THE WRONG ENDS BY THE WRONG MEANS ⁠— appearance

[QUIET]

[align=center][div style="text-align:justify;width:55%;font-family:verdana;"]On that dreaded day not too long ago, a meteor cleaved open the landscape, bringing with it a great rumble that felled trees and split grounds in every corner of the Beyond. The tremors, along with all that death and disease, brought a fragment of life.

The earth heaves, at times, coughs up the unwanted things. Where it has been stricken often enough, where the wounds cleave deep into its skin, crawls out those parasites from its gaping mouth that afflict it with a shuddering and sickening disease. And that wound will heal, eventually, but until that point all the evil things locked away beneath the soil sprout their roots and twist up toward the new sun.

She crawls, yes. On hands and knees, paw and bone and tail. Mud draws her down, a thick grit between her teeth that bubbles with the raw screams in her throat. Like a mother giving birth the tremors raise this creature up from the pools of mud and debris in the crater's core, expel it from the depths and give life with the raising of the sky-star. Dawn's first hour brings this animal's wails, sidelong rays casting shadows across her face where jagged succession reached their new, gnarled branches up to the sky. Much like her, these trees would never feel the glory of fresh, new life, plagued by the same disease that gave birth to great mutations and early death from the moment their seeds sprouted. Much like her, they survived off of death and all the cruel things this crater represented.

She chokes, breathes. Mud sputters from her lips and her manages, with all the effort she can muster, to dig her claws into steady ground. If she can see there is no telling where, exactly, she is looking: wild chameleon eyes swirl this way and that, flitting of their own accord to take in the early morning light. Dragged down by the mud and debris she takes the crudest of forms, something like a dog or an oversized cat muddled by thick mats of algae and weeds that take the place of hair. She cries out again, yowls like the dying. Her maw crowds with teeth, small and sharp far too many for any living thing to possess - like an uncanny doll, lifelike with just enough flaws to remain adjacent to the real thing.

The real thing.

Is she real?

The buzzing in her skull tells her yes, this is birth and she is alive, but the mud under her paws sticks and pulls like running in a dream, and the fractals behind her eyes see too much, too far to believe that she is not making this up as she goes along. Like tendrils, her senses tease outwards, brushing the eroded walls of the crater and drawing sensory input from every grain of sand and fallen twig. She sees all of it. Feels all of it. The buzz becomes another scream between her two ears and she cannot help another scream from wrenching itself out of her throat. Claws drag her closer to the edge.

It is too much to live like this, but it is a weight she must bear.

tldr; plant lookin thing is crawling out of the crater and Yelling

[trojan g.]

[align=center][div style="bgcolor= black; max-width: 500px; font-family: verdana;font-size:10pt;text-align:justify;"]Paw steps on this day had brought the canine mix over to the crater of Tanglewood, his curiosity piqued by the stories told of the main source of the island's radiation. Though it'd been a long time since the cause of the crater had long since come and gone, with the recent quake in the earth of the island and the meteor hitting the Typhoon, there'd been more and more chatter from the older NPC's of the group based on the crater that he'd finally decided to come over and check things out for himself.

All of the stories that he'd been told could not have prepared him for the site before him. Something that looked like plants, sentient plants, crawling from the large crater, screaming.

It hurt his ears and made his stomach flip.

Rushing over - afraid if he left he'd be yelled at for 'not helping' when he had no idea what this thing was in the first place - Ryder would finally speak out, "You need help there? You're awfully loud for someone simply climbing out of the crater." It wasn't even like it was that deep either, eroded away by time and the paw steps of those that lived there, it was deep, sure, but not steep enough to warrant getting stuck unless you were a child.

Maybe this was a child, he didn't know. He just wanted the screaming to stop.

[CAUSTIC.]

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DR. CAUSTIC

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[REDACTED]
TOXIC TRAPPER
MACKENZIE VALLEY WOLF
TANGLEWOOD
"Humanity. It's just a word."

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Very, very few things are capable of catching Caustic's eye. The list was short, as follows: plants, Thanatology, and the few relationships he held dear.
Typically, the wolf kept his distance from all manner of others in Tanglewood. Caustic was a recluse by nature, but his... duty... as a Chaser required him to interact with others.

Caustic's tail wags nigh uncontrollably at the sight of the creature- how strange it was, and covered in plants. Quickly, he steps forward, coming up behind Ryder with his gaze acutely focused on the creature.

"Easy now... You're a brilliant specimen."

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Original code by lexasperated / artwork by @R_HillPrime

[wormwood.]

☆ HUNG PICTURES OF PATRON SAINTS UP ON MY WALL TO REMIND ME THAT I AM A FOOL. TELL ME WHERE I CAME FROM, WHAT I WILL ALWAYS BE: JUST A SPOILED LITTLE KID WHO WENT TO CATHOLIC SCHOOL —

Screaming. The sound of it slammed against his eardrums and made his heart sink, his head swimming with all the possibilities of what possibly could be shouting with such intensity, and why. It only seemed to reflect a sense of agony, and that alone was enough to draw the proxy toward the crater, his paws giving way to the flap of his massive wings as he frantically made his way over. Whoever... whatever that was crawling out of the crater... not only was it potentially dangerous, but it was obviously anguished as well. The lion wanted to get close, if only so that he could pull her into his chest and reassure her that everything was alright, and that Tanglewood was not a place that would bring her more agony. This urge was strong, almost overpowering. He wasn't sure if it was just because he was a parent, or because of something else, but he still resisted it. He didn't want to embarass himself, especially if she ended up being some kind of threat bent on hurting them. After all, he had others to protect. He couldn't go hugging the new plant monster until she wrapped her vines around his neck.

When he finally arrived on the scene with the creature, Ryder, and Caustic, Aurum found that his sense of worry and confusion was soon gone. However, it was rapidly replaced with a sense of rage. Yet again, Caustic was dehumanizing someone, his delighted and slimy voice referring to this obviously unwell newcomer as a specimen. Unable to keep his anger from bubbling forth, Aurum moved forward, opening his jaws and attempting to clamp them down forcefully on Caustic's tail, in order to forcibly drag the wolf backwards and away from Quiet. Whether he was successful or not, the angel hissed lowly at the canine, seething, "What the fuck is your problem? She's not a specimen, you sniveling garbage heap." He no longer felt any regret or guilt in reprimanding the scientist, since it only became more and more clear by the day that the canine was making no efforts to improve himself. All he cared about was his title and his experiments, and considering there were actual people within Tanglewood worth worrying about, Aurum often found himself getting more than a little pissed.

Once he felt satisfied with that, he stepped out in front of both Caustic and Ryder, stretching a paw out to Quiet before he spoke softly, "Hello there... are you okay? If you're injured, we can help you. Even if you aren't, we can help you. Give you a place to stay, if you need it. Food, water..." He truly wasn't sure what to think of a creature that had emerged from the crater that was so widely feared, but he wasn't about to shun her. Even if she ended up attacking him, he could deal with that. After all, she may have been unusual and maybe had some tricks up her sleeve, but he had the power of fire on his side. And last he had checked, plants and fire didn't exactly mesh well.

[div style="text-align: right; text-transform: uppercase; text-shadow: 0px 0px 2px #1B1B2F; font-size: 24px;"][color=#44437F]— AURUM

#psychosocial.

[QUIET]

[align=center][div style="text-align:justify;width:55%;font-family:verdana;"]She screams because it hurts. Scorched by the morning sun, the transpiring dew on her skin ebbs and flows in waves of mist. Driving his claws into the dirt feels like dragging a leaden weight up a mountain, and though the crater is not deep, she feels every inch of its diseased surface, feels the fallout penetrating every cell and making her as ill as the rest of the forest's mutated wanderers. Perhaps that was how she came to be, a horrible mistake brought on by an irradiated earth. If there was a mother that was not the ground she walked on, there was a chance that her children were the same, blooming masses of flesh, if this creature was not the only one of her kind.

Oh, she wishes there were more of her, if only to distribute the suffering.

Sounds break up the wail of her cries, the call of voices from the perimeter of the pit. She reaches - reaches with a cloud of movement beyond her comprehension, a swarm of thought and feeling curling its tendrils out - and she hears it all. Something like sniveling and specimen and crawling echoes in a cacophony of noise that rings through her ears and drives a nail deep in her skull. Her stomach sinks at the word, the thought of being a plaything under the knife of another. Caustic may have neutral intent at best, but her anger flares at his voice, and that buzz in the back of her skull begins to whir again. She snarls like a feral animal and shakes out her pelt.

But there is no hair, there, only thick mats of chlorophyta that cling, sopping, to her pink and scarred flesh. Droplets of water are flung from each slimy frond, along with something else, too: flecks of dirt, maybe, or symbiotic insects that have made a home among the flora. They buzz helplessly around her body and land again, disappearing as soon as they were found. She bares yellow teeth at the lion, the wolf, the hound. She opens her maw to speak, but no sound escapes her. Only a hiss of breath escapes her throat, caught somewhere between a vicious growl and another scream.

A paw. An extended olive branch. She considers it, briefly - eyes flicker from one face to another, slow, steady.

No. Fool that he is, he believes she is a kind and gentle thing, a vulnerable thing. There's a gnash of her fangs and she lunges at the lion, aiming to snap her jaws down on his paw pads and then release him from her grip. A warning, if anything.

[BLOODHOUND.]

They are not far off from the crater, near the border of the woods, really, when they hear the screams. It reminds them all too well of a familiar battlefield, of the great wheezing gasps of life spilling out of bloody seams. They are on high alert, as they flock to the epicentre, of the great meteor, of the great shrieking.

They see a creature at its core, crawling desperately from the mud, a crack that had not been there before, screaming something wretched. They approach, as others do, they see a dog complain about the noise, they see Dr. Caustic tread closer in his scientific marvelling, they watch Aurum snap at him, and extend a paw.

They are very close, then, when they watch her examine that outstretched paw, when they see her eyes flick between the faces of those around her, the tensing of her jaw. It is instinct then, to react, knowing before those teeth bare that her jaw is going to close upon flesh.

It's not her fault. It isn't his, either, it's all nature and instinct and pain that fuels the bite, it's strength and the wild and the need to be anything other than pitied. It's the strength to survive that wills those jaws open, that will clamp them down on a helping hand, on someone who is not a danger, on someone who does not understand. And they see this, as they did long ago, amongst their people, the adults protecting a child from a prowler in pain, its body trembling with the force of its bite. They see this in the crow that they have been nursing back to health, in its beak and claws that attack their mask.

She doesn't know any better.

Their mind is a mix of languages, Icelandic and English, both barely coherent. Sentences that reach their tongue do not fall past their lips, every way to reason is a garbled mess of words that they cannot translate. They cannot speak. Unable to warn, to tell Aurum to hold his claws. To mind the fangs.

Words fail them, but actions may not.

They are close then, when those teeth gnash, and they are next to Aurum, when those jaws open. They move, to attempt to shove Aurum back, to get between the two of them, to take the hit. Their ear, their face, their shoulder, they don't care where her teeth land, because they know that they will not fight back.

They do not brace, they simply accept.

THE TRUE TEST IS BEFORE THE ALLFATHER.

[CAUSTIC.]

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CAUSTIC

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Caustic is too busy marveling at the plant creature, eyes wide in wonder as he weighs over the potential it had. Would she need nutrients? Would she need water? What PH balance best fit her? His ears flick back, yelping as Aurum grabs him. Caustic turns, throwing his paws to hit Aurum's face and make him let go. He snarls upon release, gas steaming from his mouth like a chimney, ready to attack Aurum again.

Stop.

The scientist pulls himself up, reasserting his brain and his control. Caustic watches as the rest of the scene unfolds- a smirk finding itself on his face and disappearing in the same instance, as the creature lunges for Aurum but Bloodhound got in the way.

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