Hmm.

*sneef*

Hmmmm.

This amorphous being is most peculiar. It travels around under its own power, and yet it looks and smells like Nams. Specifically the Special Wet Nams that I enjoy so. I shall investigate more closely.

*sneef sneef*

Hmm!

Yes indeed! I was not mistaken! Although this being is capable of motion and non-instinctual responses to its environs, it is indeed comprised wholly of Nams! O joyous day! I must test further! I shall now deploy my Ouch Crescents!

*swipe*

[blarglblarglblargl]

Alas! Alack! The Nams Being has resisted! It has dared, it has had the temerity, it has had the sheer GALL, to Assail mine August Personage! Oh fie! Oh horror! I can no longer thrive in this household! I shall put all my worldly belongings into my little knapsack and venture forth into the cold dark world! Mother! The Nams are fighting back! Correct this injustice at once!

*padpadpadpadpadpadpadpad MOW*

"mrglfrgl"

Mother! MOTHER! The time to act has come! Your Perfect Innocent Child has been ruthlessly assaulted by Nams! The stars above shine down in pitiless hatred upon your Poor Sweet Boy! And yet you move not! I must strenuously protest this inaction! I must do so via the medium of the Ouch Crescent!

*pap pap pap poke*

"mmrrmsajhsjFFGSPLRPL Denny get your sodding paw out of my nose what the hell?"

*poke poke MOW*

"Uuuugh. Fine. Come on. I'll give you some nams. It's not your nams time but if it'll shut you up and let me get some actual frelling sleep..."

Mother comes! Mother comes to follow her Precious Perfect Child! What a wonderful day this is! Quickly, to the Audience Chamber! The foul namsbeing assails me at the very seat of mine noble lineage! The very soul and centre of mine world!

"Denny why are you leading me to the living room?"

*padpadpad shuffleroundthelegs nuzzlenuzzle MOW*

"Alright, alright! I'll deal with what the hell is that."

Aha! Ahahahaha! Mother faces the Nams Beast! Battle shall be joined in earnest! Onward, Mother! Forth and fear no darkness!

"Hello little guy!"

WHAT?

"Awww, you're a little sweetheart! I'll get Laine up in a bit, maybe they'll know what you are."

BETRAYAL!

"Right, let's put you in a carrier for now. I've got some carrot chunks somewhere, would you like carrot chunks? I bet you would! I bet you would!"

FOULEST BETRAYAL!

"Now, you're all safe and sound in there, you've got food, you've got water, it's all good!"

CRIMES! CRIMES I SAY!

*padpadpad poke poke poke MOW MOW poke swipe MOW*

CRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMES!

"Awww, Denny, did the whatever-it-is scare you? Was it all mean and nasty? Don't worry, it can't hurt you any more. Now, you come here for some fuss and attention. That's what you really wanted, isn't it?"

Oh! Aha! I see Mother's ruse! The Nams Beast has been ensnared within a small box! It is imprisoned! Perhaps she means to take its foul corpus to the Vet, where it will be Poked with the Poking Thing and suffer the indignity of the Multifarious Pointy Implements! Mother does love her Special Boy after all! Hurrah for Mother! Three cheers for Mother! And now she provides the Crunchy Nibbly Nams AND the Soft Stroking Pats! What a lovely day to be Master Dennington of Dennington Hall, Lord of All He Surveys!

*purr*

Wednesdays are doctorlit's day to spend lunch break with his head keeper, [A]. This does have one small drawback, in that [A] only keeps one chair in her main work room. So doctorlit eats on the floor, in the alcove between the exhibit rooms for the chinchillas and the red squirrels that [A] is responsible for. Next to him is the stepladder used to access the spiny-tailed iguana's display case, mounted against the wall between the two rooms.

On the one hand, it was lucky the head of Grounds, [M], had shown up and interrupted [A]'s lunch to replace the air fan in the ceiling of the red squirrel room, because that meant [A] was inside the room when the meat thing showed up. On the other hand, though, there were now two potential witnesses yards away from the meat thing, with only a pair of doors in the way of them returning to the work hallway.

doctorlit said, "Uh."

The meat thing didn't say anything, but made a squelching noise as it crawled across the concrete floor towards him.

doctorlit sealed his cheese sandwich back inside it's plastic container.

"[D]," called [A] from inside the red squirrel room. "Can you turn the room fan off?"

"Uh, yeeeeaaah . . ." doctorlit got to his feet, sliding up the brick wall at his back. He tiptoed around the meat and hit the right switch on the room's power plate, then climbed onto [A]'s chair before the meat could reach him. He waited for the meat to start oozing up a chair leg, then made a dash for the stepladder. On top of the iguana's tank was a pair of metal grabbers, since the lizard had an infrequent habit of knocking her food bowl down the floor. As he picked it up, he saw the iguana was just inside the tank's lid, head cocked to one side and watching him through the plastic mesh.

"Don't look at me that way," doctorlit told her. "I'm doing the best I can."

"Hey, [D]?" called [M].

"Hand us the gloves." said [A].

"Do you have, like, gloves, or a rag—"

"The gloves."

"—or just, like, a wad of paper towels or something?"

"Do the gloves."

doctorlit huffed. The gloves were on a feeding cart close to where the squirrel room's power switches had been. He jabbed the grabbers down at the meat thing and snagged it, then jumped down the stepladder and headed over to [A]'s chair, throwing her microwave door open. He released the meat thing inside, slammed the door shut, and hit numbers until it started heating. Then he grabbed the animal handling gloves and took them through the double doors to the squirrel room, passing them through to [A].

"Thanks," she said.

doctorlit headed back to the microwave and tried to peer through the little holes to see if the meat had stopped moving yet, wiping down the head of the grabbers as he did so. Unable to see, he put the grabbers back on the iguana tank.

He heard a clunk from inside the squirrel room. [M] demanded, "Do you think you guys could fit any more branches in this room? There's still some walking space you haven't filled in yet. God." [A] giggled. More clunking followed, and doctorlit realized they were coming out. He ran for the microwave and stopped the timer, but [A] was already forcing the ladder through the double doors, and doctorlit couldn't risk opening the microwave.

[A] leaned the ladder against a wall and switched the fan back on.

"All right," said [M], plopping the old, failed fan unit on the table. "There you go."

doctorlit sat awkwardly through the ensuing small talk, trying to make himself eat and praying neither of them would have reason to open the microwave. Once [M] left, and [A] went outside to smoke, doctorlit took the grabbers back and gingerly started to open the microwave, ready for the inevitable jump scare.

But the microwave was empty, and completely clean. All trace of the meat thing had vanished.

—doctorlit, using his location from when he first read this thread

Kittyauthor shouldn't have been outside.

Of course, she was outside. The courtyard was, as places in HQ went, surprisingly peaceful. There was sun, and the grass felt good under the hands of a woman who hasn't spent time outside since... well, she couldn't remember when. Either way, her outside time back then was limited by a human-like rabbit who kept trying to sell her stuff.

In the courtyard, Kitty didn't have her time limited, at least outwardly. Her only limit was the missions, but O'Ryan would fetch her if-

Squish

Kitty sat up and looked around. There it was: a squishy piece of meat. Cafeteria meat.

It seemed disoriented for a few seconds, as if the fall actually affected it some. It began to move around, forcing Kitty to come to her senses. She stood up and began to run away from it.

"AAAAAAAAAA!" she screamed. "CAFETERIA MEAT HAS COME ALIVE! AAAAAAAAA!" The meat, having realized that Kitty existed, followed after her, picking up sticks, leaves, and other gunk. It was fairly fast for a piece of meat and was steadily catching up to Kitty, until...

SLAM!

The meat paused at the door, almost expecting Kitty to double-check for its existence. Then it slowly moved away.

Kitty panted from behind the door. "Okay, what the actual heck was that?" She looked up at the ceiling. "And I was just starting to enjoy my day too." She sighed and walked back to her RC.

((Yes, really. It just works. For context, see the link provided. I'll hopefully also do a snippet for Boarder!me as well, which could be interesting for a couple different reasons, but for now...enjoy an unexpected installment of...uh. Does this have a title? It seems not to. Let's call it...the Lay of Unexpected Journeys, for both the Lay of Leithian, upon which the original set-up was loosely based, and...what is apparently part of a title for one of the Hobbit movies? Could've sworn it was from something else. At any rate, it fits here!))

The Lay of Unexpected Journeys, pt. 3

Huinesoron had settled into staring, unable to find the words to speak; the Dread Kaitlyn's eyes were narrowed. Neshomeh had begun to fidget a little in the silence, tapping the fingers of a hand that shouldn't be there against her spoon.

And then another door opened with an odd slapping noise, and--

"What manner of...creature is that?" Huinesoron wanted to know.

Over at the table, Neshomeh made a very odd noise and shuffled her chair backwards. "It's a...meat. Thing. But I got rid of it!"

The piece of meat drew its middle off the floor, and turned this way and that as though eyeing them without visible eyes.

"Ah, I see," said Huinesoron. "This is not, then, a...working of yours?" He turned surprisingly calm, if alert, eyes on the Dread Kaitlyn.

"How could it possibly be--? Oh, right, the, uh...costume," Neshomeh said. "Right."

Elf and Maia looked at her oddly, to no response.

"I have never..." The Dread Kaitlyn's attention was caught by the meat, which was beginning to squish its way in her direction. "This is not my doing. Why would it be my doing?"

"I'll get the broom," Neshomeh said quickly, and got to her feet. The meat hissed; she paused, then shook her head, resolve steeling her features, and headed for the hallway.

The meat, moving fast enough to startle, set itself rolling. In seconds, it was at the entrance to the hallway; it hissed and spat at Neshomeh, who drew back a pace and glared at it.

"You didn't win earlier, and you won't win now," she said sternly. For the first time since their arrival in this strange new location, Huinesoron and the Dread Kaitlyn found her demeanor familiar. Then, Neshomeh raised her voice. "Phobos! Can you get the broom for me?"

"Phobos is here?" the Dread Kaitlyn demanded.

Huinesoron smiled. "I told you someone might come looking."

"They did not come; we--"

"Okay?" came a deep and slightly confused voice from the hallway. Before long, a man approached, holding a broom made of materials utterly unfamiliar to the Elf and his captor. "Why do you--? What is that?"

Caught between Neshomeh, its earlier foe, and Phobos, holding Neshomeh's weapon, the meat opted for the better part of valor, and, with a fierce hiss and a bit of spitting, scooted across the floor, up the wall, and out an open window.

"Was that the thing from earlier?" Phobos asked. He set the broom aside, and entered the room properly.

"Yes," said Neshomeh, and went to close the window with both hands.

"Well," said Huinesoron, in somewhat intrigued tones.

"What happened to you?" demanded the Dread Kaitlyn. Her eyes were fixed on Phobos--Phobos who, while still recognizable, was quite clearly not the Phobos Tinuvion, son of the elven King Boarders and the Maia Shipping, for love of whom the mortal warrior Neshomeh had sought the Silmarilli and lost her hand.

While he would not have used such tones, the same question was on Huinesoron's mind as well; and so, he turned his gaze on the apparently mortal Phobos, and waited patiently for a response.

This had not been a good day. Or a good week, or even a good couple of months for Iximaz. Still, you made do where you could—made the best of it.

She heard a clattering in the kitchen, and her head shot up off her desk where she'd dozed off. That didn't sound like the cleaners—and besides, it was five in the evening. Dorm maintenance was normally done in the morning. She grabbed the scissors in her desk drawer and slipped on a pair of Converse, going to investigate.

Through the window set in the kitchen door, she could see a blobby, meaty... thing, sliding off the countertop to land with a plop on the floor. It oozed its way to the door, pressing up against the glass. Iximaz could only stare at it—and she assumed it stared back, because it squelched against the glass in a way that sounded almost happy.

"What... the actual shpx," Iximaz said faintly.

The meat peeled away from the door window, inchworming its way across the floor to the much larger window that looked out over the courtyard. Up the glass to the open gap, and then it launched itself out into the air.

Iximaz remained staring at the window long after it was gone. Finally, she shook herself and went back to her room to resume her nap.

was the sound Damian Thorne made as something that felt gross impossible landed on him from above. He quickly ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Some brown, dry piece of mysterious meat gunk was lying on his head! (It was also purring happily, but he ignored that, as it was impossible.) Damian turned on the shower, detached the head from its usual place at the top, and tried to wash off the meat.

However, when the meat fell into the shower, it didn't go down the drain. No, it flew. It flew out of the shower and right out the door, even as Damian screamed at the impossible sight and backed away, slipped on a puddle and falling down as the mystery meat went out to bother someone else.

Damian shut himself in the bathroom for a couple hours after that, only coming out to check if the mystery meat had gone away.

Neshomeh stared down at the thing that had just oozed its way into her kitchen.

"Phobos? You'd better call the landlord. They have to replace that crappy back door now!"

It was bad enough when it was just smoke from the neighbors' fire pit that got in around the edges of the warped old door. This was the absolute last straw. This was between Neshomeh and her tea.

She eyed the thing.

It eyed her back, insofar as it could without actual eyes.

Neshomeh eyed the kettle full of freshly boiled water just beyond it.

It hissed with the sound of a hamburger flattened against the griddle.

Neshomeh opted for a tactical retreat toward the broom she kept in a corner of the hallway. Time to do some housekeeping...

(( I'll leave it to the imagination of the reader to determine whether RP!Neshomeh actually fights it off with the broom or whether she just looks very silly waving the broom around and screaming occasionally until the thing gets bored and goes away on its own. {; P ))