Cassie’s look grew even more suspicious. “That sounds like a huge overreaction.”

  I held up a hand and shook my head. “Hold on, hear me out.”

  “Fine.”

  “Okay. So, I’ve been thinking about this for a bit actually. Ever since my Changing started, my Fey form has been basically useless, so I’ve been thinking of making like a, I don’t know, a battle form. However, if I do it right I could also make it humanoid enough to just walk around in. I get to be kind of anonymous, I get to practice doing way more extensive changes and I can be productive. It’s a win-win for me and… me.”

  My words came quickly. I may have only just thought of it, but I liked this idea. I didn’t tell Cassie, but I was hoping it would be another step on getting over my reticence about more inhuman changes too. I could see the advantages to being able to step outside of those boundaries, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  Cassie gave me a strange look. “Okay, that was a lot. Why do you need to be anonymous?”

  I shrugged. “It’s… I don’t know, it’s nice. The disconnect between me and my actions, I guess.”

  “Good. Why do you need to make different changes?” She asked.

  “Well, I’m changing more and more each day, so I shou- Wait a minute, I know this tactic. I’ve used this on you!”

  Cassie grinned. “Yes you have. It’s working, isn’t it? You’re thinking about your decisions now, right?”

  I sighed. “Yeah. I still want to do it though.”

  “Really?” Cassie asked, like she was surprised. “I mean, you’ve been getting a bit more impulsive recently, but this feels like a lot.”

  “Why?” I challenged. “Whatever we come up with here I can just change back if it’s too much.”

  “True,” Cassie conceded, falling quiet for a moment. “You really need this, huh?”

  “I do,” I said softly. I felt strangely driven about this. I really like the idea of having a whole second template besides Lia Prime, especially since recent events had proven that I couldn’t rely on that to be consistent.

  Cassie stood. “Well, I guess we don’t have anything to do tomorrow. Let’s get started in a moment, I just have one more question.”

  I waved my hand for her to continue. “Go on.”

  “What, uh. What do you need me for, exactly? I mean, you’ve been doing fine so far.” She looked at the floor as she asked, as though she was embarrassed.

  “Well, this is my body. If we do this right, I’ll probably be using it quite a lot. I can do practical stuff, but you know if I do this myself it’s just gonna be plain white, right?”

  Cassie grinned. “Ah, I see. You wanted to look good, so you came to your number one fan. Got it.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Let’s get going, we’ve only got all night.”

  --------------------------------------

  The night passed remarkably quickly, with our creative process flowing surprisingly well. There were a few things we disagreed over, but for the most part we just vetoed depending on what it affected. Cassie said I needed four arms, but I said I didn’t even know how to do that yet. I said I didn’t need a stand in for hair, Cassie overruled me without even explaining herself.

  The first hour or so was just me, because Cassie had run out to get as many books about large insects and people as possible while I figured out the stuff that she had no sway over, which was mostly just the internal stuff.

  By the time she had returned and spread out a small carpet of paper and books between us I was ready to move on to the outside. She had also gotten a full-length mirror so that I got to actually see what I was doing, rather than just feel my way around. I decided that it was better not to ask where she got it from.

  After a few more minor arguments over detail, I was pretty happy with my part. However, Cassie had been flipping between three different designs. She was absolutely over the moon when I reminded her I could just make all of them depending on a situation. She was less happy when I mentioned I would probably be changing little things on the fly, but you win some you lose some.

  By the time the sun rose on our project we were exhausted but satisfied. Well, I was exhausted. Cassie had fallen asleep almost half an hour before hand, so I assumed she was as well.

  As I stood before the full-length mirror, I admired myself with same pride I imagined an artisan would feel when staring upon a sculpture.

  We had settled very early on insects, for several reasons. Firstly, I already had multiple different things done for an insect-human hybrid body type. Secondly, I liked the aesthetic and it gave Cassie options, and finally because I knew the most about how to construct a working body out of insect inspired parts.

  My body overall was a fairly similar shape to before, albeit a bit leaner and a few inches taller. My legs had remained fairly humanoid, although they came in chitinous segments now rather than smooth skin. I also added in one function from my Fey form: namely, the ability for my limbs to bend in either direction. It was in place in my arms too, although I wasn’t entirely sure how often I would make use of it.

  My waist followed a similar pattern of segmented defence, almost a girdle made of chitin, which had been designed in a compromise between manoeuvrability and protection. However, my upper body was where things got much more noticeably inhuman.

  Starting from my neck was a single, thick plate of chitin, which I speculated could stop the swing of a steel sword at least a couple of times in the same exact place. In comparison to my human form my upper body was a bit broader and deeper, to make space for a few back-up organs as well as larger lungs.

  Beneath that plate, starting from about the bottom of where my ribs would be in a human body the chitin split into several segments, interlocking like scales over one another to allow for proper movement while still providing protection. With this system I maintained almost all of my range of motion while being far better defended.

  My shoulders and arms remained very similar to their original chitinous designs, although I had taken the opportunity to reattempt the articulation on my fingers now that I wasn’t distracted. We had ended up going with just slightly sharp tips, since I could shift my claws in fast enough for it not to matter.

  My neck ended up being covered in a very thin layer of chitin, but for the sake of movement it was fairly undefended. My head was arguably the least human part of me, although I was still very proud of how it looked.

  It had taken us both a long time to be satisfied with, for different reasons. Cassie had apparently been going for a look that was both stern and unapproachable, supposedly to intimidate people. I had been consistently failing to make a face defensible in the slightest.

  Eventually, Cassie had the idea of making a ‘mask’ out of chitin for defence and putting a lot of the more vital things underneath it. However, that idea had eventually turned into making the face itself a mask when Cassie decided it looked weird, which I couldn’t help but agree with.

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  However, I couldn’t quite tell how to make a mouth work in this design. Eventually I made most of the structure deeper into my head and had a small slit in the mask that could open to let me talk. However, then both of us had gotten carried away and now I had a mouth that, despite being almost invisible when closed, could open wider than looked even remotely natural to reveal some teeth that were distinctly not insect-inspired.

  I wasn’t really sure when I was going to need to open my mouth wider than half the height of my head, but I ended up keeping it in for the intimidation factor alone.

  Aside from the mouth, the rest of my face was a flat layer of chitin, with my eyes carved into it at a slight slant. My eyes were larger than they had been, and mostly the same. I had actually stolen from cats for my eyes, and although the outside appeared to be a flat colour they actually dilated to let me see much better in the dark.

  That flat outside colour also changed much like my human irises did, which was one of the only points that Cassie had completely refused to budge on, not that I really argued against it. It did mean that my colour changing eyes were more noticeable, though.

  The only other major practical change on the outside was my number of eyes. Since they were larger, and thus easier targets, I had added two smaller eyes just above them. It had actually been pretty easy to figure out how to add them once I figured out the first ones, but positioning them had been much more challenging.

  At first I had intended to have eyes on the back of my head, since that seemed really useful. However in practice it just made me incredibly disoriented, to the extent that I could barely walk straight.

  My next idea had been to have my backup eyes somewhere unexpected, so that if I lost my true eyes I could still see. That had ended up with me adding a few eyes to my neck, and while it was better than the ones on the back of my head it had still been baffling to experience, since my brain had been telling me that I was two different heights at once.

  Eventually I settled on just adding two more above them, which Cassie had been suggesting since the start for aesthetics anyway. It wasn’t completely fine, but it was easy enough to adapt to compared to the other two attempts, and having four eyes at once did add something to the look.

  Externally, my part finished there and I had started implementing the internal changes I hadn’t already, like improving this body’s respiration to provide me with a constant flow of oxygen or forming a backup heart for if I was taken by surprise.

  However, Cassie had just begun. She had come up with several designs, but only one had ended up being labelled ‘standard’, so that was what I had gone with.

  Rather than the base white my chitin had been before, I had looked into insects and managed to create something that approximated Cassie’s instructions, ending up with a fairly dark shell that shimmered when it was directly struck with light and turning iridescent. The parts around my joints that had no chitin were darker than my shell, filling in the gaps.

  As well as colours, Cassie had also insisted that I add some additional features that didn’t really serve a purpose except for looks. For example, she did her level best to get me to just straight up keep my hair as it was. However, that looked really weird with all of the chitin, so I adapted it slightly.

  Rather than keratin, my hair was more of a fuzzy mane, connected directly to my shell rather than free-flowing like human hair. It piled up more around the top and back of my head, but it ran a decent way down my back too. In the spirit of decoration, I added a little bit to some of my joints too, which I ended up keeping.

  This fuzz meant that it wouldn’t get in the way while I moved, but it still kind of looked like hair. The fuzz itself was a similar colour to my chitin, although it was a little paler and it didn’t shimmer.

  Overall, I was exceptionally happy with my new form. It had taken rather a lot of work, but I had a feeling that I was going to get a lot of use out of it. After it was done, we had put together a little test to figure out the concrete bonuses that I actually got from this more battle-ready form.

  Aside from the obvious additions to defence provided by basically being a walking suit of surprisingly light armour, it turned out that having hydraulic muscles meant that I was a little stronger than before, at least in bursts.

  I also had more endurance, because of the aforementioned changes to my respiratory system, which supplemented my lungs with small spiracles to allow oxygen to travel directly to several more important body parts. Aside from that and the second heart, I made sure to throw in a few other redundancies and small features that seemed useful, like sound-absorbing pads on my feet.

  Finally, Cassie pointed out that I was going to be pretty inexpressive in this form. After all, my mouth was hidden away, I didn’t need to blink anymore thanks to a little covering over my eyes and I had no brows to furrow. Thanks to the more prominent colour changes in my eyes I didn’t need a full suite of expressions, but not being able to actively emote would be strange.

  In the end, we ended up using sound. It wasn’t too hard to grant myself a wider range of sounds to use in expressing myself, ranging from a deep rumbling sound that sent vibrations all the way through my shell to a straight up hiss.

  The hiss specifically I was very proud of, since I had figured out how to layer the sound using my illusion magic. It was the first proper sound I had managed with my illusions, which was a huge step that I had completely stumbled into.

  My mistake was that I had been doing my best to make new sounds with my illusions, when I should have been mimicking them. It was strange, but I just couldn’t get anything original to work. It was a limitation to be sure, but I could work around it.

  I had really wanted to see if I could mimic some kind of venom, but I simply couldn’t find any information on it in the various books and diagrams that Cassie had found. Despite a certain degree of biological impossibility, my magic could only circumvent logic so much, and if I didn’t have anything to work off then there wasn’t much I could do.

  As I gave myself a final admiring glance in the mirror I felt like I understood what Almon had told me about Changing a little better. I couldn’t imagine doing this a year ago, when I had struggled to shift surface features. Hells, before I got into Perch I would have been amazed at any individual part of this. I had definitely Changed, just in a different way to most.

  I quickly shifted back to human as a test, remembering to change my skin back to normal too. A big part of the new form was to have a ‘weird’ look to keep all of the strange things to, so I needed to make sure my human form was normal, or at least as close to normal as I could get these days.

  After a moment I shifted back again, admiring the smoothness of the change. I knew this form better than any other, inside and out. As a consequence it barely took any effort to change into, even with the sheer magnitude of the shift.

  I had decided to stay like this for a bit. Really, this form was mainly for combat and times I wanted to be anonymous, but I wanted to revel in it for a bit, as well as get used to a couple of the quirks that came with it.

  I quickly got dressed again, the plain leathers a little incongruous with my iridescent shell. They weren’t perfectly fitted for this form, but with the chitin making most physical sensations less intense it wasn’t all that uncomfortable either, just a little tight in a few areas.

  I was a little surprised at just how comfortable I was in this new form, although with a bit of thought it made sense. It was custom made to be both effective and beautiful by the two people I trusted most in the world: Cassie and myself. Of course I liked it, as demonstrated by the rumble in my chest.

  To my surprise, I heard a knock on the door. It was a professional knock, short and direct. I wasn’t really sure who it was, considering the sun had barely risen an hour ago, but I figured it was for the best to answer.

  Alright, debut time. Let’s go.

  In a few short strides I reached the door and took a deep breath before reaching for the handle and pulling it open to reveal a wide-eyed Neil holding two cups of something. He looked me up and down, his hand reaching for his sword seemingly on instinct.

  “Seriously, Neil. How many times are you going to reach for that thing over me?” I asked. My voice had a bit of a background hum to it, due to the fact that my mouth didn’t technically open when I talked. I’d needed to make sure that it’s resting position was the same as a human mouth to learn to speak properly, but I was pretty happy with the result.

  Neil took a step back. “...Julie?”

  I hummed in approval and walked into the room, leaving the door open for him. “Quiet, Cass’ is asleep.”

  Neil, clearly somewhat bewildered, stepped hesitantly into the room. “You’re looking… nice?” he tried.

  I chuckled, the sound coming out just a tad deeper than usual. “Thank you. We put a lot of work in.”

  He seemed to relax slightly as he realised that it really was me under all the chitin. He was a very suspicious man, it had to be said. “Dare I ask why you’re… this, now?” He waved a hand at me, keeping his voice low as he glanced at Cassie’s snoozing form on the floor. She had finally stopped snoring, which was nice.

  I shrugged, the movement a little awkward now but still possible. “What, I need a reason to turn into a giant bug person now?”

  “Yes,” he replied completely deadpan.

  “Fine. I thought it would be helpful. You know, in combat.”

  He shook his head, but a rueful smile played across his lips. “You know what? At least you’re keeping busy. Coffee?” He held out one of his cups.

  I took it and discovered that it was warm. “What is it?”

  He gave me a disbelieving look. “You don’t know what coffee is? I know you guys grew up in the middle of nowhere, but come on.”

  “Regardless of your disbelief, I still don’t know what it is,” I emphasised.

  Neil looked at me for a moment. “You’re really hard to read right now.”

  I made another rumble in response, the audio equivalent to a smile. Neil was going to need to learn to read my eyes at some point, but until then he got noises.

  “Sorry, did you just purr??” he asked, bewildered. “What? No. It was a rumble. Honestly, Neil.” I shook my head in mock disapproval.

  “Sure…” he said doubtfully. “Anyway, drink your coffee, it’ll wake you up. You should wake Cassie for this too. There’s been a development.”

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