These students are at a very frightening age, living in a very frightening age. They’ll need to desire both an abundance of freedom as well as the strictest of direction. I am willing to accept the consequences of nurturing this cognitive dissonance.

  -Roger Hill’s Notes

  Robin wasn’t the type to complain about her circumstances. Things could always be worse. That was her mindset from the very beginning. That being said, she would definitely prefer a better position than being trapped in the passenger side of a toppled, oversized truck. A Blessing without such a stupid drawback would do right now.

  Oh, and the only person who could help her being out cold was also pretty bad.

  “Thomas. . . wake up!”

  He took the impact from the blast, but Robin was the one who was pinned under chunks of the dashboard. Getting out of the wreck would be easy as long as someone else is there to make use of her Blessing. Rousing Thomas from his little concussion was the one and only hurdle. It's too bad only one of her arms was above the rubble, leaving her dominant right arm stuck along with her. . .

  With her legs.

  Her legs.

  I can’t move them! Why? Why? Why?

  As if she was never rescued that day, Robin could already smell the smoke, feel the flaming metal rubble and chunks of smoldering ceiling. The agony of her crushed legs, more and more weight squeezing the life out of them. Until, she couldn’t feel anything from the hips down.

  Nonononotlikethisnotagainnotagain

  She used her one hand to desperately reach up to Thomas’ lolled head. His face was slack, and thin trails of blood swam down from his scalp to his chin, dripping onto Robin from above. With her breathing quickly transitioning to hyperventilation, both of them would be unconscious, leaving the other two to fend for themselves.

  “Thomas!” Robin closed her eyes, raising her voice to scream harder than she ever had. Somewhere in her heart, Robin was preparing to do the unforgivable. If Thomas doesn’t wake up after this. . .

  She would give up. Throw in the towel. The next scream would be to Instructor Hill, begging to be taken out of this terrible matrix. Who the hell did she think she was, trying to be a hero? Whoever this pathetic girl was, she's far from that. So she screamed with all she had.

  A quick inhale responded to her final plea.

  “I’m up.” Thomas said tonelessly. “I’m up.”

  “Yes!” Robin laughed hysterically. “Get me out of here, now!”

  Thomas’ face tensed as he began to piece together the situation.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Getmeoutgetmeout!”

  The boy’s eyes widened at Robin’s state. He ripped his seatbelt off and lowered himself from the driver seat, resting a knee on the side of the passenger seat and his other leg on the respective window.

  “Robin, use your Blessing!”

  “My legs. . . they’re gone.”

  “No, they’re not! You need to focus or I can’t. . .” Thomas stared into her increasingly vacant eyes, and bristled. Growling in frustration, he crouched over Robin and the rubble pinning her down.

  “Brute force it is.”

  Robin stared down at where her legs were supposed to be. In her near-absent mind, she watched as two dark and coarse hands reached underneath the rubble. Her ears picked up a seemingly far-off sound of flesh melting and reforming, crunchy and wet-sounding.

  Then, in between the two hands, an elephant trunk snaked its way under the rubble too.

  Robin blinked back to awareness at the sound of an elephant trumpeting next to her. She winced, covering one ear, and then gasping as she saw Thomas’ Blessing for the first time.

  Thomas was quick to inform the team of his Blessing. However, he refused to activate it in the dozens of strategy meetings he forced upon Bravo Team. Robin chalked it up to embarrassment and left the teasing to the other classmates.

  But how could he be embarrassed?

  Thomas’ head was no more. Replaced upon it was the head of an African elephant. It wasn’t the size of a normal one, that’s for sure, but a Thomas-sized elephant head. With another loud trumpeting, Thomas tensed as his arms and trunk began to lift chunks of the armored truck’s infrastructure up and over his shoulders. With a labored snort, Thomas climbed up to the driver’s seat, let the window open, and tossed the rubble out.

  Robin was free, but she couldn’t move still. It was like a midnight phantom sitting on her lap, heavy as all hell. And yet, when Thomas’ trunk wrapped around her waist and lifted her up, it was like the phantom never existed.

  Because it didn’t exist.

  “Thanks. . .”

  Thomas said nothing.

  “Oh, right. . . Probably can’t talk without a human tongue. That’s fine. Maybe I don’t really want to hear anything right now.”

  Thomas replaced the trunk around her waist with his arms as his head morphed back into a humans.

  “Too bad, you’ll hear me whether you want to or not.”

  “Hah. . .”

  “Your breathing slowed down.”

  Robin brought a hand to her chest. Her heart was still beating like crazy, but she definitely wasn’t hyperventilating anymore.

  Panic attack over.

  Yay.

  “Yay.” Robin said.

  “My elephant ears picked up where they are. They’re breaking into the back of the truck to get to our captive. I’m going to stop them. What are you going to do?”

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  Robin noted the concern behind his words.

  “I can’t fight too well, but I’m with you. You’ll also need me to get the truck back on its wheels.”

  Realizing what Robin meant, Thomas’ grim face began to brighten up with hope.

  “Affirmative! In that case, stay behind me until I take care of them.”

  With renewed vigor, Thomas launched himself up and over the open ceiling that was once the driver-side window. He let a hand down, and Robin took it. Once Thomas pulled her up, the two crouched low on the overturned truck. They moved as stealthily as possible towards the end of the truck. All worries of their enemies being alerted to Thomas’ elephant noises were erased as they approached the deafening noise of what were most likely tools being used to carve a hole in the back of the truck.

  “Where’d Gloria-Grace go?” Robin whispered as they snuck up on the bikers.

  “We’ll worry about her later.”

  As they made it to the edge, Thomas wiped the blood from his forehead and cracked his knuckles.

  “You got this.” Robin said. She never saw the boy fight, but she said it with more conviction than she thought was possible. Thomas returned her assured look with one of his own. As Robin began to learn, it was probably just a mask of assurance. Not for her, though. She didn’t need it.

  “I mean it, Thomas. You got this.”

  “Of course.”

  With a low growl and the sound of morphing flesh, Thomas leapt off of the truck and onto his unsuspecting opponents.

  Thomas had a few seconds until he landed into his first combat. He used those last few seconds to thinly strategize. A plan usually goes up in smoke when you get punched in the face, and Thomas figured the same thing would happen if he got shot in the face too. Let’s avoid that, then.

  There were four of them.

  Two must have showed up after the rocketeers in front had successfully toppled the truck. Just like Gloria-Grace had said, the original pair lacked firearms after they used the rocket launchers. They were buzzing through the back entrance of the truck with what looked to be Gear, probably pawned off from corrupt agents or supplied to them by the infamous Apollyon. They were nearly finished too.

  As for the newcomers, they were armed to the teeth: Thomas noted machetes on their chests, pistols holstered at their hips, and old-school carbines held to their stomachs. Their heads were on quick swivels, looking for anyone close enough to interrupt their crime.

  No one ever looks up, not even androids in a simulation.

  From the neck up, Thomas’ transformation began and ended in less than a second. His skull pulled back and his vision began to change, gaining clearer sight but losing the vividness of color. His jaw elongated and deep yellow fangs grew out in inches to match. The wind in the air no longer swept at his face, but blew through the spotted yellow fur of a jaguar.

  The weapons his enemies had would be a detriment if he had not already closed the gap. Thomas landed on top of one of the fully armed androids, one hand on his opponent's collar, the other one pressed the carbine to their chest. With his prey unable to shoot, Thomas was content to bring both of them to the ground. The android collided with the ground hard, his head bouncing brutally off the asphalt.

  The rebound sent the poor freak’s head directly into Thomas’ open maw.

  Jaguar’s don’t claw or chew their prey’s throats out. They simply use their overwhelming bite pressure to crush the skull of their victim.

  So Thomas did just that.

  He had gone through many training dummies his father brought home from the precinct, but this was different. Thomas’ head may not be there. But his mind didn’t change. He could feel the skull fracture into tiny pieces, taste the blood-infused chunks of synthetic flesh.

  The horrific sensation caused him to freeze up for a moment to process what he had done. For a millisecond, he watched as the surviving gunman hopped backwards to create distance while quickly leveling his rifle. Seeing the inside of the barrel with his clear jaguar-vision had stirred Thomas from his hesitation.

  “Shit!” Thomas tried to say, but a frustrated growl came from the jaguar-head instead.

  As quickly as his head morphed into a jaguar, his head stretched wide and flattened. The cobra-headed Thomas dived to the side, lunging his elongated head towards the gunman. Just as the android was about to fire, Thomas fired first. Venom ejected itself from his fangs, coating his enemy from the face down.

  Thomas’ quick thinking saved his life, but his inaction would not go unpunished.

  The bullets spray missing Thomas as he rolled back onto his feet from his dive proved that he successfully blinded the gunman. In the chaos of the carbine being fired haphazardly, Thomas circled his prey, keeping to his back as much as possible. Only when he began to think even slightly ahead did he feel the persistent, thumping burn in his right shoulder.

  Thomas hissed in pain.

  That’s the one thing you don’t do in a fight, Dad had said, towering over him on the sparring mat back in one of their endless sessions in the precinct. Staying still is for practice dummies. You wanna be target practice? Keep standing still.

  Thomas continued to circle, moving from clockwise to counter-clockwise once he knew the magazine would go empty soon. Once he heard that blessed click, Thomas was in front of his enemy once again. The android wasn’t a complete fool. Instead of uselessly going for a reload, it dropped the rifle and moved to unholster the pistol on its hip. For some reason, it struggled with freeing its sidearm. Did they program panic into these things as well?

  No matter.

  Thomas rushed in, springing up with one leg and connecting with a flying knee. The loud noise of the Gear being used on the truck couldn’t drown out the sound of this thing’s face being turned to mush. As the gunman began to crumple, Thomas looped his shoulder underneath his neck and brought him crashing down to the ground. Blood jetted from both the front and back of the android’s head, quickly becoming a pool for it to die in.

  No half measures.

  Thomas stood up, snatching the pistol from its hip. The disgust didn’t come this time. He coldly noticed how easy it was to dispatch an enemy this way. It was just like he was trained.

  Safety lever off, and fire, fire, fire.

  Tango down, and two left.

  With the sound of metal falling to the asphalt, Thomas leveled the pistol toward the rocketeers. They had finished, not paying any heed to Thomas’ arrival in the slightest. Only when the back entrance was fully lasered through, did they turn around to face him.

  They weren’t far away, but they weren’t still objects either. In fact, distance would now be overwhelmingly in Thomas’ favor now that he’s armed. Once they rushed him with the Gear, he'd have to quickly land lethal shots on both of them before they close the ten foot gap and roast him alive.

  Both Thomas and the still-living pair of androids hadn’t taken Lloyd into account.

  From the darkness of the truck’s interior, two large hands shot out, clenching the androids by their gray bald scalps. Immediately, the top of their heads were slowly petrifying into steel.

  Thomas’ head morphed back to his normal—albeit shocked—face.

  “Lloyd?!”

  “H-hurry! Before we fully petrify!”

  “Affirmative!”

  The androids struggled and writhed but they were effectively still.

  You wanna be target practice? Keep standing still.

  Thomas rushed forward and emptied the rest of his mag in the chests of the androids. Lloyd trembled at the brutality he himself had suggested. Nonetheless, he sighed in relief as he undid his Blessing, letting the androids fall to the ground, dead.

  Thomas was about to ask Lloyd why he wasn’t petrified along with the captive, but was way too grateful for his help to bother. The scar-faced boy looked down at the results of the small battle in sorrow.

  “I thought they were gonna kill me. . .” Lloyd tried to quell his heartbeat with both hands.

  “Well, look at the G.I.!” Robin shouted from above, eliciting a shriek from Lloyd, who subsequently turned to stone. “You know kung fu?”

  Thomas sighed. “Look what you did. I was about to give him positive reinforcement for being useful and you scared him off.”

  “Positive reinforcement? From you?”

  “Forget I said anything.”

  “Can do! Hey, Lloyd, it's just me! Come out, I could use your help getting this truck back on track—wait, did you get shot?!”

  Ah, Thomas thought. That did happen.

  “I was negligent.” He said, a small smile gracing his strict features.

  The dull burning pain couldn’t surmount Thomas’ swelling satisfaction. He didn’t have to doubt himself anymore. He didn’t have to push himself so desperately anymore. Why did he let his father’s words pierce him so thoroughly?

  Detective Clark was wrong.

  Thomas was a soldier, through and through.

  [Beast Head]! Shapeshifting is a popular ability, so we figured the best way to fit it into a story about strange superpowers was making it a partial transformation instead!