Long Time No Taco

Part 6 ROKA (Part 1 is  HERE ) Who are the Sakamai? Nothing quite like them exist. Once, they were residents of a quaint village, Tanbo. A community of like-minded homebodies, they craved routine and order and found joy in the peaceful monotony life offered. Until one late Autumn day, a higher power snatched them up, and for months subjected them to a cataclysmic series of forced metamorphoses. They were starved, infected, and drowned until they finally separated from their physical forms completely, becoming a combined consciousness, floating in dark tank of chemical reactions... Nature, gravity, and whatever more mysterious forces were at play, began dragging the skeletal white remains of their former bodies into a murky sediment at the bottom of the tank. Just above that, the Sakamai could sense a similar, silty layer of Kin bodies. With their gnat-like lifespans, the Kin would rapidly multiple, grow old, and die, sinking carelessly to the bottom like grains of sand i...

Part 5 HAKKOU (Part 1 is  HERE ) "The Creators" were a god-like alpha race to the tiny, simple folk called Sakamai. The Sakamai lived blissfully unaware that these behemoths designed and cultivated all they had ever enjoyed until it was brutally taken away. After weeks of increasingly confusing transformations were forced upon them, the Sakamai found themselves reunited, divided, and reunited once more, as an even-stranger state, akin to an afterlife was induced. Their consciousness remained intact - unified in fact. Their new, formless hive mind floated in an ever cloudier sea of the hollowed-out deteriorating remains of their former, physical bodies. Eviscerated by the peculiar, psychic, gnome-like beings called Koji.  "No matter." They thought serenely, "Now our minds are united as one, and sustained without the need for our corporeal shells". The Sakamai were evolving beyond their former, timid ways.  Having transcended their physical fo...

Part 4 SANDAN-JIKOMI (Part 1 is  HERE ) Their village demolished, Sakamai - the people of Tanbo - were tortured and twisted in strange ways, physically combined with tiny hive-minded creatures called Koji. As the two became one, these new "Koji-Mai" learned from the Koji's memories that their towering and unstoppable alien captors were "The Creators" - an alpha race who designed and cultivated all they had ever experienced, just for this. But these answers only begat more questions: What would happen next? To what end was any of this happening at all? When would it be over? Would the Koji-Mai ever see the Sakamai they were taken from in their last steel prison? Even if they did, would their families even recognize them after yet another transformation?  As usual, the Koji provided soothing thoughts of complacency:  "All is a cycle The Creators have planned for. We are not the first or even the thousandth, and we will not be the last. W...

Part 3 SHUBO (Part 1 is   HERE ) An alien race had descended upon the sleepy land of Tanbo. Abducting every last villager, uprooting their verdant homeland in the process and tearing it to shreds. The people, known as Sakamai, were subjected to all manner of torture by their insouciant captors. Starved in the cold, and then worked over mercilessly. In a sudden 180, they were reunited with their brethren and plumped up, only to be separated once more. Finally, they found themselves subjected to some bizarre biological experimentation at the enormous hands of the towering aliens. Latched onto by hundreds and hundreds of previously harmless house pests they recognized from Tanbo, slowly the Sakamai began to link telepathically with these simple creatures, who they came to learn had their own thoughts, and a name: "We are Koji. Soon we will become one..." True to their word, the Koji were not shy as they latched directly onto each and every Sakamai, adherin...

Part 2 KOJI-KAKE (Part 1 is HERE ) The once robust and happy Sakamai, villagers of Tanbo, were already quite unrecognizable. Stripped not only of their brown clothing but their very layers of body fat and protein, only to then be engorged with steamy hot water. They looked like a new race; fluffy, round, and starchy white like snow. The mysterious alien beings who forced such change upon them without mercy or explanation were not finished with the Sakamai's transformations - not by a long shot. For all the brutality and advanced technology they utilized up until this point, things were about to get incredibly, deeply weirder. Resting in their latest prison, the Sakamai were trapped but momentarily reunited, warm, and fed. Despite the terror they had endured, the villagers were grateful, some even overcome with joy for the respite. It seemed as though throughout the chaos and torturous conditions, everyone had somehow survived, undergoing the same process. Just as reli...

Part 1 Sakamai Our heroes' journey began in a small, agrarian village called Tanbo. All of Tanbo's residents were known as Sakamai, and they enjoyed abundance, growing happy and plump as if divine intervention had chosen them for a life of comfort, ease, and opulence. Until one day in late fall. A day like any other... Suddenly, horrifically, alien beings of unstoppable power and size laid waste to the village. Uprooting homes mechanically and devoid of remorse, whole families of Sakamai were ripped apart and bound - seemingly at random, and in defiance of the laws of gravity. A quiet behemoth works methodically. For weeks they hung motionless, quietly suspended midair above the only land they knew. Devoid of life nourishing resources, most importantly water, the Sakamai became so parched from the sun's dull rays, even cool autumn breezes were abrasive and withering. While each of them prayed for an end to this misery, and a return to the land that taunted t...