The fest continued on as normal after that; people gradually came to sit at their side when they noticed that [Fan Girl] was not resuming the wind barrier nor whatever she had made to prevent other people from barging into her sampling of [Golem]’s innards.

 

Ale didn’t mind that and neither [Fan girl] or [Golem], the girl started speaking with other minions when she noticed that Ale was more focused on sampling as many types of food she could and since [Golem] had moved away to speak with other minions with full transformations.

 

Ale didn’t know what they were speaking, but it seemed to be an animated conversation with some people turning to look at her, [Golem] seemed to be shaking his head quite often and sighing quite loudly.

 

At some point one of the ones speaking in that group separated from the group and took quite a wide arc to end up sitting at her side, Ale of course didn’t mind it that much, and only noticed it because Main Core kept track of the people around.

 

“Hello, Rhapsody was it?” The other Minion said, Ale noticed that her Mask was modified to let a pair of fluffy ears come outside her hood.

 

“*Mogu-Mogu*” Ale merely continued wolfing the food while nodding her head.

 

“I was told by Golem there that you helped him get some bullet fragments from within his chest that had been hard to remove. Can your Core Power be used like that?” The Minion asked as she took a glass and filled it with one white liquid, Ale turned her attention to the cannister from where she had taken it, it read Milk.

 

“*Gulp*” Ale finished eating the chicken leg she had been munching and turned to look at the Minion, “It can be used like that yes, I can grow very thin and nimble tendrils to help pull out the small pieces of bullet that [Golem] couldn’t assimilate.”

 

And to make an example of just that Ale grew a few wiggles as she raised one of her hands, these grew from her exposed hand since Ale hadn’t bothered to put on her gauntlets again. Not that she needed them, besides, people tended to look at her weirdly when she licked the gloves…

 

“I see…So if I had a bullet wound, you could remove the bullet then?” The Minion asked while her fluffy ears continued to move from left to right, up and down, Ale noticed this one had also other weird movements.

 

Her feet seemed to be in position to give her the highest amount of leverage to jump away, her hands were holding onto the table as if to make herself not move away…why was she acting as a [Prey]?

 

“Of course, if your own [Core] isn’t able to help you I can give it a try, where is the wound?” Ale asked nontheless, she couldn’t help but lick her lips at the idea of the free sampling.

 

Her Mask closed up but the other Minion saw her and flinched, but didn’t run away. It was quite interesting, Ale wasn’t sure if she could do that, to remain in a place when all her instincts told her to run away, granted, her degree of instincts was different to that of the [Humans].

 

“Right…It’s here.” The other Minion said as she pulled her sleeve up, what Ale found was…not what she was expecting, “Are you okay with blood?”

 

There was a white strip of cloth around a part of her arm; the skin was roughly the same color as hers, but what was interesting was the fact that the arm was thinner than she had expected when compared to the amount of strength she had used against the table.

 

Ale turned her attention to where the girl had held herself, and sure enough, there were a couple marks of where her fingers had been.

 

“I’m fine with it,” Ale said, and it didn’t take, but a second before the other girl pulled her other hand and got it close to the white strips of cloth; her fingers grew a sharp nail and cut through the white fabric. “I’m removing the bandages then, it should have healed enough to not drop blood on the floor, but please be quick.”

 

Ale paid attention to it, it was the first time she was seeing one of these shifts from up close, unlike her own shifts, this one was closer to seeing in real-time as the flesh reshaped itself and allowed the bone to extend to the outside, Ale could see the muscles move and reshape to accommodate the changes into the claws.

 

It was a more organic and streamlined way for the claw design.

 

“[Recording outward appareance.]”

“[Recording shifting sequence.]”

“[Recording movement of flesh, updating procedure, updating looks.]”

 

Good, Ale could use this, perhaps people would stop flinching when she shifted in front of them.

 

“So? Can you do it?” The girl said, Ale couldn’t see her face, or most of her skin. But she could see the slight tremble on the other girl’s movements and the trembling on her voice. Also the amount of pheromones that screamed panic, run, and help was increasing by the second.

 

“Yes, it will not take much.” Ale said first placing her left hand into the other girl’s wrist and hovering her right hand over the wound, “This will not hut…much.”

 

And in that note Ale let her other hand press against the wound, first she sent one very thin tendril into the wound, that one would fish for the bullet. Then she sent other tendrils into the nearby flesh, she…was going to do something else now.

 

“Main Core, attempt to mend the flesh wound. Do not use nanites or otherwise permanently; just try to weave the flesh back together and remove any presence of our modification here.” It was the first order she gave.

 

“[Awknowledged mission, starting procedure.]”

 

With that out of the way, “Please tell me if you feel any pain,” Ale said aloud to the girl…whose name she didn’t know, “And I don’t think I got your name?”

 

“....Catgirl.” The girl said as she remained frozen, the girl had stopped moving as soon as Ale got hold of her hand, “...I’m….Catgirl.”

 

That was…quite the unfortunate naming, she would get hounded by those weird people that continued to try and make her turn into one of those [CatGirls] while being P4 before.

 

Either way, Ale focused on her Mission at hand.

 

“Core…get the [Blueprint] and try to locate the [Core] on this CatGirl.” Ale sent towards [Core].

 

 

That was fast.

 

“[Host, we found remnants bullets fragments within the arm; they seem to have embedded themselves within the bone tissue. Extraction. It is possible, but there may be profuse bleeding. It is advised to prepare for eventualities.]”

 

“I found some bullet pieces within your bones, if I remove them you may bleed so I need something to staunch it…” Ale said, she could probably use some of the chicken meat for now, since she doubted there was some [CatGirl Meat] around.

 

“...I have….some bandages…and gause ready…” CatGirl said pointing at some of her pouches with her free hand, she tapped the pouch in question and then her arm darted back to the table where it settled once more in a death grip.

 

“If you are sure…” Ale said unsure of why the CatGirl wouldn’t want to use the available [meat] around, but it wasn’t her body or wound, so she merely shrugged.

 

“Main Core, remove the bullet fragments and close the wounds as best as you can the wound; use the nearby biomass to deal with any bleeding, and reroute the damaged veins around as needed.” Ale commanded and felt her energy drain as Main Core started burning through the reserves she had built up on this dinner.

 

Ale would need to eat some more after this, wouldn’t she?

 

Either way, it took a few seconds at worst, and it was a job done.

 

“[Mission complete, no loss of biomass from host, loss of biomass from target around 20 grams. Loss of blood estimated around 20 millimeters.]”

 

That was less than she had expected.

 

“Done, I managed to staunch the bleeding with some of your muscles,” Ale said as she removed her arm from the CatGirl.

 

Who proceeded to rip out the lower part of her Mask and start licking the place where the wound had been before.

 

The girl really was a CatGirl; she even had whiskers and a pair of fangs in her mouth, Ale could see that she was closer to a [Predator] than [Prey], so it was quite the surprise that she was acting like she was.

 

Perhaps she had some malfunction?

 

“Oh, thank you….” CatGirl said after licking the place her wound had been before for almost two minutes straight, “Sorry about that, I know you are one of us and Golem said you were cool with us. But….you know how it is with Beast Cores like us; instincts are hard to deal with.”

 

So it was her instincts as a [Beast Core] what made her act like that?

 

“What do your instincts tell you about me?” Ale asked intrigued, Core and Alexanders said that she was [Alive] that she was a [Person].

 

But what would the instincts of someone like CatGirl said about her? So far she seemed to be among the sharpest people she had meet, not even snout face seemed to find anything weird about her after all.

 

“That you are Death,” CatGirl said, turning to her, staring straight at Ale, “That you are a predator and to run away and not look back…”

 

Well, that did check up…

 

“Sorry, it will go away when I’m used to you.” CatGirl said with a small smile on her face, “It is like that with new people I meet who have a Core above certain tresholds, when I first saw Vulcanus I jumped into a wall and they couldn’t get me down for almost five hours…that was embarrassing.”

 

…..No, that was common sense. Ale would have done the same if not because she was struggling to keep the charade of being a normal [Human] that time, but she could understand from where these instincts of Cat Girl were coming.

 

“It’s okay, if it is between seeing me as a [Prey] or a [Predator] I would rather be the second.” Ale said, nodding her head at CatGirl.

 

She would strive to always be the [Predator], she wanted to live after all, and if what she had seen was something to go by, then she would require more power.

 

“Okay, by the way. I didn’t thought that Golem had done something bad, but some of the others didn’t believe him, he does have a position of authority over a couple of cute girls, some of the other minions wanted to make sure that he wasn’t abusing his authority. And with the rumors about Cerberus being taken down a notch…people are jumpy, more so now that we lost so many Minions…” Catgirl explained, so that was why she had come to her?

 

They thought [Golem] was….what? Using his authority to give faulty commands? Ale wouldn’t follow such commands, and she doubted anyone could tie down [FanGirl], not if she was hiding as much power as Ale thought she did.

 

Half the things she was doing couldn’t be explained only by the use of a [Wind Core], and now that Ale had found out about secondary cores being a thing, she doubted that [Fan Girl] had only one.

 

She would need to make sure that her own Secondary Core was something she could use to increase her might, perhaps a [Devour] one? Or a [Mango] Core?

 

No, wait, that one was more of an Alexa thing.

 

“Mango Core let’s goooooo!” “....We are not building a Mango Core.”

 

Speaking of! “Main Core, what are the results from [Golem]’s samples?” Ale had almost forgotten about that; she had taken plenty of samples from [Golem]!

 

“Analyzing samples….results are as follows.”

 

 

Well, that was lackluster.

 

“Thank you for this…I’ll go tell the others that you are okay now…I doubt that Golem could present a danger to you either way…If my instincts are true, at least.” Cat Girl said jumping away.

The girl had generated enough kinetic energy that she landed on the other side of [Golem]’s group of people, some of the other Minions did turn to look in her direction and then towards CatGirl, but no one seemed to mind it that much.

“What’s her deal?” [Fan girl] asked when she noticed that CatGirl had come from beside Ale.

“She wanted to check if we were okay, it seems,” Ale said, shrugging, “Also, she volunteered to help with the favor that [Golem] asked me.”

Ale was thankful for the help the girl had given her; it was somewhat…weird. She had gotten four [Core Blueprints] from [Golem], but only one from [CatGirl].

And there was once more the [Corrupted Core] one among the ones she got, it was like how she had gotten the [Broken] and [Mutant] ones from the giant rats before. What was happening?

In those instances, she also had gotten several blueprints; what was happening with these people? She almost wanted to see how many blueprints she got from [Fan Girl], but this girl was like [Stellar]; her [Core] wasn’t around when she looked around.

Perhaps she needed to expand her sampling…

That or there was something different in how she took the samples, in [Golem]’s case she took the samples straight from his [Core]. In [CatGirl]’s case she took it from farther away from the [Core].

Only on this sampling she had used [Core] to find the sample…

With the [Giant Rats] she had taken the sample from their dead bodies…

“Hah!” [Fan Girl]’s laugh brought her back from the musings. “As if the big softie could hurt us… And after he asked you a favor? He better bring good food….but…can you help him?”

“I can try, there is some problems I need to figure out, but if CatGirl’s arm remains stable for the next thirty minutes that is one problem solved,” Ale said keeping track of the CatGirl, the wound was visible…or well, the place the wound had been before was visible.

“...right….Say, wasn’t Haephestus’ Forge the one searching for the correct Core to help Golem? How is yours even going to help him? Aren’t you a shapeshifter?” [Fan Girl] asked as she turned around to stare in CatGirl’s direction too.

“That is the thing, I can…modify to some degree other people, but I’m not sure how long will the change remains, and if it is even possible.” Ale really wasn’t sure, she was aware that her [Core] wasn’t that of a shapeshifter.

But she really wasn’t sure what it was. [Core] was able to help her change form, but…it didn’t feel quite right to say that it was a [ShapeShifter Core] since she was doing a few things that didn’t quite match with what those do.

For starters, while she was changing forms, it was closer to deconstructing and rebuilding her body, and all the changes of forms of other shifters she had seen were close to modifying the body rather than rebuilding it from scratch.

“I see…well, If you do manage to help him I may hit you up with some help too,” [Fan Girl] said slowly, “Mine may be more delicate but I am guessing that it should be simpler than rebuilding a man from rock into flesh,”

And she also needed the target blueprint. “Sure, but I do need a [Blueprint] target or something close enough to go by.” Ale said back to [Fan Girl], whatever she wanted to do, Ale couldn’t make miracles work.

Besides, she also needed to find-

 

Or not, now all that Ale needed was to make sure the changes stuck…And to decide if she really wanted to do that, did she really want to expose the fact that she wasn’t a true [Shapeshifter]?

 

Well, she had time to think, since tomorrow Alexa was going to spend most of the time at school, so she could discuss that with Alexandra at the back.

 

“School! Exams! Party!” “ …I guess we can spend the time checking to see if it is worth the exposure… Or if we can deflect it too like [Billy] did before,”

 

Or that, that was also an option, well, [Billy] would be on the known if they decided to check that. Actually, she should probably send a message to him about this…

 

“Main Core, please send the update about CatGirl to [Billy],” Ale said aloud…or well, in a small voice but still audible to [Fan Girl], “So, what’s next after eating?”

 

“After that we go to the upper level to party till morning…that is for the adults, you kids go to sleep,” [Fan Girl] said pointing to the elevators, “So unless you want to bring out your older version out…”

 

“Then we will go to sleep, tomorrow we have classes.” Ale said standing up and walking to the elevators, Alexandra probably would love to party…

 

And Alexa would probably not mind it, but someone had to be responsible for the three, and if Alexandra was too busy drinking that awful [Beer] and Alexa was too busy admiring the shining lights.

 

Then it would be up to Ale to be the responsible one…

 

“I hate it here,” Ale said as she waved at [Fan Girl] and pushed the button to return to the floor level, she would go back and play around a few hours before going to sleep, tomorrow they needed to wake up early.