Michael nodded and took to the podium, clearing his throat before saying, "Good people! May I have your attention? As many of you may know, my name is Michael Gysbourne. I am glad to see you all here today, to see that we, the people of this great nation, are ready and willing to take a stand! It is none too soon, I fear! Already, the freaks that wish to be thought of as 'parahuman', as if they are somehow 'just like us', are marrying and having children! Freakish children! Just yesterday, I bore witness to one such wedding! And one of the guests had a TELEPATHIC baby! Do you know how unnatural that is, for a child who looked to be at most a year old to be 'speaking' to me, in perfect English? This is utterly unnatural, and it must be stopped! But our government not only CONDONES this ABOMINATION, but PROTECTS it as well! I ask you, good people, is this right? Is the government doing what we elected them to do?"

He then paused, for a moment, to let the crowd respond.

  He heard a roar from the crowd, and they surged forward, clearly moved by his words.

  Atop the office building, someone was steadying the rifle.  A soft, pffffft sound, and Michael's throat sprouted a neon pink fluff as a dart quivered in his throat.

Michael grabbed at his throat, trying to croak out SOMETHING as he pulled the dart out, but words wouldn't come. Panic started to overtake him as he started to feel... odd, almost like an overwhelming sensation of... power. Raw, unstoppable POWER!

  Michael Gysbourne's skin darkened, becoming a deep blue shade, even as his eyes turned to a brilliant, glowing blood red.  Every scrap of clothing on his body ripped to shreds as his body swelled, becoming approximately eight feet tall, and six bony, whipping, writhing tentacles peeled out of his back, looking like spare spinal-growths that whipped around.  Between them were long membranes he could glide on, and from the base of his spine, a long, wasplike stinger sprouted.  Reason and sanity flew away, and the crowd screamed and rushed backward, even as someone else let out a roar, their body sprouting fur and claws and growing to eight feet tall.

Michael roared as well, and then started firing mutagen-laced darts into the crowd with reckless abandon, wanting nothing more than to change all the people he could, to share his newfound gift with them!

  The people all spazzed, beginning to run every which way, panicked screams and running throngs and nobody having a clue which way to run safely with NEW monsters popping up every time they turned around!

  The sniper fired two more rounds, and another wolflike creature, and then a large, almost pterodactyloid mutant roared up from their positions.

Ozzy had been nearby, since the bastards had had the gall to have their protest close to Mirage's funeral. He'd heard the screams, and fought with himself about it as to whether or not he should go see what it was. Deciding that he wasn't THAT much of an arsehole, he headed over to see the chaos ensuing.

"Well, @#$%. This looks nasty," he sighed as he saw the various monsters popping up.

  Clarissa blinked, and asked him softly "Umm.  Ozzy?  Wasn't your father supposed to be here??"  She was sitting on his shoulder (her new favorite perch) and she could see a bit further than he could, from her slightly higher vantage point.  "Umm.  Big, ugly, blue, naked, and I swear he has a facial resemblance to you . . . "

Ozzy looked up to the podium, where Michael was still firing into the crowd, and snarked, "Ha! Serves him right, he got mutated. Still, I guess we better go stop him before he makes MORE monsters. You may wanna get down, love, this is going to get bumpy REAL soon."

-> From Kattakara Estate

Fiona walked down the streets, guided by Wind-in-Bamboo, hoping that things wouldn't get too bad downtown. But the noises she heard from afar dashed those hopes quickly. Nevertheless, she walked on; in her current shape, she wouldn't be hassled too much, she hoped.

For anyone who was flying or just very tall, it was hard to miss the gigantic dragon even from afar. Rather uncharacteristically, it was walking down the street rather than flying.

  Clarissa nodded, and fanned her wings, lifting up and shifting to perch on a streetlamp instead, even as she answered him {{I'll perch up here, I'm clearly a mutant, and this way the idiots down there can't try and lynch the harmless looking little catgirl while you tango with the big blue meany.}}

  Wind looked at the chaos, shifting to his small-dragonself, and flying up to see, and said "Oh my.  Remember Ozzy told you he'd been hit by a mutagen?  It looks like someone's having a field day with the stuff on the parahuman haters."

Fiona's eyes widened, and she reared up the front of her body, standing a dozen feet tall. "Oh no... this is terrible!" she whispered to Wind, as much as a creature as big as her could whisper. "What do we do?"

Ozzy nodded and said, "Sounds good, love. 'cause I swear, if they actually lynched you, I'm pretty sure I'd go nuts and start smashing shit up."

With that, he took to the air, flying over the screaming crowd and coming down towards the transformed Michael with a good amount of force. Michael, having not quite recognized the big green monster, hand't worried about him until Ozzy came crashing down on top of him. Michael then snarled up at Ozzy and growled, "YOU.... WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!? HERE TO RUIN MY SPEECH!?"

  Wind said gently "What you choose to do now, Fiona, will determine your own future.  If you do not wish to be a hero, stand here, out of the fight, and do nothing other than calling the police.  Any other course, except perhaps to run away, will lead you down the road to becoming a hero."

  Clarissa stayed perched on the streetlamp, and played 'eye in the sky'.  She warned Ozzy {{Ugly and hairy coming at you from about your five oclock or so.}}

It took Fiona only a moment to think. "You go call the police," she then whispered to Wind. "I'll see what I can do here." Taking a deep breath to gather her courage, she began moving forward, towards where she could hear the noises.

  Indeed, one of the werewolfish types was coming at Ozzy from about the five-oclock direction, and their pink-slavering jaws were lined with impressively sharp looking fangs.  Of course, they were laying about them with claws as they went, injuring people and sending them flying this way and that.  Three more 'mutants' roared up as they finished mutating, having been on the edges of the crowd, and they, too, were surrendering to the urge to mutate everyone they could get.

Ozzy grunted as he and Michael started trading blows. He was trying to restrain his father without doing any permanent damage, but the man's mutant form wasn't making it easy, and Ozzy had more than a couple of darts in him from Michael's tentacles. As tall, dark, and ugly started to come at him from his back, Ozzy grabbed Michael and spun, hurling him at the oncoming wolf-like creature.

{{Thanks for the warning, babe! It's a real monster mash down here!}} he thought in reply.

  The one he'd hurled Michael into let out a sort of surprised "Awoof!!!" as both it and Michael went off the front edge of the stage.  The podium itself was smashed, and the audience had scattered.  A good thirty feet of space surrounded Michael and the wolfy one, and several more mutants were around.  Another one had those tentacle-dart-shooters, and was trying to pepper the crowd with as many darts as they could, but apparently each tentacle could only hold about six darts.  So they ran out of darts relatively fast.

  Another neon pink fluffy-tipped dart appeared, this time on Ozzy's left shoulder, but the stuff wasn't effective on the already-mutated.

  Fiona could see the 'mutant monsters' rampaging through the crowd, making MORE mutant-monsters as they went.  She could also see Ozzy on the stage, apparently combating two more, and Clarissa perched up above on a streetlamp.

"STOP!" Fiona shouted in a booming voice that made the ground shake. She wasn't at all sure if they would listen, but at least it would get their attention. At the same time, she ran towards the crowd, trying to put herself between the mutated and the humans.

Ozzy winced as the dart thunked into his shoulder, then turned, looking at the skyline to where the shot had to have come from, seeing if he could see anything. With his enhanced vision, he hoped he could find whoever had started this mess.

As the melee at the Anti-Para rally commenced, not far from that spot was a funeral that the Legacy was holding for their fallen friend, comrade and teammate, Mirage. Donald Derring sat in the front, Lady Psyche sat next to him, then Nokomis. The casket rested close by a podium, and Dragon Fist sat in a chair not far from the podium.

  The mutants were still running rampant, but Ozzy could see the faint gleam of sunlight on metal, the office rooftop that had a perfect line of sight to the speaker's podium where Michael Gysbourne had been speaking when the mayhem had begun.  Several more mutants were closer to the edge of the crowd where Fiona-Dragon was.  If she wished, she could wrap them in her lng, elastic body like a giant constrictor-snake and hold them from doing anyone else harm.  All of them seemd intent on mauling, shooting, stinging or something the crowd of anti-para rally attendees.  And each mauling or other attack seemed to spread the mutation to another person.  A theme was emerging, however.  The mutated men seemed to get bigger, with more frightening visages, and the some stayee their normal sizes, but got other mutations.  One of the mutated ladies was pitting some sort of sticky webbing-like stuff to pin normals so she could claw them and mutate them.  Another woman, shot by two bony-darts, was screeching, and things were beginning to break from the sheer volume.

Even though she hadn't had the opportunity to really get used to her new body yet, Fiona moved through the crowd with great agility, separating the mutants from the humans. It was terrible what was happening here... all she could do was try to minimize the harm that was being done. Her massive body coiled around the crowd of mutants, holding them in place.