Karen, Queen of the Monsters! - SCP Foundation

by harryblank

TEMPORAL SITE-01 — 2023

(SORT OF, IT'S COMPLICATED)

"No. Absolutely not. No."

Karen didn't smile at the man. Years ago, she would have. Years ago, it might have gotten her somewhere. These days, it was her scowls that made her a good negotiator. She scowled. "What happened to taking one for the team?"

Director Tibbals huffed impatiently. He'd been huffing since he arrived, claiming the recycled air in Temporal Site-01 was somehow inferior to the air where he came from. Something about advanced ecological stewardship. She hadn't really been listening, because she couldn't use the information. She'd considered, and rejected, the possibility of lighting up a cigarette to make him even less comfortable; these negotiations were a honey vs. vinegar deal. She hated it when that happened. Her hair had once been honey blonde, but all she had these days was acid.

"What you're asking for goes well beyond that." The man almost looked frightened at the mooted possibility of doing what she'd asked, even as he solidly rejected it. "We're not going to wake up the Rainbow Serpent. Damn near everything we've done in the past year has been geared toward keeping it asleep. It's the only thing keeping the Foundation in the public's good graces, and the only thing keeping the public alive. It almost killed—"

She waved him off. "All right, all right. You've made your point. If it's only good for causing an apocalypse, we don't want it anyway."

"You probably already have it." Tibbals looked like he needed a smoke, too. "You should start working on those greenhouse gases. It really hates greenhouse gases."

Karen looked down at her notepad, and carefully crossed off TL-6004. "We'll consider it once we've killed the Crocosmosquid."

Temporal Site-01 was chock full of researchers, agents and administrators like Karen herself, all of them bent on one singular goal: averting a catastrophe in an already catastrophe-prone timeline. A recurrent Crocosquid attack, halted at the last minute by a particularly bombastic application of pataphysics, had turned out to be the prelude to something far, far worse. An eldritch horror from beyond the stars, a kaiju infused with the essence of the god which had created the Wanderers' Library, was on its way to Earth to take revenge.

It was fortunate, for humanity, that they'd managed to receive advanced warning of this threat. If they hadn't, it would surely have obliterated their planet before they even knew what hit them. It was unfortunate for Karen, because she was a trained negotiator and was therefore expected to take part in the vast effort to canvass the other signatories of the Multi-Foundation Agreement of 1981 for potential solutions to their godly dilemma. Her efforts had been focused on finding a beast to equal the one barrelling its way across the vast gulf of interstellar space toward them. She and the other ambassadors had only a few days to make it work.

So, it wasn't going to work. Simple as that.

"Any luck?" A researcher was already sitting on the couch in the break room when she entered. He was holding out a finger towards her in what she at first thought was a rude gesture, until she noticed the mosquito perched on the tip. She winced.

"No. So, about what I expected. This was never a good idea; any monster-handling plan with the potential to leave us with two monsters is ill-considered at best"

"You shouldn't call them monsters," Chudley tutted.

Karen poured herself a glass of water from a pitcher in the fridge. "We haven't talked much, so let me get something out of the way real quick. I'm not going to stop describing monsters as monsters to avoid hurting your girlfriend's feelings, because your girlfriend is a mosquito and if ever a creature deserved to be called monstrous, that would be my pick."

"You're quite the beast yourself," the mosquito retorted. Karen was annoyed to be able to hear it. She was further annoyed that its voice was so melodious. She'd expected a high-pitched whine. Something more like Chudley's.

"Thank you," she responded. "Now, if I recall correctly, you're supposed to be debriefing all the ambassadors on the idiotic thing you did. Were you ever going to get around to me?"

Chudley shifted awkwardly on the couch. "I mean, if you think it's pointless…"

"It's not pointless," Karen snapped. "I've been canvassing as best I can, but I really do need to know what we're up against here. How likely is it that Kong could defeat the Crocosmosquid?"

That had been their solution. Pull Kong, the original Kong from the public domain novelization of Merian C. Cooper's copyrighted masterpiece of monster fiction, into their reality to fight the resurgent Crocosquid. Pure madness. Worse that it had worked. Worse still that it had actually not.

"He's just a big monkey," said Chudley.

"Ape," Leslie the mosquito corrected.

"I'm sorry." Chudley glanced down worriedly at his partner. "Was that racist?"

"I don't know?" Leslie flitted her wings. "I don't know how other animals think, just because they're animals."

"You're not an animal," Chudley smiled.

"Thank you, but—"

"You're an insect."

"Insects are animals," Karen interrupted, "and shut the hell up, both of you, Jesus Christ. So you're telling me the monster you tapped to fight the Crocosquid is going to be completely useless… wait, actually, it's worse than that. You thought you'd tapped it to fight the Crocosmosquid, and it ended up successfully fighting one of her children. If it had actually faced the monster you thought you were supposed to defeat, it would have gotten pounded into the seabed and we'd all be dead right now. That about the size of it?"

"Uh." Chudley frowned.

"Well…" Leslie trailed off.

Karen waved her hand dismissively. "Buzz off, the both of you."

"All I'm hearing is, it ate your entire planet."

Tilda Moose sighed. Karen had heard her sigh before, but that had been the Moose from baseline reality, not this weird hooded librarian. This Moose sighed in satisfaction. Baseline Moose had never been satisfied in recent memory. "The Serpent didn't eat the planet. It just sort of… turned the page for all of us."

"Uh huh." Karen circled the timeline designation on her notepad. "I'm thinking we'd like to turn the page on what's coming, too. Maybe squash it in the book binding."

Moose shook her head. "This isn't our story. It's yours. The solution should spring naturally from your own journey."

"Blah blah blah," Karen agreed. She did smile at Moose. Moose hated being smiled at. "We're about to be murdered by a fusion of the Serpent and the Crocosquid. Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, your version of the Serpent could help us with that? Since you're all buddy-buddy with it and all."

"That's not an accurate description." Moose crossed her arms. "Unless you want your world devoured by the Library, like ours was, I don't think we can help you with your problem. The best case scenario is our Serpent convinces yours to… start the SCP-6000 process…" She stopped talking.

"What?"

"How…? How did the Serpent fuse with a version of the Crocosquid? Shouldn't there be only one Serpent?"

"Shouldn't there be only one Library?" Karen retorted.

"Yes." Moose stared at her. "Yes, there should be only one Library."

Karen considered.

Karen crossed off TL-6000, and popped the cap on her bottle of amnestics. "Above my pay grade."

She was annoyed to see another person she was expected to chat with waiting for her in the break room. She was particularly annoyed at this one, since it was a defector from the Foundation who just happened to be their early warning system for the onrushing Crocosmosquid, which meant she couldn't blow him off as easily as she had the mosquito and mosquitofucker.

"Any luck?" August Jorel asked solicitously.

"I was very rude to the last person to ask me that," Karen growled.

"So, no luck."

"That's the worst thing about this approach. It really is luck-based. We're asking a coalition of who knows how many billion Foundations—"

"Wait, wait." He raised his hand. "What do you mean, 'who knows'? Surely you know. Surely this isn't actually luck-based, there must be some sort of… master database somewhere."

Karen stopped mid-pour. "You think we on the ground level know how many Foundations there are in the multiverse?"

"Uh…"

"You think we have access to a complete manifest of what would essentially be every anomaly in existence, anywhere, ever?"

"Uh…"

"You don't think that would both potentially solve every problem we've ever encountered, and made us all so completely and utterly mad with power that we'd have ended all human life across the multiverse through raw excess long before you and I ever met?"

Jorel raised both hands in surrender. "Changing the topic. Why did you want to see me?"

"You're the reason we know this is going to happen."

"Yeah."

"You talked to the Crocosquid in your dreams, and it told you the Crocosmosquid is coming."

He squirmed. "That's about the size of it."

"Why would it tell you this? Why not just let the thing show up and wipe us all out?"

He squirmed more. "Because she likes me."

"Sorry?"

No part of him was unmoving on the couch, now. "She likes me a lot. We like… we like each other. A lot."

Karen dipped her chin at him, glaring over her glasses. "Sorry?"

"We've gotten to… it's a whole… complicated…"

She allowed herself a quirk of the mouth. "Oh, okay. All right."

He looked pained. "Wait."

She shook her head. "No, okay. I get it. Alright."

She pointed at him. "Monsterfucker."

"Hey!" he shouted.

"Monsterfucker. Monsterfucker says the Crocosmosquid is coming, and we believe him, because he really knows his monsters. Knows them biblically." She swanned past the cabinets, gesturing theatrically.

"I don't appreciate being reduced to two dimensions," the man snapped.

"What's your second dimension, then?"

"I'm a film-maker." She could sense a note of pre-injured pride in the response.

"Wow, that really adds a lot of depth to your personality!" She affected a cold chuckle. "Famously well-rounded people, film-makers. Tell me, what kind of films do you make? Films about fucking monsters?"

"It was in the briefing packet," he mumbled defensively. "We debuted a film about the Hy-Brasil tragedy not long ago. Exonerating the Crocosquid."

"Exonerating…? How is that…?" This time the chuckle was at least half-genuine. "It… okay. There has to be an even worse word for what you are."

"You're being kind of racist right now," Jorel groused.

"That's the second time someone's said that to me today, for not liking monsters. I should like to inform you that my most recent date was with a monster."

"Did it go well?"

"It did not."

"Was it your fault? I bet it was your fault."

"Actually, it was the monster's fault. It was really, very much the monster's fault."

"So you're not on good terms now?"

She considered. "That is a safe thing to say, yes."

"So you can't, I don't know, call it over to fight the Crocosmosquid when it arrives?"

The mental image was certainly stimulating. "I think that would result in a brief, visually interesting, curbstomp. Which come to think of it, might be something I'd be into seeing…"

"Probably we ought to be focusing on actual solutions."

She shrugged. "Seems like you'll be real useful for that. Does your girlfriend know anything we can use to fight the real threat?"

He shrugged back at her. "Not really? She says it's infinitely large and infinitely wise."

"Oh, that's good," she sneered. "Always fun to be squaring off against infinites. That simplifies things a lot."

He barely seemed to hear the jab, lost in thought. "She can only feel the shape of it, you know? She can sense its existence, because it's so big, and because it's her. But she thinks it can probably be reasoned with? It just… it's really upset about losing a kid to Kong."

"I probably would be, too."

"Kind of an ego thing."

"Mm."

"So I dunno, maybe you can do something with that? Get it a match it'd be proud to win? Salve the wound."

Now they were getting somewhere. Not far, but farther than the interdimensional interviews had gotten them. "That's certainly a better idea than kaiju battle royale. I'll mull it over. Thank you for not being completely useless, traitor."

"What did you just call me?"

"You've outlived your usefulness. It's okay to be rude to you now. I was really having trouble holding it in, you know?"

This version of Dr. Gears seemed like every other version Karen had ever met, fifty-nine seconds out of every sixty. On the sixtieth second, without exception, his expression shifted to one of abject horror. Eventually he noticed her staring, and commented: "Reality reset. Doesn't always take completely. The soul remembers. Ever been in an acid bath?"

She shook her head.

"Do not recommend it."

She nodded.

"So, what can we help you with today?"

"This is sort of a Hail Mary," she admitted. "But all my other leads have come up dry, so: are there any useful giant monsters? In your timeline?"

Gears winced. "Useful giant monsters."

"Yeah. We're talking galactic significance here. Maybe something from the noosphere?"

This time the twitch seemed a little longer. Two seconds?

"Possibly something ontokinetic, then?"

Three seconds.

"Deific?"

Four.

"No? How about robotic?"

His screams filled the chamber.

She picked up her pencil.

TL-6820

Ilse Reynders, Director of the Temporal Anomalies Department, plopped down in the chair beside Karen. She looked exhausted. "So, any luck?"

"Jesus Christ," Karen muttered.

"Sorry, what was that?"

"No luck," Karen sighed. "Bupkis."

The other woman patted her on the shoulder companionably. "Well, you tried."

"How've the others done?"

"With the subset we're authorized to speak with by OP, no joy. We've petitioned for a look at some of the spicier timelines, but considering this whole thing is way beyond the bounds of the 1981 Pact, I'm not expecting much. We're at the point where whatever lunacy Tactical Theology comes up with might be our best bet."

"I'm sure they'll have something fun and interesting, if nothing else. Hmm." Karen wasn't a schemer, but she knew enough schemers to recognize a scheme when it began forming in her own mind.

"What?"

"I was talking to the 6820 people," she mused.

Reynders chuckled. "How did that go? They're pretty special."

"Well, it was Gears. Gears is always a constant. But as I was rattling off bad ideas… he was getting pretty, well, rattled. What do you know about those guys?"

"Imagine a universe entirely dedicated to the pursuit of terrible ideas," Reynders sighed.

"Would they plausibly be involved in a project to… induce… apotheosis, in a hybrid chimaera monster?"

Reynders blinked. "I think they've actually done that, at least once. At least once."

"Okay. Okay." It was settled. They were doing this. "Get Chudley in here."

The other woman looked confused. "I don't know your insulting nicknames for everyone, Karen. I'm not your Ilse."

"It's his actual name, somehow. The mosquitofucker."

That won a smile, not that Reynders was as sparing with them as Karen was. "Oh, right. Okay. Does he actually…? Never mind, sure." She tapped the intercom. "Could we have… Chudley? In here, please."

The researcher strolled in, mosquito still cupped in his hands. "What's up?"

"How good is your pataphysics?" Karen asked him.

He shrugged. "I mean, pretty good?"

"Can you pull monsters out of movies?"

"Public domain movies," he nodded.

Karen nodded back. "Won't be a problem."

"Then yeah, probably?"

"I think you owe us an apology first," the mosquito buzzed.

"I'll apologize if this works." Karen turned back to Reynders. "Can we get Jorel in here, too?"

Reynders made the call.

"Hey," Jorel waved as he walked in to stand next to Chudley. He stared at the mosquito in the other man's hands, and Karen had a wonderful image of him suddenly slapping it. Sadly, it remained just an image.

"Hey. We want you to make a movie, and it has to be kind of… fast."

The film-maker looked uncertain. "Like, framerate? That's kind of a mixed bag with audiences."

"No. I mean it has to be done yesterday."

He looked even more uncertain now. "You don't mean that literally, right? Because, like…" He waved at their surroundings. "Temporal Site-01."

Reynders chuckled.

"No," Karen shook her head. "I just mean fast-fast."

"What's it involve?"

"There will be CGI, but we'll get another agency to take care of that."

Reynders gave her a sideways glance. She ignored it.

"Okay," said Jorel.

"Mostly just screaming crowds, buildings falling down. That sort of thing."

"Stock footage," the man nodded.

"Marvellous. Okay. I want you to make a kaiju movie about a giant monster, and it has to be done well before the deadline, and then I want you," she pointed at Chudley, "to yank the kaiju out of it, so we can film it believably. Does this all make sense?"

"I guess?" Chudley shrugged. "What's the kaiju?"

"I'll tell you in a minute. I have to Google predation chains."

The man from TL-6820 said his name was Placeholder McD. Karen had met someone by that name. This someone was considerably sterner, even more given to grandiose gestures, but considerably less effusive. Then again, the circumstances of his visit might have had something to do with that.

"I didn't come here to negotiate," he told Karen crossly. "For the fit you gave poor Gears, I came here to castigate."

"That sounds really hot," she agreed, "but it can wait. We've figured out a way to solve our little problem, and I think we can both benefit from it."

His eyes narrowed. "Go on."

"I have an idea for an eigenweapon."

"I prefer to come up with those myself," he scoffed.

"It has a proven use case. Or, it will be proven, once it works. Which it will."

"Okay?"

"I want you to dream up a device that can combine predators together, and then ascend them to godhead."

He stared at her. "And… you want this to work?"

"No, not really. Not now. I just want it to seem plausible. You've done this before, right? Made up devices that didn't work, but could have worked."

"I think you might be thinking of another version of me."

"Yeah," she nodded. "Yeah, that's a real problem with these timeline disasters. But anyway, the device will never have to be used, in our situation. We just have to be able to hang the threat of it over someone's head."

He was visibly nonplussed. "All right…"

She took a breath. "And we'll also need you to use those fancy 3D rendering skills you guys seem to have to mock us up a fight scene with a giant monster."

He raised a brow. "Now you're getting silly."

"It'll be worth your while, I promise." She hoped it didn't sound like pleading. She didn't know what her voice sounded like when she pleaded.

"How precisely will it be worth my while?"

"We're going to give you two of our anomalies. Two that don't exist in your timeline. Two that I've seen are sitting pretty high on your Requested Assets list. Apparently you want them because they represent 'pure disdain' and 'utmost whimsy', whatever the hell that means."

She knew by the way his nostrils flared that she had him. "The Requested Assets list is basically just a wishlist. We're almost never allowed to actually transfer anomalies between timelines. Because of the Pact."

"This is a special case. The things you want aren't key to timeline character or stability, and they'll help us prevent an imminent and otherwise unavoidable XK event. We got clearance."

She saw the wheels turning. They didn't have to turn far. "…you know what? Fine. What's the monster, and what are the components?"

"You've already heard of the Crocosquid, right?"

"Right?"

"That will hopefully have primed you not to laugh at this."

Karen stood on the deck of the destroyer, wincing in the light drizzle, and looked up at the giant ape. Once, she might have been terrified. Once, she might have been affronted by the sheer absurdity of it. Now, she was only hoping it would be over quickly.

"Why's he so calm?" she asked, suddenly. "Shouldn't he be, I don't know, pounding his chest or trying to overturn the boat or something?"

"My guess is, he's gone too far off script." Chudley was gazing up at the monster with something like awe; Karen hoped that was all it was. "There's no Crocosquid fight in his book. He's waiting for something familiar from the plot before he starts acting again."

"Here's hoping he doesn't get it." Karen checked her watch, then sighed. "TactTheo says it should be here any minute. We ready to go?"

Jorel, standing behind them, cleared his throat. "Everything's set. For showtime."

"Here's hoping this stays a farce," Karen sighed. "I'm really not in the mood for yet another… tragedy…"

The storm was clearing. The clouds were parting, compacting, swirling. It didn't take long for the shape in the sky to take on an all-too-familiar form: a five-armed crocodile, its torso terminating in a mass of writhing tentacles. It said, HELLO.

She waved. "Hello."

I AM COME TO AVENGE MY FALLEN CHILD

Jorel waved as well. "Hi? We haven't properly met, but…?"

The clouds shifted slightly, as though the massive monster were altering the direction of its stormy gaze by the slightest degree. YOU ARE THE ONE WHO PLEASES THE MEREST ASPECT. TINY AND SOFT AND SQUEEZABLE. I WILL MOURN YOUR PASSING ON BEHALF OF THE MEREST.

"Uh," he said. "Thanks."

"There won't be any mourning today." Karen took a step forward. "No cloud monster is going to defeat the SCP Foundation."

I AM NOT A CLOUD MONSTER. I AM PRESENTLY IN PARKING ORBIT AROUND JUPITER. I AM MERELY MANIPULATING THE CLOUDS TO SAY HELLO BEFORE I ARRIVE AND YOUR PLANET IS COMPLETELY OBLITERATED BY MY BULK.

"Oh," she said. "That does make… a lot more sense. Yeah. Could I maybe interest you in not doing that at all?"

NO. THAT ONE, and a tendril shifted to point at Kong, who was staring up at the sky with obvious interest, MUST PAY FOR ITS AFFRONT TO OUR MAJESTY. I AM THE CROCOSQUID, AND THE SERPENT, AND I AM MORE AND MORE AND MORE BESIDE. I WILL NOT BE DEFEATED BY SOME MERE APE.

"What about a few ingenious major apes?" Karen lifted her work tablet up to the sky. "How good is your eyesight?"

MY EYES ARE BILLIONS AND PIERCE EVERY VEIL IN CREATION. I CAN SEE YOUR LITTLE COMPUTER.

"Excellent. What can you see on it now?"

The gigantic cloud-jaw dropped. The drizzle pattern shifted in response, and Karen had the uncomfortable feeling of being drooled on by the Crocosmosquid. THAT IS… OH. THAT IS SOMETHING. WHERE DID YOU GET THAT? IT'S NOT REAL, IS IT?

"It's real," Chudley smiled. His voice was shaking, and his cupped hands were closed to prevent the mosquito from being blown away by the rising gale. "You're parked at Jupiter? We can send the final form to meet you at Mars, if you like."

"The red sand will make the battle really pop," Jorel added.

"Mars isn't actually red," the mosquito chirped, muted.

"How is that something you know?" Chudley whispered into his hands.

FINAL FORM? WHAT FINAL FORM? IT GETS WORSE? I DON'T WANT IT TO GET WORSE.

Karen turned the tablet back around, and tapped a few buttons. "Do you read clinical prose?" she asked.

I HAVE READ YOUR ENTIRE DATABASE. THERE IS NOTHING IN IT THAT CAN HARM ME.

"Well, you haven't read their database. It's a real horror show, let me tell you." She turned the tablet back around.

DESCRIPTION: SCP-XXXX is the Placeholder-Mikasa Chimaeric Extrapolation Matrix, a hyperconceptual eigenmachine capable of raising any sufficiently interbred hybrid entity to the effective status of godhead, with an appropriate pantheonic niche accordingly generated in the noosphere to contain it. The process functions as follows:

"I'd recommend you skip the technical bits," Karen said. "It's mostly to show that the lunacy works. But it does work, I assure you. We got the machine from the lunacy dimension, and they're just waiting for my word to switch it on."

AND THAT WILL DO… I'M SORRY, I DID READ THE TECHNICAL BITS, I HAVE TO READ THEM AGAIN NOW. IT WILL TURN THIS TERRIBLE THING INTO SOMETHING AS TERRIBLE AS ME?

"That's right."

The sky paused.

I JUST WANTED TO BEAT UP THE MONKEY. THIS IS BULLSHIT.

"Yeah," Karen sighed. "I'm really sorry. But we kind of like our planet the way it is."

YOUR PLANET IS TERRIFYING. I KNEW YOU HAD CREATURES LIKE THAT ON IT, BUT I HAD NO IDEA THEY COULD BREED. THAT'S AWFUL. I DON'T WANT TO GET ANY CLOSER TO YOU NOW. YOU'RE DISGUSTING.

"We've been called that before."

WELL I'M NOT GOING TO JUST LET YOU OFF FOR PULLING THIS ON ME. The sky roiled tempestuously. IT WAS REALLY CLEVER, I ADMIT, BUT I'M STILL VERY ANGRY. IF YOU KILL ANOTHER OF MY CHILDREN I WILL RUN YOU OVER, MONSTERS OR NO.

"Don't call them monsters." Karen knew she was pushing her luck, but she did it anyway. "That's racist."

YOU'RE RACIST, the sky spat. She felt it on her face. YOU KNOW WHAT, IF I CAN'T KILL THE MONKEY, I'M TAKING THIS OUT ON YOU. I AM THE SERPENT. I AM THE LIBRARY. I'VE READ THE BOOK THAT MONKEY COMES FROM. I KNOW HOW IT WORKS.

"Uh," said Chudley.

ENJOY YOUR DATE, the Crocosmosquid snarled, then the wind swept it clean from the horizon in one smeary swipe.

Karen felt invigorated. "I can't believe it worked!"

"Holy shit," said Jorel.

"Right?" She hopped on the balls of her feet. She hadn't felt this energized in years. "I mean, I knew it would work as soon as I Googled the predation chain, but knowing and seeing are two different things."

"Dr. Elstrom?" said Chudley.

"It was just a matter of finding two anomalies that fit. There's only a few creatures that can take a crocodile in a fair fight, and as for squid, well, you know. Penguins eat squid. It was a pleasant surprise, finding out that we had a literal god emperor penguin anomaly to call on."

"Oh…" Chudley had opened his hands, and the mosquito was buzzing around Karen's head. "Oh, dear. Oh dear."

Karen looked down at her tablet, elated. The image of the massive star of HIPPOPENGUIN ATTACKS! happily romping about in its secluded lagoon made her heart leap. She was glad, very glad, she'd had Jorel make it more of a Gamera than a Godzilla. It would be easy enough to keep a leash on, and would provide a perfect countermeasure to any further Crocosquid young that might still be swimming the cosmic seas. And if worse came to worst, well, she knew enough about the 6820 timeline to know that they were presently actually constructing the apotheosis device she'd threatened the Crocosmosquid with. After giving them the spark of inspiration, they couldn't very well refuse to lend the thing. "Hopefully we never have to witness Crocosmosquid Vs. Hyperpenguimus," she sighed contentedly. Just saying the words out loud made her feel young. The only question was whether they should further hybridize the monster to take the Serpent's presence in the mix into account; she almost laughed out loud at the thought of a hippopenguimongoose.

"Karen?" Reynders was approaching from the destroyer's operations deck. "Uh, Karen, what happened to you?"

"What do you mean, what happened to me?" She flicked on the tablet's reader-facing camera, and gasped.

She'd seen that face almost every day of her life, but it hadn't looked like that in ages. She didn't smile or frown much, so she'd never acquired many lines, but the ones she had acquired were gone. Her eyes were a little brighter, her skin a little bit pinker.

Her hair was honey blonde again.

She saw, through the camera, the massive hairy shape wading up behind her, and exercised her famous self-control to resign herself to the situation.

She did have just one question, though.

"I've seen King Kong. The movie. The old one." She was talking very fast, because of course she had to. "The woman was wearing a really flimsy dress. I'm not wearing a really flimsy dress. So how does it work in the book?"

She felt a massive hand sweep her up into the sky, and was grateful that her spine had been de-aged along with the rest of her.

"It's different in the book!" Chudley screamed up at her. "In the book, he pulls her clothes off!"

"Yeah," she sighed. "Of course he does."

The mosquito landed on the tip of her nose. She resisted the urge to swat it. She didn't want to get mosquito guts all over herself.

"Any advice?" she asked.

"Be open to trying new things," Leslie trilled. "We've all got a lot in common, you know."

"How's that?" The massive, hairy fist lifted her up, up, up.

"I've heard that humans are the real monsters."

The mosquito buzzed away.

It was still the best date she'd had in years.