reality_crossroads | Looking For A Lost Friend

Heh, yeah -- maybe we just haven't connected to the right DnD-based world yet for mimic shirts. [shrugs] And yeah, that's a good point about animals who pretend to be other stuff. . .I guess in your case, being like a stick insect would be pretending to be an entire tree, though.

I don't think I need to add any more ability to hunt humans, frankly.

A tall stump or a bush more likely, the whole tree might be too big, but you get the general idea.

I was talking more just in general, but -- yeah, ain't gonna argue with you there.

[he nods] There's an idea for weird stuff for you -- mixing plant-kinda stuff with animal-kinda stuff. Like two antlers that look like branches, or a tail that's got leaves on it.

That does sound fun. I wonder how much of an animal's energy could come from photosynthesis . . .

I dunno! Sounds like something relatively non-dangerous you could try. I bet Doc would be interested in the results too.

You'd probably need an animal that was mostly leaves for it to work properly, but working it out does sound like fun.

Yeah. . .maybe a reptile? Convert all the scales into leaves? Or if you had to do a mammal, maybe an armadillo or something like that. . .

Something cold-blooded, probably, they get a lot of their energy from heat anyway.

[making the shape with his hands] Big vine-snake. Like the kind Tarzan would swing off of.

Yes! Fuck, man, now I wanna try it. You probably wouldn't wanna see what the changing bit looks like, though . . .

Proooobably not. . .but I suppose I could just turn around if you wanna give it a go now. Unlike you, I can't put eyes in the back of my head.

*He laughs.* It shouldn't be too hard to find a spot where no one can see me, just give me a few minutes.

*As it turns out, walking off while thinking of a hiding spot is all it takes. A few minutes later something like a large, flat green snake with a long leafy fin down its back slithers up to Marty. It's slow, probably not something that would last too long in nature, but it works. It even speaks, though in a voice that sounds sort of like a very tired parrot.* There you go. Animal that photosynthesizes. The real thing would be a fucking moron though, probably get killed in about five seconds too. It's just too big for light to do everything it needs done.

Anything else you wanna see?

[Marty waits patiently as Palmer walks off -- then laughs as he returns in vine-snake form] Oh jeez, that's wild. . .but yeah, guess there's a reason we eat food and don't just sit in the sun all day!

I dunno. . .I'd ask what you think the weirdest thing you can turn into is, but I suspect that would look kinda like Cthulhu.

Yeah, once you're bigger than a few inches long and more intelligent than a slug you need to be designed very differently for light to be enough. Plants don't move much for a reason.

Oh, worse. Lovecraft wasn't that imaginative. Cthulhu is even symmetrical! I could come up with way stranger than that.

Right, yeah. Sunlight works best if you're pretty much stationary. And don't have a lot of brain to keep working.

Good point, I bet you could. Stuff that could give Outer Gods or whatever they're called nightmares. Though, thinking about it, Things fit pretty well into Lovecraft's whole "there are so many creatures in space and all that that we can't understand and would easily crush us if they thought we were worth the trouble" deal.

We do, don't we? *He thinks a moment.* Honestly there are so many weird things I could be that I can't really choose one. Not to mention that I can mix and match. I bet you could come up with just about anything and I could create it.

Now then, you mind if I become me again? Talking like this is hard.

Heh -- so much choice you can't make one, huh? Well, I'm sure I'll think of something. . .

Yeah, go ahead. I noticed you sounded kinda funny in this form.

A huge overabundance, yeah.

*He slips away again, returning as his human self.* Had to redesign my whole throat to speak at all that way, man.

Wow -- guess we should be grateful you managed at all!

[he pauses, running his fingers through his hair] And, uh. I did actually have a thought. . .though it's weird in a different way. . .

Yeah, it was a bit of a mess. But then the human throat is also something of a mess, so oh well.

Well now I'm curious, do tell.

Do I even want to know? Biology was never really my thing. . .

Well -- could you do -- me? Except about Doc's height? Or better yet, Victor's, he's six-foot-three. [he starts blushing] Look, I'm short and I'm always gonna be short. I just wanna know what tall looks like.

Mostly the mess of both eating and breathing through the mouth, it's really stupid and a good way to get killed.

Doing an individual that's not Palmer takes some effort, he's what I'm used to, but I can try. *Palmer focuses on Marty's face for a bit, then starts to slowly shift. It's not the nightmare of him changing species, but it's still very unsettling.*

Okay, but isn't the whole point of the nose so you can breathe even if you're eating? Or is it just the two tubes are too close together no matter how you slice it?

[Marty tries not to pull back in instinctive "holy crap" but -- damn, it's hard. He knows he asked for it, but it's still fairly creepy] Weeeeird. . .

The fact that breathing in food can happen at all is bad. Even if it's not common.

Yeah, that was kinda the point.

Well, you can't blame us for that -- that's evolution. For some reason.

I know, I know, but -- it's one thing to think about it, another to see it.

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