Sapient Danger Noodle?

"My partner isn't here yet. He hasn't brought my prey, this is unusual."

It was what Joraane thought that morning at about 6 or 7 in the morning, it was strange for that man to not be here with her.

Joraane had known him for about 15 years now, quite literally all of her life, and even though she always felt like the man, her partner was inadequate in some respects, forgetting to feed her was not one of his failings, which was one of the reasons why she always thought of him as an equal, family even.

Joraane thought for a few hours about him, she thought many things, she looked around, she slept, she paced, and she thought. She thought a lot, that she had recently noticed, somehow she felt her thinking was never enough, her partner always did things, he moved fast, decisive, he made changes fast, moved things from a place to another and did things in what Joraane had noticed aligned with a certain order in chaos.

As if he knew what he was going to do 10 steps before he did it.

She somehow noticed how he was much more suited to thinking than her, because compared to her shallow thinking, it seemed as if her partner's head span many, many times faster than hers.

Too bad he was just so… childish, so sheltered.

She disliked that from him, but at least he wasn't dead, which showed her that at least he wasn't useless.

He also did keep her alive so far, which was something that clashed with the image that she held of him.

Joraane remembered how when he was younger and smaller his parents would feed him some sort of sludge, no meat, no blood, they did not take him on hunts, and she never saw him bring something he himself had caught.

Weak.

It was always someone else that brought prey for him to eat or to feed her, and even the times that he did bring anything, she knew, he did not kill his prey, someone else did, she knew because she saw his hands.

They never had blood in them.

He had never killed anything but flies, mosquitoes or insects, that she knew of.

This probably meant that he was lacking in boldness, however it was good that he had her.

As of late she had taken to looking at him as if she was looking at an idiot, and it surprised her that he had noticed more than a few times, looking at her trying to understand what she was conveying, or at least doing an attempt at it.

Since then, she had started to try to communicate with him using her eyes, to… mixed results. It bothered her that he did not manage to pick up her meaning, she was sure that with her wisdom and strength, she and her partner would without a doubt become the apex predators of this land.

The thought tickled something inside her, but she put the strange feeling aside, she did not like strange things, as cautious as she always had been.

As she thought this, she perked up, hearing the creaking of a door.

He was finally back

She sighed lowly after seeing Joshua bringing her prey, though she did not hunt it, she still quite enjoyed the sensation of a lower lifeform, even the ones already dead, being consumed inside her, it was the best way they had to contribute to the cause of her continued existence, and they should feel honored.

The man had white things on his head, she noticed. She believed humans used those when they were injured. Or at least he did once before, one of the few times she had seen him hurt.

The man talked to her with a silly face, ignoring the clear wound in his head, and gave her it. A rodent this time. Very well, her partner had pleased her, yet she wondered where he had been, perhaps he had a rough hunt this time.

As he gave her the prey, she noticed a slightly vacant expression in Joshua's face, to which she shot him a strange glance, what was he thinking about? he looked far away as if looking into something she could not see, and fortunately he seemed to notice her silent query. To which he shot her a smile and brushed it off.

So… had he understood her question and ignored her, or had he not got it at all?

This was a daily thing with them these days, but Joraane usually didn't mind. Except that this time, when he went away, she noticed something strange.

She hadn't noticed immediately when he entered, but he smelled of something strange, something she had never smelled before.

Maybe it wasn't a smell per se, it was just a feeling in her tongue, slightly cool and prickly at the same time

A bit like how salt tasted, just ever so slightly itchy, well, that example would be fitting if salt was combined with pure and unfiltered energy, so pure that Joraane felt afraid she could burn herself.

But somehow Joraane's instincts told her that the smell was good for her, that smelling it more would be beneficial somehow to her.

She wished for it, she instinctually craved for it.

Her eyes followed the man as he went to the ledge that the man called a "balcony", something she could not pronounce nor cared to.

He produced from a bag made from a see-through material that she believed she had seen before, and from it the man took what seemed like a small plant in a structure of a red stone like material.

Strange, but then again, the man had been strange since he came home.

A while passed, and she kept watching his every move, trying to figure out what he pretended. She knew him and he was always pretending something, always with a purpose to his movement, always, she just knew it, and his face told her that this was different from the usual mundane activity, this was important.

"What is he doing?"

For a while she saw him close his eyes and make strange faces, and she had a feeling, somehow she felt that she understood slightly what he was doing, but, no that couldn't be.

It was a dark day, darker than the usual, the clouds were dark grey and even though she usually couldn't see the sun at this hour from her vivarium, she just knew that there was no trace from it in the sky, and it was something good, because she was sure she wouldn't be able to see this in a brighter day.

Feeling the closest feeling that a snake could feel to shock, she saw as if the air around the plant started to become lighter, as if emitting a weak but visible light, if only for the current conditions of the sky.

Was her partner doing this? She had never heard of a creature capable of manipulating light like this, were her eyes playing tricks on her? Perhaps she was getting old…

No way, her eyes had always been the most remarkable part of her sensibilities, perhaps only surpassed by her ability to detect smell.

No, she was not wrong, her partner was doing this.

She observed him for what seemed like hours, taking in the phenomenon as much as she could.

Joraane was not good at thinking, but she was not an idiot, quite the opposite, she somehow knew that even if she couldn't compare with her partner, she was still, remarkable for one of her kind, perhaps because she didn't do much more.

Still, something told her, she had to observe this, it was critical.

So she did so.

She came a little closer to the invisible barrier that marked the end of her vivarium, and she stared, feeling just a little bit more of the feeling which came with her partner this time.

after a while her partner exhaled in what she could only take as defeat and slumped to the ground breathing heavily, which just made it much more obvious that he was indeed the one moving those strange lights, so Joraane stared quizzically at him, perhaps hoping that he'd explain to her, perhaps wishing that he'd come closer so that she can take in more of the light thing.

He did.

He noticed Joraane staring, so he came to her, however Joraane knew that he just wanted to play, he was quite clingy when he wished, this Joraane knew, and she usually didn't like to hang on his neck, preferring the warmth of the vivarium to that of his neck. It wasn't that she disliked it, it's just that she had more important things to do... or well, not quite more important, but perhaps more entertaining.

However, this time, she wanted to take in that light, so she accepted his offer and climbed his arm towards his neck to hang in there.

_________________________

(Joshua Drummings' Pov)

"Well, who would've thought? did you miss me that much, girl?" Joshua said while smiling from ear to ear like there was no tomorrow. Oh man, he really loved his snake, she was his best friend, which was sad now that he thought about it.

he was tired and a little down seeing as most of his experiments failed.

From the 24 strawberry seedlings he bought, only 1 survived, the last one.

All the other ones burned down from what he could only assume was an excess of Mana, and oh boy did they burn down. They all burst in blue flames that even burned HIM a little bit, and it was HIS Mana! though to be fair he didn't even manage to make too much fire, the plants were small and the fire he DID make was the size of a small candle, and the only reason he burned himself was because he was careless a few times.

Also, he discovered how shit he was at controlling the Mana.

At the beginning he could barely pull some Mana towards him, which he discovered was a no-no when his muscles started feeling strange right before they started burning ever so slightly... nope, his body wasn't made to handle Mana, so he assumed he could only get used to it slowly.

At least he learned some useful stuff, he could make fire with Mana, though seeing as it was Also, fire, it probably wasn't quite right. It most likely was burning Mana instead of oxygen, which was a HUGE waste of Mana, but at least now he knew that Mana could be used as fuel in combustion.

but he was getting there.

Also, after managing to leave one of his plants alive he decided to rest for a bit with his favourite danger noodle, and it turned out she was looking at him, to be fair she looked at him a lot normally, probably to let him know how much of a dumbass he was, but today it was different.

he felt that she was probably interested in the Mana, maybe her instincts told her it could be beneficial? when he was in the system space, the system did mention at some point that Mana could be beneficial depending on its use.

And oh boy did that sound awesome.

he sort of wanted to help her out and make her stronger, she was his best friend, after all, and she had accompanied him for a long time...

If he wanted to help her get stronger, he probably should focus on make her smarter first... just to make sure she didn't want to eat humans, even though knowing her, she'd scold him more than she'd eat them.

that was probably wise, hell who knew, maybe one day she'd become a jormungandr or a dragon or something? but ... he felt reluctant, since he wanted little Joraane to be able to talk right now!

That'd be super cool!

Joshua caressed Joraane's beautiful red and orange scales and as she seemed to reluctantly like it, Joshua really couldn't contain his happiness. When Joshua was younger, he always wanted to be a scientist of sorts! he was always very curious, so he naturally liked to make all sorts of experiments when he was a child.

Of course, for a child, an experiment could be almost anything, like putting mud in an oven or cooking wood in water to see how the wood soup would taste... so, being with his favourite person (snake) and formally conducting his first experiments on Mana made him a little too happy this time, also making him a little bit too eager.

"You're the cutest and deadliest creature in the world" he said while smiling at her.

Joshua caressed Joraane for a bit while talking to her about all sorts of things, his day in the hospital, his hopes about the system and his worries about what would happen, would he really be able to save humanity, even with the power and authority given by the system?. After a while, Joshua stopped and sighed loudly without being able to stop smiling.

"In the end I love you too much girl, I know you won't eat me even if you become a monster! ... probably. System! create a new system for my little Joraane here!"

** Creating and giving an instance of the system to the individual named Joraane will take 1 MP, are you sure you want to continue? **

"Hell to the motherfucking yes!"

Status

-----

Name: Joshua Drummings

Age: 18 Years

Class: Head administrator

Lvl: 1

EXP: 0

MP: 0 / 1

SP: 0

Stats

-----

Reflexes: 10

Stamina: 7

Strength: 4

Intelligence: 11

Skills

-----

Fast writing Lvl 1

Mana usage Lvl 1 ( 7% )

Plant manipulation Lvl 1 ( 10% )