Morning arrives to find Bug tucked into her bed and looking warm and snug as a, well, a bug in a rug. She is comfy. She is warm. She is safe. And besides having a few tasks to focus on today, she doesn’t exactly have much to worry about.
Sure, her three most favorite skeletons are still missing and need to be retrieved. But it’s not like they are going anywhere… They can wait five more minuets… Or a couple more hours…
They’re skeletons anyways! It’s not like they care.
“Mmmmmmmm~”
Rolling over so she can sleep on her belly, Bug hugs her pillow like it is the love of her life and falls back asleep without a single care in the world. Besides, she is healing right now. Her poor bruised body needs, no, deserves the rest.
…
…
*Grind* * Grind * * Grind *
…
…
*Grind* * Grind * * Grind *
…
“MMmm, be quiet…”
…
*Grind* * Grind * * Grind *
“Ah, shoosh…”
…
…
*Grind* * Grind * * Grind *
“Just five more minutes…”
*Grind* * Grind * * Grind *
*Grind* * Grind * * Grind *
“MMMMMMMmmmmmm! I’m trying to sleep…”
*Grind* * Grind * * Grind *
*Grind* * Grind * * Grind *
“AH! Stop it with all the noise!”
Getting up with a yell, her blankets falling away from her naked body, Bug chucks her pillow at the one responsible for disturbing her blissful slumber. She was dreaming about flying over a field of flowers, damn it! It was fun!
I mean, sure, the flowers did turn into monsters and start trying to eat me if I got too close to the ground at the end there, but…
Sending an angry glare at the one responsible, she finds Mimmie gnawing on the bars of its cage. The naughty little brick had woken up at some point to find itself not free, and now it apparently wants out.
Rubbing at her eyes, Bug waves her hand to beckon something over to her.
“Come here.”
The sound of bones clicking on stone sound in the room as the thing approaches her bedside, Bug sleepily half-sitting-half-lying there with one arm propping herself up.
What arrives before her is a walking, four-legged, cage of bones. The desecrated remains of poor Blane…
Having taken the arms and all of the collar bone, Bug turned them into a makeshift pair of front legs. With the rib cage set spine down and resting on the pelvis and collar bone, the head turned into a front facing ornament, his body has become like some twisted, vaguely, dog-shaped creation. With the legs placed in reverse, facing opposite the hands, this mobile cage walks like a person crab walking, its gait awkward and constantly shifting side to side with every step.
Bars are still holding up well, thankfully. Should be good enough to keep Mimmie from eating me in my sleep…
The bars of the cage are made from the ribs of the, well, rib cage. Worrying that they might not be able to hold up well against Mimmie’s powerful bites, Bug had gone ahead and dipped into her bone reserves to thicken them up and make them much harder to break.
Now, Mimmie, who is a naughty little finger eating brat, is in brick prison.
Gnawing on the bars and trying to get out, it has left plenty of teeth marks all over the bones, but thankfully, it doesn’t seem to be strong enough to get out on its own.
“Open.”
With a single word, the mobile cage cracks open, the rib cage splitting down the middle where the sternum used to be, the bars of the cage being like so many curved spikes as they move apart and open up.
“Mimmie, stop trying to eat your cage. You hungry? Gotta poop? Do Mimics poop? I don’t see a hole…”
Scooping Mimmie out of the cage, basically having to pull it off of one of the bars, Bug picks it up and give it some tired scritches, her sleeping mind still slowly working on fully waking up. Unsurprisingly, Mimmie tries to eat her finger the second it gets the chance, but Bug just pulls her hand away in a split second and nods her head knowingly.
“Mhm, definitely hungry… One second, Mimmie. Let me get you your brea- *Yawwwwwwwwwn~* breakfast…”
Setting Mimmie down on the floor to do as it pleases for a bit. Bug climbs the rest of the way out of bed and lazily stretches. Her poor, stiff, muscles protest at the movement, but she forces them to work as she gets her blood pumping.
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Another tired yawn and she is moving over to the hearth, her bare feet slapping on the cold bricks until she gets closer, and everything becomes much warmer by the fire. A quick check shows that her clothes are dry, so she tries to get dressed.
Eh, screw this. Too much effort…
Apparently, putting on clothes the old-fashioned way is difficult, or even outright impossible, when you have an assortment of extra limbs to factor into the process. The wings make it hard enough, but the new shark tail is just too thick. And now that Bug is examining her shorts, she finds that the old tail-hole is now torn due to the rapid increase in girth.
These are going to need fixed… I don’t know how to do that…
Thankfully, it isn’t so bad as to be to the point of showing off her panties, but with how damaged it is, if it gets any worse, that fate shouldn’t be too far off in the future.
And that brings up the panties situation. It was fine when she just had a rat tail, the underwear just going up to the base of her tail and fitting just fine. But now, due to how thick the base of her tail is now, she can’t bring them all the way up anymore…
Should I just change my tail back to how it was? I sort of like it like this though, and not to mention, I’m probably going to have to do more swimming down here whether I like it or not… Hah, fine, how much to adjust them?
Thankfully, it only ends up costing a single Store Point to have the System change her panties to accommodate her new body shape. With a semicircle taken out of the back of them, they are finally able to be pulled all the way up, a string being used to tie a knot atop her tail to help hold everything up.
With that taken care of, Bug uses her Inventory to get the rest of her clothes put back onto her body and then stores everything else away. She can get their sizes adjusted later after she earns up some more points.
Off to the side, Mimmie is just watching her curiously, occasionally throwing looks towards its cage. It probably doesn’t like the cage.
“Go wait over there.” Bug says as she waves away the twisted, mobile desecration of human bone, not needing it right now.
“Here you go, Mimmie, breakfast time~ Come eat.”
A small pile of bloody meat and skin plops on the floor by Bug’s feet. Mimmie, witnessing this, goes wide eyed with excitement and quickly moves as fast as it can to get to the food. Which, as mentioned previously, is not very fast at all.
Smiling as she watches her pet brick sprint at a slug’s pace, Bug leaves it to its meal once it finally reaches the pile. After all, she doesn’t feel like watching it eat human meat.
Even if she herself isn’t a human, the idea of eating them still makes her feel sick, as if considering cannibalism. Oh well, more for Mimmie.
With Mimmie enjoying a hearty breakfast, Bug moves her stiff body over to the other side of the room to check on her candies. Picking up one of the jars, she shakes it a bit and enjoys the sound of the little golden balls clinking against each other.
“Are they finished? Let’s try one~… MmmmmmHHhhh! So sweet! I love this!”
Her mouth full of sweetness and the taste of honey, Bug enjoys sucking on her hard candy as she works on replacing the cloth covering on the jars with actual lids. Gotta keep them nice and fresh.
“There we go…” Bug says as she looks around the room, soon finding a pile of bags in the corner. “Now for the loot.”
Storing away the candy jars safely in her Inventory, Bug heads back over to her bed and carefully sits down. With a wave of her hand, Bug orders her skeletons to bring her the bags and dump them out on the floor. With a loud clatter, a mess is quickly made before her as items and pouches of things spill everywhere.
Reaching for the nearest of the pouch, she unties it and fishes out some of its contents.
“Claws? Is this from those Lizard Men they were fighting? Hmm, I wonder why they collected these?”
Not have much interest in claws, Bug returns it to the pack and sets it aside. Reaching for another one, she finds teeth. Again, not very interesting, but they must have had some reason to collect them.
Taking note of the bundled-up rolls of leathers, Bug figures that a lot of her pilfered loot is probably just going to be monster parts. As she continues to investigate, anything like that just gets placed off the side.
Can sell it all for points at least. So, not useless… OH, finally some treasure!
With much excitement, Bug finally finds a pouch full of what she was searching for this whole time.
“Mana shards! Ah, so pretty~ And they had so many, too. Into the treasure hoard you go, my pretties~”
After that is digging out the coin purses. More copper and silver coins, all of which Bug happily stores away after dividing them into their respective piles. Apparently, these humans had been carrying a good amount of money on them. Do they not have somewhere safe on the surface where they could keep their money? Oh well, more for Bug.
“Let’s see here… More monster parts, boring. A dagger? Looks fancy, very wavy~wavy blade. Is this one better than mine though? Some potions? No… low quality antidotes. Useless, next. Why does this glove only have three fingers? An archery glove, it’s used for… oh, ok. Don’t need that. Next…”
Sorting through the pile and scanning it all with Identify, Bug works her way through everything, item by item. If it is something she can use or is worth keeping, it goes in the keep pile. Otherwise, it goes in the sell pile. Treasure on the other hand…
“Oh, a ring! Yes! Enchanted? No… but still pretty though. You’ll go on this finger~”
If she can wear it, it gets put on. If she can’t, it immediately gets stored away safely into the treasure hoard. And these adventurers had found a good bit of treasure apparently. Rings, necklaces, bangles. All made in copper, brass, iron, and occasionally in silver. Bug even manages to fish out the silver bracelet that she stole from Fel. But with her four arms all hanging with shiny stuff already, she decides to take the pretty bracelet, made from little chain links, and dress one of her horns with it.
Now with it hanging in the corner of her vision, Bug just has to shake her head a bit and she can see it jingle.
“Pretty, thank you, Fel. I keep this as a reminder to not underestimate humans again.”
Once she has finished fishing out all the shiny things from the loot, Bug goes on the search for food and other supplies. Things like cooking pots and utensils, bowls and silverware made from wood and iron, storage containers and more jars, some full, most empty. A lot of what is left of their food that Bug didn’t return to them is just rations like granola bars and hard bread that is so hard it might as well be Mimmie’s brick.
It all gets stored away and sorted.
Finaly, there is just some miscellaneous stuff that Bug doesn’t particularly care about. Little keepsakes and such that probably had some value to their original owner, but are useless to her. Unfolding a piece of paper, Bug finds a sketch of naked lady with a kiss mark on the corner made from red lipstick. Written on it is, “Come again, cutie <3”
“Who’s this? Meh, sell.”
It gets dropped in the sell pile and Bug moves on.
“Ooh, more blankets! Yes, always need more of those! Pillows, keep!”
By the end of it, everything is sorted and then stored away in her Inventory, Bug happy at having her stock grow. Everything else is sold off and disappears to wherever the heck it is that the System takes sold items.
“I finally have some points again. Finally, I’m not broke anymore! Maybe I’ll actually be able to get that bed I want some day…”
Looking towards the door, Bug knows exactly where she can go to get more points. And plus, she still needs to go save her skeletons.
“Mimmie, you done eating? Yeah? That’s a good, Mimmie. Alright, time for us to go for a walk, come on, in the cage you g-”
“Hissss!”
“No, bad Mimmie! It’s time to go in the cage. Be a good Mimmie, please. Just get in the-”
*Snap!*
“Don’t try to bite my fingers off! Just be a good Mimmie. Come on, you have to get used to riding in the cage. I can’t always be carrying you!"
*Snap!* *Snap!* *Snap!*
“AAHHH! You little brat!”
Bug ended up carrying Mimmie in the end. Cage training will just have to happen some other time…