His children crawled out of him and across the floor, scurrying to where a bloodstain had been left behind in the earlier fighting.

He liked moving, enjoyed the languid grace of even the simple action of walking. His head didn’t rise and fall with his footsteps, and his footsteps were feather-soft on the floor, despite the fact he weighed nearly three hundred pounds. All muscle.

“Hello there, little brother,” Swansong said.

Don’t call me little. Agitation sang through every part of his body, mercury-filled hydraulic channels within his body narrowing, muscles tightening. The children that lived within every cavity in his body stirred, ready to act.

She huffed for breath, crouching on the ground, one hand on the floor and the other on a storage container. She used the storage container to help find a standing position, then moved a bit further. Five seconds of effort, pain, and leaning on an object for help, just to cross a short stretch of ordinary floor.

He dropped to all fours and crossed a similar distance with a single step, before climbing up onto a larger storage container, to show her that he could, and to see what she would do.

“A Crawler wanted my sister to use my power on them. Bonesaw said no, that the evolution it provoked could kill her or hurt others. Too much. I thought you might be interested.”

He couldn’t remember much about her. Someone—he didn’t remember who, and the memory was vague because it wasn’t his own—had commented on Damsel, to say that the more she talked, the weaker she was, the more insecure she felt.

“Want me to annihilate you, little brother? It will give you room to evolve.”

He stared her down.

“Or are you scared?” She held her chin higher.

He didn’t move from his perch on the storage container, instead relaxing sphincters all across his body, to make openings large enough that his children could drop out. They hit the ground, bouncing where ridged backs hit floor, settled on their flat bases, and began scurrying in unpredictable zig-zags.

Twenty, from cavities along his arms, one hundred from cavities at his back. Thirty from points along his legs. One from his urethra, two from glands at either side of his mouth. Almost forty were crammed into his digestive system, and they wormed their way out through gaps and folds, making their way to openings in the stomach.

His entire body reformed and restructured, more gap than physical mass. Webbings of skin stretched to cover gaps here and there, but they were so thin the light could shine through them.

Swansong used her power as the first of his fist-sized children drew near. It was slow to initiate, slow to cut off, and a moment after stopping, barked out another brief blast that sent her off balance.

When she went to use her power again, it didn’t activate.