Books gasped in fear and leaped away from the creature. Her nerves where already frayed. Now add a weird looking rodent to the mix and she felt like she would loose it. She kept her deep blue eyes locked on the rodent. She hated any kind of rodent. If it wasn't a dog, cat, or any kind of household pet she hated it and was scared of it.

...Well, that was not quite the Basilix he was expecting, that much was for sure. This thing looked more like a... what was the thingie again? Arcadian? No. Something with a shiny... Amber? No, another shiny-glowy thingy. A-a-a...Argonian! Only this one had hair. Also, incredibly evil-looking eyes! To be honest, the stupid thing was freaking Leon out. Sure, it was just a computer hologram, but still...
On another note, apparently GM was really bad in making up names, considering that the being was forced to recycle his nicknames already. Which did raise the question about whether or not the 'Leo' file was about him in the first place. But eh, that was something he could check out later. Right now, Leon had other priorities -- namely, examining the shinies, and making the stupid lizard look less creepy! The only problem was that at first glance, it didn't look like there was any way to edit the stupid thing. Wait a minute though... didn't GM manage to do so by simply touching the hologram? So maybe, maybe Leon could do the same too (hopefully). Well, there was only one way to find out whether or not that was true,and that was Science (tm)!
As it turned out, a good application of Science (tm) showed that this was indeed the case, as touching the scaled humanoid caused several sliders to appear around the hologram -- and an even wider grin on Leon's face. Nex up, finding out just exactly what [i]this[/] slider does!
...The power of Science (tm) quickly proved that said slider apparently regulated the amount of muscle of the creature in question. Right now it was a bit to the right of the middle, resulting in a quite muscly bulk, albeit not nearly as ridiculous as pulling it all the way to the right. It sort of reminded him of the joke pictures of Mega Caterpie and whatnot he once saw. Pulling it all the way to the left, on the other hand, produced a hilariously fragile-looking image for what the creature originally was. Already the beast looked far less threatening than what it started out as. Progress!

Some other sliders Leon examined apparently controlled things like body mass, general length, appendage length and more things like that. The combination of extreme length, extreme thinness and lack of any muscles made one wonder how the creature would even be able to stand. It sort of looked like a lizard version of Slenderman -- which, of course, was still quite creepy if you stopped to think about it. The polar opposite -- that is, minimal length, high bulkiness to the point of looking pudgy and extreme muscles resulted in some kind of lizard dwarf. Of course, both of the two got the voice that would far better match the opposite end of the spectrum, just for the sake of extra amusement. At this point, Leon decided to see if there was a Save As-option under the File tab. On one hand he didn't want to lose 'his' creation, but on the other he also realized that completely overwriting the original file would probably be a really bad idea.

Rae also jumped at it. she crossed to the girl and looked down at the creature, it seemed to have some level of intelligence so she slipped in front of books and said "what are you?" her nerves were shot and she really just needed some sleep, but there was no way she would with that creature in the room, it looked harmless but that didn't mean it was.

The rodent itself seemed to jump slightly in response to Books and Rae’s shock, standing up on its hind legs as it glanced between the two, ears perked. After a few seconds, though, the mouse began to squeak in a way that almost resembled laughter, the creature’s head dipping back down again as the laughing continued, as if it found the girls’ fear to be absolutely hilarious.

Once it finished, it looked up at Rae, and in a chipmunk-like pitch, replied, “I’ll show you what I am.”

As it spoke, its voice changed — becoming deeper and more menacing — as the creature itself grew rapidly, its form stretching from something cute and tiny into something far, far worse.

The end result was a monster that filled nearly the whole chamber — though it was a skinny thing, standing on four thin, insect-like legs attached to a scrawny, mammalian body with a thin, whip-like tail, mosquito-esque wings, and a narrow, rat-like face filled with scraggly, thin and razor-sharp teeth. It glared at the girls menacingly. “Now that you know what ]I am…” it spoke up, stepping towards the two slowly. “Show me what you are, you strange creatures…!”

——

As Leon played with the sliders, especially when he pulled them all the way to the extremes, small notifications appeared in the lower-right corner of the ‘screen’ claiming to have fixed small errors in the design — mostly seemingly relating to the internal structure of the creature — in order to make sure the creature was still capable of living should the file be run. Each notification even came with buttons for “undo” and “turn off auto-adjust”, and appeared, along with the rest of the notification, on the screen for a few seconds before vanishing as more edits were made. It was really a testament to how advanced the program and GM’s creatures were.

And while the File tab did feature a ‘Save As’ option, along with other interesting options such as ‘Run’ or ‘Add form’, it seemed Leon’s concerns about not wanting to overwrite the Basilix file were already a moot point, as a small line of text that appeared at the bottom of the screen every so often seemed to imply that the changes had been autosaved every couple of minutes or so.

Callum sighed at the silence he got in his head, his eyes went back to the GM who was bewildered at what just happened. It was an amusing thing to watch. Callum lowered his head to the ground. Perhaps for a second he pondered what to do with GM's question. "Wait..I think...I think I'm getting something....Wait....Mk saying.....Shut....up.....you...stupid....ass" Callum made a face as close as an angry face he could for a new body. Before rails suddenly sprawled towards the GM. "Hey....hey....do you like trains?" Callum giggled like a little girl before a speeding train appeared out of the sky, barreling towards the GM. Completely ignoring the rails.

"Close enough...and after this you're answering some questions for me Jackass!" Perhaps this craziness was good for Callum. It certainly made him forget (if not just for this moment) Kole getting ripped in half.

Books yelped in fear. "We're just people! We're weary travelers. All we want is a safe place to stay for the night. Please don't kill me!" She said, her words jumbling together as she covered her face with her arms. She was shaking like a leaf, scared of what the creature would do if it didn't like her answer.

Rae forced herself to keep moving and she put herself between the monster and Books. "Please, we mean you no harm, we're exhausted, and hungry" she put her hands up in the general sign of 'look, i don't have weapons' and she tried not to let her utter exhaustion sound in her voice as she said "don't hurt us, and we won't hurt you" then she thought again and said "we are exactly as we seem, simply humans, travelers, trying to get somewhere safe"

When Gwazi woke up it was bright as day, expect with no sun due to being underground with glowing mushrooms. Yawning from still being tired he slowly sat up, lying his back against the trunk of the glowing mushroom he was sleeping under. For such a chaotic and barbaric world with so many deadly roleplay adaptations it was surprising how easy and safe it was to just sleep in the open like this. Or maybe he was just lucky? He thought about it briefly while packing up his stuff for nothing more than to occupy his head with something, but right when he was finishing he could hear a high, loud yet quick scream. That normally meant some sort of trouble, so he grabbed his sword and began to wander in the direction of the scream.

"Those combat RPs definitely have their uses now" he thought to himself in regards to the sword he had. If he were back in the real world he'd be completely hopeless in a fight, but in this world? He was rather skilled at it, if for nothing more than that many of his characters were. "Shame I couldn't get those magical powers too... Air, Electric and Fire manipulation, Shapeshifting, Super Strength? Something at least" he continued to think to himself while heading towards the noise. Then again, maybe he did have those powers but just had to unlock them? Because he could entertain that thought further he noticed what the source of the noise was, two girls had apparently gained the attention of some... What was that? It looked like a rat, but huge... and had parts resembling bug. "I'll just call it a bug rat" he thought to himself while observing the situation from a safe distance. He had no way to really tell who the girls were, who if they were the victims or the harassers yet. So not wanting to attack a potentially innocent party he chose to wait, he climbed up the nearest mushroom and watched from above. His plan being to jump down on whoever exposed themselves to be the guilty party, assuming this conflict was going to lead to violence in the first place that is.

GM glared at MKallum as the hybrid mumbled seemingly to himself. “What… can you… can you hear him in there?!” GM hissed, fur standing on end as he seemed to be ready to pounce. “The fuck is that cat telling you?!” he demanded to know, stepping off the tracks and towards Callum, before he was pulled out of his rage completely as his ears perked up, some distracting force calling his attention as his head turned away from the battle. “Bassie?” he called out to seemingly no one.

His attention returned to the battle, though, as he caught sight of the train about to fall on top of him. He flinched, curling himself into a ball as a dome-shaped force field appeared above him, causing the train to explode and burst into flames at the touch. “Ohhhhohohoho… so that’s the kind of game you wanna play, huh?!” GM shot back, a devious smile spreading across his face as the force field faded along with the surrounding debris.

GM leaped into the air, floating there as his mouth began to glow. He pulled his head back, uttering a rather well-known cry before unleashing a powerful blast of energy in MKallum’s direction. “I’MA FIRIN’ MAH LAZAAAAAR!”

“You don’t smell like normal humans…” the rat-creature hissed, sniffing in the girls’ general direction as he watched Books’ cower in fear. Rae seemed to be doing a better job of holding herself together, but the remaining lack of a clear answer kept Rae’s calm and collected response from sounding as strong as it could have. “And the villagers called you ‘spirits’, but, you don’t smell like spirits either…”

The creature’s ears then perked up, and, sniffing the air again, its head turned towards the opening that led out into the hallway — where it spotted what appeared to be a male villager wielding a sword. It froze momentarily, like a deer in headlights, before quickly dashing out into the hallway, grabbing Gwazi and drawing him into the chamber, where it quickly pinned him to the wall. “Don’t you blow my cover just yet…” the creature hissed. “I want to finish talking to these girls first. Maybe then I’ll have some fun with your tri-” the beast cut itself off, taking a moment to give Gwazi another quick sniff. “…You don’t smell like one of that tribe.” it spoke, sounding somewhat confused. “You smell more like them…” it continued, glancing over towards the girls.

Before Gwazi knew it the bugrat creature had grabbed him and pinned him against the wall "Figures, shows my cleverness by watching from a fucking glowing mushroom..." he thought to himself. But upon the bugrat like creature mentioning his smell and the girls Gwazi clued in to that these two girls were probably fellow roleplayers, best not to mention it yet though considering it seems the girls are trying to hide it from the bugrat themselves... probably for good reason. Though he did suck at lying, so hopefully the bugrat doesn't directly ask if he's a player or not, assuming the bugrat even knows what players are. Though this bugrat seems to have issues with some tribe, so he tried arguing "Whatever this tribe is, you seem to have issues with them. If so why are bothering to waste time with random wanderers like us? Wouldn't a tribe being after you be your first worry?".

Hmm... Most of the commands in the File menu were pretty obvious in the sense that Leon had seen them before, and he could sort of guess what a couple of the others would do. Well, there's always time to check those out later. First things first, saving his new creation under the new names: "Tiny" and "Giant" ... for the slenderman and dwarf versions respectively.

After that was taken care of, he went on to see if there was anything else he could do with the program. As fun and shiny the thing was, there's only so much fun you can have by moving sliders around. 'Run'... Maybe that would summon the creatures into the real world? Or at least as real as this place was ever going to get, that is. Either way, that seemed like a Very Bad Idea (tm). Other options then? 'Add form,' maybe? Or would that just add another tab to the thing. Speaking of which... What did that other tab look like anyway? Well, only one way to find out! With the spirit of Science taking hold of Leon, the somewhat disturbed man clicked on the Form 2 tab of Basilix' file.

Rae took a step back when the creature said she didn't seem human, "we are..." but she was interrupted by the appearance of a random person, something about him felt more like them then the tribesmen. before she could react he was grabbed by the monster, who confirmed her idea that he was like them "Don't hurt him!" she cried "you don't need to hurt anyone, i'm telling you we aren't going to hurt you" she put her hands out in front of her again "we're just people, i swear" however as she said it she started to feel the fire building up in her, much slower then when she did fire-bending before, but she tried to keep it contained as she watched.

Books felt the rocks around her feet tremble. "Leave the man be!" She said her arms trembling at her sides. She had regained control of her voice and pushed all of the fear out of her expression and voice. "We don't want to hurt you but if you don't put the man down we'll hurt you." She said glaring at the creature.

“Now that I’m inside, I can toy with that tribe whenever I want.” the bugrat hissed in response to Gwazi. “It’s not every day that I meet something as strange as you three.” The creature then heard the girls behind it trying to defend the man he’d captured, and their concern for him reinforcing its theory that they were of the same kind. The bugrat was somewhat surprised, though, to hear the words that then came from Books, previously the most timid member of the group. “Are you threatening me?!” it growled, wings buzzing angrily before quickly quieting down again, a plan forming in its mind. “In that case…” it continued, pinning Gwazi against the wall harder. “Go ahead, then. Attack me.” it challenged. “Show me your power.”

Clicking the ‘form 2’ icon caused the lizardman visible in the hologram to shift back to something closer to its original design, except about a foot taller. Additionally, the creature was the slightest bit bulkier than its counterpart, with the muscles toned just a bit more than the previous version. Similarly, the tail was slightly thicker, the feet were wider and more dinosaur-like, and the arms seemed a bit more well-suited for tearing and shredding than the previous, more human-like version. Clearly the biggest difference, though, was the head, as the human-like shape and appearance had nearly completely vanished. With no hair and an elongated snout, the head seemed purely reptilian, with eyes even more predator-like and a mouth full of sharp teeth. The features that stayed consistent between the two, though, implied that the two designs were in fact the same creature, capable of shifting between the two appearances.

Callum carefully watched. For some reason that song by Gotye was going through his head at the moment. Out of every single that could possibly be going through his head. "Somebody that I use to know....ooh...." Callum quietly mumbled, he was rather distracted to noticed the giant ass lazer heading towards him. "Holy shit!" Callum leaped out of the way. Colliding into a semi standing building. With him and it's remaining stand parts falling on to the ground rather hard.#

"Ow" Callum crawled upwards. "Kinda running out of references here....I mean...yeah." Callum paused for a second, before his cat eyes flicked upwards. "First....and since you keep on ignoring me...I'll ask you again. How did you drag me, and everyone else in here? I'm guessing something magiciky because I feel like this isn't possible with the technology we have today. Unless your from the future. Oh, that's another question. Are you real? As in, you know. The realm "outside" Answers bro"

Callum was going to make something, but the first thing that happened to him was that he felt hungry. then suddenly a tidal wave of milk washed cast a shadow over the city. It suddenly carried Callum towards the GM. He was right in the middle, somehow avoiding getting tossed and turned by the giant tsunami....of milk. Which tasted like Full fat. He hadn't had full fat in a while....

"ANSWERS MY QUESTIONS DAMMIT!"

When the bugrat dared the girls to attack him Gwazi simply grinned. With a sudden force of strength he pushed himself free of the pin long enough to swing his sword at the arm the bugrat would have used to pin him in place. Then once Gwazi dropped to the ground being free of the bugrats grasp he simply said "You asked for it" before ducking and rolling underneath the bugrat and piercing the sword right into his gut from underneath. Hopefully that did some decent damage to the bugrat and would keep it in shock for at least a few seconds, but at the same time Gwazi just left himself in a very vulnerable position. One the Bugrat could easily exploit of the girls don't follow up and cover him.

Books saw the attack that the man did. The rocks that been shaking around her feet gathered and shot at the creature. "I said I wasn't afraid to attack!" She said closing her eyes. She focused all her energy and fear on the attack at the creature.

sensing an oppurtonity, Rae put a hand forward in yet another pose from Avatar the last airbender. a concentrated line of fire went from her hand towards the beast. it still was pretty weak but it should at least singe him. and she could claim it was a warning shot. she took a slow deep breath, and try to conjure up the feeling from before back into her hands, as she awaited the beast's next move.