Trade with Creeo Part 1/3
Creeo Orbis, two inches short of a man and cosmetically, though certainly not legally, blonde, walked, chest up and puffy, with large strides that ended with a snap of highly polished shoes down the hall. His destination, the high prestige forth floor office, right at the corner where it could look out on the cityscape, was currently in the possession of someone whom Creeo would regard among his cause’s most hated adverceries: Ms. Rebecca Rade, professor of Therian studies at the newly founded Ross-Malcolm university, one of the most highly regarded institutes in the country. Creeo had, himself, studied there, mainly because of a large monetary contribution made by his father, only a few years earlier. Mister Orbis, as Rebecca liked to call him, knocked on that very fine piece of modern art that was the door to the corner office, each strike reverberating through the glass, wood, and steel that made up its materials, and striking a note that sounded as much like a regular knock as a triangle sounds like a trumpet.
She kept him waiting, not that rudeness was unwarranted, almost five minutes. During that time, Creeo thought over the poor chain of events that had led to his unwilling re-admittance to this place of high learning.
 Many people would have regarded Creeo a racist, a bigot, and someone who was born fifty years too late. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Therians, a race of genetic half-breeds brought on by the worst pandemic Earth had felt since the black death, half animal, half human, were social outcasts, abominations, considered inferior, second rate, and were discriminated against in nearly every capacity. That had been fifty years ago, and, unfortunately for the AIF, a political organization dedicated to the maintenance of segregation between the races, a group with which Creeo identified strongly, times had changed. The Therian population had exploded and, only a month earlier, a highly contested bill had been pushed through parliament, one that gave equal voting rights and freedom of property to the therians, or beasts, as the AIF knew them, as well as forbade the use of the racial slur beast, and public businesses the right to decline service to anthropomorphic customers. It was at the ‘peaceful’ protests that resulted from this bill, unacceptable to large sectors of the population, that Creeo had been arrested, charged under the new laws, and sentenced to 100 hours sensitivity education under Rebecca Rade, who had had a strong hand in the bill’s wording, and the laws’ penalties. 
It was over these events that Creeo thought while waiting for that same woman, a Ph.D even at the tender age of twenty eight, until finally the call came in a high, impatient bark to, “Come in!” and the door’s automatic lock clicked open.
Creeo might be considered a fanatic in some circles, but he had nonetheless been raised in polite society. Were Rebecca busy, with a student or otherwise, he would have happily waited, even though he despised the woman, and degraded or contradicted her at every opportunity in front of the class. But no, it was nearly seven at night on a Friday evening. No student drunk or stupid enough to take Therian Studies would visit during hours, or at all for that matter, and he had not heard her on a phone, therefore this could be one thing only: a snub, a rude and deliberate snub, and it was on the stream of anger caused by that snub that Creeo flowed into the room like a hurricane disguised behind an air of almost painful politeness.
“Good afternoon, Mister Orbis,” said the silver husky, Rebecca Rade behind her three quarter desk made of glass and steel, without even looking up from her oversized computer panel. 
“Good evening, Miss Rade,” Creeo said, correcting her heavily forced and badly educated polite vocabulary, and he found it too hard to resist adding a left hook at the end there, tapping into his sexist, as well as racist tendencies, “Might I inquire as to your reason for having summoned me here?”
“Oh, quit mincing words, damnit, you know bloody well why you’re here!” she rose from the desk like a shot, both gray paws on the table and eyes bulging in a way that made Creeo quite confident that they were about to leap out and eat him. They didn’t, and Creeo regained his posture a moment later, putting the appropriate words in the appropriate order, just as he had been taught.
“Well, it was funny, wasn’t it?” It had been funny, at least from where Creeo was sitting, watching the high and mighty Professor Rade sprint around the class madly, bumping into things and clutching her two pointed ears, only to crash into the white board and squirm around on the ground a while. And thus, Creeo’s theory about silent whistles working on Therians was proven correct. 
Rebecca’s mouth opened to reveal a mouth full of beached white teeth, like white porcelain, all pointed in his direction, “And how would you like it if I were to start playing pranks like that on you?”
“May I take a seat?” Creeo asked, impatiently gesturing to the two expensive reading chairs that sat across from Rebecca’s desk.
“No, no you may not take a seat,” she drew out and mocked his formal tone, “Not until you get over your inflated ego, apologize, and learn some fucking humility!” Creeo sat in the chair to the left, the one on the right was white, and it wouldn’t match his designer blue jeans. Once he had taken a handful of nuts from the bowl on her desk, and comfortably put his feet up on the glass, he replied.
“And why the hell should I apologize to an animal like you, hmmmm? The dog that wanted to be human, how cute,” he crunched down on a cashew, a very tasty cashew, this dog clearly had taste in nuts, if nothing else, and watched Rebecca’s face flush nearly purple with rage, visible even through her fur.
“You insolent little prick. Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?” she banged on the table hard enough to spill the peanuts everywhere.
“Hey, I was eating those!” he said, and stood, brushing the mixed nuts off of his jeans.
“Listen, asshole, let’s see who’s the animal when you’re spending the next six years in a cage!” her words were more than blind venom, Creeo was aware of that just from the tone.
“What are you talking about?” he said, more amused than afraid. 
“What I’m talking about is your sentence. 100 hours sensitivity training, right? Well, what happens if I deem you unwilling to cooperate, eh, smart guy?” That got a raised eyebrow from him. He knew exactly what would happen, his lawyers would get him off, they always did. Twenty hours community service here, a 1,000 dollar fine there, he’d never spent a night in jail. 
“You’re probably thinking all your expensive lawyers would get you off with a slap on the wrist, right?”
“Actually I’m trying to think how I could get you arrested for verbal assault or something,” he snickered a bit.
“Cut the shit, jerkwad. I’ll have you know that there isn’t a damn thing all your blue suited crooks can do. You’re mine, you hear me? Unless you want that fleshy, white tailhole of yours behind bars, you’ll get your head out of your ass, and start working that delicate tongue of yours into a goddamn heroic apology.  
“Pish, such language from a little girl!” he said in his best mocking a small child voice.
“Will you shut up?!” her paw rang out as it slapped across his face, the force of the blow and Creeo’s unusual seating position joined forces to knock him clean out of his chair and onto the floor. The husky was on him in a second, pinning his shoulders with her knees, “I’m sick, SICK of your racist shit. Do you hear me?” Her face was so close that she was practically spiting in his face as she spoke, “You think you’re so much better than us, huh?” she was shaking with fury now, and pulled a small plastic cylinder from a shirt pocket, then tore the plastic casing to reveal a syringe full of blue liquid, “kiss that fleshy ass of yours goodbye!” she jabbed the needle into the frozen man’s neck, there was a slight bit of resistance as it pierced the muscles and tissue, then she crushed the plunger against the reservoir, pumping the blue fluid into him.
Creeo gagged, suddenly dragged back to reality by the needle, and started to struggle. Rebecca removed the syringe from his neck, and stood, Creeo scrambled to his feet, clasping his neck, “S- stay away from me! You hear? You’re crazy, lady. What the fuck did you just shoot me up with?”
“You’ll know soon enough,” she tossed the needle into one of those expensive office incinerators, grinning in that weird way that Therians grin.
Creeo felt his chest start to contract, not painful, exactly, but very uncomfortable, and his reply died in his mouth as the air was squeezed from his lungs. He clawed at his chest, tearing the silk of an expensive Hawaiian shirt, tried to fumble with the buttons, but the fabric tore free first, and he sucked the air into his lungs with a force that might have pulled paper towards him. That’s when the itching started, a harsh, mind-breaking sort of itch that might have been giant tropical ants swarming over him and burrowing into his skin, all over his body. 
The shaggy blonde man started thrashing about, clawing at his skin fiercely and sporadically, he would have used sandpaper if he thought it would make the horrid, squirming sensations go away. In desperation he used his teeth, trying to tear away his skin if that was what it took, but, when he pulled away with a yelp, he spat out a mouthful of dark grey fur.
Creeo screamed, a high, shrill scream, like someonewho had just found a decapitated head in their soup, and tried to distance himself from his now fur-covered arm, a hundred thousand short little hairs all standing straight, a half inch long. 
“Wha- what the fuck did you do to me?!” He shouted in that same, hoarse tone, and noticed Rebecca, sitting casually on an armchair and watching his transformation unfold. 
“Something very, very ironic,” she replied.
Creeo nearly gasped with relief as he watched the fur spread, because wherever it went on his body, that awful, inescapable itching disappeared. As the fur crept steadily up his arm and across his torso, a shadowy, stealthy mix of black and gray, he felt the same pressure inside his polished black dress shoes, much scuffed from all the running and falling he had been doing. 
The strange mix of human and animal that Creeo had become was dancing back and forth, one foot to the other, whincing in pain at the agonizing tightness of his shoes. Losing all dignity, he fell back onto his rear, grabbed his right shoe with both hands, and tried to tear it off. It was hopeless; his feet had nearly doubled in size, and the triple stitched Italian leather seams were still holding strong. At this rate his feet would give before the shoes did, and Creeo knew it. Damning his pride, and not thinking further ahead than the next moment, he dug his fingernails into the leather, trying to tear it, and all ten of them popped off as though spring loaded, many flying up and hitting him squarely in the face. He recoiled back, holding a small gash in his forehead that a flying nail had torn, and then he saw his hands. 
The fur had fully engulfed both, where his white fingernails had been, ten sharp, glossy claws now were, and the skin on his palm had turned black and rough, rising slightly like hills with steep valleys in between, metacarpal pads… he thought, shuddering, finally realizing what was happening to him. The man, or raccoon, whichever, turned to look at Rebecca, still sitting in her chair, smirking at the writing form of what had once been Creeo Orbis, a young flame of the Aif. He spoke.
“You bit…” he said, or, rather, tried to say. He was cut off by what could only be described as a pair of explosions rang out, the leather of his shoes finally giving way, and the pair of very expensive Italian leathers were reduced to a neat pile of torn fabric and hide under his feet, now much altered. His ankle had shifted upward, digitgrade, not unlike Rebecca’s paws. They were both entirely fur covered, more metacarpal pads, fully in the shape of a feral canid’s paw print, were carved out of what had once been the balls of his feet. Ten long, tough looking claws sprung out, one from the tip of each of his toes, built for gripping and climbing. 
Creeo was almost fully covered in fur, now, and he was getting bigger. Not taller, exactly, more like every muscle in his body was swelling, and his clothes couldn’t take it. The cuffs of his Hawaiian shirt burst open, he two ivory buttons flying out like bullets to embed themselves in the wall on the other side of the room. The tearing continued, his legs inflating to the point that his jeans could not take it, and the seams started to tear from the bottom up. His shirt fared little better, between his changing body, and the new mass of fur, the colorful arms of the garment exploding much in the same way as his shoes had, revealing for all to see his new, heavy, thick coat of glossy gray fur, black along his back, hands and shoulders, getting lighter along his legs, belly and wrists. He would have made a beautiful fur coat. 
His jeans had nearly eviscerated, the fabric hadn’t held and he was now wearing little more than rags beneath the waist, but that was nothing compared to what came next. Creeo was an imaginative child, and, just as he started to feel the pressure build just above his rear, his fur having long since overtaken the area, he imagined a cartoon in which an anvil had been chained to his spine, then dropped out the fourth floor window. That’s how Creeo felt as his engraved leather belt burst open in the back, his jeans insignifigant against this force, and a tail, three quarters as long as he was, burst forth and eradicated what feeble remains of his jeans were still holding on. 
There was only one final change that really needed to occur, and Creeo had expected it. The same great pressure started to build behind his face, his skull, about the only human part of him left, bent and contorted like sheet metal in a press, his jaw stretching forward into a short muzzle, the fur, short and softer than his late Hawaiian shirt, making two, distinctive black circles, one around each of his eyes, the hallmark of the Procyon Lotor, the North American Raccoon. Creeo, if he could even be called that anymore, buried his face in his hands, only to brush his still shaggy blonde hair out of his face. Wait, what?
His hair was unchanged… Somehow still a dirty blonde color, despite every other inch of his body having undergone borderline metamorphosis. Broken, Creeo sagged against the chair, exhausted beyond belief. Sometime during the tail end of his transformation, Rebecca had walked over and, standing over him, rubbed his head like you would a dog.
“Enjoy that, shithead?” she said, smirking down at the raccoon that had so recently been Creeo Orbis, “Well, you’ll love this, then.”
The light dazzled Creeo’s new eyes, and he could only see outlines as Rebecca stuffed something white… cotton balls? In her ears, then took something shiny, red, out of her pocket, and blew through it.
“AHHHHHHH,” he screamed, clutching his ears and writhing around on the floor, the ringing like a screwdriver had been jammed right in against his eardrums and twisted, agony that he would never forget in his life. It stopped after what felt like an eternity, and Creeo was left gasping and panting in turn, writhing around on the ground much in the same way that Rebecca had that very morning.
“See? Not fun, is it? And your ears aren’t even as good as mine,” she dropped the thing, a small, silent dog whistle, the same one she had taken from him that morning. Still he sat, rocking back and forth on the ground, almost naked but for his fur, and clutching his head. Eventually sighed and shook her head, “I can’t believe I just did that… even to someone like you,” she took out the cotton balls and sat down next to him, “Oh, don’t give me that look. It hurts, I know, but you’ll get over it…”
Rebecca had planned a whole speech, and, while the serum had worked more chaotically than she had hoped, it had still done its job, nobody could deny that. She had prepared herself for no less than twenty different possible reactions to the transformation, but the one she received wasn’t any one of them. 
Creeo had huddled up into a big gray and black ball after his torment at the hands of his own whistle, and was sniveling away. Rebecca had expected that, reaction number eleven, and she would have given her carefully practiced response, if it weren’t for the hissing. Not hissing from Creeo, at least not from his throat, this hissing was coming from where his jeans had been, and, starting from the area right around his crotch, the torn fabric and white carpet alike started to discolor, “Oh! Eeeew, gross!” the husky said, as Creeo wet himself. 
Creeo noticed his wet crotch a moment later, and had much the same reaction, backing away and blushing furiously. 
“What the hell? That wasn’t supposed to happen…” Rebecca said, watching Creeo intently.
“What wasn’t?” He replied in a voice, higher and squeaker than he would have expected, and stood up.
“Oh shit…” Rebecca was looking straight at Creeo, or, rather, straight down at him, he had, in the less than five minutes since his transformation, lost a foot of height and three stone in weight, leaving him both shorter, and smaller than Rebecca. S-some trick of the serum? She thought, desperately trying to remember what she had learned about reverse mitosis in biological engineering.
“Gah!” Creeo shouted, suddenly experiencing a sensation very similar to falling, as though on a roller coaster just gone over the edge, and, even as he looked up at Rebecca, her freckled fur got further and further away, “I’m… shrinking!” he said, reaching his arms up as though to arrest his fall. The raccoon felt warm liquid flowing down the insides of his legs again, and, when he looked straight forward, he was staring squarely at Rebecca’s waist, no, her crotch, thighs… finally he stopped and, looking around, he realized just how… small he was. His legs felt like jelly beneath him, wobbly, as though he couldn’t quite walk properly. He took one step forward, tripped over his paws, both smaller, weaker, and more unwieldy than his feet, and crashed unceremoniously to the carpet face first.    
“Oh, oh crap. This is bad…” Rebecca said, chewing on one of her claws and pacing, frequently looking down at Creeo, little bigger than a toddler, and pacing back and forth across her office, swearing.
Creeo tried to speak, but this foreign muzzle failed him, and he just wound up whimpering through quivering lips. Next he tried to walk, rising to his feet with extraordinary care and taking a tentative step forward. Isn’t it true that sometimes nothing goes right? It was one of those times for Creeo because, just as his first successful step took him a few inches forward, wouldn’t it be perfect If he were to step on his tail, dragging limply behind him, squeal in pain, and fall right back onto his face. 
That last failure was enough for him, sobbing slightly, strange emotions of loss and abandonment flooding his brain, Creeo felt the first few tears roll down his face. After that, he lost all control, soon falling into an inescapable trench of pain and sadness as he cried, and cried, and cried, and cried. 
Fortunately for Creeo, even Rebecca couldn’t ignore a careening baby in her office, and so, sighing, Rebecca walked over cautiously and picked the little raccoon up under the arms. Still crying, Creeo kicked and screamed and did everything possible to make Rebecca’s life hard, the same as a toddler as he had been as an adult. 
“Oh, quit your whining,” she said, only half heartedly, then, sighing, with a burst of mercy, she pulled him up against her breast, rocking the toddler back and forth, even cooing a bit, “It’s okay, Creeo, you’re okay. Don’t cry, sweetie, don’t cry. If Rebecca never had to refer to Creeo Orbis as sweetie again, it would be too soon, but she swallowed her first thoughts, bit her lip, and kept rocking him, his sobbing gradually subsiding, “Shit, I really need to get out of here…” she looked at the clock,  almost seven, and growled at nothing, she would have to take Creeo home with her. A tall, if pudgy raccoon could get along well enough on public transit, and make it home easily enough, but a baby? Not a chance.
She sat Creeo down on her leather work chair, “do not pee on this,” now comprehensible enough to only sob six or seven times a minute, if not enough to speak. She gathered her things, a running backpack with everything she would need for a two week journey into deep wilderness stacked inside, and scooped up Creeo on her way out, “I guess I can’t just stuff him in the bag…” she sighed, that would make her life so much easier at that moment, but eventually settled on wrapping him in one of her old hiking shirts, which suited her designs just fine, and, if it left a squirmy little raccoon in a very uncomfortable position, well, the world wasn’t exactly perfect, was it?
It was a short walk down the hall to the stairwell, from there to the parking lot, and into Rebecca’s silver Volkswagen sedan. She liked Volkswagen, it reminded her of herself. She set the squirming, fabric enclosed raccoon on the passenger seat, a doubled towel underneath him in case of accidents, and pulled out of the university’s driveway, “I guess I’ll have to get you a carseat,” she looked over and saw the spreading dark splotch on the fabric around his crotch, “and some diapers, because clearly you’re having a hard time keeping yourself dry, cubby.”
“Ffuuugguue!” he squeaked, trying to free himself from the tightly wrapped package, nearly impossible given that Rebecca had tied one of her belts around the bundle, keeping his arms immobile at his sides.
“And a pacifier,” she added with a giggle, pulling into a department store only a block from the university. She might have been inside twenty minutes, leaving Creeo bound up in the car, his swaddling soaked from the waist down. He wasn’t in it long, and Rebecca’s towels held, so the only thing damaged was Creeo’s pride, and, having given back into the toddler emotions, Rebecca returned to find the little cub bawling again.
In short order she had a rubber sheet spread out and, cutting the hiking shirt away with a pair of scissors, set the squalling baby onto it, and slipped a toddler sized, blue printed diaper underneath his loins. Creeo tried to squirm, to escape, but Rebecca held him firmly pinned to the pad with one hand, and wiped his soaked legs down with a soothing disposable wipe. His crying doubled as he saw the diaper, and tripled when it was slipped under him, but Rebecca didn’t get to her station in life be luck, and she knew well know to plan ahead. The pacifier slipped easily between his small jaws, and the little raccoon’s sobbing decreased almost instantly as he started to suckle, eyes drooping.
“There, now doesn’t that feel better?” Rebecca said, giggling at the coon’s suddenly calm state, completely familiar with the process from many years clawing her way through education on a babysitter’s salary. She gave Creeo a few more puffs of powder, then taped the diaper up around his waist, sending him off to slumber with a few affectionate belly scratches. With the necessities taken care of, Rebecca loaded his sleeping form into the car seat she had just acquired, and strapped him in for the rest of the drive home, everything else she had bought could wait. 
The journey was a short one, however, as Rebecca lived within a twenty minute drive of the university, she had a high apartment in a relatively wealthy neighborhood that had been set aside for Therians especially. There were a few humans in the area, but most were either supporters of reformist movements, strange humans that wore costumes and pretended to be Therians, who knows what’s going through their heads, and those who wanted to avoid attention. Rebecca must have looked very odd indeed to anyone looking: a twenty eight year old husky wearing a business suit, dress pants, a hiker’s backpack, with a decomposable shopping bag in one arm, and a sleeping baby raccoon in the other. 
  Her apartment was nice, but not reflective of her high income. She had nice things, sure, but the vast majority of her money was invested, as she liked to say, in the wellbeing, and rights of Therians in our country. Nothing, it seemed, was more important to Rebecca than the cause.
She sat down on her leather couch with Creeo in her lap, and looked down at the little creature, sleeping soundly, diaper already discolored and wet, “What am I going to do with you know?” she said, closing her eyes to think. Then an idea popped into her head, a far flung idea, but, no matter how much she tried to push it out, it kept butting back in front: be nice to him. Her original intention was to punish the little prick in the worst way she could imagine, but fate had dropped a golden opportunity into her paws: Creeo’s family fortune was a huge thorn in her cause’s side. Money could buy politicians, airtime, news stories, celebrities, books, and the hearts of the masses. If she could somehow convince Creeo to withdraw his support… or, better yet… switch sides. Well, that question sort of answers itself.
There was no discussion in the husky’s mind. She had to try, at least to try. Creeo wasn’t a ringleader, but he was a powerful member of the inner circle, and she would never get a better opportunity than this. 
She started rocking him back and forth again, the little cub had started squirming a bit in his sleep, on the edge of waking, and Rebecca didn’t quite want him to wake just yet. She needed to plan, and that took a good night’s rest, for her, as well as him. 
Another of the great, annoying ideas wormed its way out of her lizard brain to hop into the foreground, some deep, motherly instinct that she had never felt before.
The little one must be hungry, don’t you think? Said her instinct, in feelings if not words, and, in all reason, that was probably his reason for stirring. Rebecca searched through the department store bag, and realized she had forgotten both a feeding bottle, and baby food. A quick peek inside his mouth showed that he had teeth capable of chewing, he hadn’t regressed that far, but that would require waking him up, which she didn’t like. 
Submitting to inevitability, Rebecca took off her suit and dress shirt, then undid her bra and pressed Creeo’s little muzzle to her nipple. He latched on, and started suckling almost instantly. The pleasure that coursed through Rebecca’s body as she nursed him was immense, and Creeo clearly didn’t mind either, as, just as soon as he had suckled his fill, he returned to a deep, calm sleep. Rebecca laid him out on the couch, and got out the onesie she had acquired, then carefully pulled it over his head and diaper, which, she hoped, would hold until morning.
“Sorry squeaker, but you’re going to be sleeping on the couch,” she giggled again, then forced herself to realize that this was Creeo Orbis, a flaming conservative, and one of her faction’s worst enemies… no. He was a cub, and Rebecca couldn’t bring herself to exploit him more than her duty demanded. She laid him out comfortably, she had learned from many years of babysitting that raccoon cubs sleep best on their side, and covered him with a wool blanket.
She couldn’t help but scratch him behind the ears a bit, the pacifier bobbing in his mouth, “I’ll see you in the morning, Creeo. I certainly hope you’re more pliable like this, for both of our sakes.”