FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

(**Bradley's parts are marked**)

--

**Xavier looked down at his directional paper as he stood in front of the ominous-looking science laboratory outside. He gulped, turning back to the large black SUV that escorted

him from his dingy apartment to the modern, pristine-looking tower. He sighed stepping into the fantastical building. He had a bad feeling about this -- he just knew it.

Xavier reached the receptionist's desk, sheepishly clearing his throat and waving at the person behind the counter.

"Uh, hi."**

Reclining behind the desk was a woman not much older than Xavier himself. She was rather occupied filing her nails, not even bothering to look up from her "work" when he spoke. Still, she clearly heard him and responded.

"You're smart for not trying to run, honey." She spoke in a nasally New Yorker tone. It was oddly off-putting compared to the usual coldness Xavier was used to. "Not that your collar wouldn't stop ya anyway."

Nonchalantly, she reached for a button under her desk and pressed it. A sharp buzzing sound made Xavier flinch. Old habits.

The large double doors to his left swung open.

The woman gestured to the hallway beyond before resuming her work.

"Go on in. Doctor's waiting."

**Xavier looked to his left before turning to the receptionist, "Gee thanks." He scoffed as he trotted to the doorway. He took another deep breath and strolled through.

The walls never got dirty. It looked as if dust was allergic to the walls of the building. Either they had a great janitor crew, or they vacuumed regularly.

He stopped in front of the door marked "Lab 103."**

Xavier crumpled the instructions in his fist and shoved them into his back pocket. Did they really need to write all that down? They didn't think he was capable of walking in and making a hard left? Jeeze. At least the jerks at the usual lab didn't think of him as an idiot. Who were these people? Pushing past his nerves, he pulled open the cold lab door and entered.

The room...wasn't what he was expecting. It was white as the rest of the building, but felt surprisingly cramped. The ceiling was only a few feet above his head. Xavier was so used to giant rooms and walls he was forced to scale. This room was longer than it was wide. It was somehow worse.

**He looked around at the pristine white ceiling and sighed. Sights were more or less the same, but the feeling was different.**

The sharp blip of a speaker clicked on from...somewhere. Xavier flinched again.

"Greetings, Earthling!" A loud voice pierced through the room, reverberating off the enclosing walls. "Xavier, right? Or do you prefer...Hizzard?"

**As the intercom clicked on, he cringed at the mention of that nickname. He hated it with a passion.

"Xavier. Please," he said, holding his tongue.**

He could hear the smile in the man's voice.

"Xavier! Perfect! Less paperwork," the voice laughed. "Well, my name is Dr. Feng, PhD. Biology. Hugo Award-nominee, three years running, but this year I'm feeling lucky. Anyway, thanks for taking part in this year's Subject Exchange program. We're excited to host you, and I'm sure you've been dying for a change of scenery."

Xavier rolled his eyes. What change? Every lab was the same. White walls, cold floors. Pain.

"So, you might be wondering what's up with this weird room. It's more like a hallway than a lab, right? Well, today we're doing something special. We're not just testing your abilities, Xavier. We're testing the lab itself! This...is the Suspension Chamber."

A button was pressed. The room began to shake.

Nearly losing his footing, Xavier dropped to the ground for purchase. Suddenly the floor was shifting, falling away like glass shards.

**Xavier stumbled and fell all over the place. He eventually twisted and turned all over as if he was playing Twister. He ended up on all fours, a hands-and-knees type deal, looking down.**

Sitting below was a black pit. An abyss. All that remained of the floor was the small square of tile beneath his hands. It was horrible.

**Sweat beaded and dropped down into the pit. Jesus Christ, who hires these freaks?**

The speaker clicks again. "You like?"

**"Wonderful." He said, sarcastically.**

"Xavier, I know you're being sarcastic...but I think you're gonna really enjoy this experiment. I don't know how they do it over at...whatever that lab is called, but we're about innovation here. Which is how I came up with this beauty."

Beauty. That's a strong word, Xavier thought begrudgingly.

"As you might've guessed, you're going to need to climb to the other side of this room. However, the walls are specially coated to prevent you from sticking to them. You're going to have to use the ceiling, obviously. If you fall, well...don't fall. Whenever you're ready, Xavier."

Xavier was stuck between fear and bewilderment. Who allowed this man to run a lab? For the first time, an experiment could kill him.

But the endless trials had taught him well. It was useless to argue with these people. Reluctantly, Xavier disrobed till he stood in his black boxer briefs. He took a deep breath, mentally preparing for the usual torture.

A button was pressed. The collar vibrated, pushing a needle into Xavier's skin. Moments later, his hands began to cramp...

**Xavier's immediate response was to reach for his collar and rip it off, but he knew that wasn't going to happen at all. Instead, he tried to contain his fear, visibly shaking on the, now disappeared, floor.

He winced and grunted, feeling the searing liquid jet into the vein in his neck. He began to shake and clench his hands and teeth.**

"Oh, the show's starting! Guys, get in here!"

**His hands curled into fists, or at least curled and scrunched on the tiled floor below as he gritted his teeth trying to stave off the pain for as long as possible.**

Xavier heard the shuffling of boots over the speaker, but couldn't bring himself to care. He was used to his agony being observed under a microscope.

**The shuffling of the boots just ...defeated him. He must have been tested on for months now...but he never got used to it...never.**

Lava boiled under his skin as chemicals spread from his neck to his fingertips. Despite the heat, he tried to stay calm. Increasing his heart rate only made things worse. But this was easier said than done when his fingers started to crack.

Like so many times before, the joints in his hands popped and snapped, bone creaking from the jet fuel in his veins. Xavier watched in disgust as each finger grew longer and longer, pressed down against the frigid tile. He could feel sweat pooling from his palms, chilling him further.

The sweat was getting thicker by the second.

Xavier winced as the slime on his palm made an audible squelch between his fingers. It was like the putty he'd played with as a child, though the fact that it came out of his skin made it more gross.

**He squelched the slime below -- he could only help but gag a bit. His fingers clenched on the ground, making him cry out through grit teeth.**

"It must be hard seeing your hands in such a state, buddy. But be glad you're a lizard! Or a gecko, whatever. Plenty of our subjects don't even have fingers anymore. Wait till you meet Stewart, he --"

The doctor's ramblings were cut off by Xavier's yelp. The young man found his fingers splaying wide against his will, the bones of his knuckles growing thicker as they pushed the digits out in a fanning motion. Every nail was sliding off, practically pushed away as his fingertips started to swell and pulsate.

**"F-fuck!" He cursed silently, trying to keep it down to a minimum. He watched as his small human fingers ballooned, causing him to clench his hands tighter and tighter.**

Like baby tomatoes growing from the vine, the pads of his hands grew bulbous and green. These were hands capable of scaling.

Though the minutes felt like hours, Xavier finally felt his fingers lock into place -- ten gangly digits spread wide across his hands, their tips fleshy and swollen. Carefully, he rose to his feet while thick dollops of mucus dripped from his fingers to the floor. A few rivulets fell onto his foot. Nasty.

"Wonderful, Xavier! Though that was the easy part," Dr. Feng snorted over the intercom.

"Well, it didn't feel easy," the changing man muttered. Another button was pressed. Whatever floor remained beneath Xavier's feet began to shake. It felt like an earthquake. Panicked, he looked around for safe ground, though none remained. Was the doctor seriously...

An irritated groan escaped Xavier as he leaped up to the low-hanging ceiling. Instinctively, his new finger pads clung to the surface, leaving him to dangle like a fish on a wire. He looked down only briefly to see the remaining floor drop into the darkness. Holy shit.

**As Xavier leapt to the ceiling and stuck to the wall, his adhesive pads did as they had always intended.**

"What the hell!" Xavier yelled, finally losing his patience with this lunatic. "You really couldn't wait to do that?"

"I know, a less courageous scientist would've waited until your feet changed and you climbed on all fours. But that's not how we push boundaries now, is it? In fact, I think you could use a bit more of a challenge." Another button press. Another sting in Xavier's neck. There'd be no rest for him today. Not when fire spread to his lower back.

**"You're all sick bastards, you know that?" Xavier scoffed, no longer trying to hold in his disdain for them. He felt his back twinge and crunch, causing him gurgle in pain.**

While Xavier groaned in agony, Dr. Feng laughed casually on the other end. "I do know that, Xavier! And it keeps me employed."

Now giving credit to the experiment's name, Xavier hung nervously from his fingertips, suspended however many feet in the air. All the while, his legs twitched and curled as pain flared up just above his rear. He rolled his hips back and forth, desperate to ease the deep ache drilling into his spine. He knew what was coming, and he hated it. And now, it could lead to his death.

The doctor perked up. "I hope you've been strengthening the grip of your finger pads, Xavier. That tail's going to add at least a few pounds to your body weight. Isn't it weird how you can just suddenly grow mass on your body? We really should be selling this stuff to body builders. Nothing says gains like an additional limb."

"S-Shut up, man!" The young man cried, feeling his tailbone start to twist and unfurl. It always felt like a worm digging out of his skin, tearing apart the flesh just above his behind. It wasn't long until the absurd little stump was pushing at his waistband, wriggling up and away from his body. While Xavier was loathe to admit it, the doctor was certainly right about one thing. The tail was growing heavy. It was getting harder to hold on by his fingers alone.

**Xavier's stress levels were going through the roof, his fingers clenching tighter and tighter to the ceiling as his mucus-lined sweat helped him to achieve the stickiness. Even so, the sheer mass of the tail made his fingers taut and pretty tight. It was as if he was hanging on clothes wire.**

Whines and groans escaped Xavier's lips as the now-familiar tail took form behind him. Inch by inch, second by second, it pulled at his skin eagerly. Muscle came to life and twitched uncontrollably, reacting negatively to the young man's stress. The change was never easy for him, but this nightmare was far beyond his normal regiment of lunacy.

As his tail whipped about, he found his grip weakening, forcing him to press his palms hard into the surface. For once, the adhesiveness of his slimy palms proved useful -- and strangely, he could feel his bulbous fingertips grip the ceiling with unusual precision. It was almost like he was flexing them.

**His thick green fingers compressed into the hard surface of the ceiling. He steadied his breathing, making sure to focus on his balance and not to falter.

If he did, well...that was his death.**

Before things got too out of hand, literally, Xavier felt his tail begin to settle, the base of it pushed fully past the band of his undergarments. He curled it inward, trying to center his weight balance and prevent anymore unnecessary strain.

Dr. Feng chimed in. "Ok, whoever bet on the tail killing him, you're down three hundred..."

**His tail curling inward was an alien feeling. The change had been reversed, triggered, and reversed again many times, but after a long break, it just felt...off.**

"You feel it, don't you?" Dr. Feng inquired, thoughtfully. "Your body is reacting in a heightened state. You're making this happen, not us. We could sit here all day and prod you, shock you, grow however many legs on you as we want! But this fear you have right now...you're trying to survive. And it's working."

**Xavier hated to admit it, but the Doctor was right. It seemed that his fight-or-flight survival instincts somehow amplified his well-known gecko techniques.**

Xavier grimaced. If only he could spit into the man's face, wherever he was. He'd smack him upside the head with the weight of his tail. Why hadn't he thought of doing that before?

His body stabilized, he began the inevitable trek to the other side of the ravine. He certainly couldn't just hang around forever. He couldn't gauge the distance accurately, but he suspected he could make it in 10 minutes at his current rate. Assuming he didn't tire out or...a button was pressed.

His collar shook excitedly. Goddamnit.

**The shock and prick of his collar made his heart sink as well as the rest of his guts...literally. His lungs suddenly lost breath from the movement of his human organs rearranging to fit his more gecko physiology.**

Heat drove down into his chest and abdomen, pummeling his guts with immeasurable force. Tightness gripped his lungs, and his stomach rolled into knots. Xavier curled himself inwards, whimpering like a kicked puppy.

**No wonder he had such prominent abs. The impromptu curl session was met with dry heaving, with a guest feature of inhuman moans and cries.**

A stretching sensation ran across his torso. The feeling was dragging him down.

His toes and tail curled in tandem as a literal gut-wrenching feeling overwhelmed the gecko-to-be. Xavier could feel his hips move farther away, his whole upper body growing long, lanky, and reptilian once more. Between gasps and groans, his breath hitched on occasion. His lungs swelled and stretched to fit his growing chest cavity.

"Do you feel more flexible now that you've stretched out a bit? I'm wondering how tight of a space you could squeeze through. Might be worth testing next. Once, you're nice and slimy, of course."

**His chest heaving and his breath baited, he had no choice but to ride with the changes, as rough as they were. The doctor's sly remarks and snide comments REAAAALLY didn't help either. He was definitely more flexible than usual -- he always was as a gecko. That's thanks to his stretching and continuously shifting vertebrae and ribcage.**

As the growing muscle spasms spread up into his chest and shoulders, Xavier felt his grip on the ceiling weaken just slightly, but enough to send panic surging through his mind. The tip of his tail lashed out. His hips wriggled, stretching the newly lengthened muscles in his waist and abs. It was getting to be too much. He couldn't tighten his grip any more than he had.

**The more his hands slipped, the faster his heart raced as he tightened his grip on whatever he could. It was the least he could do.**

Desperately, he kicked into the air, aimlessly looking for purchase onto something, anything to keep him from falling. Anything to keep him alive. Anything.

Instincts drove Xavier to swing his legs up over his head, leaning back and pressing his feet hard against the ceiling.

**Making a heave-ho motion, he had resorted to the thing that he hated most; fully sticking to the wall. His knees curled and swung up as close to the ceiling as he could, and as soon as his toes contacted with the ceiling, he curled them so hard he thought he was going to poke holes through it.**

And without any interference, any injection, his toes gripped on for dear life.

**His toe knuckles white, his body wet, slick and slimy, he had no choice but to feel the aching, and soon to be agonizing, pain in his heels as they shook.**

The ache of oncoming change boiled into his heels. Xavier felt sick to his stomach.

**He gulped, holding back some tears and took a deep breath.

"Here we go."**

Blistering heat ruptured through his heels and soles. As if it wasn't enough for his toes to simply stick to the surface, Xavier would have to accept the whole package. The usual crackling of bone and sinew echoed through the chamber as his heels grew rounder, thicker, more capable of all-terrain movement. A real gecko would be able to traverse any ground, no matter how rocky or hazardous. Xavier must have been perched close to a microphone, as Dr. Feng was hearing all these little changes in surround sound.

"Man, I've been to rock shows that weren't this killer!" He said, elated. "Wish I could see your feet up close, bud, but I'll settle for the VOD. Next time, we've got to do this one on one."

**One on one, huh? For some reason, he felt that his time with this Feng guy was gonna be a lot more arduous than his time with Mr. Slaughter...and that guy had a more menacing name.**

As the pain refocused from his heels to his arches, Xavier cursed under his breath, ignoring the wetness of his eyes. This bastard was having too much fun. Even the old lab assistants weren't this flippant. With a sharp crack, the young man's feet began their first big transition -- stretching.

**Through grit teeth, he felt his muscle and tissue break, tear, form and reform over and over again. It was like watching the most exciting Pop Rocks experiment happen while watching paint dry. For a few moments, it was exciting, then his heel would go back to sloooooowly inching its way up. Dr. Feng of course was VERY INTERESTED in his new plaything...perhaps he would have to change him back and do this more often.**

He forced his forehead into the ground, at least it was the ground for him, and endured the pain as best he could. Every bone in the middle of his foot was growing longer, thicker, pushing his heels further and further away from his adhesive toes. Sweat dripped off his soles as they elongated, becoming more porous by the second. Soon that sweat was thicker than any human could produce.

Of course it was. He wasn't fully human anymore.

**Xavier sobbed quietly trying not to let them see him so weak. The changes never got any better...they never really got any less painful either. As a matter of fact, it probably got worse over time. His heels rose more and more as the bone in them made thick crunching sounds and his "sweat" slid off of his soles into the dark abyss.**

As his heels pushed out further, inching ever closer to the chasm below, thick beads of slime fell off in strands and hurdled into the darkness. Xavier never knew what to call it. One doctor said it was mucus, another dubbed it "geck slime." All Xavier knew was that he hated producing it, feeling it slip out of pores and off his skin.

Xavier could swear he heard the droplets land somewhere below, but he chalked this up to stress-induced delusions. It wouldn't be the first time he imagined something mid-experiment. One time, he thought he saw a friend from --

Another twisted snap of bone pulled him from his thoughts. His jaw tightened. He just felt his toes splay out. Not that he splayed them on purpose, of course, but the knuckles and joints that held the digits had suddenly exploded and fanned out, forcing his toes into a disgusting, wide spread. The sight was unnatural.

Given his prone position, Xavier avoided looking back at his changes, all too familiar with the mutation of his body. Still, this didn't stop his new friend from playing sports commentator.

"And they're off, ladies and gentleman! Look at his toes, oh that does NOT look right. You can see the joints starting to pop and unfuse. Every bone, every single one, that makes up his toes is starting to streeeeettch and grooowww. Xavier's gonna have a much easier time climbing now." The changing human growled in response. Not that geckos typically growl, but whatever.

**Xavier hissed and cried into the porcelain white ceiling as his body was being commentated on like a national sport. He yelped and screamed out as his ankles popped and twisted in all different directions.**

In defiance, his toes gripped onto the ceiling, even as they grew longer by the second. He was loathe to admit it, but the grip strength of his lengthened toes far exceeded that of his normal feet. With the added stickiness of his pads, and constant release of mucus, he shouldn't have had any more problems clinging to the test chamber.

**The splaying of his toes caused him to scream bloody murder. His toes wiggled and stretched making micro cracks and large snaps of bone. It was disgusting. Almost as disgusting as his slime that was sliding off of his soles.

"GUAAAGHHHHDDD!! O-Ohh fuck," he cried loudly, "Please stop... P-pleaaazzeseee.... Ssttopppp..!!" He whimpered and wheezed.**

"Oh, Xavier..." Feng mused. "I haven't touched the button in like, what five minutes? The tail sure, that's on me, but your paws...you're doing this to yourself. Maybe it's subconscious, but you know exactly what you need to do to survive. You don't want it to stop. Because you want to live."

**He hadn't even pressed the button?!?! What the hell was going to happen when he DID press the button? Xavier's brain was a muddle of pained confusion and irrational thinking as he tried to rationalize why his body was changing, now knowing he wasn't administered a serum...**

The stringent pain and frustration made Xavier huff out a mournful cry. As each of his toes stretched forward, gripping desperately at the cold ceiling, he couldn't fathom that his body was doing this of its own volition. Did he really_will_ his feet to change this time? Just to make it through this ordeal?

Xavier winced as his tiptoes started to inflate, becoming swollen nubs perched at the end of his lower digits. It felt as uncomfortable as usual, though he felt the ground far more precisely than normal. It was like he could clench the individual grooves in his skin that allowed his toes to adhere. His nails popped off with a sharp twinge before falling into the abyss.

**The tugging, breaking, and just overall torture of his toes and muscle stretched on as his sinew crackled to match his soon to be gecko-like feet. If he were to lift them, they would make a sickly "SCHLOCCKK!" wet suction sound.**

"I-If I'm changing myself...why does it h-hurt!" Xavier shouted in disdain. The final clicks of bone and muscle were locking his toes into place--spread wide and proud like a gecko's. When the balls of his feet swelled and widened into form, he could feel every inch covered in his natural slime. It was helping to keep him grounded...literally.

The doctor sighed. "Well think about it, Hizz...Xavier. Working out hurts. Every time you lift a weight, you're tearing muscle and making it rebuild stronger. The same rule applies. But instead of just your bicep, it's every little bone and muscle that needs to go. I don't know why you'd think your foot elongating would feel good, honestly."

**Life as he knew it was never the same once he was administered that damn serum...now in the hands of a new doctor, it only got worse...**

Xavier realized, as his feet completed their change into proper reptilian paws, that such questions were literally a waste of air.

**He just wanted to spit in that doctor's face and tell him how much he hated him. But instinct told him to survive first and foremost. And survive he did. With more purchase on his "ground," he tried skittering over to the other side as fast as human...Er... inhumanly possible.**

"And he's off!" The voice announced as the half-human began skittering across once more, as if this was some horse race and not a life-or-death game. The William Tell Overture played over the speakers. At that moment, Xavier wanted to leap off into the death pit. Still, he pressed on.

**"You son of a BITCH!" He would have said if it weren't for him focusing on trying to survive in that moment. His spine, hips, and shoulders rattled and wracked with pain as he alternated across the great chasm of darkness below him.**

With every footfall, wet slaps resonated in the lab. Surely, Dr. Feng was enjoying the sounds of his movement. Xavier always hated crawling on all fours, especially since it felt like trudging through his own self-made rain puddles, but it was significantly faster than just latching on with his hands. In fact, he was nearly two-thirds the way there. Then, over the obnoxious horn-filled music, there came the sound of a button being pressed.

Xavier froze for a minute, worried that some other part of him would change, or the entire ceiling would give out under his weight. Instead, he heard...a motor start to run. It was coming from below.

Nervous, Xavier glanced down into the abyss. The sea of black was turning red...blindingly red. And the room was getting miserably hot.

**His head slowly turned to the deepening red abyss, and soon his sweat started to multiply by the minute.**

"We're almost done, Xavier. But we wouldn't want this to be too easy for you, right? That's not what training is about. So, let's turn up the heat a bit."

Turn it up "a bit?" The room suddenly felt volcanic. Xavier was almost panting. As the inferno spit and spiraled below, he continued crawling with haste. His body slime was working overtime, plumes of it bubbling on his skin to keep him cool and hydrated. He imagined that if not for his wet palms and soles, the ceiling would be scalding to the touch. This might have been the most mucus he'd ever produced...

**With the fire literally under his ass, he skittered across the ceiling for dear life.**

Xavier was never sure if he was warm- or cold-blooded now, or when that change ever occurred during the process, but he certainly didn't want to tempt fate and die from heat exposure. He pressed on, ignoring the strange, serpentine feeling that came with his torso scuttling at this speed. His skin grew terribly itchy as scales began climbing up from his ankles and wrapping around his thighs. Still, he ignored it. They'd probably protect him better than bare human skin anyway.

He winced as a reptilian yellow overtook his eyes and colored in the white spots, but still he persevered. It was getting hard to see through the rising hot mist, so this actually improved his vision. Xavier hated himself for thinking like this, for ignoring his tired, aching body and shriveling humanity. But he'd come this far, he'd climbed all this way. What mattered was surviving, and living to see the day where he could break this new doctor in half.

He paused only once when he grew tired and needed to catch his breath. Seemingly in response, pain flared in his spine and upper back.

Crick. Crunch. Snap.

Xavier whimpered as he felt his vertebrae grow, now jutting upwards against his newly-scaled skin.

**Xavier hissed as his spine cracked and pushed against his skin, rising and slithering under it like his skin was a pillowcase of some sort.**

"F-Fucking...s-spine..." He coughed out, his tail flexing in response to the drilling pain. His backbone was expanding and curling to better manage his weight, and he could feel the muscles in his back and legs twitch and grow, providing him an animalistic boost in strength. When the changes resigned to coloring his scales with the usual green and spotted grays, the young man continued on, faster than before.

**He trilled as he cried out in agony. He was so close, he was almost there -- he could practically taste it.**

"See what I mean, Xavier? You don't need serum when you have strength of will! Next session, it'll only take one prick to jumpstart you. After that, well, you'll be a regular Bruce Banner." The voice was grating in Xavier's ears. He was already a hulking ball of rage and anxiety. What more could be done to him?

---

Despite all the trials and changes he'd been through, Xavier still hadn't learned something quite simple. Never ever ask, "What more could be done?"

Another button, another mechanical whirring in the room. Xavier didn't feel his collar activate, so he ignored the sound and kept crawling. He was almost within jumping distance of the exit platform. Almost there. Almost...

His eyes planted on the door, he hardly noticed something extending out from the small section of tile that remained at the ground level. Just in front of the door was a handle of some sort...like a metal pogo stick hanging off the floor.

What on Earth?

The Doctor's voice came alive. "Hey Hizzard?"

"Don't call me --"

"Think fast!" Another button pressed. And the floor gave out above his feet.

Hizzard...Xavier...started to fall.

Into the hot red abyss below.

He was spiraling towards Hell.

Time seemed to slow.

Like they always say it does before death.

Screaming, the young man flailed in the air, all five limbs writhing (tail included). He needed to grab onto something, anything! There had to be some wall to cling to. Some scalable testing surface! But no, he was too far from the sides of the room. It was getting hotter as he approached the edge of the pit. He couldn't die here. He couldn't die here. He'd endured too much, changed too much. Whatever he was at the core, it wanted to live. Why couldn't he be turned into a bird? Or a spider with webs? Even a dragon, they could make that happen right? But no, he was gecko. All he had were scales and slime and gross sticky toes and...and...and...

Without another thought, Xavier felt his tongue shoot out at record speed.

It grew long and thick, the full 3 feet it needed to, and it eagerly wrapped around the metal handle that had emerged from the ledge. He was left dangling off the side of the platform, swinging aimlessly over the flames.

**With the explosion of his newly changed tongue BURSTING from his gecko maw, he was thankful, for ONCE, that he was actually a gecko in his life. Perhaps this doctor's hypothesis was right, or perhaps he was just fucking crazy. (Let me honest, they all were.)**

Did the sudden, swift transformation of his tongue hurt? Fuck yes. Did it save his life? Also yes.

**He swung himself toward the protrusion and hoisted himself up onto the platform, finally being able to breathe a sigh of relief. No more flames, no more disappearing tiles. It was (hopefully) clear from here. He rolled over onto his sore back, muscles and bones aching and pulsating, but he didn't care. He almost just died. And he was actually glad to be alive.**

---

As the heaters kicked off and the red aura faded to black, the room was eerily silent. Only Xavier's heavy breaths gave life to the lab. His mind was racing, barely paying attention to the minute changes happening deep within his back and neck. He just forced his own tongue to change. To save his skin...his scaly green-yellow skin. When did his life come to this?

The quiet reprieve was ruined by hasty clapping. It was borderline pandering.

"Wow, Xavier, just wow. I know you probably think I was planning for that change, but I really thought you were just gonna grab on with your hands! I honestly thought you were close enough. But hey, this kind of science isn't perfect. You never know what the human factor will do! Good work."

Xavier groaned, slamming a fist down onto the floor with a SPLAT. "I'm barely fucking human, you asshole!"

"Yeah, but part of that...is your fault." Dr. Feng's words made Xavier want to scream. "If you had total control of your body, you'd have made it across without any visible changes at all. And one day...you will. Though, speaking of which, you and I both know that your tongue doesn't belong in a mouth that small. Now either I can press the button or..."

Xavier sighed loud enough to be heard. He was tired, furious, achy, but he'd frankly had enough needles put in him for the day. He closed his eyes and focused on his face, remembering the feeling of having a snout. He recalled the pain of his skull lurching forward, how the first time it even knocked his teeth out in the process. It'd hurt, but the final pop of his jaw had been cathartic.

Xavier pictured himself with a muzzle that could tear the doctor's face off. His fists tightened. Even his tail slammed down onto the floor. A sudden pain flared in his jaw. Xavier's mouth snapped open and let out a pitiful whimper.

Over the snaps and pops of a skull deforming, Dr. Feng chuckled. "Good choice! You'll need a dental imprint to open that door anyway."

**The deforming of his skull made him fall forward on his knees screaming into his hands. It was almost an instant regret as his face pushed out into the gecko structure he was more accustomed to. Human teeth changed and transferred to a weird in-between of a human-gecko hybrid.**

###

The crackling of bones crashed through his ears, adding nausea to Xavier's symptoms of suffering. The rims and lobes burned as they melded into the sides of his scalp, skin growing into protective coverings over his ear canals. It made him dizzy every time they shifted. Streams ran down from his eyes.

**His bulbous slick hands pressed and squished deep into his lengthening face as if almost to try to push it back in. Tears flowed from his eyes and melded with his sticky sweat-slime.**

Though he pushed hard in on his growing muzzle, clearly some part of Xavier wanted it more exposed than not. Was that the animal in him expressing its instincts? Would that grow worse as the tests grew harder? Maybe it wasn't enough for Dr. Feng to make him simply look like an animal. Maybe the day would come where...

There wasn't time to entertain that death spiral. Xavier cried aloud as his nose upturned with a snap, the bone within shifting positions as it formed into the pointy ridge of a reptilian maw. Lips parted and dwindled, allowing his elastic-like tongue to slide out and onto the cold ground. It too was elongating to its full size, the tip rounding and swelling like his fingers and toes had.

Everything ached. Everything burned. Xavier's face boiled with change, and he even began scratching at his cheeks when the rough forest of scales slid up his neck and onto his widening muzzle. Gone was the visage of himself, of a young human man.

Xavier fell to his side, his head floating in a pool of sweat, drool, and bitter tears. The order of his mutations often varied, and while his feet stretching were perhaps the most agonizing, his face was always the most disheartening.

The wet crackling in his skull settled, leaving Xavier with his fully changed frame. He curled in on himself and cried, a mixture of despair and relief at surviving another grueling transformation. This one was tough.

**Xavier held himself in comfort--no one else was gonna do it for him, of course. The aptly obnoxious voice of Dr. Feng resounded over the intercom and into his now slightly sensitive ears, making him wince and cover them out of reflex.**

"Xavier? Want to hear something funny?"

Xavier did not.

**He turned up, giving a yellow-eyed glare to the intercom. He felt like if he could punch that intercom, he could punch through it and straight into the doctor's face.**

"Xavier? Xaaaavieeer? I know you can hear me, your hearing should've improved with that last round of --"

Xavier saw red. "WHAT? What more do you want from me! I did your test, I made it across a goddamn canyon. I grew fucking scales again. What do you want me to do now?"

A beat of silence.

"Well, if you're gonna be sassy --"

"Fuck off!"

"Just...look into the pit."

Irritated, Xavier rose from his personal pond and crawled over to the edge of the platform. Beneath him was an ocean of darkness. The thing that could've swallowed him whole, tail and all. Something that horrified him to no end. Oblivion.

A switch was flicked.

Not a button.

But a switch.

A light switch.

Oblivion vanished.

Xavier could see the bottom of Hell. And the bottom of Hell was about six feet away.

"Xavier, have you ever seen Spider-Man: Far From Home?"

He wanted cry. Now more than ever. "No....no....no!"

"Well, it's really good, and there's a guy in it named Mysterio, and he did a lot of things with just some lights and mirrors. And so I thought, hey, let's buy some lights and mirrors, a big furnace, some fans, and that way I don't have to cut funding for the new break room. The guys really wanted a pool table."

The gecko man rose to his feet, practically stomping them. He wanted to hurl himself into the nonexistent pit. He'd ridden skateboards off higher drops. And yet here he was, fearing for his life, crawling like an animal, literally turning_himself_ into one, for absolutely no reason.

Xavier turned and banged on the exit door. "Get me out of here! Open the fucking door! Send me back to Slaughter, I don't care. Just --"

"You should be proud, Xavier! You did this almost all on your own. It's like any superhero tale. The real power was inside you the whole time."

**With the slamming of his feet, audible wet slaps resounded throughout the now seemingly-not-so-empty and expansive room. He yelled, maybe not as hard as he did when he was transforming, but loud enough for him to get his point across.

"I don't give a fuck about pride anymore! None of this shit is for science! I'm just a plaything being passed around like the rest of your subjects! There was no power inside me! YOU BASTARDS PLACED IT IN ME!!!" His tongue felt like it was going to lash out in anger.

He could have gone on to say more, but no words would ever change was happening to him in this moment or in the future.

He was doomed to a life of solitude created by the same people that first imprisoned him. Quite ironically, they were also the ones who had the power to release him. It was a small chance, but he knew it wasn't anytime soon...

He fell back to his knees and sobbed, this time in full boohoo force. He felt gross, wet, alien.**

Dr. Feng projected over Xavier's lament, "I know you think you're powerless...and alone...and like a freak. But really, you're only one of those things. So whenever you're ready, scoop up those tears, scan your teeth on the panel next to the door, and head inside. We've got something special for you."

Xavier stayed weeping for a long time, overwhelmed by the day's trauma. He'd been poked and prodded and mutated before...but he'd never felt so manipulated. What was worse--agonizing changes to his skin and bones, or the mental anguish of some gaslighting game? He thought he knew the answer before today.

When his tears dried and he grew tired of kneeling in his own ocean of slime, the changed young man moved to the door scanner and did as he was instructed. The wide exit slid open with a mechanical whirr. Xavier trudged through, fury and sorrow heavy on his back.

Down the hall and through the only door, Xavier found a room he wasn't quite expecting. But to be surprised in this place wasn't surprising all. It looked like a break room. Carpeted, furnished, not sterile like the rest of the chambers he'd been held hostage in for so long. There was a counter with some chips and bottled water even. Before inspecting anything else, Xavier tore open a water and downed it. He hardly noticed that his tongue lapped at the stream like an animal's.

Catching his breath, he looked around further. There was a table in the center of the room. He must've walked completely around it.

Cautiously, he approached. There were some...keychains? Tote bags? And yellow jerseys. Xavier's eyes glared down at the print on the fabric.

"...Let's Zoo?"

A speaker buzzed from the ceiling.

"Xavier, I don't know how they do things over at your lab, but we don't do things without purpose here. And we have a very special tradition that I think you're going to love. Your shirt's on the top there."

More bewildered than mad now, Xavier lifted the jersey and examined it before flipping it over.

Xavier grimaced. "Number 34. Hizzard."

Dr. Feng laughed in a metallic hiss.

"Welcome to the team."