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It felt like stretching, felt good when he transformed. M-21 shook himself afterwards, just to feel his body moving, everything flexing and working right.
“M-21?” M-24 had asked him.
M-21 had nodded first thing, then looked down at his paws and gone oh shit.
Being able to transform his hands was bad enough. If he had a transformation like this, they’d never let him out of the lab if the scientists found out about it. And it wasn’t like he’d meant to transform: he could do it inadvertently. In front of cameras.
After he managed to transform back was when he started saving all his pills for M-24. Because M-24 was the one who still had a chance of staying out of the labs, provided discovering M-21 didn’t make them take another look at M-24.
That meant that at least they had some extra pills, when M-21 realized he didn’t need them anymore.
But when he transformed back he made a face that was half a smirk and half a sneer. “Why couldn’t I have done that in the lab? It was cold in the lab.” So a big furry transformation would have been useful. The rest of the M-series could have slept around him to stay warm.
“It doesn’t look like a regular transformation,” M-24 said.
Shit. More reason for the scientists to be interested in him.
M-21 did his best to stay out of that form, for obvious (Union) reasons. It didn’t even seem to be that much stronger than when he just grew the claws.
Poking around in Union files meant they were already aware of werewolves, like noblesse. So M-21 was based on a werewolf, the way M-24 was based on a noblesse. Not that they were human anymore, either of them. It wasn’t like transforming or not made a difference to that.
He used the wolf transformation to fight Jake and it was still easy for Jake to beat him. It didn’t make any difference at all, he thought, limping to his feet as the two noblesse looked at him. “So you know my secret,” he said, turning back.
The two of them looked at him like they neither knew nor cared what he was talking about, far more concerned with the human children. Well, at least they weren’t interested in dissecting him.
When the dark-haired noblesse told him that the power within him wasn’t small and said to Awaken, M-21’s body was in a humanoid form, not the wolf one, but when he got really furious he summoned a wave of energy, a lunging shape in the form of a wolf, and felt like his mind was half in his body and half in the wolf. The whole thing was weird, a disposable pawn like him beating an experiment like that, so he attributed it to the noblesse doing something and didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t like he could be that powerful on his own.
He used the wolf form to fight Shark and the others, when his claws weren’t enough. It got its ass kicked too, but at least he bought enough time for the little noblesse – noble – to get back up and protect the kids. The kids weren’t scared of him and all, Yuna and Suyi coming over to his side and wishing they could do something for him. It was nice, it was enough that they cared. For people like them, with a future, to care about a weakling like him.
Thank goodness the black-haired noble came in time to save them. And to tell M-21 to wake up, but that was less important. He’d gotten to his feet again, favoring his front right paw which was still injured, standing between the girls and the rest of the room while Frankenstein’s Master sorted it out. He felt well enough to transform back once Frankenstein arrived, although it was nice that the two girls kept hold of him, kept him from falling over.
He woke up in wolf form, in a bed next to Takeo from DA-5. The modified human had stared at him in shock when M-21 transformed back, revealing such a dramatic transformation, so M-21 pointedly looked away from him until Takeo composed himself a little more.
Tao was the one to point out that M-21 should train in that form, not just in his humanoid transformation – the claws were getting more dramatic as time went on – and it came in handy when they went to Lukedonia. It also helped that the nobles were startled to see a werewolf attacking them, and M-21 could charge in and pounce on them while they were off-balance.
It came in very handy when they fought Cerberus – M-21 was a little stronger in the wolf form, even if not by all that much. He might be stronger than Tao and Takeo, but he was still weaker than everyone else in the house, even the noble kid. But it did seem like he was stronger than regular nobles, and then they asked Frankenstein to enhance them.
Having a werewolf’s heart in his chest explained a lot, and maybe it was even better to be ‘basically a werewolf’ if he couldn’t be human anymore. Better than being entirely Crombel’s creation, not that he’d say that again where Frankenstein could hear it.
Frankenstein mostly enhanced his humanoid form, but that transformation came with the risk of going berserk after awhile. He stuck to the wolf a couple of times because he wanted to be sure to stay in control of himself, especially at the school. He didn’t like that he’d revealed the wolf form to the fake M-24, even if that M-24 had seemed to already know about it. Had they stolen memories from his friend’s body somehow? It gave M-21 another reason to wish he could have dug M-24 out of the rubble, to keep scientists from getting their hands on his friend’s body again.
On the flight over to Lukedonia, M-21 had transformed when the seat they were on was hard and Tao had only brought a pillow for himself. Takeo had even taken a nap, leaning against him, and that was nice. Like what M-24 had done.
He took on the wolf form the time he fought his first real werewolf: it helped his head clear somehow, or at least it helped him keep his mind on the fact that this guy was just like the Union, and Tao and Takeo were going to die if M-21 didn’t wake the hell up and keep him off them. Kentas got his head out of his ass once he spent some time as an experiment and got to see what it was like. Weird to see scientists letting experiments go, though, even if they weren’t Union scientists and Frankenstein sure wouldn’t take orders to torture people from anyone.
While they were fighting on the werewolf island M-21 saw a giant spectral wolf attack, like the one he’d used that time when awakened, but according to Kentas they didn’t turn into wolves much, if at all. If they could and didn’t, that was a waste: the form was handy for keeping comrades warm. It was a sign M-21 wasn’t human anymore, but he knew that. He’d taken wolf form a few times when they flew back from the training island, to keep Takeo and Tao warm while they finished recovering from their injuries. Regis too, although he was too prideful about letting them know he was injured.
Tao scratched him when he did that. Felt nice, not that he was going to tell Tao that. He didn’t need the encouragement. It was nice that Tao always knew what he meant when he made noises in wolf form during training, he didn’t feel left out of the planning at all – and they needed to work together, or Frankenstein would get pissed that they were missing the point of the lesson and really let them have it.
He turned into a wolf on the flight back from the werewolves’ place. Maybe to make room – the helicopter was a little crowded, and Tao’d been saying that, “You should lie down, M-21,” which obviously wasn’t going to work unless he lay down on the floor.
It was a bit of a relief to transform. He hadn’t transformed while he was in Ignes’ hands, of course, he wasn’t going to give away anything to a Union scientist. It had given him a bit of triumph while he was in her clutches, to have something about his body that she didn’t know. Because it was his body, not hers. He was the one who got to do what he wanted with it (well, and Frankenstein), not her. Nothing she’d done had left a mark, and once he again he was glad to be modified, the same way he was when it let him save his comrades. That because of his body, he’d gotten what he wanted and the Union hadn’t. A bit of triumph he’d though he’d never have, once he and M-24 realized how big the Union was.
“Good idea M-21, get comfy,” Tao was saying, so M-21 shifted to press a little more against the bench, getting Tao’s feet in under his body. “That’s RK’s werefootwarmer!”
M-21 gave him a bit of a glare, but not a serious one. Not when Tao and the others came all this way because he’d gotten himself captured.
He was just glad that everyone could fit in the helicopter now, and that they were going home.