Gible's tail lashed once against the sand, sending up a spray of grit, but he took a half-step back, yielding the ground to my approach.
I lifted the heavy ceramic bowl off the iron hook, ladling the thick, red-tinted brine until the steam scorched my wrists. I carried it forward, stopping five paces from the Totodile. The creature's golden eyes locked onto the vessel, ignoring me entirely, fixating solely on the intense thermal energy radiating from the liquid.
I set the bowl down on the wet sand and stepped back three paces.
"Eat," I said.
The Totodile did not hesitate. It lunged forward, burying its snout straight into the scalding broth. It tore into the mixture with reckless, ravenous speed, swallowing the boiling spice without a sound. The extreme thermal properties of the Tamato berries flooded its system, acting as an immediate, brutal heat-sink that absorbed the erratic electrical voltage tearing through its nervous system.
Within seconds, the ceramic bowl was scraped bare.
The Totodile pulled its head back, its tongue sweeping its jaw clean. The tremors in its front legs had ceased. It looked up at me, its golden pupils dilated, the raw desperation in its gaze sharpening into something dangerous.
'More,' it demanded through the mind-link.
"There is no more," I replied, crossing my arms. "The spice is a temporary wall. Your body is a pure Water-type vessel carrying a foreign, unstable Electric-type current. Your internal organs conduct the voltage instead of storing it. Every time you bite, you burn yourself. Every time you hunt, you shock the water and starve. You live in that cave because you cannot touch your own kind without killing them."
The Totodile stiffened. Its tail lashed the sand with a wet slap.
'I am strong,' it snarled, the mental voice sharp with defensive fury. A fat yellow spark jumped from its gumline, and the resulting flinch forced its head down toward the earth. 'I need nothing.'
"You are breaking," I said, pulling the interface into my direct line of sight. "Let me fix you."
The Totodile's tail lashed the sand with a wet, angry slap, spraying cold silt against my boots.
'I need nothing,' it snarled again through the mind-link, the mental voice sharp with defensive fury. A fat yellow spark jumped from its gumline, scorching its lower lip, and the resulting physical flinch forced its head down toward the earth.
"You need to survive," I said, pulling the interface into my direct line of sight. "You are breaking piece by piece. Let me fix you."
The Totodile did not answer immediately. Its golden eyes locked onto my face, searching for deception or mockery, finding only cold, mathematical certainty.
Beside me, Gible shifted his weight on the damp sand. The crimson dragon tilted his heavy head, his amber eyes fixing on the smaller blue reptile with clinical appraisal. A low, vibrating hum resonated deep within Gible's chest, carrying across the space between them in the Origin Tongue.
'Weak,' Gible communicated directly, his tone blunt and devoid of malice, carrying the absolute authority of an apex predator addressing a flawed peer. 'Your blood fights itself. You strike at the air. You cannot hunt a shadow without burning your own claws.'
The Totodile snapped its jaws toward Gible, a vicious, defensive reflex. A sharp bolt of static hissed through the air between them, parting the steam rising from the sand.
'Keep your distance, scale-skin,' the Totodile rasped mentally, its mental voice tight with the bitter isolation of a creature that had spent its entire life exiled by its own volatile nature. 'I tore through the kelp beds alone. I bled for every scrap of meat while you sat fat by a human's fire.'
'You bled because your body is a broken trap,' Gible replied without flinching, his metallic claws digging slightly into the earth. 'The human doesn't keep broken tools. He remakes them. He took my frame and hardened the hide. If you stay as you are, the cold will finish what your blood started.'
The Totodile went dead still. The insult hung in the freezing air, but the undeniable truth of it cut deeper than any physical blow.
It looked back down at its own forelimbs, watching a stray spark crawl across its pale blue scales and sear the flesh. The memory of every river-dwelling feral that had driven it away, every pack that had cast it out for shocking the communal waters, rose to the surface of its mind.
'They called me a blight,' the Totodile transmitted, its voice dropping into a harsh, hollow frequency that echoed heavily in my own consciousness. 'Whenever I bit into prey, the water turned white with current. The others convulsed and died before I could drag them to the rocks. I lived in the dark mouth of that cave because to touch was to destroy.'
"Which is why you hunt alone and starve on scraps," I noted, keeping my posture entirely relaxed. "Your mutation is an apex asset trapped inside a sub-standard chassis. The current is trying to evolve you past your species, but your natural biology lacks the infrastructure to channel it."
The Totodile turned its golden gaze back to me. The raw, unhinged hostility had drained away, leaving behind the hollow, exhausted stare of something that had fought a losing war against its own anatomy for too long.
'Can you stop the fire?' it asked, the mental tone dropping its defensive shell entirely.
"I can," I answered, raising my hand toward the system interface. "But once the architecture changes, you belong to this pack. You fight when I designate targets, and you answer to my command."
The Totodile stared at the blue holographic light, then slowly shifted its gaze to Gible. The crimson dragon gave a single, heavy nod of assent.
'Make it stop burning,' the Totodile consented.