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[YOU DIED]
Ike let out a huff of frustration as his thickened thumbs fell to the wayside of the sticks, his heart pounding in his chest at the strenuous effort this run was taking. Nineteen resets in this area alone, and more than three-hundred across the entire challenge - with the timer now ticking past his allotted two-hour stream section by a further three.
He had come into this event feeling like he knew every inch of Shadow Spirits 3 better than his own home, his brain running through every possible scenario and every shortcut or skip he had been able to plan out during his weeks of planning. Even just being able to attend Amazing Gamers Don’t Quit was like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get himself hooked into the livestreaming and speedrunning communities of one of his favourite games of all time, and now that he was in front of the camera, he was constantly fucking up in ways that he couldn’t entirely attribute to bad luck.
Granted, it wasn’t just him. The specific rules of the event - 2 litres of fast-acting gainer shake for every death or reset or softlock - were making it incredibly difficult to keep a clear head.
He had come in at a just-below-obese 185lbs for his size, a figure he had worked hard to get now that he actually had a part-time job keeping him moving. The past three hours had utterly destroyed his waistline beyond recognisability, and it wasn’t just his waist that was suffering either.
Ike was, to put it simply, a mound of fat and lard and blubber that had outgrown a three-seater couch. The constant heaving of his chest and pounding of his heart were only half due to his growing frustration and embarrassment at the mocking chat messages scrolling up on the monitor beside him, with the rest of the blame falling on his body suddenly having to support an additional 937lbs - a total of 1124lbs, as the scale so helpfully informed him - of pure heft that didn’t belong. He was no stranger to staying glued to his couch for hours at a time, but now it was purely involuntary, weighed down by the sheer mass of his belly spilling over onto the armrests and his love handles settled heavily on the armrests sofa cushions.
He could feel the heat rising as every movement was a monumental effort. Just the simple act of shifting his position to try and get a better grip on the controller made the couch groan in protest beneath him. The once-comfortable fabric of his shirt was now stretched so tight across his chest and stomach that it felt like a second skin, and it had ridden up to expose a slab of doughy flesh that quivered with every breath. His jeans had given up the ghost long ago, the button popping off with a sound that had echoed through the otherwise silent room and turned itself into a short-lived in-joke for the chat.
Now, this was just how things were.
"Another reset? That's too bad - another two liters!"
The funnel beside him pulsed as another load of the thick shake was pumped down into the nozzle, the tube itself blocked with a mechanism that would only open when it was actually in his mouth. With a grunt of effort, Ike shifted his arms and pushed them underneath his bulk to grab the nozzle, pulling the tip back over towards his face. The rubber tip of the tube brushed his lower lip before pressing into his mouth and forcing his tongue aside. He gave the nozzle a squeeze to confirm that the blockage had released, and the taste of thick, sugary liquid flooded his mouth as the flow began.
Two liters every time he died. Two liters for every reset. Two liters for each mistake. It didn't sound so bad, a fun gimmick for a planned speedrun where you'd maybe make a single slip-up. But for someone like him who had already made over two-hundred and fifty mistakes, it was getting difficult to keep track.
"Mmfph, nmph..."
Scooping up the controller again, Ike turned his eyes back to the screen, having to look past the awkwardly-angled hose as he fumbled with the sticks to get his fingers in the right place. They, too, had suffered plenty of damage - thickened up and fattened out enough that he had to adjust the way he held the controller. He didn't even want to think about what would happen if he had to use the D-pad - one thumb was now chunked up enough that he'd be pressing all four buttons at once.
The shake continued to pump into him as he tried to recover from the setback, the audible gulps picking up clearly on the mic clipped to this now-straining shirt collar. Each swallow only added to the pressure in his stomach, each new two-liter load of the thick calorie-bomb struggling to digest by the time he inevitably earned a second one due to his repeated failures.
He was sweating like a pig, and not just from the heat of the lights and the strain of the run. His entire body was a furnace, working overtime to process the sheer volume of calories being forced into it. He could feel the dampness pooling in the folds of his skin, the slick sheen on the surface of his belly as it rose and fell with each labored breath.
The chat was a blur of color and text, a constant stream of commentary that he couldn't bring himself to read. He knew it was probably a mix of encouragement, mockery, and people just enjoying the spectacle of it all. Ike couldn’t focus on anything but the game in front of him, the now-mismatched muscle memory of unfamiliar fingers on a familiar controller, and the sensation of his stomach pushing taut as it was rapidly refilled for the hundredth time tonight.
"Come on... come on..." He practically had to mutter the words around the tube, muffled and half-wheezed by the uncomfortable weight and pressure his body was now layering across his lungs. “Ledge skip… ledge… skip…”
The timing had to be perfect. One misstep on a pixel-perfect ledgewalk and it would be another two liters, another step closer to becoming completely immobilized by his own weight. If he pulled it off, he’d maybe come a step closer to actually finishing a run that should have taken thirty minutes, tops.
It was so hard to keep his head straight. The sheer amount of weight now sitting heavy in his gut, not to mention the layers upon layers of extra fat piled onto him, had left him struggling to actually keep his thoughts clear. The miserable groans of digestive effort didn't help either, his body simultaneously struggling to process such an excess of calories whilst also rushing through the process thanks to the fast-acting digestive aids laced in the shake itself. His chunky fingers fumbled with the sticks, clicking them against the edges of the controller's casing for a brief moment as he tried to line up a diagonal jump from one raised path to another.
"Gotta... just... bhoOUHrphh, god..."
The belch that forced itself out of his throat shook off his angle just a little, and his thumbs hastily tried to correct it. The timer was still ticking, each wasted second only further pushing him past the allotted stream time and the world record - not that he had any chance of recovering at this point.
The belch that forced itself out of his throat shook off his angle just a little, and his thumbs hastily tried to correct it. The timer was still ticking, each wasted second only further pushing him past the allotted stream time and the world record - not that he had any chance of recovering at this point.
The angle looked right. With a heavy breath, he clicked down the bumper and let his character sprint forward, hitting the jump input right on the edge of the ledge.
More accurately, a second too late.
"Fffuughhh..."
Ike got to watch for a few moments as his well-optimized avatar threw himself down another death pit, the camera snapping to an overhead view as he passed the kill trigger.
[YOU DIED]
His pulse was racing before he even heard the announcer heckle him again, partially out of panic and partially because his heart was already overloaded by the sheer amount of mass packed onto him. He could tell he was sweating again - if he had even stopped at any point - and the funnel in his mouth bucked as another two-litre load of the shake was poured in by the staff on the gantry above.
"Not againnnmmf... nnmmgphhh..."
Every muscle in his throat protested at the effort of swallowing the fresh load of calories down, his head tilted back as he tried to ignore the situation he was in. He still had a run to complete, but pretending that he didn’t at least helped him feel like he wasn’t a complete failure.
"Aaaand that's another two litres for our hopeful new champion!" The snicker in the announcer's voice was obvious - it had started about halfway into his allotted stream time and never ceased since. "That must be well over five gallons of shake, folks! I think it's time for a little interview to see where things are going wrong!"
Ike tried not to focus on the words, but it was hard not to. Especially not when the man came down from the commentary booth with his hand-mic at the ready.
"So, Ike! How're you feeling? Things not going how you expected?"
The mic was held a little too close for comfort, close enough that it could probably pick up the wheezing behind his breathing as he pulled the hose free long enough to speak. The announcer was practically leaning over him, his blobular body having already consumed enough couch space for three and a half people and leaving very little room to stand close to him.
“Yeah, I… I thought... I don't know what... m-my fault." Ike could feel his face heating up. His words were slurring together and his head felt light and airy. His face flicked to one of the monitors in front of him, above the scrolling chat - a direct frame of reference for what the camera could see. His double chin, the way his neck had disappeared underneath a pillow of fat, the way his shirt had rolled up into little more than a sports bra was straining with every breath. “Hard to… focus…”
"Hard to focus, huh? What do you think is the problem there, big guy? Because you... what, you said you'd been practicing for this night for a few weeks?”
"Monthhmmgn... months..."
"Months!" The announcer's grin was audible in his tone. “You’ve been grinding for months, and you’re getting this sloppy? What do you think the issue is?”
It was a leading question. He knew what the "issue" was, everybody who was watching or involved in the event did. The problem was that the very concept behind this challenge meant that every mistake he made was being punished in a way that would make it harder to recover from the next one, until eventually he was so glutted with sugar and fat and appetite stimulants and digestive boosters that he couldn't even think properly.
The issue was that his own body had become his biggest enemy, and there was no way to stop it from winning now that he was past the point of recovery. And he knew that saying it would only make him more of a laughingstock than he already was.
"Dunno."
Ike mumbled the word out, turning back to the screen as he lazily pawed the controller back into his grasp. It had meant to come across as a cool dismissal, the fact that he had immediately plugged the feeding tube back into his mouth made it seem more like he was a defeated animal waddling back to its feeding trough.
"Okay, then! Well, I'll let you get back to it. But you're reaaaallly pushing past the amount of extra time we can give you. You think you can at least get to the next bonfire before we have to pull the plug on your run?"
It was a question with no right answer. Say yes, and you're setting yourself up for more mockery when you inevitably fail. Say no, and you’re admitting defeat and accepting that the stream has just become an excuse to watch a gamer balloon up past the 1500lbs mark. So Ike just grunted, the sound barely audible above the wet sounds of the shake being pumped into him.
The previous load of shake was already being processed, his body actively pouring more fat onto itself as the bare minimum of nutrients were stripped away and the rest of the calorie-dense slop was converted into nothing but lard. Ike could see himself slowly filling out, the heft piling into his gut first and foremost with his moobs not far behind. He could practically feel his arms fattening as he struggled to keep his character moving in the right direction.
He didn’t have to use this skip. He could go through the area normally. Save face - or at least try to - by at least getting to SOME checkpoint, even if it wasn’t one that skipped half the game. At this point, the speedrun was dead anyway, not helped by the fact that his nimble warrior was now a clumsy oaf in Ike’s equally-clumsy hands. Each swallow of the current load of liquid was making him feel more and more like he should just cut his losses, but the thought of getting through this entire event with nothing to show for it made him feel sick.
Then again, maybe that was just the shakes.
The problem with the skip was that it was pixel-perfect. It wasn't that it was hard to do, just that it required a level of precision that Ike was currently completely incapable of. His fingers were too fat to grip the controller properly, and the constant intake of a shake that felt purpose-formulated to cause immediate obesity was making him feel bloated and sluggish. The camera was on him again, a small inset in the corner of the main game screen. He looked like a caricature of himself, a bloated parody of the bog-standard skinny-fat gamer he'd been just a few hours ago.
The chat was scrolling by in a blur of emotes and text, most of which were just the same ones spammed over and over, but he could make out some of it. Things like "RIP run" and "Just give up" and "what a butterball" and, the one that stung the most, "hope he does better next year."
Next year. As if he would ever get the chance to do this again. At best, they'd invite him as a joke.
He wasn't even really sure how the hell he'd slim down enough to leave the studio. He hadn't thought ahead that far.
His fingers idly worked the controller as he tried to navigate the area through pure muscle memory, a groan leaving the base of his stomach as another round of digestive work started. Ike let the feeding tube pop out of his mouth as soon as he had sucked down the last few dregs of the thick and weighty shake, a huff of exhaustion leaving his throat as his overtaxed lungs tried to recover and his stomach tried to settle.
He knew that the smart thing to do was to just go for the next checkpoint, but without even realising it, he was back at the ledge. His brain froze for a second, trying to convince him to not make a fool of himself, but his price surfaced just enough to make the decision for him.
"I-I can, hff, do it." Ike panted the words, more to convince himself than anyone else. “I… I can… do the skip.”
A few flicks of the stick to adjust the angle. Pulling back. Setting up the sprint. A deep, wheezing breath. He felt like a whale, beached on the shores of this couch, struggling to breathe under the weight of it all.
His character ran forward, his finger hitting the jump input at just the right moment. For a single strained heartbeat, he was in the air. His eyes widened as watched the game's physics engine take over.
He made it. He landed squarely on the other side of the gap, the character's feet finding purchase on the narrow walkway.
"...f-finally....." The words were a wheezed whisper, a tiny victory in a sea of defeat.
And then, a stray enemy arrow, an eventuality he had planned for in a hundred other practice runs, caught him in the chest and knocked him a step back. Before he could even process what was happening, he was tumbling back down to the death plane, the camera snapping back to an overhead angle that he had seen a dozen times already.
[YOU DIED]
A half-huffed sob escaped his throat - a sound of pure, unadulterated despair.
The hose pulsed again, more of the shake being primed as the chat exploded into a mix of mockery and excitement.
Another two litres. Another load of pure worthless calories being forced into a body that was already past its breaking point. He didn't even have the energy to fight it anymore. Ike just leaned back, the motion sending ripples across the vast expanse of his belly, and let the nozzle press into his mouth. The shake flowed, and he swallowed.
One more attempt. He could do it. He could still save face.
The scale beside the chat monitor ticked up to 1353lbs.