Link vs Chuchus

This was new.

Not the chuchus. Those jelly like monsters were standard fare. Link was used to encountering them. It wasn’t even the first time that one had taken him by surprise and rammed into him and, following that, not the first time one knocked him off his feet.

In fact, it wasn’t even the first time he had rolled to his feet afterward and had to search to see where the monster had gone either. Although it was the first time he hadn’t seen it anywhere when he scanned his surroundings.

It had taken him a moment to connect the missing monster with the squirming mass that had suddenly appeared in his stomach. And a bit longer to figure out how that happened. The creatures had preferred shapes, but he knew they could squish down into other forms. This one had struck him in the face, and must have slipped into his mouth while he was dazed from the blow.

He wasn’t exactly sure what to do in this situation. Precedent told him to attack the chuchu with his sword, but common sense said that was a bad idea. Taking a sword to one’s own stomach generally ended in a painful way.

Maybe the monster would climb back up his mouth? Our out the other end? Neither idea sounded particularly pleasant, but Link didn’t know what else to do. He resolved to bring the issue to Zelda… once he had finished rescuing her. Surely that was still doable with a monster squirming around in his belly. There were only three more dungeons to purge of evil before he could get to her.

Well, he had assumed it would be doable. But he only made it into the next room of the dungeon before he had to sit down and poke at his stomach. It was still flat, but the feeling of the chuchu wiggling about, particularly in response to his prodding, was driving him nuts.

So absorbed with the one chuchu was Link that he didn’t notice another emerge beside him. Not until it too had launched onto his face. Recalling what happened last time he reached up to grab it, but it slipped between his fingers into his mouth, and was down his throat before he could think to do anything.

His stomach groaned when its contents doubled in size. One chuchu had been just enough to fill it normally. Two forced it to stretch. Link grunted in discomfort and rubbed his belly, now feeling a slight bump. One that wiggled when he pressed on it.

A noise alerted him to the presence of more chuchus, and he looked up to see four… five… no, six red chuchus still in the room. He drew his sword and leapt to his feet, determined to fend these ones off before his day could get any weirder. One sprang for him, and he lunged forward as well, sword drawn back and ready to swing…

But then he stumbled, thrown off by the sudden shift on the chuchus in his belly, and the chuchu he had intended to kill landed in his mouth and joined the first two in his stomach.

Off balance, Link fell forward and hit his chin on the dungeon floor. Stunned as he was, he didn’t regain enough sense to push up for a whole thirty seconds, and when he did the weight in his stomach told him something had happened while he was out of it.

He intended to count the chuchus remaining, but as sharp pressure in his midsection demanded his immediate attention. Looking down he saw his gurgling stomach now comically extended, but that wasn’t his most pressing concern. His belt was biting into his skin. He leaned against the wall and reached both arms around to try and undo it. With all the squirming chuchus pushing his belly out it proved impossible to get his fingers under the clasp.

The noise of more chuchus made him look up. He felt as though he’d swallowed all six from before, which seemed believable. The ten now moving towards him were all green. Rats. Was this a room where more monsters appeared as he cleared it of the previous ones?

He reached back for his sword, but it wasn’t in its sheath. Where… ah! It had been thrown across the room when he fell. That wouldn’t do. He took a step towards it, but the bite of the belt digging into this stomach made him hiss in pain, and without thinking he stopped to try and unfasten it again.

Another chuchu hit, knocking him back into the wall. He slid down it as he tried to reorient himself, legs spread out so they wouldn’t push up on his stomach when he sat. The force of the belt pushing in and the growing number of chuchus pushing out was already painful enough.

The position proved cumbersome. Link recovered from the hit and tried to stand, but his stomach was continuing to swell. Although the belt, which had been forced to stretch a bit, held the belly beneath it no more than a foot or so out from his usual shape, his stomach popped out above and beneath the belt and flowed out wide enough that he couldn’t get his arms all the way around his upper belly. And he couldn’t pull his legs up far enough to stand with his stomach in the way. He made an effort to bend forward, but to do so he had to push his bloated belly into the ground, and the pressure was too much for him.

So he shut his eyes, opened his mouth, and waited for it to be over with.

He couldn’t bear to watch, but Link counted as they slipped through him mouth. Each chuchu pushed his stomach out further, making his belt tighter. When the fourth flew in, the belt finally snapped, and his stomach bounced forward, smacking the floor. The chuchus within, all eleven on them, flew into a frenzy at the sudden motion and added space. His tunic, no longer pinned in place and stretched beyond repair, immediately rode up so that it no longer covered anything below his chest.

Hope fluttered through him. Maybe now he could get up!

He bent forward and tried to shove himself up the wall, but when he bent a leg to try and stand on it his knee bounced against his stomach. His chance at standing gone and his forward momentum still going, he rolled onto his absurdly stretched out belly.

Another chuchu entered.

Link surveyed his situation. Twelve chuchus inside of him. Five getting close. He was balance perfectly on his stomach, so it he stretched down he could get his fingertips or the soles of his feet onto the ground, but there was nothing he could grab to help hoist himself up. Sword still on the other side of the room.

Two chuchus reached his mouth at once and forced it open wider, stretching his throat as they slithered down. Without all escape options gone he could fully focus on the sensation of them stretching his stomach out, and the added expanse was what it took to lift his fingers from the ground.

Only his toes could still touch the floor. He tested pushing with them to see if he could rock himself up, but the chuchus filling him up were soft and malleable, and lying on his stomach felt more like rolling in a waterbed than rolling over a ball. His efforts got him nowhere. And he resigned himself to letting the last three chuchus into his mouth as well.

As the final one slipped down his throat, he heard the bars blocking the door into the next room rise. So letting all his enemies be eaten counted as defeating them now, did it?

His stomach gurgled and groaned to let him know it wasn't happy with how thoroughly he had let it stretch, but there was nothing he could do for that. He belched once, all the gas his stomach forced out to make room for jelly monsters, but while their alleviated the pressure somewhat it didn't change the fact that he was absurdly overstretched to accommodate for seventeen chuchus.

All the chuchus had found their way into his bloated belly and there weren't any more to chase him, so Link tried squirming against his squishy stomach to see if there was any way to get back to his feet. At first nothing seemed to work. His stomach had swallowed up his sides so rolling off the top of it was out of the question. After some maneuvering he finally found that if he grabbed his stomach he could pull himself forward. Sure, it made the chuchus inside him squirm more, but that was no longer noteworthy. One wiggling in his stomach had been plenty strange, but seventeen crammed in there with his weight on top meant there was a frenzy of activity going in inside of him. If his own motion upset the little invaders, their increased activity was hardly noticeable.

With much effort, Link rolled himself forward enough to get his chest to the ground. From there he pushed himself onto his side and, slowly, painfully, managed to rise to his feet.

Link’s stomach, which now easily made up two  thirds of his mass, sagged so tremendously that it sat on the floor. He had to scoop up what of it he could under his arms in order to walk.

Progress was slow. Not only was his stomach heavy, but it was awkward. The weight of it made it impossible to keep his balance, and each step threatened to throw him to the side. The chuchus squirming within seemed to like that idea, as they sloshed against the walls of his stomach with each step, throwing their own weight in the direction he was afraid he might fall.

Finally, he made it to his sword. The strap with which he used to hold his sheath had ridden up with everything to accommodate him massive stomach, and he had to reach back with both hands to hold the sheath in place while he put his sword back into it.

Unsure what else to do, he headed for the next door. He had no ideas how to get the chuchus out, but Zelda might, so he would go on rescuing her.

This plan was ground to a screeching halt when he reached the doorway, and could not fit his stomach through it.

He looked at it in despair. If the chuchus could be convinced to group together in such a way as to let him pull his stomach into a more narrow shape, he might make it through, but his stomach was just the slightest bit too wide, and pushing it against the door anyway made it spread out.

Link glanced back at the door he’d entered from. It was no wider.

With a sigh, he lugged his stomach to the most cracked section of wall he could spot, as it looked like it would be the easiest place to pull himself back up later, and planted his butt firmly on the ground. Until the chuchus came out of him, he wasn’t getting out of the room. But surely that wouldn’t take too long.

There wasn’t much else to do, so Link leaned back against the wall and let himself drift to sleep.

As dreams of running across Hyrule Field danced in his head, another chuchu slipped out of the cracked wall.