Sanny had been running as something slim and quadrupedal (and any resemblance to a mythological virgin detector was sheer coincidence), with the front limbs doubling as wings when he had room to leap and glide. The body had been all fast-twitch muscles that laughed in the face of fatigue and let him keep on accelerating when normal biology would have long stopped moving in agony. He didn't stop running even as he felt the muscles growing, bones lengthening and thickening, and his body's overall mass increasing. His limbs grew thicker to support the weight, the formerly narrow hooves on the end of his limbs hardened and spread, bones reconfiguring, growing and changing to form structures able to distribute the increasing weight of his body, going from deer-like to elephant-like, changing his gait by necessity.

Still, he charged, maintaining speed as well as he could as he increased in mass. Motorcycles, bikes and corpses were stepped on, poking painfully on his hooves until they started crushing under his weight, which both flattened them and started producing folded edges that dug into his soles like caltrops. He ignored the pain as the injuries knit shut, flesh fusing back together as he shouldered aside stalled cars, then kicked them aside, then just stepped on them with a satisfying crushing feeling. He moved like a charging ape, with long forelimbs and a short, barrel-like torso, head small and sunk in between the shoulders, little more than a bump with a bony plate for a face to protect the eyes and soft tissues. Well, protect it from things that weren't bullets, anyway.

However, there is no stealthy way to grow fifty feet long. At least, no stealthy way to do it when you were also running flat out, anyway. Traditionally, the way to grow fifty feet long with no one noticing was to do it in a large body of moderately deep water.

The flooding in Manila wasn't that bad… yet.

So the soldiers shooting at Laking Kamay definitely heard and saw Sanny coming, which was probably why he was greeted with several dozen rounds of assault rifle fire to his limbs, torso and face. Holes were blasted into his compound eyes, and bullets lodged into his thickening, leathery skin and the shell on his back covered in triangular, teeth-like spines. He ignored the little stings as he kept running, head low, neck muscles tensed and ready. So what if they'd shot a few of his eyes? He had dozens more, and they were repairing themselves as he grew, with more growing in other places on his body, giving him omnidirectional vision.

Laking Kamay definitely heard him as his feet pounded cracks into the already damaged pavement of the street. The beast turned towards the sound, and Sanny fought his reflexive urge to swerve aside, to not hit or get hurt, or somehow worse, hurt someone else.

Fuck that. The whole point of this exercise was hurting someone else.

The multiple eyes let him aim the triangular, tooth-like horn protruding from the center of his bone mask.

His feet pounded cracks into the already much-abused pavement as he closed the distance between him and Laking Kamay, bullets now spraying his rear and ow that was undignified. If he had a working digestive system, he'd have worried about something going up it as he tried to keep the horn pointed at Laking Kamay's center of mass. The monster roared, spreading its arms wide and rearing up to its full standing height, towering over many of the storefronts as it rose up to six stories in a threat display. It looked like a cartoon ghost, standing there with its arms raised over its head, but Sanny wasn't some easily scared stoner who ate dogfood.

Sanny kept charging, crushing everything in his path, flattening bodies and vehicles under his weight, the buildings on either side of him blurring past. He never deviated, head and shoulders low to aim the horn into Laking Kamay's torso and spine. At the last moment, the kaiju wavered, stumbling back a step and turning partway as if hoping to scramble over one of the buildings to either side. The hesitation cost it, as Sanny slammed right into its belly, boneplate and shoulders striking with a sound like a truck getting into a traffic accident.

He felt the shock of impact vibrate thought his head, neck, shoulders and spine, felt bones break and knit themselves back together in moments as he pushed Laking Kamay back, the monster crumpling and folding over Sanny's back as it roared in pain. The shell on his back managed to support the weight, and he felt the kaiju clawing at his back, but it did what thick, heavy shells were supposed to do, which was protecting the soft, squishy bits. The teeth-like spines also did what teeth-like spines were supposed to do, which was tear and bleed Laking Kamay when it slammed into them, ripping open the palms of its huge hands as it clawed. Sanny turned his head, twisting the horn and tearing open the wound. He felt thick, hot blood and more disgusting viscera spewing from the wound, and he instinctively closed the eyes behind his bone mask.

He had to close his nose too, because at this range the stench coming from Laking Kamay was awful, and that didn't include the added indignity of waste that was probably coming from ruptured intestines. Gritting his teeth—at least, the teeth of his drone, since his main body had no mouth or teeth right now—Sanny ripped his head downward, tearing open Laking Kamay from stomach to thigh, sending more blood, ropes of entrails, and viscera raining down Sanny'd head, chest, forelimbs and finally the road.

For most animals, this would be a debilitating and definitely fatal wound, so the Laking Kamay screaming bloody murder and agony was completely expected. Unfortunately, the monster didn't just roll over and die. The wound began to knit shut, muscles convulsing to press the ragged edges of the torn flesh back together, even as Laking Kamay's legs wobbled, some of the muscles in one thigh too torn to support it properly. Sanny stumbled back as most of Laking Kamay's weight fell on him, still ignoring the bullets peppering his hind legs and—ow, that went in dead center! There was no main street for it to go up, but the path was the same, and some of the air-filled bladders giving his torso size and rigidity popped.

Most of his torso was gas bladders, which doubled as having lots and lots of lungs for him to respire with, and pseudo-muscles when contracted in sequence. Without a digestive system, reproductive system, most of an endocrine system, and excretory system, he was able to cut out a lot of mass and weight from the torso. Most of the weight in it was muscle along the spine and rib cage. Despite how she could, if not completely fuck the square-cube law, at least lewdly hold hands with it, mass and weight were still factors that needed to be taken into account, and being part-balloon had been the solution. It also meant that he was very much a lightweight, which was why he hadn't pushed Laking Kamay onto its ass with his charge.

His limbs, however, were muscle wrapped around a core of dense bone, so even if he didn't have a lot of mass, he did have strong limbs and, now that Laking Kamay had collapsed on him, the leverage to use it. Bracing his legs under him, Sanny pushed against the ground to drive his horn back into Laking Kamay's torso, and he felt more hot, fluid start to drip down on his face. It pooled in the eye holes of his bone mask, and Sanny felt it burn over the softer, more delicate tissues there. Judging from where he'd been able to impale, it was probably stomach acid. Sanny twisted his head again to open the wound out further, and more blood, stomach acid, and a few partial-digested corpses fell out.

Laking Kamay roared again, deafening to the ear holes on his head and annoyingly loud to the ones around his rear forelimb's knees. It was a scream of pain, high-pitched and full-throated, and Sanny wondered if this counted as 'sociopath torturing small animals'. Or was it psychopath? No, wait, they didn't use those terms anymore, not enough confusing multi-syllables and obtuse meanings for today's medical establishment—

And that was when Laking Kamay tried to gouge out his eyes.

It wasn't a raking attacking, curling their fingers and trying to tear across the organs. There was no bending down and using teeth. Laking Kamay raised its right hand from where it had been trying to claw a Sanny's shell, and jabbed down straight for Sanny's left eyehole with fingers fully extended. His eyes there burst like rotten tomatoes, and the fingers kept going, digging until it reached brain. Sanny felt the long fingers curl, the claws—growing, lengthening claws!—tearing chunks out of his brain, and causing several of his senses to go numb as the parts of the organ in charge of their sensory data was turned to meat mush, heard the vibration as claw hit the back of his skull. The finger hooked, tearing open his other eye from behind, and wow, despite the bits of brain directly behind it already being pulped, loosing his other eye somehow still hurt.

The pain didn't last long, the nerves deadened and disconnected as irrelevant. Already a new brain was growing in the middle of his torso, near his heart and his man-bits and the gas bladders he was using to regulate the pressure in all the other gas bladders in there. That was fine. He could function in a body without a brain for a while. It would just take more active attention on his part, as he took direct control of the muscles and the sensory input of the eyes positioned on his shoulders, but Sanny managed to twist his head and catch Laking Kamay's arm on the edge of his horn, cutting through the tendons and veins there like he was helping someone die in a bathtub.

Blood flowed, getting into the normally absolutely sterile part of his body where he kept his brain, but since that brain had been trashed it didn't really matter and…wait, what was… ah. Lack of sensory handling mean no input from his various inner ears, so of course he was losing his balance. His skin was only numb in patches, so he felt it when slammed against the side of the building. Laking Kamay stumbled back, thankfully pulling its finger out of Sanny's now-abused brain pan as Sanny fell, the walls of the building beside him cracking, then buckling, than partially collapsing as he tried to get it to support his weight so that—

Ah, there went one of his leg bones… and just in time to feel the full agony as the second brain came into being and started accepting all the sensory input again and argh! Sanny immediately cut off the sensory input from the head, focusing on the eyes he still had. He could still move, what had broken was a forelimb, and it was already knitting back together, the bone warping and distending and shortening to be properly aligned.

Unfortunately, so could Laking Kamay. The soft tissue damage, while agonizing, was much easier to heal from than a broken bone than hadn't been properly aligned before it had been healed. Its wounds had already stopped bleeding as the monster dropped down into a crouched stance again, partially using Sanny's body as cover as soldiers moved to other firing positions. It moved sluggishly from what Sanny recognized as blood loss, but if it was anything like him it was already producing replacement blood.

It was completely focused on Sanny now, and why not? With him collapsed like this, he was probably looking like easy prey and if that had been the plan it would have been great! Since it had not been the plan, this sucked. It bared its teeth at him, and Sanny noticed how the tip of its tongue glowed. Was it some kind on anglerfish thing? That explained the teeth and some of the fin-like growths, though wasn't the lure supposed to come from the forehead?

The light wasn't strangely hypnotic though. It was just a light, and it was in Sanny's face as Laking Kamay lunged, mouth wide open. Sanny could actually see the lower jaw detaching as he tried to move his head to bring the horn into play, tried to move at all, but Laking Kamay was out of range as a circle of needle-like fish teeth bit into Sanny's bicep. The one on the uninjured limb, which wasn't uninjured anymore. The teeth went straight in like candles into a cake, plunging down their full length. Then, with a ninety-degree rotation of the monster's neck, a circle of meat was ripped out of Sanny like a knife coring out an apple.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Sanny saw Laking Kamay's throat bulge hideously as the entire circular chunk of his arm meat was swallowed whole, the bulge traveling down the throat and down to the gored stomach, where it actually tore open the wounds to bulge out hideously. The edges of the meat were still dripping blood as it poked out from the injury.

It gave a wonderfully cathartic target as Sanny's other, now-uninjured forelimb, the bone restored, jabbed straight in for a sucker punch, the rudimentary and still-growing spike jutting out of the forearm ripping the stomach open again. The stomach ruptured once more, though with less gore and stomach acid this time. The chunk of meat from Sanny stayed in place however, because it had grown spiked tentacles and eyes and small tearing mouths that were mostly just circles of muscle with teeth, and had managed to anchor itself around one rib, the mass of flesh warping and mutating as it tore at everything within reach as it tried to fight its way up to the heart.

Wonderful things, drones.

Laking Kamay fell onto its back from the dual attack, tearing at its own chest as Sanny pushed himself up to his feet. The wound on his bicep was healing, teeth growing around its ragged edges as the raw, torn flesh smoothed, forming a new, gaping mouth that opened and closed hungrily for a moment before the teeth knit together, the injury sealing shut. The muscle mass had been reduced, but it was growing back, and the teeth were fusing into a line of spikes meant to deter that happening again. One forelimb reached out, the fingers on the end finally opening up to grab at Laking Kamay's ankle as claws finally began growing from the fingertips. He wasn't letting this one get away!

So, of course, Laking Kamay kicked him. It's wide, webbed feet were broad and backup up by leg muscles meant to propel a large aquatic creature through water at stupid fast speeds, so it hit like an absolute bitch. Gas bladders squashed and distended, popping along deliberate failure points and violently expelling air. At these scales, biological balloons weren't very good for harmful transfer of kinetic energy, especially if they were meant to break before they could. Sanny's torso caved in at the point of impact as air violently exhaled from his mouth, because all that air had to go somewhere and it also had to be replaced somehow too.

Laking Kamay kicked again and again, deflating more gas bladders, the sort-of-ablative armor wearing down to protect the actual bones and organs that mattered, before Sanny's other forelimb—arm—slashed out with claw-tipped fingers, raking at the attacking limb. The flesh was thick and felt like hard rubber, his claws not getting enough purchase to tear it open, when it wasn't skittering over scales and deceptively thick fur. Still, it was enough to ward off the attack as Sanny got his other limbs under him, still holding on to Laking Kamay's ankle. He wanted to roar, but he didn't have the organs as he hammer slammed his other fist into the knee of the leg he was holding. He dislocated every finger in that hand in an explosion of agony, several of the phalanges breaking, but was rewarded with a dull crack and another scream of agony from Laking Kamay as one knee started bending the wrong way.

Ah, he'd always wanted to do that. Pity it wasn't to one of his highschool classmates, especially that annoying class president he'd had his senior year, but he'd take vindictive, spiteful pleasure in what he could get.

Further attempts to hammer were thwarted as Laking Kamay raked at him with its own claws from both its elongated hands and its other, remaining foot. Its chest was a bleeding mess—Sanny could see its heart and one lung, while the other lung lay punctured—while the mass of flesh that had come from Sanny's shoulder lay torn to shreds on the road, still twitching but the muscles cut in too many places. He gave it up as a lost cause, and it fell silent, now just slowly dying meat. There were no more fingers on Laking Kamay's big hands, just long, wicked, curving claws that grew out of what had once been a palm, connected at the base by vestigial webs of flesh. They tore at his forearms, their curving, hooked tips ripping at his flesh even as ridges of spikes began to grow to deflect them. On its back, Laking Kamay fought like a wild animal, claws raking and stabbing at every opportunity, uncaring of how its wild, flailing movement tore at the buildings around it, elbows slamming into walls as Sanny defended himself with his free arm, jabbing back with the growing spike on the forearm and not letting go of his prey's leg—

Something exploded between them. It literally exploded, a burst of heat, light, sound, concussive kinetic energy and, he later realized, shrapnel. Many of his eyes and ears at his front burst, rendering him deaf and blind in the front half of his body. The gas bladders on his torso had burst too, and he actually found himself fallen on his side, covered in blood.

Tears ripped open on his flesh as he started growing new eyes and ears, looking for Laking Kamay even as Sanny reached out with his power and looked for people. There, in a building two blocks away, in front of a shattered glass window, were a group of soldiers with some kind of shoulder mounted rocket thing. He looked through their eyes, where they had a good view of both him and Laking Kamay, and had obviously taken the free shot from the two of them staying relatively still when it had presented itself.

"You're assholes, you know that," he said, saying it with a drone and transmitting the nerve signals the drone heard of to their ears so they'd hear the phantom sound of his feminine voice talking to them. "Just assholes. This hurts. I'm on your side."

Their confusion at the sudden voice lasted long enough for him to take stock of their situation as Sanny berated himself for loosing track of what else had been happening around him. He'd been ignoring the bullets, because they were all too small to actually harm him, but that had led to him ignoring the soldiers too… and the people he'd been evacuating, now that he realized. At least he no longer felt such people around him. Just him, the soldiers, and random animals not of Hominidae.

He hoped she hadn't gotten bored and given the people he'd evacuated something unnatural while he'd been occupied. His body was healing, wounds sealing and gas bladders inflating as a layer of metallic scales began to grow slowly. Across the road from him, Laking Kamay was screaming, its own black eyes popped and bleeding, its hands broken and limp, even as muscles on it convulsed, the bones inside distending back into shape. Sanny forced his body to stand, getting his weight under him even as he had to heal from the injuries produced by… whatever it was the military had shot him with, he didn't know, he wasn't that kind of nerd. That caused the gunfire to redouble, and a few fired what in hindsight were probably underslung grenade launchers.

Unfortunately for them, he wasn't ignoring them anymore, and it was trivial to take control of their muscles to alter their aim, sending the grenades somewhere else. The group of soldiers with the shoulder rocket… thing-y had finished reloading, but Sanny just assumed direct control of the one actually holding the weapon and had him shoot out into the bay. As fun as it would probably be to fire military ordinance by proxy, he didn't want to risk getting caught in the AOE of one of those things right now. Meat getting shredded like that hurt.

"Really? You're shooting me again? If I had an umbrella, I'd throw it at you."

Reinforce the image. It won't matter now, but they had to give a report about this, didn't they?

Across from him, Laking Kamay opened its mouth wide and chomped at the road, the pavement tearing as its teeth stabbed and scraped across it swallowed a dead body in a single gulp, then bit down again at another and another. It was shaking, though since Sanny couldn't tap into its physiology he couldn't tell if it was from pain or hunger.

…

He should probably stop it from eating people, shouldn't he? Even dead people. It might be some kind of power up, and just letting monsters do something without knowing how it affects them is how it can recover stranger than before and beats the crap out of the whole team…

Sanny managed to get his feet under him, then reluctantly put his arm on the building beside him. Between Laking Kamay and the exploding ordinance, it was thoroughly trashed, so it wasn't like he actually made it any worse when he used it for support. He rose upright, gingerly balancing on hind legs that were completely unlike what he was used to, without the long sole to distribute and balance weight, instead using a strange circular tripod arrangement. It made him have to keep his feet apart and knees slightly bent so he could be ready for any sudden changes in balance. He had to lean back as he raised his arms in front of him, claws growing out of one as the other collapsing into one long, sharp bone spike covered in barbs, both he and she deciding that trying to rebuild that hand on that limb was futile at the moment.

Laking Kamay had fallen on all fours, claws scraping on the ground, limbs spread wide to other side. Its leg had healed, the same way his arm had. Beating each other into physical trauma was so temporary, since all monsters had some degree of physical regeneration, but usually it took longer to recover from broken bones than mutilated flesh, giving him time to inflict more damage so it would stand still long enough for him to be able to devour it safely. This one, however, had recovered from it as fast as he would have. He might have to break its bones while exsanguinating it to get it to—

...

The claws. It had changed its claws. Actively changed them. Like he could.

…

Oh, shit…

…

Well, it was fine. This thing was obviously just a mindless animal. Well, not exactly mindless, but it didn't have the human level intelligence and creativity needed to get full advantage of a power like his. It got big and gave itself claws, that was it…

From the general area of Laking Kamay's ass, something long and supple was growing and beginning to wag back and worth. A tail, obviously, and it was getting longer and longer, whipping back and forth and starting to slam into buildings behind it. Windows would have broken if they weren't broken already, and—

Laking Kamay leapt at Sanny like a frog, the formerly heavy, wallowing creature suddenly uncoiling with explosive force. The ground where its limbs had rested shattered, one of the craters breaking into the sewers below as the skinny monster leapt at Sanny's face, mouth open wide, trying to go for another bite. It was unfortunately not stupid enough to go for the bone mask where his face nominally was, going for Sanny's other shoulder, but he raised up his spike hand, muscles straining to lift tones of meat and bone burning with pain that was ignored and powered through. The spike went for Laking Kamay's face, only for it to twist its neck like it was boneless, moving out of the way. Claws struck, one raking at his bone mask as if trying to claw at his eyes, the other jabbing straight into Sanny's torso. The former left bleeding marks but mostly rebounded off the bone, while the latter goes straight in and stabbed through two gas bladders.

He immediately flexed the muscles around the bladders, trying to entrap the claws, but they're too sharp and straight, and get pulled back out cleanly. Sanny felt the wound burn and recognizes necrotic venom and nerve toxins. His other hand, the one with functioning claws and fingers, was snapping forward, grabbing the whip-like tail in the air, spiny barbs jabbing towards him from below and at an angle, a sucker punch if it hadn't been completely obvious and—

Laking Kamay's tongue snapped out, once more frog-like, and the glowing lure in the tip was gone, replaced by a needle barb.

Sanny imagined more than saw some clear fluid dripping from the injector as it pierced his chest, and squirted an obscene amount of venom into his flesh, his blood starting to coagulate immediately.

His chest felt like it was on fire as Laking Kamay's feet hit the ground, which was all the time Sanny needed to stab down with his bone spike. He felt the spike just skittering off some ribs and away from the spine, but the spike punched clean through the rest of the flesh before stabbing into the much-abused road below. Sanny felt the tip snap off as it struck the ground, but that was fine. The hooked barbs all along the rest of the spike anchored it in the thick, rubbery flesh as Laking Kamy lets out a roar of pain.

The venom in his chest continued to burn as Sanny ripped his forearm, spike and all, off at the elbow. Laking Kamay's tail slipped through his grasp, so he reached up and ripped the envenomed areas off his chest, revealing raw, wet flesh that ballooned outward, seemingly filling in the gaps as he threw the punctured and infected gas bladders at Laking Kamay's face. It struck full on, and there was a slapping sound as loud as a firework going off. The flesh writhed, still alive and metabolizing even if it was venom compromised, clenching and wrapping around the monster's face, blocking its eyes as Sanny stumbled away, getting space as he grew back his arm, muscles peeling off from his bicep and wrapping in skin before braiding together and fusing into a tentacle, a triangular and serrated spike starting to grow from the end of it.

The muscles peeled off the bone of the forearm embedded in Laking Kamay's back, skin wrapping around them as well as they grew spines and barbs and suckers and teeth and began ripping at its flesh.