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Kikue's expression became tinged with pity. She sat up a little straighter, nodding. She understood. Still, it was interesting that Zach should have the doctor's hat...even if it were merely an extra, to be given it was something important, wasn't it? She logged it away, mindful of what it might mean, even though Zach had already made it quite plain where he stood as far as Dr. Duvert went. He sympathized with him. Kikue was interested in that.

She forced a smile, scratching her furry ear again idly. "I'm a bit of the opposite, unfortunately." She gestured her paws to include the fur that had grown across her body. There was still small chips of dried blood beneath her claws -- she noticed, and tried to forget about it. Forgetting that it was already stained across her white shirt was harder. She forced herself to ignore it. I can't think about it...right now...

Kikue moved her tail up to herself, putting a hand on it. Just as she opened her mouth to ask another question, she noticed a slight twitch in the corner of Zach's reptilian face. Immediately she thought, Feral?? and the fur along her chest and the rest of her body began to raise immediately. Suddenly, Zach was doing something close to convulsing, scratching with his huge claws at the back of his neck. He fell with a loud thump onto the floor, his tail writhing around his body.

"Zach!" Kikue shouted, jumping easily off the bed onto her feet. She stood over Zach, watching him twitch and shake; an incoherent string of words tumbled out of his mouth.

"Oh gods," she whispered, kneeling down next to him and throwing her furred arms around his head. He was kicking and rolling, the sounds of impact on the floor loud enough to wake whoever was downstairs and next door at the same time. They said don't let them hit their head, don't let them hit their head if they're having a seizure -- Zach's horns hit her arms; she was sure there would be huge brusies there after this. Tears started running down her face. Oh gods. She had no idea what to do.

"Help...someone...help! Help!" Just as she started shouting for anything, anybody, she felt a tingle at the base of her neck.

...Oh...no.

With a jerk, the electricity closed off her vision. The last thing she was was Zach's body, contorted, yet slowly going limp.

Then, there was darkness.

RP with Freddie.

RP with Thom and Natsumi.

RP with Brian

To wake up after a long sleep was usually refreshing, especially when one wakes up in their bed. It's also quite pleasant to remember the previous night, letting you know just how you got to your bed.

Zach had neither of these luxuries when he returned to his senses prone on the ground in the middle of a largely unfamiliar clearing. Many things ached, especially the limbs that were slept on. He rolled off of his side and onto his stomach with a groan, tail whipping. His head felt about ready to burst - this was the hangover to end all hangovers. It didn't subside even after he lay there for a minute, so he had to find his way to some painkillers. He scrabbled in the dirt till he got up into a sitting position. His legs felt pretty exposed. He was in his silly-looking Halloween costume, though from his night on the ground it was wet and muddied. Through the pain of the headache, he tried to figure out where he was and why.

Most of the previous night once he'd started in on the alcohol had become an indecipherable blur of time that he couldn't recall. There were vague snatches of clear memory, though it was still disputable. He remembered Emerwyn and Rex, a knife in a table, terror and frightened cries mixed with strange noises, and 'complications'. At least he'd had a good time, or forgotten if it was a bad one. He'd have to stay away from the alcohol next time.

The direction he faced from his sitting position looked down an apparently trampled path, and there were footprints around. He raised his hands to grip his head, but let out a small gasp of surprise. There was dried blood on his claws. He held them away from his body as if it could rid him of the guilt of whatever unknown act of violence he'd committed. He stood, shaky, one of his legs still recovering from the awkward position he'd fallen into. It was starting to get creepy being alone out here, in the jungle. There was a wolf-monster on the loose, after all, and the sooner he was back in the safety of the village the sooner he'd be able to rid himself of the headache. A 360-degree turn should have shown him there was nothing here and no reason to hang around. But the graveyard caught his eyes, too morbid not to be ignored. Headstone after headstone, with curt little inscriptions. No differentiation between staff and islander, those headstones were identical. The more worn ones he wasted no time paying attention to, for that fragment of memory that had bothered him so deeply the night before had come back.

"Complications..." he breathed quietly, eyes wide as he re-read. It wasn't the names of the islanders whose graves were marked by their failure to survive the experiment. Back in May he'd learned he was even more sucsceptible to such problems than a normal islander - mixing seven animals was 'experimental', unpredictable, and to die of complications would not be too far from an expectation. Being a ‘dragon’ made him of more worth than he’d had as a human being, just one in billions of people who were just like everyone else. He never wanted to die a death so weak, becoming a failure twice over in life. It was different now, with the possibility of death so close and personal as the handful of dead whose final resting places were just feet away from him and some odd down under the dirt. Even if life didn't seem worth living, he'd pay any price for it. He already did pay a mentally heavy one for the prevention of two attempts on his life. With no regrets, he'd found himself inclined to be indebted to a man who was clearly insane.

It was this man that brought him here, had picked him specifically for the serum, instead of the opposite that was the case for everyone else Zach could think of. Moreau had said so himself, he'd had no reason to lie to the dragon. The thought of it being such a personal pick should have stirred disgust, despair, a need for revenge. It had, once, but the battle was over before it had even begun. He was not human any longer, even in mind. But he was whole, in the literal sense, as he had regrown his arm, albeit covered in scales. He was here, he was far gone in changing, and yet it was not the horrible injustice he had expected it to be. And for the same reasons Zach should have cursed Dr. Duvert, he'd found the beginnings of respect for his twisted generosity.

He'd been staring silently at the graves for a while, his head pounding from the hangover. Though it was silent and warm, it was still a very creepy sight, and he didn't want to spend another moment basking in the bone-chilling vicinity of the headstones. Out was the other way, out was back to his duplex where he could pop a couple of aspirin and try to sleep off whatever excitement he'd had before. Judging by the multitude of footprints, he'd walked here with many others, so it was no secret place and he was not an unwelcome visitor.

He couldn't run away from there. His stomach wouldn't hear of it, ready to throw itself outof his esophagus at the littlest stumbles and bumps as Zach picked his way down the recently wandered path. It didn't matter in a couple of moments, because the grisly sight that greeted him next forced everything out. He looked away as soon as possible, but not before several of the... things... had imprinted their contorted, unnatural bodies onto his mind's eye. Another echoed warning from the past, Zach recalled the rats that had been tested on and whose deaths added to his own life. It was at the price of these mistakes, these terrible twisted creatures, that they did not turn out the same. These were failures. These were what happened when things went wrong. Though they were without graves, desecrated, they appeared to hang as a warning that things could always, always be worse for them all.

They raised a good point, but the preserved corpses were something he just couldn’t stand to look at. Too grotesque, and he was too weak to look. After the rotting things had disappeared behind him, he quickened his pace, moving through a tangled area where for the longest time there was nothing but the branches, leaves, and his own self. Visibly shaken, Zach emerged from the terrible path and floundered his way toward the main hall. Aspirn, he needed aspirin, and if possible, an explanation of what he’d forgotten.

Bother Bother Bother (RP with Gaius and Freddie)

RP with Kaveri

RP with Lucas