Slime Sister Saga: Part 8

Summary: Following the events of A Giga-Sized Glow-Up, Celes wakes up with powers she has difficulties controlling,  coinciding with terrible, otherworldly visions. She meets more strange slime girls like Feza, but are they friends or foes?

A trade with MRGIllusion45, who provided the illustrations; story is written by me; characters belong to their respective creators.

[Story Listing]

---

It was getting late and, for the second time all day, Celes was left (practically abandoned, actually) to her own devices. There was a stifling mutedness that pervaded the jungle. There was silence—not even the ambience of chirping cicadas and croaking frogs filled the disquieting silence. 

Did this island even have its own ecosystem? Celes wondered to herself. Maybe Marin's hivemind unique, spread across so many species of animals, in and of itself was the island's whole ecosystem. It was an unsettling thought on its own, but Astra's temper, quieting Marin right down, seemed to silence the whole island. 

Celes didn't want to worry about such things right now. The only thing she had to eat all day was a darn pearl. She needed a bite to eat, as well as a place to settle down. 

She focused quietly, cupping her hands in front of her. Purple slime collected into a small pile, before it moulded into the shape of a bird. Celes opened her eyes and stared into the creature's beady eyes. She got a headache from seeing herself through the bird's eyes, along with her own perspective. She shut her eyes and raised the bird, focusing on the bird, the piece of her consciousness that transferred to the bird. Of all the powers she had received from her slime sisters, Marin's was perhaps the most wondrous... and easily the most demanding.

The purple slime bird took flight, up into the canopy, fluttering around to get a lay of the land. Celes herself swayed and grimaced visibly, seeing the world through the eyes of the bird, ducking and leaning to avoid obstacles she was perceiving. But things were moving very quickly...

Splat. The bird collided into something.

"Eep!" Celes' eyes opened as she flinched; she stumbled and caught herself on a tree, before finding her legs to hurry to where the bird landed; its eyes were still working so that she could spot herself approaching through the trees. Celes kneeled down to scoop it up in her hands, fawning over it with an empathetic look. Poor thing broke its wing...

Gloop. A moment later, the bird sank into her palm, disappearing into her body. Celes stared, before furrowing her eyebrows. She felt a little cross with herself, getting so wound up over something so easily corrected. 

She spread her arms to her sides, allowing more globules of slime to form atop her limbs, morphing into the shape of birds, some half dozen specimens. She let them free and nudged them towards soaring above the canopy. She sat down and focused on seeing what they saw. There was less danger, but also less to see, as the tops of palm trees hid whatever lay below. Furthermore, it was proving difficult to control so many animals at once; as she focused on the information being conveyed by one bird, others seemed to dip lifelessly from the air and collide into trees, rocks, vines. 

She spotted some familiar shapes. Various plants and trees growing fruits, flowing rivers of fresh water, and a cave for shelter. In very little time at all, Celes developed a solid lay of the land. She sat up to try and gather things... only to lose focus on her birds, connected by her own hivemind, as they fell out of the air and splattered onto the nearest surface. 

Celes paused, and tried to sense the spread out birds. Several of them had withstood particular injuries that crippled them. Their forms had the rigidity of form and function, of slime fashioned into a greater purpose... but if they could break apart, they could be reassembled, right? Celes focused her consciousness towards another fragile bird with a broken wing...

Curiously, the bird arose, its wing snapping back into place, tendons sliding into place and reassembling with the fluidity of slime. This process was slow and tedious, and she could only focus on one bird at a time with such corrections to their form. It was easier for her to control one bird back to herself at a time, and allow the purple bird to sink back into her semi-liquid skin.

Celes felt like herself again once the final bird reintegrated with her... only now, she had the knowledge of all that lay around her in an eighth-mile radius... and within that radius,  there were various fruit trees, and a cave nearby.

"The cave will do," Celes muttered to herself. She hiked through the foliage; having expended a lot of mental energy practicing Marin's demanding unique, she didn't have much patience left to get around with any fancier tricks. 

She stopped before the cave, and glanced around, recollecting her memory. Sure enough, there were some fruit plants nearby. She gravitated towards the pineapple, plucking it free and heading for the cave. 

It was still light out enough for Celes to see inside. She plopped into a corner with the juicy pineapple in hand. Was it ripe? It seemed big enough. If only she had something to cut it open with.

"..."

Celes had an idea. She looked over to her hand; she raised in front of her, rotating her palm. She pressed her fingers together, and focused. 

The gaps between her fingers melded away before her eyes, and the tip of her appendage extended away from her. She felt the air around her body shift as her hand melded with her forearm. She peeked through one eye, gasping quietly in surprise.

"It worked...!" She rotated her arm, admiring her new sword-arm. Astra would surely be happy with her shapeshifting abilities.

Celes licked her lips, and raised her bladed arm over the pineapple...!

Thunk. 

"..."

Thunk. Thunk.

"The blade's dull..." Celes growled, trying to put more muscle behind her swings.

Thunk! Thunk! Her arm was wedged in the pineapple now. She shouted as she raised the pineapple lodged in her blade arm against her head!

Vwip! SPLAT! It slipped free from her arm, and splattered against a nearby wall. Celes cried out in exasperation as drops of pineapple juice splashed onto her...

"Noooo... it was ripe toooo..." She whined. Though not a drop reached her lips, she could still taste its syrupy sweetness as it absorbed into her skin. Her bladed arm loosened and relaxed, her fingers emerging once more. 

She crawled over and had her pick of the few pieces that weren't bruised to heck, before hugging her legs together. Her eyes lowered to the cave floor.

"Mrrgh... the ground is so hard. And my body's so soft..." Celes muttered, hugging herself tighter. "Wish I in my bed back home..."

Celes' mind wandered to the day prior. She seemed to be onto something with the principles of slimeweaving, even if Astra seemed none too impressed. She looked to her hand, rubbing her finger and thumb together; she parted them, watching a thin thread of ooze connect them, before they came apart on their own. 

"Hmmm..." Her eyes drifted around the cave.  Her eyes settled on the far wall; an idea was coming to her. She rose to her feet, glancing at the wall behind her. She wiggled her fingers and pressed against the wall in one spot with both hands. 

They gathered at one point, a patch of purple slime that adhered firmly to the wall. Celes took a step back, focusing on the tension in her fingers; from each finger and thumb, a thick strand of ropey-slime emerged. She focused on her extremities, willing the slime to animate and coil together into a firm rope.

At around the center point, her threads expanded into different directions, splaying across the cave floor. She focused, carefully knotting the threads against each other, leaving diamond-shaped spaces between where the threads wrapped and knotted against each other. Celes kept going, glancing over her shoulder. She realized she was approaching the far wall; she began to wrap the threads into a single rope again, slamming her hands against the wall.

She looked over her handiwork. It resembled a purple slime hammock, but it was too long; the part that was meant to support her was flat against the ground. But maybe she could adjust that.

She paced over, gingerly lowering herself down onto the hammock. She lay down, her hands pressing against the diamond knots throughout the form. It was strange to feel the sensation of Celes touching her body, and of being touched; the hammock was made from her own body, after all. Her consciousness traced the limits of her woven threads of slime, and coaxed some of the threads to reintegrate with her body. 

The length of the hammock retracted, and the tent-like center rose from the ground, suspending her in the air and catching her weight. Celes gasped as she was pulled five, six feet into the air, suspended along purple ropes of slime. She raised her head, looking around the cave. She pressed down against her hammock; it was taut, with a little give. It swayed gently back and forth.

"Wow... spiffy work." Celes beamed with pride. "I guess if I'm stuck on a desert island, I'll at least be able to relax wherever I want to..."

She yawned, stretching her arms above her. Today had been a busy day, and she was exhausted. She settled in for a long rest...

---

Celes was trapped in a cave. She pressed deeper into the cave networks, desperate to make her way out of the twisting, turning tunnels. There were no landmarks; they all blended together. It seemed as if she was trapped in a loop. 

Her flashlight goes out, and she's left in pitch black. She squints, trying to parse the thick darkness. Blanketed in the darkness, a glowing pair of eyes opens up, staring back at her. Celes stares back, frozen in her tracks. When another pair emerges, and then another, and then countless more, Celes tried to turn and run... only to encounter more eyes piercing the veil of darkness, eyes fixated on her. 

The darkness encroached, as if the cave grew smaller. Celes' breath was short and terrified as she was surrounded on all sides. She turned as she heard the sound of chittering, the clicking of hard footsteps against solid rock. 

Celes saw a hand emerge from the darkness. The fingers were grotesquely long, with each ending in a blade-like claw. It slowly reached out for Celes, and she recoiled in fear. Her eyes fixated on the hand, too terrified to move.

She let out a sound of surprise as the hand rose above her head. Celes looked up to where the extended finger headed. Suspended above her head was... a single spider? A harmless enough one at that, but...

Flick. The clawed, monstrous arm cut the spider's thin thread connecting it to the ceiling. In the same moment, Celes' body spasmed, and summarily collapsed to the cold stone floor.

Her eyes were wide open and bloodshot. She couldn't move. SHE COULDN'T MOVE A MUSCLE.

Her eyes darted frantically. The darkness was all over her. Her numb body lay prone and paralyzed, her mind screaming frantically as thousands of spiders crawled over her body. Into her hair. Into her mouth. Over her clothes, over her still-human skin. She could feel spiders crawling over her, but she was powerless to get rid of them.

Her world went black as they clouded her vision. All of a sudden, the tingling stopped. She couldn't feel the air on her skin. She couldn't sense her own body. It was as if she were suspended in a great void. 

Her skin crawled the longer she waited. There were ghastly noises, shifting shapes in her peripheral view. Her vision remained affixed, locked straight forward, as the world shifted to a maroon-hued red. Unable to move her body, unable to feel her body, she heard sensations of her body shifting, liquid stirring around her, squeezing her. She felt bare and exposed at points, as if her skin had liquified and melted off her bones, as if her skeleton was ripped at the joints and recombined in some new way. The machinations of where she was trapped, she remained blind to.

Through her limited gaze, she saw shadowy silhouettes cast upon a screen. Their figures were thin and alien, horrifying at a glance. The lack of visual fidelity meant that her imagination filled in the wretched blanks. She could've sworn that one such creature looked directly at her; it let out a low, clicking chitter, before clambering off.

Celes felt like she was trapped in that space for years. She felt sensations prickling at her reemerging, but not as they were before. She found herself restless, unable to avert her eyes, unable to even close them, and avert her gaze from the red glowing world. She hadn't eaten. She was starving.

Her vision focused on a bag outside her view. But a barrier prevented her from moving. She thrashed her body, trying to escape. She smashed the barrier; with a single blow, the barrier ruptured, as if it were fine parchment.

Staggering on unsteady legs, she clambered over, tearing into the bag. Inside was a savoury liquid, thick as porridge. She tore into the bag, drinking deeply of the succor. 

Something brushed against some part of her body, clattering to the floor, then another. She ignored this, drinking deep until she felt herself become full, as her meal integrated with the rest of her body. The world was still tinted rose, almost blood. She felt the chill of darkness, yet found a certain comfort.

Along the ground beneath her, human remains: skulls and bones, and... a small mirror, which she spotted only by the reflection of a red light. She leaned closer to examine.

She screamed at what she saw... but her voice came out as a shrill, almost animalistic chittering roar.

---

SPLAT! 

Celes awoke with a start, screaming in surprise. She reflexively looked over herself. Her hands were still the same inky purple slime she had familiarized herself with. But something was off. It was dark.

She raised her eyes all around her. There were thin, flimsy walls around her. They were made of purple slime, the same as her; the light from outside was leaking through on one side. She turned and tried to push through, but the whole thing swayed.

"Uwah? I'm trapped!?" Celes pressed harder, rocking the thing viciously. "HELP! I'M STUUUCK!"

Shlurk. Whatever she was in descended sharply and caught itself. She froze and held her breath... but as she exhaled, she heard something snap, and she felt herself falling. She wailed in terror as she landed, her semi-liquid form swirling around in the flimsy prison she was in.

She formlessly struggled against the walls, desperate to escape. She felt like she was tied up in a burlap sack! Her panic overruled her sound judgment, until...

"Celes!!" 

Celes heard a voice... Marin's voice!

"Marin!?" Celes shouted. "Where are you? I can't see through this-"

RIIIIIIP!! Celes recoiled as a light blue claw ripped the flimsy purple fabric apart, revealing Celes to the world once again. She squinted, finding herself in the same cave she had resided in a month ago.

And before her was Marin... well, Marin as an enormous tiger, but Marin nonetheless. Celes sat, gawking in surprise, before remembering herself and crawling forward to hug Marin.

"Ohhh thankyouthankyouthankyou..." Celes was on the verge of tears. "You saved me..."

Marin's tiger form let out an affirmative growl, nuzzling Celes back. Her embrace was interrupted as a yellow tendril implanted itself in the back of her neck; Celes' eyes went yellow for a moment, before she blinked again, the world coming into view. It was Astra, one of her hair tentacles extending into Celes' back. Still wearing the same outfit Celes had made for her the day prior...

Good morning, Celes. Astra's voice rang in her head. You certainly raise quite a commotion in the morning.

"Astra..." Celes felt a little smaller in her presence. "I-I'm sorry. I was having a terrible nightmare, and I woke up trapped, so Marin had to-"

Nightmares? Slimes don't get nightmares. Astra scoffed.

"Y-yeah, it's a human thing." Celes frowned. "You wouldn't get it."

And is it a human custom to sleep suspended in a cocoon in the middle of a cave? Astra tilted her head. 

"Cocoon?" Celes grimaced. The nightmare was fresh on her mind. She ignored it for now. "N-no, I made a hammock..."

Celes didn't understand. She had surely made a solid hammock from her own slime last night. But this morning she woke up in something like a bag, suspended from the ceiling... Perhaps it was a cocoon? Celes didn't like the implications... especially as she remembered the latest of her string of terrible nightmares...

Whatever it was, your morning flailing perturbed Marin. Astra folded her arms. And it jostled me awake as well. At least remember who you share this island with before you make a commotion like that and worry us like that.

Marin, meanwhile, curled up in a ball at Celes' feet, exposing her tummy for bellyrubs. Celes' hand hovered, before scratching Marin's soft, gelatinous belly.

"Sorry about that, I... wait." Celes blinked, glancing to Astra. "You were worried? Marin I get, but you?"

Astra's eyes widened slightly. She stirred as she chose her words carefully.

It would be... bad for our future plans if you disappeared. Astra came up with. 

"And now that I think of it..." Celes' eyes lowered. "That's the outfit I made for you yesterday, right? Why are you still wearing it? I thought you hated it. Too humanesque...?"

W-well, it's... it would make for a better disguise. If I were in human territory. Astra's eyes darted to the side, avoiding eye contact. And it's... breathable.

Celes stared for a spell, her lips curling into a grin. "So you do like it~"

NO! Astra insisted. 

"Grrr..." Marin growled towards Astra. Astra gawked back, her shoulders drooping.

...Well... -Marin- likes it when I wear this get up, so I decided to wear it for a little while longer. For her sake. Not yours.

"Well... I'm glad. I guess~" Celes lit up a bit, tactfully reading between the lines. "Y'know you can ask me for another makeover at any time. You know, for Marin's sake. Until then... Marin?"

Celes patted Marin's tiger-form head.

"You want to show me around the island a bit more today? Continue our training?" Celes asked, invitingly.

"PLAYTIME!" Marin quickly morphed into her humanoid form, reaching out with her newly formed arms. Celes yelped as she was crushed in Marin's massive grip, her hands and forearms swelling to twice the size of Celes; Astra furrowed her eyebrows as Celes was plucked from her hair tentacle. The purple slime girl giggled and cackled as Marin smooshed her into a ball, before launching her out of the cave entrance, like a pro pitcher's fastball!

"Bye big sis!" Marin waved farewell to Astra, before getting on all fours and chasing Celes out of the cave as she bounced and weaved through trees. Astra watched her azure sister make chase. 

Hrm. Astra thought to herself. Nightmares... how strange. Celes is a strange one, but... hmmm.

Astra oozed out of the cave, looking for a cozy patch of dirt. She stretched her arms over her head as her body burrowed into the ground, leaving just her head above ground.

Ponder that over a mid-morning nap... Astra closed her eyes, doing her best impression of a tree sapling. 

...

"Hello Astra. I trust you have good news?"

A luscious voice purred in her head, as if whispered into her ear. Astra shot awake.

Surai! Astra exclaimed, via her thought process. Are you almost to the island??

"Soon enough. But you must tell me about Feza's whereabouts, with the help of our little sister. Together, we'll put an end to her." 

Well... there's one other. Astra glanced in the direction where Celes and Astra headed off. Surely, she would need to bring the new slime girl into the loop as well. Their training would surely need to be accelerated if Surai was on the way...