No Prescription For That

[Robin Stanton]

Robin steps through the portal, back to the campus. Some of the festival has spilled through the gateway, though mostly folks who felt the need to step away from the bustle and into quieter surroundings. Less celebration and more small groups chatting. It's weird how the portal seems to muffle sound while light and solid objects pass through seamlessly. There's probably an explanation for it but Robin is also pretty confident that she would not understand it. Which is precisely why she needs to find somebody who can help her analyze the drug sample she snatched off of Ryan. The Point is probably empty at the moment and even if it wasn't she'd probably get a chemical composition rather than what it actually is.

So instead she heads for the Med Center. It's missing the annex she's used to from home but other than that it's eerie how closely it resembles the one she's been to countless time. It's weird how similar the stage is when the actors and plays are so clearly different from home, even accounting for the different timeframes. She can squint and almost see the building where Mum's lab should be but then it's just thin forest here and this version of the medical building might never get that addition. Weird the kind of things that suddenly make her homesick. Or maybe not quite that but a kind of... longing somewhere between morose and excited at how much time will have to pass before returning home, time filled with so much potential and adventure that it's hard to be upset about it. It's just a wild feeling to be reminded of simply by the absence of part of a building. She should ask Dad how he feels about this. Especially now that he's had so much added to him. 'Home' must seem such a small part of it all...

She shakes her head, making it loose just enough cohesion to get all jumbled and swirled before snapping back to normal. Enough of that for now, she's on a mission.

Waltzing into the place she straight up asks the poor receptionist who to talk to about drugs, which prompts a convoluted conversation of Robin trying to explain without giving away too much information until the receptionist simply gives up and points her in a direction.

[Narrator]

Robin was sent to Dr. Yamadera, one of the research scientists in the wing of what might, potentially one day, be Sara's lab. In fact, it wasn't that far from where Dr. Bowen's lab should be, another reminder that things just were different here.

Yamadera looked up, raising an eyebrow. "Yes? Are you here to pick up lunch orders already?"

[Robin Stanton]

"Nah. Sorry. I'm looking for someone who could help me figured out what this Glooze stuff is people are apparently selling in Mutant Town." she says and pulls out the vial to show Dr. Yamadera.

[Narrator]

"Glooze?" Yamadera said, reaching over to pick up the vial. "What is it, some kind of party drug?"

He shook it, experimentally; it sloshed in the vial a bit more viscously than one might expect.

[Robin Stanton]

"That's my guess but I've never heard of it till now. All I know it's supposed to affect mutants more than plain folk."

[Narrator]

"Well, we can certainly run it through the mass spectrometer and see what comes out," Yamadera said, heading over to an unimpressive looking machine -- at least, by future-child-of-scientist standards.

"What brings you across it, by the way? What's your angle here?"

[Robin Stanton]

"That's your mass spectromathingie? Where's the handheld one?" Robin gawks at the machine taking up most of a table.

[Narrator]

"If you can build a spectrometer that small, you should go into business," Yamadera smirked. "This should just take a few minutes, at least for an initial result. If something interesting pops up, we can go into more tests."

[Robin Stanton]

"I'm more of a big-picture, ideas kinda gal." Robin jokes.

[Narrator]

"Mmm," Yamadera said, unimpressed. "Which is why you leave it to us little people to figure out your mysteries for you. I see how it is."

*Ding!*

"Let's see what we have here," Yamadera said, looking over the readouts. "Huh.

Digluozynethylamine. Pretty heavily refined, at that."

[Robin Stanton]

"Nah, more that I know when I'm not smart enough for something." Robin laughs. "Case in point, what's that mean? It's, like, an artificial drug?"

[Narrator]

"Just a heavily refined one," Yamadera said, reaching up to take down a heavy-looking book from a shelf. "Increase the potency, redouble the effects, that sort of thing...

Ah, here we are. Digluozynethlamine. Harvested from a rare Guatemalan pitcher plant, apparently; the digestive fluids. Sounds utterly appetizing when you put it that way, doesn't it?

At low dosages, it's used in muscle relaxants and as an anxiolytic, so you can see why it might serve as the basis for some sort of recreational experience. At higher doses..." he paused. "At higher doses..."

[Robin Stanton]

"So, like, more to chill-out than a straight up party drug?" Robin asks. Her knowledge of recreational drug use isn't particularly great. Sure, she's smoked a joint on occasion because literally melting into the couch is an amazingly relaxing experience, but other than that she's mostly put drugs into Uppers or Downers in her head, with a vague threshold of 'bad' somewhere above marijuana and hovering right around 'stuff that makes techno tolerable'.

"What happens when you take a highly refined dose?"

[Narrator]

"Well..." Yamadera said, turning to his computer. "See for yourself."

He was on the internet! The wave of the future! Maybe it hadn't occurred to Robin because she was so used to the Engines of her time just feeding her relevant info. Having to actually type in a keyword and sort through things yourself? So last-gen.

The video was of some sorority girls in America (by the looks of it at least) yapping and making faces towards the camera. They had vials very similar to the one Robin had palmed -- not quite the same, so maybe from a different source, but presumably the same thing. The video title called it "Drain" here, but that was presumably just another street name for the...well, whatever it was.

The girls clinked their vials together, held their noses, and chugged it simultaneously. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen other than nervous giggles and titters. But within about 30 seconds, their skin began to change -- one turning a cotton-candy pink; the other a neon lime green. And as their giggles turned to more giddy outright laughter and jitters, they seemed to practically ~dissolve~, breaking down into a sort of amorphous slurry. They were still moving and occasionally reforming, looking more like Collette than Robin or Will.

"Refined like this, it's an everything relaxant."

[Robin Stanton]

"What the! That's such sloppy form!" is the first thing going through her head and out her mouth. "There's no way that's not dangerous for humans. Or hell, non-shapehsifters. Someone is definitely going to flush themselves down the toilet on accident." she adds, definitely not speaking form experience.

[Narrator]

Yamadera nodded, reading on. "Seems that way. It looks to be mostly harmless on its own; they reform once the drug leaves their system, which will depend on a number of factors. But drains, cracks in the floorboards -- for those with less control, there's inherent dangers if not used...responsibly.

Those with active X-Genes seem to run fewer risks -- and the more those genes are used to interacting with one's own bodily makeup, the safer they are. Those without active X-Genes don't seem to have much, if any, control when they are, ahem, 'gloozing'."

[Robin Stanton]

Robin snorts out a laugh.

"Remember kids, don't be a gloozer." she says in her best goodie-two-shoes voice while making a fingergun at a non-existent audience.

[Narrator]

"Ready for a Just Say No advert, I can tell," Yamadera deadpanned. "Where did you get this, anyway?"

[Robin Stanton]

"Someone was selling it in Mutant Town, all entrepreneurial-like. I think I got an idea on where they got it from. Any idea how this would be made? It can't just be anti-anxiety meds, right?"

[Narrator]

"It's apparently harvested from the Guatemalan Mandrinker, a rare pitcher plant. Purified, of course, but it's part of the digestive liquid inside," Yamadera read off the screen.

[Robin Stanton]

"Oh right, yes, you mentioned that. Wait you mean this stuff digests people temporarily? That's bad, right? Medically speaking?"

[Narrator]

"Oh, not necessarily. Pineapple and honey are filled with bromelain and amylase, and that's perfectly fit for human consumption. This is...well, this is something more, for sure, but I wouldn't say it's inherently harmful. Necessarily. Hard to be sure without further study, of course."

[Robin Stanton]

"Okay. Good. That's good." And makes it less bad that I let Ryan skedaddle. "Thanks, Doc. Can I have that vial back?"

[Narrator]

"You know, this is technically illegal," Yamadera said, frowning -- but relenting and handing it back over to Robin.

[Robin Stanton]

"Yeah and I woulda taken it to the coppers but I don't think they got Mutant Town's best interest at heart."

[Narrator]

"Yeah...they were not, let's say, overly thrilled with the fest going on. There was some more energy this year than there has been in years past, and I think there are some in charge there who prefer the smiling, quiet mutants scrapping to get ahead rather than Ms. Minamida's new uplifted version."

[Robin Stanton]

"Splurch. All the more reason to not let this get out of hand. I'd say don't tell anyone but s'probably fine if Ash knows. Don't tell her I called her that, tough. Wrong Ashlie." she shakes her head.

[Narrator]

"Mm. Just be careful -- both with that stuff and, you know, general. Don't want to be scraping you off the street, you hear?"

[Robin Stanton]

"Oh no worries about that! I've been gloozing long before they came up with this stuff." she winks and spins around to face the Doctor as she's walking away, dramatically letting herself fall backwards and splat onto the floor, letting the momentum roll through her like a wave and reshape back onto her feet in one smooth motion.

[Narrator]

"Shapeshifters," the man said with a long-suffering tone in his voice, shaking his head.

[Robin Stanton]

Once outside of the clinic, Robin pulls the vial from her pocket and eyes it. She has to admit she's curious and if there's anybody who can handle this it oughta be her. And really, isn't that the best way to judge something? It's not like it's the juice that makes your head explode. Mind made up she unscrews the vial and knocks it back like a shot of alcohol.

[Narrator]

Perhaps unsurprising from it's pink appearance, it tasted quite a bit like bubblegum -- and particularly sweet and cloying bubblegum, matching it's status as a party drug. All it was missing was some bright flashing lights and the stale smell of sweat on the dance floor to put you in the mindset of a rave.

For a moment, that was all it did -- just long enough for Robin to begin to suspect that she was either immune or had gotten a bad batch. Maybe her unique physiology meant that the chemical couldn't oh no there it went.

There was a shivering sensation down her spine -- pins and needles, welling up from fingertips and spreading out over the rest of her body. It wasn't quite the same sensation as when she used her own powers, though it also wasn't a million miles off -- the same field of bodily manipulation, clearly, but not quite in the same key, as it were. There was maybe a half-second delay between the tingling sensation and the change, her body losing it's solidity and becoming translucent, semi-goopy and bright pink! ...OK, that last one wasn't much of a change.

With a little focus, Robin could find she could control the density, within a limited range. She had a leg up on most people who tried to use this because of her own mutation, though it would still be a bit awkward working it, doing the shifting equivalent of stumbling along as she tried to find her sea legs. But, unless she wanted to, she wasn't in immediate danger of flowing down a drain.

[Robin Stanton]

Whoop, that was quite a bit more wobbly than she anticipated, perhaps a bit too used to having more or less full control over her body this felt more like trying to stack water-balloons. Not unpleasant at all and a little like the few times she's tried weed only that made her thoughts difficult to get lined up right whereas this was more affecting her body directly. Still, she has some experience navigating the world as a blob, even if it's normally more like one big omni-directional muscle, she manages to shift enough of herself up and forward to advance in kind of a rolling wave. She probably looks ridiculous but there's very few people who could really tell the difference between her normal non-sense and this. And even fewer in this dimension.

She knows what she needs though and rolls herself through the grass and towards a scattering of trees. There's always bits of fallen branches around, especially closer towards the woods. She just needs to find a couple that have broken off long ago enough that they no longer count as alive to her power and she can try pushing part of herself into them. This part of her power doesn't quite want to work right either and she takes a while having to seep into the wood instead of actively pushing into it, but eventually her awareness spreads to the collection of branches and they assemble themselves inside her body to form a rudimentary skeleton to cling to. Her 'legs' still have a tendency to meld together but as long as she moves her wooden bones instead of herself it's no worse than wading through knee-deep mud. Even if the mud is her own protoplasm. And she has to admit it is kind of an overall pleasant sensation. Like the world's best hot-tub after working out.

For non-shifters or even ones whose range doesn't include the kind of fluidity afforded to her this would definitely be an appealing full-body high. Oh! She should try the pool and see if swimming is easier tan walking like this. And so the pink-slime-coated stick-figure stalks her way towards the Rec Center.

[Narrator]

Had Robin left it to her own devices, she probably could have figured out a fairly good way to perambulate in this form. After all, her mutation involved changing her body quite significantly -- this is may have been part of what Ryan meant when she said it was less dangerous for mutants than for normal people, who wouldn't have any sort of experience with this. They'd be the ones really struggling to keep themselves together; not someone as shifty as Robin.

That being said, the makeshift wooden skeleton certainly sped things along -- creating a sort of internal structure gave Robin's (jelly? goo? protoplasm?) something to bond to and shape around, like a T-frame in a scarecrow. It was a weird sensation, as she could feel the sticks inside of her in more ways than usual, the 'inside' of her gelatinous form being apparently as sensitive as the outside -- non-differentiated cells and all that, and different from either clay or flesh and blood that Robin normally wore. But Robin had been around the block once or twice, so this wouldn't be an entirely alien sensation. Sword swallowers on TV, pincushions, the like -- it might be more Will's thing than Robin's, but Stantons are as Stantons do.

It would take long at all before Robin was able to move quite easily with the frame inside of her, even if it did kind of force her into a pillsbury dough-girl type shape as her protoplasm clung to the basic stick-figure skeleton.