"Now, hold on a minute," Lyco smarmed, fixing her brown bangs behind her blue hairband.

"You're telling me," she continued, with an incredulous smile on her muzzle--"That the Chief just went and followed you into some creepy scientist's laboratory?"

"Bullshit!" She exclaimed, pushing me playfully, while her sister Leeta watched with a fanged, shit-eating grin...

...was I going to just... leave it at that? I'd woken up by the fire. Wait...

Was I no longer human?

I started trying to imagine my own body, to see, to feel it--and the world around the outline of 'me', blurred in a painful mess of static.

Could it be I was part of the pack, now?

"Why do you need to be part of our pack to make casual talk?" Lyco goaded, from beside me.

Is this... funny for you, ladies?

Lyco elbowed me playfully. "We're not ladies! We're girls."

Lyco's twin in green got up really close, with her hands in my lap. It was weird, having her in my personal space like this, poking her snout in my direction with an impish grin.

"Do you really love the Chief?" Leeta asked, tilting her head and batting her eyes.

I got flummoxed and squirmed backwards into some rocks. The girls, a pair of pink wolf-mobians, both giggled and laughed, slapping their thighs. Then, after getting their breath, after hi-fiving each other and hugging it out in a fit of raucous laughter, they relaxed, and pressed palms together, and schemed.

Lyco: ("He's only done this like ten times now, sis, and it gets cuter every time. He needs girls in his life!")

I floated in a state between tension and fatigue.

Just... like... a nerdy one who liked comics a lot, or some other weird quirk... would be fine. Someone who dreamed enough not to be an utter drag. Just a common-enough soul. It didn't have to be some chief of a foreign tribe of doggy-looking folk.

Leeta: "Doggy-looking?" Leeta chided, hands at her hips. "I thought we covered this. We're coywolves, Avery. Huehuecoyotl's kids."

Lyco: "We're not from the pack, either. The Chief took us both in too, remember?"

There were distant, phantom giggles emanating from every direction. How had I gotten from Hojo's lab to this dissection table?

Lyco: "It'll be better if you just relax and accept us as your extended family now, Avery--"

Wait... lab?

... flash.

Nanaki: "Wait. Stop. So you've been having dreams that you're in multiple places?"

What?

Nanaki shook his head, and padded about on all fours, getting his bearings--pacing his cell. Our cell.

"You were telling me about these two girls, and you looked far-away."

Well, it was all taking place in my head, after all, right?

"You'd rather be with them, than in a holding cell with me," Nanaki added, glumly.

Shit. Where was Lupe?!

... wait. Please, tell me I wasn't being Cloud.

And I suddenly understood something about myself...

I could go places when I longed for company, in my head... but my imagination played fast and loose with the rules. And I could part-lose myself in the disassociation. Just enough to feed an emptiness.

...get it together. You know they're just characters, right?

I tried to choke back tears.

I've spent this long, with just their stories... their pictures, and a need for people.

I wasn't in any position to be writing their stories. These people? Characters? They were choking out my ability to direct my own story.

... I...

(Shit. Even that crappy mentality feels like it's Cloud's, though, and not mine.)

So... maybe, at least, I'm not utterly helpless.

... I had to think about it, now. It was like, I could pick up the gunky ways of thinking of these people, and start imitating their negative qualities... but now I could distance myself from those, too.

... a mood was just a mood now. It wasn't necessarily 'my' mood, anymore.

... that simultaneously excited, and scared me.

If I'm not my mood, who am I, then?