"It won't hurt if you stop squirming," the Human doctor said. Eteh was quite young, but old enough to have been brought away from his foster family and into a large high-tech facility near a starport. The building intrigued the Cheetah boy, but the smell of it almost made him vomit. It was all human-infested, it was scrubbed clean of normal scents. There was no privacy here, no friendliness, nothing warm.

Nothing with fur, in other words, unless you count the inmates. Of course, they were called 'patients' there, but that was utterly a lie. Etehmaro was not old enough to distinguish that little subtlety but he would later on remember it.

The doctor was lying too, when he had said that it wouldn't hurt. Remaining still did nothing to alleviate the pain and humiliation of being strapped to a table and prodded with electrical devices. They were barbaric. They were wondering why this Cheetah Kin was born with five fingers - not just four like most.

He knew it wouldn't end here, for some reason Eteh felt confident that this suffering and awful smell would be only a small part of his life. So Eteh tolerated it and yelled when they wanted him to yell, cried when they told him to.

Such an obedient boy. If only he could be explained.

***

"When did you get here?" Asked a wide-mouthed bird Kin. He wasn't a handsome bird, Eteh thought, but he was friendly.

"Just the other day. I don't know where to go now." He sighed, "they didn't tell me where to go."

"Well, just go where you want, we're all prisoners anyway." The bird walked stiffly away. He had two bandages on his legs, and Etehmaro wondered if they'd both been broken. He followed the bird, but balked when the mostly-white stork Kin turned a corner and there was a huge gathering of other avians.

"I guess not here, huh?" He said, and the bird turned. If he could have smiled, which he tried, the stork would also have added a grin to his bemused head shake. Etehmaro turned around and walked back along the wall of the enclosure. They were all prisoners here.

He was seven, and had an alarming feeling that he'd just been dropped into purgatory - on his way to hell. Of course, that was all because of the Humans who'd 'explained' religion to him. The other Kin put no real faith into their worship at the hospital, but Eteh was young and didn't know better. He believed that Humans were gods.

But they were curious about him, why was that? They'd created the Kin, hadn't they? To be part animal, and part human.

If they could only have known why, just why, Eteh was the way he was...

At the first signs of evening, the prison was locked down. Everyone was rounded up by Kin guards - Humans weren't allowed on this world he'd been moved to. He was now able to say something that almost 90 percent of all Humanity and at least 75 percent of Kin could not: he had visited not just one or two planets, but three.

He pondered this, as he was shuffled into the mammal house. Males on one side, females on the other, and roughly organized by genus. There were other Cheetahs there, but they had no room to spare on their cots. The rooms they lived in were barely big enough for the bigger Kin, not even close for some. He noticed that there were no truly huge Kin here - they were kept at another building across the paved courtyard. Lions, bears, elephants, the rare giraffe, those kinds of Kin were just too ungainly to be kept with the rest of the more human-sized folks.

That this had once been a Human prison occurred to Etehmaro once he saw the design. The walls were all of one type, the doorways all roughly human-height. Just like the hospital. Only here, it smelled worse, because not only did it smell of antiseptic, urine, feces and any number of stains - it smelled of death and fear as well. It was a prison whose eldest inmate was barely more than 17, and most were in their preteens at best. A place where those who were Abberant, those Kin who displayed something other than their parents abilities and their Type personality were brought. Often to die. Certainly to be exiled later on. There just had to be enough to send, to make the trip worth the taxpayer's money.

He kept to himself for another couple days, and then decided to approach the other smaller felines. A pair of Servals, one or two much smaller 'domestic' felii, and a lynx glanced at this boy with a bit of surprise. Here he was, merely a scrap of spots put together with a long tail... And he was standing like he owned the place. Not in that bad way that Lions or Wolves would do, they would be all up in your face about it.

Eteh simply stood patiently and watched people, without intruding. He was a pretty cat, one of the others announced, and ruffled his hair. He grinned, laughing. It was the first time someone had called him anything other than 'subject' or 'boy' or 'that five-fingered cat'. He liked it.

Of course, eventually, it would get him into trouble...

***

Etehmaro stood his ground, all of nine years old, in front of a snarling 13 year old Hyena. The boy obviously had some kind of power going because Eteh felt sick to his stomach every time he looked the Hyena's way. Eventually enough had to be enough. The Hyena stomped over, not much taller than Eteh, but broader in the shoulders and with thick, short limbs.

"Why do you keep staring at me like that?" The hyena demanded. "I don't want you looking at me."

"Well I wouldn't want to only ... there's something on your face," he said. The other Kin nearest who usually sided with Eteh had backed off a bit, but at that they gave a quiet snicker among themselves.

"What? There's nothing on my-" the Hyena said, waving his thick hands over his muzzle. When they'd moved, and his beady eyes leveled on a smiling Etehmaro, his grin quickly turned to surprise. The Hyena snarled, and began to pull back for a good punch.

Which Etehmaro ducked - the Kin's hand planted into the brick wall behind Eteh, and was obviously broken. Eteh's friends laughed loudly - the Hyena bellowed and swung out with his other hand. He impacted the young cheetah with full force, but wildly, so the blow only did a glancing pound.

It was enough to knock the lanky Kin into the wall and send him sprawling, though. No guards came running - why should they? These kids would have to survive on that exile world, anyway, so why not teach them a bit before they went?

Etehmaro stood, climbing to his feet and holding up his odd hands balled up into fists. But that was the queer thing: they weren't heavily nailed any more, they were... smooth. A dark tan color, earthy skin. No spots - what happened to the spots?

While Etehmaro was still standing defiantly with his fists at the ready to smack this older uglier Kin around, his friends moved directly into his way and got the Hyena to back off. It was a misunderstanding, you know how these little kids get, they said.

They hustled him away from the scene, and into the faintly more private area inside the building. "Eteh, what is that?" One of them asked.

"What's what? Why did you -" he finally caught up to things. Something was definitely wrong - he could no longer feel his tail! "Where's my - what happened to -" Swirling around in a tight circle, trying to see his own butt, Etehmaro had transformed for the first time - into a Human.

***

"We've kept it quiet as long as we could," said his black-cat companion, sadly, "but everyone saw you that one day... You know, with Wooder."

Etehmaro knew the event he was talking about - another fight of course, but this time Eteh had forced himself to fall to all fours and sprint around the bigger Wolf kin until he could get a better advantage. Probably dozens of inmates, and surely at least a handfull of guards, had seen the transformation itself.

Of course, it all explained why he had those extra fingers and toes...

But it would be bad now - the guards were talking about sending him back to the hospital. Which was something that the now-11 year old couldn't handle. He had taught himself to shapeshift quickly between each of his forms - since the middle one was natural to him it was easy - but he could also break between fully human and fully cat without pausing for breath.

It did seem as though that was the only power - other than a bit of empathic sense and only the barest of telepathy - that he had. Great. So not only did he get exiled because he was five fingered, but he was going to be experimented on even more because he could have however many he wanted?

That sick sense of desperation crept over him, that night. The guards had barked out that in the morning he was going to have to leave again, they'd demanded an early shuttle. He hardly slept at all.

But to his immense surprise, he wasn't shipped off to the hospital again. He was moved into the Exile-ready camp on the other side of that same planet. They'd just undergone some kind of minor revolt, it'd been put down, so there was space for people like him. It was a mixed-gender camp, faintly better than the other - but they had fewer priveleges such as walking around every day.

It took a moment for Eteh to realize also that there were no very-young Kin here, this place was reserved for teens. He hadn't known that they changed it recently, most of those people who were there already had grown up there. So it was with a faint relief that he settled in here. The people had been resigned to their exiles, or their sentances since this place also contained criminals.

But here too, were people that had little respect for the basic rights of their inmates. The Kin guards here were rougher on males than females - but it looked like they also abused that feature regularly, and there were some Kin females that served their sentances out by being sex toys for whoever had the money or time. It was pathetic.

One day, not so long before the next shuttle was to take a batch of Kin off world to Exile them, Etehmaro was taken aside by a guard. With a smirking and somewhat twisted scar-faced grin, the buffalo guard nudged Eteh into a dimly lit room.

"We've placed bets for how long she takes it," he said, "go on, boy, you know what you can do."

With a strange sensation in his stomach, Eteh's eyes adjusted to the light quickly enough to see they had a feline Kin girl, bound at her hands and hardly struggling any more, stripped and tied to a post.

"Do... what?" He whispered.

The buck was stunned. "What do you mean, do what? Go on! We know you can shift - give her a nice human bone!" The few others in the room laughed harshly, while the buffalo shoved Eteh's shoulder and moved him toward the cat.

Just do it, the feline spoke mentally, knowing that the guards could not hear her. Her mind was ragged with fear, and she was sick with pain. Just do it and they'll let you go, and maybe they'll let me sleep...

"But..." Eteh said, and another guard jabbed him with a nightstick. He turned, and snarled, but shifted into his human shape. He was handsome as a man, but he was hardly a man yet. He was only barely 12, and even though Kin mature quicker than Humans, his form was hardly out of its teens for appearance. Darkly skinned, especially in this light, with the same curly buff hair and bright eyes.

He had no idea what to do. Fortunately, the cat Kin did. She drew him close with her feet, to the raucous cheers of the drunken guards. So afraid and so confused, Etehmaro didn't actually perform - he was sickened by this all and merely wanted to put on whatever show that the guards expected of him. He told the girl this, and she gave a mental sigh of relief.

They wanted you to do it as a cheetah, too, barbaric.

Closely, he whispered, "I'm so sorry..." until the guards claimed he'd done his 'duty'. It was clear by her sudden wailings and mental wave of terror that far from leaving the girl alone, that was the first of her night's trials.

Etehmaro threw up in the corner of the hallway nearby, and ran back to the barracks to hide.

Over the course of the next several weeks, Etehmaro changed. Where once had been a volitile and confident Kin, stood a cold, stony-eyed boy. He saw all the flaws now. There was one cheetah girl who didn't seem to catch the kind of painful treatment that this poor felii had, just a little older than himself, and she seemed like she knew what she was doing here. She didn't have to strut around like she owned the place, not like he'd done in the past. She just... was there, to help people. A healer, he wished she knew the cat girl.

He didn't see the felii again, outside. He didn't have to wonder, once the girls in the barrack whispered about her demise. She'd killed herself out of grief, something that was apparently not an easy task - she had a self-regenerative power.

So this was the world, Eteh thought. This was the world that Abberants like himself were thrown into? He hated it more than the hospital. More than his parents, whom he had never even met. If only they had felt a little compassion toward a tiny cub with more fingers than necessary...

***

The Jaguar Kin were decent enough people, mostly because they were never seen all at once. They apparently had some form of tribal alliance with one another, but only to the extent that their personal territories collided in places, and they agreed not to fight there. Since they were night-hunters, and the Cheetah Kin were out during the day, they had little contact most times.

Their first few weeks on Planet Twenty were rough - but it was at that time that the cheetahs became a Tribe, and not just a fivesome of strangers. Etehmaro and Cuhsoyi had been introduced to each other, barely, at the camp where they had come from. She was the oldest, and probably the most sensible, of the batch.

Of course, she was all of fourteen...

It looked to Eteh that the younger pair, Laka and Jahkonu, were as opposite as two Kin could be and still have spots. But they were going to need time to grow up, and Etehmaro knew that Cuh would want to give that to them. They could hardly do it here. The Jaguars took most of the good hiding places, and there were just too darn many trees everywhere. The jungle was not fit for Cheetahs of any bent.

"We need to get out of here," Etehmaro said, and the others nodded. They'd been living on mushrooms, fish when they could catch them, and a bit of small prey now and then. Little Laka was always hungry, and when she was, she broadcast it everywhere. She couldn't control her powers yet, and they were strong. "We need to move. This place is just too.... wet."

They all vocally agreed. The savannah they'd been told was to the west, that would be their best bet. They were interrupted in their discussion by one of the Jaguar Kin. He bellowed from above, "hey - you, boy with the spotted hand! Come on and see something."

Eteh looked up, seeing the shadow form of the Jaguar in the tree. "Why?" He added a moment later, "I'm all spots, why single out my hands."

"Because they're human hands, boy, come along - come along..." It was an older Jaguar, known as a bit of a prankster, not a common trait among their type. But Eteh - and the rest - got up and followed. It was a short hike away, but they were shown a bit of a treat.

"You'll not see them again for another year - or more," the Jaguar said quietly. Down in the jagged vale below, where the flood waters would be coming within another month, was a line of lumbering creatures native to Planet Twenty. The natural wonder of the beasts gave even Etehmaro a bit of a chill.

They were almost shaped like Elephants, but they had six legs, and their heads were at the ends of rather long, thick necks. Whole flocks of birds rested on their violet-grey backs, and Etehmaro estimated that they were probably close to thirty feet tall at the shoulder. Their highest bits, when they raised their smallish heads, would be close to forty. They had long, whiplike tails, which they used obviously to sweep flies away from their skin.

"No one hunts those - nothing can hurt them." Said the Jaguar.

Etehmaro blinked. "Want to bet?"

The whole of the tribe and the Jaguar (along with two or three other Jaguars who had come to see the passing of these beasts) held their breath. "What did you say, boy?"

"I said, want to bet? I think I could get one down. Not the big one, but that one there," he said, pointing at the smaller of the line. There were more than forty in all, one couldn't make that much of a difference, right? And a small one? Probably a young - there would be more young if the size of that one female up in the line was any indication, and it looked like they gave birth to at least two at a time.

Things that normal, smaller herd animals did, to save themselves the trouble of predation.

"You're kidding," Jahkonu said, "you can't take one of those things down. They're just too big."

"Your brain isn't big enough?" Eteh said, glancing at the annoyed young Kin. That seemed to tick him off even more.

"My brain is bigger than yours," he said.

"Well then prove it," Eteh said.

"Wait," Cuhsoyi said, holding her hands up, "wait. You two are not going to try hunting that thing. One step and -squish!- you're a stain!" She bound both of them down to the wet ground with a brief but strong blast of her telekinesis. "You're not going to kill off our tribe now that we have a name."

"Do we?" Asked Eqahkali.

"Yes, we do," she said, looking at Eteh, "the Spotted Hand. We're five - and your hand is five." She held his hand up, and Etehmaro finally realized that she was right. There was no way that they could take down one of those...

But some day...

***

"He's tried it again," said one Lion to the other, as they dragged Etehmaro back into the village. He was snarling and snapping and spitting, all the while stuck in his cheetah-shape. The four footed one. The Lion that had him was clutching him around his whole abdomen, his hands were so big. He could easily have broken Eteh's spine with just one quick flick of his thick wrist. Fortunately, he had no interest in losing the village a slave.

Eteh on the other hand had decided that he didn't want to live, if he couldn't live freely. They couldn't even speak with one another mentally - the Lions were so powerful in their group-powers, that any spare thought the cheetahs had for one another was gobbled up by a nearby Lion or Lioness. Those would usually grin angrily, and the Spotted Hand would be punished.

This time, for sure. Eteh didn't want the others to take the blame or the punishment for his actions - he'd acted alone. If only the Master would allow him to transform back, so he could tell everyone that.

But instead, the big gristled old Lion who ran the caravan and had the strongest nullifying powers of all looked at the four-footed Kin, and gave off a rumbling hum. "And what shall I do with you, now, little spotted thief? Runaway slaves hardly ever get second chances around here..." The Pride made self-important noises to themselves, and scared the other Cheetahs. "Yet, you've got a strong back, and a good grip. You stay. Now, to keep you here..." The Master gazed around at the other four.

His eyes lingered upon Cuhsoyi and Etehmaro couldn't help but bristle and growl a bit.

"Ahh, that must be it," the Master said, quietly and with a nasty grin. "So, you'll be punished," he said while giving the tiniest commands to his attendant subordinates, "by watching her be burned."

This not only stunned the Cheetahs, but the Lionesses there. He couldn't mean that, could he?

"She is a healer, she'll survive. She'll be fine," the Master said. "Unless I have to do it twice... Get the torches. I want them good and hot..."

So shocked, but so angered by this development, Etehmaro found the strength to leap from his four-footed shape directly into his Kin form, eyes wild and mouth screaming, "NO! You can't do that!"

He'd broken the Master's concentration for only a moment, but now could not change his shape again. Many of the nearby Lions also swayed when the Master's powerful mind entered theirs.

You will watch her and you will learn from this, cubling. If you disobey me again, she will be burnt to death. We do not need healers for our Pride to live happily.

"please," Etehmaro hissed, trying to pull away from his guard. "I won't do it again, I swear it. Just don't hurt her. There's no reason to--"

"Do you interrupt me? Even now?" The Master asked, over his shoulder. His gaze, his huge size, and the whole threat of the situation made Etehmaro break down. He sank to his knees and cried. He'd never done so - merely shrunk from his captors or remained stony cold as he could.

The Lions clearly liked this reaction. But that didn't stop the Master from using at least one burning piece on Cuhsoyi.