TCB: The Talon Alternative

by GBscientist

Rating: teen
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Alternate Universe, Human, Original Character, Gilda, Adventure
Length: 5533

What happens when the griffons open their own Conversion Bureaus?

Louis Roi is a soldier who has fought and sacrificed for his country. When sentient ponies from the magical island of Equestria announce that humanity's end is nigh, he refuses to accept that having his humanity stripped away is the only survival option.

Griffons hold the answer to Louis' problem. Long marginalised by pony society, the griffons see human ideas and technology as a way to regain their long-lost place in the world. Now all they need is a volunteer to take the leap from human to griffon.

Published 2012-05-28 05:34:01 UTC
Last updated 2012-05-28 05:34:01 UTC

Chapter 1

“I’m glad you could make it, Mr. Ambassador,” the scientist said as he extended his hand in greeting. The appendage that returned the grasp was not a hand, but a clawed talon. The Ambassador was not, in fact, human, but a griffon, one of the many strange species from the magically-sealed island continent of Equestria.

“I’m very pleased to be here, Dr. Talbot,” the Ambassador said. “Your species never ceases to amaze me, and what you’ve built here reinforces that.”

“Thank you. If you would follow me to the viewing gallery, the trial is about to start,” Dr. Talbot said before directing the griffon over to a large window that looked out into a sterile operating room. “We’ve managed to isolate the transformative components of the ponification serum and separate them from the equine DNA matrix. By inserting Griffon DNA into the serum, we hope to replicate the ability of the Conversion Bureaus to transform human subjects.”

“What sort of tests have you performed thus far?”

“We’ve been able to successfully transform both tissue cultures and more complex cloned organ systems. This will be our third trial on a human subject. The first human trial was a failure, but the second worked as expected.”

“What was the difference between the failed trail and the success?”

“We had to introduce a magical catalyst. For now we’re using unicorn magic, but we hope to move to artificial magical sources or native griffon magic for public application.”

“I see. Well, Doctor, we’re not getting any younger. Begin the procedure.”

“Yes, Mr. Ambassador,” Dr. Talbot agreed before picking up a walky-talky that was connected to the operating room’s intercom. “Bring in the patient and catalyst.”

The doors of the operating room opened and two gurneys were wheeled in. One gurney held a fit man in his late 20s while the other held a tied-down unicorn mare.

“Let me go, you sick freaks! I have rights! I’m still an American citizen!” the unicorn shrieked as she thrashed.

“Please be quiet, miss,” one of the orderlies said to the unicorn before muzzling her. “As far as anyone knows, you’ve already left the US and moved on to Equestria.” The gurneys stopped on opposite sides of a pedestal full of syringes and electronics, where the orderly slipped a ring over the unicorn’s horn. Leads on the ring were then connected to some of the electronics on the table, and the equipment was connected, in turn, to a set of leads on the human patient’s chest.

“Thank you for volunteering, Captain. You’re doing your nation and the world a great service,” Dr. Talbot said into the walky-talky.

The man on the table simply nodded and saluted the window.

The orderlies left the room, and were replaced by a doctor and two nurses. The nurses inserted IV lines into the man’s right arm, the one closest to the pedestal, and hooked up saline lines while the doctor examined the syringes. Then the man’s arms and legs were strapped down. Finally, the electronic equipment that connected the man and mare was turned on, and a pink glow travelled from the unicorn’s horn, down the wires, and into the patient.

“I’m not going to lie to you, Captain,” the doctor performing the procedure said while holding the syringe of griffonication serum. “This is going to hurt more than anything you’ve ever experienced.”

“Then let’s get it over with,” the Captain replied.

“Dr. Talbot, please confirm that the patient has given final consent,” the doctor said to Talbot through the window.

“Final consent has been confirmed,” Talbot replied over the walky-talky. The doctor in the OR nodded and injected the contents of the syringe into one of the ports of the IV line before quickly donning a set of ear-muffs. The nurses also donned hearing protection.

On the table, the Captain did not look happy. He was struggling against his restraints and his eyes were wide with pain. He clenched his jaw to help keep from crying out, but he finally gave in around the time his face started sprouting feathers. The transforming man let loose an excruciated scream that slowly rose in pitch to that of a hawk’s hunting cry as the skin of his face split open and a break stretched out. His clenched fists grew yellow scales and the fingernails lengthened into claws as the pinky finger atrophied out of existence. His legs, though covered with a cloth, obviously changed into a more feline conformation. As his scream reached its peak volume, he arched his back and naked wings tore free and rapidly gained plumage. A tail snaked from beneath the sheet to hang at the side of the gurney. Finally, the screaming stopped and the new Griffon slipped into unconsciousness.

“You can see why we needed a volume filter on the intercom,” Dr. Talbot said to the Ambassador.

“I also see why the ponies use anaesthetic. Wasn’t keeping him awake a little needlessly cruel?”

“At this stage of the trials, it was felt that keeping the patient conscious would allow them to inform the attending physician if there was a problem. Given the circumstances of the first three trials, I don’t think the patients are going to be providing any constructive input, so we’ll use the anaesthetic from here on out,” Dr. Talbot stated with clinical detachment.

“I want to meet the Captain when he wakes up,” The Ambassador said before turning away from the window and departing the viewing gallery.

“Captain Roi,” he heard his name being called, but couldn’t see anything. The world was blackness and muffled sound. His entire body ached, even places that logically should not exist.

“Captain Louis Roi, please wake up,” the voice male called again. Louis made a heroic effort and forced his eyelids open, but immediately wished he hadn’t. The light was blinding. At least his hearing was clearing up.

“He seems responsive. I’ll go get Dr. Talbot and the Ambassador,” A second voice, female this time, said from slightly further away.

“Captain Roi, I know that the light is brighter than you’re used to, but you need to let your eyes adjust. Please open your eyes,” the first voice said. Louis tried opening his eyes again, slowly this time, and made sure not to look straight up.

He could see the room around him, but there was a big, yellow mask or something stuck to his face. He opened his eyes wider as they adjusted to the light and came to the realisation that it was not a mask on his face, but a beak.

“So it worked,” he tried to say, but all that came out was a croak.

“Don’t try to talk,” said the doctor that hovered over him, who turned out to be the first speaker. “You yelled yourself hoarse during the procedure and it will take a few days for your throat to mend.”

Louis nodded weakly in return.

“That’s very good. Now move your fingers and toes for me, please,” the doctor requested.

Louis did as asked, wiggling his now-reduced number of digits. The feeling was quite alien. Louis put this down as yet another thing about his new body to get used to.

“Good. Now move your wings and tail, please.”

Louis’ wings were stretched out on the bed to either side of him, and his tail lay limply on his right side. He managed to twitch his wings and flip the end of his tail, but that was it.

“That’s good progress, Captain. You need to become accustomed to you new limbs and develop muscle memory for them. I don’t expect you to have any appreciable degree of control over your wings and tail without a couple weeks of physiotherapy,” the doctor explained. “I’m going to raise the head of your bed so you can sit up. Is that alright?”

Louis nodded. The whine of working electric motors accompanied the sensation of the bed tilting upwards to a reclined, rather than prone, position. Louis took the opportunity to examine the room, now that his eyes had adjusted. It was a standard single-occupancy hospital room, painted institutional white, furnished with mass-produced pre-fabricated furniture, and floored with terrazzo slabs. His hospital bed was pretty much standard as well. The IV line in his right arm and monitors attached to his chest were no surprise either.

The knock at the door was a bit of a surprise, though.

“Is Captain Roi fit for visitors?” the female voice from earlier asked through the door.

“Yes, but only for 10 minutes. The Captain still needs a lot of rest to recover from the metamorphosis,” the doctor replied.

The door opened, revealing Dr. Talbot, who Louis already knew, and a griffon.

“It is an honour to finally meet you, Captain Roi,” the griffin said, mangling Louis last name so that it sounded like ‘rwa’ by improperly rolling the ‘r’. “I’m Ambassador Sharptalon. I was sent here to oversee the implementation of the project and the integration of the new griffons into our society. Is there anything I can help you with? Any questions I can answer?”

Louis simply pointed to his throat and then mimed taking a drink from a glass.

“Oh, sorry,” the doctor said. “I should have gotten you some water before.” The doctor hustled over to the sink and retrieved a paper cup full of water and a straw.

Louis took the cup weakly and clamped down on the straw, but his beak pinched it shut, preventing any water from coming through, no matter how hard Louis sucked.

“I can help with this,” the Ambassador said, shuffling to the side of Louis’ bed. “The beak doesn’t go all the way to the back of our jaws. There’s a short section of cheek that covers the molars. If you can get the straw right in the corner of your cheek…” the Ambassador explained while Louis did as instructed, finally allowing him some liquids. “There you go. Anything else I can do?”

Louis put down the cup and mimed writing something in the air.

“Oh! A pad of paper and a pen should be easy enough to come by,” Dr. Talbot said. He then turned to the woman he had come in with, who was obviously a nurse. “Could you please grab those from the nursing station?”

“Of course,” the nurse agreed with and left the room.

“Dr. Talbot, I think this exchange demonstrates perfectly why we need to get some more griffon staff out here. I certainly can’t be on call all the time to help with adaptation problems,” the Ambassador said.

“Oh, I agree completely. I’ll handle the paperwork for visas tomorrow,” Dr. Talbot agreed.

“Well, it’s been a pleasure, Captain, but Dr. Talbot and I have other duties to attend to. I’m sure I’ll see you again soon,” the Ambassador said as he left Louis’ bedside. Louis nodded watched the officials leave.

The nurse came back in and handed Louis the pad and pen. Louis scrawled out a quick note with his new talons and showed the pad to the nurse.

“Of course I can get you a mirror. Just wait one second,” the nurse grabbed a hand mirror from the drawer of the bedside table and handed it to Louis.

The first thing Louis noticed was that his hands were now a pair of yellow-scaled talons. He flexed his left talon experimentally while holding the mirror with his right. Examining himself in the mirror, Louis took in his new face. He had a hooked yellow beak with a black tip and golden-brown feathers. His eyes were still the same pale blue that he had before the transformation. Louis set the mirror aside and peeked under the sheet of his bed. His body was covered with golden fur, similar to a cougar, and his reproductive organs had rearranged to befit a large, quadrupedal predator. This last fact caused him to blush slightly.

Louis retrieved his notepad and wrote out a final message.

“You’re tired already? Good thing we kept that visit short,” she grabbed the bed control that was tied to the bed’s railing and lowered the head so Louis was lying flat again. She made sure he understood that he could control the bed angle by himself from then on, and left the room. The doctor followed her out and turned off the lights.

Louis was out just as surely as the lights only seconds later.

Two weeks of intensive physiotherapy were all Louis needed to gain basic muscle control of his wings and tail. He would probably never learn the unconscious body language in which griffons used their wings and tails. At least he didn’t have to keep his wings in slings anymore.

He was currently on his way to the Ambassador’s office with his wings proudly folded at his sides. Of course, with the facility built into a rather unassuming light industrial park, it wasn’t much of a walk.

Of course, walking in public brought up some other problems, even if ‘public’ merely entailed the halls of the facility outside of his room. For one thing, Louis was still pretty clumsy on his new legs and his gait was atrocious. It would take him a lot of practice to get back to military fitness levels. The bigger problem was that clothes simply didn’t fit properly anymore. While Louis realised that clothes were unnecessary for griffons in temperate climates, and therefore strictly ornamental or ceremonial, he was born and raised with human nudity taboos and he wouldn’t feel comfortable ‘au natural’ for a long time.

Thus Captain Louis Roi made a rather comical image as he awkwardly came to attention on all fours just in front of Ambassador Sharptalon’s desk. Louis’ military precision was ruined further by the burgundy housecoat with wing slits that he insisted upon wearing.

“Reporting as requested, sir,” Louis said.

“I’m glad to see you up and about, Captain,” the Ambassador replied. He waved a hand towards the two chairs on Louis side of the desk. “Take a seat.” Louis did as ordered. “I fear that we’ve done you a significant disservice by using pony magic to power your transformation, Captain. We did a transformation yesterday using griffon magic for the first time. We just had our griffon volunteer beat her wings while hooked up to the magic transfer unit and the procedure went even more smoothly than yours did. The patient was demonstrating muscle memory as if she had been born a griffon within hours of waking up.”

“I see,” said Louis.

“I’m sure you must. You’ve been dealt a significant handicap in your transfer to griffon life, but you are too important to the plan for us to let you be anything other than perfect. To that end, the Council has allowed one of our best athletes to come here as your personal trainer.”

“I appreciate the resources your government is putting into my rehabilitation.”

“Captain, humanity is the future of the griffon species. We need you and the other volunteers to act as envoys to the human world and convince them that becoming a griffon is preferable to becoming a pony. And once Earth is totally immersed in the magic field, which is sadly inevitable, we will have need of your special talents to secure the future of all griffons. But enough vague talk of the future. We have the present to worry about,” the Ambassador pressed the intercom button on his desk. “Phyllis, please send Gilda in.”

“Yes, Mr. Ambassador,” a tinny voice replied through the intercom.

A moment later the door opened and a female griffon entered. Louis and the Ambassador stood to greet her, as was only proper.

“You sure you don’t want to leave this runt for the vultures?” the griffoness crassly asked the Ambassador. He ignored the comment.

“Captain Louis Roi, please allow me to introduce you to Gilda Sharptalon, my niece, and one of the best griffon athletes of her generation,” the Ambassador said as Gilda came to stand at his side.

“Enchante, mademoiselle,” Louis said as he made a small bow.

“What did you just call me, dweeb?”

“He said he was pleased to meet you, Gilda,” the Ambassador interjected.

“Whatever. Why am I supposed to train this loser, again?”

“Captain Roi is a decorated military veteran and a valued member of the griffon conversion program. Despite his current appearance, he’s killed more sentient beings than you’ve killed live prey,” the Ambassador leaned towards Gilda to whisper in her ear. “And if you don’t get him trained back to military standard, I’ll see to it that your reputation is ruined, family or not.”

“Fine. I got it,” Gilda sneered to her uncle before looking back to Louis. “Don’t think I’ll go easy on you pretty cub.”

“I wouldn’t want you to,” Louis replied evenly.

“I’ll see you in the training room at 8 AM tomorrow, then, loser,” Gilda snapped before stalking out of the office.

“I apologise for my niece,” the Ambassador said over the slamming door. “She has an attitude problem that is equal only to her natural talents.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” Louis replied wryly.

The Ambassador let out an undignified snorting of mirth as he stifled a full laugh. “I really shouldn’t make light of her attitude problems. She grew up in Cloudsdale, among ponies. While ponies are proud of their accepting herd mentality, all cubs tend toward cruelty, even pony foals. Gilda was teased and ostracised by her pony classmates and made very few friends. Once her athletic prowess became apparent, she used her new popularity and status to ‘do unto others as she was done unto’, to misquote human scripture.”

“So she developed an abrasive personality as a defensive measure because it was easier to keep others at a distance than to potentially let in a false friend,” Louis summarised.

“Exactly. I hope that you can work around her attitude because she really is a gifted griffoness and is the best I can think of to train you.”

“It won’t be a problem, sir. I’m sure she can’t be worse than my instructors at airborne training.”

“I’m glad you see it that way. I’ll let you get back to your day,” the Ambassador dismissed Louis and finally seated himself back in his chair.

Louis brought himself to awkward attention and exited the office. He paused in the hallway. Now what the heck was he supposed to do with the rest of his day?

The workout room where Louis had conducted his physiotherapy and now worked with Gilda was a pretty standard low-budget gym. The walls were painted an inoffensive beige and the floors were covered in rubber matting, unlike the rest of the facility, which was painted institutional white and floored with terrazzo. There were two each of treadmills, bowflex machines, rowing machines, elliptical trainers, and stationary bikes. Currently, Louis was straining his wing muscled on one of the bowflex units.

“You call that a sweep?” Gilda bellowed in his ear. “I’ve seen fledglings with more wing power! Do it again!”

Louis swept his wings forward again, against the resistance of the metal bow arms. This time was a little better than before.

“Faster! Arch up, sweep down! Arch up, sweep down!” Gilda shouted. Across the room, towels began to rustle in the breeze Louis was making. “Keep going! Arch up, sweep down! Arch up, sweep down! Hey, you might actually be getting it, loser!”

Louis noticed that his rump was now hovering just above the seat of the bowflex, which totally wrecked his concentration. His rhythm broke, and he landed back on the seat with a thump.

“That’s the best you’ve done yet, newbie. Maybe this week hasn’t been a complete waste of time,” Gilda complemented him in her insulting way. “A couple more days like this and I might take you out for some free-flight. Now move your flank over to the treadmill!”

Louis nodded and did as instructed, glad to finally be able to rest his aching shoulders. He knew that building up the flight muscles would take time, but he’d never worked-in a completely new muscle group before and the exertion was unusual to him.

The treadmill, on the other hand, he had mastered. The week of training with Gilda had taken Louis from a toddling embarrassment to a seasoned four-legged sprinter. The instinctual muscle memory of moving opposite arm and leg that he had developed from years of drill and jogging was easily adapted to quadrupedal running, but griffons were sprint runners where humans were endurance runners. The difference in motion and style were what required work.

Louis hopped up on the treadmill and set it for a brisk trot. Gilda sauntered over and adjusted the controls to raise the speed. Louis faltered for an instant before getting his leg back under him, meeting the higher speed of the treadmill. Gilda nodded and gave him an evil smirk before raising the speed again. Louis wasn’t surprised this time and matched the speed of the belt.

“Not bad, newbie,” Gilda said.

Louis glanced over at her for a moment, wondering when she was going to add in the insult part, but once again, his loss of concentration did him in. He caught one of his claws on the belt, lost his balance, and went tumbling off the treadmill.

“Aww, too bad, loser. You were doing so well there. I guess you’re not ready for prime time after all,” Gilda said with mock sympathy. “Now get up! You’re not done running yet!”

Louis got back to his feet and returned to the treadmill. This time he paid no attention to Gilda, only to his own motion, and he did not stumble again. After about half an hour of trot-sprint-trot cycles, Gilda called it a day.

“Your running is barely adequate, but you’re not going to get any better using that thing,” she pointed over her shoulder with her thumb at the treadmill. “Tomorrow you’ll do half an hour on the bowflex, then we go running outside, then you’ll do another half hour on the bowflex. That should imitate real griffon hunting well enough. And we’ll start you on wing-assisted running. That ought to be fun.”

“Sounds good,” Louis said while scooping up a water bottle. He squirted a stream of water into his throat and swallowed.

“Bleh. How can you drink from that thing? It makes the water taste gross,” Gilda complained.

“I’ve been doing it all my life. I don’t really know what water tastes like without plastic or chlorine overtones,” Louis said.

“That just proves you humans have totally wrecked this planet,” Gilda accused, poking Louis in the chest. Louis pushed her talon away.

“Gilda, there are ten billion humans on Earth. A little chlorine and plastic in the water is a small price to pay for not dying of dysentery,” Louis said.

“What’s ‘dysentery’?” Gilda asked.

“Death from diarrhoea caused by drinking water contaminated with shit,” Louis replied as he picked up a towel and dried himself off.

“Uwagh! That’s disgusting!” Gilda exclaimed.

“Yes, it is. But that’s what happens when more than a couple thousand individuals live in the same place for a protracted period without proper sanitation plans. Gilda, every piece of technology humans have built was to keep us alive longer or make our lives easier. There’s no magic in this world, and the only thing humans have over other animals is the best brain. That is, until Equestria appeared. Now we can’t even claim that,” Louis explained.

“Well, you won’t have to worry about any of that once the magic field expands,” Gilda dismissed as she turned to leave the room.

“Yes we will. If you think ten billion ponies won’t foul water supplies as fast as ten billion humans, I’ve got some beach-front property in Saskatchewan to sell you,” Louis retorted.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gilda asked, turning back to face Louis.

“Saskatchewan is land-locked. If you’re willing to buy supposedly beach-front property there, you must be extremely gullible. And you have to be equally gullible to believe that pony shit isn’t just as toxic as human shit,” Louis said evenly.

“Did you just call me gullible?! Nobody calls me names!” Gilda shrieked and lunged at Louis with her claws aimed at his neck.

Louis rolled to his back while grabbing Gilda’s right wrist with his right talon. He completed the roll, using Gilda’s momentum to slam her to the floor on her belly. Then he wrenched her right arm, which he was still holding, around her back into an arm lock and planted his left talon on the back of her neck.

“’It was a joke, Gilda. I’m sorry that you didn’t get it, but attacking a superior opponent is a very dangerous thing to do. You really need to work on you impulse control,” Louis said, a little sadly.

“I’m sorry, am I interrupting something?” One of the human physiotherapy girls asked from the door. “I heard a shout and I was worried that someone was hurt.”

“No, just doing a little sparring,” Louis said as he slowly let Gilda up from the floor.

Gilda stood up and shook herself off stalking towards the door.

“So I’ll see you tomorrow morning?” Louis asked.

Gilda just shot him a murderous glance and slid out past the nervous physiotherapist.

The half-hour of strength training on the bowflex was difficult, but it left Louis feeling rewarded. He had once again pulled himself to a hover while exercising, but this time he didn’t lose his concentration and managed to hold the hover for a full 5 minutes. It was a bizarre experience for one born earth-bound to take to the air under his own power in even the slightest way.

After that, Louis was hustled out of the facility for the first time since his transformation. He was immediately assaulted by smells and sounds afforded by his new sensory acuity. But the wonder was short-lived as he was allowed only moments outside in between the door of the facility and the door of a white commercial van.

“There’s nowhere decent to run anywhere near this dump,” Gilda explained as she did up her seatbelt.

Louis nodded and did up his own seatbelt. Sitting in the human-oriented van seats was something of a pain, as Louis had to sit on his tail.

Gilda and Louis kept quiet during the van ride. It was less than half an hour, but Louis couldn’t be any more specific than that because he was lacking any timekeeping devices. He made a mental note to ask for his watch back.

The ride was not without its entertainment, though. Louis was able to himself busy cataloguing all of the noises the van made that he had never noticed about a vehicle before.

When the ride came to its inevitable end, the van doors opened to reveal a massive forest.

“This conservation area’s the closest Uncle Gerhardt could find to a real forest,” Gilda quipped. “You might want these. I heard you were a little chicken about nudity,” she tossed Louis a pair of shorts tailored to fit his new griffon anatomy.

“Thanks,” Louis said as he put the shorts on. “I guess you won’t understand, but this is a big relief to me.”

“Pfft, whatever. Get running!” Gilda brushed off Louis’ thanks and flicked him in the shoulder with her claw.

Louis shot off across the parking lot and into the trees. Gilda kept up, but clearly wasn’t exerting herself the way he was.

“Decent start,” Gilda commented. “Now follow my line.” She pulled ahead and started slaloming through the forest, swerving around trees with practiced ease.

Louis marvelled at Gilda’s skill as he followed, doing his best not to be distracted or overwhelmed by the assault of unfamiliar sensory information he was getting. He could smell the individual small animals in the trees. Each of his footfalls made noises that relayed information about his footing. Small details that were previously invisible became apparent in the brighter-seeming light. Of course, all of this was secondary to Louis' herculean efforts to not skid into trees.

“Hey, moron! Use your wings!” Gilda shouted over her shoulder.

Louis stretched his wings out a bit and concentrated on copying the way Gilda used her wings to negotiate each turn. The feel of the wind whipping past his wings as he ran was a magnificent sensation, but was highly distracting when all he wanted to do was use said wings as stabilisers. Between concentrating on how to tip his wings, the sensory information from the myriad of nerve endings in his wings, and not paying attention to his running, Louis rapidly found himself smashed into a large pine tree.

“Ow. That hurt,” Louis grunted as he extricated himself from the tree’s ground-hugging branches.

“C’mon, slowpoke!” Gilda called as she slid to a halt twenty metres ahead.

Louis shook off as many pine needles as he could and resumed the chase. He made a valiant effort to manage all of the different tasks before him and only collided with two more trees before he got it right.

Louis newfound ability to balance with his wings was rendered moot when he followed Gilda onto the shore of a decent sized lake. Gilda slid smoothly to a halt and Louis struggled to match her, managing only an awkward skid.

“Now I’m gonna show you a trick I learned from a plains griffon,” Gilda said before breaking into a sprint. As she raced down the shoreline, her gait changed from the left-front-right-back/right-front-left-back pattern used by most quadrupeds to a front/back rabbit-style that left her yanking forward with her talons and then leaping with her paws. At the same time, she integrated wing beats to extend the length of her leaps. “Now you try!” Gilda shouted back.

Louis set his feet and took off down the shore, racing as fast as he was able before consciously adjusting his gait pattern. He managed to pull it off for about a hundred metres of the rocky shore, with minimal stumbling, before integrating beats of his wings. Even with Gilda’s significant head start, he was catching up, closing the distance between them. The exhilaration of the wind whipping around him and his muscles working at their utmost caused an unexpected joy to well up within Louis. He barked out a sudden laugh and surprised himself, but he didn’t break his pace.

Gilda was even more surprised by Louis’ laugh so close behind her. She glanced back and let out a startled squawk at the sight of Louis barely five metres behind her. This time, it was Gilda’s turn to lose her concentration and she went tumbling ass over teakettle along the rocky beach.

Louis watched Gilda’s spill, but he was racing too fast to avoid her. There simply wasn’t enough ground or time to manoeuvre around the tumbling griffoness. At the last second, inspiration struck Louis; he gave the most powerful leap his could upwards, not forwards as he had been, and beat his wings for all they were worth. He sailed over Gilda’s prone form and kept going, rising into the air under his own power. Reflexes and instincts that should have been in place the moment of Louis’ transformation finally snapped into place, making him fully, finally, at one with his new body.

As he crested the treetops, Louis banked back to watch Gilda, who was staring at him in shock. A smile slowly crept across Gilda’s features, grew into a grin, and culminated in a triumphant roar of support.

Louis grinned as his new instincts informed him of the perfect response. He took a deep breath and screeched a hunting cry similar to an eagle or hawk, but much louder.

Gilda took to the air and flew into position off Louis’ left wing. “Nice job, fledgling. I thought you were gonna smack into me for sure. Never figured you’d just take off.”

“Sometimes it’s nice to defy expectations,” Louis replied. “I knew I could make the jump over you, but flying came as a surprise to me too. Stuff just clicked into place, instincts and reflexes that feel like I’ve had them since the day I was born.”

“That just means you’re a real griffon now, in mind and body. Welcome to the club.”

“Thanks,” Louis said with a nod. Then his wings began to falter. “Uh, oh.”

“Lock your wings and glide! We’ll land back at the van!” Gilda ordered. Louis followed her lead and made a rather awkward landing back at the parking lot. “Looks like you’ll have to work on that wing strength some more before you’ll be doing any real flying,” Gilda commented as they got back into the van for the return trip to the facility. “But from now on, we skip the bowflex and treadmill and do our training out here, in the real world.”

Louis nodded and leaned back into the van seat. He was so exhausted that the pain of sitting on his tail totally failed to register in his mind and he napped the whole ride back.