FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Wilson charged ahead through the forested trail behind the large house: he was determined to beat his girlfriend Xiurong to the shrine for a change. This race was a half-hiking, half-running challenge that she put him up to occasionally, and she nearly always won because she was in shape and he wasn't.

It was a difficult run up two large, forested hills, and it generally left both of them sweaty and with the heart-thrumming sensations of a nice cardio workout, irrelevant of who won.

Yet, today, Xiurong wasn't sweating at all. If anything, she seemed to be toying with Wilson, pacing herself much slower than usual and enjoying watching him push himself hard.

"Seemed" was the operative word of course - nothing was ever certain with Xiurong, except perhaps that she really did love him and care about him. She was the one asking him to get married, after all - not the other way around. He hadn't known quite what to say to her recent proposal, either - a response of indecision which she had taken a lot better than he had expected.

Their life together in Xiurong's house for the last three years had been complicated more than a little by the challenges involved in setting boundaries for their romance. The cycle had been almost hilariously repetitive: they would develop a well-defined collection of rules and policies for their romance... only to end up moving, re-moving, and sometimes altogether removing those boundaries during situations in which passion, or anger, sparked brighter than at others. The boundaries broken had touched every area of their life together, from matters of sex, to matters of household chore arrangements, sleeping arrangements, and even who considered which items to be his, her, or "their shared" property.

But, of course, the relationship and sexual issues were a major part of it. During their second year living together they had seen themselves as everything from just-friends to impassioned lovers to hopeful fiancees - sometimes all of that in the expanse of a month - and had finally settled into a lukewarm cohabitation that a little more frighteningly resembled their idea of "the average marriage" than either of them liked to admit.

There had been sex - yes, there had been lots of sex - but not all of it was what either of them would have called good.

This footrace was not like sex to them, but the dance of competing with each other, and the physical arousal brought on by the exercise, had sometimes led directly into it. Wilson, at this exact moment in time, grumpily hoped that today it wouldn't. He felt far too awkward and doubted he would even be able to stay hard in his current emotional state.

Suddenly came a need for fast reactions: Wilson, the out-of-shape computer programmer, ducked under a tree limb that he could've sworn wasn't leaning down so far the last time they came through here, which was only a week ago. The thing nearly clipped him on the nose. Behind him he could hear Xiurong gaining on him despite her steady and leisurely pace... or perhaps because of it. As usual, he didn't feel like he could know for certain.

In the pocket of Wilson's khakis, his handheld gaming console rattled, its stylus bouncing around to the frantic rhythm of his upward climb. As usual, he had merely stuffed the stylus into his pocket alongside the game system and not properly inserted the tool into its slot. Its plastic was by this time so worn from use that getting it to stay in its slot was nigh-impossible anyway.

The stylus had been eroded from far too many difficult situations - left in extreme heat, chewed on nervously (a lifelong habit of which he had finally, only recently, broken himself), and taking rough and bouncy busses around the city on his way to work.

The busses. The bouncy motions of his imprecise jogging had him nearly feeling the bus ride even now. Wilson and Xiurong lived on her late grandparents' estate in the countryside, and she had to ferry him in to the nearest metropolitan bus stop (about six kilometers away) on a daily basis for his programming work. He hated this feeling of dependency, but they saved considerable money on auto insurance this way, and he rather disliked the stress of driving himself through urban environments anyway. The arrangement left Xiurong able to return home freely afterward and do her freelance editing and proofreading work. On the occasional day that her work required an in-person meeting - well, she was the one with the car.

Nearly at the top now, Wilson could hear the still-easy rate of Xiurong's breathing. She sounded like she couldn't be more than a few paces behind him now, and he dared not turn his head to look, as the overgrowth was getting more and more treacherous. He had half a mind to come out some evening and take a machete to this trail, or maybe a chain saw! If I owned either of those things, I totally would do that, he thought.

That was when a really low-hanging limb introduced itself to his face.

He tried to stop, and he nearly managed to do so, but he stopped too late. The top of his nose got a big, embarrassing, red mark as the rough edges of the deciduous tree's wood scraped across it. Moments thereafter he was lying on the ground bleeding - nothing major, but it was something - and Xiurong ran right past him, entertained by his misfortune. "Get up!" she told him. "It's not far. We'll take care of it at the shrine."

Wilson lay there grumpy and silent, slowly pushing himself up to a sitting position, and then getting to his feet and chasing after her. He was pretty sure most men didn't have to put up with this kind of merry half-sadism from their girlfriends - but then again, he was also pretty sure most men's girlfriends weren't anywhere near as interesting as her, at least as far as his tastes were concerned.

Up ahead, he could hear Xiurong laughing and sprinting, her deliberately slow pacing giving away to her irritating desire to be the winner at everything.

Having obviously lost the race at this point, he took a moment to examine the nearby trees. Their entire trunks were leaning, leaning as if they might break at any moment.

"What's wrong with the trees?" he wondered quietly. "They look like they've been in a windstorm... or even an ice storm... but it's not been anything but sunny here for over a week! And it's late spring!"

Wilson sometimes wondered if he talked to himself too much.

"Damn it, Xiurong," he muttered, very sure that she was far enough ahead to be unable to hear him. "Why do you have to be so much better at everything than me? Well, everything except programming. You never could figure out a computer... not really."

His periodic mumblings continued the entire rest of the way to the shrine. Upon arriving, he found Xiurong's petite body happily playing on her own portable gaming system, her little rear planted atop one of the family shrine's two benches. She had her back to him, and he wasn't complaining about the view.

"Hey," he said wearily.

"Ohai," she said, raising the pitch of her voice sharply in a mockery of Internet-speak. "What seems to be your trouble?"

Wilson took out his gaming system and sat down next to her on the bench. "You don't want to know the first answer that came to my mind."

She laughed, and then spoke to him in good, understanding humor. "I already know that answer. The answer is 'me,' right? But that's just a projection. Your biggest trouble is yourself."

He powered on his handheld. "And how do you know that?"

"Easy. Everyone's biggest trouble is themselves."

"Oh? And which ancient sage said that?"

Xiurong beamed a smile. "All of them."

* * *

Despite their initial sitting-down on the bench, the two soon stood back up to walk around for a proper cooldown from their run. That didn't stop them gaming, though.

This was the intellectually relaxing part of their regular weekend run: playing Pokemon games together, and trading and battling occasionally. That was one other thing he often could beat her at - pokemon battling - but this wasn't any big surprise. He had played the series far longer than she had and kept up with its competitive metagame far more closely, despite having less hours in the day for freely browsing the net. In fact, he had been the one who got her hooked on the games, shortly after they had first met.

These sessions of playing together had become an unusual yet defining aspect of their relationship, and one which had changed very little in the ever-shifting sands of the rest of their life together. Xiurong had been the one who insisted on gaming at the shrine - because the air was clean and the setting was peaceful - and on running together to reach it before play.

"If our pokemon are going to be trained and forced to battle," she had sometimes said, "then we ought to do the same to each other."

He found it a queer notion but went along with it anyway; he was willing enough to do it to please her. He thought that perhaps the sentiment was just "foreigner logic," or at least her family's logic. Some aspects of Xiurong's native culture he had never quite understood. Third-generation though she was (much like some of their favorite Pokemon games), she looked more like a second-generation immigrant in the degree to which she had absorbed and retained so much of her family's cultural identity. He... admired it, actually, despite how frustrating it sometimes felt to him as an American whose genetic history could best be described as "Euromutt."

Looking up from his game, it occurred to him that the strange downward hanging of the trees was not merely something that was happening along the trail at the shrine's approach; on the contrary, it seemed to extend in a full circle all the way around the shrine area.

Overgrowth in the immediately surrounding benches was always limited on account of the thin stone slabs that served as the shrine area's floor... but the large, surrounding trees had never looked so poor as they did today.

"Say Xiurong," Wilson commented, leaving his lucario idle in a battle against one of his in-game rivals, "have you noticed the trees all look sickly?"

"Oh yes," she said, a little cryptically. "It's part of the cycle."

"The cycle?"

"Yes. The shrine has a cycle," she said, laying the ambiguity on thickly as if she were trying to irritate him with it. "That's what Grandpa said."

Grandpa indeed. He and his wife had been the ones who built the shrine in the first place - in memoriam of their former lives overseas, and as a place of remembrance and honor for the family to use in generations to come.

The centerpiece of the shrine was a simple and startlingly plain wooden slab, covered in an all-natural lacquer that preserved it but did not detract from its simple appearance or add much of a shine. To Wilson's mind, its shape was almost like an old tombstone, except its top edges were squared rather than rounded. There were various characters engraved on it, in a language Wilson did not understand and, admittedly, did not care enough to try to learn.

Two small wooden tables, lacquered with the same material, flanked the slab on the left and on the right. Various vases and offertory dishes decorated them - all of them family heirlooms, which Xiurong maintained out of respect. Their habit of spending time here gave her ample opportunity to stay aware of what needed maintaining.

"...The cycle?" Wilson finally asked her, deciding to probe further since she wasn't volunteering.

"I am playing," she said, informatively shooing him away from the topic.

"Yeah, me too," he told her, smiling a goofy smile. He had his pokemon finish the fight. Once he had put in this commands, though, he gave her a serious glance: "Just tell me when you're comfortable saying more about it, okay?"

That getting-comfortable took several minutes, during which Xiurong tapped away at her handheld's buttons more thoughtfully than usual. When she next opened her mouth to speak, Wilson had to peel his attention away from his own game in order to listen.

"The cycle is a cycle of change," she said, "of life into death and death into life. Since we are considering marrying, but we have not made our decision yet, it is no wonder that the shrine is so turbulent, and the cycling so strong. The remnants of my ancestors feel our emotional uncertainty and are pained by it, as I am also."

Wilson laughed, and quickly realized the laugh had come out far more irreverently than he had intended. "Sorry," he said. "It's... it all sounds a little crazy to me, you know? My family was all science with me from day one. We don't really..."

"Yes, I know. You don't really take stock in all that hoodoo," she said, making the last word sound painfully shrill. Then she sat silent for several seconds, which made Wilson visibly nervous. Then she added, her voice professional and eager to compromise, "Of course, I don't much either, but I consider that maybe it might mean something, some of the time."

Some meaning, some of the time, maybe. That definitely sounded like Xiurong all right.

"Well, that isn't how science works, you see?" Wilson pointed out. "That's the problem. Science is consistent."

"Ah-ah? What do you mean it's not how science works?" she said as her Zoroark devastated a low-level opponent in a trainer battle she had missed on her first run through an area many hours of play ago. "Science knows of lots of things that are wishy-washy. Sometimes they do this; sometimes they do that. The weather for instance."

"Well, the weather is a chaotic system," Wilson admitted, "so it's hard for science to fully understand, even if that theoretically should be possible."

"Same thing with people," said Xiurong. "People are the most chaotic system, after all."

Wilson chewed on that idea in silence as he progressed in his own game. The conversation died with the ball in his court: Xiurong offered nothing further, and neither did Wilson inquire.

He could always buy a soil testing kit and examine the soil around the trees sometime later, without her knowing. Probably just need some nutrients or something, he thought.

* * *

Three hours later, they ate trail mix from the snack bags they had each packed in their pockets, and they prepared to head home. They hadn't battled today, but there had been some friendly trading of creatures inaccessible in their respective versions of the game. That trading, however, they had done mostly in silence, mumbling to each other in short bursts about what they each had available and what they wanted.

It looked like rain, now, and the trees seemed somehow even sadder than before.

The trees weren't the only ones feeling "sad" either. Wilson felt anxious, and a little physically ill. He supposed it was just stress - from work, and from worrying about their relationship - catching up to him. He had sort of expected today's run and play session to end with them conversing about marriage - the pros and cons, really evaluating it like logical people. That hadn't happened. The whole talk had just... died, in the middle of what Wilson regarded as a wilderness of superstition.

Most logical people have problems with such beliefs, he thought as he made his way down the trail behind Xiurong. But maybe that's also my problem... maybe I'm trying to force mating into a logical mold. Maybe logic really doesn't work for quite everything.

"You need to relax," Xiurong said all of a sudden, likely sensing his anxiety in his slow and uncertain movements as they picked their footing carefully down one of the steeper parts of the trail. "You'll make yourself sick with nerves."

"Sorry," he admitted. "Work's been very hard lately."

"The work of making computer programs, or the work of making a big life decision?"

"Is it that obvious?"

"Work does not faze you," she said, admiringly. "It is only the rest of life that scares you."

"You're awfully direct about this when you actually say something," he said, not sure whether he felt admiring of that, or perturbed, or both.

"I want to get this resolved," she said. "Mother is always asking me when we will marry. She loves weddings, you see."

"That's what this is about?"

"No." She paused her speech and two only two more steps before stopping and turning to face him. "It's about me. I am selfish. I want to have you. Forever." She hugged him - tightly. "I don't want to give you up, and I want to kill any other woman who looks at you." She paused, and then she added, playfully: "Unless she is very nice. Then maybe we make an arrangement to share you."

The polyamorous jab at the end only made him feel more flattered. He doubted she was serious about that part of it, but even still... her words had opened up a floodgate of emotions from inside of him, and he felt like he was going to cry for the first time in years. Annoyed at this, he did his best to hold it back. Why was her saying this so crushing to him?

"X-Xiurong..." he said, his voice barely functioning.

"You don't have to be scared, Wilson. I think we work very well together."

"But we grumble at each other all the time."

"That is why I know we work well together." She released him from the hug.

"Because we fight?" He forced himself to stay strong and scoffed at how crazy that sounded. "How does that even begin to make sense?"

Xiurong glared at his defensiveness, but she kept her cool. "Because we fight and yet draw nearer to each other." Her voice was profound and sagely, yet stern, insisting on the truth of what she said. "We argue to strengthen each other and our commitment... not to tear away our love."

Wilson thought hard about this, and he gazed into her eyes.

"I'll have an answer for you by tomorrow morning... I am quite certain already that I know what it will be, but..."

"But?" asked Xiurong, appeased but still somewhat dissatisfied. "Why must you put it off?"

"Because I do not feel well. I feel lightheaded, like I'm about to pass out. I hope I'm not actually getting sick."

Xiurong felt of his head. "You poor dear. You do feel quite warm, and I can't imagine that it's from the running we did hours ago. Let's get you home and put you to bed. The big decision can wait."

"Damn it," Wilson muttered, stepping forward, feeling the fatigue and dizziness worsening by the moment.

Xiurong held hands with him the rest of the way back to their large, red-brick home, leading him through the old herb garden (also maintained by Xiurong) and past the disused chicken shed, to their wooden deck and their back door.

A short walk through the dining room later, they were at the hallway from which the house's four large bedrooms branched.

"Get some rest in your room," she said. "I'll check in on you every so often, when I'm not napping myself. I'm also feeling a little more tired than usual. I'll bring you some water so you can have a drink."

"Mnn. Okay."

The last thing Wilson remembered before passing out was Xiurong tucking him into the queen-sized bed, in what used to be the guest bedroom before he and Xiurong had moved in, after giving him a few good sips from a glass of cold water. It felt so refreshing, yet even so, all his body wanted to do was sleep....

* * *

Wilson felt like roadkill by the time he awoke. A glance at the clock told him he'd been out for at least four hours. It was now after ten at night. Getting carefully to his feet, he cracked open his door and heard nothing - no sounds of the television or of Xiurong's fingertips clacking away at her laptop in the living room - so he figured she had fallen asleep too. Not wanting to bother her, he shut the door again and went to examine himself.

Looking at his own face in the adjoining guest bathroom's mirror was quite a sight: his blond bangs were matted against his forehead, a heavy and oily sweat detaining them from moving. His cheeks flushed beet red, with the rest of his face, neck, and chest a more subdued - but no less alarming - pink.

He felt hot, above all, and he couldn't get out of his clothes fast enough. He felt so searingly overburdened with temperature that he found himself panting like a dog, dangling his tongue in between bursts of guzzling water from plastic bathroom cups. When that didn't help, he splashed cold water on himself straight from the tap. The water didn't instantly turn to steam, but neither did it succeed in making him feel cool again.

"What's wrong with me?" he mumbled.

Stumbling into the bedroom with just his boxers on, he felt the insane heat spreading down his belly, his thighs, his ankles.... Even his groin felt hot to the touch, his member flaccid but confusingly and painfully warm. He lay down - stroked himself there a few times - felt his penis respond by plumping up with heightened blood flow, but not truly getting erect. The warmth at least felt good in his shaft, and he held it gently in the grasp of his right hand.

Elsewhere on his body, though, the burning heat got so bad that he didn't want to continue this into an actual round of masturbating. He didn't feel horny anyway... he felt... he felt like he was about to pass right back out.

Now Wilson wanted to call out for Xiurong's help, and he thought that he did so. In actuality, he didn't: his mind was falling into delirium from his body overheating. The room spun, and all of the colors in the low-lit bedroom began to look brighter and brighter, as if the world were transforming into frames from a cel-shaded video game.

He looked down at his own arms, and could have sworn he saw a flicker of black and of blue - not the shades of a bruise, but stark, pastel tones. The only light came from the open bathroom door - in a break from his usual habits, he had neglected to turn its light out when he left - and he rationalized that he must simply be seeing things because of the fever.

Wilson tried to sustain some sort of focus. He fixed his gaze on one area of the plain white ceiling above him. The bright colors of the wood and fabrics around him soon faded away, and his arms regained their normal pale caucasian color. He could see it, his left forearm looking perfectly normal in the periphery of his vision, the bathroom's light illuminating it clearly.

Then the color of his arm faded to a ghastly white, and so did the rest of his vision. The world was without color, without thought, and soon enough without consciousness at all.

* * *

Five minutes later, Wilson's body heat held steady at a temperature six degrees centigrade warmer than the norm. His arms and legs twitched as his mind rebooted into a state of fevered dreams. Periodically he mumbled her name: "Xiurong... Xiurong," to no reply.

In the silence of the room, Wilson's body was audibly creaking, his stomach gurgling, his mouth expelling periodic and quiet belches between the bouts of his ineffective speech.

He dreamed dreams that he would not remember thereafter, and which were fleeting and incomplete even now: visions of green, tall grass, of strange animals darting around therein, and of a mystic red light that could make the strange animals into slaves, forcing them to do the bidding of shadowy, humanoid masters. Gradually these wispy visions took firmer shape, even though their progression remained choppy.

Wilson felt himself getting smaller, tighter, lower to the ground, and soon enough he had a glimmer of looking down and seeing cute black paws for feet, a swath of blue fur covering much of the space above... all the way to his very hands, which now had only three fingers. He could still feel the shape of his thumb and his little finger, but both felt numb - insubstantial. He wiggled his fingers and only the three large, padded things moved. The sensitivity of his thumb and little finger remained deeply asleep despite his attempts to rouse them, and that sleep grew deeper with each passing moment, as his sense of humanity started to evade him and immersion in the strange, flickering world took hold....

Wilson's sleeping body gave a jerk as the fingers of both hands curled in spasms. The thumbs and index fingers pressed tightly against each other, as did the ring and little fingers. Down at his feet a similar phenomenon was in progress, while his facial expression shifted into a grimace and his calling of Xiurong's name was replaced with grunts of pain.

"Help," he murmured without enthusiasm. "I don't wanna be... captured..."

His knees drew up toward his torso, bringing his body almost into the fetal position, but stopping short of actually achieving it as the painful spasms spread to his calves and thighs. He dreamed of his body being compressed so hard, forced into a tiny space, a great red light demanding that he get smaller, smaller, smaller....

Then the red light flooded his vision until there was nothing else, and his physical eyes shot open.

Wilson's consciousness abruptly returned, but the majority of his motor control did not. Searing waves of heat pulsed through his body in time with his heartbeat, and he let out a bloodcurdling scream.

Alongside the scream came change: a very specific kind of change that he had not expected but had often fantasized about, or at least about something quite similar.

The bones of his frame grew superheated to the point that they seemed to liquify, with all of the long bones shrinking to half their usual size, while the shorter bones in his feet, ankles, and hands gained mass, expanding into lengthier configurations than they'd had previously. The muscles around each followed suit, tightening harshly at first before entering a state of deep, malleable relaxation as their structure changed.

Wilson's eyes rolled and his eyelids drooped shut again as a flow of immense relief worked its way from the extremities of each of his limbs up toward his torso. The terrible heat gave way to a deep, refreshing coolness that made his fingers and toes - and soon his wrists and ankles - feel as if they had just been bathed in the coolest mountain spring water. As the coolness moved inward, Wilson began to discover that he could wiggle his digits again, and that their feeling was returning.

He immediately knew something was "wrong," though, because he could only feel and wiggle three digits on each limb, with each digit feeling much thicker than it had before. This difference however did not panic him: his body and mind both readily accepted this change, for reasons that he did not yet understand.

The cooling flowed: wrists and forearms, calves and legs; each awakened to a new feeling of strength and supple dexterity. Wilson had always been a clumsy person - correcting that was one of the many motivating factors that kept he and Xiurong in the habit of their hiking together - but the nerves in his new limbs felt richer and more sensitive. Though much of his clumsiness had always been in his head, poor blood flow to his feet and hands had never helped matters. He felt a strange sense of confidence building within him.

The cooling entering his gut and torso brought renewed balance to his panicking digestive tract, and corrected a small and not-yet-medically-examined mis-curvature in his spine. (This mis-curvature had been triggered, in part, by years of sitting in his computer chairs with poor posture as a child.) His broad shoulders shrank inward to a somewhat more juvenile-looking shape. The coolness hit his spine from all angles, the feelings of changing rising up it and into his brain as his nervous system continued gaining new and improved sensation.

Now, suddenly, he was struck with a strange sensation of Xiurong being "near" him, and he found that he could look over to his right and "see" her - or rather, a bluish, foggy outline of the space she ought to occupy... even though he knew she was in the master bedroom next-door, and there was a wall between them. Nevertheless the blue mist remained imposed in his vision, seeming to fade into the wall as a visual indication that whatever he was seeing over there lay beyond it.

Wilson soon realized that if he closed his eyes, he could see Xiurong a little less fuzzily, and he did so.

Meanwhile, the changes slipped up along his head and caused a large, dangling region of muscle to grow outward from each of his temples, the new flesh eventually dangling downward like a pair of floppy ears after it got long enough. His normal ears, meanwhile, took on triangular, canine-like shapes, pushing their way upward along the side of his quickly-reshaping skull.

By keeping his eyes closed, he found the changes in sensation easier to accept, and as the dangling lumps grew along his head, his vision of Xiurong grew even clearer. To his mild surprise, her body did not seem to have the same shape that it used to have, either. It had grown broader, and strangely "darker," though he didn't understand how he could sense this darkness, as the color of the whole shape only looked blue. Her hair had grown out into a wild mane, which seemed a fainter blue than the rest of her - a sign of her hair's lesser life signs, he intuitively knew. As his vision grew clearer, he ascertained her shape better, and soon enough he had it nailed down:

"Zoroark," he whispered through his lengthening muzzle. Then it hit him how absurd what he was saying was. "What in the world..."

Until this time the budding riolu's body had been growing less and less hairy by the moment, as every bit of his human hair got re-absorbed into his flesh by the change. He could see his clear nakedness, but he felt secure: the fur would be along any moment now.

He was right. A sharp, tickling feeling ignited below the skin on his chest before rapidly spreading out all over his body. Every pore seemed to be getting violated by new growth - and pores that he hadn't even had before soon joined the process. Long, narrow strands of blue or black fur jutted forth as the moments past, visibly growing on on his chest, belly, and groin where he could look down and see. It was easier than ever to look down at his own nose, which was darkening to black and sprouting similarly colored fur all up along the top of his muzzle.

A wispy blue fire kindled itself around the small, nearly-a-pokemon's hands, sending a wave of new determination and alertness through Wilson's body. The fur growth accelerated, coating his body and thickening at a pace that made it look almost as if it was being painted on. It might have felt that way too, if not for the visceral prickling and poking that he continued to experience as each new tuft made its way out to the world.

The blue energy rippled through his body faster and faster, and his breathing deepened. He felt each of his major muscle groups tense and relax before settling into a state that felt poised for action. These surges of muscular readiness began in his core and pulsed outward, even as the fur continued to spread from the extremities inward. He was no hulk, but he sensed that his few-feet-tall body would pack more than enough punch to send an average man flying.

Soon the fur growth converged along his waistline, and a portion of the blue energy redirected itself into his groin, from his torso and legs alike. He felt a tugging sensation in his nethers, and a warm itching, as if his boxers were tickling his shaft with a loose thread of fabric. Reaching down there revealed to him that the tugging he felt was from a canine sheath growing in around his member, the tickling a result of the fur growing in. The surprisingly thick sheath rapidly populated itself with more and more of the blue fur, while inside, the tip of his shaft darkened and turned a distinctive reddish-pink color, before getting engulfed by the growing tube.

It occurred to Wilson that his night vision had dramatically improved. The incidental light from the bathroom made it all too easy to see every detail... or at least, the incidental light plus the pale blue glow from what he could only presume was his aura.

The major changes were wrapping up, but now his balls felt itchy, and he couldn't help feeling of them as the last bits of fur on them grew in. To his greater surprise, he also noticed them swelling slightly larger than they had been before, despite his shrunken riolu height.

Goodness he thought to himself, feeling of his generous package with interest. I guess this is what to expect from an adult riolu. I suppose it makes sense, given my age before all this started happening.

He stood up on top of his bedcovers, letting his body slip into a digitigrade stance that now felt eerily natural. He had no need for wondering if the transformation had altered his brain; it was already apparent. Confident in his abilities, he took a leap off the bed and fell flat on his face when he reached the floor, not even managing to catch himself properly.

"Not changed enough yet," he admitted aloud. The sound of his voice startled him. Normally he had a soft tone of voice, one that occasionally got him picked on, but now he sounded almost innately more gruff and serious than usual. He attributed it to the canine influences on his vocal cords and picked himself up, taking another good look around the room, continuing to marvel at his vision.

His dresser, nightstand, and computer desk all lay there before his eyes, all tinged with a palette of deep blue from the flickering light of his aura.

A thought occurred to him. "I wonder how I turn it off?" he said, looking down at his glowing hands. Something in him told him he didn't have to, and that for the time being the glow was needed - and his body seemed to agree. His shiny new nerves felt anxious - on edge. The zoroark next door demanded confrontation. He needed... to battle it.

Wait, What on Earth am I thinking? he pondered, catching himself. In that instant the aura around his hands went out, and the light for seeing the room around him diminished accordingly, although he could still see pretty well.

Ignoring this sudden change, he motivated himself to walk on over the door and go down the hall to check on Xiurong. Pushing the door open with ease, he glanced down the hallway. He saw nothing and heard very little, even with his sensitive new ears. He could swear he could hear some sort of breathing, but he couldn't tell quite from where. Determined to figure this out, he walked down the corridor in the direction of her room.

"Xiurong?" he called out as he approached her door. "Hey, are you in there? Something really funny's happened..."

Reaching out tentatively with one handpaw told Wilson that Xiurong's door was already open, yet her room had no lights on whatsover and he couldn't make out much inside of it despite the best efforts of his new eyes.

It occurred to him that he found the darkness and lack of knowledge unsettling. He tried to reconnect to his aura sense before entering, but he found it difficult to force. No good. He considered just walking inside anyway and swatting the lightswitch as soon as he could.

Then he heard a faint sound, similar to a mouse scrabbling on hardwood, but much lower in pitch, and only for an instant. He stood entirely still, his ears perking and listening intently in case the sound might come again.

"Xiu--" Wilson started to say again - but was thwarted by a glomping pounce from behind. Two massive furry arms curled around his meter-high body, and two legs followed suit, quickly forcing him to the ground.

"Squishing time!" the zoroark declared, her voice high pitched and wild as she eagerly sat on the smaller pokemon. Wilson to his surprise had no instinctive reaction to turn and pummel her, but he did feel compelled to calmly look back her way and glower disapprovingly. The light of aura returned to his hands, and he spoke up.

"All right, all right, I get it!" Wilson said. "We turned into pokemon, now get off me or I'll make you get off!" His fists flared brightly as his sentence concluded.

"Oh? Can the little riolu really make the big zoroark get off?" his seemingly crazy girlfriend replied. She leaned her muzzle down by his left ear and whispered, "Why don't you show me?"

He felt his ear flick and burn with embarrassment as both his masculinity and his status as a fighting pokemon felt challenged. Surging with indignant, grumbly fury, he managed to press both of his arms against the ground enough to start lifting the weight of the dark-type sitting on his back. His muscles crackled with energy, but they also burned with pain as he pushed them to what felt like their limits. Then, gradually, it got easier to hold her up. He still couldn't get her off though - he had no real leverage that he could find.

Unless...

While his mind was working, Xiurong put her body into an even better stance for keeping him pinned, and seemed surprised to find he still held up so well beneath her. "Does it hurt, little riolu?"

Cursed... family... shrines! Wilson roared - but only in his own mind, as he saved his strength and breath for dislodging his competitor.

"Well...?" asked Xiurong expectantly. "Got anything to say to me, little Wilson?"

The riolu clenched his savage jaws, letting his mind sink deeper into the wild strength and dexterity that seemed to be ever welling up inside of him, looking for a way to plug more of itself into his consciousness....

"Rio.. rio... RUUUUUuuuu!!" he suddenly growled, a spark of blue energy forming at his chest before he pressed upward with all his might, freeing his body enough to turn one hand and zap Xiurong's muzzle with a tiny ball of the blue energy. The erratically charged ball obviously stung, and she lifted her muzzle and cried out in annoyance, her little blue boyfriend rolling out from under her during that moment of opportunity.

Xiurong's green eyes soon glared directly down at Wilson's brown ones. The crimson mane of her neck fur seemed to blow in a wind that wasn't even physically happening - a sign of her emotional state that Wilson did not quite know how to read. He remained facing her, poised in a ready stance, his arms out in front of him as she approached.

"Such a small... feisty creature you've become," Xiurong said, her voice almost sinister. "So active... so ready to fight... so much an inversion of what you were before."

"And you've become a crazy bitch," Wilson said bluntly. "Literally," he added. "What on Earth does that stupid shrine of your family's do?"

The zoroark paused in place, threw her head back, and laughed loud and long: "Zo-zo-zo-ro-zoroaa.... just listen to you. Even a day ago you'd have killed for the chance to be a lucario."

Wilson blushed beneath his fur. "S-so?"

"And now you call the shrine's effects stupid?"

"W-well..." he backed away, losing most of the intensity of the aura on his fists again.

"So unsure of yourself... and so unwilling to train yourself. No wonder you ended up only as a riolu and not the thing you really desired."

The aura flared back, glowing brightly from his surge in emotions, but leaving him feeling slightly drained afterward. "What're you talking about!? A riolu is fine!"

"But it's not your end goal. We've got to get you trained up... isn't that right? It's time for the little riolu to go 'leveling.'"

Xiurong was drawing closer and closer again, and Wilson soon found himself backed against the far wall of her room. She was so scary, so forceful, and yet so attractive at the same time. Yes, attractive - he admitted it plainly and above-board in his own mind: if she wasn't currently behaving in a way that made him suspicious that she might pulverize him, he would totally want to have sex with her, even despite the height difference, and he entirely expected it would be the best sex they'd ever had, just because.

But there was no time for thinking about that right now. The riolu put his foot down both figuratively and literally, stomping toward Xiurong and letting out another "RIO!" battle cry to warn her away. "I'll punch you right in the nose if you come any closer - see if I don't!"

The zoroark stared at him and smiled. The two watched each other, Wilson waiting for her to make a move, Xiurong seemingly defiant and not caring, as if she knew something the riolu didn't.

Then, slowly but smoothly, the appearance of the zoroark began to melt and shift, its form rearranging and recoloring itself into the spitting image of Xiurong's human body: entirely naked and seemingly aroused, with the nipples pointing out at him.

"Would you hit little old me?" Xiurong said, her voice sounding exactly as it had every day of their lives together. "I'd hate to cause a domestic disturbance."

The riolu squinted at her, not letting himself get roped in. Something wasn't right... something...

He squinted his eyes, leaving them open just enough to track her movements, and let the aura-detecting organs alongside his head begin to do their work. Superimposed over Xiurong's allegedly human form, he could see the blue glow of the zoroark's vital energy.

"I will not have you lying to me in our relationship!" he said firmly, half feeling as if he were play-acting with her, but equally feeling genuine and serious. He pounced at her and, to her apparent surprise, knocked her to the ground. Her skin felt soft and smooth, but he still knew it was phony. She hadn't shapeshifted back; she was just using the illusionist powers of her new species. She probably didn't even actually know what was going on here at all, despite how smug she was acting.

The zoroark returned her image to the normal, sexily furred one and grinned at her lover.

"You're not too easy to fool, are you? Maybe there's hope for you yet."

* * *

A few minutes later, all ruses of antagonism had been dropped, and the two lay cuddling on Xiurong's bed, Wilson content with the feeling of her warm body behind him. Spooning, with her holding him, was the only position that really seemed to work for what they currently wanted, which was honesty and intimacy.

"So you don't really have the foggiest idea how any of this happened, do you?" he was asking.

"Mmm... I trust my new zoroark instincts, and I trust them more consistently than you trust yours... but I do not know what's going on. Like you, I can only guess it's to do with the shrine, but why bother with the details beyond that? It is what it is. We've become pokemon."

Wilson glanced annoyedly back at her. "It matters because we're not only pokemon. We have lives. We... we have a world that we live in, and we can't be seen like this."

"And how do you know that we're not only pokemon now?"

Wilson gave her a look. "Beg pardon?"

"How do you know this isn't what is meant to be - truly and entirely?"

"Well, for one thing? We can both talk. And we didn't forget everything from our human lives. And we're still on Earth. I dunno - you tell me - am I wrong to be thinking this way? Where's my logic bad?"

The zoroark lay there quiet for a moment.

"Yeah, didn't think you'd have anything to say to that one," the riolu said triumphantly.

She grinned and scratched his belly.

"H-hey, quit that! You're making it hard for me to act tough with you."

"Mmm... but why act it when you can be it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Look at yourself! You're a pokemon now! You. Can. Grow. Very. Strong. You could have grown strong anyway if you had applied yourself, but now... now you have a potential that rivals any human man! But it's still only potential, just a seed of what it could be. You need to work at it... don't you understand?"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. You want me to strength train. I know what kind of porn you look at."

Now the zoroark found herself blushing under her fur.

"Gay muscle art--"

"--is something every sensible straight girl should be interested in," the riolu mockingly finished.

"It is TRUE!"

"Oh, put a lid on your wok." She playfully smacked him. "Okay, I deserved that one... but still...."

"Mmmm?"

Wilson shut his eyes. "What kind of plan is this anyway? We won't have time to do it! We'll... we'll run out of food before then! And it's not like we have a home gym or something."

Xiurong chuckled. "Aren't you forgetting something?"

"Forgetting what?"

He felt the fur of her body give way to convincingly human skin again. Then he felt clothing seemingly grow out to cover it.

"Miss Zoroark has all your societal needs covered. We just tell your boss that you're taking a medical leave. You have some time built up."

"A medical leave that I don't have documentation for?"

She handwaved him. "Leave that to me! This is my area!" She shifted her appearance to look like a sexy nurse. "Doctor, I need to deliver these papers to one of our patients in the waiting area."

Wilson lay there in silence, not wanting to admit how dumb he felt right now. He kept his mouth shut, but eventually his frustration cracked into a smile, and then into laughter.

"This is just too perfect," he said. "You know that?

"I do." She gave another, extra-toothy grin.

"Ya know what? Go for it. Let's play this thing out as long as it lasts. As long as we realistically can!"

Xiurong nodded. "And if it lasts forever?"

That gave WIlson pause. "...We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Besides, I don't think I want to stay away from coding for too long."

"Oh? Why not?"

"Because even if you're deceiving people by appearances, I still want to spend money like honest people... and we don't have an endless supply."

The zoroark thought for a moment. "I could work faster at my proofreading!"

He looked at her. "With those?" he said, nosing at her claws.

"...Yes, I am going to have to re-learn typing, aren't I."

"Just a bit," taunted Wilson. "Four fingers and all. Going to be rough."

Xiurong made no further reply for a while, seeming lost in thought. "Well," she finally said. "Snuggles! Snuggles are good, right?"

Wilson smiled, deeply inhaling her scent, "Snuggles are good."

* * *

"So hey, Wilson? Wilson."

"Mmmnnnmm?" He opened his eyes - glanced at the master bedroom's nightstand clock. Four in the morning.

"Wilson, you're going to marry me, right?" came the zoroark's voice.

"Hmm... oh, oh yeah. I am. If we ever turn back, there's no question. Too special. Sends it over the edge."

"Mmm... zo-zo-zo-zo-zoro..."

"Eh? What're you chuckling about?"

"Well, I was thinking, perhaps we can get an early start on your 'training,' then."

"An early start?" he said, still not getting what she was referring to.

The zoroark's handpaw came to rest on Wilson's sheath, and his eyes went wide as he gasped. The pink of his tip soon came out to investigate this warm and fluffy presence.

"Time for your first round of exercise, sweetie."

The zoroark was soon on top of him, her muzzle and paws tugging at his sheath, her tongue working its way inside of it.

"Ri-rio...!" he groaned. "Ahh, X-Xiurong..."

Liking the warmth and stimulation it had discovered, the pink shaft emerged faster and faster from its hiding place, the sheath drawing back and getting smoothly pushed down by the big, leathery handpaws.

"Y-you're the one doing all the exercise," he said, blushing as her padded hands worked him over.

"This is just to get you warmed up," she said seductively.

"Nnn...!"

"Such a horny man. A pokey-man?"

"Sh-shut up... aaah!"

He felt his cock swelling to fullness, his body and subconscious mind eagerly accepting the treat his mate was offering. Her muzzle was assaulting his canine tip with stroke after stroke of sharp pleasure. He writhed, feeling his member expanding to what seemed an impossibly thick girth within Xiurong's long and sharp-fanged maw. The length of his shaft didn't seem much different from normal, but how had it gotten so thick!?

Xiurong's tongue did circles around her beloved's impressive shaft while his hips and thighs started an instinctive forward bucking. The blue glow around his hands, briefly extinguished by his embarrassment, returned with an ever-increasing ferocity as he let his instincts guide him more and more. Soon he forced her up off of him, growling at her even as he throbbed, and forced her to lay on her back below him as she looked up at him innocently and kept licking.

"Serves you right for getting me all worked up like this," Wilson said to her, his voice both husky and assertive in ways it rarely became in day to day life. Repositioning himself so that he could go onto all-fours with his groin over her face, he slammed his shaft balls-deep into her upside-down mouth.

Wilson groaned out in ecstasy. The slight pains from his thickness raking across her teeth were a minor inconvenience compared to the strength and authority he felt with her right now. His blue fuzzy orbs slammed against her canine lips over and over, Wilson enjoying the feel of them smacking into her, and feeling his plumbing grow more and more congested with juices each time he did so. Feeling his pleasures rapidly growing, he put his hands onto Xiurong's chest and dug in, stopping his thrusting and raking his hard nails through her velvety black fur, finding and teasing some of her cute, concealed nipples as he did so. Xiurong gasped before licking and sucking harder, not prepared for him to turn the tables on her so completely like this.

Grunting, and still not satisfied, the horny riolu pulled his cock free of her maw and hopped smoothly down to her belly, where he took his prodigious member in hand and began angling it into her hot, swollen nether-lips.

"Oh God, Wilson, I-I'm not ready!" she pleaded.

"Who's the one not trusting their instincts now?" said Wilson with a grin as he pushed the tip further in, eliciting a moan from his lover. Even now he knew he could stop, could go back to oral if she really wanted to... but with the way her nethers were looking, with the glorious odor and the tingling aura he could feel emanating from there...

"Put it in me!" Xiurong cried out without an ounce of dignity. "Fuck me hard, Wilson. Make me your zoroark bitch!"

It was rare for him to hear Xiurong use such strong language, even in bed. She had inherited a portion of her family's sense of propriety. Even though she was naughty by their standards, there were some levels of control that she simply didn't give up... except when she was truly into what was going on, and such a time was now.

With a rumbling cry of, "Riii-ohhhhh!" the male pokemon jabbed his erection between his mate's puffy vulvae. The zoroark hooooowled in joy mixed with pain as the thicker-than-usual girth entered her not-more-stretched-than-usual passage. Soon enough she began to accommodate, however, and it was a good thing, because Wilson was going fast and hard.

"I have a knot," he told her, trying to sound helpful.

"I-is it out yet?" she murmured.

"Oh no," he said, shaking his head and panting as he pounded. "I guess when I'm close..."

Xiurong lay back and took it, feeling her lover's long nose sniffing repeatedly at the odors from her loins and belly as he held his short body above her and thrust with all his might. Soon enough he was bottoming out, his balls slapping against her even harder and faster than before, her walls clenching Wilson's grunting and panting both accelerated, and he had a fiery feeling of his legs growing taxed.

Despite the lactic acid accumulating in his muscles, he determined that he wouldn't stop now: he was so close. He was going to pound this all the way into her, and knot it there, just like they both now wanted. The pleasure in him surged; his insides congested further.

"Oh no! Oh no!" the zoroark shrieked as his knot engorged. Her moans were loud and unapologetic as her passage found itself with no choice but to take the thing, her pussy-lips closing tightly around it and sealing him within her.

Meanwhile a cool, slippery feeling had slithered its way up into the riolu's shaft from deep within him, and his world now exploded with bliss and aura and triumph.

Shot after shot of hot riolu cum burst forth into Xiurong's clenching passage. Her own moaning had gave way to outright orgasm as the realizations hit her of what was happening between them: that not only were they both pokemon, but that they were fiercely breeding in that capacity...

"Nnnnthat's how... that's how you exercise me," Wilson said gutturally, his burning thighs still riding against her as his cock throbbed and body quivered in its orgasmic high. "That's how you train your 'pokeyman,' yes..."

He nommed on her belly playfully, nipping and nibbling at her flesh and fur as his seed continued pouring into her passage. Xiurong meanwhile had nothing to say, no witty quibbling to do. She felt like his bitch, marked and claimed, and lay there silent, breathing deeply, taking in her lover's spunk.

"Gonna be here a while I bet," added Wilson with a sharp gasp at the end, brought on by a firm and gripping clench of his mate's passage. "Yeah... gonna be here for a while.... mmmmmmm...."

The little canine head nuzzled and rubbed at her tummy over and over, instinctive thoughts of fatherhood rolling through him much more than usual. He doubted she would get pregnant from this, but even so....

"Love you... Wilson..." Xiurong finally managed to say.

Wilson looked at her from his head's eventual resting place on her chest. He made a kissing noise and licked at her. Then he said, "I love you, too."

* * *

The riolu awoke to something he hadn't seen in a long time, which was Xiurong standing over him holding a large plate of ham and scrambled eggs. He smelled it before he saw it, and he couldn't believe his nose either. The amount of food far exceeded what he would usually consume. By his best guess, she must have scrambled at least half a dozen eggs, piled as the yellow bits were all over themselves and the two thick slices of ham. His nose told him she had mixed some cheddar cheese in with the eggs, and that she had treated each slice of ham with a dollop of honey.

"Goodness, Xiurong!" Wilson exclaimed.

The zoroark cracked a smile and giggled at him, her dark tail swishing happily. "Someone engaging in strength training should start his day with plenty of protein. For that matter you should eat more protein than you do anyway! Eat!"

She thrust the plate down on his chest, giving him a look that made him wonder if she really intended on him eating right now or if she was going to mate with him first. Instead, she reached down and grabbed his right forearm, massaging it with glimmering eyes that told him her thoughts were full of possibilities.

"I am so curious what will happen," she said.

Wilson couldn't help feeling slightly more rational here. "Well, don't be surprised if me training takes a while. I mean, it's ridiculous to assume I'll just instantly..."

"Shh, don't ruin my dream." She grinned and climbed off of him, leaving him to his meal.

"Enjoy." Her visage flickered into the naked form of her usual human self. "I'll go get you some training equipment."

"Put some clothes on, woman!" Wilson yelled, a little playfully.

"Sure, before anyone but you sees me."

* * *

An hour after Xiurong's departure, Wilson had tired of lurking around his house and seeing how various electronic devices felt in his new hands. (Nearly all of them were difficult to even use, let alone dexterously.) He had discovered along the way that at least two other things were true: that he felt great after that breakfast, and that he wanted to run.

So he ran. He ran out their back door and onward to the trees.

He ran with carefree abandon up the trail toward the shrine, his small, leathery paws enduring the rough ground with ease. The forest and embankments around him kept his small pokemon form concealed from accidental notice by the neighbors. He felt free - felt his mind settling further into the instincts of his new form. Leaping with increasing nimbleness up small inclines and darting around and among trees with greater poise and awareness of the undergrowth, he felt alive and unstoppable.

She's right, he told himself. I could have worked for this feeling in my human body... although....

He gathered a surge of aura, feeling the vitality of the world around him reinforcing his strength. It happened about as naturally as he might breathe in air or take a sip of water to quench his thirst. Sparked onward, he bolted up the trail, leapt to an overhanging tree limb, grabbed onto it, and began taking a detour of a climb, pouncing and grappling and shimmying his way up the aged pine's trunk, feeling unafraid of the world and of any kind of physical activity, and liberated from his intellectual routine as a programmer. For all the coding he had done, and all of the useful software he had made or at least helped to create, he began to sense that somehow he had been boxing himself in, taking himself out of the reality around him, and losing some important aspects of himself in the process. With vigor and glee he got as high up on the old tree as he could go without making its tip bend, and contented himself with that. He could see his house from there, its shiny old aluminum roof glimmering back at him, its condition surprisingly good considering how old it must be. Somewhere out in town, Xiurong would be getting him his training equipment right now.

"Hey," he said aloud, noticing some of the other trees nearby him. "Are you guys feeling better too?"

The trees encircling the shrine seemed to have recovered in part from their slump of disease. He also knew this didn't make any botanical sense. For them to recover so suddenly - it had only been a day - why, that was practically a miracle!

Closing his eyes and letting himself sense the energies around him more fully, he saw a flow of aura coming out of his body and lapping at the nearby trees, like slow waves of water on a coastline. The threes, their limbs and twig-tips looked dim, lacking much of that energy. Was his body trying to encourage them back to health? He didn't feel any weaker for it; the action seemed quite passive. Yet, the longer he remained in that state of focus, the more of a connection he felt with the plants around him. He felt like a quiet conduit of vitality that was pouring energies of life into a place where it had grown scarce. It was a rewarding, pleasant feeling, yet at the same time nothing he could really take pride in. It felt merely normal.

He opened his eyes. Hopping from tree to tree like a monkey, he dosed each tree with a surge of his aura, as if his body and spirit were calling out to each one, "Hey! Wake up!" with each successive leap. He didn't count how many trees he treated this way; his leapings were lost in a flow of nonverbal thinking and careful acrobatics.

If he had described the event to someone else, he might have been tempted to say, "My body did it on its own. I felt like a mere passenger in my own mind!" But that wouldn't have been true: he knew everything he was doing, and did it very deliberately. He knew not how he knew the way to do these things, but he played the part with relish.

In the final moments of his joyful leaping, he could sense that the aura around him had reached a pulsing, vibrant state, with the whole area rippling and quivering with its power. He felt and saw a sphere of blue energy all around the shrine, the sickly trees engulfed in the aura and being rejuvenated by it. He had a strong sense that somehow the trees had "brought him here." Whether that meant they had transformed him or had merely called him here after his transformation, he couldn't say. He only knew he felt called, and that answering the call was satisfying.

Kicking off the last tree with a loud grunt of, "Ruuu!" he backflipped through the air and landed on the ground, caught by both feet and one hand. He landed with a little less grace than he had hoped, and the landing stung somewhat in his right wrist, which took a little more of the fall than it should have, but he knew it would be fine in a very short time. He felt a paradox within himself: a skeleton as hard as cold steel, and a heart and soul as warmed up and ready as the muscles of a tournament martial artist.

Musing on these things, he found himself associating his programming work with the cold steel: not a bad thing at all, but not complete on its own either. He did indeed feel a bit like a skeleton who had recently been given a new lease on life... though perhaps that was just his mind dramatizing the whole "riolu thing" a little more than it should.

He laughed aloud, and let his aura flare up in joy again. Who cared? He was a riolu, and this was the best thing ever! The only thing that would top it would be evolving, which he felt optimistic that he'd be able to do somehow.

Casting a warm smile in the direction of the shrine, he nodded at it, unsure what to say or indeed what could be said. After a moment's hesitation, he came up with a simple sentence, which he spoke to both the shrine itself and to the plant life in the area: "Thank you."

Turning, he took a moment to collect himself - to catch his breath. He felt alive, even though all the leaping had also made him a little tired.

One solid minute of rest later, he felt entirely ready to go again.

With a shout of fervent desire, he dashed off down the trail again, eager to push his physical limits however he could.

* * *

Half an hour later, after cooling down from his run, Wilson had transitioned to sitting on the carpet of their living room floor, meditating and trying to gain a better understanding of his aura abilities. What had happened on the trail had excited the human aspects of his mind when they had a moment to resurface, this time in curiosity and analysis: he wanted to know more about the aura, to understand how it flowed through his body.

He'd had some success, but periodic worrying about Xiurong was getting in the way. Anytime he had a thought like, How will she even grasp the steering wheel with that body? his focus would strain or break, and he wasn't sure if it was because of the emotion of doubt or because of the over-emphasis on verbal, human-like thinking. He knew lucario could speak, but he wasn't sure their minds thought about language quite like his was still trying to....

"Riii-ooooo," he murmured, gathering another sphere of the energy between his hands. Doing this felt physically stressful but mentally and emotionally rewarding all the same. He let his breathing settle into a deep, steady rhythm and felt the sphere growing in size and intensity.

He felt an intellectual urge to direct the energy at something - to throw it in a blast like the pokemon he was familiar with so often did - but found it difficult to do so. In a flash of insight he could both feel and "see" how stable the energies within himself and around him currently were. To direct this focused pool of aura outward would take an emotional spark and determination that he did not currently have, nor did he need. At the same time, feeling this strange calm made him more aware and confident that he would be able to do this reliably when the time came.

"We live in the flow of the universe," he remarked aloud, managing not to giggle at how goofy the sentence sounded to the stuffier side of his scientific sensibilities. "We train and fight much like aura moves, ebbing and flowing in response to the situation... yet we train with deliberate intention."

He separated the gathered sphere into two smaller orbs that flared around each of his hands as he separated them. He felt the energy dispersing into the room, smoothing the atmosphere and clearing away the anxieties that seemed to be lingering both inside and outside himself. The calm vital energy neutralized it and made him feel awake and strong.

The muscles in both his arms gave sudden, slight twitches. He felt of his biceps and could have sworn they were softer and thinner a moment ago. The physical difference was subtle, but the degree to which he felt strong and capable was not.

"Rio... ruu..." he murmured, feeling his aura bubble over with exuberance all around him. He confidently rose and began practicing a series of punches and kicks, moving forward and sideways in a dance around his living room, totally nude save for his fur, and so lost in the moment that he did not care. He followed a dance that his body already knew, performing a long and elaborate martial arts form that he would have been unable to explain verbally to anyone else, but his mind was so focused on the activity that he didn't care.

At one point he encountered the large reclining chair, directly in his path, and he smoothly kicked it out of his way, striking it with a most delicate spark of aura at the moment his foot made contact. The chair skidded over the carpet as if cheating the concept of friction, remaining perfectly upright and stopping short of slamming into the living room's far wall.

His dance continued on, the flow of his aura dancing right along with his body, and it was during the flow of this dance that Xiurong's belated return came.

The zoroark's fluffy body emerged grinning from the fading illusion of her former human form, but she did not speak, quickly finding herself transfixed at seeing her lover's martial dance.

The riolu saw her, acknowledged her with a look, but did not disrupt the flow of his focused training. The dark type looked on, seeing his sleek body continue its long and elaborate series of kicks and punches, captivated with the balance and poise he exhibited. She too could sense that something positive was happening in his limb muscles - not just his arms now, but his little legs, too, the thighs looking firmer and larger than she recalled. His physiology was very different, at least as different as she hoped... and maybe more....

The zoroark peeled her attention away from the display, stepping back out and forcing her human illusion on in a hurry. He had already gotten the process started... she shouldn't interrupt. She would carry the items in for him. Her new body was strong enough that none of it was a problem.

* * *

By the time the zoroark returned from the car again, the riolu had finished his dance and sat silently on the floor, his legs crossed.

"What have you brought?" he asked her, trying to sense the tools using his aura sight and discovering (in hindsight unsurprisingly) that he could not sense enough life in them to make out their individual shapes.

"Basic things," she said. "A set of various weights for lifting - combine enough of them and even your feisty little body will be challenged. I think."

"Mmhm," he said. "What else?"

"A large punching bag intended to be suspended from a strong overhanging beam."

"So, something classical."

"Yes."

"What's it filled with?"

"Weeeell... that's a surprise, but let's just say that it was a pain for me to carry inside and I"ll be wanting you to be the one to actually hang it up."

"Okay. Challenge accepted. Anything else?"

"Some heavy training bracelets and anklets, and of course some resistance bands. Goodness Wilson, just open your eyes, it's all right here. Stop hamming it up!"

He opened his eyes, and it was all right there in front of him, sprinkled across the floor around their antique coffee table.

He turned to Xiurong, feeling something instinctive welling up that he hadn't quite expected. His muzzle parted into a wild grin, and his tongue lolled in glee.

"Yes?" she said to him, folding her dark-furred arms.

"Thank you," he said to her, feeling a bit of saliva drip off his tongue and onto the floor. Feeling a little embarrassed, he start peeling himself back out of the riolu mentality a bit in order to apologize, but Xiurong gave him a look of firm warning rather than giggling at his faux pas. The look made him catch himself in his mental transition, and he put a stop to it and shrugged his shoulders. There would be no running away from his destiny as a fighting type today.

"Okay, I won't apologize," he said, letting his tongue dangle again after he finished speaking.

He licked his own muzzle and got down on his hands and knees and began sniffing - and visually examining - every product carefully. It smelled like a store, a place that he couldn't go right now... but that didn't much matter.

What mattered was that he had Xiurong and heavy objects!

* * *

The next several days were like no others the couple had ever spent together, both because of their new bodies and because of their relationship's progression.

It felt in many ways like a honeymoon. They both time off from work. Wilson's prior protesting aside, it wasn't that hard to manage it for his workplace: he had plenty of sick days built up, and his manager valued him more than Wilson had given himself credit for. Xiurong meanwhile did some careful (and very slowly typed) diplomacy in order to put her current editing projects on hold.

So their life became a vacation from the normal, and a time for creating a new set of norms began.

Just before dawn each morning Wilson would rise and go for a run to the shrine - Xiurong following - and admire the further progress of the recovering trees. Then they would run back and have breakfast, rest and cuddle for a while, and then the strength training would start.

On the night Xiurong brought the weights home, Wilson had managed to lift fifty kilograms in each hand, which both pokemon deemed quite a nice start for his small body. Granted, he hadn't managed consistent repetitions of that lift right out the gate, either, but after a short time of trying he had gotten into a state in which he could do it easily. His body glowed with an effervescing flow of aura, and Xiurong had watched and admired, carefully lapping at a cup of tea she had made.

Because of that, Wilson launched into the first full day of training at that same weight value, and he progressed rapidly yet methodically from there: sixty, seventy, eighty, over the course of the subsequent days.

The punching bag full of mystery materials was quite another matter. The thing was frightfully heavy, to the point that Wilson ended up needing Xiurong's help in order to lift it high enough to hang it from a sturdy beam that formed part of the doorway between the living room and an old, children's play room that neither of them had used for anything but storage since moving in.

Wilson trained hard on punching the thing, and the bag's casing material had some give to it, but trying to make the whole bag move in response to his punches was almost like trying to do the same to a wall - even if it was a wall that was suspended like a pendulum. Despite this, he found himself considerably encouraged as he developed both his technique and his raw power for delivering the blows. Seeing the progression (from it moving almost not at all, to it moving significantly) made him smile.

Wilson was the main one doing the strength training, with Xiurong only watching and coaching his movements, occasionally slipping in a mischievous suggestion like asking him to wiggle his ass for her - to which he would respond by flexing his glutes and doing just that.

Preparing adequate lunches was always a bit of a stumper, as Xiurong soon found that some kitchen utensils played nicer with her zoroark hands than others did. Sometimes she had to request the slightly more dextrous riolu's help, and they made the concession of eating more than a few frozen TV dinners before it was over, even though both of them knew this was an inferior choice for both of their healths. Ultimately, Xiurong made another very careful drive to town in which she loaded up on fresh meats, fruits, and vegetables, which she worked eagerly to prepare for them.

But during their evenings, they exercised together, following along with every goofy step-aerobics and living-room yoga video that they could dredge up, either from the Internet or from the old collections of Wilson (from past false-starts at regular aerobic exercise) and Xiurong's grandfather (who, in his autumn years, had collected a surprising number of foreign-filmed exercise videos from a variety of eastern nations - which made Wilson wonder if this had somehow contributed to Xiurong's fascination with muscular men).

Exercising together was great fun, and they would usually end their nights with some sort of rough-and-tumble play, even if that just meant wrestling each other down on the bed before sleep or sex.

They continued most of their usual intellectual discussions as well, but they kept most of the focus on exploring their bodies and on trying to make Wilson "level up," as Xiurong kept gigglingly putting it. She would sometimes add, "I'm sure that your affection rating is not the problem." The whole gimmick made Wilson blush, but he enjoyed it more than he liked to admit.

As the week wore on, Wilson did bemoan the lack of a weight bench - what was strength training after all if he couldn't bench press - but Xiurong assured him they would get him one if he still desired it a week from now, or else find some way to smuggle him into an actual gym. Zealous though the riolu was to lift as much as possible, he considered this delay financially prudent of her, and consented.

Xiurong fed Wilson better and better, and he eventually started to joke that she was fattening him up to use as a holiday turkey... but all of the food he consumed seemed to go straight to his muscles, which were increasing in tone and bulk with each passing day, at a rate that they both supposed would be far abnormal in a human body. His lean little arms swelled outward into knobby biceps; his relatively narrow shoulders put on considerable mass from the lifting and from the strongly pivoted blows he would often practice delivering to the suspended bag.

* * *

The trees around the shrine seemed healthier than ever as the two raced each other up to it again.

Since their transformations, neither had held back much in their footraces, and the riolu's small and nimble body tended to win more often than not, but their races were entertainingly close regardless. That was apparently enough consolation for Xiurong, who never complained about losing. Wilson, each time he won, got further and further into the habit of striking "silly" victory poses - silly in the sense that most people would have regarded them as pointless, yet not-so-silly in the sense that they served as yet another way for him to practice his poise in his new body. Xiurong encouraged this, both because she had compassion for her mate and because she enjoyed watching finely toned men posing anyway.

Continuing the tradition already established, the riolu did win this morning's race, and did a double backflip onto one of the shrine's benches, letting his hands blaze with aura as he glared playfully at the zoroark tailing him. Her scent on the wind always intrigued him after a workout: she panted more than sweated, but something about her odor changed nonetheless, and got sweeter and more enticing than usual.

"I think turning into a riolu is one of the best things that ever happened to me," WIlson said casually, not even feeling especially winded after the run today.

"You don't say!" the zoroark replied, laughingly.

"No, no... I don't mean because of the body! Well, I do mean because of the body, but not just the body. I feel so carefree! It's intoxicating. I don't know if I could even concentrate on programming like this if I tried!"

"Mmm." Xiurong gave him a knowing look as she sat down beside him. "Worrying you a little?"

"No... well, a little, sure. Not enough to stop me though. Normally I'd be panicking. At the risk of sounding cliche, I almost feel like I could punch financial problems in the face."

"And it would work?"

"Yeah, I feel like it would work." He giggled cutely. "Isn't that strange?"

"Not really. I feel similarly. I just don't know what it means."

"Yeah, me either. It's pretty nonsensical, if taken literally."

They paused in silence for a moment.

"So, I have a surprise for you," the zoroark eventually said.

"What's that?"

"Look behind the slab."

The riolu hopped to his feet and did so. Behind the slab were their handheld gaming systems.

"Xiurong! You brought 'em out here in advance?"

"Yes. I wanted to play with you today."

"Aww, but I can't do anything like that with these hands! You have a terrible time too!!"

"Well, let's try. This is our usual day for it."

"Fine. I won't argue with you. I'll play with my nose if I have to." Carefully cradling his handheld in both handpaws, he carried it over to their bench. "Hey, can you turn it on? I don't feel confident enough to do that while holding it."

"Sure," she said, grinning. She reached out a claw and flicked it against the switch to turn the system on.

Nothing happened.

"Don't tell me the battery's dead!" Wilson grumbled.

"No, definitely not. I checked them both before I brought them out here, and I had them plugged in all night beforehand."

"Then what in world...?"

"Leave this one here and bring me mine," Xiurong said, still fiddling curiously with the device.

Wilson left his handheld on her lap and grabbed hers as requested. She tried it, and in short order they knew it wasn't powering on either.

"How odd!" said Xiurong, mystified.

"Well, don't look at me," said Wilson. "My aura vision doesn't see much of anything from technology."

"Hmm...."

She flicked the power switches a few more times. Dead, dead, dead.

"Well, I guess we can carry them back home," said Xiurong.

"You didn't leave 'em in the rain or anything did you?"

"No! Silly."

"Mmm...." The riolu stretched his hands way over his head suddenly.

"Hm? You still a sleepy-head?"

"Oh? Ah, no. I feel... really weird."

"Weird?"

"Well, normally when I get here after our run I feel tired, but today I feel like I'm just getting more energetic... and a little distractible. I was kind of glad when I saw the games, because it would give me something to focus on, but now... I feel like I could just take off in some random direction running, and run for hours...."

Xiurong looked him over. "Zo-zo-zo... well, I see that your legs aren't the only part of you feeling energetic," she said.

"Eh?" said Wilson. Then he glanced down. Somehow he hadn't noticed this, but the tip of his penis was peeking its way out of his sheath, and sliding out further by the moment.

"How cute," said Xiurong, leaning down and sniffing it. "Does my pokeyman feel good this morning?" She started rubbing at his sheath.

"I don't... normally... ahh...."

His penis slid fully out of his sheath without much additional encouragement from her. He didn't know what to say. He felt his body getting ready for sex in a sudden surge, one which he did not normally experience in the morning ever - he supposed because he had trained his body over the years not to feel horny at work. Then again, this wasn't his usual body anymore....

The riolu groaned as the zoroark lavished affections on his swollen member. He braced himself against the bench, laying both palms flat against its back, while Xiurong dropped smoothly to her knees and began licking his shaft and his sack.

"Xiurong... is it... is it okay to be doing this here?"

"I presume whatever force surrounds this shrine doesn't mind," she said, pausing her ministrations only momentarily to say this. "It did seem to have something to do with making us into pokemon after all."

"Ahh... I hope you're right....."

"You're so cute when you're nervous. Now stop being nervous. You need to be yourself."

The riolu took her advice to heart, and let his human worries fade further away again. He did retain the courtesy to try to keep his moans quiet, not sure how far the sound would carry, but doing that was difficult and he was sure he got a little too loud at least a time or two.

He also didn't understand why he felt so needy, and it only kept getting worse, with the aura flowing through his body sparking brighter and brighter as she continued in a mixture of pawing and licking him. As the energy increased, however, his worries kept slipping further and further away.

"Riouu... rio... rio..." he moaned, feeling his shaft bulge to its maximum thickness and his knot starting to inflate... except....

Except it didn't. Nothing happened. His knot didn't swell. He felt something flowing into his shaft, but apparently it wasn't blood. Instead, the area around his knot pulsed with the same blue energy that normally engulfed his hands. Then he started to feel mentally hazy.

"X-Xiurong... something's happening. Feel weird."

"Mmm!" she replied gleefully, continuing to lick and to observe the shinings of his aura.

"Ru-rio.... ruuuu!" he grunted, his voice deepening further than normal, "Hnn!!"

At that exact moment a flash of light erupted from all over Wilson's body. The zoroark could only close her eyes in surprise, but kept her muzzle tightly wrapped around his cock.

"RRAAAAA!!" Wilson screamed as the white light gave way to rapid pulses of blue aura. Then, in a period of only a several seconds, his body changed. He grew almost a third taller; his bodily proportions thickened and grew more masculine; his breastbone ached and then burst forth with a powerfully hard steel spike. His ears perked and grew longer; his muzzle grew shapelier and more defined. The flow of aura all over his body shimmered and pulsed in wave after wave of outflowing energy. Meanwhile, the swollen member in Xiurong's muzzle got that much bigger....

The zoroark opened her eyes again and gazed at her lover. His body had looked toned before, but now the effects of his training-thus-far seemed even more sharply amplified. His belly had grooved itself into a sleek six-pack; his thighs were much larger than before and made her fancy that they could compete with an ostrich. The strength that had already been visible in his shoulders and arms now expressed itself in a prodigious increase in the size of the muscles in question.

Staring mesmerized at the way his biceps and triceps slithered and surged beneath his skin with every slight movement - and knowing with great certainty that this still wasn't the peak of his possible strength - Xiurong found herself starting to take more seriously the idea that he could punch financial challenges in the face. Sure, it was impossible, but all of this was impossible. What did she know?

"You seem to be forgetting to keep licking," said the studly new lucario.

The zoroark hurried to close her maw around the cock again, and continued licking, but he shook his head.

"Hmnn?" Xiurong murmured.

"Stand up," said Wilson.

The zoroark hesitated in a way that made it evident she was blushing. "O-okay." She rose, and the lucario picked her up with both hands as if she were no heavier than a display mannequin at a store. The zoroark cried out in surprise: "Zor-ar!!"

"My turn to guide the fun," he said simply as he carried her off among the trees past the edge of the shrine. Finding a tree that looked sturdy and had a broad trunk, he shoved her against it, aligning his erection with her nether-lips in short order.

"Kiss me, Xiurong," he told her as he finished aligning himself. She obeyed, turning her muzzle sideways and beginning to lick at, and into, his own. Their canine lick-kissing intensified as the lucario thrusted to penetrate, the zoroark's lickings punctuated by brief gasps each time he pressed deeper into her.

"Xiurong the zoroark, my sweet treasure," he said to her, kissing all the more deeply.

Xiurong found herself speechless for a change. Out of the corners of her eyes she could see his strong shoulders flexing as his arms reached out and gripped her, holding her in place there, pinning him to the trunk of that tree, letting her know he was properly in control for a change. She wriggled against his holds for a few brief, squirming moments, but soon submitted fully, spreading her dark-furred legs wide for him and bending slightly at the knees to better match his height. His strong arms and chest kept her pinned at the shoulders, and she reached her left hand around the tree trunk for support while her right felt its way around to grab at the beautiful blue hunk's ass and tail.

With deeply ignited passion, the zoroark kissed and squeezed, countering the lucario's beefy assault with strength and encouragement of her own. Her hot walls clenched damply around him, lubricating his shaft more and more as his thrusts quickened. To her surprise, she found him changing the positions of his hands, soon grabbing under her buttocks similarly to how she was gripping at his... and then he bent his knees slightly and lifted.

In a surprisingly smooth motion, Xiurong found herself off the ground, with her body soon squished against the tree trunk again, this time supported by Wilson's strong, spread thighs, while while her sensitive feetpaws paddled against the air along either side of her love. The lucario flexed and strained to keep her weight supported, but keep it supported he did, his thighs and biceps dancing a dance of bulgings and relaxings as he varied the strength of his hold between thrusts.

It was too much for Xiurong, who cried out loudly, "ZOROARK!" as his shaft hilted within her time and again. Wilson licked at her fluffy mane and did not shush her.

The zoroark found her lifted hands unable to comfortably grab his butt any longer, so she felt her way up his strong back instead, feeling the solidity of his frame and the sculpting of his trapezius muscles, which bobbed up and down in shallow waves as his powerful thrusts continued. Her cries only got louder, and still he did nothing to silence her, and then over the course of several intense seconds she felt his knot swelling out....

"RU-KARIO!!" he exclaimed with authority as his ejaculatory cycle began. He licked at her chest, digging into her fur and lick-nuzzling at the nipples hidden beneath as his semen flowed bountifully into her. He reveled in the strong sensations of his kegels dutifully spurting it out, even the muscles of his groin having been strengthened further by his evolutionary change.

"Gonna be here for a while," he said to her with a pleasure-dazed grin, while he was still actively squirting in her.

"Fuck ever leaving," she said gleefully, her walls rhythmically clenching around him and taking his seed with merry agreement. "Mmm... Wilson...."

"Xiurong...."

He kissed below her muzzle with many tender lickings, the flow of aura around his body pulsing in time with his heart.

* * *

The two succumbed to a sumptuous afterglow, lying there among the trees and napping against each other for well over an hour.

Despite Xiurong's earlier assertions, the two did eventually leave the shrine - after taking time to pay their respects and express thanks for the chance to be here together today.

The trip back down the trail passed mostly in silence, with the two lovingly holding each other's handpaws as they walked, but Wilson had at least one thought to offer as they approached their house again: "You know, this really is teaching me a lot."

"Oh?" said the Zoroark, smiling at him.

"Yes. About how to live as a human, when I'm eventually human again."

"You think we will be?"

"Well, probably. Who knows, but, I think I see my problems a bit better now."

"That's good, now that you're a hottie hunk," she teased, groping at his abs. "Maybe that was the point of this endeavor all along."

"What, for me to become a hottie hunk?"

The zoroark laughed out loud. "No!! Nooo!"

The lucario grinned, blushed, and nodded. "I know what you meant... though, it's still so strange... and so obvious when I think about it all now."

"How do you mean?"

"Ah, well, it's like... you know, most people are caught up in a corporate race to the top, right?"

"Mmhm."

"But they tend to ruin their bodies in the process."

"Zoroar," she agreed.

"So, um, from now on, I'm going to take time to be sure to train my body for fitness too."

Xiurong chuckled. "Oh? So, uh... are you going to be the very best?"

"Like no one ever was!" said Wilson, who couldn't help cracking up and laughing now.

"We are both such nerds," admitted Xiurong.

"Wouldn't have it any other way, love. Even if I'm the strongest lucario ever someday... or the strongest human... I'll always be your little pokemon nerd."

The zoroark sighed in pleasure. "That's good to hear. And even if you're not the strongest of either, you're still mine. Don't you forget that either."

"I won't." He squeezed her paw tighter.

Soon afterward, the back door to their house swung open at Wilson's tugging, and he gentlemanly allowed Xiurong to pass in ahead of him.

* * *

The next hours passed in togetherness and quiet contemplation, with their morning giving way to a dark and overcast afternoon.

With neither of them feeling motivated to cook a big lunch after the "meal" they had just shared at the shrine, they instead attempted a haphazard snack of cheese and crackers. The lucario's hands worked even better than his unevolved form's had for the dextrous parts of the task, so he handled assembling the sandwiches while Xiurong used the cheese slicer. While eating, they both got crumbs all over their fur and spent the next half an hour thereafter playfully chatting and cleaning each other.

Before long, though, their thoughts turned to figuring out what else they could do with Wilson's sexy hunk of a form.

The newly evolved lucario surveyed the exercise equipment and found it startlingly inadequate. His arm strength had increased so much that he could displace the heavy punching bag as if it were nothing of substance.

"It's almost entirely full of concrete block rubble," Xiurong finally revealed. "How much of a punch are you packing now!?"

The lucario responded by striking a pose and flexing both of his arms downward for her. She gulped and nearly swooned as she saw the flesh bulge outward.

After giving the bag several minutes of experimental beating, and discovering that he had indeed surpassed it in about every way imaginable, he tried the hand weights. They were even less of a challenge.

Having tried these things with the zoroark watching, Wilson slinked over to Xiurong and kissed her on the nose.

"Well, I guess there's only one thing left for us to do," he said seductively.

"See how hard we can make you breathe doing hyperactive aerobics videos?" she offered.

The lucario snorted a laugh and kissed her nose again. "Nope! Homemade bench-press time!" he declared.

An awkward beat passed between them. Xiurong stopped acting quite so cuddly and blinked.

"Whaaat?" said the zoroark. "We just had wonderful sex and proved you've outgrown the training bag, and you're flexing and acting sexy at me and still you're not satisfied enough with showing off the raw might of your body?"

"Oh, I am satisfied," said the lucario with a grin, "but I see no reason not to make you even more satisfied."

"W-what's that supposed to mean... HEY!!"

The exclamation came from Wilson grabbing her on the ass with both hands, giving her a squeeze, and then picking her up with no visible difficulty at all. Cradling her in his arms like a gallant husband carrying his bride across the threshold, he took her to the living room sofa and sat her down on it.

"You wait right there," he said, and padded his way into the kitchen.

Hearing the sound of furniture getting moved around, Xiurong looked over her shoulder after him. "So... what are you doing?"

The lucario had been pulling a pair of chairs out from the kitchen table. Taking one in each arm and grabbing it near the base of the back - a point without terribly good leverage - he centered his legs beneath him, crouched, and rose to his feet again, flexing and gripping as he did so, the chairs rising from the floor in a single smooth and united motion.

"These things are sturdy right?" he asked of the tall wooden antiques while his biceps danced in front of Xiurong's eyes.

"Uhhmm, ye-es," she admitted. "I once saw grandpa strike one of them in anger. It didn't break. I was surprised."

"Yeah, they don't make chairs out of real materials anymore," Wilson muttered as he carried the load into the living room, moving about as fast coming back as he had going in.

"Fuck... your arms," Xiurong swore as she looked back.

"Heh, you like them?" said Wilson, taking a glance at one of his bulging guns.

"It's like you took steroids for years....."

"You mean without any of the negative side effects?"

He plopped the chairs down on an area of the living room floor between the house's front door and the entrance to the kitchen - a spot with plenty of room. Then he arranged the chairs so that they were slightly more than the width of his own shoulders apart.

"Good. Good. Now then, my dear zoroark....."

Xiurong looked up at him as he approached, his chest spike glistening in the light of their living room's ceiling lamp. His expression was so... physically romantic... so unlike the Wilson she used to know. She hated to admit it, but she could get used to this... very used to it.

Reaching down, Wilson grabbed around her butt and the small of her back again, nudging her to rise slightly to allow him a better grip. Then he hoisted her up once more, licking tenderly at the side of her muzzle as he carried her, and placed her bodily down on the pair of chairs. He laid her across them like a weight bar.

Now Xiurong giggled. "You're going to bench-press me? I'm not that heavy!" Playfully she added, "You calling me a fat zoroark now, are you?"

Wilson smirked. "Not at all, my love." Then he went over to the pile of assorted weights on the floor. "You're strong like this too, right? Foolish question I know - I've experienced how firm your own muscles are now, after all...."

"Yeeees?" murmured Xiurong warily, eyeing the pile of assorted weights that Wilson was now placing on the coffee table for sorting.

"Well, work with me, and I think we'll have a nice training setup."

Xiurong gulped, starting to understand what he meant.

Within a few minutes the lucario had sorted all of the weights into pairs based on their mass, and had attached the ones that he could in logical pairs on single-hand bars. Carefully and strategically, he began to balance these across various places on Xiurong's body, trying to keep them over the chairs when possible, as he didn't want to put needless strain on her spine. This arrangement included a bar for each of her meaty thighs, a pair of barless light weights on her smooth belly, and two more barless weights to perch atop her chest along each of her shoulders.

"Feeling okay?" said the lucario as he surveyed his handiwork.

"My heart is pounding from nerves, but I think I am okay."

"Stop with the nervousness," said the lucario with a laugh. "You were making fun of me before - now this is how it is?"

"N-no, it's not like that," insisted the zoroark, blushing, "but I don't want any of the weights falling on you. I just don't know how well balanced this is."

"They aren't uncomfortable to have on you?"

"N-not that much, no. I could probably hold these weights fine for a long time. But this feels silly."

"It's not," he said, and kissed her. The kiss seemed to help calm her, and she nodded and assented, on one condition.

"At least do something to keep the weights on me better?"

This took several more minutes to accommodate, most of which elapsed while Wilson ran around looking for something good to use as a tie for such heavy materials. He ended up settling for some oily old old rope that had been left among some of Xiurong's grandfather's fishing supplies. That found, he returned and quickly secured each of the weights around Xiurong's limbs. She seemed to have adjusted well to lying beneath the mass.

"Now don't tell me you're into light bondage and never told me," Wilson teased.

"N-no!" she grumbled, but he doubted her sincerity. "Goodness sake, you're already making me far too horny with all of this!! Just lift me already!"

Laughing uproariously, Wilson dropped onto the floor and slipped on his back underneath her, the lip of his tongue lolling out tauntingly as he craned his head to glance up at her panting torso and near-orgasmic facial expression.

"Wow, this is making you hotter than I even expected."

"It's embarrassing!" the zoroark roared.

"No need for embarrassment here." He let the blue energies flow around his hands and rubbed at her exposed butt and lower back. He heard her panting deepen. Reaching around, he felt her getting wet between her legs again.

"Feels good?" he asked.

"LIFT!!" she commanded.

The lucario obediently picked up his beloved, carefully and precisely applying pressure so as not to damage or discomfort her. His big muscles pumped and surged in a slow, steady progression as he made his weighted-down lover rise and lower, rise and lower.

"It's not fair, I can't see you that well!" the zoroark whined, flailing her neck a little as she tried to get a better view.

Wilson paused his efforts, left her there on the chairs, and went to one of the bedrooms. He returned carrying a full-body stand-mirror that had belonged to Xiurong's grandmother. He placed it in a location past Xiurong's head that would give her a good view of his lifting, and then he crawled back beneath her. The lifting continued.

"Ohhh!" she moaned. "What're you doing to me, what is this!"

"Pushing all your buttons exactly how you want them pushed, apparently," he said with a teasing tone. "Such a leaky woman." In a break between a set of reps he pressed a furred finger into her nethers, and she cried out.

"Is this exercise or is it sex!?" she demanded.

"I suppose I wanted exercise, but you do seem to be getting more out of it." His voice was seductive, and he lifted her for another round of twenty reps.

"Why is this so hot to me!?" she shouted.

"...Because your really conservative family taught you to be an object for male attention? I dunno." He kept lifting, his breathing deepening as the repetitions finally started to tax his vigor a little.

"I thought I had worked past all of that," she whined. "I didn't want this... I wanted to see you all muscly, but I didn't... I never asked for... I...."

She seemed like she was starting to cry, but any tears seemed to be tears of joy. The lucario kept lifting, feeling his chest and shoulders developing small burning sensations. Keeping his breathing steady, he kept going for the rest of the set, giving his arms a moment to relax after. A cool surge of aura swept through his body as he breathed, and he felt relief in short order.

The lucario scratched the small of the zoroark's back. "You should relax and enjoy," he said. "This is your chance to really be yourself with me... as much as it is my chance to really be myself with you."

He lifted her more and felt the leaky scent of her nethers slowly chipping away at his serious exercise goals. While he continued bench-pressing her, his breathing only deepened further, and more and more of her scent kept coming in, which triggered even more reactions in his body. Slowly but surely the pink tip of his member found its way out of its plump sheath, and then it throbbed in time with the beat of his heart, growing and pushing its way out into the open. Xiurong watching heatedly in the mirror as it did.

Soon the zoroark's right handpaw found its way around the weights and into her nethers. As she rose and lowered at her lover's lifting, she pressed in against her lips and clit with repeated and desperate need. Crying out Wilson's name at first, her moans soon descended into a much more savage chanting of "Zo-zoro-zor-zor..." until at last they peaked in an, "Aaaaaarrk!"

The scent of Xiurong's need during all of this got the lucario's shaft leaking pre. He couldn't stop lifting her now, though; not until he was truly tired, and he didn't feel deeply challenged enough yet, even though he had already lost count on how many sets of reps he had performed. While Xiurong panted above him, he chanced a glance at his own shaft between sets, and grinned. He loved the way the sensitive furry balls rose up tight against its big base....

Xiurong reached down and stroked at his base and his balls, causing his athletic breathing to get punctuated by several sharp inhalations. He pressed on regardless, but he felt strange... the reps seemed to be getting easier and easier, not more painful. A glance at his arms told him why: his biceps were growing, and so, he suspected, were the muscles of his shoulders and upper back.

Thicker and thicker of body he became as he lifted his love, seeing her more and more as simply his "wife" as the process went along. The pleasure in his swelling shaft could not distract him from this dutiful workout, but the energy pulsing through his body from the stimulation inspired him to new heights of strength.

Before he knew it, he felt the muscles in his loins clenching and spasming. He felt the motions of Xiurong's paw accelerate, and with a soft, understated groan of "Ruuu..." he ejaculated gloriously, his knot bulging out and getting gripped and teased by her cum-soaked hand. That stimulation did not last long, as Xiurong soon pulled her paw up to her own mouth, greedily and erotically licking at the juices she had extracted from her increasingly buff lover.

"Your body is so perfect," she cried out to him. "Wilson, please... keep lifting me, lift me as long as you want...."

...And lift her he did. More and more his muscles swelled, the throbbing after-flows of his canine ejaculation continuing to spurt out onto her hand as she played with him. The energies between and around them pulsed in an ecstatic dance of love and union.

Close to half an hour more of this interaction continued between them from there, with Xiurong slowly working at his sensitive shaft while he struggled to hold his focus as an exhaustion (not physical so much as mental) overtook him.

Finally, after two more orgasms for Xiurong and one more for Wilson - and with an ogling stare from Xiurong at the rumbling, swelling growth of his body for the entire time - the lucario opened his mouth again to speak:

"I think I'm ready for a nap again, Xiurong," he said, letting her come to rest on the chairs again.

"Think I've died and gone somewhere wonderful," she murmured, her mind smashed from the repeated peaks of pleasure.

"Mmmmmm...."

Mustering just enough energy to get up and remove the weights from his lover's body, and to walk around for a few minutes and relax his muscles for a cool-down, the lucario soon found himself stretching and yawning. He caught sight of himself in the mirror... he looked close to the levels of ripped seen on the males in so much of the art that Xiurong preferred... yet he looked more natural than they often did, his chest a smooth barrel of lucario fluff and powerful meat beneath... his arms a pair of mighty tools, smooth and sinuous and swollen with power.

Even his legs had enlarged somewhat, though not to the same degree, and his strength felt a little lopsided. He grinned. There would yet be time for training that.

Carrying the already-catnapping Xiurong in his massive arms, he took her away to her bedroom, to the large bed that tonight they would both share... and share with a greater commitment than ever before.

Placing her on the bed in the low evening light of the room made him smile. He looked at her there, her furry body exquisite in its darkness. He felt as if their interactions today had pierced the veil of her dark mystique... and had cut past his own constant "maybe" reactions as well, replacing them with what he supposed he would think of as a "steel-strength" willingness to commit.

Sighing in peace and happiness, he plopped down on the bed beside of her. Within mere minutes he had nearly fallen asleep... but then a light from the nightstand distracted him.

He opened his eyes. Two lights, it turned out: the lights of the screens of their handhelds.

He picked up one and looked at it. The screen read, in large block letters: "PRESS START TO REVERT."

Sneering, he put the handheld down, and he looked at the other one as well: same screen and same message. Neither system's power button was toggled on, although both were plugged into their chargers.

"You know what," he said quietly. "You know what... let's just save that for when we wake up. I don't want this to be game over just yet."

With that, he turned away from the lights and wrapped his large arms around his mate, kissing at her neck and falling into a deep and peaceful sleep at her side.

Story (C) 2013 dolphinsanity. The Pokemon or Pocket Monsters franchise belongs to Nintendo.