The ESTOLs are in the air. It's time for Squad Evelyn's next mission, and I dare any stupid bird monsters to try and stop them. I experiment with the acid cannons on a particularly unfortunate tree, and damn do these things melt shit. They also really hurt to use, and if I fire them too often it will disable them until I heal, but… I doubt that'll be a huge deal. Sloth acid is brutal, and between six ESTOL bodies I have twelve acid cannons. Two of these ESTOLs will remain at Fort Moosh to defend, and the other four will join Squad Evelyn on recon and recovery.

In the meantime, I have an entire other body to design: a mobility-based aquatic hunter. I'm looking to get into the ocean as quickly as possible, and I figure the easiest way to do that is to follow the river downstream. I want a relatively large body that can hold enough energy storage to reliably travel very long distances through the water and lay a bunch of eggs at my destination. I could give it gills, but I only have fresh water fish stored in my memory so I'm worried about a salt water problem. I'll stick with high-capacity lungs for now, and simply create improved bodies when I get the designs for them ready.

So. Design details. Hmm… I kind of want to be a mermaid. Four-year-old Evelyn would freak at being able to do that. It sounds fun, so why not?

The only concern I have with a mermaid is land mobility. The river is super deep right now, but that may not always be the case and I don't want to get stuck on a shoal. So I have to make sure my cute fishy tail and arms are strong enough for at least mostly-efficient overland movement. Not super hard, just… something to keep in mind for the finalized design. This body also needs to be able to kill and eat things, because that's sort of the point. Claws on the hands and powerful teeth are obvious, but I want something a bit punchier and longer-ranged. Tentacles are good, but I did just get reaper maw stabby-parts that would be ideal for spearing fish, so I may as well make myself a mini Subnautica leviathan. Now I just need to be able to roar loud enough to make someone pee their pants! ...Hmm, that's super doable. Sthrenslian tunnel whiskers are not at all optimized for underwater echolocation, though, so I'll probably wait on that and just eat something that is. Surely something in the ocean can echolocate. In the meantime, I'll stick to bioluminescence because it's really pretty and cool.

Speaking of pretty, the final point—one I hesitate to even bring up—is related to my vanity. I want to be a mermaid because mermaids are cute. And I like being cute. It makes me feel less terrible about myself. But unfortunately, despite all the media to the contrary… I really need to not put boobs on the mermaid body. I've gone so far as to give tiny chitin chesticles to the ETEs for literally no reason other than my own amusement, but swimming at high speeds with big badonkadonks is my final straw. Big wobbly fat deposits are not hydrodynamic, and they also hurt like hell to be stretched and flopped around. Speed is important here, and that means flat is justice. I've gotta be smooth as hell, like a shark. Er, a shark from the meme about smooth sharks, anyway. What was I thinking about?

Oh, right! Mermaid body: finalized! Name: The Little Evelyn, or TLE for short! Engorging: commence!

EE is bleeding pretty badly, but I think that body will survive. Which is good, because I've figured out a trick for speeding up hatch rates that requires her. I want TLE to hatch full of energy and ready to go, which means I need whatever body that births her to be as big as possible and have as much spare energy to give her as possible. This should also allow me to develop more of the body in the womb rather than the egg, reducing overall time from conception to hatch. As long as I never think too much about how weird it is that I'm trying to mathematically optimize my own birth rate, this will probably be a strategy I employ and refine further for every new body here on out. The only downside is that it requires a food excess, but… I currently have one, and intend to keep one.

"Which is why I can trade you food, if you prefer," I offer Chieftain Chlrehistra.

"Surface food," she clarifies dismissively.

I sigh. I appreciate that she took some time to talk to me in prison, but holy shit she is difficult.

"Your people literally ate my corpse," I remind her. "You can't possibly have a taboo against consuming demon flesh."

"Weren't you insisting that you aren't a demon?" Chlrehistra asks blandly.

"Yes, of course! But you thought I was a demon when you ate me, and you did it anyway! Therefore you eat demons!"

"Hmm," Chlrehistra considers. "Well, you came across people that were clearly not demons, and you ate them anyway."

I twitch in frustration.

"Yes, and that was the biggest mistake of my entire life, but I know you eat non-demons all the damn time. Other than the major fact that they were people, which I didn't know, how could it possibly be an issue that I chose to eat one? Are you trying to gaslight me?"

"I don't know what that means," Chlrehistra answers. "But I'm trying to judge your ability to reason. My daughter insists you are not as mad as you appear, yet you seem to have infected her with madness in your place. It is not endearing me to you."

I sigh. Right, that makes sense.

"I'm sorry," I answer honestly. "I promise your daughter isn't crazy. It's just that the connection is going two ways. I told you I could see through her and pick up some of her memories. Well… the reverse happened. So she got a bunch of context on what sounds like random babbling without that context, and it was… a lot. She's processing it. She should be fine once she does."

"I rather dislike dealing with 'should be,' especially when it comes to my daughter's health."

I nod.

"I know. I'm sorry. But it would be a lie to give you any guarantees. This situation is as new to me as it is to you, Chieftain."

She lets out an annoyed hiss, rubbing the front of her body with a tendril in what I interpret as an exasperated gesture.

"You mentioned that you believed you were going crazy, before," she grumbles at me. "But now you're sane?"

"I was going crazy from constant danger and isolation," I clarify. "Neither is a problem for me anymore."

She twists her body back and forth in affirmation.

"I see. Why do you want popmold so desperately?"

"Why would anyone desperately want medicine?" I ask. "I need to help someone sick."

"And who would you like to help?"

I grit my teeth. I can't very well say 'someone you're at war with,' but any explicitly vague answer would more or less imply that whoever it is, I don't think she'd want to help them.

"Right now, I want to help someone who got caught in a ghost trap," I say honestly. "I found him there, struggling for his life, and barely managed to free him. But he's badly burned and his wounds are infected. More than that, though, I want to be able to help anyone that needs help. That's the right thing to do."

Chlrehistra hums noncommittally, her whiskers twitching slightly.

"I cannot at this time give you what you ask in good conscience," she answers. "Regardless of how noble the cause."

I scowl at her, though I doubt she'll understand the expression.

"...Fine," I say. "Just know I'm already doing what I can to get popmold or an equivalent on my own. You don't get to decide if I help this man, Chieftain. It's going to happen, one way or another."

"Then it sounds like you don't need me," Chlrehistra counters.

I am not, in general, an angry person. Rage struggles to burn in the great, all-consuming vacuum of depression, and I'm very used to looking at any problem and finding a way to determine that it's my fault. If someone punched me in the face, I'd probably just apologize. But when it comes to a situation where someone else is the one suffering because of a dick move? That's when I start to get a little ticked off.

"Chieftain Chlrehistra," I say evenly. "I have to admit, I've always wondered about the meaning of your clan name. It pretty much means 'chosen ones uniquely capable of receiving salvation,' right? Do you believe that the people outside your clan aren't worthy of being saved? Do they not also live their own lives, full of hopes and dreams and love, from birth to death, without ever visiting the surface? Are they not truly people too? Why kill them? Why wait around for them to die, without lifting a tendril to help?"

Chlrehistra taps the ground with a foot, considering her answer.

"You misunderstand the same thing as Talrissark," she says eventually, "though you come at it from the opposite direction. Sss smiles on us, and he frowns on our foes. That is why we win wars, but it is not why we fight them. We fight because we must. War is a means, not an end, and it is gruesome but sometimes it must be done, and damn the other side. You ask why a Chieftain cares for her own people first? You may as well ask why roots grow and why worms dig. It is my purpose. A Chieftain fights for her clan, makes the world better for them. I would be a failure to do anything else."

"It doesn't have to be zero-sum," I argue. "Everyone can benefit if you just cooperate with each other!"

Chlrehistra laughs.

"Ah, Evelyn, what wonderful creatures your kind must be if they so easily cooperate all the time."

I clamp my mouth shut, still scowling but with nothing else to say. Chlrehistra smugly excuses herself, and I'm left to stew underground while up above Squad Evelyn makes it to the swamp.

Just like before, a slowly-rising veil of thin fog ascends from the ground at the intersection between swamp and forest. It's a gradual change, the forest becoming more and more sparse until it's all but completely dead in the area in front of the fog wall. Which is, y'know, understandable, because the fog is poisonous enough to kill me in a couple breaths.

This time, I'm not going to let that stop me. My guess here is that the airborne poison is kept away from the rest of the island by the air current in front of me that pushes it up into the atmosphere. I don't know what the poison is, but what I do know is that there's life on the other side of this fog despite said poison. It wouldn't make sense for only the fog to be poisonous, it's probably throughout the entire swamp. So all those living things inside? They must be immune.

But I still have to get in there. ETBs are small and can't hold their breath for long at all, but that's okay. I use the advanced eyesight of an ESTOL to spot some bugs flitting about just inside the poison zone, then zip forward to catch one with an ETB. The source of the beautiful colors are more obvious on this side of the fog. Yellow rocks, purple blooms of some kind of algae, and a smattering of beautiful flowers compliment the deep, near-black brown of the trees and vines growing above. There's no time to appreciate it, however, as I'm in and out before I need to take a breath. After successfully retreating to fresh air, it's time to eat.

Before my first bite, however, I take a shocked moment to realize I'm far more excited to eat this alien bug than I am to appreciate the fact that I have an alien bug here. It's just not important anymore. Gone are the joys of exploring a forest and delighting in the presence of arthropodic friends. The bug is still cute, sure, but I barely even notice unless it's a variant I haven't consumed yet. I'm too busy fighting for survival, mine at first but now for Warrior Katrk. If I could have come to this planet in a more peaceful, more prepared way? It would have been immensely enjoyable. But all of that has been stripped away in the short time I'm here, replaced with panic and desperation. My hobby, the thing I love, has been broken.

I'm a very, very different kind of 'weird bug girl' now, and I don't know if I can ever go back.

I take a deep, shuddering breath. There's… no need to be dramatic. It's still a cool alien bug, it's still adorable. I just have important things to do, and not much time to do them. I can appreciate this world later, when people aren't in as much immediate danger. With that reassurance bolstering me, I sink my teeth into the captured insect and learn.

...Except that I don't. One consumption later, I fail to identify even a single organ in this bug that could filter, mitigate, or metabolize the poison in the air. They're a bit more resistant than I am, and that's nice, but it's nowhere near enough to survive the concentration I inhaled. What the hell is going on? What am I missing? I start running mental simulations, running the poison through different parts of this alien arthropod and seeing the same result over and over again: death. Frustrated, I dive back into the swamp and retrieve a second sample, to identical results. Why is this happening? How could this thing not have any organ designed to… hmm. What if it's not an organ?

I go a step lower, halting most of my bodies to run detailed simulations on the cellular level. It's a crazy amount of work, as there are a fuckton of cells in a body and they're much more difficult to intuitively understand. I cycle through them, over and over, until I finally find something that catches my interest.

"One of these cells is not like the other," I sing happily. "One of these cells doesn't belong…"

"Are you doing okay, Evelyn?" Mr. Mooshi asks.

"Yep, as well as can be expected!" I confirm. "Though I'm a little embarrassed I didn't immediately think of symbiotic bacteria."

And not just any symbiotic bacteria, but chemosynthetic symbiotic bacteria! They don't just negate this poison, these things eat it! Yum yum, free energy! And the best part about this? I can just produce these things in my crazy super-womb and release them directly inside my body, and being monocellular they're ready to go pretty much immediately. It's only about ten minutes before I've created what I believe to be a stable internal flora system and sent my first ETB into the fog to take a deep breath.

Ugh, oh my fucking god it smells awful in here. Like rotten eggs and farts! The air kinda burns my throat, too, but other than that…? I keep breathing, monitoring my vitals. No headache, dizziness, nausea, shock, or apparent internal trauma. Nice! I send an ESTOL in to verify I have that body's immunity working, to similar results.

The terrifying alien landscape of the swamp stretches before me. Bubbling pools, beautiful swaths of color, and off in the distance is of course that flickering, magical glow. I allow myself to be at least slightly excited. After all, this is somewhere no human has ever been. ...Though I suppose, even when I'm done exploring, that will still be the case.

But that's okay. I don't have time to worry about that. Bugs are cool, I'm a bug, and I have another wonderful bug-person that I need to save. It's time to let myself be what I've become.

It's time to eat.