Hey, thanks to everyone who helped make round one a success! Not only have Toro and Victor beefed up, but we hit that first goalpost! Now every dollar is worth two pounds instead of one! I'm sure they'll eventually put their new unicorn friend to shame.
The overwhelming darkness was the dominant, and so far, only discernible trait of Xibalba. Jose and Victor were left to stumble around, tripping in their oversized clothes.
“This is wrong,” Victor muttered. “This is so wrong. I haven’t been this small since I was in school.”
Jose nodded emphatically, keeping a hand on Victor’s scrawny shoulder to keep him steady. “Jose has…” he frowned. “You know, senor, Jose doesn’t think he has ever been this small.”
The tigrat rolled his eyes. “This is just fantastic. Not only did we get dragged to Hell, it’s the wrong fucking Hell. My Priest is going to be pissed with me.”
“Si, this is not at all what Papa warned Jose it would be like…” the bull squinted into the darkness. “Wait! Amigo, look!”
In the distance, there was a pinprick of light. As they shuffled closer, they began hearing strange noises just hovering on the edge of darkness, and the two, never having felt so vulnerable, kept close. As they kept moving, the light grew into what appeared to be a town, and then, a city; a vast, sprawling city made up of palaces, temples, gardens, and crowded streets, dominated by a massive step pyramid, all under an inky black sky with no stars or moons.
“I have a sinking feeling we’ll have to climb the top of that pyramid by the end of this… at least we’ll get leg day in, right big guy?” Victor said, elbowing Jose in the all-too visible ribs.
The city was skirted by a wide river with thick vegetation on either bank, and oddly, the water seemed to be… hissing. Jose knelt down on the bank, and, picking up a stick, prodded the river. He cringed when he pulled the stick out. “Dios mio! Senor, the river is full of scorpions!”
“Well, glad I wasn’t in the mood for swimming…”
Jose scratched his chin. “Obviously, this is a challenge of wits, si? Clearly, joo and Jose are supposed to figure out how to cross the river… maybe there is a raft we can make?”
“Jose…”
The bovine waved Victor off. “Sh, quiet, senor, Jose is thinking! Mama always warned Jose to be careful when he did that! We could… make a raft, or, is there a way to tame the scorpions? Maybe they are friendly?”
“Jose-”
“Do not interrupt, amigo, it is rude! Jose almost has it… we must… answer a riddle? Si, si! That is always in the stories. The scorpions have a riddle for us!” He knelt down to the bank, speaking to the scorpions writhing in the river. “Pequino amigos, we are ready for joor riddle!”
“Jose!” Victor pulled him back. “Or- and this is just a crazy thought, here-” he jerked his thumb behind him, where a large, arched bridge spanned across the infested river. “We take the bridge.”
Jose looked from the river, to Victor, to the bridge. “Ah, well, si, amigo, if joo want to take the easy way.”
The two shuffled into the city, and they immediately ducked into an alley; the city was inhabited entirely by the dead. Skeletal specters and spirits passed through the streets; they seemed to be celebrating. Strange, bright green drinks that glowed in the gloom were shared liberally, and alien music filled the air. Jose grimaced. “They are skinnier than us, amigo! Joo and Jose could take them… but maybe not… all of them. How can we blend in?”
As they backed away from the main street, Victor nearly tripped over a skeleton lying up against a wall. Sitting in a puddle of the strange green liquid slowly pouring out of a tipped over bottle, the creature was clearly drunk out of his mind.
“Tatliznequi?” he slurred, before slumping forward, unconscious. There was another, a drinking buddy, right next to him and equally intoxicated.
Victor tapped his foot, thinking. “Well… it’s not like they have anything left that needs covering up,” he murmured, before stripping the two of their clothes; somewhat grungy affairs of open vests and trousers whose only redeeming feature was that they fit the shrunken tigrat and bull.
As they dared to pass back into the main streets of the city, they drifted past a crowd of musicians and revelers and into a cantina, where they immediately locked eyes with a unicorn; one that was very huge, and very much alive.
The unicorn was acting in some capacity as a bartender, running more drinks of that strange, glowing liquid to skeletal patrons. The liquid did not pass through their bones, as one would expect, but simply disappeared; as if it really was consumed. The unicorn running these drinks was a sight to see; with a massive, barn-door back and arms thicker than Jose and Victor’s waists put together, he towered over everything in the Cantina, and was soon lumbering towards the two of them on pillar-like legs. He had to lean forward to look down at them, his cliff-like pecs jutting past his muzzle and covered in brightly colored bodypaint. “I don’t think you two little guys are supposed to be here… you’re alive. If just barely.”
Victor and Jose closed ranks; they were feeling slightly intimidated by a figure so huge, if not a little annoyed of how much he reminded them of their former selves. “Who are you?” Victor asked with narrowed eyes.
The giant figure held up his hands. “Don’t worry, guys. I’m alive, just like you- the name’s Isaac. What’re you doing here, anyways?”
“We were, uh… invited,” Victor explained.
“Invited?” the Unicorn furrowed his brow.
Jose tilted his head, keeping his voice low. “Si, senor… by Xolotl?”
The huge bartender slowly nodded. “Ahh… I see. You guys want to get back to the… other side, right?”
“Yeah… but if you’re alive too, why are you here?” Victor asked.
“Oh, uh… I’ve got my reasons. Change of scenery.” Their host shrugged his massive shoulders, swallowing up what neck he had left.
Victor arched his brow. “You, what, came here for vacation?”
“Look, why I’m here isn’t important… if you’re staying here for long, you need to have a way to stay alive. You’ll need spirit energy.” the gigantic equine canted his head, his horn nearly scraping against the ceiling of the cantina. “Over here.”
He led the two to the bar; resting his mammoth arms against it and causing the wood to creak, he fished a pendant wedged between his bulging pecs. It was a swirling, stylized icon, like the cross-section of a conch shell. “This is a wind jewel. It syphons spirit energy, which most of the people around here get from this stuff,” he gestured to the glowing green liquid. “It’s water from the River of Life, which flows from the main pyramid. You’ll need a steady supply to survive here, but be careful… it has an interesting way of manifesting itself with people that are, y’know, still breathing.”
He ducked down, his engorged back muscles still rising above the bar like a mountain. He came back with two wind jewels, one for each of them. “So long as you have this on you, you can syphon off spirit energy to stay alive.” He pushed two drinks to the both of them. “Here, first one’s on the house.”
“But, wait- is that how you syphon energy? Just by drinking this stuff?” Victor asked.
The Unicorn wobbled his hand. “Yeah, yeah… just be careful. The stuff’s addicting. You can also get it by challenging other spirits down here… spirit energy’s kinda like a currency, only you’re your own credit card.”
“Ah-ha!” Jose rubbed his hands. “That is for Jose! Don’t joo worry, amigo, Jose knows what to do…” He drank down the liquid in one gulp. There was an odd flash in his eyes, though that could easily be the lighting of the cantina.
Before Victor could stop him, Jose swaggered over to a table crowded with skeletons. “Hola, senors! Jose is here to challenge joo all to a manly game of arm-wrestling!”
The tigrat buried his face in his hands, before glancing back up at the unicorn and took his own drink. It tasted not unlike fruit juice, though what fruit it was, Victor couldn’t tell. It did have a kick to it; he felt a lot more energized, at least. Feeling a little better about their chances, Victor put on his best winning smile, and approached another group of skeletons.
“Uh… hey there, fellas. How’s it going?”
One skeleton with a feline-like skull turned to an eagle skeleton. “Intoca?”
“Nah, nah…” the eagle waved the feline off. “He speaks one of the pale languages… from the invaders up North. You know… Americano.” He turned to Victor. “Take a seat, gringo. How’d you die? You still got your fur.”
Victor blinked. “Oh, uh… I…” He shrugged, pulling his best nonchalant look. “You guys wouldn’t want to hear it… I’m not nearly drunk enough to do it justice.”
The eagle jerked his head to his feline friend, and he slid Victor another drink. The tigrat eagerly gulped it down; the taste was growing on him. And it was oddly filling… he loosened his shirt a bit before he took another swig.
“Go on then, gringo. Thrill us.”
Jose was doing better than even he expected. Maybe this would be better than he thought! A little of the green spirit juice to keep him going, and he could do this all night. Even at his diminished form, he still had some form of muscle on his scarecrow-like frame. The skeletons had none. Each victory made him feel a little better; like he was back in the ring! And with each win, another bet saw a little more energy come his way. It was like a breath of fresh air; a small burst of energy swirling about him until it found purchase in the wind jewel. He was even feeling stronger, and when he looked down, he looked it, too! His arms looked and felt heftier, and his chest was filling out the ratty vest that previously hung limp on his bony torso.
“Hah!” Jose slammed another bony arm down, and breathed in his prize. Patting his arm and giving it an experimental flex, he smirked as his bicep surged up. He took a deep breath in, letting his chest expand; he felt relieved. He wasn’t as big and strong as he used to be, but it was a start- and at least his body once more matched his extremely handsome face.
“Victor! Amigo!” Jose called across the cantina triumphantly, bouncing his pecs against his vest. “Jose has done it! He has figured a way for joo and Jose to get all muscolo again!”
Victor didn’t hear, as he had just reached the climax of his story. “...And so then, me, three girls, and a pink mustang convertible go careening off the cliff, and before everything goes black, the last thing I hear from the girl next to me is, ‘wow, I picked the wrong day to go on the pill!’”
The other skeletons around him burst into laughter, pouring him his umpteenth drink. “Yeah, so… that’s how I died. Hey, whoever said life isn’t fair, clearly hasn’t been dead yet.” Victor smirked, swigging down the strange spirit drink straight from the bottle as the skeletons burst into a renewed bout of laughter. He had clearly been drinking a lot; the tigrat had gotten big, too, but he was looking a lot softer than Jose. His face was round, full, and then some, with a sizeable second chin starting to come in, wobbling ever so slightly as he talked. A respectably sized belly, roughly the size of an over-inflated beachball, sat in his lap, jiggling as he gestured wildly, launching into a new story to milk more out of the skeletons.
Jose shrugged, and turned back to his next opponent, rolling his broad shoulders and smirking as he grabbed those bony fingers in a iron grip. Passing out more drinks, Isaac smirked as he passed by Jose and Victor… these two would be just fine. Probably.
Jose and Victor are going to be issued a challenge! Who will their opponent be?
A- The Demon Lord, Xiquiripat, challenges them to a ball game!
B- The Necromancer, Chamiabac, sends his minions after them!
C- The Trickster, Vucub-Came, wants to engage in a battle of wits!
GROWTH DRIVE RULES
- This Growth Drive features both weight gain and muscle growth, individually!
- There is only one category you can donate toward, but it affects both El Toro and Victor's gains equally!
- As with most Growth Drives, things will start out slow, but ramp up as time goes on and donations increase.
When each goalpost is met, the amount of weight gained per dollar will increase!
For now, $1 = 2 lbs Fat or Muscle.
- A donation of $20 or more doubles the amount of weight gained. So $20 = 80 lbs!
- To donate, follow this link to the Google Docs Form: https://goo.gl/forms/D6LhFaPCJXT7JGvT2
- Once you fill out the form, you will be directed to a Paypal link where you can then finalize your donation.
Be sure you submit the donation in USD WHOLE DOLLAR AMOUNTS ONLY, please.
- The top donor for every round will be contacted on MONDAY and be offered a FREE CAMEO in the following round's picture and story.
If you are contacted, please respond with the needed references or descriptions of your character within 36 hours or your cameo will have to be forfeit.
- The top donor for the entire Growth Drive will also be contacted at its conclusion, and be offered a FREE PICTURE AND STORY COMMISSION COMBO of their character with El Toro and Victor!
- Don't have the funds to donate? No worries!
As with prior Growth Drives, you can still FREE-VOTE IN THE COMMENTS SECTION on how the story goes by choosing El Toro and Victor's next action.
The choice with the most votes wins, of course.
- A donation of $20 or more also effectively doubles your vote!
- Donations and voting for this round will end Sunday, October 2nd, 11:59 PM CST.
- As always, thanks for your support!
Art and El Toro by Yours Truly
Story and Victor by
Renard_DeFleureax
Isaac belongs to
johnpm995
<<< PREV | FIRST | NEXT >>>The overwhelming darkness was the dominant, and so far, only discernible trait of Xibalba. Jose and Victor were left to stumble around, tripping in their oversized clothes.
“This is wrong,” Victor muttered. “This is so wrong. I haven’t been this small since I was in school.”
Jose nodded emphatically, keeping a hand on Victor’s scrawny shoulder to keep him steady. “Jose has…” he frowned. “You know, senor, Jose doesn’t think he has ever been this small.”
The tigrat rolled his eyes. “This is just fantastic. Not only did we get dragged to Hell, it’s the wrong fucking Hell. My Priest is going to be pissed with me.”
“Si, this is not at all what Papa warned Jose it would be like…” the bull squinted into the darkness. “Wait! Amigo, look!”
In the distance, there was a pinprick of light. As they shuffled closer, they began hearing strange noises just hovering on the edge of darkness, and the two, never having felt so vulnerable, kept close. As they kept moving, the light grew into what appeared to be a town, and then, a city; a vast, sprawling city made up of palaces, temples, gardens, and crowded streets, dominated by a massive step pyramid, all under an inky black sky with no stars or moons.
“I have a sinking feeling we’ll have to climb the top of that pyramid by the end of this… at least we’ll get leg day in, right big guy?” Victor said, elbowing Jose in the all-too visible ribs.
The city was skirted by a wide river with thick vegetation on either bank, and oddly, the water seemed to be… hissing. Jose knelt down on the bank, and, picking up a stick, prodded the river. He cringed when he pulled the stick out. “Dios mio! Senor, the river is full of scorpions!”
“Well, glad I wasn’t in the mood for swimming…”
Jose scratched his chin. “Obviously, this is a challenge of wits, si? Clearly, joo and Jose are supposed to figure out how to cross the river… maybe there is a raft we can make?”
“Jose…”
The bovine waved Victor off. “Sh, quiet, senor, Jose is thinking! Mama always warned Jose to be careful when he did that! We could… make a raft, or, is there a way to tame the scorpions? Maybe they are friendly?”
“Jose-”
“Do not interrupt, amigo, it is rude! Jose almost has it… we must… answer a riddle? Si, si! That is always in the stories. The scorpions have a riddle for us!” He knelt down to the bank, speaking to the scorpions writhing in the river. “Pequino amigos, we are ready for joor riddle!”
“Jose!” Victor pulled him back. “Or- and this is just a crazy thought, here-” he jerked his thumb behind him, where a large, arched bridge spanned across the infested river. “We take the bridge.”
Jose looked from the river, to Victor, to the bridge. “Ah, well, si, amigo, if joo want to take the easy way.”
The two shuffled into the city, and they immediately ducked into an alley; the city was inhabited entirely by the dead. Skeletal specters and spirits passed through the streets; they seemed to be celebrating. Strange, bright green drinks that glowed in the gloom were shared liberally, and alien music filled the air. Jose grimaced. “They are skinnier than us, amigo! Joo and Jose could take them… but maybe not… all of them. How can we blend in?”
As they backed away from the main street, Victor nearly tripped over a skeleton lying up against a wall. Sitting in a puddle of the strange green liquid slowly pouring out of a tipped over bottle, the creature was clearly drunk out of his mind.
“Tatliznequi?” he slurred, before slumping forward, unconscious. There was another, a drinking buddy, right next to him and equally intoxicated.
Victor tapped his foot, thinking. “Well… it’s not like they have anything left that needs covering up,” he murmured, before stripping the two of their clothes; somewhat grungy affairs of open vests and trousers whose only redeeming feature was that they fit the shrunken tigrat and bull.
As they dared to pass back into the main streets of the city, they drifted past a crowd of musicians and revelers and into a cantina, where they immediately locked eyes with a unicorn; one that was very huge, and very much alive.
The unicorn was acting in some capacity as a bartender, running more drinks of that strange, glowing liquid to skeletal patrons. The liquid did not pass through their bones, as one would expect, but simply disappeared; as if it really was consumed. The unicorn running these drinks was a sight to see; with a massive, barn-door back and arms thicker than Jose and Victor’s waists put together, he towered over everything in the Cantina, and was soon lumbering towards the two of them on pillar-like legs. He had to lean forward to look down at them, his cliff-like pecs jutting past his muzzle and covered in brightly colored bodypaint. “I don’t think you two little guys are supposed to be here… you’re alive. If just barely.”
Victor and Jose closed ranks; they were feeling slightly intimidated by a figure so huge, if not a little annoyed of how much he reminded them of their former selves. “Who are you?” Victor asked with narrowed eyes.
The giant figure held up his hands. “Don’t worry, guys. I’m alive, just like you- the name’s Isaac. What’re you doing here, anyways?”
“We were, uh… invited,” Victor explained.
“Invited?” the Unicorn furrowed his brow.
Jose tilted his head, keeping his voice low. “Si, senor… by Xolotl?”
The huge bartender slowly nodded. “Ahh… I see. You guys want to get back to the… other side, right?”
“Yeah… but if you’re alive too, why are you here?” Victor asked.
“Oh, uh… I’ve got my reasons. Change of scenery.” Their host shrugged his massive shoulders, swallowing up what neck he had left.
Victor arched his brow. “You, what, came here for vacation?”
“Look, why I’m here isn’t important… if you’re staying here for long, you need to have a way to stay alive. You’ll need spirit energy.” the gigantic equine canted his head, his horn nearly scraping against the ceiling of the cantina. “Over here.”
He led the two to the bar; resting his mammoth arms against it and causing the wood to creak, he fished a pendant wedged between his bulging pecs. It was a swirling, stylized icon, like the cross-section of a conch shell. “This is a wind jewel. It syphons spirit energy, which most of the people around here get from this stuff,” he gestured to the glowing green liquid. “It’s water from the River of Life, which flows from the main pyramid. You’ll need a steady supply to survive here, but be careful… it has an interesting way of manifesting itself with people that are, y’know, still breathing.”
He ducked down, his engorged back muscles still rising above the bar like a mountain. He came back with two wind jewels, one for each of them. “So long as you have this on you, you can syphon off spirit energy to stay alive.” He pushed two drinks to the both of them. “Here, first one’s on the house.”
“But, wait- is that how you syphon energy? Just by drinking this stuff?” Victor asked.
The Unicorn wobbled his hand. “Yeah, yeah… just be careful. The stuff’s addicting. You can also get it by challenging other spirits down here… spirit energy’s kinda like a currency, only you’re your own credit card.”
“Ah-ha!” Jose rubbed his hands. “That is for Jose! Don’t joo worry, amigo, Jose knows what to do…” He drank down the liquid in one gulp. There was an odd flash in his eyes, though that could easily be the lighting of the cantina.
Before Victor could stop him, Jose swaggered over to a table crowded with skeletons. “Hola, senors! Jose is here to challenge joo all to a manly game of arm-wrestling!”
The tigrat buried his face in his hands, before glancing back up at the unicorn and took his own drink. It tasted not unlike fruit juice, though what fruit it was, Victor couldn’t tell. It did have a kick to it; he felt a lot more energized, at least. Feeling a little better about their chances, Victor put on his best winning smile, and approached another group of skeletons.
“Uh… hey there, fellas. How’s it going?”
One skeleton with a feline-like skull turned to an eagle skeleton. “Intoca?”
“Nah, nah…” the eagle waved the feline off. “He speaks one of the pale languages… from the invaders up North. You know… Americano.” He turned to Victor. “Take a seat, gringo. How’d you die? You still got your fur.”
Victor blinked. “Oh, uh… I…” He shrugged, pulling his best nonchalant look. “You guys wouldn’t want to hear it… I’m not nearly drunk enough to do it justice.”
The eagle jerked his head to his feline friend, and he slid Victor another drink. The tigrat eagerly gulped it down; the taste was growing on him. And it was oddly filling… he loosened his shirt a bit before he took another swig.
“Go on then, gringo. Thrill us.”
Jose was doing better than even he expected. Maybe this would be better than he thought! A little of the green spirit juice to keep him going, and he could do this all night. Even at his diminished form, he still had some form of muscle on his scarecrow-like frame. The skeletons had none. Each victory made him feel a little better; like he was back in the ring! And with each win, another bet saw a little more energy come his way. It was like a breath of fresh air; a small burst of energy swirling about him until it found purchase in the wind jewel. He was even feeling stronger, and when he looked down, he looked it, too! His arms looked and felt heftier, and his chest was filling out the ratty vest that previously hung limp on his bony torso.
“Hah!” Jose slammed another bony arm down, and breathed in his prize. Patting his arm and giving it an experimental flex, he smirked as his bicep surged up. He took a deep breath in, letting his chest expand; he felt relieved. He wasn’t as big and strong as he used to be, but it was a start- and at least his body once more matched his extremely handsome face.
“Victor! Amigo!” Jose called across the cantina triumphantly, bouncing his pecs against his vest. “Jose has done it! He has figured a way for joo and Jose to get all muscolo again!”
Victor didn’t hear, as he had just reached the climax of his story. “...And so then, me, three girls, and a pink mustang convertible go careening off the cliff, and before everything goes black, the last thing I hear from the girl next to me is, ‘wow, I picked the wrong day to go on the pill!’”
The other skeletons around him burst into laughter, pouring him his umpteenth drink. “Yeah, so… that’s how I died. Hey, whoever said life isn’t fair, clearly hasn’t been dead yet.” Victor smirked, swigging down the strange spirit drink straight from the bottle as the skeletons burst into a renewed bout of laughter. He had clearly been drinking a lot; the tigrat had gotten big, too, but he was looking a lot softer than Jose. His face was round, full, and then some, with a sizeable second chin starting to come in, wobbling ever so slightly as he talked. A respectably sized belly, roughly the size of an over-inflated beachball, sat in his lap, jiggling as he gestured wildly, launching into a new story to milk more out of the skeletons.
Jose shrugged, and turned back to his next opponent, rolling his broad shoulders and smirking as he grabbed those bony fingers in a iron grip. Passing out more drinks, Isaac smirked as he passed by Jose and Victor… these two would be just fine. Probably.
Jose and Victor are going to be issued a challenge! Who will their opponent be?
A- The Demon Lord, Xiquiripat, challenges them to a ball game!
B- The Necromancer, Chamiabac, sends his minions after them!
C- The Trickster, Vucub-Came, wants to engage in a battle of wits!
Category All / Fat Furs
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 980 x 700px
File Size 527.8 kB
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Renard_DeFleureax
johnpm995
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