A fat young man sat before a spread of sauce drenched legs of meat half the size of his body. He had a tiny little napkin scrunched up on his neck, but it didn’t seem to be helping much as he wiped his fat fingers across his belly.
For whatever ungodly reason, he seemed to only be wearing a tiny little shirt, his stomach bulging out of it. When his fingers reached to wipe themselves clean on the shirt, he missed fabric completely and hit plush, lumpy flesh.
He didn’t pause for even a moment, seemingly not caring at all as he reached for another piece of meat.
BANG.
The doors to his magnificent spread were kicked open. The only saving grace was that they were kicked so hard they flew over the tables themselves, thankfully sparing the food.
The young man just kept eating as though this was a common occurrence.
The Boundless bulldozed his way in, yanked the leg of meat out of his disciple’s hand, and took a furious bite out of it, shattering the bone and all beneath his teeth.
"Hey!"
Pa.
A slap echoed as a hand palmed the back of the boy’s meaty neck.
"Shut up." The Boundless said coldly. Somehow, he had already swallowed despite the echo of his powerful bite still echoing out and reverberating through the room.
The young man pouted, but he didn’t say anything else. He salivated at the spread of food around him, but he knew that if he reached forward to take something now, his master would just yank it away just the same.
What was more shocking than that was that as the young man’s stomach grumbled, his stomach actually... shrank. It was just the smallest bit, and the process seemed to be slow. But if one really paid attention they could catch it with their naked eye alone.
The man was, in real time, losing weight.
His stomach grumbled again, but The Boundless just finished off the leg of meat and then looked down at his disciple with a glare.
"You will be fighting someone. If you lose, no food for a week."
The eyes of the young man opened wide. "MASTER!"
"I said." The voice of The Boundless became eerily cold. "A week."
The young man stood, fury burning through his eyes. But it wasn’t aimed toward his master at all.
"Where is he?! Who the fuck is standing between me and my food?!"
Saliva began to dribble down the young man’s chin as his stomach continued to growl and rumble. As it fell to the ground... it actually began to sizzle.
Marble that could have withstood the stomp of even a Vanguard Class powerhouse was burning through in the blink of an eye, leaving a hole without a clear bottom.
The young man charged out, not even waiting for The Boundless to answer the question.
The Boundless only snorted, though. Picking up another leg.
The echo of footsteps faded, but soon they returned. These, however, were a lot heavier than his youngest disciple’s had been.
A man appeared, one barely able to fit through the door not because of how tall he was, but instead because of how impossibly wide. Though, he was also ridiculously tall.
"What did you do to Pandro this time, master?" The man palmed the top piece of trim pinned to the top of the door, looking at his master questioningly.
The Boundless didn’t respond.
"Does this have to do with Grey Temolt?" the man asked again, unperturbed.
"So you’ve heard that he’s here too," The Boundless said coldly, still somehow eating without his words coming out in a jumbled mess.
"Hard not to. You know, he asked one of the guards where Princess Elowen is. Spoke about her like they were on a first name basis or something."
The Boundless frowned.
"Not just that, but he claims that all our mechs are shit and he could craft better ones in his sleep."
The Boundless looked up from his meal.
"Then he took a piss in the nun’s garden and asked ’why the fuck’ it was taking so long for his ’punching dummy’ to get here, before saying he was in need of a meal and a ’good shit’." The man chuckled. "He’s kind of fun. Makes the church a lot more lively than usual."
"Why did he ask for Princess Elowen?"
The man shrugged. "Said that she would be interested in seeing real mechs. Thus the whole our mechs suck tirade. I’m half convinced it was a sexual innuendo, though. Maybe he just thinks she’s cute."
The Boundless’ gaze sharpened. "Watch your mouth. That is an Imperial Princess."
The man chuckled. "I think you stopped caring about the power of the Imperial Family a long time ago, didn’t you, master? That’s the real reason you’re so interested in Grey Temolt, right? You want to stir some trouble to see if he can spark something.
"But why you’d make him think you were an enemy instead of an ally... well, I don’t know why I’m asking that question. I know exactly why. If you get too close to a pawn, it wouldn’t be all that good for you when you wanted to cut them off, now would it?"
BANG.
The man fell to his knees, an oppressive weight as heavy as mountains falling down on his shoulders. He coughed up a mouthful of blood, but he still smiled a bloody grin, chuckling some more.
"Apologies, master. It seemed I went a little bit too far."
The pressure vanished and the man’s vision swam, but he still got back up with a slow control.
As he turned to leave, his chuckle echoed again. "I do wonder, though, between Grey Temolt and my enraged little disciple brother, which of them would come out on top? Pandro is incapable of being serious 99% of the time, but this time you’ve threatened his food. A week? Harsh, harsh, harsh. Pandro will really be going all out.
"I’ll have to see this for myself."