Chapter Text
“Someone has to help.”
That was the last thing he said to Hiro before running into the burning building, hot air catching his cap and gusting it off his head—forget the cap, he could get a new cap, he couldn’t get a new life if he tarried too long.
“Professor!” he bellowed, scanning the building, maneuvering through the scant clear areas—coughing as smoke started to invade his lungs and the heat stole his air. “Professor Callaghan!”
Some other noise, over the roaring of the fire—skittering, sounding like—
He turned—
Hiro’s microbots, surging through the fire, wrapping up around—
“Professor Callaghan!?”
What was going on—why did his expression look so cold—
And then a wave of blackness slammed into him, sending him cracking against a far wall—seize him away, throw him again—
As he tumbled through the fire and debris, it occurred to him that his favorite professor was trying to kill him.
“No,” he wheezed, ribs grinding painfully as he tried to stand, to push himself up. “Why—why—”
Another hit, sending him landing near a window—the microbots surged over him suddenly, breaking the window, skittering away—
And then the world flared in a sear of heat and noise and he was flying again, not of his own volition, landing hard, rolling, coming to a halt…wheezing…couldn’t breathe….
Vaguely aware of a hospital…vaguely aware of someone saying he was a John Doe…no…no he had a name he had a family—
Someone made a tsking noise. “Someone did a number on you, didn’t they hon? Don’t worry, we’ll take care of the poor boy—someone has to help, right?”
Someone has to…someone….
Darkness.
It was an eternity later when Tadashi realized his senses had returned to him, that the reason everything was still dark was because his eyes were closed—try to stir awake, reach up, rub his face—felt an IV tugging at one arm, felt entirely uncomfortable, lower body buzzing, back aching…what—
It came back to him—the fire. The explosion.
Professor Callaghan.
He sat bolt upright, eyes snapping open—action knocking the IV to the ground, yanking it out of his arm—he screamed, grabbed the blanket, pressed it hard against his arm to stop the bleeding—tried to get out of bed—
Went crashing to the floor.
Okay—okay no, please don’t tell him—try to twitch his toes—felt them—but didn’t amputees feel phantom limbs? Had to look, had to—
Looking made him wish he hadn’t, made him wish he had lost his legs.
Because he did, because those weren’t his legs.
Because last he checked, he had been one hundred percent human, and that—that wasn’t human.
Feathers—thighs, bird thighs, bird legs, bird feet—long tail ending in feathers, looking like a feathery version of Toothless the Dragon’s tail—orange and black and yellow feathers, marching up his back—wings, huge wings that prickled and burned as blood flow came back to them—
No. No, no, no, this wasn’t happening this wasn’t happening to him he was dreaming wake up wake up—
Except the pain was real—all the pain was real, and pinching himself didn’t change any of that, just added a new thing to be horrified about because his nails weren’t proper fingernails anymore they were black and looked like they were halfway between there and claws and there were feathers on his arm and elbow and some on his shoulder from the looks of things—face, feel his face—still normal, but he could feel—feel burn scars, some on his face, more on his neck—look at his shoulders and arms to see the reason the feathers were patchy—burn scars. Chest was bare, the feathers starting up again a little under his ribcage and coming back in full force, hiding everything (fortunately)—grip his head, trying to process everything—hair—feathers—feathers around his ear, poking up—behind his ear, longer ones poking down—
Curl back up on the cool tile, struggling to get the bleeding to stop, trying to process through this nervous breakdown, toes curling as he drew his legs in, legs bending all the wrong ways, tail moving of its own volition—make it stop, make it stop please—
Something was wrong. Something had gone horribly wrong, this couldn’t have been from the fire or the explosion he had to get out of here—
The sobs wracking his body slowed, eventually stopped, leaving him gulping for air…he had to get out of here. Whatever had happened, he had to get out of here….
His arm had stopped bleeding.
Struggle upright, trying not to pull the scab, feet not wanting to get traction on the tile, legs not wanting to work at all—grab onto a filing cabinet, pull himself up, work his wobbling way to the door, trying to ignore the tail dragging behind or the wings weighing down his back or the legs that were just wrong, all wrong—manage to get to the door, haul it open—a hall as sterile and bland as the room, metal doors across from an intersecting hall. Both ends had windows, doors peppered the spaces between. Try the next door over—empty, a room just like the one he had just left.
“Hello?” he tried, voice creaky, throat sore. Try to clear it, try again—"Hello?”
There might have been noise coming from that hall that stopped abruptly—slowly work his way over, slipping and tumbling several times—grit his teeth and try again, keep going…finally made it, hugged the wall as he made the turning.
Panels next to glass walls—his mind made the connection, identified them as holding cells…work his way to the nearest one, peer in—
Something huge and feathery slammed against the glass, beak full of razor-sharp teeth flashing as claws scrabbled against the glass—he screamed, fell back—
“Oh don’t mind him hon—he’s like that with everybody.”
Hon—not the woman who had said it to him though. Scrabble back a bit further, wait until he was sure the thing couldn’t come out, roll to his hands and knees to look.
The first thing he noticed was that this person had the same problem he currently had—feathers everywhere, coating more on her than on him (probably a good thing, he reflected), shades of blue and black, pale blue on her face and chest. Hands had more pronounced talons, and the wing feathers were growing out of her arms instead of out of her back. And she had a beak—an actual beak that replaced her nose and mouth, nostrils flaring where the flesh met the keratin.
The only parts of her that still looked like they originally belonged to her was the dark hair flopping forward and the eyes as sharp as the beak—she looked amused, currently, expression shifting as she took him in. “Are you okay?”
“No,” he said, dragging himself closer to her cell, looking back to make sure the…the griffin-thing in the other cell wasn’t able to get out—look down the line…he could see more faces peering out of other cells, looking confused—squawking was starting up further down the line—
“OI! SHADDAP!” bird-lady barked. “Now you, on the floor—what, did you wake up early? I’d get used to my feet and run if I were you.”
“I don’t know,” he said, grabbing the control panel and using it to haul himself up—the griffin started barking and squawking.
“Did I not say shut it? Yeesh,” she said, rolling her eyes with such vehemence her whole head rolled. “So who are you?”
“T-Tadashi,” he said, watching the griffin pace back and forth—shades of dark gray, red tipping the wing feathers, neck feathers forming a thick ruff, one side of its face splashed with pinkish-purple feathers, eyes like cold ice chips boring into him. “Tadashi Hamada.” The griffin started, roared at him. “What’s his beef?”
“Haven’t the foggiest—he’s been like that for as long as I’ve been here,” she said, pacing a little. She seemed sure of her footing—she had been here a while.
“Uh, sorry—who are you?”
“Ah, right—Momakase, although no one’s bothered asking me that for a while.” She jerked her head at the griffin. “Don’t know his name, but he seems convinced I should.”
Tadashi considered the griffin for a moment, shaking his free hand as he thought. “Wait, wait, don’t tell me—Grumpy, right?”
The griffin snarled at him, snarled at Momakase when she laughed.
“Oh don’t give me that look he’s right!” she snapped. She considered Tadashi with a more appraising look. “You seem a bit more together than most.”
“Don’t be fooled—I had my nervous breakdown earlier.”
“Fair enough—the only ones who don’t seem to have had that so far have been the kids—”
“Kids?”
She shrugged. “There’s some kids in here, I don’t know the details, I just see them when they put ‘em in and take ‘em out. What?” she spat, when the griffin started again. “All right, fine—he wants you to do something to the control panel—well I would, but you’re saying it all at once and it makes no sense.”
Tadashi looked down at the control panel his hand was on. Didn’t seem to need a key card or any sort of biometric—
“I know this,” he said. “Wait I know this! I can get you out!”
Momakase immediately plastered herself against the glass. “You’re not serious—you can get me out?”
“Yeah, yeah, hold on—maybe you can help me once you’re out.”
“Pal, you help me out of here and I’ll do you anything—cook your meals for the rest of your life, even. Or try to,” she added, considering her hands.
“You don’t have to do that, and don’t worry, we’ll fix this—I mean the wings are fine but the legs are murder and I don’t even want to think about the tail—”
“Hey, wait,” someone in the next cell over said. “What about me?”
“Yeah!” someone else called. “I want out of here too!”
A whole line of cacophony started, only silenced when the griffin roared.
Tadashi’s stomach was filled with dread when the roar finally died. “H-how many people are in here?”
“I don’t know,” Momakase said. “Kind of lost count after the first dozen.”
First dozen—dozen people, that had been snatched, experimented on—
Tadashi hesitated—
A few quick keystrokes had every door opening.
“Okay! Everybody, out! Out!” he yelled, waving frantically, still having to prop himself up to keep from tumbling over—whoever had done this to him was going to have words. Big ones. Because honestly, how was he going to go home like this? The wings he could live with, maybe some of the feathers—not the tail, definitely not the legs—but with genetics the way they were now maybe he could get—he didn’t know, a gene-cleanser or something—
The griffin-monster followed Momakase first, others filing behind in a stumbling frenzy when they realized they had a real chance of escape—Tadashi worked the other way, checking the cells, making sure everyone got out—whoever was doing these things, these awful things to people, he wasn’t going to leave anyone here if he could—
The last one on the left had one still in, curled up and looking sickly, not having even registered the door being open. Tadashi stumbled in, got down on his hands and knees, gently shook the soft black wing pulled up to cover the face, causing the long curving tail to twitch—
“Come on,” he said, glancing at the door. “Come on, we’re going, okay? We’re leaving.”
Twitch…wing pulled down shakily to reveal a thatch of messy black hair combed forward over wide terrified eyes, face too pale to be healthy—something black was plastered against the sides of the head—
His stomach lurched when he realized that whoever it was, they had to be Hiro’s age or younger—the idea—the sheer idea that someone could do this to a kid—
“Come on,” he said, working his arm under the kid and hauling him up—lighter than he thought he ought to be as they struggled upright, smaller than him by at least a head, hard to tell with the way he was curled up—haul him to the door, still struggling with legs that most certainly weren’t his—
“Hey!” he hollered upon seeing everyone milling around just outside. “Come on, let’s go!”
“The doors are locked!” someone yelled.
Great—either they were locked for security purposes or someone figured out what was going on. Either way, they still had to get out—try to work his way forward, stomach wanting to crawl out of him when he realized just how many people here were just—children—reached the door to see the griffin clawing at it and snarling. Well, snarling at the keypad.
“Not helping, grumpy,” he told the griffin, prompting a glare directed at him.
“All right then,” Momakase said, ducking into a room, coming back out with a chair and charging the window. “Plan B!”
Slam into the window, chair first, blowing it out—back up, hit it again, making the frame rattle—the griffin shoved her aside, put its weight on the chair—
“Someone’s going to hear that,” Tadashi said, wincing at the crash several long moments later . “And that sounds too high to jump.”
“Not if you have wings,” Momakase said, and then launched herself out.
Tadashi had a moment—a horrorstruck moment—when he thought she was casting herself to her death, but then she flapped, keeping herself aloft—quickly check everyone over before they could follow suit—
“If you think you can, grab a kid!” he ordered, adjusting his hold on the little black-feathered one that had thus far refused to let go. “Oh no you don’t grumpy, you can take at least one.”
The griffin snarled—
People stopped questioning when they heard yelling on the other side of the doors, keypad sparking as it malfunctioned from the deep gouges scratched into it—it was time to get out of here, it was way past time to get out of here, and everyone was suddenly too busy grabbing a kid and jumping out the window to argue, many plummeting several feet before something kicked in and made them spread their wings and flap. Grumpy did end up with three kids clinging to his back, losing almost no altitude from whatever kicking in faster—Tadashi did one last quick run-through, checking all the cells and rooms, fear making him ignore the bird feet—run back to the window, hugging the black-feathered kid tight to his chest—
Guards forced the doors open just as he grabbed down on the window ledge with a foot, launched himself out—
Freefall—terrifying, wind whistling by his ears, stomach roiling—whatever had made the others fly, now would be a good time to kick in—
Sorry kid, he thought, as they went further than ten feet. Just our luck I missed the flying gene.
Something started to click together in his head, down his spine, stirring feeling in the wings on his back he had been doing his best to ignore—spread out—
Their descent went from plummeting to angular, small twist of the wings sending them arcing back up—power flap got them flying after everyone else, following Momakase the blue-bird-lady (because he realized now there were a lot of bird-ladies) as she zipped away. Risk glancing behind to see the guards pointing guns at them—flap harder, yelling for everyone to look out—
“Dive!” Momakase shrieked, folding her wings and diving. Everyone followed suit, Tadashi’s stomach rebelling as he once again went into freefall—
But the bullets flew harmlessly overhead.
Wingbeats grew stronger as people realized they were going to make it, going to get away—
“Aim for those formations!” Tadashi called. "We can hide there!”
They did, made it, huddling under the rocky outcroppings, shivering as they realized they had made it, they were free—
And looking over them, Tadashi’s stomach—which had not shut up since he woke up—started to fill with lead. Yes, they were free…a bunch of bird-people, in a world where people decidedly didn’t have feathers.
They had a problem.