After an interminable fall through the void, spinning among darkness speckled with faint pinpricks of distant worlds, Fang landed on his feet. A split second before Fang hadn’t had the faintest shred of an idea which direction was up, let alone had his feet pointing down, but a cat landing in any other way was simply inconceivable to the steadfast feline.

Speaking of inconceivable, a human was looking at Fang with cat eyes. It boggled Fang’s mind. Humans were soft, slow-moving, teetering giants with an inherent servility and a pitiable inability to hunt anything more mobile than a metal can, while cats were the pinnacle of agility, speed, and force, mighty and independent hunters capable of bringing down even the most elusive prey with ease. Yet this human was small, her waist barely above Fang’s head, and was looking at him with slitted golden eyes. While the color was a bit off, those were undeniably a cat’s eyes. More than that, the aura of arrogant cuteness and confident charisma she gave off identified her as a cat of some sort more clearly than even her eyes. It reminded Fang of that poor mutated cat that had needed to hide itself disguised as a pile of rocks.

Was this another mutant cat? Was that why he had yet to see any true feline brethren? Did something about this world or those seemingly innocuous blue boxes change cats, turning them into tiny humans or ugly piles of rocks?

Fang slunk back, turning sideways and arching his back, fur standing on end as he locked eyes with the cat in front of him. For the first time since clawing his way down the rabbit hole into this world, Fang felt true fear. Not at the short, earless, tailless, furless cat-human, but at the idea that he could become like her. Robbed of his claws, his fangs, his glorious fur, unable to hunt or even walk properly.

As if to demonstrate her human instability, the mutant swayed back as soon as she saw him, eyes going wide in what must have been awe at his feline perfection. “What in Trieske’s left tit did you children do?” she babbled at the reeling and retching adventurers on the stone slab. Horror upon horror, the creature had even forgotten how to speak cat.

Fang looked to his human for a moment. She had begun to glow with her typical healing sunshine, and Fang leaped up to her shoulders, curling behind her head with his hackles still raised. Clearly, his soft humans would be no match for even a mutant cat; he needed to defend them if this one tried to claim his territory. The pleasant glow of Lillian’s mana against his fur was just a pleasant coincidence clearly.

Once Lillian had made her rounds curing herself, her companions, and their familiars of their teleportation sickness, they looked between the gnome and each other in confusion, then realization sparked in Charlie’s eyes. “We- Ms. Aurelia, we didn’t do anything, we had barely laid eyes on the dungeon core when it detonated; we wouldn’t-”

“What are you on about child, I don’t care about some dungeon, I’m asking why you reek of dragon. Which word of ‘No Go Zone’ did you catastrophically lucky simpletons misunderstand?” Aurelia asks as she stomped up to the group, craning her head towards each of them in turn until she came to Lillian and stopped. “Did you let your healer go off into a higher-level zone alone? What kind-” A hiss like an angry steam viper drew the woman’s attention to Lillian’s shoulders, and the bristling cat standing atop them.

She gave a flick of her fingers and Fang lifted up into the air, claws coming out as he spun in a confused tumble, ‘down’ seemingly no longer having any meaning as he drew closer to the mutant cat’s face. Fang decided he was not a fan of this development, and blinked back onto Lillian’s shoulders, hissing even louder at the woman as gravity reasserted itself.

Lillian tried to defend herself in the meantime, stammering out “A dragon? I never- I was with the group the whole time, we didn’t-” before being interrupted again.

“Never mind that, the smell is barely on you, but what possessed you to bring back… whatever this is, and why in the nine hells does it smell like it rolled around in a dragon’s hoard?” the diminutive blonde demands, while another wave of force lifts Fang off of Lillian’s shoulders once more.

Lillian hurriedly reached out towards the tumbling feline, replying, “This is Chairman Meow, my new familiar, apparently a ‘cat’ and he’s a bit…”

Fang, hearing the betrayal of the accursed false name from the blue boxes once again, teleported to the ground this time instead of Lillian’s shoulders, before bolting away at blazing speeds, ignoring Lillian calling after him. If his humans were going to be rude, they could handle this strange cat on their own. Fang had had quite enough of tumbling through the air for them. He blurred across the large expanse of grass, flickering forwards or to the sides several times when he felt his connection to the ground tumbling away. Finally, he ghosted through a large hedge and the attempts to rip him away from the planet’s grasp ceased.

Back at the teleportation circle, Ms. Aurelia sighed and glared at the group of young adventurers, opening her mouth to ask something or berate them again, before closing it and growling out a sigh. “You know what, screw it. Jerry can sort out this mess. Not my job. You four, go to the headmaster’s office. I’ll track down your familiar and bring it. Any other surprises I should be aware of?” She gestures to the intermittent scorch marks leading off into the school’s hedge maze, slowly healing over as the lawn’s enchantments do their work.

Lillian shook her head, “Teleporting, etherealness, speed, fire, claws, that about sums it up.

Alex chimed in, “He reacted strangely when I cast a sleep spell on him too, went crazy.” Angela opened her mouth and he stared her down. “I did not miscast the spell Angie.” She closed her mouth, then got a mischievous glint in her eyes and reopened it. Alex headed her off with a glare, “Not in the mood Angela. Not unless you want me to have a chat with the twins later.”

Angela shut her mouth in a pout like she just bit into a lemon, and Aurelia claps her hands. “Got it, now shut up. Go have your lover’s quarrel in the headmaster’s waiting room,” she taunted with her own mischievous glance over at the campus’s central tower. Then she flew towards the hedge maze, ignoring the outraged noises and laughter coming from the platform.

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Fang didn’t stop running after the first hedge. But he did slow down, shifting from a hot-footed sprint to a sneaky slink. The area beyond the hedge reminded him of alleyways from the time before his second human. Tall walls of solid greenery, deep shadows in the narrow corridor between them, and occasional piles of leaves or shaped topiaries partially obstructing the passage.

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He didn’t like it much. The walls made him feel small with the way they loomed, and when he tried to simply squeeze beneath the next hedge rather than using Dimensionless Stride, the leaves seemed to intentionally squeeze together into his path and rebuff him like a solid wall. Worse, there was barely any sunlight to soak in, and even Fang’s unparalleled senses couldn’t sense any birds or rodents to hunt hiding among the foliage.

Still, Fang wanted to give his humans some alone time with the mutant cat-person. He’d give them some time to rub whiskers or playfight or whatever humans did, then rejoin his humans when the strange mutant left. The cat-person seemed to really like Fang though, constantly pulling him toward her, so Fang needed to create some more distance in order to really give them privacy.

These noble goals in mind, Fang fled deeper into the hedge maze, slinking down passages when they aligned with his destination, and ghosting through the green walls when they didn’t. He was a good way into the maze by the time he sensed someone else in the area. A pair of humans, a woman in blue robes and a man in green, were sitting on one of the low shrubs. It seemed to have clustered up to support their weight in much the same way as the irritating walls rebuffed him any time he forgot to Stride through a seeming opening.

The humans were doing that close-face-talking thing Alice often did when others came over, hands together and petting each others’ backs in between. Horribly awkwardly. Humans really weren’t designed for petting, their technique was all wrong, to say nothing of the wrongness of petting without fur. But on the girl’s lap was what really caught Fang’s attention. A mouse lying on its back, with a long, glittering dragonfly perched on its nose.

Fang instinctively dropped into a low slink, keeping to the shadows at the base of the hedge and avoiding the sight of the two humans. Not that they were paying any attention to their surroundings. All four of them seemed completely oblivious, the mouse might even be asleep. The dragonfly had glittering eyes looking in all directions, but Fang was stealth itself. A dark black shadow on dimly lit green grass, truly the pinnacle of stealth, beyond all that had come before.

Somehow, despite this, as Fang closed the distance to his prey, the dragonfly’s wings buzzed, lifting off of the mouse’s nose and causing it to stir. Clearly, some sort of unnatural sense, as nothing mundane could have detected Fang’s nigh invisible approach. But its resistance was futile, as Fang was already close enough. He leaped forward, blinking mid-leap to correct for the dragonfly’s sudden dip to the side, and batted it towards the floor, blurring to accelerate his descent before his paws crashed down and squished the bug. The blue-robed woman gave a shrill yelp and jolted as though she’d just been doused with a bucket of icy water. Fang ignored her silliness and grabbed the dragonfly in his mouth, giving it a chomp and shake for good measure.

Blegh. Bug juices. Fang might have been spoiled by all the sunshine animals he had been eating lately. Despite the taste it was deliciously crunchy, but it just lacked the density of sunshine he’d gotten used to. His eyes turned to the mouse, stirring from its sleep on the green-robed man’s lap as he looked at the girl in confusion.

Fang pounced without delay, batting the mouse away from the human’s lap with sheathed claws, not wanting to hurt a potential future minion. He blinked after it to swat it down against the ground, this time with claws out, cutting a trio of gashes in the mouse’s side before pinning it down beneath his paw and looking proudly over at the pair of humans.

Only to see a look of rage on the woman’s face and an arc of water blasting toward him.

Fang blinked a couple of inches to the side, the water missing him and crashing against the ground. It barely missed the mouse, the blowback sending it tumbling up into the air. Fang’s mighty feline mind came to the conclusion that this human was hostile to him. But since he was so utterly lovable and charming, that could only mean that the humans were under the thrall of this vile rodent.

Fang darted to the side to dodge the next torrent of water directed his way, snatching the mouse out of the air as he dashed into the hedge wall, ghosting through… though with a strange strain on his sunshine. It was somewhat like a tree branch in his mouth, blocking and soaking up the sunshine that was supposed to go to his movement. It was distinctly unpleasant, and the moment he got to the other side, Fang spat out the bleeding mouse, waiting for it to get to its feet before sending it tumbling with another swat. Letting it start to run and then smacking it back into the center of the path, letting it tire itself out.

Then the mouse stayed in place, and the grass beneath Fang’s feet stabbed into his paws.

Yowling in pain, Fang jumped upwards in pained confusion, even extending that strange immaterial second set of legs to take himself higher in his confusion. His jump took him above the tops of the hedges… or it would have, had he not bonked into some invisible pane of glass. Fang’s confusion at the light impact and change in trajectory lasted only a moment though, as he saw the grass under him pointing upwards with an unnatural rigidity… and the mouse with its paws on the ground, grass waving around it.

Being an unparalleled feline genius, Fang put two and two together with the practiced ease of the most mathematically skilled cat in the world, and blinked to be directly above the mouse, crashing down onto it paws first with a crunch of tiny bones, and a loud yelp from the other side of the hedge.

The grass returned to its correct, non-sharp consistency, and Fang took a bite out of the mouse with the smug satisfaction of knowing that he had defeated a powerful manipulator and freed two future minions from its clutches. The mouse tasted alright. A little bit like grass or leaves, but the taste had that special shimmer to it that melted away into sunshine inside him over time. Even if the mouse didn’t have much sunshine, it still tasted good, and Fang took several more bites, enjoying his kill and ignoring the loud, angry voices wandering the maze, searching for a way around the wall.

Sadly, his meal only lasted a couple of minutes before darkness descended around him. Fang was no stranger to darkness, he normally thrived in it. But this wasn’t normal darkness so much as the utter absence of light, to the point not even his impeccable feline eyes could pick anything up. He promptly teleported to the side, looking around to see a dome of blackness contained within a shimmering purple field, and the golden-eyed cat-gnome from before looking down at him with a sour expression.

“Stay.”

Fang didn’t understand the word the mutant cat spoke, but he instantly obeyed the intent he felt pressing down on his mind, bolting off into the wall, though even at his top speed the woman managed to say something else, this time crashing into his entire body and making him feel as though not a single muscle in his entire body could stay still. Fang dashed away through the hedge maze, swerving, pouncing, jumping, and hunting any prey that entered his eyeline.

Aurelia stared after the fleeing form of the cat in confusion. “Well. Guess it’s not sight based teleportation, and the kid wasn’t lying about mental effects… Stupid system though, why would Paralysis be mental, it locks up the muscles. Ugh, Jerry’s never going to let me hear the end of it if I let a familiar get the better of me…” Her eyes glinted, looking to the hedge. The self-repairing hedge, keeping her from doing her duty and pursuing the cat directly. “Well… I’ll be getting an earful anyway and it’s technically part of my job…”

Aurelia grinned, breathed in, and blew a line of blazing golden fire that incinerated the hedges in its path.

The chase was on.