"I thought the whole 'melting pot' thing wasn't used that much anymore, isn't the salad more popular?" Henri asked from his couch.
"Eh, probably but the Melting Pot is more iconic. More cultural significance than a Caesar or a Cobb." Agent Broth replied.
"I see." Henri took a deep breath to ponder the meaning and significance of what he was just told about the Melting Pot Initiative before he heard his refrigerator door open, "That's interesting and all, but why are you rummaging through my kitchen like a raccoon?"
Agent Broth turned his head and looked at Henri as if he just asked classified state secrets. Henri just stared at the secret agent who had a jar of pickles in one hand, a box of frozen Swedish meatballs in the other and an opened bag of Doritos between his teeth. Overall, a very unprofessional scene.
"You don't have the security clearance to know." Agent Broth mumbled between his clenched teeth.
"I feel like that's bullshit and you're just taking my food because you're under budget cuts or something."
"That is classified information." Agent Broth dropped pickles and meatballs into an unmarked duffle bag that he slung over his shoulder before sitting down opposite an annoyed Henri with the Doritos.
Henri just closed his eyes and pretended that this old man-in-black government agent actually fit the cool, mysterious archetype of one. He also tried to pretend that he didn't notice the poorly hidden and incredibly obvious armed soldiers that were around his apartment building and right outside his window but the rotor blades of the attack helicopter above his roof was making that rather difficult. Whenever Henri looked out the window, he could see soldiers attempting to hide behind potted plants or making blanket ghost costumes out of people's laundry. One of them was even wearing an actual bird's nest for a hat which Henri honestly had to applaud out of dedication if not absurdity.
"Look kid." Agent Broth shoved a handful of Nacho Cheese Doritos into his mouth, "I can tell you that you don't really get what the big deal is so let me enlighten you; are you familiar with the works of Lovecraft?"
"Yeah I am." Henri looked disapprovingly of the neon orange crumbs Broth was getting on his couch, "Guy basically invented the eldritch horror genre which I assume she's related too?" Henri pointed at the half-cosmic-ooze half-roughly female figure that was trying to figure out how to turn on a sink.
"It is. Most people who look at it go insane or just run. Even the DLA agents assigned to it can only look at its general vicinity for so long despite the gear and psychological training . The fact that you not only made direct visual contact with it but also physical contact, well, you look like a smart enough lad to connect the dots on how groundbreaking this is."
Henri looked at the shoggoth girl startled herself by turning on the faucet and questioned if she really actually was a powerful cosmic entity from beyond the veil, or a really, really lost child with too many eyes and more tentacles than a living organism should ever have. He could feel just how unnatural she was though that despite being able to look at her, something in his mind just told him that she should not exist in this reality.
"Yeah I get that, but what are you going to do? Offer me a new job at the DLA or something?"
"Nophm Ekksacalee." Agent Broth munched down on a mouthful of chips and swallowed, "The Melting Pot Initiative exists as a cultural exchange program between humans and non-humans by way of host families. However, although Subject E has shown interest in the exchange, her nature makes finding a host family an impossibility at best."
"Wait, she doesn't have a name? You just call her Subject E? That's kind of cruel." Henri watched as Subject E collapsed in on itself and turned into a sort of lumpy tar blob with teeth.
"We tried asking for its full name once. The intern who overheard it is still in an asylum seeing runes on walls and feeling eyes on the inside of his brain. Poor lad." Agent Broth shook his head.
"Well, maybe I could get its full name. Hey, what's your full name?" Henri casually asked.
"WAIT! Nononono—" Agent Broth just got off the couch before both he and Henri were sent to the ground clutching their heads as it felt like screws were drilling into the inside of their heads from their brains.
"O-Okay… not my… best idea…" Henri accepted Agent Broth's glare as he checked to see if his ears or eyes were bleeding (thankfully they weren't). Subject E for her part tilted a mass of itself to side in a quizzical way.
"I am sorry I harmed you. I mean no harm." Henri thought that Subject E had said something until he realized that he wasn't hearing it with his ears, but that it was being said directly to his brain.
"It's no problem? Wait, you can talk?" Henri looked at Subject E with a mildly confused face. Subject E looked back at Henri with about 15 of its eyes.
"Yeah, it does that sometimes." Henri turned and heard Agent Broth's voice in his head as well, who simply shrugged his shoulders and said out loud, "It's classified", predicting what Henri was about to ask, "Anyways, you might want this."
Agent Broth extended a booklet titled "Liminals and You! A Host Family's Guide to Interspecies Cultural Exchanges!" envelope that only had the Department of Liminal Affairs emblem on it. His eyes widened once he saw what was inside: a small stack of mint $100 bills. He didn't know the exact number, but a quick glance showed that there was more money in that envelope than his in his monthly paycheck.
"Host families are entitled to minor compensation to assist in helping liminals acclimate to human society and additional living expenses. Your compensation is a little bit extra given your special circumstances and your future participation." Agent Broth dumped the rest of the Dorito crumbs into his mouth before dropping the empty bag and picking up the duffle bag of "borrowed" food.
"Wait, what do you mean 'future participation'?" Henri looked up from the money.
"Well, you see, we have some other special cases that we believe you are uniquely qualified to handle." The DLA agent threw out nonchalantly as he walked over to a window, "As a reminder, you are not to purposely harm a liminal and consensual intimacy isn't considered harm."
"What do you mean by 'special cases' Broth?" Henri got out of his seat only to see the old man climb out of his window, dropping out of sight before he reappeared on the end of a helicopter rope.
"That's classified information!" Agent Broth gave a shit-eating grin as he flew away, "You're doing your country a great serviceeeeeee!"
Both Henri and Subject E rushed to the window and watched as the old man was whisked away like the bait on a fishing line. Broth's last words filled Henri with anxiety over what exactly he meant by "future special cases". Was there going to be more girls like Subject E? Henri turned to the booklet that Agent Broth gave him. A quick flip through later and Henri got most of the important stuff out of the booklet. Most of it was just fluff and over-explanations combined with cheesy drawn pictures.
"Okay, well first thing's first, you need a name that isn't 'supernatural migraine' or Subject E." Henri looked at Subject E who was again forming into the rough shape of a human.
"How come? Is Subject E not a suitable title to refer to me as?" The voice beamed into Henri's head.
"I mean technically yes, but it'd be better to just have a name I can actually call you by and Subject E feels a little stiff and weird."
"You do realize you are talking to a shapeless being beyond your species' understanding of reality, right? Would that not be considered 'weird' on principle by most humans?"
"Oh, I didn't know eldritch pools of goo were capable of being sassy." Henri closed his eyes to think of a decent name, bouncing between the miscellaneous ideas and connections in his head before his eyes lit up, "How about Celeste? Humans mostly associate Eldritch and Lovecraft with space and things being from 'beyond the stars', basically being celestial. Changing that into an actual name you get Celeste."
Subject E's eyes looked at one another while her mouths muttered something that gnawed at the base of Henri's spinal column.
"Also… I see stars when I look into you." Henri blushed a tiny bit at that confession.
All of Subject E's movements stopped dead and her body became as stiff as a statue. Henri was torn on whether he should try to act or let it happen, it certainly didn't look natural but then again nothing about her really looked natural to begin with.
Suddenly, the formless ooze vibrated violently, savagely ripping itself apart and reconstructing itself. It was like watching a cell undergoing mitosis combined with a musical fountain. Henri strained his eyes to try to keep sight of what was going on, but his vision quickly became cross-eyed and blurry, forcing him to close his eyes and look away. When he finally looked back, there was no more violent displays or even that abyssal blob of madness he was expecting.
Instead, there was a naked woman roughly his height looking back at him. She looked almost normal from the waist up with her legs being somewhere between a mount of eldritch ooze and tentacles. The massive bulging eyes that were previously all over her body had shrunk down to small yellow-ish orbs that still dotted her body and that Henri could still feel looking at him. Like the legs, her hair was a mix of a solid mass and smaller tentacles that formed into the rough approximation of a ponytail with a fanged mouth acting as a hair tie. And when Henri looked at Subject E's, no, Celeste's eyes, he saw the same ten thousand colors unknown to man he did when he first saw her oozing out of the DLA truck.
"You look… beautiful." Henri was more than a little surprised but kept his composure.
"I have been told by previous handlers that humans do not like looking at my formless shape, citing that it reminds them of how insignificant and small they are in the cosmic scale." Celeste opened her mouth and spoke "normally", moving forward and put one of her hands on Henri's chest, letting her fingers spread like ink over the skin where his heart would be, "I still do not understand why you do not find me repulsive and react the same that other humans do. It is logical for them to do so to be honest."
"I mean, I guess it's that I just don't feel fear and horror the same way most people do? Like scary movies don't do anything for me. The last time I went to a haunted house, I was more interested in the decorations than the actual jump scares." Henri tried to pull Celeste's hand off of his chest, only for a chilling shock to run up his spine that caused his legs to shiver but he kept his grasp.
Celeste looked down and watched as Henri's fingers began to sink into her, "You are aware that this form is only a facsimile of a human female and an imperfect one at that. Any sense of attractions you have to it is severely misplaced."
"I admit that I prefer this form over your being a spooky space puddle." Henri calmly pulled his hand out of Celeste's, "But even before… this, you were still fascinating to me. And now, you're even more so."
Celeste thought that Henri was acting stupid, she doubted his motives and observations but still she felt relief around him. She had become accustomed to people running the moment they felt her presence or only looking at her general direction. To be able to actually be close enough to a human who didn't run was something new and intriguing, just like an ant that doesn't run in the presence of a human but instead decides to climb up their shoe.
Celeste opened her mouth to say something but decided against it. She'd see how true Henri was and how long it'd take him to become disgusted by her otherworldly presence and force her out. Until then though, maybe it would be fun to study such a strange human.
A/N: I have an inspiration so I've been able to write this pretty quick while also trying out some other things that reduce the amount of time I spend trying to write instead of actually writing, do not expect this speed in the future lol. Writing a story like this is something completely different for me so I'm still figuring out what to do exactly.
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