An Even Bigger Mess (A.S, OPEN)

[ThePopcornFairy]

"Ooooooooooh..." Eric watched the mobile masses of slime with keen yet detached curiosity, simply enjoying the phenomenon with no regard to what exactly was going on. He peaked over the edge of the crater, staring at the growing mound of sludge with wide eyes and a blissful smile.

He barely even had a reaction when the slime took on a human shape and voice. However, it did take him a while, but he eventually realized, much to his elation, that he recognized the voice.

"Whoa! Hey, Evan! What're you doing here, man?!"

Yep. Nothing weird about this at all in the eyes of the Lovewell.

[ParamountKeymaster]

"WHOA WHOA WHOA whoa whoa whoaaaaa..." The moment Evan sat up and scrambled back a few inches in defense, he was instantly struck with a disorienting, woozy sensation, his entire body shuddering like he was in an earthquake. He grabbed his head in an effort to stop it from spinning, and once he felt at least a little less dizzy/shaky, he looked up at the guy with the frying pan and anxiously said, "A-Arti, dude, calm down. I just-"

He then blinked and turned his attention on the purple-eyed guy with the mop, his resulting expression somehow simultaneously surprised and unsurprised to see him. "Eric?! When did you...?! W...?"

Then Evan went rigid as the odd feeling in his hand finally occurred to him. He slowly, warily felt the top of his head, stunned and distressed by what he found. Whatever was on his head certainly didn't feel like hair. It felt more like slime. It didn't even feel like there was slime in his hair. Just that there was slime where his hair was supposed to be.

He nervously dug his fingers in deeper, finding nothing but a globule of goo, like he was sticking his hand in gelatin. By the time his fingers were fully immersed, he couldn't even find where his scalp began. The disgusting sensation made him cringe, an act that briefly made his whole body feel disturbingly wobbly once again.

He pulled his hand out, producing a grisly squishing noise in the process, and held it up to look at it.

"GYAAAH!!!"

Evan had expected to see some sort of slime coating his fingers. What he hadn't expected was for his fingers to be made of slime. Or his hand. Or his arm. OR THE REST OF HIS BODY FOR THAT MATTER.

"HW D- W- AH- GCK- I-" Trembling with shock, stuttering like a nincompoop, Evan looked himself over, his gaze and his hands darting about as he took in the sight of his glistening orange body and the feeling of the gelatinous gunk it was now comprised of. "HOW DID- WHAT IS- I- W- WHAAAAAAAAAAT?!"

[DanteMGalileo]

"I, uh, erm, uhm..."

Arti's arm went limp, and the pan fell to the ground as the young man took in just what was going on.

"I, uh... Is this normal? Oh who am I kidding." He fell over on the ground. "NOTHING is normal anymore, like what the bloody fuck man?!"

The bespeckled man poked Evan(?), noting the reaction. Arti hissed at the burning sensation, quickly retracting his hand. "Okay. As far as freaky people go, I come in third."

His attention turned to Eric. "And... You know this slime? Did I miss something or...?"

[ThePopcornFairy]

Genuinely confused by Evan's hysteria, Eric put his mop away, then cheerfully slid into the crater after Arti and sat next to the orange slime man, beaming between the two of them. "Yeah, he's a buddy of mine from back home! So be nice, okay? No need for the language and the 1950's insults."

Eric leaned back slightly, lounging comfortably as he looked Evan over. "So! Long time, no talk, dude! You seem different. New haircut?"

[ParamountKeymaster]

"GAAAAADADADADADADON'TTOUCHME!!!" Evan yelped, shuffling away the moment Arti poked him, mortified to see that their brief contact had burned Arti's finger.

He turned to Eric, his expression somewhere between terrified and angry. "Eric, dude, it's not that I'm not happy to see you, and I know you're not exactly quick to the punch, but would it KILL YOU to take this seriously?! Because I'm kinda freaking out about-!"

Something suddenly occurred to Evan. Something that got him staring at himself again. He was naked. That revelation alone was awkward enough, but considering what had happen to Arti, he had to consider the possibility that his slime body was acidic and, as such, his clothes had melted off. With that in mind, he looked around and discovered scraps of fabric and denim, which seemed to confirm this.

But... where was...?!

"OH CRAP OH CRAP OH CRAP OH CRAP...!" Evan fell to his hands and knees and anxiously started to sift through the dirt. Thankfully, his search didn't last long before he spotted the golden key buried next to him and unearthed it with a sigh of relief.

To his further relief, though the necklace string had been reduced to little more than a two-inch strand of thread, the indestructible Paramount Key was unaffected by the corrosive gel holding it. The same could not be said for the chunks of dirt that had stuck to and been absorbed by Evan's hand, rapidly dissolving in the orange slime until they seemed to burn away entirely.

Evan scrunched his face up as he watched this, simultaneously feeling disgusted, horrified... and somewhat fascinated.

[DanteMGalileo]

"Well, I've seen everything... Okay, maybe not a narwhal eating peanut butter outta the tub, but still."

Taking a bit of precaution, Arti picked up a stick and poked what he guessed was now Evan, noting that the tip seemed to burn away upon contact. "Acid body. Nice. Looks like ya can't shut it off, either... Not that it seems you have much to hide, tho."

He then turned to Eric. "Did you see anything else, bub? I kinda got called here for an emergency- I was havin' a shoppin' trip in New York New York, and I'd like to catch the Broadway adaptation of my critically-acclaimed novel 'Arti: Man of Mystey, Mystique, and Maltagliani.'"

[ThePopcornFairy]

"See anything else?" Eric repeated with a tilt of his head, confused but curious. "Not sure if I really saw something worth saying something. Except for maybe all the junk n' stuff lyin' around that I haven't got to check out yet! So I'll let ya know!"

As he spoke, Eric sprung to his feet and dashed over to a hollowed out piece of the metallic wreckage, excitedly rooting through it in search of anything interesting. Eventually he dug out what appeared to be a locked brass case the size of a shoe box. "Ooh, a box stuffed with stuff!"

He immediately pried the case open, the lock easily snapping in half like it was made of paper yet clattering to the ground like the metal it actually was made of. Inside, Eric found six compartments containing marble-sized gems, organized into the six basic chromatic colors. "COOL! It's like those little gems and minerals that come in those big bins at gift shops! I used to collect these babies all the time!"

[ParamountKeymaster]

"GAH!!! WOULD YOU KNOCK IT OFF?!" Evan shouted, tumbling away and back into a sitting position when he felt Arti jab a stick into his hip. "Yeah. Acidic. I kinda figured that part out myself! Now if we're DONE marveling at the living mass of goo, can we PLEASE try to figure out what the frig happened to-?! DYGHH-!!!"

Evan cut himself off with a guttural noise when he noticed that, in the process of gripping his fists, the Paramount Key had been completely submerged in the slime and was now stuck inside his palm. He wasted a few seconds trying to shake it out, and when that predictably did nothing, he opted to reach in with his other hand and yank it out, a process that very visibly grossed him out.

After retrieving the key, gripping it loosely with his left hand, Evan looked over his shoulder as Eric unearthed some sort of case from the wreckage. "Eric! Dude!" He quickly stood up, going silent and wide-eyed for a moment as his body wobbled from the sudden motion. Once he was balanced and mostly still, he calmly continued, "I have no idea what just fell out of the sky here, but if this... ship, vessel, whatever it is... contained something with the capability of turning me into this, I don't wanna know what else could be in it!"

[DanteMGalileo]

...

"Somehow I get the feelin' that somethin' was meant to be."

Well, Arti was familiar enough with videogame logic to at least guess what was going on. He's also seen enough hentai to know where some stuff goes, but that's not important.

"You, Oven, Bacon, Fry, gimme those stones. I'm gonna test 'em on Mister Slime here. Don't worry, I won't feel a thing!"

[ThePopcornFairy]

"Great, now I'm hungry," Eric muttered, frowning at Arti as he handed the case of gems over to him. "Thanks for that."

After handing off the case, Eric skated over to Evan with a blissful smile. "You know, I feel like we don't talk that much anymore dude, what with you and Swift going on all sorts of adventures without us these days! How's that been going for ya? How's Swift doing? And seriously, if it's not a new haircut, then what is it? Working out? ...More?"

[ParamountKeymaster]

"Okay, NO!" Evan protested, raising his hands in defense, pointing first to Eric, then to Arti. "Eric, shut up! Could we maybe refrain from any experimentation until we have some idea what we're dealing with?! It's bad enough being... friggin' this, but... we have NO IDEA what anything in there does! I'd rather not toss alien artifacts around haphazardly and risk causing anymore destruction or letting something worse happen to OH COME ON!!!"

Yep. Key was stuck inside his hand again. ...Screw it. It wasn't corroding and he could barely feel it. It could stay in there for all he cared.

[DanteMGalileo]

"I believe in gettin' messy, takin' risks, and all that other crap. I mean, the Fritz did it all the time, and nothin' was worse, right?"

Oh great, now Arti wants to test things by force. Run Evan run. "So think of me as the Fritz, you as the kids, and these... stones as the Magic Schoolbus! Just that I'm either certified nor a cartoon, you're just one kid instead of an entire class, and these are shiny rocks, not a magic bus."

[ThePopcornFairy]

"AAAHHH MY CHILDHOOD!" Eric squealed, hands to his cheeks, instantly convinced to see this through. He excitedly bounced on his toes and gave Evan a friendly punch on the arm, his fist comedically singed from the acid despite his brain not even registering the pain. "C'mon, Evan, let's give this hooey a shot! We'll see what this ship has to offer, do a little experimentin', then we'll be surfin' on a sound wave, swingin' through the stars, take a left at your intestine, SOMETHING SOMETHING SOMETHING MARS...!"

[ParamountKeymaster]

Upon receiving the punch from Eric, Evan's upper arm contorted slightly, the light impact leaving a small indent and surrounding smear. He stared at the misshapen appendage for a moment, baffled and nauseated, then he massaged and molded it back into its normal shape with his hand.

With that brief distraction dealt with, Evan turned back to Arti and said, "Okay, first of all, REAL scientists don't just take chances and throw whatever they want into a pot together willy-nilly. They don't just want results, regardless of whatever mess occurs in the process. They want controlled, repeatable results that can be safely shared with other scientists and minimize random elements and potential mistakes! SECOND...!"

[DanteMGalileo]

Okay I've had enough nerd talk for a day.

Picking up the blue gemstone (and not at all paying attention to the rest of Evan's speech), Arti turned the stone in his hand twice. A weird grin was on his face...

"YO HEADS UP AND THAT MEANS HEADS DOWN IN THIS CASE."

Toss! Arti threw the gemstone directly at poor Evan's head. "Now, Eric, right? Any theories as to how this will end up?"