He stepped in, and a rush of gas blew across his face. As he lay down on the spongy interior, the gap from which he entered had already sealed, the film on its surface thin enough to see the chamber beyond.

Fight! Break out! It has you!

Even when the hundreds of penetrations began to sink into his skin, he did not flinch. Somehow, there was no pain. His hair rustled across his forehead as more gas sprayed at his face, and the extreme pleasure faded to a restful calmness. The pod trembled, and he could feel it rising, detaching.

It slowly rose, and with it much of the thick moisture that coated the pod began to slide away. He watched as the floor of the chamber faded away and a tendril, like a curving stalk of a bindweed, lifted the pod into the air, slowly turning. The walls were now a mixture of deep shadows and brilliant lights, all fully awakened.

As the pod completely shifted, he could see the girl far beneath him in the shadow of the rising head of the creature. A single neck, as thick as a subway train, supported the feelers that erupted from its maw and the waves of tentacles flailing from beneath its scaled dome. Several of the black coils reached for him, inserting into the sides of the pod.

He could hear the puncturing of the walls around him, and the smell of it, of rock and spoiled water, reached his senses just as the thin outshoots of the pod sank in and his skin began to stiffen. He gasped at the infusion jolting into his bloodstream, exchanging with his own bodily fluids.

It was within him now, just as he was within it.

And he understood. It needed him to understand, to complete its task. It needed more than a connection; it needed a complete fusion.

His eyes closed, and opened to stars.

Millions of them, flying past as the scientist traveled the vast deep. Inside its cocoon, carrying memories of smoke and death, of battles fought in skies among ships the sizes of cities. Of wars that nearly obliterated not only its own kind, but that of the civilizations that refused to surrender to them. Of centuries of hatred between races that showed no sign of dissipating.

To not only survive, but ultimately conquer, a new form of warfare was necessary.

The first scouts had found it; a planet of blue and white, its only companion a solitary moon. So it came to see for itself, traveling across the stars to finally pass through the atmosphere and into air and water. Abundant, overwhelming life. From above, the scientist observed what the others had reported: a race of people with inferior yet remarkable intelligence and, vastly more importantly, containing a complex origination system.

The world was covered in different landscapes and temperatures, proving an ideal location to test how their weaponry would work in various conditions.