meanwhile, back at the firehouse...

[raced_god]

Who: Falcon, Samus, special guest stars Pit and Megaweapon the Doge
What: Angry birds.
When: Starting Saturday morning June 29th, lasting the whole week.
Where: Das Firehaus
Warnings: Dogefights, body horror, panic rooms, profanity, stuff on fire, and yelling. Lots and lots of yelling.

Falcon was many things, but "morning person" wasn't usually one of them. Weekends especially found the Captain sleeping in as long as humanly possible, simply because there was no reason to face the morning if he didn't have to. It was a good philosophy, he thought. What a good philosophy.

A restless night (not unusual) resulted in a late morning wherein the Captain stumbled blearily out of bed, to the bathroom, and finally tot he kitchen, where he poured himself a bowl of excessively sugary and marshmallow-ridden colorful cereal and proceeded to park his butt in front of the television for the immediate future. "Immediate future" here, meaning "until Samus woke up and told him to move".

Truly, today would be an ordinary, sitting around in underpants and socks day, and nothing terrible would happen at all.

Comments

DAWN OF THE FIRST DAY

[icequeen_aran]

Ah, sweet summer mornings. Now that there were no more classes to be taught, this was an especially great time for this good philosophy, and often he still ended up waking before she did regardless. This was normal. As was Megaweapon jumping on the bed looking to fill the empty spot where Falcon once was. Generously so.

Samus groaned and finally relented to good morning licks and a wagging tail hitting her in the face over and over. She made a beeline for the coffee maker and started it up. Out of all the advanced technology in his place, the coffee maker was still embarrassingly archaic. Perhaps because the only time Samus make a mental-note-to-self to remedy was when she was just waking from consciousness.

Far better than coffee at shocking her awake, was the bizarre sight waiting for her in the living room. There was an intruder with long blonde hair sitting down and eating excessively sugary--oh my god...

SHE CAME. SHE SAW. SHE STARED.

[raced_god]

Falcon, apparently oblivious to his overnight blonde mullet, heard the telltale sound of one (1) girlfriend and one (1) doge descending the stairs, was quick to turn, spoon hanging out of his mouth and cheeks stuffed with cereal.

Okay

okay hang on

just gotta

swallow all that cereal

okay there.

"Oh, hey."

He turned, shutting off whatever he was watching on television (it was probably the news but there was at least a 30% chance it was cartoons) and sort of gesturing with his bowl of high fructose corn syrup deliciousness. "Did you want some breakfast?"

[icequeen_aran]

It was totally cartoons.

And this might as well have been totally a cartoon. Her eyes narrowed and she managed to shake her head in some semblance of a slow, cautious 'nnnnnnnnooooooo...' in reply. It sounded like a Falcon. Acted like a Falcon. Looked mostly like a Falcon except for the hair.

The prospects of this being his (or a) batshit clone were slim but not excluded from the differential here. More likely, Samus suspected, this was some kind of repeat mid-life crisis not unlike the one two years ago where his hair was subject to dramatic change.

Not quite like this, but...

"Did you do that last night?"

[raced_god]

Falcon's face slowly went from excited to concerned, mostly because of the way Samus was looking at him. His was the expression of someone who'd just figured out they were missing something. Something potentially very important.

Obviously, the solution was to slowly raise a heaping spoonful of marshmallows into his mouth and chew them thoughtfully.

And then talk with his mouth full.

"Do waff?"

[icequeen_aran]

She was extremely delicate (to her best efforts) with an obviously very sensitive issue the first time this happened, but she was beginning to wonder if he was playing her for a fool or if he genuinely didn't know.

HE WAS PROBABLY PLAYING HER FOR A FOOL...

"Your hair." She pointed, deadpan.

[raced_god]

MORE SWALLOWING

accompanied by standing and looking increasingly concerned. "My what?"

Falcon had, of course, heard her correctly, but felt the need to ask anyway, simply because the situation had graduated from 'not worrying at all' to 'slightly worrying indeed'. She had to be messing with him. She had to be. It would be just like her, too. Her and her deadpan...ness. Being all Samus...y.

Then again, he hadn't really looked at himself in the mirror this morning, going straight from bed to pee to giant bowl of marshmallows, so.

He ran his hand through his hair, expecting to find half of it shaven, but all of it was there as it should have been (maybe a little longer in the back?), though perhaps with the faintest traces of a texture he couldn't quite put his finger on. "What about it?"

[icequeen_aran]

No longer content to stand idly by trying to convince him (and herself for that matter) from afar, she took the few steps necessary to close the gap, setting her scalding hot mug of coffee carefully on the floor.

Kneeling next to him she dragged her fingers through his hair (real and in fact not a wig oh god okay keep going). She started at the nape of his neck and pushed as much of his silky, luxurious, uncharacteristic hair forward as she could towards his scalp without ripping it out.

"Look." Look at the blonde hair in front of your face.

DAWN OF the SECOND DAY

[raced_god]

Though Samus had initially projected a week, give or take, it seemed to Falcon that things were progressing much too quickly on his end. The first day, along with stark changes to his hair and eye color, included a discomfort that crescendoed to an unbearable itch down his back that proved absolutely ceaseless.

The reason for it became apparent into the night as pinfeathers finally started breaking the skin across his shoulders, which the Captain was not silent about in the least, yelling things to Samus that included but were not limited to "FUCK. SHIT", and "THIS IS REALLY KIND OF PAINFUL, I HOPE YOU KNOW THAT".

After unsuccessfully attempting to sleep, his next totally mature and logical response was to spend the wee hours of the morning locked in the bathroom, tearing out whatever he could reach but ending up with little more than a bloody mess in the bathtub. When he finally emerged, he wasn't entirely sure what time it was, only that he hadn't halted the process, was still itchy, and now was sore to boot. All in all, nothing to show as he finally decided that his efforts were better spent face-down on the sofa trying to ignore the incessant prickling that had plagued him for the better part of twenty-four hours.

The groan to end all groans could probably be heard the firehouse over.

Re: DAWN OF the SECOND DAY

[icequeen_aran]

At first Samus dutifully offered back scratches, then realized the severity of his skin problems and offered ointments and creams but ultimately to no avail or relief. Being locked out of the bathroom was terrible enough. After a while of sitting outside the door with her elbows flopped over her knees, head feeling heavier and heavier as the night wore on, she groaned and relented and chose to flop face-first down on the bed. How could he possibly make things that much worse on his own?

(She should have learned by now he was very capable of this.)

Sleep didn't come easily over the sounds of Falcon's bathroom agony, but eventually it did. It was short-lived as the groan to end all groans permeated throughout the firehouse.

This indicated to her that 1) he didn't kill himself in there and, 2) the bathroom was open again. Samus groggily rolled out of bed, urged to take advantage of the situation and relieve her bladder before checking up on him. She flipped on the light and took a step in, immediately feeling something cool and wet between her foot and the tile.

There was a feather murder

in the bathroom.

Everywhere all over the bathroom.

"What did you do in here...?!" She half hissed, half-yelled--mostly out of sheer bewilderment. Samus had seen a lot of gruesome things in her life, but this left an uncomfortable twist in the pit of her stomach. She was content to put her own bladder on hold to hastily clean this up.

[raced_god]

Falcon was vaguely aware that he was being a huge whiny baby about the whole thing, but he also felt very justified in being a huge whiny baby, because not only was this exceedingly uncomfortable, often painful, and completely ridiculous, but he was more than familiar enough with the Pokemon to know exactly what was coming, and was not looking forward to it at all.

"What do you think I did?"

Slightly muffled due to face-in-sofa, but he hoped that properly conveyed his thoughts on the subject. Sure, he hadn't bothered to clean up, but after several hours of trying very, very hard to rip out the unwanted plumage, Falcon had been far too frustrated to do anything but try and find relief elsewhere.

Relief that seemed increasingly elusive as the pricking, stabbing, burning feeling of feathers pushing through skin only spread, his hands ached, and he started to get the feeling that there would be other, bigger things to worry about before long.

"It didn't work, if you were wondering."

[icequeen_aran]

"Of course it wouldn't." She grumbled, probably not very audible between the bathroom and the couch. Samus didn't say much more but scooped up all the dilapidated bloody excuses for feathers into the trash can and dedicated a dark towel to blot out most of the blood. She'd do an in depth cleaning later (as she expected him to dirty it all over again in short time) but this would suffice for now.

Then she peed. This was important.

After all that she came out of the bathroom to kneel next to him on the couch, his back noticeably more feathery than last night--in-between all the red, swollen and incredibly uncomfortable looking skin. It was slowly just dawning on her now how arduous of a process this was going to be for him, and frowned. The gunship, after running test and test last night didn't exactly come up with any good news either. He was going to go through more of this and it was probably going to get increasingly painful.

"Have you taken anything?" Implying, pills.

[raced_god]

"Painkillers. Antihistamines." He growled a little, sitting up and rubbing at a particularly angry patch on his shoulder. "Helps a little. And it's fine once they're in, it's just getting there that's the hard part."

The itchy, painful hard part, only made worse by the fact that Falcon knew from experience just how many feathers this particular Pokemon was covered in, and that he couldn't even call this halfway there. Thinking about everything that still needed to happen before he could safely say the ordeal was over was worse than any immediate discomfort.

He ran a hand through his (starting to feel less like) hair, which had gone full-on mullet and then some during his time locked in the bathroom.

"Anything from the gunship? Reversability, maybe?"

That important little thing called impermanence.

[icequeen_aran]

"Still too early to say. Trying to make a roadmap of your genetic structure when it's changing isn't easy." Maybe near the end of the week there'd be some better indication this wouldn't permanent when he reached his FINAL FORM, but Samus couldn't say with any absolute certainty at this point.

She reached up to grab his hand and hold it in a very subtle effort to try and prevent him from irritating his skin any further.

"I can say you're definitely not suffering alone in this. Rhys is already making a note of similair transformations, himself included."

DAY 3 WITH SPECIAL GUEST STAR PIT

[raced_god]

If the first night was terrible, the second was even worse. Falcon wasn't sure he'd even slept, having spent hours in agony, clenching and unclenching his hands as claws pushed out from under his fingernails and knuckles started to fuse, making them nearly unusable as four fingers slowly became two. If feathers were bad, the gray scale-like texture that was covering the backs of his hands and feet and extending up his forearms was even worse.

He'd made a habit of checking himself thoroughly in the mirror every few hours just to stay up to speed on any recent developments, and though he didn't think anything was accelerating, per se, everything felt and looked that much more drastic. Despite Samus' reassurance that the face would be last, the telltale red coloring had started underneath his eyes and was spreading like a mask, and he'd all but given up on trying to tear out the feathers that increasingly covered his person.

Falcon wasn't sure if it was his own frustration or the Pokemon's aversion to closed-in spaces, but he was feeling cooped up indoors, and figured that stepping out for a moment or two for some fresh air couldn't hurt. Perhaps the only advantageous part of the whole ordeal was a dramatically increased (albeit slightly disorienting) sense of sight, and it wasn't long before squinting into the trees that surrounded the firehouse that he spotted

SOMETHING

OR SOMEONE

APPROACHING.

I CAN NEVER PASS UP A CAMEO APPEARANCE

[raw_angel_power]

LO AND BEHOLD the most glorious of vehicles is on the horizon. Wow, who overhauled that convertible so badly? Were they so drunk they couldn't tell a welding torch from a wrench? Or was it actually a souped-up bumper car? Okay, so the driver was like, a four-year-old, right?

No. There was no driver.

It was just a purple bumper convertible. All alone. Driving up the driveway of the firehouse. Did it have eyes? Was that a mouth? No, that was just a pair of really tasteless headlights and an ugly grille. Please tell me that's an ugly grille. NO. THAT WAS ACTUALLY A FACE. IT BLINKED. And glanced around curiously.

This was Falcon's house?

Kind of far out, wasn't it? It checked out with the more secretive and elusive side of his personality, that's for sure. Well, there was also a guy with feathers all over his body- more than last time but the same colors, so that figure had to be the one and only Captain he was seeking. He rolled up closer to say his greetings, not even paying attention to the fact that he shouldn't be knowing where Falcon lived and his arrival would be alarming. "Captain!" cried the talking car. "Captain, I need your help!"

i think you mean a camaro appearance

[raced_god]

A car was talking to him.

A car was talking to him was that even a car, really?

Falcon was probably insane. He'd either dreamed up the whole ordeal, or was finally so delirious from pain that he was hallucinating a tiny little cartoon car with Pit's voice. That had to be it.

He stood there motionless for a few more moments, knowing that despite the impossibility of this strange vehicle putting up his driveway, that his incredibly good avian vision did not lie. That was definitely a tiny little cartoon car with a face and it was definitely talking to him with Pit's voice, and he definitely wasn't wearing any pants.

Falcon did not address Pit directly, rather, stared straight ahead with a bewildered look on his face until an airy sort of whine escaped him--a moan of disbelief that eventually formed the words "oh my god what the fuuuuuck".

you're driving me mad

[raw_angel_power]

"Hey! Earth to Captain Falcon!" rang Pit, rolling forward and then backward like he was trying to push him into focusing on the matter at hand. "I'm having a colossal problem! I don't know what's wrong with me!"

On the other hand, Falcon looked like he really let himself go, only not by choice. It wasn't his fault that he was going hot turkey right now. You wanna talk problems? "...You look a lot different than the last I saw you," he added in his distraction. "Are you even wearing anything?"

[raced_god]

"Yeah, I'm--"

Falcon still seemed incredibly nonplussed, looking the tiny cartoon car up and down and itching at the back of his neck. No, he wasn't wearing anything, and he spared a glance down to his befeathered pelvic region, declining to answer the question. Feathers were a suitable replacement for clothes, right?

"I've got a case of the spirit Pokemon."

Though if this really was Pit, the Captain was starting to think he didn't have it so bad.

"You're a car."

[raw_angel_power]

"I'm a car." He had to roll his eyes, because he thought that was obvious and he didn't like being a car. "What do I look like, a trike? I've got four wheels and a trunk and everything! I think. But I'm not sure."

DAY FOUR

[raced_god]

Tranquilizers proved to be only temporary relief, and soon Falcon was refusing them entirely, not enjoying the whole "go to sleep and then wake up to a whole host of new unpleasantries as you continue to turn into a Pokemon" thing. Staying awake meant that he was at least aware of what was happening to him, instead of being surprised (and not in a good way).

That did not, however, mean it was easy.

He'd locked himself in the bathroom again, full of an overwhelming urge to ride it out on his own, despite any and all protests. Feathers were still growing in but hadn't fully covered him yet, and he'd given up on trying to tear them out, as it was more trouble than it was worth. It seemed Samus had been mostly right about full facial deformation at least, though that hadn't stopped the bony protrusions from breaking through the sides of his face and forehead, the red mask-like texture continuing its spread.

When he emerged sometime in the afternoon of day four, it was with some difficulty, his feet having long since undergone the start of a shift to two curved talons and a spur, but though everything had started, nothing seemed to have finished, as evidenced by patchy, incomplete plumage and hands that still looked like his fingers had paired off and stuck together, mostly because they had.

Instead of checking in with Samus like he probably should have, he made his way downstairs, trying to fight down the Pokemon's aversion to being stuck indoors. Somewhere along the line, he ran into Megaweapon instead.

If Samus hadn't heard him exit the bathroom, the kerfluffle that followed was probably difficult to ignore.

[icequeen_aran]

Kerfluffles and things that sounded like those were difficult to ignore. Situations like this were undoubtedly stressful and stressful situations often made sleep fleeting, which started to catch up with Samus by around now. For all the abnormal stamina she did have, she was still human. Mostly human.

Falcon was becoming less and less human with each day, which was starting to catch up with Megaweapon. She'd been taking the beginning of his transformation in stride but now Falcon smelled less and less like Falcon, and more like some weird giant game bird/possible intruder/strange imposter. Perhaps she too, found doggy sleep fleeting during all this. Perhaps his cries of agony and obvious pain upset her. A stressed dog was either way more likely to be a barking, growling dog threatening to bite and cause a kerfluffle.

Samus flew rolled out of the bed, stumbled over her pants but made down the firepole without incident.

"MEGAWEAPON! DOWN!"

It did no good; the dog was intent on protecting her home and the people that lived in it.

He was not a people anymore.

[raced_god]

The one thing that Falcon hadn't quite taken into account were instincts--sure, he had some frame of reference seeing as he'd been this Pokemon before, but certain things seemed to have snuck up on him. Certain things that the Pokemon just did not like, so when he shuffled downstairs and was met with a large, growling dog, those primal compulsions kicked into overdrive.

Megaweapon, thankfully, seemed too scared to actually go for the attack, but made plenty of noise barking and growling an Falcon found himself scrambling for higher ground, similarly making a lot of defensive noise, hackles raised and half-chcanged toes scrabbling for purchase on the smooth kitchen countertop.

He'd been feeling increasingly warm all day, with the majority of the feeling concentrated in his chest, and now he could make a guess why. Falcon didn't think--he just knew that a threat display was what needed to happen. Before he could stop himself, the burning sensation moved up and out, and he spit a jet of flame in Megaweapon's direction.

[icequeen_aran]

From barking and growling to suddenly yelping and whining, Megaweapon managed to jump out of spitting flames with nary more than some singed fur. Samus didn't intend to let any more potential damage occur and threw herself between them.

"Stop it!" What little fur did catch embers Samus quickly patted out, which the dog was fairly oblivious to. No harm, but there definitely was a fowl here. Huddled over the dog with her arms wrapped around her neck, Samus restrained her well enough to cast a look of DISAPPROVAL at the half-man half-bird creature perched on the kitchen counter top.

[raced_god]

For a moment, Falcon seemed far too consumed by the impending threat of BARKING DOG to even register Samus' interference. He stayed on the kitchen counter all poofy-like until something seemed to click, and he visibly relaxed, clearly bewildered by what had just transpired as the flames dissipated.

"Wh--"

It all seemed to hit him at once--the dog kerfluffle, the subsequent fire breathing, the way he'd scrambled on top of the counter completely overtaken by the Pokemon's instincts, and the look on his face was clearly overwhelmed.

Slowly, he climbed down from the counter--and didn't stop there, sinking to the cool tile floor in disbelief.

"Oh my god."

[icequeen_aran]

Once he calmed down, her face similarly went from a tight screw of disapproval to a tight screw of... something between disappointment, forgiveness and pity. Pity wasn't an emotion she liked to feel since it often carried insincere connotations, but in this instance it was easy to see he was fighting with himself.

"She's fine." She ventured. Megaweapon whined and squirmed in her arms until Samus eased her down again. There was a desire to also wrap her arms around Falcon and console him but she had only two arms.

"...Are you okay?" She knew he wasn't but hopefully getting him to talk would be better than letting him slip into primal actions and reactions.