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Rick stayed quiet the entire ride, constantly glancing over the information on his data pad with a worried look on his face. Spark didn't know what to do. She had no idea what was causing Rick so much trouble. It hurt her to see him this way, especially with the way she had begun to feel about him lately. Her first instinct was to try and cheer him up but he seemed distant somehow, as though he didn't want to burden her with what was bothering him. Just as she was about to ask him what was wrong, Rick stood up and took her paw, leading her silently off the tramway and towards a large building with the sign 'Enterprise Medical Solutions' outside. Spark frowned as she read this 'Why would he bring me here? Is something wrong?' For the first time since landing the fear of being taken away from her new life again weighed down on her and if it wasn't for Rick's hand on her paw, she would not have been able to continue on towards the building. Noticing that Spark was dragging behind, Rick turned around and picked her up, carrying her inside as he whispered to her "Its ok sweetie, they are going to help you." She looked up and mewled anxiously but forced herself to relax. So far, she had been treated well. Better even than she could have hoped and had no reason to be afraid. Still, the sign reminded her of her last dealing with a medical facility, the memory alone enough to send a terror filled shiver throughout her body as they passed through the door into the sterile environment inside.

Inside the building they were both scanned through security then directed to a room on the 18th floor. The room at first glance was like that of any medical office, Spark's first thought of course was to get the heck out of there as fast as possible but being held by Rick made that near impossible. Once inside and sure that Spark wouldn't bolt the moment he put her down, Rick set her down in a chair and knelt before her. "Ok Spark, I need you to pay close attention to what I'm about to say." He waited for her ears to be pointing his direction before continuing, watching her reaction warily as he spoke. "I'm sure you guessed already, but this is a medical office. I looked on the galactic net while we were at the park, looking for a doctor who could help with your... condition, and I read about this procedure they have been using on Earth. The process is safe and non-invasive. No cutting.” He paused a moment to let that detail slip into her anxious mind, only guessing what had happened to her prior in similar offices. “The procedure has a 100 percent success rate and it will guaranteed reverse the damage done to your voice though there are side effects." Spark stared at Rick, hardly believing what she was hearing. 'I could be able to speak again without the pain?' she thought to herself, the idea working its way around in her mind as she contemplated for the first time something she thought would never in a million years be possible.

She nodded to Rick, noticing a sadness in his eyes as he waited for her to take in the information he had given her, apparently not yet done with his explanation. Noticing that she had wrapped her mind around the offer, Rick took a deep breath and continued. "There is a catch to this procedure, and it is a big decision you will have to make. The process will change more than just your voice, it is a full recovery of not just injury but also any other... changes... that were performed in the past. You will retain all your current knowledge and memories; those won’t be affected though some temporary motor control issues are common as well as mild disorientation.” He pauses again, once more gauging her reaction to all the new information. She worried a bit about his cryptic statements regarding motor control and disorientation, not really comprehending what he could mean but giving him a soft mewl, ready to hear the problem he was so obviously building up to.

Rick gave a brief nod and checked his data pad once more before he continued to the problem that they would face, one which would irrevocably impact her life more than he wanted to contemplate. “Ok, now that you know the benefits, I guess we need to discuss the one drawback to the procedure. Some may not consider it a problem, and truly some who take the procedure see it as a benefit but that is something you need to decide for yourself. The process is irreversible, once started it can’t be stopped and will proceed through completion. We will have to get you scanned to remove any foreign object in your body though I doubt you have artificial implants or metal plates to repair broken bones so that should result in just a scan to ensure that none of those exist before the process is begun. The entire process will take no more that 5 minutes, but no medication is available that will work during the procedure so it may be painful depending on what changes take place and how much damage is being undone. Also, once the procedure is complete and based on your species natural pattern of growth you will be 11 years old again. I have already talked with the doctors on this point and they tell me there is nothing that can be done. Your race is an exception to many of the rules regarding this procedure, mainly since it has only been performed a small number of times and your people were discovered relatively recently as compared to those species in the inner sphere."

Spark sat down hard, clutching her tail to herself as she processed all that she had been told. Rick continued to speak, reciting something about history and lack of full medical knowledge but the two things that were forefront in her mind right know was the possibility of regaining her speech but at the cost of years. It had been 14 years since she was 11, and that had been back on her home planet. Back then she didn't even know that there was a world outside her small den, the grassy plains of her home all she had ever known until the day the hunters came and took her and her siblings away when she was 17. Now, she was being told that she could have the one thing she desired most, to be able to use her voice again but in return she would have to start life over as an 11-year-old? Noticing suddenly that Rick had stopped talking, she looked up at him and made her decision. Reaching out and taking his hand in her paws, she placed his palm against her chest, forcing herself to speak carefully and form the words properly to get her meaning across to him. "If you take care of me, I can do this." She replied, a determined look on her face though her heart was pounding with fear.

Rick smiled and nodded, his own expression becoming soft as he leaned forward to embrace her. "I will never leave you Spark, you have my word." Rick held her close for a minute, letting the tension slip away before pulling back and handing her the data pad. "Now Spark, I filled out most of the information but you still need to sign this document and there is a question on the fifth page that you must answer for yourself. Other than that, when you are ready, I will call the doctor and they will begin the scan. You may have a bit of trouble walking at first since you will need to get used to your new body and since they are doing work on your voice it may be a good idea not to speak much for the first day or two. I wish there was something they could do to stop the pain this is undoubtedly going to cause but any medication they give will be eliminated in the first few seconds of the procedure and will have no effect on the remainder of the process." Spark nodded, filling out the paperwork and signing her name to the form before handing the pad back to Rick. "I'm rreaddy."

A doctor arrived a few minutes later, leading Spark way into a back room while Rick remained in the waiting area. Spark looked around the small room, a padded table in the middle the only furniture. She looked worriedly at the restraints attached to the table, the doctor noticing her sudden worry and smiling kindly. “Those are only to keep you from hurting yourself during the procedure. It can be quite painful, and though we try to do what we can there is little we can do to stop the pain so we provide restraints to help keep the process as short as possible.” He looked Spark over a moment then pointed to a screen above the bed. “The screen there will display the time remaining in the procedure, I have done this a few times and have yet to have a patient lose consciousness so please don’t be my first.” His remark was obviously meant to add levity to the situation but it did nothing to calm the fear that was rising inside Spark as she ran a claw over the restraints. They were made of a soft material, meant to restrain without injury. The last restraints she had been in had been hard, gouging into her arms painfully. She was glad that wouldn’t be the case this time. She turned her attention back to the doctor just as he appeared to be finishing his final explanations. “For that reason, I will need to ask you to remove any clothing and jewelry prior to the procedure. Based on your species information I think your clothing will still fit once we are concluded here, since your species finishes their major growth pattern by the age of 8 if I am reading this data right so the adjustment afterwards shouldn’t be terribly difficult.” He gave Spark a smile of encouragement. “We can proceed when you are ready.”

Spark carefully removed her new clothes, blushing slightly to be in the fur with a stranger. Her species did not naturally wear clothes, their fur going through phases with the change of their environment like many feral species. Living among humans however, she had grown accustomed to the requirement and had even begun to adopt their mannerisms towards casual nudity and though her fur hid anything that would have been considered lewd she still felt anxious and uncomfortable. She folded the clothing, adding her foot wraps to the pile last and setting it on the corner of the long bed away from where she was about to be strapped down. She climbed up, managing to scramble up on top of the tall bed with only the slightest bit of difficulty and lay down. She looked up at the screen above her, focusing on the blank display as she felt the soft restraints being attached to her ankles and wrists. Once these were tightened down the screen above her lit up as the scan started, displaying what she could only guess was a picture of her insides. She looked at the skeletal structure, noting for the first time the shattered and mangled bones in her feet. The doctor spoke up suddenly, a note of worry in his voice. “You may not walk normally for a few days, with that amount of injury. It will be quite painful and though the procedure is quick, you may still feel phantom pain for up to a week afterwards. I have had other patients with broken bones, but nothing like this. It must be terribly painful to walk around on such mutilated feet though the injuries are old so you may just be used to it by now.”

Spark could only mewl worriedly in response to the doctor’s comments. Another minute later and muscles appeared to grow over the skeleton on the screen, her vocal cords showing heavy scarring. The doctor looked at the pad in his hand and zoomed into the area on the screen in the ceiling. “Looks like we have some major trauma here. This alone, though your feet would also qualify you on their own merit, is enough damage to qualify you for this procedure. Have you been notified of the changes that will occur when we start?” He paused and looked over at Spark in case she gave a non-verbal reply. He doubted from the trauma to her vocal cords she could do much more that the squeaks he had heard earlier and it pained him to see a patient with such injuries. Spark nodded to his question, still staring at the screen and the ugly scar tissue that was surrounding her vocal cords, finally seeing for the first time what was causing her such pain when she tried speaking and understanding why it hurt so much. “Yes.” Was the most she could accomplish, the image on the screen jumping as she vocalized her reply, much to her astonishment.

The doctor moved over and fastened a soft belt over Spark’s middle, another going over her forehead to hold her head still, her sight fixed on the monitor. “Don’t worry, I will pause the image when we begin. The process is going to be uncomfortable without having to watch as your bones reshape on the screen.” He pulls the image back and gasped as he noticed that her entire reproductive system had been surgically removed. “Ouch, and regrowing all that won’t be a walk in the park either. Though I guess there aren’t all that many nerves in the organs themselves so perhaps it won’t be so much painful as just uncomfortable.” He sounded hopeful and Spark agreed silently that she too hoped that the process would be painless. She watched out of the corner of her eye as the doctor approached, holding a needle where she could see it, the rainbow liquid inside swirling with colors though never quite blending. “I’m going to begin here, if you are ready. I will put up a timer on the screen for 5 minutes, that is the longest the procedure has ever taken though I can say that I have seen it complete in less time, the damage you have here will require we leave you restrained for the entire 5 minutes just to be safe.”

Unable to move, Spark replied with a worried mewl, a shiver running down her body as the needle vanished from her view. A moment later, a sharp pinch and burning sensation on her arm alerted her to the injection. A timer started in the corner of the screen above her, starting to tick down from 5 minutes. For about 10 seconds, nothing happened and Spark began to relax when suddenly her feet felt like they were being gnawed off, waves of pain shooting through her and causing her to spasm against the restraints as she opened her mouth and howled in pain. Another pain erupted almost simultaneously in her throat, her howls only making the pain worse as more spots of pain welled up all over and inside her. The doctor watched, having covered his ears at the first howls filled the small space and glancing at the timer as her cries quickly subsided into silent screams of pain. He didn’t know what she was going through, but had seen it enough in his previous treatments to know that the pain caused now would quickly fade and the benefit would greatly outweigh the momentary agony. Still, he couldn’t help but feel sorry for the small creature thrashing about on the table.

Eyes glued to the monitor, tears blurring her vision Spark managed to make out the timer, 3 minutes 58 seconds remained as the pain in her body redoubled on itself. She knew she was thrashing against the restraints, though they held her fast to the bed, not allowing her to move at all and saving her from further damage. Now she was thankful for their comfort, her body wracked with so much pain that her mind shut it all away. She still felt it, and still responded to it as real and immediate, but that part of her mind that was still able to reason had pushed that all far away, allowing her to focus on the timer in the corner of the screen. She felt, more as an absence of pain than any other sensation, the spots that the medicine finished on first. An almost cooling sensation was beginning to spread from her shoulders down her arms and into her chest. 2 minutes 23 seconds, and the sensation of pain vanished from her throat and neck, traveling down to her hips. Her feet still felt like they were being burned off, and a warm wetness began to spread across her crotch and thighs. She blushed as she realized she was relieving herself, profoundly hoping that the doctor wouldn’t comment and disgrace her further. 1 minute 47 seconds, the pain in her feet and legs suddenly vanished, replaced with a dull ache that rapidly spread up her body all the way to her skull. 1 minute 21 seconds, again she experienced more than felt the sensation of her body straining against the restraints as every inch of her skin felt like it was being burned off, another silent wail forcing her maw wide. 58 seconds, the pain subsided, leaving her limp against the restraints, whimpering softly as she felt something rub against her legs and crotch, blushing fiercely as she felt the doctor, who else could it be, cleaning up her mess while she watched the timer slowly continue to tick down towards zero.

Watching the screen in his hands, the doctor observed with clinical detachment as the scarring around the vocal cords of the patient began to shrink, the bones in her feet remolding themselves as they returned to how they would have naturally grown, the process working on a genetic level to revert old injury back to what was deemed a ‘factory default state’ in the documentation for this procedure. He didn’t understand how, but through a combination of directed radiation and the serum, her body was being reset to her base genetic code. Any foreign elements would be attacked and broken down or ejected, early treatments had seen implanted pates forced out through flesh and ripped from bone, those procedures had enacted the requirement of a scan prior to treatment and any such foreign elements were now removed to save the patient from unnecessary additional pain and suffering. A pungent odor brought him out of his thoughts.

He changed the view on the screen to focus on the patient’s lower half, watching as the bones knit to newly formed muscle, claws growing in where they had been previously extracted from his patient’s feet. He noticed that her internal organs had successfully regenerated as well, and as was the case with all his other patients this one too was evacuating any foreign material from her stomach and other organs. She would be hungry once this was over, weak and tired too. He would give her a nutrient injection, and advise her caretaker to give her plenty of rest and fluids over the next few hours. Her body relaxed, and the doctor stepped over and began cleaning up the mess, the radiation harmless to him as he didn’t have any of the rainbow chemical inside him, and it would be easier on the patient if she was unaware of this event though a few of his prior patients had still noticed and cleaning the mess off of skin was a far cry from getting it out of thick fur.

23 seconds remaining and now the lack of pain was a sensation all its own unlike any Spark had ever experienced. She had since stopped her silent wailing, even her soft whimpers had quieted leaving her tears to roll down her cheeks as she tried to ignore the humiliation of her losing control and then having to be cleaned up by a stranger. She felt nothing, aside from the gentle pressure of the restraints and the pulsing of blood through her veins. She could hear her heart pounding, her breath coming in and going out rhythmically, no longer gasping for air between howls of pain. She clenched her paws, feeling the sensation of claws extending and retracting from her feet, something she hadn’t felt in years. This sensation caused her to giggle, the sound cut short as she remembered the pain that was always associated with such sounds but when no pain erupted from her throat she began laughing, tears streaming down her face again, this time in relief. 12 seconds, and she forced herself to calm down and be quiet. Rick and the doctor had said that she shouldn’t try to use her voice much, and she didn’t want that pain to return so if it meant being quiet, then quiet she would be, if only for a few days.

Rick paced back and forth in the waiting room, the howls and barks of pain muffled but still quite audible through the walls had caused him immense anguish. He wished he could have been in the room with her but there was a strict rule against anyone other than the doctor being allowed into the room for this procedure. Apparently, someone had tried to rescue a patient and had ended up causing more damage. Rick glanced at the clock again, 7 minutes had passed. The procedure should be over, and that meant that Spark wouldn’t be in any more pain. That thought comforted him as he continued to wait. At 16 minutes, the door at the far end of the room opened and Spark walked unsteadily towards Rick, still wearing the same outfit she had on before the operation though it now seemed a bit loose on her. She was shorter, though only a little. Her height reduced from her usual 4'6" to a slightly smaller 4'3". Her fur too had changed, the tone going from a dusty gray to a bright golden brown with small black spots along her back and the tip of her fluffy tail as well as her paws were painted as though dipped in black paint, the pads a bright pink in contrast. Her face looked younger as she stepped closer too, her muzzle not as pronounced as it was before though the biggest change was her feet. When he had first found her, she had been plantigrade, meaning that she tended to walk on her heels like a human but now she walked on her toes like most animals, her heel raised up in the digitigrade fashion. Watching her move this way seemed more natural for her, and her movements suggested she was just getting used to this style of movement again as opposed to trying to learn something new.

As Spark stepped up to Rick, she handed him a small Data pad, her information and the results of the procedure listed in detail as well as orders from the galactic federation as to the nature of her care from this point on. Spark looked herself over again as Rick went over the data on the pad. She had gotten used to her gray coloring, her natural brown spotted coat now looking strange to her as she examined herself in the mirrored wall. Sitting down, Spark began rubbing at her legs to get the feeling back into them. When she had first been captured, the doctor who performed the surgery on her to 'fix' her voice had also changed not only her fur color at the request of her future owner, but had also performed intensive surgical work to her paws to reduce her natural speed so she couldn't run away from her new owners. Now that she had her old legs back however, all she wanted to do was run again. Of course, she would never run away from Rick, not after all he had done for her without asking anything in return but to be able to run again, and even to dance! Spark jumped up and twirled around, beginning to dance when her legs gave way beneath her, the muscles still getting used to their new configuration. To her surprise, Rick was right there to catch her before she fell, picking her up and giving her a gentle hug before examining her paws, looking over the new coloring and giving her a smile. "Well Spark, this is going to take some getting used to. There are going to be a great number of changes happening around us, the first being that since you are now 11 you need to be placed with a family."

Spark's ears flattened against her head as she looked up at Rick sadly, whimpering at the thought of being separated from him but the smile on his face made her pause. 'Why was he so happy? Didn't this mean that she would have to go away now? Is that what he had wanted all along?' Rick reached out and gently ruffled spark's ears, tracing his finger through her fur as he spoke. "Don't worry sweetie, you aren't going to be taken away but from now on you can call me Dad." Spark's ears perked up at this, her expression changing from wallowing despair to a happy glow as she flung her arms around Rick, hugging him tightly. Rick began carrying her outside, still talking as he headed back towards the ship and their next assignment.

"You see Spark, part of the paperwork you signed granted me custody of you once the procedure was completed, not as your master but as your parent. The microchip they injected you with after the procedure just behind your right ear proves that not only aren’t you a pet but a legal citizen of Altair 6, the planet I came from. It also has my name, my ship name, and my contact information should you ever become lost. I know this will take some getting used to, for both of us, but I'm sure we will have lots of fun. I'm going to be taking care of your schooling since we don't live on a star base too. Each month you will have to take a learning test so I expect you to study hard and do well. Also, since you were the first of your kind to undergo this procedure at this facility, we are no longer able to do any deep space runs for a while, at least until the doctors are sure that there are no negative side effects. I did manage to find us some work running supply shipments between Drakon and Earth working for the trade commission so we won't need to worry about money for a while. This procedure usually costs more than I could make in 20 years running freight but since your injuries were so severe you qualified under a medical emergency so the cost will be absorbed by the hospital."

Spark listened as Rick, no her dad, talked about his plans for their future. After a while she looked up at him, nosing up under his chin gently to get his attention. "Dad, I'm sleepy. Can we talk about this tomorrow?" Rick smiled, his expression lighting up with the pride he felt hearing her call him Dad so soon after the operation. Still, it felt strange to him but he was already getting used to it. "Sure sweetie, we are almost home and when we get there you can have a nice long rest while I get us ready to head off to our new home." Rick arrived back at the ship a short time later; Spark having fallen asleep in his arms. He deposited her in the bedroom before heading outside to load up their purchases from earlier that day along with the food supplies and other necessities he had ordered. On the top of the pile was a small stack of books for Spark, donated by the Planetary Council to aid in her learning. Rick packed everything up in the ship then set the autopilot to take them out into space, destination the planet Drakon and their new future.