Chapter 3 – Congratulations! It's a… Blob

After many dates with Dumplin and a very persuasive plea, Towa finally agreed to return to Toki Toki City with Dumplin, accepting his offer of a stable home and source of company. While the Time Patrol was initially against this arrangement (Towa's arrival was particularly tense and hostile), they grudgingly accepted her presence. Towa, in turn, gave them very little reason to be mad at her. When she wasn't with Dumplin, she kept to herself, frequently locking herself in her lab. While Chronoa was not comfortable with this, she eventually backed off when Towa's creations started saving Time Patrollers from horrible situations. Chronoa even officiated their wedding, which was attended by a hopeless confused crowd.

Things were quiet and peaceful for a time, but then Towa performed an experiment one night and everything changed.


"Who writes this crap?" Dumplin muttered incredulously, staring down at the book in his lap. He was sitting in his favorite arm chair in their cottage, resting after a hard mission through time. Towa smiled as she stealthily made her way up behind him. "Is that even physically possible?" he asked himself. Towa looked down at the passage he was reading and her smile widened. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed his cheek.

"I'm not sure, sweet one," she purred, "but I'd be willing to find out." Dumplin chuckled and leaned into her embrace.

"How was your day, babe?" he asked.

"Quite productive," she answered. "I was actually about to run a new experiment. Can you lend me a hand?"

"Of course," Dumplin said with enthusiasm as he set the book aside. Towa smiled.

"Thank you, dear," she said, taking hold of his left hand.

With a blur of motion, she took out the cleaver she had been hiding behind her back, raised it high, and removed Dumplin's hand and forearm with a single chop. Dumplin stared at the stump where his limb had been not a second earlier in confusion before he started screaming.

"Kai, Kami and me, that fucking hurt!" Dumplin snarled in pain. "The fuck did you do that for?!"

"I said I needed your hand," she said dismissively as she returned the cleaver to the kitchen. When she came back out, Dumplin was still glaring at her. She rolled her eyes. "Oh, don't be a baby. You can regrow your arm with no problem."

"It still hurts…" he grumbled as his limb started to reform. She shook her head in exasperation.

"Anyway, follow me. You should at least see what I'm working on."

She descended down into the basement, with Dumplin's waddling steps behind her. The basement contained her research lab, where she carried out her experiments and made her plethora of inventions. Currently, all of the furniture had been pushed against the wall to make room for the blood-red rune circle in the middle of the room. Thousands of characters were arranged in an amalgamation of hundreds of different designs she had researched. After weeks of work, this might be just what she was looking for.

"Well," said Dumplin as he saw the circle, "that certainly looks delightful." He shot her a questioning look. "You summoning your old sorority here for dinner? I definitely wouldn't say no to a party of demon coeds, if you know what I mean?"

Towa merely smiled and rolled her eyes again, accustomed to her husband's sense of humor.

"No, dear," she said. "I'm trying to make a homunculus."

"A homo-what-now?" Dumplin asked, tilting his head in confusion.

"A homunculus," she enunciated. "It's a synthetic being created by magic. Using our essences, I will bind it to our will and create a link that we can use to send mental commands in the heat of battle, and since it is bound to both of us, we are the only ones who could…" Towa trailed off as she saw her husband's glassy-eyed look of incomprehension. She sighed. "Think of it as a remote controlled car that can punch people and we have the controller."

"Sweet!" Dumplin said with a smile. "How's it gonna work?"

"Watch and learn, dear," she said as she placed her husband's severed hand in the center of the circle. Pulling out a small knife, she cut across her palm and let her blood drip in the center as well. With that task done, she walked back to stand by Dumplin and extended her hands toward the circle. "Let us begin," she said.

The room seemed to darken as red electricity crackled over the circle. The runes began to shine with a blood red light. The severed hand and Towa's spilled blood lifted into the air and began spinning. More lightning crackled from the circle, but Towa began exerting her control over it, keeping it contained within the boundaries of the circle.

Time began to pass and the energy continued to build. To Towa's surprise, the magic was starting to push against her control.

"Hmm," she said absently, reasserting her will over the circle. Dumplin looked up at her.

"Was that a good 'hmm' or a bad 'hmm'?" he asked.

"Not sure," she answered honestly. "The reaction is taking longer than I anticipated, as well as giving off a stronger push. It's like it's fighting against me or something." The demonic energy in circle was growing larger by the second, and was starting to jump and spark at an alarming rate. At first Towa had felt like she was holding a sheet of fabric in place, but now it felt like she was trying to keep a raging bull in a headlock. Sweat began to drip down her brow as she struggled to hold on.

With a loud CRACK, a bolt of red lightning broke free from her hold and connected with a spiked mace she had been trying to enchant. With a quick flash, the weapon was gone. Towa grit her teeth and tightened her hold, but it was already trying to wiggle free.

"Is something wrong?" Dumplin asked. She shot him an annoyed glance form the corner of her eye.

"Yes, dear, it's quite obvious something is going wrong," she drawled sarcastically. "It's leaping out and trying to absorb matter." Towa ducked as another bolt shot out from the maelstrom of energy, causing a rack of test tubes to blink out of existence. "Blood and damnation! There go my new aphrodisiacs!"

"Your what?" Dumplin asked, suddenly interested. Towa ground her teeth.

"Never mind. This thing is going to keep absorbing matter if we don't feed it something. If you can find some organic matter, I can maybe get the vortex to stop before it sucks up the whole city."

"What kind of organic matter?"

"Anything, you fool!" she screamed. "Just hurry up! This thing won't wait for you!"

"Aye aye!" Dumplin said with a salute before flying up the stairs. Towa just scrunched her face and tried to focus on her breathing. Seconds dragged on as this vortex of demonic power fought against her hold. Her body started trembling from the strain. Anyone else would have passed out by now.

"I got it!" shouted Dumplin as he sped into the laboratory. Towa let out a rattling sigh of relief.

"Throw it! I'll do the spell!"

"Here it comes!" she heard him say.

Towa looked up and raised one of her hands in preparation. A flying object when flying from behind her. She had cast the spell that would dramatically increase its mass before she saw what it was.

It was Waffles, their next door neighbor's cat.

Dumplin was going to get an earful from Cupcake, that's for sure.

Waffles had only a moment to yowl in surprise before he flew inside the boundary of the circle. The tendrils of lightning lunged at him like a waiting panther. Towa watched the cat's body being broken down by the lightning while at the same time growing larger. Inevitably, the deconstructing energy won out. The last of Waffles' skeleton winked out of existence. The swirling vortex ceased fighting against Towa, but started glowing brighter and brighter.

"Is that bad?" Dumplin asked.

"I have no idea," she said honestly. This reaction conflicted with all of the calculations she had made.

Further words were halted when the vortex suddenly exploded, throwing out a shockwave that sent furniture and science equipment tumbling to the ground and knocking down Towa and Dumplin. The light shined at a blinding intensity, a sound like shearing metal rising to a fever pitch until…

It was gone. In one second, the light vanished and everything became silent. Towa blinked the spots from her eyes, too dizzy to climb to her feet.

"Towa?" she dimly heard Dumplin ask over the ringing in her ears. "Babe? You okay."

"I'm fine," she said as her vision started to clear. She saw the multicolored blob in front of her and reached out. He took her hand and gently pulled her to her feet. "It seems I may have miscalculated."

"Maybe a little," Dumplin said with a smirk. He turned his head to look at the empty rune circle. "So… no homo-nucleus?"

"Homunculus," she repeated. "I suppose not. I'll need to check over my notes again to.."

The words died out as she looked at the center of the circle. There was a small blob of grey substance sitting there that had not been there before. Dumplin noticed it at the same time and started inching toward it. She edged forward to stand by his side.

"What is that?" Dumplin asked.

"Must be some sort of byproduct of the reaction," Towa answered. "Probably best to get rid of it. I'll get a container." She walked over to one of her cabinets and grabbed a metal bucket. She turned back to the center of the room just as Dumplin was reaching out to touch the blob. "Dumplin, I really think you shouldn't-"

Dumplin poked the blob.

The blob jumped in surprise and scuttled away.

Towa blinked rapidly, certain that she must have seen it wrong. But no… the blob was moving.

And now it was looking at them.

The blob was roughly spherical in shape. On the bottom it had four stubby little legs that were less than two inches long. Wide electric blue eyes blinked at them in confusion. It looked back and forth between them before tilting its head in curiosity.

"Nyaa?" it meowed from its little mouth.

"It…" Towa said.

"It's so cute!" Dumplin practically squealed. He reached for it, making it yelp in fright before scrambling under a shelf.

"I don't think it's going to come out, dear," Towa said, putting the bucket down. "Let me grab my notebooks and I can decontaminate the laboratory. That will get rid of it."

"No!" Dumplin said. She stared at him in confusion. "Just… just wait." He dropped to his knees in front of the shelf. She took a knee as well to get a better look. The byproduct was pressing itself against the wall, shivering with fright and breathing hard. "Hey there," Dumplin said in a soothing tone of voice. "It's alright, little one. Nobody's gonna hurt you."

He slowly reached forward, offering his open palm to the creature. It tried to back away again, so he stopped. He just held his arm like that for a few long moments. Slowly, the creature began to shuffle closer, still looking cautious. Dumplin just stayed as he was, displaying a level of patience that Towa had never seen in him before.

Finally, the creature was close enough to sniff Dumplin's hand. It was close enough to grab, but for some reason Dumplin was still waiting. It gave a few more sniffs before gently nuzzling against his palm. Towa saw Dumplin smile as he stroked the creature's head. It closed its eyes in pleasure and started purring. As gently as if he were carrying a newborn, Dumplin carefully pulled the creature out from under the shelf, all the time stroking its head.

"Let's see if we can find you some food," he said as he carried the creature up the stairs and out of the laboratory, leaving Towa to watch in bewilderment.


"Let's see," Dumplin said as he dug into the couple's fridge, "we have strawberries, bananas, cookies, burritos, purple stuff, soda, and some candy. Let's try the berries." He took some of the red fruit in hand and placing it down in front of the creature, who was standing on the kitchen counter. It sniffed the berries, seemed to find them to it's liking, and opened its mouth wide, revealing an array of tiny, needle sharp teeth. With a single bite, it gobbled up the entire handful.

"Nyaa~" it said happily when it finished chewing. Dumplin smiled and stroked its head. The creature purred in contentment and nuzzled against him.

"Dear, please don't feed the failed experiment," Towa said, looking up from the four journals she had arranged on the table. She was looking back and forth between them, scribbling out complex equations on a piece of scratch paper.

"The little one is hungry," Dumplin said, reaching back into the fridge. This time, he came out holding a burrito wrapped in aluminum foil. Before he could unfold it, however, the creature leapt forward and scarfed it right out of his hand. It chewed for a few moments before spitting out a wadded ball of aluminum foil and then swallowing the meal.

"Nyaa~" it said happily. Dumplin laughed.

"She seems pretty smart."

Towa's pencil froze in mid-stroke.

"She?"

"Yeah. She's a girl. I can tell."

"It's an accidental byproduct, Dumplin. There is no point getting attached to it." She shook her head in exasperation before going back to her calculations. After a few moments, she froze again, staring down at her paper. With a loud groan, her face dropped to slam down on the table surface.

"You okay?" Dumplin asked, used to his wife's theatrics.

"I forgot to carry the two," she said into the table. "I was trying to make artificial life. Instead, I ended up making actual life." She glanced up at him. "It was made from both of us. If you think about it, that means that it-"

"That she," corrected Dumplin.

"Fine, that she is actually our child."

A moment passed in silence as this information seeped into them. Dumplin started to smile.

"I always wanted to be a dad, now that I think of it. So, kid," he said as he turned, "want to stay with us?"

The creature wasn't there anymore. Before they could start searching, they heard a small adorable burp. The creature was lounging in a spotlessly clean bowl that had just seconds ago held a chocolate pudding that was meant for the Time Patrol potluck tomorrow. Dumplin smiled at the adorable display, not caring that he would have to make another one.

"I guess we know your favorite food now," he said. The creature just gave a sleepy meow as Dumplin took her into his arms. "You're gonna need a name," he said quietly. He thought for a few moments before looking at the clean bowl. He smiled. "How about Puddin?" he asked the creature.

"Nyaa~" the small creature said quietly before falling asleep in his arms.