“Pregnant?” Ashley looked down, a look of concern on her snout. She was silent for a moment. “I had a feeling I was…” She shook her head. “I don’t know if I’m really ready for this… College is gonna get a lot more complicated. And I doubt either of our parents will be happy about this.”
“Ashley, I’m sorry… I let myself get carried away last night…” Casper said.
“We both did… But…” She held his hand, causing a little squeak, and took a breath. “But I’m not going to back down! We already agreed to get married, after all. We might be starting a family quicker than I’d like, but I was serious when I said I wanted to be with you forever. No matter what.” She looked Casper in the eyes. “Do you still want to stay with me?”
“Of course!” He said. “You’re right, having a baby is going to make things more complicated… Especially since we don’t know how to take care of a synthetic child yet. But I’m not gonna quit here.” Casper hugged Ashley with a loud squeak.
The two sat there quietly in each other’s arms for a while, both taking comfort in the other’s touch as they tried to process the whole thing. Eventually, they finally let each other go, and Ashley stood up. “So… want to head to that swim meet?”
“You still want to go?”
“Well, we already missed the football game this week. I’m not going to let you miss another chance at a mass change that I get to watch.” The lizard girl grinned. “And maybe it will help us feel a little better, too.”
“It couldn’t hurt,” Casper chuckled. He took her hand once more, and the two started walking back towards their college campus.
As they walked through the park, Casper saw the family from Haelix’s apartment complex in the playground. The rubber rabbit man and his violet avian wife watched happily as their tyrannosaurus and triceratops sons climbed across the monkey bars, and went down the slide. A perfectly normal family.
A little girl walking with her mother to the playground pointed to the rubber children. “Mommy, look! Dinosaur balloons! Can we get one?”
The mother looked down at her daughter. “Now now, dear, it’s not polite to call them that.” She looked up at the synthetic parents, looking embarrassed. “I’m so sorry about my daughter. I assure you she didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Oh, don’t worry about a thing,” the rabbit man said with a dismissive wave.
Casper kept on walking, though he slowed his pace a little. If the little girl wanted a “dinosaur balloon” why not let her have one?
The ring worked its magic on the girl and her mother (and presumably her father, as well, wherever he might have been). The woman’s clothes vanished, (though her purse remained,) as her skin turned light red, becoming smooth and shiny. Mold lines ran down the sides of her body as a nozzle popped out from what used to be her belly button. Her crotch and rear were sealed, a black bar code appearing on her butt. Meanwhile her breasts had smoothed over, with no signs of a nipple. Her feet stretched slightly, her toes curling into rubbery paws. A long, thin tail slowly inflated behind her, hovering a few feet off the ground. Her face grew into a small snout with a black nose, and her shoulder length hair joined together into a single piece draped behind her. Finally, the woman’s ears grew larger and rounder, clearly marking her as a mouse synthetic.
The little girl’s clothes disappeared as well, as her skin turned to a smooth, orange latex, though like her mother, nothing indecent was visible. Her hair all stuck straight back behind her,merged together into a rubber crest. Her face, meanwhile stretched and thinned down into a long beak-like jaw with a couple of rounded “teeth” inflating within. Her pinkies both grew much longer, nearly matching the length of her arms. Below them, a thin layer of latex grew, which connected to the sides of her torso, even reaching as far down as her legs, and turned her arms into wings. Her other fingers remained just as dexterous, even as they inflated into dull, rubbery claws. Her legs became much thinner, as well. Her toes stretched out into longer, thinner but still dull talons.
622 to 625. Looks like her father had been changed by the ring’s effect on couples, too, wherever he might have been.
The newly formed pterodactyl synthetic ran to play with the other prehistoric anthros on the playground. Any look of embarrassment on the mother’s face was gone, the faux pas her daughter had inadvertently committed not even a memory anymore. Casper smiled to himself as he watched the little Pterodactyl shakily flew around the playground, apparently still learning to use her wings.
“That’s so cool!” The little triceratops boy said. “Hey, can you pick me up and fly with me?
“I’ll try,” The Pterodactyl responded. She flew over the boy’s head a few times, trying to grab his horns in her feet, and missing repeatedly. Eventually however, she finally managed to get a grip, and lifted him a few inches off the ground for a few feet, causing the triceratops boy to gasp excitedly before she let go and he fell to the ground again, with little more than a squeak.
“Pick me up next!” The tyrannosaur boy cried, bouncing up and down in excitement. “I want a turn!”
“Now that’s cute,” Ashley said with a giggle. Casper smiled as well. Even changed by the ring, kids were still kids.
…
Casper and Ashley finally made it to the college’s gymnasium, with a little time to spare. They headed into the pool room, where some of the inflatable otters were already warming up, and took a seat by the bleachers. Casper noted how the otters seemed to take some effort to stay submerged, much like he and Ashley had a few days back at the beach. Still they seemed to have a better grip on it than most synthetics, which made sense, given their species, and status on the college’s swim team.
More people began to come in, mostly the family and friends of the guys on the swim team. Quite a few of the families had already been changed during Casper’s little “survey” from earlier this week (about eight of the boy’s families had been changed, if he remembered right), and evidently one of the lions from Casper’s classes had a friend on the team as well, but the rest were still human.
Ashley was smiling as she saw a decent number of people pile on the bleachers on either side of the pool. It still wasn’t as big a showing as there would be for say, a football game, but there were still plenty of people to work the ring’s magic on.
The last of the audience soon took their seats, and the otters got into position in the water. Casper tensed his body at the same time as they tensed theirs. As the orca coach blew the whistle, the otters began their dash across the pool, and the ring’s magic began to flow.
It affected the unchanged families of the otters first, their clothes disappearing as their skin turned into smooth, shiny latex, mold lines appearing on their sides. Their new skins were a variety of colors; while about a third of them had more “realistic” mixes of brown, beige, and white, there were also a rainbow of more vibrant colors, especially among the children. The fathers all sported bulges on their groins, and while the mothers had nipple-less breasts (a few of which may have gotten a little larger during the change, though Casper and Ashley hadn’t seen clearly with so many changs going on). Meanwhile, the siblings that hadn’t gone through puberty simply bore a smooth torso all over.
Men, women, and children alike all had long, flexible tails inflate behind them, as bar codes appeared on their sealed rears. Their feet grew slightly wider, a thin “webbing” forming between their toes. A similar webbing formed between their fingers as they bulged and rounded out slightly, looking like a mix of paws and human hands.
Their jaws and noses pushed forward slightly, becoming short muzzles with little black noses. A few had even gained some painted lines on the sides of their muzzles to give the impression of whiskers. Their ears all became a little smaller and rounder, moving upward on their heads by a little under an inch. All of the new male otter’s hair vanished, leaving them ‘bald.” About half of females went ‘bald’ as well, though just as many had their hair join together into a single inflated piece. Though their changes progressed at different rates, each one finished with a nozzle popping into existence from their belly buttons.
656. And that was just from the the family members.
The small handful of remaining onlookers began to change as well, their clothes vanishing as they turn into colorful latex animals.
A yellow lizard man.
A bright red cardinal woman.
An orange goat woman.
A couple of dalmation guys.
A yellow turtle man.
And grassy-green mare.
663. Almost at the number of the beast. Casper mused that he might change 666 and 667 together to avoid a bad omen.
All of the newly-synthetic people continued watching and cheering on the swim team, with just as much passion as they had been before.
“I think I’m remembering something again, from our history class,” Ashley whispered. “The reason our college is so popular with synthetics is that it was apparently one of the first places to accept synthetics, even before they had attained legal ‘personhood.’”
“Thanks, Ashley.” So, apparently, the early synthetics weren’t thought of as ‘real people’ are first? Casper hoped they hadn’t been treated too poorly. He idly wondered if that might start to change, if enough of the human population became synthetic that humans were in the minority. That probably wouldn’t happen in his lifetime, (assuming synthetics lived as long as an average human did) but it was an interesting question, nonetheless.
He put it aside for now, and went back to watching the swim team seemingly effortlessly glide through the water. And occasionally bounce on the surface of it.