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]I’ll show you what I am.[/i]”

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. “[i]Now that you know what [b]]I[/b] am…[/i]” it spoke up, stepping towards the two slowly. “[i]Show me what [b]you[/b] are, you strange creatures…![/i]”

——

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.