The site 30 break room was a small but cozy space nestled near the center of the complex. It was one of the few rooms with carpeting instead of tile and featured among other things a pair of couches facing a 40-inch TV, a small kitchenette with snacks and a coffee machine, and a ping-pong table nobody used because the paddles had been lost into an anomalous vortex. Or someone had just misplaced them; Murphy was never really sure.
As he entered the room he was met by the gazes of four dragons. Azalea sat on the couch staring blankly at an old gameshow playing on the TV, her mood brightening up just a bit at the sight of Murphy. Miller stood by the snack bar eating some greasy potato chips which he quickly threw away when Azalea looked his way. Oyster sat at one of the tables near the back casting disconcerted glances at a number of cardboard cutouts lined up against the wall facing the TV (Murphy felt a slight chill run down his spine when he realized what, or rather who they were). Then there was Steve sitting on the other couch, doing nothing in particular really.
"Hey Murph, what's up?" Azalea started, stretching a foreleg over the back of the couch as she turned to face him.
Murphy shuffled around a little, claws digging into the clipboard he was holding. "Well, um...I was finally approved to do some experiments again!"
"Hey! Good for you dude!" Miller commended, stepping over and giving Murphy a pat on the back. "What's it about?"
"Oh! It's um...well it's about you guys."
Azalea and Miller both stared at Murphy curiously. Even Steve looked over.
"Who, me?" he asked.
"Sorry, not you Steve," Murphy replied. He flipped through the papers on his clipboard, not to find any information so much as to calm his nerves. As he did, his talons slipped and it fell to the ground, making quite the loud clatter. He grinned apologetically as he picked it up.
"Since I'm so close to you guys, the higher-ups agreed to let me conduct some tests relating to your powers. Nothing dangerous, of course!"
Azalea groaned. "This isn't gonna be like training, is it?"
"I won't do it if you don't want to, though!" Murphy hastily replied as if he had been expecting pushback. "It's fine, really." He suddenly felt Miller's foreleg around his back.
"We'll do it, right Azalea?"
Before she could respond, Azalea was interrupted by Oyster approaching her from behind the couch. She turned to him, annoyance painted on her face. "What do you want?"
Oyster cleared his throat, straightening his posture so that his head was a good deal above Azalea's. "I'll make it quick as I have places to be. These standees have to go. I...we're all not very fond of having them here staring at us each day."
"He's right you know," Steve chimed in.
"Shut up Steve," Azalea grumbled. She turned back to Oyster. "First of all, they're cutouts, not standees." She shifted into her own standee form to demonstrate. "No stand, see?" She shifted back, the same irate glower never leaving her face. "And second, I wanted to get them out of that boring old closet and put them up somewhere where they'd have some entertainment."
Oyster scoffed. "Whatever reasons you have, if those things aren't gone by the time I get back, I will have them incinerated."
"That's too far!"
"She's right you know."
"Shut up Steve!" Oyster snapped. He turned to leave, giving Azalea one last venomous glare before storming out of the break room. Azalea stuck her tongue out at the door as it slammed shut behind him.
"You know what, I think I wanna do these experiments of yours too," she stated as she walked over to the back wall and scooped one of the cutouts up under her foreleg. It had once been a SandWing D-class who had made the mistake of harassing Azalea while Boxer was around.
She and Miller stepped out before Murphy, the Ice/Night hybrid turning to follow them only for the door to slam shut in his face. He groaned, fiddling with the access panel like he had many times before. It took five minutes for him to get the door working again.
A few moments later the three had gathered in one of the larger low-threat testing chambers of the site. It was rather incongruous with the rest of the complex. While Site 30 wasn't the most pristine or advanced of the bunch, this testing chamber looked more like an old warehouse than a Foundation facility. Large steel rafters held up a sheet metal roof high overhead, bright fluorescent lights illuminating the windowless chamber. The place was almost completely empty, save for some crates of equipment being packed up and carted away by a worker lost in their headphones.
"A-Alright, um...so firstly I'd like to gather some data on how your different skill levels with certain forms alter the physical makeup and capabilities of it," Murphy started, nervously fidgeting with the clip on his clipboard. It had been so long since he'd last done a proper experiment. What if something went wrong, like they always tended to around him?
"I just taught Miller a new helmet form. Maybe we could use that?" Azalea suggested. She turned to Miller, who nodded in agreement.
The two stood in place for a moment, before their bodies began to twist and shrink, limbs receding into their torsos which in turn disappeared into their heads. Their horns followed suit as their snouts broadened into tinted visors, eyes pushed further back to the sides of their heads and flattening out as mere decals. Miller's transformation took noticeably more time than Azalea's; Murphy was quick to track their times on a stopwatch he'd brought.
"Three seconds and six seconds," he stated aloud, hearing a faint cheer from Azalea. He approached the two, who had each become spitting images of the helmets worn by MTF agents, at least from a structural standpoint. Murphy was pretty sure no other agents wore helmets colored and stylized off another dragon's face.
"So, what do you think?" Azalea asked as Murphy picked the two up, her voice a little muffled due to it coming from her internal speakers.
"Your powers never cease to amaze me!" Murphy replied, examining the two. They had each replicated the design of a typical MTF helmet with remarkable detail. Had he not witnessed the change he might have mistaken them for the real thing! Azalea certainly seemed to have some subtler details more accurately replicated, from the faint seams between separate sections of the helmet's plastic shell to the uneven ridging of the internal padding tucked beneath it. Additionally, he noticed that Azalea's decal eyes were able to glance around while Miller's remained static.
A twinge of worry shot through him. "Miller? Are you alright?"
"Yeah. Just not used to this form yet is all," he replied through his own internal speakers. Murphy let out a sigh of relief.
"It takes a bit more practice to be able to move decals," Azalea added, "or do this." She flipped open her visor, revealing the empty cavity inside. "I can talk over the radio too."
A thought occurred to Murphy. "Um, do you mind if I...?"
"Sure, go ahead. Just try not to sneeze while you're wearing me," Azalea replied slightly jokingly.
Murphy set Miller down on one of the nearby crates and carefully slid Azalea over his head. She was surprisingly comfortable, another result of her experience with the form? Now that he was wearing her, he could hear her voice quite clearly.
"Remarkable!" was all he could say to her as he pressed a button on her side to drop the visor. "You've even copied the mechanical components and default subroutines of a helmet such as this!"
"Yeah, had to learn how these things are built and programmed to do that. Don't understand any of it, but as long as I've got it memorized..."
Unbeknownst to Murphy and Azalea, Miller had been thoughtlessly grabbed by the nearby worker, who was so absorbed in his music that he couldn't hear the HiveWing's faint alarmed shouts. Miller, being unskilled in this form, didn't have the time to shift back before he was stuffed into a storage crate with a bunch of other helmets and carted away.
"Wait, where's Miller?" Azalea asked, just as the worker strolled away with the crate holding him.
"I'm glad we were…huff…able to find you before you were…shipped away," Murphy gasped, leaning himself against a nearby table as he caught his breath. Miller had very nearly been carted off to a Foundation distribution facility across the country; Murphy and Azalea had been lucky to catch up with the worker right as they were loading up the transport truck. "I'm sorry you had to go through that…"
"It's fine Murphy, it wasn't your fault," Miller reassured. It did little to ease Murphy's guilt.
Still, there were more tests to do, and hopefully his cursed luck had had its fill by now. "Anyway," he continued, "the next test will involve Azalea specifically." Azalea looked at him curiously, and he elaborated. "That new form you developed to help with my anatomy lesson, it has a lot of interesting properties that I want to investigate further. More specifically, I want to determine the maximum distance at which you can control removed limbs, as well as see through your eyes too. If that's alright, of course!"
"Honestly, I'm kinda curious about that myself," Azalea replied. She shifted into her anatomical model form, her scales taking on a glossy plastic sheen as seams formed along her body. "Here," she said, popping of one of her forelegs and handing it to murphy. She took out one of her eyes and passed it to him as well, having to brace herself on the table as her vision was split between two conflicting perspectives.
Murphy and Azalea positioned themselves at one end of the testing chamber, Azalea giving Murphy a thumbs-up with her severed foreleg when she was ready. Murphy slowly began walking across the chamber, Miller rolling out a tape measure alongside him to keep track of how far they had gone.
"Are you still able to see just fine?" Murphy asked through a radio as they neared the halfway point of the chamber.
"Yeah, but could you hold my eye a little steadier? The shaking's starting to make me dizzy."
"Sorry," Murphy quickly replied. He noticed the claws on Azalea's severed leg continuing to flex. Even at fifty meters she can still control her severed limbs!
Murphy and Miller continued to walk further. And further. Soon enough they'd reached the other end of the chamber completely. "How about now?" Murphy asked.
"Still good," Azalea replied, her leg giving him another thumbs-up.
Murphy gazed back at the wall behind him, noticing a doorway nearby that led to the rest of the site. "We've hit the end of the testing chamber. I can try going further, but I won't be able to get an accurate distance measurement."
"Keep going!" Azalea eagerly replied through the radio. "This is starting to get interesting!"
"Alright then," Murphy acknowledged, feeling a little hesitant. He didn't quite like the idea of taking their experiment out into the rest of the site, especially with his track record. Still, Azalea seemed genuinely interested in learning more, and he didn't want to disappoint her.
Murphy continued further through the site, leaving Miller to hang back with Azalea in case anything went wrong. He travelled through corridor after corridor, yet Azalea's connection with her severed parts never once waned. He was beginning to wonder if there was no limit to how far away her control could reach when his musings were interrupted by a piercing alarm.
Murphy froze, his fears slamming back into him once again. He heard numerous talon steps thundering down the hall toward him and in his panic he failed to get out of the way before a flood of fleeing dragons slammed into him.
"Murph, what's hap…WAH!" he heard Azalea cry through the communicator, followed by a loud crash. He realized that he was no longer holding her eye and leg, but he was too caught up in the surge of dragons to have any hope of finding them.
All he could do was let himself be carried away to the nearest shelter and hope that he'd be able to find them when the breach had been contained.
Why does it always have to end up like this…
It took roughly half an hour for the breach to be contained. Thankfully it had not resulted in any casualties – only a couple of low-threat Euclid's had gotten loose – though Murphy was more grateful for the fact that he was quickly able to locate Azalea's missing leg and eye shortly thereafter. He didn't know what he'd do if he had lost them.
This in turn motivated Murphy to conduct another test regarding this new form of Azalea's. For as interesting as it was, it also came with the ever-present threat of Azalea losing one or more of her parts and being unable to safely shift back until they were located. And moons forbid if any of them were damaged in the process!
"I'm sorry that these tests haven't exactly been going to plan," Murphy lamented, popping a plastic piece of muscle off of one of Azalea's legs. He and Miller had set about completely disassembling Azalea, her parts being neatly spread out on the table so that Murphy could create a complete list of everything. They were down her last couple of legs; Murphy was a little surprised at how detailed and thorough Azalea's shapeshifting had been. Then again, Azalea had told him that the more differently shaped a form was from her usual self, the harder it was to shift into it. Simplifying her makeup by eliminating smaller parts would probably end up further complicating things.
"Hey, there's no need to keep apologizing," Miller stated, setting the last of the bones from Azalea's other leg onto the table. "Like I said before, it wasn't your fault."
"I guess you're right…" Murphy continued half-heartedly, finishing his own disassembly. He lined up the remaining pieces on the table and took a step back.
It was a strange sight to be sure. Pieces of green plastic shell meant to be Azalea's scales, as well as her muscles, organs, and bones all spread across the table. He'd have to ask her what it felt like to be in pieces like this once she was put back together, he had to imagine it felt rather strange.
He reached over and picked up Azalea's plastic brain from the table, examining it. It was light and made a soft noise when he knocked on it with his talon that indicated that it was hollow. He hadn't been entirely sure before, but upon closer inspection he could clearly see a faint line wrapping around the piece and a tiny hole in the base of the stem that were indicative of a blow mold.
"Miller," he started, "how long does it take you on average to master the finest details of whatever it is you're shifting into?"
Miller paused for a moment to think. "Um, I dunno…depending on the form…a few weeks at least. Maybe even a couple months for more complex ones."
Strange, Azalea's only known this form for about a week and a half, and yet she seems to have already mastered even the finest details of it. He glanced over at one of Azalea's eyes resting on the table. Are her powers getting stronger?
He shook his head, placing the brain back on the table and turning around to fetch his notes. With the near complete lack of data on Azalea's abilities, especially from her time before joining the Foundation, it would be impossible to track any dramatic increases in them. We'll just have to fix that, then.
There was a sudden clang that sounded behind Murphy, followed by a heavy thud, and then the sound of dozens of small objects scattering across the floor. Murphy's heart sunk a bit deeper with each and every tok.
One of the table's legs had given out.
He collapsed to his knees, taking a deep breath, but it didn't stop the tears from welling up in his eyes.
"Moons damned it all!" he cried. "Why do I always have to mess everything up!" The tears were spilling out, his composure finally broken. One of Azalea's eyes rolled past him, Miller carefully picking it up as he kneeled down next to Murphy and placed a foreleg around his back.
"Hey, it's alright. We'll…" he began, but Murphy cut him off.
"No! It's not alright. Everywhere I go, everything I do, bad things always happen." He gripped his clipboard tighter, claws piercing right through it. "I'm a curse!"
Miller moved around to sit in front of Murphy and placed a talon on his shoulder, staring at him face to face. "Hey, don't say that. You are NOT a curse, got it," he affirmed. Murphy looked away, but he let Miller continue.
"Sure, it may seem like you have the worst luck in the universe when you look at it that way, but just look at what happened today! You and Azalea were lucky enough to catch that careless worker before he shipped me to the other side of Pyrrhia. We were all lucky that nothing dangerous breached! Plus you were able to find Azalea's parts really quickly after the crowd made you drop them. I'd say that's pretty lucky!"
Murphy sniffled, wiping a talon across his snout. "I…guess you're right…" he admitted. "But still! Every experiment I made you guys help with went awry in one way or another."
Miller frowned. "What are you talking about? You didn't make us do anything! We chose to do this with you, knowing full well that things might not go according to plan. You know why?"
Murphy sniffed again. "Why?"
"Because we're your friends, Murph! We'd stick with you regardless of whatever 'cursed luck' you have! And if Azalea weren't in pieces, I'm sure she'd say the same thing, right?" He glanced over at the plastic eyeball in his other talon, and Murphy thought he saw Azalea smiling at him through it, even though he knew that wasn't physically possible given the circumstances.
Murphy released his death grip on his clipboard, slowly standing up. "Th-Thanks, Miller," he said. He glanced down at the mess of parts scattered across the floor, frowning. "We'd should probably get Azalea back together then."
"We still haven't finished the experiment though, right?" Miller offered. "You've still gotta make that list."
Murphy nodded, glancing down at his ruined clipboard. "I think I'm going to need a new one of these."
"Oh moons it feels good to have a face again!" Azalea remarked as Murphy slotted her jaw back in place. "I don't think I'm gonna be doing anything like that again."
After completing an inventory of all of Azalea's scattered parts he and Miller had set about the painstaking task of putting her back together piece by piece. They had already managed to reassemble most of her head, upper torso, and right foreleg, though there were still too many pieces left to reattach for Murphy to count.
At least they all seem to be accounted for. Murphy thought. He'd had more than enough close calls for one day and would be happy to spend the rest of it lying in bed.
His wistful thinking was interrupted by the sound of dragons darting through the hall outside the chamber. For a moment Murphy worried that another breach had occurred, though when one of the running dragons stopped at the doorway to address the three his concerns were alleviated.
"Hey, did you…woah, what…happened to you…" the dragon began, pointing a claw at Azalea.
"Science stuff," Azalea casually replied as Miller set the last plate of scales back on the right side of her face. The dragon didn't question this any further.
"What's going on out there?" Murphy asked.
"The transport truck Oyster was on was attacked, and one of the anomalies aboard it was stolen!" the dragon relayed. Murphy saw a smirk cross Azalea's face, though what was said next immediately wiped it away.
"Azalea, it was your parents."
