+1 To the saddlebags and sleeping.
You decide that it would be best to get some sleep and continue tomorrow. As you lie there waiting for sleep to come, you start thinking about what exactly you should do tomorrow. You decide that you should try to be better prepared for any future excursions. One of your biggest problems is carrying things. Humans have their hands and clothes and bags, so many options to carry things. You wonder, could you use any of those things?
While you could use your claws to carry things, walking on two legs is really awkward. It makes you too slow and it's hard to maintain your balance and it's too tiring for your poor tail. You think your body is not meant for walking on two legs. And if you
are meant to be a biped, you definitely haven't had enough practice with it. So having hands is not an option, at least not in the short term.
You also know from experience that you can't wear clothes. At least not human clothes. Ali once tried to get you to wear her clothes but that didn't turn out well for the clothes. Mom was not happy. The only thing that fit you were the ribbon and the tiara and neither of those have a large carrying capacity. Maybe you could buy or find some clothes, but you have no idea where you could do that. Not to mention that you don't have any credits at the moment.
So that leaves bags as the last remaining option. You could wear one of the bags humans put on their back, but wearing it that way would be awkward for your wings, not to mention that it would be hard to reach. You could wear it backwards, having it dangle below you, that would make it easier to reach, but it would make it harder to sneak. A bag of the kind you hold is also kind of awkward, you'd need to have it hang from your neck or tail or something like that.
If you could somehow have a bag hanging on either side of your body, above your front legs, that would probably be best. They would be less likely to get in the way and you could reach into them using your head if you strained your neck a bit. But you haven't seen Ali or her parents use any bags that could be used like that. You should figure out a way to let her know of your idea. Maybe she can help with that.
...
It turns out to be surprisingly difficult to explain what you want using your limited vocabulary. After a while Ali finally understands what you want, but then she has to face the problem of actually coming up with a way for you to get what you want. She first tries putting on a backpack sideways and adjusting the shoulder straps so that they're really tight, but no matter how tight she makes it, it ends up slipping away and sliding towards your wings or neck. Then she tries stretching a shopping bag so that she makes a sort of shoulder bag but she just ends up with a torn bag. (You don't think it would had worked anyway, the moment you tried running or jumping everything would be in danger of spilling out. You'd prefer something like a backpack that you actually need to pull open.) Then she searches through Dad's things and finds what she calls "plastoid tape" and the real suffering begins.
"Plastoid tape" is a ribbon stored in the form of a roll. The outer side is dark grey, much like your scales. It has a pleasantly bumpy texture that provides a good grip. The inner side is white and is incredibly sticky. While this is (apparently) a desirable quality it also causes a world of problems. First of all it is incredibly hard to unroll the tape if there isn't an already unrolled segment and attempts to do so via brute force usually end up ruining that segment of the tape. Then there is the problem of actually cutting the surprisingly durable tape into usable chunks. Ali's safety scissors are not up to the task, ruining the tape before finally cutting it, making the tape stick with itself. You try to help Ali by using your claws but after cutting a few segments they too become sticky, the adhesive substance clinging to them, dulling them and making it harder to cut with them. You try licking them clean and end up with a sticky mouth. The most annoying thing is that sometimes pieces of tape end up clinging to your claws and every attempt to remove them just has them end up stuck on a different part of your body.
Plastoid tape opens up many possibilities for Ali to experiment with, which leads to many failed experiments and most of your scales feeling incredibly sticky. You're about to give up in frustration when in a flash of brilliance Ali discovers she can form something like a harness by folding a piece of plastoid tape in half, thus giving it two dark sides. By very carefully cutting and then folding large strips of tape she is able to add extra harnesses to the backpack you tried on first. She manages to secure it in place in a way that is both comfortable and unlikely to strangle you should the backpack get caught on something. You end up with something that should hold a good number of things which you can reach using your mouth. You can put it on and remove it on your own, though it takes significant effort. It would be much quicker if you could get Ali to help you whenever you want to put it on. The only downside is that it is only one bag on the left side of your body, leaving you somewhat unbalanced.
You take a long shower while Ali takes care of the mess your crafting session left in the kitchen. You have to scrub yourself clean because even water is not enough to remove that damn sticky thing. After the shower you somehow still feel sticky in places. You can't wait for the next time you'll shed your scales.
Gained Status: HungryAli's parents will be home in a few minutes. You should decide what you want to do tonight.
...
You hope Dad won't be mad when he finds out that the two of you used up all the plastoid tape.
Age: a few weeks (hatchling)
Size: about the size of a large dog
Status: hungry
Health: fine
Weapons: claws and teeth
Armor: soft scales
Abilities:
- Glide: You can glide in order to survive falls and quickly move great distances, though your wings are too weak to allow you true flight. However you can use favorable winds and updrafts to increase your glide time.
- Rudimentary Human Language: You are able to understand human language to a very basic degree. You won't understand everything though and there will likely be misunderstandings. You can also attempt to speak, but you can only form simple, short sentences and it's very hard for others to understand you.
- Pack with plastoid tape modifications (under Ali's bed)
- Half-used medpac (under Ali's bed)
- Ali's Apartment (Lair): A tiny 2 bedroom apartment. The little human Ali lives there with Dad/Jobal and Mom/Ania. Room 327.
- Ali's Apartment Tower: Apartments arranged in a circle. Clean, bright, mostly locked doors, few hiding places. Little traffic during the night.
- Eiwhyl's Clinic: Sells medpacs and other healing items and provides treatment. Warning: stabby. Room 509.
- Streets: Dirty streets, parked hovercars, shops, building entrances, street vendors, little traffic during the night.
- Maintenance Tunnels: Interconnected tunnels, small and large, going low and high. Connect various streets and buildings. Wires and pipes. Dark, dirty, with old machines constantly rumbling. Scavenger-vermin and hunters-of-vermin.
- Garbage Pit: A large room with mountains of garbage half-submerged in a sea of sludge. More garbage frequently arrives from holes in the ceiling. A monster lurks here, may pull prey underwater.
- Hydroponic Pool A room with a large pool filled with plants. A ceiling full of bright lamps. A spherical gardener-droid takes care of the plants. An armored security droid used to patrol this area. Other rooms are unexplored.
Poll
1 (6.7%)
Author
Topic: Surviving in an Alien World [Suggestion Game] (Read 98925 times)