Talk:Not Quite Furry

2011-02-05T23:16:43Z

Fibio:

Great. I really enjoyed this. The manic ferrityness especially. Sorry, this is more of a fan letter than a critique. Alveric

I was quite impressed by this, I'm a sucker for this kind of story but it was well written and there were no errors serious enough to break the flow. On a broad critique I would say that the story declines as you get further through, the mental change to the POV character is intentionally confusing so that works, but still is hard to follow. Also the story kind of just... ends, without much build-up or finality. The drama worked up until then but once the story begins to wrap up it evaporated to become rather choppy and contrived (as much as any story about a six foot ferret can be serious ;)).

It's a good TF story. But if you wanted to work on it some more I'd suggest putting some significant event at the end, or ending at the personalities merging and focusing on that. For example, having the personalities split and have to work together to [blank] would work well, or having some big show down as they realise each other's existence. It really needed to run a little longer to a climax to properly finish off a nice story.
--[[User:Fibio|Fibio]] 23:16, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Turncoat

2009-09-09T09:21:12Z

Fibio:

{{TF tag|type=Animal|degree=Anthro|species=Feline}}{{title|name=Turncoat|author=Fibio|user=Fibio}}

“Next!” the clerk roared, sticking her head round the door to her office. I glanced round at the small menagerie squeezed in the waiting room; a raccoon sitting opposite me shrugged and chattered something that I assumed translated to.

“Go ahead.” Or at least, that’s what I hoped it translated to that or he might be a little annoyed that I took his slot, and the last thing I needed was more TF victims mad at me.

“Sit,” the clerk clipped as I entered her office, and I perched on the edge of an all species bench. Mentally I’d been bracing myself for some pretty strange stuff, there’d been a ten foot long dragon in the waiting room after all, but I hadn’t realised the vixens would have such... personality. Though from the evil eye she was giving me I guessed I’d be losing a few of my favourite arteries if she caught me staring.

“Name?”

“Fibio,” I replied, with an unsteady smile. It probably wasn’t wise to show that many canine teeth, but I hadn’t figured out my muzzle enough to do anything better.

“Form?” she continued, not looking at me

“Lynx.”

“Hmm, unusual,” she murmured, noting something down on a slip of paper.

“Thanks, I try to be original.”

That got me a curious frown, which would have been far more effective if she’d possessed eyebrows. Honestly, people just don’t put the thought into their characters these days.

“Story of origin?” she pressed, shaking her head.

“Outfoxed.”

“You seem to be lacking in the tail required for that title,” she observed, also proving she wasn’t capable of peering very well either.

“Well, it was mostly a reference to me being outfoxed, by a fox,” I admitted, shrugging. “It was also one of those quarter to midnight ideas.”

“Author?” she inquired, going back to her form.

“Fibio.”

“I knew it!” she barked, clicking her fingers. How did these morphs keep managing that with paws? “You’re one of ours; I can smell the magic on you. Why the hell do you want to join the UGTFV?”

“My recent affair with fuzzdom has made me sympathetic to your cause,” I lied, with only a flick of the tail to betray me. “So I thought to make amends properly I’d offer my services.”

The vixen was looking at me slack jawed, but snapped herself out of it.

“I have to make a call,” she announced, fleeing her desk and slamming the door shut behind her. A moment later I heard it lock. Which was probably a sign that the angry mob with the TF guns was on its way.

It had been such a simple plan. The moment I figured out they had pulled the wool over my eyes and transformed me, (rather unfairly I thought, I didn’t write transformations that often) I’d been onto Google and low and behold, UGTFV actually had a website and even an online form to register for membership. After rather unsuccessfully trying to turn human again I’d put on my coat inside out and headed down to their local offices.

“Yes, I’m sure he’s an author, he told me himself,” the vixen snapped, her voice drifting through the door. My hearing was one thing I was actually enjoying, though as this was supposed to be a punishment I shouldn't admit that in case I got zapped into a less amiable form.

“Yes, I know what this means. I’m not simple,” she continued, snarling. “I don’t know if we should trust him though... Yes, more or less just an anthro, he doesn’t seem to be holding a grudge, but... Okay Ma’am, I understand. I’ll tell him now.”

“That sounded like good news,” I chirped, sitting up hopefully as she re-entered.

“How did you...” she began, a flicked the huge tufts of fluff glued to the side of my head as an explanation. “Well, at least you got something positive out of the change.”

“Yeah, though not being able to see reds is weird,” I admitted.

“Most of us don’t get colour vision at all,” she pointed out, glowering, and I shifted uncomfortably on my stool. “But anyway, the higher ups have deemed that you receive a provisional membership. After a couple of missions we will give you proper position and knowing this place there’ll probably be some nefarious scheme at some point. Before that though, we'll assign someone in a similar situation to you as a mentor, we may be hard-pressed finding anyone however.”

“Any familiar faces?” I hazarded. “Maybe a character of mine?”

‘Character of mine’ was most definitely the wrong choice of words, as the look I got could have melted though an inch of steal. A growl began to rise in her throat and I hastily amended.

“A character from one of my stories.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” she growled, taking her eyes from my neck at long last. “I know if I ever met my author he wouldn’t get out of it intact.” She glanced down at her bust line and a wolfish grin spread across her face. There were no prizes for guessing which part her author would be losing.

“I’ll take my chances,” I replied. The odds were actually quite good; most of my characters had accepted their change in story and with any luck would be at least a little sympathetic to my cause.

“Well, we only have one on record,” the vixen explained, glancing at her computer, that worrying grin still fixed on her muzzle. “Kit Arisha, Paradise setting. I’ll tell her you’re on your way down.”

“Ah, this is not going to end well.”

***

“Bastard!”

The blow caught me clean in the nose and I dropped backwards onto my tail. That hurts a lot more than you think by the way.

"Damn it Kit!" I swore, clutching my hands to my muzzle as the blooded flowed. "This fur coat is new."

A tiger-striped paw, claws unsheathed, hit the ground about an inch from my head and I gazed up at the living, breathing embodiment of my character. I keep forgetting just how big Kit is. But then with more than a touch of Bengal in her and a origin story where she'd taken on two-hundred pound werewolves on equal terms it shouldn't have been that surprising.

"You're still joking?" she growled, helping, well maybe dragging, me to my feet.

"It staves off the PTSD," I said, shrugging. "Anyway, why are you hitting me, I thought you liked being a tiger?"

"That was for what you put the other mes through," she snarled. Yeah, I had to stop using her personality so much. "I see you've got my punishment already."

"It's not that much of a punishment," I admitted, wiping the injury off my nose so I wouldn't have to remember to include it later.

"They didn't consider you worth their time," she muttered. "Not enough characters holding grudges. Of course the characters of the really prolific guys get their righteous vengeance, I just had to fill out thirty forms to send out a minor charm."

"These guys are bureaucratic?" I asked, surprised.

"There's an infinite number of characters out there," she explained. "If you just give them a TF gun they just rove around randomly zapping authors. That's not vengeance, that's just doing exactly what they want us to do. Of course, that seems to be the current plan anyway."

"You guys don't sound happy about how things are being run around here," I hazarded.

"Well, I joined up mostly to punch you in the nose, but I've done that now," she said, shrugging. "It's all too much like having a desk job for my tastes. Not to mention the really fanatical ones are bandying about transforming all authors preemptively."

I winced, this was starting to get serious.

"Look," I hissed, glancing down the empty corridor to make sure we weren't overheard. "I've got a proposition for you, but we need somewhere private."

"Paradise Transgendered Support Group," she suggested, in an equally conspiratorial whisper. "They don't have any camera's."

We hurried to the little break room off another corridor. I had to remember to ask just big this place was, and where it was as there was no way such a huge building could fit in the little reta-office I'd entered through.

"So what's this proposition?" she asked, perching on the table in the deserted room. Just in case anyone did run across us I was to pretend I was a female turned male, and hope the shock gave us enough time to escape.

"I need to steal one of the UGTFV's artifacts," I explained, and Kit laughed in my face.

"And why the hell should I help you do that?" she exclaimed. "I don't like you. I'm not going to risk mind and body to help you back to your stupid human form.

"I'll admit that's one reason I asked," I said, with a guilty shrug. "But that's not the real problem. The UGTFV are going around randomly transforming people, in plain sight with no stabilizing strings attached. When this hits the news, and if no one explains why it's happening then its going to be bad. Martian Flu bad. I mean, we've already had a ferret-taur girl go shopping. Someone's going to figure it out sooner or later."

"Not my universe," Kit said, shaking her head. "And you didn't seem to care about it in Paradise."

"Paradise is paradise," I snapped. "It's designed to randomly change people, they won't decide to throw everyone with fur in concentration camps or something stupid like that. This is the real world, it could get serious real fast, and what with my author powers messed up."

"Author powers?" Kit queried, raising a brow.

"Yeah, like-"

I picked up a coffee from the table.

"That," I completed, taking a lap and almost burning my tongue off.

"That wasn't there before," Kit intoned, staring at the cup.

"Yeah, I can still insert items that haven't been mentioned yet, and do some minor plot convenient stuff, but I can't do anything big, and I got a migraine the last time I tried to change myself."

"Serves you right."

"I know, I know, but I need to get my Plot Device from wherever they've taken it," I pressed. "That way I can stop things going even more tits up."

"Still no reason to help you," she replied, turning her head away in exactly the same way cats do when they want to ignore you.

"I never wrote an ending for your sister," I muttered, glowering at her. "She could have a safe and happy life away from all this kind of stuff if you help me get my author powers back."

Kit froze, turned slowly to stare daggers at me, and then punched me in the nose.

"Not again!" I gasped, dropping to the ground and having hot coffee spatter all over me.

"Oh, quit whining," she growled, as I tried to keep the scalding liquid out of my eyes. "I'm still going to help you."

***

The coffee stains wouldn't wash out of my fur, I assumed it was more humorous that way, so I got more than a few funny looks as we made our way down the levels to the vault.

"I hope you've got a clever plan to get us in," Kit muttered, stalking down the corridor. "Because I only have angry mob access."

"What kind of organization gives clearance based on whether you're in an angry mob?" I asked, just as we past a full morph terrier carrying a can of pepsi. Kit just raised an eyebrow in lieu of an explanation.

"Noob," she muttered.

"Just be glad I haven't had to relearn to walk. Anyway, an angry mob is no problem."

"Why do I get the feeling I'm going to be lych- Argh." I whacked her round the back of the head and leapt backwards as claws scythed though the air.

"What the hell was that for!" she roared.

"Are you angry?" I asked, dancing back as she barreled towards me.

"Yes!"

"And there's more than one of us, so we must be an angry mob," I pointed out.

Kit paused, which was good because I'd just backed into the vault door.

"It doesn't work like that," she exasperated. "You can't trick your way in with semantics."

"Sure you can," I replied, beaming, gesturing her to open the door. Kit rolled her eyes but yanked down on the handle.

"The rules of logic aren't doing so well right now," I explained, as the door swung open and Kit gaped. "As long as there's a reason for something to work, it will work."

"Who are you the narrator?" Kit growled, pushing past me and into the gloom.

"Technically, yes." She just looked at me.

"...What are we looking for anyway?" Kit muttered, as we made our way down rows upon rows of shelves crammed with all kinds of weird artifacts. Some I recognised, most I didn't, but I chuckled to myself as we actually passed Spells R Us. There was a very irate wizard somewhere, but I doubted he still had the beard.

"I told you, my Plot Device."

"And were is it?" Kit asked, gesturing as the millions of transforming spells, bells and doodars.

"At the end of this sentence," I replied, picking up the Plot Device from a nearby box. It looked like someone had bred a tricorpder and a dust-buster, glowed green and began beeping happily as I picked it up. I'd hardly had time to make it elegant, but it would further the plot, and somewhere I even had an explanation for how it worked.

"Guess you're going human again then," Kit sighed. "I hope you enjoyed you brief stay in fuzzdom."

"Who says it's over?"

The glow leapt up my arm, my fur lengthening at its touch and flipping colour from a dapper brown to a violent orange. There was an uncomfortable moment as mass sprang into existence to fill out my muscles, but the pocket universe the Plot Device contained neatly explained that away without the need for a kiloton bang. Finally, with a yawn to flex my longer muzzle it was over and I was left with Kit glowering at her twin.

"Enjoying yourself?" she growled, showing teeth.

"Not really," I admitted, tugging at my collar. "You're hot."

"Pervert," she muttered, rolling her eyes.

"I meant that as temperature," I protested.

"Well if you will wear a jacket with fur," she chided. "Why have you got your coat inside-out anyway?"

"To see if anyone gets it. Now, do you have your pass?"

"Yeah, but someone's going to notice if two of me try and use one pass," she pointed out, holding up the card.

I grinned and hit the clone button, an identical ID appearing in my hand.

"They're still not going to fall for it," she shrugged.

"Trust me."

"Not even as far as I can throw you."

***

Turns out Kit can throw me quite far, and that you need to have been a cat for a while to land on your feet. Anyway, our plan was simple, Kit would leave through one door, I'd leave through another, if anyone asked why I wasn't already outside I'd lie. What could go wrong?

"The computer says you've already outside," the guard said frowning. The UGTFV apparently didn't care about stereotyping as they'd made an anthropomorphic guard dog a door guard. There's just no originality in this place I swear.

"That's stupid," I replied. "I'm obviously not."

"Yeah, but according to our logs you left the building through door 4A three minutes ago," he continued. "Or at least your card did."

"Well, I have my card right here," I pressed, holding it up. "Its clearly still inside so there must be something wrong with your system."

"Well according to the manual its infullible," he muttered. "And it is mighty suspicious that you're trying to leave with an artefact."

"But you've got to let me out," I whined, switching to plan B and trying my best to pout. It didn't work that well. Tigers don't pout. "I've got a hot tip that my author is righting a new TF story right now."

"Rules are rules," he said, crossing his arms.

"But he's even supposed to be turning himself into me," I continued, ears drooping in a picture of despair. "The utter pervert. I've got to stop him before it's too late and you're stupid system is letting him get away with it."

"Well..."

"It'll just be a quick zap and go," I explained, smiling. "No one will even notice I'm gone. Well except for him. But that's the point."

"I suppose I can let it slide," he sighed. "But I'd better tell maintenance."

"Oh, I quite agree. Once I'm back."

"I'll buzz you through."

"Thanks," I beamed, half skipping for joy through the first security door. If Kit ever read my interpretation of her I was so dead. "This means so much to me."

"Yeah, just don't mention it," he muttered. "I'll... wait, why is your coat inside out?"

Oh boy, that tore it. His eyes widened as he figured it out.

"A turncoat," he barked. "You're your author. Alar..."

I shot him with the Plot Device, which left a rather surprised looking toad sitting behind the desk. Well the old ones are the best. But the sirens were already wailing and there was an ominous hum behind me and I whirled to see a TF gun unfurling itself from the ceiling, swinging to face me.

"Duck!" the Plot Device roared, and I dropped flat on my face as a beam lanced over me, turning the outer door into a rather surprised looking mallard. A moment later it fired again and the beam hit the Plot Device, bounced off then ricocheted randomly around the room. I pressed my muzzle to the floor as the ray whizzed past my head, turning my hair pink, before it glance off the guard's screen and struck the gun, turning it into a bunch of petunias.

"Oh no not again?" Kit suggested, appearing at the now open doorway, shooing the duck away. "Love what you've done with my hair by the way."

"Shut up," I growled, scrambling to my feet. "Lets just get out of here before I lose any more of my-"

A tartan beam hit me in the back and the toad yelled, "Stop them!" As my chest swelled.

"Masculinity," I squeaked, an octave or so up from Kit's growl.

"Well, you didn't start with much," Kit pointed out, as we broke into a run, fleeing the crowd of transformed creatures barrelling down the corridor towards us.

"Shut..." I petered out to preserve my remaining dignity, and dodged another blast, firing wildly over my shoulder. There was a trumpet as the leading fur turned into an elephant, in a decidedly not elephant sized corridor, I'm not sure whether he was more disturbed or the crowd that crashed into his backside.

I took advantage of the momentary lull to zap myself male again, only for an explosion of light to bleach me pink again. I glanced over my shoulder to see a centaur and ottsel trying to reload a howitzer sized TF gun. They weren't doing so well as one wasn't large enough to lift the shells and the other was too big to use the controls, but in the time it took for me to zap myself back to my more masculine looking lynx form the mob had shrunk the elephant and had resumed their angry charge.

"Forget this," Kit growled, as we sprinted towards the tree-line, and shifted smoothly into a full tiger, dropping onto all-fours and streaking away in an orange blur.

"Since when can she do that?" I mused, and got hit in the back, my fur poofing out as I randomly turned into a husky.

"Stop doing that!" I snapped, firing the Plot Device over my shoulder and one of the mob suddenly found themselves a bush baby. Behind them the howitzer misfired, leaving a half dozen bimbofied furs to drop out of the race and I glanced at the Plot Device which hummed smugly. Usually I don't condone that kind of stuff, but it was funny, and better them than me.

Another blast turned me into an anthro-alligator, but didn't stop me running. Being a giraffe was weird, but a moment later I was a gecko and then a gryphon as a dozen TF magic and science effects struck me. My hand warped like putty, scales growing under the fur and then dissolving mere seconds later, but I fought the controls of the Plot Device, and suddenly I dropped to the ground, a full timber wolf, catching the device in my jaws as I burst into the forest. The tree next to me flashed and became inexplicably dressed in a mini-skirt and lipstick as the howitzer boomed, but I was away, whistling through the undergrowth.

***

Kit didn't make herself easy to find and while I had a nose the size of bread loaf it didn't mean I had a clue how to track her, I eventually ended up wandering round the forest hoping for some contrivance to come along.

"Fib?" Kit hazarded, from high above my head and I whipped round just in time to see her land smoothly on all fours next to me.

I nodded enthusiastically, spitting out of Plot Device and dropping onto my haunches.

"They got you then," she continued.

Well, technically I'd done this to myself, but it was the UGTFV's fault. I pawed at the device, whining.

"Ah, and you can't talk."

Actually not having fingers was proving more problematic, but either would suffice.

"So is Timmy trapped in the well?" she asked, grinning

I took a half hearted snap at her but didn't stop her taking the Plot Device and sitting down next to me.

"So, anthros, anthros," she muttered scrolling though the menus. "I suppose you'd be annoyed if I just left you like this. Though it's tempting, you're a lot quieter.

I shot her a dirty look and barked loudly.

"Okay, so not quieter," she muttered. "Though trapping you in a forest in nearly full form while a organisation beyond your comprehension hunts for you is basically the plot of Not Human."

Pulling out the big guns I placed a tentative paw on Kit's knee and gazed up at her, a whine rising from the back of my throat.

"Puppy-dog eyes don't work on big cats," she chided. "But I'll turn you back, I'm not sinking to your level."

The blast hit me and I felt my very bones warp as my form was anthropomorphised.

"That was weird," I announced, as my voice-box reformed, letting lose a cavernous yawn as my jaw clicked back into place. "And what's this about crap sinking to my level?"

"You put me though hell," Kit warned, a finger hovering over the revert button.

"I put you though existence," I shot back. "And in whatever form that's a lot better than never existing at all. Without me you'd be..." I petered out, realisation striking.

"Without you I'd what?" Kit growled, but I had already leapt to my feet and was dragging her after me.

"I figured it out," I explained in a rush. "Why the UGTFV are really doing all this. Quick, do you know where their big boss' office is?"

"Yeah, it's on the tour," Kit sighed, as I pulled her through the undergrowth.

"We need to get there before its too late," I pressed, pushing past a scrubby tree. "There might not be much time."

"Then why not just use the teleport function on this thing."

I skidded to a stop, and Kit ran into my back.

"There's a what?" I exclaimed.

"A teleport," she explained, rolling her eyes. "Shouldn't you know? it's your device."

"It's a Plot Device, it pretty much just does whatever is easiest."

"Authors," Kit muttered, shaking her head, and pressed a button on the machine. An instant later we arrived about three feet above a very nice shag carpet and both of us shredded it as we landed and scrabbled with our claws for balance. Kit managed to stay upright. I ended up flat on my face.

"Ah, Mr Morph," a voice, dripping with superiority, intoned mere moments later. "I was informed you'd be arriving soon."

"I guess it should have have been obvious that this guy was a villain," Kit sighed, as I dragged myself upright to see an anthro ferret sitting on the other side of a mahogany desk. "He's got an English accent."

"Well so do I," I whined.

"Okay, high class English accent."

"Ahem," the ferret interjected. "I do hope I'm not intruding but I do have quite a few other appointments to get to, so if we can make this showdown quick it would be appreciated."

"Oh, right," I said, brushing off the carpet shreds from my trousers. "Err, give me a minute I've kind of forgotten the plot." Kit groaned, slapping herself on the forehead, muttering something about 'bloody authors'.

"Stealing creativity," he suggested.

"Stealing creativity," I roared, stepping dramatically forwards. "By elementary deduction I've discovered your fiendish plot and we are here to stop you."

"We are?" Kit cut in. "What is this plot?"

"Well. In that case, I believe a epic, climatic, highly choreographed duel is customary," the ferret suggested, rising from his desk, ignoring Kit. "So, pistols, swords, lightsabers?"

"Ooo that last one sounds good."

"Err, guys. Why are you fighting?" Kit pressed.

"Very good choice," he replied, smiling, throwing me a lightsaber hilt which I caught smoothly, for once. "Now let me just set the mood." The wooden panels on the side wall slid open to reveal a full orchestra just tuning up.

"I don't believe this," Kit sighed.

"I take it that there's an abandoned, yet easily reactivated, industrial plant beneath us?" I queried, firing up the sabre and the blue light played across my fur.

"I've got most of it set on laser tripwires," he replied, with a smug grin, his own red blade casting eery shadows. "I'm informed it also made guns mostly so that should be interesting."

"Right, lets duel."

I sprinted towards the ferret, lifting my blade above my head and yelling an incoherent battle cry. The ferret dropped into a smooth parry, but moments before impact he was hit in the chest with a blast of green energy and suddenly a perfectly normal ferret, still in a business suit, hit the ground.

"Kit!" I protested, stepping on the ferret as he tried to make a break for it, and I rounded rounded on Kit who was casually blowing on the barrel of the Plot Device.

"Fib, we both know with that set up you'd have a five thousand word action sequence and by the end no one would have a clue what was going on. I don't even know and I'm in the bloody story."

"It's simple deduction my..."

"And stop ripping off other authors, you're already going to have George Lucas on your back. You lot can knock it off as well," she snapped, rounding on the orchestra. One of the tuba players let out a hopeful tootle and Kit turned him into a panda.

"You are such a kill joy," I muttered. Kit sighted the Plot Device at me. "Okay, fine. This whole thing is a plot to scare all authors out of their creativity by transforming any that even dare put pen to paper. With the threat of the UGTFV hanging over their heads the only people who can create are those that write exactly what the UGTFV tell them to write. Thus they have the monopoly on creativity and use it to nefarious-argh!"

I hopped backwards from the ferret clutching my paw where he'd bitten me. Kit fired a quick blast that went wild and the ferret scampered onto his desk.

"Brilliant work Mr Morph," he declared, somehow keeping an element of class despite the fact he was squeaking more than Mickey Mouse. "But utterly wrong."

"We'll stop you... wait, what?" I said, looking at him in puzzlement. "Aren't you supposed to say, 'but how do you plan to stop me'."

"Ha, you are a fool," he shot back. "I have already defeated you."

"You can't defeat me, I'm the hero."

"Is that what you call them these days," Kit sighed, crossing her arms. "What does that make me, plucky sidekick?"

"I was thinking more glamorous assistant." A blast of green hit me and I found myself in a very revealing cocktail dress.

"Damn it Kit," I squeaked. "That's the second time today."

"Er, bad guy still in the room," the ferret interjected.

"Wait your turn," Kit growled, and then rounded on me again. "And this would be much more satisfying if you'd take it seriously."

"You're just pissed because I'm bigger than you."

I had about half a second to contemplate how that might have been a horrifically bad thing to say before she zapped me again. A moment later I dared to open my eyes to see the same inside out jacket, dappled fur and me with all the lumps in the right places. Now that was one outcome I hadn't anticipated.

"You have reached your random transformation quota for the day," Kit read off the Plot Device. "Please try again later."

"Finally some luck," I announced, turning back to the ferret that was still waiting for us for some reason. "Now, why am I defeated?"

"Oh, right," he said, composing himself for a moment. You know, straightening his collar and things like that. How he managed to still look dignified is beyond me. "We knew that you would search for some secret conspiracy to stop, so we concocted one to distract you from our real plan."

"And that is?" Kit asked, sighing.

"Revenge to all the shameless transformation authors who have wronged us!" he cried, hitting a button marked 'ferret escape-hatch' and diving through a trapdoor that opened in front of me.

"After him!" Kit yelled, but I caught her before she could pounce.

"No thanks, I don't feel like being a ferret today," I said, shrugging. "Besides, how many authors have they already transformed?"

"Pretty much all they could find," she admitted.

"So obviously it's too late to stop him.

"I don't know that," she snapped. "I lost track of what's going on a while ago."

"Oh, it's simple," I replied, beaming. "He concocted a plot to get revenge on the TF authors, but when I started this story he used that plan to cover up a plot to steal all creativity. But that was actually only a distraction to give him time to finish his first plan, which was never actually a cover up to begin with and instead hiden in plain sight.

Kit just looked at me for a moment.

"I need out of this story," she declared. "I'm going to be as mad as you in a few minutes."

"I should go too. My family is probably wondering what happened to me."

"Well, I can use this teleporting doodad," Kit said, shrugging.

"That would be plot convenient," I admitted. "Well, I guess I'll see you around."

"Not if I see you first," she said, with a completely straight face, and the room shattered.

A moment later I was back in my own bedroom.

I stretched and yawned. It had been a fun day, and best of all it had all worked out with no loose ends. Well the ferret was still free to cause mayhem, and after this story would be baying for my blood. Kit still had the Plot Device and that in the wrong hands could destroy the universe. And there was the small matter of dozens of transformed authors across the globe in fairly ridiculous forms. Okay, so nothing was tied up in the slightest, but at least I was back to normal.

A lynx stared back at me out of my darkened computer monitor. It dropped it's head into its hands.

"I am so not doing a sequel," it declared.

[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Dire Warning]] [[Category:Fibio]] [[Category:Feline]] [[Category:Wolf]] [[Category:Full form]] [[Category:Anthropomorphic]]

2009-02-08T12:05:38Z

Fibio:

Cascade Failure

2009-02-07T19:45:38Z

Fibio: New page: {{Universe|Paradise}} {{title |name=Cascade Failure |author=Fibio |user=Fibio}} {{author endnote| This was inspired by a thought in another story about how lucky ...

{{Universe|[[:Category:Paradise|Paradise]]}}

{{title
|name=Cascade Failure
|author=Fibio
|user=Fibio}}

{{author endnote| This was inspired by a thought in another story about how lucky the timing was for the change and sprang from what could happen if it occurred a few decades later.
It is quite possible it does not quite obey the rules of the cannon so could be considered AU, which is ironic as it’s a story about an alternate universe. }}

I woke to the sound of my door clicking shut.

There should have been motion after that. The sound of someone in the room. But there was silence, or, maybe the barely perceived sound of someone padding along the hall carpet, but that was long gone before I was awake enough to concentrate. All I knew was that I could smell that there wasn’t anyone in the room but me.

Wait a second.

Smell?

My eyes flicked open and I knew instantly that something was very wrong. The light was messed up. Unless I’d overslept massively, which I suppose was possible as it was the holidays; the room was far too bright. I rolled over, purposely ignoring the fact that there was something on my checks, and glanced at the clock.

Quarter to six A.M., and the numbers were far too bright. Yeah, something was up.

I sank back into the pillows and flicked my ears, or rather felt my ears flick, and stared at the ceiling for a moment, trying to make sense of the fact that my senses had apparently changed overnight. It wasn’t helping that said ceiling was being far to visible than it had any right to be in the dawn light, or that I could literally see the bulb blowing in the faint wind, or that I could smell the paint we’d used on the kitchen a fortnight ago, or that I could hear the hot water pipes humming as the house prepared to deal with its bleary eyed occupants.

I closed my eyes, folded my ears and held my breath, stifling the sensory overload for a moment. It had to be a dream. No way could I be seeing in the near dark, no way could I be able to wiggle ears on the top of my head, and I certainly shouldn’t be able feel the…

Argh! I sat bolt upright, running my hands over the, my whiskers, literally growling. It wasn’t right! I shouldn’t have anything like that! I went to bed normal, didn’t I?

I snarled to myself and took my hands down from my cheeks. Hands might be an overstatement actually. Paws worked, damn great poofy ones, with thick orange and black striped fur, animalistic pads and wickedly sharp claws. I wiggled my fingers, followed by my thumbs, okay, so maybe hands worked. My growl lowered to a barely perceptible snarl.

The room didn’t seem to have changed. It was still a fairly normal eighteen year old’s bedroom, though sans eighteen year old human girl, and had all the chaos that ensued. There was one thing wrong though. I kept a mirror above my desk, it had been a twelfth birthday present, but when I’d gone to sleep it hadn’t been facing the wall.

I pulled myself ponderously out of bed, steadfastly ignoring the fact that my feet had been warped as much as my hands and I shouldn’t really be able to stand, never mind walk, and stalked over to the desk. Someone had definitely been touching my stuff. A pen was lying out where it had been away, a pad of paper was on the wrong side, not to mention there was an envelope taped to the back of the mirror.

My senses were giving me conflicting stories though. I tore the letter off the backing and took a deep sniff, adding that whole action to rapidly growing list of things to ignore right now, and found that the only person to touch it had been me.

Actually, that wasn’t right either. I took a deep snort of the fur on my arm. I didn’t quite have the scent of cat on me fully; I could definitely pick out something human among the mishmash. Probably from the bed. The envelope didn’t have that; it was tiger, through and through, and most definitely me.

I took a moment to scent the air in the room. There was human in there, a heck of a lot of human, but it felt, aged, somehow. The only thing recent was a catty scent that still hung in the air. It smelt like me, vaguely comforting in an odd manner. But still, it was spread too far, coating the pen for instance, even though I knew I hadn’t touched it.

My attention turned back to the envelope, and I did a double take as I read the front.

“To my past self.”

Oh-kay. I carefully slit open the letter with a claw, wincing as I managed to score though the papers within, and unfurled it, holding it in clumsy paws.

“Dear Kathryn Arisha,” I read. “Or, as I think I was calling myself then: Kit.”

I sat down clumsily on the bed. On any other day I would have thought this was a prank. Soph’ might concoct something like this, if particularly bored. But I knew that this had been written by someone with my scent. My new scent even. That warranted investigation.

“First, I probably should apologise for not sticking around, but… Well. I’m not staying. The world doesn’t need a second Kit right now.

Anyway. You’ve probably noticed something off by now. And if it was normal, good for you, you can skip the next few lines.

Let me stress though. You are as human as anyone else will be. Something is broken with the world, or, is breaking, and your fury self is the biggest symptom. You are not alone. You are not insane. You are not sick. And no one will see you as a freak, there’s some kind of perception distortion over everyone but the warped that makes them see you as human and it won’t fall for a good while yet.

If all that was garbage to you, then the timeline is more divergent than I thought and so you’ll either know, or it will be moot.

Now for the introductions. I am Kathryn Arisha, fifty two years old, and a proud member of the Unified States of America, though I doubt they do/will exist. I’m also a tiger, a survivor of the war of fur and blood, and one of the security detail for the 133-T project. Though that won’t mean much to you.

I don’t know much about your world history, but given how many changed you have, and believe me I’ve even seen them on the news, I’d estimate ‘the event’ has been occurring in your world since the early eighties. This event is, in essence, slowly changing the whole world into an animalistic parody of itself, and any attempt to stop it in my world failed miserably.

This is where our paths diverge, because this moment never happened to me, and ‘the event’ began much later in my life, twenty ten at best guess. The change spreads itself at near random, ‘infecting’ at a fundamental level of reality that we can barely perceive, but it is not infectious in any meaningful sense of the word. It is not isolatable; there is no cure, and certainly no immunity.

My government never understood that. Twenty twenty brought the invention of a sniffer, rather like your new nose, and it broke though this distortion field like a lance. It was never big news to begin with; most assumed it was a calibration error that one in every million would throw up animal instead of human, or their pets distorting the reading.

Then sensors got better, the warped became more frequent, it became a serious problem for their observations and someone finally relented to put one of these people under a scanner.

I lied earlier; there are many ways to see though the distortion. It’s just most of them won’t be invented for years, but flood anyone with enough non-human data and the distortion tears like wet tissue.

It was academic for many years. “Yes these people insist that they were once human’ but they obviously aren’t,” was the general attitude, and it got worse as numbers doubled each year. After a while, I think at about the point where they had three quarters of a million warped in custody, they realised that they weren’t able to cure the problem and more people were still changing every year.

Their solution wasn’t elegant. Or particularly friendly. There was a cull.

No, wait. Cull’s too soft a word.

It was genocide.

Next year, come the weirding, august 17th,”

I glanced over my shoulder. August 16th it said on my calendar.

“(Yes I know you’re a day early. Keep it to yourself.) There was a whole new batch of warped, double that of the year before.

The whole country was mobilised. We would all be on the look out for people behaving suspicious: Wearing concealing layers in all weathers. Odd behaviours. Funny smells. Perceptions beyond what was expected of man. That sort of thing. It was an annoyance to begin with. You’d occasionally hear about that strange guy on Sunside Way finally getting ferreted out for being a lynx, or there would be odd stories coming home from school, but it didn’t affect us. So there was nothing to worry about.

We were fools.

Come thirty seven and the government had systematically slaughtered their way though thirty million warped, and then suddenly had thirty million more to deal with. Well, when ten percent of the population suddenly are threatened with extinction they tend to act a little irrationally.

Scratch that. They acted perfectly rationally.

The clean up crews were sweeping our neighbourhood. Everyone was to stay home on the seventeenth, and report any signs of illness. My son and my husband (no I won’t tell you their names) were warped that day, into foxes it turned out, and they simply ran and never looked back. I very much doubt they are alive.

Riots and looting followed. Chaos reigned on the streets, and I spent most of it hiding at home, eating the last of the canned food. When the mob came, humans and warped alike, all armed with well used guns they asked a simple question.

“Flesh or Fur?”

I said fur and joined a war.

Hope like hell Kit that you never have to go through a civil war, because if you don’t, hell is where you’ll end up.

We lashed out blindly, striking out at anything that represented the government, authority, or just what we had lost. The militias were lightly armed, and barely organised. We took what we needed and left a mound of corpses behind us if they’d happened to support the wrong side. It’s amazing that we weren’t annihilated in those first few weeks, but we hung on, still fighting for our cause. That cause was revenge, but we were sure as hell fighting for it.

I’m not terribly proud of those days. We were not just. We were not fair. We had to shoot first and ask questions later as there was no way to tell who was a supporter and who was with the government. The ‘extermination’ attitude was still going strong, and our band was hit by attack after attack, only stopping when we finally stuck back.

The next year just made things worse. Changes wracked the country, our ranks swelled by millions and for the first time we became an army, just not one with a prayer of winning. I myself changed that year, taking the form you now wear, and it turned out it… I was very good at being a killer.”

I glanced down at my hands and flexed the claws. She was right; there were dozens of place on the body where I could do a lethal amount of damage with those. Not to mention that my incisors felt large enough to go through a two by four.

“I would hope you never have to find that out for yourself.”

“You and me both,” I muttered, and kept reading.

“The war that followed raged for years and was beyond bloody. Nukes, chemical weapons, air strikes that blotted out the sky and orbital rail guns were all standard fare, and at one point everyone was armed. We found an armed nursery once. Thank God they were on our side.

How I survived I’ll never know. It was probably a sprinkling of seniority and the body of an apex predator. But make it I did, and I was there when they raised the new flag above the shattered Whitehouse. A muddy paw print spattered on top of the star spangled banner. I think the only reason it wasn’t blood was because the red wouldn’t have shown up properly.

Anyway, we set about rebuilding our lives. Trying to ignore the fact that the rest of the globe was going through exactly he same thing, just much faster, though every bit as violent.

In the end it was China that destroyed the world.

The change hit them last, well actually I think India was at the bottom of the list, but China was down there too and could actually do something about it. Don’t ask me how, but the warping revealed a key secret of the universe. How it was stored.

That’s hard to wrap your head around, so think of it like this. I was told to imagine the universe as a computer, (whether it actually is, is beside the point) one where you can alter reality in two separate ways: Within the simulation, i.e. physically touching an object. Or beyond, where you change the registry assigned to an object and so the object itself alters with no visible external influence. I never actually figured out if this was true or not. But it worked, and reports drifted through of the Chinese working on a project to stop the warping once and for all, by deleting from the universe every last changed human.

Whether or not that would work I don’t know, but you can imagine that it didn’t go over well. Still, the country was destroyed and there was nothing direct we could do about it, not against the last superpower, so we slapped together a project and tried to do the exact opposite, backing up reality. We got it working august fifteenth, and ran two dozen test cycles to calibrate the machine. I was assigned to the centre as a guard at the time so I saw them saving those people. In all honesty there really should have been some kind of fanfare, or at least it should have taken place on a monolithic machine, but in reality the head researcher just tapped a couple of keys on a desktop P.C. and it was done. Twenty four people backed up to another registry.

The world ended that evening, and I still don’t know if it was our computer that did it or theirs. I was woken from my bunk by one of the walls collapsing, followed by the ceiling and about a city block worth of soil, and I only just made it out without being crushed. The bunker was pandemonium, with random objects just ceasing to exist left, right and centre. Every so often one of the high pressure pipes would detonate, throwing dust and water vapour into the corridors and I fought my way through the crowds to try and find the guy I was supposed to be protecting.

Incidentally, I found him in the control room, just finishing a bottle of scotch and, after I’d thrown enough water over him, he explained that the fission reactor had been damaged and we were all going to die in about twenty seconds. A lot of thoughts should have gone through my head at that point. You know, the standard life flashing before your eyes thing, but I all could think about was how’d I’d finally get to see ***”

The next word was scribbled out and completely illegible.

“My husband.

I closed my eyes as the dials hit red. And opened them again in your room.

That was a surprise I can tell you. Especially as I realised I’d apparently lost thirty years and my body double was asleep in the bed next to me.

I can only assume that I was one of the one’s backed up, and there where I was backed up to was your reality, which is undergoing a different version of the weirding. That probably means it’s my fault that you’ve changed now, and I probably should stick around to help you through it… But this isn’t my world and unless you need some normal people rubbed I’m not going to be a lot of help.

I don’t actually know why even I’m telling you all this. It’s not like you need to know, and I’m sure your reality wouldn’t worry much about one warping happening on the wrong day. Still, it’s an apology and an explanation.

I’m sorry I messed up your form, with any luck it won’t mess up your life like it did mine, and I thought you’d like to know why it happened. I would after all.

Now… Well, there are probably two dozen other people across the globe in just the same position as you and I, just without the faintest idea what has happened to them. I’m going to find them, explain, and… I have no idea what I’ll do after that. We’re practically twins now, so I’ll be around for a while. Without ***”

Another word scribbled out, and then there was a few paragraphs worth of black space, somewhere to later add thoughts that hadn’t been used.

“Anyway. I’ll contact you if you want me too. But if not, well all I can say is good luck, and live well.

With hope,
Kathryn Arisha.”

I put the paper down slowly and sat there for a moment, staring at my hands. What I’d … what she’d been through, was beyond almost comprehension. What I was going through was fairly beyond comprehension, but her story… And that had happened across the country? God. It didn’t bear thinking about.

In an odd way, I could even remember a few of the things she mentioned, or at least, saw them in far too great a detail for it to be normal.

“Hey Kit!” Soph, that’s my sister by the way, yelled, bursting into the room. I didn’t even flinch. I’m going to have to get used to the whole, hearing where anyone is in the house thing. “Oh, you’re up early.”

“And would now be regardless,” I quipped back, standing and hastily stuffing the letter into a draw and turning to face Soph. It actually took me a moment to realise that I wasn’t human any more, and that she should have been screaming her lungs out over the large humanoid tiger standing where her sister should be. But there was no clue to her seeing me as anything but normal, beyond her not quiet meeting my eyes, though it didn’t look like she noticed that she was doing it.

“What have you done to your hair?” she asked suddenly, as I began to subtly lead us out of my bedroom.

“Thought I’d go for something new,” I lied instantly, placing a hand on her back to hurry her through the door.

“Stripes though?”

“Well you know me,” I explained, as the door shut, locking away the letter for the time being. “When have you known me to be normal?”

[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Paradise]] [[Category:Fibio]] [[Category:Tiger]] [[Category:Anthropomorphic]]

User:Fibio

2009-02-07T19:32:59Z

Fibio: New page: Hi, I'm Fibio and fairly new here. I've been writing for a few years now across various genres but recently found this site and was inspired to write some stories of my own. If anyone's ...