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Something was up with this bitch.
Two hours ago they were fighting for their lives against her in a giant robot as she wreaked havoc downtown. Although Momo loathed to compliment Kinta on anything, if he hadn’t been around to pilot her house as a giant robot it’s likely one or all of them could’ve ended up dead. They had no idea where she came from and only a vague idea of why she was here and what she wanted.
They had no idea what she was either. Her language was so foreign that even an advanced alien translator could hardly make out what she was saying. According to Okarun, Mr. Shrimp had even said he’d never seen any alien like her, meaning she must’ve come from very far away. They’d run into freaky biomechanical aliens with psychic powers, a talking shrimp man that bled milk, and Nessie for god’s sake, but the arguably most alien creature they’d come across was identical to a human girl, save for a few antennas poking out of her head?
The Serpo disguised themselves as humans all the time. Who’s to say this wasn’t a disguise as well?
As she watched Vamola playing outside with Jiji and Kinta, she groaned.
Here she was in her house.
Ate her grandma’s food.
Kissed her Okarun! And apparently wanted to marry him!
She felt sick, and it wasn’t just because of her overindulgence of takoyaki that evening.
Vamola had practically been leaning into Okarun for the entirety of dinner. She even got him to pick up the takoyaki and feed her himself.
“I wonder what kinds of things she normally eats?”
For the first time ever, Momo really didn’t want to hear Okarun’s nerdy ramblings about aliens.
After dinner, she pulled him over to talk about the house’s new guest.
“We beat her once, but that doesn’t mean she won’t try again. She could just be waiting for the right time to strike. She’s still our enemy!” Momo cried.
She turned her head and pouted with a much softer voice.
“Don’t let your guard down just cuz she kissed you.”
“Miss Ayase,” Okarun replied, “She may have surprised me.. but I promise I won’t let my guard down either.”
He was trying to hide his face, but she could clearly tell he was blushing.
He didn’t blush like that when he was around her!
Of course, unbeknownst to Momo, he did all the time, though she was often too busy concealing her own blush to notice.
She gradually crawled towards him, trying to catch him in the act.
“Hmm…”
“What?”
“You’re practically drooling.”
“Am I?! Sorry, I guess my face is just like that.”
She’d practically wrapped around him by this point, trying to look him in the eyes, but he still avoided her gaze.
“Why won’t you look me in the eye?! Got a guilty conscience?!”
“O-Of course not!”
“Oh really? I bet you’re still thinking about when you were sucking face with that gross weird alien!”
“Now you’re just making baseless accusations!”
“How so?!”
Okarun had to think of an excuse quickly. He may not have wanted it, but he had been thinking of the kiss. It was his first kiss, unless you counted that one time he and Momo accidentally bumped faces at lunch (which he absolutely did), so it was still fresh in his mind. He couldn’t let the girl he actually wanted to kiss know that though, so he tried to divert the conversation.
“Y-You said she was gross and weird, but we don’t know that yet! So far, it seems she’s a lot like us!”
Oh, so that’s what he’s decided to challenge her on.
Fine.
“No way!” Momo howled. “Mr. Shrimp said he’d never seen an alien like her before, so she’s probably from somewhere super far away, right? There’s no way she can be like us! I bet she’s secretly a freaky bug monster in disguise, or she’s got a nasty frog tongue, or eats babies or something!”
Okarun retorted. “That’s not true! Maybe her home planet is a lot like Earth, so her species developed a lot like how humans did!”
Momo’s face quickly changed from one of anger to a smug grin.
“Wanna bet on it?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Let's give it a week. If we find out she is the gross, weird type of alien, you’ve gotta buy me Pampy every day for a week!”
“Oh yeah!? Well if she isn’t then you’ve gotta buy all my Mystery Mu magazines for a month!”
“Deal!”
They clasped each other’s hands and shook on it. Not long after that, Jiji called them outside to show them some cool stuff he’d figured out from screwing around with Vamola’s suit, inadvertently and unintentionally triggering a future alien invasion unlike any they’d ever faced.
But that was how the bet began.
. . .
The last thing Momo wanted to do for the rest of the night was spend more time around Vamola. Unfortunately fate, or more accurately her grandmother, had other plans.
Vamola had no place to stay so Seiko offered to let her share Momo’s room, much to Momo’s dismay. She tried to protest the arrangement, claiming Vamola could find another member of the group to stay with, but all it took was one “I guess we could see if Four-Eyes has space for her” to shut her up quickly.
The one bright side this provided was it gave Momo plenty of time to snoop on her behavior. Something she had already noticed earlier in the day was that Vamola’s antennas played a large role in her body language. They perked up or even started shaking when Vamola was happy or excited, sagged and went limp when Vamola was sad, and glowed more intensely when Vamola was angry or frightened, presumably as an attempt to look more imposing rendered completely ineffective due to how cute she was.
If the whole innocent clueless alien girl thing was truly an act, then Vamola was surely committed to it. Even preparing for a simple night of rest required Momo to help her with multiple tasks. It wasn’t surprising she had to teach Vamola how the shower worked, but she didn’t even know what a toothbrush was and required a demonstration. This was made even more surprising considering she had nearly perfect teeth. It was possible her kind had different means of dental care, but Momo added a mental point towards her “Freaky bug monster in disguise” theory anyway.
Vamola was also fascinated by everything in Momo’s room. The patterned curtains, the old TV, the clothes in the closet, it was like she’d never had her own personal living space before. She spent an especially long time staring at a specific poster, one depicting a U.A.P. full of aliens abducting a woman with their ship’s tractor beam.
Momo wondered which of the two Vamola identified herself with.
Normally Momo was out like a light when it came time to sleep, but she forced herself awake this time. She hadn’t forgotten how Vamola had tried to kill her only hours prior, and falling asleep first would be handing her the perfect opportunity on a silver platter. Instead, she feigned sleep and carefully took note of Vamola’s behavior. Thankfully she didn’t try anything, and instead fell asleep on her futon rather quickly.
The first thing Momo noticed was that the soft glow from Vamola’s antennas disappeared almost entirely when she was asleep. It made sense, if her kind were sleeping together the bright light would likely get annoying quickly. The second thing she noticed was that Vamola moved around a lot in her sleep. It was mostly just shifting her arms and rolling over, but occasionally she would start thrashing around underneath her covers with a pained expression on her face. She also spoke in her sleep, entirely in her native tongue. Momo listened in to try to glean any information she could from it, but the closest sound she heard to human language was “Banga”, which still meant nothing to her. The whole ordeal was disturbing to watch and Momo would’ve woken her up, but for all she knew this was normal behavior for Vamola’s kind. Satisfied with the information she had discovered, Momo closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.
In her dream, Momo was sitting in an endless field of flowers, having a picnic with Okarun.
He’d remembered to bring her favorite foods: Crab legs to eat and yogurt flavored Pampy to drink. Usually crab legs would be a poor choice of picnic food, but it was Momo’s dream, so she got to make the rules.
They chatted about mundane topics. Their days at school, their classes, the things they’d learned to do through training their respective powers. Okarun ranted about cryptids and aliens while Momo complained about her job. It was the same typical conversations they’d have in real life as, apparently, even Momo’s subconscious was nervous about taking things further with him.
Until at one point, as she was chowing down on a crab leg, Okarun stopped talking and just watched her with his big, beautiful brown eyes and a gentle smile on his face.
“W’choo lukn at?” Momo mumbled, her mouth still filled with crab.
“You look like a hamster when you eat like that.” He teased.
“Hey! Well…”
She grabbed two crab legs from the picnic basket and stuck them on his head.
“Now you look like a bug!”
They both laughed. The crab legs on his head reminded her of the antennas on something like an ant or a cockroach, but they were also faintly reminiscent of something else. They really made her think of…
Vamola.
Vamola kissing Okarun.
Ugh.
Even in her own fantasy world she couldn’t be free from thinking about it. Did he like it? Did he like her? He’d wanted to be friends with aliens for his entire life, and now a beautiful one not only kissed him but wanted to get married to him. Would he reciprocate? Would he want to fall in love with her now?
Had everything they’d been through together meant nothing to him?
Now she was just being ridiculous. They were friends, and Momo knew Okarun really cared about her, but she couldn’t help it when these insecurities crept their way into her head.
But still… why did he blush so hard when she brought it up? Why wouldn’t he look her in the eye?
She supposed… she could just ask him. Sure, this wasn’t the real Okarun, just one her mind had created, so he would just tell her whatever she wanted to hear. But she supposed she could indulge herself a little, just to make herself feel better.
“Hey Okarun,” she said, causing him to turn his attention to her. “Earlier, when we were talking about Vamola, why wouldn’t you look me in the eye?”
“Well… she kissed me. It just really made me think.”
“Think about what?” She asked accusingly.
“About how badly I want to kiss you, Miss Ayase.”
Oh.
Suddenly, she realized just how close the two of them were.
“So… do you think about kissing me a lot?”
“All the time. I can’t stop thinking about how beautiful you are every time I see you.”
She scooched closer to him. Her expression shifted to a seductive gaze.
“Do you want to kiss me right now?”
“Yes.” He replied instantly.
He put his left hand on her shoulder, and gently placed the other on the side of her face.
Both of their cheeks radiated with warmth. Their faces were inches from each other.
They both wanted each other so badly.
“Momo,” Okarun spoke. “I love y-”
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
Momo’s alarm clock blared, waking her from her dream.
“Ugh, right as it was getting to the good part.” She thought, as her eyes slowly crept open.
Much to her delight, however, she saw her beloved Okarun’s face was still inches from hers.
His bright smile.
His big, starry eyes.
His pink… glowing… antennas…
Wait.
Momo Ayase came to two very sudden revelations as she awoke.
The first was that she was not, in fact, face-to-face with Okarun, but rather with Vamola.
The second was that because she slept on her back, she was staring directly at the ceiling.
Vamola was on the ceiling, looking down at her.
Vamola was clinging to the ceiling with the tips of her fingers and toes, like a lizard.
She smiled, as if there was nothing strange with what she was doing. She likely thought this was something Momo could do as well.
“One point for Momo.” Momo thought to herself.
“On peut aller manger maintenant?” Vamola spoke in her bizarre alien gibberish whilst pointing towards the door. She was probably trying to say she wanted breakfast.
“Alright.” Momo groaned as she rolled out of bed. “Let’s get you some food, Vamola.”
. . .
Seiko had registered Vamola for school surprisingly quickly. If there were two things she was known best for aside from her spirit medium work, it was feeding guests and making sure the kids in her custody had no excuses to miss school. Momo repeatedly pleaded against taking Vamola with her to no avail. Despite still being decked out in her kaiju suit, Seiko refused to believe the girl was from outer space. Even if Momo had somehow managed to convince her, that would’ve just been another reason not to leave her in the house alone. So, begrudgingly, Momo walked Vamola to school.
She had to admit the alien girl had grown on her a little since yesterday. After teaching her a little bit of human language, she said Momo’s name with such enthusiasm. Although it tanked her chances of winning the bet, Vamola hadn’t done anything weird (yet) aside from clinging to her ceiling, and had really helped her out of a difficult spot against Reiko Kashima.
She did, however, quickly remember why she held a grudge against the girl once they finally all met up at school. As soon as she saw Okarun she practically threw herself at him, forcing Momo to form a physical barrier between the two. Even worse, she’d been assigned to the same class as him, meaning Momo wouldn’t be around to prevent her clinging to him like a leech.
Momo, however, was still tasked with providing study materials to the girl. So before she went to class she brought Vamola around to her locker to get some extra notebooks. She pulled them out of her locker and stuffed her school uniform’s sole pocket on her shirt full of pencils and erasers, before locking it again.
“Hey Vamola.” She said, flicking the fingers holding the locker key towards her, “You can hang onto the key for now in case you need anything from my locker later.”
Vamola took the key, but didn’t seem to understand the meaning of the rest of Momo’s words, as she looked at her inquisitively.
Momo tried to make the meaning of her words more apparent. “My. Key.” She said, pointing to herself, and then the object Vamola was holding. “Keep it safe.”
Vamola seemed to understand this.
“Ogay! Keepy safe!”
After taking a notebook and a few more pencils, Vamola happily skipped to her class.
She seemed to have a decent day at school. Momo couldn’t keep a good watch on her because the nosy class rep seemed to have a problem with her for some reason, but a lot of her time was spent learning better communication skills. It seems Momo wasn’t just being paranoid when she thought Vamola was very cute, as half the boys in her class either wanted to teach her Japanese personally or were asking if she had a boyfriend. With any luck, Vamola would fall for one of them instead of constantly going after Okarun, although Momo didn’t want her innocent nature getting her stuck with some scumbag either. Kinta was there “supervising” the teaching session, another pointless attempt towards his impossible goal of getting Vamola to find him attractive. Okarun also tried to assist her learning, which made sense considering she was placed into his care, but Vamola wouldn’t keep her eyes off of him the entire time.
It made Momo’s stomach turn.
As Momo walked with Vamola back to her locker, she realized she was kinda proud of her good behavior. She hadn’t panicked or reacted poorly to being surrounded by people in class, or attempted to kiss Okarun again (or anyone else for that matter). Her kaiju suit’s disguise never came off either, thankfully, as it would’ve been very difficult to explain.
“ …Wait, that’s right.” Momo thought. Vamola wasn’t really wearing a school uniform, it was just a disguise made by her suit. That meant the pocket on her uniform was probably fake, and it didn’t seem like her kaiju suit had room to store anything.
She glanced back at Vamola. She was holding the notebook and pencils she had been given earlier, but Momo didn’t see the key she’d lent her. In fact, she didn’t recall seeing it with her in class either.
Oh great. She’d probably lost it, or left it lying around somewhere. Even worse, some creep could’ve stolen it and now had access to her stuff.
“Vamola.” Momo turned and called, catching the attention of the most cheerful creature alive. “Do you have my key with you?”
Vamola looked at her quizzically.
“Key! Do you have the key?!” She said as she pointed to her locker.
“Oh, key!” Vamola chirped, suddenly remembering. “Okay!”
Instead of pulling it out and handing it to her, however, Vamola placed her hand on her stomach and grunted quietly.
“Hmmph!”
“Vamola, what are you doing? Do you have my key or not?”
But Vamola didn’t respond, she stayed hunched over as her small grunting noises escalated to light gagging. Momo’s annoyed questioning changed to that of concern.
“Hey Vamola, are you okay? Did you eat something weird earlier? Do you want me to take you to Queen Sensei?”
“...Wait, are you-”
Momo’s question was quickly answered as Vamola spit the locker key out of her mouth and into her cupped hand, which she then outstretched towards Momo. It was glistening, completely coated in whatever mucus lined the inside of her stomach.
Vamola smiled. “Momo! Keepy safe!”
Momo looked at the key in disgust. “Oh… thank you…” she replied as she made sure to grab it with a psychic hand instead of her real one. Vamola appeared satisfied, and paced towards the school’s exit.
“Maybe it’s time to get a spare.” Momo said to herself as she glanced at the key once more.
. . .
It had been three days since the group had met Vamola, and by this point most of the suspicion and hostility towards her had been replaced by a general feeling of acceptance and welcoming, even from Momo. Her communication skills had improved as well, as she could now understand the general gist of whatever the group was talking about. One might say that, hypothetically, if someone had made a bet in blind jealousy and rage claiming she was probably some terrible baby-eating monster, then that person was now being incredibly rude, insulting, and should probably admit she was wrong and just pay next month's subscription fee for her messy-haired crush’s nerdy cryptid magazine.
But Momo Ayase was no quitter.
Unsurprisingly, the rest of their group had found out about the bet. They weren’t exactly quiet when they made it, after all. To Momo’s misfortune, not a single person was on her side.
Kinta went on some spiel about how Vamola was a “lovely and beautiful young madam”, Jiji insisted that she was a “total kyootie”, and while Aira was suspicious of Vamola, she just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to side with Okarun against Momo on something.
The only neutral party was Turbo Granny, who insisted they were all weird, gross little freaks in her eyes.
When school let out, they all went to their new hideout spot behind the school, and while Vamola stepped out to use the bathroom, Momo pleaded her case.
“Whaddya mean that doesn’t count?!” She hollered. “She was clinging to the walls like a friggin’ gecko!”
“That just sounds cool to me.” Jiji said. “Imagine how her parents felt. Can’t hide things on top of the fridge from your kids when they can just scale the thing.”
Momo groaned. She should’ve given “weird and gross” a more concrete definition when she started this whole thing.
“Oh yeah? Well then how does she stick to walls then? She’s gotta have some weird sticky gunk on her fingertips.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.” Kinta insisted, reminiscing over many late night mecha-movie marathons where his hands were covered in Dorito dust and Mountain Dew. “There’s nothing weird or gross about having sticky hands sometimes.”
“Oh I’m sure you know all about having sticky hands Erosuke!” Momo shouted as swung her leg at his spine.
“We don’t even know if that’s the case.” Okarun factually stated. “It’s possible she doesn’t stick to walls through an adhesive, instead she might just have skin on those parts of her body that’s really good at gripping things.”
“Fine.” She grunted. “I’ll drop the wall climbing thing. But you’ve gotta admit her spitting up my locker key is a weird gross thing to do. Humans don’t use their stomachs as an extra pocket!”
"It doesn’t sound like that’s much different from vomiting. While that’s definitely gross, it’s not weird, humans do that all the time.”
“I agree with Takakura.” Aira interjected, before aiming a snide expression at Momo. “Plus I can understand her, looking at your ugly face makes me want to puke too.”
“WHAT WAS THAT YOU SKANK!”
A hand clasped her shoulder.
“Momo.”
“WHAT!” Momo shouted, unintentionally at Vamola, who had apparently just returned from her trip to the restroom.
Her antennas drooped sadly in response to being yelled at. It sent a pang of guilt straight through Momo’s chest. She instantly apologised.
“Vamola, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you. I just… didn’t expect to see you there.”
Vamola’s glum mood dropped instantly. “Oh, okay! I can fix!”
She pressed her back against the nearby school wall and closed her eyes. The group watched in surprise as Vamola’s skin and hair rapidly changed color to match the wall behind her, forming a perfect camouflage. If it weren’t for the outfit Momo had gotten her earlier that day, nobody would’ve been able to detect she was there.
“You can’t see me!”
Momo immediately shot a venomous glare at Okarun that mentally spoke: “See! This is the exact type of thing I’m trying to tell you!”
“Woah Vamola! That’s supah cool!” Jiji said as he shot finger guns in her direction. “I wish I could do that.”
“Being able to turn practically invisible without her kaiju suit sounds really useful.” Okarun pointed out, soon returning Momo’s earlier glare. “There’s nothing gross or weird about that at all.”
“What do you-, can’t you see that-, but look at-” Momo stuttered.
“Miss Ayase, you don’t have to keep making up these excuses. If you really want free Pampy that badly, I would be happy to buy you some.”
“ARRGH! I HATE THIS!”
. . .
Momo hated this.
Okarun had been hooked up to the life support machine for four days at this point. She was completely silent, entranced in thought, and the only sound that filled the room was the gentle hum of the alien medical device. She couldn’t even see his aura anymore, the only way she could tell he was still alive was by his faint breathing and the slow beat of his heart.
Their battle against the space globalists was tomorrow. She and the rest of the group had made phenomenal progress with their powers, but she still didn’t feel ready. She probably never would. The constant training and battle simulations were grueling, they knew far too little about the enemy they were facing, and their plan felt like it had a million different ways it could go wrong.
Yet, despite all that, the thing that bothered her the most was she was going into it without Okarun.
Sure, a lot of the training they had done in the past was separate. They both needed to focus on different things, Momo on honing her chi and Okarun on strengthening his physical body. She still had no idea what had occurred on that one night when he, Aira, and Turbo Granny had suddenly vanished for a few hours only for him to come back with the power to tame the Evil Eye. But he was always with her to work towards the same goals. When they had to keep an eye on Jiji while he was possessed, Okarun was the first to declare he would stay with them and help them for however long it would take. When they were fighting in the cursed house, he fought the Evil Eye and the Mongolian Death Worm underground whilst she found a way to pull them all up to the surface. Even when she was furious at him for believing he was making out with that skank Aira behind the school, they still teamed up in that flooded building to take down the Serpoians. Whatever enemy they had to face, they would do it together. She could cling onto his back and thrash their foes with her spectral hands while he ducked, dove, and weaved through whatever obstacles were laid out in front of them.
But this was different. No matter what training or exercises she did, she felt like she was only fighting at half strength, because her other half was lying unconscious in bed struggling to breathe.
Whenever Aira had given them a reprieve or break, she’d come down to Okarun’s room and just talk to him. It would be about anything, the aliens they were fighting, their training, their powers, little things like classes she was struggling with in school and small frustrations she had with her grandmother. She had even taken one of his nerdy cryptid magazines from his backpack and read it to him aloud. She had no idea if he could hear her, if he could he showed no reaction, but it brought her comfort to believe he did. Yet despite all her talking, she never brought up the topic that stung her the most.
Vamola.
“It’s something else completely. Something far more hideous. It looks to be more akin to human karma. I don’t want to see that ever again. Hurry up and put it away.”
Those were the words Turbo Granny had spoken when shown the golden ball from Vamola’s suit the morning before the attack. Momo had been warming up to Vamola over the past few days. They walked to school together. They hung out together. They slept in the same room. Even if Momo hated her clinginess towards Okarun, even if she felt revolted watching the girl’s warm, green blood flush her cheeks whenever she made contact with him, she still enjoyed having Vamola around. But when Turbo Granny said those words, she gazed down at the girl and did not see the bright, starry gaze she usually did. Instead, she felt like she was staring into an empty, black abyss, and it reminded her of the uncomfortable truth of their situation.
She was an alien.
They didn’t know who she was.
They didn’t know where she was from.
They didn’t know what she wanted.
She tried to hurt them.
And Momo chose to ignore it. She ignored it because she told herself that the thoughts inside her head were paranoid and unimportant. She ignored it because she wanted to believe Vamola was her friend.
She was such an idiot.
Jiji didn’t believe the news when he heard it. He still didn’t. He believed that there was some mistranslation, or that the enemy was lying, and that there was an explanation for everything, and that Vamola would come back and tell them everything. But there were too many coincidences for Momo to be so naive.
She was a spy. Her only purpose there was to kill them herself and when that failed, she infiltrated their group and waited for the best time for her friends to strike. Her cutesy innocent behavior was only to get them to lower their guard, her “alien language” couldn’t be translated because it was just gibberish in the first place. Her kissing Okarun, her claim that she wanted to marry him, was merely an attempt to seduce him so she could get him alone and steal his kintama.
And Momo let it happen. She ignored her gut instinct that she shouldn’t let them walk home alone together, and as soon as Vamola was presented with her opportunity she pounced on it.
To think that it was all a lie. That she was just some disgusting squid wearing human skin the entire time.
“...”
Momo chuckled lightly to herself.
She’d won the bet.
Her first guess wasn’t far off. A slimy octopus in a disguise wasn’t too far off from a freaky bug monster, after all. Looks like Okarun would have to cough up some Pampy when this was all over.
It didn’t relieve her at all. It was hard to be happy about something she would get next week when she didn’t know if there was going to be a next week. Even if Okarun had miraculously sprung up from his bed completely cured, tomorrow they would still be fighting for the lives of their friends-, no, the entire planet.
Momo couldn’t be relieved just yet.
She would be relieved when Vamola was dead.
. . .
She was so relieved Vamola was still alive.
Momo couldn’t have been more wrong. Even if her jealousy and hatred hadn’t gotten the best of her, she never would’ve guessed the gleeful alien girl was one of the lone survivors of a genocide. How she managed to remain so kindhearted and joyous despite what she’d been through was something she’d never be able to understand.
It was the most mentally taxing day of her life. Rushing into battle. Vamola suddenly returning to save her. Vamola getting impaled, and subsequently saved by Rokuro. Okarun’s sudden recovery and return. Pulling an all-or-nothing move against the Space Globalist’s commander that could’ve easily resulted in her death. The gigantic mecha-vs-kaiju battle for the fate of the world in the middle of Tokyo. The massive invading fleet warping to earth and firebombing the city, only to be instantly crushed by the unrivaled, immense power of Reiko Kashima, who decided to spare her for reasons Momo decided she wouldn’t question.
It was all such a rush that upon defeating the Kur leader, nobody had checked to see if he was truly dead as a result of the battle, simply assuming he had been crushed under the weight of Earth’s gravity.
And, as the group was sitting down for a well-deserved rest, none of them saw him lurking in the bushes as he stalked them from behind.
Hastur was in agony.
Earth’s immense gravity was already well taking its effect. For every inch of ground he traveled it felt like a giant hand was pushing down on him, trying to grind him into the soil. Numerous sacs of fluid within his body used to keep himself aloft in his low-gravity homeland had ruptured leaving him disfigured, covered in his own blood, and crumpled up to about half of his former size.
His subordinates were gone. His fleet was gone. His suit was gone, and soon his life would be gone as well. All taken from him by a small group of adolescent ape creatures of an inferior species.
Nobody took his things.
He was positioned right behind the girl with the light brown hair. Momo was her name, he believed, as it was what the lanky quick-footed human called her. She was the one who had dealt the critical blow to his suit, the one he’d used for years to decimate countless civilizations.
She deserved immeasurable pain. She deserved to be nailed to a wall and forced to watch her friends be slowly torn apart in front of her and tortured for eons, before he finally ripped out her viscera and used it to decorate his ship. Unfortunately, a simple death was all he was now able to grant, and he intended to do just that.
He picked up a large shard of glass to his side. It was a disgusting downgrade to the power of the weapon he once wielded, but a quick jab to the neck would get the job done.
Nobody in the group had noticed as he leapt towards Momo from his hiding spot…
…and none of them would ever be able to forget when a two meter tongue shot out of Vamola’s mouth, latched onto his head, and pulled him into her jaw.
The next thirty seconds were so horrific and disturbing that all who witnessed them gained a permanent mental scar. The air became filled with the sounds of slurping, wet slapping noises, and muffled screams, as Hastur’s tentacles were slowly sucked down inch-by-inch like spaghetti. They thrashed and flailed around rapidly, desperate to find anything to hook onto and pull them from their terrible fate, but were unsuccessful as eventually the last of them vanished behind Vamola’s soft, delicate lips. Then, in a single gulp, she swallowed the Kur whole.
It dawned upon a few of them that there may have been a reason she enjoyed the taste of takoyaki so much.
She burped, and then turned to the group adorned with the same beaming, innocent smile she always wore.
“I got him!”
The group remained stunned speechless for what seemed like an eternity. Okarun was the one to finally break the silence.
“So, Miss Ayase, what flavor of Pampy would you like?”
. . .
Seiko was confused as to why her mention of Vamola’s lack of appetite was met with numerous looks of discomfort and disgust, but aside from that the rest of the night went swimmingly.
Momo sat in her bed as she watched the alien girl sleeping peacefully on the futon beside her. Even after seeing her memories firsthand, Momo couldn’t imagine what Vamola must have been feeling right now. To be pursued, ruthlessly hunted for her entire life, and now finally being able to experience peace. No more worrying about when or what she would eat next, no more fears over being ambushed while she slept, no more watching her people being murdered before her eyes, both anguished she couldn’t help them and fearful that she would be next.
Her problems were still far from over. There could be more Space Globalists out there, who could return in either another attempt to take over their planet or to avenge their fallen leader. She was still one of the last Sumerians, meaning at some point she would need to find a husband and have children to carry on her dying race. Lastly, she still needed to find a way to find and reunite with her mother.
The Globalists would never touch her again. Momo-, no, all of them would continue to get stronger and stronger, and if they were ever stupid enough to set one slimy tentacle on the Earth again they’d be smashed flat as pancakes in a fraction of the time. Momo would look out for her when she’d decide to search for a man, she’d make sure he’d be someone who treated her right, someone who truly loved her. And as for her mother, Momo truly meant it when she said she believed she was still alive. Vamola was a strong woman, and her mother had made her that way. She wasn’t sure if any force in the universe could keep the two apart forever.
But for now, she could rest safely in a warm bed surrounded by people who truly cared about her.
“Mama…” She mumbled in her sleep, antennas glowing ever so softly, the edges of her face tucked slightly upwards forming a gentle smile.
Momo had won the bet. She may not have been a freaky bug monster in disguise, but she did have a nasty frog tongue, and the baby-eating part had yet to be determined. She made sure to rub it in Okarun’s face, but never decided to take him up on the free Pampy. Her victory was something she just didn’t find important anymore.
It didn’t matter whether Vamola was a weird, gross alien or not.
Vamola was her friend, and that was all she cared about.