FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

After nearly two more days of traveling, the hyperlink transport ship finally docked at the station that hovered over the planet Max was about to embark on. Even with the passing of an ion storm that slowed passage, he was glad it had dissipated as quickly as it had as he stood up. His head jerked back slightly as he accidently connected the tips of his new horns with the top of the sleep pod; the bony protrusions had grown several inches during his travels and a second pair had started beneath it as the latex that covered them had thinned and turned grey with the stretching. It wasn't the only thing that had grown during his travels, as he stood up his toe claws clicked against the steel floor while his six-inch tail swished stiffly behind him. His hands had also suffered a similar fate to his toes, and as he wrapped his thick, three-fingered hands around the handle of his duffel bag, he could see the scale-like pattern on his hand stretch.

Once he had left the shuttle and stepped onto the station proper he looked out the window at the planet below. The atmosphere was a constant swirl of blues, greens, and occasional other colors that signaled a terraforming process happening on the surface. Like many other worlds this one had attracted attention due to its rich mineral sources, but when they saw that it would only take a few chemical nudges to make it habitable, they deployed small colonization crews to stabilize the planet and its atmosphere before it can have proper settlements. Due to the isolation and inherent dangers of such work, it attracted a lot of modders who can't find work elsewhere, which was exactly what Max was looking for.

It took a few hours before he finally found what he was looking for, though when he got there he frowned as he saw that going planetside was for authorized personnel only. At this point he was desperate enough to try anything, though, and started through the gate only to have it buzz angrily at him and show a red light. "Sir, could you please step over here," the human at the gate said as Max sighed inwardly and walked over to the side of the corridor.

"What seems to be the trouble?" Max asked as nonchalantly as possible.

"We appear to not have you registered in the system," the security guard replied as he pointed to a palm scanner on the side of the wall. "If you could please place your hand against the scanner, we can properly identify you."

"Um... actually..." Max replied as he held up his thick, rubber covered, claw-tipped fingers. "My hands don't really work on them anymore..."

Max could hear the guard grumble his disdain for modders as he motioned for him to head over to the secondary retina scanner while he took off his visor. The distraction didn't give him much time to think about what to do, various lies ran through his head to test their viability as he placed his head against the scanner. The brace was ill-fitting and his forehead seemed to push his face further back than before, but eventually he was able to get his eyes close enough for the computer to finally scan them. As he tried to think of a meaningful excuse to try and explain his presence there, the machine emitted an angry beep before the security guard looked at him.

"Says that the scan is inconclusive," the security guard said with a huff. "You get so deep in the mods you can't even remember what you've changed about yourself?"

A feeling of dread began to spread through Max's body as he looked around the room before he found the first reflective surface in the area. When he went up to it and looked at himself he realized in horror that his eyes had started to change; the normal blue color he had known his entire life had thin lines of amber yellow suffused throughout it, and the pupil was no longer perfectly round. At first Max couldn't understand how his eyes would have been changed since they weren't covered by the suit, until he looked down at the visor he still clutched in his hands. It shouldn't have been possible, Max thought to himself as his hand trembled slightly while he looked down at the piece of tech in his hands like it was about to bite him.

"Hey buddy," the guard said suddenly, which caused Max to snap around. "Look, I don't know why you're here and frankly I don't care, the only reason I'm even letting you out of this is because I don't feel like doing the paperwork and babysit you until the Corp Guard arrive. So you can either leave now or we can make this-"

"Frank!" A voice suddenly chimed in, both of them turning to see a figure waiting at the checkpoint. Max's jaw dropped slightly at the sight of such a creature, not human but definitely not any type of alien he had ever heard about. The male had a suit on much like Max's own, but where Max had modified it to look more like normal clothes, the guy had his like a shiny second skin that left little to the imagination. While his overall body was humanoid his hands looked distinctly canine and his feet ended in large, three-toed footpaws that tapped on the floor. The most striking difference was the helmet he wore as black-tinted lenses framed the hard rubber that had been molded into a jackal's visage while two hoses came out of the muzzle and wrapped behind. "What's the hold up here, you trying to get a little tail while you're working?"

Max could see the long, thin tail of the male wag behind him as the guard shot Max a look that told him to stay there before he went back up to the check-in desk. "Don't start with that garbage Nubi," Frank replied as he took the key card from the modded male and swiped it through the reader. "Got an unlicensed modder that's trying to access the colony. I swear every time they offer up a listing to you people they start coming out of the metalwork trying to get access."

"Charming as ever I see, Frank," Nubi replied before he looked over at Max, who despite his attempts to try and hide his nervousness found himself shaking slightly as the modder looked him over. "What's your name? Real one mind you, not something you've come up with to match the form."

"M...Max," Was all Max was able to reply as the jackal-masked individual continued to stare at him blankly.

There was a few moments of silence before a low chuckle escaped Nubi's mask that made the other two exchange a look. "Ah Max, I've been looking everywhere for you," the jackal said as he motioned for the confused male to come towards him while he looked at Frank. "This is my new assistant I picked up while giving my report to corporate and having them expand my budget by twenty percent. I told him to wait for me at the spaceport but my shuttle was late, so no doubt he wandered over here to look for me. In any case we're desperately needed planetside, so I'll make sure to take care of his credentials once he gets squared away."

"You know he needs to have his access cleared by corporate first," Frank retorted angrily.

"Well you can go ahead and call them then," Nubi shot back. "Then you can also explain to them why you held up one of the their top xenochemists who already had to cut his meetings short in order to fix a mixture imbalance that is killing all the plant life in a five hundred meter radius of the atmospheric dispersal units. I'm sure they won't mind the wasting of hundreds of thousands of credits worth of transgenic plant life so you can satisfy your curiosity, even though I already cleared him."

Once again silence fell upon the room as the Jackal crossed his arms in finality, waiting for the security guard to make his move. Finally the security guard threw up his hands and allowed them both access into the short-range teleportation unit that would send them down to the colony on the planet surface. "If I find out that you're just taking in more strays, Nubi..." Frank warned as they passed by.

"Love you too, Frank," Nubi replied as he blew a kiss to the flustered human, who just stared angrily at them as they entered the teleportation pod and the doors shut behind them. Once everything was in place the lights went dark and Max braced himself as he could feel the thrum of energy permeate the air. Neither moved as the floor beneath them began to glow as the machine powered up, the electrical current building up beneath their feet until finally it discharged completely and they disappeared from the room.

A few moments later the two reappeared in a similar room, only this one was on the surface of the terraforming planet as the machine hum lowered to a dull buzz before shutting down completely. As soon as the lights turned on and the door opened Max could smell the potent mix of chemicals that came with all colonies on a transitioning planet, overriding the odor of ozone as the Jackal began to move forward without prompting Max to do the same. Max was unsure of what to do at that point, so he decided to follow the jackal man deeper inside the facility itself.

Several hundred feet into the facility Nubi looked behind his shoulder to see Max was still following him and let out what Max thought was a chuckle. "You know that I know you're not really my assistant, right?" the other male said. "You're welcome for getting you past that blowhard and into the facility, but I suggest you find whatever it is you're looking for and get out of here before he decides to actually check in on my little story. If you'll excuse me, though, I really do have a mixture problem at the main processing facility, so unless you have a doctorate in organic chemistry-"

"It's not that!" Max blurted out, which caused Nubi to stop and look at him. "I'm sorry, and thank you so much for helping me out there. But I know that you guys are all modders and I could really use some information regarding the subject for... something. I know you're really busy, but if you could just point me in the direction of someone that would know about nanobot modification I would get out of your hair."

"Well that is a surprising request," Nubi replied. "I just assumed you were another heavy modder looking for the one who did yours in order to get more work done." The jackal leaned forward and brushed a finger against one of the horns that caused Max to shiver slightly. "And what skilled work it is, was half-tempted to ask you who did it in order to see if they could do anything for me. In any case if you are talking about nanomods then you've come to the right place, why don't you keep me company while I take care of my little problem? After it's sorted out, I can take you right to her."

Max felt his heart skip a beat as he nodded eagerly, once more following the modder into the facility. It appeared that he had made the right move, even if it was just a small step. Still he couldn't help but feel the tiniest bit of hope creep in ever since this whole problem began to happen. As he walked, though, he began to wonder about the hacker; the malevolent stranger still hadn't contacted him even as he tried to reach out to the modder community, did that mean he already knew this could potentially happen, or was he working now to try and thwart his potential salvation from curing him?

It wasn't long before the two reached a large control room and monitoring station. Nubi told Max to not touch anything and to let him know if any warning lights went off before he sat down at one of the terminals and began to type. The entire room was mostly quiet save for the hum of electricity and the quiet efforts of people at their workstations. As Max looked around he realized there wasn't an unmodified human in the entire bunch, some with simple mods like pointed ears or animal tails while others had full body skin alterations that ranged from scales to metal to psychedelic color schemes. They were all far more drastic alterations than those commercially sold and Max knew some were downright illegal, which made him wonder how they got hired in the first place.

Almost an hour passed before Nubi stood up and announced he had fixed the chemical ratio for the terraforming elements and excused himself, motioning for Max to follow along. The transforming human was about to say something when the jackal morph gestured for him to be silent as they walked back out into the main facility. "Sorry, didn't know what you were going to say," Nubi admitted once they were out of earshot. "It was only their respect for me that prevented them from asking questions, and I could tell that it was a strained prevention."

"I just wanted to say I was surprised," Max replied. "The amount of... changes in there are really hard to come by, like that one guy with the fin ears and webbed hands. How did you all get that way?"

"Mmmm, it appears I was right to silence you," Nubi responded, which caused Max's face to burn with embarrassment. "Not that anything you would have said would have shamed anyone, we all know what we've done to our bodies and are proud of it. It's just if you had started asking about things like that it would have blown the fact that you're not a hardcore modder like the rest of them. To answer your question, though, most of us enhance biological or mechanical market augmentations to the point where some see it as an art form, like the one I'm taking you to now."

"But isn't doing that highly illegal?" Max asked.

"Oh of course," Nubi replied with a chuckle. "But most mega-corporations out here in space either don't care or use it as an advantage when they're hiring people. For me it doesn't hurt that I'm an expert in my field, makes my changes far more acceptable in their eyes when I'm able to safeguard their trillion credit investment."

For a while Max and Nubi walked on in silence until the question that Max had could no longer be contained. "What exactly have you had modded?" Max asked. "I mean the suit is something you can get anywhere that can alter its appearance like that, even mine is like that..."

"Oh, so you believe this is all my suit?" Nubi replied as he stopped and turned to face Max, putting his hands up to the seal of his gas mask. "I think you'll find it's what is on the inside that truly counts." There was the hiss of air escaping as Nubi pulled off the rubber hood to reveal the canine head underneath, the jackal's ears jingling with golden earrings as they flicked in the air once they had escaped their confines. Glowing golden eyes looked down at Max as Nubi leaned his head towards max and breathed out a puff of blue-green smoke at the human that swirled around his head.

"Whoa..." was all Max could say as the smell of incense wafted into his nose as more of the brightly colored vapor continued to leak out from Nubi's canine nostrils and lips. "You're... smoking?"

"You could say that," Nubi replied with a chuckle before he breathed out a thick stream of the gas in the air. "And before you ask, the rest of my body is also like my head; completely Jackal in appearance, which stems from my love of a certain deity that I pulled my name from. As for the smoke and glowing eyes, I had attempted to do a mod of my own using my knowledge of chemicals and that over-the-counter modification that always gives you clean breath... it took ages before I could get my smoke to no longer smell like mint, and even with toning it down I have to wear this suit outside of this colony to contain it and not bother the general public. And if you think I'm dedicated, wait until you see Tamaria."

After navigating through several long, twisting corridors of the colony station they finally arrived at the living quarters marked with the name Tamaria on it. Nubi informed Max not to stare too much at her before he knocked at the door, a feminine voice on the other side telling them that it was open. Nubi nodded at the human and pressed the button to open the door before walking inside. Max quickly followed behind, and despite the warning he had gotten only a few seconds ago, couldn't help but gawk at the being that sat on the bed opposite them.

If Tamaria had been a human at any point in her life the evidence of such was long gone. What sat there with a laptop on her lap was an amalgamation of features, as though she had taken every augmentation and enhancement on the market and blended them together before using it. A pair of ebony-feathered wings flapped behind her as she looked up at them, her face feline in appearance but with long, slender ears and two sets of horns that adorned her face. Her body was covered in soft, white fur with stripes that were every color of the rainbow on her arms and legs, which ended with red and purple scaled hands and feet. When she saw who had entered into her room the creature nearly knocked her computer off the bed as she ran over and hugged him while several tails swished in the air behind her.

"You're back from your trip!" she gushed as she hugged him tight with the two sets of arms she had, Max's eyes widening further when he saw the second pair nestled just a few inches underneath the first. "Did you manage to get the funding for your chemical growth disbursement initiative?" Before Nubi could respond her head turned and looked past the jackal at Max. "Who's this, a newbie, Nubi?"

"Not quite," Nubi chuckled as they all settled down and took various seats around the room. "I picked up my new friend here on the station getting hassled by Frank. Apparently he wants to find information on nanobot augmentations, and since that's your area of expertise, I figured a meet and greet was in order."

"Well you're certainly right about that!" Tamaria exclaimed before she darted over and took a look at Max, her paws sliding over his suited body that caused him to squirm slightly. "Looks like you're no stranger to modified nanoaugs yourself, why don't you put down the camo on your suit and I can take a better look at you?"

For a second wondered if he even still had access to that part of his suit, but when he put on his visor and looked through the options he saw that it was still open and reset his look to basic. The material on his body shimmered for a second before it returned to a sleek black configuration like Nubi's bodysuit, and as Tamaria continued to look him over he was surprised at how much of his body had changed underneath the camouflage. His chest looked more barreled, not fat but with muscle in strange places on his body that seemed to sublimate over his pectorals and abs. As he reached down to touch the strange new growths he suddenly jumped when he felt a fur-covered hand grab roughly between his legs, nearly causing him to fall off the bed as Tamaria slid down his legs before sitting back down.

"Now that is some set up you got there," Tamaria exclaimed as she grabbed her laptop once again. "The suit has built-in nanobots to help heal as well as perform some limited alterations to the human body... nothing like what I've had done to me, but still alterations nonetheless. It appears our friend here has dialed those functions up to eleven and the nanobots are changing him at the cellular level, altering his DNA while making the transition in order to prevent destabilization and molecular destruction while also using the organic polymers of the suit as the building blocks for his new skin. Very dangerous, but I'm sure it was necessary for the modifications you're going for, right?"

"What do you mean?" Max asked, his throat suddenly dry at the potential implication. "What do you think I'm trying for?"

"Well without doing a full diagnostic I'd say you're going for a full feral dragon," Tamaria said with a slight shrug, both her and Nubi tilting their heads in confusion when Max felt himself begin to panic. "Did you... not know that? I mean, I could be wrong, but the muscle growth and the reconfiguration implies-"

"Of course I don't want that!" Max suddenly shouted, which caused the two to jump slightly as he held his own mouth in shock. "Wait... I just said that? I'm not the one that initiated this... I was able to say that, too!"

Nubi and Tamaria continued to look at Max strangely as he felt a perverse excitement rise in him. Once he realized that he could speak without being blocked he told the two everything, from when he got the suit all the way to coming to the modders on this terraforming outpost to try and help him. By the time he finished the two creatures looked at each other, then as Nubi breathed a smoke-laden sigh of awe, Tamaria got up and ran to her dresser. As Nubi expressed his thoughts of how messed up it was that Max got hijacked, the heavily modified feline came back with plugs that were similar to the ones that Albert had used on him when he first tried to diagnose the problem.

"We need to use the medical bay," Tamaria said in hardly-contained excitement. "If what you're saying is true then I should be able to use the exosuit diagnostic tester in order to access the hardware inside your bodysuit in order to observe this malicious modding in action. Then, if it's not too late, perhaps we can stop and maybe even reverse it for you!"

"Wait, if it's not too late?" Max reiterated as the other two stood up and Tamaria gave the cords to Nubi to hold. "What do you mean if it's not too late?"

"Walk and talk," Tamaria rushed as the three of them left her room. "When it comes to changes to someone at the genetic level it's a lot like baking a cake; once you throw in all the ingredients together it's nearly impossible to separate them once again, and if you happen to toss it in the oven and bake it, you really can't get anything back. You are the cake, and right now I think you're at the ingredient mixing stage."

"The good news is that it appears whatever the hacker was doing to you is being interrupted by the data restriction field that surrounds the colony," Nubi added. "That's why you were able to tell us all of this, you were likely speaking on a delay so that the hacker could interrupt any speech or text that would reveal your predicament to anyone."

"That's good news then, right?" Max asked as he kept up with them. "I can just stay here until we get this fixed and my hacker won't be able to touch me."

The two modders looked back at him with forlorn faces that caused him to lose a step before he rushed to catch up once again. "It's not going to quite work like that," Nubi explained. "First there's the fact that you're not actually a worker here, which means that if the corp finds you here, they'll throw you in a cell and that would be it. Second is that even though we've interrupted the connection with your hacker the nanobots are still changing you, so if we can't figure this out, your changes will come to completion regardless."

Max fell silent as the light of optimism for his situation dimmed slightly, letting the other two talk to each other about him while he remained silent. For the briefest of moments he thought he had found a way out from under the hacker's thumb, but if he got thrown in jail he wouldn't be saved at all. In the back of his mind he also mulled over what Tamaria had speculated was his final form, was the hacker's agenda just to see if he could turn someone into a dragon? Or was it the whole process, not only turning him into some sort of feral creature, but also preventing him from doing anything about it?

Those thoughts continued to bounce around in his skull when they reached the medical bay, where a surprisingly human male looked up at them with concern as they barged in. As he tried to ask what the problem was Tamaria barked at him to leave, which caused the doctor to lean back slightly. It was at that time Max saw the human's eyes shift slightly, the bionic implements focusing like a camera lens as he scowled at the altered female. Though it looked like he was about to say something else the doctor just sighed and walked around them to leave. Max saw the doctor's arms had compartments that opened and closed to reveal the metallic components underneath before he left and closed the door behind him.

"Alright, let's get this going," Tamaria said as she motioned for Max to pop up on the table with the giant machine hovering over it and to put on his visor. "The good doctor owes me one for writing the programming for all those servos jammed inside him, but that won't stop him from retaking this place if he gets a medical emergency or something like that. I need you to lie still and let the machine do its magic, but unlike a typical suit-to-computer interface, this bad boy is completely wireless."

Max found himself swallowing hard as he laid there and looked up, the machine whirring to life as it began to shift over him. His entire body shuddered as his HUD suddenly flashed with several messages about connections being made. His fingers and toes twitched and flexed slightly as electrical currents were sent through his suit, more powerful than when he had the contact pads on the material. After about a minute the huge device had made its slow journey from the top of his head down to the tips of his feet before it stopped. Max continued to remain still until Tamaria told him he could sit back up.

The electrical buzz could still be felt in Max's body as he moved back over to the two while the amalgamated female continued to type furiously on the keypad in front of her. Once she was finished she pressed one final key and the room suddenly went dark, save for the middle which glowed with a soft blue light. A holographic image of Max's body appeared, which normally would look like any other generic human except this one had a pair of horns, a tail, and other beastly features on it. "It appears that the integration is a little more extensive than we first thought," Tamaria admitted as Nubi and Max walked up to the floating image.

"That's me?" Max said in shock as he reached up to touch the three-toed feet of the image in front of him only to have his hand pass through it.

"The process of the suit integration has already begun," Nubi pointed out as he grabbed Max's hand and ran his fingers along the hardened material. "This is no longer the suit, this is your skin now. The good news is that it's only assimilated your flesh on the subdermal level up to your elbow and knees, which means that if we can somehow stop the process and get the rest of the suit off we can spare the rest of your body, though the growths on your head and spine will require reconstructive surgery."

"How is that good news?" Max replied angrily as he held up his clawed fingers. "How am I supposed to live in society like this? Do you know how expensive surgeries like that cost?"

Nubi looked down and Max immediately regretted snapping at him, especially since they likely knew all too well how hard it was to live in normal society like that. Before he could apologize Tamaria spoke up that caused their heads to turn and look at her. "There is another possible way of getting this whole process reversed," she exclaimed. "If we can find the hacker and expose him to the company that made the suit, they can go after them and possibly cover the costs to get you changed back as best as possible, let me see if I can dig anything up in the caches on your suit."

Both Nubi and Max watched the hologram as Tamaria did her work, various parts lighting up as she gained access to them. Max felt the small wellspring of hope grow slightly inside him as windows of data would appear and disappear all over his holographic doppleganger. It appeared the modder was as good as advertised as she dug into the augmentation section of the suit, but as she accessed the menu there the entire image began to flash red and multiple warnings appeared that caused Nubi and Max to both back away in shock.

"Tamaria!?" Nubi shouted in panic.

"The hacker put in a booby trap!" Tamaria replied with a snarl. "Hold on tight, I'm trying to disarm it now!"

Max tried to respond but nothing came out of his throat as the entire room started to spin. He began to feel himself falling forward until a pair of strong arms grabbed him and continued to hold him upright as he felt his entire body spasm before going numb. Despite losing all sensation he could still feel as though his ears were getting pulled as all the noises in the room grew garbled and hard to understand. His breath grew heavy in his chest as it expanded outwards, barreling slightly as he felt his insides shift. As his legs kicked and slid against the metal floor the muscle there began to alter as well, particularly between his legs as the suit shifted around his groin while a stretching sensation could be felt against his backside.

Just as Max began to feel a pressure in his face everything suddenly snapped back to normal, everything from being able to feel his body again to hearing Nubi and Tamaria shout at each other. When the jackal modder realized that Max had regained his faculties he helped him to a chair with the help of Tamaria as she bolted around the terminal to assist. Once they had him sat down and with a cup of water in his hands they began to explain that the trap laid in his suit was to cause a rapid and dangerous transformation in case anyone tampered with it. Tamaria began pointing out differences on the holographic display, but Max didn't even need to look at it. The tail that had been little more than stub was now several feet in length and the growths on his back and formed the base of what he assumed were wings as the rest of his body looked more inhuman than ever.

Once they were sure that Max was alright and the changes had ceased for the time being they helped move him to an empty room on the station to rest. When they tried to remove the visor they found the metal and latex bonded to one another, preventing its removal as they laid him in bed. After a few minutes of trying to release it they gave up and told Max to sleep as best he could while they continued to work on the problem. With the rapid onset of his new changes it took the ingestion of a sedative before Max finally felt his body rest enough for him to sleep...