The 'Back Background'

The history of the story itself plays a big part in the story. The whole reasons why Talon, Cyris, and Dameon have their abilities is because of a war that happened between the planet of T'Kar and their neighboring planet, Jural. The war had started when the Juras decided that they wanted to start colonizing the planet due to crowded space on their own. Thier race was highly advanced in mechanical and electronic devices, and could make just about anything they wanted, while the T'Karians on the other hand were advanced in genetics.
During the war, the T'Karians need some sort of spy to be able to get information on their enemy's movement, but because of the obvious phyisical differences in the races, all spys were caught. So, their next resort was a drastic one: To genetically alter their own to make them look like the Jura. After much disccussion, they took a handful of voulenteers to start expirement such a drastic genetic alteration. Though all the subects participated of their own free will, many were still opposed to the decision. Of course there were quite a few unsuccessful attempts, and deaths, those that survived didn't look completely like humans. They had no hair, and retained their original color, some even still had their horns, though the wings were the hardest to get rid of. The ones that passed by as humans the best were sent out, and some succeeded in their missions.
The expirements continued through out the course of the war, as they tried to improve the changes, as well as make them less painful to the subject. After more expirementing, a formula was developed to not only change to subject to a human, but allow them to change back to a T'Karian again. This experementation caused more deaths than the first ones, and more flaws. After months of perfection, there were about 12 successful alterations. (though the Jura form suffered the same defects as before)
Although they gained more knowlege of genetic alteration, the focus on such a task drained the resources needed to fight the war, and they were slowly loseing their home, and thousands of lives. In a desperate attempt to turn the war in their favor, the genetically altered many of the Jura prisoners they had into T'Karians. After about 100 alterations were made, the Jura almost litterally threw their hands up surrender, and there the war eneded.

Although both sides were bitter about the war in general, (The T'Karians for the Jura trying to take over their home, and the Jura for the T'Karians altering their people) There was a tready written up, and the planets have been in coperation ever since. T'Karian and Jura inhabit both planets (Though, most T'Karians perfure to live on their own planet). And as for the group of altered Jura and T'Karian, with it was because of them that created the Jal-Kar race.
Although, the gourp of T'Karians that were altered such that they could switch between both forms, they're children inhearited such a ability, although after a few generations, the gene apparentlly faded away, then thousands of years later, started to show up again in their offspring. The new gene not only allowed quicker and painless transformation between the two forms, but both forms had no flaws.
After the tready, the act of such drastic geneticl alteration was prohibited unless there was a unanimus concent of both the Jura and T'Karian groups. Although, just before this was passed, there were two main experements that had occurred just after the war had ended. Because of the success of the shapeshifting splicing, they wanted to take it a step further. They wanted to give someone the ability to change into anything and any one. After some tests, they had successfuly altered a T'Karian to take any possible form. Though that success lasted for about a week.
Although he could shift into anything, after the 3rd day, he realized it was harder to maintain his original form, and as the days progressed, he found it harder and harder to maintain any form at all. Such freedom in changing forms had made his molecular composition very weak, and it was slowly deterierating. Despite all the efforts made to reverse the effects, he eventually died. The expirement was terminated, and all information was destoryed because of the dangers it had on it's subject. Although, that didn't stop them from doing one last expirement.
Since the other subject had died because he was given to much 'freedom' they decided to make something more restricting. Someone that could shapeshift to many forms, but not really make exact duplicates of anything, and could only become something that was natural. (nothing that is man-made, or made by magic, live vampires) They also decided to enhance a T'Karian's natural telepathic abilities. This expirement met with great success. Although transformations had a tendency to be a bit painful, he could hold his form for long periods of time with not real consequences.
After the tredy was passed, all information about the two expirements were destoryed, and the surviving subject left the planet, not because he had to, but because he wanted to be sure the knowlege of the expierement would remain secret, and also because he wanted to explore other places. The Jura had started an exploration team to search out other planets, not only for homes, but to have more alliences. (Since the allience with the T'Karians ended up begin very benneficial for them) It was because of this that he ended up landing on earth, and eventual married... and thus, Talon had recieved her gift.