Chapter Text
"Bloop... Bloop... Bloop..."
Nimona was playing with the rug. It was a new discovery.
Not the rug itself. It was a very ornate rug that had been there since before Nimona applied to be Ballister's sidekick. She remembered moving it herself when she remodeled the room to be more 'evil lair-y'. It was very pretty, or something. It could hide blood well with all of the red on it, which Nimona appreciated. That wasn't the part that was new, though.
When Nimona first entered this room after waking up from a nap, she happened to glance across the room where the rug was, and movement caught her eye. She didn't entirely know what happened at first, or if she had actually seen anything, but soon, sure enough, the movement happened again. It was like something... some sort of liquid, specifically, had dropped onto it, except from what Nimona could tell, the drop came from the rug itself. She couldn't really believe what she had seen at first, but she waited a few more minutes and, yeah the rug was doing something.
Naturally, Nimona went over to investigate. Nothing happened as she crept over — fair enough, it was only happening every so often — but after waiting for a few more seconds and getting impatient, Nimona decided to try and touch the rug. Just to poke it, see if that would do anything.
It did.
Starting from where she had touched it, the rug turned a dark teal and began to lift up like a rebound of a water droplet dropping into a puddle of water. The color spread out in a circle for a few centimeters, it's movement following the same behavior. Then, as it all came back down, the teal changed back into the color of the rug, as if nothing had happened. There was no ripple, no indication that anything had just occurred. The overall movement was small, but it sure was fascinating.
This discovery immediately distracted Nimona from... whatever she had come in this room to do, she wasn't even sure what that was anymore. She wasn't even sure how much time had passed between her making the discovery and when —
"Nimona? H– what are you doing?"
— that happened.
Ballister had entered the hideout pretty loudly, so Nimona knew he was there. She chose to ignore him, though, even after he spoke.
"Nimona?" Ballister tried again.
"I'm experimenting with the rug," Nimona answered this time, continuing to poke at it. The room was quiet for a few moments.
"Why?"
"Check it out!" Nimona sat up crisscross, turning towards Bal as she did so. He looked... so confused. And tired, but he had just come back from his 'knight duties' or whatever so that part made sense. And, maybe the confusion part made sense, too, but obviously if your rug starts doing weird shit you've got to experiment with it a bit.
Nimona and Bal stared at eachother for a few seconds, Nimona bouncing slightly as she waited for Bal to give in and check out the rug with her. He did, but not without being dramatic about it first (read — he gave a sigh as he started to walk over).
"Oh, come on," Nimona whined, "it's cool!"
"I'm coming," Bal said. He trudged his way towards where Nimona was sitting, although his posture relaxed as he walked over. Nimona couldn't hold in her smile; this was definitely a new thing Bal didn't know about and it was definitely going to freak him out.
Bal knelt down next to where Nimona was sitting and observed the scene for a few seconds. "Right..." he trailed off, his dark brown eyes scanning around the empty, non-moving space in front of them. "The rug?"
Nimona nodded rapidly, her excited bouncing starting up again.
"It's just a rug."
Nimona smiled even wider, probably now bordering on her creepy-evil-plotting smile, which Nimona didn't particularly mind. "Watch," she articulated, turning her whole body back to the rug and slowly leaning forward. She kept direct eye contact with Ballister as she did so; he did not appear to appreciate her dramatics. He raised one eyebrow at her and crossed his arms, occasionally glancing back down at the rug. No matter, Nimona was going to continue with her reveal anyways. She slowly lifted her arm to be hovering above the rug, pointing ominously down at it, foreshadowing what she was about to do. She then held that position, waiting for Bal to let his guard down. Then when she noticed Bal starting to relax, her finger suddenly came down on the rug, just enough to poke it, before bringing it back up to it's original position.
"What the–"
Nimona wasn't actually able to see if the rug had done the thing again, preferring to see Bal's reaction to her discovery. She wasn't disappointed; his face scrunched and his head recoiled back in apparent surprise. Then he peered closer, hesitantly extending his robotic arm. "What was that?"
"Right?!" Nimona exclaimed, startling Bal into falling over from his crouched position onto the side of his hip. "It's so cool! I didn't know it did that! Where'd you get it from? Did you buy it off the black market? Did you buy it from a haunted store at the end of a dark alley? Ooh, did they have more?"
"What is– I don't know, what..." Bal closed his eyes and inhaled deeply before continuing. "What is it doing?"
"I don't know!" Nimona exclaimed excitedly. "It just started doing that when I walked in earlier. It was originally doing it on its own, but then I started poking it, and now it does it when I poke it."
"That's... not right..." Bal trailed off, looking around the room. Nimona shrugged, turning back to the rug and poking at it again. It sure was still doing it. She poked it yet again, but this time swept her hand through the part that was lifting up to catch it.
"It has some sort of a grainy texture," Nimona observed aloud, watching as the dark teal granular material moved unnaturally to escape her hand and return to the rug. "Woah..." she breathed. "Check it out! It's like it's alive."
"It shouldn't be doing that..." Bal muttered, which, duh. That wasn't the point though.
Nimona caught another bit of grain and lifted it up as high as she could, then caught it with her other hand as it poured out of the first, and repeat for as long as she could. She chuckled. "It's like a fountain," she chuckled, turning towards Ballis– he was holding the hilt of his sword, like he was preparing to fight someone. Why was he holding his sword?
"Hey, relax, it's just a rug," Nimona said. "Why is your first instinct whenever you see something weird to attack it?"
Ballister didn't respond — rude — and instead continued to scan around the room. Nimona couldn't understand why he was so concerned. Had this happened before? Was this a sign of something? It shouldn't be. This was the first time Nimona had ever come across this, and she'd been around for a lot longer than Ballister.
Nimona looked back down at the rug. It was... moving, now? Not much, but the dark teal grains were more prevalent now, and were starting to move off to the side, as if being pulled by some sort of magnet.
"There!" Ballister shouted, jumping into a sprint and drawing out his sword, running over the rug in the same way the grains were going. He kicked up some of the sand as he ran, temporarily revealing the floor underneath. Looking up, Nimona only caught a glimpse of what Ballister had seen, but recognized a dark teal blob of something retreating into a dark hole covered by a grating on the wall. "Nimona!"
"On it!" What could fit in there? The slats of the grating were pretty small, but the actual hole it was covering was relatively large. Maybe she could transform into there into a cat? Yeah, that should work.
She was hot on the blob's tail as she chased it through what seemed to be an old-fashioned AC system, pretty quickly coming out the other side into the shadows of the forest. Nimona heard a large f-thump as the blob fell out of the AC hole or whatever it's called, which honestly sounded a bit weird for what she assumed to be some sort of weird sand. Nimona transformed out the other side into a wolf, just in time to watch the dark teal blob roll itself off the side of the nearby cliff. Oh, it wanted a chase? Nimona was going to give it a chase.
She very quickly realized that chasing this blob down a cliff as a wolf wasn't exactly the best plan, namely because she uncontrollably fell past it. Goat! Goat should work. She changed into a goat, leaping across it multiple times on accident until she finally managed to get a hoof on it. Annoyingly, the blob seemed unbothered by her attempt to stop it and continued to roll down the hill. Rude. Okay new plan, maybe a gorilla? She jumped lower, using her claws to slow her decent and attempted to scoop up some of the blob. The grains just fell right through her fingers. Not ideal, but it worked better than the goat.
She noticed the end of the cliff, dropping off into the end of an alleyway at the edge of the city, which the blob was just about to roll off. If Nimona could jump off into that alleyway, she could catch the blob as it fell! She wasn't sure what the plan would be after that, but she could figure that out.
She launched herself off the cliff, just as the blob was about to roll off. If she had timed this right, which she was sure she did, she would be able to land before the blob and catch it. If she then cupped her hands together, she could probably at least section off part of the blob to keep.
She landed pretty hard on the pavement of the alleyway, and waited. A few pieces of dirt fell, but... no blob. Did she mistime it? Maybe she could've fallen a little faster, but... she looked around. There was no blob movement. Actually, she didn't notice any movement at all except...
Standing behind her was a person. She noticed the heavy breathing as the person stood just a few feet behind where Nimona had landed, their arms tucked tight into their chest. Her heart sunk when she realized. They must've been going about their business, when she, as a giant gorilla, landed right in front of them in a very aggressive stance.
She couldn't bring herself to look them in the eyes. She wasn't supposed to be roaming about the city; the only people who knew she was still alive were Ballister and Ambrosius. "Sorry," she muttered instead, doing one last glace around the the alley for any blob movement before launching herself into the air, turning into a bluebird at the height of her jump so she could fly the rest of the way up the cliff.
Part of her didn't want to make it that easy. Part of her felt like should've turned into something that would have a harder time climbing the cliff — maybe the wolf — just because, like, why should she make it easy on herself after that? She scared the shit out of some random, innocent person who was just going about their business, just to catch some blob, for... why was she even doing it? Fun? All Ballister probably wanted was for her to chase it away. But no. She had to go and chase it down, and that ended up negatively impacting some innocent person.
Granted, getting startled was probably the best thing that could've happened, but still. For some reason that just got to Nimona, and she couldn't quite place why.
Ballister was waiting on the edge of the cliff, sword still in hand, scanning down the cliff as Nimona flew back up. She could totally mess with him if she wanted. She didn't really feel like it, but it was nice to know she had the opportunity to.
"Hey, boss!" she shouted, which was kind of hard to do with her tiny bird throat, but she made it work.
Bal lifted his head to where Nimona was flying. He visibly relaxed as soon as he spotted her and sheathed his sword. "Are you okay?"
Nimona dived towards him, transforming right next to into her normal self. "Yeah," she said with a shrug, "It disappeared in an alleyway."
"Good," Ballister said. He turned and starting heading back towards the hideout. "It seems to be leaving the rug alone now, luckily. Hopefully we won't have to deal with it again."
"What do you think it was?" Nimona asked.
"Probably some sort of trap," Bal answered, "although I don't recognize the technology. I'll let Ambrosius know so the new administration can look out for it."
Nimona nodded. That made sense, kind of, but why would someone be trying to trap her? People had tried that before, and it never worked. Also, again, only two people knew she was still alive. While it seemed like a reasonable enough explanation, it didn't seem to fit entirely right in Nimona's mind.
But whatever, it was over now, and now she knew to look out for it.
"Anyways, have you eaten yet?" Ballister asked, interrupting her thought process. She had to pause for a moment as she re-oriented her mind. Had she eaten yet? She remembered waking up from her nap, then walking out to the main room... Oh! That's what she went into that room to do!