[Ahhh!] Jake hit the wall mid-morph and wondered, surprisingly for the first time, what exactly was going to happen in terms of his injuries if he was hurt mid-morph. That curiosity, however, was quickly replaced by another thought-speech exclamation, this one more pained than surprised, as the woman increased the pressure with whatever grip she was using to pin him to the wall. He struggled to gather himself enough to explain, as much as he could anyway, but she’d already eased up the pressure and, with a final, grotesque, schloop noise his eyes sort of jellied out and then contracted again into normal human eyes, making the room dim and dark in comparison to the owl-eyes he’d been using a moment ago.
For a moment Jake just hung there, pinned to the wall by an invisible grip in nothing but his morphing outfit, a pair of spandex bike shorts, and thought, well, at least I’ve been working out, because a potbelly is probably the only way this could get any more awkward.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?”
Jake tried to raise his hands in a hey-look-unarmed-and-harmless gesture but his palms wouldn’t move away from the wall and so he settled for a sheepishly apologetic smile. “Uh, sorry about…that. My name is Jake, and I’ve actually got no idea what I’m doing here. I was out flying and the next thing I knew I was waking up on the headboard of your bed. Which I’m very sorry about and which I would love to guarantee will never happen again except I have no idea how it happened in the first place.”
It had already occurred to him that this might be a trick, that the woman might not be as innocent in all this as she seemed. He relaxed into the hold she had on him, carefully loosening his muscles so that he couldn’t have been perceived as fighting her, but holding his tiger morph in his mind and slowly, very slowly, beginning to shift into it, just enough to let his fingernails start to harden into claws and for red-gold hair to sprout along his arms in patches. It was a subtle effect and he hoped the woman wouldn’t notice. Once he realized he could still morph he reversed the process quickly and returned his attention completely to the woman in front of him.
“I’m sorry if I sc—“ he changed his mind at the last moment on ‘scared,’ she didn’t look the type, and continued with, “if I startled you there. If I stay in a morph for longer than three hours I end up trapped that way. I had no idea how long I’d been out so I panicked a little.”