A flash fiction attempt, of the recently transformed and transfemme Catherine, aka Cafico, a fairly long time before she resorts to supervillainy.

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Sometimes waking up is like flicking a lightswitch. Sometimes it’s like struggling against a heavy tide. A warm, frothy tide. A dark, delicious pool. Is it vain to think I’m delicious? Still not quite figured out my precise… relationship to food, but it was only my third time waking up as a pool of coffee.

Senses are weird as a slime. Touch is easy. Taste is… kinda mixed into there, I could taste the bathtub I filled, bland and neutral. Sight revealed the dark bathroom and shower above me, but like… fish eye? Even without eyes. And even without ears, I could feel the vibrations from my phone alarm, pulsing and rippling through my liquid form, as disruptive as my supervisor’s voice.

She’d blow a gasket if I was late to work. Who needs more than one sickday to deal with turning into a coffee slime? A slime girl, I reminded myself eagerly. I couldn’t quite smile as a pool, but that lit enough of a fuse to wake up, and so I started to fumble upwards. My pseudopod stretched, flailed, barely resembling an arm, and finally found the shower switch.

“DAMMIT!” I hissed as icy cold water splashed into me, flowing into a humanoid shape on some proprioceptive instinct, to lunge out of the bath. I splashed across the small bathroom, felt liquid across the sink, the bin with my old shaving supplies, my phone, and cringed. It didn’t take much effort to pull back together, and blearily stand up, feeling a fifth appendage, my tail, stir against my legs.

“I’m keeping it.” My voice was messy, a little garbled, but it was worth practising. “Practice makes puurrfect. I’m keeping it. Kee-ping.”

Flicking my tail and repeating the line, I grabbed a sack of beans with my tail, tested the water, and stepped up into the shower. Boiling hot water flooded into me, steam billowing around, and I savoured it for a moment, feeling my nose, muzzle and feline ears take a little more defined shape. The sack split once soaked properly, and I hugged it to me, producing a small bubbly purr as the fresh coffee bubbled and boiled in the hot shower, becoming part of my gelatinous form. In with the new, out with the old.

There’s not a good way to explain how purging myself feels. Being well after illness? Like a good sweat in a spa? Maybe. I cycled out all the contaminants in me-no idea how I even can sense them, taste maybe? But I let them flow out and down the drain. All the pollutants, dust, old rinds, milk or beard hairs vanished, leaving me pure, tasty and energised.

And a big goopy vague mess. Like a melted chocolate bunny. Yuck.

I stepped aside slightly, reached out and ran my hands together, pushing the fingers between one another as my matter gathered and thickened. I couldn’t quite handle nails or claws, but in a moment, I had eight pretty defined paw fingers, resilient enough to not merge with me. I ran them along one another, smoothing out my arms to a sensible length, then tugged at my cheeks and chin, adding a little sense of frothy fluff there.

That and the tail was easy. The cat stuff was pretty much unconscious. Not sure why, think some cat hair was on my clothes when the radioactive coffee machine exploded. I’ve always considered myself a cat person anyway, so I’m fine with that being automatic.

Being a girl, on the other paw, took significantly more effort.

I chose to start with my feet. I don’t want big bloated heavy feet like some play-dough man. My paws squished and shaped them into cute little paws, pushing and pulling the excess mass up my legs into graceful calves, and generous thighs. Technically I don’t have muscles, but I do have taste, and thick thighs rule. I’d managed to hit lovely proportions yesterday, cool but cute, so the goal was to recreate them.

Admittedly, the spare mass giving me a big bubble beer belly was not part of that look. I cinched my paws around my midriff and squeezed, giggling slightly as my mass flooded up and down, puffing out my hips and chest considerably. Maybe too much? I traced my wide hips, added a little thigh gap, and squished my bubble butt nice and firm.

Apparently I’m either tired, or buzzing on coffee, and by this point I was full of energy and empty on inhibitions. Well, almost empty- I could have gone more pear shaped, but I squished a little mass back up into my belly, as reserves, then considered my chest.

My boobs were more than a handful each. And, I mean, I’ve got big hands. And they formed nice bubbles on my torso, perky, but they didn’t feel as heavy as yesterday. I squished in my belly a little, willing the flow of my fluid coffee slime up to puff them up a couple inches more. Then noticed my legs starting to melt.

“No, Cathie, focus!” I growled, pouncing out of the shower and bracing myself for impact. A definite jiggle ran up my legs, slime contracting and thickening to support my… not unsubstational weight. But I held enough focus to not splatter into pure liquid, and in a moment stretched back up to stand and balance, tail shifting and delighting me nearly as much as how my chest bounced.

“Focus. Focus.” My voice held less warble now, taking on a more husky, cheerful tone. That made me smile- I’d been practising it for months before my accident, trying to find the point where I could just let it roll off the tongue without thinking about it, where it became natural. Practice, and consistency, makes perfect.

Hopefully the same logic applied to form- i didn’t have enough brainpower to try being a real shapeshifter, changing all the time. But if I kept the same lovely feminine form each day, maybe muscle memory would make it unconscious to assume. Otherwise, I know I don’t have enough focus to keep fixing myself everytime my attention wanders and my butt melts.

Speaking of, I smoothed out my butt again, fixed my foot, and gathered any loose watery coffee into a flowing gooey hair that fell to just barely brush my tail. “Almost perfect, now let’s see….”

Wiping the mirror clean, two bright feline eyes of a shocked calico slime girl gaped at me. White, brown, cream and chestnut speckles and stripes adorned my features, and turned slightly hotter and steamy at the cheeks as my eyes flicked towards the reflection’s head sized honkers.

“I mean… could be bigger but… let’s not be greedy.” I hugged myself, smirking at the mirror, then leaned down with a gentle frown. Makeup is probably out of the question for me, but I pulled carefully at my features- slightly bigger eyes, smaller brows, a more slender muzzle, and I pushed the mass out into bigger ears. “That’s just like yesterday, right?”

Only the hissing of the shower, and my second- oh, shit, THIRD- alarm answered, and I hurriedly clicked off the water and scooped up the device in my huge paws. Thank god it was waterproof. I was so occupied in pressing the alarm off and trying to find my reference selfie from yesterday that I walked into the doorframe.

It’s probably good to know that I can growl now. A bubbly gurgly sound accompanied by steam and heat as I stuck my head back into position, and found myself eye level with the top of the doorframe. Well, the wall above the doorframe. Seven foot, or maybe a little more?

“Okay, Cathie, maybe you don’t need a full sack of coffee to restock from a shower…” I considered, tail flicking to flood excess mass back down the drain. What a waste! Urgh, and I’d lose my figure if I shrunk down, would probably have to spend another twenty minutes moulding myself back into this shape. And be late for work. Or just… be lazy and go to work flat and shapeless?

“No way in hell.” A little steam hissed off me as I stomped out my bathroom slash bedroom. Last I checked, the coffee shop didn’t have a height limit on staff, and there was a certain thrill to seeing the table and chairs barely come up to my door-wide hips. Clothing was more of a problem, my medium T-shirt just kinda… vanished into my slimy bust. Oh well, technically only the apron was barista uniform, and that hung basically low enough over my curvy figure to count.

Plus it let me pin my name badge on. I’d had it for months. “Hi, I’m Catherine, happy to help!”