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The trip was over, and the hunchback had returned quietly to his dorm, his mind still feeling like it was trapped in the fog... but he was feeling better, somehow. A bit anyway. He didn't feel like tearing himself limb from limb anymore at any rate.

Whatever was left in him in regards to his... relationships with other people.. had been suppressed into a tightly clenched and guarded part of his brain. He didn't want to think about Masters or Mistresses or.. or Friends. It hurt too much. What filled the void, though, was really the route of his problem.

He had died, he knew it. That was what it must have been like... but they... they somehow had brought him back. That wasn't unfathomable. Living and Dead were relative terms, he supposed.

The thought plagued him as he had padded back to his dorm room, and Scruff was ecstatic to see him. No one had bothered to feed the poor scareon while he was gone, some of the parts that hadn't been stuffed into coolers for Amrita lay mangled, but what really caught his attention was the fact the undead little creature had managed to shatter one of his windows to come and go as he pleased while he had been away. Well, that was good. Scruff was a survivor. It seemed his taste had shifted from Follyjoxes to various Lepuses, the mangled remains he hadn't eaten all the way littering his already fairly messy floor.

He sighed. At least it gave him something to distract himself.

He spent the rest of the evening cleaning and tidying, tossing all of the parts into a bucket before shuffling to numbly clean himself up, but his mind was never far from that feeling of purgatory.

What had his Master said about it? When he was young, barely half an Igor, still with his first set of parts, or it might have been his second, he remembered asking his Creator where he had come from. The answer had been cryptic, but he remembered at least two key factors: Parts, and Lightening. There was something more to it, though, but he hadn't comprehended any of it. By the time he was in his pajamas, facing the first night's rest in probably a week, his attentions had become locked on that bucket of dead rabbit.

He was fairly certain Scruff had left enough for something whole.

He shifted back out of his bed again, clearing his work bench to dump the bucket out and begin sorting. If he didn't have everything, he'd have to take the scareon hunting.

Filled with the intense direction a Project always seemed to fire up in him, he shifted out of his top, mended his arm quickly and sloppily (He was never as dexterous with his left, mostly thanks to his monstrous digits,) slipped on his already stained work-shirt, and set to work.

There was a silence, punctuated by Scruff's excited yapping before a gentle 'Hrmmmm..." indicated that yes, the hunchback was in, and apparently taking visitors.

He was still slumped at his work bench, still had not slept, and still hadn't managed to get that damn Rabbit back together. It looked as though he had made his way to the library somewhere over the foggy last couple days, several Lepus anatomical charts laid out around him, and hopefully he had bought the ones he had torn the pages from to tape them to the wall in front of him. It was all so... TINY! He understood humanoid proportions, and while he found it exceptionally fun to cut up a practice-frog... And he was certain he kept loosing bits. He had gotten as far as laying the bits out, as well as a few scraps of striped fabric where he couldn't seem to wrangle a whole pelt from his haphazard "partner".

Wearily, he glanced over his shoulder when the door opened, his posture stiffening at the sight of Malodore.

Hesitantly, Christof nodded, glancing to his workbench with embarrassment. His eyes were tired and he gingerly pushed away to quietly motion to the bench. He had just been stitching a leg together. It was... ALMOST like a human leg, but he kept mixing bits up and having to start over. Now, though, at least it seemed he was making some slow progress.

The hunchback's eyes lowered, his face going positively green, twisting it's hands and staring frantically at the half-finished corpse. His expression had gone waxy, hands trembling before motioning to the parts and then to the charts, finally lifting a pencil to write straight on the table:

Experiment.
Parts are Dead.
Need to learn how to Fix.

Christof's expression slackened with his own relief, the tremble leaving his hands as he nodded slowly. If he could only remember... he had been so young, too young, too much had filled his battered hodgepodge brain to remember that missing ingredient.

Pursing his lips, he moved to a clear spot of table, in his slow, large careful lettering:

1. Complete Parts assembly,
treated with proper chemicals.
2. Electrical jolt to start the Parts.
3. ????

Still need complete Parts. Lepus is v. small.

Fear...

FEAR!

His eyes lit up, flinching forward as though ready to hug the fragile plague doctor, but caught himself politely just in time before he could slice off a hand on a startled back blade. Yes, but how? How did one just... get Fear? This was not the human world, he had only just barely started to access his own Fear Power enough times to count on his left hand with already limited digits to spare. The truth was... he didn't know how it had happened. It just... was in the air.

What he needed.... what he needed was... a sort of Fear Magnet. No. Well. Sort of? A conductor. Something he could... but then where would the Fear COME from?

He didn't realize he had stiffly moved from Malodore's side to pace feverishly behind him.

A Fear Conductor. What had powered that portal? It had been able to attract their ruined Fear from the atmosphere, but HOW? He wished he had had more time to examine it.

And then there was the question of limiting it... the small scale of his little science project did not make the task any easier.

He grabbed the notebook from his desk, carefully scribbling, crumpling up the paper and trying again, trying a third time a different way before finally he managed to break his theory down to it's most comprehensive pieces.

His blueprints were basic, but he handed it urgently to the plague doctor with a hopeful expression that it would comprehend it.

Positively beaming, the hunchback nodded and urgently gestured with his palms up to the parts, giving an anxious whine before making a small sewing motion. It was too small, his eyes couldn't focus. He'd tried a few other combinations, judging by the jar next to the table, but it only made his headache worse.

It also might have been the lack of sleep.

He felt more alive now than he had since returning through the portal, pulling out the chair invitingly before circling the odd cone-like thing above the rabbit's head in the drawing before gesturing to his chest and pointing to his temple.

Magnifying lenses... might help, yes. His lips pursed and he gave a small noise in his throat, gesturing to Mal again before picking up his own needle, a bit big and clumsy for what they were working on, but it was what he had to work with for his own mending, and offer it to him. He personally didn't own any other needles, just what was necessary for quick clothing adjustments and flesh securing.

Magnifiers though... he was fairly certain he had seen some in one of the plastic boxes he had filled with random odds and ends that had collected under Barth's desk. HOW the sloth managed to keep his place so full of junk while seemingly never leaving the couch amazed him.