Everyone Has to Start Somewhere (Jullian)

[Jullian]

Jullian watched Richard morph. He'd spent so much time around morphers that morphing no longer looked disgusting to him. Instead he watched to see if there were any signs that Richard was controlling the morph or that the morph was going wrong. He didn't expect to see either but he was paid the big bucks (in this case, room and board) to watch out for these things.

The morph went smoothly enough and three minutes later Jullian was in the room with a husky. At least it looked like a husky to Jullian. He wondered if Richard had gotten the same DNA that Seiya had since he knew Seiya had a similar dog morph.

The dog began sniffing around and its nose led it right to Jullian's feet. It looked up at Jullian with its goofy, happy dog grin and Jullian couldn't help but smile back at it. He knew how happy dog morphs could be and he didn't begrudge Richard that happiness but he was glad when he heard Richard's voice in his mind.

"I didn't know I smelled like sun-tan lotion and, don't worry about it, if there is any morph you want to lose yourself in it's a dog. Happy aren't they?" Jullian levered himself into a sitting position on his desk and watched Richard explore his new body. "Take your time. Get used to it. I'm keeping an eye on the clock so you don't have to worry about getting stuck. When you're ready you can demorph. Then I want you to try the morph a couple of more times and then that will be it for the day."

[Richard]

Richard started picking up faint traces of other scents in the room. Only one was really strong as it reminded him of walking into a house that someone had just done laundry in. The other were really faint, so he assumed that it had been some time since anyone had been in this room for more than a few minutes at a time. He moved around the room to get a feel for the dog legs. His energy level had skyrocketed in this morph as he felt like he could run around the room for hours without getting tired.

He figured that he had spent enough time getting used to the morph for the moment, so Richard focused on his human image. The changes began with his tail shrinking his his body. <<This never gets boring does it?" His mouth had formed about halfway through the morph so he just switched over to speaking normally. It was a little fun to pretend that nothing had changed with how they were talking. It would probably make for a good magic act for someone when this was all over.

[Jullian]

"Not to me," Jullian said, watching Richard's demorph with attentive eyes. It went smoothly enough and he nodded a bit to himself. There was not really much he could teach people about morphing technique in the beginning stages. And even when he did get to the part of the class he just gave general guidelines that people implemented with varying degrees of success. He supposed it was just like anything else. If you had a talent for it you could pick up new skills fairly quickly. Other's had to work and would never be the most beautiful morphers. But, unlike with some other skills, no one could really fail at morphing if their body didn't reject the technology. You could be better or worse at it but everyone could do it.

That aspect of the technology was one of the things that made it such an effective weapon. It took relatively little training to get functional morphers as opposed to say, functional pilots.

"Do you want to try it again?" Jullian asked. "Do you think you could handle it if there were another dog in the room?"

[Richard]

Richard did want to try the morph again. It was really fun being a dog, and he wished there was a limit on how long he could stay in morph but there was. He guessed that it was like controlling an addiction or something. If someone does it too much, then they could end up being really screwed up in the head later on.

"I guess I won't know what I can handle until I try it out once." It was a class for learning how to control one's actions while in morph, so adding in another dog would just be an obstacle for his mind to deal with while trying to keep the dog's emotions in check. He wasn't sure what his dog brain would think, but it would be interesting to deal with.

[Jullian]

"Alright then," Jullian said. "I'll go first this time, then you follow after me." Jullian didn't have to close his eyes to morph but he always preferred to so he closed his eyes and began his dingo morph. His dingo was one of his earliest and most used morphs. He remember the day he'd gotten it along with the other LA animorphs. Everyone had chosen some sort of canine. Rian had gotten a wolf and Ember had gotten a dhole which wasn't actually related despite the name. Stevert had gotten his African dog and Kat had a coyote. Even Bane had gotten an aardwolf and Matt had given in and gotten a jackal. They had joked about how the faction was one large pack and had even spent some time running up and down the beach.

Since then Jullian had used the morph more times than he could remember. He'd run the sewers with it and he'd fought with it. He'd spent more time as a dingo than he'd spent as anything else and all of that experience fed into his morph and made it smooth and fast.

Yellow fur grew down his body in a wave starting from his hair. His ears rotated up and grew pointed as his nose extended into a canine nose, dragging his jaw and his teeth with it. His molars melted and sharpened as his front teeth grew long and sharp. His tongue extended and felt around the new teeth as he dropped onto hands that were quickly becoming paws. His spine extended and was wrapped in flesh and fur, creating his tail as his legs shortened up. His foot grew until he was only standing on his toes and his ankle moved up to take the place of his knee in the middle of his leg while his knees moved up until they were basically pressed against his body right below his hips.

His nails grew hard and the pads of his hands and feet thickened into things that could take long runs over desert ground. His eyes grew a bit dimmer and lost the ability to see color even has his ears and nose started feeding him with information that his human body was mostly unaware of. His ears swiveled this way and that as he sat down on his haunches and allowed his tongue to hang out of his mouth.

<<Alright, now you,>> Jullian said as he tail waved lazily behind him, sweeping the ground.

[Richard]

Richard watched as the more experienced morpher started to change at a much faster rate than he had. He couldn't wait to be able to morph at that level. At least through this morph, Richard could watch the complete transformation without getting the urge to look for a trash bin or something. He figured on bug morphs looked extremely disgusting when someone morphed into them. Richard wasn't really sure what kind of dog Jullian was morphing, but then again he didn't know what kind of dog he had morphed so it probably didn't matter.

When Jullian was done, he looked like a yellowish dog that may or may not have been bigger than the one that Richard had morphed. He was not really sure as he had not measured himself before demorphing. Jullian had told him that it was his turn to become a dog, so Richard focused on the image of a dog to start the process. It seemed to always start with fur appearing on his body. His bones began to shorten at the same time that his spine grew to be come a fluffly like tail. The bones in his arms and legs rearranged themselves to fit with the way that a dog's feet were.

The bottom half of his face extended outward to form the dog's muzzle with his teeth becoming rather sharp and pointy. His hands and feet became the dog's paws, which completed the majority of the morph. The last two things to happen were his eyes changed color and his ear shifted position. With his mind's main goal being done, it began to register the new smell in the room. The smell of another dog being present.

Being the newbie morpher that he was, Richard was letting the dog's natural instincts run free for a moment, which meant that he started to sniff the other dog curiously while walking circles around him. Then Richard wondered where the boy that was in here earlier was. He was hoping to play a game or something with him. He tried to replay the events in his mind that led up to this moment, which made him realize that he had done it again.

<< I think that I am going to need to practice getting control of the dog mind as soon as I am done morphing. It might save me from these awkward moments.>> There was no way that this could become any more embarrassing unless of course there was a camera in the room video taping what was going on then it could. If Richard's dog face could do it, he would have been as red as Rudolph's nose.

[Jullian]

<<Probably,>> Jullian answered, turning his head to look at Richard. It was a mostly human desire since humans relied on their eyes. To his dingo it was much more important how Richard's dog smelled than how he looked, looks didn't matter at all.

<<But we'll work on that as we go. Don't worry too much about it, it's still your first day.>> Jullian stood up and faced Richard, his own nose working overtime to pull as much information about the other dog out of the air as possible. <<Do you have control of the morph now?>>

[Richard]

Richard figured that Jullian was right and that he shouldn't expect to reach expert level of control on his morph on the first day. It would probably take years to even be sure that he was in control of the dog's mind instead of the other way around. <<Yeah, I think I have control of it now.>>

He wondered how the others had done with their first morphs. Richard figured that they probably had as much trouble as he did with them since they were all just beginning to learn. His mind wanted to let the dog play for a bit, but Richard figured that it would not be wise to give in to temptation as it might lead to a very weird situation.

[Jullian]

Jullian wagged his tail when he heard Richard's answer. It was the dog's way of expressing happiness and even Jullian could not completely suppress the dog's instincts, not that he wanted to. He found it was always best to work with the animals, not against them or without them. They knew how to run their bodies better than you did, especially at first, so fighting them wasn't helpful. He'd also determined that if the rest of the animal kingdom had been equipped with human intelligence humans probably wouldn't have been on the top of a food chain. Just more proof that evolution produced creatures not finished products.

<<So I think we're done for the day,>> Jullian said, still sitting down, tail wagging. <<Whenever you're ready to demorph you can.>>

((Thread is probably coming to an end after your next post. Do you want to start one of the other classes?))

[Richard]

Richard was sort of glad and sad that today's session was over, but then again the fun would not be done until he got tired of morphing. Since this would never happen, Richard was still going to be in a good mood. He decided that now would be a good time to morph or he might never do it as he liked being a dog. Richard focused on the image of himself and the changes started.

A few minutes later and Richard was back to his normal self, or as normal as he could possibly be. "Thanks for the morphing lesson, Jullian. See ya later." Richard opened the door of the room and headed back to his room to think about what he had just done.

(Sure thing)

[Jullian]

Jullian watched Richard go and felt a small glow of pride. It wasn't a burning passion or excitement. There wasn't much about teaching that was really heart pounding exciting, at least, not until the later stages of the training and even then, for the most part, the training was as controlled as they could make it so Jullian didn't worry. But there was a sense of fulfillment that Jullian was humble enough to live on.

Some of the people he'd known in this war had lived on emotions that Jullian found dangerous. Rian had seemed to live for duty and pain and Ember had lived for excitement and pain. Maybe the pain was what they'd had in common. Now all they had in common was a grave. The thought was unusually morbid but it also served as a reminder to him to be happy with the way things were. When something small went well he enjoyed it and that was enough for him.

"Your welcome," Jullian said to an empty room as he turned back to prepare for the next student.

((Seemed like it needed an ending on Jule's part. Hope you don't mind.))