His left eye takes to twitching, and in a matter of moments, his whole face sours immensely. “Yeah, no, um, Mort, I can’t tell you that. The Lieutenant would throw me into the gaping maws of a Sarlacc!”

“Alright, fair.” A pause passes wordlessly between us. “But I’m getting it out of you one day!”

“Just you try it,” he said with a mild laugh, his gaze once again turning contemplative. “Say, the way you got your large body to come here, sprouting off of your tail… Could you somehow make that more efficient?”

More-, huh? “How do you mean?”

He gestures uncertainly with his hands, mind working hard behind closed lips. “You know. I’ll assume you’re still able to grow more body parts and all, so, would it be possible for you to create a sort of intermediary?”

“What, like a third body?” I ask, catching a brief pause in his subdued ramble.

He jabs a finger in my direction, “Exactly! You can grow back from either body, so if you had a body between them, you could use it to reform from them. Or something.” There at the end, his voice seems to falter just a little, and the way he looks at me really seems like he almost demands to be reprimanded. Which is, well, not something I want to do-?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not exactly cool with this idea. Splitting into just two separate bodies is already really uncomfortable for me, so a third would probably just make me even more uncomfortable. Though, looking into his punishment-seeking eyes, I can’t bring myself to fully disregard him.

“Uh, erm, Fern, I’m not too good with concentration, it might be a bit too much sensory information to handle at once…” I say, hoping the words I speak are really words at all and not ones I made up on the spot.

He looks at me for a moment, evaluating if I was completely shrugging him off or just asking for clarification. He decides on the second.

“You won’t need for the body to be active. Or even big. It can just be a small little thing that doesn’t do anything. If all it does is reply if a specific word is spoken, then it won’t be an issue of concentration, right?”

He… makes a fair point.

The only real reason I’m able to have two bodies at all is that my larger body isn’t doing anything that requires much consciousness. Hypothetically, if I placed this other body into such a state, roused only at the mention of a certain word, there’d be no question that it’d work.

Hrm. Damn, he really makes a good argument. They must’ve taught him that at the academy.

I nod my head, feeling how my head-tail softly slaps the back of my collar. “You’re right.” A fire blossoms in my eyes as I catch his disbelieving gaze. “Let’s do it.”

Since both of us are on strict orders to do nothing and bother no one, we get to work pretty much immediately.

Using the end of my tail as base, I get to work.

The body will be as small as I can make it, outfitted with only the most rudimentary aspects I can imagine. To ensure its survivability, it’ll have a total of four cores, three embedded in three larger tentacles and one embedded in the main head area. Each of these three tentacles has one eye and one mouth, the bare minimum, alongside two tentacles that each branch into a further, even smaller two just to act as feet. This means that the body itself, although barely being 60 centimetres tall, is still able to move freely should it wish to do so.

The fourth core, namely the ‘head,’ possesses only one aspect that the regular tentacles do not, namely a single, bat-like ear. This will allow it to hear properly.

122 000 > 121 907

And… there it is. It is, much like I planned, quite small. Having my consciousness split in two like this feels weird, even more so when I’m staring at myself. Worst of all, I’m starting to feel self-conscious at looking at my own face. Damn. That’s really what I look like, huh? Shit, bro.

Still, having it standing around like this is not in the plan, so after catching a brief look from Fern, my coworker in this body’s creation, I casually bite off my tail, letting the creature loose.

I take a few steps.

Being even smaller feels weird, to be sure, but not any weirder than being ridiculously huge. I let it move around a little, testing the limits of my movement before giving it the final order to fold itself up.

See, having it all unfolded with all its tentacles hanging out is a bad idea. So, instead, I’ll have it constantly folded, as it’s doing right now. Wrapping my tentacles tightly around myself. Leaving only a sliver through which to see and hear. And, in the end, we’re left with a small, three-sided pyramid of sorts. It’s small enough to fit in your palm with a little effort.

I hold it up to Fern. He gives me a mildly hesitant look before accepting it into his grip.

His hand is warm beneath me, and from a slit between my tentacles, I can see how his eyes study me, interest and curiosity growing.

“You’re pretty light,” he remarks, weighing me in his hand.

He hands it back to me and I accept it just as the door to the cockpit down the hall slides open. The grim face of Typhin steps into view and I get a fantastic view of how his eyes scan the hallway before finally settling on me and Fern, and, in turn, on the small pyramid of me in my hand.

Moving with that solemn dignity he so often carries himself with, he walks into the hall and toward us, the Lieutenant scrambling to follow behind him, head lowered meekly. Sweat beads on the Lieutenant’s forehead, but even when he sees our undignified situation he can’t bring himself to muster any real anger befitting a man of his stature.

Fern, on the other hand, instantly realizes the situation he’s in and wastes no time scrambling to his feet, trying frantically to brush off his knees and straighten his uniform before either of his governing officers can point out how disgraceful his appearance is.

Me, on the other? Well, I’m just kinda sitting here.

I should probably be doing something to greet Typhin and all, but his stern gaze is spooking me and I can already feel my small pyramid-self quiver in my grasp.

In mere moments, he stands right above me. From the view of the small eyes of the pyramid, he’s massive and imposing.

“May I ask what it is you’re holding, Mort?” he asks, voice and eyes as cold as ice. I feel like gulping, but I’m still somehow able to keep my eyes locked with his.