Chapter 12: Egg

Yoshimi reaped the rewards of evolution as Aoi did. Still, Growing within Aoi would be unwise. She wasn’t just tagging along though. She was able to help pry out new paths for their mutual advancement. The body they’d make would be a wonderful upgrade. The perfect next step.

Sadly they couldn’t just grow into it so easily. It was too complex a transformation. They would manage it though, as the city would be so kind as to sacrifice itself to the endeavor.

With telekinesis at her disposal, Aoi became truly unstoppable. More jets and helicopters attacked. The clueless and distraught military sticking to their old worthless tactics in the face of an insurmountable threat. Perhaps they thought their lives were worth even a minute’s delay: a minute’s time to think of some better plan to keep people safe or defeat her?

No such luck.

Aoi reached out with her hand and clenched her fist, and the aircraft was scrunched down to baseball of condensed matter. The hand gesture was just for show too, and Aoi simply pushed buildings to the either side of her march with a single thought. She had made a smooth path straight to the stadium.

Even all those hundreds of thousands of lives might not be enough though. She’d have to gather everyone. Yoshimi had a suggestion for that, based on a video stream she saw back when Aoi ravaged the suburbs of Vanille.

Aoi willed the tops of her shoulders to soften. From there, two open-top protrusions sprung forth just a few dozen feet or so. Ironically, they looked a good deal like the cooling towers she just demolished. The fleshy constructs rippled and pushed out green, winged flesh-beasts. They were like the ones back in those suburbs, only a good deal bigger, and with no will of their own. Yoshimi took over here, using her psionic mind to seize theirs.

The gargoyle-monstrosities were puppets: slaves. Controlled from within Aoi’s body by Yoshimi, she had them tear open buildings and search every crevice for survivors to capture. Aoi kept making them with excess matter and Yoshimi kept on controlling them. They made a good team.

If there was a limit to Yoshimi’s psionic will, the pair didn’t find it. By the time they were just a few hundred feet from the National Paris Sports Dome, hundreds of the beasts roamed the city. They carried handfuls of humanity into the stadium, dropping them down atop the already packed masses from a height high enough to hurt but low enough to not kill them outright.

Aoi’s body expanded all the while. Even churning out those ‘minions’ she had matter to spare. Every radiation infusion revealed ways to make more of matter: to stretch it further than ever before.

The blue-green behemoth stepped down on either side of the stadium. Her feet fell across the rows of abandoned cars and trucks and everything that at this point was beneath her notice. Humans weren’t anything to her now unless they were clumped up oh so nicely like this. She reabsorbed the shoulder-spawners she made: the pair had enough minions now.

Looking up, the terrified horde of Parisians stared at a being over 2000ft (600m) tall. They knew they had lost. The army had failed. The government had failed. What they didn’t know was what she had in store. It was too horrifying for their more mundane minds to ever imagine.

Aoi raised her hand and got to work making a nice spot to lay down. Her mind clumped the people together and moved them from the stadium center: safely. The entire stadium itself was cute into quadrants by telekinetic planes and dragged apart with that same mental force. The stadium was big, but not quite big enough for her to curl up in on its own without a bit of widening.

“I hope you don’t mind if I lay down, do you?” she grinned. This was the first time in a bit she had deigned to speak to the humans. Yoshimi was just a much better conversationalist. Aoi’s voice, as usual, thoomed its superiority over the masses.

“I’m sure you’re all frightened down there. The big bully kaiju-gal is here, moving you around with her mind. You probably hoped for some happy ending. Military with a secret weapon. Maybe I fall over a good chunk of the city... say some dying words: no dice.”

Aoi’s body rumbled, she was readying a special compound inside her form.

“To you I may seem a monster, but I’m just a step towards the apex being. You fear me because you cannot understand this, and your place in it. Or, perhaps, you just lament your role.”

The space she made shoving aside all that steel and humanity was, at last, big enough for her. She took a step into the flat dirt. The gigantic being sat down and clenched her legs tight to her chest. Her arms followed suit, and her tail wrapped around her body in a spiral. Aoi had curled up as much as she could.

When she next addressed the masses, it was with her mind. Her head bent forward over her knees, and she rested her eyes.

“My lover and I are about to undergo a fantastic change. All great metamorphoses usually require incubation: like a cocoon.”

“Or an egg~” chimed in Yoshimi, her telepathic voice a new one for them.

The masses of humanity levitated towards Aoi’s naked form. Aoi’s minions were still out scouring the city for more, but this would be a fine start.

The giant kaiju-woman’s flesh shuddered, becoming softer and excreting a mint-beige coating of fluid over itself. Any citizen that touched it erupted it a yelp. The telekinetic hold ended once they brushed Aoi’s viridian skin, but they were stuck regardless in the sticky glaze. Worse still, their flesh began to tingle ever so slightly.

“But what is an egg without a yolk! The good people of Paris will provide the nutrients and mass we need to advance.” said Aoi’s mind.

“We really can’t thank you enough~” said Yoshimi’s soon after.

“You’ll be absorbed over a period of time needed for our design to take form. Unfortunately you won’t be able to rest like we are. The sensations you’ll feel might be a bit too ‘distracting’ for that.”

Screams, countless screams. Such a twisted fate made bear to those powerless to stop it. They couldn’t even move their limbs as they floated towards Aoi. The grip of her mind was too tight. The masses were scattered over her body like sprinkles on a cake. The slime grew and grew, eventually Aoi became hard to see in it. Once the gargoyle-esque flesh beasts scoured the last of the city, Yoshimi called them back to return to their mistresses. No longer needed, their flesh would be recycled against Aoi’s.

There was a last ditch advance by what was left of Paris’s defense force. They had since been called back from this hopeless place, but many refused to leave the city. Their reward was to add to the nutrient goop that’d nurture the pair during their incubation process. By now, Aoi’s psionic powers had evolved to the point where she could suss out where they hid by picking up the mental signatures of their feeble minds. She tugged the stragglers to her body and removed whatever vehicles or gear they had on during transit. Her mental force just ripped that garbage away.

Aoi wrapped herself up in enough goo to occlude her body from the outside world. Probably for the best, as the noises made in there sounded oh so alien and fleshy. Her ‘cocoon’ was still growing though. There were layers of slime in all kinds of textures: from near-water to glaze to jelly and so forth. Each tier of coating was lined with humans, squirming and wiggling, stuck and trapped between the layers of goop and membrane.

The only military still in the city were the recon planes, who filmed the whole thing from miles above. The shape of the gooey swaddle was indeed that of an egg. Unsatisfied with its current intake, semi-solid, tendrils of gelatin consistency grew outwards from it.

These protrusions shifted between the skyscrapers, fracturing off into smaller, vine-like structures. Any organic matter they touched was sucked inward. Inside, thinner fluids flowed like blood in an artery towards the growing mint-beige egg. Inorganic matter was simply dissolved on the spot: useless sans any organic components.

The bird’s eye view showed this weed-like infestation of roots spreading through the entire city. Indeed, it dug into the very earth itself. The lush greenery decorating Paris and the intermediate spaces between it and the surrounding Peripherique were drained of their color. The soil itself turned from brown to a dull grey as not a single molecule of nutrients was left spared.

The banlieues fell, lost in the tangle of the slimy vines and goop. The complex network of jelly-tentacles burst into homes. Thinner, vine-like strands crept through windows to absorb couples out of their hiding places. They resisted most forms of assault, and if one was burnt or cut it’d regenerate as others swarmed in.

None could escape: even underground the growths would burst into sewer tunnels to suck up stragglers. They were pulsed towards a being they couldn’t comprehend. More yolk for the egg.

The tentacular expanse halted at the edge of the surrounding suburbs. By now, the cocoon’s roots ran miles deep and long. The bird’s eye view showed that twitching, shifting cocoon at the center fed by a vast, twist-filled web of bio-roots. It looked much like a tumor sapping blood via commandeered blood vessels. Indeed, like a tumor it gorged itself at the expense of the land and its people. And, like a tumor, it grew.

The evolutionary pod Aoi made throbbed and burgeoned in size. From a few thousand feet tall to well over a mile, then another mile, and another.

The nation’s leaders fiercely debated how to respond. There were calls to nuke it, but radiation seemed only to help the kaiju-woman. Even sending in more soldiers seemed foolish, as they’d only end up as more food.

In the end, they sent a squads of dozens of fire bombers in hopes of at least slowing the process. The bombardment of incendiary shells fizzled harmlessly on the soft-jelly exterior of the outermost membrane. If anything, the warmth was appreciated. The intent to disturb, however, was not. As the pilots turned to fly back to their base, a voice pierced their minds: Yoshimi’s.

“It’s rude to disturb a woman’s rest, you know~”

A second later and their engines stalled, their internal components telekinetically crushed. Above the egg they plummeted, sinking into the outermost bio-coating to be absorbed in due time.

After that, Aoi and Yoshimi were left alone. The egg stretched nearly 10 miles in height and several in width. The outermost layer hardened into a proper shell. Though the roots still drew nutrients from their surroundings, their pace slowed.

The entire nation watched on baited breath from satellite surveillance. Hours passed as Aoi rested, Yoshimi resting within her. When the sun began to set, the shell’s first crack formed.