Paw Problems

Oh Come On

It was an overwhelmingly bright surge of something so near pain that kept him from waking up, just as it had pushed him down into unconsciousness. It was heavy, whatever it was, pulling and needling at him as he struggled against it. It didn't... hurt. It was uncomfortable, in a way that seemed impossible to describe as he struggled to breathe.

Nino felt like he was fumbling in the crisp darkness of a sleep with no dreams, discomfort settling in his bones as he attempted to cry out but found no voice to shout with. In a way he felt completely misplaced, torn from his body as something was being decided. And when he was put back... it wasn't right.

Of all the senses to return to him, first was his sense of smell. It was overpowering the stench that met him, some horrid cocktail of shit, meat, and blood. It was WAY too strong, so much so that it fought off the last dredges of the forced sleep for him as more awareness arrived. He was uncomfortable, like he had run a hundred miles and maybe thrown in a push up or two for the hell of it. His breathing was ragged and... weird, legs somehow light and... weird.

He felt weird.

Nino struggled to open his eyes, his brain working to make sense of the blurred shapes and colors as they came in to focus. All the colors that greeted him were dulled and misplaced, the shadows heavy and looming but not doing much to dampen the detail.

After a moment more of lying on the ground he was finally full awake, or at least somewhere close. He had determined that he was in fact on the ground but not much more than that, still no explanation for the horrible smell of cat crap and blood. Or for why he was I so much almost-pain. He struggled to remember what had happened right before he passed out, slowly dragging memories back to the surface in scattered and broken pieces.

He had been running... hard. He was afraid, he had seen something that scared the crap out of him. He hadn't been thinking when he saw Adrien, he just hit him and threw him. He... couldn't remember why. But he something bad had been happening, something he had... tried to stop? Or at least protect Adrien from. He hadn't done a good job of protecting himself... or Alya.

He remembered that, something bright and dangerous hitting them both. He had thought she'd be safe, that she was close enough to cover. Her and Max... Kim had run. Adrien and Marinette had made it out, made it away from...

The Akuma. Nino felt that same fear from before returning with the details of what had happened. There had been panthers, one of them some messed up super panther. So Hawkmoth was using animals now? Or maybe that wasn't the whole story. Hardly mattered just then, all that needed to happen was that he went down. And that the others were safe.

But what about the ones that weren't?

He had been hit, Alya and Max too and by this point who knew how many others. For the time being he felt like his mind was his own, different from his own fragments of memories from when he had been possessed himself. When that had happened he had been aware of Hawkmoth, just not his influence. Now though he didn't feel that, he just felt discomfort, and .... Weird.

It was when he tried to stand that he noticed something was off.

He shifted his arms to get them beneath him, to help him stand, but immediately even that simple motion had been off. His arms were crooked, not broken but... misshapen. He was still weak, incapable of taking his own weight but that was the farthest thing from his mind. He tried to move his legs, finding that they too obeyed but were misshapen, and with his heart hammering in his chest he attempted to look down.

He was aware immediately of something long and weighted where his nose should be, or his mouth or, something. His head didn't feel heavy but the weight was different, not that he had ever really noticed anything as small as that in his own body. Because this definitely wasn't his body.