Everything felt wrong.

Takeda's head swam in a cloud, and his eyes refused to focus when he opened them. His heart beat rapidly like it couldn't beat hard enough, thumping against his ribcage and forcing his temples to pulse. His joints creaked and ached, resisting his initiative to get up or even roll over. He winced against the odd sensations, shivering with a chill that wracked his bones despite being drenched in sweat.

He squirmed, curling up onto his side and tugging the blankets up to his chin. When he opened his eyes again, a familiar black-bearded face with kind eyes stared back at him from across the room. Familiar yellow colors that glared against the blurred background.

"M-master?" he stammered. His tongue felt heavy and dry in his mouth. "Master Hanzo!"

He tried again to get up, but his body protested. He felt wrong. Everything was wrong. His entire arm was on fire, radiating heat into all five of his fingers.

"Master Hasashi-"

Hanzo stumbled forward. His arm lifted as though to reach for Takeda. Then Hanzo coughed, and a bubble of blood burst from his mouth with such force it spattered Takeda's face. Hanzo pitched forward, then his back arched backwards. His arms ripped apart. His torso disconnected, and his legs were discarded to the side. His eyes glazed over until the pupils were a long-dead milky white, and his skin yellowed, purpled, and greyed, rolling through several stages of rot at once. His teeth fell from his open mouth and 'plinked' on the ground, and a familiar click-click-tchik-tchik! surrounded the air before the scorpion rose up from under Hanzo, wearing him as a shield.

Takeda couldn't tear his eyes away. He couldn't stop watching the sick disfigurement of his master. He lay there shivering, unable to open his mouth and make a sound. Not even when the scorpion trailed over to him, clicking against the floor. It reached for him with Hanzo's hands, resting its giant claw near his arm. His skin seemed to burn hotter, and his breath quickened to be on pace with his heart. His chest tightened, and he was too afraid to breathe. The scorpion lifted his arm with its claw.

It pressed the sharp barb of its claw into the cut wound, ripping the bandages and cutting into the tender, ruined flesh. His arm lit up, his fingers curled, but he couldn't scream. His body felt as though freezing hands were clenched around his spine, holding him in place.

He blinked, and the scorpion claw was gone, but not the fiery hot agony under his skin. His wound bulged before his eyes, and he whimpered against the sensations of pins and needles moving there. Like ants in his skin, his fingers flexed, clenched, and unclenched every time they crawled over his nerves. Suddenly, his skin bulged again and bugs burst through the hole in the bandages. He swatted and itched and tore at the spiders, worms, maggots, centipedes, and beetles that kicked and tickled their way out of him. Around the wound his skin grew red and sensitive, then started to peel away in dry, dying sheets. Rivets of blood poured down and around him as the very air eroded his skin until only bone and gummy threads showed around his wrists and fingers.

He moaned and cried, he kicked and thrashed, before closing his eyes tight. His arm totally lost, he could barely latch on to the fact that he was maimed for life after the repulsing sensation of the bugs still crawling on him.

"Takeda," someone else said. On impulse he opened his eyes, and it was Jacqui staring down at him.

Everything felt wrong and Jacqui looked wrong. There was a dull, glazed look in her eyes that instantly set him on edge. She touched his arm and he jerked away from the pain. "Don't touch me," he tried, but she reached for it again. He swatted her hand away. "What are you doing? Stop!"

Jacqui smiled wide, showing her teeth, but the smile didn't reach her face. Her eyes were wide, distant, and detached. She suddenly clamored on top of him, leaning her weight down on him to keep him pinned. He struggled and groaned, but she grabbed his arm and the pain forced him to freeze where he was and bear it. She stared him in the face, smiling the entire time as she jabbed two fingers down into his flesh-

Takeda shot awake. He gasped and twisted away from the figure leaning over him, but as he stared at her he realized the evil Jacqui in his dream was gone. In her place was the real Jacqui, with bandages on her arms and compassion in her eyes, staring with concern down at him.

"You ok?" she asked.

No. Everything felt wrong. He was burning - his arm was burning - but he felt freezing cold. His joints ached in the real life. His headache was even worse. His brain felt floaty, weak, unsettled in his head and he felt tired. Worse than tired. Fatigue, that weighed down on his shoulders and made him want to lay back down and never get back up.

"I couldn't wake you," she continued. "I kept calling and calling but you wouldn't wake up. You just kept tossing and turning."

"Oh. Sorry. Not feeling so hot," he admitted. He threw the blankets off of himself, but as soon as his drenched clothes and bare skin hit the open air the shivering worsened. He rolled to his hands and knees with a loud groan he was unable to contain. Every clench of the muscles in his arm set his nerves screaming. Jacqui stood and grabbed his bicep above the wound, but recoiled as if burnt. Without her to lift him, he flopped weakly onto his backside, blinking against the spinning room.

"Geez! Your arm's hot!" She placed the back of her bandaged had to his forehead, and he couldn't feel a difference between her cold hand and his cold skin but apparently she did. "Ouch! I felt that through my bandages. You're burning up!"

She lowered her hand and accidentally brushed his arm. The very air passing over the wound hurt him, and he let out a sound of pain before he could choke it back.

"What? Your arm? Tsk!" she sighed, shaking her head. "I knew something was up with it! Let's look." She started to tear the gloves off his hands so she could get to his sleeves.

While she worked, he leaned his head back against the wall behind him. There was something in his dream that he saw. Something important that he felt they needed to know. But the harder he tried to recall what he had just seen the further away it seemed to trail from his awareness. Perhaps it was his rapidly beating heart that was making him flighty and excited, but he couldn't shake the sensation that they had to move, right then, or they would be run down by whatever was chasing them. He tried to recall what it was that had him so panicked.

"U-uh," he mumbled. "W-wait! Wait!" he said, ripping his arm from her grasp. "We don't have time! We gotta find Hanzo before the scorpion does. It could be chasing him right now!"

"The scorpion? I haven't heard the scorpion since we left it back there. And I haven't seen Master Hanzo, either. Did you see him?" Jacqui turned and peered over her shoulder at the doorway to the next area as though he would come stumbling through.

" . . . Oh." Oh, right. They had already explored the caves before, where the scorpion attacked them. For some reason it felt so long ago. Like years . . .

"Hey!" Jacqui said, snapping her fingers in front of his eyes. "I hope you're not sleepy. You just rested for three hours!" The low tone of her voice said sounded more like, 'You better not be sleepy. That's bad news if you are.' She sounded concerned, bordering on panicking too. In his semi-delirious state, he wanted to send her a calming psychic energy, but he couldn't string enough of his power together to do so. Instead, the power clumsily collided with her consciousness, and she paused to blink rapidly and clear it.

"Woah. Stop. What are you doing? There's something really wrong, I think." Jacqui pulled his glove off, but he couldn't flex his fingers right away. They felt fat and weak. Still hot, burning. She tugged his sleeve up as gently as she could, but it grew tighter and tighter up his forearm. The tugs weren't gentle, and the hem of the sleeve started to carve into his flesh, so he resisted her. She finally decided to peer through the tear in his suit, pulling a combat knife from somewhere on her person to cut away the bandages.

She took one look, and her already grim face paled. "Oh my god."

He didn't want to look. But like his dream, he couldn't bring himself to look away.

The actual wound was a bright, hot, irritated red. Wells of blood, diluted by a yellowish pus, still flowed quite heavily. The veins right around the wound were dark, nearly black in the light, and red streaks trailed from the wound into each of his fingers. The whole thing was very obviously swollen and puffy, making it look grotesque above all else.

"What?" Cassie asked, wandering over with Jin after clearing the campsite. " . . . Oh my god . . . " she said. Her hand flew up to cover her mouth. "That's infected." She dropped her pack to the ground and immediately started to dig for the first aid kit.

"Yeah, no shit!" Jacqui said.

"No, that's like . . . really fucking infected! Jesus . . . "

"I've never seen infection spread that rapidly," Jin said. He stared at it with an odd mix of fascination that distantly bothered Takeda, and repulsion. " . . . Maybe it's . . . "

"What?" Takeda asked. He tried to scan Jin to find the word he was looking for, but his powers refused to work in his lack of focus. "What?"

"Think it's poison?" Jin asked, turning to Cassie.

"Were you bitten?" Jacqui asked.

"Bitten . . . ? No. A spider stinger scratched me."

Jacqui looked back to Jin and Cassie, wide-eyed and eyebrows furrowed. Looking for confirmation that it was poison so they could treat it, but praying it wasn't true.

"Don't look at me," Jin said. "I can't be sure."

" . . . Shit . . . " Cassie said. "I don't think we have anything for poison."

Takeda's chest heaved. A hot flash creeped from his arm and up into his neck. A sudden and overwhelming feeling of dread and fear overtook him again, and he felt the dregs of another anxiety attack raise itself from the depths of his rolling stomach. His breath entered his lungs over and over but didn't feel like they were filling up. Instead air just passed in and out without being used. His heart felt like it was going to explode in his chest. He looked around, seeing the old blood stain on the floor a ways away that triggered his first attack. He was covered in fresh blood, and the fear that he was bleeding out right there and dying in front of them caught his breath in his throat until he stopped breathing entirely.

"We need to find Master Hasashi and Kenshi before I die then," he thought to himself.

"That was only a fever dream, I think," Jacqui said. "You're not going to die. Stop thinking like that."

He didn't even realize he projected it so loudly. Jacqui followed his eyes, locked on the blood stain, and she shifted her body, placing herself between him and the stain. "Hey," she said. "I'm right here, okay? All three of us are here, and we're gonna help you. We're gonna help you, and we're gonna find Master Hasashi and Kenshi."

He didn't answer, and nobody spoke while Jacqui helped to calm him for the second time. Breathing with him, placing one hand on him to help ground him as she did before. He was able to latch on that and despite the icy-hot feeling under his skin he was able to phase out the unrealistic thoughts that tried to force their way through. His heart continued to beat out of his chest, but he knew it was from his fever.

When she saw he was ready, she patted his leg. "We have to at least treat this to fight infection. It'll probably hurt."

"I know."

Jacqui reached behind her for the first aid kit, and Cassie slid the entire thing across the floor to her. She dug through it until she found what she was looking for - another pair of gloves and some antibiotic cream. She moved to tear the old bandages off Takeda's arm, but paused as she reached for him.

"Damn it," she hissed. "Cassie, can you do this? I can't with these bandages on my hands."

She moved to the side and Cassie took over the bandage-tearing, apologizing for every tug that aggravated the wound. When it was clear she snapped the gloves on and lifted his arm to the side, grabbing her canteen of water. She dumped a slow, steady stream into the wound, and the stinging brought tears to his eyes almost instantly. He grit his teeth and tensed, but managed to keep his arm in place while she flushed more blood and pus from the hole. She tore the packet of antibiotic gel and scooped a generous amount onto her fingers, but paused with her hand resting over his wound.

He looked up, wondering why she was hesitating, but caught her staring at him. "Are you ready?" she asked.

"Just do it."

She touched the cream to his wound, and the flare of agony was instantaneous. His back lifted from the wall he was leaning on and his legs kicked on impulse. He sucked in a breath through his teeth, but when he exhaled it it came out as a moan he couldn't cut off. The pain only lasted for a little while longer before a cool, numbing agent in the cream began to soak into his skin. He sighed in total relief, already feeling better now that his arm wasn't on fire anymore. He sank back against the wall and tossed his head back, calming his breathing down. Cassie took a fresh roll of bandages and wrapped the wound snugly.

He already felt better. The wound was dry and cleaner than before, and he felt more clear-headed. Like he could focus on other things besides the pain in his arm. He already knew he would be more coherent and aware, and though he still felt achy and chilled, it had subsided a bit. Enough for him to stand up.

Cassie made sure he was situated and upright, planting him on his feet.

"You good?"

"Yeah. I'm good. Much better."

"I can tell. You're still really pale, but I can tell a little bit of color is back in your face."

"What's the plan?" he asked. He wiped a bit of sweat from his forehead, and felt a bit more energized.

"Right. That door over there," Cassie said, pointing to a rounded door he had missed the entire time they had been camping in the area. It had a spider carved in relief in the door, and its legs segmented the door in eight individual pieces. In the middle of each segment was a familiar, pink gem that was embedded in the stone. At the very top, a hole sat where a gem was missing.

"No way," Jacqui said. "The spider gem?"

"Yeah. Jin and I talked about it, and we think we should let it go-"

"But-" Takeda started, but Cassie lifted a finger in a sign to wait.

"For now, we should wait. Here's our rationale: That door is completely sealed. Nothing's getting in there until we put that gem back in the door, which means if anybody's in there, they'll be safe until we can take a closer look. Nothing can get out, either. If - and sorry for saying it, but I gotta be realistic here - if they've been locked in there with some spiders and have been killed already, the spiders in there won't get out to chase us."

In his clearer state of mind, he knew it made sense. He didn't want to say it out loud, though. It still felt to a small degree like they were giving up on the people who could potentially be in there.

"Plus," Cassie continued, "we'd have to go grab that gem and carry it with us until we got to the door to put it in. I'd rather not be chased by an entire cave of spiders again if we can afford to avoid it."

Which was the smart thing to do, Takeda admitted to himself.

"Instead, we're going to keep going down this path," Jin said, pointing to the open archway on the opposite end of the room from where Takeda was standing. "What do you think?" he asked, eyes glancing from Takeda to Jacqui.

" . . . I get it, that it's the best thing to do," Jacqui said, mirroring his thoughts almost exactly. "I don't like the idea of potentially leaving when they could be right behind this door, but . . . I understand."

"Me too," Takeda said.

"Alright. I'll take point," Cassie said. She reached behind her back and grabbed a pistol, cocking it roughly. She turned and began walking towards the archway, ducking low and leaning to both sides to try and see what lay beyond. Jin immediately trailed after her, while Jacqui waited for Takeda to start walking. He wobbled on his knees, but she was there to steady him.

"Can I say something about before?" Jacqui said.

"Before, when?"

"When you had your panic attacks-"

"Do you have to?" he thought back to her, cutting her off. It felt great to be in total control of his powers again, and he directed the thought straight into her mind. "I'm already embarrassed enough as it is."

"Yeah, I kind of do. All I wanna say is that because of your gift, you're really, really empathetic, and you internalize a lot of stuff. Because you can read minds, you're always reading and understanding exactly what we're thinking and feeling, but you rarely say your own thoughts or feelings out loud for us to hear. You never say if something's bothering you, or if it makes you happy, or anything. I feel like I have to try and be a mind reader too if I want to be able to communicate with you on the same level that you can communicate with us. And I want to communicate with you because I care about you, a lot. That's what two people who are in a relationship do. They talk, and the other listens, and they help each other through stuff when it can't be done alone. You always know what to say and do to help me because you can read me - and nine times out of ten that's a better way to understand someone than words can describe. But I just want the chance to help you too. So next time tell me if you're uncomfortable. Tell me if something's bothering you."

" . . . Yeah, you're right. I'm not doing it to purposefully hide things from you guys, or anything. I think you're right - that I forget sometimes that the rest of you can't hear what I'm thinking. I'll try to share more of my thoughts with you."

"Thanks, Takeda. I love you."

"I love you, too."

As they ducked the stone archway and headed into the next set of narrow, ribbed tunnels, a blue, natural light shone down on their left. They were met with a tangle of thick webs that covered every inch of the inlet to their left, and at the bottom of the webs was a bed of dull, dead eggs that had already cracked and burst, releasing the spiders inside.

Cassie wrinkled her nose and held up the glowstick, illuminating the inlet to inspect the eggs before her eyebrows furrowed. She stepped closer to the bed of eggs and craned her neck. "There's something back there."

"What?" Jacqui asked.

"It . . . looks like a body."

"Well . . . sucks to suck, I guess," Jin said, shrugging his shoulders.

"No, no, it looks familiar."

Takeda's heart sank into his stomach. His arm sparked an itch that he scratched as gently as he could. "It's not . . . is it?"

"No . . . I think . . . Don't quote me on this, but I think it's Reptile."

A/N: COVID-19 Quarantine Day ?

Pittsburgh and the surrounding counties have moved to the yellow phase, so I've been back to work for about a week now. I hope everyone is staying safe!

As always, leave a review if you have the time!

~Keyblader