White noise filled the ambience of the room with a soft, monotonous hum. Apart from a bed, the white noise machine that sat at the bedside table, and a desk illuminated with a small, Rotom-shaped lamp, the room was bare with its grey walls slightly highlighted with the icy-blue glow of the lamp. On the desk was a broken Pokédex, multiple small piles of broken machinery that needed to be fixed, and a modestly sized toolbox.

Busy at work, Cyrus focused his attention on restoring the Pokédex to its former working glory. Of course, he had been attempting to fix it for around a month, yet there was one part of it that seemed to not work, no matter what he did. To be frank, this part and how it worked went over his head. It seemed he couldn't understand it. Despite multiple Grunts and Commanders offering their expertise and help to him, Cyrus refused and assured them that he was fine and didn't need any help with a dismissive tone.

Externally, he looked and acted calm and collected, but internally, his years' worth of bottled-up emotions were at a near-boiling point. He couldn't afford to let his façade slip for even a moment. Even with his attempts to mask every emotion he felt, Cyrus couldn't quite shake the icy sensation that prickled every part of his body like needles at every waking moment. Whether it was due to pent-up anger, intense sadness, or his frustration hitting its peak, that icy sensation would come to a head and destroy the emotionless disguise he spent so long building up in a matter of agonising moments.

With a tiny, delicate screwdriver in one hand and the other hand left idle, Cyrus attempted to calm himself down by taking deep breaths and reassuring himself that everything would be alright, but these would be useless against the intense amount of pain he would have to undergo in a moment. One thing to note was that while his room was currently at a temperature of around ten degrees celsius, it would immediately drop to a sub-zero level.

Cold air would billow out the corners of Cyrus' mouth as his teeth honed themselves to a needle-sharp point, his tongue became more snake-like in shape, slightly affecting his speech, and his jaws pushed out forcefully, creating a sort of snout while icy horns armed with prongs poked through the sides of his head, all while grey scales covered him like a sort of chainmail and pale grey-blue spikes grew on multiple places on his face. His arms and hands would be encased in black scales and his fingers would gain slight claws that emerged from under his nails, forcing him to put down the screwdriver while a pair of pseudo-fins sliced through the backs of his hands in a small shower of blood. He would also have one less finger at this point.

Next, an uncomfortable pain in his neck would have him instinctively grab at his slowly extending throat while yellow scales would cover a small part of the back of his neck and all the front side of his neck. A mane of fur the same colour as his hair would then cover his torso as he braced for the worst part: the tail. He inhaled deeply, then exhaled, and looked over his shoulder nervously, his heart pounding. Cyrus would then cringe in pain as a thick, serpentine tail emerged between his legs, yellow, black, and grey scales, and a trio of icy tips and all. As he hurriedly took off every bit of clothing he had, he could feel his legs becoming little more than vestigial nubs. He then attempted to stand on what remained of his feet before he fell backwards with a loud thump, part of his tail resting on the desk while the rest of him could only lie on the bedroom floor uselessly.

After what seemed like hours, Cyrus sat himself up and wondered how he needed to traverse when he had around three metres of tail and two metres of torso and body before a knock on his bedroom door interrupted his planning.

"Boss? Are you okay in there?" A voice asked, genuinely concerned. How could Cyrus respond to that when he was a dragon, or to be more specific, a sort of lindworm? He couldn't fake a smile and say he was okay, nor could he ignore the question. He soon replied with a weak "yes?" before he caught his breath. After all, he needed to recover from what just happened before he could indulge in a few questions about his condition.

What Cyrus had wasn't a curse, though he thought otherwise, but rather, a simple condition that allowed him to turn into a dragon at any given moment, but any negative emotion he had would cause him to transform involuntarily. For this reason, he learned to mask all of his emotions not only to deal with life and its daily pressures, but to prevent any unexpected transformations, though he couldn't keep this up from time to time. After all, he had been the gifted child in his family and one of the only weredragons in Sinnoh, but sometimes, he silently wished to be a normal person who didn't turn a room chilly whenever he went or possessed trace amounts of freezing venom in his spit. This made him quite an alone and depressed weredragon.

Dragging his long body to bed, Cyrus stared at the ceiling and felt tears of pure frustration and annoyance sting the corners of his eyes before he turned face-down to the pillow and cried loudly, the tears running down his scaly face and dampening the pillowcase. While he sobbed, his Weavile looked at its Trainer worriedly before putting a frozen claw on his body gently to calm down its friend.

"Wea? Weavile weav?" Weavile inquired before it was met with sobs. "Weavile, leave me alone!" Cyrus shouted, his voice hoarse from crying his eyes out.

"Vile? Weav vile vile."

"Why did I have to be granted this debilitating condition?"

"Weavile wea. Vile vil!"

"No, you don't see how being a weredragon negatively affects my life! I feel alone!"

"Vile… Wea weavile!"

"Don't worry, Weavile. I don't regret having you in my life."

This conversation between Weavile and its Trainer continued into the late hours of the night before Cyrus calmed down and asked if his Weavile wanted a late-night snack, who replied enthusiastically with a single "Weavile!"

This made Cyrus smile just a little bit.