Fox(girl)ificated 2 - Ch.7 - (Not!) Another Setback (Patreon)

"Hey Rachel, Luna here," the gorgeous catgirl said into her phone. "I know it's Saturday and I'm really sorry to bother you, but is there any chance you can open up the clinic today? It's for a friend of mine. Actually you met her on Wednesday? Her name's Kit, and she could really use your help."

The beautiful catgirl paused as she held her phone up near her fuzzy feline ear for a few seconds. Then she smiled, "Awesome, we'll meet you there in forty-five minutes. Thanks Rachel, I owe you one!"

My heart was racing as Luna tucked her phone away. And even though I pretty much heard everything I still had trouble believing it was actually happening. I gulped then asked, "For real? She's going to help me?"

"She sure is cutie," she replied as she gave me another heart-stopping smile. Then she got to her feet and said, "Now come on. Let's get you to her clinic so she can do her thing."

I practically jumped up off the park bench, but we'd only just started walking before I hesitated. I gave her a worried look and asked, "What about the cafe? Your break must be almost over, I don't want you to get fired on my account."

"Maybe we could just exchange contact info?" I added hopefully. "Then I can message you or something afterwards, to let you know how it goes."

The beautiful catgirl slipped her right arm around my waist and started guiding us out of the park as she replied, "I'll text the cafe and let them know I can't make it back today. I'm sure they'll understand."

"You're more important to me than slinging coffees," she added when I tried to protest. "And not that I don't trust Rachel to look after you, because I know she'll do whatever she can to help you, but I want to be there for you as well."

"O-ok," I nodded slowly as we made our way out of the park and towards Doctor Fawkes' clinic.

My heart continued to race with excitement, both at the prospect of maybe getting my dream body within the next hour or two, and at the fact that the beautiful amazing generous catgirl liked me and wanted to stick with me to make sure I got my miracle.

Except I still had that little nagging part of my brain that refused to shut up and accept that things were looking up. I couldn't escape the thought that Luna was leading me to my doom. Or more likely, a MaR-AID squad that was waiting to arrest me. The fact that she balked at the idea of exchanging numbers felt like a warning sign. Like despite all her words and actions and everything else she'd done for me, maybe this was all just an assignment to her and she didn't want to -

"You're right about exchanging info though," she grimaced. "Honestly I should have thought of that when we had lunch on Wednesday? It would have saved me a lot of extra stress worrying about you the last few days."

I almost bit my tongue before responding, "O-oh. Uh, yeah. Same. I uh, I've been thinking about you a lot since then too."

Luna flashed me another beautiful smile before fishing her phone back out. I dug mine out of my pocket, and we did the thing while we continued making our way towards Rachel Fawkes, her clinic, the GAMA ray, and my destiny.

"Thank you," I mumbled as I stared at her name in my contact list as if it was too good to be true.

She was Luna Seaver, and her address was in a fairly nice area out in the suburbs. She also gave me her mobile number, email address, and her user name on social media. I'd given her pretty much the same, so now she'd know my full name was Kit Vaughn and that I lived in a basement apartment in between a commercial district and an industrial park.

Then I realized she probably already knew my full name, or rather my deadname, since she'd done all that research on me to find out about my parents and everything. That thought got my emotions churning again, but only for a second before the gorgeous catgirl distracted me with another gentle squeeze.

"No," she replied. "Thank you, Kit. Now I won't have to be up half the night worrying about you next time some whiny meta-powered man-child decides to take out his daddy issues on the city."

That threw me for a moment, since it seemed like a really weird way to talk about a dangerous A-rank villain laying waste to the financial district. I wasn't sure how to respond though, so I ended up just staying quiet while we walked.

We didn't rush, but we didn't dawdle either, so we ended up reaching the clinic a few minutes early. In fact we got there the same time as the doctor herself, we spotted her approaching from the opposite direction. I was surprised to see she was on foot too, but Luna didn't seem to find that odd. She smiled and waved at the foxgirl, who's tail wagged as she waved back. Then all three of us stopped when we reached the front door.

"Hello again Kit," Doctor Fawkes greeted me as she pulled some keys out of her shoulder bag. "And hi Luna. Just give me a few seconds to open up and disarm the security..."

Her voice trailed off and her expression shifted to a frown when she opened the door. It was very dark inside, and the foxgirl's ears angled forward while her tail flicked back and forth in irritation.

"What's up Rachel?" Luna asked. "Is something wrong?"

The doctor nodded, "Power's out. And it must have been out for some time, because the back-up batteries have enough capacity to keep everything going for a couple hours."

Just like that my gut lurched and my shoulders slumped. I wasn't going to get my wish today after all. Luna gave me another comforting squeeze though, like she wasn't going to give up so easily.

As we followed the doctor into the dark office the catgirl told her friend, "You should call the power company. Maybe this has something to do with that mess last night? Power was out to half the city after all that."

"There weren't any outages in this area," I said as I shook my head. "And we had the whole grid back online again by half past five this morning."

A moment later I cringed when I realized both Luna and Rachel were staring at me. I quietly added, "I'm a field tech for Metropolitan Light & Power. I was up all night working on the repairs, along with pretty much every other repair crew in the city."

"Oh wow," Luna looked up at me with a proud smile. "You're one of the city's unsung heroes Kit. Thank you for your service."

That made me blush, then I distracted myself by digging my phone out of my pocket. "If it's an outage there's probably a team on the way. I'll call in and see what's going on."

I scrolled through my contacts until I found the direct line to my dispatcher, then tapped the icon. It was picked up a couple seconds later and I said, "Hey Raymond! I didn't think you'd still be on duty?"

"And I thought you'd be out cold by now Sparky," Ray replied. "What's up? You're not checking in for another shift already, are you?"

I rolled my eyes then gave him the clinic address and asked, "Got anything on the board here? There's no power, but this is nowhere near any of last night's tickets."

"Nothing's come up there since my shift started," he said. "Hang on a sec, let me check the logs... Ok yeah there's something here from last night, before the supervillain thing. It was about six PM yesterday, some MaR-AID inspector ordered the power cut at that location until further notice."

Ray coughed then added, "I dunno what's up there Sparky, but you probably want to move on. And I'll forget we talked about it. Anyways gotta go, I'm still on the clock here. Bye!"

He didn't wait for me to respond before hanging up, but I'd already stopped listening anyways. My blood was cold and my gut felt heavy as I looked at Luna and Doctor Fawkes.

"It's MaR-AID," I sighed. "They ordered the power cut last night, around six o'clock."

The small foxgirl and the beautiful catgirl both started talking, with raised voices and heated emotions. I tuned them both out though. My thoughts were already spiralling as it sank in that MaR-AID had managed to screw my life up yet again. Honestly it felt like I'd never get a break. Like any little glimmer of hope came along, they'd always be there to snuff it out.

"Kit!" Luna's voice finally snapped me out of it. Her ears were folded back and her tail flicked back and forth as she said, "Don't panic ok? Rachel just said the whole place can run on battery power, they just need to be charged up. Do you think maybe that's something you could do?"

I blinked at her a few times, then my eyes widened as I realized what she was suggesting. I looked at Doctor Fawkes and asked, "Can you show me where the batteries are?"

The foxgirl shrugged, "Sure. They're back here, follow me."

The doctor and I both ended up using our phones to light the way, and she led the three of us through to a utility and storage room at the very back of the building. There was a big bank of high-capacity cells back there, connected to charging and power monitoring circuits via a pair of sturdy primary connectors. The contacts were hidden under thick rubber safety covers, with all the required warnings on them.

"That's it," the doctor pointed. "Fully charged it can run the whole office for about three hours. The GAMA ray actually runs directly off this, so it's completely isolated from the mains at all times. The problem is it normally takes five or six hours to charge the whole thing up from dead, once the power comes on."

Her tail swished slowly and her ears stood up as she asked, "How were you planning on doing this? You said you worked for the power company, so I'm guessing you know some tricks?"

I grimaced as I stepped closer to the big power bank, "It's a trick. But it's not one I normally use on the job."

With that I reached out and pulled back the two rubber safety covers, then grabbed the primary connectors one in each hand. There was actually enough of a residual charge in the battery bank that it would have given a normal human a heck of a jolt, but to me it was nothing. And instead of enjoying the buzz, I focused on my own power and started pushing it the other way.

Rachel and Luna both watched silently, the foxgirl with her eyebrows up and the catgirl with a proud smile on her face, as I forced more and more current into the cells.

Five seconds later there was enough of a charge for the battery bank's diagnostic LEDs to come on. After ten seconds there was enough power for the emergency lights. At the half-minute mark the ten-percent charge indicator lit up.

I kept pushing, but after the third minute I felt myself sagging. The battery bank was only up to fifty-percent though, so I kept going.

"Kit that's enough," Luna finally spoke up after another minute passed. "You're going to hurt yourself if you keep it up."

My face was probably all scrunched up with effort but I pushed just a bit more, until the indicator hit the sixty-percent mark. Then with a loud sigh I let go of the contacts and tried to take a step back. My knees almost gave out on me, but Luna was somehow right there behind me. She caught me, then practically carried me out of the utility room and into the doctor's office.

The gorgeous amazing catgirl gently set me down in one of the guest chairs, while Rachel slipped into her seat on the other side of the desk.

The doctor opened up her laptop and smiled, "That was amazing Kit. We've got about ninety minutes of power, which is sixty minutes more than we need. So if you're feeling up for it, how about we get started?"

I felt exhausted, and I was panting hard like I'd just run a marathon or something. All that was forgotten though as I forced myself to sit up straight. With a weary smile on my face I nodded, "I'm so up for this."

"When we met on Wednesday you said you wanted to be a foxgirl like Talia and myself," Doctor Fawkes dove right into the interview. "But a little taller and with black hair and fur, correct?"

She added, "This is the time to be specific Kit, the more so the better. How much taller, exactly? And are there any other details, features, or characteristics you'd like?"

Before I could respond Luna offered, "Do you want me to step out for this part? It gets pretty personal, and if you're anything like me it's hard enough talking about that with one stranger, let alone two."

I hesitated for just a second, then shook my head. I was blushing a bit though as I replied, "It's ok. I'd uh, be happier if you stayed?"

"Alright Kit," she replied with another of those heart-melting smiles.

My attention turned back to Doctor Fawkes and after a deep breath I started describing my ideal dream body, "Yes. I want to be a foxgirl..."

The next ten or fifteen minutes were a bit of a blur, and I got the impression the process normally wasn't that fast. But the doctor obviously sensed that I was in a hurry, and Luna seemed eager to get me through it before anything else could interrupt or go wrong. So I answered all Rachel's questions, and when we got into the really embarrassing details I forced myself to give her my honest detailed answers.

When the interview was over Doctor Fawkes picked up her laptop then led Luna and I across the hall to the GAMA ray chamber. She and Luna turned right and entered the operator's booth, while I went into the change room on the left.

My hands were shaking in anticipation as I got undressed, then slipped on the provided disposable paper hospital gown. A couple adhesive tabs held it closed at the back, and feeling very exposed and vulnerable I finally emerged from the changing area.

"Just lay down on the table there please Kit," Doctor Fawkes instructed from behind the shielded window. "I know it's not the most comfortable thing in the world, but you won't have to be there very long."

"Arms at your sides please, knees and ankles together," she added when I awkwardly readjusted the paper gown.

"Sorry," I mumbled as I moved my limbs into position.

Once I was laying still the doctor spoke up again. "This is it Kit, it's all set up and everything's just about ready. I need a yes or no answer, are you absolutely sure you want this?"

"Yes!" I replied firmly, while my stomach filled with nervous butterflies.

The foxgirl asked, "Yes or no Kit, do you consent of your own free will to the GAMA ray process?"

"Yes!" I repeated myself, and my heart began to pound in my chest.

The doctor spoke up once more, "Please close your eyes and relax. Activating the GAMA ray in three. Two. One. Now!"

** This chapter is brought to you courtesy of Camille, who commissioned it! **