Mochi

The man continued on his path, opting to stay in there not a moment longer than he needed to. He found himself in a hallway taller than it was wide, as the reason for such dimensions became glaringly apparent.

Dwarves, orcs, humans, elves and the like were commonplace wherever you went, as those wandering the halls happened to be dressed in similar attire to Raian himself – perhaps lab coats brought a sense of authority to most people.

The exception to the white coats were of course those sporting black and red protective gear, typically holding some form of bolt-action rifle affixed with bayonets, and the colossal, bipedal creatures just so casually meandering alongside Raian.

Any other sane person would pinch themselves to see if they were dreaming, but to Raian, these Aberrants became somewhat of a commonplace. A rather rotund bipedal Orca, twice the height of your average man, approached from the opposite direction with a hefty stomp, waving at Raian with a toothy grin as he passed by.

The man waved back with a grunt as he still remained lost in thought, continuing down the halls and instinctively stopping at intersections to look both ways – he learned his lesson in his first week here that running into a brick wall is preferable to running into a 12ft crustacean that woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

Frustrations grew with every step, and Raian brought his hands to rest atop his head, letting out a heavy sigh that luckily got drowned out in the mid-morning commotion.

“A-ah! Raian!” a pale elf who looked as if he wouldn’t correct a waiter on getting his order wrong stepped in to stop the man in his tracks.

“What now, Grimsby?”

“I-it appears y-you have uh…” Grimsby pointed ever so slightly to the left of Raian, his voice quivering.

Piercing, golden eyes stared back at the elf, and a crimson tentacled head peered from behind Raian, squinting at Grimsby with a suspicious glare, sending the man scurrying back into the crowd.

“Huh? Oh.” Raian yelped as he turned.

Looking down, the handler was met with the very topic of his performance review. Flowing locks of red tendrils sat comfortably just past his shoulders, twitching and twirling lightly as they tend to do whenever the boy is in a good mood – a detail Raian picked up on within the first few weeks, much like how a dog wags its tail.

With vibrant, reddish-pink skin and an alluringly soft face, Mochi looked up at his handler with a smile and full head of height between the two.

“How long have you been there?” Raian leaned in.

“A few minutes.” Mochi spoke softly, wiping a few remaining crumbs off his white robe, “How did the thingy go?”

“The performance review?” the handler swallowed, unsure of how to boil it down, “It went about as well as I expected. Nothing out of the ordinary, I guess…”

The two continued to meander down the bustling corridor, but the words spoken to him in said performance review still bounced off the walls of his mind. The heat about his face was certainly fading, but whether the squid could see it was a separate concern.

“Oh! Right,” Raian broke the sliver of awkwardness, “Professor Faloux gave me a couple suggestions, by the way.”

The squid narrowed his gaze, baring a mild look of concern about him as he picked up the pace, twirling around to face his handler to make small steps backwards.

“I don’t want to try any of his yucky smoothies again,” he tucked his hands about his back, “it just tastes like medicine – what’s even in it anyway?”

“Crab.”

“Crab?”

“No, just—”

Raian tucked his fingers about the rim of Mochi’s collar, yanking him swiftly until the squid planted firmly in the middle of his chest. Mochi wasn’t as attentive as Raian hoped, having not even noticed they had reached an intersection.

Like clockwork, as if the very ebb and flow of causality in the universe wanted Raian to get bulldozed, a hulking Aberrant undoubtedly with the genetic foundation of a crab stomped on past.

As much as Raian found it humorous whenever someone not paying attention gets a rude awakening by the sheer presence of an Aberrant, Mochi was the last person he wanted to see get pulverized.

“Mrmph mmh mh mrphmh.” Mochi’s words suffocated in the fabric of Raian’s shirt.

“Oh, sorry.”

Raian released the cephalopod from his grasp, realising only now he gripped him tighter than intended. The boy wiggled his nose a bit and furled his brow, giving a complementary sniff.

“Is that coconut?”

“Yeah, Unali got me a new soap – they said the last one was too harsh.”

“Oh, it… absolutely was.” The boy admitted a bit too quickly as he proceeded to cross the intersection, leaving his handler in a stunned silence.

“Well, I liked it.” Raian mumbled under his breath.

He waited a moment, looking both ways before pursuing the squid. While Raian knew to express caution, the unmistakable blur that was Miss Evans stormed past, pursuing the trail of a bacon sandwich lingering on the wind like an apex predator hunts its prey.

“I really liked that strawberry one!” the boy spun around, “What happened to that one?”

“You tried eating it.”

“Ah, I forgot about that.”

“You ate half the bar! How did you forget?!” Raian shrieked in both amazement and a hint of frustration.

He noted to himself a long time ago to never buy artisanal soap again as Mochi responded with nothing but a giggle that would make even the coldest of hearts forgive him for eating an expensive block of soap.

After a few more minutes of walking behind the squid, Raian came to a halt, putting a firm hand on Mochi’s shoulder.

“Where are we even going, anyway?”

He watched his handler nudge his head toward the heavy set of steel, sliding doors they had come to a stop to. Inscriptions upon the door read as such:

God’s Wound
226
Active
Unali Crowe
AAP

While Raian knew what most of those meant, of course, the name of the Aberrant came first, the room number, whether or not the room is in use, the name of the handler, but he never quite knew what AAP stood for. It was a hot topic of debate among the handlers, but no one came to any particular conclusion.

“Oh!” a beaming smile shone across the squid’s face as he began to incessantly rap against the door.

Raian too joined with a few thunderous, heavy knocks, and they both stood patiently, awaiting a response.