Lost and Found, Part 4

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Part 4: You Want to Know?

Jared allowed herself a second or two to appreciate the silence. But the way the now-short, now-wolfish, now-girl was still bouncing around excitedly made it pretty clear it wouldn't last if she hesitated too much to take advantage of it. "Uh—yeah. So. I'm not really a witch, I think. It's just—when I pretended to 'cast a spell', this wand..did this to me," she explained. "And then doing the same thing turned uh—my friend into that, and also you. So.."
"No way! That definitely means you are a witch, though!" the wolf-girl said. "I mean, who else can transform people with just a wand and an incantation, right?"
"Um—but I think it's just the wand doing things. And, also I can't figure out how to transform myself back? Or anyone else?"
"Why'd you wanna turn back, though? You're really cute! And your friend is super hot, too!"
"Uh—"
"Most people don't enjoy their bodies being randomly rearranged," Greg said, practically grinding her teeth at this point.

"Oh..maybe? But yeah, if you're a real witch, it'd make sense you couldn't turn yourself back, but you should totally be able to turn her back," she said, waving at the catgirl.

"Huh?" Jared said. "Wait, why?"
"Uh, it's like..your magic can't do something against its own nature, or something? I dunno the details," she said, shrugging.
"You never actually tried turning me back, did you?" Greg said.
"I guess not? I didn't think it'd make any sense for that to be possible, though!"

"Hey-hey," the wolf-girl said, "if she's not your familiar, that means you're in the market for one, right? What about me?"
"Uh—you?" Jared repeated, visibly confused.
"Like as a familiar!"
"I, uh, don't even know your name, though?" she protested, still having no idea what they were even talking about.

"Oh, yeah! It's Don. Maybe I'll go with Dora or something instead, though! And you?"

"Um—Jared."
"That's not a very witchy name," Dora said with the lightest, teasingest hint of annoyance in her tone of voice. "What about Jade?"

"Stop, stop!" Greg cut in, putting herself between the two of them. This put her back kind of close to the blond girl, and she felt compelled to back up a little just to not get hit by that rapidly-flicking tail. "Can you not shut up and listen to anyone for half a second!? Nobody is anyone's familiar here, and you are not changing anyone's name but your own!"

"Awwh, but I thought you might like something like Gretel?"

"No! Now quit interrupting us so Jared can come up with a spell to change me back into a dude!"

At this point, their conversation was interrupted by the sound of someone laughing. "Pffft—hahahah..!" It wasn't any of the three girls, because it was a male voice. "HAA—hahahah..!" The two with animal-ears seemed to find where it was coming from near-instantly, leaving Jared (or maybe Jade, she kind of liked the sound of that...at least, if she was going to be stuck this way!) to turn her her head the same way just in time to see something pitch black rolling out from inside a collection of nearby bushes. "HAHAHAHAHA!!!"

The voice's owner was...a fox? A fox covered in pitch-black fur rolled over onto his back with his forepaws crossed over his belly like it was in pain and his hindpaws kicking around in the air. He laughed uproariously for a good several seconds longer before finally gasping for air and rolling back to where he could stand on his feet. "Oooh Ruler and all the rest. I can't...heheh..I could not even..!" Suddenly he ran around to one side of Jared, tilting his head up toward her face from not two feet away. "You are hilarious!"

"Wah!" The blond girl startled badly enough from the fox's sudden approach to jump backwards and drop the wand to the ground.

"Uh, Jared—" the catgirl had turned around to face the two of them, and started to say something in an attempt to calm her down.

It was slightly too late to actually achieve that, as Jade waved her hands excitedly in the air. "Talking fox! Talking fox!" she repeated louder, gesturing both hands at it. This would've been the end of her little freak-out, except that—rather to her own surprise if not anyone else's—a bunch of electricity sparked out from her hands upon this gesture, joining together into something like a miniature bolt of lightning that struck itself straight into the fox, making him yelp and jump back a little bit himself.

"Seriously, dude..." Greg sighed, facepalming and shaking her head. The weird black talking fox at least seemed fine—uninjured anyway. However, there were some golden sparks coming out from his body for a moment, which he seemed to observe with an air of curiosity. After a couple of seconds of this, there was a sudden, audible poof of black smoke taking up the space around the fox and also several feet upward from there. The smoke cleared unnaturally quickly to reveal an adult man with furry black ears and a tail matching those of the fox that had been there a second ago, wearing a bright-colored kimono.

"Oh..impressive," he muttered, in the same exact voice as the fox. Some more sparks flew off of him, and a second tail seemed to sprout from his back to join the original one. "Ah—even more so," he said, running a hand across that tail as yet a third appeared too, and then a fourth. "My, what power.." A fifth tail appeared too, as the sparks now finally began to have an effect more like they usually had before: The complexion of his face shifted, and his hair trailed its way out to shoulder length over the course of a few seconds.

It was obvious enough that he was about to get turned into a girl, too. But it didn't seem to bother him; rather, he grinned. "Mm~mh..interesting..." His voice lilted just slightly, instantly taking on an even deeper alto tone than Greg's. His hair continued to grow a little more slowly after that first burst, and now his shape began to melt inward and slightly downward, his outfit loosening as his form slimmed and narrowed.

"Aa~ah..mmr~rrrh.." Golden sparks danced across his clothes, merging and reshaping them. All of the color washed out into a pure white, the sleeves pulled themselves all the way off of his arms and revealed some quickly-narrowing shoulders, and the pants split and spread into a long skirt with a frilly hem. "Rr~rrfh..!" A slightly higher bark came out as his face shifted itself smaller, rounder, and cuter. The part of his clothes around his torso pulled tight against his slimming waist, but remained quite loose around his chest.

"Mrr~rrh.." His face began to redden with a blush, his ears lowering and eyes fluttering shut. He'd only lost a couple of inches of height, but his body had rapidly slimmed into an extremely feminine shape, and his hair was trailing out nearly to his upper legs in the back. He jolted just once, letting out a low "Mngh—!" and then, despite the tight top and long, loose skirt hardly making it visibly obvious, all three onlookers immediately felt they were looking at a woman. This impression was strengthened further when she immediately followed with a soft, sultry "Oo~oooh...!" as her figure began to fill out all at once: Her thighs thickened, her hips plumped out, and her chest quickly began to push out into the free space left by the top part of her dress.

"M-mnn~nNNNnnh.." Her blush grew steadily brighter, her body squirming around a bit, as her breasts grew out to fill the dress's top, only to then keep pushing out bigger, forcing it to make some extra room. "Aa~aah...rrfh..! Mrr~rrrnnh.." She seemed to struggle to keep up any sort of composure against wave after wave of girlish pleasure as her breasts kept on getting bigger, until finally they'd become at least a match for the catgirl's pair. She gasped as they gave one last push for good measure, and let that breath out in a soft, high, breathy "Aa~aah..." of relief as the change came to a close.

She opened her eyes, a sly grin making its way across her lips. "Well now...aren't you a powerful witch, m'dear?"

Jade protested: "But I'm not a witch, though! That wand—"
"Wasn't in your hand when you cast that spell. Besides which, it's hardly capable of anything like this," she said, gesturing at her own new form. "It has only a tiny little enchantment on it that zaps anyone who waves it around."

"Wh—really!?"

The fox-girl nodded. "Like the magical equivalent of one of those trick lighters? I ought to know, since I'm the one who planted it in the dryer. I must say, though, I wasn't expecting anything nearly as entertaining as this from such a little prank!"

"...WHAT?!"

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After a full week stuck as a girl, Jared was really starting to just accept it. She'd tried wearing her 'old' clothes at first, but kept getting stares and jokes...then started using spells to 'adapt' them to fit her...but today, for the first time since the change, she'd gone out wearing a skirt and stockings (along with a top, obviously). It had been strangely..freeing. Of course Greg and...well, it was apparently Dora now, weren't nearly so unfortunate. One of them was the plaything of a five-tailed Kitsune, and the other had a witch at her/his command.

"S-so uh..."
"Mrowh?" Greg—who, male or female, retained bright red hair and kitty ears, and who had absolutely rejected any change of name—had Jade pinned on her back on the dorm room bed, nuzzling her cheek while she pet her.

"One of the books Minori gave me had a 'familiaring' spell. It's supposed to amplify the mage's power, but also share it with the person who's uh, the familiar."
"Hmmh." Sensing that the catgirl was mostly just annoyed the petting had stopped, Jared went back to rubbing her ears while she continued.

"I-I mean—it can work with any animal, apparently, and if it is just a normal animal then it turns sentient or whatever. But with a person, the power boost is way higher. I mean, I don't really feel like I need more power, but um.."
"Mrrr~rrh...guess Dora was right about yet another thing, huh."
"Y-yeah. But uh, it's just. If, you know, we did, then you could pretty much change yourself whenever you wanted."
"Mrowh? Inconveniencing you too much?"

"Uh, n-no, but um. You mmmiiiight, also be able to turn me back using the link? Sometimes? I'm not totally sure I get it, but it seems like as long as the person actually using the witch-magic is a girl, it still works?"

"Hmmph. I guess I could take one for the team."

"O-oh, really? That's great!"
"Yeah...mrr~rrh...just don't be surprised if I use it to make you a catgirl sometimes, too."
"Uh.." Jared felt her face flush even brighter than it already was. "I-I guess that's okay..."

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Yes, I could've spun this story into a bit more of the fallout from the immediate event, gone into more character detail and stuff...but I really just wanted to finish it and move on so I could focus on other stories I'm more interested in. So: smash cut to a week later feels like a pretty effective way to achieve that. I think the cut between parts 3 and 4 is probably the most awkward, and this part is a little shorter than the others, but that's fine; splitting this into pieces was fairly arbitrary in the first place. And if you're curious, the image used for Office Prankster was a "castoff" while coming up with the image used in this part, for Minori.