NOVEL NEXT 20 - Evolution_4
Claire watched with interest as David finished hopping a few times, his compact furry body flattening the grass below him as he hyped himself up. He shook himself hard and fixed his eyes on a point just beyond his nose. After a moment his eyes seemed to lose focus and he wobbled slightly, widening his stance slowly to improve his balance like a sleepwalker. She narrowed her eyes and kept a close watch on him as he sagged on his feet, his jaws falling open slightly, revealing long sharp canines and a mouthful of tiny fangs as he drooled on the ground. Claire grew understandably concerned and moved a bit closer, leaning down and snuffling him reflexively, her breath ruffling the fur around his ears as she found nothing amiss. She took a half step back and cocked her head curiously and continued to observe him for a few minutes before his jaws suddenly cranked open and his body heaved.
A torrent of color exploded from David's maw in impossible volumes, crashing to the ground in an unceasing torrent of rainbow light that pooled like water. The strange material quivered on the ground like a living thing, growing larger and denser by the second while Claire hissed loudly with alarm and hopped backward, her own jaws opening aggressively in shock. A storm of brilliant color flared brightly within the liquid as the pool built and grew before a large amount of whiplike tendrils emerged, wrapping around every inch of David's batlike body before yanking him into the light. It rolled up his body violently, obscuring every inch of him under blindingly intense color before the liquid began to bubble and roil.
Claire could only watch his technicolor silhouette anxiously as his wings visibly broke, loudly, before the liquid began to swirl with whirlpool patterns along the shattered limbs. Her eyes widened as the light seemed to drain into his wings as they grew and morphed slowly, rearranging themselves into powerful wyvern like forearms tipped with three sharp talons. The sound of breaking bones rang out again, and David began to swell in size as his body lengthened, chest deepening drastically as muscle bunched around his neck and shoulders. His hind limbs stretched, and wicked-looking claws sprouted from his feet. His skull lengthened and grew, canines and fangs sprouting to an alarming size before the pool of light began to dwindle. The final rivulets of energy ran along his back in delicate streams that caused a huge mane of fur to sprout up from the dense fuzz that had covered him before, giving him a ferocious appearance as it wrapped around his neck and spread down onto his back before the light boiled away to nothing.
David stood unmoving for a moment before his ear twitched slightly, and he blinked in the daylight with only moderate squinting and cringing at the light as his senses returned. He turned, smoothly and without having to hop, digging the large claws that now tipped his wings into the dirt experimentally. David turned to look at himself, momentarily surprised at the length and flexibility of his neck that allowed him to crane fully over his back.
“What the fuck David, did you just pick the most horrible-looking thing you possibly could?”, Claire barked after allowing David to inspect himself for a moment, “Seriously, you look like something out of a horror movie.”
“Huh. I expected that to hurt, like, a lot.” David replied as he turned to face her, incredibly disoriented by the rapid change in his body.
“No, don’t change the subject. What the fuck is that? You look like...if a bat ate sabretooth tigers during the ice age or something. You’re lucky I know you’re cool or I’d never get anywhere near you.” Claire shot back, demanding an explanation from him.
“I got a special evolution and a little message from Omega, you know, the red words? This was the best one for what I had, but the others were good too.” He snapped back as he began to move about clumsily, “Wow these wings are hard to walk with, feels like they’re too long almost. I bet I get a lot of lift now.”
“So, what, you picked ‘savage murderbat’ and called it a day?”
“Yes, because eventually, something was going to rip me apart and eat me if I couldn’t fight back. The other two were things that would have been great if I was alone, but I didn’t take them because they’d catch you with their abilities.” David’s voice was snotty as he fixed her with new menacing eyes, “I need to be able to pull my weight, and this is how I’m gonna do it. Now, I learned a lot, you wanna hear it or what? I even tried to remember the names of some Mutagens I saw for you, but you’ll still have to dig for them.”
Claire looked like she was going to say something nasty back for a moment but stopped herself and thought about it, to her credit. David could see the gears turning in her reptilian mind as he slowly stretched out his wings and found to his delight that he could grasp things quite well with the small trio of talonlike claws on his wings.
Weird, feels like using your thumb and first two fingers but the rest of my hand’s still all weird. Arms feel kind of long too…I’m glad I kept the crescent moon pattern, that must be because I kept Gloom.
David kept his thoughts to himself as he loped up and down the meadow a short distance, fragrant grass kicking up a cloud of intense scents to his freshly sensitive nose.
“...alright David you have a point. I just wish it wasn’t so…snarly looking. You were so ugly you were kinda cute before, but now you just look mean.” Claire sighed while watching him acclimate, “Tell me about the stuff, I’m sure you’re dying to explain it. Seriously though, that Evolution looks like something cultists sacrifice people to appease.”
David eyed her suspiciously as he fought the urge to continue sneezing and loped closer, powerful winged forelimbs allowing him to plow through the tall grass and slither over the large boulders concealed in the growth. He failed spectacularly and sneezed hard enough to blow his ears back before he shook his head again, turning his attention back to the enormous reptile settling down into the grass. David nodded thankfully in return, glad to not need to crane his neck upwards towards the irritating sun to speak with her as he sat opposite nearby. His hind limbs folded neatly underneath him and David leaned forward on his new forelimbs, leathery wing membrane folding neatly out by his sides as he sat.
“Okay, so…uh…We’re some of the first people to manage an Evolution, I guess. I won't bore you with it but people aren’t handling this whole System Integration thing well. Obviously.” David began uncertainly as he recalled the communique, “You’ll see, it’s in the message. It’ll give you three options, mine were from Alpha, Omega, and another one I don’t know the name of, honestly. I can try and draw it later if you want. Mine seemed like they were based on stuff that I did. One was really heavy on support effects and running away, one was like a Screech cannon, and this is the last one. They all gave pretty big bonuses in specific areas, and you can spend points to improve stuff. They called them Teratogenics?.”
“Okay, that sucks all I’ve done is hide and fight. Also makes sense to me, I wouldn't have bothered with any Quests or anything if you hadn't seemed so weirdly sure we needed to do them.” Claire grumped a bit as she listened. If a ton of predatory reptile could look mournful, she certainly did.
“Mutagens are annoying to dig through, by the way. Sorry it took me so long, at least when you’re getting abilities it’s fast because you can just look at the category you want.”
Claire gave him a birdlike sideways look that made shadows from the fruit tree dance across her hide as they sat beneath its branches in the grass.
“David, you sat there for maybe five minutes drooling on yourself, then puked like fifty gallons of glowing rainbow slime and absorbed it. The whole thing took maybe ten minutes.”
Wait, what?