Fyn woke in a haze.

His hands and feet weren't where they were they were supposed to be, and his head was much closer to his chest than he remembered it being.

Every muscle every joint, every nerve every bone, none of them fit right.

Everything felt out of whack, as though bits of him had been swapped out like a human Mr Potato Head. Which was, of course, incorrect. The bits hadn't been swapped; they'd simply been remoulded like clay. Even on a nearly cellular level, his body when he woke up was different from that of the day before.

And, as Fyn soon found out while trying to get out of bed - moving in a brand-new body had a steep learning curve.

Not quite as steep as the drop between the bed and the floor, however.

Fyn hit the hardwood with the side of a shoulder he didn't recognise.

There was a dull thud as he limply fell to the ground and flopped a little, jolting like a stunned fish. Nothing was responding in the way that it should have. It was like his body had been in automatic his entire life, and now, he was being asked to drive it in manual.

The feeling was sort of similar to putting on a pair of someone else's shoes. Except amplified by a hundred times. Fyn struggled to even thread a coherent thought together, nevermind get upm

But eventually, with time on his side, he managed to stand - using the side of the bed as a crutch. His head throbbed something fierce, and little black spots swam across his vision. He tried to rub his eyes and ended up massaging his cheek by accident. Neither his arm nor eyes were where they were meant to be. All of them has shifted in one way or another.

Fyn clenched his teeth and focused on getting control of just one bit first. From there, everything would be straightforward. At least then, he would have something to work with.

He began with his big toe. Staring down at it blankly, Fyn willed the stubborn thing to move. It jerked a little, moving with either too little or too much force – but eventually, he got the hang of it. Then, he moved on to his other toes, gradually transitioning up his foot and legs until he could walk normally. Or as normal as can be expected, anyway.

Perhaps his movements were a little stiff, but he was quickly gaining agency over this new body. Finding that - in spite of his reduction statue - he felt stronger than ever before.

After regaining control, Fyn walked around the side of the bed and made to leave the room. He was looking for a mirror, or anything reflective, really. Just as long as he could see what he looked like. He was itching to find out if new Fyn was as disheveled as old Fyn.

'They better have sorted my teeth out,' he thought.

Dentists being hard to reach where he was from, and toothpaste considered a luxury, one can imagine the state of Fyn's mouth.

On his way past the desk, he noticed a yellow Post-it note stuck to the wood. 'I don't remember leaving that there,' he thought.

He reached over and grabbed it rather clumsily, lifting the note so that the sunlight streaming in through the blinds hit it.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"Dear Fyn," he read aloud, his nose twitching a little. Who would address him like that? "The procedure was a success, buddy! But now, I must be off. Can't have a guy like me hanging around his holiness for too long, yunno? People might get suspicious, and we wouldn't want the flock to catch on to our evil deeds, eh?"

Reading that, Fyn no longer felt any mystery as to who the writer was.

"Anyway, I've been told to relay your mission to you. Basically, you are to meet up with the kids in the courtyard at noon today. Make friends, hang out with the little bastards; I don't care. Just make sure you have a reason to be around them and keep the little tykes safe. If anything happens to them... Well... Just make sure it doesn't. That would be best for both of our continued well being."

Fyn wasn't sure how to feel about befriending a bunch of children. He imagined it would be rather annoying if nothing else.

"Oh, and Kline should have some sort of training regimen in mind for you, so you probably don't want to be late to the meeting. Best of luck, ya little shit :)"

The smiley face irked him. Its beady little eyes were boring holes through his head. He could just imagine Karst grinning while writing the note, and it set his heart racing with fury. Never before had someone so irrationally gotten on Fyn's nerves. He was fairly confident that on an atom to atom basis, there was no being more vexing than that man. Alive or dead.

"Meet them at noon," he muttered.

A glance out the window told him that it was bright out, and Fyn could hear the distant sound of a lawnmower trundling along the grass. He hoped he wasn't too late.

There were some clothes laid out at the foot of his bed, so Fyn slipped into them and left the room. They must have been outrageously expensive since they were neither tight nor loose, weighing almost nothing and made from some soft silken material that produced almost no friction as he walked. It was like wearing a second skin.

The top was a dark charcoal grey with no buttons or pockets to speak of. While the trousers were tight fitting and black – they too had no pockets.

It was probably a good thing Fyn had nothing to his name; otherwise, he would have struggled to carry anything around with him.

As he left the room and headed down the hall, it crossed his mind that he had left his apartment, perhaps for the final time. He had no emotional attachment to the cramped concrete cell, nor anything in it, but it still felt a shame to leave the place abandoned.

Unfortunately, he could hardly go there now - looking like a child- and demand his deposit back. He would probably be laughed out of the building and then down the street for good measure.

A servant walked past him on his way down the hall, and Fyn stepped aside to let them pass. There was plenty of room either way, but he just wanted to make their lives a little easier. He knew first-hand how tough a gig in this line of work could be.

But, as the butler disappeared round the corner, Fyn realised that it would have been a good idea to ask him the time. He had no clue if he was late for his child-minding session or not.

The more he thought about it, the less Fyn looked forward to his new job. How was one man... or was it boy now? Supposed to keep a bunch of Sentinels safe? Even he - a person who knew very little about the Aegis - could tell you that the survival rates in the academies were abysmal.

Abysmal didn't even do them justice, actually.

Fyn was not sure about the exact numbers, but he remembered hearing something like one in ten students managed to graduate.

What happened to the rest of them? He couldn't say. Nothing good, he imagined.

At the end of the hall, Fyn found an old wooden grandfather's clock. It ticked rhythmically, the sound resonating through his bones in an oddly hypnotic way.

"One, thirty-five," Fyn read.

"Hm…"

He read it again, just to be sure.

It was still One, thirty-five.

Fyn licked his lips - which were now dry. One, thirty-five was a full hour and a half later than he was supposed to be there.

Why had nobody woken him up??

'I bet that was Karst's job, the prick!' He cursed.

Initially, he considered hurrying down to the meeting place, but what good would that do? Like it or not, Fyn was already far too late for a few extra minutes to matter.

So, rather than heading towards the front entrance of the house, he changed course.

Within his mind, there had been a fierce battle between going to training and getting lunch first. Lunch had won.

After all, training on an empty stomach was no good, and Fyn had never had a kitchen open to him before. It was free, for God's sake!

What was an extra 20 minutes late, anyway?

He had all the time in the world.