Donut and I stood in silence, considering what Carl had found and its implications for our survival. Neither of us liked the taste of it.

"Let's go back to the personal space," Donut said. "I'm filthy and I want another shower."

"You're filthy?" I said, amused. "I'm the one who's been literally wading through monster guts to clear the tracks. You've been sitting on my shoulder the whole time."

"You've dripped on me repeatedly. Look at me! My fur is all matted down and gross and I smell. I know you humans are noseblind but trust me, this is no picnic." She swiped fruitlessly at some of the small blotches of blood on her head and legs.

"Well, sounds good to me," I said, smiling. "I could use a shower myself, and then some more time at the makeup table. It lets me have preset forms that I can shift to quickly and without pain. I want to work on that a bit."

We went back to our base and both took quick showers to sluice off the sweat and blood. My new skin-moving trick worked brilliantly, allowing me to get clean pain-free. Afterwards I went back to the makeup table and sat down, munching on a salad and staring at my reflection thoughtfully.

My biggest problem in the dungeon wasn't the monsters.

That felt strange to think, but it was true. The monsters would kill me, but dealing with them was straightforward: Punch, punch, loot, repeat. It wasn't easy, but it was straightforward in that I knew how to solve it and only needed to level up my strength and combat skills. Those were well behind where they should be, but I had made a new discovery that would help: I could change into a human quickly.

When I added or removed more than 50% of my mass I collapsed into a big puddle a centimeter deep. It took me just under two seconds to reform my human body, and it didn't hurt to do so.

Saying that differently: I was 166 centimeters tall and I could reform my human body in 2 seconds, without any pain! That was huge, and it gave me an idea that I wasn't going to tell Carl or Donut about it until I had practiced a bit. Perhaps it was petty of me, but they were in the habit of not telling me things unless I explicitly asked. With any luck maybe I could surprise them and they would say "Why didn't you tell us you could do that?" and then I could casually shrug and say "You never asked" and look cool.

Stop daydreaming, Katia. Focus.

No, my real problem wasn't killing things. My real problem was my personality. My views and followers had been essentially zero before I hooked up with Carl and Donut. Now, a few days later, I had received 20 billion followers and a Benefactor. The box hadn't arrived yet but it was on its way. Getting a Benefactor was one of the most prized rewards in the dungeon, and I had gotten one simply because I was traveling with Carl and Donut. I couldn't understand it; Donut had 900 trillion followers, it made perfect sense for her to get a Benefactor. Why was I getting one?

I shook the doubts away. Whatever the reason, I had one. I was going to have the chance to get up to two more, one on the fifth floor and one on the sixth. Doing that, however, meant being interesting. It meant not letting Carl steamroll me and ignore me. It meant making him acknowledge me as a peer and treat my suggestions as worthy of consideration.

In other words, it meant being someone who wasn't me.

I sighed tiredly and slumped in my chair. Carl had steamrolled me on which train line we would ride, on going to the ochre line, on derailing the train, and on his plan to take out the Nightmare Express. He hadn't even bothered considering my idea of having a clockwork Mongo try to jump onto the Nightmare Express's single exposed gangway. Sure, it would have cost us an hour and a half but was that really so bad? It might have saved him from nearly being killed. He would have listened if Donut had pushed the idea, so what did it say that I didn't even warrant consideration? Answer: I was less important to him than a cat.

Which, unfortunately, was fair. Donut was powerful, versatile, and offered abilities he didn't have. She was a brilliant showman, easily drawing in the audience on Odette's show. Her banter, although occasionally cruel to him, was undoubtedly a large part of what had drawn so many followers and views to the two of them. Her Magic Missile spell was an excellent ranged attack and her other spells gave her incredible utility options. Plus, Mongo answered to her and he was fast, lethal, and eye-catching. An aid both to survival and to audience appeal.

In contrast, I punched things. Carl already did that, and he did it better. He also crafted things and used bombs and traps. I contributed nothing to the team except a lot of hit points that allowed me to serve as a human shield. And, of course, all my new armor meant that I would make an even better human shield. My new armor that Carl had figured out how to get for me, instead of me being proactive and figuring it out for myself.

Still, redundant or not, I was a member of the team. I was fighting beside them, risking my life beside them. I deserved to have my ideas considered, and the only reason I hadn't was because I didn't push back. I shouldn't have caved like that when he blew me off. This...timidity? Sure, that was a nicer word than 'cowardice'. It was exactly the thing I needed to work on. Mordecai and Donut and Zev had been clear about the fact that 'being interesting and exciting' => views => followers => fan boxes and Benefactor boxes => survival and that right now I was dull and uninteresting and the whole damn universe hated me and wanted me to die so that it could be just Carl and Donut again. Fine.

No.

No. Take a deep breath. Don't wallow, Katia. I could do better. I didn't have to be boring and timid. I could improve. I could be more interesting, more forceful. The next time I had concerns I needed to make the others listen.

Easier said than done. All my life I had wanted to be more confident, but back in the real world it was hard to change. I had family that I loved and didn't want to annoy, most of whom were bolder and more driven than I was. I had bosses who could fire me if I offended them, and a boyfriend who...never mind. Anyway, here in the dungeon I could be anyone I wanted. There was no one here that mattered to me except Carl, Donut, Hekla, and some of the Daughters. Actually, I might or might not ever see Hekla or the Daughters again, so it was really just Carl and Donut. Those two wouldn't mind how I acted as long as I helped them kill things, and if I were more aggressive it might make Carl take me more seriously. Donut would definitely stop being such an old aunty with her fashion advice and 'how to walk sexy' tips and all that. (Ugh. I could not believe I was taking comportment lessons from a talking cat.)

Calm. I needed to be calm. Like Carl said, don't let them break me, no matter what. That would be their final victory. I would not let the dungeon unmake me. I would survive this. Unlike my parents, and my siblings—

I could feel tears at the corner of my eyes and the room was wavery. The weakness of it, the one extra proof that I couldn't handle it, burned. Carl never cried. Donut never cried. Why did I always have to be the weak one?

I shoved myself to my feet and went outside to beat my feelings to death with chocolate.

"Excuse me, Typhis?" I asked hesitantly. "Do you have Goa balls?"

Typhis was the Bopca Protector who ran this saferoom. He was taller than any Bopca I'd met thus far, bald as an egg on top, and his scraggly beard was snow white. I would have assumed he was old but his skin was smooth and his movements were energetic.

"What are Goa balls, crawler?"

I slumped. Of course he wouldn't have my favorite comfort food. All of my comfort foods were gone, along with everything else about my prior existence...no, I was not going to think about that because I would start crying and it was a stupid thing to be crying about when every person I had ever known was dead. Oh, Berghreinn, little brother, how could you be gone?! I couldn't—

I cleared my throat. "They're candy, small toffee balls covered in chocolate."

Typhis gestured around at the little bodega that he ran. Against one wall was a refrigerator with milk, cream, hummus, sweetened iced coffees with a Slavic brand name that I didn't recognize, sodas, two types of cheddar cheese, butter, and an array of packaged sushi and plastic-wrapped sandwiches. Chest-high wire racks formed three aisles on which could be found candy of various kinds, Wonderbread, peanut butter, jelly, and an assortment of chips and crackers. There was a stack of baskets next to the counter.

"Lots of chocolate stuff," he grunted.

"Right."

I grabbed a basket and stalked the aisles, sweeping a few of everything remotely appealing into the basket. By the time I stepped up to the register there were Pringles cans teetering on the edge of escape.

He looked silently at the basket, then looked at me.

"Must be bad day," he said. "Crawlers get those. That will be 437 gold."

Donut could have argued him down to half that because she was awesome and talented. I just paid him and took my loot back inside.

Ten minutes later I was stuffed to the gills with carbohydrates and slurping a thick chocolate milkshake through a big straw. The milkshake was from the Arby's that we had stayed at back at stop 149. One taste and I had been hooked, so I now had a hundred of them loaded into my inventory along with several pounds of hot fries and burgers. One neat thing about being a doppelganger: Weight gain was now a good thing, and adult-onset diabetes was far from my biggest concern.

I pushed those thoughts aside and forced myself to focus on what I could actually do something about. I needed to be interesting to the audience and worthy of respect from Carl. 'Interesting to the audience' seemed to mean some combination of assertive, confident, aggressive, and dramatic...oh, and eye candy. Couldn't forget how my followers had jumped the first time I used the shower.

I didn't see how I could simply decide to be a more confident, more assertive Katia. That wasn't a thing. For a particular moment, perhaps, but not long term. On the other hand...perhaps I could be a more confident someone else? Play a role, method acting my way into a more audience-friendly persona. It felt like it would be easier to disassociate myself into another's skin than to transform my own.

Who could I model myself on? Someone female, because I didn't think I could pull off acting as a different gender. Confident, assertive, maybe a little crass. Violent. That would all play well with aliens who thought that a snuff film reality TV show was good entertainment.

Hah! Birgit Battlemaiden!

Oh god, it made perfect sense. I couldn't believe I was considering pretending to be a comic book character, but it made perfect sense. Granted, I didn't have her powers but I could talk like her. I could look like her. Except that I wasn't going to wear the Icelandic flag as a monokini.

Of course, her body was wildly unrealistic; she was eight heads tall, her legs were longer than her torso, each of her boobs was the size of her head and they didn't sag at all, and her waist/hip ratio wouldn't leave room for organs. Also, her spine was super flexible, presumably from all the practice she had at standing turned so that the reader could see her boobs and her butt at the same time. (Comic book artists were pigs!)

Sure, unrealistic. Still, I was a doppelganger. Realistic proportions were optional for me and looking like a ridiculous sex doll would definitely get me some followers. As Donut and Mordecai kept telling me, followers equaled survival so I'd better get used to being Birgit.

The more I thought about it the more appealing it seemed. I hated every moment of every day here in the dungeon. I wobbled between grief and anger and fear and most of the time I just wanted to sit down and cry. Birgit wouldn't be bothered by this situation. She would throw herself into the fray with grim determination, smiling and slashing away with Blooddrinker in one hand, her spiked shield in the other while her swords Fleshripper and Souleater floated above her. Being her sounded nice.

No, that was the wrong way to think. Birgit wouldn't say that sounded nice she would say that fuckin' banged. I needed to work on being the new version of me, and I needed to do it all the time, even in the privacy of my own thoughts. Remember: Bold and brassy and a little crass, like Birgit.

Ugh.

With a sigh, I turned to the mirror of my makeup table and started sculpting my body for the titillation of alien teenagers.

o-o-o-o

"You did what." Donut was unamused.

We were sitting around the coffee table that occupied pride of place in the common area of our personal space. Weirdly for something conjured from the aether by a crazy dungeon AI, the table was scuffed and dinged up as though it had been here for years. It even had half a dozen rings where someone had set a wet-bottomed mug down on the blond wood instead of using a coaster like a civilized person. The rest of the furniture was equally odd: Carl sat on a ratty yet surprisingly comfortable green armchair and Donut and I had claimed the beat-up purple velour couch. She was in my lap so that I could brush her. We were rested, showered, and fed—Donut had insisted that we do all that before debriefing with Carl, probably because she wanted to cuddle with him for a bit in order to calm herself down but didn't want to admit that was what she wanted. Carl had been laying out for us the full details of his adventure on the Nightmare Express, giving himself a pedicure while he did so. I had cleaned the polish off my toenails and repainted them from the bottomless bottle, and then I had brushed Donut; the brush buff had activated five minutes ago but I was continuing to brush because both of us found it soothing.

"When I looped back to get you guys I stopped at Limp Richard's and got this," Carl said, pointing to the Battery Fabricator he had carefully set down on the coffee table.

I leaned in so I could check the Fabricator's properties. My stupid Birgit boobs shifted and tugged me to the side; I was a lot more top-heavy than I had been a few hours ago and I was still getting used to it. Carl seemed to like the look; he kept stealing sidelong glances at me and then looking away and blushing. It was cute. I was going to keep telling myself that until I stopped feeling like a harlot.

Battery Fabricator

Made by the finest dwarven craftsmen (who, let's be honest, aren't that fine), the Fabricator makes the batteries that the dwarves use to run their automatons. You know, the automatons that are undoubtedly going to crush your ugly little head when you cross the wrong line.

Load an empty battery into the Fabricator, pour in a half-dozen mana potions, and voila! A supercharged electrical source that can run a multi-ton mid-sized labor/mining mecha for months. Not that you should care, since you'll be a squooshy smear on my lovely floors long before that.

"Katia, your boobs are smooshing me," Donut said, her voice muffled. I jolted upright and forced myself not to blush.

Carl had also gotten a crate of fifty discharged batteries to go with the Fabricator. They were shiny and black with the words 'Dwarvos Mining Company' engraved on the top in lines so fine I could only see them if I caught the light just right. Each battery was the size of a brick, with two dull spikes coming out one end and a button on the end opposite the spikes. The button was a perfect match for the surface itself, making it almost impossible to see. Fortunately, it was raised about a millimeter so it could be located by touch.

Dwarven Mecha Battery

A standard monopolar fluorounobtainium power cell for the class BX mining mecha of the Dwarvos Mining Company, best metal miners in the galaxy!

The friggin' lawyers require me to say that. Some kind of advertising/services swap, apparently. Assholes.

This thing is built to withstand a beating, because the miners often use them to beat monsters off. Get your mind out of the gutter you dirty-minded crawler! You're blocking my periscope. The dwarves use them as weapons, not stroke machines. Don't run over them with a train but otherwise you're probably fine. If you do run over them with a train you are very definitely not fine.

Current only flows while the button is depressed. The dwarves aren't big on safety precautions but even they can learn after enough so-called engineers fry themselves.

What's the voltage and amperage? Shut up, nerd.

"I saw the Fabricator in the store," I said. "It was 75,000 gold. How did you get the money?" I could think of a lot of better things we could have done with that much cash.

"I traded Limp Richard the last of my books," Carl said, grinning. "I got this, a bunch more rope, two rolls of duct tape, and a few other basics. Remember how I told you that guys on long-term assignments in the boondocks will do anything for entertainment? I know what I'm talking about."

"Carl, you gave up all your books?" Donut demanded, horrified. "Did you negotiate at all?! I could have gotten it for two short stories and a candy bar!"

Carl's proud smile disappeared. "Goddamit, Donut," he muttered. "Just let me have this, okay?"

"What are you planning to do with them?" I asked, hoping to keep things from devolving into an argument. I took a sip of my Arby's chocolate shake and reveled in the creamy sugary goodness of it.

"I want to try charging up one of those mecha," Carl said. "I think you might be able to get inside it and wear it like armor."

My eyes widened at that. The idea of having a suit of power armor was pretty appealing, and a device that was explicitly intended for mining could be unbelievably useful in a dungeon largely made of stone. The mecha were the right size to move through the regular dungeon hallways if they crouched, but we had no way to get them there. The tunnels immediately around them on this level were too small for them to fit through and they were too heavy to lift, so we couldn't put them in our inventories. On the other hand, if I could equip one as armor then I could absorb it. If I could absorb it, I could put it in my inventory.

"That would be amazing," I said, nodding. Even Donut had gone quiet and was looking at Carl with more respect. And then I remembered my persona. "That would fuckin' bang."

Carl raised an eyebrow at that but let it go. "The big question right now is what we do next," he said. "Capturing the Nightmare Express didn't go exactly as hoped—"

Donut snorted. "That's an understatement. What were you thinking, letting that thing hit you?"

"Shut up, Donut. It all worked out."

"Barely. You got hit by a train and almost died. Then you let it carry you off into the darkness and left us here, all alone, while you went gallivating off around the entire line having exciting adventures, and you almost got eaten, and—"

"It seems like we've got a few options," I said loudly, forcing myself to imagine myself as the brassy, courageous Birgit Battlemaiden who didn't mind interrupting people. "Carl, we can switch the Nightmare Express onto any other line, yes?" Birgit folded her arms under her ridiculous boobs and stared him in the eyes, daring him to look down. The fact that I was a doppelganger with full control over my body was the only reason I didn't set the air on fire with the intensity of my blushing, but I forced myself to do it. Be Birgit, Katia. Birgit could do this.

"I don't know if it's any other line, but there's a lot of options. You're thinking we could link up with Meadow Lark?"

"Or Hekla and the Daughters. Preferably both." I so very much wanted to see them again. I hadn't felt safe since we got separated by the stairs to the third floor. No. Katia hadn't felt safe. Birgit was loving it here in the dungeon. Lots of evil to test herself against.

Carl shifted uncomfortably the way he always did when I mentioned Hekla. "That's an option, but the tracks aren't labeled."

I considered asking him what his problem was with Hekla but it wasn't the time. That conversation could wait.

"All right," I said. "What about taking the train back to station 4?"

"And from there to the stairwells," he said, nodding. "Dunno how practical that is. The place was wall-to-wall zombies. Unless we can drive the train straight out of the station and up to the stairwells, I don't see how we could get through that."

"And we probably can't drive straight out," I said, thinking. "If the exits were open then the zombies would have spread out up the tracks. There's probably a door or something that needs to be opened, and we'd need to get out of the train to do it. That's just the kind of thing the dungeon would do so as not to make it easy for us."

"Which leaves Repair Station," Carl said. "We all know that there's going to be something waiting to kill us, right? With that much empty space and the importance of the location, there's got to be a boss. They're practically herding us towards it."

"Well, then let's fuck it up." I suddenly heard what I had just said. "Let's fuck the boss up, I mean. We shouldn't mess up ourselves. I mean... I mean, whatever is waiting there, let's definitely fuck that thing up. Because yes, there's going to be something." Oh my god, please let me die right now. I was so bad at this.

He looked at me oddly and then shrugged. "When I looked through the Repair Station portal I saw four trains on the tracks. One of them was being lifted up off the ground. The engine was out of sight and the cars were hanging down below it. I tried to get a better angle but there wasn't one."

"It sounds like maybe it's some big creature that's picking the trains up," Donut said. "But what if that's what they want us to think? Maybe that was just a regular crane and there's actually roaming packs of small, fast things? Maybe more of those vicious cocker spaniels. Carl, I don't think you have enough explosives to safely deal with a large pack. Anything you don't kill in the initial blast will swarm the train."

"If it's a pack then I have an idea for that," I said, deliberately showing my teeth in what I hoped looked like a wolfish smile and not a stupid grimace. I had spent ten minutes practicing that smile in the mirror of my makeup table, even going so far as to subtly reshape my teeth to be more threatening, but I wasn't sure if I was pulling it off. Still, it was necessary. Donut and Carl were alive in large part because they were popular—indeed, if Carl hadn't gotten that portal-detection thingy in his Benefactor Box we wouldn't have known what was going on with the trains and we would have been in a lot more trouble than we were. (No, wrong! I should be thinking: We would have been fucked, you hear me?!)

"Which is?" Carl asked, eyebrows raised. His expression said that, for once, he was actually focused on what I was saying. I had to give him credit for maintaining eye contact; it was actually pretty funny watching him not look anywhere except my right eye. I bounced my chest a little bit, just to mess with him. He swallowed but didn't look.

"It's a surprise," I said, smiling a real smile. The viewers would be much more interested if I teased them with it, and would be more impressed if the first time I did it was in battle. Some of them had undoubtedly seen me practicing but hopefully they hadn't cared enough to watch, or to spread the word. "You'll like it and the zombies or whatever will fucking hate it, you hear me?" God, that sounded so incredibly stilted.

He frowned.

I quickly started talking to preempt any questions. "Hey, how sure are you about that portal thing, anyway? You didn't explain exactly how your Benefactor gift-thingy works...maybe it's not telling you everything, or could you have missed something?"

He shrugged. "Like I said before, it's an upgrade to my brain and my eyes. I'm seeing these subspace portals all over the place—the doors to the bathrooms, the door to our personal space, some others. I can analyze them to see if they're safe for me to pass through and if the other side is 'compatible', which I'm guessing means that I can breathe the air and not get instantly lit on fire. It tells me if I need a key to go through and it marks the relevant keys in my inventory. Also, if I'm able to go through the portal then I can take a mental photo of what's on the other side, as though I were seeing through the portal directly. It's only what I could actually see from my angle and whatever, but it's pretty high quality and I can zoom in to see fine details in the picture."

"But you can't see behind the portals, right?"

"Yeah?"

"What if we stuck a mirror through on a pole? It should let your picture show us what's behind the portal."

"I don't know. Worth a shot, I guess."

I nodded. "We should do that before we go through." I paused for a moment, thinking. "We've still got a few days before level collapse and we can't go down the stairs early even if we want to. I suggest...I mean, let's ride the fucking train straight through that big ol' portal, kill the fuck out of everything, and then we make sure we can get from there to the stairwells. After that, we drive the train up the line, do some hunting, and pick up other crawlers. You hear me?" That was so performative. Even Donut sounded more convincing when she was trying to dissemble.

Carl and Donut exchanged looks. "Donut and I are on the Top 10 list, meaning there's a bounty on us," he said carefully. "Meeting up with Meadow Lark, sure. We know and trust them. Bautista, other people we know, sure. Random other crawlers, no. Someone already tried to kill Donut—would have succeeded if it wasn't for her Cockroach skill."

"Okay," I said. "We'll keep it to the people we know. The Daughters, Meadow Lark, and your friend Bautista. Are you okay with the rest of it?"

"What if the track is blocked?" Donut asked. "You saw the recap—that poser who stole our Celestial box has been going around killing engineers and leaving trains all over the place. A lot of the tracks aren't passable."

"We'll take it slow so we don't run into anything by accident," Carl said. "And the train can go in reverse, so if the track is blocked and we can't clear it, we can always back down to the stairwells. We'll want to go even slower, but we can do it."

"Cool," I said. "So, it's a plan?"

He glanced at Donut; she nodded. "Okay," Carl said. "Let's do it."

He slapped his knees and pushed himself upright with a groan, twisting back and forth to unkink his back. I could almost hear the pops and crackles. The poor guy had gotten pretty beat up on his little adventure.

"Right." He looked around vaguely for a moment then nodded and turned for the door. Donut and I followed a step behind. (Rats. I should have gone first and had them follow me. Be assertive, Katia!) Mongo bounced in excitement when he saw that we were going out and raced over to stand in front of the personal-space door, bouncing up and down impatiently.

"Question for you," Carl said as we passed through the bodega. "That new look...what's the deal?" He gave a casual up-and-down wave towards my new Birgit Battlemaiden body and the (apparent) skin-tight leather pants, white men's dress shirt, and bulky leather jacket with all the steel hardware. (I wore the 'shirt' triple unbuttoned and the 'jacket' half-unzipped to show off the ridiculous cleavage of these ridiculous boobs because of course I needed to objectify myself in front of alien teenagers in order to survive!)

I could feel my cheeks wanting to flush with embarrassment but I forced them not to. My skin coloration was mine to command and I was not going to let it betray my embarrassment. I shrugged and flashed what I intended to become my new trademark grin. "You like?" No, I could do better. Oh god, I couldn't believe I was going to say this, but it was exactly the sort of thing Birgit would say. "Just think, stud: All the clothes are simulated. I'm really naked right now, you hear me?" Please could the earth open and swallow me?

He visibly took a moment to censor his first response. "It's...different. I think—"

"Carl, stop!" Donut said.

Carl froze, his hand on the door that led from the saferoom into the dungeon.

"There are mobs out there," Donut said. "A little smaller than human size, and fast. It might be those Drek murderbabies. There's a lot of them."

I called up my own minimap and activated my Pathfinder skill. The visible area around us expanded enormously but I pinched in, making the radius contract in exchange for better detail. A moment later I was looking at something like an architect's blueprint of the part of the transit station within a hundred feet of us, including a scale that allowed me to check distances. Red dots marked the mobs more precisely than I had gotten before acquiring the Pathfinder skill, letting me track their exact positions and movements. Unlike Donut's Acute Ears skill, it didn't give me any details on what the dots represented.

"Wow. They are fast," I said. "And two of them are standing right in front of the door."

Carl shrugged. "They can't touch us unless we go out there." He opened the door. "Let's see what we've—oh."

Outside the door waited a whole swarm of gelatinous bipedal grasshoppers.

They were constantly in motion, leaping around like oversugared toddlers and occasionally perching on the walls or floor before bounding back to the floor. About a meter tall, they were made of lime jello except for their wings, limbs, and head. The wings were clear sheets of crystal with red veins spiderwebbed through them. The hind legs were massive, heavily-muscled, and covered in black chitin. The midlegs were thinner, green, hairy, and had three-fingered hands on the end. The forelegs had been replaced with black chitin scythes. The head was horrible yet anatomically accurate for a grasshopper: antennae, compound eyes, mandibles, with more chitinous armor over everything else.

Most of them had some scrap of clothing. I saw several coolie hats with holes for the antennae, a headband with a Japanese flag, wristbands, and multiple pairs of grey leg warmers. All of the clothes had writing on them in various Asian scripts.

Worst of all, most of them had something floating inside their translucent gelatinous bodies. A severed human head, a torn-off arm with tendrils of meat still attached, a crushed rat, other stuff that I knew I would see added to my already overcrowded nightmares. I felt my gorge rising and fought it back down.

"Well, that's not disturbing at all," Carl said flatly.

"Eeeww! Carl, those are disgusting!" Donut said. "I just finished getting clean and brushed, I refuse to get icky bug jello all over me!"

"Wa-chaw!" one of the grasshoppers cried, leaping towards us with one leg extended in a karate kick.

Carl stood there, perfectly calm and seeming mildly curious. The moment the grasshopper's foot passed the threshold of the saferoom the creature disappeared with a bamf!, teleported elsewhere by the dungeon's protective mechanisms.

Mongo was squawking in excitement and bouncing up and down, snapping his teeth towards the grasshoppers and revelling in the sparks that shot out of his enchanted tooth caps.

"Take the pebble from my claw, dude!" said one of the other mobs, extending its left scythe towards us.

"Become one with the universe...in mah belly!" shouted another.

I leaned around Carl so I could get a look at the grasshoppers' properties.

Kung Fu Kickada. Level 19.

The Kung Fu Kickada is like a regular cicada except it watched way too much Kung Fu Theater as a larva. Oh, and it had a major teleportation accident and got merged with one of those basement-dwelling mouth-breathers who thinks ninja stars are sooper kewl. Now it lives to roam the world and kick crawler keister. Good luck.

"I don't think the dungeon designers did their research," I said. "Those headbands and stuff are all over the place. I see Japanese, Chinese...I'm pretty sure that one is Korean. Is that Thai?" I pointed at a Kickada that was currently clinging to the wall a few meters down from us.

"Not our biggest problem right now," Carl grunted. He bent slightly forward and craned his neck, trying to see up without sticking his head out the door. "You said there were two right in front of the door. I think they might be right above it instead."

"Oh." Hazards of a two-dimensional map. "Sorry. I didn't mean to...I mean..."

"S'okay," he said, straightening up. "I'm glad you said something or I would have walked out there and gotten my head cut off. Those scythes are no joke."

"Carl, just throw a bomb and close the door," Donut demanded. "I refuse to get icky."

Mongo squonked in loud protest at this idea. The giant murder chicken was way too excited about the opportunity to murder.

"Works for me," Carl said, ignoring Mongo in favor of pulling a boomjug out of thin air.

"Actually, hold on," I said. "I want to test something out. And I think we should capture one of them." These guys were six levels below me. They would make for a great test run of my new combat abilities.

"You want to cap—" Carl stopped mid-word and cocked his head. "Actually, yeah. That's a good idea. There's a couple things I want to try. Let's see if we can get two or three."

"Carl! They look dangerous!"

"It's okay, Donut," I said. "You and Mongo should stay back. You guys aren't good at non-lethal combat." Okay, time to be Birgit. Be Birgit, be Birgit. Strong, courageous. I could do this. Sound impressive, Katia. Sound impressive. You need the views. "For now, it's time for...Battle Body!"

I activated the first of the three forms that I had pre-set at the makeup table. I could shift between all of them quickly and without pain, so it was only a second or two before I was ready.

Carl stared at my new form. "What. The. Fuck."

I grinned, and this time it came easily. "You like?" I spread my arms and twirled around to show all sides.

My Battle Body was the same overexaggerated superheroine I'd been wearing, except I had swapped the 'leather clothes' for a form-fitting sheath of mirror-finish steel. I was slightly shorter so that I could use the freed-up mass to cover most of my body in five-centimeter barbed spikes. My arms were three meters long and had narrowed into wrist-thick whips. They ended in massive scorpion-tail spikes—in truth, it was just my regular hand with the fingers and thumb pressed together at a point, the whole thing sheathed in three centimeters of heavy dwarf steel and the tip sharpened. Still, it had a lovely threatening vibe to it. I had added heavy armor to my head and neck, doing my best to balance between attractiveness for the views and thickness for the survivability. I kept the purple mohawk, although now it was a single blade of razor-sharp and super-dense dwarf metal instead of a series of thin wires. It looked cool and it made a decent weapon.

"Excuse me," Donut said, incredulous. "Did you say 'Battle Body'?"

I started to cringe in embarrassment but forced myself to stand straight. "Yes? I thought it sounded cool. You've been saying that I need to get more interesting."

"So that's what this is all about," Carl said, gesturing to my new form. "With the boobs and the cursing and the...everything?"

I couldn't help but cringe at that one. "Yes? I thought that, maybe..."

He shook his head ruefully. "Goddamnit, Donut. I told you to let her be herself."

"It's a good start, honey," Donut said comfortingly. "Really. A little over the top, but we can work on it. First thing: 'Battle Body'? No."

"How about 'Battle Form'? I thought it might make a good catchphrase."

"Guys, could we do this later?" Carl said.

"Hey, sweet thang!" one of the Kickadas called to me. "Come and sit on my face, hur hur!"

I turned and glared.

"That one?" I hissed. "We do not capture that one." I lashed my right arm forward, flicking my scorpion fist out like the popper on a whip. It crashed through the bastard's face in a spray of oily black blood. At the same time I swung my left arm up and around so that it hit the wall directly over the doorway. Something went crunch and a Kickada body hit the floor with a thud. I pulled my arm back and charged.