Dozens and dozens of people milled about below, their excited chatter and music broadcasting up into the dwindling daylight’s sky past the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. Luis peeked out from behind a shuttered window, gazing at the passing populace as they enjoyed the spoils of the twenty-eighth annual crawfish festival. He smiled to himself — everywhere you went the wind smelled of delicious cajun spices and dry rubs. He kept out of sight, waiting patiently.

His growling stomach escalated its angered protests. Inhaling deeply, Luis steeled his shaking hand. He peeked back out from his hiding place. The crowd had thinned for the moment, and a man walked along the paved streets, enjoying sweet, fishy morsels of crawfish stacked high on his plate. 

Luis licked at his lips. Besieged by further aggressions of his starved stomach, he closed his eyes and transformed.

Now.

Music from the nearby pub band masked the loud crack of the window’s crumbling shutters as Luis flew down from the third story toward the street below, held aloft by blue-green ethereal wings, feathers and all. It still didn’t feel natural — how could it? Mr. and Mrs. Bastard had been strictly religious and ensured that he understood in no uncertain terms that stealing was a mortal sin.

Any residual guilt found itself quickly enveloped by survival instinct as the plate of shrimp fell into Luis’ hands. The man protested, shouting obscenities until blue in the face even as Luis soared into the distance, far enough he was already gone from sight. It took more finesse than he’d expected to control the flap of his wings and eat crawfish at the same time, but hunger demanded his utmost attention. 

Blue-orange sky passed by as Luis flew over the twinkling New Orleans streets below. Letting the leftover tails fall to the ground, he was already halfway finished with his meal as he flapped to a stop on the clock tower balcony in the docks district. Ducking past the decaying door only partially attached to its hinges, Luis clambered up the stairs to his makeshift bed. The stained-glass window above the clock face was, somehow, still intact and secure, providing contained shelter from the rain hounding Luis at every other shelter he’d found in the last six months. 

He sighed contentedly. “Nothin’ hits the spot like crawfish boils.”

 

* * *

 

Harpy woke with a start. Cold, clammy sweat clung to his forehead. He lifted his arm — a feat in and of itself considering how tightly the blankets had been wrapped around his frame — and wiped at his forehead. The air in the room was frigid. Chilled. But not to the extreme; it couldn’t have been less than sixty-six degrees. From his nose to his toes, everything ached. Burning Man in ‘09 was the only comparable sore spell he’d experienced, and even then he’d been sunburned all over to boot.

Shit. My head is killing me...

The room was sparsely decorated. It looked sterile; nobody could have lived in this room before, of that Harpy was certain. The blue-grey-blanketed bed was set against an off-white wall in the center of the room. There wasn’t any furniture otherwise, including the rug-bare wooden floors beneath him.

“Ah… shit,” he hissed, his voice still that strange cross between a whisper and squeak. He paused, his lips curled back and his eyes scrunched into a perturbed squint. His tongue had caught against something… sharp. Cautiously, he snaked his tongue back toward the left side of his mouth, brisling as it bumped against a sharpened tooth only to find another next to it. His hands flew from his sides to his face in a frenzy. It only took a moment to confirm that all of his teeth had sharpened to a point, like a predator’s or monster’s.

“What in the goddamn!?” he croaked, jolting up from the bed but halting himself. A weight, slight but indisputable, registered near the top of his chest. Terror-filled and with thoughts becoming incoherent, he slammed to the ground as his hands evaluated the body beneath the huge t-shirt he was swimming in.

Slender. Petite. Frail. Female. Only fragments were registering anymore. What had happened to him? What was going on? Where was his sweet-ass spiked leather armor?!

The door to the room swung open, revealing a tall silhouette etched into the spilling white light from the room beyond. It was her. Dressed in a pair of yoga pants and a white workout top. Every muscle, now newly petite, rippled and tensed beneath Harpy’s skin.

“You!” Harpy cried. The figure seemed just as caught off as he when she took in his non-voice. A perfect opening. He lunged at her, his fingers bared and ready to strike at her unprotected skin. Not that it would have mattered, physical blows rarely fazed her when they clashed. His scratch bounced off of her flesh harmlessly. His claws kept slicing at her, never doing more than nicking her forearms here and there.

Giant arms wrapped around his frame, pulling him tight.

“Harpy — stop! Just hold on,” Miracle Maiden said, her voice growing low as she pressed him tightly to her chest and pinned his arms flat. Her dark, mocha hair was collected in braids at the crown of her head in a large hair tie. A few braids cascaded down past her head and into Harpy’s face.

“Let go of me this instant!” Harpy shrieked, wiggling with all the might his smaller muscles could muster against her iron-clad grip. He refused to acknowledge the lost cause nature of this particular predicament — he’d never been able to break her hold with brute strength alone before, anyways. With what he was working with now, it was ultimately hopeless.

“Not gonna happen.” She smiled down at him with a wink. “You know I’m really good at hugs.” Her chipper veneer quickly faded as her eyes scanned Harpy’s features. “Did… did you always have super sharp teeth? I can’t really remember, what with all the sonic screaming you kept doing whenever your teeth were visible.”

Harpy’s struggling body began to lose steam as a startling feeling quickly invaded his mind.

Fear.

“Turn me back, now,” he growled in his best approximation of his old voice. The result, however, was much more akin to an out of breath squirrel telling a secret.

“I…” Miracle Maiden blinked a few times as she tried to process what he’d requested. “I don’t even know what happened to you. All I know is one moment you’re the usual haughtier-than-thou Harpy, out to steal some big score, and the next you’re…”

“What?” Harpy had dealt with many, many low-lifes over the last decade and change. As a result, he’d developed a keen sense for bullshit of all kinds. That sense only heightened his fear.

She’s not lying.

“A squeaky little chipmunk inverse,” she continued. “N-not that that’s a bad thing!” she quickly countered. “I have a couple of inverse friends in the community. Does this mean ‘he/him’ are the right pronouns? I don’t want to offend.”

“I ain’t no damn inverse!” Harpy retorted. “I’ve been a guy through and through for the last eighteen years! My alter form’s always had a dick, thank you!”

She turned her head to the side. “So... this isn’t your default form? I guess it’d make sense. Normal folks don’t usually have such pointy teeth or different colored eyes.”

“Eyes? What about my eyes?”

“They’re —” Harpy found himself unexpectedly tumbling onto the floor at Miracle Maiden’s feet. She leveled an accusatory finger towards the corner of the room at an object glinting in the faint light. “How did you get that in here?” Her voice shook uncharacteristically.

Harpy craned his neck to find what was working her up so much only for his blood to run cold as his eyes fell upon a long, intricately carved spear. The very same from the museum.

He carefully chose his words. She seemed as surprised as he was. “You didn’t bring it here?”

Miracle Maiden shook her head. “No, of course not! It’s the museum’s property!” Harpy instinctually bit at his lip, drawing droplets of blood as the inconsistent nature of her actions grated on him.

Then why the hell did that airhead bring me here?

He reeled back, caught off-guard. That thought was… abrupt. Emerging from nowhere, as if written on a paper slipped into a ballot box. None of this was making any sense. He needed an out, and he needed one now. Though it pained his already battered ego deeply, he scampered through her open legs into the open interior of wherever they were currently housed. An apartment, upscale in design but messy in decoration, greeted him as he entered the living room. Clothes had been strewn around the place: over the couch, on the floor — a sweatshirt even lay across the small television.

It felt like he was in his alter form. The faint, pleasurable buzz deep between his shoulders proved it. But why did he look so different? Harpy shook his head again, golden strands brushing against his cheeks. Continuing his stride, he used the flat of his foot to ground his thoughts. Immediately, his eyes settled on a prize.

The open air.

A window sat ajar, just behind a cluttered table in a small dining nook tucked next to the kitchen. Harpy stumbled as he sprinted forward, surprised by the change in his center-of-gravity. His body slammed the table aside as he barrelled into the thin, wiry window screen acting as the only barrier between himself and escape. In an instant he was once more free, soaring through the air surrounded by cityscape, a space intimately familiar. 

Even as gravity’s relentless pull took hold, he found the presence of mind to observe his surroundings. There was a chill in the air, and the skyline didn’t match Austin. The dark-brown silhouette of mountains padded the background, too, where they shouldn’t be.

Harpy had long since perfected his internal altimeter, (several painful crashes had acted as a powerful incentive) to the point where it was nearly an instinctual blinking light in his mind. He reached deep within himself, tracing his mind’s eye around his shoulder blades.

Wind continued to breeze past Harpy’s ears, though no sudden upward pull could be felt at his back. No familiar control over his descent. Only the increasingly terrifying gnaw of the fall. He was going to die.

This dream blows.

Harpy braced himself. The passing rideshare cab below shouldn’t hurt too much. Yet it remained at a distance, its terrifying advance slowed to a halt. That was when Harpy registered the hands — those hands — clutched at his waist. He was swiftly lifted back to the apartment, by her, a hoodie drawn over her head. Likely for privacy, if she could call flying anything but conspicuous. Harpy looked over the city, taking in the sights again.

“Denver, maybe?” he mused. He wouldn’t mind getting piss-drunk in Denver. Sleep this whole nightmare off. 

The two passed through the window sill and set gently onto the glossy wooden floors. Miracle Maiden tersely shut the window, all the while shooting him a particularly displeased stink eye.

“Okay, first things first,” she shouted. Her body disappeared in a blur as she raced around the apartment, kicking up a literal whirlwind in the process. “And I can’t believe I have to say this,” she returned, grounding herself to a halt; “but no throwing yourself from the windows. We’re like, twelve stories up.”

Harpy glanced around at the other windows and silently cursed. She’d bent the locking latch closed on every window in sight. Probably any others, too.

He gave the apartment a withering once-over. “Perfect. I’m so happy to stay in this pigsty.” His voice’s pitch was weaker than before and the tone hoarser. He clutched at his throat, bile and fear rising in his stomach.

Miracle Maiden gestured to the chair Harpy stood next to as she herself sat down. “Not going to lie, that’s a fair assessment. Anyways, please.”

If ever there were a danger of eyes breaking free from their sockets when rolled sarcastically, Harpy would’ve found himself in the hospital dozens of times over. He grudgingly sat himself onto the cushioned seat, separated from Miracle Maiden by a small coffee table.

They sat there, stewing in mutually-shared tension. She was the first to speak, but only on account of Harpy’s newfound irritation with his own voice.

“Laying it all on the table, okay? I’ve got no clue what happened to you. One minute you try to stab me with a spear, screaming like a darn banshee, then next I know you’re flying back towards a…” She swallowed hard. “A probably priceless cabinet with a lot of nice pottery — I think it was pottery.”

“Why?” Harpy choked. “...here?”

She sighed. “Anyways, when I lifted the cabinet up, you were like this, and you were really, truly freaking out. I mean, I’m pretty fearless. But you looked like you were foaming at the mouth! Even Varmalla doesn’t do that, and I’m like eighty-five percent sure her altercation happened because she got rabies.”

Harpy’s head collapsed into his hands.

So glad one of us can talk.

“The police were coming up the stairs, and you know the DMO is never far behind when you’re causing trouble.” She cast her eyes downward towards the floor. “Especially after Vegas.”

Harpy shot her a smug look.

Her demeanor quickly shifted, and she pointed at him. “I had just fought Green Qween, and you know she uses pheromone junk.” Harpy chuckled, irritating Miracle Maiden further. “It didn’t even feel good —!” 

Her voice caught in her throat, tickling Harpy to no end. She lowered herself back into her seat. Harpy used the opportunity afforded as she calmed herself down to further inspect the apartment. Messy, but quaint. She definitely had a style. There was a TV, small as it was, as well as a couch and chair sitting area. The kitchen wasn’t large, but it certainly looked serviceable. There were a few doors off to the side on the pale walls that Harpy assumed led into bedrooms. The main door, ostensibly leading into the interior of the building, sat between the living room and the kitchen.

Miracle Maiden looked up at him with tired eyes. “I brought you here because I wasn’t sure what to do with you. But I was pretty sure letting the DMO take you now was a…” She forced herself to take another breath, clenching her fist as she completed her thought. “A questionable decision.” Her eyes came alive once more, renewed with passion as she gestured loudly at the room Harpy had woken up in.

“At least until I saw the dang spear in there, Harpy! How’d you even get it here? Are you an O-Class or something?”

Harpy shook his head grimly. Speaking was starting to hurt. “Normal, same as you,” he croaked.

“Okay. So it followed us?”

Harpy shrugged.

Astounding! A rare instance of cleverness from the brain-dead bicep packer. She never ceases to amaze.

Harpy jumped in surprise, but caught himself before she could notice. What was happening to him?

“I had my med-tech bed in there look you over, everything is fine as far as I can tell. You seem perfectly healthy.”

Harpy furrowed his brow in disbelief.

Healthy my ass.

Harpy motioned for a drink. Miracle Maiden’s eyebrows rose, and she quickly stood up.

“Oh, gosh. Sorry, yeah, I’ll grab some water. Maybe that’ll fix your throat thing.” She hurried into the kitchen and filled a glass from one of the cupboards up with her fridge’s water spout.

“It’ll be cold, is that okay?” she asked, turning around to an empty room and the apartment door sitting ajar. “I haven’t found the… uh…”

 

Harpy hurried down the building’s stairs, keeping a steady grip on the metal-plated banister in case his balance opted for another betrayal. He had to admit, the decor out here was actually pretty nice. He wasn’t sure why she had an apartment in Denver when her HQ was in New Yorke, but approved nonetheless of the lodgings.

“This is some swanky interior design,” he mumbled to himself as he wrapped the hoodie swiped from Miracle Maiden’s couch around himself, leaving the zipper open in a poor approximation of a recent hoodie/t-shirt style he’d seen girls wearing recently.

His bare feet padded across the titled ground floor, taking him past a resident opening his mailbox and back outside, albeit at street level. He sprinted over to the other end of the block, doing his best to keep his feet safe from any broken glass, and ducked down an alleyway. He waited for any sight of her, either bursting from the building or something more low-key, but it remained eerily quiet. He slowly retreated from the corner he’d been peeking around and caught sight of himself in the store’s glass display window.

She hadn’t been kidding about the eyes — one blue eye and one green eye sat on the left and right sides of his face, respectively. And his teeth!

“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” he mumbled, running his fingers across his positively carnivorous teeth. “These are some fuckin’ chompers!” Only after did his attention step back from his eyes, back from his teeth, and settle onto his reflection as a whole. A slight woman no more than twenty years old — maybe older if she bathed in moisturizer — stared back at him.

Ah… shit.