Tease the Dragon Ch. 02

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The group leaves the planet and a romance starts.
6.2k words
4.6
9.8k
1

Part 2 of the 2 part series

Updated 09/22/2022
Created 01/29/2013
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Author's Note:

I just wanted to put a note in here about the use of italics for the speech of the characters. Anya speaks verbally in her changed form as a Copper, and to differentiate it from her usual speech patterns it is in italics with quotation marks. Gersha speaks mentally when he is in his changed form, and it is marked by italics with no quote marks. You'll know it when you see it.

As usual, thank you for taking the time to read my stories. Feedback is welcomed, whether you use the contact feature on my biography page or leave a comment here. It is appreciated as long as it is constructive.

Any errors are entirely my own fault. I did not use an editor on this one as I usually do with most of my stories. Feel free to point them out if you find them.

*

"I erased it because I really don't think there should be copies of these films just laying around," I shot in the general direction of Lee's tiny corner. "Even if it is on a viewer Gersha probably carries everywhere."

Grey nodded and sat on the floor by the door. Not liking being the only one left standing, I sat back on the bed in front of Gersha. He nodded at me and said, "I thought that since she had stolen them, she could be the one to hold them. I mean, come on, Grey, you had to touch her to know she had them or you would have let her be taken by the guard."

I glared at Grey but he only shrugged and shot a nasty look at Gersha while Lee sat in his corner and chuckled. Gersha said something in what must have been his native language, and Grey nodded, "No, no. You were right to give them back."

"Uh," I held up a finger and looked around, though Lee continued to do whatever he was doing in the corner. "Nobody ever answered my question. What -- exactly -- are we going to do with the films now that we have them and the man that wanted them is dead?"

Lee spoke, looking up from his corner, "We can reroute some of the money remotely, but the rest we would have to physically be at the bank to move unless they change their policies. Every one of us would be recognized on the spot if we walked into these establishments. The pictures will be a challenge, but I think if we play it right and feed them slow, we could make a pretty nice nest egg off of them."

"What are the politicos doing right now?" Grey asked.

Lee looked at a vid screen in his lap that I hadn't seen earlier and tapped a couple things out on the surface, "No one seems to have noticed that the films are missing yet. The guard at the ball must have just been there because she got caught coming out of an off-limits hallway. Either that or the admiral hasn't taken his latest find to his office yet. Our intel said his routine was to take whatever he managed to pick up back to his office, have some fun with them, and then when they'd left he checks to make sure everything is straight in his office. My guess is we should probably be off world by the time he checks everything in his office. This guy isn't above having troops go door to door and tear things apart until whatever he wants is found."

"Right," Grey looked as though he were lost in thought. "See if you can put a small amount of the money into a private account under a pseudonym and get us a comfortable ride off this dirt ball." He looked at me, "All of us."

~*~*~*~*~

It seemed to take days for Lee to arrange our pick-up and shuttle tickets, but I knew it had only been a couple hours. We would have to take a shuttle to a moon base and then link up with a cruiser, but he had gotten us decent berths and we would have a comfortable ride to wherever we wanted. Or course, 'wherever we wanted' had to be together since I had the films and they wouldn't let me out of their sight.

We were on the shuttle and heading to the station when the vid screens cut to a news broadcast about the robbery. I knew what was missing, but the admiral must have gone over the edge when he discovered the films were gone because the shots of the office on the screen showed that it had been ransacked. The admiral was shown stating that he checked his belongings every night, and tonight something had been taken. A security chief came on with the usual spiel about how they would find out who had perpetrated the robbery and that they already had several leads. The broadcast ended and the usual views of where the shuttle was headed returned.

"We'll have a couple hours to wait for the cruiser then we can take it wherever it's going," Grey had taken the seat next to me and had seen the broadcast. "Lee's pulling up the ship's itinerary now and we can choose a planet later."

The station proved to be just like every other space station I had seen -- plain and utilitarian. I used some of the credit Lee had managed to get for us and got some new clothes. The tight leggings and loose, flowing top were not my idea of a good outfit but Grey had told us that with the amount of credit we were using to travel we had better look the part. I was counting on being able to find clothes that were more to my tastes when we reached our destination, wherever that may be.

We boarded the cruiser and were shown to our compartments. I was more than surprised to find that Lee had only booked two rooms -- one for him and Gersha and one for me and Grey. Grey brushed past me into our berth, only looking back when I didn't follow. "It would have been suspicious if a group of four bought separate berths for the trip. Not to mention it would have cost almost as much as Lee took to cover our entire trip."

I was a little skeptical that that was the only reason when I saw that the room only had one bed, a small table with a chair, and a tiny bathroom. When I made to back out of the room, Grey stopped me with a hand on my back. "I can't sleep with you," my eyes must have been wide and terrified because he dropped his hand and looked at me.

"You can switch with Lee if you'd like, bunk with Gersha," his voice was low and he was obviously trying to be soothing. "Their compartment is outfitted so that Gersha has a tank and Lee will get the bed."

"Then why wasn't that the case when he passed out the room cards?"

"Because Gersha is a morph and in a tank he would be in his more natural form, and Lee is more comfortable with him like that than I am," he said, his face turning a little pink at the admission. "But you are welcome to try to sleep in a room with him."

The thought of sleeping in the same room on a shuttle as a morph made me shudder and I changed my mind. Sharing a bed with Grey had to be better. I shoved him into the shower compartment so I could change into something slightly more comfortable to sleep in and then climbed under the scratchy covers with my back to the room.

The shower hissed to life and I sighed. With Grey in the shower, I could slip out of the berth and do some snooping around the shuttle on my own. I slid into a body suit as quick as I could and palmed the door open. My hair was back in a bun, and I strode down the corridor away from the front of the ship. If it was run like any of the other shuttles I had been on, the maintenance crew would be the only people lurking around in the hallways. Sure enough, there was a welder working on a door near the galley and no one else in sight.

I found the rear lounge empty and quiet except for the hum of the engines underfoot. The shuttle was a newer Star Class, but aside from being larger and having better first-class appointments it was laid out much the same as a Planet Class. In the empty lounge, I would be able to shift more of myself into my other form than I had been able to in weeks.

My arms lengthened and my hands grew into full talons. The body suit had a slit in the back that allowed my tail to be free. I sighed as my face began to shift to a more reptilian shape and I was able to stretch my jaw fully open. Where I had had silver skin before was now covered in tiny silver and gold scales shining in the dim light of the room. There wasn't enough room for a full change, but I longed for the time when I would be able to stretch my wings. With my facial changes came the eye shift that allowed me to see every single electrical conduit running through the ceiling, walls, and floor. The brightness of those lines running with electricity made me squint after being accustomed to the duller sight of my other form.

I let my head fall back and stretched my arms toward the ceiling, smiling when my talons scratched along the metal panels nearly nine feet above where my head had been.

"You and I aren't that different, child," a voice said from the door. I spun to see Gersha leaning against the wall. "Your other forms are just larger than mine."

As I stared at him I allowed my body to return to the more constrained form I'd had when we first boarded the ship. It was almost painful, like putting my foot back into an ill-fitting shoe after having taken it off. "How did you find me?"

He smiled and walked toward me once I was back to something a little less spectacular. "It wasn't that hard. You couldn't have gone far. It gave Grey a good scare, though, coming into the room and not seeing you there. He thinks you were going to try to leave us high and dry and take the films for yourself. But I'm a morph. I understand that need to stretch."

"If I was going to try to leave the lot of you, I would have done it on a planet."

"I think if you had wanted to disappear on this shuttle, you could have done it and we'd be hard-pressed to find you before we docked."

I nodded at that because it was true. The Star Class shuttle would have given me a handful of easy hiding places that would have given me a chance to get away from the men. I just didn't see the point. As he had said, I wouldn't have gotten far. "I came back here to shift. I don't get to take the tall form all that often, and I did need to stretch."

He put his arm around my shoulders and steered me toward the door he had entered. "I made Lee switch rooms with you. My room is larger and you can shift for the rest of the trip if you want."

"Grey said you would be confined to a tank."

"And I'm sure the first thing that flashed through your mind was a small fish tank not even fit for a goldfish. We're on a Star Class for a reason, child. My tank is bigger than the entire room Grey has. The room itself is large enough for a dry morph to use. I have room to swim, and you have room to stretch out. How big is your wingspan?" The question caught me off guard and I stopped to look at him. "Don't look so surprised, girl. The way you were standing there I was surprised you hadn't shifted into them in that lounge."

"I have roughly a twenty-five foot wingspan, tip to tip. They wouldn't have fit in the lounge."

"They'll fit in my room." He held his arm out to me and we started walking again.

When we reached the rooms, Grey was standing outside the door I had walked through barely an hour before. He glared at me but then looked at Gersha. Some non-verbal signal passed between them and Grey shrugged and went back into his room while Gersha palmed open the door to his own.

"Our fearless leader is not accustomed to having to accommodate for more than one shifter. He does not know the freedom of having more than one form." His hand on my back was strong as he ushered me into the new room.

I stopped just inside the door and stared. He hadn't been lying about the size of the tank meant for a wet morph, or the size of the room meant for a dry morph. The dry room went down three levels, and the entire floor seemed to be a bed covered in blankets and pillows. But the tank was the true vision -- it had to hold enough water to supply the ship for an entire interplanetary run, and it was all meant for one man to morph comfortably.

"I should have taken Grey's offer of a room change when we first boarded, but you were right. I thought it would be a small tank like the Planet Class shuttles have. This is almost as good as a Galaxy cruiser offers."

"So," and suddenly the ease between us turned to slight tension. "I show you mine if you show me yours?"

"You've already seen mine, but my full form isn't really that big."

The mariner shrugged and stepped onto the lift platform. I watched as he sank below the level of the entrance and disappeared. When he was out of sight I stripped out of the body suit and let my full form take over my mind. My face and body stretched and reformed until I stood in silver and gold scales. I lashed my tail behind me and stretched my wings, letting out a moan as they unfurled fully and didn't touch the walls on either side. The three-story drop was child's play in this form, and I glided to the floor just as the lift came to a stop. My head came to his chest, and that seemed to surprise him after the sight of me in the lounge standing almost ten feet tall.

"I told you I wasn't that big. Now it's your turn, fish-man." He smirked at the common epithet and walked toward the tank.

There was an antechamber that I hadn't seen, and I watched as he stepped inside and sealed it before stripping out of his clothes and putting them into a box that whisked them off to the bowels of the shuttle to be washed. His body in this form was magnificent, if a bit oddly formed. The upper half of his body was the picture of male perfection -- all muscles and bulges. It was his hips and legs that seemed to have muscles in odd places. I was jerked out of my observation when he hit a button that started an alarm, and I caught the smile on his face as the chamber began to fill with water.

I watched as his skin began to turn a shade of turquoise with a slight opalescence to it. His hands elongated into talons that could rival my own, and his own tail was flat. When he smiled again I could see rows of tiny teeth lining his mouth behind the full lips and I wondered that he didn't bite himself.

I squinted and walked up to the glass of the chamber and tapped lightly with a claw. His smile disappeared and he made a rude gesture before swimming to the now open tank. I leapt into the air and followed his upward progress, reveling in the feel of using my wings to go where no others could. When I landed back on the entrance platform, it struck me that I couldn't see any conduits in the room even though I was in my full form.

I must have looked slightly panicked because I instantly felt a presence in my mind. Calm down, Anya! What's wrong?

"I can't see anything in this room!" I spoke out loud, not knowing if he would hear me if I just thought the words.

Gersha made a frantic gesture in his tank, and then I heard, Well, you saw that. What do you mean you can't see anything in here?

"The electrical conduits. I should be able to see all of them in this form, but I can't!" Beginning to panic, I went to the door and out into the hall. I could see every single conduit in the hallway, but when I looked back into the morph room it was blank to my eyes. Gersha wasn't at the top of the tank anymore, and then I heard the alarm sounding signaling that he was draining the chamber.

"Anya! Come back inside before you give one of the humans a heart attack!" His voice echoed up through the room.

I turned back toward it just as the door to Grey and Lee's room opened and Lee came into the hall. "What's going on? Gersha said something was wrong."

"No," Gersha said from the door. "Nothing's wrong. She said she couldn't see the conduits in the room. You can see them out here?"

I nodded and started to shift back to my usual form as Grey joined the party in the hallway. We all went back into the tank room and I grabbed the body suit from the entrance platform as we all piled onto the lift. Gersha slid into what looked like the bottom half of a wet suit and pushed a button on the wall that made four chairs appear on a platform.

"That's how you found the film, isn't it?" Gersha asked as he sat in one of the chairs. He was still damp from his swim. "You can see electrical fields."

"Not just electricity," I said, taking another chair. The shifting had been exhilarating, but it was also draining. "I can see technology of almost any sort. I don't use that part of my vision in this form, but when I shift I can't stop it. It freaked me out not to see anything in this room, that's all."

"Can all Coppers do this?" Grey asked from beside the platform with the chairs. He looked nervous next to the tank.

I shook my head, "We all have different affinities. Just like not all morphs are wet, and not all humans are wastes of space. I have an affinity for technology. I'm not really sure how to explain it since it was how I was born."

"I think the room is shielded so that you don't have to see everything, then," Gersha said. "Coppers aren't that common, but there are enough of them traveling that the shipyards would have taken notice."

"It makes me feel as though part of me is missing, though," I said. "I don't particularly like it."

"If you don't want to stay in the room, you don't have to," Gersha looked as though saying that hurt a little.

"Oh yes, me and Lee just love sleeping together," Grey said sarcastically from his place off to the side. I snorted and looked at Lee.

"You did fine until you realized you couldn't see everything," he said. "And you could see everything in the hallway, am I right?"

"Yes. It's just this room that's blank and it freaked me out a little."

Lee looked at Grey, "Then I think you'll be fine staying here. I know I wouldn't mind a night or two in a room that actually gets dark. Get some sleep. We can figure everything else out later." With that he went back to the lift and waited for Grey to join him.

When they left, Gersha sat staring at me. "You really don't have to stay."

"Are you kidding? Except for being half-blind in here, this is the most fun I've had in months. It's been almost that long since I've been able to shift fully."

"Poor baby," he shot back as he stood and pulled me out of my chair. "I only get to shift when we find a transport equipped for it or we stay on a planet with clean water long enough."

"Well, at least I know you'll be putting in a vote for a water world."

"I'll try to find one with enough cliffs for you to enjoy it, too," he started walking back toward the tank, peeling the shorts down his legs as he went. "Don't tap the glass this time, girl. It hurts my ears."

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I woke the next morning curled in a nest of blankets and pillows with my wings tucked along my back. My talons sliced through the foam padding when I stretched, my left wing hitting the glass of the tank before I remembered where I was.

I shifted back and stretched out on my stomach when a now familiar presence pressed against my mind, You snore.

"If you fart in the tank, where do the bubbles go?"

Out into the room with you. The alarm sounded as the chamber drained, and then Gersha stepped out. "Young ladies should not talk about farting."

"Old men should not walk around naked, either," I shot back over my shoulder as he sat on the floor next to me.

"I'm not an old man."

"Then stop calling me 'girl,' and 'child.'"

"But you are a child compared to me. That doesn't make me old, just older than you." His fingers were cold and damp when he touched the scars on my back, and I tensed until he stopped touching me. "My apologies, but they don't show up in your other forms."

"That's because I was in this form when they happened and this form when they healed. The scars don't shift with me."

"Where do they go?"

"I don't know."

His fingers traced the long scar that ran from my shoulder to my side again, but this time he didn't stop when I tensed. After his fingers slid along a second and then a third scar I started to relax again and just let him touch me. "What did you do to the man who did this?"

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