John's Crazy, No-Good, First Day
JJ was, as his nickname suggests, a jock in his past life. At university on a football scholarship, he was the image of a varsity athlete, with zero knowledge or concern for any of those childish franchises that had dominated his youth. So when he got into a car wreck, he expected the pearly gates, not a forest.
Looking around, he could see nothing familiar. Is this some kind of near death experience? he thought to himself, but as the thought crossed his mind, his brain erupted with a migraine, the pain slamming into his head. It was worse than any headache he had ever experienced, worse than any football impact, it felt like his head was splitting open!
Clutching his head in agony, JJ could do nothing but collapse to the ground, not even noticing how wrong both his hands and head felt. Slowly, far too slowly, the pain began to subside. The blinding agony receded into mere waves, each weaker than the previous, until he could finally open his eyes again. That was when he noticed his hands were no longer hands.
His eyes bulged out of his skull as he stared down at these unfamiliar hands - or indeed paws! He now only had three digits, each tipped with a spherical pad. It was all he could do to not pass out in shock.
His eyes wandered lower, across the rest of his body. Gone was his human form, replaced with some bizarre, gray, bipedal, cat-like form. Behind him extended a long tail, while his legs were now digitigrade rather than plantigrade.
"Wh-what the hell happened to me!" he cried out, screaming in horror as he began to process this new reality. This was impossible, simply impossible! Even his voice was gone, the words manifesting in reality just from his thoughts alone. His mind raced, faster than it ever had before, as JJ desperately tried to deny what he saw, but no matter how hard he tried to wake up, nothing changed. He was this thing, this inhuman-
His ears - now internal - picked up a noise, the slightest sound from nearby bushes. "WHO'S THERE!" he yelled with his mind, panic now in full swing, adrenaline pumping through him. If he had been transformed into this monster, then who knows what else could be here?
Out of the shadows of the bushes and tree branches burst an array of bizarre creatures. They looked like rodents and birds, but far larger than any he had seen before. They seemed to drop out of the very sky, and before he could process what was going on, he was surrounded!
They lunged at him, teeth and beaks sharp and gleaming, their wielders out for his blood. His reflexes seemed to have survived into this new form, as he managed to evade their strikes. Indeed, he seemed even faster than he was as a human, considering that these animals were clearly trying to eat him, yet dodging them was surprisingly easy. Suddenly, instinctively, he began to glow blue. His eyes emanated with the same blue light, as the rocks around them were summoned to him, before blasting at his attackers.
Each one struck true, knocking them out cold, their limp forms slumping to the ground. John panted heavily, his chest heaving up and down.
I've gotta get out of here. There's got to be someone, someone who can help. He thought. He felt his tail flick, looking back at it with fear. Wait, what are people going to make of me? They're going to think I'm some kind of monster as well!
"Shit." was all he could think of saying. He didn't want to be cut up like some kind of science experiment, but what choice did he have but to risk it? He couldn't stay in these woods forever, and he needed to find a way back to normal.
He took a step forward - and promptly fell flat on his face. His new legs were not designed with human style of walking, it seemed. Pushing himself up with his strange hands, and wiping the dirt off of his strange face, he snarled to himself.
Stupid! Focus, John, focus! You've got to move the way this body wants to move if you don't want to crawl back to civilization!
With some effort, he got back up onto his strange legs. Getting to a balancing position was hard, but after a couple of terrifying seconds where he thought he was going to eat dirt again, he managed to to hold steady.
OK, good. Now focus, how does this body want to move? He thought, focusing as hard as he could. That blue glow returned, surrounding him, picking him up off the ground entirely. His eyes snapped open at the shock of suddenly flying - promptly breaking his concentration and causing him to faceplant onto the ground again.
This was going to take a while.