"Three hundred sixty degrees, from the WOMB to the TOMB!"
- NPC guy yelling in the background of a GTA glitch compilation video I was watching
"I'd like to run some gynecological tests on the mother."
"Who wouldn't?"
- Egon Spengler and Peter Venkman
Vegnagun was a virulent weapons platform for world domination, and Vegnagun was the state-of-the-art in vaginal optimization. The three organic replicators writhed sweetly against the machine's giant carapace as another wave of births increased its army. They were arranged together like a living bandolier hanging just beside the regular ammo storage. The process was never-ending, and the bodies Vegnagun had secured for its proliferation were delighted to help.
They used to be a trio of spirited adventurers who wanted to unlock the mysteries of the ancient Spheres and save their civilization from extinction. Now they were just pretty-looking reproduction conduits integrated with Vegnagun's immortal life support systems, and their individual minds had been destroyed days ago. Their sole function for the rest time was a simple but very important one: To produce a steady line of SpherDerB, the common name for Sphere Derived Beings. This was admittedly a very stupid name, but this was also a very stupid ending route, and was it really any stupider than saying YuRiPa?
Vegnagun pointed its insectoid tail skyward and fired a towering crystal beam into the atmosphere, the tenth such volley it had launched within the past hour. The air lit up in a brilliant blue-white hue, a ominous phenomenon that had happened countless times already. The world was covered in watery blue death, while the wombs bathed obliviously on their mobile tanning bed that kept them loaded with life.
In a few more days, all original life would be vaporized from the surface of Spira, but that wasn't such a tragic loss. Vegnagun was already well on the way to repopulating the planet with its own kind with the aid of its three cheerful and docile replicators.
The realization they had failed their final battle and witnessing the doom of their entire world should have been enough to shatter anyone's psyche. If their minds weren't already vegetables before they were locked into Vegnagun's armor, they were purged of all their individual thoughts and emotions within seconds. Maybe there was a brief moment where they were still had enough awareness to think of their predicament with ideas like "Horrifying" or "Disgusting," but their minds succumbed quickly in their weakened defeated state, and all that remained were the overwhelming maternal instincts controlling their bodies. The world may have fallen, but there was nothing but celebration inside their fallopian tubes.
One minute, they were desperately struggling for survival while robotic pliers unbuckled their pleather shorts, rolled down their metal garters, and untied their thong strings. The next minute, their reproductive organs were desperately trying to quicken babies that co-mingled the best genetic traits of human athletics and a mechanized warrior class.
The three individuals who became Vegnagun's replication foundries never imagined themselves as living nurseries for growing the planet's next dominant species. "Settling down," as the old culture called it, used to be the last thing on their adventurous minds. But with some subtle mental coercion and some recalibrating in their wombs, the Gullwings went ga-ga for motherhood. They were witches who had let themselves become their own cauldrons. Their assimilated bodies were the ideal nests for infusing burgeoning lifeforms with Dressphere energy.
They used to consider themselves clever ladies who could overcome any danger with their swift agility. Now their intelligence had been reduced to zero and their agility was diving into the negative digits. Their only remaining attributes were focused on developing the countless new lifeforms nestled within their hips. They were still resourceful, oh so very resourceful, but their primary resource was the endless supply of eggs constantly being cloned and exploited inside their waists. At any given time, each SpherDerB replicator could only have one of three status effects: Conceiving, Gestating, or Delivering. Gestating was favorite phase for all three, as a longer Sphere symbiosis tended to produce more powerful and exotic children. And it's not like they had anything better to do.
The three militarized wombs savored their own imprisonment and wouldn't let a single offspring escape their confines before it was fully empowered to dominate the world. They lived in a constant state of felicity, radioactivity, and productivity. Harnessed into the stark angles and segmented hydraulic armor of Vegnagun's massive carapace, the replicators were a uniquely voluptuous and pearly-skinned fixture decorating an otherwise desolate mountain of machinery. They were three alluring and shockingly feminine Norns welded into the iron below the face of their antlered god.
Their navels glittered with sweat and archaic fertility runes. They were always smiling and slowly nodding their heads in a lusty dream-like euphoria. Moth dust sparkled in the swirling cosmos of their eyes. They never made much noise once they lost the ability to reject their fate. Their only vocalizations were weak sighing and cooing, giggling soft lullabies toward their bellies. An occasional moan. And never a single complaint of discomfort. This beautiful and prosperous feature of Vegnagun was designed in ancient times as a critical demoralizing counter-strategy against enemy Songstresses. As it turned out, it was very compatible with any able-bodied women clothed in Dresspheres.
There would have been a sense of poetic justice if they had all been captured in their Thief Dresspheres, because now endless bundles of gametes were being stolen under their skirts. But that would mean they were producing less diverse children with limited Garment Grid enchantments, so Paine was probably wearing her Elvis costume.
The ground quaked from the terrible shrill buzzing from Vegnagun's engines as it launched another laser salvo toward the heavens. Its three sleek, bulbous, teeming replicators closed their eyes and purred in relaxation. The death of the old world was a painful tragedy, but the birth of the new one wasn't going to hurt in the slightest.
Author's aimless rambling:
"Yuna and Friends Somehow Become Critter Spawners" is uhhhh… a story concept I've been considering for a while. But I wasn't inspired to write it until I watched Vinesauce Vinny's Parasite Eve compilation video a few days ago. Does reading it make you feel cursed?
This is my first new short story since September 2023. What did I do with all that time off, you might be asking? Well, I spent about two hours building a Cerberus Battalion EF-2000 model kit. And then I spent the rest of the time definitely NOT coming up with new writing ideas where I don't just regurgitate the same sci-fi body horror schlock over and over again.
This story also makes me think of Vinny's playthrough of the original Perfect Dark, where he was talking about regenerating health in modern games, and he read a chat comment where someone said: "People get too complacent with quality of life mechanics. They've grown soft and nubile." And being a sarcastic jackass, I wrote a comment back where I said: "Yes, game design makes me very fertile. (I think someone doesn't know what 'nubile' means)"
The "Thing Which Turns Them into Critter Spawners" wasn't originally going to be the Vegnagun. But this made the writing process easier since I didn't have to come up with some weird OC monster, and it helps play up the Vegnagun's status as a diabolical endgame weapon designed by crazy people from Bevelle who really hate army-commissioned J-Pop idols from Zanarkand.
The final draft ended up being less of a traditional "storytelling" fanfic and more like one of my "worldbuilding" scenes. As in, "this is how the world is built after it gets destroyed." If you want a more "story-driven" version of this concept (with some pretty hilarious dialogue), I suggest reading "Ayashi no Tirith" a. k. a. "Tifa and Aerith Become Critter Spawners From the Future." And if you're looking for something more along the lines of "We Utilize the Magical Girl's Womb as a Weapons Development Platform While Still Treating Her as a Respectable Sentient Being," uh… I guess "Tomorrowpeople Micromachineman" falls into that genre? Possibly "What Happened at the Launch Cradle," as well? (The entire Founder concept is a low-key benevolent version of this premise when you really think about it.)
Which made-up anime science name sounds stupider to you: SpherDerB (Sphere Derived Beings) or GriDerB (Grid Derived Beings)? I was going back and forth in my head while I was writing this.
Is it ok that I'm an adult man and sometimes I kinda want to roleplay as one of the Final Fantasy X-2 apocalypse wombs? Definitely not all the time. But just sometimes. What does that even say about me as a person?
Do you remember that old Sephiroth concept art where his hair was so exaggerated it made him look like some sort of alien bishie boi with insect antennae? That's what their kids are going to look like when they grow up. And I guess they can turn into a Venom-like symbiotic goo that can take the form of any costume. That's where the "Dressphere hybrid" part of their design comes into play.
