In a room
The sign reads
"Welcome all new travellers.
To continue you must go through a series of doors.
After going through you will pick a costume. You will then become a half- human and half that creature.
After a week(100 mins a hour,20 hrs a day,10 days a week) has passed you may morph and get another costume. To start of with you will only be able to become 40% human to 60% human.
If you put on a costume you will then become that creature, be teleported to it's home town and have to wait a week before being able to morph.
After 50 costumes you may change into one of your other costumes and become 30% to 70% human. When changing costumes you must wait at least an hour before you can change costumes again.
100 different species/gender costumes allows you to gender-morph and become 20% to 80% human
200 different species costumes allows you to combine costumes and become 10% to 90% human
400 different species costumes allows you to return to your world with no more morphing
And 800 different species costumes makes a polymorph and allows you to morph outside of this world.
Also if you have a costume like a centaur then the human part will always be human and is counted towards the human percentage.
Any gender/species transformation magic of yours can only change your gender(if you have at least 100 costumes) and the animal part to a different animal.
When you change into a different costume (that you already have) you may teleport to that species home town but you will have the week penalty where you have no costume changes.
If you die while wearing a costume you will be reborn at the local inn (or appropriate location ). If you have more then 100 costumes you will lose the costume you had when you died and go to an appropriate place for your next costume.
If you fail to make it out in 100 years(100 weeks in a year) one of your possible forms will be chosen and you will be permanently stuck in that form(apart from magic) until you die. Also there will be no possibility of going back to your world.
Also, one final note: should you take a female form and become pregnant, you won't be able to change your gender until the child is born, though the other aspects of your form may change (the child will change to match.) That is all, and good luck!
You realise that you have to do what the sign said to do and go through the doors and grab a costume.
Alternatively you could use the key system to determine the room
Written by Catprog on 11 February 2004
Normal Land
You go through the door.
All of a sudden it slams shut and with no handle on this side it appears that you are stuck.
There are two more doors however and both of them have a sign on them saying
Costume room for
Element: Land
Type: Normal
Gender: ????
So which door do you want
Written by Catprog on 26 February 2004
Female Normal Land
You go through the door.
All of a sudden it slams shut and with no handle on this side it appears that you are stuck.<P/>There are five costumes in this room, all of them female, all of them are normal land creatures.
- Snake <li><span class="female">Wolf</span></li>
Written by Catprog on 26 February 2004
White Tigress Taur
Instantly, with the sound of the thunk of the door, your instincts tell you to escape. Jerking back around, you see the seam where the door closed, but where you'd expect a handle, there's nothing; merely smooth wood. Really, instead of a door, it's just a panel in the wall not a place of escape at all. You swivel to inspect the rest of the room instead. Sharp eyes scan the rest of the room from corner to corner but alas, the walls seem sturdy. "Dammit. This is bizarre. A costume room?"
So, you resolve yourself to inspecting the costumes inside with you. Stepping further into the room, you do another spin to look at each of the racks, jutting out from the wall each holding a costume, two on the side walls and one directly in front of you.
"They're all... females..." you realize, seeing that each of the costumes has an undeniable bust built into them. You look back, suddenly wishing the door was there behind you once again even more than before. The idea of selecting one of these costumes, putting on something built for a female, is far from uncomfortable.
"Wait, who says I have to pick one?" You're talking to yourself, realizing the idea of picking out one of the costumes just appeared to you, without any real logic behind it. "Locked in a room with nothing but costumes... I guess it makes sense, what would it hurt, right?" You shrug, going back to inspect the costume options in order to select one of them.
The first is a snake. You eye the way it hangs around the rack it's steadied on, hanging off like a sleeping bag might. It's skin looks so real, as if a massive python had slithered into this room and shed right there. That thought sends a slight shiver down your spine. The scales are massive, each an individual little disk, colored in a range of blues and greens all metallic and glittering. You take a few steps closer, reaching out for the costume and running three fingers down over the surface of a scale. It crinkles, faintly, beneath the touch as though it's made of small fabrics, but the longer your fingers linger on it, the more silken and slimey it feels, as though it's coming to life with the heat of your skin.
Your hand jerks back, leaving the sensation of the snake skin behind before glancing over the costume once more. "Huh." You can't shake the sensation of the skin on yours, the way the fabric seemed to morph into something moisy, living. You give a faint shudder at the thought and step back away from that first display.
Striding forward, you brushing past the snake costume with a little shake of your head. The snake costume doesn't seem right in this instance, though you can't pinpoint exactly why besides that the skin icked you out. A soft, thoughtful hmm escapes your lips before you realize you're doing it and hurry down the line of costumes without another sound.
Pausing at the next one, you see the folds of fabric spilling together in a sea of gray and white. For a second, the shape doesn't come together, the colors just fall together, but then you see the molded shape of a muzzle and the point of two ears atop of the head. "A wolf..." You linger on the wolf, eyeing the thick bush of the tail hanging out behind and the paws with their curled, pointed claws. For a second, you slide a hand down against the fur. "Warm..."
You bend, tapping onto the claws at the end of each foot, hearing the faint thwack of the sturdy surface. "Strong." You linger a beat longer, considering this option before something pulls your attention to the costume in the center, straight across from where the door had been. This one droops longer, looking more like a pair of oversized pants than a costume.
You pull away, shifting instead towards that middle option. Instantly, it seems to glow with an extra vibrance when you're eyes land onto it. A bright, pure white fur covers most of the costume while black stripes streak over top of it. You see massive paw pieces, resting on the ground for now, with their claws sleek and hidden into the design structure. Then, a thick, slick tail hangs behind, the tip dark with a black splotch.
Something, deep in you, tells you this is the right choice. Without even glancing at the rest of the two options, you instantly step forward to this tiger option. However, looking closer, you can't see exactly how the suit goes on until you notice the slightest lining of a clear chest piece that hooks a bottom half over the shoulders.
"Well, here goes" you mumble, lifting the costume up from it's hook on the wall and instantly feeling the heft of it's thick layers and skin. Once it's dropped into your arms, the other racks seem to pull away and drift back into the wall. You spin, watching the other costumes disappear into the wall, closing with perfect seams back into the wall.
"Must be the right choice, I guess" you mutter, but then pause with a bitter laugh, "Or the wrong one."
Then, with a slowness tugging down your limbs as you try to lift up the heavy suit's legs, you slide your foot down the length of the costume. The fur is thick and dense, but the fabric pulls over your legs easier than you imagine. However, for a second, the costume fits snug over you and the straps fall into place on your shoulders, but a beat later you look back to see more fabric hanging behind you.
"Huh... Wonder what that's all-" Then, a deep, muscle level tingling building through your body. At first, it felt like an itch though it quickly spreads, whooshing over every inch of your skin in seconds. Then, everything is hot. The fabric seems to heat. No, it melts. The fabric is melting, melding into your skin with a crackling, burning sensation in the hairs. It doesn't hurt, instead it feels like sitting too close to a campfire, where the flames are just licking at you.
You try to move, instinctively moving back to where the door was even though it's now gone, but when you move, you notice that the costume seems to move naturally with you. Instead of fabric, shifting around, it really seems to have attached itself right into the fabric of your making. Though, the motion also pulled something else to the forefront by dragging the bottom half of the costume with so you see that the striped white fur continues down with two additional leg portions before the tail hangs behind.
"What the? Is this for two people?" you think, imaging the Chinese dragons with all the people lifting up different portions of the body, or the infamous horse costumes with some unfortunate soul as the butt. "Do I need someone to be the butt?"
Just as you're starting to twist to further inspect this new found portion, something seems to freeze you in place. A deep ache throbs through the tissue of your legs before you feel a cloudiness building in your mind. Then, the transformation really grips you. At first, the suit just looks like it's inflating from the back, but then when it connects with your legs, fully melded into the furred outer shell and just starting to transform to be bulkier. They swell out from the center and fill downwards, rounding your feet out until
your shuffling, wobbling steps make heavy thunks onto the ground. You feel the claws ticking onto the flooring while the pads seem to cushion you.
But the second half is reaching you. With a sudden burst of sensation, the back of the costume comes to life. It's not even a costume anymore, you realize with a jolt, the second half of the costume is a part of you. This wasn't a regular white tiger, but a taur-tigress hybrid. With your realization, you try to move that strange addition to your body, finding that the tail is already twitching madly of its own accord.
Once your attention shifted to the appendage, you're aware of the feeling of it, tickling around at the base of your spine. You can feel the wind it makes, whispering through the fur that coats it. "What the..." You're so busy acquainting yourself with the new body, you didn't notice that the walls of the room, the bricks themselves are fading away. Not that the bricks are breaking in, tumbling around like you're being rescued, but they are simply disappearing. Sections of the wall seem to glitch out, like you've force closed an application on a laptop. The pieces drop into nothing, just black fades in around them.
"What's happening?' you demand, but the empty room doesn't respond, instead a new wave of the transformation is hitting you. You suddenly feel like the skin of your chest is being electrocuted. Every inch buzzes with life and power. Looking down, you see the massive paws of the tiger body jutting out from beneath your legs. You flex your toes, trying to wiggle them to somehow prove to yourself that this is real, that this is your body. Instead of wiggling, the toes merely curl, guiding out the white glint of the claws that hide just inside of them. You see their hooked, curve shape with a small grin, you'd picked a powerful option.
While you watch, you notice that you're stomach is starting to blur. You see the waistband of the second half of your body, where the costume had pulled on like a pair of pants start to creep upwards. Instead of simply being a human above and this transforming tiger below, the fur is reaching up your torso, though thinning progressively as it rises. Though, the black stripes that coat over top of the snow white fur continues, suddenly arching over your skin in waves of bundles stripes up, even onto your cheeks where you feel the faintest fuzz of a velvet coating of furs that allow the black to show. Looking down again, watching the stripes form, a whole new phenomenon has begun.
Just beneath your chin, you notice finally that your chest has begun to swell. First, it start just around your nipple, where a disk is slightly set off from the rest of the skin. But now, that disk has begun to grow. It's swelling up from your chest, growing and spreading out. Before your eyes, in a matter of minutes, you watch your pectorals transform into a bouncy, heavy pair of breasts. The naked nipple, now thicker and throbbing faintly with a newfound tenderness, stares at you as though waiting for you to do something about the pair's arrival.
Written by picklessauce69 on 27 September 2015
The Attack
"Now what?" You think, looking around to see the wall's are completely gone, and just as you look up something entirely different is coming into focus on all four sides. The brick is entirely gone, but now something else is starting to formulate in front of you. Glancing down, the floor, before aged wood boards is now precise, large panels though just beneath your feet runs a gray grate, lighted from beneath with a foggy, blue light. You look over, staring at large panels in the wall, doors? You eye where they jut out slightly from the rest of the wall, all with the same molded texture. Sure enough, some of the pieces are doors, with small computer panels beside them.
"Where am I?" You try to take a step closer and investigate the door but find that your ingrained motion on two feet isn't the same here. You only lift the front legs and topple over, slumping forward with your hind set still sturdy and upright, butt jutting into the air, and your cheek slammed into the cold floor. "Oof-"
Writhing, you scramble the front feet back beneath you, pushing back up onto all four of them. This time, you focus your motion to move all your legs, trying to figure out how to move on from the front and one from the back and the same time when your brain is telling you the back legs still don't exist.
Slowly, you strain until the feeling of shuffling step by step is natural. With one, painstakingly slow, step after another you inch towards the panel on the wall. It glows green, lit up with a backlit, but when you lift a finger to touch it, it buzzes once unhappily. "Huh-"
Miming the same slowness, you swivel in a shuffling circle so that your backend turns behind you and you can look to the opposite wall only to see a massive window. A massive, darkness fills the window but as you look, suddenly, a massive bright, blue mass comes into frame. "What is-"
It hits you, you're looking down at a planet. It's massive, curved where it disappears into the darkness spilling all around it. You see specks on its surface, differences in its composition, but it's hard to see any distinction. Suddenly there's a noise to your side, you jerk towards it, trying to assess what it is and where it came from, and for the first time your body moves with the instinctive movement, though the sudden bounce of your breasts heavy against your chest it an alien sensation. Both arms curl over you, trying to press the orbs back into place and stop the rippling jiggles.
At the end of the hall, racing towards you is a lanky deer of some sort. It's heels click hard onto the floor and send zings up through the air. "You there! Didn't you hear?! Report to command room! There's a new wave of attackers!"
Then, as if on cue, the entire hallway filled with a booming voice, echoing out from speakers you now see embedded into the walls with small, black holes releasing the sound: "All able personnel are called to report in command room A. Repeat, all able personnel are called to report in command room A. This is not a drill. This is an emergency. The planet has been attacked once more. We will debrief in T-minus three minutes. Report to command room A." Then, with a fizzle the voice disappeared.
Your eyes glance back to the window, seeing the orb of blue. Distantly, at the very edge of the window, you see something else moving through the sky, moving much faster than you are, if you're even moving. You see that the doe, a gazelle you realize, continued down the hall in a hurry. "Come on! This is serious!" She shouts back to you while her quick feet continued to trot down the hall rapidly, their tapping footsteps fading quieter and quieter until she's just a spec at the end of the long corridor.
Still confused, you start in the same direction. Your feet clump in the slow, steady pace that you set, knowing that without your concentration faltering you can move all four legs without stumbling. Before you've even made it a quarter of the way, another rush of feet suddenly follow down the hall in a rush, catching up to you. You glance back, seeing a group of people rushing towards you, chattering among themselves:
"What's happened? How many were hurt?"
"I don't know. I've heard it hit a distant village."
"No- it was Tarquin."
"No! That's the biggest city left!"
"I just hope they started evacuations in time..."
By the time they reach you, they're well aware of your presence here. You sift through the group: two of them are rodents, though the exact species escapes you, but they stand shorter than the others; another is a bird, though frail that bird is carrying a massive weapon that hangs off from it's body; the fourth is a lizard with his tongue flicking out periodically, the last is a tiger like yourself with it's long tiger body, the bottom of the taur figure, standing steadily while the human torso puffs up tall and proud. His chest is bare, muscular and chiseled. His torso tapers down with muscle packed tightly together, all cords of sinew wound together before his legs begin. Though, his fur is sleeker, showing even the rippling muscle beneath the fur while when you look down you only see the soft, fluffy side of your form. Seeing him, obviously a creature of power, you suddenly feel inadequate. Looking down, you see the heft of your breasts on your chest, bouncy and exposed.
You gulp, crossing your arms tightly over your chest to try and cover yourself. Though, as they come to your side, it's more than your exposed chest that makes you shift uncomfortably. The are all garbed in armors and equipment. Each one has on thin, sleek armoring with weapons slung over their shoulders or cradled between their arms. Though suddenly, you look down to see that your form too has clothing.
Written by Picklessauce69 on 04 October 2015
Banding
A leather-like strap is criss-crossed over your chest and pulls your breasts tightly to you. A plate is swung over your hips, protecting the precious groin area with tightly coiled plates of armoring. Over your arms too are bands, strapping small blades to you while armoring down your biceps and forceps. Your back is bare though, depending on natural strength to stay protected. You blink, unsure how you were suddenly clothed. At the same time, you feel an influx of stability in your legs. You feel strength from years of training and the knowledge of understanding one's muscles. You glance down, confused though suddenly a voice pulls you to attention.
"Anyaka? Where have you been! There's been another attack! You have to get to the command room!" The other tiger talks to you, fierce but respectful. He knows you. Though, you have no idea who this man is. "How is that possible?" You think, perplexion drawing your brows together.
"Seriously. Command Room A. Now." The group is suddenly behind you, urging you forward and when you step forward your feet feel sturdier. You find your balance has shifted, so it's natural to have four legs jutting out behind your torso. So, you rush forward with the crowd. You follow in the direction of their footsteps as more, massive windows pass by you in a blur, showing more angles of the same blue mass, though the further you go, you can see more specks in the darkness too. More ships doing the same thing as this one? Or more ships plotting the attacks everyone is buzzing about.
The male tiger strides beside you, Alira, your mind suddenly supplies his name with ease as though you simply had a drop of memory for a second. He leans into your shoulder, the sudden weight strange. "What's wrong with you? Why weren't you already in the command room? There can't be that many pilots on board with all of our ships out at the same time. Where have you been?"
You look at him, dumbstruck. You don't know how to respond. You just blink, and the male shakes his head. "Anyaka, you can't be mad at me forever. Especially not now, there's bigger issues here."
You stare at him, still stuck on the how. How is it that you've stepped into someone else's role? How is it that no one notices anything different or wrong with you? That train of thought is suddenly lost as you reach the Command Room. At least fifty individuals are crammed into the tight space. They pack in, seated at work stations or just sprayed out over the free space, waiting for information. Your eyes scan them madly, noting that of all the people here they all seem to be prey animals, more like the gazelle, the rodents, and a spattering of birds and lizards. Though the mass majority are all these same smaller breeds. Like yourself and the male, tiger taurs, you see only three others. One female and two more males. The female is massive, stomach bulging out, obviously pregnant. You gulp, glancing down at your torso once before lifting your eyes to the center of the room where a large lizard has stepped in front of the crowd.
"Thank you for coming promptly." He starts and a hush falls instantly. All eyes lock onto him. The commander. Ank.
"For those that don't know, there has been another attack. The attacking ships have planet-sized weaponry, which they used to attack Tarquin. Evacuation had been started, but hadn't completed when the first rocket missile landed. It took out the major homing division-" A soft gasp rippled through the crowd, you imagine what that could mean besides a major loss of life.
"- Within the homing division, the nursery was lost. Lab associates were able to collect breeding samples for about twenty 61B vessels, but without the equipment there, even those lives are unstable." Again, the crowd buzzed faintly with life, anxiety swirling through every life in the room.
"We have a crew of nearly fifty on each of the six defense ships, but of those we are down to two pilots per vessel. That means we're all going to be short on sleep. And, with this loss in life..." He paused, coughed. "We need any breeds listed as a seven or above on the rarity scale to consider their breeding options to ensure the diversity of our planet." He took a long breath, nodded once and then began to address specific jobs.
Then, suddenly you found him in front of you. "Anyaka-"
You look up, seeing the sharp yellow eyes boring down into yours. A chill races down your spine. You fix your eyes back, trying to avoid fidgeting though suddenly this borrowed form seems less like yours than it has anytime before this.
"Anyaka, you know what you must do, for the sake of our people." He paused, lowering his voice. "I know you have before made the choice to forsake this option, but with what's happened, we need you to carry on the race. There's only eight tiger taurs left, three are female." He paused, expectant of a response, but when none comes from your stunned, frozen mouth then he continues. "Anira has been at your side for a long time. I feel you'd make a strong pairing, something more natural than artificial insemination-" He cut himself off, giving another small cough as he stepped into this strange territory. "I will let you make the decision, but the sake of an entire breed may rest on your shoulders."
He stepped away, voice raising a degree. "I need you in your station right now, pilot. Kiya has been flying for four hours now. He needs rest." Then, the man strode away. You see a pair of eye, glance over from before the massive windows in the front of the room. "That must be Kiya..." You stride across the room, feeling your stomach churning with what's been said so far.
It's like you'd been thrust into a movie set, but everything feels so real. You suddenly flash back, to the first room. It feels like ages ago, but the information comes rushing back. "A week... A week and I'll change, but with a pregnancy... I'd be stuck for it's course."
Written by Picklessauce69 on 11 October 2015
No Sleep
That thought haunts you to the piloting station where you plant yourself and fall into a trance, using the experiences of this costume to keep the ship going. You zone into the job, lost yourself in the task. Hours seem to meld together, drifting into one. Buzz shoots from side to side of the massive conference room, slang you only half understand that fall together to basically mean the planet is struggling under these attacks. Without more soldiers and more pilots, they'll lose without doubt. For hours, in the back of your mind, you hear the desperation building.
Finally, after the darkness seems to have gotten even darker, though you're sure it's just imagination telling you with this fatigue it must be night time. The other pilot has returned and taps your shoulder. You raise, plotting down the hall with muscle memory guiding you to a door. It lights up: "Retinal Scan... preparing... loaded... Please scan retina."
You bent, guiding your eye into the beam before it chirps once and the door slides open to reveal a cube of a room with a bunk jutting from the wall. Seeing it, you collapse forward, exhaustion pulling your entire body down to curl naturally onto the bunk.
But, sleep doesn't come.
Instead, the decision in front of you haunts your mind. The decision to trap yourself in this form, in this gender for months sits there. It demands to be paid attention to. "If I stay here a week, be their pilot, that's enough for my part. I would have done no harm," you rationalize, but it doesn't work. The other voice in your head perks up, "A week is enough time for those samples to spoil. A week is enough time for the rest of their people to die. A week is enough time for such bad to happen."
"But, whoever owns this costume. Whoever Anyaka really is will be back in a week, she can make the choice." But, deep down, something tells you a week is too long to wait without something for these people. You gulp, trying to sleep instead of thinking in this circle, but just as you start to drift you hear the faintest sobbing from the next cube to your side. Instead of sleeping, you stare up at the ceiling until a distant ringing alarm signals you've done your sentence 'sleeping'
Heading into the hallway, you're thrust into a stream of people. "W-what's happening?"
"We've landed. We're picking up survivors," Someone tossed the response over a shoulder, tossing you a bone as the flow pushes you with them. Corridors wash in front of your eyes. You see more windows, more angles around the big, rounded blue mass you now see with a faint tinge of sadness. You can feel the grief in the air, the people all feeling a great ache for individual family members, the community as a whole, and their home itself. The ache is collective. The sadness washes through these people, it pours out into the hallway and soaks into the panels your feet shuffle over until at last, everyone spills onto the ground outside.
The air is thick, the planet a jungle atmosphere that instantly makes sense, the breeds you've been seeing on the spaceship suddenly making so much sense. At first, there's order. People spill out and head forth, gathering those who are fighters land-stationed and separating them from regular civilians. You hear a mixture of children screaming and woman weeping. No one has any good news.
Written by Picklessauce69 on 18 October 2015
Missile Attack
Suddenly, a missile lands less than a mile away from where everyone is milling. Explosions ripple over the land surface, knocking the weak or unsteady to their knees. There's a mixture of cries, squeals, and murmurs of confusion and fear.
"Attack! We're under attack!" You see that the missile had been a mere distraction as another ship sweeps in, landing and spilling out leaping forms. You see them dark against the backdrop of a lush, green landscape already blackened and tarnished by what's happened.
Chaos spills forth. The civilians and survivors weren't prepared for an attack while the fighters among them are too few to juggle the crowd, with their fear and their herd mentality. The attackers pour forth while more missle shoot into the surface in the distance, clearing other locations on their thinning map. You rush forward, fearless with the knowledge that death will only bring you a new costume. You crash into attackers, thrashing your body with the rage and control of a teenager, unaware of your body but so powerful regardless. The blades on your arms rips through the air, propelled forward with massive paws ripping into the ear. Claws fly up, knocking the others to the ground.
But it's not enough.
Beside you in the fray, you see the other tigress, the one from your ship whose stomach sags with child. She stands above a crowd of frightened children, orphans from the destroyed homes and she wields a blasting weapon. It's shots ring out each second, taking out one attacker after another, but it's not enough. The others swarm around her. You can't get there in time, even with dirt flying behind your paws and all four legs rushing together in unison so that you leap across the earth instead of running. Even that, you just get there in time to see her crumple, coat shredded where a ragged weapon had sliced forward.
A week is too long to wait for the true Anyaka to return. You know, in that moment, with battle raging all around you that a choice is in your lap. Will you stay in this place? Take on the responsibilities of a race and a gender not your own. Will you be thrust into this waring, surviving place for a chance to redeem their races? Blood races down your chest, pooling in the fur at your waist, practically staining it.
No matter how many enemies you can kill for them, you still have a choice.
Will you stay here, become a pilot and mother in one and be trapped in this strange land, strange life, and alien form for the entire pregnancy (as any change in species would take you away, thus leaving the child stranded from its place and discounting their breed counts anyways) or will you suffer through your week before changing to something new, something else?
Written by Picklessauce69 on 25 October 2015
Change Right Away
“I can’t stay here, like this!” Your eyes drop instinctively to inspect over your current form. The white fur envelopes your entire body while black stripes break across overtop. The velveteen fuzz of it covers your fingertips and face entirely. When you look directly down, you stare at the swelling shape of your breasts heavy and bouncy atop your chest. Then, beneath, you spot your stomach sitting there.
“Am I really... Pregnant?” you wonder, placing a hand over your stomach. The idea of supporting life in there is a bit alien, you’d never thought about being in that position before. You shake your head, but then the memories from your last sleepless night come back. You think about how much danger you're leaving, abandoning whoever’s life you’ve stepped into and this world without a pilot or a mother, when their race is already dying out. You gulped, feeling a bit of hesitation catching at your mind.
“I already decided! A week is enough of time for me to help these people!” Yet your fingers still linger on the for-now smooth expanse of your stomach knowing the rules of these costumes: if pregnant, you change; the babies come with and change too.
“Would I be stealing Anyaka’s babies? Would they really be gone when she returned?” Though, even thinking that, you’re unsure if Anyaka would really return at all or if her species would survive that long.
Your head gives a sudden stiff shake, trying to break the circle of thoughts that had kept you up all night from starting again. “No! I have to change back! For a week, I will fight for them, with them, and I will do my best to better this world for this species, but the task of breeding to survive... that’s something they’ll just have to figure out. I can’t stay trapped like this for nine months, I can’t last that long. I can’t risk not getting back to myself.”
Your mind runs through it all again, working through the problem over and over until finally you realize you were right. You have to change back after one week is up because _______.
Written by Picklessauce69 on 10 May 2016
I Feel Terrible, But I Can't stay
“I know it puts them at so much risk... there’s so many facets, but I just have to change back to myself and try to keep figuring this thing out!” you decided, just in time to suddenly hear someone calling your name again.
“Anyaka! Anyaka!” You turn to see the children, the flood of orphans the other tigress had been protecting all turn towards you now. They are shorter, able to dart hurriedly through the chaos of the battle field towards where you stand.
“Oh! No!” you think, eyes shooting open wide. “Don’t come to me!”
But, the children are all drawn to the other mother on the field, the comfort of another one of the few females. They all race towards where you stand, gathering up on all sides of you.
“For a week!” you remind yourself, “I will try to protect them!” With a sudden burst of energy, you throw yourself into the thrum of battle. The bone you wield as a weapon flies through the air, catching and piercing through on perfect strikes or simply clunking the attackers onto the ground. With each downed enemy, another takes it’s place.
The children still swarm behind you, murmuring and screaming in bursts, constantly demanding attention on all sides of their clumped group. Your eyes fly out over the field, searching for someplace safe for these children. Off to your side, the ship still sits with bodies thrumming all around it. “Is the ship still safe?” you wonder, “Has it been protected?” Even squinting, you can’t see a specific sign of the ship’s status.
Off to the opposite side, the beaten paths towards the main crop of building on this planet seem to sit; but wasn’t that where the attacks originated? You can’t remember exactly what everyone had told you about and you have no idea how you could find out.
Lastly, out across the swarming shape of the entire field of fighting bodies, there’s a part in the backdrop of the foliage of the planet. You have no idea what lies inside those woods, but maybe they’d be emptier than the other options.
“I have to move! But where?”
Written by Picklessauce69 on 11 May 2016
Into the Woods!
“The woods! Why would the even attack the woods, nothing is there!” You usher the kids to the fringe of the battle, trying escape towards that parting in the trees. Screams echo out as swords and blades fly past them, flung out of the invisible barrier of the fight happening centered in the field, but you manage to get each charge to the edge.
“You!” You jolt, hearing the harsh voice of an attacker. You and your charges freeze still. “No escape!” A blade flies forward, attacking not you as everyone else had, but for the closest child. You watch, with sudden, rising horror as the small body crumpled. A spurt of dark red broke out over the pure, soft white of the child’s furred body and it falls like a forgotten teddy bear and not a living being.
The other children instantly scream. Their voices rise out madly in horror. You jump into action, retaliating against the being and rushing the children into the cover of the woods before someone can see your escape; but that child’s fallen, supple form haunts your eyes. Instead of trees, you see its chubby legs. Those eyes, huge and confused as the blade broke through its center.
Something so small, not yet covered with the armor of a warrior or worn to accepting death by a lengthy life only broke with that single strike. The red on white. That blood, so pure, never before spilled.
You feel a sudden switch in your form, a reminder almost that you carry life so much like that small, fallen cub.
“Where are we going?” You realize you’d been running, the small charges along you following until they cannot keep up. You freeze, looking down at all those little cubs. “We’re going right to here! We’re safe now.”
You drop to the ground, pulling them all around you. Your arms circle around four pair of hips at once, feeling their squishy, soft fur against your cheeks and chest as they collapse exhausted into you.
Faintly, you can hear the screams of battle still; but louder is the small, innocent rumble of the purring cubs piled over your lap as though you’d already given birth.
“I can’t leave them. I can’t abandon them now” you realize, squeezing them tighter and staring out into the falling night. You don’t sleep, you only stare out as a silent, stone watchdog against any dangers in the wood. You don’t know if you’ll ever sleep again, but you do know that you’ll never see another crumpled cub body at your feet as long as you can still fight for them. For these cubs and the ones still growing within you.
“I just know I can’t leave.”
Written by Picklessauce69 on 18 May 2016
The end (for now)