The checkup
Sixth of the Savage stories. Savage has a checkup, and Ratbat works on a project.
The Checkup
A Savage superhero story
By Strega
"I don't think this is necessary," Savage rumbled.
"You say that every time," the Veterinarian said, and slapped Savage's nose with a tongue depressor. "Now say 'Ahh'."
He did, and the Vet shone a flashlight in to look at his teeth and, presumably, other things that vets look at. Savage tolerated the poking and prodding with ill grace. When was the last time he was sick? Hurt, yes, but even then he recovered on his own most times. It took a lot to hurt him and more to make him stay hurt.
The Veterinarian was one of the few heroes who fit into society worse than Savage did. Weres and other shape-changers could be human when they wanted. DoomKnight or his fellow armored avengers could take off their high-tech gear; the Golden Maid could turn off her glow. Most of them had secret identities. Even heroes like Stature and Callus, permanently in their 'hero' forms, could at least wear a trench coat and hat and almost blend in. Savage could not do that, but at least a tiger, when viewed from a comforting distance, was a handsome animal.
The Veterinarian, miracle vet of the slaughterhouse district, did not have even that much. Once he'd been human, the story went, but now he was...something else. 'Centaur-like' perhaps described him, but his four-legged lower body was a wild mix of species. In places his fur was short and spotted, in others shaggy and striped, and in yet others it hung out like misplaced patches of lion's mane. His three tails were ratlike and tapering, save that they ended in devilish spade tips. One foot - or rather hoof - clicked when he walked, two were softly padded, and the last scaled and long-clawed.
His upper body was humanoid, but as much of a patchwork as his lower. One arm was thicker than the other, heavy and bear-like, and he had one broad paw-like hand and two slender raccoon-like ones on the other side. Those hands together with his several prehensile tails made up for the clumsiness of the first, which he used for heavy lifting. Even his muzzled face was misshapen, one ear catlike, one frilled and scaly, one eye slitted and the other round-pupiled. Porcupine quills stood out from his nape. He was not a creature who could not disappear into a crowd, not even a crowd of heroes. It was no surprise he stayed out of the public eye.
His office was currently in an abandoned warehouse. Along the walls ran makeshift cages, a few with a resident cat or dog. A ferret slept curled up in a cracked bowl full of rags. They were this morning's dropoffs, and by the next sunrise most would be ready for pickup. His powers were strictly animal related; with no, or minimal tools he could sense what ailed them and treat them, even reaching into their bodies to remove blockages or tumors. He couldn't help them all, but he helped a lot of them, and enough grateful street people left food or small amounts of money at his door that he got by. Animal-like heroes came to him too, and in return the cops looked the other way even though he wasn't a registered hero. He was, after all, not likely to cause the sort of problems vigilantes did.
"Very interesting," the Vet said as he ran his raccoon-hands along Savage's flank. The dense maille of organic scale armor just beneath the tiger's pelt wasn't as permeable to his senses as fur or muscle, but he still got a good sense of what was going on. "When did you eat last, and what?"
"Not since yesterday morning," Savage rumbled. "I had this checkup coming, and you have me fast. Meat scraps and bones from the meat packing plant, perhaps a hundred pounds."
"Any big meals in the last few days?" The hoof clicked as the Vet took a few steps back. He looked for a drooping belly or other obvious signs.
"No," Savage said. The 'taur commenced an unusually thorough examination, running his hands over each of Savage's limbs including the tail, then poking at the cat's torso all along each side. Eventually he sat back on his haunches and pulled at a beard that wouldn't look out of place on a billy-goat.
"It's been a year since your last exam, and what, eight months since the clone hero thing. The one with the fake Starlight, right?"
"About that," Savage said with a dismissive ear-flick.
"You weigh," the Vet said, "Just over thirty-five hundred pounds now. That is up almost a quarter of a ton from last year, and it's not fat. You are several inches taller at the shoulder than before, and incrementally bigger all over."
The tiger's head swung around to peer at him. "Really? I don't feel any different." He considered for a moment."You're going to say that I may not be at my full growth."
"Something like that. You gorged yourself during that incident, including eating your own clone. You said you were flabby for months afterward, until you worked off the fat. Well, it appears some of that fat turned into muscle and bone."
The tiger grunted. "I thought the roofs of some familiar buildings felt a bit flimsy recently."
"Well, I wouldn't make too much of it. Maybe you are just filling out, as it were. We don't know everything the Professor programmed into your genes." The Vet was one of very few people who knew Savage's origin, though even he did not know what ultimately happened to the tiger's creator.
Savage was silent, and the Vet shrugged. "I understand your friend the rat is working on his powers," the Vet said as he snapped on a latex glove. The claws on his raccoon hands were trimmed so they would not puncture it.
"He has been talking to other Weres," Savage rumbled, resisting the urge to send the doctor sprawling with his tail. The Vet was big, but at 300 pounds he was less than a tenth of Savage's mass. "He and Technocoon can already change into normal-sized versions of their animal selves, and humanoid ones, but some Weres can change to man-sized animals. A few can even change to larger versions. Why it seems a good idea to be able to turn into, say, a five-hundred-pound rat, I can not imagine."
"I can," said the Vet, and smiled.
*****
At the garage, Technocoon and Couatl were watching Ratbat practice shape-changing. The were-rat went from normal-sized rat, to dog-sized rat, to rat-man, then back again, all in the course of a few seconds. The dog size was new, but it was only an intermediary to what he really wanted.
Couatl's forked tongue flicked as he watched. He had no intermediary forms, just human and pale-scaled feathered serpent, and his powers only operated in snake form. His talents included both psionics and magic, and he'd helped Ratbat understand his powers better.
Ratbat changed from dog-rat to humanoid again, but this time his form was different. A web of fur connected his legs to his body. It was supposed to be bat wings, but he had not yet managed to morph his arms into the proper shape. The trick of extending his fingers to form wing-bones escaped him.
"That's not bad," Technocoon said. He too was in his were-form, but he was perfectly content to remain a raccoon-man. He could assume the form of a normal-sized raccoon, and did for the same reasons as Ratbat took his small rat form - surveillance. Raccoons were almost as common as rats in the river districts of the town. Like Ratbat, he was stronger and faster than human in hybrid form, but his main power was his brain. Changing to were-raccoon shape upped his IQ by something like fifty points, and he was smart even as a man. "You look more like a flying squirrel than a bat, though."
Ratbat slumped, panting. "I'll get it yet. You'll see."
Couatl hissed out his opinion. "It is very rare for a Were to master other species. Chiroptera may be beyond you. Other rodent forms may be available, though."
"I don't want to be a flying squirrel. Or a groundhog, or a...I don't know, another rodent. I want to be a bat. I'm Ratbat, it fits."
Couatl shrugged, a strange and impressive gesture that rippled down his armless snake-shape. "Perhaps you could extend the web of skin out to the sides and flap it somehow. Your strength is supernaturally enhanced, after all."
It did not escape the other two that his eyes lingered on the rat with a certain predatory interest. The dog-rat form was the ideal size to bulge out his midsection, and he was hungry. The possibility of him eating Ratbat had already been raised and dismissed, though, somewhat to the regret of both parties. As he possessed magical powers and Weres are vulnerable to magic, such a meal carried an unacceptable risk of Ratbat being unable to recover. At best his reptilian digestive system would leave the rat out of action for a week or more.
"Let me try the other one," the rat said, and dropped to all fours. Ratman became dog-sized rat. Gradually the rat grew larger still, reaching and exceeding the mass he'd had as a man. His whiskers quivered as he pushed his powers as far as he could. Eventually he squeaked and shook his head.
Technocoon grabbed the tape measure. "Seven foot seven from nose to tailtip, that's an inch longer than last time. And...two hundred sixty pounds."
Ratbat climbed off the scale and collapsed back into ratman form. "God, this is hard work. Capwolf can turn into a giant wolf, almost as big as Savage. What's holding me back?"
"Nothing," Couatl hissed. "A month ago you were barely six feet long in that form. It will take time, but you are making progress. Soon you will fill the tiger's belly well."
There was an awkward silence. Techno, who lacked Ratbat's peculiar fetish, busied himself putting the scale away.
*****
"There are a lot of calories in a 500-pound rat," the Vet said as he finished the most uncomfortable portion of the examination. Uncomfortable for Savage anyway. The tiger's dense musculature and natural armor made him harder to "read" than most creatures, requiring a certain intimacy during the examination.
Savage sighed. "That's probably what he is thinking, all right. There is no explaining the rat." Naturally the Vet knew about Ratbat's trips through his digestive tract; he treated the rat too. They'd probably discussed it before the rat jumped into his mouth that first time.
The Veterinarian poked and prodded his belly, palpating - Savage thought that was the word - in search of some bulge or lump that wasn't supposed to be there. Muscular as he was, the giant tiger was sleek in some places. He finished with the second part Savage disliked, an examination of the big cat's genitals.
"How old are you now, Savage? Eight?"
"Nine, I suppose." The tiger thought a moment. "Yes, nine last month."
"Tigers in the wild only live about that long. Fifteen years at the outside."
"I am not a normal tiger," Savage replied reasonably. "I don't know how long my maker intended me to live."
"And that is why these checkups are necessary," the Veterinarian said. He slapped Savage's flank. "We're done. You're a picture of health, as usual. Oh, and remind Techno his appointment is next week."