Ah My Goddess Fan Fiction / Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Pangea ❯ Down the Hatch ( Chapter 8 )

A Tale of Two Wallets

 

(An Altered Destiny)

 

Pangea

 

(The Land That Time Forgot)

 

Written by Jim Robert Bader

 

Proofread by Shiva Barnwell

 

 

“Akane-chan, wait up!” Ukyo pleaded, “I need to talk to you, dammit…!”

 

“Why bother?” Akane fumed, “It's obvious enough what's going through your mind, Kuonji. You've chosen her over me, what more is there to say about it?”

 

“Hey, don't be like that!” Ukyo protested, “I'm not out to hurt anyone, I just think we maybe, you know…ought to take a minute to kinda sort things out. I mean, we can still be friends—!”

 

“DON”T!” Akane whirled around with such suddenness that Ukyo nearly ran into the winged girl, forcing him to back-pedal by a half a step as Akane waved a finger under his nose and growled, “Don't you dare say we can always be `just friends!' And after the way you've been leading me on…I even broke up with Ryoga on account of you! Doesn't that mean anything? Don't I deserve at least a little consideration?”

 

“Akane-chan…I…” Ukyo found himself struggling for words, his entire mental script thrown out of whack by the look of hurt in the Tendo girl's eyes, his cursed body reacting to her nearness on a level that his normally feminine consciousness would have found most peculiar, and somehow he managed to wind up feeling very small in the process, as though it really were his fault that this whole complicated situation had come about in the first place.

 

“Give it up, Senpai,” Makoto said from directly behind him, “She's right, you made your mind up by choosing me, and it won't help to let her go on imagining that there's something else between you, right?”

 

Ukyo gulped, finding himself quite literally between a rock and a hard place, sandwiched between two volatile girlfriends who were each intent on claiming him for their own and who just as clearly viewed each other with disdain, leaving him to realize that whatever words he said next were likely to hurt one or both parties.

 

“I…I just want…I mean…” he fumbled to try and get his mental processes back in order. On the one hand he genuinely did love Makoto and wanted to make a life with her in a relationship between equals. On the other hand…he just as genuinely liked Akane and could not bear the thought of seeing her hurt. What to do to get himself out of this fix he wondered, even as the odd stray thought drifted through his mind to ask what Ranma himself might do when confronted by such a pair of amorous wild cats?

 

Obviously the resolution to just kiss and make up was not even in the picture. Akane and Makoto were glaring at one another as though they were about to come to blows at any moment, and from the way in which they were positioned it was dubious if Ukyo could even get out of the way in time to avoid being a casualty in their cat fight.

 

He had hoped that soaking their cares in the nearby stream might calm everything down, but all that did was clean the muck off their bodies while reverting Akane and Ukyo into their cursed forms once again. Still, it was better than being coated in the slime of those digestive juices they had been bathed in while he and Makoto had been trapped in that snake's big stomach. He could still remember what it felt like to be trapped within the intestinal walls of the demonic creature, feeling tendrils probe and penetrate her every opening as she and Makoto writhed together in the throes of a tentacle-rape hell, doomed to die in each others arms while slowly dissolved and crushed to death within the creature…

 

He shuddered at the remembrance and said, “If it's all the same to you guys, can we shelve this until later? I'd like at least a little time to get over what just happened, and we still have to find out if the others are all right. No offense to either of you guys, but getting eaten by a giant snake really takes a lot out of a girl, know what I'm saying?”

 

Makoto did and reflexively shuddered as her own memories flooded back with graphic clarity in all their strangely lurid detail, then she said aloud, “Ah…yeah, I know just what you mean, Senpai. Going out like that…it's all kind of freaky, though…I have to confess that dying in your arms together would have been awfully romantic…”

 

Akane blinked as she looked from one face to the other then turned about on one heel and said, “Whatever.”

 

They started forward again but Ukyo still found himself feeling trapped between the tug-of-war being waged between both of his girlfriends. Makoto made a point of taking Ukyo's hand between her fingers, and naturally Ukyo squeezed her back, but still she could not keep from glancing at Akane, who was staring resolutely ahead and angling her wings so that they cut off the line-of-sight between herself and the “happy couple” walking beside her.

 

An odd sort of silence fell over the three of them as they followed a curious trail that lead from the edge of the forest to a relatively wide field full of colorful flowers. They halted midway at the base of a tree and glanced around to get their proper bearings, and Ukyo took a moment to take stock of their situation, gratified that he had at least recovered some of his belongings, like his trousers, bandoleer and spatula, but not his shirt, which left him effectively bare-chested. His manly profile was lean and hard with well developed muscle definition, and he noticed that both Makoto and Akane were stealing glances his way, albeit in the latter case the angry Tendo Angel was doing her level best to pretend otherwise, scowling as if upset at her own weakness.

 

This was not Ukyo's idea of an idyllic jungle vacation, but at least the two women he most cared for were not sniping at each other and threatening to come to blows, which was something at least to feel grateful about. To avoid addressing the matter directly he shaded his brow and scanned the nearby mountains, trying to find something that would give them a clue about which direction to turn, and in an attempt at lightening the thickness of the mood he spoke at a calm and casual level, “No sign of the others hereabouts, but you guys see anything that could give us a clue about where to head, Sugars?”

 

“Afraid not, Senpai,” Makoto replied as she, too, scanned their colorful surroundings.

 

“Maybe I should take to the air again and look around,” Akane suggested, “I could cover a lot more distance.”

 

“Good idea,” Ukyo nodded, “We'll stay here and wait for you to get back, Sugar, then we'll try and see about tracking down the others.”

 

“Too bad Usagi and the others haven't tried to make contact with me,” Makoto sighed, “But I don't even know where my communicator went down. I don't mind traipsing around in the buff so long as it's around you, Senpai, but if we run into anybody else and they see me like this…well…” she blushed from head to toe, which was quite a lot of her to see pinken, not that Ukyo minded all that much.

 

In truth Makoto was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful in her total nudity, those huge, perfectly shaped breasts of hers erect and firm without requiring a bra to support them. Her legs were lean and firm with muscle, and not an ounce of baby-fat was showing, though she was quite soft to caress and could set his pulse to racing just by breathing deeply.

 

Ukyo privately wondered if Makoto's protestations about being unable to “find” her clothing were entirely on the level. After all, Makoto could create her Senshi guise out of virtual nothingness, but Makoto insisted that she had lost her “Henshin pen,” the magical wand-like item that she used during her transformations. Without that her costume had dissolved entirely, leaving her fully nude since what passed for normal clothing had long since been ripped apart during their travels.

 

Still and all, it was entirely within the character of the pony-tailed girl to want to take advantage of the situation to use her body as a means of further leveraging Ukyo into a commitment. If so then she need hardly have bothered because Ukyo was already turned on just being in her near proximity, and were it not for his trousers he'd be sporting an enormous hard-on. That would certainly make it difficult to explain to Akane just how tight he and Makoto were these days, even if it was taking all of his self-control and will power to resist the urge to grab his taller girlfriend and bend her over so he could plant his “meat” between her legs, to pump her for all that she was worth until they both came together. If he did so then that would most certainly drive a permanent wedge between himself and Akane, something Ukyo was reluctant to do in spite of all his promises to pledge himself exclusively to Makoto and forsaking all others but his beautiful Senshi partner.

 

Fortunately for his peace of mind, a faint murmur, “Somebody hit the snooze button, I wanna sleep another few minutes…” answered Makoto's wistful mention of her friends

 

“Huh?” Akane blinked, “What…?”

 

“Would you mind keeping it down over there?” another voice complained in tones of sleepy irritation, “I've got this headache…”

 

“Me too,” a third voice said before a short-haired girl sat upright right next to Akane, a girl who resembled her greatly save for the fact that her eyes were blue, not brown, “I have the oddest sensation…and what is that curious taste in my mouth…?”

 

“Huh?” Akane blinked before the other girl turned to look at her, then in a single chorus they both chimed, “You?”

 

“Ami-chan?” Makoto gasped, seeing her fellow Senshi was stretching herself out and quite as naked as herself.

 

“Eh?” Ami Mizuno turned a startled look from Akane towards Makoto and said, “Mako-chan? But…what…?”

 

“I said keep it down, what are you, deaf?” an angry Rei sat upright, only to blink in dismay at seeing who it was who was staring at her naked body, which prompted her to hastily cover her breasts with both hands, “EEEP!”

 

“What's the matter, Rei-chan?” Usagi sat upright and glanced around, then said, “Huh? Where did you guys come from?”

 

“Where did we come from, Sugar?” Ukyo said somewhat wryly as he studied the position that the blonde and her two brunette friends had been lying in and drew the logical conclusion, “We were looking for you, of course. Didn't expect to find you like this, though. Lemme guess…you started smelling something sweet and fragrant, and the next minute you were screwing each other like rabbits?”

 

“Hey, I resemble that,” Usagi mildly protested before she took notice of the fact that she had been cuddled up in a sandwich with Rei and Ami, the latter one forming the middle, “Uh…oh…ah…yeah…think I see what you mean. This…certainly is awkward…”

 

“You think?” Rei snapped before turning a curious look towards Ami, “Uh…you mean…you…we…that is…?”

 

“Er…apparently so,” Ami replied, blushing all over before staring back at Rei and adding, “Why, don't you remember?”

 

“Ah…” Rei actually considered the point then gave a sheepish look towards Ami that spoke volumes about what she could remember.

 

“Oh wow,” Usagi blinked, “We…did all that together? Freaky…”

 

“Well, at least you're all right,” Ukyo turned a glance towards Makoto, “That's something to be grateful for, eh Sugar?”

 

“Oh yeah,” Makoto said with a half-smirk, “Guess I should have seen this one coming for quite a while now.” All at once her expression changed and she took on a look of alarm before adding, “Where's Minako-chan?”

 

Her fellow Senshi all blinked together, then Rei asked first, “Isn't she with you? I mean…”

 

“Usually you two get into everything together,” Usagi said more bluntly.

 

Makoto hastily glanced away before saying, “Um…not this time. I sure hope she hasn't gotten herself eaten by some damned giant snake, or trampled by a monster…”

 

“What was that?” Ami asked her curiously.

 

Makoto hastily got a “deer caught in the headlights” look before blushing furiously and saying, “Er…nothing…”

 

“Well, this is pretty serious, guys,” Usagi got to her feet and offered a hand to Rei and Ami, “We can't be separated in a place as dangerous as this. We're going to have to search for her and my cousin to find out what might have happened to them…only…er…anyone see our clothes anywhere about?”

 

“Clothes?” Rei blinked as if hearing a word for the first time for which she had no direct memory, only to blush again when she saw the looks her friends were turning in her direction.

 

“Now is hardly the time to stand on modesty, guys,” Akane flexed her wings and indicated that she was wearing nothing more than a pair of shorts and a tank-top (which you could see right through to discern her nipples), “Who cares what we look like when this place is full of creatures who must think we look good enough to eat no matter what we're wearing?”

 

“You got a point there, Sugar,” Ukyo remarked, giving the assembly of attractive looking girls his best masculine appraisal, “All we'd need right now is a dinner bell and those beasties will probably come running from kilometers around to see what's cooking here, so if it's all the same to you, I think we should gather up our stuff and start moving to someplace safer, like an active volcano.”

 

“Now see there,” a voice suddenly surprised them all, coming from the sidelines, as it did, “That's not entirely accurate you know. Active volcanoes can be safe to travel around only so long as there is no seismic activity worth mentioning, but the volcanoes around here have been known to blow their stacks time and again like regular clockwork…”

 

Akane and the Senshi all reacted with dismay as they caught sight of the one addressing them while Ukyo's hands went to his baker's peel and bandoleer of throwing spatulas, tensing at the ready as a troop of Velociraptors appeared at the edge of the clearing, every one of them a colorful reptilian killing machine stalking towards them on two legs. Much to their astonishment, however, Ryoga and Minako were also present near the center of their midst, walking unmolested towards them.

 

“It's all right!” Ryoga called out, “They're friends!”

 

“Friends?” Usagi asked in girlish tones two octaves higher than normal.

 

“Are you feeling okay, Sugar?” Ukyo asked, remaining still in a posture of readiness.

 

“Hey yeah, it's okay, they'll cool, guys!” Minako called out, “They call themselves the Velari, and they treated us good. At least…I don't think they want to eat us or anything like that…”

 

“Young lady,” one of the Raptors said in heavily accented Japanese, “If we did then we'd never have had such a stimulating conversation. In fact, you'd never even see us before we ate you.”

 

“That's comforting,” Rei noted, refusing to relax as her every sense cried out that these were dangerous creatures who could strike at any moment.

 

“Oh my,” Ami said as she hesitantly took a step forward and stared directly at one of the creatures, “You are…Velociraptorus Draconum, am I correct?”

 

“Why yes,” the individual so indicated replied, “An quite charmed to meet a fellow sentient of your culture and breeding. You may call me T'shalkri, leader of the crèche you see before you.”

 

“Mizuno Ami,” she indicated herself, then smiled nervously, with obvious excitement in her eyes as she added, “You speak quite well…is that a resonating echo chamber that you use to produce human-like sounds?”

 

“It suits us as well as your ape-like larynx,” T'shalkri responded, “Charmed I am most certain. You have the look of one who spends much time in research.”

 

“Why yes,” Ami replied with delight, “I must say, this is quite extraordinary, an entirely new experience for me…”

 

“The feeling is mutual I assure you,” T'shalkri inclined his head in an appraising manner before turning and addressing the others, “Took a bit of effort for us to track you down. It really isn't safe for you hominid-types to be running around in circles in a predator-infested area such as this. My crèche and I wish to offer you our services to act as guides so that we may reunite you with the rest of your companions. Your downed airship is over in that direction, and if we hurry we can catch up to them before the others get here to spoil things.”

 

“The others?” Ami asked with a lifted eyebrow.

 

“My dear, do you imagine that we are the only sentient beings on the whole of this island?” T'shalkri enigmatically replied before turning to the rest of his fellow reptiles and saying, “Of all my crèche I am the only one who is fluent in your language, but if any of you know King's English, then we will be happy to answer your questions while we take off in search of your airship. Don't mind our appearance, we are as odd looking to you as you would seem if you visited our village. Pray that we reach the others in time to avert real trouble and we might be able to assist you in getting home to your own country.”

 

“Wait!” Akane said, “What about my sisters, Kasumi and Nabiki?”

 

“If they're the ones we tracked down earlier then there may be a bit of a problem in that,” T'shalkri gave them an apologetic nod, “We'll explain about that later, but now we should be moving…”

 

“Hey,” Makoto glanced around as if only just remembering something, “Where's that Mon-Mon character who was with us a few minutes ago?”

 

“She said she wanted to circle back and look for somebody,” Ukyo shrugged, “Beyond that I didn't ask too many questions…”

 

 

“Hello? Peorth-sama? Are you there?”

 

Mon-Mon glanced from side to side and seemed perplexed over something, then paused to consider what to do about the matter. A moment's thought was all that was required before she drew her ever-handy lute in hand and began tuning up the strings, and only then she began to play a musical number, choosing the chords quite carefully before finding the right combination of notes and strumming them with precise key patterns.

 

The air shimmered and a gap in space and time appeared, and through this the Concubine Priestess stepped forward, passing in an instant between one space and another, to emerge out on the other side a short distance away by the measure of cosmos-spanning constants. Yet here she found the quarry that she was after, and to no great surprise came upon the massive snake-like body of the Egyptian Goddess, Neferti.

 

“I thought as much,” the Courtesan sighed, “Just like Peorth to bite off more than she could chew…or should I say vice versa?”

 

She stared at a noticeable bulge in the snake's mid-section then walked up to the contented looking had and said, “Excuse me, Divine One…but do you have a moment?”

 

The snake's unlidded eyes took on a lazy focus then with a sibilant hiss she replied, “What do you want, Morsel?”

 

“I'm just satisfying a curiosity,” the Courtesan replied, “Peorth challenged you and lost, correct?”

 

“Of course,” the serpent smiled (as best a snake can smile, that is), indicating the bulge in her body.

 

“And by the rules of challenge you get to do whatever you want with her for the duration, correct?” Mon-Mon continued.

 

“For a day or two,” the snake said contentedly, “Which should take me just about that long to digest her.”

 

“Is that wise?” Mon-Mon inquired, “You know that it is forbidden by the system for one divine being to extinguish the light of another.”

 

“Rules like that are so boring,” the serpent pouted, “I prefer to make my own rules up, and what are you going to do about it, hmmm?”

 

“Well, that all depends,” Mon-Mon explained, “I am a servant of Benzaiten, and if I put in a word or two with her she might make trouble for you by reporting you to the system administrators of heaven.”

 

“Your point is?” she serpent hissed, “I remember Benzaiten, one of the Seven Lucky Gods, correct? So, you're her servant, Morsel. How very…interesting…”

 

“Nonetheless,” Mon-Mon replied, “I would very much advise against keeping Peorth for as long as it takes to reduce her to her nutritional components. I am pledged as a priestess to prevent such an evil deed, and if forced to do so I will take the appropriate action.”

 

“You?” the snake seemed to mock the concubine with her regard of cool cynicism, “I think that would be most unlikely.”

 

“Do not underestimate me, daughter of Set,” Mon-Mon cautioned, “I am more powerful than you might imagine to merely judge me by my surface.”

 

“Powerful beings do not frighten me,” Neferti replied, “I delight in consuming them so that I might devour their divine light. Come at me if you dare, but if you do you should prepare to join Peorth as I intend to eat you.”

 

“You think that I am that easy?” the Consort responded, “I warned you before not to underestimate me.”

 

“You think that I'm impressed with your bravado?” Neferti sneered, “You may be a priestess, but to me you are nothing but an appetizer. But plead for your life and I might consider sparing you…for a bit.”

 

“So, you still insist that you will not release your claim to your fellow goddess?” Mon-Mon asked.

 

“Peorth and I are old friends…we go way back,” Neferti flicked her forked tongue between her massive jaws, “I always knew one day that I would eat her, and I am delighted to say that she is every bit as delicious as I have long imagined.”

 

“You leave me no choice then,” Mon-Mon replied, “I must therefore oppose you.”

 

“And I am tired of talking to my food,” Neferti sniffed, “So…are you prepared to get eaten? You have no fear about it?”

 

“Should I be afraid?” Mon-Mon raised a pale eyebrow, “As a servant of Benzaiten I have nothing to fear from the like of you. In fact, I dare you to eat me.”

 

“As you will then,” Neferti opened her jaws wide and suddenly her tongue shot forward to warp itself around the bared legs of the priestess. Mon-Mon had barely a moment to register this fact before the tongue retracted, yanking her off her feet and drawing her relentlessly into the open maw of the impossibly huge creature.

 

The snake clamped its jaws together and swallowed, creating a second bulge that went down the length of its neck to join the first bulge near its center. Neferti smiled and lay back to enjoy the rays of the sun upon her scales, humming softly to herself, “Delicious…they don't get much tastier than that one. Now to begin absorbing her vital essence…”

 

Neferti was silent for a long, intense moment while submerging her consciousness into a probing awareness of what was going on inside her own body. She could feel the concubine struggle and kick a bit as she fought against the stomach muscles that now contained her, and in due course the flexible appendages that lined her stomach reached out to engulf the priestess, immobilizing her while probing about her openings, gradually forcing their way into all three of her orifices as Mon-Mon squirmed and struggled against her containment. Soon she was as helpless as Peorth, who already was enjoying the penetrating stimulation of Neferti's hungry tendrils. If she could have closed her eyes to savor the moment she most certainly would have, delighting as she did in the sense of total power that she held over a rival goddess as Peorth still struggled and kicked while taking it all the way in up the ass, in the mouth and in her vagina. It always gave her such a thrill when her victims put up a fight, it made it all the more savory when she pumped them up then drained their vital essence.

 

In all truth she most delighted in the gradual process of digesting her prey, and female mortals were the most delightful with their combination of openings and softer, more pliant natures. Stimulating them from within helped elicit the most exquisite of emotive energies as sexual passion replaced survival instinct and helped to bring her victims off in a combination of trembling climaxes that helped to sweeten the taste of their energy as she gradually absorbed them. Not for her was the quick release of death to be granted until she had measured her fill of all that her “dinner guests” had to offer, and only at the end, when they had nothing left to offer, did she grant them their release. So had it been since becoming the patron of this island and discovering her appetite for the flesh of tender mortals, and this morsel in particular was an especially tasty little dish that she would relish probing and digesting for a very long time. Almost as sweet as absorbing Peorth's energies when Neferti contrasted the two together. In fact, it was almost as if the servant of Benzaiten had a spark of the divine within her, as though she were more than merely mortal and…

 

Eh? Neferti would have blinked if her snake form had eyelids. Her awareness of all that was going on inside her stomach told her that this Mon-Mon character had folded up into a fetal position around that musical box she had been clinging to like a religious token. In point of fact the blonde was struggling to bring a hand over the strings of her lute, with the other gripped the neck in a distinctive manner and…strummed a chord that vibrated into a combination of intensifying energies, pooling within Neferti until it reached crescendo levels, and then all at once…

 

All at once it exploded from within her, and Neferti's huge body lifted from the ground as she convulsed in unexpected agony, her mouth widening to twice her body diameter as she suddenly spat flames and vomited out the contents of her stomach.

 

Mon-Mon slowly picked herself up out of the muck of mud and stomach acid that she found herself amid, turning to see an unconscious Peorth laying close nearby, no worse for the wear. She smiled in realization that her desperate gambit had played itself out exactly as intended, then turned to look back at Neferti, who had reverted back to human form and was quite down for the count, looking sick to her stomach as though she had eaten someone who disagreed with her immensely.

 

“I told you it would be a mistake underestimating me,” Mon-Mon smiled, only to glance down at herself with a grimace, “Of course…I didn't know it would be quite so…disgusting. I'm going to have to take another bath now, but when you wake up we are going to have a talk about the proprieties of your conduct…that is if I can convince Peorth not to take action.”

 

Her resolve thus so stated, Mon-Mon went to the side of the goddess and once more lifted Peorth into a fireman's carry, then headed back to the nearby river to wash the goddess down while Neferti slept the sleep of the guilty and perverted…

 

 

Nabiki's Journal Continues:

 

The steam was rising and my breaths were becoming much more shallow and labored, I was having trouble focusing and my vision was blurred as I struggled to remain conscious. More than anything else I wanted to let go, to relax, to release my hold on life and cease struggling altogether, anything just to bring an end to my torment as I slowly cooked to a boil in that stewpot, convinced that I was about to fry and would soon wind up a bullion feast for my hungry hosts and the Director who commanded them like a god, Akuma Zesutoru.

 

“That's it!” the big chief said as he kept the cameras rolling away while continuing to view me through the lens of his beefy hands as I was being boiled upon his directions, a casualty of his demented quest to fulfill an artistic vision that had already claimed too many lives and had turned an entire village into a backlot set for the ultimate erotic horror-snuff movie, “That's what I've been looking for, that look of peace and resignation, the certain knowledge that you are about to become one with eternity, to venture to that great beyond which is a mystery to both priest and scholar…”

 

I glared at him as best I could with my blurring vision, only to gasp as somebody ladled a giant wooden spoon full of hot soup over my head, shocking me as I felt as though my brain was being cooked inside my skull, even as my flesh treasonously responded with an electric shiver of pure eroticism, and to my stunned surprise I had an honest-to-kami spontaneous climax!

 

I was taken aback to find my body convulse and spasm in the throes of an unexpected physical reaction that seemed to imply that I was getting seriously turned out by the fact that these guys were out to eat me. I squirmed helplessly within my bonds and felt my toes brush the hot metal of the pot surface. My ankles and wrists were immobilized but ropes connecting them were looped around me in such a way that my every motion brought them rubbing up against my clit and vagina. I bobbed around in that brew and felt those ropes tighten around me while digging into my sex and cramming the vegetables and mix stuffed up my ass and pussy further inside me while I bucked and moaned in pure ecstatic glory, almost as though I was getting double-reamed by a pair of giant dildos.

 

“Oooohh,” Akuma moaned as though he were sharing my orgasm, “That is the perfect moment of bliss…to capture it on film for all eternity, that is truly beyond inspiration! You should be proud of yourself, Pai, you are about to become immortalized in cinematic glory! Oh yes, this will be my finest creation ever, the one that redefines the cinema and makes all my sacrifices worthwhile, just to attain this one most perfect shot of a woman on the edge about to yield to the ultimate surrender.”

 

“Get stuffed,” I muttered under my breath, now in possession of my wits once again and feeling horribly foolish over behaving like that in front of total strangers. The fact that I'd just flavored the broth with my own cum juice made my humiliation all the more complete, and—worse still—I could even smell the special flavoring that I had created, which—accompanied by the rest of the aroma rising up all around me, smelled like something really delicious was cooking—and three guesses just what was making my tummy rumble the most since I'd unfortunately missed out on breakfast.

 

Yep, that old special ingredient, me. I was shocked to find that I was getting hungry smelling my own flesh heating up, and damn if that didn't add to the perverse eroticism of my crazy situation.

 

This left me feeling lost and helpless with a certain sense that I was lost and it was nearly all over. Ranma and Shampoo had failed to materialize to rescue me and I had only a minutes more to live before the heat overwhelmed me completely and I lost myself to that kami-forsaken stew pot!

 

As if to add to my humiliation, the photographer named Snap spoke up and said, “Should we move in close to capture the look in her eyes when she goes, Boss? Just like with Pai the first time we cooked her? You know that the best part always comes when you look into their eyes just before they go, that moment between when you can see the life in them fade out, when they go from living to meat. That's always my favorite time when I can get the best still pictures…”

 

“Not yet you fool,” the Director snapped testily, “I wish to savor the moment of her agony just a little longer, and only when she is about to expire will we capture her transfiguration. Yes…Pai was so glorious when she gave herself to the camera that first time so long ago…so long ago…oh, but she was such a classic performer…”

 

“That she was, Boss,” Snap replied, licking his lips as he added, “And she sure was tasty.”

 

I could see nods and hear grunts of assent from the other performers, and all around the general consensus seemed to be that the actress Pai Takura was a magnificent feast whom they had all dined upon with great gusto and enthusiasm. The fact that they had cooked and eaten a fellow human being seemed hardly to bother these guys in the least, especially since they had done the deed repeatedly ever since, taken woman after woman by force and turned her into their supper until the only women left were either too old and stringy or too fat to appeal to the tastes of the director.

 

But still I had to try one more time to make these lunatics see reason, “Please…don't…don't do this…please…” which was the best that I could do since my thoughts were too incoherent to frame a more rational speech pattern.

 

“Too late for you, girl,” Snap said, “But don't you worry, you won't suffer much, just like Pai didn't suffer either. It'll be over and quick soon enough, after which we'll cook you a while longer until your meat is soft and your bones are elastic, then we'll pull you out and peel the meat away and save your head to make a trophy that we'll dedicate to the Snake Goddess, Neferti.”

 

“Snake goddess?” I gasped, wondering why the sound of that had me even more worried all of a sudden.

 

“Yep,” Snap continued, “Then we'll toss your bones back into the broth, along with your meat, and cook you a while longer to get the marrow out, and then we'll serve you up and everyone will give a toast in your honor. You'll be the Queen of the ball and you'll live forever inside us, you'll be a part of us and we'll be an extension of you and your strength will become our strength and we'll be stronger because of you, just like we were after we ate all of the others.”

 

In spite of myself and the way that I kept drifting in and out of semi-coherence something about those words registered a note with me and caused me to open my eyes in belated realization. I closed my eyes again and opened my inner eye, seeing with more than my conscious perception right to the true heart of the matter, and in an instant I understood with crystal clarity just why these clowns wanted to eat me.

 

I mean, sure, you can joke about women being as tasty as food, like calling us “dishes” and other safe euphemisms that imply that we exist only for the benefit of our menfolk. What is cannibalism after all but the ultimate exploitation, the final expression of devaluation and transformation in which a human being is taken as a symbolic metaphor for life itself in all its messy complication, and that by the act of consumption they somehow transcend the limits of their own masculine bodies?

 

A woman is indeed the fountain of life, the creator and life-giver who nurtures the child from her womb to adulthood, sacrificing of herself to insure the perpetuation of the species. Women are the core of all societies and without us there could be NO society at all, a fact overlooked by the patriarchs who have sought to oppress us, who have viewed us purely as domestic maternity dolls who spread their legs and take it.

 

Oh yeah, and if we should happen to distract them from loftier, spiritual pursuits, to tempt them to wallow in the flesh and the writhing sea of erotic hormones, then it's all our fault and we need to be punished for it, of course. It's all our fault after all that men are weak and fragile creatures unable to control their own baser lusts and urges, we're such natural temptresses and harlots that the only woman who gets praised is a virgin Madonna, and that's only so long as she remains “chaste and pure,” a symbol of unattainable perfection.

 

A woman also symbolizes hope for the future, but these clowns had lost all sight of the future and had no hope of anything so long as they followed their leader with his lemming-like obsessions. They had nothing more to live for beyond Akuma's madness, so what did it matter if they became extinct from their own actions? Pure nihilism and fatalism had replaced the joy of life for these people and substituted in its place a kind of wandering resignation that could only express itself in negative behavior patterns and general madness.

 

To them I was a symbol of all that they had lost and sacrificed for the vision of Akuma, a man so completely immersed into the idea that life was meaningless and could only be defined when placed on the edge of death itself that he had forgotten that there was any other purpose to living, which kind of makes his philosophy the ultimate form of life-denial. The only way these boys could satisfy their hunger for the joy of living that they had forsaken was to consume the symbol of all that they had renounced, to take me into their very being and to physically merge with my substance so that my flesh would become a part of their own bodies. In this manner they hoped to also take my life essence and share it among themselves, to transfigure their own mortality by means of my sacrifice and thus to take part of the ultimate savage Eucharist-like communion.

 

Pai Takura had understood this well when she came up with the suggestion of offering herself up as a feast for the sake of the others. Faced with likely starvation and with no hope of leaving the island she had chosen suicide for the sake of art to give her death an appropriate meaning that would fulfill the dreams of the director whom she idolized like an adoptive father.

 

On the other hand, if I were faced with the prospect of spending the next twelve years having to listen to him rant his existential nonsense, then I might have jumped into the stew pot voluntarily myself, which ought to let you know just how far into madness he had sunk in pursuit of his vision.

 

The natives who had lived here before the advent of Akuma had been a peace loving tribe of cannibals living at one with nature in economic competition with beasts far too savage to be tamed completely. Mostly they would dine on roots and grubs or whatever wild game they could catch, or on the vegetables and fruits that they cultivated in their gardens, but once in a while when food was scarce they would draw lots and sacrifice one of their own for the sake of the clan, a practice that had gone on for countless generations and which had helped insure that the tribe maintained a stable population that was just viable enough to sustain itself without overconsumption of the resources on that damned island.

 

Thanks to Pai, however, this rare event of feasting on a family member became their mainstay and had all but guaranteed that the tribe would be extinct before the end of another generation.

 

But Pai had not been so much concerned with this as she been with what she saw as a quick end to her suffering and a pleasant demise that she could enjoy as a sensual experiment, in knowing her death as the ultimate turn-on fetish, something even her jaded sensibilities found enormously exciting. At her coaching the natives had agreed to cook her on the terms that she herself specified while Akuma taped the whole affair and experienced her death as the great climax of his uncompleted movie. Perhaps she even thought that by doing so she would bring the madness to an end and shock Akuma into sanity, but whatever her thinking on the matter I could sense that she had gone to her death willingly and had experienced—just as I did—the ultimate in carnal orgasms.

 

By this I do not mean to justify what she did, only to describe what I knew to be the truth about her story as I opened up my senses to the past and discovered the roots of my own dilemma. I could see her in my mind now, and I was startled to discover that she bore a strong physical resemblance to me, albeit that my hair is shorter and a lighter shade of auburn, but otherwise she could have been my exact physical ringer, which explained a lot about why Akuma thought that I was Pai returned to him, even though she had perished when I was still in grade school.

 

How odd to think now that her experience of death had been consensual and pleasurable, that she in no way fought her fate and had blissfully surrendered to the broth to become the feast that she had promised to the others. She had even joked about it and offered to let the crew decide which parts of her they wanted to consume, but in the end her head wound up adorning a pole and her meat was picked clean off her bones and returned to the stew to cook a while longer before it was divided up and shared among the crew and tribespeople. In a way a part of her had indeed lived on with them, but by giving them the idea that women could be a great resource for meat she had sealed the fate of the other women in her party, all forty-seven or so, who one by one would take turns being cooked and eaten, followed in turn by a majority of the tribes women.

 

And these guys did not just go in for bouillon either…they had a bunch of other recipes that they were eager to try so long as they had a fresh supply of victims. Even men wound up being cannibalized for their meat, mainly guys who ticked Akuma off or got on his bad side, and anybody else who died for whatever other reasons automatically went up on the menu. You could die a hundred different ways in that primitive setting and count on being the next one up for a feast. That's why there was no graveyard adjoining that village, just a pile of human bones tossed into a big pit at one end of town, all that was left to mark the passing of their friends, loved ones and fellow human beings. The only thing that they kept as momentos were their heads, and those were prized as decorations and could be seen on display on the couple hundred poles lining all around the periphery of that demented village.

 

In a way I had it easy being cooked in a stew pot. It could have been a LOT worse, let me tell you, and most of the gruesome ways in which people could fry had a zero chance of survival. I could have, for instance, been beheaded outright and divided up into different body parts like chunks on a meat chart, or I could have had a pole stuck up my butt and impaled all the way through to my mouth so that I'd be roasted like a suckling pig over an open fire pit, still alive and dripping with juices. And if that doesn't nauseate you just to think about, there's also the alternative means of hanging me by the neck until I strangle, or tying me up and wrapping me in animal skins before burying me in the ground with hot stones that would effectively roast me. Hell, they even had an oven at one end of the village that was big enough for me to slide in all tied up like a roasting turkey. All these forms of death I could see in my mind, and many of them had been used upon the girls who had came before me, many of them kicking, screaming, yelling and weeping all the way to the end, and only a few of them genuinely consensual roasters.

 

Among them only Pai had gone without grief, remorse, regret or resentment. She had gone to her death because she believed that the act would spare her from future misery and would help free the others from their enslavement. She had even blown a kiss to the camera and smiled for her fans so that they would not weep as she leant her body to the art that she most loved, to live on celluloid forever.

 

And now I would shortly be joining her in either Heaven or Hell, and all because of Akuma and his dreams of making the ultimate dinosaur movie. No doubt he had spent the better part of the last twelve years rationalizing what he did and telling himself that it was all for the best and using his art as an excuse to cover up for his not-so-personal madness.

 

And yet I was also conscious that there was something more going on here besides the insanity that I saw upon the surface. There was an element missing from the picture, some primal player who was egging things along and pulling the strings to play upon Akuma's dementia, to stoke his insanity and drive him well beyond the twilight edge of “common” sense. I could sense her on the periphery like a shadowy character worthy of any suspense thriller, and I did not need to be told that she was inhuman, I could sense the coldness in her eyes, the slithering hiss of a serpent who could have tempted a dozen Adams into that long ago orchard.

 

I thought again of Pai, of how she laughed and joked with the crew and teased them with her body, encouraging them to think of her as “only meat” while relishing her starring performance, a performer to the end who would not deign to use a body double to perform her own stunts.

 

And then they ate her.

 

Was I, too, going to go her way, to let go of myself, to wallow in the heat and allow the bliss of sweet eroticism send me to my culinary grave? What does it mean to die but that the sufferings of this world are finally ended? To go on and struggle, to suffer and be hurt, to know the pains of unrequited love and to have your feelings betrayed by others? To grow old, sick, infirm and ultimately useless? To have your looks peeled away by the ravages of time, to regret the things that you did not do in life and the lost youth what you had squandered, only to see a younger generation come along destined to steal your thunder? Surely a slow death cooked up by loving friends and family would be less fearful than all that, and what better way to quit the scene than to do something both kinky and dramatic that would give your death a significance that it lacked in all the messier and nastier ways that there were to perish. Being eaten by a T-Rex, for example, was certainly a LOT less pleasant than to gently boil to death with very little pain and only a little genuine discomfort…

 

“No…” I whispered, my mind rebelling from this vision that was filling my senses. No, I thought to myself again, I would not surrender, I would not go quietly down and be forgotten like a memory of yesterday's leftovers. I wanted very much to live and to find my loved ones, to assert myself as something more than just a piece of tasty meat, that I was indeed an individual, a person, someone whose life did matter, and for whom the meaning of life was both self-evident and beyond the need for justification.

 

But by this point I had slipped too far and could tell that my end was nearer than it had ever been in my young life. My body was already soft and pliant, my muscles having soaked too long to have any strength left at my disposal. I could tell that my muscle tissue was becoming limp and stringy and that my tendons were as soft as rubber, which meant that I could not physically free myself and had far less time to act than I could hope to recover given how the heat was making me dizzy.

 

That was when the strange thing happened, when my mind suddenly grew clear and clarified like molten crystal. I began to see the world in colorful patterns, as shapes and figures, lines of force and swirling fields of energy that filled the universe at large and helped me to become aware of the reality that existed beyond the illusion of solid matter.

 

Akuma and his sophistry were forgotten in that instant as my entire being filled with the light of new awareness, of the way the curls of heat and moisture rising up from the near-boiling soup operated upon a complex set of vectoring forces, and how I could draw strength from that energy, to fortify myself and repel the effects of the heat while creating an envelope of cool protection all around my body. I drew more life energy into my very being and used it to accelerate the healing process, to reverse the damage done to my blood, muscle, bones and internal organs, to restore life to my reddened flesh and give me the strength that I needed to overcome the swelling within my loins and rump caused by the vegetable-laden stuffing mix.

 

My ropes became like twine as I perceived the way that their fibers were woven together. I freed my wrists with very little effort and then set to work upon my feet, parting the ropes there with great ease then shrugging off the crisscrossing vines that had been grinding at my pelvis and steadily driving me to distraction.

 

Akuma did not realize what was happening with me until I started to rise up out of that pot, but when he saw that I was ad-libbing he reacted badly, screaming at me in dismay, “Hey, you can't do this! I didn't order a script change!”

 

“Tough,” I said, my eyes blazing as I stood erect amid that stew feeling my energy levels rising as I drew upon the force lines in the air to fortify me for my coming battle.

 

Unfortunately the tribespeople seemed to have different ideas and leveled spears my way while some started pointing their rifles. I could tell at a glance that the magazines in those guns were nearly empty and I had no doubt that I could destroy them with a glance with my escalating power levels. Fortunately I was spared the need for making such an effort since that was the moment in this story when Ranma and Shampoo finally caught up with us, and then all hell really broke loose in that cannibal infested village…

 

 

Continued

 

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