[center][img]http://i1090.photobucket.com/albums/i374/bensundeitestutho/raptor-man2_zpsbzrk09ho.png[/img][/center][center][b]Samantha "Sammy" Kadowsky[/b][/center]
Sammy stretched out her feline body on her apartment couch, resting her head upon a pillow that propped her head up so that she could see her television set.  In her current condition, there was little Sammy could really do without the help of her best friend Kelly (since no one else besides Zac knew about her current condition).  They had left all the doors open so that Sammy could move around the apartment freely, although there wasn’t much for her to do in the other rooms.

“Come on, Kelly.”  Sammy thought to herself, since otherwise they would have come out as purrs and meows.  “Please come back safely.  I don’t want you to do anything stupid.”

Sammy thought back to the sticky note that Kelly had left behind.  Something had to be wrong with her best friend because Kelly did not see the same message that Sammy did.  When she looked at it, Sammy saw something about Zac having a surprise for her or something like that.  But when Kelly read it, it said something way different.  How could that even be possible?

Then Sammy heard the click of the front door unlocking.  “Finally she, or they, are back.  Hopefully this means that Kelly did not do anything stupid while she was out.”  Sammy thought, as she sat herself upright.

However, when the door opened, nether Kelly nor Zac were standing there.  Instead, two men entered through the doorway.  One man looked older than the other, sporting a full beard and wielding a staff that had a snake wrapped around it.  The other man wore a wide-brimmed hat upon his head and also carried a staff in his hand, although this one was winged without any snakes.  Both of the men were dressed up as if they had popped out of some ancient Greek movie.

As soon as she saw these two strange men, Sammy darted off the couch and headed toward her bedroom.  However, she had not anticipated the younger man’s speed, as by the time Sammy had landed on the floor and started running to her bedroom, the second man had already closed the distance between the two of them and had picked her up in his hands.

“Don’t fear, mortal.  We have not come here to harm you!”  The man who held Sammy told her, “In fact, we’re here to help you!”

“Hermes!”  The other man said, “Don’t be messing around!  We have a job to do!”

The man so called ‘Hermes’ rolled his eyes and carried Sammy back over to the living room couch.  “What are you talking about ‘messing around’, Asclepius?  When do I ever mess around?”

Asclepius shook his head, knowing the crafty nature of his partner.  He then took a blanket that he had brought with him and wrapped it around Sammy, leaving only her head visible.  Then, the son of Apollo placed his hands upon Sammy’s face.  At that moment, Sammy began to freak out, since this was the same position she was in when her body (besides her head) was transformed into that of a cat.

“Do not struggle, young one.”  Asclepius said while he tried to calm the squirming girl, “Remember that we are here to help, not harm.”

After hearing this, Sammy eased up a little bit.  What did she have to lose anyways?  There wasn’t much that he could do to make her situation any worse.  All she hope was that he was telling the truth.

For several seconds, a blinding white light hindered Sammy’s eyesight.  While she could barely see the silhouette of Asclepius, everything else was shrouded in the bright, white light.  Once the white light dissipated, everything seemed to have shrunk around Sammy, or somehow she had grown larger.

“Be glad, mortal, that you have been restored to a humanoid form.”  Asclepius told Sammy.

Joy overtook Sammy, since she now knew that she was not going to be reliant on her friends anymore for her basic needs.  Heck, now she could go outside without a fear of being kidnapped by some secret government organization because she looked like some weird experiment performed by a mad scientist!  What’s even better is that she no longer needed to use some electronic means to communicate anymore: she could now speak normally again!  However, while taking in everything that just happened, Sammy realized that something was off.

“Wait.”  Sammy remarked, “You said ‘humanoid’, right?  Why would you make a distinction between ‘humanoid’ and ‘human’?”

Sammy could already tell that something was off, or rather something felt the same, especially in respect to her hearing.  From beneath the blanket that kept her decent Sammy stretched out one of her arms, patting down the top of her head.  Her fingers discovered that feline ears crowned the top of her head, although it had been like that since this whole “cat” ordeal began.  She didn’t even need to reach behind herself to know that she had a cat tail, since she could already feel it brushing up against the blanket that covered her.

“You seem awfully calm for your current situation.”  Asclepius asked Kelly’s best friend.

“Well,” Sammy replied, “When your best friend has been turned into a wasp-girl and you yourself has been rendered into something from Tim Burton’s imagination, being a girl with some vestigial cat anatomy isn’t the freakiest thing I have seen so far.”

For a few seconds, she sat there in silence, taking in what has happened to her and Kelly these past few days, enduring her circumstances better than most others would have in her position, as the son of Apollo had already said.  Well, it was silent until Hermes broke it.

“At least you were changed into a female cat.  Things right now would be weirder if that was not the case.”

Both Asclepius and Sammy gave Hermes blank stares, both of whom were a little disturbed by the messenger god’s comment.

“Hermes, no one wants to talk about your transvestite child whom you had with Aphrodite.”  Asclepius chided the son of Zeus, even though Hermes was the older Athanatoi there, in spite of it seeming the other way around by Hermes’ behavior.

“So,” Sammy asked while trying to change the subject away from Hermaphroditus and Hermes’ other strange comment, “Why are you helping me again?”

“Well, mortal.”  Asclepius began, switching the conversation to answer Sammy, “We are here as agents of Zeus, the father of gods and men and the ruler of the Olympians.  He has a particular interest in your friends, especially the mortal whose name is Zac Wilson.  Unfortunately, your two friends are in trouble and Zeus has sent us to restore you to a form in which you could make yourself useful.”

“Zac and Kelly are in trouble?”  Sammy asked as she jumped to her feet (still wrapped in the blanket), feeling more concern for her friends rather than questioning why these ‘gods’ could not solve the problem by themselves.  “We need to do something.”

“Be at ease, mortal.”  Asclepius said, patting the spot where Sammy had just been sitting, gesturing for her to sit back down, “You will go and save your friends.  We must, however, first wait for my aunt, Athena, to arrive so that she can make you a costume.”

“You might want to chew on this while we wait.”  Hermes told Sammy as he handed her an herb that had a flower as white as milk, but roots as black as coal.  Sammy hesitated at Hermes’ offer, wondering what the heck that herb would do to her if she ate it.  Considering what Hermes had just said prior to Sammy’s change in topic, Sammy knew it could not be good.

“Don’t worry.”  Asclepius consoled her, “That is just Moly, the same herb that Hermes offered Odysseus when he was intending to free his men from the sorceress Circe.  It will protect you from the magic that your friend’s assailant is accustomed to using.”

Once the herb got Asclepius’ stamp of approval (as he seemed to be the more trustworthy of the two), Sammy began nibbling on the herb that they called ‘Moly’.  Meanwhile, Hermes somehow got his hands onto Sammy computer and started to search through the internet for ideas for Sammy’s costume.

“Hey,” Hermes said, “Why don’t we use this ‘Tigra’ character as inspiration for your costume?”

Hermes’ suggestion was immediately rejected by both Sammy and Asclepius, knowing how ridiculous that idea was.  In fact, Asclepius tried to snatch the laptop away from Hermes, but the trickster god was able to elude the son of Apollo.

“Wait!  I think I got one!”  Hermes pleaded, “This design is covered up pretty well.  Well, mostly anyways.  She kind of looks like what you would get if you would cross a Minoan priestess with a cat-themed super-heroine.”  Hermes turned back to the other two, giving them a toothy grin.  However, Asclepius had placed his hand over his eyes, shaking his head in disappointment.

“Who the hell decided to put this pervert on the costume design committee?”  Sammy said aloud.