Early Solly & Tickles Stuff

It starts with Solly (4th form) getting stranded somewhere. Maybe he's also caught in something and has to wait to be found and rescued. Tickles shows up (1st form), and perhaps due to being afraid he wouldn't be found, he tries getting Tickles's attention. Tickles jabs him with the little horn on its head and starts sucking his blood (hemolymph?). Solly is an extremely social character, so instead of shooing the parasite away, he just kind of let it do its thing. He started calling it "Tickles" because aside from the initial jab, it kind of tickled when it drank his blood. After a bit, he thought it similar to what he imagined nursing must be like. By the time he was found, he'd all but adopted the thing.

Solly brought Tickles back home with him and tried to tell people it was okay that it was drinking his blood and that otherwise it was very nice. (I dunno, maybe I'll have it where Solly was specifically stranded in some kind jungle or something and Tickles managed to somehow bring him food or something, and some of the other characters interpreted that as it just making sure its own easy food source didn't die on it.) Perhaps due to its unemotive face or lack of a mouth -and therefor speech- and that it was pretty much a vampire, most other characters didn't really trust it. Nonetheless, Tickles was pretty much Solly's child at this point. He'd take it with him to places like the store or the pool or the monster daycare Solly works part time at. He at some point had to tell Tickles that the others probably aren't as okay with it sucking their blood as he was. It seemed to understand. It changed forms as it got older and it got to the point where Solly alone wasn't enough to feed it. He making some kind of deal with a butcher would work. He'd also sing lullabies and stuff to it sometimes.

On the subject of Solly singing: even though Solly appreciates the humans and is on mostly good terms with them, they frustrate him to no end. There's a sort of subplot or whatever where he'd dress in a showy costumes and sing to karaoke punk or metal songs as a sort of semi-protest. (Partly just because I think it'd be almost funny I guess, as he doesn't look like the type to do that, at least to me. Not sure if it'd work better narratively if the others there knew who he was outside of that or not. Or if it was mostly a place for monsters or a decent mix of monsters and humans.) Tickles wouldn't really be able to participate, but maybe Solly could bring him in anyway to socialize.

I was thinking about having a moment where some other monster spooks it into going 5th form (the highest one for this story's world; most monster characters will stay at 3rd or 4th depending on age and power) and accidently scaring human characters (the original premise of this story was that monster eggs mysteriously started appearing, so a lot of humans are kind of uncomfortable around even the more friendly ones like Solly). Someone had called the authorities, and it was either Solly try to calm Tickles down, or they were going to "subdue" it "their way", if you catch my drift. Tickles didn't seem to be listening to reason, so Solly eventually resorted to going 5th form as well and fighting Tickles until it was in a lower form.

(*Solly was one of the first monsters to hatch, and at the time was one of the few friendly ones, and of those he was pretty much the only one -at least in the area- who was willing to fight the "less friendly" monsters, but he wasn't very good at that, so some people decided to pretty much implant cyber weapons and stuff in him. They're nigh undetectable when not in use, but when he needs to, he can pretty much summon a rhino beetle style helmet, ladybug spotted shield, wasp striped rapier, and twin sickles. I guess they're like solid holograms. Anyways, that's just context for how he won the fight, because I feel like Solly looks kind of defenseless compared to Tickles.)

Solly goes back to 4th form once Tickles is in 3rd form, wherein Solly embraces Tickles and apologises profusely while trying to explain the current situation. Tickles was still freaking out a bit and pinched Solly pretty bad in his clamps. One of the humans got scared and shot and accidentally hit Solly. Tickle then grabbed him and ran off. Solly had passed out (from previous experience, he was really good at staying in is upper forms when he should revert to a lower one). When he woke up, Tickles was back in his 4th form and seemed to be on lookout for something. (Alright, a bit of a cop out, but I haven't really decided what was actually going on, I just know they eventually figure it out and deal with whatever it is.) By the end of it, Solly goes back to his 3rd form for a while; Tickles quickly goes back to 4th form to play the role of guardian while he heals, though switches back to 3rd once Solly can go back to 4th. They decide that it might be best to bring Tickles back to where they found it. Solly packs it a bag of toys and stuff and they have a nice tearful goodbye as Solly promises to come back and visit sometime.