UB Feat 4

Eve appeared to be in pain, tearing at her face with a look of anguish. Flesh fell from
her in pieces.
Toshiaki strained his eyes as Eve changed form yet again. Her entire body rippled. Her
waist's curves straightened out, and her breasts flattened while her chest heaved out. Her
shoulders broadened. The facial structure also changed. She wailed loudly. But the voice,
too, was transformed.
What the hell is going on?
What had been a woman was now clearly becoming a man.
Something protruded from between its legs. At first the size of a finger, it began to
swell and rise menacingly, pulsing all the while. The gentle curves faded as muscles
stretched out in their place. Abdominals bulged out, and muscles swelled up above the
shoulders. The neck grew thicker and the facial features sharpened. Sideburns extended like a
lion's mane. A goatee and beard sprouted on the face. The creature's back heaved up like a
mound of steel. Then, it put both hands onto the floor and assumed a beast-like posture on all
fours. Every part of it embodied strength. A shout of indignation emanated from this new
body as it struck the floor.
And then, it howled.
Thunderous waves rattled Toshiaki's ruptured organs, nearly tearing him apart. There
was another enormous sound and the room went pitch dark. The electricity had been cut. An
alarm sounded from somewhere.
Toshiaki coughed up the blood rising in his throat. Ruptures along his skin oozed
plasma. The inside of his head burned.
Something popped in his eyes, after which he saw only red and black dots. A swarm of
countless points ran wildly in his vision like a sand storm. He could hear the creature, but
could not guess what it was doing. He heard concrete splitting open as chunks of wall fell
onto him.
Yoshizumi let out a scream, but Toshiaki could do nothing more than remain where he
was.
He then felt himself rise into the air. Something hit him repeatedly. In the stomach,
shoulders, head, and chest. He was soon numb to the pain. While he knew he was being
thrown against the walls, he had no will to fight it. He could only wonder why Eve had
turned into a man. Mitochondria were definitely female. What did this mean? Was this
another evolutionary step? And if so... It all became clear to him now.
It can't be.
But there was no other explanation. Intellectually, it was questionable, but the intuition
of every fiber of his being told him otherwise.
As if in answer to his thoughts, the creature yelled in agony.
There was an explosion. Toshiaki fell to the floor. The alarm blared in his ears.
But an even more deafening sound threatened to drown it out. It was as Toshiaki had
suspected. Eve's voice was changing back into a woman's.
He heard what sounded like wriggling flesh in between the alarm intervals. Eve was
reliving her violent regeneration and birth. Her pulse shook the air. A woman's voice arose
above a man's yell, as if to silence it. The man's voice cut off the woman's with the ferocity of
a jet exhaust. Male and Female were waging battle against one another in the same life form,
a balance of power being pulled back and forth between them. Just when the female's
expression was about to appear, the male formed its own figure over it. When the female cut
out a womb in the body, the male buried it and extended its distinguishing organ in retaliation.
The female twisted the penis back into the body as breasts arose in defiance. Toshiaki's
intuition had been correct. Though he couldn't see it, he could tell that the new life form was
devolving into a mess internally.
Someone or something jumped into Toshiaki's mind. The voice was faint, as when
phone fines got crossed. Toshiaki realized right away that it was mitochondria, the ones that
had parasitized Eve 1. That monster had been melting on the floor, trying to welcome her
extinction, but was now dismayed at her daughter's transformation. The mitochondria were
making one last desperate attempt at signaling the host cells to propagate again. The mother
longed to control this disaster that was supposed to have been her perfection. But the host
cells were damaged beyond repair. The mitochondria's sorrowful cry echoed in Toshiaki's
body. This cannot be, this cannot be!
His head filled with a brilliant flash. That which until now had caught in a corner of his
mind, refusing to be drawn out, now revealed its dazzling self. It was just as he thought... The
mitochondria in Eve 1 had overlooked one important thing. They did not give sufficient
consideration to it because they were female. His sperm was obviously necessary to create
new life, but Eve 1 had only thought of male genes as tools for reproduction. The
mitochondria had failed to notice that their "daughter" was made up not only of themselves,
but also of male mitochondria.
Eve l's mitochondria's final scream rang in Toshiaki's ears, trailing off into silence. He
felt her death indirectly. Outer and inner membranes collapsed, spilling DNA from inside.
They were then torn apart by enzymes. All electrical transmissions diffused and died out.
Receptors dissolved into useless peptides before losing life completely. Consciousness
ceased. Cells burst, returning to mere fats, amino acids, and sugars. Eve 1 was no longer a
life form, but simply a heap of decaying organic matter.
Eve 1’s child screamed in sexually dimorphous anguish.
The ceiling began to crumble as Eve erupted with pure power. I need to get out of here,
thought Toshiaki. But his body would not move.
He heard people's voices, footsteps drawing near. Short gasps of shock and horror
followed. A light hit his face.
Help had arrived at last.
He let out an exclamation of joy, but it did not take form in sound. He tried to move a
little, but could not quite gather enough strength.
At that moment, a tidal wave of heat exploded around them.
Screams and frantic footsteps.
Toshiaki panicked, fearing for those who had come to their aid.
A blast of magma-like air pierced his body. Something heavy smashed into his waist.
He lost all feeling in his legs. Distant screams:
"Oh my...!"
"What is that?"
"It's alive!"
He heard only snatches of speech, followed by the sound of flesh being torn from the
bones, damp explosions, and truncated screams. While Eve was trying to keep Toshiaki
under control, she was simultaneously venting out her power and destroying everything
around them.
This could not go on. No one would ever make it out alive. He had to calm Eve
somehow. There was no reason to let anyone else be sacrificed. He felt something hot
swelling up from the very core of his being. He would stop this thing. He had to kill it. Even
if... "I order you to stop!" thought Toshiaki, with all the fury he could muster.
He sensed Eve's momentary hesitation. He screamed with more force.
"Come here! Look at me, me! I am your father! Come here!"
Eve whined, turning her attentions to him. The blazing wind lost its intensity.
"I know all about you. I know why you are the way you are. Come to me. Let me hold
you."
Eve's movements weakened. She looked around in confusion for her mother. But Eve 1
was already dead. Toshiaki spoke to her with sympathy.
"Your body is breaking apart now. It hurts, doesn't it? I understand. Come here. Let
your father hold you. I will share your pain. You can make all the children you want. But
what about parents? You can't create them. And your mother is dead. I am the only parent
you have left. Share your suffering with me. Think only of me. Over here. I am here. Now
come!"
The heat died down completely.
Silence fell. The alarm faded away as Toshiaki's ears grew deaf to it. The ceiling
stopped crumbling as well, as if the concrete fragments falling from above had ceased in mid- air. A silence that could not even be called silence.
And then, movement broke through the quietude, turning slowly in Toshiaki's direction.
Yes, that's it, he said encouragingly as he spread open welcoming arms.
It touched his waist with a warm and greasy appendage, wrapping around his torso.
Toshiaki smiled and spoke gently. "Come now, share your pain with me. Fuse with my cells. Let us become one. If you
do, you will no longer be afraid. You were not at peace, because you knew there was another
self separate from you, because the life I gave you was trapped in another. I understand your
torment. Become one with me. Come into my body. Be one with your father. There's nothing
to be afraid of. Now."
Toshiaki felt his body melting.
Eve's cells opened the pores in his skin and flowed inside. Cell rubbed against cell,
creating friction and heat. All sense of direction disappeared. Toshiaki could hardly feel
anything. He knew that Eve's cells were passing into him, that their membranes were binding
to his cells. Her mitochondria were becoming one with his, as were her mitochondrial DNA.
Eve's power vanished in the blink of an eye.
She moved. The friction and heat increased and Toshiaki realized he was on fire. He
felt like he was flying. It was such a mysterious sensation, a stimulation beyond anything he
had ever imagined. Perhaps it was something no living being on this earth had ever felt. Was
this what it felt like to evolve? He was experiencing a completely different dimension. Its
joys and sorrows could never be comprehended by organisms that hadn't so evolved, nor
would such creatures even know what they did not know. Human beings, too, would perhaps
evolve to such a point someday. But would they still be in symbiosis with mitochondria then?
Probably, yes. Evolution occurs in the process of one thing trying to coexist with something
other than itself. That other could be another organism, or an environment. It was hard to say
whether it would be on earth, another planet, or inside cells, but when human beings
managed to build a new symbiosis, a new, evolved world would be theirs.
Eve growled as she integrated herself into him. Toshiaki merged with her in silence,
their strength fading like a dying star. It ends here, he thought. This is where the nightmare
ends.
Kiyomi, you will return to the self you once were.
To the Kiyomi I always loved.
Part Three: Evolution. Chapter 24. Pages 223-227.