Having just read Border Stone, I am sincerely wondering what Team Snakemouth's reaction will be once Mothivia randomly shows up with Hollow.
We originally planned to illustrate this, but we didn't get around to it. This depends on whether or not they show up to potentially important briefings on other team's missions, because the first opportunity that they'll have to see The Hollow Knight is when Team Mothiva turns up to report on that mission, but after that they've got something of a 50/50 of encountering them being dragged around more or less as encountered in Hallownest or encountering them as Ominous Bodyguard Number 2.
As by the time they've returned to Bugaria, they've also achieved what they actually came there to do (assess the state of the fallen kingdom of Hallownest now that the plague has died down), they do have more things to present than just THK, but there's a solid chance that they'll just kind of... leave it to idle in the background, while talking about everything else. Watching. Waiting.
The original plan, of course, was to try and leave it in Hallownest. This, unfortunately, failed around the point when Zasp realized just how poorly it was holding together, along with the fact that they couldn't actually locate anyone with medical training for whatever Hollow was in the area (or anyone speaking a language they shared). Since Hollow was still following them around whenever guided, the plan became "bring it back to Bugaria, get it medical attention, shove it off on whoever we can manage to get it to stick with".
The final step of this plan failed. Mothiva, as someone with a very distinct public image to upkeep, was then stuck with the task of prettying it up enough to fit with the brand rather than risking backlash from either her fans or her managers from having some raggedy-looking maybe-beetle following her around, since her association with Zasp already sort of has her on thin ice with her brand.
There is a "trying to make it look less like it's in the process of actively dying" montage. It involves usage of power tools to clean up the crack on its shell well enough to seal and liberal amounts of beetle shell ointment, and THK is wholly uncertain how to feel about the whole thing. It doesn't do a whole lot for making it look less... horribly intimidating, but it's slightly more marketable in that it don't look like it's going to keel over and die at any second now.
The first reaction is generally going to be "by Venus's name, where the hell did you find that thing?!" regardless of first encounter, though. The industrial sander doesn't change that it's a ridiculously massive maybe-not-even-a-bug with a shell black enough to absorb all light and we don't think Mothiva will be doing an even remotely adequate amount of explanation on "what this thing is" or "how we found it".
