The Process Forum - New TF Story

Not much, but here's something to kick off the new page:
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Katie nodded, sliding the phone into her pocket. "well," she exhaled, "now what?"

Mary looked around at the apartment, the sea of green making her blanche. "...Now we get some new furniture," Mary said, furrrowing her brow. "I'm really starting to hate the way this place looks."
Katie blew a laugh through her nose as the side of her mouth twisted up. "And how do you propose we do that? Not like we can go to Ikea."
"I think..." Mary said, getting that same far-off look on her face as she tilted her head up. "I think I'm going to borrow some stuff from the neighbors." Without another word, Mary dropped into the floor, disassembling into tentacles, one last tentacle dragging her toga inside the nest of tentacles and disappearing.
"Uh, Mary...?" Katie asked, bending over the spot where she'd vanished. She'd only had a brief moment to furrow her brows before a pair of tentacles lashed down from the ceiling, hooking under Katie's armpits and pulling her straight into- and through- the ceiling, the tentacles raising her up from the second-story floor and depositing her on her feet as Mary reformed inside her toga.
"Okay, so-" Mary started.
"Whoah, honey, one sec," Katie said, putting a hand to her head and holding the other out for balance. "I think my stomach's still taking the stairs up."
Mary smirked. "Sorry, I won't pull you up so fast next time. I just thought, you know, not exactly a rope ladder or anything."
"How about sairs? Stairs are great..." Katie muttered, looking around the barren room.
"Right, so, as I was saying, I accidentally ate everything in here, but I only went as far as the walls, just sort of making a barrier between me and the cops," Mary said. "and since they've evacuated all the other units in this building, I think it'd probably be okay if we borrowed some furniture for a while."
"'Borrowed'?" Katie asked, arching a brow as she looked at Mary.
"Yes, 'Borrowed'," Mary repeated as she waled across the room. "Don't think I'm not keeping track of everything bad that's happened, Katie. I fully intend to make restitutions once this is all over, but for now, there's no sense in us having no furniture while everyone else's just collects cobwebs until this blows over."
"...Provided it doesn't get eaten," Katie said as Mary extended her arms towards the wall, parting the green mass like a pair of curtains and revealing the empty apartmenr next door.
"I'm working on that," Mary said, ducking through the hole, a small swarm of tentacles following her as she moved through the space to the bedroom door, still open.
"I forget how big these places feel when there's nothing in them... Katie said, looking around as she followed Mary. One of the tentacles slithered over her foot, causing her to jump. "Is this you, here?" She asked.
"Is what me?" Mary called out, her voice echoing in the bedroom.
"This, these," Katie said, gesturing to the tentacles on the ground as she entered the bedroom as well. "Did you tell them to follow you, or do they do it instinctually, or are you actually moving each of them yourself?"
"...A little bit of all of them, I think," Mary said as the mass of tentacles began climbing the wall, burrowing into it and growing fat as they ate through the drywall. "Hang on a sec," She said, her brow furrowing as her eyes unfocused. "C'mon..." She muttered as the tentacles split and grew, burrowing deeper into the wall. Katie tilted her head, thinking that the tentacles' spread reminded her of high school biology, watching a time-lapse of cultured bacteria spreading. It took less than a minute for the mass of tentacles to start lowering down to the ground, the next apartment over visible through the hole as the tentacles ate their way down to the floor, leaving only a single ribbed silver tube going through the hole.
"Ha!" Mary exclaimed, clapiing her hands once. "I got it!"
"Got what?" Katie asked as she followed Mary through the hole.
"See that silver thing?" Mary asked, pointing to the tube that remained uneaten. "That's the electrical conduit. I was specifically trying *not* to eat that, and I didn't."
"Uh... good for you?" Katie said, scratching her head.
"Well, to answer your question, it's a little bit of each. They have something of a default behavior- I think that's the Body's doing- and it's tough for me to override that when it's being spread across a hundred or so of the damn things." Mary looked down at the coffee table by her feet. "Hm, This looks solid. Could be something worth sleeping on if we get some pads," She said. "But yeah, me being able to think 'don't eat the electrical' and having the rest of them actually understand and listen to me, I'm pretty happy about it." Mary picked up a pair of blankets that were sling over the back of the couch and tossed them over her shoulder. "Well, as happy as anything involving this stuff makes me, anyways."

They wound up going through two other apartments, grabbing up a few other pieces of small furniture- nothing too large, as Mary didn't want to risk the structural integrity of the building by widening the holes too much- but after a few hours' work, she and Katie had managed to make Mary's Lair at least somewhat more habitable, though for the time being Mary was in a near-constant state of yelling at various parts of her lair to not eat the new furnishings. Shandra was still mostly ina daze, but at least she was beginning to deflate somewhat, the pile of tentacles at the foot of her seat attesting to where all the mass was going.