The Emperor’s New Clothes

  Today I received a strange book in the mail. It seems that Stella and company sent me some additional information about my new slime body, and after returning from school, I thought it would be a good time to experiment a bit more and eat... I mean, practice. So I started reading it while ordering fast food to my house, more for testing than for eating, if that makes sense, although I did want to try the new Mexican menu called "The Box for the Starving with Starvation". It also seemed that I would need some things made of different materials, so I borrowed some items from around the house.

  The first thing the book said was that I could apparently compress up to 20% more liquid if I stayed focused enough. I tried it, and it turns out it's true, because I drank a lot more water than usual for a while without growing. But it seems that it's really just a percentage, because after a while my body started growing again. This may sound trivial, but it's actually quite important. It means that I have a buffer to take damage without consequences, because now every time I get wounded, I have to sacrifice some of my own mass to repair the lost parts. Something as simple as 20% means I have enough fluid to preemptively heal a hit or two. The problem is that I have to focus on keeping it under control, which isn't easy in a high-pressure environment like a gunfight, but it won't reduce the pain in any way. Also, the energy expenditure is quite high, and if I get too tired, my slime-girl form starts to loosen up, and I risk melting completely if I get too exhausted, leaving me as a puddle on the ground for a while, or a small ball if I need to move. It's not ideal, but it has its situational uses. For example, if I know in advance that I'm going to fight, I can compress the extra water. But knowing how often problems find me first...

  The book also detailed another great technique, creating clothing using my own slime body as a base. According to some of the pages, I could try to use my shape-shifting ability to make clothes like a jacket or shoes out of nothing more than the water from my own body, and have them shape to my body as I wanted. This meant that I could really dress as I pleased without having to buy anything! The only thing I had to do was walk around naked all the time... No, wait, I think that's a bad choice of words. The energy expenditure is zero, and once I've transformed into parts of my clothes, I don't have to concentrate to keep using them. Also, I can combine it with the 20% compression to have the clothing as an extra, but compress the extra water for when I need to wear real clothes without the fear of ruining buttons or zippers again due to my already massive breasts or ass. Among the problems mentioned in the book is that if I lose consciousness for any reason, my clothes will return to my body, effectively leaving me naked. Also, testing things like durability still resulted in items made mostly of water, so the bulletproof vest with ceramic plates that I made didn't stop any bullets, and now I have to fix a hole in the wall before my mom comes and kills me with the slipper.

  After a while I saw my sister Maria come into the house with several bags of fast food.

  "Hey Elise, two food delivery guys were outside making a delivery."

  "How much food did you order? Did you buy enough for everyone?"

  "Oh no, this is mine."

  "........"

  "Elise, that looks like dinner for 8."

  "I know you have hunger issues from starving in subway tunnels for who knows how many years, but please, control yourself."

  "This isn't a contest to out-eat Levia."

  "At least she is a huge mermaid, she has a pass."

  "But if you keep eating at this rate, and considering that as a slime girl you now have no limit to how much you can absorb, you'll soon hit the weight limit in elevators."

  "Hey, wait, I have an excuse this time, it's for a few more tests as a slime girl."

  "And do these tests require 2 extra cheese burritos each?"

  "This has your signature all over it."

  "I'm reading this book, and there were some interesting things I wanted to try."

  " How to be a slime girl for that one stupid dragon."

  "Written by the renowned author of preschool children's books, Stella the Beautiful." "........"

  "Oh, that makes sense now.

  "There's a part that says I can digest solid things, as if I had a strong acid, if I concentrate, and I can even choose what to digest."

  "So I thought I would test it several times with different things."

  "Oh, okay, can I see? At least it sounds interesting.

  The next test was to see if I could actually digest things already inside my body without problems if I concentrated. First it was 2 burritos, which was easy. Then I put a pen right inside me to see what would happen. What a surprise to see it disappear within seconds. Next we tried a piece of wood and the same thing happened. To test the limit of dissolving things, María took a stainless steel spoon and put it inside me, and even then I could destroy it until there was nothing left in just a few seconds. I was even surprised when I looked in the mirror and saw the spoon disappear.

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  The rest of the girls arrived a little later and started eating Mexican food while I continued testing things. The next thing in the book was to try to intentionally digest something between different things, like having a burrito, a spoon, and some lettuce in my body at the same time, but digesting only the spoon without damaging anything else. And surprisingly, I was able to do that, although there were obviously some things to be aware of. It seems that I must first be aware of where things are in my body in order to choose what to digest. If I make a mistake and start absorbing where I think the spoon is but the burrito is actually there, it will be the burrito that disappears. Another thing we noticed was that only organic things gave me more mass for my body. Absorbing things like the burrito or the lettuce made my body grow a little, seemingly in proportion to its original size, but harder objects like the metal spoon didn't contribute to my body's growth. Also, the energy expenditure for absorbing things that clearly weren't food was quite high. When I got tired of digesting things randomly all day long, to the point where I accidentally became transparent, it was because I no longer had the energy to maintain my skin color.

  "Well, at least some good things came out of all this."

  "Not having to buy clothes for Elise is a pretty big one," my mother said, sitting in the living room chair.

  "!!!!!"

  "Oh damn, I have an important call, it's the Secretary General of the UN."

  "I'll be in my private office, please don't say anything weird out loud."

  "Sure, no problem."

  "Hey Elise, I have another question."

  "Excuse me for asking like a new girl here, but from what I heard about what happened in Costa Rica, wasn't Maria a slime girl too?" Mei Ling asked.

  "That's a good question," Momo replied.

  "Hey, yeah, she's right!"

  "Technically, I was the first slime girl here." said my sister a little pridefully

  "But being a mermaid maiden is not the same; you were just under a spell, it was just magic."

  "Your body returned to normal when the curse was broken, because you were never really a slime girl," Levia said, shattering my sister's illusion.

  "Besides, the only thing you did with that power was pop like a water balloon in the hotel pool."

  "You couldn't even make a proper dive." I added.

  "Hey, I wasn't even aware of myself!"

  "They brainwashed me for days! It's not my fault!"

  "I have one more question."

  "If Elise can choose what to absorb into her body, whether it's organic or not, what would happen if she absorbed something that was still alive, like someone's hand?" Tifa asked curiously.

  "Another good question; the book doesn't say anything about that," I replied.

  Everyone in the room automatically looked at Levia, as her regeneration power made her the ideal candidate to see what would happen.

  "Ohh, okay, as long as it hurts a lot."

  "She's a masochist, right? From what I was told," the spider pretending to be human asked.

  "Do I just have to put my hand inside Elise and that's it?" the mermaid asked shyly as she put her hand inside my chest.

  "...."

  "Done, now what?"

  "I'll never get used to this, it tickles me a little."

  "Okay, just stay there for a moment, I'll try to absorb and see what happens."

  "If it hurts or burns, don't hesitate to pull it out as fast as you can."

  "This is just a test, we don't know what might happen, don't go crazy just because you like pain, this could be serious."

  "Don't worry, I'll try to heal you if anything goes wrong," Tamamo said, also paying attention, her curiosity about the subject as high as everyone else's.

  "Okay, ready? Here I go."

  I began to absorb Levia's hand as I had done other things throughout the day. But instead of things happening as before, this time Levia's hand began to turn into more goo for my body, and it didn't stop with just her hand. To everyone's surprise, including my own, I could see how the extension of her arm began to melt into water as well, first her wrist near the border of my body, but also progressing further.

  "Elise! That's enough! STOP IT!" Levia shouted in panic.

  "I can't stop it! I've been trying to stop it for a long time!"

  "Help! It's still growing!"

  Lisa, without saying a word, took her scythe and without hesitation amputated Levia's arm, successfully stopping the melting of the flesh and turning it into just more water. My body didn't stop, however, and began to suck up Levia's severed arm until it was completely consumed, leaving only a little extra mass growth in my breasts, which bounced slightly as if to indicate that they were satisfied with the gains from the food. All those present were left in an extremely awkward silence, watching my massive chest and Levia as she regenerated her lost arm.

  "Hey Maria, I'm feeling a little lonely, do you think you could give me a hug?"

  "A tiny one," I said to my sister.

  "STAY AWAY FROM ME YOU DAMN MONSTER!" Maria said fearfully.

  "Come on, give your brother a hug!"

  "Don't be selfish!" I said, moving closer to Maria.

  "No, never!"

  "Go away!" Maria started to walk in the opposite direction of me.

  "What's wrong with a hug?" I kept threatening.

  "Mom! Help!" Maria said as she started to run.

  "My brother wants to devour me with his body to make me into more of his fat to make his boobs bigger!

  "Help!"

  "Maria! Shut up!"

  "Can't you see I'm on the phone?"

  "?????"

  "Oh, no, no, it wasn't you, Mr. Secretary, it was just... a movie, yes, just that..."

  ".....Eh? What kind of movie is it?"

  "Why the hell do you care? .......... What!? no, Fuck you!"