Yuuna stretched out her limbs, fighting against the pull of the automatic functions of her friend’s body, stopping her descent, using the enhanced strength gifted by her transformed state, and firmly planting herself in Tougou’s gullet. Almost immediately, the girl could feel the body around her reacting to her resisting becoming just food. The esophagus pushing against her and retracting, trying to dislodge the hero from her spot and continue her descent into the depths of Tougou’s body, accompanied by the sounds of her friend coughing. It was difficult, and she could already feel herself slowly sliding down the slippery, fleshy walls despite her efforts to stay in place, but she just had to hold on for a little bit and not fall.
The very instant the thought crossed Yuuna’s mind, her right hand slipped.
‘Oh, no!’ Worry flooded Yuuna’s mind as Tougou’s throat rushed to exploit the opening her obstruction caused. The sides enclosed upon Yuuna, firmly sandwiching her between the slimy, muscle like walls and beginning her descent as food once more.
Again, Yuuna tried to push against the esophagus walls forcing her down Tougou’s body, but this time she was at a worse position. One of her arms was awkwardly raised above her head and unable to get proper leverage, while the other had become pinned to her side, able to just barely push out with her elbow, yet it was of little use as the other wall simply squeezed her tighter to compensate. With her arms unable to gain a grip, Yuuna resistance didn’t amount to much more than some minor squirming with only briefly delayed arriving at her final destination.
Briefly, Yuuna heard a dull thump noise between the wet squelches of sliding down the narrow tube. It was rhythmic, echoing. But, almost as soon as she heard it, the sound grew distant and faded into the background noises of Tougou’s body at work.
‘Is that Tougou-san’s… Heart beat?’ The idea crossed Yuuna’s mind, serving as a reminder of her situation. Ordinarily, such a sound might’ve been relaxing, calming even. But, right now, that sound hammered in that Yuuna had gone most of the way down Tougou’s throat. If her heart beat had come and gone, then this trip was going to end any second now!
And end it did, Yuuna’s legs exiting the narrow tube imprisoning her, before ejecting the rest of her body with a forceful push that threw Yuuna into the air. With nothing to grab and in utter darkness, Yuuna dove through the ‘open’ air for several seconds, until she slammed into a soft, mushy mass that broke her fall and she was nearly buried in.
Finally on something resembling ‘ground’, if not solid, Yuuna maneuvered her body through the stick mass, bits and pieces of it clinging to her clothes. If she wasn’t transformed, trying to get out of this would’ve been like quicksand, further hampered by the constant and vigorous rocking back and forth the platform experienced, making it hard to find any steady position even with her super strength. However, finally, somehow, Yuuna managed to get herself upright. But, it wasn’t of much comfort. She had no idea what to do now.
“Tougou-san swallowed me...” Yuuna whispered to herself, uneasy. It didn’t take a genius to realize that she was now resting inside of Tougou’s stomach. All around her, the sounds of the organ hard at work digesting her earlier snack echoed. Gurgles and groans washed over the chamber, interrupted occasionally by waves of stomach acid crashing together and more fluids being pumped into the hot, humid chamber. Even the air tasted humid and tainted with a faint smell of Tougou’s breath and botamochi.
‘How am I going to get out of here?’ Based on how far she fell, Tougou’s throat was far too out of reach with no stable ground to jump from and trying to climb up it was an idea that didn’t seem likely even if she could reach it. Her best friend likewise didn’t give any clue that she had swallowed Yuuna with her botamochi, oblivious to her existence as anything more than a snack. She knew a Hero was tougher than normal, but the botamochi under her was already dissolving, stomach acid lapping at Yuuna’s feet and eager to start turning the digestive process on her.
The juices around her shook violently, nearly shaking the remnants of her ground apart from the churning and dumping her into the water. “W-Woah, what’s-” Mid sentence, a wave she couldn’t see slammed downward on Yuuna, burying her beneath the watery surface and throwing her senses into chaos.
Immediately, Yuuna flailed her arms around, trying to find some sense of where the surface was, but the waves were determined to keep her within them. The stomach’s churning tossed the contents of it in all directions, spinning the girl around and robbing any sense of direction. What was left become right the next, what was up became down. No matter the direction she moved and flailed, nothing broke the surface. Her chest felt like it was going to explode, she couldn’t breath, she couldn’t see, and her head was starting to get dizzy. If she didn’t get out of here soon, Tougou’s stomach was going to digest her!
A heavy weight slammed into Yuuna from above, pressing down and briefly stilling her tumbles through the lake while it enveloped her into its confines, quickly starting to sink further down into the stomach with her, the surface and hope of avoiding her fate as nutrients for Tougou’s body growing more distant with it.
On the edge of consciousness, Yuuna felt one last, desperate idea come to her. ‘This is botamochi… Tougou-san’s eating more… So this fell from above…!’ Summoning up her strength, Yuuna pushed the mush clinging to her aside, kicking and swimming with all her superhuman might in the direction it’d come from, until at long last Yuuna felt her hand break the surface.
Shooting the rest of her body out of the digestive juices, Yuuna hungrily gulped down a breath of air for her pleading lungs. It was unclean, the air humid and warm, even stinging to draw breath, but it hurt so much less than having no air and second away from blacking out. She had bits of soggy botamochi all over her, had literally been swallowed by her best friend, and had Tougou’s stomach acid soaking her entire outfit while swimming in it like an acidic pool, but she wasn’t going to become nutrients like this.
Still, that had been so close, just reinforcing how Tougou’s body wouldn’t have any mercy for even her closest friend. As far as the stomach was concerned, she wasn’t ‘Yuuna Yuuki’, she was only ‘food’ like anything else Tougou swallowed. Something to melt down into fuel. Yuuna always admired and thought Tougou had a nice body, but she didn’t want to be digested into some extra body fat for it…
Taking a few more deep breaths to clear what dizziness remained, Yuuna steadied herself to start thinking. She couldn’t just sit here and wait to get dissolved and she couldn’t give up! She ha to get noticed somehow. But how?
Hearing another groan and feeling another violent sway of the ways, an idea suddenly stuck Yuuna. Swimming through the soupy fluids, and taking extra care to not be thrown under it, the girl continued until she came to a wall, her hands instantly sticking to the muscle like and rough wall, a thick and slimy coating of mucus greeting her.
‘This it is! If I keep hitting her stomach, Tougou-san will know something’s not right!’ A sense of hope swelling in her chest, Yuuna thought to herself.
“Hero Punch!” Yuuna yelled, striking the walls of Tougou’s stomach with her fist, a loud thud echoing across it with the impact. She struck several more times in succession, blows enhanced by her transformed state’s super strength to be felt, but hopefully not enough to cause Tougou any harm. She would apologize to Tougou once out of this just in case.
Rhythmically, Yuuna continued her assault punching at Tougou’s insides, praying her friend would notice something wrong and rescue her before her body turned Yuuna into part of it. She could barely hear the voices of her friends over the near deafening grumbles of Tougou’s churning stomach, unable to tell if there was any sign her struggles were being felt, but it didn’t stop her, it couldn’t stop her. This was Yuuna’s only hope at getting rescued, all she could do at such an insignificant size of a mere centimeter. She wasn’t going to let herself become food for her best friend…!
The wall suddenly sprung at Yuuna, slamming into her like a car. With a started scream, Yuuna was launched airborne and sailed backwards, hitting the gastric acids with a wet splash. This time, the tiny girl was thankfully able to rise to the surface before getting buried too deeply.
What had happened? Did Tougou perhaps finally notice her? Why did the stomach suddenly hit back like that? Maybe Tougou was trying to give a sign?
Optimistic at the thought, Yuuna waited, keeping her upper body floating above the stomach acid while expecting some kind of sign.
But, nothing greeted her.
Time continued to tick by, only the continued sounds of the churning stomach and digesting food to accompany Yuuna. The stomach’s churning was starting to intensify and the water grow more violent, swaying her about without any effort and at borderline raging rapids.
A frown started spreading over Yuuna’s face as her hope diminished. There wasn’t any sign, nothing at all. She had to of been felt, but why was nothing happening? Did her determined struggles get brushed off as nothing but an upset stomach? Was she so tiny, even when transformed, the best she could do was give Tougou some indigestion?
An orb of pink suddenly surrounded Yuuna in a flash, providing a small light in the darkness, enabling her to see, even if highly limited, for the first time since being swallowed. And right in front of her, seemingly the source, was her cow fairy.
“Gyuuki?” Yuuna spoke, both a sense of relief and surprise coming over her at the familiar sight in such a dangerous place. After the momentary shock faded, hope swelled in Yuuna’s chest in force once again.
“Gyuuki! It’s good to see you!” Smiling while extending a slimy hand to pet her fairy, Yuuna spoke with the optimism that had been drained from her. The shield around her was like those that protected her from the Vertex fatal attacks. If that was here, then it meant she was going to be safe and not absorbed into Tougou’s body! But, why did he only appear now then? Was it because that, without this protection, she would’ve started melting into soup like the rest of the half digested food inside the stomach? It was an unsettling thought to consider. She could have been dissolved into nutrients and nobody would’ve ever known…
‘But, that doesn’t matter now!’ Shaking the idea away, Yuuna reassured herself. “But, how am I going to get out of here...” She wasn’t in any danger of being absorbed as body fat for Tougou's bountiful breasts, but that still didn’t answer how to escape. Would she have to go through Tougou’s entire digestive tract and… out the other end? Could she get coughed up? Maybe if she kept pounding on the stomach walls some miracle would happen?
Bobbing inside the lake of stomach acid, Yuuna tried to think of what to do next...
After her sudden coughing fit had come and gone, Tougou had largely felt fine. Some of that botamochi must’ve simply gone down the wrong way, it happened from time to time. Still, she couldn’t shake that weird taste in one and wonder if it had something to do with it.
Weirdly, even more strange things started occurring on the Hero Club’s way to the field. The botamochi she ate wasn’t agreeing with her stomach. She had never made a, finalized at least, bad batch before. But after eating the snack, she started feeling something almost pounding on the insides of her stomach. This meal was being oddly stubborn.
‘Did I accidentally use too much sugar?’ Her stomach let out a low rumble and growl from the weird feeling inside of her, thankfully quiet enough nobody else seemed to notice it. Trying to soothe her belly, Tougou gently patted her stomach a few times, the weird beating against her stomach wall soon stopping.
In time with the motion, a rush of air erupted from within her, flowing up her throat till it exploded out of her mouth in the form of a subdued burp, something Tougou was barely able to restrain in time to avoid embarrassment over being seen doing such an unladylike action in public.
‘A-Ah. I supposed I ate too fast...’ Tougou felt her face burning up with an embarrassed blush at the thought, covering her mouth daintily to further suppress the sound. There wasn’t any further grumbles or pounding from her stomach, so the source of the cause had to of been some minor indigestion. How thankful she wasn’t close enough to any of the others for them to hear. That would have been humiliating. Perhaps, when this was over, she would double check her recipe for botamochi. This batch seemed quite stubborn about becoming food.
Even so, she couldn’t shake the worrying feeling something else was wrong, but couldn't put her finger on it...