literature

By The Hair on Their Tails

Deviation Actions

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“Evacuate, Evacuate.  Self-destruct sequence initiated.  This facility will destruct in five minutes.”  

“That doesn’t sound good.“ Jeff said.  

“Gee, you think?“ Felicity answered back.  

Jeff looked over at her.  “You had better change, you‘re going to need your speed to get you out of here.”  

“I’m so far ahead of you.”  She answered with a slight lisp as fangs replaced her canines.  Very soon, a powerful white tiger hybrid took the place of a stunningly beautiful woman.  

“Four minutes, thirty seconds.”

“What about you?“ She asked looking at Jeff.  

“I didn’t really have too much time to learn from the only other person in the world who knows how to do it, now, did I?”  

“Oh, cut the crap Edwards!  We’re not going to get out of here on your feet.  You need to change, and you need to change on the fly.  You have to concentrate.”  

“I‘ll be fine.”  He said matter-of-factly.  “Besides, what if there are still guards that are going to try and stop us?  You said it yourself, I‘ll be extremely vulnerable.”

“Four minutes.”  The electronic voice chimed in.

“Not when you’re alone.”  Felicity said with a slight smile.  Jeff’s forehead wrinkled.  She let out an exasperated sigh.  “Dammit, Edwards, swallow your fucking…”  

She was stopped as Jeff forced his PDA into her hands, and pointed to a red blip between two lines.  “That’s us; the exit is that blue dot.  Don’t get too far ahead of me.”  He said as the cornea in his eyes slowly swirled into a pale glowing yellow.  

Felicity smiled and took off down the hall, with Jeff in tow.  Black lines soon formed on his skin, outlining the fur slowly growing in its place.   Steam began floating off of his skin, as the molecules put off tremendous heat with the speed that they were moving inside him.  Pain gripped Jeff’s head as his ears contorted and moved to the top of it, the bones cracking as they formed them to a point at the top.  His canines followed suit, piercing his lip for a moment, only to be healed quickly by the highly energized molecules in his shifting form.  Jeff’s fingernails lengthened into sharp claws, as did his toenails.  He felt a slight pain as they grew against the inside of his shoes.  Relief came quickly but it was short lived.  

“Does it usually burn like this?”  He called ahead to Felicity.  

“Three minutes, thirty seconds.”  The loudspeaker droned again.

“You get used to it.  Keep concentrating.”  

Jeff quickly found out that you get used to that pain only because the pain afterward was so excruciatingly intense, you felt like you were stabbing yourself in the spine 100 times over.  That was due to the fact that the vertebrae in his spine were shifting and splitting, ultimately doubling it’s length to support the tail that was growing from the base of it.  This brought Jeff to a dead halt.  

“I can’t do this Felicity.”  He said sitting down, defeated.  “Get out of here; don’t let me hold you up.”  

Felicity looked down the next hall they were supposed to go down, then back at the steaming Jeff.  He looked like a kid on Halloween with the best costume you could ever think of, not some powerful force like her.  His body was still steaming as he laid his head on his knees.  She stuffed the PDA in her pocket as she walked over to him.  

“Three minutes.”

“You know what, Edwards?  Fuck you.  You come all this way to get me, and now you expect me to just leave you here?  Just because you are in a little pain?  How the hell did you make it back to the apartment with all those bullet wounds, so that I could give you the ability to heal yourself?”  She knelt down next to him.  “You told me when you first joined that you hate to fail.  Well guess what…”  She accented the last word by sitting next to him.  “…you started it, you better finish it, or you fail.”  

Jeff raised his head, the two pairs of yellow eyes met for a moment.  “How long has it been since you’ve gone through this pain?”  

Felicity grabbed Jeff’s wrist and looked at his watch.  “Approximately two minutes.”  Felicity answered.  Jeff squinted at her.  “I’m not going to tell you that the pain goes away, because it never does.  But you do get used to it, because you eventually realize that the pain is a lot better than being dead.”

Jeff placed his head back on his knees.  

“Two minutes, thirty seconds.”  The voice echoed through the halls.

“How do you get through it all the time?”  Jeff asked, desperately

Once again, an answer came from Felicity that Jeff did not expect.  She picked his head up off his knees and placed his eyes in line with hers again.  “Look at me and concentrate.  Concentrate on the change, but think about me.  You’re close, we’re close.  Just finish it and we’ll get out of here.”  She embraced him, like a mother does to her child.  

Jeff hesitated for a moment, this scenario had never come close to crossing his mind, but he joined the embrace.  

“Concentrate, Jeff.”  

“Two minutes.“  The speaker continued it’s grim countdown.

Jeff closed his eyes, and did so.  His spine slowly finished its growth spurt and the pain changed again.  He tightened his grip on Felicity as it hit him.  

“Keep going, you got this.”  She said in a very soothing voice, a rarity coming from her.  The slight sound of fabric and skin stretching joined Jeff’s occasional gasps for air and grunts as his body mass grew.  He was already the athletic type, but he bulked up almost double in this process.  Felicity felt his skin sliding underneath her fur cladden hands.  

“This is the last of it Jeff, just get through this one last push.”  

Jeff cried out in pain as the fabric in his clothes stretched as far as they could go.  Now they were almost fighting his growing form.  One of Felicity’s claws was close to a seam.  She looked at Jeff’s pain filled face and pressed on the line with it.  To the tune of ripping cotton a hole formed in his shirt, and soon various other seams followed suit.  

“One minute, thirty seconds.“

Jeff was done.  His eyes shot open and he gasped for air repeatedly.  

“See, that wasn’t so hard.”  Felicity said, sarcastically.  

Jeff sighed and answered.  “I should have just left you here.”  

Felicity laughed out loud as she offered a hand to Jeff.  He jumped up quickly with her help.  She began to turn to make her way out, grabbing the PDA out of her pocket, when Jeff stopped her.  

“One minute.”  The soulless voice called.

“Hey…thanks for staying.”  

Felicity smiled again, “Remember that whole thing about repaying you‘re debts?  Well, now you still owe me.”  She said with a sly smile.  “So don’t let Bill kill you without a fight when we get back.  Besides, it looks good on you.  The whole ripped shirt and fur thing.”  She caught herself eyeing him a little more than she should have.  

“Really?”  He said looking himself over.  “I like this feeling too, it feels powerful.”  

“Just wait until you start…”A puff of air hitting her interrupted her thought, as well as leaving her staring at dead space. “…running.”

“Thirty seconds.”  There was a slight inflection this time.

“I believe your words were, ‘I’m so far ahead of you?’”  A voice called from behind her.  She turned to find Jeff leaning on a corner at the end of the hall, smiling his trademark Cheshire grin.  

“You son of a bitch.”  She said, laughing, as she caught up with him.  

They both took off at blinding speed, Felicity calling out the directions as they turned.  It wasn’t too long before they stopped again.  

“You hear that?” Felicity asked.

“Come on guys, we don’t have much time, we have to lock them in here.”  The voices said.  

Jeff and Felicity shot a look at each other, then blasted ahead again.  They careened around the final corner to see a pair of feet hanging from a ladder in the ceiling and another guard watching.  He happened to look down the hall at the right time.  

“GO!” He yelled up the chute.  

“Ten seconds.“

Almost instantly the pair was on top of them.  A fight ensued as Felicity pulled the guard off the ladder.  Both Jeff and Felicity lost all human thought for a moment.  They became what they looked like, mauling the two men, like their counterparts would to prey in the wild.  Two of the guards that got out earlier watched, stunned by what they saw.  One finally snapped to reality and ran over to the entrance lock.  He punched in the code and the steel door squeaked loudly as it came to life, slowly marching to the point where it would seal their fate.  

“Five seconds.“

Felicity noticed it first and shot up the chute, just barely making it out before it closed.  She was met by two semi-automatics, but her instincts were still in control.  Jeff followed shortly but was locked in just on the other side.  He heard shots and loud thuds on the door, and for the first time in his life since he lost his parents, he prayed.  

“Self Destruction commencing.“  You could hear the echoes say.

The ladder shook violently, almost throwing him off, as he felt the explosions rumbling from deep inside the bunker.  As the charges systematically grew closer, and Jeff began repenting, a ray of light shined on his face.  Before he knew what was happening, a hand that was armed with claws grabbed his shoulder and yanked him through the door.  

“Let’s go!”  Felicity yelled, as Jeff watched the sinkhole forming as the ground collapsed into the void formed by the explosions in the bunker.  They took off down the hill just as a jet of fire blew out the door.  The shockwave sent them flying.

As the dust settled the two took in what just happened.  Simultaneously, they let out a cry of joy, jumping in elation.  The noise soon stopped as they found their lips entwined with each others.  They held there for a moment, before they realized what they were doing, and pushed each other off.  Felicity let another true smile form on her face.  

“I guess I owe you double now.”  Jeff said as he returned the smile.
Story by *jonnyneroactionhero

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