So in this chapter Arctica realizes the lesson she was meant to learn if things weren't clear in previous chapters it's because I was saving them to be figured out later. Also a reminder of something I established in my first Mutant/Humanimal stories, the Humanimal Universe is not only five five thousand years older than the Turtles' universe but several months ahead to, so when Arctica first arrived on Third Earth it was May on Viola Strierra it was the middle of January, and I realized that in certain stories having several planets be so synronized that Christmas on Earth means the Northern Half of Another Planet is also experiencing winter is locgically absurd (In Cordwainer Smith's Norstrilla when a character asks how much time has passed he realizes his planet's hours aren't the same as Earth's hours) But I will say this is done for simplicity's sake as I'm using Saturday Morning Cartoon Logic not Hard Science Fiction logic and it can kind of fit, if you imagine the Earth like planet's humans colonized were meant for them to have so they really all syncronized so everyone can celebrate Christmas at the same time, kind of like all all the different races of Star Trek are descended from a common ancestor or as Strong Bad put it 'Why all beings are alike except for slight differences in our foreheads' and I could imagine those are only on the Planets similar to Earth on Planets humans colonized unlike Earth there isn't even traditional four seasons
What happened next was when the Twilight Express came to Third Earth... The Train concealed itself from mortal eyes by covering itself with dense fog, otherwise people would have noticed a train traveling through the sky!
"Next stop!" The Conducttor called "Third Earth!"
Arctica was just beginning to wake up from her nap and all she really processed was 'Next Stop'
Then she felt the train shift, what was happening was the train's track was turning sideways so the train was turning sideways.
"Remember..." Came the Conductor's Voice on the P.A. System "If for any reason you want to come home again, meet us at a place where the Heaven's Touch the Earth..." And with that the window opened causing Arctica to fall out of the train and into a soft green meadow. She heard the sounds of the train growing fainter and fainter as the fog began to clear, revealing a meadow in the full bloom of spring...On Planet Viola Strierra when she left it had been in the middle of winter.
"Oh it's so beautiful here!" Arctica exclaimed as the fog began to clear up revealing more and more of the landscape "And the clover!" She gasped taking a deep sniff "Just smell the clover!"
The fog cleared to reveal the familiar shape of a large red barn, and several children came into view they were playing a game tossing a large rubber ball back and forth.
Still somewhat dazed and sleepy, not realizing what changes had been made to her body yet, Arctica smiled these humans were 'Normal Humans' like the kind she saw on Mizzer not evil humans like the Wranglers 'Maybe I can live with them.' she thought to herself not thinking for a moment in a different dimension Anthropormorphic Animals might not be the norm.
She ran over to the children with arms outstretched, calling out to them, the children turned and looked at the Monstrosity running over to them and they shrieked and ran away!
"Mom! Dad!" They screamed "There's a Werewolf coming after us! It has giant claws and teeth!"
Arctica stopped dead in her tracks "Giant claws and teeth?" She thought to herself then she thought to actually look at her hands She screeched "What happened to my claws?!" She gasped seeing how enormous they had become, gingerly she felt her fangs which were now a foot long
"And my fangs!" She was terrified to see what the rest of her looked like but she soon found out seeing her reflection in a spare piece of crome that was lying in the grass...
END FLASHBACK
"There's not much to tell after that..." Arctica sighed "...Feral and his goons eventually found me hiding in a tool shed, and that's when I learned I had been taken to Rural Upstate New York...And then I waited for two months, watching as Feral vivisected the more Exotic Mutants from his Safari Trips around the World...I heard the voices in my dreams saying I will be free when I find a Mutant that believes my story..."
"But what I want to know is why you turned into a freskish version of yourself..." Don said
Looking at her giant claws Arctica realized she already knew the answer "I turned into this freak because I didn't know what I was..." She sighed "...I forgot what a Humanimal was supposed to be, so I turned into a monster to reflect my inner ungliness."
Just then there was the sound of thunder!
The sky was now quite dark and Don feared there was going to be a storm, but instead bands of coloful Auroras came down from the sky, picked up Arctica, and for a moment the colors surrounded her and her claws and fangs shrank to normal size, her spiky head fur smoothed back down and even her mizzle became slightly less long and narrow, she was restured to her normal beautiful self!
So that's the arc of Arctica's backstory now that the collars are off and Arctica's back to normal all that's left to do is climb the mountain to catch the train.