Just a Pat, Really (Patreon Commission for DesertScales)

TAGS: Transformation/TF, Good Girl Pets, Species TF

---===---

It all started innocently enough… somewhat. She didn’t recall the last time anyone gave her a pat on the head, but for some reason the chef really liked the slab of cockroach Lilah slapped on the counter, reaching out to give the security officer a quick pat and offer a couple of words to thank her for her service.

For the first time in months, Lilah felt legitimate, genuine warmth for a compliment received. It was such a weird sensation that, for a moment or two, the young woman actually thought she’d been drugged by someone without realising; it took her a moment before she came to the conclusion that no, she was simply attention-starved after being on near-constant duty aboard a ship in deep space, and even the simplest of displays of affection was enough to get her to squirm and beg for more.

But it… wasn’t just that. There was more to it, even if Lilah herself couldn’t quite explain it, and it took her being next to a mirror to see it: she’d missed it at first glance, but after stopping to take a closer look, the guard noticed that she had fur coming out of the collar on her uniform. Given that her attire didn’t have any fur on it, this was somewhat confusing, doubly so when she pulled the collar back and noticed said fur was attached to her skin somehow.

Pulling on it didn’t work; if anything, it was just painful, which meant someone definitely glued that onto her with some industrial-strength adhesive when she wasn’t looking… somehow. Readjusting her uniform so no one would see, Lilah breathed out a long, frustrated sigh and went back to her patrol, figuring she’d sort it out later, after her shift was done. Yet, the first thing that happened was her practically tripping on a giant cockroach right outside the door to the bathrooms, just barely avoiding tripping onto her front, but conveniently upending the little critter itself.

Almost as if on cue, there came running one of the senior officers, who lunged at the beast and plunged their service knife into its soft underbelly, spilling the thing’s insides all over; with a short, ear-splitting the screech, the creature perished, leaving Lilah thoroughly confused as to what had just happened.

“Thanks, officer… Kowalczyk, was it?” - the older man extended his clean hand, shaking Lilah’s vigorously - “Sorry about that, little bastard ran off with my sandwich and I figured I’d give it a piece of my mind.”

“Over a sandwich,” was Lilah’s only reply, trying her best not to sound too snarky, “I mean, I’d eat it, but I wouldn’t think you w-”

“Officer Kowalczyk, there is nothing more delicious than something you’ve ripped from the jaws of your enemy,” the older man interrupted her, “and besides, it was a matter of pride; losing a lunch to a cockroach isn’t something a man of my stature should have happen to him.”

“A man of your stature shouldn’t be eating sandwiches near roaches anyway” - the young woman holstered her sidearm, rubbing the side of her temple - “but, sure, why not. Y’allright there, sir?”

“Oh, I’m perfectly fine, unlike this little bastard” - he aimed a kick at the still-twitching corpse, recoiling somewhat afterwards - “those were some good reflexes back there, good job officer; keep up the good job, good girl!”

She blushed, almost instantly, upon hearing those words. Yet, did she? A superior officer would never have employed such terminology towards anyone, much less with someone on the command hierarchy (even if Lilah was technically near the bottom); but she heard them regardless, and that made her body temperature skyrocket, leaving her feeling like her entire body was ready to burn up and melt out of her uniform. So much so that she decided it wouldn’t hurt to pull up her sleeves, only to find they weren’t there.

Confused, Lilah looked down at herself, only to confirm that no, there were no sleeves to her uniform. This wasn’t possible, because it definitely did have sleeves just a moment ago and she hadn’t done anything to get rid of them; that, and for whatever reason her arms also had a covering of thick, fluffy off-yellow fur on them, along with what looked to be paws on the very end where the hands should be.

A weird prank, but she wasn’t going to complain; she’d been through worse, especially during the tenure of Captain Stevenson and his interminable research forays into the field of applied genetics. Getting fur slapped onto her by some unseen force and a pair of paw gloves mysteriously materialising around her hands ranked quite low on the list of oddities that had happened aboard the ship… even if those gloves did feel very lifelike once she got around to massaging the pads on the palms.

No matter; she could think about the implications of this later, when she was safely in her quarters, the doors were locked, and she could afford to think about things that weren’t responding to that distress call in maintenance shaft 17-B. As usual, someone had walked straight into the damned cockroach nest and ended up getting dragged away, and was now screaming their heads off not understanding the bloody critters wouldn’t hurt them until they died and started decomposing… probably. It was just like everyone to act so inconsiderate; didn’t they know that security personnel equipment didn’t account for digitigrade body plans? Lilah had to take twice as long as anyone else to get anywhere!

Thankfully, the “abductee” was still there by the time she got to the nest, being slowly dragged off by a couple of cockroaches who seemed very confused as to why their future lunch was shouting so loudly or writhing around so much. Lilah almost rolled her eyes at the sight; honestly, the roaches weren’t that bad, she used to spend her time popping hatchlings as they came out of their eggs before her security chief told her it was bad optics. She didn’t know why, but for whatever reason the upstairs folks really didn’t want people thinking they were mistreating the roaches.

So she took a step forward, fired a couple of warning shots near the two bugs, and when they predictably didn’t run away, drew her combat knife and lunged forward. She gave them a warning; it was their fault if they didn’t listen, giving her a perfect reason to sink her metaphorical and literal claws into them, splattering the walls with whatever passed for their blood. Lilah didn’t even notice the stuff dripping from the sharp edges where her regular nails used to be; if anything, she had a near-instinctual drive to lick them clean, a wide grin stamped on her face as she looked back at the hapless techie and asked if they were fine. Poor guy barely managed to get up, stumbling so badly they needed to hang off one of Lilah’s arms just to stay upright.

Plenty of words flew out of his mouth, none of which made any sense whatsoever on account of them being cut into pieces and mangled with one another. Only at the very end, just before the technician turned tail and sprinted out of the tunnel, did Lilah catch anything at all:

“Thank you, you’re a good one! Lifesaver!”

Not exactly “good girl”, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Lilah was nonetheless very happy about that one, enough that her tail started wagging; she had to check herself to keep that from happening, which was something of a bother given how it insisted on going off whenever she did a good job. At least her uniform gave it plenty of room to waggle around in; it took a bit of effort to convince her superiors to let her have something a bit more roomy, but given how much space her rump took, it was either that, or have her quite literally rip through most of the uniforms they had on storage.

Content with a job well done, Lilah shook off her boots and began walking back towards the bar, figuring that she’d earned a drink or two. On the way there, she was greeted by a surprising number of people; they all worked together, yes, but most of the time the various companies kept to one another and very rarely interacted, turning most interactions into polite exchanges of awkward pleasantries between coworkers. That day, however, everyone seemed so nice to her; whenever Lilah walked by anyone, they even stretched out their hand to give her a rub between the ears, a couple even ruffling the fluff around her neck and offering a few choice words.

Really, by the time Lilah was in the bar, her face could not be redder. If anyone dared to ask who the best girl in security was, then she’d be the one with a paw in the air and her tail wagging hard enough to brush dust off even the most stubborn of surfaces, bouncing around and giving her bust a chance to show off how much it loved swaying with each of her movements. It was everyone’s luck that her uniform still covered it up.

For the time being, that was. She wasn’t one to hide herself unless she absolutely had to, even if this didn’t usually come in the way of taking off clothes. Her uniform didn’t normally include all the pointless, unnecessary additions that Lilah spruced it up with, but it worked with her aesthetic, and unless someone actively told her to knock it off, she wasn’t going to preemptively do so.

On the other hand, taking stuff off was a good choice as well, especially with all the extra fur on her; didn’t need a stab vest if she had enough fluff to stop most cutlery being throwing her way, but she kept it on regardless, just in case HR decided to start getting panicky over her showing off too much skin. Arms though? Perfectly fine, and no reason not to get her legs out in the open as well; she could make do with a single-piece uniform ending just around her unmentionables, it wasn’t as if other people weren’t walking around in similar fashion statements.

Plus, it got her plenty of looks from all around, and she wasn’t one to say no to people wanting to tell her she was doing a good job… or something along those lines, focusing was harder than it used to be for some reason. Lilah distinctly recalled a point in time when she’d deliberately walk into somewhere just to make a point about something or other, but what this something was eluded her for whatever reason. Maybe it was the bartender reaching out and patting her between the ears, that was the likeliest culprit.

Still, she had a job to do, so she couldn’t stick around and be scritched on the head all day. She wanted to, but unfortunately her headset was still on, and having to listen to someone screaming on the other end for all available hands over another roach infestation wasn’t something Lilah was keen on doing; best go get her claws dirty and rid the ship of another wave of bugs before it could get anywhere near critical mass.

Hopping off her seat, the sec officer adjusted her breastplate, making sure it was fit snugly underneath her bust where it belonged; getting the uniform’s cut to fit her exaggerated form was something of a challenge, but Lilah had to admit that whoever was responsible had done a wonderful job: some might claim that a boob window where a hardened, bullet-resistant plate should be was a terrible decision decision for a piece of armor, but what was she gonna do, stuff those sweater puppies into an undersized jumpsuit?

They were each the size of her head, she couldn’t be expected to keep them locked up; besides, whenever the perp of the day was an actual sentient, it made for one hell of an intimidation tactic: the sight of an height-foot amazonian huntress barrelling down the nearest corridor, tits bouncing wildly enough to snap someone’s neck if they connected at the right angle, was enough to either drive the would-be criminal to freeze on the spot, or outright turn themselves in. Usually with plenty of drool on their face, for some reason.

Sadly, no such pleasantries for her that day; nothing but roaches until the cows came home, driving Lilah to snarl and grumble as she made her way through the cramped maintenance tunnels towards where the rest of the sec team was assembling. She never got why exactly everyone kept staring at her whenever she waltzed up to rendezvous point; she wasn’t even wagging her tail for once, even if her crossing her arms as she waited did accentuate her cleavage to a somewhat excessive extent.

She just wanted to be done with things, get her complimentary pat on the head, then head back to do whatever it was she was doing beforehand. Didn’t help that the security chief kept looking up at her with the widest set of eyes that Lilah had ever seen, stumbling over his words every other sentence and having to eventually just point in the general direction of the roaches and say “Kill bugs, go,” before taking a step back to hide their face. Thankfully, that was all Lilah needed; with a wolfish grin stamped on her muzzle, the nine-foot giantess lunged forward, practically climbing over everyone else as she raced ahead of the heavily armored security personnel, armed only with her claws on one hand, and a knife the size of a human arm on the other.

She lived for those moments, where her inner animal could be unleashed and her interior could finally match her exterior. If she looked like a beast, she should act like one as well; the only reason she wasn’t biting the roaches in half was mostly on account of how awful they tasted, or else she’d be chowing down on any that came too close just to make extra sure they were properly dead. Hell, the rest of the team didn’t even do anything; they certainly tried to get close, but once the point man peered around the corner and saw the scene of carnage courtesy of Lilah’s solo action, they quickly turned back around and told everyone else to wait it out.

Five minutes. That’s how long it took for her to be done with the nest and head back to the rendezvous point, where Lilah would find a very confused and terrified-looking group of officers staring up at all ten of her blood-soaked feet. Once there, she leaned forward, unceremoniously showing off the good foot or so of cleavage she had on display, and once her security chief gave her the pat on the head she so rightfully deserved, Lilah straightened her back and went straight for the showers.

Had to clean up before returning to the bar. Her shift was still only halfway over.