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SHUICHI SAIHARA HAS BEEN FOUND GUILTY. PUNISHMENT WILL NOW COMMENCE.
The young man's eyes widened as the reality of his situation finally set in. Shuichi Saihara, known to his peers as the ultimate gardener, stood quaking in his boots as thirteen sets of eyes fell upon him. Their gazes were shocked, though tinged with sadness. He had been a good friend of theirs, which made it all the more heartbreaking for them to process that he was the one guilty of this awful murder. He had tried to lie and cover his tracks, but all roads ultimately lead back to him. The class trial had deemed him guilty, and now, as the room around Shuichi went black, he had to face his punishment.
He had expected some manner of outlandish chamber to be the scene of his demise, but all he was greeted with to break the void of featureless space in front of him was a spotlight illuminating a small table. On top of it was a small wicker basket filled with fruit, blueberries to be exact, not dissimilar to the sort that could've been found growing in one of his own allotments. He hesitantly stepped forward, wondering if he'd been offered a kindness in the form of a delicious bounty before he met his fate. He plucked a few of the more ripe looking ones and idly began to eat, nodding in surprised contentment at just how rich and juicy they were.
No sooner had he allowed himself to be somewhat comfortable than his environment changed once again, the delicious offering sinking down into the ground before overpowering flood lights came up all around Shuichi. He shielded his eyes from the blinding illumination before taking stock of the space he now found himself in. It was all white, covered in tile, like some kind of giant shower block. It felt oddly clinical, a far cry from the extravagant set he'd seen in the previous execution. Before he had time to wonder about the purpose of this design, he was distracted by the soft, waddling footsteps that he, without even looking, knew to belong to monokuma. When he actually did look, he saw that there were 2 of them, both carrying what appeared to be a large, ornate mirror. They wordlessly carried it across the entire length of this enormous room, before plopping it down directly in front of Shuichi.
The boy stepped towards it, confused by what exactly he was supposed to be looking at. He didn't notice anything different from his usual reflection Dusty denim overalls, straw sun hat, plain beige t-shirt, jeans, everything seemed in order. If this was some grand moment intended to illustrate the predicament he was in, then the moment was somewhat lost on him, he had to admit. Actually, scratch that, it did point out to him that he had some kind of smudge on his nose. Good thing he caught that before everything kicked off. It struck him as embarrassing to have people's last memory of him be blemished in such a way. Shuichi lightly rubbed at his nose, but found that the mark persisted. He went at it a bit harder, but still it hung on in there. If anything, he appeared to have smudged it around even more, coating his entire nose in a strange dark blue. He squinted at himself in the mirror, NG to work out where this mystery stain might have come from, before recoiling in shock and sudden realisation, his eyes wide with terror. Before his very eyes, the strange discolouration continued to spread all on its own, coating his face azure. As it spread further down his neck towards his torso, a loud and insistent gurgle rang out from his belly, as if his body was running on fumes and crying out to be filled.
Those blueberries…
No, it can't be…
Not here, not now…!
"Alright, tell us who you are and why you're here" an offscreen voice disinterestedly ordered, to which the young man on screen happily obliged.
"My name is Shuichi Saihara, I'm 23 years old. This isn't my first time auditioning for Danganronpa, I've been a big fan of the series for years." He spoke with bright clarity and intent, as if he'd had time to process the situation he was in but the emotions were still running high.
"Mm, your last pitch was good, but we couldn't quite fit a detective into the roster that time." the offscreen voice added, having dealt with this hopeful before.
"Right, right, well this time I've got something a bit different. This time, I was thinking, maybe I could be the ultimate farmer, or something along those lines? Something rustic and down to earth, you always need at least one solid, dependable character like tha-"
He froze mid sentence, suspended in pre recorded time. His wide-eyed optimism sat in a freeze frame on a monitor at one end of the conference room. In front of it, bleary eyed and visibly at her wits end, was one Tsumugi Shirogane, creative lead in Team Danganronpa.
"I just…" She began, words failing her. "He seems like a pleasant enough person, but it all goes off the rails from here." She finally elaborated. The various producers in the room, a collection of TV executive and creative types of various ages, appeared confused.
"What do you mean? He seems fine enough to me." piped up one, who looked to be in his mid 50s.
"Just keep watching, you'll see." Tsumugi declared, pressing play and allowing Shuichi's audition reel to continue.
"Plus, nobody would ever expect a wholesome guy like that to ever be a culprit, so you could get some great drama out of that." Shuichi rambled with enthusiasm, his brain going at a million miles a minute. "And just think of the possibilities for executions! Not to imply that the creatives at Team Danganronpa need any help, but one idea I always really liked would be to like, have me get fed some of my own fruit produce, but it's been, like, tainted, yknow?" He continued, a slight redness appearing in his cheeks as he averted his eyes from the camera somewhat. He couldn't help but fidget in his seat, the reality of actually saying the words going through his head being both embarrassing and exciting."Th-Then I end up, like, turning blue and swelling up into this giant blueberry and exploding. It'd be this huge, humiliating spectacle, you could even have like, little monokumas all rolling me around and playing with me, making fun of me for how big and round I am, before I finally hit capacity and burst and get juice everywhere ." He nearly shouted, as if it was a grand effort to force the initial words out that he couldn't stop by the end of the tangent. He sat nervously for a second or two, before letting out a half-hearted chuckle. "Haha, wouldn't that just be wild?"
The video was once again paused. Tsumugi glared at the screen, unsure whether she should be angry at the temerity or impressed with the chutzpah that this audition must have taken.
"...I think that clip speaks for itself, wouldn't you all agree?"
Shuichi stared aghast at his torso, a nervous hand pressed against his belly as if to hold back the inevitable. As he watched the same blue colour that had overtaken his upper body slither out of his sleeves and covered his hands, he felt his stomach grow full and tight as what he knew could only be juice flooded into it. He went from empty to full in an instant, and when that fullness was reached and the juice kept on coming, his belly had no choice but to make room for it. Shuichi stumbled backwards as his stomach began to visibly bloat outwards, pushing his hand aside as it launched a hard and fast offensive against his shirt. In the time he spent frozen there, just trying to comprehend how any of this was even possible, his tummy had already grown to nearly the size of a full term pregnancy and showed no signs of slowing down any time soon.
He was only snapped out of his astonished stupor by the sudden sensation of the juice that was filling him up Branching outwards from his engorged belly. As the sound of a great, hollow sloshing, like a half empty keg being sent hurtling from the drinks table to the floor, penetrated his ears, he felt his entire center of gravity shift as his read suddenly ballooned outwards. his jeans pulled taut, putting his dumptruck ass and engorged thighs on show for all the world to see as the very fabric came alive with the sounds of seams cracking and popping under the sudden pressure. Whereas before, Shuichi's expansion had induced stunned bewilderment, now it had him in a frantic panic. He desperately swiveled his head around, trying to find any direction in this seemingly endless room that might possibly hold an exit, before picking what seemed to be a random direction and taking off that way. His rushed, instinctual thinking seemed to be that getting anywhere other than where he was right now was optimal.
Unfortunately, what Shuichi had envisioned as being a mad sprint for freedom ended up being more of a laborious waddle to nowhere in particular, as his newfound thunder thighs and additional bulky belly rendered him only capable of a few slow, ponderous, unbalanced steps before he exaggeratedly and ungracefully fell forwards, landing directly on top of his bloated, sloshing gut. His full belly absorbed most of the physical impact, but the feeling of most of his body rolling and sloshing under him still brought him a great deal of discomfort. He watched helplessly as his hat fell forward off his head, slowly fluttering down to the ground in front of him, just out of reach. Had he still had it, he might have at least hoped that its brim might be able to hide his humiliated expression from anyone watching, and least let him preserve what little dignity he had left. He attempted to right himself, his arms and legs cavorting across the entirety of their dwindling range of motion in an attempt to find the mythical angle that might allow him to get some leverage over his inflating body. If such an angle did exist, he found himself unable to make any progress in finding it. He had effectively beached himself atop his gurgly orb of a belly. All there was left for him to do was lie there, his head resting atop a rapidly forming set of juicy boy boobs, and await whatever else Monokuma had in store for him.
"He does have a point, the angle for a potential murder would be pretty emotional."
"Mhm, I agree. Plus, we have had an ultimate farmer before, but he was in that anime that nobody likes. This is a good chance for us to associate that part of the brand with something better and more contemporary, don't you think?"
Tsumugi couldn't believe what she was hearing. She'd been confident in assuming that this pervert would've been instantly seen for the freak that he was and have his audition tape thrown into the trash. Yet, right before her, the show's producers were sitting there none the wiser as if the tape they'd just watched was nothing more than a promising audition from a hopeful, bright-eyed fan. She tried not to let her bewilderment show on her face too much, so as to not draw that much attention to herself over something nobody else seemed to notice. She'd have to play this one cleverly if she didn't want to attract a new audience to Danganronpa for entirely the wrong reasons.
"I see where you're all coming from, please don't get me wrong," Tsumugi began, her voice wavering as her brain tried to hurriedly squeeze a million unsavoury thoughts into a coherent sentence or two. "but I mean really , just listen to that stuff he was saying about the execution. He's clearly got an ulterior motive here." she stated calmly, yet firmly. She couldn't let too much on, but she could not let this continue. Frustratingly, all she got back were looks of mild confusion.
" Whatever do you mean?"
"Does what he described not… remind you of anything?" She elaborated, doing her best to gesture heavily in the direction of the movie she knew had to have been this young man's sexual awakening. The producers and creatives murmured for a moment, before one of them piped up in sudden realisation.
"Ohhhhh, of course! It's like that bit from Willy Wonka! You know the one, right?" He spoke, the whole room suddenly having a similar eureka moment and chastising themselves for not making the connection sooner. Tsumugi breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, everyone saw it like she did, and there was no way this upstart's attempt to kinkfish an entire TV studio would be successful.
"Well I mean, Danganronpa does movie references and parodies all the time, why should this be any different?"
Oh no.
"Yeah! We could go all out with it, put monokuma in a little purple coat and top hat. You can do that easily, right Shirogane?"
THEY'RE NOT FUCKING GETTING IT.
Tsumugi felt her back press against the wall. She'd tried to dance around the issue, fearful of exposing just how terminally online she really was, but now she was left with no choice. It was either this, or be thrown to the throngs of hapless online comments exclaiming "did they know??? They had to have known, right???" She took a deep breath, before finally just blurting it out.
"It's very clearly a fetish thing!" She exclaimed a little bit louder than she had intended. The spirited brainstorming almost instantly fell silent, every pair of eyes in the room swivelling back in Tsumugi's direction in anticipation of any elaboration. "You see these people online all the time, they watch that movie growing up and they end up getting aroused at the thought of being blown up and turned into fruits! I mean, this is Danganronpa we're dealing with, we're a big deal, we can't just go ahead and indulge a bizarre pervert like that, can we?"
The silence persisted, only occasionally broken by Tsumugi's ragged breathing and the sound of the clock on the wall. Each tick, each eternal second passing by, seemed only to serve as a reminder that, indeed, it had been This Long and still nobody had said a word. It was only after several seconds that one of the younger writers spoke up, offering his opinion on the matter.
"You know what, Shirogane? You're right, this is Danganronpa we're dealing with here." He said, adjusting his glasses, causing Tsumugi to breathe a sigh of relief.
"Thank you, I'm glad somebody finally gets what I'm talking abou-"
"We're a series built by weird perverts and kept alive by weird perverts."
Tsumugi's eye twitched wordlessly in response.
"Yeah, you think the original Danganronpas were the way they were because Kazutaka Kodaka was normal? Let the guy have his weird berry shit, we've probably done worse in the past."
If time felt as if it was passing slowly before, now it was as if it had entirely stopped. Oh sure, linear time was moving as it ever did, and things were happening in the room once again, but Tsumugi felt frozen in that one instant. A look of resigned defeat hung on her face, as the rest of the room all discussed something or other, the specifics of which were as far as possible from her mind at this moment. Finally, one last heaving sigh left her body as she slumped back down in her chair, her will and desire to argue this point any further leaving her body along with it.
"This is going to be even worse than the time we had the ultimate plumber." She muttered. Nobody heard.
Shuichi lay strained atop his own heaving mass, effectively motionless and helpless at the whims of whatever mastermind had put this affliction on him. He'd occasionally flap his arms and legs about, a gesture that became increasingly futile as they slowly grew and their range of motion shrunk. His perspective gradually rose as the jiggly repository of juice that he was currently lying on pushed him higher and higher into the air with its expansion. It was as he began to get accustomed to his physical changes, the various swelling parts of his body beginning to coalesce into one perfectly round sphere, that his mind seemed to be shifting as well. When he initially realised what was happening to him, his mind exploded in all possible directions as he was overcome with a mixture of humiliation and horror. Given the time to calm down, while the embarrassment was ever present, he felt a red flush creep across his countenance as pleasure and contentment began to infect the equation. The uneasy current of the juice inside his titanic tummy was stimulating in a way he found hard to describe; like a gentle massage against his taut skin from the inside out as the same juice that provides such sensations also coaxed into creeping forward inch by inch. It was as if his own body was trying to tell him "hey, relax, this is good, this is right, we want this."
Perhaps he really did want this. Even the thought of his classmates seeing him in this state, he found, no longer perturbed him much at all. The thought still embarrassed him, that much was certain, but not in a way that truly made him uncomfortable. He could almost picture them all coming across him, idly poking and prodding at him while making remarks in confusion and mild amusement. The sort of embarrassing moment among friends that, as bad as it may feel in the moment, is looked upon with mirth and nostalgia in retrospect. The thought, he had to admit, had him more than at ease with his current predicament.
"I… I'm a blueberry…" was what he wanted to say to himself, but his chubby, engorged cheeks and puffy lips meant that all that came out was a series of halfway-intelligible, muffled moans. It sounded right to him though, and he was the only one who could hear it and indeed needed to hear it.
"That you are, my little blackened, that you are~" Came a sudden voice from the other end of the room. It was a girl's voice, dripping with self assured, domineering smugness. The peaceful bliss that Shuichi had allowed to appear on his face fell away in an instant. There was only one person that voice could have belonged to.
But that was impossible, he thought to himself, half in reassurance and half in panic. She was beaten in the very first killing game he'd read about. How could she be here now? What machinations could have made this possible? He screwed his eyes shut and shook his head. It couldn't be true, it was just another lie cooked up by the mastermind. That had to be it.
And yet, as he finally opened his eyes once more, there she stood.
"Ok, let's just get this shit over with"
That was the last thing that went through Tsumugi's head before she donned the cosplay identity of Danganronpa's iconic mastermind, Junko Enoshima. The replication in broad physical appearance and personality was perfect, though the outfit had been modified as per the scenario Team Danganronpa had come up with. The tight fitting blazer had been swapped out for a resplendent purple tailcoat, and where once might have sat a regal crown, now sat an unassuming top hat, both giving the appearance of a certain iconic character from an altogether different media property involving cartoonish personalities meeting elaborate and ironic bad ends. It wasn't exactly what the girl had imagined when she initially took on the moniker of Ultimate Cosplayer, but here she was all the same.
Shifting perfectly into the mindset of the character she was portraying, she stepped through a wide double door and into the execution chamber. The clacking of her boots rang out as she sauntered across the room, gradually mixing in with the cacophony of gurgles that emanated from Shuichi’s body. The spherical boy, now roughly the size of a van, tipped forward ever so slightly, his leaky, needy boobs causing him to pivot around his newfound center of mass until he came to rest on them. He was looking down on his tormentor, but still he felt powerless. Junko came to a stop only inches away from his face, getting up on her toes and pulling out a pair of glasses as she inspected every inch of Shuichi’s deep blue visage. After all, what could he do to stop her? angrily slosh his juice about it?
“My, oh my, it would appear that somebody ate something he probably shouldn’t have. I’d offer you the chance to refute such an accusation, but I think the evidence is right there for all to see~” She spoke, each word dripping with cruel teasing as she poked at Shuichi’s swollen chest for emphasis. Shuichi’s eyes frantically darted around his limited field of view as Junko began to walk around him, dragging an acrylic nail across his skin which served as a nerve-wracking reminder of just how tight he was starting to become.. “Besides, the time for evidence and counter-arguments passed long ago. We all know what happened, and now it’s time for your punishment~” She proclaimed, lifting her finger away from the berry boy's surface with a dramatic flick before clicking her fingers.
At her command, a veritable horde of Monokumas began to quickly approach Shuichi from every far inch of his peripheral vision, running out in perfect synchronicity as if initiating a well-drilled response. Even if Shuichi's bloated cheeks would have allowed him to question this ursine procession, scarcely had the thought to do so gone through his head before he felt several tiny pairs of paws beginning to push against his rounded side, sending his world upside down and right-side up and upside down again as he began to roll back across the tiled floor. It seemed to be a complicated operation, yet still carried out with an almost rehearsed efficiency. One or two other Monokumas waved over the group that was rolling shuichi, seemingly acting as foremen. The thought of having to describe his main form of locomotion as "rolling" felt incredibly bizarre to Shuichi, but simultaneously sent the pleasure centers in his brain all aflutter. Some monokumas even went ahead of the group and hurriedly swept the floor in Shuichi's oncoming path, something which he couldn't imagine was at all effective in aiding his movement, but still served to make him feel more like some kind of object on display than anything really human anymore.
And at the center of it all, deftly jumping up and landing atop his berry body with a nimble flip, was Junko Enoshima. She made the act of balancing atop a giant, rolling ball that used to be a person look as simple as buttering toast, cementing herself as the one both figuratively and literally on top.
"You holdin' down there, berry boy? I tell ya, the view sure look fuckin great from up here~!" She yelled down at him, her calculated teasing being replaced with a callous crassness which only further cemented Shuichi's status as something to be belittled and toyed with. In theory, being treated like this by the emblem of the killing game; the embodiment of despair itself, should have been enough to push him over the threshold into its abyss. Yet, those holdout neurons in his brain continued to insist that this was some manner of esoteric dream scenario come true. A fantasy so deeply held that it would have been pointless to even entertain the idea of seeking to make it a reality, somehow fully realised. This flurry of confused euphoria combined with the raging tempest of juice that now turned over and over on itself within his cavernous, agonisingly tight sphere of a body to tell Shuichi, even if only in the back of his mind, that he was rapidly approaching a point of no return. Indeed, as the troupe of monokumas finally reached the lone, bright spotlight in the middle of the room that Shuichi had begun this entire process within the illumination of, it seemed that both them and Junko sensed the same. The group brought their show to a halt, stabilising the overly engorged berry before the monokumas departed as swiftly as they came in. A few of the rollers made sure to give Shuichi a wave goodbye before making their exit, something he took as a sign of departure for both of them. Junko quickly dismounted, once again getting back up in Shuichi's face. Whereas before she seemed focused and analytical, now she seemed just as ready to burst as he knew in the recesses of his mind that he was, her face overflowing with delight.
"Awwwww, is my cute widdle bewwy boy about to go pop~?" She asked. The tone of her voice made it seem like an innocent question, but both her and him already knew the answer. Shuichi wouldn't have needed to say anything even if she was expecting an answer, his creaking gut was more than sufficient in that department. He was going to burst, and Junko seemed to revel in it. In an instant, though, her demeanor shifted entirely once again. That sudden spark of joy and delight was now replaced with a melancholy boredom. Not even this absurdity, it seemed, was enough to satiate the ultimate despair. She didn't even offer him any final parting remarks, simply muttering something offhand that he couldn't have hoped to make out over the sounds of his overtaxed juice factory of a body. She turned and began to dismissively walk away, putting some distance between her and the inevitable tidal wave of juice that would soon follow. Shuichi felt his body no longer expanding outwards, but instead tightening and tightening as the juice he'd been steadily inflating with now fought for any space it could find within the confines of his body. He felt it pushing up in his throat, pushing through his puffed up lips and spurting droplets onto the floor in front of him as he desperately tried to swallow it all back down; gagging noises muffled against the torrent. He fought and strained and moaned and whined and creaked and sloshed and gurgled and-
The scene cut from a shot of the ultimate despair obscured by a drenched, black and white umbrella streaked with purple, to a shot of a straw hat washing up over a small drain, before fading entirely to black.
A voice in Tsumugi's ear told her that the cameras were no longer live, to which she let out a rough, throaty groan of relief as she swiftly made her way off the set. She vigorously shut the door behind her as she reached her dressing room, slamming it a tad harder than she perhaps meant to, and threw the wig, hat and coat off into a pile on a nearby sofa. She caught a glance at herself in the mirror as she ripped her wig cap off and allowed her long, matted hair to fall back down around her head. Her expression was tired, aggravated, and most of all, unsatisfied. She'd done a good job out there, she of all people knew that, but to what end? Nobody gives out trophies for #1 turd polisher.
"I need a drink and a shower." She muttered to herself, a reassurance of standards for her and her alone.