"I don't know how I feel about letting her go." I told coach Russell.
"Well that makes one of us." He told me. His face a mask of impassive apathy.
"I know exactly how I feel and how I feel is horrified. That thing could be farting out Super Cancer for all you know. We have to take it in for testing back at the biohazard lab in town. Or, we put her down. Right here. Right now."
He paused to think.
"We'll also be burning the body afterwards. I don't think the bean situation will repeat itself, but I'd rather not take any chances. Don't fancy getting shot outside the dungeon, you know? And that's me talking. Not everyone can tank your bean-sniper squads. Especially not the other kids, The ones who could wander around the farm you've grown at any moment."
He paused again. His eyes dilating.
"Oh shit. The farm."
"What about it?" I asked in confusion.
"What would happen if your Frankenwolf zombie wandered into the crops? What would happen to anyone who ate the food afterwards? Would we be dealing with some kind of infection?"
"That's not going to happen." I waved him off.
"Howe do you know?"
It was my turn to pause.
"Well, I don't exactly know it but..."
"But nothing." Coach Russell snapped. "Carlyle spent a lot of money bribing officials to pass fake test results showing the giant veggies were, in fact, edible. It wasn't a big worry until now, because our own tests showed your residual magic has slightly healing properties and they are indeed edible. The chances of anyone getting sick was in the negative, so us skipping the usual process was a matter of simple expedience. But all of that effort will crumble like a house of cards the moment our produce gets linked to some fungal infection turning people into truck-stop bathroom zombies."
He looked at the wolf more closely.
"We have to burn her. Now."
I turned to him with a mounting sense of irritation. My knuckles clenching and unclenching with suppressed rage despite the reason in his argument.
'His logic is sound. I don't have an counterargument. So, why am I so angry at him?'
There was a connection between me and the wolf, true. But there had always been a connection between me and all my creations and that hadn't stopped me from shipping off giant potatoes by the truckload or sending the plant monsters in Alaska to their messy gory deaths.
And yet, I knew this was different.
Those had been plants.
Living beings, yes. But not in the same way that animals were. Not in the same way that I and the wolf were living beings.
Right now, I felt her. Her fear. Her relief. The pain she'd felt when y fist struck her torso. The agony that followed and the sense of loss. Of letting go. All of that, combined with the surge of vitality that had come afterwards. The joy that life brought.
'She feels me too.' I wanted to shout. 'She's a thinking, breathing, emotionally aware being. One that is aware of itself and of me as a person now. She's smarter than she was and she knows what is happening to some degree. Killing her would be... murder.'
It sounded stupid, even as I thought of it. But it felt true in my heart.
"Since when do you care about the dangers of doing anything?" I prodded. Trying to find some wiggle room.
He shrugged.
"I've always cared. It's just that I've always been familiar with what I'm putting you up against. I'm not some psycho Cecil."
'That's exactly what a Psycho would say.' I thought to myself.
Still, despite all my protests, part of me knew that coach Russell had a point. This, did not look good.
Not in the slightest.
The creature in front of us now only vaguely resembled a canine. What with the generous amount of fungal growths interspersed around her frame and the blood-red leaves growing from her shoulders all the way to her tail. Then, there was the fact that she was now even taller than me and the issue of her having more magic than the raven that had led her here.
An errant hunter in the wrong place at the wrong time might be able to escape from a hungry wolf pack, if he was armed. However, that same hunter would find himself rapidly separated from the rest of his body is he happened to chance upon my new... uh... friend.
I was pretty sure she was bulletproof now. Maybe even truck-proof to some degree.
As such, letting her loose might be the same as condemning a few dozen poachers to messy, grisly deaths. Maybe a few park rangers too.
Then there was the whole secrecy of magic to consider.
Granted, Mr. Robertson had already started to lift the veil of secrecy, but he and coach Russell had made it perfectly clear that those events would take place under carefully controlled circumstances and preferably far, far away from any of their businesses.
Not only was she not controlled, but she was also far too close to town for comfort. That, and the farm to boot.
Anyone who happened to glance upon her would either think she escaped from the fathomless depths of the Dungeon's smelly cloaca or, if they weren't in the know, the deepest smoking pits of Tartarus.
There was simply no way that anyone in their right mind would think she was anything other than a blood-thirsty monstrosity that ate babies and pooped out bubonic plague.
And yet...
"Look, coach. I get how this sounds. I really do. But I can't just agree to have her experimented on. I... I don't know how to explain it. I have this connection with her."
"You're not helping your case Cecil."
"I know! I know! Okay! She's... she's not the most photogenic of..."
I hesitated. Trying to find the words.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"Crimes against nature?" He offered. Not sounding as if he were joking.
"Animals." I finished.
Coach Russell gave me a look that did not bode well for her chances.
Then he sighed into his hand.
"Cecil, I... I want to indulge you. But I can't. It, she, needs to be either studied or put down. There's too much at risk here. I mean, I think back to the beans and I sort of chuckle, you know? It's funny. Magic beans that go around setting up encampments and shooting us from behind cover. It's really funny."
Coach Russell's face betrayed the fact that it was not, indeed, funny.
"But then I started trying to get rid of them in earnest and found that I couldn't. They seem to have invaded the... I don't know how to call it. The underlying mechanism of the Dungeon. At least in some floors. They are now spawning in like regular monsters. Though mostly on the sixth floor and below."
Coach Russell passed his thick, calloused fingers through his hair.
"Do you recall how bad the swamp on the sixth floor was? Now imagine snipers taking potshots at you from behind every boulder and Vietcong-style traps at every other step. Cecil, the beans are in the trees. They're in the trees! I can assure you that a lot of people are not laughing. And it's worse on the tenth floor and below. They've managed to develop world-war 1 era biplanes! Don't ask me how. Your little soldiers as actually strafing people down there! And they're fighting the regular tenth-floor monsters for dominance! It's like a warzone in there! Bean soldiers gunning down gnomes and gnomes lighting up bean collectives all over the place. Both keep spawning so no side will ever win, but it has made training and traversal that much more dangerous. This thing..."
He pointed at the she-wolf.
"She could be incubating a deadly virus for all you know. She needs to be put down and she needs to be put down yesterday."
Again, I had no retort.
I thought I had one for a few seconds, but she then coughed up another chunk of lung tissue. My magical senses telling me a new pair of organs were replacing the damaged old ones. Flesh intermingling with plant matter and fungal growths. So that the breathing apparatus was connected to several sprouts along the front and back, instead of just the throat.
I imagined that happening to another person.
A normal human being.
I cringed away from the thought, but then I had an epiphany.
"Okay Okay! I see what the problem is! She's a bit too feral and... well... wrong. But I can fix that! I transformed her into what she is now and I can keep changing her until it isn't an issue!"
Coach Russell narrowed his eyes.
"Explain."
I placed one of my hands on the wolf. Feeling a mix of textures through my fingers. Budding leaves and stringy fur, interposed with hardening mushrooms here and there.
"I can try to change her back into a sort-of regular wolf. I mean, the plant and mushroom stuffing will still be there on the inside, but no one will be able to see the difference and it shouldn't matter if she's not leaking stuff anymore! I can keep her in my mansion, since no one's using it! It's far away from the fields and pretty close to your own compound, so you can check in anytime you want! If you give me enough time, I might even be able to make so that she looks like a dog and my uncle lets me keep her!"
Coach Russell didn't look convinced.
"Okay! Okay! Think of it like training! You've always wanted me to be the best me that I can be, right? Imagine how much I'll be able to improve if I can use her to learn about my own magic! I could learn to change my body with even more precision and I could learn to better control whatever else I spawn in the future. You want that, right? You don't want the thing with the beans to repeat itself, right?"
One of his eyes twitched. Ever so slightly.
His expression giving way, as his mind juggled the pros and cons.
It was then that I knew I had him.
----------------------------------------
I was still reeling from the encounter by the time we made it back to the town proper. Past the fence and the guards stationed outside.
"Hello boss." One of the men said. Jovially addressing coach Russell as we passed the checkpoint.
"Looking good Martin." Coach Russell said in response. Shooting him a finger gun gesture and winking before turning to me.
Martin glanced my way and then towards my new companion.
"Holly molly that's a big husky!" He spoke. "She's even bigger than a wolf! Where'd you get her?"
"Oh you know." I said non-committaly. "Around."
Martin inched closer. Stretching out a hand for some petting.
Which struck me as a rather silly thing to do with an unknown animal. Then again, it isn't as if he were in any kind of danger.
The guards around the fences were not the best of the best, but they were still adults who trained on the regular. She could still be in her hulking plant-zombie form and not stand a chance against him, given his level.
"Does she have a name?" Martin asked.
"Cupcake." I answered. "Because she's so sweet."
Well, okay. That was stretching the truth a little bit.
She was more fond of growing tentacles from her back and tearing elk to pieces than she was of snuggling, after all.
But I hoped that the name would go a long way towards keeping her alive. Since I figured armed personnel would be less inclined to slice her up from head to heel if they associated her with a cute name.
Coach Russell had laughed at my logic, but it seemed to be working so far.
Her current form was holding fast as she licked Martin's fingers instead of biting them off.
'And coach Russell was saying we didn't have a connection. Hah! I sure showed him! Keep it up Cupcake! You're doing great!'
"All right Cecil, it looks like it's pretty late. You run along now and have yourself a good long rest. Take tomorrow off too while you're at it. You could use the diversion."
"I'd rather go down into the Dungeon if I won't be on the farm." I grumbled. "I could even take Cupcake along."
That brought on a laugh. Not just from the coach, but also from all the men near him.
"The kid's a natural!" One of them said.
"That young and already addicted! Man, what a world!" Another guffawed.
"It's Russell's fault." A woman in uniform interrupted. "He's corrupting the youth with his vile ways. Little Cecil here will be taking out two girlfriends to dinner at once before we know it."
The comment brought on a blush, which only elicited more laughter from the three guards and coach Russell. Until I found myself sort of laughing with them.
Indeed, the woman was laughing so hard at her own joke that she had to lean on the security booth in order to remain standing.
She had her rifle slung over her shoulder as if it was a prop and not a weapon.
'Which is probably how she sees it too.' I considered. 'If I almost killed Cupcake by accident, it stands to reason that anyone who's even a couple of levels higher than me could do much more damage with their bare hands than with any kind of gun.'
"Now if only that aunt of his was half as smart as he is. Maybe then she wouldn't have ended up a dud!"
The other two guards laughed along this time as well.
"I mean, hot damn! A basic core in this day and age! Talk about a wreck. She was only going down to the first floor and them coming up all in tears with her mascara running. Yeah! she actually put on mascara before going down into the Dungeon! I was shocked she didn't wear heels too!"
The other two guards laughed along this time as well.
"And afterwards she'd go on and on about how hard she had it. Like, she never stopped! It was all, Wah! Wah! I have wino face! Wah! Wah! Honestly, it's a good thing she became a dud. now she can go back to what she loves most. Day drinking!"
The other two guards laughed along this time as well.
"I swear! Her core isn't really [Water]. It's [Boozehound]! She can go have as many..." The woman started doing heavy air quotes. "Milkshakes, as she wants now! With enough ethanol to put a bull elephant down for weeks! She's drinking so much the ruskies and the Irish are looking at her with concern! She's singlehandedly keeping Hennessy in business! Her breath hits you from across the room and it's seven minutes early wherever she goes! It hits monsters even harder than her club does! She's drinks so much her splash attack does poison damage!"
Coach Russell snickered, but then his eyes met mine.
I wasn't laughing. Neither was Cupcake. Her demeanor changing at once to match mine own.
And then, he wasn't laughing either.
"Hey, Candice. Apologize."
The woman looked taken aback all of the sudden.
"For what? I'm just saying..."
"Apologize. Now."
Coach Russell's tone could have frozen lava.
Yet it was not even half as cold as the chill that had gripped my heart.
'Calm yourself. Fool.' I told myself. 'She's probably twice your age and at least four times your level. Calm. Down. There will be a time where you'll be strong enough to make her eat her words. But that day is still far off. Calm yourself. Bide your time.'
The woman finally seemed to realize that I was, in fact, standing in front of her. Her face turning into an ugly shade of red, as she took in my stony countenance.
All while I was busy memorizing her face and name for future reference.
'Have you fun, Candice. Laugh. Go on. Laugh. Make fun of my aunt who never expected to fight monsters in her life. Poke fun at how she's struggling to raise me and Eva while surrounded by people like you. It's funny. But not as funny as what I will do to you.'
Cupcake began to growl. Fur bristling as her innards began to re-arrange themselves so that layers of hardened plant matter covered her bones and organs.
'Not today.' I thought to myself. 'Not tomorrow either. But someday. Someday. I will be strong. Strong enough to make you eat those words. And that will be hilarious.'