Of course, what he was going to have to do next was probably going to be a lot more difficult than this: he was going to have to demorph, since it was impossible to acquire DNA when you were already morphed. That was why he'd picked this spot, so far from the press of the crowds; and that was why, now that Tobias had offered it, he was going to wait for the hawk's distraction before he started demorphing.
Turning to take in the crowd, wanting to know when it would be safe for him to demorph, he saw them in far greater detail than a human would have ever been able to. It was almost like he was standing right there in front of them; he could see the color of their eyes, the various foods that some of them were holding, and a loose button on one man's shirt. Of course, it went without saying that no one in that crowd could see him in anywhere near the detail that he could see them.
For one thing, he was a pretty small bird; for another, they were all limited to human senses.
All right; no time to go waiting all day; let's get this done, Jake reminded himself, feeling more grimly determined than he had in awhile. Demorphing, Jake wondered briefly how long it would take the rhino he was sitting on to react to his presence. It would eventually, he knew, since there was no way that anything with senses would fail to notice someone demorphing right on top of them even if they didn't know what, exactly, was happening.
He gained weight swiftly, as his hollow bird-bones were replaced by comparatively-denser human bone and his muscles and general body-structure were altered to become human once again. He wondered for a moment just what the rhino he was on would do, once it became fully aware of his presence. Heck, he wondered what would it would do when it noticed him morphing the way he was doing.
He wondered if the rhino would throw him to the ground and impale him with that giant horn he was so clearly aware of, or if it would wait until he'd fallen off its back and then trample him.
Putting those thoughts out of his mind, since his morphing has started to slow down with his concentration split the way it had been, Jake pictured his human body all the more clearly. There was no time to wonder what would happen, no time to wonder if the people watching the rhinos in their habitat would see what he was doing here, no time to wonder what Tobias would come up with to distract them. No time even to think about what the others might be doing at the Fenestre mansion even now.
No time for anything but to focus on his own, human form so that he could regain it all the faster.
He could, however, take notice of something that was happening within his field of vision: something like the way that Tobias had just swooped down and snatched a little girl's pink puff of cotton candy right out of her hand. Or like the way he carried it back up into the air with him and started swooping and diving around with it, even letting it go for a few seconds so he could catch it again. Or the way the crowd laughed and pointed up at him as he did all of that.
He could notice that, he just couldn't think about it.
Turning away from the outside of the habitat, where he could faintly hear the laughter and applause of the crowds, Jake refocused his attention on his own situation. He knew that no one would be watching him, not with the way Tobias was holding all of their attention, but that didn't mean that he was completely out of danger. There was still the rhino to think about.
The rhino whose back he was sitting on. The rhino who was so much bigger than either his falcon or human forms. The rhino whose DNA he was planning to acquire for just the sort of traits that could easily get him killed under just these circumstances.
Just then, the rhino did indeed notice what Jake was doing. Snorting more loudly than Jake had ever heard something else do before, the animal broke into a trot. Jake, deprived of both his hands and talons by the caprice of the morphing process, was thrown from its back by even that comparatively small motion.
The rhino, towering above him like a small truck, bent its horned head down to sniff at him. Having something so dangerous so very, very close to his vulnerable, demorphing body, forced Jake to swallow harshly with his suddenly-dry throat. He'd never been this close to such a large, dangerous animal before. Well, almost never, he mused with a bit of dark humor, thinking back to his encounter with the Siberian tiger that had become his preferred combat-morph.
Still, this was the closest he had gotten while not-quite-demorphed.
Once his hands had reformed, Jake reached out and grasped the base of the rhino-horn sticking out so invitingly toward him. He kept the side of his hand in contact with the rhino's flesh, just in case the acquiring didn't work on dead cells like hair or fingernails for some reason. Jake knew that his only hope for acquiring the rhino without getting himself killed in the process was for the animal to fall into the same kind of trance that most of the others did when they were acquired.
Unlike the shark that they had all acquired; he could still remember the way that thing had thrashed in Shara's arms as she had held it out for all of them.
Still, once he'd begun the acquiring process, the rhino became as docile as he'd ever seen any animal become. He was glad for it; the last thing he wanted to deal with was a startled rhino. Once the new DNA-pattern was fully integrated into his store of morphs, Jake backed slowly away from the rhino as he began to morph into his falcon form again.
That one might still be in the acquisition-trance, but none of the others were, and it was really best that he get as far away from them as he could manage before they began to come his way. Or before the one he'd just finished acquiring woke up.