I sat calmly by the campfire while magical teenagers made camp. Well, they weren't using magic now, but they had magic. I really should be used to all this shit by now.

And I was. Or I really thought I was. Magical Dodge Chickens? Got it, no problem. Dodge Chickens eating from a magic berry bush? Yup. Normal in crazy land, not even weird.

Fucking dragon monsters calling 'chicky chicky chicky'?

Nope.

I'm done.

The kids were shaken up too, but were pretty resilient. The mundane tasks of digging a pit for a fire and figuring out how to get Owen's tent less lopsided were done quietly and with minimal bickering.

If I was human right now I'd probably be having a nervous breakdown. But instead, I sat quietly on my butt, my tail curled around my paws, as I waited for the teenagers to finish camp.

I think I didn't believe that those table-sized spiders were a common thing. I didn't want them to be common, so I believed they were an anomaly instead.

But then there were bus-sized starving dragon monsters that wanted to eat everything nearby. That was something else again.

I did not want to be food.

And the kids had faced that fucking thing on their own. I was late to that party.

I had already sorted out that I was fine with violence. I had come to the conclusion that I was fine killing the chickens if necessary. I expected to have to fight or kill 'Chicky Chicky' too.

That was when I thought 'Chicky Chicky' would be dog sized or smaller.

I arrived to see Owen, a fifteen year old kid, holding a ton of hungry reptile at bay with a bit of dull metal. For a moment I was simply too shocked at the monster to comprehend it.

And then Owen was down with Seth and that thing was going after the girls. Damn but those girls held it off too. But that wasn't going to last either.

So I, a sneak thief with an aversion to violence, jumped on the face of a beast that was big enough to swallow me in one bite so I could scratch its eyes out. What the fuck. Crazy land has made me crazy too.

I've entirely lost who I was.

I'm not human anymore. I don't remember my real name. I don't remember hardly anything about my life before, just scraps intermittently. I felt like there was a pattern to what I could remember, or a rule, but damned if I could work it out.

I needed to know how I got here. Why I was here. What happened to my memories, and if I can get them back from whoever or whatever took them. I no longer thought I 'forgot' them. That white space in the time before I met Seth, that weirdness there, that was significant. Shit was happening to me, and I didn't know it.

Making a field trip to wherever that egg came from is on my to-do list. Seth would know where that caravan left from. He might know where that egg was found.

But I need to be careful about how I go about that. For now, Seth thought I was just one of the kittens. I think I was in that egg, and then I inhabited one of the kittens, or became one, or something. I'm pretty fuzzy on those details.

Professor Kaban said that people from my world are enemies. If anyone finds out I'm not just a smart cat, I could have problems. I'm not sure I want that cat out of the bag yet. Even with Seth.

Well, that's a thought. I am the cat. I'm not who I was. And who I was before isn't going to work anymore anyway in this world full of monsters. I needed to be someone new.

And after this little adventure, the new me needs to be able to battle monsters. Fuck. I still don't want to be food. That thing was fucking scary.

Wait a second. Those fucking chickens set me up. They could have told me what the fuck 'Chicky Chicky' was but they stayed vague about it. They wanted that thing to eat the kids so it wouldn't eat the chickens for a while. I don't know if they thought I could actually kill it or not, or if they were trying to feed me to it too. I was so going to kick First Hen's ass the next time I saw that bitch.

I must have zoned out for longer than I thought because suddenly Seth was pulling out the berries I'd collected. The kids were now sitting around a deeply dug fire pit, with the light of the fire hidden from most angles. They even positioned the tent to block the view from the mountain peak.

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Those stupid berries were a whole other thing. Him just moving that sack of berries had my whiskers trembling. There was so much mana in those things, I could feel the sack being taken out from behind me.

Duvessa nearly pounced on the berries in her excitement.

"Mau collected these," Seth said, not letting Duvessa take the bag. Yay for giving me credit kid, it's appreciated. "If we're going to try them, it should be up to Blaise."

"You want me to eat the glowing magic berries from a bush none of us have ever heard of before?" Blaise asked. Oh, Blaise, this is crazy magic land. Of course we're going to eat the mysterious glow-in-the-dark food.

"If you won't, I'm going to!" Duvessa said. "Can I go first?"

"No, let Blaise go first," Booth said. "It's the point of the whole trip."

"Alright. I'll try it. Give me one, Seth." Blaise held out her hand.

Seth pulled a berry out and dropped it in her palm. The berry was grape sized with three points. It glowed a soft blue with the light concentrated at each of the points. Blaise took a deep breath, then popped the whole berry into her mouth.

"Oh! I wasn't expecting it to be salty!" Blaise said. She kept chewing. "It actually tastes good. Not as tart as most berries, but not super sweet either. It reminds me of the beach."

They waited a bit. "So now what?" Booth asked. "Was something supposed to happen?"

"Try using your power," Owen said. "Does it feel any different?"

Blaise closed her eyes. A moment later she said, "Nope, nothing. Do you think we need to wait a bit longer?"

"Magic potions work right away," Seth said.

"This isn't a potion though," Blaise said.

"Magic effects are usually instantaneous. I think if the berry was going to do something, it would have happened right away?" Seth suggested.

"Not necessarily," Selendrith piped up. "Many effects only trigger when they have sufficient power."

"So, more berries then?" Blaise asked. "They're good. I don't mind having more."

"My turn too," Duvessa said.

"Do we all get to have some berries?" Booth asked. "Or are they all for Blaise?"

"I think we should share," Blaise said. "It doesn't feel right for me to get them all. They could benefit everyone, I think?"

Seth laid the berries out on a blanket. "There are twenty six berries here. Blaise already had one, so that's twenty seven, and there are six of us,"

Uh, no way kid. I count too. I yowled, putting as much of my annoyance into it as I could.

"Aww, Mau wants some too!" Duvessa said and clapped her hands in delight. "That is soo cute!"

Seth looked around at the group for confirmation.

"Mau picked them," Blaise said. "We wouldn't have any without her help."

"That's right."

"Sure."

"Okay."

"All right then, there's seven of us," Seth said. "Instead of four each with two left over, there are three each with five left over."

"I'm fine with Blaise getting the extra," Owen said. "I don't need them." He poked suspiciously at the pile of glowing berries. "I'm not sure I want the three I'm getting."

"We'll leave the five extra as free," Blaise said. "If I need them, I'll take them then. Does that sound fair?"

Seth quickly divided the pile into groups of three. I could see he tried to balance each group to have similar sizes.

"I want to pick first!" Duvessa declared and scooped the pile that she judged was glowing the brightest. Booth was next, scooping up the berry pile with the largest berry. Greedy guts, the both of them. Eh, I get it. If I was an immature child, I might grab excitedly at magic berries too.

Blaise and Selendrith were next, then me and Seth, and finally Owen.

Duvessa had popped all three in her mouth at once and was chomping happily. Booth was nibbling the corners of his. Blaise ate another berry, but was chewing it really slowly, as if she was trying to suck all the magic out as she chewed.

Selendrith had pulled a plate and knife out of somewhere and was delicately slicing a berry. She also had a notebook out and was writing furiously in it as she went.

Owen sat quietly and stared at the berries like he thought they would bite him.

"You're right," Duvessa said to Blaise with her mouth still full. "They are salty. And so so good! I could eat these all day."

Seth popped a single berry into his mouth, chewed it slowly, and swallowed. "Do you think anything will happen to any of us?" he asked.

"Of course not. They're just berries, " Duvessa said. "Shiny, glowy berries, but still just berries."

"They have a ton of mana in them though, don't they? Isn't that the whole reason we're giving Blaise so many? To feed up her talent and get it going again?" Owen asked. "That much mana might not be safe for everyone." He still glared suspiciously at his three berries, as if they might leak their mana onto him.

"Oh yes, I can feel it," Duvessa said. "It normally takes a whole day or more for me to get my mana back when my shadows are slain. It feels like I just got all my shadows back and then some." She waved her hand in front of her. "It just got really warm here. Anyone else feel that?"

"The fire isn't that high," Owen said. "Is it the berries making you feel warm? You're not going to burn out, are you?"

Booth got up and walked a short distance away. I could see him using his power on the rocks there. He was turning them into giant fucking rubies. That was something I could vibe with. Too bad I still don't have thumbs.

"Oh! I've never had enough shadow for this. Have you ever seen an animal like this one?" Duvessa summoned a huge shadow, larger than everyone there. I had a hard time determining what the huge, blobby thing was until it turned and I saw the enormous ears flapping and the nose that touched the ground.

Duvessa summoned a shadow elephant.

And it wasn't friendly.