Change of Fate

The "Best" RPG Ever-33

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---

The wolf followed them out of town. Zack paused, kneeling over to speak with him for a moment. "Are you planning to come with us today?" The wolf barked what seemed like an affirmative. "We're fighting undead. I don't know if you were listening to what the Captain said, but they don't die like normal monsters. They're not natural." The wolf made a slight grunting noise.
"He says he doesn't care," translated Katherine. "The pack's going out to fight, so as a part of the pack, he's going out to fight."
"Well, okay then. Just wanted to be sure," said the knight, nodding at the wolf before standing up again. "I guess we're going west," he said. "Who has the compass?"

"Oh, I got it!" said Mika, holding up the navigational implement. "We should be going...that-a-way!" She pointed enthusiastically in the direction of west with her free hand, and they started off that way.

"By the way, the new armor looks great~," said the witch.

"It really does," said Katherine with a nod. "Sells the whole 'knight' look a lot better than the default stuff you started out with."

"Yeah, well..I'm just glad it actually has pants instead of a skirt," said Zack. The others, however, could easily see him blushing slightly and his tail wagging a bit more from the compliment.

"How'd you find one that fits so well, though?" said the catgirl. "I mean, it looks like someone tailored it to you or something."
"Some kind of magic with the gem of brightness thing," he said. "The shopkeep used some kind of pearl thing to make it adjust its size some."

"Well, no wonder it shows off your mmffg mgh mmn!" Katherine started to say, but Nora put a hand over her mouth, preventing the rest of it from coming out.

The psion glared, pulling herself out of the elf's grip. What? she telepathed privately.

I don't have to read your mind to know you were going to bring up the curves, she responded. Just let him have this.

Okay, okay...

Before long they encountered a few walking corpses—more skeleton than person in their looks—shambling in the general direction of town. They were still a short ways off, and hadn't noticed the party as far as they could tell. Katherine sorted through her collection of daggers to find the one decorated with red, and fiddled with it briefly until it gained a wreath of fire around its blade. Zack drew his weapon and muttered some sounds he understood to be his new spell; a kind of white fire-like aura appeared around the blade, which he readied for attack.

The knight moved forward first, enough to be in whatever equivalent the undead had to sight. They made some kind of rattling noise and started running toward him. "Whoa, fast undead!" he said, dodging out of a clumy swipe by one of them and bashing another's side with the enchanted blade as it arrived. The bones that took the hit turned into ash right away and fell to the ground, causing the rest of the body they had been attached to to crumple over and lean nearly at a right angle to that side, but still continue standing somehow.

Katherine sent her blade toward the third one, and as soon as it was close Nora pulled out and amplified the fire into a ball of fire big enough to encompass the entire walking corpse. With some effort she kept it going for several seconds before it died out, leaving behind a badly burned skeleton, but still a mobile one. It started to run at the psion, but the wolf tackled it onto the ground, cracking most of the still-intact bones on it into pieces under his weight. When the animal jumped back off of it, it flailed ineffectually, no longer able to get back up.

Meanwhile, Zack continued to duck around the assaults of the other two skeletons; swipes with bony fingers and efforts to bite him were met with more swipes from his sword, some of which they dodged while others caught bits of their body and dismembered them further. When he took off one of their arms it writhed on the ground and nearly grabbed him by the ankle before he jumped back.

Mika moved in closer as he backed away and shot a gout of dark fire from the tip of her broom at the pair. To her surprise, they kept moving, shambling quickly toward her despite clearly burning up, and she took several steps backwards before losing her footing and tumbling over onto her back. "Waah!"

Zack stepped between the walking corpses and the witch and gave a low sweep with his sword, clearing most of the still-living bits on the ground and knocking out what was left of the skeletal legs, causing the remainder of both to tumble onto the ground as a tangled pile of half-burned bones, still trying to move themselves around in a disorganized fashion that just made the entire pile rattle disconcertingly.

While the elf and psion had another go at incinerating what remained of their opponent, Zack offered Mika a hand to help her back onto her feet before stabbing and hacking at the pile of bones until it was a pile of unmoving ash. He kicked at it a few times to be sure there weren't any intact bits left and then sighed, sheathing his weapon and releasing the spell on it.

"This doesn't really seem like it's gonna be as hard as it is just tedious," he said.

"I dunno, the real problem with undead is numbers," said Katherine. "How many d'you think there are closer to the source?"
"I guess we'll find out."

---

Breakfast done, the party split up, the two friends taking on the tougher task of looking for some kind of rentable office space while Aria and Clera looked for paper and writing utensils to buy. "So you're like..a fusion of two people now?"
"To...some extent," she said, thinking carefully. "But I don't seem to have conscious access to Clera-from-here's memories or thoughts while awake, not counting the ones that were communicated to me in the dream. It seems more like...her impulses just arise as my own occasionally."

"It sounds a little like my relationship with the sword demon. Except that in my case the impulses are murderous and get harder to say no to the longer I go without feeding it blood, and if I draw the sword they just take over completely for the most part, and...yeah, I guess it's pretty different actually."

"Do you know of any way to alleviate that?"

"Well...there's a section of my skill tree dedicated to control and suppression, that kind of thing. I'm sure whatever build we get will require dumping a lot of points there since I can't exactly help execute a plan when I'm...you know, totally crazy. Heyy!"

The shifter snapped her head to the side, abruptly halted in place, and backed up, requiring Dr. Kellen to turn around and backtrack a few steps to see what she was looking at. "What?"
"Office supply store!" She pointed dramatically at the sign above the door. "Didn't fail my spot check this time!"

"Your what?"
"Um..sorry, gamer joke. It's like...if you're playing a tabletop game sometimes you roll a die to see if your character notices something in the envirnoment, and if you fail it you don't see it at all."

"So you are using jargon to describe the experience of noticing something that is there," said Clera flatly.

"Well, it's—it sounds dumb when you put it that way."

The winged girl tilted her head slightly. "I did not mean to insult you."
"'S fiiine," she shrugged. "Let's just go inside." Her chipper manner returned as if it had never left. "You look for big paper and pushpins, and I'll see if they have a pack of colored pens or something."

---

The answer to Katherine's question: Lots. The first few clumps of undead weren't much larger than the first one, but as Zack led the way over a hill his head first poked over it to see some twenty or so walking corpses milling around each other, and then immediately ducked back out of sight before they could 'look' his way (or however it was things with half-rotten or nonexistent eyes saw).

"..That's too many to just rush at," he said. "We need some kind of plan."

Mika spoke up: "Well, are there lots in a small area? As long as we have the element of surprise I could use a pumpkin fire-bomb to probably knock over a lot of them."

"...You can make a pumpkin fire-bomb?" said the knight.
"Sure! I've been learning new skills too. It's like a combination of stuff from both of the demons I've absorbed so far."

"Hmm..how much delay can you put on it?" asked Katherine.
"Well, it's more like a...nitro glycer-thing. It explodes when the pumpkin bursts."

"Which means you could make a number of them...and I could probably float them around so they'll come from different directions and the ones that survive will go looking for us in all the wrong places."

"And then we can just chase them down in small groups, and clear out the rest," said Zack, nodding. "Good."

Mika poofed one of the explosive fruits into her hands and carefully lay it down on the ground. Then she did the same thing another four times, each one seeming more difficult than the last until she nearly toppled over from the weight of the last one, and as soon as that was safely on the ground she tumbled back onto her butt, panting. "Phew...that's...really tiring. I'm just gonna sit this fight out if you don' mind."

"Hopefully your luck will keep us from accidentally driving them this way," said the catgirl, nodding. "I'll keep track of them just in case." She made a gesture toward one of the pumpkins and lifted it into the air. It was heavier than the knives she was used to, but she'd taken a few more points in this skill and really just needed to concentrate to bring it a decent range around. Eventually she had a supply of two on either side of the crowd of undead and one directly opposite the party's hill.

Lifting one of the ones on the left in preparation to throw, she looked to Zack and Nora. "Ready?" They nodded, and she threw that one. It crashed through one of the skeletal heads on the way to the ground, shattered and exploded in a gout of dark fire like a magical grenade. The walking corpses, as expected, turned toward the direction it had come from and began to give chase. Then another bomb hit them from the other side, and they scattered in collective confusion.

Once most of their backs were turned, Zack charged up the hill, re-enchanting his blade again on its way out of its sheath, and ran after the largest group, hacking through them from behind. The wolf followed after him, tackling one of the back-row ones to the ground with its weight and then hopping out of the way of an attack straight on top of another, and continuing this pattern with anything in range. The psion lent her fire-dagger to Nora as a source and she moved to the top of the hill, spinning it out into a giant fireball to engulf anything that had been knocked down but not taken out by the first bomb.

The undead on Zack's side began to turn around toward him, but he kept slashing. When they started to get too numerous to fight he turned around and fled in the direction opposite the hill. Those on the other side reached the bomb stored there and Katherine flung it directly upward into the air; it quickly fell and landed directly on one of their heads, exploding in another black fireball. Nora followed this up with another flamethrower-like stream in their general direction, intensifying it enough to reduce them to a pile of ash and wriggling bones.

The knight made it to the pumpkin opposite the hill and picked it up one-handed by the stem before quickly tossing it backwards into the crowd following him. Before the smoke from its explosion cleared he was charging back through them again, slicing mostly at intact legs, arms, and torsos to keep them from moving around too much. Another explosion sounded from the last of Mika's creations as those undead which hadn't noticed him reached it, and he went that way to start clearing out anything still moving while Nora arrived to clear his group out.

Soon there was nothing but partially-charred, barely moving bones in any of the piles, and Zack began the work of tracking those down and smiting them the rest of the way to ash. The wolf followed him, sniffing at and kicking around some of the dust in an effort to expose anything the knight missed. Nora methodically concentrated fire in small sections of another pile until it seemed like there was nothing left, and then blew a gust of wind across the ash to reveal what really was left, and repeated this until they really were all gone. Eventually they had eridacted the whole group, and met (Mika joining as well) in the middle, roughly where the crowd of undead had been in the first place.

"Hey, we're not bad when we work together, yeah?" said Katherine, grinning.

"I'll still be glad when this is over. I feel more like an exterminator than any kind of hero," said Zack, crossing his arms.

"I helped!" chriped Mika.

"Yep!" the catgirl nodded, and patted the small witch on the head a couple of times. "If we can catch them off guard making a bunch of pumpkin bombs to set off like this is probably the best plan we've got in absence of some kind of cleric with a real 'turn undead' spell."

Nora smiled with the group, but once they had turned to continue toward the source of the trouble she frowned slightly, thinking. Those men who had kidnapped her had said something about her being a priestess...if only that were true, maybe she could have some sort of anti-undead power. But it seemed like everything she had was specifically natural in nature (for want of a better phrasing), and not at all tuned to combat the unnatural. Well, at least the fire magic was working for them.

---

"How do you rent office space in a fantasy world?" said Lynn. The two friends were walking along the streets in hopes of finding such a thing.
"How do you rent office space in our world?" replied Rayna. "I have no idea. We never did that kind of thing."

"Nope, never were in that kind of business. Illusion-veil-whatever sense telling you anything?"
"Not particularly. For this I think we'd have to ask around. Maybe some kind of businessperson?"
"What's a businessperson look like in a fantasy world?"
"What's one look like in our world?"

"Suit and tie, or maybe a dress. Formal clothes," Lynn shrugged.

"Or it's casual Friday and they're literally indistinguishable from normal people."

"Is it Friday?"

"I dunno. I'm not sure if this world even has the concept of a week."
"Can't you just sense what day it is or whatever?"

The foxgirl looked up in the sky, shielding her eyes with a hand over her brow. "...Theraday. Whatever that means."

"I feel like we're getting off track."

"We are getting off track."

Rayna approached the next stranger she saw. "Excuse me, do you know anything about how someone would rent some office space? Like, one office?"

"Uhh..there's a community center over on Foxview," he said after a second of thought, pointing a vague direction. "They have rooms people can use for stuff like that, I think."

"Ah, thanks," she nodded.

A couple of seconds later, Lynn asked: "Do you have any idea where Foxview is?"

"Sure, this way. I can see street names if I focus just right."

As she led the way to their latest destination, the foxgirl hmmed to herself. "Say Lynn."
"Yeah?"
"Have you ever—I mean, since we got here and this stuff happened to us," she said, gesturing vaguely at her body's present state, "—have you ever wanted to...y'know...touch fluffy tail?"
"No," she said flatly.
"Aww, why not?"
"Because you're my best friend, and I respect you way too much to think of you like a stuffed animal. Or a real animal, or whatever."
"I wouldn't mind, though, really. It really is remarkably fluffy and soft," she said, bringing it in front so she could hug it briefly before letting it go back to its duty of helping her balance or whatever.

"I really don't want to," she shook her head. "Do you have weird new instincts that want to be petted or something?"
"Nooo, but I am a little curious what it feels like. I guess it's not fair to ask it of you, though. You've already found someone to pet, right?" She stuck out her tongue.

"Oh, come on! You gotta make it about that?" she said, looking away in annoyance. "I also respect him too much, for your information."

"I get it, I get it. Your relationship's not to that level yet. I'm sure it will be in three, maybe four more dates."

Lynn was blushing furiously by this point. "Can we just change the subject please?"

"Okay, okay. Anyway, I'm sure Rose wouldn't mind helping me out with this at all."

"The weird dragon girl? Isn't she kind of a pervert?"
"You've barely even met her."
"Well, I listened to what you guys said she acted like, and I think we're dealing with a perv here."

"If she is, she's the nicest one I've ever met," said Rayna, "maybe not including myself. Hey, we can do a trade! She lets me see what her scales feel like in exchange..."

"Oh wow, you're serious." Lynn frowned. "Are you sure your mind hasn't been screwed with on the way to looking like that?"

"Mn..maybe it has? Not nearly enough to stop being the same person, but I feel a little curious about things I didn't care about before, maybe, or didn't have available to be curious about. Anyway, I like it. Don't you like the way being with Rast makes you feel?"
"I...yeah, I guess so," she said, blushing again. And then snapped: "Hey, I thought you said you'd change the subject!"

"I did, it just looped back around on us. Your new boyfriend is like a conversational boomerang."

"I'll make your face like a boomerang in a minute."

---

After clearing out a few increasingly large groups of undead, what awaited the party over the next hill was a strangely barren-looking patch of land. There was grass and occasional trees everywhere before, but this area was just dust, dirt and rocks. Zack instinctively stopped shy of the sharp border between nature and not as soon as he saw it, leading the rest of the party to pause behind him. "..What is this?"
"I don't..i-it looks like.." Nora stepped a little closer, and kneeled next to the border. "Th-there's nothing there...the elements related to life are gone here."

"It looks like dark magic to me," said Mika. "Nothing tasty like a demon, but..."
"I would guess our necromancer. Or whatever is making the undead," finished Katherine. "I don't sense a mind anywhere over there, so it's probably an artifact like the captain said."

There was suddenly a kind of...pulse. All of them felt it, and instinctively stepped back; about an inch's thickness of grass out from the previous border suddenly withered and died, expanding the dead land out further. "I think we've got more problems from it than making undead," said Zack, fighting that instinct to step up onto the dead land. There wasn't any immediate harm to doing so; it was just dirt after all.
The catgirl nodded. "Either way, we already signed up to deal with this."

"I would guess that pulse meant it just summoned more skeletons," said Mika, "should I start..uh..."

"What?"

The knight followed Mika's eyse forward again. A whirl of bones and body parts was coming up from the ground, rising up past a hill opposite them, quickly placing and knitting itself together into a gigantic body.
"Yes, make a bomb. Soon as possible," said Katherine. "Keep some energy for running or flying."

"This should at least be a more interesting fight," said Zack, unsheathing and re-enchanting the sword again. "I hope you're ready, I don't see any way to keep that from noticing us."

The towering mass of misshapen, rotting body parts finally formed a head, complete with a pair of big curved horns fitted together out of a bunch of smaller fragments of bones. There was what looked like a handle of a weapon glowing a deep purple color lodged into its chest, the rest of whatever it was buried deep inside its body. As soon as the whirlwind of forming parts concluded, dropping a few unneeded bits and pieces unceremoniously to the ground, it opened its "mouth" and somehow generated a loud, rumbling roar from it, before beginning to charge straight at them.

Gloomy

(Related to Inheritance) 

Probably the shortest period, at least recently, between one caption and a "sequel" to it.

Midas Journal 24

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---

I am enough of a dork that when I realized today was the real-world, actual full moon, it motivated me to push my way through writing this entry about what happened on the full moon so that it would come out on the day of a real full moon. It might be apparently one of the tiniest full moons available, but I'd rather not wait several months or years or whatever for a supermoon, and I doubt anyone else wants to either, so...

---

Entry: May 15

Obviously I was busy all of last night and then some of this morning. I'm writing this in the afternoon and I should be exhausted after not sleeping for like 48 hours but even after being pretty active all night and all day since then I feel so full of energy I'm surprised I'm not vibrating right now. The point is I guess that the full moon is really something, for werewolves at least. I feel like I should talk about last night. It was a pretty big deal overall, I guess.

Let's start with the afternoon, after school. I got a bag of some of my stuff and headed toward Lues' place, and ran into Brian a few blocks out. “Hey!” I yelled and waved at him, and he stood still so I could run up and jump on top of him, hugging him and planting a kiss on his face. He returned both, and since we both knew we wouldn't be able to do this for a while we let it go long and a little heavy. Finally we let go, both panting, and he said, “Well..you ready?”
“Y-yeah. I'm pretty excited, actually.”
Brian smiled. “Lemme get ready, then.” He started shrinking right away, and set me down on the ground, still holding on to me as he rapidly approached my height. His hair puffed out, the fluffy white ears and tail grew into place, and I could tell he shifted to female just before our heights matched. Then Brie's chest pushed itself out into mine, her tail wrapped around mine, and she nuzzled me a little bit as she continued to shrink the rest of the way down to her usual size.

We let go a little later, once we'd had time to fully catch our breath and my legs didn't feel quite as weak. Brie took in a deep breath and huffed it out. “Well, this should be int'resting if nothing else.”
“Y-yeah,” I said.

“Sooo, tell me about the new member you 'made'?” She led the way, and we started the trip through the last couple of blocks to our new alpha's house, the tips of our tails still curled around each other the whole way. I gave a short version of what happened with Chris, and she listened and nodded.

It was still an hour or two before sunset when I knocked on the door. “Come in!” said Lue's voice from inside, and after Brie and I shrugged at each other I opened the door and stepped inside. After a brief search we found Lue on the couch with Chris leaning over on top of her, the side of her head firmly entrenched in Lue's chest-mounds. I noticed the giant ponytail from the day before had been let loose into its true form as a big cape of hair falling all the way down her back.
“...Have you two just been there all day?” I said.

“Nooo,” said Lue. “We changed clothes, see?” She gestured at what she was wearing, an extremely baggy shirt and equally oversized pair of shorts. Chris was in a slightly loose t-shirt and some gym shorts. “Anyway, we had to go to school—different schools, even. Chris just got here before you two.” I noticed she didn't say anything about Chris having gone home the night before, but decided not to bring that up.

“Well,” said Brie, “What all're we doing tonight, anyway?”

“The aim is to eat before sunset,” said Lue, “I've got some stuff going in the kitchen. We can introduce each other and all that, sort out anything about pack structure we need to—not that there's much to do with just four people, but it's worth setting a precedent.” I noticed while she was talking she ran a hand down Chris's back along some of her hair, just idly petting her, and Chris didn't respond beyond a slight wiggling of her head. “After that, the moon rises and we can all see each other's full-wolf forms...which I've been looking forward to for a while, honestly...and then...” Lue let in a pregnant pause.
“Um..th-then what?” I said finally after a few seconds.

“You know. We can hang out and have some fun, that sort of thing,” she said innocently, shrugging.

“You made it sound a lot more ominous than that,” I said, putting my hands on my hips.

“Eh...we'll see.” There was an egg timer 'ding' from the kitchen which I swear couldn't have been choreographed better in a movie. “Oh, food's done!” Lue gently pushed Chris up to a sitting position and then stood up and went off toward the food.

Chris slowly opened her eyes, seeming to only just now notice she wasn't on top of Lue anymore. “Mnh..oh, hi!” She popped up energetically and hugged me right away, her tail whipping back and forth in another mile-a-minute wag. “Kaela, I dunno if I can ever thank you enough!” she said.

“Um..y-you're welcome.” I patted her on the head a couple of times until she let go on her own and turned to my boy/girl-friend.

“Ah! Are you Brie?” she said.

“The same,” she nodded, and offered a hand. “You must be Chris. Nice to meet you.”
“Yeah, you too!” She shook the offered hand excitedly. I was starting to get the impression that she has only two speeds: 'too much' and 'stop'.

“Looks like everything's done!” said Lue from the kitchen. “Come get some food~.”

There was a lot of it. It looked like she'd made an entire medium-rare steak for each of us, along with a huge loaf of bread and a variety of veggies. Honestly, I had no idea Lue could cook at all before this, but everything certainly looked good..not to mention how it smelled.

Once it was all on the table and we all sat down, our alpha said, “Well, it seems like we've all met each other now, at least as far as knowing each others' names. And everybody here is familiar with Kaela's unique powers, without which very little of this situation would be possible.”
“Err...yeah, I guess that's true,” I said.

“It's probably a good idea to keep any future pack-mates in the dark about this until and unless there's some reason they need to know about it. Aside from special cases like Chris here, of course.”

“I'd appreciate it, yeah,” I said. I suspect Lue wants a huge pack like her old one eventually, and the idea of that many people knowing about my powers is a little scary. I mean...sure, there's a lot of people who know about them already, but that many more and total strangers seems a lot worse.

“Good, good,” she nodded.

“Hey Lue,” said Brie after we had eaten quietly for a minute or two. “Uh, where are your parents, anyway?”
“They rented out a hotel room for the night,” she said.

“Oh.” A few seconds later, I think it hit all three of us at once. Brie blushed as much as I did and said, “Ooh. Y-yeah.”

“So we have the place to ourselves until probably about midmorning,” she pressed on like nothing had happened. “Anyway, pack structure. I hope there's no disputes of me being the alpha.” I shook my head emphatically, and nobody else said anything. “Good. I've already made Kaela my beta; only the two of us have the right to officially test potential new pack members. Beyond that there's no need for a terribly complicated ranking. Maybe we should just go for seniority for now...if you're okay with that, Chris?”
“Mmh?” Her mouth was full, so she had to take a minute to swallow. “Why would it not be okay?”

“Well, it would make you the current omega,” said Brie. “I guess that doesn't really mean much anyway, though, right?”
“I don't care if I'm omega,” she said, “I'm just happy to be here~.” Her tail started wagging again, whiffing back and forth across the hole in the back of the chair.

“That settles that too, then,” said Lue.

“Enough business! How was everyone's week?”

“Weird,” I said.
“Same,” Brie nodded.

“Really weird,” I amended. “Weirder than any week before, which is saying something. I've had like seven straight weeks of weirdness. What about you?” I nudged Chris, whose mouth was full of steak.
She chewed and gulped it in. “I mean, pretty normal up until yesterday...and then kinda weird? But not bad-weird,” said Chris. “Wait, do you mean what really happened this week or what I remember happening this week?”

Lue shrugged. “Real is increasingly relative. Did anything weird happen in your 'new' memories before yesterday?”

“I guess not...some stuff that would've been weird to me before, but feels normal now though?” she said, looking a little confused.

“I know I brought it up, but maybe we should get off of how weird,” I suggested. “Overall I had a good week.” I looked at Brie. “I stopped feeling like I was a monster...mostly. I came up with some ground rules I probably needed like four weeks ago. Also I have a...?” I paused. “Uh, romantic..someone to kiss, anyway.”

“Just say 'girlfriend', I'm a girl right now,” she said with a teasing grin. “Anyway, glad I could help.”

“Best week of my life~,” Chris half-sang. “Both memories, actually. This-me has always wanted to be in a pack, but I'm a gigantic softie and I never learned to fight...”

“We love softies in this pack,” said Lue, grinning wide. “Or...I do at least. And that's most of what counts.”

Once we were finished eating, Lue lead the way to her bedroom and opened the door. I should mention that in the time I've known her, I've never actually seen this room before. It's huge. I mean, compared to a normal bedroom at least. There were two queen-sized beds and a desk inside and even with that a ton of floor space left over. Also, the beds and a lot of that floor were covered in a large collection of stuffed animals. I couldn't help but think the collection was cute, but maybe a little extreme.

“Welcome to my place,” she said cheerfully, “c'mon in.” As soon as we were inside she started clearing off the beds, grabbing the stuffed animals and tossing them casually off toward the far sides of the room, humming cheerfully to herself the whole time.
“Uh..well, I guess the sun hasn't set yet,” said Brie, waving vaguely at the big window opposite the door we'd come in through. The sky was starting to turn yellow-orange, but it felt like a good ten minutes at least before the sun would be all the way down. “Are we just gonna stand here awkwardly waiting for it?”
“No, silly!” Lue looked up from her progress frantically clearing her second bed. “If we wait 'till sunset, we all change at once and it'll be really hard to appreciate each other's full wolfy looks. We can take this extra time to change one at a time and enjoy the experience.”

“I...guess that makes sense?” I said, not sure I really understood. My 'new' memories have been alone or just with my parents every full moon, so this was more or less still uncharted territory. I guess it sounded kind of fun, though.

“Well, why don't you go first?” she said.

“Okay...” Changing to werewolf form is like flipping a mental switch, and then letting the results play out. It takes more mental effort to control specific parts changing, and it doesn't hurt regardless. I've heard that for people who were bitten, it hurts the first time. I changed in a matter of seconds, my body being covered with fur, my feet reshaping into larger versions of a wolf's hind paws while my hands became more paw-like with padded palms, my face extending out into a muzzle. I also stretched upward, my muscles tensing, and on top of having taller feet my body itself grew a few inches...maybe half a foot or so? I'd picked slightly loose clothes more or less on instinct to wear that day, and now they stretched tight against me. I don't look muscular at all in human form, but something about shifting to full werewolf gives me some real tone all over the place, more of an athletic look than anything else but including a slight six-pack even!

Also, my bust grows a little bit, which is a little bit of a weird thing to have happen, and which I almost forgot about and had to scramble part-paw-hands up under the back of my shirt to unhook my bra before it started squeezing me, and let it fall through to the floor. For some reason, being full werewolf seems to mostly eliminate the need for support, even with the larger size, so usually I would just take it off after getting home the day of a full moon.

“Phew..okay?” I said, gesturing vaguely at myself.

“Very cute,” said Lue, grinning. “You even look a little buff like that.”

“Me next?” said Brie, and our alpha nodded. This was at least something I hadn't seen before, someone else not in my own family changing, so I watched curiously. Brie was wearing a button-down blazer, and unbuttoned it before she started, then undid her bra (possibly reminded by my own, I guessed). Her body shimmered with snow white fur almost instanstly, and then she stretched upward, her usual soft look hardening to muscle visible even through the thick fur as she went. I felt myself blushing slightly as I saw her breasts growing a little bit too, and then paused as she stopped growing and I realized we were actually about the same height, which means she'd grown more and faster than I had.

It's weird how expressions work for werewolves. Normal dogs don't really do things like smile or frown, but even having muzzles we sort of manage to get recognizable expressions out of them in addition to the more whole-body-based communication. As Brie's changes finished she smiled over at me, some red from a blush visible through the fur, her tail wagging rapidly, and I found myself doing the same set of expressions back.

“Ooh, equally adorable!” said Lue, snapping us out of it. “You're like a complimentary pair, even better together~.”
“Eheh,” Brie laughed nervously. “Are you gonna go next?”
“I'm saving the best for last,” she said, shaking her head. “Chris?”
“Yeah!” Chris changed rapidly, fluffing up all at once and hardly growing at all (in either the height or the bust department). Actually I think the only height gain she had was from her feet shifting to wolf-feet, and her clothes, tight as they were, didn't seem to show off any gain in the muscle department either. All the same, I couldn't help but think she looked like a big fluffy teddy bear or something.

“Well, I've already seen it,” said Lue, “so what do you two think?”

“You called us cute after seeing that?' said Brie, “Chris looks like a big puppy...”
“Or a huge stuffed animal!” I said.
“Yeah. Makes me want to squeeze her and feel all of the fluffy fur at once.” Chris just giggled, her tail wagging rapidly as ever from the compliments.

“Alright, the moon's almost out,” said Lue. “Chris has already seen me change too, so I want you two to reeaally pay attention.”

“Oh...kay?” I said, not sure why she made it sound like it mattered that much.

“Here I go!” Lue began to change a little more slowly, starting from the all-human form she usually seemed to have. First her ears and tail grew out, and then fur started to slowly spread down along her face. She began quickly growing taller, and even her arms and legs visibly lengthened as fur spread out down them from her torso. The oversized clothes started to get tighter on her, and I realized that instead of just her chest growing, her entire body's figure was getting steadily more pronounced: Wider hips, longer legs, deeper curves in general. “Mmhh..” Her voice, coming from her throat, was a little lower in pitch than usual. Her face pushed out into a muzzle as the shirt pulled up off of her midriff, showing off a very solid six-pack. Her limbs looked muscular and toned, too, I noticed, and she just seemed to keep growing and growing.

Finally, the change completed, and Lue let out a soft “Aah...” in a deep alto I would never have recognized as her voice, stretching her arms up and then letting them down again. She was really tall, maybe a foot taller than I am as a guy—definitely taller than any of us anyway. The strength that she always had, that seemed unexpected coming from a small, slim girl, was entirely on display, yet somehow avoided detracting from a very mature, womanly figure I swear any girl would kill for. Her fur was a mesmerising pattern of darks and light browns all the way around; it looked rough but very well-groomed.

“Well..?” she said, looking at us expectantly.

“Uh..you...y-yeah,” I stammered. Seeing all of that, I felt an unexpected emotion...something like pride? I felt happy to have such an obviously strong, beautiful alpha. But she was also imposing, and it made me initially nervous about talking to her.
“Amazing,” said Brie for me.

“I admit, this is really what I consider my true form,” said Lue, casually catching the hem of her shirt and flipping it off of herself and away. Of course she'd been going braless all along, but it didn't really expose anything much. Werewolf fur is usually thick enough to cover...things. “I burn off moonlight by changing to this when I'm gonna be home for awhile, or to go to bed, rather than looking part-wofly all the time like you guys. I actually looked a lot like this as a werewolf in my old life too, except of course for all my favorite parts.” She squished her chest together with her hands briefly to emphasize what parts those were.

The three of us were more or less just staring at her. But she was...clearly enjoying it, beaming with her tail wagging almost as fast as Chris's, so nobody felt the need to stop. She turned her face toward me and said, “Isn't that really uncomfortable on you? It looks sorta tight.”

“Oh, uh..” I blinked, and after a pause realized she was talking about my shirt, and probably wanted me to take it off. Probably not just because it looked uncomfortable, either. But before that had clicked in my mind I already had it most of the way over my head because the instinct part of me that wanted to do what the alpha wanted me to do picked up on the fact that she wanted the shirt off before the rest of me could catch up, and now they'd already seen my bare upper body and it really was kind of uncomfortable so what was the point of trying to force it back on anyway?

“Oh, you have a light underside!” said Brie while I pulled the top the rest of the way off and let it awkwardly hang on my hand for a moment, unsure of what to do with it.

“Uh—yeah, I've always looked just sorta like a normal gray wolf, fur-color-wise,” I said. Lue came closer, gently lifted the shirt away from me and tossed it at the same corner of the room her own had gone in, which I looked toward just for an instant and noticed had been joined by Chris's shirt at some point.

“It looks great on you!” Brie smiled brightly.

Then, she reached forward and brushed her hand across my stomach, and I shivered, unused to the feeling of someone else touching my body-fur. Just the wolf ears and tail are sensitive enough spots, but a blanket of fur covering every inch of skin makes every touch, anywhere, run deep..at least when it's someone I'm as “friendly” with as her, anyway. Apparently not bothered by my reaction, she leaned closer and slid her arms around me, more fur sliding against my own, and then pulled me into a hug close enough to squish our breasts against each other.

“Uh, um..” My face would be blazing red if it wasn't covered in fur...it probably was red even then. But my tail was still wagging and my arms disobeyed an order to push her off or hold still, wrapping around her and pulling her into me instead. “Mnn..mrf!” She was starting to run her padded hands across the fur on my back now, and I couldn't react to it like a human at all, starting to bark softly instead.

One of my hands ran down her back from the top of her head to stomach level, feeling soft, fluffy white fur all the way down. I don't know when her top got removed, but it wasn't there anymore. Brie's muzzle brushed against mine in response, and I stumbled backwards a couple of steps in a state of sensory overload, and then fell back onto one of Lue's beds with her still on top of me. She leaned over and we turned until we were on our sides instead. Our tails were starting to tangle up with each other, and our hands moved across each others' backs, trying to explore every inch of velvety fur. We had both making small, high, cute sounds in our throats, barking and yipping to each other between nuzzling.

The sun must have finished going down, because I could feel the force of the full moon on me now, not just maintaining the werewolf form but making me feel wild and full of energy. I'd always felt a kind of nervous, twitchy energy when I was alone on the full moon, and it felt somehow like I finally understood what all of that energy was for. However extreme I thought the experience of petting each other when we were still mostly human was, this was several times more. Even without being attracted to girls just now, the feeling of Brie's chest squished against mine was very nice, the way my hands felt tracing along her curves and finding a solid, strong body beneath the soft fur was fascinating, and her doing the same to me was almost more than I could take. It didn't feel like we were ever going to stop...neither because we had to nor because we wanted to. In fact, we pushed each other's pants off onto the floor to find more fur to touch, and slowly rotated until we were aligned with the bed, our heads resting on a pillow when they weren't being lifted up to rub against each other.

It must have been at least a few minutes later when I finally started to be able to perceive the world beyond the two of us again. I could pick up more small noises from the location of the other bed. It wasn't just Chris's voice, either; Lue's strange new deeper voice was barking and churring in excitement. I had a stray thought similar to “so much for not fully trusting her yet” before Brie's nose rubbing against my cheek, and I started to vigorously nuzzle her back again.

I don't know how long this lasted. It must have been at least an hour before Brie and I finally, mutually pulled our faces away from each other. During that time we'd rolled around over each other a few times and our legs had managed to get just as tangled up in each other as our tails. We were panting rapidly and blushing brightly for a short while longer before finally regaining the ability to speak.

“Hh—heehee,” she giggled first, softly. “I dunno whether to say 'sorry, I don't know what came over me' or 'you're welcome'.”

“Um..I'm leaning toward the second one,” I said, rubbing her ears again. “...phew. That was really...that was something though.”
“It was...and still is,” she grinned mischievously. “Whenever one of us turns into a guy later this will really be an interesting memory to think back on.”

“O-oh, wow. Yeah.” My entire muzzle was burning up again. “At least we're still in some underwear...”

I leaned up slightly on an elbow, looking over her at the other two, who were still tangled up in each other. Chris was on top of Lue with both of them in a similar state of undress to the two of us. I noticed that our omega's fur was thick, solid black all the way around, and the difference in size between the two of them really did make her look like a teddy bear Lue was hugging. “Mnh...they're still...”

“Uh-huh.”

I leaned back down, and rubbed her ears a little, drawing a pleased, relaxed sigh. “I'm more glad I met you every time we see each other,” she said quietly.

“Me too,” I answered.

“Hmmh..” By now we'd pulled our upper bodies far enough apart for there to be just a little bit of space between our breasts. One of her hands slipped into that gap and a finger gently traced the outer edge of one of mine.

“O-oh, uh...what're you..?” I started to ask, but in that time she placed both her hands gently on my chest and then traced her fingers upward along each, drawing a very pleasant, tingly feeling all the way up. I let out a very human “Mmnnnh!” at a sudden flare of pleasant, tingly feeling between my legs, which of course also brought my face back to the temperature of the inside of a volcano. “Wh-what was that?!” I half-whispered in an effort not to shout and alert the others.
“Wanted to try something...I hope it didn't upset you too much,” she said.

“Try..?”
“We're not really attracted to each other right now, but we have an awful lot of power over each other's bodies,” she whispered. “So it looks like we can use that to just make anything feel good if we want.”
“Oh, w-wow, that's kinda really pervy...” I whispered back.
“If we weren't 'romantic someones' to each other, maybe,” she responded, sticking out her tongue. “C'mon, I wanna know what you felt a minute ago.”

I felt excited about the idea, but I restrained myself. “J-just once though, no more. There's a reason we decided not to be opposite sexes right now.”

“Okay, okay...”

I put my hands on her breasts cautiously, still feeling a little weird about it. But they felt good, covered in the same silky fur as the rest of her along with what was underneath being squishy and pliable. I knew I was blushing again as I thought about how remembering this would eventually feel as a guy, but I pressed on anyway. I didn't do exactly what she'd done, instead just gently squeezing at them, but I asked my power to make it feel the way she'd made me feel a moment ago. Right away, Brie started wriggling around slightly in place, and let out a long, sighing “Ooohh...” in response, confirming it had worked.

As soon as that was over, I disentangled myself from her and pushed off, and accidentally rolled off of the bed. It didn't hurt but it made a clonk noise louder than any sound either of us had made in the past...however long since sunset. I sat up and Brie leaned over toward me. “You okay there, silly?”
“Yeah, I'm fine.” I looked over toward the other two, where our alpha was picking up the other girl and placing her in a sitting position at the same time as sitting up herself.

“Well, that was loads of fun~,” said Lue with what I swear was a knowing smile. “Don't you agree?” She turned to Chris, rubbing her ears a bit.

“Mnnh...mnh-huh.”

“Yes, it was—uh, fun,” I said, blushing more in spite of myself. “I really think that's enough 'and then' for tonight, if we can please move on to something else?”
“Okay, but just 'cause you asked,” said Lue, standing up.

The rest of the night was not as extreme. None of us seemed to feel like putting any clothes back on, it felt like fur was enough, and I stayed close to Brie most of the time, hugging and petting each other nearly nonstop (to be fair, Lue was doing that with Chris, too). We ran around in the back yard at one point to burn off some energy.

Somewhere in the early AM, Lue pulled me aside, to the opposite side of the house from the others, and asked me a question. “So you've more or less confirmed how your powers work by now...as far as being wish fulfillment, right?”

“Yeah?” I said. It sounded like she had something to say, which she did.

“When I first heard that I didn't think it was right, 'cause...you know, when you bumped into me when we first met, I wasn't really thinking about being young again at all. Actually, what I was thinking about...well, about eighteen years ago a couple from my pack had a miscarraige. The baby would've been a little girl, and actually a great-grandchild of mine. I was reflecting on that loss...I realized she'd be about an adult by then, and feeling particularly bitter about it. I must've run into you because I was lost in thought, not paying much attention to the world around me...awful thing for an alpha to do, y'know, even one with as much respect as I'd earned. It happened...right after I had a fleeting thought about me being old, having lived long enough...wondering if I would take a deal for her to survive that day instead of me.”

“So...wait, you think that's what happened?” I said.

“I'm...almost certain it is. I, Lue, had a great-granddad who everyone says was a great alpha, maybe the best in a long time, but he died the day I was born. In my new memories my thoughts of being an alpha always used to get a little scrambled by his legacy—worry I won't ever be that good. Isn't that weird?”

“But now you're...but, wait, are you just..?” I said, not entirely sure how to express the question.

“I'm nothing like I was when I was young,” she said. “I mean...when old me was a young man, the world was a different place and he wasn't anything like I am now even accounting for that. A lot of my ideas and thoughts are a hundred percent new-me.”

“That's a really...so you're like two people in one?” I said.

“I guess,” she shrugged. “It's nice though, it feels like a real unfair advantage that I'll try and leverage as much good out of as I can. I didn't have to really die for the girl to live, I more or less got to see her grow up. My great-granddad isn't really dead, he's in here,” she poked her head with an index finger, “with all the experience of making and running a pack I could ever need. I don't even have to ask for advice because I already know what I'd say. But it is pretty weird, yeah, if you think about it at all.”

It finally hit me. “My power can literally bring a person back from the dead,” I said slowly. “That isn't...that's...”

“By all accounts, our world has afterlives,” she said. “At least a few. I don't think those who own them would be happy if you went around trying to empty them.”
“But...I can...should I? Shouldn't I?”

“I don't know what you should do,” she shrugged. “But if I were you I'd think carefully before doing anything. What my story means is that your power can reach back into history as far as it wants to and it's willing to shuffle things around in weird ways. If you go trying to, say, wipe out all the diseases or something there's no telling how it'll do that, or if the world you wind up with will be one any of us could recognize. It hasn't been a trickster genie yet, right?” I nodded. “—But you give it a big order like 'nobody ever dies again' and not exactly how it's supposed to accomplish that and the result might be that everyone already died ten years ago except you. Fixing one person at a time based on particular wishes probably won't wreck things too badly too fast, especially since it seems like accidents like me are nearly unavoidable, but there's no rulebook for this stuff. As far as I know—and I've seen a lot of things, you know—nobody's ever really had a power like yours before. I mean, even if someone did and kept it a secret surely they would either have tried to fix everything already or become the supreme ruler of the world, and we don't have either of those things. So if they did try one of those two, for some reason or another it didn't work.”

I took a minute to process all of that. She didn't say anything more. Eventually I said, “You've really..thought about this a lot, huh?”
“I didn't want to mention it to you until I had. And now you can think about it too. Mention it to Brie if you want...I didn't feel like that was my place. But not tonight!” She ruffled my hair and rubbed on my ears a bit. “Tonight we're supposed to be having fun and your girlfriend is probably wondering what we're doing way over here all this time. So c'mon.” I followed her obediently back to the others, trying my best not to think about it.

I'm still trying not to think about it. Maybe she's right and I'd wreck everything trying. I want to ask someone else about it, I want a lot more than just what I think to be behind whatever decision I make, but I don't know who I should really trust with the idea. Lue's right though, my power can reach back in time if it wants to. If I want it to then I can make it. If I really tried to do something crazy then I can push its effect back in time as much as I want, which means there's no time limit—not at as long as I'm alive, at least. One more reason to keep Rio's self defense clause, but other than that I have time to think this through and not do something rash and stupid and break the universe like an idiot. For as much as I (still) don't like the idea of potentially brainwashing people, breaking the universe would be a lot worse.

Super Power

(See also Great Power and Small Power)