Bestial Planet

Chapter 34: Metamorphosis

"I still feel sick.."

"I didn't want to say anything before dude but... I could feel the heat comin off you earlier, still do. It's like you're radioactive or some shit."

"Shouldn't we call someone to come pick you up?"

"If we call Mei-lin everyone else will just get panicked..."

I unintentionally groaned out loud as I tried to take a few steps, it felt like I broke something by trying to move. There was concern painted across both Nik and Catty's faces; none of us knew what to do.

"Look for all we know it just might be growing pains. Maybe I'm entering my teenage years in my new... body."

I roared in pain this time, I tried to stifle it but I was sure someone had heard it. I forced myself to walk over to a large tree, each step screaming at me to stop moving. My senses, all of a sudden, were turned up to 11. I smelled something strange, it was a tree but a new breed. It had been altered like us, it was very wide but stood a little more than 25 feet tall. It's branches stood out to me the most, one of them looked like a balcony. I swallowed the pain and used it to propel myself up the tree.

"You seem like you're getting over..."

I collapsed at the spot that I felt compelled to move to and screamed again, this time unrestrained. It echoed through the trees and Catty raced up the tree to see what happened to me.

"Panzer I think we should..."

My voice was at normal volume but had I been able to speak with a normal voice-box, I would have been whispering.

"Just... leave me here. If I turn feral - kill me if I'm violent..."

"Yo chill the fuck out, you're just sick. I'm not g..."

I tried to speak again but my thoughts were a haze of nothing and everything.

"You're going to be fine Mannie, we're all we have left."

I was able to move my head just enough to see the tears running from Catty's eyes. Nik was freaking out more than Catty, not being able to climb a tree.

"What's happening, I can't hear you. What's wrong with you man?"

"I'm changing... I feel like... slipping away. Please... I... if I'm..."

After that all I can remember is blackness, a void of nothing that I was falling into... Then the pain flared up, like embers catching their breath and reigniting into a roaring inferno. The pain that hadn't left me for the entire week had become too intense. I couldn't do anything, not even think; everything I was that night was pain. My muscles were contemplating snapping my legs into pieces every second. Every joint in my body felt like they were liquefying, disconnecting from the bones. My paws felt like a truck parked on them. My eyes hurt when I tried to open them and they felt like they were bleeding when I closed them. Even my teeth felt like they were falling out. When I finally stopped writhing in pain it wasn't because I fell asleep, I passed out.

I woke up with the sun. The first two things I saw were the faces of Catty and Nik. I'd fallen out of the tree and they were looking at me, petrified by what they saw, jaws agape in disbelief. I was on my back and tried to look down at my body. I hoped I wasn't attacked during the night. As I looked down, expecting the act to be difficult given my anatomy, shock and confusion took up residence.

"Oh my god! What is this! What... What happened?!"

I clambered backwards and knocked my head into the tree behind me. Paws, I felt them ripping up the ground beneath them, tense, claws extended. My eyes were as wide as Catty's and Nik's were. I raised a paw to my face and felt it grab at my jaw. I looked at it in disbelief.