A Summoning, Part LI

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Part LI
~Hanged Man~

Prama looked at the green, slightly-glowing potion in the water bottle, and thought about the events of the previous Thursday night. Does this make me a hypocrite? she wondered briefly, before shrugging. Doesn't matter, I'm doing it anyway.

Over the past couple of tutoring sessions, she'd observed that Logan liked to drink bottles of those sporty drinks that were supposed to replenish people's electrolytes, but which also had ridiculous neon-glow colors and were probably as full of sugar as any soda could ever hope to be. So she bought one from a vending machine with a greenish color that was a close enough match, and now—late Tuesday night in her room—she did a little bit of what people unaware of magic might sarcastically call "alchemy." She dumped around one-quarter of the drink's volume out into the sink, then replaced that with the magic-refill potion, and then tightly closed the drink's cap. It might taste a little bit weaker this way—she knew the potion itself tasted like slightly sweetened water—but not strange enough to draw any real suspicion.

The idea was very simple: This amount of potion would be more than enough to fully recharge a relatively average magic-user. The typical effect would be that person feeling a slight rush as the overflow naturally and harmlessly left them. But—if her theory was right—anyone sufficiently close to awakening as, say, a Kitsune, would find that overflow directed into helping complete that near-awakening into a full one. Even most people with some sort of potential wouldn't actually have this happen; a person would need to be only a short time away from inevitably and naturally awakening all on their own for this particular method to work. Anika had said Logan was 'extremely close', however, so Prama was pretty sure he fit the latter category.

If anything, she was saving him the inconvenience of awakening in a more public location, and/or when nobody was around who knew anything about the veil or could help him make sense of what had just happened. Or, if it didn't work, then she'd know Anika had been wrong or lying or that 'extremely close' didn't mean what Prama had thought it meant. In that case, she'd provided him with a free drink, and if she thought it worth the trouble to try again with a different potion later, he'd be even less suspicious then. At any rate, this quarter-potion drink wasn't capable of doing any harm—or at least, not any more than something composed entirely of the original sports drink would've been.

---

From overhearing the students' chatter as they walked the campus sidewalks and lawns, and even the occasional chat between faculty or staff, one could get the impression that absolutely everyone was happy with the results of the strange prank that had coincided with a rainstorm on April 1. However, there was one group of people who were not happy at all, and wished among themselves that someone would catch whoever was responsible and, at the very list, bill them. That group would be those who had to clean up the mess.

The flags, banners, and posters on the corkboards weren't really a problem; they was mostly taken care of by the students themselves, with so many deciding to take them down to keep as souvenirs. Erasing chalkboards and whiteboards was no difficulty at all, and usually the responsibility of whoever was teaching a class in that room first. However, the custodial staff still found plenty of scraps and other bits of mess all over the place, and the most longstanding mess was the one which the groundskeepers had to deal with.

Bill came back from his lunch break, which he had spent most of purchasing some fresh jeans, to a report that still more of those accursed flags had been discovered. They were evidently supposed to have popped up during the rainstorm, but several of them hadn't—and when it wasn't the automatic sprinkler systems setting them off, it was a small batch of them all in one area popping out of the ground at once, usually startling or tripping someone in the area. And then they had to get out the shovels and look very carefully around for any more of those little holes that indicated the presence of an unpopped flag.

As one of the lead groundskeepers, it had been Bill's responsibility for the last week-and-a-half or so to go wherever a new flag was reported, verify that it was one of the originals that had been buried in the ground rather than some imitation stuck shallowly in from above (because a few students were doing that too!), and then go help them look around and dig them out. He'd ruined one of his few good pairs of jeans working the shovel to try to get one of them out just a couple of days ago.

Well, Bill was proud that he worked for his pay, so as soon as he got the report, he took a company golf cart out to the site, had a quick look around, pointed out a few little divots that needed to be dug out for flags, and then cursed alongside the younger, lower-ranking groundskeepers as they all got shovels out of the back of the cart to start digging away. One of them asked if he was getting too old for this kind of work, and he just laughed. "I ain't too old 'till I get a heart attack!" he said, making the first strike into the earth.

The flags weren't all that deep. Digging out just a little bit of ground really wasn't that much work. The real pain was what came after: Putting the earth back like it was, making it level, replanting fiddly little patches of grass, and doing everything they could to ensure the scars on the lawn would no longer show. As they got through step one of that process, Bill actually felt a little less tired and sore than usual. Maybe all the digging he'd been doing since April fool's day counted for exercise, he thought. Whatever the case, he kept on going, doing the work alongside his juniors.

About an hour and half later, they were done. Usually all of the bending over that was involved in this part of the job had him well and truly out of breath by this point, but Bill was actually feeling better than when he'd started. Not one to question a blessing, he told the other guys that they'd done a great job, got the cart all loaded up again, hopped back into it, and then started driving it back to where it belonged.

Thankfully, the rest of that day was fox-flag free. Bill got to go back to his more routine kind of work, which was a little bit less physically demanding. He usually hit a wall of exhaustion around an hour before quitting time, but today seemed to be an especially good day for him. He could swear he was less tired by that time than he'd been when he left for lunch—shoveling up the flags and all!

On his way out from work, an office worker he said hi to nearly every morning asked him if he'd started using that "touch of gray" stuff on his hair, and he laughed—thinking she'd been joking. But when he got to his car and glanced in the rear-view mirror, he had a slight shock. His hair did look a lot darker than usual, and maybe a little bit more full, the bald patch not as big. He shook his head—it had to be a trick of the light. Bill possessed the unfortunate sort of genetics that made a man start balding by age forty, and he knew that balding didn't work in reverse. Anyway, he had more important things to worry about, like heading off to get a drink and some food, and then back home to launder his clothes, including the day's purchases.

It'd be nice, though, he thought—if he really could be ten, twenty, thirty years younger. That really would be something wonderful!

---

Prama had arranged to meet with Logan on Wednesday afternoon to receive his "payment" of demonstrating his skills. She'd suggested that they could meet outside this time, since the weather was nice and all he was doing was showing her a mock-up website on his laptop. So she sat next to him on a bench in a relatively isolated space between two of the campus buildings, letting him go through the pages in order.

"So, this is the 'store'," he said, pointing. "I know, the items make no sense and the prices are ridiculous—I was just messing around."
"That's fine. Would you know how to actually make a real online store functional? Secure? Anything like that?"
"Uhh, well, I'm familiar with what companies you'd want to buy those services from," he said, shrugging. "I am seriously not a security expert, but I know enough to know who's got a good reputation."

"That's helpful. It's good to admit what you don't know or can't do, right?" she said, half-repeating some advice from their tutoring.

"Hah, yeah.."

She could tell: He still wasn't sure whether she was attracted to him or not. She'd sat next to him to help him with his math earlier, but in a separate chair; now the bench was only wide enough to allow a slightly respectful distance between them, which she maintained. Maybe Logan was attracted to her, maybe not—but his level of uncertainty about her intentions was hopefully enough to distract him that little bit more.

"I guess these are just stock images, but—if you needed to, you could take pictures of a product, right? Or make some kind of graphic to represent them?"
"Yeah, sure. I'm not a full-blown graphic artist, but I know how to work a photoshop," he said with a shrug.
"What about making a form for text to go into? So just the owner of the website can read it after, or reply to."
"Uuhh, I think that'd be easiest to make as an email thing," he said, shrugging. "You know, you can make a form where you put in your address, type your message, and then the website is configured so that message shows up as an email from that address, to whoever. And that way you can reply directly to.." He paused, clearing his throat softly. "Ah, sorry."

"It's fine, I've had you doing a lot of talking," Prama said. "Hang on.."

She bent over, digging around in her backpack for a moment, and produced the bottle she'd prepared the night before. "A machine gave me this the other day when I asked for bottled water..you want it?" she said, partially opening the top before he could see whether it had still been sealed or not, then offering it over toward him.
"Uh..." Logan looked from the drink to her for a second or two, just long enough for her to wonder whether she was onto him, but then he said, "Sure," and took the drink, chugging some of it before closing it and setting it down again. "Anyway, mostly with a form like that you need to be careful about injection, uh...stuff. Like, people entering commands for the website to do nasty things as their message, and for some reason it obeys them? More security stuff I don't really get all that well, but there's some standard tools that're supposed to filter all of that out for you too."
"It seems like a lot of web development is taking and using things other people built," she observed.

"Yeah, kinda. I get the impression sometimes that that's basically how you do any software, in the modern day."

"Well, there's no reason to fix what isn't broken, I guess," she said.

Watching him during this exchange, Prama didn't really see anything happening. Definitely no fox ears sprouting, at least. But Logan huffed out some air at this point, and grabbed the front collar of his shirt, flapping it a little bit to fan his torso. "Hooh..sorry, feels like it's gotten a little hotter out," he said.

Prama didn't feel any difference in temperature at all, but said "Yeah," kind of noncommittally, watching him reach for the bottle and take another long chug of it. If his first swig hadn't given him enough potion to overflow his magic, this one definitely did.

"Aah," he let out after the drink, sounding relieved. "Uh, anyway, I'm trying to stay up-to-date with the latest..uh...the..." He trailed off, looking distracted.

"Logan? Are you okay?" she asked.

"Uh..I-I dunno, I still feel hot..and kinda weird." He bent well forward to set his laptop down on the ground, sat back up, and put his hand up to his forehead for a moment to feel for a fever. "Uh..ugh.." He dropped the hand, shivering slightly, and Prama caught sight of the first visible sign that he was awakening: The color of his hair shifted to a bright shade of blue, seemingly as a wave coming out from its roots to its tips which went beyond the locks' original lengths, making them grow a few inches longer to accommodate this new color's needs.

"Ah..I...urgh.." Logan squirmed in place, panting softly, as his hair slowly grew out a little bit longer still. However, a more notable change began a second later, as his facial hair vanished away, and his ears, now sporting a few patches of light-blue hairs on them, started to poke out past that growing hair. He looked over at Prama, bringing a slightly-shaking hand up to touch some light blue hairs that were now framing his face at the sides, and said, "Uh..g-got a weird question. Are m-my ears...uh..?" Prama just nodded in reply. "Oh..g-great...hffh.."

At this point he gasped, then let out the air in a distressed "Aa—aagh...!" This came with Logan's body suddenly shrinking, losing at least half a foot of height all in one go. His frame collapsed inward, his arms visibly thinning and his pants loosening around his legs as they did the same; his face visibly shrank and softened into a rounder, cuter shape that fit much better with the longer locks of hair surrounding it. Then he shuddered, struggled as if against some invisible restraints, and began shrinking again, more slowly and steadily this time. "Aah, aa~aah.." His voice cracked and squeaked, its pitch shifting upward as his Adam's apple started disappearing from his neck. This whole time, his ears were still slowly growing bigger, the hairs taking over more and more of their surface and becoming more proper fur.

"Aaa~aah...m-mnngh...!" As his ears finished growing out into two big, fluffy vulpine triangles, their fur the same color as his hair other than their inner fluff and tips begin white, Logan's shrinking finally slowed to a halt, leaving him a very slender guy with narrow shoulders and slim arms and legs, and only a few inches taller than Prama was herself. "U-ugh...wh-wha~aat..?" His face flushed red as his voice refused to come out in anything lower than a high, barely-male tenor tone. She could see the color of his eyes slowly brightening from brown to red as he squirmed around in place a little, trying to pull his now-oversized shirt back onto a shoulder it had slipped off of, only for it to slide off of the other one. "I-I...a-agh..!"

The issue of his clothes seemed momentarily forgotten as he suddenly hugged himself tight. "Mrrrh—yip!" A high, soft animal-like noise emerged from his lips at the same time as a tail shoved itself out from his lower back, easily finding its way out between the bottom of his shirt and the top of his pants. It was colored the same as his hair and ears, with a much lighter blue on its back fifth or so, and it rapidly grew longer and fluffier now that it was out into view. At the same time, Logan shuddered one more time, his blush growing brighter, and let out a high, soft "M-mrr~rrr~rrh...!" Then it was "Ah—aah—AAH!" with the last one coming out in a voice too high for any male vocal chords. Prama judged by what happened next that this was the point where Logan's sex changed.

"M-mmnh..!" Her tail finished growing out to its full size as she squirmed her upper legs against each other, then nervously pulled the top of her pants and underwear up to look—probably forgetting entirely that she had an audience. "I-it's..I-I'm..mmh..w-wah!" No sooner had she let go of the pants than there was a sudden puff of blue smoke around her entire body, startling both her and Prama. The smoke instantly replaced Logan's ill-fitting shirt with a kind of kimono-dress-thing, white with dark blue trim, complete with a blue sash around her waist that was tied into a big ribbon on the back. Said dress barely covered down to her upper thighs, and the smoke had left her with apparently no pants, so her slim, smooth legs were completely exposed by this wardrobe change.

"W-wha..!?" Another tail sprouted from the fox-girl's back at this point, and her eyes fluttered shut. "A-aah..m-mngh.." Her hips and thighs visibly pushed out a little thicker, and a pair of small bumps pushed out the part of her new outfit above the sash. "M-mrr~rrh..." Her ears lowered, pointing out to either side; both the full-grown tail and the one that was still on its way out wagged back and forth; and her blush shone its brightest yet. "A-a~aah..m-mrrr~rrrrh..." Logan's voice deepened ever-so-slightly, leaving it a little deeper and more mature-sounding than Prama's was. "Mngh..a-aa~aah..." Her small bust slowly, steadily grew out bigger and bigger, at the same time as her second tail steadily grew longer and fluffier. The two seemed almost linked to each other, and, indeed, appeared to finish growing at the same time. "Mrrh..o~ooh.." Logan slowly untensed as her mid-sized bosom bounced gently into place, her second tail now a perfect match for the first one. For a second or two, she breathed in and out, looking calm and, perhaps, satisfied.

This calm did not last very long. She blinked her eyes open, looked down at herself for a second or two, and then her ears popped straight upright and she jumped off of the bench. "Wha—wha..!?" Her hands hurried down to make a vain effort to pull the hem of the dress lower; the enormous sleeves around her arms wound up covering her legs better than it did.
"Uh, Logan, waaait a second—don't panic," Prama said, quickly dropping to her feet herself.
"What did you put in my drink?!"

"Uh—what do you—?"
"Don't play dumb with me!!!" She went and violently grabbed the bottle in one hand, pointing at it with the other. "You gave me a drink, and then I turned into—what!?—A fox girl?! I know what correlation is!"

"Okay, okay! There was something in it, but..that result was still very unexpected," Prama said, resisting the urge to mention causation. "Could you lower your voice a little please?"
"Fine—fine!" she said, the second one coming out as an extremely emphatic near-whisper. "So what was it supposed to do, turn me into a frog or something?!" this question came with her emphatically throwing the bottle backwards over her shoulder.

"No, it's—that kind of potion doesn't even do much of anything usually," Prama said.

"Potion!?!?" Logan hissed, waving her arms up and down excitedly.

"Oh, whoops—uh, one thing at a time.

"Look—you're a Kitsune. You know, a fox spirit?"
"Is that how it works? Have I always been one and just didn't know it?"

"Well, no—but you were already really close to becoming one, and the potion helped. I, don't actually know why you turned into a girl Kitsune exactly, but the potion didn't do that."
"Wha—then what did!?"

Prama crossed her arms, trying to think quickly. "Uuhh, well, magic awakenings like that come with a brief burst of power for the person being awakened. Some physical changes happening—beyond the necessary, like a Kitsune having fox ears and a tail—aren't that unusual. So, logically, the only power that could've done that part was your own."

"Why would I do that!?" she said, trying to use her hands to point at herself, bumping both of them into her new breasts, and quickly pulling them back off them, her face flushing red again.

"I don't know..I'm not saying it was necessarily your conscious will or anything," Prama said with a shrug. "But anyway—I do know some people who can fix that, actually."

"That's great I guess, but—whyyyy did you want to 'help me' 'awaken' as a 'Kitsune'," she said, making deliberate air-quotes with each phrase, "in the first place!?"

"I..thought it'd be the easiest way to help you come out from the veil," Prama said.

"Is that what it's called? People having weird traits like fur and wings, and magic obviously existing, and nobody talking about it?"

"I..guess that's one way to put it," Prama said.
"I already knew about that!!!" the blue-haired fox-girl shouted again, flapping her arms excitedly enough for the gigantic sleeves they were in to produce a gust of wind.

"Oh. But you—" Prama paused, engaging her genius mind for a moment. From Logan's apparent ignorance about the details of magic, and the way she had just described her own experience of the world... "Wait, do you mean to say that you noticed magic was real, but never asked anyone about it once you did?"

"Only for three years! What was I supposed to say? 'Hey man, why do you have a tail?'" she said in as low a tone of voice as she could manage, trying to imitate how her male voice had sounded. "I'd look crazy, and for all I knew someone would lock me up or kill me for knowing too much!"

"Uh, well, the veil doesn't work like that. Don't you think you'd hear of a lot more 'mysterious disappearances' if it did?" Prama said.

"I don't know! HowamIsupposedto know!?"

"Ssshh! I understand you're freaked out, but you're being really loud again. Uh, look—you did get two tails, and Kitsune are more powerful with more tails, so you should be able to just make both of us invisible and inaudible, and then you can yell at me all you want."
"How do I do that?"
Prama shrugged. "I don't know, but apparently things like illusions are supposed to come naturally. Feel for it, I guess?"
"Feel for...hmngh." Logan crossed her arms, making a visible effort to concentrate, and then in a puff of blue smoke, she vanished.

"Uh, that worked—I can't see you," Prama said. "Or—hear you, if you're saying anything right now."
The fox-girl reappeared in another puff of blue smoke. "Okay, so—"
"Just do both of us this time?"

"Yeah, okay. I'll just...uh." She made a vague gesture Prama's way, and this time the puff of blue smoke appeared around both of them, but with no effect that Prama could actually perceive. "..Did that work?"
"It should have if it felt the same for you, but I can't actually tell. I guess we'll know if you start yelling again and someone comes along to check on us."

Logan grabbed her ears in her hands and pulled them upward. "Aauuugh this is so weird! I guess it's nice you know someone who can at least make me a guy again, but I guess I'm just stuck with having fur for the rest of my life!?"

"Well, I think Kitsune can actually 'hide' those parts...I'm not sure whether you still feel like the fur is there or not," Prama said, while Logan let go of her ears, dropped her hands, and visibly took a few deep breaths to try to calm herself down.

"I-it's , I guess I can get used to it when apparently so many other people do. I-it's not all bad, if it apparently comes with superpowers..but how do you know all this stuff anyway?"

"Well, one of my friends is a Kitsune," Prama said. "Also—I guess you're not planning on staying that way, but I do know from experience what it's like to be, er, newly female."

"Oh, yeah—'cause you were part of that cult, right?" the fox-girl said, pointing at her for a second. "I guess you're one of the people who changed because of that. No wonder you were acting kind of weird for a girl."

"No, that's just how I am. And I wasn't just part of the cult, I was one of its leaders. In fact, the main guy was my roommate, and also happens to be one of those rich friends I said I have? Well, the new leader basically changed everything about most of us." Prama sighed. "Now we're all supposed to be nice and good like her. But I guess I'm not very capable of being 'good'. I'm just as selfish as ever, and can't even think about doing anything that won't personally benefit me."

Prama caught sight of Logan watching her with a slightly tilted head as she turned her own face away, feeling an unexpected formation of some tears in her eyes. She sniffed, and then: "Wah—!"

Suddenly, and very unexpectedly, the blue-haired Kitsune had come up and grabbed her into a hug. "U-uh..wh-what're you..?!"

"I don't know! Y-you looked really sad, and I just..u-um.." Logan paused to try to explain herself better, but instead realized something aloud at the same time as the other girl: "Y-you're hugging me back..t-this feels really weird as a girl..!"

"Um..s-sorry.." Prama let go. The sensation of the fox-girl's body against hers was nice, and a part of her actually wanted to touch the fluffy, warm-and-soft-looking fur of her ears, or even one of those tails, but she knew better. Logan gently let go of her and hopped a couple of steps back, her face entirely red again.

"N-no, it's fine. I mean, that was me, even if I don't really know why? Some kind of uh, fox-person thing, you think?"
"I uh..probably not..."

"A-a-anyway! I don't think you're that bad. You decided to help me out as soon as you thought I had a problem, right? And, you really didn't expect 'awakening' me to go like this," she said, pointing at her bust with one index finger.

"I didn't, but—the only reason I wanted to help you was to advance my own plans. Which, included needing you out of the veil to do it..."
"Still! You are the first person out of all of the..magic, whatever, stuff, people I know...to actually even try to tell me what's been going on! You have no idea how much of a relief it is to know I wasn't going crazy! A-and, I mean..superpowers, right? Maybe you can tell me a little more of what you know about that? Or uh, magic stuff in general..?"

Prama took her glasses off and wiped a few leftover tears off of her face with a sleeve. "Sure—I don't mind. I can..explain what I wanted your skills for while I'm at it, and...it's up to you if you want to help me or not with that. But—maybe not somewhere so public. I uh..don't actually have a roommate right now, so we could just use my dorm room?"
"Uh.." Logan hesitated briefly, blushing again, but then nodded. "Sure..that's fine. After that, maybe you can call someone to turn me back into a guy..."
"Right, of course," Prama nodded, although a part of her thought that it would be a huge shame...

---

Yes, another generated image. I did do a tiny bit of actual editing to this one; one of the teeth had a weird vertical line going through it, so I removed that. Otherwise, I'm still amazed that an image this good showed up.

A Summoning, Part L

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Part L
~Chariot~

"Damon, supper's ready!" The brown-haired werewolf bounded down the stairs before Onida had finished speaking. "Oh, hi—you're energetic."

"Um, yep! I'm also really hungry though."
"Pfft, okay then. Come on to the kitchen..."

Sam joined them not long afterward. "So, I guess things went well with Graham this afternoon?" Onida asked.
She gulped down what was in her mouth before speaking. "Y-yeah! S-so, um—" Damon's face flushed red. "Uh, her tail finished splitting! She has like magic powers now or something? I uh...was turned back into a boy for like two minutes, and we kissed...that was really nice."

"You—aah, back up," Sam said, putting out a hand. "So—she's a full-fledged Nekomata now. And turned you male?"
"Y-yeah..?"
"Did you, aaaah. Feel any sense of aggression or anything during that time?"
"Uh..y-yes..." she said, folding her ears down a little bit. "It was um, much friendlier aggression than wanting to attack someone, but—either way. I think she's strong and powerful enough that I basically couldn't hurt her if I wanted to."

"I guess that's aaaaaah, kinda good?"

"Do you..want to be male again?" Onida asked her sister seriously. "Once you're..fully recovered, mentally speaking, and have enough self-control?"
"I..I dunno..? I've been um..enjoying being a girl, I think. But at the same time..." Damon blushed brighter still. "W-well, with Graham, I'd like to...at least sometimes.......I think!"

"Well, think about it. I guess we now know another person who could just...do that for you, if you really wanted to. Although I guess it'd make things awkward with your streams, since you were supposedly irreversably changed by a disease, or something like that."

"H-heheh, w-well. Being a girl for that, at least, I might really wanna keep. We both definitely get more donos these days," Damon said—the other party of said 'both' being Sam, of course.

While Damon ran back upstairs to actually get things ready for a stream that night, Sam volunteered to help with the dishes. Onida paused a long moment during this, just watching her and thinking. Eventually she noticed, and paused too. "Aaah...something on your mind?"
"Um. Yes, you could say that. I'm..." She shook her head slightly. "It's difficult for me to know how to put this exactly. I guess...I always imagined getting to know someone I liked in a more..traditional kind of way, and part of me still wants that. Even though uh.." Her face felt a little hot, and she felt her tail wagging a little bit.
Sam smiled, returning the same body language back. "Y-yeah, aaah. So...you'd like to go on a proper date or two?"
"M-maybe...I, suppose I could use that male form I have for them..."
"Well, sure! Why not? I mean aaah, if you want—since I'm the one who was originally male, I could play that role, too."
"Uh, m-maybe, on one or two of them...b-but...I really wouldn't mind. Maybe I could use some getting used to being er..l-like that."

"Whatever you'd like. Let's aaah...let's make plans," Sam said, smiling cutely.
"R-right..."

---

Prama couldn't meaningfully bring up her idea to Boreas on Friday. The old alchemist was, if anything, in far too good of a mood. Not that Prama ever actually saw her smile, but she had a bunch of complicated mid-step tasks for some more difficult, expensive potions for her apprentice to do, and had also brought out an old notebook (the handwriting of which was entirely indecipherable to Prama) and kept flipping through it while asking her for responses to various ideas. While the genius girl didn't mind putting her mind to work, or the practice doing things more interesting than the basics she'd already mastered, it didn't really leave much spare conversation time between them for that entire day's worth of work. Saturday was only a little calmer, still not enough to go through the entire pitch.

It didn't really matter; this plan could eventually work without Boreas's help, so she proceeded with other parts of it in the meantime. Such as starting to help Logan ready himself for his last couple of tests in math for the semester. His grade really wasn't abysmal, but he was struggling to understand the very last, most complicated parts of the material, so she patiently guided him through problem after problem on Monday morning, and they agreed to meet again on Tuesday afternoon.

Around mid-afternoon, in the middle of a class lecture, Prama got a text from Anika. It just said: that guy you're tutoring is extremely close to awakening as a kitsune, fyi

She took a second to reply: Thanks but how do you even know about that?

passed by in the library

Well, that was nice to know...she'd need him out from under the veil for her plans to work anyway. If someone was that close to awakening, it wouldn't take a lot to nudge them over the edge, she thought. Maybe she could introduce her idea to Boreas during today's work, and buy a particular potion while she was there too...

---

Coming down the stairs from her visit to Damon was the first time Graham really noticed: Her fully-split tail and accompanying powers also came with a sort of additional sixth sense. She knew exactly where the other two werewolves of the house were, and which one was which; she could sense that they were werewolves in particular, and could feel Onida's presence much more keenly, seemingly as an indication that she was more 'powerful' than either of the others. Coming outside and driving, this sense threatened to distract her, and she found she was able to tamp it down or tune it up at will—and so made use of the former capability to better focus on what she was doing.

On Sunday, she demonstrated some of her power for her granddaughter—not in the form of transforming either of them, but rather making some simple illusions effortlessly, making fire and water come out of nowhere and float around, creating a brief indoor gust of wind and then quickly catching a bunch of objects that it had blown off of the shelves, from a distance, 'directly' with her magic, which showed as a bright purple glow surrounding them. Some of what she worked out how to do was because Rachel asked whether she could, having perhaps a somewhat better imagination than Graham did.

Walking toward work on Monday, Graham's new sixth sense picked up details about many of the people she passed by which she never would have guessed. She noticed a werewolf in fully-human form; a kitsune who was trying to hide his power entirely; and most interestingly, a few people who felt a lot like Neko or Kitsune or some other thing she couldn't identify, but were still decidedly human. There was a distinct sense that they only needed a little bit of help to become that other thing, a kind of help which she'd be able to give...but, not knowing any of them or what they might actually want, she didn't actually try to act on any of that. The longer she exercised this odd sense, the more she had the feeling that it wasn't actually entirely new—that, perhaps, it had been there since her initial awakening as a Neko, but had been so weak she'd barely noticed. And, of course, her tail splitting had intensely sharpened it into something that she could really use.

"Hello theeeeere!" Valoz emerged from her office as soon as Graham entered the door, hurrying over toward the Nekomata with her arms spread wide, and picked her up into a brief hug. "Congratulations! I knew you were lucky~!"

"Err, hello there to you too," she said, returning the hug gently and politely for the few seconds it lasted; then the greed demon set her down and hopped back out of her personal space. From the Mammon, Graham could feel a very strong version of one of the sorts of power she'd felt the potential for in some humans earlier, making it quite obvious now that this was demonic power. "I guess you can 'feel' the difference, eh?" It only made sense that a demon that powerful would be able to sense a Nekomata back, she guessed.

"Yep! It's really something to actually meet a real Nekomata after all my years, let alone already know somebody who ascended into one!" She placed her fists on her hips. "Well, Graham cracker~, you could probably just make your own gold and gems outta rocks if you wanted to, but here you are anyway. I guess you'd just prefer to play fair in society?"
"Well..it didn't really occur to me I could do that. But if everyone did who could, then gold wouldn't be worth much at all, now would it?"
"Nope!"
"Anyhow, I took this job partly to keep myself busy, so...not thinking of quitting all that soon."
"Well, that's great! I'm still very happy to have you on after the last couple of weeks of profi—I meeeaaan, stellar work ethic—I've had from you. So—you know where to find me if you need me," she said, giving a friendly wave before turning to head back to her office.

"Uh, sure."

---

Logan ran across one of his friends in the hallway after his last class. "Hey dude!" he said, waving.

"Oh, hey." He came over, and they shook hands like bros do. "Guess you decided the redhead look wasn't for you, huh?"

"Yyyeah, nah," his friend shrugged. "Besides, something way better happened last Thursday!"

"Uh-huh?"

"You know that girl—that woman I told you about before? I finally managed to ask her out on a date! She said yes, we went that night, and she paid for it herself!"

"Oh, wow. Good for you, I guess? I thought you said she was terrifying, though."

"Yeah...she really took over, too, man. But that's what makes it so exciting!"

"Uh, if you say so." Logan really didn't understand Jack's taste in women. Maybe it was normal for people who were part-wolf? "Anyway, I guess the date went well?" he said, knowing that he couldn't really ask about that.
"Yeah! Y-yeah..uh." Jack flushed a little bit. "I mean, it was sorta weird, but I still really enjoyed it?"

"What, did she make you dress like a girl or something?"

"Uh. Um....n-no, it wasn't that weird," he said, the extremely long, flustered pause making it obvious that it had actually been even weirder. Logan knew that several people's sexes had spontaneously changed since the weird cult more-or-less dissolved into a social club, so he knew that was a thing that could happen. Perhaps Jack's date had, instead, done that to him. Not that he could ask for clarification, though.

"Uh, any—anyway, we've got a second date lined up too! But how 'bout you? Meet any cuties lately?"
"I guess...?" He crossed his arms. "Last Friday, at lunch, this girl just sat across from me and started talking. Offered to help tutor me in math for basically nothing. She's cute but..I dunno, she doesn't actually seem interested in me?"

"I guess you've got a name? What's she look like?"
"Prama. She's..pretty short, light brown hair, purple eyes, wears glasses. Talks a lot about how amazing she is, says she's a genius. Seemed really nervous at first, then suddenly turned super confident—dunno what that's about either."
"Uh...huh." Jack's expression said that he strongly suspected some kind of unexpected correlation. "This Prama chick...she wouldn't have like, really long braided twintails most of the time...would she?"
"Huh, yeah, actually," Logan said, nodding.

"Yyyyeah. I think that's one of the people who were, involved in that whole cult thing before. You should probably be careful around her," he said. But Logan had the distinct feeling that that wasn't why he was concerned about Prama.

"I will, sure. But I mean—free help with passing my class? I can't exactly say no. She already helped me out yesterday morning, and I'm doing way better on the latest homework! So.."
"Yeah, yeah. I'm not saying don't hang out with her, or don't go for it if she is interested, just..you know...be careful."

"Okay, okay. I'll look out for if she wants me to help reform the cult or something," he said with a shrug. "Anyway, see ya later."
"Yeah, man, same. Let's shoot some hoops or somethin'!"

Logan watched his friend leave, his fluffy brown tail waving back and forth behind him the whole time. He'd been increasingly convinced, since he started seeing weird things back at the start of freshman year, that all of it was real...but he still had no idea how to bring it up. Jack had had furry ears and a tail since their first meeting, and had never said a single thing about it. Everyone else he knew or had met with similarly strange traits also seemingly went out of their way to say nothing about them. And, recently, several people suddenly changing to completely different, almost-unrecognizable appearances was a 'known medical condition'. Which, again, basically nobody really talked about much.

He felt certain there was a genuine, actual conspiracy happening around him, and really wanted to know what it was all about...but he had no idea what the consequence of admitting what he knew could be. Would they accept him into the conspiracy and let him know what was really going on...or just lock him up and claim he was crazy, so that nobody else would ever believe him?

For now, Logan just sighed and tried to push those thoughts aside to make room for more practical considerations. Like what he was going to do for supper tonight...

---

After trading introductions with the third Kitsune involved in Andrew and Steph's schemes, Toma and Stella had to wait a couple of minutes for the two of them to arrive. After all, the three of them were a few minutes early.

"No, that's the sixth," Steph was saying.

"You said the sixth was the twelfth," Andrew replied, "and the twelfth was the eighth, and the second was the fourth."
"I didn't say that. I very clearly told you which one was the fourth in the first place!"

"No, you sai—uuugh." at this point they reached the door to the study room, and Andrew just threw his hands up in exasperation, giving up, and pushed the door open. Toma was pretty sure she could hear Steph snickering on his way inside.

"Uh, hi," Andrew said, pulling the door closed behind him.
"Hello~," Stella said cheerfully, waving. "So, I understand you two have come up with a plan safe enough for our friendly neighborhood dragon to help make it work?"
"Yeah. Uh—it's not exactly what we were originally going for, so it won't actually involve any seismic movement. That, we couldn't find any way to make more safe. But we'll still really need you to lend some power, 'cause it involves me doing something I'm not actually very talented or good at."
"All the same, Andrew's been practicing hard to give you a quick demonstration of what it is we have in mind," Steph said, gesturing his way.
"Right. Okay, check this out." He put his hands out to either side, pointing the palms at opposite walls of the room they were in. In each place there appeared a rectangular, doorwayesque opening, and on closer inspection the openings were found to lead to each other. Toma leaned over to try and look directly into one of those doorways, and found an effect resembling the "hall of mirrors" that appears when two flat mirrors are placed directly across from each other.

"They're doorways!" the third Kitsune said, gesturing. "Go on and try going through one."
Stella and Toma exchanged a glance, and then the celestial shrugged and walked through one side, coming out the other. "They are functional! However..." she tilted her head slightly, looking over at Andrew. He was shaking a little bit, and starting to audibly pant. "This appears to take something of a toll on you," she said with a touch of concern.

"Uh...ffh.." He dropped his hands back to his sides, visibly sweating a little bit, and the openings disappeared. "Y-yeah.." His voice sounded strange, much higher-pitched than usual. "That's why we, hffh, really need some help with, like, powering it. Steph knows a way to—um." He paused, cleared his throat, and suddenly his voice seemingly went back to normal. "...Knows a way to channel magic from a willing 'source' into me. We did a more, complicated version between the three of us to make that storm, but in this case we just need some raw power. I think."

"Thinking with portals, huh..?" The dragon-girl crossed her arms and looked carefully at Andrew, tilting her head slightly. His voice hadn't simply sounded like someone tired or strained; it had sounded like a completely different person. Now that she had some experience 'sculpting' both Stella's body and her own, she felt able to discern the actual shape of a person if she 'looked' hard enough...and what her eyes saw wasn't matching what she felt from that direction, now that she was really paying attention. "Isn't it still physically straining to use powerful magic for a long period of time?"

"Yeah, of course," Steph said. "That's why he's been practicing. But in this case, most of that strain was from squeezing out so much of his own power to make it do that. With a little more practice, I estimate it shouldn't be much more tiring than the storm was. Which...admittedly, did require some bed rest and good food afterward."

"I see..." Toma nodded. By now she had a pretty good idea of Andrew's actual body shape: Shorter than what everyone was seeing, much longer hair, and most importantly female, with some pretty deep curves to boot. They'd said before that Andrew was hiding 'his' curse with illusions, so now she felt fairly sure she knew just what the curse's actual nature was. But was there any reason to bring that up right now? Probably not.

"Are portals safe?" she asked instead. "I mean, can they dump someone out in the wrong place, such as fifty feet up in the air? What happens if they close when someone's halfway through?"

"Longer distances take more energy and effort to make and maintain," Steph said. "Going against gravity does, too. It'd be harder for Andrew to make a portal that goes way up in the air, so that's not gonna happen by accident. And magic portals like these can't cut things, they just get ejected out one side or the other—practically at random, if it's truly exactly halfway in."
Stella nodded her agreement to this description. "The ejection exerts some force, but not enough to injure. At worst, it may cause one to stumble forward or backwards and fall onto the ground," she explained. "I could heal an injury as minor as that myself, with little effort."

"So, just to summarize—you want to basically swap the entrances using portals," Toma continued. "Just the main entrances, or all that you can?"
"At least the main and the side ones," Andrew said. "Plus, a minor illusion to swap the names of the buildings for some extra confusion. We'd like to do it sometime in the morning, have them set up right before lots of people start going in and out maybe, and maintain it for a good hour or more—enough that it confuses people again when things go back to normal."

"Okay. I think I can get behind this one," Toma said. "Maybe 'stretching' my own magic like that would be good for me anyway. But—not when people are taking tests. So, it'll have to be pretty soon."
"Agreed," Steph said. "Believe it or not, most foxes really do want to minimize the actual harm from our pranks."
"We should get a feel for how this all works, then. See how well you can do keeping those portals up from earlier with donated magic from me."
"I'll give some too!" Stella said. "This should be fun."

"Okay, that's fine," Steph said, nodding. "If you're sufficiently rested, Andrew?"

"Yeah..I should be okay to try again."

---

"So..I don't really expect that you're curious what I want to ultimately do with alchemy," Prama said as she was putting her tools away for the day late Tuesday afternoon.

"Hm? Make potions and sell 'em, I'd expect," Boreas said.

"Well, sure, but that's only the broad strokes. I have a particular idea I'd like to let you in on..just in case you're interested in participating. The least I could do, out of gratitude for taking me on as your apprentice. I believe it's a very profitable idea, that might get requests for all kinds of unusual potions."

"Well, I'm not really hurtin' for money, but. I'm listening."

"Let's see—first of all, how familiar are you with the internet?"
"Uh..that's that human thing, with computers, ain't it?"
"Yes. It allows communication and commerce across wide distances. Spanning pretty much the entire world, actually. I guess maybe magic-using people have other ways of solving that problem."
"There's some ways of communicating long-range. Usually short-lived spells, or enchanted items, or such."

"Yeah, it's a lot less limited than that. Basically everyone can talk to everyone else whenever from wherever, using the internet."
"That...sounds exhausting."
"Oh, it is sometimes...but, to get to my point. You can also buy things on the internet. There's basically virtual shops where you can see pictures of the item you want, press a button to buy it, and the money goes from your bank to that of whoever you're buying the stuff from, and then they ship it to you."
"I see...that sounds like it takes an awful lot of trust between the buyer and seller."

"The thing is, it kinda doesn't? Usually both sides are complete strangers," Prama continued patiently. "The go-between is what both of them trust, the website and the banks and so on. Besides, individuals and online stores have reputations to uphold, if they want people to keep buying from them. Scams aren't unheard of, but scammers don't usually last very long."

"I see. And, you want to put your store on this internet thing, then."
"Right! Exactly. We could have a standard set, and have a form to commission anything special, a way to communicate with the alchemist for clarification, and of course a way to reject commissions if it's something that simply can't be done."

"Well, I guess if you know what you're doing, it don't sound too impossible.

"Lots of hurdles to get over, though. Just to start with: Normal humans, under the veil, use the internet all the time, don't they?"

"Oh, well. I'm not talking about doing this now. Definitely at least after I graduate college, if not also once I've met your approval to be a full-fledged, independent alchemist. And, from my conversations with Zotha, I've got a feeling we may not actually need to worry about the whole veil thing. But regardless, I've thought through the logistics plenty. Obviously we'd need less-fragile containers for as many potions as can remain stable in them; ways to pack up and send a liquid safely without getting the side-eye from shipping carriers; the actual website itself; so on, so forth. And I wouldn't mind being the sole proprieter and alchemist of this venture, but—if you're interested, we could also work together on this. Be able to sell more volume, or handle more complicated requests. Not even necessarily all the time, like, if you're just interested in really strange and difficult potions, I could filter out the easy stuff and leave only that to you. Whatever you'd feel works best, including your being completely uninvolved. But like I said: I wanted to let you in on it regardless."
"Hm. Well, I'll think on it, at least. Maybe wait 'till you've got it all set up to decide whether I'd really like to be involved. My quiet little business here is trouble enough for a lone wolf like me to handle," Boreas said.

"Fair enough," Prama said, heading out into the main shop to exit the building. "We'll see about it in the future, then. Oh—by the way, I'd like to buy this." She pulled a water bottle of standard magic-refill potion off the shelf. "I set some cash on the counter for it earlier."
Boreas glanced at the cash in question, then back to Prama, and nodded. "You could just take something that cheap at this point, you know. Think you made that batch yourself anyway."
"Sure, but I'd much rather save up my goodwill to buy something a lit-tle more valuable," she said with a sweet grin, then headed out the door.

---

Around mid-morning on Tuesday, Graham noticed (from the back of the store) an older man walking inside who could become Neko, given enough help. She went out to check on him from a short distance off, making sure none of the other employees were already helping him, and then quietly put a small illusion over her appearance. He looked to be in his late fifties or so, with gray hair on a partly-balded head; she kept her body's apparent shape the same, but created the look of some faint wrinkles and age lines on her face, like someone around that same age, but wearing some decent make-up, might be expected to have.

"Say, anything I can help you with?" she asked, coming up his way.
"Well, I don't know. Any deep-pocket sales you know of?" he asked. "Tore up my near-last good pair of jeans."
"Hmm. I think there's something over this way, if you'd follow me," she suggested, pointing and starting to lead the way.
"All righty then."

"Got a bit of an odd question for you, sir," she said while he followed. "Do you..ever wish you could be young again?"
"Hah! Every day o'my life," he said. "Just ten, fifteen years or so'd be great. I had a full head of hair back then, you know. And I should've found me a woman back then, too, when some of 'em would spare me a second glance."

Graham regarded him for a moment; he was a little bit overweight, but had the build and fitness of someone who did physical labor for a living. "You don't look half-bad for your age...but I know what you mean. I'm a widow myself, and lucky enough to have found another someone to be with since then," she said. "What if..you could be even younger? Say, back to age eighteen, or twenty?"
"Oooh, that'd be something," he said. "I'd sow some real wild oats then, lemme tell ya! Aww, I hope I'm not being too vulgar about that, but you know."
"Sure, sure," she said, nodding. "I'm well-acquainted with the facts of life, so don't worry too much about me.

"Now—these are on clearance. Half off, and I think a few of 'em look to be around your size," she said, gesturing to a particular stack of jeans.
"Ooh, you're a blessing, miss," he said, going and picking one up to get a better look at it. "These oughta keep from tearing for a while, at least. Price's just about where I can afford it, too."

"I'm glad I could help you out," she said cheerfully.

Awakening him, making him younger, or really just transforming him at all right in the middle of the store—especially if it was anything like when Zotha had done that for Graham—would make a bit of a scene, and probably be at least somewhat embarrassing. So the Nekomata went for something much more subtle: While he was sifting through the jeans to decide which subset of them he wanted to actually buy, she simply planted a little seed of her power into him. It would give him what he'd just said he wanted, and the more he liked the results, the stronger its effect would grow—and, eventually, it would be strong enough to fully awaken him as another cat-person. Its work would probably be done by the following morning, she figured, although this was partially a guess. She had never asked her magic to do something as complex as this before, after all.

Just to be sure, she kept up with him throughout the rest of the sale, continuing to be polite and friendly, and waved goodbye to him as he left, his appearance completely unchanged for now. But the seed was most definitely present, and had already 'grown' ever so slightly by then.

Graham paused, looking at the time, and jumped slightly. Her shift was just now over! So it was time to head home for lunch, then off to...play with Damon for a little while, and then everything else planned for the day afterward. Thinking about all of that, she mostly forgot about the whole "seed-planting" thing by the time she got back to the house.

A Statue in the Woods 9: Recreation

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---

"Rrrfh..."

Ty woke up hugging a pillow again. This was probably going to be a pretty regular occurrence, unless she could start waking up earlier, or learn to wake up when Elise (no doubt) teleported herself out of bed, or stop being so clingy while asleep. Then again, she didn't actually mind, especially considering the nights that preceded waking up this way. So she gently let go, pulled up and sat on the side of the bed, stretching out and yawning.

"Morning, master~!"

"Wah!" The wolf-girl toppled backwards in surprise at a voice suddenly not two feet away from her, and sat up to find Elise leaning partway down toward her, wearing shorts and a tank top again.

"Oh." She'd either teleported in or been standing there, invisibly waiting, either way with the express intent of startling Ty. "Morning. Your boobs look bigger than last night."
"Pffheheh! Why is that your first thought?!"
"I dunno, just something I noticed. It's a good look."
"Well, thank you." Elise offered out a hand, and the wolf-girl took the help hopping up out of bed, then allowed herself to be briefly spun around and pulled into a brief hug.

"Mrr~rfh. I guess for you, changing around your proportions is the same as any other girl getting a haircut. Or changing clothes."
"Indeed—though I do like to have some consistency. But I can do just the same for you, master~."

"Sure," Ty said, and gently freed herself from the embrace, taking a small step back. "I guess I'll go take a shower now..."
"All right. I'll have breakfast ready by the time you get out!"

While this breakfast wasn't as extravagant as the first one she'd made, Elise's cooking was as good as ever. "Don't feel like you have to do this every morning," Ty said. "I mean—I know how to cook too. Or, we could go out for breakfast some time."
"Ooh, I'd like that," Elise said—but this also helped the wolf-girl remember how it had gone when they'd gone to a restaurant with Ronan right after releasing her. Elise just softly giggled at the brief face Ty made in imagining a repeat of that.

"Uh—anyway. Tonight's usually board game night with the guys. And it's my turn to host, so..obviously you're invited too."
"I see. So I might get to meet some more of your friends?"
"Right. Rona'll be here too, unless some conflict comes up."

"That may be a good opportunity...considering that you awoke as an Ookami, and she gained a feline appearance without my meaning to—well, my magic may have accidentally awoken her as well."

"Does that uh..come with any special powers?" Ty asked, trying hard not to imagine the chaos that could ensue from Ronan having Elise's level of magical power.
"Not immediately, usually. Neko do have a little more talent than an ordinary human if they put in the effort to learn certain kinds of magic, and they can gain a second tail and ascend into Nekomata—whose power is comparable to that of a nine-tailed fox. But that tends to take an entire lifetime, and a great deal of wisdom; most never even come close."

Ty's ears picked up the mail truck coming and going while she was doing the dishes, so after that she went out to the box. Aside from a couple of pieces of snail-mail spam, there was a large packet from the people who were supposed to be hiring Elise. "I think this is your paperwork," she said, placing it on the table and opening it up. The kitsune watched from one side while Ty picked up the pages and sifted through them to find a quite boilerplate, mundane-seeming agreement. The only thing sort of notable was that the contract could be terminated by the employee at any time, as opposed to needing to give some kind of notice. "Looks pretty normal. There's like ten places you'll have to sign or initial."

"Thank you~." Elise took the papers, then spread them out on the table before her, leaning over them.

"I'll find you a pen...I guess you want to read the whole thing yourself?"

"Indeed. A wise fox never enters any agreement in ignorance," Elise said.

"I guess I'll get to work while you do that, then." Ty handed her a pen, and Elise set it on top of the papers before straightening up and pulling the wolf-girl into another close hug.

"You don't mind if I steal a kiss first?" she said, already starting to shift her master's form. Ty's curves flattened out as she started to get taller.

"N-not a~at all," she said, her voice quickly deepening. In a moment, the wolf-girl had turned back into a tall, strong man, and holding the cute, curvy fox-girl in his arms created an entirely different—but no less pleasant—set of feelings for him. It was no less so when she locked her lips onto his, initiating one long, passionate kiss that left both of them panting as he gently set her back down onto her feet.

"H-heehee~...You're getting very good at that, master~! I believe I'll be grateful to be sitting down for a little while," she said.

"Uh, y-yeah, good, thanks," Tyler sort of mumbled, feeling too flustered to form a meaningful sentence right now. She just giggled again in response, halfway falling onto the chair, so he headed over toward his office to try and focus on something else for a while.

Elise took at least half an hour to thoroughly read through the document, calling out to ask Tyler the meaning of a couple of terms at first before coming to one he didn't know off the top of his head—at which point he pointed out she could look them up on her phone. After mailing the signed contract back out, she went and played more of the game from their first night until lunchtime.

It was an occasional bad habit of his to stubbornly continue working on an article until it was done, pushing a meal out an hour or more past when it should really happen. Today, the Kitsune came into the room and said, "Maaasteeerr~...I'm hungry."

"Oh." Looking between her and the clock in his computer, he nodded. "Yeah...I'll make us something." So he didn't wind up having a late lunch this time.

After lunch, he tried calling Renard's number. Elise stuck around in the kitchen to listen in on the conversation, her curiosity obviously piqued. "Helloo...Renard speaking."
"Hey, this is Tyler—"
"Oh, with the rip van Kitsune?"
"Uh, yeah," he said, taking a moment to interpret that figure of speech.
"Guess I did give the number to both of you. Something wrong? Is she giving you trouble?"
"No—uh, nothing like that. It's just—well, we thought you, or youuurr...organization? Might know something about Ookami?"
"Huh. Well you're in luck, actually. I dunno about the organization overall, but I did some studying out of personal curiosity a couple years back. Wait—is it you? I caught a whiff of celestial magic when we met, but thought it was just leftovers from that curse you freed her from."

"Well—that's the thing. I, was, a normal human before..she stopped being a statue. I mean, that same day, but slightly later, she transformed me, and I guess—accidentally 'awakened' me too?"
"I see..makes sense you'd want to know, then. Lemme just, take a minute to pull up some old notes, huh? Make sure I'm not imagining what I think I remember..."

After a brief pause (during which Tyler heard the faint clicking of his keyboard's keys), Renard said, "Okay, right, right. So—Ookami have powers concentrated heavily into 'protective strength' and 'restoration'. That first one, it's not like their magic makes them super-strong all the time the way dragons are, although they can 'force' it to enhance their strength with some general magic practice. But anyway...you ever hear of people picking up, like, an entire car to get someone else out from under it? 'Miraculous' strength like that, that comes up in a time of need, is a kind of celestial magic that humans have wielded sometimes even while completely under the veil. And, Ookami are supposed to be naturals at that. If a lesser demon is threatening you or someone else, for example, you can probably banish it in one punch, without much effort."

"That's...pretty cool, I guess." Kind of hope I never need that, though.

"And, 'restoration'. It's partially what it sounds like—healing magic comes in many flavors, but the easiest and most convenient kind is the celestial one. It's doesn't require you to have a medical doctorate to do it right, 'cause it's incapable of doing something 'wrong' in the first place. But it's also more general than that. Things like fixing recently-broken objects, or reviving wilted plants, or whatever. I'm not sure how much of it comes naturally, or how much you need to actually train to use, but pretty much every Ookami I was able to dig up information about was able to do that sort of thing."

"Also sounds good."

"That's most of what I've got. Help you out some?"

"Yeah, thanks. I haven't really, felt like I could do anything new or special, but I guess I haven't been in a situation where I needed either of those things, so..."

"Hey, if you want—I know of exactly one other living Ookami. Now I've never actually met this person, but, I'm aware of him since he's one of Sol's lieutenants." Tyler sat bolt upright; Elise didn't seem at all impressed by this name-drop, but she was also probably very good at hiding her reactions in the first place. Renard just casually continued: "I could kick an email upstairs, see if something gets all the way through to my boss's boss's boss's..aah, you get the point."
"Uh, wai—hold up a minute. What does your boss have to do with the god of the sun?"
"Oh, you didn't know? Our organization is full of former veilkeepers, and Sol was always in charge of those guys. I guess technically we're a joint venture by Sol and Azoth, but he's the one who had all the administrative structure and financing in place back when this whole 'rejuvenation' thing started out. So, yeah, I dunno if it'll go anywhere, but I could send something off to just try and let that guy know another Ookami exists, and would he like to meet up."

"I guess..that's fine? If you can, maybe try to make sure he doesn't show up completely unannounced? I mean, I have no idea how intense someone who directly serves under a literal god is gonna be..."
"Yeah, good point. I'll hold off on giving contact info, maybe, act as a go-between for setting an appointment up."
"You don't mind? I mean, that's not really part of your job or anything..."
"Nah, it's fine. Should be interesting," he said. "Okay, I'll admit: I'm also hoping to get to see an Ookami's powers for myself. Maybe I can learn a thing or two."

After hanging up, Tyler said, "He wants to learn from a celestial? Can Kitsune do that kind of magic?"

Elise nodded. "We can learn any kind of magic we like. It simply takes much more effort to do things that stretch outside of our usual nature..." She paused, titling her head slightly. "Ah—I see. He said something about wanting to earn his tails a particular way. 'Magic purists' are quite rare...I'll be interested to see how far he can take that road."

Tyler went back to work for a few more hours, happy to have some articles to write to take his mind off of all of the magic stuff. Then it was time to get everything out and ready for board game night. Elise watched with interest as he started getting a bunch of snacks and junk food out, then started following him around, eventually coming so close behind him that he nearly ran into her when he turned around.

"Bwah!" He bounced several steps backwards.
"Pff—heehee!" Elise just giggled.

"Uh—do you wanna help?"
"I wouldn't mind lending some aid to my master when he's working so diligently~," she said teasingly.
"Okay then." After that, they did the rest of the preparations together, winding up with everything ready a good half-hour ahead of time. Then she offered to teach him to make rice balls, and they wound up with several of those (his were merely passable, while hers were of course perfect) for everyone to enjoy as well. Then, finally, everyone else started showing up.

There were eight of them in the group—nine counting Elise: Tyler, Ken, Clay, Al, Jay, Rona, Lucia, and Freya. Those last two were women, and Elise, of course, remembered Tyler calling the whole group "the guys" before and took the opportunity to briefly tease him about it. He tried teasing her back, asking if she was jealous, and she responded by glomping and kissing him, nearly (but not quite) knocking him over onto a table. If any of them had been unclear about the relationship between Tyler and the fox-girl, then they probably weren't anymore.

Their first game was the latest leg in a several-session-long, cooperative campaign. Elise declined joining the game formally and instead watched them with interest while reading through the rules. By about halfway through the session, she suggested a strategy to the entire group that would get them through a tricky situation they were in. Everyone celebrated when it worked, and wanted her on for the next week's game. She just smiled peacefully and said, "We'll see!", which gave Tyler a very bad feeling. But that would be a problem for next week. For now...

"Come on, this is pick-up-and-play!" Their next game was a fairly simple game that used regular playing cards, to mentally cool down from the intensity of the first one.
"Yeah, you'll figure it out in no time. Rona understood it after one hand!" Lucia said.

"Heey, what's that supposed to mean?" the catgirl protested.
"What's the rook do in chess?" she shot back immediately, twirling her bracelet with her index finger.

"Hmph." Rona just momentarily pouted at that.

"It's really not much fun to just watch," Tyler tried, and Elise nodded.

"Very well, then—I shall join your game. I'm certain you'll all be honest with me about the rules~," she said.

"Okay, great," Ken said. "So, once Jay finally finishes shuffling, he'll deal us each seven cards..."

On their fifth hand, Elise was the first one to go out. "Hm..'tis the trouble with a game largely of chance," she said, shrugging.

"Yeah, that was a bum hand, sorry," Freya said with a shrug—having been the dealer.
"Nothing to apologize for, unless you know the sleight of hand to guarantee such a thing."

"Nah, no Vegas dealers here," Al said quickly. "Anyway, we cut the deck after shuffling..."

After they went a couple of rounds with nobody else going out, Elise sat up. "I'd like to make this a little more interesting for myself...you all are aware of how powerful I am, hmn?"
"Oh, yeah—like seven tails or something, right?" Clay said.

"Five, but I do appreciate the flattery."
"You're not gonna make the cards start coming to life or something, are you?"
"Oh, no—nothing like that. I only meant—I'd like to offer the winner of this hand a small boon," she said with a grin. "To be claimed at the end of the night."

"Ah. Like turning Ronan into a catgirl," Lucia said. "Cool if you're into that..."

"Perhaps. I cannot grant every possible wish, but I'm quite good at altering appearances~," Elise said, demonstrating by growing herself half a foot taller. "The winner and I could..negotiate. That ought to keep things interesting."

"Uh, okay, sure," Ken said. "We don't do gambling here, ever, but if you want to offer a prize of your own free will, that's fine. Winner gets a fox-magic boon, I guess," he said with a shrug.

The hand went several more rounds before ending, with Al as the winner. By that time, everyone had mostly forgotten about Elise's prize, and the conversation moved immediately to picking their next game to play for the night. But Tyler didn't forget, and of course the Kitsune didn't forget either.

A few hours later, they wrapped things up, put everything away, and began filtering out. Elise disappeared in a puff of red smoke, appearing next to the front door as Al came to it. "Whoa! Uh, hi," he said.

"As I recall—you won a boon," she said. "Unless you don't intend to claim it?" She gave a slightly hurt-looking expression at that notion, although Tyler could tell this was faked.
"Oh. N-no, I..actually almoooost forgot about it. I mean, I waaaas thinking about it for a while, then I got distracted," he said, letting her lead him back away from the door. Tyler took over letting everyone else go, taking advantage of his wolfish ears to pick up on the rest of their conversation.

To Rona he said, "Hey—just so you know. Elise 'accidentally' awakened me as an Ookami, which is some kind of magic wolf-person thing. And, we're pretty sure she might have made you a Neko, hence the 'accidental' ears and tail. You may..want to look something up about that."
"Oh, really? Cool!"

"Just...if that is the case, you might be stuck being part-cat forever, I guess.."
"Oh, that's fine! I'm getting pretty used to it~," she said, bringing her tail up in front of her to run a hand along. "Mrrr~."
"Okay, well, as long as you're happy I guess."

"Yeah! I don't say this kinda thing too often but...thanks for letting me know, and you know. Being concerned enough about me to come out to those woods in the first place," she said.

"Uh—yeah, sure. Couldn't let you get lost alone."

Meanwhile, Elise was saying: "I'm pleased to hear that~. It'd be a shame not to carefully consider how to spend such a generous offer."

"Y-yeah, of course." He was probably a little afraid to insult her. Although their group had had plenty of friendly back-and-forth with her joining in, it was different being one-on-one with a magically powerful fox-girl.

"So, what is it you were imagining?" she said; Tyler could hear her predatory, trickster sort of grin in her voice at this point.

"Well, you knooow—you said you're good at changing how people look?"
"But of course~."
"Does that...I mean, is it completelyyyy, superficial, oooorr, actual anatomical changes?"
"Transformation magic is a quite thorough thing," Elise explained. "I made myself female, and I am that in every sense of the word~. Less extreme alterations—height, proportion, hair color—are all no different."

"Oh, cool. Soooo, just.."

Tyler had finished speaking with Rona at this point, so he headed to the living room where the two of them were talking, stopping in the doorway. He had a guess where this was going...but part of him really wanted to let it play out, and see what happened. Maybe being Elise's 'master' was starting to get to him...

"You knooow.." Al patted his belly. "I've carried some weeeight, pretty much my whole life. I guess I've been lazy about exercising most of the time, but I've been trying lately. So what I'm getting at is—you cooouuuld, like, just transform me to be more fit, right? Maybe have a little bit better metabolism, so I don't gain the weight back in like two weeks?"
"Oh, certainly," Elise nodded. "A couple of little things like that are no trouble at all for me~. But you understand, of course, I can't make you permanently fit. Maintaining your fitness is still up to your own efforts, even if it is a little bit easier."

"Yeah, sure. So if..that's not too much for like, a boon from juuuust, winning a card game? I'd love that."
"Hmmm~..." Elise pretended to just now remember that it was only supposed to be a small boon, and lightly tapped her index finger against her lips a few times. "Do you want this...badly enough, that you won't mind if I play a little trick or two on you along the way?" she asked.

"Iiiii..guess not? These are, uh, harmless tricks, right?"
"Oh, of course, of course! Besides, my Master's around to make sure I don't misbehave too much~," she said, gesturing Tyler's way. Al turned to look, and jumped slightly at realizing he'd been there the whole time.

"Uh, yeah, hi." He waved. "Sorry to, eavesdrop like that.."
"Nah, it's cool—this is your house and all. Iiiii dunno where we could go so you couldn't hear us with those ears anyway," Al shrugged. "Besiiiides, you've heard me complain about my weight before..."
"Yeah. So, I'll make sure Elise doesn't leave you with something you hate," he said. "Right?"
"Oh, certainly~," she said with a reassuring nod. "Then, in that case, shall I grant your boon?"
"Uh.." Al looked back and forth between the two of them a couple of times. "Yeah, sure. Please, go ahead. Do I need toooo, do anything special?"
"Just stay right there...and enjoy~," she said. Before he'd even asked the question, a familiar red glow had begun to surround his body.

"Okay...? Ah!" He jolted slightly, then shuddered. "W-whoa.." All at once, Al's complexion shifted, becoming a little paler and softer. The bits of fuzz on his cheeks and chin thinned and vanished away, followed by the hair on his arms—and probably his torso and legs too, but his clothes hid those from view. At the same time, his black hair spilled out from the top of his head, his bangs threatening to hide his eyes while the rest quickly fell down across his shoulders on the side, and a good few inches farther down his back. The glow faded off as he reached a hand up to feel the silky-looking hair, running down some locks that now framed his face. "Uh..?"

Al jolted again. "O-oh!" Then he started shrinking. "W-wha~a..?" He only took a couple of seconds to lose half a foot of height, and at the same time his frame swiftly collapsed inward, his shoulders narrowing, arms and legs slimming down, and his face growing rounder and cuter. This first bit of shrinking went so fast that his shirt seemed to hang in the air around him briefly before falling down across his smaller form, only to continue to loosen around him as it went on. "Aa~ah..aa~a~aah..aa~aah..!" His voice cracked and squeaked, its pitch rising rapidly higher, as his height sank down one jerking step at a time; each time his shirt fell back around him, it revealed a smaller belly, until about the fourth jolt when it had become completely flat. By then, the shirt's hem was down around his thighs, and his pants had given up completely, their fall to the ground revealing soft, smooth, slender legs. His face flushed increasingly red as his height slid down to Elise's level, and then past that to the shortest the fox girl had been, and then—with one final little jolt and a soft, high, almost child-sounding "AaaAAaa~ah!"—he was a few inches shorter than even that.

"Mmh—mnngh..w-wa~aah..!" Al's face was completely red now, as he squirmed there in place for a moment. Tyler guessed that his underwear had shrunk with him, as otherwise it would surely be on the floor with his pants. The shirt now tented around him began pulling itself smaller and tighter, and when the hem flew up past his hips it revealed a pair of boyshorts tightly hugging his slim upper thighs and hips and a very small bulge between his legs. "Aa~aah...!" His voice went even higher for just a second as that bulge flattened away completely, leaving Al an extremely petite girl.

"M-mnn, n-naa~ah.." Then, just as suddenly as everything else, her voice began to audibly deepen and mature again—though, obviously, toward sounding like a woman rather than a man. This came with a sudden shift to Al's eyes, as a deep gray color seemed to flow out from their pupils into their originally-brown irises like paint staining water. "A-aa~aah.." With her mouth open, Tyler could also see the growth of her canines into fangs. Then—"A-arrfh!" Al barked, as her right ear suddenly pushed out past her hair as a big triangle covered in pitch black fur. "R-rfh..!" The other ear followed suit with this second bark, and a slim, black-furred tail pushed out from her lower back, starting to wave back and forth behind her.

"Rrr, ruffh..!" Just as her shirt finished shrinking to fit her tiny torso, the new girl began to grow again. Her height shot up a half a foot or so at once, her hips and thighs spreading out a bit thicker in the process, and the now-tight top made visible the growth of a tiny pair of breasts. "Aah, aa~aah..!" Her voice continued to deepen and mature as she steadily grew taller now, and curvier too. "Rrhf..y-yip! Aa~aah..oo~oo~OOO~Oooh..!" She squirmed her legs back and forth as her breasts spread out bigger and bigger, pulling the top up off of her belly. It struggled to hold her growing bosom, and in the process seemed to need to sacrifice the material for its sleeves and short way down her neckline. Besides getting bigger and curvier, her tail grew thicker and fluffier, and Tyler began to see some muscle tone appearing on her limbs and her now-flat belly.

"M-mngh..ah, AAH, Aaa~aaah...!" Al's height pushed up past Elise's again, as her breasts expanded to what must have been at least C cups, her ears lowering and her tail wagging the whole time. "R-rrfh..a-a-ARROOOOOOOO~OOh..!" Finally, as one last little burst of growth brought her height up a few inches more, she helplessly let out a loud howl. She was..still half a head shorter than before, but was now a curvy, fit wolf-girl with a solid set of abs. During the howl, the pants she'd lost to the floor crawled their way back up her legs, splitting apart as they went; most of the leggings converted themselves into a pair of soft black thigh-highs, while the leftovers pulled up around her hips as a tight pair of jean-shorts. With that, the change finally finished.

"Aa~aah...hff, ffh..." Al panted, slowly coming down from all of the excitement. Her voice seemed to naturally come out at a very deep, mature-seeming alto—but that howl earlier had revealed a very high ceiling to her voice's range, too. She blinked a couple of times, looked down at herself and patted her bust, her belly, then her tail.

"So—what do you think of your new form?" Elise asked.
One of her hands still hovering a short way above her new breasts, Al looked up, at the fox-girl and then at Tyler. Her lips curled up into a slight smile, the remnants of a blush still on her cheek. "Hmm~mm.."

"This's not so bad..I think I could get used to this?" She reached a hand up, running it through her hair. "Am I..hot now? I feel like I must be at least an eight out of ten, right?" She directed this question at Tyler—which made some sense; he was the only male present at the moment.

"Uh, I'd say so. But—as a girl? Besides being furry now..you don't mind that part?"
"I dunnoo~oo.." She shrugged. "I definitely wouldn't have ever asked for this, but uuuh...Elise's turned you into a girl too, before, riiight? So you knoooww...what I mean?"
Tyler's cheeks heated up. "Uh..y-yeah." Elise was grinning over at him, which didn't help matters. "But, you might—I mean you wouldn't. I-if you change your mind and really hate it later?"

Al shrugged again. "Yeah, that's a risk. But—maybe I could just try and earn another 'boon' then, right? Or, maybe I'll get to be such good friends with your fox waifu that she'll just be willing to do it, huh?"

Tyler stammered, "Uh—"
"His fox what?!" Elise said, and burst into an immediate fit of giggles.

"That is totally the situation you're in, right? Magical manic pixie dream girl whatever?"

"...Okay, I guess that's fair. But we're still kind of uh—figuring things out?"
"Yeah, cool. I can befriend her either way then, right?"

"Obviously. Uh, Elise, the moment's seriously passed.." The Kitsune was still doubled over, trying to regain her breath and composure from the laughing fit.

"Pfffh...you're going to have to explain that one to me, Master~," she said, finally straightening up.
"Yyyeah, I'll do that."
"So—hey, do you drink? Tyler's a complete teetotaler," Al said, practically ignoring their conversation.

"Oh, indeed? I was wondering about that," Elise said.
"Yeah. If you want—Tyler's got my number; I know some good places. Not to stereotype, but if you're fond of sake, there's this bar downtown..."
"That sounds delightful," Elise said with a bright smile.
"Yeah. Maybe we can drag him along, get smashed, make him drive us home."

"I feel like I'm starting to understand why you couldn't keep the weight off," Tyler said.

"Aww, a few drinks won't hurt my weight that muuuch. Anyway, I guess I've got some shopping to do tomorrow, so I'd better get back and get a good night's sleep. Thank you soooo much for the boon, Elise~."

"Ooh, you're very welcome," the fox-girl said.

After Al's car left the driveway, Tyler said, "So...how many of my friends are you planning on swapping the sexes of, anyway?"

"Hmmnnn...perhaps half of them? I can't really predict when the mood might strike me," Elise said. "Now, Master—what, exactly, does 'waifu' mean?"

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This story part has one image generated using the "newer" methods, and one using the "older". You can probably tell which is which.