CATERPILLAR
Eri had a pet caterpillar. It looked like a finger, but fingers didn't move when they weren't attached to hands, so it was a caterpillar. It wriggled around and probed at her hands as Eri clutched it tight to her chest, hoping with all her heart that the bad bird-mask-men wouldn't find it. They didn't. They locked her in her room without dinner.
As her stomach rumbled, she wondered what caterpillars ate. She let the caterpillar inch its way across the room and tap against everything it ran into. Eventually, it tapped a little metal racecar. The caterpillar opened up and ate the car. A second caterpillar sprouted out of the side of it. And it was still hungry.
Eri dove into her toy box. The toys inside were dusty and neglected, but under the grime, she found two tiny remote-control cars. She offered them to the caterpillar, and its two heads devoured the miniature vehicles, tires and all. Two caterpillars became five, and the base where they met swelled up in the shape of a palm. Her caterpillar became a butterfly. And it was still hungry.
The butterfly crawled around the ground, bumping into objects and tasting them with its fingertips. Eri looked, but she didn't have any more food. But the air duct, too high to reach and too small for her to crawl through, might have food inside. So, she threw the butterfly. It didn't fly very well, but it hooked around the duct's edge and crawled inside.
The butterfly probed the sides of the duct. They were metal, but the butterfly craved a wider variety of compounds than steel. So, it crawled. It eventually overlooked a hallway and saw a security camera perched next to the vent. It ate one, then two more at subsequent vents. The palm stretched out into an entire arm, and an eyeball sprouted on top of the hand. And it was still hungry.
It sensed the flow of current in the wires around it. Following the flow of power backwards, the butterfly found four power generators. It ate them all. Warnings blared about corrupted blueprints, so the butterfly made more of what it had. A giant arm served as its main body, with six arms to propel it along the ground. More arms stuck out the top to consume more metal. And it was still hungry.
Five Yakuza thugs, fumbling in the dark to reach the power room, saw the giant glowing eyeballs in the dark and opened fire. The butterfly ate five guns, inspected the components, and made bigger guns of its own. The Yakuza ran, and the butterfly was still hungry.
Overhaul cursed and swore as his thugs ran away in a panic. Then he heard the noise, an awful metallic shriek. The building shook, and concrete shattered as a hydra of hands and arms rose from the rubble.
Eri sat astride the monster's back and shouted at the night sky, "Go butterfly! Get the bad-bird-men!"
497
The things I dredge up from the depths of my mind...