Chapter 9: Roommates

Aoi’s throat was gross. Pulsing walls dripping with slime surrounded Yoshimi. Despite its size, the muscular-thing still clung tight to Yoshimi’s flesh--lathering it up with its yucky fluids.

A part of Yoshimi thought she was dead: done. Her girlfriend had eaten her seconds after she confessed her love. She was gonna digest. She could hear Aoi’s stomach, churning and rumbling. She even heard faint screams. The pilots she saw Aoi eat on the way over were the likely culprit: bellowing as their bodies denatured.

That was gonna be her; that’s what Aoi must be referring to. She’d be digested and be with ‘Aoi’ together forever in some sick twisted way.

She could see that esophageal sphincter twitch--coated in some alien-esque mint-green fluid. It was waiting for her, to snag her legs and slurp her into that death chamber. This whole place was aglow with strange fluids, and the light left nothing to her imagination.

But Yoshimi didn’t see one thing coming.

There was a turn in the throat about halfway down. It lurched sideways and Yoshimi went through some flap of slick flesh that sealed behind her.

The chamber shimmered with its own fluids, a soft dull green-and-blue. The flesh itself was that shade of color--though more on the green side. It occurred to Yoshimi how fitting the name ‘Aoi’ was right now.

She pounded at the floor of this place, hitting at it with her saliva and kicking with slime soaked sneakers. “Aoi where did you put me? Hello?!? Didn’t you hear what I said?!?”

This chamber constantly undulated. Aoi’s heartbeat thumped in the distance alongside other bodily noises. While taking some tentative steps, Yoshimi slipped face first into a puddle of slime just in time for a dollop of the stuff to land on her from above.

“Aoi wherever you put me is disgusting.” said Yoshimi.

She stood back up and started fervently wiping her clothes of as much of the fluid as she could. She squeezed the thin goo from her long black hair like wringing a towel.

Still no response.

“Aoi, please say something. I’m getting scared in here.”

One of the walls rippled. Stubby protrusions began to grow from them.

“A-aoi what the hell is that!” Yoshimi yelled.

She took a few steps back, but they lashed forward. There were dozens of them. Tentacles: vermiform in shape though much longer than the tendrils Aoi used to probe people’s minds.

The internal appendages coiled around Yoshimi’s arms, legs, and waist--anything they could wrap around really. She fell forward and they dragged her to the wall of this organ.

“A-Aoi!!!!” Yoshimi shouted, she tried to claw her nails into the living floor. No use. The flesh was too slick, too strong.

She was tugged to the wall and held there tight by the tentacles. The flesh behind her rippled against her back. More fluid was being made by Aoi’s body: it came in all sorts of consistencies. It dripped down from the walls and the tentacles were coating themselves with it in between holding her steady.

“Aoi please don’t digest me. You said you’d keep me safe, I don’t want to die like this I-

“I’m not gonna digest you!” said a thundering voice, muffled by layers of flesh and body-goo.

“A-aoi you can hear me?”

“Yes, I’m sorry I was just trying to focus. This is kind of new to me too here.”

“A-aoi I don’t like this. It’s gross.”

“Well I’m sorry but it’s about to get grosser. Just bear with me.”

The tentacles clenched Yoshimi tighter to the wall. They started emitting their own fluids to lather Yoshimi with. Her clothes were soaked. Some protrusions came from the wall. Thick and nubish, they had open tips at the end. She thought them akin to freaky flesh barnacles. Their ‘mouths’ shuttered before they dumped half-opaque slime down Yoshimi’s head. She got some in her mouth and spat it out, and they disappeared soon after.

“Urghk, I-is this really necessary?”

“Yes, it’s to protect you. My body can be pretty reactive in there. Temperature fluctuates wildly.” came Aoi’s thooming voice again.

Another tentacle showed up, with sharp needles on its tip. It split at the tip into a clump of like-pointed things.

“A-a-aoi what are you doing with that.”

“Trust me.”

The tentacles stabbed at the back of Yoshimi’s neck. She yelped. They slithered into her body.

A connection began to form.

There was a voice ringing in her head. It came in broken up chunks like a message marred by static.

“Yoshimi”

She made out a word in Aoi’s ‘voice’ and her head was wracked with pain.

“A-aoi what-”

“It’s me, it’s Aoi. I’m talking to you over your mind. Why don’t you try it.”

Yoshimi closed her eyes and focused, thinking a message back.

“Aoi, what are you doing.”

“A lot of stuff. I’m gonna try to modify you a bit, make you more resilient. More like me.”

More tentacles slipped out, piercing into Yoshimi’s exposed arms. She twitched.

“Aoi, I’m scared.”

“I know Yoshimi, I know. But... what you said earlier. I love you too, you know. To think we lived together so long and only recently started dating...”

Yoshimi twisted her sneaker into the flesh. It was resilient, spongy. It bounced right back from her pressure. The was something almost soothing about the way it rippled now.

“Well I was shy, you were prideful...”

The two of them chuckled. Then a moment of silence.

“Aoi, what’s going on out there?”

“Oh, that reminds me. I mean, I should wait to be safe but, I know I have to convince you about a lot of stuff now. It’s easier to show you rather than tell. Here, feel this.”

Aoi was very careful in Yoshimi’s mind. She didn’t want to pry, just establish a link between their senses of touch. It was tricky, but Aoi was eager and determined. The microscopic appendages within her form managed to integrate just right and...

“Got it!” Aoi beamed. She spoke mentally as before.

Yoshimi gasped. She felt the spring breeze on her flesh. Was it her flesh? It was distant, without her body not within. Yet, it felt like a part of her, or something she had access too at the least.

On the outside, another assault from the army arrived. This was mostly soldiers and jeeps. A couple tanks. Nothing too exotic. Aoi felt they were trying to stall her again or something. In any case, they’d make for the perfect demonstration.

Aoi lifted her right leg above a huge clump of the military beneath. They pelted her sole with bullets and rockets and the usual, but nothing broke the skin. Nothing stuck or marred her. The warm explosions rippled up between Aoi’s toes, which she wiggled in response.

Yoshimi felt that.

Aoi lowered her foot. They both savored the feeling of wind pushed out of the way of her descending ped and the increased fire from the soldiers beneath. The force’s courage and conviction wavered ever faster as the ceiling of foot flesh drew nearer. Panic set in so they peppered the sensitive sole with everything they had.

Yoshimi felt that.

The stomp neared completion. Aoi took things a little slower than usual. She hovered her foot just atop them all: enough to flatten the vehicles and keep the men beneath pinned best she could without killing them. A few still died from crumbled roofs or broken necks of course. With the canopy of wrinkled viridian skin looming above, they became almost primal in their rage and despair. The soldiers writhed and kicked above. They expended the last of their ammo. Any truck still functional enough tried to drive away, only serving to vibrate under the sensitive flesh of the superior being snuffing them out.

Yoshimi coo’d. She definitely felt that.

Aoi completed the step. She just let her weight set down behind her foot. They all popped. The cityscape beneath cracked and crumbled. She flexed her toes to dig into the underlying concrete and asphalt and dirt of the area the military set up in.

Yoshimi felt it all. She squeezed her legs together in a clench--best she could with tentacles around them. Her own toes curled as these novel sensations assailed her. Ones of intense sensitive and sublime power.

Aoi mind-spoke. “You can’t possibly tell me that’s not amazing Yoshimi. Being able to smother hundreds of lives in a single step? To feel them snuff out with such granularity? Do you see that I’m not crazy here?”

Aoi lifted her foot and stomped out another swarm of combatants, then another and again. Yoshimi twitched with every footfall. Her body shivered despite the warmth of her quarters here.

The little-woman refocused. “I, I can’t lie and say that didn’t feel... good. But, are you worried it’s just that thing, that meteorite-slime that got you making you feel this way?”

“No. It’s hard to explain. Maybe I can share that feeling later, but I don’t think that’s what happened--or what’s going on. That meteorite... it was like a payload. A collection of genetic data wrapped up with just enough prerecorded actions to find someone to give it to. To find someone to set on a path of higher evolution.”

“So you think it was like a guide or something? But why?” Yoshimi said.

“That, I’m not sure. You believe me though, right Yoshimi?”

Yoshimi paused for a moment. She reflected. All the while, Aoi’s tentacles continued coating her in fluids. A few more slid into her skin too. Little pinches.

“I do Aoi. I thought you might’ve been possessed or something, but now I just see you’ve changed. Still, those are real people down there. This isn’t moral.”

“No, that’s their morals you’re thinking in. I’m above that now. You can be too. We can be above them, together. So far beyond this planet that it’ll be a distant memory. That’s the destiny given to me. You can come too.”

“I’m not sure Aoi, I don’t just wanna be absorbed by you.” She looked at a tentacle kneading at her arm, rubbing some strange green-blue slime into her skin. “This is a lot to take in.”

“We’ll be connected, but I won’t be absorbing you I promise. They’re food; you’re not. I want you to be yourself. Connected, but separate. Just like a normal relationship.”

Yoshimi blinked twice at her fleshy, pulsing surroundings. She giggled. “Yeah, real normal.”

Aoi chuckled in turn.

“I need you to go asleep for a bit though. Not too long; you don’t really have a lot of cells to tend to... compared to me anyways. It’d be just long enough for me to modify you.”

“I, I don’t know but-”

“I have to Yoshimi, it’d be the only way for you to keep up with what I become.”

“Alright fine. I trust you Aoi.”

“Good, but... one more thing. I need to remove your clothes, sorry if that sounds weird bu-”

“Weird?!?!?” Yoshimi fired back with a telepathic shout. “You have the audacity to call that weird, amid the fleshscape you stuff me in?!?”

The two laughed. “Fine fair point, but you know what I mean I didn’t want to just start melting your clothes off or whate-”

“You ate me Aoi”

“I swallowed you! There’s kind of a difference...”

Another bout of laughter.

Yoshimi sighed. “Sure, go ahead. Do whatever you need to. I trust you.”

The tentacles swarming Yoshimi oozed some sort of thin slime that melted Yoshimi’s clothes to shreds. Other tentacles gently yanked the tatters off and tossed them to the ground of the living chamber. The scraps of cloth and denim fully dissolved soon after, absorbed into the flesh lining this place.

Yoshimi’s shoes were the last to go. The thick sneakers were a bit more resilient to the dissolving fluids, and Aoi didn’t want to increase the corrosiveness of them and risk hurting Yoshimi. So, the kaiju-woman just willed her tentacles to tug them off and crush them.

‘This is so weird’ she thought to herself. But she trusted Aoi, even more than before now. Her girlfriend had enough power to wipe out armies. If she was being nice, it’s cause she wanted to. This was real affection.

It was also real gross.

The tentacles around her arms uncoiled to hug her entire body width-wise. More joined them, the throng of appendages growing. The fleshy limbs started melding together at the creases where they met. They softened, becoming semi-solid save at the very exterior. The squeeze was tight, her back was held close to the wall. From that rippling moist flesh behind, a surge of thin tendrils broke through to puncture her back. It was fast, the pain lasted only a minute.

She was cradled in the warm viridian ooze. With the tight flesh around her, holding her snug, she realized what she was in: a cocoon.

Yoshimi reached out with her mind.

“Is this mucus?”

“Just relax, you’ll come out stronger I promise... Also... yeah there might technically be some mucus there...”

Yoshimi’s vision was getting dark as the flesh cocooned around her. The fluid inundated her, but she was still able to breath in it. Such a strange feeling. She began to squirm.

“Sleep” came Aoi’s voice, ringing in her mind. Soon after Yoshimi closed her eyes and rested.