"Think there's a chance it's a lot weaker up close if it's got to rely on such nasty ranged crap?" David grumbled, craning his neck to glare at the bald patches on his back where the mystery sludge had withered away his fur.

Much to his annoyance, he'd discovered that although most injuries healed completely within an hour as his health regenerated, his fur seemed to grow back much slower. So for now, he was left looking mangy and patchy, with an unsightly bald streak down his back from the tiny droplets that had struck him. The unhealthy-looking bare patches amused Claire to no end, and she’d snuffled at him for a long time before pronouncing him hideous, despite the fact the fur was beginning to grow back unevenly.

“You’re lucky it stopped where it did, or you’d look like a flying rat.” Claire sniffed daintily as she side-eyed him, “I’m not sure we could hang out if that happened.”

“Yeah, yeah yeah.” David griped as he uncurled himself and stretched to relieve the kink in his neck the awkward position had brought on.

“Well, that sucked. Good thing we didn’t just go stomping straight in.” David continued as he scratched idly at his mane with a talon, “I’m gonna sneak in and see just what the hell it is we’re dealing with, then we can decide the best way to sneak up on it or lure it into a shitty position or something.”

“You still want to try and kill it?” Claire asked incredulously, tilting her head owlishly from within the thick growth of reeds she’d settled down on like a cushion.

“...yes?” David replied with a confused expression of his own, “Everything seems to follow roughly the same rules. If the boss is dangerous at range, there’s a chance it’ll die like a baby if we can get to it. The Crusher would have gone down in, like, 30 seconds if we had a couple of reliable ranged attacks to just hammer it with when it came out…probably.”

“So what, you expect me to kill it for you if you can get me to it without dying?” Claire gave him a pointed look as he squirmed uncomfortably.

“What about if I get you to it without dying, and also disable it so you can just smush it or something?” He chittered with a winning smile that nearly made her wrinkle her nonexistent lips in revulsion.

“Ew. I know what you were going for, but the mangy fur just made you look like you’re trying to hustle me for spare change.” She sniffed, throwing her snout up into the air dramatically with a hint of mischief.

“Oh, my god. I get it, I look like a junkyard dog right now.” David snapped playfully in her direction before leaping back with a hiss as she returned the gesture with a resounding clack of teeth that silenced the local wildlife for a long way in every direction.

“I’m just joking, geez.” Claire snickered wickedly as she leaned back into the reeds, “I’ll go along with it, but only because I’m glad to see you acting like you again. You worried me last night, you know. I was scared I broke you by asking you to do what you did…”

David opened and closed his mouth several times before shaking his head, allowing his ears to flap around a bit with the motion, “Can we just stop talking about that for a while? Please?”

“Fine, but you should talk about it at some point. More than you did at the time, anyway. I’ll drop it.” Claire snorted as she clawed the tall plants away from her face with her forelimbs, “Go poke around. Be sneaky for once, didn’t you say you have an entire Mutagen for that?”

“Yeah, I do actually.” David agreed, “I’m going to try listening to…well, I’m gonna try something anyway. I think I’ve got this. Those shots weren’t particularly fast, even if they were pretty accurate. I’ll just fly away if it starts shooting at me.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Assuming it doesn’t shotgun you or something,” Claire added offhandedly. David paused at the thought, his mane poofing up slightly before he forced the hair to lay back down flat and gave her a ‘why would you say that’ look that made her shift guiltily.

He sprang into the air, a few strong wingbeats flattening the thick vegetation around him in a wide circle as he hauled himself up into the sky. He soared upwards easily, catching a surprisingly strong updraft he hadn’t expected to find and allowing it to carry him high into the air as Claire waved her stubby little clawed arm at him as he once again angled himself towards the Boss’s Territory and allowed himself to glide towards it once he’d reached a comfortable height.

Okay, let's give this a shot. Wake up and find this Boss for me…Arise! …Dammit, it was so easy with Viktor, why won't it work now? Hrmm. What did I do differently that time? Was it, oh duh!

David cleared his mind and fixated on the visceral memory of being driven from the Boss's Territory by that relentless volley. He embraced the indignant rage stirring in his baser instincts as it induced a silent snarl of defiance. Allowing the familiar tingle to rise, he teetered on the edge of fully giving in like the night before in Redfield but restrained himself just shy of that point.

He kept the mortars raining down, the reek of that gel-like spit, and the direction the shots originated from locked firmly at the forefront of his mind. David permitted his instinctual side to examine the memories in vivid detail. Almost instantly, a vaguely formed plan bubbled up for his conscious mind to consider. It was hard to process, communicated entirely in flashes of imagery and muffled inhuman emotion, the strongest of which was anger. David stomped down hard, refusing to allow it to overpower him despite his irrational urge to do so anyway.

He hung nearly motionless in the air, letting the wind catch his wings as he oriented himself toward where the original attack had chased them away from the boundary of its lair. David weighed the impressions and fragmented tactics proposed by his predatory subconscious. Slowly, the hazy outlines of a strategy took more concrete shape...

Staying just outside the blight's perimeter, he would strafe the treeline, using his ability to glide almost silently through the air to his advantage to approach stealthily. All the while, David would map out the overgrown, poisoned terrain - pinpointing the lair itself and planning an approach vector. When the moment was right, he would enter from an unexpected angle, using the environment itself as cover to neutralize those damnable ranged attacks if it somehow spotted him anyway before bailing out.

David's blood burned hotter at the prospect of paying back their unseen assailant in kind, a wave of feral aggression directed at their unseen attacker simmering just below his consciousness as he metaphorically kept his head above the surface.

Down boy, you’ll get your chance. Let’s give this a shot, consider this your chance to prove you’re useful for more than just combat.

A wave of glee roiled through him as David soared low along the blighted tree line, allowing his instincts to voice their opinion, this time from the back seat themselves. He asserted his own thoughts, but left the door open just a crack, allowing the subliminal whispers of his predatory subconscious to drift through and provide him with input he would have never noticed by himself.

There, that hollow with the splatter. The enemy alpha was here…The Boss was here, I mean. Whoa, this is harder than I thought it would be. Have to focus.

His gaze honed in on a gnarled hollow between two massive trunks where sickly residue coated the dried bushes and fungi in a telltale explosive pattern. David angled closer, nostrils flaring as he scented the air. Something had been crouched between the trees for an extended period of time, likely as it was bombarding both him and Claire, and it had left a visible slimy depression in the dead grass where it had sat. He frowned a bit as his instincts clamored for attention, directing him to the faintest stirring of air that passed for a breeze drifting slowly over the top of the dead waters that stretched away into the marsh ahead of him.

Upwind? What’s…oh! I can follow the smell, shit. I never would have thought of that, yeah, I can just follow the trail back.

A fetid reek, part chemical, and part decaying organic matter, wafted from deeper amid the poisoned woodland. David followed it hesitantly, allowing the scent trail left by the occasional patch of sticky slime to guide him deeper into the marsh. He glided carefully over patches of sickly vegetation, avoiding any angles that brought him directly over the murky water after the first time he'd done so and nearly fumbled his balance as he'd been berated harshly for exposing himself against the sky above him. He gritted his jaws and committed that one to memory, realizing immediately what he'd done after it had been more-or-less pointed out to him.

The twisted, desiccated vegetation took on an increasingly disturbed appearance the further he pressed. Shriveled trunks and branches bore unmistakable signs of repeated passage by something quite large, though obviously not so large as the Crusher had been. Unsurprisingly to David, when the trail finally vanished it led directly into a bubbling pit of murky water at almost the exact center of the blighted marsh.

Well…good job spooky voice. That worked pretty well, time to see what we’re dealing with then.

David beat the air frantically, quickly climbing above the dead trees before Screeching loudly when he reached what he judged to be a safe distance into the air. His lips curled back in anticipation as the water began to stir before the echoes had faded, and a large slimy head protruded from the water, eyestalks swiveling independently as they searched hatefully for the cause of the noise. It squirmed up onto the muddy banks that surrounded the pit it had elected to claim as its lair, and David rolled his tongue out of his mouth in disgust as its nearly transparent flesh rippled in undulating waves as it slowly crawled out of the water.

Now that is a big fucking slug, blech. Oh man, Claire’s not gonna be happy about this.