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"Are you sure? It'll be painful."
"Oh, well, how painful is it?"
A pause. Then, "Excruciating."
The slime hybrid had paused after that. The gears rotating in his head as he turns the thought over.
"Alright," he agrees quietly. "I trust you."
~~
So here they were.
Ungloved hands press into soft gelatin flesh. Carefully, delicately, they pierce through the thin, outer film before sinking into the slime's chest. For a living organism, their body is surprisingly malleable. Cold, like melted ice. The non-Newtonian fluid envelopes D3's fingertips, curiously encircling his hand as though it were eager for the golden apple's effects to wear off.
He exhales slowly, deeply. His fingers dip further, then his knuckles, then his wrist as he calmly submerges his hand into the dormant acid.
Then, he wraps his hand around the slime's core.
It pulses with potential energy like a steady drum. A heartbeat.
Avery's breath catches at the touch, but he remains otherwise relaxed. No, not relaxed, still. Any sudden movement would render as stress and cause his form to harden as though under attack. An instinctive reaction that consolidated energy to push back unwanted objects like swords. Useful in most cases; detrimental in this one. If he couldn't keep it together at this stage, then he'd be hopeless for what comes next.
D3 runs his thumb over the darker green core lost in thought. How strange it was to be able to hold someone's heart in the palm of his hand. The amount of trust up to this point that brought him here, in this moment, with this task... for anyone else it would've been impossibly high, wouldn't it? All it would take is one wrong move and then-
"De..." Avery whispers quietly, snapping D3 out of his thoughts.
"I know," he reassures him. He looks up from their core into those forest green eyes and could almost forget his goal. Avery's eyes held no secrets. They were flooded with uncertainty and nervousness, the same as when D3 had led them straight down a long dark abyss just a few nights prior. Anyone else would've thought it as suicide, but not Avery. Even now, determination and an unyielding amount of trust danced with his mortal fears. And that is what gave the knight all the confirmation he needed to proceed.
Avery grips the chair tightly and looks away with a pained wince. Sharp pain radiates from where D3's fingernail presses up against his core. It's uncomfortable.
Slimes are a very hardy species. As long as their core is intact, they can withstand a great number of attacks. They are known to duplicate into smaller version of themselves if their core were evenly sliced in half. Otherwise, they would consume the smaller portion to rebuild themselves as they were previous to the attack.
D3 let's the information wrap around his thoughts to quiet his own doubt. He pierces Avery's core, a pained whine leaving the hybrid as the wooden edge of their chair creaks under their grip. Anxiety swells in the knight's chest. "Almost there, Avery."
Even with their outstanding regenerative properties, once a slime's core has been broken...
It can never naturally seal back up.
D3 grabs the potion from the side table. "I'm sorry," he murmurs right before using his teeth to pop off the cork. Little whisps of smoke hiss into the air as the potion starts to glow. The pink liquid bubbles and steams when greeting the oxygen in the air as it pours out of the bottle and into the hole D3 made.
Avery muffles his scream even as his whole body goes taut and his core shakes. The potion mixes with the green slime, forming a sickly brown color as D3's hand quickly escapes from the solidifying soft body.
Body alchemy. He was performing body alchemy. Mixing together the elements of Avery's hybrid gelatinous body with that of an ancient recipe banned from further use.
Avery's skin liquifies and melts onto the chair as he pants heavily and squirms. Drops of pink-green slime shaks off from him as he leans forward and grabs onto D3's shoulder for support.
His hands were warm. Slimes were never warm.
At this point, the slime would feel as though they were being boiled alive from the inside. Their core overheating with the additional energy sealed inside of it. Their body will treat it as a virus, rejecting the fluid and refusing a proper merge by destroying its own infected cells. However, the potion is much stronger than a slime's biological defenses. It is still important to watch carefully at this stage for any defects.
If there is: kill the slime.
"Ah... agh..." Avery presses his head into D3's chest, writhing and gasping in choked breaths. "De... H-he... lp," he begs just before a nauseatingly painful wave slams into his consciousness. He gags with tears in his eyes.
D3 holds onto Avery's trembling, unstable body the best he can. In any other context, he would've found it fascinating to watch his body cycle between colors of lime green to mahogany, to a galaxy swirl of pink and emerald, then back to walnut brown. But knowing exactly what the slime was going through left no room for anything other than pure terror.
"I'm here Avery, I'm here. I promise," D3 claims as he holds Avery tighter.
Sobs fill the room as progress remains slow and steady. "It hu- hurts," Avery chokes out.
D3 starts shaking as well, his heart thundering in his chest as it echoes in his ears. "I know," he murmurs. "It's almost over."
He's a liar. The pain proceeds for another thirty minutes as Avery writhes and squirms in agony; all the while repeating D3's words to himself that it's almost over.
Because D3 said so.
Because it was better than imagining it could only get worse.
And by the time the wooden chair is a half-melted puddle beside them, Avery finally passes out from the shock. His color settles as the foreign potion starts to successfully integrate with his chemical composition.
~~
Afterwards, D3 makes him some warm milk with honey, perfectly warmed as Avery wakes up.
"De..?"
"I'm here." D3 places his hand reassuringly on Avery's forearm and squeezes lightly. "You did good, Avery. It worked."
Avery grimaces and closes his eyes. He does not want to think about it any more than he has to. He does not want to relieve the experience, lest he start to regret it entirely. "So what now?" He asks, trying to direct the tone away from the past.
D3 hesitates, but continues. "Now? Well, we... Test the effects. Make sure that it homogeneonized with your body and..."
Avery drops the cup. "You're going to kill me?" When D3 looks away, something like anger rages in his core. "And if it didn't work? If something went wrong??"
D3 takes in a deep breath. "I'm not going to kill you."
Avery frowns. He knows that tone.
"We're going to meet with an Old Friend of mine instead."