Personality Slime, it's Time

Garland desperately attempted to give Shedu CPR in the transport. “Dammit!” He shouted, looking up at Lajoi angrily. She was just staring down at the two of them, seeming to be faintly catatonic. There were dark circles under her eyes and she was slumped forward, just watching and waiting silently.

“At least help!” He gritted his teeth, keeping the gruelling pace of the CPR to the tune of a song that exists within the universe. As Garland kept trying, he looked down through the open door of the transport and saw the large hospital quickly pass under them.

“Why aren’t we going to the hospital? You haven’t given up, have you?” He asked harshly.

Lajoi shook her head. “A hospital isn’t going to be able to help. The best chance for her is to go home.”

“Home? You mean-” Garland watched as the transport left Orr and began to soar over the channel towards the black cliffs of North-Cheshire. The home that he was remembering was a private resort operated by his grandmother, Sona. They would visit on holidays or other special occasions. It was a retreat that sat atop one of the rocky North-Cheshire plateaus. It overlooked the ocean on one side and the rolling hills for miles on the other, while being mostly flanked by taller, rocky hills to the North and South-West.

They landed on the Hoverpad with many staff from the resort waiting. Sona was in charge of the management of the facility, though Garland knew vaguely that it was quite a sacred and official location. The whole staff were foxes that Sona managed, and included a very peculiar and very old fox as the head servant under her. The girl looked strikingly young, but Garland knew that she was an elder to even Sona since his grandmother treated her as such. The woman who seemed, similarly to Sona, like no more than a girl, had jet black hair and vibrant emerald green eyes. She greeted the party professionally, directing the staff to take Shedu out carefully. Garland followed, remaining close.

Sona rushed out in her kimono, fretting as she followed along on the other side of the stretcher with genuine concern.

“Oh no… Oh dear.” She covered her mouth with her sleeve. Garland noticed that she was particularly broken up over it, but had no idea why. He didn’t have time to question it.

“Grandma, is there anything we can do?”

Sona looked down anxiously. “Only mother will know what to do.”

“Then why the hell didn’t we stay in the-” Garland was about to curse the woman’s name when he heard another transport cycling in behind them. Another procession immediately hopped out, led by Raithe.

They settled into the den, a section of the resort that sat far below ground in a smoothed out, natural stone grotto. There were laminated roots running all through, giving the natural environment a strikingly artificial look to it. Sona was always uncomfortable in these sections, mostly only thriving on the surface where nature was closer. That meant that the elder that was already seeming very broken up over the event was despondent. She looked like she was experiencing something horrible and her face was painted with regret.

Raithe sat beside Shedu, looking down and holding her hand. “She was on borrowed time.”

“What does that mean? Is she gone?” Garland asked, a lump forming in his throat at the thought. He had not liked Shedu in his time with her. In fact, he very much disliked her, but closing in on the end he felt as though he understood her. He wondered how he would’ve fared if he had been in her position. Garland remembered being a bitter, selfish and conceited being before everything kicked off. He guessed that he could’ve been even worse.

“She’s not gone yet, but she’s fading. Effectively, her consciousness is fading within her body and when it disappears completely she will be dead.” Raithe explained.

“Well… do something. Please?” Garland stared at Raithe. The woman stared back, cocking her head and saying with a weak smile.

“I can’t stop her Soul from fading. But-” Before she could finish that sentence Joi chimed in. She was being held in the corner by Asra.

“Grandmother…” She said it in a sharp yet sad tone, as if she already knew what Raithe was going to suggest.

“What is it?” Garland looked around pleadingly.

Raithe shot a quieting glance at Lajoi, then returned to acknowledge Garland. “A drastic measure. A transfer. Shedu is paying for the interest of what was taken. Her Soul was already fairly weak and what else she gained was simply borrowed from another source. She will absolutely die without a transfer and the transfer has to be someone extremely close.”

“Fuck it… I’ll do it, hook me up!” Lajoi offered, stepping forward. Asra did his best to hold her back.

“”I’m afraid there is a very low chance, Joi, and you know that, don’t you?”

“I just…” She trailed off, looking down.

“Guilt is a complicated weight to bear, but it doesn’t help us, here.” Raithe said.

“It’s me, right?” Garland chimed in.

“Indeed. Twins have a special position among our kind stretching back to the very first… If Only I’d understood that sooner.” She sighed heavily and shook her head.

“A single Soul split between two bodies. However, one is not weaker than the other. On the contrary, both carry, in essence, an exceptional version of the Soul, which means that assimilating them together is far easier and extremely potent.”

“I don’t want to assimilate Shedu.”

“Well, maybe that’s what’s needed. I need to warn you that this ceremony is irreversible. Once it has become, the only way I have known it to end was for one Soul to consume the other. Either you or her… this is what is very likely to happen.” As Raithe explained, kara popped into the doorway and leaned up against the frame uncomfortably in the background, rubbing her arm.

Garland barely deliberated. “How do we do this, then?” He was fully intent on giving Shedu the life that she was denied. The life that he had.

“It’s honestly too late to be teaching you how to perform the ritual.” Raithe mumbled, rubbing her chin.

“The only other way I can think of is… the experimental machine…” Raithe, though the situation was dire, looked up with a repressed hint of excitement as she suggested the use of the device. She was trying very hard not to let her eyes glimmer. Lajoi was trying not to drool too much at the mention, and Asra attentively wiped her mouth with his sleeve.

“Huh?” Garland cocked his head to one side, ears perking.

“Simple… You want to do this, no?” Raithe asked, standing up. She turned and began approaching a locked safe, Garland of course answered immediately.

“Yes!”

Raithe returned, smiling gently. She opened both hands. Within each was a single round pill. A red and a blue. Raithe stared at Garland seriously and explained.

“If you take the red pill, it will help you assimilate Shedu into yourself. She will… remain ‘alive’ in a sense. You will have her memories and you will feel her often.” Raithe subtly glanced towards Kara within the doorframe as she said that. The girl blushed and looked away.

“If you take the blue pill you will be surrendering yourself to-”

Garland quickly grabbed the blue pill and sucked it into his mouth. Once the flavour landed on his tongue he squinted, rolling it around.

“Wait… this isn’t a pill, it’s a jawbreaker. Are…” He took the other one and popped it in.

“Both of these are jawbreakers.”

Raithe smiled and lifted a finger. “Correct! I just needed to distract you.”

“From w-” All the fur on Garland’s very furless, perky body stood up, so mostly on his ears and tail and the back of his neck. He was immediately treated to the sight of a comically huge Quad-Needle Syringe injecting a whole lot of something into his arm. The head servant, Ashur was happy to be doing the plunging for once.

“Ho-holy shit.”

“Okay, Ashur, get the bucket, now!” Raithe called out.

“Yes Ma’am!” The girl saluted and ran off.

Lajoi felt weak as she collapsed into Asra’s arms. “It should’ve been me. I really wanted to try that…” She whined shamefully.

“What?” Asra asked quietly as he nervously looked at Garland.

He collapsed onto his hands and knees, feeling an immediate rumbling in his stomach. His small member became hard for one of the extremely rare moments in his life as of late. What Garland was feeling was not just a movement. Whatever was moving through him felt like it was drawing his psyche from his head, pulling his awareness away into blackness as it moved into his stomach. He felt dizzy as he no longer had a sense of selfe to speak of, and what little he had was spiraling through the worst roller coaster he could think of until eventually most of Garland landed unceremoniously in a bucket held dutifully by Ashur. Garland had become a vibrant teal-blue slime, and that is where his awareness lay. It was odd, because he could not see or hear, but he could feel the magic. It was like he was in that same black space, but as nothing, whereas before he had a body. He would be glad, because he was not privy to Raithe commanding.

“Ashur, get in there. Really just scoop everything out, okay?”

“Yes ma’am!” She saluted excitedly and dropped the bucked, reaching her hole hand into Garland’s gaped asshole to remove more of his neon-teal soul and scoop it into the bucket. She dusted off her hands afterwards.

“All done!”

Garland only became truly aware when A very weak Shedu entered the space. She was sitting on her knees, panting and looking down. She was close to nodding off.

“Shedu!” He shouted. In the space his voice could still be heard. She looked up.

“Garland? Don’t tell me you died, too. Fucking waste…”

“You’re right in way more ways than you’ll ever know, but not how you think. Shedu, I don’t have much time so just listen. I lived a good life. I want you to live a good life from now on with my Soul as a part of yours.”

“What?” She squinted at him, then fell onto her back, sprawling out.

“Fuck off. I don’t deserve it. Lemme have my heroic sacrifice.”

“I already ejected my whole Soul from my body as a neon-teal slime! I can’t go back. I resolved to do this.”

“You… you did that for me?” She scoffed and turned her head, crossing her arms stubbornly on the ground.

“Don’t wanna. Take my soul instead. You’re a sissy anyway so you’ll like my body.”

“I’m not a sissy I’m a femboy.”

“The hell is the difference, dude?”

“A sissy is a man that-” Garland stopped mid sentence.

“It’s not important! What is important is that you start this soon. Just get it over with.”

Shedu looked down angrily. It was what she wanted for so long. It was her driving goal to tire Garland out and absorb him before everything turned upside-down.

“How’s Mithra doing?” She asked. It was the last thing she wanted to know about before she could be at peace.

“Mithra got turned into a fox, Shedu… That thing has her.”

Shedu sat up suddenly. “What!? Why the hell didn’t you say so!?”

Garland smiled as Shedu fully took him in. He could feel a warm sensation as his own self seemed to be melting and joining with hers. Since he was willing, it was not a hard task for his Soul to be taken in by hers. Just as it would’ve been a trifle for his strong Soul to overcome her weaker one if he tried.

Garland woke up an amount of time later sitting cross-legged on the floor. He tilted his head back since he could feel his ears being played with. They were bigger than normal. His body also felt sleeker, taller… invigorated. But he was angry.

“That-” he felt like he had been fooled. His sacrifice wasted as he sat in something that felt like Shedu’s body but not quite. The arms were only partially tech. They still had joints but it all felt integrated. It was the same all over.

“Floof~ Floof~” Raithe took a long, cozy inhale of Garland’s silver hair between his ears as they twitched at her touch. She had her hands all over his head, scratching and rolling her thumbs around the tuft of fluff inside. His eye twitched.

“Tell me Shedu didn’t pull one over on me…” He asked, tilting his head back, blushing when Raithe’s pretty face stared back down. Raithe nuzzled her nose into his forehead, then kissed it.

“Ayaaaaah, I’m so happy~” She shook his cheeks like he was a dog.

“Gr- grandma! Can you answer me!?” He shouted, his voice getting muffled as Raithe pinched both his cheeks affectionately.

“So soft~ I could eat you up~”

Lajoi mumbled. “Granny, that has a different connotation when you say that…”

Garland felt so very confused until he sat up and stared down into the reflective surface of the coffee table he was sitting in front of. Shedu was staring up at him with a smug smirk.

“You look like an idiot.”

Garland’s face scrunched up in disbelief. “You look like me, so you’re literally insulting yourself.”

“O-oi!”

“What the hell did you do?”

“Floof~ Floof~” Raithe repairing, practically putting her whole fingers down Garland’s fluffy ears as she petted him, causing Garland to shudder intensely as his ears flapped desperately in an attempt to escape.

She shrugged. “Sorry, bro. I just had to escape that woman’s harassment. Honestly it’s just too smothering for me. Not my jam, at all.”

“Not that! I’m obviously talking about you and me…”

“We share a body now, big bro.”

“Big bro?”

“You came out first, apparently. Anyway… we can switch back and forth, but I haven’t quite figured it out yet. It kinda just… happens so far without much rhyme or reason.”

“I- I thought you were absorbing my Soul.”

“Nah. See, I gave up, too. I wanted you to live… You, I guess, wanted the same thing so we did the thing, but instead of one taking over the other we bonded and joined, each remaining an individual. In a sense, anyway. According to Great Grandma, this is the first instance of this happening in history.”

“Wow… So…” Garland furrows his brow.

“So what?”

“I guess this means you really love me~” He grinned.

‘Sh-shut the hell up, fool! Endure the harassment. Take that as an extension of my love!” She demanded.

Garland frowned as Riathe started hugging and pulling Garland into her lap. “Whoooo are youooo talking to~” She hummed, rocking him against her.

“Nooo! Change back!” Garland begged.

“Gahaha!” Shedu cackled, her voice fading as he lost sight of the reflection.

***

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this story and want to read more of it, more Chapters are currently available to read at https://www.patreon.com/TVWintergreen I upload new chapters every week day with extra content also being released constantly to my discord for Extra Tier Members."