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After a decent amount of thought, Zach soon came to the conclusion that the headache and the frustrating soreness of the scales and skin of his neck were related. He was tempted to scratch at it, but his claws were far too sharp for relieving itches. After slipping into some clothes (and donning the 'fitted' top hat for his own reasons), left his duplex in a somewhat bitter mood. and he felt unusually stiff and sore all over for only having been inexplicably zapped what felt like the day before. If he was going to get any serious thinking done about anything, he needed to stifle the rythmic pounding behind his eyes. Aspirin, that's what he needed.

Zach had only just tackled the staircase and was trudging past the gap between duplexes when he spotted someone fairly human-looking milling around. Normally it wasn't anything special to see someone walking around during the middle of the day, but this was different. It was difficult to explain, but the look of the clothes that the person wore seemed familiar, and not in a good way. He couldn't see their face that clearly, but they did look rather large.

It should have been an excellent reason to stop gawking and continue on his way, but the infuriating pain of the headache left him standing beyond the gap just a few moments too long not to seem awkward somehow. He massaged his forehead with a couple of his mostly-human fingers. His tone of voice had a slightly grating edge to it. "Hey. If you're trying to avoid the nativesss around here, it'sss pretty pointlesss." He made a mental note to deal with that usually unavoidable hiss to his words.

Zach couldn't help but wince a little at the man's temporarily contorted face, especially when the shock fled from it and utterly failed to improve its easiness on the eyes. The headache only made looking at it worse. His eyes fled to a safer viewpoint away from the face, and briefly spotted the Feral Labs logo. His thoughts wandered to the last time he'd really had a good look at the logo, when it was emblazoned on an envelope he'd found in his mail one seemingly uneventful morning. He tried to push it out of his mind, taking his chances once again with the guard's face. Thinking back to those times between the accident and the more recent times on the island made him feel... human... and consequently pathetic.

His apprehension about the man's clothes made sense now. He didn't usually see guards around, and when he did they were hardly ever alone and never unarmed. After all, what was there for islanders like Jamal to fear from these guys if they weren't toting weapons? He spread his wings a little behind him in some mock form of defensiveness. Zach was not particularly fond of guards after seeing how they treated Kaveri during the Aubrey fiasco. The pain in his head hit again, hard, and he waited for it to subside a little before giving this guard a response. There'd been no word on the wolf girl's capture. Maybe this guy would offer him at least a hint about that situation. He wasn't going to venture into the jungle again until it was safe. And there was always the option of running away if he sensed more hostility. "Wait, wait. You're a guard wandering around without a gun when a psssychopath is loossse in the jungle?"

"Lossst it," he repeated blankly. Zach was tempted to raise his nonexistant eyebrows as the nameless guard backed away. He himself hadn't moved from his spot, still holding his forehead under the brim of the hat. The explanation sounded absurd. They wouldn't leave a gun lying around in the jungle when they already had a killer wolf to contend with out there. There were accidents, and then there was downright carelessness.

He sauntered a couple steps forward whle his tail made a slow sweep behind him along the ground. The headache was terrible, but the painkillers could wait for something like this. The fear that this guy was showing by walking backward emboldened him to keep talking. Without a weapon, the guard seemed hardly a threat. The cobra was far worse than this guy could be. "How'd you lose it? Sssomeone take it from you?"

"Hold up." He was desperate to keep the smirk off of his face, though whether it would be recognized as such or just taken as some twisted feral expression was difficult to guess. Either one would probably send the guy running. He had his suspicions about this man's story, mostly because of the lack of a gun. An unarmed guard out here would have to be suicidal, and this ugly guy didn't seem like that type.

After seeing that Lily woman once a long time ago, the idea of staff members ending up as islanders wasn't too much of a stretch of the imagination. He placed his free hand against the side of Valentine's eternally silent duplex. "You... didn't wake up in one of these, did you?"

Zach gave him a disbelieving look but said nothing in regard to the denial. If the guard said he hadn't, Zach wasn't about to go out of his way to try to disprove anything. Threats of zapping, however, were a different matter.

"H-hey, jussst calm down, will you? I'm only curiousss. That'sss all. Don't take it the wrong way." In the event he'd been wrong and the guard was just a particularly incompetent but employed specimen, then Zach didn't want to be faced with a gun the next time they met. Using his arm he pushed off the wall so that he could hold both hands up defensively. He stopped clasping his forehead long enough to adjust the brim of the hat. As he so easily recalled, the last zap he'd recieved had been quite painful. The headache still hadn't abated. He grumbled wearily. "And I already got zapped the other day for no reason. I don't need that again."

"Woof," Zach called flatly to the burly guard from where he stood, unamused by being treated like some kind of pet. It was punctuated with a quick and contemptuous roll of the eyes. It hadn't occured to Zach before how infamous he was among lab employees for what had happened to Dr. Lockheart. He wasn't impulsive or idiotic enough to try going after the guard, but there were other things he could do to make up for it.

With an audible sigh, held his left hand casually in front and slightly to the side of his snout, and made an obvious but silent show of inspecting his wicked-looking claws.