The Cherri on Top (Patreon)

(Season 1) Cherri Ref 

Due to his ability to sense the flow of magic through complex circuitry, Christopher Langdon is a huge asset at Willmore Dynamics.

Underpaid and up against a ridiculously unrealistic deadline Chris pushes himself past the Chimeric Threshold. With magic changing him into a purple-furred otter herm, and his livelihood on the line, Chris tries to pull back.

The problem is, even with the risk of being hunted by the Usonian Union police, Chris can't resist the ecstasy of horny self-actualization. Becoming his true, horse-hung herm self feels far too good.

This series of stories is going to be treated like seasons of a show, each episode with a soundtrack. This first season is all character introductions that establish the world and the characters.

The Cherri on Top

~TubePunk Witches: Season 1 - Illicit Introductions~
By Mabel and Elara Singlais
(Edited by DumpsterShark, Akikotigress, and Ramda Singlais) 

Track List: 
     Season 1 theme: The Warning - XXI Century Blood
     Episode theme: Metric - Handshakes
     First TF Scene: Brittany Spears - Touch of My Hand
     Second TF Scene (Cherri’s Theme): Megan Trainor - I Love Me
     Season One Credits: My Chemical Romance - Destroya
Spotify Playlist Link

The sun was just starting to burn off some spring fog from the Pacific and the sky was still alive with shades of pink. Sparrows and doves greeted the morning while well caffeinated commuters navigated the grid of Long Beach's magnolia-tree-lined thoroughfares.

Euclid Avenue was like all the streets around it. In addition to magnolia trees, the tan-stuccoed, two-story apartment complexes with arched, classical facades had rosemary, lavender, roses, and hibiscus growing out front of them. Breaking up the uniformity were occasional light gray and dirty white stucco complexes. Spaced between them were ranch-style houses with brown, light green, or cream exteriors. Some of these houses had entryways that sported square columns and accents that made them look like cheap, Vegas-style knockoffs of the Parthenon.

Breaking the relative silence of this sleepy residential street, a phone rang in a brown apartment complex, three complexes north of the intersection of Euclid and Grand.

Outside Christopher Langdon's tiny kitchen window, the clouds parted and a sunbeam hit a pink and white rose bush that was trying to outgrow the fence behind it. The shrill ringing from his rotary phone didn't fit the moment at all.

He grumbled as he shoved his spoon into his cereal bowl, knocking a couple of wheat squares onto the teal, metal-rimmed table. Then he slid back in his steel and red vinyl dining room chair and got up, his feet feeling the slight gaps between the boards in his dark, reddish-brown hardwood floor. His slate-colored socks slid as he dashed over to the bit of wall between the front door and the coat closet. He grabbed the coffee brown receiver for his rotary phone and held it up to his ear.

"Hello?" He scratched his belly through his undershirt with his free hand.

"Good morning, comrade. I've been thinking about the awkwardness between you and Pavel and I think it would be best if you sat out this company cookout." Dr. White's voice was gentle and sympathetic. Well, for him. He was far too heavy a drinker for his voice to retain any smoothness.

"Are you serious? It's been two months since I talked to him at all."

"Yes, but when you did talk to him, you ignored my advice and corrected him instead of letting me do it." The sympathy in Dr. White's voice increased. "If you hadn't been so obviously right at the time, it might've gone better. It's just--he's been calling you a gopnik and I've been having to justify why you're on the payroll."

"I cost you nothing compared to the people with degrees. Why would he even care about my barely-a-living hourly wage?" Chris's voice rose as he spoke. "It's not my fault his anemic ego can't handle someone without a degree being smarter than his masters-in-management ass."

"His anemic ego may not be your fault, but it is your fault that you challenged that ego when it belongs to the one person with the most power over your career." Dr. White sighed. "I suggest you treat this as an opportunity. You'll have the whole warehouse to yourself and be able to wholly focus on finishing your prototype. If you impress the Commissar, you won't have to worry about what Pavel thinks of you."

"The warehouse all to myself?" Chris thought for a moment. "I'm okay staying back if you save me some BBQ chicken, bean dip, cornbread, and coleslaw."

"You got it! I'll tell them you're eager to get your prototype up and running and make sure to mention your fantastic work ethic." Dr. White sounded so pleased he was almost chuckling.

"If you're able to impress them, see if you can get me a raise." Chris smirked.

"My doctorate is in condensed matter physics, not miracles."

Chris laughed.

"Enjoy your day at work and lunch is on me. Just put it in your expenses and I'll make sure it's taken care of."

"Thanks, comrade! Talk to you later!" Chris took the phone away from his ear.

"Ta-ta!" Dr. White said before Chris hung up the phone.

He chugged the rest of his cup of Russian black tea and downed his cereal. Then he headed into his bedroom.

At least a dozen layers of paint were crusted on the closet doors and, as he slid them open, they were sluggish in their tracks. He picked out a light blue button down shirt and a pair of reddish-gray slacks. After donning his shirt, he pulled his pants up over his blue pinstriped boxers.

On his way out of his bedroom, he stopped in front of his walnut veneered dresser. Sitting atop it was a chestnut-colored stuffed horse and a light blue stuffed otter with a purple bow around the base of her tail. Each was about six inches tall and were in good shape despite having been in his possession since he was five years old. Between them was a wavy-banded amethyst ring and a shark tooth necklace with a black silk cord.

After putting on the necklace, he put the ring on his right pinky and then patted the otter's head. "See you later, Cherri."

He surveyed the room for an onlooker he knew wasn't there, he could practically feel his mother's steely gaze (the woman he'd hidden these stuffed animals from in his teens). Then he pet the horse's mane and smiled at the name tag he'd put around its neck. It was a small identification plate off of a transformer that he'd burnt out when experimenting with electronics in high school. The plate read "Tinsleytronics," in a simple, white, newspaper-like font that was etched into the black metal.

"Ta-ta, Tinsley." He chuckled as he withdrew his hand. Having someone to say goodbye to whenever he left the house, even if they were inanimate, was a comfort.

To complete his outfit, he slipped on a pair of black, non-slip work shoes, a brown, wide-brimmed fedora, and a brown bomber jacket. He slung his leather briefcase over his shoulder as he reached for his front door's knob.

When he opened the door, he found his copy of The Los Angeles Post. Plastered on the front page was an image of three guards, all crumpled to the ground on the steps of a marble-columned government building. Going toward the camera and to the right were blurred streaks in a vaguely humanoid outline, like what happens if one tries to take a sports picture with a slow shutter. The headline read, "Coven's New Speedster Wreaks Havoc Again!"

He shook his head as he slipped the paper into his briefcase. These days, it seemed The Coven snagged a headline at least once a week and it wasn't just happening in California, it was all across the Usonian Union.

On his way to his bright red Pontiac LeMans, which was parked on the street outside, he passed a magnolia tree, whose flower buds would open in a couple weeks. After getting in his car and merging with the early Friday traffic, his mind drifted back to today's headline.

So far, other than when they caused the police to swarm and clog up traffic, The Coven had never directly inconvenienced him. The news loved calling them terrorists, but their strikes seemed to avoid crowded places like train stations, sporting events, and other large gatherings. They seemed far more interested in government labs, warehouses, and breaking their own people out of prison, than harassing the average Usonian.

Deep down, he hoped the rumor about The Coven being a group of revolutionaries was true. The status quo had done him very few favors.

As he passed Cherry Avenue, traffic slowed and he looked to his right. The buildings were more dilapidated here and in the short time he was looking, he spotted several chimera: a fox, two dragons, a hyena, and a tiger. Chimera was the term the Usonian Government used for humans who had been corrupted by magic, becoming human/animal hybrids.

Chris's stomach clenched. He'd always found them deeply interesting, and oftentimes beautiful, but didn't dare share that opinion with anyone. Oh how many times he'd called them disgusting just to fit in with his coworkers and bowling buddies.

The teal-scaled dragon, and the feminine hyena she was chatting with, had obvious bulges in their slacks, which made him feel even more sick. As always, he had no idea why.

His forehead started sweating as he stared at them, on the edge of fascination, fear, and fury. Just as traffic picked up, a policeman approached the two women. This policeman was in the typical navy blue uniform with maroon leather accents.

Chimera lived short, dangerous lives.

His mind drifted as he drove by block after block of Long Beach's largest chimera slum. He'd never dared to converse with a chimera beyond saying "excuse me" in a grocery store and he didn't know if he was being smart or was just a coward.

Recently, the marine layer was more responsible for low visibility in the mornings than the smog. The advent of catalytic converters had reduced the smog noticeably over the last decade, but the lethargic economy meant people were reluctant to buy new cars or upgrade their old ones. On most mornings, like today, he could only barely make out the stacks of shipping containers in Long Beach harbor a half mile away. While outside the green iron gate that led into work, he counted the number of street lights he could see before they disappeared into fog, four. The air quality was definitely improving faster than his life was.

In an ironwork arch above the gate were big yellow-painted letters spelling out "Willmore Dynamics." Behind the gate was a collection of warehouses which had been used, several decades ago, to store foodstuffs for the second World War. They now housed the California Protectorate's most advanced magitech research facility.

A guard hut next to the gate was a perfect cube with a pointy roof. On a high chair, in front of a console, was a woman with dark curly hair and a round, middle-aged face that had been so etched by boredom that it no longer had the ability to display emotions. Willmore Dynamics was the sort of secret that was so well kept that, though it theoretically benefitted from security, no one ever tested that security.

Leaning forward, the guard pushed the button that opened the gate and then went back to her horribly placid existence. It was sad to see someone so done with everything, but Chris understood that feeling.

    *

Inside the expansive, steel-beam-supported interior of the warehouse was a wide array of projects. Chris had used his gift to help with many of them, despite not knowing exactly what they did. One of them was connected to three four-meter-tall metal towers with mirror-polished balls on top and head-sized vacuum tubes powering them. Another was a six-meter-in-diameter torus hooked up to high-amperage magitech circuits and vacuum tubes the size of a person. There was one in the back that looked like a windmill combined with a bug zapper.

His project looked a lot more mundane than any of those. Just a microphone, a pre-amp circuit that used small, thumb-sized vacuum tubes, an amplification circuit that used vacuum tubes about four times larger which had boxy black centers, and a tube that was head-sized and built like a soccer ball inside of a soccer ball. The outer soccer ball was made of a wire grid while the inside soccer ball was made out of black plates. Just to the side of that soccer ball was a tube that was even taller, about one and a half times the size of Chris's forearm. It had a double helix of plates on the inside and cylindrical mesh in the center with tiny hexagonal cutouts in it.

This tube was Chris's brainchild and it's where most of the magic literally happened.

Against the warehouse's insulated steel wall was a power box with a switch two-thirds as long as Chris's forearm. Another box only half its size was next to with a switch no longer than his hand. He pulled the smaller lever down, igniting the neon lamps on the power strips of the large plywood workbench that held his project.

Heinrich, their lab assistant, had gotten the new layout for the amplifier circuit all set up and all Chris had to do was make the solder connections. So, he grabbed a soldering iron, some flux, and a spool of solder and got to work.

Because no one was calling him over to look at X, Y, or Z issue, he got everything soldered in under an hour and by the time he was done, he was grinning ear to ear. It was time to turn his baby on.

He cackled like a mad scientist from a pulpy sci-fi film as he pulled down the giant electrical box's lever. When the switch fell into the "on" position with a big clunk, an electric buzz permeated the air around him.

The soft orange glow of the filaments in the tubes lit Chris from below as he went over to the preamp circuit and started testing various connections with the oscilloscope. He found noise in the circuit immediately, and four hours later, he was no closer to figuring out where it was coming from. All his experience told him the problem was some sort of grounding issue, but he was completely out of ideas as to what to check. None of the smaller components were suspect. Not surprising since all of the resistors, diodes, chokes, and capacitors had been made by TinsleyTronics, which had incredible quality control.

Instead of banging his head against the wall, which was tempting, he turned off the power and went to a nearby cafe for a late lunch.

For dessert, he had a fudge sundae with extra maraschino cherries on top. He kept the receipt for the dessert separate, not wanting to annoy Dr. White by taking his offer of a free lunch too far.

Once back, he flipped the power on again. It was time to inspect each tube, each circuit closely using his unique gift.

Now that the filaments had warmed up, the blue glow of flowing electrons added an eerie edge to the room. Thin, effervescent, magenta tendrils moved like the limbs of tiny octopuses, mingling with the electrons. That was the evidence of magic one could see with their naked eye.

Chris took long, deep breaths, letting himself feel his annoyance at the long work week, his tiredness, the depression that was nearly drowning him, and his glee at finding the silver and gold amethyst ring that was now on his pinky finger. He had to visit that jewelry store in Santa Monica again after a few more paychecks.

Throwing out that tangent and regaining his focus, he took a few more deep breaths, listening to the electric hum of various components. He took off his shoes so he could feel the concrete floor under his socks. Vulnerable, present, and open to his emotions, magic flowed into him up through the floor and from the very air around him.

He could see and feel the tendrils that everyone else only caught glimpses of reach outside the tubes, into the air, and down the power lines.

Thrumming, fizzy magical energies mingled with his being, tugging on him as he stared deep into the preamp circuit. An urge to laugh, an urge to yell, and an urge to clench his fist all passed without him giving in. Magic, like all living things, could be tirelessly playful and curious.

A twitch in his leg, a tremble in his hand, a tingle behind his balls, all of it he ignored. He had to hang on and get this figured out because if he could get this done today, he could sleep for a week without Dr. White caring. He needed enough rest that his answer to relaxation wasn't drinking himself into a stupor. And to get this done, he needed to maintain his focus at all cost. If he didn't, he'd end up a chimera, the magic's whims forever leaving a mark on his body.

Every swirl of tendril, every reverberating wave, every bit of interference from the randomness of the universe, all of it was as it should be.

There was a prickle on the back of his hands. This was the point where he normally quit, but there was a lot more to check. Looking at the amplification circuit, he felt the prickling on the backs of his hands spread up his arms and his abdomen throbbed. A good throb? A moan escaped his lips as he spotted white peach fuzz on his upper arms and hands. This throbbing felt way too good and was spreading from under his belly button to between his legs.

"Haah! That's new." He groaned before closing his eyes and basked in the pleasurable tide of magic flowing through him.

He giggled, blushing as he fiddled with the beautiful amethyst ring on his pinky. The waves of silver and gold in the band were so elegant. It was something he could get away with wearing, something soft, and wearing it felt good in a similar way as what was going on between his legs. He bit his lip and blushed, feeling a tugging inside him, something moving. His areolas and nipples ached, his nipples tenting his shirt, looking bigger than ever. Maybe he wanted this to happen?

With a growl, he steeled himself against his emotions and all the sensations, shoving himself out of the magic's flow. He knew better than to act girly. That would only get him shunned.

His body tingled while the pleasurable ache between his legs waned and his breathing returned to normal. The fuzz had just gotten long and dense enough to be considered fur before the flow of magic stopped.

Even though all the signs of his brush with magic had passed, his heart was still racing. He'd been on the knife's edge, nearly falling into magic's embrace, crossing the chimeric threshold. But he hadn't fallen victim to it. In fact, it had been easy to pull away even when it felt good. He had tons of practice fortifying himself against his emotions, after all. Why had he been so cautious all this time?

The only places he could think to check now were the power supplies, the ground loop, and the magitech tubes. Everything else had to come before the magitech tubes. If the problem was inside them, the project would be offline for a month while they waited for them to be remade, but that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was trying to identify a problem inside them, which could take months and strained his magic sense to its limit.

Centering himself once more, he let magic mingle with his being. Fur started to show on his arms immediately, but it was coming in slowly. As pressure built on his chest, his nipples expanded once more. If he could keep all these changes going as slow as possible, he'd be fine. Temptation, curiosity, and pleasure were all the magic trying to claim his body.

Concentrating on his breathing, he stared into the power circuit. The magic coming out of the power line was wild and cantankerous, but the capacitors, electrical chokes, and resistors in the power circuit mellowed it out enough that it could flow through the rest of the system. Chokes did wonders for mellowing problematic oscillations in the magic signal, even when the electric signal didn't need one. But since turbulent magic could easily mess up an electrical signal, it wasn't always easy to tell which one was the source of the problem and most magitech circuits had more chokes than they needed.

His instincts told him this noise was starting from the electrical side of things, but he'd run out of ideas for what he could check. Plus, sometimes tracking the magic signal could reveal problems with the electrical signal.

If he didn't have his sense to rely on, he'd have to use a magic-sensing oscilloscope and wave what looked like a tiny metal fly swatter around all the wires, connections, and components of this contraption. The readout on a magic oscilloscope was much noisier than a normal oscilloscope and it was grueling work that tested one's patience.

Taking the time to apply his magic sense wholly to his hearing, he listened for noise in the signal coming out from each choke. His ears itched, enlarging as fur grew in on them. Sharp pricks just above his upper lip on either side of his nose brought his hand to his face. His eyes widened when he found whiskers, but his eyes relaxed fully when he found it soothing to stroke them.

He needed to stop stroking his whiskers and stop drawing magic right away. But stroking them was so soothing, so wonderfully--no!

As he pulled his hand away from his face, he felt his chest jiggle. Looking down, he saw his button-down shirt straining due to a sizable pair of tits. A blush pinkened his cheeks as he felt another pair below them squishing against his shirt.

"What the fuck?" He tried to push back against the magic flowing into him, to stop the changes, but the magic had momentum this time. He got a sharp ache in his head and chest.

He froze, not even breathing, and worked to endure the pain. A thought drifted through his mind as he was gathering his resolve to sever his connection to magic and return to his normal human form: shouldn't he at least answer the one question all guys ask themselves? What does one's date feel when someone touches their tits?

His hands reached down to cup the upper pair and the moment his hands made contact, he gasped.

He should've been scared, he should've been freaking out, but instead he was just standing there, holding them while tears blurred his vision. Why the fuck didn't men have tits? These things felt astoundingly good, soft with just the right amount of firmness. He gave them a squeeze and moaned.

Everyone had told him this would be a painful process, magic warping his body unnaturally, but this was the opposite of pain. Maybe he was special?

The sides of his fingers, along with his fingertips, felt like they were getting massaged while he felt yet another pair of nipples touch his dress shirt. This clearly wasn't a normal thing to have happen, but he couldn't figure out how having more tits would be a bad thing. Sure, it was the sort of thing only a chimera had and many would call it weird, but he thought it was kinda neat. He'd turn back to his original form soon. All he wanted to do was satisfy his scientific curiosity for another minute or two.

He grabbed his second pair of tits and felt blood rush to his prick. Between his legs, there was a pinch and then a tugging sensation. His pants felt tight too, like they were giving his balls way too little room.

A delightful fuzzy warmth was settling throughout his body, so delightful that he didn't want it to stop. All his life he'd been riding the edge of anxiety, but in this moment he felt so very calm. He rubbed his palms on his nipples and moaned as his prick started getting stiff. Well, maybe not completely calm. Had he known passing the chimeric threshold felt this good, he would've--

He jumped and yelped in surprise as the base of his tail bone pressed outwards and made the situation in his pants a thousand times worse. Now that he could see his white-furred hands, he spotted light blue paw pads at his fingertips, light blue webbing between his fingers, and paw pads forming on his palms. The webbing was pushing his ring towards the end of his pinky. The paw pad on the end of his pinky was keeping it from coming off.

His breath caught in his throat. He could see a deeper texture to the magic around him. A swirling, vine-like, tangled mess of it was flowing around, and through, his experiment. Then there was the writhing mass of it that was flowing into his body. The magic was a network of vibrant tentacles that were adding depth and life to everything.

These wonderful sensations, the beauty of the magic, how right this felt, the rest of the world was thousands of miles away. Perhaps the magic had him in its web. Perhaps this is why he'd been warned all his life to stay away from the chimeric threshold. It didn't matter. He couldn't find a single shred of resistance inside himself.

Huh, it felt kinda wet between his legs. He undid his pants and let them fall to the floor before sliding down his boxers. Tears clouded his vision again as he realized what that might mean. He still had his balls and his prick was half-hard, so that meant the magic was giving him both? He bit his lip and reached down toward his crotch.

Right behind his balls, his fingers found a big, round, clit nestled between moist pussy lips. Simply his fingers coming into contact with his clit sent a white hot jolt of pleasure through him. He screeched and bucked his hips wildly as waves of contractions crashed throughout his brand new cunt. As his cock started spasming, it took on a light blue shade and tapered toward the tip as it got larger and larger. His right hand gripped the workbench next to him to keep himself upright while his left hand rubbed his clit in little circles.

He couldn't hold back. Everything was automatic. And as he let out a breathless scream, his dick fired ropes of pearly white all over the concrete floor. Pussy juice wetted his inner thighs as he gushed between his legs. It felt like someone had set off a flash bulb inside him and burning white light was permeating every facet of his being.

When the dual-orgasm was over, he was just standing there, panting, feeling warm and relieved in a way he could barely comprehend. This was the sort of orgasm he'd thought he'd get when he was first with a woman, but he'd achieved it on his own. He pulled his fingers away from his pussy and licked his own nectar off his paw pads. It tasted faintly of fresh squeezed orange juice with a bitterness like the peel and a tartness reminiscent of cranberries. He was still licking it off his fingers when a clang echoed throughout the warehouse. Someone had just unlocked the swinging steel door next to the large warehouse door.

"Oh shit! Shit, shit, shit!" He dropped to the floor, hiding behind the workbench, wetting the fur on his knees with some of the feminine excitement that had dripped onto the floor.

If he was caught this far transformed, he'd be jailed for unsanctioned magic use. He'd lose his job and have lots of trouble getting another. Or worse, he'd be sentenced to community service, blasting subway tunnels.

Why had he let himself become an abomination? Magic had distracted him with a dangerous fantasy. He was a man, not a hermaphroditic furred creature. The creature he was now had no future.

He pushed the magic out, ignoring the pain.

Anxiety came flooding back as his fur was forced to retreat. The tightness in his shirt slowly abated and his cock started returning to its human color and shape. Each thud of the vertebrae in his tail being forced into non-existence was excruciating. Fighting to move despite the pain, he used his boxers to wipe up cum and pussy nectar. He rolled them up so the moistest parts were in the center and then slipped them into a pocket on his leather jacket. After that, it was a real chore to get his pants on while his body was changing. With each motion to get himself dressed, the jiggling weight on his chest diminished. He told himself that it was a good thing, but his facial expression soured into a grief-stricken scowl.

When he heard the footsteps of whoever had entered the building get close, he pulled his amethyst ring off and rolled it toward the corner of the workbench.

Dr. White stepped into view, looking down at him while holding two foil-wrapped paper plates stacked atop each other.

If Dr. White wasn't clean shaven, he would've looked like the spitting image of Abraham Lincoln with his tall build, long, wrinkled face, and prominent nose.

Chris's muscles were so tight that he was struggling to breathe. The only evidence he could sense that he wasn't fully human was the wet, throbbing muff between his legs, but he didn't know for a fact that nothing was showing. So, he only glanced up at Dr. White for a second.

"My ring got caught on something and I'm trying to find it." Chris's voice was a bit higher than normal.

Dr. White set the plates on the workbench and stooped down for a moment before grabbing the ring and handing it to Chris. "Here you are."

"Oh, thanks!" Chris smiled up at Dr. White, getting off the floor as the throbbing of his pussy started to wane. He really hoped there wasn't any visible evidence of his transformation left.

"You're welcome." Dr. White looked into Chris's eyes. "Huh, I always thought you had dark brown eyes, but I guess they're more gray or hazel?"

"The lighting in here does some odd things." Chris chuckled to try and disarm Dr. White. It came out as a nervous chuckle and he felt like his heart was about to stop.

"Considering the magic we get up to in here, I'm not surprised." Dr. White looked at the glowing tubes with a furrowed brow. "It looks like you've turned on the power for some reason? I thought we still had to wire everything up."

From the plates that Dr. White had set down, Chris smelled fresh cornbread and grilled chicken. He pushed his love of cookout food to the side so he could think.

"No one grabbed me to look over other projects, so it was smooth sailing. I got it all wired and powered up." Chris reached behind his neck and scratched, feeling the last bit of fur vanish from his body.

"That's fantastic progress!" Dr. White's eyes were wide with appreciation and awe.

"Well, mostly. There's noise that I can't find the source of with or without my gift. I've been at it for several hours."

"It's almost supper time, why don't you just go home and rest? We're now ahead of schedule and starting the weekend early will do you some good." A gentle smile graced Dr. White's lips.

"Thanks. I think that's a good idea." Chris put a couple schematics he wanted to review over the weekend in his briefcase. His snatch tensed one last time, making him gasp under his breath, before it sealed up. "I'm hoping the problem's not some sort of reverberation from the magitech tubes. Redesigning those would completely tank our deadline."

"True. I'll take a look myself before I go home. Maybe I'll spot something."

"I hope you do, because I'm running out of ideas." Chris sighed, getting on his brown leather jacket. Then he slung his briefcase over his shoulder using the shoulder strap and put on his fedora.

"Well, maybe a nice barbecue dinner will get your mind going again. I'll trade you the receipt from lunch for these plates." Dr. White picked up the plates.

Pulling the receipt out of his pocket, he stuck it in the upper right pocket of Dr. White's lab coat. Then he grabbed the plates and balanced them on his left hand.

"See you on Monday." Dr. White made his way to the oscilloscope.

    *

Even after eating his fill of the delicious barbecue fare in his improperly renovated, dilapidated kitchen, Chris felt off. He felt much like the walls of his apartment, which had so many layers of white paint on them that some of it was flaking off. He should've been happy about getting the prototype powered up faster than expected, but he'd been looking forward to the spring cookout for over a month. Getting paid to eat good food and hang out with the coworkers he actually liked was always a blast.

Was Dr. White going to talk him out of the summer and fall cookouts too?

The one person he definitely couldn't count on was himself. It made sense the only time he remembered being happy in the last few months was when he had fur earlier today. Being awash in magic was the only thing that had truly pushed him outside his comfort zone in years. Misery was some rather painful comfort, but he sure loved wrapping himself in it. He was lucky he had his gift or he'd be the most useless man alive.

Come to think of it, his gift had gotten way more intense when the magic started changing his body.

His mind jumped back to the sensations of having tits, a satiny opening between his legs, whiskers, and a tail. "Why had it felt so good?" he asked himself as he grabbed the bottle of vodka he'd left on the counter and poured himself a shot. Putting a maraschino cherry in the shot glass, he remembered that moment when his fingertips had come into contact with his brand new clit and blushed.

This line of thinking needed to end. He downed the shot. Then another as he remembered his tits jiggling.

If he let the magic tempt him to become a full chimera, he'd end up even more under the heel of society than he already was. And he was only just above dirt, at the moment. Everything hurt as that thought sat in his mind and he didn't want to know why. His eyes wouldn't stop getting wet today and his mind refused to shut up.

Dropping two maraschino cherries in his third shot of vodka, he sat on the edge of his bed and stared at Cherri, the stuffed otter atop his dresser and her friend, Tinsley, the stuffed horse. He'd always wondered what it felt like to have fur and the fact that he now knew that it was infinitely better than the sticky skin humans had was torture.

He sipped this shot over the course of a minute, hoping sleep would take him soon. When he laid down, the bottle of vodka loomed over him, sitting on the nightstand while his body felt ever so heavy. Tears beaded at the corners of his eyes as he wondered what breasts felt like when one was lying on their back.

Is this why people said to stay away from the chimeric threshold? Because they got charmed by the magic somehow?

He pulled the amethyst ring off of his pinky and stared at it, rolling it between his fingers. The government sure loved to preach about how evil magic was, how it had to be controlled, and how unsanctioned use of it led to calamity. There was this quality to propaganda that made it stick out, though. It was the same reason he wasn't convinced that The Coven was a terrorist group: when the government's fixation on something was about them maintaining absolute power over their populace, they would talk overmuch about it, instilling as much fear and shame as possible.

So, what was he waiting for? Everything he'd heard suggested he should've been in immense pain when he transformed, but it had felt good. They'd also said, repeatedly, that once you passed the Chimeric Threshold, you would forever be tainted. He didn't have one whisker, one extra nipple, or one tiny bit of fur left on him. If he wanted, he could draw magic until he was fully transformed right here, right now, and see for himself just how real the danger actually was.

He put the amethyst ring back on and then only managed to unbutton three buttons on his shirt before his chest tightened up along with the back of his neck. What if he couldn't change back after he fully transformed? What if the rumors about the insatiable lust chimeras have was true? He'd been unable to resist touching himself in the middle of the warehouse.

That was it, he needed to stop entertaining this fantasy and get the fuck to sleep. Grabbing the bottle of vodka, he took two gulps.

    *

Chris smacked his alarm clock as he woke up, but the noise that had forced him into wakefulness didn't stop. As he stumbled forward out of bed, his pudgy hand grabbed the doorframe to the closet. His right foot kicked an empty bottle of vodka while his left foot crunched on a discarded bag of chips. He reached down to untangle his ochre comforter from his left ankle and then bounded across his hardwood floor toward the far wall. An ache in his left knee from the drunken way he'd slept slowed him down a bit, but he soon grabbed the brown receiver off the wall and put it up to his ear.

"Hello?" He stammered, barely awake, his head pounding.

"We need a working prototype by Sunday evening." Dr. White sounded far too awake for this hour on a Saturday.

"What? Why?" Chris mumbled, a bit of acid bubbling up from his stomach. He really shouldn't have had potato chips and more vodka when he woke up in the middle of the night.

"Commissar Natayev's flying back to St. Petersburg on Monday."

"So? I know I'm ahead of schedule, but I can't do two weeks of work in two days. He'll have to see it when he comes back." Chris was about ready to hang up.

 "If he flies back with no progress to report, they'll pull the funding, I just know it." Dr. White was breathing heavily. "We have to show him something, anything before he leaves."

"I still haven't found the source of the noise, and until I do, even if we manage to entangle both ends and transmit through a kilometer of bedrock, the signal will be rubbish." Chris sighed. "Transmitting static isn't going to impress anyone.

"So, you're just going to give up and risk our funding? I thought you had a gift for this."

"Speaking of my gift, it's not like I can just use it for hours on end. I'd be a chimera in no time. And I don't even know if it is a problem with the magic right now. It could be an electrical problem that's resistant to my troubleshooting."

"I checked Heinrich's work and all your solder joints. It's not an electrical problem. You've been with us for five years, Chris, and you haven't had even one chimeric event. I think it's time you stopped making excuses and started pulling your weight." Dr. White was trying to sound forceful, but his nervous energy was making his voice waver.

"Pulling my weight? I'm the one who came up with the idea for this whole project." Chris worked to bring his volume down for the next part. "It's not even seven A.M. on a Saturday and I was trying to catch up on sleep from the overtime last week. I don't have anything left and I don't think we're at risk of losing our funding. Commissar Natayev is a consummate nerd and loves this project."

"Just like you, Commissar Natayev has superiors to answer to. You're going to come in and get me results this weekend or you're going to be finding a new job on Monday." Dr. White hung up.

"God damn it!" Chris slammed the phone down and then walked back into his bedroom, scooping yesterday's undershirt and blue dress shirt up off the floor.

The sooner he could get into work and get the prototype working, the sooner he could come home and sleep for sixteen hours straight.

As he walked up to his dresser, he caught a glimpse of his light brown hair, bit of extra weight, and round face in the mirror atop it. He hated how he looked, but he never had enough motivation to remove that damn mirror. Maybe Dr. White was right to treat him like a fuck up. Exhaustion and anxiety were trying to kill him. Every breath hurt.

He picked up Cherri and held her forearm-sized, stuffed otter body against his chest for a moment. It was so stupid that he started feeling better. Maybe he never fully grew up. Maybe he was too isolated. Maybe he was too effeminate to exist. The same friends that taught him how to “hold his school books like a man” were the same friends that he’d had to hide Cherri and Tinsley from every time they came over. Now he never had to hide them because no one wanted to spend time in his dinky, dilapidated apartment.

After he set down Cherri, he pet Tinsley’s mane. “I’m such a fragile wimp.”

Opening the top left drawer, he got a pair of green plaid boxers and then opened the drawer next to it to get a pair of black socks. He was dressed and out the door in under ten minutes, a peanut butter and honey sandwich dangling from his mouth.

Before he opened the car door, he took a bite of his hastily-made sandwich. Then he got in his car and became part of the zoned-out weekend morning traffic. The only good thing about driving to work this early on a Saturday was that the smog wasn't too bad.

Dr. White had had his moments in the past, but today was a special occasion. As he drove up to warehouse thirteen on the Willmore Dynamics campus, Chris felt dread permeate every bit of his being. He'd finally been asked for the impossible. As much as he wanted to believe he'd be able to finish everything and actually have Sunday free, he wasn't even sure he could get the prototype working by the end of the week, let alone Monday.

    *

Surrounded by his prototype once again, he carefully used his magic sense to trace each circuit, trying to get a feel for the flow and see if it matched up with his schematics. This careful use of his gift lacked so much nuance, however. He couldn't see much outside the wires or identify any possible sources of magic interference from the rest of the warehouse. The more he looked, the less he was convinced it was a problem with the magic flow. Except for one possibility, the possibility he had been avoiding this entire time: that one of the magitech tubes was the issue.

So far the magic hadn't pulled at him, but he'd been using his gift at such a low level. The moment he turned toward the magitech tubes, he needed more sensory depth. As he let more magic flow into him, tears he had been holding back since yesterday afternoon started pouring down his cheeks.

He was so tired, so worn out, and it felt like no one gave a shit about his suffering. Here he was, working on a Saturday after putting in twelve hour days for most of last week. His eyes hurt, his head was pounding, and his body was still reeling from all the vodka he'd had to drink to fall asleep. Everything was a mess. His life had nothing soft in it other than that brief moment he'd been a non-human freak.

There was no way what made him happy in life would ever be accepted by everyone else. He cried harder, grabbing onto the workbench that had the amplifier and preamp circuits on it.

His crying tapered off over the next few minutes and he realized he was tired of feeling sorry for himself. Deep down, he knew he had a choice, that it was his fears holding him captive. That he was a coward when it came to breaking the rules, even when there was little risk of getting caught.

It was something he hated himself for, so much.

He froze as a thought he'd never ever had before blindsided him: if he wanted to stop hating himself, he'd have to change the way he did things and become someone he liked more.

No one was here this early on a Saturday morning. The guard at the gate had practically been asleep when he arrived. It was the same woman who was there on Friday morning, actually. She had days off in the middle of the week and was usually there before he got to work. There were a couple other guards that made their rounds, but none of them had high enough clearance to enter warehouse thirteen. Too much chance of corporate espionage, too little chance of someone stealing one of the giant projects in here.

If he passed the chimeric threshold, he could change back before anyone noticed. And even just letting enough magic in to give him some fur and tits had given him a much keener sense.

What would happen if he didn't fight the magic and just let it in? Would he see even more? Maybe see enough detail to locate the problem instantly or identify, without a doubt, that the problem was electrical?

He set his ring on the workbench so it wouldn't get pushed off or trapped when he got webbed fingers and paw pads. Then he closed his eyes and took in a few deep breaths, letting himself plummet into magic's embrace. Paw pads, fur, tits--his eyes widened as his tailbone shot outwards. He'd forgotten about the tail!

While scrambling to get his pants off, his tail threatened the seam between his pant legs and a couple stitches popped. Then he quickly got his boxers and shoes off, wondering what type of tail he was getting.

The buttons on his shirt strained as eight tits took up all the available space. He could see the nipples of each set making tents in his shirt while he noticed them, and the flesh under them, getting squished. A blush raged on his cheeks as the third button from the top gave way, a pair of white-furred tits with light blue nipples bouncing to celebrate their sudden freedom. His fourth button followed. He ran his hands over the supple mounds of flesh, his light blue paw pads getting tickled by the soft, dense fur.

While he toyed with his tits, he got out of his button-down shirt and undershirt. Then he went back to feeling up his eight-pack of boobs.

"HNNGGG!" Blood rushed to his crotch, his balls falling lower and lower as short, satiny fur spread across them. A pinching near the top of each of his testes was followed by two tiny lumps pushing up into him from his sac.

As these lumps moved upwards into his abdomen, the tugging between his legs became very strong, feeling like penetration combined with muscle contractions. His foreskin pulled back into a sheath, his length tapering toward the tip some. He reached full hardness as his dick turned a vibrant shade of light blue that matched his nipples and paw pads. The head of his dick flattened and slanted back towards him on the top side, looking somewhere between a canine and an equine cock.

His nose started turning blue to match his nipples and cock while it flattened and his gums got tender. Then the trickle of magic that was flowing to his head became a torrent and his jaws cracked as they pushed forwards. The folds in his ears changed shape as they enlarged and dark purple fur grew in on the backs of them. On the front and underside of his growing muzzle, the same white fur on his belly, balls, the underside of his tail, his forearms, and forelegs sprouted. He felt more thuds as new vertebrae came into being, his tail getting ever longer, with a very thick base. It now went down past his knees. The sting of his whiskers coming in accompanied a penetrating warmth in his feet and ankles. His socks tore as his toenails became blunt claws and his feet widened, becoming more paw-shaped, complete with paw pads.

He gasped at the beauty of his fur pattern, looking at his thighs and hips. Dark purple arcs and elongated, crescent-shaped dots sat amongst purple-red fur which gradually shaded to white by just past his knees. The same sort of gradient happened between his shoulders and forearms.

Behind his balls, there was a sucking sensation and then wetness. With his right hand, he reached back there, his paw-padded fingertips coming into contact with wet, puffy pussy lips. The fur was more like peach fuzz and the lips were leathery while being very soft. The result was a wonderfully stretchy and smooth expanse that was so sensitive his tail was curling and he couldn't stand still.

Aroused excitement welled up in him and he let loose an otter chitter as he bounced on his footpaws. The magic had the upper hand again, he couldn't hold back. He had to explore everything!

An ache in his legs, back, and arms accompanied an odd sense that the room was getting taller.

That detail was lost as he felt his balls grow, hanging heavier in his expanding sac and pulling on his pussy lips. His prick felt tight as it got a growth spurt, a medial ring forming about two-thirds of the way down.

"Ahh! FUCK YES!" He cried out as he hooked two fingers over his clit and plunged them into his snatch.

Touching his snatch in this way made him sway his hips back and forth, and as they swayed, they got more voluptuous along with his buttocks. Within a couple minutes, he had a back end worthy of envy.

Reaching down with his left hand, he found that his cock was so thick he almost couldn't get his fingers around it. His hips started moving on their own, thrusting into his hand. While his pucker took on an equine donut shape, his pussy became equine teardrop-shaped, and his prick grew to over a foot long.

The workbench next to him definitely seemed taller than before. In the brief moment while he tried to understand what was happening, his womb and girl parts finished forming, contracting from his depths to his opening. Along with his femme parts winking, there was this double-wave of pleasure. The muscles inside him were strong, gripping his paw-padded fingers tightly. He gasped and groaned and shook as more waves of pleasure crashed through him from both his cunt and his cock.

His tail got so long it could more-than touch the floor.

In a moment of desperation, feeling like his fingers would never be enough, he grabbed his tail and shoved the end into his snatch. He gasped and groaned and uncontrollably thrust his long, thick dick into his hand, feeling his pussy stretch wider and wider for his tail.

Between his fingers and toes, light blue webbing spread out, finalizing his transformation into a herm anthro otter. If he had known he could feel like this, he wouldn't have been able to stop this transformation the first time.

As he thrust his prick into his hand and stuffed his snatch with his tail, he felt his eight tits bouncing on his chest and abdomen while his two-inch-in-diameter balls swung wildly. It was obvious to him now that he was not much over five feet tall. He'd lost at least eight inches of height.

Being smaller, like everything else, felt so damn right!

Normally, he just got himself off to deal with a feeling of being pent up. Right now, he couldn't get enough of touching himself. Everything felt so perfect, so wonderfully--

Pleasure, overwhelming sparks of pleasure were heating up every inch of him, spreading out from his groin as a two-lobed knot inflated at the base of his dick. Then he felt his cock pulsing. He fell to his knees as his cunny convulsed around his tail and his dick lurched.

Squealing at the top of his lungs, he fired ropes of cum across the concrete floor while a rush of fluids from his spasming love tunnel added to the mess.

His breath caught as he felt his inner walls milk his tail as if it was a nice big cock. Rope after rope of pearly white left his shaft, two of them hitting his work pants. For the last two shots, he planted his mouth on the top of his dick and drank them down. He instantly regretted not catching more of his cum because it tasted a bit like a salty cranberry orange scone.

Gently, he fell on his right side, panting and squirming as aftershocks of his release ricocheted through him. His face was plastered with a pleased grin until he started giggling. The giggling sounded like cute, girly chirps. He kept chirping while feeling up his chest, knot, balls, and pussy. The joy in him was so intense that he could barely keep still and he knew, deep down, he'd give anything to be able to remain in this form forever.

It took him a half hour of fondling his new chimera form, and cumming again, for him to finally start thinking about what to do next.

He frowned immediately, knowing it was time to change back. Concentrating, taking deep breaths, and clamping down on his emotions, he envisioned his human form and tried to push the magic out.

Nothing happened, not even pain.

He couldn't even feel the presence of magic inside him as a separate thing. The life force of the cosmos, the web that held all living things together, he'd--she'd never felt one with it before. Yes, her true form was a feminine presence in the universe. She'd avoided it her entire life, but in this moment she was fresh out of lies.

While staring up at the ceiling with no idea what to do, she witnessed the complex, interwoven texture of magic as it interacted with everything within thirty meters of her.

"Oh wow!" Her eyes widened as her jaw dropped open. It was stunning, it was overwhelming, and it was the absolute most breathtaking thing she'd ever seen.

Tears dripped from her furry cheeks. Her life was so insignificant, but still a bright spec amongst it all. Breathing, taking in nourishment, and making choices connected her to it all. But seeing the magic tendrils reaching out toward her from the rose bushes outside the hangar, feeling their warm, passive and yet nurturing touch, provided a gorgeously deep sensation of connectedness. Focusing her sense upwards, she felt the seagulls on the roof of the warehouse, their curious, hungry minds, their noisy playfulness.

Then there was the well of magic inside her, reaching outwards into the chaotic beauty of existence. Much of her magical energies were currently centered on her head for her magic sense, but there was a warm, magical presence in her balls and womb too. Her balls were virile and productive, and could light the spark of life inside another. And her...

She started bawling, clutching her womb. With every fiber of her being, she knew for a fact that the capacity to be a mother was now hers. Finally. Finally, she could carry the spark of life inside herself.

Someday, if she chose, her own child would look up at her and call her "mommy."

That thought led to a torrent of tears that kept her on the floor, writhing and sobbing for long enough that her diaphragm started to ache. Relief, immense relief that she could barely understand the depths of, was pouring through her. At this intensity, it was an alien emotion, something that she didn't know was possible to experience. Eventually she was panting and staring at the dynamic web of magic around her. She blew her cute otter nose on her work shirt and dried her eyes, resolve crystalizing in her mind as she did so.

No one would ever take this away from her. No one would make her feel as empty and used as she felt before opening herself to the universe, to her true self. If she had to live in a chimera slum, join The Coven, or hide in some faraway place, she would do it because she'd found her truth and would never look away from it again. Existing as her old self had been a grueling trial, existing like this was effortless.

She got up, her smaller stature making this open warehouse feel a lot bigger. Grabbing her boxers, she put them on, amused by how they fit around her hips after she stuck her tail down the left leg. Then she put on her pants, which were way too big for her, but that made it easy for her to hide her tail. Some cum had gotten on the outside of the pants' left thigh, but her aquatic-adapted fur made the chill from that barely noticeable. Finding that her baggy pants didn't want to stay up, despite her wide hips, she found an awl lying on one of the benches and made a new hole in her belt.

She took off her shark tooth necklace and then grabbed her amethyst ring off the workbench before stringing the cord through the ring and putting the necklace back on. Then she put her light blue shirt on, glad only one of the buttons had actually flown off. Her coat was next, and then she put on the fedora, amused that her ears were bigger than a typical otter's and were helping her hat stay on. Her overall smaller form made it so her wide paws still kinda fit in her shoes, so she put them on as best she could. It made walking a bit awkward, but she didn't want an errant screw stuck in one of her paw pads.

The mess she'd made was massive, so she went and got a mop and bucket. She mopped it all up, blushing at the sensation of her tits and balls swaying. Even wearing clothes felt lewd in this form.

As she was turning to leave, she spotted something from her, now shorter, height that she hadn't spotted before. One of the screws that held the giant breadboards for the prototype was missing its insulating washer. She laughed hysterically as she realized the interference problem had, indeed, been electrical. She hadn't needed to use her gift after all and it would take about five minutes of effort for her prototype to work.

Hmm. Her prototype... If anyone caught her, she was screwed, so there was nothing stopping her from being a petty bitch.

Going over to the wall, she grunted as she pushed the lever on the breaker box into the off position. After it clanked loudly, gathered all her notes and plans, ripping them out of notebooks and folding them before stuffing them into her briefcase. She put her socks in there too, not wanting to leave behind any evidence. Her dexterity was a bit different now that she had daintier, webbed hands, but she still managed. By the time all her notes were collected, the tube with the hexagonal array, the tube she designed herself, was cool enough to touch.

She grabbed a stepping stool and grunted as she pulled the giant tube out of its socket. It took some wiggling and a lot of patience, but eventually, it popped free. She shoved that tube between her eight tits and then zipped up her jacket to hold it in place. Then she grabbed her briefcase and went up to the warehouse door.

Before disengaging the lock, she reached out with her magic sense, finding only one guard within thirty meters. Once he passed her building and turned left to go between two of the warehouses, she scurried to her car. She kept the tube between her tits as she readjusted the seat and grabbed a beach blanket from the trunk. She sat atop the beach blanket after folding it so she wouldn't put too much pressure on her tail.

"Hey there, Chris!" the guard she thought she'd avoided said.

She squeaked in surprise, her heart pounding in her ears. This was bad! In all her reconfiguring of the car, she'd lost track of him.

Speaking in the lowest voice she could muster, she said, "Sorry, can't talk, gotta get to a bowling match."

"Huh? Is that really you, Chris?" The guard said, walking closer.

"Sorry! I'm really late!" She started the car and raced toward the gate, the guard calling after her.

The gate was far enough away that she was able to act calm as she drove up. The bored guard let her out without even looking at her.

After driving home, she took her emergency cash out of a tea tin in the back of her cupboard, and gathered Cherri and Tinsley from the top of her dresser. As she did so, she saw her otter muzzle, her purple and white fur, the whiskers that came out of her cheeks, her vibrant light blue nose and eyes. The hate she used to feel when looking in the mirror was now a memory. Instead, she adored the face looking back at her, even if it looked goofy under a wide-brimmed fedora.

She stuffed her childhood friends, and a bunch more essentials, in a big canvas backpack. Anything she knocked over due to her not being used to her smaller stature, she left where it lay, knowing that this sad, neglected property was no longer her home. Later, once she had all her essentials packed, the mess gave her an idea. She ransacked her place, making it look as if someone was desperately trying to find plans for top secret devices she’d worked on. During that, she grabbed every one of the schematics she wanted to keep and put them all in her briefcase. The last thing she did was take all the business cards she kept in a glass jar near the door and stuffed them in one of her jacket pockets along with the little spiral-bound notebook she kept important numbers in.

Just before she left, her phone started to ring. She grabbed the receiver with the sleeve of her jacket and let it hang.

“Hello? H-hello? Chris? Are you there? One of the guards saw--”

She let Dr. White ramble nervously while she pushed the glass jar the business cards had been in off the shelf. The crash caused him to gasp. She chuckled quietly as she stepped through the front door and left it ajar, adding a bit of mystery. Then she booked it for the chimera slum on foot.

She'd long heard people deride the fact that chimera had underground railroads to illicitly smuggle each other to safety, that they were scheming to overthrow the government and/or turn everyone into chimeras like them, and all sorts of stuff like that. She hoped all of it was true.

Thinking back on Dr. White calling her name, she shook her head. She wasn't Christopher Langdon anymore. She was Cherri Tinsley and her life had just begun.

END OF EPISODE

I’d like to acknowledge my $20+ patrons: Arkona Kothe, forestwolf98, Longhauler, LambChopSoldier, Navajo Demar, Tiliquain, Warialinth, and Xaziana Tenebris for helping make all this possible. Thank you! Thanks to all my other patrons as well. Every one of you rocks!

(Season 1) Cherri Ref 

Art by Miraoff on FA