3000 years into the future, Humanity is once again fighting for it's very survival. There of course are those heroes who make sacrifices for the sake of others. Some have to sacrifice more than most people will ever know. Thanks to the Praetorians, our lives can continue...

============================================================================================

*beep….beep…beep… beep* Hell, would someone stop that damn beeping!! My head felt like it was shoved through a duracreate bulkhead. “Blood pressure 115/75, god she’s amazing” who was that? What?.. Where?… oh! “Doctor she’s coming around” a second voice, but somehow I knew there were two others as well, I could smell them. “Charles! Get out of the room” it was a woman’s voice. The male wasn’t leaving, in fact, he was getting closer. What happened next I’m not entirely sure of, but I snapped my eye’s open, rolled off the table and pounced on top of my new toy! It wiggles so nicely… *sniff.. Sniff* mmmmm fear… I bet the fear makes the blood taste so very much better. I bent down and gave him a long, slow lick up his face and across his forehead. That only made him whimper more, and his fear sent a thrill through me. It was intoxicating!

What was it that pushed me to actually think? Was it the begging little morsel under my claw? The intercom that crackled “Oh shit! Charles!”? or the now constant alarm of the heart monitor? I’m pretty sure it was the heart monitor that saved Charles’ life that first instant I woke up. After all, I did have a splitting headache. When I realized what I was doing I jumped back off of him. Oh god! I almost killed him…with my claws?

I raised my hand and looked at the monstrous claws that now adorned my hands, they seemed retractable. Black with a metallic sheen, I had only seen that color as paint on a hover car and yet this looked completely natural. Looking at those claws I was certain of how easily I could have killed Charles. A small part deep down whispered “but would that be so bad?” a chill ran down my spine. My whole hand and forearms were in something that looked like an exoskeleton, they too had a shiny black to them. The rest of my skin looks like a shiny metallic blue, like a car’s paint it even shimmers in the light giving it a mild rainbow effect…. My mind just shut down.

Breasts, I have breasts… of course I do. Why wouldn’t I? Because I’m a GUY!. WHY the hell do I have Tits!?! “psst! Charles, slowly back out of the room” I heard a woman whisper. I looked down at the rest of me, yes, complete female now, but what shocked me were my feet. Claws that would put a large hunting cat to shame, and that same black exoskeleton that goes all the way up to my knees. It was then that I felt the twitch behind me, it was so sudden that my body once again reacted and I found myself crouched, hunting, ready to pounce on my prey. Only, there was nothing there, then I felt it again just behind me. I twisted my body around only to see that I now had a freaking tail. I’m not sure which was worse, the tits or the tail.

Having calmed down a bit, I finally took a look around the room. Nothing special, typical med bay, except for the eight foot wide observation window that three doctors and a very frightened “Charles” now stood behind. The short elderly woman finally nodded and then the intercom crackled “Finally calm down enough to listen?” I nodded my head and said “yes, Ma….” I know my eyes just went wide, and I reached up to grab my throat. My voice was so weird. Like a sex hot-line operator’s recorded voice played back at the bottom of a metal barrel. Sexy soprano with a strange deep echoing to it. The woman chuckled “My, what a lovely voice you have dear. I’m somewhat envious” I could hear it in her voice, she was telling the truth, she really was envious but not overly so. “Well now my dear, ready for some tests?” I just nodded. Now with my head screwed on straight again I knew what had happened to me, and why.

During the full disclosure it was explained to us the risks of death and disfigurement, but also the chance of a gender change. I knew the risks, and tossed the dice anyway. 2%, just a measly 2% of all Praetorians have a gender change. The female population of Praetorians on Earth II was something like 15 out of the 1,000 that where living there. Well.. 16 now I guess… damn it. As I followed the doctor through the halls I noticed that no one was in sight, just me and the Doc, but I could sure smell the others. What must have been a hundred different scents assaulted my nose, and I found that I could pick out individual scents, even know what direction the imaginary trail led. It was very disorienting, instead I focused on one scent, the doctors. It was old, sickly, the smell of walking death ~not prey~ the thought ran through my mind. “Doctor…” my new voice sang, it was still disturbing. “Laughlin, but just call me Missy” I smirked, so she was also going to play ‘friend’, must have a minor in psychology or something as well. “Anthony Dubrinksy” I held out my hand to shake hers, but I think we both decided that wouldn’t be best idea for the moment. “So Missy, what’s wrong with me? Why did I almost rip that man’s throat out? Why can I smell so many different things?” the doctor stopped and sighed the turned to look at me. With an index finger she pushed her glasses back up on her nose. “I noticed that no where in there did you mention anything about being female.” her tone was direct like Mom’s when she caught you in a lie. I was at a loss for words, I didn’t even want to face that right now. Finally I just smiled “Let me face one crisis at a time Doc, I’m sure I’ll freak out about that part latter, so, what’s wrong with me?” Missy turned and started walking again.

“Don’t worry, nothing’s ‘wrong’ with you, in fact quite the opposite. Your what we call an aspect. You have traits of a specific predator, in this case a feline from what I’ve seen so far and even that is rare among aspects, most are wolves. I’m sure your going to hear so much about it in the future that you’ll be sick of it. So let me be the first to congratulate you on beating odds so high that you’d have more luck getting struck by lightning in the vacuum of space, well almost. You’re now a female, I believe we told you the odds of that. You’re an aspect which have even worse odds, as there are about seven right now in existence. Now to top it all off your aspect is feline, though possible, is a very recessive trait when it comes to the virus. I’m sure some mathematician somewhere will be figuring the odds of it all, I’m not even going to bother, I just know it is going to be a very big number.” I wondered, what did she mean by ‘when it comes to the virus’ what did that have to do with it? So I asked, “Well dear the creation of your new body was actually the creation of the virus, the process is complex but lets just say that the virus did as much work on your body as we did, maybe more. The virus carries with it memory ingrained to the DNA level, instincts if you will. As your aware that DNA picks up junk strands from different stages of it’s evolution. Snakes, Cats, Dogs, Birds, the DNA carries in it left over junk from many different species. When an aspect is formed, well, lets just say it’s ‘pot luck’. You never know what’s inside to you open the lid.”

Missy led me to a door and then opened it, “this will be your room for the next few days, ill give you some alone time for now, I’m sure you need it. Someone will come by shortly and see about getting you some clothes.” I looked down and just now realized that I was more or less nude, the hospital gown I had worn was somehow shredded. Explains why the hallways all the way here were empty. Soon as I walked in there was a full body mirror in the corner. I had known I looked dangerous, what with the claws and all. However the image that looked back at me was like a beautiful dominatrix with a fetish for jagged spikes. For the first time I noticed I had sharp spikes growing out of my elbows and on the back of my calves. It looked like I even had some smaller spikes growing between my shoulder blades following down my spine just on my upper back. Oh this was just bloody great, how the hell am I supposed the lay on a bed? My skin was that shiny metallic sky blue, my lips were a darker blue. My eyes were slit like a cat’s and looked like pure gold, I hadn’t given it any though before but I realized now that my peripheral vision was much greater. I smiled at my reflection, then started making funny faces at her, raising up my claws and hissing at the mirror. Oh my god!… my teeth, every tooth in my mouth was sharp as a razor, and ebony black just like my claws, exoskeleton, and spikes. I sighed, I was a walking cheese grater.

My attention was drawn to the globes on my chest, fairly small by my estimate. For that I was thankful, I really didn’t want large breasts. I’d say they were about a small B cup. Just enough to have fun with but not enough to… I cut that thought off. I reached up touch them, and massaged them a bit. Wow! Ok lets not do that….I looked at my claws again, wait, why didn’t that hurt? Gently I ran my claws across my skin, and felt nothing. Harder this time I raked until I could at least feel some pain. It actually took a bit of effort. Sure if I tried I could penetrate my skin with my claws, but it would have to be a hard stab. My skin was acting like some sort of armor weave, now that was interesting. I continued with my self inspection, and looked further down to emptiness between my thighs. There rested nothing but a slit and two puffy lips, no hair I noticed. Now that I was thinking about it, I didn’t seem to have any hair at all below my neck, no underarm hair, no leg hair or arm hair, no pubic hair. The hair on my head was long comp aired to what I had always kept it at, but it didn’t seem long for most women. It stopped just between my shoulders. It wasn’t silky like you’d expect from most women either, it was rather course. From the looks of it I’d say low maintenance compared to most of the women I’d seen, a definite plus give how dirty one can get out in the field.

Footsteps down the hall, they were getting closer. The footsteps stopped and I heard a knocking at the door. “Come in” I said, and watched as this tiny package of bubbling energy bounced through the door with a huge grin on her face. “Oh my, I do love a challenge!” she said as she looked me over. “Those spikes on your legs will make any pants out of the question, not to mention you tail” She reached up and gently nudged me to turn around for her. “The ones on your elbows make it impossible to put on just about anything that needs to be pulled over your head.” She pulled a tape measure out of her pocket like she was performing a magic trick, then flicked her wrist to unravel it. Lifting and lowering my arms at her silent commands, she had my measurements and was out the door skipping down the hall before I could even think to ask who she was.

I laid down on the bed to try to relax, all my new jagged edges forced me lay face down, I hate lying face down, it forces me to twist my neck. Surprisingly, lying like that didn’t really bother my new bags of fat dangling from my chest (yes I’m still bitter about that). As I laid there I wondered, what would my father have thought? Would he be proud of me finally becoming a Praetorian? Or would he have been disappointed with the loss of my gender. I miss my old man, he was working as a driller for the Sysco Co. on Geryon Prime. He died last year when a hull breach flooded the section he was in with carbon dioxide, that and the surface temperature was -348 degrees. What didn’t die of carbon dioxide was frozen solid. Seventy-three of the two-hundred man crew lost their lives that day for the sake of sulfide and copper ore.

Dad wasn’t the first in our family to give their lives in effort to harvest resources, both my mother and older brother are gone as well. Mom was a pilot, I don’t know the fully story she died when I was only two, but I was told her ship was badly damage when the asteroid they had landed on bumped into another. It wasn’t a hard impact or anything, but it was enough to rip ship off it’s moorings. Failed life support due to systems damage was the cause of her and the crew‘s demise. As far as my brother goes, his ship went missing and has never been found. No beacon, no emergency broadcast, nothing, just gone. I often dream of him barging into my room like he always used to. Usually it was sit down and play on my gaming console, to challenge me to shoot out. I always beat him in shooter games, and it was a major source of frustration for him.

“Oh how cuuuute!” gushed a female voice. I snapped awake, I was crouched ready to pounce and hissing like a cat facing a bath. I was ready to rip her open when her crying stopped me cold. Damn! I did it again. I slowly relaxed and moved towards her, then wrapped her in a hug. “I’m sorry, you startled me.” I never was any good at comforting a crying woman. Even when I wasn’t the cause of those tears I always felt bad. When I AM the cause, well, I feel like a total prick. My vision started to blur. What the hell? Am I crying? I never cry. All I could do was rock her back and forth crying telling her how sorry I was. “I’m so sorry I scared you like that, I don’t know what came over me!” Now she was the one holding me as I cried, and cry I did. I cried for my confusion about these new instincts, I cried for the loss of my gender, I cried for the deaths of my family. Mostly, I cried and didn’t know why, there just didn’t seem to be a reason. Finally she laughed, “You know you purr like a cat in your sleep?” I couldn’t help but smile and laugh a little.

When we were done I stood and helped her to her feet, then her eye’s suddenly got bright. “Oh you are going to just love what I dug up for you!” She opened the door and wheeled in a cart that was just outside and begun digging through it. After a minute there was a small pile of straps and buckles at the foot of the bed. I was still waiting to see when she’d pull the clothes out. Finally she stopped and looked at me expectantly, “Well, what do you think?” I looked through the pile, still not really seeing any clothes. Seeing my expression she just huffed and held up a this strap then snapped two ends together. It looked something like a thong. “Since you can’t have anything slip on, everything has to be snapped or tied in place, so what do you think?” She couldn’t seriously expect me to wear that could she? “So where’s the rest of it?” I asked hopefully. “Well, if you need more to it I suppose this would work.” she leaned over into the basket and pulled out a strip of cloth, then wrapped it around her waist. It was simply a loincloth that went to her knees. Sure it wasn’t made of animal skin or anything, but it reminded me of some of the outfits that I had seen female martial artist wear. Difference was they had tights or shorts under theirs, while all I get is a thong? The thong did look somewhat different though, it would clip around the waist, and then you brought the material up between your legs and then clipped it on the same ring in the back. Frankly It looked uncomfortable. “So what about a top?” I knew I was going to hate what ever she grabbed next. It was basically a tube top that opened and closed with a zipper. In all fairness I suppose the outfit wasn’t too bad considering all of my spikes, I just wasn’t crazy about wearing the thong. At least the loincloth would provide some small measure of modesty.

The next three days I was put through the wringer, medical exams, physical fitness and agility tests. I really got to open up on the treadmill, I was able to hit 64mph for a few seconds. That speed really wiped me out and I was craving a very bloody steak afterwards, actually I think it was raw but I was too hungry to notice. My average run speed was 40mph, I was able to run for and hour and a half before I became too tired. It didn’t really seem to surprise anyone, but I was amazed. I was told another female already on the surface could hit 80mph for a few seconds. Apparently extreme speed and agility are feminine traits amongst the Praetorians as the fastest male runs 40mph top speed, but can run at 25 nearly all day long with his enhanced stamina. No one’s really sure how we’re able to achieve these speeds, the human body really isn’t designed for it. Then again, we really aren’t human anymore are we?