Lantern Mouse

Lantern Mice are creatures found in. They are passive, and can be used to navigate through dark areas. They are extremely helpful due to their bio-luminescence, but tend to flee from if they perceive them as a threat.

Appearance
Lantern Mice look like glowing hamsters with big eyes, two dots on each side of their body, and elastic tails they use to hang from the ceilings and scaffolding. They come primarily in red, blue, and yellow tinted colors. Green and purple tinted Lantern Mice can also appear, but are significantly rarer.

While Lantern Mice are referred to as mice, they are nearly the size of a, and about half the height of an Iterator's puppet.

Properties

 * Lantern Mice are bio-luminescent and glow with considerable strength, although they need to spend some effort to turn their light on.
 * The more injured they are, the more difficult it is for them to glow at full strength
 * They run in fear at the sight of Slugcat, whether they are holding a  or not.
 * They can be grabbed and dragged around as a portable light source, although they weigh the player down considerably, restricting movement.
 * If dangling Lantern Mice are grabbed before they detach their tail, unless there is a shortcut nearby, Slugcat likely has to:
 * Wait for their tail to lengthen enough due to grab-stun to:
 * Make a pipe accessible to force their tail to detach, or;
 * Find convenient level geometry to force enough tail bends (3) to force detachment,
 * Or attempt to spam grab-linked throws to trick the mouse into detaching its tail.
 * Otherwise, such Mice are impossible to remove from their room.
 * They repel small groups of s, but large groups still attack them aggressively. Throwing a mouse into a group of Coalescipedes can help distract them for some time.
 * If a Lantern Mouse is killed while it's charging up, it returns to its original color.

Trivia

 * Lantern Mice are one of the 10 backer-created creatures, specifically created by co-composer Lydia Esrig.
 * Lantern Mice are incapable of swimming in bodies of water and can do little else other than bob on the water's surface until some external force gets them to drift close enough to dry land for them to climb out.
 * Lantern Mice are unafraid of s and ignore them. Scavengers likewise do not seem to acknowledge Lantern Mice.
 * Lantern Mice have a 1/17 chance of facing the opposite way and a 1/8 chance of hanging their hands down when sleeping.
 * There is a 1/100 chance that any individual Lantern Mouse has a completely random hue.


 * Lantern Mice do not eat despite having a "want to eat" relationship with them. Batflies are also not scared of Lantern Mice.
 * In incredibly rare circumstances, a Lantern Mouse may decide the best place to dangle from is a ceiling underwater. Under even rarer circumstances, such a mouse may drown to death due to its tail length. Lantern Mice do not detach if drowning.