"You're a drug dealer."

"I'm a manufacturer, not a dealer."

- Breaking Bad

"Uwu."

- Frank Herbert


ALLOCATING RESOURCES

The digital letters flashed across the reflectionless black voids covering Mars, Venus, and Pluto's faces like a death knell spelling out their demise. That's how these systems always fell. Take out the harshest and most arid ones first, and then rest would quickly topple in line like dominos. The immense tubes streaming off of Sailor Tleilax's back ribbon twitched as they sent pulses into the three captured Scouts' brains and instructed their bodies to prepare for their next anticipated stage.

The battle behind the three slouched figures was raging with a confounding haste where all that could be seen was a violent silver streak darting around with other multi-colored streaks. Sailor Tleilax was blindingly fast in her fighting style, forcing the resident Earth Sailor Scouts to push the limits of their powers and still struggle to match her pace. They were lucky when one of them managed to land a single attack on her. With her mastery of speed, Tleilax could easily end the lives of each of these poor guardians at any instant by spinning on her toes and cracking the front of her boot into their temples, or at least eliminate any two of them with the hidden poison darts in her gloves. But the strategy she was putting into play just now required taking live prisoners, and any other outcome would be a waste. When she did go for a physical strike, she carefully watched her timing so she wouldn't injure anything below their sternums and above their femurs.

Sailor Tleilax stopped in place with a hand on her hip only so she could take a moment to laugh mockingly at her inferior opponents. The base of her Sailor Suit was a metallic silver leotard that somewhat matched her native complexion. Her skirt, scarf, and ribbons were colored with alternating red and black. Her shoulders and waist were fashioned with an extra layer of light cybernetic armor that made her Suit more durable than the all-cloth arrangements worn by these local Sailor scions, and it gave her an appearance more attuned to a long-lost Sailor whose name started and ended with "V." In place of a simple tiara, she wore a full hairband that spanned the top of her head and ended in ear coverings pointed backwards at a slightly reptilian angle.

The nicest thing about her Suit was it came equipped with portable axl-normalizers that could render any intelligent female sapiens into reliable docile livestock. All Sailor Tleilax needed was an unfettered connection between her ribbon extensions and their craniums, a feature she was presently putting to good use against three of her strong but slower opponents.

There was initially a great amount of thrashing and screaming when the captive Scouts struggled to remove the vacuum seals formed around their necks, but by this point their cerebellums were swirled with the consistency of marshmallow cream. All that came from them now were weak muscle squirms and occasional grunts.

Each time the Sailor Scouts made an effort to save one of their own from the fertile clutches of their fate, Tleilax always intercepted them in a blur to protect her captured booty. In one surprising case, she even managed to snag Neptune's head in her fourth axl-normalizer. The princess of the green ocean planet instantly dropped her mirror, flopped to her knees, and started getting ready to go with the flow.

The Sailor Scouts that were still fighting to keep their wits were dropping about one maiden every 30 seconds. To say the situation was out of control would be putting it modestly, and there was nothing modest about the fate that rapidly approached them.

Tleilax's vicious laughter as she zigzagged between her remaining enemies made it clear she thought she already knew who won this battle. Most of her excitement just came from waiting for the black spheres engulfing her captives' heads to finish their procedures.

One of the monitors sudden flickered a different message.

CONFIGURATION COMPLETE – BIOME ONLINE

And just like that, Rei became the first Tleilaxu procreation vessel in history to be commissioned out of an active Sailor Scout. A definite upgrade compared to the usual raw supplies collected for this purpose.

Pluto and Venus quickly got their confirmation alerts just after her, followed by Neptune last, and then all four were assuming the standard operational position: Seated on the rears of their miniskirts, heads vapidly slumped forward on limp shoulders, arms tangled in cables or limply flopped against their sides, knees bent to their chests with their heels flat on the ground, with their ankles spread about a meter apart. They would be lying down with flotation units supporting their backs once they could be settled into a more permanent arrangement, but their posture right now was perfectly in line for a hasty and improviso battlefield initiation.

There was the swift sound of fabric being stressed and leotard seams tearing apart, and large clusters of biological sensors and installation tubes were fitted in the right places. Another wave of reflexive aftershocks rose from the subdued Scouts, but they never made a sound. This was well after their dulled minds had succumbed to the simplified role they would carry out for the rest of their lives, and now their movements were oddly pleasurable. If nothing else, the other Sailor Scouts at least got a decent look at what they were about to become.

"Damn you! Whatever you've done to them," Jupiter yelled while their body temperatures gently rose to optimal production levels and the hair between their thighs became sweaty, "You're not going to pull the same tricks on me!"

"Then I guess you'll have to be the next one I demote to spawner," Sailor Tleilax responded with a slow imminent nod.

The rogue Scout deflected a bolt of lightning thrown by Sailor Jupiter, ducked under a sparkling tiara thrown by Sailor Moon, jumped like a feather off of several giant bubbles thrown by Sailor Mercury, and flipped backwards to dodge a sword thrust from Sailor Uranus. In the fraction of the second she corrected herself in the air, Sailor Tleilax thrust open her arms and sent an entire swarm of her mind glazers flying out on her ribbon-wires from behind her hips. They flew too quickly for any of the Sailor Scouts to react, and each module instantly sealed over their targets' faces like black metal oysters clamping around their valuable pearls.

CONFIGURATION COMPLETE – BIOME ONLINE

CONFIGURATION COMPLETE – BIOME ONLINE

CONFIGURATION COMPLETE – BIOME ONLINE

One after the other, the axl-normalizers obliterated whatever final thoughts or concerns were going through Moon's, Mercury's, Jupiter's, and Uranus's heads. The Sailor Scouts were reduced to a circle of limp mannequins with Sailor Tleilax hovering weightlessly above them in frenzied gloating. The dead weight of their slumped bodies provided the only anchors that kept Tleilax from floating off entirely.

Her sense of achievement was maddening. She had brought the entire bankable "Sailor Team" under her reins in a single victorious coup. Eight in all, based on a quick groin count. She knew there were still others in the wild—a "Sailor Saturn" and a "Sailor Mini Moon," at the very least—but those were juvenile examples of their species. She only had a need for surrogate containers with fully functional internals.

"It's all over for you gene preserves. Don't worry, though. It's all easygoing from here," Sailor Tleilax cackled feverishly as she swayed her tailbone in the air, increasing the current clearing out the Sailor Scouts' mental capacity. Their minds were successfully turned to fluff, leaving only the most subliminal brainstem activity that regulated their vital functions and gland signals. Senseless formations of flesh and organs that never spoke, never resisted, hardly moved, and were fully accommodating for whatever she had planned.

Their bodies sank backwards in an unsettling and almost alluring way as Tleilax drew the final black curtain around the fallen marionettes.


Scylla only managed to age the first batch of invasion drones to the physical equivalent of 10-year-olds on such short notice after acquiring her generators. The cells in the outputted products tended to deteriorate if she tried to age them more than three years in a single week, but the Sailor Animamates insisted that she show something right now so they could decide if all the effort was even worth it.

These first prototypes would be artificial clay soldiers predominantly crafted in the kilns of Moon, Jupiter, and Uranus, but it was agreed that all the units in Scylla's possession would be put into full production if this trial phase paid off. So was the way of the wicked Sailor Tleilax: Take control of a solar system's own defense grid, then turn the byproducts of that grid on its own populace. The Sailor Scouts were now merely repurposed satellites that were going to be regularly discharging weapons on the very people they had vowed to protect.

Sailor Galaxia and her Animamate entourage were impressed with Scylla's initial results, considering all she had to show were basically a dozen or so mutant middle schoolers with strange elemental powers. Given a few months to work all the kinks out of the equipment, Scylla proposed she would be able to produce an entire army of fully grown, fully trained, loyal fighters. Time was no longer an issue now that Earth had practically no one defending it.

"Gross, but lucrative," was how Sailor Iron Mouse described the current outlook.

"Planets are meant to be renewable resources," was Scylla's only excuse for her actions.

Somewhere in a sparsely lit room rarely seen by sentient beings, an automatic thermostat pressed against the scrapped remnants of an orange miniskirt and a pair of wide hips wiggled over a conveyor belt. The only things permeating the spiritless, sinister gloom were the sounds of life support systems constantly operating, the faint atmospheric smell of Earth-born organisms being maintained with regular but economic upkeep, and the hiss of steam billowing down multiple sets of relaxing legs.

What transpired in this room was the permanent mating of mammal and machinery. A great source of interest to certain branches of biologists, and an overwhelming source of revulsion to everyone else. The minimal lighting was energy-efficient and beneficially self-censoring. The same room fully lit would be unpresentable to even the most savage societies.

Nothing above the navel was considered vital to the plan's success. Mars was scanned regularly for the synthesis of valuable artifacts. Jupiter's south pole was treated with lightning rods to keep power surges in comfortable limits. The glob of wiggling flesh and procreation components that used to be called Sailor V was routinely vectored in the V. Pluto's large elevated peaks might have been considered a useful trait in a different mode of life, but here they just tended to get in the way of things. The whole group of biological assets were likely as cluttered with probes and modulators on the outside as they were on the inside. The mechanical parts involved in this ongoing process were sterile, relatively organized, and kept in respectable working order. The living, sulking, moisture-exuding biological components were anything but.

If the Sailor Scouts from another universe ever came as visitors to this room to see what had become of their selves from this universe, they first wouldn't even recognize these shadowy, unshapely, barely visible portions of bodies and tattered Sailor Suits ever belonged to them. Then, as the realization crept in, they were be profoundly disgusted by what they saw (or didn't see), to the point that they would greatly prefer death over this form of existence.

But the astute Sailor Tleilax made sure there would be no death here. Only the maximum capacity for life, where many, many more lives would be created in calculated bulk. The possibilities of what she could do with the eight copious production units at her service were endless: Develop an improved species that would follow her every command and could be further modified to any age or size fresh out of the canal. Formulate new chemical compounds never before discovered. Grow replacement organs on a custom-order basis. Grow perfect copies of deceased individuals, complete with their original memories.

A constant info loop of development schedules, demand quotas, and sudden changes in estrogen levels was sent through Scylla's transformation headset so she could always monitor the situation remotely. The slightest sign that the generators weren't performing to their highest potential at all times would instantly send her on a bug hunt.

There was obvious tension between Galaxia and Scylla when the offworld Sailor Scout introduced the young but powerful fruits of her labors. Galaxia of course saw Scylla less as the guardian of a freelance planet simply offering her assistance to the Sailor Animamates, and more as a backstage player making her bid to usurp Galaxia as Queen of All Cosmos and All Chaos. Scylla was warned to remember her place, and never become too proud of what she'd accomplished in a few short days.

Scylla responded to this by showing a friendly little shrug and just brushing her greenish-gray hair over her shoulder. Instead of her technological Sailor Suit, she was wearing an ankle length black dress studded with hundreds of pieces of silver jewelry shaped like meteorites. This was her standard regalia when she was outside of combat, something between a princess's ballroom gown and an ambassador's uniform. She was actually a fairly reserved and well-mannered lady when she wasn't massaging her enemies' brains into incognitive porridge with wires hanging off her skirt tails.

"This is some wonderful espresso you made, Scyl!" Sailor Aluminum Siren excitedly waved a porcelain cup in Scylla's direction. "What did you add to this?"

"Ah, yes. That's our new enhancer tonic," Scylla nodded coyly. "The sugar I mixed with the coffee beans was formulated in the wells of Mercury. We've been experimenting with different ingredient sources."

"Have you tried harvesting any from Neptune?" Tin Nyanko twitched her nose as she asked.

"That foundry is currently being used to replenish the numbers for our class-N troops. But it's always a possibility for the next production cycle."

"Will we ever see what these 'foundries' look like since you've… put them to use?" Aluminum Siren asked.

"Not for the foreseeable future," Scylla replied. "We have the equipment safely stored away on the no-ship."

"What the hell is a no-ship?" Sailor Lead Crow asked. Arms crossed. Eyebrow lifted to one side. Feathers noticeably ruffled.

"If I explained it to you, it wouldn't be a no-ship anymore." Scylla gave a helpful smirk.

Even Galaxia, while still holding all her reservations of potential treachery in her mind, allowed herself to join in the cheer for the time being. She sat back in her throne with a subdued smile as she swept one leg over the other.

"I thought the only way to deal with these dreadful Earth Sailor Scouts was to steal their Star Seeds. It seems the real solution was just to plant plenty of seeds inside of them."


Author's note: I think I've written this exact (gross) fanfic like three times now, but this time it's different because there's ~context~ and everything is just ~implied.~

Author's other note: I chose Scylla for her unmorphed name because it fits Smoon's Greek mythology kick and it kind of works as a feminine form of Scytale.