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In the quad, the newly monstrous Vulpimancer finished its roar. The psychic wave receded, leaving behind a ringing silence and a deep, visceral dread in every human heart. It lowered its head. Five blue-burning eyes and one blazing white orb scanned the scene. Its gaze swept over the retreating knights, over Valerius, over the humans holding Mikasa and Armin, over the unconscious Hannes.
And over the small, orange-furred form of Savage, who was finally struggling free of the dead, sparking net.
The beast's gaze held no recognition of the cub, of the attempted friendship. There was only the glare of a supreme predator looking at another creature in its territory. And it was hungry.
Savage scrambled to his feet, his fur singed in patches from the net, one side badly burned and matted from the creature's earlier superheated touch. Terror, cold and sharp, cut through Eren's mind. This wasn't the scared animal anymore. This was something else. Whatever thing that was in its chest, it was in control now, or the beast's instincts had been pushed so far past breaking that only feral survival remained.
<
The response was a psychic snarl, a wall of negation. <
It took a step forward. The ground trembled. It was focused on the closest concentration of "two-legs"—Mikasa, Armin, and the knights holding them.
Savage leaped, not to attack, but to intercept, to place himself in the way again.
NO!
The fight was a brutal, hopeless blur.
The mutated Vulpimancer was a phantom of pain and fury, its form flickering in and out of his senses. One moment it was a roaring corona of distorted sound and heat, the next it was nothing but a vacuum of silence before rematerializing with a bone-jarring impact.
He'd tried to hold his ground, to project a sense of calm. It was a fool's hope.
A large clawed swipe he barely dodged tore a deep furrow in the earth where his head had been. The force of the passing blow, trailing superheated air, whipped against his fur, singing it. He tried to counter, lunging for a leg, but his jaws closed on empty air as the creature phased, becoming intangible smoke.
Where is it?!
His head whipped around, sonic senses straining, painting the world in frantic, swirling colors of heat and vibration. The silence was more terrifying than the roar.
A low, guttural growl sounded directly behind him.
He spun, but too late.
It materialized not as a whole, but in parts; a massive, clawed paw first, solidifying out of the night air to slam into his side. The air left his lungs in a choked yelp. A second paw, then the full, terrifying bulk of it, the five good eyes burning like malevolent blue stars.
It was on him. Its weight, immense and crushing, pinned him to the scorched forest floor. The stink of ozone and burnt fur filled his nostrils. He thrashed, a frantic, panicked animal, but he was utterly overpowered. This was an adult, driven by a parasitic reactor, and he was just a juvenile. Its jaws, dripping with saliva that sizzled on the ground, opened wide, descending towards his exposed throat.
This was it. The plan had failed. Armin's hope for understanding was ash. He was going to die here, torn apart and burned, and the Omnitrix would be lost (Reference back to chapter 21!)
No. NO!
With a final, desperate heave, Savage managed to get his hind legs under the beast's belly and pushed with all his might. The Vulpimancer shifted, just enough for Savage to twist his head away. The snapping jaws closed on the thick fur and muscle of his shoulder instead of his neck. Agony, white-hot and searing, lanced through him as teeth like heated nails pierced his hide. He howled.
'I can't bite! It burns!!! I can't out-muscle it! I need... I need to get away! I need...'
A dark, hysterical thought flashed through the pain: I wish Phantom was in here! At least he could match this phasing madness!
The Omnitrix on his wrist, hidden beneath his fur, began to glow. The fight, the extreme stress, the desperate need for a different solution; it was triggering the failsafe. The dial began to rotate autonomously, symbols flashing past too fast to see.
Hannes, groggy and with a pounding head, finally pushed himself up onto his elbows. He saw the titanic flaming beast. He saw the smaller orange one pinned beneath it, being savaged. And he saw Mikasa, held back by a knight but straining with every fiber of her being to launch herself into that inferno.
"Mikasa, no!" Hannes croaked, but his voice was lost in the roar of the flames now spreading from the Vulpimancer's footsteps. The forest around the quad's edge was beginning to catch, smoke billowing into the night sky.
Savage was losing consciousness. The heat was unbearable. The pain was everywhere. His vision, already based on sound and scent, was fading into a grey static. The Omnitrix's glow became a green fire on his wrist, outshining the burning trees.
The Vulpimancer reared back for another bite, its maw a pit of glowing heat and sharp shadows.
The green light erupted, consuming Savage's form.
The Vulpimancer bit down on empty air as the orange-furred body beneath it dissolved into emerald energy. The energy didn't scatter. It coalesced, shrinking, reshaping, rising from the ground.
Where Savage's sturdy, grounded form had been crushed beneath the Vulpimancer's superheated weight, now something entirely new erupted in a corona of green light. Eren's consciousness, screaming in pain and trapped, was suddenly unbound.
It was a sleek, aerodynamic, and utterly alien. A humanoid form covered in smooth, red and black bio-armor, like a living ray fish. Its head was a streamlined helmet with a sharp, fin-like crest and a dark visor. From its shoulders unfolded two vast, powerful wings that seemed to be made of folded, organic yet brittle metal, and a long, elegant tail ended in an arrowhead tip. In its chest, a glowing green symbol; the Omnitrix emblem; pulsed with steady light.
For a dizzying second, Eren didn't understand. The crushing pressure was still there. He was… lighter? Yet thrummed with latent power.
The Vulpimancer, jaws still snapped shut on where his throat had been, now found its muzzle pressed against hard, smooth leathery skin. It recoiled, confused, its five eyes blazing at this new, birdy thing that had replaced the orange-furred cub. Its heat aura washed over the young Aerophibian, however unlike with Savage, the creature's thermal aura was little more than a strong uncomfortable breeze.
"Get OFF!" The thought was pure, panicked instinct. And his new body responded.
A searing vertigo lanced from his forehead—no, from new sensory organs around his visor. Twin beams of concentrated neuro-energy, vibrant green and crackling with power, screamed from his eyes and struck the Vulpimancer point-blank in the chest.
ZRAK-KOOM!
The sound was less an explosion and more a violent disruption. The neuroshock blast didn't burn; it overloaded. It hit the Vulpimancer's central nervous system and, more critically, the unstable Xerxathi parasite fused to its spine.
The beast's roar choked into a gurgle of pure systemic shock. Its glowing sigils stuttered erratically. The intense heat radiating from its body flickered and died momentarily as the parasite, the source of its power and pain, shorted out. It wasn't a fatal blow, but a catastrophic reset. The Vulpimancer was thrown backward, crashing into the burning undergrowth, steam and smoke rising from the point of impact.
Eren stumbled as he got up, his new three-digit legs unused to bearing weight. He looked down at his claws, then at the reflective surface of a nearby puddle of spilled water, lit by flames. A streamlined, alien face with a sharp crest and a blank visor stared back. A voice that wasn't his, a filtered, resonant hum, had just echoed his command.
"A new form…?" The wonder was profound, dizzying.
It lasted two seconds.
The Vulpimancer writhed on the ground, not in rage, but in abject, primal terror. The parasite within it wasn't just damaged; it was screaming. The psychic echo wasn't directed, but it bled out; a pulse of pure, survivalist panic that anyone sensitive could feel:
RUN. RUN. DANGER. NEW PREDATOR. RUNRUNRUN!
The Vulpimancer's animal brain, already fractured, latched onto this final command. With a last, whimpering shudder, it scrambled to its feet. Its eyes held no more hate, no more confusion; only the white-rimmed panic of a prey animal that has seen the hawk's shadow. It turned, and with a burst of its remaining strength, it fled, crashing through the burning forest, leaving a trail of scattered embers and terrified energy in its wake. It was no longer a hunter. It was a wounded, terrified thing, running on the last command its parasitic heart would give.
The Knights, who had kept a safe distance away on higher ground, watched in stunned silence. "What should we do?" one asked, voice trembling as the fire roared louder.
Valerius watched the Vulpimancer vanish into the wall of fire and smoke. He observed the new, winged creature clumsily finding its footing. He closed his single eye, weighing fanaticism against pragmatism. The purge of the cadets was largely complete, but this mission was still a failure at large, as they aren't able to apprehend the root itself. Too many variables, too much interference. The blights were escaping, the Scouts were here, and the fire would consume evidence... but they had also discovered this shapeshifter's nature and had its symbol. The scene was becoming a deathtrap.
He opened his eye. "We retreat.", he decided, his voice steady despite the defeat. "Regroup. This is not the end."
"But our comrades' dead bodies—" another protested.
Valerius didn't look at the bodies. "The fire will purify what remains. We leave. Now." His order was final, cold. The mission's objective had shifted. They had new, more valuable prey to understand.
As the Knights began their disciplined withdrawal, the Silent Knight paused. His cracked mask turned toward the group, most specifically, the black haired girl. That single, red glowing eye behind the porcelain lingered on her for a beat too long—an unnerving, silent study. Then, as he turned to follow Valerius, a small, leather-bound book slipped from a hidden pouch on his belt, tumbling to the charred earth.
He didn't notice.
Hange, having managed to haul a groaning but alive Moblit over her shoulders, saw the retreat from her position. Are they doing what she thinks they're doing…??? After the shit they had done?!
Over her dead body would she let these monsters go scott free!
With a surge of furious energy, she fired her anchors, swinging in a wide, intercepting arc that brought her crashing down in the Knights' path, Moblit dangling precariously.
"Leaving so soon?" she called out, her voice sing-song with manic rage. "The party's just getting hot! Or is the guest list not to your fanatical liking?"
She couldn't mount a full attack burdened as she was, but she was a whirlwind of spite. A deft kick to a Knight's knee here, a jab with her elbow there, sending two stumbling.
"Stay! I have questions! Starting with what the hell that thing was! And why you think human lives are so expendible!"
The Knights, under orders to retreat, didn't engage. They pushed past, a wall of armored indifference. The Silent Knight, now several paces ahead, finally realized his book was missing. His head snapped back. He saw it—a small, dark rectangle on the ground, the edges already beginning to curl and blacken as the hungry flames licked closer. He saw Hange, eyes wide behind cracked glasses, following his gaze to the book.
He took one step toward it.
Hange dropped Moblit as gently as she could and lunged, not for the Knight, but to place herself between him and the book, a mad scientist defending a puzzle. "Oho? Losing something important?"
The fire chose that moment to surge, a burning branch crashing down between them with a roar of sparks. The Silent Knight stared; at the book, at the flames, at the unhinged Scout blocking his path. The calculus of retrieval versus survival clicked. With one last, unreadable glance, he turned and melted into the smoke after his brethren, gone.
"COME BACK, YOU COWARDLY BASTARDS!" Hange screamed after them, her voice raw. Then the crackle of the inferno registered. Mike. The cadets. She grabbed Moblit again with a groan. "Hang on, assistant! We're not done tonight!" Her ODM gear fired, carrying them both back toward the blaze.
_____________________
Back at the clearing, Eren shielded Armin, Mikasa and Hannes from a massive, burning branch that groaned and fell. The burning timber shattered against his carapace, exploding into a shower of sparks and splinters that hissed and died against his heat-resistant hide. He stood firm, unscathed.
'I have to follow it.' Eren thought desperately, looking into the fire-streaked darkness where the Vulpimancer had vanished.
'But I can't leave them here. The fire...'
A sudden, reckless idea struck him. He looked at his powerful wings, at his streamlined body. Sure it's not as familiar as Buzzrot's placement for wings, these are sticking out of his armpits…but it would do.
'Wait a minute, I can fly. I can get them out fast.'
"Hold on!" his filtered voice buzzed, the command more confident than he felt. Before Armin or Mikasa could protest, the young aerophibian swooped low. He tried to scoop Armin up with one leg and grab Hannes with the other, his long tail hooking toward Mikasa. "I'll fly us—WHOA!"
The theory was sound. The execution was a disaster.
An Aerophibian's body was built for speed and laser-precise aerial combat, not for delicate passenger retrieval (I know jetray can carry a 6 meter humungousaur but Albedo in that episode use his talons, definitely not his tail, think of jetray as a bird…a space bird). Without his tail for balance, his balance got thrown off by the uneven weight distribution. As he tried to lift off, his wings beat too hard, too fast. He shot upward at a violent, uncontrolled angle, spinning slightly.
Armin yelped, nearly slipping from his grasp. Hannes groaned as his injured head whipped around. Mikasa, who had instinctively grabbed his tail, was swung like a pendulum.
"Eren—TREE!" Armin screamed.
A thick, burning oak limb loomed directly in their chaotic flight path. Eren's visored eyes widened. He tried to bank, but his inexperience with the form, combined with the struggling weight in his arms, made the movement jerky and overcorrected.
THWUMP-CRACK-SNAP!
They didn't hit the trunk head-on. Instead, Eren's left wing clipped the massive branch at full, clumsy force. The branch, already weakened by fire, exploded into flaming shrapnel that pinged harmlessly off his armor. The impact, however, sent them into a wild, spinning tumble.
The aerophibian lost his grip. Armin, Hannes, and Mikasa were thrown clear, landing in a relatively soft but undignified heap of limbs in a patch of wet, muddy earth beside a creek bed, mercifully away from the immediate flames.
Eren himself cartwheeled through the air for a dizzying moment before crash-landing a few yards away, skidding on his back and sending up a spray of mud and embers. He lay there for a second, the world spinning for some seconds.
Silence, save for the roar of the fire. Then a groan from the pile.
"...Are we... still alive?" Hannes mumbled into the mud.
Armin pushed himself up, spitting out dirt. He looked from the smoldering forest to where Eren was slowly getting to his feet, then back at the retreating silhouette of the Vulpimancer, now almost lost to the smoke.
Mikasa was already up, eyes scanning Eren's new form for injury. "You... tried to carry us."
The alien turned 10 year old shook his head, the motion still alien. The filtered voice that emerged was laced with frustrated embarrassment and dawning clarity. "I... can't. Not like this. Not yet." He looked at his claws, then at the blazing path ahead. "The fire's cutting off the path. I could fly through it... you can't."
Hannes, wiping mud from his face, stared at the inferno, then at Jetray's massive wings. Hannes, you are the damn grown up here, come one. Think, think, thiiink-!
A spark of desperate, Garrison-veteran cunning lit in his bloodshot eyes. "Wait... Eren, before help arrives to quench this mess, we'll be cooked. Unless..." He pointed at the wings. "Can you clear us a path? Not by carrying us—by moving the air."
Eren blinked behind his visor. Move the air? He looked at his wings, feeling the powerful muscles in his back, the broad surface area. The idea clicked. He didn't need to be graceful; he just needed to be strong.
"Stand back!" he buzzed. He planted his feet, faced the wall of fire blocking their retreat, and with a deep, resonating hum from his core, he brought his wings down in a single, thunderous WHUMP.
The force was a concussive blast of air that ripped through the clearing. Dirt, debris, and—critically; a wide swath of the advancing flames were shoved backward. The fire didn't go out, but it was beaten down, the oxygen stolen from its front line, creating a temporary, charred corridor through the burning undergrowth.
"Go, go, go!" Hannes yelled, shoving Armin and Mikasa forward.
They sprinted through the scorched, steaming but passable gap, the young aerophibian hovering above them, using smaller wingbeats to keep the embers at bay. They reached a relatively safe, rocky outcrop overlooking the burning valley, gasping.
The entire training grounds was now nearly a lake of fire, and distant, panicked horns from the Garrison outpost finally sounded…far too late.
Hannes bent over, hands on his knees, gasping. Then he looked back at the spreading catastrophe, a wild grim idea long since solidified. He turned to Eren, who had landed beside them, his wings still humming with residual energy.
"Alright, kid... new question," Hannes said, his voice gravelly with smoke and a strange, focused intensity. "That light thing you shot at that beast—can it start a fire?"
Eren's visored head tilted in pure bewilderment. The filtered voice was flat with confusion. " Start a fire?! I just got this guy! Yes-No-Maybe-?! How is more fire helping?! The whole forest is burning!"
Even Armin looked confused. "Hannes, the principle of fighting fire with fire is for controlled backburns, but without proper containment, you'd just create a second, uncontrolled—"
"Listen, kid," Hannes interrupted, a strange, grim certainty in his eyes. "Years back, before you were born, way out near the foothills of Wall Maria. Dry season. Lightning strike. A blaze started bigger than anything you'd ever seen, heading straight for a grain depot that fed half the southern district. The Garrison was useless, just dumping buckets. But an old MP captain, a real bastard but sharp as a tack, he did something mad." Hannes pointed a shaking finger at the fire below.
"He set a bigger, faster fire right in its path. Burned out all the fuel before the main blaze could get there. Created a firebreak out of ash. Saved the depot. Lost a lot of woodland, but saved the food."
He met Eren's unseen gaze. "The point is, new fire eats the old fire's lunch if you do it right. We need to starve this one. But to do that... we need a big burn, right there," he pointed to a wide, rocky ridge that acted as a natural firebreak on one side of the valley, "before it jumps that ridge and heads for the farmsteads. And before we can even think about that..." He looked meaningfully toward the distant, panicked screams still echoing from the burning barracks area. "...there are still people in there."
The kids stared at him, stunned. The usually drunken, defeatist Hannes was strategizing like a field commander.
"...You're smarter than you look," Eren's filtered voice admitted, a note of surprised respect in the hum.
Hannes managed a weary, pained smirk. "What, you think Armin's the only one with brains around here? I pay attention. Sometimes." The smirk faded. He looked from the apocalyptic scene below to the dark, vulnerable forest stretching toward distant farmsteads and the wall itself.
"And before that," Hannes said, his voice dropping with urgency, "there are still people in that mess. Scouts. Cadets. We need to find them, get them to high ground. And that purple bastard..." He pointed a trembling finger toward the north, where a fresh column of smoke was beginning to rise from a new location, marching in a terrified, straight line away from them. "It's still out there, and it's a walking furnace. It's not just running—iit's running through dry timber. It could be lighting new fires with every panicked step. We need to get whoever's left out, then cut this blaze off at the knees before it becomes a wall of flame that eats the whole territory."
He looked at Eren's alien form, then at the two determined children beside him. The plan was insane. But it was the only one they had. It was no longer just about escape. It was triage, rescue, and containment.
"Alright, team," Hannes said, straightening up with a wince. "New priority one: rescue. Priority two: controlled arson. Let's move."
Eren straightened, the bewilderment replaced by a grim sense of purpose. "Tell me where," the filtered voice stated, no longer a question.
Alien countdown: Heatblast (Inferno), Wildmutt (Savage), Fourarms (Titanfist), Ghostfreak (Phantom), Diamondhead (Obsidian), Greymatter (Cerebrus), Eyeguy (???), Stinkfly (Buzzrot), XLR8 (Blitz), Upgrade (Overhaul), Ripjaws (Leviathan), Jetray (???) .
Chapter 27-31 are already available on Patreon.com/Weeb Fanthom.