Chapter 2 – Gorillaz
"Whoa, whoa, watch out!"
"What the––who let that thing out of the zoo!?"
"Hey, watch it––!"
Not even sure where the hell I ran to, I dashed through the streets of Midtown like a rhino. My humongous body, awkward and clumsy, felt really weird to move around in. Trying to run on two legs just didn't seem right and kinda hurt, but running on all fours… I didn't know how to do it. That, plus the fact that I was a fucking gorilla kept looping through my head and making me freak out even more, combined to produce one ape-shaped wrecking ball that accidentally knocked pedestrians aside, broke restaurant fences and tables, and basically caused mass chaos.
I almost rammed right into a baby in a stroller getting pushed by their mother, and I scrambled around them. Nearly sliding out onto the street with my immense momentum, I had to dig my feet and hands into the cement. I stopped short of the street, but it still scared one driver in a white Porsch so badly that they swung out into the other lane, and accidentally hit a yellow oncoming car on the side.
Horns blaring in the air, plus the sounds of the crash, alarmed me even more. I scurried backwards towards the sidewalk, breathing hard. Five hundred pounds of hefty, muscley gorilla body slammed into the glass wall of a Starbucks, shaking the glass. I flinched and spun my head around, staring.
Gaping back at me was the same apeish face I'd seen before. Well––granted, humans were apes due to how evolution worked, but… You get it! Less human! It was like my consciousness had suddenly been taken out of my body and slapped into Donkey Kong's by some crazed mad scientist. Black fur cascaded down my body. My nose sat flat on my face, almost like someone had taken a bat to it and smashed it inward. My huge cranium stood tall and ovular. I looked like nothing short of raw, natural power.
"No," I whimpered, but it came out as nothing more than a grunt.
What in the hell caused me to look like this? How was it even remotely possible for a human being to suddenly transform into a being on a completely different evolutionary branch than them? This fucked with everything we knew about biology on so many levels! Seriously, what caused this!?
As I sat there, heart hammering away, I felt something poke my fur.
"Big monkey!" a tiny girl's delighted voice said, and I blinked, gazing to my right; a tiny little runt of a girl who couldn't be more than three year old absolutely beamed at me.
"Sweetie, don't do that!" a tall woman who must've been the girl's mother chided her. She wore a white designer shirt, pink lipstick, and had dirty blonde hair. She definitely had that uber-rich feel I'd grown accustomed to as the grandson of the head of a popular tabloid magazine/webshow pandering to the anti-superhero crowd. "It might have rabies! Come on, let's go get that water you wanted."
"Well, screw you, too!" I growled back, though of course no words were actually said.
Then I blinked, because something about that conversation happened to spark a line of thought. My literal monkey brain realized––
Wasn't the spider that bit Peter something that came from Norman Osborn's experiments?
And as a corollary to that, I suddenly recalled the oddly sweet water I'd drunk in Osborn's office. ...No way. No way, that couldn't be––Why would Norman Osborn give me a serum that contained some sort of weird evolution-breaking bullshit!? Unless… Maybe it was some sort of accident caused by my coughing as I'd asked for the water?
...Huh.
I'd gotten my powers completely by accident.
I was so worthless I couldn't even get my powers intentionally.
Sounds about right for me.
I sat there, completely unable to think of what to do next, for several moments. Then I heard, distantly, a vehicle park nearby, and someone walk up to me. Multiple someones, actually.
"Holy shit, I really didn't expect this call to be real," someone muttered. Then, louder: "Here, gorilla, gorilla… Heeere, gorilla..."
Totally confused, my head swiveled in the direction of the voice. A few guys dressed in Central Park Zoo zookeeper getup stood there, eyeing me carefully. Their caution was definitely warranted; after all, I stood at about one and a half times their height, and my body was toned in this form. I'd stopped a car with my bare hands. Speaking of which, something tells me that isn't quite something gorillas could be capable of. Huh, I wonder if…
"Heeere, gorilla, gorilla…!" the guy beckoned me again, swallowing a bit and carefully stepping towards me. He set down a plate of what looked like bamboo shoots and berries. My mostly vegetarian monkey stomach rumbled at the sight, but something told me they were trying to trick me and capture me to take me to the zoo.
Someone clearly must've gotten the wrong idea and thought I was an escapee.
Wanting none of that, I swung my huge, hairy butt around and hauled ass.
I had to get home, now.
"Hey!" the zookeepers squawked indignantly.
I sprinted down the sidewalk as hard as I could. Which turned out to be surprisingly fast, actually. I absolutely whizzed by all the other people on the streets, who I forced to dive to the side in order to avoid me. Camera snaps followed me a few times, and I figured my picture would be all over the internet come morning. Headline: Backpack-Wearing Gorilla Tears Through Manhattan, Knocks Over Street Vendor Somehow Shittier Than the Last. Truly sensational.
As I ran, out of the corner of my eye I happened to see the vehicle that the zookeepers had been driving following me in the glass window of the buildings next to me.
Shit.
Not today, fuckers!
Ahead of me was a traffic intersection. The cars to my left were all idle, waiting for the light to turn green, and a bunch of traffic ahead of me filled the lanes. I couldn't get through it—what about getting over it? I turned on the ol' jets even more, and just as I reached the edge of the sidewalk, fucking leaped.
A part of me, the part that had self-preservation, thought, maybe this wasn't a good idea.
The reckless side of me pointed out that I'd already done it, so second thoughts were kind of late. Also—I jumped high. My feet easily cleared the cars. Hell, my head went over the height of the traffic lights. I landed on all fours, tumbling to the floor in a heap of smelly gorilla. I'd somehow cleared all three lanes of traffic. Whoa.
Adrenaline racing through my veins, I took off again. At least I'd managed to gain some distance from them by forcing them behind a stop light.
I rounded another corner, and was halfway down it when I looked over my shoulder and saw the zookeeper's truck behind me again. Fucking hell, dude. These guys weren't letting go, huh? Well, sorry, zoo guys, but I have ZERO intention of letting you take me!
I booked it through the city, the zookeepers fighting through traffic but still managing to keep on my tail. As I ran, I had the thought that maybe I could lose them in the river? With this goal in mind, I headed towards the East River, and about ten minutes later, found myself at the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. Horns blared at me as I ran over the walkway next to the road, and turned my head to check if they were still behind me.
Yep. They we—why was my arm pressing into metal? Why did the sound of metal creaking rise into the air? I swiveled my head back around, and…
Oh. I must've started veering to the side while I turned my head, because I'd rammed straight into the side of the bridge with enough force to break clear through the railing. And now I was falling, falling through the air toward the East River below.
This had not been my plan.
The river quickly flung up towards my face, and I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath—but the impact never came. Instead, air rushed by me horizontally instead of vertically, and, confused as all hell, I opened my eyes…
Whoa.
I was flying!
Flying over the river, long, feathery wings flapping repeatedly where my arms should have been. I tried to laugh in pure, unadulterated surprise and disbelief; it came out as a lovely little tweet. Actually, my whole body felt smaller, and my mouth—my mouth was a beak! I was a bird; an albatross, to be precise! Thank god, too, because if it had been anything smaller, I probably wouldn't have been able to keep my backpack on.
But at least that proved something I'd been afraid of. I could transform into different things, and I wouldn't be stuck as a gorilla for the rest of this life.
That was good. My grandfather had been through enough in his life. He didn't need to have his only grandson suddenly and inexplicably disappear on top of that.
...That said, I found a new problem: Flying as a bird wearing a backpack was not very easy. In fact, it kind of hurt. I needed to find a place to land and figure out how to change back. Both times I'd transformed so far, it had been because my life had been in danger. I hadn't actually willfully transformed. Could I even transform willfully?
Hoping the answer was 'yes,' I decided to gain as much air as I could with several pounds on my back, and then glided the rest of the way to a tree on the edge of the river. I landed next to it and let out a little breath.
All alone now, I could finally focus.
Alright, let's see… Maybe if I tried picturing my human self? I squeezed my eyes shut and did that, imagining how I looked as an actual person. I waited a few seconds, concentrating on this mental image, then opened my eyes… Nope, the world still looked huge around me. Still a bird.
Hmmm… Maybe…?
I tried doing that again, but this time, I also imagined my DNA shifting, turning from a bird's DNA to a human's DNA. A noticeable difference swept over me. My bones shifted around, my skin crawled; my feathers shrunk back into my body, and my size grew. At last, I was a human again, taking in deep breaths of air. That had… That had hurt. Ow.
Groaning, I stretched to crack my back. The breeze blowing over my skin felt nice—
Oh.
...Oops.
Uhhhh… so I might've forgotten the little fact that my suit and tie got destroyed when I turned into a gorilla. And now I was totally naked, save for the few scraps of cloth still hanging onto me and the pack on my back. A furious red blush stole across my face. I really hoped no one was watching!
I quickly dug into my backpack and took out the shirt and jeans I'd worn to school. It wasn't ideal because my underwear was gone, but it was better than being naked. Now with some actual clothes on my body, I stretched again and put my backpack on again.
Time to go home at last.
I found the nearest metro station, boarded the train, and rode it to the stop nearest to my grandfather's apartment. Self-consciousness ate at me the whole way, and I kept glancing around, sure someone knew I was commando underneath my clothes. My stop did not arrive soon enough for my liking. I ran up to my apartment building, and rode the elevator to my family's level.
Getting out of the elevator, I heard the TV set to the news channel. CNN played, and as I walked inside (sadly barefoot; shoes and socks were the two things I had not had a change for), I froze.
"––and sources say the last place this gorilla was seen was the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. He somehow broke through the railing and was last seen falling into the river. Further investigation shows that no gorillas have broken out of any zoos in the Manhattan area, so officials say it is likely someone's pet that escaped."
The water ran in the sink, which turned out to be my grandfather. He washed some dishes as he listened to the news, and upon seeing me, he nodded in greeting. "Hello, Jack. Crazy world we live in, isn't it?" He set the sponge he was cleaning with on the counter, and the plate he was cleaning in the drying rack. "Iron suits of armor flying through the sky, gorillas stopping a moving car… It's just getting weirder and weirder every year."
I winced; I definitely could not tell my father that gorilla was me.
"Huh, I didn't hear about that one," I said, heading to the fridge and taking out some lemonade. I got a glass and poured myself some, put the lemonade back in the fridge, and took gentle sips. Mmm. Such good stuff.
"It happened while you were gone," Grandpa said with a shrug. "Even animals have super strength these days. Total insanity!" He angrily threw his hands into the air.
I blinked several times. "Super strength?"
Grandpa rolled his eyes. "Damn ape somehow stopped a car with its bare hands," he grumbled. "That's not something gorillas are normally capable of, Jack."
I…
Huh.
Honestly, I'd been so caught up in and thrown off by all of the suddenness and chaos of the moment that I hadn't even thought about that. But if... "There's a gym in our apartment building, right?" I mused, scratching my chin in thought. If I really had super strength, how far did it go? "Third floor, right?"
"Yeah, it's on the third floor," the old head of the Daily Bugle confirmed while washing a bowl. "What's up with you today? You usually never do much working out outside of soccer practice. and your weekend muay thai classes."
"Just want to test my strength," I said, which worked because it wasn't even a lie.
He huffed, raising an eye at me but accepting the answer on face value. "...Okay, but be back in an hour. I'm making hamburgers for dinner."
I headed back out after setting my bookbag down, and went down to the third floor. I headed into the gym and wandered over to the weights. With Eye of the Tiger playing in the gym speakers—an… oddly fitting thing to be playing, all things considering—I almost nervously picked up a fifty-pound weight. Well, started to, anyway, before changing my mind and deciding to test it with a hundred-pound weight.
It felt like a feather. It offered no resistance. Its weight pressed against my hand, but did nothing, and like my grandfather had said, I did not work out much.
...Ooookay.
I grabbed a weight bar, laid on a bench press, slid on several hundred pound weights on each end until it totaled four hundred, and tried lifting it.
Now I struggled, but it was the kind of struggle I would've previously felt lifting something weighing like thirty, forty, fifty pounds. Hard, definitely, and it strained my muscles, but it still felt like something I could easily do with enough effort. Even now, I could still do it; my arms just were protesting a bit. Eyes shooting up in surprise, I placed it back on its rack, added a few more, and tried lifting a seven hundred-pound weight bar with no prior arm training.
The weights lifted half-way, before my arms gave out and dropped. My eyes widened—shit, seven hundred pounds falling on me could not be good—and let out a loud scream of pain as the bar landed hard on my chest. Choking, I coughed and groaned. "Ow, ow, ow…" I gasped out, breathing in and out in panic. My chest burned with pain, and I heavily worried I'd broken something. I needed to get this weight off of me now, somehow.
Biting my lip, I tried to lift it up enough that I could slide myself off of the bench press. But my arms refused to get the damn weight bar more than a few inches. I… I needed to be stronger. But how!?
Oh, wait. That's right.
I calmed down and imagined myself transforming again. My arms suddenly grew bigger, hairier, stronger. I could see them expand, the muscles bulging out and almost doubling in size like Zoro from One Piece. I watched in weirded out awe as my hair grew fuzzier, and more of it spread across my arms. They looked just like my gorilla arms from earlier, except for some reason the rest of me wasn't turning into a gorilla. Totally shocked by this, I froze for a few seconds, before grinning.
I can do partial transformations?
Yeah, I can work with this.
I tried lifting the weights again. This time, it rose more easily. I let out a grunt, putting in more effort, and finally managed to get it up enough that I could squirm off the bench press. I let the bar drop and winced at the sound it made as it slammed into the floor, shaking the room. Panting from the physical stress I'd put my body through, I stretched, then shook my arms a little. Then I took a few breaths in and started taking the weights off of the bar.
How much could I lift with training if this was what I could lift without training?
When I'd finished cleaning up after myself, I returned to the apartment, mind racing. I had powers, I had super strength… I could become a superhero. Someone like me could become a superhero. I could finally atone for my sins. Finally, the world had granted me an ability to actually make a difference and atone for my sins.
And here I was lying on the bed, groaning and rubbing my stomach gingerly because I'd been a dumbass and dropped a seven-hundred pound dumbbell on myself.
Owwwwww.
...Going to the hospital sucked. I did not want to go to the hospital if I could avoid it. ...And that line of thought brought me to a realization; wasn't there some sort of gene controlling regeneration and stuff that's turned off in human DNA but isn't for some animals? Wait, more specifically, cat purring can help mend injured bones, right? I closed my eyes, concentrated, and my throat more similar to a cat's. Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
After a while, I started feeling more relaxed and my stomach didn't hurt as much. I let out a sigh, changing my throat back… but damn, while I didn't hurt as much, I was starving.
But still...
I could do something instead of sitting on my ass and doing nothing while waiting for dinner.
Swallowing as I entered my room and booted up my high-tier Oscomputer. Doubt rose within me as I did, even as I began to research animal-related things to call myself. I also pulled up Photoshop and started brainstorming hero costume desi…
Hold up a moment.
My clothes didn't transform with me.
Hmmm, this could be an issue…
After brainstorming solutions to this problem, I finally arrived at a very unique solution. First of all, I happened to remember that character from MHA, Mirio Togata, who could make his body impermeable. His clothes normally didn't change with him, but after making a special fabric containing his cells, he was able to have it transform with him. Further, I had the ability to turn into different animals, which meant I could turn into a spider and create my own spidersilk!
Granted, this sounded pretty damn impossible and farfetched—but as impossible and farfetched as someone able to turn into multiple animals…? This world ran on superhero movie logic, nothing was too impossible.
Alright, with that idea in mind, what costume could I use?
Hmmm… I wanted a cape, even if Edna would roll in her grave as a result. Capes were cool, man! My color scheme would be important, too… Maybe an earthy kinda look would be good? I tapped a pen against my chin in thought.
And my name…
...God damn it, I was mad that Beast Boy had already been taken. Shit. Therianthropy is the ability to turn into animals… Therian, then, maybe? Nah, that'd make me sound too much like those people who identify as animals. Fucking weirdos, and they undermine the transgender movement… I do not want to be linked to Therians. Okay, what, then?
I blinked as I clicked through Google, looking for animal transformers and animal-related characters for ideas.
Pan.
The Greek god of the wild and animals, among other things… That was a pretty cool name! I grinned a little, feeling a little excitement brewing in me for the first time in… God, a long time. How cool would this be!?
But… could I really do anywhere near good enough of a job..? Or would I fuck things up so badly that Thanos wouldn't need to destroy half of all life on the Earth? Oh, shit, Thanos! How the hell could someone like me face off against someone like that!? He wrecked the Hulk with his bare hands!
Swallowing nervously, I rolled my chair away from my computer, licking my lips nervously. I… I didn't want to die again. Dying had hurt like hell the first time around. I didn't want to do anything that would cause me to face that kind of thing again… Even if there wasn't much purpose for me being here, as long as I was here, I wanted to avoid as much pain as I could. And if I did nothing at all, I'd still have a 50/50 chance of surviving Thanos—without the added threat of dying to a supervillain with the same or similar powers as me, or who was motivated by perceived wrongdoing of Tony Stark.
My fingers restlessly tapped against my armchair as memories of my death flashed through my head, and I desperately shoved them to the back of my mind. A terrible shiver ran down my spine and phantom pain crept through my nerves. I felt like I was going to be sick.
Thankfully, my grandfather shouting, "Dinner's ready, JJ!" shook me out of the almost trance I'd put myself in.
I got up, shaking the chills out of my body, and went down to eat.