What, when they invented guns? It looks so cool, though. You probably looked like a badass... Feathers are my armor but you couldn't pull that look off.

[...feathers are armor, in that in bird form they cover him in layers, some blows can glance off them instead of striking true, and often the feathers and not the bird are what gets damaged.]

Oh. Uh - Strider, they have a car-wrecker dinosaur headed this way, and if the portal's moving around I'm just going to slow you down like this. [which would be a very self-sacrificial thing to say if he didn't follow it up by turning into a normal-sized dove again. He flaps a bit, still a bit dazed.]