My name is Justin. I am a normal kid that goes to school just like everyone else who is my age. Today is February 5, 2016. My friends and I are going to camp out in the jungle near our houses tonight. We want to discover new creatures and become famous for the discoveries. I just hope I can make it through school without being anxious for the trip.

    I made it through school and my friends are coming to my house with their camping gear. My mom told me that when my friends get to our house, I should probably grab my shotgun in case we see carnivores in the jungle. About 15 minutes later, Eli, Michael, and Gordon arrived at my house with their gear. I ran outside and packed my stuff into the trunk of Michael’s car. We were off in a matter of minutes. In a couple of hours, we reached the jungle and set up camp. The hardest part was setting up four tents. “When are we having dinner” Gordon asked. “After we explore for an hour or two,” I replied. We set off into the unknown hoping to discover something new.

    In the time frame I had promised, we went back to camp and had dinner. After dinner we put out the fire and went to bed. About an hour later, bright lights woke up all four of us. We stumbled out of our tents and walked toward the lights. We had to continually look away to get water in our eyes because the lights were too bright to look at directly. We reached the origin of the lights and saw many scientists walking in and out of a tent that was labeled “Containment Unit.” We heard animal cries coming from the tent. We gave each other questioning looks and ran into the tent. We snuck past scientists until we found where they were keeping the animals. Before we could reach the cages, scientists swarmed us and knocked us out.

I woke up on a metal table with scientists all around me. I tried to get up, but I was strapped down. A tall, slender scientist came up to me and injected me with some sort of serum. I felt instant pain within my body and started thrashing about. My body stopped spasming and began to change. I don’t mean that I just had to pee, it literally began to look different. My arms, legs, and face began to grow black fur. They also began to get bulkier until the muscles on my arms and legs were the sizes of watermelons. The remaining skin became rough and irritating. I realized I had become a gorilla. I broke the restraints and grabbed the nearest scientist by the neck and said, “What did you do to me?! Where are my friends?!” Before the scientist could reply, I choked him to death as if I had a grip of steel. This was the first murder I had committed. I backed into a corner and began to punch holes in the walls. Scientists tried to tranquilize me, but I knocked them away. I took one final punch and rammed the wall down. In the room I found myself in, Gordon was unconscious and strapped to a metal table just like I was. A scientist was injecting a serum that was similar to mine, right into Gordon’s arm! Gordon’s skin started turning green and scaly. Before I knew it, Gordon was an iguana. I ran at the scientist and knocked him out. Gordon woke up and I made him cling to my arm. He told me where Eli and Michael were being held. We were too late to save them, which means they already injected with the serum. Eli was transformed into a kangaroo and Michael was transformed into a lion. They were fighting off scientists that were trying to tranquilize them. Eli kicked a scientist who flew in the air and landed right in front of me. I kicked the scientist away before he could get up. When the scientist landed, I heard crushing bones. My friends and I gathered together and we ran outside. Dawn was breaking and we had to be home by noon. The thing is, we didn’t know what our parents would think if they saw what we had become. We decided not to go home, but to find somewhere safe in the jungle until we found out how to change back. We went back to our campsite, but found that everything was destroyed. There was no food which meant we would have to forage for food. There were no edible berries around so we would have to eat tree bark for now. We split up to find fresh water, but we all got lost. We weren’t able to find each other before dark, so we would have to find each other in the morning. I found myself in the city a couple of hours later, so I decided to go home and grab water. I walked in and saw my mom sleeping on the couch. I walked into the kitchen so I could grab some water bottles. When I opened the fridge, a jelly jar fell on the floor and broke. My mom woke up and walked into the kitchen. She took one look at me before she screamed and called animal control. They arrived within minutes and put me in a cage. It didn’t take long to get to the zoo and move my cage by a kangaroo, iguana, and a lion. I realized these animals were my friends. I tried everything to get their attention, but they were all fast asleep. When I finally gave up trying to get their attention, I started punching the bars of the cage. The bars began to bend little by little. I finally got the bars to break, so I decided to break the cages that held my friends. The ruckus woke them up, so we were able to devise a plan to find a way out of the zoo. We would sneak past the night guards and climb the gate in front of the zoo. We followed the plan immediately and got out of the zoo in no time. We went back to the jungle so we could talk to the scientists.

    We reached the labs where we were transformed and promised the scientists we wouldn’t kill or hurt anyone else. They agreed to tell us why they did what they did to us as long as we would keep our promise. They told us that they panicked with having people finding them in the middle of the jungle. They had been looking for cures for new diseases, but accidentally created the serum they had injected us with. They told us more about the experiments for the next few hours.

The scientists gave us food on our way out of the lab that would last us all a week. They said to come back every week for more food and info on the serum. We went back into the wild and lived like actual wild animals. The first few days living like this were tough. We ran into a few bears that we eventually killed and ate. I doubt that’s considered cannibalism because we were still technically human. With that aside, the bears were delicious. Having the bear meat saved us a couple of days worth of the food we were given by the scientists. We set up a new camp and slept in some trees.

    The next morning, we made wooden weapons to use against animals like bears and mountain lions that would kill the animals easier than using our hands. We finished the weapons a few hours later and tried them out on a bear who attacked us for getting too close to her cubs. We felt bad for the bear cubs, so we killed them too. We went back to camp and ate all of the meat. We had eaten as much as we needed for the day, and it wasn’t even time for lunch!

    Later that night we realized that the bear meat was still raw. We were all puking non-stop and we couldn’t hold down any more food. We drank a lot of water to settle our stomachs and then we went to bed.

    In the morning, we went back to the lab and got more resources for our new lives. They said they had new information about what we could do and took me into an office to talk about it. The man who took me in the office said there was a way we could change back and forth between animal and human forms at will. We just had to concentrate really hard on what form we wanted to change into. He had me concentrate on changing into my human form and I changed back instantly. “I’m human!,” I screamed. I danced around and screamed those same two words over and over again. I was thinking about being so happy about not being a gorilla, so I became a gorilla again because of my thoughts. I pushed being a gorilla out of my mind and became human again. I immediately knew I could go home. I walked out of the office and told my friends how to change back into their human forms. They practiced changing back and forth between their forms a few times and then we left the lab. As we reached the lab door, a scientist handed me a tiger cub. “Great things will happen with this tiger in time,” the man said. We walked out and headed for our homes in hope that our parents would be happy that we had returned.

    We reached our homes and made a pact that we would not tell our parents about the crazy things that had happened to us while we were gone. We shook on the deal and split off to go home. I walked in the door and my mom embraced me in a hug that was so tight I thought I was being strangled by a python. She yelled at me with words I can’t say because they were very naughty. She quit yelling at me and told me the stories of what she did while I was missing.

It’s been three weeks since we went back to the jungle laboratory. I received a call late last night saying that the laboratory was taken over by the city and the scientists needed our help to get back the rights to continue doing the experiments. I went downstairs and told my mom that I had to leave again. She became infuriated as soon as I said that. She said I was not allowed to leave until I told her what was going on. I hesitated for a moment and agreed to her terms. I told her I couldn’t quite explain it but that I would try to show her as long as she wouldn’t freak out. She agreed and sat down with a worried expression on her face. I took a deep breath and began my transformation. She screamed as soon as I finished the transformation. I told her to be quiet but she passed out as soon as I spoke. I picked her up and gently set her in bed. I changed back and left for the jungle.

    I grabbed my friends and we walked the entire way to the jungle. We stopped in our tracks as we reached the hill on the South eastern side of where the laboratory is. Lights were blaring around the lab as we grudgingly walked towards it. The closer we got the harder it became to stay hidden in the shadows. The lights seemed to become brighter as we entered the gates that governments agents set up around the lab. We knocked out a few guards we saw and changed back into human form to put on the guards’ uniforms. We dragged the guards away into a closet as if it were happening in a movie, locked them inside, and threw away the key. We congratulated ourselves a job well done and left the closet so we could find the scientists.

    We slowly walked down the corridors as scientists rushed up and down the halls with tables. One scientist bumped into us and immediately recognized us. We told him to keep quiet because we were here to get their lab back. He agreed and went on his way. When we reached the doorway to the room we were experimented on we had to knock out seven guards that knew who we were and tried to radio in security. We dragged their bodies and put them in a basket that is used for clothes and pushed down the halls. We soon learned that the guards had put a safe lock on the door that had to be spun around to the correct combination. Lucky for us, Gordon knew had to crack these kinds of locks. He grabbed his mini equipment that he carries around with him and opened the safe in a matter of seconds. We were finally on top of things and we were going to take back this lab.

We kicked down the door as soon as it was unlocked so we could enter in a grand fashion. The alarm that the government had installed went off (which was not according to our plan) and government agents came flooding into the room just a few seconds later. We had to hide in a split second if we didn’t want to be blown off the face off the planet right then and there. We hid in a corner and waited for the agents to leave. There was just one problem, our hiding spot was in plain sight and we were found almost immediately. The agents pulled us up and put us in handcuffs. We knew that the only way out of the handcuffs was to change in front of the government. We silently nodded in agreement and prepared for another transformation. As soon as we started to change the agents backed away as if they were witnessing a volcanic eruption. We broke the handcuffs and charged the government agents head on. They pulled up their guns and began firing lasers at us. The first thing that the lasers hit were the lights leaving us to battle in the pitch black room. We had a harder time finding our way around because we didn’t have night vision goggles and the agents did. They shot their lasers again and hit me in the arm with the red hot lasers. I winced in pain and fell to the ground. Eli ran to my aid and took a shot to the leg. Seeing my friend hurt sent the adrenaline coursing through my veins and I pushed the pain away. I picked an agent up and threw him across the room. I knew we needed to push all of our fear and pain away from our thoughts and replace it with the anger that these agents have created in us. We pulled ourselves together and took another try at the agents. They cowered in fear as we took them out one by one. We had taken them all out in a matter of time and sent the rest of the government agents running from the lab. We walked out of the room to find that there were many scientists on the ground and unconscious. We slapped them silly to wake them up and told them the great news. They cheered and offered to help us by giving us new serums so we would have more options to change into. I knew that this was my chance to be able to become a shark. I told them my ideas and they led me back into the room where I would be injected with the new serum.

    I strapped myself down and prepared myself for the injection. The head scientist came in with a giant needle and told me to hold still. I took a deep breath and he started the process. I noticed a tank across the room for me when I changed into a shark so I could breathe. The scientist threw me in the tank when the transformation began and I fully changed by the time I hit the water. I looked at my fins and I showed my teeth in a wide grin. I was so happy that I was a shark. I jumped out of the water and changed back to my original form. I gave the scientist a high five and told my friends that it was their turn to get their next serum. Gordon had chosen to become a cheetah, Michael chose to become a grizzly bear, and Eli chose to become a turtle. Before we left, I brought up the tiger we were given. He told me that the tiger was their very first human test subject, but the experiment went wrong and permanently altered his cell structures. The tiger is named Max and he can still talk but so far they haven’t found a way to fix what they did to him. We told the scientists that we would like to help with that as well, but they would have to explain what happened to us to our parents. They said they would and we all headed out to the big city.

    Once we entered the dimmed city around 1 am, we were surrounded by police cars and handcuffed on the spot. I realized that they must have been told by the government about the lab battle.

We were taken to a secure police facility that had security cameras everywhere. I knew that if we were caught changing forms on camera we would become science experiments but this time for government purposes. This suddenly felt like deja vu because this was kind of like what happened at the lab. I asked Gordon to try becoming invisible even though it was unlikely for him to do so because he had the power to turn into an iguana, not a chameleon. He changed into an iguana and remarkably was able to become invisible just like a chameleon. He snuck out and waltzed into the control room. He found some strange buttons as he was looking around the room. The most peculiar button was the “Shut Down Security Guards” button. As soon as he read this he was in utter horror. The security guards that were taking us in were robots. He gave his most devilish grin and pushed the button. The security guards around us fell to the ground and gave off sparks. Gordon came back out to tell us about the control room when I noticed something about the metal that the guards were made out of. The metal seemed to have an alien sort of look but I thought to myself that aliens weren’t real so the metal couldn’t have been from somewhere in space. Eli picked up the metal and found the strangest name engraved into it (at least I think it was a name. The word or name engraved into it was Destavalo. I was now sure that this must be alien. Who the heck, other than an alien, would name their child Destavalo? I gasped and told my friends my theory about the name and its origin.

    We made an agreement to take the metal to none other than the scientists. Yes, we were already going back to the lab. Once we were back at the lab, the scientists rushed out to us and hurried us into the lab. They locked all the doors and closed and covered all the windows. We knew immediately that something was up. They rushed back to us and told us that they already knew about the government robots. Before we could say anything about the engraving, Nathan, the head of the scientific operations, told us that the metal was made by aliens. Nathan also said that they had an alien in the lab that was unconscious. The weirdest thing about this conversation is that Nathan mentioned the name Destavalo eight times. Nathan lead us to the chamber the alien was being held in and I only took one look at it before I fainted.

    I woke up a few minutes later and told them why I ended up fainting. I had a dream when I fainted about the alien. I think it was a vision. In my dream the alien was killing all of mankind and destroying the universe and time itself. The alien had allies that were all chanting “All hail Destavalo!” The alien that I first saw was raising a sword and my friends and I were chained down in front of him covered in sweat and bruises. Destavalo brought down his sword upon my and then I woke up. My friends became worried about me because they thought this was the moment I was going crazy. I told them that no crazy person would have had that “dream” when they passed out. Gordon helped me up and he took me to a room where I would just sleep and realize that I was just being crazy (even though I was pretty sure that I wasn’t crazy). He locked me in the room and I sat there staring into space pondering my vision about Destavalo. As I continued to ponder, I realized that Destavalo looked different than the alien that was in our captivity. They looked similar, but there were two differences, Destavalo had a scar on his right cheek and spikes along his body, whereas the alien had neither. Maybe I was fretting over nothing after all. I changed into my gorilla form and broke the lock on the door so I could go tell my friends that I was being “crazy.”