If Astrid had been smarter, she would have gotten a good look at the two men who came in to realize they had little imps on their shoulders. That’s just her luck – acting first and thinking later never is her best course of action. To be fair, she really thought they would see Blue and attack them. Speaking of the ooze, where is– Oh, the chair, duh. Wait, the chair?!

No time to think! A fireball comes hurtling toward her. She ducks and rolls behind some of the cargo in the room, and the flames crash into the stone walls, licking off of them and spreading along the (luckily) damp floor.

“Oi, li’l bugger, don’t damage the merchandise!” the still conscious guard says angrily to the imp, to which the imp replies by hissing angrily and diving across the room to chase after Astrid. It jumps across the crates and jumps down on her from on top of them, landing on her back and clawing at her face.

“Ack! Get offa me!” Astrid shouts, reaching back and pulling the imp off. It tries to chomp on her hand but just gets a mouth full of gauntlet. “Pain in the arse, ain’t ya?!” Astrid channels electricity through her body and puts the full power of her electromancer capabilities into the shock that she delivers the imp, leaving a crispy creature that she drops on the ground.

“Come out, li’l girl,” the guard calls. “What’ve ya done wif this chair, huh?”

---

Gauntlet [-1 hit prevention]

"Lots of things!" The man heard from behind him and turned to see a large, reptilian tail slam into his face. While he'd been focused on Astrid, Blue Raspberry transformed back into their knightly self, but with a tail coming from their back and their hands transformed into claws. They stood right on top of the unconscious man they'd been stabbing and electrocuting while seating.

The man stumbled backward, but he was tough enough that the tail slap didn't take him down. He glared at the knight that, in his eyes, had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. He didn't notice at all that the chair was gone. Suddenly, he felt his muscles tense and spasm in his face as the electrical shock started to hit him. He twitched as the wave passed through him, but he still didn't fall. Whoever this guy was, he was surprisingly durable. When he got over the electricity, he suddenly charged at Blue with his hands out and ready to grab them around the waist in an attempt at a grapple.

Blue was a little confused by the total stranger suddenly hugging them. It was weird. Even their own family didn't hug them all the time, so who the heck did this guy think he was? The man even tried to lift them off the ground, but thankfully the ooze was heavy and their feet sticky. He couldn't get them off the ground.

The man was surprised for a moment just how difficult it was to lift this knight guy off the ground. Their attempt to pick him up and then slam him back down wasn't going great. The next thing he was surprised by was just how much electricity he could get shocked with at once.

Now it was just one more imp left in the room, flying in the air.

---

Prehensile Tail
Eldritch Claws
Slimy Hands
Lightning Armor

“Ya know, it’s times like this I really wish I knew how ta just fire off a lightnin’ bolt,” Astrid says peeking from behind the crates. The room is too small to throw either of her hammers. Great, those are, like, her best and only tactics.

Flying around, the little imp realizes it’s alone in the room with two people who just took out two of the stronger men in the building, and both of them are wreathed with electricity. It looks around the room, evaluating its options. There’s a grate to the sewers and a little window slot in the door. One way means escape, the other means backup.

It chooses the door, beelining for the slot at the top so that it can try to squeeze its way out.

“Oi! No ya don’t!” Astrid shouts, rushing after it and trying to intercept it. Curse her height. The imp stays out of her electrified reach. So Astrid backs off, and the imp considers itself victorious. Until Astrid slaps the imp out of the air like a sportsball with her hammer. It shrieks, and the force slaps it against the wall with a meaty crunch.

Annoyed, Astrid huffs. “Right, anyway, we should hurry an' find some information on the bodies.” She quickly starts looking around the room for any kind of inventory list, completely forgetting Blue can’t read.

"Yeah, me too." Blue nodded. Being able to shoot lightning bolts sounded really convenient, but somehow, it was just a skill the ooze could never figure out. They generated electricity and they could channel it through themself and other people really well, but just making it fly through the air, they couldn't figure out. Oh well, maybe they'd get it some day. At least it was kind of a relief to know it wasn't just them who had such a problem. Astrid also couldn't shoot lightning, so maybe it wasn't just another weird thing with Blue, but something actually normal about them for once.

While Astrid went to work checking the room for any information, Blue went about doing what they were best at. Disposing of the bodies. If more people came in here and found not just the other guards unconscious, but also these guys and their charred and crushed imps, they probably wouldn't be able to pass it off as a little fight over some gambling winnings again. Blue thought it'd be better to just make the room empty so anyone else who came in just thought the guards must have left.

With the front of their armor opening up to reveal the blue goo beneath, they picked up one of the dead imps and unceremoniously shoved it into their torso. The little red creatures didn't have any clothing or anything, so they didn't think they'd have anything on them to read. The second imp was disposed of in the same way.

When they came to the first human corpse, they stopped and took a moment to actually search the body for anything of use. They couldn't read, but they could at least recognize writing when they saw it. The first one just had a pouch of coins on him and a nice pocket watch in his pocket. Nothing useful. Schlorp. They moved on to the second guard that had come on with the lady. This time, the man did have a small note in his coat pocket.

"Hey Astrid, this guy has something. Here." Blue held up the note and looked to Astrid.

While Blue checks over the bodies, Astrid starts trying to check the various crates, peeling up the lids wherever possible. In one she finds it filled with straw and on top a sheet of paper with a list of the contents. Some kind of artifacts, but nothing like bodies. The crate wasn’t body-shaped anyway. Actually, none of them really are, are they?

“Huh? Ya found somethin’?” Astrid asks, taking the note from Blue. She unfolds it and reads over it only to realize that it isn’t a note at all but rather an intricately drawn circle with runes and an incantation in a language she can’t read. Rubbing her head, she looks over it with a puzzled expression, turning it in all sorts of directions before ultimately deciding that she definitely can’t make heads or tails of it.

“Looks like some sorta… magic circle or somethin’,” she says. “I dunno if we should mess with it too much…” They could probably figure it out if they really wanted to, but this could also blow them up. She offers it back to Blue, expecting them to just eat it. “I don’t think the bodies are in here,” Astrid continues. “They might be gettin’ ready ta sell ‘em.”

Blue took back the little piece of paper and looked at it again. Nope, they still had no idea what to make of it even with Astrid's help of identifying it as a magic circle or somethin'. With a shrug, they folded the paper up and popped it into their mouth, storing it for later. If the people here really were getting ready to sell the missing bodies from the Mage's Guild, they didn't have the time to stand around and mess with something that neither of them knew anything about. Maybe they could make use of it later for something, but in the meantime, the ooze went back to work disposing of the bodies while continuing to chat with Astrid and try to figure out what to do next.

"Yeah, let's hurry and try to find the bodies. I mean, the missing ones. Not these ones. I'll just get rid of these ones." Blue said to Astrid as another pair of legs sank into their torso. "But how are we going to look for them?"

These guys all attacked as soon as they saw Blue and Astrid. Going through that door definitely wouldn't be very easy if there were a bunch more enemies on the other side, and who knew what that pale lady had going on if all these guys listened to her? She must have been their boss, or really powerful, or maybe both. She didn't seem like someone they wanted to mess with. She was fine with killing all of these guards, just for taking a nap! Wait. Oh, right. They were only knocked unconscious, weren't they? Blue completely forgot, just treating them like more corpses and consuming them. As usual, their stomach got a bit ahead of their brain. Well, at least they were knocked out so they probably didn't feel anything, right? And, they would have alerted everyone of the two intruders as soon as they woke up. There was nothing they could do about it now.

"Ah, shoot!" Blue suddenly gasped. They shouldn't have eaten the assassin they recognized though! They could have asked him some questions! Dangit! Blue looked guiltily at Astrid, their head hanging low. "I forgot these ones were still alive..."

Since Blue stores the magic circle paper away, Astrid turns to keep searching for clues, completely missing that the ooze has decided to dispose of the unconscious guards. “Aye, we’ll look fer the mummies or whatever we’re lookin’ fer…” Astrid’s voice trails off as she hears the squelch of something meaty sinking into Blue. She starts to peer around the cargo in the room as she asks, “Bluuue… What’re ya–”

There it is. They’re eating them. Astrid just stands there looking at the ooze knight absorbing the unconscious guards, one of which woke up the moment his head hit the acid but was too quickly absorbed to make much of a sound, only his legs and arms struggling briefly until the whole of him got consumed.

Blue quickly realizes their mistake, and Astrid tries really hard to consider what she’s even going to say right now. “A-Aye they’re alive, we didn’t kill ‘em,” she says – or rather whines. "O-Or at least I didn't... I don't think." Sure these guys were working with some bad folks, and they rightly could have been bad people themselves, but they could have been like Jonesy: just desperate for coin.

It also hasn’t been that long since the situation at the temple. How could she be so upset about that and not be upset about this? Sure they’re two very different situations, but someone died either way. Astrid’s hand comes up to cover her mouth while her foot taps anxiously without much explanation.

“J-Just tie the last one up, okay?” she finally says. “We’ve gotta get what we’re lookin’ fer. A-An’ we’ll do that by just… I dunno, we’ll sneak best we can. Long as we can get an idea of where it’s at. M-Maybe Melodia… Yeah, we’ll use Melodia.” With that, she quickly summons the specter. “Hey Melodia, can ya help us find where they’re keepin’ the bodies they stole from the guild’s tomb?” she asks. “They’re probably mummified or somethin’. I dunno.”

Melodia looks between the two of them, noticing that Astrid’s speaking quickly and nervously. “Hello, both of you. Are you… Are you alright? You’re speaking quickly. Where are we?”

“A mob hideout we think,” is all Astrid says.

“That… explains very little. Hold on, I’ll be back.” Melodia disappears through the wall. Astrid continues to stand around more anxiously than usual. After a few moments she returns and gives the two of them a quick rundown of the area, explaining that there is a room with several people gathered where it looks like an auction is going to be held soon. There appear to be some coffin shaped crates stored in the room behind the stage that conveniently have cloth wrapped bodies inside of them. Along with those are several collections of artifacts and other various – and likely stolen – items.

“Sounds like that’s where we’re goin’,” Astrid says. “Lead the way!”

And Melodia does. She takes a peek outside the room and upon seeing the hall empty leads Astrid and Blue, as clanky as they are, through a series of access tunnels that run through the sewers. They pass various valves and cranks for opening and closing portcullises throughout the sewer system. Occasionally, they pause when Melodia spots someone walking ahead, wait, and continue forward. But it’s likely they’ll run into someone soon.

Blue was concerned for Astrid. She seemed more affected by Blue's bad eating habits than usual this time. More panicked and less sure of what to do next. They didn't know how to help. They just nodded and did what she told them to do, and tied up the last unconscious guard. They carried him over to one of the opened crates and looked inside to see that it was filled with little round things. Blue didn't recognize what they were. Glass spheres of some kind, with little hooks on top? Whatever. They just shoveled them out of the crate and into their gullet to make some space to hide the man. Tied up and trapped in a crate, he shouldn't be a problem for a while.

Blue tried to be as quiet as possible as they snuck through the tunnels, but their armor just wasn't made for stealth. Maybe they should have asked Astrid to somehow make it quiet when she was designing it, but they didn't see how that was possible. Metal clanked. That was just what it did, right? So far, it hadn't been too much of a problem at least. They hadn't encountered any guards thanks to Melodia's scouting, and they knew which way they needed to go. So far so good.

But now there was a problem. The tunnel ahead ended with a big door that was flanked by two guards. They needed to go through there, and there was no other way to get to the bodies they needed to retrieve. It was either a fight, or somehow getting past those two stealthily.

Blue looked at Astrid and had an idea. They put a hand on her shoulder and motioned for her to retreat a bit with them. A safe distance away, they could whisper quietly without their voices echoing far enough down the tunnels to attract any attention.

"What if we wore a disguise? I can change my face, see?" Blue whispered and pointed at their face, which morphed into a perfect replica of one of the guards the ooze had consumed. They pulled out the clothing the man had been wearing from their stomach. Now, they just needed to figure out how to sneak Astrid in. They looked at the outfit. The coat was pretty long.

Hmmmm. Astrid was pretty strong. She could probably hold the ooze on her shoulders, and it would look completely normal if Blue just became a little smaller! Yes, this was a perfect plan!

---

Space Pocket
One With The Cosmos

Melodia’s scouting really makes things a lot easier for the missions that are supposed to be stealthy, but that doesn’t usually prevent Astrid and Blue from having to fight people. So when they come to the hall with doors at the end and two guards on either side, Astrid figures that fighting is exactly what they’ll do. They can make quick work of most people, especially if there are only a couple of them.

(With some exceptions, of course.)

Astrid gets ready to go in for a fight when Blue pulls her back and suggests a disguise, shifting their face into the face of someone she definitely just watched them eat. Not bothersome at all. “Erm… okay, so that helps ya get past ‘em, but I’m a bit small ta pass fer any of them. An’ I can’t change me face.” Her head tilts a little. “Have ya always been able ta do that??”

She has no idea what’s going through the ooze’s mind currently and could not possibly expect them to suggest the two kids in a trenchcoat idea because she’s never even heard of that idea before.

---

Call Ghost [2/3]

"You mean change my face? Well, not always, but I figured it out when I figured out how to make my own face. But don't worry! You don't have to change yours. Look!" Blue whispered and then their body started to change. Their armor was absorbed into them and they shrank, changing to be almost the same height as Astrid, but with their head and arms the same size as they had been before, looking weirdly large on them now. The coat they wore was now much too large for them, piling up on the ground around them.

"See, so I'll just sit on your shoulders and hide you with this coat, and then they won't notice at all! It's perfect, right?"

Blue seemed really excited about the plan, and completely confident. This was probably the smartest thing they'd ever thought of. But, Astrid didn't look very happy. She looked like something was bothering her. Their smile turned to a frown and they slumped a little. They didn't think about the fact that it was the borrowed face of the man they'd eaten that they were now using to look at her sadly.

"What's wrong? You don't think it'll work?" Blue asked, but then thought of something else. Maybe they'd messed up more than they thought when they'd consumed the not-exactly-corpses before. "Are you mad?"

It hadn’t really occurred to Astrid that Blue had to make up their own face to appear human or human-adjacent in order to walk around in society. Then again, they did keep their helmet on most of the time when they first met. It’s an odd skill to need, really, but the fact that they can change their face into someone else’s is… Well, it’s really pretty useful.

She watches as they change into this figure of cartoonish proportions with tiny legs and an adult-sized upper torso. It would be comedic if it weren’t such a serious situation. Still, it’s not that bad of an idea at all. She can be the legs, and they can be the head. “Hmm…” Astrid murmurs while she considers it. Can they change their voice?

That’s when she notices that they seem to be let down. “Huh? No, I didn’t say that,” she says quickly. “Ya just didn’t explain all the rest of it before, so I didn’t know what ta do.” Astrid gives Blue Shortberry a once over again. “Honestly… It ain’t a bad plan at all. Might as well see if it gets us past ‘em so we don’t alert all the other folks inside. Come on, then.”

She squats down so they can clamber up on her shoulders before she grips their tiny legs and stands upright again. This feels…weird. Astrid has seen kids riding on their parents’ shoulders before, but she’s never gotten to do that herself. Cantio would probably crumple under her weight. She certainly didn’t expect to be the one giving a shoulder ride either. “Alright, ya think ya can convince ‘em yer the guy whose face yer wearin’?”

Blue climbed up onto Astrid's shoulders, their gooey feet sticking securely in place. Their feet wouldn't move, but it was still a bit wobbly. They didn't want to flop backward while Astrid was walking. That would be a dead giveaway! From their sides, a second pair of arms, much smaller than the others and made of blue goo, sprouted and placed their hands on either side of Astrid's head to steady themself.

It was a bit weird. Blue had given Astrid a boost before, letting her sit or stand on their shoulders, but they'd never actually been the one standing on someone else's shoulders. They'd also never made themself look so weird before. Well, maybe they had looked weirder before with their claws and tail and such, but never weird in this specific oddly proportioned, part goo part skin way.

They pulled the coat around, covering most of Astrid. All that showed of her was her boots, barely. Hopefully the guards wouldn't look at those.

"Yeah, I think so. Ahh- ehhh- ehem." Blue started quietly practicing trying to change their voice to match the man whose face they were borrowing. It was a bit difficult. They didn't have much practice changing their voice, and they'd hardly heard the man say anything before he'd been knocked out. "Hmm. How's this?" Blue finally said, their voice sounding pretty decently convincing, but their own cadences still in there. Well, they decided they'd try not to talk too much. Ideally, they wouldn't have to speak at all and they could just walk past the two door guards in silence.

"Alright, let's go."

---

Extra Arms

This is so weird. This is so weird. I didn’t think it’d be this weird, Astrid thinks to herself while she clumsily takes a step forward. She saw Melodia making a bit of an amused expression before the trenchcoat covered Astrid’s face. How the heck is she supposed to walk when she can’t see?? Feeling the magic holding the specter fade, Astrid recasts it so Melodia can offer them both directions to where the bodies are hiding. The woman stays invisible while she helps direct Astrid quietly.

They look ridiculous.

When Blue Trenchcoatstrid walk around the corner, the cadence at which they approach the door guarded by two men is a bit off-putting. They don’t wobble, but the steps seem to be more like shuffles forward comparatively to how an adult man would usually walk. If only Astrid could just… be invisible. That would be a useful skill, wouldn’t it?? Then they wouldn’t have to do something that surely won’t work. It can’t possibly work.

“You alright there, Geoff?” one of the guards asks, noting the strange pace at which supposedly Geoff walks.

Melodia whispers in Blue's ear, her voice so soft it seems like a breeze. _{"Tell them you've had a lot to drink."}

---

Call Ghost [post 1/3]

"Uh, ehm. You've had a lot to drink." Blue stated, following Melodia's advice as Astrid shuffled the two of them closer. The two guards looked at each other, an eyebrow raised. Then one smirked, apparently amused, but the other looked back at the trenchcoated duo with genuine concern. He stepped forward and leaned in to whisper in Blue's ear, making Blue tap Astrid head in a panic to try and get her to stop walking.

"Uh, right. I don't think the Madam would be happy about you being this trashed. You should probably go home. I heard the last guy that showed up wasted was drowned in the sewer." He whispered, but then sniffed and look confused. "You been eating raspberries? You smell real... fruity." He said as he pulled away, his head tilting in confusion. Maybe it was some kind of Raspberry wine that the man got drunk on.

The other guard stifled a laugh after hearing that. But then he looked curiously at the pair.

"Hey Geoff, where's your imp?" He asked, pointing to Blue's empty shoulder. A previously invisible imp suddenly appeared on both of the door guard's left shoulders, one whispering in the smirking man's ear.

Oh shit, the imp! They completely forgot about the imp the guy had! Hurry, think of some excuse, a good one!

"Uh, getting me... a... croissant." Blue mumbled the first thing that came to mind. Perfect.

The two guards suddenly looked very serious. Blue would have been sweating from nervousness if they were really human. This didn't look good. Then, the guard who had stepped forward spoke up.

"You... you can do that?" He asked under his breath, sounding genuinely impressed with the man who had apparently tamed his devilish companion well enough to fetch him baked goods.

If Melodia were physical, her hand meeting her face would create a loud smack. Luckily, she’s incorporeal so no one hears it and is invisible so no one sees it. That’s right. Blue takes everything quite literally. Something they still need to work on. At least it worked out alright, it seems.

“Damn, Geoff’s a genius!” the other guard cackles, slapping Blue Raspberry on the shoulder. “Get your imp to bring us croissants too!”

Astrid feels the weight of Blue Geoffberry pushing down on her when the guard slaps them on the shoulders. A croissant? Really? Maybe she should let Blue eat these guys too. No, wait, bad thoughts. They could beat them up. They need to get inside though! Her fingers squeeze at Blue’s legs, and she looks up at them from beneath the trenchcoat hoping they’ll be able to convince the guards to let them through. Otherwise it’s time to fight. If they could see through the door they could just teleport inside with their blink cloaks!