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Description
Pheagle gets a bit more than he bargained for when he goes for another skydive and accidentally gets caught in his plane's contrails!

Art and the accompanying story by Ferret-Badger
Original

“Woooohooooooo!”

Phil threw himself from the plane, nerves and excitement battling for a place in his stomach, as wind pummeled his body and he marveled at the grid of fields and roads far below him. With his arms and legs stretched out to maximize resistance and the cold wind buffeting his face and battering the cloth of his suit, skydiving felt a lot more like flying than falling. There was no stomach-in-your-throat sinking sensation, no anticipative fear like one might feel at the very top of a roller coaster just before it dropped, just a feeling of absolute freedom from earthly limits as he soared through the –

The wind shifted, and frigid water droplets suddenly spattered across his goggles, obscuring his vision and clinging wetly to his suit, face and hair. He tilted back and shouted in surprise, accidentally flipping in the air and coughing as cloud droplets shot down his windpipe. Dizzily, he realized that he must have gone straight through the plane’s contrails, or rather, shifting air currents must have by some bizarre circumstance blown the contrails down toward him.

He coughed again and spun a bit, wiping his goggles with a sleeve before maneuvering back into a stable position. Well, it wasn’t exactly something he’d had happen before, but at least it was different. Wiping his goggles hadn’t done much more than smear the water around, but they were drying quickly in the wind, even as his exposed face stung with the biting cold. He looked around as the blurriness cleared, revealing his hands stretched out before him. They still looked…off? Bloated and stretchy, even distorted.

He felt odd, and not just from the cold and the sudden spin. His skin was cold, but he also felt hot and feverish inside, dizzy and lightheaded. Maybe he should tuck in for a dive and try to get to a safe altitude to deploy his chute early. He was flexing his fingers and toes, trying to shake off the abrupt stiffness, when he suddenly felt his stomach bulge and something in his back stretch, both pushing against the already tight fabric of his suit. With an audible *riiiiiiiiiiip* that he heard even over the wind, the back of his suit tore open, and what could only be described as two wings (airplane wings?!) tipped with blinking lights burst forth into the area between his tattered suit and the stretching, creaking straps of his parachute pack.

Phil screamed, twisting around and grabbing at the growing wings behind his shoulders as they shifted, two obvious turbine engines emerging from the underside as the pale tone of his skin gave way to bright, shiny red metal. His fingers felt rigid and hard, and they tapped against the hardened edges of his wings with the hollow clink of metal on metal.

He pulled his hands back into view, staring in silent horror at his expanding digits as they stretched the material of his fingerless gloves to their limits. His pinkie and ring fingers twisted and undulated before suddenly melting together into one, destroying the outer finger holes of the gloves in a burst of shredded fabric. As if suddenly freed from the need to hold together, the rest of his gloves gave way along the seams as massive holes tore through.

More shiny red creeped up the backs and hands of his palms and down his fingers as his nails similarly turned dark and sharpened into claw-like shapes that quickly turned blunt and streamlined. The indent of a metal seam rolled around each finger and settled into place where the dark red of the tips met the fire engine red of the rest of his skin.

Was he…hallucinating? Having some kind of stroke? He didn’t know and didn’t have a whole lot of time to ponder. He now felt tight all over, something pushing out from his skull making his helmet strap cut tightly against his chin. His stomach and limbs were bulging outward with new growth, but instead of feeling heavier he felt…light. Light and hard around the edges, like his surface area was increasing but not his overall mass.

His skydiving suit bulged and stretched tightly around his belly in increasingly uncomfortable ways, but it was the straps of his harness that were the most painful. They constrained his expanding belly, pinching tighter and tighter until Phil thought he would be squeezed in half. He clawed at the unforgiving material, once again wheeling about in the sky, ground and clouds swirling in his vision as the straps’ holding capacity finally breached with a massive SNAP!

He exclaimed in immediate relief at the loss of pain and pressure, and his body responded in kind as his now-free belly and sides bulged out in leaps and bounds. His spine abruptly ached, stretching and stretching into the formation of a tail, the beginnings of three stabilizing fins on the tip pushing at the seat of his pants. His suit, far less sturdy than his harness, stood no chance. It was torn asunder, massive holes and tears meeting each other and leaving little more than shreds of fabric. A few scraps remained caught on his arms, legs, and wings, but most were torn violently away from him as he fell, nothing more than specks of green against the bright blue sky and white clouds.

…and, with a shock of absolute horror and a failed, flailing attempt to grab it for his life, he watched as his parachute pack spun out of his grasp, its lighter weight and shape making it fall slower so that it floated up and away from him in a way that ensured he would never be able to catch it. Assuming this wasn’t some kind of terrible nightmare he would wake up from when he hit the ground, he was plummeting to his presumable death.

Too terrified and confused to be embarrassed by the sudden absence of most of his clothes, Phil instead gaped as he watched his stomach balloon out, and out, and out in shades of red and gold. It hardened to a polished surface that sparkled in the day’s bright light, tinted slightly blue by the reflection of the surrounding sky. A line like the edge of two metal plates butting against each other spread out from his disappearing belly button, tickling as it spread horizontally to his sides. It was followed by more tickling lines up and down his chest, up to his neck and down all the way around to his rapidly growing tail.

Small bumps followed, dotting along the edge of each seam until they took the clear form of rivets. Red spread up from where his belly met his sides, followed by squares of highly reflective tinted glass windows that rippled up from the tip of his tail to just under his arms. He stared in horrified fascination, curious but also relieved that he couldn’t manage to see “inside himself” past the reflection of sky and clouds. Small nodules began to push up in rows above the windows and down his back, solidifying into shiny dark red spikes that caught and helped dislodge the remaining scraps of his suit.

Conversely, the release in pressure around his middle only made the growing pressure around his feet and head more apparent as the changes increased in speed. His shoes pressed claustrophobically tight around his feet. Their laces and green leather compressed and squeezed around his toes and heel, creaking with the futile effort of holding everything in. An intense pressure grew at the arch of his foot, almost as if he had somehow shoved his feet down into his shoes on top of a couple of tennis balls, stretching the laces at the top of them until the knots were pulled irreversibly tight.

The material, however, couldn’t hold forever. His shoes’ leather sides and rubber soles squeaked and groaned before giving way with a sound like ripping Velcro, and the laces broke with a series of sharp pops. Phil twisted in the air, watching as merging toes tipped with sharp claws burst through the front of his shoes at the same time as the force of…Phil blinked a few times, swept up in another wave of disbelief…landing wheels pushing out from the bottom of his foot ripped the sole clean in two, each half sent tumbling away into the sky. His feet stiffened as clear seams grew along the red edges, hinged by a bolt in the middle, and he felt the whir of servos as he flexed them.

His skull also felt tight, pushing and growing outward against the hard confines of his helmet and goggles. His ears grew pointed and his skull abruptly shifted, changing shape to make way for two horn-like protrusions. They pushed at the helmet, pressure growing until Phil thought his skull would be crushed…he closed his eyes and screamed at the thought when a large SNAP and a CRACK like that of a gunshot echoed in his ears and in front of his face.

Instead of pain, however, he once again felt nothing but relief. It had been the helmet and goggles, not his growing head, that gave way. The helmet had cracked at the same time as the strap had snapped, its buckle whipping up to crack his goggles as well. The elastic strap of the ruined goggles now stretched too, ripping just above his ears as they grew hard and pointed. His new horns caught in the large crack around the middle of the helmet, lodging briefly before both the helmet and goggles were snatched away by the wind.

He squinted his watering eyes against the unexpected rush of air. For a brief moment they stung and itched, unknowingly to him shifting from blue to bright yellow-green, and then it felt like something slid down in front of them and suddenly the wind didn’t bother him at all anymore. He blinked, but nothing changed. It was like he had a sheet of glass between his eyes and eyelids, built-in goggles so he could see in perfect 20/20 vision as he plummeted through the sky.

Something else pushed out into his view and Phil shook his head before realizing that it was his own nose, gradually turning dark red and conical. His jaw followed, bone and flesh stretching and creaking as it took on a new streamlined shape. As his face assumed the sleek form of an airplane’s nose, something in his awareness…shifted. He could sense the world around him in the sky. With internal radar he knew that nothing and no one else was flying near him, and sensors told him how fast he was going, the flex of his wings, his flight angle, his altitude – and with the last, a screaming klaxon of danger that he was approaching the ground entirely too rapidly.

He felt little static shocks as new neural/electrical connections ran down through his limbs, stretching out, clicking into place across his back and down his wings. With a thought that took no more effort than lifting a finger, he felt the heavy thrumming roar of his jet turbines igniting. The ground was still drawing near – he could see individual buildings and cars – but he instinctively stretched his limbs and adjusted his tail and the flaps on his fins and wings, positioning himself just right…and leveled out before leaning into a climb.

He…was flying.

The wind whipped around him and he yelled excitedly, the sound emerging as a loud mechanical roar that reverberated throughout his entire frame. The ground fell away beneath him as he flew, his engines howling. He felt predatory, light, and as free as a soaring eagle as he performed barrel rolls and dives.

Skydiving was like flying, but ultimately it was just falling with style.

This…this was freedom.

Description
Pheagle gets a bit more than he bargained for when he goes for another skydive and accidentally gets caught in his plane's contrails!

Art and the accompanying story by Ferret-Badger
Original

“Woooohooooooo!”

Phil threw himself from the plane, nerves and excitement battling for a place in his stomach, as wind pummeled his body and he marveled at the grid of fields and roads far below him. With his arms and legs stretched out to maximize resistance and the cold wind buffeting his face and battering the cloth of his suit, skydiving felt a lot more like flying than falling. There was no stomach-in-your-throat sinking sensation, no anticipative fear like one might feel at the very top of a roller coaster just before it dropped, just a feeling of absolute freedom from earthly limits as he soared through the –

The wind shifted, and frigid water droplets suddenly spattered across his goggles, obscuring his vision and clinging wetly to his suit, face and hair. He tilted back and shouted in surprise, accidentally flipping in the air and coughing as cloud droplets shot down his windpipe. Dizzily, he realized that he must have gone straight through the plane’s contrails, or rather, shifting air currents must have by some bizarre circumstance blown the contrails down toward him.

He coughed again and spun a bit, wiping his goggles with a sleeve before maneuvering back into a stable position. Well, it wasn’t exactly something he’d had happen before, but at least it was different. Wiping his goggles hadn’t done much more than smear the water around, but they were drying quickly in the wind, even as his exposed face stung with the biting cold. He looked around as the blurriness cleared, revealing his hands stretched out before him. They still looked…off? Bloated and stretchy, even distorted.

He felt odd, and not just from the cold and the sudden spin. His skin was cold, but he also felt hot and feverish inside, dizzy and lightheaded. Maybe he should tuck in for a dive and try to get to a safe altitude to deploy his chute early. He was flexing his fingers and toes, trying to shake off the abrupt stiffness, when he suddenly felt his stomach bulge and something in his back stretch, both pushing against the already tight fabric of his suit. With an audible *riiiiiiiiiiip* that he heard even over the wind, the back of his suit tore open, and what could only be described as two wings (airplane wings?!) tipped with blinking lights burst forth into the area between his tattered suit and the stretching, creaking straps of his parachute pack.

Phil screamed, twisting around and grabbing at the growing wings behind his shoulders as they shifted, two obvious turbine engines emerging from the underside as the pale tone of his skin gave way to bright, shiny red metal. His fingers felt rigid and hard, and they tapped against the hardened edges of his wings with the hollow clink of metal on metal.

He pulled his hands back into view, staring in silent horror at his expanding digits as they stretched the material of his fingerless gloves to their limits. His pinkie and ring fingers twisted and undulated before suddenly melting together into one, destroying the outer finger holes of the gloves in a burst of shredded fabric. As if suddenly freed from the need to hold together, the rest of his gloves gave way along the seams as massive holes tore through.

More shiny red creeped up the backs and hands of his palms and down his fingers as his nails similarly turned dark and sharpened into claw-like shapes that quickly turned blunt and streamlined. The indent of a metal seam rolled around each finger and settled into place where the dark red of the tips met the fire engine red of the rest of his skin.

Was he…hallucinating? Having some kind of stroke? He didn’t know and didn’t have a whole lot of time to ponder. He now felt tight all over, something pushing out from his skull making his helmet strap cut tightly against his chin. His stomach and limbs were bulging outward with new growth, but instead of feeling heavier he felt…light. Light and hard around the edges, like his surface area was increasing but not his overall mass.

His skydiving suit bulged and stretched tightly around his belly in increasingly uncomfortable ways, but it was the straps of his harness that were the most painful. They constrained his expanding belly, pinching tighter and tighter until Phil thought he would be squeezed in half. He clawed at the unforgiving material, once again wheeling about in the sky, ground and clouds swirling in his vision as the straps’ holding capacity finally breached with a massive SNAP!

He exclaimed in immediate relief at the loss of pain and pressure, and his body responded in kind as his now-free belly and sides bulged out in leaps and bounds. His spine abruptly ached, stretching and stretching into the formation of a tail, the beginnings of three stabilizing fins on the tip pushing at the seat of his pants. His suit, far less sturdy than his harness, stood no chance. It was torn asunder, massive holes and tears meeting each other and leaving little more than shreds of fabric. A few scraps remained caught on his arms, legs, and wings, but most were torn violently away from him as he fell, nothing more than specks of green against the bright blue sky and white clouds.

…and, with a shock of absolute horror and a failed, flailing attempt to grab it for his life, he watched as his parachute pack spun out of his grasp, its lighter weight and shape making it fall slower so that it floated up and away from him in a way that ensured he would never be able to catch it. Assuming this wasn’t some kind of terrible nightmare he would wake up from when he hit the ground, he was plummeting to his presumable death.

Too terrified and confused to be embarrassed by the sudden absence of most of his clothes, Phil instead gaped as he watched his stomach balloon out, and out, and out in shades of red and gold. It hardened to a polished surface that sparkled in the day’s bright light, tinted slightly blue by the reflection of the surrounding sky. A line like the edge of two metal plates butting against each other spread out from his disappearing belly button, tickling as it spread horizontally to his sides. It was followed by more tickling lines up and down his chest, up to his neck and down all the way around to his rapidly growing tail.

Small bumps followed, dotting along the edge of each seam until they took the clear form of rivets. Red spread up from where his belly met his sides, followed by squares of highly reflective tinted glass windows that rippled up from the tip of his tail to just under his arms. He stared in horrified fascination, curious but also relieved that he couldn’t manage to see “inside himself” past the reflection of sky and clouds. Small nodules began to push up in rows above the windows and down his back, solidifying into shiny dark red spikes that caught and helped dislodge the remaining scraps of his suit.

Conversely, the release in pressure around his middle only made the growing pressure around his feet and head more apparent as the changes increased in speed. His shoes pressed claustrophobically tight around his feet. Their laces and green leather compressed and squeezed around his toes and heel, creaking with the futile effort of holding everything in. An intense pressure grew at the arch of his foot, almost as if he had somehow shoved his feet down into his shoes on top of a couple of tennis balls, stretching the laces at the top of them until the knots were pulled irreversibly tight.

The material, however, couldn’t hold forever. His shoes’ leather sides and rubber soles squeaked and groaned before giving way with a sound like ripping Velcro, and the laces broke with a series of sharp pops. Phil twisted in the air, watching as merging toes tipped with sharp claws burst through the front of his shoes at the same time as the force of…Phil blinked a few times, swept up in another wave of disbelief…landing wheels pushing out from the bottom of his foot ripped the sole clean in two, each half sent tumbling away into the sky. His feet stiffened as clear seams grew along the red edges, hinged by a bolt in the middle, and he felt the whir of servos as he flexed them.

His skull also felt tight, pushing and growing outward against the hard confines of his helmet and goggles. His ears grew pointed and his skull abruptly shifted, changing shape to make way for two horn-like protrusions. They pushed at the helmet, pressure growing until Phil thought his skull would be crushed…he closed his eyes and screamed at the thought when a large SNAP and a CRACK like that of a gunshot echoed in his ears and in front of his face.

Instead of pain, however, he once again felt nothing but relief. It had been the helmet and goggles, not his growing head, that gave way. The helmet had cracked at the same time as the strap had snapped, its buckle whipping up to crack his goggles as well. The elastic strap of the ruined goggles now stretched too, ripping just above his ears as they grew hard and pointed. His new horns caught in the large crack around the middle of the helmet, lodging briefly before both the helmet and goggles were snatched away by the wind.

He squinted his watering eyes against the unexpected rush of air. For a brief moment they stung and itched, unknowingly to him shifting from blue to bright yellow-green, and then it felt like something slid down in front of them and suddenly the wind didn’t bother him at all anymore. He blinked, but nothing changed. It was like he had a sheet of glass between his eyes and eyelids, built-in goggles so he could see in perfect 20/20 vision as he plummeted through the sky.

Something else pushed out into his view and Phil shook his head before realizing that it was his own nose, gradually turning dark red and conical. His jaw followed, bone and flesh stretching and creaking as it took on a new streamlined shape. As his face assumed the sleek form of an airplane’s nose, something in his awareness…shifted. He could sense the world around him in the sky. With internal radar he knew that nothing and no one else was flying near him, and sensors told him how fast he was going, the flex of his wings, his flight angle, his altitude – and with the last, a screaming klaxon of danger that he was approaching the ground entirely too rapidly.

He felt little static shocks as new neural/electrical connections ran down through his limbs, stretching out, clicking into place across his back and down his wings. With a thought that took no more effort than lifting a finger, he felt the heavy thrumming roar of his jet turbines igniting. The ground was still drawing near – he could see individual buildings and cars – but he instinctively stretched his limbs and adjusted his tail and the flaps on his fins and wings, positioning himself just right…and leveled out before leaning into a climb.

He…was flying.

The wind whipped around him and he yelled excitedly, the sound emerging as a loud mechanical roar that reverberated throughout his entire frame. The ground fell away beneath him as he flew, his engines howling. He felt predatory, light, and as free as a soaring eagle as he performed barrel rolls and dives.

Skydiving was like flying, but ultimately it was just falling with style.

This…this was freedom.