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Clouds rolled over the island on an unusually gloomy day in paradise. There was the smell of coming rain, and the wind blew cool through the humid air. Gaius frowned, sitting under one of the planted trees in the village greens, staring out towards the jungle, but without seeing anything. His mind was as dark as the weather, occupied with his own problems.

Namely, the ominous welt on his still-bare arm, and the headache that'd been cultivating all morning. It'd begun fairly ignorable, just a slight pressure, but it had mounted, hour by hour, until he felt sure his brain was gonna thrash itself out the front of his forehead with its pounding.

Beside him, Vixen sat. Though she faced the jungle as well, her mis-matched eyes were ever on her pegasus-man. He was scared, she could smell it. He may have set his jaw and furrowed his brows in mixed determination and pain, but he couldn't hide the emotion wafting from him. Vixen didn't understand the cause, though her canine mind had some fuzzy idea, a recollection of her master screaming, in pain, and black fur and the red scaled predator. Vixen whined and leaned over to nuzzle his leg.

Gaius grunted, lifting a hand to pat her, but instead lifted it to rub his temple. Taking a deep breath, he breathed out slowly. With the rising headache came frazzled nerves.

Suddenly he stood up, a wave of panic tightening his stomach. "Too alone," he muttered. I'm too alone! He needed people, more than just Vixen. As many as possible, his instincts demanded. He was in danger, it wasn't safe.

Gaius took off across the lawn at a quick trot, unsteady on his feet, and one hand clutching his head. Danger! Danger! his mind screamed. The problem was, his instincts couldn't cope with the fact that the danger was coming from inside.

The horse-man was so distracted, he didn't hear the light padding feet bounding through the grass. It wasn't until Vixen at his side turned and gave an excited yap that he spun about, eyes wide.

"Wha..." Gaius blinked, caught completely off guard by the perky, babbling fox-girl. He opened his mouth as she greeted him, but was cut off by her quick stream of questions before he could get a word in. It didn't help that his head was throbbing with the force of a sledgehammer...

"Who- Wha- S-Sophie?" he managed, wincing as his ears flicked back. "What do you mean sca-..." Gaius stopped himself. The way his heart was pounding in his throat, and the way every part of him quivered with adrenaline, he couldn't be anything but scared, could he?

"It's not something you can chase, Sophie..." he said with a curl of his lip. Normally, he would've been all smiles and cheer to see the girl so perky, but now it was more an annoyance, just compounding with his own pains. Did she have to smile and fidget so?

But! She was a person, just what he'd been searching for. Gaius's face shifted suddenly, the grimace disappearing into a look of wide-eyed panic. "Sophie," he said, grabbing her arm in his hard hoofed grip, "Sophie... stay with me. Whatever happens, will you stay with me?"

It was soon. Soon, before his head split open if he was lucky.

Gaius followed the girl's large eyes down to his arm, to the redness just above his arm's hairline. He let go of her arm to cover it with his hand, little good it would do. Despite the tumultuous emotions roiling in Gaius's mind, he managed a tight, sad smile. "I'm afraid... it might be..."

It was then that the first drops of rain began to fall. Great, large, slow ones that fell like marbles. Vixen whined, hunkering down closer to the two. A raindrop fell on the bridge of Gaius's nose and he snorted, rubbing it away with the back of his hand, but he stopped at the sand-paper-stubble that scraped against his face and pulled his hand back. Little black follicles were pushing themselves up through all the pores of his hair-less hand. He flipped it over. The same was happening on the palm. He could feel it spreading elsewhere, wherever he still had skin.

"We need to get inside," he said in a tight voice, reaching for Sophie's shoulder for support. "So... Somewhere... I don't... want to be caught... out here..."

Gaius was grateful for the support as they stumbled for the village center. The combination of the burning sensation all over his exposed skin with his head pain had his senses swimming.

By the time they got to the room, short coarse hair covered the entirety of his arms, what he had around his forearms growing even longer, and it was creeping up his neck from under the shirt he wore, already soaked by the quickly building rain.

He stumbled in before Sophie, grateful for the shelter, though it brought a new wave of panic to his equine and aviary instincts, being entrapped in a room out of the open.

The sound of a sneeze broke through Gaius's haze and he turned slightly. "Bless you," he mumbled.

He let Sophie lead him to the couch, sitting down gratefully and leaning his head back a moment before looking back down at Sophie.

Her whine reminded him so much of a dog... He lifted a hand absently, moving it to ruffle her head, the way he'd comfort Vixen when she made the same sound, but stopped himself, pulling it back.

"No... it's okay... Just stay with me. I don't think I could handle being alone..." He crinkled his face in a small smile, the teeth showing large and white against the wave of black that was engulfing what was left of the skin on his face.

And then the smile was gone, wiped away by the first wave of real agony. His brain really WAS coming out, but it was coming out through his nose and mouth rather than his cranium. He let out a grunt before lurching forward, clutching at his face and screwing his eyes tight. It was beginning!

Gaius shook his head as she knelt closer. He was beyond words now. Just as with his previous change, no matter how hard he pressed he couldn't hold back the change, much as he wished to. The grind of bone thundered in his ears, quite possibly audible to Sophie's own keen hearing, and Gaius's previously stubby muzzle began to push out, excruciatingly slow. Skin stretched to cover the new length of skull as what had remained of the bridge of his nose flattened out, becoming a smooth slope down to the tip of his nose. Within two minutes, his hands could no longer cover the muzzle. His entire skull creaked as the muzzle forced his face wider, eyes shifting even farther apart, his features taking on distinctly equine structures.

Inside his mouth, teeth jostled as they grew, forced into his lengthening jaw. Gaps formed between the rows of molars and what had become his incisors, the gap where the bit of a bridle would normally rest in a horse's mouth. Gaius's lips pulled back from the teeth as they grew too fast, exposing the ghastly things. Tears streamed down his black cheeks unbidden. His sinuses, his throat, his face was being ravaged by the pain. Maybe... Maybe he should've taken Sophie's offer for painkillers...

Ten minutes, and Gaius's face was still going. Worse, he could feel what was coming next as his wings clutched themselves despite their shaking as a similar bone-deep aching began to throb in them. He managed to force one eye open, looking at Sophie, and released a grip from his muzzle to reach for the hand on his shoulder, holding it tightly. He desperately needed the anchor, lest he lose himself now.

The blue eye that looked at her from the side of Gaius's face reflected the pain the poor man was undergoing, and was bright with tears. He felt ashamed to be showing such weakness in front of a girl, but it was better than being all alone. He squeezed her hand gratefully, and nodded as she nuzzled him.

Yes, she was helping, though she couldn't make the pain go away.

As the last of his human nose disappeared, pulled up into two vertical nostrils, and his lips filled out to cover the mass of incisors, Gaius jerked forward, back arching. Every muscle along his back spasmed with the change. He had to let go of Sophie's hand, grabbing the couch in his fists instead. As Sophie and Vixen watched, the twitching decorative wings began to lengthen, growing unevenly as bones in one joint lengthened, and then another and so on. A shrill equine scream escaped Gaius as the agony threatened to overwhelm him.

And then came the needles. Black shafts jutted out from the new flesh, welling up beads of blood around them before fanning out into full, raven-black feathers. The wings were growing so large, they took up almost all the couch, batting against poor Sophie as Gaius flailed. He fell to his knees on the floor, wings spreading behind him. They were huge, massive. Easily longer than Sophie was tall. And they took up a good deal of space!

Another scream escaped Gaius and he hugged the wings close to himself. The pain was still fresh, but it wasn't building anymore. Vaguely through his haze, he could sense Sophie close by. The smell of fear, his own as well as Sophie's, assaulted his newly improved nose. Vixen whined behind Sophie, nuzzling the girl's side for mutual support. She didn't want to get close to those wings, having been hurt recently.

The pegasus's form shook. The worst of the pain had passed, ravaging his body and leaving his soul scarred, but the changes weren't done yet.

A jolt of cold fear gripped him as he felt the hard encasement of his fingers and feet growing. All his fears, ever since he'd first learned the nature of his fate, ran through Gaius's mind. Eyes opened to stare wide-eyed as the black of his fingers grew, thickened, and rounded out... but there was no merging.

Gaius closed his eyes in tearful relief. Thank the lord, he still had fingers!

The same couldn't be said of his feet, as the change gripped them more complete. All fleshy pad and callouses disappeared into the hard joint and hoof, but Gaius paid it little mind.

He lifted his eyes, but had to close them quickly as a wave of nausea swept over him. It was like his previous change all over again as the widened vision threw off his equilibrium. Gaius hung his head, lengthening hair falling over his face and shoulders, and let out a great sigh.

At last, it was over.

Vixen stood up, moving forward to be the first to nuzzle Gaius. She snuffled at Gaius's face, giving his nose a brief lick and wagged her tail once hopefully. Gaius opened an eye to look at Vixen, then looked up at Sophie. She was there, just as she'd promised... And he was still there, what was left of him. He tried to pull up at the corners of his mouth in an attempt at a smile, but the muscles were too new and the motion unnatural for the shape of his face. He only managed a twitch in the muscles along the side of his muzzle.

Desperate to communicate his thanks somehow, he groped at her hand, giving it a light squeeze.

With his eyes still closed, the affection of the two female canines caught Gaius by surprise. He jerked his head back slightly, a snort escaping him, and blinked his eyes open, trying to focus them. The pupils, once circular, had widened into the peculiar rectangles of a horse, though his eyes remained otherwise human-looking. An odd sight on a horse face.

Gaius noticed Sophie nuzzling against his shoulder. It was such an endearing act, with the way her ears flopped and the expressiveness of her large eyes... He blushed beneath the black hair, embarrassed by the intimate contact. Had this been how Nita felt when he did similar to her? Well... maybe she'd been right... Maybe it was 'cute'...

As Sophie sat back to look him over, Gaius took the opportunity to examine himself too. His nose proved to be a nuisance, interrupting his vision with a long, wide mass. The shirt he'd been wearing had been torn badly by the growth of his wings and hung loosely across his chest. Everything, every last inch of him was dark, glossy black.

Gaius opened and closed his mouth a couple times before attempting to talk. Even so, his words came out thick, unused as he was to the length of tongue and jaw.

"Yesth..." he said slowly. "Ah'm complete. Ah'm done... at lastht."

He wiped the base of his hand over his eye, wiping away the tears gathering. It was a bitter relief.

He looked back at Sophie, still holding her hand with his. The change was over, but he was still grateful for her presence, and the comfort her contact brought. A pang of guilt hit him. What would Nita think? But the thought was quickly buried. It was the lab's fault, after all. This was just sympathetic support, anyways.

His eyes moved between her and the closed door, and he gave her a sheepish expression. "Ah'm... hungry. Could we...?" He gestured in the direction of the caf and raised his eyebrows.