Herbie the Love Bug

Herbie the Love Bug is a character in the SLAY series.

Character Overview

Herbie is the diamortuga familiar of Icepick. Herbie's overlay is that of a 1963 VW Beetle, identical to the car in the Herbie movie franchise.

From SLAY 3 first draft:

The VW Beetle shimmered, sparkled, and grew. Like a kernel bursting into popcorn, the Beetle morphed from a car to a… a… a turtle, a crazy turtle with a spiked shell gleaming like textured glass. Thick, mottled-green legs, legs as long as Billy’s, so tall the shell’s apex was at eye level. The thing was a walking tank. And the heavy head, like a snapping turtle’s, lustrous, scratched and pitted like a war-battered barbarian’s shield polished up after many battles. Eyes the size of Billy’s fists, gleaming slits of onyx protected by metallic ridges.

“That thing was Herbie. It’s a Diamortuga. Diamond-hard shell. Can bite a Buick in half in one chomp, can hit forty miles an hour in a flat-out sprint. Got to watch out for its bite because the neck is three times as long as its body.”

Icepick heard the bubbling crackle of his familiar’s transformation. A thick, gray-pink tongue shot out, the sticky, bulbous end smashing into an ratadant, yanking it backward just as quickly. The last ratadant landed atop the man’s head, eight orange legs clinging tight. Before the yellow fangs drove into his skull, the tongue-mace lashed out again, hammering the beast free of the man an instant before it retracted like a recoiling whip.

Herbie is devoted to Icepick, his keeper.

Other than a convincing physical transformation, none.

Herbie is perpetually hungry. He loves fresh tuna more than anything else. When hungry enough, he is known to eat people.