Setting Rod down to embrace that feral instinct surging within him, Fenrir charges at his final target and feels his body changing mid-charge.

His arms grow slightly longer and thicker with muscle, a short coat of fur grows over them, and sharp claws protrude from his fingers.

Then he stops in his tracks when he makes a disturbing realization.

He notices that he basically looks like those characters from anime or games whom wear giant, oversized animal paw gloves. His arms and hands may not be as dramatically oversized as theirs, but it is a comparison that he cannot just let slide.

It’s almost enough for him to completely shove his feral desires into the depths of his mind to return his arms to normal.

But, before he can be ashamed enough to do that, the crab that he was charging at decides to charge at him instead.

One of its pincers slams down into the sand where he was just standing! A cloud of sand is kicked up by the sheer force of impact. The crabs may be somewhat slow and awkward when it comes to fighting, but when they actually manage to land a hit, they can deal a ton of damage.

They’re basically glass cannons when he thinks about it.

Fenrir lands a few feet away from where the crab hit the sand.

“Alright. That’s how you want to play it? Then let’s try my claws versus yours,” Fenrir borderline growls at the crab.

Now he’s realizing that he is not only reciting cheesy dialogue, but he is reciting cheesy dialogue at a crab.

“How did I become this way?” Fenrir asks himself.

He hears Rock let out a surprised yelp.

Turning around to check on her, he worries when he first sees what sort of situation she’s in… and then he wants to laugh.

The crab that Rock went after is holding her up inside of its pincers. Each of those mighty, giant pincers are squeezing around Rock’s body in the air, but they are not making even the slightest indent into Rock’s body.

She’s even hanging her tongue out and panting. Rock looks more confused than worried.

Then she turns her head, remembers that she’s supposed to be killing the crab that is swinging her around in the air trying to crack her open, and starts barking and snarling.

Her tail wagging against its left pincer is doing more damage to the pincer than its pincer is doing to her.

“You’re something else, Rock,” Fenrir says before returning his attention to his own crab.

He narrowly dodges another fist from the crab by jumping out of the way. It looks like the crab wants to take him up on that cheesy challenge he offered it.

“Let’s see just how strong my arms are like this,” he says to himself, getting ready with balled fists for the crab’s next attack.

The crab swings its left pincer at him like it’s throwing a punch, and Fenrir does the same with his right arm.

His wolfen fist slams directly into the crab’s pincer.

Fenrir immediately winces from pain and wants to pull his arm back, but he sees his punch through and manages to knock the crab’s claw back with fragments missing from its shell and cracks running throughout it.

The crab swings its right pincer at him now, and Fenrir replies with his left fist.

Knowing just how much pain to expect, he puts even more force behind his punch to make his enemy hurt just as much as he does.

The crab’s right claw hangs limply at its side, getting dragged through the sand as it tries backing away from Fenrir. Its left claw still works but is heavily damaged.

Fenrir looks down at his hands. His left hand is fine since he put more force into the punch and more easily overwhelmed the crab. But his right hand, which he met the crab with almost equal force with at first, hurts and got scraped against the rough shell to cause some minor bleeding. Nothing too serious, just painful.

“I don’t want you to suffer for too long. Even if you’re just being controlled by the overseer right now, I feel kind of bad seeing you try to get away from me dragging your claw like that, so let’s finish this,” Fenrir tells the fleeing crab.

There is something in mind that he wants to try which he knows is going to messy and edgy, but also cool.

He runs directly at the crab, fists ready to attack.

The crab’s only working claw comes slamming down into him, but he blocks its closed grasp with one arm while his other arm lunges forward between the crab’s eyes.

His sharp, canid claws pierce straight through the shell and tear through its brain.

The crab’s legs give out and it collapses to the sand.

“I feel pretty cool for that,” Fenrir praises himself.

“About time. You going to help your pup now, Mr. Wolf?” Oleander asks.

Fenrir looks over at the four crabs Oleander had to deal with. Each one is very, very brutally dead.

“How did you do all that with just plants? That’s the kind of thing in anime where they just censor it with giant black bars instead of actually showing anything,” Fenrir says.

“It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to have any fun, and I have to stretch my abilities after being all cooped up on that ship! Geez, Fenny, don’t you know how girls work by now?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever know that,” Fenrir says, returning his attention to the midair Rock.

Yep. The crab is still swinging her around trying to break her with its claws, but it’s just breaking its own claws instead.

“You know, this is kind of funny. I have my assistant recording it to show the group later,” Oleander says.

Rock seems to switch between not minding it and being extremely aggravated. When she looks at Oleander and Fenrir, she happily barks at them and tries paddling in the air to run over to them with her tongue hanging out of her mouth. Then she remembers that she’s being held up by the crab, looks at it, and starts viciously snarling and barking at it again.

“Yeah, just record this for a little bit more. I don’t think we’ll ever get to see anything like this again,” Fenrir says.

“Does this count as animal abuse if we’re recording something trying to kill her for our amusement?”

“…we’re horrible people when you put it like that.”

“Yeah… but we both knew that already! So, wanna see what gets there first? Your little puppy claws or my magic?”

“Sure,” Fenrir says, immediately taking off after responding.

“Hey! Fenny! That’s not fair!” Oleander shouts as he quickly tries to prepare a spell.

By the time Oleander fires off one of his thorny tendrils at the crab, Fenrir is already leaping between its arms and underneath Rock to perform the same finishing move that he just used on the last crab.

Unfortunately for Fenrir, he ends up taking a pretty hard hit and enough damage to make his vision go half black.

The crab’s arms let go of their prey after having its brain crushed by Fenrir, dropping Rock directly onto his back.

Fenrir gets knocked down onto the sand with Rock on his back, and then to make matters worse, the crab’s limp corpse falls onto his head and oozes putrid liquid all over his hair and the back of his head.

“I’m still recording, by the way,” Oleander teases.

“I hate everything right now,” Fenrir says against the sand but is quick to shut up when he feels that liquid oozing down the sides of his face toward his mouth. “Please help,” he mumbles with closed lips.

Rock helps him by biting onto his leg and pulling him out from underneath the crab, then she rolls him over by pushing her snout underneath the side of his body and pushing against him.

Fenrir gets flipped over with gross, sticky hair—temporarily dyed yellow from crab guts—stuck to his face.

At least Rock loves him enough to lick most of the gross liquid off of him. “Sorry, Rock, but I don’t think I’ll want you licking me for a whi—” Fenrir starts saying, but then the situation somehow manages to grow even worse.

From talking while she’s cleaning his face, her tongue ends up accidentally going into his mouth.

Her tongue, with crab-guts-juice on it, gets some direct action with his own tongue.

“Stiiillll recording, by the by,” Oleander reminds him.

Fenrir pushes Rock off of him and sits up. “Can we just pretend that none of this actually happened? Like, can we just pretend that we never got off the ship or saw each other today or anything?” he pleads.

“No-pe.”

“Please.”

“Everybody is going to see you get tongued by Rock and force-fed crab guts.”

“I’m going to throw up if you phrase it like that again.”

“Two dogs, one crab.”

Fenrir turns over and gags.