My love… Await for me, until the end of my long campaign. Through any agony, I would return to you... I would see you again, even if for just one last time...

Surely… You would do the same...?

The regal female had felt so foolish, letting such a promise pass her lips. At that point, her children were nothing more than a flutter in her middle… She had visions of a serene beachside scene, with her mighty King reclined beside her, and their family dancing in the waves...

The Queen had wanted nothing more than to honour her promise… But before she had become laden with children, she had been an explorer and sea-farer… And even as her middle grew larger, and the pups squirmed and caressed their mother from within, it wasn’t enough to deter her from a bubbling, hormone-driven wanderlust…

Her guardians were worried she may hurt herself. Too many a female had fallen into such depressive episodes during a pregnancy, to the point of madness… With her incessant begging, and her carefully laid plans, a secret voyage was planned… One last breath of fresh sea air, before she was confined to her quarters and dedicated to the business of child rearing. She would tell no one, and thus would be safe from enemy spies and hidden threats...

So she thought, anyway...

The voyage was almost a success… A serene, uncomplicated jaunt about the coastline… But as they turned towards home, the captain was uneasy… The waves that crashed around their ship were unnatural... The storm that brewed and hemmed them in was evil-sent. The monsters that came after them cared not for wars nor boundaries on a map... 

All they wanted... was blood... 
"Push HARDER!" a petulent voice hissed, from the shadows... "Push harder, royal little mutt... Do you want them dead? Hm… Maybe no matter what, they will be, with a lazy mother like you… But you could save them a little pain... What kind of queen are you...?"

She had felt… So foolish giving that promise...

The Primarina laid on a spit of rock in the middle of the endless blue ocean… She had been crying so much that despite being soaked by the driving rain, the tears dribbling down her face remained obvious…

Her voyage had renewed her… Her body, or maybe her very soul was vitalized by being allowed to swim in the open, living ocean… She had thought herself so clever, and had forgotten that the ocean is a cruel predator, always waiting to strike…

The last thing she recalled was… Floating there in the open waters… Her broad arms gently clasped around her beautiful middle, feeling her pups wriggle madly with delight at the new sensations about them…

Then… The storm… The storm had struck their ship, as if from no where at all...

It felt like a nightmare made manifest, and the poor mermaid could only assume that was true as the razor-maw and glowering eyes floated from the darkness towards her...

Crimson’s shark teeth were bared in a worrying grin… She drifted lazily about the fallen queen, watching intently… The ruby red Manaphy's eyes were locked on the tightening middle that the queen possessed, and they were so preoccupied that it seemed as if the predator was speaking to the belly, and not the one who carried it...

"She's NOT pushing HARD enough…" Crimson growled, her eyes as btight and intimidating as an angler’s lure... The gaze that was as terrifying as the abyssal depths of the waters around them… They rippled with an undying rage, always alert for a reason to unleash it and its terrible violence...

"No real royal at all, just like I thought… SHE NEEDS TO BE GIVEN A REMINDER..."

The water behind the Manaphy frothed and burst suddenly, as a hoard of scarlet Phione darted and rushed through the air as if they were still swimming through the waves. The swarm separated, and displayed two other Pokemon who had been kept prisoner beneath the waves; the first was an Inteleon and the next was a Greninja... 

The queen's most loyal bodyguards… And both very pregnant... Each holding a vast egg in their protruding middles...

Crimson's children tore and tug with their sharpened teeth… The Greninja howled in agony, as their arm was reduced to a fine mist by a thousand serrated edges...

"They have so few limbs… I don't think they'll last much longer..." Crimson sighed… Her scowling expression had softened into something resembling pride at the grotesque torment her children wrought...  She swayed through the air lazily, and floated around the Inteleon. The lizard struggled even now, despite the ragged gash torn down her front... Crimson floated near, peering at her thoughtfully… Suddenly, she laughed and seemed to make a signal to her little ones... 

Without hesitation, they tore the Inteleon to pieces. 

They were masters of their wicked art, even being so young. The speed at which they worked was horrific to witness, yet they left just enough time for the chameleon Pokemon to understand her fate… and experience the agony.

When there was little left but the torso and head, Crimson floated above and spread her arms… The Swarm dispersed immediately, as their mother manipulated the energies of life and vitality, as her species was able… Yet, this was no benign Heart Swap…

It was a beam of pure pain… A surge of energy into the muscles, and an unending command to force them to clench, beyond even what was possible. The Inteleon, even in her half-dead state, couldn’t help but scream…

The vital energies seeped into the egg within her midsection… It grew rapidly… Her skin stretched painfully, her insides compressed and...

SPLUT...
The lizard burst, and in a few moments, was gone... Nothing but a lingering red mist that slowly fell into the sea...

The Phione brought their mother the heavy egg and then rushed to 'help' with the Greninja, who was now hanging by her only remaining leg, to keep her from pushing her womb full out...

“Mmm, one sacrifice down, one more to take your place… Unless of course, you can get those pups out of your useless, ‘noble’ body and save them, eh… ‘queen’…?”

The sound of the Manaphy’s laugh was as terrible as the thousands of teeth gnashing around her... The Primarina, pale and sick, still attempted to push, her labour having long been set off from stress and trauma... 

She was weak... She had planned all manner of herbs and medicines to help her give birth to her brood safely... Even a doctor's intervention if need be… Yet now, she was stranded in the middle of no where, and her children were being DEMANDED of her instead...

The Manaphy flicked her antennae and fired the same beam of energy she had aimed at the Inteleon. The Primarina felt her belly tense firmly, making her squeal… But by the time the contraction had ended, her swollen belly had grown so far overdue that the muscles were no longer strong enough...

Her straining was impotent… She could no longer make progress without help. She had ‘lost’…
 
"What a shame..." growled Crimson, her body vibrating with perverted desire. The Primarina could tell that the Manaphy floating before her was doing her best to hold back urges to crush her… To tear her limb from limb and sink her teeth into what was left... Her willpower gave way for a split second, and she jerked forward. Her mouth snapped wide… before they suddenly snapped shut, and not a moment before she would have torn the queen’s throat out…

The Primarina’s heart throbbed in her chest… Her breathing came stilted and terrified, as Crimson had floated so close, their foreheads were nearly touching…

...The Manaphy’s teeth were bared slowly in a horrifying grin… The Queen’s stomach turned with nausea at the sight...
Crimson wordlessly signalled her brood…

The Greninja had been alive only because Crimson willed it. Now, the Swarm rushed upon her. She barely had time to scream before her body was split in multiple directions and reduced to paste, leaving little left of her but unclean bones that splashed into the water below…

The Swarm reverently brought their mother the Greninja’s ribcage, in which the egg she had been carrying was nestled. Crimson took it, flicking the rib cage away idly, like the wrapper on a candy bar before patting the nearest Phione in a moment of tenderness that was almost perverse...

"You failed, mermaid..." 

The Primarina cringed at the words and covered her head. She expected to feel a field of razor teeth dig into her body in an instant. Instead, she heard Crimson say;

"Take her with us..."

Instead of teeth, the Queen felt dozens of little limbs grasp at her and drag her into the air. They were bloated from their meals, and just a bit lazy. The ride would be rough… But they’d make sure to dunk her forcefully in the crashing waves below every now and again to keep her awake, aware, and hydrated...

They were going to keep her alive, she realized…

"Stop... PLEASE! What are you doing... Are you going to let me go?!

"Let you go...?!" laughed Crimson, turning to look over her shoulder... "My plans for your fate haven't changed..."

She swirled lazily over to the Primarina, to say the next words straight to the queen's face...

"I just don't want to eat you raw...~"
She laughed and zipped ahead with terrifying speed. The Phiones started to bite her impatiently, leaving bloody little marks they knew they weren't supposed to leave... But they couldn't resist. All of them wanted to taste the main ingredient… The queen screamed bloody murder as she was dragged through the storm... on her way to her impromptu 'dinner date'…

===

Down and down again…

Through a caustic whirlpool, above the canopies of a grim forest, along snow fields, raked across burning embers... Was the journey that long? 

No… No, she realized that she could not have been taken so far… Her mind must have been addled by loss of blood… She was back in the palace, of course, as she should be… Perhaps her babies were on the way, and… And she had passed out from the…

...the pain...

Was she supposed to be in this much pain!?

Her eyes fluttered slowly open, and she immediately arched and screamed bloody murder...

"And now she's AWAKE..."

The Primarina was hyperventilating as she jerked her unsteady head up to look around. She was in some lavish kitchen, but the tools were all of strange black iron and the fire seemed too hot. Her own kitchen at her palace resembled this... But this had an aura of...

...cruelty.

"Help me..." she whispered, her head awash with terrible images of her beloved bodyguards being taken to pieces by small, fanged monsters...

"You wanted her to be awake. You’ve never tried to leave one asleep for this part."

"Grrrh… Yes, but in THIS case... It would have been better!"

The princess lifted her head weakly and squinted into the flickering firelight. Crimson floated there before her still, but was arguing with someone unseen, who stood at the Primarina’s head…

The Queen became suddenly aware of a sharpening sound… An ominous, metallic scraping...

"You don’t HAVE to act like a spoiled cat, Autumn!"
The Meowscarada’s thin pupils narrowed. Her drooping expression twitched briefly into an angry grimace. She stood there next to her fire, scraping a whetstone over one of her tools, with her eyes looking past her work and down at her midsection… It was swollen even past what a Devil might normally expect...

"You come to me... You throw that thing on my table, and demand that I prepare it right away… And I'm spoiled? I'm in LABOUR, Crimson..."

"It’s your JOB, isn’t it Autumn? Besides, I've seen you cook in labour before!" pouted Crimson, whose stomach was audibly, if softly, gurgling...

"Ouh, well it’s all okay then, eh?” hissed the cat, in a dangerously soft voice… “Never mind how little I want to cook with something YOU ALREADY ATE HALF OF!"

The Queen gasped softly, jerking her head up. She began to panic and flail, but her limbs were secured by a tight crisscross of string, like she was nothing more than a turkey...

...And... her entire tail was gone. 

There was only a ragged stump, leaving her hips and little else. As if to add insult to injury, both of her fins had been chewed off, leaving her helpless even without the binding.

As if seeing it all made it real to her mind, she howled in agony, immediately and damningly aware of every single ragged bite mark on her body...

Autumn’s ears flattened in annoyance. As the Primarina continued to scream, she gave a soft growl and waddled forward. She held the side of her head, and the side of her belly… But as soon as she reached the preparation table, she grabbed the mermaid’s jaw and sunk her claws into her tongue...

A horrid, fleshy TEARING sound shuddered through the room… the tongue separated. Screams were replaced by desperate gurgling...

"You can let me have some, as I'll need it after this baby is born... Or you can eat it raw..." Autumn said, gesturing and pointing with the tongue... 

Crimson's eyes flicked back and forth, following the chewy bit of meat that Autumn had extracted, as a bit of red drool dribbled down her chin. Her attempts to resist the allure of Autumn’s cooking slowly and obviously collapsed, until she crossed her arms firmly and pouted a sharp “FINE”...

"N... nouh..." the Primarina begged... She watched in horror as her tongue was tossed casually into a nearby pan, and then Autumn turned back. Her hands were again settled on her middle, and her eyes were closed. She looked like she was about to drop a kitten from between her legs at any moment...

"Fine then..." she mumbled, and picked up a long stake... "A royal feast for the manor’s ‘princess’..." 

The demonic chef jammed the heated skewer into the ragged stump of the Primarina’s tail. The queen sobbed in agony, writhing as much as she could in her painfully tight bindings, as the red hot metal slid through her body at an almost leisurely pace… She felt more than one of her organs shift and sizzle around it, as it jammed up into her chest, and then forcibly out of her throat... She gagged until the heat of the metal seared her throat to uselessness, and leaving her with nothing but a pitiful choking. Her midsection writhed in unholy mocking of the soft, excited kicking that it once contained. Her eyes rolled back with terror, as Autumn lifted her and set her above the raging fire...

Why was this happening? It was only a few months before she was promising her husband she would wait for him… She had been envisioning their family at the beach…! Now…

She saw Autumn marking her middle with demonic runes, a soft and smug grin on her face. To her horror, she felt something vital taken from her… And her children…

Autumn cradled the vessel she had prepared… A simple jar that absorbed the essence of those marked by the runes…

Her family… taken from her… In the most horrendous of ways… Tears slithered down her cheeks… Autumn noticed, and leaned in to whisper to her...

"Keep crying. Salt is good for the dish."

With a metallic groan and an echoing THUMP, the oven door was closed. The skewer began to turn...

The princess wasn’t even able to scream as her body was engulfed in fire...

Autumn shuffled about the kitchen as casually as a housewife would, unbothered by the writhing silhouette in the flames… She leaned against a counter, her tail flicking as she rubbed along her middle slowly…

The fur between her thighs was matted with fluid and blood by now...

"Too many ingredients. I've made a bit too much, I think... Ah, so it goes..."

Within an hour, the food was done. Autumn set the steaming plates down, the meat roasted to perfection. As a finishing touch, she opened a jar, and a spectral mist flowed out…

With a ladle, she spooned a thick, and very dark red fluid over the meat. The sauce sizzled on contact, and its aroma was at once awful… and unnaturally tempting…

Autumn grinned silently, turned, and carried the tray with both plates from the cooling kitchen. She left a trail of red drops as she did...
"It wasn't ENOUGH!" squealed Crimson, an hour or so later. 

She had devoured her portion of the azure meat with her usual furious zeal. Her middle still gurgled and snarled, as it always did, demanding her brood be fed... But she was especially frustrated because Autumn was sat across from her, her plate only just barely touched, and leaned back in her chair with her eyes closed and her mouth curved into a frown...

"Do I seem like I CARE right now, Crimson? You're the one who let your little ones tear the meat to pieces...!"

"You're not eating yours! Go pop out the pup in peace and leave the plate to me…?"

"It's a KITTEN..." growled Autumn, as she leaned forward with a sharp gasp. She remained double over for a moment, and then slowly lifted herself back against the chair. Despite the obvious pain, she had a dark grin on her face... 

"You wouldn't want to eat if you were hurting like I was.... You'll see soon..."

"I'd want to eat even if I-" she started, but then stopped and paled a little, before baring her fangs in fury... "What did you put on my food?! It tasted different… Better than usual… I should have known!”

"Heh…! You're always ready to grow your little swarm, aren't you?"

"AUTUMN!"

She squealed and gripped her middle, realizing the furious hunger wasn't normal. Indeed, she had grown subtly over the course of the meal, and...

"How did you put that many more in me?!"

Autumn likely would have answered, but she was forced to lean forward once more by the contracting of her muscles. There was a kick from her immense middle, and with it, a ripping noise from within her chest… She arched in pain, then coughed a gush of dark ichor...
Crimson would have wanted to enjoy her sister's pain, or at least she was angry enough to try and taunt her for it, but her own middle clenched hard and immediately demanded all attention... She recognized this sensation, obviously… She was no stranger to labouring… But it was far harder when your body was thrown into the deep end with no time to prepare itself. 

In fact, with the weight of what now sat on her hips, it might have been impossible...

"Autumn...!" she whined louder, but the cat was sat there in her chair with her paws clutched to her middle. Her head hung limp, and the black fluid dribbled down her chin and pattered on her chest. Her breathing was ragged... clearly, she wasn't paying attention... 

Crimson felt her middle lurch and pin her against the table. She flailed in frustration, and even in her condition, Autumn couldn't help but smirk at her victory. It was easy for someone as strong as Crimson to be intimidating, but even the mightiest creature is made humble by the agony of bearing a child. Even if it seemed impossible, she braced herself against the table and pushed at the egg that even now forced her middle bigger and bigger...

Autumn lifted her head just enough to witness the carnage. Crimson tried desperately to push again, but her muscles were useless against an egg that was only becoming heavier by the moment. Crimson squealed desperately, and Autumn let her head droop again, a soft grin on her face. She didn’t have the strength to watch, but the noise of Crimson’s egg suddenly bursting, and the newborn Phione making their way out with their teeth while Crimson screeched, was enough for her...

Autumn's own labour wasn't progressing at all. Her little one's head was stuck comfortably against her pelvis...

"Too... Too much... of... the..." she muttered, trying to note the recipe… before she suddenly slumped against the table. Her birthing muscles were destroyed by this point by the immense head forcing her hips wide. It was like trying to squeeze a melon through a keyhole, and her flesh had long ago snapped in a few places. Autumn coughed suddenly, and splattered the nice tablecloth with her dark blood…

Her baby wriggled there impatiently… But there was little mama could do at this stage but sigh and relax...
"Next... time then..." she wheezed. She used what modicum of strength she had left to extend a claw, and press it firmly into her sternum...

It pierced the skin and flesh with ease… After a point, the internal pressure was too much, and she fell open violently… Her organs splattered against the ground, hissing with one last flash of demonic fire before sputtering to charred lumps. Autumn’s eyes were growing dull and her body was moving almost robotically as her paws gingerly gripped the giant kitten inside her. As she pulled them forth from her destroyed body, their gazes met... Even now, Autumn couldn’t help but smile gently, and hug the kitten to her chest... before slumping forward. The newborn shook itself free of its mother’s dead weight and fell to the ground… It shook its pelt, splattering red droplets along the ground and wall before it turned and curiously began to wander, leaving the dining hall and exploring the grand manor it found itself born into...

At the table, everything was left in silence. Nothing disturbed the room but the soft and intimidating crackle of the fireplace as it slowly burned lower. Elsewhere in the mansion, as could often be heard, there was the strained cry of a mother pushing her children into the world...

After some time had passed, the dining room’s door suddenly swung open. Into the room ambled a tired, but cheerful looking Sprigatito. She had to shake herself off a few times, as if she wasn’t used to the fur she found herself in. She walked to the dinner table and hopped up, looking at the carnage. The disembowelled corpse of a Meowscarada, and a lot of carnage from the traumatic birth of a few new piranha…

The kitten hummed thoughtfully to herself, then turned to look as Crimson's swarm suddenly rushed back into the room and started to 'clean up'. As the eager and unpicky Phione wicked away any trace of blood or bone, a much smaller Manaphy emerged from the centre of the swarm, as cute as a newborn, and yet still with a scowl that could freeze the heart of a hero...

"Oh, HA. HA. HA. Very good meal. Very FILLING, right…?!" squealed the little Manaphy, indignantly. The Sprigatitto merely grinned and began grooming herself casually. 

Little Crimson pouted for as long as her willpower held... But it wasn’t long before she zipped forward and devoured what was left of Autumn’s half of the meal...
"N-Next time..." she mumbled as threateningly as her tiny self could, through gory mouthfuls... "Next time!"

Autumn’s feline smugness never faded. A glance from her was enough to make the reborn Crimson return to focusing on her meal, instead of her humiliation...

"Next time indeed... Mm... A little less dragonscale... And I might just be able to push it out...~!”