RING-RING-RING-RING-RI-

With a swing, the alarm goes flying off the table, crashing onto the floor. Hopefully it didn’t break. I rise up slowly and yawn, averting my eyes away from the sunlight pouring in through the window. Still half-asleep I rub my eyes with one hand while the other grasps around for my phone, checking the time. I still have half an hour left before classes. Good. Combat rolling out of bed, I let out a sound of contempt, although others may tell you it's a sound of pain. Every day goes the same, brushing my teeth with only the finest of the cheapest toothpaste my money can get me, followed by a quick shower, thanks to my genetic male pattern baldness, passed down from generation to generation of Mous men. As I throw on my green jacket, sling my bag over my shoulder and lock my door, I realise I might not have told you my name. My name is Anon Y. Mous, and welcome to Jackass.

As the stale air hits me, I breathe it in. Ah yes, Skin Row, where cutthroats and the homeless are one and alike, how I love you. I don’t look at the chumps and they don’t look at me, it’s what I’ve been practising ever since one of them tried to shank me for ‘looking at ‘em wrong’. We all know none of us want to be in this part of town, yet here we are. I check my phone as I walk to the bus stop, nodding as I’ll get there on time… probably. As we travel I look out the window, preparing my ears for the sugar-storm that is Naomi’s voice in homeroom, while also thinking of my classes for the rest of the day. There’s also Science with… Fang, my lab partner. The mint-green, silver haired ptero girl… shit, I got it wrong again. Oh right, I forgot to mention, she’s non-binary. Big wow, right?

Anyways, where was I? Right, the mint-green, silver haired ptero… person. Last time I addressed her as a girl I got yelled at… which wasn’t really a good experience. Although, we have been getting along, especially since the.. rooftop episode. In the middle of my monologue, the bus stops, launching me forward and right into the back of a seat. I get up rubbing my jaw and cursing the driver who just snickers lightheartedly, waving as I get down from the bus. I wave back to him and look up the flight of stairs at… Volcano High, where dreams come true and humans get discriminated against. Fun stuff, I know. Out of the corner of my eye though… I spot something odd. A hooded figure rushing away from the side of the building… totally not suspicious. None of my business though… hopefully.

I follow the stream of students into the building, rife with dinosaurs of every kind… but not humans. As I turned in the direction of homeroom, I froze hearing a sickly sweet voice piercing my eardrums. “Hey Anon!” I sigh and turn to look at the orange parasaur sticking out like a sore thumb out of the crowd who was part of my ‘welcoming committee’. “Hey Naomi.” I lazily respond, though it doesn’t seem to bother her. “Another day of homeroom together, how exciting! And also… another day with Naser…” She looks off into the distance dreamily while I blanch. Naser was another part of my ‘welcoming committee’. He also organised a concert for Fang, which ended… disastrous to say the least. His heart’s in the right place, but he just makes the wrong choices sometimes. At least she’s busy dreaming about him rather than giving me a tyrannosaurus’ worth of diabetes from her voice alone.

I manage to sit through homeroom and English, although Mr. Tsuki doesn’t make it easy with his definitely-not-faked-but-everyone-knows-it's-faked ‘Engrish’, which isn’t hard to figure out even for people who don’t watch anime. I breezed through the next few classes with nothing notable to say about them, landing me right into Science with Fang. Fang glances at me from our table and waves with a smile as I wave back. “Hey dweeb.” I don’t bother formulating a response but for some reason… I feel butterflies in my stomach. Why? Ever since that incident on the roof… a memory flashes into my head, of not so long ago when the two of us had ‘eloped’, as Spears accused us when he called us into his office later.

I remember Fang back on the rooftop, holding her arm while blood ran down in rivulets from her elbows, her wings bleeding with feathers roughly ripped out in patches, her make-up ruined. Despite all that, even with the dried blood caked all over her and the runny mascara, she smiled. Something about that smile stuck with me even after I’d gone back to class… even to this day…

WHACK! A blow to the back of my noggin from Fang brings me back down to Earth as I turn and glare at her while she has a smirk plastered on her face. “Enough daydreaming, dweeb. We have an assignment to do.” I roll my eyes and sigh, since per usual, she’s going to make me do most of the work like the cruel taskmaster she is. Another whack to the back of the head. “I heard that.” Damn mumbling. Let’s see… ancient dinosaurs and their traits. The topic is pretty boring, but it’s not like it’ll matter until the next semester right? In the middle of working, I found a picture of a pteranodon like Fang, although it had a sharper crest and a wider wingspan. Fang raised an eyebrow at my seemingly particular interest, but didn’t say anything about it. Considering they’re sitting in a position where their steel-toed boots can very comfortably rest against the back of my head, I hold back a joke I was thinking of making about them.

Eventually class ends as we pour into the hall, going our separate ways. Next I have Maths with Reed and Trish. Reed, the carfe-addicted philosophical raptor and Trish, the short-stack triceratops who punches way above her weight class. I guess it’s true that like chihuahuas, the smaller they are the fiercer they are. I approach the two as Trish waves me over. “‘Sup compadre?” Reed smiles lazily with half lidded eyes and one hand on the back of his neck, while Trish gives me a cold look. “Hey Anon.” Something tells me she still doesn’t like me. “Nothing much Reed. Still high as a kite?” I joke as Reed shoots finger guns my way. “Bro!” Trish simply facepalms then pinches the bridge of her nose, used to this by now. As usual Reed somehow has a copy of the answers for Mr. Carlesiidewski’s homework and I’ve given up asking how at this point. “So, you up to watch us practise at lunch? Reed raises an eyebrow as I nod. Trish looks displeased but she nods and heads off with Reed at the end of the class as once again, we go our separate ways… temporarily.

After a while I manage to get myself a sandwich and cookies courtesy of my lunch card… which is just another way to say I’m too poor to afford my own food. I hum as I walk to the auditorium with my food, pushing the doors open and sitting down in front of the stage, where the trio were getting ready for practice. Reed was twirling his drumming sticks, Fang adjusting the strings on her guitar to Trish’s chagrin while she herself was getting her bass ready. While opening the wrapping on my sandwich, I noticed the three of them sniffing the air. I tried sniffing the air myself, but I couldn’t really find anything wrong, so I guess their dinosaur senses are just that much better than mine.

As soon as Reed hit the drums, as if giving a signal, a bluish-white gas billowed in through the air vents, covering the four of us as we hacked and coughed. “What the fuck–” I tried to get out, but that only lead to more coughing. What the hell is happening? Did a fire break out or did some asshole decide to play a nasty prank on the band? We rushed to our feet and out of the auditorium, but hit a full stop as soon as we were in the halls. Looks like we weren’t the only ones with the idea to get out. The hallway was full of students wheezing with the same gas blanketing the halls. With all the movement, people were getting shoved around and trampled, us being no exception. “REED! TRISH! FANG!” I yelled desperately as I was separated from the three in the chaos, just barely hearing their voices calling out my name, broken up by their coughs. Eventually I crashed against the lockers after taking a particularly nasty blow, fortunately in an open space so I could take a breather. As I did, I noticed the gas stopped affecting me, but not my saurian comrades who were coughing their lungs out.

Strange. Even stranger was that the noises they were making had stopped. For a brief moment, I thought it was over but as soon as I thought that I regretted it. Animalistic noises hit my ears as all the silhouettes in the fog seemed to writhe about. Alarm bells rang loud in my head as I looked around for the nearest window, but they were all reinforced with metal bars. Shit. I looked for anywhere nearby to hide, unfortunately finding none. I could do nothing but watch what was happening with a mix of confusion and fear, taking a sharp breath as their movements finally ceased. Coincidentally, the fog began to clear. Was it over? The breath I was holding hitched in my throat, seeing the sight before me.

All of them had changed, but not in a good way. Their claws, teeth and horns seemed to have grown out, tails elongated, plates larger, snouts wider, longer wingspans… as if they had all reverted somehow. They all seemed… confused by the change, looking at each other cautiously, as if a fight would break out any second. Seeing them like this… the title of the assignment flashed in my mind for a second as I let out the breath I had been holding for so long. That was a mistake. At once, all of them turned their head in my direction, their superior senses locating me with ease. I had only realised that I was the only human among them, which put me at the bottom of the food chain. The only human… or so I thought as a voice rang out, one particularly loud Maths teacher’s voice.

“What the frickin’ hell is goin’ on here?!”