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Anomalous Space

For ehh123

By Draconicon

Brooks was a dog, and as such, he was only vaguely conscious of the continuity of his world. Time had very little meaning to him; five minutes could have been five years, or five hours, or five seconds. It varied depending on his emotional state of being, and that, in turn, varied wildly.

Yet, the German Shepherd was a happy enough hound. He lived as the personal companion to a ship captain, though he had little idea of what that meant. He knew that his human was important, knew that from the way that the scents of the other humans around him changed whenever his human was around, and he knew that it meant that they went all sorts of places. Other than that, it was just a distinction that Brooks had some sort of odd understanding of the difference between his human and others, and nothing more.

One day, his human brought him onto a different ship than usual. They normally worked on big, fancy, 'clean'-smelling ships that went hither and yon, taking people on-board and then putting them off somewhere else. There was very little work involved in it for Brooks, save to occasionally look intimidating when his human gestured for him to growl or to show his teeth. It was always more of a game than anything else for the German Shepherd, however, so he always smiled afterward to try and make things better.

This time, however, he smelled other things as soon as they reached the gangplank. Brooks paused, lifting his nose a bit higher, breathing in a bit harder.

Other animals, for a change. Wet things, dry things, furred things, scaled things. There were a hundred, a thousand different smells coming down the gangplank like they were passengers in and of themselves. Each one was a different thread, a different thought, a different reaction, and he paused to try and sort through them.

"Brooks. Come."

The voice of his human snapped him out of his semi-trance, and the German Shepherd padded up the plank. His eyes, a bit weak to begin with, were suddenly overwhelmed with what was in the cargo bay.

There were buzzing lights, walls of burning light that made his eyes hurt to look at. Behind them were other animals, ranging from a pool that held a few sharks to a tank that held an elephant inside. He did not know these names, of course, but he knew the basic smells, and the idea that came behind them. The big sniffer. The biting swimmers. The ideas came to him under the burning smell of the energy passing between the cage bars.

His human walked by at a quick pace, and Brooks hustled to keep up, his tail wagging, but not as fast as it normally would. Something felt off about this. It was like...like something was a bit wrong.

Maybe it was the different smell of his human. There was usually a sharp, happy smell, something like the smell of warm bread and a little sharp cheese. It meant that things were going to be okay, that his human was focused, but confident. That wasn't there this morning. It felt different, like a smell of old coffee. Focused, sharp, but not happy, and not entirely right.

It put the dog off a bit, and he didn't know how to feel as they padded through the different ship. He saw more of the bright-light cages, and knew that there were more animals on the ship than people. His nose burned every time that they passed by another cage, and by the time they reached his human's quarters, he flopped down and covered his nose with his front paws.

"That bad, huh, boy?"

Brooks whimpered.

"It'll be okay. It's just a short trip. Wish it was longer, but corporate found some new route, and..."

The human looked down at him, little more than a silhouette to the dog's eyes after looking into so many cages. A hand came down, patting him on the head.

"Heh, what am I telling this to you for? You can't understand me."

Not entirely, but Brooks could get the tone. It was enough to make him feel a bit more worried. His human never sounded this tired before a trip before, and he'd never felt this off. Something was wrong.

He just wished he knew what it was so he could fix it.

They were off in short order, and Brooks, well-accustomed to the disorienting feeling of leaving his home, stayed in the quarters to wait it out. The ship moved and twisted in the air, but soon enough, it was flying through the Weird Place.

That was how the dog thought of it when they were not on the ground anymore. There was the Twisty Place, and then there was the Weird Place, where his paws didn't feel like they wanted to stick to the ground, where his stomach felt weird and topsy-turvy, where he felt like he was getting turned around and held upside-down despite nobody picking him up.

It was weird, but he had gotten used to it over the years. Some special water - his human always put a little pill in it, letting it dissolve before he drank it - always perked him up again later.

This time, however, his human had left before giving him the pill. Brooks watched the sliding door, waiting to see if his human would come back and remember that he needed it, but there was nothing. His human had just run off, and now, he was alone.

Brooks hesitated, then hopped off the bed, wobbling slightly as his stomach twisted a little. It wasn't so bad that it stopped him, but he took the walk a bit slower than he otherwise would, making his way to the door. He waited, like always, like a good dog, and it opened a few seconds later. He stepped into the hallway, only to see nothing.

Even to a dog that had little understanding of time, that was strange. It felt like there should have been some other humans around, some other people that were making sure that the ship was running. He tilted his nose back, finding his human's scent, and he followed it through the metal corridors.

Down the hall, up the elevator - he knew the buttons, by now - and then up to the top of the ship. Or bottom. There was another twisting feeling in the elevator that made it feel wrong. The doors opened, and he saw a hundred or more humans gathered before the window that peered into space.

His human was at the front of them, staring at the swirling shape out the window. Brooks looked up, and as he did, he stared at it, too.

It was a strange blob in space, one that twisted and writhed in his view. One second, it looked smaller than a distant star, and then the next, it was bigger than a planet. It kept swelling and shrinking, shrinking and swelling, and it was almost impossible to look away from.

Almost.

Brooks, like the good dog that he was, dropped down into the crowd of humans, descending the stairs, then pushed between their legs. He shouldered his way through them to his human, the one in charge at the front, and butted his head against the dangling hand.

His human looked down, or at least, started to. He couldn't turn his head all the way, almost like his eyes were glued to the thing outside. Yet, at the same time, he managed to curl his fingers, petting Brooks on the head. Even that felt wrong, almost like the fingers weren't entirely there, and it felt more like he was getting petted by a ghostly sheet rather than by someone's hand. The German Shepherd whimpered, trying to lick his human's hand, but his tongue passed through the fingers.

Something was wrong. Something was very, very -

Then the ship touched the anomaly, and everything changed.

The ship shook, bouncing up and down as if it was a cat being shaken by a dog. Brooks yelped as he went flying backwards, having a split second where he could still see his human...and then he was gone.

The dog howled for a moment before he hit the ground. He forced his legs under him, trying to get upright again, but it was hard with the ship still shaking. Lifting his head again, he tried to find his human, but he was gone. All the humans were gone.

And the ship was still shaking.

Brooks pulled himself forward, dragging himself along the metal floor to where his human had been. There was a...a thing...a thing that stood up from the floor. It beeped and it booped, and there were lights that spread across the surface of it, dozens of lights. They made different shapes become clearer, then disappear again, almost like they were playing hide and seek.

For the first time, Brooks tried to remember something. His human always pushed buttons. What button fixed this?

Half in desperation, half in remembrance, he lifted himself onto his hind legs and poked one of the buttons with his nose. The ship trembled one last time, and then calmed, slowly going back to normal.

But there were still no humans.

With his legs feeling funny, Brooks pulled himself back from the buttons, making his way to the elevator again. His head felt as funny as his legs, almost like something was buzzing around in there, something that was making it hard for him to just follow his instincts. He felt...he felt something different.

Responsible, in a way, responsible in a way that he had never been responsible before.

He leaned up and nosed another button, further down. The first room of cages. He remembered it better than he remembered the other stuff, better than he remembered what his human had done on the top level -

Bridge.

The word popped into his head out of nowhere, but he didn't fight it. If there was a name, he should have it. He should know it.

The elevator door opened, and he found himself in one of the cargo decks. Or, what had been...a cargo deck? Maybe?

Whatever it had been, it wasn't that anymore. The burning light and the burning smell that had filled the whole chamber was gone, and so were the cages that the animals had been in. They'd disappeared completely, and they were free to roam. Brooks opened and closed his muzzle, clacking his teeth together in confusion, finding it so hard to understand.

And yet, he had never tried to understand before. It was...it was something else that was changing.

Even as Brooks tried to pull his head on straight, to think through the situation like his human might have done - something else that was definitely new to him - he could see that there were more changes happening before his eyes. To his right, a cheetah was slowly stumbling forward, legs shaking as it twitched, looking about. Yet, with each step, it shifted, its forelegs changing configuration, shifting so that they were no longer quite so locked in place.

As the cheetah slipped again, one foreleg came forward, turning from paw to hand at the end, fingers lengthening and claws blunting. They pulled back slowly, dragging into the digits, becoming something that was no longer so dangerous, no longer so deadly, but rather a blackened mark at the end of the finger to show that they were there at all.

Brooks watched with awe as the cheetah pushed himself up again on his new, bulking arms, the feline's head changing, too. His muzzle turned slightly flatter, more human-esque, and the fangs in his mouth were slowly pulling inwards, becoming less dangerous, less intense.

He was even able to reach up to his head, rubbing it as he groaned, his legs changing, his thighs and calves thickening up to take on less hyper-lean, slender legs as the feline had had, his hind paws becoming a bit thicker and larger to support the different body-type.

Yet, before anything could be seen elsewhere, clothing, too, began to bloom, taking form around the cheetah's body. A red vest with black shoulders appeared, spreading further and further along the feline's torso, and black pants appeared at the cheetah's waist, sliding over anything private before it could be seen.

Brooks stared with eyes that felt wider than they should have been, his jaw dropping as he watched similar changes wracking the different animals that were on this level of the ship. Elephants were growing taller, more austere in the way they stood rather than hunched over. Crocodiles were rising up on their hind legs, their little arms growing longer and thicker, their chests covered in body armor for security. He saw a shark rising from the water, taking on a blue uniform and pulling a datapad from nowhere at all.

The German Shepherd could see them changing, but more, he realized that he could think of them all changing, realizing that it was happening in the first place, and that was something that he had never done before.

Brooks turned from them as their eyes started to glow, intelligence replacing the simple flat stare that most of them had had. He jumped back in the elevator, hunched up on his hind legs, and pressed another button.

As the elevator doors closed, he realized that he was standing on his own, holding his own weight on his back legs. Looking down at his front paws, he saw them changing, stretching, the center of his pads spreading out to make hands, his fingers pushing forward to make fingers. His claws, much like the cheetah's, were disappearing, becoming something more gentle, less dangerous.

He hunched his head forward against the cool metal of the elevator door, trying to keep himself focused, but it was so hard, now. Thinking hurt. It was never meant to hurt, and now it did.

But it was getting easier, simpler. He opened his eyes again, staring down at his face as it became more defined, more obviously boxy. He leaned back, wobbling on legs that were changing as much as everything else, barely holding his balance on his hind-paws, but still doing it more than he should have been able to. Brooks looked at himself in the reflection in the metal, staring at his body as it lengthened, growing taller by the second, looming over where he had once stood. Inch by inch, then foot by foot he rose, until he was the height of a...a...

There was a word that he was missing, now, a word that had meant the world to him before. It had been attached to something powerful, something good, something...

Something that didn't come to mind. Brooks had a moment of panic, and then it disappeared. He did, however, see something on his neck...

He reached up slowly, his fingers almost touching the dark band along his throat that he saw in the reflection before it, too, changed, disappearing from view. Whatever it, and the little silver circle that hung from it had been, it was gone, now, and soon, he forgot that he even had it in the first place.

As the German Shepherd wobbled upright, he could feel his balance getting firmer, stronger. He held out his hands, watching as his arms thickened slightly, becoming nice and full, but not as thick as the gators down below. There was something like a ring on one finger, which then became a true ring, a silver one with a black dot on the top.

It came with memories, and as it did, the dog leaned forward against the metal wall again. He had...he had a name, a title.

Captain Brooks.

Captain.

He was the one in charge. He had graduated from the academy half a decade ago, and he'd been given this ship as part of his first mission. That was why they were out here, exploring the universe and finding new planets to explore, new places to see.

As he realized that, he looked down, saw himself dressed. For a moment, he had imagined himself as undressed, as if a captain would leave his quarters as anything less than fully in role. But no, he was in his proper clothes, a red-purple sort of color that splashed across the front, a black shade along his shoulders and down his arms. Black pants, a small pistol attached to one hip, and a pair of boots that covered his feet.

Yes, that was right. That was him. Captain Brooks. The head of the ship, the guardian of everyone else on it, the one that made sure it worked, one way or another.

He took a deep breath, the German Shepherd looking himself in the eye. He ran his hand along his chin and along his cheeks, and then poked himself just under the eyes.

"You...need to get more sleep. You're going to run out of coffee before long, and then what are you going to do?" he told himself.

There was no answer from the reflection, not that there ever was. He shook his head, waiting for the elevator door to open as they returned to the bridge.

As it dinged and opened, his crew turned to face him. The animals looked back, each of them turning from their glowing consoles to face him. Several - the newest of them - stood up and saluted him, but the more experienced hands just chuckled and waved when he passed by. He walked down the central walkway in the middle of the bridge, making his way to the captain's chair and the console there.

Sitting down, he looked ahead, staring into the blackness of space. There was something out there, something that felt like he was missing, but there was nothing new about that. Ever since he had gotten out of the academy and realized just how little they taught you, he had felt like there was something missing.

"Is the turbulence from the anomaly clear?" he asked.

"Completely clear, captain," the flamingo at the console said. "Looks like it'll be smooth sailing from here."

"Good; looks like it was harmless, this time."

Resting one hand against the hollow of his throat, fingers drumming on something that wasn't there, Captain Brooks shook his head and gave the order.

"Warp factor three. Take us out."

"Warp factor three, captain."

The German Shepherd leaned back on his chair, watching the stars open before him, and wondered what would await them in the future.

The End

Summary: Brooks, a German Shepherd pet to a starship captain, goes off on another adventure with his master. However, not long after departing the planet, something goes wrong, something that will transform EVERYTHING.

Tags: no sex, german shepherd, elephant, shark, cheetah, various species, uplift, transformation, feral to anthro, sci-fi,