FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"OK, so tell me exactly what happened again?" A message addressed to Petra from one of her friends pinged on her phone.

"I'm not entirely sure what happened, but my laptop kinda crapped out on me whilst I was doing some work. Everything stopped responding, I tried rebooting it, but it wouldn't get past the boot-up sequence... I think the hard drive must have died on it!" Petra typed a message back to Mao, a friend of hers. It was so much quicker doing it with a physical keyboard, but doing it on her phone, she had to keep correcting what she was typing.

"Oof, that sucks - laptop hard drives aren't exactly easy to replace, not to mention you'd have to get an all-new copy of Windows and all. Did you have your stuff backed up at least?"

"Most of it is saved to my external drive, some's backed up online. Thankfully the few files that are totally lost aren't too important." She sighed. "Still, it's a bit of a downer, I've had that for years, and I've got a nagging feeling that some of my more recent notes weren't backed up."

"When you say 'recent notes', you mean your hacking notes, right? ;P"

"Eheh, yeah... granted, I don't think I've made any real progress on that!" She replied. "Outside of getting a free KFC and getting access to foriegn Netflix without a VPN, it's kinda been small-scale stuff."

"Hey, no-one gets anywhere without any practice! Only thing is now you don't really have a laptop to do so..."

"Actually, I do have another one on order - it should be arriving shortly!"

"That's some good news, where'd you get it from?"

"Browsing around on eBay, nothing too special, though the item specification claims that it's good for multitasking and has lots of neat features and everything. They didn't exactly specify what those features were, but hey, it wasn't crazy expensive. I was assured it'd be good for games as well, so there's a bonus!"

"Sweet - you'll have to show me it whenever it arrives!" Mao responded again.

"Oh no worries, I'll show you it as soon as everything's up and running - I gotta get Discord on there again beforehand!" She typed, pausing when she heard the doorbell ring. "That could be it!" She added, making her way over to the door. She opened it up, expecting to be greeted by some form of delivery person, but no-one was there. "Huh?" She looked around, stepping forward slightly, her foot bumping against something. Taking a look down, she saw a fairly-sized box sitting on her doorstep, on top of which were a couple of feathers, tipped with purple markings. ".... Did a bird deliver this?" She blinked, picking up the box, discovering there was a bit of weight to it. "Must have been a flock of them to carry something like this!" She stepped back in, kicking the door shut behind her.

She placed the box down on her desktop, tearing off the straps of packing tape that sealed the box shut. Sitting inside of it was the laptop she had ordered, though she did have to take another look at it for a moment - the picture on the listing showed a normal-sized laptop, this one looked like it was nearly twice as big. "Damn..." She blinked. "I didn't think they made laptops for giants!" She joked, opening it up to take a closer look at it - even the keys looked a bit larger than what you'd expect on a standard setup. "I mean this won't be impossible to use, but it's gonna take a little bit of getting used to... the screen will be great for movies, at least!"

She took a couple of photos of the laptop with her phone, ready to send to Mao once she had sorted everything out. It'd probably help to get it out of the box before turning it on, as the last thing she'd want to do is give the system no ventilation whilst it was on. She carefully took it out, revealing some additional accessories - a wireless headset and some spare USB drives. As she was lifting it out to put on the table, a sheet of paper came unstuck from underneath, falling by her side.

"What's this?" She placed the system down on her desk before leaning down to pick up the paper, looking over it. The top right corner of the paper was decorated with the image of what appeared to be a white-haired raven cheerfully winking, and under that was the text "LEARN TO BE A MASTER HACKER IN EIGHT EASY STEPS!"

"Eight easy steps?" She thought. "I'd think it'd take a lot longer than that to get good at hacking, but whatever works!" She smirked. Unfolding the paper, she looked over the eight steps - at least she would have, if there was anything actually listed there. Instead, there were simply eight bullet points.

"O...k.... did they forget to print out what the steps were?" She placed the piece of paper next to the laptop. "Or is this one of those 'it's all in the mind' things?" She thought about it for a moment and shrugged. "Eh, when all else fails, just learn from experience!" She turned the laptop on, getting a slight shock as she did so. "Ack! Damn static..." She shook her hand, watching the laptop whir to life, the lights underneath the keyboard emitting a soft red glow.

She picked up her phone again, taking a picture of the open laptop, the system booting up fairly quickly. Within a few seconds, the system login screen was being displayed. "Guess I should really import my account settings first..." She started typing, not noticing what looked like reddish-brown hairs spreading over her fingers, shifting to a bright orange over the rest of her hands and up her arms.

"So far, so good..." She finished getting her details set up, and it didn't take long for her to reach the desktop. She knew she'd have to get it connected to wi-fi before she could install anything on there, or check to see if anything needs updating. The growing fur continued to spread across her arms, steadily making its way across her front and back, the orange coloration hidden underneath her clothing. Some of it poked through her top, not enough to do any damage, and not enough to be immediately noticed - she never even noticed the tattoo on her lower left arm.

"Checking the settings... oooh neat, it's running off of an SSD, that'll come in handy!" She chuckled, going into the wi-fi settings, wasting no time in getting the system online. The fur moved lower down, sweeping over her hips and thighs. The hairs grew in an alternating pattern, maroon around her upper legs, shifting to orange part of the way down, swapping back to maroon closer to the lower portion of her legs, leaving a small portion of her feet covered in orange hairs. Her legs stretched longer, Petra once again failing to notice any of this due to the fact that she was sitting, though given the fact that her feet were nearer the wall than by the base of her chair, it was somewhat strange that she wasn't alerted to it, even as her toes merged together into a singular, rounded digit.

"Alright, let's get some programs installed - the sooner I get Discord going, the sooner I can show all this off to Mao!" She started to install some of the programs she had on an external drive - some of them would need to be updated, but she figured it'd be quicker to install them first and then let the programs update themselves afterwards. Whilst she did, she squirmed a little in her chair, feeling a growing pressure in her rear.

"Hey, I haven't been sitting down long enough for my butt to go numb just yet!" She tried to shift herself, taking a look behind her. As she did, she paused upon noticing that her behind was quickly growing larger in size and width, putting a strain on her skirt and undergarments. She stood up, watching her backside swell larger and wider, red-brown fur covering its underside, as well as a good portion of the top part, the orange fur spreading around parts of the top half. The clothing on her lower body soon ripped apart, fully revealing what looked to be the great, hairy abdomen of a spider, now replacing her human derriere.

"... What the thorax?" She looked at her great tush in confusion, even momentarily pondering her odd choice of wording, only to be brought back to reality a few seconds later when it was apparent that her now-animalistic ass was a bit on the heavy side, her legs wobbling as she forced herself to lean forwards, catching herself on the table. Thankfully for her, she didn't have to worry about her currently botched-up balance for too long, three additional pairs of legs sprouting outwards around the base of her abdomen, each helping to support her changing form, as well as restoring her balance.

"Huh..." She tried to move her new legs - it did take a moment for her brain to catch up with the rest of her, but she was soon able to move them alongside her original pair. She cracked a slight smile, examining everything so far - for some strange reason, something about what she was becoming seemed oddly familiar, as if she had seen it somewhere as of recent. She tugged at her shirt, noticing now that it felt slightly more constricting due to the thick, bristly hairs covering her torso, as well as a couple of slight adjustments elsewhere - she'd have to get her shirts the next size up now, maybe then they wouldn't feel as tight against her hairy frame.

As she attempted to work with her clothing, the hair worked its way up her head and face. Her jaws pushed slightly forwards, giving her jaw a subtly round appearance, almost as if it were a slight muzzle, her nose vanishing entirely, yet it did nothing to dull her sense of smell. Her ears shrank away into a pair of tiny holes in the sides of her head, her hair receding, becoming shorter, taking on the same maroon hue as on other parts of her body.

Her teeth sharpened into fangs, her upper and lower canines becoming the most prominent, a little more rounder compared to the rest of them, to the point where it looked like she had two sets of buck teeth, each sporting a broad gap between them. Her eyes barely changed outside of becoming noticeably larger, a scarlet hue flooding her irises, her eyelashes and eyebrows now a little more prominent, the darker colour showing up against the bright hairs.

"Heh... well look at me now!" She giggled, looking at herself - she didn't know what had caused it, but she had transformed into a tarantula, albeit one with a build that was a little more humanoid than she expected, bordering on centaur-like. Walking over to the mirror, she had a proper look over herself, and again, this felt familiar...

*Ding!*

"Hrm?" She looked back at her phone, noticing that a message had been sent on her Discord. "Lemme get to that on the computer..." She moved back over to it, using the sign-in function on her phone to quickly sign in without having to mess with passwords. Her contacts popped up, including one she had never seen before. She clicked on it, the contact's name showing as 'Shade'.

"Hello there! I trust you're happy with your new laptop, Petra? Or would you prefer Ms. Tarantula instead, maybe 'Webs' for short?"

"You're the seller?" She typed back before realising what Shade had said - no wonder this felt familiar to her, she had literally been turned into one of the Bad Guys! "Wait, how did you do this to me?"

"Just a teensy bit of magic, it's a speciality of mine! ;>" Shade returned the message. "Just like you, now you're a much better hacker!"

"I dunno... kinda hard to be stealthy at the size I'm currently at." She told Shade.

"Oh no worries, if you check the notes, I've included a handy spell which you can use to freely control your size, so you can easily shrink down to what your counterpart's size would be, and the laptop's bound to the same spell, so it'll shrink with you - I gotta admit, I never thought I'd have the need to include a shrinking spell, that's not something I normally work with. Be careful with it though, cause it can easily work in reverse as well - if you wanna make yourself bigger than you currently are, I'd advise being in a wide open space and not inside of a building!"

"Right, right... and what about the blank notes you included about hacking in eight easy steps?"

"You'll be able to read that now! Of course, all the knowledge is in that fuzzy little noggin of yours, but it never hurts to read it over every now and again - step eight is a fun one, after all!"

Petra took a look over what previously was a mostly blank piece of paper, now fully written out with various tips and tricks - alongside a bullet point which was a small list of YouTube videos on the subject. Her eyes gazed down to step eight: "When all else fails, go full Beast Mode!" It described, showing off a diagram of the tracking pad beneath the keyboard, the drawing showing it being pressed in hard. Curiously, she placed her hand down fast and firm on the mouse pad, pressing it in as if it were another button, and to her surprise, four additional keyboards emerged from the side of the laptop.

"Wow~" She let out an impressed whistle. "Now we're talking!" She responded back to Shade.

"I'm glad you like it! I'll be around if you have any other questions, but for now, why not try seeing what your new system's capable of. Who knows, maybe you'll be able to put together a crew to work with, if you've got any friends in mind!"

"A crew, you say?" She scratched her chin with her hand. "I may have a few friends who'd make for some good Bad Guys..." She grinned.

"Great! I'd say right now that laptop's got enough magical charge for four other people, if you need anyone else after that, you can always book a flying visit from me!"

"Sounds good to me... and I think I know the perfect person to start with. I just hope he won't mind the sudden hacking~" Petra, or rather, Tarantula, said with a smirk.

"Better get to work, then! See you around!" Shade left one last message. Tarantula picked up her phone, finding Mao on Discord, sending the initial photos she had taken of the laptop his way.

"Oooh, that looks sweet!" Mao responded after about a minute. "I really can't believe that it barely set you back much!"

"Indeed! Would you like to see a neat trick that it can do?" She asked.

"I'm sure I'm down for seeing what it's capable of!" He typed back.

"Perfect!" She grinned, looking over the extended keyboard, momentarily rearing up as if she was getting ready to pounce, her multitude of feet tapping against the extra keyboards, her hands furiously typing against the original board. She had already picked up Mao's IP address from a while ago when she was doing some early tests, she was just too kind-hearted to do anything that could cause his computer or network any harm. Right now, however, it was more a case of anything goes.

A few brief moments and some fancy footwork later, Mao's screen blinked, going dark for just a second before showing off an animated message. An animated gif with three images of Webs' face, each a different colour and sporting a great, beaming smile showed above a message simply reading "YOU HAVE BEEN HACKED!"

"What in the world?" Mao stared at the message "Don't you think that's just a little bit mu-" He reached for his keyboard, getting a jolt from it, the message vanishing from the screen after a few seconds, bringing back his Discord conversation with Petra. "Ow, son of a -!" He inhaled through his teeth. "What did you just do?"

"Nothing too much worth worrying about!" Tarantula giggled. "Hey, Mao, this might seem a little bit out of left field, but I'm looking at getting a few friends around for something - how do you feel about being a master of disguise?"