Slime and Punishment

"What about tipping me over and shattering me on the floor?" Peri asked. "Even I'm surprised I made it through that."

Tibo was silent for a moment. "Rog has a stronger dramatic flair than I do. I'll ask him not to do that again, if we even do the freeze trap again."

"Am I under arrest?"

"We're not cops. You have not been detained. I would love to keep talking to you, but you can leave whenever you like." Tibo gestured to a door off in the corner of the large studio.

Peri barely needed the encouragement. She slid sluggishly out of the basin and reformed on the concrete floor. She staggered a bit as she formed her two legs once again, trying to pretend she did that on purpose. She walked over to the door he had gestured to. She turned the doorknob, which turned freely, but the door didn't move. There was a padlock on the door to keep it shut.

"The door is locked." She said.

"You can go underneath the door." Tibo said. "But you can't take anything with you if you do."

Peri stuck her leg out towards the gap between the door and the floor. She flattened her foot to about a centimeter or so thick and stretched out under it. She didn't see any new traps awaiting her underneath, just a narrow hallway with some boxes that could easily be some other form of trap waiting for her. That's how those prank shows worked, isn't it? Layer a trap onto another one to bemuse the audience?

Peri slithered back over to the basin, taking a seat within. She folded her fingers together, as she'd seen humans do when being interviewed on television. "I suppose I don't mind talking for a little longer."

"So how'd you get into this game?" Tibo asked. "Who is the goblin woman who sold you to us?"

Peri crossed her 'legs' in her basin seat. "I'll talk about me and my life, if you like. But I'm not talking about anyone else."

"You don't need to worry." Tibo insisted. "We're not recording this."

"I don't care." Peri was undaunted. "I'm NOT talking about anyone else, and you can't make me."

"I know we can't." Tibo said. "So how did you, and only you, get mixed up in this?"

"Slimes have to do what we have to do." She said shortly.

"Even if it's illegal?"

"What are they going to do, lock me up?" Peri shrugged. "If a slime was killing people indiscriminately, or even if they somehow had a good reason...I'm sure that there's a way they could be killed or otherwise sequestered into an inescapable cell. For the most part, we just sort of exist, neither the recipient nor the benefactor of justice or commerce."

"What good reason would a slime have to kill someone?"

"The same as anyone else." She said. "Self-defense... though we probably have the flexibility to avoid being forced to do that. I confess, when your friend was mocking me, I had some very dark thoughts that I hadn't had since I was being chased by adventurers in my youth. If I wasn't stuck as I was, I might have tried eating him whole."

She looked away, a little embarrassed. "You probably know how it is. The anger that never leaves you when you... grow up surrounded by bullies."

Tibo sighed. "Rog is a nice guy. He mostly does that sillier stuff for the thumbnails."

"You get paid to post these videos to the Internet?"

"Yeah."

Peri looked disgusted. "Wish it was that easy for me."

"It's hardly easy." Tibo said. "I work seven days a week most weeks. And there ARE slimes that have Internet presences. Some of them are meant to be wealthy influencers that live in those big mansions in the south. They have videos of them eating expensive things like diamonds."

Peri shook her head. "Stupid..." She said softly. "I've never eaten a diamond. But it's just carbon. I can't imagine it tastes good, and I'll bet it takes forever to get anything out of it. I'll bet it was a fake gemstone made of glass. Why eat it when you can spend it? It's just playing into the adventurer's claim that we all have gold jingling in our bellies."

"I'm not an adventurer..." Tibo said. "But I took the walking tour of the low-level forests. Some of the little slimes had coins floating in them."

"Well, sure." Peri said. "Where else are they meant to keep their property safe? Their studio apartment? We're lucky if we can find a space under a gnarled tree root to hide stuff. If not, we just hold them in our bellies AND get sliced up for those meager claims by people with swords worth hundreds of times as much... all so they can level up."

Tibo sighed. "You know that there are people out there... who don't believe that the low-level adventurers are even killing slimes when they first go out. They think the slimes regather themselves after being sliced up and continue their lives. They think it's all a big ruse."

"I assure you, sir." Peri said. "Most of the time, you find a young slime and chop it with an axe... if they're not flexible enough, they will pop like a wart and die. When a slime is very young, we're quite dense and rather inflexible... like a gumdrop. We only get skilled enough to take human shape after years of practice or watching TV. Most of us would rather just stay round and blobby, but... that's not acceptable in your world filled with beauty and body part fetishism. Only certain parts of the body are allowed to be round in the solids' world.

"However... think of it from the young slime's perspective." She continued. "Let's say that you did manage to survive your first strike from a young adventurer's broadsword or arrow. You burst like a grape, stay still until they leave... and then what? Just sit there until you evaporate? No, you pick yourself up, quite literally, and move on with your life. Even if you died, no police have ever so much as lifted a pen to investigate the murder of a slime.

"So when people attack you HUNDREDS of times... not always hurting you, but definitely making you late a whole lot... what would YOU think of the world? How would YOU try to make a living, when almost no job out there will hire a slime? I can't work at a restaurant... except maybe as a literal dishwasher."

To punctuate the statement, she took the mug that held the consommé and dropped it into her chest, where it floated around inside her before she pushed it out with a tendril of slime, setting it next to Tibo. The mug was clean... allegedly.

Tibo took the mug back and set it aside. There was no purple residue anywhere on the mug... but he might give it a rinse before next drinking coffee from it.

"Solids and slimes have advantages and disadvantages. It might seem fun and free to be a slime, but... there are complications that you don't fully appreciate unless you are one. Maybe being frozen just now made me realize that... solids can have it tough, too." Peri lifted her leg into the air and held it against her shoulder, in a feat of flexibility that would be very impressive for a human. "Did you know that a human... can just break their leg?" She stared at him to punctuate the importance of the information she was presenting. "There's a hard thing inside the leg called a bone. It's crazy."

"That stuff you drank, the consommé... that's sometimes made out of bones."

Peri looked to herself, expecting a skeleton to appear inside her at any moment. The skeleton and the slime had kinship as low-level creatures, grist for the adventurer's mill. "I'm not going to GROW bones, am I?" She asked, worried. "That's not how you intend to mend my ways, is it? Curse me with irremovable solid bits?"

"No, that shouldn't happen." Tibo said. "Not much of the calcium makes it into the consommé, I think. It's mostly collagen or something. Besides... you can just eat bones, can't you?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe." Peri said. "What else has bones in it?"

"Chicken wings?"

In a feat that would stun all her old friends back home, Peri actually snapped her fingers. "OK, I can eat bones. If I get bones in me, I'll just dissolve them like anything else."

"I mean... if a slime can eat gemstones and money, you can definitely eat bones." Tibo said.

That was sound reasoning. But Tibo mentioning money made Peri think of something.

"Do you have a copper?" Peri asked.

Tibo reached into his pocket and pulled out his cinched coin purse of monster hide. No matter how modern the world around them got, everyone loved the cinched coin purse. Most just kept it hidden so archers couldn't shoot it off the belt and steal it that way. It's not like he was carrying around any gold... there was even some company called Ridge was trying to reinvent the way people held their coins that had sponsored a few of Tibo's streams. Good thing nobody could see him still using this old-fashioned version.

Tibo retrieved a copper, holding it in the space between his fingers. This felt like the start of the world's oldest con. "Am I going to get this back?" He asked.

"We'll see." Peri said. "Depends how long we talk, and how hungry I get."

Tibo shrugged. It was just a copper. He tossed it to her with a flick of his thumb. She caught it in her hand. Literally. It sunk into her palm and she had to push it back out. She wasn't back to full firmness yet.

Peri rolled the coin between two fingers, emphasizing the edge of the coin. "Do you know why modern coins have the reeded edge like this?"

"To make them easier to pick up off a flat surface." Tibo said.

"Incorrect." Peri said. "It's because many years ago, before all coins were perfectly round and uniform, enterprising people would cut very slight slivers off the edges to get a bit of the precious metal off it. Sometimes they would save up enough to mint an entire coin out of the scraps. Putting these ridges on the edge of the coin means that, so long as the ridges are there, the coin is the same size, weight and value.

"That's the way I think of it. I go into a house, they have fun if they want, and I take... a few things they might not even miss. Just a very gentle scraping off the edge that doesn't reduce them at all. They still have a coin, that's still worth the same amount. I have a little something. Nobody really loses out."

"That works with your metaphor, but not in reality." Tibo said. "People are missing out, if not by much."

"If they don't notice, are they really deprived?"

"But is that much of a life, all of us just fighting over the little anthills? Is it worth living in squalor AND risking retaliation from either police or underground figures? I know the normal work rat race is tough, but it must be better than that." Tibo said.

"It's not 'tough' for a slime." Peri said. "It's actually impossible. There are no opportunities unless you make them."

"I believe you." Tibo said. "I was in it for a little while before I got into IT. There are so many jobs where you couldn't make ends meet even if they were offering you full-time. They demand huge availability to keep someone from having two jobs so you're exclusively dependent on them. And when the minimum wage goes up, they blame THAT for not paying people with earnest experience higher wages. It's awful. But schemes like this don't really hurt the high-and-mighty. They just leech off people who are in that same situation."

Peri crossed her legs and dangling them over the side of the basin. "You asked me how I got into this line of work. Well, how does someone freeze slimes for a living?"

"We're more general-purpose scam-busters." Tibo said. "Lots of different approaches, depending on the approach, or species, of the scammer."

"But what got you into this field of work?" She asked. "You said you were in IT. That's a rather lucrative field to leave."

"Rog's grandmother got taken for maybe a few thousand silver. Not a huge amount, but a gigantic windfall for someone in the distant lands, where money goes so much further."

"How'd they manage it?" Peri tried not to sound too eager, as if looking for pointers.

"They somehow mimicked his voice perfectly over the phone and pretended he was in trouble."

Peri shivered at the thought. "Shapeshifters." She groaned.

"We believe so." Tibo nodded. "It could have been a very talented harpy."

"I don't understand." Peri started. "Shapeshifters could do ANYTHING. They could be historical re-enactors. They could replace deceased actors in classic roles or soda commercials. They could be fashion models and effortlessly change their appearance with the zeitgeist. They could recreate faces of crime suspects for wanted posters. They could be trophy wives, influencers, motivational speakers... but every shapeshifter you hear about is some kind of criminal."

"I feel like that's unfairly emphasized by the media." Tibo said, even-handed. "You could probably say the same thing about cyclopi. You don't hear about ANYONE on the news unless they're up to no good. I try not to generalize based on their species."

"Well, in GENERAL, I feel like maybe it IS something wrong with the shapeshifters. Maybe it has to do with not having to actually look at your own face in the mirror."

Tibo held his lips together tightly, as if holding the words back. "Do you feel any dissonance for calling them out for crimes, when you're doing something similar?"

Peri made a phlegmy 'ech' sort of snort, as if rolling her entire mouth in a disgusted sound. "If I was a shapeshifter, I'd just go legit. It's harder for a slime to do anything, like I said. If I could imitate someone's voice, I'd... become an actor. Or work at a sex hotline, if those still exist. I can change the PITCH of my voice..." Peri sang a scale going from a low rumble to nearly a whistle. "But exactly imitating a solid? No way."

"Do you ever look at yourself in the mirror?"

"Every chance I get." She leaned over the rim of the basin. "I worked hard on this face. I think it's both cherubic and alluring."

"I'm surprised I make money with my face on camera all day on stream." Tibo said. "I hardly think it's my best feature."

"So... what about you?" Peri asked.

"I can't change my face so easy."

"No, I mean... do you have an origin story like your friend? Did some slime wrong you by dissolving a rock you were particularly fond of?"

Tibo was surprisingly forthcoming with an answer. "My house got burgled."

There was a long pause.

"By... a slime?" She asked.

Tibo shook his head. "I wish. If they were pulling your scam... I probably wouldn't have ever known."

"What happened?"

"There were maybe three or four perpetrators. They were casing the neighborhood I live in for a while. They assumed my house was unoccupied or the residents were on vacation because they never saw a car out front and there was no garage." He paused. "I ride my bike into the city."

"What did you lose?" Peri asked.

"Nothing. Just a broken window on my door and some soda from my fridge."

This wasn't the heart-stopping tale of justice that Peri had expected. "I don't understand. How were you robbed if they didn't take anything?"

Tibo took in a deep breath. "Because they were still there when I got home."

Peri stiffened. She knew what she would do when faced with armed strangers who meant her harm. She'd just slide away, or try to separate herself ahead of the sword swing to not get split in half. (After getting broken into thousands of pieces, being cut in half sounded like a breeze.)

"What... did you do?" She asked.

"They got scared and ran off. Most of them got caught pretty soon after. This was in the middle of the day. It was quite brazen."

"Four metahumans were scared of you?"

"Maybe I had a wand and threatened to turn them into a cloud of ladybugs." Tibo said. "It really wasn't my proudest moment. All these people who have wands who salivate at the idea of killing an intruder... they don't really know how disquieting and chilling it really is to have someone in your home just because you have something that can be stolen or sold."

For the first time, Peri felt a bit of sympathy when looking upon her tormentor. She really didn't have as much to fear in that situation... so long as nobody froze her.

"I didn't... KNOW for sure that nothing substantial had been taken until I'd taken inventory of all my stuff and put it back. It took me months to deal with the giant pile of disturbed furniture and electronics and stuff in my living room. Maybe they took a spoon or something so they have a memento of their violations of social norms. I didn't have a count before the incident. But it's still quite... disturbing to have your home invaded like that. It's hard to feel safe afterwards. THEY felt safe enough to sit around and drink soda before I got there. Good for them. It's almost like that's what they really took from my house; my sense of safety.

"So yeah... I'm not very sympathetic to anyone, metahuman or not, who wants to enter someone's residence and take stuff that does not belong to them. I know things are hard out there. Things are hard in the distant lands, too. But this isn't the answer."

"Well, what is the answer?" Peri asked, arms folded.

"I don't know if I know the answer, but I know that crime isn't it." Tibo said. "Even if I didn't know the world was round, I at least know that it's not a cube or a cone. There are really two ways to make money in the world. You take it, somehow, from the people who have too much of it. Or you take it from the people who DON'T have too much of it. The first can be any normal job, even doing it badly or sleepwalking your way through it. If that means your fellow worker has to carry your weight... you start to move into the second category, because you're making their life tougher by forcing them to work harder without gaining anything for themselves.

"If you wanted to pull this sort of gambit and steal from some wealthy dude, as some sort of public service, or even just because you thought he wouldn't miss it and you wanted it..." Tibo shrugged in defeat. "I wouldn't really lift a finger to stop that. You can argue that's the first category, depending on just HOW rich this imaginary person is. The wealthy certainly have schemes of their own to make money without effort.

"But nobody at our level of society tries to steal from the earnestly wealthy, because they're insulated from all of us. They don't buy sex toys with slimes sequestered inside from street vendors. They have other ways to feed their sin, legal or not. Sometimes, there are somewhat rich people who pretend to be super wealthy, and they sell get-rich quick schemes to regular people to gather actual wealth from the poor, the people who can spare the least. THAT is really low.

"Since scamming the rich is too difficult, this sort of thing always turned into stealing from regular people, even rich regular people who don't hurt anyone else other than by participating in the same system we're all stuck in... and I don't really respect that. It preys on the lazy, the disillusioned, the desperate, the naive or even people who just aren't very smart.

"Not everything in the second category is necessarily a crime. At my last normal job I had before I did this, I had a boss who... didn't exactly BRAG about it, but he was talking about how he had scalped some video game consoles for double their value. This guy was a full-time worker who made good money, or at least decent money... and he had to use that capital to make a rare toy HARDER to get. Nothing is added to the community, but he gets a bigger piece of the pie because he already had a bit of money and some luck."

Peri looked off. "It IS a luxury item."

Tibo seemed to bristle at this momentarily. Maybe he had a child, for which, in the modern era, games were NOT considered a luxury. Or maybe he was just a gamer. (He DID say that he previously worked in IT.)

Tibo responded, "But do you want to live in a world where every luxury item costs twice as much because someone got there first and holds them for ransom? And the only people who get that money are those who had enough money already to exploit the lack of supply and increase their own capital, with NOTHING new entering the market at all?