Yurnel didn't show the next morning for my testing but she did send over several tests that I could run to determine my new range of motion and capabilities. She was also kind enough to send me several stretches I could attempt that would help me adjust to my new body faster. I still wish she had shown up and told me in person.

"How do we do this Commander?" Angie asked, holding a tablet that was connected to several wireless sensors placed all over my body.

"Why don't we just throw things at him and see what sticks?" Carrie suggested from where she sat watching. How she knew to show up now I still do not know.

"Or we could just follow Cai's lead and have Angie record this stuff with the tablet," I said.

"Nah, that's no fun!" Carrie said, jumping to her feet. "Touka says that if you were to dodge stuff then you could get the same data and learn your body's new proportions. I vote we do that."

Glad to see that she was acting more like a typical teenager than a moody one. I still didn't want anything thrown at me.

"Commander," she said in a sing-song voice, "if you don't let me throw things at you, then I'll alert everyone else that they can instead."

"Why would you do that?" I asked. More than that, what kind of mood was she in that she was using that kind of voice?"

"Cause I'm bored," she said while stretching. "So am I winding up and pitching stuff at you or am I sending a message out?"

"Fine but tell your Cyber to set a timer, no more than five minutes of this," I said, figuring that if I gave in a little and set a firm limit she'd be happy.

"Cool! Angie come over here, we'll never get the chance to throw stuff at the Commander again!"

When had this extended to Angie?

The first thing Carrie pulled out of a bag I hadn't even seen her bring was a bunch of eggs. Just great. I was about to be pelted with eggs by a teenager and her new BFF. I was already regretting agreeing to this.

"Okay, Commander," Carrie said with a smile while bouncing the egg in her hand, "if I manage to hit you, you have to tell me what your name is. If you manage to dodge them all, then you get to pick your reward."

What the hell kind of offer was that? She was going to hit me at least once today, that I already knew, and if by some miracle she didn't, then what the hell kind of reward could I pick? If it was something dumb, then she'd never take me seriously as her commanding officer again; if it was something creepy, then she'd plan my murder in detail; if it was something that reflected my position as her commanding officer, then she'd call me boring.

Wait. Why was I worried about that last part? And I thought she already knew my name. I hadn't hidden it from her. Or had she just never heard it before?

"Okay, sure," I said. "Cai, you and Touka coordinate and give us a three count. Once they start throwing eggs, time for five minutes. Cool?"

"I will do it," Cai said.

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I moved into a ready postion, to wait out his countdown while Carrie and Angie both gripped their eggs and prepared to throw them. Here's hoping I didn't get any in my eyes.

At Cai's call for one, I ducked the first egg that Angie sent my way and felt it graze the top of my head. Close call. The first egg Carrie sent at me wasn't dodged nearly as easily. In fact I was pretty sure that she had aimed for my balls when she threw and the only reason she hit my chest is because I ducked to avoid Angie's egg. Oh well, not like I expected to win her little bet anyway. From there I worked to dodge, duck, and dive around any egg they threw. Cai kept a running tally of eggs dodged to eggs hit beside the timer. Never had I regretted agreeing to anything more than I did for those five minutes. It didn't take long before I was covered in egg and trying not to slip on broken shells and spilled yolk while I tried and failed to avoid anymore eggs. Carrie and Angie were having the time of their lives though, so I guess it wasn't so bad. Just wish they weren't laughing at me. Finally, Cai called time and they stopped throwing the eggs at me. It didn't take them long looking at me standing there covered in yolk to start laughing even harder than they had been a minute ago; seriously it was almost another five minutes before they stopped laughing.

"Well I guess that means we won," Angie said while wiping tears from her eyes. "Go on Commander, what's your name?"

"Yea tell us!" Carrie agreed.

"I could've sworn I'd already told everyone when I woke them up," I said. "If you guys insist though, my name is Rickshaw James."

"No way," Carrie said.

"Way."

"Where did 'Rickshaw' come from?" Angie asked.

"My father wanted to name me Shawn but my mother hated that name, so she insisted on naming me Rick. She and dad spent months arguing about it until my aunt told them to combine it and name me that, so Rickshaw," I told them, wishing for a hose or bucket of water to clean myself with.

"That's weird," Carrie said. Big talk from a family named "Applewood."

"Lived with it my whole life," I said. "Now, did we get any good data Cai?"

"Yes," he answered me. "Cadet Applewood's Touka also provided a unique perspective to study your movements from. I reccommend that the cadet stay for the duration of the test."

"Cool, what's next?" I asked. Let me change my answer for thing I regretted most.

For the next three hours, I performed various stretches and excercises under Cai's supervision while Angie recorded the data into the tablet she was manning. Carrie, for her part, encouraged me with various offers to throw more eggs at me. None of them were helpful.

When we finally broke for the day, I had learned from my stretches and excercises that I was taller. I was also stronger, faster, more flexible, and could take a hit more easily. On average, my speed and strength had both doubled and it was projected by Cai that I could eventually reach levels that were beyond normal human athletes. Olympic level athletes. My flexibility was more difficult to put a number on, all I knew definitively was that I could touch the floor with my elbow without bending my knees. I don't know what that looked like, but Carrie described it as gross, so I was pretty sure it was gross and not something I wanted to see done.

According to the good Dr. Yurnel's projections, Nephilim men were going to be on average stronger than Nephilim women, who would be more flexible. Her notes said that this would be a reflection of our natural abilities as humans. I wasn't sure about that but I couldn't dispute any of it from the current data I had access to. Another thing she projected was that our height would grow as a result of the transformation by at least a foot to a foot and a half. That was something I could already see; I'd always been around six feet tall but now I was pushing over seven and having to look almost straight down to speak to the women trying to help me with my testing.

Before we ended the tests for the day I tasked Carrie and Angie both with finding someone who had studied enough genetics in college to be able to help me wrap my head around the data I had forced from Yurnel. I didn't tell them what I had done or why I had done it. They didn't need to try shouldering the Commander's burdens before they were ready or Commander themselves. While they went to get lunch and start looking for my new genetics savy helper, I went to take a shower.

After that it was off to the techs to grab their data on all the Nephilim technology they had developed. I just hoped this went better than my conversation with Yurnel; I still felt horrible about having to practically threaten her.