Kingsburgh, California, The Briggs Family Estates
I trembled, my fingers stretching out to trace around the tiny monitoring device that Vakrexid had adhered to my collarbone. I glanced around the shower room, a small, single occupant affair, with no frills, and undressed myself. In a society as advanced as Earth’s there were as many ways to cleanse yourself as modes of transportation, but some people still preferred to immerse their forms in water, whether or not it was total submersion. I was never so surprised to discover it within the walls of the Conclave Headquarters, especially one so simple in design that it used technologies from before the occupation.
“Are you ready?” Khala asked, from the corner of the room, her form leaning against a mirror. I jerked away, taken aback that she seemed to cast a reflection before realizing that it was another aspect of the illusion she projected.
“No.” I quivered from the chill and slipped my fists under my pits. “Good lord, it’s frigid in here.”
“This was your idea, remember?”
“This is not at all what I had in mind. I thought maybe we’d use the spa room back at the estates or even the facilities on the Hawk… I wasn’t aware this room existed.”
“Where better to usher in your new life than a room dedicated for that exact purpose? This was among the first rooms to be completed within the headquarters for a reason, and it has survived, more or less unchanged, through three renovations.”
“That explains the primitive setup.” I shivered one final time before nodding at Khala, indicating that she should start.
Nothing happened, and I craned my neck around to study her face. Her clothes melted away from her body, revealing a form pretty much on par with Tanner’s minus the penis. “There is so much diversity on your world.”
Khala smiled, her form bending, twisting and snapping until she grew more slender, her skin darkened and she smiled at me with a mouthful of perfect pearly-whites. My symbiote touched my cheek and her body shifted again, her breasts once small, bloomed, growing larger even than her initial form, her skin lightened, and her eyes shifted to hint at an Asian ancestry. She wasn’t done however, she twirled around on her toes, and where before her form had been so soft, this one was on the muscular side. It was breathtaking in its own regard, but I always felt myself more drawn to women with soft curves than the athletic type.
“I can mold your new body, idealize it… If you will. You can be whatever kind of female you like.”
I bit back the response on the tip of my tongue. I didn’t want to be any type of woman… did I? “You know people are more than what they appear to be on the surface.”
Khala rolled her eyes, brushing past me as her form shifted back to her original proportions. She marched clear across the room before she spun around, resting her fists on her hips. “I’m trying to make this transition easier for you. I don’t have the sort of fine control you were hoping for, but I can mix and match, and I’ve got a good enough read on the turnout that, I believe, I can come close. It’s not an exact science, but with a bit of experimenting it may be possible.
“So, you could make me into a mannish-looking woman.”
She shrugged. “Probably, but like I said, it’s not an exact science.”
I trembled again and sank my teeth into my lip, my mind racing at the implications. As weird as it sounds, going that route seemed like a cheat. If I lived out the next year as a woman, I shouldn’t do it by burying my head in the sand. If she gave me a form that looked more masculine than feminine, it wouldn’t be a fair representation. The point is, I knew myself. If I took that route, I would spend all my time trying to appear and act like a man. If I was going to do this, it would be all in or nothing. How else would I determine if I wanted to remain female or not?
“No.” I rocked my head, shivering, but this time it wasn’t from the cold. “No, I won’t do that to myself. Make me a woman, but make me… Me.”
“You realize that every genetic combination is unique. I can’t make you into a female version of yourself. The best alternative would be to recombine your parents’ genes into a new female form. Genetically, you would be similar, about as similar as a sibling to your original form, but that’s the best I can do.”
“Then do it.” I clenched my eyes shut, bracing myself for the inevitable transformation.
“Uh.”
She cleared her throat and my eyelids snapped back open.
“What now?”
“Well, I can’t exactly start until I feed. Well, that’s not true, I could start, but wouldn’t get that far. I’ve fed off some electrical currents, here or there, but most of those are meant to power small devices. I need something with more substance if you wish me to complete your transition from male to female in a single go.”
“And… How the hell, am I supposed to do that?”
“Relax,” she folded her arms over her breasts and tipped her head sideways, motioning toward an indent in the wall. “I’ve never used this room, but I was a founding member of the Conclave, remember? I know everything about this place. There’s a catch hidden inside that wall that, once released, should give us a direct feed into the building’s power supply. That should give me more than enough of what I need.”
I shivered and advanced to the spot she indicated, popping loose the panel, after slipping my hand inside the indent, and fumbled around. Soon, my fingers found purchase on a long cable, I peeled back the protective sheath, exposing the copper within and hesitated, wincing as I considered what I was about to do. Was it any wonder? All my life, I’d been taught that doing this very thing would cause a very permanent and untimely death. Would it surprise anyone that I had my doubts? I wrapped my hands around the exposed metal and my eyes grew very wide as Khala fed.
It was like the ultimate adrenaline high, except I didn’t have to do anything insane like cave-diving or anti-grav jumping. All I needed to do was let Khala have at it. Brilliant, iridescent energy flowed through my body, radiating from the floor and the walls, invigorating me in both body and mind. God, it was better than sleep, better than a cup of coffee, and hell even better than sex.
I threw my head back, letting out a soft moan as all that energy cascaded into me, scratching an itch that Khala would only fulfill through this very means. The K’teth consumed energy, which is what granted their hosts their superior speed, strength, and reflexes. In a civilized society that meant feeding off electrical power, but there were other sources from which Khala could turn if she needed to, like phase weapon discharge, fire, explosions, and the like. The K’teth fed on and grew stronger from things that would kill almost anything else. Which meant now that I was joined to one, I would be pretty damned hard to kill.
Once Khala satiated herself, I pulled away, hunching over as the K’teth began to remake me. It came with no delay or fanfare on Khala’s part and started with a slight tingle around my nipple. My stomach rippled, and I reached down, fighting down the powerful urge to claw at my skin, as tiny clumps of fat began to slither up my body toward my chest. Bit by bit, it collected around my nipples and they grew larger and larger until they’d developed into what I would only call a rather nice set of breasts.
I averted my eyes, trying my best not to peer at the mirror, but try as I might my gaze took in the very odd sight of my reflection sporting a pair of mammaries. It seemed odd, but I wasn’t as broken up about it as you might expect.
The next step in my transformation distracted me, and I didn’t gawk for more than a few moments. My shoulders were the next fatality of my changing form. They cracked and popped, shifting to where my arms looked massive framed by their new counterparts. It wasn’t long, however, until they too succumbed to Khala’s transformative prowess, growing slimmer and more slender by the moment.
The changes shifted toward my torso, and for the first time. A sharp burst of pain shot through my chest. I collapsed atop the cold, tiled floor, my new breasts cushioning the rest of my body from the fall, but produced a sharp jab of pain. My insides contorted, muscles shifted, bones cracked, and internal organs moved about. It should have been a lot more painful. Khala seemed to be, at least, trying to keep a damper on the pain, but it probably was too much even for her to suppress.
“No, no, no!” I screamed, my still male voice striking an odd cord, as I slid my shorts around my ankles, struggling to keep my manly bits from slithering away, but all my efforts were for nothing. Once my ball-sack was sucked into the space between my legs, Khala’s illusionary hands molded my cock like clay until she’d formed a vulva.
I panted, black gunk now trickling out of my pores in beaded rivulets. I gagged as something rose out of the pit of my stomach, I held it back for as long as I could, which is to say, a few seconds, turned my skull and let it rip. It was the most disgusting experience of my life, but had expected it. I’d heard about K’teth induced transformations from a young age.
Hunkering down, I rolled over and knelt, making it easier for all the dead tissue to flow out of my throat as Khala continued her assault against the last vestiges of Jek.
I collapsed back onto my side, as each vertebra of my spine snapped, and realigned, no doubt, helping to lend my backside a more feminine curve. From there my hips and ass came next, popping and shifting into position, as fat collected in the right places. Where it all came from was anyone’s guess. I had never been what you might call muscular, but I’d never been over five kilos overweight. When Khala was through working her magic, I had an ass that any straight man would be more than happy to sink his teeth into.
“Shit!”
I screamed out as my legs and feet became the next victims. Hair dropped away from my chest, one of the few places on my body that had much besides my head, and mixed into the sludge of discarded flesh and vomit from my transformation.
Soon, I possessed a set of dainty legs and tiny feet, which I might have called ‘cute’ if it hadn’t been for the folds of ill-fitting skin that covered them. Now that my body was smaller, my skin was so loose that whenever I changed position, bits of it shifted around. It wasn’t painful, but I cringed when my skin shifted with each movement. I was glad I wouldn’t have to live with it very long.
There was one final and very obvious change that had to take place before my skin conformed to the remainder of my figure. It began with a crunch that reverberated through my entire skull. I brought my hands up to my throat, rubbing against my Adam’s apple, or what remained of it. I gasped, emitting a moan that sounded much more feminine, and jerked sideways so that I would see the last part of my transformation through the mirror. My face melted away like butter. All the hard edges faded away, becoming softer, finer, less prominent.
I blinked and reached up to rub my eyes, but thought better of it when I realized a mixture of my vomit and dead flesh now covered my hands. There was so much of it, in fact, that I scooped some of it up and flipped a handful at the wall.
“That’s plain disgusting,” I said, noting my new high-pitched and very feminine voice as I rose on tender feet. “And… I’m covered in Jek pudding.”
I put my revulsion aside, looking into the mirror, and my heart pounded in my chest. I walked toward the glass. The loose bits of skin firmed with each additional step. When I reached out to place my open palm on its icy surface, my transformation had completed, and was awarded with my first good glimpse of my final self. It surprised me at how much I looked like my mother, but a considerable amount of my Briggs heritage showed in my face. Most people didn’t know of my half-Latino heritage before, and if my new face was any sign, the only thing that had changed was that I would need to switch the ‘o’ to an ‘a’.
The Briggs family had always been more on the attractive side. My father had been no exception and from what I’d been told my mother, though married-in, had been quite the beauty. I didn’t see it, but I mean, even if I didn’t remember her well, she was still my mom. So, it shouldn’t have been so surprising that I’d turn out so… hot.
You know what? I wasn’t the best-looking guy around, but I did well enough that I didn’t have trouble finding companionship. My female form, on the other hand, would have men salivating over me. I had mixed feelings about that, to be honest.
I turned away, shuddering against the cold again. I tucked my hands under my armpits, but the weight of my breasts on my arms was… odd. With a sigh of resignation, I dropped my hands and moved toward the shower, knowing that at least would warm things up. Most of the sludge was centered near the shower drain, which would make cleaning up easier, but it made it harder for me to get to the knobs. The vomit by itself turned out to be really fucking slick, but the goop may as well have been slime. As I traversed the short distance to the shower, I discovered that even a joined host wasn’t immune to the effects of gravity. I went down in the most undignified fashion, like a sack of potatoes.
My cheeks burning in what, a quick glance at my reflection revealed, to be a deep shade of crimson, I climbed to my feet, rubbing at my sore ass and never so glad that there’d been no one to witness my mishap. By then I was close enough to use one hand to leverage myself against the wall while I used the other to get the water running, realizing how short I’d become when I had to reach up to turn the knob.
Soon enough, water cascaded from the shower head, inundating me with a stream of warm droplets that left me gasping when they splattered into my chest. It was an odd sensation, but overlooked it because… well, I liked it.
“Guess I’ll need a different name.” I said. Jek was a simple moniker, but I’d it given to myself. While I’d put considerable thought into, it didn’t resonate with me any more, and, face it, I’d get a lot of odd looks if I kept introducing myself by my old male name.
“Give it some time,” Khala said, appearing beside me, her form completely naked and soaking wet.
I jumped, glowering at her. “Don’t do that!”
“Sorry,” she pursed her lips, looked down at her feet, and back up at me. “Spend a little more time in your current form and get a better sense of things. Maybe then, you can pick a name that will suit you. There really is no hurry.”
“I’d much rather do it sooner rather than later. Something tells me if I don’t, someone might take it into their head to start calling me Lexa.”
Khala smiled and shrugged. “There are worse names.”
“Do you have any idea what it’s like being named after the hero of the resistance? It was annoying as hell when I went by Jellfree, and not everyone knows that was what she went by before she became Lexa. If I choose a name now, it would prevent anyone from getting cute and trying to stick me with her female moniker. I don’t even want to consider how bad it would be if I actually shared that name with her.”
“You know, I guess I’ll go by Kayde.” I shut my eyelids, letting the warm water soak through my hair. “It sounds pretty badass and if anyone gives me any grief that it’s too masculine, I’ll tell them it’s short for Kaydence.”
“You came up with that one pretty quick.”
I smirked, casting a sidelong glance toward the symbiote. I couldn’t say why, but the new moniker felt… right. “Yeah, if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s thinking on my feet.”
I stopped, staring down at my bare breasts, and cupped them in my hands. Before slowly reaching for the soap dispenser on the wall. Now that the majority of the gunk had been washed away, it was time to do something about those stubborn spots… and the smell.
As I ran my new, more slender hands up and down my body, it became immediately obvious I’d undergone a significant change. I had the same sort of silky smooth skin, I’d always loved it in a woman, and it was disconcerting to realize that I now had every physical trait that I found desirable in the opposite sex. I guess ‘opposite’ didn’t exactly apply to me anymore, but you catch my drift.
Yeah, I was getting a bit, you know, titillated by my reflection, which probably meant I still retained some attraction towards women… Or else I was a huge narcissist in my new form. I didn’t exactly get all wet down under thinking about oth— men, but who knows? Lexa was said to have become bisexual after her transformation. How exactly would I react if my orientation shifted?
I quivered and continued soaping my body, trying my damnedest to avoid contemplating what relations might be like from the other side of the fence. I was definitely planning on trying out girl on girl sex, but the idea of being penetrated by a man produced a shudder. Conversely, the prospect of getting fucked by Tanner’s girl-dick didn’t seem quite so unpleasant in comparison.
I didn’t even realize it until I peered down at my hands, but the entire time I’d been mulling over sex, they’d been caressing my nether regions. My cheeks burned, but I clenched my jaw and let my finger slide into the new opening. I had a good grasp on how female masturbation worked. Hell, I’d had sex enough to figure that one out, but I was not prepared for the sensations it elicited. I gasped and swallowed, my whole body quivering. Glancing at Khala, who was grinning at me from ear to ear, I slipped my finger free, closed my eyes and took in several deep breaths before opening them again.
Though fingering myself had been nice, it was too reminiscent of getting impaled by a dick for my male mind to be completely comfortable with it. Besides, with Khala’s casting her image all about, it seemed a little too much like I had an audience. I gasped, my hands moving up to my erect nipples and stood there panting.
“Think unsexy thoughts. Think unsexy thoughts…” I repeated the mantra out loud and pictured a Faioloese dancing in a red polka dot bikini.
That seemed to do the trick. At least my nipples weren’t poking out anymore. I continued taking deep breaths, but I let the chanting slide. Despite my best efforts, the rather disturbing image of the alien in the bikini wouldn’t quite fade away. I shuddered and finished washing myself. Something told me it might take me awhile to expunge the alien from my mind. If that wasn’t weird enough, a new thought sprang into my head.
“If only Jax could see me now,” I muttered my mind drifting back to my childhood bully, another smile touching my lips as I experienced a brief perverse pleasure imagining the look on his face when he realized the attractive woman I’d become was the ‘sissy boy’ he’d ridiculed for all those years.
When done, I shut the water off, grabbing a fresh towel from a stack in the corner. I rubbed the water dry and promptly yelped. Since I had such soft skin and the towel was on the rough side, my usual method was like trying to dry myself off with sandpaper. So, I patted myself down instead and made a mental note that I desperately needed to talk to my grandmother about using some fabric softener. Those towels were atrocious.
Content that I was dry enough, I grabbed a second towel and wrapped it around my waist. I would have traipsed right out of the shower room, oblivious that my chest was bare for the world to see, but stopped short when I heard Khala clear her throat.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
I glanced down at my chest, realizing my mistake, and feeling my cheeks burn again. I undid the towel and pulled it up to cover my breasts, this time making extra sure it was secure, and with one final look over the room, I waved my hand at the door sensor and slipped through the opening before it slid all the way open.
My face must have been quite red as I stepped into the adjoining room. My grandmother’s presence was bad enough, but when you added Tanner and the doctor into the mix, it was a little strange. Especially when Vakrexid whipped a hand out and popped the sensor free from my neck. I jerked back. The doctor released a high-pitched wail before he jerked away and lurched from the room with a gait I could only describe as wobbly.
Vakrexid’s rather quick departure did make things a little less unsettling, but given Tanner’s recent revelation of her feelings and our night together, I was still a little weirded out. Especially when there was a high probability that my grandmother knew about our nighttime activities.
I figured it was my imagination, but I swore there was a lingering sensation from her lips locked around mine. A little odd when you consider that the lips I now sported weren’t exactly the same ones she had kissed. Either damn way it elicited a strong reaction from my new libido and all I could do was grit my teeth and pretend that my nipples were not doing their thing. Fortunately, the towel’s fabric was thick enough that I was the only one aware of those… interesting sensations. Still, having fully erect nipples in front of my grandmother was unnerving, particularly when I couldn’t seem to settle them down.
“Goddamn,” Tanner said, grabbing me by the shoulder and tilting her head down enough to look me in the eye. Given she had to have been a good eighteen or nineteen centimeters taller than me with her shoes on, it was rather awkward.
“Jek?”
I nodded, cheeks burning anew, not only because I was one step removed from baring it all, but because I realized I was now the shortest person in the room. Even my grandmother was taller. I trembled and pulled away, folding my arms across my breasts and my gaze darted between Tanner and grandmother.
“K-Kayde.” I spoke the unfamiliar name and met her gaze. “Jek doesn’t feel like a very good fit anymore.”
“Kayde?” My grandmother asked, brushing past Tanner, a hand reaching out to touch my chin as she swung my head this way and that. “You’ve already chosen a new name? It does seem a little masculine, but it’s your choice.”
“Who cares?” Tanner glowered at my grandmother, folding her arms across her chest and adopting a pose that was just a bit reminiscent of mine, then winced and bit her lip. “What I mean to say is, does it really matter how masculine or feminine his name is? This isn’t the twenty-first century. We don’t have people getting all in a huff over transgender people using the right bathroom. I think if he wants a masculine name let him have one.”
My fists clenched at my side as my grandmother pulled away. “If you must know, it’s short for Kaydence. I figured I’d pick out a name before someone decided to do it for me.”
Kaya patted my face and smiled, that awful unbearable smirk that I had come to just loathe. She’d never reveal her innermost thoughts to anyone, least of all her own grandchild, but my grandmother had once been a practicing psychologist. Whenever she gave someone that look, I’d always figured that she’d had one of her little analyses confirmed. The people she knew well, she could read like a book, and unfortunately, despite our time apart, I don’t think I’d changed enough to trip her up. She must have known I’d do anything to avoid comparison to the ever so legendary Lexa Briggs.
“Well then, Kayd-ence,” My grandmother said, putting just a little emphasis on the tail end of my new name, and patted me on the cheek. “We’ll need to get you some new clothes before the Conclave Council meets this afternoon.”
“I could probably help with that,” Tanner said, prompting my grandmother to look at her with a single raised eyebrow.
“Thank you, honey, but I don’t believe that will be necessary.”
Tanner glared at the elder woman through gritted teeth. “I was just trying to be helpful.”
“Thank you,” my grandmother smiled and patted her on the shoulder. “But Kaydence has just undergone a very big change, and I think I’d rather keep you around to help support her through what I’m sure will be a very difficult period. That is assuming the two of you are as close as I’ve surmised. You’ve worked together for what, five years, now?”
“Oh.” Tanner blushed, brushing her hair behind her shoulders. “Well, yeah, I mean I consider Kayde a good friend.”
See, what exactly did I say? Kaya Briggs was a master of manipulation. First, she said something that comes off as more than a little condescending, Tanner reacts, showing her irritation and then my grandmother reverses course making it seem as if the line she’d fed her hadn’t been haughty at all, but looking out for my best interests. Which not only throws Tanner off, but makes her out to be an ass.
“I’ll have one of my aides pick a few things up. In the interim, Kaydence, I’m afraid, we aren’t in the habit of keeping spare clothes around headquarters. We’ve only had three hosts, counting yourself, who underwent a complete gender reversal in the last decade, so it just isn’t very cost efficient to keep those sorts of odds and ends sitting around.”
“So, what the fuck do you want me to do in the meantime? I can’t just sit around wearing nothing but a towel.”
Kaya Briggs smirked and shook her head. “Language dear. Where do you think the doctor ran off to in such a hurry?”
“Don’t tell me.” I winced, rubbing my jawline, my fingers tracing over smooth skin instead of the usual stubble. “You asked him to bring a hospital gown?”
She nodded, taking several steps toward the door, and stopped her hand on the doorway. “It’s either that or the towel.”
I bit my lip and watched my grandmother slip out the door, then turned to Tanner once it slid completely closed. I opened my mouth to speak, but clamped it shut again. There were so many things I would have liked to voice, but the words just wouldn’t come. I think Tanner was in the same predicament. She kept glancing over to me, turning a distinct shade of scarlet, and then turning away.
‘Oh, for god sakes,” Khala’s voice screamed out. ‘Would you just tell her how you feel already?’
I rolled my eyes, let out a long sigh and turned, placing a hand on my business partner’s shoulder. “Are we good?”
She smiled and touched my hand. “We’re good.”
‘That’s not what I meant, and you know it.’
I clenched my jaw shut and shook my head. No matter what my symbiote might have insisted, I wasn’t ready to take that step. Not by a long shot.
