"Ohhh, this is some professional-grade artificing," Candace breathed into my neck, staring at the laurel. "Steady mana regen and boosts to teamwork!"

I slipped the laurel onto my head, the metal comforting and cool against my skin.

"You look regal," Nessy said, her tail wagging as she looked at me. "Like an actual pack leader."

"More importantly," Kristi added, "how's the mana regeneration feeling?"

"It's slowly regenerating," I replied, watching as Syntropic Fusion ticked up to 1% then 2%.

"Quality musicating my dawg," Candace let go of me, standing up and turning to Nessy. "Snappy lyrics. Mmmm… branches spreading. I'd like Alec to spread something else of yours though, if you kno' what I mean." She wiggled her white eyebrows at the husky.

Nessy let out an embarrassed choking noise.

"You should give his neck a big lick while he's not paying attention," Candace encouraged. "You know you want to. I've been… inside you."

"Slayer, staaaaahp," Nessy shoved the fox away.

"You know I can hear you, right?" I commented, shaking my head at Candace's relentless commentary.

"That's the point, tree-boy," Candace grinned wickedly. "Gotta plant those romantic seeds somewhere. Speaking of planting n' plowing—"

"Nope," I cut her off before she could finish what was undoubtedly going to be another over-the-top innuendo. I pulled the laurel crown from my head and placed it firmly on hers instead. "Here. Go knock out the TA again."

"Ooh, crowning me your queen?" Candace purred, adjusting the circlet with theatrical flair. "I accept this most regal position. I promise to rule with a magisteel paw and a silver tongue. Both of which I'm very good at using on—"

"Candace," I warned.

"Fine, fine," she laughed, skipping toward where Marlena lounged.

I watched as she approached the no longer paralyzed, extremely chill sea lion.

"Oh, hello again, dear!" Marlena said. "Come to chat? I do enjoy a good conversation! Just a reminder, you've about ten minutes until I start slapping you into walls."

"Mhmm," Candace replied sweetly, kneeling beside the TA. Her hands began to glow silver as she placed them on either side of Marlena's head. "Bind sleep!"

"Are you sure you have enough mana for that? I am prrrre—" Marlena's words cut off mid-sentence as her eyes fluttered closed.

"There we go," Candace announced, standing and dusting off her knees, swaying slightly. "One unconscious seal, as ordered."

She returned to us.

"Go amplify one of the bags so all of us can fit in it," I ordered. The fox immediately set to work expanding the nearest dimensional bag with binding magic.

"Bag space increased by approximately 400%," she reported in about five minutes. "Should fit everyone now."

We quickly packed our scattered supplies into the enlarged bag. Kristi climbed in first, followed by Nessy, who paused at the opening.

"Be careful," she said to me. "And try not to do anything too crazy while you're... you know, being a seal."

"Uh-huh, sure," I agreed.

Once they were both inside, I removed the laurel from Candace's head and placed it on Adelle instead. The cheetah's eyes widened when the artifact's power flowed through her.

"Whoa," she breathed. "Mana! I can shadowstep way longer with this."

"That's exactly what I'm counting on," I said, taking off my pouch and tying it to the passed out TA's elbow. Then I climbed into the bag myself.

The moment I was inside, I found myself sandwiched between Nessy and Kristi in the expanded, somewhat tight spherical space. Nessy immediately nuzzled into me from one side while Kristi did the same from the other side, the pair practically smothering me in fur and feathers.

"This is nice," Nessy murmured against my shoulder.

"Speak for yourself," Kristi grumbled. "I can barely breathe with all this dog fur in my face."

I checked my watch in the dim light filtering through the bag's opening. 12:53 PM. Almost time.

"Candace," I called out. "Bind me to the TA now! And transfer the treasure-tracking tag to her body."

"On it, boss," came her reply. "This might feel a bit weird."

"Weirder than being a wolf?"

"Much weirder! Seals have a very different sensory apparatus."

She reached out into the bag with her left hand, grabbing my forehead. I felt the familiar pulling sensation as my consciousness was drawn away from my body. The soul-leap was accompanied by a shift in perspective that made me slightly nauseous.

I opened my eyes as Marlena.

Colors were even more muted now. I could see perfectly across the entire dim tunnel and sensed vibrations through the ground that I never noticed before.

Then the sheer size difference became apparent. Marlena was significantly larger than the wolf I'd inhabited, and her body felt alien in ways I hadn't expected. Everything was oriented differently, the perspective way off, my hands too big, webbed skin stretching between fingers, large breasts feeling like an unnecessary weight on my chest, the sensation of her seal tail stretching out from my spine at odds with my balance. I slowly sat up with the fox's assistance.

"How do you feel?" Candace asked, leaning over me.

"Like a very confused marine mammal," I replied in Marlena's deep, feminine tone. "Did you transfer the tracking?"

"Yep. As far as any magical sensors are concerned, you're carrying the dragonheart now." She handed me a collection of flashbang grenades from our supplies, rapidly weaving a rope through all of the pins. "For when things get exciting."

I accepted the flashbangs with Marlena's large fingers, trying not to fumble them and pulled the second bag over my lap to hide the grenades.

"Adelle!" I called out. "Time to go. Shadowstep us out of here!"

The cheetah grinned, the laurel crown glinting on her head between orange-red curls. "Hold tight, everyone. Loops, quit foxing aroun' n' get in."

Candace quickly dove into the bag, somehow managing to squeeze herself in with the others. I heard muffled complaints about overcrowding and someone's tail being in someone else's face.

"Ready?" Adelle asked, shouldering the bag.

"Yep," I confirmed. "See ya!"

One moment the orange cheetah was standing in the tunnel beside my borrowed seal body, the next she was gone with Shadowstep, leaving me alone as Marlena.

The ground around me shook as earth Elementals began tunneling their way towards me.

I smiled, digging into my hand pouch with seal fingers.

. . .

Soil erupted from multiple directions as passages opened like the spokes of a wheel, and suddenly I was surrounded by a quarter of the school's student body.

Katherine Strand was the first to rush in. The raptor's emerald-violet feathers fluttered excitedly when she spotted me sitting there. Behind her came a parade of pradavarians—wolves, cats, more raptors, a few foxes, and even a polar bear. Above us, dozens of Elementals swirled in preparation for battle.

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"Oi, TA!" Katherine barked, reaching me. "Where's the fucking human and his posse?"

I smiled at her, trying to channel the TA's perpetually upbeat demeanor. "Under my butt!"

Katherine halted in front of me mid-stride. Her head tilted sideways like a confused parrot. Gold eyes blinked rapidly as she processed my words. "Under your... what now?"

"My butt, Kat!" I repeated cheerfully, patting the ground beneath me. "They're all right under my magnificent seal posterior!"

"That's… What?" The raptor girl tried to work through the logistics of my comment. "How exactly did you fit five people under your butt? Are they... flat now? Did you pancake them?"

"Oh, you know how it is with water magic!" I laughed as more students rushed into the underground space joining the raptor girl. The prads that moments ago were eager for delver-pummeling action looked at me with confusion. They clearly didn't get 'how it is with water magic'. Neither did I, as I was simply stalling.

One of the raptors behind Katherine whom I recognized as Scarlet Strand whispered loudly, "Do seals normally sit on their enemies?"

"Is this a seal thing?" a dog student asked.

The gathered "monsters" packed tightly into the underground space looked at each other. A few of the wolves and dogs sniffed the air with confused expressions.

"Something smells off," one of them muttered. "The cheetah's trail is leading away from here."

"Ah ye, the orange cheetah girl likely away with Shadowmancy," I commented. "But it doesn't matter! The rest are trapped under me in a bubble of air and water I carved out with Hydromancy, floating with their precious treasure!" I laughed jovially. "Poor dears were no match for a TA!"

Professor Fern emerged from the largest tunnel, hair burning bright.

"You've... captured them?" she asked with mild disbelief and sharp dissatisfaction of my failure. "Really? You got four of them? Did you… attack them during lunch?"

"Yep! They tried to run off, choosing not to rest!" I chirped enthusiastically. "A big mistake because I simply plowed through them and cut off their escape route! It was quite the exciting battle! The fox tried her binding magic on me again but she was much too low on mana, the poor darling! Then the cheetah attempted to punch me, but have you ever tried to punch a wet seal? Utterly futile! Mwah Ha Ha Har Arf!" I emulated the seal's jolly laugh.

Professor Fern's eye narrowed as she studied my face. She was too experienced, too clever. I needed to act fast before she figured out that I wasn't her TA.

"The human was particularly amusing," I continued, reaching for the flashbang grenades under the extradimensional bag on my lap as if adjusting my position. "Kept trying to give me orders like I was one of his pack members! The audacity of the kid!" As I roared out my declaration, my fingers pulled on the rope to extract the pins from every single flashbang grenade.

"Let them out!" Katherine demanded, stepping closer, feathers sticking up. "I want to see Foster's face when he realizes he failed!"

"Of course, dear!" I replied sweetly, counting down mentally. "Though I should warn you, they're a bit... feisty and disheveled from being drowned."

Katherine made a face. "Whatever."

"I'll let 'em out on the count of three!" I announced cheerfully, closing my eyes tight. "One... two..."

Professor Fern finally understood that questionable things were afoot. "Wait… something is…"

Instead of reaching three, I yanked the bag off my lap and immediately flopped backward while simultaneously dumping the grenades across the tunnel. I covered my ears and tried to bury my face in the wet mud.

Forty flashbang grenades tumbled out in a glorious cascade of imminent doom.

The first detonation was blinding. The second was deafening. By the fortieth, I was pretty sure I'd achieved something close to a small-scale apocalypse in the confines of the underground chamber.

Through the seal's sensory apparatus, the combined effect was overwhelming. Light exploded in every direction, turning the world into a stark white void while sound hammered at my eardrums like the anger of wrathful gods.

I had closed my eyes as tightly as I could, plugging my ears with my fingers and still went 90% blind and deaf. It was awful.

To top off everyone's suffering I dug into my pouch and turned on the anti-pradavarian high-frequency emitter keychain. The noise it made was absolutely horrendous and made me curl into myself, shudder and want to claw out my ears.

The pradavarians around me howled in agony, their enhanced senses making the assault far more devastating than it would have been to a human. I heard Katherine shriek out curses, while other voices devolved into confused barks, yowls, and other distressed prad noises.

I slowly opened my eyes, blinking seal tears and pulled out a large plastic container of pepper from my pouch. I flung the contents in a wide arc around myself. The fine powder caught in the air currents created by the air elementals, flailing wolves and fluttering raptors, creating a spicy cloud of pradavarian misery. Students all around me began frantically sneezing and howling as pepper went into their eyes.

"ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: SEAL OF DESTRUCTION!" I shouted over the din, though I doubted that anyone could hear me due to the grenade detonation and the high-frequency noise emitter.

"SURPRISE STEAMROLLER SEAL ATTACK!" I declared, flinging my entire body forward and sideways.

The first victim of my large, steamroller seal body sounded and looked like a blurry Katherine. The raptor shrieked as she was crushed under me, her claws trying to stop me but failing spectacularly, unable to penetrate my thick posterior and slippery hexamesh suit.

A few more students crunched under me with yelps of misery and then I heard Ignis cry out as I rolled right over her.

"Marlena!" Professor Fern howled, her voice barely perceptible against the 'Eeeeeeeeeeee!' of my awful keychain noisemaker. "What in the name of the Slayer are you doing?!"

"Teaching!" I replied, making sure to keep her pinned down halfway under me. "Isn't this educational? I'm just demonstrating the effectiveness of asymmetric warfare combined with tactical deception, Ignis!"

"What?! You aren't…" Ignis growled, realizing that she's been had. Her entire body ignited with flames, the water puddles around us hissing.

I approximated the position of her head and swung my large seal fist down with as much strength as I could muster. "Sorry! Have a nap!"

The Elementals filling the cavern went wild as Ignis was knocked out, attacking everyone nearby.

Prads screamed and flailed, trampling over each other in their desperation to escape the rampaging Elementals. Through my blurry, aching seal eyes, I watched Katherine struggling to crawl out from under a writhing mass of her own teammates while an earth Elemental bulldozed through the tunnel wall, sending debris raining down on everyone.

I couldn't help but laugh. My deep, barking seal laugh echoed through the mayhem. I watched as a wind Elemental spin three wolves into a tornado of fur and panic.

A fire Elemental whooshed past my head, singeing the whiskers of a fox who was trying to climb over Kirra to reach one of the tunnel exits. The poor pradavarian girl yelped and tumbled backward into two other students, creating a domino effect of more blindly flailing limbs and desperate curses.

As I reveled in the beautiful mayhem I'd created, I felt a strange tightness building in my chest, like a rubber band being stretched to its breaking point. The sensation grew stronger, more insistent, until finally...

SNAP

The world lurched sideways, colors bleeding away as my consciousness was yanked elsewhere with the force of a slingshot. I tumbled through endless, cold darkness, my sense of self doing infinite backflips before finally—

I opened my eyes with a gasp to find myself staring up at Candace's silver-gray face. She was perched directly on top of me, holding tightly onto my shoulders, her white ears twitching anxiously as she studied my expression.

"Did it work?" she asked as I blinked at her. "Please tell me you slowed them down and we're not about to get our asses kicked by a swarm of Elementals."

I grinned. "Oh, it worked better than expected! I may have turned the entire underground chamber into a war zone, and severely traumatized the delver student body with flashbang grenades, ultrasound and pepper."

"You… did?" The happy voice belonging to Nessy came from my right, followed by the sound of her tail beating against the bag wall.

"Yep. I steamrollered Katherine Strand and Co," I continued. "And crushed Fern with my unstoppable seal body and bonked her on the head. It was glorious. Also, Slayer, those ultrasound key fobs are awful, it's no wonder that prads hate 'em so much."

Adelle's laughter exploded from somewhere above us through the bag's covered top, "Holy shit! You actually used that oversized TA as a weapon? That's the most badass thing I've ever heard!"

"Yep. Knocking out Fern caused the Elementals to go completely berserk," I added. "Last I saw, they were attacking everything that moved."

Candace let out a giggle. "You beautiful, crazy human!"

"We just got to the gym, by the way," Adelle announced from outside the bag. "They had a few students guarding the gym entrance but I plowed right through them with my fists, as the Elementals hovering above them went ham. Weaklings!"

I tried to sit up, but found myself thoroughly pinned by not just Candace, but also Nessy's hands hugging me tightly. Kristi's scaled hand was resting possessively on my arm, her feathers tickling my face as she leaned into me.

"Guys," I said, not really putting much effort into escaping, "we should probably get out of this bag and...."

"Mmmm… in a minute." Nessy licked my cheek with a grin. "First, celebration cuddles!"

"Celebration cuddles, hum?" I repeated.

"You just pulled off the most whack diversionary tactic in the history of Ferguson High," Candace declared, planting a quick kiss on my forehead, pulling my face into her curvy chest. "You deserve all the smothering n' cuddlage now, my dude!"

Kristi, not to be outdone, leaned down and gave me a quick kiss on the other cheek, flashing violet. "That was genuinely brilliant strategy from start to finish... Completely unhinged, but brilliant!"

"Nobody expects the seal steamroller!" I chortled.

"I can't believe you knocked out Professor Fern," Nessy licked me again with more confidence, nuzzling her wet nose into my neck. "She's going to be soooo mad when she wakes up."

"Maybe not," I shrugged. "She believed in me and will probably be happy that we kicked her ass."

Adelle's voice sounded from overhead. "Are you coming out of there?"

"Nu, we're celebrating! Join the bag cuddle pile!" Candace laughed, pulling my face up to kiss me softly.

I didn't resist her this time, didn't push her away.

All of my packmates seemed to take this as encouragement to paw, smoosh and smooch me even more thoroughly. Nessy's warm breath tickled my ear as she whispered, "My hero."

Even Kristi, normally the most reserved of the group, became caught up in the celebratory mood, clawed hands kneading my back as she kissed me with her elongated snout-face.

I looked around at the prad faces surrounding me—Candace with her silver-gray shining eyes and mischievous grin, Nessy with her warm, adoring expression, and Kristi with her proud, confident smile. Despite the cramped confines of the dimensional bag, despite everything that had happened over the past few days, for the first time in my life... I felt... content.

More than content. I felt like I was exactly where I belonged.

Adelle suddenly squeezed herself in from above. "My turn!" She declared.

Shoving Candice to the side, she engulfed my mouth in a fierce, upside down kiss, cheetah whiskers tickling my cheeks.

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