User:JonBuck/Open Secrets

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Remember, as WIP, the whole text is in flux. --Buck 03:21, 25 February 2008 (EST)

{{#ifeq: User |User| Open Secrets | Open Secrets}}[[Title::{{#ifeq: User |User| Open Secrets | Open Secrets}}| ]]
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 {{#ifeq: {{#ifeq: User |User| Jon Buck | Jon Buck}} | | 
   {{#ifeq: {{#ifeq: User |User| JonBuck | JonBuck}} | || 
     Author: [[User:{{#ifeq: User |User| JonBuck | JonBuck}}|{{#ifeq: User |User| JonBuck | JonBuck}}]] [[Author::{{#ifeq: User |User| JonBuck | JonBuck}}| ]]
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   {{#ifeq: {{#ifeq: User |User| JonBuck | JonBuck}} | |
     Author: {{#ifeq: User |User| Jon Buck | Jon Buck}} |
     Author: [[User:{{#ifeq: User |User| JonBuck | JonBuck}}|{{#ifeq: User |User| Jon Buck | Jon Buck}}]] [[Author::{{#ifeq: User |User| Jon Buck | Jon Buck}}| ]]
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     Authors: [[User:{{#ifeq: User |User| JonBuck | JonBuck}}|{{#ifeq: User |User| JonBuck | JonBuck}}]] 
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   {{#ifeq: {{#ifeq: User |User| JonBuck | JonBuck}} | |
     Authors: {{#ifeq: User |User| Jon Buck | Jon Buck}} |
     Author: [[User:{{#ifeq: User |User| JonBuck | JonBuck}}|{{#ifeq: User |User| Jon Buck | Jon Buck}}]] 
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August 17, 2008

Holly snarled at the gas pump as she filled the tank on her Honda Odyssey minivan. "Four effing thirty a gallon! That's outrageous!" She thought that all those oil discoveries and that new wastewater process was supposed to make gasoline cheaper! So what the hell is this?

OPEC had panicked, cutting oil production so much that it drove prices close to $150 per barrel, trying to milk it for all it was worth before the new American and Canadian cheap stuff hit the streets. At the speed new wells and renewable bacterial gasoline facilities were being built, gasoline would be back under two dollars next summer. But the vixen felt like rending those sheiks limb-from-limb! She drummed her claws on the rear window, covering her muzzle to keep out the stinging reek of the gasoline from her sensitive nose.

Holly yawned, checking her watch. Barely six in the morning, but summer traffic in the Monterey area could become a slow gridlock on Highway 1. From her home in Carmel Valley her first stop was all the way in Gilroy, the so-called Garlic Capital of the World, to visit another fur for a needed checkup. Once the tank was full she checked to ensure the ultrasound equipment was still secure behind the rearmost seat, before a mewing cry made her yank the tailgate closed. The vixen moved swiftly, opening and closing the sliding side door behind her.

It was only a moment, but her three-month old baby had woken. Dr. Holly West double-checked to make sure nobody was looking, then uncovered the child in her secured bassinet made for vehicles. "And how is my little kitten?" she cooed, sniffing. At least she didn't need changing.

The infant anthropomorphic cheetah regarded her mother with a studious feline smugness. She took after her father, as far as species was concerned. She had that fuzzy kitten look to boot, with the dark tracks down her cute little muzzle. She was pudgy like a human baby, but those little claws were quite sharp and needed frequent clipping. There was not a hint of fox in her, but Holly was so relieved just to have a healthy baby she didn't care. There was only one problem.

Unlike her mother, little Roxanne had no human past. Her human ghost was tenuous at best, confirmed by some of the non-furry Friends she had. While the image of a human infant was there, anybody who touched her felt the fur, the tail, the muzzle, and the ears. They saw human, but felt the cheetah. So just in case, Holly kept her out of sight out in public.

Unfortunately leaving her at home for this trip was not an option. The baby needed nursing, formula was an unknown, and she couldn’t pump enough milk to keep her fed for the ten days she'd allotted for this trip to Seattle to check up on other pregnant furs in small towns up the coast, and in some cases other babies. She'd already postponed the trip several times, but even though Change Day was here it could no longer wait.

She checked her iPhone. She'd rushed out the door so fast there were quite a few emails on the PregFurs list she hadn't yet read. It'd just have to wait for the next stop. Holly nuzzled her snoozing baby one last time, hopped in the driver's seat, then headed northward.

Traffic moved at a sedate pace in the ever-present early morning fog, but she got to Highway 68 to Salinas at a decent speed. She reached Highway 101 at about the time the Change had hit her two years ago. Holly started looking at the other drivers around her on the off chance one of them...

"Oh, crap!" Holly swore. The highway was nearly empty, and in the mist she watched an old Ford Escort go off into the dry grass and only miss running into a highway sign by sheer luck. The red vixen stopped as quickly as she dared, but on a hunch, didn't call it in just yet. She reached the car only ninety seconds after the accident.

Frightened doe eyes looked back. She was right in the middle of the "American Werewolf" change, as someone had called it years ago. The special effects in that movie had turned out prescient. Watching someone get a muzzle of any kind was a strange sight indeed. Holly double-checked to make sure this wasn't one of those gender-changed victims. But there was no sign of antlers, and she was obviously not wearing anything unisex. Not in that top.

"Muwaooow!" she bleated in panic, fumbling for the door handle with fusing fingers. "Holy shit!"

"Calm down! Don't panic!" Holly said. The doe-woman scooted across the center console to the passenger seat, torn between her own transformation and the predatory apparition in the fog. "You're fine! Just go with it."

She was hyperventilating, putting herself into even more of a panic. Holly didn't care about species at the moment, but knew the first few hours for new deer tended to be anxious ones. Rodents and lapines were even worse.

She finally decided that her own changes were more important than the vixen outside. She stared at her hands, wiggling her cloven hoof-like fingers, an expression of surreal disbelief on her face. In that pool of calm beyond panic. "Oh. Oh my! Oh my God! My face! My hands! My hands!"

"I'm Holly West," she said. "Can I open the door?"

"Elise... um... Elise Rosenberg," she stammered. Her shoes had vanished, and now she was staring at her feet sticking out from under her skirt. "Am I some kind of demon?"

"Hardly," Holly replied with a chuckle. She flicked her ears back, listening to see if the baby had awakened. "You're a deer of some kind. Are you feeling okay? You're not injured?"

"If you can call this okay!" she exclaimed, panic rising again. But the post-Change endorphin rush put a lid on it. For a lot of new furs it was impossible to feel bad the first few hours. Going from being so sick to suddenly being so well was quite an unnatural high. The doe folded her ears back. "Open the door if you'd like, um, Holly. The passenger side. I think I've wedged my behind in a bad spot. Is that a tail I feel?"

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It took half an hour for the two truck to come, and during that time Holly filled Elise in on all the basics, interrupted only by Roxanne's hungry bawling. The baby made Elise stare even more than the changes to herself. "I don't understand this at all," the doe said, unable to keep her altered hands off of her changed anatomy.

Holly draped a nursing blanket over her shoulder, then pulled up her top. She wasn't wearing more than a token bra, just enough to absorb any milk she might be leaking. It was time to feed the baby anyway. She shifted in the minivan's empty back seat opposite the highway as Roxanne found her nipple and started suckling. She draped the blanket over the infant's head for some privacy, bushy tail through a hole that had been skillfully cut in the back by her husband. "Get used to it. A million more today, two million next year. Things are starting to accelerate..."

Despite having been told about the RDF over and over again, Elise still hid from the tow truck driver when he arrived. She only poked her ears out of the minivan after it was obvious he didn't see anything amiss. "She's a little skittish after the accident. I think she ran through a patch of oil or something," Holly explained.

The tow tuck driver was a clean-shaven man in his mid-twenties. As always, he looked at her with obvious attraction, despite having her having gained ten pounds after her pregnancy. "Can't blame her. I think she knocked something loose after she went off the highway, too. See that oil slick?" He pointed out a long, black smear that started at the highway's edge and went all the way to where the Escort had come to a stop. "You knocked off your oil pan. You hurt, Miss?"

"I'm fine! I'm just... out of sorts," Elise replied, looking askance at Holly. "Dr. West here checked me out. I'm... I'm fine."

"If you say so. I'll pull the car out. Only take a few minutes with a winch. Let me get your insurance card."

As the man made good on his word, the doe sidled up to the vixen. Roxanne was sleeping now, her spotty tail swishing lazily beneath her mother's forearm. "You're right. He can't see us at all," Elise said.

"Right. So, before you were interrupted, where were you headed? Perhaps I can help?"

Now the new doe started getting upset again. "Portland. I'm... supposed to be a bridesmaid. It's my younger sister's wedding, you see. And I'm already leaving a day later than I planned. Damned flu! And that car was on its last legs anyway. I don't have the time to get it fixed, or the money for a flight. Even at these outrageous gas prices."

The vixen carefully scratched her muzzle thoughtfully, switching sides so Roxanne got fed from both breasts. Next time, it was the lowers' turn. I could do without having four tits, thank you. The lower set of breastlets had only become slightly swollen after she gave birth, more like a normal vixen's milk glands would. But the uppers were essentially human-normal. I barely know this woman. But I'm not going to leave her in the lurch.

"Don't worry, Elise. I have a proposal for you."

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Salinas was only ten miles back, and Elise's home was on the outskirts of town, in a new development surrounded by fields of lettuce. The tow truck driver dropped the old Escort at her driveway, doffed his hat to both women, then went on to his next job. "You'll have to pardon me for a few minutes, Dr. West. I need to check on something really fast..." the doe said, with that distracted expression of the newly Changed.

Holly decided not to rush her and called her patient in Gilroy, letting her know she'd be late.

When Elise came out again a half hour later, the vixen had transferred her luggage to the minivan and nursed Roxanne a second time. The speechless woman climbed into the passenger seat, and said nothing until they were halfway to Gilroy. "Um... I just can't believe it. Anything, really. I feel better than I've felt since I was sixteen, and even then I couldn't hope to have the body I have now. Is this some kind of sick cosmic joke? I'm a hot chick, but now I've got ears like these?" she tugged on them. "And this damned tail? And what about my face? Lord in Heaven, I'm a deer!"

"I'd say the strangest part is looking at yourself in the mirror and thinking: 'yes, that's me.' About three quarters of us go through a phase of disassociation, but it passes quickly," Holly explained.

"I'm up two whole cup sizes!" she complained. "I was an A-cup and I liked it that way!"

Holly checked the clock on the dashboard. Already pushing nine, but it was only another fifteen minutes to Gilroy. "How quickly do you need to be in Portland?"

"The wedding isn't until Thursday, I'd planned on spending a few days with my sister. Batchelorette party and all that beforehand." She looked at her hands, ears vibrating a little.

It was Sunday now. "There are a few patients I absolutely need to visit before we get there, Elise. About four pregnant furs and two toddlers I need to examine. And another five on the way back down from Portland. I can afford to fly you home from there, if you like..."

"Oh, no! Not like this!" the doe said. "I can't fly..." She blinked at the vixen's questioning look. "I'm on vacation anyway, and I hate flying to begin with. More, since they started making you take your shoes off."

Holly snorted, nodding. "I agree with you there, Elise. If you don't mind traveling with a veterinarian getting a crash course in anthropomorphic anatomy." She chuckled, thinking at what her professors at UC Davis would need to re-learn over the next few years, if they didn't have some idea already. "See, I normally doctor horses and the occasional wildlife."

The doe flicked one of her ears and snorted, looking at her hands again. "I guess that makes what?"

"Two million of us."

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Gilroy was famous for its Garlic Festival in July, which most furries avoided like the plague. Patricia professed to love the odor, though there were times when Holly doubted her honesty. Detectable even to a human nose from miles away, to a vixen and a doe the next few hours were going to be a trial. "Patty's the only one I'm able to check up on regularly," Holly explained.

Elise covered her wide, black nose, eyes watering. "My sense of smell is shutting down."

"Good! That'll make it a little easier. How are you holding up, otherwise?"

"As well as can be expected, I guess. It's a lot to absorb."

"So don't think about it too hard. Just do what comes naturally. What kind of deer are you?" Holly cocked her head as she got near Patty's driveway. There were two more cars parked out front than the previous checkup a month before. Aside from her ratty husband, the two of them were pretty solitary.

"I really have no idea, and I really don't care right now. What are we here for?"

"We're going to make sure that furs are giving birth to healthy babies." Roxanne belched a little as her mother parked next to Patricia's Chevy pickup in the driveway. It was a modest bungalow, painted white, not the most cushy place to live. The air was already getting hot. The air conditioners were already running full blast. To the vixen's surprise, an older woman came outside, husband in tow, with the gravid red panda right behind. "You really shouldn't be moving around in your condition, Patty."

"If I don't get at least a little exercise I'm going to go crazy," the red panda replied, arms around her belly. She was dressed in some used maternity clothes. The fact that she had once been physically male didn't make her situation less enjoyable. In fact, Holly had never seen a woman so happy to be pregnant. The most important thing by far that as a human she had been a transsexual.

"You're Dr. West? You weren't a man too, were you?" the older woman said.

"No, mother. She was born a woman, just like you," Patricia said. "I've tried explaining that only a tiny fraction of us change gender, too. But..."

"She knows?" Holly asked warily, opening the door to get the bassinet out.

"My whole family knows, Holly. When I got preggers my human ghost went female, even to them," Patricia said, delighted. She cocked her head at the vixen's obvious confusion. "I'm a woman to everyone now. Even my birth certificate. Even my high school yearbook--you should see me in my prom dress. It's so cute! I never told you?"

"No. That's the first I've heard of that. That's sort of important information."

"Why, I assumed you knew. I told the PregFurs list back in March."

"And I finally joined in April, Patty. But never mind. Just make sure everybody knows." Patricia was the first transgendered fur anyone knew of who had gotten pregnant. She looked at Elise, who was almost hiding behind the other side of the van, so quietly that the humans hadn't noticed her yet. As quiet as a doe already. "Come here, Elise. Let me introduce you to Mrs. Jones, here."

"Newbie?" the pregnant red panda asked.

Holly hefted the handle of her baby's bassinet. "Just a couple hours ago. Let's get started, shall we? We'll stay long enough for lunch, then move north. If your husband would be so kind to carefully get the equipment out of the back, this won't take long."

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It wasn't an empty house. Two kids, ten and twelve, sat in front of the small LCD TV, watching the Summer Olympics. Next to them was another woman in her early thirties who bore a strong resemblance to Patricia's mother, still outside with her waddling daughter. The news crawl at the bottom of the screen told of the cancellation of several events due to illness from the participating athletes. Elise, still feeling uncharacteristically skittish, walked into the cooled air inside the living room. Every window had a humming air conditioner.

It smelled like rat and red panda musk, but it was much better than the redolent, cloying reek of garlic.

The girl, a bored-looking ten year old, looked at Elise's feet. "Are you one of those furry people? You're not wearing any shoes."

"Well... um..." she stammered. From the dining room table, Holly's half-human baby started crying. It was a strange mewling sound, something that certainly didn't come out of a human throat. Elise folded her ears back.

"Oh, dear! I'll get her," Patricia's mother said. She happened to be closest.

"No, wait..." Holly said, torn between her child and her heavy ultrasound equipment.

To her credit, the gray-haired woman didn't drop the baby. The fuzzy little cheetah stopped crying, smacking her lips together. She started purring. Loud kitten purrs, the kind that rumbled through your hand if you were petting them. This was only the second time Elise had seen her, and she was nearly as floored as Patricia's mother. "Oh, Lord in Heaven. Give me strength in the years ahead," she whispered.

"Watch her claws, Mrs. Dale," the vixen said gently. She and the rat had put the equipment down on the floor. "They get sharp quick."

Mrs. Dale handed the baby back to her mother. Patricia had come in behind them, closing the door. The pregnant woman waddled towards a worn easy chair. "I told you, mother, that I didn't just become true female physically. There's more to it than that."

"I just thought... the Lord saw fit to correct my error of praying for a boy, and that was it," she said. "I heard you, Patty. And you know I always supported your transition. And... and... I need to go lay down for a while."

The woman Elise had taken as Patricia's sister looked concerned and got to her feet. "I'll help you, Mom."

Holly put her baby back in her bassinet, then opened her bag, removing an electric razor. "Let's get started, shall we?"

Patricia grimaced, pulling up her top to reveal a somewhat bare belly. "I hate this part. It's barely grown back from the last time."

"Thirty-seven weeks, Patty. You're almost finished," Holly reassured.

"The midwife is coming down tomorrow, and you can imagine this is why my family is here," she replied as Holly shaved the short fur off her stomach while her niece and nephew watched in fascination as black fur fell to the floor. "To tell the truth, I think everyone's just a little loopy today."

Elise snorted. "Loopy."

"I'm sorry, where are my manners?" Holly said. "Patricia Jones, Elise, um..."

"Rosenberg," the doe said. All the conversation from the past ten minutes clicked into place. "You were a man?" she sputtered. Somehow, that seemed even stranger than becoming part animal.

Patricia's expression hardened. "No matter my accident of birth, I was _never_ a man. You heard my mother. She prayed for a boy, but got a boy with a girl's brain. But that mistake was corrected. If you want the whole story, Holly knows. Who is this woman anyway, Holly?"

The vixen finished with the razor, then started to spread clear gel on the newly bare skin. "Go easy on her, Patty. She just Changed today. I met her on the road and we happened to be going the same direction. We're traveling together." She flicked on a few switches, and the wand began to hum. Adjusting her laptop so the screen faced the two women, she started the exam. "Let's see how that little ratboy of yours is coming along."

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