Commissioned by  P1XU5

~~~~~~

Elijah had no clue where he was. The human made a wrong turn somewhere along his urban hike, and hadn’t noticed for several blocks, at which point he was deep inside the abandoned part of the city. He looked around himself, at the soaring buildings that had been left to decay over the decades. An old museum caught his eye, and he shrugged. “Might as well check this place out,” he said as he went inside. It wasn’t long before he realized that the building’s interior did not seem as entirely abandoned as everywhere else: there was far less dust on the floor than he would have expected, and there was a path made by a particularly clean area, leading towards the back. He scanned the room twice, feeling quite certain that there were no traps in the room, even though he had no idea what to look for. He took a deep breath and proceeded to follow the path, slowly and steadily, each footstep registering as a ca-lunk that echoed through the room. The light slowly faded as he went further and further, and the feeling of being watched slowly crept over him. The light from outside was very nearly gone when he saw it, a backlit numpad on the wall next to a circular vault door, and it looked to be both installed and used rather recently. The feeling of being watched only grew stronger as he approached it, and then he started pressing keys at random. He jumped in surprise as the door opened after the fifth key press, revealing a chamber that was full of darkened, depowered equipment of which he could only see faint outlines in the darkness.

Elijah could not stop his feet from carrying him inside, even as the door started to close with a loud squeal, his curiosity had so completely overpowered everything else. He turned back just in time to see it close and lock, momentarily plunging the room into darkness before the lights and equipment suddenly turned on. Looking around, he thought he had somehow wandered onto a set for a 1970s comic book movie, there was even a grappling hook launcher mounted along the far wall, and a comically oversized computer monitor and keyboard on the adjacent wall! He stood in the center of the room, slowly looking around and gawking, not noticing a small strip of black cloth materializing directly above him, at least until it suddenly fell onto his face, forming a hole over each eye and somehow adhering to his head. Instinctively, his hands shot up to his face to pull it off, but he froze when he felt something else on his face - soft, dark brown fur.

It was at that point that he became aware of something flashing to his left, and he slowly turned to see that the large screen had turned on, displaying one flashing message: Intruder correction protocol initiated. Beneath his hands, the fur continued to spread, and something felt off with his hands; they started feeling rough on some spots and fuzzy on others.. He pulled them away from his eyes which had taken on a yellow color as his pupils changed into narrow slits, and found that the fur was now growing on them as well, and was also brown in coloration there. Padding had appeared on his palms and fingers as well, and over that, black gloves were materializing, starting with the fingertips. Elijah could not stop himself from staring at his hands, even as his nose and mouth started pulling away from the rest of his face, slowly forming a distinctly vulpine muzzle, whiskers sprouting in quick succession from either side while his nose turned moist and black, while his teeth sharpened and his tongue became somewhat flatter. His cheeks moved higher and became more pronounced as his head morphed to a distinctively vulpine shape, quite painlessly for how sudden that part was. The fur continued spreading down his arms, neck, and over his face, taking on a lighter brown color over the temples and pale gray-tan over his ears as they slowly moved up to the top of his head, enlarging and gaining a triangular shape. Meanwhile, his hair became slightly darker, grew over the left eye, and lengthening so that its lowest point was now perfectly in between his shoulder blades. He shifted his feet ever so slightly, and that’s when he became aware that his feet had reshaped into feetpaws on whose toes he now stood, held by a pair of dark lavender high-heel shoes that were perfectly tailored for his rapidly-changing body, and within those were a pair of black socks, also tailored to fit his changing form. The fur shot up his legs, causing his shins to thin out slightly and his knees changed so that his lower legs moved backwards slightly, followed by his thighs becoming somewhat broader, right as something between them went inside of his body and turned into its female counterpart. His - or her now - fingers curled as a grimace came to her face as soon as she noticed, and then her waist narrowed so quickly that it brought out a harsh cough, and seemingly in response to that, a pair of small breasts formed on her chest, further confirming how complete her transformation would be. That wasn’t the end of it, though, as indicated by a hole opening in the back of her jeans and underwear, both of which reformed in other ways to continue to fit, and a very bushy tail, about as long as one of her legs, and with all three of her fur colors on it swiftly grew into being from her tailbone. Her jeans turned into a tighter, flexible fabric, becoming dark purple with medium lavender cuffs. Around her narrowed waist, as the fur continued to spread up her arms and torso, a dark brown belt formed with loops on the outside for holding various pieces of equipment, and a decently-sized bag materialized over her left hip, and from there another strap that went around her torso and right shoulder appeared. She looked up at the screen again, seeing that a progress bar had appeared beneath the Intruder Correction Protocol message, labeled as 50% and quickly climbing. As the fur overtook her arms and torso, now covering all of her body, her shoulders and arms lost some of their definition, while her shirt merged with her pants, copying its dark purple color around the torso and turning lavender around the arms with thin purple cuffs, all of it becoming a tight-fitting suit with a zipper at the front, and the outfit changes finished with a tan collar of sorts forming around the middle of her tail. Elijah looked over herself, feeling the new outfit and the thick, soft fur underneath, not realizing that the Intruder Correction Protocol was not yet complete. It paused for a moment as Elijah looked around the room some more, resuming just as suddenly, causing the vixen to grab her head and groan as a whole new set of thoughts and memories were forced into his head, weaving themselves through the ones that were already present, but not overriding them. She was still Elijah, but she was also someone with a far more interesting - and perfect! - life, an actual supervillain by the name of Farley, by all accounts, as her own mind said, the most perfect fox to ever had lived, and how could that be wrong? She let her hands down, turning to the monitor, which now read, “Intruder Correction Protocol complete. Welcome home, Miss Farley.” She smiled, pulled down on her suit at the waist, and proceeded to explore the rest of her new home.

What had once been an abandoned, decayed museum was now a mansion, and it belonged to Farley. A heavy plush carpet, soft walls, and long, broad hallways all decorated in various shades of purple, tan, and gray, and it was all hers. Eventually, after some exploring and taking everything in, she looked out of the biggest window she could find, finding that the mansion was on the outskirts of a huge, bustling city, glowing brilliantly in the night even more so than any other city her old, boring human self had ever seen! Her thoughts turned to all those loose, valuable objects that were just lying around, waiting to be taken. Without any hesitation, Farley turned and made a run for the planning room as a big grin crept to her face. As the door to that room opened, she grinned ear to ear, saying proudly to herself, “I think a little heist is in order.”

* * * * * *

Cutting power to the museum was a simple matter of planting a small, circular device on its roof, and holding down the single button in the middle for four seconds. Next, she took a white cylinder the size of a small soup can from her belt, and switched it out with the device that shut all power to the building, which went into her bag. The next device, once the soft red button on its top was pressed, extended a small arm, on the end of which was a plasma torch that ignited as soon as the arm started to spin, quickly cutting a hole into the roof. The perfectly circular cutout, smoldering around the edges, fell to the top floor with a thud, and Farley winced at the noise, waiting for a few moments before descending through the hole. Her eyes didn’t need to adjust too much, as there was some city light coming in through the hole, as well as wall-mounted, evenly spaced emergency lights that illuminated the hallway she found herself in just enough, even if the latter caused a series of bizarre and often unsettling shadows all over the floor and walls. The stairs to the next floor weren’t hard to find, and she quickly zeroed in on the room that held various jewel-laden artefacts. Jackpot. She reached into her bag and pulled out another device, this one resembling a baseball-sized pearl, completely devoid of any features. She knelt down and rolled it across the floor, where it began broadcasting electromagnetic garbage that disabled and/or jammed every sensor that was in the room, as the security system had their own backup power sources, after which the vixen simply stood up and strode in, carefully observing each and every object of interest, as well as starting a countdown in her head to when the jammer ran out of power, after which its internal systems would melt themselves, leaving it untraceable.

The first one she saw looked like some kind of dress shirt, made from purple-dyed silk with gold, silver, rubies, emeralds, and sapphire. The next tool she retrieved was a simple crowbar, which was immediately forced between the glass and top of the display, and a little bit of force pried the glass and display apart from each other, leaving more than enough room to get an arm inside of the display. Farley, keeping one hand on the crowbar, leaned forward and reached out with the other, grabbing the whatever-it-was and pulling it out. The crowbar was gently lowered and then pulled away next, and the glass clunked softly. Farley pulled one more tool from her bag, a little teleportation pad, threw the item that gave off an air of very probably being cursed onto it, and it promptly disappeared with a hiss.

She moved on to the next display case, which held a suit of armor that must have been at least nine hundred years old, with a golden, jewel-laden crown fused to the helmet, and began working out how to take it as well.

* * * * * *

The police sergeant noticed the sphere right away. He sighed as he picked the familiar device up with one hand, tapping a finger against it. It was still warm to the touch. “What is that, sir?” one of his underlings asked.

“It’s a jamming device, this is the fourth one I’ve seen this year.” He looked up, out the window that faced further into the city, and then around the room, particularly at the display cases that were now empty, of which there were fifteen, only three remaining untouched. His neutral expression flickered for an instant, betraying a scowl. “Who put you here?” he asked the sphere, turning it over in his hand.