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She doesn’t stop moving until she’s out.
She can’t. There’s monsters.
She can’t, they want to… eat her? She had to turn a wrong corner and they talked about products. Snack, she was a snack.
She likes snacks. Used to be in a club about them, but after…
God, is she the one disappearance she knows of?
She sits where she got out from, panting on the floor.
What if they know her. What if they come back?
She thinks… she thinks she can’t go home.
The butterfly flaps its wings, and Inoue Shouma has a sister. Karakida Hanto’s mother is alive. But he doesn’t know that.
It hurts Karakida Sae, to disappear. She remembers the pain as weeks dragged on. As the police gave up. As her and her friends stopped being able to talk about it, and so she couldn’t look at them.
Hanto asked about those friends sometimes. He said good riddance, he didn’t like sweets anyways.
She doesn’t anymore, either.
The changers echo, and she agrees to a surgery. She has even less reason to survive than her son, but he had nothing special to begin with except revenge. She has that in spades. Monsters kidnapping people, ruining lives.
“Fascinating woman, aren’t you?” Suga says. “You should Not have been able to survive that.”
“Do you have kids, Suga?” Sae asks.
“Have? No.”
“I do,” Sae says. “And as long as those monsters are around, he isn’t safe. So I have to kill them all.”
“Big dreams.”
“I never had them, before.”
“But you do now,” Suga says. He grins. “Keep in touch.”
Change doesn’t happen in one moment, but it echoes. Inoue Michiru had a life, Before.
She remembers it in terms of food because names and faces hurt. Karakida Sae was crunchy chips.
The Granute Hunter upsets the Stomach family. She hears of the woman.
She wishes her luck and holds Shouma close and tells him not to eat dark sweets because in truth, she is not confined to her room. Her so called husband drags her away for—
And when he wants calm in his office. She hears him argue a failing business and a horrifying product with his son, and Lango Stomach glares at her like she chose this. She can’t fight.
He can’t either. She knows and it scares her. Even among monsters, the man who Wants her is powerful.
She can’t fight. He pets her in his arms.
She sees the face.
“We caught her as inventory,” Lango says. “But she escaped. We need to update our methods. I’ve spoken to Nyelv.”
Bouche’s grip on her tightens. She almost doesn’t feel it, because she knows that face.
No…
“Why haven’t you done it already?” He asks. “Just keep things moving. I don’t care!”
“We’re losing ground!”
“I don’t care,” Bouche says.
Lango tenses. Their faces do not move like human faces, but their bodies move far more. Michiru has learned it, to know when she will be the most injured.
Michiru stares at Sae’s face and lets herself remember people, not food, for a single moment.
Sae does not have access to the creatures that save everyone. She has raw power, a bit of hope, and a streak of stubbornness her son will inherit. She has no suit, just a face mask and hopes.
Hit hard. Kill them with their own claws and powers. Keep them from taking the people.
She watches their methods change and it does not stop her. She takes monster parts when she manages dead bodies and tells Suga more, risk if, make me stronger.
She’s checked him. He is human. His hands run along her body with a grin.
“Don’t you have a wife?” She asks.
“Don’t you have a girlfriend?” Suga asks. “They’re likely in similar states.“
Sae frowns. These moments of relief bring her comfort. The alien parts in her body are growing hard to hide. Thinking of Michiru, likely dead, possibly tortured, brings her the strength to keep going.
“They make human disguises,” she says. “Do you think you could build me one?”
“I could try,” Suga says. “It might kill you.”
Sae huffs and kisses him.
“You say that every time,” she says. “Let’s have fun, first.”
Shouma comes back to his room one day bruised but relieved. Glotta stays kind to him. He doesn’t know why. He didn’t even realize at first, that she was trying to help - he has known fear from everyone named Stomach. But they are suffering too, he thinks.
Glotta wants to make him strong. His mother explained with hesitant words that the world runs that way, here. Pure power game - strong abilities keep you on to. Those below suffer for it.
He is below. Glotta said she would like to fix that. He thinks it’s her idea of love.
He stumbles in and climbs into his mother’s arms. She pets his head.
“I had a friend, once,” she says. “Well, a group. She had a son a few years older than you, and she liked salty snacks, and she was… so stubborn.”
She never talks about people. Shouma listens.
Her world is full of food that doesn’t make them gag and good people.
“She still is,” his mom says. “I think.”