Kelly turned aside and stumbled back, barely avoiding the attack. He looked down, saw a cut in his training uniform that showed a bloody patch beneath it. That spike was needle sharp and more of them were sliding out as he watched. Jim was staring at him, crouching just a little with his arms spread to the sides, as they slid into place at his knees and elbows as well as his other hand. Kelly needed to buy time to get into his new fighting shape. He shifted to the climbing form instead and leaped for the nearest wall, just above the door he'd come in through.
Kelly's fingers had wide, sharp claws that bit into the stone surface of the wall. He knew his skin had a weird, pebbly look to it but that was just the side effect of the tiny sucker like extrusions that covered most of his body now. They were modeled on a gecko's setae and let him cling to surfaces, even vertical or upside down. It wouldn't have worked without the hollowed out bones or the super light, thin frame that he'd gotten by removing most of his internal organs. A custom designed body could do things that Mother Nature never dreamed of. Kelly crawled, as quickly as he could, up the curved wall of the dome and out of Jim Feral's reach.
"Oh come on man!" He heard Jim cry out, below. "I know there's not a time limit, but how long are you going to hide up there? I got other stuff to do today!"
Not long at all. Kelly couldn't answer out loud; the climbing form lacked a vocal apparatus. He just needed enough time to picture his next change in detail. The ones he used most often were as easy as taking off a shirt, a reflex he didn't really need to think about. New forms required concentration and a detailed mental image of what he wanted. Kelly had spent the better part of the week putting together his plan for the new combat form, but this would be the first time he'd tried it for real.
The basic body was an iguana's, scaled up massively. Kelly had tweaked a few things here and there, titanium scales, diamond-like structures for the bones and muscular system that was both denser and far more extensive. The wings were modeled on a bat's, but he had to really rework the skeleton's shape and the muscles in his back to accommodate them.
The final touch was the head and neck. Someone in the Citadel kept snakes, either as part of their duties or just as a hobby, and Kelly had been allowed to 'sample' a real Naja ashei, the giant African spitting cobra. Of course, he'd reworked the venom sacs and altered the coloring to something more appropriate.
Kelly felt the tingling as the change started and pushed himself free of the ceiling, twisting in midair. The climbing form had the inner ears of a cat and a custom designed tail, so it was a trivial for Kelly to make sure he landed on all fours. It should look awesome.
* * *
"Holy shit. This really is like fighting Kerry." Jim muttered, watching as Kelly's body rippled then transformed into a twenty foot long dragon, minus the tail, while it was still in midair. There was a tremendous crash as it hit the ground, sending up a cloud of dust and shattered stone. "Or maybe not." Jim said, as he moved forward, cautiously approaching Kelly's prone body.
"You okay?" The dragon thing didn't look right. Maybe hurt in the fall? Its legs weren't broken, but there was something wrong with the joints. "Hey, just wiggle you're tail if you're okay." There was something sticking up, distorting the skin around the nearest one. Was it still called skin when there were scales on top of it?
He gave a sigh of relief as Kelly's body shifted, the joints visibly reshaping back to something normal. Jim darted forward, stabbing at its neck with both of his hand spikes. Kelly stood up, his snakelike head meeting Jim's gaze. He hadn't been able to get through the scales at its neck so Jim leapt back, trying to get out of range before Kelly could swipe at him with those claws.
Apparently, he'd had plenty of time. The motion came, but it was slow and badly aimed. It didn't even come close to hitting him. Jim ran back in, moving as fast as he could. He stabbed at the neck again then used his elbow blades to cut at the dragon thing's legs and sides as he ran past.
Kelly was moving too slowly to get him easily but, given its size, all it would take was one mistake and Jim might be down for the count. The tail turned out to be more dangerous than the claws. It was moving faster than the other limbs and he hadn't thought to watch out for it.
"Fuck!" he swore, as it collided with his thigh. Jim fell and started rolling, opening up distance between Kelly and himself. He couldn't turn off the regeneration so Coach Achala had consistently paired him with the harder hitters in combat training. Jim was grateful, now.
He could tell the difference between a broken femur and one that just hurt, a lot. It wouldn't take long for him to recover, then he'd be back in the fight. Jim Feral might not be the best there was at what he did, but he was determined to show that he was better than his current ranking.
* * *
Kelly looked down at his opponent. Jim was too far away for him to reach with claws or tail and this new body was turning out to be really hard to move around in. The coordination was awful and everything just felt so heavy. He tried to take a step forward and almost fell. Well, that still left him one option. He'd embedded flint into his snakelike tongue and iron into the roof of his mouth. The spitting cobra's venom had been replaced with acetone.
Kelly would've preferred gasoline but acetone was easier, most bodies used it in small amounts already. He raised his head and reared back, prepared to spit a blast of flame at his opponent. He didn't like the idea of hurting Jim, but he'd heal and this was going to be really cool.
* * *
Jim watched, stunned, as Kelly's head exploded.
* * *
Kelly woke with the weird, full body tingling sensation that meant he'd done a major shift in his sleep. He opened his eyes and saw a masked stranger, wearing a grey uniform, leaning over him. This wasn't his bedroom.
"What's going on?" he asked, his body tensing up and gaining weight as he got ready to fight.
"Stay calm. You're not in danger Kelly." the man in grey said. He had that tone people used when they were trying to stay cool, even though they were actually nervous or a little afraid.
Oh right, he's a healer, the one from the match. Why hadn't he recognized him?
"Do you remember what happened?" the healer asked him.
"What?" Kelly was still bleary so he took a moment to look around. This definitely wasn't his room. He could feel a cold, hard surface beneath himself. The walls sloped up to form a dome. Wonder where the light's coming from? He couldn't see a bulb and there were no windows...
It snapped back into place when he saw his cousin Jim, crouching down on the balls of his feet and staring at him, concern written all over his face. "The fight. Guess I lost?" Jim's worried look was wiped away as he started laughing.
"Yeah," Jim answered, eventually, "you lost. You really don't know what happened?"
"The trainee isn't showing any signs of injury or distress. I think we can cancel that request for Aid." the healer spoke into a device on his wrist. When he'd finished, he stood and addressed them both. "James, please fill Kelly in on the details of your match. Kelly, once you're feeling a bit less disoriented, you're free to go.
“Given the way your power seems to work, we don't expect you to have any issues but if you'd stop by the medical area in the next twenty four hours, we'd really appreciate it. There's a few tests we'd like to run. Also, yes. I'm afraid this will count as a loss. You won't be able to challenge again for another week." And with that, the healer turned and walked away. If he felt any concern about leaving a patient who'd been missing a head, just a minute prior, he didn't show it.
"What the heck?" Kelly asked, confused. "Last thing I remember, I was having trouble with my shape. I couldn't move right. Everything was too heavy or too light. Guess I need to do some more work on the nerves and stuff." He looked at Jim, waiting for him to fill in the missing pieces.
"Ah."
He had that look on his face, like the time he’d bitten into one of Mom's cookies and she’d mixed up the salt and the sugar.
"Okay, wel
l, the dragon thing? That looks awesome. Don't get me wrong, but..."
"Just spit it out."
"Yeah, do you remember hitting me with your tail?" he asked.
"You managed to get out of my reach and I couldn't walk right. I knew you wouldn't be down long, so I was about to try breathing fire at you."
"That explains it." Jim said. "You remember when we were kids, that time at the beach when my dad was trying to get the fire started? He had a little bitty flame thing going and then he just grabbed the lighter fluid and sprayed?"
Kelly laughed at the memory. "Yeah, the flame ran right up the stream and he freaked out. Dropped the lighter fluid and ran off."
"Okay, well the reason it didn't blow up in his hands is because they make those things with vapor locks or something. I'm guessing, however you set up the fire breathing, it didn't come with anything like that."
"No, I adapted it from a snake, a spitting cobra." Kelly explained.
"No wonder, that thing was creepy as hell. Right up until your head blew up."
What? "My head-?"
"Blew up."
What? Kelly just blinked. He had no idea what to say to that. Even for someone like him, whose conversations had the tendency to get a little surreal sometimes, that was a new one. "How am I still alive?"
"You didn't know?"
Man, Jim could be frustrating sometimes. "Obviously not. Stop beating around the bush and tell me, okay?"
"Well, it's like this. Remember that time we built that half-assed tree house?"
"Are you going to remind me about our childhood every time you tell me something? Because that's going to get old real quick." Kelly said, sitting up so the conversation didn't feel quite so much like he was back at the shrink's office.
"Hey, we haven't seen each other since my dad got his job in LA. Five years ago?"
Kelly had brought up a perfectly reasonable point and Jim got all defensive. Just like old times. "Something like that."
"I didn’t even know you’d joined. Maybe I'm feeling a little nostalgic," Jim continued, "regardless, do you remember or not?"
"Yeah, we didn't use long enough nails. One of the boards came loose and I fell, knocked the wind out of me and I went out like a light. But I was okay when I woke up, a minute or two later. You totally freaked and that was it for the tree house." Kelly said, going along with his cousin's trip down memory lane.
"So no, you didn't remember." He's got that look on his face, like he bit into something sour but didn't want to spit it out. This was just like that thing with old Mrs. Givens' cat, all over again. "You didn't get the wind knocked out of you. Your head hit a rock, about the size of a baseball. You're damned right I was freaked out." Jim paused, took a deep breathe, then went on. "Kelly, we were just kids, but I knew what it means when you see a bloody hole in someone's skull."
"What? I wasn't really hurt, I just-"
"No. Kelly, you should have died. I watched my cousin, my best friend, die because I didn't pick the right size nail. You have any idea what that's like? Then you rippled, just like you do when you change, and you were fine. The blood was gone, the hole was gone, and you were complaining because your back was a little sore and you were out of breath."
"Oh." That was just... "I didn't know." Kelly said. "I mean, I can heal most things just by thinking about it. Changing from one person to another is a lot bigger than changing from a person with a cut in his arm to a person without one, but..."
"You didn't used to be able to change into fucked up dragon things," Jim interrupted, "just into different people. Did your power change or...?" he trailed off.
"No. I just figured it out. I can do pretty much anything, but if it's too different from human I need a sample first, and I have to plan it out."
"So you got a sample from Kerry?"
"I..." Kelly was speechless. "I didn't even think of that. No, I basically tried to build a dragon from scratch." Would that even work? Did Kerry really change into a dragon or was it just some kind of projection? And, if it was real, would she be willing to help Kelly out? She was nice, but that seemed like it might be a big deal...
"Anyway, we're off topic." Kelly said, bringing his thoughts back to the exploding head thing. "If I do something that's not alive, a chair or whatever, I have to concentrate to keep the change in place. Soon as I lose my focus, I go back to my last viable form."
"Shouldn't you be a non-headless dragon, then?" Jim asked.
Huh, he hadn't thought of that. "Um, apparently not? I guess I don't have as good a handle on this as I thought. But apparently, my power treats a corpse as a non-viable shape change and snaps me back." Kelly went quiet as the implications of that hit him. It meant...
"Does that mean you can't die?" Jim asked, quietly.
"I don't... I mean, I never even realized..."
They both sat there, awed by the situation. Well, Kelly was awed. Jim was a bit more practical.
"We're not gonna figure it out sitting here. And they'll probably want this dome for someone else's match pretty soon. Wanna go grab something to eat in town and catch up?"
"Sounds good. Kind of a long drive for a burger though." Kelly pointed out. It's always a burger, with Jim. The guy eats whatever you stick in front of him, but if he gets to choose, it's always a burger.
"Nah. We can just take one of those glowing gate things that breaks every conventional law of physics and head to San Diego. I found this great burger place there, last Sunday."
Kelly just smiled. "I've missed you, Jim."
* * *
"What the hell are you wearing, Hector? This isn't a kindergarten class."
"Duncan! That's messed up, man. What the hell is your problem?" Samantha came to his rescue, her face flushed and her hands clenched into fists. The rest of Hector kept watching the matches while the one Duncan had accosted slid his hand down to his new equipment belt.
"Well Duncan, I've got a match scheduled in a bit and I don't want to know what it's like to get my jaw slapped across the room. So I brought some extra equipment." Hector felt a chill run down his spines and all the little hairs on his arms stood up. He set his hand on the item he wanted. If Duncan escalated, this was going to get bad but at least he'd be able to do something. He just wished someone tougher than Sam was his backup. Kerry had worked wonders last time. Of course, Jenny would be even better.
"Trainee, shut it down. You're disrupting the fighters." The newcomer had Chinese features. His hair was cut short and he was wearing an operative's uniform, just like theirs but with a white shirt instead of black. "Hector, stay. The rest of you, go home or go watch one of the fights, quietly." he said, voice and eyes as hard as cast iron.
Duncan's demeanor changed, instantly. "Yes, sir." he said, lowering his face, now wiped clean of the hostile sneer Hector was used to seeing on it. Duncan left immediately, but Sam lingered, for a moment, before taking to the air. She was out of sight in less than a second.
"Thanks, sir."
"No problem, Hector." The operative stuck out his hand. Hector fumbled with the canister he'd been holding, shifted it to his left hand, then extended his right to shake. The stranger slapped his hand aside and plucked the item out of his left. "I don't shake hands with recruits. I just wanted to see what you were holding."
Hector stepped back, too surprised to respond with any kind of grace. "What the-?" The motion had been so smooth that Hector hadn't even been able to track it.
"Why the OC spray? You've got a pistol and a bean bag gun. Why not use one of them?" The man's voice was cool, analytical, but there was a wry twist to his mouth.
Who was this guy? "Sir, I'm not sure how tough Duncan is. The pistol might've killed him." he answered, doing his best to keep his tone polite. At least he had plenty of experience as a waiter and bar tender to help with that.
"And the bean bags?"
Hector stifled a frustrated sigh. "Same issue. I don't know how tough he is, might not have done anything. Pepper spray should have at leas
t some effect on him."
"Good thinking." He broke into an outright grin, nodding. "You haven't figured out how to access the fight archives yet, but I know you watched him fight the Juggernaut." His face relaxed, a little more serious. "Why don't you know how strong he is?"
"How-? Who are you, sir? How did you know our names? What I've been-?" Hector couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so flustered.
"Operative Bruce Richards, Deputy Director of Training and your next Conditioning Instructor." he replied, radiating self-satisfaction.
"Holy shit! You're a Richards type?" Hector asked.
"All that, and my power type is what you picked to focus on?" Bruce laughed. "C'mon Hector, I thought better of you than that."
"Sorry, sorry sir..." That name was familiar, so was the face. "It's just, I've never met a Richards type, they're so rare, and I didn't think that I'd run into one here..."
"Yeah, most of us don't go in for the fight stuff." His grin was as big as Jenny's. "I'm a bit of an exception though."
"So, so you're here to watch us fight? For your class on Monday?"
"Nope!" He was still grinning, cheerfully amused by Hector's state. "I came here because I wanted to talk to you, Hector."
"Me?" Hector slowed his breathing, trying to calm down. "Well, uh, what can I do for you, sir?"
"It's about your challenge."
"Yes, sir?"
"Before I go any further, tell me what you're carrying."
"Okay..." Hector paused, going over the list in his head. "Well, like you said, I've got my pistol. I wasn't planning to use that though. I just thought I should get in the habit of having it on me. The bean bag gun," he hefted the item in question, "it can fire gas canisters too. The bags shouldn't do too much damage to a normal person, long as I'm careful about face shots, and the gas is just a more concentrated version of the pepper spray."
"Okay, but the gas doesn't disperse much, won't cover the whole combat room."
Citadel (Book 1): Training in Necessity Page 13