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The occasional bark still breaks the silence of the yard, but it's a happier sound, the smell of a familiar and friendly presence to many of the dogs. There's whining and claws scraping at the bars of cages, the fighting dogs knowing little about the rules of subterfuge.

Down at the end of the row of cages is a much subtler clicking sound, human fingers dragging furtively at what they can reach of the latch, to little avail: there isn't an opening large enough to accommodate a whole hand, and the man inside is sitting rather uncomfortably folded up in an enclosure barely big enough for a medium-sized dog to turn around.

Edgard's eyes widen when he realizes there is a human man in a cage and quickly runs towards it. He inhales deeply when he recognizes the man.

"Mado?" What sort of place is this? He quickly pulls at the latch. "Can you get out? H-how?" His mouth gapes open. He is in shock and looks around at the cages to check. All dogs.

The latch comes open easily, as it's made to contain someone with paws, and Mado gently nudges the door open with his foot before slinking out and unfolding into a standing position with a decidedly sheepish expression.

"Hello Edgard!" he says, hands in his pockets, his classic smile coming a little late for once. "My, this is-- well there's an explanation,"

He doesn't seem eager to give it.

Edgard is even more alarmed by his cheery demeanor.

"Are you hurt? Who did this? What the fuck?"

"Well," Mado stalls, taking a moment to scratch the back of his head (which almost certainly has fleas at this point), "what would you say if I told you this isn't the first time it's happened?"

Now there's a smile, but it's a guilty, ingratiating one. "...getting out was easier this time?"

Edited 2020-11-11 01:43 (UTC)

Edgard scrunches up his face. What the hell is going on?

"Not the first time? Is this man capturing humans as well as dogs? And you didn't tell anyone?"

Edgard again looks at the dog cage and then at Mado.

"How?"

"...no," Mado says evasively, and it's the damnedest thing, but his shrinking avoidance bears every resemblance to a dog who knows he's in trouble.

"You see," he continues, haltingly, "...I don't always... look like this, exactly."

He seems a fool much of the time, but Mado knows that Edgard will, if not now, eventually make the connection between the dog he's been feeding and what Mado is about to tell him.

Edgard looks at Mado, then at the dogs in cages, and then at Mado again.

"What? What do you look like?"

Mado has opened his mouth to answer, but there's a slam from one of the outbuildings near the warehouse.

"Who's in there?" comes a demanding voice, angry footsteps venturing nearer, and one gets the impression that time to explain has been cut rather short.
With nothing left to lose, exactly, and in one fluid motion with a quick "sorry!", Mado is suddenly a little brown and white dog-- the little dog Edgard has come to see around, and it gets a remarkable amount of height when it leaps out a partially-shuttered window.

The rest of the dogs, of course, lose their minds.

Edgard, stunned at this revelation, stands paralyzed as a cacophony of barking surrounds him. The door opens and a man strides in.

Edgard takes one look at this man and is snapped into motion. Pure rage courses through him as he walks over and punches him hard in the face. The man hits the ground with a thump.

The man goes down like a sack of bricks, and all the dogs go even crazier, cages rattling with their excitement.

Mado is nowhere to be seen, for the moment.

Edgard stares at the man, stunned for the moment at his success, and then takes the opportunity to spit in his face. Fuck this guy.

His hands are then on latches, opening one after another and he's surrounded by fur and barks. He laughs as several leap up to lick his face. He leads the herd of dogs towards the door, peering carefully at some of them in case they turn into a human.

If someone sees the door open, it will appear to burst at the sheer amount of dog and Edgard triumphant at it's center.

A triumph indeed: dogs come bounding out, barking joyously, wrassling with one another (and in a few cases actually fighting, but well, when you've been bred to fight other dogs,) unleashing havoc upon the quiet street.
They race off in all different directions, pausing to jump and lick at Edgard's face and hands, until he's the only one left in front of the warehouse.

And then, finally, Mado reappears from an alleyway, looking sheepish enough that one can almost imagine the floppy ears pinned against his rust-colored hair.

"Thanks, Edgard."

"You!" Edgard shouts. "You're a dog! Why did you leave?"

It is unclear whether Edgard is angry or impressed. Maybe both. His eyes suddenly widen.

"Chicken!"

With a gasp, Mado lifts his hands as if in surrender. Then, when Edgard calls him out-- or just yells the word 'chicken', it's not entirely clear-- he nods timidly.

"You see," he says quickly, "dogs, which is to say, other dogs-- they-- they don't like me much."
An ingratiating smile flashes onto his face, his brow knitting apologetically. "If I'd stuck around, things would have gone far worse for both of us. I swear it."

"No, no, no. The chicken." A tremendous gasp. "I almost killed..you?"

This is a lot to take in. Edgard puts a hand to his forehead. He then quickly tries to come back to the matter at hand.

"The dogs don't like you, so that's why you left. The dogs can tell?"

Finally, shaking his head: "Why did you tell me? The chicken!"

"The chicken!" Mado echoes, and gasps again. "Oh-- yes. Well."
He scratches the back of his head again, sheepishly. "...that happens sometimes. It's all right! Don't be upset."

He claps both of his hands on Edgard's shoulders, smiling sincerely.

"And yes. The dogs can tell. I've never gotten along with dogs, not for lack of trying."

"Does anyone else know? Is this a secret? Have you always been a dog? Are you only a dog?"

These are only a few of the many questions rocketing around the mind of a man who just learned a man could be a dog.

[man dog dog man dog man dog man man]

"Please don't tell anyone," Mado pleads gently, "Athessa knows, and so does the Scouting Master. It's... well it's one of the ways I've learned to be of some worth to the organization."

He smiles with uncertainty.

"If it got out to the wrong people, I'd be useless again."

Edgard's eyes widen and he holds out his hands in reassurance.

"I won't tell! You can trust me."

He grins.

"I bet it has come in useful a lot."

"It has," Mado admits with an air of relief and a grin, "it's often the only way I'd eat, on the road and back in Rialto. People like dogs."

He taps his fingertips together. "...and it's easier to find places to sleep, when you're smaller."

Edgard is still mulling all this over.

"So, do you think like a human when you're a dog?"

Mado nods, but then pauses, and has to think about it.

"...I mean, I think like me," he says, with the air of someone whose mind is expanding with possibilities, "but I'm not sure. Maybe I think like a dog when I'm a human."

Hrm. Edgard is very quiet for a moment.

He leans down and picks up a stick off the ground. He then throws it as far away as he can.

It's an experiment.

Though at first blithely unaware of what point Edgard is trying to prove, Mado watches him raise the stick-- and then lurches after it slightly when it's thrown, though he quickly catches himself with a self-conscious grin.

So there's that.

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