“NGGGHHH…! C’mon this is, like, the fifth time you’ve eaten me! You have to be close to full by now?!” The Octoling captain pleaded as she was plucked from the wreckage of a smashed industrial crate. She’d managed to stay alive during the latest wave of attacks by using the smallest of her troops as meatshields, but even someone as slippery as her gets caught eventually. She tried to yank her arms from the fistful grip to grab the bow on her back, but Marina’s clutches were as tight as her eyes were pink. Which is to say, very tight and very pink.

The captain was staring into those eyes right now, hundreds of feet above anything that could even resemble land, and she almost seemed to shrink. Marina’s makeup gave her an almost pouty visage, but there was no remorse to be found in her expression today. She’d already grown large enough to practically bridge the distance between the Blue team and the Yellow team if she laid out on her back. By now she was practically building-sized, and each rickety creak of the wrought-iron beams that made up the outer exoskeleton of Moray Towers was a reminder that this structure was not created to hold up this kind of weight.

But Marina was unconcerned with what could or couldn’t hold her up. Marina had gobbled up dozens of collective Octolings, and the respawner only increased her appetite knowing that their reserves were always replenishing.

“Well, I have nothing to fear… my teammates will have regenerated by now. I know my loyal crew are already preparing a daring plan to get me out of this mess!” The captain smirked to her nonplussed captor. Then, nervously, she called out, “I-isn’t that right, fellas?”

The other Octolings had indeed respawned, but they were nowhere to be found. Unbeknownst to their peerless leader, they were tired of being summarily stomped, chomped, and used as meatshields. Every surviving member of the Blue team made a beeline for the first cover they could get their hands on as soon as they skittered off the spawner. In this decision, they had preserved their own existence for a little while longer, and they left their captain on her own.

When no help was forthcoming, the Octoling captain gulped.

“You know, it’s been a while since you’ve tried eating some of the Yellow team, hasn’t it? Don’t you feel like seeing what they taste like?”

When Marina spoke, the captain suddenly wished she hadn’t asked her anything. “Oh, I’m sure they taste just as delicious as the rest of you~… but I’ll get to them. I’ll get to them all… it will be a long time until the effects of my machine wear off, and until then… I guess Inkopolis will have to contend with being my buffet for the time being! Now… ready to go doooooown my gullet for a sixth time?”

The captain was a jittering mess, ears demolished after taking Marina’s mountainous monologue at point-blank range. Marina shook her around to hopefully shake a response out of the eyepatched young girl, but to no avail. Shrugging, Marina opened her mouth to reveal her luscious, plush tongue once more.

“NOW!”

A whistle. A symphony of whistles. They reached a crest, and descended violently, and even at giant size Marina’s ears were forced to perk up. She turned, her massive brown hips twisting as they swayed, just in time to see Arco and company launch the last stream of projectiles. Only moments later, the sting as they made contact with her ankles, exploding in spectacular fashion. Dozens of splatbombs and what seemed like every last scrap of paint in their holsters, all entirely pinpointed on Marina’s calves.

“Whoa!!” Even with this much firepower, they still hadn’t even scratched the surface of Marina’s nigh-blubbery skin layer. It did something far more disruptive though: it disoriented her.

The burst disrupted Marina’s stance, precarious enough as is at the top of a skyscraper. She swayed, and the Octoling in her grasp had to clench her teeth to avoid hurling.

On the ground, Arco pumped his fist and turned to his troops.

“Good work team! We might be able to repel her yet. How many bombs do we have… guys?”

His team did not share his enthusiasm. In fact, they were starting to turn tail and run.

“Huh? Team? Come back!” Arco turned to Kem. “Hey, what’s up? Why are they…”

Kem’s face was in shadow, and she was looking up in awe. Arco turned… and he gasped, as Marina’s milky, bounteous butt was descending. Those two moons were heading straight for them at an insatiably slow, yet unavoidable speed.

The two squids tried to run, knowing of its futility. Marina’s rear was still as proportioned as it was when she was normal sized, meaning it was one of the most well-endowed parts of her body. And gravity was a cruel mistress. The two panted, wanting to get a relative inch or two farther and out of the way, hopeless, panting, as the sunlight around them was extinguished. They pushed, farther, and father. Futile, until –

BRA-BOOOOM!!!!!

***

“Uggghhh…”

It was easy enough for the blue-haired Octoling to clamber out from the giant pop star’s slack grip. Surrounded by rubble and debris, it was hard enough to make out precisely where she was. All she could say for sure was that Moray Towers seemed to have been unable to take the hit and had collapsed beneath the continually-expanding weight of Marina. Or, more specifically, her toned ass. The Blue team captain had managed to survive somewhat in Marina’s clutches, but not without taking a hell of a beating on the way down.

She crawled away in a limp. “Yep, yep, I’m gonna need a medic.”

Once she had climbed a good distance away, she looked back at Marina. Here at ground level, she was mostly covered in rubble. Yet, the deep and throaty rumble of air traveling through her pipes combined with the dull slosh of juices running through her veins told her that she was more than alive. Asleep, but alive. If she wanted to get out of this in one piece, now was the time.

And she would. But the captain noticed something else. There, right next to Marina’s ear, was the yellow respawner. Like everything else caught in the collapse, it was quite worse for wear, but still appeared to be operable. But there was no sound, no hum, no sign of electronic activity. And if that was the case, if someone didn’t turn it on, then the squids who saved her would be unable to come back. Ever.

The captain huffed and turned away. No skin off her back.

Thirty seconds later, she was trotting down the pile of rubble again, dashing to the sideways respawner, ripping out wires, flipping switches, and cursing herself for every tiny and insignificant noise she made that was another opportunity to wake the sleeping giant.

“C’mon, c’mon… yes!” Signs of life!

No sooner did the machine hum back into functionality did it give off the telltale glow of someone emerging from its platform. Suddenly, Arco and Kem erupted out of a yellowish goo, sideways from the off-kilter machine, falling to the craggy ground in a heap. The last they knew, they had been converted into paint-stains to speckle the left and right cheeks of Marina’s buttocks respectively. How had they managed to end up here?

The captain reached down and extended her hand, trying her best to look aloof as usual.

“You… you saved us?” asked Kem. “That’s real cool of you, I wasn’t expecting that!”

“Yeah well… we’re even now, I guess,” said the captain as she pulled Arco to his feet. Kem followed suit.

“Now we just need to get away long enough for whatever that is that’s going through her to wear off. And then we can –

“Wear off?”

Marina’s voice froze the three bonding mollusks in place. And as she rose from her slumber, the deluge of dust and debris that cascaded off her body forced them to ward their eyes from the sting. By the time the air was clear enough to hazard a glance, the group wished they hadn’t, as sitting above them, Marina’s face the size of a building on its own was trained squarely on them.

“This may have been accidental on my part… my bad… but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that nothing beats the flavor of fighting calamari. My hunger has only grown… I need… I need MORE. I need…”

Marina noticed the respawner. And an idea formed in her big brain.

“Hey… how about this?” And with a candid swipe, she collected the three kids all in one hand, as well as the metal cacophony that was the respawning machine. They screamed and struggled and kicked and bit to be let go, all of it deflecting from Marina’s newly calloused heart, which now existed solely to fuel her passions for devourment… and destruction.

“Now metal has never tasted very appealing to me… but if this works the way I think it’ll work, it will be well worth it. Ahhhhhhhhhhh…”

Arco, Kem, and the captain squirmed desperately, trying anything to avoid entering the cavernous borehole through the center of Marina’s paparazzi-pleasing face. But it was all for naught, as the kids were tossed inside her mouth, machine and all, and swallowed whole, sent to the pit of her stomach.

It wasn’t long before the Octoling girl to dissolve in Marina’s stomach acid, screaming curses all the way. Arco and Kem followed suit, but they were not so lucky as to be transported to a safe space after their splat. Rather, they regenerated on the portal within Marina’s stomach, spilling out into the vat of acid, and dissolving again, only to return to life and repeat the Sisyphean process.

"Well, this sucks," Kem said, quite annoyed, as she was once again diluted into her component parts. “‘Save the enemy!’ you said. When we could’ve simply –

She dissolved again.

“–ran away! Now look at this fine mess you’ve gotten us into. How are we even –

She dissolved again.

“–meant to get out of this now?”

Arco, who was trying in vain to use the machine as a life raft to keep from getting pulled under the flow of Marina’s stomach acid, chafed in response. “Well, look on the bright side. With us in here, there’s no way she’s getting hungrier.

***

Marina was getting hungrier.

The source of food in her belly was functionally infinite, and this fueled her growth. However, infinite it may be, they were still merely crumbs. And one could not fill up on crumbs. No, she wanted more. She needed more.

Marina got to her knees… she scanned the ground for survivors.

The Octoling captain had clambered out of her own respawning machine, thanking her lucky stars it had survived the fall. She had done her good deed tally for the day and was ready to make a break for it when Marina’s eyes landed on her, and she once again froze under their petrifying gaze. “Well, I’m sure you can’t… still be… ACH!!”

Marina was no longer showy. She was now flippant, and she flippantly grabbed the Octoling and her respawner, putting them both in her mouth before swallowing the lot.

Yes… that was a little better. Each regeneration brought with her a few feet of height. She was slowly growing, emerging out of the rubble, out of the dust. Police cruisers and helicopters were now beginning to observe her emergence as the sitting pop star hit the rough altitude of what was once Moray Towers’ catwalk. She was taller than most buildings in Inkopolis now… and she was just getting started.

Marina got to her feet. Each one was easily more than enough to fill both lanes of the roads parallel, and the security personnel at ground level had to contend firsthand as so many of them were extinguished between steps. Marina rose, her eyes now finally surveying the city she’d come to love after so many years. But it wasn’t with any warmth, no affection, not even indifference. For these citizens, indifference might’ve been preferable to what would come next.

Hunger.

Marina drooled. Her stomach was getting emptier even as her size was getting larger. She increased, more and more, never enough. But here, in each building, each structure that was slowly becoming scarcely tall enough to reach her collarbone, there were enough calories to feed her lustful growth… for the moment.

Marina looked into the eyes of the skyscraper. Various working squids and Octolings and looked back, every single one of them holding their breath.

Marina did not see people, or even squids, through the windows. She couldn’t – her husky breaths were already applying a damp mist upon the glass. That made it even easier for the dark-skinned vocalist to dissociate herself from the entities she was witnessing. They were no longer her brothers and sisters in squid-kind. No. Now, they would be sustenance, and they’d fuel her growth into the stratosphere if that was what it took to satisfy her.

Marina crouched, and she planted her green-tinged fingers about the base of the skyscraper. She grunted as her toned legs flexed on their haunches, but soon the shrieking sheer of metal and grass ripped from cement sliced through the air. She’d torn the building straight from its foundations, holding it in her hands like one might hold a palm tree, struggling to balance it upright. Within the building, nothing but chaos as every glossy-skinned occupant was rushing to and fro, wondering what would become of them? What plans did this pop star have for them? Would there be any escape?

Escape would not be found. The skyscraper was big, true, but Marina too was getting bigger with each passing moment. And the moment had just about arrived that she could barely, just barely, stuff the square-bottomed base of the skyscraper into her mouth.

So, she did. It hurt, for a moment, as Marina stretched out her plump cheeks wide enough to encompass the base, compressing the outer walls with her moist, spongey inner cheeks. Those squids on the inside, right after fangirling at being in the presence of the biggest musical sensation of their generation, belted out in terror as Marina’s slow, sensual suck of the skyscraper bore down on them, her saliva leaking through the crevices of the building and invading the living space with the deeply personal scent of her breath. Until the pressure caused the ground to crumble and the walls to break, and those tenants fell out and into Marina’s expanding mouth, down into her gullet, crashing into the digestive ocean that made up her belly’s interior.

A respawning Arco had to dive out of the way to avoid being sent under from the huge chunks of glass that followed, screaming squids holding onto them for dear life even as it all turned out to be for naught. Kem felt her heart drop in despair as she felt the rubbery, stretchy noise of Marina’s growth come back with renewed vigor.

On the outside, the skyscraper was already becoming a far more manageable size, and Marina was content to chomp down on it more and more. She’d even gotten used to the taste of metal and building material! Enough at least to suffer through it so she could get to that sweet, sweet taste of flesh and ink that made up those juicy morsels she once knew as her friends, neighbors, and fans. All down to her gullet, all to fuel her expansion, nothing more than food to be ingested and broken down to build her up to the next level of her growth. Nothing, left, more, more!

Marina’s crouched haunches slackened, and her butt was once again rearing to sit down. This time, however, it was higher than most of the mid-sized buildings that existed in Inkopolis and was girthy enough to populate the capacity of a football stadium. Neighborhoods, city blocks, and boroughs watched in unified despair and lust as Marina’s derriere prepared to fall once more, twin moons with the power to destroy cities. That Arco and Kem had ever believed they could outrun something of this magnitude would’ve been laughable had these citizens only knew. There was no outrunning something with that much mass, that much flesh, that much giggling nonchalance behind it.

SMMMMMAAAAAAAAAASH…!!!

The shockwave that permeated Inkopolis leveled much of it. Ironically, the skyscraper still in Marina’s hands… or what was left of it anyway … avoided the brunt of the blow by virtue of being aboveground. This was likely cold comfort however considering Marina was more than halfway through eating the structure’s metal husk. Her butt meanwhile had quite literally flattened everything directly beneath it into a smooth, moist, brown-tinted mush. Inklings of all colors and creeds smushed together to become one underneath, even speckling her ass for good measure as a fashion statement.

“Oh… that felt incredible! Amazing!!” It was one thing to buttcrush a few running gnats completely on accident. Doing it on purpose? Marina could get used to that feeling. She took a hand off the skyscraper (now more than manageable one-handed) and guided it to the rim of her buttcrack, sliding between to feel the sticky sediment and debris that had lodged itself in the valley.

After that inspection, she SMACKED her right buttcheek.

The reverberations were a cruel insult, shattering any unbroken glass structures that had made it out of the first crush triumphantly unscathed. Even something as innocuous as giving herself a congratulatory butt-smack made her rear into a weapon more powerful than any splat grenade, any paint gun… heck, a nuclear bomb didn’t have the force that her butt had just so casually put out on a whim.

Locking her knees, Marina was just in the top quarter of the skyscraper now – her growth had made the tapering apex of the structure look more like a banana in her hands than the once mighty structure that dared rival her in height. She chuckled at its diminutive size… then she began to slllllllliiiiiiide her ass across the ground. She pulled herself forward, pushed herself back, crab-slid from side to side, all the while turning her own rear into a press, a bulldozer, a wrecking ball, a mountain of destruction that would absorb everything it touched beneath the silky-smooth texture of its mass. It had grown incrementally-bigger by this point, but despite the changes being minor, the effect was anything but. Marina’s combined asscheeks were larger at this point than almost any squid-made structure in Inkopolis, and their relentless crushing of everything not tied down was filling Marina was an undivided bliss that made her absolutely giddy.

“This is soooooooooo gooooooood…!!!”

Marina didn’t know how to explain it. She didn’t know how to explain anything anymore… but she felt that this had left the realm of hunger. Even as the twin teleporters continued to make her grow at ever smaller and smaller intervals, Marina realized that as her butt caused a swath of unstoppable carnage, as her hands and fingers dug hundreds of feet deep into the planet’s crust to anchor her weight, as her breasts flopped and slapped against one another and her own skin to create deafening shockwaves, as Marina continued to munch and digest the squids and Octolings that called Inkopolis home… Marina realized it was no longer about hunger. Perhaps it was never about hunger. Perhaps the scientific accident that caused her to balloon to the size of a house was never an accident. Perhaps, it was a true blessing. Something for Marina to realize the form she’d always meant to occupy.

Even as Marina came to this realization, her body was already doing the work for her. Specifically, situated between her massive, city-dominating thighs, she could feel the splurge of thick and milky liquid that was flooding the ruined husks of buildings that any survivors had done their best to seek refuge within. The house-sized raindrops that saturated their haunts were in actuality Marina’s viscous, juicy discharge. Marina felt in love with herself, in love with the power she now held, and subsequently more in love with herself. It was a cycle that continued even as she lazily scooped up ever more of the city scape to toss into her mouth, growing more, more, until even laying down the curve of her thighs absolutely dominated whatever there was that still existed in the ruins of Inkopolis. The cities demolished, towns, destroyed, lives ended, all would be Marina, more. From here, until forever more.

***

Meanwhile, inside of a giant pop-star’s absolutely cavernous stomach:

Kem sighed. “Yeah, you know what, fine, I’ll admit. Running away probably would not have helped.”

“Finally!” Arco screamed, dissolving into acid before reforming once more. “Now you agree with me. So, you finally think it was a good idea to try to save the Blue team?”

From another quickly-disintegrating piece of driftglass, the blue-haired Octoling captain scoffed. “Can you two leave me out of this? I can’t… huh?” She looked out across the sea.

A chunk of skyscraper that now semi-functioned as a raft was drifting the pair’s way. One suited red-tentacled Inkling woman called out and asked, “Hi! Um, just curious, you wouldn’t be opposed to letting us upload our signatures into one of those respawners would you? I mean, if we’re going to be spending the rest of our lives down here and all I don’t see any reason to not try to reform a fully-functional society in the dregs of the stomach of the most beautiful woman on the planet.”

Arco’s face was twisted in thought as he weighed his options. Until finally, he shrugged. “Sure thing! By all means! Oh, but you realize if you respawn you’ll probably just make her bigger and further the potential destruction of all life on the outside, right?”

“And I should care about that in here because…” asked the office lady.

“Fair point.”