And from the look on Launchpad’s face, time was running out! Maybe if he worm-crawled to the door he’d make it in time… but then how’d he operate the door-knob with his beak? Perhaps if he BOUNCED off Launchpad’s stomach… no, too difficult to aim. Or he could… no, that wouldn’t work… how about if…? nah-

He was interrupted by another, cavernous rumble from Launchpad’s blimplike belly.

“Hi… hone gow how huch honger hi han heek hic huc, hee-huggleoo!” The airship-sized aviator’s eyes were glazing behind his chub-tastic cheeks, and he was breathing heavily through his beak… which only wafted more of the muffin’s malign aroma up his nostrils. Worse, the muffin was starting to go soggy. “HO…. hung-hee…….”

“C’mon, Darkwing, THINK!” our hero frantically scolded himself. He made another impotent attempt to break free of his bonds, his frustration boiling over. “Hynnnnngh…! Gyabba-yadda-hadda…!” He subsided with a spluttery wheeze. “If ONLY there was a way to bust out of thes- waaaait a minute…” A lightbulb in the shape of a muffin pinged on above his head. “That’s it!” If he’d been able to smack his fist into the palm of his hand in triumph, he would have done. “Launchpad! Launchpad...? Launch-PAAAAAD!”

“Huh?” The drooling blubber-duck blinked, and his eyes refocussed. “Uhhh… Hee-huggleoo?”

“Launchpad, I want you to CHEW on that muffin!” His stupendously swollen sidekick blinked at him in bewilderment.

“Huh?!”

“Chew, Launchpad! Chew, but DON’T swallow!”

“Huck… huck hoo haig…” Launchpad’s puzzled complaint was drowned out by another RRUMBLE from the pachyderm-sized poultry’s stupendous stomach. Darkwing could have sworn he felt Launchpad’s belly swell a little bigger behind him.

“We’ve got to think outside the box here, LP. Now CHEW!”

“Uhhh… hokay!” Launchpad shrugged his sizeable shoulders.

GLOM…

With an effort, Launchpad’s beak closed around the malicious mouthful. The muffin strained between his mandibles like a fruit being trodden on slowly, and then as they finally pressed shut the compressed, quivering cake popped like a puffball. Crumbs cascaded down either side of Launchpad’s bill, funnelling into the crease between his massive moobs and skittering wildly over their outer curves like an avalanche sliding down a feathery mountainside. They began to shower down around DW, who leaned back against his bloated sidekick’s blubbery bulk, beak open to the sky.

“Come on…. come on…!” Darkwing began to sweat, his tongue waving wildly. Then a small moist chunk came bouncing erratically down the slopes of Mt. Launchpad and scored a direct hit. He gulped. “Say-hayyyy….” Darkwing said to his audience in wide-eyed surprise, licking his beak “That IS good!” His stomach gurgled ominously, but just then he heard a deep, ominous sound from overhead.

GOLLOP…

“LAUNCHPAD!” Darkwing stared in horror as the malevolent muffin sank down the duck’s throat as a bulbous bulge. “I said…” he had to raise his voice as Launchpad’s gut began to gurgle as well, only much more loudly, a thunderous gastric grumbling that only kept growing in volume. The huge belly behind Darkwing suddenly lurched forwards a few inches, pressing against him like an overinflated bounce house. There was a series of deafening POPs from higher up, and as his sidekick’s jacket finally RRRIPPED apart from the pressure all that feathery bulk surged outwards even further!

“…Don’t… SWALLOW!”

Darkwing was propelled forwards like a trodden-on ping-pong ball, sailing through the air still in a sitting position, and bounced several times before coming to a halt.

Bimph…!

Mid-air, Darkwing’s stomach let loose another gurgle, and the ropes tied tightly around him began to tighten. Looking down, he saw them stretch out as his midsection began to swell.

Bamph…!

His second landing was definitely heavier than the first, and his behind’s impact with the hard floor felt considerably more cushioned. Bouncing up again, he gained far less height this time before gravity weighed him him down. Stomach still gurgling, his ropes creeaaked audibly as they stretched even further, quivering from the increasing strain they were under.

BOMPH!

Darkwing landed solidly on his behind and didn’t so much as skid. The overburdened ropes binding our hero burst apart all at once with a POP, releasing him like a butterfly from a chrysalis. Or, perhaps in this case, a large grub.

“Ha! Yet again, brains triumph over brawn!” Triumphantly, Darkwing jumped up. “Oh boy…” he finished in far less exultant tones as the extent of his necessary ‘bulking up’ sank in. He put his hands under the sizeable paunch sticking out from his middle and bounced it a couple of times in chagrin. His blue polo-neck barely made it half-way down this embarrassing excess, whilst the buttons on his purple jacket strained in a similarly ineffective effort to keep him covered up. Glancing behind him, Darkwing winced- that was why his landing had felt so soft. His cape now barely made it to the top of his cheeks. “I only hope it comes off as easily as it went on,” he said to-camera, feeling his much fuller face wobble as he spoke. He was having trouble seeing his feet. “If Gosalyn sees me like this I’ll never hear the end of it!” Again he hefted the big flour-sack his stomach had become, and ‘oofed’ as its weight thunked back down. That tore it- that psychotic procyonid pants-hating pastry chef had to be stopped before he cooked up anything else! Darkwing had grown almost as big as the ‘old’ Herb, and that was just from one tiny morsel-

Darkwing’s eyes suddenly went wide as he remembered where the rest of it wound up. On cue, a shadow began to block out the light.

“Mother…” he gulped as he spun round to see a wall of white-feathered flab advancing inexorably towards him. He backed away, then turned and ran, although with all the extra weight he was carrying made it more of a lumber, the growing avalanche of adiposity that was his unstoppably swelling sidekick hard (or should that be lard?) on his heels. As he ran he screamed hysterically:

“I always knew baking was bad for you!”

Darkwing reached the store-room door and wrenched it open, then had to fight to keep it open as a mushrooming mountain of duck-fat began to press up against it.

“Hnnnngh….!”

Finally, our newly fuller-figured crime-fighting fowl forced himself through, the pressure of Launchpad’s ever-growing weight slamming the door behind him. Darkwing leaned on it, panting heavily.

“Whew… that was a narrow-”

Then he blinked as he felt the door begin to bow out against him, the doorknob trembling and rattle as the wooden frame started to creak. There was a grinding of building materials, and cracks started to appear in the wall around him. The entire building began to shake with a tectonic grumbling. Flakes of paint started drifting down around him as the pressure on the wall’s far side grew higher, and higher, and higher...

Darkwing looked to camera, tugged nervously on the constricting scarf of his roll-neck top around his new double-chin and gulped.

“R-remember kids, this is what happens to you if you don’t exerci-”

KERBOOM!