[TF, Multiple Inanimate Changes (Motorcycle, Balloon, Goo, Ball, Flask, Tire, Zeppelin)]

[Commission for TheDrunkAstronaut]

You roll to a stop in a dark alley. The engine that rumbled in your chest had been silent for the last few blocks, as well as the headlights that were part of your face being dark. It looked as though you had no rider, though you drove perfectly fine despite that. It would have surprised everyone to no end that the self driving motorcycle was, in fact, actually a person.

You popped a wheelie, perching on your back tire with perfect balance. The front wheel, suspended in midair, started to bulge and separate at new seams that were forming over its surface, and your fingers - now distinct objects that were formerly part of the tire - released from their interlocked grip. You stretch and flex your arms - formerly the front suspension of the bike that had been holding your wheel-hands - as you feel your normal joints reappearing along their lengths, enjoying the silver surface that adorned your arms. Your feet were the next to separate as the rear tire underneath you split into your normal limbs; suspension and shock absorbers turning into bones and muscles under your silver skin. Your fingers stroked along your chest as it swelled outward, losing the combustion engine and gas tank and their distinctive curves. Your chest went from the smooth plating of a motorcycle to the slightly more lumpy shape of a torso now filled with normal human organs, albeit liquid metal versions of them.  The handlebars retraced inward, becoming the outline of ears on your metallic head that was forming. Your headlights blinked a couple times, dwindling in size and shape until they more resembled eyes.

For a moment, you stood there in the dark, your metallic goo-formed body catching any spare scrap of light it could. As the premier Utility Thief, you didn’t spend much time in your normal, original human body. Your secret identity, if you will. Instead, you often chose to be someone else during your heists, so that even if something went wrong - which it never did - you wouldn’t be caught. Today was no exception, as you changed back to human completely, flesh and blood, bone and muscle. You were some nondescript looking person, the details intentionally vague. It didn’t matter who you were, as hopefully no one would be spotting you.

Silently, you ran down the rest of the alley way. Your body was light and agile, and made short work of the distance. Looking up the wall in front of you, you could see that it was a sheer face straight up. Smoothed over concrete, with nothing to use as footholds on the long multi-story climb.

Good thing you weren’t climbing.

You took a deep breath and then another. Your body was letting you pump air into yourself instead of breathing normally. Every breath you took, your body got a little thicker. Feeling almost a little light headed, you sat down on the cold pavement of the alleyway. Each time you inhaled now, not only did your chest swell and become more rotund, but your limbs seemed to dwindle down, absorbing into your bloated torso. Your body was taking up more and more of your view, obstructing sight of everything else. Eventually, even your head started to reduce down onto the stretched and taut skin of your abdomen. Your skin was taking on a shiny red hue, and the more you inhaled, the more translucent you became.

You barely could look down at yourself, but you could tell that you were hollow, filled with the gases your body was making from the air you kept inhaling. One more deep breath, and you swelled enough that your arms and legs were completely gone, absorbed into the rubbery surface. A last breath later, and your head too was sucked into the round balloon you had become. Your face remained painted on the surface in a vague expression of amusement, staring at the wall in front of you before even your smirk faded away into the pristine surface. As you started to rise, you stuck a metallic tendril out of the balloon mass, letting it dwindle down into the form of the ribbon attached to your spout.

Rising up along the building, a strong draft kept dragging you against the surface of the building. Suddenly, there it was, the railing. A flick of your ribbon curled around it, and instead of vertically ascending, you shifted your momentum so that you were drifting across the surface of the building. Your red surface shimmered and glistened,, rapidly collapsing back into yourself as you turned back into a metallic blob, splattering against the rooftop in a messy puddle of silver.

Finally, you stood back up, your goo-like form recollecting into the figure you had chosen in the alleyway. You looked around the rooftop and spotted what you were looking for, starting to walk towards it. A ventilation system. With how many bolted-on grates this facility used in it’s air conditioning, a normal thief would overlook them. But you were different, and had your own way to get past them without unbolting each and every one.

You pressed your hand against the surface of the first grate. You pressed harder and harder, until your hand started to flatten. You relaxed every muscle you had, and imagined yourself formless. This was a harder change to master - it seemed your body preferred to have a defined shape, but with a bit of practice you managed to make it stay in your liquid metal form. You pressed your hand against the grate again, grinning as you melted straight through it. You pulled your hand back, took a deep breath, and jumped into the air system.

Your entire body melted into a silver puddle on impact with the mesh, spraying through and hitting the other side of the duct behind it. You slid down the side of the metal, your viscous body falling through the vent until you hit another surface. You were tempted to reform and look around, and for a moment it feels like your body wants to as well. It’s after reminding yourself that it’s dark, and you already know the way. You managed to slink along the shaft as a pile of goo until the last physical obstacle.

The fan.

Without a chance to second guess yourself, you drove the puddle that was your body through it, scattering yourself into the rest of the vent. A small perk of being a nearly indestructible shapeshifter. The moment you passed through the fan, you focused all the globs of yourself that were spraying everywhere to come back together, and into your human form. Last up was a drop from the elevated ceiling to the floor of the room. You started to do the reverse of turning into the balloon - instead of inhaling to inflate, you began to exhale to vent out gas. Your body slowly collapsed in on itself as you became more and more empty. Eventually, your deflated head crumpled forward against your chest, melting slightly as it connected to the caved in torso it touched. Your entire body shriveled and contracted, pulled together with all the strength that you had until all that remained was a small ball.

Under its own power, the ball - you - rolled forward, out of the vent and careened toward the floor. Once you hit the ground, there was a momentary thud that rocked through your being, before you launched back into the air nearly as high as you fell. Repeatedly you bounced, losing momentum each time you struck the ground until finally one last bounce set you gently on a table top. You started the gooey process of turning back into a human, when you heard it.

There was someone outside the door, rattling their keys. You had just finished reforming to human, and now you needed to hide. The moments where the key was being inserted into the lock seemed to stretch on to infinity as you mildly panicked, considering what you could turn into to avoid detection. You noticed you were surrounded by a lot of glassware, various flasks and beakers that were laying around haphazardly. Perfect, you mused to yourself. You sat on your rear and hugged your knees, picturing the conical flask next to you as inspiration for your next shape. You felt like you were vibrating, and you looked down at yourself. The surface of your skin was getting sparkly and crystalline, resonating with itself as you started to become see-through. Your neck began to stiffen, forcing your head to look straight up at the ceiling. Before you could help yourself, your mouth was gaping open wide. The rest of your face was absorbing into your mouth and throat, leaving you as just a single hole connected to a large container that rattled softly on the counter as you settled into position.

It seemed like it would be easy, waiting for whoever this was to leave. But the visitor wasn’t a guard or other member of the staff that would be leaving soon. Unbeknownst to you, this was a sanitation worker, cleaning up the glassware for the day, which now included you. At first, their attention seemed to be on the other items on the table, but eventually your luck gave out and you were lifted in the air and carried to the sink. Your mouth was placed right next to the sink faucet, and cold water blasted through your throat and into your insides. A bit of soap ran across your insides - a foul bitter taste as it hit your mouth - and you were swirled around. You could feel the water lapping at the glass inside of your body, washing you out more thoroughly than you ever thought possible.

An eternity later, the washing finally stopped. You were set on a drying rack, and finally the worker left the room. Relieved you reformed into your liquid metal, slithering off the counter and plopping onto the floor. Finally, you managed to turn partially back to human - remaining a silvery mass that was vaguely humanoid in case you needed to hide again - and stay that way undetected for more than a moment. You walked over to the nearby computer and turned it on. It only took you a few moments to find what you were looking for - the top secret files that you had been paid to steal. You held up the tip of one of the tendrils that was your arm, looking at it before pushing it into the USB port of the computer. Immediately you could feel the electricity flowing through you as you downloaded the files into yourself. Once the transfer was completed, you removed yourself from the computer, turned back to fully human, and began to make your escape.

The run out of the facility was smooth and uneventful, thanks to your preplanning. You knew the routes the guards would take, and which hallways would be empty. Before you knew it, you were at the parking garage. According to the plan, it would only be a single change left before you left, but fate had a different plan.

A new security guard was walking through the garage, heading toward the door you just came in. He wasn’t part of the plan, and you were left nearly optionless. With moments to think, you panicked and started to change. Your legs bent back, and your arms arched back to meet them. The moment your fingers and toes touched - and impressive feat of flexibility even for you - they fused together. Your body widened out, turning a dark black. All along your front, tire treads formed on you, covering you in a rough pattern of zigzags and squiggles. It felt strange, feeling the bulges of rubber pushing up through your face, distorting your vision as your eyes and other facial features were shoved out of the way to make way for the rubber. Eventually, the details of your face were so stretched and warped, disguised by the black rubber they had become that no one would have been able to spot that you once had those features. Before long, the individual limbs of your body had fused together and formed a singular loop of rubber. You rattled to the ground, laying on your side. Unfortunately, the sound attracted the guard, who came to check out the errant tire that was by itself. He tried to move you, straining against your weight. You groaned softly internally, no sound escaping due to your stature as a tire while the guard manhandled you aggressively, the second time in one evening that someone had decided to mess with your inanimate form. With a sigh and a curse, he left you alone, heading deeper into the building away from you.

With a bit of effort, you manage to rock yourself upright, flipping onto your narrow side. A gentle wobble before you find your balance, and off you roll accidentally. You finally managed to make your way through the garage as a tire, before accidentally misaiming due to your lack of eyes and hitting a wall. In a burst of silvery goo, you end up in a messy puddle that takes a moment to reform into a very achy thief.. Despite the great flexibility you had demonstrated, it left you sore and stiff. Time to leave, and in luxury, you decided. You made your way to the front gate of the parking garage where the attendant was asleep, just like usual. Smooth sailing, almost as smooth as sailing on the sky. That gave you an idea. Once again, you started inhaling air, your body plumping up much like before. The only difference is you didn’t stop. Your torso soon doubled, even tripled in size, and you had to lay down on your front. Your arms and legs folded underneath you as you held your stomach, and they bent and reformed into first the structural beams, and then the walls and floor of some kind of compartment underneath you.

You looked straight ahead, the pressure of your torso holding your neck in place. You kept inhaling, though your body was swelling on its own at this point. You grinned, knowing you were going to get away with the perfect heist yet again. Eventually, your entire head disappeared into the mass of your body - cocky smile and all - leaving just a singular egg shaped orb that gently lifted off the ground. You tried to imagine the look on the sleeping guard’s face as a zeppelin - one roughly the size of a minivan at that - gently floated past his booth and drifted upward into the night sky. Your body kept swelling in size until your compartment could actually hold multiple people in it comfortably, the balloon part of you the size of a small blimp. Slowly you drifted through the cold winter air, taking your time to reach the drop point for the stolen goods. After all, you deserved to relax a little in such a luxurious mode of transportation: no one had spotted you, and your record as the undetectable, unstoppable Utility Thief was unblemished.