Species 9562 3/3 11

The moon in the preparation room…

"In this last stage of the parasites infection cycle is where its role is decided, it has three possibilities,", Quirrel stated to his horrified audience while holding up two of his fingers and one of his thumbs, "one is that as the parasite reaches maturity and reaches out with its telepathic hive mind abilities it doesn't sense any of its kind that are mature within a radius of between six hundred to a thousand meters and undergoes development to become a queen to form a colony, second is that it does sense others of its kind nearby but less than five hundred give or take in the area which will stimulate it to become a female worker drone for the hive akin to how insects on Earth who have massive colonies act, the last path that it can take is for the parasite to reach out and sense enough active females in the area to go over the six hundred-ish limit and it changes it's sex to male."

While describing the last version the parasite could take another hollo flickered into being showing an infected in a white lab area that looked like it was a massive terrarium, the infected appeared to be hiding and watching another group of infected as they went about their business of harvesting plant matter.

Quirrel indicated the hollo above itself, "Males can't lay eggs and therefore can't parasitize its victims but that doesn't stop it from hunting for prey, the males excrete a paralytic enzyme instead of eggs that as it implies will lead to the prey becoming paralyzed. Males aren't allowed near the hive or even tolerated near females who will attack and try to disable their host if they get too close to any groups.".

At the end of the of Quirrel's statement the infected tried to venture closer to within about ten meters but as the others notice him they all snapped to attention and mobbed him bearing him to the ground, battering and biting him. Quirrel watched for as the attack started and then continued, "As such the males hover at the edges of the parasite society as outcasts, or that is they remain that way until they can bring prey personally to the queen to become a potential mate.", Quirrel's smile didn't change but the cast of its eyes showed a small hint of mirth.

As the hollo was depicting the end to the savage attack on the lone unfortunate infected, it suddenly switched to a cartoon heart that beat at a regular rhythmic pace, this change led Quirrel to make an exaggerated grimace while twitching its head before continuing, "Even though all of these changes are extremely drastic and the host loses ninety-five percent of its motor function, the host is still in essence…alive and aware, the parasite just piggy-backs off of what they experience and forces control over motor functions.".

Quirrel began moving its fingers in a similar way a puppeteer would as the explanation continued, "To this end the parasite attaches its specialty organs to the brain stem, it just integrates delicately with the nerves allowing it to intercept and interpret certain information the host itself can perceive or feel in most cases.", as Quirrel began a selection of slides began to shift across the hollo depicting a dead parasite on a surgical table with a half of a brain lying next to it, the slides showed close ups of the connections where the parasite invaded into the nervous system showing the insidious invasiveness that it employs.

Upon seeing this Seb almost threw up and was very glad that he was still sitting down in the same spot he had for lunch before he was abducted, there wasn't much that freaked him out, but insects laying eggs in him or just being inside a human body in general were one of the major three.

Before it was botflies and the guinea worms that had reserved the largest feelings of disgust in him, but this was on such a higher degree it was almost incomprehensible and he had to force himself to calm down so he could follow along with the explanation, even if just to get more info and hopefully never become infected by them.

There was one thing he knew for sure so far though, and that was that if he ever got infected by these nightmares he would take every and all opportunities to end his life before they could take up residence in his head.

"Oh ya they also kind of evacuate an ocular organ so that they can also kind of look around for themselves as well, I'm pretty certain this is why they acquired the nickname drivers as it's kind of like they're piloting a meat mech suit. It's rather endearing really.", Quirell spun slowly looking at all those gathered while giving this off hand comment tapping under both of its eyes.

The hollo switched to a small group of infected gathering different plant material in bundles. As the hollo shifted a leafy plant materialized in the air next to Quirrel before he grabbed it and began shredding it with his sharp teeth, and after a few bites Quirrel began again speaking around a mouthful of vegetation, "To keep the host alive the parasite secretes a massively nutritious waste product directly into the host's bloodstream, which also contains an amazingly powerful anti-bacterial, this replaces the hosts need to eat and drink for the most part although they will still try at any convenience to try and absorb any kind of moisture as well.".

"The parasite itself relies mostly and preferably on plant matter of all kinds that it drives its host to procure for it as you can see.", at this the hollo shifted to a mound of vegetation seemingly piled by the infected, but curiously there were multiple of them with their faces just pressed into it, "The humans parasitized look kind of funny as they feed their parasites though in this instance hehehe.", Quirrel seemed like it couldn't help giggling as it looked at the hollo side on grasping it's face in embarrassment.

Should the host expire the parasite can still manually manipulate the body as it fully takes over the function of the brain and reproduces the electrical output the brain would normally take care of."

After shaking it's head looking away from the feeding infected Quirrel stiffened and grabbed its chest and seemed to fall dead in the air, falling flat on its back in midair, only to rise stiff as a board with its arms held out in front of it just like vampires did in all of those old dated black and white horror films.

"Should the host expire the parasite can still manually manipulate the body as it fully takes over the function of the brain and reproduces the electrical output the brain would normally take care of.", Quirrel's shaking head twitched this way and that with only half of that eerie smile, while the other side twitched randomly.

Quirrel began to take random shuddering steps forward like a zombie and explained just how the parasite achieved this, "The parasite fully severs the brain stem and extends more of its organs into the amputation sending its own bioelectricity throughout the body, doing this the parasite can now manually move the hosts body but it will be quite jerky and spasmodic in its movements as it gets use to piloting the host, not including whatever trauma caused the host to expire to begin with. This process takes between one to six minutes depending on many factors.".

"As I mentioned before the parasite relies pretty heavily on the host's senses but now that the host is expired and the brain is no longer attached to help process the sensory information it's all up to the parasite to navigate with what it can sense from the lone ocular socket it peers through, so it has to you know? Manually drive if you will hehehe.", the giggle Quirrel let out seemed more dark than humorous, and went on for much longer than was comfortable for those watching.