January 2026 Sketches

Starting off 2026, Louis reigns supreme as the ultimate alpha of his pride and Tony has gotten a little too heavy off his own supply. Enjoy!

************

Louis had spent a lot over the past few years learning about the intricacies of lion pride politics, ever since he had taken over the Shishigumi. At first glance, it seemed like a simple dominance hierarchy, the strongest male takes precedence, and the rest was a strength-based pecking order. But Louis had not started his tenure as the head of the Shishigumi as the strongest, his leg shorn off by Legoshi, but he certainly had the best head on his shoulders. As it turned out, a lion pride was not based on sheer, raw strength, but in results— a pure meritocracy, no politics beyond what a person could offer the rest of the pride. Louis turned the Shishigumi around— they were a force to be reckoned with in the underground with him at the helm, taking over huge swathes of the smuggling and black market activities— and that was how Louis came across several enhancers; on a whim, he tried one, with explosive results.

As it turned out, strength was not the deciding factor in the pecking order of a lion pride— but boy, did it help. Over the last year, those enhancers gave Louis such a wonderful feeling of power and strength, and the more he took, the more it began to explode his body into an enormous beast that had been unseen in the city. He had grown for past what a deer should have been capable of, his arms alone larger than some of the lions that served him, packed deeply with huge swells of galvanized muscle, his chest a vast clefted canyon wall, casting huge, stone-like abs in their shade. His wing-like lats flared out, and his personal throne was a former couch, refitted and reinforced to hold his vast weight.

Louis had to forgo his fine, tailored suits— no clothes would hold back or contain his enormous body, legs thick as sycamore trunks, every burly bulge of muscle along his sculpted thighs bare. Sometimes, that meant his fur got mussed, but then, that's why he had underlings. When he wasn't throwing around vehicles or manhandling his criminal gangs like they were ragdolls, the rest of the Shishigumi lavished their attention on him— toweling down his fur and massaging the deep swells of brawn adorning his body. In a lion pride, rank was decided by what one could do for the rest of the pride— but keeping their huge leader happy turned out to come with a few extra perks that Louis felt he could share generously.

— — — — — 

"They're Grrrr— UUuurrp!" Tony let out another wall-shaking burp.

"For the love of— cut!"

There was the snap of a clapboard, and a dozen crew members and the commercial director let out a collective groan. The long-suffering director turned to the corporate liaison, a stuffed shirt who had, until now, insisted that any problem with Tony could be solved with just working it out in post. Tony the Tiger didn't have quite the body he had twenty years ago? Fix it in post with some digital editing, stars in Hollywood got it all the time. He broke a few of the props? Kellogg's was a multi-national corporation, they could cover the extra costs, just write out an incident report. But this?

"This is what I've been telling corporate for weeks, now," the director said. "We can't get a single line read without Parade Balloon Garfield over there letting out a belch that could curdle milk. This is something we can't just fix in post."

The corporate liaison bit his lip, tugging on his shirt collar. He remembered telling the board that a lifetime supply of Frosted Flakes wasn't an excessive amount of cereal for their most popular mascot— it had simply never occurred to him that Tony would burn through his lifetime's supply in only a year. Now they had a big product re-launch to plan for, and the tiger who was supposed to represent health and fitness looked like an orange and black-striped avalanche.

Tony was still lapping up the sugary milk left over from the bowl he had been given for the commercial— the tiger was almost unrecognizable; not even his bandana could be seen under the landslide of extra chins and wobbling, inflated cheeks that now dominated his face. Every part of him was overly soft, round, and doughy— from his arms swaddled with reams of extra fat, a breathtakingly large, pliable, and droopy chest that looked like a partially inflated hot air balloon spread out on a hillside, and his great, white belly, an absolute boulder— they had to push him through the delivery entrance meant for unloading trucks, and he had nearly hit the weight limit on their smaller forklifts with that massive, blubbery mass now pooling on the floor, hefty love handles smothering the tops of his near useless legs, so inflated with lard his feet were propped up by oversized calves and barrel-thick thighs.

The liaison folded his arms, frowning deeply as he stared at Tony, sausage fingers already reaching out, grasping for another bowl. "It's alright, it's all okay, we can spin this…" 

"How?" the director asked as Tony let out another rumbling belch that made his enormous belly slosh.

The liaison paused, then turned to the director. "Do you know much about the feeder scene online?"