Welcome to Gaia! ::

Joshua was frowning more, now, as Kaveri continued speaking. What did she mean by that? "Planning on putting a school here? I was under the impression there already was one..."

Surely, they couldn't place a school here within one week alone. And even so, he would think that everyone would know about it. "No, aside from Dr. Duvert, you are the only person I have met so far."

"If there is, it's news to me," Kaveri said, arching her brows. And then, Joshua had to mention that she was the first one he'd met outside of Sabin. Her jaw dropped, and she gawked for a moment upon this realization.

Step one: Open mouth.
Step two: Insert foot.

"Wait, you... you're really, really new here, aren't you? s**t." Kaveri herself started to look a bit uneasy, how was she going to explain this without excessive profanity? "Well, uh, you're in for a trip. It's gonna be hard to explain and you'll probably not believe me at all, and--"

As if on cue, Zach HAD to come tumbling out of the greenery with a dead rabbit impaled on his hand. Her eyes widened as she took a step back to give the charging dragon-man a safe berth to run into. "Zach?! What the hell... where were you?" She craned her neck to the side, looking at the carcass.

"Did you escape from the labs? What happened? What... what's that on your hand?" She approached him carefully, holding out her hands to get a better look at the rabbit. Without even realizing it, she licked her lips at the sight of the mangled animal.

"The labs? Barely... they let me out though... said I was the one who attacked Aubrey and they think there's something wrong with me. They're right... they're right..." He looked about ready to keel over and die. He halfheartedly shook the left hand and the rabbit in it. "I didn't mean to! I really didn't!"

His tail gave a slight twitch. "I don't know what to do... they saw, I'm sure they saw. They're going to kill me. I have to get rid of this though." He continued to hold the rabbit away from him at arm's length. "Kaveri, they said I attacked Aubrey. They were probably right. I don't know what to do!" A slight trickle of blood was coming off his hand now.

He turned to Joshua again, his wings folding and unfolding a little as he panicked. He seemed to regard Joshua as some unfortunate victim of the night of the storm. His words continued at the same breathless pace. "What do you mean? How much of your memory did you lose-- all of it?"

Joshua watched the two of them interact, the scene before him so unbelievable he wasn't sure it was actually real. How could it be real? It was so bizzare he wasn't sure how to react to seeing all of this. He wanted to go right back to his duplex and pretend the whole ordeal never happened. Maybe he was having a bad reaction to the injection Dr. Duvert gave him. What was in those vials, anyway? And Dr. Duvert did have that strange grin while reading over the files...

Maybe he was just hallucinating.

He would have to contact Dr. Duvert about this, and ask him about the side effects of the injection. Surely he would have mentioned things like this to him...

It seemed like there was no where he could look to see something normal - either at the frantic lizard looking man with blood dripping from his claws, or at Kaveri, who was shaking around a dead rabbit?

"Lost my memory?" he said in response to Zach's question. "No, no, I - I haven't lost my memory at all." Although now, he wasn't so sure that was the truth. Did he lose his memory..?

He looked at Kaveri again, trying to ignore the dead rabbit. "Have what broken to me, exactly? What is all this... why... why is your neck so long, why do you have claws? Why does he have claws - and a tail, and horns! This doesn't make any sense!"

"How do they know it's hers and they're not just setting you up as a scapegoat?" Kaveri frowned, ending her sentence with a decidedly inhuman, gutteral click. "It's easy to accuse someone of something and have it be that, especially at a place like this -- I somehow suspect the justice system here is more retarded than it is in the States."

She looked down at the rabbit again, its blood glistening in the sunlight. Her thoughts became more and more clouded by the black lines, and she turned it in her hand. Upon turning it at a wrong angle, a line of viscera quickly drops out of the rabbit's belly and hangs there, swinging limply.

"I... I don't think this had anything to do with it, either way. They're looking for an easy blame, don't let it get to you." Even though she had already eaten, she kind of felt the need to eat again by looking at the carcass. This one, unlike Aubrey, was actually dead and could be quite palatable to the vulture.

A few of the lines withdrew and she snapped her head up to look at Joshua, her mouth gaping slightly open. "s**t!" Kaveri exclaimed, "I don't know how to explain it, especially not why! Your guess is as good as mine, man, as to why those doctor assholes are doing this -- but see, for some reason, upon being dragged upon this horrible rock... you get turned into some half-human, half-animal crime against nature. I... I guess it happens once every few weeks or something, I was here for about a month before I got the way I am now."

"It's been... wow, almost two months since I've been here." She paused, then quickly added, "Don't ask me what the ******** animal I am, by the way, because I don't have a clue."

"They haver, er... some good reasons..." He shrugged weakly. Admittedly, he had almost done to several others what had successfully been done to Aubrey. It wasn't that strange of a claim. Upon seeing the rabbit start to come undone in Kaveri's hands he had to look away completely, facing the newcomer. He failed to see the odd behavior, focused instead on listening to the older man's reaction to a story that had been explained so many times already. "It's, er... I don't know. All of this is so weird..."

There was the uncomfortable moment in which the newcomer was unable to process what Kaveri had said. Then it was gone, vanished, eaten up by human disbelief. Even with the clouding, crushing element of fear that was being fueled by the dead rabbit, there were a couple things that could distract one from them. Zach, who had been nervously attempting to shake some of the blood off his hand, had to look up. How familiar... this was the second time he'd been witness to the standard reaction. However, there was one thing he had now that he didn't have the previous time.

Evidence. The effects of Sabin's carefully crafted serum had not gone unnoticed by the newcomer. Hell, he seemed to shock everyone he'd met since the second change had occurred.

"We wish it was a prank. She's telling the truth." His wings folded and unfolded a little against his back restlessly. Trying to cover up his changes was at this point strictly impossible. And he could hardly blame the man for being disgusted, as he too was horrified by what had become of the rabbit. He motioned weakly to Kaveri and himself with his right hand while the left one still oozed blood. If it wasn't for the scaly skin... "Is it... really possible to pretend to have a neck that long? It isn't. But think whatever you want to. I already know we... we can't convince you. No one believes it when they first hear about it."

"You have... about a month. Enjoy it." His tail swished a little behind him, and his thoughts were back to the cameras that were watching them all. No doubt they'd seen what had become of the rabbit. What were they going to do to him? Cassidy was wrong. They were going to hold him accountable, simply because they could.

A month. He had one month to enjoy - what? His humanity? Before he would start to look like - these people?

No. Joshua shook his head, obviously still in disbelief. "It isn't possible. Science is not that... advanced. I came here to teach, not to be a science experiment. Dr. Duvert explained everything to me, and he certainly didn't mention any of this." He was growing aggravated; despite the evidence in front of him, his mind would not accept it as reality. None of the pieces were fitting together, no matter which way he tried to place them. "I signed a contract to work here. It is illegal to preform science experiments on people without explicit permission, and I never gave anyone such permission."

He wanted to escape back to his duplex, back to where things were normal and he wasn't being told such a ridiculous story by these strange looking people. There was no way any human could have real tails and wings, no way a human could have such a long, flexible neck.

He needed to contact Dr. Duvert.

He needed to make sure he was not going insane.

"And will you please, please not wave that rabbit around?"

"It's true, this would be illegal," Kaveri mused, rolling her head to the other side, "if we were in the States. As far as I know, this place isn't under any government aside from the crazies in the lab. So whatever hangups there are about legality and law are thrown out the window."

"But on the plus side, they don't care if you smoke pot or whatever. Just be careful, it might be laced," she added helpfully, then paused to look at the rabbit that she had just been so carelessly waving around like a ragdoll.

The vulture woman blinked and stared at the carcass, slowly bringing it to her face to sniff at it. She didn't quite understand this odd craving, the desire to pluck out that little indistinguishable blob of organs and swallow it. But it was there, and it was quite strong. Craning her neck forward, Kaveri opened her mouth and caught the viscera with her lips, sucking it into her mouth with a sickly, wet slurping sound as it slid smoothly down her throat.

For a moment, she was completely oblivious to those around her.