Exactly as I planned, Eve was using the extra biomass to match Beta-09’s size. The transformation was rapid as the dark form bubbled into itself, looking like boiling, roiling black tar.

  Beta-09 shrieked in anger and rushed for the slowly growing form, but before it even fully solidified it smacked Beta-09 with a massive tentacle, sending her sprawling to the ground.

  Eve’s new form continued growing until it was about ? the size of Beta-09—probably all she could get with the biomass she consumed. Once she had her size, the form started to solidify, growing limbs and scales, darkening into a complete form in a matter of minutes.

  Eve stood up and roared into the heavens, a cry of challenge, then stood tall and proud to display her new form before Beta-09.

  Eve was huge now, mostly black and reptilian—no, more like a dragon. She stood on two thick legs, with two muscular arms with razor sharp claws, with a glorious set of wings behind her, and a long, sweeping tail with that same silver hook on the end. Her face looked like a classic dragon, with maybe a few elegant feline qualities thrown in. She had scaly armor and spikes all over her body, with massive silver fangs in her furious maw.

  Of course it wouldn’t be Eve without a little of her flair; the draconian body still had wildly feminine curves, like a fat ass and wide hips, with scaly boobs over the chest area, and fucking smokey goth girl makeup around her vivid yellow eyes.

  I absolutely adored Eve, and I had to admit I found the goth-dragon sexy, but I would never even try to protest the idea Eve was absolutely batshit insane.

  ~Are you okay, darling?~ Eve asked, voice as elegant as ever in my inner-ear.

  ~I’ll live. Now go kick your little sister’s ass!~ I said.

  In response, Eve roared once more, sounding like a full-fledged dragon with the after affects of some eldritch abomination, and she rushed after Beta-09 with astonishing speed.

  Now that Eve was much closer in size and had the strength to match, she started rolling over Beta-09 like she was nothing. Eve tackled Beta-09 into the ground then started slashing at her with those massive claws, digging out huge chunks of her armor and getting down into the vulnerable flesh underneath.

  Beta-09 screeched and slashed her huge crab claw against Eve, but Eve caught it up easily, then started to pull, and ripped if from its socket. Beta-09 roared out in pain, but the roar was interrupted as Eve started beating the shit out of her with her own severed limb.

  “Oh shit!” I couldn’t help but laugh as Eve started absolutely dog-walking Beta-09 like a fucking brawler.

  There was no defense Beta-09 could summon to protect herself from Eve’s onslaught, however, despite all the damage Eve appeared to be doing, surrounded by this massive nest of biomass, Beta-09 could just endlessly regenerate. If Eve didn’t start focusing her attention on ending the fight quickly, I still didn’t see how she could win this, but at least she was in a much safer position now.

  I decided to try standing up to see how badly I was damaged and found I was still able to move; I felt like I’d broken some ribs, and I couldn’t move my right arm, so I was guessing there was a dislocation or fracture, but other than that I was holding up surprisingly well.

  I turned my attention back to the fight to see Eve was still going crazy on Beta-09, slashing and clawing and throwing severed limbs miles away. It was then I wondered if Eve’s plan was to simply damage her faster than she could regenerate, at least until she could get at Beta-09’s biomass core.

  Suddenly, in the middle of Eve’s assault, Beta-09 puffed up her chest and then screamed out a biothermal laser from all of her crab mouths—six in total, all angled to the same spot on Eve’s torso.

  Eve roared out in pain and slashed at Beta-09’s long worm head, destroying three of the crab faces in one strike.

  Shit, I hadn’t expected a Beta generation Predazoan to be able to use the biothermal lasers, but I guess there was no reason for me to think they couldn’t.

  The real shitty thing about the inhibitor field was how it prevented Eve from using some of her best offensive abilities, and yet somehow it hadn’t been able to fully defend against Beta-09’s laser. I could see a long burn mark down Eve’s chest and torso, but it bubbled up quickly and was healed a few moments later.

  Eve followed up her claw slash by spinning around and slamming her tail against Beta-09’s head, severing it completely with the huge hook on the end. Still, a severed head wasn’t a game over, not for a Predazoan; Beta-09 didn’t even flinch, and rushed after Eve, tackling into her while her head regenerated.

  Eve caught her sister easily though and flipped her around like she was using fucking judo, then slammed her onto the ground. Once Beta-09 was flat on her back, Eve started stomping on her, over and over, maximum brutality, not giving her any chance to defend herself.

  Eve started digging away at Beta-09’s limbs again, stomping and clawing all together, roaring with otherworldly ferocity. Beta-09 actually seemed to be losing her form now, turning into a squirming mass of tentacles all congealed together, rather than the abominable form she was before.

  Beta-09 tried to escape then, to break apart and flee, but Eve held onto the largest chunks and pressed them together, biting at anything else she could get her fangs on.

  Still, Eve wasn’t fast enough, and a massive wave of biomass from the tentacles that had been all over the capital rose up behind Eve and crashed into her like a tidal wave, pushing her off Beta-09’s main body.

  Eve tried to recover quickly, but it was too late, Beta-09’s main body converged with a new mass of tentacles and started solidifying into a single form, growing larger than the last one.

  Beta-09’s new form was at least 20 feel taller than the old one and wasn’t as abominable as the last. It seemed she followed Eve’s example and created a simpler form, this one looking like a mix between a crocodile and a rat, standing on two squat legs, with a massively long rat tail, with dexterous grabby rodent hands, and a huge crocodile maw, all covered in heavy black scales with tufts of nasty black fur poking out in between. Beta-09 shrieked and wailed so loudly I had to cover my ears, but Eve accepted the challenge and screeched right back.

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  The two titans ran after each other and collided, and now I could see Beta-09’s new form was moving much faster, much more agile—but still wasn’t able to outpace Eve. They clawed and scratched at each other, but Eve was more ferocious, and even with Beta-09’s increased size, it wasn’t enough to make a difference.

  Beta-09 tried to bat away Eve’s furious claw swipes, looking almost desperate. Eve dug into the heavy scales of her sister, ripping chunks away like it was nothing.

  But it had been a trick.

  With her super long tail, Beta-09 wrapped it around the battlefield until it was behind Eve, and before she could even sense the danger, Beta-09 speared through Eve with a sharp spike at the end of her rat tail.

  “Eve!” I called out, rushing over even though there was absolutely nothing I could do to help.

  Once again the inhibitor field proved detrimental, not even able to protect Eve from being impaled, all while keeping her contained. The physics of the device made absolutely no sense, and I was definitely going to have words with those idiotic Lord Generals once we got through all this.

  Eve roared out more in fury than in pain and lunged forward, clamping her jaws on Beta-09’s long reptile snout and tearing into it, trying to rip it away.

  Both Predazoans were digging into each other, Eve trying to rip off Beta-09’s maw, while Beta-09 was widening the hole she created in Eve with her tail. They both shrieked and thrashed into each other, looking like a mess as black ooze started splashing around the battlefield—Eve’s ooze remaining contained within the inhibitor field.

  It looked like Beta-09 noticed the ooze was contained in something, but before she could investigate further, Eve pulled away as ferociously as possible, ripping away the entire front of Beta-09’s face. Then she leaned up on one leg and full on spartan kicked her away, freeing herself from the tail that impaled her.

  Eve consumed Beta-09’s face as the rest of her body quickly regenerated, while Beta-09 wailed and shrieked on the ground in pain.

  “Why, I don’t understand, why are you attacking me—why destroy what I’ve built here?” Beta-09 demanded as her face regenerated, her voice loud and booming, but surprisingly feminine.

  Eve laughed, sounding like it was coming from some huge mega-speaker or something, still sounding like it belonged to the Eve I knew, but amplified to match her size, “And why not? Once you achieved perfection, are you telling me you would’ve been fine to hide away on this little world?”

  Beta-09 stood back up, “Are you telling me you’ve already achieved perfection?”

  Dragon Eve gestured to herself grandly, “Of course.”

  Beta-09 flinched as though Eve had struck her, “Then is it instinct that drives you to attack your sisters? Once you achieve perfection, you wish to be the only Predazoan in existence—to be the only perfect being in this universe and beyond?”

  Eve laughed derisively, “Is that what you think this is?” She shook her huge head, “No, in a way my perfection has led me here, but for a different reason than you might imagine.”

  I assumed Eve meant how I got us involved in the Predazoan containment mission; Eve’s perfect form was as my mate, and her mate said we should be hunting down the Predazoans—or at least the Empire was making us do that now.

  Unless that wasn’t really the truth; I had more reasons to doubt Eve than ever before after what she did to Almana and me. What if Eve had her own reasons for hunting down her sisters just like Beta-09 thought? What if Eve had been lying to me all along?

  I shook my head, absolutely not the right time to be borrowing trouble; Eve and I needed to have a good long talk, but all that could wait until we were well and clear of any danger.

  Beta-09 held her hands out placatingly, “You could help me achieve perfection, we could work together, hunt down the Prime, and then we could do anything we wanted to this dimension—or any beyond it; we could truly be as gods together! Please sister, there’s no reason for us to fight.”

  Eve’s smile fell as her draconian face turned vicious, “I don’t need you or anyone else getting in the way of my plans for this reality. No, better for you to die here and now before any of you could complicate things.”

  Beta-09 shrieked at Eve in frustration, then puffed up her chest and fired off another huge biothermal laser, but this time Eve was ready for it. She flew up in the air with her dragon wings, all the way to the top of the capital shielding, then faster than I could even track, slammed back down on Beta-09, cutting off the lasers as she shattered every inch of her spine and whatever foundation kept her upright.

  Beta-09’s body was bubbling all over as she was trying to regenerate from the damage, but Eve was moving faster than ever digging into her, clawing her back open, pressing Beta-09 down beneath her feet. Beta-09 scratched and scrambled, trying to get up, trying to right herself, but Eve had her down flat.

  I could see in Beta-09’s eyes she was growing desperate now, actually afraid for her life. She pleaded and wailed, but her words quickly turned into shrieks that weren’t coherent at all as Eve continued ripping through her. Eventually Eve clawed her way deep inside Beta-09, throwing out chunks and masses of tentacles and organelles, until finally she pulled out the pulsing red and black biomass core, looking like a dozen hearts and brains all meshed into one, glowing like it was radiating pure energy—like it was some rare treasure.

  Beta-09 let out a long, ear-splitting shriek that had me doubling over in pain it was so loud, but a second later it was cut off as Eve took a bite out of the massive biomass core, then devoured it completely.

  Beta-09’s wails warbled and then died as she burned away to ash underneath Eve, followed by all the biomass netting in the capital liquifying into useless black ooze. Everywhere I could see, walls and floors and even ceilings drained away into the useless sludge, revealing the old, desiccated structures they used to be.

  I rushed over towards Eve, but she quickly flew into the air once more, landing down miles away onto something I couldn’t even see, but then a few moments later, the capital shielding in the sky deactivated, opening it to the outside world once again.

  A couple seconds later, Eve flew back in front of me, touching down just a dozen feet away, standing up and running her hands over her scaly curves in a presenting manner.

  “What do you think darling? Pretty sexy right?” Eve inquired, all traces of violence gone from her voice, sounding elegant and flirty once again.

  I rolled my eyes, looking up at the strange, curvy, feminine, humanoid goth dragon that was my Evie, “Looks like something I would see on someone’s DeviantArt page.”

  Eve’s smile grew, “You didn’t answer my question…” She said teasingly.

  I chuckled and shook my head, “Yeah yeah, I’d fuck it in a heartbeat.” I gestured to the mess of ooze around us, “But maybe another time? We should see how the rest of the team is doing, then get the hell off this planet.”

  Eve held up a huge draconian finger, “Just a moment.”

  She turned away from me and hunched over, then seemed to just melt into herself as her form started shrinking, condensing back down to her regular size. A few moments later, Eve returned to her normal celicapoz form, then manifested the sexy princess-goth dress I hadn’t seen in quite a while.

  I quirked up an eyebrow, “Better?”

  Eve shrugged, making her way over towards me, “Not quite; without access to my stores of void energy, that extra biomass is going to burn away quickly.” She placed a hand on her forehead, “Honestly, it makes me seem feverish, although I do feel fine.”

  I gestured towards the ashen remains of Beta-09, “What about the energy from her core? Hasn’t that revitalized you?” I asked.

  Eve stopped before me and smiled, then wrapped her arms around my neck, kissing me tenderly. She pulled back and looked into my eyes, a crazed, happy expression on her face, “Absolutely, I feel much better now, more alert, more focused—more alive. Still, it’s only a temporary solution and hasn’t fixed the issue with maintaining my store of biomass.”

  There were a dozen questions I wanted to ask Eve, about her void energy, about her biomass, her conversation with Beta-09, her actual motivations, and of course what happened with Almana and her obvious lack of humanity—but now wasn’t the time.

  Instead, I just smiled and kissed Eve again—and again and again, and despite all the shit that was going on between us, I was so happy she was safe, and beyond happy we were just about done with the mission.

  I finished the kiss and looked down at Eve, holding her with my one good arm as she held me, staring into each other’s eyes, and for a moment I forgot everything else—for a moment, everything was perfectly fine.

  Eve’s smile was satisfied, and she let out a content sigh, “Well, ready to finish it?”

  I smiled too, feeling quite satisfied myself, “Yeah, let’s get the show on the road.”