Battle Vixens! - 145

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Episode 145: Steady as She Goes

Amp started the call, and they discussed the plan over speakerphone.

"We've got three spots to defend starting off, and after that they'll show up at various points around the city," Clark said. "I've spent some time plotting some fairly efficient 'lines' to use, but we pretty much need three groups no matter what.

"There'll be several of them in that new 'training area' of ours—you know, where the Gigaworm trashed the ground. Might be tricky to move around on."

"Hey, Light and I have some practice fighting there!" Magus volunteered. "I mean—not fighting monsters, but at least with like, how to get around the place and stuff."
"That works for me," Light agreed.

A gryhpon dove toward what it thought was Light, trying to rake its claws into her. "Photon Wall!" Magus called from the side, and the light making up the illusion joined some more light focused nearby, arranging itself into thin, pure-white rectangular barrier that the monster slammed into, shattering it while crashing onto the ground. The real Light came and slashed through its wings, while Magus fired another prepared orb of light out as a bunch of sharp spikes straight from the tip of her blade into its side.

The snakewolf that had arrived with it couldn't see either of them, but could hear Magus, so it charged at her. This was well anticipated, Magus silently transposition-ing out of the way while an illusion of her was left behind; behind it, a tangle of metal wires (a trap spell she'd set earlier) snapped up around the monster's limbs, making it crumple into a ball and tumble helplessly for a moment. Then Light was on top of it, slashing into its body with two swords, and Magus threw a few fireballs into the gryphon while it tried (with no success, thanks to shredded wings) to get back into the air.

"Would it be acceptable to lend us Ning?" Rowan asked. "Wide coverage is crucial for dealing with the swarm. We could trade out Tora, perhaps—she's very efficient at fighting Class 1's, and has higher mobility to easily maneuver from one target to the next."

"I've got a babysitter ready, so, should be fine?" Ning said.

In the city, a dark cloud began spewing out an array of small, flying or crawling red-eyed monsters. Almost as soon as they appeared, a branching bolt of lightning shot out from the roof of a six-story building near VI's headquarters. Ning had one hand gripping a 240-volt extension cord running out through a roof access door while the other one was spread skyward. Electricty arced all over her body, but most of it flowed through the arms and chest—from one hand to the other—to concentrate the charge on the outstretched hand. Whenever there was enough, she fired it out into the sky again.

Several more cords ran next to that one, continuing over to the other side of the roof. They were plugged into a huge speaker system, borrowed from a resident inside, playing some dubstep—and Hugo stood in front of that. The monsters missed by the periodic lightning strikes hit a wall of pressure waves going out in time with the bassline, knocking those that survived the impact itself down to the ground.

A rooftop garden between them had some unusual trees growing out of it. Nico was sitting on a conveniently-shaped branch of one of those near the center and humming along to the music.

"If I stick with Gemma to get plenty of weapons, then maybe Tora can go with my husband," Rory decided.

"Let's do that, then. Better get transport arranged pretty quickly, though," Clark said.
"Already on the way."

"Great. Rory, you'd better start toward the apartment complex, then."
"Alrighty~. Love, you dear!" She took a moment to audibly kiss his cheek, then left, the door-closing barely audible over the phone.

Rory punched a triplet at a nearby building, and the structure's shadow erupted into a short-lived spike to impale it. She caught the "handle" of another one's spiked-hammer-arm, using that to judo-throw it to the ground. Then she held out a hand. "Scalpel."
"You said that one already," Minus pointed out, handing her a longsword made of wind and shadow.
"Forceps?" Rory immediately plunged the weapon into the prone triplet's center mass, slamming it halfway into the ground with a fist and then stomping it the rest of the way down so only its handle was visible.

"We're not even near a hospital." The one she'd thrown at a building was running their way, and Rory accepted an axe from Gemma just in time to swing it straight through that body's middle, erupting black mist off of its body and sending it tumbling sideways.

The third "part" of the monster was trying unsuccessfully to hit an illusion of Plus, while the real one tossed some fire and lightning and rocks at it from one side or another of the fake.

"How about a jackhammer, then?"
"I can do a normal hammer." Electricity and steel wire formed into a sledgehammer, which Rory took and used on the still-prone triplet's head. Minus followed up the axe swing with a few daggers made of some elements not already in use. "We really—" "—need to get moving soon—" "by the way!"

"No worries; these are almost dead. Two swords and I should be able to finish 'em myself, if you wanna start toward the next set?"
"Okay!"

"It's raining monsters!" Karis ran around, jumping occasionally, punching a gauntleted fist through one stunned flying beast after another; her Stand did much the same thing, only slashing with her sword instead.
"Would you prefer it was raining men?" Petra asked. One of her stone fists was holding onto the last survivor of a group of chargers, while the other one exploded apart into a bunch of rock-shrapnel to bury into the front end of a freshly-appearing bear-monster, the combined momentum enough to knock it prone. She pressed the advantage, launching herself into the air by briefly shoving the concrete beneath her upward, summoning her sword into the hand not clenched into a fist to keep the charger held, and then plunged it straight through the beast's neck. She didn't linger, just planting the blade and then leaping back away to the side as it tried to swipe for her.

"I think that'd be more terrifying, but prolly less dangerous at least!" Remedy went over to keep the "bear" busy, slashing into its leg as it stood up and then hopping back just ahead of its attempt to grab her.

"Focus, please?" Zeno caught a few bits of the swarm with some arrows just as they began to get up off of the ground. then threw up a hard-light shield to block a swipe from the bear when it had nearly cornered Remedy.

"I am focusing!" both other vixens responded in unison.

"Send Tora to campus; that's where I'll be." Clark sighed slightly. "The courtyard, same as usual. At least there shouldn't be anyone congregating there this morning."
"Affirmative."

"C'mon!" The basher stumbled, its thin legs tripping over each other, when it tried to turn to retaliate. Tora leapt and slashed into its side, then landed her feet onto it and kicked herself off, the impact knocking its already-unsteady stance completely off balance and toppling it onto its side. "Gimme a real fight!!"
"Please don't ask the universe for a challenge," Clark said, tossing a net of prepared string around the beast's tangled legs. "It'll be all too happy to oblige."

"I know, just—" Tora went back to their first target—another monster of the same type—as it began to snap the strings holding it, and slashed her claws repeatedly through its side. "I really like to get the adrenaline pumping!"

"Well, there's plenty more 'excitement' on the way." Dr. Quinn's left hand was busy controlling a couple of puppets, using them to lure monsters toward them, while her right hand waved about alongside her needle, assembling thread to trap them with. Tora was very good at keeping the monsters' attention on her, allowing Clark to essentially stand still in the middle of the courtyard without much fear of attack. The only thing more reassuring would've been, maybe, Light or Gemma making her invisible too, but if push came to shove, she could always bring out another puppet to take the heat.

For now, a couple of the tentacled rats came along chasing those puppets. Tora seemed to know exactly where those tentacles' blind spots were, dashing in and out of what should've been a dangerously close range to them and slicing into their core masses with her claws without being so much as touched herself. The basher she'd just been working on stood up, so—freed as they were from the chase thanks to Tora—the puppets went to deal with that instead, one of them grabbing the net Clark had just finished weaving while the other picked up and threw a rock at the monster's head to get its attention.

"Miss the rain?" Fay asked, lightly tapping her staff against some surviving pieces of the swarm, each touch placing a point-explosion just big enough to finish that one off.

"Not particularly." Rowan was drawing water up from a nearby storm drain and forming it into some spinning blades to help keep her current opponent—a razor lizard—busy and make openings to slash into its body with her sword. When it backed her against a wall, she let Warp move her out of range; Fay took advantage of its overcommitment to an attack to tap it on the back with her staff, placing the largest explosion she could right inside of it.

It staggered briefly as black mist erupted off of its body, then whirled, starting toward her. Rowan regathered the water that had recently pooled all over the ground into some limbs to wrap around all six of its legs (and its tail), pulling it backwards and pinning it to the wall. Warp took this moment to appear in front of the monster and throw her weapon at it, retrieve it to the other hand, throw it again, and repeat in rapid succession until the mist bleeding off of it began to obscure her vision; then she disappeard again. Rowan tossed her sword at it, splitting it apart into the shape of her water-dragon's "teeth", and reformed some of the water holding the monster into the shape of a mouth just long enough to carry the weapon's momentum into a bite.

"Second one's on the way!" Warp reported; Fay came back to shove another explosion into the lizard's midsection, and then Rowan retrieved her blade to slash through it several more times as it turned indistinct and began to dissipate.

As things started to get more crowded, Magus began to feel like Light had an array of "spells" of her own. A shouted phrase brought down a bolt of lightning from the clouds to finish off the gryphon; another shot a fireball out from her hand to explode right in the middle of a pair of twins just as they formed. She caught the snakewolf's back head in a thin limb of water before slashing through the base of its "tail" with one of her swords, severing it completely and making that part of its body dissipate back into mist.

The mage vixen was hardly idle herself, continuing to use the provided orbs of light to toss out some efficient attacks, running or teleporting herself out of the way of retaliation, and occasionally setting off a prepared trap or two to hurt and stall their opponents. They steadily moved from one end of the ruined street to the other like this, drawing the surviving monsters along with them and constantly damaging them as they went. Soon they came close to the edge of the area, and Light leapt past a wide trench of lower ground, Magus using transposition again to get herself to the opposite side too.

"Ready?" Light asked.
"Feels like it—let's see!" Grabbing the brim of her hat in one hand, Magus swept her weapon in an upward arc with the other. A "seed" previously planted in that trench sprouted and grew out all at once, becoming a collection of thick, thorned structures resembling the roots of a tree, but colored in a similar blue to the "special effects" that tended to accompany Magus's magic. They spread themselves out rapidly thicker and longer, twisting around the limbs and bodies of the monsters that had been pursuing the vixens and holding them tight.

This was a summon spell she'd cast the "first part" of before the fight began, and had been channeling to give it plenty of power and duration ever since. Light went running along the branches once the beasts were caught in them, slashing her swords into one after another and occasionally following up with a "borrowed" lightning bolt or fireball. The mage just kept her sword held out at a forward-up angle, feeding the "Yggdrasil Roots" as much magic as it needed to remain stable against the monsters' struggles.

"Looks like the swarm's done coming out," Ning reported, yelling toward her phone, which was sitting several feet away on a small wooden table.
"Good. Are you feeling any exhaustion?" Rowan asked.
"Nope! Borrowing from the grid super helps, I guess."
"I may have to take a breather, though, boss," Hugo added, stumbling her way to behind the speakers before sliding down to sit on the concrete leaning against them.

"Affirmative. Ning, Warp is on her way to move you."
"Trap's nearly ready," Sam added.

"We're headed toward it!" said Karis. "Got plenty of guests!"

A scorpion tiger was advancing on Plus, while Minus kept a pair of chargers busy. Rory ran up next to the former, grabbing a leg and using it to toss the monster behind herself, landing it upside-down onto its back. She barely even slowed her run while doing this, and only stopped a couple of feet in front of Plus to hold out an empty hand.
"You lost the swords already?" she said, making another new one and handing it over.

"Extra weight. Needed to run fast!"

"Fair enough." The monster was already halfway to righting itself, so Rory turned and grabbed a limb with her free hand again, twisting to turn it over again. Then she hopped onto its underside, gripping the hilt in both hands to slash through it several times.

Plus had already made another sword, so she stuck it into the ground for Rory to get later and ran to attack Minus's opponent.

"Hey, don't these things usually screech sometimes?" Rory asked, sheathing her current weapon into the monster's underside before hopping off of it to get away from a stinger strike.
"I'm muting it.—" "—Have some sound." the noise of one of its vocalization was bent around to in front of Rory and then formed into a dagger, which she caught and then threw into the scorpion tiger's eye as it began trying to charge toward her.

"Great, thanks!" She moved aside, grabbed a limb and threw it into its back again before going to get the sword in the ground.

When the chargers ran toward "one" of her, Gemma had the other one strike them from the back or side. Then they would turn toward that body and start trying to charge, giving the other one a breather and another couple of shots. Since these monsters still couldn't learn anything, she had an easy pattern to follow, broken up only by Rory's next couple of requests for weapons. All three of their remaining targets were looking very indistinct before long, so it was just a matter of keeping them nice and far from each other so they wouldn't merge or do anything else nasty.

The city's vixens converged toward a certain park, letting the surviving monsters from their respective fights chase after them as they went. Sam stood in the middle, surrounded by several interconnected nets of thorned metallic wire, some of which had already closed around the monsters Phoneix and Dawn hadn't already dispatched. Ning was teleported next to Sam, and they exchanged a brief nod as everyone else began to show up.

Limbs of water and hands of stone grabbed and tossed any monsters whose own momentum didn't carry them onto the nets, landing them deeper into the park. Sam set each trap in turn, turning the park into a strange kind of zoo whose freakish collection would be (to everyone's relief) very temporary. The vixens stopped at the rim of the network, where Sam's pair of teammates had already gone a moment earlier, and once the last of them arrived (and the last few of their enemies were caught in the net), Sam yelled to double-check: "We got 'em all?"
A few separate voices called out, all saying some form of "yes".

So Sam put out her free hand—the other one holding on to one end of the wire—and Ning took it. "Light 'em up."

"Yeah!!!" She lifted her free hand to the sky, drawing all of the excess charge recently deposted into the clouds back down toward herself and having it flow through their two bodies and branch all throughout the wire nets, electrocuting all of the monsters at once. One by one they dissipated into mist, the most stubborn of them receiving some extra fireballs or chunks of ice from Cynthia and Don respectively, until they were all gone, the lightning fully spent, and the park was quiet.

"WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

At least Tora was having fun. Clark watched her dart from one monster to another, slashing through them each in turn. Her puppets played support, and she kept tying them up in string whenever possible to keep the heat off. Some of the earliest arrivals were turning indistinct by now, but the two of them they weren't meant to finish off this group alone anyway.

Her ears picked up the noise of two people running, and before long Magus's voice casting some spells. Light showed up near Tora, helping slash apart the "free" monsters while Magus focused on taking out the ones still bound up in string. It only took a couple of minutes for the four of them to finish cleaning up the first of the day's four messes.

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Amidst numerous reports of a successful defense against the day's first wave of attacks came one less-than-optimistic message:

Good work so far, but don't start thinking like, 'this is supposed to be worse than yesterday?'.

You know full well by now what the enemy is really capable of.

The words "You", "know", and "full" linked to news stories covering increasingly severe devastation and loss of life that attacks over the past couple of weeks had brought on; "well" was a map link, the coordinates pointing to a city in Mexico they had more-or-less completely leveled before Espadas could arrive.

Complacency is the tip of a blade in one's own chest. Be careful, and be ready.

So, if the Giver was impressed or satisfied by the vixens' performance so far, she wasn't showing it.

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We pretty much get a warm-up victory lap to show off how everyone has learned and grown throughout the story before things start getting bad. Some highlights include Rory fighting a scorpion tiger in a repetitive but effective way; Gemma comfortably playing along with her banter; Magus and Light showing off some of the results of the previous day's training; Ning trusting others to protect her grandkid to the extent of going over to the other town without her; and a whole lot of just "fighting smart" overall. I actually imagine this episode (in an audio/visual format) as being a montage, sort of like some of those scenes in Guardians of the Galaxy that have semi-diagetic music built in.

P.S. I don't know whether sending electricity up from the power mains up into the sky would ever actually "accumulate charge" that could come back down as actual lightning later, but Ning thinks it works that way, so her magic is helping make it so.

Battle Vixens! - 144

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Episode 144: Deep Breath

Marcus came back from his 'training montage' with Light, opening the apartment door to a sight he would have found positively surreal just a week or so earlier: A curvy, blond-haired catgirl lying on the couch asleep, hugging one of the pillows. Yet now, it was just Thad—or maybe 'Thalia'. As worn out as he felt from all of the sparring and experiments with magic, a stray part of his mind sputtered out that he should put on his hat and join her...but he immediately shook his head to dispel the thought, continuing on to his own bedroom. The rest of the day was pretty much uneventful.

After Emma left to negotiate and possibly sign a contract with the VI, Amory headed back to his own apartment. Both of them kind of wanted to go back to what they'd been doing before the call...but there was an eventual, mutual, semi-reluctant agreement that they'd do so the next day, after all the fights were over. It was good to have something to look forward to, maybe, for both of them—and besides, they both had some other things to take care of. He pestered Blake to go to bed early that night instead of continuing to read comic scans on his computer, and turned in himself not long afterward. Well—more like herself, given the plan for the night.

Rowan sighed, leaning back in her chair. Fox ears didn't miss a single whisper, of course, so a neighboring vixen at the table said, "Long hours getting to you?"
"I can't even rest when I'm asleep. If this crisis ever ends, I won't know what to do with myself," she admitted. "I may end up committed."
"Don't count on getting free time anytime soon," she advised; despite her young appearance, this person was in her nineties, if Rowan recalled right. "The cleanup after a hurricane is often far more work than living through it."
"True..." She looked over to where Espadas was busy arguing with an Italian vixen, noting their volume getting louder and their tones increasingly heated, and took a sharp breath in before standing up to intercede.

Simon treated his wife to a dinner out. Sure, he had dramatically instigated a few large-group meals which she also attended over the past couple of days, but that wasn't quite the same thing as just the two of them sitting across from each other at a table, with nobody else around.

"I think I've got her warming up to the idea," he was saying.
"You mean you feel like you've bullied her enough for the moment?" Karis retorted.

"Sure," he said with a small shrug. "There's an art to this sort of thing, you know. Push too little and they'll forget; too much and they'll refuse to do it just to spite you."

"You're not gonna forget that it is Cynthia's own choice what to do with her life, are you?"

"Oh, perish the thought. But it would be a terrible shame for the art world to lose such a talent just because she's a superhero," he said. "Now, look—she's going to have to pass the GED. If going to college is what she wants. And I have no idea how good her math skills are; they might be even worse than mine."
"Now that's scary," Karis said.

"Right? So I was just wondering, you know, pre-emptively, whether you'd be willing to play tutor once in a while. In the event that it's needed?"
"I guess that wouldn't be too bad. As long as she doesn't start burning the books or something."

"Rowan's been helping her learn better control. Besides, I don't think that's the kind of thing she'd have done even before all this."

"Good, good. Say—you're not worried at all about tomorrow, are you?"

"Worrying really isn't in my nature, my dear."
"I know, I know. But, after everything we've been through so far...I admit I don't really like imagining what 'even worse' is supposed to look like. Maybe we'd better, at least, go to bed early tonight."

"Well, I am more or less caught up on my portraits for the moment," he mused. "I've got some projects from before this disaster started that I really should get back to, but I think the people waiting on them will be understanding if I put them off just a bit longer."

"So you spent more than half your day off talking to youg'uns?"
"Yeeeah...but it's not so bad. I mean, it helps I look like one of 'em again," Ning said, "complete with all the energy." She'd called Corporal Samuel Langdon for a chat a couple of hours after her lunch, now that the shop was empty of both applicants and customers. "I got some pretty good applicants once the folks who were just there to gawk had their fun."

"Being the owner of your own business seems awful tough. Can't say I'd be cut out for it."

"Well—what'd you do today, army man?"
"First thing in the morning, back to base to help run a few drills. After that..Simon bugged me to do a press spot in that t-shirt Lucy gave me."

"Lucy, Lucy...ah! You mean No Evil's leader, right?"
"Seems I'm an 'honorary member', on account of missing half a leg. He reckoned it'd be a 'good angle', for me to talk about what it's like going around on a prosthetic."

"Uh-huh. So, did you do it?"
"Aaaafter some thinkin'. On a couple-a things Lucy told me when she was handing over the shirt. It would be awful nice if everyone who's missing pieces could get 'em back as easily as I did mine...or, 'least, something more similar than what they can make now."

"Heheh~, well, I guess even talking to the press can be tolerated for a good cause.

"Hey—you get any time to talk to your kids? Or grandkids?"

"Just over the phone. They gave their well-wishes, told me to be careful, all that. I said they might want to locate the nearest storm shelters, print out some maps—just in case."

"You think it'll be as bad as that?"
"I don't know, but...it don't hurt to be careful. Our 'spy' told us the enemy's got something big coming for us; it'd be a fool who doesn't take a threat like that seriously."

"True. I guess I'll be sharing Nadia's bedtime tonight.."

"I wanna have some fun tonight, too!"
Clark sighed, then chuckled slightly. "You realize that would mostly defeat the point of turning in early, right?" It was good to have his wife fully back. Even if it wasn't precisely the "old Rory", he would still call it a "new and improved" version. But some things hadn't changed.
"Bleeh, nonsense!" Rory said. "I sleep way better after. You're telling me you don't?"
"I suppose I can't argue otherwise." Now that she'd had a taste again, she was back to being insatiable.

...Well, that was something he'd always loved about her.

Ezekiel walked back inside, and then to the office, reporting: "That's the last set packed up and shipped out."
"Good..." Dr. Brand nodded slowly, lifting his near-empty coffee cup like it was made of lead and attempting to take a sip from it.

"Have you considered, maybe...using that younger form of yours instead of ingesting unhealthy amounts of caffeine?"
He glared up, ever-so-slightly, and then slowly put the cup down. "I know my limits. Exhaustion carries between appearances anyway."

"I told everyone to go home, you know—of those who didn't already need to before. It's past 2 AM—we're really testing the limits of 'same-day delivery' at this point. I'm about to head home to catch a little shut-eye myself. What've you been staring at there, anyway?" Ezekiel leaned over the paper on his colleague's desk; the fact he was looking at it upside-down didn't make it any more comprehensible.
Dr. Brand just shook his head in that 'you're-not-a-physicist' way, then sighed. "If our work is done for the day, then I will go to sleep."

"You make it sound like you intend to collapse at your desk." Ezekiel offered his arms over. "C'mon, I can drive you home if you need me to."
"I'm sleepy, not drunk," he said, rising a little slowly from the chair.
"Impaired judgement comes from both."
"My judgement is not impaired."
"Okay, okay—just, take it easy, you know? Maybe sleep in a little bit?"
"This body loathes a late morning."
"That body? What about the other one?"
Dr. Brand glared briefly, then shrugged. "Haven't tested."
"In that case, I'd venture that an experiment is warranted. You've got to get some rest somehow, right?"
"Hmmph."

---

"Let's see..." Amp had her laptop at the kitchen table, and scrolled around a map of the college and town. "Attacks here, here, here..." She was mostly mumbling to herself. "Not exactly simultaneous. If we go from one to the next...three teams might be able to manage it. Probably gonna have to do some kiting, though..."

Her ears picked up Blake getting out of bed, going about a typical morning routine in his room and bathroom...and then he came into the kitchen. "Hey! I've got breakfast in the oven," she said. "Actually—it's prolly done by now."
"Thanks. Smells good," he said, going over to get it out. "We already have warnings?"

"Yep! I was just thinking about the most efficient way to handle the first set. Looks like it's gonna involve a lot of running around no matter what."
"Greeeat." He put together plates for both of them, setting hers next to the computer before sitting down on the opposite side of the table. "How long do we have?"
"At least another hour right now. Uh, the probably bad news is—this is first of four. And she's said there will be 'at last thirty minutes' between one attack and the next, which...isn't much time to rest."

"That's...hmm. If they happen as soon as possible, they'd be over by the afternoon," Blake computed aloud. "But if they're as spread out as they can be, two to two-and-a-half hours between."
"Right, right," the fox-girl nodded.

"You had a look at how things are for our neighbors?"
"Grrmfh," she mumbled through a mouthful of food. Then, after swallowing: "Not yet. Lessee...oh, oof."
"What's 'oof'?"
"The city's getting a 'swarm' like last Friday, plus several Class 1's and a few 2's around to make it extra spicy. They're already putting out public warnings and notices to 'shelter in place'. Aaand..No Evil's town has got something similar to ours. Oh, hey—they added a new team member! Uh...'Love No Evil'? ...Treatment-resistant arrhythmia, apparently..."

"Getting off-track there."
"Oh! Right. Anyway, I'm in a group-text with Dr. Quinn an' Rowan an' Lift in case one of us gets a bigger attack when either of the others has a gap, or anything like that—so we can send support back and forth. The police are volunteering some vehicles for rapid transport, you know, kitted out for a high-speed chase."

"That's good..."

They ate quietly for a couple of minutes.

"Three weeks," Blake said eventually. "Almost a month."
"Yeah."
"I guess we've been over this a dozen times already, but—tell me I'd wake up to a blond, curvy fox-girl making breakfast in the kitchen, I'd have thought someone had been...watching too much anime or something. Maybe sleep deprivation from studying too much."

"Heehee."

"The thing really making it surreal is that it's just so...normal now. I don't really notice it unless I take a step back and try to put myself in that frame of mind."

"I have a cute, strong, brave, girlfriend," Amp added. "I, myself, literally am a classified asset. There are other universes out there—not just a few, but too many to count. Like the stars in our sky, and each one with its own sky full of stars and planets. The list goes on and on, huh?"

"Yeah. And yet, somehow..our lives go on."

"Not if we don't really want them to. Not if we don't keep fighting for it."
"Right—right," he nodded.

"I won't let everything we've fought for and struggled through and suffered be for nothing. Not now, not ever. Today I...today we'll be heroes. And again tomorrow, and..for as long as it takes."

"Pfft. Finish your breakfast, hero. Then I'll put us on a call to figure out who goes where."

"Y-yeah."

The Next Chapter: 17

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The Next Chapter
Chapter 17: Who's Coming to Dinner?

"Hmm hmm hmm~mnnnh..."

L'hoxifel was cooking tonight's supper for most of OZK's membership, plus one visitor. She caught herself humming one of the songs from the previous week's karaoke night without quite being sure of its title or who had sung it. Eventually she zeroed in on it being Ed's performance, and then she managed to recall some of the words in the final chorus.

"Must be a love-spell~ you've cast on me; can't be a hate-spell~, I don't wanna be free..hmm hmm hmm hmnnn~ hmm..."

A little later, she had everything to the point where the only thing left to do was wait a while, so she stepped out to the dining area to take a seat. After she'd sat there a minute or two, the door opened, and a fairly tall, white-haired wolf-girl in a tight-fitting suit wandered in, her head tilted upward as she visibly sniffed the air.

"Something smell good?" the demon-girl said. "Sorry, it's not quite ready yet."
"Oh, hey—sorry, didn't know someone was in here. I'm Tokanwa—gonna be joining up real soon, I hope," she said, hurrying over to offer a handshake. "You must be L'hoxifel, right?"
"That's me," she said, taking the offer. "I've been on my feet in the kitchen for a while, so I hope it's all right if I don't get up."
"Yeah, that's no issue. Maan, though, you really are an actual demon!"

"Uh-huh..?"

"Sorry—it's just that I've never actually met one before. And your skin's purple! I wonder what kinda chemicals are involved in the pigmentation. I'd love to get some samples under a microscope. Plus your horns!"

L'hoxifel's face flushed a little bit. "Uhm, you like them or something?"

"Yeah! I wonder if it'd hurt to file off a little bit, and try to figure out the exact makeup of the surface keratin. Does the shape run in families? Maybe you have some pictures of your relatives to compare?"
Her blush deepened. "Errrm, Toka. Not to interrupt your fun too much buuut..."

"Oh, yeah—sorry." Tokanwa slid into a chair two away from the one the demon-girl was sitting in. "I can get kinda carried away about this stuff. There's just so much to learn!"

"It's just, even though they aren't physically sensitive, demons' horns are kind of an emotionally intimate part of our bodies. What you were saying there, was kinda like someone talking about taking clippings off the fur of, like, the base of your tail. Or your inner ear-fluff."

"I'd allow it," Tokanwa said, "for science. But—yeah, point taken. Sorry, I'm way more ignorant than you'd think about this stuff!

"...Okay, I got one question about it. Seriously. Not invasive—I hope. You can say no if it is!"
"Shoot."
"Did you ever, right before they started a growth spurt or something, get like a super-specific craving?"

"Hmm. I guess, sometimes? Actually, it's more like my mom would make some pretty unusual dishes sometimes, and when I tried them I liked them way more than I thought I would...but then I didn't like them as much later on. I guess that was when my horns were really growing, though, now that you mention it..."
The werewolf leaned forward slightly, her tail wagging excitedly. "D'you know what was in those dishes?!" Ed hadn't mentioned how cute Tokanwa would look when starting to nerd out about stuff like this, but she also wasn't necessarily Ed's type.
"Pfft—easy, girl~. I've got the recipes in my phone; I can send 'em along if you give me a number."
"Sure!"

---

"Whoa..what happened to your eyes? Is..it my imagination, or 's your hair blue now, too?"

Fritz sighed. "I'll..tell you later. Let's just get supper, okay?"

"Sure..." Hendrix nodded, picking up on it being a sensitive topic, and the two of them headed into the dining hall together.

Fritz's roommate was a tall, handsome, smooth-shaven Adonis of a guy who wore his golden locks long, all the way out to his shoulders. His parents had named him after a rock legend, and he swore from their very first meeting that he was "gonna be a rockstar!" He was double-majoring in music theory and advertising, since apparently the second-most-important thing for a star (after having amazing songs to play, of course) was being able to promote oneself.

They sat across from each other in one of the booths, chatting—and pointedly avoiding the subject of Fritz's eyes now being pink. Hendrix also didn't mention the visit to OZK at all, even though he'd probably heard about the angel-girl through Ivan at some point.

"Oh yeah—you remember that freshman dude in the choir, who showed up last Monday as a fox-girl all of a sudden?"

"Mmhm?" Fritz's mouth was full, and he needn't contribute more than this to the conversation anyway.

"Today she was—he was back as a fox-boy! Our director pulled him aside and was like, 'pick a lane! Do you want to sing bass or soprano?' And he kinda scratched his head and said 'uhh, whichever is best for the choir?' She couldn't really get upset about that, and just said 'bass it is, then'. But dude, last week she was singin' a totally different part with no trouble at all, practically sight-reading all of it. Guy or girl, that's a talent that's going places, man!"

It occurred to Fritz that this person was probably another member of OZK. But mentioning that now would mean bringing up that entire topic, and he still didn't want to—not in public. Instead he just nodded along.

After that, they went back to their dorm room. Fritz carefully closed the door behind him, dropped his stuff, and shed his pants like he usually would when not planning to leave the dorm again until morning. "Okay, so like—what happened?" Hendrix asked. "I guess it had to do with that weird chick that dragged you and Gio off somewhere?"

"Yeah. Uh, so..she's in a weird sorority that takes guys. Their whole house is enchanted to transform people, but apparently it's supposed to only do that if you sleep inside," Fritz explained first. "Only..I guess whoever did that screwed it up somehow. It uh..transformed me anyway, even though I was awake. So they gave me this..." He pointed to the ring he was wearing. "It...let me turn back into a guy—with some mistakes, apparently. Gio didn't bother mentioning that 'till after we'd left, though," he said, annoyed.

"Wow—that's pretty crazy. Too bad I wasn't there; I'm a little curious how you'd look as a chick," Hendrix said.

"Well—uh.." Fritz blushed a bit. "The thing is, this ring..comes off if I fall asleep for some reason. And then I'd turn back into a girl. They promised a more, uh, permanent solution soon, but this is gonna make things..pretty awkward until then."

"Ooh, I gotcha," Hendrix said. "Well—don't worry about me. We're bros, even if you're a chick, dig? I'll be a perfect gentleman. What's it like, though, having an enchanted house transform you? I mean—if you don't mind me askin'?"

"It was...hmmh." He shook his head slightly. "It was weird—it's like I could feel it was enchanted as soon as I stepped inside. I didn't, realize that's what it was until after it all happened, but it must be. There was this...power, this energy, that seemed to be pushing at me, like it really wanted in.

"I..changed...when it got to be too much, and I did let it in. The..the really weird thing is, right after it happened, I felt like something similar was in me. Almost like I could, control it—make it do whatever I wanted. And it didn't seem like it was coming from the house, from outside; it was more like...it had always been there, only I never realized it before. But...I don't feel that anymore. It's like that feeling...disappeared all of a sudden, not long afterward."

"Hmm. You have any idea of exactly when?" Hendrix asked, scratching his head.
"I guess..it must've been before we left the place. After we went upstairs..."

It took him a second, but Fritz finally put it together. "..Oh." He remembered it, now that he was really thinking about it. "It was...it must've been...when I put this on," he said, holding the ring up in front of his face. "When I..turned back into a guy. Weird."

"Hey, that might mean something, man! I've heard a little about how magic stuff works from some of my classmates," Hendrix said. "Apparently there's some people who're crazy powerful, but either like—only as dudes, or only as chicks. That might be you!"

"I..kinda hope not..."

"Well, hey, there's really only one good way to find out, right? You were gonna have to go back the other way at some point tonight, right?"

"...I guess so."

On the one hand, the idea of having magic power of his own was kind of exciting. On the other...Fritz wasn't so sure about being stuck as a girl all the time, or most of the time, or even just when he wanted to use that power. It had just felt so...weird. But it worried him even more that part of the weirdness was him, deep down, sort of enjoying it.

He stared at the ring for a moment longer, then took a deep breath and slid it off. Instantly, he could feel the same energy—that same power as before—welling up from inside himself. It spread out quickly to his whole body: Lengthening his hair, softening his skin. Shrinking him down. "Aa~aah..!" His boxers shrank rapidly tighter as his manhood retreated inward and his hips spread themselves out. One quick tug turned Fritz back into a girl, just as her light-blue hair started tickling her thighs, and then her shirt split itself apart down the middle at the same time as her chest pressed itself up and out into the same pair of breasts as earlier that afternoon...!

"Aah!"

Her face burned with a blush all over again. "M-my shirt!" It had suddenly turned into a white, button-down, collared shirt, but more importantly—it was completely unbuttoned! She felt intensely exposed, especially with a guy in the same bedroom! Not to mention a pair of tiny little, pink, hip-hugging shorts being the only other clothes she had on now.

"Uh, don't worry—I noticed it happening and turned around," Hendrix assured her. And he was, indeed, staring at the wall opposite her right now. "Just lemme know when you're decent."
"Uh...s-sure..." If anything, him being a 'perfect gentleman' as promised made her feel uncomfortably excited for a second or two. Quickly swallowing that down, she hurried to her dresser, tossing off the tiny unbuttoned shirt to pull on a regular t-shirt. It was very loose around her slender frame, which did a decent job of hiding her figure, but it also slid off of one her shoulders, showing that off along with part of her neckline. Well—this was still way better than before, and hadn't taken nearly as long as awkwardly putting all of those buttons together would have!

"I'm good now," she said, and he turned around now.

"Huh. Well, you are pretty good-looking as a chick, at least."

The blush she'd been starting to lose came back even worse. "Reeeaally not helping!"

"Hah, sorry. But, what about that power? You feel it again?"
"I...do," she realized aloud. It had spread out to change her, and now it was just..there, the same as it had been right after the initial transformation. Waiting for her to command it—to want to do something with it, and then it would.

"So—you wanna try something with it, then? Test stuff out?"

"I guess..." She held up her left hand, palm-up, and just tried to..put some of that energy into the space above it. Some sparks visibly went up from her fingers to the area above her palm, forming a bunch of flickering sparks in a small orb floating in the air—like the inside of a plasma globe.

Hendrix leaned in slightly, watching this. "Coooool...! Hey, what'd happen if I touched that?"

"I don't...know? I don't really suggest it—" she started, but he'd already moved closer. "Uh, Hendrix, wait—!"

The warning seemed to fall on deaf ears. He'd stuck his hand right into the middle of the orb. "Yeeow!" He drew it back again, shaking it around. "That's some serious static shock, man."
"W-well you should've listened to me! I have no idea what this stuff is, or how to control it! You could've gotten seriously hurt!!"
"Aww, I'm glad you're concerned for me," he said, reaching a hand up to scratch one of his ears. "Hate to say it, but that pouty look is really cute on you, too." Then he let go of that ear to scratch the other.
"I'm not 'pouty', I'm annoyed!" she said.

"Right, right—sorry. Hey uh.." Hendrix now had both of his hands scratching both of his ears pretty hard. He lifted them away for a moment, brushing the hair aside to make the ears easier to see.

"D'you...see anything weird? My ears just got super itchy, and now..."

"Um, yeah." She did see something weird; those ears were covered in soft, blond hairs, which seemed to be in the process of growing rapidly longer and thicker. "That sparkly orb thing...definitely did more than shock you," she said. "A-and I'm not really sure how to stop it!"

"Oh, well—my bad, I guess," he said, then shuddered. "W-whooaa, this feels pretty trippy, though. Aah..aah...arrrffh." His mouth was wide open for the first couple of vocalizations, enough that she could see some of his teeth growing longer and sharper—turning into fangs. And with that...bark?...a short, golden-furred tail sprouted from his lower back. "Aaa~aa~aaAA~AARRFh...!" Then...Hendrix shrank. His voice lilted higher and higher, as his body got smaller and shorter; at the same time, that tail grew quickly longer and fluffier, his ears spreading up and out to become a big pair of fluffy dog-ears.

Fritz began to understand what was happening. The power she'd tried to make float above her hand wasn't just something generic, like sparks and glowy lights. She'd been trying to put something like the power she'd felt in the OZK house. That was: The power that had transformed her! Which could only mean that now Hendrix was...

He blinked once, and his eyes were a much lighter brown. A second time, and they were bright yellow. "O-o~oh wow, this fe~els..?" he said, his voice audibly leaving masculine range. "Pretty, n-nice..?" His face was lighting up with a blush; his boxers were shrinking shorter and tighter, and the tracksuit jacket he had on—which was shrinking with him to continue to fit properly—suddenly unzipped itself, coming apart to reveal a torso completely bereft of chest and belly hair. "Aa~ah..y-yip...rrufh..!" The shorts pulled close against a bulge between his legs, and then the bulge visibly shrank. Hendrix's height plummeted a little farther, until it was the same as the blue-haired girl's, and his frame collapsed the rest of the way to a slender, feminine look. "Mrr~rrrrfh..!" His already-long hair spilled out another couple of inches, turning a little bit wilder and messier an the process.

"Oh..oo~oh..." Finally, the shorts pulled flat between Hendrix's legs. "Ooo~oooh, d-duu~uude...!" She wriggled back and forth in place as her hips began to spread apart, and a pair of small bumps raised themselves up from her chest. "H-heehee~!" Her voice settled into a mid-range alto: Cute yet mature...kind of sexy. "Mm~mnnfffh....rrufh..! W-wow...!" Her tail whipped back and forth excitedly behind her as those small breasts grew out faster and faster, soon far exceeding the size of Fritz's own pair, before abruptly coming to a halt. A high, cute "Y-yip!" came from the dog-girl's lips as this happened, and her suddenly-big bust bounced gently out into place.

Hendrix giggled nervously, blushing and grinning. "H-heehee..." She leaned forward toward Fritz slightly, reaching a hand back to touch her tail, while the other one seemed uncertain whether to try to pull her top together or take it the rest of the way off.

"Well, I guess I don't need to worry about being a gentleman anymore, huh?" She did try to zip the jacket up now, but it didn't want to go past her generous new bosom, so she quickly gave up with a slight shrug—leaving some extreme cleavage in easy view. "Did it feel that good for you, too?"
"I-I guess so..? I was a little overwhelmed, at the time," Fritz said. Then: "H-how can you be so calm about this?! I don't know how to turn you back!"
"Awwh, I'm sure you can figure that out. Anyway, this is neat! A totally different look, and voice, and everything. Aren't I pretty cute, too!?"

"Uhm, y-yeah..." Try way too cute. Fritz was feeling even more conflicted about her roommate turning into that than she was about herself! "I-i-isn't having a tail just..really weird, though?"
"Haha, yeah, it's totally bizarre! And I was barking the whole way through the change! Guess I'd do that in bed with someone too~," she added, which made Fritz feel yet more conflicted.

"Well, hey—for tonight, problem's solved, right? Not too awkward that you've gotta be a chick if we both are!" Hendrix declared, not seeming to sense that this was making things more awkward for Fritz.
"Could you—at least—try to get a little more decent, please?"
"Huh?" She tilted her head slightly. "I mean, I'm not topless or anything like this—and chicks see each other's boobs all the time. But—sure, if it'll make ya feel better. The 'too-big-shirt' thing is plenty cute, too~."

"I'm...gonna focus on how to turn you back now," Fritz announced, going over to her desk. "I mean, like, in the morning. Before I put on the ring to go back to normal too."
"Yeah, sure! Guess I'll get a little bit of homework done—like I was planning before all this stuff." She then heard the sound of a tracksuit jacket hitting the floor, and tried to focus very hard on the ring that had turned her into a guy now sitting on the desk in front of her. Fritz really had already seen enough of her roommate's new dog-girl form to very easily imagine it topless, however, so she couldn't do much more than take some deep breaths and try to make her whole entire face stop burning until she finally heard the shirt coming down onto Hendrix's torso.

That she could do magic now was an amazing, probably life-changing realization..! But Fritz found it quite hard to focus on that, being far too distracted by just how bizarre her life had gotten in only the last five hours. Gio had sounded like he kind of liked the idea of living in a sorority full of 'cuties' too, and if he followed through on that thought, he'd probably drag Ivan in along with him...

---

Feeling thoroughly overwhelmed by the range and intensity of emotions she'd gone through across the afternoon, Nancy collapsed onto a couch in the lounge with intentions of doing absolutely nothing for the hour-and-a-half or so remaining until supper. She was grateful that Tokanwa had wandered off on her own pretty quickly, and quite certain the werewolf could entertain herself for a good while. She paid no attention to the real world while in this state, so other people coming in and out of the lounge, or walking through the hall outside of it, only just barely registered to her consciousness.

However, she was yanked partway out by a certain special sound. It was the noise of someone knocking on the front door to the OZK house. She sat slightly up, looking around. Was anyone here she could send to take care of it so that she could slide back into her haze? Of course not. Today had to be one where her astrological sign was fated for the worst luck possible...or something. The knocking was repeated, and she heard nobody in the hallway outside hurrying to the door to take care of it, either. So she sighed, closed her eyes, rubbed her temples, and pushed herself back to a normal mindset again. By the time the third knock came, she was quickly hopping to her feet and hurrying to the door, eager to see who it could be.

"Hello~?"

A skinny, dark-haired guy was waiting. "Hey! Is this Omega Zeta Kappa?"
"It is," she nodded, resisting an urge to answer No, this is Nancy. "How can—?"

"Can I join!? I need to be a girl!"

"Uuuuhh." Even she hadn't been prepared for that to come out of his mouth. Was her brother right in saying that a lot of people truly wanted this kind of thing?!

"Uh—hey, wait. You're the costume lady!" he said suddenly, and Nancy realized that he did look pretty familiar. This was one of the younger theater majors. "Nancy uh...Tuh..Trent?"

"Tanner. Close," she said. "That'd make you Ulrich, right?" It was a relatively hard name to forget.
"Yeah! So..?"
"You do realize there's normally an application process to join a GLO, right? In our case, it'd be nice to at least know whether you'd fit in with the existing members."
"But I really need to be a girl! You can do that, right?"

"Why is this so urgent, exactly?"

"It's for a part! So I can achieve my dreams," he said, spreading his arms out dramatically. "You're a theater major, right? So—you understand?!"

"A little, but—lemme get this straight: You're willing to join a sorority full of near-total strangers, so our house's enchantment can change your sex and completely transform your looks, just so you can try out for a part in a specific play."
"Yeah," he nodded.

"Well...you're dedicated to your art, if nothing else. But there are certain things you'd really need to live as a girl, and we usually like to provide those the morning right after the transformation. It'd be pretty awkward for you to go around campus as a shorter girl, for example, in the clothes that fit you now. Plus that'd reflect kinda badly on us."
"Yeah, Kyo told me all about that. I'm free all morning tomorrow!" Given what she knew of him so far, Nancy had a suspicion that Ulrich would be perfectly willing to skip classes if he had to to make himself free. But that was no skin off her nose.

"Okay, well—someone would need to go with you. Plus we do need to actually decide whether we want you to join?"

He looked slightly dejected by this hint of a delay, if not potential rejection. Nancy kind of got that; she wasn't an actor herself, but had seen firsthand just how cutthroat the competition for parts could be. Sometimes the director decided that they liked the first person they saw for a specific part, and all of the other try-outs might as well have just not shown up.

"Okay, how's this? You can have supper with us, and maybe hang out for a bit afterward—to meet the members. We can find out whether you're a good fit with the group we've got so far, and also whether any of them have an opening tomorrow morning—since I certainly don't." L'hoxifel always made more than enough for everybody, plus leftovers; adding an extra plate tonight wouldn't cause any problems there.

"Yeah! That'd be great," he said, nodding. "Thanks so much!"

"Don't thank me just yet," she advised. "Wait until we see how this actually turns out..."

---

"Love-spell Hate-spell" probably has some ridiculous spelling involving a lot of colons and backslashes. Its lyrics, at least for the chorus, kind of write themselves in my opinion.

I hadn't planned it to go this way, but it is kind of funny: Nancy fancies herself a bringer of chaos in a certain way...but she actually can't handle it that well if too much chaos at once comes to her of its own volition.

The Next Chapter: 16

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---

The Next Chapter
Chapter 16: Who Will Punish Her?

Gio could hardly believe his eyes. Fritz had been acting kind of distracted ever since the weird angel-girl had started the tour, but he'd thought it was because he was bored and thinking about something else. But to have his friend suddenly start glowing and shrinking and then—just—turn into a super-cute girl right in front of him—well, that was a shock!

Polaris hurried into the room while she was yelling. "Oh? How unusual and entirely unexpected," she said, very unconvincingly. "That isn't intended to occur."
"What? What happened?" she demanded, grabbing the winged girl's shoulders. "Did you do this!? Turn me back!"
"Please, inhale deeply and try to calm down," she said gently, with a reassuring-looking smile. "I cast no enchantment on you, and the means exist nearby to return your physical form to its original semblance."

Fritz let go of her, took that deep breath, and then said: "Th-then can you go get it? A-and you didn't answer my first question!"

"Oh, but of course. It appears the house's enchantment malfunctioned, ever so slightly."

As she was speaking, another girl—presumably a resident of the place—also showed up in the doorway. "What's all the yelling about?" Unlike the first two members of the sorority they'd met, she was an ordinary human, stylishly dressed, with brown hair. "Polariiis..did you do something?" she said, crossing her arms and glaring.
"I cannot comprehend why it's so automatic to assume that I am at fault," she said, placing a hand on her chest and looking slightly offended. "I was merely giving a pair of prospective applicants a standard tour of the living spaces, and the house transformed this one despite his clearly being entirely conscious," she said, gesturing toward Fritz. Gio's friend looked back and forth between the two of them with her expression shifting from shock toward anger.

"Th-th-this house transforms people!? Unconscious people!? There is no way that's legal!" Fritz was in a pre-law major, so she would presumably know.

The brunette cleared her throat. "Excuse me—my name is Nancy, nice-to-meet-you. Did Polaris not explain this before inviting you two in? Or show you the very clearly-worded disclaimer next to the door?"

"Nope," Gio answered. "She also kinda opened the door where we couldn't see anything next to it, if there was."

"Mmmmmmrrrrrrrrrgh....!" Nancy made some fists hard enough for her arms to shake and her knuckles to turn white, all the while giving Polaris an absolutely withering glare.

"Oh, dear—what awful negligence on my part," Polaris said, putting her hands out palm-up to either side while still smiling innocently. "Although it's not as if it should have mattered, if the enchantment were functioning entirely as intended."

She raised one of her hands to point an index finger. "You. I'll deal with. Later." Then, with a very brief in-and-out breath, her entire demeanor instantaneously changed. She smiled apologetically in Fritz's direction. "I'm terribly sorry about this mess. If you'd like, I have the means to help you temporarily transform back to your original appearance right away, and I can call some people to help make it actually permanent. If you two wouldn't mind coming with me?"

"Uh...sure," Fritz said.

Gio wasn't sure why it was, really. Nancy gave off the impression of being quite ordinary—if cute and well-dressed—but he suddenly felt like it would be an incredibly bad idea to ever annoy or cross her. Especially not when she'd just bottled up a fury like that in under a second. Besides undoubtedly wanting to go back to being a dude, Fritz probably had the same intuition, so—at least for the moment—she wasn't arguing.

Once they were out in the hallway, Nancy said, "Well. Allow me to explain what Polaris should have. We're a rather unusual sorority, and brand new to campus—the second chapter ever of Omega Zeta Kappa. We can accept male applicants thanks to an enchantment on the house that is sup-posed to only transform men into women if they sleep inside. As a concession, there are also some enchanted rings that can help previously-male members take on male forms at basically any other time than when sleeping in the house—which I will be lending you one of. That's the 'temporary means' I mentioned before."

She paused this rapid explanation as they entered a door to a stairwell, then continued as they went up: "We are also very well-connected with some powerful mages, enchanters, and so on—I'll just need to ask one of them to come around to help you stay male in a way that won't require wearing the ring all the time. Ah—but, because they're supposed to work with the enchantment on the house, it'll come off if you fall asleep with it on. I'm sorry about that inconvenience, and will again try to get someone to come help you out as soon as possible."

Gio had to stop at the landing to the third floor, hunching over slightly to catch his breath. Turning into a pretty girl hadn't diminished Fritz's stamina any, and it seemed like Nancy was quite fit as well. Since the former paused to wait for him, though, the latter did too. He quickly tried to regain his composure, standing upright and giving a grin and thumbs up. "Uh—I'm good!" And so they continued.

It sometimes took a moment for wheels to start turning in Gio's head. He didn't fully put together everything Nancy had said until the three of them were in a spacious room with a big table occupying the middle. He'd never considered it before, since it sounded so absurd, but..the idea of living in a sorority house, surrounded by cute girls...sounded pretty sweet! Apparently it'd involve turning into a girl while asleep, but who cared what they looked like when sleeping anyway? Besides, Polaris had given a pretty great tour of the place—neglecting to mention the transformation part aside—and compared to the living arrangements he and Ivan had been in since starting out at this school, they were positively heavenly! Gio could almost imagine putting up with being a girl most of the time just to enjoy that. He wondered whether he could convince Ivan to come along too...

Meanwhile, Nancy had taken a plain-looking metal ring out of somewhere in the room, plus a piece of paper and a pen. She used the table to write something down on the paper, then brought it over to Fritz. "Now, look—I agree, Polaris crossed a line here. But there are plenty of much more innocent people living at OZK, besides our other chapter being entirely uninvolved. Don't consider it a condition for getting my help—I'm handing over this ring either way—but I'd appreciate it if you'd sign this waiver saying you aren't gonna sue us over this rather engineered accident."

Fritz took the paper, staring at it briefly with her head slightly tilted. "Uhh, as far as a contract goes, there's loopholes in this big enough to drive an eighteen-wheeler through," she said.
"Well—I'm not a lawyer, okay?" Nancy's 'happy, friendly' mask slipped for a second, and she paused briefly to put it back on. "Let's—just—consider this a temporary understanding, and I can have my people draft up something more proper later on, if it's needed. I'm trusting you to act in good faith—which is a ton of trust to give a stranger, but consider that a part of my apology."

"Hmmn, okay then. I'll return your trust in kind." The blue-haired girl nodded, scribbling a signature on the hastily-drawn line at the bottom of the paper, and then traded it for the ring in Nancy's hand.

"Okay, so—to use that, all you have to do is put it on while focusing very specifically on how you want it to make you look," she explained.
"...Got it."

Gio was very tempted to provide a distraction, in the hopes it might make something funny happen...but Fritz had suffered enough already, and could be terrifying when made actually angry. So he stayed quiet as his friend slipped the ring on, and her body and clothes shifted most of the way back to how they had been before entering the house of this bizarre sorority. The exceptions were that Fritz's hair was very dark blue now instead of brown...and his eyes were still pink. He probably hadn't even realized they'd changed.

He looked down to examine himself, and—since he couldn't see either of those imperfections in his present looks—breathed a small sigh of relief. "Phew...thanks, really. That was so weird."

"No need to thank me—I'm making up for a couple of my own mistakes, after all," Nancy said. "Just remember what I said about sleeping...I apologize for how awkward this might make your living arrangements for a day or two."

Fritz blushed slightly. "Uh—right. Yeah..."

---

After leading the two visitors into the OZK house, Rob perked his feline ears up to try and pick up on just what that screaming earlier had been about. He just heard Nancy in the stairwell giving what sounded like a typical recruitment pitch, and vaguely shrugged Camilla's way.

"I guess someone just got excited at a game or something," she suggested to Alyssa and Beth.

However, they'd only taken a few steps through the entryway before witnessing something that was probably related. Mary was walking through the hallway in front of them with a huge black, shadowy, spindly arm going out from her right shoulder to reach a couple of feet behind her, its spiky-fingered hand holding onto...Polaris's right ear, dragging the celestial along behind her by it. "Aaaagh!" She hurried along behind, visibly struggling and rapidly babbling: "I am perfectly willing to accompany you under my own volition! Relinquish my auditory apparatus! Cease this injurious maneuver post-haaaaaste!!!"

On the one hand, this was pretty funny, conceptually. On the other, the mere sight of that shadowy arm thing completely paralyzed Rob with a deep, instinctual, involuntary terror until it was finally out of sight. As such, the four of them were silent for a long moment.

Alyssa finally spoke up, squeaking quietly: "What was that?"

"Some kinda crazy magic stuff for sure," Beth concluded, her tone of voice betraying absolutely no hint of fear.
"Uhhmm...I'm not exactly sure," Camilla said, "but I think Polaris is in huge trouble for..some reason. That's the uh, th'one with the wings. Mary—the goth chick—has some kind of terrifying powers, but has said multiple times that she never uses them in public."

"I don't think she saw us," Rob concluded. "Anyway uh—they're two of our weirder members."

"Hey, does that mean everyone else is normal?" Beth asked.
He mentally ran down the list of the other members briefly, then shook his head. "It's just a matter of degree, I guess."
"Hahah. Point in your favor, I'd say."

Their tour focused on bringing the pair to the game room first, since it was meant to be the main attraction for them. Beth and Alyssa wandered around the room for a bit, taking in its size and shape, the big windows and lighting, and the items on the shelves and in the cabinets.

"This is a pretty good spot," Beth said. "How close is it to the kitchen?"
"That's a short way down the hall," Camilla said.
"Sweet."

"Beth.." Alyssa waved to her friend, having just opened one particular cabinet door. "They have the rule books here." The shelves inside were lined with a number of DND-related books, as far as Rob could tell.

"Which ones?" Beth went over to take a look herself.

"Looks like...all of them? Including every expansion I know about..."
"Some of the older editions look kinda new to me," she said, pulling one out to flip through it for a moment. "Reprint, I guess? Still though..."
"I thought, nobody in OZK was playing already?" Alyssa asked their guides.

"Nancy told me this room was stocked by some of the alumni from the original chapter of OZK," Camilla said with a slight shrug. "I guess one of them knows their stuff."

"Well," Beth punctuated her pause with shutting the book in her hands to replace it on the shelf. "They got good taste, whoever it is."

Eventually they came to the end of the tour, circling back to the entryway. The visitors seemed reasonably impressed by the facilities, and of course had been happy with the game room itself. But so far they hadn't met any current members of OZK who'd actually want to play.

"This does seem like a pretty sweet place to live," Beth admitted. "I'm a little on the fence, though.."

"Yeah." Alyssa said, "Since you admit guys...I mean, even if they do get turned into girls when they join, and stay girls some of the time, um..."

"I get ya," Camilla said, nodding. "It's an understandable concern, but none of the 'boys' who've joined us were really that kind of guy in the first place. And obviously none of 'em have stepped out of line yet. Pretty sure there's a ton of magical power on the 'girl' side that could inflict some serious punishment for anything like that anyway. Like: My roommate's a pretty powerful demon; Nancy told me she learned a bunch of magic spells specifically for self-defense; and you kinda saw what Mary can do."

"Besides, anyone like that would get kicked out of this place," Rob added, "banned for good. Plus everyone would hate you. I think there's plenty of deterrents."

Alyssa said, "Yes...as long as everyone actually thinks about, and cares about, those things..."

The front door opened then, and Ed stepped through, followed by Jay. Both had their bags, meaning they'd just come from classes. "So then I—oh, hey!" Jay interrupted himself, eagerly hurrying over to just in front of the two strangers. "Hi I'm Jay! Are you new members? Wow you're tall!"
"Eeehhh, I get that a lot," Beth said.

"Is he literally a puppy?" Alyssa whispered, kind of in Rob's direction; he just shrugged in reply.

"Potential members," Camilla answered. "They were looking for place to play DND, and people to play with, so—"
"When?" Ed interrupted, displaying an uncharacteristic level of excitement as soon as that the three-letter abbreviation came up.

"Oh, are you interested?" the tall woman said. "We haven't got a group yet, but we were thinkiinnng...weekends, maybe? Sometime everyone involved can play. I'm Beth."
They shook hands briefly. "Ed. Jay's my roommate."
"Guess you two are among the 'boys' Cammy was talkin' about, huh? You played before?"
The wolf-girl folded her ears down slightly. "No..couldn't really find anyone else interested."

"That's all good, we're open to newbies, 'specially since we're just now forming a group."

"Could I play too, then?" Jay asked.

"Yeah, sure, hahah." Alyssa also nodded her agreement with this.

"I guess you could come in to play as their 'guests', at least," Rob concluded.
"Sweet. We'll give some serious thought to joining too, I guess. We'll pretty definitely be back either way—oh, Cammy, can you put me and Ed here in touch? I can send along some starter material and stuff, plus we can figure out a meeting time and all that."

"No prob'."

---

Once the day's first pair of visitors were dealt with—and Nancy had finished making a couple of calls that were required to resolve that entire incident—she headed down the stairs.

As soon as the two guys had left her sight, and aside from a brief pause to sound cheerful and friendly on the phone, Nancy had been positively fuming, busying her mind with trying to think up the worst possible torture she could put Polaris through. That girl's...irresponsible, selfish behavior...could've ruined everything! Did a celestial not understand how human law worked?! Did she not comprehend OZK's precarious position with the university? When she saw Polaris again, she'd pluck her wings off feather-by-feather! She'd make her run laps around the entire campus until she collapsed! She would...!

Exiting the stairwell to the first floor, Nancy nearly ran into Mary. "Hey." It was as monotone as ever, but the way the vampiresque girl was standing perfectly still in her path afterward made it clear this was an 'attention-getting' hey and not a greeting.
She needed a fraction of a second to affix a neutral emotion to her face and voice. "Uh..hello?"

"I've had a little talk with Polaris about her actions. She's very sorry, and so am I."

"Oh...okay. Grreeeaat," Nancy said, nodding and smiling.

"Polaris is basically a good person, mostly, but...every once in a while, she'll get so fixated on a goal that the usual guardrails start to disappear. I'm usually the one who has to provide a little reminder. Sooo...can't promise it'll never happen again. But not for a long while."

Nancy thought about what she'd seen of Mary's power, what she could always passively feel with her relatively weak magical senses, and that entire conversation with Kyo back on Saturday. All of a sudden, the torments she'd been imagining for the celestial girl seemed absolutely petty and ineffectual. "Well...thanks for that," she said. "No hard feelings. We can't always control our friends, right?"
"Yeah. I reminded her we've got a pretty good thing going here, with OZK. Hate to screw it up."

"Oh, really? I'm pretty glad you feel that way, at least," Nancy said with a winning smile.

Mary didn't respond much to this, as expected, and instead just concluded: "Got a class to get to. See ya later." And with that, she turned and left.

That was just as well; OZK had an expected visitor coming soon. Nancy took a circuitous route to the front door in an effort to avoid awkwardly running into Mary again on her way out, which took her through the hallway Ed was living in—and had her happen across said wolf-girl not far from her bedroom. "Hi, Ed!" she greeted with a friendly wave.

"Oh, uh, hi." She fidgeted nervously, wringing her hands. "Um...I was, just about to head upstairs to look for you."

"Uh-huh?" So it was finally time. Nancy had some half-formed ideas about how to capitalize on this moment, but she was quite frankly just not in the mood today. So she instead dug around in her purse, pulled out the ring reserved for Ed, and tossed it at her underhand. "Well, here you go." Her script would survive this bit of improv just fine.

"Aack!" Ed's catch was a little clumsy, the ring bouncing from one hand to the other a couple of times before it stopped. She only recognized the object after staring down at it in her palm for a second; then she looked up again. "Um, thanks? B-but how did you—?"
"You pretty much wear your whole mind on your face," she said, shrugging. "Have fun!"

That had provided enough of a delay by itself, so she now made a beeline for the entrance and watched out the window. It was only a minute or two before she saw who she was looking for. Then she went and opened the door.

"Hey theeere."

"Tokanwa, nice to see you again! You're—uh—wearing a suit?"

The white-haired werewolf girl had wrapped her body in a full-on, black-and-white, three-piece suit, complete with a black tie. "Yeah? I'm supposed to be interviewing, right?" She was also carrying a briefcase in her left hand.

"Errrh...it's not really that kind of..well, whatever. Come on in~!"

They sat across from each other in the lounge. "Sooo, I got the gist of things from Ed, but—you're a fourth-year junior, in biology?"

"That's right. It's not 'cause my grades are bad, though—oh, I got some transcripts if you want 'em."

"N-no need for that!" She'd been about to open the suitcase on the coffee table between them to retrieve the paperwork. "I am a little curious, but it's the college's job to make sure people's grades are up to the right standard before joining a sorority, not ours."

"Oh, cool. Yeah, it's just that I got interested in a lot of different classes, and now I've started working on a couple-a projects with some of my profs. Advisor says I should still graduate next school year, and wants me to apply to the grad program and stuff."

"Nnneat." Some people, mentally as well as physically, were just built different. "Well, our original chapter does have a history of letting doctoral students stick around if they're going to the same university."

"Now, I'll ask what I usually do: Why're you interested in joining?"

"Heh, well, pretty mercenary. Can't compete with free rent. Plus Ed and Jay seem pretty fun to hang with, at least. I'm sure you're attracting some more fun people, too, right?"
"I certainly hope so~."

"Plus—I do want one of those rings. Never had access to magic like that before, after all. My pack back home pretty much live like humans with a little bit of fur, and have for generations. So not much contact with the rest of the magic world 'till lately."

Nancy nodded. "Like I said, shouldn't be a problem. It will transform what you're wearing when you put it on to fit, but you will have to figure out the rest of your wardrobe for yourself. Speaking of rent though—have you got things sorted with your apartment?"
The werewolf nodded. "I had a close look at my lease. I think the easiest thing is to sub-let, and there's someone—not a college student—who's expressed interest. They get cheaper rent, I get out of the lease, owner gets their money. Everybody's happy."

"That's great. Do forward me a copy of any agreements before you make them; I can have some people look over them to make sure nobody's trying to pull something sneaky."

"Nice of you to offer—guess I'd better. Fine print has never really been my jam," Tokanwa said. "Sooo, in that case..?"

"You're free to join us as soon as you're ready to move," Nancy said with a small nod. "Welcome—I think we'll be glad to have you," she said, offering a hand across the table.

"Hahah, cool!" Tokanwa gave it a sturdy shake. "You think I could hang for the afternoon, before I head back tonight? It'd be nice to meet some of the other girls...or guys, whatever."

"No problem~."

---

"Well..I got the ring." Ed closed the door behind her after coming in.
"Wow, that was quick! You sprint up the stairs?" Jay (who'd taken her ring off a few minutes ago) paused just long enough for her to inhale in preparation to answer, then giggled. "Heheh—kidding; I can hear out the door."

"Rrrright. So uh.." She fiddled with it for a second or two, flipping it around between her fingers and thumb.

This was ridiculous. She'd decided what she wanted to do the day before. Or maybe it had been on Saturday. But the hesitation persisted: What if I don't like it? If I get sick of it after another week? Or what if I don't use the ring correctly and end up not looking at all how I wanted?...

Ed sighed. "Jay...how do you do it?"
"Hmn? Do what?"

"How do you keep yourself from overthinking things? And just, leap in, when you've decided what you want?"

"Uhmmm...I guess Iiii...just don't think about stuff much in the first place?" The fox-girl shrugged. "Honestly, I probably don't think enough. Can't overthink if you don't think! Anyway, it's not like you always do that. You responded pretty quickly to a chance to actually play DND!"
"R-right. Hmm."

She nodded slightly (mostly to herself), then slid the ring onto the appropriate finger, closing her eyes and picturing what she wanted. Then there was a swift series of sensations that were sort of similar to that first transformation over a week ago, and...Ed was a man again.

He blinked his eyes open, looking down to check. The girl-cut shorts and shirt had, of course, shifted into looser clothes that properly fit him. He was essentially the same height and build as before all of this began, as much as one's genes would have an influence over; his hair was back to a comfortable, short length. But he was as just as physically fit as the female form, with a decent bit of facial hair, and...was still part wolf. The furry ears, tail, and fangs stayed. "..Phew. Looks, about how I expected," he said, and found the sound of a male voice slightly alien to his ears. Had it really been just a couple of Fridays ago? But this was definitely how he'd sounded before.

"Cool! You look good like that," the fox-girl said.
"Uh, th-thanks..." She was probably just being supportive—though no doubt honest—but having a girl as pretty as Jay was right now compliment his appearance still felt pretty nice.

"Though, you are gonna have to take it off again tonight to sleep."
"Yeah, I know..."

---

Thanks to some tips from FrostedPines, I've been experimenting with some stuff to get images in different-looking styles lately. The one in this chapter is a more obvious example of that which I'm pretty happy with.