Too Goo To Be True

The weekend did a number on the slime lab.

When Setsuna returns to work on Monday, he'll find that the place now holds twice as many slimes as before: not only more slimes have been stuffed into the same enclosures, but somehow Uta has managed to acquire more enclosures. Books and scrolls are piled on the main workbench, on secondary workbenches, on shelves and on enclosures. The place teems with them; they're mostly low-quality menu crafted affairs, text only and rough to the touch, but they still qualify. Poster-sized sheets line any previously empty surface of the walls, each of them filled with texts, diagrams, graphs, and mind maps; there even is a corkboard featuring a map of Yamato covered in pins and strings, each pin holding in place a crudely drawn stick figure of either slimes, cities, books, and people.

Uta is sitting at her table, buried in a book. One can see her eyes, despite the large bags under them, never so focused before, scan that volume at breakneck speed as she hums to herself; she flips a page every three or four seconds. What is notable is that on Friday she couldn't wait for her contractually stipulated week of promotional modeling for Gwen to be over, yet today she's still in exactly the same outfit she was so eager to get out of, earrings and all; however, it is splattered in slime goo, and even frayed at the edges with acid burns. Ine could bother to inspect her, but the way she smells leaves little doubt about whether or not she's been washing.

The answer, by the way, is 'not.'

She eventually reaches the end of the book, and slams it closed. "Three-hundred and fifty three occurrences. Seven geographical connections. Estimated accuracy seventy-eight point nine percent, plus or minus one point seven." she mutters, mostly to herself. "Accounts overlap significantly. Cross-correlation disproves five of thirteen hypotheses. Nakamoto cojecture still an option." She makes sure to place the book atop a pile on her right, taking a little time to make sure the way it lines up with its brethern below is seamless. "Neatness. Vital."

She stumbles sleepily towards the opposite wall, barely mantaining her balance; midway through, her stomach growls so loudly that the slimes (along with possibly the closest Pekos in the next room) squeak and dart for cover from what they believe to be a mighty predator.

Once she reaches the pins-and-string map of Yamato, she sketches a few more stick figures, pins them to the board, and engages in some herding of that cat's cradle while letting out the mother of all yawns.

"...Yes." Once she's satisfied with the new configuration, pencil still clasped in her hand, she moves on to the various graphs and diagrams, and reports the information she's apparently just absorbed from that book in each poster, all from memory.

If one were to double check, they'd notice she's not making a single mistake.

    Setsuna enters the slime lab, and well he is also still exhausted. Boss fights and cursed dolls and all that so it is what it is but he had someone special to check in on and take back his place to play with. Yep , Setsuna was here to retrieve Demon from Uta, who he had left puppy sitting. However when he enters he finds the lab not in the same state he left it. So many slimes and papers and wow , "Uta! You somewhere in here ? Just you know give a call if you are buried in papers or slimes or... even here. Also Demon, you here little terror of a fluff ball. Where is he? Come here , who's my goood..." This continues for much longer then it should but yes we all see where Setsuna's mind is.

Uta turns to glance at Setsuna. "Setsuna. Hi. You were right. Slime #329 and #330 are chunky." She flicks her menu open, then closes it immediately. "Feeding time. Twelve minutes. Calculated optimal nutrition regime. Tabular format. There." Without looking, she gestures vaguely at a sheet pinned to a wall. She does a 180 degree turn, and stumbles her way towards a knee-level enclosure, where she squats to observe the slimes inside. "First column, ID number. Second column, name. Third column, exact number of kibbles." She flicks her menu open, and a leather bound booklet appears in her free hand. While staring at the slime (and yawning), she jots down notes, and resumes humming quietly to herself again.

    Setsuna peers at Uta and then around and then nodding his head slowly he follows along. "You've definately been busy, you say you've done all this, got a full night sleep, bathed, and all that? Very impress..."Setsuna trails off as he hears faint yipping and follows it to find his cerberus puppy in a slime container. " Oh , come here." Stopping what he is doing he frees the cerberus puppy who chews on Setsuna's hand as the necromancer looks back up at Uta. " So Uta, whatcha hummin? "

"Food. Food gets eaten, food becomes excrement, excrement is flushed, excrement ends up in sewage, slimes eat sewage. Skip the middlemen, go straight for the slimes." Uta rambles as she marches at a brisk pace past a line of enclosures, marking a checkmark at each slime she sees. The rate of checkmarks makes that scribbling sound of the pencil resemble a machine gun. "Sleep. Not a slime. Irrelevant. I can-" She launches into a concerto of a combined yawn and stomach growl that, this time, definitely terrorizes the pekos next door. "-go on perfecly fine. I am not sleepy. I have coffee." Yes. Cold. In a cup that hasn't been touched in two days.

She casts a quick glance at when Setsuna retrieves the puppy. "Demon. Infant Cerberus specimen. Not a slime. Distrubance. Reduced efficiency by an estimated seven point three percent. Had to be contained,"

She slaps her notebook closed, and disappears it into her inventory. She returns to the tomes on the desk, sits down, picks a new one from another maniacally stacked pile, and begins the high-speed skimming again. "Humming? I don't. Inefficient. Waste of breath."

She goes back to humming the Earth song, which Setsuna might or might not remember Uta singing during his own Strange mood.

    Setsuna approaches Uta with a level of slow caution as Demon growls a little in her direction. Someone did not like being put in a container. So Setsuna approaches and rubs his chin for a music before he gets an idea . "If the experiment runner breaks down due to not maintaining a certain level of body functionality that will be a big hit to efficency. Like days of lost work. You would rather that not happen, so how about we compromise, an hour of sleep and I will reach out to someone to bring you a bowl of soup that you can drink while you work. How does that sound?" Setsuna looks around and starts getting the big picture. " Maybe Prophylaxis will come by too."

"Uh? Oh. Yes, of course. I will sleep." Uta's already one quarter of the way through the book. "I just have to finish one thing."

We all know how that 'I have to finish a thing' thing is gonna go, hm?

"What? Invite Prophylaxis? Are you organizing a soup party?" Page turn. "That's- that's a weird thing to do if I've ever heard one." Page turn. "Sold. We'll have one to celebrate when I'm done." All this time, she talks without detaching her eyes from the tome.

    Setsuna looks at the Tome and decides to not just grab it and walk away. He will not treat Uta like a child. he won't. So he stands there and watches the page turns one by one by one. So much so that he sits for a moment himself. Finally he has an idea as he walks up to her and whispers in her ear. " You know I heard there was a rare slime spawn. A mythic level slime that only appears to those who sleep during moments of intense focus. The countless sheep slime."

"Nice try," Uta replies. "Your statement conflicts with the geosemantic morphological distribution on the connectivity map." She points at the cork-and-strings map on the wall. "Besides, nobody seems to have seen slimes /spawn/. That's one of the big mysteries." She slams her book closed, and, once again, she staggers elsewhere, this time towards a chalkboard. "I have already cross-referenced the whole literature on the subject," she begins, over the rhythmic tapping of chalk against the dark slate. "Literature which consists entierely of tiny sections in larger monster handler books and that basic book over there." She points at the single book on the table which is not on a stack. It is a quite simple affair. She turns to Setsuna. "And it contained /this/!"

She reaches into her slime-splattered bag, slung over her shoulder, and pulls out a yellowed sheet of paper, which appears to have been ripped from a larger book on slimes. "There is Another!", she whispers, with reverence. "Someone else went down the Path of Slimology before me! Someone has the Secret of the Slimes! Has compiled the Grimoire of Goo! The General Compendium of Gelatinous Creatures!" She stares for a moment, and- yes, she does need that beauty sleep.

    Setsuna looks at Uta for a long moment, mouth open just a tad as he tries to process it all. " Wait wait wait wait..." He simply begins to pace and every so often a finger there and another over at the corkboard, ignoring where in the world Uta found cork, and then finally he looks at the page that was handed to him and scratches his head and does a whole nother lap around the lab as he tries to quickly actually catch up before he stops infront of Uta. " Are you telling me, that you are not the first mistress of slimes and infact there is someone with greater slime knowledge then you? Do you know what this means?"

"Yes! But no! But yes!", Uta replies, sandwiching a crestfallen expression between two perky ones. Her earrings jingle a little as her expressive ears spring up, droop, and spring up again. "It means that I must find them! And become their disciple! Either directly, or through the legacy they've left!" She snaps her current book closed, maniacally places it atop a different pile, and heads over to give a new batch of slimes a fresh physical. "It also means you're not feeding the slimes, but we are still within tolerance. I will let that slip." She inserts her ungloved fingers into a bluish slime's mouth, and pulls it as wide as she can before leaning over, closing one eye and peering inside. Her HP bar, still not in great shape, drops further while her finger glow a little. To be fair, she does wince, but is quick to mumble, "It's just a little prick... faster than wearing gloves... plenty of HP left..." She lets go, and moves on to the next specimen, still humming the Earth song.

    Setsuna looks at the slimetologist for a moment and realizes the dangers of someone with the songs all in their head to actually hit a mood. "It means I will go to the ends of Yamato to help you. So why don't we do this." He places a hand on the shoulder and does his best to lead Uta to the armchair, " You sit. Close your eyes, think our next steps. Meanwhile I will take care of all the slimes while you plan. This way there is a double efficency boost." He even hums the song too, to try and sway her to his idea.

Setsuna's soothing tones achieve the desired effect. Hitting just the right frequency with Uta in the right mixture of trance and sleep deprivation, she follows Setsuna's lead a bit zombie-like (with more stumbling than shuffling). She doesn't really seem to realize that she's being placed on an armchair, and she was even going to close her eyes when the Earth song was hummed. Uh-oh.

Well, if he didn't know before, Setsuna will learn what effect this has: Uta's eyes pop back open (if /very/ tiredly so), and she reaches out with her hands. "The Caffeine slime! I haven't created the Caffeine slime! If I could just make one, contact might keep me going by osthmosis-"

It appears that humming the Earth Song at her makes her focus /deeper/.

    Setsuna blinks as he realizes what happens and smacks himself in the head. Taking a deep breath and calming himself down he says, "You already did. Let me get it for you. " With out waiting for another word he retrieves a blanket with slime patterns and the slime pillow. He then walks up behind Uta and with a quick flick of the wrist spreads the blanket over her and then puts the slime shaped pillow in her hands. " Oh no , I got the wrong one. It's the sleepy lavendar tea slime. It's a shame the effects are unstoppable and requires one to sleep for eight hours. A deep deep sleep. Don't worry though you will wake up and be able to go at two hundred percent efficeny and I will work till you wake."

Uta looks puzzled at everything going on around her. "The... what? Levander... huh?" The slime pillow is looked at with interest. "...three-dimensional simulacra... hmm... could be a viable way of storing and trasmitting information, especially when training budding handlers. Perhaps by obtaining the correct consistency..." she begins to squeeze at the pillow, at first, and then tests its tensile reaction with her cheek...

...and she goes limp, her eyes closed. She may still be looking, smelling, and sounding like a mess (the latter mostly due to the regular complaints of her stomach until now), but at least, now she seems to be on her way to resting.

    Setsuna watches the Uta finally sleep as he turns to begin getting the lab under control and quietly,very quietly make some chimlink calls. He was going to need some help with this.