Davis was panting, sweat staining his forehead and hair.

“Come on Davis, we’re nearly there!”

His heart was pounding against his chest, gasping for breath. His legs felt like gelatin as he continued to run, footsteps echoing through the building. Just up ahead was an equally sweaty Louise, waving for him to catch up.

Davis felt his legs start to give out and he slowed down. More and more students passed him by. His run turned into a full stop, as he put his hands on his knees, sweat dripping onto the ground.

Louise rolled her eyes, running up to her friend. She patted his back.

“Come on, one more lap! The mile is almost done!” She handed him a water bottle, which he snatched and started chugging down. Halfway through, he gasped, and continued his jog.

Louise casually jogged beside him. “You know, a short sleeved shirt would probably still do you well.”

Even Davis knew that wearing a heavy jacket in the middle of gym class was out of the question. He still had a baggy zip-up hoodie he could wear over his regular tee as the best next compromise.

“No way.” He gasped. “That’ll completely ruin my style. I’m not gonna be caught looking lame around here.”

Louise chuckled. “So being all sweaty and smelly is cool to you?”

“Nevermind, you’ll never understand me…”

Finishing the mile run, Davis sat against the floor, his back against the gymnasium wall. He took his water bottle, sucking down the last of the fluid. The gym teacher was still waiting for the last of the students to finish their run, and several others had formed groups near the exit, chattering in their own respective groups.

Louise pulled out her phone, showing it to Davis.

“Eight minutes this time to finish your mile! Last week was eight minutes thirty seconds.”

Davis sighed in relief, still panting.

“That’s good, yeah?”

“Around average I think? But it’s an improvement! Jogging to and from school every day is starting to pay off, isn’t it?”

“I guess so. How’s your time?”

She sneered. “Six minutes, thirty seconds. You still have a lot to catch up with me!”

“Man well… Like…” Davis drooped his head down, closing his eyes for a few seconds. “Well yeah, maybe I’ll get there or something.”

The last of the students finished their mile, and the teacher began shouting for everyone to rally around.

“Come on!” She grabbed Davis by the shoulder, pulling him up. Davis groaned as she tugged her towards the rest of the class.

Last period. Despite being sore from Gym, Davis still kept his focus on getting through the last of Calculus. It was silent work time for the last ten minutes of class. He scribbled away at his worksheet, glancing around at every other student.

Just last night, he and Louise bumped into one of the living trees he had spotted long ago. She took out Witchbane, turning it into an axe and tried to cleave through it, but the wood was much sturdier than it looked. Her axe got caught in it, and the monster picked her up, and flung her far away.

They had to retreat after that, thankfully neither of them hurt. Threats like that were waiting just outside of the town limits, and not a single student here was aware.

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None of them were aware of all the work he was doing for them all either.

Davis chuckled to himself, smiling. There was nothing cooler than just that.

School had ended, and he was in Louise’s home, studying together on the kitchen table. Mr. Palrick was in his office, typing away on his computer, and Louise had made hot dogs for him and herself.

She was focusing on her pre-calc work, while Davis didn’t have much to study today.

He took out his black notebook, and flipped open to a blank page.

Tree Giant. Resistant to Witchbane. Stronger than steel? Flammable maybe? Need more info.

He doodled away next to the notes, a rough silhouette of the tree giant. Minutes passed by, and he smiled at the work.

“Oh hey, your notebook thing!” Louise said, peering over.

Davis glanced up, finding Louise had been watching his doodling.

“Yeah, wanted to take notes about that tree thing last night. I think we need to scout it out a bit more before doing anything, and take more notes.”

“It’s about time we came across something bigger than usual. It’s just been giant bug after giant bug every other night!”

He flipped a few pages back, finding doodles for a flamethrower schematic.

“I made an aerosol flamethrower a while back, but maybe we can upgrade it for the tree giant?”

“Or maybe we can just bring full on gas cans and blow them up at his feet!”

“You know, we might want to bring a fire extinguisher as well if we’re gonna do all that…”

“You know, what else do you have in there? You got any more cool schematics?”

He stretched out his arms, smiling. “Oh, a few.”

He flipped through his notebook. There were various other schematics intermixed with random notes and sketches of monsters encountered; A schematic for a grappling hook, a deer with a human face, a new outfit idea, numerous sketches of the giant bugs they had been seeing. Then a rough sketch of the Whispering Settlement, numerous notes about Queen and several doodles of her, a shadowy sketch of Scarecrow, and much much more.

Louise gazed in wonder. “Wow you’ve been very… Thorough with all this!”

“Thanks, it’s kinda relaxing to do. Just splaying out everything we’ve seen helps make it seem a bit easier to manage. Even if they’re like, five times our size.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, wait, that grappling hook, think you could get it to work? What if you give it to me, and I can climb to the top of that tree giant and attack its head! If it has one.”

“Oh well, I don’t really have it built… That and it’s meant to be used when I’m ghosted. Everything is much more feathery to me there, so I thought ‘hey, a grappling hook could probably function there’. We’re way too heavy here in reality for a hook to properly work. Unless I had a powerful, miniaturized motor or something.”

Louise pouted. “Well, maybe we can find a magical artifact grappling hook! Or build some miniaturized motor from some dead cryptid. There’s a game I play where they make equipment out of dead monsters, and I Thought that’s not a bad idea to help us out!”

“I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I’m not a fully fledged engineer. I can’t build a normal motor, let alone a magical one. I just get what I need from hardware stores.”

“Well, you can learn! The sky’s the limit!”

Davis shook his head, flipping through his journal.

“You know, maybe when we give The Collector a visit again, he could have something I could borrow.”

Louise paused for a few moments, shaking her head. “Oh true! But about that…”

Davis looked up at her. “Hm?”

“When we return, you better bring a bunch of high powered bombs or something. We’re entering guns blazing through the front door, with Rex too. I wanna make sure that entire military base is trashed, so if anything could go wrong, we won’t have an army blocking our way out.”

“You know, maybe I might come across a monster that’s a living bomb that we can work with. But we’ve been doing good work, so I don’t think we’re too pressed for time. So focus on your pre-calc.” He pointed to her homework, which was only half completed. “After, maybe we can work on some anti-tree bombs together.”