*Behold, bitches! The glory of the Orctapus!*
"Wow." Garath laughed, clapping dramatically. "New best mutant, man!"
Auto wiggled his tentacles wildly in response, getting a chuckle out of most of the group. Daisy, however, hid behind Athios, who shook her head slowly in disbelief. Garath was impressed as he watched Auto dragged himself along the sand with his tentacles in a repulsive imitation of a crab-walk into the water.
Alice insisted on the whole Raid Group unlocking their Octopus forms as well before setting off to the open water. It made sense to Garath. In the case that the ability to breath underwater became an emergency, it would be good to have the option. After that, the rest of the Party followed Auto into the water and shifted into their own pod of orcas.
Garath became immediately fond of the new form as he felt the strength of his tail and fins. He dove below the water's surface and delighted in the sensation of simply being an orca. Each push of his tail propelled him ahead and each move of his fins, no matter how minute, altered his course as he dove deeper into the cool water. In his mind, Garath heard Peppy Hare’s command to, "do a barrel roll!" and couldn't resist. It was a fairly simple maneuver but, being his first time, he didn't stop the roll at the right time. Then he over-corrected, and started to feel dizzy. Seeing the light from the sky coming from a direction he had related with "down" only a second before was disorienting. It wasn't until he remembered the wise words of Merlin in The Sword and the Stone that he was able to right himself and really find his water legs. Upon seeing the other members of the Party going through the same sense of disorientation, Garath decided to pass Merlin's sage advice to everyone.
*We are living between two planes now,* Garath told them. *Somewhere between the ceiling and the floor.*
The synaptic process of speaking, even when speaking was done telepathically, reminded Garath of another process that he had never had to consciously think about before. He felt a rush of claustrophobic panic as he realized he hadn't yet gone up for air. How the hell was he even going to breathe? He'd never had a blowhole before. He forced himself to calm down and work the problem out.
Not a big deal. Garath propelled himself toward the plane he was now thinking of as the ceiling. I've seen orcas and dolphins and whales do this a thousand times on TV. How hard could it be?'
Now that he was thinking about it, Garath found that he could actually feel his blowhole connecting the back of his neck to his gigantic lungs. He somehow knew that he could open the blowhole voluntarily any time he wanted to. He also knew that now, submerged completely in water, was not a good time to do so. After making his way back to the surface, Garath allowed himself to float there with his neck and back exposed to the open air. Then, in one of the strangest experiences of his life, Garath took his first shot at a completely new concept: voluntary breathing.
He started by exhaling the air still within his lungs, sending a jet of salty air spraying from his back a few feet into the sky. Inhaling was even stranger than exhaling, he noticed. Sucking air through a completely new orifice to fill the massive lungs of his Orca form felt totally unnatural.
Since the apocalypse, Garath had taken the form of a House Cat, a Puma, a Crow, an Osprey, and a handful of other forms, but none of them felt so completely alien as the Orca form. Gliding on wind currents and flapping his wings to gain altitude was somewhat similar to the feeling of swimming as an Orca, but also decidedly different. Garath had always figured orcas were similar to land mammals, but after taking the form of one for only a few minutes, he realized just how different they really were. Another spray of salty air to his right shook Garath from his excessive internal comparisons, and he saw the rest of the Party, apart from Auto, whose Orctapus form could apparently breathe underwater - breaching the surface to take in their first breath as an Orca as well.
It took a few minutes for everyone to really grasp the concepts of swimming and periodic, voluntary breathing in their new bodies. The pod of orcas that was apparently native to The Tower's strange ocean watched patiently nearby as Garath and the rest of the Party splashed and flailed about in order to learn the basics. Once they had, the native orcas excitedly approached and began to weave between and around the clumsy newcomers.
Garath watched as one of the natives dove thirty feet or so beneath the surface, then turned and jetted past him heading toward the ceiling with a full head of steam. It broke the surface and continued on, propelled by a final whoosh of its powerful tail. The jumping orca came back into Garath's new, blue-tinted world with a huge splash. He couldn't be sure, but Garath thought the acrobatic orca was smiling as it swam past. He couldn't blame the beautiful creature if it had; that jump had looked like a great deal of fun. Garath had to try it.
Garath's jump was decidedly less impressive, but it was even more fun than he'd thought it would be. He wasn't the only Party member to give it a try, either. Daisy tried and failed tremendously. The whole Party swam and jumped and played with the native pod of
