Three days later, Professor Scranton emailed Bath with the subject line, “[IMPORTANT] UPDATE,” which was as vague as it was attention-grabbing.

> Bath,

> I just flew out to the location you marked off to me. Imagine my

> incredible surprise when the obsidian behemoth you captured

> on camera was clearly visible in a slab of rock at the bottom

> of a huge ocean chasm! I don’t think I've ever been more

> thankful that I'm a certified scuba diver, else I might not have

> been able to find it. Even so, it was way too out of the way for

> someone your age to find on vacation, so I have no idea

> how you were able discover it. I’m also skeptical that the fossil is

> as relevant to the Permian Extinction, but regardless, I want you to meet

> me in my office today as soon as you get out of all your classes.

> Thanks,

> -Scranton"

Bath chuckled softly at the rather scatterbrained email. This human had actually taken a flight the day he told her about the fossil? He found it rather unbelievable that a professor like herself would believe the words of an undergraduate student she just met and fly across the world.

It was 2:10 now; he had actually just finished all his classes. He promptly headed over to the Paleontology Department building and walked into Professor Scranton’s office.

The woman started as soon as she saw him, for he had entered very quietly without knocking. “Bath!” she exclaimed. Then her eyes narrowed. “Who are you, and who have you been working with?”

“Me?” Bath said innocently. “What?”

She shook her head as though dispelling her mind of his innocent charm.

“There’s no way a normal undergraduate would go on a random scuba diving mission off the Siberian coast in a sea most people have never even heard of! And to find a huge, never-before-discovered fossil...and on top of everything else, to find the damned fossil preserved in obsidian...It’s impossible! Everything about it!”

When she put it that way, it did seem a bit unbelievable. Bath just shrugged. “Well, I was scuba diving in the Kara Sea and found it. What am I supposed to say?”

“Why were you scuba diving in the Kara Sea?”

Bath’s neutral smile at once turned icy. “Why do I have to explain myself or my discovery?” he asked.

The professor flinched. "We're working together! I want to know more about how you made this discovery before we do more research. Besides, now I’m concerned that someone else is trying to set me up for failure."

“What?”

She gave him a look. “Sabotage. For all I know, you could be working for someone eager to lead me on a wild goose chase that might ruin my career.”

Bath sighed. “Professor, there’s nothing more to say.”

She stared at him, expression pensive, though her eyes glinted with frustration. Bath could tell she didn’t like to leave mysteries unsolved. Likely, he reasoned, this was a driving factor behind why she became a paleontologist.

“So, the first question I have,” Bath began, breaking the silence. "Is: how are we going to study a fossil in Siberia?” He knew the fossil was too large to relocate.

The professor suddenly laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. I used an imaging device to scan the obsidian. We have a complete image of the 3D structure of the rock, including its interior.”

Bath was actually quite surprised.

“Really? How convenient. I can get started then on reconstructing the appearance of the specimen, while you can get started...” Bath figured there must be many things paleontologists did when they discovered a fossil. “...With writing the paper?”

She frowned at him. “Reconstructing an image of the specimen requires a lot of experience. You need to be able to use a computer program to analyze the data that I took of the obsidian’s 3D structure and the use the anatomy of similar species to recreate the organism’s body.

“The organism will be difficult to reconstruct because the minerals in the obsidian, the only markers revealing the organism’s disintegrated body, are not evenly distributed; some areas almost completely lack any mineral imprint. Moreover, based on the mineral imprint alone, I’m hard-pressed to come up with any extant species that’s similar enough to use for recreation.

“But go ahead, do your best. If you can’t do it, I'll just take over.”

Bath smiled. “I'll get back to you as soon as I finish.”

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

“Lisa, I need to make a model of my old self,” Bath whined mockingly. “Help.”

Lisa rolled her eyes. She was actually very curious to see Bath’s supposedly enormous, ancient, Permian-Extinction-causing form, though she wouldn’t let her excitement show so easily. “Now?” she sighed.

Stolen novel; please report.

“I'll bring us somewhere remote. Just bring your phone. I'm going to need you to take photos of my from every angle.”

Bath and Lisa went to a fairly secluded area on campus, on the edge of a local forest. When Bath was sure nobody was around for at least a mile, he formed himself into a large bird-like creature. This form had a pouch-like opening that Lisa crawled into. Then, the bird took off, dashing into the sky at an incredibly fast pace. Bath knew the quick acceleration gave Lisa vertigo, but didn’t want anybody to see them take off.

As soon as he was in the clouds, he slowly stopped accelerating until he was moving at a constant velocity. As long as he kept his speed constant, he could move incredibly quickly through the sky without causing Lisa discomfort.

He slowly decelerated as they reached a secluded stretch of desert. The ground was a burnt-orange color, as though the sun had seeped into the soil. Lisa stumbled out of the pouch inelegantly as Bath landed.

“Ugh," she groaned. “When I was a kid, I always dreamed of flying. But this just sucks! I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to this.”

Bath chuckled at Lisa’s imbalance after leaving his pouch. He was already back in human form, the form he knew Lisa found most familiar. Over the past three years he’d devised a way to create clothes just as surely as growing fur or scales, making the human transition a viable option. It had been an important skill when the two of them went on mind-manipulator hunts.

“Lisa, I'm going to become the big creature now,” he remarked casually.

“Ok,” she replied, readying her phone.

Bath’s new form genuinely was fear-inducing. Its black carapace was extremely imposing, and its huge, teeth-filled head only served to enhance the dangerous aesthetic. The body was covered in looked like something between a spider and a beetle, and had eight legs that were segmented like a spider’s while terminating in powerful, clawed feet. The legs were long enough that the body itself was suspended a long way off the ground, at least ten times Lisa’s height. Every time Bath changed position, the ground beneath him cracked. He was every bit as heavy as he looked, which was remarkable considering that he was easily one-hundred feet long from head to posterior and heavily plated in beetle armor.

“Holy shit,” she said softly. “This is so fucking creepy. You know I hate spiders, and this thing is a million times worse. Like...if the world took a brown recluse and covered it in armor like a tank, and increased its size, they’d have the current you.”

“Lisa,” Bath said. Bath had grown a mouth along his underbelly so that he could talk with Lisa and give her instructions. “I'm sorry this form is so jarring, but you need to take pictures of me.”

“Fine, fine” she grumbled. She walked around him in a circle while taking pictures. After she completed her route, she stopped. “Ok, done.”

“I need you to take a picture of me from below and above,” he explained. “I can help you get above, and for below you just need to walk under me.”

Lisa hadn’t realized that by ‘every angle,’ Bath literally meant every angle.

“Fine!” she replied adamantly. She wouldn’t let the appearance of Bath’s form freak her out. It was just Bath!

Lisa walked under his stomach and took pictures from the bottom of his head to his posterior. Then, when she finished, Bath sent essence tendrils swirling around her that lifted her into the sky. Bath had done this to her before, so she knew not to flinch. She held stock-still as he positioned her above, taking photos with as few movements as possible. Bath wouldn’t drop her if she moved around or flailed, but her lizard-brain told her otherwise.

She exhaled a sigh of relief when Bath set her down again.

“Okay, we're done,” Bath smiled, having once more returned to human form.

He took Lisa around the immediate area, giving her a tour of the desert land while they were there. He told her about the local wildlife, knowing an overwhelming amount about the ecosystem and the organisms within it. For the organisms which he couldn’t name, he made images in the air by sculpting essence. Bath had gotten much better at long-range manipulation since entering the human realm, having never had use for the skill until then.

They two of them returned to campus and Lisa sent off all the images to Bath once she connected her phone to the internet. He quickly traced each of the images with lines, sketching out the contours of his form. He wasn’t sure how to make a 3D model from the 2D stills, but figured Professor Scranton would know what to do if he gave her 2D sketches from each angle. After he finished converting the images to sketches, he began to sketch the giant creature’s internal structure. Doing so was trivially easy: While organisms generally couldn’t feel their internal organs, Bath simply understood the structure of his internals as innately as he knew how to walk.

If he had really wanted to, he could have recreated sketches of his ancient form based on his own knowledge of the contours of his outer carapace. However, simply taking pictures and sketching them over was much easier.

Bath finished all of the sketches and emailed Professor Scranton that he was done and wanted to have a meeting with her about making 3D models.

She responded almost immediately with the single-line email: "come now!"

So, Bath headed over to her office, this time making three rather loud knocks to mark his arrival.

“Come in!” the professor called out. “You said you had sketches for me?”

Bath nodded. “I've completed the sketches.” He had also printed them out for her to look at, later placing them in a manila folder which he now produced and placed on her desk.

She picked up the folder and opened it. Her eyes grew wide.

“This is your sketch?” she asked. Then she flipped the sketch over and saw another underneath. And another.

She looked through all of the sketches, stunned by their detail and thoroughness. “How did you get all of this just from that obsidian?” she asked, stunned. This was utterly beyond her expectations.

“What I didn’t see in the obsidian, I guessed at,” he explained. “I have studied rather thoroughly the anatomy of insects and filled in the blanks as best I could using what I know.”

Professor Scranton didn’t reply, lost in the sketches and their levels of detail. Each one of the sketches provided one angle of insight into the appearance of the specimen. Together, they offered a complete, redundant view of the behemoth. She couldn’t find any inconsistencies.

“Professor, how does one go about turning these sketches into a 3D representation?” he asked, curious.

She looked up. “Who are you?”

Bath resisted the urge to rolled his eyes. “Professor, I thought we were past this.”

“No, seriously. This is ridiculous. This sketch, it’s as though you actually have seen this monster. I can’t believe you just...drew these sketches based off of the data I gave you.”

Bath knew he had been acting rather carelessly, not really trying to hide the fact that he was doing the impossible. Honestly, he was tired of pandering to human expectations as he had been doing while living back in the McLane house. If he could produce a perfectly accurate sketch, why wouldn’t he?

“Professor, I’m simply good at guessing and good at art. Anyways, if we plan on publishing this in a paper, I'd like you to help me turn these sketches into a 3D model.”

Scranton eyed him with suspicion and confusion.

“...I'll just make a 3D model. Don’t worry about it.”

Bath nodded. “I'll write up the theory, then, about how this beast caused the Permian Extinction.”

Professor Scranton actually spat out a sip of coffee, though quickly moved her head to the side to avoid spraying her computer and the sketches.

“What!?” she crowed. “That’s an absurdly farfetched claim. There’s no way you can prove that.”

“Just wait for my report.” He walked out of the room with a confident gait that left the professor stunned.