The Mimic in Monsterland

“You know, I understood the first time this happened. I didn’t judge. Nope. None…Okay maybe a little bit. There was an explanation at least. You were exhausted from a big fight. That green elf lady, who isn’t nearly as pretty as she acts like she is, had cool plant controlling powers. You were never going to be able to do anything about that. However, this time. This time it's on you. Fully and completely. No excuses.” Tutor said in my head.

“Mppfmmfpff.” Was the scholarly answer she received.

“I’m starting to think you're a fan of the women and ropes combo.” She scoffed.

“MPPMMPPFFFPF.” I responded with more vigor this time. Not that it helped at all.

I removed the mouthpiece as I scanned around the room before replying to the little annoyance that lives rent free in my head.

“Shut up.” I whispered. “You know that’s not what's going on. I’m here of my own freewill.”

“And that’s what scares me the most. You chose to be strapped to that chair in Frankenstein's basement.”

She wasn’t wrong. Even though I had total control of my arms, my torso and legs were tied down by leather straps. I was still in the guild. Just underneath it now. And sadly, Tutor’s description of the place wasn’t far from wrong. I was brought down here soon after meeting with the guest who knocked on the guild office door.

Daila opened the door after the guest knocked on it no less than thirty times in under five seconds. Honestly, it was kind of impressive. I bet they’d be great at button mashing.

I turned in my chair and watched Daila open the door. Her normally steel expression changed to a tired one upon seeing who it was. “Hello Ms. Timely. Now is not a great time…to”

But the guest ignored Daila’s rejection completely, shoving the door open and strolling right past her. It was a girl. Maybe around Daila’s age, could be younger. It was hard to tell due to her obvious trope. She had large black disc-like eyes that sat in a wide and pale, circular face. She had short black hair, accentuated by light brown and white feathers. If that’s not an owl gene, I quit.

But that wasn’t the most interesting part of her appearance; that would be reserved for the lab coat she wore. It's just like the ones I found in the big tree. Bit more raggedy. The once white lab coat was covered in a multitude of stains that varied from brown to dark red. Even a little dark green and blue in some places.

The woman’s squinted gaze swept across the room. “Please Ms. Timely, we were in the middle of discussing something.” Daila said to the woman in protest. But just as before, the woman disregarded her words. Her eyes locked on me. I waved, with a slight totally-not-awkward grin.

She invaded my personal space in an instant, her black eyes looked massive this close up. I tried to move away from her, but she placed both her hands on the armrests of the chair. Essentially locking me in place. I could have moved her, but that would be rude. Not that she wasn’t being rude first.

Her eyes traversed my entire body, while I sat there, looking to Daila for help. She just shook her head and sighed. That’s a great sign. After one of the most disconcerting minutes of my life, the owl lady released her grip from the chair and took a step back.

“You are the one Leonard spoke of, yes? The boy with the new gene.”

“Umm.” I looked at Daila with a questioning expression. “Go ahead Liam.” Daila said.

I turned back. “Yes.”

She cooed as a response. “Come. Come. We must get started then. Ooh, this is so exciting.” She grabbed my hand and made for the office door, pulling me along. “Wait, where are we going? Who even are you? Daila, who is she?”

The woman’s head turned completely around and looked at me. “To my lab, silly.”

“JESUS!” I ripped my hand out of hers and jumped back from the horror movie monster that was undoubtedly leading me to her murder cave. The woman’s body turned to match her head. She looked down at my arm and tried to grab it again. I recoiled. But that didn’t stop little miss freakshow.

I spent the next five minutes running around the office trying to get away from her. Only knocking over a couple of things on the desk. Including Daila’s notebook. Once the notebook hit the floor, I felt a hand drop on my shoulder. An air of malice filled the room, stopping me in my tracks and making my blood run cold.

I turned to see Daila’s face, which held thinly veiled anger now. Through gritted teeth, she spoke. “Enough of this nonsense. Both of you.” Daila looked at the two of us. “Stop it this instant.”

I chilled out, but the owl lady seized the opportunity and grabbed my arm while I was stopped. Daila’s head slowly swiveled to her. “Rita. Stop. Now.” Daila’s voice gave me goosebumps. I’d hate to be a kid in her class.

She still clung to my arm, the owl woman no longer tried to pull me to the door. Daila sighed once again. “Liam, this is Ms. Rita Timely. She has a laboratory in the guild. That is most likely where she was going to take you.”
The owl girl nodded enthusiastically.

“Right, sure. Why?”

The owl girl responded. “Because I am the number one expert on anything monster gene and monster gene adjacent.” She cooed in pride as she said the words. “And if what Leonard said is true, you have a gene that is not in a single one of the family records. Which means you could be the discovery of a lifetime. And because Leonard said I could.”

Her face feathers ruffled a bit. “Ooh this is sooo exciting.” She repeated the sentiment from earlier with even more vim, pulling me to the office entrance once again. Daila followed along this time.

“Go with her Liam. She’s harmless. Annoying and stubborn, but harmless all the same. Besides, you might just learn more about your… I’m sorry, what was your gene called again?”

“ZPIPZIZIP! Don’t say it, I don't want to know anything until I get you to the lab and run some tests. I would like to do this without a shred of bias.” Rita exclaimed, hushing up Daila.

“Tests? What kind of tests?” I asked as we entered the hallway. Rita just shushed at me. “Nothing bad. Just need some bodily fluids and such.”

“Oh is that all?” I responded in sarcasm.

“Yes.” She responded, my sarcasm flying over her head.

“Awesome.”

Daila stayed behind in the office, while Rita and I walked down the staircase that led to the front entrance of the guild. The sounds of construction stirred in the building once again. The gnomes must have finished their lunch break. Two of them were carrying a freshly cut board through the front doors. Their faces twisted in what I believed was rancor and bitterness when they looked at Rita. And subsequently me when they noticed she was holding my arm. “Ugh, looks like the damn bird found someone else to harass.” Said one of the gnomes in a harsh gravelly voice. “Poor sucker.” Replied the other.

Rita, of course, was completely oblivious to the jabs from the gnomes. We walked past the door that led to the training room I had my tussle with Jaren in. Oh what I wouldn’t give to be doing that instead of this. The thought bewildered me for a second. Since when did I care about training like that?

I peered into different rooms as we walked down the hallway. A lot of the doors weren’t installed yet so I could see inside of them. One door led to a kitchen that housed some medieval looking stoves and an oven along with some tables. The next room was huge but empty. Mess hall probably. Just no tables and chairs yet. We passed by three other empty rooms before stopping in front of the last room in the hallway and the only one with a door on it. Rita let my arm go, but didn’t reach for the door knob.

She walked about four feet to the left of the door and stood in front of the wall. She coughed and placed her hand on it, closing her eyes. She stood like that for a solid minute.

“Umm. You good?” I asked.

She sighed and then shifted her hand up the wall a couple of inches. Green light shot forth from the wall. It made a rectangular outline, the same size as the door next to us, before more patterns appeared all over it. The symbols were not the same as the Kniyan language, they were more spiraled and wavy. The wall thrummed for a moment before the entire section of the wall vibrated and then moved backwards. It slid into the ground after it stopped moving backwards, revealing a staircase.

Different symbols and patterns lit up the stairs, but they weren’t very bright. Barely enough light to even see each step. “What's with all these creepy ass staircases?” I whispered. The wall closed behind us as we stepped in.

Rita descended down the stairs, voicing complaints the whole way down. “I asked those buffoons to put the hand receiver needed to be four feet and four inches up from the ground. And what do they do, they place it four feet and nine inches. Inconceivable. I gave them simple instructions. The design document was only twenty-seven pages.” I stopped listening to her when we entered the room at the bottom of the magical stairs.

More of the magical light patterns activated upon all of the walls and the ceiling in the room. It reminded me of the glow-in-the-dark stars and planets we put all over the twins’ room back when I was a kid. They loved those stars, Especially Gabby who absolutely adored the night sky. Tim seemed more interested in the putty used to keep them stuck to the walls. He kept ripping them down, stealing the putty, and hiding it in Gabby’s hair. He got a solid whack from her for that one. I was impressed, I didn’t think a girl her size could hit that hard. But by god did she ever.

I bumped into a table during my trip down memory lane. I felt the familiar eye strain from Darksight turning on. I looked down at was on the table. It was covered in handwritten notes and illustrations. I couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it. Most of them were scratched through or half erased. The whole room was cluttered, different tables each covered in papers like this one. Some strange and somewhat concerning looking metal implements hung on different racks on the walls along with some glass vials and bottles filled with concerning liquids. And a terrifying looking chair with leather straps sat in the corner.

Before I could decipher any of it, I felt a pin prick on the underside of my arm.

“Ow. Hey, what was that?” I checked my status bars to make sure I wasn’t inflicted with something.

Rita moved throughout the torture dungeon with ease, sliding between each table and desk, until she stood in front of a pedestal. She placed her hand on it. More magical lights turned on, but they floated in the air above the pedestal, instead of the surface. They lined up before her and she started to…type?

It looks like a magical keyboard. But there’s no monitor or anything.

I cautiously spelunked through the lab and walked up next to her. I looked at her face and saw green lights racing across the black discs in her face. Wild.

She stopped her typing and placed a sharp looking piece of metal into a socket on the pedestal. Probably the thing that she just stabbed me with. Hmm. Its shape reminded me of a usb stick. “If it’s checking my blood type, then it’s usb type AB positive.”

But Rita made no notice of my terrible pun. For the best probably.

“Dude.” Tutor said in a massively disappointed tone. “That was actually terrible. Irredeemable even.”

“Yeah I kinda stretched for that one.”

The symbols vanished from above the pedestal, and the light left Rita’s eyes. She turned to me with a huge smile on her face. “It’s not there.” She said, before giggling uncontrollably.

She jumped up and down for a moment. “We need to run more tests!” She jumped on top of a table and grabbed some of the metal implements that hung on the walls, shoving some into my hands before going to grab some vials filled with mysterious liquid.

I put the stuff down and walked over to her. I grabbed her from the table. She was surprisingly light. She squawked in objection. I placed her down in front of me, keeping my hands on her shoulder and stared into her big face.

“What are you on about?”

“Your mysterious gene isn’t in a single one of the family records.”

“And what does that even mean?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”