Dinner With Monsters - Moana

Moana didn’t have time to starve. She was on a quest so important that the Ocean itself had chosen her for it. Her island home, if not the entire world was at risk, and she’d even met and recruited the Demigod Maui himself. It was just that she had barely eaten a thing since setting sail. Most of her supplies had been eaten by Heihei the stowaway chicken, who was a little too close to her heart to become emergency rations.

And now she was stuck in a cave in the Realm of Monsters, watching Maui get pulverised by a giant, narcissistic, gold plated crab.

They’d come all this way to retrieve his magic fishhook, just to find a thousand years apart had left him rusty. Thankfully Tamatoa was too busy singing his own praises to spot her climbing out of her cage of bones. She was thankful for the adrenalin rush – the second she calmed down, she knew her stomach would start screaming.

There was only one thing their treasure loving host could want more than Maui. The one thing her entire quest hinged on. She gave him the Heart of TeFiti, and ran.

“Yes! I have… wait a minute. Oh, I see, she’s taken a barnacle, and she’s covered in it bioluminescent algae. As a diversion!”

Moana was already dragging Maui and his fishhook to safety, or at least away from immediate danger. They had a good head start, but the monster crab burst through the cave walls and strode towards them, cutting into the dry seabed with quaking steps.

Maui stumbled and moaned.

“This is fine!” Moana assured him. “I have a plan!”

She had no plan. They’d arrived by jumping down a massive tower, and the sea itself hung overhead where the sky should have been. How were they supposed to get out?

A jutting geyser exploded nearby and tickled the surface. Good enough. They clambered up the side, hearing the next blast rumbling upwards. The heat was already turning their feet red, with only Maui’s godly-in-the-literal-sense body to protect them when the blast hit.

“This is going to work!” she laughed. “We’re getting out of here, we’re going to-“

Gold gleamed and rocks flew as Tamatoa roared towards them, his eyes burning less like an eccentric collector and more like the colossal sea monster he really was.

“Give it to me!”

Too late. They dove apart as his claw smashed through the geyser, and instead of one quick jet, it erupted in a torrent of steam and a solid column of boiling water caught the colossal cretin dead in the face. He struggled and screeched until he was finally flipped onto his back, leaving gold and jewels to tumble away in every direction.

“That wasn’t quite the plan,” Moana coughed, pulling herself off a sponge bed. Maui was propping himself up with the fishhook, with nothing more than few bruises. They were alive.

But Tamatoa wasn’t.

After more than a thousand years, the great golden crab now sat lifeless and burnt bright red just a few steps from his own home. In the five minutes she’d known him, Moana had no reason to give him an ounce of sympathy, and yet she couldn’t help herself. It was just how she was.

“Nobody deserves that.”

“You’ll have to forgive me if we disagree on this one,” said Maui, regarding his old foe. He sighed. “Listen, I appreciate what you did back there. Took guts… I’m sorry, I’m trying to be sincere for once, and it feels like you’re distracted.”

“What? No, I’m listening!” Moana snapped towards him, having not been listening.

“Really? Because it looked like you were still eyeing Crab Cake over there.”

“It’s just… so sad. One minute he’s singing and dancing, and… admittedly trying to kills us, then the next…”

“Right, that’s why you’re looking at him like someone just wheeled out the birthday cake.”

She gasped, offended. Then turned back and sniffed the air.

Steamed crab.

“Alright, so you seem to be having a moral dilemma, and I don’t mean to come off as insensitive, but I’ve built up a lot of frustration that needs venting.”

Before she could protest, Maui flipped through the air, and struck the bright red claw with his fishhook. Chiton broke apart, leaving only soft white meat and releasing what seemed like the most beautiful and appetising scent to grace Moana’s nose. Maui tore out a piece and took a bite.

“Oh man, that is cathartic!” The tattoo on his shoulder seemed a little queasy. “Crab is a delicacy, it’s not weird!”

There went the adrenalin. Moana felt her belly cry out, tortured by food uneaten.

“If you want some, you really need to start now,” Maui suggested, already finished with a bit larger than his head. “I’ve been eating grass and rocks for the last thousand years.”

Well it was out of her hands now, wasn’t it?

He carved off a pincer and tossed it down, and she practically dove on it. Hunger took the helm, and she bit straight in, pulling back with a big mouthful of hot meat. It suddenly occurred to her that an enormous supernatural crab might taste supernaturally good, and she was not disappointed.

At first, it was just the best steamed crab she’d ever tasted, but then it was coconut. Rich, and just sweet enough. Then came the flavours she didn’t recognise at all. She swallowed, missed the taste, went in for another hearty bite, and promptly fell straight over. It was really that good.

“Brap!” she slapped both hands over her mouth.

“Don’t bother,” Maui laughed, cutting out another snack. “Trust me, there is no dignified way to eat a giant monster.”

Each bite begged her to take another, and being the kind-hearted soul she was, each plea was answered. Perhaps this was meant as a curse, meant to fill her to the breaking point as she tried to finish off the whole beast. With Maui just finishing off an entire claw, there wasn’t much chance of that happening.

She ignored a growing tightness in her girth, much preferring it to the aggressive emptiness it filled, though she did take a second to adjust her skirt. If she had to make the rest of the voyage without it, Maui would never let her live it down.

“UrrUUURURRRP!”

“HipPUAAAAARHP!”

Down in Lalotai, it was impossible to distinguish a hearty belch from the roars of the native beasts, let alone which came from who.

Tamatoa remained as a heaped pile of broken shell and forgotten gold, and sitting amongst it, Maui stretched his legs. Wide, but no more so than usual, he gave his satisfied stomach a pat and stood up, ready to go.

Moana, unfortunately, did not share the metabolism of a Demigod.

“I can’t move...”

She lay on her side, and her belly lay with her, larger than her body had ever intended it to be.

“Not gonna lie, that’s freaking me out a little,” Maui regarded the giant thing cautiously, feeling more body conscious than he was used to. Bellies like this were usually followed by the sudden arrival of children. A whole village worth, from the looks of this one. “Does that hurt?”

“This is the single most painful thing that’s ever happened to me,” Moana burped, sounding absolutely euphoric.

In the past, she’d overeaten on accident, and she’d overeaten in a hurry, and maybe her stomach had pushed out a tiny bit. Now, that she had eaten a giant monster seemed like a the only reasonable explanation.

“I say give it a week, let it settle, you’ll be fine.”

“A week!?” she went to stand and fell straight onto herself, something she could never have done previously. Her face went green, and she forgot everything that didn’t relate to not being violently sick.

“Or five days, let’s not be pedantic.”

She gave a squeak as he lifted her into the air and carried her off. Her skin was so stretched, just staring at it too hard would tickle.

“If this ends up in your stupid song, I will kick you so hard!”

“And if you could stand under your own weight, that might almost be a threat.”

He rested her on a rock under the gateway above, yelled another CHEE-HOO, and promptly turned into a coconut crab. After a very strange feeling hit her stomach, Moana wondered what strange, magical method he was preparing, before realizing he had simply became the wrong animal. If she wasn’t the size of an island stuck in a creature infested death world, it might have been funny.

“Problem?” she asked.

He turned back into a human. “Not a problem per se, we might just be a little…”

“Do not say we’re stuck! I might be stuck, because my stomach weighs more than me right now. We can’t be stuck!”

“Relax,” he huffed, not sounding relaxed. “Here’s an idea, why don’t you call your pal the Ocean to pick us up?” He pointed upwards. “Literally, pick us up.”

“I don’t – HURARP – I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“Hey, if I can lift you, I don’t think it’ll take the whole Ocean.”

For the love of TeFiti, she was too full for this. Just breathing made her stomach jostle and sting. When it rested on top, it felt like Tamatoa was making one last, desperate try to squish her. He’d always cared so much about his outside, he probably never expected to end up on someone’s inside.

That was when she remembered that Lalotai was the Realm of MonsterS.

“Maui?”

The thing crawling towards them resembled no animal Moana had seen or wished to see again. It had no legs, but had an excess of arms ending in sharp claws that made this difficult to notice.

Moana ran – or rather, flopped clumsily off her rock and on top of Maui, now a duck. Thankfully she still felt him moving under there. She started throwing rocks and bits of coral, none of which made a difference, and some which didn’t even make the arc over her girth. An enormous red eye peered at her through a set of spear-like teeth, no doubt sizing up the plump snack Moana had become.

“I said get off me!”

Maui stood in full Demigod form, launching Moana straight into the beasts’ mouth, which might have been a problem if she wasn’t currently much bigger than said mouth. She fell, and all the monstrosity could do was cushion her fall, and let her roll away from its broken jaw.

“Maui! A little help!?”

“Why would I help? He’s a monster!”

She rolled on up a small hill, and came crashing back as the thing managed to hobble into her direction. This had to be the least graceful monster slaying in the history of the world.

Watching her wallow on her front against the great dead thing, Maui went to speak, then laughed. “Sorry, I can’t take you seriously looking like that.”

“Braaaahhhup!”

“Or sounding like that!”

Being sick went from an inevitable outcome to a passed possibility as more monsters caught sight and headed their way. Pushing hard left, Moana wheeled herself towards Maui.

“You know, you’re on a real roll today, Chosen One. Want to handle this as well?” he seemed to be aiming her at the approaching horde.

“You’re the Hero of All! How about you find us a way out of here!?”

“It’s in the pipeline! I’m open to suggestions!”

“Suggestions!?” she roared like this was her homeland. “You’re the Demigod! What would I know about magic monster realms? It’s not like we can just leave up some staircase!”

Something seemed to click, though not before he nudged her and sent her hurtling downhill into an unlucky green cyclops. With another mighty swing, Maui struck the ground, cracking a small fissure through it and sending monsters flying. Still reeling, Moana held her bulging cheeks shut and watched him haul up the broken earth. He stacked another on top of it, and followed it with a broken pillar.

He was actually building them a staircase.

Moana gave herself a second to be impressed when she felt something wrapping around her enormous abdomen. She spun and would have screamed if she still had the energy. The monster had a dozen arms like massive snakes, and was using them to hoist her high into the air. On the hill, eight eyed bats swarmed Maui, so she was on her own. In a panic, ‘How did I beat Tamatoa again?’ raced through her pounding head, and she sank her teeth deep into the tendril. It loosened with a screech, and the beast attached to it was flat under her backside before she could correct herself.

“If this goes down in legends, we are leaving this part out!”

*

Heihei didn’t know what to make of the sight climbing down the rock face. He didn’t know what to make of the colour green, either, so this wasn’t saying an awful lot.

All the same, the girl who had sailed them there now took up significantly more of their tiny boat. On habit, the chicken pecked at the huge brown shape as soon as it arrived, causing wet popping sounds to funnel out of the girl’s lips.

“You had me worried there for a minute right at the end there,” said the large, loud man they’d picked up. “I didn’t think you had it in you! But I guess you do now,” he laughed, giving her stomach a quick pat.

“Let’s beUrrAAAP… be clear… I am not eating any more monsters!”

“Are you sure? Because you seem to have a talent for it. You’ve still got some bat wing right here, by the way,” he smirked as she quickly picked at her teeth.

“Just get us out of here.”

Doing very little to hold back his amusement, he kicked off against the island, setting sail as best he could with such a large obstacle to work around.

If Heihei was in the habit of noticing things, he might have noticed that the boat was dipping low into the water in a way suggesting it was about to sink, only staying afloat because the water itself wanted it to.

Alas, he was not, so he did not, and they sailed unsteadily away to the sound of a belly that was never meant to be nearly this full.