Dawn of Hunger [Nonhuman FMC Progression]

75 - Unconventional Desires


After returning home, or rather, after returning to Cassandra's house---is her house my home yet? People make a big distinction about what counts as a home, right? Well regardless, we didn't immediately go meet up with other intelligent, self-controlled Anathema. I wasn't really expecting us to.

No, that was something that would come later. Arrangements needed to be made, and more importantly, I needed to go to school.

I wasn't sure exactly how long we spent in another reality, or if time moved at the same rate on both sides. Regardless, it was now well past sunrise and I had engineering classes to attend. At least it's not a bunch of gen-eds. God, fuck that shit. I was very glad to be done with those, and that some of my pre-existing credits had sort of carried over.

Strictly speaking, they didn't carry over exactly, because Vonnie and Alex were two completely different people.

"God I hate being so Goddamn hungry all the time again," I complained from the passenger seat. "This is such bullshit. I mean at least everything tastes good now, but still."

"Just make sure you don't eat anything important, okay?"

I rolled my eyes. "Yes mom, not eating anything important, mom." I was digging around in Cassandra's glove compartment for something to snack on. "What's this? A pressure gauge?"

"Hey, don't—!"

"—ish too 'ate," I said through a mouthful of radial tire pressure gauge. "Ha. Too 'ate. I was trying to say late, but my mouth was full, so it sounded like ate. That's funny."

I realized Cassandra was staring at me when she damn near turned a random cyclist into a medical insurance claimant. "Shit mom, watch the road."

"I am watching the road," she replied with far too little confidence. "I am watching the road."

I just rolled my eyes again. Like, what's even the big deal? I couldn't imagine Cassandra as the type to actually use a miniature gauge to check her own tire pressure. She would probably just phone someone. So like, it's fine?

There wasn't much else in the compartment, and worse, some of it actually seemed useful. There was one relatively large object that wasn't, though, which I happily grabbed for my next snack.

"Hey, don't eat that! Give me that—oh, you are so gonna get it!"

I couldn't stop laughing through the face stuffed with driver's manual. It was—well, the texture honestly wasn't great. I actually had trouble chewing and swallowing pieces of it, which was not something I was used to experiencing since I awakened as an Anathema.

It was likely a side effect of drawing a more rigid distinction between my Alex and Vonnie forms. Dr. DeVille hadn't mentioned anything like this, but it was my best hypothesis. It was harder to notice at first, but now that I had such distinct forms, I realized that I was noticeably tougher and stronger in my 'truer' Alex form.

It made sense, as Vonnie was all the way to the human side of my transformation spectrum. That didn't mean she was weak, though. Vonnie was still superhumanly strong, and even then, strong for my effective 'Guardian' rank.

Ultimately, I supposed this could make chewing through normally inedible materials just a bit more difficult. I wouldn't be surprised if I'd been passively and subconsciously more Anathema when I used to eat things like this while appearing human.

Cassandra looked really mad though.

"—ish fine," I mumbled through layers of dry, partially chewed paper, "--no'o'y 'eads 'ese any'ay."

I jumped a little in my seat when Cassandra reached over and slammed the glove compartment closed. "No more eating any pieces of my car," she scolded. "Keep pigging out like this and I'll tell everyone this is why you're so fat."

"Hey!" Weirdly, my cheeks turned red. Fuck, why am I embarassed by that? I literally designed this body like this on purpose. I decided not to question it. It was probably just a side effect of embodying my Vonnie persona—to do so was so much more than wearing a mask. A mask implied there was something completely different behind it.

"I'm not fat." I saw Cassandra raise a brow and so amended my statement. "I mean I'm not like fat fat. I'm just curvy. A little bit overweight in a sexy way. And I don't even know if I can gain weight by overeating anymore."

"...right."

Fortunately, we were almost to the spot where she would drop me off. I still carried those three emergency vials around, and they were currently in my backpack. I was kind of tempted to eat those.

I wouldn't, though. What I would eat at some point sooner or later—probably sooner—were the normal snacks as well as some decently large steel bolts.

Yeah, I was still carrying basic hardware pieces around. I learned from my floor-cracking incident weeks ago, though, and there were only a few pounds of them wrapped in cloth. Heavy, but not enough to accidentally break things or raise difficult questions.

My first class of the day ended up being boring as fuck. I tried to pay attention because, despite being boring and fairly trivial, I knew that at some point I would have to pay attention to the boring stuff to not get boned on an eventual test.

But while my willpower was firm and unyielding like Adamant steel, I nevertheless found myself bouncing between the encyclopedia article for a completely real, non-esoteric physics thing called a time crystal, two different game wikis, and also some curious lesbian porn I found.

The last one wasn't because I was a homosexual—I absolutely wasn't—but merely due to a continued anthropological curiosity. I was also pretty sure that this one was intended primarily for actual gay women and not straight men.

I think. It can be hard to tell.

Anyway, I'd found a whole blog page seemingly by a girl who looked rather like myself, or rather, like my Vonnie self. I'm still way prettier though.

Her partner—seemingly actual partner, not just partner in the adult content business—looked similar, just taller and pretty skinny. So basically, she looked kind of like Katherine.

Damn. So I really am just a shorter, heavier, and definitely prettier version of Katherine right now. I really wasn't sure how to feel about that.

Regardless, I spent a good chunk of time scrolling through all the short videos and random pictures. They didn't seem to be grouped into any meaningful categories and were only ordered by recency. Honestly, why even post stuff like this? I mean I'm not complaining, but damn.

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I wondered if Katherine would be attracted to me with how I looked currently. It was certainly possible. I knew that a decently large minority of guys absolutely would be, and it seemed like that applied to gay women as well.

But how would I know if Katherine is? I knew she was attracted to my original appearance. I bet she wouldn't. She'd probably be a bit grossed out. I mean she decided to try to be my friend for some reason, but that doesn't mean she has any interest in sex stuff with this appearance.

Even though it didn't really matter, I felt like I couldn't stop thinking about it, and it was getting annoying. That was starting to piss me off, and I found myself frustrated and kind of resentful. Just stop thinking about it. It doesn't even matter, you're literally not even gay.

Soon enough, that class ended, and I had an annoyingly short break before my next class began. I decided it was a good opportunity to work up some of my building frustration and also temporarily satisfy my constant hunger.

So, with that objective in mind, I hustled over to the university library which, very conveniently had a cafe on the ground floor, as well as vending machines.

For my drink, I just ordered the usual—black tea with nothing fancy about it. Unlike the usual, I also bought two donuts. I'd already eaten one of them by the time the tea was ready, at which point I dumped the entirety of the self-serve sugar canister into it.

Which is fine. It wasn't even half full, so it's really not much.

That part had literally nothing to do with being an Anathema. I was always like that, because it seemed like literally no one who worked at a cafe understood what it meant to make tea sweetened.

The amount of syrup they'd put in was like—what, a hint of sweetness? Contains sugar in the same way a regular chocolate bar warns you it may have been processed in a factory that also processes peanuts? And that wasn't much difference if you asked them to make it extra sweet.

No—the only way to get a reasonably sweetened tea was to do it yourself.

Unfortunately, I now had to hurry to my next class—and it was a class that I supposedly now shared with Katherine. God. This might turn out to be annoying.

Walking into the class, I was relieved to see that she was nowhere present. Maybe she decided to skip? She really didn't seem like the type—but then again, something might have come up related to how she was a literal Star Guardian now.

The lecture hall wasn't particularly big, but it was tall, with ramped, movie-theater style seating. The major difference from a theater was that the rooms like this also had these little folding things to serve as an incredibly shitty desk reminiscent of an airplane seat tray.

The main difference was that the aircraft trays tended to be relatively stable and also larger.

Taking written exams in classrooms like this was completely ass.

Fortunately, the seating was nowhere near full and I was able to take a seat right against the aisle without difficulty. That was rule number one for classrooms like this—sit as close to the aisle end of a row as possible.

Upon taking my seat, I was immediately struck by just how different it was to sit in seats like this with my current size. It wasn't uncomfortable necessarily, and it wasn't like I was anywhere close to having trouble being able to fit. It wasn't like I was 300-plus pounds or anything.

It was just a matter of not being used to sitting so snugly, of not having any real room to sit to one side of the seat or the other, of having the fold out desk always press into my stomach and chests, and of feeling like I couldn't do anything to make my legs take up less space if I wanted.

It wasn't uncomfortable. It was just strange to feel such a marked difference in all these tiny little things.

Weird.

I was broken out of my body musings when I caught sight of a slender, raven-haired girl entering through the particle board lecture hall doors. Oh fucking hell. Katherine wasn't skipping—she was just showing up later than me, about a minute before the class was officially supposed to start.

She spotted me immediately—well of course she did. Her stupid power was probably telling her about everyone who was here well before any of us were within her normal sight. God, I really hope that elixir thing is working.

I'd taken one of those spirit masking elixirs on the way here, of course. There was no way I would be going anywhere in public as Vonnie without taking one. I still had zero intention of exposing myself.

The whole point of Vonnie wasn't just to have a second identity I could use. The point was to have a second identity that was purely civilian—purely normal. I didn't even want my dad or any of his Red faction buddies to find out about it.

Even the Bouquet only knew about it by pure necessity.

"Hi," Katerine said as she squeezed past me to take the seat right next to me. "Vonnie, right?"

I nodded a bit timidly. "Yeah," I replied, my voice quiet and soft. "I forgot you were also in this class."

That was completely untrue, but for whatever reason, my instincts and my Vonnie persona guided me that it was the right thing to say.

"It's this and also diff equations," Katerine helpfully replied. "This should definitely be the easier one."

"Yeah." She was right about that, but I wasn't worried. Annoyed, if anything. I'd already taken a differential equations course—linear algebra and ordinary differential equations, specifically—but it was unfortunately a course that my fake academic history didn't already cover.

We didn't get a chance to say much else before the instructor arrived and the class started.

Annoyingly, this class was also super boring, but I didn't get a chance to screw around on my computer, which was entirely Katherine's fault for choosing to show up and sit next to me. I couldn't even use my phone—in fact, I went so far as to discreetly power it fully off in case she had the gall to try using her stupid powers on it.

Even if I wasn't as paranoid as that, I wouldn't have used my phone next to her anyway. I didn't trust her not to snoop the ordinary way, and I also didn't like using my phone where other people could see the screen in any situation.

Just a personal irritation I had regardless of my current persona.

"Do you have any other classes after this?" She whispered to me midway through the lecture.

I shook my head. It was tempting to lie, but—well, I was incapable of lying here. Vonnie's personality wouldn't lie about that, even though she also wasn't keen on Katherine's advances. Damn it.

I hadn't found myself too bothered by the usual constraints of personas lately, so returning to the usual restrictions grated on me.

But it couldn't be helped. This was no life or death situation, and therefore, the bounds of a persona were well and truly inviolable.

"That's great," she whispered, "I was thinking of meeting up with some, some friends after this and I think it would be cool to introduce you to them."

Friends? Does she mean—ugh. "Where?" I asked. "Somewhere off campus? Because—"

Katherine shook her head. "No, we'd be staying on campus probably. We're meeting up at the Guardian college."

My eyes lit up, even though I already knew where she was going with this. "Oh, right!" I whispered equal parts anxiously and excitedly. "You're like, an actual Guardian! That's so cool."

God I wanted to roll my eyes after saying that—but the way it made Katherine immediately seem embarrassed was totally worth it. "It's not really a big deal," she denied. "It's not really that cool and aside from it I'm still pretty boring."

Yeah, right. "If you say so," I said, my tone indicating that I very much didn't believe her. "But what do you want me there for? I'm not a Guardian or anything."

Katherine frowned. "So what? We're just going to be hanging out and studying. As your peer mentor, I think—"

Oh for the love of—beyond that point, I decided to just tune her out. Goddamn it, Katherine. I still can't tell if you're really just like this or if you're actually suspicious of me for some reason.

And I really can't decide which option would be worse.

I sighed. If worst came to worst—well, I could probably just kill her. It would be pretty gratifying, actually. I suddenly recalled the altered, somewhat dissociative thoughts I experienced while fighting that Kraken, when she was projecting a horrible Anathema-enraging aura.

I recalled an intense, vivid desire to sink my claws deep into her soft, smooth flesh. You know? I think I kind of still want to do that.

Maybe I should work out a way to engineer the right kind of opportunity.

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