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The thing is: Jimmy is really perfectly happy being human. No matter what anybody else says!
Like, sure, he’s a little cursed. They’re all a little cursed! Comes with the territory, with the cyclical murder games and all. He’s really quite content that his particular chronic condition generally only means terrible misfortune and early death and sometimes a couple feathers in his hair. At worst, some light disintegration. At least he doesn’t have to deal with preening, or shedding, or physical transformations that accompany the phases of the moon, or any of that nonsense.
Jimmy is just a normal, regular guy, who shouldn’t be trusted with the cutlery, and he’s fine with that. And everyone who’s got an opinion otherwise can kindly sod off forever, thanks.
—
The first thing he notices, on opening his eyes in the new world, is that the grass is wrong.
Specifically, the color’s off, which he mostly notices because he’s face down in it, blinking the sudden sunlight out of his eyes and squinting down. It’s a lot less green than he’s used to; more yellow. A biome thing? Did they spawn into a savannah or something?
“Grian, what’s up with the grass?” he asks, looking up. Is everything a little more yellow than he’s used to? He blinks a few times, deeply disconcerted.
“What?” Grian says, glancing briefly over at him, looking a little put-out at having his pre-game rules spiel interrupted. He sounds oddly loud, which is weird, because he’s definitely not yelling or anything, he’s just loud. Jimmy twitches. “What about the grass?”
Well, now everybody’s looking at him. “Maybe it’s nothing,” he says, which is a lie, because it’s definitely something, but it’s probably not the grass that’s the problem.
Grian moves on. Jimmy tries to follow along with the rules, but everything is very loud, and very yellow, and it’s more than a little distracting. Across the circle, he makes sudden eye contact with Joel, who is blatantly staring at him.
Jimmy stares back at him. What? he mouths.
Joel shakes his head and glances hastily away, looking distinctly caught-out. Jimmy narrows his eyes. Something’s up.
Grian finishes his introduction, Gem waves hello, Martyn punches him (typical) and then gifts him a heart to make up, and everyone scatters. Jimmy crosses the circle and snags Joel by the wrist before he can leave.
“What’s up with you?” he asks.
Joel tries a few times to shake him off without much actual effort, then turns around, scowling. “What are you talking about, Jimmy?”
“You know what I mean,” Jimmy accuses. “Something’s weird. Everything is- loud, and- yellow.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Joel says, looking distinctly defensive. “And what’s that to do with me?” He shakes Jimmy’s hand off his wrist, pauses, then says, “Besides, if something was weird, which it’s not, it would probably be the sort of thing that’ll work in your favor, probably, and so you shouldn’t worry about it, alright?”
“You do know something!” Jimmy says.
Joel rolls his eyes, shifts uncomfortably, says, “Look, just- leave it, okay?” and reaches up and- pats Jimmy on the head?
It is, for some reason, so completely distracting that Jimmy rolls his head to one side, feels his shoulders slump. His eyelids feel suddenly heavy and something feels weird at the base of his spine? He feels… nice, actually. Really nice.
Hey, wait a second. Where’d Joel go?
He blinks hard in an effort to dispel the fog, shakes his head and looks around, but Joel has apparently booked it while Jimmy was… spacing out, or whatever that was. He twists around, looking, and catches a glimpse of blonde hair behind him at roughly waist height. Freezes.
Oh, no.
What ensues is probably the most undignified three minutes of his life, which is a high bar to meet, but it does end with him sitting on the ground, holding onto the end of a tail which is, as it turns out, very definitely attached to him.
He tugs on it. Nothing happens except it hurts quite a lot, so after a moment or so of trying he lets go with a huff and slumps.
Great. Awesome. Lovely.
…It’s not completely a surprise. He’s seen this sort of thing happen plenty of times before to other people- in an environment as unreliable and fleeting as the death game, with its ever-changing laws of nature, bodies didn’t necessarily stay consistent any more than anything else. Most often the changes were brought on by lost lives, but sometimes it just happened out of the blue, like Scott and Martyn getting all fishy in the last season.
But that’s not supposed to happen to him! He has a curse already. He’s very definitely extremely cursed already! And he’s pretty sure the stupid things aren’t supposed to stack!
He frowns, runs a hand through his hair. Usually the feathers don’t show up until he’s red anyways, but maybe-
He does not come away with any feathers.
His hand does, however, catch on something different, and he blinks, his other hand going up to join it as he feels around the sides of his head.
Well, that explains why everything was so loud, at least.
He tugs on the floppy ears more gently, having learned his lesson with the tail, and skin and cartilage pull, but don’t budge an inch.
Alright, fine.
But what happened to his curse?
—
“So,” Martyn says, not long after inaugurating their alliance, “why are you a dog now, anyways?”
Jimmy scowls at him, and tries not to call up images of begging puppies in his mind. “None of your business, is it?”
“Oh, I beg to differ,” Martyn says. He’s grinning, but not in a way that looks particularly happy- more in the way that says he knows something Jimmy doesn’t.
It’s a weird answer. Jimmy squints at him. “Well, what about you? Weren’t you a- a fish last time, or something?”
Martyn shrugs, leaning against a chest. “Yeah, ‘cause Scott was,” he says. “I was a zombie before that, if you’ll recall.”
Jimmy blinks, then realizes. “Wait- ohhhh, okay. That’s your curse?”
Martyn snickers. “Yeah, dude. You didn’t realize?”
Well, now he feels dumb. “I don’t know! I wasn’t thinking about it!” He’s thinking now, though. “Wait, but, so, before that-“
Martyn shrugs again, a little too dismissive. “It wasn’t a problem until— eh. Loyalty’s bad for my health,” he says. “As it turns out.”
And, well, there’s not anything Jimmy can say to that that won’t be extremely awkward, so he changes tack entirely. “So you think you’re gonna…” he gestures vaguely at the ears.
“I mean, if patterns hold,” Martyn said. “Got any advice for me?”
“Nothin’,” Jimmy admits. “Uh, enjoy green while you’ve got it? I haven’t even got a clue why this happened in the first place. I thought my thing was like… set?”
It sounds a little stupid when he says it aloud, but Martyn is nodding. “No, yeah, that is strange.” He falls silent for a moment, then perks up. “Hey, do you think that means you won’t die first this time?”
Jimmy blinks. “Oh, wait, do you think? I hadn’t even thought of that.”
Martyn grins. “I mean, unless that’s not actually part of your curse and you’re just that bad at-”
“Alright, alright, shut up.”
—
The thing is: he’s pretty sure his luck actually has gotten better. It’s still bad, to be clear, but it’s not quite preternaturally bad. He’s getting injured at what he’s pretty sure is a normal clumsy person’s rate, and not the rate of a man who’s been cursed to die as fast as possible.
He does miss green, though, and once Scott figures out about the whole tail wagging and head pats situation, he has an absolute field day with it, so there are also some cons.
And he still would like to know why this happened, and also how, which is how he ends up at the door of Joel’s base trying to look as menacing as is possible with golden retriever ears (so not very).
“I didn’t do anything,” Joel says, unconvincingly.
He is lying through his conspicuously human normal teeth. They’re really his most obvious giveaway- they’ve been wolf-sharp since Third Life, for goodness sake, and now they’re as regular human blunt as they are on Empires. Jimmy squints at him.
“Okay, I didn’t do anything intentionally,” Joel amends.
“You’re not a werewolf anymore!” Jimmy accuses. “And I am! Or something! What gives?”
Joel ducks his head and mutters something under his breath. Jimmy feels something weird rising up in his throat- it takes a moment for him to identify it as a growl, and he swallows it down as quickly as possible, because he doesn’t actually want to go around growling at his mates. He kicks Joel in the shin instead.
“Fine, fine! Jeez, you can never take a good thing when it’s handed to you, can you?” Joel complains, slumping against his doorframe like he’s really the one who’s been the most inconvenienced by this whole affair. “Like I said, it wasn’t on purpose. I just- look, last time, I wanted to die first so you wouldn’t for once, and then it happened anyways on account of you being completely incompetent, so I figured, well, next time I’ll plan ahead better. So I made a little deal with the spooky guys when we were in between games to get your curse. I didn’t know that meant you would get mine.”
“So I do have yours!”
Joel snorts. “Yeah, I guess it made you a golden retriever instead of a wolfhound, which is pretty funny. Even the curse knows you’re a bit useless.”
Jimmy rolls his eyes, then frowns. “Wait, but, then, you’ve got mine? But you look fine.”
Joel glances off to one side, shifting in place. “Yeah, actually, I haven’t the faintest what’s up with that. I thought I’d have yours, but- it’s like bad luck, right?”
Jimmy shrugs. “Bad luck, constant injury, feathers occasionally.”
“Yeah, I haven’t noticed anything like that,” Joel says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Maybe I’m just far too competent for your lousy curse. Or maybe someone else wound up with it? Either way, it’s not my problem, I’ve done my good deed for the season.”
—
Lizzie trips over a pumpkin vine, twisting her ankle, and yelps.
“I- that was not there a moment ago, what the heck-”