Chapter 10: The Ropes

The vigilantes hadn't seen hide nor hair of their leader and it had left them all wondering just what had happened that day. Andrew and his group had been waiting for a while now to be showed around the place formally. It had been two days since they had appeared here and they still hadn't had any tour or anyone come to tell them what was going on. The room they all shared was a cramped newcomer's quarters, made as a dorm room for maybe 2 people at the most. There were four beds at the four corners, but other than that the room was awfully bare.

"Damn it... What's going on here?" Andrew threw the question to the air and the others sighed in agreement. The door opened slightly and Kristin made her way in, looking a little flustered. Her hair was tousled and her glasses were resting on the very tip of her nose, making the others think she had just been to see Michael with negative results. That was, however, until she ran her hands down her hair and pushed her glasses up her nose.

"I hate my hair." She simply said and looked around at the group and their solemn faces.

"Geez, you look like someone's died or something." The rest of them looked at her incredulously and she giggled. "Oh! You must've thought that...OH! No! He's fine! Just taking a rest!" She held her hands up submissively as she backed away towards the door. "I'm sorry about that; I thought you knew already from the way things happened... He took on too much at once, but it isn't the first time he's done that." She hinted vaguely and gestured to the door.

They all filed into the hallway and followed the dragon closely as she started telling them just where things were. For what seemed like a small building to them before became a massive complex of hallways and rooms, similar to a school building. Every once in a while the group taking the tour would bump into some fellow tenants and even some of the senior staff of the group. The other members all smiled warmly as they saw the dragon leading them around, figuring they had some more newcomers to the complex. A few times the passersby would actually follow along with them before dropping off at their destinations.

"We still hold classes for people that want to learn from time to time, as they can't go to the schools around here until there are people to staff them. The ever brilliant contractors and planners that made this place didn't get enough people to get everything up and running at once, so we decided to take matters into our hands. This place functions as an actual school as well as our base of operations, and while most of these children's parents know about the schooling, they're nearly oblivious of the Vigilante cause. Unfortunately has to be that way, but a few of them know and openly support us, like the judge, the councilman, we even have part of the postal service." Kristin giggled a little and turned to face the group.

A nearby set of doors opened up and Cody walked past, a look of concern posted on his face. He stopped for a moment, noticed who he was walking past and he smiled half-heartedly and waved. Kristin nodded and the others waved while he quickly shot past them down another hallway and the dragon gave a half-knowing smile. Connor cleared his throat calmly having said nothing the entire time before addressing everyone else.

"I'm sure I speak for everyone here, but just how is the leader doing? Maybe we should go see him?" Kristin smirked as her tail flicked slightly and the group headed towards the infirmary. It was their next stop on the tour anyway, according to her.

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Cody was rushing down the halls to reach the other team mates he had had during the mission. They were all trying to figure out just how bad the damage to their leader had been, and just what they could do to remedy the situation. The mission had seemed like it had been a success and failure at the same time, having heard nothing about their leader's condition. It felt like they gained the four heroes and lost the one person that had told them their mission from the outset.

"It all feels so surreal..." Amy stated with a melancholy sigh. Collin was sitting on the bed with Jessica sitting between his legs, dwarfing him when all was said and done. He was absentmindedly rubbing her shoulders while the group continued to worry about Michael. It was just then that the door opened and Cody waltzed in, giving everyone a half-hearted smile.

"I ran into Ms. Hraban outside. The heroes are getting a tour." He alerted everyone to what he had seen and the rest only smiled in response.

"I feel like joining them, actually..." Collin said from behind Jessica, who was enjoying her massage quite readily. Over a small amount of time the two had grown quite fond of each other, and had even begun dating. Collin, while small and wiry, was still about the same age as Nate, which had surprised everyone at first. Jessica smiled distantly and looked back at her boyfriend with a wink.

"Maybe we should go and see them, then." Cody replied while holding the door open. It was a welcome change to sitting there wondering just if their leader would survive. They all filed out of the doors and walked down the hall side by side, causing some attention to befall them. A few of the students around them knew from word of mouth just who they were and quickly parted the way for them. They all reacted differently, cheering, bowing, nodding, and some even going as far as fan worship.

They reached the branching hallway within a few minutes and turned right, heading down the next nearly identical hallway towards the infirmary. Every once in a while there was a change in the scenery, maybe a poster here and there, but for the most part it was a bare hallway. The leader had always lamented over the fact in a small way, figuring that the place seemed too oppressive with the blank white walls. Still, having next to no control over what the place looked like meant little to the group making their way to Michael. The door to the room was hanging wide open, and they could see Kristin's pierced tail tip poking through.

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"Kristin... I see the humidity got the best of you again."

"Shut up, Mikey! Bastard." The room got an earful of Michael's laughter as he poked fun at Kristin's head which once again looked extremely disheveled. She growled in frustration and ruffled her hair before trying to smooth it down. Michael simply smirked before he turned his attention to the heroes.

"So here we are. The Vigilante headquarters. Shame I couldn't give you the tour myself, but our resident nurse-" He was interrupted by a particularly angry looking ferret woman that smacked him on the side of the head. She walked around to the side of his bed and gave him a critical look before walking back to her original spot checking the EEG. "...insisted that I stay in bed until she determined I was fit to walk once more." He smiled in spite of the grim sounding statement.

"What happened? How did you get all of us out here in less than a few seconds?" Mary asked the necessary question and Michael responded with a chuckle.

"It's all technical crap, but I can tell you what I think it honestly is. I travel between worlds, planes of shadow and light. Andrew, you heard the screaming from the tear in the fabric right? I heard your voice screaming alongside it, and that's usually not a good thing to accomplish. The last person that did that went completely insane. I should know...it was my father after all."

"When I enter that realm I cease to exist for that split second, and the longer I stay in it, the more it affects me. I was getting pretty torn up just from fighting Vlad, but seconds afterwards taking... let's see... eight, nine... ten people along for a ride it was just too much for me to handle I suppose."

"You SUPPOSE, Mr. Man?" Kristin walked over and poked Michael rather unceremoniously in the stomach, making him cry out before bashfully covering his paunch. "You could have very easily lost yourself in all that darkness, and then where would we be?" She pressed the lecture on and he nodded in response.

"I understand. So, any news while I was gone, now that I remember to ask?" Kristin's face took on a critical look not unlike the nurse's before she sighed and gave her report.

"Seems Rondel has a few new lackeys on his side, and it seems that he's been appealing to a new group of people that we hadn't heard about yet." Michael gave a grim look before nodding. "They call themselves the Demons. They're Animalians that have been even further augmented by something. They're supposedly even more grotesque and hated for it." Michael slammed his hands on a swivel-in table found in most hospitals and the cup of water set on it flew over. Expecting to get drenched Kristin quickly jumped to the side, but everyone's eyes were on the glass as nothing moved out of it. The water inside was completely fluid, but it wasn't spilling from the glass.

"What in the...?" Michael tapped the cup and the water shot out of it like a cannon, hitting the nurse square in the middle of her lab coat as she let out an excited yelp.

"Oh nice, Mikey, trying to get the nurse to show us what she's got, huh? Pervert." Kristin sighed and threw a hand up theatrically while Michael blushed profusely.

"N-Nurse Spanner, I assure you..." She simply harrumphed and briskly walked away to change her shirt. A change overtook the air immediately and Michael sniffed the air cautiously. His face contorted with concern and he shot his gaze over to Mary, who was clutching her sides and dropped to her knees. Connor was holding his head and his fingernails were already changing form. There were screams outside the infirmary and Michael quickly jumped to his feet belting it out to the hallway.

The scene looked depressingly macabre when the remaining heroes followed Michael to the hallway. Most notably the vigilante agents sent to find them were all hunched over just near the door, except for Nate who was looking around frantically. The other children in the hall were all moaning and groaning, some even growling as sudden and drastic changes began to take form. The leader reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a tiny button about the size of his thumb pad. He pressed it down and a clicking noise echoed down the halls as he spoke.

"All senior members and all unaffected by this strange phenomenon are hereby ordered to help the afflicted." He let go of the button and put it back in his pocket before he looked back at Andrew and Lane. He nodded at the both of them and quickly ran up to the nearest child, a girl, who was whimpering and panting heavily. He quite candidly reached down to the back of her jeans and tore them slightly, making a long, thin, brown-furred tail shoot out. She quickly stopped whimpering but was still unresponsive and the three quickly turned to Nate.

"What's going on here?" He cried uncertainly and the groans and screams grew louder. Cody was beginning to sprout black and white fur in splotches over his arms and face. The back of Jessica's shirt was bulging out pronouncedly and it looked like there was something moving underneath it. Collin was gasping and letting out what sounded like squeaking noises, and gray fur was beginning to form on his face. Michael sighed and looked back to Nate.

"I never would have thought that they would all activate at the same time... This was a humongous blow Evolution had in store for us...oh god, I can only imagine all the pain at once would be horrendous...but they're all changing into their animals here and now." Amy let out a shriek at that very second; causing Michael to wince noticeably and whiskers erupted from the sides of her cheeks above her mouth.

"Y-you mean...everyone is...? Oh god..." Nate shriveled at the thought and knelt down at Cody's side and, not hiding his feelings at all, hugged him tightly. Cody growled through his pain and stammered Nate's name before letting out a yelp, his clothes tearing up little by little. The fur had completely covered him as far as Nate could see; white around the muzzle, black around the rest of his face and the ears – the dog ears. A long brush-like tail peeked out over Cody's jeans and his hands had turned into a mix between paws and human hands, his fingernails turning instead into claws. His shirt tore entirely apart and Nate saw a stomach covered in white fur. He blushed a little at what he was seeing.

Amy let out a whimper and a yell as her face contorted bit by bit, taking on a more feline appearance. Her eyes opened in the middle of their transformation, yellow overtaking the normal sapphire blue and changing to ovular pupils. The fur on her body, a brilliant orange and yellow coloration, was almost completely formed, and a long thin tail brushed against the floor. She was actually the first to stand after the transformation in the middle of the hallway, but the pain was still obvious on her face.

"M-mi...chael... what's happening here...?" Amy asked pathetically, another wave of pain emulating through her. Jessica's shirt had torn by now; exposing two large leathery wings covered in short black fur. A snout pushing out from her face, relatively tiny fangs poking out between her lips and her hands sprouting talon-like claws. Collin gasped and a long, thin, hairless tail slithered down a leg of his pants while two large, rounded ears began to form on his head. A mouse-boy now sat where Collin was before, and a bat-girl replaced Jessica.

"This is bad... this is horrible..." Michael looked around with concern and jumped when he heard an animalistic howl from the infirmary followed by crashes. He whirled to face Andrew and Lane, and the two quickly gathered what he was going to say before he said it. The two ran back into the room in time to see the Nurse and Kristin holding down a coyote that had been inches from attacking the weasel on the floor. She had pure white fur with a black splotch on the tip of her tail, and it occurred to Andrew that it was Mary on the floor. Which meant...

"Connor? Connor, is that you?" The coyote growled threateningly and lurched forward, the two women holding him groaning from the strain of holding him back. There was snarling and howling as the dog creature was continually working at the nurse and Kristin's strength, straining to get to the ermine on the floor. Andrew quickly ran over and scooped her up into his arms, whisking her out of the infirmary and down the hallway past Michael. He had a grim look on his face as he reached for his intercom button once more.

"Be advised, some students may become feral. Remain cautious while searching through the rooms!" the PA system all around them belted out the message. The transformations in this hallway seemed to be dying down, and a few of the students were finally silent. Mary woke slowly from the jostling feeling from being carried quickly down the hallway, hearing Connor howling in the distance.

"A-Andrew... What's..." She gasped when she noticed the white and black tail draped around her leg. Slowly her mind recovered the missing events of her transformation, as well as Connor's loss of control. She patted Andrew on the shoulder and he set her on her feet.

"We have to try to calm him down... Otherwise he'll have to be knocked out. Andrew, I'll have to try the calming, and you'll have to back me up." The look on Andrew's face was nothing short of dumbstruck. She was almost eaten by a coyote and now she wanted to go back to it to try and calm it down? Sure, it was Connor's body, but it seemed like he had left the building a long time ago. Still, they had to try something. The two quickly turned around and headed back to the infirmary.

"Connor! Calm down! Control yourself!" Lane was getting desperate after failing to control his brother when the two arrived again. Lane glared angrily at Andrew wondering just why he had entertained Mary's death wish when Connor broke free of the nurse and dragon, lunging for the kill. Mary stared him straight in the eye whilst he was in mid-flight, and Andrew prepared to knock him unconscious before the coyote in front of them fell to the floor, dead asleep. A fox-boy stood in the doorway holding a gun in his hand, the recently fired dart sticking out of Connor's arm at an odd angle.

"I... I'm sorry, I had to do it. I couldn't risk him killing someone; I couldn't bear to see it." Nate shook a little and holstered his gun, brushing his blond hair out of his eyes. The three watched as the coyote lay on the floor, growling in his sleep as his foot twitched like a puppy having a dream. Despite the ferocity of the attack, seeing him asleep was oddly a cute sight, and Michael rolled his eyes as he looked around the room.

"Geez... this could be bad. Anyway, as soon as he wakes up we're still going to have to try something. For a while he might be no more than an animal to be trained properly, but eventually he should get his mind back."