At some point, Chad shook him awake again.

“Huh-, who-, where-, bow before me-, morta-, zzzznnznnznz,” he mumbled, turning over to get some more sleep. But his friend was having none of it. Sure, Chad would rather not wake his friend at all, but they had to go get his phone fixed. With a few more invigorating shakes, the man-slug-thing woke with a startle. “Huh!? Who-, oh, Chad! Good morning…”

“Wakey wakey eggs and bakey,” Chad said as he forcefully pulled his sleepy friend into a sitting position. The sun shone brightly outside the window, a telltale sign that Adam hadn’t slept nearly as long as he wished he would. “We gotta get going, bro.”

“Going where?” Adam slurred, letting himself be propped up, Chad’s strong arm keeping him standing despite how much his legs wanted to buckle. Slowly, he was lead out from his room, down the stairs, and out into the scorching sun. Adam sort of felt like recoiling from the warm sun in the sky, but the idea passed. It felt… nice. He felt a bit more awake. Chad really knew his stuff, huh.

“Alright, now that you’re a bit more awake, you can walk by yourself,” Chad stated and let go of Adam, who stumbled a bit in place before straightening out. He was fine, he was alright. He could do this. “As for where we’re headed, it’s the main street, the Get-R-Done store? They fix phones.”

Before Adam could ask what a phone was, Chad fished said item out of one of his pants pockets. Rectangular in shape and black in colour, it looked… very high-tech. Apart from the fact that there was a huge gash going down the front of it, clearly a result of what had happened the other day. Still, Adam had no idea what it actually was.

With no further comment, Chad removed yet another, similar object from another pocket. This one was a bit bigger and white in colour.

“This is my phone, yeah? You can do all sorts of stuff on it, but the reason we’re fixing up yours is ‘cuz without it, nobody will know how to contact you.”

“What about writing a letter?”

“...No, we don’t do that nowadays, that’s more for old-fashioned lovers, I think. And weird school projects. Mostly weird school projects.”

“Oh…” Adam mumbled. He still felt pretty weird, but he was sure he could walk to main street. And that he did. Somewhere along the way, Adam started feeling strangely energetic. At times, he just wanted to start running. But he didn’t want to leave Chad behind, so he’d just run ahead a bit and return.

It was… a weird change of pace, even for the sorcerous Adam.

Soon enough, they reached main street. Adam bounced on his feet, his exited eyes scanning the crowded streets. People mingled, exiting and entering various stores. He had no idea what the stores could possibly be selling, but that uncertainty only made things more interesting. More exciting!

A hand gripped his shoulder before he was able to find his way outside one of the many shops. Eyes and smile eerily wide, he turned to face his stopper. No surprise, it was Chad, shaking his head in muted disagreement. Adam frowned. But there was so much fun to be had in there? Why shouldn’t they check it out??

“Bro, that’s a store for glasses and stuff. You don’t need glasses,” Chad stated matter-of-factly. He was right. Well, mostly. Adam did use glasses back on Lutum before he’d gotten his hands on the humanification spell, but those were simple reading glasses due to his books being so small compared to his oversized body. Gods have mercy, who knows how his real body looks like now? If Adam had anything to say about it, he’d never have to take that form again.

Human all the way.

“Hmpf, fine! How about that one?” Adam huffed, very uncharacteristically. Chad followed his pointed finger to a store on the other side of the road. It seemed to be a bookstore of some sort, with baskets filled with books and the such outside it, the inside filled with bookcases. A sign outside it said “Water Books”, an odd name, but a name nonetheless. A name Adam should be able to see.

“Yo, Adam, it’s a bookshop. It even says so on the tin. Are you sure you’re alright? Wanna just, like, sit down for a moment, bro?” Chad offered, his eyes already trailing towards a small bench just down the road. It even had a tree to shade it. But Adam seemed completely unwilling to do anything of that sort, excitedly hopping from one foot to another, his long, charcoal hair bouncing in an odd way Chad wasn’t sure he liked. There was a dichotomy between how his friend looked and how he behaved.

“No, no, let’s go! We’ve got all day, right? Let’s look at some books!” Adam chanted happily, his pale face twisting ever further into mania. Chad raised an eyebrow and pressed his lips into a thin line. This just wasn’t sitting right with him. “-Or-, or do you wanna fight? I’d fight you, man, I really would! But-, but not like a mean fight, just, like, a spar??”

“No-, no! I won’t fight you dude-,”

“Hm. Then let’s go!!” Adam shouted, interrupting Chad midway to run across the road, only barely evading a car. Cursing under his breath, Chad followed suit, although he did the safe thing and looked both ways before crossing the road. To be sure, Adam was in the terribly named “Water” bookshop, flipping through one book before hastily putting it back to pick up another one. It didn’t seem to be that the books were boring or uninteresting, more so that he couldn’t pay attention to one long enough to actually read it. And, like so, he darted in between books.

If Chad hadn’t feared for Adam’s well-being, he might have taken the time to just check if they had any new Hulk-themed comics, be it the latest issue of immortal Hulk or an anthology of the early Ultimates comics, before that universe went down the drain. But as it was, he was just trying to find/catch his hyperactive friend.

“Hey, hey, bro, look!” a voice practically shouted in his ear, and Chad realized Adam was behind him. Fast. Or sneaky, or both. A book was shover in his face, thin, paper-white fingers pointing at a passage he could barely make out. “Look, look, it’s about a woman!”

Chad glanced over his shoulder, met with the stunningly excited visage of his friend.

“...A woman-?” Chad asked, slowly poking the novel away from right in front of his nose. Adam, growing more exasperated by the second, did not pick up on this non-subtle hint to get the thing the fuck out of his face. On the contrary, he shoved Chad’s face even further into it.

“Yeah!! She wakes up one day, and she’s dead, and in hell!! Wherever that is!” Adam explained, removing the book from Chad’s mug to hug it close.

“You wanna buy it bro?” Chad asked if only to give himself time to formulate his thoughts.

“Nope!” Adam answered, and with a movement quicker than Chad could see, a small, pink flame engulfed the book, reducing it to ash within mere moments. Uncaring about any of this, Adam clapped his hands together, sending the bluish ash flying in all directions. Chad was too stunned to speak. “Let’s go to another store!”

“No-, bro, listen,” Chad grabbed the hand of his friend and dragged him outside, tossing a fist-full of bills onto the pile of ash, finally tossing both himself and his friend into a people-less alley, “you’re not fine.” Adam gave him a strange, tight-lipped look.

“Why?” he asked, frowning for the first time in too long. “I feel great! I feel amazing! I feel like I could - no, SHOULD - conquer the world!!”

“Bro, calm down. Here-, sit down, right?” Chad suggested, sitting down himself to urge Adam into mirroring him. Adam’s smile faltered and returned to that confused, tight emotion. But he did sit down. There wasn’t a bench and the pavement was dirty, but it would do. “Right. Look, we can go back to your house if you need to. We can do this another day.”

“N-, no! I want to! We have to!”

“Well, yeah, but not if you’re not well, which you clearly aren’t,” Chad stated. Adam’s face twisted in contempt and disbelief.

“I feel perfectly fine!” he spat, nose wrinkled like some savage animal snarling. “Maybe you’re just not-, GAH-,,”

Clutching his chest, Adam buckled over, heaving and panting in an effort to keep the air within him where it was supposed to be. This felt wrong. He knew he felt wrong. But he felt so good, so right, how could it possibly be wrong? A hiss escaped his lips. Strong, comforting hands fell on his shoulder, shaking him just a little. He couldn’t hear anything. A mumble resounded everywhere, but he didn’t know if it was some human or the howl of the wind. All was the same, wasn’t it?

“H-, help-,” he growled through clenched teeth. The hands left his back. His whole body was heating up-, no, not that. It was cooling down. He was so cold it hurt and so hot it hurt. Something weighed him down, something pounded against the inside of his brittle ribcage. Was it his human heart, or something else? Blood conjured from Magick and will roared in his ears, bones kept in place by flesh he’d created himself quaked and gnashed, the flesh ripping slowly, agonizingly so.

A pair of pitying, horrified eyes studied his heaving form. Another mumble of words, and the eyes left, albeit hesitantly. Left alone, his focus returned to his body. Was it his body? He had created it himself. It was his. But it felt wrong. Uncomfortable. Cramped. Drained. But he didn’t want to leave it, he wasn’t supposed to.

Something shifted in his abdomen. The heavy rebelled and screeched and screamed, longing for an out. Unable to cope with anything, anyone, he heaved once more. It travelled up his throat, up his very human yet not-his throat, and he retched.

A globule of thick, acidic sludge splattered down onto the pavement, the edges growing black and fizzy from the acidic nature of it. His throat and mouth were on fire. This was wrong. But it wasn’t done. He couldn’t keep it in, and another globule escaped the confines of his body, and yet another one. Tears streamed down his dry eyes, blood coated the inside of his mouth, seeping from wounds created by the acid. It hurt, it hurt so bad.

But he looked down.

And he looked up.

No.

No, Gods, no.

A hand touched the acidic goop and slipped, causing his entire body to collapse face-first into it. The acid tore at his flesh and body, bones becoming exposed at the expense of its fleshy confines. As soon as his bones saw the sun, they too melted into fizzy, black sludge. A single, reddening eye peered down at the blackish slug gazing up at him from within the sludge. He choked on a scream and saw himself.

A pathetic human. Had he had a mouth, he would have snarled. Consciousness shifted, the man became the slug (or was it the other way around?) and fear took a hold of his non-existent heart.

The human body dissolved within seconds, and at the same rate as it disappeared, his more sluglike (true) form grew, gaining six limbs - four arms, two legs. A face lacking nose, ears and mouth but with an added white eye, a crown of tentacles raised high. He couldn’t think, he didn’t want to. He was only the size of a human at first. Two arms crossed over his chest like a vampire, the two others hanging at his side.

“A-, Adam?!”

A confused shout turned his attention to the mouth of the alleyway, where a blond-haired teenager stood, together with two other humans.

Sorrow coloured his eyes, and he didn’t need to see it to feel the tentacles growing like hair from his head grow longer and stronger. His feet stood planted, but that wouldn’t be for long.

He hated this.

He just wanted to sleep.