“I hate this world,” I inform Alec as I drop the monkey suit near him. “Is that big enough for a helmet and pants? Helmet will have to be weird, cuz of the hawk. And hell, I never liked leather pants. We had to wear them for one of the tours, and they kinda suck, but I keep getting my legs all ripped up, and my jeans are broke.”

“I can handle both for you. It’ll take thirty r-thaums and ninety minutes.”

“Okay. I’ll be in the shower. I feel dirty.”

I pull the shower out from my pockets, and take the two minutes to set it up. It’s really well designed. A fold-up two-room shower that I can store in my pocket and set up in two minutes? This rocks. I spend three red-thaums for two hours of water plus soap and clothes cleaning.

39 minutes of hot water on my back, my head rests against the glasstic shower walls. No thinking. I'm just kinda numb. I’m a drummer, not a hunter. I don’t go around clubbing baby seals. When they came to eat me, it was one thing, but going out hunting on purpose? What’s got into me? I hate this.

By 43 minutes in, these Dee-Nancy pockets rock. I’ve got drumsticks in 3 limbs, tappin the sides of the shower. I wonder if I can install a cymbal in here. Hung high? The drumsticks' wood is getting wet, but I can afford more. And drum therapy is the best therapy.

At 56 minutes, I remember to turn off my echolocation before I clean my ‘hawk.

At 68 minutes, I’m singing “We will rock you,” along with my shower-drumming, and my hair-radar is dry enough that I can use it again. Queen still has one of the best drums and singing songs. Then I start on magic practice. Singing, drumming, and ‘mancing is on.

At 97 minutes, my audiomancy practice turns a corner. Over the next few minutes, I can not only build two sound walls, but I can move them separately, and tune them separately, and even shape them separately. The one to my left is reflective, the one to my right is absorbing. The one to the left looks like a wall, while the right side is a blank spot in my echovision. I can shape leftie into a circle, while rightie is a square. And then the water turns off.

Apparently a perfect internal metronome isn’t good enough if you’re not paying attention. I was already clean, so I step out of the shower and towel off. My clothes are cleaned … and folded it seems. I dress and step out. Hanging outside the shower are a very nice pair of leather pants. And some odd lace-up helmet thing?

“Alec?” I ask hesitantly.

“Put the pants on. Let’s confirm that they feel good.”

I do. I’m in the hut now, and I don’t think the plant cares about looking at my undies. Old jeans-shorts go back in my pockets, and the new pants fit surprisingly well. I can feel them, but they’re not restricting my movement. Checking to confirm, I run through a couple Escrima katas, and the pants are good. They almost feel like sweats, or really well made stretch jeans. Full coverage. No restriction.

“Good.” I say, “And what’s this contraption?” There’s a pile of leather and string that is black like monkey skin, but other than that, I can’t tell much.

“To avoid difficulties, I left it disassembled. It’s your leather helmet. If you look, there are locations for your ears, with several pinholes to permit clear hearing, and two sides of the helmet. By tying it together through the string holes, with the string provided, it should work nicely. It will take five or ten minutes to put on the sides, string the string through the sides and your mohawk, and then tighten it around your chin.”

“Did you buy this at Ikea? Does it have instructions?”

With Alec ignoring me, I work on putting the thing together. Twenty-seven minutes later, once it’s assembled and on my head, I have to give the plant credit. It’s a nice device that I would never have come up with. It’s basically a split helmet, with a chin strap and a forehead strap, that laces together through my ‘Hawk. And it’s padded on the inside. It’s not quite a football helmet except, it kinda is. It’s one of those old-school hundred-and-fifty years ago leather football helmets, but it laces together on top. Lots of small pinprick earholes, rather than one big one that a claw could go through, but I think this is pretty darn protective. And the laces don’t impact my searing at all.

“I don’t care what anyone says about your looking wilted, Alec,” I say. “In my book you’re an upright kinda guy. This is an impressive helmet. And the pants fit better than I thought they could. Thanks.”

“Don’t get fat. They don’t stretch,” says the plant.

“Well, I eat so much these days, I guess I’ll have to cut back.”

“Indeed.”

“Hey, Treeman, how long until the final trial?”

“There’s flexibility built in. It’s 10:32pm right now. You could start in an hour and a half, or you could wait a whole day. The only rules are that you need to start tomorrow.”

“I have twelve oranges now. I want to spend them, but I need to have time to acclimate. Do you think I can up my speed again, and be coordinated by the time I have to fight? And is there anything else I need?”

“You need a bigger thaum capacity. You’re already at six thaums a day of usage. Buying more speed will take you up to ten. And that’s before your thaumaturgy. If I were you, I’d spend an r-thaum and an o-thaum to improve your internal thaum capacity. You'd triple twice to ninety.

“Besides capacity, your biggest weakness is endurance. It’s probably not worth buying improvements, but while your sprints are fast, you can’t keep it up for long. You need to be able to keep it up.”

“I fuckin’ hate running. But good advice, Forest.”

“Life is like a box of chocolates. Sometimes you get thaumic capacity. Other times, you get trance states. A drum-fugue like you’re doing is good, but you really need to improve it. Again, getting to where you want to be would take a bit more than an o-thaum.”

“I can’t afford all those at the same time. And I want to talk about some other options too. But that can wait. Hit me with speed and thaumic capacity, Alec. I’ve got training to do.”