Honestly the flock might be safer, but...you're lonely. And the day has already gone poorly. And maybe one of the spiders will be of more use, so you reach out and paw at the edge of Ethel's mind like a cat who wants into the bathroom with you; it takes her a moment to notice, and then she swings her mind open and lets you in.
This sensation is far stranger than when you have control. You can feel all of Ethel's senses, are aware of every part of her body that she herself is aware of; you can feel the satisfyingly heavy sensation of having a full supply of webbing, the ache in her human torso that says she's been working a bit hard and maybe should have bothered with a bra today because those tits do
not support themselves, every little itch, the gritty sensation of plant matter in her heavy gardening gloves that's trapped in the weave, the air that fills and leaves her lungs. But you don't have control over any of it. Her perceptions are yours to know, and even her emotions to an extent (currently she's enjoying her work tending to the gardens and pleasantly surprised that you've dropped in), but the best you can do in terms of manipulating her body is to strongly suggest a course of action which she then accepts or ignores. You do not often do this and put in quite a lot of mental effort not to; she experiences every 'suggestion' and it's highly fucking distracting. So you sit within her body, metaphorically close your own eyes, and for a long moment just exult in almost being a mostly human thing in a living body.
The world is so beautiful, even now.
"Doctor Heller," Ethel says, and you hear it as if you yourself are speaking in her voice; Ethel always speaks to you aloud. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
I've had a bad morning and I was wondering if you might be free for a bit of an adventure. I want to check out the clubs that should be nearby.
"Now that is interesting," Ethel muses. She picks up her basket of things that are not quite enough like lemons and taps her chin. "...I can trade some shifts out. Maybe even check out a gun."
Lean on Orchid, it's got a soft spot for y'all.
Ethel laughs. "It'll be a few hours either way. I'm just working - you don't need to stay around if you don't want to."
...Can I stay?
"Always, Doctor. My other offer stands if I ever am in a position to meet it."
Yeah I am not lurking around while you make out with people Ethel.
There's something pleasant about...well, not working with your hands, but feeling like you're working with your hands. Ethel had wanted to go to culinary school, and indeed she takes regular shifts with the new pots of Eternal Soup while doing her best to learn from Nettleson in her spare time. Her ambitions are modest, but so earnest, and her new connections to where the food actually comes from and what it means to really make it have been the subject of many long hours of conversation. Her biggest obstacle right now is that the kitchens are not sized for her, and resources for a spider-sized kitchen just can't be allocated. Maybe that can be fixed once the amusement park is cleared out...
Oh, hold up, Orchid found its notebook. Switching.
"I don't have much," Orchid admits. There's a brief physical description of the dragon from a distance, alongside the one thing it's said to anyone here in the community - "Cogito ergo sum." That's familiar too. Orchid has scrawled a dozen theories about what kind of dream might have made it or summoned it or turned someone into it, and as you cock the raven's head all of them feel -
"Son. Of. A. Bitch," you squawk through the raven's throat. "Ethel. Will. Tell. You."
- switching -
Ethel I know what the fucking dragon is.
"Do you now?" Ethel says lightly, and then you feel her emotionally double-take. "
You do?"
It's draco sapiens. Or, rather, he is, or is based off of, Sunshadow, who prefers the name Klion.
...
......
"From the
movie?" Ethel asks in disbelief. "From - from
Wyrmriders: Alliance? It - he - is a
fictional character?"
That film made two billion at the box office, Ethel. It was on people's fucking minds.
"How many copies of him are there?"
Ask a bitch who knows! THIS one is Klion! The bitter-ass elder wyrm sick to death of humans being racist! The grandpa-ass motherfucker whose refusal to join the war against the Dark Lord is most of the fucking plot! And if he's hanging around I shudder to think of who or what else is - my baby nieces were super into that show with the pixies, can you imagine?
Ethel's disbelief boils over into a bubbling giggle, and she puts on a high-pitched voice as she goes, "Friendship
blaaaaaaaast!"
YEAH THOSE ONES ETHEL, THOSE ONES! PLEASE INFORM ORCHID! AND I GUESS GET SOMEONE TO SEE IF WE HAVE SOME GODDAMN MOVIES!
* * * *
"You know, the girls and I had been working on something else," Ethel muses as the two of you climb up the side of a warehouse. Leaping from rooftop to rooftop is barely a problem, here towards the docks; the buildings are clustered together pretty closely, with only enough space to drive forklifts in many places, so long as you avoid the roads the trucks used to come in on. Or don't; the trucks are mostly parked uh, forever. "How did you put it - you can only influence the insufficiently human, or the sufficiently weak?"
Uhhh. Yes. Where are you going with this?
"We've been working on meditation exercises with some of the fine people from the divinity courses at the university." Powerful legs bring the two of you up onto the roof; the burn of exercise is pleasant and also anatomically impossible, but then, your friends are already anatomically impossible. "The thought goes that we can enter a trance state and sort of...let you walk around. Speak with a real mouth, be in a real body, and we sort of sleep the day away. Maybe get you a fetching lab coat with a nametag for when you're walking around."
UHHHHHHHHHHHHHH -
"There's no need for an answer now," Ethel soothes, smoothly, as she skitters across the warehouse roof and adjusts the bolt-action rifle on her back. "We were inspired by tales of the Numani priesthood, out east? They invite the gods into their bodies, are 'ridden' as one rides a horse. Or, well, me." Her smile is in her heart too. "I wouldn't mind being such a cheval for you."
...I'm not a god, Ethel.
"You're god enough for us, Doctor Heller."
Hey would you look at the time it's distraction o' clock. The two of you lean up against a little shack-thing on the roof of the warehouse (roofing supplies maybe? Stairs? Both?) and Ethel brings the rifle up to look through the scope. Your target of choice is the area around the Diamond Girls Club ("The most precious girls in town!" Ugh.) and sure enough it's strung up with glass webbing...
Those are corpses. You nudge without thinking, and Ethel makes a frustrated noise. She adjusts the scope, zooming in; the bodies are few and far between, maybe three that the two of you can see over a webbed area of about three relatively small blocks, but they went down hard. The webs that hold them up have thoroughly sliced through the meat of the corpses, which now hang only because bone is tougher...
"Is that military surplus gear?" Ethel mutters. "...Hold up. That one there, he's got a 'buy gold' patch on that flak jacket...and there, what is that?"
That's a fasces, old Imperial symbol - the bundle of sticks with the axe blade coming from it. Unity and force, the founding principles of the Empire, kinda associated with total assholes these days. I uh. I think we found our bandits. Urban preppers...no room for real bunkers, maybe only a few months of food storage. They must be leaving their hidey-holes and realizing other people are stripping the city.
"Why would they be dead?" Ethel asks. "We weren't violent..."
You weren't under siege by hardcore traditionalists who want all the 'minorities' and 'immigrants' thrown out of an empire that's waged war on, no joke, literally every other sovereign nation on Domus. We gotta tell someone.
Something grim settles over Ethel, and she lowers the gun. "Those are bite marks on the bodies, Doctor. The girls are starving."
One way or another, the maybe-bandits will be addressed
You are...
[ ] Jackie, the kitten whisperer
[ ] Diamond, unofficial leader of the spiders
[ ] Jill, trying to keep Orchid upright
