Niki was not happy in the least when she woke up- which was very, very bad, because I hadn't bandaged her wing. Somehow Tobias- I don't know how or want to- had managed to find supplies for a suture.

Funny place, his house.

Unusually, Dave was the one to bring up the subject of what to do with the eagle morph. I say unusually because Dave is the polar opposite of Tobias, whose reaction to obstacles tends to take a bit of a direct approach. Dave prefers to work through others. Such as the police. In response, Nikki panted, staring at us.

She was nervous. I couldn't blame her. Dave and Icestar hadn't transformed yet, but humans would still snack on birds, if not as readily as those of us who had Changed. Tobias and I, on the other hand, would view her wild cousins as suitable meals. I didn't, though, and neither did Tobias. No, being in a room full of predators wasn't the only reason she was nervous. Being attacked by another morph and suddenly changing to full form most likely had something to do with it.

All of the sudden, I became aware of a curious sensation, like my mind was splitting. It wasn't painful, really, just unusual, and my ears perked as I heard my other half. This is new, he said. Then the sensation stopped, but I became loosely aware of the fact that my other half was currently sleeping on Tobias' parent's couch. The highly quality couch that they didn't allow anything with fur on.

Get off the couch, I sent, but he merely sent back a loud snore in response. Then there was a loud screeching- no, not loud, but my other half heard it- as I felt something that was suspiciously similar to a newspaper hit me in the rear end.

"Well, I think we still need to figure out more about these other beings. If they have that advanced of technology, who knows what they will do," said Dave.

"Off! Off, you dirty thing!" shouted Tobias' mother, but no one else noticed because Tobias had a soundproof room. I abruptly started lashing my tail, but no one seemed to notice that either. There was another slapping sensation, then the vacuum sucking in my tail. I- he- leapt off the sofa, his claws catching on the fabric but thankfully not tearing it. Then he vanished and reappeared under the bed, which he promptly slinked out from under. Nobody treated him as anything particularly interesting, which I'm sure he found a welcome change. In any event, he flopped down next to me.

"I feather pick," she said, and that brought me back into the conversation, at least as far as listening was concerned. She couldn't be telling the truth. I would have smelled it, her features would have become more avian, and there would have been large lumps on her arms from where she had removed the feathers. She had Changed straight from human to norm form this day, and that was deeply disturbing alone, but especially so when coupled with my encounter with the Inducer Sphere.

"Feather pick?" Tobias inquired, somehow lifting what should have been a non-existent eyebrow.

"Well, my methods don't work as well. My mom's a swan morph and sick of it. She's been having plastic surgery done to look more human, but it just makes her look weird." Small wonder she had avoided talking about her family. "I've had another raven morph show me some techniques to appear human, mostly breathing stuff and mind over body techniques." Any morph capable of doing that was already low-degree, but appearing human was rather incredible. But from my knowledge of the Change, it might actually be true. Perhaps she was telling the truth- especially if the feathers were new, which was possible, but I was skeptical, and resolved to talk to her about it later. "I won't pretend to know how they work, I just know it's a temporary fix. I've been using it mostly so my mom doesn't try to put me through the same stuff. It's been breaking down though, so I'm sure one of these days, I'll lose it entirely. Hopefully by then, my mom will have regained her marbles and won't insist I go through the same." Yeah right. Anyone suppressing their natural instincts was going to not only lose their marbles, but send them to a glass grinder and recycle them into beer bottles which would end up on the side of the road in shattered pieces. Tobias grinned. It wasn't helpful.

"The breathing technique isn't working so well on these feathers though... anyone have any pliers?" she asked. Ah. The feathers were new, which meant that Nikki's Change was taking an abnormally long time, for her to learn how to perform anything that made the Change less obvious with any excellence. How she knew she was a raven, however, was beyond me. Instincts, maybe?

What if the Inducer Sphere caused Changing abnormalities? I wondered, becoming so drawn into my thoughts I more or less tuned out the conversation. We could all be at risk from the effects if so. It wouldn't just be my other side, Tobias, myself, and Nikki- we could all go insane. Maybe not now, maybe not dramatically, but we certainly could. How long until I became a real predator, preying on my friends? Could anyone stop me, a cat who turned to metal? Bullets bounced off my fur. A Power like that could be used just as effectively by a monster or a hero.

I looked at my other half. He looked at me. An expression of worry and dread crossed both our faces. Then the question of what we should do about the extradimensional beings was raised. "They've already harmed us," I said, my voice close to a snarl. "Left alone they will fester, bacteria in a wound, and take over all Earth's civilizations. They spread the Plague, came close to wiping out the entire population. They've harmed us, we harm them."

"Finding them will be easy, since they would have immunity to what they spread and the Plague is responsible for the Change- appearances are going to be purely cosmetic. They will probably have technological-based Powers, but soon we'll have them too, and we might be able to reverse-engineer one or two of their devices. They were kind enough to leave the instruction manual." Dave immediately objected, and we immediately began brainstorming.

"Find different officers." That was Dave.

"They're open to each other," Icestar said. "Tell one tell them all. Tell them all tell the mole. Maybe FBI?"

"FBI can only be called in when dealing with interstate problems," I argued. "Name one group we can trust and call on, Icestar. One group."

"Well," he admitted, "we might have to do some scouting, but that's no reason to go on the offensive. How did Tobias find you?" The eagle-morph looked up long enough from plucking to answer.

"I have an electronic map of the city, set to mark any police alert or call going into the police channel. Small town; bad cypersecurity. A ping went off at Blaze's location- a ping reporting a large cat in the flowerbed." I darted over to the Network, making everybody jump.

"Sorry," I said apolagetically. "It's just that moving this fast is quite exhilarating." The idea that I was capable of moving so fast was something I hadn't expected- yes, cheetah morphs were faster than humans; and had quicker reactions, but speed like that was amazing. I couldn't wait to try it out.

"Not- ugghh! -for the rest of us," Nikki said, yanking out a feather and grimacing. I started a search for any police reports. That battle had to turn up some. While that was going on, the brainstorming continued.


***

Quite quickly after Nikki was done, we all left, more or less gridlocked. The search would take a long time, and I wasn't going to wait around. But since my friend was injured and vulnerable (so were all of us, admittedly, but she had a broken arm): "Nikki, whatever-he-wants-to-call-himself is going to make sure you don't get killed on the way home."

"I don't need a stranger following me around, Blaze. Remember who came to your rescue recently." I activated my ability to turn to metal. My other half did too. "That's useful," she admitted. "But I don't even know him, let alone trust him."

"You do. He's me. I'm him." When she didn't relent immediately, I said, "Besides, I can lock him back inside my head at the first opportunity."

Thirty seconds later, she had left with... well, might as well just call him Duma, I thought, until he chooses his own name. They were having a conversation regarding Nikki's mother and the Change. I had more important things to worry about, however, and all the information gathered was being uploaded to my mind. In the mean time, I was fixing dinner. Ineptly. I could analyze DNA, apparently, but not cook a microwave meal properly. I knew this, because the frozen dinner had just exploded in my face. How, I have no idea.

Duma had left her for all of twenty seconds before my phone rang. As soon as I picked it up, I heard a loud scream. Get back there now, I told my other side. Recon unless there's actual danger. In that case, you know what to do.

He didn't listen to me. There was a loud shattering as he crashed through the window, his metal body thankfully protecting him from the shards of glass.

I felt a familiar, rising sensation as my instincts became more obvious. Inducer Sphere, I thought before I blacked out- but my other side didn't.