The Reading Room

[[Jump to Current Chapters|Chapters]] - [[Jump to New Originals|Originals]] You stand in front of the doorway, contemplating your journey thus far. As far as doorways go, it hasn't exactly been the easiet one to reach, not the kind you can get to merely by walking down your street, or getting into your car and driving a bit. Just to start down this path required a plane ticket and a long flight to take you half a world away, going from cramped coach seat to cramped minibus trundling down dusty rural tracks, all the way to a small village tucked partway up the side of a still-active volcano. It was there, in a small hut with thatched roof and grey adobe walls, that you met the one person on Earth who would not only humor the notion of what you were seeking, but actually possessed a clue to where it might be. Even then, he hadn't had much: just an old, hand-drawn map with scrawled, unidentified landmarks arranged just precisely enough to one another to actually be of use. He hadn't been willing to part with it, of course, so you took careful images of it, keeping the scale of everything as precise as you possibly could. Then, after a long journey back home, you'd fed every image you'd acquired into a powerful computer workstation, tapped into a database with satellite measurements of every inch of the world's surface. While the landmarks themselves were unknown, the distances between them were fixed - and if a similar pattern could be found, then so could the location marked on the map. After working on it for what seemed an inordinate amount of time, the computer produced three potential locations with known landmarks arrayed in the same pattern around a particular spot. One was almost precisely in the center of downtown Helsinki, one a few kilometers outside of Lagos, and the third... the third was tucked away in a supposedly uninhabited patch of Bolivian jungle. That alone made the third location seem all the more interesting - after all, years of watching a certain fedora-wearing swashbuckler made the idea of a hidden South American temple all the more intriguing: traps, creatures, and perhaps an even greater reward at the center. And so you'd set up a trip, acquired a guide, and set out to find the hidden temple you were so sure was there. After a day of trekking through sticky, bug-infested jungle, you finally reached the spot, only to find... another patch of jungle, nearly indistinguishable from all the rest of it. Undeterred, you'd searched the entire area, but there was nothing to be found - heck, you even did thermal-imaging studies on most of the surrounding trees to see if one of them held a secret entrance. You looked high and low, for days, until your supplies began to run low and you were beginning to wonder if there was a patch of skin left that hadn't been savaged by mosquitoes, but there wasn't even a trace, even one solitary clue that might have helped, just jungle and more jungle, mud and vines and grinding, growing frustration. So it was that, a couple of weeks later, you'd found yourself, somewhat chagrined, bundled up in a parka and wandering around downtown Helsinki, having an not particularly adventurous time of it at all. True, at least the foray was a little easier: instead of enormous frame packs and stacks of supplies, the trip had required little more than a plane ticket, a hotel room, a transit pass, and a universal-translator app on your smartphone. With the coordinates provided by the computer analysis, it was easy enough to locate the spot in question, although it didn't exactly look the part: a small, one-room bookstore hemmed in between a delicatessen and a laundromat looming on either side. At least it had a promising atmosphere: piles of books stacked high in the windows and everywhere else, with only enough paths to walk through, seeming almost reminiscent of some medieval arcanist's library of mystery, a notion only enhanced by the olde-european architecture. Once inside, though, you realized that it felt more like the business of someone with a hoarding problem, and populated not by someone with the knowledge of centuries glinting in their eyes, but a rather bored-looking cashier and a gaggle of euro-hipster college students pretending that they were deep enough to understand the philosophical tomes they were paging through disinterestedly. You poked around as much as you could, but the place really was just one room, apart from a tiny, claustrophobic bathroom crammed into a back corner. No windows, no secret passages, just stacks of books - and even those are mostly textbooks and readings for college courses, hardly repositories of ancient knowledge. The oldest book you can find is, upon translation, a bawdy play from the 1800s or so, which doesn't seem to contain even a discernable coded pattern within its pages. Frustrated by the waste of time, and not particularly enthusiastic about going to Nigeria and quite possibly another dead end, you stop into the delicatessen to grab some lunch. Unlike the bookstore, the place is nearly deserted, and the only person behind the counter is a wizened, white-haired man of probably slavic descent. He starts out saying something in Finnish, but after you start fumbling with the phone to try and work up a decent translation, he instantly switches over to English, speaking in a mellifluous and surprisingly unaccented tone. "So, a long day, hmm? Produced a good appetite?" You respond affirmatively - although he has no idea just how long of a day it's already been. He sets about stacking up a tremendous amount of roast beef on a fresh-baked roll while asking you a bit about your trip. You don't mention much beyond looking for something, although even that seems to make the man perk up a little, and even more when you talk about poking around the bookstore. "Ah, not the place you were expecting, perhaps? Always a surprise, how mystery is often made mundane. No mystery, however, in meat and bread, for which I am thankful." He slides the sandwich emphatically across the counter towards you. "Eat! And then, perhaps, we talk some more..." You eat the sandwich - and to be fair, it is an excellent one, albeit one that you can barely get your jaws around. After you finish, you search around in your wallet for the proper paper money for this particular country, almost handing him a handful of bolivianos by mistake. When you try to pay him correctly, though, he waves you off. "Money is also mundane. You are from far enough away, and here to do more than take in sights. Tell me your story, and I'll buy you lunch, yes?" You wonder at that a bit, but can't think of a reason not to. You tell your story, most of it anyway, aside from the precise nature of the thing you're looking for, especially since you're not really sure what that something even is: a portal of some sort, to take you somewhere different, but all the vague clues you've come across so far don't really begin to hint at its nature. Still, the man sits with you as you tell what you can, listening with rapt attention, his eyes lighting up even more. "Hmm... so you've come for ///that/// thing, then," he comments as you finish, and you glance back at him, surprised. He doesn't reply, though, only getting to his feet and walking abck behind the counter. After a moment, though, he gestures for you to follow. "Ah, just so you know, if you do come back from it, make sure you press hard - sometimes, the latch gets caught and you have to thomp on it. Oh, and telling the authorities is forbidden, of course, but if you're into this, then you already know that." Intrigued, you follow him into the back of the store, thankful for your parka as he opens up the shop's walk-in freezer and ushers you in. The two of you walk past large slabs of meat, hanging from hooks - this particular butcher, it seems, starts completely from scratch. At the back, two large metal doors, similar to the first, sit resolutely closed. The man swings open the one on the left, revealing sets of shelves stacked high with vacuum-packed sets of more granularly butchered meat. "Ach, right... the other one." He closes the door and swings open the one on the right, to reveal... you're not quite sure what. The entire doorway sparkles with bright, scintillating light, shimmering almost like an aurora and intense enough to obscure anything that might be lying beyond. You reach out a hand towards it, and can feel the tingling of energy as it moves beyond the curtain of light and towards something beyond. This, without question, has to be the portal, even if it is sandwiched incongruously into the back of a random butcher shop in northernmost europe. "So, there it is. What lies beyond, I have no idea. I merely keep away meddlers, like my father, and grandfather, and those on before. Be a butcher, run the shop, keep away troublemakers. Explorers, though... explorers need to see what lies beyond, and I am here so that such a thing can happen. There may be risks - I do not know. But if an adventurous heart has led you here... be my guest. I do not know how people return from it, or if they do - but if you come back, and return with another story, I will make you a sandwich worthy of it." He stands aside, his eyes sparkling, gesturing eagerly towards the portal. And so, naturally, after spending all this time researching and scheming and traveling and preparing, you stepped through without a second thought, eager to see the awe and wonder that lay ahead in a fabled other world. For a moment, the energy tingles across your body, and all you can see is the intense light as you pass through it, only to find yourself in... a hallway. It's a nice one, as hallways go: the walls are made up of well-varnished wood paneling, cherry if you're not mistaken, and the carpet is plush and well-maintained, dyed in a crisp navy blue. Jutting out from high on the wall are sconces in the style of old-style gas lanterns, although the bulbs glowing in them aren't just modern, but... odd. You walk over and look more closely at one of them, and realize that there isn't even a bulb per se, just a glowing ball of light hovering a few centimeters above a white, metallic cylinder. It is like nothing you've ever seen on Earth, for certain, so wherever this is must indeed be a different world. And yet, new world or not, it still is just a hallway. Lining the hallway are a series of unlabeled doors, and when you open the handle on one, are met with yet another scene of glowing light leading... somewhere, probably, although you're not sure you want to jump to somewhere else just yet. Each door, though, produces a similar effect. There are dozens of them, lining each side of the long hall, which finishes up at one end with little more than a small, polished-oak table with a carved stone bust of a person on it. Something about its features, though, seem intentionally vague, and the more you scrutinize it, the more amorphous it seems: you catch glimpses of recognition in it, moments where it seems to resemble someone you know or have seen, but as soon as you try to look at it closer, the resemblance vanishes. Frustrated, you pace down in the other direction, to see if the hallway terminates similarly. And yet, it does not: this time, instead of a table, there is a door like all the rest, polished wood, copper handle, and otherwise largely nondescript. There is one major difference, though: unlike all the other doors, this particular one is labeled, a small nameplace set on the wall along the side, black-enameled metal with white block letters etched into it and spelling out a single phrase: THE READING ROOM. Is this it, then - the doorway you've been searching for all this time? You reach for the doorknob, hesitating for a moment. Do you want to see if the answers you are looking for are beyond this portal... or, perhaps, do you want to see what one of the other doors has to offer? [[Enter The Reading Room]] [[Try another door at random]] (display:"breadcrumb")

<hr><hr><hr> //Game Navigation/Options// {(link:"Save in Slot A")[(if:(save-game:"Slot A"))[Game saved!](else: )[Sorry, I couldn't save your game.]]} - {(link:"Save in Slot B")[(if:(save-game:"Slot B"))[Game saved!](else: )[Sorry, I couldn't save your game.]]} - {(link:"Save in Slot C")[(if:(save-game:"Slot C"))[Game saved!](else: )[Sorry, I couldn't save your game.]]} (set: $arr to (history:))(set: $ack to $arr's length)(set: $ack to it + 1)(link-repeat: "Click to reveal links to prior passages")[(if: $ack > 1)[(set: $ack to it - 1)](link: $arr's $ack)[(go-to: $arr's $ack)](print: " ")(print: $ack)(print: " ")]

You reach for the handle, but before you can reach it, the handle seems to move on its own - and then, before you can scarcely realize its happened, you're on the other side of the door, leaning against it and feeling the solid wood behind you as you take in the sight of it. You find yourself standing in an expansive room with vaulted ceilings, seemingly solid, and yet the room is amply lit with seemingly natural light. The walls are made of polished stone, but despite the cold look of their exterior, the room is comfortably warm, and as you look around, you quickly discover why. In the center of the room, a trio of plush armchairs upholstered in rich brown leather and finished with brass rivets face towards a stone fireplace set against the far wall, within which crackles a rustic, wood-fueled fire. The other walls feature extensive floor-to-ceiling bookcases, complete with rolling ladders allowing access to each section. Despite the expansive space for literature, though, there are only a handful of visible books standing up individually on some of the empty bookcases, one on either side of the room. Clearly, these are the stories that you are intended to read, and you are tempted to pick up one of them and settle down into one of the chairs to read it. You look at the two bookshelves. They are labeled with the same sort of placards as the room itself is, two to each one. The first placard on both simply lists the word "interloper" in precise sans-serif script, all lowercase. The second placards are only slightly more informative: one is inscripted with the heading "Current Chapters," and the other with "Unreleased Originals." Which bookcase do you want to investigate? [[Chapters]] [[Originals]] (display:"breadcrumb")

You try another door at random. It leads into a new dimension. Trouble is, in this particular dimension, the space you are now occupying is not the space on a planet, but the space between them. Oops! Luckily, an unseen force slams into you before the air has been completely evacuated from your lungs and shoves you back in, gasping, slamming the door firmly closed behind you... [[Back to the hallway]] (display:"breadcrumb")

You look over at the bookcase. It is mainly empty, the shelves bare except for a single one in the middle, upon which several slim volumes are perched, leaning against each other and a couple of haphazardly-arranged bookends cut and shaped from beige, enameled sheet metal. You look over the spines, examining the titles: [[The Assignment]] [[The Boneheap]] [[Shifter]] (display:"breadcrumb")

You look over at the bookcase. It is sparsely populated, although each of the shelves is technically occupied, with a book or two here and there, leaning against each other or along the edges of the bookcase itself. You crane your neck up and down, taking in the various titles on offer: [[Heat Plague]] [[Division Seven]] [[Curse-ive]] [[Keeping the Change]] [[Wolven Boys]] [[A Quick Shift]] [[Special Situations]] [[Waking Up Female]] [[The Right Planet]] In addition to the titles you see on the main bookcase, you realize that in a bookcase standing next to it, one you initially assumed was completely empty, is not actually so: hidden on the bottom, in a corner obscured by the shadow of the upper shelves, a few slim volumes rest, huddled closely together. They are covered in a thick layer of long-undisturbed dust, and a succession of spiders have almost completely encapsulated some of them in fading cobwebs. Nonetheless, you can still just barely make out the lettering on their spines: [[Dragon]] [[Wolf and Mouse]]

Once again, you find yourself infind yourself in... a hallway. It's a nice one, as hallways go: the walls are made up of well-varnished wood paneling, cherry if you're not mistaken, and the carpet is plush and well-maintained, dyed in a crisp navy blue. Jutting out from high on the wall are sconces in the style of old-style gas lanterns, although the bulbs glowing in them aren't just modern, but... odd. You walk over and look more closely at one of them, and realize that there isn't even a bulb per se, just a glowing ball of light hovering a few centimeters above a white, metallic cylinder. It is like nothing you've ever seen on Earth, for certain, so wherever this is must indeed be a different world. And yet, new world or not, it still is just a hallway. Lining the hallway are a series of unlabeled doors, leading to... somewhere. There are dozens of them, lining each side of the long hall, which finishes up at one end with little more than a small, polished-oak table with a carved stone bust of a person on it. Something about its features, though, seem intentionally vague, and the more you scrutinize it, the more amorphous it seems: you catch glimpses of recognition in it, moments where it seems to resemble someone you know or have seen, but as soon as you try to look at it closer, the resemblance vanishes. Frustrated, you pace down in the other direction, to see if the hallway terminates similarly. And yet, it does not: this time, instead of a table, there is a door like all the rest, polished wood, copper handle, and otherwise largely nondescript. There is one major difference, though: unlike all the other doors, this particular one is labeled, a small nameplace set on the wall along the side, black-enameled metal with white block letters etched into it and spelling out a single phrase: THE READING ROOM. You reach for the doorknob, hesitating for a moment. Do you want to check it out... or perhaps see what one of the other doors has to offer? [[Enter The Reading Room]] [[Try another door at random]] (display:"breadcrumb")

(display:"header") The first group that managed to ascend the steps to meet us was the one composed of family, friends, and attendant Tiaileng. They seemed just about as collectively befuddled as the rest of us, my mom glancing between me and the slowly approaching official entourage with consternation. “Damian? I’m… I’m very glad to see you, of course, but I thought it was just going to be you, and us, and… all of your companions, of course, but… no one told us there was anyone else coming, much less an entire Tiaileng procession, and that uniform…” “Yeah, um… I don’t know? I don’t think they told any of us they were coming, not me, not…” I trailed off, inclining my head over towards Daledonne, who thankfully picked up on the gesture. “Yes, I can assure you that we’re all quite… taken off guard by current events,” he said in an oddly impassive tone, not even looking over towards us in response, his gaze fixed on where the council member and her entourage were still getting themselves together. “I can assure you, had I known that such a response was coming, I would be far more professional and composed at the moment, instead of standing here trying desperately to figure out how to address someone with both paramount stature and not precisely clear motives…” “Wait, so some random super-important Tiaileng shows up out of the blue, and you don’t know anything about it?” Zalman was blunt, as usual. “I thought you were supposed to be in charge or something…” “I’m afraid that’s something of a… misconception. I’m here to keep things organized, make observations, and make sure that nothing gets out of hand.” And for some other things as well, but thankfully he didn’t go into that in front of my parents. “Ultimately, though, sometimes there are special cases, and when there are, sometimes a Tiaileng in authority checks up on them. Then they, in turn, report to someone in charge of coordinating things at a higher level of abstraction. That person then reports to someone above them, and so on. And then, if something is especially interesting, it’s reported to her.” He inclined his head forward, towards the slowly-approaching entourage. “Although… I suppose it might have to do with the fact that the requisitioning of some additional Tiaileng, above and beyond the original assigned amount, might have been enough of an anomaly to attract more specific interest…” “Huh? You’re really giving him even more Tiaileng?” Will’s expression was hovering somewhere between awe and incredulity as he turned towards me. “Dude, I still don’t know how you’re keeping it together. Knowing you, I thought for sure you’d be passing out constantly from perpetual nosebleeds just from being around all of them…” Daledonne finally broke his gaze and glanced back over, seeming momentarily concerned. “Really? I wasn’t aware of any such condition, and I’m sure we were thorough in our analysis of his medical records…” “Huh? Oh, no, it’s just a… not exactly an inside joke, you know? Yeah, guessing you don’t watch anime much…” Daledonne seemed to consider for a moment. “Hmm… ah, yes, I think I recall what you’re referring to. No, in fact, it is actually due to his remarkable progress that some additional Tiaileng were brought in. It turns out that in terms of overall capacity, fifty was probably too… conservative an estimate.” “Damn, seriously? I have got to know what kinda stuff you’ve been getting up to. Man, if I had fifty-plus Tiaileng, that would be something else…” After a moment, he seemed to think of something, glancing quickly to his side, where Ingotheen was snuggled up against his side in typical Tiaileng fashion. “Um, not that I’m implying that you’re not enough, of course…” “You really are too cute when you’re flustered,” she replied, leaning in to nuzzle against his shoulder. “If you’re really interested in something like that, though… maybe when everything’s sorted out here, we can have some fun together, all of us…” I glanced back at her, trying not to blush, and hoping that her comment was actually more innocent than it seemed. Before things got even more awkward, though, the conversation quickly derailed as a strange, lilting music began to play from unseen speakers. Our heads all snapped back over to look towards the stairs, which the entourage was finally ascending, the council member in the center of a phalanx of hangers-on, with the three other Tiaileng apparently assigned to me trailing confusedly along a few steps behind them. Within moments, they were all on the top step, the metal fixtures on their uniforms glinting in the fading sunlight. I had expected the council member to perhaps address Daledonne, or do some sort of formal introduction. Instead, though, she seemed to ignore everyone else there, stepping onto the patio and walking directly towards me, stopping only when we were barely a pace apart and looking directly into my eyes. Her gaze seemed somehow both calm and determined, and her entire posture and expression really did seem different than the other Tiaileng I’d encountered: for that moment, at least, showing the sort of gravitas you’d expect from someone of her position. Which is why, I suppose, it was even more of a contrast to see her go from such an expression straight into the sort of wide, overenthusiastic smile that I was far more used to seeing from a Tiaileng. It certainly led to my momentary befuddlement, so much so that I didn’t even really react when she suddenly leaned forward towards me, arms outstretched. I’d assumed that, like most Tiaileng, she was going to envelop me in some sort of surprise hug, but instead her arms came down to rest on my shoulders, holding me at arm’s length as she regarded me eagerly. “So, you’re the young gentleman that has everyone so intrigued! And I don’t blame them - standing here like this, even though I’m not familiar with you, the sense of energy I’m getting from you is quite remarkable. Without any attunement or accommodation at all, I can still… comprehend its presence clearly enough. I might be an expert in such things, true, but I’m actually surprised that the Tiaileng attached to your friends, or even those in your own family, never fully picked up on its magnitude. Quite fascinating, though, regardless, and the data I’ve reviewed so far absolutely backs it up.” She paused, seeming to give me another once-over. “Yes, it’s decided then - I’ll definitely have to investigate this with you personally. If you could show me the way to the nearest bedroom, I’d like to begin as soon as possible…” “Wait, what?” I replied, blushing just abut instantaneously, suddenly becoming acutely aware of her touch. It was no surprise that Tiaileng could be, well, forward, but was a member of their most important council proposing that we… she couldn’t be, could she?” She seemed puzzled for a moment by my confusion, but quickly seemed to have a flash of recognition. “Oh, I’m sorry! Perhaps I wasn’t specific enough. I have tried to perfect my English as much as possible, as it isn’t my first language, but I do have a tendency to occasionally lack the clarity of details. I want to feel the full range of what you have to offer, and sharing the intimacy of sexual contact is the most direct way to do so. Plus, it’s been a long drive, and I can’t think of a better way to relax and become acquainted with each other than that. So, now that everything’s clarified… care to lead the way?” “Um, uh, I…” It wasn’t exactly a surprise that I was lost for words. While it was true that I’d gotten more comfortable with some of my assigned Tiaileng over the time we’d been together, even enough to somehow manage intimate contact with them, it had taken weeks to attain that comfort level. Having sex with a new Tiaileng off the bat, even a normal one, probably would have been far too daunting a challenge, and with someone apparently so important, if I screwed up and managed to offend them… to say that I was just about paralyzed by the situation would have been putting it mildly. Her hands retreated, though, seemingly in surprise, and I glanced up from where I’d been abruptly staring nervously at my own shoes to see that Daledonne was suddenly standing between us. “Honored Councilmember, I apologize for the abruptness of my interjection, but… would it be possible for us to talk in private? I’m afraid there’s an extremely urgent matter regarding this situation that simply must be immediately discussed…” “Really? I don’t see why…” She trailed off, something in her expression changing subtly. “Hmmm. Yes, of course. Not for too long, though. I respect the information you’ve managed to compile, of course, but you’re not the person I traveled all this way to see…” She appeared to let Daledonne walk her through the main entrance doors and out of sight, her security detail following and looking slightly appalled by Daledonne’s forwardness with her. For my part, it was all I could do just to catch my breath and try to calm down from the spike of anxiety that the councilwoman had managed to instantaneously inspire in me. It only took a moment for another hand to settle gently on my shoulder - this time, though, it was Envelie, and her touch was far more reassuring. “Fear not - I’m sure that no offense was generated by your reaction. I realize that it… may not have been our place to intervene, but we know far better than our visitors do about the adverse effects of you becoming overly agitated. I’m sure that this will be all cleared up expediently, and then we can all have a proper introduction.” I glanced around, feeling a little calmer, and thankful that my family and friends, at least, weren’t actively doing anything to make the situation more awkward. My parents seemed to be looking on encouragingly, talking softly amongst themselves, while my friends stared in wide-eyed amazement at the massive assembly of Tiaileng standing behind me. Will, characteristically, was the first to speak, a certain hushed tone of awe in his voice. “Seriously, dude, are you like the Tiaileng whisperer or something? I mean, yeah I knew about it, saw some of them on the video calls and stuff, but seeing them all just lined up here is really something else. Not to mention, some super-important Tiaileng shows up, and just like that, she’s all over you… I don’t know how that all works, but that’s one heck of an ability for sure…” He paused for a moment, though, glancing quickly over at Ingotheen and then back again, looking uncharacteristically nervous. “Um, not that… I know you’d never do anything like that on purpose, of course, but that power you have, it’s not gonna, er, draw someone else’s Tiaileng to you, or anything like that?” “Er, I don’t think… so…” I replied, trailing off and at least a little surprised when Ingotheen, already at Will’s side, spun him rapidly around partway and pressed her short muzzle in against his lips in the closest Tiaileng equivalent of a kiss, her lithe arms wrapping around him and pulling him in close. They stayed that way for a few moments with everyone looking on, my other friends looking slightly confused, my human parents looking somewhat more uncomfortable than my Tiaileng ones at the spontaneous display, and a few of the Tiaileng in my entourage actually, audibly cheering. When Ingotheen relaxed the embrace, Will was blushing slightly, and his face had the sort of befuddled look of someone who still wasn’t quite used to that kind of experience - an expression I surely was all too familiar with. Ingotheen grinned back at him. “So… convinced that’s not a problem now?” “Y-yeah, I think so…” “Good! Plus, it’s like I told you before - when we’re assigned, there’s a Rule, and that’s the way it always works. You had to have known when the assignment happened, anyway, as it’s always spelled out beforehand.” “Er… what rule?” I interjected. “You know… the rule! Actually, the way things are here, don’t you kind of have to know it by now?” “Maybe, but I can’t know if I’ve heard it before or not until someone tells me what it is…” “Hmm, it’s possible we didn’t mention it,” Envelie said from beside me. “There was a lot of confusion when the assignment first happened, and a lot of people to organize, so we never really went over the formalities of it. You’re right, though - in this case, it probably is self-obvious.” “Um, still not following here…” “Well, as far as rules go, it’s pretty simple,” Ingotheen continued. “When a Tiaileng’s assigned to a person, to a human, I mean, they’re committed to that person, totally, in exclusion to all other humans. After all, that’s how it usually works in your society, right? What it means is that an assigned Tiaileng can still be, y’know, intimate with other Tiaileng when it’s called for, since that’s kind of how our culture works, but in terms of you guys, once we’re assigned to you, we’re never letting go. Plus, once we’re with someone a while, we get better at taking in and experiencing their energy, but when we do that, we don’t pick it up from others as much. So I can feel your energy a little, but it’s not like its overwhelming or something to me, just… a little more pronounced, but still in the background like everyone else. The energy that I need and want, though, is right here.” She paused, snuggling in a little closer to Will again, turning back to meet his gaze unwaveringly. “I know the situation here’s… unusual, unprecedented even. But whatever is going on, it’s not about us. I’m here for you, no matter what, and the only way I’d be with another human is if you actually came out and asked me to. And since you’re not, there’s nothing to worry about, okay?” “Yeah… okay. I get it - nothing’s gonna happen. I guess I’m still just not used to how some of this stuff works, and I’m not gonna lie, it’s kinda intimidating that there’s some super-powerful Tiaileng here, and this gigantic mansion, and a wall of Tiaileng just standing in front of me… come on, I can’t be the only one who thinks this situation is pretty damn weird…” I couldn’t help but nod. “Trust me, this is the last thing I expected - I just wanted to finally have a chance to see you guys again. I mean, yeah, I saw you on the teleconference thing, but it’s been well over a month in this one single building, big as it is, with a lot of very enthusiastic Tiaileng for company, and while I sure can’t complain about that, it did kinda remind me how much I missed actually seeing you guys. I still want to do that, catch up and everything, but with this… council person here, I don’t even know what’s going on…” I paused for a moment, realizing something. “You know, she didn’t even tell me her name, didn’t even introduce herself, just walked up and asked me to… sleep with her…” “Like I was saying - you seriously have some crazy Tiaileng mojo going on. Although… maybe the rule doesn’t apply to her? Or maybe she’s just not assigned to anyone, somehow, since there isn’t a human guy with her. Although I still don’t get how you just found out about the rule spontaneously…” “Um, well…” I looked over at my parents, not feeling particularly sanguine about going into that in too much detail. “The thing is, there are like fifty Tiaileng and only one of me, and I can only handle one at a time in that… way, so the rest take care of things, which I guess just made sense considering the situation. I didn’t realize it applied to all Tiaileng, though. I mean, I’ve never seen it…” Although, come to think of it, my parents, both sets of them, had a habit of going to dinner parties at other people’s houses, and coming back several hours later than I would have though normal for just having a meal… “I didn’t either, so it surprised me a little at first. I mean, this one time, when you were tied up with some school project, the rest of us, Tiaileng and all, were hanging out at Emma’s house, when…” Will, seeming to suddenly remember that my parents were standing right there, brought the sentence to a nervous, awkward halt. “You know what? I’ll definitely tell you the rest of that story sometime. Sometime later. In private, or at least as private as it can get around here…” “Or not,” was Emma’s response, leaving Will looking even more flustered. “Besides, we all know that’s not important right now. Think about it - there’s a Tiaileng high-ranking something-or-other in the next room, and absolutely no one knows why she’s here! I mean, you barely even see them on TV very much, and there’s an actual one, right here, right now! I don’t know about you, but I sure want to know what’s going on, especially since no one seems ready to admit what’s up…” She finished, looking pointedly at one of the other Tiaileng from the official entourage that hadn’t followed after the council member. If he knew something, though, he didn’t betray it, staring back with the default Tiaileng grin while somehow managing to make it look far more like a poker face than usual. “You know, we could give them the benefit of the doubt,” Mirracai interjected, drawing close and wrapping his arm gently around Emma’s waist. Her expression still seemed annoyed, but I could see the tension in her posture relaxing noticeably. “Kinda hard to do, that, though, when they won’t even say a word about what’s going on…” “True, but… you probably know that we don’t pick our leaders for no reason, or through some spectacle of politics. Tiaileng become leaders because they are the best for their particular job, with a level of competence and judgment that can be trusted implicitly. Regardless of their… personalities, or how they get their message across, they only act with the best of intentions, in ways designed to help people, not just Tialeng but everyone, in the best way possible. Whether or not she’s ready to reveal her ultimate reason for being here, there’s no way it would be to cause harm or disruption.” “Yeah, yeah, I get that, but… that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I know Damian’s super-interesting to the Tiaileng for some reason, but even so, what would a super-important Tiaileng want from a high-schooler? Pretty sure she didn’t just show up for a roll in the hay…” I was fairly sure that Zalman jumped in with some counterpoint, but for a moment I found my focus unexpectedly shifting elsewhere. More specifically, it seemed drawn to Mirracai, Emma’s companion. Something about him was just… intrigung, somehow, in a slightly disconcerting way, and all of a sudden it was driving me crazy not to know why. At first glance, there didn’t seem to be anything really surprising about him. He had the usual sort of bear-cat Tiaileng features, with ears that were slightly more rounded on top than the slight point that most had, but not that different from several in my entourage. Also like most Tiaileng, his frame was fairly true to the slightly-varying norm, maybe ever so slightly shorter and thinner than most. Even his face was fairly typically Tiaileng, in that it was unreasonably cute, with wide, bright eyes and the foreshortened not-quite-muzzle angled in such a way that it always looked like he was smiling. I supposed I was as attracted to him as I was to most other male Tiaileng, and considering I was surrounded by more than enough of my own, it seemed beyond reason that I was feeling anything for him. If it wasn’t that, though, then why was I focusing on him? What was it that was different, that was making me so curious? It took me a few more moments, long enough for him to notice and start looking back at me with a confused expression, before I realized what it was. It wasn’t his build, or looks, or how long or fluffy his exposed fur was around his reasonably abbreviated polo shirt and linen shorts. Rather, it was the fur color that I realized was standing out - subtle enough, to be true, but a difference that was nonetheless quite noticeable against the virtual wall of Tiaileng around me. They were all basically blue-green, to be sure, but somehow I’d never really noticed that there was much of a variation in shade. While Envelie’s fur, for instance, was more towards a deeper sort of turquoise blue, Mirracai’s fur had a balance that was clearly more towards the green. For comparison, I glanced over at Ingotheen - and realized that her fur, while similar, was a unique shade in its own right, somewhere in between the two. Tesekorri, though, was slightly greener still, and my Tiaileng parents were subtly different shades as well. On their own, I hadn’t really put it together before, but all of a sudden it stood out against the others assembled. Strangely enough, I realized the guards who’d arrived were the greenest of all, with that shade clearly dominating in slightly different combinations. Although… the more I looked, back and forth, the more I suddenly wondered if I was wrong about the anomaly. While all of them were slightly different, they stood out because of the uniform, dominating background that I’d never really noticed. I’d assumed it was normal, just how the Tiaileng were, but now… now I had to wonder, if all of these other random Tiaileng were all slightly different colors, why every single Tiaileng assigned to me now seemed to be the exact same shade of deep, oceanic turquoise blue. “Hey, man, you okay?” I glanced over to see that Will was looking back, seemingly concerned - actually, all of my friends were. “Generally you respond when I ask a question, so… I mean, if you’re overwhelmed, just say so - honestly, if I was in your position, I’d kinda be freaking out in my own head too.” “Huh? No, it’s not that, I just… noticed something I hadn’t before and was thinking it through…” Will glanced around for a moment. “Um… you mean, besides the fact we’re on the steps of a weird-ass mansion with a gazillion Tiaileng everywhere? Although I guess that’s not all that out of the ordinary for you now…” “No, just… a random observation. I mean, people have different skin colors, so it only makes sense that Tiaileng have different fur colors too. It’s just weird that I can’t remember ever really noticing until now.” Will looked at me weirdly. “Um, you sure? Because, just looking around, they all look pretty much the same color to me. Maybe if you squint, there’s like the teeniest difference, but… what, you’re saying they’re all actually distinctly different colors to you?” “More like shades than really different colors, but… yeah?” “Huh… pretty sure I’m not colorblind, but… help me out, here?” “Looks the same to me,” Zalman replied, and Emma nodded in agreement, as did their respective Tiaileng. “Huh…” Will glanced over at one of the Tiaileng from the entourage. “You guys ever hear of anything like that?” The Tiaileng shook his head. “I am not qualified to comment on such matters. Perhaps it is something you should mention to the Councilmember upon her return…” “O… kay then…” Will replied, looking askance at him. “I know it’s a rare thing indeed, but I think I’m gonna have to agree with Emma. No offense, dude, but the reticence you guys have, for a Tiaileng, it’s not… normal.” Which, I realized, was actually sort of true - while most of my entourage seemed content to be quiet for the moment, you could tell from their restless body language that they were following everything eagerly. The other Tiaileng, by contrast, despite its naturally smiling demeanor, was the picture of uncharacteristic equanimity. “It is a product of my role, not my personality,” the Tiaileng replied, his hands remaining resolutely at his sides. “As is the fact that I am unassigned. However, as I am unassigned, when these introductions are completed, perhaps I could get to know you and your partner in a more… appropriately informal setting.” “Wait, are you saying what I think you’re-“ He trailed off, looking over at Ingotheen, but before he settled on how he wanted to respond, the doors swung back open, and Daledonne, the councilmember, and the remainder of her entourage reemerged. It took but a moment for her to casually insinuate her way past my friends, and once more we were standing face to face - still closer than what I was used to, at least for anyone outside of… well, outside of my very own entourage. This time, though, her hands remained at her sides, and while her expression wasn’t really at all contrite, it was certainly earnest. “So!” she began, her wide Tiaileng eyes staring directly at me with a surprising intensity. “I have now learned a lot of additional information about you, most of it even pertinent. And while such information could have been appropriately included in a far more detailed report…” She paused, turning her head rapidly to fix Daledonne with the same intense stare before returning to me. “In any case, I am now far more appropriately informed as to the situation regarding particular patterns of behavior and stress. It appears that had I continued on my original course of action, a dangerous situation could have emerged, and while it was admittedly abrupt, I can only commend Daledonne for taking the prompt action that he did to properly manage the situation. However, it does mean that we’ll have to take a different approach here - one that will certainly be more comfortably done without us all milling around on these steps in a disorderly fashion. You… will invite us all inside to continue this important conversation, of course?” I nodded, and with that small gesture of acknowledgement, she was suddenly beside me, arm wrapped around my shoulder and pulling me steadily forward, as the weight of our respective groups of Tiaileng helped to bear us both inside, past the ostentatious sweeping-staircase entryway and down a a short hallway that I could have sworn led to a bizarrely-proportioned bathroom, but instead took a strange, short dogleg before opening out into a rather different sort of room. I realized, when I saw it, that it was a room that I had at least a passing familiarity with, having stumbled across it a couple of times while getting lost in the mansion’s various passageways. It sort of had the ambience of one of those aristocratic lounges, the kind rich gentlemen on television would retire to after a meal to puff on cigars and swirl brandy in oversized glasses. True, there were some idiosyncrasies, as seemed to be the case with just about every room in the mansion: the velvet upholstering the drapes and overstuffed chairs was a vivid blue instead of the usual crimson, and each chair-back was emblazoned with a different, mysteriously abstract symbol, some made up of swirling, interlocking curves, while others were starkly boxy with an almost digitally precise motif. Beyond that, though, what stood out most about the room was its scope: if it were a lounge, it was big enough to accommodate even the entire assembled group comfortably, with seats left over. Well, that and the absurd fountain that sat in the center of the room, dispensing water (and presumably other liquids) out from the top of a buzzcut bust of the tech gazillionaire himself, the individual streams apparently representing strands of his own hair. Still, as slightly odd as the room was, it was even more surreal to see it so fully occupied, the variously-shaded turquoise fur of the Tiaileng a strange counterpoint to the intensely blue upholstery as each of them found their own unique way to curl up comfortably in the ostentatious armchairs. I ended up in one of them sitting directly across from the councilmember, with Daledonne and Envelie nudging their chairs over to either side, and my family and friends scattered in a loose circle around us, in turn surrounded by the jumble of our combined entourages, the surreal fountain trickling on in my peripheral vision. Even while everyone was settling in, there wasn’t a lot of peripheral conversation - everyone, it seemed, was eager to hear what the councilmember had to say - though, I assumed, for a variety of different reasons. She didn’t seem fazed about the number of eyes upon her, though, or perhaps didn’t particularly notice them - even though her posture in the chair seemed relaxed and at ease, her eyes still seemed to focus on me with a singular intensity of purpose. On a… human, I suppose, it would have been the sort of look that would have made me felt instantly intimidated and on edge, but in conjunction with the cute face and wide, eager smile that were both so characteristically Tiaileng, the expression seemed less intentional intimidation and more unashamed, unwavering focus. “So… in the interests of expedience, I propose we simply ignore those brief prior… miscommunications and start our introductions anew. Fair enough?” “Um, sure, I mean… yeah, okay.” Specifically intimidating or not, the fact that her gaze wasn’t leaving mine, even for a moment, was still more than a little unnerving. “Anyway, um, I’m-“ “Damian Barrett. Yes, I don’t think we need to rehash that part of the introduction. Although… I suppose I never did tell you my name, though. Which is Jesollae, of course! I’d rather if you just called me Jes, though, despite the fact that due to my station, everyone always seems of the opinion that such a contraction is inappropriate. Personally, I think is ridiculous, especially considering these names aren’t even meant for Tiaileng consumption, so they might as well be convenient for the people who are intended to use them. “Enough about names, though - I’m aware of all the rest, even if for some of them it is only through reference to their Tiaileng companions. I imagine, being related in certain ways, you all have questions, but soliciting them from so many people is likely to be an exercise in inefficiency. So, I shall simply try to anticipate the questions hovering unasked between us, and address them before they need to be asked in the first place.” She gestured over to a member of her entourage curled up against the cushions of a nearby chair, and he uncurled enough to reach down towards a small satchel propped in front of it, extracting a clear bottle with Tiaileng writing on it and tossing it over to her. She flicked a hand out and caught it effortlessly, a display made even more uncanny by the fact that her eyes didn’t even momentarily flick over in that direction as she did so. She spun the top off of it and took a swig of the clear liquid inside, flashing a brief glimpse of the glittering, crystalline points of Tiaileng teeth before setting the bottle down beside her and continuing. “Yes, much better… forgot about that on the ride, for some reason. Anyway, on to questions. Most to the point: why am I here? While I suppose there are a few additional details to fill in, I think the reason really is quite obvious.” She paused, moving her hand out in a sweeping, pointing gesture across the swath of Tiaileng encompassing my section of the room. “It’s hardly a surprise that the amount of Tiaileng assigned to you is… comparatively enormous, considering the usual arrangement. In fact… while it’s not exactly a secret, I should point out that the next part of what I’m about to say isn’t exactly meant for wide dissemination. Specifically, you are, in fact, the person with the… third largest Tiaileng assignment, actually, if you take into account the trio that has been newly assigned to you. There is one other with sixty, and one with a current total assignment of seventy-five. I have, of course, met with both of them, and with several others who have shown lesser degrees of promise, but all of them were unique largely in terms of their total capacity and energy levels. For that reason alone, they were all intriguing, but you, Damian… your scans propose at least a few additional areas of surprising uniqueness. Which is why, instead of simply summoning you to a meeting and interview, I wanted to interact with you directly, firsthand, within your own particular environment. And I must say, thus far, the reputation that your scans belied has not disappointed, and hardly seems likely to - the more I learn about you, the more intensely your situation intrigues me.” Jesollae leaned forward, her expression seeming even more focused than before. “Especially… certain aspects of it. Tell me, is it really true that you can observe the stream? The one that flows between you, and us?” “Yeah… I mean, I’m pretty sure that what I have to be seeing. It’s not all the time, though, not really in a place like this, but when the lights are turned off, or when they’re really low, then… then I can see it, yeah.” “Fascinating. It’s a rare Tiaileng indeed who can even begin to sense that, and even then, for us it’s more like… peripheral vision, almost, something that seems like it’s viewed from the corner of your eye, never all that clearly. True, there are scientific devices that can render it more specifically on a screen, or even display it as a hologram of sorts, but to actually see it in its natural form, with your own eyes… I can only imagine. You… wouldn’t mind describing how it looks from your perception, would you?” I tried to do so, as best as I could, especially considering I didn’t really even understand what it was that I was seeing, or why it was even important. To me, it was just another interesting byproduct of interacting with Tiaileng, albeit a very beautiful one, but to actually describe the shimmering tendrils in more granular detail than that seemed to defy me. The closest comparison I could think of in the world were those bioluminescent anemones, tentacles waving gently in an aquarium I’d visited years before, but that description obviously wasn’t very satisfying. How else could I describe it, though? It was literally the kind of thing you’d see in some sci-fi television show - although, considering the fact that Tiaileng and their advanced technology were living alongside us now, it was hard to even call such things fiction anymore. From the looks on the faces of my friends and family, the description was at least fascinating to them - while I’d mentioned the phenomenon offhand before, it was probably the first time they’d heard me talk about it in any real detail. For Jesollae, though, the description seemed to have been as inadequate for her as I’d feared - I could see the disappointment for a moment on Jesollae’s face, although she seemed to quickly move past it. “I… see. Well, I’m sure there will be more time to delve more deeply into that topic later on. After all, that part of it isn’t really so much my mission here overall, as it is my own personal curiosity, although it certainly is a unique aspect. No, I suppose I should probably get to the point of why I’m actually here.” She leaned back, making a point to scan her gaze across all of the assembled Tiaileng, seeming to linger for a second on the trio of new arrivals. “You see, when I mentioned that statistic before, about the others with various groups of Tiaileng, there was one specific part that I have yet to mention. For those others, once their proper amount of Tiaileng was calculated and assigned, that was it - they adapted to their presence, and their number remained static from then on. As far as we can tell, you’re the first person whose potential capacity has actually grown over time. With that, and the fascinating transference of sensation that you seem to make possible during your… encounters, it became clear to me that there is truly something unique and important going on with your development, and while Daledonne is quite skilled at what he does, I felt that it was imperative that you were evaluated by the foremost expert in this field - namely, me. Especially considering that if you’re truly ready for your assignment to be increased in a meaningful way, the next phase of this experiment might proceed even faster than anticipated…” “Wait… phase? Experiment? Daledonne told me that this was just an assignment, and that-“ “Ah, yes. Well, that’s because Daledonne could only tell you what he himself knew about the situation. Which was that this happened to be an unusual assignment, one which he should observe and report on carefully, which he did. And, truth be told, that’s what it has been up until this point - an unconventional assignment. However, like I said, there has never been a case with this species of an assignment actually being increased, or what the reactions of all involved would be. So, the addition of this trio is where the experiment begins, and I intend to be on hand to see it play out. That’s… phase one, basically. And if it goes as successfully as anticipated, then… “I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself, though. All of that’s for a future that’s probably a ways off at this point. No, I’m here to focus on the situation as it is now, and to see it unfold in the near-term, before we talk about any future… opportunities. Although, speaking of opportunities…” Jesollae leaned forward, resting a hand gently on my knee. As overwhelmed as I was, even that slight contact made me a little jittery, but it was at least less intense than before. “What I said earlier, about wanting to gather data on you firsthand… my intentions in that regard haven’t changed. I realize, now, that for you such things are the result of a much more gradual process. I think that I will observe and facilitate things for now, and give you a chance to catch up with your friends, family, and those assigned to you. Plus, now that I have at least an initial assessment of the situation, there are… certain things I must discuss with my retinue. Later on, though, I would like to have some more time with you, one on one. For now, just to talk, but when you’re ready, I would like to introduce myself to you, in the true Tiaileng fashion…” She stood up, the other Tiaileng in her ensemble doing so as well and falling into formation around her. “In any case, I suggest that the first thing you do is introduce yourself to your newly assigned Tiaileng. Getting comfortable with them, and them with you, is surely in everyone’s best interests. As this point, I can only assume that you have more than enough experience with such things…” Jesollae and her entourage didn’t leave, exactly, so much as come together in a huddle in a distant corner of the large room, talking amongst themselves in quiet, intense, rapid-fire Tiaileng. That left the rest of us still sitting there, more than a little befuddled by what had just happened. It hadn’t really been a conversation as much as it had been a not particularly illuminating monologue, without much of a chance to get a word in edgewise, let alone mention my unusual observation. Strangely enough, though, out of everyone else there, I realized that Jesollae actually had a shade of fur that was the closest to my assigned Tiaileng. For a moment, I wondered if it had anything to do with her earlier comments about… accommodation, but with her engaged in her own conversation, it was a discussion that would have to wait until later. Will, unsurprisingly, was the first to speak out about it. “Is it just me, or did her explanation actually make things more confusing rather than less? And some of that other stuff she was referring to… transferring sensation during your-“ “I’ll, ah… talk about that later, okay? You know, in private…” I glanced meaningfully towards my parents. My human ones actually had the good tact to at least seem a little embarrassed, although my Tiaileng ones still seemed uncomfortably fascinated by it. “Yeah, sure… it’s just weird, you know? I knew it was gonna be a little strange, visiting you in this crazy mansion with like a metric ton of Tiaileng everywhere, but this is… I don’t even know what. The thing that’s really weirding me out, though, is that every Tiaileng in here seems to be taking it in stride. This isn’t the kind of thing that happens every day, so…” “Well, it’s just the way that the Council operates,” Ingotheen replied, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Sometimes their motives are a little circumspect, even eccentric maybe, but everything they do is done with a specific purpose in mind. It just might take a little while for that purpose to become fully known. Those on the council give up on being assigned in order to fully devote themselves to the best outcomes for all Tiaileng, so they see things from a different perspective. For one to actually contemplate contact with someone like this… the only way that they would is if there was a very compelling reason to do so. And since there obviously is something that compelling, that’s good enough for me - and likely for everyone else here.” I looked around, seeing most of them nod, as Will replied. “I guess… it’s still damn weird, if you ask me, but I guess no one is, so…” He slumped back in his armchair, sighing. “What can I say… I just wanted to be here, hang out like we used to, not get into some Super Important Discussion with some Tiaileng high mucky-muck. Especially when it’s a discussion about nothing at all…” He tilted his head to look back over at me directly. “You know, I kinda take back what I said earlier. I’m pretty happy with what I have, considering the alternative. Sure, I wouldn’t mind being important, getting some attention and respect and all, but I think I’m beginning to understand that maybe there’s such a thing as too much attention…” “Yeah, no kidding…” Which was probably true, although I had to admit, I’d somehow adapted to handling far more Tiaileng attention than I’d ever imagined being able to. Even if now, there was going to be quite a bit more: three more, at least, for the moment, and probably four if you counted Jesollae’s clearly stated intentions… I looked over at where the trio of new Tiaileng were seated nearby. (display:"breadcrumb")

(display:"header") As it turned out, when faced with the roster of unappealing options in front of her, Gianna did what Giancarlo would have done when having to face something he really didn’t want to. Which is to say, when it came right down to it, she decided to punt again: while grimacing at the unknown and potentially problematic consequences, she put on another set of the girly underwear that the boneheap had provided, erasing that incidence of heat entirely and giving her another short block of days with which to strategize. Not that it had done much for her the last time - but then again, she’d also been wrapped up dealing with Hugh, and the aftermath of his stupid-ass kidnapping attempt. No, she’d have to be much more proactive this time, especially considering how much her options had shrunk. Okay, admittedly, she hadn’t really wanted to use Hugh for sex, no matter which one of them was raping the other, but now that Hugh was Heather, it wasn’t even an option. She still couldn’t stomach Jonah yet, even if he got over things enough to handle it, and May couldn’t carry the entire load, so she’d have to get more creative. Which was how, the next day after work, she’d willed herself to pick up the phone and do something Giancarlo couldn’t have imagined doing. And how, ultimately, on the Saturday that followed, she found herself sitting at a table for two on the patio of some vaguely trendy cafe, the kind that had tables with umbrellas sticking up from the center advertising something Italian or other on the canopy. It wasn’t exactly the kind of place that would have interested Giancarlo, which was precisely why Gianna had picked it: she had no idea how the food was, but the place was light, open, with clear fields of movement in all direction, no dark alcoves to get trapped in, and plenty of foot traffic passing by to make sure even the slightest step out of line would be visible to plenty of people with cellphone cameras. It was no secret, of course, that Giancarlo hadn’t had much love for cops, especially after spending a handful of hours in interrogation rooms during a couple of close calls. Of course, things were a little different now: like the not-actually-angelic apparition had said, for better or worse, Giancarlo’s troubled slate no longer mattered. The only crime that Gianna had committed, the time she’d taken Hugh, would likely never have been prosecuted, and surely even more so with Hugh just as much out of the picture. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help looking over across the table at Alan, even in street clothes, without a certain sense of apprehension. Alan, she assumed, was under the impression it was some sort of date, and on the surface, it probably was. In reality, though, it was much more of a… vetting than anything else. Ultimately, she only had one real question in mind: whether or not he could be useful to satisfy her heat, both without further emotional entanglements, and without asserting that now-troubling sense of male dominance and putting her once again into a humiliatingly submissive position. At least, from second impressions, he didn’t exactly stand out in the dominance department. Sure, he was doing the macho off-duty cop thing with the way he was dressed, from the intentionally distressed leather jacket to the denim jeans snug enough to betray more than just the bulge of his concealed-carry piece bulging out from his hip. None of that, though, could cover up his youthful, wide-eyed face, and everything about his attitude seemed to epitomize an inexperienced rookie, almost to a stereotypical extent. If anything, he was the one who seemed intimidated, either by her presence or her ostensible attraction; he’d all but stammered his way through his initial drink order, and still didn’t seem to know whether to look at Gianna’s face, or her chest, or down towards his own feet. If that wasn’t enough, he more than proved how nervous he was when his soft drink arrived, bringing it up to his mouth and anxiously lapping a third of it down in a matter of moments, before looking suddenly self-conscious and clapping his muzzle shut around his quickly-retreating tongue. Which, Gianna’s mind had pointedly noted, was quite reasonably long indeed. In fact, that wasn’t the only thing about him - as a cop, he was the picture of fitness, and with his big blue eyes and almost calico fur pattern, she had to admit that he was kind of, well, cute… That thought lasted just about long enough to reach the front of her mind, before she recoiled from the notion and mentally tried to stomp it down in to oblivion. A guy, cute? Really? Yeah, maybe she’d thought that about Hugh, but in an intentionally derisive way, not as some… some notion of it being attractive! No, there were only two things that were supposed to be cute: pups, because they simply were, and women of a certain, petite type, but definitely nor men. Dammit, she wasn’t even in heat, so why the hell was she thinking like that? She shook her head, trying to clear all that nonsense out of it, before freezing at the notion that he might be watching her freaking out. Luckily, though, he seemed too busy stumbling over the sentences he was trying to formulate to have paid much attention to it. “Um, so…” he finally managed to get out, kind of just barely meeting her eyes as he talked. “It sure is a nice day, isn’t it?” Gianna looked at him askance. If this was the speed that things were going to go, there was no chance she was going to get the information she needed before their lunch date wrapped up. That was the whole point of this, after all - she’d worn those stupid heat-cancelling panties because she wanted to find out, with a clear and sober head, whether he might actually be worth it, rather than trying to take a desperate chance on his unknown personality while actually in heat. So, somehow, she’d have to speed things up, even if it meant being annoyingly, stereotypically female in the process. She leaned forward, forcing what she hoped was a warm, alluring smile onto her face. “You know, you could just tell me how beautiful my eyes are, or something like that…” Gianna almost felt like gagging as she pushed the words out. Obviously, that approach wasn’t going to work, if it was going to make her that miserable one sentence in. What other approach was there to try, though? “Er, um, they are pretty nice-looking, yeah…” was Alan’s reply, and he looked even more anxious when Gianna couldn’t manage to keep her pleasant expression in place. “Oh, jeez… please tell me that didn’t come across as awful as it sounded…” Gianna actually managed to crack a genuine grin, albeit from schadenfreude more than anything else, but if it helped to defuse the situation, so much the better. “Heh… guess we both kinda suck at small talk, huh? So, maybe we should just talk… about…” Problem was, though, Gianna had really no idea. What the hell did cops talk about, anyway? Eating donuts? Handcuffing people? Alan, though, apparently interpreted the trailing question in an entirely different way. “Yeah… can’t really avoid talking about that, unless we want this… awkwardness to continue. About the other day… what can I say? I should have just kept my mouth shut and done my job. Of course, if I’d done that we wouldn’t be sitting here, but… it was still stupid and wrong, and I’m sorry for totally misreading the situation like that, especially since as a cop I oughta know better, like my new training officer keeps saying. When I get that scent of heat, thought, sometimes it’s like some wires just cross in my brain and I just start thinking with my, y’know…” “I get the picture, yeah. And hey, it wasn’t like I was trying to discourage you, either. After all, it’s not just guys who get messed up by heat, you know. I mean, heck, I can’t think of a guy I’ve met recently where the fact of my heat didn’t end up getting us both in some awkwardness or other.” Which, to say the least, was putting it mildly. “For what it’s worth, I forgive you - you wouldn’t be sitting across from me if I hadn’t. So let’s just chalk that up to a moment of heated stupidity, all right?” “All right… yeah. Um… so, what do you want to talk about?” Well, gee, since they were already on the subject… why not? Beating around the bush was overrated, anyway. Heck, if she were still Giancarlo, none of this nonsense would be necessary at all - there was certainly something to be said for just grabbing who you liked and taking what you needed. Of course, the one time she’d tried that as Gianna, it hadn’t exactly worked out as planned, something that the erstwhile Heather would undoubtedly agree with. Still, it wasn’t like she was doing this dating nonsense in the hopes of a parting kiss as a payoff. Might as well get to the point, right? “So, speaking of heat and stupidity… well, I’m sure you know that the guy who was, ah, taking care of things in that respect ended up…” “Being afraid of his own dick?” “Yeah, that, basically. So, while my earlier comment might have come about in a moment of heat-related weakness, it wasn’t exactly untrue. Hmm, how can I put this? He and I had an… arrangement for that particular thing, one which isn’t exactly playing well right now.” “An… arrangement? That’s kind of a weird way to put it… I mean, I thought he was like your boyfriend or something, and I assumed I was here because you’d broken up…” Gianna actually laughed for a moment at that. “What, you thought he was actually my boyfriend? Nah, we’ve just… known each other for a long time, and when we needed to blow off steam, or heat, we were there for each other.” Well, true enough, she supposed, at least in whatever parallel universe the boneheap had conjured up for her. “Look, I don’t want to give you the wrong impression or anything, but dating, big emotional relationships and stuff… that really isn’t my thing. I like keeping things uncomplicated, you know? Plus, if we’re gonna try and be honest here… you’re not exactly what I’m looking for in the whole life-partner thing.” At least the tone of the conversation wasn’t so heavy that Alan looked too disappointed, instead choosing to laugh it off. “Yeah, don’t like the whole cop thing, huh? Yeah, I guess some women can find it a little intimidating…” “Heh… actually, it’s not that, really.” “Oh? What is it, then?” “Well, you don’t have tits, for one…” Gianna’s muzzle clacked down, but not quite in time to cut off the statement. Why the hell had her mind decided to go down that route at the strangest possible time? She braced herself for his reaction, but he only looked a little confused, rather than perturbed. “Wait, you’re a… lesbian?” No sense in trying to deny it at that point. “Er, something along those lines, I guess… even kinda have a girlfriend. Heck, she’s the one that said it, though: if you’re a canine woman, one who goes into heat, there’s no such thing as actually swearing off men. And being a canine woman who goes into heat every fucking week, well, it’s kind of unavoidable. So, yeah, if you’re looking for some lovey-dovey relationship thing, someone to propose to and marry and start a family with, that’s not gonna happen, and if that’s what you’re after, I wouldn’t blame you for bailing here and now. However, if you’re looking for someone to, you know, have some heated fun with now and again, then maybe we should keep talking, hmm?” Alan leaned back in his chair, taking a moment to go over what she’d just said. “Wow… all right, then. Guess I see what you meant when you were talking about that arrangement before. Still, I gotta ask… why me? I mean, a smoking hot lesbian who’s after no-drama, no-strings-attached sex, it’s like… it’s like every guy’s high-school fantasy or something, second only to having the head cheerleader dump the quarterback and choose you instead. Every red-blooded guy in town would jump at the chance, and yet I’m the one sitting here. I mean, jeez, I’m a guy that more than one woman has called unimpressive right to my face, so I just don’t quite get it…” “Well, look at it like this. Maybe you didn’t impress a certain type of woman, but that’s because they’re usually, for some reason, impressed by jerks or macho assholes.” Oh yeah, Giancarlo had known about that type of woman, for sure… “However, that’s the last thing I want, and since you’re about the only non-jerk guy that I know at all at the moment… yeah, that’s why you’re here. And maybe it’s kind of a stereotype, but your ancestry… your breed has a certain reputation for being both energetic and very eager to please. I mean, let me guess… you’re one of those guys who became a cop because they wanted to help people, right?” “Yeah… I’m really that much of an open book, huh?” “Not really - like I said, more a stereotype than anything else. At the same time, though, you being a cop means you’re also good at following orders. And in the bedroom, a guy who’s not all about taking charge, a guy who’s eager to please, can take direction, and isn’t afraid of a woman being on top… well, let’s just say that those are assets that are probably more appreciated than some women would lead you to believe.” Which, admittedly, were certainly advantageous for her - but even as she said them, it still felt like a weird disjunct from the Giancarlo worldview that she’d known for so long. It hadn’t even been two weeks since her encounter with the blasted boneheap - had things really changed so much since then? And yet, to survive in her current form in a way that was tolerable… well, maybe that was it. If it was all just in service to making her short-term situation tolerable, then maybe it was acceptable. The more she kept having to do in this form, though, the more she had to keep thinking this way… would it really all just bleed away once she got back to her proper form? Although, she supposed, that was the point of all this: get the unpleasantness out of the way as quickly as possible, get to that challenge and get Giancarlo’s form back, before she started thinking that her current situation was anything approaching normal. “So, I guess what I’m trying to intimate here is…” “Yeah. Whether I’m… that kind of guy. Really, I… don’t know. Only had a few girlfriends, a couple who thought I was too tame, and one who thought I was too rough, although I was the one who ended up with claw marks all over me. And sure, I’ve had a few… flings on top of that, mainly with women who were in heat, mainly while drunk, and as to what happened there, I can’t remember half of it - except one time I woke up staring up at the moon, about a half-mile outside of town, with no pants and my underwear on my head. Like I said before, when that scent of heat gets into me, the way I react… sometimes it’s conscious, sometimes I think it’s just all on instinct. And I mean, yeah, if you’re offering, sure I want in - I mean, what guy wouldn’t? Er, what straight guy, at least… but I’m not gonna promise something that I’m not sure I can do. If it’s just normal stuff, I might be able to, but heat, there’s just no way to tell. If my PTO hadn’t told me to rein it in, back in that office, I really don’t know what could have happened.” “Fair enough. Although… I gotta say, I’m actually a little more intrigued now. Most guys, knowing what a woman was looking for, would have sworn up and down that they fit it to a tee, say whatever it took to get in her pants. And considering I was already halfway believing it, you might have actually pulled it off. And yet, knowing that opportunity, and still deciding to be honest with me… yeah, that’s something, for sure. And you’re right, maybe that aspect of you means it won’t work out. But if we both know what’s up going into it, maybe it’s worth a try…” “Yeah…” Alan trailed off, though, suddenly glancing around the mostly empty patio. “Of course, there’s something about you too, for sure. Can’t say I can think of many women I know who’d be willing to sit here in public, just casually talking about sex like they’re discussing-“ “The weather? And yet, which of those conversations worked out better?” Alan grinned at that, looking a little less self-conscious. “You got a point there. Guess I’m just thinking about all the stuff my new PTO’s been trying to drill into me, about professionalism and all that, and if he saw me here talking like this, I don’t know what he’d think. Except, when he’s off duty himself… dobie ancestry or not, the guy’s a real hound, if you know what I mean. Heh… guess that means I’m a gentleman in comparison. What can I say, I guess I just wasn’t…” “Wasn’t expecting our ‘date’ to turn out quite like this?” “Heh, probably not. I couldn’t possibly complain, though…” At that point, the conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the server, who delivered two cheeseburgers that were thankfully lacking pretension through the inclusion of unusual ingredients. They both dug in with gusto, each seemingly thankful that their conversation concluded before descending back into awkwardness. After that, there really wasn’t much more to talk about, and they quickly parted ways, albeit with a more comprehensive information exchange, and Gianna noting that she would give him a call “when the time was right.” Which, likely, would be in precisely four days. The conversation, though, hadn’t exactly been comprehensive - and by the guy’s own admission, he might not be what she was looking for. And yet, even despite that, he was still the best option, at least until they ended up alone in a room together under the influence of her heat, in which case she’d discover soon enough exactly what kind of attitude had shown up - and whether, in that state, she was capable of handling it. Blergh… yet another uncomfortable situation she would never have even needed to contemplate if that damn meddling boneheap hadn’t insinuated its way into her life. That fucking challenge really couldn’t come quickly enough - and yet, at the same time, she didn’t exactly relish the sheer amount of being fucked she’d have to endure to get there. And if he did work out… well, there were far worse things than going at it with a decently attractive Australian Shepherd-type guy who could potentially take direction better than her other erstwhile partners could. If he could get her to that challenge while keeping those distasteful acts as palatable as possible, and her reasonably in charge, maybe she might actually make it to that ultimate battle with at least some semblance of her sanity, and the remnants of Giancarlo’s memories and confidence, intact. Of course, getting there was significantly more complicated than before. She was already suffering some unknowable effects from taking advantage of one of the boneheap’s weird rules, of which there were sure to be more. On top of its lecherous and somewhat vague machinations, now she had to deal with who knew how many other bizarre supernatural entities that had suddenly decided her life was worth messing with. And all of that didn’t even begin to get into the weirdness of dealing with the ever-evolving emotions of the people she knew, some of whom were now in the same bizarre, swapped-gender situation that she was. Speaking of… as strange as it was, Hugh actually seemed more disconcerting at times as Heather than he had in his original male form, lechery towards Gianna notwithstanding. That first day, she’d actually settled down from it reasonably fast, especially considering she’d essentially been gang-raped the day before. The second day on, she’d been confused, subdued, and oddly silent, reticent to talk about much of anything at all - so much so that Gianna couldn’t tell whether it was just from the gravity of her situation sinking in, or whether her erstwhile friends had gotten back together with her for a second round. And yet, even with that, she didn’t descend into the strange spiral of rage and despair that Hugh had done after Gianna’s encounter with him, and the next day her mood had bounced back immensely. By the fourth day in, the disconcerting feeling was fully in effect. Despite earlier protestations, unlike Gianna’s constant struggle against it, Heather was becoming comfortable with her new form surprisingly quickly - so much so that Gianna wondered how much of the boneheap’s words to her had been calculated mindfuckery, as opposed to the revelation of a truth that the wannabe-macho Hugh had dared not speak. Far from trying to hide away her figure or discourage people’s attraction, her clothing choices had become tighter and more abbreviated, yet unlike Gianna she didn’t grouse about being forced into them, seeming to wear them as an intentional choice. Nor did she discourage the comments from their male colleagues, instead responding to them enthusiastically, almost flirtatiously, like she was actually enjoying the attention. In fact, Gianna had even notice her intentionally rub up against or unabashedly grope a couple of guys she was apparently interested in. Even as a woman, it seemed, Hugh was still something of a pervert, reverting to her usual behaviors - except, being a woman, and a cute one at that, she could actually get away with it. Well, to a certain extent at least - eventually her teasing and goading would probably end up having her bent over a desk with a cock well and truly buried in her spade, but if that happened, it would be her problem, not Gianna’s. Still, it was disconcerting to see, even if there was plenty of truth behind it - Gianna was transformed as well, but it wasn’t like her own behavior had really changed all that much. Sure, she’d had to take more than she’d dished out, but what she’d felt, taking Hugh like she had before, that part of Giancarlo still seemed to be there no matter what form she was in, even if that form meant she couldn’t satisfy that dark desire with anywhere near the same frequency. Someday, though, she would take on the boneheap and get her true form back, and there was certainly no fault in enjoying what dominance she could in the meantime. Maybe she couldn’t do that with Hugh anymore, having to be Heather’s “friend” and all in service of finding some weakness in the boneheap that she could exploit, but even that was temporary. She still owed Hugh, after all, for his stupid little attempt, even if it had largely failed. She would eventually get her form back, and assuming no one else was changed back simultaneously, Giancarlo would be paying “Heather” a very long and very thorough visit, preferably when she was in heat… That, though, was a concern to be stored away for later. Everything else seemed to be stabilizing, more or less, and that could only be a good thing. Jonah was no longer such a mess, and while she still wasn’t exactly in the mood to even touch him, they’d at least had a few conversations that could be classified as normal. The guilt from what had happened before was still definitely there, but Gianna didn’t really want to risk playing on that just yet, especially since Jonah’s mental state still seemed a little fragile. Jonah wouldn’t talk about it, but she got the sense that even if the demon itself was long gone now, the hooks it had planted in Jonah’s mind were still tormenting him. No, for the moment it was better to just pretend that things between them were normal enough, if a bit more distant. There was little doubt, anyway, that their friendship would survive, and in the meantime, Gianna had more pressing ones to pursue. She still wasn’t entirely sure whether she and May could be considered an item, exactly, but the time they spent together was only growing, and she was certainly the first choice to hang out with now when Gianna wasn’t at work. While Gianna was still trying to sort out exactly what kind of advantage the relationship could provide, apart for the occasional necessary relief, having a friend that things weren’t currently complicated with was more valuable than she’d anticipated. Although, in a way the relationship was both more complicated, and more inevitable, thanks to whatever the thing was that piggybacked on May’s consciousness; luckily, though, it hadn’t visited again, so it was easy enough to enjoy May’s company and leave it at that. Even Amanda, the supposed friend that she hadn’t known she had, had proven more valuable than she’d anticipated. Somehow, one of their conversations had morphed into a shopping trip to track down new outfits, and in the midst of it, Gianna had discovered a potentially important loophole for her own comfort: if Amanda suggested something for her, and held onto it herself until checkout, the curse surrounding clothing didn’t seem to really come into effect. True, she couldn’t directly suggest things without it kicking it, but if she played like she was unsure about fashion or something, letting Amanda guide her while subtly nudging her towards the sort of things Gianna preferred, the results were a little better. Sure, she still wasn’t able to net anything proper like pants, but at least she managed to get a couple of blouses with reasonable cleavage, some skirts that actually approached a professional length, and some leggings that, while not ideal, at least looked vaguely pants-like and didn’t have the same sort of spade-centric, ultra-conforming crotch that the other ones did. Minor things, perhaps, but to see them hanging in her closet still felt like a victory over the boneheap, a way to assert her power and put one over on it. She still didn’t exactly love wearing what was on offer, and the boneheap did tend to have one or another of her preferred garments go “missing” on a daily basis, but it was progress. She’d even felt confident enough, when she’d seen it happen, to call the boneheap out on breaking its own stupid rules. Of course, the slimy thing had simply made up another one on the spot, that it could remove one thing a day as long as it replaced it with something similar that was to its tastes, but she’d badgered it sufficiently over the course of a couple of days that it had somehow relented and actually given her something she wanted: Every time it did a replacement, it would have to give her a point towards her total. Admittedly, it had come with conditions of its own: whatever it replaced, as long as it was reasonable to wear in public, she’d have to wear it the next day, and at least occasionally after that, plus she couldn’t toss it out and replace it with something else, or the boneheap could revert it for free. That, and it reserved the right to mess with her underwear for free, as long as it only swapped out a small amount at a time. More aggravation, but by her estimation she still came out ahead: considering the stupid game she was playing, points were more important than any of it, and if wearing a few stupid things meant she was raped by one less asshole before the challenge arrived, it could only be a good thing. In that sense, perhaps she’d made a couple of concessions, but she’d won a much more important battle. Finally, the boneheap had given in, at least a little, and for the first time she actually believed that there might be a way to get the upper hand. Predictably enough, though, that sense of having more power and control over her own life ended up being the thing that led to her latest humiliation. Riding that wave of success, so confident was she, after a successful (if sexually uneventful) date with May, that after they’d parted ways and Gianna was walking back to her car, she hadn’t even though twice about taking a shortcut down an alleyway between two downtown buildings. In fact, she’d been walking along, lost in her own thoughts, that she was halfway down the alley before the cautious part of her even woke up to the fact that it was a stupid thing for a lone, attractive, and basically unarmed woman to do. And even then, when her eyes snapped back to alertness, the rest of her just about brushed it off, and it wasn’t until the padding of feet became just barely audible a few steps behind her that she realized just how real the threat was. By then, though, it was too late, and she barely even had time for the notion of the curse - that if she left herself vulnerable, someone would inevitably take advantage of it - to flash through her mind before she felt the heavy impact of someone slamming into her from the side, sending her careening to slam into the nearby wall. And that was it - before she could recover, before she could even spin around and try to confront whoever it was face to face, he was on her. A hand reached up to clasp hard around her muzzle, the iron-strong grip keeping her jaws clamped firmly in place. Even as she tried to bring one of her hands up to try and prize his fingers off of her, his other hand locked around her wrist with the same powerful grip and twisted it around, trapping her entire arm against her back. (display:"breadcrumb")

(display:"header") Initially, Teiya seemed just as mystified by the message, but Caure’s penchant for capriciousness and randomness had preceded her - as soon as Dain mentioned her name, Teiya just sighed, nodded, and seemed to accept it without further question. “I’m sure, whatever it is, if it’s important to her, then it probably ought to be important to me, too,” he’d commented, although the enthusiasm on his face didn’t quite seem to match his statement. Of course, being a guy, staying in the good graces of the girls he knew, even the difficult ones, was of paramount importance. For Dain, of course, it was a little different - but then again, Caure was Caure, and Dain knew she’d never hear the end of it unless she went over and heard what Caure had to say. As they began walking, though, Teiya’s expression began to look more genuinely happy, although it took Dain a few moments to realize why. However Teiya felt about Caure - and Caure was one of those people you couldn’t help but feel something about - Dain realized that Teiya was probably happy not so much about going to see her, so much as to be walking alongside Dain in the first place. The way that she was dressed, in the fashion that let her more easily blend in with the girls, also meant that, breasts or not, it was easy enough to see that she was in her female form. That, in and of itself, was apparently enough to make the first few blocks go by mostly in silence, with a few halting attempts at conversation from Teiya that his nervousness apparently choked off after one or two syllables. Awkwardness aside, though, whenever she glanced over he was looking back, grinning - not in that strange, obviously aroused expression that some of the boys tended to wear whenever they were around girls, but a warm, genuine smile. It was obvious enough that Teiya liked her - although, that could probably be said for most of the guys in her class. Which made sense, of course: Dain had been a guy for long enough to understand that particular pressure, that desperate hope that a girl might actually find you worthy, and if one actually did, you couldn’t help but like them for that. With Teiya, she knew, it was a little more than that, considering they’d actually known each other a little beforehand. That, and considering his background, he wasn’t exactly on the short list for most girls’ heats - in fact, he might have even been resigning himself to a life based entirely around something else, as Dain had himself anticipated in the months before the first episode of shifting, and to have suddenly been invited to her heat had probably boosted his hopes a thousandfold. Certainly, in the intervening weeks, he’d seemed ecstatic any time she’d shown him the slightest bit of attention, and being able to walk with her, like that, his expression looked like he was appreciating every step. The strange thing was, as they walked along, Dain realized that as far as feelings went, she felt a certain… something for him as well. True, he was the first guy she’d ever been with as a girl, and maybe that had to do with some of it, but at the same time, she knew that it wasn’t just some reverberations of that memory that drove her interest. In a sea of changes, he was one of the people, along with Caure and her other, mostly female friends, that had provided some level of similarity, of stability. Even the relationship with Eloa, her own mother, had gone from cool but predictable to an almost surreal closeness that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, but Teiya was still the same boy he’d always been, quiet, simply-spoken, skilled at building and shaping the things that his imagination could conjure. And yet, looking at him, she realized that even though his personality was largely the same, certain other things about him had changed. If Dain’s particular situation had led to certain aspects of her combined form becoming more noticeably feminine overall, in the same intervening time Teiya had stepped more comfortably into a quickly developing masculinity. It was still, perhaps, subtler than in some of the other boys, but even beneath his fur there was a sense of more bulk, more definition. His posture reflected it too, standing him up a little straighter, making each stride forward seem possessed of a little more confidence. His face, too, was clearly trending more in that direction, his muzzle held a little more squarely, his cheekbones and brow a little more pronounced in a traditionally masculine way. True, none of it was as pronounced as some of his peers, but in a way that was a good thing; while seeing a display of excessive masculine confidence in her female form still produced feelings in Dain that she wasn’t exactly sure she was comfortable with or wanted to have, Teiya had just enough to be interesting in that inexplicable way without it feeling weird or intimidating. Even with the way he was developing, he’d probably never win any awards for attractiveness, but at the moment, being able to feel comfortable around him, in either of her forms, seemed like a much better reason to be attracted. Maybe, outside of heat, she wasn’t exactly ready to jump into his arms or anything quite like that, but she was more than happy to walk beside him - even, for a moment, entertaining the idea of reaching out and walking along hand in hand. It was a good thing, she supposed, that they were comfortable enough like that, as it would be a long enough walk that to be otherwise would have become more than awkward. Caure, like Dain, lived on the other side of town from where the school was, and so they’d need to walk all the way back. Considering that she’d never grown all that comfortable with it, she’d considered detouring the long way around the perimeter, closer to the factories than to the interior, but she’d been distracted enough that they’d both walked, more automatically then not, through that uncomfortable middle. It was the silence that finally shook her out of her thoughts and brought her back to where they were: no chatter, no diaspora of students, no footfalls around to run in counterpoint to their own, none of the sights or sounds of a populated world. Nothing but their own steps, accumulated leaves that had never been regularly cleared crunching underfoot, the sound of their own breath, and the slight rustle of the trees planted along the sidewalk, as the wind teased through the branches of those sole, stoic survivors. She could sense Teiya realizing it too, as his pace slowed, his head turning slowly from side to side as the eerie quiet flared out the tuft of fur that trailed down along his neck. Strangely enough, it was that quiet that spurred the first complete sentence from his mouth since they’d begun walking. “Um… how far in are we, do you think? M-maybe it’d make more sense just cut down that street we just passed, head back out and listen to the factories rumble the rest of the way…” “Well, it’s gonna take a while to backtrack, so it’s probably faster to just go through… I know what you mean about this place, though. At least it’s not like the dead center of town, all the way in, where everything’s breaking down and coming apart. It still looks kind of normal, I mean, just… empty…” As much as it made sense to talk about the center of town, the city really had two: the actual center, still built up and bustling, the place where everyone wanted to go - and the dead center, where no one did. It was off to the southeast, and the only part of the city that really looked like a cataclysm had hit, broken into ruins beyond the best efforts of the automated machines to resurrect it. A place she, and most other people, were forbidden to go - and yet, in a way, it was actually less creepy of a sight than the empty streets, still pristinely maintained but devoid of any real hints of life. Something about the nature of its destruction felt more… honest, more direct, in acknowledging the weight of what had happened. Here, the only real acknowledgement was the chilling silence, and the perfectly-preserved remnants of a population long gone. “Yeah, I guess we can just keep going… really, we’re almost adults now, it’s probably something that makes sense to get over, it’s just so… I don’t even have words for it, just that feeling that makes the fur creep up and down along my spine. I know it’s long over but…” He paused, seeming to think of something as they walked along. “You know, Lotoe said that he doesn’t think the people around here actually died.” Dain looked over, a little surprised at that. “Really?” “Well, that’s what he thinks, anyway. I know what the official story is, what they told us in class about it - that the robots just came along and made sure everything was tidied up, taking all those disturbing aspects and taking them away, leaving everything else in its place. But the way Lotoe said it, things are just too undisturbed, you know? Not a thing bumped out of place, and surely the robots wouldn’t have put everything exactly back to the way it was before cleaning up. He thinks that whatever the cataclysm actually was, at least some part of it - maybe some of it destroyed things, like in dead center, but the people that were here, they just… vanished. Vaporized, maybe, but he thinks that they just went somewhere else, or into some weird plane that can only be described by math and probabilities far beyond what I can make sense of. I dunno… all that weird plane stuff made it seem like they turned into… ghosts or something, although that’s even creepier than them just being gone.” Dain looked over to see him shiver for a moment, despite the reasonably warm fall air, before continuing. “I… sorry about rambling like that. I don’t know the truth of it either way, but being around here, it just sets me on edge. I mean… I don’t want to make you more upset about it or anything! When I’m in a place like this, though, I just need to start talking, about something, anything, so that the quiet doesn’t linger, you know?” “Yeah, but… maybe there’s something else to talk about than how creepy it is…” “No kidding. Who knows, maybe one day there’ll be enough people to occupy all these places again, and then it’ll be alive again, not this hollow, empty shell, but until then… er, that’s not to say that I’m insinuating anything, though! I mean, I’m not trying to talk about babies or heat or, um, anything like that! I, uh… sometimes I’m not sure how to talk to you, especially when you’re a girl…” “Like… you would anyone else?” “Except that you’re not like anyone else… no, wait, I didn’t mean it like that! I just meant… you’re in your girl form right now, and people are starting to go into heat again, and I’m getting all nervous because I’m still not sure who’s heat I’m getting invited to, I mean besides yours, and I don’t want you to rescind your invitation because I said something stupid without thinking, and these creepy, empty streets are making me feel even more unsure of myself…” “Well, um… I think it’s like this, okay? We’ve been around each other since we were little kids, in the same place nearly every day, for years and years. Maybe we weren’t ever really close or anything, but I know who you are, and I know that sometimes you say stuff that comes out in a way other than what you really meant. That happens with everyone sometimes, I guess, but with you maybe it’s a little more. So, I’m just kind of used to it. And if you’re worried about my heat… I really don’t even want to think about it yet, but you’re one of the few people in it that I’m actually familiar with, so I kind of need you there. You don’t have to be nervous about that, so… maybe just try and talk to me normally?” “Yeah… thanks. It’s just… it’s a little bit of a strange situation for me, but I know it’s nowhere near as strange as it is for you. I’ll try to calm down, but… we are going to meet Caure after all, and she is a little…” “Unpredictable?” “That’s one way to put it, for sure, and on top of that…” He looked around, uneasily, at the empty street, at the snapshots of interrupted tableaus visible through front-facing windows, seeming to linger on a kitchen table with one chair pulled conspicuously out as Dain followed his gaze. “Er, how many more blocks of this do you think there are?” “Just a few more until we’re back in a real neighborhood, I’m pretty sure, and since we’ll hit one fairly close to Caure’s own, it won’t be far from there. In the meantime, maybe we could talk about… stuff that doesn’t matter so much. Like classes, or the weather, or…” “Yeah, maybe that’s for the best…” Teiya glanced around once more, shivering a little, before intentionally picking up the pace. “So, have you been getting the same kind of math problems that I have? Because there’s this one, about logical operators or something, that’s driving me crazy…” They talked for a few minutes about the thankfully abstract subject, leaving the empty streets behind in favor of ones with more obvious signs of life. From there, it was only a few more streets over until Caure’s house appeared, a little bit bigger than those around it, painted a light, cheerful shade of yellow. They went up to the door, and Dain reached over to knock, but the door swung open before she could, her gesture passing only through air as the portal revealed a very intent-looking Caure on the other side of the transom. Since Dain’s extended hand was the closest part of her, Caure gripped onto her, pulling her quickly inside even as Dain noticed the obviously incongruous thing about her. Well, not Caure exactly, but the way she was dressed: in a female style of T-shirt, the kind with the abbreviated sleeves, in a vivid shade of purple that contrasted with the lighter shade that adorned the panties she was wearing below. Aside from a pair of of similarly-colored socks, it was all she was wearing below the waist, and while there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the main areas of the house right now to notice, to Dain it was a little disconcerting - although hard to focus on, what with Caure dragging her rapidly down the hallway and into her room. Once there, she mercifully let go, before jumping onto her bed and sitting there in a cross-legged position that only emphasized her current state of dress. She seemed unfazed by it, though, motioning for Dain and Teiya to join her. Dain, though, just kind of goggled at her a bit incredulously, while Teiya, at least what she could see of him in her peripheral vision, was rooted to the spot, almost sure to be blushing beneath his fur. “Great, you guys got my message! Come on, don’t just stand there, get up here! We’ve got, like, a ton of stuff to discuss, and I-“ “Um, Caure?” Dain interjected, trying hard not to look at Caure’s crotch. She knew how her male form would react to that sight, and wondered if it was going to somehow manifest itself in a way that was incompatible with her current clothing. Dain remained a girl, though, and in that form, seeing Caure like that felt… not arousing, not offensive, but something else, one of those still not-quite-comprehensible female feelings that she’d experienced, from time to time, but still couldn’t fully parse what they meant. “Yeah? What is it?” “You’re, ah, not wearing anything down there…” “Huh? Sure I am! I mean, yeah, the colors don’t really match, but I a didn’t think you were one to care about that any- oh.” She looked over at Teiya, seeming to notice his reaction for the first time. “Okay… really, though? C’mon, don’t tell me you guys don’t hang out in your underwear sometimes, too! And really, both of you were actually inside me not all that long ago, so seeing me in my undies shouldn’t exactly be shocking…” Teiya, though, seemed strangely more shocked by what Caure had said, turning towards Dain with a clear look of surprise. “Wait… you were inside her? How does that even make…” He trailed off quickly, his surprise quickly overtaken by embarrassment. “Dain, I… I’m sorry! I don’t know why I said that, I mean of course I know you’re a guy, too! Sometimes I just… you’re a girl a lot now, you even dress like one a lot too, and since I got the invitation, I’ve just been thinking about it all the time, about heat, and you, and… I know about your shifting and all, but it’s just when I try to think about what we’re gonna be doing, and then try to think about you being with Caure as a guy, I just feel really confused…” Dain wasn’t quite sure why, but instead of holding her first answer in as she normally did, she found herself blurting it out. “Hey, I’m the one who’s actually having it happen to them! Trust me, you think you’re confused, but you have no idea, no idea at all…” Teiya actually shrank back from her for a moment. “I get it, I get it! Seriously, I’m not trying to make you pissed off or anything, I’m not trying to be insulting… it’s just confusing. You’re right, though. I don’t- I wouldn’t even begin to know how to handle that if it was happening to me. It’s just… I still don’t know what to say to you sometimes, or if I should say it like you’re a boy, or like you’re a girl…” “Then maybe… just say it like you’re talking to me? I mean, I’m me, just sometimes things are one way, and sometimes they’re another, but… I’m just me, okay? I don’t want to be confused about it either, but that’s the only way I can think about it. If I’m doing my own heat, or if I’m at someone else’s, I guess then it really matters, but outside of that, I just want to be me…” “Well, duh! Of course you’re you! Who else would you be?” Caure looked between the two of them, glaring for a moment, before her expression softened. “Look… Dain, I get it. The way I feel about you, I kinda have to, right? And Teiya’ll learn it too, and if he doesn’t, I’ll make him learn it. Problem is, he’s a guy, and a guy only, so there’s probably only one part of him that he’s really thinking with right now…” “Hey! I’m not-“ Teiya started, but Caure just smiled, shifting her legs around and spreading them further apart to give him an even better view of her panties, and he quickly returned to his state of mute blushing. “Yeah, that’s what I thought!” Caure said, laughing a little, although she cut it out when she caught Dain looking at her askance. “Jeez, I was just having a little fun! All right, all right, I’ll give it a rest, though…” She crossed her legs back tighter, but didn’t otherwise move to put on anything else. “You could, y’know, put some pants on,” Dain replied, glancing meaningfully over at Teiya’s particular state. “I think it would make things more… comfortable…” “More comfortable? Hah! If you really wanted that, you oughta both take your pants off! I mean, my mom and dads know better than to butt in now that I’m more grown up, so it’s not like anyone else is gonna see. And like I said, we’ve all seen way more of each other than that, so there’s no reason not to, but hey, I’m not gonna force you or anything…” Dain, of course, was more than happy to remain clothed, although when she turned back after clambering up onto the bed, she noticed that Teiya had managed to shed his loose pants. Not that it mattered too much, though - unlike the kind of supposedly sexy, tighter stuff guys tended to wear when at a girl’s heat, he was wearing a pair of loose, formless shorts that stretched most of the way down to his knees, and had apparently managed to calm down enough that nothing else was attempting to give them form. Still, Dain couldn’t help but feeling a little weird about it, even if Caure seemed to be looking at him appreciatively. She didn’t linger on it, though, and her face shifted back to at least some semblance of seriousness as she looked between the two of them. “All right, enough messing around - you know I’m not the kind of person who’d send a message like that just to get you guys to come over and hang out. And… well, I’ve been thinking about some stuff. A lot of stuff. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought about what I had to do, I knew I just needed to talk to you. To both of you.” She turned to Dain, looking right into her eyes, reaching over to where Dain’s hands were crossed in her lap and covering them with her own. “So, I talked with Ekka. At first, I wanted to say so many things to her, but the more I thought about what you said, how you felt, the more it started to sink in, and when I cornered her, I didn’t blow up, or lord it over her. I just… talked, and listened, let her say what she had to say and tried to really hear it. And I, I…” Caure’s eyes flashed for a moment, and Dain could feel her hands being squeezed as Caure ground her teeth for a moment. “Grrr… RRRR… I, I was… ngrrr… Gah! I was wrong, okay? You have no idea how hard it is for me to say that, but I was wrong! I don’t know how, but I didn’t see it, and I totally jumped to conclusions about everything that happened. It was… it was really freakin’ Ekka of me, is what it was, doing the same stupid stuff that she was sitting there apologizing to me for. She actually cried, do you know that? Right in front of me, sobbing, saying how sorry she was for everything that happened, but I was the one who was feeling so guilty about it. And not even guilty about her, at least for the most part! Okay, yeah, I was a little, but what it really was is that I felt guilty about how I treated you. How you were a part of all that too, and the way I got on you, the way I pushed you, the things I said to get you to do stuff just so I could get what I wanted… I didn’t even see it. I didn’t even see just how shitty of a friend I was being to you, and that’s the worst part. I mean… I love you. I want to be your lover, want to be part of your family, want you to care about me as much as I care about you, but how can I do all that if I can’t even be a good friend? So that’s the most important reason for you to be here. So that I can sit right here, look you in the eye, and tell you how sorry I am that I screwed all that up. I mean… I’m me, I can’t change that, but I can change the part of it that I show to others, and Dain, especially to you… I want to show you the best part of me, or at least the best part I can manage. But before I can do that… I am really, truly sorry about getting out of hand like that. And I really, really need you to forgive me, to say that I haven’t really messed things up between us…” “It’s…” Dain had to admit that she was a little taken aback - Caure had a reputation for wearing her emotions on her sleeve, sure, but those weren’t the emotions she usually displayed. And yet, for all that… somehow, it actually felt like the most genuine feelings that she’d expressed to Dain in a while. “Caure… I kind of know how you are by now, right? I decided years ago that I just needed to let that roll off me, because… you’re my friend, and friends learn to overlook that stuff because it doesn’t matter that much. The stuff with Ekka… maybe it was too much, but she did do the stuff that she did too, so… maybe it’s for the best, this way? Now that it’s all out in the open, now that everyone’s said what they had to say, and we can just put it all behind us. Maybe that’s the best way to do it, not look at all the bad stuff that happened, not make it about blame or guilt or forgiveness, but just decide that it’s done, and it doesn’t matter now because we’re past it. Because that’s the thing - I really just want to be done with all that. Since I talked to her, I know why she did what she did, and I know why you reacted, too. Sometimes I don’t know how to really… feel about it, but I know how much you care about me, how much you want to protect me, and while I’m not sure about why you got so weird about it after a while, the way you stood up for me… sometimes it’s more adventurous than what I’m used to, but no matter what, I’m glad to have you as a friend…” Caure seemed… relieved by her response, at least. “Well, that’s… not really what I expected you to say, but I guess that’s fair. It’s been a weird time for all of us, I think, and we all are handling it differently. I know I’m probably handling it the worst, which is even weirder, since I’m probably the most prepared for it all. I mean, I still remember when we were back in the workshop, and Dain still thought he was just a boy, and the two of you didn’t think you were going to be involved in any of this, sitting there and talking about how you were going to focus on your careers and being the best at them instead. None of you even thinking that it mattered, and I thought that the most we might ever be with either one of you is a friend… and now here we are, with each one of us attending the heats of the other two. I don’t know if anyone else can say something quite like that.” She turned slightly to look at Teiya. “That’s kind of why you’re here, too. Er, that is, I don’t really have anything to apologize to you about. But… because of heat, because of that, you’re more connected now to both of us than anyone else, and that’s why I want you to be part of this.” “Okay, but… part of what?” Even though he’d been on the periphery of the conversation, and should have had a chance to at least regain some of his composure, Teiya still looked a little flustered. “Well… that brings me back to all that stuff I was thinking about. Some of it was about apologizing to Dain, but the other stuff… although I guess since you’re a boy all the time, you probably don’t know all that much about it.” “That… still doesn’t really explain anything?” “Oh yeah, I guess that wasn’t very specific, but what I meant was, the stuff that girls go through, not heat, but… deciding who’s going to be a part of it. You know, matching, scheduling, all that sort of stuff. I thought it was gonna be simple - well, probably actually complicated in terms of figuring out who it’s supposed to be, but once that’s done, you just pick who you want, makes sure things don’t conflict with other girls, and then it’s all set. And that’s how it was the first time, before Dain was added to the system as a girl. You choose who you want, and that’s what you get if they’re available. Except with Dain, well… they picked some of the boys for her, told her that’s who she was gonna be with for her heat. Now, mind you, it wasn’t like it was bad, and the other girls were pissed because some of those guys were the ones who were most in demand. That’s not why I was pissed, though.” Caure leaned back, releasing Dain’s hands to rub at the fur on her muzzle. Dain was sort of halfway glad to be released, although after what Caure had said, she hadn’t really minded the contact any more. She wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about Caure going into the weirdness that was her heat assignment, but it wasn’t like it was embarrassing or anything, so she let Caure continue. “In fact, I wasn’t really pissed about it, since if it helped Dain, why would I be? She’d get to be happy with some really nice guys during her heat, then become a man and be happy again at my heat, but… they screwed up on predicting the timing, and our heats are gonna overlap instead, and I got all angry that I wouldn’t get to be with Dain this time around since it’s the only time we can be really, truly close like that. It was no one’s fault, though, just a quirk of timing, so there wasn’t anyone to be pissed at, and being pissed with no purpose is boring. But then I started thinking about that, and I started to wonder. What if it’s not just Dain that they assign guys to? What if they decide we’re not making good decisions, and so our heats get scheduled for us? What if they decide we’re not supposed to be together, but with other people? And if we are, and because that closeness goes away we start to drift apart, and then… well, that’s about the point I really started to get pissed off, but it’s not like I can change the schedule if they do that, right? Especially not if that’s what we need, when it’s time to be fertile, if that’s what we have to do just to make sure that there are lots of kids and everyone survives… but I don’t just want to be with some strangers. I want to be with my friends, and I don’t want to lose any of them. And you two, especially, I just couldn’t bear to let that happen… and that’s why we’re here.” (display:"breadcrumb")

(display:"headera") The ancients had called it Aruze, and it was one of the last known words etched into their books of knowledge before their civilization apparently regressed over a hundred years overnight, all but erasing a decades-long civilization that had built up from the jungles of barbarity. Once it hit, it had taken several hundred years more before a new civilization could be rebuilt from whatever the chaos and turmoil had left over once it had swept through. The society had done well, modernizing quickly, and had made it to a world of jets and skyscrapers, factories and internetworks. Still, while historians had found the occurrence of Aruze to be a fascinating one, scientists had never been able to isolate anything that seemed at all related from historical artifacts, and whatever the true nature of the calamity, it had been eventually been blamed, by a consensus of anthropologists, on an unpredictable flare-up of social unrest, perhaps brought on by the civilization’s monarchic systems and relative inequality. Any notion that it was due to something microbial had been long ago ruled out. And, in fact, the microbes in question were, in fact, not all that focused on longevity - once they had become established, they had all but mutated their way into oblivion, eventually purged from the bodies of all involved, but not before the damage was done. Before they went, though, inside the cells of some of their victims, they had encountered a virus that was already replicating, and joined in on the fun, appending some of their own DNA onto the virus’ new copies, innocuous bits and pieces that for all the world looked like little more than junk data when said virus, now a common cold, was eventually sequenced. And so, for hundreds of years, the virus of Aruze had been all but dead, carved up into unrelated snippets that circulated from one mutation of the cold virus to the next, parts that did nothing on their own. Over time, though, viruses combined again, and certain strains that resulted had more and more pieces attached, and finally there were three separate strains that, between them, had essentially all of the genetic material of that ancient foe stored somewhere within them. And in the year 372 in the modern calendar, after an unpleasant week of being coughed and hacked on at work during the cold season, the cells of Jacovary Arunthelada are where all three strains tried to meet and reproduce simultaneously. And when they did, of the various strings of genetic material that emerged, five were common cold variants - and one bore all but a few hallmarks of the dread disease. As he walked down a cold, thinly-traveled thoroughfare on his way home, hacking and coughing and wiping his wolflike muzzle on the scarf bundled around his neck, the reconstituted virus was already going to work. It had formed a beachhead of cells with which to reproduce, rudely shoving the weaker originating viruses out of the way, as its particular peptide chains began to cause the body to do unusual things. The first and most important of those things, once the virus had made its way to certain strategic parts of the body, was to infiltrate certain bodily cells involved in the localized nerves and instantly stimulate them to release a very specific toxin that they usually contained inside without incident: a synthetic neurotransmitter that bound instantly to receptors in his central nervous system as soon as the blood reached them, the transmitters quickly causing a chain reaction that worked its way up his spine and found their way to a very specific, very ancient part of his brain, where they went to work stoking a very basic and even more undeniable drive. By the time Jacovary realized that something was amiss, something worse than just his cold symptoms, it was far too late, and his higher-level consciousness faded away into the background, as those inbuilt instincts, buried in the lower parts of his brain, were artificially stimulated into life. In only a matter of moments from when the infection initiated, the most animalistic part of his brain took over, and his body, now well outside of his own conscious control, was suddenly little more than a slave to those basic impulses. And as soon as those impulses had a target, as soon as autonomically roving eyes lit on something that the hind-brain functions identified as suitable, his body sprang into motion. By the time said target, the woman walking in front of him, was even aware of how the gait of the man behind her had suddenly changed, he was already lunging forward. She didn’t even have time to turn her head to see what was happening before he collided with her from behind, his arms wrapping around her and his voice snarling savagely and wordlessly in her ear as he took her to the ground. The woman, Caelesca, momentarily stunned by the impact, quickly felt the anonymous man writhing on top of her, hands tugging viciously at her clothing, albeit in a strangely uncoordinated way. For a moment, she couldn’t even figure out what was happening. After all, the man couldn’t be trying to rape her, could he? It was the middle of the day, and there were dozens of other people around, some of whom were surely already reacting to what was going on. Maybe the man was having a seizure, or was on drugs, or just insane somehow - he certainly seemed all but incoherent. She knew, whatever was happening, that she did need to get him off, though, so she trued to turn her body underneath him and see if she could flip him off. When she tried to push back, though, he roughly shoved her back onto the ground, but she managed to get her head turned enough to see him snarl at a bystander who had come up to grab his arm, but his grasp missed, and the hand swung out to claw him across the face, tiny droplets of blood trailing off to follow the hand’s path as the bystander staggered back, clutching at the wound. Then the man shoved her shoulders back down towards the sidewalk, continuing to snarl incoherently as he went back to her clothing. He still seemed to have no idea how the clothes worked, but this time he just used his claws, digging them into the fabric of her running pants until the seat of them ripped in two. By the time the realization finally sunk in - that the man really was going to rape her - it was far too late to do anything about it. Another quick swipe against her, and the crotch of her panties were ripped away, followed by even more ripping sounds above her as the man tore at his own clothes. Caelesca made one last desperate attempt to squirm out from under him, but the weight of him atop her was too much to counter, and a moment later he slammed down forcefully against her rear, his hard tip probing against one buttock, than the other. He continued his seemingly random thrusting, wrapping his arms around her body and pinning her own to her sides, his muzzle digging into her neck and puffing heat against it, his snarls reverberating against her fur. She desperately tried to tilt her hips back and forth, trying to keep his quick, uncoordinated thrusts from getting anywhere, but either bad luck or sheer persistence meant that when she moved in one particular way, he did too, and his tip speared the center of her pussy, pushing through its meager resistance and slamming inside. The man howled on top of her, and she screamed at the feeling of him brutally violating her. Now that he’d found the right spot, his thrusts came even quicker, hard and rough as he slammed down against her. She was unprepared for his sudden, violent intrusion, and the emergency lubrication her panicked body tried to produce was far too inadequate to protect her against the savage assault. The friction of the rough, unceasing pounding quickly abraded the surface of her inner walls, just as they did the flesh of the penis that was rubbing and thrusting against them. It wasn’t much, wasn’t the kind of wound that would be visible to the naked eye, but the abrasions were just enough to expose the capillaries on the exterior of each reproductive organ, which was one of the locations the virus strategically located its initial payload. This meant that as soon as the capillaries were exposed, they allowed virus-laden microdroplets of blood to emerge, mixing amidst the internal conflict, and reentering the exposed bloodstreams of both. And, in that brief moment, Jacovary, the index patient, propagated the first transmission of Aruze in nearly a millenium. Once the virus entered Caelesca’s bloodstream, the effects were almost as immediate as they had been with Jacovary. From their point of penetration along the vaginal walls, the viral particles and the toxins they caused her cells to release spread through various veins, until they made it into one that crossed through the base of the tail and provided access to her spinal column. As soon as the toxins hit, making their way up the nerve bundles protected by her spine, it was only a matter of moments before her higher functions shuddered and gave way to her body’s new directives. Her struggle and screams beneath the man quickly ceased, her muscles relaxing and her hips arching up instinctively to meet the man’s thrusts as her body heeded its ancient genetic programming and did its part to facilitate mating. All that was left was his muted snarling, her quiet panting, and the rhythmic, staccato thrusting of their bodies. By the time the man erupted inside her, what was left of Caelesca’s thoughts were swirling, confused and barely conscious, somewhere towards the back of her mind as something deep within her opened naturally to accept his seed. It was all over in a couple of minutes, during which no one else had been brave enough to intercede - a crowd had begun to form around them, however, which meant that as Jacovary pulled out, his penis glistening with the intermingled results of his assault, his roving, predatory eyes had an immediate selection of horrified, onlooking women to choose from. By that point, the virus’s initial nervous system onslaught was already fading - as it found other types of cells to invade and use to reproduce, it had moved beyond the initial phase of neurotransmitter stimulation - and, in any case, the receptors in his central nervous system had already been completely saturated. However, the signals that had already been sent had kicked things into gear enough that his body’s own instinctual machinery was already taking over to make the impulses self-sustaining, flooding his body with enough adrenaline and powerful hormones to fuel his uncontrollable, animalistic lust for at least as long as his body’s stores of energy could maintain it. As a result, he only took as long as needed in the center of the shocked, puzzled crowd for his body’s reproduction to reset and his erection to return - which, given everything that was pouring through his systems, didn’t take very long at all - before he lunged forward, this time towards a woman in a skirted business suit probably on her way to work, and she barely had time to bring her hands halfway up to futilely stave him off before he brought her to the ground. Meanwhile, the bystander who had attempted to intervene earlier was leaning against a lamp post several feet away, keeping one eye on the spectacle as he conferred with an emergency dispatcher on his cellphone while he used his free hand to dab at the scratches on his face. A smaller sample of the virus had managed to make its way to Jacovary’s unwashed hands when he’d absentmindedly licked one of them a little earlier, and so it took a few minutes more for the virus particles to prod enough nearby cells and bring the neurotransmitter amount to a critical mass. So it was that Jacovary was most of the way through raping the second woman before the bystander, Crandeno, started to feel any of the virus’ immediate effects, and a few minutes after that before the transmitters found their mark and the cellphone slipped out from hands that no longer understood what it was. By the time he began stepping forward towards the crowd, his pupils dialed down to points as the intelligence in his eyes glazed over in unthinking lust, a crowd of over a dozen people had gathered around the scene. Most of them, it seemed, were just watching: several people in businesswear, a few joggers, a couple of college students carrying messenger bags emblazoned with the logo of the local school. The college kids seemed to be back a few steps, filming the scene on their cellphones, while a couple of the businesspeople had their own phones to their ears, probably trying to call the situation in. One of the joggers crouched down to help Caelesca up, puzzled by the fact that she just wanted to lie there, her ass sticking up in the air. Another was trying to grab onto Jacovary’s arm and pull him off of his second victim, but the woman didn’t have the strength, struggling and straining for a moment before Jacovary shook his arm free and brought it back down against the wrist of his struggling victim, pinning it down again as he tried to hump his way past her tangled clothing. The rest just seemed to be staring, disbelieving that what they were witnessing was actually happening. Their vision, certainly, was focused on the spectacle in front of them, so much so that the woman didn’t even seem to take much notice of the sound that Crandeno made as he walked quickly up behind her. She gasped for a moment as she felt his arms encircle her, trapping her own against her sides, before he hooked a foot around her ankle and took her legs out from under her. She fell forward, landing hard in the dirt and coughing as the wind was knocked out of her, looking up to see the face of the other woman now inches away from her own, eyes wide with fear as her muzzle rubbed back and forth against the dirt in response to the frenzied thrusts of the man on top of her. It took the woman a single shocked, stunned moment before she realized that she was in the very same impossible situation, but even as she tried to pull air back into her lungs and find the strength to move, she could already feel hands shoving her skirt roughly up and tearing away at the thin fabric of her pantyhose beneath.

(display:"headera") Finally, it was time. The exams were over, the celebrations waiting in the wings, and at the front gates of the academy, a massive plywood board had been erected with the names of five thousand students, in tiny type and alphabetical order, along with the assignment that would direct them over the next half-decade of mandatory national service. In such a time of peace, whether tentative or not, the assigned divisions would not necessarily correspond to a military service branch - Division One, for instance, would build roads and rails, bridges and overpasses, and restore the infrastructure lost to past conflicts; Division Two would work to rebuild other aspects of society, doing communal social work to improve the lots of those who had the least, and paradoxically suffered the greatest. There were a dozen in all, building on different traits and specialties, and would certainly have impacts on each student’s life depending on which one they were assigned. Unsurprisingly, everyone wanted to know as soon as things were posted, cheering or grumbling when their name was finally found, a massive throng crowding around to discover their respective fates. Even Rathelia and her friends, who had been smart enough to hang back and watch the spectacle for the first couple of hours, still had to push through the dwindling group of people clustered around the base of the display. Shelyonne, small but determined, had been the first of them willing to push through, creating an aisle behind her just large enough for them to follow in single-file. Kanett, though, was a little taller, and was the first to spot her own name towards the middle of the board. “Division Two? Blech! Well, I know how bored I’m gonna be the next five years! I hope you guys at least do a little better…” Rathelia was toward the rear of her group of friends, not in close enough to make out any names clearly, but Shelyonne was industrious enough for all of them, pushing left and right and tracking down their names one by one. “Huh… found my name first, and I’m Division Eleven. Marine and Amphibious Forces. Can’t say I mind, though - always did imagine ending up somewhere they might place a gun in my hands. Let’s see, though, who else is nearby… Sylda and Rathelia, you guys have…” She trailed off for a moment, taking the sort of abrupt breath that could only indicate surprise. “I’m sure you’ll want to see it for yourself, just so you can actually believe it, but the both of you are set up to audition for Division Seven.” It was relatively unbelievable, for that matter, but when Rathelia shoved her way through to look, sure enough, there was the designation beside her name. Division Seven… the only other division besides Twelve, the super-elite special forces that only men and Draghal could be chosen for, that one actually had to try out for. Seven, though, was reserved only for women, and even then, the only ones sent to try out were the sort that were clever and robust in both body and spirit. As Rathelia had specialized in wrestling and Var Kai, the official sparring discipline of the advanced army divisions, and Sylda had a collection of ribbons and awards for endurance running and long-distance swimming, it wasn’t entirely surprising that they fit the bill, but as she glanced at the names of other girls on the various sports teams, only one or two others appeared to be chosen. There was no question that even being asked to try out for Division Seven was an honor, even if the duties it involved were a little more… irregular than some of the other military disciplines. For starters, were it not for the Draghal, Division Seven probably wouldn’t have existed. Previously dwelling only on a tiny series of islands far off the coast, they had only seen fit to come ashore and settle in the independent nation of Vedovia, one of the few places besides the islands warm enough for them to enjoy staying for any length of time. They had been different than the short-furred species that had shared it before, and while there were many that hardly believed it, they laid claim to the blood of the mythic dragons of old. True, they were tall and solid, with scales of shimmering red, green and gold, but they walked on two legs like everyone else. Nor could they soar into the air on their own power, with wings that at best could let them glide enough to survive descending from a significant height, and seemed used far more as appendages reserved for prideful ornamentation. The only fire they could spit was the result of high-proof spirits held in their mouths, and set alight with a spark from their metallic teeth. Nevertheless, though, they were fearsome soldiers, able to shrug off bullets that would have felled lesser creatures, and never backed down, even to the point of death. Before their decision to ally with the Vedovians, theirs had been a nation beset on all sides by countries that hated them, and had fought war after war to the detriment of their country. Within a year of the Draghal joining their forces, though, and fearsomely thumping multiple invading armies back to whimper behind their own borders, for the first time in decades the nation had known a true sense of peace, and a chance to rebuild and capture the attendant prosperity. The Draghal, of course, weren’t perfect, especially in one particular way - a way, in fact, that had been the impetus for their migration. Both genders of Draghal, male and female, were tremendous fighters, but when it came to love, they differed greatly. There was no sense of coupling like that which occurred in most other species. For a single week out of the year, the women as one would become fertile and receptive, and for that week the attention of all mature Draghal was completely occupied with mating. At the end of the week, though, the women would be done, and men that tried to press the issue afterwards often ended up with one of their heads missing: the one atop their neck, the one between their legs, or sometimes both. A few months later, eggs would be laid, and guarded ferociously until they hatched, revealing children that emerged already capable in their own right. The problem, though, was that once the men came of age, their drive to mate flared into being - but it stayed, constant, instead of the female ebb and flow over the course of seven short days. What were they to do, then, for the next seven, and all the sevens after that? Their answer had been to avail themselves of the women from the other species that had populated the islands. Draghal loving, though, was not short, easy, or gentle, and the other women could only handle their attentions for so long before breaking in some way or other. Because of that, and because Draghal weren’t exactly known for asking before taking, the other species had been furious, but unable to challenge them in a fight. With the women so predated, though, some generations later and the other species were no longer viable, the survivors either constructing vessels and fleeing or dying out. Left to their own devices and unresolved urges, the recourse for male Draghal was only to rage, and to fight, but they were smart enough to see the dead end such a thing would have caused. And so they emigrated. Within their adopted country, though, with a modern military presence, they knew that such behavior could lead to hostility that they couldn’t fight off with their present numbers. It was that primary reason, then, that they chose to fight on the front lines - enemy women would be their spoils, and since the enemies were long-hated, no one much minded if they crossed borders and captured playthings from a few nearby villages. Once peace was declared, though, such things were no longer feasible, and after several citizens of Vedovia perished in Draghal hands, prostitutes or not, it had brought the issue to a head. Around the same time, though, another story had emerged: of the few women at that time who had shown enough determination and drive to make it into the elite forced where most of the Draghal were stationed, several of them had taken up with Draghal men. Despite serving with them, and being with them, for months on end, they were none the worse for wear, and claimed to enjoy their time with them. As their conduct at the time was against regulations, it was investigated extensively, but with a useful conclusion: not only were certain women able to satisfy Draghal lust, they were tough enough in the matings to hold their own, and the Draghal, unlike the way they seemed to treat others of any gender, behaved towards them closer to how they did with women of their own species. For some of the women, who had proved their mettle time and time again beside them in battle, their Draghal partners would even let them take a dominant position during sex, something that had been unheard of outside of interactions with actual Draghal females during the short mating season. Division Seven was the direct result of those revelations: an elite unit of women trained in both the most advanced forms of combat and in interacting with Draghal warriors in every aspect, especially sexual - once accepted and trained, they would serve in conjunction with the nation’s fiercest warriors whenever conflict again reared its head, supporting the nation’s most important military advantage in whatever way was needed. Because they were the piece that allowed that advantage to work in a way that kept the peace intact, though, they were seen as critically important, and therefore promoted by the government in such a manner. Division Seven, then, was both the most difficult and the most prestigious posting a woman could get, and once their service was up, were awarded opportunities commensurate with that status. Even if a woman wasn’t able to make the cut and join Division Seven proper, just being chosen was enough to catch the eye of prospective colleges and employers afterward, and enough to ensure that even those who failed wouldn’t end up in one of the more mundane divisions for the duration of their service. (display:"breadcrumb")

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(display:"headera") (newly updated: 4/25/16) Rauthmont Consolidated Secondary School loomed before me in all of its grey, brutalist glory, two imposing stories of drab concrete blocks and round, sunken windows that seemed to glare back at me in mute challenge. The building was forbidding enough that even the plants around its perimeter seemed to unconsciously shrink back from its walls, and an unfortunate planting of ivy had shriveled in futility halfway up one of the walls, the sparse green growth at the bottom betrayed by the blackened, withered skeletons of vines barely adhering to the concrete above. Inside, probably, the place was the same as any post-junior school, but its exterior was enough to make me shiver involuntarily as I walked up the gravel path to its wrought-iron front doors. That the building was intimidating was hardly a surprise; after all, long before it had been a high school, it had served as the regional command bunker during the Half-Century War. Even now, there were still visible gaps in the front through which heavy turrets had once pointed outward, and in places the concrete was still chipped and pockmarked from small-arms fire, the damage left intact as part of the preservation of its historical legacy. The war itself had taken place long before the current time, but to a certain extent, it was that war’s resolution that ultimately led to me, or at least to my currently inconvenient conundrum. At the time the war had taken place, there had only been one type of sentient people: humans, and all the lesser animals and other life below them. Sometimes, they had enjoyed and promoted peace; other times, they descended into conflicts, ones that occasionally merged into devastating, globe-spanning war. It had been a world devoid of magic, supplanted by wondrous and terrible technology, and during the Half-Century War nearly all of it had been brought to bear as nation fought against nation, continent against continent. Still, it wasn’t enough to be decisive, which meant that the warring parties had looked for any possible edge to ensure their victory. In a long-forgotten cave in South America, one such group thought that they’d found such an edge, tucked away beyond a puzzling seal that they finally managed to pierce with technological ingenuity. When they did, though, what they discovered, what they released, was far different than they’d imagined. The thing about magic was, the world had never really been devoid of it after all - an ancient civilization, aware of the dangers of its manifestation, had somehow managed to trap it and seal it away. The warnings they’d left alongside it, though, were in a language that had long since been lost to time, and in their mad dash for power, it was doubtful that the interlopers would have heeded it anyway. So the seal was breached - and just like that, magic, and everything that came along with it, had flowed out into the world once more. In a sense, those who broke the seal got what they wanted - in the chaos that ensued, the military campaigns of the war collapsed into confused retreat, and a few years later a reluctant armistice was signed that left borders basically unchanged. After what had transpired, though, such borders had become of considerably less import, mainly due to what had arrived along with the magic. In most parts of the world, the main religions had been monotheistic, but upon the release of the seal that concept was quickly dashed - the main thing released beyond the magical energy itself were the beings, the deities, that were so indelibly intertwined with it. All of a sudden, instead of one unknowable god, there were hundreds, thousands, each one released to seek out followers and power, along with its own niche within the natural world that it would control. And when it came to followers, most wanted more than worship and loyalty - to cement the bond, the followers would be transformed in their image, an indelible mark of which deity they served. There was one deity, taking on the name Ningen, that had claimed dominion over people; it had put down stakes on the island of Hokkaido and had left its population of people, of humans, intact. Everywhere else, though, people had changed, with the whims of whichever deities had settled upon the region. Many of the powerful, commanding deities had settled on animal interpretations of some sort, or at least the ones that were the most territorial; the ones who had claimed the region where I grew up were a sort of canine pantheon that had banded together to control a whole chunk of the continent. The humans that had resided in Canada and the northern parts of the United States, then, had been transformed into dog-people of one sort or another, the precise type determined by which canine god ruled over each specific region. The southern part of the country had become more fragmented, with scorpion-people in the desert west, sand lizards in the Texas expanse, and gators in the swampy east. On the other continents the transformations had been different, if just as dramatic: towards various sorts of rodents in South America, avians in western Europe, cat-people in Africa and bear-people lumbering about the shivering expanses made up of the former Soviet republics. There were even more unusual types that were rumored, although rarely seen in person: tree-people on the British Isles, now sequestered by their deities with impassible mists, mer-people abandoning small South Pacific islands for the surrounding seas, even cloud-people transformed by the regional weather deities to assist them somehow, invisibly, in the skies. Apart from the ones powerful enough to claim specific dominion over their own territories, there were even more deities beyond that, staking their claims where they could: there were now lords of lakes and streams, demigods claiming dominion over everything from computers to toasters to grandfather clocks, each with their own drives and motivations and demands for prayer and loyalty, even if it usually wasn’t of the transformative sort. The result was that, for a time, the world had largely dissolved into chaos as its people came to terms, both with their transformations and with the new world order. Now, though, two hundred years hence, things had stabilized, and people had adapted to the new world, at least for the most part. Satisfied that they were paid their due, the distributed gods had far less incentive to meddle. Woe betide the one who crossed any of them, intentional or otherwise, but beyond that the world generally worked. Sure, we had to do things like wearing special headbands on Thursdays to honor the goddess of clothing, and I would certainly have to genuflect for a moment to appease the Lord of Doors before opening an important set like Rauthmont’s front portal, but it was something I had long grown used to. Still, if it hadn’t been for the release of the magic and everything contained with it, there wouldn’t have been any such deities present at all, and certainly not the particular one that my mother, in her youth, had made the mistake of accidentally insulting. She’d been in Malaysia for a month as part of a college-exchange program - while in the early days, the regional deities had wanted to keep their followers close, after the transformations travel had again been encouraged, both as a way to show off the caliber of their followers to other deities, and to provide spies or small bits of influence in the territories of others. While there, things had largely gone smoothly, both with the local deities and with the native salamander-person population. In fact, it all would have been fine had it not been for one single, fateful day. It had been getting on towards summer, hot and humid, and she’d spent the morning with some friends hiking up to a temple, commercialized and touristy as it had become, to take pictures, enjoy the surroundings, and drink plenty of chilled, aromatic tea from the nearby cluster of vending stalls. The place had been crowded, though, and once the tea had caught up with her, she’d headed for the facilities only to be faced with a long line for the women’s bathroom. She couldn’t wait that long, though, and upon heading to the other side, she discovered that the male bathroom, fortuitously, was both empty and had a door that could be temporarily locked. All it had, though, were urinals, and a single stall with a seat so covered in dubious secretions she’d been afraid to sit down on it. So, with some effort, she’d managed to angle herself properly over one of the urinals and relieve herself in an effective, if unconventional, manner. To her misfortune, however, such an act had not gone unnoticed by a local deity that had apparently laid claim to some aspect of masculinity. For some insane reason, perhaps simply because it was one of the few things used exclusively by men, it had decided that urinals were sacred bastions of masculinity, and that only men could consecrate them with their urine; for a woman to use one, then, was a defilement of its ridiculous and petty principles. The deity, upon seeing this, seethed and stewed, and finally, that evening, manifested itself before her. It told my mother of her defilement, a violation of its pointlessly rigid social order, and that to make it right, said order had to be restored - she would have to be “consecrated” in the masculine way in compensation for her defilement of the urinal. The consecration the deity called for, however, was for her to submit to some of his male canine “followers” that resided on the island, and in being so taken confirming their masculinity and thus honoring the deity. Seeing that rape for what it really was, though, my mother had indignantly refused its demand. This riled the deity up, and it resolved to punish her in a more traditional way: with a curse. Problem was, though, if it had cursed her, or her potential daughters-to-be, it would have offended the local goddess of femininity just as much as if he’d ordered his followers to just commit rape on their own, which was why it had asked my mother to submit to that treatment instead. The deity, not wanting to create a row and have to deal with that sort of trouble for both it and potentially its followers, had to refrain from such curses; but it had no restrictions on levying a curse upon her potential unborn sons. And that was exactly what it did, placing upon them a curse that they would no longer be entirely, or constantly, masculine; for their mother’s crime of defiling a urinal, there would be times when they themselves would be put in a state where they would be largely unable to use them. So it was, then, that for my older sister, there had been no consequences from my mother’s petty transgression. I, though, was her firstborn son, and from the moment of birth the curse had been at least partly apparent. Even at that point, my penis had been smaller than normal, not so microscopic that sex-reassignment was mooted, but only slightly above the minimum where it would have come into consideration. It was otherwise healthy, though, and in my earliest years everything went apparently normal, apart from being a little overly fond of playing dress-up, and not always in gender-appropriate clothing; that was long before I really understood gender, though, and while I don’t think my mother approved of it overly much, she was nervous enough about further messing with what the deity had done, and worried about her behavior offending him further and levying an additional curse on me, that she never said so much as a critical word about it. In most other respects, I was basically normal, just like any other boy. At least, that is, before one day in kindergarten, when a certain part of me had mysteriously gone missing. It had been getting on towards recess, so it was unsurprising at that time for me to have the anticipatory urge to pee. Except this time, the urge was moving somehow, from up in front, at the base of my penis, to somewhere else further inside. Something else didn’t feel quite right, like things between my legs were in different spots, and my briefs suddenly felt like they were on slightly wrong, looser in some places and tighter in others. I instinctively tried to reach down my pants to figure out what was going wrong, but some kids had already gotten in trouble for that kind of exploration, and when the teacher noticed and glared at me, I pulled my hand guiltily back. Things felt strange enough, though, that all I could do was cross my legs and watch the clock count down the few minutes until recess, even that motion strangely perturbing. I should have felt… things down there shifting when my legs crossed, but all of a sudden I couldn’t feel them at all. As soon as the bell rang, I darted to the bathroom, driven by anxious curiosity as much as the urge. I had rushed to one of the urinals, unzipping my pants and grabbing at the fly of my underwear, but there wasn’t anything to pull through - instead, the fabric was just empty, pushing back against a flat expanse of fur where my penis was supposed to be. I felt around for a few seconds, but nothing was there - even my balls seemed to be missing. The anxiety was fast approaching terror. I knew enough to know that boys had penises, and girls had… something else, but as far as I knew having a penis was a permanent part of being a boy. It wasn’t something that could just go missing… could it? And if it did, how was I supposed to get it back? I had to figure it out, and I still needed to pee somehow, but both seemed impossible standing in front of the urinal. And what if some other boy came in, and started laughing at me because I’d lost my penis and couldn’t find it again? I ducked into one of the stalls, locking the door to make sure it wasn’t going to swing open and expose me, pulling my pants and underwear down around my knees, trying to see what had happened. Sure enough, both my penis and balls were just gone, regular belly fur trailing down where they were supposed to be. Except… there was something else further down, between my legs, just a little fleshy bit of something below the fur, though I wasn’t flexible enough to really bend down and see what it was. It was easy enough to reach, though, and when I put my hand down between my legs, I realized that something else was different. Before, there had been my penis and balls, and of course my butt, but between them, between my legs, had just been a fluffy bit of nothing. Now, though, it wasn’t fur, but some sort of fleshy thing, weird and squishy, ridges and valleys that seemed to move and stretch around where my fingers touched them, while the touch itself against… whatever it was felt unquestionably squirmy and strange. What wasn’t in doubt, though, was that the urge to pee was still coming from some area vaguely in the center of it. Not knowing what else to do, I just sat down on the toilet and tried to go, although the muscles I had to release were slightly different somehow, and it took a couple of tries to figure out how to do it right. Once I did, though, the pee came out like normal, although it was strange to just feel it pouring out like that, without being able to aim it around at the thing in the bottom of the urinal like I was used to. It also kind of sprayed out against the squishy bits that surrounded it, leaving them uncomfortably wet, and while it seemed strange to have to wipe myself after just taking a piss, I couldn’t think of any better way to do it. It still felt strange to touch whatever it was at all, and my underwear felt even stranger against it when I pulled it back on. As I did, though, and the strange feelings persisted, a certain sense of terror was beginning to creep into my mind. Everything had disappeared when I’d needed to take a piss, but doing so hadn’t fixed it, and nothing seemed to be coming back. Something, then, was definitely wrong with me. I’d been sick, before, and strange things had happened, to my nose, to my throat. This was nothing like that, but at that point I wasn’t old enough to know better - maybe, I’d wondered, there was some sort of cold that made your penis go away? It was the reason, at least, I’d started to head down to the nurse’s office, but midway there things started feeling weird between my legs again, and then my underwear started to feel like it was back to normal. Glancing down the hallway to make sure it was empty, I quickly jammed my hands down the front of my pants, and immediately I could feel that things were back in place - and when I reached lower, behind where my balls were, it just felt like nothing, as it was supposed to. Whatever had happened, things were back to normal - and it also meant that if I told the nurse, and she couldn’t see anything wrong, I’d probably get a talking-to for making things up. Instead, I went back to class, and for the rest of the day everything was fine, but that hadn’t kept me from feeling that something had gone very, very wrong. Maybe I couldn’t talk to the nurse, and my dad had never been one to put up with a lot of questions from me, but my mom was a different matter - which was why, as soon as I got home, I immediately told her, in a trembling, worried voice, about what had happened. From the look that came over her face when I told her, I knew that something really was wrong, although the first words she said was that none of it was my fault, not at all; rather, it was hers. That was the first time she told me the story of what had happened between her and the deity, or at least as much of it as I could understand at the time. It was still confusing enough, especially when she explained that the other configuration, the thing that had been there instead of my penis, wasn’t some alien thing but the part that was the female equivalent. That was really the only difference between boys and girls? If it was, they sure didn’t act like it. And even then, it didn’t really make sense, so I’d asked my mother some more: are boys and girls really supposed to change like that? Wasn’t is supposed to just be one or the other? And if it was, then… was I a boy, or a girl? “A boy,” she’d said, without a moment of hesitation. “A boy with a curse, but still a boy. Maybe you won’t always be physically, not all the time anyway, but I’m not going to let that deity take being a boy away from you if that’s who you want to be. I should have been the one to be punished, not you. I’m sorry you have to deal with this, but… it’ll be okay. You’re still a good boy, you can be a good man, and don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.” And with that, she seemed to consider the matter settled: I would be a boy, except when I wasn’t, and those times would simply be an inconvenience I’d have to deal with until things went back to their normal state. As straightforward as it was between us, though, it wasn’t something that could be kept entirely private - apparently, there would be a big hassle if people found out I wasn’t always a boy, and they hadn’t been informed. As it turned out, though, my situation wasn’t all that uncommon - with the number of demigods floating around, it was a regular enough occurrence for someone to have pissed one or another of them off, and suffer various levels of inconvenient consequences as a result. In fact, it was common enough that the school even had a specific process for registering various potential curses on their students, including the usual paperwork, and evaluation by a district-assigned professor of multiplicative theology. My particular conundrum wasn’t exactly common, but common enough to have its very own box on the intake form: “non-specific gender-morphic imposed condition.” The whole process was very deliberate, including listing and classifying the specific deity in question, and answering a laundry list of questions directed at both me and my mother in the professor’s office. About all I could end up remembering about the experience was that the professor’s office was brown and boring, and the questions seemed to go on and on, about things as trivial as whether or not my shoelaces sometimes came untied of their own accord. After all the data was collected, a functionary finally handed down their conclusion: that as my normal state was male, and the fact that my “imposition” occurred for durations lasting usually less than one full day at a time, that it would be the simplest to do as my mom had done: operate under the assumption that I was a boy, and continue to have me use male facilities, with specific interventions or alternative accommodations provided as needed on a case-by-case basis during the occasional times my curse became active. For the most part, I was happy enough with that - I could go on the way I had before, without being directly singled out, and as the changes were limited only to an area that was almost always covered by clothing, which meant that the change, when it happened, could be weathered without calling any attention to it. Whether I would still be able to do that once arriving at the age when boys and girls started developing more physically noticeable differences, though, had been an open question, but at the time I’d been hopeful that I could at least keep things under wraps around my peers. True, it wasn’t like I was the only one with a curse, and some had to suffer through them far more publicly. One of the girls in the next class up from mine had somehow inadvertently pissed off the local Lord of Doors, and now every time she walked through a doorway, there was a chance that whatever she was wearing, skirt or pants or even leggings, would fall down around her knees, both tripping her up and, to her extreme embarrassment, revealing her underwear. Despite the fact that enough kids had their own curses to worry about, she still got more than her fair share of teasing over it, although there wasn’t much anyone could do, out of fear of having some similar wrath, or worse, brought down around their own heads by the irate lord. In fact, it had taken several months before, of all things, another deity stepped in - this one a local goddess and protector of all things female, at least when she deigned to intervene, who’d take the lord to task over what she saw as a punishment doing double-duty as an unfair perversion. The two had had a brief row over it, a day during which doors would randomly refuse to open and some women were unable to unzip their jeans for hours at a time, but eventually the situation was resolved: from that point forward, the girl would only randomly trip across the occasional transom, without the accompanying wardrobe malfunction. Still, she’d gotten enough grief over her curse from the other kids that I certainly didn’t look forward to having knowledge of mine spread far and wide. The teachers and administrators, apparently, were required to know; my peers, not so much. Most of the time, at least, it wasn’t a big deal - at least I didn’t have to watch out every single time I walked through a doorway. At the same time, though, even if I made an effort to hold it in for the maximum extent possible, I still had to take a piss a few times during the course of a school day, which meant I still faced a conundrum. According to the ruling, I was still to use the boy’s bathroom, which, because it was normal, I would have wanted to use anyway. The problem was, most of it was urinals, without any sort of partitions, so it was easy enough to look over at someone else while they were taking a piss. None of the other boys cared, of course - why would they? I didn’t want to either, and for the most part it was okay. If I did use the urinal, though, every two or three days, I’d unzip my pants, only to find out that there was nothing to pull out and take a piss with. If no one else was there, it was easy enough to just zip back up and take care of things, as alien as they were, in the privacy of a stall. When someone else was there, though, zipping up without going would earn me a weird look, one that I worried would eventually result in more pointed inquiry. But if I just used a stall all the time, that would be noticed as well, which meant that every trip to the bathroom became a nervous balancing act of trying not to be found out. Still, somehow, I made it work for some number of years, and no one seemed to be the wiser that for an hour or two a couple times a week, I was somewhat less of a boy than they assumed. Eventually, though, I found out that things were a little more complicated. As it turned out, the curse itself, once applied, was basically automatic, kicking in on occasion when I tried to take a piss in a “masculine” manner that, because of my mother, was somehow an affront. What I didn’t know, though, was that this particular deity wasn’t satisfied with laying on a one-off curse and leaving it at that; no, he actually went around and checked up on those he’d cursed to see if their punishments had left them significantly chastened and respectful. He hadn’t been so much of a jerk as to embarrass me in front of the whole school, but when he’d halfway materialized in my bathroom, while I was taking a piss, that had been shock enough. It wasn’t every day, after all, that a wizened but still ferocious tiger-man, with black-striped silver fur, glowing red eyes, and a giant hornlike codpiece jutting out from his pelvis just materialized in the middle of the floor - although, admittedly for the times, it wasn’t the most uncommon thing either. Needless to say, though, it hadn’t been the most pleasant experience, as I’d been standing there, my still-dripping penis hanging out of my fly, as the deity had begun a long-winded rant, excoriating me in a shrill, raspy voice for continuing my mother’s disrespect - to make up for what she’d done, I was supposed to take every piss sitting down, until my cumulative, comparative lack of masculinity in such things made up for her desecration of something so sacrosanct to men. And when I, still too young to really know not to argue with someone like that, tried to argue that I should at least be able to piss normally into something that wasn’t even a urinal, his eyes had flashed annoyance, and for my defiance he’d angrily stabbed a finger in my direction before fading away. True, I didn’t have to worry about still standing their with my dick in my hands, but at the same time his dismissive gesture left me stuck as a girl for an entire week. At first, nothing came or that particular lapse - I didn’t even bother to tell anyone, and just used the stalls for the whole week, dealing with the alien feeling between my legs grumblingly until things went back to normal. This time, though, avoiding the urinals for an entire week didn’t go unnoticed. One of the other boys started calling me out on being too embarrassed to be seen, and started a rumor that maybe I was shrinking, or had had my penis turned into a wriggling worm or something (a curse which had been, horribly, actually inflicted on his second cousin). I got through the week basically unscathed, at least, but now that it was established, the boy’s taunting showed no signs of abating. Naturally, that had pissed me off, and one day when I’d walked into the bathroom and he’d started going on about it, I’d actually whipped it out in front of everyone in there just to prove him wrong. It shut him up, for a while at least, but he started watching me suspiciously whenever I made a beeline for one of the stalls. Which meant, while he was in there at least, I had to use the urinal if I could. Frankly, I still wanted to - having to actually take things off and sit on the toilet to take a piss seemed like a hassle, even if girls had to put up with it all the time, and I still wanted to act like a normal boy. Every so often, though, when I did the deity would show up later in my bathroom at home, and even when I just stood there and accepted his rant, promising to do better or something, he’d still stick me with being a girl for several days at a time just for pissing him off. Which meant more of the other kid’s stupid rumors, and eventually led to him calling me out on it again in the middle of the bathroom - only this time, thanks to the deity, I was stuck in the middle of a multi-day span of being a girl. I was stuck - I couldn’t just show him off like before. So, in my youthful stupidity, I challenged him back. I knew I couldn’t challenge him to a dick-waving contest, but he was a little smaller than me overall, so I challenged him to a fight instead to prove who was more of a boy. Neither one of us really knew how to fight, though, so we both ended up sort of wrestling around on the floor, which had resulted in his hand finding my crotch, and not, in fact, finding what was supposed to be there. At which point he’d crowed in triumph, and as I tried to extricate myself, he managed to dislodge the button of my pants and pull them down, and my underwear along with them, in front of several other boys who’d gathered to watch the tussle. It was only for a moment, after which I got free and quickly pulled things back up to cover myself, but the damage was done - with that momentary exposure, my curse was decidedly far from secret. So, with no other choice, I’d had to stand there, supremely embarrassed, and explain about the stupid deity and the stupid curse that meant I would be a boy one day, and forced to be a girl the next. The boy who’d been bugging me about it, Marco, had actually seemed a little disappointed at the revelation. “That’s it? You just turn into a girl? That’s not interesting at all!” Apparently, having several sisters, for him there wasn’t much mystery about such things. Most of the other boys there, however, seemed more than interested - as girls weren’t particularly keen to put those parts of them on display, it was the first glimpse most of them had had at the main difference between them. Naturally, they were eager for a second, more detailed glimpse, and one that I was in no mood to give. A couple of them, nonetheless, tried to go for my pants again - at least until I told them that if they tried it, I’d kick them in the balls so hard they’d wish they were girls. Somehow, I managed to extricate myself from the bathroom without any further issues, and as it was late enough in the day, made it home before anything else could happen. My curse was out there, though, making its way from ear to ear, and I knew that soon enough everyone who cared would know about my curse. Somehow, though, it wasn’t quite as bad as I’d imagined. Yeah, a few of the boys got on my case about it, how I should go hang out with the other sissy girls and stuff like that, but after I punched the first couple of them in the face, the others generally shut up. Of course, that also got me suspended, and earned me visits from the deity, who ranted that by fighting with my fists whenever I happened to be in a female configuration I was desecrating the most ancient manly art of pugilism, and sentenced me to additional weeks in girly purgatory. Still, the teasing didn’t really work - sometimes I had girl parts between my legs, but I looked, dressed, acted, and sure as heck fought like a boy. Plus, once the whole story came out, and people realized I was being punished for someone else’s mistake, there was at least a little more sympathy about it, although the girls understandably scoffed at my grousing - after all, they didn’t see what was so bad about it. And maybe they were right - it felt strange, to be sure, and it was a little more annoying to use the bathroom, but for the most part it didn’t make a difference. Then again, though, while most boys that age wouldn’t even think of asking a girl to flash them, given how much trouble that would get them in, since I was ostensibly a boy they didn’t have any similar qualms about me. Which meant that every time I used the stall, even if I actually had to do business that required it, a proposition from some boy or other to “play doctor” usually resulted. And so it had gone for much of my childhood, an aggravation more than anything else, but more than enough of a hassle nonetheless. People really only pestered me constantly about it for the first few weeks before it faded more into the background, just that one thing about me that I was destined to get ribbed about, the way that Randy got ribbed about his height until a late growth spurt years later, or how James had a few weird, blond splotches in his otherwise brown fur. Because of it, there were the usual insults and casual derision. Some of the guys thought that because I became a girl sometimes I should go play house with them or something instead of the sports the boys were playing - although that ended once I blustered my way into a couple of pick-up games and showed that I could play at least better than average. Other than that, it was mostly penny-ante stuff - Marco, for some misguided reason, for a week or two had had taken to grabbing a pair of his sisters’ panties, wadding them up, and then throwing them at me at random. That only happened, though, until his sisters found out what he’d been doing, and then he’d been inexplicably absent for a week, returning much more subdued and never hassling me again. Other boys, though, took up the slack well enough. I was thick-skinned enough to deal with it, although it certainly didn’t put me in an agreeable mindset when those same boys sidled up to me during one of my week-long curses to ask for a peek. While I had obviously denied them, I’d been curious enough early on that the next time I’d been stuck with being a girl for more than a brief spell, I’d tried to take a good look myself. It turned out that was easier said than done, as even if I bent all the way over and pushed the nearby fur aside, all I could really see was a little bit of pinkish skin. Even when I finally figured out that I could use the hand mirror that my mom kept in her bathroom drawer, holding it between my legs to look at things as I sat naked on my bed, what was there was still fairly mystifying. My penis had made sense - it was this little fleshy bit that you could aim your pee with so it went where you wanted it to. In its place, though, was mostly just bare, featureless flesh, except in the center, where there were some slightly pinker, squiggly bits kind of pressed together. I had tried pushing at them with my fingers, and while I discovered that they could kind of be stretched away from each other, all that revealed was even more weirdness: even more pink squiggly bits, smaller with a little nubbly thing on top, bigger and even more squiggly below, and between them was a little dot-like opening like the one on my penis, which I could only assume was where pee came out. All in all, I couldn’t figure out what girls saw in it - from my perspective back then, the configuration just seemed somehow both stupid and incomprehensibly complex, a bunch of weird stuff that didn’t seem to have any point to it other than to feel thoroughly weird and out of place. Why were the big squiggly things even covering up the other bits, like they were actually trying to make it harder to take a piss? For a while, I actually felt bad for the girls because they had to be stuck with all that weirdness, and whenever the curse came on I couldn’t wait to get my normal stuff back. I just wanted to be a normal boy and not have to deal with it, so much so that I kept using the urinals regardless, even if that ended up meaning, paradoxically, that I’d ultimately have to spend more time dealing with the weirdness of girl-parts between my legs. After a time, though, I even became used to that when it happened, at least to the point where it eventually faded into being a vague annoyance rather than a continual aggravation. For the most part, I just tried to ignore it, concentrating on studies, sports, and just trying to enjoy being a boy. And through grade school, at least, I hadn’t put much thought into it at all. Junior high, though, had been something of a different story. That was, of course, because it was around that time that puberty had begun in earnest, and everyone’s hormones had started flowing. Because I’d spent so much effort on proving myself and being one of the boys, girls were still sort of a mysterious other to me, despite occasionally sharing their genitalia. All of a sudden, though, they were growing, their figures blossoming, and almost overnight they were attractive, intriguing… arousing. I found myself thinking about them, lusting after them - in short, about exactly what a young teenage boy would do. The feelings were new and exciting, and not at all confusing - until, that was, I somehow managed to piss of the deity again, and had to spend another week as a girl. All of a sudden, those feelings were dramatically different. The next day, when I arrived at school, the girls who had attracted my eager glances and and vague yet lascivious thoughts were suddenly just… girls again, with no real intrinsic attraction at all. For the most part, the same could be said for boys, but some of them, the fit ones from the sports teams or others whose faces all of a sudden looked somehow just right, made me feel… something, although I honestly wasn’t sure what it was. As a guy, seeing a hot girl was as immediate as it was predictable: you just felt excited all of a sudden, that particular thrill running through you, and a second later you’d popped an uncomfortable boner that you were shifting your legs around to try and disguise. In that female state, though, seeing those particular guys, I just felt… bothered, somehow, kind of unsettled, less of that electric thrill and more a weird, diffuse sense that was kind of like butterflies in my stomach, but offset from where my stomach actually was. It felt… heavy, almost pensive somehow, like some part of me was tensing in anticipation of something I couldn’t even begin to understand. At the same time, though, it was a sensation that I couldn’t ignore, and even though I wasn’t really sure whether or not I liked how it felt, when those particular guys were around my gaze kept returning to them unbidden, almost like it had with girls when I was fully a boy. The main difference, I supposed, was that in that state I seemed to focus more on their faces, where with girls it was probably only the third or fourth place that my gaze usually landed. Whatever the feelings, though, they hadn’t gotten me in trouble at that point - mainly because, for the most part, people had stopped caring about my curse, and my overall form hadn’t given them any reason to start caring again. Whatever happened between my legs on occasion, and whatever might have additionally been going on inside me, I was primarily a boy and went through puberty like one, at least for the most part. Overall, my body developed into a clearly boyish shape, although there were a couple of oddities. I still was active in sports and was certainly fit enough, but the muscles in my upper body never developed quite as much as my peers. And while I never grew breasts, or the additional rows of nipples that some girls ended up with, my nipples also hadn’t stayed the vestigial, nearly-invisible dots they had been, instead swelling up as big around as my forefinger and poking far enough out past my fur to think twice about wearing form-fitting shirts, and even more self-conscious about changing for gym than I had before (I’d long since learned not to even try showering or changing underwear in the locker room while I was cursed, a precaution even more clearly reinforced once I realized just how much more interested in girl parts every guy in my class was becoming). To say that the situation was confusing was wildly understating the facts, but I’d made it through without doing anything too boneheaded for the most part, and somehow I’d even managed to more or less have my female occasions fly under the radar, especially with a whole lot of actually feminine-looking, and permanent, girls to lust after. Sure, the occasional prankster took my spare underwear from the locker room and stuck pairs of panties in their place, but I was used enough to not changing and dealing with it that it hardly mattered. There were even a couple of instances of guys coming onto me, but neither of them had paid much attention to my state - upon figuring out that I was, in fact, a guy they were trying to make a move on, they suddenly lost interest, and the few openly gay guys didn’t have much inclination towards someone who could become female at any given moment. As a result, even junior high hadn’t been all that eventful, and I’d even had a girlfriend for a whole couple of weeks, although we’d both been nervous enough that things hadn’t managed to progress beyond a couple of relatively brief, chaste kisses. High school, though, seemed like it was shaping up to be another thing entirely. And it wasn’t even, really, about a new school with new people in it. No, it was, unfortunately, about yet another deity - this one local, vocal, and in charge of a new canine aspects of femininity and all the females it affected, myself rather uncomfortably included. Shiarai, it seemed, had wanted to be the goddess of fertility, but had been stymied in that pursuit by the fact that there already was a fertility goddess resident in the region who took affront to it. Luckily for her, though, when it came to canine morphs, sex and fertility were divided up into several different aspects, of which the fertility goddess had really only claimed the part actually involving babies, from conception to birth. How those babies came to pass in the first place, and how those contacts were encouraged, were a different story entirely, and so Shiarai had latched on to the one part of it that seemed like fertility, and the part that was exclusively feminine. So, to every woman’s consternation, Shiarai had become the Goddess of Estrus, and with it a planned, tri-monthly schedule that was to be simultaneously enforced, with her magic if necessary. No longer would such things be detailed exclusively by nature - within the region, at least, upon reaching a state of full sexual maturity, every woman would go into heat precisely when Shiarai dictated. And stay that way. For a full entire week. Even in junior high, I’d still technically been developing, so while I’d felt a certain burgeoning arousal from both the male and female standpoints, I hadn’t been subject to such requirements. A couple of weeks before high school, though, during the pre-entry physical, my doctor had confirmed it: from a sexual standpoint, I was fully developed, which meant that the female self that I sometimes became would surely be as well. At the very least, the stupid masculinity deity had thought so, as he had shown up a week before school to gloat about a couple of salient points: that Shiarai’s next scheduled estrus would take place on my first day of school, and that because the curse had led to my being considered female enough, I would fall under it; and, furthermore, because I would have to be female to satisfy such a requirement, my maleness would be gone for the entire duration. However, it had at least intimated one hopeful thing: seeing me experience such a female phenomenon would go a long way towards assuaging my mother’s affront, and that perhaps it would eventually be seen as sufficient obsequiousness that I would be allowed to go back to honoring him in the traditionally masculine way. Still, it meant that I was standing in front of my new school in the sort of configuration I didn’t exactly prefer, my already too-large nipples puffed up and rubbing uncomfortably against the loose fabric of my shirt, and the not-male parts between my legs were feeling decidedly unsettled in an especially squirmy way, the fleshy bits swelled sufficiently that I could actually feel them touching the fur on my inner thighs in the area where my underwear didn’t quite separate them. Apparently, wearing loose underwear while in heat was a bad idea, so I was basically wearing girl-style boxer briefs without the pouch in front, but still tight enough that I could feel them clinging damply to my crotch where the other weird part of heat had been dripping down into them. (display:"breadcrumb")

(display:"headera") “C’mon, time to rise and shine!” The tug on your shoulder rouses you into wakefulness, blinking as your dreams recede and the room swims into focus above you. Not much to see - just a typical dorm room, and your roommate, Russell, standing over you. He’s a Terrier mix, thinly built, his loose tee and shorts hanging from him like a scarecrow, which is absolutely typical for him. He doesn’t normally shake you awake, though. In fact, looking up at him, you realize that he looks somehow different as well. Although… it’s not so much that he looks different, so much as that you’re noticing things that you can’t recall having paid much attention to before. His face, for example, seems handsome, in that cute, canine sort of way, and while it must have always been that way, you feel like you’re noticing that aspect of it for the first time. It doesn’t stop you, though, from feeling annoyed at him for awaking you so abruptly. “Hey, man, what’s the big idea?” Somehow, your voice seems higher-pitched than normal. It hasn’t always been that way, has it? As soon as you think that, though, you’re pretty sure that it has, which makes the initial thought that much stranger. “Yeah, I know, you like to sleep in, but the RA stopped by to remind you that it’s moving day, and you’ve got to get the rest of your stuff together. The new guy’s gonna be here with his stuff this afternoon, so they want you to be all moved into the girls’ dorm by then, remember?” “The girls’ dorm? Why the heck would they want to move me there?” Russell stares down at you incredulously. “Um, really? I mean, I know you’re a tomboy and all, but seriously? Not to mention you’re the one who was complaining about having to room with a guy because they ran late finishing the renovations on the other dorm wing and ran out of room in the girls’ section. And I mean… you were a cool roomie and all, but I have to say, having to leave the room every time you changed clothes, it was getting a little tedious, you know? Now that it’s fixed though, and you’ve got you a slot with the people you originally wanted to room with, don’t tell me I’ve made such an impression on you that you want to stay here with me…” Wait - you’re a girl? Well, of course you are - you kind of have to be, given the way your breasts are pushing the covers up. As for the other parts… you reach a hand down quickly under the covers, and unsurprisingly, your female parts are exactly the way they’ve always been. Except… it’s weird. You know that everything feels precisely normal, but at the same time, something’s unsettling about it. You think back, trying to figure out why, and then it suddenly hits you: you don’t seem to have any recollection whatsoever of being, of growing up as, a girl. But then again, come to think of it, you don’t exactly have any memories of growing up as a boy, either. In fact, for the moment, trying to recall much about your childhood just seems to return a sort of vague blur. You try to shake it off, knowing that sometimes, if you’re awakened while you’re still in the middle of a dream, things like that can become muddled for a little while. After all, it’s not like you have amnesia or anything. You know where you are, what college you’re at, what you’re studying, the names of the other guys on your hall, and, of course, your own name: Angela Revin, but usually just “Angie.” Hearing it in your head, it still somehow doesn’t feel quite right, although not in a way that makes you doubt it’s your own name - as soon as you think it, it feels so familiar that you know for certain it’s right. And yet, as you think it, for a moment you feel something, a pang of emotion that you can’t quite parse, other than that it’s something that makes no sense to feel in response to something as mundane as thinking your own name. Whatever it is that’s nagging at your subconscious, though, it isn’t at all clear, and thinking about it just seems to make the feeling lurk more deeply and subtly. After all, guy’s dorm or not, it’s not like you’re supposed to be a guy, right? As soon as even the notion of that comes into your head, your mind immediately rejects it outright. Memories aside, whenever you think about it, you’re absolutely sure that you’ve always been a girl, and the notion of being anything else immediately feels strange. (display:"breadcrumb")

(display:"headera") Growing up, your earliest memories of boys were mostly about how different they were from girls like you. Even from the beginning, from the very first, cloudy memories of being curled up together as near-infant pups next to your mother, you remember that their fur was thicker, and a little coarser, their body shapes overall subtly but meaningfully different. Later, when you were more aware, the differences became even more stark: when you and the other girls learned to walk, for instance, they stayed on all fours, and the way that their legs worked, bending in a different manner, meant that they were not even capable of such a thing. As your fingers extended and flexed to create nimble, capable hands, their forepaws stayed just that; while you developed a proper voice, able to engage in all the phonetic complexities of speech, their limited vocal chords kept them to a series of yips and barks, which they leaned to modulate into an alternate, if less nuanced form of speech, and the girls, at least, were taught to speak each language equally. They wore no clothes, preferred to curl up in a nest of blankets rather than sleep in a proper bed, and would shrug off food that was cooked, but would happily dig into meat that was still bloody and raw. In many ways, they seemed almost as beasts, and yet when other girls mocked them for it, they were able to defend themselves verbally with little issue. Despite their appearance and occasional rough-and-tumble nature, they were clearly just as intelligent, but the differences in natures, even back then, kept you somewhat apart. And, after the first grade, the separation was made complete. You had wondered, of course, as to why the only boys in your village had seemed to be very young, and that adult men only seemed to show up on occasion rather than be a permanent part of the community. It was only when the summer break arrived that a group of men appeared on the outskirts of town, and all the boys of your age were chivvied across into their care. As they crossed over, you could see trepidation on some of the boys’ faces, but as they met the men, and began to frolic and play with them on the outskirts of town in their unquestionably boy-like games, you realized that they seemed quickly far more comfortable in the company of their own gender. Then, as the sun shone straight down in the sky, they all took off for wherever it was the men normally lived, and it would be the last time you would see the boys you grew up with for many years. That wasn’t to say, though, that men were that uncommon in the town where you lived. They certainly weren’t there all the time, though, and certainly didn’t live there. At the end of every week, though, as the sun drew low in the sky, a pack of them would show up at the entrance to town, near the square, dragging with them the carcasses of large prey animals that would be prepared and cooked to feed the entire town that week. You can still remember the first time you saw them as a child, pacing along the cobblestones of the town square, with massive, grey-furred bodies that towered over your diminutive frame. Compared to the women, or even to the boys who you played with, they seemed fierce and wild, powerful bodies and keen, glinting eyes and sharp white teeth. While you knew that they were your species, they seemed so different and terrifying that you shied back, clutching tightly to your mother’s arm as you huddled against her for safety. One of the men had noticed you, though, and instead of staying still, he approached. You held on even tighter as you saw him lope forward, his paws thudding down on the pavement strongly enough that you could feel a little of the impact trembling up your own legs. As you shrank back in terror, though, he stopped a few feet in front of you, gesturing with his muzzle for you to come forward. “Here to me, little one. Is nothing to fear.” You thought otherwise, of course, refusing to let go of your mother’s arm, not caring that she was smiling encouragingly down at you and trying to get you to let go, to step forward towards him. He was patient, though, moving forward no further, and little by little, with some further coaxing from your mother, you made one tentative step forward, then another. You still shivered, though, as the man leaned in close, his muzzle huge before you as it spread into a grin, sharp teeth and all emerging to glint mere inches away from your face. You stood rooted to the spot, frozen with fear by the beast that loomed above you. It wasn’t the teeth that came closer, though, no sharp points slamming down in front of your face as you had feared. Instead, from between the fearsome jaws flopped a wide, panting pink tongue, which quickly flicked out to lap enthusiastically at the fur on your cheeks. It was the exact opposite of what you expected, warm and happy and not threatening at all, so much so that it took mere moments for the fear to fall away. It tickled enough, in fact, that soon you were laughing, rolling around on the ground happily as he tickled at your sides with his muzzle. All of a sudden, the man that had seemed so intimidating, so scary, just a few minutes ago was instantly more familiar, and when you looked back over to your mom, she seemed thrilled to see you both starting to get along. Despite his size, in a certain way his enthusiasm reminded you of some of the boys you played with, and he was happy to play with you, even letting you chase him around and around the fountain, no matter how absurd it might have looked. Afterwards, as you sat on the edge of the fountain, he nestled his muzzle against your chest, and you, no longer fearful of the teeth it contained, were happy to gently pet the fur on his head as you heard his voice rumble against you. “See? Nothing to fear. You and me, may look different, but same in mind, same in heart. You never fear from us. We protect, we provide. You are precious. You are life. Someday, you will be woman. Someday, will understand our devotion in way that only women can. To know what it means, to be together as one. But that day is far. For now, just know, you are always safe with us. Our fangs, our claws, prove our words. We are here for all of you. Know this, and be happy.” He pulled away soon afterwards, and as much as you were scared of meeting him before, you were just as reluctant to let him go. As he left, though, he acknowledged your mother as well, and you both waved goodbye to him as he and the others loped back out of the square. They didn’t go that far, though - a short ways out of town, a large bonfire flared into life as the sun dipped below the horizon, and you could see the silhouettes of the men dancing around in front of the flames as some of the women trailed out from the town’s entrance towards them. Curious, and less fearful, you wanted to join them, but your mother hustled you back inside, into one of the community centers where some of the older girls, the ones who were not yet quite women, watched over several dozen of you, while your mothers walked out beyond the town walls. You didn’t know what they did when they visited with the men, but occasionally during the night you could hear long, low howls from somewhere outside. You didn’t know, though, whether it had anything to do with them, or whether it was just some other beast out there, baying at the moon. Whatever it was, though, it didn’t stop you from crawling into your sleeping back and drifting off at some point during the night. The next morning, though, when you and the rest of the children emerged into the town square, the men were gone and the only remnants of the bonfire were lazy tendrils of white smoke in the distance drifting in curlicues up towards the sky. The women had all returned, though, mothers retrieving their children and bringing them back home to get ready for school. There was something subtly different about them, although it was hard to tell what it was, exactly, apart from the fact that they smelled almost as much like the men had as they did like themselves. For your mother, though, it wasn’t so much that she was different, as much as she was… calmer, maybe, and a little more tired, but especially happy and upbeat, even more so than she usually was. By the next day, it was back to normal, but it was a pattern that repeated - every time the men arrived in the square, that night there would be a bonfire, and the women that went out to dance around it came back, tired in a certain way, but incredibly happy. You had picked up on that, knowing that something good was happening out there, but each time you asked to join in your mother turned you down, stating simply that it was something that could only be appreciated by adults. Still, you couldn’t help but wonder about it, even as you contented yourself with playing around with one or another of them in the square before night fell. As you grew up, though, there was another event involving the men that was even more mysterious and intriguing. Going to school, you knew that there were different classes of girls, each one divided into two groups, containing the girls who had birthdays in the different halves of each year. One after another, they climbed their way up through the grade levels, until they finished off in the twelfth one of them. When they finished that grade, though, there would be celebrations of their ascent to womanhood - but something happened before that. As soon as their education finished, a group of men would arrive, and they would go off with them - not just for a night, but for more than one week, and sometimes two. (display:"breadcrumb")

(display:"headera") Mikey once said, "I betcha there's treasure in there." "In where?" I asked. We were two kids, friends, messing around in a half-constructed play fort made from the cushions of outdoor furniture. "Up in that cave, y'know, the one up the hill behind my house." Mikey's parents owned land on the outskirts of town, and the manicured backyard quickly bled away into scruffy, unkempt forestland that crept up the side of a foothill, a very modest beginning that eventually built up to a fairly respectable mountain range. From the ground, though, it didn't look all that impressive, a tangle of brambles and anemic-looking trees. Somewhere in that mess, though, Mikey was certain that there was a cave, and that inside it, there was treasure. "I been readin' this book, that I got outta the library last week," he said. Mikey even brought it outside, a big, musty-looking tome with a faded medieval scene on the front, partially obscured by the glare coming off of the protective plastic cover. He opened it, flipping through pages of text and the occasional detailed line illustration, of knights and damsels, rows of men on horseback carrying banners with unrecognizable symbols. Then he turned the page once more, and there was a detailed drawing of a map, with various marks on it. He pointed to one spot, a big red X at the bottom of a line of upended triangles. "There use'ta be dragons, and they lived in these caves, an' they all had these giant hordes of treasure. Gold, gems, anything shiny, they'd catch it up and hoard it away, and fry anyone who tried ta take it." "Like a fire-breathing magpie," I interjected, always sarcastic even then. That day, he gave me a glare, but kept going. "No, not like a magpie, dummy! They're like, big flyin' lizards and things, more ferocious than you'll ever know! But I guess all the knights killed 'em, or they left, or something, but they never found all the treasure, I jus' know it! An' that map, it kinda looks like here, it's gotta be markin' the cave that's up there in the hills! If the treasure's still there... Well, just imagine it! Maybe even a creepy dragon skeleton! We gotta go find it!" "My mom's going to spank my butt until it's numb if I tear up my clothes, you know." But he wouldn't let up, and eventually I followed him up the hill, pushing the brambles out of the way with a stick as best as I could. It wasn't that much fun, slogging through the forest, but it was kinda cool when a fox poked its head out from behind a tree, and we both just stared at each other for a second before it got startled and fled back into the forest. Beyond that, though, it was just dirt, and rocks, trees and brambles, and nothing else. I was pretty sure there weren't really any dragons, but I was hoping for at least a lizard, or a snake, or something. And who knows - maybe there weren't any dragons, but there certainly were pirates and explorers, and a cave was as good a place to hide treasure as any. After an hour of slogging through the forest, we finally found the cave entrance - dark, foreboding, with water dripping down the walls. I screwed up my courage, and we made it through the entrace, and even ventured a few feet inside. But then it got narrow, and the floor was slippery, and it looked really, really dark. While it was true that Mikey had been known to do some stupid things as a kid, even he wasn't willing to brave the cavern in the dark, especially when a low, eerie noise emanated upward from the depths. "I- I'm sure it's just the wind blowing through the cave or something," I'd said, but I was hardly doing a good job convincing myself. Needless to say, we gave up and went back home, each promising the other that we'd go back someday with flashlights, but neither of us really being brave enough to follow through. As it turned out, a few weeks later, the choice was made for us - a teenager, going into the cave on a dare, slipped down an open crevasse in the dark and broke his neck. Mikey said it was incredible to see all the lights and sirens of the vehicles coming up his street, and all the serious-looking adults traipsing through his backyard, with their uniforms and fancy equipment. His parents wouldn't let him watch as they carted the body back out, though. The public-works guys who showed up a few days later weren't nearly as interesting, although they did lug a portable cement mixer up the trail the rescuers had carved through the forest, and they even let us come up and watch as they slowly built up a concrete wall to seal off the cave entrance. "It's for everyone's safety," they'd said. At least they let us carve our initials down near the bottom of the wall, where no one official would notice. They're still there to this day, scraped out awkwardly in a childlike script, our own lasting mark on an otherwise nondescript concrete plug, fenced off by two aging sawhorses and a few remaining remnants of sun-bleached caution tape. Mikey and I stayed friends in the years that followed, but he eventually went away for college, all the way to the coast. As a result, we drifted further apart, although we still kept in touch from time to time. For my part, I was a sophomore at the local university, pulling together the tuition by working nights at a local grill, tending bar and observing what happened when drink pulled people's inhibitions away - sometimes pretty, but mostly not. It wasn't the worst job ever, but surely there had to be a better way to make money. One night, for some reason, that day we'd spent searching for the cave flashed back into my mind. He was just a kid then, and probably wrong, but... why not? School and work were boring the heck out of me, and if nothing else, it would at least be an adventure to head out there and take another look. So, one weekend, I got some stuff together - a bit of food, some rope, and a flashlight - stuffed it all into a backpack, and hiked out there to take a look. Of course, once I got there, the other part of what had happened popped into my memory, but I pressed on anyway. The area had suffered from drought recently, and much of the bramble had died back to leave the forest looking considerably more barren, with plenty of empty space between the the reedy boles of parched trees. The cave, then, was easy enough to find, and still sealed up tight, without even a crack anywhere on the concrete barrier. I glanced down at our scrawled initials, feeling a bit disappointed, but happy nonetheless - it was fun to revisit something like this from my childhood, and I was feeling younger already. I decided to just walk around the area for a bit, making a mental note to look Mike up online once I got home. Surely, he'd be interested to hear about this, even if only to know that his wobbly, uneven MXS was still there, dustily withstanding the test of time. Aside from the sorry state of some of the vegetation, the forest was pleasant enough, and even with the drought, the loam was still soft beneath my feet. I hiked along, glad for a break, taking in the crisp, clean country air, watching as various insects flitted about here and there. Insects, though, were about the biggest thing I saw, as even the bird had fled for more promising hunting grounds. The highlight, then, was a dragonfly, light dancing off its metallic skin, shimmering sapphire as it danced and hovered around me. I was sad to see it go, and when it left, I decided it was probably about time to head back. As I did, though, I noticed a handful of shrubs off to the side, near the base of the hill. Ordinarily, that wouldn't be all that odd, except for one thing: unlike all of the other vegetation, which was brown and dry from dehydration, these shrubs looked considerably healthier, their leaves decently green, with only a little bit of yellowing around the edges. Curious, I looked closer. The ground around them was wet. There was no way anyone was watering them, though. They were almost as tall as I was, and resisted when I pushed at them to see what could have been causing the strange oasis - a spring, perhaps? Behind them, though, I was greeted with darkness, and not just a wet patch of rock - the darkness extended back into the hillside, and I could hear the steady sound of water dripping from somewhere within. The public works guys had sealed up one cave, or one cave entrance, but here was another. Pushing the shrubs further aside, I noticed that the archway leading into the cave was at least waist-high, with plenty of room for even an adult to crawl in. Why not? I thought to myself. After all, I'd set out to explore a cave, and now that one had presented itself, that's what I intended to do. It it looked too dangerous, I'd back out, but if it wasn't too bad, it certainly couldn't hurt to take a look. I extracted the flashlight, a newer style with LEDs instead of a regular bulb, and new batteries meant that it should provide more than an ample amount of light for a decent amount of exploration. Gripping it tightly in my hand, I got on my hands and knees, secured the backpack around my waist, and pushed into the cavern, the shrubs springing back into place behind me. Luckily, the cave entrance didn't narrow any further, and I only had to go a few feet on my hands and knees before the ceiling lifted away to reveal a fairly good-sized cavern. I panned my flashlight around, taking in the stone walls and the stalactites on the ceiling, some of them still letting loose stray drops of water now and then. I paused for a second, wiping my hands off on my shirt, and realizing that my pant legs were fairly wet from the crawl through the tunnel entrance, the wetness chilly against my calves. So, not too much exploration, I thought - just a quick look around, and then back outside to dry off. Luckily, this part of the cave didn't seem all that dangerous - no sinkholes or crevasses to fall into, just solid rock for the floor, and a few passages leading off of the back wall, all large enough to walk through standing up. I took the middle passage, making a careful mental note of how I was going, to make sure I could easily find my way back. In any case, I didn't plan to explore more than the next few passages, so it wasn't going to be an issue. The passage itself was fairly bland, curving a couple of times, but it soon let out into yet another fairly good-sized cavern, as large as an average living room at least. This room was less dusty stone, with protrusions of something shiny and black - obsidian, perhaps? Of course, both mountains and caves were often the results of eons-old volcanic activity, so it wasn't particularly surprising to see. On the other hand, the room also featured densely packed stalactites and stalagmites, which made finding a clear path through a bit of a challenge. Still, it was interesting to shine my flashlight around, and watch the light bounce and glint crazily across all of the shiny surfaces. Amidst it all, though, there was another passage off to the right. It was a bit shorter, but seemed mercifully free of anything problematic, with only a slight bit of dust on the ground - easily navigable on hands and knees. As I crawled, I could feel the passage inclining upward, and as I climbed, the temperature seemed to climb with me. By the time the passage leveled off to a hard right turn, the climate was actually reasonably warm, although quite a bit more humid. Honestly, though, that was hardly the most interesting part. There almost seemed to be... light, glowing faintly around the turn. I shut off the flashlight momentarily to see if it was true, or if my eyes were simply playing tricks on me in the darkness. Sure enough, there was a bit of light. Perhaps there was another cave entrance up ahead, or a natural skylight? I quickly moved forward, squeezing my body around the tight curve, wondering what might lie ahead. The passage didn't really open up, so much as it got taller, and a little wider - at least I could stand up again. It stretched on, though, with no obvious exit up ahead, or any light filtering in from above. Still, the light was definitely there - faint, not really even enough to see clearly by, but definitely there. I walked onward, and it got a bit brighter. As it did, patterns began to show up on the cave walls, random, but also somehow precise, almost like fractals. When I glanced closer, I realized that the glow was coming from some sort of small, spindly lichen that had managed to insinuate itself into the minute cracks in the passage walls, fed by the constant drip of water that seemed to seep from everywhere in the cave. It was intriguing, and I'd never seen anything like it before, but it was nothing compared to what I found at the end of the passage. The passage, after yet another set of turns, opened up into yet another cavern, but unlike the others, this one was brightly lit enough that I no longer needed my flashlight. The lichen blanketed the inside walls with tightly interwoven patterns, illuminating a series of craters that were arrayed around the cavern's edge. Each one was filled with clear water, shimmering in the unsual blue-green light, and some of them even had water bubbling up into them from below, spilling out around the crater rims, and quickly vanishing into the porous stone of the floor. Clustered around them were large, symmetric outcroppings of clear crystals - quartz, perhaps, or something similar. Taken together, the room was brilliantly beautiful, and definitely worth the trip. Excited, I bent down to extract the camera from my pack, intent on documenting the cave for posterity. Looking down, though, I noticed something moving in one of the pools. Upon closer examination, I realized that the pools were almost like the tidepools you'd find at the seashore, teeming with life as an ecosystem of their own. Hidden by the reflection of the water before, this pool contained different types of small, frondlike plants, which seemed aquamarine in color, although it was hard to tell because the entire room was illuminated a similar color. Crawling in between them were creatures that looked like a cross between crab and shrimp, mostly translucent, with an even dozen legs and a cluster of tiny stalked eyes protruding from their heads. Noticing my movement, they scuttled away, trying to hide behind the thin collection of plants. I was almost tempted to try and grab one to take a closer look, but I grabbed my camera instead, taking some snapshots of the curious creatures. Luckily, my camera was capable enough in taking low-light pictures, and although it beeped in frustration at the lack of illumination, the images still showed up reasonably well on its screen once I'd taken them. The creatures, being translucent, didn't show up all that well on camera, but you could see them decently enough - and the rest of the room, certainly, would come across as more than impressive. I didn't think that much of the creatures, honestly - certainly, the creatures had certainly been discovered before by someone, and it was possible that they were a feature of many caves in the area, so I spent more time taking pictures of the overall look of the cavern, with the pools and rock formations. I even shot one picture with flash, to see what effect it would have, but the glare from the water and the crystals flashed back, leaving me blinking, my vision a sea of glowing afterimages that took a few minutes to fade. By now, my clothes had more or less dried from the warmer climate, and so instead of turning back, I decided to see if the passage went anywhere beyond the unique cavern. Indeed, off to one side, there was a small arch that led into a seemingly similar room, only this one curved off to the right. This one also had a veritable forest of crystals springing up every which way from the walls and floor, so I took my time, weaving my way between the crystal formations. Some of the craters in this room seemed to be hot springs, with ripples of steam coming off the surface, and as I walked along, I could feel both the warmth and humidity increasing, although not uncomfortably so. In addition, there was a sound, like splashing water, coming from further down, around a slightly sharper curve. I walked forward to see what it was, but as I rounded the bend, I noticed a shadow extending forward - one that looked remarkably like a crouching human. Apparently, I wasn't the only person exploring the cave. Not knowing who it was, or what they might do if disturbed, I decided to just back up the way I came - but before I could do so, there was a startled noise, the shadow straightened up, and a moment later, the figure appeared in front of me. It - I mean, she - was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Well, I suppose that's not entirely true - to be fair, she appeared to be more humanoid than anything else, but that's about where the resemblance ended. The first thing I noticed were her eyes - dark, except for iridescent pupils that glowed an intense green with their own inner light. The surrounding skin, if it was skin, was a deep, brilliant red, edged with a black scalelike pattern, with an unusual sheen that seemed almost chitinous. She had no ears or hair to speak of, aside from a raised, spiky ridge of skin that bisected her skull in a way that was almost reminiscent of a mohawk. From what I could see, the skin pattern held true for the rest of her - she was wearing a tunic-like white dress, and while her hands looked close to human, her legs extended down to reveal feet more like a raptor, complete with thick, sharp-looking talons. Behind her, I could see the flicker of a tail twitching back and forth in the low light, and what looked like a pair of folded wings, complete with talonlike protrusions at their tips, peeking out above her shoulder blades. In short, aside from the parts of her that seemed vaguely human, she looked remarkably like what you might expect to see in a dragon. I just stood there and stared for a moment, barely able to believe my eyes. The fact that she had an undeniably womanly figure, along with the fact that she was at least a head taller than I was, left me feeling just a bit awed, and more than a bit unsure of myself. I certainly didn't expect her gaze to flick down at her feet, looking almost embarrassed, speaking a moment later in a soft, melodious voice. "Hi." "Um, er, hi," I managed to stammer back. I mean, what do you say in a situation like that? (display:"breadcrumb")

(display:"headera") The thing that caused Reuben Ratliff to return rapidly to sobriety was the feeling of the nylon rope as the knot was pulled just tight enough to restrain his left leg against one of the bedposts. He’d technically felt it as his other limbs had been secured, but for some reason the feeling of his last limb being trapped had been the sensation that had cut through everything else and returned him rapidly to reality. Once he’d gotten to the nightclub, the night had rapidly become a blur of dancing, grinding, mixed drinks and thumping music, bodies undulating spasmodically amongst the flashing strobes… and a pair of intense, penetrating dark eyes, eyes that seemed to draw him in. The same pair of eyes, in fact, that flashed within the grey-furred face above him for a moment, a slow, sharp-fanged smile spreading across it before it momentarily vanished from view. Seeing the eyes again caused another flash of memories to cascade across his returning awareness. He’d danced with many guys, but none as intensely as the final dance of the night. Almost unthinkably, it had been with a wolf that was at least a head and a half taller than Reuben’s diminutive mouselike body. Even in the uneven light of the club, there had been much to admire - tight jeans that the wolf pulled off flawlessly, lithely muscular arms and a chest and back the would have fit perfectly in classical sculpture, all covered in a coat of grey fur that was as sleek and lustrous as any Reuben had ever seen. And those eyes, those intense, determined eyes… While the wolf hadn’t been the greatest dancer ever, he’d made up for it with his energy and intensity, and by the end of the dance Reuben’s own tight clothing was doing little to hide his obvious arousal. Between the drinks and the dancing, the world seemed perfectly buzzed, and Reuben had recalled the wolf saying something about taking a ride back to his place, and throwing caution to the wind, he’d accepted, although he didn’t recall quite agreeing to this! Reuben tilted his head up, looking around to take in his predicament. The first thing he could see, of course, was his own restrained body - like most mouse-style anthropomorphs, even his reasonably fit body looked thin in comparison to other species, covered in short, light grey fur just a few shades off of white, slightly mottled in a way that Reuben always thought made it look dirty. It wasn’t of course, but it was a far cry from some of the lustrous coats he’d spotted at the club, the wolf included. He was secured to the bed in a sort of X pattern, it seemed, with each limb tied to the nearest bedpost. There was enough slack in the rope that he could move each limb slightly, and the rope was smooth against his fur, the knots just tight enough around his wrists and ankles to prevent him from prying free, but otherwise, not all that uncomfortable. His tank top and shorts were nowhere to be seen, leaving him clad only in a pair of white sports briefs with hot-pink seams - not the classiest thing ever, but then again, he’d thought that his odds of shedding his clothes tonight hadn’t been that good, after spending the last few outings without meeting anyone interesting at all. This was interesting, certainlty, but Reuben wasn’t quite sure if it was a good kind of interesting. Being tied down, with a wolf lurking nearby, was the kind of thing that could easily bring the prey instincts of his distant ancestors to the fore, and he could already feel his heart pounding within his chest and his leg muscles tensing to run, as impossible as that might currently be. Rationally, he doubted it would be that bad, but in this situation, his mind couldn’t help but conjure up a variety of uncomfortable fates. Civilized or not, wolves were still carnivores, and it wasn’t unheard of for them to occasionally lose control… Reuben’s eyes darted around the room, trying to find something, anything, to dissuade his fears. What did he know about the wolf, anyway? Not much, he realized - he recalled somewhere in his hazy memories that the wolf had mentioned his name was Will, but he couldn’t recall him saying anything much more revealing than that. Okay, then, Will… not a particularly threatening name, at least. And it wasn’t like he had a collection of swords or hunting trophies on his wall - instead, what Reuben could make out in the room’s somewhat subdued light were nature photographs, majestic mountains ringed by clouds and stands of trees of the shores of lakes with pristine, clear blue water. Somewhat soothing, he guessed, but hardly all that revealing, although it at least showed some appreciation for the outdoors. Nothing else left any other particular clues that he could see - visible to him was the bed, three otherwise white walls lit by some kind of lamp on the headboard behind him, a traditionally styled wooden dresser, and a doorway framed in dark wood veneer that betrayed little of the room beyond, blocked as it was by the shadowy, massive shape that slowly stepped forward and into view. Reuben felt his breath catch in his throat as the wolf stepped forward until he was fully visible at the foot of the bed. It was, without question, the same wolf as before - the intense dark brown eyes that locked instantaneously with his own were confirmation enough. Nervous as he was, Reuben quickly broke eye contact, half-afraid of what would happen if their eyes remained locked. Instead, his eyes flicked down the wolf’s toned body. The jeans were long gone, leaving the wolf in a similar state of undress, his only article of clothing a pair of form-fitting black boxer briefs, with golden metallic stripes down the sides. Already, the pouch in front was pushed outward, the fabric wrapped tightly around a formidable bulge. Below that, his thighs were as muscular as the rest of him, although the view of anything below was blocked by the bed. The wolf was already turning, though, and Reuben looked up to see another smile begin to creep across the wolf’s muzzle as he walked over to the side of the bed. The smile didn’t seem particularly mean or menacing, though, just a sly little grin, the wolf’s tongue darting out to flick across his muzzle in… anticipation? The wolf reached down, placing his hand lightly on Reuben’s right ankle, just above where the rope was secured around it. His fingers nudged at the rope, checking that it was secure but loose enough, running his fingers along the circumference of the nylon loop. After a moment, the wolf released his ankle, but instead nestled two fingers into the fur above it, just deep enough to stroke against the individual strands, but not quite deep enough to press against the skin beneath. Slowly, the wolf began to trail his fingers upward, brushing them through the fur as they traced a line along his leg, curving outward around the knee to run along the outer part of his thigh. The gentle sensation against his fur was almost soothing, and Reuben could feel the tension in his legs beginning to dissipate even as the wolf’s hand traced along the seam of his underwear and slid under him to give his butt a sudden, firm squeeze. Reuben let out a squeak in response, startled by the change in contact, but also, he realized, becoming somewhat aroused by the gesture despite his predicament… The wolf’s hand didn’t waste any time, continuing to slide up and brush gently through the fur along his side, briefly darting across his chest before resting a moment on his stretched shoulder, the strong fingers taking a moment to massage the joint and roll it into a more comfortable position before trailing up along his arm. When they reached the top, the wolf’s fingers gently nudged in between Reuben’s, their hands interlocking, and despite his trepidation, Reuben could feel his own hand returning the gesture, his fingers curling over to press against the wolf’s sleek fur. (display:"breadcrumb")

(display:"headera") “I dunno about this,” I said, rubbing a paw-like hand between my fuzzy ears, glancing over warily at the dermal injector. “I mean, yeah, I can kinda get why the idea of this is hot, but… I don’t think you’re considering exactly what I’m gonna be going through, here.” Teki glanced over at me, her intense glare at odds with the gentle grin spread across her muzzle. “You’re that afraid of it, Zane? Is being like me really all *that* horrible?” I knew she didn’t mean anything by that, especially given the smile, but it didn’t do much to relieve my hesitation. “Well, no, but… you know, you were always that way, right? From birth, that’s just how your body was. So, to you, what I’m about to turn into isn’t any different from what you’re used to, but for me, it’s a pretty radical change.” “Yes, but a temporary one, as you well know,” Teki said, gliding a finger down the metal cylinder that made up the bulk of the injector. “You’ll be back to normal after an evening. It’s the anniversary of when we first met, and you know that you promised you’d do anything for me, within reason…” She didn’t say the rest, but I knew that she was right - as strange as it might be, this was all well within reason. After all, these things had been on the market for years, were advertised as well-tested and well-tolerated, as safe and sane as it got… but that didn’t stop the notion from being creepy in a sort of instinctual, visceral sort of way. Still, looking across at Teki, sitting on the other side of the bed from me, I could see the love that was obvious in her expression - a love that I was sure I felt at least as strongly. I hadn’t told her anything yet, but I’d even been out looking at rings recently, a few incognito inquiries here and there; an old-fashioned gesture in this day and age, but something I knew she would appreciate. If I couldn’t even do this for her, though, how was I going to get up the nerve to go through with something as high-stress as a proposal? And if I couldn’t even do this for her, how could I really think she’d say yes? My eyes darted back toward the injector, and I gulped involuntarily. At least, I consoled myself, there was only one injector on the bed, which meant that she wouldn’t be undergoing the reciprocal change; given how much trouble I was already having convincing myself to do this, having both of us swapped was far beyond what I was prepared to handle. I could feel her gaze on me, and I looked over to see her sitting on the bed and eagerly awaiting my next move. The first part of our anniversary celebration was already out of the way: carnivore-friendly cuisine at the most well-regarded local restaurant, followed by an evening of classic ballroom dancing that Teki had enjoyed considerably and that I had tolerated without complaint (at least, I certainly hadn’t minded the closer dances that had been sprinkled throughout). And now here we were - me, totally naked, lounging on the bed, my mind bouncing between the anxiety of the injector and the way that the cream-colored satin lingerie stood out against Teki’s glossy black fur. I knew that Teki was looking forward to this, and somewhere deep inside, a small part of me was too, the odd mixture of eroticism, curiosity and anxiety leaving my cock in a confused, semi-erect state. I gulped involuntarily as I reached out for the injector, bringing it up in front of my face and looking it over. The instructions, in bold red letters along the side of the cylinder, were clear enough: “Press dispersal tip against upper part of inner thigh and press blue button to release agent.” I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to gather up my determination and quiet the anxiety that was buzzing in my brain; and, now that the injector was in my hand, slowly building towards panic. I closed my eyes and tried to focus, working to find a moment of calm that would allow me to commit to my decision, and when my eyes opened again I realized my hand was eerily calm. I was sure that such composure wouldn’t last, though; it was now or never. Reaching down, I immediately felt the coldness of the metal nozzle against my thigh, an involuntary shudder running down my spine as I realized just how close I was to the point of no return. The shudder was just enough to make my hand twitch, though, and before I had even mentally committed to the decision, I felt an icy, tingling burst against my skin as the twitch was just enough to activate the button. It was a standard injector, for the most part, so I knew that the sensation meant microdroplets of the agent were already pushing in past my pores and rapidly entering my bloodstream. I tensed, a flash of panic jolting across my mind, as the process the injector was meant to invoke was already well underway, and essentially irrevocable - well, until the agent wore off, at least. For tonight, though, Teki would have her wish; despite her intensely interested and aroused expression, though, I couldn’t reciprocate that interest, as a knot of… something… was quickly building in my stomach. I lay back, trying to get comfortable, the strange feelings in my gut increasing even as the icy feeling on my thigh quickly dissipated. In its stead, a patch of warmth slowly began to expand, flowing quickly up my leg and across my crotch, before radiating outward from there. Soon, the warmth seemed to envelop both my thighs, and was fighting against the tense sensation in my abdomen. Along with all of that, though, I could feel an odd, tingling sensation centered between my hips. It took scarcely a moment for the sensation to dip quickly downward, and almost immediately I could feel my testicles begin to twitch within my scrotum, somehow moving on their own accord as things quickly began to change. I looked down with a mix of curiosity and confusion, and realized I could see the outline of my testicles shifting around within my furry scrotum. As I watched, first one, then the other began to edge upwards, their speed increasing as they pulled up towards my groin. I could feel the strange pressure of them as they pressed tightly against the upper bound of the flesh that contained them, even as I felt that same flesh somehow begin to shift around subtly in response. The strange sensation was quickly followed by an odd popping sensation as they pushed through whatever barrier had shifted around them and continued on inside, moving steadily up through my pelvis. As the unusual sensations continued their steady march upwards, I could do little else but stare down at the oddly deflated sack of fur where my testicles had been. Whatever I might have wanted to say caught in my throat as my mind somehow tried to deal with the intense wrongness of what I was seeing. As wrong as it seemed, though, the sight quickly became even more strange - somehow, impossibly, the fur that coated my now-flattened ballsac was somehow shrinking down and fading away, leaving only the oddly naked, pink flesh beneath. I was sure the color was draining from my face at the sight, as my mind moved beyond panic and simply failed to properly grasp the implications of the beyond surreal sight. Teki, however, seemed raptly fascinated by what she had just witnessed, and I felt her leaning in close to look at my emptied ballsac. “Wow, they weren’t kidding when they said it’d work fast! I mean, I knew it wasn’t exactly a gradual change, but… damn, I never thought I’d really see it happening before my eyes.” “Yeah, I… hahh… can’t believe it either,” I replied. It really was unbelievable, though, that a supposedly simple injection spray could make things happen so dramatically. “It’s like it’s… freakin’ magic, or something.” “Hah, you know, you’re right! I kind of had the same thought about it when I was looking at them down at the distribution center. Made some offhand comment to the tech that was down there helping me, and he said something like, ‘With technology that’s as advanced as this, it might as well be bloody magic.’” Teki said this last in a slightly silly mock baritone, and I couldn’t help but chuckle in response, but even that involuntary vocalization seemed to catch in my throat as something inside it shifted. I tried to say something else as the feeling took hold, but I only managed to get a word or two out before my voice cracked and ended up coming out as an odd, high-pitched squeak. I coughed a couple of times, trying to clear the odd feeling, and in a moment my throat felt mostly back to normal. “Well, that was weird,” I said, but the voice didn’t seem to be mine at all. It was several registers higher in pitch, at least. In fact, I realized, it sounded more like Teki’s than anything else. “Whoa, cool! Your voice shifted already! I wonder what’s gonna come next…” Teki trailed off, flicking her gaze up and down along my body to look for additional signs of change, but aside from the deflated scrotum nothing was looking tremendously different. I, however, was well aware that not only were the changes continuing, but they were progressing even more strangely. For one thing, I could somehow still feel my testicles, if they even were still testicles, shifting and moving inside me, two points of unusual heat pushing steadily through my abdomen even as they spread apart, slowly shifting to either side. They finally seemed to settle towards the upper part of my stomach, shifting around inside me and producing an odd, momentary queasy feeling as they seemed to settle into place, their area of warmth beginning to spread slightly outward. After a moment, though, the warmth instead seemed to flow out of them in a narrow stream, creating two curving lines of heat seemingly just below my skin, almost like some sort of pattern was being tattooed on my belly from the inside. The lines didn’t come together, though, and stopped after several centimeters, seeming to hold in place as though they were waiting for something. Whatever that something was, though, was twisting and stirring within me, and I could feel my guts being shunted aside and cramping uncomfortably as they rearranged themselves into a new configuration. The abrupt shifting was quickly accompanied by a wave of nausea, and I bolted up from my reclining posture and doubled over momentarily, the room around me seeming to waver like an out-of-sync video screen. A growl emanated from my throat as I slamming my eyes shut, trying to block out the crazy sensations churning through my insides. Somehow, I managed to hold it together, and after a minute or two, my guts seemed to sort themselves out. The points of warmth on my stomach, though, gave off a quick flash of heat, and the lines gave out a similar burst as they seemed to connect to the unusual new heaviness in my abdomen. I opened my eyes again, straightening up to look into Teki’s worried face, which was now hovering close to my own. “Zane, are you okay? You looked pretty awful there for a moment…” I reached down, placing a hand on my belly, but everything was once again feeling fine - in fact, I realized that I felt quite reasonably comfortable, thrumming slightly with a faint new internal warmth. “I’m okay, I think, it’s just… there’s a bunch of stuff going on inside, and it was kinda bad for a moment, but I think that part is over, at least.” “Well, that’s good…” Teki said, even as I noticed her eyes trailing down to my chest. At the same time, I realized that I could feel something pressing out against the arm that I’d used to inspect my stomach. Surprised, I pulled my hand back, looking down at at the changes that were quickly taking place on my own chest. My chest had been fairly well-built ever since I had reached puberty, in a masculine sense at least, but now that definition was gone, replaced by a much softer look… one which I realized was quickly swelling outward, my fur pushing out rapidly around steadily growing hemispheres. As they pushed outward, I could see the pink flesh of my nipples, somehow, in their center. Usually, they weren’t even visible at all beneath my fur, but now they were more than visible at the tip of the quickly-forming breasts, the pink nub of flesh pushing outward and quickly expanding, swelling to several times its normal girth and dimpling inward in the center. Within a matter of seconds, I was looking down at two adorable pink nipples, the kind I would have been more than happy to languidly tongue and suckle on myself, were they not attached to my own chest - and capping off the tight furry hemispheres that now formed a reasonably ample set of breasts. Momentarily mesmerized, I reached up to feel them, not quite believing that they were attached to my body. They definitely were, though, and I could easily feel my own fingers wrapping around warmly as I carefully cupped each one. They felt good but strange in my hands, followed momentarily by the even stranger realization that I was enjoying the feeling of my own hands against them! Intrigued, I gave them a little squeeze, the flesh yielding easily even as I thrilled at the massaging feeling. Almost instinctively, I moved my hands up slightly, running my fingers across nipples that were suddenly far more sensitive than they’d ever been before, not quite as sensitive asmy penis, but their stimulation jumped to the front of my mind in a similar fashion. A couple more caresses, and I could swear I could feel my arousal growing, but it felt strange - even as I sensed my somehow still-present erection growing, I also realized there was a more diffuse sense of arousal growing somewhere low in my belly, far deeper than it should have been. Slightly unnerved by the unusual feeling, I reluctantly released my new breasts, even as I could feel a series of warm pinpricks poking down my chest as the two rows of auxiliary nipples made themselves known. I could see Teki watching as they expanded to display their subtle pink dots nestled within and poking out just above the level of my fur. I ran a hand down along them, and discovered to my surprise that they were almost as sensitive as the other ones - and when my hand finished its motion across the lowest pair, I felt a sudden twinge of pleasant warmth spark in my belly, accompanied by the sound of a breathy, feminine moan that I quickly realized had emanated from my own lips. Of course, I realized that technically, I might not really even be a “he” at that point… I leaned back on the bed a bit, propping myself up on my elbows. The movement shifted my breasts slightly, and I felt them bounce subtly against my chest before settling into a new equilibrium. Teki had also caught their motion, and once again was staring at them intently, an almost cheshire-like grin plastered across her muzzle. I could tell that she was at least as eager to play with them as I was, but for some reason she held back, keeping her hands on her knees. It took me a moment, though, to realize the intent behind her focus: as much as I knew she wanted to play, she was far more interested at the moment in simply observing and absorbing every aspect of my transformation. And, despite the turmoil caused by the sudden changes, I realized that I was happy to let her do so - after all, no matter how unsettling or fascinating it was for me, I was really doing all of this for Teki’s sake. I noticed Teki’s head dipping downward, and a moment later I began to feel something shifting around near my groin. “Oh, wow,” I heard Teki say, and I leaned forward again, looking down to see what was going on. My penis was still there, standing fully erect from the unexpected nipple stimulation. It didn’t really look all that different yet, but what lay beneath it certainly did. My scrotum, or what was left of it, lay flat against the sheets, all of the fur that had covered it before vanishing to reveal a thin layer of soft-looking pink skin. As we both watched, though, it seemed to ripple and undulate, rolls of it bunching up and shifting to either side, even as I could feel the flesh pulling… inward, somehow, rolling back towards the barrier that had previously blocked the ascent of my testicles. Only now, that barrier was there no longer, and in its place was apparently some sort of empty space into which the flesh was flowing and somehow filling, a cone of warmth that seemed to push in between my legs and settle slowly upwards into my pelvis. As it pushed deeper in towards my belly, I could see the flesh rippling and retracting as it pulled in, the bunched-up areas seeming almost to fuse together until they formed a pair of tight pink ridges, pulling parallel and pressing warmly together for a moment before pulling back snug in between my legs. I had to arch my chest forward and crane my neck to see what was happening, my new breasts pressing down against my ribcage as I strained to see around them. Looking down through the cleft between them, I could see the remaining area of flesh press in between my legs and seem to trail off to either side, stretching taut to leave a slightly raised pink dome of flesh just behind where my balls had used to rest, the ridges settling flat against each other in a crease running directly down the middle of it. As I looked closer, though, I realized that somewhere in the midst of all of it, the ridges had also extended upward, seeming to curl up to meet around the base of my penis and forming a little skirt of flesh that encircled it. I suddenly felt his pelvis shifting on the bed, my bones making an odd creaking sound as they somehow became momentarily malleable and subtly shifted into a slightly different configuration. At the same time, I felt a flash of warmth low in my belly as the skin that had seemed to extend inside pressed up against something and seemed to meld with it, connecting to the new organ that had formed inside me. The burst of warmth was followed by an odd rippling sensation, as though something inside that had been tightly pressed together suddenly relaxed, section by section, rolling down the new passage between my legs until they reached the outside, a flush of warmth spreading across the new patch of skin even as the ridges of flesh twitched and pulled apart slightly, a single bead of clear moisture edging out from between where they came together. Even as I realized what I had just experienced - the formation and first gentle contraction from my newly-formed vagina - a flicking motion from slightly higher oup drew my gaze. My penis, still somehow erect through it all, was suddenly and drastically changing its angle, tilting downward in a strange, steady arc, until it was pointing straight down like an arrow between my legs, its tip pressing down into the sheets. If it had been fully erect, I realized, it wouldn’t have just been pressing down, it would be bending outward in protest. It was considerably shorter than that now, though, and getting shorter, but not because my erection was softening - if anything, it almost felt like I was straining to get even harder. Nevertheless, it continued to get smaller, seeming not to shrink as much as to concentrate, the definition of the tip and flared head melting into the shaft even as the shaft itself grew redder and warmer. The bottom parts of the shaft almost felt as though they were sinking in, somehow splitting and curling around the newly formed passage, and I realized that I could actually see something nudging in below the top of the fleshy ridges, pushing them up and out to display them prominently as fully-formed pussy lips, even as their presence padded the taut flesh around them and caused it to push out to form a proper pink pubic mound. Even as that formation finished, I watched as the remaining part of my cock, now transformed into a bright red bud that improbably felt more intensely erect than it ever had before, pulled down within the ridges that rose up slightly and curled around it. With a wonderfully intense sensation, I felt it nuzzle in comfortably, surrounded by the flesh of the pink hood that now protected and surrounded it. With that, the abrupt changes seemed to cease, but the last transformation had made the transition abundantly clear : for the moment, at least, I was now completely and unquestionably a woman. Leaning back up, I took a moment to look over my newly transformed body. Along with the more obvious changes I had already witnessed, there were several subtler ones - my musculature had shifted, leaving toned but thinner arms. My thighs, though, had rounded a bit, and I could feel that my hips had swelled out some to accommodate the new configuration. Overall, the lines of my body were smoother, rounder, more attractive… however things were configured now, my mind had apparently remained much the same, and the sight of the new body was proving to be oddly arousing. At least, I thought it was - the flush of adrenaline was the same, but the other accompanying sensations still seemed so different that my mind was having trouble parsing what I was feeling and what those feelings meant. Instead of the obvious erection that I was used to, there was almost just a general sensation of something warm and comfortable, taking gradual form in my belly and slowly radiating downward. The only sensation that was at all familiar was that of my new clit straining erect and nudging up against its hood, but instead of being pleasant or arousing, the sensation was momentarily so intense that it almost flashed over into intense discomfort, and I desperately squirmed my hips around for a moment until the intensity dissipated. I looked quickly back up, though, as a hand brushed along my arm. I’d been so engrossed in the changes, and my newfound arousal, that for a moment I’d barely even remembered that Teki was still in the room. “So, how are you feeling?” she asked. “Uh… surprisingly, okay.” I replied, still getting used to the new, higher tone of my voice. Truthfully, though, everything was, overall, feeling pretty good. Aside from the few moments of nausea while things inside rearranged, the transition, while surprisingly quick, hadn’t really been all that bad either. And while conceptually, the situation still felt strange, now that things were done adjusting my new form felt comfortable, almost… natural. There wasn’t the feeling I’d thought I would have afterwards, the sense of something missing or different. Something must have shifted in my mind as well, nerves reconnecting and reassigning to everything new, as I now seemed to register my body as just that: absolutely normal, the new and changed parts felt like they’d always been a part of me. I realized, surprisingly, that I could barely even remember the specific sensations of what it felt like to have a cock. What I did know, though, was that I felt good - and, female body or not, the sight of Teki’s nearly-naked body in front of her was enough to make that… something… begin to stir within me even more powerfully. “Actually… pretty good, all things considered. I, I feel good, I feel sexy, I probably look sexy, you definitely do…” Teki smiled at that. “Mmm… so they were right about the attraction staying the same, or better.” Teki shifted on the bed, not so subtly rocking down against the bedsheets in a slow grinding motion. “I have to say, it felt amazing just to watch it happen, but I feel like the time for just watching should be over…” She leaned forward, her grin shifting to look almost predatory in nature, not a hard thing to do given her canine appearance. “C’mere, my very girly boyfriend. If you’re going to get the full female experience, I think the first thing you should feel is how awesome it is when two very nice sets of breasts get to meet…” Teki reached back, unhooking her bra and sliding the garment over her shoulders, holding it against her breasts with her hand for one tantalizing moment before letting it drop. I admired the newly-revealed sight, even as I couldn’t help but simultaneously feel a twinge of guilt while flicking my eyes down to my own chest - the transformation seemed to have endowed me with a set of breasts at least half a size larger than Teki’s. Teki’s breasts, however, were to me just as beautiful as they had always been: perfectly balanced, exactly the right size for her body, full and pert with her soft, creamy fur encircling a pair of bright pink nipples that were already standing at attention. Teki moved forward on the bed, her knees causing the sheets to ripple like miniature waves as she edged herself closer, her arms reaching out to circle around my back as she pulled in against me. Before she could get as close as she normally did, though, she made contact with my own newly-acquired breasts, pressing them gently back in against my chest as an equally soft and impressive set nuzzled gently in against them. (display:"breadcrumb")

(display:"headera") I leaned back in the swivel chair, trying to kick my legs up onto the desk and softly swearing as my tail got tangled up between the seat and the chair back. Fuckin’ thing. One damn bite from a were… what? Wolf? Fox? I have no idea. Hell, maybe it wasn’t a normal were-creature at all, but an alien, or a demon, or some other sort of supernatural horror. Given that it had been dark enough beforehand, and the damn thing had had the temerity to gobble down my flashlight before sinking its teeth into my shoulder, I never really got that good of a look. The next several minutes had been a flurry of darkness, terror, fur, and mind-jarring growls. By the time things had calmed down, I realized that I was somehow balls-deep in one of the creature’s orifices, and I hoped like hell that I’d managed to hit a female one before my panicked body somehow found the energy to incongruously climax. Afterwards, it had had the good sense to pass out entirely, sparing me any more horrifying , or worse, titillating details. When I’d come to in the back of the EMS dropship, though, I quickly realized that the encounter had caused some rather rapid, if disappointingly expected, results. The tail, for instance: a long red-orange puff of spastic fur that I quickly learned never did anything I told it to. Oh yeah, and the ears, the furry hands, the clown-shoe-sized footpaws, and the whiskered muzzle where my nose and chin used to be. And the stuff between my legs, of course, although the less I thought about that, the better. Then again, I supposed, it was hardly the worst fate that could befall a sworn officer of the Special Situations Unit. The only parts of Harnell they ever found were contained in a carefully-crafted vest crocheted from thin, leathered strips of his own skin; Pelkir spent his bleak-eyed days and sleepless nights standing ramrod-straight in front of his workstation, continually babbling Lovecraftian nonsense as he processed the bulk of the squad’s computerized intelligence and criminal databases in an eerily efficient manner. All told, I’d gotten off relatively easy so far: I still had surprisingly good health and all my faculties, and aside from my smattering of oddly bestial features, I’d managed to maintain more of a human appearance than most. True, there were a handful of “untainted” humans who still worked in the department, but most of the time you could hardly tell; they tended to guard their purity zealously, and even in the office most of them wore the up-armored, military equivalent of a hazmat suit. Some wouldn’t even take off their chemical masks, which only added to the vaguely creepy atmosphere of the working environment. At least in the field, you were usually too busy making sure nothing bad happened to you to notice just how… weird things had gotten. I mean, things had been weird for a while, but it wasn’t like it had happened overnight; it was more like a steady progression, one strange thing after another popping up to redefine people’s notions of what was possible. I was old enough that I’d been a teen when stuff started to manifest in earnest, but that was scattered sightings here and there; by the time I’d finished studying criminal justice at college and joined up with the newly-formed Special Situations Agency out of curiosity a decade later, such things had largely become routine and spread worldwide. From there, the… events hadn’t exactly gotten more common in the intervening years, but definitely became weirder and more geographically widespread. By the point all the craziness basically engulfed the entire world, I’d sort of lost track of time, as my transformation had managed to muddle the way every part of me worked. Looking at me, various people would swear that I was in my twenties, or thirties, or forties, but it was probably longer than that; by the time I’d hit was I was sure was forty, and had somehow reverted to what looked like at least half that, I just decided to stop counting. The transformation, or curse, or whatever it was had its hooks firmly into me, and it seemed to have no intention of allowing me to succumb to old age before it was satisfied. It’s not like I felt any older, anyway - my mindset was still pretty much the way it was when I’d joined up, albeit tempered with a long list of things to do, and not do, to avoid any more unfortunate situations. And, even after all those years, I still had no idea what to do with that goddamned tail. It was midnight, so the open-plan office was bustling: the weirdness only seemed to increase once the sun went down. Not that I minded; for some reason, after the transformation, I found that I absolutely loved midnight. Even more so when the moon was out, and if it was full… well, when that happened, I pretty much just gave up on getting anything useful done and gave myself over to stomping around outside and howling at it, among other things. Those other things, well… let’s just say I’m not the only beast in town that develops some urgent needs around that time, especially in the spring and summer, and leave it at that. Especially since urges that powerful don’t always necessarily… discriminate between gender, or attractiveness, or occasionally willingness. I will say, though, that before my transformation, I’d never really thought about whether a crime was committed when two people ended up, due to clashing instincts, basically raping each other simultaneously. Turns out there’s not really a law for it, but when it comes to things happening between beasts on a full moon, it seemed that not even my esteemed colleagues in Special Situations could be arsed to care much either way, or or for that matter risk their own hides trying to get between two pent-up beast-people intent on going at it. “You know, technically, if two people pursue intercourse with each other, it’s not actually rape in the first place.” I glanced towards the voice, although I already knew who it belonged to. Banton Orrelleyn could be charitably described as my partner, though it was less a case of mutual compatibility so much as no one else in the department wanting to be anywhere near his… particular attributes, to put it politely. It wasn’t that he looked all that bad, comparatively; apart from the living, writhing hair that looked vaguely like someone had dumped a can of nightcrawlers on his head, the rest of him looked human enough. It had more to do with the unblinking third eye that sat smugly in the middle of his forehead, and allowed him to glance into the surface thoughts of anyone who happened to be nearby. For rather obvious reasons, that tweaked a lot of people off - but quite frankly, I didn’t much give a shit about it either way. If he wanted to put up with the near-continual stream of violence, smut, and cussing that regularly reverberated between my ears, or at least where my ears used to be, then more power to him. Plus, on the rare occasions his comments crossed the line, all it took was a quick baring of my fangs and a not-so-subtle jibe about the potential tastiness of his flesh to get him back in order. Of course, that didn’t mean that I loved being around him - more that his presence was simply a constant, chronic source of low-level aggravation, the sort of irritating background noise that, among other things, you learned to at least partially filter out for the sake of your own sanity. “Yeah? Is that so?” I swung my legs over again, this time successfully plopping my ridiculously-sized fluffy feet atop a pile of pointless reports. “I’m afraid it is. Rape is defined as the consummation of a sexual act without the consent of one or more parties, and if someone is actively trying to have sex with someone else, their consent is obviously implied. If both parties are trying to do such a thing, then they cancel each other out and all you’re left with is just a normal, regulation act.” “Even when both the parties involved are snarling, rutting animals acting on instinct?” “Even more so, then. Admittedly there are also sections in the statute based on impairment, but I’m quite sure that just really, really wanting to have sex doesn’t count.” “Hmph.” He was right, of course. He was, in fact, almost universally right, which, combined with how he projected that rightness onto others, provided a wholly different reason for most people to avoid him. Which was why, as usual, I decided to drop the argument, albeit with a torrent of grumbly, unspoken thoughts that managed to elicit a smirk from him. What did he know about it, anyway? Textbook definitions, sure, but once you’ve experienced something like that… Of course, given our line of work and the law of averages, it was probably only a matter of time before Banton got to experience such a thing firsthand; then again, being able to know the intentions of someone long before they struck probably gave him a sizable advantage in avoiding such situations. That, and the fact that the damned third eye seemed to give him preternatural accuracy and finesse with his sidearm, despite the fact that he carried a four-fifty-five “elephant-gun” magnum revolver, the sort that you’d swear would buckle his spindly arms until you’d watched him methodically empty each of the chambers right into what could vaguely be considered the “ten-ring” on some otherworldly horror. “All right, ya damn smartass. If you’re done correcting me for today, I’m gonna go ahead and assume you’re bothering me because we’ve got an actual case tonight.” Case nights, in my opinion, were the best; instead of going out to randomly patrol some sector of the city, bracing yourself for whatever weirdness you were just about guaranteed to stumble into, having an actual case to investigate was far superior. It was always better to have something to sink your teeth into; metaphorically speaking, at least, although if it did become physical, my current form didn’t seem to have much of a problem with that either. “A reasonable assumption, and one that is certainly within the logical processing power in your possession.” I snarled at that, of course - it was a button that Banton loved to press, given the disjunct between my appearance, and my vastly experienced and reasonably educated mind. Banton largely ignored my wordless riposte, though, and instead unclipped the minicomp from his belt and kicked up a quick projection of the casefile on my desk, the subject heading bleeding over onto my feet and giving the fur an odd blue-green tint. “Tonight, our illustrious leaders have saddled us with a suspected case of shape violation.” “Let me guess. More curses?” As weird as the term sounded, all a shape violation really meant was that there was a person out there who was in a shape they weren’t supposed to be, and a shape they didn’t want. One of the latest trends in the overall weirdness were self-proclaimed “gypsies” or “shamans” trafficking in various occult potions and incantations. Want to turn your boss into a toad? No problem these days, as long as you’re willing to get on the bad side of the law and risk a pissed-off half-werewolf coming to knock on your door. On the grand scale of things, not exactly the most heinous crime someone could get up to, but for the poor sod on the receiving end, it was generally an unpleasant experience. Especially given that the last few cases we’d seen involved guys who’d pissed someone off not just turned into cats or dogs or other sundry pets, but female versions that were somehow given instant estrus and left to “play” with their fellow animals. The ones Special Situations had found so far, we’d been able to change back, physically at least. Upon their return to their normal form, though, most of them had what Banton had described as “suboptimal mental states.” Yeah, you dick, you’d probably have a suboptimal mental state too if you’d just spent the past week getting gang-raped by a bunch of fucking dogs. “I know your own particular situation likely predisposes you to it, but must you spend your time obsessing over the breeding of lower forms?” “You just can’t give it a rest, can you? Jeez, Banton, I thought you would have learned by now…” I followed that up with my best short-form imagining of a pair of dogs going at it with wild abandon, and was rewarded by Banton making a face like he’d just been sucking on a lemon. “Had enough?” It was my turn to smirk. “Honestly, for your indeterminate age, your juvenile humor never ceases to both amaze and disgust me.” Banton paused for a second, pointedly refusing to look at me, and instead flicking idly through the case file. “I have to admit, though, it does seem odd that so much of the weirdness in our world today seems to revolve around intercourse in some form or other. You’d think there would be more lights in the sky, scenes of sheer magic and wonder, but instead we end up with eldritch tentacle monsters and half-beasts rutting in the streets.” He looked up at me, more of a glare than anything else. “Present company most definitely not excluded, of course.” “Jeez, Banton, it was just that one-“ “TWO times. Two miserable times I’ve had to watch. Two times that haunt my dreams whenever I dare to risk an actual attempt at sleep, and which you make it your mission to replay in your head just often enough to remind me of them.” “Eh, just think of it as payback.” “Payback? Payback for what?” “Payback for me suffering your existence in my every working day.” Banton sighed. “Fair enough.” He turned off the projection and stowed the minicomp before stretching his long, spindly arms. “Shall we get to it, then?” “Works for me.” I slid my feet back down from the desk, buckling my equipment belt back into place. The only thing missing I retrieved from one of the drawers, brushing a few motes of dust off of the hardened barrel. The barrel was actually hexagonal, hard-forged iridium on the outside, but professionally rifled within, packing a half-dozen rounds with a magnum powder load and hand-plated silver shells. In this business, it made more sense to pack a punch, and a jamming automatic could quickly take your day from pretty good to very, very bad. Plus, if you were up against something that six nearly half-inch, paranormal-warding slugs couldn’t take down, there probably wasn’t a gun in the world short of a tank cannon that would do you much good. Not that I drew my gun that often anyway; one of the side effects of my form, and the muscular bulk its hormones had subsequently provided, was a desire to get up close and personal once things kicked off. I got to my feet, holstering my weapon, and looking out into the bustle of people milling around between us and the door, in what served as a lobby in the open-plan workspace. Looking over those assembled, it was easy to see just how much Special Situations really was a microcosm of the weirdness in society at large. There was an abundance of fur, both natural-colored and otherwise, and while most of the people milling about still had only the traditional two arms, the quad configuration was growing in popularity. Some of the limbs were even robotic in nature, and the odd squid-like tentacle certainly wasn’t unheard of. There was a time, one I still remembered at least, where you could pick someone here at random and have better than even odds that they’d be a regular, straight-up human; these days, though, it really was rare to spot one at all. It made sense, I supposed: there wasn’t a lot of incentive for a human to expose themselves to the dangers of Special Situations, not if they wanted to keep both their life and their inherent species intact. And the perps, well, if all they were was human, there were plenty of more conventional police to keep them in line. And I was happy to let them, as it meant that, danger aside, we got cases that were a whole lot more interesting than whatever pedestrian violence “regular” people got up to. Of course, there were a few drawbacks to working primarily with the mutated and transformed segments of society. One of those, I was quickly reminded as we made our way through the undulating sea of creatures and people, was the smell. Dozens of different types of hybrids and various eldritch conglomerates, each with their particular mixture of scents, musks, and slimes, and me with the misfortune of having accidentally inherited the sort of canine-type nose that was sensitive enough to unconsciously distinguish and catalog every last one of them, involuntarily breaking down the entirety of the awful collected funk. My mind simply took it all in, casually noting how the probably-werefox woman sitting at Stelvar’s desk and giving a statement was about three hours past the onset of her heat, and the musk coming off her partner standing nearby meant that as soon as they were released, I’d lay good odds that they’d be rutting in the first alley they came across that offered even the slightest level of seclusion. Or how the octopus-headed thing standing a few feet away, its arm-tentacles swaddled in a straitjacket as regular handcuffs could do nothing against them, was about midway through its mysterious slime cycle, which was ostensibly related to mating but not in a way that anyone could reliably explain. Or the fact that the diminutive red imp-like creature weaving its way through the crowd, with a couple of Special Situations officers chasing along behind, had recently emerged from one of the more problematic dimensions, and still hadn’t fully cleared its homeland’s metallic, sulfurous air from whatever served as its analogue for lungs. It was all informative, sure, but also a sickening reminder that I was actually breathing in all of that stuff. At least the outside air, when we finally reached it, was marginally more tolerable - given the time of day, though, and the time of year, the exotic tang of heat and the earthy spice of musk were still omnipresent. Unfortunately, mixed in with all the rest were at least a couple of signatures that were halfway compatible with my own transformation, and I was soon walking aggravatingly at half-mast, desperately trying to run through recent sports scores in an attempt to keep everything, so to speak, in my pants - if the knot got free of its containment and started bulging out again, it was gonna be pretty damn obvious, and once it was out it would take at least an hour, or a good several minutes being lodged in someone receptive, before it would be at all tamable again. I sighed, glancing out at the expanse of the city stretching out before me, asphalt still slick and glimmering under the streetlights from the quickly tapering rain. It was, objectively at least, the kind of future that someone from a few centuries ago would marvel at. I’d seen all the classics, the utopias and dystopias, the worlds of Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell, and knew that people had expected futuristic cities with staggering verticality, all chrome and neon and glowing pan-asian ambience. The future as it was, though, was more like a mutation, like a city that had sprouted and expanded haphazardly, bulging out pavement and cold concrete as it messily tried to evolve. Things hadn’t gone up so much as they had down and out and around each other, jutting out apartment-block elbows and strip-mall knees into the sides of their respective bedfellows, bear-hugging each other with the encirclements of narrow alleys and elevated expressways, glowering at their intimate neighbors with the glowing, unblinking eyes of scanning digital screens. The heights were reserved primarily for the newer breeds of the mechanical locust swarms, glittering drones doing an intricate dance of avoidance as they buzzed and clattered along their own industrious paths to efficient commerce. It was still better, though, than the sub-city, the place below even the utilities, hot and dark and claustrophobic, more a jumbled assembly of animal warrens than anything approaching proper civilization. I did what I could to foist off any cases we received that went down there, as Banton absolutely refused to work in such close quarters - even though there was fun to be had, at least if you happened to look like me, and knew the right places to poke your head into. That being said, I still liked it better on the surface. At least out here, polluted or not, it didn’t feel like the air had been breathed in and then oozed back out the pores of a hundred different people before it ever reached your nostrils. Especially after a rain, there was nothing quite like walking at ground level, enjoying the relative silence that the downpour had brought to the usually crowded streets and breathing in the air that millions of minute droplets had changed for the better. “You got the address, right?” I asked Banton, even as I began swiftly stepping in a random direction. After being cooped up in that bullpen of an office, it was hard to deny that need lingering in my legs. They wanted to roam, and I obliged them, even as Banton sighed, ran after me, and tugged my arm in a different direction. “Yes, just follow me, if you can manage to keep yourself and your pesky canine nose from wallowing in trivial distractions. The sooner we get this over with, the better. I’ve already had to look at… stuff… dripping out of a dog’s hind end twice in the past week already, and I am certainly not looking forward to a third.” “Fine, I won’t make you look this time.” Ya big baby, I didn’t say, but then again, with Banton, I didn’t have to. Even with him walking in front of me, I could all but feel the pained expression that was surely forming on his customarily aggravated face. “Unlike yourself,” Banton continued in a clipped, precise tone that I knew signified frustration, “I derive little enjoyment from having an animal’s sex all but rubbed in my face. Surely, with a nose like yours, you could simply sniff out the victim’s wretched condition without such a physical examination.” “True, maybe, but with all those eyes, I’m sure you have much more insight than a little sniff. Not to mention, we need evidence of all the crimes before we try someone. Someone gets changed and then a pack of animals find them, feral or not, we still get to charge the dumbass who did the transform in the first place with conspiracy to commit rape. You want to get someone dead to rights, sometimes you have to get your hands a little dirty.” “No. Not my hands. Not this time. You want to get ahold of that stuff, you can do it yourself. Not to mention, if you insist on photographic evidence, you can handle it too. The last girl I went out with asked to borrow my phone, and I did not enjoy in the least the mental accusations and subsequent required explanation as to the nature of an investigation that led to the intimate parts of female dogs, actual female dogs, maintaining a presence in its image gallery.” “Banton! I’m shocked! Breaking an important chain of custody by letting some random civilian gain access to your-“ “Stuff it.” Banton, as I well knew, was not one to be subtle about when a conversation was over. “Suit yourself,” I replied, glancing at his writing hair and idly wondering for the umpteenth time whether some of the strands would eventually lose it independently of their owner and make an aggressive lunge at me. “Like I told you, though, I’ve got your back. The next time some fine lady catches you with your phone showing the ace of spades, I’d be happy to explain your heroic dedication to your job, especially as it extends to your personal electronics.” “Hmph. Right. I wouldn’t introduce you to a woman I had the slightest interest in if you paid me. We both know exactly what happened with Lilah, after all.” “Um… well, in my defense, she was in heat…” “No, no she wasn’t, and you know it.” “Er… I was in heat?” Banton glanced back for a moment, glaring at me. “You’re always in heat. That’s the problem.” “Well, not technically-“ “Tell me, when was the last time you spent more than ten minutes at a stretch with a canine woman, one who hadn’t already sworn to chew your balls off if you tried anything, that you didn’t end up dipping your wick in? And don’t bother trying to make anyone up, either. You know I know when you’re lying.” “Dipping my wick? Really? What fuckin’ century did you-“ “Don’t try to dodge the question. Seriously, how many?” “Hmm, well, let’s see… three?” “Out of?” “Um… more than three?” A lot more than three… “I rest my case.” “You know, you could stop seeing canine women…” I trailed off, eating another glare. “Really? I should think you, of all people, would have the least right to comment on my tastes in women.” “Yeah, probably…” “Good. If that’s settled, could we please talk about something else? I would rather, at the moment, discuss brutal disembowelment with you than have to consider again what happened between you and Lilah.” “Look, I’m sorry I forgot to lock the stall door before we-“ “NOT THINKING ABOUT IT.” Banton turned back around, his shoes thudding on the pavement as he angrily increased his pace. I considered for a moment replaying a snippet from that particular event in my mind, but I wisely decided that Banton had already been tweaked enough, and pushing it would probably result in the monstrous barrel of his gun tickling my muzzle in an uncomfortably phallic manner. Come to think of it, Banton always avoided using the station showers, at least while I was there, and I realized I’d never actually seen him other than fully clothed, despite the fact that he’d probably seen me that way more times than I could count. In all honesty, I had no idea what exactly a creature like him packed inside his drawers, but given his penchant for women and generally male appearance, it had seemed like an easy assumption. I couldn’t help but wonder, though, if his wriggling mass of not-exactly-hair might presage something particularly… adventurous lower down. Not that it was any of my business, though - Banton’s personality was more than enough to discourage even any peripheral notion of getting in his pants. Banton paused, clearing his throat. “I know that you know I’m more than well aware of what you’re thinking.” Oh, yeah. Well, it wasn’t like I was going to be embarrassed about thinking it. “So? Care to tell me what you do have down there?” “I will tell you precisely this. Don’t talk. Don’t make noise. Don’t even fucking think out loud until we reach our destination. Can you do me that one small and thoroughly inadequate favor? Or at the very least, could you maybe converse about something work-related and not directly salacious?” “Well, now that’s a tall order, but for you…” I paused for a moment, watching Banton dodge around one of the scuttling, ground-based cargo variant of the insect-like drones, trying to think of anything that reasonably resembled work and didn’t involve some level of sexuality, twisted or otherwise, a tall order in the vicinity of a full moon during one of the common breeding seasons. “You listen to the scanner coming in? Heard something about DAVE’s latest escapades downtown…” “Those jerkwads? Yeah, I heard they took apart an outpost of some supposed demon organization. And when I say took apart, I mean it literally. They jacked a bunch of plasma cutters from a construction site and really went to town on the fuckers. Surgically precise, apparently. Even arranged the resulting body fragments into several obscene words, just for effect. They’re cocky, for sure, but given that plasma cutters aren’t exactly supernatural, they’re not really our department. Those slackers in the regular police had better get around to catching them soon, though, or there’s gonna be another abnormal riot on our hands.” “Yeah, well…” I shrugged, walking along as Banton made the scrambling transition between narrow street and dirt-encrusted maze of alleys, dodging expertly around several pieces of questionable debris that I stomped uncaringly on top of moments later. It was true that the illustrious and disturbingly organized vigilantes that made up the Death and Violence Equalizers weren’t exactly our concern, but the fact that nearly all of their targets were supernatural, at least in some respect, didn’t exactly spur confidence in that section of the populace. While I didn’t think that members of the “abnormal” community were particularly more or less likely to commit crimes, the ones they did were occasionally of a level of gruesomeness that was beyond the capabilities of the average human, so there was certainly a level of fear and resentment to be had. Of course, DAVE was quickly managing to demonstrate that humans could be just as inventively gruesome in their revenge, and there was no question that someone would have to deal with them before they really got out of hand. It might, I wondered, actually even be fun to take on such a sophisticated rival. It certainly beat tracking down some stupid asshole whose greatest claim to fame was turning apparently random guys into literal bitches. “All right, a couple more blocks, and we’re there.” Banton moved on, his wormlike hair writhing and glistening in the light rain in a slightly unsettling manner. Even more unsettling, the sight of the writhing mass was for some reason actually making me hungry. True, ever since the transformation and the heightened sense of smell I’d found a much wider range of dishes appealing, but I hadn’t yet descended to devouring cans of actual worms. Nevertheless, I resolved to track down something once we’d done our initial evaluation, as the last thing I wanted to do is end up absentmindedly nibbling on whatever it was that passed for Banton’s hair. We traversed the next couple of blocks and found ourselves at the entrance to a squat, wide block of average-looking apartments, butting up against other nearby buildings and sitting next to what looked like a radiant star of alleyways leading off in several different directions, each one with masses of pipes and conduits snaking along their edges, twisting around and through each other and giving the whole scene the look of a perverse spiderweb extruded from black plastic and dull steel. I spent a moment gazing curiously at the odd-looking intersection, but Banton didn’t seem to give it much notice at all, instead tracking down the main entrance to the apartment building. Like most, it was access-controlled with an automatic door to ensure that no one unauthorized was allowed in, even if it was more of a comforting notion than it was actually secure - anyone with a little know-how, the right micro-computer, and knowledge of where the access panels were could hack it open in a matter of moments. For us, though, such subterfuge wasn’t necessary - like most buildings, the door had the usual police overrides built in, and the door whooshed open a moment after Banton held his badge up in front of it. The interior was nice enough, the hallways painted over in OLEDs to form dynamic floor-to-ceiling screens, as had been the fashion for a number of years; for this particular building, the screens appeared to be set to display a calming island scene, complete with palm trees and waves lapping soundlessly against the artificial shore. In that clear blue sky, luminescent numbers glowed at regular intervals, the scenes flashing out to reveal the shapes of doors behind them as soon as either of our badges got close enough for the system to recognize. The stairway and elevators at the end of the hallway were the only areas not adorned with the scene, and I enthusiastically bounded towards them, halfway up the first flight of stairs before Banton, probably sighing inwardly, gave up on the elevator and started thumping up the stair behind me. We emptied out on the third level, with hallways that were displaying a quiet, pristine forest, with rays of light filtering in through the verdant canopy. I wondered just how many people in the building, or even the city, had actually been present in a forest like the one on display - I had, of course, but that was probably decades ago, and after all of the crazy things that had happened since, I honestly didn’t know if places such as that still existed. I made a note in my mind, though, to try and find one the next time my slot for taking vacation days came up. Banton stopped behind the third door that appeared on the left. “This one, I believe.” He rapped on the surface of the door, then took an abrupt step back. “Oh, and by the way, while I sincerely doubt that this will faze you, the female human inside has just seen what we look like on her internal video feed, and will be greeting us at the door in several seconds with a firearm in hand - hard to tell exactly from the thoughts, but I believe it’s actually a pump-action shotgun. Quaint, that. I don’t think we’ll need to draw, though." “Eh, don’t worry. I’m sure I’ve had worse pointed at me.” Sure enough, the door opened a moment later to reveal, first the barrel of a shotgun, and then the woman holding it. She looked to be maybe in her mid-twenties, caucasian and blond, and unchanged from the standard human form, at least in any obvious way. I could differentiate her red shirt and and blue pants clearly enough - unlike some of those who were transformed in a canine way, I’d only acquired a little colorblindness, but if she’d been wearing pastels it might have been impossible to tell. I didn’t need any other senses or instincts, though, to tell that she was on edge - her eyes were hard as they glared between us, and the barrel of the gun jittered just perceptibly enough as she trained it alternately on each of us. “You’ve got about twenty seconds to explain why you’re trying to bust down my door, and if you think I’m unprotected, if you think you’re gonna come in here and do something to me, you’re both gonna find out what it feels like to be neutered by buckshot. Clear?” I just grinned, admiring her attitude, as Banton spoke up - and quite frankly, when it came to interviewing witnesses, he had a far better manner than I did. Then again, I supposed, having foreknowledge of another person’s responses probably helped a lot with that. “I can assure you, madam, that we have no intention of doing you harm, and that your weapon will be wholly unnecessary in this encounter. In fact, I do believe we’re here in response to your earlier summons.” He reached down, slowly and evenly - even as the barrel of the shotgun tracked his movements - and retrieved his badge, proffering it to her. The woman kept the shotgun trained with one hand even as she flipped the badge open with the other, looking at first surprised and then even a little embarrassed as she quickly trained the shotgun down towards the floor. “Um, sorry about that…” she said, her gaze quickly following the barrel down towards her feet. “It’s just that ever since I got home and found out what happened to Walter, and worrying if someone was after me, too… I’ve just been a little scared, and when I saw your faces outside, I don’t know what I thought, but I’m sure it was nothing good. I’m sorry - I shouldn’t be judgmental like that, I know, but it’s just unsettling sometimes, and if I offended you-“ “Oh, I’m quite sure that isn’t the case,” Banton said, although I wasn’t entirely sure if his writhing hair was in agreement. “I tend to be incredibly hard to offend over trivial matters of appearance, and as for my colleague here, I’ve been trying actively to offend him for years, but I’ve yet to have anything stick. However, offended or not, we are here for a specific purpose. Perhaps we could continue the discussion inside?” “Yes, of course…” She stepped back, and I followed Banton into the apartment, making sure to give the woman a wide berth - while it was true that Banton was more unsettling overall, I imagined that I was probably the one she’d been afraid was going to force his animal lusts on her. Not that I ever would, of course, as doing so wasn’t my thing, animal traits or not. Besides, with the breeds of women I tended to gravitate towards, they were just as likely to pounce on me as I was them. She led us into the living room of the apartment, and I glanced around, taking in the place and checking to see if anyone else might be lurking. Nothing immediately stood out as suspicious - just a generic, average-sized, thoroughly middle-class dwelling, some slightly drab couches and tables and electronic frames with glowing, shifting abstract color patterns that some people seemed to think qualified as art. Everything seemed quiet and unremarkable, though, except for one door leading off of the room that was conspicuously closed. The woman seemed to follow my gaze, and gestured toward the door. “My husb- Walter’s in there. Or, at least I think it is…” “Don’t worry, madam, I’m quite sure will have this sorted out shortly.” Banton paused for a moment, contemplating something. “You didn’t, perhaps, ask the canine whether or not it was Walter, did you?” He seemed to wince a moment before the woman gave her response. “Um… he’s a dog right now, how am I supposed to ask it whether it’s Walter? But it’s here, and Walter’s not, and… something about the dog, the way it moves, it just… seems like him somehow. I don’t know how to explain it, but I can feel it, you know?” “And you’re sure Walter isn’t simply elsewhere?” “No, of course not! He’s not at work, no one we know has seen him, I can’t contact him, and trust me, the kind of guy Walter is, the last thing he’d do is sneak off with someone…” The woman continued with her justifications, but it seemed to me that there was a far easier way of sorting things out, and it involved walking over to the closed door and swinging it open to reveal what seemed to be a hall closet, with a whimpering ball of fur curled up in the corner. While there wasn’t much to see, a single, simple sniff told me just about everything I needed to know. Canine, definitely. Purebreed, probably. Unquestionably female. By the strength of her scent, she was in either the first or second day of her heat, and from the combination of other scents on her, that heat had already been taken advantage of several dogs of the male variety - at least four or five, maybe six. There was also another scent, very faint amidst everything else, but still ever so barely noticeable. It took a few more sniffs, but I was finally able to tease out what it was: some sort of aftershave, a distinct combination of scents that a couple of the male file clerks in the department administration seemed to use. It wasn’t impossible, of course, for a dog to come into contact with such a thing, but it was certainly more than a little intriguing. I wandered back over to the woman, who was glaring at Banton for some reason. “Look, madam, I’m simply trying to ascertain-“ “He’s not cheating on me!” “I know you keep saying that, but I keep getting the sense that you have your doubts about-“ “And I keep getting the sense that you’re kind of a-“ She stopped short as I held up a hand to interject, although the barrel of the shotgun bobbed a bit in her grasp, and I immediately regretted not having her set the thing down in the first place. Best to derail that line of stress, then, and the easiest way to do that, it seemed, was to simply be direct. “Ma’am… you mind if I ask your name?” “Huh? Oh… it’s Angela.” “All right, Angela, I’ve just got one question for you. Did your husband use an aftershave called Diamond Mist?” She looked momentarily taken aback. “Um… yes, yes he did, every day. I told him I liked the way he smelled on our first date, and he took it as a command to wear it religiously. To be honest, it’s kind of getting tiresome to smell, but I didn’t really know how to tell him…” “Thank you very much, ma’am. In that case, I’m beginning to think that your theory is correct. Which is why I think we should try to get some information from the source.” I turned to Banton. “So… ever try to read a dog before?” “Don’t be facetious. That stuff only works on sentients. Only those with intelligence can organize their thoughts in a way that’s comprehensible beyond the current moment in time.” “And if they’re someone sentient somehow transformed into a dog’s body?” “Oh, fine, I’ll try. Madam, if you wouldn’t mind waiting here for just a moment…” He followed me back to the room, leaning over and staring down at the ball of fur, which had uncurled enough to reveal a pair of big, wet eyes and a clearly feral canine muzzle. “Hmmm… I’m guessing female, then, like the others?” I nodded. “And… wait, hold that thought. I really don’t want to know what this poor chap was subjected to. Especially not as filtered through your thoughts.” “Hey, think what you might of me, but the people I fantasize about tend to be of the two-legged variety. And besides, getting shoved into a dog’s body and then having a half-dozen other dogs shoved inside in a different way doesn’t sound like anyone’s idea of a good time.” Actually, I had no idea how that particular situation felt - for all I knew, actual four-legged bitches enjoyed the heck out of it, but somehow I doubted someone who had been a regular human guy just a few minutes before would find it all that amusing. In all likelihood, if this was Walter, he was most likely traumatized and scared out of his wits - and having us standing over him, especially if he was still able to comprehend what we were saying, probably wasn’t helping. “Look, just check the dog out already. If it’s just a bunch of stupid dog thoughts in there, you can go back to your cheating theory, although I do think that’s more projection than anything else-“ “Hey!” “All right, all right, I know - on the job, gotta be professional. It’s real simple, though. We figure out this is actually Walter, then we can get one step closer in figuring out the kind of psycho that’s behind all these cases. If it’s not, then we figure out whose pet it is, and we’re back to a missing person, jilted lover, whatever.” “Ugh. Fine.” “What, you think it’s beneath you?” “No… not that. If its actually a guy in there, that’s one thing. But if it’s actually a dog, a female dog in heat… there are a lot of things in this world I wonder about, but whatever fantasies a bitch in heat might have isn’t one of them.” Nevertheless, after a moment his hair seemed to momentarily cease its writhing, which usually meant he was concentrating on something. It was odd, though - usually, he’d know someone’s thoughts in an instant, but a good minute passed before he leaned back upright, shaking his head. “Well, that’s certainly ten types of odd. It’s definitely not a regular dog - if it was, I’d get some flashes, some pictures of surface thoughts, something at least. There’s definitely something in there, but it’s convoluted somehow… I can’t really describe it, but it almost feels like whatever’s in there is wrapped around and around itself, like thread on a spool. Whatever it is, I can’t parse it beyond that feeling.” “Hmm… maybe that’s what comes of trying to cram a whole human mind into that little skull down there…” “Could be. I’ve never actually tried to read someone transformed to this extent. Problem is, while I know it’s not right for a dog, I can’t confirm anything beyond that. Doesn’t mean it’s Walter, though. Could be a… a demon, who knows what else…” “So… can’t read the thing. I guess we’ll just have to try and do this the old-fashioned way.” I crouched down, looking over at the dog as it tried to shrink back further into the corner. “Hey now, I’m not gonna hurt ya. Just want to know if Walter’s in there? Are you, Walter? Can you understand me?” The dog just looked back at me, seemingly befuddled. “Okay, let’s try this again. If your name is Walter, extend one of your front paws and tap it twice against the carpet. Can you do that?” The dog seemed to hesitate, but a moment later uncurled into a much clearer canine shape. Upon further examination, it looked to be a border collie, with the same distinctive build and fur pattern. The dog crouched on its stomach, looking pensively up at me, but a moment later tentatively extended its right front paw and tapped it clearly twice on the floor of the closet before settling it back down. “See? Easy enough. It’s Walter.” “Yeah… or it’s a dog that happened to randomly move its paw around. We need to be more thorough than that.” “Fine, fine… Okay, Walter, let’s see… I’m going to ask you some questions, and I want you to tap twice for yes, three times for no. Can you do that?” The dog’s head seemed to nod, but a moment later the paw came out and tapped twice. “So, Walter… are you married?” Two taps. “Good… and do you remember your wife’s name?” Twice more. “Is it… Theresa?” Three slow, distinct taps. “Viola?” Three, a little faster, maybe impatient? “Regina?” Three again. “Angela?” This elicited a sudden, panicked bark, the dog’s ears suddenly going flat against her head, but the forepaw tapped twice a moment later. “I’d say that’s clear enough, Banton… wouldn’t you?” “Yeah, fine. Guess the poor sod really did get transformed. A bit odd that he’s terrified of his wife, though.” “Really? Seems obvious to me. Assuming he was raised traditionally enough, he thinks he’s the man, in charge and all that, especially in sex. The fact that he just got helplessly dicked, and by a bunch of four-legged dogs no less, is humiliating enough on its own - but probably doubly so when he realizes how weak he looks in front of his own wife.” “Wait, you think the- you think Walter got done right in front of her?” “No, but it’s apparent enough - you don’t get done up by that many dogs without something leaking out prodigiously afterwards. And no, before you say anything, I don’t know that from experience. I told, you, nothing with four legs. However, I’m guessing that Walter here sure as heck didn’t want his wife finding out just what a sad state he was in, so I’m guessing that as soon as she opened the door he darted right into the closet and curled up like that so there was nothing to see.” The dog didn’t respond, but something about the way it looked back at me seemed to lend truth to that statement. Banton sighed, rubbing his temples. Obviously, thinking about the circumstances of the situation wasn’t doing wonders for him. “Urgh… well, at least we know it’s him, which means there are only two other things we have to find out - who did this to him, and how to get him back to normal. I guess there are some department clerics who might be able to sort him out, but unraveling this sort of mess without whatever did the transformation in the first place isn’t exactly gonna happen overnight. The best way to fix this is to find the jerk responsible and have them fix it, voluntarily or otherwise. I assume you’ll have no problem arranging the ‘otherwise’ if it comes to that, yes?” “Yeah, no problem. Been a while since I’ve been in a good dust-up, and with the moon being the way it is, not quite there but close enough… let’s just say I’ve got more than enough energy to burn. We find this guy, heck, I’m gonna have some fun with him even if he does fix things.” “Right… you eat another ‘citizen complaint’, though, I’m not helping to sell whatever bullshit story you come up with.” Banton looked down at the dog skeptically. “Of course, figuring out who decided to subject him to something this sick might take some doing.” “Or, you know, since he’s here… we could just ask him.” “How? What, you think he actually knows who did this? And if so, what are you gonna do, run through the alphabet and have him spell it out letter by letter?” “Dunno about you, but it’s not like there’s any place I’ve gotta be tonight, and it still beats filling out paperwork. Tell you what - I’ll see what else I can get, and you can fill Angela in and see if she has any guesses as to who might be behind this.” “Suit yourself.” Banton shuffled back over to where the woman was waiting somewhere behind us, and I turned my attention back to the rather unhappy canine in front of me. “So, Walter… got any enemies?” It turned out that trying to get a dog, even an intelligent being trapped as one, to explain itself was just as tedious as Banton had suggested. In fact, for that matter, it was downright boring, and as antsy as I was, going through the alphabet letter by letter ended up leaving me growling in frustration. That, of course, caused the dog - Walter - to shrink back fearfully, leaving me sighing and trying to think of a better tactic. “All right, since this is getting us nowhere, and not at all fast to boot… How about we try a game of charades?” Walter looked back at me quizzically. “What I mean is… I’m gonna try to, you know, act out, pantomime some stuff that might have happened, and you do the same yes/no thing until what I’m doing seems like it resembles what happened. All right?” Which did make sense - while spelling things out would take ages, there were only so many types of people and interactions that Walter was likely to have encountered. Walter tapped twice, and I started going through everything I could think of, with the notion of an affair being first (although I couldn’t imagine how awkward I looked trying to illustrate it by hugging across my own chest). Luckily, Walter at least seemed revolted by that possibility, so we moved on - and whether I lucked out by acting out the right things first, while it wasn’t absolutely perfect or full of detail, within another five minutes I had at least a decent outline of what had gone down. I thanked Walter, reaching out to pet him reassuringly, but thought better of it midway through. Instead, it seemed far wiser to wander back into the living room and see how Banton was faring with his own line of questioning. “Look, ma’am, we really are trying here,” I heard him say as I wandered back into the room. In all fairness, I probably could have just swiveled my ears around and picked up the conversation, but there was something… well, satisfying about seeing the aggravated look on Banton’s face to go along with the edge in his voice. “Trying? If you were trying, wouldn’t someone be trying to turn him back to normal? That’s one of the things you guys are supposed to do, right?” “Yes, technically, but as I’m trying to explain to you, not everyone in our unit has the same duties, or the same specialties. We’re investigators, not practitioners of the occult, which means the most useful thing you can do is to answer our questions, so that when the people with the capability to potentially fix this arrive, we can provide them with what they need to sort this all out.” “Which is all well and good, but in the meantime, my husband’s a fucking dog! I don’t… I don’t even know how I’m supposed to deal with that! What am I supposed to do, pet him?” “Ma’am, as far as we can tell, your husband’s just in a different shape right now, but is probably otherwise fine, and most likely retains his mental capacity - that seems to be fairly well-indicated by his ability to answer our questions. That means he can also hear and understand everything you’re saying. Just… treat him like your husband, I guess, and remember that this is in all likelihood a temporary situation.” “In all likelihood? Are you trying to say he could be stuck like this for good?” “No, ma’am, what I’m trying to say is, we’re going to do everything we can…” He trailed off, glancing past her until he met my gaze, his expression seeming to implore me to intervene while he still had one last good nerve left. Fair enough, then. I quickly stepped forward, nudging myself between them and allowing him to back away for a moment. “Look… honestly? Magic is crazy and unpredictable, and there are no guarantees. Here’s what I do know, though: we find the person who actually put this curse on him, there’s probably a better than average chance of fixing him in a few hours. We don’t find the guy, the folks who work with this stuff can probably still unravel whatever it is and fix him, but then we’re talking days or weeks. Luckily, though, your husband was able to tell me… enough of what happened for us to at least know where to start looking.” That news seemed to calm her down instantly, or at least back her off from the height of her frustration. “Wait… you know who did this to him?” She paused, and to Banton’s displeasure, her anger and frustration seemed ready to spike back up. “No, don’t tell me… it was that bitch Courtney, wasn’t it? I know he wasn’t sleeping with her, heck, I know he wasn’t attracted to her - if I had a dick, the sight of her piggy slut face would make me soft instantly, but she kept trying to poach him anyway. If she did, I swear-“ “Actually, ma’am, I’m quite sure it wasn’t her. I asked about several scenarios, and that… wasn’t one of them.” “Then… then what? Who else would want to do this to him?” “Well… it’s entirely possible he was the victim of random happenstance. As far as I can tell, he was walking back from work, and one of those corner-hawkers stuck a free sample of a drink in front of his face - probably one of those guys handing out stuff for that new… corporate soda, whatever it is, that they’re flogging all over the place to get people interested in it. He was thirsty, accepted the free soda, drank it down, felt kinda sick a few minutes later, and then bam! Transformed. Confused, he ran into the wrong alley to try and escape, and-“ Oops! Yeah, Walter probably didn’t want her filled in on exactly why it had been the wrong alley…” “And?” “And then, after some… trials and tribulations, Walter managed to conjure back enough of his faculties to navigate his way back here to you. Which is a really good sign - sometimes, with these cases, the people can’t really handle it, kind of just go feral and wander off, and it’s a heck of a time to track them down. The fact that he came back, that he tried to reach out to you for help, that he was able to communicate with us… it means that once we get him back to normal, sure he’s probably gonna need some serious therapy, but he’s likely to come all the way back, be the same person he was before, with none of it lost to the transformation. So, don’t worry about it too much, okay? We got this. Clerics will be by in a while to see what they can sort out, and in the meantime, we’ll work on tracking down the shithead who’s terrorizing random people on their way home from work.” “All right, fine…” Angela paused, sighing. “I hope this gets fixed soon, though. Really not much of a pet person…” “And you don’t have to be. Just treat Walter with some respect and dignity, and remember that whatever he looks like now, you’re husband’s still in there, just like before. Anyway, unless there’s something else you can tell us that might help…” “Yeah, yeah. Get out there and find the fucker. Oh, and I’d consider it a personal favor if the guy that did this isn’t particularly… intact, afterwards. They don’t get to pull this shit, not with my Walter…” Banton handed over his card, promised to light a fire under the clerics and get them there sooner rather than later, and then we headed out - Banton grumbling slightly, but expectedly, as we walked down the hallway. “So… I’m guessing you read something that she wasn’t saying out loud? Maybe something that might make one think this is a little less random than I might have implied?” “Sadly, not at all. If you’re thinking an affair, on either of their parts, with some sort of revenge as a motive, her response was sadly lacking. No, it was… that frustration in her voice, it wasn’t simply aggravation due to her husband being transformed. Some of the thoughts, feelings that I gathered… well, I’m surprised your nose didn’t sniff it out, although probably hard to do underneath everything emanating off of that dog. Walter, I’m afraid, isn’t the only one in heat.” “Heat? Really? You do know that-“ “Yes, of course I know it’s not actually heat! Arousal. Happy?” I shrugged. “In any case, I’m guessing that she had a… special night planned, just for the two of them, and all of a sudden here’s her husband turned into a dog, and one that isn’t gonna be of much help, to boot! Honestly… well, actually, it’s not even a conjecture, as I caught a glimpse of the fantasy in response to one of my questions. Sadly, if the transformed Walter had maintained his physical sex, I seriously doubt we would have gotten the call until tomorrow morning at the earliest…” “Well, I guess you can’t blame her…” Banton turned to glare at me. “Seriously? This coming from Mr. ‘I don’t do anything with four legs’…” “Not gonna dignify that with a response.” Although, if I had to be honest with myself… being in the room with Walter, that damn smell emanating all over the place, and with the moon near full… yeah, there was more than one reason for finding a way to speed up that questioning. I doubted I was unprofessional enough to slip that significantly, at least in front of a victim, but when the instincts that came with the fuzzy bits of me flare up… let’s just say I was thankful enough that I hadn’t worn boxers, which would have done nothing to constrain things and would have led to a rather embarrassing display that Walter would have been none too happy to see… “Whatever. You actually feel like wandering around the whole damn town shaking down street hawkers?” “Eh, no need to. We know where Walter lives, and from the pay stub that was sitting on the living room table, I know where he works. Only so many routes he could take between them, and when you rule out the obviously unsafe ones, fewer still. Then I see where Walter’s scent is the strongest, and we go after the hawkers around there. Chances are the one that did this up and bolted already - have to be one heck of an idiot to do this and just stay at the scene of the crime - but maybe some of the other hawkers know him, and can point us in the right direction.” “You’re obviously sure it’s a him, aren’t you?” “Well, that’s what Walter seemed to indicate… but you’re right. No assumptions. Just gotta track whoever the fuck is doing this down and sort it out. Unless you want to be chasing more obnoxious calls like this for the rest of the month…” “Yeah, no. Not doing that. Which means… I guess we’re pounding the pavement the rest of the night. And considering the kind of night it is… can you at least try to keep your impulses in check?” “You know I will, but no promises. I can keep myself under control, mostly, but who knows what else might be out there, and depending on how aggressive they are…” “Urgh… yeah, I’m more than well aware of how that can play out, no thanks to you. Seriously, though, if something like that does happen, I’m seriously going to consider plugging the offending party, yourself included…” I just shrugged at the idle threat. After all, if getting shot was enough to actually stop me, I’d have been taken out long ago, but considering I was still there… that, plus apparently I wasn’t werewolf enough for silver to do much of anything extra, so gunshots were generally the least of my concerns. Some of the newer energy weapons, though… and of course, if someone happened to wield magic, then all bets were off. Both of us were at least a little resistant due to our transformations, but then again, some manner of magic also happened to be the reason we’d both been transformed in the first place… Luckily, though, we wouldn’t be heading into a part of the city where such weapons were likely to be commonplace - as I’d said, it seemed unlikely that a mild-seeming guy like Walter would have been trundling through any of the dicier neighborhoods. No, it was likelier that he’d been traversing the main commercial corridor that stretched from the neighborhood, through a narrow portion of vaguely upscale downtown towards the city’s commercial center, where he’d worked in the one part of the city still home to ubiquitous high-rises. Well… maybe not the really upscale parts, now that I thought about it. Judging by where Walter apparently worked, and by the generally unassuming nature of their shared apartment, the couple was middle-class at best. The truly upscale areas weren’t just tony, with security guards posted to mildly dissuade any riff-raff that might wander up - once things had started getting weird, those who could afford protection had gotten more serious. Now the whole area was wrapped in a very tastefully decorated electrified wall, with armed and armored personnel by all of the entrance gates, and you had to swipe to get in - not your identification, but your credit, and the only way you got in was if your credit line didn’t have a limit attached to it. True, it was actually a slightly less stringent requirement than walking into the seedier part of the commercial corridor - there, if you were human at least, you kind of needed to be someone who actually was armed and armored, if you wanted to make it back unvictimized and uncorrupted. For someone like me, that wasn’t much of an issue, as most of the skels who frequented that part of town only needed a glance at my muscular bulk and fang-bearing grin to decide it was a better idea to accost someone else. Walter, though, I couldn’t imagine having a similar sort of intimidation, or, for that matter, limitless credit, so it seemed almost a certainty that he’d walked the more reasonable middle path. Which made our job easier, at least: for that particular part of the city, once the shadier and fenced-off parts were discounted, there were really only three main drags left that Walter might had taken between work and home. And since the middle one seemed like the straightest shot, at least according to the efficient mapping program on Banton’s service phone, that’s where the next phase of our investigation would begin. (display:"breadcrumb")

You select the book from the shelf, return with it to one of the comfortable chairs, and begin reading... <hr> //Disclaimer: You are looking at a rough draft of a work in progress. It is incomplete, unpolished, and probably not representative of what you would find in a finished, released work. Also, keep in mind that this is a story start, not an established series - it may never be completed into an officially released work, and may be ultimately superseded by another variant or taken in a different direction from the one displayed here. Knowing that, read at your own risk.//

(display:"headera") When I wake up and discover that I’ve suddenly, serendipitously turned into a girl, while it’s true that I am a bit surprised, I’m not particularly perturbed at all by it. You see, I’m (or rather, was) the kind of guy who spends his time not-quite-daydreaming, thinking up every possibility under the sun and how I might fit into them - you know, the guy who can quote verbatim from one of those survive-any-disaster handbooks, who has tales of magic and hard science tucked under his bedside table. The kind of guy who thinks those “alien” (or “alter-dimensional,” to be specific) creatures called humans, the ones that are not exactly uncommon these days, are any less sensical than, say, stockbrokers or senators. And as with both humans and my own species, gender (or at least physical sex) is an either/or sort of thing, so it’s only natural that I would have considered a scenario that placed me in that other gender’s shoes. In fact, I’d considered far more than one such eventuality, with variations on a number of basic assumptions. So when it actually happens, it’s less a matter of shock or distress or panic, and more a sense of, “I know this. I’ve played this out in my head a dozen times. I just need to figure out which scenario it is that actually happened, remember my imagined response, and I can handle this, no problem. Just like in most everything else in life, unusual or not, I’m actually prepared for this.” The strange thing is, if it isn’t for one particular change that’s just about impossible to ignore, it might have taken a while, maybe until I finished getting up and went to the bathroom, to actually notice what had happened. I mean, it’s not like I feel a whole lot different, right off the bat. That’s the thing with us, Canis Sentientis as the humans call us, or Wirleks as we do - the female stuff is mainly internal either way, but when it comes to guys, it’s not really like humans, where everything’s just hanging out there and impossible to ignore. In a way, for guys of my species, things are internal a lot of the time too, with the penis totally enclosed inside its sheath and balls tucked up snug against the pubic bone. Unless I’m, you know, playing with things, it’s pretty easy to feel like that’s all just some internal part of you, and because it is you only have a sort of vague impression about where it is or what it’s doing. I mean, it’s like trying to pinpoint some specific point on your small intestine - you can generally guess where it is, and you can kinda feel it a little when something’s going on, but the rest of the time it’s just part of your guts, just there without you ever really thinking about it. It’s not quite the same with what’s between your legs, I guess, but it’s still enough that if you’re not really thinking about it, it’s just the vague sense of something that’s there, and if it’s not doing anything, even if it changes it’s not the most obvious thing to tell. Yeah, I suddenly have more guts, and differently configured, but it still feels just kinda like guts. Add to that the fact that female Wirlek parts, like most canid females, have a bit of a bulge to them (even if differently angled), and the fact that the flyless trunks I wear to sleep in aren’t particularly different overall to a pair of boyshort panties, and I really could spend several minutes being entirely oblivious to the new state of things. When you wake up, though, and as soon as you move you feel something shifting on top of your chest that you’re pretty sure is attached to you, the first thing you’re gonna do is toss the covers off to see what’s going on. And when, to no surprise, I actually decide to do that, the fact that I sleep in trunks, and only trunks, makes it impossible to not to glance down and notice the pair of fuzzy orbs (well, hemispheres, to be specific) that are right there in front of me. Oddly enough, the first think I think is not, “wow, I have breasts,” but “wow, my nipples are HUGE!” I guess that’s the difference between something that’s vestigial, though, and something that actually matters - as a guy, I had to hunt through tufts of cream-colored fur just to find the strange little nubs beneath, but I’d known from my copious collection of porn, and the two times I’d been vaguely intriguing enough to women to get at least slightly past the first-base side of lucky, to know that the female variety were both a lot more obvious and a lot more interesting. So, my first inclination is to go “big female nipples, cool!” and reach down to touch them, and my fingers are within centimeters of brushing against them when I finally get past the immediate novelty and begin to seriously consider the implications. After all, the nipples are attached to what I assume to be about average-sized breasts, at least from my limited experience, and generally you only tend to have breasts when you’re of the female persuasion. The follow-on thought to that, of course, is “wait a sec - am I actually, somehow, a woman now?” This, of course, is something that I immediately want to confirm, so I ignore the breasts for a moment, as enticing as they are, and throw the covers the rest of the way off. There are my trunks, of course, but the fabric down the front of them is totally flat against my fur, with no hint of the cylindrical bulge where the sheath used to be. Instead, the fabric just vanishes below the horizon framed by my hips, and from my vantage point, I can’t see what’s below. I shift around a little in bed, though, shrugging my hips, and I realize, as the fabric moves subtly, that I can actually clearly feel it - not in the vague way that it usually feels as it moves against my fur, but actually feel it rubbing, directly, against what can only be bare skin. I can guess pretty clearly as to what it is, then, and how it means that my transformation into a woman is somehow, inexplicably, complete, but I have to reach down and touch it to make sure. Even through the fabric, it’s sort of puffy and squishy, yielding a little beneath my fingers and making me squirm as the alien sensation of feeling my fingers rub against a part of me that I’d never even had before flashes through me. Now that it’s really happened, now that I have confirmation, that wave of panic does finally get around to hitting me, but at the same time, I’m curiously intrigued. After all, it’s not exactly every day an opportunity like this comes about, to experience that other half of a binary existence that you never thought you’d be able to experience firsthand, at least not in your current universe. The panic, then, is less about the fact that I’ve changed, and more about the worrying notion that instead of a nice, brief, insightful vacation in another form, that my gendered transformation might be permanent. As intriguing as it is to be a girl, at least for a while, I really did like being a guy, and so I do want to make sure, if I can, that there was a way to go back once I’m done exploring. Right off the bat, though, there’s no easy way to tell anything beyond the basic fact of what’s happened, so my mind goes to the next logical step - figuring out just which of the scenarios I’ve contemplated matches the one I’m currently in. First off is figuring out the class of event that’s occurred. You see, when I first started thinking about this sort of scenario, I realized that most of them fell into three general classes of “completeness.” In the first, most basic one, you change, but the rest of the world stays the same - meaning that all of a sudden, you have to convince your own parents that you’re, in fact, you, and not some complete stranger that’s broken into their house and is trying to impersonate their son. In the second, more comprehensive one, you don’t change just from a male to a female form, but from a male to a female life - that is, every aspect of your life, everyone you know, believes that you have always been female, and everything in your entire history backs that up, with the exception that you still have your old memories, know that you are - were - actually a boy, and so you’re the only one who knows that anything’s changed. The third category, then, is fully comprehensive - not only are you suddenly in a female life, but your memories, personality, everything swap along with it. All of a sudden you’re female, you’ve actually changed, but you’d never know it - in your mind, you’ve always been female, and you go on living that changed life none the wiser that our actual history is much different. Immediately, though, I can rule the third one out - I’m a girl now, but I know that I was a boy just the night before. As for differentiating between the other two, I can immediately think of a couple ways to tell - go over to my desk and dig through my wallet to see what sex my ID lists, or pull open one of my dresser drawers to see if what’s inside is different. After all, it seems like a reasonable assumption that, however much of a tomboy girl-me might be, there would have to be at least some sports bras around to contain the new encumbrances on my chest, the ones that gyrate and wobble around with far more animation than I would have thought as I spring up and get out of bed. Their movement reminds me how intriguing they once again are, but also how they’re somehow less convenient if you’re not just playing around with them, but actually have them moving about on your chest. Whether it’s that, or the fact that my hips are angled a little differently now, or maybe how my tail is suddenly longer, fluffier, and more animated in the way that female ones usually are, I stumble more than stride the first few steps across my room, nearly falling before I brace a hand against the top of the dresser for support. Based on my conclusion that it would be the most immediately decisive category, I reach down and tug open the underwear drawer. Looking down, it takes me less than a second to throw scenario one out the window, and immediately open up a mystery that’s even more intriguing than the one I’m already facing. You see, in all my imagined scenarios, I always assumed that my female alter-ego would be basically my personality, just, you know, more girly somehow - i.e., basically, a tomboy, something that would be reflected in the general similarity of everything else. In my cursory glance around the room as I’d gotten up, it had been essentially normal - same basic layout, same scenic landscape photos decorating bare white walls, same neutral solid-color bedspread. Looking down into the drawer, though, and all of a sudden things begin to quickly diverge. It seems that, far from being a total tomboy, whatever girl-me had ostensibly lived this specific life up until this point had been more of a, well, girl than my theoretical imaginings had anticipated. There are dozens of panties, arrayed in neat little rows, and only about half of the leftmost row is made up of the kind I’m currently wearing. Everything else is much more feminine, in purples and pinks and pastel blues, some done up with ribbons or lace edging. There are some on the other end that look even more exotic, including one that just seems to be a triangle with a bunch of straps connected to it, and a few where the sides of the waistband are replaced by a thin ribbon done together in a tight little bow. I stare down incredulously at it all. This couldn’t really be me - could it? I leave the drawer for a moment, leaning over towards my desk and glancing over at it for my wallet. It isn’t there, of course, as women have a different type, but there is a small, satchel-like purse hanging over the back of the desk chair. I lean over further, nearly losing my balance again, but manage to use my tail to counterbalance and swipe at the strap, successfully pulling the thing over to me. I unzip it, glancing inside, and quickly find a tall, narrow bifold wallet, flipping it open. The identification is sitting right there behind a protective plastic window, and it quickly banishes any notion that I’m an impostor in someone else’s life. The name on it is my own, and so is the face looking back at me, in most ways at least - some of the more angular edges have softened, resulting in an undeniably feminine appearance, but the underlying structure of the face is unquestionably mine. I toss the wallet back into the purse and set it down on top of the dresser, looking back over at the neat rows of panties with even more puzzlement. Is this… is this really how I would have turned out if I’d spent my entire time so far growing up as a girl instead? Is it a… swap, somehow? And if it was, does that mean that there’s a mirror image of this, some girl-me inhabiting my previous form, staring down at a uniform assortment of black and grey trunks and boxer briefs crammed together without even the basic courtesy of folding, with an equal degree of puzzlement? I thought up a ton of scenarios, sure, but this one seems to be drifting further and further from what I’d anticipated. At least one question is answered, though - whatever the details, it’s still essentially the second type of scenario, and the one which, in fact, is the most intriguing. After all, unlike the third one, I can actually appreciate that it’s happening, and because I conform to the person I’m supposed to be, at least outwardly, there isn’t going to be any immediate conflict. It does, however, mean that I’ll have to so some more sleuthing to figure out just how, exactly, I’ve apparently turned out. That, however, is something that probably isn’t best done wearing nothing but a pair of what basically amount to panties, even more so as a girl with additional… areas to cover up. I close the first drawer and, acting on a sudden flash of insight, open up the drawer next to it, where I previously kept a few random things, not really having enough clothing to fill all the drawers. Girls, though, tended to have additional things to keep there, however, and I’m not disappointed - the previously near-empty drawer is filled with various bras, also neatly tucked away in as close to rows as you can get with them. Problem is, they’re actual bras, in styles that are apparently supposed to match up with the corresponding panties. The end result is a bunch of lace, frills, clasps and straps. Glancing down at them, they still seem something of a mystery - and if I had to judge by my fumbling performance at taking them off during the very few opportunities I’d had to try, I didn’t hold out much hope that I’d be any better getting one back on. Fortunately, there are in fact a few sports bras tucked in amongst the rest, and they look, at least, like you could generally pull them on kind of like a shirt, and then adjust them into place. I try that theory out, and for the most part it works, although my newfound breasts kind of get twisted into the fabric and I have to tug at it for a while before everything feels like it’s in place. The thing feels weird and a bit snug, and the closest thing I can think of is the one time when I was a kid doing some junior-police thing, and one of the detectives let me try on a kid-sized version of a shoulder-holster. This time, though, it was my own body that was being holstered, and I can feel the cotton fabric rubbing subtly against my bare nipples every time I move. An actual woman, I suppose, would be so inured to that feeling by now that it would hardly be noticeable, but it just serves to highlight the fact of how different my body is now. And that, I realize, is just the part I’m thinking about. The fact is, even though I took “health” class in freshman year, and paid attention to most of it, I’d focused more on the parts that were potentially sexy. That meant that while I knew basically where, and how, sex was supposed to happen, I couldn’t really remember where exactly on the new body that pee was supposed to come out - or, for that matter, exactly what muscles I was supposed to use to let it out, or prevent that from happening. Luckily, as far as I can tell, such an urge isn’t exactly pressing, and in any case there are far more interesting things to be exploring. Or, for that matter, practical - such as getting dressed the rest of the way. I poke through the rest of the drawers. They are, for the most part, organized about how I remembered, even if their contents are remarkably different. The sock drawer, however, apparently now has a section for leggings and hosiery, and while there are some things that are sort of like t-shirts, there are also blouses and other things with straps on the shoulders. Again, everything has a feminine tilt to it, pastels and frills and other things like that, stuff I wouldn’t have been caught dead in yesterday. It does make me think, though, as I look across it - why is it that they should seem so wrong from a male perspective but so… normal from a female one? You change just one thing, one simple chromosome, and suddenly nearly every aspect of life is different, from how you’re seen, to what you put on in the morning, how you’re socialized, maybe even down to how you think - after all, if girl-me had been thinking the way I always have, I’m certain I’d be looking down on a remarkably different set of clothing. I can’t spend too much time dwelling on it, though. Last I checked, it should still be the weekend, but even so my parents are going to wonder if I spend too much time in here without showing my face. So, I decide to keep things simple. Just grab the kind of stuff I’m used to, or at least its equivalents with what I have on hand, and go from there. No leggings or straps or frills - I just grab the plainest-looking t-shirt I can find and pull it on. It’s still of the babydoll variety, and so a little more snug than I’m used to, especially in certain parts, although given the tight grip the bra already has on them, it’s not much of a difference. I stumble over to the closet, getting a bit more confident in my balance, and to absolutely no surprise there are plenty of skirts, dresses, and things of that nature. There are, however, a few pairs of what I guess are supposed to be fashionable jeans, and while the fabric is somehow both tighter and stretchier than I’m used to, they’re close enough, and mercifully the tail-loop fastener in the back isn’t any different. Okay, so that’s settled - I’m dressed and good to go, even if I’m still completely puzzled by the situation. Now that I’m all set, though, the detective part of me really wants to get going, spurred on by the differences I’ve already seen. As much as I didn’t anticipate it in this type of scenario, it does feel like I’ve stepped into someone else’s life somehow - even if the life is apparently the one I was supposed to have had if I’d been born a girl. I really want to get down to it, get past the surface similarities and figure out the differences, the history, all of it. What changed growing up, simply as the result of that single different chromosome? Did I know the same people? Have the same friends? Keep the same interests? Whatever this life had come with when I somehow stepped into it, it didn’t come with new memories, just the ones I already had - and which, while comforting to an extent, were no longer accurate. On a whim, I walk back over to the purse and fish through it again, coming up with a mobile phone. I flick it, on, type in my passcode, and it opens like usual, further proof that this existence really is somehow a permutation of my own. In fact, a lot of things on it are the same: same seascape background, mostly the same apps organized into the same folders. When I pull up the address book, though, some things look a lot different. For one, while it still has a few of the guy friends I know in it, a couple are missing, and in their place there are at least a dozen other girls in my class. If I’m still a guy, I’d be some sort of player to have that many numbers - but of course, being a girl, it makes perfect sense, as they’re all just friends. It does make me wonder about the guys that are still in there, though… I scroll through, and notice one of the names jump out: Janice, the girl who up until yesterday I’d been previously involved with, and the most recent one with which I’d reached second base. I press her name, and the contact sheet comes up, complete with photo: a selfie of the two of us, her and girl-me, grinning and mugging for the camera, her sleek brown fur standing out in contrast to my own. There’s a link to text-message logs, and out of curiosity I click through, only to be confronted with a truly surreal situation: a conversation between the two of us, discussing in detail her latest makeout session with a guy who somehow managed to sound not so dissimilar to the one I’d been. The responses from girl-me still somehow rang true, with my own sort of analytical style in messages that usually pushed up against the length limit, but just different enough to be eerie. For one thing, I knew for sure that I wasn’t aware of that many different factors to be evaluated in the simple act of kissing… When the text start talking about the things they’d like to try beyond second base, though, the level of weirdness reaches the point beyond what I’m ready to deal with, and I shut the phone off before I start blushing in embarrassment. It seems almost like reading my sister’s diary, if I’d had a sister at least - the sort of secret lives of girls that guys weren’t supposed to know. And yet, here I am. Of course, that brings another thought to mind - in this world, everyone who knows me is going to expect me to interact like I’m girl-me. As least from the texts, it seems like she doesn’t speak that differently, but as for behaviors, nonverbal cues, that sort of thing… I have no idea. Probably best to just play it straight, then, and hope it’s close enough. I hear some footsteps padding down the hallway outside, and I look up towards the doorway, recognizing the footfalls as those of my mom. A moment later, she taps on the door. “Honey? Are you all right in there? I know you like to sleep in sometimes, but there is a limit…” “I’m awake, mom,” I reply, momentarily startled - the voice that comes out sounds the same, basically, but a little less gruff and at least an octave and a half higher. “I’ve just been, ah… texting some friends.” “That’s fine, but you can do that at the table while you’re getting some food into you. Being healthy is more important than being skinny, and you’re already skinny enough, so I won’t have you skipping a meal.” Well, it’s definitely the same mom, all right, although boy-me had gotten over his underwhelming appetite once puberty had hit. Knowing that she’s not the kind of person to walk away without a response, I head over to the door and open it, and come face to face with her. I know that even before, people used to say that I took after her, but the resemblance in this new form is uncanny - in many ways, she seems more than vaguely close to the woman who I’d seen staring back from my I.D., just a few decades older. Admittedly, her fur’s just a shade lighter, and muzzle is a little longer and angled slightly differently, but the resemblance is still clear enough. For her part, she looks back at me just like she normally does, with her normal, baseline expression: a mix of concern and bemusement. “Happy?” I say, and she nods slightly. “I’ll be happier once you get some food in your system.” So, everything seems normal. That lurking curiosity is still poking at me, though, wanting to know just how things are different in this situation, and before I really consider it, I’m blurting it out. “Mom… this may sound a little weird, but… how long have I been a girl?” Unsurprisingly, her expression doesn’t change much, although the bemusement seems to be wining out. “Well, ever since you were born, dear. I ought to know - I was there, after all.” So, it really is the second type of scenario - this isn’t some sort of alternate universe where genders just change spontaneously (well, except for the part where, at least in my case, it somehow actually is). “Although, that’s a bit out of the blue… is there anything you haven’t been telling me? I know that being a teenager, you don’t want to talk about everything with your parents, but if you’re feeling conflicted about something, you know that you can always talk to us and we won’t judge…” “Um, n-no, it’s nothing like that,” I say, trying to figure out how to respond. After all, in a sense, it is a transsexual situation, just not in a way anyone would imagine would be possible. In this case, though, an explanation was already available that was basically the truth. “You know how sometimes you have those really vivid dreams, where things are different, but it feels like it’s real, like it’s rally happening?” “Uh-huh…” “So I had this dream, and things were just normal like they usually are, but for some reason I was a boy, and that felt totally normal too… and then when I woke up, and things were back to how they usually are, I just… it’s just a little disconcerting, because the other thing feels so real that for a little while you kinda feel that both are somehow part of reality… it’s just a little bit confusing, I guess, and then you want to ground yourself and make sure you know what reality you’re currently in…” I trail off, hoping it didn’t sound too much like complete BS, but she seems to believe it. “I think I understand… I’ve had some weird dreams sometimes, too, and they can be a little disconcerting and feel very real, although I haven’t had one quite like that. But if it’s disturbing you, you just need to remember that you’re awake now, and as you can see, you’re just the way you’ve always been. ” She reaches over and smooths down an errant tuft of fur on my head. “Well, close enough.” She starts to turn, but then takes another look at me. “Huh… I haven’t seen you wear an outfit like that in a while…” Oops. Guess I should have gone with a skirt and leggings or something - now that I think about it, that’s kind of what most of the girls in my class wear anyway. Still, it had seemed best to go with what I knew. I know she can see the look on my face, but luckily she seems to interpret it as something else. “Oh, I don’t mean to say that I disapprove, or anything like that. It’s just… well, actually, it’s kind of refreshing. It reminds me a little of how you used to dress a few years ago, before high school… I know you usually want to be fashionable and everything, but for what it’s worth, I think that look is good on you.” She pauses for a moment, considering something. “Just make sure not to muss your fur too much when you change before your date tonight.” Date? Somehow, I manage not to say it out loud, and hopefully repress my surprise, but not enough. “You didn’t forget, did you? You were so enthusiastic about it earlier in the week. It is tonight, isn’t it? You know, if you’ve changed your mind, if there is something you want to discuss about the way you feel about boys… or girls…” I shake my head. Maybe she is picking up that something is different, but luckily not in the right way, not in the way that could get not-particularly-female-inside me in trouble. She isn’t wrong, though, or at least I think she isn’t. I still like girls… don’t I? “No, mom, I’m fine, it’s just… yeah, it’s tonight. My mind’s just been on other things so I haven’t really gotten around to considering it yet…” “All right. Just wanted to make sure, although I should have known you were on top of it - after all, you usually are. Remember not to stay out too late, don’t have alcohol or anything harder, and don’t leave your drink unattended.” “Yes, mom…” “Oh, that’s right. I know you’re going to be annoyed at me for this, but that’s tough.” She ducks into her bedroom, coming back with a small, narrow cardboard box, which she places in my hands. It’s a box of condoms, Wirlek-sized, the box offering such come-ons as “maximum sensation, extra thickness,” “canine mega reservoir tip,” and “rated to hold shape through even the longest tie sessions.” If I hadn’t been blushing before, I certainly was now. “Um…” “Better safe than sorry, right? I know you probably think I was born at 30 or something, but I still remember enough of what I was like at your age to make sure not to take chances. I’m not saying anything is going to happen, or is happening, but you have been going out for a few months now, and if things do, you know, progress naturally, you should be prepared. Oh, and a word of advice - if it does come down to that, however you feel in that moment, you really shouldn’t let a boy knot you until after you become engaged…” “Mom!” I yelp, my mind really not wanting to go there, although I’m pretty sure that girl-me would have reacted just as indignantly. There are certain things you just don’t want to discuss with your parents, no matter what. “Yes, yes, I know, not what you want to talk about, but sticking your head in the sand just leads to problems down the road, and it’s better to make sure you’re prepared, even if that means me making you uncomfortable. And yes, I know you’re current on your hormone shots, but that’s no reason not to be doubly safe. Just take the box along with you, okay? For me?” “Fine, mom, whatever you say…” Anything to get this conversation to end, before it gets any more awkward. “All right, then! I won’t go on about that any more. However, I’m not kidding about getting that food - you can spend a few minutes wrapping up, but if you really must keep texting, it’s going to be with a plate in front of you.” With that, my mom finally turns around, and I duck back into my room and close the door. Looking down at the packet of condoms in my hand, I flash on a conversation I had with my mom a few weeks ago - and realize that the content of it, with a few important differences, was nearly the same. Of course, that had been with Janice, and on that particular night at least, we’d never gotten anywhere close to that point - in fact, the most we’d done was share one short, relatively chaste kiss. But this… well, things are definitely getting more interesting by the minute. Or terrifying, depending on your perspective. Still, as strange as the notion of having a… boyfriend is, I suppose it’s really no different - a relationship’s a relationship, right? Except that it’s definitely a little different coming from this perspective. I mean, as a guy in a relationship, there are certain things that you tend to prioritize and focus on, in relation to the girl you’re with - most notably, as dictated by your hormones, finding ways to get under her shirt or into her pants. Now, being the one whose pants the guy I’m dating is ostensibly trying to get into, I’m not quite sure how I felt about that. How are girls supposed to feel in that part of the relationship? I can probably ask Janice - after all, I know that girl-me already exchanges relationship notes with her - but it feels somehow weird to be thinking like that. Plus, now the mystery is deepening even further. Just like I’ve had a couple of (probably not very serious) girlfriends, she - I - have a boyfriend… but who? Is it some random guy at school? Is it someone I know? What if it’s Jake, or Tyler, my two best friends who I’ve known since grade school? I just can’t imagine how it would be in that case, to be with someone who you know so well, but never like that, never in that sort of a relationship, going from someone who you’ve palled around with to someone you would kiss, or do other things with… It’s so strange to think about either of them like that, so alien as to be almost beyond belief, but at the same time, remembering them, I’m thinking about them differently, focusing on parts of their bodies that I’d never even really considered before, and all of a sudden, somewhere inside me, something’s starting to feel strange. I quickly bring my phone back up, unlocking it and flicking through the address book intently. All of a sudden, I really, really need to know just whose face I’m apparently going to be staring back into, catastrophically awkward or otherwise, later today. Problem is, just about every boy that I knew even peripherally is now in my phone’s address book for some reason: Jake and Tyler both, and Terrence, Misha, Ronnie, Cedric, Gary, none of them obviously tagged in a way that would indicate they’re my supposed current boyfriend. I flip through to a different tab, and there are texts from all of them, messages that I suddenly feel apprehensive about flipping through. What if they’re, you know… graphic? And if they’re from someone I know well, if they’re from one of my best friends who’s suddenly thinking about me like that… while my current situation is fascinating from at least a certain perspective, just thinking about that happening is rapidly making me feel more than a little awkward. Still, I have to find out - and so I close the app and flip over to the photo album, sure that it will reveal, in hopefully less lurid fashion, the person who I might be involved with… (display:"breadcrumb")

(display:"headera") There is something hauntingly beautiful about watching a ship come apart in deep space. It doesn't happen the way it was often imagined in popular media a few centuries ago - no bombastic choreography of petroleum explosions that defy the lack of atmosphere. It’s more like watching a glass disintegrate in slow motion, breaking down along fracture lines into its component fragments as they slowly disassociate and drift away, ceramic and metal glinting as they turn end over end in the unobstructed light of distant stars. The atmosphere inside puffs away, illuminated clouds dissipating into ghostly tendrils rapidly plucked away by the stellar undercurrents. It is a quiet, fragile sort of beauty, a reminder of both the triumph of human achievement and its yawning inadequacy amidst the yawning expanse of a largely inhospitable universe. As beautiful as it was, it was a sight that I'd never expected or hoped to see, and certainly not from my current vantage point within a tiny survival capsule, one of the objects drifting somehow both slowly and rapidly away from what had once been a cohesive whole. I didn't know how many others had managed to surround themselves in such a cocoon of last resort, but it couldn't have been many - only my presence examining a malfunctioning conduit adjacent to the evacuation bay had allowed my mad scramble to end successfully, ejecting moments before the atmosphere in the chamber voided as the bulkhead began to shatter and break away. Through the tiny portal before me, I watched the ship continue to drift apart and fade away, even as I felt the needles sink firmly into both of my wrists, and the deep, all-encompassing chill as cold saline began to flow into my veins to replace the blood flowing out the other side. The pod was insufficient to sustain life, and would make no attempt to - I knew that within moments I would be in a strange, unknown state between life and death, my blood stored away to be replaced when, or if, the pod found a place where my life could be resumed and sustained. And so I watched the ship for as long as I could, trying to appreciate one last scene of beauty, terrible though it was, before the blackness curled in around the corners of my vision and I faded into uncertainty. — Eventually I returned to wakefulness, my first sensation a strange awareness of the warmth once again pulsing through my veins, wondering how much time had blinked away. Coming out of stasis is accompanied by a certain odd sense of timelessness, and it took waving a weak hand hesitantly across the capsule’s small display before its contents began to sink into my consciousness, a sequence of blocky digits coalescing on the screen. Three hundred and seventeen years. That was how long it had taken for the pod’s limited electronics, weakly scanning the nearby systems as it navigated through space the best it could on its non-deterministic drive, to have found a place potentially suitable for survival and set itself down. All that guaranteed, though, was an oxygen-based atmosphere with no detectable chemical toxins, and some signs of surface water and vegetation that could be rendered at least edible through the pod’s incorporated support gear. There would be no guarantees beyond that, and any number of potential, unknown perils, but come what may it would still at least be some sort of resolution - better to meet some fate on my feet, struggling and striving and surviving, than to drift through the endlessness of space in an unfeeling, unliving limbo. I blinked my bleary eyes, still wavering in focus as they recovered from their deep freeze, trying to see through the tiny viewport in the main hatch in front of me. The hardened material, though, was a hazy, messy spiderweb of cracks, indicating that the capsule’s landing had been anything but smooth. The dampers that had protected me, coupled with the nervelessness of stasis, had probably saved me from the worst, but as feeling slowly returned to my extremities, so too did the deep aches and bruised soreness that seemed to spread across most of my body. As I recovered, the pod ran through the rest of its stored atmosphere, beeping a warning before releasing a ventilation seal, which hissed sharply as the inner and outer pressures equalized. The air that began to waft in elicited a short cough from my stabilizing lungs as I breathed it in - it was rougher than I was used to, with a slight but noticeable acrid edge of bromine and sulphur, but also accompanied by something more exotic, something that smelled almost like a hint of the spicy aroma you’d get from old-Earth mediterranean cuisine, but with an unusual accent and intermingled with a puzzling scent I’d never encountered before. As odd as it was, though, it was eminently breathable, and after a few abbreviated, coughing breaths, it slowly began to smell, and feel, reasonably normal. The interior sensors, noticing that I was moving around well enough to be considered successfully revived, began the next stage of its evacuation. I felt a slight pinch from beneath my wrists as the needles retracted, their fluid exchange complete, an accompanying tube spraying a sealant onto the injection points as the pod made another series of hisses. Its cycling complete, the pod fired a series of electric pulses into the bolts that had sealed the hatch shut, tiny detonations shearing them along their length and allowing the entry hatch to fall away, clanking onto the ground as I got my first glimpse of the world it had selected for me. My first impression on looking around was that I had lucked out immensely. This was no bleak wilderness, surrounded by hostile beasts. I had plunked down, it seemed, on top of some sort of raised thoroughfare, traversed by collections of domed craft that hovered across it on some type of forcefield - although only the ones in the furthermost lane were moving along, the rest arrayed in a ragged semicircle in front of me, although there was no sign of occupants behind the glasslike, tinted edges of the vehicles’ front screens. In the distance, curved spires rose up in a regular pattern, and while it differed from the way things looked on the planet I hailed from, there was no mistaking it as anything but a full-fledged metropolitan city - and, along with it, some form of modern civilization and a stable enough planetary situation to allow it to flourish. As I undid the impact harness and sat up in the escape pod’s seat, I caught a flicker of movement behind one of the vehicles - and then, a moment later, a pair of fuzzy… ears?… popped up above the vehicle’s trailing edge. Apparently, whatever creatures had been in the vehicles had been startled by the noise of the hatch unsealing and had rapidly hidden from view. I called out to them in an unsteady, rasping voice, hoping I sounded friendly enough, and watched as the ears twitched and shrank back down a little as the pod, sensing my need, whipped a tube out to flick between my lips and shoot a jet of water down my parched throat. When it hit a stomach that hadn’t processed anything in over three centuries, though, it came right back up, but the pod kept at it until subsequent jets stayed down and began to make my insides feel the way they were supposed to again. I worried that my uncouth, involuntary reaction had scared the creature off, but after a few minutes the ears popped back up again, and then the entire head, and another and another from behind the adjacent vehicles. Upon seeing them, I realized that I had lucked out again, perhaps even more so - while it wasn’t entirely unlikely, as it had turned out a significant minority of life in the universe had followed suit, it also wasn’t the likeliest eventuality to encounter advanced, sentient life that was within a reasonable approximation of humanoid. If anything, the heads of the creatures that popped up looked like some sort of chimeric combination of animals: long, almost rabbitlike ears with something odd and feathery hovering in the center of the head between them, paired with short, light-colored mammalian fur and an extended muzzle reminiscent of a canine, the only real deviation being a sextet of unblinking, jutting hemispheric eyes that seemed to be almost entirely pupil, and a trio of thick, white whiskers that trailed down from where the muzzle met the neck. One by one, they edged out from around the vehicles and headed hesitantly towards me, seeming to alternate between a slightly unsteady bipedal movement and a sort of crouched motion that was something between an amphibian hop and a canine bound executed on all fours. The general humanoid trend seemed to extend to their bodies, which were largely covered in what seemed to be a dense, complicated array of thin, loose-fitting robes, each one thin and diaphanous on its own but together serving to cover the creatures in shifting opacity. Their extremities, though, were visible outside it, and continued the general humanoid trend, albeit with no less than seven strangely articulated fingers, each one a different length, and mirrored identically on all four limbs. As I observed them, they continued to inch closer, there heads jerking about in swift movements that almost reminded me of the imagined recreations of small, agile dinosaurs, looking at me with what I guessed was curiosity. I tried to get up to greet them, but my equilibrium still wasn’t up to it, and I collapsed back into my seat, gasping and coughing in the odd, alien air. At the sudden, sharp sound, a couple of them tucked their legs quickly and leaped, shockingly, several meters straight up into the air. The others, though, dipped their ears in a particular motion, and then bounded straight towards me. I felt a spike of adrenaline burst across my chest, suddenly fearful that I had misjudged the creatures and that I would soon meet a fang-filled, violent end. When they reached me, however, I quickly realized that their behavior mirrored the civilization all around them: instead of being hostile or angry or afraid, upon really seeing my condition, their reaction was one of immediate concern. Instead of ripping into my flesh, their hands worked rapidly over me, feeling my limbs through my jumpsuit for breaks and other injuries while peppering me with incomprehensible questions in an animated, melodic series of vocalizations that were almost certainly language. The capsule’s systems apparently thought so as well, as a thin robotic arm jumped out from a panel and jabbed something forcefully just beneath my left ear, while another injected something, probably an induction speaker, below my chin. The actions caused the creatures to jump rapidly back out of the hatchway, conversing rapidly amongst themselves for a minute before approaching me again, a bit more cautiously this time. Meanwhile, the earpiece made a series of pings as its adaptive-translation circuitry kicked in, running through its diagnostics and reporting that it needed five hundred and seventy-three additional unique words to effect a rudimentary translation, a number that quickly counted down as the creatures continued their rapid-fire speech, poking curiously at my abdomen as one talked into what seemed to be a handheld communication device. Not wanting to seem like a threat to them, I resolved to let them continue their investigation of me as long as it wasn’t overly intrusive, and simply stayed put until the earpiece confirmed that it was ready to attempt a translation. “Hi, how are you?” I said, not really sure what the best thing to saw was in the situation. There was a delay of a few seconds, and then the speaker attached to my jaw let out a series of trills that sounded remarkably similar to the language the creatures were speaking. Upon hearing this, the creatures all went momentarily silent, looking between themselves for a moment before they all simultaneously launched into another series of rapid speech directed at me. The words seemed to overwhelm the implant for a moment, and it let out a series of glitchy, stuttering sounds before spitting out its initial translation: “Eustachian carbuncle eventual ninepin elbow contusion indeterminate plenipotentiary noncommissioned to very ingrained verticopter?” Moving as unthreateningly as I could, I brought my finger to my ear and flicked at the implant, hoping to nudge it into a more useful, or at least intelligible, state. After a few more tries, it seemed to more properly manage suppression of erroneous results, burying them in warbling static around the few words that it was reasonably confident in. “… Injured? … pain, are … assist?” Not comprehensive given everything they were saying, I was sure, but it was enough to get the gist of it. I nodded in response, before realizing that such a gesture was probably not universal, and remembered to give an affirmative vocal response that could be actually translated. “… We help … be unabrupt … coming you.” I replied again, trying to thank them for their concern, and they seemed to acknowledge me. A moment later, though, they stepped aside, in favor of a new set of creatures. These ones, though, appeared to be more official, dressed more in a sort of loose-fitting uniform that bore at least a vague resemblance to doctor’s scrubs. There was a quartet of them, clustered around a sort of slab that hovered between them in a way similar to the vehicles, and they parked it next to me before carefully grabbing onto me and lifting me with their thin but surprisingly strong arms. They set me carefully onto the slab, affixing a flexible sort of collar around my neck, and I panicked for a brief moment at the constriction and its attendant worry of imprisonment before remembering that our own medics used similar procedures to immobilize people after impacts to keep them from further injury. The pod, sensing my imminent departure, expertly lobbed a field survival duffle somewhat painfully into my lap as the slab moved away, its surface vibrating with an unusual frequency. It hovered into the back of one of the larger vehicles, one with a bay that, while considerably differently designed, bore enough resemblance to a mobile medical facility to make it clear that it was this planet’s version of an ambulance. The vibration intensified as the vehicle accelerated, and between that and the current situation, I couldn’t help but feel a little unease as the medical technicians used a pencil-style energy beam to cut along the seams of my jumpsuit and pull it away. Thankfully, they didn’t do the same with my underwear, instead waving several devices over my body that almost looked, at least in shape, like the electronic version of a painter’s palette, with indentations along the edge for the creatures to hook their fingers through. As they examined me, the translator continued to adapt, managing to pick out more words as they talked over my diagnosis. “… Never seen one … skin along, smooth, just hair … that statistics are wrong? Liquid pressure inside … structure can intact, are masticators wrong color? … extrasolar thing, to contact ambassador … think is compatible? No to inquisit, though, heal first…” I tried to pay attention, but as the vehicle moved on, my body’s rebound wooziness caught up with me, and the rest of my journey through the alien medical process took place in varying degrees of haze. My impression of the facility, once we arrived, was that it wasn’t wholly different from the sort of modern medical facilities that I was used to, albeit with a few differences, the most notable of which were some sort of alcoves that were adjoined to most rooms, partitioned off by some sort of a force screen that partially, but not entirely, obscured the shadowy movements and vague, muffled sounds that emanated from within. For the parts I was awake for, at least, the medical treatment was fairly rudimentary - from the snippets of conversation I picked up in moments of awareness, they seemed to be concerned that, not knowing very much about my physiology, that they were unsure if many of their standard procedures would be safe. There was a scan of some kind, though, the full-body sort with a wand that spins around the length of your body, and after that they seemed confident enough to put me in another device, which lit up like the holidays and started up with an awful, buzzing vibration that, despite the haze, I swore I could feel rattling the insides of my bones. Whatever it was, though, when I came out of it a few minutes later, the aching, while still there, was lessened, and the contusions felt much improved. Along with all of that, the speaker felt like it had actually begun to sink into my jaw and integrate my own skin around it, although whether that was due to the device, or its own preprogrammed function, I didn’t know. The final thing that happened before I left the facility was initially the most mysterious. One of the doctors had casually grabbed one of my wrists, placed a device against it, and injected something that left a very slight but noticeable bulge under my skin. I tried to quiz him on what it was, but between the still-calculating translator and my own unsteady state, the proffered explanation was somewhat less than helpful - the best I could tell was that it was some sort of identification, but not much beyond that. Then the slab hovered over to what looked to be some sort of loading bay, but this time I was met by a smaller vehicle with an official-looking splash of characters arrayed around the sides, and a pair of somewhat beefier creatures - beefier for them, at least - who supported me between them as I wobbled unsteadily towards the vehicle’s open hatch and into its interior. The vehicle seemed to be composed entirely of a passenger compartment, with a plush-looking but strangely monochrome interior. Given their reasonably advanced technology level, it hardly seemed surprising that their vehicles were self-navigating. Overall, though, they still looked less like cars and more like a sleeker take on the image of the flying saucers from the classic imagery of premodern science fiction, although tapered and angled in a more scientific way to improve their aerodynamics. The interior seemed to mirror the design philosophy; instead of the rows of parallel seating you would generally find in a human vehicle, a circular seat ringed the outside edge around what seemed to be a sort of low, pillar-like data console in the center. Above, a clear, unified strip of tinted material provided a full panoramic view. The two assistants, or possibly guards, set me gently down onto the well-padded bench, allowing me to lean over and slump onto my side on the curved surface, before closing the entry hatch and sitting roughly opposite me, the pair uncharacteristically silent as they pored over something displayed on the console in the same script that was plastered on the vehicle’s exterior. As the vehicle moved off towards its destination, I continued to recover, my return to full awareness and clearheadedness accompanied by certain other pangs as my insides finally stabilized enough to both accept and demand sustenance. Hoping that by now the translator had picked up enough to be generally fully functional, I asked the two creatures accompanying me if they might have food or drink on hand that could be compatible with my physiology. One of them said something that the translator couldn’t properly parse and looked intently at me with an expression I had seen enough recently to associate it with concern, but the other one brought up a report on the console, probably the medical results from the hospital, reading a few of the lower lines carefully before poking at the wall of the car behind it until an unnoticed compartment slid open. It retrieved a small glass bottle of clear liquid and a cylindrical black stick shrink-wrapped in something at least analogous to clear plastic, scooting itself over along the seat in a series of short, odd hopping motions before setting the two items down next to where I was resting my head, gesturing to them as it spoke. “Hydration in this flask. This bar is also generic protein that should acceptably noncompete with your interior. If your internals do not continue stability, please gesture for hatch opening to avoid emesis within the compartment.” The statement, despite the translator’s seemingly aloof, uninterested monotone, was clear enough, and my hunger and thirst overrode any residual concerns about the readiness of my insides. I unsealed the bottle and took a gulp of the liquid, which as far as I could tell was essentially distilled water, completely without taste but impossibly refreshing in my parched, post-stasis condition. The water stayed down this time, and after giving myself a few minutes for the threatening rumblings to subside, I unsealed the bar and chanced a bite of it. It did, in fact, taste generic, consisting of more texture than flavor, chewy almost like jerky in a way that I feared would overtax my weakened jaw muscles, still settling in from the speaker integration. They managed to work through it, though, and aside from settling rather heavily in my stomach, the food at least initially didn’t seem to cause me any problems. As the vehicle traveled on, I finished off both the items I had been handed, as the two creatures watched my every motion intently. Becoming aware of their glances, I realized that there was another concern I had failed to address earlier in my recovering state. After the earlier examination, I was all but undressed, still clad only in the second-skin compression shorts that came as part of the standard flight suits I had been issued for my previous posting as an interstellar technician. While it was at least better than being naked, and while the interior of the vehicle was fairly comfortable even in my current state, being without the protection and modesty of my standard gear did leave me feeling a little bit vulnerable. My inquiries about clothing, though, were met with less success - according to them, there were no additional compartments that might contain, according to the translator at least, “intensely equitable raiment.” They did, however, mention that they would be happy to remove their own clothing if it would make me more comfortable, and the one closest to me appeared to allude to, in addition, being willing to make me more comfortable in “customary ways.” Given the vagaries of the translator, I wasn’t actually sure what that offer meant, so I politely declined, although in its reply it seemed to insist that it wouldn’t be any problem at all, and that it would be happy to help. Before I could try to decline in a way that wouldn’t offend it, though, its hands were already reaching over towards me. The customary way it seemed to be referring to, though, was to run its fingers gently through my hair in a sort of petting motion, and I had to admit that the gentle touch was actually quite relaxing, a far cry from the poking, frenzied examination from earlier. As overwhelmed as I was, going from stasis through a series of half-alien, half-familiar places and encounters, I was happy enough to let the touch lull me into a light slumber. When I awoke from it, though, I was already out of the car, the two creatures apparently carrying me inside, setting me down onto another bench in some sort of waiting area. Overall, the design scheme mirrored that of the car, with short benches arrayed in a trio of concentric arcs to form a generally circular pattern, comprising the only visible furniture in the room. The walls were white, and seemed to be painted in random, jagged segments with what the creatures might call art, although to me they looked more like the monochrome, 3D barcodes of the type you might see on halfway-ancient products in one of the consumer museums back on Earth. A few of the creatures occupied some of the other benches, ones with fur that was either darker than those I’d encountered before or tinged with a more auburn hue, though they weren’t the only other people there - mixed in with them was an even more unusual creature, something that looked to me like a combination between a geode and an octopus with vibrant green tentacles. Based on the other occupants in the room, I hazarded a guess that I’d been brought to some sort of immigration center, where the fate of such unexpected visitors would be decided. I hadn’t been harmed yet, though, so all I could do was hope for the best. The two creatures who’d been tending to me left through one of the doors behind me, but not before one of them scanned the implant in my wrist with a small, hemispherical device that tucked neatly into its palm. The task, it seemed, was simply to wait, and to take in as much about my surroundings as I could. Not seeing any other obvious sources of diversion, I satisfied myself with simply looking around the room. The other creatures, I noticed, were mostly looking intently back at me, a pair of them conversing softly while gesturing in my direction. I noticed that they were dressed similarly to the ones I’d first encountered, although they appeared to be wearing less layers than they had outside, the outlines of their bodies a little more clearly visible beneath them. Judging by a more prominently bulging pelvic outline, I surmised that the talkative pair were male, or some analogue thereof - what gender the tentacle-rock creature was, though remained a mystery. The rest of the room, though, was far less interesting, and seemed largely nondescript, featuring the door I had apparently entered from, and a pair of closed ones on the slightly-curved opposite wall. The floor, walls and ceiling were all made out of the same hard, smooth white material, a compound that seemed to curve into itself in the transition from ceiling to wall to floor without betraying any obvious seams, the material appearing to glow uniformly across its surface to provide the room’s lighting. The only other break in the surface was in the walls curving roughly opposite to the doorways, each of which had a forcefield-obscured alcove that seemed basically identical to the ones I’d noticed at the hospital. My gaze flicked back over as I noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye, and looked over to see one of the creatures sit down next to me on the edge of the curved bench, although it looked slightly different from the pair I’d looked at before. It regarded me silently for a moment, before waving its hands in a quick but intricate pattern that I guessed was some sort of a greeting - one that, strangely enough, ended up with one of its hands on my shoulder and the other on my knee as it began to speak. “I have never seen one like you before! Do you speak the language? Can you understand me?” The translation seemed considerably smoother now, hopefully indicating that the translator had met its threshold and would now be reasonably accurate. I only hoped that it was able to do the same in the other direction. “I believe I can, in a sense,” I replied. “Is what I’m saying making sense to you?” The creature seemed puzzled for a moment as I spoke, but when the translation kicked in a second later, he appeared to understand. “Yes, you make sense. Excellent! If you are able to do such a thing, it means that you come from a modern society like ours. We have so much in common already. Additionally, you look… of our shape, which is a very good thing.” The creature glanced over at the rocklike alien. “There are many living things out there, but some make a true introduction unlikely.” “Well, um… pleased to meet you? I’m Renford.” The creature looked back at me quizzically. “You are? You are… what? Are you trying to call yourself, or your species?” I realized, on his response, that the translator didn’t really know what to do with proper names. I pointed at myself again. “Not my species. Me, personally. Renford.” The creature nodded, hopefully in understanding. It made a slightly different-sounding trill, for which the translator remained silent, and again, for which the translator spit out “eggplant.” “I don’t seem to be able to pronounce it. Is there a title I can use to call you?” A sensible request, in fact - if a proper name didn’t have a precise definition, a title might be translatable. As I wanted to move quickly past the formalities, and to the point in the conversation where I could determine whether the creature would be taking its hands off of me anytime soon, I went with the most obvious moniker of technician as my own. The alien made another motion with its head. “Yes, I understand! The maintaining of mechanical things, of that sort. I am… person that makes bits go around.” Seeing my expression drift again towards what it had now apparently learned was puzzlement, it said something slightly different that the translator interpreted as programmer. “So, we are both technical, which means we have even more in common!” As it spoke, the enthusiasm evident in its manner, I couldn’t help but notice that the creature’s hand also took the opportunity to slide further up my thigh, its fingers resting against the leg band of my underwear. “As we are so similar, I think that we should be properly introduced,” the alien continued, looking down towards where its hand was resting. Taking its other hand from my shoulder, it gestured towards one of the obscured alcoves. “There will probably be a wait, and I would enjoy getting acquainted with you and discovering the full extent of out compatibility.” The hand shifted upward, a little closer to my crotch, and it rapidly became obvious what it had in mind. I glanced over at it, and a quick observation of its own shrouded pelvic region changed my assessment from an it to a he. That, I had to admit, only increased my trepidation. Not that I had anything specifically against males, aside from generally not being attracted to or interested in them - after all, in modern society, such things were based more on mutual attraction than physical sex, sometimes out of necessity depending upon the other person’s genital configuration. The larger issue, though, was that male in that context usually equaled penetration, and given my body’s currently recovering state, even if it was out of necessity such an act seemed to carry an even greater than usual risk. Not to mention a potentially lethal one, depending on what particular equipment the creature had… I knew, though, that I might be jumping to conclusions, so I asked the creature if he could more specifically state his intentions. “What would we do? From your underwear, I take it that you are currently of a male form?” I nodded, and the translator noticed it enough to spit out a vocal affirmative response. “Ah, good! That means that you have a… protrusion of some sort, and if you are close enough to what I think you are, it responds to touch. I would touch it, and learn how you respond to stimulation, and you would do the same with me.” “Er… and what would you be touching it with?” The creature looked back at me, its ears dipping into an expression that I wasn’t yet able to read. “With… fingers? When we say touch in our language, that is what it commonly means. Sometimes, it is true other parts are used for touching, but that is used for something more advanced than a first introduction, as it is more often a configuration prepared in advance. A first introduction is about learning and exploration, to know someone by discovering what brings them pleasure.” I tried to keep my composure, despite being a little taken aback. I knew, of course, that there were a wide variety of alien cultures, with huge variations in customs and rituals. I was mostly used to the common codes of spacefaring conduct, which tried to create broadly uniform sets of acceptable behaviors across cultures. For some creatures, their natural inclination about sex was so casual that it bore hardly more significance than a handshake; for others, of course, the proper greeting for unknown interlocutors was to cook them up in a stew and see if what resulted was poisonous to them or not. I supposed that I should be thankful that the culture I was currently in was closer to the former than the latter, at least if the creature sitting next to me was indicative of their socially acceptable behavior, but it was still a little disconcerting. Even on the few occasions I’d imagined making first contact with a hitherto-unknown species, it generally hadn’t involved mutual handjobs. The creature’s hand returned from its gesticulating, this time brushing its fingers across my face. It was a strange sensation, and one I hadn’t felt clearly from the earlier petting. The outside of the creature’s fingers were furry, like the rest of it, but the interior seemed to be a little closer to skin, although it felt more like a strange combination of leather and felt, smooth and weighty but with an unusual texture, and a far fainter hint of warmth beneath. “You are quite interesting, are you not? You have hair, but the skin on your face is smooth. That only makes it more interesting to explore the part of you that is currently hidden…” The creature’s other hand moved further upward, gently cupping the pouch of my form-fitting shorts, and to my surprise I could feel myself begin to stir beneath his hand. I actually felt an odd sense of relief that I’d at least recovered enough to have that sort of response, but I still wasn’t quite sure how to feel in the current situation. Was it really acceptable to just go into an alcove and just start… touching each other? Was it even something I wanted to happen? I knew that ultimately, my survival on the planet was probably contingent on accepting the current culture, but things seemed to be happening too quickly - at least for two people who were both ostensibly sober. Before I had to make a decision either way, though, the situation was mercifully interrupted as another of the creatures walked up, wearing a garment that seemed adorned with a little more in the way of ornamentation than what the other one was wearing. “The ambassador will see you now,” it intoned, before turning on its heel. It walked a few steps away, but then paused, turning its head back in my direction and seeming to gesture with its muzzle that I was to follow it. Thankful for the intervention, I got up, hastily saying my goodbyes to the other creature. “It was nice to almost meet you,” it said as I walked away. “I will likely be here for a while, so if I am here when you are done with your meeting, I will seek you out again. I would very much like to finish making our introductions.” I followed the other creature, presumably a secretary of some sort, through the waiting room’s other door and into a surprisingly normal-looking, if spartan, office. There was a low, squared-off desk that looked to be made of a polished black plastic-like material, a pair of chairs with circular bases and padded, open frames instead of full seatbacks, and a black fabric-covered low couch off to the side. Again, like the other room, there was little else available, aside from a small door on the other side through which the secretary exited, and two circles of grey metal inset into the ceiling above each of the chairs. The rest of the walls, though, were a uniform white, without even the monochrome adornments of the waiting room. The person I was to meet, who I assumed was an ambassador of some sort, was already seated behind the desk, gesturing for me to take one of the chairs on the opposite side. Its fur color was a little more vivid, somewhere between auburn and orange, which only accentuated the foxlike appearance of its long, narrow muzzle. Combined with the eyes and ears, though, the appearance was still a little disconcerting, especially since it made basic expressions harder to determine. The ears, at least, were expressive, and I knew enough from my previous encounter to guess that the current display meant something related to either greeting or happiness. The creature spoke, and after a moment of crackling the translator kicked in, first giving a confirmatory beep that I hoped meant it had moved to the next stage of smoothness in translation. “Welcome! It is always an interesting event when there is a visitor of a new species to our planet.” It followed with what I guessed was the planet name, but the closest the translator could come up with was ‘kookaburra.’ “It is especially interesting when a new visitor appears with such a high level of projected compatibility,” the creature continued. “While immigrants from nearby systems often bear similar forms, others who visit may not, and due to their differences they can have a hard time interfacing with our society. As a result, many of them do not stay long, and are not offered a place here. Someone like you, though, both compatible and from the untraveled beyond, are a rarity - I have been the extra-planetary ambassador for this city for many years, and this is only the second such event.” The ambassador pressed something on the desk, and a small screen angled up from the flat surface. I could only see part of it, and what I could see was more of the same undecipherable alien characters. “According to the medical staff, biocompatibility is generally good, with no detectable surface cross-toxins or other contaminations, and no obvious issues with our own biology. You are also free of diseases that could be potentially transferable, and in overall generally good health after our intervention. All in all, you seem to be an excellent candidate.” The ambassador stood up from its chair, and I noticed as he did that his robes shifted in hue as they moved, from diaphanous white to a deep, oceanic blue. It meant nothing to me at the time, but I would later come to realize that it such embellishments were part of the standard dress for most higher-ranking officials. “Please stand, if you would,” the ambassador said, and I complied, glancing down at myself and still feeling quite underdressed in comparison. “Yes, yes, quite intriguing… just a bit of light hair, and so much exposed skin, really something of a rarity indeed. Is it particularly sensitive?” “Um… I guess?” I replied, having never really thought about it that much. “Probably more so than with fur, in any case,” the ambassador replied, glancing down at the screen. “Your physical sex appears to be male. Tell me, is that your permanent form?” I looked over at the ambassador, slightly surprised. After all, if you had to ask that question, then it stood to reason that for your own species it wasn’t quite as defined. “Yes, I have always been male.” “Ah, interesting too, although not that uncommon. For us, we often feel that it is better to experiment, as our own physical forms have the capability to do, eventually to the point of direct selection made possible by technology. It may not be the same for you, but our physical sex is something that can be chosen by ingesting an activator at night and is then available the next morning. Being one with a generally fixed sex, it is probably important for you to know this, as there are several configurations you may encounter - there are four specific traditional configurations, although two are usually only used for a specific stage of reproduction, and many other configurations have been adapted from other species to aid our experimentation and pleasure. Some also choose to possess aspects of both physical types, while others simply choose a single, uniform erogenous zone with no extensions or openings. In your species, do you have these other types, or only a direct sexual dimorphism - male and female?” “In rare cases, there are some with both or things intermixed, but… usually just two physical sexes,” I replied, suddenly wondering just what, exactly, the ambassador might be concealing beneath its robes - like the one from before, from what I could tell it appeared to be male, but now I wasn’t so sure. “Okay, a simple configuration, then. It should mean that being here will be especially exciting for you, if you have not experienced many of these things before. It is always good to expand one’s range of experiences.” The ambassador looked back up at me. “All right, I would like to have a look at it now.” “Look at it? Look at what?” The ambassador gestured towards the front of my underwear. “Your male aspect, of course. I have the scans, but I would like to judge its compatibility for myself. Please lower your… what do you call that garment?” “Underwear?” “Below wear… yes, please move it to a configuration that does not obscure your maleness.” I hesitated for a moment - judging from the forwardness I’d seen thus far, the ambassador’s request was probably considered normal, but my own upbringing meant that I was again faced with an uncomfortable request. On the other hand, considering that the ambassador probably had the power to decide my ultimate location on this planet, between being able to recover and figure out some existence here that might lead to eventual passage back to my own people, or potentially being detained or deported somewhere else, well… it seemed wisest to comply, no matter how uncomfortable it felt. Sighing, I tugged my boxer briefs down until they bunched up just below my knees, putting my flaccid member on display and feeling the slightly cool air keenly against it. “Oh, a traditional sort of shape… simple, but quite elegant! It’s even closer to one of the customary types than I would have imagined. Tell me, when you are preparing for the act, does it expand or straighten, or does it go in just like that?” “Er, well… for that, yeah, it becomes hard and longer, we call it getting an erection…” “So, similar enough, although as with the rest of you even such parts are not so sheltered or protected, but just hanging right there for everyone to see. I can understand why you would wear a… garment that goes underneath, like that, to protect what your body does not. Regardless of that, you compatibility is indeed excellent! I would need to see it… erected, as you say, to judge how it would fully interface with one in a female form, but we can take care of that in a moment. You can return your underneath garment for now.” I complied, as quickly as I possibly could. “Good. Now extent your hand, please, the one with the imprint on it.” I looked down at my wrist, the one that had been injected, and I noticed that whatever had been subcutaneously implanter had surreptitiously expanded into a series of thin, grey filaments that rested just below the surface, curled into a design faintly reminiscent of the wall art from before. I proffered that hand, and the ambassador gently took hold of my wrist, guiding it over the screen. There was a faint, mechanical beep, and for a brief moment, the filaments glowed through my skin with a vivid burst of light, strobing briefly between red, green, blue and white before rapidly fading. The machine beeped again, and the ambassador’s ears waved with what I thought might have been enthusiasm. “Oh… one more question. From what I can tell about you, I doubt it’s a problem, but what is your intent on this planet? Anything troublesome, or warlike?” I explained, quickly, my situation: the destruction of my ship, the escape pod trying to locate a survivable place, my thankfulness to simply be alive and able to function there. “Ah, a refugee! A noble reason for being here, and one that we support - finding a new life in our society for those who are adrift in such a way is one of our basic tenets of responsibility. Right, then, it’s all settled.” He pressed something on the display, and it beeped once again, with a slightly more complex trill that went up sharply before fading into inaudibility. “Your registration is now complete and as long as you meet one further aspect required of being a citizen, you will have a place among us.” He turned away, gesturing to the couch. “As for taking care of that remaining aspect of citizenship… I think the most expedient way to do that would be to introduce ourselves.” I glanced over at the couch, thinking of what the creature had said in the waiting room. “Wait… by introduce yourself, you don’t mean… are you talking about touching me? Touching, I mean… my, um, genitals?” The ambassador’s ears dipped in the way that I now was fairly sure meant assent. “Is that not how you normally introduce yourself? Most nearby cultures do something similar… but that is true, I am already forgetting that you are from the beyond! You seem so compatible that it’s easy to assume that you’re more familiar with us than you probably are. Yes, then, that is what we mean by introduction - pleasure and stimulation are an essential part of interacting within our culture, and it is with that greeting that we can become accustomed to each other and create a bond of the sort that helps to bring our society together. Ah, but perhaps you are worried that such a thing will not be mutual? And after the medical exams… I can assure you that this will not be a clinical investigation, simply a social one, and that you will be able to use your hands to explore me as your curiosity desires.” Not quite what I was going for, really… “um… and if I don’t want to?” The ambassador cocked his head, but his expression didn’t seem to be angry… maybe concerned? It was hard to tell, with those six blank, black eyes staring back at me. “Oh, are you feeling unwell?” “No, I feel fine, it’s just…” “Hmm… is it possible that the culture you come from practices that relentless trait of… what is it considered to be… modesty?” “Yeah… something like that…” “Ah, then I think we can probably get around that. As you can see, we do have a version of that, and use our type of clothing to provide some concealment when engaged in general interactions, and there are special places set aside where a group of people who have arranged to provide each other with mutual pleasure can do so separated from those interactions that do not involve such stimulation. I know that there is not one here, but this is a private office, and I find the couch a little more comfortable for introductions. I can assure you that no one will interrupt us. And as I mentioned earlier, we are externally compatible, which should be more than enough for basic introductions. Furthermore, my fingers are of sufficient dexterity that they can provide the necessary amount of tactile stimulation, no matter your level of sensitivity. So, as you can see, there are no barriers to prevent us from being properly introduced.” The ambassador gestured once again at the couch. “Remember, as I stated before, that the actions of my introduction will be entirely in the service of your pleasure, and you will have the honor of learning my own.” I glanced over at the couch again. I had to say, the notion of having the alien’s multitude of spindly fingers playing over my crotch didn’t exactly sound like the greatest time in the world. Then again, I did have to admit that it actually wasn’t, by far, the weirdest thing I’d ever done with an alien, although this would be the first that wasn’t facilitated by an intoxicant of some form or other. And it sure beat getting shot, or lasered, or explosively decompressed into a vacuum, or a hundred other awful fates that were probably more likely once my survival pod had shot away into the great unknown. If getting felt up by an alien was the price I had to pay for lucking into an existence where I could do far more than just survive at the most basic level, as strange as it was, it actually felt like a fairly small one to pay. Still, it took me a moment to get up the strength to agree to it. “Sure… why not?” “Precisely. There is no reason not to, and therefore we should begin our introductions.” The ambassador walked over and sat down on the couch, scooting over along its length to sit close beside me as soon as I joined him. He was close enough that we were practically touching at the hip, and I could feel the folds of his unusual, diaphanous garment rustling against my thigh. The sensation was soon joined by that of his hand, but instead of lingering like that of the creature from before, this one quickly found its way to the waistband of my underwear, tugging down on the front until I was once again exposed. With his other, though, he did something intricate to the arrangement of his garment, and a moment later the robes seemed to part down the center at the waist and slide off to either side, revealing the alien’s own nether region. Following along from my earlier observations, in that respect he also seemed somewhat canine in nature, at least from the initial inspection - rather than a naked scrotum, there was an actual sort of sheath that protruded at a particular angle from his pelvis, covered in a shorter, more tightly-packed variant of his fur. If the things slightly below were its testicles, though, they were a significant departure from the ones I was used to: five of them, arrayed in a slight arc, hemispheres protruding only partly from the interior and covered in a slightly darker variant of fur. Within the sheath, though, the tip and shaft that were gradually beginning to emerge were an uncharacteristically vibrant sort of blue, almost as though someone had taken the color of the alien’s fur and inverted it. While it was certainly curious, I realized how true his earlier comments were - while the tip was a little more prominently pointed, and the ridge a little wider, it bore far more of a resemblance to my own, in general shape at least, than most of the other species that I had encountered. “Do you find what you see interesting?” I looked up to see him staring back at me with what I guessed was enthusiasm, at least as much as I could tell from his unblinking visage. “Well, it’s both similar and different, although…” “Although?” “I’ve been with guys on extreme occasion, but most of my experience has been with more… female configurations. It just feels a little awkward, is all. I know you need me to do this, for whatever reason, but… should I just reach out and grab onto it? Are there certain parts I should or shouldn’t touch? Even if it looks kind of the same, I don’t know what actually feels good for you, and I don’t want to do the wrong things…” The ambassador did something intricate and unusual with his ears, which I wasn’t quite able to interpret, but his reply was at least clear enough. “I think you misunderstand. I anticipate that we will both do things that are not optimal, especially at first. That is the nature of exploration, is it not? It is those unconventional things, things that may not always work, but in doing things differently perhaps new types of pleasure can be discovered that had not been thought of before by our species. You should therefore explore and experiment, in the idea that what may seem to be a failure now can lead to an innovation in the future. I am quite certain that neither of us can be harmed by this level of interaction, so do what you find interesting. And tell me… do you ever perform this tactile stimulation on your own configuration?” “When I don’t have a partner to be with, then… yes, sometimes.” “Ah, excellent! Then perhaps you would consider using the techniques that bring you pleasure on my current configuration, in the hopes that it might encourage new forms of enjoyment that I can learn and then share with others. Would that be an acceptable thing for you to try?” “Yeah, sure…” Not that what I usually did was all that complicated, but as long he found it acceptable enough… “Good. Then perhaps I will do the same for you.” He gestured down at his sheath, and the penis that I suspected was now close to being fully emerged - his interest was obvious, even if the awkwardness and limited attraction of the situation had kept me mostly flaccid. “In case you were waiting for a statement that we should begin, I am now offering it. You may start your explorations whenever you are ready, and once you have started, I will begin my own.” That was it, then - just show him how I went at it? Well, if that’s what he wanted, then that’s what I would do, although it wasn’t like I’d developed some particularly advanced technique: just slapped on some hand lotion, grabbed my dick, and stroked up and down until I was done. There wasn’t any lotion on hand, though, but perhaps it wasn’t necessary - like my own circumcised penis, there didn’t seem to be anything like foreskin that might be unusually delicate, and I’d certainly done it dry myself, albeit with a lighter grip, when there hadn’t been anything else immediately at hand. Nothing to be done for it then but to try, I supposed, so I reached over and tentatively wrapped my hands around his shaft. The first thing I noticed was how warm it was, not quite enough to feel hot or painful to the touch, but certainly more intense than my own. The ambassador seemed to find the contact intense in his own way, though, as I heard him take a sudden, sharp breath, and his ears dipped and twirled into a state that I hadn’t seen before. “Hmm… what a fascinating sensation! Indeed, your touch is not quite like anything I have felt before. I am fascinated to feel it in motion… oh, but I can’t become so lost in that new sensation that I neglect your own. Here, let me show you how we feel…” I watched as he reached over, feeling a moment of trepidation about how it would actually feel to be touched so intimately in such a strangely casual and not really sexually-charged situation - actually, I still felt far more awkward than anything else, with more than a little trepidation as I watched his fingers approaching me. He didn’t grab me directly, though, in the manner that I had, but instead brushed a finger lightly across my tip and down along the shaft. It felt… a little odd, to be sure, but mostly just a more intense version of what I had experienced earlier, the sensation of being rubbed with a small bit of something like velvet or suede, and while I still wasn’t sure if I considered it sexy or not, it was a feeling that was undeniably pleasant. Even if my mind didn’t find the situation erotic, though, the touch was stimulating enough to provoke my body into the expected reaction. It only took a few more of the hesitant, brushing touches to bring me to half-mast, and from there I didn’t seem to need any further encouragement to become fully erect. The ambassador leaned over slightly towards me, seeming to momentarily forget about his own sensations as he examined me. “Yes, there really is quite a striking similarity in certain ways, isn’t there? Much wider than I would have imagined at first glance - far more of a difference in size from one state to the other, or at least far more visible.” He glanced back over to his own lap, apparently comparing the two of us. “And yet, the surfaces seem compatible, and attuned to similar stimulations. The way you wrap your fingers around, though… to simulate a certain type of opening, maybe? A straightforward idea, although we prefer to differentiate each act to play to the strengths of each configuration. Which makes me especially curious to see how you will react to the most traditional form of male introduction…” I watched as his fingers spread out, articulating in their fascinating fashion to create a configuration that looked almost like a wireframe globe, albeit incomplete at the bottom. As I looked at his hand, trying to figure out how many joints the fingers needed to actually bend into that shape, he lowered it back down to surround the head of my cock - and then, abruptly, all seven fingers made contact, going quickly to work. Rather than working together, though, each one of them seemed to move independently, a confluence of motions I couldn’t even contemplate trying with my own fingers. The pads of the fingertips made the same sort of motions as before, lightly brushing along one particular area and rarely traversing the entire length, but all of them suddenly brushing at once, with different directions and intensities, created a feeling truly unlike any I had ever felt before. True, I had been with many others who had provided stimulation far more intense, but usually in a comprehensive way, with the sensations uniformly moving in one direction or another. There were a few who had been talented with their tongues, providing something a little like the every-which-way sort of stimulation, but only from a single point of focus, not seven at once. Because it was all happening independently, it was hard to focus on any one of the sensations, and while I could feel that they were certainly stoking a biological sort of arousal, it was hard to tell whether it actually felt good or not. Well, it felt good, that much was true, but so chaotic and diffuse that I wasn’t quite sure what I was feeling. It took all my concentration just to parse the sensations, with just enough left over to provide him with the simple, unsophisticated motion of my own hand, but he still seemed far more focused on how I was reacting than to anything I was actually doing to him. It was a whirlwind of sensation, especially when several of the fingers shifted up higher to trace around my cockhead’s outer ridge, alternately seeming to lightly tap and rub short, abrupt patterns across the tip. I still wasn’t really sure what to make of it - some parts of my cock were beginning to feel almost numb, while others were stimulated to the point of near-discomfort. The brushing sensations had slightly more pressure than before, but the velvety feel of the digits as they rubbed against me became dramatically more intense simply by virtue of the rapid, repetitive motions over the same small patch of sensitive skin. A few of the brushes, in fact, almost made me want to squirm away from his touch, as they were somehow close to being too much direct sensation to bear, but before I could one of the fingers dwelled on one particular spot that had maintained just the right amount of sensitivity - and I realized, as my body suddenly tensed in response, that somehow, through all of the confusing stimulation, I’d barely felt the point of no return sneaking up on me until I was literally on the edge of it. “Wait, hold on, I’m gonna-“ I started to say, but before the translation could even kick in, the touch had lingered just a moment too long, and I felt my hips shudder as the leading edge of my climax rolled through me. It didn’t feel particularly intense, maybe because of the strange situation or the confusing way I’d been stimulated, but it had the usual effect, and I felt the head of my cock throb once beneath his fingers before the first spurt of cum launched out and splattered against the palm of his hand. The feel of it apparently surprised him, as his hand immediately jerked back, but not before nudging the tip forward a little, and for several more seconds my cock just stood there erect, jerking from side to side as it twitched and spurted, sending visible jets of cum in high, narrow arcs that landed to make a wet, abstract mess on the carpet in front of me. By the time I had enough control over myself to get my one hand around the base and pull it back, it was nearly over, and the embarrassing damage had been done. I looked over at the ambassador, hoping that he wasn’t too upset by my abrupt climax, or the mess I’d inadvertently made on his carpet. From what I could tell, though, he didn’t seem angry at all - in fact, he actually seemed to be even more enthusiastic, marveling at the stuff as he happily squished it between his fingers. “And on top of everything else, you’re an emitter! How exciting! Tell me, is this something that you do every time you are touched to this threshold of pleasure?” “Yeah, that’s kind of how it works…” “Wonderful! Such a feature will make you quite popular indeed.” “Um, you mean… you don’t ejaculate?” “You will soon see that for yourself, but no, such a thing is only reserved for one of two specific configurations we take on, and only when we are acting in a specific reproductive capacity, as for whatever reason it is a function that does not replicate upon changing to an alternate form. Because the use of such forms results in reproduction, and most of our contact is not intended to create such a result, it is rare to feel such a thing happen when reproduction is not intended. As such a novel thing, I imagine it will be fascinating to most. I take it your reaction is now complete, though?” “Yeah, pretty much…” I was definitely spent, my erection already quickly subsiding, and while it hadn’t been particularly intense, I was already feeling the aftereffects, the general sort of relaxation in response, the typical male exhaustion compounded by what I’d already been through, and my mind was ready enough to wander or drift off. Still, though, I knew I had to finish the reciprocal part of the ritual, and I was awake enough to keep pumping my hand up and down while keeping just enough of a grip to slide gently along the surface of his cock, judging from what he’d done with me that his species tended towards less directly intense stimulation. They also didn’t seem to need much in the way of duration, though, as it only took a few more strokes of my hand along his length before I felt it suddenly tense beneath my fingers, becoming inexplicably somehow both more rigid in general, but softer along the surface against my touch. It was unusual, but it seemed clear enough that it signified something important, probably a climax of his own, and I realized that my hand had instinctively tightened around him in anticipation like it would have around myself. A moment later, I heard him gasp, and then rapidly twice more, his hand abruptly reaching up to my shoulder and gripping hard against it, tight enough that I could feel the series of tense little shivers that reverberated through his body and out along his extremities. As soon as they stopped, though, his penis seemed to almost buck in my hands, just a couple of times, but with a surprising amount of force. Then it began to throb, a little more quickly than I was used to but with a broken, almost random sort of rhythm - and as it throbbed, I realized it wasn’t just moving as a whole - underneath the surface of the skin, ridges were actually rippling upward along its length, and little nubs seemed to push out along the head’s outer ridge, tapping noticeably against my fingers in time with the rest of the strange, breakbeat rhythm. I held my hand in place, feeling him rippling and throbbing beneath my grasp, but it was indeed true that nothing was being released in the male fashion that I was used to - the tip, visible through my grasp, had deepened in hue to a fascinatingly vivid turquoise, and I realized that the very top part of the tip itself was peaking somehow, narrowing and pushing outward in the same sort of tapping way. It was certainly different enough to be fascinating, and I watched and felt with undisguised curiosity as it continued, persisting for at least twice as long as I had before the motions finally subsided. As soon as they did, though, I felt his shaft rapidly slipping away through my fingers, and I opened them up, puzzled, to find it tucked just about entirely away back within his sheath, with only the topmost part of the tip peeking out as it had before. As strange as it was, I began to realize why he had been so fascinated by the process of my becoming erect - in that particular form, at least, his species was probably always effectively erect, and that instead of becoming hard, arousal simply caused them to emerge in the same way that he had retreated. As I figured that out, though, I felt a sudden flash of heat on my wrist, and I looked over to see the device that had been embedded in it was suddenly glowing red, with a series of symbols flashing brightly enough to be visible even through my skin. I noticed something else flashing out of the corner of my eye, though, and when I glanced over, I realized that something similar was happening on the ambassador’s arm, and that was managing to be visible even through his short dusting of fur. “Wait, what… what just happened?” The ambassador glanced casually over at his wrist. “Ah, there we go! That is the final part of our introduction, and administratively the most important one. Oh, unless you were referring to what you felt during my climax? I am eager to explain either one if you would like.” “I admit I’m a little curious about both, but the thing in my wrist - is it supposed to get hot like that? I thought it was going to start burning for a moment…” The ambassador glanced over, his ears dipping in what I thought was an expression of concern. “Really? Oh, no, that’s right, it does feel a little intense until the implant is fully settled into place. Eventually, it will be a nice, quick thrumming sensation to let you know a bond has been made. As to how that works… well, it’s more complicated, so I’ll explain the other part, the climax, first. It is one of the alternate traditional configurations designed for pleasure, generally the most popular one because it does more during the climax, and also because such things interface with the most popular female configuration and stimulate it reciprocally to a more powerful climax. It is one of many configurations you will see, although based on my initial assessment, I imagine you will spend most of your time with female ones. You should not be intimidated, though - that you are an emitter will make up for the other features most of the time, and I imagine your dimensions will be pleasing as well. Perhaps in another configuration I will sample them more directly, but as such things take a night’s rest to change, that is for another time. For now, I should explain your citizenship, and the important part that the device on your wrist, and what happened with it, will play.” He gestured to his own wrist for a moment, before securing his flowing garment back around himself. “The device is your identification, but it also contains the bonds you have with others. A bond is often formed by way of introduction, but can also be forged through more directly intimate means. If two people experience the physiological effects of orgasm, while in contact with each other, a bond is created, which means that you will have access to that individual in the future. With such a bond, you can access the one you have made the bond with wherever they happen to be - if they have a permanent residence, for instance, you will be able to stay there as well, and if not you will be able to stay wherever they are along with them. You see?” “I’m… not entirely sure I follow. You’re saying that because we touched each other, that I can live at your house now?” “Admittedly, it is a system with some complications, so perhaps I should explain it from the start. A child, for example, can stay at any of the residences of his parents, until the age of sexual maturity. At that point they must leave, but as they become sexually available at the same time, by the time their first day on their own is complete they will certainly have a variety of partners whose residence, and bed, they may share. “Once they find a particular person with whom they share a plurality of their sexual contacts, they can have a permanent residence assigned with that person, in their place if there is room, or in a place nearby. Once they have that, all of their other partners can visit them there, and those that have many contacts who want to visit will be assigned larger residences to accommodate them. My residence, for example, is quite large, but this is because I interact with so many people through my job, and as I am the first bond of most immigrants, it also serves as the place they will stay during their first days as they make further introductions. Having a permanent residence is a choice, not a requirement, as all residences have the features to meet a person’s needs, and a fabricator to create individual items such as clothing. Some choose to have stable residences and have others come to them, while some prefer the freedom of their multiple connections - many who are prolific at connecting in that way can walk down any street in our city and have someone they can be with on every block. Perhaps this is different from how it is in your society, but this is how it works in ours.” “The specifics of it are different, I guess… there isn’t nearly as much sharing that goes on, at least not like that, but everyone, regardless of their station, is generally provided for if they’re a citizen.” Well, if they were a citizen of the Constellation worlds, at least - I’d seen more than my fair share of worlds on the fringes of empires that hewed far less to those sorts of utopian ideals. “So, some familiarity. Good. As long as you understand the system, you should do fine. If you would like to stay somewhere else, I imagine there are others around who would be more than willing to make similar introductions, but I would encourage you to stay in my residence for a while. As someone from another civilization, there are so many things I would like to talk with you about.” He got up to go back over to the desk, glancing down at the carpet as he did so. “Don’t worry about that - the fabric is easily replaced, and we’ll want to remove that segment anyway and deliver it to a medical lab for a full analysis of your particular emission. If you passed the medical screening, though, it’s already been deemed compatible enough and without risk of unintentional procreation, so such an analysis would be done more out of scientific curiosity than anything else. If you do have any encounters with female configurations, though, do not feel any hesitation about emitting within them.” The ambassador turned back for a moment after reviewing something on the screen. “The team assigned to the device you landed in has completed its evaluation, and has cataloged the small amount of handheld effects that resided in it. The device itself will be studied, but the effects, which include clothing and some other things, have had their components determined and scanned into the fabricator network, excluding a few pieces of equipment that appeared to be weaponry upon initial analysis. Should you have need of them, hold your wrist up to any fabricator and a list of your contents will appear. I do not know if your translation device extends to written words, but pressing an entry will display an image of the item in question - pressing again will fabricate it. I imagine this will provide you with clothes in your style which are more comprehensive. Oh, you can restore the covering of that region for now - we are done with that part of the introductions.” Somehow, amidst all of the information I hadn’t noticed that my underwear was still pulled down, something that I hastily rectified, even as I felt some residual cum dampen the fabric as I pulled it back into place. If the ambassador was right, though, one of the fabricator devices could craft a clean replacement readily enough. “So, with that, you are now a citizen of our world! Please return to contact me, either here in the day or at my residence at night, if there are any further questions. Otherwise, there are other appointments for me approaching, so I must say goodbye for now, although I am sure I will see you again soon.” He ushered me to the door, and then through it, inclining his head to one side as I looked back and tilting his ears to the other, in what I assumed was a gesture of farewell. Then, once again, I was back in the waiting room, and before I could even figure out exactly where the exit was, the other alien, the programmer, was quickly at my side, holding his wrist against my own until a slight chime sounded from both. “Oh… of course the ambassador is first bond. I suppose that’s only reasonable. He indicated that you should stay with him?” “Yeah, essentially… although, come to think of it, he didn’t actually tell me where his residence is…” “Not a problem! The ID in your wrist can guide you to him, if you can read its symbols… Is your translator visual as well?” “As far as I know, it’s sound-only - it’s an emergency contingency, not a full-sense cybernetic translation suite - all the ships I served on had on-demand translation available anywhere on them, so I never actually got around to getting one. So if I’m going to read the symbols, I’ll have to learn them the old-fashioned way, probably.” “I see. If you like, though, perhaps I can walk with you and show you where it is? It’s not very far from here, and I would like the opportunity to talk with you more in depth, perhaps become more properly introduced…” he gestured again towards one of the alcoves. “Actually, I’m… not sure I’m up for another one of those kind of introductions today. I hope that doesn’t offend you…” “Not at all. Is it that you do not prefer contact with males, or that it takes you a significant amount of time to… recharge?” “Yes, to both of those, actually…” “Ah, well. Had I known there would be such a fortuitous meeting today, I would have chosen a more compatible configuration. It is unusually…” he said, the translator struggling for a moment before spitting out the word ironic. “It is unusual in that sense, as I had spent the last several days configured as female, but desired a change for today. And now there is such a large change, such a promise of new experience, but my first change limits it. That is only a problem for one day, though. Tomorrow I will take on my more usual configuration again, and then we can explore each other fully in the way that appeals to you. Could I ask for that guarantee, though? That if I am female tomorrow, that you will be with me in that way before you are with others?” “I, um… I guess? I’m still trying to wrap my head around how all of this works. I’m used to a little promiscuity, serving on a ship with a wide variety of libidos, but… not quite to this extent. Do people really just go around and have sex with each other as an extended way of saying hi?” “Not exactly. Although… I wonder if you fully understand the significance such things have for us. Take the ambassador, for example. He doesn’t hold his position because he has a conventional form of power. Some positions do, but the reason he has his is because every adult in this region has intimate knowledge of him, and so the general consensus is that he can be trusted implicitly with a position of importance. I… suppose that doesn’t really clarify things, but it’s an attempt to begin an explanation. It really is quite complicated…” I still wanted to know more, but as the programmer talked, I did begin to wonder something about the translation. “I don’t know if it’s just the device, but when you were talking… did you refer to the ambassador as a ‘he?’” “Oh, the ambassador? Yes… our language predates our conversion attempts, so we refer to people by their initial presentation, although it’s just a formality of language. We tend to be, actually, whatever form particularly pleases us… or pleases the person we currently wish to become entangled with.” (display:"breadcrumb")