A/N: written for FMA fic contest back in July 2009 for the prompt, "Metamorphosis"
Larva (1/1)
Instead of wings, he sprouts souls.
(wings are for sissies. souls, now, especially souls from pathetic human beings that were slaughtered like lambs, that's badass.)
They protrude out of him as he grows, ripping through sinew, muscle, and flesh, pushing their way through his skin as if they were trying to surface for air. They scream as they do so, faces glistening with fluids that run down necks and shoulders, sometimes an arm or two.
(it hurts like hell and the screaming makes everything inside his cranium feel like it's shattering and breaking, but he bears with it, because he's tough like that.)
He's thrilled he has sinew. He can feel it connecting muscle to his bones, to his joints, all growing larger and denser to form a solid, hard body that dwarf even his own father. The floor seems far away from him now, though he can still feel it beneath the stone-hard pads on the soles of his feet, feel it give a little as he runs a heavy claw along it, leaving a long deep scratch. He laughs at that power. He shakes his head as he laughs, feeling thick strands of hair whip against his cheeks and eyes.
(he really likes the hair. when he changes again, he make sure to keep it.)
His skin has a tough scale-like hardness to it, and his teeth are strong and sharp. He could easily bite a human in half. He takes a tentative step, then another, and is overwhelmed by the power in his limbs, how solid and sure-footed they feel against the ground.
(he hoped no one knew how apprehensive he was about walking. he never had legs before this.)
Swelling with confidence and self-awe, his next few steps are brisk and long-gaited, and soon he is running down the tunnels, expertly weaving around columns and turning corners and dodging his siblings as if he had been running his entire life instead of -
(don't go there. don't ever)
He stops, and he tells himself he does because the souls that are hanging from his body are wailing louder than usual.
"Shut up," he screams at them. "You're driving me fucking crazy."
They don't, and he runs back to his father, snarling the entire way, all his earlier exhilaration gone.
He does eventually learn to change shape so that all the souls are trapped muffled inside, out of sight and better still, out of earshot. He actually learns to change his shape to whatever he wants it to be, whenever he wants. Soon, he constantly changing bodies, growing taller, shorter, changing his teeth, having his muscles swell in a different way, changing his walk to suit the person he pretending to be.
Sometimes when he's caught, he's ask about his real form.
Sometimes, he'll revert back to his preferred form, slender with the long black hair he likes so much dangling around him.
Sometimes he'll go further and show them the souls on his face and shoulders, and then open his mouth to show more.
It's a comfort to him to know he can never go further back than that.
(such a pathetic creature.)
(wormlike.)
(a shrimp resembling crustacean without its shell. a snail without its hard spiralled glory.)
(grubby little appendages that could pass as hands but not arms. holy god, that *is* pathetic.)
He does his best not to think about himself as he was once, because the shame of it kills him each time. Burns him up and eats at him until his stomach feels like it's full of acid and he wants to scream and he wishes he could blot out the entire world.
(you couldn't even walk.)
He grins, a truly ghastly sight combined with the inhuman sounds that the souls mired in his body make, and he drinks in the terror on the faces before him before he lashes out and snaps them in half.
He leans back, shaking with laughing, drunk on the power that comes with the kill, the knowledge of his strength and potency.
He doesn't think it, but there's a part of him that's glad a butterfly can never become a caterpillar again.
(in that form, a human child could kill him just by stepping on him.)