The area of the street where the yellow newcomer and the plague dog were fighting was clear of people, who'd all drawn back to take out their phones. The plague dog grappled with the newcomer, trying to get them in its jaws. It fought like… well, a dog, leading with its fangs, batting with its front paws. Its limbs were jerky though, its inflammations working against it and hampering its movements. But it was huge, it treated the fact it was bleeding like a minor inconvenience– and if it was anything like Tammy, it was– and it had a single-minded fixation on surviving.

The newcomer seemed to possess an equal determination to kill it. The back of their left arm was thickening, becoming thick and shell-like as they used it to ward off the plague dog's jaws, even as the nails– the claws– on their other hand tried to tear at the monster's– the other monster's– sides, attempted to stab in between ribs, and generally make their body unsuitable to the business of being alive and functional. Their abnormally long and thin, almost insect-like limbs danced as they tried to avoid the paws that kept batting and swinging at them, trying to get them to stumble and fall to the ground. Their reflexes seemed to be keeping them ahead of the plague dog though, and Tammy had no idea how they were moving so fast. But the yellow one was keeping the monster in place, and its stomach was still cancerously sealing shut, so it couldn't release any more pups. This was their best chance to take it down!

"Keep it from running away this time!" Tammy cried.

Willy was running ahead of her, longer limbs– Tammy had unconsciously defaulted to her natural height and proportions, something that happened when she forgot to deliberately sculpt her form– letting her cousin take the lead. Water surged as one hand erupted in a fire hose-like stream, slamming into the side of the plague dog. The water immediately started washing off the layer of blood and pus and other unmentionable, unknowable fluids on its skin as it pushed the plague dog back. Willy directed the stream lower, refining her aim, and the dog let out a high-pitched yelp of surprise as its hind legs were knocked out from under it by the relentless flow of water.

The newcomer was on it in an instant, using its bulk to protect themselves from Willy's stream while getting on top of the dog to gain leverage. It tried to keep batting its paws at them as the newcomer shoved their left forearm between its jaws, forcing its head back and disorienting it about where to attack. Their other arm drew back, and in the split second when it stopped, Tammy saw it wasn't tipped with claws anymore.

A single, blade-like spike of bone now jutted from the newcomer's forearm, and it stabbed deep into the plague dog's flesh. It howled around the thick, hard mass of bone and shell and spines between its jaws as the newcomer bore down on it, seeming trying to keep it down despite their smaller, lighter body.

Now that they were no longer dancing around, Tammy finally got a good look at the newcomer. What had seemed like tights in the distance– even though she'd known in her heart they weren't, couldn't be– from much closer looked like the shell of a crab, segments locking together and over each other like the limbs of a high-quality articulated figure, covered in fine hairs– barbs? Spines?– and minute bumps . What had seemed an even yellow turned out to be subtle gradations of yellow and white. Their head was human-sized, too small and smooth to be a helmet, so all those glistening, slightly iridescent plates had to be its actual head, which was smooth and lacking any features beyond two large, black eyes wider than tennis balls. Their eyes were slightly bulbous and dark, with a vague textured sheen that made Tammy realize it had compound eyes like an insect…

And suddenly it fell into place. The seeming shell, the slimness… it was like someone had taken an insect and shaped it roughly like a human. Or a human had made themselves look like an insect…

She felt the hunger again, the wish to open herself up and devour them and thus make them part of herself over time…

Tammy ignored it like she'd ignore grass underfoot as Willy kept up her spray, keeping the plague dog unbalanced as she kept pushing its legs out from under it, keeping it in one place. They didn't want to have to chase and find this thing a third time today. The water around it started turning into ice, making the plague dogs attempts to stand even harder. It had only known tropical weather all its life, and it didn't know how to stand or balance on ice, particularly wet ice. The newcomer's head was jerking, as they kept glancing at her and Willy, but they didn't make any gestures to try and intimidate them to keep back.

Beneath the newcomer, the plague dog heaved, changing tactics as it rolled over on the slick, slippery surface, the spike in its side and the arm in its mouth letting it drag the newcomer with it. The surprised newcomer was pulled over the plague dog and hit the ground on its other side, smothering them beneath its bulk. There was a snap at the newcomer's spiked arm snapped under the plague dog's bulk, and it let out a cry as the spike was seemingly driven deeper into its flesh.

Yet it persisted, hind legs flailing to try and regain control of its body's position as it kept pressing down on the newcomer and rapidly shaking its head from side to side, as if intent on ripping off their other arm. The newcomer's long legs kicked and scrambled, as if trying to get purchase, but their feet– covered in shell as if to mimic slim armored boots– couldn't get enough traction or leverage on the wet, icy ground.

Tammy wasn't any good at jumping. Plants weren't jumpers, either. But her light, springy wooden body managed to compress and let her kick off with enough force to get decent air as she grew an enormous, meter-long, fine-tipped thorn on one arm and rammed it with all the force of her body behind it into the plague dog's now-exposed side.

The impact rammed the thorn all the way up to her fist, at which point it snapped as she misjudged her leap and mass and kept on moving to tumble over the monster. Fortunately, after skidding on ice for a few feet there was a parked car to catch her. The impact left a huge dent on the metal of the trunk and half-ripped off the bumper, but she was fine. Just a little scraped-off bark and crushed trunk. Didn't even lose all that much sap. She glanced at what was left of her giant thorn, a ragged, moist stump that dripped white sap, and a new one grew from it, the point erupting through the middle and leaving only a ragged ring of interrupted growth that quickly smoothed to a rough ridge as the wood aged and firmed to be tougher. People always underestimated how sharp wood can get unless they regularly had to deal with thorns. Tammy knew why they were still a common design feature of a lot of plants: they were sharp enough to go through most flesh. And isn't that what she was facing?

The plague dog was writhing on the ground now, pierced through other side as she got to her feet, the ice under her suddenly turning to water, letting her step on wet asphalt. Her attack had gotten it to roll off the newcomer, who'd scrambled back out of the way, managing to skid along to the edge of the ice. Tammy was mildly horrified to see both of their arms had been sheared off at the elbow, leaving writhing stumps of dripping fluids and exposed bone. The armored forearm was still in the plague dog's mouth, long strands of meaty muscle flopping from the stump, writhing and wiggling and… wrapping themselves around the plague dog's jaws?

What Tammy had mistaken for muscle that had been ripped out somehow resolved themselves into thin tentacles that wrapped themselves around the plague dog's head, keeping its jaws trapped around the armored forearm part as the fingers on the other end wiggled and grew like forms extruding from the ground, each claw-tipped finger becoming a head that wrapped around the plague dog from the other side before jamming their points into its flesh and hanging on like hooks. The tentacles writhed where they contacted its skin, their surface becoming red and raw, scaly and flaking, dry and cracked, gushing pus and blood by turns, and growing thick, dark lumps of cancerous growths, but they held on, keeping its mouth shut.

The spike of bone in its side was writhing too. The break there was more ragged and bloody, as if it had actually been torn off, but even as she watched the stump was growing flesh in a cleaner, faster way than the plague dog's cancerous flesh sealing, closing over the ragged stump to form even, smooth flesh. It trembled for a moment, as if shaking from the plague dog's movements… before segments of shell separated as if they'd always been there, and a lamprey-like mouth suddenly opened, revealing rows upon rows of small, curving teeth surrounding a deep, pulsating throat where Tammy could have sworn there had been bone a moment ago. The mouth bent its armored, flexible body down and bit into the plague dog's diseased flesh for leverage as it tried to push the bone spike that was now its tail even deeper in

Tammy looked over the bulk of the fallen plague dog, meeting the black gaze of the newcomer, compound eyes to mutated photoreceptors. For a brief moment, she felt the hunger in the literally inhuman gaze, a hunger she reciprocated despite herself before pushing it down hard, back into the dark rich earth of her mind, filled with the silent whispers of plants.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Then they both lunged for the plague dog.

Tammy got there first as Willy, despite her preoccupation with keeping the plague dog knocked down so it wouldn't run away, turned the ice in her path back into water so she wouldn't slip. She dove at the plague dog, fingers thorn-sharp, thorn-tipped branches erupting from her torso as she slammed into the plague dog fingers-first burying them to the knuckle. The plague dog immediately tried to buck her of, but her other branches grasped at it like hands to lock her in place, even as thorns grew, digging down, fattening into rhizomes that dug in deeper with feeder roots. The meat and blood and fluids were diseased, but she pressed on. She'd been sick as a kid, and she'd lived through it. She knew how to deal with sickness: power on through and keep on growing, keep on living. Her cells tried to change, to become deadly and cancerous and turn against her, but her body was a plant, and plant tumors didn't metastasize or become a threat to the main plant. Blood gushed and the plague dog howled as she dug deeper into it, roots growing towards its lungs, its heart, its brain, seeking its power…

There was the snap of cracking bone and wood, and Tammy jerked as she realized a part of her growing root system had just been ripped off, as well as the meaty flesh around it. She felt them, still growing, at least until it as crushed repeatedly and–

Tammy jerked again as her roots were ripped out again. And again. And again.

She didn't have eyes to close, but she'd stopped paying attention to her photoreceptors again. And whatever she'd been using for ears too. The plague dog was howling in agony, and as Tammy finally started seeing again, she found herself face to face with a monster from deepest nightmare that would have made her heart clench and start screaming at her brain to start running away from imminent death.

Plants didn't have hearts, and if she froze, well, plants generally didn't move under normal circumstances anyway.

The yellow one had pounced on the plague dog just like her, and it wasn't eating it from the inside. It was doing it the other way. Hook-like claws had grown back on the ends of its arms to replace the forearms it had lost, and were now digging into the body of the plague dog, visibly caught on ribs. Also, Tammy had been wrong. It had a mouth after all,

It had several.

At first, Tammy had thought the newcomer had grown new arms. The long extremities erupted randomly from their shoulders, and were lodged into the plague dog's body, including several areas where Tammy knew she'd grown roots. Then one ripped out a large, circular chunk of meat and roots and Tammy realized those weren't arms but mouths with powerful jaws and triangular, recognizably shark-like teeth devouring the plague dog one piece at a time.

The plague dog… and her. Because with every bite, more roots were torn out, and she could feel them slipping out of her control as they were crushed and digested.

It wasn't without cost. She could see the mouths starting to blister from her poisonous sap, but that only slowed it down as it continued to devour.

She felt instincts inside her, instincts she recognized as that of the plant, telling her to burrow in deep, to keep feeding, to feed and plant seeds intside the dark, fleshy places so they would grow and continue on, a part of her…

Tammy was not a plant and didn't consider continuation of the species at the price of her to be survival.

Still, a stubborn part of her pressed on, trying to outgrow, outfeed, and outlast… until a bite ripped a substantial amount of her rhizomes and roots out from under the flesh of the plague dog. Blood and pus was everywhere, and by the reactions of bystanders– Tammy still had no sense of smell– it must have been foul. Some of the insides of the plague dog was actively rotting, as if it was desperately trying to make itself as inedible as possible in an attempt to dissuade them…

Plants had no problem with rotten meat, and apparently neither did whatever the yellow one was. A carrion feeder, a scavenger? The shark mouths tore at the limbs to keep the plague dog from moving, shaking from side to side and even twisting around in circles to saw through root and bone and rip out huge chucks of unspeakable meat which they swallowed with disgusting gusto. Others, smaller and leaner, burrowed inside the plague dog's, feeding and feeding and feeding…

Her roots couldn't compete.

It was like ripping chocolate out of her mouth as Tammy let her fingers and branches tear away, throwing herself back, knowing she was in the presence of a faster, more voracious omnivore than she.

The yellow one seemed to have been waiting for just this opportunity. As Tammy stumbled back on shaky trun– legs, an uneven, slight askew line carved itself across the yellow one's chest like some kind of autopsy incision. She saw the interlocking teeth a split second before their entire chest simply… opens up, ribs like fangs swinging their torso wide to either side as if they hinged at the spine.

Despite not really being a vegetable, Tammy felt like she was going to be eaten.

It was a feeling that spiked and made her jump back, slamming once more into the car she'd previously abused, as tentacles emerged from the torso like a disgusting plurality of tongues, red muscles that looked like sandpaper and drew blood– well, drew more blood– from the plague dog's skin. They wrapped around the beast, too flexible for mere tongues, even as more cancerous grows and bleeding sores and–

The plague dog was pulled, whole, into the torso cavity, its cries reaching a panicked crescendo as the hook-like arms started pulling it into the open, predatory maw of the creature devouring it, as the tongues wrapped around it to prevent it from escaping, as flesh crept forward envelope it completely, as tears opened all over the tongues, revealing toothy maws of their own that bit and bit and bit…

The flesh closed in a mouth-like seam of interlocking teeth, leaving a comically, cartoonishly bloated figure with a stomach bulge literally the size of a car. The shark-toothed extremities shuddered and began to fall off, as easily as a lizard losing its tail. The now worm-like appendages began to thrash, gaping painfully, and Tammy felt slightly gratified as she recognized the symptoms of her sap's manchineel poisoning.

The bloated stomach was convulsing, and with each heave it got smaller and smaller as if its contents were being digested, even as the yellow one fell to their knees. Their face was still blank, but they were giving off the body language of someone having indigestion from eating way too much. Their fingers curled as they pressed on their engorge stomach, as if trying to physically assist it with getting smaller.

Willy's hand snapped up as if to shoot another stream of water, but Tammy gestured for her to stop. She watched in horrified fascination as the stomach got smaller and smaller, as if all reason and sense and little things like the conservation of mass didn't matter.

Tammy knew it didn't. She'd just turned into a giant tree on nothing but air and water. She hadn't even properly photosynthesized.

The bulge got smaller and smaller. Faintly, she could still hear the plague dog's cries, carrying stories of pain and agony as it was consumed. Then there was silence as the bulge finally approached a humanly-possible size, until finally it was gone, leaving a deceptively smooth and flat yellowish stomach that hardened back into shell. They stayed on their knees, arms trembling slightly, as if needing to mentally recover from what they've just done.

Despite the murmuring, pointing, watching crowds, it felt like it was just the three of them on the road as Tammy watched the yellow one shake.

Hesitantly, she took a step forward, causing the most minute splash on the still-inundated road.

The yellow head snapped up like a dog's, staring right at Tammy.

Then they leapt up, and Tammy had a moment to feel a distinct pang of envy as they managed to leaped over thirty feet straight up from a dead start and start scaling the sides of one of the buildings, claws gouging handholds on the façade. Then she was running towards her cousin, pointing after the fleeing… person. "Get me up there!" she cried, hoping her cousin would actually be able to think of a way. They hadn't exactly practiced this.

The hoodie moved as the transparent ball of water that was currently Willy's head turned to look at the scaling figure. Then her cousin grabbed Tammy by her armpits with both hands, and lifted her up, pointing her towards the yellow figure. Tammy turned her head around 180 degrees so she was facing front as her cousin angled her up slightly higher, and then she was flying through the air on twin jets of water.

She didn’t scream– mostly because she didn't have the right organs for a good scream– as her limbs flailed frantically, and she slammed into the yellow figure just as they reached the edge of the roof and were in the middle of pulling themselves up. The two tumbled, falling onto the plain, gray roofing material and into a bank of vents.

Tammy recovered first. She was a plant right now, she didn't have things like an inner ear to get dizzy from, or a brain to get sloshed around and concussed from impacts. Judging from how their unfortunate victim was cradling their head, they did.

Still, even concussed, their body language was quickly becoming belligerent as they got on all fours, a knob near what seemed like their but growing and extending, clearly becoming a tail with some kind of spiked tip as their head writhed, changing shape subtly as the pair of black, soulless compound eyes locked onto Tammy…

Praying she was right, Tammy raised both hands as a lipless slit tore itself open in the front of her face. "Wait!" she cried, bell-like sacks growing in her chest to pump air as she tried to make vocal cords without making her throat all the way human. "I surrender! I just want to talk!" Her voice came out like a loud, windy whisper, but at least they were recognizably words.

They froze, compound eyes staring at Tammy expressionlessly. Then slowly, warily, they stood, the tail they'd grown touching the ground as they stopped crouching like an animal and started standing like a human.

They were taller than her, Tammy realized, their elongated limbs giving them a fey-like, alien aesthetic, their smooth yellow head expressionless and faceless save for those eyes, and for a moment she remembered that internet horror story…

Then a slit seemed to crack open along the front of that head, right were a mouth would be. Tammy saw triangular, shark-like teeth and a bizarrely normal-looking tongue.

That yellow chest heaved, the plates of the shell visibly shifting as if they were taking a breath for the first time.

"So talk," an incongruously normal, feminine voice said.