[TF, F Foothands]

The Ring.

Of course, that was its informal name. The Hayes-Richardson Programmable Matter Reassembling Aperture didn't quite roll off the tongue the same way, so the researchers and their assistants just called it the ring. Julie was one of these assistants, and she was bored.

There wasn't much research going on now. The ring, while still a prototype, was functional enough that it was in the experimental phase of its existence. Calibration tests were the name of the game, making sure it operated within bounds at all times. Julie was working the night shift, essentially babysitting the machine while the other researchers were out for the night.

When you have a machine that can assemble the atomic structure of anything passing through it and you're bored, you get ideas to play with it. Julie was no exception. She grabbed the remote control and, after making sure she was alone, turned on the ring. The space inside the ring turned into a shimmering blue liquid. Something scientific about the event horizon of the aperture that turned the air into a suspended liquid-like puddle of shiny blue fluid. To Julie, it looked like a lake of latex turned on its side, and she couldn't help but laugh at the oddity of it.

Reviewing the remote, there were plenty of settings on it. Fortunately, there was one that seemed the most promising to cure her boredom: "Random". The remote would choose a random set of objects that would be the target for anything passing through the ring. Without checking the remote to see what the first target object was, Julie dug a quarter out of her purse and tossed it through the ring.

She waited for the clattering sound of the coin hitting the ground on the other side, but it never came. Instead, a black balloon lifted up into sight over the top of the ring. Floating gently, it bobbed its way in the invisible air currents of the room until it reached the ceiling. A long silvery string hung from the orb, taunting Julie by being just out of reach.

It worked! Well, of course it worked... Plenty of small tests like this happened all day when the researchers were present, but this was the first thing she ever put through the ring, and randomly something different came out! Julie was hooked.

Next up out of the purse -- lip balm. She just had to keep testing - or rather, playing - with the device. She set herself up next to the side of the ring, straddling a large power cable, so that she could both toss the lip balm through, albeit at an angle, and see the end result come out the other side. Due to the weird angle she was standing at, she had to through it in with a bit of force, and Julie got to watch the strange blue goo that was suspended in the air wrap around and coat the object.

She whipped her head around to the other side of the ring, watching the surface tension distort. Something round was coming through, and a moment later it did just that. With a soft pop, the fluid parted just enough to reveal a small rubber ball. The ball still had the momentum of her throw despite its slight delay while it was being reassembled. It careened off the opposing wall, ricocheted off a cabinet and bounced against the floor, impacting against the side of the ring itself before landing high up on top of a light fixture, causing it to swing back and forth.

The sudden calamity set off Julie's nerves. She quickly lept from her seat, nearly tripping over the large power cable she had just been standing over. "Dumb... it's so dumb to play with this like it's a toy," Julie mumbled to herself. "Yeah, it's the coolest thing around and can do anything, but think of what would happen if I broke something!"

Unbeknownst to Julie, the rubber ball hadn't finished its fantastic journey. Rolling around on the swaying light, it approached the edge just as Julie's anxiety brought her around the front of the ring again. Suddenly, the lip-balm-turned-bouncy-ball fell, clattering to a tabletop full of drying glassware. Bouncing chaotically about, the sphere rebounded across various beakers and created a cacophony of sound. Julie, unfortunately, was easily startled, and tripped over her own feet at the source of the commotion.

Into the air flew the remote, which gracefully sailed before Julie’s gaze toward the ring. Before she could help herself, she lunged for the remote, trying to catch it -- but it was too late. The remote control landed with a soft thud just on the other side of the ring, and based on a reflection off the stainless steel ring, she could see a human foot where she expected to see the remote.

But Julie didn’t dare move. She looked back down at the viscous surface of the ring and gasped. Her hands had disappeared into the blue liquid, up to her wrists. It didn’t feel bad, or anything like that... maybe just like the pins and needles when a limb falls asleep -- certainly not appropriate for the dread she was feeling as she slowly withdrew her hands from the machine.

Hands -- that’s all they were. They hadn’t changed. Either she hadn’t entered the machine fully, or it didn’t work on organic matter yet. Yes, that had to be it. Julie tried to console herself with these facts. Anything could have happened to her just then, and she would have had nothing to blame but her own boredom. Shaking and nearly in tears, she collected her things and shoved the fleshy foot into her bag to deal with later before leaving the lab in a rush.

 ===

The entire drive home, Julie was distracted by her hands. They were never notable before, but now she couldn’t help but feel like it was a miracle to have both of them intact. She flexed her fingers, stretching them around the steering wheel. Other than a small cramp, it felt like everything was fine.

By the time she got home, the incident in the lab was nearly forgotten. Still, something felt… off. Julie gave her hands another glance. Were… were her fingers shorter? That didn't sound right, but here she was. After studying her hands the whole way home, she was reasonably sure that when she closed her fingers into a fist they should reach further than they did.

Fear and dismay stroked through Julie like a chord. There'd be no escaping the effects of the ring, it seemed. As if on cue, another cramp wracked through her hands, and she couldn't help but look at her bag instinctively. Fishing out the foot within, she examined it. It seemed to be alive, though it was only a foot. No lungs, no heart to beat blood through it. Was this Julie's fate? She found herself stroking the foot as she carried it around her home, before heading to bed for the night.

Laying there in bed, she didn't sleep peacefully. The foot on her nightstand felt like an ominous sign, something foreboding. Julie grabbed her phone, texting a friend of hers. The darkness left her hands feeling swollen and larger than they should be. After a little while of this, she found herself unable to keep texting -- it was as though her hands weren’t wanting to cooperate and hold the phone in position while typing. Instead, she switched to watching videos on a streaming app, but soon it became hard to even hold her phone above her head. She had to place it down on the dresser. In the dark, she couldn't see her hands anymore. The cramping had resided, which seemed both fortunate and also like a bad sign. Her hands felt like they were in an awkward position, and she was anxious to see what had happened.

Morning couldn’t come soon enough, and with it, Julie started her routine. She quickly ran into her first obstacle: turning on the bedside light. Normally, gripping the pull chain for her light was no problem, but her fingers just weren't cooperating. Eventually she managed to grasp the chain between her thumb and index fingers -- which felt strangely close together and far less flexible than normal.

When the light flashed on and blinded her, an image was seared into her eyes by the suddenly stark lights. It made no sense, but it was what she saw. While she waited for the sudden temporary blindness to pass, Julie reflected on it.

Feet. She was holding the lamp chain with one foot attached to her arm, while the second arm had its foot pressed up against the nightstand for support. Julie gasped as her vision returned, confirming the unnatural sight. She tried to wiggle her fingers, thinking it might be some kind of joke. Instead, the toes of the feet in front of her wriggled instead. Tears came to her eyes unbidden, as she shook her head and silently uttered prayers to whoever would listen.

“Please… please, I can’t be a freak. Don’t… don’t let me be like this. It’d be better if I was just an entire foot like the remote, just… why me? Why do I have to be some freak with foothands?!”

Long moments filled with the sound of sobbing passed for Julie, before she was eventually able to open her eyes again and view the transformation that had befallen her. Where her wrists normally resided, an ankle now seamlessly flowed out of her arms. Her foothands had high arches, looking almost as though they were designed for high heels. The idea of wearing shoes on her ‘hands’ nearly sent Julie into another crying fit. Her fingernails had shrunk down and become normal length for a foot, though the nail polish remained on them. The thought occurred to Julie that she wouldn’t likely be able to paint her own nails now, and would have to get someone else to paint them for her. Someone else painting her nails... “Someone seeing me like this?” Julie muttered to herself, staring at her newly reshaped appendages. “Hell no… I can’t let anyone see the kind of monster I’ve become.”

It took a long moment, but Julie caught her breath and sighed. “I’ll stay home, as much as I can. I’m going to live my life as normally as possible, these… these foothands be damned.”

First things first, Julie needed to eat some breakfast. Her normal diet consisted of eggs and toast for this meal, and she was decidedly not going to let this change stop that. Her first challenge came with getting the bread out of the bag. Her fingers - now toes - were ill-equipped at handling something with any amount of delicacy. Holding the bag between either sole of her foothands, she found she could get a couple slices of bread out and onto the counter. From there, she just needed to slide each slice individually onto the bottom of a foothand, and then carry it to the toaster where she could drop it in.

Julie sighed while the toast cooked, looking at it miserably. Fifteen minutes had passed with her fumbling her feet around inside of the bag of bread, and she was getting uncomfortably hungry. Carefully holding it between both foothands, Julie got the butter out from the fridge and procured a knife from the drawer. The knife was actually surprisingly easier to hold than the bread, requiring no delicate touch and fitting easily between her former thumb and the toe next to it. Curling her toes created a strange grip around the handle of the knife, and she was able to wave it around with a modicum of dexterity.

After getting the toast out from the toaster - a process that ultimately turned into dumping the appliance upside down so the bread would fall out - Julie deftly smeared butter onto her knife, and then tried to spread it on the bread. It was impossible, given the newly configured shape of her hands, to both hold the bread and keep the surface clear, so butter rapidly ended up on her non-dominant foothand as much as it did the toast. Still though, she had the first half of her meal. Now for the eggs...

Cradling them delicately between both sets of toefingers, Julie managed to lift each egg into a bowl. She frowned, pondering on how to deshell them and get to the actual food inside. Her first attempt to crack an egg against the side of the bowl went well, with only a couple shards of shell ending up mixed in. After she had cracked both her eggs, she spent several minutes mixing her toe into the cold gooey mixture of the eggs, fishing out the shell fragments. It is already unpleasant enough to dip one's fingers in an eggy mess, but this experience reminded Julie of the liquid-like barrier of the ring, and her incident the night before. Still though, Julie got the job done and was able to pour her eggs into the waiting skillet on the stovetop.

Holding the spatula just like she did the butter knife, Julie slowly and delicately flipped her eggs. They were a little darker than usual - the time it took to line up and carefully slide the spatula under them left them slightly more cooked than she preferred - but it was a small price to pay if she wanted her breakfast her way. Plating her food, she noticed that other than when she focused on it, her fear and anger against her foothands wasn’t present. Julie was troubled by this, but she ignored it and dug into her food.

While eating, Julie heard her phone ringing in the other room. She was paralyzed by the fear of work calling. After all, she had rendered the ring inoperable and left the lab in a wrecked state. Cautiously, she approached her phone, now ringing for the third time. Slowly dragging her big toe across the screen, she managed to decline the call. Carefully, she poked out a message with her pinky toe. The letters were so close together, she had to turn on a magnified keyboard that made it easier to type, but it was still slow going. Finally, she managed to type a message to the staff saying she wasn’t well and would call when she would be back. At least that crisis was averted for now, and Julie was able to head back to her food.

After finishing eating, Julie shoved her dishes into the sink. Washing up would be a problem for later, as she was too exhausted to finish that right now. What sounded great was brushing her teeth and taking a shower. Heading to the bathroom, she avoided looking in the mirror. She didn’t want to see herself with the foothands, not yet at least. She grabbed her toothbrush in what she now dubbed ‘knife pose’ - after all, it worked so far - and looked at the toothpaste. Dropping the toothbrush, Julie realized she would need both foothands to get the cap off. While gently pressing the tube against the counter with the arch of one foothand, she used the other to pinch and twist the cap between her big toe and second toe. It took a lot of bending her entire body as her wrists didn’t have the flexibility they needed anymore, but finally the cap fell off and tumbled into the sink. She doubted she’d ever realistically be able to get it back on again anyway... Now, for the toothbrush again, and a slight bit of pressure against the tube… and success! Julie couldn’t help but grin as she raised the toothbrush to her lips and started slowly brushing her teeth.

As she dragged the bristles across her teeth, she caught her reflection in the mirror. She looked like she had ridiculous gloves on, as though her real hands were hidden inside of these ridiculous feet. With a sigh, Julie knew that wasn’t the case. As much as she was trying to ignore it, she couldn’t help but notice every sensation, like when the butter had coated her foothand earlier. They were real, and her fate wasn’t seeming to change any time soon. Still though, they looked… cute? Julie was always a firm believer in the idea that feet - on a sexy person - were just as sexy as the rest of their body. But here she was with more than the average number of feet, and they almost seemed to enhance her femininity. The gentle arches, the small wiggling toes, the slender ankles... In a way, Julie couldn’t help but feel attracted to them for the work they were doing in promoting her own body’s feminine image. Fear and repulsion quickly rose up into her gut as the thought occurred to her, but she couldn’t shake it. They were delicate and feminine. As she posed with one on the side of her cheek, even while brushing her teeth she had to admit, they weren’t the worst things in the world.

Still, she couldn’t deny that she was a freak by society’s standards now, and that depressed her mood again. Spitting out the toothpaste and stepping into the shower, Julie lathered up her foothands with soap and began caressing her body. She’d likely be the only one to ever touch herself like this now, what man would want someone like her? As her feet lifted and held her breasts, she sighed. At least she still was human -- that’s a small miracle. Her thorough examination of her body in the shower confirmed that the changes were limited to what passed through the ring, and nothing more.

Getting out and drying off with a towel were pretty simple tasks compared to her morning; just wrapping the towel around her new feet and then rubbing herself over made the task pretty simple. Julie stopped for a moment and wondered... Was it simple, or was she getting more used to the new appendages? It should take more time than a morning to adjust to a life-altering change like this, but what if the ring gave her some kind of strange, adapted muscle memory that was helping her out? The thought was concerning, but at the same time, comforting. She knew she had to adjust, and the fact that it was an easier process than she expected was a relief.

 ===

Another day, another phone call to avoid from the lab. Julie was getting used to punching out a quick message in response using nothing more than a pinkie toe, claiming to still be feeling unwell. She knew her cover story was getting thin, though she didn’t have many options. And speaking of limited options, she was out of food. She normally ate at work, and grocery shopping was an already looming task before the incident happened.

Cursing her bad luck, Julie stood at the door to her home, dressed and ready to face the world. All the confidence she had built up over the last week evaporated away, leaving her afraid to face the general public. How could she face them, when she was a freak with feet for hands? Finally calming down enough to think, she decided to rationalize it out. No one would pay attention to her. Her long sleeves would hide her foothands well enough so that she could push a cart and load groceries into it, and then self-checkout would allow her to avoid facing a judgemental cashier. She just had to figure out how to drive with these new appendages, and she would be set.

Opening the door, she gasped. Standing there awkwardly in a white lab coat was Oliver, one of the researchers from the lab. Not just any researcher, though. Most of them were elderly, working on this project late in their careers, while Oliver was fresh out of school and much younger than his peers. To top it off, he was incredibly attractive in Julie’s eyes, leaving her with a strong blush from seeing him. Immediately she tried to shut the door, but his foot was already wedged into it.

“Julie!” Oliver exclaimed, his face lighting up. “There you are. Look, I know you’re not feeling well, but we need to talk about what happened at the lab during your last shift. Glass was broken everywhere, the remote to the ring was missing… It looked like a tornado came through the lab!”

“Look, Doctor Oliver…”

“Just Oliver, Julie, you know I prefer to just be called by name. What’s wrong? You look dreadful; you’re sweating like you have a fever!”

Julie instinctively wiped the sweat that was forming on her brow with the back of her foothand, then gasped. Oliver had seen it. The cutest guy in the lab had just seen how much of a malformed freak she was. She pushed a foothand against his chest, trying to push him out of the doorway.

“Please, just go! Get out of here!” Julie was in tears, unable to look Oliver in the eyes. “I… I can’t be seen right now…” A whimper escaped her lips, and Oliver took a step backwards.

“Julie, it’s ok… whatever is going on, it’ll be ok. Just talk to me here.” His eyes fluttered down to the foothand against his chest, and he bit his lip. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but here was one of his assistants from the lab, with feet for hands! It was incredible, as though a secret passion of his - unknown even to him - had lit aflame inside of him at the sight of the toefingers wiggling against his lab coat.

Julie pulled back her arm and slammed the door. “No! You’re just going to turn me in, or call me a freak, a monster!” The deadbolt snapped into place, and silence came from inside the house.

“Julie? Julie?!” An exasperated sigh from Oliver slipped his lips. Here he was, standing on the doorstep of a subordinate, despite having been sent away already. He certainly wasn’t being decent, and the throbbing bulge in his pants didn’t help his professionalism either. “Look, Julie, I’m not leaving until we can talk. I’m not going to turn you in, or call you those names. I promise. Just let me in.” With that, Oliver sat down on the stoop of the house, sighed once again, and proceeded to pull out his phone to let work know he’d be out today as well.

 ===

By the time the sun set, Julie had had enough of waiting. Oliver was still sitting out there, spending a whole day on her porch. She was unable to fathom how he was being so patient, and finally, she gave in.

The lock on her door clicked open, before she gently nudged the door ajar. “Come in. Shut the door behind you.” Resignation sat deep in her throat; Julie had already stepped away from the door into the house. Oliver immediately jumped to his feet and dusted off his white lab coat, stepping into the house and closing the door as instructed. He went to the only illuminated room, the living room, and saw a sight to behold there.

Julie sat on the couch, foothands planted squarely on her hips. It seemed she was giving up hiding them for now. The strangest sight though, was the human foot on the table in front of her.

“There’s the remote to the ring.” Julie gestured with a foothand - all the toes except the biggest one curling so that she could point at the foot on the table. “A bouncy ball went crazy in the lab, broke some glass, startled me, and I dropped the remote through the ring. It was set to random, and I guess it randomly changed into a foot.” Using both foothands, she placed one on either side of the disembodied foot and grabbed it, tossing it over to Oliver. “Sorry.”

Oliver caught the foot, and then looked at Julie. She wasn’t sounding insincere, she was depressed and being distant. Whatever happened to her had left the poor girl shaken and disturbed over the last week. Oliver looked over the foot in his hands, handling the fleshy member. He set it back down on the table and looked at Julie. “What happened to you?”

Julie looked away immediately, tears forming in her eyes. “I tried to catch the remote, but my hands went through the ring. I guess the ring is locked into foot mode, because it… It turned my hands into these feet.”

“May I see them?”

Julie looked at Oliver, stunned. Why would he want to see them, would he just be preparing insults for her? Reluctantly, she got up and sat on the couch next to him, offering her foothands. Oliver took one into his hands and started to gently rub over it. He examined it from all sides as his hands roved over the surface.

“Does it hurt?”

“No.”

“Good.” Oliver gently spread the toefingers out, acting as though he were giving a proper examination of her transformed appendages. In reality, he was marveling at the feminine beauty that was attached to the cutie before him. Julie tried to resist her own indulgence in the moment. A man - a hot man - was playing with her suddenly very sensitive foothands. It felt intense, but it also felt powerful. She curled her toefingers, flexing them into his grip.  “Does it feel good?” Oliver asked, softly.

That question surprised Julie, and with a blush she had to nod. Oliver’s attention on her foothands felt divine, and she wanted to keep enjoying it. Then suddenly, as though in response to her thoughts, Oliver wrapped his lips around a big toe and sucked. “Mnf…” Julie groaned, and then realized what was happening. She jerked her hands back, folding them under her arms. “What was that?!”

Oliver blushed, getting up and backing away. “I’m sorry! I just… I don’t know what came over me. They’re so attractive that I couldn’t help myself!”

Julie paused. The spark she had felt in the bathroom was back… in a way, they kind of were cute, and Oliver’s sudden burst of affection confirmed that in her. Regardless of her thoughts, she couldn’t deny that the attention felt good, and was the best she felt about herself in a while.

“Do that again.”

“Wha-what?”

“If you like my foothands so much, show me. Show me you don’t think I’m a freak.” Julie wasn’t sure where this confidence was coming from. Internally, she still considered herself monstrous looking, but the attention that Oliver was giving her had brought out some bold and commanding personality in her that just wanted to make the pleasure continue.

Oliver blushed, shaking his head. “Not a freak at all, you’re perfect like this. I’m going to take care of you, ok?” Julie nodded, and Oliver continued. “As long as it takes to build a new remote, I’ll make sure you’re well cared for, if that’s what you want.” And with that, Oliver sat back down, lowered his head, and started licking over her foothands again to the sounds of Julie passionately enjoying it.

Julie lay forward across the table, eyes closed as Oliver continued. His tongue expertly navigated the creases and gaps between her toefingers, and she couldn’t help but to moan out loud. As the minutes passed, Julie couldn’t help but to wonder if Oliver had experience with a woman’s foot in his mouth before. A flare of jealousy and possession swept through her, before she realized she was being irrational -- of course no woman had foothands like she did, so she was the first one to share this moment with Oliver, or anyone for that matter. The uniqueness of the situation gave Julie a giddy surge of emotions, and she decided to take charge.

“Strip for me, and let’s find out what these can do.” Oliver balked for a moment, lifting his head off her foothands as though to object, but Julie cut him off and continued before he could. “You want to show me that you like this? Let me show you back. Strip.” Her words carried a commanding tone that she hadn’t had earlier. Lust drove out of her head the fear and anxiety, leaving her with a power trip that was lasting as long as her sensitive foothands kept getting played with.

Oliver, for his part, obeyed after just a moment’s hesitation. Standing before his assistant, he shucked off all his clothes and showed off his already impressive member. Julie wasted no time in wrapping the soles of her foothands around the throbbing erection. The pair cooed and moaned almost simultaneously, as both of their sensitive parts were stimulated. Julie curled her toefingers, trying her best to hold onto the shaft before her. Her ‘knife position’ that she had been using throughout the week wouldn’t work here, instead she had to use both appendages to hold the member delicately.

Despite the difficulties, Julie was able to start running her feet up and down the length of his member. Oliver groaned in pleasure, unable to look away from the sight before him. He could already feel himself building up, the pleasure overwhelming. Why was this so hot? No part of his rational mind could figure it out, but he couldn’t ignore that lust burning in his heart for the transformed girl before him. Oliver bit his lip, trying to hold off the coming explosion.

For a few minutes, Julie kept giving Oliver a mind-bending footjob. She teased and stroked his length, making her toes flirt expertly with every detail. A temptation was getting stronger though with his shaft right in front of her, and Julie gave in to it, leaning forward just a bit more across the table, running the tip of his cock along her lips. Oliver wondered what it would be like for Julie’s mouth to be transformed as well, to have even more toes touching him, but he shoved the idea aside. Perhaps later, he mused. For now, he’d have to settle for a footjob-blowjob combination. The moment his tip passed over her tongue, he couldn't help himself any longer. Load after load rocketed into her mouth, and she was left gagging on it.

“That good, huh?” Julie smirked, wiping her lips with her big toe, then sucking it clean. Oliver blushed, mumbling his best excuses and apologies. “Don’t worry about it,” said Julie. “I’m just glad you liked it. So, what’s next?”

Immediately, the image of Julie with even more misplaced feet and toes sprang back into Oliver’s mind, and his blush grew more vibrant. “Well… since we know this change is safe - and hot - what would you say to more?”