(Women to birds)
“Right behind you.”
It was the kind of comms chatter that annoyed Pharah to no end. The woman looked to the blinking icon in her helmet’s feed with irritation, blinking to activate a private channel. “Cut the extra chatter, they don’t need to hear you announce your presence.”
“So-rry, Miss Perfect. Still trying to take after mommy, no?” Sombra cooed over the line, her voice dripping with condescension.
Pharah didn’t often wish to be back in the military, but right now she’d like nothing else than to bust the Hispanic hacker’s ass down to latrine duty. Unfortunately, Overwatch was a less rigid organization, and the worst Sombra would have to put up with was another of Zenyatta’s stern talks.
“I said” Pharah began, cut off by a screech in her ear. It was a harsh ring of feedback, and for a moment she’d thought the Talon agent had turned traitor. Then the voices started.
“Wh-AAWWW? Guh! MierdAAAW!” Sombra’s voice cried over the communicator, but it wasn’t quite her own. It was like someone had layered the voice of a crow over hers, the natural melody of her accent devolving into harsh squawks.
The agent sprinted out form the target building, her body transforming as she ran. Sombra’s natural cloaking field melted away to reveal a thick black coat of feathers was covering her body, more and more quills sprouting with every passing second.
From her birds-eye view, Pharah had a perfect sight of the woman’s transformation. Her jaw fell slack as she watched Sombra’s tanned face stretch out into an ugly beak, and the woman’s brilliant eyes dimmed to a dull black.
Pharah didn’t want to see it, but she couldn’t keep herself from giving into curiosity. She watched as the running woman tripped, falling onto hands that were now wings. She shrank back into her clothing until there was just a writhing ball within the purple fabric, until finally that too stilled.
A crow’s head poked out from Sombra’s collar a moment later, and Pharah floated in the air, stunned.
“Y-you saw that, did you not?” Mercy asked from below her, the woman’s wings deployed, keeping her airborne as surely as Pharah’s thrusters. “You saw… I cannot explain it.”
“I did. What are we dealing with?” Pharah’s heart pounded, and she quickly opened communications to the entire squad. “Sombra is down, I repeat, Sombra is down. Call in, do any assets need assistance?”
“Down? Merde, what do you mean down?” Widowmaker’s voice was curt and reproachful, the Frenchwoman’s scorn as clear as her informal military training.
“Does she need help? I should have been there.” Brigitte, Torbjorn’s daughter. This was her first mission, and Pharah had no intentions of making it her last.
The blue-armored woman sent a glare groundward, looking to the Swedish woman. It sent a warning buzz through her armor, arresting her vainglorious charge. That was the only warning she’d get until the last member of their team called in-Pharah had no intentions of further clogging their comms channels.
“D.Va here. Requesting permission to engage.” That brought a smile to Pharah’s face, and the woman nodded, shifting her thrusters to change angle. The Korean had experience in the armed forces, and despite her attitude off the field, she was invaluable in the thick of things.
“Acknowledged.” Pharah sent to the team’s channel, before flicking over to a private line with D.Va. “Hana, watch out. There’s something strange here… Sombra’s become a crow.”
“Like, a bird?” D.Va boosted her mech towards the pile of clothing, scaring the animal in the rags. It took flight, and the MEKA pilot chirped in a moment later. “Whoops.”
There was no love lost there, and Pharah knew it. Still, it rankled her that someone on her team was so casually dismissing the lost of another. “Exactly like one. Seal your hatches, private. If this things’s environmental, I don’t need you changing too.”
“Already done, ma’am. No offense, but the ommies did something similar in the-wait.” The MEKA on the ground froze. Then the team comms channel opened to the most terrifying minute of Pharah’s life.
“There’s something happening to me! Hnngh, everything feels wrong, my body feels wrong!” D.Va’s voice was strained, as though she was in tremendous pain.
“I don’t have visual, relocating.” Widowmaker called.
“I’m moving in too, she needs help. The hell with your orders, no Lindholm just sits back and lets their friends fall.” Brigitte echoed the lavender-skinned sniper.
For once, Pharah was glad for their disobedience. She didn’t have the heart to keep them from helping the MEKA pilot. D.Va was the one to halt them this time, a harsh blurt of static preceding her words.
“NAUNNK! HAUUNK! Stay baUUNK! Do nAUUNK! GAH! MY AUNK LEGS!” D.Va screamed into the mic, and the icons marking Widowmaker and Brigitte’s positions stilled. “Muh-mAUNK-my arms! Wings? N-no… I don’t wAUNK to bHGGAUNK! HAUNK!!”
The cries of a frantic bird filled Pharah’s ears, coupled with loud pops and snaps, as though bones were cracking and reforming. Blessed silence filled the air a moment later, followed by a private comms-click from Widowmaker.
“I… I can see into her MEKA. There’s a heron inside it. No, wait. A crane. What did you get me into?”
Pharah’s response was curt and instinctive. “Fall back.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Her suit was environmentally sealed and she was still transformed. How about you? Do you think your visor can keep you safe? Fall. Back.” It hurt Pharah to say, but she didn’t want to risk another of her agents.
For a moment, it looked like Widowmaker was actually going to listen to her. Then the woman clicked in again, over the team’s channel. “Brigitte… The damned idiot’s daughter is shell-shocked.”
“Brigitte, come in. Lindholm!” Pharah swiveled her position midair, eyes scanning for the familiar gold of the girl’s armor. “Listen to me, I don’t know what this is. You need to pull back, you need to get away.”
“I see her!” Widowmaker again, the lithe figure somehow easier to spot than Brigitte’s ostentatious armor. The lavender woman ran to a collapsed figure, who stirred as she approached.
“Hurk.”
That was the only sound, the only warning that something was awry. Then Brigitte’s form began to convulse.
Pharah magnified her field of view, getting a good look at the young woman, finding she wasn’t going to be a woman for much longer. Brigitte was looking cross-eyed to her growing beak, pressing her fingers against it as though she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
Her legs were kicking and thrashing, and Pharah could see why. Armor was falling away from limbs no longer suited to wear it-or any clothing, for that matter. Her supple legs were a hard and calloused gold now, thick and knobbly.
“Someone, papa, pleEEEse!” She screamed, her voice distorted by her beak. She looked towards the sky, and Pharah could swear that she’d somehow made eye contact with her aerial support. Then the girl’s gauntlets fell free of her armor, revealing fluttering wing tips.
The hair fell from her shrinking head as she beat her wings, screeching louder and louder, her caws echoing through Pharah’s helmet. Then the last scraps of her breastplate fell emptily to the ground, exposing a proud, feral eagle. The support had become a predator, one that took wing.
“Fareeha…” The tone was tender, and for a moment Pharah thought it had come from her counterpart. The icon blinked as Widowmaker’s; however, and the woman blinked in surprise.
“What?” She spoke harsher than she’d intended, a lifetime of enmity making the biting tone easy. She regretted it, and corrected herself. “Amelie?”
“Tell… Tell them I’m sorry for Gerard.”
There was remorse in her tone, something that Pharah hadn’t thought the woman capable of possessing. She turned her attention towards the sniper, and almost sobbed as she saw even Widowmaker was beginning to change.
That was a surprise. Pharah hadn’t expected she’d feel anything towards the woman’s death, she’d certainly imagined it enough. But seeing her transform instead… It was remorseful, and oddly beautiful at the same time.
Widowmaker didn’t fight her changes as the others had. Instead, she spread her arms wide, letting feathers tear her outfit to ribbons, leaving her in an angelic pose only accentuated by the wings growing from her shoulderblades. Her back popped and forced her into a forward-facing stoop, and her arms windmilled for a moment as they began to regress.
Pharah watched them pull into Widowmaker’s shoulders, leaving her only with long, white wings. The sniper craned her head up to the rocketeer, a motion made easier by the stretching of her spine, the elongation of her neck. Then she brought a wing to her lips sadly, blowing her commanding officer a kiss.
With it, her lips turned an ugly orange, merging with her nose into a long beak. Widowmaker collapsed onto her knees, folding her wings inward and grunting as her lithe female body bloated into the meaty form of a bird. Even for a creature as elegant as a swan, it was an ugly transformation.
Her backside extended in time with the growth of tailfeathers, her hair receded into a scalp now clad in white. The last of her skin was covered in the same soft down as her wings, and with that the woman let out a loud cry.
“HOOONK!”
It would have been amusing, were it not for the numb shock of having lost another team. Pharah swallowed hard, her mouth dry. “Mercy. Record any data you might find useful here. Then we’re getting out of here.”
The angel-like woman nodded, her fingers dancing across the small keypad embedded in her armor. Then her fingers spasmed, and a look of consternation crossed her face. It was soon followed by one of panic, and mirrored by Pharah.
“No…” Mercy muttered, watching her fingers twitch. “We’re so far in the air, it couldn’t possibWAK.”
It was like the opening shot of a war. The woman looked up to Pharah, eyes widening. “BuGWAK! GAWKBWAK! CLUCK!” The sounds leaving her throat weren’t even slightly human, and she clutched her hands around her neck.
As she did, the golden corona around her wings flickered, and died. Slowly, Mercy began to fall.
“PharAWK! GWAK!” She babbled, her beautiful face beginning to distend to the changes. Pharah watched her fall numbly for a moment, watched the outstretched and pleading hand reform into a wing. She watched Mercy’s lithe figure bloat into the round, chubby body of a hen.
Then she realized the danger her friend was in. Pharah tucked her body in, turning groundward and bringing her Raptorion suit to a full burn. Mercy had started to fall before her, which meant Pharah needed to accelerate.
The woman reached her hand for a wing, thinking better of it a moment later. Instead, she curled her arm around Mercy’s fatter waist, feeling the woman begin to shrink in her arms.
“PhBWAKrah! I can feel itGWAK inCLUCK! In my head!” Mercy’s speech was mangled, her eyes unfocused. Pharah watched the intelligence literally drain from the woman’s gorgeous eyes, and she hugged the hen-to-be to her breastplate tightly.
“It’s okay, Angela. I’m here. It will all be okay.” Pharah lied, the hardest falsehood she’d had to tell in her life. Worse, it looked like Mercy didn’t even understand her words. The woman clucked and pecked at Pharah’s arm, kicking her legs as they became short and stubby, with thick thighs.
The ground cracked beneath Pharah’s armor as she landed, a clucking chicken in her arms. Scraps of Mercy’s armor and clothing pattered to the ground around her, and she let the animal go. Tears dripped down her cheeks as she felt her heart clench, and she knew that she was next.
“The sky has always been my home.” Pharah closed her eyes, unclasping her helmet. She opened them again, looking to the blue clouds, to the eagle circling overhead. “I suppose this is only fitting.”
She had planned to let her change be graceful, like Widowmaker’s. She had dreamed of a life in the clouds, free of the stink of jet fuel and the drums of war. She had been wrong on all accounts.
Her chest bulged, and she huffed as air was driven into her lungs. She looked down, grunting as she watched her body expand, rather than shrink. Then her body started to pull away from her head, and the woman realized she was sorely mistaken about her destiny.
It wasn’t that her body was pulling away from her head, it was that her head was pulling away from her body. Her neck quietly cricked and popped as it stretched out longer, craning as it grew. It was like it was pulling at her spine in the process, forcing her to lean her body forwards so that her breasts hung parallel to the ground.
Deep within her heart, Pharah knew what she was becoming. But it wasn’t until she caught sight of herself in her helmet’s visor that she was able to admit it. Her head had shrunk as her neck had grown, giving her a look that could only be described as ‘ostrich-like’.
“No…” She breathed, tears falling from her eyes anew. She’d been able to bare the change with the thought of becoming something graceful, maybe even something beautiful. But an ugly, land-anchored ostrich? It was too much for her to bear.
“Please, noARK! BWERRK!” She warbled, her distended vocal chords making the task easier. She pawed at her face, whimpering at the feeling of coarse hair-like feathers sprouting along her cheeks, along all of her neck. It itched, madly so, and was an itch that her changing fingers couldn’t sate.
She tried to dig them into her burning skin, but found her fingers pressing uselessly against her new hide, tickling it like the feathers they’d become. She pawed at her long neck with both changing hands, even as her arms began to pull towards her bloated body.
The only mercy to this was that her armor was simply peeling away from her body, clattering onto the ground harmlessly. There was no constricting feeling; it was like her clothing was melting away wherever feathers touched.
The last scraps of her protective gear hit the cement with a set of dull thuds, and Pharah turned her long neck to her changing body, looking at its plump and ungainly form, and at the thick feathers which covered it.
She wasn’t ever going to be meant for flight, and that meant her feathers were free to be as thick as they wanted. It was like she was covered in a layer of fluff, heavy and cumbersome. It covered all of her body from the bottom of her neck to the top of her legs, which were left bare.
Despite how uncomfortable the feathers were, Pharah would rather her naked parts be covered. Because they were bare, she was able to see her legs lose their dark tan, stretching and buckling to the transformation. She wobbled on her new chicken-legged posture, grunting as her toes splayed.
“Nouurblblbl…” She moaned sadly, her tears finally ceasing as her ducts closed. She looked up to a sky she’d never be able to taste, crooning in distress. The changes were moving to her head now, and she could feel herself getting dumber.
It was indescribable, and not just because she now lacked the mental capacity to do so. A thick fog was settling over her mind, instincts replacing rational thought and desires for the future replacing memories of the past. An ostrich had no cares for human trivialities like recollection. She only cared about surviving, and expanding her brood.
The ostrich squatted, and inside her head a woman screamed. She felt an egg pressing behind her sex, unable to pass her tight lips. The transformation had a simple solution for this, and one that Pharah couldn’t bear to endure. “GWERRK! RRRRRK!” She cried, her lips slowly stretching into her peripheral vision.
She pleaded, begged the changes to take her mind before she laid her first egg-and was singularly disappointed. Despite her protests, her body remained in its squatted posture, letting the egg inside her transform her, pulling her vagina closer to her anus. The two merged into an avian cloaca, which winked as the large oval began to crown.
It was stretching her, tearing her apart! Pharah screeched in distress as the massive egg slipped out from her cloaca, dilating her new sex. Then it tapered off as the egg slid out from her, clattering to the ground.
Her mind reeled from the nightmare of the situation even as the last of her human thoughts were stripped of her consciousness. The last echoing cries of the woman weren’t wistful memories, or concern for her comrades. They were frantic, pleading begging for the release of an egg.
Then her humanity slipped away, and the ostrich warbled stupidly. She turned her tiny head from side to side, shaking a few loose strands of human hair from her scalp, and then turned to run away from these human buildings, towards a safe nesting ground.
Miles away, an AI mentally steepled its fingers. The first test was a resounding success, and thanks to the data it had retrieved from the Raptorion suit it had a bird’s-eye view of its results. The irony wasn’t lost on the thinking machine, and it felt a rush of amusement as it plotted its next transformation.