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Zack's survival depends on some very risky decisions. Bella has never been under this much pressure.

Shifting Consequences--Chapter 25: Risky Rewards By Zmeydros (Lucien Quinn) zmeydros.tumblr.com zmeydros (Twitter) Malfedrosti (Mal Twitter)

The country road Glenn is driving down is a bit bumpy. The lack of other cars is a plus, though. Glenn rubs his chin and glances at Bella who's hypnotized by the boring around her.

She sighs and turns toward Glenn. "Being on the run sucks."

"Yep, it's better than the alternative, though."

"True. I wonder what we'll do if we settle down..." She smiles. "I could make cosplaying props."

Glenn raises an eyebrow. "You're good at that?"

"If I have the right tools, I can make just about anything."

"That is a good business for our situation. You could run it through the internet and stay pretty anonymous."

"Y--" Bella points at Vale, whose motorcycle has pulled up alongside Glenn's window. "What is he doing?"

Vale points at Zack and then shakes his head and moves his hand under his throat.

Bella's eyes widen as she looks back at Zack's extremely pale face. Then she gives Vale a thumbs up and he moves back behind the car. She starts casting a stabilization spell. The magic burns a bit, but this spell is low level.

Glenn sees the orange and yellow strands that are building between Bella's hands as she moves them in a spherical pattern. Then he glances back at Zack. No wonder Vale was signaling them. Zack looks like he's on his deathbed. He stays silent so Bella can concentrate.

"Thep them satta thel trel nen catta sell thep thep thep straan." The magic goes to Zack's lower right ribcage just above his abdomen. "Well, I think your mention of possible internal bleeding was spot on. I'm not sure if I can do much other than stabilize him at this point."

"One of his ribs probably shattered. A hospital is probably out of the question... Do you have any mana potions or anything?" Glenn grimaces at his own suggestion.

She would have laughed at Glenn's comment any other time, but there was nothing remotely amusing about this situation. "No; doing absurd things can help, but only when multiple people witness the absurdity." Bella looks back at Zack. "Hey, are you awake?"

"Huh?" Zack's eyes crack open.

"How do you feel?"

"Tired and throbby."

"Throbby?" She tilts her head.

He shrugs very slowly. "There's this dull throbbing in my abdomen. It hurts a lot more when we hit a bump."

"Why didn't you say anything earlier?"

"No one asked and I felt really tired. I thought it was just a big bruise."

"I wish I could do more than just stabilize you." She reaches out and put her hand on Zack's knee.

"Oh, you don't have..." He grimaces when the car hits a rather large pothole. "A healing spell?"

"I do, but it's starting to burn when I try to draw magic. If I overdo it, I will risk not being able to cast another stabilization spell."

"How bad is my condition?" Zack tries to move to get more comfortable, but the pain just gets worse.

"Judging by how you look, really not good." Bella gives his knee a squeeze.

Zack speaks with long pauses. It seems he's having more trouble keeping his eyes open the more effort he puts into talking. "Remember when you... said something about my wings? That they... were antennas?" Zack groans as he leans forward and little blue scales start forming on his hands.

"Zack! What are you doing?" Bella's heart starts beating at a break-neck speed. Is he trying to kill himself?

"Getting my wings." His face cracks as it pushes out into a draconic muzzle. The blue scales spread up his arm and across his cheeks. He grunts as he moves forward on his seat. The feeling of his tail trying to push through his jeans is pretty uncomfortable. It feels like trying to lean most of your weight on one finger.

"Stop! What will happen if you move something inside and make the wound worse!" Bella feels a tear form in the corner of her eye.

"I'm nearly--aargh!--the same size as this dragon form. Stuff inside... Should stay put." His teeth multiply to fill his now larger jaws. The jeans start tearing as his tail pushes even harder against them. He reaches down and pulls off his shoes when he feels his feet start changing. His socks rip, his wings press against the back of his shirt. His panties give way to the tail as the jeans finally rip enough for it to slide through easily.

Glenn looks at Zack. "Sounds like a clothes shredding contest back there."

Zack smirks despite his condition. His hips widen a bit, ripping the jeans more. His thighs get bigger and the seam gives way. This would be very sexy if he wasn't in so much pain. At least it's easy to stay awake now. His breasts get bigger as his wings make it further out and red scales form on his belly.

Bella just watches in horror, hoping fervently that he lives through the crazy risk he's taking. She blushes a bit when his shirt stretches to its breaking point and then rips down the front, exposing Zack's scaly red chest.

Zack grabs at the collar of the shirt with one of his claws and slices through it. "Bella, can you get the shirt untangled from my wings?" He feels his wings throb as they extend to their full size. His socks shred as his toe claws form and his feet get even bigger.

Bella unbuckles her seatbelt and reaches back to pull the tatters of Zack's shirt off. She can feel the magic coming off of him. She won't have to do much work at all to collect it. When she touches the scales on one of his wings, she feels a surge of energy. Yeah, she won't have any problem.

Scales fill in on his sides and his legs. He feels heat in his abdomen. Maybe he moved around too much? Wow, he's really dizzy. He leans back in his seat after Bella has taken the shirt off of his wings. The dizziness becomes a falling sensation and he starts getting black splotches in his vision. He feels really really hot...

Zack's body goes limp. Bella gasps in fear. "Stop the car!"

"What?"

"Zack's unconscious and I need to stand."

"Roger." Glenn slows down and pulls over to the shoulder of the road.

Bella jumps out and opens Zack's car door. She feels his neck and her heart sinks as she waits for a pulse. Can she bring him back from the dead? If he's this close to dying, wouldn't he just die later after she gets his heart beating? Healing spells are one thing, but resurrection... That's out of her league. She starts to cry. Damn it!

She clenches her other hand into a fist. Giving him CPR could just make his injury worse. He's still so warm to the touch. Does she know any way to bring him back from this state? Maybe a lightning spell? When she concentrates on collecting magic, she gets a rush that has her feeling almost giddy. If she casts a lightning spell now, he will be a toasted corpse. She has very little medical training. What should she do? More tears fall.

Maybe she can't do it. She knows more spells for transformation and cleaning things than healing ones. In transformations, the elasticity of the skin helps to keep it from getting hurt. If there's a split in it, it tends to get bigger. Like the time she turned a paper cut into a gash.

Just as she's about to ask Glenn for help, she remembers a spell she was learning just before she attacked Zack. It was a repair spell that could be adapted to heal someone's body. If Zack's rib wasn't broken, CPR would be safer. She may not be able to heal all his injuries with magic, but maybe she can mend the bone and stitch some tissue back together with it. She wipes her tears and stands beside the car.

She moves her hands in sharp up and down motions as orange and green strands of magic form what looks like a pine forest of larger and smaller vertical lines. "Kah Kha ha HA! Su den DEN Su Suu del DEL SU Den DEL! KA HA! KA HA! KATS HIYA! Kattya kattya MA MA bren fell YA! Yu den sell yu den sell YU DEN FRELT!"

She moves her hands in a circle around the lines in a counter-clockwise direction and the lines swirl around each other into a disc. Then she holds her hands at her side and pushes them forward with her wrists touching each other and her palms flat. "SIYUU DEL SHA!" She strikes the disk with her palms and the lines stretch out into cylindrical semi-circles going into Zack's abdomen.

Zack's body floats for a fraction of a second before falling back onto the seat. His entire abdomen is glowing as the strands of orange and green flit in and out of his scales, going around him counter-clockwise. Vale runs over to look at what's happening. The strands of magic get fewer and fewer as they fix what's wrong.

Vale watches in awe. It looks like some tiny fireflies are flitting in and out of Zack.

The moment the "fireflies" are gone, Bella yells, "Glenn, get out here and give him CPR! I'm really rusty."

Glenn gets out of the car and runs over to Zack. "His heart stopped?"

"Yes, and I'm not sure a lightning spell from me would solve the problem. I lack finesse. I repaired a lot of the damage, I think you can move him." Bella shakes as she watches Glenn pull Zack out of the car onto the somewhat tall grass next to the shoulder of the road. Zack's clothes are just shreds clinging to his draconic body at this point.

"CPR alone is very unlikely to start a heart. His heart probably went into arrest from being starved of oxygen. You will have to figure out how to shock him while I give him some CPR to delay brain damage. There's no guarantee that a shock will work, but it's our best shot." Glenn gives Zack a breath of air and then presses on his chest thirty times. Then he starts the cycle again with another breath.

While Glenn is tending to Zack, Bella tries to grab a small amount of magic energy. She gets another flood, then she tries again and again, but she can't seem to have the right amount. She doesn't even know how much she needs. "I'm drawing too much energy, I'm worried I'll fry him."

"Well, he's going to die if you don't take the risk." Glenn's voice comes out a bit spotty from his presses on Zack's chest.

"But!--" Bella feels like curling up into a ball. It's all her fault. If she had just left Zack alone and let him live a normal human life, he would never have gotten shot by that FBI agent... He wouldn't be dying. She starts to cry.

Vale puts his hand on Bella's shoulder. "You can do it! If you have too much energy, just send some of it over to one of those fence posts."

"I've never been known for my control. It's all my fault. He wouldn't be dead if it wasn't for me." She moves away from Vale's hand.

"He's not dead!" Glenn yells.

Vale says, "Are you really going to let your lack of confidence get in the way of trying?"

"I've hurt him enough." Bella starts to run away.

Vale tackles her. "Stop it! I won't hate you if you fail, but I will hate you if you don't even try."

Failure... Having to ace tests so that her grandfather wouldn't tell her she should try harder. Being belittled by her dad if she got her facts mixed up in an argument. The way she felt when she got a B- on a paper. Everyone expected so much of her because they all thought she was smart. Now someone could die if she screws up. She lies on the ground and tears some grass out of it with her right hand. Fuck! So much pressure.

If she doesn't get up, she'll lose the person she's obsessed about the most. She'll never forgive herself. If she fails--NO! That's her father's side of the family talking. She doesn't need their conditional love. She needs Zack's love and he can't love her if he's dead.

She gets up and looks Vale in the eye. "Thanks."

"Go!" Vale points at Zack. "Glenn, you better get clear."

Glenn gives Zack one more breath and several compressions before before he runs around to the front of the car. Any stray lightning should hit the car instead of him.

Bella walks over, collects energy and her hands fly in jagged patterns as she says, "Drizz rezz brizzet bonnet zzzars zzmeck trizz!" Bella feels her hair stand on end. Lightning leaps from her hands and hits Zack as well as a couple of the dilapidated fence posts.

When Bella puts her hands down, Glenn dashes over to Zack. "There's a car coming. We have to get him inside so they don't see him like this."

Vale grabs Zack's feet and Glenn grabs his shoulders. They put him in the back and close the door. Everyone tries to look normal as the car drives up. When the car starts to slow, Vale shakes his head and waves them off. The middle-aged balding man and wife with over-permed impossibly blonde curly hair wave back as they drive by.

"What's going on?" A familiar voice comes from Glenn's car.

Bella starts to cry tears of joy. She's cried a lot today, but at least she can do it out of happiness now. She looks in on Zack who is pulling off his tattered jeans to reveal his beautiful crotch.

Bella reaches down and he takes her hand. "Is everyone okay?"

"We are now." She says.

Glenn and Vale bump chests before having a very enthusiastic victory kiss.