David thumped Wally's back in what he hoped was a comforting gesture, though the lupine man flinched violently at the contact.

"My bad for the scare tactics," David said with a casual shrug of his wings. "It's a Mutagen thing, y’know? A few control-focused abilities early on, Fusion or two, and bam! I make everyone pee themselves just by existing now."

He gave a toothy grin, fangs glinting. "The wings are my favorite, though."

"Y-yeah, no, I don't really follow," Wally stammered, eyes still wide.

David's snout wrinkled slightly as he retracted his wing. After an awkward few moments, Gideon cleared his throat pointedly, smoothing his ruffled fur as he clambered to his feet. The small creature fixed David with a scrutinizing glare, barely contained curiosity, and a million questions simmering behind his eyes. Finally, he threw up his tiny hands.

"So just what in the hell are you?" Gideon squeaked angrily, jabbing an accusing claw at David that made his ears flatten reflexively as another shower of sparks briefly illuminated the gloom, "Some kinda infiltration specialist? Who do you work for? And what was that freaky mind control thing? I've never been that scared, not even when I hatched!"

David cringed at that. "Like I said, Mutagen weirdness. You didn't even catch the full dose of it, because your eyes were messed up. I know you all Hatched with at least one ability yourself. Mine's been Fused a couple times now, synergizes with the rest of my build...I'm probably a lot higher level than you guys, no offense.”

"I'm level 3, thank you very much!" Gideon protested with a stamp of his foot. "Made solid progress on both my Special and regular abilities! Just because I don't know about Fusions--"

"I'm about four times your level, then," David interrupted flatly. "Filled every slot on my Status screen ages ago. I'm coming up on my second Evolution pretty soon, probably another Special one too. The first was just a couple of days after I Hatched."

He paused, considering. "Covered a lot of ground, met a bunch of people. I've even dropped a couple of Bosses so far."

Gideon's eyes went perfectly round at that admission. Behind him, Wally let out a breathless curse, his tail beginning to wag slowly as he seemed to find his voice.

"You, uh, you got a second to answer a quick question, my...guy?" the wolf-man asked hesitantly.

David's head cocked to the side, nodding happily before his ears twitched, and he chattered a brief Echolocation pulse towards the stairs, aiming for the floor to bounce it up the steps.

"Kozlov! I know you're up there," he called out in as soothing and gentle of a voice as he could. “Six steps down, paw on the rail? Make that four steps now...HEY! Did you just flip me off?”

Another Echolocation chatter. "Left-handed too! Damn, I really can 'see' you up there, no need for that."

There was a tense pause before Kozlov's gravelly voice finally answered from the stairwell, "Are my men unharmed? Because if you've hurt them-"

"We're alright, sir!" Wally quickly replied, to David's surprise. "The uh, intruder's just a civilian from a nearby city. Says he doesn't want trouble, and claims he might be able to help with...y'know, the situation. He's… damn terrifying, not gonna lie. But he could've smoked both of us ages ago if he wanted."

Another pause, then, "I'm coming down."

A massive, fur-covered wall of muscle and claws descended the stairs. Kozlov pulled up short at the sight of David, who was giving an awkward little wave. The bear let out a slow, controlled breath, visibly restraining himself as he raised his paws in the universal "unarmed" gesture.

The absurdity of the massive ursine trying to appear non-threatening made David bark out a short laugh before he could stop himself. Kozlov arched an eyebrow, a tiny hint of his lingering humanity shining through the form that he had been forced into.

Not to be deterred, David extended a wing in an attempt at a handshake. Kozlov stared dumbly for a beat before extending his own paw to meet it before David slapped out an incredibly awkward low-five. Refusing to quit while he was behind, David followed it up with an equally cringeworthy finger-gun gesture, which, given the wicked talons on the ends of his wings, looked more like a poorly-veiled threat to strangle the bear. He dropped it immediately, clearing his throat.

"So...yeah. Pleased to meet you, I guess?" David mumbled as Kozlov stared at him with an utterly dumbfounded expression.

Smooth move, David. Why are regular conversations so much harder than just fighting monsters? No need to decipher complex motivations, just bring them down before they can eat you, or run away before they can get you. Really doesn’t help with the way I look, too. I can’t just pop out of a bush and be like, ‘Wanna be my friend?’ without someone having a heart attack. Maybe I should get a hat or a scarf or something…hey, yeah that’s not a bad idea-

"According to him, he's over level ten at minimum," Wally offered, drawing Kozlov's skeptical gaze and jarring David out of his rapidly spiraling social anxiety. "He subdued me in about one second and has some kind of mind-altering ability that makes you utterly convinced you’re…below him on the food chain. Nasty stuff. I don't think he's as...eccentric as he comes across. Best not to underestimate him."

Kozlov's brow furrowed as he appraised David again, who fidgeted a bit on the concrete below him as he refolded his wings and tapped his talons anxiously. The bear closed his eyes briefly, a deep rumbling sigh escaping him.

"Very well," he said at length, his tone clipped but polite. "Let's start over, shall we? I am Major Kozlov, acting commander of this facility. These are two of my men, Gideon and Wallace."

He paused, clearly waiting for David to introduce himself properly. His mouth worked soundlessly for a moment before he found his voice.

"David. My name's David," he managed, ears twitching nervously. "I'm from Riverport originally, but I've been...well, wandering is probably the best word for it lately. Trying to make sense of this whole ‘Integration’...thing. Doing Quests, helping some people, trying to get stronger so I don’t get eaten."

Kozlov gave a stocky nod of acknowledgment, his next words coming out in a slight growl, "Then perhaps you'd be so kind as to elaborate on your...situation, David? And what expertise you might offer regarding the energetic anomaly we're dealing with here?"

David's hissed sibilantly as he thought about it, scratching his neck idly with a talon before reshuffling himself into a more comfortable position. Gideon perked up again, crowding the edge of the counter and leaning in, his huge eyes boring a hole straight through the side of David’s head in a way that made a single ear fixate on him obsessively as he fought down an irrational urge to poke him off the ledge that he wasn’t sure came from him or Spooky, who was basically just him anyway.

"Right, yeah, that..." He licked his chops, shooting Gideon an uncomfortable sidelong glance. "Might take me a minute to explain it all in a way that doesn't make me sound completely crazy..."

David launched into a brief explanation of the Evolution process and the times he'd encountered the rainbow energy himself. He conveniently omitted the instances he'd witnessed Claire's Evolutions, once at the ill-fated fruit grove he still mourned leaving behind, and again when she had absorbed her own Bloodline essence. David alluded vaguely to having seen the iridescent liquid manifest a few times when activating or fusing certain Mutagens, skirting around the details of his personal Bloodline and the scope of his debilitating Abilities. He wasn't outright lying, but he didn't reveal the whole truth either. This small group seemed professional and level-headed so far, but David still held back from fully trusting them.

He explained how, from what he could piece together, the rainbow phenomena appeared to be an aspect of the Evolution process itself, a byproduct of the physical and mental transformations their kind now underwent. Gideon listened with rapt attention, his brow furrowing as he attempted to process and he darted off at one point to retrieve a small stub of a pencil which he gnawed into an ugly but serviceable tool, and began to take notes directly on the plastic computer casings around him. Wally seemed equally riveted, though his eyes still flicked repeatedly to David's talons and fangs in a mixture of awe and trepidation every now and then. Even the gruff Major Kozlov betrayed glimmers of skepticism warring with genuine curiosity behind his stern mask.

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When David finally fell silent, Kozlov was the first to respond with a rumbling clearance of his throat.

"I'll admit, that’s…hard to swallow," the ursine muttered. "But it tracks with some of our own fragmented findings regarding this..." He waved a paw at the dripping crystal shard. "Though our theoretical models never accounted for the sheer magnitude we're witnessing here."

“Yeah, I touched some once when someone else was Evolving and it threw me about twenty feet away into a bush. It’s some potent stuff, but it’d have to be to do what it does.” David cast a wary glance at the crystal that still dripped unceasingly into the little tray below it, “I’m still not entirely convinced it isn’t magic or something. I’m tempted to just ask the Overseer what it is directly, but I’m not sure how that would turn out. With my luck, they’d actually respond again, and I think I pissed them off a little last time.”

"You have a direct line of communication to enemy Command?" Kozlov growled, his hackles visibly rising as his muscles bunched.

David blinked, momentarily taken aback by the bear's sudden hostility. "What? No. Omega isn’t even the only Overseer, there are at least two more that I know of, Xi communicated briefly as well. There’s probably more than that, too. I’ve got this pet theory there’s one for every Ability category."

He waved a wing dismissively, though Kozlov remained tense, baring wicked fangs in a snarl of warning.

"Easy there, big guy. I don't mean I'm working with whoever is behind this bullshit," David said carefully, fighting to keep his tone level. "From what I can tell, Omega is mostly impartial, which is good for us, trust me, I’ve kinda seen what it looks like. You think I’m scary? I almost pissed myself, no joke. Totally different level than what we’re on."

Gideon's eyes went wide at that revelation, but Wally seemed to grasp the implications first, "You're saying...anyone could theoretically communicate with this 'Overseer'? Not just the enemy?"

David bobbed his head in a nod. "In theory, yes. Though I get the sense it's...selective about responding. Like it won't waste its time on just anyone."

A frustrated growl rumbled up from Kozlov's broad chest. "And what makes you so special, then? What's your importance that it will converse with you?"

Spooky snarled loudly and stirred in irritation, bristling at the disrespect and perceived challenge from the burly ursine. His hackles rose and his ears were pinned back before he had a chance to get it under control, and Kozlov tensed slightly in response as Gideon and Wally skittered back a few feet.

"I'm not claiming to be important at all," David hissed out, struggling to contain the sudden surge of feral aggression. "All I know is that I've...generated a lot of ‘data’. Interacting with the System. Quests, Evolving, I helped a little settlement in Riverford deal with a boss…killed a guy torturing people down in Redfield, and took out the boss in the swamp. I worked out how to reconfigure my Status, gave myself a heads-up display, there’s a lot you can actually do. It’s not like we’re totally powerless."

He shot Kozlov a toothy snarl, unable to fully suppress his irritation. "The only reason the other Overseer chipped in was because I’d been fantasizing about eating Omega’s face if I ever ran into him, and they thought it was funny."

For a tense moment, they stared each other down, David's glowing crimson glare locked with Kozlov's smoldering amber gaze. The tension was palpable, the weight of Kozlov’s size and David’s ferocity creating an almost physical pressure in the air between them.

Then, surprisingly, it was Wally who broke the standoff. The wolf-man shifted forward, placing himself between the titan and the David with a cautious look.

"Easy, sir," he murmured lowly, throwing David a sidelong glance. "If he's telling the truth...having an insight into the mind of this Overseer, however small, could be invaluable."

Kozlov's muzzle wrinkled, thick cords of muscle rippling beneath his coarse fur. For a long moment, he remained silent and unmoving. Then, finally, some of the tension bled out of his stance as he huffed a reluctant snort.

"Very well," the burly bear rumbled. He let the words hang as he turned his broadside towards David, keeping his shadowy form firmly in his peripheral vision. With obvious effort, he schooled his features into a more impassive mask.

"If you believe you can offer some insight into this..." Kozlov gestured at the crystal with a sweep of his paw. "By all means. Stabilizing that would be a critical first step. But I want real answers eventually, I know you’re holding back. I understand why even if I don’t like it, but for now, I could use the assistance. Clear?"

David's own hackles had risen during their confrontation, Spooky interpreted Kozlov's every move as an escalating threat, and it took a conscious effort to rein in the impulses. He took a deep breath, slowly unclenching his muscles and swallowing the wad of spit that had gathered in his mouth before forcing himself to give a terse nod of acknowledgment.

"Crystal clear," he replied, the words ground out through gritted fangs. "Let's take a look at this thing, then."

With exaggerated nonchalance, David began to stalk forward, each movement controlled and purposeful as he circled around to inspect the artifact from multiple angles. All the while, his piercing red gaze never left Kozlov's imposing silhouette.

"Gideon, can you disconnect this thing entirely for a second? I don't want to blow us up," David chittered after studying the crystal for a few moments as another wave of sparks cascaded over the far side of the room. "Last time I tried using my Special on it, it caused one of those power surges."

The small rodent's eyes went wide, but he gave a terse nod. "I can swing the restraining arm away from the collection tray, but you'll only have a few moments before the output starts reacting violently with the floor. I'll have to put it back as soon as that happens."

"Gotcha. Go ahead, I’m ready," David replied with a curt bob of his head.

Gideon swiftly worked a series of levers and the entire crystal assembly swung out over the open floor, suspended away from any containment. David inhaled deeply before closing his eyes tightly, focusing himself as he prepared to try something on the fly, releasing a tiny Echolocation point-blank by barely opening his jaws as the wave slithered out of his mouth.

With a precise chirp, he unleashed the focused pulse of quasi-sound directly at the crystal shard. Immediately, the iridescent material flared with blinding light, forcing the others to squeeze their eyes shut against the searing illumination. Only David, by virtue of how Echolocation worked, could perceive the symbols that blazed into view across the crystal's surface for the briefest of moments, lines of shimmering equations surrounding geometric shapes burning impossibly bright as they crawled over the surface of the shard. Most were indecipherable alien glyphs, but a few stood out as vaguely familiar. The symbols for Alpha and Omega were starkly visible, as was the shape he had come to associate with the Xi. But two previously unseen symbols also materialized in the dazzling display. The first looked like an almost perfect circle, bisected by a single straight line passing through its center at a steep angle, and the second new symbol resembled a fanciful cursive 'y', with the descending tail looping back up to cross the upright staff about a third of the way down from the top.

Before David could examine them further, the shard's glow winked out as swiftly as it had appeared and David was left reeling for a moment as he realized that the final drop from the crystal had frozen mid-air, wobbling strangely as it began to drift toward him. An almost foreign sense of victory swept through him as he heard the chime, and Spooky began to rejoice wildly.

–Located Shard of Supremacy–

–User deemed compatible–

–Claim Shard?–

The vibrant drop continued its slow, inexorable path toward him, defying gravity as it moved with clear intent. David's rational mind screamed at him to retreat, to put distance between himself and whatever it was that was now happening, but he found himself rooted to the spot, mesmerized by the softly glowing liquid, limbs locked in place in a way that reminded him of when his Bloodline had begun to activate.

A strange pressure began building in the back of his mind, like an inaudible tone on the edge of perception. The notifications persisted, practically demanding a response now.

–Claim Shard?–

–Claim Shard?–

–Claim Shard?–

"David? What's happening?" Gideon's voice reached him as if from a great distance, worry tinging the small creature's tone.

David barely registered it, his entire focus narrowing to the droplet and the insistent prompts. Spooky raged for him to accept, to take what was being offered. While his rational mind screamed every warning it could muster.

Yes?