Orientation
Part 4- Loose Ends

Warning: This just doesn’t make a lick of sense

Ethan bounded back to his car, exhilarated via a combination of eagerness and nerves. No doubt about it, he had seen some strange things within the walls of the Amalgatech facility and was fairly certain that he had been flirted with by his superior, but it all felt…right. He had a solid job at a fascinating place of work and a very…interesting manager. He drove towards the entry gate, passing by the same guard from earlier in the day, who looked strangely disappointed in Ethan’s lack of changes. He grinned and set off for home.

Cassie the kitsune strode down one of the nearly infinite hallways that twisted, turned and occasionally spiraled throughout the impossible facility. Attempting to map out the Amalgatech building only ever led to madness, but there was little danger of getting lost within the labyrinthine factory. All you had to do was think about where you wanted to go and you’d wind up there eventually. Cassie pushed through another set of doors and was greeted with the roar of machinery from the industrial complex that she had led her tour group through earlier. She waved to a member of the cleanup team, who jogged up to greet her. The man’s body was entirely covered with a jumpsuit, thick rubber gloves, helmet and gas mask.

“Have you found our wayward employee, Sam?” Cass inquired.

Sam nodded, beckoning his manager to follow. She tailed him as he espoused the details of his charge.
“Turns out your new maintenance man…Walter was it?” He turned to Cass

Cassandra nodded.

“Right, well…Walter got into that new sealant we’ve been testing. It got right under his skin and started replicating, that’s what it does, right? It fills in cracks, no matter what it’s exposed to. Well, he’s all putty now. See for yourself”

“I’ve seen plenty of men turn into putty” Cassie purred “But rarely like this”

Sam chuckled as he pointed towards a large grayish blob that had been adhered to the side of a solvent vat.
“That’s him there. A few of the guys used him to plug a leak”

Walter could still see and hear everything. With all of the lunacy that had occurred today, he honestly wasn’t that surprised to see his new boss having sprouted ears and an influx of tails. She approached him like an artist who had finished her masterpiece. There was something thoroughly unsettling in that gaze.

“Not to worry Walter, we’ll find a solution for this little issue you’ve gotten yourself muddled into” she said.

Walter felt his fears concerning his new state alleviate slightly upon hearing that there may be a cure.

“Or at least” Cass continued. “We’ll find a way to make you a little more…mobile”

The blob of caulking putty moaned audibly.

Leaving Walter behind, Cassandra continued her journey. Passing back into the thoroughfare, she was greeted with the odd sight of a long, fleshy brown rope stretching the length of the corridor, she peered one way, then the other. Three more members of the clean-up crew were awkwardly shuffling towards her, carrying a large coil of dark flesh between them, like some sort of massive boa constrictor. Cass realized that they were carrying Wanda, or at least, some of her.

“How goes it boys?” she waved to them.

“Afternoon Cassie” One of them waved back, hefting his share of Wanda’s body higher onto his shoulder. “This one of yours?”

“I’m afraid so” She confirmed “Miss Monique here got pulled into our delivery system. She must be spread out along half the factory by now”

“Tell me about it” Her friend replied “We’ve been disentangling her for the past half hour. All we’ve got is her left arm and neck so far. Where do you think we’re gonna put her?”

“Oh” Ms. Himura shrugged “We’ll think of something”

She glanced towards the loops of ropey skin that made up Wanda’s new body, spotting the top half of the elongated girl’s head poking out of the middle of a large coil, nestled like a bird’s egg and fixing her with a doleful stare.

“Oh don’t look at me like that” Cassie shot at her employee “This is as much your fault as it is mine” She leaned closer, putting a finger on Wanda’s forehead “But tell you what…if you like, I can make it up to you…All you’ll have to do is ask”

She smiled coyly, a gluttonous look in her eye and visions of what she could do with a girl like Miss Monique dancing through her head.

“Ahem” she smoothed out her skirt, which had suddenly started to feel very confining “Carry on boys”

Ethan was still caught up in the revelry of his experience at the facility as he sped home. Of course, Noah and Zeke would want to be filled in on the day’s events. And then he’d finally get a chance to relax. A shower seemed like it was in his near future, followed by a late lunch. Ethan felt like he hadn’t eaten in a week. And then, he’d go out for a movie with the guys, who would always be game to watch the next big stupid summer blockbuster. One last chance to kick off his feet and see something explode for a few hours in the middle of the afternoon before the demands of his job took over.

A wise man once said that one should focus on the journey, not the destination. The poignancy of that nugget of wisdom escaped Ethan as his attention drifted away from the road in front of him, if only for a second. But a second is all it takes.

Ethan’s eyes snapped back to the road as a large, grey, hairy shape sprung out in front of his car. He instinctively pressed the brake lever to the ground and was greeted with a squeal of rubber on cement and brake pad against wheel. A second before his station wagon started to slow, the young manager felt something heavy collide with the side of his engine block. His car shuddered to a stop as he immediately scrambled to undo the seatbelt that had locked him in place. Leaping from his vehicle, Ethan circled around to the front to see what the hell he had hit.
He was shocked to find the still, bloodied form of a dog lying on its side, stone dead. Ethan felt a pit clump together in his stomach as be doubled over, hands clapping together over his mouth.

“Oh no” he muttered “oh, dammit. No”

The animal had, by some small mercy, stayed in one piece. Ethan could tell it was a Husky, definitely getting on in years judging by the raggedy grey look of it’s matted fur. In a year or so, time would appear to have done the job that his car just had. One of it’s milky grey eyes was open, staring off into the distance. Ethan averted his gaze, and met that of a greasy looking twelve year old boy standing on the curb with a dull look on his face. The child was clutching a long, hefty branch in one hand. Ethan’s eyes narrowed as he glanced at the end of the stick, which had a small amount of blood and hair coating it.

“Whoa” The boy said, staring at the dead canine.

Ethan rose to his feet, an iota of anger building in the back of his throat as his mind started to assemble the pieces laid out in front of him.

“I mean….” The boy began again. He looked up again at the older man in front of him, and fear crossed is face as he saw the accusation his eyes.
“Stupid animal!”  He shouted, throwing down the stick and making off down the sidewalk at a full sprint.

“HEY!” Ethan shouted after the diminishing figure of the cruel boy. He clenched his fists, considering chasing after the brat, but ultimately relaxed his hands as the anger faded, replaced again with sorrow. He dropped to one knee, just as a loud, mournful cry rang out down the suburban street. The young man looked up to see an old woman, barely three feet tall and withered as a raisin, hobbling down the street towards him, her twisted cane pounding off the street as she moved with such a speed that Ethan had beforehand considered impossible for someone who looked to have entered the ninth decade of their life via running leap.

The old lady was on the adjacent side of the dead dog and huddled over it in a manner of moments, shuddering sobs escaping her lips in between hushed utterances of a language Ethan could not recognize. Her clothing was similarly obscure, a mish-mash of a dozen different vestments from an equal number of different countries and cultures.

“I…” Ethan tried to think of what to say to what he correctly assumed was the animal’s owner. “I am SO, very sorry. I didn’t see it until the last moment, and he moved so fast…”

The elderly woman looked up at him with fire in her tear-stained eyes. “Pasha….” She began with an icy middle European accent “Was my dearest…and oldest friend. And all you can give me is EXCUSES!?” She spat at the cowering man in front of her with every ounce of venom her tiny form could muster.
“You-you should be my new dog!” She raved “Then we’ll see how good you are at talking your way free from blame!” She returned to muttering in that same unrecognizable language.

Ethan felt like running from this furious senior citizen, but instead dropped to his knee again.

“Look” he began. “I just wanted you to know that there was nothing I could do. He was dead before I even stopped the car. There was this kid chasing him with a stick and…” He faltered as the old woman looked up, first at him, then the bloodied stick lying on the sidewalk and the miniscule form of the boy in the distance.

“I…know what it’s like to lose a pet like this and…I just want you to know how very sorry I am for what happened and the part I played in it” The elderly woman looked back at Ethan, all trace of the initial fury gone, replaced by a look of worry.

“I am sorry too” She croaked.”For the actions I have taken in my anger. I can see now you are not to blame for my poor Pasha’s fate.” She squinted after the fleeing boy as he finally rounded the corner and disappeared from sight. The ancient lady rose once again, picking up the stick that the abusive boy had used and running a hand along its length.
“From where I come from” She continued “My people have a way of settling matters such as this. For you, I fear, there is some unpleasantness ahead. I have taken the worst of it away, but the damage has been done.”

Ethan backed away from this strange woman, wondering on earth what she was talking about.

“You should go now, young man” The woman said, her eyes fixed on the distance as she continued to stroke the stick in her hands. “The one truly responsible will be held accountable, and you will have more than guilt to live with on the coming hour”

Starting to get thoroughly creeped out, Ethan nodded and got back into his car, backing away from the dog’s carcass and returning to his route home. He sighed, letting out some of the tension in his gut. He still felt lousy, but at least that lady had forgiven him, to an extent. But what was all that other stuff about settling accounts she had been talking about?


Meanwhile, back at the factory, Cassie decided she had one more person of interest to check on before headed back to her office. Pushing through yet another set of double doors, Cassandra winced at the loud, industrial sounds emanating from within, which closely resembled the recorded audio of a Jackhammer and a chainsaw having a duel to the death. Her ears folded flat against her skull in pain as she shouted at the lone technician in the room, a girl in the same coveralls as the rest of the factory floor staff. “Can’t this thing go any quieter?!”

“What?!” The techie howled back, her own ears covered by large, industrial earmuffs. “Sorry, we really can’t talk! This thing blew a gasket last week and she’s been whining about it ever since! Loud isn’t it!”

“WHAT!?!?” Cassie yelled back “I can’t hear a damn thing over this racket!”

“Hold on!” The other woman shouted back “I can’t hear a thing you’re saying! We’re almost done here anyways!”

The Kitsune turned her attention towards what lay beneath the gigantic array of antiquated gears, gauges and steam powered hydraulics. It wasn’t much more than a particularly large taffy puller, numerous cylinders rotating around one another, stretching, squishing and pulling out a long, sticky pink mass entangled in its workings. Cassie watched it go through several cycles before turning to the technician and shouting at her again.
“We really need to get a new one of these things! I can barely hear myself think over this racket! Are all these cogs and levers even necessary?!?”

“Didn’t catch any of that!” The girl at Cassie’s side howled back “We really need to get an upgraded version of this thing, I don’t even know what half of all that machinery is for!” She glanced back at the pinkish mass being yanked apart by the cacophonous machine.
“Hold on! I’m activating the final sequence!”

At the press of a button, one end of the sticky mass was fed into a large pair of rollers, which flattened it to paper thickness as the rest of it was drawn through. The long strip folded on itself as it was spat out of the other end of the mechanism, straight onto what looked like a huge, industrial meat tenderizer. The two spiky plates mashed down on each other repeatedly, rendering the previous ribbon of putty into a formless wad once again. The crusher apparatus tipped sideways, letting the quivering hunk of gum slide off of it onto the pristinely scrubbed floor.

Ms. Himura sighed in relief as the techie powered down the colossal machine, finally audible once more. She strutted over to the hunk of pink goo lying on the floor in front of her, bending down over it and raising her eyebrows.

“Ms. Dower, can you hear me?”

The hunk of gum shifted slightly in response.

“Maggie” Cassie smirked “You’re going to have to do better than that. Do me a favour and curl into a ball, would you?”

In response, the formless blob known as Maggie started to shift in shape, growing smoother and longer, resembling a large, pink jellybean. Depressions started to form in the surface of the blob, molding out into the vague form of a shapely young woman in the fetal position.

“Very good” Cassie smiled, her tails flicking happily behind her “Now, could you just stand up now, if you please?”

The rough form of Maggie gained more definition as it slowly and unsteadily came to it’s feet. A waist thinned itself out from the swell of it’s hips and the gummy girl’s hair separated itself from her head and neck, as her face and eyes formed.  Maggie’s fingers and toes separated themselves from previously flipper-like hands and feet and she swayed slightly the last of the Bubblegum Girl’s self restoration completed itself. She looked exactly as she did before she started swelling up. That is, she was a curvaceous young lady that was a hot pink in coloration all over her body with a slight sheen to her skin and hair that hung in tapered strips from her head. She was also, of course, completely naked.

“How do you feel?” Cassie asked, eyeballing every inch of Megan that was on display.

Maggie staggered slightly, then let out a pleasurable moan that evolved into a giggle. “Can-can I go again?” she asked, a dazed smile slipping across her face.

Cassie returned the grin “Maybe if you’re good. I’ve heard that a solid chewing can be a very…thrilling  experience”

Maggie shook the lingering sensations from her head as she eyed her skin, her smile faltering. “I’m still pink” She poked at her pliable flesh, watching the deep indent her finger left in her forearm slowly rise up and smooth out again. “I’m still gum, aren’t I?”

“Well, yes” Cassandra replied “But that can’t be helped. And to be more specific, you’re still BUBBLE gum. See?”

Maggie’s monotone eyes widened as she looked down at her flat stomach, which was already starting to balloon outwards into a full, pregnant looking belly.
“No!” She yelped “No! Not again!”

“Oh relax, you big baby” Cassie rolled her eyes as she darted a hand out towards the gum girls swelling belly. A tiny pop was heard and with a small hiss, Maggie’s stomach shrank down back to nothing.
“See?” The bewildered girl inspected herself, noticing what looked like half of a simple barbell piercing poking through the top of her navel. Cassie knelt down and finished securing the small piece of body jewelry in place before looking up at Megan’s face from between her breasts.
“Now, as long as we’ve got some kind of pin stuck through you, you won’t inflate, simple as that.” She gave the piercing a little flick as she rose to her feet.
“Now, if you’d still like to lie down after all that, we’ve got some lodgings upstairs where you can rest, if you’ll follow me”

Maggie hesitated. After all that happened to her today, preserving her dignity seemed like a moot point, but she still had to ask. “Like this? Are you sure I shouldn’t…find some clothes or something?”

“Oh, believe me” Cassandra said as she beckoned the nude Megan out into the hall with her “If you work at Amalgatech, you’ve already seen much, much weirder things”

The bizarre duo of girls began to trek down the carpet lined thoroughfare of the factory, when Maggie turned to Cassie.

“So I just noticed you’ve got, like, a whole bunch of tails coming out of your rump.” She noted “Wanna explain that?”

“Oh” Cassie chuckled “Now THAT’S a story…”

By the time Ethan hit his home block, he was starting to feel better about the whole ordeal. The woman had let him go, he could admit that his role in the accident was purely that, an accident, and his thoughts turned back to what he would do when he got back home. He really needed that shower though. He was itchy all over.

Ethan glanced at his arms as he rounded a corner and nearly swerved right off the road in shock. His arms were covered in white fur. He kept one hand on the wheel and brought the other to his face to find it similarly coated. Before his eyes, black, leathery pads of skin grew on his palm and the bottom of his fingers, dull black claws growing out and replacing his nails.

“Oh No” He said weakly

Ethan’s eyes snapped back to the road, just in time to avoid him plowing into a fire hydrant. He jerked the wheel back onto the road and could only wince in terror as he felt that same ripple of itching work its way along his shoulders, up his neck, down his back and across his face, signaling that he was growing that same smooth coat of fur across his entire body. The changing man bucked in his seat slightly as his feet altered shape, his little toe stretching up along his calf , leaving only four toes on a half human, half dog foot to support his weight.

Ethan tried to center himself as he focused entirely on driving, determined to get home before he completed his transformation, already guessing what the final result would be. Jolts at the base of his spine made him swerve again, nearly smashing a mail box to pieces before he corrected his course. Ethan stood up slightly in his car, bracing himself with the coat hook above the driver’s door and letting his butt hover over the seat to allow his new tail room to grow. It punched out of the back of his pants, swiftly growing a thick coat of hair, Black on top, grey on the sides and white on the bottom and tip. If Ethan cared to check, he would have found that the fur on his back, shoulders, butt and exterior forearms and thighs was a similarly darker shade. Ethan took the last turn on the route home on a perfect ninety degree angle, his car rising on to two wheels slightly before landing back on all fours. He was in the homestretch now; he could see his house in the distance. Just a little bit closer…

A growl of discomfort escaped Ethan’s lips as he felt his skull start to crack and change shape. He squinted his eyes through the agony and to his credit, managed to mostly ignore his nose and mouth thrusting forward, his cheeks and jaw thinning into a perfect canine snout, tipped with a black, wet nose. He let out a howl of pain as the changes completed. The last of the black and grey pigmentation crept onto his face as his ears grew long and pointy, rising into their new position on top of his skull. The brand new Husky’s car squealed into his driveway as the last of the transformations finished, his teeth growing out into wolf-like fangs and his eyes fading to an icy blue.

Ethan collapsed back into his seat, his freshly acquired tail poking out of the seam between the base and the back. His tongue felt flatter and larger than before. Finding himself unable to sweat, he let it fall out of his mouth, bobbing up and down as he panted in long, hot gasps. Ethan found the method of venting heat through his maw oddly relaxing and within five minutes, he had cooled down and was ready to leave the car. His fingers finally let go of the steering wheel, leaving ragged claw marks where they had gripped it tight enough to crack the plastic. The husky kicked open the door, greeting his front yard as a different man altogether.

The first thing Ethan noticed was the smell. He could practically sense everything in the neighborhood, from the freshly cut grass on Ms. Haverstock’s front lawn , to the sweaty couple having afternoon sex in their living room a few doors down, to the freshly baked banana muffins being pulled from the oven on the other end of the street. The sheer fact that he could detect and isolate every single scent was only matched by Ethan’s ability to do the same with the sounds around, albeit at a slightly lesser range. His pointed ears twitched slightly as he began to pick up on noises he hadn’t ever noticed before, like the odd ringing the still vibrating metal chassis of his car made after turning off the gas. Ethan shrugged, his tail wagging slightly. This wasn’t all that bad. And he supposed that the laws of averages dictated that it must have been impossible to get out of the Amalgatech facility without some sort of change. He was sure that if any company was going to understand one of their employees altering species between shifts, it was them.

Ethan made his way to the front door, reflecting on the words of that mysterious old woman, whom he was convinced at this point was a witch of some sort, having cast a curse on him and everything. If this was her idea of a light penalty, he would have hated to see her idea of a full blown punishment. Lord help that stupid kid that had been abusing Pasha in the first place.

Just as the door swung open, Ethan realized that he had in no way informed his two friends and housemates that he would be coming home in any other state but “human”.

Noah was the first to start laughing. As usual.