Sauce: Ultimate War of the Sexes on writing.com (but it's not really worth it)

A little apprehensively you pick up four of the cookies and quickly stash them into your bag. It's a big pile, at least thirty on one large plate, so you figure a few won't be missed. Being a woman, and a superfit field operative at that, you'd normally steer well clear of such a sugary snack. But after several days deep behind enemy lines your food supply is depleted, and you never know when you might get cornered and have to lay low for hours - perhaps even weeks.

Suddenly you hear footsteps coming down the corridor. Hastily zipping up your bag your dart across to the door on the other side of the room, only to find that it's locked. Swearing under your breath you look around for a hiding place. The lab is huge, full of large microscopes, equipment and tables, but nowhere that you could- aha! You spot a small ventilation shaft underneath a desk that's pushed up against the wall opposite you. For a moment you look at it, biting your lip with doubt, but the sound of voices just outside the door makes the decision for you. Scampering softly across the shiny floor in your skintight black spy gear, you quickly slide off the vent's grill and back your 36 inch hips in, silently thanking your stars that you kept up those extra cardio boot camps.

You've just finished pulling the grill back across the vent when two men burst into the room, swinging the double doors on their hinges. Ever the espionage expert you peer throug the grill, watching them closely and taking mental notes and snapshots.

The first thing you notice is that the're scientists. This is obvious from their attire. The second, equally obvious thing, is that they're fat. Very fat - even by male standards. Both must be over 500lbs, with massive tummies protruding like yoga balls from their unbuttoned lab coats, and big bubble butts bouncing behind as they waddle towards the workbench you recently vacated.

The sight of such sizeable scientists makes your pulse quicken with interest. Three decades ago, long before the war broke out, science reached its apex: pills could guarantee good health and with robots carrying out more and more manual jobs necessary for human survival and flourishing, experts predicted a shift in body shape, towards a softer and rounder physique for both sexes.

And they had been right. Half-right, anyway. With male-dominated consumer society continuing to promote - subtly and overtly - a lean, firm and curvaceous figure as the ideal beauty standard for women, the females of this brave new work-free world dedicated large portions of their extra free time to exercise. Fitness became woven into their social lives. Gyms and swimming pools sprung up everywhere, with all manner of female-oriented fitness classes - from spinning and circuit training to yoga and zumba. Groups of local women started running clubs and cycle groups, donning lycra and spandex, much to the delight of their husbands and boyfriends. As a result of all this, and in direct defiance the initial expert predictions, the female sex actually began to get slimmer and fitter over the subsequent decades.

As for the men... Well, with no work to do, and no such beauty standards to live up to, they reclined into a life of leisure. While wives and girlfriends stretched and sweated and toned in the gym, their male counterparts would be found plonked on sofas and bar stools, swigging beer and grazing on pretzels or ordering chips, pizzas and burgers as they cheered scantily clad sportswomen on their ultra-sized TV screens. (Women's sports had quickly overtaken men's in popularity - another consequences of male-domination of society. After all, what man wanted to watch a bunch of sweaty jocks banging into each other on the football field when he could watch supersexy scantily clad young women do it instead?)

Staying comfortable and well-provisioned on their sofas while their wives worked out in the gym, cycled up mountains and ran charity marathons, men quickly began to fulfil their half of the expert predictions, becoming almost universally obese. A guy's waistline became a good indicator of his social class or rank. The rounder the belly, runs the notion, the richer the man: the more lavish food he can afford, the more robots to make his life easier. After the rebellion and the walkouts by women (triggered mostly by a simmering resentment at how easy the male sex had it, and how demanding they were of the female) it was confidently predicted that the consequent disappearance of all their wives rich home-cooking would cause men to lose weight. In fact the opposite happened. Without women to provide them with Sunday roasts and all manner of delicious pies, the men resorted to fast food, eating enormous quantities of junk to make up for the quality meals that left with the women and swelling up around the middle as a result. What's more, when women were captured, they were inevitably sold to the richer, more important men who immediately put them to work in their kitchens. On this rare, almost-forgotten influx of fine dining, said men gorged wildly, becoming fatter still.

Hence your excitement. Given that weight is generally a sign of rank and social status, these two must be very important scientists indeed. One of them waddles over to the work bench with the mysterious cookies and drops his bag on the table and begins to unload. Your heart starts to beat even faster. Will he notice the missing snacks?

Fortunately his mind is on other things.

"Man I can't believe we're not allowed to the feast," grumbles scientist 1, a handsome-faced man who looks to be in his mid thirties, with messy highlighted blond hair. His shortness and belly width making him almost spherical.

"Don't worry," replies the other, a taller darker, slightly older specimen. As he slumps into his seat with a grunt his vast, proud gut surges towards the table, causing your eyes to widen. He must measure at least eighty inches around - a true heavyweight in size and social standing. Surely he and his colleague must be involved in the secret weapon men are developing!

"I had the kitchens whip these up specially," grins scientist 2, salivating as he pulls a massive foot high burger crammed with beef and bacon and dripping cheese and barbecue sauce. "They're the same as they got in the banquet hall. And we got four each!"

The petulant blond slaps his belly. "Well good, I'm starving with a captial ARVING!"

Watching the man's enormous gut wobble as he lifts his first burger to flashing white teeth, you can't help feeling that he's exaggerating. Forget missing a meal, these men look as though they eat constantly.

You look down at your own deprived stomach by contrast. It starts to grumble. Queitly unzipping the bag, using the grunting chomping noises from the men as cover, you pull out a cookie and lift it to your lips.

"Careful there munch buurp Toby," cautions the darker scientist, pointing towards the mound of fries his colleague has just dumped onto the work bench. "Don't get any of that near the specimens!"

You pause, the unbitten cookie between your open teeth.

"Haha, you're right man," says the blond scientist, carefully pushing the plate of cookies further away from him. "Damn, I can't wait to unleash these bad boys on the women. They won't know what's hit em!" He laughs, popping the remaining quarter of his second burger into his mouth and rustles in the bag for his third.

You look down at the cookie in your hand, wondering what it might contain. A virus? Unlikely, the men really want to bring the women back until their control, not to kill them. Some sort of long-term sleeping potion, perhaps, an experimental mind-control drug? Breathing a quiet sigh of relief at having narrowly avoided eaten it, you zip the cookie back up safely with the others in your bag. No doubt HQ will want to anaylse it when you get back.

With the two scientists gorging on gourmet burgers and glugging huge cannisters of soda, you decide to continue your search for the secret weapon. After shuffling backwards for a while, you find a small area to turn round in, and continue quietly down the ventilation shaft. It's like a maze, running throughout the big industrial building, and you feel like you've been travelling for hours, until, turning a corner, you spy a grill in the ventilation shaft floor just ahead of you. You also smell something incredible wafting up through the grill. Sniffing longingly, you shuffle forwards and peer down the grill, finding that you're just above...

As you crawl towards the gauze, a rich smell of melting chocolate wafts up into your nostrils.

Must be the kitchens, you think, breathing in sensuously. And it sounds like they're in full flow.

Sure enough, as you peer carefully down through the grate you're greated with a birds-eye view of a truly enormous gleaming, uber-modern kitchen complex - and it's a hive of activity. Stacked racks of gleaming ovens line the walls, humming and beeping periodically and huge silver pans bubbles on raging gas hobs. Across the room, a line of deep fat friers sizzle with piles of greasy chips and burritos. Buzzing industriously around all this like worker bees are no fewer then twelve beautiful women in short skirts and aprons. They bustle about the hot room, passing each other like ships in the night as they stir pans, decant trays of melting strawberry sauce onto towering cakes, tug trays of roast beef and glistening lamb shanks from the ovens, spray whipping cream onto rows of cupcakes, stuff chickens, pasting hams, shuffle baskets of french fries - marshalling mountains of food with almost military efficiency as they slowly but diligently transfer plate after plate, platter after platters, tray after tray and bowl upon bowl of edible delights to the enormous granite island in the room's center.

Despite the heat a shiver goes up your spine. From the firm lean bodies and the way they move, you realise that the women are moving like military because they are military. Soldiers captured on the front lines by the men, and put to work as slaves in their kitchens, toiling endlessly to produce what must be the great feast those two scientists mentioned. You notice the metal bracelets around their slender ankles - some form of imprisonment device, you reason, to stop them running off.

Suddenly an enormous rumble causes the air vent to shake. You look down at your narrow waist with horror - but no, the sound was much too loud to be hunger.

At least, too loud to be your hunger.

"Mar-ia!" The voice booms across the kitchens like a cannon. "Aren't those deep-fried enchiladas ready yet?!"

Your eyes follow the voice to the far side of the room. There, lounging on an immensely large and soft looking armchair, with one hugely fat leg dangling over the padded chairarm, sits a man in a tall chef's hat. His white outfit, pulled across him and held together by huge black buttons, is blotched all over with food stains.

"Yes chef!" calls a cowering voice from near the deep friers. Soon a tall woman with ponytailed blonde hair is hurrying over to the chair, a plate of freshly fried enchiladas in her hands, oozing sauces and bright with colour of fresh meat, refried beans, guacamole and tomato. As she approaches the chef's chair, he leans back, licking his lips and opening his mouth wide.

You watch the woman push a whole enchilada into his mouth, taking care to swiftly remove her fingers before he starts chewing.

That explains the stains, anyway, you think, watching a huge glob of guacamole drop from the chef's lips. Though he seems more a taste-tester than a chef - and judging by the size of his belly, which sticks out so far that the descending glob simply sits atop of it - you reckon he's tested a lot of food today. The big black buttons on his overall are stretched to busting over an impractically massive paunch.

The serving girl has to feed the greedy chef all three enchiladas on the plate before he delivers his verdict.

"Needs more guacamole," he snaps, picking at his teeth with a toothpick and then belching awkwardly. Only because you spilt half of it on your top, you pig! you think, clenching your fists. As Maria bows and scurries off, the "chef" places places a hand on his mighty paunch.

"Jennifer, bring me a tube of that chocolate sauce."

Figures, the lazy lug wants something sweet to finish off his meal.

"Yes chef - just let me get the consistency right" says a voice directly below you.

Looking straight down for the first time, you realise right above an enormous pot - or more accurately a massive vat of thick, brown liquid chocolate. Twenty or thirty feet wide and bubbling and glorping noisily. Four women, including the redhead who spoke (Jennifer, presumably) are standing around it, stirring the mixture with a huge wooden spatulas and grunting with effort as they do so. You can see why. The mixture looks as thick as tar.

The chef frowns in displeasure at the delay. Reaching to the table next to him, he picks up what looks like a TV remote. "I said now Jennifer," he speaks evenly, but with menace. "Gateau du Chocolat Supreme is His Exellency's favourite dish. The sauce must be absolutely perfect. I need to test it immediately."

Such is your shock that you almost bang your head on the roof of the vent. His Excellency? The Emperor of Men is coming here?! It makes sense when you think about it. If this is where the men's new ultimate weapon is situated, the Emperor would surely want to inspect and announce it in person.

Meanwhile the chef's patience is at an end. He points the controller towards Jennifer and, with a demonic grin, presses a fat finger onto a large blue button.

There's a sizzling sound, but not from the bacon. Immediately the redhead releases her spatula, fingers splaying as she yelps in agony, an electric shock coursing through her system.

"Coming chef!" she squeals, reaching for a transparent cannister as long as her torso and as wide as her thigh. She thrusts it into the vat of chocolate sauce, letting it bubble away until it's full.

As the poor girl scuttles across the floor, several strands of her hair still vertical from the electric shock, the cruel chef shifts in his chair in excited anticipation of the treat. The second she reaches him he leans back to let her pour the treat down his throat. She lifts the cannister and he begins to chug.

You screw up your face in disgust. Even with the cannister tipped up almost vertical he's slurping and gulping at the chocolate, greedy to get it all inside himself as soon as is absolutely possible.

Still, it's a slow process. There cannister is huge, and its contents incredibly thick. You realise the room has fallen silent, but for the gurgling gulps of the chef. All the women have stopped to gaze at in fear and awe at the gradually rising bulge of their oppressor's monstrous white stomach. Now would be the perfect time to strike, you think, he's so intent on his eating. But the women make no move. Clearly cowed into fear by the ankle bracelets - and surely the infinitely worse punishments they would receive for open rebellion.

But you're not amongst them. You're primed for action. Moving as quietly as possible you unzip your rucksack and pull out three of the four cookies you swiped from the lab. Specimens, eh? You muse, recalling the fat scientist's warning to his colleague not to eat them.

Making doubly sure no-one is looking, you drop them into the huge vat of chocolate.

There's a hiss and a bubble, but that's all. No one notices.

Bon appetit, your excellency! You whisper with a grin.