Cloud AU's

Cursed AU

The Curse does more than even Luce knew, beyond what she expected. It did more than what Kawahira told her would happen.

In her Visions, they were all fine, if with a collar around their necks that signified them as the Sacrifices. They were tall, standing proudly, side by side if weary and agitated in the future she foresaw. They were on their own more often than not, but she also saw them occasionally together. They were weary still, but more tired than anything, staring into each other's eyes and searching for something.
It was a relief, and a heartbreak in one, knowing the world would be saved through their sacrifice and they'd retain most of themselves, yet she would be the driving force to make them such. To betray them when they were starting to get along, and make them into something no sane element wanted. They'd be
a cursed set: The Damned Arcobaleno, the Forsaken Seven.

In one Universe, it turns them into timeless infants with pacifiers that break the curse.
In another, they are Gods looking upon humanity and doing according to their Will and whims, blessing select few they like to stay with them.
Another universe still sees them in school, college, University or jobs - meeting in classrooms, restaurants like the civilians so very few of them can relate to.

For them, the Curse is similar to all of them. You can't be timeless without being something entirely different. The infants were flame-constructs sealing their true bodies within, as though they were box weapons.

They are mighty, yes,but they are not the Almighty. They are monstrosities. They mutate and transform, flesh bulging and bones splitting into off-angles, hair growing like grass and skin stretching like too-thin rubber. Their blood pools, flows where it hadn't, into areas and limbs that hadn't existed before. Some of them tear out their beloved, signature clothes, while it flops around the rest, some of it torn or hanging onto them barely. The agony torches at them, flames bristling and screams surrounding them like a choir of the damned. Everything is too much, hurts too much and then they flop, twitching into unconscious when even their nerves fray and rip from the amount of pain flashing through their synapses.
The Greatest shut down on that mountain as does the setting sun.

-------

They awake slowly, far apart from each other, the sounds in-between consciousness not registering as anything besides incoherent noise before they drift off again, even as they fight through the unnatural drowsiness to awake.

Skull wakes up for an extended period first, fully concious. He groans, just lying with his chest to the ground, legs sprawled under him and arms in front of him. His muscles twitch, sore and he groans, consciousness tired and drowsy. Still, something urges him to wake up and he cracks one eye open blearily. The first thought he has is that it's day, it's bright, yet also that there's a gas leak mixed with copper. It reminds him of something white and green, into going under the earth to sterilized labs where he sees glass windows and screens, or high atop forest mountains in regions reportedly haunted.

His eyes focus and he sits up, leaning back to get the weight off his legs. He spins and helps "Whas--?!", his line of sight elevates and he reaches out behind to steady himself only to fall on his side. His arms don't- can't twist that way.
He opens both eyes to lock at his arms, checking if they're restrained. What meets his eyes are long, sleek black limbs that remind him of leather. That would be ok, he's dressed in leather most of the time, and they were on a mission last he recalls and he wore his biker suit then. The confusion starts when he checks his wrist for binds. He spreads his fingers apart, watching long, black... paws stretch and white-tipped claws dig into the ground.

He screams, tilting away from the strange sight, but the limbs follow him as he gets up into a crawl, using his legs to push himself up.

That's when he freezes. He got up way too fast, and he's taller than before, he knows he is, seeing as he looks even further down the mountain than earlier, past the ledge, when he could only just see the edge of the plains beyond before. Something has definitely changed, and he gets the very disturbing realization that nobody wants in their life: He changed, and it hasn't been by choice.

-bright lights, pain, screams and grunts and yowls and his flames pulsing angrily, out of control, trying to protect him, shield him but rushing out of him wrongly, taking skin with each flicker. He falls to the ground, vision fizzling out as hehowlsinpain-

Skull looks down at himself.
He's, from the looks of things - he doesn't even know what they are, damnit - standing on what was once his arms, the same paws he saw earlier. He turns his head, noting belatedly that his neck is also longer and not as fixed into place as it once was as it doesn't just rotate - it lowers, stretches, swerves to the side and he looks under him like a giraffe would. If snakes had limbs, that's what it would probably be like for them.

His hind legs resemble hooves, also with the same black texture and white hooves. Something flicks behind the legs, and Skull cranes his head over his long back to realize he's got a horse tail -- it and his back all in black.

Skull has the incessant need to see a mirror, or lake, any reflective surface to truly see what he's become. He hears something shuffeling (how does he even hear now? Does he still have human ears like this? He's not even a full-on lizard, what the hell-) and a quiet exhale.
Skull perks up, looking for the source and---

He's not the only one changed. He's just the only one aware of it.