A Helping Hand

[Jullian]

If Jullian had been human he would have smiled. Since he was a monkey he smiled anyway, it just looked a bit odder. He was still a bit distressed that his first student seemed to have arrived to class, to the entire Academy in fact, unprepared, but it seemed like Dustin intended to catch up on lost time.

When Dustin held out the vial to him Jullian jumped onto his arm instead, running up to his shoulder. He used one delicate hand to grab a handful of Dustin's hair to steady himself. His monkey brain really wanted to check out Dustin's ears to make sure no delicious bugs were hiding in them but he stopped it from going that far.

His tail curled around Dustin's shoulder, further stabilizing him. <<I don't want you to morph until I demorph,>> Jullian said when he was settled. <<Some animals don't like others and even if a squirrel monkey and a flamingo would get along I don't want to be a distraction to you. But before we get started I have to ask you a question. Dustin, have you given some thought to what this technology will mean? To you specifically I mean.>>

Jullian leaned out and looked at Dustin's face. It was very close up and, if he'd been a human, he definitely would have been violating Dustin's spacial bubble. He let his tail go and scampered over to Dustin's other shoulder. <<When we demorph our bodies are rebuilt from out DNA. All injuries disappear,>> Jullian said, crawling a bit down Dustin's other arm, the one that was much shorter than it out to be. Jullian looked back at Dustin over his shoulder. <<It will heal you.>>

[Dustin]

Dustin tried to look at the monkey while it "talked" to him, but the best he could really manage were sideways glances. This was one of the oddest normal conversations he had ever had.

When Jullian asked if he knew what the morphing technology would mean to him, Dustin was about to answer. But then Jullian told him the answer and Dustin knew he had been way off. Dustin looked straight forward as comprehension struck. "Healed?" The vial fell from his hand and he was distantly aware of a shattering sound by his feet. But he wasn't paying attention to any of that.

Slowly Dustin looked down at what remained of his left arm. My hand will grow back? He stared at it for a long while until the weight of a monkey on his shoulder reminded him where he was. Then he looked at the mess on the floor. "Oh fffffudge monkey."

[Jullian]

Jullian hopped down to the floor. The drop would have equaled at least two or three stories in human terms but his monkey handled it without even a though. He landed next to the bloody spill on the floor and nimbly began searching around for broken vial pieces. His monkey was a little closer to the ground and could catch sight of the pieces easier.

<<It's ok,>> he said when Dustin almost cursed. <<It's just a small vial, it'll be fine.>> Jullian looked up at Dustin, the skull pattern of his fur making his eyes look all the darker, a small hand holding a little piece of glass. <<Do you want to try to morphing now or do you need a minute?>>

[Dustin]

Dustin put his forehead in his and and rubbed his brow. This was all too much to take in at was. He turned around to start pacing so he could think about Jullian's question, but almost immediately he turned back around with his answer.

"Yeah, I better do it now. I still haven't acquired anything and I'm guessing the blood won't stay good for too long when it's all over the floor." He kneeled down next to where Jullian was picking up pieces and stuck a finger in the spill. "No sense letting this stuff go to waste."

Dustin tried following the instructions Jullian had given him a few minutes earlier. It wasn't easy to concentrate with all of the thoughts that were going through his head, but eventually he was pretty sure he had accomplished his goal. He acquired a flamingo. He could now become a flamingo.

"I know you said it's okay," Dustin said as he stood up, "but I really am sorry I broke it. I don't imagine flamingo blood is easy to come by. Is there a cleaning rag or something nearby so I can clean up the rest of this mess while you demorph?" Dustin meant what he said, but he was only half-listening to his own words. He was still busy trying to get past the fact that he would be getting his arm back.

[Jullian]

<<Oh, um, no there aren't actually.>> He'd never had something spilled in his classroom before and grabbing paper towels was one of those practical habits he wasn't old enough to have picked up yet. He dropped his little piece of glass on a pile with the rest near the spilled blood and moved away.

<<We'll clean it up later. Really, don't worry about it. A little blood is not the worst thing in the world.>> Jullian concentrated on his own form and began growing immediately. For a moment it threw him off balance as his center of gravity sky rocketed off the ground but he'd been crouching as a monkey to avoid falling over and it served him well.

He concentrated on an image of himself with a human sized monkey tail and was glad to feel the rest of his body slowly become human even has his tail stayed where it was. His fur sucked back into his skin and his ears slid down the side of his head and shrunk into human ears. His ability to hear shrunk with them as well as his sense of smell as his nose reconfigured into a human nose. The pupils of his eyes grew smaller, allowing white to show around them and some of his fur became his eyebrows and eyelashes while his dark, wavy hair grew out of some more of it. His toes shrunk until they were human toes once again, vastly decreasing their dexterity but much better for helping him balance when he stood up, which he did as the last of the changes faded away.

He looked over at Dustin with a smile on his face and waved his tail at him before allowing it to be sucked back into his spine at last, finishing up the demorph.

Jullian stepped around the pile of broken glass and pool of blood and took a seat back on his desk. There was actually a chair behind the desk but he hardly seemed to use it. He still preferred to perch on things like the teenager he was. "Alright Dustin, it's your turn. Let's see what you've got."

[Dustin]

Dustin watched in awe again as Jullian demorphed. He doubted he would ever get used to seeing something so... alien. "That was pretty cool," Dustin said, as much about the tail as the whole process in general. "Now I guess I'll find out if I can do the same."

Backing up away from the spill, Dusting closed his eyes and pursed his lips in concentration. He did his best to finally calm all his thoughts and, with a bit of solid effort, managed to bring the basic image of a flamingo into his head. He thought and thought about turning into it, but he didn't feel anything happen immediately.

But then he felt a slight itch on his chest and he opened his eyes to see what it was. All down his front, an intricate feather pattern was etching itself across his morphing suit. Dustin's eyes widened as he felt his suit fuse with his skin and in an instant all the patterns erupted from his chest and became black feathers the color of his suit, but were quickly turning pink.

"Are you seeing this," he asked Jullian incredulously. He was doing it! He was actually morphing!

Up until this point the process had been pretty cool, but then it got weird. His whole torso pitched forward as his his hips and spine realigned to be parallel with the ground. He almost fell over, but managed to get a leg out in front of himself to keep his balance.

That's when he noticed his feet were flattening in his flip-flops. A couple of his toes were melding together and the others were becoming webbed. It was really disgusting to see. And as he watched, his feet only seemed to get closer, enhancing his view.

But then he realized his feet actually were getting closer. Or, more accurately, his head was getting closer to his feet. Dustin tipped his chin down to se what was going on and he promptly received a great view of his own neck. It was Huge! Almost as long as the rest of his body was tall. "Vis is abvhurd," he tried to say, but couldn't because his mouth was becoming too rigid. Soon it was a dark down-curved beak.

His whole body continued to become more petite and lighter by the second. Muscle mass was dissolving, bones were hollowing, and organs were realigning. But one part of him was adding mass. His left arm was growing from the remnants of an arm into a beautiful broad wing. He gave it a test flap as the last of the changes took place.

Then he noticed the other creature in the room. Dustin fanned his wings out in order to look bigger as well as to be ready to fly if he had to. But there was nowhere too fly. And no water. With his wings still outstretched, Dustin walked quickly toward the far corner of the room, always keeping one eye on the two-legged creature with no neck.

[Jullian]

Jullian watched Dustin's morph. It wasn't pretty but he hadn't really expected it to be. He was much more concerned that it was whole and that nothing went amiss. If Dustin had panicked half way through his morph it would have been a bit tricky talking him down and getting him to go one way or the other with the process. But Dustin handled the new experience well enough and even when he looked up in surprise his body didn't stop morphing.

Jullian leaned back and rested his hands on the desk behind him, slouching in a sitting position as he watched Dustin finish up. He'd never seen anyone morph a flamingo before but when Dustin spread his wings he found he was a bit envious. He began wondering what he could do with wings like that. Could he make the morph last and hold onto the wings until last? How would large, pink wings look on the end of his arms? Jullian looked down at his arms as he had the thought.

He looked back up at Dustin as the recruit walked to the other side of the room, eying him warily. Jullian waited a moment to see if Dustin would get control of the morph on his own but when no thoughtspeak voice reached out to him Jullian decided to try to reach Dustin instead. He hoped he wouldn't have to morph. Sometimes a thoughtspeak to thoughtspeak connection was the only way to bring someone back to themselves. But he didn't want to morph with a nervous flamingo in the room. The bird was pretty big.

"Dustin? Can you hear me? It's Jullian. Dustin? You're a human. You morphed a flamingo. Can you speak to me?"

[Dustin]

The creature didn't seem to be chasing him, so Dustin folded his wings to his sides. But he still kept watching the human. If it made a move he didn't want to be caught off guard.

Then the human made some weird, overly-complicated sounds. Was it a warning? No, a distant part of Dustin's brain told him. It's speech. What's wrong with you?

Slowly he began to become more aware of his situation. You are a person, Dustin. You only turned into a copy of a flamingo. You are not a flamingo. Dustin shook his head clear then tried to figure out how to respond to Jullian.

<<How do I talk without speaking like you were when you were the monkey?>> he asked. <<Oh. Never mind. You can hear me right? This is really weird, but I think I got this under control now.>> Dustin tested his claim by turning back around and walking calmly toward Jullian.

[Jullian]

Jullian smiled at him. "Welcome back then," Jullian said before he hopped off the desk. He landed easily on his feet but didn't move farther into the room since he wasn't sure if there were still broken glass around to step on.

"How does it feel?" Jullian asked, honestly interested. He'd never morphed any of the larger birds like the cranes and the flamingos. He wondered what the fear level was like, what the aggression level was like.

"Is it a good fit?" That was a bit of an esoteric question. What made a morph more of a good fit than any other morph. But some people reported feeling more in touch with certain morph and less in touch with others.

[Dustin]

<<I don't know if it is a good fit or not. Good enough, I suppose. I don't really have any experiences I can compare this to. But as for how it feels, it feels... weird.>> That was the best word he could think of to describe what it was like to have a flamingo's body.

Dustin quickly tested out moving a few of his new body parts before going into more detail. <<For one, these wings are like having two fans attached to my arms, and they don't bend the way I'm used to. Same with the legs. The knees are on the wrong side and they look like they might snap if I get hit by a strong breeze. My vision is a little wonky too.>>

<<But the weirdest thing of all, by far, is this neck.>> Dustin wheeled his head in a full circle for emphasis, starting at his full height and swinging it almost down to the floor then back up again. <<This thing is absurd! Necks are not meant to be this long and flexible.>>

<<Yeah, this morph is definitely weird,>> he stated again matter-of-factly. <<But I think I'll manage.>>

[Jullian]

"Good to hear it because you're going to be spending a lot of time in it over the next few weeks," Jullian said with a smile that was just a bit mischievous. He had scheduled a few days next week when all of the recruits would have class together instead of individually and the entire purpose of the day would be to spend as much time in morph as possible. Jullian planned on keeping an eye on the clock but, besides for demorph and remorph breaks, they'd spend their time getting to know at least one of their morphs very well, and hopefully two. He'd move on to bug morphs last, after they were completely comfortable with morphing.

"Well you have about an hour and a half left in morph. If you'd like to spend that time experimenting with the morph you can. Once you demorph I'm only going to have you morph and demorph once, quickly, at the end and then class will be over."

[Dustin]

<<I'll be spending a lot of time in this morph?>> It made sense, seeing as how this was a morphing class and all. Still, Dustin wasn't sure if he like that thought or not. But it was something he would just have to deal with regardless. He was an animorph for life now, so he might as well get used to morphing.

<<I guess I could do some experimenting though. Since I'm already in morph.>> Dustin walked around in a couple circles wiggling his neck around and flapping his wings randomly. He had no idea what he was supposed to do when testing out a morph, so he settled for this. But as he moved his wings, an inevitable question occurred to him. <<Mr. Jullian, can flamingo's fly?>> His insticts said he could so he really hoped the answer was yes.

[Jullian]

Jullian shrugged and looked exactly like the kid he was for a second. "Honestly I don't know but this isn't really the best place to try it," Jullian said, looking around the room. "It's cramped in here and the Academy is not the best place to practice flying anyway. It's one of the things I regret. We take you guys outside in a few days but we can't stay out there for long for obvious reasons. Most of our morphs aren't equipped to handle the cold and I doubt a flamingo can survive for long out there."

Jullian looked at the bird and a scene from Lion King popped into his head. "Actually Dustin, I think they can fly. At least, according to Disney animators. But you'll have to try it out for yourself, probably in the hangar bay."

[Dustin]

<<I may have to try that sometime then. Flying in the hangar bay, I mean. I can't say I'm really looking forward to going outside with this morph though.>> Dustin didn't think a flamingo would last too long in sub-zero temperatures. The legs would probably snap right off like icicles.

Dustin walked around a bit more. He jumped up onto the desk, bumped his head on the ceiling, then jumped down. <<Well I don't know what else to do, really,>> he finally admitted. <<I guess I'll change back now. That is, if it's alright with you. I unshapeshift the same way I morphed, only in reverse, right?>>

[Jullian]

"Yeah, you can demorph whenever you're ready," Jullian said, watching Dustin jump around in his new morph. "To become yourself again just picture yourself and you'll demorph." He didn't mention again what would happen when Dustin demorphed. Now that the moment was here Jullian once again found himself hoping that they weren't wrong. Nineteen's assurances that Dustin's injury were not birth related seemed awfully thin in the face of the disappointment Dustin could be facing. Then again, even if his arm had been injured from birth it still didn't mean that the injury was coded into his DNA.

Jullian stepped back, not really because he had to give Dustin room so much as the fact that he was now a bit nervous himself. He tried not to let that show but there was a worried look in his eyes as he watched Dustin walk around his desk towards the open part of the room.