Chapter 6: Genomes

When Yoshimi ran away from the crater she didn’t stop once. The slight, petite woman ran all the way back to the train station and brought a ticket back, hopped on, and rode the night express back to Paris.

All of this was automatic. It was as instinctual, if not more, than when Aoi swallowed that policewoman whole. Yoshimi hadn’t slept that night, but went through her morning routine regardless. Instead of breakfast, she just sat at the table in their apartment and kept refreshing the news.

That afternoon she found a live-stream and her eyes were hooked on her phone. Aoi was alive! She looked different, a little monstrous what with the alien skin tone and tentacles. But in the end, it was that same face she always knew. That same roll of the eyes at some stranger’s stupidity.

Then Aoi ate someone on camera. Then she ate a few more till the cameras cut out.

An hour after that, still in the throes of disbelief, the raven-haired woman somehow managed to slip on her shoes and report for the city-wide emergency procedures.

Yoshimi was in shock again. Her world once again turned upside down. The brief moment’s joy that her girlfriend was alive had been suddenly muddied by Aoi being some kind of people eating monster now.

As she shuffled through the crowded streets, soldiers in megaphones yelled at people to go to X or Y spot for information pamphlets and took a number which was assigned. All the while there was chatter among the citizenry.

“I can’t believe it. A real fucking kaiju.”

“She seemed cute at first. They say it’s a human; used to be a college student here.”

“I’m not gonna evacuate I don’t care what they say.”

“Military will blow it up we’ll be fine.”

She checked her phone too. It was known the situation was quite serious, though some people’s countries away were oddly rooting for Aoi’s acts. Bunch of nihilistic trolls perhaps.

Despite the horrors, Yoshimi couldn’t let go of her girlfriend. They were inseparable roommates since they got here a couple years ago, both on the same exchange student program. She was delighted it blossomed into something more--least at the time.

In a line for whatever assigned shelter she got, Yoshimi saw an opportunity to slip away and took it.

She thought of a spot to try and meet Aoi. There was one place the two of them haven’t been despite the two years they lived and studied here. The Eiffel Tower. Plus, she knew from all those awful movies Aoi picked that the kaiju always heads to the tallest building in a city. If she went there, she’d be able to get Aoi’s attention for sure.

Getting there was tricky with all the soldiers in the street. Helicopters combed the city from the sky. There were plenty of trucks and vans too. Green and black vehicles were on almost every street with some ornately dressed commander barking orders to others. Yoshimi caught glimpses of tanks and a wide variety of curious armaments she hadn’t seen or even heard of before. Everyone was on guard and preparing for something.

Preparing to kill her girlfriend.

Strangely she wasn’t worried about that. She knew Aoi could handle herself. Whatever her tomboy pal became was something strong, even if disgusting at times. Spitting on ‘bugs’ wasn’t too out of character for Aoi, but spitting on people?

Maybe that’s how she saw them now.

News reached everyone that Aoi was in the suburbs and the depraved stuff she did there wasn’t secret. People had phones. The internet wasn’t shut down or anything. Still, Yoshimi knew if anyone could talk sense into Aoi, it’d be her. She could make things right.

By some miracle of luck and deft maneuvering, Yoshimi managed to make it to the tower. There weren’t even any guards, as they knew Aoi would have to come from the other side of the city. They figured they could stop her early. They were confident.

Yoshimi was confident they’d fail, but she--she would succeed! She made her way to the staircase leading up and run up those steps fast as she could. A small chuckle: she never thought she’d have the whole Eiffel Tower to herself! Usually it swarmed with tourists.

Once she reached the uppermost platform, Yoshimi waited. She looked over the railing now and again, but mostly kept her eyes on her smart phone. She checked that thing for updates fast as the screen would refresh.

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

The gene bank was one of the taller buildings in Vanille, though there was an office building or two to rival it. The whole thing was made of stainless steel and other high tech materials. It towered at over 10 stories tall.

Aoi towered taller. After gorging herself on suburbia, she had enough matter to rise up to just over 300ft (91m) or so. Some of the latest meals were still digesting--writhing and squirming in her caustic enzymes. Most were done by now, absorbed proper. She grew a tiny bit with each step.

Her senses were sharp, so every step was a treat. The ground kowtowed to her weight: to her might. She felt unstoppable, and there wasn’t a lick of fear in her when she saw the parking lot of the Ark filled with some soldiers. They must’ve been stationed there for whatever reason.

She paused at the edge of the dark asphalt and glared down at them all. The emerald green of her iris glowed slightly. They pointed their weapons up.

“Relax yourself troopers, I’m just here to make a withdrawal at the bank is all.” She chuckled.

“Then again, if you think I’m waiting in line behind you all, you’ve another thing coming!”

Aoi raised her foot and the soldiers below started pelting her with bullets and grenades and all sorts of things. Trivial things really. The former were easily expunged, and the latter served only to warm her toes. She snuffed them out under-sole, giggling.

“Sorry but, I’m something of a VIP now. Priority service and all that.”

Her tail curled around her legs to box more of them in.

“You’ll have to wait with the other ‘little’ people at the back of the line. Or, better yet, you can wait in my stomach to become part of something greater.”

Aoi swiped downwards, taking two handfuls of humanity and stuffing them in her gob. Large and flexible enough to swallow multiple people with ease, her throat tugged them down as two distinct lumps. She used her constricting saliva, so that when the soldiers fell in that glowing, undulating gut they were stuck in a bolus of one another.

She sighed. “Yummy. Now stay out of my way and I’ll be so kind as to ignore you while I get down to business.”

Some soldiers did rout, moving away from the building they were guarding. True to her word Aoi did ignore them: but that was a double edged sword. Her tail swished left to right in tune with her slight hips. The appendage smeared some soldiers to paste that way.

Reaching the Ark, Aoi had herself a bit of a problem. She couldn’t exactly fit this in her mouth. It was about the height and width of a computer case; in other worse, it came up to just over her knees. If she waited long enough, her body could probably figure out a way to get her to unhinge her jaw, but that sounded painful and a bit grody--even for her.

She had an idea though. Aoi fell to her butt, an action which smashed a couple of soldiers who neither attacked her nor fled: shock can do silly things to people.

The viridian-toned woman wrapped up the building in a great big hug. Her back tentacles, which normally rested when not in use snatching and smashing things, joined the embrace as well. Her legs curled around it, but she took care not to dent it at all.

Aoi grinned as she felt her skin began to twitch just a tad. She felt a little slimy.

‘Yes, it’s working!’ she thought.

A semi-translucent, light greenish-bluish fluid began to coat the anterior of her body and, by extension, the gene bank. The metal of the structure groaned to protest its softening. Aoi hugged the building tighter. The steel quickly went from harder than stone to as soft as jelly. The fluid seeped in through the cracked and warped windows and started to inundate the contents within. Floors buckled, furniture pooled to the floor and, most importantly, the countless cabinets and shelves of genome samples dissolved into the liquid.

Aoi squeezed, and the melting building was drawn into her. She was absorbing it through her skin. If she couldn’t swallow it down, she’d just have to digest it another way. A few unfortunate folk were still inside. Even with the soldier contingent, the World Genome Preservation Institute insisted on a few guards of their own. Whatever substance her skin excreted had no problem deforming them to an absorbable state as well.

While lapping up the genetic data for all Earth had to offer, some of the soldiers started to fire again. Turning around, she saw a few helicopters and armed trucks on the way. She could only chuckle.

“Please don’t disturb a lady while she’s eating, I’ll be with you shortly. Shame to see you spurn that temporary reprieve I gave.”

A mock sigh and Aoi swashed her tail to clear the area behind her back. That part of her body, being that big and moving that fast, just gibbed the poor soldiers on impact.

“I can... feel it all...” Aoi was alight with potential. The building was halfway inside her. It dissolved into her skin like a thin ointment. In lieu of soothing, it offered power. The traits: the chemicals and dyes and chitins of the beasts of earth; the blueprints to every species humans had ever encountered and collected were here, inside her.

The trucks stopped at the other end of the lot, but the building was gone. Absorbed into her body via the torso, there wasn’t a single drop missed or spilled. Aoi turned her head over her shoulders, then kept going. The newly arrived soldiers gasped at the horror of a head twisted nearly 180 degrees. Aoi just laughed.

“Never seen an owl before? They do the same thing.” She snapped her neck back in place and spun her whole body around. There was a power station by the building. From the outside it looked like a small concrete cube with all the wires and such on it. A transformer, basically. But, Aoi’s senses picked up something more. She yanked it up and gave it a little squeeze, just enough to peek inside and see a familiar radiation warning symbol.

Aoi erupted into laughter. “What luck, of course they’d have one of those fancy micro-reactors. They probably wanted a back up power supply, or maybe the curators of the Ark insisted on keeping off the normal grid. Snobby bastards.”

She stuffed it in her mouth and devoured it whole. These things were as rare as they were expensive. Usually hospitals and other high priority buildings had them as small backup power. It was only enough energy for one building, and it wasn’t all that radioactive. Still, it gave Aoi just a little to work with.

The kaiju spun to feet and took one step to loom over the new force. She ignored the helicopters at her side for now.

“You’re too late, I’ve already the basis for becoming the ultimate life-form. All the genetic data in there is now in here~” she tapped at her taut front.

They pelted her with bullets, but unlike before, they didn’t even penetrate her flesh. She had thickened it past the point where it’d be harmed by such trivial means.

“You don’t even know what you’re up against. A monster? Is that what they told you? Ha!”

Aoi hastened the digestion in her gut. The balls of soldiers from before were now entirely goop, and she started to grow. Her toes intruded on the clump of soldiers below, making them stumble back from her expansion.

She glared down. Her eyes, green on black, stared as though she was looking into their very hearts.

“For you, your DNA is a template. A rigid mold you fill. For me, DNA, genomes, genetic data: all of it is putty for me to work with. It’s a guide, not safety bars. For you, it’s limitation: for me, it’s inspiration.”

Aoi looked past them to a truck. It had a fancy looking barrel on it that shot out a big clunky shell. It exploded against her stomach, and she grinned down below. When the smoke cleared, her body was completely fine.

“Inspiration... I am inspired to become the apex being.” She lifted a foot and slammed a toe on one of the soldiers. It was too fast for any to react to, and the force against the ground bounced them up and over onto their asses.

Giving the ped a twist. “I suppose I am monstrous though: to you. My body is the ultimate biochemical weapon. I have samples of every poison and venom the world has to offer, but mimicry is boring. Nature is neither as fast nor as creative as me. Why don’t you try a sample of a nice toxin I just cooked up.”

Aoi crouched down. The soldiers backed up, still shooting. She reached out with her finger and shot a fine mist from the digit’s pores. The fluid coated them and they began to scream as their skin erupted in sores and rashes.

“I based that on poison ivy. A nice little resin right? I added some of the effects of spider venom in there too. Of course, venom can’t normally go through the skin, which is why I loaded the fluid with milli-scopic stingers. Thinner than cactus needles, your weak eyes probably can’t make them out.”

The victims flailed and their skin darkened to a sickly black from necrosis or sepsis or something worse.

“Hmm they went a bit fast didn’t they? Seems like they suffered enough though.”

The laughter that followed from Aoi was interrupted by another volley of heavy munitions from the trucks. The helicopters kept their distance for now. She sighed.

“Fine, if you insist I’ll deal with your toy trucks first. But, I don’t want you little soldiers running off now.”

Aoi looked to them and spat. It only took three such salvos before the soldiers were affixed to the asphalt by her saliva. She stood to her new full height and took a couple steps to the trucks, leaving the troops to wiggle behind like flies in a gooey waddish web.

The trucks were side by side in a formation of some kind. They looked like toys: the tiny kind where if you stepped on one in a hallway it’d flatten pretty easily with its little wheels popping off to either side. Stepping on them would be too fast for them: too kind.

“I don’t know why you continue to fight when its so hopeless? Is it orders? Ego? I’m sure if you go up the chain of command enough, the root is ego. Always is...”

Aoi straddled them, like a woman staring down at a nest of ants. One of them had readied its next payload and fired it square at her crotch. The kaiju-woman closed her eyes and coo’d. “Mmf, right on target.” she chuckled. The warmth and force was a welcome treat.

She reached down and smashed the trucks down the middle, one by one, with just a bit of force from her finger. It was like poking down an empty soda can, only much, much easier.

As they fanned out of the now useless vehicles, Aoi curled her tail around their back-line. She was beginning to really appreciate that tail of hers: very good for keeping the weak in line.

They filtered out and, realizing there was no escape, stared up at her. Some barked requests or pleas into their radio. ‘Send backup at cords blah blah blah’, but a few were just speechless. They looked up at the looming figure, and she spotted a few of them looking right at her crotch.

She smirked. “What? Never seen a vagina before?” She broke into laughter. “Clothes didn’t grow with me I’m afraid, but I’ve gotten used to this level of freedom. Not as though it matters what you see. Maybe you’re a prude or something? Is that it?”

She slipped a finger to her snatch and slipped it into her folds. A bit of feminine fluid clung to the tip. She dappled a soldier with it, and his clothes and flesh started to steam and burn.

Another bit of cruel laughter. “Too hot to handle am I? Acid’ll do that to you humans, I suppose~”

“Tempting as it is to use you all to get off, I don’t want to waste too much time here.”

Her tail crept in to huddle them and their trucks nice and close, then she reached down to scoop them in her hands. They erupted into howls and wails. They felt a piercing sensation soon as they touched her skin. Aoi grinned and turned her hands upside down. Normally they would’ve fallen to the ground, but something held them in place--something sticky and stinging.

“Take a look and you can see it. Tiny white hairs on my palms. Well, more stingers than hairs.”

The clothes of the soldiers sloughed off along with the outermost layer of their skin. They didn’t look flayed, just raw. Their flesh began to morph and bubble though, as if boiling.

“I got the idea from some jellyfish DNA. It was pretty easy to morph into place. What you’re injected with isn’t venom though, it’s radiation.”

The screams continued, but Aoi talked loud enough that it wasn’t an issue. She watched the handfuls of humanity writhe and wiggle in her soft greenish palm.

“When I get some organic cells, the DNA within them is an open book. My body can even clone that DNA so I always have an original to tinker with. Modifying it is more tricky. Just as you humans--and myself, too--need nutrients and caloric energy for your metabolic processes, I need radioactive materials and energy for my mutative ones. That micro-reactor I scarfed down was nice, but it didn’t quite have enough energy to modify myself that much. I am a big gal, after all~”

She chuckled again. By now one of the poor fools in her hand was more blob than man. Another had so many bumps he looked like a dog’s rubber chew toy.

“Plus I have to experiment. Most meals I’ll just turn into more of my own cells, but I’ll save some matter here and there to try new things, or split off some of my own cells to be a basis for testing. It’s a lot easier to test a few cells than commit to full modification. Unlike me, you are small and puny. Mere trillions of cells compared to my quadrillions”

Aoi smiled. “Anyways, point is I need more radioactive materials. Paris has them, along with millions of lives for me to absorb. With all that mass and energy to play with, I’ll soon be so far beyond even this level it’ll make your head spin.”

“For now, I think this is a fun little experiment. I diverted some of the radioactive materials into a chemical I made, that’s why you’re mutating right now in fact. Don’t worry though, I’ll make good use of the data you provide. Normally every human is so similar, but I’ve taken your genetic code and did the equivalent of flipping every ‘number’ it has randomly, ACGT base pairs, mix and matched.”

Another chuckle from the kaiju-woman. By now, one soldier had mutated to the point of death. The rest weren’t so lucky. They showed all the symptoms of radiation poisoning--something Aoi was immune to. Their bodies got the slightest bit mushy and the she-monster sighed.

“I think this experiment is over for now. Time for analysis~”

Another set of meek, weak screams as those micro-stingers pumped them full of dissolving enzymes. Like the building, they were liquefied and quickly lapped up by her flesh. She processed the results right away, and an idea hit her.

“Oooh very interesting~”

Then bullets hit her cheek, distracting her. It was the helicopters. Aoi reabsorbed the stingers on her skin she made, then rose to face them.

“You’re flying pretty low aren’t you? But, I guess that makes sense if you want to hit me.”

She reached out with her arms, purposefully sluggish to give the pack some false hope. They spun around the back of her neck to pelt it with more rapid fire, but she just lashed at the constructs with her back tentacles.

“Gotcha~”

Aoi held them in front of her bosom. The perky mounds had darker blue-green toned flesh making up the areolae. She grinned and stuffed the helicopters into the sensory region. The kaiju-woman used just enough force to crumble the cockpits to the point of entrapment.

“I can tell from your scent you’re all men in there, surely you must be enjoying this on some level, to be so close to a woman’s tits? I never much cared for men in the past, though I’m beginning to think you do have some appeal: even if only as toys.”

That deep viridian nipple brushed against the glass of one chopper. Inside, a pilot with crushed legs tried in vain to slip out a hole in the cracked side window. Before he could manage, a jet-black scythe erupted from the nipple, curling into him and his helicopter.

As always, anyone who could watch did so in horror. She had impaled the busted copter on some kind of nipple blade. Aoi erupted into that laughter of hers.

“Surprised I bet.” she said, talking to the other 3 choppers smashed to her bosom. “It’s just a modification based on a claw or talon. Nothing too special. Frankly I’m not that attached to it: unlike your buddy there.”

Another bout of laughter at her own joke. She slipped the organic claw-blade construct back into her areolae, dissolving it at the same time. The vehicle once caught to it slipped off and fell to her feet. There, she slipped her foot over it to pound it flat.

The other three tentacles coiled tightly about the remaining aerial forces.

“I know some part of you is thinking this disgusting. ‘Oh how can she just go around sliming people and morphing her body?!?’. That’s just a limited mindset of yours. Breaking through it as I did was a precursor to real progress. Potential, power... I hold these things in far greater amounts than you can imagine. Tragically, you won’t live to see my full potential. I need all the mass I can get before Paris.” She licked her lips and raised the copters towards her face. Those green-black eyes squinted at them. She smiled wide.

“Rest assured, Paris will though. They’ll witness a true force of nature.”

Aoi opened wide and ate up the constructs. Like the truck from when she walked the highway to Vanille, the vehicles themselves didn’t offer her much in terms of mass: yet at least. They did dissolve well enough though. She had biochemicals that could melt down anything. That micro-reactor she quaffed was a simple, cesium based thing, but minuscule as it was she found another little metabolic optimization to get even more from her meals.

When the pilots hit her stomach, the alkaline fluids were extra fast to liquefy them. She was eager to get to Paris. There was a proper reactor: multiple even. Not to mention all those people. Her mouth watered at the thought.

Aoi took a step forward, then another that almost came down on the soldiers she trapped from earlier. There were a good 20 of them. The constrictive goo she spat from earlier which had since hardened into something like a hard, translucent--though still slimy--shell.

“Ah, I almost forgot about you all.” she giggled. “Or perhaps I was just teasing. Don’t worry, I have enough time to deal with you real fast. You have a special task, to keep the other soldiers here in Vanille busy.”

She sat on her knees, right before them. The thud of her bulk to the ground wracked their ears. “Consider it... a higher purpose.”

Before, Aoi had intruded upon a man’s mind to learn all he did. What she was doing now seemed similar. She reached out towards the stuck-soldiers with her fingers just as she did him: the tips sprouted some skin-toned tentacles, which had their own throng of thinner, anemone-esque ones at the end. Those littler ones flailed wildly; she was eager to begin.

Aoi didn’t care what these people knew though, but she needed access to their minds all the same.

“You soldiers ever hear of a special kind of fungus? It infests the minds of bugs to make them stand up real high and proud in the sun. Naturally, some animal gets them, and the fungus spreads while the zombie insect dies.”

With five fingers on two hands, she could modify 10 of them at a time. Half the crowd was forced to watch the other half deal with... whatever it was she was doing.

Those with the tentacles up their noise started to shift and wail, then suddenly stop, as though at peace. Tentacles from the side of Aoi’s fingers formed shortly thereafter. With needle-like tips, they punctured the soldier’s flesh and injected them with something.

The ‘treated’ bodies began to spasm and twist. Their flesh bubbled. Their muscles bulged to the point their clothes teared a little. Their fingers became jagged claws; their feet became talons. Some of the finger-tentacles sprayed some mist over them, loosening the constrictive compound which held them to the parking lot.

Free at last, they fell to their knees and sprouted wings of thin leathery flesh. Their skin changed to shades of green and blue, dark and deep. Their faces contorted; teeth turned to fangs. Hair fell out and their ears curled like horns. Spikes poked from their elbows, knees, and the front of their wrists. Lastly, they grew, becoming a solid 10ft or so tall.

She was making monsters. The other soldiers wiggled and writhed and screamed and shouted. They didn’t want to become that.

They didn’t have a choice. They were next, and while those new mutants were getting their bearings, she worked on the last of them.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be dying to serve me soon enough. Just hold still, it’ll make it easier for you I’m sure.”

The soldiers were free and transformed. They looked up to her for instructions. She grinned.

“Don’t get the impression I’m attached to you little things. In fact...”

She pinched one up and popped it into her mouth. After a bit of savoring, she swallowed and grinned right back on down at them all.

“I was curious how you tasted. Anyways, your job is already embedded deep within you: cause chaos. Rip this suburbs to shred. It’ll hold their forces here so I can focus on getting to Paris with fewer distractions. You’ll fall eventually, but do me proud till then my little minions~”

She rose to her full height and all her creations flew off. Following her orders, the winged monstrosities spread across Vanille and struck at any soldier or citizen they saw. They had incredible strength for their size. Working in pairs, they could lift up an entire armored truck in their talons and fly off with it, usually to drop it on some other clumps of soldiers or citizenry. Each of the 19 creatures was a formidable foe which required oodles of focused fire to bring down.

They’d be busy for awhile, and the path to the capital was clear. She saw the city on the horizon several miles away. She rose to her new full height of over 400ft (121m) tall.

Aoi broke into a sprint towards Paris. The fun was just getting started.