The Change, part 5


KAREN

I sat up, looking at my hands and feet. I no longer slept properly, since Xana had opted to do my extreme transformations by night. Well, I thought, at least both my hands and my feet will be fully scaled before the day is out. Right now, they look really strange without their scales.

"Aelita, tell me you remembered to wear your swimsuit to bed."

"I did. Um…could you help me with my wings?"

I looked up. Aelita was fighting to get large, pink-scaled bat-wings to close using her hands.

I couldn't help it; I laughed. "Aelita, those wings are a part of you: you can't just push them shut with your hands like some sort of book." I held out my arms and demonstrated what I meant. "Your wings are designed just like your arms, with the majority of them being fingers. If you want them to close like I was managing to do, then you need to move them like this," I pulled my elbows back against my sides, putting the rest of my arms perpendicular to my sides, "this," I bent my elbows all the way up, so that my hands were near my head, "and this," and I bent my fingers down more or less over my hands.

"Um…okay." Aelita closed her eyes and focused. Then, slowly, her wings stretched up and out, nearly touching the walls. From there, they bent onto her back, upper 'arm,' 'forearm,' and 'fingers.'

"Good job! Now, you'll have to keep semi-thinking about them staying that way for at least a little while, since the first position they were in from growing out of your back was just flopping about loose. Believe it or not, wings are items of habit."

"Well, then let's go find Ulrich and help him out." She was assuming that Ulrich would be having trouble.


At the breakfast table, I saw that Odd was leaning over and looking down at his feet. So that was what had changed on him; I wondered. Aelita was right, by the way: Ulrich had no shirt, and was fighting with his own brown-scaled bat-wings.

"Nice wings, Aelita," Yumi greeted us.

"How did you get out of your room, Ulrich?" I asked while Aelita thanked Yumi.

"Odd had to help me. Could you show me how to close these things?"

As I was talking him through the wing-folding process, Jim walked in.

I immediately smelled a rat. Generally, Jim avoided the dragon-kids during mealtimes. Especially Odd.

"Hi, Jim. What's up?"

Jim didn't answer right away. He was busy staring at Ulrich's wings. Wait…weren't Aelita's wings the more impressive ones, since they were pink?

"Jim?" I asked slowly, "Is there something inconvenient about Ulrich getting his wings right now?"

"Well, yes. Stern? Ah…your father's here to see you."


ULRICH

"WHAT?!" I yelled, my wings flopping open again. Before anyone else could say anything, I dashed to the door, flapping my wings frantically.

I actually don't remember opening the door. I think Sissi opened it, and I knocked her over. Either way, I vaulted into the air and…didn't come down.

I heard Karen yelling behind me. "Ulrich, you're doing great! Now, don't try turning, just glide slowly towards the ground and hit running!"

Following her instructions resulted in my landing hard and falling flat. Yumi and Sissi both ran over, along with Karen, asking if I was okay.

"Uh…did I just…."

"Fly?" Karen finished. "Yes. Nerves tend to set off First Flight faster than anything else." She looked past me and stiffened. "Um…has anyone told you that you look like your dad?"

Something about the way she asked that… "What makes you think so?"

"Because there's this man staring at you, and he looks like you probably would in a decade or so if you were kept isolated."

Oh no.

I looked up. Bingo: my dad was standing there, staring at my new look.

"Ulrich? Would you care explaining this?"

"Ah…not really."

Karen stood up, getting this defiant look I'd never seen before. "Mister Stern, I presume? This change is taking place on your son because of a virus he'd contracted from an old factory. He had been considering suicide because of your treatment of him, and probably would have done it if Yumi," she waved at the black-haired girl, "hadn't sent me to stop him."

What?

"As it is, now Jeremy will be assisting the school nurse in figuring out how to cure both of us of this virus. I sincerely doubt that a solution can be found before Ulrich changes completely into an animal, so if you'll excuse us?" And she heaved me to my feet and led me off, with Sissi and Yumi following us.

I looked back. Dad wasn't following us; he was just standing there with this shocked look on his face.

"Karen, where did you learn to lie like that?" Yumi asked.

"No clue. I was thinking on my feet, trying to figure out how to tell him part of the truth without implicating Ulrich's friends as the cause."

"Ulrich?"

I winced, closed my wings, and shrugged off my female escort. Turning around, I asked, "What is it?"

"I…want to apologize for my high-handed treatment. Of you and your friends, I mean." He looked very nervous. Understandable, seeing as I had claws now.

I felt a whack on one wing. Karen was trying to cue me on an answer. What should I…oh. Dad's saying he's sorry, so of course I…

I held out my hand. "I'll forget it if you stop calling my friends losers."

Dad hesitated for just a moment. Then he straightened his shoulders and shook my hand. He looked surprised at my grip.

"Ulrich, do you think you're going to keep this strength when you're cured?"

I grinned, glad I didn't have fangs yet. "Maybe; who knows?"


AELITA

I went to the pool like Karen had asked me to before running after Ulrich. Karen was already there with Ulrich.

"Okay, now I'm going to teach you two how to fly, and to land properly." That last one was said with a smirk at Ulrich. "The proper beats that you should use with those wings are a butterfly-stroke kind of move: down, up, and forward, keeping the webbing full on the backward stroke and then closing it on the forward stroke. Go on – try it."

I concentrated on moving my wings in the manner she wanted me to. Upon moving my wings down with the webbing open, I felt my feet lift off the floor! "Oh!"

Karen grinned at me. "Lifting, isn't it? That's the whole point. How are you doing, Ulrich?"

Ulrich was trying a few wingbeats by himself. "This actually feels like what I was doing earlier."

"Yeah, you were doing it right, amazingly. The next thing you're going to learn is gliding from a height and landing properly, which is why we're here." She pointed at the high diving board. "One of you is going to climb up there and jump out, keeping your wings stiff and your webbing full. When you've glided across the pool, start moving your wings as if you're trying to clap them in front of you. That move – back-winging – will start moving your upper body backwards so that you can get your feet under you, and it slows you down so that you can…land safely." She smirked at Ulrich again when she said that.

Ulrich ignored that, and instead tried back-winging while on the ground. "Whoa!" He fell backward and hit the floor.

Karen laughed and held out a hand. "I could have told you not to try that unless you're in the air. But that's the way you do it. Who wants to go first?"

I held up my hand. "I'll do it."

Karen didn't actually say anything to acknowledge my volunteering; she just waved at the diving board.

I'll admit to being nervous about climbing up there. I mean, I wasn't going to be jumping into the water below the diving board – I was going to glide through the air away from the diving board!

Poised at the end, I took a deep breath, spread my wings, and almost tipped off the edge.

"Whoa!"

Startled, I jerked back up.

"You need to give yourself more thrust than that! You were about to belly-flop in the pool!"

Oh. Thanks for telling me, Karen. I can do that. I jumped off the edge, keeping my wings spread and stiff.


KAREN

Everybody learned something that day. Ulrich learned how to fly, and Aelita learned how to glide.

What did I learn? I learned that I was never going to become a teacher; I went too fast in my own curriculum, and I wasn't patient enough with my friends. I also learned that it's awfully hard to stand still when there are scales growing on one's feet.

Well, at least they're getting pretty good at landing with the instructions I gave them. Tomorrow, I'll teach them the art of turning. It's easier with a tail, but they can do it. I should know: when I was turning into a dragon, I got my wings before my tail, but I could still turn in mid-air. I just hope Xana leaves my hips and shoulders alone long enough for me to teach them that.

A/N: Yeah, two out of three are learning how to fly. I'm going to skip over the next "scale-up" for the three warriors -which is when Ulrich and Aelita get scales on their faces, Odd gets scales on his shins, Karen, yes, loses full human mobility in her hips and shoulders, and the two flyers learn how to turn - and go straight to the next interesting thing.