Professor Mary Goodwill sat behind her desk in her office on the 4th floor of the Natural Science building of the University she had worked at for almost 40 years. She was old closer to 70 then 60 but her work was her life. She never married, never had kids and as an only child who had no living cousins, she had no family to speak of. Her work was her family and she never planned to leave it, she wanted to die either giving a lecture to a classroom full of students or doing the research she loves. Which was why she was still in her office well after sunset on a Friday night.
She lowered her eyes as she looked over the assignments from her Geology 101 class, her grad students and TA had graded them of course but she made a point of looking over each assignment herself. She wished she did not have to wear her reading glasses but knew it had to be done as she looked at the papers. Most of them where what she expected of students who really did not want to take her class but had to but there where others she read because she had hopes for the kid. She pulled out Oscar’s paper and nodded multiple times as she read it over, he had gotten an A+ from her TA and he was a standout among the freshmen but in truth the work was more in line with an A- but given some of the other papers she was more then pleased with his work.
She looked at another paper, Lindsay. Here the work was a C range at best, but the TA had given her a B-, she was temped to change that but shrugged, Lindsay tried her best when she wasn’t blushing whenever she looked at Oscar. She had seen that too many times to count, a young girl or boy with a crush on another student in her class.
“Maybe I should assign them to a group project together, that may be fun.” She said with a grin
A knock at the door caused her to lift her head off the papers.
“Enter.” She ordered as the door opened as one of her grad students walked in, she had a look of being scared on her face like she just gotten horrible news. “What is it Monica?”
“Professor, I was making sure the sample we have from that cat ideal and found that the sample ID tag doesn’t match what we have on record.” Said Monica as the Professor paused for a moment and began to glare at her grad student. Part of her job at the university was to identify and carbon date different historical artifacts which where brought to the university.
The Cat ideal was an interesting piece, it was not made out of any stone they could quickly identify instead some sort of crystal possibly from a deep earth cave but that was unknown since they weren’t allowed to take off a sample. There had been multiple small shards of what seamed to be the same crystals found with the piece and they were given one of them to study. She had not lost a sample in 20 years and the last time was because a fire had broken out in the building to lose one was shameful to her.
“Any idea where it is?” inquired the Professor
“Yes…the Identify tag we have attached to the sample is one we hand out to students to identify in 101 class.” Explained Monica as the Professor let out a groan.
“You are telling me that one of my students has a priceless sample of an artifact which had been around for thousands of years.” Stated the Professor “Is that what you are telling me?”
Before she could answer the sound of something falling over in the neighboring work area/lab which was attached to the office caused both to look toward the door.
“What was that?” inquired Monica as the Professor stood up and moved toward the attached door and walked into the darkened work area. She quickly spotted the open window and the knocked down plastic bottle.
“Some idiot left the window open.” Said the Professor as she rolled her eyes and walked into the darkened room with only the light from door.
She never saw them but she felt it as two sharp fangs bit into her neck area as a fur covered hand wrapped her mouth from behind so she could not scream. She heard Monica let out a short scream but that was cut out when a loader thud came from behind.
The pain from the bite was there and then it was gone, it became almost a magical feeling as new strength entered her body radiating outwards from the bite. She felt as if she had lost a decade of age as her muscles grew a bit and her strength returned. She began to smell all the chemicals in the room and she could see the darkened room much better. From behind she could hear soft moaning, she was spun around to see a cat like creature with a long tail pinning Monica to the ground however Monica was not screaming anymore she was moaning and pulling at her cloths. Judging from the creature Monica was becoming something similar, a cat like tail began to grow from her body as fur began to grow.
She looked down at her own hands to see grayish white fur was growing over her body and her cloths were feeling itchy. She then realized that the figure which had been holding her was not anymore. She turned around to see a large anthropomorphic jaguar man.
“Professor.” He said, it took her a moment to realize who he was.
“Oscar? Correct?” inquired the Professor
“We need your help.” Said the other creature, a female cheetah woman, how she got up here she didn’t know but somehow, she did know she was looking at a transformed Lindsay. “That mineral thing you gave me to identify did this to us and others what is it?”