[u][b]Arkin[/b][/u]
You don’t have hands. You’re not built for climbing. You're able to keep a grip on the ledge of the trapdoor for only a moment before your considerable weight drags you down. Your claws rip right through the carpet and leave scars in the ground before you find yourself holding onto nothing but air and begin plummeting towards your imminent demise. You lose sight of James as the trapdoor promptly shoves him back up and out of your rapidly shrinking view.

You panic as you try to right yourself like a falling cat. You would have made a much better cat. Alas, you are a big dumb dog, and your vision fades to white as you slam into the ground.

...

...Okay, so it wasn’t that much of a fall after all. The room you find yourself in is simply covered from top to bottom in pristine white tiles, a look both clinical and mysterious. The lighting is whacky, as if lit from top to bottom, though you can’t distinguish any obvious light source. The tiles simply look white, and the grid of indents between them seems to form the only shadows within the entire room. Even looking straight down only reveals the faintest of shadows beneath you, as if every tile in the room is a light source, or perhaps that you’ve stumbled into a video game with bad graphics.

You weren’t alone, naturally. There were maybe a dozen of them, all garbed in the same goon costume that you can only describe as ‘eastern disciple’. They encircled you, each assuming some sort of fighting stance, with one in particular standing out in front of you. Where every other outfit was a light gray, his was black. He steps forward, breaking the circle.

“Welcome to the white room. It’s brand-new, and tailor-made to make sure you won’t make it out alive.” He walks back towards the wall and presses his hand on one of the tiles. The tile gets pushed into the wall a bit before sliding out like an SD card. The man gestures you over with a wicked grin, and the circle of goons split up a bit to make way for you. You cautiously walk over to get a better angle on the apparatus that slid out of the compartment and find, to your horror, memories of a DS game that never worked for you because of your human handwriting.

“THAT’S RIGHT! THIS IS A PUZZLE ROOM! AND UNLESS YOU CAN SOLVE MATH PROBLEMS IN PROPER HANDWRITING YOU WILL BE TRAPPED HERE FOREVER! MUHAHAHAHAHA!”

He begins doing his best evil laugh. You just stare at him, unamused. Besides the oversized touch screen and stylus, the device is basically just an emulator for the DS game, Dr. Kawashiro’s brain training. You’ve always hated this game because it didn’t recognize your handwriting. He’s right. As a dog, you’ve got no hope, so you do the wisest thing you can think to do in this situation and jump onto the device. He abruptly stops laughing and looks up at you, meeting your mildly annoyed gaze. About a second later the compartment snaps and you fall to the ground, still on top of the device. You maintain eye contact the whole time.

“ERROR. PUZZLE ROOM CANNOT BE COMPLETED. ALLY PRESENCE DETECTED. UNLOCKING DOORS...”

A set of tiles on both sides of the room swing open, revealing two pathways out. You turn back to the man and give him a smug smile. His eyelid twitches.

“Whatever. Whatever! The puzzle room was plan B in the first place! Men, block the doors! Like I said before, this fight is mine! I’m not like the other goons, wolf. I’ve got powers of my own, and when I defeat you, Dr. Wu will give me the promotion I deserve! Behold, your undoing!”

You step back a bit in apprehension as he puts his hands together. He brings his hand behind him, mirroring several figures in popular media as a glowing blue ball of light appears next to his hands.

It can’t be...

The man doesn’t say it, but you can hear [i]his[/i] voice in your head. [i]’Ka... me...’[/i]

Fuck this! You have a fight or flight reaction. It’s not the first time you’ve had one, but you’re not exactly accustomed to actually fighting people, and it’s hard not to be cognizant of it even amidst your impending vaporization. You default to flight, because for all you know that blue ball in his hands will just explode even if you rip his head off. This is not much different from choosing to fight, because you find that literally ripping a man’s head off is not that hard. You don’t actually rip a man’s head off though. You only rip his arm off. All it takes is one bite and the fountain of blood is enough to get all of them to flee in terror. You slam the door open, but you hear him call out behind you, “Too late!”

The door opens up to the full width of the hallway beyond, and the opposite end has no door handle to grab onto. You’re left with no recourse as the glowing blue ball of light erupts from his hands, flying directly towards your face. You shut your eyes, turn away, and brace yourself for the worst sunburn of your life.

Instead, you get hit by an inflatable rubber ball.

You open your eyes. The glowing blue ball has bounced off you and landed on the floor. You approach it carefully and poke it. It rolls back a bit but otherwise nothing. You press onto it a bit, finding it actually does have a consistency akin to rubber, and watch as it deforms into an oblong shape before springing back up again when you let go. You poke it with a claw, harder this time, and watch as it deflates into a glowing smudge on the ground.

You look the man in the eye, still splattered in the blood of the earlier goon. He laughs awkwardly. Before you make any moves, he abruptly turns to run through the opposite door. You leap across the room in a single go, shutting the door. He backs away, looking towards the other door, but he knows it’s pointless. The rest of his goons are already gone. He pulls out a gun - finally, the first one you’ve seen, but you bat it away before he can even point it at you, throwing it to the corner of the room. If he had it this whole time, why was he fooling around? You approach him slowly, menacingly, as he falls onto his ass and begins having to drag himself backward to get away.

Then, you show him something you haven’t shown anyone before. You transform in front of him, in a blinding flash of light, into your moth form. The big one. Not nearly as big as your wolf form; you’re still not as large as a human, even counting your wings, but he must be scared of insects or something because he starts screaming. You spread your wings and take off, giving him full view of them. You’re not sure why, honestly, but your instincts tell you this is what you want to do in this situation. As you do, he gradually stops moving, continuing to hyperventilate but holding still instead of trying to get away, blankly staring at your wings with wide eyes, like he can’t help himself.

You’re quite amused. You know moths imitate eye patterns to confuse predators but this outcome is completely unrelated and unnaturally effective. You hover closer to him and open your jaw - also an unnatural feature for moths, considering they typically have a proboscis if any mouth at all. Rows of shark-like carnivore teeth glint in the light of the room as they near his face. His breathing gets so heavy and erratic that he breaks whatever intangible hold you have on him to scream before simply passing out, slamming the back of his head on the ground. Ouch.

A golden glow envelops you once more as you achieve yet another new form. As the light subsides, a pair of dark black wings replaces your big reddish-orange-brown ones. Purple and white specks adorn the edges of your wings, with only four stark white crescent moons to break up the deep abyss of black across the rest.

You were mainly playing around with him. You’re not actually going to eat human flesh, but this result is downright impressive. Your ego balloons and abounds as you exult in your prodigious ability to spread terror. You do a mental fist pump. You’d do a physical one, but your legs don’t bend like that. You could try anyway, but it wouldn’t be the same.

You admit you switched to this form just to scare him, because a giant insect is terrifying, but you also did want to take advantage of finally splitting up in order to try unlocking new forms without spilling the beans. Maybe it’s not that big of a deal, but you’re still holding onto the possibility you’re going to need to keep a form ready to rob a bank or something. Minus James, you are homeless, after all.

You idly wonder if you can still hypnotize people in this form. There’s no point to sticking around in the defunct puzzle room, so you fly down one of the hallways, picking the one with a blood trail, staying in your moth form. You may be enormous by moth standards but your main body is still not as big as an actual human, and your outstretched wings are just barely able to maneuver through the hallways that would normally be considered decently large.

Your question is answered as you come across some more goons and they stop to gawk at you. They seem content to just stare at the moons of your wings even as you come within arm’s reach of them. Seeing no need to fight them, you simply land and squeeze by them. They all turn so as not to break eye contact like a certain animate concrete statue, but in reverse. It’s kind of creepy.

As you look back at them with the kind of disgust a celebrity might have for a bunch of stalkers, you realize you should probably stop them from causing any problems for you once you’re out of sight. You head back and affix them all to the wall with webbing. You’re pretty sure you’re past the point where ordinary opponents can give you new forms in this evolutionary line, but you can’t switch to your weird white caterpillar form without breaking your hold on them, and time is probably of the essence in terms of reuniting with James and Arthur.

You continue through the labyrinthine hallways, following the blood trail for lack of better direction until you find yourself in what seems like a medical wing. Each room within that you pass by has a clear view of the beds inside via large windows. It’s mostly empty, and none of the privacy curtains are drawn. You soon hear noise from the one and only room with any human presence, finding some of the goons sitting outside of it. You ignore them as they get caught staring at your wings and peek inside through the window, only to find the goon whose arm you ripped off laying in the bed with a swarm of doctors around him. You peer at him through the window with morbid curiosity. You were originally going to be one of those doctors before you ended up in the mess you’re in currently. You’re not nearly an expert yet, but his alarmingly high heart rate visible on the heart monitor is indicative of hypovolemic shock. You may not have given him the cleanest of amputations, but he should have been fine if he was treated properly to stem the bleeding. They could probably even reattach the arm. The distance between the puzzle room and the medical wing is only a few minutes.

...

You look at the paralyzed goons with suspicion. Even idiots should know that you’re supposed to stem the bleeding with a tourniquet, but in hindsight, the blood trail has remained pretty thick throughout. Arthur is practically a caveman and he knew to cover his wounds in cloth. You turn back to the window and see that his heart has stopped. They’re busting out the defibrillators now.

You get off the windowsill and turn back to the goons, hissing at them briefly before earnestly trying to verbally speak for the first time since you barked out your name for Arthur.

[i][color=d0661e]"҉w҉h҉a҉t҉ ҉d҉i҉d҉ ҉y҉o҉u҉ ҉d҉o҉?҉"҉[/color][/i]

Your voice is scratchy, screechy, and generally unpleasant, like nails on a chalkboard crossed with an elderly chain smoker. You’re irritated, because [i][b]you’re[/b][/i] not to blame for this. Nuh-uh. You haven’t taken the hippocratic oath and you may have been under duress but the situation does not sit right with you. Your enthralled captives seem to want to respond but they don’t seem able to. In fact, they’re still staring at your wings. You sigh in exasperation before webbing them all to the wall and finally transforming back into your wolf form.

“YOU!”

“IT’S BACK!”

“WHAT THE FUCK!”

You growl at them, a futile attempt to get them to shut the fuck up and answer your question. Why are they being so loud anyway? Are they [i]trying[/i] to distract the doctors? Do they not care about their coworker at all? They stayed behind while the others left, so wouldn’t that mean they’re closer than that?

“We didn’t do anything!”

“Yeah! It was you who bit his arm off! Why are you mad at us!?”

“It’s all your fault! You didn’t have to rip his arm off! We don’t even have guns to defend ourselves!”

These guys really love pissing you off, don’t they. You feel yourself edge closer to a precipice that you don’t want to jump off of. You grit your teeth and let your claws dig into the tiled floor. The tile eventually cracks and the three men shut right up as they finally realize how foolish it is to taunt and blame the monster with their lives in its... paws.

Then, you begin to glow again.

A new form, so soon? For what? For why?

Then, the answer hits you. Hard. Like a sack of bricks, along with a ton of other answers you didn’t even ask for. Still, nothing hits as hard as the first brick. The worst brick. It might as well have been a live grenade or a runaway train, because it’s exactly what you don’t want to hear right now.

[i]Unlock condition:[/i] Take the life of a human.

Why is this happening? Another brick. Because you’ve achieved a [i]humanoid form.[/i]

You’re flooded with information, information you’ve been dying to know. Woefully incomplete information. Not enough information, and not what you want to know most, but whether you like it or not, you now know.

[hider=Forms][list][*]Petit Caterpillar - A simple caterpillar whose only redeeming quality is its ability to produce and fire sticky webbing.
[list][*]???
[i]Unlock condition:[/i] Defeat a worthy foe while in Petit Caterpillar form.
[*]Oculus Caterpillar - A stronger, if still rather incapable Caterpillar form. It is the size of a large cat or medium-sized dog and has eye-like rings lining the side of its body. Staring into the rings for too long can cause dizziness, though it still mostly relies on its sticky webbing to fight. Has carnivorous fangs and can digest most anything.
[i]Unlock condition:[/i] While in the Petit Caterpillar form, meet the gaze of a relevant predator, then survive for 24 hours without changing forms.
[list][*]Oculus Moth - A somewhat large moth with a wingspan of 3 meters. Its wings are an amber color, with bluish eye-like patterns in four different spots. Staring into the spots for too long can cause dizziness and render victims in a trance-like state until line of sight is broken. Despite becoming a moth, it retains its mouth, lacking a proboscis, and keeps the carnivorous fangs of its previous form.
[i]Unlock condition:[/i] Defeat a worthy foe while in Oculus Caterpillar form.
[list][*]Luna Moth - A somewhat large moth with a wingspan of 3.5 meters. Its wings are pitch black, showing very little glare. The wing tips are lined with purple specks with white centers, though the main wing is simply black, with only four shiny white crescent moons on them. Gazing directly upon the moons, even in motion, can hypnotize victims, rendering them unable to move or act even as they remain cognizant of their surroundings. Maintains the mouth and fangs of its previous form.
[i]Unlock condition:[/i] Defeat a worthy foe while in Oculus Moth form, on the night of a full moon
[list][*]Mothman - A humanoid monster covered from head to toe in bluish-black hair, with enormous feathery wings made up of a chitin-like material. Its facial features are indistinguishable, obscured by its hair, save for its enormous hypnotic eyes that seem to glow red, visible even in complete darkness. Meeting its gaze or otherwise staring directly into its eyes will stall the mind, hypnotizing victims and rendering them unable to look away or take other actions as an eternity passes in an instant for them. Once eye contact is broken, it can leave the victims with feelings of terror, dread, and/or paranoia for hours, assuming the psychological trauma of the encounter doesn't do that first.
[i]Unlock condition:[/i] Take the life of a human. (any form)
[i]Bonus effect:[/i] Improves the ability to hypnotize victims with the Oculus Caterpillar, Oculus Moth, and Luna Moth forms, up to the standard of the Mothman form.
[/list][/list][/list]
[*]Silk Caterpillar - A caterpillar adorned in snowy white hair. It is the size of a large cat or medium-sized dog and possesses improved silk spinning capability. It generally lacks means of direct attack, though its hair makes for surprisingly effective armor. Can digest most anything.
[i]Unlock condition:[/i] Capture prey within silk and keep them restrained for 24 hours. (any form)
[i]Bonus effect:[/i] Slightly improves the strength and quality of silk for all forms that produce it.
[list][*]???
[i]Unlock condition:[/i] Defeat a worthy foe while in Silk Caterpillar form.[/list][/list][/list]
[list][*]Wolf Cub - A small, adolescent wolf. Possesses light brown fur.
[list][*]Wolf - An adult wolf with brown fur.
[i]Unlock condition:[/i] Defeat a worthy foe while in Wolf Cub form.
[list][*]Dire Wolf - A large wolf roughly the size of an adult horse. Fur has darkened, becoming a mixture of black and brown, and its teeth and claws are sharper than that of an average wolf. Its healing capability is slightly improved relative to a normal wolf, allowing it to bounce back a bit quicker from wounds.
[i]Unlock condition:[/i] Defeat a worthy foe while in Wolf form.
[list][*]???
[i]Unlock condition:[/i] Defeat a worthy foe while in Dire Wolf form, on the night of a full moon.[/list][/list][/list][/list][/hider]
You feel like you need to sit down.

You do so. On the bench the goons were sitting on before now, in fact.

The goons seem to have shut up at the sight of you, and the doctors haven’t come to investigate, so either they’re committed to their jobs or the operating rooms are soundproof.

You look down at yourself. You take in the sight of the bluish-black hair covering your hands completely. You should be ecstatic that you have a humanoid form now. It’s not exactly what you wanted, but it’s a step closer.

It’s also a dead end, or so your newfound knowledge tells you. You can’t evolve again from your Mothman form, and new branches basically require you to fumble around in the dark looking for them.

You intuit that you have a newfound control over the process of unlocking new forms. You’re no longer required to transform into them immediately, or do so in such a flashy and superfluous light show. Cold comfort, you suppose.

You’re not the same person you used to be. You have blood on your hands, even after transforming the literal blood off of your wolf form. The guy in the hospital bed is young, like you. You don’t deserve being thrust into this situation and neither does he. The trite saying goes that hurt people hurt people, but that doesn’t make it okay. You... aren’t okay.

You stand up and leave. Hypnotized or not, you’d rather be alone for a while.