"He hired snake quasies!?" Kayt exclaimed angrily, her hand tightening on Nimesh's fur. "Damn it."

'Those aren't quasies, they smell different,' Nimesh observed, her nose twitching. 'Look: he's controlling them with a standard dragonleaf tether, like those used on normal animals.'

'Those are not normal animals,' Kayt snarled, her legs digging into Nimesh's sides as the wolf dove forward into the spray of the sea. 'They look like mini sea monsters.'

Nimesh licked her lips. 'Dinner?'

Kayt scowled and sighed in disgust. 'No, ugh. We can still beat Edgewood, anyway: the snakes aren't impossibly fast, though they're faster than any waterborne creature should be.' She looked down to the water below: Edgewood currently had a slight edge in distance, mostly due to the surprise the snakes' emergence caused Kayt and Nimesh.

'Don't worry,' Nimesh thought, sending an image of a calm pond. 'Flying is faster than swimming.' Over the pond appeared a fish and a dragonfly. While the fish darted swiftly through the water, its dorsal fin leaving a ripple-trail over the surface, the dragonfly zoomed ahead.

Down below, Edgewood was furiously egging on his two serpents while adjusting the sail rigging. He had Dandy on crew, while he himself assumed the role of skipper. Dandy's main job was to adjust the sails and plan the boat's trajectory through the water, while Edgewood manned the helm and focused on directing the serpents. Previously, he had only used the serpents below water for a bit of extra speed. Now, however, he directed them to the surface where they could exert the greatest amount of force on the sailboat.

"I feel like this sail is just getting in the fucking way," Edgewood grumbled ferociously while angling the sail away from the oncoming wind.

Dandy just gave him one of her typical, pitying looks. Edgewood could practically hear her say, 'Or maybe you have no idea how to work a sailboat...'

Regardless, Edgewood was absolutely determined to win. He wanted those path points, damn it; moreover, he wanted to beat Kayt and her meddlesome wolf, Nimesh. Considering all the bizarre mutations Kayt had given the poor test subject alpha wolf, Edgewood couldn't say that he was surprised by the wolf's newly grown wings. Personally, he didn't really get the point: if Kayt wanted a flying quasi-sapient, she could just contract one of Basalith's three bird varieties: hawks, falcons, and spearrows. Technically, she could also contract out a devilbat, although those were notoriously difficult to find in the North.

But no, she had to go out and painstakingly reinvent the metaphorical wheel. "There's a reason nobody invests so many points into flesh-shaping," Edgewood yelled, the wind picking up and partially distorting his voice. With the fierce wind, even he was starting to feel the slight chill of winter: after all, soggy clothes, cold temperatures, and harsh wind made for a terrible combination.

"Oh? Care to elaborate while we win?" Kayt shot back, head positioned just over Nimesh's right shoulder blade.

"Don't be too cocky," Edgewood warned, a savage, determined grin on his face. "COTD's Dragon gave us our boons. Flesh-shaping is the ability to make your own boon-like enhancements."

"And?" Kayt didn't fully agree with this, but she let the generalization slide.

Edgewood smirked, his hair whipping wildly around his face. "You think you can make better boons than the Dragon?"

Kayt's mouth smashed into a defiant line. "We'll see who has the last laugh in the end. If you think about it, isn't liberating oneself from dependence on the Dragon's boons the ultimate form of self-determination?"

'Keep talking,' Nimesh transmitted with a devil emoji. 'He's easily distracted.'

Edgewood's eyes narrowed. 'Well, shit.' "Nope, not even close," he lied confidently. However, as he looked up to make eye contact with the neck-at-neck wolf above, the sail flipped open and parachuted outward.

"Dandy!" he bellowed, scrambling to keep his feet on the precariously-tilting deck. Dandy simply glared back, as though to say, 'Don't you dare pin this on me.'

'Sassy motherfucker,' Edgewood thought menacingly. Though he only took a second to right the sails and set the boat back on course, the damage was done: the wolf had pulled ahead. Edgewood sighed, lamenting his poor luck and inexperience with sailboats.

"You win," he called out dejectedly. 'One hundred path points; ouch.'

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Nimesh barked jubilantly, while Kayt replied, "We know. One hundred points, right?" The duo circled back around. Nimesh landed on the boat, jostling it with her added mass.

"A deal's a deal," Edgewood said reluctantly.

"Or," Kayt began, a devilish glint in her eyes. "We could make a deal."

Seeing the expression in her eyes, Edgewood couldn't help but feel that forking over the points was the safer option. "Like what?"

"Oh, you know. Give me some of your raptors as test subjects."

Edgewood's pupils contracted. "No fucking way." Just the thought of his raptors being subjected to Kayt's butchery sent shivers down his already cold spine.

Nimesh whined, while Kayt's eyebrows pulled together. "C'mon. I've really improved since a month ago. What do I have to do to gain access to, say, three raptors?"

Edgewood looked over at Dandy. "Actually, I'll make you a counter-offer. You get Dandy here, and that's it."

'How could you?' the raptor's soulful eyes seemed to say.

Edgewood ignored Dandy's accusatory stare. "Do whatever you want with her as long as it's all reversible and won't leave her a vegetable from pain." In all fairness, Edgewood wasn't being cruel to Dandy: he loved all of his raptors, even if he treated some of them rougher than others. While Dandy had pissed him off with her attitude, he sure wasn't willing to subject her to the torture Kayt put Nimesh through.

The real deciding factor, here, was that Edgewood believed that Kayt really had improved: only a few weeks ago, she struggled to do simple things like increase the wolf's muscle mass or claw length. Now, she had created a set of working wings along with a host of no-doubt invisible bodily modifications that made wolf-flight viable.

Edgewood was curious...what would Kayt do with her hands on a raptor?

Nimesh grumbled, clearly unhappy with the arrangement. 'More path points!' she squealed mentally. 'Why do you want a raptor?'

'Because: Edgewood has control over all Kray City raptors, which probably constitute 40% of Earth's total raptor population. If I have access to one raptor, and show that I can make design improvements...'

'He'll give you more raptors,' Nimesh finished. 'But why do we care?'

Kayt sent the image of golden, flashing light. 'Think of all the path points I can net from working on the raptors.?'

Nimesh transmitted back her customary exploding heart as an expression of her love. 'I see: this'll be like the squirrels, or the hawks...'

'Exactly.' Because this exchange happened via direct thought, it only took around 4 seconds to elapse. Edgewood was used to the two's communication pauses by now and didn't think much of the silence.

"We agree," Kayt finally replied. "When can we pick her up?"

Edgewood looked over at Dandy, then at the two serpents swimming idly in the freezing water. He shrugged, then said, "You can take her now." He doubted the raptor would be a willing sailing partner after he effectively "sold" her to Kayt for a hundred PP.

Kayt gave Nimesh a dubious glance. 'Uh...can you carry me and a raptor? And fly?' The raptors were heavy, with thick, leathery armor and wickedly curved spikes. Kayt wasn't sure if Nimesh could lift the raptor, let alone carry its spiky form in her maw or on her back.

'Of course,' Nimesh replied brazenly. She approached the raptor, keenly aware of its shifting eyes and feverish talon clapping. Without warning, Nimesh lunged, pinning the raptor's tail between her jaws.

'Let the poor thing down!' Kayt mentally shouted, shocking the wolf into doing just that. 'You can't carry it to shore by its tail!'

Nimesh whined. 'It's the biggest part that fits into my mouth.'

Kayt's eyes met Edgewood's; as she did so, the two both broke out into knowing, companionable smiles. "Think we can catch a ride with you and enjoy the view?" she asked.

Edgewood put his hands behind his head. "Don't see why not. Wanna take over for Dandy?"

Kayt scoffed. "I don't know any of the controls."

Edgewood shrugged. "Neither did Dandy; I think she just made them up."

Kayt gave Edgewood an incredulous look. "Why don't you just...ask her?" Even if Edgewood hadn't invested any path points into land-shaping, he still had his expert land-shaper boons: talking to a quasi-sapient should be as easy as breathing.

Edgewood waved a hand dismissively as he returned to the rigging near the helm and began to transmit commands to the serpents via tether, aka the dragonleaf reins in his hands. "By now, I'm an expert at reading raptor body language. It's more natural that way."

'He's an idiot,' Nimesh thought. 'Body language is dumb.'

'Well, it's clearly worked,' Kayt transmitted back. 'Otherwise, how would he have an army of loyal raptors?'

Kayt walked over to Dandy, then placed a hand on the raptor's shoulder.

'This guy's an idiot,' was the first thing to come out of Dandy's mind. 'But he's an excellent teacher.' Even as Dandy thought this, warm thought streamed through Dandy's mind to Kayt and Nimesh, conveying sentiments of love far exceeding those between a teacher and pupil. If anything, the emotion felt like...love between a father and a daughter.

Kayt immediately gained a better understanding of who Edgewood was as a person underneath all the bravado. As she looked back at his fur-covered silhouette, she smiled.

'Do we like Edgewood?' Nimesh asked quietly, if thought could be described in terms of volume. 'We didn't before, right?'

'We...we don't really know him,' Kayt replied. Not the real him, at least.

'Do we want to?'

Kayt paused. A heat rushed to her cheeks. 'Maybe.'

'I'll take that as a yes!' the wolf stated with an air of self-importance. 'You, me, and Edgewood: what a great love triangle!'

Kayt snort-laughed out loud at Nimesh's misuse of the word.

'Do it!' Nimesh cheered. 'Ask him to go on a date with us! Do it do it do it~'

For the first fifteen minutes, Kayt endured this mental barrage, growing more annoyed by the second at Nimesh's inhuman persistence. However, as the thirty-minute mark came, Kayt growled in annoyance before shouting, "Edgewood!"

Startled, he replied, "What!?" His first thought was, humorously, 'Is the ship on fire?'

Cheeks quickly turning crimson, Kayt asked, "Wanna go out?"

Silence.

"Umm..."

More silence, of the extremely awkward variety. 'Kill me now,' Kayt thought.

Then, belatedly: "Sure."