New World Order (TNE) [Original]

Chapter 13- Lone Dragon's Quest

Geoff was an architect, he had been working on this house for a while. Ever since leaving Poland he had found a new strange curiosity for the world around him. This house was no different, every drop of paint and every tiny decoration meant more than he could ever describe to him. Geoff had been working on this house for an awfully long time though and was getting tired so he grabbed some of his light blue paint and began climbing down the ladder. The house was looking great, it had a nice curved roof on the top and a white and grey lower half with every room of the house coloured a different shade of green. He had always wanted to be an architect and admittedly got a bit carried away with his colours sometimes. While climbing down the ladder Geoff fell off.

This was a high up ladder and Geoff's crew had already went home so there was nobody down there to catch him. Now, Geoff wasn't somebody who liked to look at the negatives so he tried imagining the ways he could save himself from this fall. It took some effort but he eventually turned himself around in the air so he could look at the ground and what he would soon be dealing wi-.

Geoff noticed something different about himself, his arms no longer felt like arms but all of a sudden felt considerably more scaly. It seems like some of his paint spilled on him, or maybe that was just what he was now; he looked like an aquamarine dragon. He could use these new wings to fly and avoid the impact of the fall, you know what he did! Geoff flew in the evening sky so excited by the new transformation into the dragon he completely forgot what he was doing. That's when he dropped the paint and it fell on another person who was transforming from the toxin below. Too bad that they managed to transform into another flying creature. In fact this one was more than just a dragon, it had 3 heads and a spiked tail! One head a red dragon, one head a goat with bloodshot eyes and the third head was a lion with what looked like remnants from the person's human hair.

Geoff saw all of the paint fall onto the 3 headed creature and the goat head look directly into his eyes. The two other heads curved around the goat head like a crab's arms and pierced directly into Geoff's still recovering emotional state. Geoff began flying away using the wind currents to get a head start but he wasn't fast enough to completely outspeed the beast and was soon tackled to the ground. That's when they both realized that they could still speak english, which was surprising as their whole structure had since changed.

"Do you remember me Geoff?" The multi-headed beast asked.

"Besides from spilling paint on your head, no not really," Geoff replied almost laughing at the situation. It was either that or he was laughing at how the lion head looked with the paint sloshed onto it, which was admittedly pretty funny; I think we can all agree that we might crack up seeing that.

"I'm the person you were hired to paint that house for in the first place!"

"Why did we both turn into these awful creatures just now?"

"You expect I know any more than you?" The pair continued like this for a while, neither of them terribly full of answers but both hoping that the other had some answers nonetheless. By now they had landed back down on to the city streets where cars were lining the streets since people were getting out of them to transform. It is believed people only did this because they had a stomach ache from the feeling of the transformation although nobody knows for sure. The argument only ended when one of them gave in and started going silent so that they could try and take in the situation for what it was. All of a sudden people in hazmat suits started shooting darts and electrifying nets at the pair and they both fell unconscious for an unknowable amount of time.

"Perhaps you should bring both groups down to the underground, that way they will be together for the next part of the plan," Chief told The Unknown in a tone that clearly defined that The Unknown had no real control over it. The Unknown was multitasking, already doing menial and manual work for Chief while it told them this so they were pretty distracted. Making coffee, organizing manuals and cabinets, the usual jobs. This whole new plan of making the groups feel in control was mind blowing to The Unknown though. Through this distraction The Unknown and Chief had barely even noticed the new shipment of once humans.

"What a marvellous idea, we need to make Plum and Timothy see Martin and Marissa so that they will be together for the big step 3!" The Unknown could barely contain himself and started subconsciously doing the other tasks even faster, spilling coffee everywhere.

"Precisely. Also you spilled some coffee," Chief replied unemotionally pointing with one of it's bony hands to the ground where a lake of coffee had now formed. The Unknown used the tentacle that they were using for hand gestures to grab a cloth and clean it up. That's when Chief noticed Geoff and a number of other flying creatures that had come with the new shipment, all in silver cages. The cages had been specifically designed through tests to counteract the serum to nullify or at least subdue the abilities of those encaged.

For some reason it didn't seem to be working on Geoff though. When Chief noticed this it gave a strangely human look that just didn't look right on something like Chief. Geoff was very confused too, everyone around him in the cages had at least partially reverted to their previous selves; human flesh and all. So, why hadn't he. The cage even had a small heads up display of flashing red lettering that red "transformation reversion: ON" although it was difficult to read much more than 'ON' since it was all very scrunched together. For the time being at least, The Unknown and Chief wouldn't be calling Francis or any other scientists to check on the cage.

Training for the attack began the day after being captured and at first it was fairly simple. Do 30 pushups, flexibility exercises, how far can you fly before getting exhausted, etc. and Geoff was neither incredibly good nor bad at these basic training routines. It seemed as though, the 3 headed beast that he was painting the house for was quite incredible at the exercises. It seemed as though basic muscle structure had been carried over from before to after the transformation, which to Geoff seemed unfair. He never knew that he would be forcibly captured by the government and scored off of fitness for infiltration of an underground village, and he certainly didn't have time to work out his old human body.

"Hey, Geoff. Daily check-in time," The Unknown called Geoff over and out of the literal flying through hoops he was about to go through. Francis was with The Unknown and they were both holding clipboards although with The Unknown's tentacles it was more accurately slowly falling from their 'hands'. Francis was absolutely appalled by the amount of people that the transformation toxin program had captured but tried to look calm with his superior in the room. They went through the usual steps for daily check-in.

"Open your mouth,"

"Opened,"

"Just wait a few minutes for the thermometer to tell your temperature," after a few minutes a tiny blue hologram popped out of the white device that displayed a temperature of -10° celcius. It was usual for the blue dragons in the program.

"Chould You thake it out of mhy mouth please,"

"Oh yeah, sorry just looking over these graphs. Geoff, you haven't been taking any pills or anything have you,"

"No I can't say I have..."

"Well, after the recent tests we've found that there is some sleeping pill mix and sick medicine baked into your bloodstream. We suspect that this has been the reason you were resistant to the power reversion cages,"

The aquamarine dragon went on and on about this daily check-in for a while but by then everybody was starting to get ready for the scout mission and retrieval of Marissa. The few people who were still at the town meeting had started talking amongst themselves and the dragon chose to stop talking. Geoff had got the word out though, the plan was even more elaborate than they expected and it seems that Plum was a part of it. Geoff had just tossed it up to some kind of codeword when he heard her name but now that he was in the village it seemed all the stranger. The majority of the town but on special uniforms to survive the new air polluted with transformation toxin but Geoff decided to stay back.

When Geoff returned to his clay hut he found York sitting there.

"I thought you were captured!" Geoff exclaimed.

"That's exactly what I was hoping you would say," 

York replied with a deep grin gleaming on his young face as tied the electrified webbing over the dragon. In Geoff's last few moments of vision he saw York's grin just glowing at him, then suddenly Geoff's vision went black.