Chapter 2: Alteration

(Weaver)

"Where do you think you're going with that energy drink? It's nearly midnight."

"I'm going to try and take a look in Jake's dreams. We've been here for two days now and we haven't heard anything from him yet. I expected some furious phone call by now."

"How long is your range with that anyway?"

"No idea." Which was true enough, I really have no clue where my limit as a dreamweaver lies. As a telepath it's about 100 kilometers, and the derived skill to relay conversations breaks off at about half that. But the dream part, no idea. I had once reached my dad when he was on a business trip to Australia.

"Well, have fun. And try not to break anything when you're in there."

I grinned at his joke as I walked up to my room and sat on my bed. I put my back-up energy drink besides me and let myself drift off into darkness. I have once been told my eyes seem to glow white when I do this. I always found it a bit ironic given the complete and utter lack of light of, what I call, 'the space between dreams'.

The next time I opened my eyes, I was drifting in a familiar sea of infinite darkness. Slowly, tiny stars started to appear around me. Some close by, some far off, but every one of them, a dream and a person. I let myself drift on the waves, as the appearances became more frequent. More and more, until ... no more. Only one star remained.

I changed the currents of the black waves around me, guiding me towards this last star. Minutes ... hours ... days passed as the star slowly neared. It did not become bigger. It was the radiance, the amount of light that was my only measure of the distance.

Then it all came to a stop. A blinding bright light enveloped me as I made contact.

Slowly the light faded and other colors came into view. Still it took a few more minutes before I could get a bearing on where I would be and what Jake was dreaming about. I just hoped it would be nothing erotic, that's always awkward.

Slowly, a floor came into view, and a strange one at that. I don't really know any floors with ceiling lights in them.

Slowly the rest of the room came into focus. Then, I recognized my location: I was standing on the ceiling.

Oh well, it's a dream, anything is possible. As I thought that, my vision cleared some more. As well as my hearing, I could make out voices, familiar voices. It took me a moment before I recognised the room. It's not every day you get to see the great lecture hall from this view point.

Above me, or better, beneath me, students were making their way to the seats. That's when I recognised a slightly younger version of Jake walking down the centre aisle. As my grip on the dream tightened, my hearing sharpened, allowing me to overhear some heated discussion.

" ... dare you even be here!? Animals should be in a zoo, not in college! Now get the hell out of here, before I make you my first biology subject!" No doubt that was Jenny.

It seemed Jake was reliving a memory, introduction day in college to be more precise. It's not that uncommon to relive parts of your life in your dreams. Actually, for me it's a whole lot better than the generic chase dream.

I hadn't been able to be there that day in person, so I decided I could wait for a bit and see how the dream version played out. I had hear rumours about the 'legendary' first encounter between Jake and Jenny and was quite curious to know what really happened. And knowing Jake, the memory wouldn't be much different from reality.

Sure enough, Jake walked up to Jenny just in time to hear the last part of her ranting. And I recognised a mischievous smile on his face. This should be fun.

"Then please tell me why you are here?" Overly polite, making sure the girl got his point.

"Great, another animal. Don't you have something better..." She trailed off as she turned to see a 'pure' human standing behind her. It must have been quite a shock, but she recovered quickly. "How dare you call me an animal?! Do you really think they should have the same rights as humans?"

"First, I did not call you an animal. But seeing as you come to that conclusion, there has to be some truth to it." Ow, here come the big guns. he's having her insult herself. Well, at least I know why Jenny would love to see Jake killed. "Now, as for the rights. I think him being here has proven him to be intelligent enough to have the same rights as the rest of us."

Jenny had turned almost purple with the first remark, but had to refrain from a witty comeback when a teacher walked by and took a seat nearby. With some authority that close, she couldn't continue her verbal abuse, so she left it at that. For the moment.

Meanwhile Jake had seated himself next to the abused morf, who mumbled a hardly audible 'thanks'.

"No problem. Never thought a face could turn to so many colours in such a short time." Jake replied. "You shouldn't let yourself be bullied like that, not like she got any real power."

"Yeah. Unfortunately, she does." Jake and the morf turned back to see who spoke up. "You do realize you just committed social suicide?"

"Nope, why's that? Who are you anyway?"

"Name's Ariana, I used to be in high school with her. Her parents know some pretty important people around town. And she has a habit of taking over the popular and or purist groups wherever she goes."

"Ah. Not like I planned on joining those anyway. The weirdoes seem to have more fun." This caused the morf to cringe away in his seat. "Not in that sense kid. It's more fun to be a snowflake then a raindrop." That sums up Jakes view regarding purists and morfs pretty well. "Now, you going to introduce yourself or what? My name's Jake."

"W-Warren." He stampered.

"Nice to meet you." Trying to cheer up a potential friend. "If you don't mind me asking, what kind of hybrid are you exactly? The gills remind me of some amphibian, but I can't point out which one."

Warren seemed to take the hint, as he seemed to lighten up a bit. "Well, you're right about the amphibian part." He smiled mysteriously. "It's axolotl"

"Really?" Both Jake and Ariana were genuinely surprised. But it was Jake who found his wits back first. "Where did you pick that up, not like you can find those in every ditch."

"Got some spare DNA from my pet. An albino, which explains my lack of a tan."

Now, I'm pretty much used to Gills' tan. But to most people he's pale as a ghost. And the lack of hair doesn't help much either. I thought back to the first time I met him. He is nearly completely white, except for his large black eyes, which seem a bit unnerving to the people still looking at the package.

"Hey, you guys want to hang out once we're done here? I heard you can play games on the campus LAN, want to try and see if we can download something?" This surprised me, I always thought it was Jake who started our gaming team. Turns out it was Aaron, or Ariana as he was called back then.

From there the conversation started to die down to small talk and I noticed Mr. Anders coming up stage. Now, I was not planning on listening to another one of his speeches, so it was time to do what I came here for.

I started by fading out everyone present, one at a time. Don't want to shock him awake, now do we. I don't think Jake even noticed until I removed Mr. Boring-speeches and Gills.

He jumped when I appeared next to him and tapped him on the shoulder. "Weaver?! What is going on here? And how do I know that name?"

"Take it easy Jake, it takes a moment." Three, two, one...

"HOLY Crap ... How could I forget all that?" He looked like someone had slapped him in the face.

"Don't worry about that, its normal when you're reliving memories. Now, how are you feeling?"

"At the moment, pretty well, I guess. Felt like crap this morning ... Doctor diagnosed MORFS ... Was planning to have my parents call you when I wake up tomorrow..." He trailed a bit as his 'waking' memory returned. "Wait ... you shouldn't be able to do your dream-walking thing when you've just driven a car all the way to Austria?"

"I'm not, actually. And I think your sense of time is a bit off: its Sunday, maybe Monday by now."

"That can't be right." He said thoughtfully. "They said the pills should knock me out for about 18 hours, not three days. And I'm very sure I didn't down them all at once." He must have noticed the look on my face.

"Then I guess something did not go according to plan." I thought for a moment before I continued. "How about I update the rest of the gang on your condition, leave you hanging for another week or so and take another peek, let's say ... Wednesday, second week of Christmas break?"

"Sure, by then I see only three options: 1, I woke up and know what's going on. 2, I'm still out and there is something seriously wrong. And 3, I'm dead." The last was more of a joke than anything else, but I knew Jake did take it into consideration. I'd rather not think about that option though.

"Okay then, I'll leave you at it." I closed my eyes and let myself flow back to my own body.

(Daemon)

Beep ... beep ... beep ... beep...

This can't be good. I didn't open my eyes, hoping I was still dreaming. Too bad the beeping matched my heart rate perfectly. At least I'm in a hospital, so at least I'm being taken care of.

I heard someone walk into the room, then someone spoke: "Mr. and Mrs. Wilson."

"Yes." So my parents are here.

"Tests show your son is clear of stage 2 and he should be waking up between now and a few hours."

I figured I could use at least a few minutes to do a quick 'body' count, before they discovered the change in heart rate and respiration from sleeping to waking.

Let's see: No weird things on my chest. You never know with morfs. No obvious changes as far as I could tell, but I did feel kind of numb in weird places, but couldn't point out where. Guess I'll have to 'wake up' for that.

I slowly opened my eyes and was greeted with the smiling faces of both my parents and the doctor just behind them. The first thing I noticed was the long black hair hanging in front of my face. That's strange, I'm sure I'm dark-blond. Then again, who knows...

"Oh, Jake. Your awake, how are you feeling?"

"Not too bad. I feel like I've slept on my arms for a week, but for some reason my arms feel fine." That's when I first got a look at the rest of my body.

My skin was replaced with a smooth covering of small scales and my fingertips were topped with slightly curved black claws, about 1,5cm long.

I sat up, to notice I was sitting on something. The weird part was, I felt like I was being sat on as well. I tried to stand up, but was slightly off balance. I turned my head to see what morfs had stuck to my back, to have my full field of vision blocked with what seemed like a large patch of skin.

I was plain shocked and it must have shown, as my father tried to calm me down. "Easy Jake. Yes, MORFS really did a number on you. But you're still our son, no matter what you look like." I don't think it worked as well as he'd hoped, cause I could barely keep myself standing. "Now, would you want to hear the verbal version first, or should we get you a mirror right away?"

I had to think about his question for a bit, leaning back against the bed, but then opted for the verbal version. At least I would be slightly more prepared for the visual shock.

Apparently the doctor had been waiting for this moment, as he dramatically pulled up a list on his tablet and started off. "Welcome, young sir, to the land of morfs-survivors. The changes we have for you today are as follows: Your entire skin has been reworked to a smooth layer of tough and surprisingly flexible scales. You now have a reptilian style tail, at the place it was intended to be, of about a meter and a half in length. The giant patch of skin you just discovered is one of your two wings. Both are approximately two and a half meters long, which adds up to a wingspan of over five meters. And before you ask, yes, with some practice, you should be fully capable of flight." My question must have shown. He paused for a moment to take a breath, which allowed me to pick my lower jaw from the floor.

"Further: You now have butt-length Carbon-Nano-Tube reinforced hair. CNT reinforced nails, of which your finger claws appear to be at least partially retractable. And last but not least, your bones are now for more than fifty percent composed of CNT-fibres. As of this moment, you don't have any missing or extra internal organs." He paused again. "Oh, and almost forgot: Your eyes changed colour, but I'll let you see for yourself." He motioned to the back of the door.

I stumbled to where he pointed and noticed a full length mirror. How could I have missed that? I took a deep breath and looked up. The first thing to attract my attention were the eyes, not the wings, not the scales, but the eyes. They were completely cyan-like blue, with no whites and a slit shaped black pupil in the centre. It was like nothing I have ever seen before. I can't remember ever seeing an animal with such eyes and I wouldn't until much later. It was quite hard to pull my attention away from them. It was hard to even imagine they were indeed part of my new face.

Next up were indeed the wings. They were huge, though it seemed far less than the two meters the doctor mentioned, but that could have been because they had adopted a sort of comfortable resting position. They still felt kind of numb, but I guess any body part would have. I tried to spread them, but all I was able to manage was a sort of wiggle.

In the meantime, it looked like my tail had developed a little mind of its own. It didn't wag like a dog's or cat's would, but it did a good job at keeping me balanced. Guess I'm gonna need pants with tail-holes.

The claws were a bit disconcerting, the ones on my feet were just a bit below one centimetre, but the ones on my hand were nearly twice as long. The doctor had said I would be able to retract these, so I tried flexing about every muscle in the vicinity.

My eyes shot wide when the claws suddenly grew another one and a half centimetre. Apparently they had been retracted all this time. I couldn't believe my eyes. "These are more like little daggers than anything else."

I didn't realize I had said that out loud, but the doctor stepped in. "You should be very careful with those. According to the scans, the tips are nearly as sharp as a monomolecular blade."

Okay, that does it. I'll never need a knife again.

"I should tell you however, that there were some complications during the first stages of your change. When your skin finished its remodelling, you lost the ability to sweat, as well as every single body hair. This in combination with the strangely isolating properties of your new skin caused you to overheat and slip into a coma. Afterwards, we kept you under, in case there would be any other complications. There weren't. But I think I should warn you about wearing lots of thick clothes." I nodded again while letting the news sink in. "Now, if you're feeling up to it, I'll go get your release papers and give you some time to get dressed. Unless you plan on walking out in that gown." The doctor's jokes did help lighted the shock a bit and I nodded a go-ahead.

My parents handed me a stack of my own clothes: standard issue sweater and some jeans. Apparently my mother had already modified the pants for my tail, probably somewhere during my self-examination. And after a bit of arguing with my new appendage, I got it to fit through the hole. The sweater didn't go that easily, as there was no way I could get the wings to obey me. It eventually worked by forcibly folding them around my body, then keeping them there with some kind of bandage. To be honest, it didn't feel all that uncomfortable. Think I should do that once I got some more control.

I moved to spent some of the spare time in the bathroom, emptying my rather full bladder, when I made another discovery.

"FUCK!!"

My parents rushed to the door, which I, thank god, had locked. "Are you okay, everything all right in there?"

"Y-Yeah, j-just a moment." My manhood had somehow acquired a sort of protective sheath. Everything was still there, but when it wasn't needed, it would retract to leave very little visible. Basically I could prance around naked, without showing anything.

This will take some getting used to.

Once I regained my ability to speak, I answered my parents. "Don't worry, everything is fine. Just a little change around the crown jewels."

"Ow, you poor dear..."

"No, mom, nothing like that. It's all still there. Just a bit more ... uhm ... covered up." I wasn't planning on showing them this part of my new anatomy. Though they might find out sooner or later anyway, they were my parents after all.

I re-joined my family just after the doctor had returned, signed some papers. Then we left to make my appointment for a check-up next Tuesday.

The ride home was pretty uneventful though a little uncomfortable, as I wasn't used to sitting with a tail. My brother nearly freaked out when we got home, but I think he'll get used to the new me eventually.

The following few days were filled with me practicing my wings and getting used to my new claws. No-one got hurt, though I did spill an entire bottle of coke across the kitchen floor ... claws went right through the plastic.

Come Monday afternoon, I had pretty good control. I could hold the wings in one position without much trouble, but moving still took a lot of concentration. I had been musing about what my life would be like now, wearing nothing but a pair of modified jeans, when I heard a car park on the driveway.

I guess news travels quickly. I thought, as I recognised it as my uncle's.

From my room in the attic, I could hear my uncle come in, followed by a cheerful squeal. Hm, I guess Lisa couldn't contain her curiosity.

My parents had made arrangements with the rest of the family, that they would celebrate new year's eve at our place. They figured it would be a good time to re-introduce me, while still having some time to get used to it myself. Of course, the original idea had been for me to be in Austria. Planted face-first in a pile of snow, with a snowboard strapped to my feet.

But I guess little Lisa had exerted her 'Little-Girly-Parent-Manipulation-Tactics' again.

I was pulled out of my daydream by the sound of a small earthquake. Followed by a shocked squeal of: "AAH, MONSTER!"

"Aw, come-on. It's not that bad." I said as I turned around to face my bunny-girl cousin.