“If the virus got out of our systems after a while, then it probably won’t take long for the others to work it out of their systems as well,” Erus said. “Or, maybe because we destroyed that guy’s computers, the virus is just gone in general.”
“I hope so,” Cerby said. “I’d hate to get the CDC involved in a possible taur-fusion-transformation-contagion.
“Then all we have to do is get this thing off,” Erby added, poking the LED-studded collar Hades, or whomever he really was, had managed to shackle to her neck in the commotion. Thankfully it remained unlit, and the other two collars dangled freely from it on their golden chains, draped on either side of Erby’s impressive bust yet held there by the impressive busts of her sister-selves on either side. “Too bad it’s some mind control device. This could be a killer rave accessory.”
“Fusing with you physically and partially mentally was bad enough,” Cerby scoffed. “I’d hate for it to be totally.”
“We WERE fused totally,” Erby reminded her. “Now, how does this unclasp?”
“Let me try,” Erus offered, turning to fiddle with the device, as whatever seemed to amount to its control mechanism was closest to her side. “There’s just a bunch of buttons with... What are these, Greek letters? That guy was really dedicated to his theme.”
“I’ve seen better,” Bug chuckled. “I can’t picture the god of the underworld as a troll in an internet cafe basement. A cave would have been more thematic, or at least a spooky abandoned manor or something.”
“Fair point,” Erus conceded. “I’ll just try one at random and hope it’s the ‘unlock.; Uh... This one, the triangle.”
“If they’re Greek letters, that’d be delta,” Cerby said.
Erus’ stubby paw-finger pressed the button, eliciting a whine of concern as the LEDs on the collar sparked to life one-by-one, lighting up like a low-budget Christmas tree.
“Turn it off!” Erby all but shouted, grasping the collar in her own paws and tugging at it as hard as she could, but the hardened leather wouldn’t budge. “My head feels... Weird...”
“Okay, okay, don’t panic,” Erus stammered, pressing another button at random, which somehow sent an electric crackle racing from the central collar down the chains of its sisters, which jumped into the air and clasped themselves on Cerby and Erus’ necks as well. “Okay, maybe panic! I don’t want us to be a single mind, either! Oh, no, now my head feels funny, too!”
“You’re not the only one,” Cerby whimpered. “Get your nasty busty-feminization-fixation thoughts out of my consciousness, Erus!”
“Let me deactivate the battery,” Bug quickly suggested, flying around to land on the cerberus-taur’s collective lower back and grabbing ahold of the battery pack. “Hold still, I just need to--”
It had been a good plan. It had worked before, after all. However, in the panicked confusion, Erby trying to rip the collar free, Cerby and Erus doing much the same and jostling their collective form about, Bug never got a chance to properly insert his claws into the screws, much less unscrew them or spray down the battery within. Instead, just as he darted forward to try and wrestle some control over the device, the collar shifted the slightest bit, causing his claw to instead hit another button.
“Oh,” he said simply. “Shit.”
“What happened, what...” Erby started to say.
“...Did you...” Cerby continued for her.
“...Do to...” Erus added.
“Us?” all three spoken in unison. “No, not us, me! No, not me, us. But, we are us! Aren’t I? Aren’t we me? Why am I... Myself...”
Moving in perfect synchronicity, each sister-self clutched her head in her paws, massing their temples. Taking advantage of the stillness, Bug attempted to grab for the battery pack again, only to quickly retract his claws with a gasps as the crackling electricity shocked him.
Even worse, a robotic voice belted out from the collar, “ERROR: SYSTEM OVERLOAD!!!”
All three felt their minds crashing against one another, crashing as waves like three oceans meeting in a central whirlpool. Cerby and Erby’s memories as Wert, as all her previous forms, even her original male human self making the original Curse of the Storyteller post, swirled and cascaded into Erus’ recollection of her own first encounter with the curse. Memories meshed and melded, three timelines remaining distinct, though now beheld equally by an increasingly singular perspective.
Meanwhile, the changes, it seemed, did not stick to the simply mental. The space between each sister-self quickly diminished as their torsos grew closer and closer together, slamming into one another. Flesh met flesh, then moved in further, further, and further still. Three stomachs met as one smooth, taut midriff, six large breasts joined another like meeting bubbles, expanding even further into a somehow even bustier pair of just two. Erby’s arms were lost alongside Cerby’s left and Erus’ right, the new singular torso now having one arm on either side. Lastly, their heads too merged into one, hair growing longer and more luxurious, eyes brighter with fiery irises.
Personalities clasped onto one another as well, traits joining as one, quirks and interests and fears and desires all merging, becoming greater singulars. Cerby, or was it Erby, felt the aforementioned rush of Erus’ seeming obsession with the transformations of males into buxom female beauties, their personalities and sexualities twisting to become ravenously attracted to male attention, much to their chagrin. Erby felt the bizarre paradox of being two people at the same time, each with different personas, one a formerly masculine proper British gentleman and the other a lascivious, radical cyberpunk, exploring all the vast possibilities of alien species throughout Daring Space Adventures and beyond.
Tastes in music, favorite films, childhood phobias and preferences for hot or cold beverages, their skills and talents and everything that made them themselves, all collecting and joining, not merely a multitude of personal qualities from three personas side by side but a true melding into one entity.
Was she Cerby anymore? Erby? Erus? No, none of those names fit her anymore, because they all fit her. They were no longer themselves, they were herself.
She was herself.
“I must find a pleasure my master!” the three mouths spoke from one mind, only to gasp and add, “Ack, what the hell?!”
“That’s quite enough of that,” Bug said, apparently having been able to unscrew the battery pack and incapacitate its power unit. Though the feelings of submissive, unwavering obedience to that Hades punk quickly evaporated into nothing, like the other cerberus-taur, it seemed too late to prevent the mind-melding, personality merging, and general one-ness-ifying.
“Cerby?” Bug asked hesitantly. “Erby? Erus? You three still in there?”
“In a way, I suppose,” the new person said, three voices together, upper torsos moving all exactly in sync. “I’m still the ones you know, but together. A new version of us, as one. I am me... Please, call me... I guess ‘Cerberus’ doesn’t work anymore with just the one head. Call me... Hellhound? Helly... Hound... Elly. Call me Elly.”
“Shit,” Bug repeated.
“It’s not so bad, once you get used to it,” the other cerberus taur said. “Nice to meet you, Elly, though I’m jealous you got the single body while I’m still stuck with three. I used to be Tarry, Arry, and Arus, but now I’m Tartarus.”
“Nice to meet you as well, Tartarus,” Elly said with an earnest smile.
“No, no, no!” Bug groaned. “I just made three new friends. Now it feels like I’ve lost them. No offense, Tartarus, but I never knew you as three people, and still, we just met.”
“None taken,” Tartarus said sincerely.
“Having one new friend is better than none,” Elly pointed out.
“But I still lost three,” Bug rebutted.
“Well, maybe we can cheer you up,” Elly said with another warm smile. “And maybe this’ll prove I still am your friends, just now as one.”
Grabbing the phone from earlier that Bug had been unable to properly use with his claws, Elly began furiously typing away, the words-per-minute speed of three people (or at least two) combined into a single zoom of text.
Just as quickly, Bug felt a warm tingling sensation growing within him, infesting his stomach with the thematically appropriate sensation of butterflies even as some of the warmth drifted lower, a pang of arousal shooting through him.
“L-let’s not go crazy here,” Bug said.
“Why not?” Elly asked with mock-innocence, not looking up from the phone. “You wanted a cuter, non-body horror body, right? Besides, I have to prove to you that part of me comes from Erus.”
Bug could only swallow uncertainly as the tingling warmth intensified, sending a surge of energy through him as the world began to shrank. Or, rather, he began to grow, his two sets of arms extending, remaining slender yet acquiring vaguely more humanoid proportions, claws splitting and growing an opposable thumb each as they resolved into fully functional hands of chitin, still tipped with tiny pinprick-claws. Much more humanoid proportions grew from his lengthening legs, the thighs in particular fattening with soft, supple flesh, softer bits expanding where they weren’t covered by the smooth, hardened plating of gem-like exoskeleton.
His wings grew larger and larger as well, sprouting a fine layer of fuzz as the exploded with rich floral colors, growing into a beautiful pair of moth wings covered in eye-like patterns. What would have been his hips creaked wider, then wider again, more of the softer bits of his anatomy ballooning into a plump rear, the upper bits of each cheek nuzzling the still wasp-like protrusion that extended down behind him to expand into a stinger-like tail.
Knowing what was coming next but still unable to fully prepare for it, what had been Bug’s masculine genitals abruptly popped up inside him, burrowing upwards into a canal as egg-laying facilities reworked themselves out of the no longer necessary man-bits, the whole vaginal outer fold covered by a chitinous trap-door that he realized he could open and close at will. However, the more the tingling warmth and transformation intensified, the harder it became to keep it open.
His head shifted next, proboscis rolling up into a straw-like curled tongue inside a mouth beset by two plump lips, face coated in fuzz like the wings. The eyes shrank into slightly more humanoid proportions, but retained their kaleidoscopic segmented appearance, a stained glass of fractals. The antennae only grew fluffier and fluffier, a wave of electric blue-and-green locks growing out from the scalp to cascade down around his neck, shoulders, and the tops of his wings.
Bug’s chest blossomed, once-firm pectoral plates crumpling and fraying out like withered, dried old leaves as more of the soft under-carapace flesh swelled beneath them, pushing out like two inflating sacks. And inflating, and inflating, and inflating some more, their weight becoming heavier and heavier, erect nipples leaking a honey-like fluid by the time they finally stopped their growth.
“How am I ever going to fly with these... Things?” Bug said, unfamiliar tension creeping into his voice as each buzzing syllable shifted higher in pitch, leaving a sweet sing-song voice. “What trickery is this, to make my voice sound like pure bliss? Wait, what have you done? I can’t stop rhyming, help, someone!”
“Thought it’d add to the general fairy-like insect aesthetic,” Elly said, finally finishing slowing down her typing. “Just one last bit to include, and... Done.”
Almost like a snap inside Bug’s mind, the flip of a switch, a juddering, rushing, flow of changes swept through everything to solidify her new form. Yes, HER new form. No matter how hard she tried, Gossamer realized she couldn’t think of herself as a ‘he’ any longer, much less as... Wait, her name wasn’t really ‘Gossamer,’ was it? It was... Well, she knew the word ‘bug,’ but try as she might, she couldn’t bring herself to capitalize the ‘b’ and address herself by that descriptor any longer.
Other changes quickly made themselves apparent. She leaned heavily on one hip, one of her sets of arms crossing together beneath her ample bosom in a pose of mild annoyance while one of her others rested on her out-thrust hip, the other pointed accusingly at Elly. If there ever had been, she could no longer see the slightest sexually interesting thing about Elly’s prodigious curves, though memory-flashes of that muscled, male chimaera and his massive cock sent her vaginal hatch snapping open, droplets of desire already slowly dripping like the honey from her tits. Her personality felt so very, very... Fae. And not just the newfangled nicey-time winged babies of modern fairytales, but a mix of old and new, Seelie and Unseelie, mischief and tricksy, whimsy delight. A craving for sweetstuffs exploded in her mouth.
“You wiley bitch, you gave me the itch!” Gossamer buzzed, gesturing down to her new sex. “But I will agree, I am now a beauty. Shall I remain like this? A buggy miss?”
“That’s for the next chapter to decide,” Elly said. “Tartarus, Gossamer... What’s next?”