Even though Lincoln had told Mad Dawg he had ten sisters, Dawg was still left in silenced shock as he saw the Loud Family. They certainly lived up to their name… He shook his head and cracked his neck as he followed Lincoln over to where some couches were.
"I gotta ask dude… How do you deal with this?" Dawg remarked. "Like… The bathroom has to be a nightmare."
"It is." Lincoln replied with a smirk. "You have no idea…"
"I'm guessing you guys don't have Indian food often?"
"Dude…"
"What? I'm just askin'!" Dawg laughed.
"Hey, Lincoln, who's your friend?"
Mad Dawg and Lincoln turned as saw one of Lincoln's sisters walk up, she had paler skin than the others and black hair covering her eyes.
"Oh boy. My Chemical Romance fans…" Mad Dawg thought.
"Hey Lucy. This is…" Lincoln began but trailed off, unsure of what to say.
"I'm Mad Dawg." Mad Dawg nodded. Lucy didn't reply, but looked to Lincoln as if silently asking 'Is this guy for real?'. Lincoln nodded in response.
"Huh." Was all Lucy said. "Where'd he come from?"
"He's uh… Luna's friend." Lincoln lied. "He was helping with the band."
"They wanted some concepts for album covers, I'm here to help." Mad Dawg added, picking up where Lincoln was going.
"Cool." Was all Lucy said before walking off.
"Is she always that happy?" Mad Dawg sarcastically asked.
"No, usually she's more monotone." Lincoln replied.
"She's like a mini female Reaper..." Mad Dawg muttered.
"Hey! New guy!" Luna shouted across the room. "What do you want on pizza?"
"Meat." Mad Dawg called back. "Pretty much anything but sardines, and vegetables."
"Alright."
Mad Dawg looked back out the window, taking in the quiet neighbourhood. Things seemed so calm and peaceful… man, he could get used to this.
Luna had just hung up the phone when she saw something. It was the messenger bag Mad Dawg had arrived with. She grimaced as she saw the stains of what she assumed (and hoped weren't) blood. She picked the bag up and took it outside, deciding to let it air out. Not noticing a portfolio slip out.
"This is gonna sound really weird, but… what year is it?" Mad Dawg finally asked, casting another glance over to Lincoln.
"Huh? Oh. It's uh… 2019." Lincoln replied, and seemed a bit confused when he saw Mad Dawg noticeably pale. "What's wrong?"
"If I only got sent back in time… then I'm sixty-one years in the past…" Mad Dawg muttered, looking down at his hands then back up at the neighbourhood again. A lot made sense now… He had remembered the last major event with the heroes before he… well, whatever happened to him. It was New Year's Eve, 2079, going on 2080. He was irresponsibly drinking despite being underage with McCree and some of the others.
"Hey Lincoln! Who's your buddy?" Came another voice snapping Mad Dawg out of it. The girl seemed a bit older than Lincoln, had braces and a plaid skirt.
"Luan, this is Mad Dawg." Lincoln introduced the newcomer to another sister.
"Your name… is Mad Dawg?" Luan repeated after a few moments of shocked silence.
"Yup." Mad Dawg nodded.
"Boy… seems like you had a ruff day!" Luan laughed. Lincoln groaned, but was surprised when Mad Dawg started laughing.
"Believe me. I couldn't even paws for a break!" He replied, and the two burst out laughing.
"Fur real?"
"Believe me, I'm surprised I ain't in the dog house!" Mad Dawg laughed before suddenly pulling a stack of papers out from behind him, literally out of nowhere. "I've got pages of these, I can go on for a while."
"Okay, so letting you two meet was a mistake." Lincoln said aloud, both as a sort of statement and as a mental note to himself and anyone listening.
"Oh, c'mon Lincoln!" Mad Dawg grinned.
"Please don't."
"We were just raising the roof!" Luan finished, and the two kept laughing again. After a few more moments, Luan decided to go annoy her sisters while Dawg turned his attention b ack to the window, seemingly fixated on the neighbourhood.
"So… are you from the city or something?" Lincoln casually asked. "I've never seen anyone look at the neighbourhood like you do…"
"What? Oh. Uh… it's… it's a bit of a tale." Mad dawg said, coming down to reality. "And to be honest? I really doubt you'd believe me."
There was something in Mad Dawg's tone, maybe it was sadness or remorse… but to Lincoln, things were clear that whoever Mad Dawg was, or wherever he came from, or however he ended up crashing onto their van, there was a lot to unpack. Lincoln mentally noted that there was a pretty good chance he would never find out that story, and he was okay with that. But he had to admit… he was curious.
"Didn't Dawg have a bag? Maybe that could explain things…" Lincoln wondered.
"Well, he doesn't seem like a monster." Lori mused, watching 'Mad Dawg' and Lincoln's interactions. "But he should be dead… Why isn't he? Okay. Not that I WANTED to kill anyone, but a regular human would've bled out… and he healed from it!"
"WOO! PIZZA!" Luna suddenly shouted, getting everyone's attention. Mad Dawg got up to stretch for a second, and when he turned around, all the couches were full. Some of the girls who had met him seemed more interested in the pizza, and those who hadn't seemed a mixture of interested to somewhat nervous.
"Hey… Lori?" One of the younger girls finally asked. "Why's there a guy wearing one of mom's shirts?"
"Huh." Mad Dawg blinked, looking down at the shirt. "Uh… She can explain." He said, pointing to Lori then dashing off faster than anyone would've believed possible.
"Right. Uh, that's Kace." Lori sighed, setting her pizza down. "He's a friend of mine. Vanzilla was making some weird sounds, and he offered to take a look at it."
"He said his name was Mad Dawg." Luan replied, confused. "Where'd you get 'Kace' from?"
"His name's Mad Dog?! That's awesome!" One of the girls exclaimed. "Why didn't we get names like that!?"
"If I had to guess, 'Mad Dawg' would simply be a nickname." The smartest loud, Lisa, then spoke. "No one in their right mind would actually name their child 'Mad Dog'. That's just ridiculous."
"First of all, you don't know anything about me." Mad Dawg spoke up, walking back into the room, now wearing a t-shirt and track shorts, with a hoodie tied around his waist.
"Hang on. Where'd you get those clothes?" Lori blinked, confused.
"Secondly, Mad Dawg is my name." Mad Dawg continued his tone wasn't one with an agitated edge some would expect, but more of a 'Oh boy, here we go again' type of tone. "And if you're wondering who gave it to me, the answer is simple: my family. And C, yoink!"
Mad Dawg finished his pointes by grabbing two slices of the meat lover's pizza and sitting down with his back against the window. The answer seemed to be enough for some of the Loud's, but it was clear Lisa wasn't fully buying it.
"Hey, what happened to your eye?" One of the girls asked.
"Lana!" Lori snapped, annoyed at the rather blunt question. She both didn't want to seem offensive to Dawg, but also had a feeling she didn't want to know how he got it.
"Which one?" Dawg chuckled, tracing four fingers across his face, all pointing to different scars. Some faded, and one still very clear.
"The one across your eye."
Mad Dawg rubbed the scar for a second. Remembering what had happened to him.
"sEe FReaK? I'm aN aRtISt tOo!"
The distorted voice… the fake bodies... the trap he had walked into…
Shulk!
If Sombra hasn't pulled him back… he may have outright lost that eye... He didn't see that knife until it was too late…
It still hurt. Even after all this time, he still wasn't rid of Virus.
He looked to Lori as if asking for permission, and the look on her face was all Dawg needed to hear. Or see. Regardless, he got the message:
Talk, and you'll have another scar to deal with.
"It… it's personal." Mad Dawg replied with a slight frown. "I don't wanna talk about it."
While Lana seemed disappointed, she seemed to understand. Mad Dawg took another bite of pizza and looked around.
"So, I know some of your names." He admitted. "But some of you, I don't think we've met yet."
"I'm Lana!" The girl in overalls said cheerfully.
"I'm Lola." The girl dressed like a princess added.
"I'm Lynn Jr." A girl with a chipped tooth grinned.
"My name is Lisa." Lisa said in her somewhat dry tone.
"And that's Lily." Lincoln added, pointing to the baby playing with a ball nearby.
"Okay… Gimmie a sec. Mad Dawg said. "Lincoln, Lori, Leni, Luna, Luan, Lynn Jr., Lucy, Lana, Lola, Lisa and Lilly." He counted off the names on his hands then looked up in disbelief. "I mean… how do you guys live?"
"We eat, sleep and breathe." Lynn Jr. smirked.
"Sleep. That's something I haven't done in a long time…" Mad Dawg muttered. "No, but for real. How do you guys do it? One boy, ten girls?"
"Wouldn't trade it for the world." Lincoln replied matter-of-factly, getting some smiles from his sisters.
"Hey, if you can make it work, who am I to judge?" Mad Dawg shrugged, before finishing his second slice in a single bite.
"So, you're an only child I take it?" Leni asked.
"Heh. Not really… but kinda." Dawg shrugged, blinking a bit rapidly. "I don't have brothers or sisters by blood… but when I was crashing in Nashville, I lived with a pretty big group. There were… geez. Thirty-one of us, not including me."
"You lived in a house with thirty-one people?!" Lynn Jr. asked in disbelief.
"Nah, nah. Not a house." Mad Dawg corrected himself, stuttering slightly over the words. "More like… an apartment complex. It was a hostel-turned-complex, and I got to know them while I was staying with my aunt."
"Ah. Okay."
The group continued eating their food, Mad Dawg remained silent for a bit, listening to the others talk, and argue. He smiled, it reminded him of home. If he was gonna be stuck somewhere he didn't know, this was as good a place as any he guessed.
"Wait. Where am I gonna sleep?" Mad Dawg thought. "Ah, whatever. I'll find a tree or something."
After dinner, Mad Dawg nodded to Lori, and she paused but nodded back. As Mad Dawg got up to leave, he looked around for something.
"Hey, any of you seen a messenger bag? Has a neon Rasta-lion on it?"
"Oh yeah. I set it aside while you were working." Luna remembered. "Hang on a sec."
The pun rocker left for a moment while Dawg cracked his knuckles. He was tired, confused, potentially dead, but he had pizza. That made things slightly better.
Luna had picked up Dawg's bag, and grimaced again at the smell of blood that was still lingering around it. She saw that there was a lot of stuff in it, more than should've been possible… but it seemed to weigh practically nothing.
"Maybe I'm losing it." She muttered. Returning, she tossed Dawg his bag. "Catch!"
Dawg caught it with one hand and slung it over his shoulder in one fluent motion. Turning back to the Loud's he smiled and saluted.
"It was a pleasure meeting you all."
"You're leaving?!" Lana asked, disappointed.
"Yeah. This ain't my house, so… I ain't gonna try and insert myself here." Dawg shrugged. "I'll see you guys at a later time… or maybe not… I dunno!"
Dawg then left through the garage, closing the door behind him. The Loud's remained silent as they watched where Mad Dawg had gone.
"He's weird." Lola frowned.
"I like him! I can see why they call dog's man's best friend!" Luan joked.
"That joke doesn't even remotely make sense." Someone commented.
"I don't care. I'm with Luan." Lynn Jr. shrugged.
"I'm amazed you all believed him as much as you did." Lisa then spoke, her tone clearly one of someone who had thought things over.
"Which means…?" Lucy asked in her flat tone.
"Most of what he said were flat out lies." Lisa stated. "His body movement, his eyes jittery movements, his speech mistakes, he was lying almost the entire time."
"Hey, Lisa. You don't know that-" Lori began, not wanting to have to go too deep into how they actually found Mad Dawg.
"I understand that perhaps you have some reason for ignoring his lies, and as my older sister, I'll trust you on that." Lisa cut her off, looking to the oldest loud. "But I implore the rest of you to be wary of what he says. If the van was simply making strange noises, why was the windshield removed?"
"We hit a deer." Luna replied, her tone showing no signs of nervousness that Lori was struggling to withhold. "He was helping us with that."
"And you didn't take it to a mechanic because…?"
"He'd do it for free." Luna replied, a little agitated now. "Lisa, I'll be honest with you, you're dead wrong okay? I know Mad Dawg, everything he's said is true."
"Wait. If you know him, how come you've never mentioned him before?" Lana asked confused.
"Sam introduced me to him." Luna quickly lied. "She knew him form a while ago, and she introduced me to him over video call. Then, he said he was coming down for the week and wanted to meet. We've known each other online for a few months."
Lisa didn't reply, but simply shrugged, seemingly accepting the answer. Everyone dispersed to do their own things, except for Lori, who stopped her younger sister.
"What was that about?" She hissed.
"What was what about?" Luna replied, annoyed.
"That whole story! Why were you lying for him!?"
"What did you want her to say? 'Hey everyone, this is Mad Dawg. We hit him with our car and yet somehow, he's alive!' because that would be so much better." Leni rolled her eyes, looking over to her sisters. "Look. I don't know why he isn't more pissed off that we literally ran him over, but I'm not gonna question it! He looks like he'd hang around with Sam and Luna, so what does it matter?!"
"Besides, he's gone." Luna frowned. "We may see him around town, or he may up and disappear."
"Yes… but…" Lori tried to think of a counter-argument before sighing. "All right, I guess you're right…"
"I don't see why you're so paranoid of him. He seemed like a nice guy." Leni remarked. "Again, we hit him with our van and broke most of the bones in his body but he just asks for a shower and some food in response after fixing our van."
Lori didn't have anything else to say, she just sighed and rubbed his temples.
"I know. It's just…"
"The healing thing?"
"YES!" She exclaimed.
Meanwhile, Lincoln had opened the backdoor to let Charles in, and notices something on the back step. Picking it up he turned over the portfolio and looked at what was written on the cover.
Project: Crimson Horizons
Test Subject Codename: Beta-576 (A.K.A. 'Mad Dawg' was drawn on in what Lincoln believed was crayon.)
Status: Terminated, Alive (again, crayon.)
Subject Files: Classified
"Wait… what?" Lincoln blinked in confusion. He looked into the house and saw that Mad Dawg was long gone. He frowned as he looked at the portfolio again, debating if he should try and track Mad Dawg down.
"I… guess he'll be back once he realizes it's gone." Lincoln slowly rationalized. Making sure there was nothing else left behind before slipping back into the house.
Mad Dawg sighed contently, he had found a sizable tree and was currently resting in the branches. There were two that branched (ba dum tiss) off form the main trunk, forming a weird sort of 'U', what was ideal for resting in. Mad Dawg didn't have to worry about slipping and falling out of the tree, and had put one of his legs on one of the branches and let the other dangle. He had hung his bag on another branch and was enjoying the cool night breeze, finally feeling like he could breathe for the first time in… ages.
"Okay, let's recount this real quick." He thought. "Both for my sake, and those that didn't read the first story. So, I was in Talon's base, we were kicking all the ass, then I blew myself up. Smart move. Then, I woke up here."
After a few moments, Mad Dawg finally spoke aloud:
"That was actually kind of pointless…"
He cast a glance up to his bag. He hadn't checked what came with him, and he began to reach for it, then waved his hand dismissively.
"Whatever." He shrugged, resting his hands behind his head. "I can deal with my bizarre adventures tomorrow. Right now… I need some sleep!"
And so, with the cool summer breeze rustling the leaves ever so slightly, and an owl nearby occasionally breaking the otherwise still night, Mad Dawg fell asleep. And for the first time in as long as he could ever remember, he slept peacefully.
Lincoln was reading some comics he had picked up earlier, and finished the last one. Setting it back in the bag, he looked over at the folder Dawg had accidentally left behind.
"I shouldn't…" He frowned, debating if he should read it or not. "But… after what I saw him do…"
He looked at the folder again, guessing this was either a bunch of nonsense Dawg had written, possible for some role-playing campaign, or this was about him.
"It's not like he'd notice if I had a look."
Slowly, Lincoln opened the folder, seeing dozens of papers attached, along with what he assumed were newspaper articles and pictures. He flipped through a few pages, and his eyes widened in disbelief at what he was reading…
Day 33
Subject: Beta-576
Codename: Amug Un Rama
The subject's body is growing according to schedule, and its body seems to be adapting to the spliced genetics we've added. However, we are still unsure if it will succeed, but you learn from your failures, not your successes. There's still the matter of the potential final adjustments, but I'll have to consider all possibilities for this experiment, and others to come, they've offered us financial support beyond what we could ever imagine. The breakthroughs we could make would change the world, but the request they've made is rather... strange.
Lincoln flipped a few pages ahead, finding another report.
Day 79
The subject is awake now. It seems to have a basic understanding of the world around it, it seems to have the brain of a young child. Jackson and I have agreed to go ahead with the requests made for this subject. While some would call it weaponization, I prefer to call it what by what it really is. A potential revelation that could change the scientific world as we know it.
"What does any of this have to do with Mad Dawg?!" Lincoln mentally exclaimed. He knew he should stop, he shouldn't keep reading… then he noticed something sticking out from the back. Pulling a picture out, there was a shot of Mad Dawg, along with a man who seemed like he came out of an old west film, a guy who seemed like a roller-blading dj, a man with his hair on fire, and a few others. He flipped back to the entry he had read, and saw there was another note written below it:
Oh, that's BULLS**T! This wasn't about making breakthroughs, this was about making weapons! How are you so far up yourself that you can't see that!? You gutted me and made me into a monster!
"His healing ability… he is a mutant." Lincoln said to himself. Admittedly, he thought Dawg was kind of crazy when he told him he was a mutant from the future or another dimension, but seeing this… It made it harder to deny that Dawg was at least partially telling the truth.
Lincoln slammed the folder shut and shoved it under his mattress. He had a feeling if he kept reading, he'd find something he didn't want to.
"I'll try and find Dawg tomorrow, maybe he can explain…" Lincoln mused, casting a glance out the window.
Chapter 2 is done! If you haven't read any of my other stories, don't worry. There's gonna be a bit of an exposition dump soon. Dawg kinda has a bad habit of not telling the truth… but the truth may not be his to tell. Come back soon and see what happens!
