After hours of boring walking, the kid finally says something.

“Almost there now, where do you want me to take you?” It seems like he’s finally calmed down, seeing as his stutter is gone. I guess walking for so long with me just chilling on him made the sense of imminent death lessen.

“Hmm… Let’s go to your house first.” Getting a home base would be good.

He stops and looks at the ground. “I don’t have a house, or a place to go…” he mumbles.

Something strange flickers through me. An odd feeling, like being sad, but not for me… Oh! I feel bad for him. Right… Been a while.

“Hmm…” I’m totally lost on what to do. He has no home, and no money from the looks of it. Maybe… “I have a proposition.”

He tilts his head. “What is it?”

“You do what I say, and I protect you.”

His eyes go wide. “Like, work for you?”

I try to snort, but can’t, since I don’t have a nose. “More like… a pet, or a horse.”

“What’s a horse?” Is that really the part he’s curious about?

“So is that a yes?” I ask. He nods, seemingly satisfied with the arrangement. I let out an irritated sigh. “A horse is…” I quickly explain the details of horses, thinking it’s an issue with the translator, but he says he’s never heard of one. He did mention large spiders that are similar.

“So, what’s your name?” I ask the boy.

He pauses for a second, hesitating. “I-It’s, Betton.”

“Alright, Betton, I’m Alex.”

Betton’s eyes widen in surprise. “You have such a n-normal name, for a…” He stops, realizing what he almost said.

I giggle at him. “For a monster? Yeah, I do.” I’ll let him off the hook, but I’m not telling him shit.

That’s when we finally reach the road. Not far away, I can see… a giant purple crystal? The thing is at least sixty stories tall. On top of that, there’s a massive city built around it’s base. Then, attached to its sides are three more layers of city, like a weird cake with spaces between each part. It finally hits home to me that I’m not on Earth.

“Wow…” I whisper. Betton continues walking towards the marvel of architecture, seemingly unfazed by it. As we get closer, I notice farms outside the city edge. The crop fields are strangely small, and all stop at the same distance from the city center in an almost perfect circle. The other thing that stands out to me is the lack of any kind of wall. Farmlands just blend into city blocks at a certain point.

Just as the two of us reach the outer edge of the fields, we run into something invisible. Pain wracks my body, causing me to lose my shape. I desperately try to stay attached to Betton, but my focus is shattered by the agony rushing through me. It feels like I’m being shoved in every direction at once. An instinct starts to scream in the back of my brain to run, to escape, but I keep holding on to my scrawny ride.

After an eternity of suffering, something inside of me cracks loudly, to the point that it makes Betton jump. Then the pain just… stops. I quickly pull myself together, smoothing myself back into the shape of a green shirt. Betton stares down at me, clearly concerned, but starts to walk further into town. For some reason the air feels horribly muggy against my cloth-like skin.

My vision fades a bit around the edges as a wave of fatigue hits me. I try to stay awake, but I feel myself quickly losing the battle. Like the night before, with the loaf shape, I make sure I can keep my form without effort. Just as I feel confident I can sleep as a shirt without turning to goo, I feel myself start to lose consciousness.

With a last glance up at a nervous Betton, I black out.

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My eyes slowly creak open as I drowsily try and remember where I am. I was… at a sleepover, with… Aww shit, I can’t remember. I open my eyes the rest of the way and find myself in an alleyway. I’m pretty sure this isn’t where I went to sleep. Are those buildings made of stone?

A voice comes from right behind me. “Alex?”

Girlish screaming rips from my lips as I flail around defensively. Many long limbs shoot out of my body and start waving around erratically. Several of them hit hard objects, but they just sail through things like they’re cutting butter. Wait, there’s a bunch of things wrong there.

I quickly calm myself, and feel my arms pull back into my body. Right! I’m a… whatever! Isekai’d to who knows where as a bubble gum thing. I open my second pair of eyes, ones that are pointed upwards towards Betton’s face. The kid looks petrified, apparently not expecting me to gouge out the nearby buildings suddenly.

“Sorry,” I say bluntly. He’s lucky I’m saying that much. “Where are we?” I scan the area with the forward facing eyes, and from what I can tell it’s just some random hideaway in a back alley.

He smiles sheepishly. “It’s, uh… where I’ve slept before.”

My eyes run over the place a second time. “Really?” He just nods sadly. I let out a sigh. “Well, let’s mug someone.”

The guy’s eyes go wide, and I can see his reluctance. I head him off before he can get too worked up. “Just take us to some like, gang, or something. Someone you think deserves it. I don’t really care who… I’ll take care of it either way.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

His expression settles as he thinks about what I said. After a few minutes he nods, and starts off down the sidestreets. At first I try to remember the route he’s taking, but I quickly give up. The damn passages all look the same.

We don’t get very far before some prey comes to us. A duo of thugs cut us off as we pass through a narrow path. They look… Ah, men, don’t care.

“What’re ya doing here, Bet? You know this is our territory.” Man, even their words are lame.

I don’t give Betton a chance to answer. Six muscular tendrils shoot out to either side of Betton, imbedding themselves into the walls. Once they’re in there good, I use them to slingshot myself at the duo. I aim at the bigger of the two.

My body wraps around the big guy’s head. Before he can do anything to annoy me, I start giving him the blender treatment. He hardly gets to scream before my teeth cut him off.

The guy’s buddy starts to back away from me, but I don’t give him the chance to run. Two tentacles shoot out of my main mass, their sharp tips impaling the guy’s legs. Once they penetrate, the tendrils start to burrow into him like roots growing through soil.

I watch in curiosity as my new method of attack advances. As the limbs grow through the guy’s body, he starts to bloat and lose his shape. Eventually he implodes with a sound like sucking real hard on a straw, leaving a tangle of fibrous pink threads. The thin filaments retract into my body, leaving behind nothing but the man’s clothes, and a lot of blood. I really need to learn how to not eat so messily.

While I was trying out my new methods, I had also been eating the first guy in my normal manner. After finishing my meal, I crawl over to the bloody pile of clothes. I rummage through them for a minute, until I find what I’m looking for. I hold up a small but heavy bag into the air triumphantly.

Betton walks over to me, shirtless. I’m surprised he didn’t run off as soon as I left him. I guess he doesn’t expect me to hurt him anymore. Once he gets into range, I jump onto him. In one smooth movement I thin myself out and turn green, once again becoming the kid’s shirt.

The scrawny boy grabs the bag of coins. He looks at the small bag, eyes wide.

And he smiles wickedly.

────────────

I’ve… I’ve never seen someone eat so… enthusiastically. And that’s coming from me! Betton and I are sitting in some dingy inn and he’s inhaling three people’s worth of food. He’s going to burst his stomach at this rate.

As amazing as it is, I quickly get bored of the kid’s gluttony, and start looking around the place. The surfaces of my eyes are camouflaged like the rest of me, so I don’t have to worry about someone noticing me staring.

Most of the patrons of the dingy rest stop are even more boring than the kid, aka men. Why are there so many men around? Don’t tell me that women have to stay home in this world. If that’s the case… Well, I guess I’ll have a second goal.

Luckily there are a few women, namely the barmaids and a few adventurer-looking chicks. The girls working here are wearing revealing clothing, while the adventurers are covered pretty well in armor. A girl with black armor has badass scars covering her face.

Just as I get bored of checking out the girls, two of the men start hitting each other over something. Whatever it is must’ve been important, because the bigger guy sets the smaller one on fire. I have to keep myself from cackling as the inflamed dude runs to a nearby table and dunks his head in someone’s stew. The owner of the stew doesn’t appreciate that, and joins the brawl. In a few seconds, half the building is slugging each other.

Betton pays the chaos no mind, continuing to wolf down his meal. At some point he ordered a four and fifth helping. Suddenly a dude gets thrown at our table, and Betton just picks up the plates as the guy slides across it. Once the man crumples on the ground, Betton puts the food back down and goes back to eating.

Just as things are starting to get really hairy, as in ‘I think that one dude in the corner is dead’ hairy, a heavyset woman comes out from a door behind the bar. She snaps her fingers, and everyone in the building freezes. Except Betton, who keeps eating. The woman is well-dressed, for where we are, and has an aura of authority about her. Her hard gaze crosses the large room, stopping on Betton with a raised brow. She quickly moves on and spots the possibly dead man.

Again she snaps her fingers, this time a small cloud of smoke bursts in the air next to her. A small fuzzy thing in a tuxedo drops from the cloud, flattening his shirt after landing. My body shivers reflexively as I watch the creature. It looks like a furby. Fuck, why?

“Heal him.” The woman speaks in a no nonsense tone as she points out the dying guy. The furby quickly nods before running towards him. After watching the creature for a moment, she snaps her fingers for a third time and leaves.

As soon as her third snap sounds off, almost everyone in the building vanishes. Besides Betton and I, there’s only around six people. Not including the guy the furby is giving mouth-to-mouth. After a few more minutes of silence, Betton finally finishes his dinner. He smiles at me contentedly, which probably looks stupid, since I’m his shirt.

He leaves the plates on the table and makes his way upstairs. With a key that he paid for earlier, he leads me into a bedroom. It’s a typical fantasy inn room, with a dresser and a bed with a small table. The only difference is that there’s what looks like electrical ceiling lights. Weird…

Betton falls into the bed, letting out a satisfied sigh. “Hey, Alex?” I quickly grunt in acknowledgement. “If you give me food and a bed like this, I’ll work for you forever.” He smiles, greed in his eyes.

Honestly, that’s pretty fair. The kid’s visible ribs tell me all I need to know about his situation, and I’m basically a meal ticket… As long as he doesn’t stab me in the back, I don’t see any reason not to work with him. He’s also homeless, so no one will miss him if I do end up killing him.

“Hey Betton, do people have a… I don’t know, a class system or something?”

He nods at the ceiling lamps. “Yeah, I’m surprised you know about that.”

I shrug his shoulders. “Well, I have a monster one, so I figured people had one too.”

He looks surprised at that, but doesn’t end up mentioning it. “People pick classes and improve them with work. My class is countermage.” His eyes turn sad. “I got that back with… my parents.”

Oh god, I don’t caaare. “So what’s a countermage?” I try to cut off his tragic backstory.

It seems to mostly work. “Well, it’s a mage that cancels supernatural effects. It’s mostly used against spells, but you can use it on martial techniques too if you get to a high enough level.” He laughs sadly. “Which I am nowhere near. Countermages also can’t really defend themselves, either.” The happiness from earlier is nowhere to be seen on the kid’s face.

I feel a bit guilty at ruining his good feels, so I try to cheer him up. “Well, you have me to protect you, so you just cancel out any incoming magic. Works out great, right?” I won’t mention the magic options I saw in my mind menus.

My plan works and his face brightens up a bit. “Yeah, that’s true.” He then swaps back to a scowl. “I should get something, like a really strong shield. Since I don’t need to attack, using that would be enough, right?” He looks down at me expectantly.

That’s… not a bad idea, actually. When I’m fighting, if he has some big fuckoff shield, I won’t have to worry about him as much. “Good idea, kid.” My words make him smile.

This kid is seriously smiling at getting praised by his shirt. He needs therapy.

He pulls out the small pouch I procured earlier. “Well, this isn’t going to pay for a shield.” He shakes the bag, which makes no noise.

“That’s not really a problem, we just get rid of some more thieves and that’s all sorted.” He nods slowly, unsure.

I slip off of him, returning to my normal pink color. My body pools on the floor and quickly becomes my default blob shape. “I’m going to work on something, don’t let anyone come in.” Betton nods at me and quickly locks the door.

Time to practice.