Noah inspects the slime carefully, walking around it several times before declaring, "I don't get the appeal."

[What do you mean? It's round and cute.]

Shaking his head, Noah disagrees. "No, Duck is cute. This is just sort of..." he waves his hands for a moment, trying to get the message across. "...jelloey."

[That's not a real word!]

"All words were invented at some point. I just made a new one."

I'm a little more interested in something else.

[You own a duck?]

He shakes his head again. "No, I own a flying shark. Its name is Duck."

There's a long and confused silence before Joule asks, [So are you going to name it?]

Noah laughs. "Of course I'm going to name it. I may not get why you want to keep it, but the fact of the matter is that you do."

He pulls out that rectangular object from earlier and slides a finger across it.

[Now what are you doing?]

"Checking the poll. Hang on for just a second."

While he taps the object, I ask Joule, [What's a poll have to do with naming the slime?]

[I don't really know. Maybe it's a Noah thing.]

Putting the object back in his pocket, Noah grins. "All right, I checked the poll, and there were only two options. Therefore, your pet's new name is-" He pauses, but Joule cuts in before he can say anything else.

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[This isn't going to be some ridiculous name that makes no sense, right? Because the last time you tried to name someone, you ended up almost giving him the name Leroy. Please let this one make sense.]

The wind goes out of his sails somewhat, but he pushes on regardless. "Well, originally I was going to say his name should be Singularity Superstar Slimeball-" I can feel Joule flinch inside of my head. "-but I suppose Bubbles is fine. All right, slime, your name is now Bubbles. Even though Singularity Superstar Slimeball would have been a really, really cool name and - what's happening?"

The slime - Bubbles - starts floating in the air, and as I watch, the green color begins draining to its center and concentrating, slowly turning to a black. It grows slightly, its eye-circles change to a pale white, and it lands, finished. It's almost perfectly clear now, with a tiny black shadow condensed into its center.

Joule starts talking fast.

[Wha - he just developed a Void! Did it absorb energies from Noah or you? Did it - whoa, I think I can allocate to it and more accurately quantify it now! Maybe it's because it's your pet, but Noah named it? What if-]

Noah cuts her off before she gets any further. "Calm down, Joule. It's not the same kind of Void as Null's, it's more... natural. It's called a Void Slime. Hardly original, but then again, I didn't name it." (Joule snorted rather uncharacteristically at that.) "It's pretty rare since they can only appear either in space, near a Fissure, or really deep in a high-level crawl. But hey, now it should be possible to allocate the resources it eats and drinks into physical or mental attributes. However, it won't grow anywhere near the same rate as Null does because his Void is far superior in terms of original power rank. It came from me, after all. Also, 'it' isn't the right word for it. 'Him' is actually correct."

Bubbles burbles happily, and the Void inside of him shakes slightly. Noah adds, "Oh, and his subspace should be overwritten by the one built into the Void, so it'll probably empty soon."

[...It'll what?]

"Empty. It shouldn't be too much of an issue, since you haven't had him very long. What's he been eating?"

Joule whispers into my head.

[I just finished quantifying Bubble's contents. I was wrong. Twenty tons of water was a horrible, horrible miscalculation. It's more in the upper eighties.]

I start backing away from Bubbles as he starts vibrating rapidly. Noah looks curiously at him.

"Oh, wonder what he's-"

Bubbles 'empties' everything inside him all at once.