FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

As far as Firr was concerned, the road was for the birds...and it proved an ironic thing, as he was taking to the skies for his latest convention related journey.

Much as it would have been more exciting for him to literally be flying to a convention on the back of a giant bird or some other winged predator, the realms of fantasy in which he lived only reached so far, and the modern marvel of a plane was the only way that he was getting off the ground for an extended period of time.

He knew the kind of pressure that he'd feel, once he was finally sucked into the back of his seat; he was entirely familiar with the amount of thrust required to get a plane off the ground, and as much as he was hating the process of getting through the TSA pre-check line, his body was all atingle at the idea of hearing the engines fires up.

"Seat 12F," the gate attendant greeted him, repeating the information on his ticket. "Have a great flight!"

It was a common and friendly enough greeting, and Firr scarcely had time to waste with reading in the first place; if he hadn't been walking through the crowded corridors of an airport, he never would have bothered with checking his ticket in the first place.

His only concern while he was on the ground was making sure that he went to the right gate, and between the modern luxuries of a ticket and a travel app on his smartphone, he wasn't going to mess that up.

He was more likely to drag his carry-on over the slack of his own tail...and where skunks had some of the longest tails out there, he'd gotten smarter about letting that slack drag behind him when he was boarding a plane.

"There's always one person who does it," he muttered, keeping his voice just low enough that no one in front of him or behind him in line would pry at what he meant...but he was sure that he'd see someone tumbling down the bridge, as everyone pulled their luggage along behind them, ignorant of their swishing tails. "Who's gonna be the lucky customer that trips and holds up the line, today?"

He already felt like he should have bought a lottery ticket, based on how well his day was going: he arrived to the airport a few minutes early, he had just enough time to grab a small snack on the other side of a security checkpoint, and he was able to book the flight that would get him in right on time to check in at the hotel, without having to putz around the lobby for several hours with no place to relax.

The lottery ticket was almost a forgone conclusion when he reached the end of the bridge without incident, finding that everyone else was mindful of their tails, that day.

"...Huh. Guess there is a first time for everything," he whispered again, adjusting the bill of his cap and putting on a smile to match its subtle curve. "If we make it into the air without having to wait in a taxi line, I swear I'm buying a Powerball ticket as soon as we land."

There was no one to hold him to his word on that matter, but Firr could just imagine how hilarious of a story that would be: to be the skunk who decided to buy a lottery ticket right before the convention, only to have it hit as a winner before he arrived.

He could already hear the sobbing in the crowd, the masses moved by his generosity when he donated a portion of those winnings to the convention charity; that part, he actually did wish would come true.

"Nine...ten...eleven...twelve F," he counted off the rows as he walked toward the middle of the modest plane. He'd gotten especially lucky with his seating assignment, finding that window seats in an exit row were becoming a hot commodity again on the other side of the pandemic. "Huh...no one else in the row yet? Seriously?"

For the first time in far too long, everything was coming up Firr. Much luck as he was having on the way to his seat, he would have been perfectly fine with the plane needing to taxi for a while, just so he could revel in the fortunate moment...but he didn't want to take an inch of good luck and stretch it into a mile of bad road.

He'd stop with the purchase of the lottery ticket when he arrived, but his mind couldn't help wandering past that. This was the kind of day that someone would find a bonus onion ring in their order of fries from their favorite restaurant...the kind when you'd find an extra chicken nugget in your usual order of ten.

It was the sort of good fortune that Firr was glad to be able to share with others: he wasn't the only one to benefit, after all, when the plane was loaded in record time and the overhead bins all closed without incident.

He was just another face in the crowd of lucky folks that felt the plane backing away from the gate mere minutes later, each one of them making up for some of the time they were going to lose in the air.

"Good morning, folks. This is your captain speaking...uh...looks like we've got clear skies all the way to Pillhockey...I mean...Milwaukee...uhm...winds coming in out of the northwest up there about five miles an hour...sun is shining...weather is a pleasant 65 degrees...we'll uh...have more information for you when we land. Sit back and relax for takeoff."

The words were lost on most of the passengers, their headphones already popped in and blaring their favorite tracks in a vain attempt to drown out the impressive roar of the firing engines.

Firr, however, was listening to the lovely forecast, forgiving the pilot for his lack of public speaking skills and focusing on the bulk of the message: he'd step off the plane to balmy, soothing weather in a place that he always loved to visit, and then, it was just a short cab ride over to the hotel to attend one of his favorite conferences.

It really should have been that easy, and Firr had no doubt in his mind that it would be, given how quickly the airplane made it through the brief taxi line. The familiar bumping and bouncing of running over the seams in the tarmac gave way to a rather sudden spin, and Firr leaned into the window as the plane turned on point, sitting at the far end of the runway.

Streaks of dark, gray soot and burned rubbed coated the large, thick stripes of white below the plane; new streaks were being added as the pilot chimed in with a brief "Flight attendants prepare for takeoff."

It was all going as seamlessly as it should have, thanks to the expectations of modern air travel, but Firr wasn't taking all of his good fortune for granted, even when the plane eased forward and the engines kicked over. The familiar whiiiiiir of twin jets spinning at a rapid pace drowned out all the other noise around him, and then came the best part...

...The suction he'd been waiting for pushed him flat into his seat back, his arms settled on the rests, and Firr grinned wide as his still empty row was subjected to the kind of force that frightened some people.

He loved it, finding a certain comfort in having his body so tightly pressed into the seat as the nose of the airplane came up and off the ground, and his feet planted against the floor, adjusting to the rapid change in altitude.

"Nothing like being glued to your seat," Firr said, his head leaning into the seat back as the plane climbed up rapidly, pushing through the first few thousand feet of the climb in quick and easy fashion. "I think I could honestly fall asleep like this..."

There were plenty of people who had fallen asleep on the plane already, but Firr was torn between the excitement of takeoff; the thrill of being sucked into his chair...and the desire to get some much-needed shut eye during the trip.

He was going to be exhausted before the coming weekend was over. It was possible that the flight ahead of him was going to be the best day of sleep that he'd find in the days to come, and the more he considered his options, knowing there'd be a line for the restroom as soon as they reached cruising altitude, he waited against the seat, expecting the pressure of takeoff to bleed away with the end of the climb.

The usual bing-boong was comforting to Firr. He'd heard that sound so many times that he rarely waited for the pilot to declare that they were actually at cruising altitude before he pulled the latch from his seat belt and hopped up to stretch his legs for a moment, but this time, he opted against it.

Part of that was due to successfully planning out his day, and not needing to make a run for the lavatory in the first place.

The other part of that was the source of a certain discomfort...one that Firr had never known on an airplane before.

"Huh...didn't think it was that humid outside," he whispered, feeling the somewhat familiar, tactile response of flesh grabbing onto a pleather surface. "Thank goodness it'll be a little cooler out when we get up to Wisconsin."

He pulled up again, expecting his wrist to peel away from the arm rest...only to remember that his skin was hiding under a thick, plush layer of fur; it wasn't humidity that was sticking him to the seat in the first place.

Pulling all the same, Firr determined that he must have set his fur down in some kind of stain: any number of spilled toppings or condiments would have done the trick, and if it was honey, he wouldn't be able to budge himself away from the seat until a stewardess was able to come and bring him some water.

"...That's all it is. Gotta be it."

That he felt the need to test his other arm almost felt like admitting that he'd lost his mind.

Firr didn't genuinely believe that he was going to have any trouble prying his right arm from the other armrest, and the likelihood that both cushions would have been coated in some kind of sticky substance felt like it should have been out of the question.

"Oh, come on."

To feel his right arm struggling against the cushion...to feel his fingertips effectively glued to the rounded end, barely able to tremble where they rested...was the most uncomfortable he'd ever been on a flight before.

"Great. Just great. Can't even get my finger to the stupid call button..."

There was no longer a proper, upward force from the airplane itself to keep Firr glued to his seat back, but at that point, he wasn't questioning the logic of why it felt like he was sinking further and further into his own seat.

He was just trying to figure out how to break free from it, as the pressure of a seat belt tightened further and further against his lap, adhering his backside into the cheapened pleather beneath him.

All the while, he didn't feel forced pressure, but the slowest, sinking decline that he could possibly imagine...as if he was molasses being poured through a strainer.

"I don't suppose it'd be the weirdest thing ever if I just started yelling about how I was melting into the seat," he thought aloud, quietly hoping that someone might actually hear what he'd said. "I'm sure they hear crazier things than that on a daily basis!"

His voice was picking up with every word, but that shift in volume wasn't entirely conscious.

Genuine panic was setting in, and his voice was getting louder and louder still as he tried to bounce in his seat, hoping that his writhing, thumping approach would be enough to get him out of the seat.

His legs strained, his arms pulled up and away with all their might, and his back arched...and he accomplished little more than giving himself a headrush and a brief spell of nausea, as every muscle fired at once to no avail.

"And this...is when my b-best day ever...becomes a total nightmare," he said, panting efforts turning the simplest of statements into a proper struggle. "Why the hell can't I b-budge free of this stupid seat?!"

A last ditch effort of pushing down with the bulk of his tail only caused the long, pliable appendage to adhere to the seatback, as well: he was completely stuck in place, so much that breathing felt like it was becoming a chore, with his back and shoulders stuck in such a firm posture.

He never thought he'd see the day that he actually wanted the masks to drop from the ceiling above him, knowing that they'd never fall in comfortable conditions, but struggling to draw a full breath was motivating him to reach up and try to punch the ceiling all the same.

He couldn't , of course...but his luck took a turn back for the better as let out a long, drawn sigh...and noticed that he could breathe a little easier when he vented those frustrations.

"That's kinda weird, isn't it?"

There was no one around to answer him, and despite his earlier increase in decibels, no one was paying him any attention.

The fact that the exit row was empty was starting to feel like an inside joke: a prank that everyone else on the plane was in on, despite their being a collection of total strangers.

Firr didn't think the joke was so funny, but being able to breathe clearly again was enough to keep him from having another outburst.

"Almost like I'm calming down because I couldn't get a breath," he continued. "Did I black out? Is this all some kind of messed up fever dream?"

He put the theory to the test, and with all the effort he could muster, he tilted his head back and inhaled hard, as though he was about to yell at the top of his lungs.

The back of his head touched to the seat, and once more, he found another part of his body stuck in place, but the gap in his lips stretched wider than he ever fathomed it could, as if the bones in his muzzle elongated at the peak of that breath.

If he hadn't been so thoroughly stuck to the seatback, he might have noticed the bones in his lower mandible becoming eerily pliable...he might have been able to tell that something was aiding him in taking a fuller, more satisfying breath, even without the aid of extra oxygen from the masks; they'd never dropped in the first place.

Definitely still wide awake, Firr thought, preferring to save his breath, at the risk of everything becoming difficult, yet again. But I really can't move...

He wasn't paralyzed: he could feel his nerves firing, commanding his fingertips to budge from the edge of his seat, ordering his arms to lift from the rests.

The effort was there, and the struggle was genuine, but something was still keeping him in place, even beyond the odd, sticky sensation of the seat enveloping his body.

Something more was there, keeping him against the seat; an internal weight that seemed to be natural, but it wasn't something that Firr was familiar with. The skunk took care enough of himself, but when he eased up on the effort and allowed his arm to relax, there was a shift of mass within his wrist that felt like it was going to tear the armrest right from the middle of the aisle.

He couldn't imagine anything about his physiology changing so rapidly, nor so dramatically , but he could see the cushion warping around the underside of his arm as flesh and skin took on the properties of someone much more durable than an ordinary skunk.

What did I have for breakfast, again?

It seemed a random thought, but in his world, Firr was used to having to watch what he ate: it wouldn't have been the first time that he'd heard of someone having a terrible reaction from eating or drinking something unusual, and though allergies had come to mind, there were greater concerns than breaking out in hives.

He didn't think it was allergies that had forced his skin to feel strange...and hives didn't have such a smooth and slippery texture.

Guess there's worse things in the world than having a shimmering complexion, the skunk thought. But the fact that I can tell how slick my skin's becoming...even through my fur...that's probably not good.

He still couldn't lift his other arm to reach across the seat and inspect himself, but the plane was at just the right altitude for the mid-morning sun to shine through the open window beside him, and the dark, black fluff of his fur should have been keen to absorb those rays.

The warmth lingered, but the beams of golden light bounced away from his arm, flooding the exit row and narrowly missing the sleeping faces of the other passengers.

"Gives a new meaning to squeaky clean," Firr groaned, trying to rationalize how his fur could have been so reflective that light would bend around it. "Looks so stiff , though...that's...t-that's still my fur, right? I'm not seeing things?"

There was a certain degree of fluff to his fur, normally, but that volume was matting down to his arms, as if he was standing under the familiar comforts of a showerhead.

What was unfamiliar was a sensation more like candle wax, keeping his fur matted to his flesh and melting it into his skin, even after the sensation faded.

One more time, he tried to budge his arm from the armrest, and that time, the slick material that encompassed his flesh allowed him to budge away, but his arm had become to stiff that he couldn't crook it back into a straight, elongated posture: it was stuck at a slight bend, and attempting to wave it revealed just a little bit of pliability...

...A pliability that eerily mimicked the wing of the plane he was sitting on, as the wind forced it to bounce and sway in the breeze.

"Okay, don't freak out... don't freak out," he reiterated, feeling the wobble spread all the way through his shoulder and into his chest. The vest across his torso rippled as the new texture continued to encompass his fur, matting it down in wide swaths at a time and revealing that his fur wasn't going to change colors at all; the natural patterns of a skunk would make for a very unique livery. "This is normal. Totally normal! People just stiffen up in their seats and...watch their arms...become wings...all the time...yeah. Normal."

He was tripping over his words for the labored breathing before, but as he tried to talk himself through the act, he felt a strange coating upon his teeth: at first, it was little different than getting a fluoride treatment at the dentist, but rather than finding a taste of artificial fruit feeling the gently bursting bubbles of a cleaning foam, he was treated to the awful, unique flavor of liquid aluminum.

As lucky as he'd been before that, he was hoping to at leave receive a silver tongue for his troubles, but the unusual coating around his teeth would be among the least of his concerns, when his body stiffened up again.

"Ahhh...this is your, uh...captain speaking...we'll be coming down into Milwaukee in about half an hour, so we're beginning our final, uh...descent...weather still looks, uh...pretty gorgeous...should be a perfect day to head outside and get some sunshine...uh...yeah."

The delightfully awkward pilot wasn't doing enough to clear the air for Firr, who couldn't shake the feeling of stiffness about his day, literally or figuratively.

His other arm had come free, but it moved with such an awkward and hefty weight that he couldn't maneuver his way onto his feet...and those feet were coming closer and closer to his torso, though he scarcely realized it.

There was too much going on for him to keep up with all of it, and it might have been a blessing to avoid seeing the gaps in his toes fill in with a thick, dark flesh, the webbing binding his lower digits together in what looked like a wide, flat and otherwise useless pair of limbs.

Their use became a bit more evident as everything started to curl upon itself, the bones in the heel shifting into something that was still thick and durable, but far more flexible : the subtle gaps left behind in the newly formed webbing maintained a certain texture, as well, until the toes were completely curled back to the heel, formed in a neat, perfect circle.

He wasn't sure how he was going to depart the plane when it finally landed, but he had all he needed to take off again, when it was his turn.

"Ooooh, that's uncomfortable," he muttered, though speaking caused the most unpleasant clang of his teeth when they settled back against each other. "Worst cramp I've ever had in my toes... really should have gotten up and gone f-for a walk..."

The sensation was terrible, but it wasn't going anywhere: like an itch that couldn't be reached, he was stuck with that dull, stiff cramping in his newly formed wheels, and he didn't dare to try and bounce up from his seat to ask a stewardess for help, anymore.

Despite his panic and continued frustration, no one around him was paying his plight any mind, to the point that it felt like everyone had to know what was happening to him...and that they simply didn't care, or couldn't be bothered to ask.

Gotta love the manners on these other passengers, he thought. Do they really not see the way that my seat is buckling underneath me?

He would have yelled out, hoping that his final cry might be enough to get someone to pay attention...but the weight of his aluminum-coated enamel was becoming too much for him to work around.

The coating that he hadn't recognized upon his body was a thin, lightweight layer of steel, and it was moving up his already stiffened neck and capturing the underside of his elongated muzzle, forcing it to take less of the square, stout shape that the skunk was used to.

Something a little sharper was forming at the peak of his nose, and the little bit of black flesh there was spilling over his lips and spreading down to his chin, leaving a pattern of color that looked a little unusual on a typical skunk.

On the nose of a plane, however, that conical pattern would have been right at home.

If I could just touch the end of my nose...it almost feels like a button, now. Maybe pushing it would put a stop to all of this?

Slats were forming along his torso, revealing the compartments that his wheels would fold up and into when he was finally departed from the runway. The ignorable weight of his favorite vest was still flittering about at his efforts, but the darker, black fur that ran along his back was clinging to the fabric of the vest, revealing that even his outfit wasn't free from the influence of whatever had caused such a diabolical change.

"Folks, we uh...we're gonna...uh...hit a little turbulence on the way into Milwaukee, so uh...yeah...masks may deploy...hope you were listening to uh...to the safety briefing at the start of the flight."

The plane around Firr barely shifted, and his eyes darted up, seeing that his mask, and only his mask, dropped from the compartment in the ceiling above.

His panicked cries, once completely ignored, felt like a waste of effort when a stewardess rushed to his aisle and grabbed the bag and the cone, affixing the end over what was left of his lips.

"There you are, sir...just breathe in and out slowly. Even if the mask doesn't inflate, oxygen is still flowing to you. We're gonna be just** fine**."

The bag was the final piece of the puzzle; Firr couldn't have known it, but he was already supposed to be a fully formed plane by the time he reached Milwaukee.

The crew couldn't take any further chances.

That's no oxygen, he thought. It's almost like...new car smell...the hell is this stuff, anyway?

At the very end of his muzzle, a canonical shape had already formed, but the end of the bag was encompassed by the crawling, oozing steel that had wrapped over the rest of his body. The substance cut right through the tube on the end of the bag, separating the nose cone from the rest of the apparatus, before doubling back toward the last part of his body that was truly mustelid.

Eyes of comforting blue wouldn't have looked the part when they were shrunk down to panicked dots in twin seas of white, but those figurative windows to the world took on a literal spin as the crawling metal splashed back toward Firr's expression. Another deep breath in, and the pliable coating roamed over the top of his skull, flattening his ears down and forcing them to meld with the rest of his now aerodynamic face.

He blinked, sure that such a foul substance would burn something unholy if it came in contact with his eyes, but even before the liquid metal had a chance to reach him, a glass screen descended and slammed down over his eyes...and in the privacy of his little window, he could see the shape of his separate eyes coming together, melding into one pair of joined, but separately functioning optics.

...Yeah...no amount of oxygen will ever make this okay, he thought. Or drugs. Or therapy.

The life of a young jet plane rarely left time for something like therapy: there were other things for Firr to worry about, and in the comforting, temperate climate of Wisconsin, Firr would feel right at home most days...and those days when it was cold or raining, the hangar would provide him with all the warmth and shelter he could ever need.

The stewardess would catch him up on that on the way out, but right then, she was taking a seat in the exit row with him, patting the top of his head and smiling at him with an expression that should have been comforting, had it come from anyone else.

"We're just about to land. Did you have a comfortable flight?"

Along the underside of his nose cone, a seam appeared in the midst of the all the wrapped, lightweight steel. The livery was complete, with a fanciful pattern of green and black spreading over the small of his back, and a lighter green façade that moved along his wings and down to the ends of his sharp, angled winglets.

"Do I look like I'm comfortable?" he asked, and much to his surprise, he could still hear his own voice, despite the lack of ears on the sides of his head; only tiny, aerodynamic blades were present around those otherwise rounded edges. "What kind of question is that?"

"Oh, you young planes...always so cranky ," the flight attendant answered. The vixen crossed her legs and leaned over the edge of the seat, patting his head once more and pulling up on the back of his neck: as it happened, his hat was still a part of the repertoire, and it simply needed a little adjustment to settle on the top his skull once more. "That's okay. A quick fuel up, a little routine maintenance, and I'm sure you'll be right as rain again!"

She was patronizing him, no matter how much she was trying to come off as polite and motherly; Firr wouldn't be fooled.

"Yeah, that... none of that is happening," Firr argued, but his words were still coming out with an unfamiliar slurring.

It couldn't be helped, given how much the shape of his face had changed in such a short amount of time. It was a wonder that he could still speak at all, but he had a horrific static around his words, as if he was using the same microphone as the pilots that were checking in on their passengers from time to time.

"Well, of course it is! Planes have very important schedules to keep, and we're gonna need to get you right to the tarmac if we're gonna have you ready for your first test flight," the vixen explained. Her eyes narrowed slightly, and the comfort in her smile was gone , replaced with a level of arrogance that warned Firr of how hopeless his situation had become. "But look on the bright side, little guy...you get to depart the plane before everyone else!"

Squirming about in his seat, Firr discovered his center of gravity had completely shifted, and the weight in his fuselage and the spread of his wings kept him from leaning all the way forward from the seat back.

His wheels bucked against the seat, trying to function like proper legs, but he couldn't generate enough momentum from that spot to roll away from the stewardess...and there was no fuel in his body to power the small jet engines that had formed along the joints that were once his elbows.

The final details of an exit door and a tail fin only formed when the plane around him landed safely in Milwaukee, when the stewardess could help him down to the aisle.

"Folks, we uh...are in beautiful Milwaukee. I understand we have a passenger that needs to deplane immediately, so uh...please uh...stay in your seats with your seatbelts fastened and uh...seatbacks in the upright position until we give you the all clear."

Good luck simply wasn't the right way to describe a smooth, easy landing and a quick path to the gate anymore...