Caustic is human in his dreams. It’s blissful peace to him, allowing him to be delightfully unaware of his current reality. They came in different forms, greeted by faces of his past.
He was sitting on the couch with Luc, the Frenchman’s head against his chest. Luc smelled of grease and iron, Alexander was chemicals and stale coffee. His right arm was over Luc’s shoulder and fingers loosely locked with Luc’s left hand.
He was scrolling through his tablet, trying to read an article, but all the words were mixed and matched. His face schrunched in confusion, trying to make sense of the article. Luc hummed and Alex turned off his tablet, placing it on the coffee table.
His hand moved, unlocking from Luc’s fingers and moving to run through the man’s long, white hair.
“Natalie should be coming home soon,” Luc mused. Caustic was rather fond of Luc’s daughter. Their shared love of engineering was admirable and Natalie was so sweet.

The door opened backwards, from the hinge. He craned his neck around, watching Natalie enter. She said some greeting in French to her father, and Alexander’s eyes settled on her.
Natalie’s face was fuzzy, full of static and it obscured her features. Alex’s brow furrowed and he looked down at Luc.... who’s face had vanished in a cloud of static. Alex pushed the other man away, standing and stepping back.
“Luc?” Green gas leaked from his throat, clouding out of his mouth.

Blink. Wolves. They were wolves. They snarled at him, they leapt-

Caustic woke up on his back, jolting and giving an audible groan. The wolf rolled back onto his side, staring at the wall and giving a rumble. He moved, pressing his nose against the cold stone walls of the cave. He huffed in a cloud a green smoke, a drop of water from the ceiling hitting his snout.

An uncharacteristic growl left him, followed by another huff that would be interpreted as a sigh. He needed more bedding. More blankets would be nice. For now, Caustic slept on a foam mat he dragged from one of the treehouses. It was too thin to support his weight properly, and it was growing disgusting with a combination of fur, drool, and water. It made him uncomfortable, inhuman, in fact.

Caustic rolled onto his stomach and stood, involuntarily shaking his fur. He hated these movements. They weren’t his. The Wolf was too comfortable with sleeping on stone, with being in the cold, with being dirty, being in the Pitt. Caustic desired sterilization and privacy.
He missed the white tile of his labs, the island counters and the cupboard of chemicals.
In a strange way, he missed Octane. He missed opening the boy at the chest cavity and the familiarity of his organs. Caustic owned each of Octane’s parts individually and watching him die never failed to be insightful.
His itch to experiment and watch his test subjects die continued to go unscratched and it was driving him crazy. Science was inherently human, something only they had mastered. Science proved his humanity.
The Pitt didn’t understand chemical bonds or isotopes, they knew what was limited by their society. Hunt, kill, survive. These were basic and primal modus operandi and the Wolf embraced them.

Caustic pulled up his right paw, running it across the side of his face, a motion that would have slicked back his hair. He quickly found himself staggered on the left paw, putting the other back down to re-balance. He needed a prosthetic and a mask already. Caustic looked down at his paws, glancing at his missing toes, and sitting back down. He raised the left paw this time, settling the wrist over his snout, closing his eyes to take a few breaths, green puffing out with each exhale. He coughed, instinctively raising his left paw again to cover his mouth.

Get yourself together.
Caustic let down his paw and raised his eyes to the small mirror on the rock he made his work desk. It wasn’t large at all, 4”x6”, enough that Caustic could see portions of his face.
Caustic had a well-aged face. He was pushing 50 and it showed under tired eyes and a droopy expression. He looked... fake, hopeless. His beard was salt and peppered with age and it was growing up his cheeks. He needed to shave, and inherently reached out for a razor, quickly reminded of his paws as the left one fell to the stone with a soft slap.
Eyes back to the mirror. The Wolf stared at him, and another cloud of gas left him. Caustic moved, leaving his living area with a trot and closing his eyes when the harsh sun hit his face.
This was annoying, he needed to get out of here already and had made no progress to do so. Caustic headed towards the camp, intent on finding something to eat. Just anything to bide his time. He needed to find out about these other clans already, maybe they loan better resource to him. Temples, pyramids, caves all did nothing for him. He needed books and information, lab equipment and to start training his monkey to grab things for him. This entire dimension was tedious and annoying.
Maybe someone in camp could entertain him, before Caustic tried counting the stalagmites in the caves again for meaningless data. The wolf had not been seen anywhere near the camp in days. Caustic basically made a beeline from his cave to the forest daily. He enjoyed such privacy as a known recluse. He didn't want them to get nosy though. Kydobi might not approve of his test subject, or lab assistant, whatever the monkey was now.

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