Battle Vixens! - 99

First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

Episode 99: Anticipation

With her hat and armor finally both on, Magus ran, panting, out to the quad. Light and Gemma were already there, the latter split into two bodies evidently with the intent that the three of them could then stand in a triangular formation and watch out in all directions. "Hahh, ffh, ffphew..uh, hi, sorry I'm late."
Light shrugged. "You know how you're not really late for class as long as you get there before the professor?" She and Gemma were both in their 'Amp-lified' forms; it was too bad something like that didn't exist for Magus. "Same thing here. You didn't tire yourself out running, did you?"
"Uh, no no. I mean..ffh...not in any like, long-term way. Just need to catch my breath, is all."

Plus produced a couple of Nico-esque seeds in her hand, tossing them and making a small sapling grow from the ground nearby. It gave out a refreshing sensation, helping her catch her breath a bit quicker than she would otherwise. "Heey, thanks!"

"Uh, n-no problem.—" "—...Something just occurred to me," her other body said. "Whenever uh, one of us gets eaten—" "—Amp can wake us up, because our powers are kinda linked to Ber—" "—uh, to the Giver, and she has like a...power like hers?"
"Suure..?"
"But then—" "—your power's um, not. So what if—" "—I mean, if you get eaten then, then how do we..?"
"Let's try not to need to know," Light said.

"Oof. Yeah." Thinking back to how Ning had seemed to be suffering while asleep a couple of days ago, Magus nodded. "I'll stick to the back row, totally." She went over to between Light and Minus, taking out her weapon and looking around for a moment.

"Sooo, I guess the Doctors Quinn...?"

"Went to help Ning," Light nodded.

"Are you two gonna uh..?"
"What?"
"You know, the—'fusion'" (she whispered this word well under her breath) "—thing?"
"Oh, that. No. It's way too exhausting to use unless we absolutely need to."

"And we have to fight those things twice today as it is," one of Gemma added.

"Oh, yeah, that's fair. It's kinda a shame you can't just pull out your strongest stuff whenever you wanna, though."

"What do you know about what we're up against?" Light prompted her after a moment. "I, only glanced at the pictures for a second and then ran out here in case they were showing up right then."

"Um—" "—wait, pictures?—" "Oh, right!—" "—Uh, I-I didn't even look," Gemma admitted.

"Well, the uh, scorpion tiger is kinda what it says on the tin. Like, a giant wildcat with a big scorpion tail it likes to try to stab people with. I think the Quinns fought one before? And the other one's a mouthtopus...uh, the giant squid orrr, octopus thing Ning and Dawn fought on Thursday before last. Its tentacles are super tough—and it has lots of them and they move fast—but the main body is pretty vulnerable, got a big glowing eye as a weak spot too. The name's because it likes to uh, lean down and charge mouth-first to try to eat people, and it's kinda fast when it does that."

"Mmh. If uh, you start to fall into a shadow—" "—that's me getting you out of the way of something," Gemma said. "Try to just, um, land gracefully and duck until it passes?"

"Will do!"

---

"Hey! Get back here!"

Ning had seen on the app that a "charger" was coming to the area just outside the hospital—something like a bull or boar the height of a person with feathery "skin" and an especially spiky front end, a wide mouth full of sharp teeth (naturally), and its namesake—a penchant for ramming headfirst into its targets. What she hadn't been told was that there would be five of them, but even that would've been fine. No, the real problem was that instead of charging her, they were intent on charging at anything and everything else—crashing into the sides of cars, knocking over lightposts, aiming for power lines, and bowling into windows and walls with an impact force neither was built to withstand.

She chased the nearest three, striking her sword into one and tossing lightning at the other two. But one person could only really chase one of them at a time. It was a good thing the front end of the hospital was still under repair from when those gryphons shattered the windows, so nobody was in that area to be struck, but she couldn't allow them to get in to all the doctors and injured people. The area was thankfully mostly evacuated, including the interior of a lot of these buildings, but there was no way to just move the occupants of an entire hospital on such short notice.

With her sword still pinning one of the three, the other two turned toward her, scuffing their hooved feet against the ground. "Yeah, that's it. Come at me!"

"Hey ugly!" another voice called. It was in the direction one of the other two had gone, and followed by a couple of gunshots. A quick glance found a police officer with a riot shield held up and one of the monsters turning toward him. That shield...probably wasn't going to be enough when that thing charged him. Thinking fast, Ning took off at a run in that direction, taking out her sheath (the sword still in use pinning her earlier target). She had two of them running behind her, and managed to catch up as the one after the officer started its run, slamming the sheath into its side hard enough to bowl it over sideways and allowing the force to break her weapon back apart into a shower of sparks. Then she made a high backflip over the other two, throwing more lightning into their backs as they made to circle back at her.

The fifth one she couldn't see, but her ears could pick up the sound of a lot of things breaking in a nearby shop. She'd be pitying the owner quite a bit right now if her mind wasn't occupied with the other four chargers all converging toward her at once—the one previously pinned by her sword having freed itself by now. She was panting from exertion already, so she took a moment to regain her breath rather than moving or countering, waiting until one of them was getting dangerously close before leaping into the air, letting sparks fly down out of her in the process and spread out across the four of them, summoning her sword in midair and stabbing it down through the head of the one just in front of her.

There were more gunshots—just one or two, with the aim of getting attention more than the expectation of doing any real harm. That policeman was also loudly cussing out the monster; all of this was to try and bait it back out into the open. Ning wasn't sure if he was brave or stupid at this point, but at least it was working. She heard it crash through another window and him tumbling in a rough roll just barely out of its way.

The fox-girl had her own concerns, vaulting off of the hilt of her blade to land behind the monster she'd just stabbed it into, then turning and firing off more lightning through the whole group. She could spare a glance at the fifth one from this vantage point, and saw the officer getting up and booking it more or less her direction as the beast turned and resumed its charge, quickly gaining on him. Calling lightning down on it didn't slow it down or even get its attention, and as they came closer two of the others that had been after her turned to converge on him, with the remaining one not impaled by a sword turning and getting ready to charge her again. She growled in frustration, trying to think of what to do to keep this guy from getting killed. The help corralling these things was definitely appreciated, but if he got himself killed, it'd be better if they'd just let them wreck the whole area instead!

---

Rowan got everyone in a conference room or on speakerphone not long after the Giver's warnings went out. "Listen up, everyone. We've got four attacks marked. On the east side of town—"

"I got it," Simon interrupted, waving. "I'm taking that one."
"What's got you so riled up?" Warp asked.

"That high school, literally two feet from the spot she marked? Wife works there."
Rowan nodded. "I'm with you, then. There's another, higher threat level near there too—anyone close enough to get there quickly?"
"Pretty close," a man's voice came through—Hugo in human form.

"I'm in the neighborhood too," Tora added.

"Got it. I'll send Fay with you two to handle it. Closer to town center—Nico, you're around there, right?"
"Preeetty close. That's guy's deffo too much for just me, though!"

"Sam, head out to assist. Zeno, you join them when you can. Your job is to stall it until one of the other teams can assist, got that?"
"Sir," Sam saluted. Zeno didn't respond verbally, but this was fairly normal when she was away from the headquarters; he knew Ezekiel was listening.

"That leaves the west end. Mixture of low-level threats. Warp, Cynth, Dawn—I'll get a ride for you three there; mop them up quick, then go help Sam and Nico."

"Sure," Cynthia said; Dawn nodded.

"You should have info on what to expect in the app. Try to do your reading before you arrive, if you can, but if it isn't there when you do, you can do it then. Let's go, people."

"Don't get eaten!" Simon helpfully advised, following Rowan out.

---

The two monsters appeared side by side, proving the Giver's predictions accurate once again. The tentacled beast on the left raised its limbs to strike, and the other one raised its muzzle skyward, letting out an unholy screech, paralyzingly loud and shrill.

Light had made their four bodies invisible, but the mouthopus seemed to know where they were anyway—despite its big eye suggesting it relied at least somewhat on sight. She and Gemma scattered, while Magus managed to react just in time to raise her sword and place a half-dome of magic in front of it to block the blows. "Gyeaah! I thought those things were silent!" she said. Thinking about it, the sound did seem to be just above the range of human hearing—not that that made it any less loud.

"Sorry, uh—" "—I'll block it next time!" Gemma said, Minus raising a thick, moderately solid wall of earth to block some more tentacle strikes as that monster advanced. Its companion, however, did not charge any of the vixens at all—nor Light's illusions of them elsewhere—instead opting to turn and dart off to one side, toward the nearest building.

"What th—what is it—I'm on it!" Light interrupted her own confusion at this behavior, and then lightsped over in front of it, throwing her sword into its shoulder. It made another screech—this time muted about a quarter of a second in by Emma's efforts—and whipped its stinger down at where it probably thought she was; she'd already moved to one side and above it, keeping herself in the air to slash into its side, by then.

Magus continued rapidly backing up while she silently channeled a spell, eventually casting it to send a bolt of lightning down from the sky to the big tentacled beast's main body. Gemma pulled a bunch of the light away from the area between the two (or three) of them with Plus, sending it Light's way, and used Minus to weave the resulting shadows up into a bunch of spiky limbs that grasped the monster's own tentacles, binding them so they couldn't keep whipping dangerously around at them.

While it swiped at her position again with its stinger (easily dodged by just bringing herself back to ground level), the tiger-scorpion didn't turn to face Light, instead continuing in its earlier direction now that she wasn't directly in its way. She growled, pulling the light Emma 'donated' her into a blinding semicircular wall of light around its head to try to disorient it. She then struck two of her sword into its right hind leg, trying to use them as hooks to hold it back and throw it over onto its side, and eventually succeeded after being dragged along a few yards herself. Its tail swung around, stinging everywhere it could, but she'd already moved to its front-underside by then, slashing repeatedly into it.

Magus moved to one side while she gathered her breath, then threw some fireballs in an arc toward the big tentacled beast's main body. She was a decent distance off with both of Gemma between her and that thing, but it just never seemed to run out of tentacles, and even the ones bound up in shadow were starting to break loose. Gemma now abandoned those shadows entirely, Plus instead producing a bunch of steel wire from her hand and throwing it, forming it into a big net with electricity pumping through it that the limbs' whipping around tangled themselves into. Then she used both of her bodies to throw numerous weapons at a single point between/in front of them, time-delaying the whole lot so they'd all reappear at the same time, followed by teleporting them directly in front of the thing's eye when they did. It screamed, tearing the net apart as it drew its limbs back to itself, leaning its body back to charge.

It wasn't as cheap to maintain the blinder around the tiger-scorpion's head once Emma stopped sending her light, but Light no longer needed to maintain it like that anyway. Once the monster got up, twisting to swipe its forelimb claws at where she'd just been, she made it look like the blinding light faded off, but actually changed it to an illusion in the same place of their surroundings—turned so that a spot a little bit ahead of of the mouthtopus's position looked like the way it had been trying to go before. It took the bait, turning in a brief circle before charging that way.

Magus and the twins spread out, all three preparing to dodge the charge as best they could, but when the many-tentacled beast just began darting toward Minus's direction, its companion slammed into it from the side, knocking both of them over and well off-course. The big mass of black mist tumbled along the ground for several yards before slowly coming to a halt, but when it did, it was hard to tell what part of it was the tiger-scorpion and what part was the mouthtopus. It was like the impact had put one of them halfway into the other, and its limbs—tentacles, scorpion tail and legs alike—all writhed around confusedly for a moment before suddenly stopping, as if it had realized something.

The black mist surged together into a single form, raising itself up. It was the same shape the mouthtopus had had before, except that as its tentacles extended out again, their ends had visibly changed into sharp, scorpion-like stingers. Its eye, badly injured from Emma's earlier attack, seemed to tear itself the rest of the way open, becoming a brand new circular mouth lined with razor sharp teeth, and while it did, it emitted a loud, high screech—which would have been even worse than any before if Plus hadn't almost immediately muted it again.

"I guess you guys aren't the only ones who can fuse, huh?" Magus muttered, continually backing away from this sight; Light placed herself next to Minus, the part of Gemma now farther away from the combined beast. "That uh, that's—not good, right?"

<hr/>

The three amnesiacs sat in the back of one of the VI's unmarked vans, Warp handling a tablet and showing the other two some pictures of what they'd be up against. "Buncha cannon fodder," she remarked. "Gryphons and..'snakewolves'? Guess it shouldn't be too hard for you to burn 'em up, at least."

Cynthia nodded. "Quicker we get rid of 'em, the quicker we can go deal with the 'big threat' or whatever."
Dawn put a hand on her wrist, gently. "Just, please be careful..."
"Hey, I ain't stupid." She placed the opposite hand on top of Dawn's. "I won't forget what I was taught literally this morning."

"Oy, right. If either of ya feel a weird tug from my direction," Warp said, "That's me trying to pull your tail outta danger. So just let me."

"Sure."
"Thanks," Dawn added.

---

Ning clinched her fists, clamping down on the electricity running through her as best she could. This might hurt you, but it won't kill you, she thought. Then, with everything gathered, she made a high leap to a spot just ahead of the policeman, electricity falling out behind her and spreading out across the monsters that had been charging her. She caught him mid-run, picking him up, and leapt again, spreading electricity behind her and a little bit (about as much as a few static shocks) into him before landing a good distance off. He jerked slightly from the resulting pain but gritted his teeth and didn't cry out.

Setting him down, Ning turned to see all five of the chargers making to turn her way. "Thanks," he said. "Those things were after some civilians, and I couldn't let them get impaled. Guess I got in over my head, huh?"
"Can't blame ya for helping," she said. "Borrow your shield?"
"Huh? Uh, sure," he handed it over. "Think I can write it off if you break it, so don't worry about that."

"Good. Now get outta here while I've still got their attention."

Ning turned the shield horizontal and ran toward the monsters; it was mostly plastic, but the handle was metal, so she ran some electricity across that. She clashed against the first of them, knocking it aside with the shield while current arced across its body, then slammed straight into the second one with the shield, stabbing the thing's horns into it and using that to throw shield and monster alike to one side. She formed her sword in its sheath and used that to knock the next beast aside with as much blunt force as she could manage—maybe too much; it slammed into a wall hard enough to knock some bricks out. A swing back the other way and a little bit of circling electricity to make repelling magnets threw the sheath out at the fourth one, the impact staggering it, and she had it explode into sparks again on landing. The last charger bore down on her from an angle, but she turned to it with her weapon raised in both hands, stabbing it straight down between the thing's eyes, tightly gripping the hilt to push back against its momentum, her feet sliding across the ground several feet in the process until they came to a stop, and then using the hilt to lift its entire body up over her head and slam it into the ground to one side of her.

A thin line of blue flew past her vision, turning to arc around one of the downed chargers and wrap around into a thick rope binding its legs and keeping it from righting itself back to a standing position. After this, the familiar sensation of Clark's ability to let people fly came to her not a moment too soon, as two more of the things had just recovered enough to start coming after her once again. Ning gathered herself and leapt straight up into the air, leaving behind a shower of sparks to spread across her assailants as they bashed their faces into each other, and then used that flight to stay up in the air, surveying the nearby area to find the Quinns quickly floating in from one side.

"Hhh—" She was a little out of breath from all of that, but couldn't stop grinning anyway. "Hey! Took you two long enough!"

"Sorry. Traffic was murder," Rory said, diving at the nearest charger to lift it into the air and punt it back down into the concrete.

---

"I was wondering...does Dawn seem different to you?"
Rowan was driving. "How do you mean?" Not that she didn't, but he still wanted a clarification before answering.

"I don't know. She seems weirdly, ehh, quiet. And calm," Simon said, gesturing vaguely. "And she's always following Cynthia around like a lost puppy. Or a duckling or something? She was much angrier, more aggressive—assertive, certainly—before, well..."

"Before she died," he put it out bluntly.

"Yes, that."

"You're not wrong. But we didn't really know Donald before all this started. Maybe she is normally calm and collected, and losing Cynthia changed that. It's really not hard to imagine she'd be afriad of losing her again."

"Hmmh, I guess not. But you can't spend your whole life being someone else's bodyguard, especially if they don't want it. Isn't very healthy."
"I've made arrangements for them to talk to someone. Someone professional," Rowan said. "Hopefully it'll help both of them."
"Ah, well, that's good." Simon nodded. He seemed as chipper as ever, but changing the subject away from what was obviously the most on his mind was telling. This was, evidently, Simon's way of worrying.

Of Fae and Foxes

I think this requires a little bit of context and/or explanation. I started this short story a few months ago, and have been working on it off and on for a while now. It's a complete story, all in one post, but it is long. To give some context, it takes up slightly over 20 pages in my document editor, which is more than the entire "Miranda" series (around 16 pages). It's about as many pages as "Wishing to Fall" and "A Wedding Guest" put together. Still, I don't think it makes any sense to try to split up this one-off into multiple pages. I just wanted to give a warning that it's long. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.

---

Three people sat at a restaurant bar, each one very different from the other two. A mismatched pair who'd known each other for years had been joined by a third member for the past few months, and this was one of their usual after-work haunts.

"So then the floor manager's like, 'nobody's leaving until every last box is packed up and ready to go!' And this is forty-five minutes till closing." The tallest of the three, sitting on the right, was a dark-haired, tall, somewhat broad-shouldered man with an impressive physique and somewhat handsome face. He had short, slightly spiked dark hair and a couple of rings in his left ear, but he otherwise dressed casually—a lot less like a punk than he used to.

"So: two boxes a minute, per person," the other guy, in the center, said. He was a little on the short side, and a bit overweight, with unkempt, short but thick blond hair, in a slightly disheveled white button-down shirt and black slacks.

"Yeah, so, wayyy too much. I'm thinking 'dude, you're not paying us overtime. You can't pay us overtime! Screw this.'"

"'D'you walk out?" the third member of the trio—on the far left—asked. She was a woman of about average height and slightly above-average figure, with a pretty face and bright green hair and eyes, who was seemingly always overdressed for every occasion. In this case she was wearing a flowing, dark green ankle-length dress, mid-high heels, and long, dark, silken gloves just to go casually drinking with friends.

"Nah, I snuck out. Pretended I had to go to the bathroom, didn't come back, didn't scan out. I'll say I forgot, you know, in the 'biig ruuush'," he said sarcastically, making air quotes with his hands.
"Well then, what're you doing here? I thought you had a date," she said.
"Pssh." He picked up the bottle in front of him and took a long gulp of it. "Stood up again. Dumb online dating, prolly found someone she liked better and didn't bother letting me know."

"Yeah man, that's ridiculous," the other guy said. "'Least the last two times, they had the courtesy to show up and eat on your dime before bailing. Hey, is that what it's all about, Agatha?" he asked the woman, elbowing her gently.

"I wouldn't know," she shrugged. "You know I've never been interested in dating in the first place." Of course both of the guys had made passes at her early on, but they also hadn't taken long to accept her complete disinterest in romance, and now treated her little differently from how they did each other.
"Got your corporate ladder to climb, eh?" the first guy said. "Speaking of, how's the IT biz today, Sal?"

"Ehh, you know," the shorter guy shrugged. "Sometimes nothing happens all day and I can play flash games and go home early—"
"Didn't they cancel flash a few years back?" Agatha interrupted.
"Not if you know what you're doing. Anyway, sometimes that, and sometimes your boss decides to check his spam box, open the email with like sixteen different warnings that it's not legit appended at the start of the subject line by our system, and then download malware that takes out the whole, network. Hahah...yee-eah."

"To be clear: Your boss as in the manager of your department?" she asked.
"Nah, she's actually pretty cool. I mean the guy over the guy over her. And naturally it's all our fault this happened, 'cause we didn't do enough to patch out human stupidity."

"So no overtime for you either, huh?" the other guy asked, and his friend shook his head.

"Salary, remember, so..nope.

"Anyway, we did get it fixed, and I put in a little thing that empties that guy's spam every hour or so without letting him know, so maybe I can get back to tasering that gnome tomorrow."

"...Is, that a euphemism for something?" Agatha asked, eyebrow raised.
"Pffheheh, nah, it's just a dumb reference. Rogan got it, right?"
"...No."
"Dang." But it wasn't unusual for her to misunderstand relatively well-known references, either; the two of them occasionally joked with each other that Agatha had to be some kind of space alien. She was working as some sort of legal consultant for a big corporation, and every time she tried to explain what exactly her job entailed, it gave both of them a headache. It was more likely, especially if that hair color was natural, that she was some kind of magic folk who'd only relatively recently joined the 'modern world', and so lacked some of the context that mundane humans like the two guys had. Since she'd never brought it up herself, and seemed to brush off the topic of where she was originally from, they figured it wasn't their business and left it alone. Anyway, at least she was fun to hang out with.

"Well, I certainly hope I'm not causing such problems for our IT department," Agatha said. "A few days ago, I did have something of a disagreement with my computer."

"Just to be clear," Sal said, pointing to himself, "not on the job, don't work for free."
"Ahahah, I wouldn't dream of making you work for nothing," she said. "No, this is only venting."
"Oh, well, in that case vent away," he waved theatrically. "This is vent central over here. We're gonna make the bar's AC system jealous, 'cause of all the vents."
At this point Rogan gave him a look that said 'I can't believe you're the one not drinking,' and then gestured for Agatha to go on.

"Well, it told me that I did not have the authority to do what I needed done. I insisted that it was part of my job, and so should fall under my purview. But—we eventually came to an arrangement, after a while."
"Uhh, is that the kind of 'arrangement' where the PC's in the bin with its screen cracked?" Sal asked.

"Oh no, it never got violent or anything. I just convinced it that my position was the correct one."
"Uhh yeah, okay. Look, if you do run into something like that, you probably should just call IT instead of negotiating with a piece of tech," he said. "Still—not my problem, and I guess it worked out?"
"Yes, wonderfully," she nodded. "I doubt I'll have such a problem again for some time, anyway."

This conversation was interrupted by the arrival of food, which the shorter of the two guys eyed eagerly. While both of his friends drank—typically beer for Rogan and some kind of wine or whatever for Agatha—Sal's main addiction was food, so he played designated driver. So far, she'd always insisted she had her own way home and wasn't driving, as much as he offered.

The subject abruptly changed after this interruption, and the three of them carried on talking for around another hour or so. Then, after they'd paid their bills, Agatha stood up first. "If you two will excuse me—I'd best be off," she said.

"Sure. Be safe, you had more than usual tonight," Rogan said.
"I'll be alright," she nodded. "As always, I won't be driving."

After watching her head off, he turned to Sal. "She really looked like she was wobbling a little there."
"New, taller heels," the other guy guessed, and got an annoyed look in response. "Okay, okay, what?"

"I dunno, maybe she is driving and just don't want us to worry? We should make sure she's alright."

"That's why the ladies keep running off on you, man. You're too nice," his friend said, but got up to follow her out anyway.

The two of them hurried out to the parking lot at a brisk enough pace to catch sight of her from the door, watching her walk through the lot toward a neighboring building. "See?" Sal said quietly, "I don't even think she's got a car in the lot."
"Or, she parked somewhere else just in case we're watching. C'mon." Rogan gestured to follow, and they moved to keep her in sight as she came to that building—a store that had closed a few hours ago—and began to turn a corner to go behind the wall of that building. As she came close to going out of sight, he suddenly took off at a sprint to get where he could see her again, and Sal had to jog pretty hard to get not even close to keeping up with him. When he got there, panting heavily, he found his friend staring in Agatha's direction, mouth agape, and slowly followed his gaze.

The green-haired woman was in the middle of doing...something. She was holding up some kind of flower in front of and just slightly above her head, and its petals were detaching and blowing forward in a wind neither of them could feel, spreading out and growing into large blocks of stone which formed the shape of a wide archway twice her height. As soon as the archway finished forming, its interior was filled with completely different scenery from what was actually behind it: Bright, morning-like sunlight bathing a field of flowers, yet somehow not lighting up the area around the portal, nor the woman who had summoned it.

By the time the portal had formed and existed for a couple of seconds, Sal had caught his breath enough to let out a long, high-pitched "Whaaaaaaaaat?"

"Shh, dude!" Rogan whispered, but Agatha was already turning around toward (presumably) the source of the noise, each of her eyes emitting an eerie, bright green glow. Her expression was briefly stern and terrifying, projecting an unimaginable power, before it suddenly settled into a much friendlier chuckle and grin—but still with the glowing eyes.

"..Ahh, it's only you two," she said. "Hey, come over here—you're curious, right?" she waved for them to come, so they did.

Rogan gestured to the portal as they approached, trying to ask gently: "So uh, what is um...?"
"Duude, are you one of the fair folk? Like, for real?" Sal was much less restrained.
"Heheh, got it in one," Agatha said. "I thought it might be fun to try and make you work it out somehow, but it's my own fault if you found me out because of my own incaution. Perhaps I did have one too many tonight after all," she mused.

"That means we get wishes, right?"

Rogan facepalmed. "Sal, seriously, why do you act like that sober?" he half-growled at a low volume.

Agatha, fortunately, took this well, just giggling. "That's really not how we work, you know. But—eh, I do like you guys, and..can't imagine anything you'd actually want that wouldn't be trivial for me anyway. What would you like?"

"Ooh! Can you get one of those domestic foxes? They're such cute little guys."

She headtilted, and Rogan gave him a 'seriously?!' look. "Well—"

"Wait wait, could you like, make me actually attractive?"

"That would be easy enough, too," she said, shrugging.

"What about—I mean, maybe this is dumb, but, I think you know, uh.." Rogan half-mumbled, not feeling nearly as bold in the face of a being of unimaginable power.

"You want me to help you find a beautiful woman who'd actually be interested in you?" Agatha said.
"Well—yeah. Or..if not that, I'd settle for a better job?" he said, a little more confidently. "I mean, I don't need to be rich, just, something that pays better, with more vacation days and maybe more fulfilling?"
"Hold up," Sal said, "Is wishing for a cute girlfriend seriously on the table right now?"

"Pfffheheh!" Agatha put her hand over her mouth delicately, interrupting their exchange with some full-bodied laughter. "See now, this is why I like you two. Okay, I think I've got the idea. You'll both get something I think will make you very happy, but..it might take a couple of days, alright? Just—hold still a moment." She then drew a couple of flowers from..somewhere; it looked like she just got them out of thin air or something, taking one into each hand.

"Uh..sure?" Rogan said. The fae nodded, turning to face him and holding up one of the flowers between her face and him; its petals were a bright, sky-blue color, and she took a short breath before blowing gently, sending the flower's petals flying out like it was a dandelion. They flew up to him with purpose, briefly swirling around his body before seeming to vanish. Then she did the same thing to Sal, except that 'his' flower was different, with longer petals cast in a pale, pure white.

"There we go~," she said afterward. "Now, I really must be off. You two drive safely, and have fun! See you again soon."

"S-sure," Rogan said, still looking down at himself and trying to see anything that might've happened from the flower-petal-swirling.

"You have fun too!" Sal said, as she stepped through the portal.

Agatha briefly turned back, grinning at both of them (but her eyes were glowing green again) and nodded. "I'm certain I will, thanks~." Then she stepped through, and the portal immediately vanished, the stones turning back into some gray-colored, wilted petals which blew away in the wind.

The two guys stood there in the parking lot of a closed store for a long moment, then exchanged a glance. "Soooo...that happened," Sal declared.
"It did." His friend shook his head. "I think I'm too drunk to believe this is real right now. Remind me when I wake up tomorrow."
"You mean after work?"
"Yeah...after work," he nodded.

As they walked back to Sal's car, he said, "So, I guess I'm probably not getting the pet fox. I mean—if she was gonna just summon one of those, it would've happened, right?"
"You wanted the other two things you asked about more, didn't you?"

"Hey, I don't mean I'm disappointed or anything. Just trying to figure out what is gonna happen."
Rogan sighed. "I feel like we modern humans are at a disadvantage, you know that? Back in medieval times, everybody got a good warning at some point in their life not to screw with the fae."
"Well, I say getting chummy and joking around with one is a totally different thing," Sal said.

"Does that make it better, or worse?"
He shrugged. "Guess we're gonna find out!"

---

Sal's first sign that having a fae blow a flower at him had any actual effect came when he got up the following morning. It wasn't instantly obvious, either; it was something that required him to carefully check himself out for a moment before getting into the shower. Regardless, he was pretty sure that his gut had withdrawn itself, flattening down just a little compared to the day before, and his shirt seemed looser by a slight but present margin, enough to confirm it for him. It wasn't enough for him to completely rule out the possibility that his hopeful expectation had him merely perceiving the change, but really, he'd be okay with it if she'd just pranked them both and done absolutely nothing.

He went to work that day, and gradually noticed that his scalp was itchier than usual, fully realizing this fact as he was about to break for lunch and caught himself vigorously scratching it, slowly pulling his hand down before his face and staring at it once he really thought about what he was doing. "Hmmn." Reaching it up with a bit more purpose, he gently teased his hair around, and confirmed that it was noticeably longer than before, and fairly unkempt at that. He decided to take his break from doing very little a bit early to head to the bathroom and look at it in the mirror.

Sal gently brushed the longer bangs, and especially the hair coming from the back of his head, which was halfway down his neck, into a slightly straighter, less messy shape. With how thick his hair always was, this was probably the best he could do without a brush. As he did, he noticed that its color overall seemed somewhat faded, paler and brighter than usual.

This also provided an opportunity to take stock of his body overall, the way his clothes fit on him. His pudge was all but gone now, which made his shirt fall a bit loose and long; however—maybe it was just his imagination, but he thought his pants were longer than before too, the leggings falling far enough to touch his shoes instead of stopping off at the ankles. But..he couldn't imagine a good reason why he'd actually be shorter. He knelt and folded the hems up so they wouldn't trip him anyway, and went on to eat his lunch.

Rogan didn't notice anything out of the ordinary when he awoke—nor did he particularly expect to. Despite the presentation with the blue flower, what he'd asked Agatha for was to help him meet someone else, which he expected required time and setup for entirely different reasons. Or..the same was basically true for finding him a better job, too.

Notwithstanding, he did notice throughout the morning that his ears itched uncontrollably from time to time. Once, a couple of hours in, he had to pause what he was doing to scratch them, and when he did, he thought his fingers and nails found something..soft there, like peach fuzz. This had him narrow his eyes and carefully hold his hands around each ear for a second, and he could swear they were bigger than before, too—with noticeably more surface to hold. At this point someone glanced his direction, and he quickly got back to work, pretending he'd only been briefly scratching his ears.

He took a few more opportunities to examine them (and couldn't help scratching them several more times), and the fuzz seemed longer and thicker each time, the ears gradually getting bigger. By the time he was able to break for lunch and go to a mirror to look, they were big enough to poke out past his hair, peculiarly pointed tips covered in short hairs which had a familiar, bright blue coloration to them. He crossed his arms, glaring at the strange sight of that shade interrupting his much darker hair, and muttered, "What're you doing to me, Agatha..?" But his job wouldn't let him stop for much longer than that, and it seemed like it might be inevitable at this point anyway, so he tried to put it out of his mind.

Sal's scalp itched some more as the day went on, and the hair kept on getting longer and longer. Some locks slowly trailed their way down the sides of his face, while the hair behind him accelerated even more after it hit his shoulders, slowly making its way down his back. Its color also continued to change, like someone was slowly pushing a saturation slider downward, draining away its yellowish shade. Some of his coworkers noticed this, of course, and he just told them he'd bought a bad hair-growth potion on a whim and planned to get it cut once it stopped taking effect.

The truth was, however, that whenever he'd finished scratching his scalp for a moment, he'd run his hand or hands through that increasingly long hair. It was strangely soft ever since lunchtime, and therefore quite pleasant to the touch. He especially liked the way it felt running through his fingers like that, and he wondered if it might actually even..look good?

What Sal's coworkers didn't have as much of an opportunity to notice, thanks to his usual choice of clothing already being somewhat loose, was that his fat was continuing to vanish away. Not only did his belly flatten the rest of the way as the afternoon went on, but even his arms and legs trimmed and slimmed a bit more. What concerned him just a little was a different subtle change, however: The hem of his shirt occasionally bunched and needed to be re-tucked, and he thought that how much longer it seemed on him couldn't quite be accounted for by just the loss of fat from his torso. And even though he'd folded the leggings up before, when he got up to do something about halfway between lunch and the end of the day's shift, he found them trailing back down over his feet again. He was...almost certainly losing height, even though he had a hard time really gauging any significant change in perspective.

Rogan's ears itched less throughout the afternoon, but kept on growing. People began to take notice, of course, as the bright blue..fur, probably..made its way out from the sides of his head, but he was able to glare away any questions before they could actually be asked. He soon noticed them becoming mobile, too, twitching and turning around with increasing flexibility in a way that seemed to reflexively help him listen to whatever he was trying to hear. A brief examination near the end of the day found that, despite a drastically different shape they were taking on—similar to a pair of tall, fuzzy triangles—his right ear still retained its piercings and the rings through them. His examination also found that the fur remained soft even as it grew longer and thicker; if anything, it seemed even softer now, peculiarly fluffy.

They seemed to finish growing near the end of the day's work, becoming the size of his hands or even a bit bigger, and he observed in a brief glance in the mirror that they weren't entirely bright blue, with the inner ears sporting snowy white fluff instead. He was already starting to get used to the way the air ran across their fur, their heightened sensitivity both to touch and sound, and the way they moved, flexibly twitching and rotating around. He even found it very easy to control them manually, so to speak, although that didn't feel particularly necessary.

The one thing those ears didn't seem too well suited for, however, was the use of human-centric devices like headphones or...cell phones. Rogan really noticed this when he stepped out to his car and almost immediately got a call from Sal. He answered it, and tried unsuccessfully to find a comfortable way to press the phone against his left ear. "Yoo, uh, what's up?" Sal's voice came through; he could actually hear it without putting it close to the ear anyway, especially with both of his ears instinctively pointing toward the phone. So he just gave up and held it horizontal with the mic close to his face instead.
"Hey. Not much. Just grew..giant furry ears today."
"Whooaa, seriously?"
"..Yes. Very seriously."
"Can I see them!?"

"I'm pretty sure you'll have a hard time missing them," Rogan said.

"Sweet!"

"...What were you calling me about?" It obviously couldn't be the ears, since he didn't know about that until just now.
"Oh, right! I wanted to know if you wanna hang out for supper or something? I..had some stuff happen too!"

"..Yeah, sure."

Getting in his car and needing to adjust things before he could drive conclusively proved to Sal that he'd really lost some height, maybe four or five inches. And when he pulled up to the restaurant, got out, and waved Rogan over, he got another indication of the shift: His eye level, once around his friend's chin, was nearly down to his chest. "Heyy, wow," he said, looking up toward his face—and those ears, of course. "You were not kidding."
"Uh, you either. Actually, I almost feel bad for complaining now," Rogan said, crossing his arms. "You, what, shrank six inches and got stupid long hair?"
"Yyyyeah," Sal ran a hand through it absently. It was an extremely pale, washed-out yellow now, clearly approaching pure white, and the locks streaming out from the back of his head fell as far as the middle of his waist. "But hey, check it out!" He patted his stomach. "Fat's all gone, at least!"
"Heheh, well uh..I guess as long as you're happy?"

Hearing about his friend's ears suddenly growing had no particular meaning to Sal at first. However, the sight of those giant, bright blue fuzzy ears instilled in him a strange urge to reach up and touch them—particularly, in fact, to pet them like an animal's, rubbing them between his fingers gently. They had to be super-soft, he thought. But—boundaries existed, especially here in public. So he began to hatch a plan to try and get them alone somewhere instead...food, however, still came first.

Rogan got a beer to drink, figuring he was having a strange enough day to justify it. Sal watched him do this with an expression of slight concern. "Dude, it's fine, I'm eating too," he said, and felt his ears fold back alongside his frown.

"Yeah? You better at least be careful," Sal said. "Actually, my place is way closer than yours if you wanna crash for a couple of hours or something."
"I'll be fine," he insisted.

There was more different about Sal's appearance than he himself seemed to have noticed as of yet. Rogan had noticed right away the way that his friend's long, slightly wild hair trailed out into long bangs and even longer locks down the sides of his cheeks to his shoulders framed his face, drawing quite a bit of attention to..the fact that his face, itself, suddenly lacked hair now, leaving its skin smooth. It was also a bit softer and rounder than before, a bit..cuter, even? He caught himself almost-staring once or twice, trying to make sense of the thought of his friend looking a bit cute, especially when he was laughing and joking around like usual. And his arms seemed slimmer, his hands a little smaller than before—or maybe that really was just Rogan's imagination. After he'd had some drink and before the meal arrived, he got the strangest urge to feel those fingers in particular touching his ears, but shook it off as quickly as it came. It had to be the alcohol talking, or...something.

"So anyway..Agatha's a fae, I guess. We didn't really get much time to talk about that last night, huh?" Sal said.
"Yeah. Crazy. I would've guessed some kind of..Kitsune, or minor forest spirit or something."
"Nah, man. The signs were kinda there from the start, in hindsight. Like: She pretty much never lies. You notice that?"
"What about the whole 'being a legal consultant' thing?"
"I don't think that was a lie. Fae are supposed to be really good at twisting words and getting people to agree to things they wouldn't otherwise. Isn't that a total lawyerish thing?"
"Ehh, maybe."

"Hey, what do you bet she actually used her power to give her computer a personality, just so she could negotiate with it? Heheh, I am so glad I'm not on that IT team."

"It's just—she seems really down-to-earth for a 'dangerous being with godlike powers' or whatever."
"Well, they can't all be baby-eating tricksters. I mean, that'd get boring after a couple of centuries, I bet!"

"What about iron? She never seemed bothered by iron."
"Dude, I don't think we've been around any iron with her."
Rogan held up his silverware. "Steel?"
"Well, she tends to wear gloves, so...?"

"And when it's in her mouth?"
"What, you never noticed? Look:" Sal picked up some food with his fork. "This is how she eats." He carefully placed his teeth on the food and pulled it off of the fork, taking the utensil away from his mouth before chewing and swallowing. "No contact. With the fork. And she'd delicately pour soup in her mouth with a spoon, I bet."
"She never ordered soup, though," Rogan said, with Sal saying "but" and then those first four words at exactly the same time.

"Jinx! Hahah..I guess I should be careful with that, though. Uhm, unjinx?"

"I think that's supposed to ward the jinx off anyway, or something," Rogan said, idly scratching an ear.

It wasn't that Rogan's ears itched anymore, with their transformation apparently concluded, but he felt a kind of unconscious urge for them to feel the touch of a hand on them or something. His own hand was okay, but...now, midway through his meal, the feeling came on even stronger that he wanted it to be Sal's hand. At least...just once. But it wasn't like he could ask him to do that in public, or maybe even at all? It was definitely too weird.

Once they had settled their bills, Rogan said, "Look: I'm still fine to drive; I hardly drank anything at all."
"Yeah, compared to usual, I guess..." He was visibly almost succeeding at hiding some sort of disappointment.
"But, you wanna hang out at your place for a while anyway?"
"Wh—uuuh, yeah! Sure," he nodded, making his hair swish around a bit from the motion.

"Okay. See you there." He got up.

Sal followed his friend out, then drove to his small house, heading inside. While the change had been gradual enough at the office for him to not really notice his change of perspective, it couldn't be more obvious here. Everything, from the door to the walls and ceilings and every bit of furniture, simply seemed taller than he remembered it being this morning. But, of course, he was just shorter. He glanced around briefly before turning around and pulling the door open for Rogan. "Heheh, come on in," he said, grinning. This was far from the first time one of them had come to the other's home to hang out, of course, but he was still feeling a little bit of unaccountable nervousness. It was..actually, probably just because he was still thinking about making the bizarre request to pet Rogan's ears.

"Thanks," his friend nodded, coming in and pulling the door shut behind him.

"So, we haven't really addressed the elephant in the room," he said, going over to a couch.
"Yeah, what's that?"
"What exactly is her...spell or whatever, doing to us? I mean, I definitely didn't ask for these," he said, gently pulling his ears outward with his hands. "And you didn't ask to be shorter, or have ridiculously long hair, either."
"Well, yeah," Sal said, sitting on the opposite side of the couch. "But I was pretty vague, to be fair. I just asked to be attractive, right? And I did lose basically all my fat, and I don't think this hair is ugly, exactly.." He lifted some of his hair around in front of him, running his hands over it; the color was all gone now, leaving it a pure, snowy white.

"..Waiit. I also asked for a pet fox."
"That was before you changed your mind," Rogan said, folding his arms.
"Yes, but, she didn't really say she was granting any one thing, either. Just 'oh, I've got the idea, now lemme blow flowers at you'."
"Well, what does that have to—" He stopped short, particularly noticing his ears folding back. Noticing, that is, his ears. "...These are fox ears." He poked one of them with an index finger. "Fox. Ears. Right?"

"I mean, I think so? They look too tall for cat ears, and..well, a lot of canine ears can be hard to distinguish, but they're pretty spiky to be dog ears anyway."

"So she's turning me into a fox!?" Rogan sat up toward his friend and raised his voice, feeling his ears stand straight up.
"Uh—I mean, probably not?" Sal put up his hands. "Or at least not exactly. I can't imagine that Agatha would expect you to be happy about turning into a literal animal, so maybe more like..fox-person?"
Sitting back again and crossing his arms, shaking his head, and slowly folding his ears down again, he said: "..That's, not as bad, I guess. And it explains, uh.."

"What?" Sal was curious now that he'd almost said it, but hesitated.
"Um, nothing."
"That was definitely not nothing! C'mon, man, you can trust me." He leaned up and forward toward his friend a bit, grinning conspiratorially.

Rogan's eyes widened slightly; Sal's face was round, soft—it was even cuter than before, especially with this expression! When had that happened?

"Uh, I got a. Weird urge to have your hands on my ears. Like, just brush their..fur a little," he said. "Uh—weird, right?"

"Oh. Yeah, that's..a little weird to suddenly feel, I imagine," Sal said. "At the same time, I have the exact same urge! I mean, on my end though, so...to pet them." He leaned a little closer still, looking up in Rogan's face. "Can I?"

"Uh, okay fine. Just, a little though, okay!?"
"Sure. I'll stop if it seems at all like it's bugging you," he promised, scooting toward the center of the couch to be close enough that he could reach. He brought his hands carefully up to either side of his friend's head.

Rogan was unprepared for what he felt when Sal's hands touched his ears. The touch was gentle and hesitant, yet it caused him to shiver, something racing down through his ears to their bases, down to and through his spine. His ears instantly lowered completely out to the sides, and he felt calm and warm as the hands began to slowly run along them. "Mh..mnnhh.." The sort-of-chill that had run down his spine seemed to settle at its base, forming into a strange kind of tingling there. And his mouth felt odd too, the teeth and tongue particularly, as the utterance from his throat changed into an odd, deep "Mrrrh" sort of sound—a more animal-like churring.

Sal's fingers played around with his fur for a moment more, totaling only ten to twenty seconds, before he slowly lifted them away and brought his hands back to his sides. Rogan didn't even seem to have noticed that his eyes had closed, as he slowly opened them and blinked a couple of times. He looked confused that it had stopped so quickly, before he finally noticed the look of concern on his friend's face. "...What?"

"You um..don't panic, but you..shrank," Sal said. From the moment his friend had started making a rather cute, low churring sound from his throat, his height had started to abruptly sink downward, rivaling Sal's loss of size by the time he'd even noticed it happening and quickly withdrawn his hands as a result. In addition to that, now that he was looking, he could see that the bright blue coloration of the ears' fur seemed to have 'bled out' from where it contacted his hair, immediately turning those patches of it touching the ears to the same hue. And, when he'd opened his mouth to speak, Sal had also seen some clear, canine-like fangs sticking out among his teeth where there hadn't been any before.

"Oh..oh great. So, whatever this is, she set it up so that both of us wanted you to pet these," he said, pointing to an ear, "and whenever you do, it changes me more. Did it stop?" he asked quickly.
"Uh, yeah, as soon as I let go of your ears. But your hair's kinda, weird now."
"Weird how!?" Rogan pushed himself to his feet and almost tripped over the leggings of his pants, immediately drawing attention to his clothes hanging noticeably longer and also slightly looser across his body than before. He pulled them up and marched to the bathroom to take a look.

"Uh, sorry!" Sal called, still sitting on the couch. "I didn't know."
"It's fine, you didn't know," Rogan echoed, and then loudly sighed, walking back to the living room.

"I guess whatever's gonna happen to me is probably inevitable," he said, crossing his arms. "But..I still want to delay it as much as I can."
"I guess that's understandable," Sal said, but looked rather sad about it anyway. It was true that the feeling of those fingers on his ears had been rather blissful in the brief moment it had existed, and evidently the feeling was mutual.

"Look, I'll..let you do it again tomorrow," Rogan said. "I just, want to stay as normal as I can for now.."
"That's fine. You're okay to drive, right?" Sal said, hopping up off the couch and heading toward his front door. "You, might want to adjust the seat and mirrors and stuff after that."
"Yeah, I will," he nodded.

Unfortunately, just having Sal stop petting him wasn't enough to entirely prevent Rogan's transformation from continuing. The strange tingling he'd felt around the base of his spine seemed to return as he drove home, and then grew stronger after he'd walked inside. It progressed into a faint sort of pushing/tingling feeling, and when he eventually took a look, he found a small stub of bright blue fur coming from his lower back as the source of the sensation: A tail. Besides that, the same shade, which had bled from his ears to some of his hair, steadily spread out over the course of the evening, until only the tips of his hair retained their original color.

By that time he was going to bed, the tail had grown to half the length of an arm and begun to move around on its own—similar to the ears, but to the purpose of helping him balance and walk instead of hear. He fully expected the tail to gain its full length, and the rest of his hair to change, before he awoke the following morning...but he desperately hoped that was all that was going to happen for now.

As he lay in bed trying to sleep, Rogan realized that they hadn't applied the logic used to explain his sudden growth of fox ears on Sal's condition. Long hair, slim body...cute face? That had to mean...but no, he couldn't believe it. He refused.

Sal took a moment to measure his height after Rogan left and make a record of it, checking it occasionally as the evening went on. In this way he confirmed for himself that it didn't change throughout that whole time—and yet his clothes gradually fell looser across his body anyway. As he was close to getting ready for bed, he decided to take a good look at himself with his shirt off to try and figure out why, and then it was fairly obvious.

His shoulders had narrowed considerably, his waist not only flat now but trimmed in a bit at the sides. His arms and legs were even slimmer than before, taking on effeminate proportions, and even his hands and his feet were smaller. Really looking at his own face now, Sal realized that its features had subtly changed: The hair was gone from it, for one thing, but the skin there and all the way down the rest of his body had a decidedly softer, smoother, paler complexion too. And..it was smaller and rounder, rather...cute, with the way it was framed by his hair.

He tilted his head slightly at the altered face in the mirror, the long hair, the slim body. "I..kinda like this?" In the same vein as long, soft, white hair, he was really beginning to appreciate a sort of attractiveness to this look. He wasn't sure he'd ever really envied the way Rogan looked: Tall and buff and muscular and all that. And yet he had genuinely wanted to be attractive, even if it was in quite a different way. This other direction...seemed strangely promising to him now that he could see it in action.

After a bit more staring, brushing his smooth cheeks with his hands a bit and then teasing the long hair around a couple of times, he shrugged and continued on his way to bed, feeling no worry whatsoever about the trajectory of this change.

Rogan dreamed of Sal's hands. He dreamed of them rubbing his ears, maybe even stroking his growing tail. The desire to have that happen again, to chur with enjoyment and fully realize the potential of all that sensitive fur, seemed especially sharp and extreme in that dream, and lingered even after he woke up, now sporting bright blue hair, a long, fluffy tail in the same color, and—as he found when he looked in the mirror after he awoke—new eye colors. Yes, colors plural: Instead of their previous dull brown, his left eye was a brilliant red, and his right a deep blue, much darker than that of his hair but still fairly hard to mistake for any other hue.

Sal woke up several times throughout the night, which was rather unusual for him. He usually simply went to bed, fell asleep, and woke up to the morning. But tonight he seemed restless, helplessly tossing and turning. At first he wasn't sure why, but around the third or fourth time he awoke, he noticed a strange, tingly sensation down between his legs just in the process of fading off. Some...careful examination later found that his equipment down there was....considerably smaller than it had been before.
"Ah." He lay back on the pillow, contemplating this newly-discovered facet of Angela's gift to him. He...found it hard to be upset about this, or really feel much more than disappointment at himself for being at all surprised by it. Between all of the other, very obviously feminine, changes to his body, he really should've put it together before it came to the point of his sex trying to change itself.

As he came to accept what was happening, Sal found himself drifting off to sleep once again, even though he kind of wanted to know what it was going to feel like when things...really changed. But he got this wish anyway, waking up again an hour or two later to that tingling again. Only this time, it intensified as he gained consciousness rather than fading off, and began to be accompanied by an odd slipping, tugging feeling down there that made his heartbeat accelerate, his body and especially cheeks begin to feel rather warm.

"Oh...i-is this..?" He slowly sat up, pulling his thighs together. "Is this it..?" he mumbled softly, noticing that his voice was still exactly the same. It would..probably change later, he thought, and anyway there was something more important to pay attention to right now.
"Mmh—!" A somewhat sharper tug came through, and Sal squirmed in place a bit, slowly moving his hands down to touch his thighs. "Aa, aaaahh..!" It came on even stronger—it felt good—and he leaned his upper body downard, pressing his hands fairly hard into his thighs. "Oh, oooh man, thah, that's...mnnnnhh..!" Sal's manhood now melted away, what bit of masculine anticipation it had been capable of feeling seeming to flip straight over into feminine pleasure as new equipment formed into place.

"Ah, aaahhnNNnnnnn..." This noise sounded strange in a guy's voice, but Sal couldn't help it. The wonderful, pleasant, fuzzy feeling down between her legs that welcomed her to her new sex was irresistible and disarming. She let out a soft "Aah, aaah..!" in as high a pitch as her voice would go for a moment, then gasped and let it out in a slow, satisfied-yet-relieved "Ffffhhh.." as she slowly lifted herself upright again, picking her hands up off her legs and dropping them down her sides. "Aah, w-wooow.."

Suddenly feeling awfully tired, the new girl leaned back, falling with a soft thump back onto the bed, her head on the pillow. She panted softly for a minute or so, slowly closing her eyes, and then drifted off to sleep, beginning to imagine the kind of sexy voice and amazing figure she might eventually wind up blessed with if things kept going the way they were...as she was now very much hoping they would.

Rogan was most of the way through getting ready for the day's work—after examining the new changes to his body—when he got a text from Sal. He picked up his phone to glance, and received a second one before he'd read the first.

so uh

woke up female this morning

He blinked at the message a couple of times in disbelief, and received a third: anything new with you?

Instead of answering this question, Rogan asked one of his own: WHAT?!

Then: Are you okay?

perfectly fine, feels a little weird but not bad at all

He folded his foxlike ears down, feeling increasingly bad about this. Of course Agatha had decided to just magic his best friend into a girl to honor his request for a girlfriend! Why go looking for someone compatible when you can do something easy like that instead?

thinking about asking off from work today, Sal sent him.

It hadn't even occurred to Rogan to do that before this very moment, but he replied: me too

Somewhat to her disappointment, Sal's body hadn't changed much after becoming female. She still had very androgynous proportions, a boy's voice...but her eyes had changed now. They had taken on an almost magical-looking, bright purple color that she felt complemented her cute face and long, brilliant white hair perfectly. She couldn't discount the possibility that Agatha's magic had messed with her mind, making her want to be a girl and now a curvy one—especially as she noticed herself taking on more feminine mannerisms from the moment she woke up and giggled softly at the texts she sent Rogan and his replies—but it all felt really good, and she didn't feel not like herself either, so it was kind of difficult to say.

you want to come over was what she typed first, but then she thought about it. Rogan...she kind of wanted to wait until she had some curves to show off to him first. It was a weird thing to think about, but suddenly being female really brought into focus for her how attractive of a guy he was. Of course, there was also the lingering, if not strengthened, urge to pet those ears some more, but...anyway, she added the word 'later' to the text before sending it.

After a pause that seemed long enough to hold some serious consideration, he replied, Sure, maybe this afternoon.

Rogan's job didn't afford him very many days off, but there were more sick days. He'd called in with a fake cough and pretended to be sick before, so he did the same thing now, with about equal success. He got the sense that the person on the other line maybe knew he was faking it, but also wasn't being paid enough to care. She assured him she would find someone to cover his shift, advised him to get lots of rest and get better soon, and that was it: He was free for the day. And...the first thing he was going to do with that freedom, was get out of his work clothes and into something much more casual and comfortable.

Sal quietly urged her body to hurry up and change some more as she got up, filled out the online form for taking a sick day, showered, and had breakfast. She occasionally made quiet "Aah" sounds to try and test her voice, but heard no obvious change by the time she was through eating. However, she did notice occasional moments of discomfort that made her wriggle around in her seat, and a careful examination after standing up to take the dishes to the sink found her hips and bottom decidedly more plump than before. Her thighs also seemed to be in on the action, looking a little thicker than before—especially when compared to slenderness of the rest of her legs. Given her recent shrinking of height and frame, and present expectation of more changes to come, she'd only put on her longest t-shirt, a pair of boxers, and some socks—to keep the cold floor from bothering her feet—so it was easy enough to see changes without even going to a mirror.

To her delight, her voice started to change not long after that. It was subtle, but her range pulled upward just slightly, and the masculinity ebbed slowly out over the course of an hour or so until her voice, despite being fairly deep still, was a decidedly womanly alto instead of anything remotely boyish. At the same time, her hips and thighs continued to grow, steadily plumping and thickening until she had a very satisfying curve coming down from her waist to her upper legs. Tracing a hand down along that in front of her bathroom mirror, she grinned and blushed, giggling softly, noticing that her waist had also slimmed a bit more too, accentuating that curve yet more.

It was true that Sal found herself wanting to be a beautiful woman, basically entirely for herself. But, simultaneous to that desire, and seemingly parallel to her still-standing urge to pet Rogan's fluffy foxlike ears again, she was...sort of looking forward to impressing him with it? It was a silly thing to think about, of course, considering that her appearance was increasingly not her own doing at all, but she still wanted to see him blush at how pretty she was. She took a moment in front of that mirror to pick up a brush and try to tame her hair a bit, and even though this wasn't an entirely successful endeavor she figured the remaining bits of wildness to it were an enhancement rather than detriment to her cuteness. Now there was basically just one major change lacking, she thought, and anticipated it just as eagerly as she had the others.

Rogan wasn't sure how he felt about any further changes might come. He argued with himself over whether he dreaded or anticipated them, whether he wanted to get things over with, or wanted to see what would happen, or just wanted things to stop here and leave him like he was. It all seemed to be academic, however, as his every glance in the mirror since waking up that morning found him looking just the same: A little shorter than he was used to, sky-blue hair and fur, the odd red-and-blue eyes, and of course the ears and tail and fangs.
When he thought about those last few features, his mind immediately jumped to the experience of Sal petting his ears and he had to bite back an instinctive-feeling desire to get him..her now, to do it again. This was something that felt especially inevitable, and he was really beginning to suspect that it would be a catalyst for his body changing even more when it happened.

He was also imagining Sal's gorgeous, long, white hair, framing that adorable face. He had no idea what his friend's body looked like now that he was a girl, but those traits were likely to still be there. He shook his head, annoyed and even a little disgusted at himself. Agatha had put them in this position because he wanted a girlfriend, or at least a steady date, and it wasn't fair at all to Sal to just..give in to it. He would've been fine with a solution that didn't involve coercing or changing anyone like this, and he wondered if it was a subtle message from her that she thought he was just undateable or something.

As the day wore on, all the way to lunchtime, Rogan's urge to have his ears..maybe even that tail pet by his friend became stronger and stronger. He tried running his own hands across both periodically to quell it with only partial success. After habitually drinking for years and never really becoming an alcoholic, he had to wonder if this was what a real addiction was like..absurd as its target of desire was. He denied himself for as long as it took him to make and eat lunch—because then, at least, it would be afternoon as agreed—and then he sent a text asking whether he could come over. It took some serious restraint not to run out to the car before sending it, or before receiving a positive reply.

Sal's chest changed about as slowly as everything else had. One moment she was sitting playing video games, and the next she moved a certain way and felt a soft, high gasp come through her lips at a sudden sensitivity of her nipples. A bit of careful examination found them taller and wider than before, and within a few minutes there were small, soft bumps rising up from behind them. She had to move a little more carefully as she played, and of course the mere knowledge that she was growing now was pretty distracting itself!

She took a break thirty minutes after they started to grow to prod them, finding them still fairly sensitive. Her face flushed warm when she held her hands against the just-budded breasts, finding them pliant to being pressed gently inward by her palms. "Heheh..ooh man, this is ridiculous," she said. "I guess I've had a certain obsession with boobs since puberty, so maybe getting my own pair's just a logical conclusion?"

Maybe it was a stretch to call any of what was happening to the two of them logical, but..Sal was okay with that. If it felt good, if they both enjoyed it..that was good enough. She had always wanted to be happy, and for Rogan to be happy too. Even if that happiness took on a bizarre dimension thanks to Agatha, she couldn't really be upset—if anything, gratitude was the most dominant emotion.

She paused after another half an hour, finding the peaks rising up under her shirt to be pretty unmissable now, maybe about average size for girls her present height, and decided to try and look up how bra sizing worked. Sal had always had the vague impression that the cup letter indicated the size, like maybe her present size was a B and she was hoping for D or better, but it turned out to be substantially more complicated than that. Feeling that she was going to need some good, properly-fitting support if she got what she wanted, it was easier than expected to distract herself in some careful research on the topic. Nonetheless, she periodically placed her hands across the steadily blooming breasts, squishing them in or toward each other, and always blushed, sometimes giggled, at the feelings this produced. She was also starting to imagine how they'd feel pressed against somebody else's chest...a very specific somebody, in fact. Seeing him blush was maybe half of the appeal of the idea!

When she got hungry, Sal put her computer aside and got on her feet, feeling a certain satisfaction at the way the new assets bounced in response to this motion. They were almost as big as she could hope for now, two large globes for the loose, oversized shirt to hang over, emphasizing her womanhood in direct contrast to her presently very tomboyish clothes—or maybe even more so because of them than in spite of them. It was the last bit she needed to complete a generous hourglass figure, and she hummed happily to herself in satisfaction at her new look as she quickly got something to eat.

Rogan rang the doorbell and waited, wondering what he would see and trying to drive back the idea of immediately begging for his ears to be pet out of his mind. A deep, sexy woman's voice called "Coming~," and after a moment it opened to a sight he wasn't sure he could've imagined.

"Hi~!" Sal grinned pleasantly up at him, her face slightly red. She was...gorgeous. Her face and hair were just as pretty and cute as he remembered, aside from a change in eye color and that blush; she was wearing one of her shirts and a pair of dark socks, which both did little to hide her ridiculous, curvy figure and especially showed off some long, shapely legs with soft, smooth skin. The way her shirt hung down over a shoulder and teasingly showed part of her neckline, plus how it draped over an enormous pair of breasts, falling too loosely around her waist to show any of it, before hugging a pair of generously wide hips, was all impossibly sexy. Rogan was struck speechless, and he could feel his face warm with a blush, his ears lowering and his tail wagging, swishing steadily back and forth behind him.

"Uh, sooo, what do you think?" she asked. The answer to that was fairly obvious, but she wanted to hear it anyway.

"You're uh, really beautiful. I-I mean uh..wow."
"Heheh," she giggled softly. "Thanks. Uhmm, I mean not that I did anything to make this happen, but...it feels good hearing it anyway." Her voice dipped as low as it could go on this last part, which visibly made him blush a bit deeper. Having that effect on anyone—but somehow, especially on him—was exciting!

It took a long moment for Rogan to gather enough brain cells to quit staring and remember what was important—what needed to be said. "B-but! Uh. Look..um. We should..talk? Inside, maybe?"
"Yeah, okay," she said, opening the door and moving out of the way. "So, uh, guess you got a tail to match the ears, huh? It's seriously cute."

"Um, thanks I guess? No, I mean...it, feels kind of weird...but I'm already getting used to it, too," he said, slowly shutting the door.
"I totally know what you mean, trust me!" Sal said, gesturing vaguely at her own appearance. "Feel like I should be upset or at least more shocked about this, but it's felt more natural by the minute since I, you know, went female."

"Uh, y-yeah—that's, what I should talk about. You..remember what I told Agatha I wanted, right?"
"Sure. A hot date or a better job, right?"

"That's right," he nodded. "So—after I went home last night I realized, if she fulfilled your wish by making me part fox, then uh.."

"I'm not in any position to offer you a job," she said, crossing her arms. Rogan folded his ears back and shook his head. "Hahah, dude I'm just messing with ya!" she said. "I get it, you think she set me up to be the hot date. Honestly, I don't mind."
"You, don't."
"Nah," she put up her arms. "I mean, a date isn't a huge commitment or anything. We already know we like each other as friends, and coming off of being a girl for like half a day so far? You are really cute."

"Uhh." He blushed even brighter than ever before, but tried to keep the conversation on-track. "You're not, worried Agatha just made you feel that way?"
"I still feel like me," Sal argued, shrugging. "If you notice any signs of mind control, then I guess you can point it out, but I think the only thing that really stands out is the urge to pet you—which is, waay stronger than it was yesterday, by the way."
"Yeah...s-same here....but I think it might, change me more...if you do," he said slowly, failing to fight the urge to take small steps closer to her, one by one, as he spoke.
"Well, maybe the urge will go away if we do it? And get it all over with? I feel like she'll be happy to take back any changes we absolutely hate." Seeing him approach this way, Sal grinned invitingly before gliding over to her couch, sitting on the nearest seat and waving for him to come, holding her arms open for him.

The combination of his pent-up urge to be pet, Sal's newfound, unimaginable beauty, and now this open invitation completely broke Rogan's remaining resistance. He slowly shuffled over, taking off his shoes, and let himself down into her arms, letting her hold him in a close hug and slowly returning that embrace.

"Well, here we go," Sal said softly, and got back a quiet "mmh" in response. This wasn't an objection, so she brought her hands up and began to gently brush her slim, delicate fingers through the soft fur of Rogan's ears again. He flinched from the intense sensitivity he felt to this touch, but didn't draw away or try to stop her, instead leaning in slowly closer, even as he felt a faint tingling starting to wash across his body.

"M-mrrhh.." Rogan began to let out a soft, low churring of enjoyment again, and Sal could see his hair beginning to grow longer as his face drew closer to hers. His facial hair was vanishing away too, steadily thinning and shortening until it left his face—now framed by long, bright blue hair—visibly soft and smooth.

She let out a soft, high "Aah!" as his nose contacted her cheek and he began to nuzzle her in appreciation. She kept on rubbing his ears with her left hand, going back and forth from one to the other, but used the other one to move off of his ears and down through his hair. It was definitely a little longer in the back, and when her hand reached the edge of it it seemed to tease it out a few inches more, so that when she brought the hand back up and brushed down again there was even more to feel. Besides the length, his hair was just as soft and nice to touch as hers was, and running a hand down it like this was making him shiver just a bit. And his face was warm and bright with a blush, and she could feel his heart racing in his chest pressed right against her generous pair of breasts.

Rogan could feel Sal's hand running down his hair, seeming to pull it out longer and longer; he could feel the smoothness of their faces against each other. And, he could feel a slight pressure across his whole body, beginning to shrink it down once again. It was slow at first, so slow that the gorgeous girl holding on to him probably didn't even notice, but as he continued to nuzzle her, his tail whipping back and forth behind him in a happy, eager wag, he could feel himself getting shorter, slimmer, narrower, his clothes all falling looser and looser around him. As his arms grew shorter and thinner, his hands smaller, he found himself pulling close against the white-haired woman, seeming to find more room to pull closer into in the wake of his own body's loss of size. And his brain was too frazzled between strange, newfound instincts and the enjoyment of Sal's body holding so close to his to fully register what was very obviously happening, much less worry about it...

Sal realized he was shrinking, and then noticed the soft churring in his throat was changing pitch, too. It was pulling higher and higher, and by the time his height sank down to about where it matched hers, it had shifted register into a tenor or higher. It felt..curiously nice, his hair now trailing almost as far down as the base of that tail and his body feeling slim and soft in her arms, but she knew...if things kept going this way, she might not get another chance! So, she moved her left hand to the back of his head, leaned her head back just enough to make room, and quickly pulled him close, planting her lips directly on his in a kiss.

"Mmh!" Rogan's eyes, closed from the moment he'd started nuzzling her, popped open wide in surprise at this. But he didn't pull away, instead beginning to return the kiss as she made it more aggressive and passionate. "Mm, mm~mh.." He was still shrinking, if a bit more slowly, and his voice lilted higher in his throat. There was a..weird tingling, slipping sensation down between his legs, right where his body was 'enjoying' this kiss the most.

"Mmm~mmMMnnnh.." Sal let her eyes flutter shut, and she rubbed his ears a bit with her right hand, squirming a bit in place as his reciprocation gave her a brief but intense burst of feminine pleasure. She knew it wouldn't be long before he could feel something like that too, and eagerly anticipated sharing such a wonderful sensation with her friend, but...hopefully Agatha could arrange things so they could still do this again too.

The white-haired girl ended the kiss with an audible smack, leaving both of them panting heavily for air. Rogan's first gasp of breath afterward came out in a boyish "Aaa~aaahhh..!" As his height pulled down another inch or two, his body growing ever so slender and slight, with a narrow frame, slim arms and legs, and a small, round, adorably girlish face.

"Aa~ah..rrfh, mm~mnrrfh..!" His voice changed still more, his body squirming around in Sal's arms, quickly pushing toward a high, girlish soprano as his manhood began to fully melt away. He could feel it getting more and more difficult to even think of himself as male, with how small and cute his body was and his voice sounded.

Sal felt some disappointment that he, too, was changing sexes now, but a simultaneous burst of excitement. He was so cute, with such a pretty face and amazing hair! The ears and tail were adorable, too! So what showed on her face was a big grin and a bright blush as she held on tight.

"W-waa~aaahhh..!" A cute, breathy sound came out as Rogan's manhood disappeared entirely, and everything rapidly rearranged itself down there. "Rr~rfh..! Oh, oo~oooh..." She squirmed, feeling a wonderful, deep, fuzzy sensation down there as things settled into place, and almost instantly her hips and thighs pressed out, giving her a modest but very present figure down there—and her chest puffed forward with a soft pushing sensation, growing into a small but undeniable pair of breasts squishing directly against Sal's enormous globes.

A deep, womanly "Mm~MMmnnhh..!" replied back. Sal felt surprisingly good with the change suddenly finished, leaving a small, cute fox-girl in her arms. It seemed to..awaken or spark a new change for her own body too, which manifested first as a strange sensation from her lower back, around the base of her spine. "O-oh? Mnh, mnnrrr~rrrhh.." As she hurried to pull the adorable, blue-haired girl close and start petting her ears again, the sound from her throat changed to a deep, sexy churring noise as she felt a slight shift in her mouth, the feeling from her back progressing into a tingling, pushing sensation as a thick, fluffy white tail made its way out from there.

And then...! "Mrr—rrfh!" Sal's right ear felt like it was stretching, then suddenly popping out all at once into a huge, tall triangle of snowy white fur. Another high-pitched "Rrfh!" came out in response to her left ear doing the same, completing her own change into a fox-girl just like Rogan had become. Well—she thought, holding the small girl close and starting to nuzzle her, drawing the new tail up to curl around Rogan's—not exactly the same, with all the size differences taken into account. But similar enough for her to enjoy the sensation of Rogan's suddenly small, delicate fingers playing across her own ears, and for her to join the smaller girl in a chorus of pleased, vulpine churring as they both gave in to their newfound animal instincts for a little while.

As the petting continued, there was a steady shuffling around of their clothes as they, too, changed. Rogan's pants crawled down her legs and then off of them entirely, falling audibly to the floor, and her now quite oversized shirt steadily shrank smaller and smaller against her slender frame, its sleeves lenghtening until they began threatening to swallow her wrists. Soon it became a dress just barely long enough to cover her hips—leaving her long, slim, soft legs totally exposed. Sal's shirt pulled tighter too, its sleeves detaching to expose her shoulders instead, and her socks grew longer, softer, and thinner, pulling all the way up to her lower thighs as a pair of tight black leggings that gently rubbed across Rogan's bare legs as they both continued to fidget and wriggle around.

It took a while for them to finally come out of it, in the form of Rogan letting go of the other girl's ears but not the hug, pulling her face back enough to look Sal in the eyes. "Mrnngh..w-wah..why'd I turn into a girl too!?" she said almost as soon as she had some command of her own mind back. "Neither of us, w-wished for that!"

"Uhh, I dunno—I did ask whether wishing for a cute girlfriend was an option," Sal pointed out. "Maybe she figured this was 'fair'? Annd, me being a foxgirl too?"

Rogan replied with a slightly annoyed "Mmh."
"Well, I like it, anyway! Look how keey-uute you are~!" she said, grinning brightly.

Rogan felt her face warm again with a blush at this compliment, but frowned, folding her ears down slightly. "I can't, I'm still trapped in a bear hug."
"Pffheheh! More like a fox hug, right? Anyway," she said, running a hand through the other girl's bright blue hair, "You can't tell me you've never wanted a girl to hold you like this."
The touch, and Sal's voice going deep and sexy again when she said that, made Rogan blush, feeling the nice, fuzzy tingles down below again. "Mrrrngh." She frowned cutely, both loving and hating that Sal was now able to do this to her basically at will. "I'd still really like a look in a mirror, though."
"Okay, okay." Sal loosened her grip enough for the smaller girl to get loose and hop down to the floor. Her pants had turned into a pair of light-colored tights since falling there, which after a brief glance to see them she decided not to put on, instead continuing on to Sal's bathroom to get a look at herself.

On the way, it was hard not to notice how much bigger everything was. Losing so much height at once was something of a shock, and it was especially surreal to see Sal—who came up behind her as she examined her reflection—being the taller one by a wide margin, even after her own bout of shrinking. She could also feel a drastic difference in just how her body walked, the wider hips swaying around, the ultra-long hair blowing around through the air around and behind her. Rogan..couldn't bring herself to hate it, though—any of it. Now that she'd gotten to really experience Sal's embrace, her petting of those bright blue ears, that..fluffy, warm white tail against her own—she could only blush at the taller girl grinning back at her in the mirror.

"Uh, s-so...girls, have it pretty good, huh?" Rogan asked, slowly turning around to face her.
"We really do," Sal said, her tail-wagging going into overdrive. "My bed's probably comfier than the chair, if you wanna double check?"

The shorter fox-girl couldn't do much but sigh at her own helplessness and nod, taking Sal's hand in her own. "Come on..."

They lay together, holding and petting each other, for at least twice as long as before. The more familiar each fox-girl became with her own body, and with the other's, the happier she became with their new situation. Then, feeling fully satisfied for the moment, they slowly pulled apart.

"So, now what do we do? Wait for her to show up and wave this in our faces?" Rogan said. "I, don't see how this is supposed to help me get a better job at all."
"Well, uh, none of my clothes really fit now, besides this one magically-transformed outfit," Sal said, tugging at her skirt. "Bet yours don't either. You wanna go shopping with me?"

"..Okay."

---

Rogan learned something new the first time she pulled up her dress top to change clothes and saw her upper body in the mirror: For as small, slender and girly as she looked, she still sported quite some muscle, with some decently toned arms and legs and even a six-pack on that slim belly of hers. Come to think of it, she didn't actually feel any weaker, just...very much smaller and, softer, for lack of a better word.

Sal insisted on getting them both undergarments first, for reasons anyone could guess the instant they saw her walking around with those enormous globes on her chest. After that, she started trying on almost exclusively girly clothes: Dresses, skirts, and so on. Every time, she asked the smaller girl what she thought of it, spinning around a bit to display all sides, and then announced her decision on whether to buy it or not before Rogan could verbally answer.

Rogan, on the other hand, was after tomboyish clothes, starting with boyshorts for her undergarments. T-shirts, shorts and pants featured prominently, as well as tank tops. It wasn't just practicality she was after; she often chose clothes in dark tones, several with chains or built-in rips, thinking to somewhat recapture the sort of fashion she used to wear in high school. For every single outfit, the bigger fox-girl only had one word to introduce her opinion of it: "Cute." And, every time, Rogan couldn't help but frown and fold her ears back adorably, blushing in appreciation for the compliment at the same time.

"What d'you think of this outfit, huh?" Sal said, showing off some daisy dukes and a top that was sort of like a normal, cream-colored t-shirt, except that its sleeves had been intentionally torn off and it was a few inches too short to entirely hide her midriff. "..Yep, this one's a keeper."
"Why d'you keep doing that?!" Rogan finally demanded. "Do you want my opinion or not?"
"What, duude, you didn't figure it out yet?" Sal giggled. "I just wanna check how red your face gets looking at it. This one's only a little above average, but I do want a few bottoms that aren't skirts. What about you, you run out of things to try?"

Rogan was currently wearing her latest purchase, a pair of short black jean-shorts and a black tank top with a white skull on it. "No, I ran out of budget," she said, folding her ears back. "You don't make that much more than me, either—how're you paying for all this stuff?"
Sal shrugged. "Credit card. Maybe we can guilt miss fae into spotting us some cash for this too, since it's totally her fault. Anyway, you're supposed to land a high-paying job, so what're you worried about?"
The blue-haired fox-girl put her hands on her hips. "The fact that I haven't yet."

"Well, whatever, I'll put it on my credit then! Try on something else!"
"Fiiiine..." Rogan made her face and voice seem unhappy at the prospect, but she couldn't really fool her friend—her tail was wagging, after all.

They entered another store a few minutes later, and had started toward the racks when both of their vulpine ears picked up hurried footsteps in their direction. Both turned around to find a guy in a suit approaching: Tall, on the thin side, pitch-black slicked back hair, wolf ears and a slim tail in the same color, bright red eyes. "Hey, 'scuse me—miss? With the blue fur?"
Rogan crossed her arms. "What, me?"
"Yes! Where on Earth did you come from?!"

"Uhh." She folded her ears back, uncertain just how to take this question.
"Oh, excuse me," he said. "I, should introduce myself first. Name's Jackson," he pulled a business card from a shirt pocket, offering it at her. "I'm a model scout with Black Fang, been interviewing people for the last two weeks seeking someone to wear our brands?" She took the card and examined it briefly, nominally confirming this claim. "We cater exclusively to ahh, tailed folks, like ourselves," he said. "I haven't been able to find anyone with a build like yours in all this time, and here you just wander into our store! But, ah, excuse me, jumping you out of the blue like this must be more irritating than ingratiating."

"..A little," Rogan crossed her arms, looking up at him seriously. "But, I'm listening. I mean—I'm not really 'trained' as a model or anything, but if you're that desperate..."
"Oh, there isn't really that much to it," he said, waving a hand dismissively. "You put on our clothes for some professional shots, and preferably be seen in them otherwise, though not exclusively or anything. The way we do it, it's practically a part-time job—but pays much better than one, of course. Besides your build, I must say your sense of fashion clearly complements our line of products—might not've even noticed you coming in otherwise.

"..Anyway, sorry for ambushing you like that, but—just gimme a text or call if you're interested!" he said, making a 'call me' gesture with his hand. "I'll keep an interview spot open for you."

"Sure," she said, "Thanks."
"Thanks're all mine!" he said, waving and hurrying off.

Rogan gestured for Sal to follow her once he was turned away from them, and led her close to the opposite wall of the store—seeing the wolf-man take up a post behind the counter with the checkers, though not taking on that task himself. "What do you think? Is this some kinda trap?"
"I dunno," Sal shrugged. "You got his card, some research should say if he's legit. Maybe this is Agatha's doing?"
"How? She'd have no idea we'd walk into this store specifically."
"You could always ask him if he's ever met someone who looks like her. Or we could ask her later, I guess.

"Sooo, are you gonna go in for an interview? If he's for real?"
"..If I get an offer, and the pay's good enough," Rogan said.

---

The two of them hadn't seen Agatha in a week and a half or so—not since the night she first "blessed" them, causing all of the changes. She hadn't answered her phone either, but then they hadn't tried but a few times. They went back to the restaurant they'd last seen her—not to look for her, of course, but to celebrate Rogan's first paycheck from Black Fang and the end of her time at her old job. She'd even insisted on treating them both.

Sal watched the blue-haired girl taking a deep drag of beer. "You know your body mass affects how much you can handle, right?"
"Aah, shaddup. I'm celebrating! And you're driving us back anyway."

"So you're testing your new limits, or what?"
"So what if I am?"

The white-haired woman shrugged. "I guess I finally get to find out if you're a funny drunk."

"Hello there, ladies~." Both of them turned around to the source of the voice, who neither of them—despite the fox ears—had heard walking up to the position it was coming from. "Mind if I join you?"

Both of them identified her at once: "Agatha!" The fae was looking about the same as usual, characteristically over-dressed and everything.

"Pull u—pull over a. Sit here!" Rogan finally concluded, waving at a chair to her right. "Where've you been, huh?!" Sal was too busy giggling at all the verbal stumbling to interject.

"Here and there. Not in this world, mostly," she said, coming to take the offered seat. "How do you like your new look, Sal?"
"Pretty sweet."
"And the new job?" she asked the smaller fox-girl.
"Are you seriously taking credit for that? I mean—yeah, I wouldn't have it if I didn't look like this, but.."
"I only asked you how you like it."
"Eh." She shrugged. "Too soon to say, but no complaints yet. Pay's pretty good, and they say they can hook me up with some work with their partner companies for extra, too."

"Well then..no complaints overall, I guess?"
"Nah," Rogan said. "I mean—being a, small girl was weird, at first, but I'm already pretty used to it. I guess uh, I kinda like it. I thought I'd hate being part-furry too, buuut..." She trailed off, blushing, rather than continuing this thought.
"Aaactually," Sal said, "It'd nice if she could be a guy? You know, sometimes? When she wants?"
"I could arrange something for you," Agatha said, smiling knowingly.

"Sweet!

"Hey, are you staying for dinner? It's Rogan's treat~," Sal added.
"If it's not overboard or anything," the smaller fox-girl corrected quickly.

Agatha chuckled. "Heard a thing or two about making offers to fae, I guess? Not to worry, I'll pay for myself. My wealth eclipses yours by a fair bit, after all."
"...Then why don't you ever buy for us?!" Rogan demanded. "Are we friends or what?!"
"Doown, girl," Sal said, putting a hand on her head. "She just got through giving us something way better than cash, right? Sorry, just the alcohol talking I think," she added to the fae. Rogan's ears folded down and she crossed her arms, blushing, but she didn't speak to the contrary.
"It's quite alright. Perhaps I will sometime," Agatha said.

The following morning, a package showed up in the mail at Rogan's home—where both of them had spent the night. It was a special order from some online alchemy shop, a vial of swirling pink-and-blue potion. There were none of the usual labels or booklets included indicating what the potion's name or purpose was, only a handwritten note in a fancy, cursive script that said: You know what this is. Enjoy! -A. They tried it that night, and Rogan gained a new, male form which she could change to and from at will. The new fox-boy form still had long, bright blue hair and multicolored eyes, and was only a few inches taller than Sal—decidedly on the short and slim side for a guy. But ultimately..neither of them had any complaints!