Nightshift 49: Disciplinary Therapy Room 3 [M-U for Kemanorel]

[damned-doctors.livejournal.com]

It has been said that an animal lurks within the heart of every man. In some cases, that could even be taken literally. In tonight's specimen the dragon sleeping within his heart was a literal thing, the human exterior only a deceptive facade. And masks could be so easily shattered, couldn't they? It simply took the right kind of blow in just the right place.

And tonight the stage was all prepared, the set pieces in place and the curtain about to rise as soon as the star decided to awaken. In anticipation of that event the young man had been placed on a table illuminated by a single particularly bright light above him, enough to cast the rest of the room in shadow. After all, it'd be premature to reveal the rest of the backdrops before the show began, wouldn't it?

For the moment the room was almost utterly silent but for a faint humming, buzzing sound, the sort that wasn't immediately noticed but as soon as it was became impossible to ignore. And accompanying the sound was a particularly heavy tang of ozone, as though lightning had just struck nearby. Nobody else was visible in the room as yet, no sounds of movement to give away the doctor's presence. Until the time was right she simply waited, watchful and silent.

Comments

[damned-doctors.livejournal.com]

Perfect.

As soon as the monitor displays finally returned to full display the doctor couldn't help it: she laughed. Full-voiced and triumphant, she laughed, in counterpoint to the boy's scream of pain. He was, after all, not even human, so what did it matter? Her experiment had succeeded.

She reached over and flicked on the speaker again, wincing slightly as it squealed and spat static at her before settling to the soft hum of an open microphone. "Bravo, my dear boy, bravo!" she cried, the wide smile clearly audible in her voice. "I always knew you had it in you.

"And now everyone else will, too," the doctor continued, reaching over to a panel of switches and flipping several in turn. "It's a little unorthodox, sending the star out with his true face instead of a costume, but when the role calls for it... well, we needed a monster. A beast. And, after all, you fit."

[adorkabledragon.livejournal.com]

The same laws that applied to shifting back home seemed to apply here. As Keman’s tail grew and he sprouted wings, his arms and legs shrank to make up for the additional mass, repositioning themselves as they did so because dragons are not bipeds. His skull lengthened and so did his neck, but both had to become smaller and thinner. Hair grew back into his scalp, leaving him momentarily bald until a bony ridge could take its place. Without all of the spare mass he’d moved to the Out unavailable to him, each little change in one part of the body directly impacted another.

And all of it was agony.

Keman screamed until he literally couldn’t anymore; his vocal chords changed to accommodate his longer throat and the next sound that came out was an animalistic whimper through teeth that were suddenly too long and too sharp. It should only have taken seconds to shift into something this small, but…it felt like hours. Maybe it was minutes. There was no way to tell. His wings ripped through what was left of his shirt, lacing themselves with skin from his back. It was still human skin, pink and fragile and bleeding from a dozen little cuts he couldn’t remember sustaining, but that would change soon enough.

He could hear the woman over the intercom, gleeful, and he realized that he wanted to kill her. He wanted to rip her throat out with his newly-sharp fangs, feel her lifeblood dripping down his jaws. She was wrong. He wasn’t a monster; he was a thinking, reasoning, intelligent being. He only killed to hunt, the same as any other carnivore.

But he could make an exception for her.

While the blue-green scales were still spreading over his body, the little dragon shed the remnants of his patient uniform and started to run towards the sound of the woman’s voice.

[damned-doctors.livejournal.com]

The speakers broadcasting the doctor's voice in the small chamber were located at the very base of the walls, camouflaged well enough that they were hard to see until one was almost on top of them. And should anyone be foolish enough to try to touch speaker or even the wall, so much lingering power still remained that it would give him quite a bit of a shock.

A faint sigh echoed from said speakers as the doctor noticed her subject's charge on the monitors, and she shook her head slightly as she pressed a button on the console in front of herself. "No, no. Stage left, dear boy," she chided, as with a grating rumble one of the panels on the opposite side of the chamber lifted, leaving a gap perhaps a couple feet high. It wouldn't have been easy for someone human-sized to get out, but Keman's minature dragon form would fit just fine.

The snap of a flipped switch echoed through the microphone, and the gems on the walls began to glow again, but this time with a predominantly red tinge. "Sometimes it can be difficult to train the dumb beasts of the world, though. They need a little... prod." A minature bolt of lightning arced from one wall panel to the next, providing a dramatic punctuation to her words.

[adorkabledragon.livejournal.com]

Keman collided with the wall and sprang back with a yelp of pain as soon as he touched it. His scales had done their job and reflected a lot of the shock, but enough power hit him that it hurt, registering across nerves that were already over-sensitive. He watched warily as the door opened just a little bit, not wide enough for a person to get through…

But he wasn’t a person now, was he, and he was barely a fraction of the size that he should have been for this form. The only mass that had been available while shifting—or, rather, while he was being forced to shift—was that of a skinny seventeen year old boy, barely enough to make a dragon the size of a hunting dog. This was wrong. All of it. The dragon seethed with anger, so much so that red haze filled his vision, and—no. Keman took a deep breath through his new nostrils, trying to calm himself. He couldn’t prove the woman right. He wasn’t dumb animal or a monster.

Steeling himself, the little dragon folded his wings and raced towards the open door. He had to get out of here, no matter what the cost. And not too soon, either. Lightning arced behind him, searing the tip of his tail as he went.

[going here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/910780.html?thread=69700796#t69700796).]