[PRP] The Gravity and the Glue (Robert/Mimsy)

[Nio Love]

There had previously been no worry that the creature within was hesitant to express itself to Robert, until Mimsy started thinking about it. Until that point, Robert was just worried it was dying. Now he was starting to think it was playing favorites.

It didn't help that the creature was all too happy to play the game Mimsy described, tapping against the egg at the exact spots her fingernail had just hit. It did not know the purpose of the game, but it played just the same - and just as sure as Mimsy was the cleverest woman Robert had ever met, the plan worked without delay. One tap with a claw was enough to make the tinest little puncture in the egg, precise enough to fail to cause a crack but large enough to blink one surprisingly open eye through.

It saw her.

"BAHA!" Robert screamed, having only just gotten the joke of 'Morris Code' at the same moment the egg was punctured. "That's the best thing I ever heard. MORRIS CODE. I'm gonna use that." He leaned in, and saw the creepily blinking eye through the tiny hole it had made, unnerved at the sight of it. He turned to pick up the three theropods in his arms, and carried them gently over to see their sibling break through its shell.

"Hey, little guy." Robert greeted the tiny eye, as it focused on him for a moment. "Come on out and meet your family."

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[Nothing Yet]

Though the minipet could (presumably) not speak English, it was clever enough to follow along with the game she'd proposed. Its acquiescence was almost thrilling, and her tapping had just begun to pick up speed when its claw punched through the shell. With a fascinated gasp, she pulled her hand away to investigate the new presence, eyes alight with a spark of curiosity.

It stared. She stared back.

"Congratulations," she whispered, providing no further information or greetings before falling silent. There was no more tapping for the moment, either - she just kept staring, entirely comfortable with this exchange.

This felt normal, intuitive, and that was encouraging, in spite of the fact that this was a newborn FEAR creature and not a human child.

"We could create an authentic Morris Code of our own," she suggested, with half a grin and a brief, sidelong glance towards him. "No one will be capable of understanding us, but we will understand each other. A slightly hyperbolic extension of our reality."

Her stare had returned immediately to the egg, and she was hesitant to break away when Robert gathered its siblings to meet it. Reluctant to sever any trust that it may have placed in her, she tilted the egg just enough for the other three to be visible if it desired, but continued to hold it close enough to allow the option of staring at her instead.

"Are you ready to meet your family?" She tapped the shell at her closest approximation of where one of its arms might be. "Or would you prefer to be alone? I am sure that we can arrange either option, but...perhaps you should meet them before you make your assessment."

Robert seemed to want them to get along, judging by how quickly he'd moved to introduce them; there was a sense of obligation to get this right by the minipet's standards, but disappointing Robert was much higher on the list of things she hoped to avoid. It was best to maintain that she had not abandoned this prioritization.

Nio Love

 

[Nio Love]

"Oh my God yes we need a secret language." Robert breathed out, agreeing with too much excitement and shaky joy to even dwell on the topic for long. He snuggled as close as he dared, so that the three theropods and the egg were nestled warm and snugly between both of their bodies, with no room to spare. Mimsy was talking to the egged creature the same way she spoke to him. She never talked down to him due to his intellectual level. He smiled, and lifted up one of the theropods just enough to let it attach - quite effortlessly - to his shirt with its claws. It hung there as if it had been made to do so. Then he snugged closer, sealing up the room the movement had given them.

"Once the egg has a crack in it," Robert gently informed her, "It's only got a very small amount of time to get out of there before it actually won't make it. So if he just keeps staring at you through that hole, it'll be time to try and help." He hoped it wouldn't, but he couldn't say for sure. The theropod seemed to love staring at both him and Mimsy, and then at his brothers - or anything that moved. His focus was darting, but sharp. And his claws were, thankfully, still tapping at the egg near the tiny hole it had made. It was trying to get out, at least.

"Now he's just gotta find himself a good spot to make a crack. Eggs look so fragile to us, but man, to those little guys it's gotta be like trying to break through a brick wall with a tiny hammer."

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[Nothing Yet]

A lack of spoken response was to be expected, but Mimsy thought that its physical response was fairly apparent. Though it did seem interested in observing its siblings, she remained hesitant, and had all intentions of protesting the pressured introduction until Robert relayed that its safety depended on a limited timeframe.

The sense of urgency was somewhat startling, and she no longer found herself very inclined to allow it to stay within the egg if it chose to. Instead of offering more verbal encouragement, she watched quietly and carefully for any signs of further weakness in the egg, poised to assist it at the first indication that she was allowed.

She didn't have to wait long - a thin, hairline crack began to spread from the center of the egg, creeping towards the hole that had already been created. Delighted with this development, she wedged her nail into the tiny crevice, then pulled until an entire chunk of shell broke off into her fingers.

"Your turn." Having presented this challenge to the minipet, she stared expectantly down at it. "There is a limited quantity of your shell remaining. Will you allow yourself to be outdone?"

The smile that followed betrayed exactly how pleased she was with her clever solution.

Nio Love

 

[Nio Love]

Though in truth, it did not understand that she was daring it to do better, the crack allowed the tiny creature to latch its claws into both sides, and tear until the egg itself cracked in half, leaving it exposed to the world in its small, wet little bowl of goo and eggshell. Once it was free, it stretched out all of its limbs and let out a high pitched screech, garnering the attention of all its brothers. Upon closer inspection, despite how scandalized the tiny thing acted when Robert picked it up by the tail, he discovered that she was the only female of the group.

"It's a girl!" He informed Mimsy, putting it back down in her hands and letting her brothers climb down to virtually blanket her in their bodies. The one that had been attached to his shirt leapt on top of the dogpile, bounced off, and fell back into Robert's hand on its back. "Ain't they just the sweetest little darlings. Come on, let's put 'em back in this box, we've got some preparing to do."

He picked the turtle-wiggling one up and placed it back on his shirt, where it latched on immediately. Then, one by one, he picked the boys off of their sister and attached them to his shirt as well. Their tails were swishing as they clung there, swiping at one another and leaning their heads back to stare at Mimsy and the sister they were leaving behind.

When he arrived at the box, he began the process of trying to take them off of his shirt - and they were stubbornly refusing. "I guess they need to be in one of those minipet containers to survive, right? What else do they need? There's no momma, so they might not eat solid food yet. I don't know how to take care of minipets very well. You gotta help me with all the details. We can do it together!"

He was still trying to rip the first one off of his shirt.

"And we can make 'em toys, like uh, I could get a big thick stick of tree and make a little neanderthal looking guy for them to chew on. We should think of names too. Other than stubborn magnet - he's gonna rip my shirt! Mimsy, help!"

The shirt was in fact tearing at the site of the claw.

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[Nothing Yet]

As a humanoid entity of above-average height, Mimsy harbored a momentary irritation that she had actually been outdone by a minipet that could be crushed within her hand. It was almost a pity that there was no median between the transition from annoyance to pride; there was a significance in the fact that she had been capable of exercising the restraint to not destroy it in a display of her true superiority, which was lost and left unconsidered as Robert plucked up the creature to inspect it.

"Of course she is," she murmured with a passing amusement, already setting aside the samples of the shell and the 'nutrients' of FEAR that had been inside it. She had just finished separating them when the minipet was deposited into her care once more, and she struggled to keep her balance as its siblings followed suit.

"They will continue to require FEAR to sustain them now, yes." One was much simpler to manage, so she waited with unsubtle exigence for him to return this to a more manageable state. "If we do not currently possess the supplies that we need, we can obtain them from Halloweentown. It could be beneficial to ask for any suggestions that they might have, should we pursue this option."

There was a pause as she returned their tiny stares in triplicate, until they found the matter of clinging to the cloth of his shirt to be more pressing.

"I have very little experience...ah...sustaining minipets." She crossed towards the box with the newborn tucked carefully into her arms, allowing just enough room for her to feasibly interact with her siblings once they were close enough. "Laika is the only minipet that I am familiar with in this manner, but he was never this young in my care. Prior to meeting you, he was here for only a day."

The matter of shirt-clinging had become even more pressing, it appeared, as Robert began to plead for her help. Already aware of how ineffective it would be to solve this by taking them from him, she hastily employed another solution: after offering the comfort of one of her coat pockets to the baby she'd been holding, she took the hem of his shirt into her hands and attempted to remove it and all of the minipets at once, as proficiently as possible.

Nio Love

 

[Nio Love]

"I wanna pursue this option." Robert parrotted, already excited about the prospect of getting whatever was needed to keep the little clingers as pets. Mimsy solved his problem by pulling his shirt off, and he let out a yelp followed by three much more high pitched screeches when the shirt was pulled off and turned into a bag of dinos. He stood there, shirtless and unsurprisingly comfortable with it, and took the bag to the box they had come from. Instead of trying to separate them, he decided this particular shirt was now dino property, and just left the shirt to open on its own in the box. The dinosaurs were exposed, and began to rip and tear their new toy to bits.

Robert loved his shirts, but he was just glad that hadn't been his 'Ask me about my dinosaur' shirt. The irony, while hilarious, would have been lost in the wake of tragedy.

"I'll make each of them something to chew and scratch. That's all they wanna do it looks like." He watched them, a little hesitant to interact as they began to play with one another in snappy and dangerous motions. "And fight. Just like boys, huh."

Mimsy had mentioned how little experience she had in keeping pets alive, and Robert couldn't help but remember that in a box within arms reach was a messy goop of remains that he himself had caused. Neither of them were really the best pet owner material, when it came down to the wire. He convinced himself that he could do better, with these four. It was important that he did better.

"Names." He demanded, this time. The two greenish-yellow ones were battling one another for the right to stay standing, and Robert immediately pointed at them first. "Rocky and George." Naming them after boxers felt even more comfortable after Rocky, the mottled one, slammed George down with a swift slap of his tail.

The brown one was trying its best to find a way out of the tall box they'd been placed in. He was currently jumping, nonstop, and reaching claws out to try and convince Robert to pick him back up again. "Um. Maybe that one's name is Clutch. That's kind of a weird name though. What do you think?"

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[Nothing Yet]

Despite the brief case of minor harm inflicted upon her husband, the solution appeared to be successful. Mimsy smiled as she watched him carry the bundle of wriggling creatures, pleased with their efficiency as partners.

"I like that idea. I would have valued something crafted by my father, if he had given it to me." He never had, and the closest object that she could claim he'd bestowed upon her had burned up almost a year ago. "Do not forget to accommodate the needs of our female, who appears less inclined to participate quite so fervently."

She scooped the scaly girl out of her pocket, and placed her alongside her siblings in their shirt-nest, which she promptly burrowed into to create a makeshift bunker. Mimsy recognized this tactic from her own experiences with mandatory scheduled playtime, before she was no longer allowed to participate.

The cotton blend shield proved itself useful with immediacy, as two of her siblings began to play quite aggressively with one another. Had she been familiar with the source of the names that Robert chose for them, she would have confirmed the cleverness of his choice. Instead, she just nodded along and committed them to memory.

"It is only a weird name if you believe it to be. It is certainly suitable, in any case." This was probably not good advice, considering its origin was a person named Mimsy, but the irony escaped her. "If we are selecting names that have some relation to the traits that they have already displayed, I suggest 'Argon' for the girl."

As she spoke, she narrowed her eyes at 'Clutch' and hooked her arms around one of Robert's. There was a hierarchy of needs here, and she intended to establish it very early.

"Argon-argon dating is a method of measurement used in archaeology," she explained, leaning into him. "But the relevant similarity comes as a result of argon's etymology. The Greek word that it was derived from means 'inactive', which is comparatively accurate in this case."

Nio Love

 

[Nio Love]

Robert looked antsy with excitement as he pondered all the things that he was preparing to do. Toys, housing, treats, playtime, and oh, the tricks he would try to teach them! He couldn't handle how excited he was.

"George, Rocky, Clutch, and Argon." Robert confirmed, pointing at each one as he called out their name. Clutch was the only one who seemed interested in his voice at the moment, as his claws reached out for the pointing finger as it neared him. He did not seem deterred by Mimsy's sign of possessiveness, perhaps because he was too young to understand the line of hierarchy just yet.

But he would learn. Oh, he would learn.

"I'll find something for her." Robert promised, reaching out to try and get Argon to come out from her hiding place. "Till then, let's get them some Fear treats and make sure they're comfy. All that hard work getting out of their eggs is gonna hit them any second, and sleep's gonna come whether they like it or not."

The boys did not look very sleepy, though that might have just been their initial burst of excitement from being born. Robert reached in and carefully rubbed each of their heads with his fingers, eliciting a different but overall accepting reaction from each of them. They understood few things in this new world, but there was one thing they had already imprinted upon in their small, clever little memories.

Robert was their alpha mommy, and they were his to take care of.

The affectionate nudge seemed to trigger their awareness of how tired they were, and the fighting and fussing slowed to a stop one by one. Even though she might have attempted to stay at a distance, her brothers searched for - and eventually found - Argon under the shirt covers. They dug themselves in, surrounded her like a nest, and began the slow, twitching process of falling asleep. They needed it.

"See," Robert whispered, kissing Mimsy gently on the forehead. "They know what they're doing." His arm slid around her waist, and he picked her up against his body. "Now, let's go make this house their home."

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