"Malleable." Riley felt the familiar effect of her brother's power as the helmet of her suit flowed over her head. "Invite."

Riley ► Status.
Monkey-bot A ► Fully operational.

Hmmmm...

Nope.

That was no good. A monkey should be cute, even if it's actually a Monkey-bot. It also needed to be casual. No 'Affirmative' and 'Negative'. Something more like 'Sure', 'On it', or 'Okay' would be best.

"So Bit, I know I asked something like this before, but are you sure you're not, like, a [Necromancer]?" Pinky held up her palms. "No judgment here! I mean we need all the help we can get against that badger, but what if they break free of your control?" Pinky tentatively poked the Monkey-bot with a stick. "Also, what's with that helmet?"

"Malleable." Riley's suit readjusted itself and she smiled down at Pinky. "Don't worry, it isn't dead." At least not any more. "I've just made some modifications and... domesticated it."

"Uh-huh." Pinky still looked wary. "And the helmet?"

"My brother made it for me!" Riley's chest puffed out with pride. She still needed to wear it to set up a party or add/remove people. Conveniently, she didn't need to wear it to send party messages. Riley thought about adding Pinky for a moment, but she cringed at the potential bombardment of random messages.

"The same brother who you said could wipe out the Dyed Lands?"

Riley hummed. "I'm pretty sure I didn't use those exact words, but yeah." She looked Pinky in her eyes. "He could."

"Okay. Okay." Pinky nodded to herself. "But you're sure about the monkeys?"

Riley gave her a flat stare. Why did everyone get so worked up about her assistants? Spiders were a very useful body type! "They're just animals. They'd try to kill us like everything else in this white hellscape, so why not use their bodies for something good?"

"I guess..." Pinky dropped her stick and started walking away from the Monkey-bot. "It's kinda like a [Beast Tamer] with extra steps."

"Look at it this way." Riley had the Monkey-bot move to assist her in modifying the next corpse. "If I ever need to operate on myself again, the monkeys can assist me rather than you."

"Oh?" Pinky relaxed and smiled. "That IS good news!"

...

It had taken a couple of days, but all the Monkey-bots were up and working. The best thing was, they could offset their own upkeep! Riley watched the cliff side as white fruit seemingly floated up by itself.

Of course it was just one of her Monkey-bots returning with more food. They made good scavengers. She didn't have to make many updates to their natural instincts as they already had evolved to avoid predators. They could go out at night and pick up fruit, water, sticks, grass, smaller animals, or even the carcasses left over from larger predators. Their excellent night vision, hearing, and agility made for perfect scouts.

Not to mention their invisibility, but that was commonplace in the Chalklands.

Riley was still trying to figure out just how that worked. She couldn't make any further modifications until she was sure that her upgrades wouldn't clash with the innate ability that all animals around here shared.

It definitely had something to do with their coloring. The white dye existed on a cellular level, or possibly deeper. Riley would need a MUCH bigger microscope to find out. A proper Tinker one too. You couldn't tell what color something was by bouncing electrons off of it.

At least she had plenty of samples.

Riley went to check on how her tree graft was going. It had been tricky making a 'plant' from some of her own tissue, but she thought the cell walls looked nice. It was small, and it didn't do anything, but it still took in nutrients. That was enough.

If she was going to eat white meat and drink white milk, she needed to know if there'd be consequences. Pinky said it'd be fine, but Riley had to know for herself.

Thus, the grafting experiment served two intertwined purposes. The obvious one was to see if the non-white part of the tree started turning invisible once fully integrated. The second test was to see if her cells started gaining any color. As a smaller organism, the Riley-branch should show signs earlier.

It was sort of like a canary in a coal mine.

Finally, the two results might be linked. Could the grafted branch only turn invisible after it was 'white' enough?

It was an interesting and important experiment, but not the most important work that Riley had to do. The badger was still out there. She didn't have a good estimate on how long it would take to recover from the injuries it'd gotten from its fall.

Or just how it would decide to try and kill her again?

Riley motioned for the sacrificial Monkey-bot. It gracefully crawled towards her. She picked it up and examined the badger nose on its back.

Hmmm... No change.

Mixture #43 was a dud.

The badger's biology was something else when it came to ignoring substances that would hurt it. Mother Nature made some truly elegant designs sometimes. Riley thought she could feel her Passenger's excitement as she got another idea for a dye.

She shook her head. "No. That's not going to work."

"What's not going to work?" Pinky stopped doing jumping jacks and walked over. "No luck with the badger poison?"

"None so far." Riley sat down with a huff.

"Don't be discouraged!" Pinky wiped her face with a tiny towel. "Using poison to kill it is not [Foolish] at all, so I know you can do it!"

Riley glanced down at her new friend. "You keep saying things are or aren't foolish. Do you have some sort of Thinker power?"

"A thinker power?" Pinky did a handstand. "What's that?"

"You know..." Riley frowned. "Something that helps you think? Like..." What was the best example? "Oh! Like something that warns you about danger!" That was probably the most common one. Riley paused. Of course, she might be biased since she'd thought that was what part of Jack's power had been for a long time.

"You mean like [Dangersense]?" Pinky shook her head and lost her balance. The Fraerling groaned as she stood up. "No. I don't have [Dangersense]. It's a common skill, but the Titan says it's a trap."

Really? That was interesting.

Riley shook her head. "No. I don't mean danger sense specifically. I'm using 'Thinker' to generalize skills that grant you information or that bring details to your attention. Stuff like that. Since you always say that something's 'foolish', I thought you might have something like that."

"Oh!" Pinky's eyes went wide as she brought her fist down onto her palm. "I understand." She smirked. "Yes. I am a [Thinker]." She paused. "Or a sub-class. Or tangent class. Or related. However you want to say it."

Riley's eyes gleamed. "So you have a sort of precognition about if something is 'foolish'?"

"Well..." Pinky clasped her hands behind her back and slowly walked in a circle. "It would be [Foolish] to say that, wouldn't it?"

Riley rolled her eyes. "Fine. Can you tell me if it'd be foolish to try and make a poison out of a monkey's brain?"

Pinky hummed. "Nope. Not [Foolish]."

Riley smiled. "Okay then... Wait." Her question wasn't specific enough. "Would it be 'foolish' to try and kill the badger with a poison I made from a monkey's brain?"

Pinky hummed again. "Yep. That's pretty [Foolish] alright."

Riley's smile widened. Progress! "How often can you answer my questions about if something is 'foolish'?"

Pinky shrugged. "Not constantly, but it has a short cool down." She tilted her head. "Huh. Telling you that was both [Foolish] and not [Foolish]. Weird."

Riley brought her hands up and started drumming her fingers together. "Excellent. Time for twenty questions."

...

Riley shook the mixture in the moonlight. While she could've made a fire for light and warmth, she was still cautious about what might see them. The plateau would potentially allow their fire to be seen from a long ways away. So while she made one during the day, she also made sure to put it down before it got too dark.

Pinky was asleep, but Riley had given herself another shot to stay awake.

It wasn't a sustainable plan. Her body needed rest. Her mixture wasn't a perfect substitute for all the processes that happened during sleep. She was also starting to run low on the chemicals she needed. She could make more with some cerebrospinal fluid, but it was one thing to eat white meat and drink white milk - it was another to inject it into your brain directly.

Still, staying awake served two purposes.

First, it gave Riley more time. That and materials were the two major limitations that all Tinkers faced. Surgery's blueprints could mostly be done with body parts once the basic tools were accounted for, so she was lucky there. (Even though all her incoming materials were dyed.) Thus, Tinkering during the night allowed her to get up to speed quicker.

The Monkey-bots were a good first step. With her Mets and Spider-bots gone, they were a welcome effort multiplier. Making them combat worthy was another matter. While they possessed excellent characteristics for stealth, she still needed to both outfit them with bone blades, poison glands, and acid sacs for them to be of any real use in a fight. In addition, she needed to tweak their biologic responses. Reflexes, muscle memory, tactics - the list of ingrained behaviors that a proper fighting drone needed was... involved.

The second benefit of staying up during the night was as a lookout.

The badger had climbed the walls at dusk last time. No reason to think that it wouldn't try to ambush them again in the same manner. Especially since it was blind. Riley wasn't sure how much credit to give it, but denying a prey sight seemed like a tactic that was common in the Chalklands.

It was far too likely that the badger would try to attack them during the night next. Heck, it might be intelligent enough to wait until the visible part of the moons was smaller.

No. Riley shook her head. How would it even know how much moonlight there was? There were numerous details that would let it discern day vs. night, but you had to be nocturnal to have the same experience with moon phases.

There was also the fact that the badger didn't seem like the patient type.

If anything was delaying its attempt at revenge, it would have to be the injuries it had that kept piling up. Honestly, it was an impressive physical specimen. A parahuman with its strength, endurance, and Stranger powers would've been a tough opponent.

Well, to most people. Not to Kevin, but who was these days?

She wished her brother was here.

Riley stood up and walked around the plateau's perimeter while looking over the side. She played with the vial containing the poison in her hand as she did. It should work. It WOULD work.

Hopefully.

Pinky had said that making a poison from the remains of the badger's nose was only a little foolish. It was the best option that the Fraerling's Thinker power could come up with.

And it had worked.

At least, the small amount of poison she made with a sliver of the nose killed a portion of the nose when introduced. It was proof enough to use the rest of the badger's remains to create more toxins. It was one of her poison/venom hybrids as it could kill the target however it got in their body.

Just how effective it would be remained to be seen.

That was why she'd been trying to condense a more potent acid. The badger wasn't immune to THAT. It was just annoyingly resistant due to its size and fur. She didn't know how much acid it would take to kill it, and it was difficult to make. Not to mention store. She really needed to switch to a two-part compound so the individual chemicals could be stored in her Monkey-bots and not in the few glass containers she had.

Riley came to the part of the plateau that overlooked the pond. She smelled cookies. She always smelled cookies here, as the creatures that dwelled in the water set off her Stranger sense.

Wait.

Riley paused.

The smell was stronger than normal.

Or was that just her imagination?

Riley played with the jar of acid she'd just finished. It represented hours of work. She didn't want to waste it.

But... if the badger WAS crawling up the cliff, then now was the perfect chance. The only chance.

Riley took out the glass stopper and swung her arm in an arc. The white liquid splashed along the side of the plateau. The hissing sound from where it had started to slightly eat away the rock was drowned out by a roar.

The badger became visible and growled as it started moving quicker!

Okay. Now was her chance!

Riley flexed the fingers in her right hand just enough to allow her bone needle darts to poke through. She then dipped them into the badger-toxin one by one. The hollow cavity and porous nature would let the venom seep into them and hold it tight until they struck their target.

The downside was that while they were extended like this she couldn't bend the top joints of her fingers. She'd have to relax the pressure and let them sink back in before firing, but doing so would let the badger-toxin seep in with her venom and vise-versa. It wouldn't do to dilute it.

Riley glanced down as she started applying the venom to her other hand. The thing was close and moving fast! "Pinky! Get up! It's back!" She yelled as she quickly backed up. Riley pocketed the rest of the badger-toxin and aimed down her right arm. She had one shot at this if she wanted to both end the battle before it started and recover the badger's body.

If she killed it as it was climbing, it would fall into the pond and the predators there would eat it. But killing it after it made it all the way to the top was too risky. The thing was dangerous! Deadly, resilient, and far smarter than it had any right to be.

Besides, it was too close to the edge for her liking. It was hard to judge jut how far those long paws could reach.

No. She needed space so she could shoot it just as it crested the ridge.

"Huh? What's going on, Bit?" Pinky walked out of her tent while yawning. "Who's back are we talking about? Mine? It was just on the floor-"

"The badger! The Bloodrage Badger!" Riley shouted over her shoulder. "It's climbing up again!"

"Oh." Pinky blinked. "That's not good."

Riley nodded and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

What was it doing? The rate it was going it should've reached the top by now!

Riley smelled cookies and whirled around. There was something trying to mess with her senses. Pinky was gone.

Was she back in her tent? Did she do her Stranger-thing? Was that what Riley smelled?

There was no way to tell for certain. She'd gotten the idea for her signal re-routing from Kevin's 'Perception Checks'. It could let her know she was missing something, but not exactly what.

Riley ► Monkey-bot A, C, D, F and G run around the edges of the plateau and try and find the badger.

The rest of her minions were out gathering at the moment.

Monkey-bot A ► Ook.
Monkey-bot C ► Ook.
Monkey-bot D ► Ook.
Monkey-bot F ► Ook.
Monkey-bot G ► Ook.

Riley backed up further and swept her eyes back and forth. Where was it? Had it given up after being discovered? Had the acid slowed it down?

Monkey-bot F ► Eeek!

Riley whirled to where her 6th Monkey-bot had been. It was gone!

No.

That wasn't possible.

She narrowed her eyes. There! Her Monkey-bot was sprawled on the ground, but that wasn't all.. A large mass of heat she hadn't been able to see before towered above it! The badger had circled around to come up on the side. Fast and clever... but it didn't move quickly when it was using its perception altering power!

Riley took aim and shot it with a needle.

The badger's invisibility faded and it coughed. The respiratory distress didn't last long as the cough turned into a growl. The badger put all its weight onto its front paw as it moved forward. The pressure caused the Monkey-bot it had pinned to shriek in pain before a wet pop silenced it.

The badger advanced - leaving the mangled remains of Monkey-bot F pulverized on the ground.

Riley narrowed her eyes and shot it with two more darts.

The badger shuddered slightly, but didn't fall down. Instead it charged!

Riley swore to herself. The toxin was working, but not nearly as well as it should've been!

Why? What was wrong? What had she missed?

Riley ► Monkey-bot A, C, D and G attack.

They wouldn't buy much time. She had to think fast.

Monkey-bot A ► Ook.
Monkey-bot C ► Ook.
Monkey-bot D ► Ook.
Monkey-bot G ► Ook.

The Monkey-bots leapt on top of the badger and clawed at it ineffectively. Such an attack would be a nuisance at best under normal conditions. There was no strategy. No plan. It was all wild instincts that were ill-equipped for dealing with such a foe.

However, the badger was blind.

Ideally, her Monkey-bots would go for the vulnerable places like its eyes or nose. Since those were already ruined, their haphazard attack would work just as well. In fact, they distracted the badger completely since it had no idea what was happening.

It thrashed around, and tried to crush the Monkey-bots with its jaws. The Bloodrage Badger was a huge and imposing monster, but it wasn't flexible. The Monkey-bots scrambled over it and it failed to contort itself in a way that would allow it to bit them.

That was until it rolled on the ground.

The badger's sheer bulk repeatedly crushed the Monkey-bots as it rolled back and forth. Monkey-bot D was the first to lose its grip. The smaller animal stumbled to its feet and moved to attack again, but it was too slow. By luck or by a sixth sense, the badger swatted it away and the Monkey-bot flew off the side of the plateau.

Riley swore under her breath as she raced back to her backpack and grabbed all the acid she'd made so far. Would it be too much to ask for the blind badger to fall off again with all its rolling? It was no longer above the pond, so she could recover its corpse or pursue and kill it.

Riley ► Monkey-bot G return. Grab this jar. Throw its contents on the badger.

She unscrewed the glass lid of the container and held it ready. The Monkey-bot could deliver it up close, which should be much more effective (and safer) than her throwing it herself.

Monkey-bot G ► Ook.

Monkey-bot G took it from her hands and raced back towards the fight. Unfortunately, it didn't know how to carry the jar properly and the deadly liquid inside splashed with its uneven gait.

Some acid washed over its hands, which made it lose its grip. ...and fall face first into the jar.

Riley winced as Monkey-bot G was taken out of the fight by its own 'attack'.

"[Sneak Attack]! [Red Slash]!" A crimson line flashed across the side of the badger's head!

Pinky appeared at the end of it and quickly retreated. She ran up to Riley. "Gah! I nearly had a heart attack! The thing almost rolled on top of me!" She grabbed Riley's leg and quickly climbed up to her shoulder. "Imagine fighting a mountain and you might have an idea of what that was like for me!"

Riley was about to respond, when the badger coughed again.

She blinked.

"Is the poison working?"

"Hey! Listen!" Pinky said from her shoulder. "We need to run!"

"It coughed a little when I shot it." Riley bit her thumb. "And more when you slashed it." She frowned. There was some interaction. "It's biological defenses are based around its color. Its cells reject anything else because they aren't the right shade." Even the ground and Monkey-bots were very subtly different. They were an almost imperceivable shade lighter. "The poison almost works because I used the badger as a component, but his nose wasn't the same color because you cut it off!"

Riley looked at Pinky. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Uhm, I think so Bit, but a badger's a badger and a monkey's a monkey, but at the end of the day it's night."

What?

Riley tried to parse that, but quickly gave up.

"No." She pointed at the badger. "The poison I made isn't white. It's pink. For it to work on the badger, we need to add more red to it."

"Oh." Pinky nodded. "That makes sense." She rolled her shoulders. "It might be the most [Foolish] thing I've ever done, but I'll cut it again!"

She hopped to the ground, but Riley interposed her hand and Pinky landed on it. "That's too dangerous." She shook her head. "Can you use your 'red slash' with a bow or other ranged weapon."

"Aww!" Pinky hugged her thumb. "You care about me!" She smiled as she looked up. "Yeah. If I had a proper Fraerling crossbow, I could use [Red Slash] with it. I mean, I guess it's a slash. Kinda. It's just in a straight line away from me. [Red Thrust] would work better, but if you want me to use [Red Slash], I'm game."

"No." Riley brought Pinky to her other hand. "Whatever works best and is red. Do you need to fire the attack or just hold the weapon?"

"I need to manually shoot it."

"Okay." Riley nodded. "I can work with that." She sat down and placed Pinky in her lap as she took out a scalpel. "I just need to modify the nerves and build up some pressure..."

"Uhm, Bit." Pinky looked nervous. "You've lost two of your trained monkeys, and I don't think the last one's going to delay the badger long."

"Hang on, I'm almost... done!" She lowered her right hand and had Pinky climb on top. "Squeeze my ring finger and a dart will fly out. Use your attack with that."

"Right." Pinky crouched and wrapped her arms around the digit.

Riley let out a sigh. She was afraid that Pinky wouldn't know which finger was which, but she either did. Or she'd gotten lucky. Either way... "Fire!"

"[Red Thrust]!" Pinky squeezed and a beam of red light shot out of Riley's hand like a laser!

...And missed the badger.

"Ugh!" Riley set Pinky down and started cutting into her left hand. "The firing system worked with your skill." She tweaked the nerves around her needle launcher. "We just need to hit it. I have seven more needles we can use."

"That's good." Pinky said. "I have three more uses of my skill!" She shrugged. "They use the same cooldown."

"Oh." Riley stopped at her index and middle fingers. "Then we'd better make them count." She lowered her hand and Pinky hopped on. Riley pointed at the two fingers she'd adjusted. "Here and here. I'm going to move closer." If the number of shots were limited, it would be better not to use her pinkies - they had smaller darts.

"Gotcha." Pinky saluted before sitting down to grasp one of the fingers. "This is hard to aim with."

"I agree." Riley whispered. She started walking forward while trying to make as little noise as possible. Pointing at something shouldn't be hard, right? Except that her palm was face up, which threw her off. Also, Pinky was blocking her line of sight when she tried to aim.

The pair advanced. Monkey-bot A was scurrying around the badger as it rolled. From the back to the belly to avoid being crushed. From the belly to the side when the badger lunged at it with its jaws. Back to the belly when the badger swatted at it with its paws.

Riley was impressed. Her mets weren't nearly as agile as that. She looked at the remains of the other Monkey-bots. However, the mets were significantly more durable.

Her foot stepped on a dry section of grass and made a barely audible crunching sound.

The badger immediately turned its head.

Riley swore to herself and sprinted forward. They needed to be close. They couldn't afford to miss again!

"Firing!" Pinky yelled. "[Red Thrust]!" She squeezed Riley's finger when they were about ten feet away. The crimson lance shot forward and struck the badger in the side of the neck. "Got it!"

The large animal clamored to its feet - the remaining Monkey-bot ignored. It staggered forward, shook its head, and then pounced!

"Eep!" Riley squeaked and fell backwards. The badger's leap propelled it over her and barely missed. The animal crashed behind them. Riley had to move! She had to get away! She had to put more distance between them!

Riley froze.

There was a red line that hung in the air above her.

It was the remains of Pinky's attack. The color would fade with time, but for now it remained in stark contrast to the ever-present white. Her friend had fired again as they'd been falling back. The fact that the line stopped instead of shooting upwards into the sky meant...

Riley wiggled around so that she was facing the badger, while keeping her palm horizontal so as to not throw off Pinky.

The badger shuddered. It's arms and legs twitched as it convulsed. Slowly, every so slowly, it maneuvered them under itself and pushed.

Its limbs gave out.

The badger fell back down with a cough and then a whimper. It tried to inhale, but couldn't. With one last shudder... it finally died.

Monkey-bot A continued to ineffectively attack the corpse.

"We..." Riley stood up and took a tentative step forward. "We did it!"

"Yay!" Pinky jumped up and down on her palm and cheered. "Who's a [Fool] now? Huh? Who has a worthless class now? How many Tallguards have killed a Bloodrage Badger? None! That's how many! I am SO leveling tonight!" She laughed. "Ha ha ha! Just wait until I tell my father about this! Ooooo... My mom's going to be sooooo jealous!"

Then, in a whisper Riley only heard because of her modified hearing: "I did it Lars. You'd be so proud of me if you were still here..."

Took 'Pinky' Narffion lay in her sleeping bag and tried to fall asleep. The sooner she slept, the sooner she'd get the levels she KNEW were coming.

But how could she sleep at a time like this?

She hadn't been so amped up since her days as an [Adrenaline Junkie]. [Calm Self] only did so much - especially since her other skills from her youth tended to contradict it.

Besides, who could just fall back asleep after being woken up in the middle of the night to fight a gigantic monster? Nobody! That's who!

Took had more experience with coming down from an [Adrenaline High] than anyone else. No. Wait. That was a [Foolish Thought]. There were bound to be other people out there that shared her... inclinations, if not her actual class.

She knew what she needed to do.

She had to distract herself. She had lots of practice in doing that.

Okay, then what about Bit? Took would be lying if she said the human didn't scare her. She didn't believe the girl's story for a second. Bit clearly believed she was from another world and didn't have classes, but that was patently impossible.

The far more likely scenario was that she had a hidden blood skill.

Took knew a lot about those too. Not more than anyone else, but she was certainly one of the most knowledgeable among the Fraerlings. The trick was to accept it and incorporate it into your classes. That was how she'd gotten a class consolidation afterall.

She'd won and removed that class while not abandoning Lars' memory.

So Bit was clearly suffering, and it was Took's responsibility to look after her. The [Saw Doctor]? [Tamer]? [Biomancer]? [Poison Master]? [Necromancer]? Whatever she was, Bit was also nice and had saved her from those birds. Took wouldn't forget that.

...Even though she was starting to get the suspicion that Bit hadn't used a potion on her at all.

That... was awesome!

Took now loved blood, and she embraced the change. Helping Bit sew herself back together had been... wonderful. She'd been surprised that she hadn't leveled from that, but then again she hadn't really done anything.

Having a monkey assist Bit so she could watch the next time would be nice - even if she couldn't possibly level that way.

Sure, combining taming with cutting the monkeys open and poison had been disturbing, but that was mainly because of how dangerous the monkeys were. Sure, they were no cats, but Took still felt apprehensive with them around.

Then again, they were willing to sacrifice themselves for Bit, so she must be a pretty good trainer afterall.

And what was up with that helmet?

It was so...

Took yawned.

It was just so...

Huh?

Maybe Bit did have a powerful brother.

It was clear she had someone she looked up to and loved.

The same way Took had looked up.. to.. and... loved...

She fell asleep.

[Rouge Fool Level 29!]

[Skill - Giantkiller Strike obtained!]

[Skill – Advanced Aiming obtained!]

[Skill Change – Red Strike + Red Thrust → Scarlet Beam!]

[Skill – Scarlet Beam obtained!]