“Hey, you out for the day?”

Grant turned to find Rob looking at him with that same half-smirk as always. He had his phone pressed between his cheek and shoulder, another bad habit of his around quitting time. The man always called his girlfriend of the week while on the clock.

(Various M and F to Pokemon, Mass TF)

At least this time it wasn’t on speaker.

“Nah, my shift’s just about to start,” Grant chuckled ruefully. “Marv took off, so I’m on the graveyard shift.”

“Again?” Rob tilted his head in surprise, enough to dislodge his phone. He fumbled for it hastily, trying to catch it before it hit the floor. The man’s palm hit the screen at a bad angle, and a female voice crackled over the speaker.

“-did not just ignore me to talk to your loser coworker!”

“Ah.” Rob blushed. “Her words, not mine. Hey, babe? Ah, it’s muted…”

Grant chuckled, shaking his head and turning for the timeclock. Her next words made him pause.

“Seriously, y’all need to be watching the news right now! Something big is going-“

“There it is!” Rob beamed, tapping the screen again. “So listen, about what she said, I might talk a little trash at home…”

“I’m less worried about that and more about the other thing. What’s that about the news?”

“I dunno, I’ve been stuck here. You tell me.”

Grant sighed. “I don’t check the news until work, gives me something to do for the first hour.”

“Fair enough. Let me just-wait, babe, what was that again? You’re not making any… Sense…” Rob trailed off, wobbling unsteadily on his feet. His phone fell again, and this time he didn’t make an attempt to catch it.

“Oh crap, sorry about that,” Grant said on reflex, wondered why an apology was his first instinct, and then decided to distract himself by picking up the phone. “Hey, here you-”

“-achamp, Muh! Machamp!” A very male voice crackled from the speaker. Something about the sound felt… Fluttery.

It felt almost like the first time he confessed to a girl, coupled with the excitement of asking her out. Somewhere deep inside of him, he felt uneasy about this sudden sensation. That unease only grew at the sight of bright orange hair near-exploding from Rob’s ears.

“Hey-xen, what’s going-aixen?!” Rob coughed, a look of panic on his face.

The sight made Grant’s unease build, but the sound blasted any fear from his mind. He shuddered, and a soft sensation bubbled out from his arms, from the inside of his chest. Something in his neck tingled, and a wonderfully warm feeling flooded him as it stretched away from his shoulders like taffy.

“Haaah… Alltaria!” Grant crooned, a beak pushing past his lips as his legs were sucked into his fluffy, cloud-like body.

The changing Braixen on the ground warbled out in panic, but the man it had been talking to was now a blue, bird-like creature. Worse yet, the spectacle of their changes had drawn a fair share of onlookers, all of whom were beginning to experience changes of their own. Worse, some of them were making a break deeper into the warehouse.

There were a bunch of rules for safety on the floor, and some of them even made sense. The ‘no music allowed’ on was a pile of crap though, and Sara didn’t care about who knew she was breaking it.

Sure there were people that said earbuds didn’t protect against ‘hearing loss’ and crap like that. But that was just a conspiracy. After all, if her music was loud enough that she couldn’t hear the factory, then how in the hell was it supposed to be able to damage her?

Sara took a self-prescribed break from the humdrum by air-drumming a kickass solo. Then some dumbass bumped into her, and she turned to face him with a glare. Her right hand lifted towards her ears, but she paused at the… Colorful sight before her.

Her dumbass supervisor was currently pawing at his lower body, which now looked like some kind of pink gemstone. Her dumbass trainee was currently melting into some kind of ice cream cone with an idiotic smile. Her dumbass coworker was… Hm. Maybe she’d need to reflect on why she thought so many people were dumbasses.

Though that would have to wait, because some dumbass snake-person just bumped into her hand, knocking her earbud from its safe spot in her ear and sending it to the ground.

“ChaAARBOK!” The… female? Snake hissed. Sara wasn’t quite sure why it had snitties, but… Oh, hey. She recognized that mole. It was probably Deyonte, right?

Sara’s musings were again distracted by the din of the factory growing louder and louder in her ears. She flinched, rubbing her lobes and feeling them start to grow. Something was happening, not just to the dumbasses but her to her as well.

She could feel it deep in her arms, like they were somehow getting slimmer but stronger at the same time. Sara looked at each of them in shock, seeing muscle and bone shrink away. Somehow they felt even more powerful for it though… At least, until a sudden bout of weakness dropped them to her sides, bumping her wrists against her hips.

They stuck fast, and for a moment Sara wondered if she was about to lose her arms forever. She tugged frantically, and a roar of surprise burst from her lips as she lifted her arms, also lifting two thick sheets of skin along with it. Wings. Crazy as it was, she now sported a pair of leathery wings.

“ARBOK!” Hissed the snake again, now even more of a purple cobra than it was before.

Seirn flinched at the noise. It made her brain feel… Bubbly. Like, in a boiling sort-of-way, not the fun soapy kind. She was… Seirn? Savern? Her eyes narrowed, her ears widened. She fell to all fours, and a long tail burst from her backside, tearing through her work jeans.

“Shut… Oip… Drrrumbvrrass…” Savern groaned as her other earbud fell out, now far too small for her swelling ears. She could hear everything on the floor now, every cry from all of the changing people. Her eyes squeezed shut, then Noivern opened them.

Her skull immediately reformed into a near draconic maw, her torso widened, and she let out a thunderous roar.

Alisha stumbled as she ran. Just a second ago, she’d heard some kind of Godzilla-like scream, then some half-cat thing had burst into the inclusivity office, and then it breathed literal fire onto the flag-of-the-month flyers they were going to hand out tomorrow.

Now, she… Well. She felt funny. Full. Bloated, even. The corridor around her felt like it was shrinking, which was doing very little for her claustrophobia. Even the doorways looked smaller.

A tiny person ran out from one, their eyes widening as they caught sight of her. “Holy hell, Alisha?”

“Why… Shouldn’t… Be me…” Alisha yawned. For some reason, she was totally winded. More than that, she was more tired than ever. So tired that she could just close her eyes and…

She opened them again to someone poking her belly. How long had she been out for? And why was something wrong? She had a feeling that there was something weird about what she was seeing… Her eyes crossed, and she flinched as there wasn’t a nose to be found on her face. At least, none she could see.

“Alisha? I’ve been trying to make you wake up for the past like, five minutes. Is everything okay?”

Was that person talking to her? They had to be. Weird. Why didn’t Alisha feel like her name? She knew it was her name, didn’t she? The growing woman yawned again, bringing a fuzzy clawed hand over her mouth.

That… Felt wrong too. She wriggled her hips, but the walls at her sides hugged her tight, like some kind of blanket. A cozy blanket… She closed her eyes again, snoring her name embarrassingly loudly.

A thump in her chest woke her, and she rumbled out a “lax” in confusion.

A goat in a torn suit was kicking at her, frantically bleating “Go-oh-oh-goat” again and again.

Grumpily, Snorlax huffed, wiggling her triangular ears in irritation. Why had this thing woken her up? It was dumb. She was tired too, so she decided not to care about it. Her eyes drifted closed once more, and she lapsed back into a comfortable rest.

Little did any of them know, these scenes were echoing themselves along much more than just the factory floor. After all, it was flu season, and this year’s strain would be one for the record books…