Disclaimer! While small amounts of the information presented in this story is founded in hastily done research into the real world study of zoology, the author is not a zoologist and is also taking his own creative liberties as to make the story make sense in his own fictitious setting.

In Scraps there is an alternative version which features an alternative NSFW ending.
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Button Presses.

Mild flame flickering.

D: *Slrrrrrrrp…*

Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. Coaster plonking.

D: “Here he comes…”

Footsteps.

Pause.

D: “Huh?”

Pause.

Scrape.

D: “I swear I heard him… HOLY SHHHHHIT-”

P: *Pffffft. Laughing*

D: “Were you already inside?”

P: *Laughing* “No, I just got here.”

D: “How’d you get behind me so quick?”

P: “I flew around back.”

D: “You can fly?”

P: “Yeah! I watched some of the students at FlyCare and just replicated the way they were doing it.”

D: “Do it again, I want to see.”

Scrape.

Long pause.

Scrape.

D: “Impressive!”

P: “Yeah! Robe fits too!”

D: “How do you hide who you are?”

P: “Let’s get inside!”

Footsteps.

P: “So, when I’m at Canine’s Cave I’m always a dog. It’s when I’m outside of the cave that I’ll find a place and shapeshift, but for like…”

Cushions plumping.

P: “a day after that? The whole thing was just up and down from owl to slime, and then I practised going from dog to owl and back at home.”

D: “How does dog to owl and back work?”

P: “It’s a quick change. I’d show you, but the clothes are gonna have to come off for that ‘cause I still struggle with doing it through my trousers and you’ll see something scandalous. The main reason we do this is, say, if we’re out and about and something fucks up and we’re being attacked for whatever reason, the first thing we do is run away and get a lead that lets us duck into a private corner where we quick change and then, when they finally catch up, it’s as if I am a different person and those attackers will then not be able to find me.”

D: “My goodness. So this is a really thought out thing then.”

P: “Slimes that wind up travelling to the Surface have heaps on heaps of dramatic arts degrees and training under their belts. We’re not just good at taking forms, we’re masters of disguise in a very literal sense.”

D: “That’s what it’s called?”

P: “It’s a Masters in Disguise, yes. That’s a real degree I have but can never show off on the Surface. That certificate is at my home in the Underground.”

D: “Wow.”

P: “I have a lesson planned, just like I said.”

D: “I’m ready for it. Give it to me.”

P: “I know my physiology fascinates you, so I’m gonna start there.”

D: “I listened back over some tapes between these sessions and something that stood out was you mentioned “types of slime”, some of which can change colours and some can’t”

P: “Exactly, so let’s start with the types of slime I am composed of. Think of this a bit like a taxonomy tree, you’ve got slime at the top. And then under that you’ve got 2 categories - the slime that makes up my eyes, and then the rest of it. The slime of my eyes has three parts, each of which represent the same 3 visible parts of animal eyes; a pupil which captures the light, an iris which controls how much light enters that pupil, and the sclera for shape and protection.”

D: “That is surprisingly simple…”

P: “Good, the other type is more fucked up, but hopefully still simple; the purple stuff is in, like, maybe 3 categories which themselves split off into doing their own things. The stuff that is kept on my outer body is two things; there’s one type which is mostly used to make skin and fur and scales and feathers, and then the second type, we call it fluff, is used for extending the hair that makes the hair on my head, but also excess tufts of hair like chest hair, underarm hair, pubic hair, et cetera. If I make other forms we can use it to male excess webbings of skin too like how dragons wings kind of take that physiology.”

Writing.

D: “And functionally what can they do for you?”

P: “I probably should have started there. Can we go back?”

D: “Yes.”

P: “All slime, no matter what, can shapeshift. It can all become looser like water and it can all become harder too. Some slime types can become harder than others. It can all mix to an extent, though if eye slime mixes with the rest of it, it doesn’t properly mix in and it will all be stuck as one bunch and we can mix the functions of them too, but it’ll make the functions of each more level. And then even if they mix they can unmix; in other words, I have full control over all of my slime at any given moment, with exceptions which we’ll get to when we talk about how slimes die. Um… slime can also come apart from me and I’ll still have control over it while it’s split off, and then I can have it rejoin. And the all slime can become warmer and cooler too. Does that all make sense? Or at the very least can you rationalise all of that?”

Writing.

D: “You’re a bit of a messy talker, but to recite back what I’m getting from it… Eye slime and body slime are kind of like oil and water in terms of their ability to mix. The purple slime types all have varying functions which can mix with each other which can make the weaker functions stronger in exchange for the stronger becoming weaker. Slime can become more solid or fluid and warmer or cooler. And it can also separate and rejoin.”

P: “Yes, basically.”

D: “Okay what were you about to say about that outside stuff?”

P: “The main outer body slime is where much of the colour changing comes from. The lighter fluff slime has a much milder ability to do that and no matter how much I make that, say, green, it will never not be a little bit purple.”

Writing.

D: “Do you think that’s because it’s weaker or something?”

P: “We don’t have a clue really. Maybe that’s true?”

D: “Okay, heard. There’s the stuff on the outside. What is on the inside?”

P: “Inside we have the slime we use to make flesh happen. All of the colour changing power we have in this stuff is making it redder or of a fleshier tone. This can become denser, but it’s not going to become much denser than real animal insides. Additionally, again, the chromatosis on this one just can’t let go of the purple. There’s always a purple undertone here. I say purple, but I’m talking about me in particular. If I was a green slime, it’d consistently have a greenish undertone to it, if I was blue it’d be blue, et cetera.”

Writing.

Pause.

D: “Okay… continue on…”

P: “We call the next type tooth and nail slime because that’s what it’s best used for, but it’s almost entirely responsible for making everything hard as stone. We have this naturally as a defense mechanism; a wild slime will harden like a rock to parry against an oncoming swinging attack. In disguises though, we’ll use this to create teeth, horns, beaks, claws, we’ll mix it in with external slime to make our scales hard, it can make the crown jewels extra rigid if we’re struggling with it, we can make fake bones out of it too… it’s a heavy lifter for us.”

Writing.

D: “This hardness stuff. Is there also an emotional element to it?”

P: “Yes, actually, I can control it how I want if I’m in a good state. But that defense mechanism I mentioned is a panic or shock or anger response if we’re particularly cornered, but emotion can also result in us losing a bit of our control and we may struggle to harden our bodies, say if we’re flustered, in stress or fear, maybe tired.”

Writing.

D: “This is all making a lick of sense…”

P: “Can I continue?”

D: “Yeah I’m nearly done writing the last bit.”

P: “The last bit of slime is stuff like our waste and other bodily fluids. We eat and then we get sustenance and then the waste needs to get out, but also sweat and, we’ll get to reproduction later, but seminal fluid. I mentioned splitting a bit ago; I can control stuff that’s been split apart from the main body in the short term, but over time I will lose control of it until it is eventually totally lost. Once it’s lost it reduces to a puddle on the floor basically and my body will start regenerating it back at a faster rate than slime is normally regenerated. It takes more effort and thus more time for that to happen.”

Writing.

D: “How does that slime develop over the lifespan?”

P: “So, in our youths and from being a baby, we are indistinguishable from a wild slime. I can still look that way now if I can and, say I do get caught by someone and they find out I’m a slime, I will run away just as a wild slime would; as a runny fluid blob, can climb anything with it and it’s vaguely similar to swimming I guess, except I’m swimming on a hard surface and swimming up walls and across a ceiling, but as young slimes that what we are all existing like all the time. It’s over our training in shapeshifting that we start evolving the composition of our slime and our purple slime starts splitting off into sub-types of slime which we learn to manipulate to make shapes and colours."

Writing.

D: “Say you lose some slime. Do you shrink?”

P: “In the sense that there is less of me, yes. We tend not to lose too much at a time because we’re good at avoiding that, and we can keep a gap on the inside such that we’re still opaque and appear to be the same volume as I previously was”

D: “Huh… right… opaque?”

P: “This might be better demonstrated… I’m gonna switch really quick…”

Writing. Footsteps. Clothes ruffling. Wet sounds.

P: “How fast was I?”

D: “Oh, I wasn’t timing…”

P: “Fuck… Well…”

Wet footsteps.

D: “Grab my hand and just, like, pull…”

Wet slap. Schluck. Schlunk.

P: “It’s not actually opaque, but it is a very dense body. So, you can see through it a little when you stretch it enough, And if you stretch it more it becomes more and more denser. If I ‘sweat’, that substance will be very clear; a touch purple, but still clear. Slime piss is about as opaque as urine. Slimes’ semen is a paler purple, slime faeces are a darker purple unless we’re sick and have slimy diarrhoea when it’s lighter. Our bodily waste functions are similar to animals, is what I am getting at.”

D: “I have a huge instinct to treat you as so many different things and yet you’re none of them…”

P: “We have about as many questions…”

D: “Is shapeshifting a natural trait of your species?”

P: “Not on this level, no. The DNA analysis component is present in the wild slime and the hardening of the exterior and the reshaping to gain advantages in fights and flights are all in the wild equivalent too, as is the colour changing, which is used to ward off anything that might try to ingest them. Our sentience and our full on shapeshifting is all learned. This is the history part; the wild equivalent has been an Underground domesticated species for a very, very long time. It was much later, but still a very very long time ago, that a witch - we know her as Diggy, though we’re not sure if that’s what she was actually called or just an affectionate nickname - observing the wild species’ shaping and DNA reading abilities got curious about what else these natural abilities have to offer. And so she would ask volunteers in her neighbourhood to let her study them. She kickstarted it; she would give the slimes her own DNA to analyse and then train them to take on the shape of her body and that is where it all started. She was very protective over what she had created, and when the thought of us remaining as pets, even in such a sentient state, was inevitably discussed, she was also the one to shut it down and demand we be a free species like the rest of the anthros.”

[Writing.]

D: “Tell me more about how sentience comes to be. Is this a part of your nature now?”

P: “Yes. We have evolved since then too.”

D: “The species has done that on their own?”

P: “Outside of the initial incident with the witch, yes.”

D: “Fascinating… You’ve mentioned or hinted at a few times now reproduction.”

P: “I have.”

D: “What’s going on there? Cause as far as I can see, you don’t have any genitalia”

P: “I have reproductive slime, we just keep it inside for decency’s sake.”

D: “And how is the sexual dimorphism of slimes?”

P: “Non-existent. Slimes don’t have genders biologically. I am as capable of giving someone a child as I am baring one. I am a man insofar as we are anthros and there are gender norms in anthros, but we can’t match that to, say, my penis or semen because I can still be impregnated. I will always present as male. Other slimes have their other preferences, hence my dad’s partner is my ‘birther’ and not my mother or even second father.”

Writing.

D: “How does the species reproduce?”

P: “We have sex like any other anthro. The gist overall though is one of us contributes the equivalent of semen and the other contributes an egg equivalent. There are big differences; if I were to… uh… do you mind if my language is a little flavourful?”

Writing.

D: “Go ahead…”

P: “If I were to get cum inside of my equivalent of a womb, I can control whether or not I let that fluid mix with my own and if I were to cum inside of a slime womb equivalent. whatever you wanna call it, I would still have that control of that lost slime in the short term and my partner can control their womb like I was able to in the first example. Even once it’s mixed, it can be ditched. There is even a choice to let the development happen externally for periods of time, though because of the loss of control over time, it does need to be incubated internally still. We do need a partner to reproduce; none of that shark thing, my bemusement there was genuine.”

Writing.

D: *Chuckling*

P: “Hybrids exist. Lavaslimes, remember? Lavaslimes though are not offsprings of lava monsters fucking slimes, that’s just when lava mixes with a slime and the slime is like ‘this is really cool, I’ll keep it.’”

D: “That’s all that is?”

P: “Yep, and then they can reproduce and they might pass on a bit of the lava. But as hybrids go, slimes can only mix with other sentient fluids. That said, slimes can still be impregnated by and manipulate the cum deposited into them by an animal to form a new slime.”

D: “Now there’s a tidbit you’d be shocked about if it came from my mouth and you were a different species. How does that happen?”

P: “We don’t know, but the process goes the same as normal slime reproduction, where they mix and mix until they can sustain themselves. One thing I will add though is the reverse isn’t true; slime semen will never make an animal pregnant, only the other way around.”

D: “This is in alignment… hang on let me finish…”

Writing.

D: “This is in alignment with much of nature, it’s quite often the female that retains a lot of the sexual power in that regard. And you of course note that the impregnated slime isn’t female but agender biologically speaking, but the point is the ejaculating party in these asexual reproduction circumstances are often not the ones capable of asexual reproduction, it’s the females.”

P: “I’m glad it’s not totally strange in that regard.”

D: “My curiosity is getting the better of me, I must admit. You don’t have to follow along with this as it’s a very inappropriate line of questioning, but what does it mean to have genitalia as a slime? What does that look like?”

P: “When transforming, we know everything. I didn’t appear to have a penis when I shapeshifted into an owl because it took the form of a cloaca and the penis is tucked away, just like you. If I switched to a dog right now I would present with a sheath that looks like a dog's dick and behaves like it. My other reproductive anatomy that functions as a womb is kept inside of my body and I reuse the pieces to make new traits.”

P: “As for what it looks like in slime form, we can extend it like a tentacle and that’s the natural look of it with no editing, and the other reproductive anatomy is pretty much a hole with the surrounding body taking a shape fit for it.. As a matter of preferences though, when we gain out first form and we borrow that species’ oral structures, we do the same with the way we present our genitals, and so if I brought mine to the surface right now I would present you with a canid-like penis tucked into a canid-like sheath, that emerges when aroused. It has a lot less detail, like we don’t need to give it veins or realistic colours anything like that, but if you were to identify it you’d say it was a replica of a canid cock.”

Writing.

D: “And how does it work?”

P: “Same as you'd expect probably.”

D: “So, like, it’s massaged until a climax is reached, and then ejaculation occurs.”

P: “Right.”

Writing.

Pause.

Quiet tapping.

P: “What is your question?”

Pause.

D: “Let me think about it first…”

Pause.

D: “Your… emotional capacity… is about normal… how is your… response… to sensations?

P: “How do you mean?”

D: “Does it hurt to have pieces detached? Does it feel good to receive a massage? Is your… anatomy… sensitive?”

P: “It hurts to detach slime if it’s not my choice. Um… being massaged feels good, but it’s as a matter of pure sensation; we don’t get, like, muscular knots. And… yes… the reproductive anatomy is… Highly… sensitive… Our whole bodies are already very sensitive but our junk is… well…”

D: “Even more that way.”

P: “...Yeah.”

Quiet tapping.

D: “I think… that’s all my questions about that… No! Actually one more thing; you don't have blood, yeah?"

P: “No blood. I guess the equivalent is our whole bodies; we lose more than half of that, we’re dead.”

D: “You can’t split in half and have two of you?”

P: “No.”

D: “That is peculiar.”

P: “I was a little jealous of starfish when you said they were able to do that, it sounds cool.”

D: “What is the reason it doesn’t happen?”

P: “Well, the slime dies on its own.”

D: “What does it die of?”

P: “I think a lack of water has something to do with it in combination with a lack of control over it. We’ve tested, previously, what happens when it stays in water and our sense of control over it is longer lasting, but it still perishes all the same in the water, and so there’s something about slime being attached to the rest of our bodies that is keeping it alive in ways it can’t without it.”

Writing.

D: “You hinted at diseases earlier.”

P: “Yes. We can be poisoned and become sick. We have hygiene processes too, like we keep clean because dirt can get stuck to our bodies and we have ways of getting that out. As for sickness, it’s us being poisoned in some way.”

Writing.

D: “If I ate slime would I get sick?”

P: “If the slime was sick, maybe, it depends if that sickness can ail you. Slimes’ bodily fluid equivalents are totally safe to ingest, again, assuming it’s healthy, which it tends to be even among sicknesses. I don’t know about- if, say, I went and cleaned and then you ate slime from my body, I don’t know how good that would be for you because when that happens to a slime they just bring it back to them, but any of the waste slime? I mean, not to be crude, but it happens all the time.”

Writing. Quiet tapping.

D: “Mmkay…”

Paper flapping.

D: “Hnn- hrrrrrghhhaa.”

Pat.

D: “How do you think? Where is the slimes brain?”

Pause.

Wet sound.

D: “All over?”

P: “Probably.”

Quiet tapping.

D: “You are one potent fluid…”

P: “Your questions have just about covered everything I had planned.”

D: “Can I… hmh… Can I play around for a minute?”

P: “What do you mean?”

D: “Can I smell you? And can you smell things? Can you sense things besides touch?”

P: “I have all 5 senses. Smell me how?”

D: “There are more than 5 senses, for one, but what I mean is, do you leave behind a scent?”

P: “We do actually! We can remake the scents to a mild extent too.”

D: “What is the normal smell of the slime? Do you use that as part of your species’ social engagement?”

P: “Idk that there is a ‘normal’ scent of slimes. It’s not a social thing for us though, no.”

D: “C-... Can I try really quickly?

P: “What? To smell me?”

Pause.

P: “Yeah, why not…”

Footstep.

D: *Sniff…*

Pause.

D: “It’s like…” *sniff* “Very faint, but…” *sniff* “It's humid and like… vaguely putty?”

Footstep.

P: “It doesn’t taste like putty.”

D: “Tasting is a big step…”

P: “I mean… I’m not opposed…”

D: “Well… I… am not mentally prepared to do that. What do people tell you you taste like?”

P: “They don’t come to a flavour profile, it’s just like… ‘ooooh… you taste… goooooood…’ or ‘baaaad’ if they felt like being an asshole.”

D: *Laughs.*

Writing.

D: “I think I’ve covered everything I’m willing to pry on right now.”

P: “Right now?”

D: “Right now, yes. I’ve pushed my anxiety about as far as it’ll go today. You got nothing left?”

P: “I’m sure there’s more I could say, but it’s not with me right now… haha…”

Pause.

D: “Then I think we’re good… I’ve got pages upon pages to interpret already.”

P: “Now a, uh… good time to pack up?”

D: “Uh… you’ve only been here for about half an hour… I mean you can leave whenever you want of course, but I’m not kicking you out or anything.”

P: “Right! Um…”

D: “Feeling a little awkward?”

P: “...Yeah?”

D: “Yeah… if you wanna, uh… part ways early today…”

P: “Yeah… uh… sorry if, uh… I soured the mood at all…”

D: “No, no, you're fine… I, uh… yeah… that's me…”

P: “All good. Uh… chat, uh.. later?”

D: “Yeah, uh, shoot a message…”

Scratching. Footsteps.

Button press.