-Flashback! Zoom!-

Alan (Fatty) Hayashi. Despite being of Japanese descent, he was born and raised in America where he lived his whole life a virgin of simple means. Having a stable build (fat), he was employed as a trade assistant to a mining corporation and later worked his way through an apprenticeship to become a qualified tradesman that could proudly sell himself as a Fitter Mechanic.

After an accident involving the coincidental collision of a truck hauling soap, a lorry filled with pet food, park rangers van with some wild animals and an ice-cream truck, on a rainy night, in the middle of a deserted road ... Well in the end when Fatty was released from hospital his mind was filled with conspiracy theories, and in all his spare time he delved into a maddening degree of wild notions about a whole range of things.

When he turned 23, he was offered a life changing opportunity to work for a satellite company that branched off from an unnamed multinational billion-dollar corporation. At first, it was a strange experience when he was shipped out to a sparse stretch of sea off the coast of Australia that contained nothing. That was until they reached a single white elevator floating on the surface of the water.

Fatty, being ever vigilant of such things, jumped at the opportunity to investigate as his mind spun with a billion theories. However after a month when they were shipped back to the coast of Australia for leave time he had discovered nothing, everything seemed kosher in the lab, and it was just as advertised. A deep ocean aquatic sea-lab designed to help research the depths of the ocean where no man has gone before. But that never stopped Fatty’s imagination from spinning, and once he discovered the base had a restricted lab, his theorising went to a whole new level.

His imagined conspiracies, however, tended to create a distance between people and the only person on the base who’d ever listen to him without being enraged was ‘ol’ dead eyes’. That’s what everyone called him anyway. Because he always had dead, lifeless eyes that stared straight through you when he looked at you, as if you didn’t even exist. He was like a robot, showing little joy, anger or sadness and this was the impression Fatty had of him until they met each other departing the boat at Airlie Beach.

When he noticed James standing on the pier, he almost didn’t recognise him. For starters ‘ol’ dead eyes’ was smiling and his face had life in it. He looked like an entirely different person than the silent robot Fatty had been spilling all his conspiracies to back in the base.

When he approached him, even his voice sounded different, and a bright smile split his face upon seeing Fatty. “Ha-ha, Alan you fat bastard isn’t it great! We’ve finally got some free time away from that claustrophobic lab. If you’re staying in Arlie for your stint on dry land, you should join me at the casino tonight.”

Then sliding a hand over Fatty’s back and gripping his shoulder he leant in to whisper conspiratorially. “I heard one of the strippers in the casino has it hard for virgins and even harder for slanty eyes. If you shout me $100 in chips at the tables, I can help you solve this conspiracy, heh heh.”

With that evil sounding chuckle, he through a wave over his shoulder and started walking up the pier with his travel bag over his shoulder. Fatty didn’t know it yet, but his entire worldview was about to change after the night he met this new James.

The next morning with a blinding hangover in a hotel room filled with naked backpackers crowding the floor, Fatty crawled over naked women with trashy makeup to make his way to the toilet. Covering the hotel floor were empty bottles of every alcoholic beverage Fatty had ever seen, and some he’d never even heard of. As he shuffled past the little TV table lined with rows of white powder and into the bathroom, his guts grew sicker.

By the time he reached the ensuite he was already rearing back. Then without any other warning, he projectile vomited up the wall and over the sink, demarcating a clear line across the room from the sink to the doorway. After this momentary lapse in bodily control, the pounding headache and queasy guts forced him to his knees.

Suddenly the shower curtain was thrown open to reveal James with an evil smile plastered across his face, balls deep in one of the dealers from the casino with her teeth biting into his shoulder as she spasmed on his cock. “Fatty you glorious bastard! Don’t forget you owe me a $1416. A bets a bet. Oh and I imagine the bill for the rooms are going to hurt, but since you offered to take care of everything last night, I’ll leave it up to you.” Then with a swish, the shower curtain closed again, and the sound of wet slapping and muffled moaning resumed.

After this whole ordeal, when they returned to the sea-lab, Fatty felt like a bird that just left the nest thinking before that it new, but only understanding when it could actually fly. He also felt incredibly cheated when he realised James had been leading him into one misadventure after another and goading him into bet’s he couldn’t win.

-Zip! Zip! Back to the present--

-Black Forest Mountain-

‘Day’s!’ Fatty wasn’t sure how long he’d been lost in this forest, but he guessed in his heart it was days. The tree’s overheard blocked all light, and he couldn’t tell if it was night or day. He never knew which direction he was heading in because he could never see the sun. His slightly bloodied grey jumpsuit was now khaki brown with a multitude of various other coloured stains and a myriad of tears.

The most eye drawing new development of Fatty’s was his right hand which glowed a luminous red. He couldn’t tell when it happened. Perhaps as a result of all the strange colourful mushrooms he’d been eating or the occasional puddle of luminous acrid water he’d been drinking. Regardless of the cause, the effect remained, and that was a glowing red hand.

This might sound like a problematic inconvenience, but to Fatty it was a life saver. With everything around him being pitch black his glowing hand was his only saving grace. In fact, since it started glowing it had only grown brighter and brighter, and Fatty could now discern a good 40 or 50 meters into whatever direction he pointed it.

Amusingly enough, after his hand started glowing, his night vision which had once been so remarkably poor that he accidently drove into an ice-cream van and created a massive ... well, needless to say, his night vision had now somehow grown dramatically better. So good in fact that when he covered his glowing hand, he could almost see 10 meters around him.

Also interesting was that since he started eating things in the forest, he was now fatter than ever, looking to be on the verge of obesity. Inversely to his expanding waistline, he felt healthier and fitter than ever. Which was a stark contradiction to how he looked covered in dried blood, mud and other particulars no-one could guess at.

One might think eating strange things in a dark forest would inevitably lead to eating something poisonous or deadly but in this case, Fatty had no worries. After his hand had started to glow, it’d start flashing orange and begin to burn whenever it approached something he shouldn’t put near his mouth. Which he discovered rather quickly after a torturous hour of painting the ass end of his jumpsuit brown and writhing on the ground in agony. Since then, he’d never again tried to eat the berries with a texture and shape of an aged ball sack.

“Huff! Huff! Fuck I’ve been running for what feels like half a day. I should be out of this forest by now!” Fatty puffed as he slowed to a walk as he moved between the trees.

‘Fuck! Will I be trapped in this forest for the rest of my life? I have to escape! I can’t spend the rest of my life eating suspiciously shaped berries and suggestive looking mushrooms. And Christ as my witness, if I have to drink from another glowing puddle that smells like horse piss I’m going to... ‘

Fatty’s thoughts stopped along with his legs as his eyes squinted to try and peer through the darkness. ‘Light?’ Was his first thought. He covered his hand in his jumpsuit and started to move forward. The further he moved, the faster he began running. Soon he was in a full sprint leaping over logs nimbly and darting between trees, which would have been humorous if watching any other obese man except he was sprinting so fast and jumping so high he could set Olympic records.

“HAHAHAHA! Mother fucking piece of shit forest, I’m finally free! HAHAHA! Light oh beautiful light!” With a blood-curdling laugh, he launched himself through the tree line and into the blinding light of the setting sun. By the time he stopped running, he was standing at the edge of a poorly maintained dirt road running alongside a field of Golden Grain.

Many thoughts ran through his head as his bright smile nearly split his chubby face from ear to ear. No conspiracies were running through his mind, and he had no great thoughts about what had happened to him so far or where he was because right now nothing else mattered other than having survived this nightmare of a forest.

After a long pause and watching the sun slowly settle over the vast fields of grain, he could no longer hold his smile as his brain caught up to the fact three suns were settling onto the horizon. “Holy fucking shit! I was right all along! I’ve been fucking abducted!”

-The Endless Forest-

It was starting to get darker, and James still hadn’t found Jessy. He was starting to worry that Jessy was lost really deep in the forest. Or worse still, that this compass was somehow broken. Pushing away all thoughts of his only life-saving device somehow malfunctioning, he continued on along the narrow cobblestone path.

That was until the compass began to wildly spin in every direction like a leaf in a gale. This time he was genuinely worried. ‘Fuck! Fuckin’ thing is definitely broken.’ Then without warning and before his inner thoughts could work their way up to a peak of foul language the compass just as quickly returned to its original direction.

‘What in the fuck is pointing at now?’ Thought James as he started moving forward again. After five or six steps the compass once again began to spin bizarrely until James roared a loud “FUCK, you piece of shit stop fuckin’ me around!” into the forest, and the mad spinning slowly came to a halt. Then the compass began to spin again only this time its spinning started speeding up until it was eventually humming and buzzing as it jumped around in its little metal box.

“James you piece of shit, bastard, motherfucker!” A loud yell accompanied the mad buzzing of the Spirit Stone as Jessy flew out of the forest looking significantly less well dressed than when she’d entered. Her hair was frazzled, and the beautiful long cheongsam was now covered in a multitude of rips and tears, some revealing a bloody scratch or two. Her eyes were bulging and shot with blood vessels, and her once delicate face now showed a vicious and wild savagery. With teeth bared like an animal, she sprinted towards James with her hands like talons aiming to gauge out his eyeballs.

Before she even got close James had started quickly backing away, his face deadpanned as he rapidly retreated down the forest path.

“Jess wait!”

“Argh! Just wait till I get my hands on you, you cock sucking...” Jessy’s reply to his hasty retreat and beseeching plea was to speed up her chase as she started wildly swinging her ‘talons’ towards James’ face and swearing even more violently.

‘Holy shit, I think she might actually be trying to kill me.’ James rapidly started dodging which was for some reason markedly easier than other times he’d tried avoiding someone’s swing. He soon found that it was actually so easy to evade her attacks that he could basically stand still and only lightly move his body.

It felt like time around him had slowed down a little, and he had sped up a little, which was a mind-boggling sensation he began to enjoy as he started to reach out and slap Jessy’s ass every time she missed.

Jessy cottoned on to this and started throwing kicks and punches instead. James very quickly found those just as easy to dodge and decided to start increasing the power of his spankings as an evil grin slowly revealed some white teeth. He was now having a great time.

Jessy, on the other hand, was close to a mental breakdown. Ever since young, she’d trained martial arts in a dojo and never once had she met an opponent she couldn’t even touch, in recent years she’d rarely met an opponent she couldn’t beat. To make matters worse, she could feel her ass swelling from the spankings, and the pain of every slap made her eyes water. Soon her tight little bum grew so mistreated it began to numb, following which she discovered to her chagrin, that she was starting to run out of breath.

‘When did this dead-eyed freak ever have so much stamina? I never saw him once in the gym.’ Jessy’s rage only increased with every resounding slap on her ass and missed kick or punch. By the time she’d run out of breath the skin James had been so careful on tenderising was now glowing bright red through the rips of her dress. Her face was flushed red as her ragged breathing rang out in the quiet surroundings.

James was a little disappointed that the game had ended so soon. However as disappointed as he was he was even more excited at the discovery he’d just made. For that short ... scuffle, he’d felt that familiar sensation from earlier. The tingling of electricity running through his body. Just like when he’d placed the spirit stone in the compass except not as magnified. He tried hard to remember that feeling and started swinging his arm through the air.

‘It felt kind of like this ... no that’s not right.’ As James swayed his arm around, he tried to perceive that sensation like a jolt of electricity.

‘Got it! That’s what it felt like. Now let’s try making it stronger.’ Soon James’ arm was like a blur swishing about in the air. While Jessy saw a blur of his arm, James saw something entirely different. The more he urged this power, the slower time around him felt and the faster his body moved. To him, his arm seemed to be moving only slightly faster than normal with a steady back and forth motion, but the sounds of the world and motion of the falling leaves all appeared to slow. It wasn’t so dramatic as to approach time around him stopping but felt closer to one second becoming two or three seconds.

‘This must be spirit power!’ James concluded. It was, after all things considered, the closest thing to a logical explanation he could reach. His face bloomed into a foolish grin, and he tried ramping up the power further.

Jessy only looked at him growing further enraged. To her, it looked like he was teasing her by practising his bum slapping technique right in front of her. Though she was inwardly shocked at the speed his arm swung, it only fuelled her growing hatred of James. “James you piece of shit just what do you think...” James stopped all motion and then in the eyes of Jessy disappeared in a blur.

The next thing she knew her ass was stung with a fresh slap and James was already standing back at his original position swinging his arm again. “Bid gil” Came a high pitched garbled sound from James. Seeing Jessy’s odd look when he spoke he quickly realised what just happened.

‘Doppler Effect? The speed of my vocal cords has changed, so the sound wavelengths of my voice will be higher and firmly compacted together, like when the source of a sound is rapidly moving in the same direction the sound is emitting towards. Except with me, I’m stationary, but my voice has been jammed into half the time it usually has so virtually the same effect is happening.

‘If I pump spirit power into my whole body, naturally everything must speed up. Perhaps if I can control the energy in a particular area of my body I can control how strongly it affects that parts.’ This was James’ thought, and while swinging one arm, he started waving the other.

Now James stood there both arms swishing about as one become faster and faster and the other became slower and slower. It wasn’t long before one just looked like a streak of light, and the other looked like he was karate kid slowly painting a fence.

Finally, he stopped. Looking at the darkening sky through the leafy canopy he sighed and mumbled to himself. “No time to play around here, we should get back soon. God only knows what fucked up creatures start crawling around in here at night.”

Jessy’s face was going through a whole variety of expressions. Eventually, it returned to the infuriated expression of moments before, and she once again began preparing to explode at James. “Dead-eyes you fucking scumbag piece of shit! Who’s ‘getting back soon’? This spooky fucking forest never ends, no matter how far you walk! It’s your fault for bringing us in here, and you just want to ‘be getting back soon’, as if some fucking magic genie will pop out of a tree and fucking lead you out. James you piece of shit, we’re fucking lost in this forest, and we’re never fucking getting out!”

James just stood there quietly letting her finish her rant. Once she was done, he urged the spirit power in his body as he sped forward and flicked her ass with another slap. “Bad Girl!”

Jessy’s eyes filled with tears from her painfully swollen bum once again being abused, and she was ever more incensed by James’ action of treating her like a dog. James, of course, was fully aware treating her like a dog would only build the fires of her rage, but he had the way out of the forest, and he was going to enjoy himself for this short period of time by humiliating this uppity bitch a little.

James made a wry smile as he pulled the Spirit stone out of the compass and once again closed his eyes to envision the Gau Clan’s mansion before placing the ball back in. This time he felt only a small rush of spirit energy and didn’t get dizzy or feel tired afterwards.

‘Odd, last time it sucked half my fuckin’ life out of me. Maybe because I used a sharp memory instead of a fantasy? Or perhaps because I wasn’t trying to find a lost bitch and a place instead? Maybe both these things. I’m definitely going to have to play with this little gadget when I get back.’

Jessy watched with a strange expression as James was playing with the compass. She’d now come to the conclusion that the little black box he was holding must be some special way to get out of the forest. ‘Why else would he give me that disgusting knowing smile before pulling that thing out?’

James then with a swish appeared in front of Jessy like a flash and only said: “Don’t resist if you want to exit the forest.” Grabbing her in a princess carry and holding the compass in one hand, he started sprinting with his spirit power in the direction it was pointing. Jessy screamed from the sudden shock of going from standing to forty odd kilometres an hour instantly.

After about a minute of running, James’ foot stumbled, and he almost fell face first with Jessy into the cobblestone path before rescuing himself in the last split second. Jessy, of course, got an even greater fright, but was too scared to say anything now that James had started sprinting again at some stupidly inhuman speed.

She watched as the path and forest trees rushed past her like blurs and looked at James’ face now carrying a somewhat relaxed smile and only breathing slightly harder as if out for a morning jog. ‘Has he gained some magic power from this world? And where the fuck did he get that bloody box?’ Her mind began spinning with questions and slowly the forest grew darker and darker.

James eventually had to slow down to the average jogging speed of normal humans. Jessy made no move to get down from his embrace, and James was too busy concentrating on the path ahead in the darkness to suggest it, and so they stayed like that for another half an hour until the forest was enveloped entirely in the black of night and James could barely see a thing.

Just as he was growing worried that the compass actually was broken, it began spinning around excitedly. His face split into a grin, and he continued on forward until he and Jessy could soon make out the lights of the Gau Clan Mansion between the trees.

In the guest courtyard sat Dr Skay reading out some instructions from his black-pad. Standing near the slushy pond showing a multitude of disturbed and worried expressions was Harvy, who’s continuously afraid and pale skinned appearance had turned to a deathly afraid greying skin tone. It almost looked like he’d been so stressed out recently that his body was trying to shut down on him and only his one sliver of hope that he may yet still survive this living hell was keeping his heart beating fast enough to slowly move his blood that was rapidly trying to coagulate.

After seeing the mansion James unceremoniously tossed Jessy onto the grass and started walking towards the guest rooms. Before she even had a chance to jump to her feet and begin berating him his figure blurred like a shadow and he shot into his room.

“At last! I need a shower and a change of clothes, and come to think of it, I haven’t even had the notion of eating these last few days. I should definitely do that too. Now that I’ve got a chance to unwind a little I wouldn’t hate a scotch on the rocks. Oh God! I hope they’ve got scotch. I don’t want to end up drinking some fruity fuckin’ girls drink, like wine or something!”

James began mumbling to himself as he started moving about his room trying to find a shower. Instead, what he found was a large wooden tub sitting behind an opaque room separator. Hanging on the wall over the tub was a large barrel of water with an oddly shaped tap carved to resemble the head of a dragon. James sighed, and with a ‘better than nothing’ turned the tap to fill the tub.

To his happy surprise, the water that came out was scolding hot. Too hot in fact! As he started closing the dragon tap the water coming out began to cool. ‘Holy shit! No way! A fuckin’ magic tap! Is this how everyone gets there hot water in this world?’ As James stripped off his clothes and submerged his filthy body in the tub, he began to wonder what the implications of such a thing could be as he started scrubbing his body clean.

‘Perhaps only wealthy households like the Clan have such luxuries. If that’s not the case though, maybe it’s the reason everyone here, despite having lived in this world for millions of years, are so backwards and never developed any higher science or technology. After all, once someone made a magic tap, few people would think of a hot water heater. Hell, I imagine the thought of how electricity is created has never even occurred to these superstitious hicks because they all believe it’s some ‘lightning element of the natural laws’ like a group of pious zealots.

‘Their entire society is based on who has the strongest fist and to be honest, with the possibility to rise up like a god above all other mortals, who other than that fucked in the head Doctor out there and focus entirely on science when that chance is laying in front of them. Even I occasionally forget myself and tremble with excitement to try and reach the heights of power in this world.’

James leveraged his way out of the now filthy bath water and began looking for a towel to dry off with. Discovering none he walked out from behind the separator and started combing the room. Finding nothing he had a sudden thought and soon his spirit energy flooded his body. He then began to step side to side rapidly until stopping on the spot.

For the first time since arriving on Ascension Star, he glanced at his naked body and very quickly noticed some dramatic changes. Where once his belly protruded slightly, it was now flat toned abs and sculpted pecs. He stretched out an arm and flexed, watching as the before half decent muscles now bulged a little more than they had, as they tightened and released. His skin felt smoother and tighter, and all the muscles tone on his body had sharpened significantly. Even his bum was less flat and tighter looking.

‘This must be the effects of spirit power!’ He thought to himself with a proud grin spread across his face as he was playing with his body. His moment of self-inspection was rudely interrupted with the loud bang of the door smashing against the wall and in raced Jessy, face filled with madness seething and huffing like some Amazon.