“Mmmm…”

Blue Ribbon opened her eyes. The large, overbearing lights of the warehouse shone down on her from above. Something must be happening for them to turn them on, they were already making her sweat. Massive hot bulbs that projected the heat down onto her huge body from above which were impossible to avoid.

Blue Ribbon was a rather special pony, not in the way you might expect. She was, for all intents and purposes, the largest pony on Sleipnir colony. However, there was a caveat to this size, nopony knew that she was. The job had only been offered to two mares, internally within the company and it had been very competitive. Not only had the questioning lasted weeks, but both of them had been put through intense body exercises of eating. In the end, Blue Ribbon had won out, just.

The prize for doing so was worth the effort, Blue Ribbon you see was employed by Sleipnir’s only pad corporation. Over her years of working there, the company had taken an interest in her. She had at points, such as company outings and in the canteen demonstrated an amazing capacity to eat. Which is why her and one other pony had been called in about this job.

“You see, whilst blocks of weights are effective at telling us what our new models can take, they are no good at judging how a ponies fat moves, how their weight distribution changes when piloting our pads. We need a live tester for each of our new ones before we release them, one that can put them to the test at maximum capacity. Maybe even more.” Striving Step had told her way back when she had been interviewed about it.

She had willingly accepted the job of course, there was a reason Blue ate so much when she did. Like lots of ponies she loved it, she was no exception. She just loved it a little more than others. Plus she had plenty of opportunity to pack on the pounds.

How many years ago that was now, she had forgotten. Since then it had just been constant gaining. The pads had increased in size and weight they could hold, every one Blue had tested to the companies satisfaction. Within the past two months, they had been fattening her again. Plying her with meals, even tube feeding had been involved this time when the food wasn’t enough to make her gain. They did try to stick to food for her, it was part of the contract. But there was always that clause that said where quick gaining was needed other methods may be employed at the company's discretion.

The last pads she had tested, the interlocking designed ones, she had been pushed to a little over 10,500 pounds to really test it. At that size the interlocking mechanism had failed and the company was satisfied with her work. Things had returned to normal. Then, Striving Step had made a visit to come see her, which was rare. Blue Ribbon never moved, as her purpose was to test the biggest pads she was always ahead of whatever technology they could come up with to make her mobile. But she was comfortable and the company provided mostly whatever she desired.

“How’s it going Blue?” he had asked.

“Oh you know, still trapped in my own prison of blubber, as always Striving. What about you?”

He had smiled back and explained, he couldn’t give her an exact weight they needed her at, or an ETA of when even her services might be needed. He just said something was in the works, something big that would push the company forward. But they wanted to get working on it quickly, she’d be needed soon.

Since then she had done nothing but eat and sleep, non-stop for two months. On days where her jaw was so crammed up with food she had felt them push something into her rear, a hose obviously. Not that she could argue with it, she couldn’t speak for all the food she was being fed. They had kept it up, 18 hours a day while she was allowed to sleep for the other 6. They had kept her body propped in position by various metal jacks to stop her from moving, even an inch. They didn’t want her to lose even 1 pound of blubber between feeding sessions.

After a month Blue had guessed she had gained a good 8,000 pounds and they continued to push her more. The days and weeks passed, nothing but eating and being fattened. The mare was in absolute heaven. She knew in terms of residents of the colony she was the biggest, but she knew that others who had visited and back on Equestria were much more massive. She had no doubt that one day, ponies on Sleipnir would be wanting to rival them and she’d be the first to do so. All the name of eating.

Eventually after two months of being stuffed, well, just under give or take a few days. It had stopped. Blue could finally relax. Her body had grown, so much. She had no idea what she weighed. It was like nothing she had ever felt before. A few weeks ago her fat had started to make a tyre around her head and she was just able to peak it out from her immense body. She had tried wiggling her hooves too, but they were totally encased in blubber. Once again, Striving Step had paid her a visit.

“Good morning Blue.”

“You know striving, when you said you had something big on the way I didn’t think you’d mean me. What do I weigh?”

“25,000 pounds. I’m sorry for such a sharp increase, but we had a rather time sensitive project with outside help with this new pad. I’m still sorting out the details, there was a few problems with the partners, shall we say.” he replied calmly.

“I see, that’s a lot of blubber Striving. This means I’m only getting bigger in the future right?”

“If you can take it.”

“Of course I can take it. I don’t even rival an Equestrian. You think this is all I’m capable of? I won this posting for a reason.”

“Indeed you did. Now for the lardball you are we need you to test the new product. We’ve pushed you to 25,000 because with each technology increase there is a bigger grace weight the pads can support. This one is rather special. We’re marketing it at taking 20,000 pounds.” he said proudly. Through her flab, Blue just raised an eyebrow.

“So, you think it can take 5,000 pounds more than it’s capable of? Even the 8k models could only be pushed to 2.5k more than what they were advertised at. This is risky.”

“Risky, but you’ll manage it. The tech in it is something out of this world”

Behind Blue, she could hear the massive bay doors opening as the engineers brought in the new product. Prototypes were always rough, this one was no exception. No comfort offered or any of the nice things ponies who bought the retail model got. Absolute bear bones, even some of the functions didn’t work correctly. But once they got the commands working and the thrusters in check they put her on it.

She felt the cold metal of the base slide against her flank. Ah, no easy to load system on it yet either. Slowly the pad was pushing its way beneath her at the commands of the engineers, hovering just inches above the floor. She felt her blubbery stomach try to resist a sheet of thick metal working its way between her and the floor, but there was no way her squishy body would win out.

Finally the pad was beneath her, Striving started to explain. “There’s either a control pad which will situate itself as close as it can get to your hooves. It will then partially wrap itself around them, you only have to move them ever so slightly to get it to respond. Gentle touches Blue. Otherwise it’s also voice activated. We haven’t quite got there yet with that. Still working on it.”

As always with these tests Striving and the rest of the engineers moved back to a safe distance. A failing pad could be catastrophic with all that weight on top of it.

Blue began to work the controls. She instantly felt the thrusters kick to life, but boy did they strain against her weight. On the rudimentary display panel she could see the thrust indicators going absolutely bananas.

WARNING - EXCESSIVE WEIGHT DETECTED. PARK NOW.

Despite the warnings, Blue continued. The pad was taking her weight, for the time being and she was piloting it gently around the large space with no issues. She tried tipping it slightly, the thrusters compensating for her size and correcting as a sea of flesh pushed sideways and put more strain on one side of the device. Perhaps a little too much…

WARNING - CRITICAL THRUST FAILURE. PREPARE FOR IMPACT.

The message flashed up on the screen for a split second before Blue felt the pad dip and heard a whine squeal out from the thrusters as they gave up. She had only been flying it for maybe 30 seconds before it had crashed to the ground. She felt her body jiggle, a tide of fat cushioning her fall as the pad rather unceremoniously hit the floor and her with it. The thrusters shut off, there was a small amount of dust that it had kicked up in its descent to the floor, which was, to be fair only a few feet. It had hit the ground with a loud crunching noise as the unprotected metal on the prototype made contact with the ground.

The prototype was no match for the immense size of Blue, clearly there was some work to be done. Once the dust had settled, the engineers and Striving Step made their way over to the crash site.

“Not a first for you, out performing one of our prototypes.” He said dryly.

“Well thank goodness I’ve got a soft exterior to cushion me. You need to put some more drive in the thrusters I think, then you’ll be fine.” Blue said, still recovering from the fall.

“Our engineers will look at it, we’ll be back for further testing over the next weeks. Don’t go anywhere Blue.” He said with a smirk.

“Please, I never go anywhere.” She replied. The engineers were already hauling the battered remains out from under her. She guessed maybe a few days before they returned with a reworked design. They did their best to make her comfortable where she was, no way was she getting any movement again for a little while.

The lights went back down to a dimmer mode, her eyes relaxed. Perhaps some sleep right now would be good. The immense pony drifted off, slightly peckish. She’d request something to eat once she woke up.