Or: Oh Shit, Not Again

And now, for something completely different

Many, many years before the Nightmare Moon incident of 63

SIlence filled the night over the town of Roanikstead. The town was quiet, all citizens asleep in their homes.

Such silence never lasts, however, and the silence was filled with the shrieking of reality being torn asunder as a massive, hellish portal dyed the night sky blood red. A figure smashed into the ground in the center of Roanikstead, the impact destroying the closest huts and filling the night with the flames of combusting bodies.

Strange ooze covered the ground around some of the ruins, flaming corpses falling from others. Then the figure awoke, screaming out in agony, and the town of Roanikstead was flattened by the woman’s sheer presence.

Miles away, deep in the Everfree forest, two princesses awoke in a cold sweat.

“Did you sense it?” Celestia asked as she moved into Luna’s room, already dressed for combat.

“Of course I did, it would be impossible to ignore, “ Luna scuffed as she pulled on the last of her armor. ”Quickly, we must make haste,” she moved out onto her balcony, both princesses taking flight towards Roanikstead, swords drawn and and shields raised.

The destruction continued.

The woman was destroying nearly everything within her line of sight, all the animals in the area either torn apart or horribly mutated. The town was a complete loss. Not one single human was left alive, and the town itself had been flattened into the ground from the woman’s scream.

The scene the Princesses came upon not five minutes later was nothing short of hellish, a town consumed in fire, a drove of mutated animals wandering around the ruins, fire everywhere. In the epicenter, a massive crater with the collapsed and twitching form of the mysterious woman.

The Princesses descended upon the destroyed town and approached the woman carefully, not sure of what to expect. Then the woman exploded into a fountain of disgusting orange ooze, the slime from around the town congregating upon the mass and shifting into a new form, a pale skinned, red clad, four horned woman with no legs, only a massive black tail, and grossly oversized hands.

The new entity reared back and cackled maniacally, tears streaming down her face, which was set into a rictus of agony and fear.

“I’m so hot! Make it stop!” she roared, slashing at the pair. The Princesses dodged, only to be set upon by a barrage of inexplicably appearing energy beams. The animals around town also attacked, biting and clawing until the Luna cut them down with a well placed crescent of energy.

Celestia hung back, preparing a spell in her hands, leaving her more violently inclined sister to press the melee advantage. Luna, taking her cue, rushed at the levitating creature, slashing her swords at the figure’s torso. Much to her chagrin, the blades merely passed through the being, and she was knocked back with a forceful backhand to the torso.

“Please make it stop!” the figure screamed, her eyes glowing green. Several rats around the area started to mutate, growing in size, transforming into monstrosities the size of dogs, with an overall air of necrosis, and a strange, three pronged tail.

The rats charged, tails spitting fireballs and teeth gnashing in blind, animalistic fury. Celestia dodged in front of her sister, taking the fireballs with no harm due to her immunity to fire, and leapt away, still charging her spell, hands now glowing the color of molten gold.

Luna merely cut the rats down as they approached, freezing some, slicing apart the rest. She stepped behind her sister, and they rose into the air, the moon becoming full under Luna’s influence and framing them in cold, white light. And then the sun appeared in the middle of the night, directly behind the moon, and causing the most magnificent solar eclipse that the world had never seen.

Luna charged her own, considerably less draining spell, and at the same time, the sisters released their fury upon the shrieking figure down below.

“SOLAR FLARE!”

“ECLIPSE PIERCER!”

And the sky lit up in holy fire, a massive beam of golden energy piercing through the moon and acquiring a sheathe of midnight blue, spiraling energy. The combined attack slammed into the woman, driving her deep into the earth, then exploding with enough force to dig a six mile wide crater, the target lying at the bottom of the crater, a mile and a half below the surface.

Celestia and Luna landed near the unconscious woman, preparing their magic for another round. But the woman only stared weakly up at them and whispered, “P-please… ma… make it… stop…” before falling unconscious once more.

“Sister? What should we do?” Luna asked, glancing at her frowning sister. Celestia put a hand to her chin, golden armor clanking with every movement.

“If we leave her as she is…. she will cause untold amounts of destruction. But, ending a life so callously, especially for one so young… that would be even worse.” She stared resolutely down at the unconscious woman, hands flaring with power. “We must seal her away, if only for her own good.”

“Sister!?” Luna was shocked, she hadn’t had to seal anyone away since Discord, and that was nearly a hundred years ago.

“It must be done, Luna. You know this as much as I do.”

“If we must…”

The sisters prepared their energies, pooling them together and releasing them with a loud shout, the world flashing white and gold and blue for an instant that seemed to last forever.

When all was said and done, Roanikstead was a flaming crater in the ground, the Everfree had a massive new clearing, the strange woman was sealed into a gramophone with a can impaled into its speaker, and the Princesses were beyond exhausted.

They buried the item deep into the ground, where it wouldn’t be found for over a thousand years. When it was dug up and polished off, it gained the name AEC 1313: Sealed Eve in a Can, from the label on the impaling can.

In the Present

After Drake had been freed from his mind control, and the Ruby was smashed into inert shards of crystal, he’d been moved to AEC Foundation Site 63, up in the mountains near Griffonia. He’d been there as a ward of the Site, since he was still registered as a Safe Class entity when unprovoked and Site 63 had no mind altering AECs.

That they knew of, that is.

A week after he’d arrived, Drake was lounging in his specially constructed room when he heard a faint noise in his head.

‘Help me’

“What was that!?”

‘My name is Elizabeth…. please… help me’

The voice fell silent immediately after, and Drake put it out of his mind. He wasn’t even allowed to do anything in the first place, since him making any suspicious moves would end with him being sealed into a toilet seat in a restroom at a Mexicoltan restaurant.

Those had been the literal words of a distinctly unamused Princess Celestia.

Thus, Drake ignored the call on the first week.

The second week was the same, but he felt that the voice was becoming stronger, and he didn’t know if his mind would be able stand under the assault of Elizabeth’s telepathic call; not with his mental defences still shredded by the LSD Flytrap’s drugs and the Ruby’s interference.

Thus, he reported the voice to the site telepath, a wonderful woman named Calm Mind, who attempted to trace the signal to its source.

Unfortunately, Elizabeth picked that moment to reappear, and the psychiatrist’s mind was crushed under her raging presence, small though it may have been.

Drake was also rendered unconscious in the assault, though his shattered mental defences also meant that he was protected in another way: His two alternate personas.

Both 682, one was a maddened killing machine, the other a raging “Papa Wolf” that sought to protect others.

Both had been the dominant personality at one point, AEC 682 appearing to destroy the Basilisk, SCP 682 appearing under the influence of the now destroyed Ruby of Apollyon.

These two personas shielded Drake’s fragile human presence from Elizabeth’s onslaught, though in the process, even they were weakened, thus leading to the events of Week Three.

Week Three saw Drake waking up in a haze, unable to clear his mind of his lethargy. He stumbled around the complex in a daze, barely coherent and suffering from migraines under the screaming of Elizabeth’s voice.

‘SAVE ME DRAKE. SAVE ME. HELP ME. FREE ME!’

‘DRAKE PLEASE! HELP ME! I NEED YOU!’

The screams only grew louder as the week progressed, Drake going from a hazy lethargy to crippling pain.

‘SAVE ME’

Until finally, on an unfortunate friday morning, one final, earsplitting, nose-bloodying, eye-vessel-popping scream ripped through Drake like the impact of a railgun, shattering his thinned mental defences and blowing away the human and the lizard personas, leaving only AEC 682 in charge.

The reptilian beast grew, shredding Drake’s uniform into its specially enchanted armband form. Flesh bulged, limbs expanded, growls and screams filled the air. And when the transformation finished, AEC 682 stood, markedly different from its first iteration.

The beast was smaller, sleeker, its body more lightly armored with fewer spines. Its tail had no blades, only a large fin. Smaller claws, thinner profile, this was a beast made for speed, not strength. And as the beast’s four eyes glowed blue, it rocketed down the hall at mach 1, blowing away all personnel in its path, thankfully without major injury.

Down the halls AEC 682 went, sometimes running along walls or even on the ceiling in its mad dash to reach the source of the call. Finally, the beast slid to a halt in front of a large door marked ‘AEC 1313: Sealed Eve in a Can’.

The door was obscured under various warning labels, many of them warning to never pulse magic through the object contained within, some marking the object as Keter class.

682 paid these signs no notice as it barreled through, coming to a halt in front of a small, mangled gramophone, one with a metal can impaled halfway through the speaker function.

‘Destroy the pedestal! Please! It’s your only chance!’

The voice was pleading intensely, sounding more and more like a distressed woman wailing in pain. 682 heeded the voice, shifting its flesh, eyes disappearing, and releasing a massive beam of energy from its maw, tearing through the pedestal and the compound behind it until it hit the open air. The gramophone fell into 682’s waiting maw, where it bit down and shattered the object, piercing the can as well.

A millenium old seal shattered, glowing with golden and midnight blue magic before releasing the unconscious form of a young woman in a red opera singer dress. 682 gently picked up the woman and wrapped her in his mane, hiding her within its furry depths.

The lizard beast then ran through the holes it had made, not noticing that some of the people and beings it past spontaneously combusting or melting into orange ooze. Leaping out of the hole and out into a sixty thousand foot drop out of the side of a cliff, 682’s runes glowed vivid blue and the formidable beast grew a massive pair of leathery wings, soaring into the unexplored depths of the nameless mountains on the border of Griffonia and Equestria.

A pair of light brown eyes awoke in a cave. Their owner, the so-called Elizabeth, curiously noted the warmth surrounding her, and her own lack of ability to move in any significant direction. Looking around as much as possible, she saw the form of a massive draconic reptile curled around her, she herself packed snugly under one of its massive wings.

“Hello?” she asked softly, her voice soft and musical.

There was no reply, but the creature she was tucked against shifted a tiny bit, revealing that her being pressed against it had caused it to start melting ever so slightly, though it appeared to stop at nothing more than a slight distortion in the tissue, no worse than a light burn scar, really.

“Oh! I’m sorry!” she said, pulling away from it.

The creature growled comfortingly, damage healing over in seconds, and patted her on the head with its massive hand, all four eyes now open and glowing a comforting icy blue.

“Do… not… worry… little one… I am… fine” The creature growled out, apparently having difficulty forming human words with its reptilian mouth. The beast stood, Elizabeth landing softly on the floor of the cave, and shifted. When the transformation finished, Elizabeth felt slightly ill at the brutality of the transformation, and there was an unconscious human on the ground. A human with reptilian features, and long, shaggy, black-and-green hair.

“Are you alright?” she asked moving over to him. She focused, managing to touch his cheek without hurting him.

The unconscious man grunted and pushed himself up, rubbing his head. Blood dripped from his nose and tear ducts from the movement.

“Aww shit… where the hell am I this time!?” He muttered, not noticing the woman beside him.

“Please, let me help,” she placed her hand on his cheek, their eyes flashing green as she healed up his wounds.

Red eyes shot open in surprise as Drake jerked back to full consciousness.

“Oh shit!”

He fell backwards and tripped over his tail, landing rather painfully on a rock. As he rubbed away the pain, he then took notice of the sound of the woman’s voice.

“Hey, wait a minute…. you… you’re the one that’s been calling to me for the last three weeks! You fucked up my mental defences even worse than they were before!” He yelled, and then clutched his head, the sudden burst of emotion not helping his predicament. Thankfully, the regeneration bestowed upon his form also applied to his mindscape, so his brief jaunt as 682 had done more to shore up his mind than a month of lazing around ever managed to do.

“I... don’t remember any of that sorry,” she said shaking her head.

He shook his head, mind now mostly healed. “It’s fine, you seemed like you were in a lot of pain before I broke that… whatever it was you were sealed into. It’s all a bit hazy though, what’s your name again?” He stared up at her worried face, smiling a tiny bit.

She went quiet, staring into her lap. “It used to be Elizabeth...” she said, closing her eyes, tearing up.

“Elizabeth… Elizabeth…. I used to know an Elizabeth…. My name’s Drake. Drake Long, the omnicidal, overprotective, twenty foot long, immortal lizardbeast. At your service.” He bowed jokingly, trying to lighten the situation.

“Drake!? I haven’t seen you in years! It’s me, Elizabeth Mason!” She tackled him into a hug, sending them both to the ground in a sprawl of limbs.

“Aww man… I remember you doing that to me a lot too….” groaned Drake, pinned under the surprisingly heavy mass of his old highschool friend. “The eyes and hair are new though… didn’t you used to be blonde?”

She giggled, “Didn’t your eyes used to be brown?”

“Oh yeah… that. So, what the hell happened to get you to fucking Equestria of all places?”

“Equestria? You're telling me we’re in a place called Equestria?” she asked, raising her eyebrow.

“Guilty. But, hey, it could be worse. The nation’s only named like that since there’s so many goddamn horses. There’s a horse farm like… every two miles. Not that I’ve seen them. Been locked away by this Universe’s version of the SCP Foundation for the last… two, three? months. At least there’s maps and internet….” He trailed off, not sure how to reconnect with his former best friend. “So… uh, how’d you even get here? I mean, I was dressed like 682 in a ‘Con and got a neat sew-on patch… what’s your story?”

“I went to a con to but I was dressed as Mitochondrial Eve,” she gestured to herself, “I bought some contact lenses and when I put them on it felt like I was on fire.” she whimpered, clutching her dress. “Oh god Drake, I killed all those people...”

His face fell, as he wrapped his arms around her, hugging her to his chest. “Hey, hey. It’s fine. It’s gonna be okay… it was a long time ago, as far as I know. The room you were in, 1313, said it was found over a thousand years ago. I know I was panicking after I killed my first person, though that was under the influence of mind control… and I’m not helping, am I?”

“Thats not the point!” she shouted, her eyes flashing again, Drake suddenly found himself getting rather hot.

“Then what is!?” He shouted back, drawing her to arms length and shaking her.

“You see this?”she asked, pointing to her eyes, which were now glowing green.

“Yeah?” Drake was more confused than anything, just wanting his old friend to get over whatever problems she had and be happy again.

“Drake, I’m not human anymore, this body is, but I’m not,” she said, shaking her head.

“...” Drake narrowed his eyes and bopped her over the head lightly. “So? I’m not human either. This body is… by this Universe’s standards… but my real form? I have two and they’re both locked behind alternate personas that either want to start a genocide or are just hella overprotective, respectively. No one in this goddamn world cares if you aren’t human. We have sentient robots with all the rights of organic beings, we have gods dating humans, hell even the ghosts can still legally own property!” He was bopping her head with each statement, ending his sentence by grabbing her head and pulling her into a bearhug.

“I’m sentient mitochondria...” she said in a low voice, hugging him back.

“.... AEC 420 is a sentient, humanoid mass of marijuana that acts and sounds like Snoop Dogg. He owns a pharmacy down in Baltimare. AEC 65 is a sentient mass of viral cells shaped like a gorilla. It’s a fucking doctor. Being a sentient mass of things that aren’t usually sentient is fine, Beth. Jesus, at my worst I’m a sentient pile of slowly recuperating ooze.”

“Yes but can you make people combust or melt into goo by commanding their mitochondria to do so?”

Drake blinked twice before coming to a realization. “Oh yeah! You always did like Parasite Eve… But no, I can’t. But AEC 100, Lilith-she’s kinda a bitch, btw- can melt people just by, inverting their souls or something… and her effective range is like... hundreds of miles. And then there’s AEC 9292, who can make people… and everything else he touches… explode by overcharging it with kinetic energy. It’s theorized that he could destroy the planet just by getting pissed off enough. I really don’t see what your problem is. This place, no matter how bad you think you are, has seen a lot, lot worse.” He pat her on the head and ruffled her hair, which was now much longer than it had been the last time he saw her.

“You also know how to make a girl feel better,” she said, planting a kiss on his cheek.

Drake laughed, scratching the back of his head, “I guess I do, huh?” He looked around again. “Hey… where the hell are we anyway? Shit did I take us to some cave in the middle of who-the-fuck knows where!?”

“We’re going to be in a lot of trouble aren’t we?” she asked, sighing a little.

Drake slumped onto her, sighing. “...Fuck, and my month was going so well. Thank you, Elizabeth, for making me destroy another AEC Foundation Site. I was just dying to add another one to my tally. At least no one died this time… that I know of…”

He sighed again. “Well, we might as well make the most of the time we have until they retrieve us. I suppose I should learn how to shift without going insane… and using my powers in my human form would be nice. My 682 forms have laser cannons for godsake! Oh, and you should probably learn to not accidentally kill people when you get mad. I had to keep cycling through mitochondrial mutations to keep you from exploding me into a mass of ooze for the third time in my life.”

“Sorry...” she said looking away with a blush on her face, “I’ll um... work on that...”

“It’s fine. It’s just, if you ever actually do explode me, don’t use the ooze to do anything… the last time they tried to feed the ooze to an assimilator… it was… gory. Oh, and I’ll regenerate enough to look sorta alive within half an hour, anyway.” The pair were now at the entrance of the cave, overlooking a massive canyon that had somehow been missed by all of the rest of the world.

“Wow… I actually did not know that was there….” Drake gazed around the canyon in wonder, eyes lighting up at all the strange animals that could just barely be seen moving below. “Now, I wonder how we’d get down there…” He looked down only to see a massive, four hundred foot drop. A quick glance to either side revealed the same.

“Allow me,” she said, putting her arms around his waist. The two of them started to float, going down into the canyon.

Drake stared at Elizabeth, now confused again. “What the hell kinda bullshit science lets you fly!? I mean, 682 is bullshit too, but at least I need wings!” He gripped tightly to her dress, somehow not feeling gravity as strongly as he should have.

“I have no idea, all I know is that I can do weird stuff thanks to mitochondria,” she said with a shrug. “Here,” she said as they reached the ground.

“Well, that’s convenient, but I don’t think I want to rely on you all the time for a lift… I did enough of that back in junior year, anyway.” He mused, thinking back to all the times he’d begged her for a ride home whenever it rained. “Anyway, I’m gonna try something that’ll maybe end up with me learning how to fly… if not, well, at least I’m basically immortal.”

With that, Drake rushed up a nearby tree, the canyon being filled with hundreds of massive sequoias for some reason. As he reached the top, he concentrated and leapt from the very tip of the tree, ignoring Elizabeth’s worried scream. As he descended through the canopy, his shirt ripped along his back and a massive pair of draconic wings burst out, spraying little droplets of blood from where they emerged from, and slowed his fall down enough so that he landed with barely a sound.

“Oh shit yeah! I got wings!... I hope I can actually use them…” He flapped them experimentally and made his way back to the now furious Elizabeth.

“Seriously?!” she berated, her eyes glowing, “Why the hell would you worry me like that?!”

“Sorry, sorry!” Drake wilted under her verbal assault, “I told you I’m immortal, remember!”

“Thats not the point!” she screamed, several small creatures burst into flames around them.

“Merp…” He fell to the ground, paralyzed, as his wings retracted into his quickly regenerating shirt.

“Drake!” she shouted, moving over to him, “Are you alright!?”

“Please never do that again. I nearly had a heart attack. You’re hella scary now… also, I had to change my mitochondria twice during that…. we’re really gonna need to work on our abilities aren’t we?” He slowly stood, looking around at the forested canyon they now stood in. “I wonder if either of us actually needs to eat… you’re a mass of mitochondria possessing your own body… and I’m an immortal thing that constantly adapts to anything I need to.”

“Heh, that’d be the one good thing out of all of this,” she said, sighing, “And I thought my anger was a problem before...”

“We’ll manage. So, wanna try practicing right now? I mean, I’m immortal, and there’s no humans around for miles.. so…” Drake trailed off, “I guess my powers are easier to train though… yours are just a matter of control, I think. I just gotta figure out how to work with a genocidal maniac and an overprotective beast… wait…”

“Wait?” she asked, blinking a few times.

“I think my job is harder now. Both of the personas in my head are telling me that I need to fight them for me to gain all my shit… you, I think, just need to separate your powers from your emotions… and maybe train them afterwards.” Drake paled and sat down on a convenient boulder. “Shit… I need to fight and kill two immortal hellbeasts… granted, I’ll also be a hellbeast, but I don’t have the instincts or the experience. I’m dead. Beth, when I die, please hope that it’s the AEC that pops out instead of the SCP, because I don’t know if the SCP will see you as human enough to kill and assimilate.”

He took a calming breath. “Okay, battle in the center of the mind… easy. Beth, wish me luck, I’m going in now!” And then he collapsed to the floor.

“Well,” she said, looking at the limp man, “I best practice myself,” she said taking a breath, her eyes glowing.

In Drake’s mind, a massive, shattered jungle formed a mindscape of nearly incomprehensible depth. In the center, where Drake stood, there was a massive pit leading to a simple wooden trapdoor that concealed his true mind. Three weeks prior, the pit hadn’t been there. Three weeks ago, the jungle had been pristine, concealing the forms of the two massive predators in front of him.

If the pair had to be compared to a pair of ‘60s era gangsters, SCP 682 would be the large one that held you by your ankle and over the edge of a skyscraper. AEC 682 would be the thin, devious one that would just as soon shank you as shake your hand. Of course, neither label truly fit the pair of car sized reptiles, but they were about the closest ones that fit.

AEC 682 spoke first, purring out words in a throaty growl, “You know what you want, correct?”

SCP 682 picked up, a harsh rasping coming from its mouth, “You wish for control. You wish for our power.”

“Be warned, hatchling, your trials shall not be easy.”

“Falter, and die. Stand strong, and succeed. That is all.”

“But, we are not heartless. My brother, yes, but not we-”

“I resemble that remark.”

“-thus, we shall not use our full power. Neither of us shall. Instead, you must only prove yourself worthy of using your own power.”

“Shall we begin?”

Drake gulped and shifted into a mix of AEC and SCP, large, but sleek. Armored, but quick. Armed, but in moderation. His words came out sounding hollow and double-toned, “If we have to, then let’s.”

“VERY WELL! THEN LET US FIGHT!”

And the battle for Drake’s power began, all two lizards against one in an all or nothing battle for total control of one man’s mind and body.

Meanwhile with Elizabeth, she was currently sitting under a tree, her hands in her lap, eyes glowing brightly. Around her floated a thing ring of orange goo, coming from a few of her more unsuccessful attempts at controlling her power. To make things worse, the ring periodically pulsed with fire every time she lost her grip on her extreme power. The comatose body of her friend lay curled around her, unconsciously gravitating towards her presence even when in a fierce battle for his own power. The man was shifted halfway between his human and lizard forms, still recognizably Drake, but with most of the body of 682. The body had been melting and catching fire as well, though less frequently, as it adapted faster than her mitochondria could communicate.

She paused for a moment, reaching down to stroke Drake’s cheek. “Oh Drake, I know you can’t hear this… but I like you a lot… more than like, really...I’m just rambling now,” she sigh a little closing her eyes. This time instead of trying to do anything with her powers, she merely opened herself up, listening to all the mitochondria around her. There were an uncountable number of them, all speaking to her in chorus.

The chorus crescendoed, washing over her like the most beautiful symphony never heard, bathing her in the voices of trillions of tiny little powerhouses. Unconsciously, she had shifted forms, slightly heating the air around her as her dress and her skin melded together, leaving her with four horns, massive clawed hands, white skin and a short black tail. She began to levitate, taking Drake and the ooze with her as her mind adjusted to her new form.

“I do hope I can change back,” she muttered to herself as she looked over the giant mitts that used to be hands. She smirked before summoning up two green beams of energy, cutting through some trees, “Well, hopefully now I won’t just kill everyone...”

And then the ring around Eve caught fire and exploded outwards, circling back in and forming a massive halo behind her back.

“....What?” she muttered, confused at the turn of events. She shook it off, looking at Drake, “I hope you wake up soon...”

Both 682s slashed at Drake, who nimbly dodged before launching a barrage of lasers at the nearly unstoppable pair. The lizards dodged, SCP melting into a forward facing cone shape and growing hundreds of eyes on its forward surface. AEC, meanwhile, grew wings and took to the air, wielding 682 like a massive laser cannon.

Drake frantically dodged, trying not to be incinerated by the massive beams coming from the even more heavily mutated than normal lizard.

‘Who was the dumb fuck that decided laserbeam tag was a good test!?’

‘I did, hatchling.’

He facepalmed as he dove for cover, spitting curses as he realized that none of his thoughts would be private in his mindscape.

His mindscape had changed from the torn up jungle it had been earlier, instead, it was now a ruined city, with rubble and broken machinery everywhere to provide cover. Not that the items could stand up against the might of any of the three lizards for more than a few seconds.

“COME ON HATCHLING, SHOW US THAT YOU HAVE THE ABILITY AND STOP HIDING!”

“DO IT OR I EAT YOUR FACE!”

“Shut up, you.”

While both were distracted, Drake had taken to the air and snuck up behind the two bickering lizards, blasting them both in the eyes that took the place of sensors.

“AARGH!”

The mindscape shattered and reformed, coming back together in a nearly healed over jungle, only the slightest of craters marring the surface. Both 682s stood side by side, facing Drake, now back in his human form.

“You won-”

“-You used your abilities with creativity-”

“-Followed your instincts-”

“-Persevered against nearly impossible odds-”

“And never once lost your intelligence.”

“For that, you earn my share of your power.”

“And mine.”

“I do not think he cares about your side.”

“You soft-shelled son of a lizard whore, come here!”

Drake merely accepted his new power and left, leaving the pair of squabbling lizards to their fight.

“God I hope that’s not going to be a regular thing.”

Drake awoke in midair in his human form next to a floating woman with a flaming halo behind her back.

“... Oh god my head…. Elizabeth, that still you?”

“Yup, I um... mutated I guess,” she said, gesturing to herself.

“Oh. Cool….uh, why are we floating?” He looked down, wiggling his tail back and forth in a vain effort to latch onto one of the nearby trees.

“Oh um... That would be me... my legs are kinda gone at the moment…” she said, giving him a sheepish smile.

He looked down and saw her tail, “Huh. So they are… think you can still change back from that?”

“I hope so... I’m rather afraid to find out...” she admitted quietly. She lowered him to the ground, patting his head.

“Oi! I’m not a cat… even if my lizard form can purr and make disturbing cat ears!” He stuck his tongue out at his currently taller than him childhood friend

“You’re so cute!” she teased, cupping his face, giggling a little.

“....” Drake blushed and looked away, desperately trying to ignore the fact that Elizabeth’s rather sizeable assets were right in front of his cross-pupiled eyes. “Seriously, can you change back? It’d kinda suck if you were stuck like that…. you’d never be able to pick anything up…”

“Ok let me try,” she said focusing her powers. She shifted into orange goo, reforming into her human form, “Well that answers that!” she said happily.

Drake looked down at her and smiled slightly, hugging her head to his chest. “Sure does. Well, now that we both have some semblance of control over our immensely powerful powers, how about we go explore the forest until the Foundation finds us?”

“That sounds like fun,” she said, looking up at him with a smile.

The pair descended into the massive forest, taking in the sights and sounds of the strangely wooded area in the middle of nowhere, completely oblivious to the squadron of Foundation helicopters searching for them far above.

Author's Notes:

Thank you to Shagohad12, who is my new Cowriter!