The very first thing I heard upon my return to the good old material world was Omar barking, "Yo, Joe! What the fuck man!?"

Turning my head to look at him I was startled to discover that I had to look down at the Salvadorian sasquatch, in fact I seemed to be towering over everyone around me, including Kyli who had become noticeably larger with her evolution into a horny toad the size of a tow truck. Playing it by eye, and using the rusted hulks of cars still in the parking lot, made me guesstimate that I'd gone from twenty feet long to nearly fifty as well as now being nearly four feet across. Most of that width seemed to come from the massive layered carapace running down my back and slightly over my flanks, though honestly I was tempted to redub those layers of carapace as guillotines seeing as the edge of the thick armored plates were visibly sharp. Even my tail blade had gotten in on the action, going from a thin three foot curved blade into a towering eight foot straight slab. The thing was so massive, thick, heavy, and rough that I'm not sure it could still be called a sword so much as a hunk of metal, its edge still looked to be viciously keen though.

"Huh," I blinked, startled at my own voice. Then I blinked again because I blinked. By the Good Lord's name! I had eyelids again! "I will admit I wasn't expecting it to be this big. Bleh, my new voice is messing with me something fierce." Christ on a bike my voice must have shifted nearly three full octaves lower and now had a metallic echo to it like I was speaking through eight feet of metal piping. Which I suppose I technically was now.

"Man," Omar moaned, "if you'd just gone and done that before we fought the scorpion you could have probably soloed the thing. At least we got plenty of bug meat to keep you fed."

I lowered my head to be more level with everyone else, having to almost rest my head on the ground to be at eye level with most of them now. "Nah, I'd've still needed your help. That thing was a tank buster based on the bloodline I got from it, though if we'd have known evolution was a thing and just around the corner it would have been a much easier fight." I grunted as I tried to shift and found the process took longer than I expected as just about every movement seemed to have some serious startup and end lag to it as the sheer mass of my form resisted every move I tried to make. "This is going to take some getting used to."

"Well it looks like finding clothes to fit you will be a trick," Jerry stated, a smugly satisfied smirk on his square armadillo face. "Assuming you don't want to just drop the-." He was interrupted by a loud happy whinny that silenced the local night life as it echoed off the buildings.

"Guys! Guys!" Rumi skipped excitedly in place on her hooves, powdering the ground beneath her as her already muscular frame had swollen to the point that she could be mistaken for a large hippo, though much like a hippo it was clearly all muscle. "I'm a unicorn now! Well Bicorn, but still! Isn't that just the best!?"

My eyes ran over the woman's hyper muscled frame, taking note of the two antelope looking horns growing out of her head, her equine maw full of now impossible to miss flesh tearing teeth bared in gleeful exuberance, to the long spotted tail ending with a long tuft of hair. Doing my absolute best to keep a straight face I turned to meet Kyli's gaze and I immediately knew she recognized the creature as well. I did my best to keep my voice level but a bit of a chuckle still leaked into my voice as I asked, "Do you want me to explain to her what a bicorn is or do you want to tell her?"

"What's so funny Joe?" Rumi demanded, her new longer tail lashing like an agitated feline, "Is it because I'm still weirdly muscular? You hardly have room to talk, Mr. Literal Tank."

I met Kyli's eyes again and the lizard woman sighed, "Uhm, Rumi. I'm afraid that, erm, unicorns and bicorns are, ah, opposites."

"What?" Rumi's head perked up, her tail falling limp. "What do you mean?"

"Well," Kyli hesitated, "Unicorns are symbols of purity and goodness. While, erm, bicorns are evil and, ahm, infidelity."

"Known for growing fat by eating kind hearted and devoted men," I teased. I was kind enough not to mention them being a cross between a hippo and a cougar as well. I couldn't keep the snaky smile from my face or from adding, "I had no idea you were such a man eater Rumi."

"Go eat a dick Joe!" she huffed, baring her teeth.

"Isn't that your thing now?" Omar teased from safely behind my armored bulk. I really shouldn't have snorted at that, but it was too solid a comeback not to.

Rumi stormed a short distance away before collapsing in a huff with her back to us and tail lashing. Kyli shot us both a reproachful look before saying, "I'll go talk to her." Michelle delivered a kick hard enough to be felt through my armor and gave Omar a murderous look before the bird woman hurried over to the gathering of women.

"I was just trying to have some fun," Omar said, looking a bit abashed.

"Yeah, me too." I commiserate. "Definitely took it a tad too far. She's not as thick skinned as the women we worked with. Probably ruined the one good thing she'd had all day."

"Probably why we didn't ever get promoted at work," Omar ran his hands across his head.

"Well, that and Halloween."

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Omar visibly struggled to remain composed as he remembered the two very different extremes we'd both gone to when the store had allowed costumes for Halloween, specifically how company rules had to be changed to be more restrictive the following Halloween. "Maybe that as well." he glanced over as the last of the second round finished evolving, "Whelp that's my queue to get in there, see you in a bit."

"Be careful in there man," I waved him off as he started to strip, "Tell, the Cube hi for me."

As the third round of evolutions began I glanced over the people who'd already gone through the process. Rumi, Damian, Kyli, Michelle, Jeremy, Nolan, Rafael, and...

"What's wrong with Rumi?" A now slightly larger and far fluffier moth asked as she landed on my head and peered into one of my eyes.

"She thought she'd turned herself into a unicorn and got upset when we teased her for turning into the opposite." I answered honestly.

Matilda produced something approaching a bee's buzzing as her wings rapidly fluttered before smacking me on my pointed, shovel shaped, nose. "Men," she tutted, "The poor dear will need something to distract her or she'll be nursing that all week."

My gaze wandered over to the pile of dead scorpions and the surviving arachnids picking over it near the stadium entrance. "Would finishing off the last of the bugs do?" I asked, "I figure with this being the last group and just how big I am now that I can watch over them while you all go have fun taking your new bodies for a spin."

Matilda, despite having one of the least expressive faces in the group, still managed to give me a very effective stern disapproving look before simply tutting, "Men," and fluttering over to the gathering of women. Despite her seeming disapproving of my suggestion, less than a minute later the ladies had rounded up Damian and Rafael, who were listening to Jeremy talk about his new cackle of hyena summons, to head into the stadium where the sounds of insecticide began shortly thereafter. If she liked my suggestion, what was that last comment for?

Well either way, I had a moment to myself, so might as well use that last fusion token I’d been saving, and I had a currently dead skill just sitting there in my inventory waiting to be fused. Fusion token! Fuse Stalk with Hunker down for me would you?

–Confirm Fusion of: Stalk F & Hunker Down C?–

–Fusion will result in: D Skill–

I gave a faux haughty huff. Must you always confirm everything, yes. Fuse them. You just can’t find good help these days.

–Fusing–

–Received: Bunker Down D: Become an immobile barrier capable of withstand all but the harshest attacks. Build attack bonus against those that strike you in this state. –

With the announcement came the usual accompanying pins and needles sensation that continued to remain incredibly unpleasant despite having experienced it, what, five times today? At least this time it only seemed to be skin deep. Or was it scale deep? Huh, I’ve not really tested how well I can feel my scales. Am I feeling with them or feeling them move through the skin holding them in place? By the time that bit of pondering finished so too had the post fusion sensation.

Well that seems simple enough, wonder what it’s like using it? Bunker Down!

Almost instinctively upon activating the skill I curled into a loose coil and rotated my body so that my thick back carapace was facing outwards and lowered my head so it was barely peeking over the wall my body made. I felt more than saw a transparent barrier cover my body as the edge of my carapace dug slightly into the ground.

I held position popping up my stamina bar to see the minimal stamina cost of activating the skill quickly recovered. So either holding the skill required no stamina maintenance or my mutation’s stamina recovery completely outpaced it, nice! It was only in trying to turn my head that I found a flaw with the skill. When it said immobile, it meant immobile. I couldn’t move at all until I toggled the skill off where the transparent barrier seemed to quickly collapse away into nothing.

Definitely going to need to play with that tomorrow.

Barely three minutes later the final evolutions were done and people started filtering out of the stadium carrying or pushing a fresh load of dead scorpions. I angled my tail at them, flashing reflected moonlight at them to catch their attention before motioning them over.

"That's the last of them?" I asked as they approached, taking note that Rumi was pointedly refusing to look at me.

"Seems like it," Damian answered, making me jump as he just seemed to appear on Gerry's back where he was cleaning my- well, I suppose it was effectively his knife now. Not like I could use it anymore... "Matilda and Nolan still want to give the place a good solid sweep before we go to sleep. They've got their pets backing up Jerry's new pack right now so hopefully they'll get everything."

"Oh they'll get everything alright," Nolan chuckled darkly, his now massively engorged abdomen shifting slightly as he seemed to puff himself up. "I worked here long enough to find all the little hidey holes where those things might hide, this place will be free of anything larger than a cockroach by the time we're done with this."

"That's good to hear," I smiled at the bug man, who seemed rightfully proud. "I was hoping we wouldn't have to sleep outside. I was planning to wind down around a campfire after trekking over here, but I don't think most of us are awake enough to wait for a fire to get going." a small ripple of tired chuckles answered the weak joke, "I wanted to start laying down plans for everyone the next few days, but I guess we can just go over the basic outline for now and talk details first thing in the morning."

"Basically the first part of tomorrow is going to be divided between preparing and saving as much of this meat as possible, along with the other unprocessed bodies still in the trailer, and gathering supplies from the nearby stores. I think that we can all agree that while tonight we might be fine sleeping in the end field or in chairs, we'd all prefer some proper mattresses and pillows soon. Not to mention all the stuff we need to do to try and get this place to a livable standard, like getting the water running again. Figure if none of that brings down anything dramatic on our head we can do some light sparring to get used to all our new new bodies and maybe level up our skills, and maybe try to hammer down that weird power we seem to get when we really focus now. Any disagreements with anything so far? Questions?"

Kyli reluctantly and awkwardly raised a leg, "Uhm, are we going to help anyone else we find? I, erm, know I didn't look around much after I hatched, so there might be more people still around."

"If they're willing and not actively malicious, yes." I nodded, "You're all in a fairly decent place right now with this evolution and a massive surplus of food and shelter. Hopefully the next couple of nights can capitalize on this. In fact, if you're willing Kyli, if you can get somewhere high and use your flash in different directions, it should hopefully pull in any lost folks nearby. Basically be a living lighthouse."

"I, suppose I wouldn't mind doing that. But, maybe starting tomorrow?" I gave her an amused smile. It'd be cruel to force her after a day like today even if I did worry it might lead to people dying that might otherwise be saved.

"Sounds like a plan. If all goes well, you'll be in a good place when I leave in the next day or two."

Suddenly there was a heavy tension in the air broken only by a soft, disbelieving, "What?" from someone.

I gave them all a sad smile, "Yeah, I'm planning to head out in a day or two. Figured I let y'all know now rather than just heading out. My family might still be out there and it's a hell of a walk. Figure by the time I leave you'll all be good enough not to need me any more."

The silence from the pack of people before me continued for nearly thirty seconds, all of them seeming to look at each other in silent exchanges or gazing up at me with scrutinizing or disbelieving gazes before finally someone said...