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The sunlight glinted off Tohru’s tail as she unfurled the blanket.

They’d picked the perfect day for their picnic: birds twittered happily in the clear blue sky, while a cool summer breeze caressed their arms and rustled the leaves as it slipped through the tree-lined pathways of the park. Nearby, the pond sparkled in the sunlight, its pristine surface broken only by the occasional carp leaping to catch a fly. A squirrel scampered between bushes, snacking on a berry. Bumblebees buzzed between flowers. All around them was nature, unspoiled, untrammeled by mankind and its toys–it was as beautiful an afternoon as you could hope to enjoy.

There was only one thing missing…

“Nnngh! Why couldn’t Miss Kobayashi come too?!” cried Tohru, dumping the hamper on the blanket. 

“I’m sorry, Tohru,” said Elma, “but it’s been really busy at the company recently, and she has a lot on her plate at the moment–” 

“Then why are you here?!” cried Tohru, thrusting an accusatory finger at her. 

“Y-you said you were bringing food,” said Elma, sweating. “I’m allowed to take the occasional lunch break or two!” 

Tohru huffed. 

“Maybe Kobayashi’s just sick of your cooking,” said Ilulu. Lying back, she rested her head on her arms and closed her eyes, her enormous chest rising and falling as she breathed.

Tohru whirled on her. “Miss Kobayashi would never refuse my cooking!” 

“Even your tailmeat?” said Ilulu, opening an eye again. 

Tohru discretely closed the lid of the picnic hamper. Ilulu smirked.

“Perhaps we can arrange another picnic next week?” said Lucoa, settling next to Ilulu. “I’m sure Miss Kobayashi will be free then.” Rummaging in the hamper, she grabbed a bottle of schnaps and chugged it shamelessly.

Tohru slumped. “But I wanted to have a picnic with her todaaaaay. It’s not fair!” 

Ilulu snorted. “You’re so childish.” 

Down by the pond, Kanna had succeeded in catching a carp, and now she returned with it held over her head like a trophy. “Tohru! Lady Tohru! Look what I caught!” 

“Nice work, Kanna!” said Elma. “Try not to fill up on fish though, or you won’t be able to enjoy the picnic.” 

Kanna took a second to consider this, shrugged, and stuffed the fish into her mouth whole. 

As everyone finished taking their places on the blanket, Tohru sighed. Lucoa was right–she was sure Miss Kobayashi could come to their next picnic. Oh, but what if the good weather didn’t hold out that long…? It was such a perfect day, so pristine and beautiful, unspoiled by anything, even–

–the roar of a vehicle racing through the park? 

Turning, Tohru found herself looking at a gigantic machine: a robotic serpent the size of a house, its stacks belching smoke and its tracks flinging mud and grass everywhere. Like a runaway train, it sped across the park, tearing straight through the trees and the flowerbeds.

“I-is that coming towards us?!” cried Elma, leaping to her feet. 

Tohru’s eye twitched. Not only was she having to spend her beautiful day without Miss Kobayashi, but now this awful monstrosity was going to interrupt it too?! “Hey!” Spreading her wings, she leapt into the air. “Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” 

The machine rumbled to a stop only a few meters from the picnic. On its head, something swiveled, taking aim at her. Tohru barely had chance to realize it was a gun, before–

Splot! 

Something struck her in the gut, hard enough to double her over, and as she gasped in surprise, it exploded, entangling her in a morass of sticky pink gum. With a squeal, she dropped, striking the ground with a harsh thud. “Urgh!” 

Splot! Splot! Splot!

Across the machine, multiple nodules snapped open and fired, striking their once wholesome picnic with a barrage of exploding gumballs. Elma and Lucoa were caught first, plastered to the ground where they sat, and Ilulu barely managed to get to her feet before a pair of the blobs slammed into her chest and knocked her back to the blanket too. Soon it was only Kanna left to stumble back in shock, and the machine showed the diminutive dragon no more mercy than the rest of them: taking aim, it let loose a volley that plastered her to the grass, barely visible. Only her head could be seen poking out of the gum, her eyes wide in panic. “Lady T-Tohru!” 

Tohru squirmed in her own gummy bindings, fighting to tear free, but it was like all the strength had gone out of her. She couldn’t even use magic. 

Rolling the last few meters towards them, the machine came to a stop, and with a pop, a hatch on the serpent’s head swung open. The head that poked out couldn’t have been more of a contrast: “Hah! I got nyou, nya!” Hopping out of the tank, the catgirl landed on the grass, her long pink tail flexing playfully. “Nyou know, I kinda thought it would be harder…” 

Elma squirmed. “R-release us!” 

“Nyo way!” cried the catgirl. “Do nyou know how hard it is to find dinosaurs on this planet?! The brochure said they’re supposed to be everywhere, but I’m searched the entire thing, and nyou’re the only ones I’ve found!” 

“Dinosaurs?!” spluttered Tohru. “We’re not dinosaurs, we’re–!” 

The catgirl wasn’t listening. “I almost thought I’d come to the wrong planet, but then I saw nyou flying about with nyour big green scales and I knew it had all been worth it, nya. Anyway, time to get nyou processed!” 

“P-processed?!” cried Ilulu. 

“Nyeah! Nyou know, into fuel. What do nyou think I wanted dinosaurs for, nya?” 

“F-fuel?” cried Elma, eyes wide in horror. “Wh-what are you talking about?!” 

The catgirl’s mouth stretched into a grin. “Why don’t I show nyou, nya?” And with a lick of her lips, she snapped her fingers. 

Her machine jerked into life, lurching forward and extending a mechanical arm from its underside. Reaching over their heads, it wrapped its claw around Elma, ripped her gummy body from the ground, and hauled her straight towards its mouth.

With a hiss of steam, the vehicle’s jaws snapped open, exposing its cavernous, pipe-filled interior. Raising its head to the sky, it held Elma over its maw, as the rest of them stared in shock, simply dropped her straight into it. With a clunk, its jaw slammed shut. 

“H-hello?” came Elma’s voice, muffled. “Hello? Can anyone hear me? It’s really dark in here.” 

With a groan, the machine started to shudder, rumbling like someone had restarted its engine. A spasm passed through its length from head to tail, pistons pumped along its carapace, and from its pipes vented great blasts of steam. The whirring of its motors was deafening. 

For a second, Elma’s voice cut out, smothered by the cacophony of the machine’s operation. Then, just as suddenly as it had vanished, it returned with a scream, a high-pitched whine of terror and pleasure that grew louder and louder with every passing second and, then, as the rest of them listened in horror, cut out with one last intense shriek.

Slowly, the machine’s rumbling died, its pistons stopped pumping, and its pipes ceased to vent. Tracks whirring, it spun on the spot, stretching its segmented tail and lowering the tip to the ground. Its length bulged as something passed through it. 

Finally, with a pop, it produced a large, pink barrel, featureless save for a simple label on the side. Depositing it on the grass, it soon expelled another, and another, and another, till there were five of them standing there in a row. Of Elma, there was no sign whatsoever.

Approaching them, the catgirl popped the first drum’s lid and stuck her finger in, sucked on it for a second, and finally grinned. “Wow, this stuff’s even better than I expected, nya! It’s so sweet! I bet I’m gonna get a million miles to the gallon on it!” 

The dragons could only stare at her in horror. “N-no,” said Tohru, her face pale in terror. “You–” It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t possibly. Elma couldn’t just be fuel. It wasn’t– It–

“I knew I made the right choice coming to this planet,” said the catgirl, grinning smugly. “There’s nyothing better than making nyour own fossil fuels from real dinosaurs. Anyway…” She leaned forward, making the rest of them flinch back. “Time to process the rest of nyou, nya~.” And with a lick of her lips, she snapped.

Tohru could only lie there and watch, trembling in terror, as the machine worked. It was a simple, mechanical process: first, it extended one of the arms attached to its underside and grabbed one of her friends. This done, it stuffed them into its mouth, swallowed, and started to rumble and whirr, shaking as it broke their body down into fuel. Finally, once their screaming had stopped, it extended its tail and pumped them out again, depositing them on the grass as so many identical barrels of oil. 

Lucoa was the second to be taken, giggling drunkenly as it plopped her into its maw and swallowed her like a piece of cheese at the dinner party. Gulp! She became six drums’ worth, each indistinguishable from Elma’s.

Next up with Ilulu, who squealed and squirmed for her whole trip through the air and screamed even louder once she was in the monster’s belly. She became four barrels.

After her went Kanna, pleading for Tohru to help her every step of the way. By the time the machine had finished with her, only three drums of oil remained of the little dragon, a small addition to the steadily growing pile. 

Finally, it was Tohru’s own turn. As the claw approached her, she grit her teeth and trembled, eyes wide with uncharacteristic fright. No matter how hard she fought, screamed, tried to cast a spell, she couldn’t do anything. “Kobayashi!” she cried, as it tightened around her waist. “Kobayashi!” 

Ripping her gummy body from the grass, the machine hauled her to its mouth like a morsel of meat. For a moment, she hung over it, staring into its dark, pipe-lined depths, and then, just as she thought her terror couldn’t grow any greater, she dropped. 

The machine’s jaw slammed behind her with a clunk, throwing her into pitch blackness. Tumbling through a tunnel, she found herself spun around and blasted with gas and struck by an unbearable pressure that made it impossible to think, let alone fight. “Nnn~! Nnn! L-let me–! Ah! Oooooh…!”

As the machine rumbled and whirred and shook around her, Tohru slid deeper and deeper into the tight confines of its guts, and the farther she traveled, the worse the pressure grew, threatening to crush her into paste. With it came something worse than pain: a terrible, mind-searing pleasure that shot through her form and scorched her, leaving her panting and whining for more than one kind of escape. 

“Nnn~!” She could barely even open her mouth to speak–her lips felt like they were gummed together. In fact, her whole body was starting to feel less and less solid, and more and more sticky. “Kobammmaffi…! Komma…! Mmmmah!”

She entered a vat, where a giant whisk swirled her till she no longer knew which part of her was where, and still the pressure and the pleasure continued to grow, pervading her mind and cracking her thoughts, crushing everything she knew into the tiniest of pieces. In panic, she fought, scrambling to hold on to herself, but with every second that passed, another little token of her mind slipped out of her hands, and soon she no longer remembered what she was even holding on to. 

With one last moan of delight, Tohru gave in and dissolved. 

*

As the last of the barrels emerged from the machine, Itasha stepped back and admired them with a grin of satisfaction. “Nyot bad, nya.” There were twenty-three drums in total, each full of oil and indistinguishable from the others. “This should keep me topped up for another couple of days at least!” She giggled. “Maybe I should make fuel out of dinos like these more often…”