The Mechanicsburg Snap Bean is a biological construct encountered ✣ by Agatha and Gil as they and others explore time-frozen Mechanicsburg, investigating the effects of Lady Heterodyne's Star, formerly Prende's Chronometric Lantern, on living beings enveloped in the time-stop field.
Appearance[]
The bean appears to be a plant-animal hybrid, presumably created by some Spark. At rest, it resembles an inverted pear; that is, pear shaped, but with the thick end at the top, near the stem, which bears a single leaf. When inactive, it appears to be a weird looking pear-like fruit, two- to three-times larger than a typical pear, covered with spots. When active, it extrudes or unfolds two legs, the spots turn out to be closed eyelids, which open to reveal white eyes with small, brown irises, the narrow end splits into a large, very toothy mouth, two-thirds the length of the body, and the stem and attached leaf play the role of a tail.
The Name of the Thing[]
The name of this being is helpfully supplied by a nearby sign. The sign supplies other useful information as well, reading in full:
Fresh Mechanicsburg Snap Beans
Kills bugs!
5¢ and worth it!
In the Comic[]
With Gil's help, Agatha seeks out a greengrocer's shop to try the effect of the Star on simpler organisms, such as vegetables, first. (Earlier attempts to remove living creatures from the time-stop field resulting in accelerated aging, causing them to crumble into dust.) When the bean at first remains unchanged after being exposed to the luminescence of the Star, Agatha is very encouraged, but when it "wakes up" and starts snapping, snarling, and jumping, she is dismayed, thinking the Star caused the fruit to mutate. But, when Gil points out the sign, she realizes the bean is behaving normally…normally for produce from Mechanicsburg, that is!
Three of these beans are featured on the web cover ✣ for volume 24[1], chasing an apron-wearing rat holding a strawberry and running away fast. The rat is named Eekineezer and is the proprietor[2] of the shop where the bean was first seen.
References
- ↑ Text on this cover image confusing says "Volume Twenty-Five: Here we go!" This is because the page is right before the first page of volume 25 on the webcomic.
- ↑ food license says EEK at the bottom ✣ and based on that Tarvek thinks he's the owner, Kaja's Patreon post says Eek is short for Eekineezer