Work Text:
It was late in the day, the sun having already set about thirty minutes ago, the heat slowly dissipating from the summer air and John was complaining about having to be out working in the dark to his charge, Samuel.
“Why do we have to be out here so late, wouldn’t it be safer to work during the day?” he asked, starting to annoy Samuel with all of his questions.
“The Creatures are primarily nocturnal, and you know how long I have been trying to observe them while they are hunting and eating. I have yet to see them in their true form.” He explains tiredly to John.
“I’m sorry, love. I know how much you care about this research.” He explains while gently taking Samuel’s hands in his.
“John!” Samuel said in a nervous, hushed tone. “We’re very close to the base, someone could see!” He said, sounding even more worried now.
“It’s late, my love, no one will be coming by, especially not this spot. And if they do I can say that I was simply helping you up.” He said reassuringly. “They all know how clumsy you can be.” He said with a short chuckle.
Samuel starts angrily flipping through his notebooks. “I am not clumsy! I just have balance issues.” he said in a short huffy voice (is huffy even a word, IDK)
(His notes read as such)
These creatures have been relocated from their home in the Amazon Rainforest, by a man named Allen Mountmend. He is the current senator of Tennessee and he lives out in rural Appalachia in the town that his ancestors founded, Mountmend. He believed that they would either make great pets or make valuable weapons to aid in the secret resource wars. He took around 50 of them to his estate in Appalachia.They escaped somehow, likely due to a lack of proper security, and fled into the forest surrounding the town.
Back in their natural habitat they are a part of the natural ecosystem, but due to the move they had to resort to hunting down the people of Mountmend. They are normally nonviolent, but because of the situation they were forced to let go of their morals until they learned to properly hunt. They killed 15 out of 100 residents in Mountmend, which of course terrified the town’s people and many would flee the area. When Allen realized the damage that had been dealt he alerted the military of their dire situation. The military would come in and force out the people still there and begin researching.
Long before the forced migration the creatures had been human, they were a tribe in the rainforest. They discovered a source of magic deep in the forest that could grant them immense hunting prowess; it allowed them to shift into the form of any animal so long as they had consumed it before. Not only could they transform into any animal, they could change the form to be bigger or more grotesque as a form of self defense against the other things in the forest that also hunt their prey.
After many decades of use, the magic started to alter their DNA. It turned them into creatures rather than humans. Their skin was too perfect, teeth too straight, far too tall to be human, hair always straight and perfectly combed even without a brush. They were never dirty, sick, or injured, the only thing that has been known to kill the creatures is a direct removal of the entire head. It most likely works because they can no longer think to control the magic to reform.
While they look perfect in their true forms because of how weak and frail they look they often stay in the grotesque forms of other animals as a method of defense from a view. Though they look terrifying they are far more intelligent than normal humans and they have ‘perfect morals’, they do not have a grey area, it is either right or wrong, they cannot be swayed. This fact makes them incredibly docile unless provoked and very merciful. They may attack humans without need to because of how badly they have been treated.
These creatures, while they were once human, are vastly different from humans. They can be 8 - 20 feet tall but they tend to average around 15 feet for the adults and 8 as children. As mentioned previously they have very smooth skin and their features are often far too perfect to be normal people. They are thin and lanky, but the most notable change is the fact that their knees bend sideways in relation to their chest instead of forwards like ours to better cover long distances.
He kept reading through them, trying to find answers he hadn’t yet written. Hopefully they would magically appear on the page straight from the creatures themselves. When he had originally arrived the information had come so easily to him, and while he knew that information doesn’t always come as quickly as it did before he missed the short days in the lab and short trips outside, while he would never admit it, he preferred to be with his boyfriend, John.