Chapter Text
Chris is yanked from the childlike pedestal he’d placed this dream on, and he hits his chin on the way down.
Chris Kratt wouldn’t trade his powersuit for anything in the world.
Experiencing the heart of the natural world, running beside wildlife like a brother. Scratching every child-like itch for discovery he’s ever had, finding, observing, mimicking. He’s not only willing, but obligated to fall in step with order of things, flying blind in whatever artificial body he’s offered.
Not to mention he can count the number of scientific findings with his name on them. He can count them because there’s a number .
Hell, he’s a bit of a know-it-all at this point and he’s damn proud of that, mind cluttered with useless tidbits and crucial breakthroughs.
His lifelong dream, the fruits of his labor, pulling all nighters pouring over countless articles and research papers, searching every corner of the communities for opportunity. For field work. For this life.
To him it’s just that, not the job of a lifetime, but his life’s work itself.
He’d be- been lying when he didn’t also mention he’s a massive sucker for the rush of it all to. That pressure in his chest, the stretch in his ligaments, the pop and click of his joints as he transforms. The way he can move! In ways his human body simply can’t. No hate towards it, he’s got plenty of appreciation for his good ol’ opposable thumbs, it’s just that he’s not normally so capable. Not even in peak form.
To put it simply, there’s just so much to the powersuit! Avenues he’s never gone down. Senses he’s never experienced. Behaviors he’s never understood in such intimate detail, forced to pay attention, to pick up the discreet marks of a new animal power.
It’s exactly that, that brings him to his tied shoes and pockets, stuffed full with his favorite disks ( and maybe one or two of his brother’s, but hey- Martin should have kept better track of them) .
The Wolverine and Tasmanian Devil he’d chosen first were no brainers, some of his personal favorites for one reason or another. The panther and wolf just as nonnegotiable, practically staples, the all around known icons of the animal kingdom. With his extra room, space for two more, he’d branched out from his usual reptilian climbers and picked the sloth bear and the vampire bat.
Chris pats his pockets again, poking a thumb in to pick through. To triple check he’d safely collected all of them.
A noise rises from one of the hammocks strung up on the little tree by Aviva’s workplace.
Chris jolts. He’s a little too used to sneaking behind Aviva’s back with Martin.
Speaking of the devil-
“Chris?” Martin’s arms stretch out like a sleepy dog, and the hammock rocks as he rolls onto his shoulder.
Threadbare fingerless gloves stained navy blue hide his palms in the dark. Chris meant to remind him to take those off. He doesn’t think they should be touching Martin’s face.
They squint at each other in the dark.
“Yup.” Chris whispers. He grabs the lip of his dvd bag. He’d found it online last month and it worked wonders for carrying disks. It lost its lustre years ago he guesses, coming used, but its pockets are the perfect size for disks of any kind. “Just going out for a bit.”
He’d put it away, but he still stands with the question of what disk to start out with.
Could go with a reptile anyway… He muses.
Martin mumbles something unintelligible.
“Just go to sleep, dude.” Chris snicks, attention turned down.
A bright orange disk catches his eye, a tufty mane engraved on the front. The tamarin disk Aviva made for him last month when they were across country. He remembers begging her for it, on his knees beside Martin as they shook their joined fists for their monkeys of choice.
For all she preached over their less-than-stellar patience and reckless, impatient rush for one project after the next, she always seemed to find it in all their best interests to let them chase the dopamine. So to say.
Chris smiles to himself and plucks out the disk, closing the bag and setting it back beside the center island.
The disk is smoothly slotted into the suit center and he breaks into a light, impatient jog to the door, feet fleet as he bounces on the toes of his boots.
Chris has been making this a routine, packing up whatever powers he thinks he may get an itch for, and going out alone for a while. A couple hours, best.
No distractions, no studying, no social anything, just him and his powersuit.
He thinks it’s kind of cheesy in a way, to try and describe it. How would he? He thinks he wants to call it the animal within him, desperate to be indulged, enabled. He wants adrenaline to blast him out of his mind and yet on his own, he never has the energy to go long, too quickly tired out, muscles burned.
There’s an unrestrained sort of pleasure in the bite of frosty wind on his face while he handles the only technology he knows intimately.
If anyone asks, he calls it stress testing, and so far he’s gotten away with that impressively well. It’s technically not even a lie.
In all honesty, he’s kinda impressed with himself, considering Aviva hasn’t caught on. Or maybe she has and she’s just sparing his feelings. Either way, he’s not going to poke a bear with its eyes shut just to find out if it’s sleeping.
The morning air wipes his thoughts away, the crisp cold kissing his nose and coaxing the blood to his cheeks. His breath ghosts infront of him.
Chris doesn’t bother closing the door as he leaves. They haven’t had any concerning wildlife visitors recently he needs to worry about getting in. The worst they’re seeing around right now is raccoons coming to poke around, but the sun’s rising and the crew would stir if something went down. Probably. He’s going to choose to have faith in them. For his own convenience.
Plus, maybe, just maybe, Chris can’t be bothered to close the door when he’s positively hopping with energy, bouncing from side to side as he roots around the extra, closed pocket low in his shorts leg. He’s stuffed a variety of furs in it, some pricking the pads of his fingers like straw, so all he has to do is stick his hand in and let the filter disk handle the rest.
With nothing to hold him from action, Chris takes off in a sprint, aiming for the thick, gnarly oaks. His hand comes slamming to the power hub, fingers needing no help finding the right button. It’s more than muscle memory to him, engrained in his very character.
The flood of adrenaline that follows is addicting, and he’s damn pumped !
He flies, flinging himself against the nearest tree branch as his body morphs, the stretched palm of his monkey hand slamming onto the bumpy bark.
He hollers and whoops, body twisting when be swings and a grin plastered over his cheeks.
Then comes the really fun part!
Chris launches himself from the trees, punching the eject button. He’s still detransforming when he grabs the next disk, plunging his other hand in his pocket to transform again in seconds time, all whilst tearing through the air.
His new paws slam down onto the thick, mulchy ground, and beat the forest floor as he dives through the undergrowth, weaving around the thick swaths of bracken and curling strips of ferns that circle the sparse groves of silver birch.
In a heartbeat he’s beating at the suit hub again, shoving in disk after disk to filter power after power.
It’s electric. Exhilarating .
He’s faster. Faster than he’s ever been. He’s just better, and by god he’s never felt so alive.
And then he pitches forward, balance skewed, full on messed up. It’s almost sobering, but he’s still got that blessed adrenaline and lets himself roll with the punch, feeling his body shift and flex.
But something goes wrong. He’s bigger than he’s supposed to be, towering. He’s taller than his bear suit, than any of the filters he took with him, and he can only gape as the ground grows further and further away.
He’s supposed to be smaller. He’s supposed to be a Wolverine.
What happened, Chris? What went wrong?
His feet are still moving, hurdling through the undergrowth at speeds that can’t be safe when he can’t take count of his limbs.
Branches whip at his face, dirt caught and gathered under the curve of his claws, and he’s geared up like an oncoming car crash, playing one sided chicken with the trees.
A certain terror takes its hold on him. The grim sort. You fucked up.
The hub has stopped regulating entirely, rejecting the filters, his Wolverine disk flying out from the port, lost to the blur of dead leaves and thorns. The hub is accepting all available information, all the samples he’s touched. All the DNA he’s gathered.
His eyes jerk around and he can see with growing dread, the way his suit is stripping itself, molding against him as it tries to build itself up.
And then he trips.
Fuck.
Chris is yanked from the childlike pedestal he’d placed this dream on, and he hits his chin on the way down.
His limbs, fuck there’s so many of them , they all scramble and bend, buckling under him as he writhes. They’re aimed, moving with a mission.
They pummel one another, flailing and thrashing and bashing.
The big ones, the ones with claws, he knows when they reach the suit’s core, the electrical hub that roars central of his animal chest like a machine heart.
He knows because something snags and he can feel the faux nerves light like fire, lightning shocks ripping through the amalgamation of a body he’s demanded too much from.
Warm stripes paint his arms, no use in denial, it’s blood, the little ones that jut out of the shoulders he’s had forever.
He screams, and there’s nothing comparable to the horror when that sound reaches his ears in a guttural roar, pitched like the shriek of a wounded wildcat and with the bass of a groaning bear.
When he looks down, his vision is stretched and taught, shaking in a way he’d be hard wired to believe his pupils should not, had he had a strain of logical thought left.
There are shards in his chest, and the suit’s hub is no longer a shiny, well kept contraption, but now impaled in on itself, shattered like a broken star.
It buzzes and snaps, angry as a spitting cat, and Chris has never been at such a loss.
A fervent vignette of feeling he cannot parse engulfs him, rising and falling to the roars that crash in his ears.
He’s gone, he knows this, there’s nothing besides the beating of his heart, the taste of the blood he’s choking on, beading and budding from his gums, and raw overstimulation that laces every ounce of his being.
THERES A HOLE IN MY HEART! something screams.
It’s the adrenaline speaking. Chris would be delusional to believe he’s in any control.
The front seat is taken, a sliced off piece of his brain pie with its sweat soaked hands on the wheel. The rest of him takes the backseat.