When Ren straggles to consciousness, he is aware of being cold, of having a terrific migraine, and of the hum of machinery.

You paged Rex with 'Any light in the room?'.
Rex pages: Ah, yes, light. That blinding, painful light coming through his eyelids.

Serendipity squints against the light trying to brutally violate his eyes, and tries to protect them with a hand. "....nnng," he groans softly to himself, "...the dark'd I =drink=?"

There is no answer, just the continued hum of computers and other machinery and the blazing artificial lighting of the barren little white cubicle he seems to be sealed in, with no visible exit. But perhaps he notices his lack of clothing, small pains in the crook of his right arm and the back of his left hand, and a slight pressure at his throat.

It is far from the first time Ren's awakened in a strange place, buck-naked and headachy, but generally there's been someone else involved, or at least well-warmed blankets. He forces his eyes open a slit more, taking in his surroundings before he moves any further. Something is decidedly Not Right.

The walls and ceiling are smooth, some kind of plastic, perhaps, and he seems to be lying on a slightly cushioned pad of a similar material.

Right. We're not in canvas anymore. Serendipity considers his options briefly, then sits up gingerly and takes inventory, still somewhat pained by the light, even filtered through his lashes. Limbs? All there, apparently. What are these painful bits? And what's with his neck...? His fingers flit over the places in question, unaffected by the headache.

There are needlemarks -- and large, ugly bruises around them -- in the crook of his arm and the back of his hand. Around his neck, however, is a smooth, rounded, metal collar that seems to have no joins or seams anywhere. He is, in fact, buck-nekkid. No other damage apparent.

Serendipity goes very, very still, scarcely even breathing, the only movement visible the tips of his thumbs just barely tracing along the collar. His eyes are completely open now. Fuck the pain. There are worse things. It's nearly a full minute before the rest of his mental stock-taking can resume. Naked. Well, that's no big deal. Except for his coat, shit. And- He shifts a hand upward, checking the state of his hair.

His hair is intact, but braided back such that it requires no other restraint.

That, at least, is reassuring. As much as anything here, considering. The precipitating events start coming back to him -- the trip with Rex, and that damn Callie. Right. Ren runs a hand across his hair, and narrows his eyes. Lots of things to figure out and deal with, but most of them he can't do too much about in here. He clasps his hands, with a silent plea to Coyote for luck, and pushes to his feet, the better to explore the place.

When his feet touch the floor, one wall turns transparent, and he can see Rex, similarly unattired, sitting up groggily and rubbing his head.

At least the place has a nice view. Serendipity takes a couple steps toward the 'window,' and waves a hand to Rex, trying to get his attention. In slight hopes it might work, he adds aloud -- though not too loudly -- "Hey. Handsome. Over here."

It takes a moment, but Rex does look up. His eyes brighten and he springs to his feet -- an unconsidered motion that he obviously regrets. He staggers toward the window, one hand out, and encounters the still-intact partition. Rex's mouth clearly shapes the words, "What the fuck is going on?" but Ren can't hear his voice.

Serendipity shrugs eloquently, and takes a second to look Rex over, checking for signs of any wounds like or unlike his own, and trying to get a better look at that collar -- presumably it's like his. And maybe appreciating the lion kin's body just a =little=, while he's at it. No reason to let whoever their captors are take =all= the fun out of the world. He puts his hand up to the partition, against Rex's. "...I dunno. That chick on the road..." he replies, when he's done.

Rex's body shows similar needlemarks, but nothing else significant. The collar looks like brushed steel with some kind of circuitry marks under some transparent -- plastic? glass? ceramic? -- facing. He seems to be checking Ren over similarly, and his free hand runs along the line of the collar. There is something of a bleak look in his eyes for just a second, then he concentrates on Ren. "Some kind of stunner or something," he suggests.

Serendipity nods agreement, fingers tracing his own collar in absent mirror. "That box, I bet," he suggests in return, and then glances around again, checking the room for anything at all out of place -- walls, ceiling, floor, everything.

Rex starts running his hands over the walls of his cell lightly. In Ren's cell, it all seems to be of a piece. There are tiny but visible seams between ceiling and walls, and between walls and floor, but nothing one could even wedge a fingernail into. The pad is clearly attached to the floor, as well. Nothing to pick up, nothing to bang, nothing to harm himself with.

Well. That's as may be, but they -- whoever They are -- got the boys in here somehow. Therefore, there's got to be a way back out. Serendipity stands in the middle of the room, closes his eyes, and considers. What Would Coyote Do?

While Ren considers and Rex searches, there is a small buzzing from the "window." Ren hears, "Oh, /cool/, you're awake!" The squeak on the end of the sentence is dulled by the mechanical interface, but the voice is clearly recognizable. Her image, in fact, is floating in the middle of the window.

Serendipity opens his eyes again, focusing them on the image, and looks rather less enthused to see her than vice versa, all things considered. "And =you're= a lousy hostess," he replies darkly.

"Oh, well, I /am/ sorry about the rooms, y'know," Callie says contritely. "But they're really important to the experiment!" She clasps her hands together beside her face and looks ecstatic. "I'm /so/ lucky to have found the two of you! You're perfect! So perfectly perfect I just can't believe you were /together/! In the /same/ place! And you were talking about things at /just/ the perfect time! And your genes are /perfect/! I just /know/ this will be a success!"

Rex watches this projection with horror, though Ren can see the red anger building up behind his eyes.

Serendipity arches a brow, slowly. "...well, I hate t' break it to you, chickie, but we're both guys. Note the well-proportioned penises. So if you're planning to breed us together, you're gonna be real disappointed. Plus," he indicates the collar, "really not into the bondage thing."

Callie laughs. It is a laugh that matches the insipidness of her voice, but there does, somehow, manage to be an edge of menace in it. "Oh, no, that's /boring/," she says. "/Every/one does breeding experiments. And the whole sex thing? Funny. /I'm/ trying something no one's worked on for about a hundred years, and /I/ have the theory /right/. And /you/ boys will be the first lucky people to have it /work/ on you! Isn't that /great/?"

Serendipity's brain does a quick round of mental math and comes up with 2 + 2 = Oh... Shit. His mouth, however, comes up with "...thanks, but I've never been mucha an early adopter. How 'bout we leave, and you try it with someone who =does= think it's great? Gotta be guinea-pig kin out there somewhere."

Callie shrugs cheerfully. "Well, sure, there are people who've volunteered, but /no one/ as /perfect/ as /you/! Most kin I've worked on have had really /low/ gene scores, but both of /you/ have scores within the range where you really /could/ be shifters! So all you need is a /little/ help! Isn't it /lucky/? /I'm/ so excited I can hardly sit /still/! But I really /should/ wait until your systems have /recovered/ from that nasty shock I gave you, and do a /little/ more calibration! So I'll get /back/ to you when everything's ready, 'kay?" And her picture fizzles out.

Serendipity is left looking at Rex, and meets his eyes, the 'oh shit' showing there a bit more now that the enemy's apparently gone. And good genes have generally been such a =good= thing 'til now...

Rex is, sadly, a somewhat slow-witted boy, and he has not entirely caught up with the conversation. He does, however, clearly read the "oh shit" expression, and seems to puzzle over it for several long moments. The realization then breaks over his face like dawn over a vampire.

"...So," Serendipity says, very quietly but with clear lip movements, "...just how bad =do= we wish we made that particular team?"

Rex rakes his fingers through his hair, then hauls at the collar uselessly. His lips are easily read: "Not this way!"

Serendipity nods. "Ditto," is all he says back, before starting to check the room out carefully again, touching everything. He starts with himself, trying to invoke Coyote's luck for the task. On his side, he hopes. Then the walls...

The pair are left to themselves for a very long time. Ren has plenty of time to go over the walls... well, without a fine-toothed comb, since he just doesn't have one right now. The seams are fine and close and perfectly joined. When he presses his nose right to the wall to see, there /are/ seams at the corners of the walls -- just very nearly invisible. It must have been assembled around him. All perfectly joined. Except... there's just a small bit in one lower corner that looks like it wasn't jammed together /quite/ right...

Serendipity stares at the bit for a few seconds, working out which way looks weakest, and then wriggles a fingertip firmly against it, trying to enlarge and get into the join, maybe pop it apart...

His fingernail, with some work, gets into the seam. With a certain amount of pain and wear-and-tear on said fingernail, he manages to widen it enough that he can get just the faintest hint of purchase with his fingertip, and further widening with more fingernails lets him get a grip, however tenuous. It seems like this part wasn't fitted together properly -- the tabs or something didn't go into the proper holes -- and now it's just taking some time for him to work the wall apart from the floor. Of course, he has to contend with the fact that the adjoining wall /was/ attached to the floor correctly, so it's very slow going.

Serendipity grimaces at the pain, but what's a fingernail or two compared to the alternative? He focuses his energy on the task at hand, trying to be quick and quiet, but mostly effective.

Rex has not fared as well as Ren, and keeps circling and circling his cube, pacing like his relatives. Ren, on the other hand, makes progress. He manages to work loose an entire side of his prison, though his fingertips are torn and bloody by the end.

Serendipity sticks his bloodied fingers in his mouth, soothing them a little, and endeavours to see just what he's gained access to, by his blood, sweat, and toil. No tears, though. Not yet, at least.

With effort, he wedges open the crack between wall and floor, and sees out into a laboratory, with tall, black lab benches laden some unknown machinery. He can hear someone humming nearby, but can't see them.

You paged Rex with 'How big a crack is it? Slipping out size, or just seeing?'.
Rex pages: He could probably manage to work his head into it, and thence wriggle the rest of his body out. The tabs will scratch him up pretty significantly, but it's doable.

Serendipity makes an effort to bend the tabs on the opened section backward, to point into the outside room, and then takes a breath, a moment to prepare himself, and the matter up with Coyote, mentally, before he makes the attempt to wriggle into the hole and break on through to the other side.

The tabs won't bend very well, but they bend a bit, at least.

It'll have to do. Ren attempts to slide through both quickly and quietly, biting his bottom lip against the distinct lack of helpfulness those tabs inflict as he tries.

The tabs scratch him pretty thoroughly, especially since the wall is still being pulled down by the three other walls and everything has to stretch out of shape to let him out. Because he bent the tabs over, though, the only ones that draw blood are across his shoulders, really. After struggling to get his shoulders and chest through, the rest is pretty much child's play, and he spoots through, newborn-like, onto the cold metal floor.

Serendipity bites back a whimper at the first touch of the floor, then shifts a little, finding the coolness soothes some of the lower, lesser scratches a bit. He lets them enjoy it for a few seconds while he takes in his surroundings.

This side of his cube is populated with machines and lab benches, things that hum and things that go "bing!" There appears to be no living thing here but him, and there also appears to be no exit from this metal-floored, beige-walled room within sight. The humming person begins to sing softly, and it's clearly Callie, and she sounds like she's on the other side of the room. "Oh, the cytosine's attached to the... tyrosine. The tyrosine's attached to the... guanine. And the guanine's attached to... another guanine..."

You paged Rex with 'No sign of their stuff, or anything that looks like a handy weapon of any sort, I don't suppose?'.
Rex pages: Nope!
You paged Rex with 'Can one go around behind the cubes? ...she sounds like she's in front and on the other side?'.
Rex pages: Yep.

Serendipity gets very gingerly to his feet, staying slightly hunched just to be sure his head's down... and plus, it feels sneakier that way. He begins padding his way slowly around the back side of the cubes, with a quick glance behind him to check whether he's dripping blood.

No dripping blood, no. The back side of the cubes is littered with other small plastic cubes, presumably for storage. The second cube shares a wall with Ren's cube, and there are no other cubes present. Callie's singing continues, shifting songs, clearly in front of the modular prison. "You spin me right round, baby, right round, like a helix, baby, right round round round. Unzip it, baby, right down, baby, right down, and replicate, right down down down..."

Serendipity takes a moment to look over those smaller cubes, hopefully -- though carefully. Storage means things, and things means possibilities. He's a big fan of possibilities.

There are latches on the cubes, things that look like they lever the lids open.

Things closed are meant to be open. Ren takes a closer look at the cubes, looking for signs of dust, or unusual lack thereof, to see which ones might have been opened more recently. And for any signs of wires leading into them; he doesn't trust the nutty professor not to have boobytrapped one of them for just such an occasion. He picks the most promising of the lot, and very gently undoes the latch.

There is no dust on anything, and no wires, and really nothing that distinguishes one two-foot-by-two-foot white plastic cube from another. Ren picks one and opens it. The latch pops the lid open, and a small robot thing rises into the air, little red lights flashing. It beeps in a friendly sort of way, and produces an arm with a scrub brush, another arm with a vacuum cleaner, and another arm with a feather duster. It runs the feather duster over Ren as it fires up the vacuum and begins to scrub the side of Rex's cube. Callie stops singing and says, "What?!"

Serendipity winces. If his mind screamed 'Shit!' any louder, Callie would hear =that=, too. Well... he flicks the latches of all the other cubes he can immediately reach, spending only enough time to catch a glimpse of the contents and grab his coat -- or anything that immediately looks handy -- before he pads quickly back around the way he came on the cubes, listening for the woman's footsteps to gauge their direction.

Callie's footsteps around coming around the cubes from, fortunately, the correct direction. The other storage cubes reveal nothing of interest or use -- they're all cleaning 'bots of some sort. One that extends arms with iodine droppers and gauze bandages, however, starts chasing Ren.

Crapcakes. Ren pads as fast and silent as his feet'll take him the opposite way around the cubes, toward where Callie had been working. If the bot keeps chasing him... well, that'll just have to be a secondary consideration for now. Time is, as they say, of the essence.

The bot attempts to spritz his bleeding shoulders with some kind of anesthetic antiseptic, and also tries to daub at the blood with gauze. There is a yelp from Callie as, apparently, something tried to scrub her, and Ren comes around to where she had been working at a strange control board, only to, seconds later, have her run back around the side, pursued by cleaning bots. They end up face to face. Callie stares at him for a moment, jaw slightly open.

Serendipity knows opportunity when it knocks. He hauls back and gives her his best uppercut to the jaw, with all the force he can manage. Sure, he's a lover, not a fighter, but he's not a bartender either and he can still mix a mean drink if he's got the right motivation.

Callie is caught flatfooted by the punch. Her teeth come together with a violent crack and she's lifted off her feet a good six inches. Her backward arc ends with her sprawled awkwardly over a couple of boxes, that slip and slide out from under her, and one can almost see the little swirlies in her eyes and hear the cuckoos fluttering around her head.

Serendipity shakes out his hand with another wince and a muttered, "...sorry, toots. Hate t' hit a lady..." All the same, he looks entirely prepared to do it again if the first one didn't do the job. After making sure she doesn't appear liable to jump up and shock him again, he glances around for some kind of restraints... surely she finds them indispensable in her work.

Restraints seem to be few and far between here. There's some wires and such, bundles of them scattered nearby. She seems to be down for the count right now.

Wires should do. Ren yanks a bundle over to tie her hands nice and tight behind her back, and her ankles as well. After a second's thought, he looks for a suitable gag, as well; can't be too careful, right?

While Ren is engaged in applying duct tape to Callie's mouth, he hears a tinny voice from the direction of the cubes say, "Five seconds to process finish. 5... 4... 3..."

This time Serendipity =does= audibly exclaim "Shit!" and then, while looking for some kind of cube-opening or process-aborting lever or button -- preferably jolly and candy-like -- adds just short of frantically, "Cancel! Abort! End, Stop, Quit, =Whoa=!"

Buttons! Levers! Switches! Slides! Dials! There are plenty. They flip, push, spin, swish, break, shatter... chaos ensues. The countdown, however, goes on unperturbed: "3... 2... 1... Process complete." There is a click, a buzz, and a blinding, burning pain shoots out of Ren's collar through his entire body. It feels like something it trying to take him down to his component cells and reassemble him. In the distance, someone is screaming. It may or may not be Ren. But... oddly... after a few moments, Ren's brain begins to cope with the pain. It's not so very blinding, although it's certainly not pleasant.

Serendipity whimpers, discovering he appears to be on his hands and knees on the floor, suddenly. So does the coffee cake. His stomach settles as the pain ebbs, and he takes a few seconds to breathe, pressing his forehead to a clean patch of nice cold metal flooring, before he staggers to his feet and ventures, hesitantly, "...Rex?"

Rex pages the room: The three rescuers come through the forest at quite a pace, and find a circular metal manhole-type thing in the ground.
Justin pages the room: Justin assumes we can pry it up and get inside? :)
Rex pages the room: Yep! It's kinda heavy, and seems to be attached to something that, well, levers it up and pulls it closed, but it does pry open. Doesn't seem like fabulous workmanship.

Rowan insists on checking around for random people who might be in the area, first, but then acts as the grunt squad.

No guards, no other people. The Garou prizes up the manhole...

Miki peers at the metal thing on the ground, circling it as a cat does around a puddle of ink (which is usually the cat's fault). When Rowan pries it up, he darts forward to look inside.

Rowan hisses, "Hey, you, you don't regenerate. Get back."

"Miki--" Justin makes a snatch at the trailing edge of Miki's coat. "Be careful!"

Well, the coffee cake is long gone, apparently, so Ren ends up with dry heaves. The metal floor is very nice, and his body is still tingling painfully. On his feet, the world spins and his stomach threatens more heaving. There is no more screaming, however. The opaque white boxes in front of him are silent. Callie is still out. The board is whining gently as a thin line of smoke rises from one corner, and a few idiot lights flicker yellow and red.

From a far corner of the beige and white room, there is a shrieking sound of metal on metal on plastic. Miki can see... a very plain room, scattered with white plastic boxes, a couple of black lab benches... and Ren, stark naked and looking wan, standing near a gently smoking metal control board. A small woman with scads of fluffy blonde hair seems to be unconscious, heaved over a couple of boxes, and restrained with wires around her wrists and duct tape over her mouth.

"Ren!" says Miki joyfully, both for the benefit of the Coyote-kin and for those watching above.

Rowan swears under his breath. "Miki," he says, very (very) calmly. "What is /in/ there?"

Serendipity props himself up on the corner of the large cube-cell, and looks up in startlement at being addressed. Despite the intense discomfort, a huge grin breaks across his face like the sun in a sudden cloudbreak. "MIKI!" he exclaims, "...=damn=, beautiful, are you ever a sight for sore eyes." The grin goes a little wry, then. "...c'mon down, the insane scientist's laboratory's fine," he invites, before going back to looking for a way to get or at least look into Rex's cube.

Miki says, "It is a room with metal boxes and strange black furniture and wires and a woman tied up. And Ren. He is not wearing any clothes."

Justin mutters, "As per usual. Let's go in."

Rowan mutters, "Either he's been having a real good time, or I'm suddenly real worried." That said, he for some reason allows Miki to go down first, and then shimmies down after him.

Miki grips the edge of the hole and drops into the room, landing carefully on the floor of the room. "Why is she tied up? Was she caught with you? And where is *Rex?*"

Justin follows Rowan in, apparently having more sense of self-preservation than Miki, and managing the drop reasonably well. He scans the room with a gaze that isn't quite all there. "True Magic has been worked in here," he says lowly.

"She's tied =up=," Serendipity explains without ceasing his examination of the prison cube, "because she's a darkin' insane scientist girl who wants to change me and Rex into shifters, WHICH doesn't sound that bad now that I'm saying it out loud, but trust me, she sucker-shocked us and closed us in these cubes and =collars=, I might add, to experiment on us, and =Rex= is in THIS one." He stops, and knocks on the side of the cube, hesitantly, asking again, "...Rex?"

There is no answer from inside the cube. And, yes, the others will now notice the seamless brushed-steel collar around Ren's neck, and the bloody scrapes on his back and shoulders.

Rowan, who is in glabro and quite warily alert, gives Justin an exasperated look, but asks, "Do you know what it did?" And then, to Ren, "Is she the only one other than you around?" Then, he offers, "I can do my grunt squad routine and break him out..."

Miki places his hands against the strange white box which Ren says has Rex in it. "Rex?" he says, then looks at Ren. His gaze hitches for a moment on the collar, then travels over the scratches and bruises. He turns to Rowan so quickly that his hair flips over his shoulder and catches on the edge of the plastic. "Yes, get him out!"

"It's the sphere of life and the body, I can tell that much." Justin frowns, staring into space. "And ...the sphere of spirits, as well. I think. If she's trying to turn them into shifters, these both make sense." He approaches the unconscious mad scientist with a certain deliberate stride.

"I dunno," Ren replies with admirably little sarcasm, "I was stuck in the cube, and then I was kinda busy escaping from it and dealing with her," he indicates the woman with a jerk of his head, "and trying to cancel the process thing. ...I was doin' really well up to that one." He smiles weakly and runs a hand through his hair. "But I =think=, yeah, it's just her. She was alone when she found us, and I haven't seen or hearda anyone else here. Plus. She doesn't seem like the type who's gonna have a lotta buddies hanging around."

Rowan complains, "That's what it /was/, not what it /did/," in Justin's general direction, and says, "Right," to Ren. "Cool. Good fuckin' job gettin' outta this shit, too. Miki, watch my back, huh?" That said, he shifts up to crinos (for speed of breakage) and tries to break Rex out.

Miki obediently turns his back on the spectacle of Rowan ripping through the plastic and keeps an eye on the rest of the room instead. Although it doesn't make much sense in this enclosed space, he reaches behind him and pulls his bow and an arrow from his bowcase, just in case. He doesn't nock it, though, because despite being a foolish teenager, he's not *stupid.*

The plastic doesn't /look/ like it will hold up to a Garou's strength, but oddly it /does/. Rowan's claws screech off it awfully, and fists make the plastic bend a little, but it snaps right back into place. It just won't break. Only when his claws catch on the seams of the assembly -- and the seams, Ren may notice, are much more obvious on the outside than on the inside -- does he make any headway in splitting the pieces apart from one another along the lines on which they were assembled. After a few minutes of this, though, the pieces do disassemble, revealing... a large lion with a short black mane, lying sprawling on the floor of the erstwhile cube, entirely unconscious.

After a second's silence, Serendipity remarks, "Well... guess we know what it did."

"I can't tell exactly what it did without--" Justin looks over, and falls silent, and stares. A second passes. Two. ".../Impossible/."

Rowan stumbles backwards, eyes a little wide.

Miki can't resist a bait like that. He looks over his shoulder. "Rex?" he whispers, and then, in a joyous shout, "REX! REX, you have got what you--" Shoving his bow aside any old how, he scrambles for the box.

Rowan pulls himself together and begins serving as /Miki's/ guard.

Serendipity stays decidedly -- for him -- still, eyes fixed on the Rex-lion, not quite staring, expression nigh impossible to read, beyond 'ambivalent'. "...if it worked," he says eventually, quite quietly.

Callie makes a small, muffled whimpering noise and attempts to sit up, unsuccessfully. Meanwhile, the lion's eyes open slowly, but he attempts to react to Miki's abrupt arrival in the cube by springing backward. The attempt ends with Rex in a four-legged tangle of awkward limbs and swishing tail. He makes what in a smaller cat would be an unhappy sound, but comes out of this voicebox as a significant rumble.

Justin stares wide-eyed at the lion Rex, until he realizes Callie is stirring. He gets a grip on her bound wrists and tells her, "Good morning, my dear. Do not speak, or it will go ill for you."

Callie looks up at Justin blearily past the wad of duct tape over her mouth, and manages to summon a sarcastic look.

Miki stops, staring at the lion. "Rex, it is me. It is Miki. Do you not... not recognize me?" He crouches on the edge of the shattered cubicle, very still. It seems to occur to him that rushing to hug lions is not the action of someone who wishes to remain in one piece, usually.

Rex stares at Miki for a long moment before Miki's voice seems to sink in. The lion drags himself closer, awkwardly, unaccustomed to these limbs, and makes another, slightly softer, unhappy noise before trying to nose Miki gently. This "gentle" thing is going to take some getting-used-to, though.

Rowan gives the woman a sharp look, then Justin an approving one as he deals with her. He shifts down to glabro in order to ask, "You want help in figuring out how to shift, or... You wanna stick like that for awhile?"

Serendipity's legs go a little wobbly. He covers by leaning on a remaining standing cube wall for a second, then wandering to the nearest lab bench and scooting enough equipment over to make room for him to sit. Adrenaline ebb, perhaps.

Justin's eyebrows go up as he sees the ducttape. "Well done, Ren," he calls, approving. Looking back down at the bound woman, he asks her, quite calmly really, "You kidnapped a Perunka as well, yes?"

Callie frowns at Justin and shakes her head vigorously. Then she regrets the shaking and winces.

Miki reaches out and gently, very very gently, pats Rex on the nose. "You make a very good lion, Rex," he says, and if he chokes a little over the words, surely people will be good enough to pretend they did not hear that.

"Just me and Rex," Serendipity confirms rather quietly. "..this time, anyway. She said something about others before. But I don't think they're here now." He watches Miki and Rex from his perch.

Justin frowns right back at Callie, even deeper when it's confirmed by Ren. His jaw tightens, then he forces himself to close his eyes and breath deeply for a moment. Apparently, this brings something else to his attention. Opening his eyes, he glances upwards, then at Rex, then at Ren, and back to Callie. "It's an effect!" he accuses.

Rowan asks, "A which?"

Serendipity looks at Justin as well, arching an eyebrow in question. If that's all he can manage regarding it, this must've taken a lot out of him, at least for the current moment.

Callie rolls her eyes and shrugs her shoulders at Justin.

Rex makes a very shaky attempt to stand, and manages to get up onto his plate-sized paws. After standing there for a moment, he noses Miki's hand, this time more successfully.

Justin stares down at Callie as if she's deeply personally affronted him. "You did all this for an /effect/? You're a...a charlatan!" This a very bad word to call her, it seems.

Miki carefully strokes Rex's nose, then runs his fingers through the black mane. He looks over his shoulder. "This is not right, he moves like he hurts. Does a first change hurt?"

Rowan says, still eyeing Justin, "Sometimes. It varies."

"This fucking stung a bit," Serendipity mutters, giving the distinct impression that could be considered an understatement in the same way New York could be considered a city, i.e., a damn big one.

Callie might snort, if she could, but she just draws herself up and looks offended at Justin, then rolls her eyes at him again.

Miki looks over at Ren, his eyes widening. "It happened to you, *too?* And you just changed *back?*"

Rex steps forward shakily and carefully peers out at Ren past Miki. Unfortunately, he isn't careful enough, and brushes against the crouching Miki with enough casual force to topple him over. Rex looks as apologetic as a lion can.

Justin glances back at Rex, admitting, "All right, it's a really good transformation." He sighs, and explains to the rest of the room, "He's not really changed. It's a spell she has him under, worked through the collars. It did not work on Ren. The collars will need to come off, though it would be better if she ended the effect."

Serendipity looks up at the ceiling, at nothing in particular. "No," he replies very evenly, "I didn't. Got the exciting collar-jolt at the same time, though. Guess the effect thing just didn't work on me." He shrugs, looking back down at Miki. "Which is good, in that I'm not really into mad scientist chicks doing magic on me without my consent and all, but I coulda done without the side effects too, frankly." He looks at Justin, a little confused. "...so what's the deal with it, then? He's just a lion until the collar's off, then he's him again?"

Miki, who was crouched on his heels, falls over backwards with an "oof!" He struggles to lean up on his elbows, kicking a random bit of plastic away. "Justin, what do you mean? You can not mean that he, that he will not be able to do this again!" The pain and loss in his voice are so intense that you would think that it was he being deprived of his birthright.

Rowan considers the woman. "So," he asks Justin, just to be sure, "We gotta persuade her to change him back?" He looks to Callie. His tone is, perhaps, somewhat less than gentle. "Hey, lady, you up for it?"

Rex looks at Justin with an intensely distressed expression and he opens his -- large, fanged -- mouth as if to protest, and all that comes out is a deafening roar as the lion shape swarms up into a truly enormous Crinos.

Miki scoots a little more backwards on the floor, his eyes as round as moons.

"In essence, she's turned him into a lion, yes. It's not a true shifting." Justin is promptly made to eat his words as Rex shifts. He boggles at the Crinos lion, backing up swiftly until he bumps into something. Then, with an unnerved swallow, he adds, "Uhm... It's a /really good/ effect!" He nods a little frantically at Rowan.

Callie winces at the roar in the confined space, stares at Rex, and then nods at Rowan enthusiastically.

"I'd /suggest/," Rowan says, remarkably calmly for someone who's got a crinos roaring in the background, "You do it /now/."

Serendipity blinks, staying right where he is on the table, staring at Rex. "...wait," he says, not raising his voice, "ask Rex if he wants her to."

Callie stares at Rowan as if he is the largest idiot on the face of the planet. She wriggles her hands a bit in Justin's grip.

Rowan blinks at her, and then looks abashed. "Oh. Um. Ignore me."

Miki scrambles to his feet, grabbing his bow and shoving it back in the case. Then he backs up against the nearest wall, feeling unaccountably like a mouse.

"It doesn't work that way Ren. It'll stop when she stops it, though for now..." Justin stares up at the Crinos-Rex. "My apologies, madam, for calling you a charlatan. You're a genius. Now please end it." He sets about untying the woman's wrists.

Rex reaches out an enormous clawed hand toward Justin, but then sits back on his haunches. He looks pleadingly at Miki and opens his maw again. "Nnnnnnnnnnnot rrrrrrrrrreeeal?" he manages.

"It looks real to me, Rex," Miki answers hoarsely, his eyes suspiciously bright. "But I did not do it. Justin is trying to make the, the mage-woman tell."

"It doesn't work =what= way?" Serendipity asks, and there's an uncharacteristic note of annoyance in his voice briefly. "He's shiftin', you need her to do somethin' to make him not be able to again, that looks pretty real to my untrained eye. Seems to me Rex oughta be the one who decides whether she does more fucking uberpain on him to take it away or leaves him that way. Not us."

As Justin gets Callie's hands free, she reaches up and carefully peels the duct tape off without ripping her lips off. "/Thank/ you," she says formally to Justin. Then she looks at Ren. "There is /no/ reason I can think of that /you/ didn't change too!" She stamps her foot. "There's something /bigger/ around you. You aren't /cursed/ or anything, are you?" Yes, there's that breathy squeak at the end of every sentence. "As for /him/, it won't hurt to turn it /off/. But, I'm afraid, until I /perfect/ it, every time he changes out of human, it'll hurt. /Obviously/ I want to fix that, but..."

Justin gives Callie an indecipherable look which is probably closest to wary admiration. "It's not permanent, is it? Once the focus is removed, it will stop? You can't keep it up forever...can you?"

Rex stares down at the huge hands, and his enormous shoulders slump, and he slides back into the lion shape. His rear end, no longer shaped in a bipedal fashion, doesn't cope very well with the new form in the old position, and he topples over unceremoniously.

Miki dashes forwards and heedlessly throws his arms around lion-Rex. "It is real, it is," he whispers fiercely, as if by saying it he can make it true.

Callie fluffs her hair a bit. "Well, it's not /really/ going on /my/ magic, you see. The collars are /almost/ talismans. They need external power supplies. But now I've made the breakthrough, I hope I /can/ get the effect to permanence, you see?" She focuses on Ren again. "/You're/ a puzzle, though. Why /didn't/ you change? Your gene score is higher than /his/. /Much/." She frowns prettily.

Rowan asks, "What happens if you /don't/ get it to permanence?"

Serendipity watches Rex and Miki, though he's listening to the others. "...'m not cursed," he replies to Callie, still a bit subdued. "...I'm blessed."

Justin looks like he needs to sit down. He glances at Ren with something of an apology. "She's making it go, you see. She's done some...amazing things, but the basic fact is that this is still artificially induced. Without her influence, Rex is a kinsman again."

Callie looks at Rowan and shrugs. "Well, /I'll/ be spending my /life/ trying to make it work permanently. In the /meantime/, whoever uses the collars will have the /same/ problem that these two had when the effect hit. /Not/ very useful in, say, battle." She reaches into a pocket and fishes out what looks like a television remote. She presses one button, then points it at Ren and presses another. The collar around Ren's neck splits open and drops to the lab bench. "Not doing /any/ good at /all/ on /you/."

Miki pets Rex's mane and refuses to turn around, although by the tension in his shoulders he is listening. Very much listening.

Rowan says, in that dogged 'I am going to understand this if it kills me' kind of way, "So Rex'd have to hang around with you to stay shifted."

Rex, with exquisite care, hooks one paw around Miki's waist -- no claws -- and squeezes lightly. He looks gratefully over at Ren. Somewhere, deep in his chest, there is a rumble that is something like, perhaps, a purr.

Callie nods at Rowan. "For now, yes. /I'm/ the only one with the machinery to charge the collar."

Serendipity reaches up to rub his now bare neck in relief, eyes closing a moment. "...Thanks," he says a bit brusquely, and slips back off the lab bench, walking over to Rex and Miki, apparently to give the sometime-kin a hug and some petting before all the fur and paws go away.

Rex pages: Where the collar was is lightly burnt -- red and sore to the touch.

Justin slumps a bit, leaning on his staff. "And this still doesn't tell me where Danny is," he whispers, to himself.

Miki looks up at Ren, then reaches out and touches him gently on the shoulder, still hugging lion-Rex tightly with the other arm.

Rowan looks over from Callie to Rex. "I hate to break up the fuzz fest," he eventually says, reluctantly, "But is it worth hangin' out with /her/ for the forseeable future, in order to be able to shift?"

Rex sighs, enormously, breathing a huff of warm air over both Miki and Ren. He shakes his head then, and then sets his chin on Miki's shoulder.

Callie looks at Rowan, then Justin, eyebrows raised questioningly.

Serendipity hugs both Rex and Miki... gingerly. More for his sake than theirs; he's not exactly in peak condition just now, after all. He does not, however, bleed on them, being the considerate kinda guy he is. He's still notably more subdued than usual, but calm. Not quite serene, but somewhere in the area code. Somewhere lower rent.

Justin runs a hand over his hair. He straightens up, as if reminded that he's still doing something here, and nods to Callie. "End the effect, please. And in the future, stick to the willing, would you? We have enough to worry about around here."

Miki hides his face in Rex's mane suddenly, puts an arm around both Ren and Rex, and hugs them tightly. He is very, very, quiet.

Rowan agrees, sounding tired, all of a sudden, "Let 'im go." He's silent for a moment, not looking at Rex, and then asks Callie, quietly, "Have you gotten anyone killed, doin' this shit?"

Callie touches one button, then points and clicks again. The collar comes apart in Rex's mane, and then Ren and Miki are hugging a human Rex. Callie sighs and pockets her remote. "I've never killed anyone, no. My experiments are /all/ very careful. I /do/ get carried away though, and I'm sorry. It /won't/ happen again."

Rex, finding he has arms again, puts one around Ren and one around Miki and hides his face in the neck of one or the other, whichever is closer.

"Yeah," Rowan says, "It won't." He's staring at her, intently, suddenly radiating entirely unrepressed rage. "Because we /know/ about you now. Got me?"

Justin mutters very lowly, "It really -is- an -amazing- effect..."

Miki continues to hug both Ren and Rex very firmly. After a moment, though, he says, muffled by Rex's hair, "Um... what happened to your clothes?"

Serendipity squeezes Rex and Miki both for a moment, then tips the lion-kin's head up and steals a kiss, gently, before letting it go again and addressing Callie, "...yeah, speaking of. I'd like mine back."

Callie nods briskly. "Yes, yes, and you'll kill me if I step out of line, don't worry, I've got that. I'm /not/ as stupid as I /look/, you know." She surveys the damage to the control board and sighs again. "Oh, their clothes are in that box over there," she waves at a storage box next to Rowan. "Thank you," she says more quietly to Justin. "It's /good/ to be /appreciated/ by someone who can /see/ what I'm doing."

Rowan shrugs ruefully. "Hey, I gotta actually make the threats, it ain't like we can sit around just assuming I made them."

Rex kisses Ren, and then kisses Miki's neck, and says, "Um, yeah, I'd like El Cid back, too. Is it in there?"

Miki disentangles himself-- one cannot get dressed while being hugged, after all-- and stands up, looking at the woman who caused all of this for the first time. He looks her up and down, coldly, as though to memorize something, then nods to himself.

Serendipity gives Miki a slightly teasing expectant look -- hey, gotta complete the circle, right? -- and looks slightly disappointed (but only slightly) when the youth disentangles himself. Oh, well. He collects his clothes, and slips into them with practiced ease and speed, noting that everything's there. "...well," he remarks, flashing a quick smile to the later arriving threesome, "...thanks for dropping by, guys. ...Rex, d'you still wanna finish the trip?"