It felt good to fuck the square-cube law.

His wings flapped at a rate too fast for him to put a number to, but it was probably in the neighborhood of 'too-bullshit-fast' per second as he flew at the Blood Bug, a knife-like serrated tooth rapidly growing behind his wrist to extend over his hand. He'd… well, to be perfectly honest, he'd yet to use it in a way where it was actually useful, but he liked it, it was cool, and it had to work someday! And maybe that day was now! After all, it wasn't like he could grow a gun or something…

The Blood Bug saw him of course, and tried to evade, but it couldn't tell every law of physics to go fuck itself. Just because it could fly when by all rights it was too big to do so didn't exempt it from the consequences of all that mass. Newton's laws and its own mass made it handle like… well, exactly like how a big, fat, heavy thing trying to maneuver through the air with a single source of both thrust and lift would handle.

Sanny, in contrast, was lighter, smaller, and probably had more powerful wings. He adjusted his aim with contemptuous ease and came at it like a missile, the arm-spike/tooth in front of him to impale the Blood Bug's head. It tore through one of the Blood Bug's enormous compound eyes, which were far larger than the ones he had, cutting a bloody gash through the organ that made the Blood Bug roar in pain in a strange, high-pitched, doglike yelp.

And then he was past it, still moving at speed, and while he was lighter than his enemy, speed was a greater multiplier in momentum than weight, and he'd been moving pretty fast. Still, it was simple to flip around and point himself back the way he came, his wings beating like a chainsaw as he redirected the direction of his thrust back the way he'd come.

Movement, and he'd dodged before he realized what he was doing, avoid the huge pink chunk of… rock? Crystal? Himalayan salt? Sugar? It had been hard and pink and big as his torso, so it would probably have ruined his day if it had hit. All around him, his compound eyes caught more glimmers of pink movement, some heading for him, some at his foe—no, his prey. This one was getting eaten, one way or another. The rocks were no threat. The Blood Bug was managing to evade them, sluggish as it was, since it had an altitude advantage. Sanny not being able to do the same would be embarrassing bordering on Darwin Award.

One of the stones clipped the Blood Bug in the side, the side he'd blinded when he'd made his pass. It was jerked aside, the movement looking deceptively gentle, but Sanny had been 'accidentally' clipped by fat guys in school hallways. That rock that had hit had probably weighed only slightly less. One of the Blood Bug's legs had been crushed, its abdomen slightly caved in, dripping blood and hemolymph. If anyone asked, he'd totally meant for that to happen when he'd gone for the eyes.

Sanny shot forward again, aiming for the head, the other eye, anything, even as blood—thick syrupy blood, dense in blood protein— flowed out of the wounds wrapping around the broken leg, patching up the damaged portions of its side, making a weird crystalline eyepatch on its face. It saw him coming, and this time rather than dodge, it let out a vaguely feline hiss and literally lashed out with its tentacle-tipped arm.

But it had gotten those tentacles from him.

He snapped up his left hand, the fingers there erupting into long, muscular tendrils held together with the barest internal chitin, fattening faster than an anorexic's worst nightmare, his wings actively growing longer and wider to compensate for the sudden mass. The two sets of tentacles met, his moving with grace and agility to swat aside the Blood Bug's, rips tearing open into toothy mouths that snapped out and bit at the thorn-like proboscises. They shattered in his jaws, filling him a strange, dusty, metallic taste, filling his mouths with bacteria he quickly consumed and integrated into his biomass. They'd been part of him, after all.

The tentacles had done their job, though. They had slowed him down and warded him back, and now his own tentacles were hindering his movement. He pressed forward, tentacles leading the way, finding himself in a weird shoving contest, the Blood Bug's mass letting it stay relatively unmoved.

That meant it stayed in one place long enough for another rock to strike it from below, hitting it between all four legs and making them dangle uselessly, broken. Sanny used his own grip on the Blood Bug's tentacles to swing himself out of the way of the projectile aimed at him.

Blood trickled down from the injuries, wrapping around the broken legs, and with a shudder they started to move again.

Well, getting in its face had never been part of the plan to kill it, anyway. And since plan A, drowning it, hadn't worked…

Sanny activated plan B.

At first, nothing happened except for the Blood Bug seeming to be indecisive about whether it should press towards him or keep running away. Then it shuddered.

Its thorax, full of blood proteins, began to bulge. The Blood Bug let out a scream as it started clawing at itself, as if trying to rip out something inside of it, its tentacle arm writhing in apparent agony as Sanny saw splotches began to spread along its flesh, say it began to swell, inflamed, saw the blood-colored plates darkening like scabs and falling off…

The bait drone, and all the co-opted animals they'd used as lures, hadn't just been full of blood. They'd been full of bacteria. And now the Blood Bug was getting an infection.

He hadn't been able to do this, once. Not until he'd consumed that plague dog. Not until he'd finally stopped having dreams of tainted flesh being devoured from the inside, and gone back to his usual dreams of hunting, eating, nature red in tooth and claw and tentacle and venom and eyes and slime and phagocytosis and…

Well.

The Blood Bug screamed, its own bounty of blood turned against it as the bacteria in its system reproduced at nightmarish rates, as they came together in the blood, feeding on healthy cells, blocking veins as they grew to form masses…

Sanny grabbed its tentacles with his own and darted in close as it reeled in pain, his arm blade darting forward and slashing upward, amputating the immobilized limb. He let it and his own tentacle limb fall, cutting it off at an elbow like a lizard losing its tail, bone, muscle and shell already growing to form a new hand and forearm. He darted back, avoiding the arm flailing in pain, then darting in to grab it by the wrist and slashing upward again, disarming the Blood Bug completely.

Heh. 'Disarmed'.

He darted back as it lunged at him headfirst and kept moving, avoiding the proboscis it was wielding like a twisted unicorn horn and the snapping jaws it didn't seem to know how to use but was trying out enthusiastically anyway. Blood tried to spurt out to cover where the arms had been and regrow them, but it was too thick, and writhing…

When you get down to it, bacteria are just cells. Cells that were a part of him, under his power. Cells that he could make fuse together, cells whose composition could be changed from independent life forms to components of tissue. Tissue that differentiated into organs, and then…

From inside the Blood Bug, vessels were blocked and exploded as small worms devoured their way out, still forming, dribbling out of the blood it was trying to use to heal its wounds. Screamed and writhed in agony, and all he needed was an opening, a shot…

He saw the pink mass flying towards then and briefly changed priorities, getting out of its way, pulling the Blood Bug with him as it chased him single-mindedly, and the car-sized pink mass passed harmless behind the dying insect as—

The car-sized pink mass exploded.

Irregular and too-regular pink rocks went flying in all directions like shrapnel, yet somehow hitting the Blood Bug in the back and ruthlessly crushing its wings and thorax. Despite how the rocks burst, they seemed to curve in mid-air in a way that made his compound eyes want to water as if the rocks had minds of their own, aiming for the Blood Bug with an almost tangible malice. Not every rock managed to hit, even after it curved, but each and every one certainly tried.

It spoke of intelligence and lateral thinking and the ability to problem solve, all of which were good signs whoever the pink was, they were human.

That didn't excuse the fact that they seemed to be aiming for Sanny just as assiduously.

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But he had compound eyes optimized to track movement over a wide field of view, a smaller body and fast, maneuverable wings, and thus he finally got to be on the evading side of the ancient contest man trying to squash bug. Despite his dodging, the pink still got lucky. One slammed into his bicep, deflecting off the armor there, and another hit his knee with such force that if he couldn't heal he'd have had to retire to be a guard.

Flesh wounds. They were already healing before the rocks hit the ground.

The Blood Bug didn't have that advantage. It tried to heal itself, calling its blood from its stores, but there was more bacteria than blood left, most of it consumed to fuel the growing parasites inside the Blood Bug's body. Without its wings, it was gravity's bitch as it plummeted.

They couldn't have that.

Sanny dropped into a powered dive, tucking his arms in and dropping headfirst with wings at full power as he chased after it. They couldn't let it just hit the ground! It was prey!

It was in his sights, a dark, bleeding outline against the glittering, glowing pink sand and stones below, and he could feel the bottom half of his face altering, felt teeth growing, his jaw bifurcating to form mandibles, ready to be opened, and he realized what it was far…

From below, right in front of his eyes, pink boulders were suddenly launched straight up in the air, heading right for them. They weren't hovering of moving anymore. Their path was literally straight and predictable, and the boulders had been launched in a line going the opposite way.

The leading boulder struck the Blood Bug, ripping off its blood-filled thorax completely, sending the red goo flying like a tasteless special effect. Sanny rolled out of the way of the deflected boulder, stretching out his arms, which were inches from the Blood Bug…

There was a whirl of movement, and the pink below was eclipsed by darkness.

No, not darkness.

Branches and leaves.

The Blood Bug slammed hard into a woven mat of thick branches that stopped its fall with all the gentleness of a sledgehammer to the face as Sanny quickly kicked his legs downward, reversing his position and flapping his wings as hard as they would got to keep from meeting the same fate at more-than-terminal velocity. The rest of the boulders slammed into the woven branches, sending the entire enormous branch shaking up and down but holding firm as the kinetic energy was absorbed by the far more flexible wood. He felt the sudden reversal of forces try to pulp what internal organs he had, but fortunately he didn't have any. Still, it was too much for his wings, and there was a snap as they tore from the force, sending him spinning drunkenly for a moment as he tried to regain control, tried to—

He slammed into a thick bank of leaves, grasses, soft trailing vines, leaves, more grasses, young bamboo that snapped like wet celery, actual oversized stalks of wet celery, and one unfortunately placed very hard tree branch that amputated the leg that encountered it at the knee.

Still, his exoskeleton didn't crack like an egg and his insides didn't become outsides, so he was actually pretty good.

"Ow…" he groaned, mostly for effect, his voice coming out strangely through the mandibles and other mouth alterations. It was what was expected, after all.

Sanny blinked as right in front of his eyes a bud poked through the tree bark, two leaves sprouting before a bump at the end grew and grew and became a coconut that became a head, with two dark patches for eyes, long stands of unruly fibers for hair, and an opening for a mouth.

"Sorry!" Tammy's head said, and he could hear some kind of sack laboring to provide the air for the whatever facsimile of vocal chords she was using. "I saw you falling. Glad I managed to catch you in time." The face broke into a huge smile. "Holy shit, you flew! You've got to teach me that!"

"I don't think you can do it, but I'll try," he said, regrowing his leg. As cartoonish as it had been, all the impacts to relatively soft things that had broken before his body could had managed to bleed out his momentum. Had he been injured? Oh, certainly. It would have killed a normal human easily.

He wasn't normal, and there was a question mark on whether he counted as human right now.

"Where is it?" he said. "Where's that bug?"

Every leaf around Tammy's head pointed in the same direction to the side and a little bit down. Sanny nodded, pulling himself up easily, his feet reconfiguring to having gripping hands for stability as the branch Tammy's head was growing from reconfigured, becoming arms and torso fused at the waist to the food of the tree for her head to sit on properly. More branches grew near him, and he accepted the proffered handholds since the branch, and by extension the whole tree—Tammy had grown huge while he'd been fighting—was being rocked by the relentless attack of the pink sand, rocks and whatever.

"Hold on!" Tammy suddenly cried, and the whole branch—which come to think of it was the size of a decent-sized tree in its own right—bent out violently of the way of several large boulders that had been thrown up at it in a ballistic arc. Thankfully these didn't explode into shrapnel, but he had a feeling the next ones would be.

His wings finished regrowing and his gave them a practice flick, spreading all four wings wide before having them start flapping. He sighed in relief as they lifted him off the ground, the fear that his flight had been a once-in-a-lifetime pity-fluke melting away.

"I'm so jealous right now," Tammy said, her upper body bobbing up and down. "Ugh, come on, let's deal with that stupid bug."

What was left of the Blood Bug was still alive, which wasn't surprising. Sanny buzzed towards it as, below, Tammy and Willy went on a combined offensive against the pink to give him some uninterrupted time, the entire field flooding before turning into ice, roots spreading out and growing new trees to try and act as ablative defenses against any more launched rocks, even as they fought against being encapsulated and fossilized by the pink rocks.

Tammy had restrained it with branches, and even now a few had grown roots and were burrowing halfhearted into its open wounds. It continued to thrash weakly, despite being only a head, a much-abused abdomen and some useless dangling limbs, and what little liquid blood still covering its body that Sanny hadn't consumed as bacteria-food was even now flowing and writhing like a living thing, trying to repair its wounds. Sanny landed some distance away from it, the hands on his feet gripping the branches for stability as he kept his wings flapping gently for added balance. Next to him, just under his wings, Tammy's celery-green head and torso grew out of the wood.

Sanny stepped forward to finish it off, then paused. "Do you want to take care of it?" he offered.

From the back of his head, he distinct objection and hunger, but focused on Tammy.

For a moment, Tammy stood still, moved only by the swaying of the rest of her. Then she shuddered, and he saw the roots that had grown into the Blood Bug retract. "N-no," she said. "I… I'm not sure if…"

Sanny nodded, then bent down not at all that far to pat her head. "It's okay, I get it," he said. "Look away, this will get messy."

Tammy nodded woodenly (hah!), then physically turned away. It was probably a meaningless gesture, since she was the entire tree, but…

Sanny floated toward the Blood Bug, wings buzzing like he was the mosquito. It heard and saw him coming, of course. It struggled to free itself, still as energetic as if it wasn't being eaten from the inside and dismembered to boot. Its rat-like jaws gnashed, trying to get free of the branch wrapped around it its muzzle, the tip of its proboscis broken off.

Prey.

Devour!

He was pretty sure all he needed was the head, but just to be sure…

A line grew vertically along his chest, shell ending in flesh as his internals reconfigured itself. As he stepped toward the struggling blood bug, his torso swung opening, revealing wet, pink folds of vaguely lewd looking flesh, the edges lined with teeth. From where his intestines and bowels would normally but weren't, since he hadn't put them in this body, tentacles began to curl out, rough like a cat's tongue, tipped with curling, claw-like spikes. His mandibles opened wide in sympathy, rows of shark-like teeth snapping out into position to rip and tear…

Just from looking down, he could tell there was something off about the maw in his chest. It seemed to go too deep, to descend into depths beyond the back of his spine. Though it was completely under her control as he opened it wide, tentacles lashing forward to hook onto their prey, it felt other. It seemed to salivate in perfect time to the hunger in the back of his head, and the phantom sensation of it taking a deep breath—absurd. It didn't connect to any lungs—pulsed in time with the anticipation that wasn't his own.

Sometimes, he wondered if one day that anticipation would be.

But today, only the third time he'd done this, it was still alien, in him but not of him as he stepped forward and dragged what was left of the Blood Bug from Tammy's suddenly willing branches and into himself to consume.

To devour.

As the weakly struggling monster was pulled into him, as the teeth-edged flesh grew to encapsulate their prey, he felt it. For the third time, he felt it. The shift inside, like his soul was opening its mouth wide and licking spiritual teeth to—

—Small. Weak. Barely a spark, more a bundle of instincts that kept it alive. Its last were more instincts, a desire to procreate, to relieve itself in waters like its birth and release its eggs, then… eat? Eat… eat… eat… —

—Hideous. Indescribable. Eldritch. Red. Liquid. Life. Bonds. Family. Information. Code. No, no, no, it didn't want to die, it didn't want to die, don't, please don't, don'teatm—

For a heartbeat that felt like forever, Santiago Dalag felt small and insignificant as he stared through a crack for the third time, and saw. The little, almost non-existent spark that had been a mosquito… and within it, around it, part of it, something….

And then that something was consumed, devoured, and his torso was just closing around dead, empty meat as he felt satisfaction from the back of his head so strong, and yet so alien, and yet so part of himself…!

There was a crash, and he moved on instinct, darting into the air and avoiding glistening pink shards even as they tried to put themselves in his path, the air behind them warping strangely as they did so, and instinctively he plucked the nearest pink stone out of the air.

It immediately started to grow in his hand, and he could feel perfectly geometric spikes under his palm, felt—

His mandibles fused, teeth drawing back, vocal chords and lungs to run them setting into place as the meat inside of him came to rest. He opened his mouth and screamed in the bitchiest voice he could manage, "Hey, ASSHOLE! Stop trying to kill us! We're on the same side here! So stop being an ASSHOLE!"

Far, far below, he heard the field of pink suddenly grow still.