Koda nearly ran for it, it was just one of those fight or flight situations where his brain freaked out and flooded his body with freak-out esque hormones. There were gunshots, there was blood, the lines between belief and doubt were so muddled as to be undefinable, and there was a great thundering coming towards them. He didn’t run though, he focused on the dying man instead, for the few seconds his attention counted for anyway, because in the next moment all was light and weightless.

He stopped breathing, unsure if that was his brain hitting maximum freak out and forgetting how or if that was a side effect of death-activated wormhole travel… but then he was out the other side and took a loud gasping breath as he collapsed into soft grass, staring down a peculiar purple flower, its petals dark except for the sprinkling of white dots like stars. It’s sudden appearance in his face was… intriguing enough to jar his brain into higher functions again, and he nearly cackled as he sat back on his ankles and got a good look at a whole other place- it had worked.

[i]It had worked![/i]

As the excitement built in him a razor sharp smile split his face. This was brilliant, there was so much to- a tug pulled his attention down. The dark tactile edges of the mask, so like the stubby arms of a small octopus, were tightening their grip on his fingers. Right, the Mask, the Semblance, the deal; he got to came here, and all he had to do was wear a magical mask.

As if anything was that simple. He looked up to the others, finding them orienting themselves, checking each other out, some were calming down from their freak outs, others not so much- and the officer was whole again, the attacker as well, and the suicide kid- and he noted at least one gun among them. [i]Great.[/i] He looked back down, taking himself in: he was as he’d been just before being transported, being rebuilt obviously hadn’t been the same as cloning, and thank fuck for that - he did [i]not[/i] miss boobs thank you very much.

He hadn’t heard the others’ words, except for some of that last shouted reprimand, so he wasn’t aware the Ghost Girl wanted to speak with them more, instead his attention finally managed to cling to the mask itself. It truly was like the piece of a domed helmet, he thought as he brought it closer to his face, inspecting the way the triangles it seemed to made of connected together at the barest of angles. It was shiny, like glass, but only barely see-through by its dark tinting. The edges misted and tugged at him with insignificant but noticeable force, giving him the impression it was at least as sentient as a plant, if not wholly sapient given it’s magical status.

There seemed to be some sort of circle beneath the center, about where his eyes would go. Was that some sort of interior lense? Was this mask made for a cyclops? Or perhaps it’s function was complex enough they only bothered to make the one big lens instead of two?

...and then his curiosity got the better of him, and the circle lit up with blue light, nearly blinding him in it’s intensity, and the mask’s short tentacles elongated and clutched his face. All at once everything faded to darkness, and it was as if he was drowning as something slick surged down his throat, energies flowing through him as if he was being electrocuted by the very air in his lungs- except there was no air in his lungs.

He coughed and gasped on the substance, but he made no noise by the way the mask had so vigorously smothered him. From the outside looking in it was obvious something was wrong by the way he jolted from his crouching position to stand and stumble backwards as if struck, and he clutched at his throat as if he could force it to open and take in air. Then, only a few seconds or so later, the mask was gone and he could see again.

But… he didn’t feel- he hit the ground on his knees and hunched over, painfully vomiting bright red all over pretty space-colored flower he’d admired before. The terrible feeling of something [i]wrong[/i] inside him faded a bit, but he wasn’t an idiot; vomiting blood was Not Good, and vomiting blood after getting his throat roughed up by a magical mask? Very Not Good. Or maybe it was fine, Koda didn’t know shit about magic, he just knew it didn’t feel very okay at the moment.

He put a hand over his mouth, as if the gesture would keep anything else from coming up, and noticed several not very normal things all at once: First was the way his hand seemed to be [i]smoking[/i], a somehow physical darkness was misting off his skin- and a quick look over showed that was true of every part of him, though muted a bit except for his hands. Second was the metallic smell and a slick feeling of his nose, which proved to be bleeding. And third was the echoing jumbled sensation of his brain, making it hard to focus on much of anything, but he suddenly felt like he was standing in a crowded city street with thousands of voices shouting all at once- all of them hazy and far away and maybe not speaking any language he knew- 

He vomited again, this time the same as the last, upchucking slick red liquid that could only be blood, but mixed here and there with swirls of black. This time when he looked up, sitting back from his hunched over position, he felt much lighter, though still in a very unpleasant way. He was decidedly not trusting anyone and their stupid magic masks ever again, working magical wormholes or not.

Unbeknownst to him there had been several other changes, powers he had yet to catch wind of, but also one last physically apparent change: his eyes were still brown, the irises at least, but the formerly white scleras were now dark red, an unnervingly inhuman look.

He didn’t look at the others, and in fact faced away from them as he sat back and held his stomach tightly and curled in on himself a bit, embarrassed that he’d actually threw up in front of them, much less threw up blood in what was a very concerning display of not being okay. Amazingly, the role of the scientist he’d embodied since birth, was now starkly absent as he tried to collect himself, not a single thought spared on calculations or observations or speculations, he just… needed a moment.