Devin and Laura opened the portals and we all rushed through, using the aspect of surprise to get the drop on the Shifters. My spear and I flew across the camp and pierced one before it had the chance to do anything. It reverted forms before dying.
With one down, the three others panicked and tried to run away after shape-shifting into birds. Boel shot at them and couldn't hit. Laura was much luckier with her knives. She killed one more and chased another into the woods. I flew up and stabbed the last one with my spear.
"It got away! Ugh!" She stomped back into camp five minutes later.
I shelled out the four silvers and Laura when she came back from the forest and started to skin the kills. Like an expert, she gutted them in seconds with no mistakes. I took the hides and put them in the shed, then preserved the meat in an Icebox.
"Don't waste the blood, it can be used in invisibility potions!" I shouted, seeing that Laura was about to dump out the buckets of Shifter blood.
She had already started the motion to dump it so it all flew out of the bucket, but, with a flick of my wrist and a little bit of intuitive manipulation, it all floated back to where it belongs.
"Shifters' blood is conductive?" Laura asked
"All blood is conductive, even the human's, the only reason I can't suck their blood out of their bodies is that it's resistant to Eneru somehow, while they live at least."
"You're not going to investigate it?"
"Investigate what?"
"Normally when there is something you don't know you study it until you find the answer.'"
"Well I'm not going to research it for the same reason I'm not going to make combustion engines. Imagine if I found out how to manipulate other people's blood. Killers would have a field day."
"You, of all people, considering the consequences of research? Are you sure you aren't a Shifter pretending to be Ingen?"
"I'm me for sure, and I can tell you that some subjects are too dangerous to study."
Laura kicked me in the face.
"Ok, good if you were a Shifter, you would have reverted forms."
"Ow! You were just looking for a reason to hit me! Weren't you?!" I rubbed my face
"Nooo..." Laura made it obvious.
"Well I know you would never make it that obvious that you hit me on purpose! You're a Shifter!" I threw dirt at her and suddenly her arm shape-shifted as 'she' lost focus. "Ah! That was supposed to be a joke!" I started to back up and get into a fighting stance.
A bolt came from the treeline and stabbed the Laura-Shifter in the neck, completing its return to its normal form.
"I expect my eight silvers!" Laura shouted.
Laura was in a disheveled state, her hair was messed up, her clothes were torn in many places and she had a few broken fingers, but she held a crossbow delicately in her hands, using her middle finger to pull the trigger because her index was broken.
"Make that sixteen!" Devin pulled three more Shifter corpses to the camp "She killed these with her bare hands!"
Something was wrong with this picture. My spear flew and impaled the Devin-Shifter standing nearby as soon as the real Devin made a portal.
I counted on my fingers and realized that I had eight hides, enough for six Changeling Suits.
"Good work everyone, now come here and I'll go over the plan." Laura and Devin listened and sat next to me.
"First order of business, Devin, could you heal Laura a bit?" When Devin started the healing process, I continued. "We need a way to distinguish our friends from our foes, I propose that we make a secret handshake of sorts."
At this, Devin chuckled.
"What!? You focus on healing dumbass." I was confused but wrote it off as an otherworlder reference. "Anyway, Shifters revert forms when they lose focus so it has to be complicated enough to require all of your focus to do, especially mimic."
Another chuckle from Devin.
"What is it?!"
"It's just that young me and my friends used to do that for fun and this reminds me of that." He smiled, remembering the times he introduced his friends to his Earthly customs.
"Ignoring the fact that you never did that with me, we should figure one out before more Shifters try to impersonate one of us."
When Devin finished healing Laura, we worked out a handshake and went hunting.
********
Over the course of two days, we saw nothing of note.
"Eight in the first day, but nothing for two after? Are they hiding?" Devin said while doing some complicated motions with his hands.
"I think they are, I'm going to scout from the air today, see if I can catch them on the heat sensor." I mirrored his hand signals.
I took off when we finished our code and searched.
'This is the last day we have to hunt, it would almost be a waste to lose it not finding Shifters.'
'They use mind-links as a sort of hive-mind so maybe they are coordinating to avoid you.'
'In that case, flying is probably a bad idea." I dove towards the ground and started to brainstorm a way to tunnel through the ground.
"Preliminary analysis: there are three options. The first is to use flow manipulation to make a drill and metal supports. The second is to let the tunnel collapse behind me and wear a metal shell to protect myself. The third is to protect myself with Changeling armor and dig with flow manipulation." My Speakwrite wrote furiously on the paper that I floated in front of it.
"I'll go with option one, The second and third are too dangerous and are gimmicky."
It took a little while to collect the metal required for the drill plus extra for the first few supports. I dug for an hour and waited in the tunnel. As predicted, there were some Shifters disguised as rats following me, and there were more than one.
"I see you, dumbasses!" I shouted from across the cave, scaring them into their original forms. I counted five.
I removed the support behind and in front of them, trapping them there while I built a passage for air to get to me.
"They can suffocate now, I'll go grab the guys."
I flew back to camp to find that Laura and Devin had found a cave full of Shifters with a Flit on the inside.
A Flit was a creature that could steal intelligence from one creature via lobotomy and give it to another through a special sub-affinity, it also just so happened to be very fast.
We all went out and collected the Shifters I had left for dead in the cave and counted our totals.
"We got fourteen today, plus a Flit which we can sell. This brings me to twenty-two hides, and you two to 60 silvers in total, 40 to Laura and 20 to Devin."
The Speakwrite wrote down everything, including confirmations from Laura, Devin, and Lana, who somehow had been watching all of us at once.
"Let's go home now, it's getting dark."