Men and Monsters: Syndication.

Antarctica was cold, really, really cold.

This seemed like an obvious fact, Antarctica was the place on Earth with the lowest recorded temperature in the world. But few people knew what real cold was, the general public believed that being cold is simply just shivering, being able to see their breath, and it was just something that could be dealt with by wearing some gloves or flicking on the A/C.

That wasn’t cold, that was just a chill, Nick knew true cold.

True cold was being unable to feel anything, your hands, your feet, your face, barely even able to feel your own heart beating. The cold even seeps into your very bones, making you unable to feel your own movements. Your breath was so icy cold and sharp it was like icicles were forming in your throat, and that was warm compared to the rest. You could be on the verge of dying, your body about to shut down as it tries desperately to produce and keep as much heat as possible, and not even know it.

That was what it truly meant to be cold, and it was something he was abundantly familiar with.

He made his living as an explorer of Antarctica, a hard job to a make living of, but he managed. His interest started when he watched a video titled ‘Top Ten Strangest Things Found Frozen In Ice!” in his mid teens, which sparked a passion for all things related to that. He watched all kinds of videos and documentaries about things trapped in ice and how that entire process even worked, to this day his favorite movie was The Thing.

He’d been all over Antarctica more than most people, either as a part of some research thing, or in search of something. He had been to Greenland a couple of times also, but it just wasn’t as interesting as Antarctica was. He had found a couple of things, but nothing of significance. Leftover items from other explorers, random pieces of wood and other materials, even a human skeleton on one occasion. His dream was to find something in ice like nothing no one had ever found before, or some extinct species frozen in ice, which might be able to get brought back to life like a Mammoth.

Right now, Nick was in charge of a team of people. A mixture of cave explorers, miners, and a few other ice experts. About a month or two ago, he had been approached by a strange guy in a bar after his most recent expedition. Saying that he had amassed a few other people and was looking for something buried deep in ice, and that he was one of the best people to ask about it. Being someone who naturally had a strong sense of curiosity, he was going to ask him a plethora of questions. Then the man offered money for him and the team to do what he asked, offering to pay for all the equipment and other expenses, on top of offering extra money if him and the others didn’t ask any questions and didn’t talk about whatever happened on their trip.

The amount of money he was offering to him alone was...staggering, to say the least. He had never been a particularly greedy person, but that much money was enough for him to retire if he really wanted to, wouldn’t be hard since he had no one in his life he needed to provide for. It was clear that man meant business, and he made it very difficult to say no.

At least, he was pretty sure that was a month ago. He had a bad habit of just completely losing track of time whenever he was out here, he didn’t usually leave until he either was out of resource, or was satisfied with whatever he came out there for. But now, what that man told them to do was dig a tunnel until they got to a certain point. Usually that would be very difficult to do, but he provided the mining team with a very specific list of equipment, all paid for by him, of course.

He had actually been doing a decent job of keeping everything organized and managing resources, which is probably why that guy thought he’d be the best to be in charge of them, though how he knew that wasn’t really something that made sense.

“So, remind me why I’m down here?” Nick asked as he turned to the short man to his right, walking through a long, wide tunnel of carved out ice.

About an hour or so ago, at least what he was pretty sure was an hour, one of the guys from the miner team asked him to come down here because they were nearing their target. Unsurprisingly, it was colder underground than it was above, so he had to prepare himself. Wearing several coats, two pairs of thick pants, large fuzzy gloves, and a couple of scarfs. All the hoods for the coats were up and all the scarfs were wrapped around his neck, not much more than his dark blue eyes were visible, his voice a bit muffled as he spoke. Luckily, the cave they tunneled out was mostly empty and any noise made would echo. All the clothes did a good job of keeping him warm, but only to the point where he could just barely feel his body and was still pretty cold.

“Well, that guy gave us very specific coordinates, but I guess he thought that might not be enough. He also gave us a detailed map, though the way he drew it made it seem like he was mocking us.” The short man said in a gruff, muffled voice as he pulled out a piece of paper, opening it and revealing what looked like a map, but it was drawn with big arrows and stick figures that he guessed were meant to be them.

“Assuming this is right and he isn’t just fucking with us, we should be hitting it sometime today. Hell, they might have already gotten to it. I figured since you’re just as curious about whatever we’re getting as much as anyone else, you deserve to be here when we uncover it more than anyone else since you've been managing everything.” He mumbled as he adjusted his clothes, wearing the same set of clothing as Nick was.

The ice tunnel the miners had dug out was wide and long, directed by the ice experts in where it would be easiest to mine through. Looking around, Nick could see the ice around them, a bit surprised it hadn’t caved in or something like that. There were lanterns attached to the roof to light it up, going all the way to the end to make it easier for them to dig through. There weren’t any sounds in the cave other than their footsteps, and the distant sounds of a drill and whatever else they were using to get through. It was kind of like that scene in the second Ice Age movie, but instead of dinosaurs in the ice, it was just various fish.

“Yeah, that makes sense. While we’re on the way there, you mind telling me whatever the hell you think this thing is? I’ve explored a lot, sure, but I can’t think of anything that would be worth this much time, money and effort.”

“Well, I can think of a couple things.” He mumbled as he put the map back in his pocket. “My massive amount of money that I’ll be getting after this is on ore or some other kind of hard to get resource, you’d be surprised how much someone would pay for something like Rhodium. Or maybe some kind of ancient artifact? He seemed like the type of weirdo that would pay a lot of money to complete his collection of ancient Aztec vase or something like that, but he said we couldn’t ask any questions if we wanted that bonus, so I’d rather not voice my concerns. No, what really grinds my gears is how he knows where we’re getting this thing.”

He stopped walking for a moment as he reached into his pocket, pulling out a compass and looking at something. Strangely, the arrow on the compass was slowly spinning around the entire compass, like it couldn’t find a direction to stick to. He scowled as he put the compass back in his pocket, starting to walk down the tunnel again.

“It's too...specific, is the thing. I asked around while coming here, and nobody has even heard of this guy and, as far as I’m aware, he doesn’t exist. To my knowledge, you get to know about something like this through connections and experience, but there have been no excavations or anything anywhere near here from anyone to think anything was here. Even when we’re contracted by groups or something, they usually just give us the area and we keep going until we find it. But I have never heard of anyone giving specific coordinates, and having enough money to pay for everything we need and the amount he’s already paying us! Not even the biggest companies I’ve ever worked for have had that kind of money, I’m starting to think it would actually be really dangerous to find out who this guy actually is.”

He gave a loud sigh as he rubbed the back of his head, furrowing his eyebrows from evident frustration.

“This place is weird too, compasses don’t work and some of the workers say they here...whispers, freaks some of them the fuck out. But, no one has gotten hurt or anything past some weird dreams, and the money is worth it. Everything about this is going to bug me for a while, but I’m sure the pile of money is going to make it easy to forget. First I’m going to put enough of the money in a savings account for when my daughter gets old enough to go to college, then comes the hookers! After that I’ll-”

“WHAT THE FUCK!”

“HOLY SHIT!”

“GESU CRISTO!”

He was interrupted by sudden exclamations of surprise coming from the end of the tunnel, the last one being said in a thick italian accent. Nick and the short man ran forward, worried at what the cause of such a sudden outburst could have been. Luckily, they weren’t that far from the end of it, and were there in a minute or so.

Nick hadn’t actually seen their mining in progress before, so what he saw was a bit surprising. There was a giant, drill-like device right in front of the end of the tunnel, like something he’d see out of some over the top bank heist movie. There were headlights on the front and back of it that were the main light source, but he couldn’t see the power source for it anywhere.

There were only three miners around the drill, he guessed that they worked in shifts and these three were the ones who were on duty at the moment. Something clearly had scared them, as all three were against the walls of the tunnel, their mining tools on the floor and looks of pure terror on their faces. The drill was turned off and was no longer tunneling deeper into the ice, and they seemed to be staring at whatever was on the other side of the drill. From where Nick was standing, he couldn’t see it. He moved to the side of the drill, curious at what they had found that surprised them so much.

He couldn’t make it out at first, despite the light source shining, it was still fairly dark. But as he got closer, he was able to make out what it was they discovered, his eyes widening in terror.

It was roughly human, but much larger than any human he’d ever met. It had to be at least seven feet tall, if not taller. It had the head of a wolf, with the pointy ears, snout, and large teeth with fangs, though they looked bigger than any wolf’s he’d seen. It’s fur was thick and black, covering its entire body except for its face and chest, which showed gray skin. They had dark blue eyes with black, slit pupils, that seemed to move even though the creature was frozen.

It also had sharp claws, its hands still resembling actual human hands rather than something like paws. Even with all the thick fur, the bulging muscles were obvious, showing the raw strength this creature must have. When it was frozen, it was clearly trying to escape its fate. It’s claws stretched towards Nick like it was flailing, resulting in it being frozen alive.

Nick was never really much of a believer in the mythological and cryptids, as interesting as they were, he didn’t think there was any realistic chance of anything like that being real. Of course that doesn’t mean he wasn’t aware of some of them, there was a reason they remained so popular even into the modern era after all. He knew about vampires, shapeshifters, all kinds of things. But nothing past surface knowledge.

Even so, he could recognize what was in front of him. The body of a human but characteristics of a wolf, a creature with massive strength, resembling more of an animal than the man it once was. It was unmistakable, there were very few other things it could be.

“Is that....a werewolf?”

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Well, that’s not good.” Discord mumbled as he shifted his gaze to the right, grabbing his glasses off the table and putting them on. “Been a while since anyone’s tried to hack into The Syndicate’s network, even longer since anyone has actually managed to get this far. Gotta nip this in the bud now, if I let them continue they might actually get past the firewall, can’t have that.”

Discord was in his room, sitting in front of his computer as he had been writing something. He suddenly noticed a miniature sprite version of himself show up in the bottom write of his screen, an AI program he cobbled together to help him manage some things while he was working, he couldn’t organize everything himself after all. It showed up with a red exclamation point on a yellow background, a specific symbol he made to tell him whenever someone was trying to break into The Syndicate’s database. Usually, he’d let the AI program itself handle it, it was certainly more than capable. However he decided to deal with it himself, it was a bit of fun and he had the time.

He brought his hands together, a loud popping noise came from his hand as he cracked his fingers. He hovered his hands over the keyboard, a stern look coming onto his as he looked at the computer screen intently. He then began rapidly typing on the keyboard, the computer screen switching to a black screen with waves of constantly moving green numbers. Every time he pressed a key, a green number disappeared, just for a bundle of numbers to take its place.

Discord’s eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the screen, somehow his gaze getting more intense as his hands pressed the keys faster.

Soon, the numbers were disappearing faster than they were reappearing, empty spots where there once were. In minutes, the computer screen was almost completely black, all the green numbers absent. The only thing left was the little sprite of Discord, doing a victory dance as the words ‘You Won’ hovered above it in white flashing letters.

“Oh boy, I’m getting a bit rusty, that was harder than it should have been. Now, for the address of this person. I know it isn’t that pesky group Anonymous again, I have an agreement with them. Which makes me curious, who would be so interested in trying to gain info from The Syndicate? Or desperate?”

Discord said as he wiped his brow with his sleeve, a small drop of sweat getting wiped off with it. He then pressed a key on the keyboard, causing the sprite to run off the screen for a moment and come back, holding another box with a string of numbers and letters on it.

“Oh? This is pretty close actually, I think I might recognize that. I didn’t realize there was anyone with that kind of potential around here, my interest is piqued.” Discord mumbled as he pulled out a piece of paper and a pen from his ear that wasn’t there before, writing down the address on the piece of paper and putting both it and the pen in his pocket.

“But...I can’t check it out myself. I need to check on Vincent’s progress, hopefully he’ll have learned English and I can start teaching him about everything he’s missed. And I really should start preparing for Wyett, the team should have found him by now if they were consistent and I’m almost done with gathering the amount of food he’d need. I’ll have to teach him modern english also, but luckily he hasn’t been out of commission nearly as long as Vincent, so it wouldn’t take long to catch him up with all that he’s missed. Real problem with him is going to be food, I should get a bit more than my calculations just to be sure. Hmmm.”

Discord closed his eyes thoughtfully for a moment, before opening them and reaching into his pocket, pulling his flip phone and dialing a number.

“I think I’ll call Juno and meet up with him, I kind of miss hanging out with him anyway. I’ll give him the address while I’m there, I’m sure Pinkamena will appreciate getting him off her ass for a bit.”

The phone ringed for a moment, before there was a clicking noise as Juno picked up. “Yahallo Dissy! Strange for you to be calling me personally, last time you did that, you asked me to kill someone.” He said in a chipper tone, before remaining silent for a few moments. “You don’t need me to kill someone again, do you?” He suddenly asked in a much darker tone, his voice empty of any emotion.

“Mmmmmayhaps, depends on how things turn out. But we can talk about that in a bit, can you give me a status report on Pinkamena real quick? I’d like to know how my little monster is doing.” Discord asked as he spun around in his chair, crossing his legs as he leaned into the phone.

“Well, nothing too interesting so far. After waking up, she went to her house for a bit, then talked with Applejack. Then she went by an apartment building for an hour, while talking to The Whispers the way there and back. Sat on a house for like...an hour or two, then started crying randomly. Started walking back while talking with someone on the phone, and then got shot at by The Silent Killer. Like you asked, I didn’t intervene and gave her the chance to fight them herself this time. She didn’t die, but she didn’t kill them either, kind of at a stalemate. Now she’s running from the police for whatever reason, can’t tell where she’s going, but back to her house I think. That’s about it so far.”

“I am curious about how their fight ended up at a draw when I gave her a dose of Imperium, but I’m sure I’ll hear about it from her later.” Discord said with a sigh as he turned back around, his computer monitor going back to the screen before as he began typing again, holding the phone against his ear with his shoulder. “Alright, anything interesting about her? Physical abnormalities? Anything like that? I’m pretty curious to see when her tail is going to show up.”

Juno stayed quiet for a few moments, the sounds of his footsteps slamming against concrete and wind blowing coming from his phone before abruptly stopping. “Tail? I thought that was something unique to Igneous? You’re telling me she’s going to get a tail too? That’ll be interesting. But no, nothing like that. Well, some of her hair did turn black, and it seems to be spreading, that’s about it.”

Discord stopped typing, his eyes widened for a bit in surprise before going back to normal. “Black? Are you sure she didn’t just highlight it or something? Girls seem to really like dying their hair whenever they’re having an identity crisis.”

“No, it isn’t highlights. When I say some of her hair, I don’t mean sections, I mean strains of her hair. If it wasn’t for my years of experience at watching people, I wouldn’t have even noticed. When she left her house, only one strain of her hair had turned black. It stayed that way when she went into a convenience store before their rematch with The Silent Killer and she put on her mask, when she took it off, another strain of her hair on the opposite side turned the same color of black. I doubt she’s even noticed the second one, but I’m sure she’s aware of it. Why? Is it a problem?”

Discord stopped typing for a moment, reaching into his lab coat pocket and pulling out his brown journal and opening it. He flipped through the pages in silence for a minute or two, a scowl on his face as he looked for something.

“I don’t know what’s causing it, and that makes it a problem. I’m sure it’s something related to The Whispers, has to be. Thing is, they don’t usually do new things, and they have never changed the hair color of any previous host. But, if nothing has actually changed, then there isn’t much more I can do right now but speculate. Anyhow, that’s not entirely what I called you for, I need your help with something.”

Discord pulled the pen out of his pocket again, putting it beside the book as he flipped it to a clean page.

“I won’t tell you much in case it doesn’t end up being anything important, but I need you to check out something. Can you meet at Homra? That bar me, you, Michael and Starlight went to that one time after I first gave Michael his cybernetics. I’m sure you’d appreciate the break and I doubt Pinkamena is going to be doing anything extravagant for the rest of the night, and knowing you, you haven’t been getting a lot of sleep recently, huh?”

He gave an awkward laugh, the sound of his feet hitting the ground came from the phone again, but much louder this time. “Heh, you caught me. But it seems she likes sleeping even less than I do, considering she’s barely gotten any sleep unless she got knocked out or something. But yeah, you’re right, I could use the break, and I doubt anything else will happen. Yeah, I know the place. I can be there in...twenty minutes ish, need me to bring anything?”

“Just your good looks and skills, see ya there.” Discord said as he closed the phone, putting it in his pocket and picking up the pen beside the book.

“Changing physical characteristics, this is something completely new. Starlight brought up numbing emotions, something Igneous may have also had, but didn’t mention to me. This shows that they could have started doing this with Igneous, but I can’t eliminate the possibility that they did this with previous hosts and the hosts were just unable to say it. She also mentioned brain aneurysms, something that Igneous did bring up. Again, I can't eliminate the possibility these things happened with previous hosts, but they were unable to say. Even so, I can’t ignore the fact that it seemed to become more frequent with Pinkamena than Igneous, the question is why?”

As Discord talked to himself, he was writing frantically in the blank piece of paper. He was writing various words, all under the words ‘details’ in bold letters. After a few moments of him mumbling and writing, he suddenly circled a word and put the pen down.

“There are a handful of possibilities of what this could mean, but this one seems the most likely. If I’m right...then I need to speed things up and handle this.”

On the page were writing and scribbles all over the paper, while being very organized, there was still a lot of it. At the bottom of the page were three words, written in bold and circled.

The words were ‘Full Body Takeover’, under the words ‘Possible Scenarios’ underlined.