An incredibly loud battlecry roars out against the night whose quiet had only been broken by the thrashing of the serpent prior to now, “AAAaaahhhh!” Teuila enters my sensory range at what has to be twice terminal velocity, as if she somehow doubled her own gravity, or engaged a jet thruster aimed downward. Her boots are braced against the head of her spear, aiming downward, the serpent foolishly looks towards the sound, and Teuila shifts just enough to split the skull of this particular head of Octorochi all the way down the neck to the base where it connects with the main body. I topple free, bewildered.

“What in the heavens?” I claim the equipment I’d spilled out, and manage to claim some pieces of Octorochi as well, and I accidentally claim Te’s spear where it’s stuck deep in the earth at the base of the serpent. “Te, Te please be okay? Are you okay? Te!? Te answer me!” Octorochi is thrashing against something, and I hear the clang of fang on metal repeatedly. Extending my senses I can feel a smirk play across Teuila’s face. She’s, well, enjoying this? Teuila draws a sword from its sheath at her hip, which she uses to parry bite after bite.

“Time to go honey.” Te shouts back towards me. At this point I wonder if I should just let her finish off Octorochi, but then I realize that her leaping attack took up most of our combined energy. Teuila barrels into me, leaping horizontally at incredible speeds, the wind is knocked out of me as she virtually flies through the swamp, hundreds of feet per stride. Since I’m exceedingly disoriented, I feel completely useless, until I sense where Luni and Lil are hunkered down.

“There, take us there, grab some mud, quick!” Teuila obliges, heading towards the direction my finger vaguely points in. “I’m dropping the tether, I’m almost out of energy but I need to erect a barricade.”

“You might need these Reggie, I gave Luni hers and Lil’s already.” Teuila hands me several small darts that just feel heavy in a non gravity way, in a metaphysical way. I can tell these contain my maximum energy. As we land, I’m about to drop the connection, but before I do, Te places a gloved hand on my face, she whispers something and kisses me. I blink a few times, as my vision appears fuzzier, less dark splotches on darker splotches, and more details than earlier in the day. As I drop the tether, I can sense Teuila slowly shrinking back to her usual form.

Lil is up and about, moving around, Lil and Luni are basically comforting one another and seeming to be just fine. “Lil, can you fire some clay for us still?” I try to request Lil’s help quietly.

Lil answers quickly, quietly yet excitedly, “You betcha buddy, I was so worried about you! We’ve got no roots down here to worry about burning, so we can fire the whole hole!”

“Perfect. Here’s the clay type mud I’ve gathered. Te's grabbing another armful, that should be enough for a wall to hide us while we take a short rest.” Lil and I work on firing some bricks and platters and carefully shaping the walls of a little dugout, when Teuila returns, we make sure we have a sturdy wall surrounding the cap on the dugout with her extra armload of clay. We’re all full of anxious, nervous energy, jittery, shaking, yet somehow, it almost feels like the best I’ve ever felt.

“We’re alive, we’re all alive, we did it. If we weren’t surprised and attacked by those jerks, I think we could easily get the family to a safe spot away from Octorochi if it starts chasing us. You guys, you guys, you should have seen Teuila, she took an entire head out in a single attack, the head that I was stuck inside!” I nervously ramble, trying to play off just how terrified I had been, how certain I was that once again I was likely to die for just the possibility to maybe let my chosen family have a chance to live. Te presses a paw against my chest, and leans in to kiss my cheek. She shushes me with her other paw, then puts it to her own lips, whispering a shush sound. I nod nervously, trying to calm my breathing, to quiet down.

I spread my arms out and pull everyone in close for a tight hug, the air is pretty thin in our dugout, because we’ve only got very small airholes poked through the mud, but the nervous excitement, and the cuddlesome love that we all share right now is palpable. I whisper “Te was like some sort of ultra fast shadow, if we could get Teuila and Lil both evolved, foes wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Luni sassily replies: “I think one or the other is probably enough, you just played it safe and didn’t want to risk any of us.” Hm, a sassy shadow of a chance, somehow these words near each other cause my brain that momentary BSOD flicker. I do smile though at her assertion, of course I didn’t want to risk any of them, even though it’s not necessarily my decision.

I stare into Te’s eyes for minutes, possibly an hour or more while resting, and I realize I’m staring into Te’s eyes. I can see her beautiful emerald eyes. I can see Teuila. Wait. What?

I exclaim, “I can see you!” Everyone plops a paw, hand, or tail over my mouth as I loudly exclaim having my sight back. Teuila smiles at me, she winks and puts one finger to her silky-furred lips. I get a quizzical expression on my face. Did Teuila have something to do with this? Wait, my inventory, wait what? Gáe Buidhe. Teuila’s spear is still in my inventory. But Teuila is herself, her ottery naked self. “Te, Te I still have your spear!” I excitedly hoarse-whisper.

“You what!?” She quietly exclaims back, her eyes wide. She playfully thrusts her hands forward doing the gimme gimme motion. I make sure we’ve got enough space in the dugout safely to summon it, and carefully place it in Teuila’s hands. “Hm, put this back in your inventory, if it cuts one of us, it’s really going to hurt, and it won’t heal up.”

“It’ll what?!”

“This thing has some kind of magic that stops healing, though I guess you could carve the wound out with a different weapon and then heal back the bigger wound.” I nervously follow Teuila’s orders and shunt the thing back into my inventory. How does forced evolution create spontaneous items? How does it create magical equipment? How did that equipment stay? I would hazard a guess it had something to do with me claiming it to my inventory, and it remaining there when Teuila de-transformed. Speaking of equipment, Luni is still wearing her dress, headband, wristband, and her harp is slung around her shoulders, I haven’t heard her try to play it yet. But point is, Luni evolved into clothing and equipment as well.

If I help Teuila re-evolve, will another spear appear? If so, could I ask her to drop it again, and claim that one as well? What if I asked her to doff her armor? We could all be armored up with actual metal equipment. Equipped with equipment, which, well, sounded really effective when she was defending against the serpent. Te’s armor must have also been extremely light for her to be as mobile as she was, leaping hundreds, maybe thousands of feet into the air.

I quietly ask, “Do you guys mind if I experiment with some evolution stuff before we head back to camp? We’ve still got a few hours before everyone else gets up.”

“What’s on your mind buddy?” Lil chimes in with a query.

“What scheme are you concocting in that precious noggin’ of yours?” Teuila noogies me lightly. Her knuckles actually hurt worse than the hole in my ankle, which is beginning to mend slightly. Actually, all of my flesh hurts a bit worse than the hole in my ankle, like all of me is slightly on fire, exceedingly tender, hypersensitive to tactile activity.

My answer is a bit long-winded, “So, when I helped Teuila evolve, it takes some of my energy, but she had like, magical equipment just show up as part of the evolution. Her spear was stuck in the ground when I was reclaiming stuff as we were about to run away from the serpent, so I accidentally claimed it, but it stayed when she returned to this stage of evolution. If you’re willing Te, if I evolve you again, and you have a second copy of your spear, we could duplicate it, and duplicate your armor as well, for those of us that it might fit anyway.”

“You really think it works that way?” Te queries.

I return with a question of my own, “Has anyone else ever been able to evolve and drop back down a stage of evolution?”

“Not that I know of. Also, I didn’t evolve like Agwai or Laomati, I evolved into some sort of winged warrior, I could soar like I’ve always dreamed.” Lil and Luni oo and ah at Te’s description of her evolved form. It really was magnificent as far as I could sense with the danger wraps, though that was mostly like a ranged tactile sense, some sort of silent sonar. I’m also sort of curious what it looked like visually.

“Speaking of evolving, why didn’t you just teleport onto my back, or into Te’s arm’s buddy? Like that one time?” Lil asks, curiously.

“I uh, well, I didn’t think of it. I don’t really know how I did it the first time, and when you were flying away to get Luni, I wouldn’t have wanted to weigh you down and slow you down, and my connection to Teuila is different somehow when I helped her evolve. So uh, yeah.” I mildly curse myself for not thinking of that possibility, and giving into panic when I was in Octorochi’s mouth, when I probably could have just phased out or teleported out or something, to one of my friends who was evolved at the time. Well, maybe, depending on how the ability actually works.

“We’ll definitely need to experiment with that later, at some point, but for now, um, I think we should experiment with the evolving equipment. Yeah?” I raise my eyebrow, basically asking if everyone is ready, which receives a series of nods from everyone. I try touching Te’s shoulder whilst pouring my energy into forming a bond with her, hoping maybe a physical connection will make it easier. Sadly, nothing appears to happen with the same amount of energy poured into a tether, I frown and scrutinize our stats. I think a temporary forced evolution has always taken a total of five hundred fifty energy between the two parties, Te has far less energy than Lil, but after claiming the darts to my inventory, I’m back up to over two thousand energy capacity. I could easily offer her the five hundred fifty just by myself, but for some reason, out of combat, that doesn’t seem to be enough. Or maybe it requires more energy since we now have to replicate a new spear, or something.

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Curious, I try pouring in double the required energy, and I feel Teuila growing slightly in front of me. I see her form glow brightly like a backlit silhouette. As her form gains more human attributes, clothing and armor materializes on it. Her body appears to be that of an extremely sporty, fit, slightly androgynous young woman, an almost entirely human, woman. The clothing is incredibly silky, smooth white fabrics that look like body stockings or bandages or wraps, depending where on her body it materializes. The armor is silver, with gold as the main accent, with white and blue highlights. What I thought was a bow on her back is actually a small metallic bird that seems inactive. Her spear materializes in her right hand, whilst her buckler appears on her left forearm, several belts appear with sheathes, or a quiver strewn about her hips.

“Te, would you mind divesting? Or uh, unequipping everything, for me to claim it, before we run out of energy?” I ask, but Te was a step ahead of me, understanding the plan before she evolved, she knew she’d be dropping everything, so she disrobes everything rather quickly. I blush at her nearly human features, but she just raises an eyebrow at my reaction. I distract myself by claiming all of the equipment and clothing, and severing the connection. Te’s form glows and shrinks back to her usual otter self, and all of the equipment, including an inactive metal bird, and her clothing remains in my inventory.

“How are you feeling Te? Would you be up for doing that again a couple more times? I know that sometimes, the forced evolution could maybe take a lot out of someone.” Te tussles my hair as I ask this, and she just gives me a thumbs up. I’m concerned that she isn’t saying anything, but all I need is a few minutes to regenerate my energy. Not only that, but my energy capacity is growing again for the first time in what must be a month or more, since I was locked at such a low capacity when recovering, and had been unconscious for so long. I repeat the process several more times, until we have eight spears, and seven sets of equipment, after which point, Te falls silently into my arms, and I begin panicking.

Gulping, I ask with fear, “Te, Te are you okay? Te come on, be okay!”

“‘M’jus’tired, dingus, gonna sleep now.” comes a very quiet, mumbly reply from Teuila. I hope she’s just taking a normal short nap, and isn’t going to be unconscious for days like the first time Lil went into energy debt from transforming.

“She’ll be fine, she was using your energy Reggie. I think it’ll probably be okay, but we don’t know anything about this evolution stuff, there could be long term consequences none of us know.” Lil explains, making a fairly logical point.

Whew, but Lil's right, I acquiesce, “Oh crap, you’re right, I didn’t even think about that. Alright, no more, until we learn more.”

“So what are you going to do with all that armor and all those weapons and clothes?” Lil prods.

I take a moment to figure out how to phrase my plan, “Well, as gorgeous as Luni looks in her dress, I was thinking she could wear some armor over or under it, for protection, and obviously Te herself. It’s also probably way, way, way more effective at protection than my leaf leather. Luni’s dress looks pretty poofy and like there’s lots of space under it, Luni do you want to try putting on the tights and armor under your dress?”

“Sure thing, I was afraid you were going to ask me to cover it up.” Luni strips as I produce a full set of equipment for her, I was slightly incorrect about the poofiness of her dress, Luni is actually relatively curvy now, erm, exceedingly curvy, hourglass-like even. Wow. I rattle my head to stop ogling Luni. The dress is still poofier than her form, but there’s not as much space as I thought, as her body fairly fills out the dress, in that hourglass shape. When she’s getting reclothed, Luni opts for her own leather boots, instead of the metal-ribbon wing boots, but the interesting thing about, wait, what?

Okay, firstly, the interesting thing about the armor, it seems like it perfectly fits Luni, even though it came from a version of Teuila who was much taller, and proportionately larger, it even fits underneath her adorable poofy dress. But I just noticed Luni pick up the helmet, boots, and several of the weapons, and I don’t see them anywhere. A small panel on the bottom of her harp opened, a bag attached to the inside of the harp unfolded, and I think she somehow shoved the excess equipment in there.

“Luni, did, did you somehow get inventory magic?” I check her stats panel, and her inventory capacity still says negative one. She shrugs and shakes her head.

“Nope, just a neat magic bag inside my instrument thingy.” She rolls the bag back up, it seems completely empty, and she latches the bottom of the harp back, locking it inside. I stand up so I can sit down extra hard, just to demonstrate how floored I am that Luni’s evolution included magical equipment, and that I’m only just now learning about it. Luni and Lil laugh since they knew my intent before I did it, but Teuila just mumbles something like five more minutes.

I’m trying to process that anyone I know or meet probably came from an egg, was likely spherical at some stage of evolution, and could possibly evolve in a way that ends up with them equipped with magical equipment. If I hadn’t met Lil, I’d be concerned that everyone keeps evolving til they reach a state that is completely human, based on the Shellcracker’s morphology, as if there were some kind of cosmic joke about humans being the pinnacle of evolution. They absolutely aren’t, by the way. Laomati and Agwai are still definitely visibly otters, though they stand tall, bipedal, and have facial characteristics that are human-like, not to mention webbed, pawed, hands. Iakopo and Taito were also in that stage as well, and seemed to have been considered elders, so I don’t think there was any chance that Lao and Ag are in danger of a further evolution turning them into humans.

Is morphology the word I meant there? I think it is. Regardless, the revelations keep coming, leading me on an incredible journey. Not that it would be necessarily bad if my friends and family became humans, but I honestly think it would be a downgrade for most of them, well, all of them. People, well, human people, are squishy, feeble little things, if we’re still assuming I’m a human, then, me: case in point. I think that’s how you say that.

I blow a sigh through puffed cheeks, exhaling as I ask in a mutter, “I think we can gather some more clay and still get back to camp before the others wake up, at least if one of us carries Te. Lil, are you up for being evolved again, just trying to keep the energy expenditure low til we get back?”

“What, you want me to be her personal carrier, like some sort of mount? I’m a draagon, not a horse. Hehe, just kidding, sure I’ll do it.” I got nervous for a second as Lil seemed indignant, before I realized Lil was stringing me along for a joke. I fashion a little harness out of vines and leaf cushions, sort of like a saddle, which makes me feel guilty as I help Lil transform, then strap it to Lil’s back, then strap Teuila to the saddle. Teuila has stopped her sleep muttering, but I’m not sure if that means she’s getting better rest, or worse.

I work on claiming any of the fired clay and mortar-like mud, and several gallons of murky swampwater as we leave the dugout, trying to mentally prepare myself to throw up a massive wall in case Octorochi arrives suddenly. Thankfully, as we head back to the river, we can easily hop over to the other side by waiting for Lil to fly back and forth, and there’s a fairly sizable deposit of clay on the way back towards camp on the east side of the river. If I’m careful, I feel like I could maintain Lil’s transformation, as long as they aren’t breathing fire, probably indefinitely, if I rest for about half the time. How crazy would that be, to be able to head back to the rest of the family, and be all like “Hey fam, remember how Lil’s always talking about being a dragon? Guess what, they grew up big and strong.” Or something. My comedic delivery needs work, even in my own head. For now though, since we’re basically back to camp, I ask Lil to fly us each across to the west bank once more, and then we’ll just let the transformation drop, and I’ll carry Teuila the rest of the way.

As I begin to sever the link, causing Teuila to slide off Lil’s back as they de-transform, I hear Teuila mutter “Awe, poo, I was having fun riding Lil around in the air.”

I fight back a smile as I ask, “Te, just how long have you been awake?”

“Ah, well, maybe since you put me on Lil’s back?” Teuila's answer has me cracking up.

“This entire time! You bum!” Lil cries out indignantly, though they’re half laughing as they say it. Teuila rubs the back of her head with a big mischievous open-mouthed grin on her face.

Te responds jubilantly, “What can I say? I couldn’t pass up the chance to fly.”

Lil grumbles an agreement, “Grr. Well, okay, yeah, flying’s pretty cool. You got me there.”

“See, I knew there was a reason I loved all of my little dorks so much.” Teuila starts to noogy Lil. Lil is trying to respond with indignant grunts but keeps laughing, then Teuila realizes what she said, so she pauses, blushing. This confirms my suspicions that Te really has a hard time expressing her feelings with words because it embarrasses her for some reason. Specifically she has a hard time with words that contain meanings for strong emotions. I wonder if there’s a story behind why, or if it’s part of her personality as a general thing. I don’t think it’s a flaw or anything, per se, I just sort of wish I could help her out.

Trying to distract Te from her embarrassment, I bring up the equipment. “Te, ah, so, did you want to try any of the equipment? It seemed to fit Luni even though she’s shaped a bit differently than you were. She’s got a bit more shortness, and some round poofiness, and um, curviness, and stuff.”

“And look, it even fits under my dress!” Luni lifts her skirt up, pulling her dress up over her head, revealing a fully clothed, armored torso, her legs still covered by essentially some sort of bodystocking as well. The armor somehow even looks slightly curvier on her than I remember it. As I pull an extra set of equipment out of my inventory, sure enough, her armor is shaped more for her body than the copy I set out for Teuila.

Teuila begins to inspect the gear, rather, um, judiciously I guess is the word I’m trying to think of. She slides on the padded clothing that’s meant for someone a fair bit taller, and sure enough, it seems to fit perfectly. Teuila pulls on the armor, and likewise, it seems to form a comfortable fit for her current body. When forced to choose between her guppy-leather wing cloak, and her feather-winged cloak from her evolved form.

Te twirls, continuing to wear the cloak I made for her, swishing it through the air. “I’ll keep this one, you can store the other one away, for now, also, no weapons until we march. Or armor either, I’m not going to sleep in this stuff. Though I think I’ll try sleeping in the clothes, they feel really really comfy. Feel!” As she divests herself of the armor, Teuila grabs my hand, and yoinks me to her, placing it on the various padded portions of her bodysuit-looking clothes. They’re silky smooth, cushioned, but resistant, it feels like they probably offer a fair deal of protection all on their own. Probably in part so that the armor doesn’t smash into the person wearing it when they take a heavy hit.

Luni also disrobes, storing all of her armor and clothing in her harp pouch. It’s kind of funny seeing Teuila in clothes now, but Luni, well, naked I guess, other than fur. We head to the cuddle pile afterwards. I’m a bit worried about the hole in my ankle, so I decide to clothe myself in one of the white padded outfits as well.