It was around mid-morning a few days after the tentacle incident and the staff was gathered in the conference room for their weekly meeting. Dr. A was in the middle of talking about a plan to do outreach to local shelters, vets and breeders to have them submit reports on any unusual fluffies they encountered. She paused and Jon said “I hate to interrupt but did you guys hear a thump?”
Everyone else shook their head. “Maybe it was something outside,” Dr. A pointed out, “As a wolf you have a lot better hearing than anyone else here.”
“Even better than you?” Jon asked looking at Nessa.
“Seals are not known for their hearing .” she responded with a grin.
Then they heard it, a faint thump followed a few seconds later by another louder thump and yelling.
“Was that August?” Dr A asked.
“Oh shit,” Jon said “You don’t think. . .”
Suddenly there was a huge crash followed by a loud “NUUUU!!!” Everyone rushed into the hallway in time to see August midair, lurching around the corner towards them like a drunk driver, with his tentacles flailing wildly.
“August stop!” Dr A yelled.
“Fwuffy nu can stahp!” the fluffy cried out as he continued to zig zag down the hall, bouncing off the walls like a fluzzy pinball. As he got closer to them, reality began to twist and warp making everything look like it was double exposed, bizarre ruins merging with antique wallpaper, tentacles sprouting from the carpet and weird plants snaking over debris on the ground. As the fluffy swerved down the hall past them reality snapped back throwing them around like a toddler throwing toys during a tantrum. The hall around them was a wreck, pictures askew, furniture damaged, fluffy shit on the floor, weird blotches of purple and green slime on the wall and debris in the corners.
Micah stirred “Uh, how is everyone?” he asked from where he landed against the wall.
Raven sat slumped against the wall opposite, “I feel like I’m about to get the world’s worst migraine but I’ll live.”
“Ugh. . . I’m OK. . .maybe, give me a minute,” Willow said from the corner she leaned against.
“Really dizzy, there’s a 50/50 chance that I will either throw up or fall over if I try to move right now,” Dr. A said looking over at Jon and Nessa who were collapsed unconscious on the floor “I hate to ask, but are you three in good enough shape to go catch August?”
“Yeah” Micah replied, and Willow nodded weakly. A few seconds later Raven grunted in the affirmative.
Dr. A nodded, “Good luck, I’ll stay here to make sure the others recover.”
“Is there anything that August seems to be susceptible to?” Micah asked as he stood up slowly
“He gets sluggish in the cold,” Dr. A said.
“OK, I have an idea that might work,” Raven said thoughtfully, “I’ll have to get close to him though so we’ll need a distraction.”
“I think I’ve got the perfect thing, “ Willow replied.
“I might have something,” Micah said
Raven pushed herself off the wall she was leaning against. “Awesome. Let’s go wrangle a fluffy.”
The trio followed the path of destruction August had left in his wake, carefully stepping over broken furniture, glass, fluffy shit, puddles of weird slime and unexpected debris. The trail ended where the old farmhouse met the addition that held the lab and clinic in an odd little corner.
August hung in mid-air facing the corner huu-huuing and muttering to himself.
As they got closer he started crying louder wailing, “Fwuffy sowwy, nu hurt fwuffy” as his tentacles began to move erratically and reality began to ripple around him.
Raven looked over at the other two and nodded. Willow sang a few words and made a circular motion with her hand. The air around August shimmered and suddenly he was surrounded by tiny flickering lights that completely enthralled him causing him to calm down. Micah muttered under his breath while making intricate gestures to get a something ready to cast if needed.
Raven slowly moved towards the entranced fluffy and started to wrap her arms around him. It was going perfectly until she misjudged and bumped into one of his tentacles. August snapped out of his trance and began to flail and panic again, expelling even more shit and causing reality to start to warp again. Raven managed to catch the fluffy in a bear hug and pulled him tight against her chest as the world melted around her and she felt her heart and stomach drop. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes hoping it would alleviate her nausea and vertigo and help her concentrate. Everything in the world paused briefly then the temperature began to drop. A light coating of frost began to form on Raven and everything around her. Slowly August’s tentacles stopped moving and reality slid back into place.
“Su cowd,” August whimpered quietly as he shivered in her arms.
“Can you guys bring something we can use to restrain his tentacles? And also a sorry box,” Raven said as she struggled to maintain a temperature that was cold enough to keep the fluffy sluggish but not cold enough to cause lasting damage.
“Nuuu, nu want sowwy box,” the fluffy said through chattering teeth as he struggled weakly.
“August you broke the rules and made a huge mess, you need to be punished,” Raven firmly said as the others returned. Micah wrapped a towel around the fluffy and secured it with duct tape to keep his tentacles confined. With that done Raven slid August into the sorry box.
“We probably need to keep him cold otherwise things will get weird again,” Willow said.
“Probably. Do we have any of those large freezable warm/cold packs? Or really anything I can freeze that we can drape over the sorry box?” Raven asked.
After a bit of work, they got August set up in one of the exam rooms in a sorry box draped with towels that had been soaked and frozen just as the others arrived.
“There’s showers in the back and I can run your clothes through the washers” Dr. A said, “Why don’t you guys go get cleaned up and we’ll see what we can do out here.”
A short time later Raven left the clinic area in a set of borrowed scrubs and walked carefully out into the hallway. It only looked a little bit cleaner than it had before. Dr. A stood in the middle of the hall looking defeated. She looked over, “I think we are going to have to call in the professionals.” she sighed, “We’ll meet down in the conference room in a little bit, I need to make a few calls and break August out of the cold box.”
Raven nodded tiredly and carefully picked her way down the hall back toward the conference room. After a stop by her office she settled into a corner chair in the conference room, put her feet up and tried to relax.
She came back to consciousness when someone tapped her foot, “Hey Raven, you ok?” she heard Micah ask.
Raven’s opened her eyes to find everyone in the conference room looking at her worried. “I’m fine that just took a lot out of me,” she replied.
“OK,” Micah responded “So what was “that”?”
“We caught August and got him subdued, you were there with me,” she replied.
“No, not that,” Willow said “The temperature drop thing,”
Raven sighed and shut her eyes again while she considered her options, there really weren’t any, they’d seen what she had done. Hopefully the neural simple explanation would work, “It’s something I inherited from my father, his people have control over some elements.”
Everyone nodded and while Dr. A looked skeptical she seemed to accept the explanation.
“So what are we going to do with August? He’s just going to keep trying to float and I don’t want to go through this every few days,” Willow said quietly from the corner.
“Not sure” Dr A said, “Anyone have any ideas?”
“In our pack when the pups first start shifting we have a schedule where they can only shift at certain times under supervision and there are set activities for them to do that teach them how to control the shift and work with their wolves, maybe we can do something similar for August.” Jon suggested.
“Yeah like an hour of floating lessons where he learns how to corner and so on,” Raven agreed.
“We could set up an obstacle course/maze, made out of foam blocks or something else soft, and have a lesson time everyday where he works on a specific skill. Also we can leave the maze up and let him and Poe play in it at other times , which will give him more practice, the rule is that one of us has to be there to keep an eye on them.” Micah said “The room we wanted to use for the safe room is huge so we could just partition an area off for the maze. It also would let us do observations for our research on him since it appears he is developing new abilities.”
“That sounds like a perfect solution,” Dr A sighed, sounding relieved. “If you guys could come up with a design and training plan, I need to make some phone calls to cleaning companies.”
Incident Report A2
Subject August attempted to practice floating and went out of control causing considerable damage and reality shifts to the facility. Subject was subdued using cold and punished in a “cold box” for 1 hour for breaking rules. A soft maze will be added to saferoom and a trailing schedule for the subject has been started. Subject will be observed as he appears to be developing new abilities.
Need to look into having on call cleaning service or get better cleaning supplies.