Chapter One - The First Change
Harvilen Blacklight seemed like just your average everyday person; average job, average apartment, and an average car. One day he noticed that his body was changing, and not in that everybody goes through puberty way.
He soon found that he was anything but average. He could change into anyone he wanted, or change any aspect of his body that he was unhappy with. If for instance one day he was no longer happy with his height he could increase it by a couple inches or decrease it depending on his mood. But first he had to learn to control it, and that was not such an easy task to figure out.
Harvilen woke up just like it was any other day. His alarm went off at 7:00 A.M. and he got out of bed with a bit of a bounce, and quickly jumped in the shower. He always got up a bit early so he could take an unnecessarily long shower, something about the heat always relaxed him. He got out of the shower half an hour later feeling refreshed.
He wiped away the steam from his mirror as he gave himself a once over. His body wasn’t what you would call fit but he wasn’t overweight neither. He could easily be described as ordinary, 5′ 10" with his weight being just above the minimum to be healthy for his height. Brown eyes, with brown hair that was down to his shoulders. He has a heavy tan, one that could make it to where someone could easily mistake him for a black person, even though he was white.
He walked back into his room and threw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt (that has a giant metal circle on it, with what looks like water in the circle, and runes along the edge of the circle) along with his black combat boots. He looked around his apartment one last time just to make sure he wasn’t forgetting anything before heading to work. His apartment was simple, 1 bedroom 1 bath, with just enough furnishings to live comfortably.
Not missing anything, he left his apartment, and locked the door on his way out. He took the elevator down to the basement parking garage where his gray Chevrolet Cavalier was waiting for him. It wasn’t the most glamorous or powerful car but it got him to work on time and it wasn’t a gas guzzler, so he didn’t complain about the car.
He drove the fifteen minutes to the nearest grocery store, GIANT Food Stores, where he worked. He managed to get there with five minutes to spare before he had to clock in for his 8-4:30 shift. Harvilen clocked in and went to his register where he would stay for the next four hours before he went to lunch. The time went by relatively quickly with just enough customers coming through to stay busy the whole time.
During his half an hour lunch break he got a cheeseburger and fries from the Wendy's next door and sat outside the store eating while reading a book and enjoying the weather. It was the tail end of summer and still very warm which Harvilen enjoyed immensely, he always preferred the heat over the cold. He was half way through his cheeseburger when the back of his left hand started itching very suddenly. It caught him off guard and he almost dropped his cheeseburger on the ground. The itching wasn’t very aggravating at first, but it kept building and building until it got to the point where he thought he might rip the skin off of his hand trying to scratch it. Then the itching stopped as suddenly as it started and left Harvilen wondering whether he had imagined it.
Harvilen’s hand didn’t end up itching the rest of his lunch break, so he went back to work behind his register. He made it roughly an hour before his hand started itching again, not horribly this time, but just enough to be noticed. Since it wasn’t bad enough to demand his immediate attention he kept scanning and bagging his current customer’s items. He was just getting back into the rythym of it when the customer’s words caught him unawares.
The customer, who looked to be about a nineteen year old guy, said “Hey man, that’s a really cool glove you have on. Where did you get it?” Harvilen thought to himself “Glove? I’m not wearing any gloves.” However as he looked at his left hand, he realized that his skin had taken on the appearance of azure dragon scales. Freaked out on the inside, Harvilen started to panic a little, but kept his appearance the same as it was before the guy had spoken. “Thanks, I got it off Amazon” he replied, and continued to bag the customer’s groceries, while thinking to himself “What the HELL is going on with my hand?” he had another employee cover his register for a minute while he went to the back.
Once he got into the back room, he stared at his hand for a minute, pondering to himself “Go back to normal, go back to normal.” Not having any change on his hand, he started to wonder if he was actually just imagining it. He goes into his boss’ office with his hand behind his back. Crystal, his boss, is a 32 year old lady with short brown hair standing at 5' 2".He says “Hey Crystal you got a second?” She says "Sure what’s going on?”
Harvilen built up his courage and said “You can see the scales on my hand right?” as he brought his left hand around in front of him for his boss to inspect. He looked at his own hand as he brought it around and was amazed to see that his hand was back to the dark tan that it had been just five minutes before. Crystal looked at him like he was crazy as she said “Are you feeling alright there Harv?”
Harvilen didn’t know what to think as he stared at his hand, so he just blurted out “I could have sworn that my hand had these azure scales all over it just a moment ago.” Crystal replied “How about you take the rest of your shift off, alright? We have enough people to cover for you.” Harvilen not knowing what to think said “Yea maybe that’s a good idea.”
As he was driving home he kept thinking to himself “Maybe I did imagine it and I’m just really tired.” He made it home in short order, and didn't even bother to take his shoes or clothes off before he laid down on his bed and went to sleep.
