It was time for microfauna engineering lab, and I was about as ready as I would ever be. We’d been tinkering with our critters all semester, and today we’d actually be printing them for grading. And so I cheerfully walked down the main corridor of Hasko Hall at Cthonic Mare Institute. En route I idly noticed the holographic dioramas of past alumni, before a new one caught my eye.

I turned and took in the view of a fantastic trophy rendered in glittering platinum and emerald, shaped like a partially hatched egg. Beneath was the text “Blackwood Invasive Species Competition, register today!” followed by a whole lot of detailed information on how to enter. It was somewhat interesting, but I really had to get to lab. So I turned away and resumed my trip to the lab at a normal walking pace; there was still plenty of time to get there without being counted as tardy, so I wouldn’t need to fly.

On the other hand, a chance to stretch my wings would be nice, and the corridor was tall and wide enough for flying to make sense. So I checked that my courier bag was well secured, stretched out my leathery bat-like wings from my shoulders, and catapulted myself into the air with my powerful raptor-like legs. I caught the air under my wings, and with a fwoomph of displaced air I thrust my way down the hallway. I approached my destination in just twenty seconds, flaring out my wings to bring myself to a stop as I touched down for a landing.

And so I walked through the doors of Lab 520A in Hasko Hall, Veronica looking up from her lab station to note “Hello Yures, I see you’re a bit early today.”

I replied to my classmate “Yeah, I want to make sure that I have everything ready before Professor Thonne shows up.”

Veronica Machinae frowned knowingly, before noting “I see you’re wearing your feminine morph today? You know Professor Thonne doesn’t approve of you having three of them.”

I shrugged “Thonne can shove it; he’s not allowed to fail me without that decision going before the review board, and failing me without merit would completely fuck up his his tenure application.”

Veronica shrugged “Fair enough. Good luck.”

I smiled back “You too Veronica.” as I made my way over to my lab station. I quickly started checking over my design documents as I checked that the bioprinter was in good working order. Of course, I’d barely gotten started when Thonne stepped sharply into the room, his boots clicking against the tile floor as he walked. Mere moments later, he announced “Welcome, class. Today we will print your final organisms for your microfauna lab course, as well as uploading the design files. Begin.”

I of course was already well on my way to getting this done. Bioprinter feedstock wasn’t provided so I’d needed to supply my own. Fortunately I’d already passed the microbiology classes with flying colors, so I’d made a point of whipping up my own custom stem cell cartridges for the printer.

So I dug around in my bag to find the cartridge and slotted it into the printer’s feedstock socket with a satisfying “Ker-chunk”. This was followed shortly after with the nutrient cartridge to provide those cells with what they’d need to construct the extracellular matrix, bones, and connective tissues. The printer already had a water hookup, so at least that was already taken care of.

From there it was a simple matter of using my tablet to load the design into the bio-printer, and off it went. Strictly speaking I could have done it directly, but there were grade penalties for practicing poor brain security protocols, so external devices it was.

And so the printer started whirring away as the multitude of nozzles started putting together my critter. I quickly sent off a copy of the design file for both the engineered cells I was using and the macro-scale structure of the organism, and turned around to see Professor Thonne’s bioluminescent eyes glowing red as he stared intently at my work.

A few moments passed as he noted the action of the printing head in total and ominous silence, before he noted “Well, at the very least you have managed to create a printing template for a working organism. In addition, I note that the printer head is making two of them in parallel. Is there a reason for that, perchance?”

I nodded, noting “I decided to make placental mammals with sexual reproduction as primary, though they have parthenogenic cloning available as a backup option. Still, this means that for reproduction testing they need a breeding pair.”

I noted the professor’s long pointed ears twitch slightly as he glared, the red glow in his eyes intensifying ever so slightly as he ran his gaze down my body and noticed my honestly rather large chest. Immediately his eyes snapped back up to meet my gaze, and he replied “Very well, Yures Hann. I shall leave you to supervising your print.”

I shuddered slightly as Thonne’s gaze left me, before I returned to watching as the print head kept whirring away at the pair of critters I’d designed. I took a lot of design inspiration from rodents and mustelids on them, but I’d also worked in some extra features that weren’t normally found in either of those ancient clades. Case in point, I’d given them each eight legs and a truly nasty set of venomous claws that were also well-suited to burrowing.

Anyway, the printing was set to take about a kilosecond in total before my critters were fully ready. So I settled in to wait as I watched layer after layer of tissue be deposited and start differentiating into all the various organs, bodily fluids, and other structures that they’d need for their life functions. It’d take another two kiloseconds for their bone structure and other such things to fully solidify afterwards, but considering the lab period was nine kiloseconds long that would be plenty of time to put them through their paces.

Anyway, I settled down to do some more studying as the printer worked, working on my history paper as I waited. I got a thousand words or so down in the meantime, before the printer came to a halt and retracted upwards. Sure enough, there were two freshly made animals on the base plate, slowly waking up as the routines preventing the brain from booting while it was only half printed came to a halt.

There was a brief moment of motionlessness, then my furry little creations took their first breath and started clambering to their feet. I watched intently as they started sniffing each other, quickly retrieving the carry case for pets I’d brought. Coaxing the animals into the cage from the enclosure of the bio-printer took a few moments, but soon enough I had them ready to go for examination.

I’d barely closed the cage when Thonne got on my case again, noting “Ah, Yures. I see your organisms are completed. In addition you managed to get them out of the printer without it or yourself sustaining any notable damage, which is… efficient, unlike your general lifestyle. We will be progressing to evaluations shortly.”

I grimaced slightly at his tone, but things were quite out of my hands now. Professor Thonne wheeled out the evaluation equipment. As he did so, I got a good look at the apparatus. There was a treadmill for mobility testing, digestive function scanners to determine how different types of food were handled, an immunology response tester, and a small terrarium full of concealed food caches to measure how effective our organisms were at foraging.

As the professor brought the machinery to a halt, he noted “Attention, class. Yures’ submission has finished printing and will now be put through evaluations. Yures, please release your organisms into the treadmill section to start the evaluation of their speed and endurance.”

And so I nervously brought the pet carrier over to the evaluation machine. I brought it into alignment, opened the door, and unceremoniously dumped the ferrets onto the conveyor belt where they immediately righted themselves. I’d briefly considered trying to put them in more gently, but considering just how viciously they’d been programmed to respond to unwanted handling I opted not to risk getting clawed up and needing medical attention.

The ferrets now on the treadmill, the evaluation machine immediately began revving up to significant speed. The ferrets started out at a walk, then moved to a jog, and finally reached a full-fledged gallop of five meters per second, limited largely by the lower gravity on Bark. Then they stayed at that pace for almost an entire kilosecond, professor Thonne going to get other evaluation rigs for the other students in the meantime.

My ferrets still showed no signs of tiring out when Professor Thonne made his way back and noted in a cold and clinical tone “It seems that your creatures have passed the mobility and endurance tests with flying colors. They will now be allowed to attempt the foraging challenge.”

With that the treadmill suddenly lurched to a halt as the divider opened, my ferrets managing to react in time to avoid catapulting themselves forwards into the glass of the terrarium. Almost immediately they started sniffing around for food, and mere minutes later they’d dug up every single morsel that had been buried in the dirt of the terrarium. From there the ferrets were coaxed into the third chamber of the evaluator even as a drone started resetting the foraging terrarium for the next student.

From there a few basic tests were done to determine how well the organism’s digestive and immune systems were working, some of those tests being distinctly scatological in nature. Every single thing came up flawlessly; I’d managed to get the digestive systems working swiftly and efficiently, and the immune cells I included trivially dispatched the pathogens that had been included in the food morsels. Half a kilosecond of this passed before Professor Thonne noted “Yures, your evaluation is complete. Please collect your submission and return home.”

I nodded and started coaxing my ferrets into the pet carrier, carefully closing the door as soon as the both of them were secure. Afterwards I waited around for a few minutes to see how everyone else was doing, pleasantly noting that my ferrets were outperforming the majority of my classmates. Only then did I turn to leave, making my way to the exit of Hasko Hall and flying back to the dorm I was staying in. En route I noticed that I was starting to feel less and less comfortable in my feminine morph, but fortunately I had a solution to that waiting for me as soon as I got back.

As soon as I entered my dorm room I gently set down my stuff and released the ferrets into the enclosure I’d prepared for them. That done, my next priority was switching out to one of my other morphs. I quickly stepped into the rotating support closet I had set up for them, thought for a moment about which gender felt the most right at the moment, and selected the androgynous morph instead of the masculine one.

The scanning probe came down, there was the distinct non-transition associated with a good Mindcast, and then I was wearing one of my other bodies. This one still had the same wings and raptor legs, but was less blatantly female than the one I’d just been wearing.

Immediate annoyance now dealt with, I figured it was finally time to look at my grades for that lab final. I quickly fired up the network access computer, signed into the university’s systems, and after a few minutes of navigation to find the right page I finally got a good look at my grade. My first reaction was shock and confusion, followed by pure incandescent anger. This was for one simple reason: the grade I received was only one point above the pass threshold.

My anger only intensified as I read over the list of half-assed ‘justifications’ that Professor Thonne had scrawled onto the graded version of the documentation, it becoming more and more clear that he’d taken out his personal issues on my grade. This was completely and utterly unacceptable.

Fortunately my academic advisor was always open for this sort of thing, so I grabbed my tablet, grabbed my bag, and started making my way to Ruje hall. A quick flight over the campus later, I arrived at the building and started making my way to the bio-engineering department. I idly noticed that the previous secretary had been replaced, and read the name on the desk to make sure I got their name right.

Then I greeted them, “Hello Ressen, I’m Yures Hann, and I’m here to speak with Doctor Brose.”

The secretary quirked one of their mechanical eyebrows, before noting “Doctor Brose is currently out assisting a party from the Frontier with an investigation, but should be back within a few kiloseconds if you wish to wait.”

I nodded, saying “That makes sense. Though I’m honestly rather confused why he’s involved with the investigation.” as I sat in one of the comfortable chairs around. Ressen simply shrugged, and we both sat in silence for quite some time.

Shortly thereafter I got to see Doctor Sagi Brose pass through the lobby followed by seven identical cat girls in what were obviously suits of military combat armor. A few minutes passed before the cat girls left again, and I got up to make my way to Doctor Brose’s office.

When I got there I found him sitting in his normal lizard morph, greeting him with “Hello professor Brose. Something came up and I’m wondering if you can help with it.”

Doctor Brose nodded before asking “What seems to be the issue, Yures? Are you worried about an upcoming assignment?”

I sighed, before explaining “No, I’m actually more worried about a completed one believe it or not. I just did my final in microfauna engineering, and I’m fairly certain that the grade Thonne gave me was deliberately reduced due to a personal grudge.”

With that I handed the tablet with my grades on it to Doctor Brose, who quickly began reading through it, making brief noises of disgruntlement as he looked through it. He then quickly called up the recordings of how my organism evaluations had actually gone, his brow furrowing as he compared the actual course of events with Thonne’s adjusted version.

After several minutes, Doctor Brose concluded “Yures, you are entirely correct to be upset. What Thonne did was unacceptable, and I will certainly be bringing it up with regards to his tenure application. Unfortunately, I cannot directly help you.”

I paused for a moment as I tried to collect my thoughts on the matter, before asking “Why?”

Sagi sighed as he answered “Because he didn’t strictly speaking fail you, that’s why. The rules only allow a grade to be altered retroactively if it caused a student to erroneously pass or fail, which Thonne strictly speaking did not, even though he reduced your grade sufficiently to not count as a valid prerequisite for subsequent courses. I may have some authority to bend the rules to get you into those classes anyway, but Thonne struck precisely to cause you severe inconvenience without immediately landing himself in trouble.”

I groaned, before asking “Is there any advice about where to go from here? I really don’t want to spend another entire semester making up for lost time over this blatant pettiness.”

Doctor Brose thought for a moment, before noting “It’s not strictly speaking an official policy, but Cthonic Mare Institute does have a tendency for allowing notable accomplishments to count as alternative prerequisites to classes. As an example, if someone placed highly in a rocketry competition it can allow them easier access to more advanced spacecraft engineering courses, even though they never actually took the introduction course. Still, for bypassing the need for this particular prerequisite would require something truly prestigious in your list of accolades.”

I thought back to that flier I’d passed in the hallway, before asking “Would the Blackwood Invasive Species Tournament be sufficient to count as an alternative prerequisite, then?”

Doctor Brose’s eyebrows shot up before he noted “Yures, the Invasive Species Tournament would be much more than sufficient to count; in fact I would almost call it overkill. That said, please be aware that you’ll be pitting yourself against the entirety of Bark if you do this, and I won’t be able to help you; I’m going to be one of the tournament judges this time, and am therefore legally required to be impartial.”

I nodded as I thought. On the one hand, Doctor Brose was right; the Blackwood Invasive Species Tournament was one of the most highly contested competitions on Bark. On the other hand, if I managed to succeed at it, I’d be able to rub my accomplishments in Thonne’s stupid face in a way he simply couldn’t deny. So I told Doctor Brose “Thank you for the advice, I think I know what I need to do next.”

With a hint of amusement in his voice, Doctor Brose asked “Do excellently on all your other exams?”

I nodded “Right, glad I’ve been studying for them.”

A bit of time passed and I finished all my other exams, passing with flying colors on every last one where the professor didn’t have a petty grudge against me. Meaning all of them except the lab I’d had my grade sabotaged for. Once that was done, I started trawling the net for information on the Blackwood Invasive Species Tournament, particularly how it was organized, and how one would go about registering yourself or a team as a competitor.

What I learned first was that the idea of the Invasive Species Tournament being a single overarching “Best Species Wins” event was completely wrong. There were tens of thousands of separate categories based on ecological role and environment.

Strictly speaking there were four tiers of trophy, and aside from the Platinum Egg each and every one of them was given to thousands of recipients. The Bronze Egg was awarded simply for your organism finding a viable ecological niche and not being wiped out. The Silver Egg was awarded for not only finding a niche, but displacing an existing species to reach that ecological niche.

The Golden Egg was Best In Category, divided both by type of organism submitted and geographical region of Blackwood, and was the first level of trophy for which the judges had notable discretion over who it was awarded to. Finally came the Grand Prize in the form of the Platinum Egg, which was awarded to whatever organism the judges deemed the most suitable.

The statistics meanwhile indicated that no matter what else happened, I wanted a team. Sole inventors only sometimes got a bronze or silver egg and almost never a golden egg. Meanwhile teams of more than four or so started suffering issues due to creative differences. Looking at the data, it was clear that I would want a partner for this at the very least, maybe a team of three counting myself.

Immediately I discounted Veronica as a possibility; she was a nice person and a good friend, but when we tried to collaborate on a project the results were guaranteed to be an utter failure; something about each of our workflows just didn’t mesh. I had no doubt that she’d have joined in if asked, but given that such would likely do more harm than good it would be counterproductive.

Given that she wasn’t an option, that meant I needed to go looking for other people who might be interested in helping out for the tournament. Which meant trawling the CMI message boards looking for other students interested in the Invasive Species Tournament.

I didn’t have to wait long for someone to express interest, a microbiology graduate student by the name of Queen Shed replying that she was quite interested in proving herself for the tourney. Meanwhile another student who’d also been screwed over by Thonne indicated that he would also be very interested in joining our team. We quickly set about scheduling, and soon we had all arranged to meet over lunch tomorrow.

The assigned time and place rolled around, with me waiting at the Good Eats sandwich assembler for about a kilosecond before either of my prospective teammates showed up. I was wearing my masculine morph today since it’s just the body I felt the most comfortable in right now, sipping a vaguely sweet and sour fruit drink as I noticed someone arriving.

Her scales were a dull red across most of her body with a tanned underbelly, she had tough leathery wings folded from her shoulder blades, her eyes were vertically slitted, and her thick, stocky limbs ended in razor sharp talons. She was also a bit curvy, and she spoke with a dissonantly soft voice as she asked “Hello, I’m Queen. Are you Yures?”

I nodded to confirm, replying “Indeed I am.” I waited for a brief moment before noting “I see you’re a dragon.”

Queen hummed with approval, noting “Yeah; I kind of have to be. I get all kinds of dysphoric when I’m not in a sufficiently dragon-y morph, and it’s no fun at all. You wouldn’t believe how much paperwork I had to go through for the integrated flamethrower.”

I felt myself loosening up at the common ground we shared, noting “Ah. Meanwhile I keep having to switch between three different morphs because my gender identity shifts around constantly. I understand completely.”

That’s when another person made themselves known, an energetic spider-like synthmorph bouncing along to the table we were sitting at. They clambered up onto one of the chairs and greeted us “Hi, I’m Wesseck. I heard you two were interested in joining the Blackwood Invasive Species Tournament with me?”

I nodded, noting “Yes. I’m Yures, and this is Queen. Nice to meet you Wesseck.”

That’s about when Queen noted “So, from what I’ve heard you two both got your grades sabotaged by professor Thonne? I’ve never had a class with him so I don’t know firsthand, but he sounds like a total ass.”

I nodded, saying “Yes. He doesn’t approve of my morph swapping for nonsensical reasons of ‘efficiency’, and he docked my grade hard enough that I’d need to retake that lab course to get back at me for it.” making sure to properly time my air quotes.

Wesseck nodded their blue plastic head sadly before noting “Same story for me, though I’m pretty sure it’s just my general enthusiastic attitude that set him off. Professors are supposed to be happy when a student is excited about learning, so I’m really not sure what’s wrong with Thonne.”

To her credit, Queen winced in sympathy, before asking “Want me to burn him? I know my way around the campus and I can probably contrive an excuse that’d let me do it without getting in trouble.”

Both Wesseck and I shook our heads no, and I explained “While tempting, that wouldn’t solve our actual problem. We’re entering the competition because getting a trophy in it will let us not have to retake the courses Thonne screwed us over in, and also let us rub our worth as bio-engineers in his stupid face.”

Queen grinned, displaying a row of sharp teeth as she noted “That’s what I was hoping to hear. So, Thonne’s made his opinion quite clear, but I think there’s lines for exactly this eventuality in Bark’s national anthem.”

Wesseck perked up as they immediately began singing the relevant verse “They called us mad!”

I joined in with the next line in perfect harmony with Wesseck “But we’ll show them!”

And finally all three of us sang as one “WE WILL SHOW THEM ALL!”

---

This is the free edition of The Blackwood Tourney. It is entirely pre-written, and will have one chapter released each week on Saturday. 
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