“Wizards.” Hope Jennings scoffed as she watched another crate of vials go by. Working for TransFun had its perks, but hearing her coworkers insist on how ‘magic was real’ was starting to get a little on her nerves. So what if two of the three founders were a little... eccentric? This was a company based in science, where science should remain and belong!
“Not too much of a fan of magic, I take it?” A male voice interrupted her thoughts, and she jumped, looking down to find a man with blue spiked hair and a suit grinning up at her. Somehow, he was standing on the side of the catwalk, perpendicular to the ground.
“What?” Hope blinked, confused. There was a logical impossibility before her, yet she couldn’t deny what her eyes were seeing...
“Taylor Davin, at your service.” He bowed, bending over to grab the railing; then swinging his body across. His feet landed on the tile of the floor and he grinned back at Hope. “I’m from the Customer Safety department. I know you normally don’t get too many of us up here, but...” He shrugged.
Hope blinked once, very slowly. The odd man was still standing in front of her. She blinked again. His position hadn’t changed, though his smile seemed wider. Then, Hope remembered to close her mouth. “Um. What?” Funny how the writer of an award-winning dissertation could be so completely disarmed by the absurd.
“Well, you sounded like you weren’t too sold on the idea of use magical folk, so I figured I might as well put on a demonstration for you.” Taylor beamed, slipping his hands in his coat pockets.
Hope’s brow furrowed. “Okay, who put you up too this? Was it Brad? It was Brad.” Hope chuckled, rolling her eyes. As if there could be such a thing as magic!
“You seem a little bit stiff... Sounds like you could use a demonstration!” Taylor grinned, clapping his hands together.
Hope felt her entire body lock up; then her clothing simply vanished. Before she could even process this, glimmering silver metal overtook her skin, hinges and ball joints settling into place wherever her body had articulation.
“Oh!” Hope gasped as two new arms ground out from her sides, just at the edges of where her ribs were. Her hair hardened into a solid block—a copper approximation of her bob cut—and her feet became metal boots, with hinges where her toes should have been.
Finally, a numb rush settled over her face, freezing it into a vacant smile. Her teeth felt odd, a speaker’s grille replacing them; and her eyes flickered to life, a pair of bulbs behind clear glass plates. Hope tilted her neck down, the joint quietly clicking as she looked down at her metal body.
“Wh—what did you just do?” Her voice sounded tinny, and she had the odd sensation of speaking without any air entering or exiting her body—not a single muscle contracting to give birth to her words. Hope raised all of her arms, the joints creaking and clacking together as she tried moving all four of them.
“Well, someone who’s a fan of science should love being a robot for a little bit. Am I wrong?”
“Well... No, but when did you slip me a serum? Was it a ChangeLover’s thing, set to you clapping? One of those time-delayed PrankShift candies?” Even as the words left her grille, Hope knew they were completely absurd. She’d eaten at home, and had only drunk from the water bottle she always kept on her person. Working with practical jokers had left her paranoid, and there was no way she’d ingested anything without it having originated from her house.
“As if either of them could come up with something like this.” Taylor scoffed, flicking Hope’s head. A hollow ‘ting’ filled the air as he continued to speak. “No, this is one hundred percent original Davin material.”
Hope nodded slowly, knowing he was right. A loud creaking filled the air as she brought her head back up, and she paused—looking at Taylor in confusion. “But then why am I so creaky?” She cringed inwardly at the sound of her voice—her speech was a little bit off, like a text-to-speech converter that was almost there, but not quite.
“Well, I’m not the best at transforming people into other things—I specialize in making things back into people. It’s why I’m a part of Safety.” Taylor’s face reddened a little, and Hope noticed his hair was turning a slight grey, as well.
Hope’s eyes whirred as they focused closer on his hair, getting a zoomed-in view of the follicles switching to a lighter shade.
“Oh...” She murmured, caught up in the spectacle. Then, a second later, she realized she was having trouble zooming out back to her normal view. “Ah! How do I change my perspective?”
Taylor’s hair started to turn purple. “I dunno.” Was his only offer of a reply.
Hope started to panic, stumbling forward. All four of her arms clutched at Taylor, her body trying to remain upright. She succeeded in pulling him to the ground, and as she fell, she let out a loud, chirping scream.
Then... Nothing. She blinked, looking up at Taylor’s smiling face. “Sorry about that, I’m rubbish at imparting instincts.” He grinned, his hair back to its normal blue.
“Oh. Oh!” Hope’s hands flew to her mouth as she realized she had her own voice back, not to mention her body and her clothes. There was a faint absence where her extra arms had been, despite only having them for less than ten minutes.
“Sorry for changing you back so quickly.” Taylor shrugged. “I didn’t want you falling on me... Metal robots are heavy, you know?”
Hope nodded, a faint flush coming across her features as she realized how much she liked being a machine.
“But hey, I think I’ve proven that even a magician like me can change people better than our serums, any day of the week.” Taylor grinned cockily, helping Hope back to her feet.
Well, that was a challenge if she ever heard one... “I bet I could make a robot serum better than your little ‘spell’!” It was out of Hope’s mouth before she knew what she was saying, and she flushed a little further. It was a little bit embarrassing to acknowledge magic existed, but when the evidence pointed to the contrary...
Surprise flitted across Taylor’s face, then his cocky grin returned. “Oh? You know, all of our serums still involve magic, right?”
“This one won’t! Besides the safety mechanisms, I mean.” Hope added the last part as an afterthought. “You’ll see, you don’t even know who you just challenged!”
“And who did I just challenge?” Taylor chuckled.
“Hope Jennings, head of the TransFun reverse-engineering team!” Hope smirked, placing her hand on her chest. She was rewarded with a startled look from the man before her—she still couldn’t quite call him a wizard—and she spun on her heel to leave. “Tomorrow! Right here, we’ll test out my new product.”
“Tomorrow?” Taylor called after her, a friendly skepticism in his tone.
Hope was already coming up with a recipe for a serum to beat him—she’d just need to grab something from the InaniMates lab, one from their Animal Instincts collection, and maybe one or two things from the Choice Changes division... Yeah, that was more than doable in a day—though it might also require some of the night as well.
“Tomorrow!” She promised, walking to her lab with renewed purpose.
The next day, she returned to the walkway, finding Taylor nowhere in sight. She frowned, clutching the vial of serum in her hands. Had he chickened out? No, he didn’t seem nearly the sort of person to give up so easily.
She walked over to the edge of the walkway, finding him standing—of course—on the side of the wall. Today he was clad in a t-shirt and basketball shorts, in flagrant violation of business attire. Worse, he was drinking calmly from a cup of coffee—which wasn’t spilling despite his angle on the wall. Hope grit her teeth at this latest desecration of physics. “Hey. Ready to become a robot?” She called, taking some small satisfaction from him jumping slightly in surprise.
“Well...” Taylor began, hopping over the railing. “I think it wouldn’t entirely be fair if I were to drink it. Seeing as how I can’t change myself, I’d have no way of comparing if your changes stacked up to mine.”
Hope’s eyes widened as she realized what he was leading at. “But!” She managed, dread and guilt flowing through her in equal parts.
Taylor beamed. “Miss Jennings! Are you suggesting that your little serum might have something a trifle... embarrassing to it?” His voice had a teasing, scandalous tone to it—only making Hope feel worse.
“N-no.” Hope muttered, sending a shameful look to the ground.
Her eyes snapped back up as Taylor gently wrapped a hand around her wrist, pulling the vial towards her mouth. “Well then, bottoms up!” He beamed, letting go of her arm.
Hope wanted to pull the vial away, claim it ‘wasn’t ready’, but she knew she’d dug her hole quite thoroughly. So instead, she uncorked it, knocking the whole thing back in one go. It went down smooth, a bland vanilla with a cinnamon kick at the end.
Hope knew she had just seconds before the changes started so she quickly got on the floor, laying back and closing her eyes. Her whole body shook, jolting with the first onset of change. Her skin felt a little numb, and she knew it was the start of her body becoming rubber. Worse—it was becoming a bubblegum-pink rubber.
“Oh, neat!” Taylor applauded.
Hope tried to keep her eyes shut, but they opened slowly as the changes swept to her head. Her mouth opened in a small ‘o’, and her eyes glazed over, becoming two sky-blue orbs on her face. She looked down, seeing the changes sweep over her toes, and she quickly put her head back against the ground again. This was where the unpleasant part would begin...
Hope’s body shook once, twice, then a third time, great tremors running through her form as her skeleton and internal organs became synthetic. Muscles became servos, veins became wires, and an underlay beneath her skin started to activate, warming the rubber to a human temperature.
Then, with a faint popping sound, her arms and legs detached from her body, smooth, green rubber marking where they’d been should her user wish to reconnect them. By which she meant Taylor... Who was her new owner and user.
Hope sighed petulantly, her last action as herself before the changes swept over the rest of her mind. Everything became foggy for a moment, her identity locked away thanks to a very good chemical of her own devising. Then, the new persona moved into its vacant body, and Hope felt herself return... As Hope Goodtime.
Everything was airier, more relaxing, and—most importantly—erotic. Even being so close to her user was a turn-on, and Hope’s mouth creased from its typical ‘o’ into a small smile. “Hello, Master Davin! I am ready to please you!” She chirped, wriggling from her lab coat. Her panties and jeans slipped off from the action, and she gasped with pleasure at the sensation of air curling across her bare groin.
Her user arched an eyebrow as he noticed her arms and legs weren’t moving with the rest of her body. “So... You’re a sex robot?” He chuckled.
Hope smiled further—Taylor was such a smart owner! “I am a love machine, yes!” She practically squealed with delight when he bent down, picking her body up. He paused to slip her shirt from around her body, and Hope cooed with bliss at the warm rush of his skin touching hers.
“You’re light!” Taylor exclaimed in surprise. “How on earth did you manage this with just technology?” He cradled her in his arms, and she nuzzled his shoulder happily.
“It’s a trade secret!” She chirped, some small bit of her old personality leaking through, just as the serum called for.
“And if I were to ask you to as ‘Master Davin’?” Taylor grinned as the self-professed love machine pouted. He held her closer to his face, kissing her forehead. She quivered in his grasp, and when he pulled away he found she was biting her lip, trying to hide the madly pleased smile on her face.
“Well, I kind of took some bits of serums here and there...” She admitted. “But making them work together was all me! I promise, I wasn’t bad!” She gave him her best puppy-dog stare, and Taylor sighed, his hair turning a slight pink.
“Don’t worry, you weren’t...” He knelt down, slipping Hope’s right arm from the sleeve of her lab coat. “So do I...” He pressed it against her right shoulder, and with a faint ‘click’ it set into place.
Hope didn’t waste any time, cupping her hand around the back of his head and pulling him into a deep kiss. He tightened his embrace around her—much to Hope’s delight. She moaned into his mouth, the small vaporizer in her mouth discharging a warm and minty flavor.
Taylor’s eyes widened, his hair now completely pink. “Wow! Just... Wow! Hope, how much longer do you have with this serum?” As he spoke, he attached her other arm, letting her hug his neck gently.
“Mm...” Hope muttered, tilting her head to the side. “I kind of wanted to change you for the next few hours, so... Until the end of the day?” She admitted it freely—why wouldn’t she want to tell him that she wanted to spend the rest of her day with him? Even if it had started out as her plan to get revenge on him for a day, Hope thought it was still a sweet sentiment.
Taylor chuckled, hugging her tighter. “Well, then what say we bring this to some of the higher-ups so we can get this on the shelves? I can imagine more than a few people interested in this...”
Hope smiled widely. “Like you?” She purred into one of his ears, licking his cheek gently.
Taylor grinned, and Hope felt his pulse race beneath his chest. “Well... You said you had a few hours, right?”
Hope nodded fervently.
“Then what say we do a little bit of... product testing?” Taylor’s words were music to her ears, and Hope settled into his arms.
“Don’t forget my legs... I have a few tricks I’d like to show you.” Hope cooed, the former scientist planning to give her user a magical time.