Jessica couldn't help but be offended.

"A collar?" she asked as she stood in her room, staring at the thing on her bed. [i]"A collar?"[/i] Part of her understood that surely Mr. Merlovich didn't intend any sort of offense by presenting this, but that didn't help much. She figured a collar meant a lot of things:

[list][*]1. It implied ownership.
[*]2. It suggested the wearer was less than human.
[*]3. [i]Cats wear collars. Cats are awful.[/i][/list]
Jessica certainly wasn't a cat, and she didn't think she was awful. She also didn't consider herself [i]less[/i] than human, but rather a sentient biological entity with intelligence equivalent to that of above-standard humans and also a lot more [i]kickassness.[/i] Really, how many humans could claim to have such awesome teeth? And finally, she definitely [i]did not[/i] consider herself owned by Mr. Merlovich or anyone else for that matter. No. Jessica was Jessica, and Jessica was a free genetically-enhanced clone with raptor DNA.

The tall woman rubbed her forehead for not the last time as she tried to decide what to do about this. Raptora's instincts told her to go straight to the source and start a conversation with Mr. Merlovich (or eat him; but she ignored that part of her instincts). He seemed reasonable, and he had what seemed like infinite wealth, so the chances were good that he'd make the change for her. In fact -

And [i]that[/i] was when the sirens started to shriek. Jessica was glad for once not to be in her raptor form. She knew that would have [i]hurt[/i] in her raptor form.

Jessica started bolting for the door, then quickly stopped, grabbed the collar, and slapped it on about her neck. She immediately felt a pang of regret for doing so, reminded distinctly of the mind-controlling collar Capitão Caos had used to turn her into a mindless battle slave. It also reminded her of the electric death switches built into this collars. She sincerely hoped this new collar had neither of those abilities.

She had already transformed into her raptor form and started dashing down the hall when she first spotted a very confused looking Steve. It took her a couple microseconds to remember who he was: Steve, the stitched fellow whose reduced reaction times and child-like responses seemed to suggest he possessed some sort of mental disability. Another couple microseconds later and Jessica observed just why he was confused: he was messing with his own Slight Heroics logo communicator, trying to figure out how it worked. He wasn't succeeding.

Always the helpful woman, Raptora jumped in front of him and started to explain, "Don't worry about that just yet. Just follow me to-" And that was when she started to see that same shock and fear spread across his face as earlier.

The information clicked. [i]He's afraid of me,[/i] Jessica understood. Somehow, that hit her harder than any punch.

The raptor's form shivered and shook, and her body twisted and bent like before. She popped back a moment later in her human form, holding her hand out and smiling encouragingly.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm Jessica. Come on. I know where to go; I memorized the map."

With that, Jessica started leading Steve off to the hangar, pushing unhappy thoughts out of her head. She focused on the superheroism she was about to take part in, and it was [i]going to be awesome.[/i]