Chapter 7: Eating

Laura sat at a two-person high table. Her legs were back, clothes as pristine as when she walked into the gymnasium. Her memory was still fresh with being stepped on: with Etsu’s glowing sole covering her body. She felt its warmth and its crushing pressure. She had felt a few bones in her body snap before she actually lost consciousness.

But, now she was back, and sitting across from Etsu. The purple-haired woman had her usual school attire on: the same garbs she was wearing when she rampaged over Kramston as a miles tall giant. The ponytail was gone now too of course, just as in the changing room.

A plate in front of Laura held some pieces of sushi. There was a plate in front of Etsu too. Hers rested on a bed of rice, and she seemed to have a few more pieces of the seaweed-wrapped bits of food and Laura did.

Laura took another quick look around, taking in the sights of the room they were in. There were other seats and tables, though they were mostly empty. Wasn’t until a few rows of space away from the pair that other people, students mostly, actually were sitting down and eating at. TVs dotted the walls, all switched to news channels.

“Where are we?”, asked Laura.

“A dining hall. The one nearest my dorm. You didn’t forget that I mentioned we were going to get some food, did you?”

Etsu snatched up her chopsticks and used them to cart a piece of sushi into her mouth. She chewed once before swallowing noisily.

Laura looked around some more. She noticed other university students with trays moving around. They invariably stayed away from the pair, sitting far away, often out of view at the tables far to the other side of the hall.

The heroine also noticed what was on the TVs around the eating place. It unnerved her.

“Why aren’t they sitting anywhere near us? Why do we have all this space?”, she asked Etsu without glancing back over.

“You know why: cause I don’t want them here. Don’t you like the space? The privacy as we chat?”

Laura was still staring at the TVs. They were tuned to different news channels, but the events they were covering had overlap. It was footage from the various cities around the world. Helicopters were hovering over the devastation. One screen showed Etsu’s panties draped over Paris. Another showed her socks scattered with one of them in Amsterdam, Netherlands and the other in Cape Town, South Africa.

Headlines were ticking by at the bottom of the screen. Captions showed the words of the experts being interviewed who tried to explain the peculiar phenomenon. There was so much going on at once it was almost impossible for the news to cover it all.

One international station had broken up their broadcast into little screens with each showing a city Etsu had affected. All her articles of athletic clothing were seen, as well as the flooded city of Sydney. Warnings were flashed before much of the footage, which showed piles and piles of bodies.

Yet, through all that, the students kept eating as though the screens weren’t there.

“You left your clothes there? And Sydney is still-”

“I’ll fix it all later, don’t worry.”

“Why aren’t they reacting?”, asked Laura, referring to the students that just ate and chatted happily while this broadcast went on.

“Are these TVs an illusion?”, continued Laura.

Etsu chuckled.

“No don’t worry. This is real. It’s just easier if they don’t react to it.”, said Etsu.

“So you’re mind controlling them?”, Said Laura.

“Not exactly.”, said Etsu. “I’m just tweaking their minds a bit. Anytime they’d think to want to look at the screen, they don’t, and if they can’t avoid looking without being awkward, I just short circuit their mind’s attempts to process it. They’ll think of something else right away. In fact, they were already thinking of other things, I just push it out of their unconscious mind into the forefront at the right time. Little nudges of neurotransmitters. Little sparks of synapses. It’s very easy~”

“And that’s the same reason they aren’t thinking to sit remotely near us, isn’t it?”, asked Laura.

Etsu slipped her rice-holding chopsticks into her mouth, swallowing another bite of food.

“Mmf, correct.”

“I thought you didn’t like to read minds, or control them.”

Etsu chortled.

“Kehehe. You’re right, I don’t. Why control a mind when you can just break one? Same thing for reading them. It’s not too fun. But, do you want the alternatives? Do you want me to teleport everyone outside, seal the doors, and then have us having to deal with the commotion going on past the windowed walls while we eat?”

Laura squinted.

“Or, even better.”, continued Etsu. “Would you want me to just kill them all, so we can have peace and privacy that way. Say the word and I could pop them with a thought and paint the dining hall spotted red. If that makes you too squeamish, I can just blip them into the sun instead, no mess to distract while you eat. Then, we’d have all this space to ourselves just the same. By the way, speaking of, you haven’t touched your sushi.”

Laura slid her plate forward without even looking at it.

“I’m not hungry.”, she said.

Etsu grinned.

“Fine, more for me kehehe.”

Etsu reached over with her chopsticks and stole a piece of sushi from Laura’s plate, stuffing it in her gob.

“Besides.”, she said, then gulped, then spoke again.

“These people don’t matter. They’re like background characters to us now. They should be here, but they also shouldn’t mess anything up. I don’t wanna tweak their minds like I am, but it’s just easier that way. Our conversation is worth it, don’t you think?”

“They’re people, not props.”, said Laura, sternly.

“Oh, good idea!”, said Etsu. She had looked down at her legs. The stools they were sitting on were rather high off the ground. Laura was tall enough that her fancy shoes almost reached the floor, but Etsu’s loafer-clad feet didn’t quite touch down at the college student’s shorter height.

One older university student came into view with a tray. He seemed like the sporty type, fourth year, with a wide but healthy build. He turned towards Etsu and Laura with a zombie-like gaze in his eyes. At one point in his brief walk towards them, he dropped his tray on the floor, making a mess and a noise that caught the attention of none of the other people around him.

He walked up to the table, fell to hands and knees, then crawled under it.

“Stop, you don’t have to do that.”, said Laura, looking at and speaking to him.

Etsu lifted her legs, providing space for the man to scoot under them. She planted her shoes on his back, crossing the legs.

“Ah, a footstool, what a good idea you helped me think of.”, said Etsu. She gleefully beamed the words before taking a sip of the water cup nearby.

“Beh~”, she sighed happily.

“Can he even hear us?”, asked Laura.

“Yes, but he can’t listen. He’s much too infatuated with the idea of being my footstool.”

“Another mind twisted to your whims then, is it?”

Etsu snorted.

“I’m a hypocrite, so what. There were alternatives here too. I could’ve frozen time and broke him. I could’ve bent his arms and legs every which way till he’d want to shimmy over here, under my feet, out of fear. Or, I could’ve done that till his mind was like putty to me. With words and time alone I could’ve eventually had him worshiping me like a god, eager to do anything including, yes, acting like a footstool. But, that would take time. I mean, for me. For everyone else it’d be instant, but it’s a waste of *my* time. Boring in comparison to chatting with you.”

Laura ignored the compliment with her next words.

“You forgot one other solution.”, she said.

“What’s that?”

“Just poofing an actual, inanimate footstool into existence.”

“Kehehehe!”

Etsu broke into a chortling fit.

“Nonsense.”, said the purple-haired woman. “There’s not too much fun in that.”

“How do I know you aren’t controlling my mind then, Etsu? Steering me to ask the questions you want to answer? To do the things you want to do so you can perform tricks for yourself for your own amusement? To respond how you want”

Etsu licked her lips to snatch a piece of rice that had been stuck to them.

“What a smart question. You don’t! I could be doing all that. But, I’m not, and you just have to trust me.”

“You’re not exactly trustworthy.”

“I haven’t lied to you yet~ Besides, everything you want to do, you’ve already decided before you’ve done it. Some unconscious processes in your mind steer you towards the choices you make and the thoughts you consciously think. By the time you reach to grab a banana over an apple for breakfast, you’ve already decided fractions of seconds before based on the light reflect off the fruits to your eyes, and the scent hitting the olfactory senses near your nostrils. That’s how everyone’s mind works: well, not mine of course. I’m beyond that. True free will, though even in the case of you *mortals* it’s semantics really~”, said Etsu.

The man below let out a small oof as Etsu changed what leg was crossed over which.

“You can kick your feet up too. His back is big enough, and your legs are long enough for it.”, said Etsu.

Laura just ignored that offer.

“So, why don’t you want to read my mind, or minds in general?”

“Well, to start, I don’t really have any more questions for you to answer.”, said Etsu.

“’To start’”, repeated Laura. “You could’ve read my mind back at the volleyball court, but you didn’t.”

Etsu sat a bit straighter up.

“Have you ever played a video game, Laura?”

“I don’t play games.”, said Laura.

Etsu snorted out laughter.

“Kehehehe. Yes of course, big super serious super heroine. Ok, well, I’m sure whether you’ve wanted to or not you’ve seen at least one movie, maybe a TV show. You’re smart so I’ve bet you’ve read your fair share of books. Tell me, is skipping to the end of a story fun?”

Laura simply listened.

“It’s not that fun, right? That’s cause it’s about the journey, not the destination. You’re right I could’ve read your mind, but then we wouldn’t have a need to have this fun conversation, our little back and forth I’ve grown to like so much in such a short time.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”, said Laura.

“Ouch. Not even the least bit friendly to me even now huh?”

“You’re a murderer.”

“True, I guess. But, you are still thinking a bit small. Why even read your mind when I could, say, just become aware of the knowledge directly. You know reality is mine to toy with. I could simply will myself to know everything that happened and will ever happen. Then we wouldn't need any conversation cause I could see how it’d go.”

Etsu continued.

“In fact, I could become aware of every *potential* conversation too. Going one step further, instead of having stomped your city to bits, treating it as a massage mat, I could have just given myself the knowledge of how that all would’ve gone if I *did* do it. Then, I never would’ve felt the desire to ruin your city in the first place. Moreover, why not just do that for *everything*, I don’t even need to be on this planet anymore, or even this universe! I could just be above it all, immaterial, filled with the bliss of every potential pleasurable action I could take, with my own sense of ecstasy ramped up to infinite levels both maximum yet always growing. You know why I don’t do that though? You’re smart enough to put it together?”

Laura had an answer, and it would’ve matched the gist of Etsu’s. She felt like giving it was playing along too much. Etsu clearly wanted to speak, anyways. So, she remained silent as the young woman continued talking.

“Because that’s boring to think about! Fun to live, sure, maybe, but so boring to think about. Plus, you’re missing something there, right? Sure, I could probably break the universe so I have all that bliss without actually missing the ineffable delight of not knowing what will come next, or how someone else will react to me snuffing their home out under heel. I could have all the novelty with none of it at the same time if I wanted to, but that’d probably break reality in some weird way. It’d be some chaotic soupy gunk of illogicality that I’d enjoy for a bit, but wouldn’t want to live in, even if it didn’t bother me enough to fix given my infinite bliss. I mean, I could resolve the paradox bu that'd make another, and resolving the infinite chain would be easy, but also lame.”

Etsu chortled.

“No, I wouldn’t want to live there in chaotic illogical soup. No one would. Would you?”

Laura remained silent. Etsu stuck out her tongue to mock the stoic heroine.

“You wouldn’t. And you don’t have to, cause I like novelty. I like a lot about being human, even if I’m beyond a normal person. I like getting horny then feeling satisfied. I like the feel of warm, clean sweat on my skin as I exercise. I like to feel my blood pump, and my breath quicken. I like to feel hungry, then eat till I’m full. An energetic light blob of perma-bliss doesn’t get that, you know?”

Laura looked to the side a moment.

“Ah, speaking of eating.”, said Etsu. “I think this food is a bit bland, don’t you? It could use some spice.”

With that, a bunch of small little “zloop” noises rung out across the table as portals briefly opened up on the pieces of sushi. Entire cities dotted some, others had entire landmasses as toppings. Laura leaned back from the table in disgust, while Etsu pinched up a city-clad chunk of sushi with her chopsticks, and moved it to her mouth.

“Aaaa~”, she said, exaggerating it all.

Laura reached out and grabbed Etsu’s wrist. Rather than paralyze Laura, or turn the arm to dust, Etsu simply moved her arm despite the interference. For Laura, it was like trying to hold back the limb of a powerful machine. She merely kept her fingers about the wrist as it inexorably moved. The heroine was unable to swipe the sushi out of Etsu’s chopsticks without ruining the tiny city in the process.

Etsu slid the piece of sushi in her mouth before an irritated Laura’s gaze. She swallowed, eyes open, then stuck out her tongue.

Etsu pinched up another piece of sushi, this one dotted with a small country, visible as green and brown topping on the circle of sushi.

--==--==--==--

People of New Zealand saw the sky swap shades of blue from natural sky to the sterile ceiling of a dining hall. It wasn’t long after that till they saw an utterly immense pair of chopsticks move overhead and snatch a country-dwarfing piece of sushi which shadowed the entire nation as it passed over it.

There was some thundering chatter above. They couldn’t quite gleam the context of things, other than that the purple-haired woman seemed to be the bad one among the two.

Then, it was their turn. The chopsticks came down to either side of them as great big wooden walls that passed over their sky. From there, a great tumultuous quake wracked their land as the piece of sushi was hoisted up. A few had figured it out from the odor of rice and seaweed and everything else where exactly their entire country was.

There was another shake as the other giant being’s hand gripped the wrist of the purple-haired one, again, to no avail.

They saw the great lips part, so very large that one could scarcely even know what they were looking at. Everything was so large. They were so small. It was almost alien to view lips that were tens upon tens of miles long.

The mouth basically was alien. Saliva pooled around. Maw flesh shifted. The great tongue curled to take them in, and they saw the wall of pink bumps making up Etsu’s papillae and taste buds for a brief moment. No sooner, and the lips sealed and shut out the last bits of light from the humid, sushi-scented cave.

Though the saliva ruined much of the country, drowning many hundreds of thousands, Etsu didn’t chew. She let the fluid in her mouth soften the land and the sushi piece before swallowing it all down whole and without issue.

They couldn't see in the journey down her throat, but they heard it. They heard the shifts of countless tons of muscle and flesh. They heard the heart beat and break up their country a bit further with every thump.

They of course heard the gurgling as they plopped down into an acidic stew of sushi and rice. Acid droplets started to flood them not long after.

--==--==--==--

Laura watched helplessly as Etsu ate another piece of sushi, then again.

“Haven’t you ruined enough cities today? Enough lives?”

Etsu gulped down yet another piece.

“Relax, these aren’t from our universe.”

“Where are they from then?”

“Another one. One I made up. It was the same as ours except I wasn’t there, and, of course, that its history is shaken up by me pulling a few cities out of it when I did. You know, for this meal.”

“You’re duplicating universes so you can have a meal? As though that makes it ok?”

“I am~”, said Etsu.

She pinched up a few grains of white rice from the pile of it beneath the sushi. It was the kind of rice you could see through a bit when cooked right. She held it up to her amber eye and Laura, against her better judgment, squinted to see it as well with her own blue gaze.

Within the grain of rice was an entire spiral of stars: a Milky Way Galaxy. A few of the other grains had galaxies in them as well. Laura recognized Andromeda and one or two others, but many seemed unknown despite her studies of astronomy.

Other grains ‘merely’ had planets in them, or stars, or sometimes even just a continent or two.

Etsu moved the chopsticks into her mouth and swallowed the rice with even more ease than she had gulping down sushi.

“Being eaten is probably not a great way to go, right?”, said Etsu. She continued talking.

“I mean, you’re stewing in what’s essentially puke. All that acid probably stings huh? Then to top it all off, you can’t even get a solid footing with all the churning. Then the noises. Deafening gurgles. Roaring squelches. It’s a real delight for me to even think about, let alone inflict. Wanna see?”

Before Laura could answer, Etsu’s jacket unbuttoned on its own, and the shirt beneath went invisible in a small circle around her stomach region. Laura could see Etsu’s bare, taut tummy for a moment before that too became see through all the way to Etsu’s stomach.

Laura could see inside the digestive organ. It was horrifying, but she couldn’t look away: at least not in time. She saw the piles of sushi and rice mixed among digesting cities. The bits of rice with civilizations in them would split open at times from digestive processes, with all the stars and whatnot spilling out into Etsu’s stomach like a capsule.

Laura could feel her senses drawn in. She could see the cities as though she had the vision of a hawk. Her ears were assailed with the sounds of agonized screams, alongside gurgles which matched up with the undulations of the stomach walls, now lit as Etsu’s little trick let the lights of the dining hall illuminate the organ for Laura. The heartbeat of Etsu thumped in her mind.

“Enough!”, shouted Laura. It was an uproar of a statement, but none of the other students turned to face her. No staff did either. No one did except Etsu, whose jacket was buttoned back up, body full opaque once again. Laura’s senses were once again wholly her own, at least as far as she could tell.

The purple-haired woman chortled. She reached over with her chopsticks at another piece of sushi, but Laura was ready this time. The heroine reached for the chopsticks and batted them out of Etsu’s loose grip. They skidded across the table a moment before falling down near the man-turned-footstool’s hands. He didn’t react to it.

Etsu pouted a moment. Then, holding eye contact, she opened her mouth wide. Her tongue stuck out, and from the maw echoed a vacuum noise. All the pieces of sushi and rice on the two plates were sucked up into her mouth with a cartoonish noise accompaniment: ‘plomf’.

She devoured it all, no need to swallow it seemed as it past down her throat without so much as a twitch: as though there was just a black hole back there.

Once that last grain was past Etsu’s lips, she sealed them, and gave them a lick. A satisfied sigh followed to mock the appalled Laura. She then stuck her tongue out, showing off her empty mouth before speaking again.

“All gone, see. Nothing to worry about anymore. No more of them to save.”

Etsu sat up straighter in her chair, her smile faded a tad.

“Haven’t you learned you can’t stop me from doing something I want to do yet?”, said Etsu.

“I have to try.”, said Laura.

Etsu chortled.

“Is that so? Of course you do, heroine~”

She leaned back, and patted her tummy region. “Mmf, feisty in there. This all reminds me. I promised you a fight didn’t I? You really want to bring me down huh? Well, do you still want to?”

“Yes.”, said Laura without any hesitation.

“Let’s have our fight then. It’ll be fun. It’s what you do best, super hero~ First though, my dessert. I was saving it.”

Etsu stood up from the table. Of course, the foot stool was in the way of her shoes hitting the floor, but she didn’t let that stop her. Her legs punctured through the man like pistons through paper. He let out some involuntary utterances of pain before finally slumping over, dead. By then, Etsu had taken a couple steps to get to the side of the table: steps that waded through his body as easily as her legs would wade through water. More blood mess was scattered about.

The table cleaned itself of the old plates. A new, small, fancy circular plate manifested. Atop it, a small puffy pastry appeared. It was the size of a coin in diameter. A thin layer of white icing topped the doughy part, and then atop that was a city settled in the fluff of sugar.

Laura recognized it as Kramston of course. She moved to pull the plate away but before her fingers touched the porcelain, she found herself shrunken down small enough to fit on one of its streets. She stared up at Etsu’s beaming face.

Laura clenched her fists, but was determined not to give Etsu the satisfaction of any words at the moment.

Etsu’s voice came down, shaking the land with its volume.

“There, the perfect extra bit of spice.”

Her fingers grabbed either side of the treat.

“I’ll be taking this one to go, though. I’ll see you soon~”

Etsu’s mouth parted and Laura looked up at the palate that became her sky. A strand of drool dangled, plopping down on one of the entertainment districts of the city. Though Laura was confident this wasn’t the real Kramston of the current world, it was still filled with real people with thoughts, and dreams, and an ability to sense pain.

As saliva rushed through the streets in a flood, Etsu swallowed. Everything shifted. The ground tilted with the tongue as a suction force tugged Laura and the entire pastry down the college student’s throat.

By the time the small pastry landed in Etsu’s stomach, it and the city were so soggy as to be falling apart. Having survived to make it to the gut--thanks to Etsu’s help no doubt--Laura was able to experience the horrors of being digested alive first hand. A wave of acid took her off the relative ‘safety’ of the city and into the churning chyme of doom.