[Plot] From one beast to another.

[Narrator]

Ainsley made the right call it seems, and while he's not allowed to be in the room with Leo, he is allowed to be in an adjacent observation area with an intercom.

Leo has been given a few things to stabilize him, which also sedated him for awhile as Doctor McCoy hurried in and out of the room as he took blood and did various tests. The sedation is starting to wear off for Leo.

[Ainsley Green]

Ainsley made little use of the intercom for obvious reason, but he loomed around the observation window with his writing pad, waiting to hear from Leo.

[Leo Eskandari]

The tests revealed an increasing instability in Leo's deactivated X-Gene, causing a sporadic release of his natural MGH. His mutation seemed to be fighting a losing battle to reassert itself and, due to the extreme physical aspects of it, was beginning to tear his body apart from the inside.

While he slept, the growth at his bicep had reversed course but irregular pulses of temporary metamorphosis were popping up all over. When he blinked awake he began screaming as his quill power joined in for an attack, the quills pushing through his skin and leaving bleeding holes behind upon retracting when the attack mercifully ended.

[Ainsley Green]

Ainsley paced around the observation deck with a moral quandary on his mind.

On one hand, Leo didn't want his mutation back. He was pretty adamant that taking his power back might cause the effects of the experiment to come back and he had no inclination towards embracing that.

On the other, it didn't take Dr.McCoy to figure out what had changed in the last couple of days in regards to Leo, and that seemed like the obvious culprit to him.

But he couldn't make that decision for Leo.

After the attack, Ainsley scrawled a message onto the pad and pressed it up against the window.

"You have to take it back Leo."

[Leo Eskandari]

Leo, still wide-eyed from the attack, shook his head with a pleading vehemence.

"No..." he said weakly, though more to the doctor as Ainsley couldn't have heard, "There's... gotta be... something else. I don't... want that."

[Ainsley Green]

Ainsley engaged is his defeated body language and wrote. "Can wait to hear back from Dr.McCoy."

[Hank McCoy]

"Ah, you're awake." Doctor McCoy says as he comes back in.

"I'm afraid the test results are not very encouraging."

[Leo Eskandari]

"What's wrong with me, Doc?"

[Hank McCoy]

"You've had a considerable amount of your DNA rewritten, as you well know. The trouble is, it was intended to build upon your mutation, not act on its own. That's why it went dormant when your mutation was suppressed."

"It's not dormant now, and it's attempting to restart your mutation. I say attempting because it's not entirely working. If this continues, it could tear your body apart from the inside."

[Leo Eskandari]

Leo squeezed his eyes shut to keep from crying. It was dawning on him that he was in all likelihood never going to get to be human again. Not without dying.

"There's nothing you can do?" he asked hopelessly.

[Hank McCoy]

"There is one rather significant thing I can do, but not without your consent."

[Leo Eskandari]

"Then..." he said, hesitating briefly before feeling brave enough to continue, "Do it before I decide I'd rather die."

[Hank McCoy]

"There is life after... all this," he gestures to his furred face before drawing a vial from a rack and walking over to Leo's IV.

[Leo Eskandari]

It didn't take long after returning the vial's contents to Leo's system for his body to stabilize and begin its metamorphosis back into its beastly form. Mercifully, this time it was both comparatively quick and nearly painless with some chemical assistance. His stitches breaking as he grew was the worst part, the laceration closing up as his regeneration factor kicked in. When all was done, the large hybrid just laid there numbly, clearly depressed about being a "monster" again.

[Hank McCoy]

"I know you may not want to talk about this right now, but my door is always open if you do. I understand more than you might think."

[Leo Eskandari]

He just nodded. The only person he wanted to see right then was on the other side of the glass. And he wasn't even sure of that.

[Hank McCoy]

"I'll give you your privacy in the meantime," he nods and makes his way out.