He needed a break badly.
His editor had demanded the next chapter be in by Tuesday, and he had finished about half the work so far. Unfortunately, Tuesday was coming in five hours, and writer's block had not been friendly to the aspiring author. He was a fresh graduate from UCLA, an English major, naively assuming that a love of reading and writing fanfiction foretold a promising career as a novelist.
The most recent project he was working on, the one shown on the laptop screen just then, was supposed to be a great, epic tale, his magnum opus. He wanted it to be about… love, perhaps? Maybe some violence… He gave the piece of loose-leaf he was scribbling on an angry crumple; what was this chapter supposed to be about, anyways? And for that matter, what did he know about love?
His eyes drifted away from the PowerBook perched on his desk to the rest of his tiny Los Angeles apartment. The one room was barely big enough for him to breathe.
I'll finish it, he thought to himself (for there was no one else nearby for him to think to); I'll just pull another all-nighter. And after that deliberation, he rose from his creaky chair, closed his laptop, and walked over to the window. With a huge screech of rotten wood and rusty metal, he opened the only window in the only room of his apartment. Right now, it's time for a break.
He closed his eyes and concentrated. The image of a hawk appeared in his mind. It was a Cooper's hawk, actually. After he had found it, he spent the night trying to identify it using Wikipedia. He considered himself to be extremely lucky; most people in the city couldn't find anything less common than a pigeon. And only the brave (or stupid) considered the zoo a feasible source of DNA. The security at a zoo seemed almost as tight as that at an airport – another attempt by the city to curb the proliferation of gangs.
The floor of his cramped apartment rushed up towards him as he shrank to the size of a small dog. He had been practicing his morphing every night since one of his friends had given him the ability to morph, and while he couldn't control what part of him changed first, he liked to think that he had gotten at least a little bit faster in the month since he'd touched the Escafil device.
Where had this friend gotten hold of a blue box? He didn't know, and he certainly knew better than to ask. The morphing cubes were number one on the list of contraband, and for a civilian to get a hold of one meant that someone had broken numerous international and interstellar laws. Almost as illegal was possession of the ability to morph.
Of course, that didn't stop people from growing wings and sprouting feathers. He watched a detailed pattern of feathers spread quickly down his arms, now growing broader and forming a pair of wings. He flapped his arms and tried to life himself off the floor. He wouldn't be doing anything too dangerous tonight, just enjoying an evening flight around the city. Still, if he were caught… He'd go to jail so long as the judge was feeling particularly generous; otherwise they could turn him over to the Andalite authorities. He'd had some… acquaintances… who had suffered such a fate, and they were not to be envied. Even to call them friends would endanger his own freedom. As far as anyone knew, they were never seen again anywhere on the planet.
His morph was almost finished, and his bones suddenly emptied into straws to prepare him for liftoff. No, he really needed to avoid doing anything that could get him arrested. Just a safe, inconspicuous flight up and down the thermals to clear his head and cure his writer's block.
Now in the body of a hawk, he fluttered up onto his chair, up onto his desk, and finally up onto the windowsill. He poked his head out the window and examined the street corner for anyone of the law-enforcing variety. With no one in sight, he defenestrated himself deftly into the warm dusk.
A turn to the right would lead him towards the usual hideout. He didn't want to admit it, but he had to consider himself a part of the gang that met there every night. All his friends hung out there, sometimes fought other gangs, and sometimes even fought each other. They were the ones who had presented him with the power. They included some of his friends from college, and even one person that he had known since high school. And yes, he had participated in his fair share of fights with them.
Instead, he veered to the left. It was a less familiar part of the city, but at least there was little chance that he'd run into someone who would recognize him. He just wanted some time all to himself. Plus, he really should've been thinking about how he was going to finish that chapter…
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I own naught but my use of the subjunctive; long may it live.