HOME | DD

Description
The night was silent and peaceful, lit only by the light of the full moon. There was no wind, so the sounds of howling from the nearby forest carried for miles. This didn't bother Trottimus much. He was so used to the howls that he was able to continue sleeping comfortably in his room in one of the highest portions of the Marble Towers.

The bedrooms on either side of him were empty – Smiffy was still downstairs working on building a new wand focus, and Ross was out in the forest somewhere, most likely murdering something. They had decided after the first few full moons to let him run; whenever they tried to keep him caged up, he would usually end up hurting himself. They figured finding him in the forest in the morning sick but uninjured was better than pulling him out of a locked room and trying to stop the bleeding.

Trott didn't think about that though. The day before he had prepared everything they would need to deal with the aftermath of the full moon. For now, he was sleeping peacefully, dreaming of fish while Smiffy paced back and forth downstairs, his nose buried in his book as he tried to work out why he couldn't make the new wand focus.

Just after midnight, Trott was snapped awake by the sound of an explosion from downstairs. He flopped out of bed and ran over to the elevator, zapping down to Smiffy's workshop.

He was shocked to see just how much flux had appeared. There was purple gas on the ceiling and purple goop all over the floor. There was a wand focus in the center of the altar, and it was covered in purple goop. There were a few fires dotted around the room.

When the shock of the destruction wore off a second later, he saw Smiffy lying on the floor, bleeding heavily from a wound on his chest where the flux lightning had struck him. Trott quickly ran over, seeing that he was unconscious. Shaking his head a bit, he grabbed Smiffy under the arms and dragged him back towards the elevator, bringing him upstairs and into his room.

With a bit of effort, he managed to get Smiffy back into his bed. Then he ran and got his first aid kit from his room. Without bothering to take the shirt off, he put a quick and temporary bandage over the wound to keep pressure on it and keep it from bleeding.

After making sure Smiffy wouldn't bleed out, he ran back downstairs and cleaned up as much of the flux as he could. He didn't have his jetpack, so he couldn't get to the flux on the ceiling. He would have to take care of it in the morning.

While he was cleaning up the flux, he glanced over at the wand focus on the pedestal. He recognized it as a portable hole focus, even though it was mostly covered in purple goo. He didn't dare touch it.

A few minutes later, all of the fires were put out and the flux was mostly gone. Satisfied with his work, he went back upstairs to the bedrooms. When he went into Smiffy's room, he was surprised to see him waking up.

“Hey Smith,” he said, coming over to him. “How do you feel?”

Smiffy only replied with a low groan.

“That bad, huh?”

“What do you think, mate...?” he muttered, rubbing his eyes.

“Here, sit up for a second,” said Trott, ignoring the green man's sarcasm. “I need to put some proper bandages on you.”

“I can't fucking move.”

“Then bite this,” said Trott, handing Smiffy a washcloth. He then spent the next five minutes struggling to get some bandages on his friend. It didn't help that, as soon as he got Smiffy upright, he became incredibly pale and almost vomited. Then it took a few minutes to get his shirt off without increasing his discomfort. Getting the bandages on was the easiest part.

As soon as Trott taped up the bandages, Smiffy fell back onto his pillow, grimacing in pain at the impact. Trott felt his forehead and found that he had a fever.

“Well mate, looks like you have a pretty severe case of flux flu,” said Trott, taking Smiffy's pulse. His suspicions were confirmed when his friend tried to pull his hand away but was too weak.

“Okay, well you just lay there and try not to vomit on yourself,” he said. “I'll be right back.” Then he turned and quickly left the room, heading into his medical supply closet back in his room. When he came back a few minutes later with flu medicine and an IV drip, Smiffy was already drifting off.

“The fuck is that?” mumbled Smiffy, gesturing to the bottle of medicine Trott was holding.

“This will keep your fever down and help you sleep,” said Trott as he hooked up the IV. “Flux flu moves pretty fast, so hopefully you'll sleep through the worst of it.”

“Don't worry, I'll still be sure to be a pain in the ass tomorrow.”

“I would expect nothing less.”

Trott rolled his eyes a bit. “Alright, now hold still.”

The second the needle went into Smiffy's arm, he passed out.

XXX

Smiffy sat upright with a gasp, looking around. Wherever he was, it was dark and foggy. It took him a moment to realize that he was dreaming.

He slowly stood up, looking around. This was the first time he had ever experienced a lucid dream, and he figured it was because of his fever.

He tried to walk, but the ground felt uneven, like it was constantly moving and shifting. He stumbled, struggling to stay upright.

Looking around, he saw that the black fog was slowly getting thicker, making it harder for him to see and breathe. Suddenly, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He whipped around, but it was gone. Whatever it was, it had left behind a smell like ozone and burning flesh and the distinct, metallic smell of blood.

Struggling for air, Smiffy frantically looked around, again and again seeing the shadow darting around the edge of his vision. He started to hyperventilate, panicking as the smell of blood grew stronger. Whatever was in there with him, it seemed to be growing more aggressive.

The thing shot past him again, this time clipping his shoulder with enough force to stagger him. He heard a voice echoing through the mist, calling his name.

He could hear the thing coming at him from behind, charging him. However, a split second before it struck, he woke up with a gasp.

His vision was blurry at first, but then everything slowly came into focus. The first thing he noticed was the oxygen mask covering the lower half of his face. Had he been struggling to breathe? He couldn't remember.

Then he saw Trott standing over him.

“Smith, are you okay?” he asked, looking concerned. “You looked like you were having a nightmare.”

“Did I...?” asked Smiffy, confused. “I don't remember any nightmare.”

“Maybe it was just a fever dream,” suggested Trott, looking at the monitors he had attached to his friend. “It does look like your fever got worse... I'll give you something for that before I leave.”

“Leave? Where are you going?” asked Smiffy, struggling to keep his eyes open.

“I've gotta go find Ross,” he said, gesturing to the window, where the soft light of the freshly risen sun shone through.

“Right,” said Smiffy, nodding lethargically.

Trott narrowed his eyes a bit. It was unusual for the flux flu to last this long – normally, it would burn itself out within a few hours. This one seemed to be holding on tight.

Shaking his head to focus, Trott picked up a syringe of fever medicine and put it in the IV drip, which he was surprised hadn't come out with all of Smiffy's thrashing.

“I should be back soon,” he said, setting a glass of water by Smiffy's bed. “Try and stay hydrated.”

Smiffy groaned a bit, and Trott turned and left.

As soon as he stepped outside, he reached into the pocket of his doctor's coat and pulled out a small hand-held tracker. He began to follow it's signal without question as it led him into the forest.

After their little incident with Ridge, Ross had never fully recovered from his lycanthropy. The silver bullet that Trott had put through his heart had stopped him from transforming every night except for the full moon. They had found that out the hard way.

However, after they decided to let Ross run free on the full moons, Trott had planted a tracking device in his arm. They all agreed this was the best way to handle the situation; although, now that Smiffy was sick, Trott wasn't sure how he would carry both Ross and his medical supplies. Luckily, he had fixed that problem the night before.

It didn't take him long to find his friend. Within ten minutes, he was in the middle of the forest. After another two minutes, he found a small clearing, where Ross was curled up in the fetal position.

Setting down his medical bag, he went over and gently shook his friend awake. Slowly, Ross woke up, suffering from the exhaustion of the transformations and the lack of sleep.

“You made it,” said Trott, scooting back a bit as Ross slowly sat up, trembling and covered in blood and the shredded remains of his clothes. Trott didn't give him the clothes he brought because he knew what always happened next.

As if on cue, Ross convulsed a bit and vomited up a mess of blood and bone fragments and chunks of half digested meat of indistinguishable origin.

It took him a few minutes to get rid of everything the werewolf had eaten in the night. Once the episode was over, however, Trott moved in and carefully dragged him towards the edge of the clearing. There, he leaned him up against a tree and began to carefully clean the blood off of him while stitching up any wounds he came across.

While he worked, Ross slowly came back into consciousness. He looked around a bit, slowly regaining his senses.

“Trott...?” he choked out after a minute, his voice raw from the obscene amount of howling and snarling from the night before. “W-where's Smith...?”

“He had a little accident last night, so he couldn't come,” explained Trott as he pulled a large t-shirt out of his bag and carefully put it on his friend.

“Is he okay?” asked Ross, the fog of exhaustion slowly disappearing from his eyes.

“He's fine,” said Trott, handing Ross a bottle of water. “He got hit with a bit of flux, and it gave him a pretty resilient strain of flux flu.”

“Oh...” muttered Ross as he sipped the water. Trott pulled out a syringe, and he held out his arm, looking away as he gave him a dose of powerful pain medicine to stop his bones from getting sore and locking up again. His bones and muscles always took the worst hit during a transformation, and they were the cause of his pain in the days afterwards.

“Quick question...” said Ross quietly, feeling the exhaustion catching up to him. “How are we going to get home?”

“With this,” exclaimed Trott, pulling a thin silver cylinder out of his pocket. He stood up and stuck it against a tree, where, to Ross' surprise, it unfolded into a dimensional door.

“I put another one in the tower and linked them together,” said Trott, picking up his medical bag. He opened the door, and inside, Ross could see the interior of the tower, just outside the entrance to their rooms. Trott tossed the bag inside before turning and carefully pulling Ross to his feet. This was a bit of a struggle, because Ross wasn't even strong enough to hold his head up, much less keep his feet under him.

After several minutes of cursing and struggling, Trott managed to drag the now unconscious Ross through the door. As soon as they were through, he closed the door and broke the link so nothing unwanted could get inside. Then he dragged Ross into his room, knowing fully well that today was going to be a long day...

Description
The night was silent and peaceful, lit only by the light of the full moon. There was no wind, so the sounds of howling from the nearby forest carried for miles. This didn't bother Trottimus much. He was so used to the howls that he was able to continue sleeping comfortably in his room in one of the highest portions of the Marble Towers.

The bedrooms on either side of him were empty – Smiffy was still downstairs working on building a new wand focus, and Ross was out in the forest somewhere, most likely murdering something. They had decided after the first few full moons to let him run; whenever they tried to keep him caged up, he would usually end up hurting himself. They figured finding him in the forest in the morning sick but uninjured was better than pulling him out of a locked room and trying to stop the bleeding.

Trott didn't think about that though. The day before he had prepared everything they would need to deal with the aftermath of the full moon. For now, he was sleeping peacefully, dreaming of fish while Smiffy paced back and forth downstairs, his nose buried in his book as he tried to work out why he couldn't make the new wand focus.

Just after midnight, Trott was snapped awake by the sound of an explosion from downstairs. He flopped out of bed and ran over to the elevator, zapping down to Smiffy's workshop.

He was shocked to see just how much flux had appeared. There was purple gas on the ceiling and purple goop all over the floor. There was a wand focus in the center of the altar, and it was covered in purple goop. There were a few fires dotted around the room.

When the shock of the destruction wore off a second later, he saw Smiffy lying on the floor, bleeding heavily from a wound on his chest where the flux lightning had struck him. Trott quickly ran over, seeing that he was unconscious. Shaking his head a bit, he grabbed Smiffy under the arms and dragged him back towards the elevator, bringing him upstairs and into his room.

With a bit of effort, he managed to get Smiffy back into his bed. Then he ran and got his first aid kit from his room. Without bothering to take the shirt off, he put a quick and temporary bandage over the wound to keep pressure on it and keep it from bleeding.

After making sure Smiffy wouldn't bleed out, he ran back downstairs and cleaned up as much of the flux as he could. He didn't have his jetpack, so he couldn't get to the flux on the ceiling. He would have to take care of it in the morning.

While he was cleaning up the flux, he glanced over at the wand focus on the pedestal. He recognized it as a portable hole focus, even though it was mostly covered in purple goo. He didn't dare touch it.

A few minutes later, all of the fires were put out and the flux was mostly gone. Satisfied with his work, he went back upstairs to the bedrooms. When he went into Smiffy's room, he was surprised to see him waking up.

“Hey Smith,” he said, coming over to him. “How do you feel?”

Smiffy only replied with a low groan.

“That bad, huh?”

“What do you think, mate...?” he muttered, rubbing his eyes.

“Here, sit up for a second,” said Trott, ignoring the green man's sarcasm. “I need to put some proper bandages on you.”

“I can't fucking move.”

“Then bite this,” said Trott, handing Smiffy a washcloth. He then spent the next five minutes struggling to get some bandages on his friend. It didn't help that, as soon as he got Smiffy upright, he became incredibly pale and almost vomited. Then it took a few minutes to get his shirt off without increasing his discomfort. Getting the bandages on was the easiest part.

As soon as Trott taped up the bandages, Smiffy fell back onto his pillow, grimacing in pain at the impact. Trott felt his forehead and found that he had a fever.

“Well mate, looks like you have a pretty severe case of flux flu,” said Trott, taking Smiffy's pulse. His suspicions were confirmed when his friend tried to pull his hand away but was too weak.

“Okay, well you just lay there and try not to vomit on yourself,” he said. “I'll be right back.” Then he turned and quickly left the room, heading into his medical supply closet back in his room. When he came back a few minutes later with flu medicine and an IV drip, Smiffy was already drifting off.

“The fuck is that?” mumbled Smiffy, gesturing to the bottle of medicine Trott was holding.

“This will keep your fever down and help you sleep,” said Trott as he hooked up the IV. “Flux flu moves pretty fast, so hopefully you'll sleep through the worst of it.”

“Don't worry, I'll still be sure to be a pain in the ass tomorrow.”

“I would expect nothing less.”

Trott rolled his eyes a bit. “Alright, now hold still.”

The second the needle went into Smiffy's arm, he passed out.

XXX

Smiffy sat upright with a gasp, looking around. Wherever he was, it was dark and foggy. It took him a moment to realize that he was dreaming.

He slowly stood up, looking around. This was the first time he had ever experienced a lucid dream, and he figured it was because of his fever.

He tried to walk, but the ground felt uneven, like it was constantly moving and shifting. He stumbled, struggling to stay upright.

Looking around, he saw that the black fog was slowly getting thicker, making it harder for him to see and breathe. Suddenly, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He whipped around, but it was gone. Whatever it was, it had left behind a smell like ozone and burning flesh and the distinct, metallic smell of blood.

Struggling for air, Smiffy frantically looked around, again and again seeing the shadow darting around the edge of his vision. He started to hyperventilate, panicking as the smell of blood grew stronger. Whatever was in there with him, it seemed to be growing more aggressive.

The thing shot past him again, this time clipping his shoulder with enough force to stagger him. He heard a voice echoing through the mist, calling his name.

He could hear the thing coming at him from behind, charging him. However, a split second before it struck, he woke up with a gasp.

His vision was blurry at first, but then everything slowly came into focus. The first thing he noticed was the oxygen mask covering the lower half of his face. Had he been struggling to breathe? He couldn't remember.

Then he saw Trott standing over him.

“Smith, are you okay?” he asked, looking concerned. “You looked like you were having a nightmare.”

“Did I...?” asked Smiffy, confused. “I don't remember any nightmare.”

“Maybe it was just a fever dream,” suggested Trott, looking at the monitors he had attached to his friend. “It does look like your fever got worse... I'll give you something for that before I leave.”

“Leave? Where are you going?” asked Smiffy, struggling to keep his eyes open.

“I've gotta go find Ross,” he said, gesturing to the window, where the soft light of the freshly risen sun shone through.

“Right,” said Smiffy, nodding lethargically.

Trott narrowed his eyes a bit. It was unusual for the flux flu to last this long – normally, it would burn itself out within a few hours. This one seemed to be holding on tight.

Shaking his head to focus, Trott picked up a syringe of fever medicine and put it in the IV drip, which he was surprised hadn't come out with all of Smiffy's thrashing.

“I should be back soon,” he said, setting a glass of water by Smiffy's bed. “Try and stay hydrated.”

Smiffy groaned a bit, and Trott turned and left.

As soon as he stepped outside, he reached into the pocket of his doctor's coat and pulled out a small hand-held tracker. He began to follow it's signal without question as it led him into the forest.

After their little incident with Ridge, Ross had never fully recovered from his lycanthropy. The silver bullet that Trott had put through his heart had stopped him from transforming every night except for the full moon. They had found that out the hard way.

However, after they decided to let Ross run free on the full moons, Trott had planted a tracking device in his arm. They all agreed this was the best way to handle the situation; although, now that Smiffy was sick, Trott wasn't sure how he would carry both Ross and his medical supplies. Luckily, he had fixed that problem the night before.

It didn't take him long to find his friend. Within ten minutes, he was in the middle of the forest. After another two minutes, he found a small clearing, where Ross was curled up in the fetal position.

Setting down his medical bag, he went over and gently shook his friend awake. Slowly, Ross woke up, suffering from the exhaustion of the transformations and the lack of sleep.

“You made it,” said Trott, scooting back a bit as Ross slowly sat up, trembling and covered in blood and the shredded remains of his clothes. Trott didn't give him the clothes he brought because he knew what always happened next.

As if on cue, Ross convulsed a bit and vomited up a mess of blood and bone fragments and chunks of half digested meat of indistinguishable origin.

It took him a few minutes to get rid of everything the werewolf had eaten in the night. Once the episode was over, however, Trott moved in and carefully dragged him towards the edge of the clearing. There, he leaned him up against a tree and began to carefully clean the blood off of him while stitching up any wounds he came across.

While he worked, Ross slowly came back into consciousness. He looked around a bit, slowly regaining his senses.

“Trott...?” he choked out after a minute, his voice raw from the obscene amount of howling and snarling from the night before. “W-where's Smith...?”

“He had a little accident last night, so he couldn't come,” explained Trott as he pulled a large t-shirt out of his bag and carefully put it on his friend.

“Is he okay?” asked Ross, the fog of exhaustion slowly disappearing from his eyes.

“He's fine,” said Trott, handing Ross a bottle of water. “He got hit with a bit of flux, and it gave him a pretty resilient strain of flux flu.”

“Oh...” muttered Ross as he sipped the water. Trott pulled out a syringe, and he held out his arm, looking away as he gave him a dose of powerful pain medicine to stop his bones from getting sore and locking up again. His bones and muscles always took the worst hit during a transformation, and they were the cause of his pain in the days afterwards.

“Quick question...” said Ross quietly, feeling the exhaustion catching up to him. “How are we going to get home?”

“With this,” exclaimed Trott, pulling a thin silver cylinder out of his pocket. He stood up and stuck it against a tree, where, to Ross' surprise, it unfolded into a dimensional door.

“I put another one in the tower and linked them together,” said Trott, picking up his medical bag. He opened the door, and inside, Ross could see the interior of the tower, just outside the entrance to their rooms. Trott tossed the bag inside before turning and carefully pulling Ross to his feet. This was a bit of a struggle, because Ross wasn't even strong enough to hold his head up, much less keep his feet under him.

After several minutes of cursing and struggling, Trott managed to drag the now unconscious Ross through the door. As soon as they were through, he closed the door and broke the link so nothing unwanted could get inside. Then he dragged Ross into his room, knowing fully well that today was going to be a long day...