Black Sheep/Synopsis

## Black Sheep

Going back a few hours to the end of the battle against the soul parasites, and Joe is standing naked before his friends, bleeding from lots of little cuts, and he says, "We should talk."

Shocked and unable to speak, the whole rest of the band and Phoebe stand there watching Joe with wide eyes and some with gaping mouths. Charlotte is biting her lip. Feeling exposed, Joe tells the others that before talking he needs to find some clothes. A short time later, Joe is at his locker putting on what he'd stashed there earlier. He starts telling the story with how until a couple of weeks ago, he thought he was just a normal kid; awesome but normal. But he's not.

He's a chimera. He's supposed to be a guardian of Nature, and he can change into animals, something they'd just seen. He skips ahead, telling them he wanted to tell them, but Corkindale, the new janitor at school and also a chimera, told him it would put everyone in danger, because now that he has his power,    things are going to be coming for him. He finishes up saying that's most of it, then he waits for their reactions.

Fletcher calmly says it's cool.

Paulo frets about more stuff coming, and that they need to get better organized, and then he notices his laptop is missing.

Charlotte enthusiastically declares this is the best day of her or anyone else's life.

Phoebe asks contritely if Joe's mad she told all of them about him. She says in her defense she thought they were all going to die.

Joe looks to Sean for his reaction. Saying Joe could have told him, he turns and walks away, his feelings clearly hurt, and leaving Joe conflicted. On the way out of the building, Paulo tells them he has so many questions. Charlotte tells him they all do, except Fletcher, but he confesses he has questions too. Joe tells them they can talk later, but now they need to get out there and calm everybody down. He admits it feels good to talk about all this. Then he tells them he's supposed to beat some Big Bad, someone named…─────────────────────

Back to present time, and Joe has just realized *he* is Ralabast. Looking very pleased and somewhat proud, Kagan is happy that Joe has made the breakthrough. Naked and on his knees, Joe holds his head in his hands, denying what he'd learned. Kagan tells him he's almost there, he just needs to stop fighting it. This is what he is, what he has always been. Joe desperately shouts at her to shut up, but she won't, she can't comply. She says he's needed, and truthfully, she missed him. Joe asserts himself as Joe Gomez, but Kagan tells him he's older than mankind itself, and reminds him he's Ralabast. The first and strongest of them all. The one never reincarnated. The most powerful weapon Nature ever created. Sitting on her calves beside him, she tells him he can't fight this, that Ralabast is an ocean, a million years of memories, of life, a flood of experience.

She continues hammering at him, telling him a teenage boy can't stand against that. Corkindale was a fool to try and cruel. Looking at her, he says it was all a lie, what Corkindale told him. Kagan concedes it probably wasn't. Corkindale is cleverer than that, too clever for his own good. It was likely the truth, from his point of view. She is here to give another. Joe asks her about the soul parasites, that she sent them. She claims it was to remind him what he is, who he is. He couldn't be told, he had to see. And he does see. Leaning into him, she puts her hand to his face gently and tells him to come back to her.

Joe's mother with his father beside her, calls out to Kagan, demanding the bitch take her hand off their son, now. They've armed themselves with tools as weapons they found in the car. Kagan looks at Joe's parents and announces they don't need them anymore anyhow. Rising from her knees, she begins shapeshifting and tells them that now he has returned, they are all at an end anyway. That this is mercy, a final kindness and farewell for Joe Gomez. From the ground, Joe tells her no. Sitting up in a squat with his eyes suddenly glowing blue, Ralabast's spirit rises in Joe, and he tells Kagan that she will stop. As fast as she had shifted, his voice pulls her back, and she gasps Ralabast's name, hoping he has risen. Ralabast continues, saying she will stop and she will go, then his spirit withdraws … and he is simply Joe again.

Unable to defy him, Kagan admits it was too much to hope for it to be easy, no matter how much she wanted it to be. She assures him he will come back to her. She reaches out to the sky and huge bat wings form from her back and arms, and her body thins and stretches. Flying off, she gets in one last word. When he is ready to hear the truth, call, and she will come. Once again, Joe's parents are left totally dumbfounded with their mouths hanging open.─────────────────────

A Victorian manor with a double-pot chimney and a turreted tower sits behind a tall privacy fence somewhere in Walker's Point. The devourer posing as a high school student enters the house and announces she's home. She lays her purse on a table by the door, and a voice answers from the depths of the house saying she's down here. The girl opens a door built under a staircase that leads to a staircase to the basement. The girl reports that the Battle of the Bands was interesting, passing along the information that the parasites had attacked the boy. As a by-the-way, she mentions that she's alone.

Pushing through into a room in the basement, this one looks like a charnel house. There's what are obviously bloody body parts from some not so obvious creatures scattered on tables all around. A gently smiling old woman, her gray hair in a bun and round glasses perched on her nose, tells the young woman that you can't be too careful. She has on a black rubber apron and rubber gloves and is wielding a bone saw with her right hand. She asks if the boy was able to fend off the parasites, even as her hair darkens to brown and all signs of advanced age fade away. The young woman answers her no, he was able to kill them, two of them, anyway. The older woman, excited by the news, says this is just in time. Someone they call *Mother* is out for groceries, but this one is almost used up. Pointing at the table, the young one asks if the other left some for her. The older woman laughingly tells her she always saves her the best parts. On the table is a dead human-chameleon hybrid: a chimera.