(M to Lion)

Kyle blinked, looking at his reflection blearily. It didn’t do much to clear his vision, so he tried again—and immediately felt a twinge of embarrassment as before he realized the mirror’s auto-filter was still toggled.

“Damn technology,” he muttered, waving the filter off. Good thing he did—he’d probably need a shave before work.

“Sorry, what was that? I didn’t quite catch that,” the bathroom’s AI intoned.

AI was a bit of a strong word for the program. It wasn’t capable of thinking on its own, and couldn’t even ‘hear’ him without connecting to his phone.

“Nothing, ignore that.”

“Sorry, what was that? I didn’t quite catch that,” it repeated.

Kyle picked up the phone by his sink, glaring. “Nothing. Ignore. That.”

“Sorry, I don’t think that’s one of my functions. Did you mean: Shave?”

“The hell?” Kyle blinked, tapping the power icon. An unfamiliar lock screen greeted him, and the man sighed. “Great. Amy took the phone with her again.”

He turned for the door, only to jump as it slammed shut.

“Syncing complete. New data inloaded,” the AI spoke. “Door locked.”

The lock turned, and Kyle realized that he might be in very, very deep trouble.

xXx

Amy pursed her lips as the door to the lion enclosure snapped shut. She squeezed her work phone a little tighter in her hand, anxious that it might actually be better at doing her job than she’d anticipated.

“Door locked,” the enclosure’s AI said. Was it just her, or was there a faint element of smugness behind its words?

She narrowed her eyes. “Okay, let’s try this again. Approach the male and trim his hair.”

Gerald the lion didn’t seem to be bothered by the arrival of a styling droid. Amy couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy—it had taken her nearly three months to acclimate him to her presence. Then again, she also hadn’t been able to practically mist herself in the natural scent of a lion.

“What style would you like?” Her phone chimed.

“Traditional lion mane,” Amy decided to give the machine a little test, to see if it would also trim the rest of his fur. “As for the rest, use your better judgment.”

She watched with interest, unaware that ‘her’ phone’s screen had lit up in her back pocket.

xXx

“Style confirmed.”

Kyle yelped as the bathroom deployed its array of trimming instruments, as well as some he didn’t recognize. A faint mist from a bottle sprayed along his neck, and artificial hands clamped around his shoulders, kneading in whatever chemical he’d been doused in.

“W-what the hell?” Kyle stammered, struggling and failing to get away.

His collar itched, and dense, lush hairs sprouted in a halo around his features. The hairs were an unfamiliar shade of gold, one that contrasted with his natural hair. They were thick and lush, a dense coat wrapped around his shoulders almost like a blanket.

A gentler spray followed before he could fully process what was happening to him. Shorter golden hairs slipped from beneath his skin, far thicker than anything he was used to. They almost looked like they belonged on some kind of animal.

xXx

“Damn,” Amy bit her nails. Of all the jobs that were going to be automated, why did animal stylist have to be one of them?

“Sorry, what was that? I didn’t quite catch that.” Could an AI be sarcastic? She was pretty sure this one was sarcastic.

“I said, ‘brush his teeth. And be sure to scrub his tongue, I want Gerald to have a perfect snout.”

“Anything else? This is all rather basic, I am fully capable of serving”

Amy offered a rather rude, anatomically explicit comment as to how the machine could ‘serve’ the lion.

xXx

“Brush cycle initiated.”

Kyle eloquently expressed his distaste with a loud “Horfph!” A thick retainer had forced its way into his mouth, wrapping around his teeth and buzzing. Something was really wrong about this—he could almost swear that it looked like his mouth was swelling. But that had to be the retainer, right?

His answer came a few minutes later, as the brushing system disengaged from his mouth, revealing a set of oversized fangs. He had two on his upper gum and two on his lower, and each of them was larger than his thumb. The top two might even be larger than his fingers.

“What the?” He poked at them curiously for a second, crinkling his nose. Then a toothbrush slammed into his agape mouth, bristles poking against his tongue. A warm, tingly gel secreted from within the brush, and he could feel his tongue transforming in his mouth.

“Hwagl! Thtawrp!” He pleaded, cries for help falling on deaf ears. Each stroke of the brush caught against his tongue, pulling it back and stretching it further and further out from his mouth. It was lengthening the muscle like taffy being pulled, until it flopped past his lips.

Of course, the changes wouldn’t stop there—why would they be as kind as to simply leave Kyle with a monstrously large tongue?

Kyle babbled more, waving his hands and brushing against his thick mane in the process. His tongue felt rough, uncomfortable, even. The man could feel sharp bristles lifting from its wet surface, catching against the brush’s hairs.

Finally the machine relented, letting Kyle raggedly pant and stare at his reflection. His oversized tongue drooped well past his chin, its spines catching the light as he turned his head from side to side. He tried closing his mouth around it, only to flinch as his tongue poked against his soft upper lip.

“Command confirmed. Perfect snout.”

“Wghaith, whuth?” Kyle slurred around his tongue, looking worriedly as large clamps and discs lowered from the ceiling.

The next few seconds were the singular most unpleasant experience he’d had in a restroom. The discs pressed against his skull, thrumming with some strange energy that warped his bone like clay. Worse, rubberized clamps pressed against his cheeks, massaging them to a longer, broader state. His handsome features stretched and distorted, lengthening his jaw in the process.

“Aghhl… Hrrugh…” No matter how hard he tried to talk, the combination of machine and his larger mouth were getting in the way. He recognized that there was an almost feline visage in line with his own, and wondered if it had something to do with Amy’s job at the zoo.

Kyle grunted as a cottony pair of cylinders hooked themselves in his nose, shaking slightly from left to right like they were stirring his nostrils. Slowly but surely his sinuses widened, bringing tears of discomfort to his eyes.

The changing man switched from crossing his eyes to looking at his reflection, working out whether it was weirder that he could see a muzzle in his peripheral vision, or that the face in his mirror was a lion’s, and not his own.

Before he could make up his mind, a large clamp lowered itself onto his head. Two small pinchers tugged at his ears, while his skull sloped and pressed against his brain. Kyle staggered visibly, but didn’t feel any mentally different than he had as a person.

That, perhaps, was the oddest part of this. He looked a good deal like he had a few minutes ago, save with the oversized skull of a big cat, with fur to boot. He lowered his large head submissively, a faint murr of displeasure rattling in his throat.

“At least I can still talk,” he muttered, though there was a faint gruffness to his words. He chalked it up to them echoing within his cavernous maw. Kyle had never realized just how big a lion’s head was. The mane had made it seem smaller, but when he was faced with the real deal…

Then the machine dropped between his legs, and Kyle found himself distracted once more. Warm and soft suction enveloped his manhood, and he yelped in shock.

xXx

“Oh God, no, no!” Amy covered her eyes, hearing the lion roar with delight.

“Milking completed.”

“That’s… Great. Real great,” Amy muttered, doing her best to repress what she’d seen. She hadn’t gotten into animal husbandry for a reason.

“Thank you. Would you like me to apply a post-coital workout?”

“Sure, go… Do that. Get him in shape for our customers, okay? Work his tail off.”

The AI paused. “I believe there was an error with that command. Do you want me to remove the animal’s tail?”

“No! Damn it, why do they always program these things to be literal…” Amy sighed. “Do not, under any circumstances, let him finish his workout without a tail.”

xXx

“What the hell are you confirming!? Stop it!” Kyle tried to swat off the new appendages, wondering why in the hell his bathroom was equipped with so many devices. Maybe that deal from Amy’s zoo was a little too good to be true, after all.

Warm and round balls enveloped his hands and feet, and he correctly feared that they were reworking his limbs to end in paws. But, as if that wasn’t bad enough, they also angled him down into a stooped posture, on all fours.

A band looped around his waistline, holding him in place like some sort of harness, and small needles pricked into his muscles, encouraging new growth. The growth was spurred on by the machines holding him hostage, forcing his body to run midair like a lion.

The band around his waist hugged him tightly and kept him aloft, occasionally shaking from side to side. With each shake, he could feel his torso lengthen, ribcage broadening. He didn’t grow as much as he’d expected, which left his head feeling too large for the rest of his body.

This problem was soon solved, as arms clamped around his collar, stretching his neck, dragging it away from his shoulders. At the same time, more arms worked his tailbone. Joints clicked into place as his spine pulled out into a long and swaying tail, the sort of thing that would allow him to retain a feline balance.

“Okay… That’s great,” Kyle said, between pants. Between the air-running and his thick coat of fur, he was starting to overheat. And, since his body seemed stubbornly unable to sweat, he realized that panting was perhaps his best option to cool down. “Lion tail, lion body. But… I can probably do something with my hands. Even if they’re paws, it can’t be that hard to text, right?”

xXx

“Okay… Great,” Amy sighed. “You were able to do that, too. Now… Let’s try something else. Gerald’s claws have gotten a bit longer. Why don’t you trim them?”

It was, of course, a trick question. Lions hated having their claws trimmed. Whenever Amy would work on Gerald, she’d need to sedate him with half an elephant’s worth of drugs. She wondered just how easily this machine would handle a pissed off king of the jungle.

“Warning. This will likely result in damage to zoo property, with parameters as defined. Permission to apply natural sedatives?”

Amy blinked, a little surprised by that. “Natural sedatives? That sounds interesting…” She hummed to herself, actually curious in the machine’s capabilities. “Elaborate.”

“Natural sedatives are non-chemical, as the name should easily imply. Soothing music and visual aids are employed to ensure a docile and content creature.” The AI had gone from sarcastic to proud in just a few sentences. Amy wasn’t sure which she liked less, but she still decided to play along.

“Sure. Give it a shot. See just how well your ‘natural sedatives’ work on him. Then trim his nails for me.”

xXx

Kyle gasped as the machine finally set him down. His broad chest rose and fell with the effort of breathing, and his tongue was actually dry from how long it had hung past his lips. He knew he couldn’t wait long, though. It was only a matter of time before something set off his AI again.

He couldn’t stand naturally, not like he was now. However, the lion certainly could lift a paw onto the counter, clapping his plush palm over Amy’s phone. It was a little surprising just how large his hands were, too. Given the relative size of his body, it was like they’d nearly tripled in size.

That made grabbing the phone something of an ordeal, though he was able to slowly slide it past the lip of the counter, sending it clattering to the ground. The noise was a little louder than he’d expected, and Kyle wondered if his hearing had been as enhanced as his muscles. Come to think of it, had his sense of smell gotten better? He couldn’t tell, not with the rich musk of an overexercised lion in the air.

Kyle couldn’t focus on that too long. He didn’t want to focus on that. The only important thing to him now was to call his phone from Amy’s, and let her know she had to unsync his device from the bathroom.

“First thing… Unlock the screen…” Kyle muttered, his hackles rising as he detected a faint whirring from above.

Kyle craned his head back, and came face-to-face with a swirling screen. Something about it made him want to look a little closer—were the patterns changing?

Before he could fully comprehend the ramifications of his actions, a tiredness settled across his thoughts. He felt his jaw go slack, but didn’t fully process what that meant. Instead, he kept staring, kept focusing on the humming that was growing louder and louder.

He felt like he was home. Not home in his house, but home on an open plain. He could feel grass tickling his belly, rather than linoleum. He could picture his nearby pride, ready to please him and feed him. Idly, he spread his paws, huffing and shaking out his mane.

“I… I feel…” Kyle began, but was unable to finish. He couldn’t put into words how he felt. He couldn’t put anything into words. All that he felt was a warm content as the lion’s mind overwrote his own. A glazed and vacant look settled across his face, and he offered no complaint as the machines took his paw in their embrace, filing down his claws.

It was surreal, like a dram within a dream. He was watching himself as a lion, getting his nails trimmed. His body was there, but his mind wasn’t. His mind was miles away, wondering what he’d do when Amy got home or how he’d explain to his boss—

Another wave of emptiness brought him to shiver, and his muscles relaxed a little more. That was another strange dream. Why had he thought of himself on two legs? Why did he think he answered to a human other than his trainer?

The lion couldn’t purr, but he huffed happily at the thought of his trainer. He wondered when she would be back. Until then he could… tired… maybe…

He slumped over, drifting off into a contented slumber.

xXx

Amy looked to the sleeping lion with a small frown, sighing and shaking her head. “Well, you win. That’s basically my entire job, and I think you’ve done it flawlessly.”

“Confirmed. Both lions have been properly groomed,” the AI said, back to full smugness.

Amy perked up at that, a small grin on her features. “Come again? Did you just say… Both? As in, more than one?” She looked to Gerald’s pen, beaming. If the damned machine couldn’t’ count, then that was license enough for her to keep it in the testing phase.

“Confirmed. Two lions have been treated today. Are there any other questions?”

Amy smirked. “None whatsoever. Don’t worry, we’ll be sure to recalibrate you at our first opportunity.”

Amy didn’t wait for the AI to respond before clicking it off, grinning as the styling droid silently did an about-face, exiting the enclosure as quietly as it had come. Idly, she wondered what would happen the day the software really was completed.

She’d probably need to get a lion at home, just to make sure she could at least groom something. Or she could practice on Kyle. Amy grinned at that, imagining how he’d react to her trying to give him a full lion’s spa treatment.