The captain was off to his cabin and they now had a course of action to follow. Vadim’s gaze swept the group around him. He spoke up.

“So, how do you all want to go about this now?”

Alejandro crossed his arms and shrugged, as the head of department he could have unilaterally steered them in the direction he wanted but he didn’t feel the need to do that, his fellow deck officers were mature enough to get their job done on their own.

“It’s not really like we’re in too much of a hurry, so I wouldn’t worry. Charting a passage to Zeebrugge should only take an hour, tops. Just need to modify a route passing by the pilot station and adjust the calculations in consequences, no big deal and I’m pretty sure I left an excel sheet on the server to compute that.” He let himself plop down in the helmsman seat. “That can be done by whoever’s on watch, and that will even help ward off the boredom. And setting up a shore party? Just make a list with any of the deck guys that are not busy doing the mooring. There, job done.”

“And what about the tug problem?” Cadet De Vries asked. She (he? Might want to give some thought on which pronoun to use with Micha and De Vries before it blew up in their face) was leaning on the chart table as she said that.

The Chief Officer chuckled at that. “Please, I know my trade. There is a trick in that port with the whirlpool that’s just after the breakwater. I’ll calculate our speed so that we come with the right tide and it will swing us just right so we can lay Amandine’s arse right on the quay. We only ever use tugs because they’re compulsory for a ship her size. As I said, easy as can be if you know what you’re doing. Heck, we don’t even have to go to a particularly difficult berthing, I’m pretty sure if no one is home in port control, we can nab the car terminal that’s right in line with the entrance.”

“You sure the captain won’t mind us using that trick? I remember he’s pretty by the book when it comes to manoeuvring.”

“He’s the one who showed me how to do it, no biggie. He’s just forced to use standard company procedures usually. You should see the vids he keeps of his manoeuvres with the Indian navy.”

The cadet tilted her head in confusion. “Navy?”

“Oh yeah you’re not up to snuff about that.” Alejandro realized. “The captain, he’s a reservist with the Indian Navy, never mentioned the rank tho’.”

“Eh Chief that’s new to me too that.” Vadim added. “I knew he was giving lessons at a cadet school but I didn’t know their navy actually put him on their ships. You knew that Micha?”

“Nope” The bald eagle headed griffon said wide eyed. “But that explains the attitude.”

“That it does. But I think that’s beside the point.” The Ukrainian said. “Not that I want to kill the gossiping in its infancy but I’ve been up for an ungodly long time and I’d rather be asleep right now. That time travel is giving me a nasty case of jetlag to boot. So... if we could clear out the watch thing if you don’t mind?”

“No te preocupes” Alejandro said with a shake of his head “But if we keep the four hour watch plan that only gives you uh...” He glanced at the clock, it was now half past ten. “Less than five hours of sleep.”

“What, you want to skip to a six hour scheme?”

“Nah.” He glanced at the female parrot next to the chart table. “I was thinking our young and fresh cadet was now ready to monitor the anchor.” That surprised her(him? For the love of God that’s starting to be annoying Vadim thought).

“Me? You sure about that?”

“You got your certifications and the sea time to back it up, and you heard the captain. You’re technically a new third officer as soon as we reach port. And I’m only asking you to pick up the slack for Vadim, complete with a favour, to be redeemed later.” A glance towards the Griffon killed any protest about the last clause in its egg. “And we all know what kind of favours he can provide.” Vadim rolled his eyes.

“A true capitalist uh, Chief?”

“Shut it, you were a few months old in ’89 last I checked, don’t you dare go the communist route on me.”

The Slavic griffon reached for his heart with a claw. “You wound me chief, and here I thought we were friends, oh the agony.” He smiled and shook his head “Anyway cadet, or I guess I should start calling you by your name right? So, Geert... “The pronunciation of the name made everybody wince in sympathy for the poor syllables “What is it you’d like from uncle Vadim’s stash? Rare vodka, cigs, Havana’s?”

“You guys aren’t even going to worry that much about a wet behind the ears cadet being left alone on the bridge? Really?” Geert asked with a dubious look.

“Eh when I was in your place my first watch alone was crossing a traffic lane at night and at full load” Micha commented “You really aren’t in any position to complain as far as I’m concerned. And you’re getting a pick in his stash at that.” The Pole pointed a claw towards the now smiling griffon that had retrieved a notepad from his pocket. Geert gave the Chief Officer a pleading look but that only sent the guy into a snickering fit. Eventually, she relented.

“Fine, hook me up with that Polish Vodka I saw you sipping like juice the other day.”

“Fantastic choice! One bottle of Belvedere coming up to your cabin by next watch. Have a good watch folks –urk!” Vadim gargled when Micha stopped his escape by grabbing his collar.

“Forgot to tell us if we should wake you up when they open the cafeteria opens.”

“Fuck no! Just tell Rahul to save me a plate of whatever you and the other griffons found palatable, I need my sleep. I have the keys to the kitchen, so I’ll just grab it in the fridge and reheat it.”

Micha didn’t stop him when he ran off again. It seemed like the appeal of a bed had given him a good control of the four leg drive. Except that the Ukrainian failed to pay attention to his tail when he went for the door and closed it behind him.

“Blyat!” He practically yowled in Russian, reaching for his tail. That, of course, meant that he missed the first step in the stairs and his fellow officers saw him disappear down the stairway. There was a dull thud, followed by a pained groan.

“Should I check on him?” Geert asked, slightly worried.

“Nah, he’s fine. Third time this month. You’d think he’d start paying attention when he’s learning how to walk anew but nooo, mister’s got a meeting with his bed so let’s sprint ahead without even knowing how to.” Micha commented. “He always does that when I come to relieve him at night. It’s a wonder he’s never woken up the captain.” He hesitated. “The Russian swearing is new tho’, usually it’s just ‘shit’,’fuck’ or ‘kurwa’, he must have got that from Artyom.”

“Uh, guess some things never change regardless of how bad the situation gets...” Alejandro commented. He looked at Micha “You’re not leaving?”

“Nah, what for? My watch is almost in an hour anyway. It’s not like I’m tired either since Vadim insisted on doing most of the navigation from Purfleet to here to pay back some favours.”

Alejandro just shrugged. He glanced at Geert.

“Oh and if that helps remember that every cabin has an interphone so if there is any trouble during your anchor watch, and there won’t be any, feel free to call anyone.”

If she wasn’t already red because of the feathers, the Spaniard could have sworn he saw her blush.

“Oh... Guess I forgot about that.”

Uncaring of the fall, Vadim continued his way towards his cabin. The fall had been more of a scare than an actual danger anyway, but his tail was still throbbing. He would have to start paying attention to the bloody thing, or else he could be in for a lot more than a bruised ego if he failed to keep in check. Many things on Amandine could make mincemeat of the unwary, and dying because your tail pulled you in the equivalent of a giant grinder didn’t sound particularly appealing to him.

He was on deck B, the first one immediately below the bridge, which housed the captain’s quarters, the servers, library, chart room and the ship’s office being the most important rooms, the rest of the space being occupied by supply lockers, backup systems and control nodes. The hallway on this deck was just a straight line with the captain’s quarters on one side, and the other rooms on the other. On one end of the hallway was the stairway leading up to the bridge and on the other was a weathertight door leading to the outer deck, next to a closet in which they stored fire fighting equipment.

The ship was of a recent build and it showed. While certainly not luxurious and instead very utilitarian, the shipyard had taken great care in making the appearance of the interior (at least, in the accommodation part of the ship) pleasant to the eyes and easy to maintain. The walls were lined up to waist height with fake pine wood planks, the rest being painted off white with vertical red stripes. The floor was covered by a cheap but admittedly decent looking burgundy carpet, with a striped pattern parallel to that found on the walls. And it was easy to fix and clean to boot.

Vadim walked over to an alcove on the captain’s side of the hallway which hid a hatch leading deeper in the accommodation. He eyed the steep slope of the stairs warily, not really willing to get a repeat of his fall. Still, emboldened by the call of his bed, he just grabbed the guard rail firmly in his claws and let himself slide down, skipping all steps. The impact was jarring, but at least the technique had the merit of having him land on his feet instead of his face, a definitive improvement.

He was now on Deck C, or the Officer’s deck as was its implicit name due to it housing only the officers’ cabins (and some extras for pilots and VIP’s) and lounge apart from some offices.

This one was designed around a U-shaped hallway pointing forward. The offices and lounge, as well as the ship’s vault were all on the inner part of the U, whereas the cabins were on the outer side. There was an access to the main stairway, where Vadim was at the moment, in the bottom centre of the U, leading both up and down. There were also some stairs leading down next to the doors leading outside, on both extremities of the U.

All officers shared similar cabins and Vadim’s was the closest to the portside door. While he walked to his own cabin, Vadim spotted the Second Engineer, Angelo, who had been turned into a minotaur, make his way to his cabin with a large bundle of orange fabric under his arm. Big guy had his work cut out for him modifying his coveralls to fit his enlarged bulk, he had gone the whole way from a small scrawny geek to a 2m10 tall giant with the musculature of a Greek god. For now the Greek guy (fate has some odd sense of humour it seemed) was walking around bare-chested, exposing his hairy muscle-bound frame for the world to see.

The Third Officer didn’t bother engaging in a conversation with the clearly busy engineer and simply walked past him to his cabin.

He embarrassingly shuffled around for a bit trying to extract his keys from his rear pocket. While he could bend his spine easily enough, the two bulges on his back (which he know knew hid a pair of wings he honestly didn’t know how to react about) kept preventing his arms from reaching the pocket behind his kidneys (yes, he had a thing for coveralls with oddly placed pocket, so sue him if you will, his jacket had eight pockets).

With a sigh of relief, he managed to extract the keys from the pocket after a frantic exercise in agility, having had to wedge himself against the wall to get access to it. The key slid in the lock out of muscle memory and he was inside before he had time to think about it.

The cabin, if simply designed, was rather spacious and quite comfortable. He had some light streaming in from two portholes, good ventilation from the A/C and he could set it to whatever temperature he felt like if he wanted. A luxury on many merchant ships. The cabin was divided in three parts: the entrance, in which he had his desk and filing cabinet, as well as a couple shelves on which he stored some books and a CD collection. His laptop, a slow but sturdy machine, rested on the desk, powered off but hooked to the ship’s grid. Opposite the desk was a wardrobe laid in the wall with a few hooks for clothing on it and a rack to store shoes. There was also an interphone attached next to the door with a list of numbers for every connected room on board.

The second part of the cabin was his own personal bathroom, which he cherished very much after having had to share on previous ships. It was covered in white and blue tiling, had some powered racks to dry his clothing and towels, a toilet, sink, and a shower. It was in a small room set in a corner of the cabin.

The last part was the ‘bedroom’, hidden behind a curtain. It was recessed from the rest of the cabin and had a large bed placed below the second porthole of the room, for which Vadim had personally gone out of his way to find a comfortable blanket. There were also a couple drawers under the bed and another wardrobe laid in the wall. His nightstand was solidly attached to the floor and heavily reinforced; it doubled as his safe locker and had the boon of coming with an integrated retro-looking digital clock.

All over the room were signs of Vadim customizing it to give it a feeling of home far away from home. There were a couple posters of cars attached to the wall, with one larger one drawing the eyes: it was the general schematic of a Ford Escort Mk2 he was building back home. There were a couple post-it notes stuck on it, ideas he had had about this feature or that he wanted to add when he completed the kit car. Above his desk, an erotic calendar was proudly displayed. Vadim had sworn to himself to wait the whole way before taking a peek at Miss June. The bookshelves were an assorted mix showing his preferences in music (which was a disturbingly odd mix of classical compilations and hardbass CD’s) and literature: some war novels, a couple actual after-action-reports he had salvaged, the obligatory porn magazine and some vintage instruction manuals for kit car aficionados.

On his desk, next to his laptop, there was a framed photo of a smiling blonde girl with Vadim by her side and a small silk covered box beside it.

Vadim shrugged off his jacket, hung it on the wall peg and made his way into the bathroom after taking off his shoes, intent on finding out what his new mugshot looked like. In passing, he grabbed a lone half full bottle of Eristoff. That would help him with processing the sights.

Inside, he took off his coveralls, which he tossed in the bin and then steeled his nerves for the reveal. He had already seen the results on Micha and the other griffons, now it was time to see it on his own person in all its gruesome details. He absent-mindedly took off both his T-shirt and his boxers (those were good for the thrash anyway, having been ripped apart by him sprouting wings and a tail) as he approached the mirror. With a heave, he braced himself with both claws on the sink and lifted himself up.

Oh Hi there Mr Bird. He thought, immediately popping the plug on his vodka and downing a sizeable part of the bottle. Boy was he a sight for sore eyes.

“Good lord I’m fucking ugly.”

Staring at him was something that was quite a ways away from his formerly handsome facial features. Because, of course, birds could not be handsome. His head was now covered in grey feathers of varying shades. The back of his head and neck were covered in dark grey feathers speckled with black spots while the rest of his face was covered in light grey feathers. He had a smallish crest of feathers pointing backwards on the top of his head, and some tufts of down on the sides of his face akin to sideburns.

Of course, there was also the beak present in the middle of his face. It was a matte yellow, with a black tip which curved downwards. As he had noticed earlier on the bridge, the tooth-like notch on the upper part of his beak, just behind the tip, indicated he had turned into some species of falcon, though he couldn’t point out which (not that he knew many to begin with). Just on the top of his beak, he also spotted two discreet holes, he was now part of the noseless people club (Lord Voldemort being a famous member). Vadim opened his beak. He had a long black tongue inside and... he saw a flash of white and started poking around carefully. Yep, he did have some teeth, some rows of molars in the back of the mouth past the beak, but that was all, no row of teeth in the middle of the mouth, just his sharp beak. Still, that left him hope at having a somewhat omnivorous diet. He made a face in the mirror, noting how the beak seemed able to bend to show very humanlike expressions despite being hard to the touch.

His eyes were enshrined in a circle of yellow skin. They were a bit odd he found, because contrarily to what intuition would have led him to believe, they weren’t really those of a bird of prey. Sure, they were larger than human eyes, but they also had whites which he had never seen on raptor birds, though that explained how he was able to move them around without moving his head. The pupils were rather large, but he was more surprised by the size and colour of his iris. He had brown eyes before, but now they were yellow, with the colour progressively turning to a greener shade towards the outer edge of the circle.

Vadim couldn’t spot ears on the side of his head, but a quick search revealed that they had been turned into ear holes, each hidden behind a layer of down slightly thinner layer of down. Both holes were surrounded by a cartilaginous ridge. He would have to see if it affected his ability to hear (probably more about the sound location than the sensitivity) but that change meant he was now unable to use glasses. No matter, he had a pair of safety stashed... somewhere.

Now that he was naked, Vadim also got a good look at his body with the sight unimpeded by the presence of his coveralls. The entire front half of his body was covered in feathers, those keeping with the pattern of dark grey on his back and light grey on the rest. He pressed a claw against his chest, noting how thick and fluffy the down on his front was. Probably wouldn’t freeze with that anytime soon.

He halted a moment. There was something odd. He pressed the palm of his claw against his chest and moved it around a bit, feeling a heartbeat but not in the usual place.

Talk about a day full of surprises: his heart had been moved in the middle of his chest, safely protected behind his sternum.

The next object of his focus was the pair of wings on his back. Very large wings from what he could tell. In folded position like they were at the moment, they still occupied the entire length of his body. They were the same colour as the rest of his body, with the addition of having black tips. Vadim tried to move them, but only managed to make them twitch a bit. He tried again to no avail, unable to figure out how to work the muscles beneath the feathers, so he pried one open with his claw. Bad idea, very bad idea.

Touching the wing itself wasn’t the problem. Moving it by force, however, sent an unexpected jolt running through the wing’s nerves which sent him to the floor gasping. It felt like an electrocution but at least he was now keenly aware of the way his nerves were connected: the wing was segmented like an arm with a ‘shoulder’, ‘elbow’ and a ‘wrist’. Vadim tried to make a few motions with it but that only made it trash about haphazardly so he grabbed it with both claws and folded it back in place. By some thankfully ingrained reflex, the wing stayed in place.

Next stop on the way to self (re)discovery: take a look at your own hindquarters, Vadim thought, taking a swig of vodka. The rear half of his body, he recognised, was that of a mountain lion. He had buff fur all over, except in the belly area where it was a darker shade of brown similar to the tip of his tail. Like his feathers, the fur was quite thick and would keep him warm (and most likely, too warm). A quick look at the skin in the area where avian and feline halves met revealed no notable change in the skin underneath his coat. The tail wasn’t of much interest to him and he didn’t feel like touching it because it was still throbbing from being smashed by a steel door.

No, what he really had to know at the moment was the situation with his other tail. The third leg. The rod of glory. He flipped on his back and spread his legs to take a look. First note of the inspection: seldom had he seen balls this hairy. He paused to take a large sip from his bottle. The cataclysm (because what else could you call it in such circumstances?), had made his nut layout change from parallel to in-line, in addition to hiding his dick in a furry sheath. Vadim carefully eyed his claws. Did he really feel like poking around his genitals with sharp objects he was not quite familiar with yet? Another swig of vodka. Yes he did, what was he supposed to fap with anyway? His hind legs? Careful prodding revealed that (much to his relief), the rest of his genitals was of a similar brand to the previous model so he already knew the user manual. Still, his claws would need a trim if he wanted to practice his tried and proved techniques. He gazed upwards at his sink. The nail file was there, so that was a task to be done, but later.

Vadim didn’t even look at the content left in the bottle before downing it in one go. With a practiced swing of his arm, it landed in a bin next to his desk outside the bathroom. He turned on the shower and stepped in immediately. With how much pressure the engine room guys insisted on dumping into the heater, the temperature was quick to rise and he was soon enjoying a nice shower after a long (and that was quite the understatement) day of work. Cleaning his new coat took him quite a bit of work and a lot more soap than expected, the fur in particular, but he didn’t need more than fifteen minutes before he was out of the shower and drying himself with an hairdryer (which he usually used on wet clothes when the air was too humid outside) and a brush (‘cause he’d readily bet that not using it would just lead to him looking like half of a poofy furball).

Trimming his claws was a quick affair. Vadim elected to only leave the index sharp and dull the rest so he would always have something sharp on hand (or claw?). To avoid slashing something when he didn’t mean it, he added a layer of isolating tape around the sharp claws, which he retrieved from his desk.

The Ukrainian allowed himself to yawn. Why use sleeping pills when you have vodka, eh. He had done just about everything he wanted before hitting the hay. In short order, he had programmed his alarm clock to ring eight hours later. After that, he was under the covers trying to find the right position. Failing to sleep normally due to the presence of wings, he wound up basically making a nest out of his bed covers and sleeping in it curled up like a cat.