Rick left his workroom and its comforting wall of monitors. Turning around, he locked eyes with a crowd of men, his underlings. And with a nod, he left them and proceeded down a long walkway toward the second testing ground.

As he did so, he could feel his body shaking, partly from anticipation, but mostly from fear. So he tried to move confidently, hoping to put them his men at ease.

Collecting Core's blood would be a much more intimate process, and one he wouldn't trust to machines.

The second testing area was little more than a simple platform. Two machines rested upon it. Both were designed to pierce Core's skin so her blood could be collected. Since the viscosity and other characteristics of her blood were unknown, various techniques had been brainstormed to collect and store it.

There was an outline of a giant hand on one side of the platform; a place for Core to rest while Rick's team did their careful work.

Rick stepped onto the platform and calmly walked forward even though his soul was breathless. Core had already placed her hand on the outline and Rick was so overwhelmed by her presence that he couldn't even raise his eyes to meet hers. Instead, he kept walking forward.

The trembling of his body grew more intense with each step, and just when he thought that his body wouldn't let him continue any closer, he began to perceive the details of Core's hand.

At first, her hand was only a vague and terrifying shape, like a black, undecipherable outline cutting through a blanket of bright fog. But as he drew closer to it, its details became clearer.

Core's hand wasn't an unmoving wall of flesh and fingers, but the hand of someone who was working hard to keep from fidgeting, though their blood would soon be shed.

Her fingers were feminine and beautiful, and her nails smooth and perfectly shaped, though as he looked closer, he could see the tell-tale signs of dirt trapped underneath them.

Moving up from her fingers, he followed Core's pale skin as it moved up her arm, a smooth surface of alabaster covered in a field of waving gold. The gold being the the fine hairs that covered her skin, which unlike his own, were large enough to catch the wind.

By the time he reached Core's fingertips, he was himself again. The fear which had threatened to freeze his body, had been smothered and destroyed by the simple desire to speak with his favorite specimen.

"Am I too close?"

"You can touch my hand if you want."

"May I?" Rick said. Walking confidently between outstretched fingers, he reached up and affectionately patted one of Core's knuckles.

"I can feel it. Thanks, Rick."

In that moment, Rick realized how long in had been since Core had received physical affection from another human being. He gave her knuckle one last pat, and with a flourish of his lab coat, headed toward his men, who waited just outside Core's omniscient gaze.

...

With a subtle shifting of his body language, Rick set his men loose.

They didn't emerge immediately, which was expected. And when they did, their expressions were grim, which was also expected. From Core's perspective, it probably looked like they were just being serious about their work, and Rick hoped that her innocence would hold out.

Rick's commands were terse and direct, communicated in a series of physical signals they had practiced for hours before this pivotal moment.

Every man stood at his assigned position, and the first piece of testing equipment was wheeled out. It was nothing more than an extendable arm with a medical blade attached to its tip, though it was was built to be extremely precise, and the pressure that could be exerted on the blade could be set to a value that spanned several decimal places.

Core's hand was quite relaxed as the blade's curved edge approached her thumb and rested against her skin. After conferring with Core, Rick gave his team permission to begin.

The pressure behind the blade gradually increased until it began to indent Core's flesh. But there was still no blood. Her skin was tougher than he expected. He was tempted to give Core the good news, but didn't want to startle his men. So he waited and the blade's pressure continued to build as the indent grew deeper.

But the technician who controlled the blade soon reached his limits and retracted the blade without a warning.

"That wasn't so bad." Core said. "Wait, is something wrong?"

"You broke our machine."

"What?"

"A fascinating result! Your skin is a lot tougher than I expected. You truly are a remarkable specimen."

"Thanks. So what happens now? I can probably pay for it."

"Now we try another machine. A much more dangerous machine. I didn't think we'd have to use it, but things are never easy with you." Rick said. "We are ready to proceed, if you are. I said the machine is dangerous, but I was only talking about myself. A tanky hand like yours has nothing to fear."

"How does the machine work?"

"It fires a giant beam of fire."

"Awesome!"

...

Core broke the second machine as well. Its mechanisms could only handle so much heat stress at the highest output settings, and after the first few flashes of plasma, it became clear that Core was immune to heat weapons as well as bladed ones.

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It was truly an exceptional result. Of all the outcomes Rick had predicted, this was the least likely. After the outcome of the second experiment was clear, Rick's underlings had evacuated the testing platform, as planned. Rick originally planned to leave with them, but his mind was giddy with possibilities and so he had decided to debrief Core in person. It was a dangerous deviation from his plan, but his excitement was so great that he discarded the risks, only to be confronted with them in one humiliating moment.

Now that they were alone, Core began talking to him excitedly. Her hand was still glued to the platform, like she forgot it was there, and Rick's ears buzzed with the youthful sound of her voice. She was measuring her pace for Rick's sake, and although he was engaged in the conversation, his eyes never rose to meet hers, until he attempted to raise his head in an unguarded moment.

His body froze in an instant, at the same moment that it screamed for him to run. But though his body was frozen, his mind was free to blame himself for his foolish mistake. His reaction was expected, and he had taken every precaution to avoid this moment. Yet, he had let his guard down, and saw Core not as an ordinary girl gifted with an extraordinary body, but as that body itself; a headless mountain of flesh that would erase him in the next moment.

But more than his fear, Rick felt a deep sense of self-loathing. A humiliation that sank into the marrow of soul, and as he stood transfixed, this feeling of humiliation began to thaw his nerves, like a steady trickle of cold water thawing a frozen corpse. The change was slow, almost imperceptible, and this very fact fed Rick's self-loathing until it birthed a new emotion.

This one Rick couldn't describe, only that it was a hunger he needed to satiate. And if he failed to satiate it now, it would never be a satiated, but would instead become a wound that would become as much a part of him as his own soul.

Rick forced himself to speak, yet couldn't perceive if any words were coming from his mouth; so deep was the numbness that had overcome him.

Then like a whisper, he heard Core's voice, a whisper that was almost silent yet so clear that the sound of it sent sparks of warmth into Rick's body, forcing it to awaken. The desolate scene before Rick's eyes began morphing, changing first into the brightness, then descending into darkness again. But this new darkness wasn't unmoving; it was a pattern a of warm shapes, like an earthy patchwork of distinct fabrics. And there was a form beneath them; the feminine curves of woman's waist, and the welcoming hills of her bosom, and then the welcoming sight of a youthful and earnest face.

The face too descended, until Rick's eyes were met by two pools of warm gold.

They were Core's eyes, right? Yes, she was his specimen, and he was...Rick...an ambitious scientist. Curious...the color of her eyes were completely uniform; how had he not noticed it before? Had he really been asleep?

"I've never seen your eyes from this angle before. Can you see the speckles in my eyes?" Rick said.

"I think so. But maybe I'm imagining it."

"Don't ruin the moment."

"I guess we are having a moment, huh." Core said. "Sorry, it's new for me."

"I'll cut you some slack this time. You are the one humoring me, after all. But it's funny."

"What?"

"Nothing, it's not important."

"What?"

"You have very gentle eyes."

"Yours are too, Rick."

...

"Why don't you start phase 3?" Rick said, pointing toward another platform off in the distance. Core turned her yes to follow his gaze and perked up when she noticed that the platform wasn't empty; a large box sat upon it and the box looked suspiciously like a gift.

"I"m starting phase 3, please stand back if you don't want to get squished."

"Confirmed. Stepping back to give the young lady room."

Smiling, Core scooted away from the platform to give herself space. Then she rolled over onto her back, before standing to her feet. It was a complicated process, which made it fun.

She looked at Rick for a long moment before drifting over to the box. Collapsing to her knees in a heap, she studied the box before lifting off its lid with both hands. Inside she saw something unexpected. She didn't know much about it but she knew two things. One, it was cool. And two, she was meant to wear it on her head. So she did and waited for something to happen.

"Remember how I said we would have to live with your body's limitations?" Rick said. "Well, that wasn't exactly true. Those limitations only apply in the real world. But this device allows us to create a new world. A world where we can sip from the same coffee."

Core felt increasingly antsy as she realized the truth behind Rick's words. So antsy that she didn't notice that he was teasing her until it was too late. The headset wasn't finished yet; she was only wearing an empty shell and it would take a few more days to finish the parts that made it work.

She was a little annoyed that she'd been betrayed by the man she trusted most, but she chalked it up to her childishness and decided to forget it.

Hopefully he didn't notice...but she didn't count on it.

...

Rick's over-sized desk had grown less empty, but there was still a lot of work to be done before it truly felt homey.

He had purchased several new monitors, and the comfy pictures they constantly displayed helped create the aesthetic he was looking for, and he was rather proud of his newly planted succulents which had settled between a tangled nest of mice and keyboards.

But the newest addition to his desk was also the grandest.

It was nothing more than a small picture frame displaying a teenage girl in an awkwardly friendly pose, but it energized Rick's soul every time he looked at it. If anything, Core's missing bang had made her face even more charming; she was truly a woman who looked best with messy hair.

She was also a bit of a growing enigma.

Her DNA results had come in, and as expected, she was completely human. Her hair's makeup was also completely ordinary, save for its unique color. The DNA coding behind its unique shade of white was known, though it had never been known to occur in a human before. So far, it was the only anomaly that could be directly traced to her kaiju form.

The cause of her transformation probably existed deeper within her DNA, in the 5th or 6th dimensions, but analyzing that deeply would take decades, even with the most advanced analytic tools. And the cost of such calculations was prohibitively expensive, even for his deep-pocketed employers.

Which meant there was only one avenue left for him.

Her blood.

There was an ancient saying in biology: "Life is in the blood." And in the case of kaiju, it had a double meaning.

K-energy was generated in the blood.

K-energy itself was quite mysterious and possessed powers that seemed almost magical. It was the source of the kaiju's power, and without it, their existence would be impossible. For as powerful as kaiju were, they were still beings of flesh, and flesh operated within very precise limits.

It was precisely K-energy that allowed them to surpass these limits. Without it, kaiju would collapse under their own weight, or die of asphyxiation before they mustered the strength to take their first breath.

There were competing theories about K-energy's nature since ancient times, but no progress had been made since Hunkeryork's founding. All theories agreed that the key to understanding it must be found in the blood.

And this was the reason that Rick had decided to become a scientist who specialized in kaiju blood while he was listening to his tutor's lesson on the importance of learning piano.

Rick picked the up the picture frame and ran his finger along its smooth edges.

Core's flesh was surprisingly resilient. This meant that her body likely contained high amounts of K-energy. A highly unusual result for a terrestrial kaiju. Unless...

Maybe he'd been categorizing her incorrectly. In which case...

Rick set down the picture frame and began typing furiously, desperate to record his growing epiphany in a digital spreadsheet.

As he continued typing he mumbled excitedly to himself, and reached into a mini fridge underneath his desk and pulled out a can of iced coffee with practiced ease.

…

Rick smiled deeply in the darkness. "Silly, silly Bonabelle."