"You're revolting. I'm Revolting. I can't even tell whose implied to be talking. How're they—" the new creature motioned at me without looking over, "—going to resolve this. Literally two incompatible men—and we are men, right? Yes, some men have pussies—shoved together like Potara TimeCop Fusion Dance."
Down in the grass of the front yard was one person arguing with himself. Was it David Nicolaus Scott the Third, or was it Trevor Christian Phillips? Simple. It was both. And yet neither. Both men's flesh had melted together, their memories and 'mass' crammed into one larger being. Both David and Trevor had ceased to exist as one and now there was... whoever this was...
This wolftaur looked different, seemingly keeping bulk from both, channeling more of Trevor's muscle into his shape. His lower body wasn't just slightly larger than a wolf and longer, it was now bigger now than David's had been, and also more brawny, like a bulldog. His tail was still big and fluffy, covering up his rear and the canine cookie he still had. That tri-lipped vulva was right behind his large balls—a leftover from David—and now even larger, sheathed shaft—the more size of which had come from Trevor.
That wolf form was now stocky and less gray, more like a dire wolf than a regular with just some hints of auburn in the fur taking some of Trevor's hair-color. The humanoid torso which connected to the wolf's neck had thiner fur with apparent scarring over more defined abs where Trevor's squad had sewed him back together years ago after an IED. David's broad shoulders now held stronger muscles, muscles which traveled down his arms like a body builder. On his right hand, he was missing the very end of his ring finger where Trevor's wedding ring once sat.
The canine muzzle was more square, with hazel-green lupine eyes which were unfocused, not taking in his surroundings as he paced. His hair atop his head had shifted from dark gray to more red, short at the sides as if buzzed, creating a kind of mullet which was longer and curled over his shoulders. Triangular ears picked up the children and animals moving around, but that's not where this man's attention was. Rubbing the scar above his eye from where David's mom and cut him deep with a bottle decades ago, he went on:
"Geez, it's like only David could make that reference because Trevor was born the year that movie came out. Ugh. If there's one thing that's upsetting about this it's that my wife is too young for me and also the same age. But if there's two things, the second has to be we were a soup of flesh, bone, blood—" the creature shivered, remembering the last few moments before two men had been ended.
David and Trevor had both seen their insides on the outside before, though for David it was last night and for Trevor it was off in Afghanistan. The memories of the two men competed for 'airtime' in the one head, each making arguments which conflicted with the other... an imperfection of the memory structure of the Chronivac, or a horror by design.
"Chronivac!" the wolfaur realizing the instrument of their situation with a certainty. "This is like when I became aware of that first author instead of—" he looked over at me. He couldn't exactly see me, not with his eyes, but he knew I was here and that I was back after the last chapter. "Where's the other guy? Wolf? I thought I was gunna be on my own, but you're back...?"
A chestnut and gray colored dire wolf—colors not dissimilar from our current wolftaur—appeared in the doorway and stepped out onto the patio. The big male wolf, well, she was quiet... far too large to be sneaking anywhere, but she wasn't disturbing them. She merely laid and listened as on man spoke to himself...
"This is your doing," the wolftaur said, changing the direction he was looking. "I mean, it's the other one, but couldn't you undo this?" We'd long since lost the ability to communicate with each other, and the man was at a loss. He didn't know my motivations any more than he knew those of ChronoSeth.
The confused man sighed. "Of course, if you did change me right back, you might invoke an 'Author Fight' like over in that phuking chapter where you and the one author went back and forth over the powers or colors of dragons or whatever until you gave up," he said, remembering something printed on CYOC website over a decade earlier from when this story started.
What I—and now this character—had called an 'Author Fight' is when two or more people keep continuing the story in Round Robin, changing details back and forth as they continue the story, fighting with the characters about how realities or truths of he universe should work. For me, I try to be beyond that now. And, as a result, Trevor and David—two very incompatible characters in my mind—now suffer as one. I've decided embrace as many alterations as other authors make to these characters and I encourage anyone else to do the same...
The wolftaur looked accusingly at me, giving a side-glance to you the reader. "This is a challenge to you, isn't it? Fine,'god'. Let's see what the next logical step is."
"You!" he declared, suddenly pointing at Alice Phillips on the patio. The big wolf's ears went flat against her skull. "You were with David, right, so it had to be the boy," the gray/auburn furred creature sneered. "Where is he? I don't hear him upstairs anymore."
Tears had welled up at the corner of her eyes. "Tommy put you in Mr. Scott's body?" she asked as she instinctually turned her head down at to the side to show deference. "Where is he? Where's Mr. Scott?"
This new man didn't have a proper answer to that question. They were both here, but also not. In a moment of terror and anger the two had now literally been locked in an battle of wills. Whose life was the stronger to form the cohesive structure of this new being? Alice seemed to think Trevor was in charge of the body, which wasn't true.
The imposing, fatherly air that the wolftaur gave off made it seem to Alice like Trevor was there. But Tommy—Tom now, due to his further years—had set the percentages of the strength of impression to 60/40 in David's favor... but things were not that simple, and the math a lot more muddy.
Firstly, David's life was longer. By the time Trevor was birthed, David was the age Tommy had been before aging up today, eleven. So if David had been a paragon of virtue, the weight of the math would be slightly in his favor, but he wasn't, so it's not. David was semi-popular back in school, but bullied for his smaller stature and his lack of belief in god. In fact, there's little doubt in the new man's head that Trevor Phillips would have been one of those kids picking on David Scott had they attended school at the same time.
But while David's life was longer and arched towards progressive and inclusive, the young version of David lashed out at everyone who was 'against him' including authority figures, local frats, landlords, and the like. Trevor's battles were a lot more literal... urban warfare in the desert, running from air raids, and more jarhead stuff. The only authority he'd ever fought was higher-ups who wouldn't do what needed to be done and the politicians who put them in harms way.
The woltaur was looking through Alice. He didn't know where David was nor did he care to find him. His mind wandered the ocean of memories looking for an island of similarities... something this new person could latch onto as the ground from which to build the foundation of their personality...
Video Games? they thought. No. Trevor hated them. Memories of karaoke and plastic drums came to mind. Trevor and his unit shared nights of partying on base and off with Rock Band. For David, it had been similar at yearly gaming parties at Chester's. Neither were a huge part of the other's life, but there was common ground in drinks and partying.
School? They'd both had sex when they were young, though technically Trevor's was with a minor as he'd already aged to eighteen by the time he knocked up Holly with Tommy. David had used protection while Trevor. Wolfen eyes narrowed and the man felt anger from David and guilt from Trevor... actual legitimate guilt.
Trevor had punctured the condom.
This new man growled to himself. David, having a pregnancy fetish, had always fantasized about such an action, but he'd never once had the nerve or immorality to do it. Still, he did feel guilty about thinking about it, and now what was left of him felt anger and guilt on top of that because Trevor actually did it. Disgusting.
The wolftaur looked toward Alice for a moment. Holly and Trevor had tried for another son on purpose. His held titled as he wondered about that: Children? David wasn't sure he'd ever be a good parent, but he did love spending time with the kids... helping them with school projects and teaching them things about video games. He also wanted to be pregnant himself. And Trevor, well... Trevor had a responsibility to his children which as the breadwinner of the family he upheld. He'd smacked a few strippers asses, but never cheated on Holly. Because of the merge, he knew for certainty she'd never cheated, but also that David had no problem if she wanted to. David saw no issue with someone else cheating on their significant other with him because he'd never pressured. If they wanted to, they could, and had before.
Privilege? He considered. Both Trevor and David were white. Both of them grew up in mostly white rural towns—David was a local, Trevor was not—with very few minorities in either's upbringing. David's high school was huge, shared between four neighboring small towns and it was there that he'd learned first-hand the lives of those with darker skin or differently shaped eyes. For Trevor, such life experience eluded him until he joined the military after high school. His squad wasn't all white, but he did learn to watch out for browner people. Insurgents. And, as a police officer, he treated all people equally [bad]. That was like equality the new man surmised, and was something they could improve upon.
Alice was afraid to move. She could hear Tommy moving around the house and up to the attic. What was he doing? she wondered... but she felt that if she moved, the wolftaur's eyes would refocus on her, and she'd be in some kind of trouble. That's how it worked with her dad. If you didn't draw attention, you'd be less likely to draw his ire.
Meanwhile, the gears spun in the creature's mind as he seemed locked in thought. Sports? David had played soccer growing up and Trevor had played football. David didn't dislike football, though he preferred Hockey. They both actually liked the heavy hits, so... it would be easy to like both, he figured.
The combined creature smiled. "OK," he said, to himself and also us, "OK. Now... what was I saying?" He looked to Alice. "Oh, right, David." His eyes narrowed and her hackles rose. "David's fucking dead," he growled at her and the big wolf's ears went flat against her skull again. "So's Trevor," he added quickly. "I'm your father now," he was certain. "This is what the author deems," he said as if I were divine. I'm not.
David and Trevor's cloths were piled up in the grass, soaked in blood due to how the two had melted through them. "I'm th... tha.. d..." he bulky, muscular wolftaur made noises with his mouth, fumbling with trying to smash his two names together. "Fucking hate stories where one person changes and then suddenly they've got new pronouns and a new name just from changing, but I'll be damned if I'm going to be called by either of those two asshole's names," he declared sternly.
"Least our pronouns are the same," he said to himself as he bent down facing away from Alice to pick up David's utilikilt carapace. He was showing off his lupine cookie and sizable balls without thinking much of it. Alice's eyes went a little wide and she looked away. When she tried to look back, the creature was facing her, standing back on his hind legs as he used his lower from paws to slide on his underwear. Mostly she saw sheath, but she looked away again.
"Drevid? No. Drevor? Drevor. That sounds like a name," he considered. "Drevor your father," he concluded, belting on the front of the carapace and then the back. Over his torso he put on David's white shirt with the black QR code, and over that his XXL wife-beater. Atop that, a red and black flannel shirt which just barely fit his bulk frame, from Trevor. Finally, he hung his belt holster with his Glock 22 still strapped inside, to the front belt of his carapace.
Drevor's left hand naturally went to his right hand where he was missing the last bit of his ring finger. He turned to look at the bloody earth and picked up a silver-colored, titanium ring from the ground. "Trevor's wedding ring," he said. "Mine now," and slid it onto his finger.
The wolf creature picked up Trevor's boots and jeans, and turned to the patio again. "Alice. Honey," Drevor started in that fatherly tone that said 'I'm not mad at you, but I am mad'. "I'm real sorry you had to see me naked, but your brother's pulled a bad prank on everyone and really derailed things with horror," he said slowly, menacingly, as he took one step at a time with four legs. "I've been distracted, but you've been listening, yeah?" Golden-green eyes met the dire wolf's in a challenge. "This is a big mess to clean up, and I don't mean your 'white stuff', kiddo..." he trailed off and the young girl listed intently to his next words:
"Where's Tommy?"
(|[***]|)
Tom Phillips, a former eleven-year-old with aptitudes and experience—but not the specific memories—of a teenager of sixteen, was coming down the stairs on at the far end of the living space of David Scott Senior's ranch house. He was wearing Trevor's now more fitting Denver Bronco's jersey with the tiny red handprint in the white on the front. At 5'8", he was taller than David had been by three inches.
But his new father towered over him even still, taking Trevor's 6'2" and extending that proportionally in his new bulk to 6'6". Those canine teeth of his were shown as lips pulled back and a low, fearsome growl escaped his throat. "Boy," he said like Trevor would. "I want you try and fathom how much trouble you thought you might get into and how far you undershot that estimate," the wolftaur said, a thumb on his right hand pinching his belt.
To him, like Alice, something was clearly wrong. He saw no David in this... unless David was secretly like his dad? The former owner of the Chronivac always disputed being a good person... was he serious? Tom bit his lip. No. No, he thought better of it. David also said a few times that line about 'the anger of a gentle man'. What did this wolftaur think he'd actually done?
"I don't know," Tommy finally said.
Alice had stepped up behind the wolftaur as was sitting, looking at the older boy who was now double her age. Her shoulders were drooped a bit, but a part of her was watching this 'alpha' for signs he might lash out at the cub, his boy. Tommy was physically weaker than either of them right now, and Alice had no intention of letting the man hit her brother if that's where this was going. Clearly the powerful creature would do real damage.
"When I was fifteen, a little younger than you look now," began Drevor, "I knew a girl with freckles and pigtails and a nice pair of tits..." Tommy blinked. "She did OK in school, but she'd always seemed sad. She confided in me that she had been thinking about killing herself for a few weeks... and, having dealt with feelings like that myself at that point, I gave some bad advice...
"I almost yelled at her. 'Death is the coward's way out' or some bullshit... I leaned into the idea that it wouldn't be fair to her friends both because they cared about her but because now they'd have to live in a world without her." He'd been looking in Tom's eyes directly, but now he glanced away for just a moment before looking back. "These are not things you should say to a person if you are trying to help them live. These are intimidating things that make them feel worse not better." Tom was intent on Drevor's words, listening.
"You're wondering what this terrible story has to do with your actions and it's a few important things. The first of those is that this is David's story. This is why more than two decades have passed and he thinks of himself as a bad person," Drevor took a breath. "He's right. We're all at least a little bad. Not always for bad reasons, but bad still. He was right to want to be better, but wrong to hold onto it for so long. He fucked up, even though he didn't understand what he had done at the time."
"I—" Tom started, but Drevor put a finger to his lips to make it clear he wasn't done. The boy knew the hand-motion from his father, and quieted right up.
"What David didn't know—this is the second important part—is what you don't know now. Or, well, what he didn't fully comprehend at the time... is how much life stories make a person who they are unless you spend the time to get to know them. You and Trevor? You knew each other eleven years, Tommy. To you—" he motioned at Tom's aged body, "—maybe more now. But whether it be your father or your mother's boyfriend, you don't know either well enough to understand their motivations... so it was a bad idea to put them together... not the least of which because we were oh so very different. You were selfish, Tommy. Very selfish."
"I'm sorry," Tom said, tears in his eyes. He wasn't crying, but he wanted to... but Trevor had raised him to keep those emotions inside... to be a strong man. Those extra years were doing work, though not as he'd intended. "I—"
"—still don't get it—" Drevor interrupted, "—because it's this last important part where you find you fucked up the most." The wolftaur paused, then reached out and put a hand on the boy's shoulder, looking down at him. "That girl? She never came to school after that weekend. I won't get gory with it, but it wasn't quick. And David got to live the rest of his life, certain he was the push that put her over the edge... Whether that is true or not, he'll never know. Partly because it's unknowable... and partly because, tonight, Tommy... you killed him, and your father, with the Emitter."
Tom jerked his shoulder away, throwing his hands up. This wasn't what he wanted! "No! No I didn't! Y-You're right here!" he said, poking the wolftaur in the chest. "Both of you!"
Drevor sighed. "Not that I'm advising you on how to fuck with people, Tommy... but you could have simply given traits to one or the other. Instead—and Alice can confirm this—I spent the last... I don't even know—Half an hour?—trying to mentally overpower an existential crisis." Alice only vaguely understood what that meant by context clues, but she nodded anyway. "Tommy. Boy. I'm glad you didn't try to give them one body with two heads, but neither of them could survive the experience you gave to us. What you've got now is whatever I am."
"They're dead?" he implored, trying to hold back his tears.
"Their memories live on in me, and I'm gunna take over for them both... but it's going to be hard to combine these two disparate lives." The creature took a deep breath. "I am your father now. Call me Drevor... because that's as far as I've gotten with the naming scheme so far."
Tom put a hand to one eye to wipe a tear. "Are you mad?"
Drevor put a hand on his waist. "A cop whose son murdered two people in cold blood... because he wasn't yet adult enough to handle that his parents were splitting up?" The man leaned over so that his muzzle was inches from Tom's face. The next words he spoke were a threat of violence, whispered one at a time: "I. Am. Absolutely livid." The boy gulped. "Tommy, you misunderstand this nose—" he wiggled it to emphasize, "—if you think I can't find where you hid the Emitter."
Alice growled softly, and Drevor turned towards her and barked a warning without words. The dire wolf lowered her head, and the man looked back at the boy. "You're going to go get it and bring it to me, and I'm going to punish you, with it. This is part of what you can expect from parenting like you had but combined with David's transformation interest. I don't know what I'm going to do to you... you are only a minor, after all, but murder is serious Tommy and whatever it is... you will not like it."
Tommy briefly considered his options, but Drevor never broke eye contact or even blinked. This was a monster made by a child. Whatever happened to him now... it was all his fault.