What was meant to be an easy hunt in the forests outside of Vale turned sour as a heavy storm rolled in. Team RWBY was caught outside with nothing but trees for protection.
"This way!" Ruby called out over the hammering rain. "There's a road coming up, we might find a house!"
"I'd settle for anything at this point!" Blake added, holding Gambol Shroud over her head, using the wide bladed sword as an attempt at cover. The girls kept running, their clothes soaked through and their endurance being tested. Before too long, the girls spotted the wall of a log cabin through the blanket of trees. Their spirits buoyed, they picked up a second wind and almost sprinted for the structure. As they broke through the treeline and circled around to a door, the girls noticed a wooden sign that had clearly been removed and put back on a fair few times. The sign read in bright red letters "Grimm! Keep Out!"
"Seriously? We have to fight Grimm for our shelter?" Weiss complained, somehow having the energy to be indignant between catching her breath.
"Don't care, going in!" Yang shouted as she went shoulder first at the door. With her speed and strength, the flimsy wooden door didn't stand a chance at stopping her from getting inside. The rest of the team came through the doorway, weapons drawn and ready for a fight. With their adrenaline high, the team was ready to swing, shoot or stab at anything with enough black and white to even look vaguely like a creature of Grimm. After a moment of dead silence, broken only by the storm outside, the girls took a moment to breath, try to dry off and lower their guard just a little bit.
"Okay, let's search the place. If we need to stay here for the night, we should make this place safe." Ruby led the team through the simple cabin, even if there was very little to lead them through. The living room and kitchen they entered through was completely empty, save for some well-worn furniture, everything covered with a layer of dust showing an obvious lack of use. The bedroom proved to be equally empty, with the only things left being too large to carry out in a hurry. At the door to the final room, the team stacked up next to the door, with Yang ready to lead the way.
"Alright, ready when you guys are," Yang said, getting into position to barge through. The rest of the team nodded silently, before a loud growl came out of nowhere. Ruby, Weiss and Yang readied their weapons as Blake's eyes widened with surprise and embarrassment.
"That… wasn't a Grimm, that was my stomach. Sorry, I'm kinda hungry right now," Blake said, her face flushing red. The tension broken, Ruby and Yang couldn't help but laugh, only making Blake's blush deepen.
"Can we please take this seriously?" Weiss said loudly, trying to be heard over the rain and the laughter.
"Yeah, yeah, alright Princess," Yang teased, before counting herself down. On one, she burst through the door, followed by her team, only them to be met by walls of cupboards and a padlocked and chained hatch down to a basement of some kind.
"No Grimm?" Blake said warily.
"Might be in the basement, but I've seen enough horror movies to know never to go into the basement, especially one with all those locks on it," Yang answered.
"Yeah, good idea Yang. We should just block this room off and stay in the living room," Ruby agreed.
"Should we maybe search the cupboard first? Maybe we can use them for barricades," Blake suggested.
"Or perhaps there might be food in them," Weiss added. Yang turned to Weiss with a raised eyebrow.
"You getting hungry too?" Yang said with a smug grin.
"N-no… I'm just planning ahead in case this storm leaves us stranded for the night." Weiss' entirely logical statement was immediately undermined by her stomach rumbling loudly. Weiss' face paled even more than normal and her hands shot to her stomach. "Grr, I ate before we left, how am I so hungry?"
"Relax Weiss, you probably just worked up an appetite fighting all those Grimm," Yang said with a dismissive wave. "Anyways, let's get searching!" she announced as she strode confidently over to the cupboards and flung them open, revealing more and more non-perishable food stored with each cupboard opened.
"Food! We're set for the night," Ruby cheered.
"Ugh, you call this food?" Weiss said, side eyeing Ruby.
"Relax Princess, it's just for one night. Besides, I've eaten worse," Yang said, waving away Weiss' concerns.
"Shouldn't we deal with that first?" Blake suggested, pointing to the cellar door.
"On it!" Yang affirmed, going for a chair from out in the living room. She tore the legs off of it and jammed the door closed with them, adding that to the other barricades. "There, done. Now, food?" Yang turned to ask the team. Blake and Ruby were already going for the cans and packets, with Weiss reluctantly joining in. Yang scooped up a double armful of food and the team took their haul back to the living room before sealing off the storage room with a cupboard wider than the door, making it hard to leave the store room, but relatively easy to enter.
"Uh, guys, isn't this a lot of food for one night?" Ruby asked, raising an eyebrow at the veritable hoard of food.
"Relax, Ruby, it's not like we won't be able to stop ourselves, right guys? Plus, it sounds like we're all pretty hungry right now," Yang said to the rest of the team. Blake and Weiss agreed and that placated Ruby for now. As the team nabbed some utensils from the kitchen and settled on to the couches, Ruby pulled out her scroll and set up a distress call.
"Okay, so everyone back at Beacon should know where we are. Someone should be coming to get us soon," Ruby said with a cheery smile, before glancing out the window at the setting sun and the near solid wall of rain. As she looked back, her team had already begun digging into their piles of food. Ruby shrugged and made a start on her food. "Man, I hope we're not stealing someone's food," Ruby thought out loud as she nibbled away at her food. The rest of the team didn't appear to hear her, too focused on eating. "Oh, wow, you guys really must be hungry."
Some unknowable amount of time later, the sun had gone down and the only light in the room was the torch on Ruby's scroll, bathing the room in a soft blueish white glow. Ruby hadn't noticed the sun go down, the storm beginning to clear, or anything else for that matter. All she had been doing for the last little while was stuffing her face with all the free food, filling her mouth until her cheeks were puffed out and full of food and downing it all at an incredible speed, as if she hadn't eaten all day. Ruby only slowed down when she heard a clattering sound from the store room that seemed to snap her out of her laser focus on the food in front of her.
"Uh, guys, did you hear that?" she said, eyeing up the store rooms blocked off door. She hopped off her seat and made her way over to the door, still nibbling on her ration bar, blissfully unaware of her bloated stomach beginning to push against her waist cincher. "Watch my back, okay?"
"Yeah, sure, it'll be fine," Yang said through a mouthful of food. Ruby turned quickly and saw that the rest of her team was definitely not paying attention. She rolled her eyes and went for the door. As she slowly opened it and peeked in, she couldn't find the source of the noise, everything seemed to be as it was. While she looked around, still nibbling on her bar, she noticed a sudden pain from her thumb. Surprised, she looked at it and saw teeth marks. All of a sudden, it was as if a cloud had disappeared from her mind as she realised that her was so distracted by food that she had managed to bite her own thumb.
"Oh, geez, that's not a good sign," she said, before looking down. What she saw sobered her up further. Her belly was sticking out past her breasts. Her cincher pinched at her gut, the tight band splitting her round belly in two. She didn't even think she had eaten that much. If she was like this, the others couldn't have been much better. She had to warn them. Then, she felt a haze take over her mind. She blinked, and next thing she knew, she was back in the living room with a double armful of food and an even more bloated belly that before, one that made her cincher creak concerningly with every shallow breath. She shook her head to try to clear it and put the food down. "Guys, I think we need to stop eating."
"It's fine," Ruby heard a drowsy Blake say through a mouth full of food. Ruby looked up in time to see Blake crack open a can of shrimp flavoured beans and chug it in one go. Ruby's eyes drifted down, and that's when her eyes went wide with surprise. Blake gut was round and firm, large enough for her to need to undo the buttons on her vest. It sat heavily on Blake's lap and slowly grew as she shoved down more and more food. Ruby reluctantly looked around, as if not seeing the effects meant they wouldn't happen, but sure enough, the same had happened to Weiss and Yang. Weiss' belly may have seemed to be the smallest, other than Ruby's, but it was squashed in tight with her white dress. The seams were pulled tight and almost ready to start splitting. Meanwhile, Yang's gut outpaced everyone's by a mile. The hefty mass, round, smooth and solid, filled her lap, making her look like she was heavily pregnant, even if it was just a food baby. All three of them had glassy, dilated eyes that didn't seem to be processing what was in front of them or what they were doing, and they just kept on mindlessly piling more and more food into their mouths. Ruby was lost for words and without a plan of action as her team was lost in gluttony. Then, her mind drifting back to earlier and remembering how she snapped out of her trance, an idea formed. It wasn't much of a plan, and it was hard to focus further with how hungry yet full she felt, but it was better than nothing.
"Sorry Yang," Ruby said, wincing as she leaned in towards her sister. Yang had plenty of aura, so it wasn't like this would hurt very much, but Ruby couldn't help but feel bad as she slowly raised her hand. She brought it down on Yang's mammoth belly, making a slap mixed with a meaty thud. Yang's belly barely moved from the impact it was so packed full and tight with food. Her eyes went wide as they cleared up and focused, her irises going blood red.
"Aah! What the hell!?" Yang screamed, half in pain and half in surprise, at a Ruby that wasn't too sure how to respond. As the shock dissipated, Yang looked down at her sore belly and her eyes went even wider. "When did that get there!?" she asked.
"I don't know, but we've been eating way too much. Something's messing with us," Ruby warned.
"Yeah, no kidding," Yang said, taking a moment to breath and cool down, even if her stuffed belly meant her breaths were shallow to avoid angering her overfilled belly. "There's no way I should be this stuffed and this hungry, something's wrong." She looked up at Ruby, her eyes going back to their normal lilac and taking on a hint of a misty haze. "But I still want to eat."
"Oh no you don't!" Ruby reached for Yang and pulled her out of the chair with all her might. Distracted, Yang wasn't able to fight back as she toppled to the floor. Sprawled on the floor, Yang rolled over and rubbed her sore belly
"Ow, crap, okay, gotta focus. We need to get out of here before…" Yang's warning was cut short by the sound of fabric tearing. The sisters looked over towards the sound, and saw the seams on the side of Weiss' dress beginning to rip apart, revealing hints of pale flesh as it poked through the little gaps it was making.
"Oh man, she's gonna be so mad when her brain starts working again," Ruby said with a nervous laugh.
"Maybe the rain will wake her up," Yang suggested, uneasily getting to her feet, not fully adjusted to her new centre of balance. She grabbed Weiss and moved as quickly as her feet could carry her. As soon as she was outside and the gentle but steady rain was hitting Weiss' face, it was as if she had woken from a daydream with a start and immediately regretted it.
"Ooh, why does my stomach hurt?" Weiss whined, her head still spinning as Yang gently let her down.
"Don't worry about it," Yang said quickly before turning back to the house. "Ruby! Get Blake out of there!"
Meanwhile, Ruby was doing her best to literally drag Blake out of the house. Blake was being far from cooperative, still stuffing herself as Ruby tried to get her out of the house. Ruby already knew that she wasn't the strongest, and the extra weight on Blake wasn't helping. The dangerously tempting food sitting around wasn't helping matters. Ruby was doing her best to drown out the voice that was telling her to give up, sit down and pig out. She knew it wasn't coming from her, and she knew what would happen if she did. She steeled her resolve and just kept at it. From outside, she heard what sounded like a distant engine getting closer. Someone was coming to help, Ruby knew it. She heard Yang and Weiss calling out, trying to get the vehicle's attention. As Ruby felt like she was reaching her limit, she crossed the threshold and stepped out into the rain. Blake didn't need to be too far out of the house before she snapped back into reality. She staggered to her feet and out of the house.
"Ugh, what happened?" Blake asked, still fairly groggy. That was when a bright light from the sky from the sky shone down on the team as a Bullhead slowly descended. On it was the portly Professor Port.
"Oh goodness, it looks like there must be a Hunger nearby. There's no other way that responsible huntsmen in training like you four would end up look like this," Port boomed as he ushered the team onto the Bullhead.
"Hunger? Is that a type of Grimm?" Ruby asked, rubbing her belly, half considering undoing her waist cincher.
"Ah, yes. They give off waves of energy that afflict the mind with incredible sensations of hunger, distracting you while they go in for the kill. There are other Grimm that affect your mind differently, and they're quite likely some of the weakest Grimm that you may fight, not that that should let you underestimate them," Port explained, beaming with pride at his own knowledge. Then, his moustache seemed to droop. "I apologise for not teaching you of these foul creatures before now. I believed them to only be in Mistral and even then, they are meant to be especially rare."
"Well, guess that explains what was in the basement," Blake said with a weak smile.
One awkward ride back to Beacon later and Port was still informing the team about the Grimm that had affected them, with more information that the team could ever hope to retain. The team found his voice a good distraction from their churning, uncomfortable stomachs. As the team were debriefed by Port and sent back to their dorm room to recover, they all looked at the sorry state of each other. Their distended bellies stuck out so far that seeing their own feet was out of the question, even for the comparatively light eater Ruby. Weiss was annoyed with her own lack of self-control, especially since it was responsible for the damage to her clothing and even if she wasn't truly in control to begin with. Blake was awkwardly fidgeting with her undone vest buttons, attempting the impossible and trying to button them back up and having trouble looking her teammates in the eyes. Ruby and Yang weren't exactly in the mood or the state to be climbing up to their top bunks, and after everything that happened, the floor was good enough. Before the team collapsed into their sleeping arrangements, Weiss quietly spoke up.
"Perhaps we shouldn't mention this to the others, agreed?"
"Agreed," the rest of the team chorused, before drifting off to some well needed rest and recuperation.