‘Huff, huff, huff. Aaand pull!’

With a few mental huffs and large show of strength I pull my massive body a few tens of meters up. Large chunks of sand and rock fall past me into the deep as I grind my body along the slope. It’s hard work, climbing a mountain. Especially when you’re of a monstrous size and heavy enough to grind bedrock into dust. But the ocean surface is finally getting within sight. Not just with my sensing, but actually visual with my own eyes!

The pure blackness of the abyss has been receding for a while now, slowly transitioning into different shades of grey, before being replaced by a soft but dark blue. It’ll still be a while before I actually reach the surface, but over 80% of the climb is over already.

I pin my legs deep into the bedrock so I won’t slide out and take a rest for a moment. oppressive darkness. A welcome bonus is the immensely more comfortable temperature here. It’s getting warmer by the meter climbed, and I don’t mind that one bit anything is better than the only barely unfreezing water down there.

The only thing that’s less pleasant somehow is the lower pressure of the water here, which makes me feel somewhat queasy. That’s why I take these breaks every several hundred meters. So I can adapt to the new pressure and temperature. It’s definitely not because I’m lazy and don’t wanna climb anymore.

Alright! It’s because I don’t wanna climb anymore! It’s just way too hard. The control of my limbs has become better of the passing, weeks?, I don’t know. I lost track, but anyway. The control is definitely not optimal yet, not by a long shot. Although, I had fun while slithering over the seabed like a real, if somewhat incompetent octopus.

While I’m reminiscing over my past journey I can feel some of the bedrock finally give on my weight and break away, lurching that tentacle free from the side and taking a large amount of rock and sand with it. I can quickly catch myself with my other tentacles which are still anchored deep into the wall. But the damage has been done and a large part of the wall comes crashing down past me, followed by a bit of the reef above. This is nothing new, though. I’ve been butchering this wall for a while now and if you were to look down, large parts of the slope would be missing, only to be found at the bottom of the ocean.

Sigh, this would have been so much easier if I could just shoot up like a squid. It definitely would’ve been better for the island. Alas, I can’t seem to figure out how to do that one. I though squids had a special sack-like organ within they’re head to fill with water and then forcefully eject to create momentum. But I don’t have any such organ, at least not that I can find.

‘Well, if you didn’t have it, why not create it?’ Exactly, that’s what I thought as well. If it’s not there then create it. I can do it with my maw, why not with a new organ? And I did just that. I create a large sack on the underside of my large head. But it was just that, a large sack. Just a loose flab of skin I’m not able to control at all.

The maw is easy, because it is somehow ingrained within my very being. Even if I don’t like the look of it, it feels right somehow and it just comes to me. Not with a totally new organ, though. I need to make that one from scratch with every detail in mind. Every muscle, tendon, nerve, you name it. It all needs to be accounted for. And that was just too much for me. It was overwhelming. I tried experimenting with it a little, but only ended up hurting myself when the sack ended up ripping itself apart. So it’s possible, yes, but it’s going to take a long time to get that to any sufficiently usable level.

But then you may be wondering; ‘Ellen, why aren’t you using those amazing, new powers you get from your core? It would’ve made your journey a whole lot easier and faster.’ Well, the same reason, it’s going to take a long time to get that to any sufficiently usable level as well. I can influence the energy, yes, but it would be an insult to call that control. It’s one thing to accidentally blow up a cave. It’s a whole other thing to try and control merely a fraction of that without letting it go haywire and destroy another part of the ‘beautiful’ barren wasteland that is the ocean floor.

You try to control every miniscule muscle and blood vessel within your legs. Having difficulty already? Good! Now move those muscles and vessels to outside your body, multiply them by at least five, and for the fun of it exchange the blood with liquified uranium. Because that’s what it feels like. Moving the muscles will be difficult enough and even the slightest mistake will have disastrous consequences for the local environment.

But that’s in the past for now. I’ll practice with my new ‘superpowers’ when it becomes necessary. Or when I become bored. Whichever comes first. Well, first comes getting on this damn island.

==

After a good while of more climbing and slightly falling only two more times, I finally reach the edge. Great. Fantastic even. If not for one small problem.

I don’t fit in the reef!!

I’m way too enormous to fit. I’ll simply squash a large chunk of it while the majority of me reaches above the water to bake in the sun. I can’t destroy the reef, not any more than I already did. Which isn’t small by any means. But destroying it any further, that’s just criminal. And this Ellenoor obeys the law, even if those laws are set only by herself.

That doesn’t stop me from cresting the surface like a beautiful, splashing whale and admire the sight. With my actual eyes for once! Who’d have thought you could start missing colour? It takes a while for my eyes to focus, since this is the first time I’ll actually use them to see and not just differentiate slight shades.

When my eyes finally clear up, though, I’m awestruck. The sight of the island is absolutely beautiful. Large, jagged, grey-brownish peaks of a mountain, likely a volcano, with its slopes overgrown by a lush, green jungle stands proudly at the centre of the island. Between the jungle and the ocean is a small strip of pristine, white sand, stretching from one end of the island to the other. The colourful reef and azure lagoons surrounding the island are absolutely teeming with life. The parts further away from me, that is. For some reason everything is avoiding me like the plague. Just like down in the deep sea. Not that there was much life down there to begin with.

I can’t help but get a little emotional when I bob up and down on the waves, just out of reach of the pristine beaches and cool shade of the trees. It makes me think of the week before all this happened. Me, laying on that beautiful beach, cocktail in hand, while my dad is bullying my mom into playing volleyball with him and a few random teens.

…

Staring at the beach in silence, a deep melancholy settles in my core. I didn’t want to think of them. I tried so hard not to think of them, afraid that it might take my motivation away, so I supressed it. Shoved it in a corner. But now that I see that peaceful island… It isn’t fair! Why’d I have to be taken away? Why’d I have to be put in this body? I want to cry, but I can’t. My body won’t let me. At this point it’s just a prison, keeping me from even letting out my emotions.

And I hate it!

As soon as these thoughts enter my mind, a shock passes through my being. The continuous buzz of the energies intensifies, pulling me slowly out of my mental downward spiral. The moment the energies start whirling around my core like a hurricane is when I fully snap out of my melancholy. I futilely try to wrest control back, but I’m denied. As if core has a will of its own, it starts moving the whirl of energy into my right arm. As soon as it reaches the base of my arm it just surges in, but not through and out.

A large amount of Organic and Water energy surge into my right arm and heaps up within the tip, condensing there into a blob of pure energy. I react quickly and point my arm away from the island. But nothing shoots out. It stays within the tip of my arm. After a minute or so of the energy pooling into my arm, a change happens. Not metaphorically. The mass of energy is actually starting to morph my arm.

The arm itself is compressing and thinning across its entire length to merely a fraction of its original size. But that isn’t all, as around the tip a blob forms. And out of that blob five appendages are quickly sprouting. Four long ones and one smaller, roundish thing.

I stare absolutely stupefied at my arm. I’ve given up on controlling it, just letting it runs its course. But I now have a slight idea as to where this may end. And that hunch fills my heart with excitement. The core reacts once again to my state of mind, as a blinding flash of powerful energy obscures my physical sight, as well as my ability to sense my surroundings.

The lights inevitably fades away again soon after, and when it does I can finally see the figure of a fully formed human at the end of my tentacle…, and I can see an enormous octopus from another set of eyes.

Three…

Two…

One…

“What. The. FUUUUUUCK!?!?” My human mouth shouts out as my octopus-self starts flailing itself in a panic as much as it can while not throwing itself back into the deep. Which means its long arms are swaying around. Which means I am swaying around. Quite aggressively I might add.

“AAAAH, STAAAHHP IIIT!!!!” I’m getting swung left and right, up and down while I beg the beast to stop flailing me around. It only takes a second of flailing to realize that I’m only punishing myself like this, cause I am said beast. So I stop swinging me loose tentacles, and I’m immediately lurching to a standstill, hanging almost ten meters above the sea.

My human me just hangs there, taking deep breaths as it recovers from the wild rodeo ride it was just on, with its long hair a tangled mess blocking her face. While ‘I’ am busy with recuperating, ‘I’ take the time to look ‘me’ over in detail. The body hanging in the sky is somewhat familiar, yet also distinctly different.

I slowly scan my body up and down a few times. No matter how I look at it, my body has improved in every way possible. Where it was once somewhat skinny it is now lithe and a little toned. My eyes shift higher slowly, until they stop around the chest-area. “So why couldn’t this also improve!?” My human mouth spurts out. Such injustice! My whole body got toned, healthy and a bit more filled. And yet, nothing of that went to my boobs! My human hands squeeze and fondle them, trying to get them a little bigger than the A’s they are, but all that accomplishes is eliciting a squeal and making me stop as quickly as I started while the warmth of a blush spreads over my cheeks. Still as sensitive as ever…

I try to take my mind of that little (Aaah, don’t say that me!) embarrassment and move up to my hidden face. Hidden, because aggressively shaking myself around definitely did not help with the styling. So let’s first get that tangled mess of a birds nest out of the way. I pull up my human arms and try to untangle it. And it does, quite easily at that. With a few strokes it just falls straight down, like actual magic. Now the only thing that’s left to do is open the curtains. And when I do…

My jaw drops. I look absolutely gorgeous, but not at all unfamiliar. Everything is the same, yet somehow more refined. More perfect. But it hasn’t taken anything away that makes my face mine. The jaw is slightly sharper, but the small mole is still there. Lips and mouth are totally the same, yet they somehow seem to fit more in the whole picture. The same cute nose, maybe a little smaller, decorated with a slight sprinkle of freckles, which are spreading further over slightly blushing cheeks. But the eyes, they have definitely changed. They are absolutely mesmerizing. When I look into their dark-stretched pupils surrounded by a wide and glowing, green-blueish iris, I just get lost.

I wouldn’t have called myself stunning before the change, but I wasn’t ugly either. Maybe a little above the average? But now, I definitely could go as a model, if not a supermodel. I try pinching my cheeks a little, to see if this is actually real. I slightly tear up due to the pinch, but that confirms it to me. Definitely real. Oh, I hope I don’t become vein due to this…

My admiration for the new look is cut short, though, as a new shock echo’s through my body from my core. Apparently it isn’t quite done yet. I mentally prepare myself for what is about to come, but I’m not prepared for the feeling of getting sucked up by myself like I’m spaghetti. My arm quickly recedes between the shoulder blades of my human back, which is flying rapidly towards my Squoctopus body.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Within mere seconds I’ve reached the base of my arm. The sensation from my arm vanished along with it. It’s gone completely. And going by the pinching feeling at the base of my vanished arm, it’s far from over.

Right on cue my whole body starts compressing, starting from the contact point. And I’m rapidly pulled underwater. The quick squashing of my body is giving me a sense of vertigo as my large eyes are being stretched and moved sideways before also vanishing within my back, leaving me with only my human eyes to look around.

The compression pauses as my massive core reaches my back. I turn my head as best as I can to look at it and see it towering behind me, being at least ten times my human height. There’s barely anything left of my squoctopus body. My tentacles are spread around it, pulled taut between my back and the core, giving off an intensely unsettling pinching feeling.

Ever so slowly the pinch roles further over my tentacles as the get slowly slurped passed the core into my human body, as impossible as it may seem. Well, as impossible as a 250 meter leviathan fitting in a 1,60 meter girl. But as the tentacles get slurped in they get pulled out of the side of the island, making me slowly start to sink further.

Soon enough all of the tentacles are onboard, leaving only the core outside my back. The sea around is slowly darkening as I drift deeper ever so slightly. A great shift happen within my chest. All of the organs that have previously formed shift aside to make room for the core. When my lungs are squeezed flat, my hart stopped, and the rest shoved down the abdominal cavity the core pops right in. One second it’s outside of me the size of a bulldozer, the next it’s inside. Somehow.

But with it settled in place all the organs instantly shift back, making me gulp in a massive amount of seawater. The shock scares me for a bit, but I’m not in outright panic, because I’ve been underwater for months now. A little water hasn’t slowed me down in all that time. But that was before I was back as a human. Only when my chest starts to burn do I realize, I do need to breath!

No the panic sets in as I start flailing around, before gathering enough wits to make my way to the light above. They always say, ‘don’t go to the light’, but when that’s your only point of orientation, I’d like to hear them then.

The burning gets worse and worse with every stroke I make. Not realizing in my mad dash upwards that I’m going way faster than I actually should. After a minute or so I breach the surface again, or more like shoot a meter above it, before falling back down in the water and immediately getting pulled under again by a wave. I desperately struggle to surface again, but another wave pushes me back down.

I didn’t realize it at mega-size, but now that I’m a tiny human it has become extremely apparent how turbulent the ocean is as another wave crashes over me, but I can quickly get back up from this one. I need to get into the lagoon, but that’s easier said than done. In this situation tentacles would have been useful!!

…

Well, this is just getting too convenient. I actually feel something grow from my back. Something that was the first thing to go in my transformation. I don’t hesitate a moment as I reach out with the tentacle and it extends right towards the reef and curls around it. I quickly pull myself up, lifting my body a meter or two above the water, so I’m just above the waves.

The moment I’m free from the water I start coughing and heaving to get the water out of my lungs. I bit of vomit follows suit, as everything gets ejected. When that finally settles down hang there above the water, slowly breathing as spit, snot and tears run down my face. I’m spent. Trying to hold yourself above the waves as a human is utterly exhausting. I just want to lay down somewhere and rest, but I can’t yet since I’m still in the ocean, far from the safe sands of the island.

But I should be able to reach it, now that I have something to grip with. I only think for a second before aligning myself towards the island and bracing.

Then, I pull.

Way too hard.

The tentacle with which I used to pull the weight of a leviathan is way overqualified to pull a measly human, causing me to launch out of the water and shooting towards the island. It happened with such excessive force that the reef I held just breaks apart, destroying my hold and sending my tentacle following after me.

I shoot through the air flying higher and higher with a magnificent tail trailing behind me. Soon enough, though, I reach the apex. I start descending again, reminding me of my first interaction with this world. And that ended with me breaking a lot if I remember correctly.

I start flailing my arms and legs in a panic, which doesn’t help as the flailing of the counterweight that is my tentacle sends me in an uncontrolled spin. In a flash of clarity I menage to pull the tentacle back into me, but that doesn’t stop the spin it started. In my tumble I can make out that a just passed the white beaches, heading straight for the jungle. I try to brace for impact as the trees quickly approach.

The last thing I see is a particularly large tree, before hitting hit with my head at full force and immediately losing consciousness.

===

“Uuuuuuuhhh….”

I let out a low grunt of pain as I wake up, but it comes out more as a wheeze than anything. A sore neck and throat, a deep pinch down my lower back, a wrangling sensation in my left arm and other smaller pains make their presence known as I slowly wake up. This can’t be good.

I gently open my eyes, fearing the worst. But nothing seems out of the ordinary as a green carpet of leaves hangs over me. The only thing that seems somewhat strange is the massive trunk of a tree lying a meter to the left of me, and going by the rain of leaves that are still floating down, it just fell.

At first glance I don’t spot anything that’s different about me specifically, but the fact that my pelvis and legs are laying front down on the ground, yet… I’m staring up at the sky… As soon as I feel the wrongness of that statement a slight glow ignites in my chest and spreads to the parts that are aching the most. A pleasant warmth follows, soothing those same aches. The results are noticeable within seconds as I can lift my head up again slightly.

When I leave it up to take a look over my body multiple things startle me. First is the devastation to the forest is see in front of me. I don’t need to take a wild guess which way I came flying in from. Second, the size of my chest, which must have grown a size or two. Third, the glowing, tattoo-like lines spreading all over my body. And fourth, my butt being visible behind my chest. So somewhere down there, my body has twisted halfway around. Great. Nothing to worry about.

I let the warmth do its job while I lay my head back down and keep the mental breakdown at bay. Deep breaths do the trick, but even deeper breaths are necessary when my lower body starts shifting in its entirety until the wrenching in my belly is gone. Only now do I dare to move and I make to sit up, only to be held down by my left arm. I quickly take a look, wondering why.

The sight of my arm ending just below the elbow, where it disappears under the trunk is enough to bring the breakdown right back. “Deep breaths, Ellen.” The thought of wanting the tree off my arm is enough for my core to react, though. A pulse spreads from my chest through the tattoo-lines over my arm, down under the tree. A second later the trunk collapse in on itself, before disappearing entirely. It got annihilated with only a simple thought.

“Why does it react so often today?” Weeks of flailing over the ocean floor and nothing. And now I’m shifting to entirely different creatures with a mere hint of a thought! My body even heals itself in the blink of an eye. My flattened arm, yes, literally flattened, is already up and running again. Nothing feels different as I clench my fist a few times. I sit up in a daze checking over the rest of my body.

All seems fine again, even the small aches are gone completely. The only thing that still remains is are the tattoo’s spread all over my body. When I inspect the once on my arm a little closer, I immediately spot there are two lines twisting around it until they reach my hand, one ending on the palm, the other on the back. I quick check of my other limbs shows identical tattoo’s. Two for each limb, twisting around it until ending on the hand and feet.

Unlike the twisting going on on my limbs, the lines form an intricate design all over my torso, congregating in a circle at the centre of my sternum. Which brings me back looking at my breasts, which also have a few lines crossing it. But most of all, they are definitely bigger now. Let it be known. The world is right, the world is fair! All it took was squeezing my entire octo-body within to gain two cups.

…

Don’t think about it. It must somehow make sense. I just don’t see it right now.

I stand up and stretch my body, feeling none the worse for wear. Looking at my belly you wouldn’t think that just a moment ago it was twisted 180°, nor would you now think my arm was paper thin. Even the tattoo’s are slowly fading away, leaving me with only my white skin. And naked. Completely and utterly naked.

“But we can fix that later. It’s not like I’m going to come across someone else on this forsaken island.”

With that in mind I’m first going to make my way back to the beach, because the dead silence of the jungle around is starting to creep me out.

=====

“Bleeeh” “Pfffft”

With a graceful flail and ladylike sounds I try to get the umpteenth web out of my face. Not a spiderweb mind you. These things are made by wasplike insects. At least they somewhat looked like wasps. I’ve seen their black-yellow striped butts clearly as they shoot into an unseen hiding place when I come near. They seems to be deadly afraid of me, but that doesn’t stop their webs from doing their jobs. They might not seems like much as they skitter away at the slightest sight of me, but they’re some of bravest things around. Most animals are long gone before I arrive, leaving the area around me eerily quiet. It’s like I have an aura surrounding me, repealing most things and scaring everything else.

…

“Wait…”

I close my eyes quickly focus on my sensing. It’s a lot harder to focus on it in my human form so I haven’t really bothered yet, but if my guess is right. Yup, I can see it right and clear. The energy is leaking from me in massive waves. It’s so thick I can even sense my surrounding with it. So, I am actually emitting an aura that’s repealing everything! Great! It’s a miracle I’ve seen any animals at all!

“Sigh”

I need to rein it in somehow. I’m curious to see all the animals on this island. The plants are meh, they look mostly like their earthen counterparts. Just big and leavy with strange fruits or small and leavy with strange fruits. The animals though. Catfish crocodiles? Web spinning wasps? If this planet can grow an octopus the size of a hill, can you imagine what else it can spit out!? I can’t wait to find out.

I don’t need it to keep me safe anyway. With my super strong tentacles, intense healing ability and annihilating, I doubt anything short of a nuclear bomb is going to be enough to stop me. Or something like myself, but at this point I’d put that higher than a nuclear bomb on the danger scale. Hopefully we’re so rare, there are only like a few in the entire world. I don’t see this world surviving if there are a ton like m….

“Pfffffft.”

Another web hits home. I’m so done with this, I want to get out already. I’ll figure the aura and the danger scale out later. Just focus on not walking into another web.

It takes probably another hour before I finally pass the treeline and can plant my feet into the loose sand. Now that I look out over the beach and the sea, something catches my eye. Something I haven’t noticed before. I follow it up from the horizon, all the way towards the sun and back passed behind the mountain. It seems extremely out of place, being denser and longer than any plane trail I’ve ever seen.

I take a while longer to myself. Laying in the warm sand and admiring the sky. When the sun disappears behind the mountain I get up again. But not for long. Now that I can take a moment I realize how tired I am. I just want to sleep for a while. I haven’t had the feeling once while being a squoctopus, but now I really want shut my mouth, lay down and don’t move for about eight hours.

I do the bare minimum to find some shelter under a few large leaves, with a few more large leaves laid down underneath me. As soon as I lay down on it and close my eyes, I’m gone. The pent-up exhaustion finally catching up with me.

===

And like that, a few days pass. In that time I’ve construct some prime real-estate, standing proudly on the edge of the beach. It’s definitely not the ramshackle hut over there, nope, nope. I’ve also found some delicious mangonut fruits. Not that I need to eat anything. Nor drink, really. I just need to submerge into the water every once in a while and I’m good to go again, but it still feels right to eat a few things a day. Lastly I’ve gathered a whole bunch of big leaves and driftwood, and assembled that with the trusty Ellen.CO Multitool (trademark pending) into a makeshift floaty. Best decision I’ve ever made.

“It really is paradise here.” I mumble quietly under the bright evening sky, my back resting gently on the leavy cushion, while my hands and feet hang in the warm water. The sun is almost reaching the horizon, seemingly connected to each other with the white line in the sky, which stretches on overhead and past the island to the other horizon. Not being able to sunburn while laying unprotected in the sun’s full glory all day is a total perk of this new body. The days of premium lobster Ellen are far in the past, mwuahahaha.

It might look like I’m doing nothing, but I’m actually training my aura and corresponding sense. I can now rein it in to within a 100 meters or so from me. It’s now only strong enough to scare the wildlife within five meters of me, instead of everything within a mile. And that’s underwater! On land there’s basically no aura at all! Unless something were to come within armlength, they wouldn’t even notice. Good progress if I say so myself.

Looking around underwater without disturbing the whole ecosystem is a real treat. It is just as beautiful as the view of the sky. The lagoon and surrounding reef are teeming with life. Unfamiliar forms, but also plenty of familiar things, such as fish, crabs, lobsters, starfish. I’m sure there’s some difference with the species on earth, but I find it amazing that so many species have a close likeness their earthen counterparts.

Some weird disturbance within the reef makes me sit up on my floaty. The fish are reacting to something and swimming away, heading away from the northside. I intensify my aura, trying to get a better look at what’s going on around the island. When the aura finally reaches the northside it spots an anomaly. Something is breaking apart the reef on this of the island, just out of my visual sight. The weird thing is, I can’t sense what exactly it is that’s the destroying the reef. Like not at all. It’s just a bunch of nothing slowly dragging a distinct line through the reef. But that should be impossible, right?

I don’t get to ponder over it for long, because the resistance of the reef is starting to take it’s toll and dragging whatever it is to a standstill. I stop focusing on my sense and try to listen. And low and behold, the sound of creaking wood and something crashing down echo’s over the water. It’s hard to pick out over the sound of the ocean and the jungle, but it’s definitely there.

Now, do I investigate, or run away like a coward? I don’t even hesitate one second before starting to paddle my floaty back to the beach, jump off, secure it and take my first steps northward.

“Momma didn’t raise no coward!”