Friends
There was another beep, and the door behind him opened. Another creature stepped forward, another kitsune like Kit-002F. She walked in, and upon seeing David, ran up to her and viciously hugged her till she couldn’t breathe.
“Oh my God, they got you too,” the creature said.
“Who...who are you?” David asked as the kitsune let her go.
“It’s me, Jake,” she said.
David stared at the new body of Jake, similar to her own. How...how could this have happened? What sick mind would create us as this?
“Don’t be scared, um...David?” Jake said. “It’s actually kind of cool when you get used to it. Oh, and here come Daniel and...Pammy, I presume.”
David followed Jake’s gaze behind him as two creatures emerged from a tinted sliding glass door. They had human heads and shoulders, but their bodies were like that of a lion. They had thick, elongated arms, sharp, extended claws at the end of their large paws. Their hind legs were stronger, more heavy set then their arms, with a long almost chord like tail swinging wildly behind them. David knew who each were immediately. Their hair and, much like Jake and David’s, eye color did not change, but their hair length and...sensitive parts did.
Pammy, now sporting a broad set of shoulders and missing her usual thin shape lunged forward and hugged Kit. “Oh, David,” he whimpered into her long ears. Pammy let go and surveyed his new body. “So you’re changed too?”
He shakily nodded his head and looked behind the sphinx. “Daniel?”
He, now sporting breasts like David, avoided eye contact and put up a paw. “Hey, David.”
A heavy silence hung in the room, everyone shifting uncomfortably in their new bodies. David was the first to speak. “So, what the hell is going on?”
“Honestly, we didn’t know at first,” Jake said. “But, these people, whoever they are, they want to give us new lives-“
“Well who the hell are they to tell us that we need a new life?” David exploded. “They- they can’t just take something from us like our freaking bodies and expect us to live like,” he pointed to his girlish figure with a jagged claw, “this!”
Jake placed a calming paw on Kit’s shoulder. “Hey, listen, I already told you it gets better. Once you get used to it, it’s not so bad…”
Daniel remained silent. Everyone turned towards the sphinx as its tail swung wildly behind her.
“Daniel?” David asked.
The sphinx avoided eye contact, but spoke in a low, high-pitched voice. “Jake’s kind of right, David. It’s not so bad once you get used to it. I mean, these bodies can do so much…I miss my old one, but these are kind of cool.”
The room grew silent again. Pammy, now stepping forward, his form dominating the room. “How’d this happen?”
“We were captured and the injected with some...kind of liquid,” Jake offered. “We blacked out a couple seconds after it happened, then woke up like this. Why? Didn’t you guys get injected?”
David shook her head. “I woke up like this.”
Pammy said, “Same.”
“Maybe they just didn’t want you guys to suffer or something,” Daniel spoke up. “The needle was pretty large.”
“So are we stuck like this?” Pammy asked.
No one answered, which, to David, was an answer in itself. Well...shit,” David sighed.
“Listen, man- woman,” Jake smiled pointing to David’s exposed breasts, which she quickly covered up. “you have to just accept it.”
“How?”
“Take ‘em out for a spin around town…or the lab!” Jake smiled again.
How could he be so okay with this? David thought to herself.
“Here,” he said offering a paw, “there’s a sort of break room, we can go talk there. I think it’d be a better scene than this place.”
Written by Cole Stryker on 04 April 2015
