Chương 30: Hatched

The only thing that all the scripts can agree on is that The Pathbreakers were all legendary figures. Their powers too can be agreed on broadly. Their characteristics and exact features though are a bit of a wild card. Some basic features are agreed upon by everyone, but the details vary. The powers are probably wildly exaggerated, but as long as it makes for a fun story, who cares. Light it up. - From the private diary of Professor Carbon, University Eleven, Batches 373 - Present He had been expecting a bird.

The egg had come from Kite - or at least from Kite's beak, which was where Kite had been holding it, and Kite was a roc, and the logical inference from those two facts was avian. Kara had spent months reading about avian partners. He had prepared for avian. The head currently emerging from the shell was not avian. It was canine in structure - broad forehead, blunt muzzle - but not quite canine, the proportions slightly off in a way that was familiar without being identifiable. Hyena, maybe.

Something in the jaw and the forehead suggested hyena. The rest of the body, as it became visible through the cracked shell, was feline - compact, lower to the ground than the head suggested it would be, the hindquarters built with a density that spoke of something designed for short explosive movement rather than sustained speed. Snow leopard came to mind, in the general architecture if not the specifics. So. A hyena-leopard. In an egg.

Kara sat with this information for a moment and then accepted it the way he had learned to accept things that did not fit existing categories, which was to say he filed it and kept looking. The cub was mostly hairless, the skin a dark pinkish-grey, blind, the eyes still fused shut, days away from opening. It was licking the inside of the shell with complete focus, entirely unbothered by the large human watching. Then it shifted slightly to reach a different part of the shell, and Kara leaned forward.

There were stubs on the body. He counted carefully - two pairs. The first pair sat just above the shoulder blades, small and symmetrical, each one a slightly different shape from the other: one blunt and rounded, one sharper at the tip with a slight curve, as though it had been formed under some kind of directional pressure. The second pair ran along the shoulder ridge itself, lower and flatter, almost flush with the skin, barely distinguishable from the surrounding tissue except by the texture.

Four stubs in total. He had no framework for what they were or what they were going to become. He looked at them for a long time and arrived at no conclusion and filed them alongside everything else about this creature that was currently unclassified. The cub, having apparently located the last accessible yolk in the shell, stopped licking, tucked its tiny face down into the remaining slime, and fell asleep. Its tongue was still slightly out.

The shell fit it the way a snug garment fit - just exactly the right size for right now. Kara sat on the floor and looked at the tiny cub sleeping with its tiny tongue out and felt something in his chest he did not immediately have a word for. All he knew was that he would happily fight the entire world for this little fella he had just met. He pulled up his interface. There was a pending notification, blinking steadily for his attention. He opened it. Bond with unknown creature available. Do you wish to connect?

He stared at this for a moment. He had never had an animal partner - none of his family had, for as long as he could remember, though his mother had grown up around his grandparents' partners and knew the basics. He selected yes, and information flooded his interface. Name: None - Choose to fill Species: Unknown Potential: Unique Level: Grade G, Tier 1 Skills: Poison Resistance (Passive), Elemental Pores (Active) Bond: L1 He read through it twice.

He had more questions now than before the notification, which was not how information was supposed to work but was apparently how this creature worked. He set the interface aside and focused on the name, because the name was the one thing he could actually do something about right now. But before the name - he sanitised his hands, put on surgical gloves which he had acquired months ago, and carefully lifted the cub out of the shell, turning it gently onto its back. Male. He squirmed slightly without waking.

Kara put him back in the shell with the same care and washed his hands and sat down to think about names. He searched for mythical hyena names. Nothing. He searched for mythical leopard names, which produced more options, and he worked through them with the methodical attention he usually reserved for problems that mattered. The list narrowed. Dionysus versus Waghoba. Dionysus was a god who kept leopard companions; Waghoba was a leopard deity, which was categorically different and somehow more appropriate.

Something that was its own thing rather than an accessory to something else. Waghoba. Waggy for short. He tried it in his head a few times. Regal full name, ridiculous nickname, which was exactly the right combination for something that had arrived in his life looking like a hyena-leopard hybrid in an egg. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. He hoped Waggy would wag his tail at the name. He was aware this was probably not going to happen.

He stayed up with the cub through the rest of the night, watching him wake, lick, and fall asleep again in a rotation that had its own internal logic. Each time, Kara was ready - hands near the shell, not touching, just present. Each time, Waggy ignored him completely and attended to the yolk with the single-minded dedication of someone who had priorities. More than once, the little guy fell asleep mid lick, his little tongue sticking out. Lords, he was cute. Glasses woke up later than usual.

Kara had been thinking about this conversation for hours and had, in the process of thinking about it, become progressively more awkward about it, which was the predictable result of overthinking something that did not require overthinking.

He hid Waggy while Glasses did his morning routine, and when he heard the washroom door handle lock, he took off his mask, retrieved the shell with the sleeping cub inside it, and sat at the foot of his own bed at a slight angle - not directly facing the door, but not turned away from it either. Enough angle to give Glasses a moment to process before fully coming into view. The washroom door opened. Silence.

He could feel the gaze on him - on his face, on the shell in his lap, on the small sleeping creature inside it. The silence stretched for what felt like two full minutes, though it was probably less. Then, without a word, Glasses walked to his own bed and sat down at the foot of it, and removed his own mask. Kara had not seen his face before. His imagination and inference from the mask was close, but not quite. Wide jaw, blunt nose, slightly wide-set eyes. Neither of them said anything for a moment. Kara smiled.

Glasses gave him the small nod that was his version of the same thing.

"May I introduce you to the mighty Waghoba," Kara announced.

"Waggy, if you prefer." Glasses studied the cub the way he studied anything he was actually trying to understand.

"His body and tail look more like a cat's. Despite the face."

"It does."

"Does he actually wag it?"

"Well... Not yet. In my defense, it's only been a few hours, far too early to judge."

"Waggy," Glasses repeated, weighing whether to pass judgment, then letting it go for now.

"What is he, exactly?"

"I have no idea. His face says hyena, his body says snow leopard, and he hatched from an egg, which neither of those does. And there are four stubs on his body that I can't identify." Glasses nodded slowly, like he was processing something by acknowledging each piece as it arrived.

"And the origin?" Kara looked at him. Glasses looked back, steady, having already worked most of it out and leaving Kara room to say only what he wanted to.

"A gift," Kara said.

"From someone I trust." Glasses accepted this with a nod and moved on, which was one of the things Kara appreciated most about him.

"Do you know what Potential and Bonds mean?" Kara asked.

"The interface is showing both." Glasses brightened slightly. It looked like he had researched this, because of course he had, and had been waiting for someone to ask. He settled back slightly.

"Potential first. It defines the maximum grade a creature can reach, based on accumulated observations of that species across the system. Follows the same structure as skills - Common at the low end, Unique at the top. However, just like in the case of skills, Unique doesn't mean exceptional. It means unknown - the interface has no recorded data on that species and therefore cannot project a ceiling." He looked at the cub.

"Which would fit, if you can't find anything about him anywhere." Kara had already checked. He had found nothing. It was both less and more reassuring than he had hoped.

"Ok, so that's for Potential. Now, onto Bonds," Glasses continued, leaning in a little, arriving at the part he found more interesting.

"Four levels. L1 through L4."

"L1 is baseline - you're companions, you've declared mutual trust, the bond is registered. It doesn't give you much practically."

"L2 - you can feel the general direction your partner is at. You start picking up emotional states, not clearly, but reliably enough to read simple intentions. You get an instinct when they're in danger, and they get one for you. That's where most bonded pairs on Earth operate." Kara nodded, tracking this.

"L3 is where it gets more significant. You can share your partner's senses directly - see what they see, hear what they hear. From what I've been able to find, this typically requires both partners to be at least E-grade. The energy requirements for that kind of data transfer are substantial." He paused.

"You may recognise this as approximately what our thermodynamics project was attempting to do with interfaces, which makes it interesting from a research perspective."

"And L4?"

"Full mental communication. Not emotional impressions - actual exchange of thoughts, intentions, complex information. Requires at least C-grade for both, from what I've found." He looked at Kara, letting the number land.

"So. A long way from here." Kara sat with this. He thought about Bodo's voice in his head on the first day, warm and slow, arriving as clearly as speech. They definitely did not share an L4 bond, and somehow they hadn't needed it. Likewise with Kite and Tremble. He filed this alongside everything else about the island that exceeded what he understood. Waggy woke up.

He turned his head toward Kara's hands resting on the edge of the shell and sniffed hard, smell being the only sense currently open to him, and then licked one finger. Kara had not been wearing gloves. He withdrew his hand immediately and watched for any reaction, having worried about exactly this. Waggy turned back to the shell's interior and resumed licking slime, which was mostly dry by now.

"You're worried about biological contamination," Glasses observed.

"Exactly. He's not a common pet. I have no idea what his immune profile is like."

"Too late now. Let's just wait and watch." Glasses was already pulling up his interface.

"What do we know about feeding requirements?" They spent the next two hours deep in the confusion that comes of researching a creature you cannot even name. Hyena milk had the highest protein and fat content of any terrestrial carnivore. Leopard milk was different in composition. Neither was obtainable discreetly, which made both theoretical. They landed on cow's milk to begin with, clear that it was only a beginning, and that they would adjust from whatever they observed.

Kara looked at the cub in his shell, still licking, still oblivious, the four stubs on his back rising and falling with his breathing. He thought about all the things he did not know - what Waggy was, what he would become, what the stubs were for, whether cow's milk would work, whether anything he did over the next weeks would be adequate. Damn Pranky for not giving him some clue, any clue, on how to take care of this precious little thing.

If anything happened to him because of his ignorance, he would never be able to forgive himself. He sighed. This was going to be an interesting semester break.