The Mimic in Monsterland

Rita dropped the papers she was holding, all the previous organizing a waste now as they fell to the ground. She rushed back over to me, reaching for my clothes again. “NO. Stop.” I planted my hand in her face. Her face smushed into my hand. “I will show them to you. On the condition that you stop trying to rip my clothes off.” I explained.

I kept my hand out for a moment longer, testing to see whether or not she would listen this time.

Len snickered in his chair. “You should have bought him dinner first, Rita. He’s a classy one.”

“Len shut up,” I responded with a slight chuckle. He just shrugged.

Rita stepped away from my hand. She tilted her head at Len. “Would giving you food have allowed me to…”

“No, he is just making a dumb joke. Don’t pay any mind to that.” She seemed to be on the more gullible side, so I wanted to nip that in the bud as soon as possible.

She pulled out a small pouch. She walked over to my still outstretched hand and turned it palm side up, dropping the pouch in it.

It clinked when it landed. Coins? Wait, did she just give me money? Did she just pay me to strip?

“I don’t have food in the lab, but I do have this. Will that suffice?” She asked, completely

“Umm.” I knew returning the money would be the right thing to do, however I was intrigued. I hadn’t yet seen the currency of Kniyas. So curiosity got the better of me.

I opened the small bag and looked into it, before pouring some of its contents into my hand. A multitude of small metal coins flowed out of the bag. Each coin was the same size and shape, probably about the size of a nickel, but not every coin was the same. Each coin had one of three different symbols on it. They were letters from the Kniyan alphabet, which doesn’t really translate to English well, but they were the letters for B, S, and G.

I had a feeling they were different denominations of currency. Bronze, silver, and gold maybe. That’d make things easy. But what are the rates like? How many bronze pieces to a silver or a gold piece? Or could silver be worth more than gold? This is a different world, silver could be more scarce than gold.

The coins also shined differently in the dim light from the wall lights, but I couldn’t recognize the colors. Darksight, while giving me the always-helpful ability to see in the dark, made everything grayscale.

“Hey Len, could you give me a light?” He snapped his fingers and a small ball of fire appeared next to my head.

My eyes readjusted to the orange hue, letting me get a better look at the coins. “Well, that's simple huh,” I muttered to myself while fingering through the pile in my hand. The B coins were reddish brown, the S silver, and the G, pink?

“Rose gold, what? But that doesn’t occur naturally. It’s an alloy if I remember right.”

Before I could ask Len some questions about the money, I felt a tug at my shirt. And then it started lifting.

I flicked the nosy little owl girl’s forehead. She recoiled from the devastating blow with a cute “ehh” noise. She rubbed the wound while pouting at me.

“The only way to stop her is by showing the goods. The poor girl paid for a show. You're obligated to give her one now, my boy.” Len pulled out his own notebook and began writing things down. Some things never change huh?

I sighed in defeat. “Fine. But no tools. Just writing. That is it. And no more blood.” I refilled the bag with coins and dropped it on the nearby table.

Her pout ended abruptly, she grabbed some papers and readied herself.

I looked up at my status bar. Ursa and Tigris were still on cooldown. Ursa only had three minutes left, Tigris was over an hour. I guess Monkey Man will have to do.

I shifted into Apis form. Everything was fine, except for my tail getting stuck down a pant leg. I need to get Mrs. Warbler to add a tail hole to my clothes. I twisted my face in disgust. Oh, I don’t like that word. Tailhole just sounds wrong. I pulled the tail out of my pants and waved at Rita with it.

Rita hopped away from her notes, taking a closer look at the newly formed appendage. Miss Grabby-Hands did what she does best and started groping my tail. Which I can’t say felt terrible, but definitely a bit vulnerable if I had to put it into words. I flicked it at her, seeing if I could get a reaction.

I found it odd that she hadn’t asked any questions yet. Hell, she still hasn’t asked for my gene’s name. I scratched my head with my tail.

She stopped playing with my tail and wrote something down, then moved on to the new fur my face donned. She touched it rather gently, pausing to write a few notes. “Open your mouth.”

I obeyed. She looked inside for a sec and nodded. She voiced her thoughts as she wrote them down. “Typical Primate gene tropes.” She turned her head up to me. “Why can you change your trope?”

“One of my gene’s abilities allows me to copy and imitate a monster. In this case, it was a jackanape, those little monkeys that sleep in trees and make awful songs. These copies are recorded in my character sheet. I may turn into the form at any time, but once I leave the form, I must wait out a cooldown timer before coming back into the form.”

She smiled the whole time as she furiously scribbled on the papers. “What is the form recorded as? It’s name I mean. Is it Jackanape?”

“No, it's recorded as Apis.”

She dropped her writing utensil upon hearing the name and slowly turned her head up at me. “Please repeat that.”

“Um, Apis.”

She shot up from her chair and sprinted back to the weird magical keyboard pedestal. Her fingers flew around as she typed. I was going to walk over to her, but she stopped and cooed. “As I thought.” She said, returning to her notes.

Len walked up this time. “What is it?”

Without stopping her notetaking she answered Len. “That name, Apis, is an extremely old name. It was one of the earliest genes in the records. Maybe three generations from Denn himself.”

“What do you mean old gene? Did it disappear from the record or did the holders of it die without reproducing first?”

She shook her head. “No. No. That is far from how it works.” She stopped writing and tapped her pen on her chin.

“Genes have changed throughout the generations. They are wildly more varied and specific than they once were. They are influenced by the pairings of parents, mutations, and even the environment in some cases. Every gene is a mutation or evolution from the original First Generation. Apis is one of the earliest splits from Denn’s Beast Gene. The Warm-Blooded Father is another name he goes by. His gene split into many others, which in turn splintered into even more.”

 

“Let’s look at your Apis form and compare it to the jackanape you received it from. There is a gene that corresponds to those little primates called the Jackas gene.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that name. Hey, I’m Bob and I’m a Jackass. Len bumped me with his elbow. “Oh sorry. Here, before we go any further.”

I reverted back to base form. Rita watched. “Is there a timer on the form?”

“Nope, well if I run out of Stamina then I revert. And I can’t sleep in the forms either. But right now I changed back because Apis form does not like long complicated talks.”

“Interesting.”’I saw the gears in her head begin to spin as she pondered what I just told her. After a few seconds of silence, she made one big nod. “Need to test that later.”

”But back to my explanation. The Jackas gene is relatively new at least compared to the Apis gene. It started showing up about six or seven generations ago. By following the family record of one of these Jackas splicers, we can see that it is a split of the Apis gene. Tell me, what are your other forms called?”

She returned to the pedestal and wired for me to list them out.

“Ursa, Gremlin, Tigris.”

“Ursa…Gremlin…Tigris” She repeated after me, typing each name.

“Yep, as I thought, each one is an early recorded gene, especially Gremlin. It’s a second gen, from Tiamat no less. Fascinating. Is that a powerful form?”

“Not particularly, it's weak compared to the others.”

“Fascinating. So even a second generation gene doesn’t have the same capability of the First.” She spoke mostly to herself before addressing me again.

“Is that all of them?”

“Nope, Squirrel is that last one.”

She started typing but stopped abruptly. Her head spun around 180 again. I managed to not flinch this time, though it still made my skin crawl.

“Like the little tree rats?”

“Mhmm.” I nodded.

“That. That’s gonna need some more research.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s another gene that doesn’t exist, or at least isn’t recorded.”

“Well it’s nothing to write home about, it doesn’t have any combat ability and its trope just gives me buck teeth.”

“That doesn’t matter, not really. It's not in the records.” She walked away from the pedestal and started pacing around the room, talking to herself.

“Two. Two genes that aren’t recorded. One from a tier-one monster as well. Riveting! What does it mean?” She thumbed the side of her head. “Oh, how I wish I had access to the lab again. I could do better experiments there.”

Len put his hand on my shoulder. “She’s gonna be like that for a minute, best to let her get that out of her system.”

“Probably a bad time to tell her about the object mimicry then.”

Len laughed at the comment. “Yep, that might push her over the edge.”

“So the shade panther is your only new form. You didn’t pick up anymore?”

“Nope, I have a limit. Got the notification a while back. It will increase though. At level five, I get more. Not sure how many more. The notification didn’t say.”

“Any monster you’d prefer?”

“Not really, I haven't spent much time thinking about it. It's been months since I got that notification and I’ve only just hit level four. Right before that raid.”

“Best start now. You’ll get there quickly. Raids do wonders for leveling. At least in the early levels, it slows down around ten. Here, think about what you're missing. What would help the most right now?”

I pondered his question. What am I missing? I thought back on the previous battles, trying to analyze what would have made them easier. And one thing popped into my head.

“Range. I need something with range. Some of my fights would have gone much smoother if I didn’t always have to be in close quarters.”

“Good answer. Karibu might be a good choice.” Len remarked with a smile.

“Karibu?”

“The things that singled your bear fur in the raid.”

“Oh, the magical moose. Karibu. Oh, by the way, what are the boars with the single venomous tusk called?”

“Tusxic.”

I snapped my finger. “So close.”

 

Rita ran up to me, halting my quick talk with Len. She grabbed my arm and started leading me over to a different part of the lab.

“What are you doing?”

“I need to analyze your gene more. And to do that we need you in that chair.” She pointed to the chair in the corner. The one with leather straps. I gulped.

“What's that chair gonna do to me? Len, help.” But he was already back to walking up the stairs, completely disregarding anything I said. “Need to get more notebooks, I’ll check on you in a while.”

“It will help us see which of the First Generation you're descended from. Or at least tell us which genetic markers you share. It will most likely even help us learn more about how your powers work. Don’t worry, it's nothing invasive.” She pushed me into a chair. “See, the straps don’t even go on the arms. And this needs to go in your mouth.” She shoved a small strap in my mouth.

She walked back to the pedestal, she typed into it. The chair and its straps began to light up. I felt a vibration and heard a humming noise. But it wasn’t unpleasant. It kind of reminded me of being in a massage chair. She stepped away from the pedestal and ran to the stairs before going any further, without saying a word.

Which left me all by myself, until Tutor started talking. “You know, I understood the first time this happened.”