As Petra waited for her magic to recover, she idly considered how exactly she was supposed to go about building herself a workable eye given the materials she had at her disposal, and thus far she was making very little progress. It wasn’t that vertebrate eyes were all that complicated, in fact, as far as organs went eyes were actually relatively simple, in her opinion. No, rather, the problem she was having was a lack of materials.
Slimes, as homogeneous as they might seem at a glance, turned out to contain a variety of different materials, which Petra would have no problem separating out with her magic… well actually, it’d probably be exhausting work, but very little problem at the very least. The issue was, that even with what she had, none of them had the material properties she needed for what she wanted to create, and getting that down was the bare minimum for her to even start on the project, let alone solve all the other countless issues that would no doubt arise in the process.
Petra felt herself growing frustrated by her inability to think her way around the problem, or do much of else in the meantime, when mercifully, she was given an excuse to drop the matter for the time being, in the form of a message from Up – or rather, from Cassius, as she had to remind herself the guy had introduced himself.
Contacts: "Cassius"
C should be speaking with Meira right now. If you have questions, send them over to him so he can ask. I am bed-bound right now, so I won't be able to pick you up. Are you still in the shack? It's night now; I'd recommend hiding somewhere because there's a possibility of someone else occupying it for shelter. Slimes aren't considered dangerous, but maybe they're considered food.
Also, what's your name?
Cassius was bed-bound? That was worrying. Was he sick, or had he been injured? Perhaps he’d been involved in whatever scuffle Down had gotten into, or maybe if this world was as openly violent as it seemed to be, he’d been hurt in some other conflict.
In either case, Petra thought Cassius’s message seemed to calm to indicate that he’d been crippled or anything quite that bad, and she hoped she wasn’t just misreading things. Even if she still had a somewhat poor opinion of Cassius, Petra wouldn’t have wanted the guy to get hurt whatever the case, but the realisation that literally half of the people she could be taken out of the picture as easily as that had her suddenly very concerned.
By the standards of her life up until now, the idea that two people she knew might suddenly be crippled or die out of the blue seemed almost unbelievable, but now she realised, that wasn’t a standard she could in any way rely on to hold true. Actually, if anything, she could probably rely on it to not hold true. Which made her current lack of both independence and people to rely upon all the more concerning.
As for the other part of the Cassius’s message, that was perhaps even more worrying.
With any luck, people wouldn’t consider her food on account of slimes being creatures that wouldn’t hesitate to devour literal shit, but even so, the very idea that someone might try it made her more than a little nervous, and even short of being seen as a meal, Petra could very easily imagine slimes being considered a pest to be exterminated not unlike how most people see cockroaches.
Contacts: "Cassius"
Appologies. I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Petra.
If you’re sick or injured I could take a look at you and see if there’s anything I can do with my Skill. I don’t exactly have any way of making it to wherever you are right now though, so it’d probably have to wait if I did. Sorry.
After firing off a quick response, Petra set about figuring out just how she was meant to get out of this shack. It wasn’t exactly like she could see where she was going, and blindly wondering out into the open would probably put her at even more of a risk of being noticed than rolling the dice on whether a random squatter decided to occupy the shack.
Actually, now that she was looking for it, Petra was suddenly very aware of the vibrations coming from outside the shack – a persistent background noise she’d thus far ignored, but one which she was suddenly very aware might be the steps of people moving about outside. Actually, scratch that, there were definitely people outside; while most of the vibrations were utterly meaningless to Petra who still hadn’t figured how to interpret the sense, with her newly enhanced hearing, Petra was able to occasionally pick up snippets of conversation magically translated into something she could make sense of.
Trying to think quickly, Petra considered hiding in the gap in the floorboards like Down had suggested, except she realised she didn’t know where exactly the hole was. She was pretty sure it was somewhere over…
Petra was still trying to figure out the exact location her designated hiding place was, when the worst possible case scenario happened, and she felt one of the sources of vibrations outside break off from the others, resolving into a more distinct vibration that seemed to draw closer my the moment, until just a couple of seconds after she noticed it, someone entered the shack.
If Petra could have, she would have probably frozen like a deer in headlights, as it was her body already happened to be stock still, so instead through the haze of her panic, Petra somehow managed to throw her movement program back together, moving as fast as she could towards the tarp beneath which she’d first arrived in this world – a hiding spot she only now remembered existed.
Of course, Petra’s efforts were in vain – even if she couldn’t see them, there was no reason to expect the newcomer wouldn’t be able to see her, not in the relatively tiny confines of the shack – and she made it all of halfway to her would be hiding spot, before in three steps the newcomer moved and cut her off.
As she cancelled her movement, Petra could only feel her panic growing. She didn’t exactly have a measuring stick by which to gauge this newcomer, but compared to how Down and Cassius had felt, it seemed as though this person must be positively gargantuan, and it was only thanks to the small part of her mind that was still capable of rational though, that Petra was able to realise that that perception was probably at least in part because of her now enhanced senses.
Before she could think up any kind of solution or even just make her piece with her inevitable death – perhaps for the second time today – Petra felt her body deform as the giant poked her with something. Then a moment later, they poked her a second time, followed shortly by a third.
For a confused moment, Petra was surprised that the pokes didn’t hurt, before she realised that she couldn’t feel pain like that anymore and concluded she was being stabbed. A second later, Petra realised she was not in fact being stabbed, and the pokes really weren’t injuring her at all, and in fact, they were almost gentle.
The sudden realisation that whoever this was, they apparently weren’t trying to kill her – at least not for the time being – caused Petra’s blind panic to die down a little – though only by a little, since there were surely all sorts of nefarious reasons one might poke at a slime – and she was able to regain some measure of order and reason to her thoughts.
Not exactly able to run and still desperately needing information, Petra once again drew on her magic to try and get some sense of what was going on. Her magic, perhaps unsurprisingly, wasn’t exactly suited to the task, but examining herself through her organic vision she quickly determined that whatever it was she was being prodded with, it was definitely organic, as with each and every poke her body peeled off a small amount of the offending object for digestion. Whatever the substance was, it was clearly a lot tougher than regular flesh, but no so tough as bone, which she’d already discovered she was hardly able to digest at all; her body only managing to pry free a few cells with each poke.
Zooming her sense in upon some of what material her own cells had managed to pull off of the object, Petra was met with the tell-tale cell walls that marked as having once been part of a plant. After a moment, Petra realised that it was probably a stick. Someone was poking her with a stick.
While it logically wasn’t any indication that this person wasn’t potentially dangerous to her – they definitely were – or even that they meant her no harm, something about the image of someone repeatedly prodding at a slime with a stick – perhaps just curious to have seen it act in ways no lesser slime normally would have – somehow felt a whole lot less threatening than all the myriad of awful possibilities she’d been imagining just moments before, and like that Petra felt the worst of her panic drain out of her.
As she calmed down, Petra recalled her earlier worry about ending up stuck on her own.
She had of course already considered the potential consequences of letting the inhabitants of this world know that she wasn’t a normal slime – after the reality bending implications of magic existing, and alternate worlds running off of fantasy tropes, that had pretty much been the first thing she’d considered – and she’d pretty quickly decided that it would be an incredibly stupid thing to try without first knowing more, Earth’s own witch hunts coming to mind.
Except the realisation that she had exactly two people she could communicate with – just two lifelines to support her while she was essentially crippled – clearly indicated she hadn’t though it through well enough. Obviously, trying to communicate with one of the natives would immediately out her as being special, and that might get her immediately captured or killed, but what did the alternative scenarios look like?
Petra considered a reality where she didn’t ever speak to the locals, and thought that it’d probably be awful. It might be safer, but at the very least it’d probably be lonely, and worse, she’d be crippling her ability to learn about this world. No. That clearly wasn’t a valid option, at some point she’d have to talk to someone who hadn’t come here from Earth.
She thought about a world where she slowly worked up to being able to talk to locals, taking measures to be cautious as she went, but decided that that scenario wasn’t that much better. She had no idea how long that might take, and there was so much she wanted to do and learn. And what if something happened to Down or Cassius while she was useless? Then she would be stuck on her own and everything would be that much harder, if not impossible.
Even after considering all that, Petra thought the smartest thing to do would still be to wait, just a little, until she had the slightest clue to go off of, but she also realised something else: she really didn’t want to. There were so many questions she wanted to ask, questions that couldn’t be answered by anyone from Earth, and she wanted to ask them right now. Each and every minute she spent waiting was another minute spent not satisfying her curiosity, and somehow that seemed worse than some nebulous risk of being burned at the stake.
Petra realised she was being stupid but decided she really didn’t care. The worst that could happen would be dying, and she was pretty certain she’d already done that once today.
With an effort of will, Petra tried to add the stranger to her contacts. When it became clear that that had once again failed to work, Petra mentally sighed to herself and switched to her less convenient method of communication. After a couple of false starts, Petra managed to get a hang of the process again, attaching meaning to the slapping of her pseudopods as she slowly spoke.
“He̶l̸lo… Is t̴her̴e̸… ̶a̷ re̴aso̶n… y̸o̵u're poki̷n̶g me?̶” Petra slowly asked.
“C̴oul̶d... yo̶u̶... y̶ou... ple̸a̵s̷e sto̷p̸?̸”After a moment’s consideration, Petra recalled how she’d forgotten to introduce herself to her companions from Earth and decided since she was already this far in, she may as well do things properly this time.
“I’m <Name: Self>…” Petra only remembered immediately after saying it, that her slap-speak couldn’t actually handle names, and was glad that she couldn’t cringe with this body, carrying on as though nothing had happened.
“I wa̶n̷t t̸o̸ know̷ ever̵ythin̸g… an̵d a̸m… som̸e̴t̷hing lik̵e… a hea̴l̴er… or ma̷ybe̴… a̸ doc̶t̶or… So̷r̴ta.̵” Petra had intended to make it clear that she could be at least a little useful on the off chance it made whoever this was less likely to want to squish her like the vermin she probably was, but immediately regretted describing herself as a doctor, because magic or no, she absolutely wasn’t qualified to perform medicine. Either way, what was done was done, and now all she could do was wait and see how the stranger responded.
