Unfolding Her Wings
#4 of Commissions
Trying to protect his friend, David awakens to find himself a much different person than he was before...
A commission from AngelKatt(https://angelkatt.sofurry.com/) involving her katsune fursona. As always, all constructive criticism is welcome. Enjoy!
"Quick, in here!"
The metal door slammed against the wall as an exhausted David shoved the door open, practically pulling in his equally exhausted friend Jeremy before closing the door and locking it before nearly collapsing in exhaustion against it.
"Are we safe in here?" Jeremy finally managed to get out after taking a few moments to catch his breath, his hand brushing lightly against his soft brown hair as he wiped some sweat from his brow. "Those idiots can't follow us in here, right?"
David could only nod in agreement as he tried to recover himself. At 15 years old, a sophomore in high school, and STILL he was having to run away from bullies. He wasn't sure what was more pathetic, that or that there were still bullies whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to make his miserable in high school. No, wait; he did know. It was the latter.
"Don't worry." David finally managed to get out once he'd recovered. "They always forget to lock that backdoor, and there's no way inside without a key. Even if they saw us run in here, there's no way for them to get inside. We'll just wait here for a while till the coast is clear, then we'll take off."
Jeremy concurred with that plan; while he at least had some height to his lanky frame, both guys were about as thin as could be without being considered sickly. Neither one of them stood a chance against the jocks that seemed to have more meat in their arms than the two friends had on their entire bodies combined. Eventually the Triple Threat, the name their trio of bullies gave themselves, would get bored and go looking for someone else to pummel.
David grabbed a pair of glasses from their storage space(it helped that he was a dishwasher part time here to know where they were, as well as knowing about the unlocked backdoor and that the restaurant was closed today) in the kitchen and a pitcher, filling it with some water and ice before bringing them out of the kitchen and into the restaurant proper. Setting everything down on the bar table, David poured a glass and offered it to Jeremy, who happily accepted. David followed up with a glass for himself before the two of them took a seat on the attached bar stools. Neither one said anything for a moment as they drank, the water helping with their physical exhaustion but doing little to help with the mental exhaustion of being a constant punching bag.
"Did you imagine things would still be like this for us in high school, David?" Jeremy asked, finishing off his glass with a heavy sigh. "Still being chased by the same morons who tormented us in middle school? The ones who bombed every test yet somehow still managed to limp on to the next grade to follow us around and beat us up some more?"
"Can't say that I did, at least not at first." David's sigh matched his friend's level of resignation at their predicament. "The teachers always said, 'Be smart, study, and you'll be the ones who make it in the real world', like school isn't real. The bruises and beatings we've gotten have felt pretty real to me."
"Yeah..." A touch of sadness lingered in his voice as Jeremy smiled at his best friend. "If it weren't for you, I don't know how I would've made it through all this crap."
"T-Thanks..." David's cheeks flushed a little at his friend's words. "Listen, Jeremy, I've bee-urk!"
"David!" Jeremy turned as his friend was suddenly yanked backwards and thrown into a nearby booth, only to have his view immediately blocked by Maurice, one of the members of the Triple Threat.
"Told you they ran in here!" A cocky smirk adorned the blonde-haired jock's face as he called out to Lawrence and Curtis, the other two members of the group. The other two emerged just in time to hold David by the arms, forcing him to watch as Maurice landed a vicious blow into Jeremy's stomach that made him double over and nearly fall off the stool.
"Stop it!" David struggled against the vice-like grip of his captors, only to find said grip getting even tighter as he tried to squirm free. "How'd you even get in here anyway?! There's no way in here without a k-"
"Without a key?" Maurice smirked as he produced a set of keys from his pocket. "My Dad's the owner, dipshit. That means he owns you, and that means I own you!"
"T-That's not how tha-oof!" Jeremy's attempted correction was met with another punch to his stomach, this one making him fall off the stool and collapse onto the floor below. Maurice cracked his knuckles before leaning down to grab Jeremy by the collar of his shirt, hauling him up as he prepared to throw another punch.
"What is wrong with you, Maurice?!" David would've tried talking to the other two, but Maurice was the brains of the operation, or at least the only one to have something that resembled a brain. For as much time as they were tormented by the trio, David couldn't remember Lawrence or Curtis even speaking other than to laugh and give words of encouragement to their leader. "If you don't like us, why don't you just leave us alone? Why do you keep coming after us?!"
"Why? Because it's fun!" Maurice flexed his arm, pulling the sleeve of his t-shirt to show off his bulging bicep. "Because I'm strong, and the strong are supposed to dominate the weak little fags like you two!"
David didn't respond, in part because he didn't want to dignify Maurice's words with a response but also because he wasn't entirely sure Maurice was wrong, either. David couldn't speak for Jeremy's feelings about him, but lately David had been starting to think of Jeremy as being kind of cute. Even David wasn't sure how deep his feelings ran for Jeremy, but he was just beginning to explore the idea of them maybe being more than friends. Running from bully's in-between school work and his part time job left little time for him to really explore those feelings or to find out if Jeremy felt the same way about him.
"Let him go, Maurice." The pain in Jeremy's voice was obvious as he leaned heavily against the bar, but so was the determination. "You can pound on me all you want, but let David go."
Maurice gave some sort of snide comment, though it was lost on David as Jeremy's words hit him on a deep, emotional level. How could it not? His best friend, the person who his feelings for were evolving in ways even he didn't understand, had just offered to sacrifice himself to save him! He didn't know if it was out of love, friendship, or just deep loyalty, but it only made him treasure his friend even more.
The swirling emotions, the desire to protect his friend, the anger of being bullied yet again, culminated in a perfect storm of emotions. When Maurice bought his fist back to pummel Jeremy again, a sudden burst of strength let David slip free of his captors. Without thinking he grabbed Maurice's fist as it shot toward Jeremy's face, somehow managing to reach out, grab, and hold it back before it made contact. David caught a brief glimpse of a smiling Jeremy before everything went to hell.
Maurice pulled his fist free of David's hands and swung again, this time aiming and connecting with David's face. The blow was so quick that David didn't even have time to register the pain as he was driven back, too stunned to properly realize what was happening. It also meant he was too stunned to try and keep his head from slamming full force into the heavy wooden bar as he fell. He vaguely heard a cracking sound somewhere, then everything went black.
"Owww..."
Am I dead? Usually not a good sign when that's the first thing you think of when you wake up, but it was the first thing that crossed David's mind as he slowly came to. If the splitting headache was anything to go by, though, at least he was certain he was still alive. Thoughts of Jeremy slipped from his mind for now, though given the circumstances it'd be hard for anybody to blame him.
"Where am I?..." His reclined resting position and the IV bag hanging near his head suggested to David he was in a hospital of some sort. His eyes followed the liquid flowing through the tube down to his arm, a clear liquid of some sort being pumped in through the needle that had been inserted into his arm, right above his brown furred covered hand. The brown fur covered hand that was always there, with its semi-paw shape and claws and... wait a minute...
"What the?..." More confused than anything else, David found the hand did in fact belong to him as it turned and clenched at his command. Whether it was head trauma or something else that kept him from realizing sooner, it was slowly dawning on David that his hand was probably one of the least shocking changes to have occurred to him. One of the most prominent changes was that he, David, wasn't really much a of a he anymore.
The higher pitch his voice was reaching should have been a clue, but the way the hospital gown bulged across his chest in a decidedly feminine outline was the most indisputable fact that David was female now. Pulling the needle out of her arm, David also noticed the unusual fur pattern that covered the rest of said limb. The brown of his hands only went about halfway up his forearms before suddenly shifting to a bright gold, only to shift colors AGAIN about halfway up her tricep and bicep where it became a bright red color.
Pulling herself into a seating position on the edge of the bed, David found her legs had gained a similar pattern in both structure and color. Tried to stand flat on her feet like normal felt incredibly uncomfortable; instead it was only when she tried to stand entirely on her toes did she feel like she properly balanced. A few tentative steps confirmed that her feet were closer to a digitigrade animal like a cat or bird. Despite how foreign this should have felt to the former human, now...well, she wasn't sure WHAT she was at the moment, but definitely not human being, she was moving at a brisk pace within seconds.
David was still a little stiff from lying in bed so long, rolling her shoulders a little to stretch them out and get some feeling going back in them. David felt her shoulder muscles moving and flexing slightly, as well as... something else? Looking back over her shoulder, her eyes went wide when she saw the giant set of wings that were now sprouting out her back. And was that a tail she felt brushing against her butt now as well? How the heck had she missed these?!
"This is so weird... and yet it's not." David knew she should be freaking out about these changes she kept discovering, but she felt completely at peace with it. It certainly helped that her feathered wings, with golden feathers layered atop red feathers that attached to brown forelimbs, were quite beautiful to help make their sudden discovery tolerable. Overall everything was still weird, though, and that fact that it didn't FEEL weird made it even weirder.
Finding a mirror in the corner of the room, David quickly discovered the rest of her changes. It was almost a relief to see her face no longer looked human, the small pink nose on the tip of a short muzzle the first thing that caught her attention. Her human ears were gone, replaced with a pair of triangular red furred covered ears atop her short brown hair with purple tips. The wings blocked a clear view before, but by turning around and with the aid of the mirror she confirmed the tail above her butt was that of a fox. Her ears seemed fairly fox like as well, but the muzzle was too short for a fox, and her green eyes were slited like a feline's.
Part cat, part fox, and part bird? That sounded like some sort of mythological combination out of a fantasy game she'd play with Jeremy... JEREMY! David gasped as she suddenly remembered the last time she saw Jeremy he was getting pummeled by Maurice. How could she have forgotten about him? Where was he?! Was he changed like her?!
The door opened as these questions started to rush to the forefront of David's mind. David immediately bombarded the doctor(if the white lab coat was anything to go on) with a thousand questions as he stepped into the room.
"Where's Jeremy? Is he alright? Is he hurt? Did he change like me? Why did I change? What's going on? Where am I?..." David took a moment to process what the doctor had hanging from his arm before asking one final question, "...And why are you holding a maid's outfit?..."