A single arm twitched from the mass of pulsing flesh. The grotesque form had spread out along the ground like water. Almost as if the only thing keeping it firm and together was sheer willpower, but with the last bits of its life slowly fading away, it started to come apart at the seams.

"Well, I'm man enough to admit when I'm wrong," Sentenza shrugged as he lit up a fresh cigarillo. "Seems you could defeat it."

Trizel's entire body was moving up and down with his deep breaths. His face was bright red from exertion and sweat stains covered his clothes. He turned to glare at Sentenza, but was panting too hard to actually say anything.

Bakade patted Trizel on his back. The fires in her eye sockets trailed down his body and to his bandaged arm that was now covered in sweat. "Gggoooodddd jjjjooobbbb," she said as her eyes stared at the soaked bandages covering his severely burned arm.

A bubble started to rise form the creature. It got bigger and bigger, and then:

POP!

It exploded and sent bits of flesh all over everyone. Sentenza had his entire face plastered. He put a hand up on his forehead, and dragged it down to wipe off the viscera. He gave a disappointed, "Tsk," as he pulled the now ruined cigarillo out of his mouth. He looked down at it with some sorrow in his eyes before he flicked it onto the ground.

Pockets popped up from inside the bubble with a bike pump. "Whoa, it looks just as messy out here as it was in there!" she giggled.

But it seemed no one found it funny as they all went about peeling the wet flesh off of themselves.

"Why's everyone look like a bunch of sour grapes?" Pockets asked. "I thought you guys would be happy you beat that thing?"

"Bakaw!" Nugget cried indignantly as she tried to shake off the mess that now soaked her feathers.

"We were, until you saw fit to make a mess of all of us out here," Sentenza grumbled.

For her part, Pockets looked completely untouched. Like she had just come out of the shower and put on a fresh pair of clothes. On the other hand, everyone else looked like they had just tried to shower in tar.

Bakade stood stunned while the others turned to Pockets and complained at her. The lanky girl seemed to shake slightly as she looked down at her hands. Her mouth had been open when Pockets blew the bubble, and bits had gotten into her mouth. She looked down at her hands, and then swallowed.

Her eyes shrunk immediately, and her jaw hung open as she started to pant.

Nugget seemed to be the first to notice as she turned to look at everyone's mouth. One by one, she saw white vapor spew from their mouths as they argued with Pockets.

Finally, she turned to see Bakade who had started to shove her own hands inside her mouth, until they were all the way up to her elbow. A low groan escaped Bakade as she pulled her arms free, and she turned her gaze down to the limbs around them.

A howl that sounded like a cold wind rushing through the forest echoed out from Bakade's throat before she thrust her hand down into the pool of flesh, and started to shove any pieces she could manage to grab into her mouth.

She tried to chew, but seemed more intent on shoving more down her gullet than properly savoring any of it. So, it was more of a symbolic gesture, as she was almost constantly swallowing. Her clawed hands chopped up the pieces enough that she never seemed to struggle to swallow.

Instead, she kneeled there like a starved wolf on the verge of death, tearing into a fresh prey. Squealching sounds surrounded them as she seemed to disregard everything else but the next handful of meat she would be able to swallow.

Even still, her stomach never seemed to grow, despite how much she shoved into it.

"We should go..." Sentenza managed to say after he finally shook his eyes from the scene before him.

"Wow, I wish I could just eat whatever I wanted," Pockets joked. "If I ate like that, I'd be round as a ball!"

"Not...the...time..." Trizel panted as he wiped the sweat from his brow. "Let...us...go...quickly."

As they started to leave, Bakade's head flung up and met them with her gaze. She paused her feeding frenzy to stare at them a moment. Everyone fell silent as the muscles in her legs started to tense up.