The rooftop smelled like old concrete and warm beer. The sunset spilled molten orange across the skyline of Victor, washing the mismatched buildings in gold and pink like someone had smeared a luscious lipstick across the town.
Alisha adjusted her talons on the railing, claws clinking softly against the metal. Her salmon-pink crest fluttered as a breeze ran through her feathers. The tips of her wings trembled with quiet energy.
A harpy - A Moluccan (or Salmon-Crested) Cockatoo Harpy, she was one of three in the city. And the only "anthropomorphic-form" Moluccan Cockatoo Harpy - looking more like an anthro cockatoo than a woman-bird hybrid.
She popped the top of a can of cheap mango lager with a sharp black talon, and with a white-feathered wing-arm, tilted it to her beak, and sipped awkwardly. Still hadn’t quite figured out the beer-beak balance. But she was learning.
She was learning quite a lot. Having been fused with her pet Cockatoo by the Fusion Wave, she had painstakingly adapted to her new life. She had been getting the hang of talking with a beak, mastering flight, grooming and cleaning feathers, having to wear only certain types of clothes.
The weirdest thing was having two cloacas instead of a conventional vagina and anus - there were numerous Harpy forms, and quite a few types of Harpy genitals at that.
At the same time, she was attempting to hone her old pet's skills . . .
“Okay, okay, try again!” Connie shouted, lounging bare-assed on an old couch someone had somehow dragged up six flights of stairs. She wouldn't be sitting down for long before she perched back on top of the satellite dish. “Come on, Alisha! Channel your inner chaos chicken!”
“I am trying!” Alisha squawked, flapping her wings in frustration. “I can mimic sounds, I can do the stupid *hEllO! PrEttY bIrD!* bit, and squawk like usual, but I still can’t scream like Yoplait used to! You know, that full-body, bone-shaking cockatoo death wail you kept laughing about!?.”
“Oh God,” muttered Julia from her seat near the satellite dish, draped in a shawl despite the warmth. “Please don’t call it a death wail. I’m trying to digest this bean dip.”
“You used to be a bird,” Alisha said with a squint. “You had to scream.”
“I did, and I’m in therapy for it.”
Julia was a bird - a sparrow, to be exact - who became a harpy through a simple, non-fusion transformation - and now tries to be as human as possible. Since she's a "humanoid-form" harpy (like most designs of Ella from the Percy Jackson series - winged-bird-arms, but relatively human head and torso), this endeavor is even easier for her to undertake.
The reasons as to why she tries to cover up her feathers, wings, and bird feet to appear as "human" as possible, with stockings and sweaters and gloves, aren't fully understood even by her friends - but at least they forced her to stop plucking off all her feathers obsessively.
What is certain is that Julia both admires the human race and is insecure at her own "monstrous" and "bestial" state. Perhaps, however, the root of her obsession could lie with guilt over an action taken when she was still but a bird . . .
Connie was a human who became a harpy through a simple, non-fusion transformation as well. It is thought that the feathers, of a Hyacinth Macaw, woven into her souvenir necklace, influenced her transformation. The complete opposite of Julia, Connie is a free spirit whose transformation freed her even more.
Thanks to her feathers, she has taken the liberty of not bothering to wear any clothes.
Despite the shimmering blue and lightly indigo feathers, being a "hybrid-form" harpy (a nice blend between human and bird - like most harpies from Dungeons & Dragons) means that her curvaceous, and rather voluptuous, form is exposed to a degree far higher than she often realizes.
To top things off, she retains traditional human genitals and a human anus. Being a hermaphrodite, she too has a sizeable phallus . . .
Connie cackled and raised her beer in salute. Her feathers shimmered in the last light, as blue as the approaching night sky. Her wings were half-extended as she rolled onto her side, lazily stroking the curve of her own hip. A glimpse of her endowment flopped out casually.
“Whoa, hey now,” Tammy said from her beanbag by the chimney. She shifted, her legs spread wide to give her enormous package some room to breathe. “I’m not usually the one who makes a scene, but Connie, that’s your fourth unsolicited dick drop tonight.”
Connie grinned. “Oops.”
Connie's on-and-off girlfriend, Tammy, wishes she could fly.
She can't though - her oversized phallus and testicles prevent her.
Tammy, once a guy named Tim, was given the growth spurt he wanted by the Fusion Wave, for both his height and phallic length.
However, sizeable breasts plopped into existence, shredding his shirt as he was changed into a futanari, and over the course of a short day, his genitals exaggerated to the size of an elephant's.
Now a she, Tammy regularly deals with 4-feet-long erections and testicles that grow to the size of soccer balls if she doesn't "drain" herself regularly.
It's a task that, thankfully, Connie is often up to taking on.
Alisha sighed, shifting her twin cloacas for comfort and folding her wings tighter around her sides.
“I just… miss Yoplait, you know?"
"I . . . want to hear him again. It's the least I can do for absorbing him into non-existence . . ."
“You want to unleash the sound of God’s air raid siren?” Julia deadpanned. “Great. Just give me five seconds to call my ear therapist.”
Alisha rolled her eyes before making another attempt. She'd been trying for over 2 weeks, and after making some raspy progress, had resolved to finally achieve her goal at this rooftop beer party.
She took a breath, crest lifting.
She spread her wings.
Flexed her talons.
Closed her eyes.
Opened her beak.
And pictured cute little Yoplait rubbing his beak and forehead on her cheek.
And croaked.
It was raspy, phlegmy, and awkward, but not hoarse - it was better than any voice-break shriek she'd made in the past week.
Everyone froze. Even Connie stopped mid-sip.
Tammy wobbled over, her penis, stored up between her squished tits and held in place by her bra, craning her head and neck to hear as she walked.
Julia tiptoed over with a bright, jubilant light in her eyes as she bit her lip - while Connie jumped up, caught the air, and glided over.
Everyone leaned in close. Connie cupped her ear with her entire wing-arm for better effect, and Julia followed suit.
Alisha’s eyes widened. “Wait, I—I think I got it!"
The first true scream was not that "bone-shaking cockatoo death wail" Connie couldn't stopped laughing about when Yoplait was around.
- - - - -
Moluccan Cockatoos have some of the loudest bird calls, or shrieks, in the world, at an average of 129 decibels - and a loudest-recorded 135 decibels.
For reference, a Sonic Boom is 110 decibels.
Indeed, a bird-sized set of lungs shrieking with this intensity is in itself deafening, but manageable.
But . . . what if a human-sized set of lungs charged the screech?
- - - - -
The shriek ripped out of her throat shattered the sunset silence like a bomb. The air wobbled. The beer cans rattled. The bean dip exploded.
People rushed to balconies from across the streets, and civilians on the streets below shot their heads up, petrified.
Julia hit the ground with a squawk, wings and shawl over her head,
"OH MY F*CKING GOD! MERCIFUL JESUS!”
Her sandals had been kicked off as her legs flailed about and scratched the concrete in auditory agony.
Connie, wild-eyed, ran straight off the roof.
She fell a ways before spreading her wings and shooting into the sky in a blur of feathers and panic, doing barrel rolls like a shotgunned falcon.
“I'M DEAF! HOLY SHIT, I CAN'T HEAR MYSELF THINK!"
Tammy, for some reason, moaned. Hands firmly pressing against her ears and the sides of her head, she turned beet red as she watched her penis swell, spread the breasts that secured it aside, and grow ever so slightly upwards to reach her chin and throat.
Alisha, disoriented, blinked, swayed, and fell backwards as she let out a second scream as a pure reflex from the shock - it was equally, if not even more, deafening.
Tammy’s eyes rolled back as she curled up, flushed and confused. “Why am I into this?!”
Alisha staggered and clung to the railing, chest heaving, feathers puffed out. “Okay. Okay. I did not know it would be that loud.”
Julia’s muffled voice came from beneath a wing, her shawl, and now the picnic towel. “I think I peed.”
Connie zipped back into view, doing circles in the air and laughing uncontrollably. “ALISHA, EVERYONE IS PISSED!”
And indeed, cries of commotion and some pointing fingers came from across the way and on the street below.
“I think I heard colors,” Tammy muttered, some pre-cum and a little splooge coating and dripping down her chin, throat, and neck.
"Uh-HNNnnh! . . . fuck, I need new clothes." Penis still throbbing against her chest and breasts, everything was coated in a thin layer of rooftop grime, sweat, and a generous amount of precum.
Alisha sat down slowly, talons trembling, crest rising and falling. And then—she started to giggle. Soft at first, then louder, until she was cackling like a true cockatoo.
“Yo! I did it!”
The others laughed too. Julia rolled over and groaned before she too began to giggle wholheartedly. Connie crash-landed into the couch, rushing to and then hugging Alisha from behind with her wings. Tammy, distracted by a much Bigger problem in her nether-regions, gave a lazy thumbs-up from her corner, erect and puzzled.
The sky darkened around them, stars blinking into view.
And somewhere, deep in her newly avian lungs, Alisha felt the joy of noise—pure, chaotic, and impossibly loud. A piece of her that was never entirely human, never fully bird, but enough to evoke the memory of an old friend.
'Hopefuly Yoplait could see this - He'd be cackling!' - she thought.
“Next time,” Connie murmured into her ear, “we try it with fireworks.”
Alisha smirked.
“Oh babe. We’re gonna ruin some eardrums.”