Chapter Text
Green was a horrible father. He did not have any food for his slime children, and it was shameful. He could hear it in the way that the explosions began to echo, agitation spreading through his single corral like wildfire. He needed some sort of food, and fast, because he didn’t want his babies to be angry forever.
He’d only planned to leave the ranch for a few minutes to get some fruit, he swore. But then he got distracted.
What, you may ask, distracted him from his perfect, round, gooey, exploding babies back home? A cat.
Well, not really a cat, so to speak. It wasn’t any kind of Earth cat, for sure—no, this had to be a Tabby Slime. It was round, gray, stripy and cute, squishy and pouncing around, playing with a pogofruit like it was a little toy, and, well… Green liked cats.
See, had he simply sucked it into his Vac and moved along, it would have been fine. He did not do that. Instead, he started cooing at it like an idiot, and the slime itself went right along with it. The sun was already halfway past the horizon before he realized he’d wasted the rest of the day away. With a groan, he stood back up with a stretch, eyes scrunching shut.
A small meow caught his attention as the Tabby Slime squished against his pant leg, looking up at him with its small, shiny eyes. It pushed the fruit it had been playing with toward his feet, and he just about died then and there.
Green still did decide to find more to bring home, anyway. The sun was setting, sure, but he had a flashlight. He could still search. He wandered around, near aimless, even with the path ahead of him, and didn’t notice his gray little shadow bouncing after him. He ended up finding a couple cuberries, more henhens, and even more pogofruit. It wasn’t much, but it would be enough for his slimes—it had to be. He really should start growing a garden…and getting a chicken coop, that would be a good idea.
He was already shooting fruit directly into his four Boom-pinks’ mouths before the Tabby Slime made itself known again, splatting against his back with a loud meow. He nearly fell over, not expecting it in the slightest, but caught himself at the last second.
He guessed he had a cat now? Is this that cat distribution system he’d heard about online once or twice?
The sun was long gone from the sky, and he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He had to finish up soon. Something about the night already unnerved him out here, so he hurriedly bought a garden and, with a second thought, a coop. Cuberries were shot into the receptacle and a tree quickly sprouted (weird), and he shot all but one henhen into the coop, deciding that the last one should go to the new Tabby Slime. He had half a thought to try and buy a corral for it, but his balance was just slightly under what was needed, so he let it into his house.
Green looked at his Vac one more time before laying down, seeing the boom, pink, and single tabby plort he’d managed to get throughout the day. With a deep sigh, he sunk into the mattress and dozed. (The Tabby Slime, of course, hopped right onto the bed, flattening like a pancake over his chest, burbling purrs the only sound it made as it, too, fell asleep.)
The sun rose again, and Green woke up at the break of dawn. Something was wrong. Something was deeply wrong, and he needed to see what.
He didn’t care that, when he sat up, the cat was launched to bounce off of the wall. Something was wrong outside. He had half a mind to grab his Vac before he slammed open the door, and the sight that greeted him was ugly.
Blackened blobs of swirling, sickly, oily not-quite-slime leapt in a vague mimicry of the slimes he’d seen in the past couple of days. One of his pinks, the last one, was grasped suddenly in a warped claw, dragged into a sickeningly sharp, gaping maw, and consumed. Another wretched thing formed from the original, faintly pink and veiny for all of three moments before the blackened goo slathered itself around it.
What had he done wrong?
He’d kept them in a corral on their own. He’d fed them and cared for them as best he could in two days. He’d made sure that there weren’t any plorts out when he went inside, even in his panic.
What had gone wrong?
With fury deep in his heart, he lifted the Vac, flicking the switch from spit to suck, and charged.
One, yanked backward from where it had been going, trapped at the tip of his gun, launched out into the sea.
Two, noticed him first, but was too late to try and grasp him, flung.
Three, its claws barely scraped him before it was his, sent out.
Four, its vile body was already starting to decompose upon itself, the thick substance burned his skin as it splattered against the Vac, and it, too, was disposed of.
Five, it got one lucky bite in, but then it was dead.
The screen on his arm, his Slimepedia, vibrated gently, and he looked at the new notice.
The Tarr.
The information in the blurb was repetitive and simple—they form from an attempted tribrid largo, they only wanted to eat and multiply, and they can only be killed in a scarce few ways. Still, there was one thing that confused him.
Why were there five on his ranch? Had one…come from outside? Why? How? He was so careful. Would locking his gate at night help?
No, it wouldn’t. This was something malicious. A warning, even. Something, or someone, was trying to scare him off. From what? He didn’t know. He planned on finding out.
The Tabby Slime bumped his leg again, looking up at him with its beady eyes.
“Well, Brie,” Green sighed, pulling a name out of actual nowhere, “Looks like it’s just us right now.”
His only answer was a meow.
