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[b][u][center]Smoothing Things Out

Part 7

for Libra-11 and Harute11

by Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]

Blake and the rest of his headmates were true to their word to trust Libra, but that was a hard word to keep. Knowing that there was something out there, something that didn't appear on cameras and was being kept from them, no matter how much the rabbit hybrid assured them that it was safe, did not sit well with them. The lack of information on what that thing was, the knowledge that they were being spied on regularly, and the fact that it came and went without any real explanation felt like something out of a horror movie, and while that left Aries oddly eager and excited about the possibilities there, it left Cancer and Ptolemy feeling...ill at ease. Ryder made himself okay with it, and Toy was, as ever, more mildly curious than he was anything else.

Blake, however, was barely short of being a wreck as the days wore on and the answers didn't come. The few times that he pushed Libra for an idea of when the time would be right for an explanation were met with a reminder that they had promised to be patient, that they would wait, and the human just let it slide. He wanted things to be okay, and he knew that he was neurotic about it, but it was very, very difficult to keep oneself from freaking out when they were in a situation like this.

If it wasn't for the fact that the rest of the headmates were bound and determined to remain in the mansion, if it wasn't for the fact that Libra was such a good host, he would have been tempted to head back to the train station. It was getting painfully close to a horror movie line-up of plot points, and he knew for a fact that he wasn't good enough to get through a horror movie plot. Not without being one of the victims.

[b]You need to calm down.[/b]

Ptolemy pushed at him in a way that only he could, the pressure easing some of the frantic anxiety that came from rushing this way and that in his head. He groaned, leaning forward against the breakfast table and rubbing his eyes. There was only so much that even that could do, but it was better than nothing.

"I'm trying."

[b]You are not. You are worrying at the issue. Let go.[/b]

"Easy for you to say."

[b]Harder. My memory is better than yours.[/b]

"Yeah, but you don't feel much about it."

[i]Heh, yeah he does. He just doesn't listen to it,[/i] Aries teased.

[b]You will leave that be. And be that as it may, I am not wrong about Blake.[/b]

[i]...That's true. You're not. Come on, man. It'll come together eventually.[/i]

It was that eventually that got to him. He sighed, shaking his head and spooning another mouthful of cereal into his mouth. The sheer insanity of the situation aside, it was the waiting for answers, the long periods of not-knowing, that made it all very difficult for him.

If it wasn't for the reward waiting at the end...

[b]Having a body each will be worth it, provided that the price is not hidden from us,[/b] Ptolemy said.

Blake agreed, for the most part. The six of them able to live in their own forms, in their own shapes, was something that they had all dreamed of for years. It would mean that they could be actual people for a change rather than just one person that had to hide what they were from the rest of the world. It would mean so much for all of them, and Libra was helping them, granting them that - so far - free of charge.

But it was such an amazing technology that it was hard to imagine that there wouldn't be some price tag somewhere down the line, and it was whether it was payable or not, whether it was something that he could actually give up or not.

He didn't know what to think about that. They didn't know what to think about that.

Finishing up his breakfast, Blake began the usual debate between the headmates of whether they wanted to work on data entry or scanning work down in the lab for the day. They were just starting to get a stimulating discussion going when their host walked into the room. The rabbit hybrid tossed his ears over his shoulder, smiling.

"Hey...today's the day."

"...What do you mean?" Blake asked.

"Today's the day you get your answers."

"...Really?"

"Of course. I did promise that you'd get them eventually, didn't I?"

"Well, yes, but -"

"Come on."

And just like that, they were already on the move. Blake was stunned into silence, unable to bring himself to question Libra about the how and when and why this was happening now. Instead, he was just overwhelmed with relief that it was finally happening.

Of course, as ever, their emotions were hardly universal. Aries was bouncy and happy, curious as a little puppy with a new toy, while Cancer was on the watch, half-paranoid that something was going to happen to silence them. Ptolemy doubted that, but the 'emotionless' center of logic was also rather curious, pensive about the possibilities. Ryder was curious, not quite eager, but definitely curious, and Toy...well, Toy could only be described as eager, like someone that had been promised a toy of their own and wanted to see what it was like.

That, he supposed, was a rather weird feeling. The tulpa had never been that expressive before.

Down, down, down they went to the basement lab, and there, waiting for them, was a...well, one might have called it an exam table, but it was bigger than that. Much, much bigger than that, as a matter of fact, looking more like a king-sized bed rather than a proper table. The human stopped in the doorway, his head cocked to the side as he looked at the table, then back at Libra.

"What's this about?" he asked.

"Oh, part of the meet and greet."

"[i]I'm[/i] the one getting tied down?"

"Well, not so much tied down as, um, restrained," Libra said, rubbing the back of his head. "Okay. Saying it out loud like that does kind of make it sound worse than it is."

"Explain. Please."

"I will, I will. Just -"

"No, no. Now."

"...Well, that's fair enough, I guess," Libra said, shaking his head. "You did kind of wait this long without any answers. I guess you can stand to get one or two of them now."

That was an understatement and a half. He had been waiting for a very long time for answers, and he wasn't about to just let himself - themselves - get strapped down without being told why they were being pinned down. A meet and greet didn't mean that he had to be completely helpless, after all, and that seemed counterintuitive for actually meeting something that was being treated as something so dangerous. If anything, shouldn't that thing be the thing that was tied down, not him?

Libra looked back at the table, then back at him, then back at the table.

"You can't see him yet, right?"

"Is there supposed to be something there?" he asked.

"Well, there is, but only one of you has seen him so far..."

[i]...Ptolemy?[/i] Blake asked.

[b]There is something.[/b]

[i]Show me?[/i]

It was a brief, uncomfortable moment as the pair of them merged together, rabbit and human blending senses. The world was overlaid with a sort of monochrome coloration, something that he imagined that Ptolemy applied to everything that he could. Color detail went down, but the edges and definition of everything around them went up, allowing for a stronger distinction of the shapes and contours of the different items around them.

It also revealed something vaguely shark-shaped in the space of the shadow under the table, something that was just barely there, and something that clearly wasn't supposed to be there. It seemed like goo given physical form, with a long spotted tail and body, with no eyes or clear features on the face, and with spotted patterns that shifted and slid along the body, keeping it from ever being entirely one thing or another.

The melding didn't last long, and the color of the world shortly after reasserted itself as Blake pulled back. He groaned, rubbing his forehead.

"What is that?"

"I thought you said you couldn't - can you share that well?" Libra asked, cocking his head to the side.

"Libra...please..."

"Right, right. That...well, that is someone that I call Rorshark."

"...Rorshark."

"You know, like the patterns?"

"I get it, but...really?"

The rabbit hybrid shrugged, and he didn't bother pushing it. It was a weird name, and a very weird one at that, but he wasn't really one to talk, considering that he was carrying around multiple different personalities in his head. Seemed a rather stupid thing to get hung up on, just a name...

"Alright, alright...it's name is Rorshark, but what is it?"

"Well, that's the thing. I don't actually know yet. Oh, I know some of what he can do, but as for what he is...well, that's something that's been harder to actually explain. Suffice to say, he's a very curious, very intriguing individual with an ability to ooze out some of the material that I've used to help create your bodies."

[b]The formula. He learned them from this...thing.[/b]

"All the chemical stuff in the study..." Blake blinked. "You've been cheating with this, haven't you?"

"Cheating's a bit of an unfair term. I've been studying it all quite properly. It's just...a boost, if you want to call it that," Libra said, making his way to the exam table. "But I figured that it was time for him to meet the six of you properly. After all, he is going to be involved with the whole new-body thing, and I figured that you should all be comfortable with each other."

Of all the things that they had heard about Rorshark so far, that was the thing that offered the most insight into what would happen between them. If he was to be involved with this...

[i]He's going to want to be in our head,[/i] Blake said.

[b]I was about to say that...but yes, that is what I puzzled out.[/b]

[i]Can we deal with that?[/i] Ryder asked.

[i]I mean...I'm not opposed to a new playmate,[/i] Aries said.

Yet, even Aries sounded at least a little bit off about it. They had been a slowly-growing family in their head for some time, and the idea of having someone else added in, while not precisely [i]new[/i], was something that had generally required a great deal of work to get right. The fact that it was part and parcel with being split up into their new bodies made them wonder if they were going to be carrying around a second passenger with them, and gave them a new puzzle to solve: was that something that they were all okay with?

They were still thinking about that as they walked over to the exam table. Libra patted the white surface, and Blake took a deep breath.

"Do I need to be...naked for this?" he asked.

"It helps."

"But do I have to be?"

"...It helps," Libra repeated, stressing it a bit more.

So, it wasn't required, but it was heavily recommended. He wasn't sure that he was comfortable being naked in front of someone else just yet, but Libra had been kind enough so far, and open enough with them to make it possible for him to be comfortable. He would have to try.

Soon, he had his clothes in a pile on the floor - neatly folded by Ptolemy and nearly ripped apart by the effort needed to keep Cancer from lunging at the space Rorshark had been - and he climbed onto the table. He half-expected to be pinned down by unseen shackles, but no such thing happened. Instead, he was allowed to lie there, his head tilted back, not quite sliding off the table but getting close to it.

"Alright. Now. Rorshark's going to come out, and he's going to...well, I guess the best word is 'interface' with you."

"What's that going to do to us?" Blake asked.

"Essentially, he's going to meld with you, one by one, and then as a whole. And...this is the part that you might not like, but he will listen if you don't want to go through with it. I think. I'm pretty sure he'll listen."

"Pretty sure?" Blake asked, trying not to sound too whimper-y.

"Pretty sure. He's not evil, just...really not one of us." Libra shook his head. "He does listen to consent, he just sometimes gets a little over-eager about things. Think of him like someone still learning."

Great. Something that was powerful enough to possess someone else and take them for a joyride that was still learning what it meant to be socially acceptable. That was going to be fun. He imagined that there were restraints in the table, but now he realized why they weren't restrained just yet. Perhaps that was to keep Rorshark from taking a body and just walking out of the room...

But if it meant getting those bodies...

And if Libra was that confident for this...Blake took a deep breath and nodded.

"Alright."

"Thank you for trusting me. I promise, this will be worth it."

"I'm taking your word for it. We all are..."

Libra nodded, stepping back and out of the way. For a moment, nothing happened. The room felt as empty as it always had, save for the rumbling of the machines and the slow hum of the power generators. Blake took one deep breath, then another -

And then he felt something hovering over him, something that loomed like a shadow over his body. He couldn't see it, but there was a [i]feeling[/i] there, a sensation of something that shouldn't really be there floating over his body. It made him shake from head to toe, at first, but he slowly took control, keeping his panic from rising high enough to freak him out. He knew that it had to be alright. It was always alright. He just had to be cool, calm, and collected.

[i]How did you see him before?[/i] he asked Ptolemy.

[b]I...invited myself to see him.[/b]

[i]That's it?[/i]

[b]He seems to act on the invitation to be seen. It would fit with the way that Libra has told us so little; the less we know, the less we can see and interact with him.[/b]

That...did fit, he supposed. He took another deep breath, let it out, and then opened his mind, for lack of a better term. He told himself that he was willing to see what was there, that he was open to seeing whatever might be there. He was open to something new, new experiences, new -

"Gah!"

He gasped as the faceless creature appeared over him, Rorshark staring down at him with a face that shouldn't have been able to stare at anything. It was at once a flat expanse and a gaping voice, something that could merely reflect something into someone else and something that could swallow up anything in its path. The incongruity made it powerful and terrifying...

And yet, somehow, in the body language of a tilted head, the curious pose that it had as it floated over him, and the strange way that it just stared like a curious animal faced with something that it hadn't experienced before, he wasn't actually afraid. And that lack of fear from him spread through their headspace, meaning that nobody else felt entirely afraid, either. Oh, sure, Cancer was all kinds of concerned, but that wasn't the same thing, and neither was the cautious watchfulness from Ryder. Aries downright wanted to leap up and hug the intangible individual, but that was nothing new.

A moment of silence stretched out into a near-minute as he laid there, not sure what to do and not hearing any instructions from Libra. He was concerned that he was doing something wrong, but with nothing said to the contrary and still actually seeing Rorshark, he was pretty sure that he was doing everything pretty much exactly as he should. So, he waited...and waited...

And then became aware that his fingers were dancing, tapping on the table without him realizing it. He blinked, waiting for one of the other headmates to take responsibility, but none of them did.

"Okay, looks like we have a neural link," Libra said from just out of view. "This is so exciting."

"Libra...Libra, what's going on?"

"I told you. He's going to be melding with you one by one."

"He's not melding with any of us yet..."

"What? Oh. Oh! Hey, that's not -"

Without warning, Rorshark lowered itself toward them, the spotted shark suddenly lying over them, superimposing his body over the human's. It was chilling, at first, almost like they were being sucked into something else, only for it to sink deeper into their body instead.

Then, and only then, Blake felt it. Not five other minds in his head, but [i]six.[/i]

Blake was completely speechless, and for once, so was everybody else. The sensation of having someone else among them, fully formed and without that acclimation period that usually came when they realized that someone else was pulling together in their mind, hit them hard, but not quite as hard as what happened next.

Rorshark - there was no feeling of him giving to them, but they could all feel the intrusion, the new thing, the strange thing that was linking between them and knew it had to be him - wove between them, and suddenly, all six of them were connected. A network of odd 'strings', for lack of a better term, ran between them, interweaving him, Aries, Ptolemy, Cancer, Ryder, and Toy in a way that they hadn't been since before the split.

"Ah...ah..."

He gasped for breath, hearing Libra muttering something off in the background, but he was too busy trying to stay conscious. The connections that had been forced on him, on them, made him want to retreat to the back of their head, but he could already feel that the others were in no better shape. With Rorshark in their head, there was no 'back', there was no 'front,' there was just this union of unholy parts that were dragged together, forced to think and feel and meld in ways that they were not meant to do.

It was like the momentary melding with Ptolemy to see Rorshark in the first place, only a hundred times more intense, a thousand times stronger as he also felt everything in the vibrancy that Aries felt it, feared and seethed the way that Cancer did, felt Toy's curiosity and interest, Ryder's casual detachment, and -

"NNNNGH!"

It was so much.

It was too much.

He was on the verge of passing out when the connections between them stopped, leaving him gasping and shaking on the table. Sweat ran down his forehead, dripping off his temples and down to his ears, and his chest and back felt like they were drenched in it. His mouth hung open, his eyes wide, and he slowly took in the well-lit lab again.

Inside their head, the headmates were scrambling, picking themselves up after the horrifying rush of sensation that came from being forcibly melded together in such an imperfect way. Nobody wanted that again, but -

But at the same time, there was no anger, considering how quickly the detachment had happened, and how Rorshark seemed to be putting up barriers between them instead, almost like an apology and correctional measure. They were able to communicate, after a fashion, ensuring that the barriers didn't go up too strong, and that the six of them weren't kept apart from one another.

Six. No, it wasn't six anymore, but rather, seven. Seven people in his head, including himself, and one of them was a great deal more fully formed than the rest of them, and that...well, that was a hard thing to deal with. They had functioned for years on their own, working through their issues, seeing their own improvements and ability to interact with the world get better. But now, having someone that wasn't...

[b]Damaged. The word is damaged. And he most definitely is not damaged.[/b]

Ptolemy was a hundred percent right. They were able to see the little defects between themselves, the lack of fullness and completion that they'd heretofore been able to ignore considering that they were all fragments of a whole, considering that they had all been improving, but with someone else that didn't share that damage in their head, it was hard not to feel self-conscious, and in a big way, too.

Yet, even as Blake tried to sort through his own feelings on that, Aries stepped forward...

#

[i]It was insane to see someone else that was so powerful in their mind. Not since the old fights between himself and the other headmates had anything like that happened, and Aries was more curious than ever before.

"Oh, wow. You're really something. Really, really cool, too. Can you do that with everything?"

It was hard to describe the interior space in a way that they all agreed with, but for Aries, his little spot for the moment was a bit of a ball pit, a playful place where people could hide or stick out as they liked, and where they could all relax. He ran through it, then swam through a deeper pit of balls, circling the shark creature that had come into their head. Rorshark, for his part, was silent, watching, listening.

"Do you talk?" Aries asked.

Rorshark shook his head.

"Aw, man. I thought you'd have a cool voice. Nice and deep and ominous. Well, not ominous, but - you know what I mean. Nice and rumbly and mmmmmmmm..."

He winked, and Rorshark seemed to chuckle. At the very least, the shark's shoulders rose and fell like someone that was laughing, which meant that he was probably on the right track. He rushed over, holding out his hand.

"My name's Aries. Nice to meet you."

The speckled shark thing reached out and took his hand after a moment's hesitation. No sooner had they made contact than the world expanded.

"Whooooooooooooa..."

A second in time expanded to a minute, and then a handful of them. His heart - their heart - hadn't so much as finished a single beat in that time, but that was time expansion for you. It did what it wanted, and fuck your sense of reality and physics.

Out, out, out, feeling like his mind was expanding, feeling like he was rushing down pathways that had been closed to him. Nightmare lanes that he had avoided in the night were suddenly flooded with light - and rubber, he realized, really nice and slick rubber - and he was pushed along. The world of night and depression and horrors seemed to loom ahead of him, but this time, rather than being bounced back, he felt like he was being invited in...and this time, he didn't feel fear in exploring them, not with the shark pushing him forward.[/i]

#

[b]Aries...did not quite disappear, but he did shift. There was something off about the whole thing, of the emotional core of the headmates disappearing and yet still being present. Ptolemy did not like it, but for the moment, he still extended to Libra the trust that he had earned.

So, when Rorshark came to him, he did not immediately dismiss the creature, but rather invited him into the mental library. The shark stepped inside, looking side to side in obvious curiosity, but did not push for anything. Not yet. Perhaps it was more polite than it had initially appeared.

"You are welcome...for now."

There was no response. Instead, Rorshark attempted to float, and then found that it could not. Ptolemy sat at one of the tables in his mental library, and Rorshark was forced to sit on the table rather than floating over it. It chose to sit there, he realized, rather than sitting in a chair.

It looked at him, as curious as could be, and he realized that there was a question in that look. He opened himself to it, much as he had done to see the creature in the first place, and realized what it was.

"No, I do not like you."

The stare continued, another question, another slow sift in understanding.

"I accept you, but I do not like you. I am a private person, and we have our boundaries. Well-understood, negotiated boundaries. And you do not like to be kept behind those boundaries. Do you?"

Rorshark shook its head.

"That is what I thought." Ptolemy nodded, the rabbit crossing his arms. "We are separate. To force us together is not healthy for us. Nor is it helpful, as you just found out."

Rorshark nodded. Good. The thing had been paying attention.

"Yet, out of respect for Libra, we allow you to remain. The others - Aries already, doubtlessly - will allow you in, and make space for you. They enjoy some of that. I do not. And I assure you, Cancer does not, either."

The shark looked off to the side, slowly nodding. Perhaps there was more of it spread through the mind, more of it touching on the different segments that they had made for themselves. That was something to be concerned about on some levels, but Ptolemy kept himself focused on the moment rather than on the future. He waited, and eventually the shark looked back at him. There was another question there, and a moment later, he puzzled out what it was.

"You want to understand how I work, and how the others work. And this is your way of asking permission."

Another nod. Ptolemy took a deep breath, not that it was needed in this mind-space, and slowly let it out.

"This will be short. And do not try to open doors that I have locked."

Rorshark nodded, offering his hand. Ptolemy took it, and soon, they were passing through channels of ink and circuitry, a book written in lines of wet coding and hard lines of connecting wire. It was a strange passage, but it felt him just as much as anything else did.[/b]

#

Through the mind Rorshark went, each time stopping with someone else, each time offering and encountering different emotional experiences. There were those that were not keen to have him there - like Cancer - and those that were more welcoming. Toy was very happy for someone to enter its bubbling pit of goo, talking and offering it silent companionship, and Ryder was rather curious in his own detached way for what might come next.

And then, there was Blake, who sat alone. The human stared straight ahead, waiting for his turn, and eventually, Rorshark appeared. He had felt what had been happening as the others were opened up to the world again, feeling connections to their old parts, their old things. It didn't make them [i]full[/i] beings, but it had bridged broken paths, allowing for byways and roundabouts that led around the trauma that had detached them from parts of their past.

It was something of a miracle, and something of a horror. He didn't know what to expect when Rorshark finally approached him in his empty, featureless room. The shark stepped inside, then stopped, cocking its head to the side in obvious confusion.

"My room...isn't really a room," Blake said. "I...I'm the one that stays front...so I have to be...more of what the world sees."

It had always been that way. The others had had the luxury of being what they wanted, allowed to present their ideal selves and their ideal spaces in the mindspace. Blake, as the face for the headmates and the one that had to keep everything together for the rest of the world to see...well, he didn't have that same privilege. He'd never gotten around to decorating his inner room, never had the feeling that he was entirely allowed. After all, if there was too much of a disconnect between the outer him and the inner him...

He'd seen what could happen to some personalities that reached that point. The levels of dissociation could cause some serious problems for those involved, and he wasn't about to risk that. He couldn't let the others down that way.

Rorshark hesitated, then made his way over. He offered his hand. Blake looked at it, then looked up at the shark.

"You....tried to fix us all, at first. Then you tried to 'fix' them, right?"

Rorshark shook his head. Blake blinked.

"You - but I felt it. You changed them."

Rorshark shook his head again. The shark kept insisting that he hadn't done anything, and that forced Blake to get to his feet, leaning in.

"You had to. I felt it. I felt them...them getting better. I could...it was..."

No. No, there was no fixing. Not the way that he was thinking of. Even if those parts were still there - and considering how long it had been since their various connections had been detached, it was seriously possible that those parts of their old self had long since atrophied into nothingness - there was no way that they could just 'reconnect' to them. That was the wrong way of looking at it.

No, no, this was something different. This was Rorshark melding with them, becoming bonded to the others in his own individual way. Their head...their head didn't feel so stuffed-full as it had been, less like there were seven minds in there and more like a six-plus feeling, like each of the six individual headmates had been enhanced, or something like that.

He looked down at the shark's hand.

"What...what will this do to me?" Blake asked.

There was no answer. He wasn't Ptolemy to just puzzle it out with a look, nor Aries to just go by feel. Yet, there was still something in the background, something that told him that it was going to be okay. After all, Cancer and Ptolemy had gone along with it, and they were the least likely to be fooled if there was something sinister going on in the background.

With a hint of hesitation, he took it...and he felt himself being expanded...perfected...melded...

There was a rubbery feeling to his thoughts, something flexible, yet restrained, something free-formed, yet constrained in its own way. He was slowly being encased, wrapped up in the shark's thoughts and power, and as he was, he felt...at peace, he supposed, calm and happy in a way that he hadn't been before...

#

Eventually, Blake opened his eyes. They were all there, but there was something different about it, almost like their various rooms had 'firmed up' in a way in their heads, allowing them to maintain connections through windows rather than meeting up as often as they had done before. They could rotate, stepping back and yet more fully stepping forward as they moved their rooms around, and as Blake's room swung forward, he opened his eyes to see Libra looking down at him.

"Feeling alright?" the rabbit hybrid asked.

Blake nodded.

"Well, Rorshark got all the mental mapping done that we needed for the new bodies...but what do you say that we show him how it feels to be in a body for real, hmm?"

Blake cocked his head to the side, then slowly smiled. He hadn't been so, ahem, eager for physical fun before, but now that he thought about it, there was something rather kinky to the idea.

"He can't...get out?" he asked.

"Not so easily. Not so long as you keep him invited in."

"Then...let's show him how fun physical stuff is."

"I have just the thing," Libra said with a grin.

[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]

Summary: The headmates are introduced to Rorshark, a creature of some power, and learn some of what he can do.

Tags: M/solo, Nudity, Human, Rabbit, Hybrid, Various Species, Headmates, Latex, Rubber, Playfulness, Multiple Personalities, Series, Possession, Spirit, Science,