Note: Working on Ch 7 ATM and the characters seem to be running the show instead of me. :) --- Again, thanks goes out to Elrod for his most excellent MAU universe and all MAU mistakes/transgressions are totally my fault. I am trying to keep this story as close to the MAU rules as possible, but I am afraid I may end up bending a few. Thanks also go out Beyogi for his almost daily feedback and suggestions. Last but not least, djkauf for his magical editing.

<* Chapter 3 *>

Now that it was his turn, Hector struggled to contain his enthusiasm and fear.  Enthusiasm, because after Greg’s successful change into that alien chick, he wanted to see if it could change him into his favorite superhero, Wolverine. Fear, because what if Greg was lucky and Hector got stuck as Wolverine? Would that be so bad?

While not something he ever had to worry about, Hector knew people who had immigration problems. His family was very close to their Mexican roots and had many friends on both sides to the border who had problems getting into and staying in America, the land of the free and home of the brave. So, yes, it could be bad if he was stuck as Wolverine because who would recognize him if he looked like someone else?  Being Wolverine wouldn’t pay the bills. How would he drive to work or even work without an identity.  His home country would quickly become not so free for him.

Hector still felt amazed at what Greg had done. Admittedly, it was pretty damn stupid of him to step into the machine, but as his Platoon Sergeant once told him when he used a dab of construction C-4 to knock out a dent on his bulldozer’s blade, ‘Corporal Vasquez, if it’s stupid and it works, then it isn’t stupid, but don’t do it again, okay?’

His ‘introduction’ to Greg’s alter ego shocked the shit out of him, but after things calmed down; Hector found himself feeling both fascinated by Greg’s alien female body and confused by how sexually attracted he felt towards him, no her. He found it hard to reconcile the larger than life alien chick with Greg. The two images were just too different.

When he finally realized that Greg was the alien chick, his head got so confused about what to think and feel that he had to get out of the garage to give himself some space.  He was so messed up in the head, that he even considered sneaking back and spying on his friend because he knew what he would be doing in the same situation, but he couldn’t do it. That was the difference with ‘her’. She was his friend and he had never had any women he could consider ‘friends’.  Women were ‘lovers’ first and he never made it to the ‘friends’ part. Friendly, yes, but not the kind of friendship he and Greg shared.

It wouldn’t have been right and it would have felt kinda creepy because he was not ashamed to admit to himself that he thought Greg was pretty damn hot as an Avatar alien chick. Not that he had any intention of ever trying to talk him into being a giant blue alien chick again, but he also would not try to talk him out of it if he did.

He chuckled at the directions his thoughts had been taking him.

Greg glanced askance at Hector. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about how you kept on banging your head on the light. Plus, it was kinda funny when you spotted your tail for the first time. I swear you looked like a dog or a cat chasing their tail.” Hector chuckled as watched Greg’s expression falter.

Greg snorted with derision. “I’d like to see you get turned into some giant blue alien chick and see how well you take it.”

“Oh no, no, no...not going to happen, bud, but...” Hector glanced hopefully over at Greg.

“Don’t even go there! Not happening, no way, no how. Once was enough for me!” Greg pounded his chest to reinforce statement.

Hector spun to face his friend with his hands up with mock surrender. “Okay, if that’s how you really feel about it. Just saying...” He turned back to face the machine, but not before gaining some satisfaction from watching Greg squirm. “Okay, so how does this thing work?”

“Well, you just press on that...” Greg pointed to the red paw print and Hector followed his instructions.  “And think of the hot chick you want to be.”

Before Hector could process what Greg said, an image of Michelle Rodriguez as Trudy wearing her flight uniform from Avatar shimmered into existence.  “Asshole!” Hector glared at his smirking friend.

“Nice, but I thought you would go for Jessica Alba or J-Lo...” Greg helpfully supplied additional crushes for Hector to consider and dutifully, the image shifted with each name, settling with Jennifer Lopez wearing a body hugging, shimmering and barely opaque mini skirt thing that showed off her figure very well.

Hector lifted his hand, freezing the image of Jennifer Lopez in place. “Damnit! Stop that shit!”

“Fine, just messing with ya, but...” Greg smirked suggestively.

“Go...” Hector pointed to the camp chair he used.

Once Greg sat, Hector placed his hand on the paw print and concentrated on his hero, Wolverine.  Adamantium skeleton, retractable and cut through anything claws, healing factor, pain tolerance and boosted strength, but not the berserker, animalistic rage thing. Hector did not like losing control during a fight. Anger was good, but not blind rage. It took a few seconds, but eventually an image of Wolverine materialized, complete with his X-men costume and trademark claws.

“That’s good, but not going to work...” Hector muttered to himself as Greg, now captivated, looked on as the image morphed to look like Hector, but with the claws and instead of a costume, he wore his regular street clothes.

Satisfied with the results, Hector removed his hand from the paw print, freezing his image in place.  “Well, what do you think?” He nervously looked over his shoulder at Greg.

Greg walked over and studied Hector’s image. “Umm, except for the claws, you look like, well, you?”

“Yeah, well, I decided that if it works, but I’m not lucky about changing back; I would want to look like myself since no one would know me if I looked like Wolverine from the comics...” Hector briefly glanced down at the floor with shame because it was the safe thing to do and he was not known for his caution.  He rode an ungodly fast sport bike and had joined the Army. He was a risk taker and adrenalin junky, but for something like this, he was not ready to take the chance.

Greg looked shocked by his admission. “Wow, that’s...actually pretty damn smart, for a ditch digger.”

“Fuck you man!” Hector grinned to take the sting out of his words because he knew Greg was actually impressed with his uncharacteristic display of common sense.

Greg laughed and pointed to the purplish crystal on the door. “You going to do it or are ya just going to stand around all night?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m getting to it...” Hector impatiently waved away Greg as he turned to face the machine again.  Goaded into action, he reached down and touched the crystal.

[Whoosh!]

The door vanished, causing the breath in Hector’s throat to momentarily catch. What if the aliens had lulled them into a false sense of security and they were now waiting to jump out at them?  When that fear was proven false, he spared a quick glance back at Greg and with Greg’s gentle gesture to ‘go ahead’; he let his breath out and stepped into the machine.

“Just touch the other purplish crystal in there...” Greg pointed it out after Hector paused inside the guts of the alien device while he tried to work up his courage to take the final and potentially permanent step.

“I know. I’m just working up to it. I’m not a crazy gringo like you.” Hector muttered just loud enough for Greg to hear as his voice echoed strangely inside the booth.

Unable to delay any longer, Hector reached down and touched the crystal.

[Whoosh!]

The light from the garage was replaced by the yellowish glow as the sole illumination inside the confines of the alien device.  Hector had enough time to get started on regretting his decision when a red light washed over him, causing him to blink from the intensity of the light.

Within the span of a single blink, the red light vanished.

[Whoosh!]

Once again, the light from the garage flooded the interior of the device.  Hector reflexively blinked his eyes once more due to abrupt changes in lighting and felt a sense of relief that he was still alive and also, still in his garage. Unable to restrain his enthusiasm for getting out of the crazy device, he jumped out and into the garage.  His work boots made a solid thunking sound as feet hit the floor.

“Well, did it work?!?” Greg scrambled to stand up from the camp chair.

Hector shrugged his shoulders and he noticed a marked difference in how the muscles in his shoulders and upper body felt.  He felt stronger and more powerful and his shoulders also seemed a bit wider, but he really wanted to see if he actually had claws like Wolverine. He flexed his arm muscles in an attempt to free his claws, but nothing happened.  He thought he felt something in his forearms, but he wasn’t sure. “Umm, I don’t know...”

He concentrated on his right forearm as he tried to work out a way to get his claws to extend. Nothing worked, until he lined up his fist with his forearm and flexed the muscle group in his arm that felt like it was pushing against something deep inside his forearm.

[Snickt!]

His discovery was rewarded with the sound of metal smoothly sliding against metal and locking into place with a searing pain that began with his wrist and ended with a set of three, slightly curved, eight inch long silvery colored metal blades erupting from between the skin of his knuckles.

“Hijo de puta!” Hector dropped to his knees, clutching his wrist.

“Holy shit! Dude...” Greg rushed to his side.

Hector wave off Greg’s aid as he regained his feet. “Holy shit, that stung...” He said as he inspected the blades now extended from his knuckles.  He noticed a few small drops of blood where the blades had cut through his skin, but nothing else. If he hadn’t just felt them rip through his knuckles, he might have been able to convince himself they were just glued to his skin.

He tried to move his wrist, but with the blades extended, his wrist was firmly locked into place.  Hector cautiously swung his right arm around in air to get a feel for how they worked or could be used in a fight. He noticed Greg standing a little too close for comfort. “Stand back a little, I wanna try these out...”

He waited until Greg took a few steps back before he started testing a few punches and swings that might be useful for taking advantage of the claws.  He actually felt somewhat relieved to have his wrist locked because the small bones in the hand and wrist are actually fairly fragile and could shatter from the torque the blades could transfer to his hand from an impact. He wasn’t sure if the adamantium reinforced bones would’ve prevented that from happening, but those, plus the locked wrist couldn’t hurt.

Now he needed something to try them against. He spotted a nice three foot, one inch diameter steel pipe he used as a breaker bar leaning up against the workbench. He pointed to it and looked at Greg. “Could you put that pipe in the vice? I wanna try cutting it with my claws.”

“Umm, sure.” Greg grabbed the pipe and locked it into place in the big steel vice bolted onto the workbench.

Hector tested the pipe with his other hand to make sure it was locked into place, but Greg had done a good job and it didn’t wiggle in the slightest.  His first test was just to see if his claws could scratch the steel because he was not about to try slamming his claws into the pipe full strength as his first test.  As Greg intently watched from the side, Hector lined his claws up on the end of the pipe so only a single claw would touch the pipe. He chose the end because if it worked, he didn’t want to wreck his best breaker bar by cutting it in half. Next, he slowly, but steadily began to press down, his single claw against the steel pipe.  With approximately 20-30 pounds of force, his claw began to part into the pipe as if it was made of butter instead of steel.

The ringing sound of the smoothly sliced, one inch steel donut hitting the floor caused both of their mouths to drop open with shock. “Holy fucking shit dude!”  Greg was the first to put his thoughts into words.

Still speechless, Hector inspected his claw, expecting it to be dulled or scratched where it cut through the steel.  He touched the edge of the blade with finger tip.

“Ouch!” A fine trace of blood welled up as he quickly jerked his finger away from the insanely sharp edge of his claw. The thing was so sharp, it had cut him with only a light touch.  Hector sucked on his finger tip, but when he took it out of his mouth, the cut was simply not there.

Greg noticed how quickly he healed. “Well, you can heal like Wolverine and your claws are definitely sharp like Wolverine’s claws...” He checked the end of the pipe before he reached down to inspect the slice of pipe.  Next, he mated the cut piece of pipe with its parent and it fit with barely a seam to show it had been cut. “Nice,  I bet they have a monomolecular edge!”

Hector simply nodded with agreement because he didn’t understand what monomolecular could mean, but if it meant sharp, then he definitely agreed with that. He debated trying to get his left claws to deploy.  Once again, caution got the better of him and he decided to try and retract his claws first because it would suck to be stuck with them out all the time.

[Snickt!]

Hector winced. “Son of a...” Even retracting the claws hurt as they cut their way back inside his forearm.

“I’m surprised they hurt so much. Maybe that is why Wolverine is so pissed all the time?” Greg chuckled in an attempt to make Hector feel better.

Hector nodded because he wondered what it would feel like if he hadn’t specifically considered the pain Wolverine must feel to have these claws rip through his skin each time., “Yeah, I bet, but lemme try both of them now that I know what to expect. Maybe it won’t be that bad...”

[Snickt!][Snickt!]

“Holy fucking shit!” Hector clenched his jaw as the twin pain of six metal blades lanced through his wrists and knuckles at the same time.  No, it did not feel any better the second time around, but at least this time it wasn’t a surprise pain and it quickly disappeared to become a dull memory.

[Snickt!][Snickt!]

Hector retracted them both again and it also hurt, but not nearly as badly as extending them did.  He inspected the knuckles on both hands and not a trace existed of where the blades had erupted from his skin.  “This healing thing is pretty damn cool, but the claws...well those I think I could do without, or least, not used them that much because  ¡ay!, they hurt.”

“Yeah, I bet...” Greg sympathetically nodded his head with agreement.

Hector turned and pointed back at the machine. “Okay, your turn again.”

~o~O~o~

Greg was still stunned from Hector’s claws and healing demonstration. He wasn’t sure he was ready to go back into the machine and he hadn’t had time to consider all the heroes he could try changing into.  Hell, if the machine could give Hector claws and healing like Wolverine, then what else could it do? Well, besides turn him into a giant blue alien chick.

“Umm, I don’t know...” He anxiously glanced over at the machine.

“Come on, it’s easy.” Hector chuckled.

“Yeah, I know, but why don’t you try changing back first?”

Hector grew still as the mulled over the idea.  He slowly shook his head from side to side. “Ya know what? I think I will stay this way for now. I kinda like it.”

Greg felt surprised, but at the same time, he could see why Hector might wish to keep Wolverine’s powers because Hector was still Hector.  Yeah, he looked maybe a touch stronger and larger in the shoulders, but Greg sort of expected a change due to the muscles needed to use those claws like Wolverine did in the comics.

“You don’t know who you want to be, do you?” Hector asked, refocusing Greg on the machine and how it could change him.

“No, not exactly...” Greg began to consider his options. If Hector could have his favorite heroes powers, maybe the machine could give Greg him his favorite hero’s powers, Spiderman.  Feeling more confident and deciding to follow Hector’s example he placed his hand on the machine’s paw print mind reading sensor.

An image of Spiderman wearing his traditional red and blue spider costume quickly materialized above the display panel. Greg concentrated on remembering everything he could about his favorite superhero’s powers.  Precog or “Spider Sense” to avoid danger, super fast reflexes to go along with the precog, like a spider, able to lift as much as 170 times its own body weight, but not be the size of the hulk. Spiderman’s image shimmered a little at that request before it settled back down.  Greg held his breath as he studied the image, but he didn’t notice any differences.

Relieved, he continued with his requirements. Okay, wall crawling or able to cling to any surface like a gecko, but while wearing thin gloves and shoes, and last but not least, the gadgets. Web shooters with liquid webbing that was super strong, but would dissolve after a few hours and the famous Spider tracker bugs that were keyed to his Spider-sense power.

Finished, he took a page from Hector’s play book and imagined himself as Spiderman instead of his vision of what Peter Parker looked like in the comic book.  Satisfied, he removed his hand and the image froze.  While his Spiderman looked like him, he elected to keep the costume because he could always take it off and use it for Halloween or something.

Greg looked to Hector to see what he thought.  Hector gave him the thumbs up and nodded. “Nice, but you should’ve tried Spider Woman instead. She was hawt!”

Greg laughed at his friend’s determination to see him as a chick again. “You could always turn yourself into her ya know?”

Hector leaned back against the workbench and crossed his arms. “Nah, I know how you are around women. I wouldn’t wanna have to deal with you getting all romantic over me.”

“You wish...” Greg snorted as he reached for the purplish crystal that activated the machine’s entrance. Without hesitating, he stepped in and touched the inner crystal.

[Whoosh!]

The door disappeared, the red light flashed.

[Whoosh!]

The door appeared and there stood Hector, still casually leaning against the workbench.  As Greg stepped out he noticed his legs felt funny.  The way his leg muscles worked didn’t feel right. He stopped after taking only two steps and looked down at his legs with concern. Except for the skin tight Spiderman costume, his legs looked like they always did, but when he tried to flex his thigh muscle; he felt a strange pressure build while his skin remained immobile. He reached down to touch his leg. With that motion, he grew further alarmed as he noticed his arms and even his torso felt the same way. It felt strange but it was as if his muscles were pushing against his skin instead of smoothly moving underneath.

When he touched his thigh, he noticed his leg felt solid and hard, not muscle hard, but armor or shell hard.  He tapped his leg and heard a dull thunk sound. “That’s not good...”

Hector stepped away from the workbench. “Is something wrong?”

Greg lifted his Spiderman shirt and found that he now sported a perfect set of well defined abs. Too well defined because each ab looked like a smoothly interlocking plate of flesh toned armor. He tapped his stomach and it also made a dull thunking sound. With growing alarm, he glanced over at Hector. “I’m not sure, but I think I might have an exoskeleton now...”

“What!?!?” Hector walked over and inspected Greg’s exposed stomach.

Greg quickly removed the web shooter bracers and after a few seconds of trying to figure out how to remove his gloves, he discovered those were actually half gloves that somehow adhered to the top of his hands.  They simply peeled instead of pulled off.  His gloves were designed to cover the top of his hands, but leave the bottom open. Without the gloves, the exoskeleton with its segmented joints was very noticeable on Greg’s hands and fingers, but instead of fingerprints, he noticed the palms and fingers of his hands looked like they were coated with  fine sandpaper.

While he was distracted with his hands, Hector tried to reach over and tap Greg’s chest.  Without looking, Greg quickly dodged to the side, causing Hector to miss him completely. “Dude, hold still, I wanna see what it feels like.”

Surprised by his roommate’s request, Greg glanced over. “What? Oh, wow. I didn’t even realize I had moved.”

As Hector reached over a second time, even though Greg knew Hector only wanted to touch him, he had to force himself to not move away from the expected tap. On a positive note, it appeared he had a spider sense power.  Hector’s knuckle made a solid thunking sound on his chest that Greg could barely feel. He felt the noise more than the impact. “Wow dude, that’s freaky.  Why did it give you an exoskeleton?” Hector asked.

“Umm, I am...not sure.” Greg studied his upper body and hands for a few more seconds. “Well, it could be due to the reason why a spider is so proportionally strong.”

Hector took a step back to study Greg’s strangely human spider upper body. “Oh?”

“Yeah, well, from what I remember reading a few months ago...it’s hydraulic pressure that allows some spiders to jump far higher than they should and lift objects many times their own body weight.”

“Okay, that’s pretty close to pushing you over to the nerd side of the force. Why would you read something like that?”

Greg chuckled and self-consciously ran his hand through his hair. “Well, I don’t remember where I found it, but it was an article about how what a human would need to be strong, like Spiderman. The article mention that due to their exoskeleton, spider muscles have more attachment points compared to a human muscle and it talked about how jumping spiders used hydraulics to extend their legs to jump up to 50 times their own body length.”

Hector laughed and reached out to place a hand on Greg’s shoulder.  He missed as Greg automatically shifted to avoid the touch. “Dude, this...” He again tried to unsuccessfully touch Greg before he gave up and simply crossed his arms over his chest.  “..and that...” He glanced at Greg’s bare, exoskeleton chest. “Is kind of weird, but cool at the same time. Can you climb walls though?”

Greg glanced at his hands again and nodded. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can...” He walked over to the large garage door, placed a hand, followed by  his foot and proceeded to smoothly climb the door until he reached the exposed rafters of the garage’s ceiling.  Those he climbed, upside down, using the sides of the beams instead of holding onto the tops with his fingers like a normal climber would.  His toes and the ball of his foot clung easily to the one inch wide bottom part of the rafter.

Greg chuckled. “Okay, this is pretty damn cool.” He leaned back on his heels until both of his feet were fully attached to the bottom of the rafter. Once satisfied, he let go with his hands and hung upside, appearing to defy gravity.  “Ta da!” He smugly crossed his arms over his chest with his head two to three feet off the floor.

Hector nodded approvingly. “Okay, yeah, that is pretty impressive. You could get a job cleaning high rise windows pretty easy!”

Greg laughed at his room-mate’s cynicism. He contracted his legs, pulling himself up before letting go and easily flipping to land on the floor feet first. “Ha, you’re just jealous.”

Hector shook his head. “Nah, but it is pretty cool, especially the freaky exoskeleton deal. Makes you look kind of badass.”

Greg nodded with agreement as he lifted and inspected the bottom of his foot. “Well, I guess my feet are like my hands because my boots...” He let go of his foot and stepped down on the floor. “..are not really boots.” He bent down and peeled his Spiderman boots off the top of his foot, exposing more flesh toned exoskeleton.

“Okay, that is officially freaky. Is there anything you can do to make yourself more, well, normal?” Hector asked.

Greg walked over and placed his hand back on the red paw print. “I’m not sure...gecko’s and spiders use tiny hair like things to stick to walls. I tried to get it to work through my gloves like it does for Spiderman, but apparently, that’s not possible.”

Greg concentrated and his holographic image appeared again.  “Maybe if I made myself as strong as possible for a human to be while still being human and looking like myself...” His naked torso image morphed to display a smoothly muscled torso with a cut and well defined, everything.

Hector nodded as he thoughtfully studied Greg’s image. “Your body kind of looks like Bruce Lee there because man, that dude was ripped.”

“Okay, and for my climbing power...how about gloves and boots to mimic that power instead of physically altering my hands and feet?”  Greg’s hologram changed to show Spiderman themed gloves and boots. He also considered what might happen if a glove or boot fell off and decided they should bond to his hands and feet until he wanted to take them off. Satisfied with those alterations, Greg gave his body the full Spiderman costume and removed his hand, causing the image to freeze in place.

Without any reservation, he stepped into the machine and after a few seconds, stepped back out, looking every inch, like Spiderman.  “Well, how do I look?”  Greg glanced over at Hector.

Hector chuckled. “Perfect, except for the fact you’re Spiderman instead of someone cool like Wolverine.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah...laugh it up, fuzzball.” Greg deadpanned before he easily and with the grace of an Olympic gymnast, grabbed onto the exposed rafters above him.  He duplicated the feat of hanging from only the bottom of his feet, before he effortlessly flipped back around to land on his feet on the garage floor.

“Well, they work and I feel pretty damn good too because having an exoskeleton was weird.” Greg removed his mask as Hector nodded his head with agreement. “Hey, why do I keep getting all the weird changes?”

Hector chuckled and shrugged his shoulders. “Dunno dude. Maybe you just have too good  an imagination or something?”   He looked at his watch and yawned. “Well mi amigo, it’s late and I have a full day tomorrow. I’m going to hit the sack.  You?”

“What? You’re not going to play with this some more?” Greg asked, incredulously as he crossed his arms against his chest.  He liked how his muscles felt now.

“Nah.” Hector waved dismissively at the machine before he turned his back on it and retreated to the entrance into the house. “It will still be here tomorrow. I can play with it some more after work, if I want to.”

Greg couldn’t believe Hector could treat this opportunity so cavalierly. Did he really like Wolverine so much that he didn’t want to try being someone else or having any other superhero’s powers? Without Hector there to back him up, Greg felt reluctant to play with the machine, but there were so many cool things he wanted to try.  What about Cyclops with his eye beams or Shadowcat with her phasing power. Well, except for the girl part, but maybe he could have that power without needing to be her.

Superman? Nah, Greg didn’t really like him as much and based on his exoskeleton discovery, he doubted the machine could make him Superman anyway.  What about Thor and his hammer?  If the machine could make it use some sort of anti-gravity gadget with a mini-fusion reactor to generate lightning bolts, the hammer seemed possible.

Greg’s curiosity overcame his reluctance to solo the machine. He quickly built his perfect Thor character and he even made his Thor look nothing like himself. He wanted to really look like Thor of legend.  Satisfied with the results, he removed his hand from the paw print, causing the image to freeze.

He paused before touching the purplish crystal that would cause the door to open. Glancing back over his shoulder at the now closed doorway, he was alone and Hector probably wasn’t going to come back.  Knowing Hector, the dude was probably already asleep.  He had the annoying ability of being able to fall asleep in almost any position and at the drop of a hat. A skill he learned in the Army.

Greg remembered how it felt to be Neytiri, but he didn’t want to be a giant alien woman because that would be too weird. He looked back at his Thor image. “I wonder...”