Joe stared at his own trembling reflection in the glass for a long moment, feeling the thirst for change churning stronger inside him—no more fear, no more softness, only the visceral draw of power and the gnawing hope he might find some part of Mike that was still real in the cold, engineered embrace of steel.
He turned to the observation window, squaring his voice to Dr. Kelly. “I want to go robotic, too. Give me the pill, the one for a full mechanical form. I want… I want what Mike has. Or something like it.” He tried to sound resolute, but his voice had a nervous tremor.
Dr. Kelly regarded him for a moment—studying, perhaps, the need in his face—then nodded. She retrieved a different capsule from a drawer, this one etched with a faint silver band. “This will trigger a distinct pattern—mechanical, but not identical. You’ll still transform in the containment room, under full monitoring. Are you certain?”
“I am,” Joe said, jaw set, though his hands still shook as he accepted the pill.
He barely heard as the security team gently guided him down the hall, through decontamination, and slid him into the bright, clean containment chamber. Mike was already there—an immense presence cast in green and black, motionless except for the slight sound of servos shifting within armored limbs.
Dr. Kelly’s voice came over the intercom, “For the trial, Specialist, you may remain with Joe to provide reassurance. Please use minimum actuation on contact.” Her tone softened. “Gentleness is paramount, Mike.”
Mike’s golden visor tilted towards her voice, then he gave a deliberate, precise nod. “Orders received. I will remain watchful. Intent: protect. Gentle contact. Zero harm protocol enforced.” His speech was algorithmically calm, but deeper currents of care flickered through.
Joe stood naked in the bright room, heart pounding, the capsule sweating in his palm. He looked at Mike—at all that strength, all that alien care boxed in steely muscle and plates. “You’ll… you’ll stay with me?” he managed, voice small.
Mike did not move forward, maintaining a careful distance with his huge armored body. “Affirmative. I will guard you throughout the process. You are not alone, Joe.”
For a moment, the room was quiet, tension and anticipation hanging in the air like a live wire. Joe met the golden glare of Mike’s visor—and, for the first time since the changes began, he felt truly safe. He closed his hand around the pill and lifted it to his lips.
Joe stared at his own trembling reflection in the glass for a long moment, feeling the thirst for change churning stronger inside him—no more fear, no more softness, only the visceral draw of power and the gnawing hope he might find some part of Mike that was still real in the cold, engineered embrace of steel.
He turned to the observation window, squaring his voice to Dr. Kelly. “I want to go robotic, too. Give me the pill, the one for a full mechanical form. I want… I want what Mike has. Or something like it.” He tried to sound resolute, but his voice had a nervous tremor.
Dr. Kelly regarded him for a moment—studying, perhaps, the need in his face—then nodded. She retrieved a different capsule from a drawer, this one etched with a faint silver band. “This will trigger a distinct pattern—mechanical, but not identical. You’ll still transform in the containment room, under full monitoring. Are you certain?”
“I am,” Joe said, jaw set, though his hands still shook as he accepted the pill.
He barely heard as the security team gently guided him down the hall, through decontamination, and slid him into the bright, clean containment chamber. Mike was already there—an immense presence cast in green and black, motionless except for the slight sound of servos shifting within armored limbs.
Dr. Kelly’s voice came over the intercom, “For the trial, Specialist, you may remain with Joe to provide reassurance. Please use minimum actuation on contact.” Her tone softened. “Gentleness is paramount, Mike.”
Mike’s golden visor tilted towards her voice, then he gave a deliberate, precise nod. “Orders received. I will remain watchful. Intent: protect. Gentle contact. Zero harm protocol enforced.” His speech was algorithmically calm, but deeper currents of care flickered through.
Joe stood naked in the bright room, heart pounding, the capsule sweating in his palm. He looked at Mike—at all that strength, all that alien care boxed in steely muscle and plates. “You’ll… you’ll stay with me?” he managed, voice small.
Mike did not move forward, maintaining a careful distance with his huge armored body. “Affirmative. I will guard you throughout the process. You are not alone, Joe.”
For a moment, the room was quiet, tension and anticipation hanging in the air like a live wire. Joe met the golden glare of Mike’s visor—and, for the first time since the changes began, he felt truly safe. He closed his hand around the pill and lifted it to his lips.
Joe’s hand didn’t stop shaking as he swallowed the metallic-tasting capsule. He stared at the digital clock on the wall—it began to tick down from ten minutes, each second louder than the last. He peeled off his clothes, feeling the cool clinical air on his skin, and set them aside neatly, trying to channel some sense of ritual and control.
Across the room, Mike remained an unmoving figure—hulking, impassive, but the angled mask of amber glass never left Joe. For a moment, Joe hesitated, then stepped closer, almost shy, until he stood before the armored colossus. Carefully, he reached out and rested his cheek and hands against Mike’s torso, uncertain what to expect. To his surprise, the armor wasn’t cold like steel; instead, it radiated a gentle, palpable warmth, like a machine built to shelter life rather than extinguish it. It felt almost like standing before a protector’s hearth.
Mike’s huge gauntlets shifted softly, actuators moving with exquisite slowness and care. Mike did not close his arms tightly, not daring even now, but rested one great hand feather-light on Joe’s shoulder. His other hand splayed against Joe’s back, offering contact without pressure. Joe could feel the hum of micro-servos, the deep vibration of internal systems, an inhuman heartbeat resonating through the weight of armor.
“Contact acknowledged,” Mike murmured, voice a low mechanical purr just above a whisper, strangely soothing. “My sensors register your body heat. Holding you at safest tolerance. You are… remarkably fragile, but safe in proximity. Intent: maximum gentleness.”
Joe squeezed his eyes shut, leaning in, letting the warmth and steady hum calm his nerves. “You’re not as cold as I thought… You feel… safe. Home, almost.” His voice sounded younger than he liked.
Mike tilted his armored helm, visor catching the overhead lights; through every precise movement, his purpose radiated. “Optimized output: comfort. No threat detected. You are my priority.”
The timer counted down: seven minutes, five, three. Joe pressed his forehead and bare chest more firmly against the smooth armored plating, using every fleeting second to store up the feeling—flesh against warmth, the hard curve of mechanical muscle, the almost impossibly restrained strength beneath the green plates. Mike—whatever else he’d become—was still here, still present, still capable of offering safety and care.
Joe whispered, “Stay right with me. All the way.”
Mike’s hand did not tremble. “I will not leave.”
The seconds waned away, the feeling in Joe’s body shifting, tingling as the pill began its deep and unyielding work.
Joe turned in Mike’s embrace and looked up at the massive armored shape, his lips quirking into a small, nervous smile. “You know I find you sexy as you are… hell, maybe even more.” There was something new in his voice—boldness fused with a giddy, reckless affection. He pressed his naked body close to Mike’s armored torso, relishing the strange mix of security and anticipation buzzing through him.
He lowered his hand, wrapping it around himself, nerves alight as he began to stroke, letting memory and imagination fill in where flesh would soon be replaced by steel. His eyes never left Mike, recalling every line and bulk of the soldier’s inhuman form, how it had felt before the separation of flesh and armor—pleasure and devotion bound up in that mechanical gentleness.
Mike's gaze stayed fixed on Joe—a digital intensity burning through the amber of his visor. His stance shifted minutely, as if he was reliving some echo of old habits, the edges of old pleasures—a sort of mechanical yearning.
Joe let the memories flow in detail: their bodies tangled, the impossible friction and pressure of Mike’s strength always held exquisitely in check. The faint simulated heat of the armor gave way to a swelling sensation building inside him—familiar and utterly new.
As climax took him, a resonant vibration pulsed outward, and the change began.
It started at his core—a flush of heat racing down his thighs and across his lower belly. His skin reddened, but not with blush or blood: it was as if translucent enamel slid over his flesh, then solidified into shining, fox-red plates of seamless metal. Black and white streaks followed, forming bold, angular patterns at his shoulders, his shins, his chest and the tip of his angular, evolving face.
His muscles didn’t shrink or soften; rather, they were remapped, his silhouette preserved and reimagined. Plates shaped like stylized fur tufted along his forearms and calves, edges catching the light in precise, fox-like points. His palms thickened, digit by digit, each nail becoming a blackened mechanical claw; his feet reshaped into digitigrade paws, each step now purposeful, balanced, predatory.
The change swept up his spine, vertebrae ratcheting into tight articulation, as a long, segmented tail unfurled behind him—blood-red plates with black tip, sweeping smoothly as it finalized. White striping swept across his chest and down his snout, stylizing the classic fox mask in cold, flawless metal.
His head reformed, jaws sharpening, teeth now a seamless row of synthetic white, black-slitted optics coming alive behind faceplates meant to mimic a sly, vulpine gaze. His nose, once soft flesh, became a matte black sensor point, and his triangular ears extended proudly from his head, catching every sound with high-gain mic arrays hidden beneath enamel plating.
At his groin, his genitals transformed into a sleek, red-tipped metallic rod that telescoped smoothly out from beneath a protective armored sheath. At his rear, a similarly sleek, black-trimmed port sat behind a secured flap—mechanical, functional, unambiguous.
He didn’t shrink—if anything, he was slightly taller, limbs lengthened for grace instead of bulk, his frame built for speed and agility rather than brute force. Every movement radiated confidence and kinetic potential.
As the last of the transformation completed, Joe flexed his new, digitigrade feet and looked down, marveling at the interplay of red and black and white, at the precision-engineered style intended to echo an animal’s cunning beauty. He ran his new claws along his forearm, sensations crisp and sharp. He rolled his hips, feeling the resolve and unfamiliar emptiness left behind, wondered at the rod and the new, curiously thrilling emptiness at his rear.
Joe now stood in the center of the chamber, a vision of mechanical sleekness and feral style—an anthropomorphic fox forged from living metal, every line and color an homage to vulpine grace and cunning.
His entire body was sheathed in overlapping plates of vivid, candy-apple red metal, each segment contoured to suggest the tufted fur and athletic muscle of a fox in motion. These plates shimmered with subtle motion as he shifted; iridescent under the sterile lights, glinting at every flex of newly engineered sinew.
Black plating ran in crisp, sharp-edged patterns—a bold V on his chest, stripes along his outer thighs, knees, and the backs of his arms—lending his lithe form a striking, athletic contrast. His forearms were wrapped in stylized black gauntlets, the plates jagged and swept back like the stylized tufts of a fox’s forearms, ending in articulated, dexterous fingers tipped with gleaming black mechanical claws.
White ran along the front of his neck and chest in an elegant, sweeping stripe, arching halved by red at his midsection and accentuating his lean, masculine form. A gleaming white blaze divided his face from brow to muzzle, stylized to echo a fox’s familiar mask.
Joe’s head was distinctly foxlike, with a curved, angular jaw and a slightly elongated metallic snout. His mouth parted easily into a sharp grin, white ceramic-fanged teeth visible beneath expressive, black-rimmed ‘lips.’ His nose was a sleek panel of matte black, and above it, two eyes glowed behind angular frames—deep amber, pupils slitted and alive with electronic intelligence, catching and scattering the light.
His ears were twin triangles, large and sharply pointed, flaring up and out from each side of his head. Clad in black and red plating, their interiors held the faint shimmer of delicate high-tech mesh sensors.
Down his back, a long segmented tail—each segment armored in smooth, overlapping red and black—extended nearly to the floor behind him, with a glossy black tip and, where it joined his spine, a pale white chevron, further suggesting a fox’s coat.
His physique was athletic and sculpted, shoulders slightly broader than his narrow waist, thighs and calves powerful and digitigrade—a hybrid blend of human and fox, upright and balanced, but ready to spring.
Between his legs, a streamlined armored plate retracted to reveal a glossy, red-tipped metallic rod; functional, aesthetic, and entirely synthetic, sitting where biological anatomy once had. At the base of his tail, set into the smooth white-black-red plating of his behind, sat a discreet but plainly engineered port, hidden behind a spring-loaded flap—an unmistakably mechanical addition.
He turned to Mike, a flash of his new foxlike grin glinting under the containment lights. “How do I look?” his voice was deeper, modulated—still distinctly Joe, but refined, edged with a playful electronic purr. “Think we still make a good pair?”