The Present:

*splorch*

Brooklyn stomps out the last of the millipede eggs wearing some newly made rock boots and a tattered black tank top as she scratches an insatiable itch around her thigh.

These last two days have definitely been the worst days of her life, by far. It wouldn’t have been nearly as bad if she had come prepared, but she thought she was just collecting some radiation samples from a deep-cave near an already erupted gas volcano.

Her new boss probably betrayed her as well; albeit monster detection technology is still a very new technology and has a lot of problems to iron out, at least that’s what her more tech-savvy sister tried to explain to her, when the technology first became public knowledge.

But even still there is no way, it is buggy enough to miss an entire ecosystem of monsters.

It is much more likely that her previous villain-boss figured out that she knew something and simply decided to kill her. She has worked in the villain business for a long time. Having to protect her sister mean’t doing things that were not-so-legal; pickpocketing, assassination, and robbery being the main ones. It would not be the first time one of her bosses tried to sabotage her for something she did in the past.

Even though the past included the sleepless nights and suffering, she had to go through to keep her and her sister with a roof over their head and food in the pantry. The beatings she took from heroes over the years. The immense training she did to keep in excellent shape. The raw monster blood she had to drink to keep from dehydrating in this cave.

Nothing can seem to compare to this itch.

“GUH!” Brooklyn screams out in pain as her nails dig into her flesh to satiate the indomitable itch.

Her hands are covered in blood as she tries her best to satiate her body's desire to be scratched by tearing apart her flesh, partly giving in to the desire and inching a step closer to death.

She manages to gain control of one of her hands again and grabs the other one to stop it from scratching.

She may not keep very up to date on almost anything but even she knows that this isn't your run of the mill radiation poisoning. If this was normal, she should slowly heal over the course of a week. Instead, it seems to have been able to take some level of control over her hands.

Brooklyn manages to keep her hands locked tight around each other to avoid scratching herself, it is only a temporary solution, though, and one of her hands will eventually loosen under the mental command of the itch and start to scratch her skin but, for now it is a useful stop gap.

Brooklyn slowly shambles back to the spot of the earlier fight where she had to throw her destroyed military vest out of the way mid-fight because it offered too little protection for how much it slowed her down, after being completely wrecked. She just came back to double check if there is anything useful in it, there wasn’t. Brooklyn has to constantly stop her body from trying to itch herself, especially her bare backside.

Brooklyn has no other goal other than finding a cure at this point, there is no way she will be able to find the exit before dying of blood loss from scratching herself.

How will she find a cure in a deep dark cave filled with...

“...monsters,” Brooklyn says quietly out loud.

Brooklyn gets an idea about that one really cute monster that spewed out radiation enough to glow, it must have a way to be immune to its own radiation.

Brooklyn begins to track the small smears of black blood it left on the rock floor in it’s escape.

As much as Brooklyn needs that cure though she would rather not kill the intelligent and cute suctioner monster that saved her from death by volcanic gas, although killing is still a solid back up plan, the main plan is to try and communicate with the very unusual monster using the only form of communication that they both understand...art.

=======

I ended up choosing [Agility] for Cake’s, Mutation Advancement because after evolving into a Toxic Myst Lola I can move even faster, Cake has been struggling to keep up with my increased movement.

I asked Cake, what the advancement changed and the way she described it was very confusing, ‘Word. Change? New. Strong,’ Those were her exact words, and I don’t get it either, since I don’t have access to her status window to see what she is talking about. I can only assume it’s a good thing and move on.

Next, I told Cake to put any future Biomass into her claws instead of her legs, because her claws are super weak, anything with armor can simply deflect her attacks.

And lastly, Me and Cake have been going on a killing spree as I lock the enemies in my tendrils while Cake does all the damage and gets the xp and we end up splitting the Biomass about 50/50.

I have also noticed something a little strange in Cake’s eyes, they have very dark pupils that basically blend in with the rest of her eye, they must have been there since the last evolution and I never noticed them. But, it is definitely strange.

I put those thoughts behind me as Cake finishes killing a toad that I captured.

‘What level are you now, Cake? I mentally send.

‘One. Zero.’ Cake says, trying her best to word out ‘ten’.

Why does evolution have to be at 12?! That’s such an odd number, not literally, of course. Does 12 have some like super deep meaning or something?

“You fi...,” Glados tries to speak and gets instantly muted.

Honestly, I think I should stop calling the ‘sentient’ GladOs, well ‘GladOs’, she isn’t even able to talk half the time because I mute her so damn fast. I am just too afraid of her convincing me to do something stupid and it’s the only way to get back at her for making fun of me so much. I think a much more satisfying name is in store for the ‘Sentient GladOs’.

Sentient GladOs, as I call her since her real name is way too hard to remember. Shall now be called GagOs, for obvious reasons,

“Your na…,” GagOs is then instantly muted before she can say anything, other than a stutter.

The only real GladOs is the ‘system’ GladOs, at least that GladOs is always reliable. How can GagOs even be GladOs she hasn’t even mentioned ‘Cake’, I literally named her after you!

“Pie…” GagOs is only able to let out a single word this time.

GagOs is quite annoying most of the time and it seems like 99.99% she speaks, it's either to confuse, make fun of, annoy me, or all three at the same time. If anyone is worthy of being in constant limbo of being gagged it’s GagOs.

Although I did actually find a use for that ‘century counter’, it makes a great way to check the time. I mentally unmute the GladOs themed timer.

“...10 Days, 1 Hour, 16 Minut…,” I cut off GagOs after getting the time.

It seems me, and Cake have been killing these monsters for about 5 hours, I think it’s time to upgrade something and make our way back to ‘Hole Base.’

Cake and I begin our trek out of the shallow cave system and begin our way back to ‘Hole Base.’

However, I stop about halfway there and decide to buy a few upgrades and try something I've been meaning to try ever since evolving. It’s been pretty safe around here after the Hermit and Millipede war indirectly ending in both of their downfalls and upgrading only takes about a minute at most...and because holding onto all this Biomass and not spending it as quickly as possible seems like a crime, when I could use it to buy upgrades.

[Material Storage: 78/250

I decided to upgrade a lot using that Biomass as well as fixing my little mistake with Flesh Motor.

[Confirmed, Using 68 Biomass/Remaining Amount 10]

Regeneration: Usability (Medium) -> (Slightly Strong)

Flesh Motor: Speed (Slow) -> (Slightly Fast)

Flesh Grenade: Explosiveness (Extremely Weak) -> (Weak)

Flesh Flash: Distance (Very Weak) -> (Medium)

===

I pass out and wake up exactly 53 seconds after I last checked the GagOs timer.

Cake upgrades her claws after me, although she didn’t have enough Biomass to get a brand new mutation since she never got the [Special] perk to discount all her mutations, however I can tell her claws are more deadly than ever before.

‘Cake get over here, I want to try something.’

Cake scuttles over to me as I try and pass my radiation cream onto Cake. I try to wipe off the wet liquid onto Cake’s shell. It doesn't stick though and keeps clinging to my body. Maybe if I smacked it really hard against something it might fall off my body and prevent radiation poisoning, but I am not going to test that theory on Cake.

We continue onward toward ‘Hole Base’ after making our quick pit stop and about an hour later we arrive at our hole. It looks slightly different, though, and I can see a blood trail on the floor and a bloody handprint on the rock door, which has also been shifted a little differently.

I’m pretty sure someone is inside my house and I have a pretty good idea of who it is.

Give me back my house itchy ghost girl!

Oh boy...how to get the ghost girl out of my house? I could throw a grenade in there and kill her. However I’m not going to do that, what do I look like a heartless monster. I'm not going to kill someone just for trying to lock me in a cage.

“You do not have a heart, thou...” GagOs tries to speak.

Mute.

Please keep your comments on my metaphors to yourself GagOs.

I quietly push the large rock out of the way just enough to look inside, just in case it was an ambush. And I see the ghost girl just sitting in the middle of my ‘hole’ house with her rock weapons and flashlight just sitting next to her and she looks like she is trying to meditate, but has to uncomfortably scratch herself every once in a while. I also take notice of the fact my house is huge.

Did she use her rock powers and expand my house! That's insane and a little strange?! How has she not gone insane from the itch? I had regeneration helping me and even then it was a serious challenge to control it. Could she just be using her will-power to push past the itch? No...no way that would be absolutely insane, no sane person has that kind of will power.

I push the rock door open a little more as I prepare a Flesh Flash and warn Cake about the intruder. Cake immediately takes an attacking position with her new claws, and I am ready at any point to Flesh Flash away.

The woman hears us enter and hits a button on the flashlight turning it on, instead of using the crank. Although she doesn't point it at me this time, I do still keep a very vigilant watch on it and watch as she starts to sculpt a rock using her powers.

The rock shows a woman scratching all over her body, meaning that she is talking about herself.

“Blingbill?” She tries to say.

She then grabs another rock and converts it into a tentacle monster, obviously me, and then clicks the two rock figures together and the itchy figure stops itching itself and gets a happy face.

"Gruulini!" She speaks in an unknown language.

‘I see that you may have lost some marbles. Look I know you're trying to get me to cure your itch but this ‘anti-radiation skin secretion’ just really won’t come off. It just sticks to my body and nothing else, my body is like a magnet to the stuff. I already tried to put it on Cake to no avail.’

She repeats the rock play one more time and I try to answer using super terrible tentacle figures to answer her rock ones.

‘I’m serious it really won’t come off, I mean I never really gave it too much effort on Cake, but even if I did that it might not have even come off anyway, that’s how glued it is to my body.’

She tries again to explain her problem using rock figures and since my tentacles gestures can’t seem to do the trick, I point at the rock doll of her to give a demonstration of the only possible way I can cure her of radiation.

She seems to figure it out and passes me the small thin doll to which I demonstrate on the rock doll by slapping it with a tendril causing the weak body to break apart because I hit it too hard and some of the goopy anti-radiation glue gets stuck to the destroyed doll.

She doesn’t seem to get it though and looks at me completely confused as she scratches herself again.

Okay! Fine, I'll do it! You’ll thank me later!

I get tired of playing charades and roll a little closer to her and completely smack her upper thigh.

*smack*

The goop from my limb lets go and seeps into her skin causing the itchy redness to dissipate.

I however didn’t fully think through the response of getting smacked that hard and instead of being graciously thanked for ending her itchiness on that part of her body. She tries to stab me!

I am able to dodge it with only a small cut and grab the flashlight on my way out to keep her from blinding me.

After that quick exchange of blows the human immediately notices her leg feels better and looks back at me with the ‘Ohhhh’ face after realizing what I was trying to get across.

But, Cake doesn’t pick up on that little queue and tries to attack her.

‘Cake! Stop!’

Cake immediately stops in front of the woman and double snips loudly at me. The woman looks at Cake and...

“Hahaha!” The woman begins to laugh at Cake for no logical reason and falls to the ground in a fit of scratching herself and laughing.

She completely lost her marbles didn’t she...guess I may as well cure her of the rest of the itch, while she has her laughing fit. I slowly roll toward the ghost girl and begin the soothing process of itchy radiation healing.

*smack**smack**smack**smack*smack**smack**smack**smack*smack**smack**smack**smack*smack**smack**smack**smack*smack**smack**smack**smack*smack**smack**smack**smack*smack**smack**smack**smack*

‘Meister!’

‘Yes?’

‘Cake. Join!’

‘Absolutely Not!’

*snip*

===

“HeheheheHAHAHA!!!” [Nothing] watches the event on display.

“Carl...CARL! Get over here and watch this! I bet you regret not choosing a tentacle monster, when we all had to choose a soul to transfer!” [Nothing] yells to one of other Gods who also chose to transfer a soul to this planet.

“What are you talking aboouuuu…” [Carl] watches as a human-tentacle-monster slaps and smacks an irradiated humans gluteus maximus.

“No...no, I don't think I do,” [Carl] responds before going back into [Nothing]’s tendril themed dimensional gateway and makes his way back to his own domain to watch his transfered human face off against the villian who has been dumping their science experiments into an active gas volcano.

Specifically the kind of untested experiments

that can cause all manners of itch related irritations.