It wasn't a dream. If it was a dream, it was a doozy. Ethan was beginning to think it wasn't, though.

He'd woken up this morning on the kitchen floor, his cheek uncomfortably pressed against the linoleum. His head hurt and his back vaguely ached, but he just attributed that to his choice of bed. As it always goes, Ethan thought about getting up. He really meant to, just five more minutes. However, someone was watching out for him now. He thought it, and suddenly, Ethan was up.

With a faint whir, the four arms began to move, setting on the floor and pushing him up and onto his feet. Dream, was his first thought, but then his head hurt from the sudden movement. Nope, not a dream.

Quickly, he took a seat in one of the chairs at his small table, wishing he had coffee. Seeming to be ready to wait on him hand and foot, the arms had got to work, making coffee. When it finished, they handed it to him, which he drank gratefully.

They may be frightening to look at, but they sure were nice.

After having a bit of conversation, Ethan got to know the arms. Miroslav (or Mir), Mieke, Gunther, and Gretchen. He still wasn't quick sure who was who, but the M names were the top, the Gs were the bottom. He didn't bother to ask where the names had come from. He wasn't sure and didn't quite want to know if they knew the answer.

Soon after, he realized he need to go for a walk again. To clear his head, collect his thoughts. He put on a new shirt which bunched up in the back now and a raincoat for now to hide them as best he could, then set off for the Conservation Area. Less chance to be seen this way.

So here he was, making his way through the forest, the arms helpfully pushing all branches and bushes out of his way when needed.

They were also making noise as they pushed their way through the foliage.

A shadow can't stay attached to its caster all day.

Well, actually, it can, but a shadow servant that gained sentience through a fluke can't. It wants to go out and do things. Boredom breeds mischief, and mischief is bad for Rifter-- Rifter in this case being the caster.

Fenrir had been drifting throug the woods, a somewhat more solid patch of black against the morning greys and golds, when he'd heard someone crashing around up ahead. Curiosity is what prompted him to head in that direction. A desire for possible company is what prompted him to do it in his human form-- after all, running into someone unnish is as like as someone innish, out here.

The shadow servant ambles genially along, his own lack of a shadow not terrible apparent in the mottled woods. his clothing is dark and casual, modelled after his caster's-- slacks, T-shirt. Everything's black, though-- colour is an unecessary bother. What isn't black is his skin, and that's about it. Along with his dark clothing, he sports a head of dark waves, dark eyelashes, and eyes that are black from corner to corner. He squints habitually, and anyone who can't deal with eyes dark to each edge can pass it off as an optical illusion.

Fenrir approaches the noise, and then stops dead in his tracks as he catches sight of a wealth of gleaming metal arms puching their way through the forest, keeping the area around the young man attached to them clear.

Ethan caught site of the other person first, the shock running through his brain and causing the arms to stop.

Hide? asked the polite voice, which turned out to be Mieke. Ethan sent an affirmative and they quickly retracted, hiding beneath the raincoat as best they could. The ends stuck out a bit, glinting in stray patches of sunlight.

"Hello," Ethan said as aimably as he could under the circumstances. His tone was a forced cheery one. He hoped the man wouldn't run and/or scream.

Instead, the young man gives him a brief appraising look, and the bursts into a brilliantly white smile.

"Hello!" he says, in the cheerful tones that a dog would use when wagging its tail. It's not possible he didn't see the arms. He just doesn't seem to be bothered by it.

"Nice day for a walk, though it gets boring after a while of being alone," he offers, moving forwards from where he'd stopped, towards the somewhat stricken-looking young man.

Hurt? came a slightly gruffer voice, Miroslav. Ethan quashed that thought as soon as it came, putting a smile on his face.

"Yeah, it can get boring," he said in a noncommitally, rubbing a hand through his air. He gave a quick glance to the path he'd left, hoping the man didn't notice.

But he had to have noticed the arms. Ethan saw him staring at them. Better not say anything.

...Hurt?

No.

Fenrir follows the quick glance, his dark eyes peering back over Ethan's shoulders then finding the other young man's eyes again with a smile.

"City boy?" he ventures. "The people not used to forests tend to be the ones who snap the branches rather than avoiding them."

Ethan nodded, grateful for the suggestion. Yeah. He was just so big a guy that he snapped all those.

"You're not from the city?" he asked, a silent panic that the man was playing with him. He had to have seen the arms. What was he toying at?

Surely he could have avoided them even with the arms-- Fenrir didn't understand Ethan's distress, and so hadn't intentionally offered a solution.

He shrugs the question off, a bit nervous. Rifter doesn't want him talking to strangers about what he is.

"Yeah, I live in the city. I can move through forests pretty well, though."

Ethan nodded again, eyeing the person.

"I know you saw them," he said. "But you didn't say anything." He sounded confused and a bit desperate for some reason. "Why not?"

The arms bristled, the rubber of his jacket making an uncomfortable noise against the metal. He really should get a new jacket.

"I didn't realise I was supposed to." yes, poor Fenrir, not even a year old yet and an initiate all his short life.

He peers curiously at the metallic ends where they're visible.

"Hello?" he tries, not sure what, exactly, the other man expects.

Having had a horrible sleep last night, confusion, and some of Miroslav's aggression seeping through, Ethan was a bit touchy and unpredictable. Not to mention it was all a dream, right?

The arms popped out from under the coat and managed to look menacing in a robotic kind of way. They whirred, making a slight hissing sound.

"'Hello'? What the hell?" Ethan wasn't sure which was worse: the man's apparent lack of interest or the fact that he might be playing with him.

Maybe the guy was just insane. He was out in the middle of the forest.

Maybe he was just a dream.

Fen frowns, watching the arms as they unfold, then turning his attention back to Ethan's face with a creased expression.

"Soh-ree," he says, having picked up some colloquial uses of the English language. "First you get touchy when I don't look at your arms and then you do when I do?"

Despite the defensive air of the sentence, this young man actually seems genuinely confused. There are some things (okay, a lot of things) that an encyclopaedic knowledge can't tell you.

his hair seems to flicker, just faintly-- in face, all the darkest parts on his form do. Faint. Mostly unnoticeable-- the slight quivering of a projector as it beams a black and white image onto the screen of life.

Ethan did not notice the flickering of the man, too busy trying to make sure he didn't run or scream, not to mention trying to keep Miroslav in check.

It didn't really work all that well, however. With a sharp sound, a metal spike popped out of middle of Mir's pinchers, who then shot forward quicker than Etahn would have expected toward the odd man.

"No!" Ethan shouted, the only thing he could get out, but the arm didn't much feel like listening to him.

It catches Fenrir unawares.

Luckily, as a magical construct, he has to be destroyed by magic-- not something physical, like the spike that slams through the center of his chest, rather to Fenrir's surprise. The metal goes through without a fuss, not hitting any of the cartilege or bone that ought to be there but most certainly isn't. The texture could be compared to driving a nail through the soft part of an apple.

The arms bickered in Ethan's head, yelling back and forth at each other. Ethan tried to block them out, which worked really well considering the horror he was feeling.

He had just stabbed a man through the chest.

Well, not him, but he couldn't very well explain it.

"Y'see, it wasn't me. It was these Doc Ock arms, they just went crazy and stabbed a guy." Wouldn't go over very well with authorities.

Satisfied his job was done, Mir withdrew, retracting the spike. Ethan moved closer, his mouth moving quickly.

"Are you ok? I'm so sorry, I didn't want for that to happen, it wasn't me, it was the arm, you see, I didn't want to do it really and are you ok please be ok..."

Well, he's still standing, which is a good sign.

Fen shakes off the surprise and fingers the 'wound' in his chest. It's a clean hole, as though Mir has stabbed through black silly putty. There's no blood, guts, gore, anything like that.

It crosses Fen's mind that Rifter will be annoyed with him for not bleeding, falling over, and playing dead. He shrugs the thought off-- this guy looks freaked enough as it is-- and shrugs the hole closed.

Like water filling in a hole left by a dropped pebble, he heals.

"No biggie. You ought to keep a tighter leash on that arm..." curiosity creeps into his good-natured expression. "Are they sentient?"

Numbly, Ethan nodded. "Y-yeah, I guess..." he mumbled, staring at the newly fixed chest. "I mean, they talk to me and..."

Ethan trailed off, pulling his gaze up to the face. "How did you do that?"

One of the arms spoke up, so to speak, sending a very clear feeling of a question, How did you get the arms?

Looking slightly uncomfortable, Fenrir rolls his shoulders-- a child caught doing something he shouldn't.

"It's easy," he says, avoiding the questions. "I can do it the other way, too." A hold opens in his chest and shirt simultaneously, grows to about the size of a bowling ball-- the forest clearly visible on the other size-- then shrinks down to nothingness again.

Sentient, yes. Particularly good with reasoning, no.

Ethan dug the heels of his palms into his eyes, rubbing viciously, then shook his head. If he wasn't drunk and seeing things at the moment, he was feeling the need to be.

He had an overwhelming urge to poke the odd man. As the arms were still new to him, he didn't try to block the urge from them; one of the arms oblidged him, tenetively moving forward to give a quick poke to the arm and the retreat.

"I'm drunk, or dreaming, or drugged, or something, aren't I?"

Fen shakes his head, then stops to consider.

"Well, actually," he says reasonably, "You might be. I don't know. But if you mean in relation to me, no, I'm real."

He offers his helpful smile again.

Ethan frowned. "I might be... yeah..." His voice dropped to just above a whisper, him muttering about the evils of liquor and such.

Convinced it was a drunken stupor or something similar, Ethan turned and began to walk, the arms once again making a clear path for him as he wandered off.