An alien best friend

Itzel Ramirez was spending her night the way she usually does when she is preparing for a stargazing event. Gathering snacks (with attention for food allergies), searching for the best venues and bugging everyone to line up schedules. Her phone rang. It was her parents, she used one of her head tendrils to grab the phone off the counter and start the video call.

"Hey how is Kanasín?"

"Oh it's wonderful," Itzel's mother began sitting in front of the moderately sized stone structure her parents damaged spaceship was disguised as. "Wait why aren't you wearing your Mask?!" her mother's eyes wide at seeing her daughter's sapphire skin. "What if someone sees you?!"

"Its fine Mom, I'm on the third floor and there are three walls in between this room and the door."

"Oh you worry too much Maria, its much easier to lie to people now that it was in 1856." This voice came from Itzel's father who had just walked into frame covered in a pale purple grease.

"I don't want to hear that after you were worried all the way to the airport."

"Anyway," Itzel interrupted, "How has the construction gone on the ship."

Her father's eyes turned downcast. "I'm sorry dear but even if we got this space worthy we can't go back to Gerilia."

"Can I ask why? I think I'm old enough to at least know that much."

Both of her parents eyes meet and turned away form the camera. It was her mother that spoke up first. "Your father and I liked to gamble."

Itzel sighed loudly. "So you got in trouble with the space mob and are hiding out here?" A few of her tendrils began rubbing her face in disappointment.

"Oh come on why do you even want to go there? Trust us there is nothing there for you or us."

"Tomás, don't start this now."

"It's fine Mom we can have this discussion when you get back. Love you, bye." She ended the call there. After taking a heavy sigh Itzel unspooled herself on the floor becoming a torso betwixt a tangled mass of sapphire tentacles. Once she was finished with her silent screams, the physicist pulled herself together to the facsimile of human form as she started to work on her next paper.

The paper had been having trouble lately. Thanks to the a combination of bad science reporting and hoaxes her work has been made all the harder. Repairing and reverse engineering the family space lead to physics and engineering an attempt to help her dad fix it faster, but today's revelation has left her in a lurk. Her parents have no desire to return to their home planet. If she was honest it wasn't like she wanted to leave Earth permanently but there was an entire part of her family out there she wanted to meet. At the very least working on the spaceship has lead to some green energy improvement, if they can be repeated at scale.

Suddenly, the lights in the apartment started to flicker a glowing circle appeared above Itzel. She opened her mouth to yell before she was spirited away in a flash of light.

"Our next contestant is..." Jack began hoping for a smoother transition than the first. He was disappointed as the sapphire physicist was plopped onto the ground unceremoniously. "Itzel Ramirez? Well Robin at least you got a friend here."

Robin was confused, this didn't look anything like the brown haired woman who was their best friend. Instead the only resemblance to a human was the the placement of a head and torso. In the place of arms, legs, and hair were countless tentacles. They had a texture that looked at first glance to be closer to a plant or fungus rather than skin. Once they saw the Cow Cog Cage concert shirt on the person doubt set in.

"Itzy is it you?"

"Who the fuck else would it be?" Itzel asked completely disoriented. A few moments passed until she realized that she didn't have her Mask and she shyly covered the orange orbs that were her eyes. "This was not how I wanted you to see this."

"You're an alien?" the Mastress said in shock.

"No I'm Mexican. I just happen to not be homo sapiens sapiens." The pair had a soft chuckle at the absurdity of everything.

"I'm sorry that was rude of me. I have so many questions but only if you feel comfortable."

"Thanks," Itzel uncovered her eyes. "So where are we?"

"Some game show called Harem Hotel, I apparently was the lucky one to get a season focused on me."

Itzel then turned to Ipheara, "Wait is that the lady you like in that farming game?"

"My name is Ipheara."

"Apologies."

"Yes," Robin gave a look of begging not to pry further. Itzel relented, for the moment instead she focused on Jack. "and who are you?"

"I am your host. You can call me Jack. Short version you have been bonded forever to your friend the Mastress there. There are more details but I am waiting for the contestants before for I go over them. Anyways viewers as mentioned before the transformation will come from viewer submissions among three paths. For Ms. Ramirez the paths are the following: Parasite, Weird Science and Star Citizen."

"Excuse me what?" Itzel asked.

"Here's to our third contestant!"

Submission Form: https://forms.gle/wv2gAoCXiSriS1AH9