I awoke with a start, the sensation of my body hitting the ground jarring me awake. I’m unsure if you’ve ever had one of those dreams where you feel like you’re suddenly falling, but it was extremely similar to that. I slowly opened my eyes and groaned almost immediately in regret as I was assaulted with a wave of vertigo that was so intense it would make roller coasters jealous. I laid there on the cold damp floor, eyes struggling to adjust to the blinding light of the world around me for all of two seconds before groaning once more and closing my eyes. I made a mental note that my ears were also apparently struggling to adjust to whatever I was currently experiencing, because the groan I’d heard escaping my lips both times sounded nothing like my own voice.

  With that done, I performed a quick mental inventory on myself to see if there were any other issues but aside from my throat being drier than the Atacama Desert which, fun fact, was the driest non-polar desert in the world, I appeared to be fine. You might be wondering why I know what the driest non-polar desert in the world is, and to that I say you only miss a trivia question once before the answer is engrained into your very being. Anyway, with that inventory done, I chalked up my horrible sounding voice to the fact that even a glass of sand felt like a refreshing beverage right now. That's how thirsty I was.

  I’m not entirely sure how long I laid there with my eyes closed, not wanting to get up, but eventually the dizziness did go away and a minute or two after that the dryness of my throat won out. I forced my eyes open once more, but not both at once. Starting with my left, then the right, I opened them in a way that I’m sure anyone watching would say looked absolutely cartoonish; however, given the light was still painfully bright, I stand by my rather unorthodox way of opening my eyes. As I laid there letting my eyes finish adjusting, I finally realized why it was so bright; the roof above where I was laying had collapsed in on itself creating a rather large hole that allowed light to shine right onto my face. I squinted in frustration for a second before deciding that more extreme measures were in order. I lifted my hand to try and cover my eyes, only to pause in shock as I saw a fur-covered arm moving in response to my thoughts. I blinked once, then twice, thinking that the bright light was playing tricks on me, but no; after five or so seconds of just staring at the arm, I’d come to the conclusion that I was hallucinating due to the brightness and because I’d just gotten shot. No other explanation made sense to why I suddenly had an arm covered in blue-gray fur.

  I marinated on that for all of one second before shooting upright with a speed that I had no idea was possible. My body began painfully protesting, but I shoved the protesting muscles to the back of my mind as I dedicated every bit of brain processing power to the realization that I had been shot. Unfortunately for me, what little processing power I had was easily distracted by the second realization I’d made upon sitting up. Not only were both my arms covered in a thick blue-gray fur, but my legs were, too! I glanced around my body and quickly found that the vast majority of me was covered in the same thick fur as my arms and legs. The only parts of me that weren’t covered in fur were my hands, feet, and chest, which were all a tan color that I quickly identified as belonging to someone who was frequently out in the sun. My poor brain couldn’t catch a break, though, as my next realization was that I was naked except for a pair of ugly beige shorts. That wasn’t the worst part, and I might have honestly preferred to have just been a topless furry girl compared to what I was looking at. I’d seen myself naked before, what 22-year old woman hadn’t, but this time was significantly different than any other time I’d seen myself topless.

  I had no breasts.

  Now, I know what you might be thinking, and no, they didn’t just get smaller on me and I was exaggerating. I hadn’t been that chesty prior to this, but in this instance it was a night and day difference. My breasts were just… Gone. Missing. Non-existent. I was flatter than a washboard, which actually was a rather interesting thought to have in retrospect given that holy crap this body of mine had abs that looked like those washboard abs you saw on unrealistic advertisements or in movies where the male lead is super jacked. I couldn’t help but realize under normal circumstances there was a 50/50 chance that I would have been stoked to wake up and find myself to be super fit, but the part of my brain that was working quickly pointed out that if you swapped the blue-gray color of my fur with red, I would look stupidly similar to a certain red-furred ape man from an anime show I’d seen as a child. I think that realization was what finally caused my brain to crash.

  “What. The. Fu–”

  A jolt of pain went through my body the likes of which I’d never felt before. It originated from my neck and, while I wouldn’t exactly say that it hurt, it definitely got my attention as I heard a soft feminine voice speak from nowhere: “Slave Collar profanity censor activated: Detected attempted use of profanity. Mute Status Debuff is applied for 60 cycles.”

  I blinked away tears of not quite pain from my eyes and opened my mouth to ask who was there, only to find myself unable to. I tried again but still no words would come out. Panic gripped me as I tried a third time to speak to no avail, the words I attempted to speak just getting stuck in my throat. I quickly felt myself beginning to hyperventilate, a crushing sensation pressing down on me with more pressure than when I’d been shot and I felt like I was about to pass out when all of a sudden I heard myself wheezing for air.

  “H-Hello…?” I managed to weakly gasp out. My heart was still beating a million miles a minute as I sat there, listening for a reply that never came. “Okay… Yeah…” I muttered to myself as I continued struggling with my breathing. “I’m definitely hallucinating,” I said, only to pause as I finally registered the voice that was speaking the words I was saying. I glanced around, thinking that it was possible someone else was having the same experience I was, only to realize that the voice must have been coming from me. The helpful part of my brain kicked back into gear and shoved the unhelpful monkey comparing part of my brain aside; it then began telling me that I wasn’t going to help myself any by continuing to get worked up like this, so I closed my eyes and focused on trying to calm myself down. If I could manage that, maybe I could regain enough composure to figure out what was going on.

  I eventually did manage to calm down, though I’m not entirely sure how long it took for me to do so. My breathing slowly normalized as the adrenalin faded and soon even my heart began to stop feeling like it was going to explode out of my chest at any second. The first thing I noticed upon calming down was a small amount of discomfort in both my arms, so I did what any normal person would do and looked down only to wince as I saw that I had a full set of claws on both hands, and that they were currently digging into my arm enough that I had managed to draw blood.

  “Ow…” I whined, removing my claw-tipped hands from my arms before bringing my left hand up to my face to examine it. Palm-side up looked more or less normal, although I noticed that my palm and the tips of my fingers appeared to have slightly thicker skin on them than the rest of my hand, and I immediately thought about a dog’s paw pads. I flipped my hand over to look at the back-side and while they weren’t covered in fur, they were definitely the hands of a man, or at the very least, the hands of someone who worked with his hands regularly. I could also get a good look at my nails at this angle, and was surprised to see that all five of them were sharp black claws. They looked more like pointed human nails than dog claws, which I wasn’t really sure how I felt about that, but they were unmistakably claws.

  “I didn’t think I had claws originally…” I said to myself as I flipped my hand back over so my palm was facing me, all while thinking about the first glances I had taken of my hands. I’d not really paid much attention to them, so it was possible I’d just overlooked my claws, but no sooner had I thought that did I notice my claws shrinking. I flipped my hand back over just in time to see the black of my now very-human looking nails fading to a more natural translucent color that revealed the tanned tone of my non-furry skin underneath.

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  “That’s actually kind of cool,” I said softly, flipping my hands back over again and noticing that while the tips of my fingers had a little bit of blood on them, my nails all appeared to be blood free. I quickly checked my other hand and saw that it was in a similar state; claws gone, a little blood on the tips of my fingers, nails completely and totally clean. “Huh,” I said, slightly amazed at that.

  I spent way more time looking at my hands than I care to admit before finally deciding that I should spend my time focusing on something more important like trying to figure out where I was and why. I glanced around the room I was in and frowned. “Well, I’m definitely not in a parking garage anymore…” I said, standing and giving the room a more thorough look, spinning around this time as I did.

  Halfway through my second look through the room I paused as I noticed out of the corner of my eyes that I had a rather large and fluffy tail of blue-gray fur trailing behind me. “You have got to be kidding me…” I grumbled under my breath before shaking my head. There would be time to be frustrated about this whole body situation later, for now, I needed to figure out where I was. “Am I in some kind of basement?” I asked after completing my search of the room. It definitely felt like I was underground, but it wasn’t like any basement I had ever been in before. For starters, both the ground and the walls were made from some sort of hard, compacted dirt, the only exception being a small staircase in the corner. Secondly, the room felt very dank and had an unmistakably earthy scent to it, though that was likely a result of the room being constructed from so much dirt. Third, and most important, I was alone. Both my quick glance and my more thorough one had confirmed that, aside from myself, there was no living soul in this room that I could see.

  I’d be lying if I said a part of me hadn’t been holding out hope that the female voice I’d heard earlier would respond back to me telling me that yes, I was in a basement and that I was a good boy for noticing. Without even looking, I could tell my tail had started to wag at the thought of being called a ‘good boy’ and I immediately could feel my cheeks burn with embarrassment. “Stupid tail…” I huffed, trying to think other thoughts to make my tail stop. “Definitely seems to be a part of a building, that’s for sure,” I said, examining the wooden ceiling above me. As I did, I noticed that it was low enough that if I reached my hands up I could actually touch the ceiling without needing to be on my tip toes; something I definitely hadn’t even been close to doing this morning, though I supposed it was possible that this ceiling was just lower than I was used too, too.

  With my tail now under control again and nothing else to do, I shrugged and made my way toward the stairs. The unhelpful voice in my mind chose that moment to inform me that I was being extremely calm about the fact that I was in the body of a fur-covered man in a basement made out of dirt and that there was something called a slave collar that had just shocked me, making me unable to talk. I faltered at that and nearly tripped on my own feet at my thoughts before catching myself. “One thing at a time, Naomi,” I muttered to myself as I got to the foot of the stairs. “First figure out where I am, then I can try and figure out how I got here.”

  The unhelpful voice once more nudged at the fact that I was in a different body and I sighed. “Yes, after those two things, I can figure out how I got in this body, too.” I glanced down at my body again and sighed again. “I just hope this isn’t some kind of fetish thing…”

  Before I knew it, I was at the end of the stairs with the door in front of me. I reached to open it, only to frustratingly find that it was locked. “No problem,” I said softly to myself as I let go of the door knob. “I’ll just knock on the door, surely someone will open it,” I told myself, not even allowing myself the possibility of considering the fact that no one was home. “Who even locks doors to their basement, anyway…?” I grumbled in frustration as I knocked on the door.

  After a couple of seconds of silence, I knocked again, grumbling about stupid home owners going on vacation or something and locking their basement doors. “Who are they trying to keep from breaking in, mole people or something?” I said, before yelling out, “Hello! I’m stuck in the basement! Can anyone please come and let me out?” A minute of silence passed and I growled in frustration, slamming my fist against the wall without even thinking about it. “Stupid!” I yelled, then winced as I pulled my hand back from the door and shook it. “Stupid,” I said again, this time in frustration, rather than anger. “That hurt,” I sighed, looking at my hand. “Of course,” I said while rolling my eyes. “I managed to get a splinter right between my knuckles, that’s my luck. It’s bad enough that I woke up in a body that wasn’t my own, but of course I’d keep my old pain tolerance because of course I would.”

  I stared at the wood fragment stuck in between the knuckles of my middle and ring finger and stared in disbelief as I had started to bleed a significant bit from the spot, all things considered. I normally wasn’t afraid of blood, but I guess the shock of seeing a steady trickle of blood from such a small wound was more than I’d expected, because I stood there like an idiot for nearly an additional minute before I finally started to question if I should pull it out or not. Before I could come to a conclusion though, my body acted on its own, almost as if by reflex, and pulled the splinter out. The bleeding stopped immediately after that and the pain instantly faded.

  “That’s not weird at all,” I muttered as I narrowed my eyes and studied the piece of wood between my index and thumb. I turned it around, trying to see if there was anything on it that could indicate why it would have hurt as badly as it had, or why it made me bleed so much, but to the best of my abilities, I couldn’t make out anything that would indicate why either of those things would have happened; it really did look like just a regular piece of wood covered in my blood. The nagging sensation in the back of my head pointed out the fact that I’d just been shot not too long ago, yet here I was looking at a bloody piece of lumber like a grade-A moron.

  “Focus, Naomi. Focus.” I slapped my face a few times with my free hand before shaking it. “You got shot and passed out in the parking garage. You’re currently dreaming about being a furry man with a tail in a basement. This is not a fetish thing. You’re either hallucinating as you’re bleeding out, or this is your mind going into shock.” I giggled a little, which definitely wasn’t a good sign. “Yeah, that’s it,” I said, giggling again. “You’re just hallucinating. That’s it.”

  With nothing else to do, I sighed. “Well, hallucination or not, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m stuck here.” I glanced back over where I’d hit the door and noticed that there was a dent in it, though the door still seemed pretty solid despite that. “Given no one’s shown up yet, it’s likely no one’s here to let me out,” I said with a frown as I suddenly realized another possibility. “That, or they’re afraid of me. I did wake up underneath a rather large hole in the ceiling, so who’s to say they didn’t lock the door because I fell down here?" I mused on that for a couple of seconds before I had another idea.

  I quickly went back to the spot I’d woken up in and looked up at the hole. “Yeah, I totally can clear that,” I said to myself, though even as I said it there was a part of me that was screaming, ‘No you can’t, you idiot! What are you thinking!?’ I told that part of me to shut up, and then started to do a few stretches.

  “Alright,” I said after a couple of minutes. I rotated both shoulders one final time before bending my knees and closing my eyes. I took a deep breath and then opened them, before jumping with all the strength I could manage. I’d expected that I’d only clear about half the hole and would need to grab hold of something on the other side to ensure that I didn’t fall back down. I had not expected to shoot clear through the floor above me and the one above that. I blinked in disbelief as I cleared the second floor and a few feet past that into the open air, before I felt gravity kick back in and begin to pull me back down. I flailed, like an idiot, but managed to grab hold of the roof to keep from going back into the house.

  “Oof,” I grunted, wincing slightly as I felt some of the house digging into my sides and under arm. Despite the minor discomfort, I was able to easily pull myself out of the hole with my arms and I looked down to see a deserted town street. I looked to my left and right, but both ways appeared to be devoid of life. “Well if that’s not incredibly ominous, I’m not really sure what is.”

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