When Colin emerged from his chrysalis, he shifted into a dragonfly to start. His body easily lifted off the ground and his heart sang with joy as one of his dreams came true. He was flying. He was finally soaring through the air.

  Colin chirped with joy and did a few barrel rolls. In this form, it felt like second nature to move through the air.

  Suddenly, a bird within Colin's senses locked its eyes on him and its predatory intent flared, warning Colin of the danger he was in as it swooped for him.

  Mid-air, Colin shifted into the form of a crab and plopped into the water below just before the bird reached him. It was a closer call than he was expecting since the transformation took about three seconds. He’d have to pay attention to that time. Three seconds could be an eternity in the wrong situations.

  Even after almost being eaten, Colin felt great. His pain was completely gone, he was able to fly, and he could change shape at will. That was more than he had ever hoped for.

  Colin transformed into a hybrid of a fish and a crab, so he ended up looking like an armored catfish and meandered through the water. He closed his eyes and took a slow, deep, appreciative breath in the shallow, sunny water. It was good to feel no pain.

  It was good to be alive.

  Getting shot was the most painful experience of Colin’s life and feeling as good as he did now really hammered home how much he never wanted to feel pain like that ever again. He promised himself that he would protect himself better in the future. Though he may have come a long way since he’d been eaten by that fish when he first woke up, so long ago, he still had much more room to grow.

  His time living with Jenny made him complacent and he’d forgotten how vulnerable he could be. Well, that ended today.

  At least, the vulnerability part ended today. Colin would gladly give up his safety before leaving Jenny. Why only pick one though? Colin wanted a way to keep his body safe from bullets, so he could be safe and be with Jenny.

  Colin thought all the way back to when he had tried to take a bite out of an alligator and couldn’t pierce its skin. He needed to toughen his own skin like that and make it impenetrable, so what better way than by eating an alligator?

  It was decided. Before he could visit Jenny again, Colin needed to eat an alligator. As he swam through the water with his sensing range expanded to the maximum, Colin felt an excitement at his capabilities. He could sense all life within the range of about four hundred feet and while he couldn’t distinguish much information unless he focused on a single target, he was able to tell the size of the creatures within his range. It made him feel ready for anything. He played around with the ability and found that he could understand more about the life around him as he shrunk his range of detection.

  It took about fifteen minutes of swimming for Colin to find his first alligator. It was swimming slowly through the water in front of him.

  After deliberating the best approach, Colin decided that directly attacking the thing would be a suicide mission, so instead, he reshaped himself using a combination of Fish, crab, chicken, and eel. The combination left him with a slender body that was fast, but also lined with scales made of crab shell for defense. For limbs, he combined chicken's feet and crab claws to have flexible, three pronged claws with talons at the tip of each prong for extra gripping power. His head was a slender arrow tipped with a chicken’s beak.

  It took several tries to transform into the ideal version of the combination. The first few attempts had been nothing like Colin had imagined. The more pulses he added to his transformation, the more difficult it was to control the formation of his body. It also took several seconds longer for each pulse added. Colin needed to practice transforming as much as possible, so it didn’t end up getting him killed.

  Colin took a moment to admire his new form. If Jenny could see him right now, she'd be thoroughly impressed. Even with preparing as much as possible, Colin had his doubts it would be enough to take the alligator down, but it would definitely be enough to allow him to tail the alligator and plan his best chance to attack.

  The alligator moved through the water at an unhurried pace. It had one eye missing and the tip of his tail was damaged. Colin stalked it from a distance far enough to allow him plenty of time to escape if it suddenly got any ideas.

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  The plan was to follow and wait until the gator fell asleep to strike. He couldn't be sure how long that would be, so for now, he observed and kept his eyes open for any weaknesses.

  At one point, the gator caught Colin off guard. It had been watching a bird on a branch about five feet above the water and seemingly defied gravity as it leaped high enough to snatch the bird from the branch in one powerful bite.

  The longer Colin observed, the more he came to respect and pity the ruthless predator. This thing had no real weaknesses, no threats, but it also had no friends.

  Colin thought about Jenny and decided that he had much more meaning in his life than simply being a predator. This alligator had nothing more than an endless hunt. What good was power if you had nothing else?

  Colin drifted in his thoughts as he stalked the alligator all through the afternoon, and late into the night. The darker it got, the more actively the gator hunted. Colin made sure to be extra cautious as the gator’s movements and pace became more sporadic.

  hungry

  Watching the alligator hunt and eat, Colin’s hunger started nagging at him. He damned that hunger up and let it build for now. It was not yet time and he was the one in control of himself.

  It took until midmorning the next day for the gator to stop entirely. The sun was a furnace above and it rapidly dried Colin’s hide, so he watched from the water as the gator nestled into a dirt mound that was fully exposed to the sun.

  The gator’s pulse gradually grew softer until there was a subtle yet distinct switch into the gentle, unfocused rhythm of sleep.

  This was the chance Colin had so patiently waited for. He transformed into something smaller and land based before sneaking up to the gator. His body was still slender and kept the beak of the chicken, but he prioritized his form for burrowing, chewing and latching on. It was a combination of chicken,

  It was time.

  Colin’s vision went red as he released the damn on his hunger. He lunged for the gator’s only weakness. Colin dug into the gator’s remaining eye with a flurry of claws and teeth, forcing his way into the eye socket. The gator stirred awake with a jolt and began to thrash his head about with a fierce growl. Colin latched onto the inside of the gator’s eye socket to keep from being tossed aside. He burrowed further in tearing flesh away with his serrated teeth and his free claws. Colin realized while tailing the gator that its greatest asset in the wild was also the easiest thing to exploit: its size.

  Being so large allowed Colin to bypass the armored skin of the gator and attack it from the inside.

  Even when Colin was almost entirely inside the creature’s skull, it kept on thrashing around.

  The gator had made it to the water now and was death rolling in a final desperate attempt to dislodge Colin but it was too late.

  Colin burrowed to the base of the gator’s skull and severed its brain stem instantly killing the great beast.

  HUNGRY

  The hunger inside of him took over and Colin dove into his kill. Starting with the brain and then the spine, he feasted without thought of anything else. After those two parts were finished, Colin ate all he could until his hunger was fully content.

  As the hunger faded and his thoughts returned, Colin sighed in relief at the quickness of the kill. He was not here to make the gator suffer, he was merely here because he needed to improve. Even though it was prey, Jenny had taught him that it was important to be nice to everyone. A quick death was the nice thing to do in this situation.

  Colin thought about that and wondered if that was the truth. Something felt… wrong about his reasoning, but he wasn’t sure why. Part of him wanted to be an apex predator like this alligator, but what good did that do the gator now that it was dead? Another part of him wanted nothing more than to be safe and to be with Jenny. He knew deep inside that both parts of him were important. There had to be a balance between the two.

  But what?

  Colin had achieved his goals from when he was first born, he could fly and he’d eaten an alligator which was amazing, but when he thought about it, he felt somewhat empty.

  The memory of Jenny’s mom screaming at the sight of his mangled form returned unbidden and it crushed his heart. The bullet wounds couldn’t hurt as much as seeing that woman fear him. The memory turned his stomach but it was important. Colin had been introduced to a world much larger and far more beautiful than that of the cruelty of nature. After seeing that world, he was no longer satisfied with being one of these wild beasts, but the fear on Jenny’s mom’s face made it clear he was not a welcome part of the human’s world either. If that world were made of only Jenny’s, then he would be fine, but it wasn’t.

  It hurt to know Jenny’s mom feared him. He felt a deep longing to change that. She was his home. He had only seen her once, but when he searched his feelings, he knew he loved her just as much as Jenny.

  Colin dug his way out of the corpse of the Alligator and washed his blood drenched body off in the water. He swam heading back home. There was nothing left to do but head back to Jenny. On his way back, his thoughts were filled with excitement to see Jenny and worry that Jenny’s mom would never love him.