Adel the Bounty Hunter 2

Adel could barely walk straight as she lazily carried herself back to the front desk of Georgette's fine little establishment, cradling her tightly-packed belly with one hand as gingerly as if she were holding a real child. Her eyes were glazed, her mind discombobulated from the overload of pleasure she had just experienced moments ago within her private room, but she sauntered up to the counter and slapped her free hand down as loudly as she could. Georgette continued to watch her with a patient smile. She'd known Adel for the longest time, maybe even longer than anyone else had ever known her, and this was not the first time they'd gone through a scenario like this together. Even Adel seemed to know the ropes already, as pumped up with kink-fueling drugs as she was, and she gave Georgette a playful, uneasy smirk.

"Th...Thanks...for that..." Adel hiccuped. She belched right in Georgette's face, but offered no apology. Georgette shrugged it off, not offended at all by the clearly honest mistake. When it came to (business) or (pleasure), Adel was a very different person when fulfilling either one, and the owner understood that quite well. She did not judge Adel harshly for that, as she knew many people who were the same.

"No problem. I hope you have a nice night, Adel."

"You got the money, right...?" Adel asked. She was starting to gather herself again. Georgette could see the other woman's eyes becoming clearer, the connections in her brain making their rounds.

"Yes, I did. You paid in full as usual."

"Good...good..." Adel suddenly faltered for a moment and she gripped her stomach; she could have sworn she felt the thing kick, but there was definitely no baby inside of her. "Agh...I think I got to go..."

"Are you sure? You seem tired. Why don't you stay a little while longer?" Georgette offered. She had some rooms behind her desk that were meant for employees only, including her office, which had a couch in it. It would not be the first time she'd given Adel a place to sleep. As a bounty hunter, she was not able to own any land property such as a permanent residence, due to the nature of the job requiring so much travel, and even though she returned to this little desert town now and again, she'd only ever slept in the run-down apartments a few blocks away. Georgette cared about Adel too much to let her go waddling out of here while she was in such a state. Tonight she went overboard her usual standards of bloating, so today's mission must have been an extremely exhausting one for her to need to go this far just to relax.

"I...I don't know...is that really alright with you?" Adel asked. She didn't want to impose, as difficult as it may have been to drag her stomach around while she was so heavily weighed down with a fattening cream mixture. Georgette nodded. She stepped out from behind the counter and took Adel's mechanical hand to lead her along. Georgette frowned a little. She could still recall when this hand had been made of flesh, it seemed so long ago. Adel muttered a quiet 'thank you' before swallowing down most of another oncoming belch in her throat.

Georgette ushered Adel into the room and had her lay down on the couch. Adel removed most of the contraptions she'd still been carrying on her at the time, including her pistol and all of the ammo packs she had been conserving, laying them out onto the table beside her. Georgette offered Adel a blanket as well, but the bounty hunter turned it down, feeling that would be too much, and she would just need to rest long enough for her stomach to settle and finish digesting. Georgette smirked; she knew that Adel would eventually fall asleep and end up spending the entire night. She didn't mind at all. They were former partners in the field, after all.

"By the way, Adel..."

"...Huh?" Adel sounded as groggy as she looked; she was about ready to pass out.

"You plan to go to Neptune tomorrow too, don't you? You must need to refill your equipment."

Adel groaned. A loud, angry, frustrated groan. It had nothing to do with the aching throb that had started inside her tightly-packed gut, though.

"I don't want to think about that...right now this is pleasure, not business, but still...I really don't want to deal with him...not after..."

"Not after what?"

"I used two bombs for this mission."

"Two? Seriously?"

"I didn't think..." Adel stopped to grunt when she felt her food-baby give a rather impressive kick in the pit of her belly. "I didn't expect that there would be a bigger goblin than the rest..."

"Ah, geez, he's going to really hold you for ransom for that."

"I know...I know..."

"Do you want me to go with you tomorrow?"

Adel rolled over on the couch so that her back was facing Georgette. Her backside was rather exposed, her tiny shorts riding deep inside the depths of her full cheeks, but she was too tired to even bother picking them out like usual. Georgette snorted, trying not to laugh. Her friend really wasn't very good at keeping control of her weight, especially since it was all gathering inside her hips like that. How she still managed to work as a bounty hunter when she had such an hourglass figure was beyond Georgette's understanding, but as humorous as she sometimes found it, she sort of admired Adel for sticking to her guns, even as she steadily grew softer and flabbier all over. She could only imagine how big Adel would have to get because of her secret kink before she would be convinced to retire from the bounty hunting business for good.

"Nah...I have...some things I need to speak about with him anyway..." Adel yawned. "He still owes...a lot more...than he thinks..."

Adel finally drifted off to sleep. Georgette left so that she could get a proper rest. She would let the girl show herself out when morning came around.

For now, she could go ahead counting the money and welcoming any other customers who decide to come here for a late-night 'meeting'. She had all sorts of different rooms and contraptions set up for many different tastes, and it wasn't exactly the 'cleanest' sort of business when it came to social morals, but it worked out well enough for Georgette to keep it running. She preferred it vastly over continuing to be a bounty hunter herself.

Adel had dreams of goblins, Treaders, bombs and fat. Lots and lots of fat, copious mounds of it billowing off of her body from every angle, so much so until she finally managed to crush both the goblins and the Treader beneath her own girth. By the end of her dream, she was bigger than a mountain.

-----

Neptune was one of the few bounty hunters that Adel still acquainted herself with, but he was a far different sort from Georgette. In fact, he was a far different sort from most beings in general, not being a human or anything at all. In fact, if it wasn't for the ancient diving suit that he possessed at all times, Neptune would have no physical form at all, being little more than a gaseous life-form that had arrived here from another planet. He liked to think that he was unique because of that, but he was a bigger thorn in Adel's love-handle than even the desert monsters could be. He was a bounty hunter, but he also worked as a travelling merchant, selling off the wares that he'd either purchased for cheap himself or built together with pieces of old technology he'd found scoured across the land. He was one of the very few who tailored to bounty hunting needs more than any other market.

Neptune sat cross-legged at his usual spot in the town's market area, with his blanket spread out in front of him and a pile of boxes sitting behind him. He had an umbrella set up, not for himself, but for potential customers to keep their heads cooled in the shade when they sat down to discuss business. That was about as hospitable as he'd chosen to be, however, as he was not an easy man (if you could call him a 'man' at all) to negotiate with under any circumstance. Adel twisted her wrist around on her false arm a few times, watching it spin in full circle, to make sure that the joints involved weren't beginning to rust. She'd hate to have to buy new oil along with the ammo and the grenades. Neptune would bleed her poor wallet dry if he had the opportunity.

"Neptune,"

Adel sat down on the red blanket, trying to do so in a manner that would not to let her paunch jiggle too much.

"I need to talk to you about replenishing some of my ammo stack."

The old, gray diving suit hardly seemed to be anything close to 'alive' at first. If anything, it seemed like a regular diving suit sitting unattended on the side of the street, no rhyme or reason behind it. It was leaning back, like it could topple over at any moment if given the slightest push. Adel waited. The small vents on its shoulders started to release puffs of an emerald-green mist, and soon, with a sudden jolt, the suit raised itself into a more comfortable seated position and folded its bulky, gloved hands together like a man who had just formulated a twisted plan inside his dark little mind. Something green flashed briefly from behind the dusty, glass visor on the helmet. It then began to speak, in a deep but soothing sort of voice. Had radios still operated like they used to, it would have been the most popular announcer voice of the decade.

"Good morning, Adel. You look well-fed as always."

"Yes, I know." Adel replied. She wasn't going to comment on her weight right now, or even acknowledge any comments made about her weight toward her (business).

"What is going on with you? What do you need from my wares? Bullets? Oil? Incendiaries? Grenades? ...I can add a few little 'upgrades' to that arm of yours too, if you're willing to check out my offers." Right off the bat, Neptune was already trying to get her to buy something. He didn't beat around the bush, instead he pummeled it with one mighty blow. Adel sighed.

"I used two grenades yesterday. The little pen-shaped ones." Adel explained.

Neptune paused for a moment. "Two of them...? What the hell in the world could you need two of them for? Making grenades that tiny and efficient costs a damn lot more than your average bomb, you know that? You're one of my favorite costumers because you pay me a lot to restock you, but you need to start learning to conserve your weaponry a little more sometimes."

"I hadn't expected there to be a big goblin on board the Treader. It was tougher than I thought, it caught me off-guard."

"Oh, that's right, you had been hired to collect a Treader's brain, weren't you? Tough luck, having to do a job like that, with Treaders getting kind of rare these days, everyone wants those brain-crystals of theirs. Seeing that you are sitting here right in front of me, I can assume you succeeded, but also for the same reason of you sitting in front of me I'm also going to make a careful guess that you already spent most of your earnings on that fetish house of yours last night, didn't you?"

Adel tried her damn hardest to keep a blush from spreading across her face. Neptune sighed.

"Do you still have enough to afford it? I'm not going to give you a discount, no matter our relationship with each other, but just tell me know if you're wasting my time or not."

"I can afford it...it's just going to leave me with a lot less than I'd prefer..." Adel grumbled under her breath.

"All I really needed to hear was that you can afford it. Let's get a list of everything you're looking for in particular, and I'll offer it up to you."

Neptune popped open one of the massive silver-lined cases he had sitting behind him. He started rummaging through it, looking for the tiny pen-sized grenades that Adel had requested, while the young woman was begrudgingly retrieving her wallet from inside her shorts. She took a moment to pluck said shorts out of her rear and then removed a hunk of bills to present to the possessed old suit. Neptune was already beginning to remove a carton full of pistol bullets when he happened to glance away down the road. Adel followed his supposed line of sight to see that a rather large gang of people were running toward them. It did not take long for her to realize that they weren't actually running toward 'them' specifically, but simply running in their general direction. Something appeared to be chasing them.

It was goblins. Not just one or two of the little cretins. Several of them in fact, followed up in the back by a large one similar to the old adult that had attacked Adel on top of the Treader, but this one had all of its arms and legs intact, and, judging by the breasts swinging like wrinkled pendulums from its chest, it was a female this time. The giant goblin reared its head far back and released a vicious howl, one that made the window panes quiver in fear. The town erupted in a cacophony of screams and wails as the goblins made their presence known to the people.

"Ah. Goblins." remarked Neptune.

Adel was careful to face-palm with her real arm; she'd prefer not to accidentally smack herself in the face with a fist full of metal like previous times. "H-How in the world did they get in? I thought we had the shields up!"

"They've been down for about a day, but even though we were working on them, nobody thought any monsters would actually show up. We never had any before."

"Ah..." Adel frowned. She couldn't help but let the thought wander into her brain that she was somehow responsible for this. She' considered the potential possibility that the giant old goblin she had killed atop the Treader had actually been the husband or lover of this female goblin, and the little goblins she'd shot to bits had been several of their many children. After having discovered the corpses of her family members, the female goblin had followed Adel's scent (goblins had good sense of smell, or they must have, with noses that big) all the way back to this little desert town. It could have just as easily been coincidence and nothing more. Adel knew she was going to have to do something either way, though.

She was a bounty hunter, not a hero. Her only connection to this town was Georgette and her humble little establishment (pleasure). Even Neptune, her most trusted supplier, was eventually going to move onto another town with her, somewhere far away in another part of this vast, empty, war-torn land that they called home. She got her money from those willing to hiring her, each job never being the same as the last. She had no connection to this place, but the connections she did have were still enough to give her a reason to try and help (business...?).

Plus her brain wouldn't stop telling her she was the one at fault for this happening at all, even though that claim was still dubious at best.

"Let's kill them." Adel said simply, unsheathing the pistol she kept on her being at all times.

"Way ahead of you."

Neptune had another one of his boxes propped open and from within it he removed an RPG launcher. Adel blanched, scurrying to put some more space between her and the diving suit, just so that she wouldn't be caught in any sort of crossfire. That was an understated issue with Neptune being made out of gas, in her opinion; he failed to understand how fleshy lifeforms felt on numerous levels, the concept of experiencing pain being one of them. Adel knew what he had in mind though, so while he prepared the missile, she was already running straight toward the goblin hoard, keeping out of Neptune's line of fire at the same time. She reached behind to tug her shorts out of her rear. A bigger pair of pants was at the top of her list for what to spend her next paycheck on, whenever she got it.

"Zbohom." Neptune had heard that word used once long ago, and even though he could not recall who had said it or whatever the situation had been when it was first used, he had never forgotten the word itself, and he used it every time he was about to perform an assigned kill.

The missile fired. It flew through the air, leaving a tail of white smoke behind it, and it rushed past Adel before eventually colliding into the ground directly at the goblins' feet. The petrified screams of dying animals hurdled into the air just as dirt and dust and smoke rose up in front of them, shrouding them completely from view. Neptune was already preparing another RPG. They were expensive too, but he knew a good supplier, so he wasn't too afraid to use them.

Adel could see a splatter of blood through the thick veil of smoke, along with a severed arm, so she knew that at least a few of them had been killed.

Nonetheless, some of the goblins came at her sprinting. Adel blasted a charging one in the head and it dropped hard. She twirled to avoid the claws of another, grabbed the offender by the arm with her own robotic hand, squeezed hard enough to snap the fragile bones within its limb, and blew its brains out before it even had a chance to squeal for mercy.

Big Goblin Mom was still alive too. It had its giant, toothless mouth open wide, probably with intent to swallow Adel whole. She fired a bullet at its face, but it only managed to puncture the nose, which didn't exactly deter the creature and achieved nothing more than simply making it grow even angrier. However, before it managed to so much as wrap a single clawed finger around her soft waistline, it was sent tumbling into the side of a building after an RPG collided with its ribs.

"It's a lot easier to aim when you're up close and personal." Neptune remarked as he walked up alongside Adel, RPG launcher hoisted over his shoulder. He handed Adel the empty launcher and pat her on her rear. "Take care of these, you don't want to lose them."

"Don't do that...!"

The giant goblin grandma was already scrambling to get back onto its feet. A large chunk of its side had been completely burned through by the impact of the RPG rocket, but even though its blood was gushing out and staining the earth in copious amounts, just like its apparent husband, it was a stubborn gal. Strolling up in front of it rather casual-like, Neptune curled the fingers of his right hand into a tight fist, reared his arm back, and threw a punch that collided straight into the giant goblin's face, shattering whatever was left of the nose that Adel had already blown open with a bullet. The goblin howled in agony.

"These things have never been very difficult to deal with...say, are you sure you had to use TWO grenades against them last night?"

Adel rolled her eyes. She wasn't going to even offer him a proper reply to that.

The remaining normal-sized goblins were already beginning to reconsider their life choices as they cowered before the bounty hunters. Two of them turned tail and ran away for the edge of town, the third one shot by Adel in the middle of retreating as another way to hammer the lesson home, that they weren't wanted here. Neptune continued to pummel the goblin mother's face in with his literal steel fists, until eventually the skull beneath its temple started to feel as soft as a bowl of cold porridge, and he stopped. Neptune wiped some of the blood off of on a nearby cloth from a destroyed market stand and returned to Adel's side.

"That was easy." he remarked.

"It's certainly easier dealing with these things when you have a partner." Adel remarked. "...And when you own enough missiles to rival a small army."

"They're all low-level, even the big ones, hardly tough enough to take a few bullets without dropping! Nothing special at all."

Adel's stomach started to grumble; she had skipped breakfast after last night's intense bloat (business), but now she was beginning to hunger for a big lunch (pleasure). It was too bad Neptune couldn't eat, she might have offered him to go with her if he was willing to pay, but that act of small generosity was just as unlikely to ever occur as him actually gaining the ability to eat sustenance. Apparently his species needed oxygen alone to survive, but Neptune never liked to go in-depth about his background to anyone, strangers or fellows. She handed Neptune back his launcher before he could try to spank her ass again.

"So, want to go back and do the trade? Still ready to slap down the bills?"

"I suppose. I wonder when the people will come back." Adel looked around. The market area had been all but deserted by the town's frenzied citizens, it was like standing in the middle of a ghost town.

Suddenly, a massive black form came crashing down in front of the pair. The dark-colored creature unfurled its wings and stood itself straight, standing at nearly ten feet in height with a wing-span over twenty, forcing both Adel and Neptune to tilt their heads back just to look at it. A moment's glance was more than enough necessary to discern that this new arrival was a few dozen levels above goblins in terms of deadliness. It possessed the body of an extremely well-built man, six-pack abs glistening with scales the color of fresh charcoal; it needed this strength to be able to lift itself into the air, as well as to decimate its prey with the ease of a fly swatter smashing its namesake insect. Its long tail whipped back and forth across the ground, kicking up clouds of dust around it. A toothy grin adorned its face, through the glass visor which it stared.

It was one of the rarest creatures to roam the planet, a mysterious fusion of dragon and man known as a Dragoon.

As it so happened, it was the exact same Dragoon that had stolen Adel's arm years ago.

"Hello, Adel. I had wondered where you had gone, after our last encounter." the Dragoon's voice rivaled Neptune's own, only it was more like that of a prime-time TV announcer.
The color steadily drained itself from Adel's face. Her heart throbbed with a long-forgotten ache, as did the nub of flesh that connected her prosthetic limb to her shoulder.

She had a feeling this would be a bad time to readjust her shorts right now.