Chapter Text
After months of study, the great warrior alchemist Baron Draxum is finally prepared to set foot on the surface to acquire his first specimen for mutation. Research proved that the animals up here are far more stable when fused or genetically altered than the monsters of the Mystic City; he narrowed down his search to the reptilian family. Birds proved to be too fragile, fish too limited, and amphibians were always off the table– mammals were a close contender, but Draxum chose lizards for their uniquely cold-blooded hearts. Draxum needs an animal without empathy, without feeling; with the ability to remorselessly kill.
Observing human maps and connections led the warrior alchemist to portal to a far-off destination for a special event on reptoids. Here, he’s hoping to gather much information about the most powerful lizards, and even pick one up, if it suits him. For this purpose, Draxum’s donned a decent human disguise. Intricate and intense floral-patterns are popular around this region, so he’s draped one of the fine colorful garments over his shoulders, where it matches nicely with a plain white top underneath. It does feel odd to be above-surface without his armor, but blending in is of great importance right now. He’s even equipped with human carrying-bags– one hanging off his side and one on his back– to complete the look. His goyles, Huginn and Muninn, are similarly dressed, but don’t pull off their outfits nearly so well. Currently, they’re fussing around the garbage and chattering.
“Look at this, Muninn!” Huginn pulls some half-eaten human foodstuff from what’s clearly a midden pile. Muninn looks just as excited to see the hot dog, letting out a whoop of excitement.
“Dude!! That’s an entire half a hotdog! You gonna share some with me?”
“Of course, man!” Huginn tears the hotdog in half, and they chomp down their portions in a single bite. They fondly bump snouts before Draxum clears his throat, getting his minions’ attention.
“Gentlemen, if you would stop being enamored with the human foodstuffs, we have a mission to complete today.” The goyles snap to his shoulders, and Draxum sighs. “Get in the bag. I didn’t reserve tickets for either of you.” A goyle topples backwards off his shoulder and lands in the human shoulder-bag, quickly followed by the other. They coil into one another like cats and Muninn gives him a happy thumbs up. Perfect. Draxum begins making his way to the entrance of the convention.
“Welcome to the Gatorcon 2009! Home of all scaly slimy animals.” A cheerful bearded man greets Draxum just as he’s finished cramming Huginn’s tail into the purse and clasping it shut. He looks down at the man’s shirt, which has a picture of an iguana and the text ‘I-GUANA DEAL WITH IT’. “You’re gonna meet all kinds of scientists, and doctors, and even a whole slew of hobbyist herpers here, but collectively, we like to call ourselves herpes!”
Draxum stares at the man stony-faced, before flashing his recently-forged ID. Dodgily looking down, the human chuckles awkwardly and checks the papers on his clipboard for the ticket Draxum reserved online. “Just so you know, the Paws-Con Fursuiting Fest is, uh, in Orlando this year if you picked the wrong– oh! Here you are, Mr. Draxum.” Leaning over the table, the man snaps the bracelet into one piece. Draxum’s immediate urge is to slice the flimsy paper band off with a single claw, but with great restraint, he lets it dangle loosely around his wrist. His lip twitches at the irritating texture, but at last, he is permitted into the Greater Pensacola Area’s finest herpetology convention.
“Now you’re officially a herpe too, pal! Happy herping!” Draxum sends the door-guard a withering stare as he turns the corner, immediately unclasping the bag and tumbling the goyles out. They stretch their legs and wobble into twin salutes.
“My goyles. We must split up in order to witness all the information available in this human-gathering.” The goyles nod as he briefs them. “These fools run panels while the roadshow is open– I need the two of you to run ops for me, and split up for the 12:00, 2:30, and 3:00 panels. I will need notes–” He drops a lined pad and a pen into Huginn’s hands, and the goyle flails as he drops his tight posture to catch them. “Bulleted preferably, don’t just write down everything they say, and Muninn, make sure his handwriting is legible this time.”
“Oh, yeah, boss, that’s totally doable!” Muninn jumps into the air, fluttering a little, and Draxum slaps him back onto the ground. “Keep those wings away! Humans are unused to flighted… things. You are to stay on foot, and if anyone asks anything, just do your best komodo-dragon-in-a-shirt impression. They will assume you are a lost pet.” The goyles look enthused, and nod knowingly. Huginn leaps to fly off as Muninn yanks on his tail to ground him. They bicker amongst themselves over the map as they scurry off into a panel room.
Draxum smiles and fixes the collar of his shirt. With the two of them occupied, he’s free to interrogate the humans of this ‘reptile roadshow’ without distraction.
—------------------------------------------
After an hour or two, warrior scientist Baron Draxum’s patience is beginning to run thin. There’s far too many useless amphibians here, and while some of the larger lizards are impressive, they lie around lazily, unmotivated. Draxum’s looking for an animal with spirit, not a dead-eyed pet. Approaching a table with a promising looking reptoid, he folds his arms and addresses the humans behind it. “Greetings. I desire a creature reflecting my own kind, having been cast from the light to dwell below the surface. A being grown uncomfortably accustomed to their dank world of misery– yes, I look for a creature that’s been pushed so near to the brink, that the only feelings they muster any longer is their slowly-burning wrath.”
One human hisses at the man beside him. “Ant. I told you I didn’t want your freaky dnd-larping buddies hanging around our table! They’re gonna drive the customers away!!” The human ‘Ant’ sweats, looking dodgily from side to side as Draxum hunches down, narrowing his eyes at the man. He spots something a few booths away, and squeezes out a strained laugh.
“RIGHT! Right. Something… mean, cruel, lives under the—you’re looking for… turtles! You’ll find em’ in row F,” he says, leaning back. Draxum smirks, straightening up to look down his nose at the tiny man. Humans are so weak willed. As he strides across the convention to this row ‘F’, he hears the two humans continue to bicker with each other. “Andy, you think I know a HUNK like him!?! I’ve never met the guy!”
It was true– this Row F is indeed packed with a number of shelled beasts, locked away behind layers of plastic. Draxum folds his arms behind his back and takes note of the pathetic trapped creatures as they duck away from the light and shimmy into the corners of their boxes. Across the row, a dark-skinned man with a bushy mustache waves him down. “Hello there! Now where are you from, stranger?” Draxum clicks his tongue at the distasteful question. Like this man will understand a thing about the Mystic City. He will Lie.
“The Newest York City, of course.” He lowers his gaze to scan the table– it’s mostly papers, but with a few small and unruly-looking shelled beasts sitting in a small tray with sand, water, and two plastic palm trees.
“What a coincidence! My little turtle-handler here is also from them parts! She’s my niece.” He gestures to a small human much in the same way the humans at the last booth introduced their most prized gila-lizard. She humphs, arms folded, as her uncle coos at her. “Workin’ a big job today at the table, aren’t we?”
The small human pulls at her ponytail as she glares up at Baron Draxum, who is unintimidated. She leans forward across the table, slamming a palm down on a newsletter-application form. “You some kinda’ SHEEP MAN, big guy?” Draxum’s face twitches before widening into a grin– it seems that humans lose their intelligence when they grow. She’s the first creature to have any inkling of his true nature. The older man elbows the tiny human for her impudence.
“HA! Sorry about that, she’s not too good with people. Just turned five last month, you know how kids are.” Draxum nods, not bothering to mention he never cared to learn a thing about larval humans. “Anyway, I’m Professor O’Neil. What can I do for you?”
“Greetings, Professor.” Draxum steeples his fingers and crouches, taking a deep breath. He smiles, eyes glinting below his helmet. “I crave a beast who knows naught but rage.”
The professor laughs nervously. “Aha….. excuse me?”
“I search for the creature with the greatest bloodlust. Aggressive... slighted... cast aside by god and left to rot in its own bitterness. A beast… who may understand my pain.”
“Yer WEIRD, old man!” shouts the human larva, immediately shushed by her horrified uncle. Draxum huffs as the professor turns back to him, grinning despite the sweat forming on his brow.
“Please don’ mind my niece, I apologize sincerely sir. But, um… there ain’t many turtles who are aggressive without provocation. Those few don’t make no easy pet for a novice– n- not that I think you are one, of course– and uh… but….”
Draxum frowns deeper. This fool is of no help. The turtles in the bin, basking lazily and watching him with beady yellow eyes holding nothing behind them, are as spineless as their handler. He scans their tanks, looking past their plastic enclosures to the pathetic, soft beings within.
When Draxum looks up, the dopey professor is still speaking. “It may surprise you but I’m not sure if I would use bloodthirsty” – he draws out the word as though unsure of it– “to describe any–“
This man has said almost nothing of value. Draxum flicks an ear, breathing hard. There are turtles eating lettuce, turtles sleeping in their shells, turtles resting and basking– a human life has made them soft, and in a moment, Draxum’s anger rises. Professor O’Neil continues to stutter, listing out turtle facts Draxum isn’t paying attention to. The power and drive of reptilians has been vastly overstated by these fool humans. Then, just as he is about to lay waste to this mockery of a reptoid convention, he sees it. It’s… hideous.
“What is that?” Draxum points out the beast with a claw, half curious and half horrified.
“Ahah! You have an excellent eye, sir. This is our youngest spiny softshell, the most aggressive turtle species,” Professor O’Neil says, adjusting his glasses and smiling. “They bury in mud and hate everything that breathes,” he chortles.
“A softshell?” Draxum says with disdain. “What merciless god would make a turtle with a soft shell?”
The Professor only laughs. As he reaches towards the lid of the tank, the small one hops off her chair and marches over, an intense resolve painted on her face.
“I’m gettin’ this next one! For sheepy man!” she announces, and her uncle’s smile wavers.
“Next time, April, sweetheart. With a turtle that isn’t quite so—-“
Before he can finish, the larva has shoved her hands into the tupperware they call a tank and is fishing out one of the shapes within; something flat, small, and dark brown, like a piece of gum after being thoroughly trod into New York cement. Suddenly, a worm-like creature erupts from this darkened splotch on the plastic and locks onto her finger, biting hard. The larva squeals and jumps back, lifting the thing up off the ground. It releases its death-grip, only to be discarded limply with a flop. Immediately, it scrabbles with flabby limbs across the tank’s floor. Its head appears deformed, tipped with a peculiarly long snout.
It is hideous, but more importantly it is wrathful, and it understands when it’s been slighted. Draxum watches as its beady eyes lock onto its target and it shoots across the tupperware to lunge at the human larva. Ferocious. Draxum smiles.
“April sweetie, are y’alright?” Professor O’Neil fusses over the larva he has loaned out for free labor. “Don’t cry honey, he don’t mean it. You just spooked him, that’s all.”
To her credit, the larva looks less bothered than her uncle, nursing her injured hand and pouting while glaring at the turtle from the other side of the tupperware. It swipes at the plastic barrier frantically, and she sticks her tongue out at it.
Clearing his throat and laughing nervously, Professor O’Neil continues where his niece left off. He slips a hand under the shell of the beast to lift it from behind single-handedly, his thumb securing it in place while it fruitlessly wheels its stubby legs to try and break free. The professor holds out the creature, beckoning Draxum to do the same.
It seems smaller than ever between Draxum’s claws, with a shell that gives slightly under his touch. Draxum brings up his other hand to get a better grip– firmly, but gently. Humans are so short, and the table was quite the distance below the almost seven-foot yokai, but with the wretch in his hands, the warrior-alchemist can lift it to his eyes to properly appraise it. The turtle snaps at Draxum’s face, hissing as loudly as it can. “Such intensity for a being so young… surely, this… is the spirit of a warrior.”
“Hey now–I sell the little guys as pets. Lives-in-a-tank, has good ol’ heat lamp and water and mud kinda pets. You aren't plannin’ on runnin some kind of reptile fighting ring, are you?”
It would be a fine test of the animals strength and ferocity– but Draxum wants his turtles to be in tip-top condition for the mutating. Combat trials will come after. “No. Absolutely not. I have a domestic habitat set up for it already.” That’s a lie, but the goyles are sure to do a fantastic job after sitting through all those panels. He closes his palm around the struggling turtle to stop its wriggling and throws a couple hundred dollar bills at the child, who takes them with a scowl. “Would you know of any other powerful reptoids similar to this… turtle?”
Professor O’Niel narrows his eyes, his gaze sliding leftwards as April counts the money-stack. One, two, three... They’re counterfeit, of course, but the Mystic City has ways of making the surface world’s strange paper-monies appear real for a few hours. The professor takes a bill and holds it up to the light, checking each part of it with great detail, then stares at the turtle snapping at everything that moves. “Eh, this’ll do. Now if we’re talkin’ strong turtles, there’s not one mightier than a big loggerhead– I’m talkin about alligator snappin’ turtles.” Draxum smiles– even the name sounds menacing. “They start out little, but they grow huuuge. Real-real big, 200 pounds, just covered in spines and spikes. Too heavy for us to carry to shows like this, if we had one.” If this monster-reptoid is even half as ferocious as the creature in his hands is, then Draxum’s team is beginning to come together already. He’s ready to ask more questions when something small starts tugging on his shorts. Draxum’s gut reaction is to punt what he assumes to be a lost human larva, until he notices it to be Huginn, looking very upset.
“Draxum! It’s time to go. The humans didn’t like it when we asked which of the reptilians are the most combat-ready– the doctorate panel dissolved into chaos! There was a brawl, it was–” The distressed gargoyle wipes a tear from his eye, and Draxum wraps up the transaction, placing his new specimen into tupperware from the lizard-peddler who thinks himself a scholar. Huginn continues. “Oh, gosh, the violence, the name-calling, it was horrible– which normally would be fantastic– but I just never expected such a collected collection of gentlemen to go to such lengths over lizards. Plus, I couldn’t follow the debate,” he rambles before shaking his head. “But anyway, while we were running they got MUNINN! They put him in a little box and started arguing over his taxonomy! We’ve never even made enough to pay taxes!” Huginn anxiously flutters his wings before diving into Draxum’s small human-bag, cupping his face in his little hands. “My boy… I miss my boy. What have they done to him…”
Draxum raises an eyebrow, then rolls his eyes. He raises a fist, and in the distance, five of the con-goers stumble back as a mystic root knocks the box Muninn’s trapped in off a small drinks-table. The goyle’s quick to flap into the air and bolt back to Draxum’s left shoulder.
“You know… I think I like being held in a box and argued over by frenzied scientists. It’s just, they pay so much attention to the little details. It’s really flattering.”
“Duuuude. Freaky.” From his hiding spot inside Draxum’s purse, Huginn reaches up to give Muninn a fist bump. “Herpes for life, though.”
Solemnly, Muninn connects the bump. “For life.”
—---—---—---—---—---—---—---—---
“Ow-boss, help! There’s somethin’ in here!”
Outside of the convention, Draxum smiles to himself as the goyles laugh and shriek, having found his next superweapon. “What the heck is that man?? Oh, It’s gross!” Draxum rolls his eyes, hearing hissing– from the turtle or the goyles he isn’t sure– and some rising giggles. “Where the hell did you get this thing,” Muninn laughs, “Hell?!”
Huginn squeals, evidently bitten, and Draxum feels the bag at his side rustle. “It’s so slimy!!” he protests.
As entertaining as it is to watch his best advisors be baffled and bit by his new beast, Draxum does not want to risk its injury or escape. The turtle is unlatched from the goyle’s arm with just a bit of wiggling. It continues snapping at the goyles as Draxum grins.
“Careful, Huginn. This creature is my latest specimen, and is destined for greatness you cannot begin to imagine.”
Draxum stamps a hoof onto the sidewalk, the turtling hatchling limp in the palm of his hand. The goyles’ wide eyes watch from within his handbag, awed. He raises it to the dusky sky, a maniacal grin plastered on his face, and proclaims his intentions with a roar.
“With this hideous beast of fury and fire, I shall bring the humans to their DOOM!” he howls. The hatchling wriggles its flat little legs in response, and snaps at the air. With a flourish, Draxum summons a big glowing blue portal and strides through, as Florida’s finest nobodies look on. One of them shakes their head with a sigh.
“It is every year with these goddamn herpetologists.”