"Sure he does. Just like he did for destroying the End, right?"

"....That's--he--"

He did have a good reason for it. Right? In his book, he had a good reason. He had wanted to trap Team Awesome in prison, right? That was the reason, it was for the prison. ...It had felt like a good reason at the time. It doesn't feel like as good of a reason now, in front of Planetlord.

"Yes," he says, anyway. Zam's pretty sure it's obvious he doesn't really believe it; Planetlord snorts.

"That's not the point. The point is, Alita can transform into any animal she can touch. How she got modded--whatever the fuck that is--I don't know, alright, but we have--Planet, is Poopies still in the maze? Do we know where Poopies is?"

"Ummmmmm. I think so?"

"Last time I saw it was when it killed me and Mapicc during our fight, I think that was after the maze?" Zam looks back at Alita and does a double-take again. "Wow. I--what the fuck. Goodness gracious."

Everyone here is useless. Bacon spams F3+A and looks around for endermites with ridiculous quantities of particle effect. 

"Found it. It's a bit under spawn, over that direction--" He points. "--we probably don't want to let it up, we can just dig a hole and Alita can go down. Alita, you're probably going to die, sorry. I'll give you a totem and some pearls, you can try to get out, but, um. Good luck, you'll need it."

He drops Alita a totem and a stack of pearls.

Oh no, she scared the new guy. :c

<Hey, it's cool. I'm not gonna hurt you. Sorry for startling you,> she says to Zam.

(She does her best to use the Andalite thought-speech to give her words a warm, affectionate tone. It's an inferior mental communication method, she thinks, to her native form—which, wrapped around someone's brain, can convey warmth and affection themselves.)

She turns to Bacon, holding the totem in one hand and the pearls in the other.

<How do I use these?>

(Andalite thought-speech, just like regular speech, is handled under translation convention; the native lifestealers still experience it approximately the same. They're already always doing "communication method that doesn't require your body to have ears or a mouth", and often doing "communication method where you can talk exclusively to some but not all people who are physically present".)

Just to Alita, since they're now in a private call, apparently: "It's not about whether you'll hurt me!!! It's about--you shouldn't be able to do that. No one should be able to do that."

And, a couple moments later:

"Hold the totem, it'll explode if you take enough damage to die, which will happen as soon as you touch Poopies. Also, as soon as you touch Poopies, start running and throw the pearl, it'll teleport you to where the pearl lands."

<That is...a take on morphing I have never heard before,> she says to Zam, thinking though maybe the fundamentalists will think of it when it's revealed publicly to humanity. <I'd be interested to hear more, sometime, about why you think so.>

She walks over to the place Bacon had indicated to her. <Thanks. I'm ready.>

"You're looking for an endermite--uh, little purple creature, about yea big--it's going to have a ton of potion effects, it'll be incredibly fast and aggressive enough that you probably won't have to do much looking, it's going to hit you and pop your totem and then if you're lucky you can pearl away and not die but realistically you're probably going to die. Good luck."

And then Bacon spleefs Alita into spawn--what seemed like solid ground was, in fact, a very thin layer of dirt over a massive crater. The fall hurts a little, not enough to kill.

And then there is Poopies: as promised, an endermite with various magical-looking particles coming off of it. It's very fast. It hits like a truck, or maybe something stronger than that, because at least trucks are sometimes damaged or slowed down by accidents. It hits like Alita's body is a piece of wet tissue paper. As promised, the totem in Alita's hand explodes, and she doesn't die immediately. She's got an instant to react; if she misses the pearl and stays down with Poopies, she dies, or if the pearl takes a moment too long to land and it gets her again before then.

The pearl does, indeed, take a moment too long to land. She respawns, one heart worse for wear, and assumes the form of...

...an endermite. She lacks the varied assortment of particles.

"Huh," Planetlord says. "Hit me?"

It's not super necessary; they can all see just by looking at Alita that she doesn't have any particles, and she's not moving faster than a normal endermite would. But Planet's holding a totem, just in case.

She hits him. It does the usual damage of an unaugmented endermite.

"Huh," Bacon echoes. "So, no effects. --Can you turn into people?"

Could be an insane heart dupe, if she gets people's heart counts when she does. Or it could just put her at ten, like how the endermite just gave her a normal endermite. If she turned into Spoke, or Ashswag, or Vitalasy, maybe she'd get their powers, maybe she wouldn't, it's worth testing. Or if she turned into LifestealAdmin--

--He's getting ahead of himself. See if she can turn into people, first.

(He wouldn't use it, even if it did turn out to be a dupe glitch. He'd report it to Parrot to be patched. And if he didn't, Zam definitely would. But there are a lot of people on the server who would really love to use it, and he needs to know if this is going to be a problem.)

She thought-speaks to everyone around. <I can! Humans and Andalites are people. Uh, that is, my pink bipedal form and my purplish quadrupedal form. Do you want me to try acquiring one of you?>

"Right, yeah, you've got a human form. You probably want to acquire Zam, if you get people's heart counts when you turn into them, because, uh, Planet and I do not have a ton of hearts and if you're not used to that you might die on accident."

Zam looks very hesitant about this but doesn't object.

Ok, silence and an uncomfortable look isn't a "no", but it's not exactly a "yes" either.

(Why is he uncomfortable? Maybe he's afraid she'll impersonate him, or maybe since he seems to have some kind of moral objection to morphing he doesn't want to ~contribute~ to it. Or maybe he just thinks Yeerks are gross. His loss if so, and not her business.)

She thought-speaks directly to Zam.

<Zam, are you sure you're cool with this? It's just a little tap, it doesn't hurt, but if you really don't wanna be acquired I won't judge you about that, and I'd back you up if anyone else took issue with it. Or if you don't wanna say it I could try to make up some reason it shouldn't be you.>

"It's--it's fine."

Zam doesn't feel great about the impersonation potential. Or the helping-with-exploits. Mostly the helping-with-exploits. Also the "getting swept up into someone else's plan that he doesn't know the details of or motivation behind" in general. He's been doing a lot of that recently. But Bacon's not wrong that he and Planet both have three hearts and Zam has seventeen. Zam holds out his hand to Alita.

He doesn't sound fine. At some point you have to take people at their word. She reverts to her natural form and jumps up to touch his hand.

Alita assumes Zam's form. She feels sturdier, stronger, more alive.

"Wow. I feel great. It's gotta rule to be you, Zam."

Zam sounds even more miserable now!!! "It doesn't, actually, but thanks."