Entry tags:

!completed gdoc, !log, [plot] freaky friday, lydia martin (needstoscream), malia tate (mathispointless), ~2025 may

Who: Lydia and Malia
What: Freaky Friday Freakout
When: first day of plot
Where: McCall pack house
Rating: low

Waking up without Vane wasn’t exactly unheard of, though it was much less common after they had talked about their feelings for each other. Waking up as a man, however, was entirely shocking. While Dyson was tall and muscular and generally a lot of good qualities she looked for in a man, she didn’t want to be the man.

Freaking out led her to accidentally shifting into a wolf - a whole damn wolf - which she’d admit to be grateful for because she didn’t think she could pull off the half-wolf werewolf aesthetic. However, she wasn’t sure how to un-wolf and her only thought was that Scott could make her turn back with one of his Alpha roars… assuming she was a werewolf (which unfortunately she wasn’t).

So a broken window later, a wolf was bounding down the street and heading for the McCall Pack House.

---

Malia had been at Rusty’s house for a while – and it was still kind of weird to think of it as his – and hadn’t been paying attention to what time it was, which meant she just so happened to be getting home right as the Lydia-wolf showed up at the house.

She faced the wolf, taking a step back not out of fear but a simple shifting into position. She’d fight if need be. She didn’t think she’d need to, something just didn’t feel like there was a fight brewing, but that didn't mean she wasn’t going to be careful anyway.

Well, what passed for careful with her. Didn’t always match up to anybody else’s definition.

“Who are you?” she asked, one of those questions that could be entirely normal but in Madison Valley really kind of wasn’t. At least, not always.

Not now.

---

Lydia realized her mistake when she realized full-wolf meant the inability to talk. She let out a whimper even if in her head it was more a frustrated sigh. She sat on her hind legs and looked at Malia for a moment with a blank expression, then she looked down and tried to paw the ground. It turns out paws move differently than arms and hands and she couldn’t exactly draw her name in the ground. She let out a huff this time, then laid down with her head on her paws looking like a sad wolf because she had no idea how you were supposed to communicate in this damn body.

---

Malia had no clue who this was, but at the same time? She was smart enough to at least try and figure it out. Someone that knew her, obviously. Not someone from Scott’s pack, not someone from the other pack or they wouldn’t look so miserable and irritated at the same time.

Likely not someone who was usually a were, because again the miserable look, which… opened a whole other can of worms that she’d worry about later. Problem at hand and all that.

“Okay, this is totally going to end up a game of twenty questions, but…” A shrug. “Nod your head or something. Assuming I know you, we’ll just go with that. Are you usually capable of this whole wolf thing?”

Might as well confirm a thing or two first, because she was already rolling over the exact who it might be in her mind.

---

Well, at least Malia wasn't attacking her. That was a good start. And she knew how to nod her head even if it looked a little awkward. At the question, she nodded. Then an idea came over her. It was a ridiculous idea and hopefully no one had a cellphone out recording her because she would deny ever doing it.

She put her head on the ground, put her paws over her eyes as best as she could, and let out what she hoped sounded like a scream, but as a wolf it was definitely a howl, but if you never practiced howling before.

---

Under any other circumstances, Malia might’ve laughed a little at the silliness of it, but the wolf was very clearly trying to communicate – and then there was the awkward howl, and something clicked for her. Or at least started to.

“Lydia?” she guessed. “Okay, so… uh, you wanna come inside?”

It feIt kind of weird literally inviting a wolf into the house, but hey. It felt Madison Valley weird, so it was really just kind of normal.

---

She huffed out and awkwardly nodded her head a few times. She felt relief flood her system. Not a lot of relief mind you - she still needed to figure out how to change back to a human, but at least Malia knew it was her.

She sniffed a little as she walked inside. It was weird knowing Scott wasn’t there with a single sniff. She headed for the living room, though she hesitated about sitting on the couch.

---

Malia waved Lydia up onto the couch – not like she actually cared, for one thing. For another, it was Lydia. Wolf form, but still Lydia, and Malia could be polite when she chose to be.

It was just that most of those times were reserved for interactions at work.

“Okay, so… what now?” Yes, she knew Lydia couldn’t answer, but she was more talking out loud than anything else. “Obviously something’s wrong. So how do I figure this out? What do we do now?”

A pause. “Yes or do, do you have any idea what’s going on?”

Look, Lydia was smart. Way smarter than she was. Even as a wolf, she probably knew more.

---

She huffed. Lydia might be a wolf, but she still had her attitude. Instead of climbing on the couch, she decided she had to do more charades. She wanted out of this form and Malia was one of the experts for that, especially considering she'd been stuck as a coyote for years. She did her best to jump onto the back of her legs like she was trying to stand. She did it a few times, kind of looking like a horse rearing up, before she was tired and laid down on the floor with a whine.

---

That attitude was strangely reassuring somehow – at the very least, it made it clear that this was still so very much Lydia.

Translating the awkward jumping took her a moment, however, and made her mentally facepalm. How had she taken this long to figure it out? All the same…

“Scott!” she called out, not sure whether he was actually home or not.

It was probably better for all involved if she just brought him into this, anyway.

---

Scott had been sleeping since he had a long night trying to figure out what Lycanrock needed. While the Pokemon was technically a werewolf (probably?), he still only spoke ‘Pokemon’ and it had taken a while to learn the Pokemon had been restless and needed to run. And then the run had been extensive. However he’d been aware of people coming into the home in the vague sense - his protective instincts kicking in - and so when he heard his name, he was awake.

He came down the stairs in shorts and tank top that he clearly just threw on along with some bedhead. “What’s -” Scott paused, picking up the scent of a wolf they didn’t know and then seeing the wolf in the living room. He looked from the wolf to Malia and then back to the wolf. “Everything…. Okay?” He was worried now.

Lydia sat up on her hind legs and made another annoyed sound that was a huff and a whine at the same time.

---

“Oh, everything’s fine, aside from Lydia being a wolf now.” Malia had a very “wtf I don’t even” look on her face as she said it.

On the plus side, she could almost guarantee it was solely because of Madison Valley. On the minus side, it’d happened in the first place.

“Figured this was one of those things you needed to handle,” she said to Scott. Because she could handle a good many things, and at least she’d gotten to the point of figuring out what was going on, but the rest of it?

Was definitely a Scott-level issue.

---

His brow furrowed as he looked at Lydia/the wolf because trying to picture Lydia as a werewolf was… a lot. It seemed wrong considering she was essentially immune to the bite since she was a different supernatural being.

“Oh… okay.”

This was going to slow for Lydia who huffed in annoyance and sat up again. She ‘barked’ at Scott which was kind of a growl, but she’d like to be able to talk again.

The growl made Scott’s instincts rise, but he tamped them down with practice. As is a very Scott McCall way, it took him longer than it should have to realize that Lydia wasn’t in wolf form by choice and then another moment to realize probably she didn’t want to be that way.

He nodded to himself. “Okay.” He looked to Malia, giving her a look just so she’d be prepared before he shifted his stance. He took in a deep breath, his eyes shifting to red and fangs descending as he let out a loud Alpha roar.

Lydia panicked at the feeling of involuntarily shifting, but she also knew she wanted this and this was some mixed message. So she leaned into the feeling of shifting until she was a tall naked man in the living room. Immediately her hands were on her hips and when she spoke, the man’s voice seemed a little more sassy than he looked. “Well that took longer than I wanted to. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to wash the smell of wolf off me while someone gets me clothes.” She strode toward the stairs. She still had a room here, but it wasn’t like the clothes she left here was going to fit Dyson’s body.

Scott watched the naked man go. “I think that’s Dyson.” Not a werewolf, but at least he could help with the shifting. He looked at Malia. “I guess I should check the network, huh?” He rubbed the back of his neck.

---

“Yeah,” Malia said with a nod. “You go check the network, I’ll go handle finding clothes for Lydia.”

Because she might not have been able to manage anything else outside of translating the issue at hand, but she could do this much. Plus, it was Scott. It was probably more important he deal with the other stuff.

Malia was perfectly happy to handle this much.

---