Yep!

Her Typhon dispatches them easily enough, though. They are not hard to locate.

Eating mimics is a bizarre sensation.

She sits somewhere with a good view of all the entrances and exits, and unpockets the Nintendo Slim and checks its charge and game library. As she suspected from the general state of that car, it's almost fully charged and has lots of interesting titles available. She picks a physics puzzle game she recognizes and plays a few levels.

Her Typhon doesn't overtly react, but it doesn't interrupt her, either. Neither does anything else. She is free to play the physics puzzle game.

She's interested in how her Typhon will react to the concept of video games, but also this is just really fun. Various objects traverse intricate obstacle courses, and her goal is to get them through the final gate without them getting stuck, tumbling into an abyss, or being incinerated by hazards along the way.

When one of her various objects is incinerated a fifth time on a challenge mode that requires some tricky timing, her Typhon intervenes.

It wins the level for her, then it returns control.

—she giggles.

"Thank you," she says. "That was very helpful."

Her Typhon offers no commentary.

... But will win other levels for her if she fails at them enough on her own.

She plays a few more - the Typhon ends up winning another challenge mode for her - and then puts the game away and starts heading south again, keeping an eye out for mimics.

There are a few, all of which are devoured by her Typhon. It's not clear if it's worse at spotting mimics than her or not, but it lets her point them out before it eats them. Keeping her 'awake' while it does it becomes the new normal. The same is not true when it devours the larger Typhon that mumble garbled sentences, but it'll put her back wherever it leaves her backpack. Aside from brief detours for its dietary choices, it doesn't interfere with her very much. It'll win levels for her in the physics puzzle game, and eventually starts helping her in other ways.

When Lauren tests the door to an abandoned apartment and finds it locked, it takes control to kneel in front of it. It peers expressionlessly with Lauren's eyes at the lock itself. After a few seconds of silent staring, it reaches towards it with her (their?) hand, turns a finger to a smoky black tendril, and inserts the digit into the lock. It's clear that it doesn't really know how locks work, but it's definitely noticed that some doors are locked and some aren't and is curious about how it works. Lauren can feel the digit probing the interior of the lock, turning to thinner and thinner tendrils to fit into the tiny crevices, and then eventually to an amorphous mist as her alien curiously probes the device.

They're there for a few minutes as it fumbles curiously at it, but eventually it figures out the trick of it, and the lock clicks open. The Typhon removes the tendril from the lock and turns it back into a finger, then tries the door.

It opens, and her Typhon returns control.

She should probably not be so weirdly charmed by her Typhon.

...

She's really weirdly charmed by her Typhon.

"Thank you," she says again. It seems only polite. Then she goes to look through the apartment. Maybe there will be some mimics for it to eat.

Nope! Maybe they couldn't get past the locked door. Her Typhon doesn't complain.

Whoever lived here looks like they've been gone a while. The only food in the pantry are things that will keep for a while, and everything's perfectly neat in the way some people make their homes before they go on a trip.

She can still recharge her devices - solar power is nice but carrying the TranScribe around so it gets sun all the time is annoying - and pick up a few odds and ends, and—

—having a shower seems kind of weird, in context. Not having a shower seems kind of like a bad long-term plan, though. On the other hand, it's getting on towards evening and she hasn't felt noticeably hungry all day. Nor has she needed to use the bathroom. Perhaps coffee cups are beyond such mortal requirements. Convenient if true, but how does she check?

It's really not clear! But the shower is stocked with soap if she'd like to have one, and there are some crackers in this apartment if she'd like to give eating a shot. They are plausibly the sort of thing that might make her thirsty, if she is not above such mortal requirements.

...she nibbles on a cracker.

It tastes like a cracker. Her Typhon doesn't screech and pull the cracker away, and she can swallow it easily enough. This is probably fine.

She doesn't feel any thirstier.

Hmm. And not tired, either. Except emotionally.

She sits by a west-facing window and watches the sun go down.

The integrity of the sun has not been affected by the alien invasion. It's just as pretty as it would be without them.

Her eyes unfocus and the sunset blurs for a second.

Then when she blinks to clear them, it looks - different. Brighter, more vibrant than anything she'd seen before - is that another color? That looks like another color.

"...did you just upgrade my eyesight?"

She blinks a few more times.

"You did. Thank you," she says, delightedly.

It looks like it gave her ultraviolet vision, and did... something... to let her see colors more easily at night. As the sunset's light fades, it's easier to distinguish things on the blue-to-ultraviolet range than the red-to-green range, but both sets are faintly visible.

Whatever it did, it made the sunset look even more lovely.

She should really be less charmed by her Typhon than she is. But here we are.

As the sun sinks below the horizon and she continues to feel absolutely no desire to sleep, she retrieves her puzzle game and plays a few more levels.

Her Typhon will help win difficult levels for her!

Evidence towards being beyond mortal requirements continues to stack up. She doesn't feel tired, hungry, or thirsty. It's pretty convenient, but it's not clear how her Typhon's pulling this off. But then, that's true of most things it does.

If it can shapeshift well enough to turn into her this thoroughly in the first place, it's not a huge surprise that it can also just - not do the 'bodily needs' parts. Especially since it also managed to mess around with her vision.

What's it using her for, she wonders. Is she really the equivalent of a mimicked coffee cup? Then why is it spending time playing cooperative puzzle games with her when it could be out hunting for more aliens to cannibalize?

She switches to another game. A platformer where you play as an anxious armadillo who curls up involuntarily whenever something startling happens, so you have to manage your interactions with the environment to make sure a sudden noise or movement doesn't send you rolling down a hill and undo ten minutes of progress. It's a cute mechanic, more fun in her opinion than the traditional kind of physically harmful game hazard, and she likes waiting and watching as the round little creature cautiously studies the terrain ahead and gets used to the behaviour of the plants and animals there.

She doesn't immediately get assistance for this game, but it also doesn't interrupt her to go hunt for its peers.