Even as he crossed the back garden, John wasn't really sure how he was going to handle this. Hell, he didn't even quite know what his goal was in this upcoming conversation. Hadn't figured out what the ideal outcome would be. Was it better or worse for the birds to be properly aware of what was going on? What were the implications if they were intelligent now, uplifted by whatever flavour of system had attached to them? How would he handle it if they weren't?

John sighed, shaking his head. He was getting ahead of himself, letting his pessimism creep in. Whatever their intelligence level, the birds had proved themselves to be allies against the monsters, and he had to take that as a win.

The tree wasn't a massive one in the grand scheme of things, but it was tall by local standards, standing just a bit higher than the rooves of the two-story houses around it at its apex. It was a pine, so it had plenty of needles for cover even though it was the first week of March, and so it took him a little while to spot the birds nestled in there despite their contrasting colours.

They were all on the same branch, high up in the canopy, though they weren't huddled together. The crow was closest to the trunk, almost leaning against it, while the dove was at its side; both were looking down at him. Further along, Polly and Zazu were bouncing in place, off in their own little world, evidently.

"Hey," John called up to them. There were no monsters within a hundred metres or so, so he figured he could pitch his voice a little louder, though he was far from shouting. "How much of what I'm saying can you understand?"

The crow and the dove stared, unblinking and unmoving.

"Punk ass bitch," Polly said, in a teenager's terrible attempt at an American voice. Was he imagining it, or did the words seem clearer?

Zazu just kept bobbing its head up and down as if dancing to music only it could hear. After a moment, Polly joined back in.

"That doesn't help me much," John said with a sigh. He turned his attention to the crow and dove, black and white, yin and yang. Or something. They seemed more likely to have something going on within their tiny skulls. "Look, it would really help me out if I understood how much you understand of all this. You're definitely not at the intelligence level of average birds, considering you made your way into the portal world, coordinating like a team. I know for a fact those two parrots must have joined up with you later. And doves and crows don't exactly mix in regular nature, as far as I know. So there's more to you. You're not just mindlessly using your abilities in the way a normal bird would if it suddenly had magical powers. But I need to know how much we can coordinate with you. Rely on you as allies."

And, secretly, he had to admit to some selfishness, here; having a crow as a familiar seemed like exactly the kind of edgy bullshit the Aura system would love.

Polly and Zazu had never stopped bobbing as he spoke, but they were staring at him with unerring intensity now. The dove and crow looked at each other. The former let out a soft coo, and the crow turned its attention back to him. Then, it spread its midnight wings and hopped off the branch, gliding down to him in a slow circle.

John watched it come, and didn't flinch when it landed on his shoulder sideways on, so it was facing his head. It stared into his eyes, tilted its head, and clacked its beak once. John nodded at it. It nodded back.

"Can you understand English?" he asked.

The crow tilted its head from one side to the other, like a person would make a so-so gesture with their hand.

John sucked in a harsh breath through his teeth, expelled it through his nose. "Okay. How should I interpret that? You clearly understand enough to respond in some way that makes sense."

On a whim, he activated the Intuition Skill, which he hadn't got much use out of thus far, since he'd unlocked it in the middle of the portal world, where combat abilities had taken precedence. He wasn't expecting much out of a Level 3, and indeed the results it gave him weren't ground-breaking, but it was useful information all the same:

Crow's body language responds to words, but not with comprehension. Understanding of intent, perhaps, but not content.

He didn't know where the hell the Skill had picked that up from, but figured it was worth double-checking.

"So," he began slowly, "you get the meaning of what I'm saying overall, but not the exact definition of the words themselves?"

The crow gave a single nod, its eyes never leaving his.

"Is it something to do with my eyes? Or looking at me in general?"

It nodded, then nodded again.

"Yes to both?"

Another nod.

"Okay. So communication isn't going to be perfect, but we can definitely coordinate in a deeper manner than just ordering you guys around." John looked up. The dove was watching the exchange in silence. Even the parrots had stilled. "Would you like to work together with us longer term? Cooperation is much safer than going alone."

This time, the crow looked up at its avian companions. The parrots started bobbing up and down again, which John took as a yes. The dove, though, spent a long while in a staring contest with the crow, and John wondered what was being exchanged between them. Was there some kind of bird language he wasn't privy to, or did one of them possess a psychic ability that let them communicate without sound or movement? Hell, maybe something else entirely was going on.

Either way, the dove finally nodded. The crow didn't hesitate to give a nod of its own in reply, then turned and repeated the motion to John a moment later.

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Not knowing what else to do, John nodded back.

Over the course of the next half an hour, John went through a painfully inefficient interrogation with the birds which didn't yield anywhere near as much information as he wanted to know, but at the end of it, he was relatively confident in several facts about the flock:

First and foremost, he was now 99% sure they had the same systems that had been inflicted on humanity. The game of charades that would have been needed to communicate the precise details of what torment it put the birds through was beyond him, but he'd managed to confirm to his satisfaction that they were all accumulating points in some fashion that they could then spend on physical and mental upgrades or supernatural abilities.

Obviously, it had already been clear they had supernatural abilities of some kind, but confirming they were working with the same system was important. The implications of that would have to wait for later. Still, he had to admit he was anticipating the possibility of running into super-powered dogs and cats and other animals later.

If they came across livestock like pigs, cows, and chickens… Well, that kind of problematic scenario would have to be dealt with if it popped up.

Next, he managed to confirm, to some degree, what the birds could do.

The crow, they'd already seen, was the front line fighter, utilising shadow powers to conceal and misdirect before disembowelling its enemies with impossible sharp talons and a beak that seemed to close stronger than a great white shark's jaws. What they hadn't seen was the feathers it could fire out like throwing knives, trailing shadows, or the sheer amount of darkness it could pump out, easily surpassing John's shadow stream despite its small frame. It made John wonder if he should add a Stealth Spell to his planned Range, Melee, Defence, and Summoning loadouts.

The dove was a support, providing buffs and heals for friends, and debuffs and ailments for foes. Its feathers would turn crystal-like, glowing, and the light they radiated bestowed different effects depending on its colour. Unfortunately, they seemed far more effective on birds than humans.

And that extended even further. A bit of confused questioning eventually revealed that the dove allowed the birds far greater understanding of one another, without the need for words. It was apparently all about intents and feelings, like the way the crow was picking up on the intent of John's questions, but with a far deeper connection, allowing them to coordinate. A telepathic link, almost, sharing the vague outlines of their thoughts. It sounded useful, but unfortunately only included birds, for now. The dove agreed to add humans to the ability, if it got the chance.

Polly seemed to have specced into a variety of lasers it could fire from its mouth or eyes. So far, it had a red one that that was hot, a blue one that was icy cold, and a green one that seemed acidic. Zazu, meanwhile, had slightly more variation, but still seemed to be specced into projections; his ghostly after-image attack that lit enemies on fire was decent enough on its own, but it was also able to slash its wings like fans, creating slicing gusts of wind, and could create a pale phantom version of its talons to attack from afar, similar to Jade's Caustic Hand.

All in all, they had quite the little team going on. Two rangers, a healer/support, and a melee front-line fighter.

Frankly, there wasn't much he hadn't known already, there. He'd seen most of it already. More interesting were the clues it gave him as to what the birds were being forced to do by their system. Nothing he'd make any definitive guesses on yet, but every new data point helped add another piece to the puzzle of what the fuck was actually going on with this apocalyptic bullshit.

Next, he managed to tease out some personal details about the birds—if personal was even the right word. Birdinal details, perhaps?

Regardless, a long series of yes or no questions allowed him to establish that the crow and dove were both wild, both formerly part of their own flocks that had been devastated in the opening moments of the apocalypse, and that they'd met up after finding themselves the only survivors of the massacre of everyone they loved. The two wildly different avians had been forced to fight for their survival together, relying on each other.

A lot of that was conjecture and filling in the blanks, but they didn't contradict him when he laid out his theories.

The dove kept giving mournful trills intermittently throughout that part of John's questioning, and so he moved on as quickly as possible. It seemed birds could feel grief. A lump lodged itself in his throat at that revelation, and he had to rush to swallow it down so he could continue. Getting choked up about birds losing their flocks would definitely incur an Aura penalty.

Even so, he expressed his sympathies with a soft, "I'm sorry for your loss."

The raven and the dove had apparently come from out west, heading towards the city not out of a desire for safety, but revenge.

It seemed monsters really had gone after any living creatures, slaughtering anything they could find in their mad sweep across the countryside. The raven confirmed that many animals had fought back, and the monster presence hadn't been so dense out there as it was in the city. But still, it had been a massacre. It sounded like the two birds had witnessed horrors on par with an animal holocaust, and their path had taken them to wherever the monsters stood densest, seeking to pay them back for their crimes against nature.

Quite to John's surprise, it turned out the birds had cleared a portal of their own, just the two of them. Sussing out the details when he only had the ability to ask yes or no questions was difficult, but he eventually managed to discover that they'd gone down a rabbit hole that had been covered by a blue sheen, fought their way through hordes of monsters, before narrowly defeating a final boss at the end, after which the portal disappeared and they found themselves back outside with a significant point reward from their system.

He looked between the crow and the dove. There was nothing in their body language or faces for him to read, and Intuition and Insight turned up nothing he didn't already know. "You two are kinda badass then, huh?"

I'm not going to have to start flexing my superiority over a bird am I? Surely not, I've already defeated a yellow and fought off a red monster right in front of them.

Luckily, no aura penalties came in as he continued to question the birds on their exploits. They hadn't cleared any portals since then aside from the depot, but it had become their priority to find and clear them. They'd met up with Polly and Zazu shortly after arriving in London, though he was unable to find the right questions to get an explanation for the exact circumstances. The parrots only offered a litany of creative cursing.

The bus depot had been their second portal, apparently. They'd gone through the blue, not truly understanding the difference between the three colours that had been present, and thus wisely going for the familiar one. John was confident the four birds wouldn't have made it to the bus kraken if they'd gone in the green or yellow.

Eventually, he felt he knew enough about the birds to have a decent picture—and was fucking sick of the yes or no questions game, to be honest—and decided to change track.

"Okay, from what I'm understanding here, I think we can rely on you, if you want to work with us longer term."

The crow nodded. The dove followed the motion, and the parrots kept bobbing.

"Fuck you," Polly said.

"Fuck you," Zazu agreed.

"Right," John said. "Then I think we need to make some plans." He looked back at the house. "After everyone else has had a good rest, that is."

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