Pooka's First Catch

The first time Pooka was able to shapeshift

He was trained his whole life for this; taught how to discreetly travel great distance to find the exact people you wish to mimic, given training in acting for the journey back, and most importantly, trained to take samples directly from the peoples themselves in as many different ways as possible - trained to catch prey by surprise and force his way into the gasping mouth of the species he wishes to sample, or perhaps to knock one out in a single swipe before they can realise what’s happening, or even to lure them in by delicately throwing a whisper towards them and coaxing them into exchanging a DNA sample for the reward of an unfulfilled promise.

Trained his whole life to deceive, lie, cheat, deny and commit atrocities just to gain a piece of the material he needs to shift his form into the species he so desires… and yet here he is going against the very principles backing that training. All his civilisation needs is remain hidden - alert no one to their hidden reality by redirecting their practises to several worlds over. That’s not where Pooka is right now. He is about as far away from his own home as the other end of the town his home sits in. All he had to travel was out of the cavern's mouth and through the winding walls that obscure it and sneak his way to the nearest cluttered courtyard of the local canid settlement, where he currently sits crouched behind a wall.

He also intends to ditch his martial training. He has no desire to engage in such violent and shady tactics. Granted, his own techniques aren’t exactly honest, but he still has a duty not to be seen or heard. As much as he rejects the unquestionably immoral devices he’s been trained in, there’s still a chance he gets caught sneaking around and gives a local or two the freight of their life, in which case he’ll need to get them quiet as quickly as possible - a situations he’s desperately hoping to avoid.

He’s been watching through a small gap in the wall of the courtyard for an hour now, taking in as much of the surroundings and information about the people as he can - watching for anyone that darts through with high frequency that he’ll want to avoid, and watching for workers on their breaks who will undoubtedly be off to linger at their workstations for a while who could be a good target. From what he’s gathered, this courtyard connects to a tall L-shaped building of many purposes. This part of the building is split into three sections, and through following the edge of this building to the courtyard, he’s found the one and only part of the building where few people inside of the building could catch him sneaking in from.

As he watches workers coming in from their breaks and re-entering the building from its behind, they pop right back out in the far side of the courtyard and walk a straight line back into the building on the nearer side of the courtyard, which he can only assume is one route back to their particular job, but equally one that he’s completely unable to see the extent of beyond the door. Well, he could look through a window, but that also couldn’t be a more foolish thing to attempt when the bottom of the window is higher than the top of the wall - it’s a sure-fire way to be spotted.

Speaking of being spotted, he’s got a good plan for how to sneak around the courtyard unseen, but he is also without a way in. He could degrade into a liquid and slide himself over the wall, but if a purple ooze randomly started curling around the peak of a blockade, he’s pretty sure that would look suspicious, so that option is out of the realm of possibility. As is true for the possibility of using that same liquid form to go through the very hole he’s surveying the area through; there’s only one explanation for a thick slime oozing from a hole in a wall that just so happens to face an unsafe area of the cave for any regular anthro to explore, no matter how experienced as a cave diver they may be.

Pooka pauses his planning and thinks for a moment, observing the people. He observes that some of the passers-by in the courtyard don robes - a small number of them are blue robes with cloaks and occasional masks while others’ robes are basic and white, covering about as much as a bathrobe. The blue robes flow down to wearers’ feet, which he can occasionally see between their paces are wrapped in some fabric. The robes come with hoods and long sleeves, and he observes that all those wearing the robes’ movements are centred around a door at the middle of the courtyard deck. As the door opens for robe-wearers to pass through, he catches a glimpse of a waiting area and a check-in desk. It becomes clear that this section of the building is involved in healthcare and wellness of some kind - perhaps this is a massage parlour or some kind of holistic retreat.

It’s hard to see what's through the third door, the most far away and the most crowded - he can only assume this is the primary entrance to the whole building. He catches flashes of people in a third type of outfit rushing past, but he’s unable to properly decipher what this is - either way, these third visitors to the building don’t take route through the courtyard, so he decides this will be irrelevant to his DNA heist.

The plan is as follows; find a way to enter the courtyard with the least likelihood of being spotted possible. Get under the decking that lines the wall of the building and check for cracks in the wall of the building beneath here that may allow him to get inside. If there are no gaps, try sliding his eyes up through the floorboards beneath a seat and try to look into the building for as much intel as possible. Once here he must observe what he can of these people, and try to figure out where he might find the blue robes.

As part of the courtyard's symmetrical decoration there are three water features; two in each far corner from the edge of the building and one larger one right in the middle, featuring a prominent statue of a fish. If he can get behind this unnoticed, he can sneak through the rest pretty easily. And as things would have it, the influx of workers passing through has died down significantly, which he can only assume means the rest of those passing through are late.

He moves leftward along the wall while slowly removing the dark cloak he came out of the cavern wearing. He degrades the viscosity of his body to a thinner and lighter density and pushes gently against the wall until he is raised just enough to peer over the wall with as little of himself in view as possible and watches the dwellers, waiting for just the right moment to dash in. A robed man and a robed woman are seated on the decks, the woman, appearing pre-treatment, reads the newspaper while the man seems flushed and appears to be relaxing post-treatment with his head laying back and his eyes closed. Another man donning a white robe enters the courtyard to the sound of a professional voice calling from within the room he just exited from and the man turns around to walk back, talking to the voice through the door.

Pooka sucks air into his body and makes the jump, propelling the lower half of his body up and then springing himself as horizontally forward over the wall as he can, landing firmly behind the statues with a wet pat, followed by the sound of the rest of his body plopping into upper half before he swiftly re-shapes to his treacly anthropomorphic form, arranged to a crouching position behind the statue. He peers through the gap between the statues flippers and the pedestal to check if the people noticed - the newcomer to the courtyard is just now re-entering the courtyard with a towel over his shoulders and looking through the paper racks, while the other man remains relaxing. The woman's attention seems to have been caught by the sound of his landing, but she quickly shrugs it off and reoccupies herself with her paper.

A weary sigh of relief exits Pooka's mouth. With the hardest part over, he quickly takes a moment to double check his routing work. He realises it might be tighter work than he thought as he takes in the height difference between ground at his feet and the decking, but he can still work with it if he just clings to the walls as much as he can. He thins down his consistency once again, this time keeping closer to the base of the pedestal and starts curling around the right side to keep as far away from the reader and the newcomers' sights as possible, and as he reaches the edge, he darts forth to sit himself behind a rock at the foot of decking. He repeats the maneuver around the rock until he reaches the decking’s posts, where he recollects himself and slides under without a sound.

Pooka finds himself lying back and taking a short break, moving his right hand behind his head and the other foot flat on the ground at his right knee. He turns his head left to watch the water features piddle along and releases the tension in his body through a long exhale as he hears a buzzer followed by someone putting down their papers, their footsteps moving towards the building.

Pooka melts back down, getting back to his mission. He finds a dark spot where a seat blocks the light from peaking through the floorboards and slips the yellower fluid that makes up his eye colour up through the floor there, watching around for what’s happening as the woman walks towards the central door and struggles with pushing it open as it drags across the floor. As the door swings open he’s able to observe there’s yet another waiting area, packed with waiting customers adorning a line of seating around he visible segment of this rooms perimeter, most of which sound to be chatting amongst each other about football, with a few outliers who appear to be stuck in their own devices. At the back of the room is a big wooden desk set up and he catches sight of an arm peeking into view and back out as it retrieves papers. The woman passes off a small slip of paper to this receptionist and then walks away, presumably to another room as the receptionist calls out towards the door, complaining about the door's hinges and asking someone to close it, which they do, blocking out Pooka’s view.

Pooka slips his eyes back between the floorboards and takes into consideration what little he was able to gather as he drags his inconsistent form along the back wall for potential alternate entries; it’s a busy day, which at the very least means he’s less likely to be heard in crowded places. Being seen is the other issue though; as his feeling along the walls comes to a close he concludes that door is his one choice. He can at the very least observe that he has plenty of seating around the edges of the room that he may be able to hide underneath and a couple chairs and tables in the middle of the room that could block the view of the door a little bit, but he can’t gather nearly enough information to know whether or not he’d be seen slipping past the next customers feet.

While lost in thought Pooka hears the door dragging back open and a set of footsteps coming out of the door, walking over him and sitting down. Pooka eavesdrops on the two voices.

“How are you feeling now? Gotten time to relax?” speaks the first voice - a soft, low and considerate masculine voice.

“I’ve cooled down a little… still hard to breathe though…” the other responds with a higher and more anxious voice. Pooka slips some of himself back up between the floorboards to listen closer as he looks out towards both men’s feet - one pair of feet are small and bare, ankles connecting to thin calves while the other set appears larger and surrounded with blue robes and footwrap.

“At least you can talk now, yeah? Have you had this kind of reaction before today at all?” the blue-robed man begins his questioning.

“Not this severe. And definitely not from a massage…” the patient responds with a soft scratching at the back of his head.

“Do you have any information about the types of oils that have been used before? Or any allergies that may have led to other less severe reactions you’ve faced?”

“No, I never thought I’d have to think about it. Last I felt anything similar was side effects from a medicine I was trying,” the patient's feet lift up to the seat.

“And your doctor was able to verify this was a side effect and not a reaction?”

“Yep. She took me off the medicine”

“Hmm…”

The conversation stops for a minute as the employee flips through a few pages. And starts scribbling. As this happens Pooka has a eureka moment; the robes would be perfect to hide behind if he can just slip through the door and dash underneath the sofas right as the door opens. He doesn’t have a lot of time to think about it though as the masseur stands. Pooka begins slipping the rest of his mass through the floorboard and hides beneath the sofa waiting for the right moment.

“I’ll be right back. I’m going to go get a list of ingredients for all of the things we tried today and then I’ll hand you a slip that you can give to your doctor,” The man's robes move around as he readjusts them.

“Thank you, sir…”

“We’re really sorry about all of this, though our temporary hires for days like this haven’t shown yet, this isn’t actually a factor in this error and we have committed a failure in gathering all the necessary info from you as our customer. We’d like to offer to pay any medical expenses you face as a result of our mistakes. We’ll also offer a free massage in accordance with your doctor’s advice and the mistake will not happen again,” the employee recites this as if it’s been rehearsed.

There’s a small surprised grunt from the patient before the employee begins approaching the door, and Pooka almost lets one slip himself as the perfect excuse to disguise himself as a “new guy” just fell cleanly into his lap. Pooka collects the back end of his form up as much as possible and prepares to pounce underneath the nearest couch inside the room. He takes a quick glance towards the other waiting customer, whose gaze is fixed firmly on a magazine and then watches as the employee finishes pushing the door open, chuckling at the receptionist. Right as the employees second footsteps into the room, Pooka glides himself very quickly into the room and underneath the sofa, hugging the wall and rearranging his eye position to look around as much of the room as possible.

The layout of the seats shows he’ll be able to travel along the underside of these sofas and dash under the receptionist's desk. He watches the employees go behind the receptionists desk and enter an archway into a room behind here, inside which he can see another wall just beyond the door on which there’s a sign indicating the area is for employee access only.

He slowly approaches the corner of the room, sitting himself in the space beneath the sofas corner to get a view of the space around him. The room has a bizarre aroma as if several scents are trying to power over each other, one being the smell of a locker room which fights back against the other - a loud, nostril burning incense with hints of lavender you could easily miss under both the burning sensation it causes and the stench it aims to mask.

The room itself has 18 people waiting for their massages, to what he can see. What he can’t see is how much space he’ll have to hide as he tries to sneak into the employee access, nor can he hear past the chattering’s in his current room to gather if there’s anyone else in employee access besides the one he followed into the waiting room. There’s only one way to find out and he cannot bear the conflicting stench in this room.

Pooka glides his amorphous body along the next wall until he reaches the small gap between the end of the sofa and the desk. The wood panelling of the desk almost touches the floor, but he can just barely gather what shape the desk really takes thanks to the dark shadow it casts on the floor; yet another L-shaped part of this room. The stretch of the desk lined along this wall is thicker than the stretch that faces the rest of the room. He can see the shadow extending and shortening every now and then following the sound of light footsteps back and forth behind the desk.

Pooka moves quickly and uncalculatedly as the assault in his senses speaks for him. He realises his mistake quickly as his body hits the underside of the desk in his attempt to fit himself underneath. He just barely squeezes himself into the tight space, finding the need to create the exact shape of the underside with his body as he brings the gel of his eyes up through his body around the corner to the middle of the desk and starts delicately tracking himself around the corner until he sits along the long stretch of desk that almost touches the other side of the room, where it stops just short of the wall to create a walkway. As all this goes on Pooka understands that this is the feeling of claustrophobia - a problem his kind never usually has to deal with, but he finds himself anticipating the moment he’ll be able to anthropomorphise again.

The moment comes sooner than he could have known as footsteps come in from his left and out into the sitting area. The receptionist is heard stopping the masseur in his tracks and calling him over to the desk for a conversation. The masseur comes back around to behind the desk and they talk at the far end.

Pooka uses some force against the leg of the desk closest to the archway and feeds his thin body out in a line. When he reaches the arch, he turns around the corner and pokes an eye into the parts of the room he couldn’t see before; an empty locker room with recently prepared spare staff uniforms stacked on shelves at the front. As he feeds more of his fluid form into this room he repositions his eyes back at the arch way to keep an eye on the conversing employees to be sure they can’t see a thing, and after a few minutes of collecting himself in this room he’s able to pull himself back together in the room, opting for a seated position on the bench.

Pooka takes a few seconds to breathe and take back some of the control of his slightly numbed down form before standing up and collecting a fresh blue robe off the shelf, solidifying his form more to keep it up on his shoulders and raising the oversized hood above his head, letting it fall over his eyes. He raises a foot onto the shelf and wraps it in silk before raising to repeat this on the other. He lifts a pair of deep blue shorts to his waist before tying the robe shut and donning the company cloak. He picks up the silk for his mask as he starts solidifying the still visible parts of his body to try and create the illusion of being fully canine… or at least from a distance.

“Oh, hey! Are you one of the temp hires?” A female voice calls out from one of the exits.

Pooka yelps in shock; for the first time in his life Pooka has to brush off his improvisational skills and it’s by surprise. He tips back slightly, regaining his balance on his feet and placing his hand over his chest. “Goodness me, you gave me a start! Uhh, yes, I am”

“Perfect, I take it the others are just behind there?” The rather short woman tilts her head towards the entry wall, her long hanging ears swaying back and forth as they blend in with her wavy hair.

“I don’t know actually, I showed up early since they were already on their way before I could get to work today,” Pooka lifts an arm to scratch the back of his head nervously as he turns his head to the shelf to pick up the silk again, largely in attempt to cover his snout before it can arouse suspicion.

“Oof, good save from being late though,” the woman laughs.

“Hah! I’m making a terrible first impression, I assure you,” Pooka chuckles back as both giggle.

“Oh god… well, if you want an even bigger head start, my next customer should be on their way in, if you wanna keep yourself busy?” A shy suggestion from the woman.

“Need to slack off a little?”

“Uhhh kinda? I usually call my mum earlier in the morning, but since your team has been running late I haven’t gotten the chance yet.”

As Pooka finishes hiding his muzzle he stands and brushes at his robe, “ah, I see. Yeah, that’s no problem for me,” he responds with a cheer. “Where will I find your parlour?”

“Just out the first door, down the corridor, third room in. There’s a big red label on the door, 1-C,” the girl waves her hands around as if to display what directions he should be taking. “Oh, and he have been told my name when he made the appointment, so if you can just clarify that you’re only there to get it started and I’ll be there in a moment.”

“Got it. What name is he expecting?”

“He’ll be expecting a ‘Miss Cavaly’ - or just Cheryl. And your name?”

“You can call me Key,”

“Alrighty, Key,” The woman opens her locker to pull out her phone, “I’ll run in once I’ve finished calling my mother. Thanks for this, you’re doing me a massive favour!”

The woman hurries off to a room on the left as Pooka giggles looking at himself in the mirror. As she leaves the room he paws at his muzzle, whispering to himself “how the hell did she fall for this?”

Pooka sets off, following her directions and entering room 1-C.

“AH! DON’T LOOK!” the customer shouts back startled as his hairs immediately stand up straight. He quickly turned around with a foot raised and both hands pinning his robe to cover his crotch.

Pooka starts laughing and turns around, putting a hand high on the wall and looking down at the floor “alright, I’ll give you a second”.

“Thank you… uhh… miss?” The man frantically looks for a towel to get around his waist.

“Miss Cavaly has asked me to take over the start of your experience. She’ll be here in a few minutes” Pooka chuckles back.

“Oh okay… you can look now.”

As Pooka turns back around the man is sat on the edge of the table with the towel messily stuffed in on itself around his hips and his palms face down, figures curling over the table's edge. The man has a small smile and nervous eyes as he looks over Pooka, blushing with a stiff tail wag and shrugs his broad shoulders. His body is well built and white with black specs as his ears are raised with the black tips drooping to face the floor.

“What are you in for today?”

The customer raises his paw to wave over all the areas he intends on getting massaged “My face, back and shoulders. I booked extra time just in case I feel like my chest could do with one too.”

Pooka starts to realise what he’s got himself into. Though it is the perfect chance to gather some DNA, he’s not 100% confident he’ll gather enough just through the planned massage, and on top of that he also needs to do a convincing job of the massaging part. “Since I’m only here for the start and you came here expecting a whole other person, how about we start on the face and continue with the rest if she still hasn’t shown up?”

“Uhh… yeah, that works” the customer gives a small smile before turning his body onto the table and leaning back, as if practised. There’s a nervousness being held in the very back of his voice as his Adam’s Apple bobs in his throat. Pooka gets an idea that he will execute in time. He needs to keep the man talking first though.

“That surprise entry couldn’t have helped with any of your tension, huh?” Pooka sparks up a conversation while wetting his hands in the sink. He pretends to dry them off by mimicking the sound of a towel flopping with his robe and starts pumping some oil out of a bottle and into the sink without catching it in his hands. He rubs his palms together to create the organic sound of his body in place of the lotion and moves to lay both palms at the customers temples, solidifying fingertips at his cheeks.

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that…” the customer closes his eyes to take in the feeling of fingertips pressing into his face.

Pooka’s finger pads tingle as small particles of the man's fur come off and are absorbed in his body. He lowers his voice to a soft whisper, “nothing to worry about, you weren't expecting me to enter midway through dressing. But I can feel that energy in your face…” Pooka’s eyes look up to their corners as he struggles to come up with rationalisations.

“Really? I guess this is you making up for it then…” the man sighs out without relaxing his shoulders, still having a slight frog to his voice.

“That’s right… just relax… take a big breath in… and… out…” Pooka guides the man through breathing for a short while. “What caused all this tension in your body today?”

“The football, the work stress and meeting all these new people…” the man continues the breathing exercise through his conversation, gulping down air after every breath.

“You must be putting on a lot of inorganic smiles to have such tension in these cheeks…” Pooka circles his plan back to the forefront of his mind, “not to mention all the introductions you must be giving all those people. Can’t be good on your voice…”

“It doesn't make me any less nervous the more I do it… even as relaxed as I feel now I still can’t just let it out…”

“I hear that,” Pooka lowers his fingers down to the front of the man's neck, “and here I can certainly feel it here too…”

The man breathes out, his Adam’s Apple dancing underneath the wet fingers “I don’t even know what I’m gonna do about that tension.’

“Well…” Pooka takes a deep breath, finding himself with the most perfect and honest excuse to handle canid saliva he could possibly ask for, “something we learn from our studies is that we can promote relaxation in the throat by massaging the tongue, if you’d like a small demonstration.”

“My tongue?” The man never opens his eyes, but raises his eyebrows out of hesitant but strong curiosity.

“I’ve never had to put it to use before, and we don’t usually offer it as reaching into someone’s mouth is a bit personal, but since I’m only a temporary hire I can risk offering a quick lesson” Pooka closes his eyes tight and repeatedly chants pleadings in his imagination that this will work.

“Uhhh…” the man's brows furrow as his head shakes in shock, before slowly tilting to the left shoulder with one eyebrow raised, “that’s actually not a bad idea…*

“So… is that a yes?”

Pooka’s inner monologue grows louder as the man twitches his head side to side in consideration, “sure, why not.”

Pooka brings a fist into his side in celebration before tapping the bottoms of the man's shoulders to have him rise to a seated position. As the man follows the movement Pooka presses his right thumb and finger into the hinges of the man’s jaw, “I’m going to grab the end of your tongue, is that okay?”

The man nods and opens his mouth “luh hluh.”

Pooka uses his left hand to hold the man's chin and crouches down slightly to look into the man's mouth. With the other hand he pulls the tongue out of his mouth and lets it hang down over his bottom lip. “If you want to quit the demo at any point you let me know and we’ll go back to the face, okay?”

The man nods, allowing Pooka to start the massage. He takes his thumb and forefinger, pressing them together and drawing a line up the middle of the man's tongue, separating the fingers half-way down and drifting them apart to touch the sides of his tongue, where he firmly presses inwards and pulls his fingers back out. He feels his fingers grow slightly denser as saliva collects on his fingers and he draws it into his hands.

“I'll repeat that one more time and then I’ll let you lie down and get back to your face, and you can take that knowledge home with you okay?”

To another of the man's now calmer nods, Pooka repeats the circular movements along his tongue, slower and more deliberate as he collects saliva into his fingers.*There…. Are you feeling the effect?”

“Yeah, that works really well actually,” the customer reopens his eyes and finally relaxes his shoulders, “thanks!”

“Always,” Pooka taps the man's shoulder with one hand while hovering his finger and thumb over the man's face to bring him back down and close his eyes again. “Let’s get back to your face… try to stay relaxed now”, Pooka speaks with more sternness than he intended.

Just as he turns back around to repeat the lotion maneuver he sees Miss Cavaly turn the corner. “Hi, sorry I was late Mr. Mater, just had a call to take,” she redirects her attention to Pooka, “how are things going?”

“Pretty well, I’d say. And you’ve got perfect timing,” Pooka

keeps his face to the wall and starts pretending to wash his hands.

“I can attest,” Mater approves.

“Perfect. I’ll take it from here then”. Miss Cavaly approaches the station to start washing her hands. As she sees Pooka start to leave, she raises her voice to give an appreciative “thank you”, to which Pooka throws back a firm nod and leaves.

He exits the room and dashes to the left, power walking back to the locker room and watching the doors on the right for any toilets along the way. As he enters the locker room he quickly finds a men’s toilet sign on the other side of the room and dashes in, ducking straight into a stall and locking it behind him, pushing both of the toilet seats down and planting his rear the back. He raises his feet onto the seat, making sure they won’t be visible under the stall and moves the robe out from under him as he starts to open the uniform and shrug it off his shoulders, slowly removing the clothing until he is back down to a nude state.

Pooka takes a short rest, leaning back against the cistern and moves the saliva from the ends of his fingertips up his arms and into his head. He places both hands onto his head and turns his eyes inwards on his head as his vision fades to pure dark red-purple. He raises the saliva to the centre of his vision and starts his analysis, zoning his eyes in on only the saliva.

He starts by zoning in further on the saliva as he makes work of massaging the fluid, organising the bacteria from the leftovers of foods Mr. Mater ate from the all important white blood cells and buccal epithelial cells.

Once he’s sorted it and gotten the unnecessary parts out of the way, he begins massaging the DNA, warming it up by clenching inside his head and squishing his head in with his hands, then cooling it by expanding his interior and blowing air through it, not only observing how the DNA reacts to different temperatures, but also amplifying it and learning how it copies itself over.

During this process he begins extracting product from the clustered sample and selecting identifying traits he can find in the DNA, separating those that come from Mater’s parents from those that come from his overall species.

He starts by studying the species’ attributes - the texture of the fur, the shape of the eyes, the placement and formation of each digit, the hardness of the claws, the softness and tenderness of the flesh - everything there is to know about the anatomy and biology of all dogs wrapped up in one tiny cluster, which he assess and experiment with using the surrounding slime.

He then studies the specifics that made Mater the unique individual he is; how his fur got its pattern and colour, how his ears got to their size and where he got the shape of his snout. He takes time testing this out, starting by flexing his newly-learned ability to replicate the exact feel of dog fur before working on replicating Mater’s fur patterns, followed by working to adjust it and manipulate the way it will look on his shifted form.

Mid-way through his studies there’s a knock on the toilet door followed by a highly official sounding voice. “Are you alright in there? You’ve been in there for 45 minutes”

Pooka pauses the process of learning and flips his eyelids back around to the outer world. “Uhhhh yep! Almost done!”

“Are you sure? Do you need help with anything?”

“Uhhh…” Pooka quickly thinks of a way to get the man distracted, straining out a forced grunt before speaking out “if you could maybe get a towel?” Pooka lets out a deep sigh, “or two… phew… it is boiling in here…”

He hears the individual stifle a laugh and rush out of the room before turning his eyes back in and continuing with his study, experimenting with the ears, teeth and tail shapes and lengths before proceeding to assess the way all of this gets put together to create a canid form.

After a short while, the knock returns. “I got you two towels, is that good?”

“Ah, yeah, that’ll do!” Pooka speaks back without a hint of embarrassment before feeling a thick pair of towels land on his head. “Cheers mate,” he rubs the towels against each other to pretend he’s wiping himself down.

“Oh wait…” the man asks, not finishing his question.

“Wait what?”

“You’re not, uhh… wiping… with the towels, are you?” The voice sounds extremely concerned.

“What? Oh god no!” Pooka shouts back, nearly accusatory.

“Oh thank god! I was wondering who we’d hired for a moment,” the man can be heard stepping back slightly as his hand plants against his chest with a bizarrely coarse thud. “You take your time in there, kid, it must be nerve wracking having to work with a load of new people like this.” The man leaves, and Pooka can hear the faint, muffled sounds of him talking behind the bathroom door once it closes.

Pooka finally stands back up, snapping his head left and then right and shaking off all of his limbs before standing in a still position, straight back with a deep breath in and then out as he slowly softens up his whole body. Making his body runnier and thus making him melt down to an amorphous puddle again, but instead of using it to hide and sneak around, he was now going to use it to start building his new form. He starts arranging everything right, raising all of the ear particles to the top of his body and slowly reshaping the cat and rabbit ears his parents gave him into two thick, rounded off triangular dog ears that point straight up to the ceiling. He builds the shape of the skull underneath this before adding on top his typical snout shape. Once the basic shape is complete, he refines things, choosing to extend the snout slightly further and make it a touch more square, adding a thick glob at the end which he will later manipulate the shape of into a leathery-textured dog's nose and refines the inside into pointed teeth and a large, flat tongue.

Once the general head shape is complete, he begins crafting a thick, wide pillar for his torso with two thinner and smaller pillars at the sides for arms, which he reshapes into thin biceps and flat cushions for pectorals. He slowly uses more and more of his puddle, being sure not to tuck away any external parts as he continues solidifying more and more the structure of a canid until he finally had a full slime replica of a vague short-haired anthro canid for his body. He now develops the details, shredding up the outer layer into short strings which solidify into millions of strands of hair. He roughens up the texture on his new paw pads and nose before adding the crackled leathery texture of both. He reforms his hairstyle into realistic strands of hair and begins concentrating the fluid of his eyes until there’s a clearer line between pupil, iris and sclera. Finally it’s time for colour. He opts for a largely grey body with a purple chest and tummy colouration which trails down his underside and moves slightly up the bottom of his tail. He creates a paintbrush tip effect on the end of his tail and adds splattery patterns around the edges of the purple parts of his body to pay homage to the reality inside of him.

He can’t see how good he looks, but he certainly feels it. He thinks back on all the advice he was given about straying away from nearby settlements - about how easy it’d be to trace them back using their conventional methods. He can’t help but chuckle slightly as he looks down at his new paws, rolling his eyes and muttering in his mind about how ridiculous their advice really was and how worth it this original take on it is. He knows what reaction he’s going to get when he goes home, but he doesn’t care. All he knows is he’s just gotten his first species and he will wear it like a point of pride.

All that’s left to do now is get himself clothed again, somehow dampen the towels so it seems like he actually had sweats to dry off and find a way to get out.

He covers his body back up in the blue robes, opting to keep the hood and mask down for the time being. He solves the second issue by flushing the toilet and lifting the seat before holding the towels by their corners to dunk the middles slightly into the technically fresh toilet water, wincing as he twists out the excess into the bowl before scrunching up the towels to make them look used.

He leaves the bathroom and turns right down the locker room before throwing the towels onto the laundry pile under the shelves.

The voice from the toilet calls out from the entrance to the locker room. “Ah, there you are”.

Pooka turns around to see the most unique individual he has ever come across, exposing a gap in his knowledge of the canid taxonomy. The sandy blue-furred man is relatively large with a rather small head, on top of which is perched two enormous and rounded ears shaped like butterfly wings. His body goes from a base blue to a lighter cornflower blue as it tucks under his yellow robe over his chest, and his rather small black paws connect to skinny wrists that lead up to well build arms that slowly fade back into the blue skin tone that creates the majority of his body. The man's tail is very bushy and his beady black eyes are deep set into their sockets as he presents Pooka with a tinny smile. Pooka is almost certain this man is a fox from his thin-lower arms and his quite adorable little face, but no fox in any of his textbooks had such prominent tails nor ears. The man dons a warm yellow robe and around his neck are a red bead necklace and a lanyard attached to which is a name badge reading “Human Resources - Buzwe Otus Kiuon”

Buzwe speaks with an official tone, “you had us concerned in there for a bit. Are you alright to continue working for the rest of your allotted time?”

Pooka catches the opportunity by its tail, his mind quickly rushing to the easy way out of this situation. “I feel a little light headed actually. I don’t usually get this way”.

“Oh my goodness. We apologise for any inconveniences. The management decided to try out some new incense in the foyer today and it’s been some of the highest concentration of complaints we have ever received from both customers and employees. And to think they chose a football day to test this out…” Buzwe considers apologetically.

“Yeah, haha! I think it’s just a little too potent. It left a terrible sting on my nostrils,” Pooka perfectly mimics a couple voice cracks as he speaks through a breathy tone.

“Well I’m going to ask to send you home for now. We’ll inform the boss at your company that we’ve allowed one of you to go back home, we’ll take full responsibility,” Buzwe pulls out a notebook and starts writing as he speaks. “Do you mind describing the effect this incense has had on you?”

“It’s just really lingering on my senses. It left me feeling overwhelmed and assaulted. The sweats were more just the anxiety of telling people about it, I’m actually quite cold, temperature wise,” Pooka laments, wiping his forehead.

“Cold? That can’t be right, the room temperature is slightly above average…” Buzwe appears deeply confused.

Pooka had made a mistake that could only work to his advantage. He lets his jaw hang, “Oh…”

They exchange some more information, namely Pooka’s invented identifiers for this mission before Buzwe places a hand over Pooka’s handcrafted heart, and the other on his shoulder. He looks into Pooka's eyes with regret and gently pats him on the back “Here, kid. You run home quickly now. Feel free to keep those robes if you need to stay warm. And when you get home, please do call a doctor.” He gives Pooka two more firm pats on the back of his shoulder before nudging two fingers against it towards the door gently. “Take care.”

“Yes, sir,” Pooka gives Buzwe a nod as the HR manager leaves for the door.

“Oh, wait a minute actually!” Buzwe catches Pooka’s attention. He slips a hand into the front of his robe and presents Pooka with a contact card. “If you need to contact us about today's events, the information is on this card,” he hands Pooka the card before sending him on his way.

Pooka makes his way back to the courtyard, no longer needing to engage in a sneaking mission to get by. He tries not to walk with too much confidence given the predicament he’s just co-invented with HR, but he can’t disguise all of the happiness. He not only gets his first surprise through unconventional but ethical methods, but he also

The ending of Pooka’s mission is simply getting back home - sneaking back into the cavern is a mandatory part of the curriculum with scrupulous planning that is updated yearly. As he steps back out into the courtyard he questions if he will even go back home. He has no doubt that his methods will be controversial through the corrupt ways his people are usually taught to gain their first form, but if he can get at least one person to realise the potential of taking the stealthy approach, he will be content. But he’ll also delay going back home just yet; his people’s usual excursions take at least two weeks.

Pooka walks back into the building through the far side of the courtyard away from the route back to the cavern where he saw the customer darting in and out of there on his way in. He finds himself in the building's foyer, which is a lot emptier than it seemed to be before. A lady at the front desk calls him over to offer him a small amount of money to get back home, which he gladly takes in hopes of instead spending it on a notepad and pen to write about his methods with.

And as he steps out of the building he gets his first glimpse of the outside world ever - he was never made aware just how little of the canid society was actually set into a cave, and thus he never knew just how close to the outside world his hidden people actually are past the pit leading deep into the Underground. Vibrant green grass and a bright blue sky. The sun's rays reflecting straight off of a shimmering pond and the continuation of canid society just down a hill from where he’s looking into a whole rustic city. He can’t help but imitate a caps bill over his eyes as he admires the visage, soon opting to bring his hood back over his head and step towards a nearby shop where he picks up a notepad and pen. He seats himself just outside, perching near a small fountain and inking the front cover.

Pooka’s Precept - The Art of Stealth and Theatrics as a Method of Developing New Disguises

He’ll spend a good amount of time perfecting this before going back to his home in the caves. For now he must consider finding a hiding place where he can retreat to and start his new temporary life as a canid.

He turns the page and taps the pens clicker against his chin as his gaze wanders off towards a huge white mountain in the distance. He’s smiling, and excited to write all about why…