Thursday, August 20, 2026

The Next Chapter: 23


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The Next Chapter
Chapter 23: Were They Compliments or Catcalls?


Giovanni got in bed thinking of all the cute girls he'd met—and which he and Ivan were now living with!—and supposing that he'd end up dreaming of them, too. It seemed like the magic transforming people in this house only turned out hotties, and even those who had been girls all along looked great to him. To be perfectly honest with himself, though—and as he'd admitted to his friends once or twice—he'd never met a woman he didn't think was beautiful in one way or another. They all just had different charms. He would admit to liking certain figures more than others, but his personal taste was a distinct thing from whether or not a girl looked good.

That said, when he fell asleep it wasn't girls he dreamed of, but cats. He "woke up" to find himself sitting in a chair, still wearing his pajamas, in a house full of cats. There were so many sizes and shapes of them—even a few big wildcats a little farther away. Their fur patterns varied widely too, including not only several he was familiar with but others he had never seen before, and wasn't sure actually existed. This room had to be awfully big to hold so many cats; he was vaguely aware of a floor and a ceiling, but couldn't see the walls. They were all wandering around doing their own thing, the way cats do, and several brushed across his bare feet and ankles as they went along.

All of this maybe should have weirded him out, but everything just sort of made sense to him in the moment, as it often is in dreams. If anything, he felt relaxed and content in their company. Gio's family had a couple of house cats when he was growing up, so maybe he qualified as a "cat person"...although he certainly never had anything against dogs or lizards or other, more exotic kinds of pets. Anyway, he sat there watching the cats wander around, play with each other, occasionally get into fights for a few minutes...and he had the odd impulse that he rather wanted to join them.

Almost as soon as he felt that, one particular feline hopped up into his lap. "Whoa—hey there," he said, gently placing a hand on its head. This was one of the more exotically-colored ones, its fur coat entirely a bright, sky-blue color, and even its eyes reflecting back at him blue. It blinked up at him, twirling its tail affectionately, while he carefully pet it, and then it stood up and—hopped into him! "Aack!"
Gio had the natural reaction of anyone whose face was being pounced at by a cat, namely jolting back almost hard enough to knock the chair under him over, but the expected impact never came. The cat just seemed to pass right through his skin into him instead! "Uh..?" He sat up again, looking around and behind him, to try to find where it had gone or what had even happened. But at the same time as he was trying without success to locate that bright blue feline among the crowd around him, he had the increasingly strong sense that actually, he knew exactly where it was.

It hadn't run into him, and hadn't passed through him; it was in him. And...calming down a little bit, Gio noticed the feeling of something pushing its way out from his back. "Huh.." He turned around to find a tail very much like the one that cat had had, only larger, sliding its way out from between his pajama top and pants, rapidly growing longer. "Oh, wow..!" He put out his hand as it stretched out longer, lightly touching it, and shivered slightly at how this felt. The fur was soft, and the tail itself was so sensitive that this touch seemed to send a brief chill racing up his spine. The sensation also made him cry out with a soft, startled "Mewh!".
His ears began to push up and out just as the tail finish growing, and when he turned forward again and cautiously put up a hand to feel one of them, he found it covered in the same sort of soft, warm fur—and sensitive too, though not nearly as much as the base of that tail. He couldn't resist rubbing it just a little more; it felt so nice, after all, and he did know the right way to rub a cat's fur. This act made him lower both of the rapidly-growing ears to point out to his side, and he started to actually purr too. "Mrr~rrr~rrrh..."

The tone of the purring rumbling in his throat changed swiftly, going from a deep, male tone to something steadily more and more feminine-sounding. Also, he could feel his hair brushing against his hand, growing quickly longer, and a strange, slipping sensation down between his legs. When he lifted his hand off of the ear for a moment to look down and try to investigate, he found a river of bright-blue locks of hair tumbling down past his shoulders in the back, some long bangs poking down into his view in front. And..his heart was beating faster all of a sudden; he felt excited and warm. What was this feeling?! He wanted more..!
His body was hit with a rush of tingling then, making him shiver almost as violently as when he'd touched that tail a moment ago. "Aa~aah..!" A strangely high-pitched voice came from his lips too, and when this tingling gave way to a squeezing, pressing feeling, it was a girlish mid-alto "Mm~mmmh..!" that came from his throat. The tugging down there was getting even stronger; his manhood was excited all of a sudden, and getting noticeably smaller. In fact, all of him was getting smaller! His belly shrank before his eyes, his arms and legs became slimmer, with his fingers becoming smaller and more delicate by the second. His height slid down slowly, and his frame collapsed inward, narrowing his shoulders and slimming his waist.

All of these exciting feelings were making his tail flick back and forth happily behind him. His cheeks burned with a blush, and his heart was racing. "M-mrrr~rrrrh...!" Gio purred happily as the last little tug down there gave way to a strange, fuzzy sensation; the pajama pants and underwear beneath them pulled tight and flat down there, as Gio felt some more shifts deep in the pit of her stomach making her completely, entirely female. "O-ooh..m-meww~wwh...!" Her hips shoved out wider then, her chest erupting in tingling before bursting forward into a small pair of breasts. Then that small bust began to spread out bigger and bigger; she wriggled around in place, enjoying the fuzzy feelings down below that this continued change was bringing on. "Aah...o~oh..m-mrr~rrrrh...!" Soon her pajama top's uppermost button burst off to make more room, and then the one beneath that snapped apart too; her growing breasts became nearly too big for it, making it squeeze them together as they pushed out yet another entire cup size!

Then, finally, it was done. Gio found herself lying on her back all of a sudden, her eyes opening and blinking briefly in the dark. She was awake, back in bed under the covers. The ceiling and—turning her head from one side to another—the rest of the room were oddly easy to see, despite how dark it was. But after a second she understood: It's 'cause I'm a cat, duh! Cats had no problem seeing in the dark, after all.

This felt..very nice. But she was also super sleepy, and it was still dark after all. Tomorrow was Saturday, a day for sleeping in, so nobody would fault her for taking a nice long nap anyway. "Mrrrrnh..." She let out another soft purr as she drifted off back to sleep.


In the morning, Gio awoke to the sound of someone quietly growling: An unfamiliar high, cute sort of voice. She sat up, then hopped to her feet, looking around briefly before spotting the owner of that voice: A pink-haired bunny girl standing in front of the dresser! "Whoa~!" She hurried a little closer, getting a better look at both of them in the mirror. "Mega cutie alert!"
Her own body was that of a busty catgirl, sporting the same sky-blue fur as that cat in the dream, plus her hair having changed to that same color. It matched her eyes and PJ's pretty well, if she said so herself. And the bunny-girl could only be her roommate!
"I see you're pleased with the results," Ivan said, quickly pulling her shirt shut as she turned around to face the catgirl. Ivan had always been half a head taller than Gio; it was weird to find that reversed now that they had both shrunk in the process of becoming girls.
"Totally! You look great too, though! You're super curvy, and those ears are adorable! Did I see a fluffy little tail back there, too?"
Ivan tilted her head slightly. "You know...somehow stuff like that coming out of your mouth sounds a little less bad now that you're a girl."
"Huh?" She tilted her head. "What'sat supposed to mean?"
The bunny-girl exhaled a small sigh. "Never mind." Her stomach then audibly growled.
"Ooh, are you hungry? Me too!"
"I-I guess so," she said, blushing slightly. "But I ain't going out in this. You should, uh, put on another shirt too. Those things are gonna put someone's eyes out in that top." Ivan went for her suitcase—still packed—and Gio shrugged before going to her own suitcase too.

While they changed, the catgirl said, "Are you gonna use a different name as a girl, or the old one? I mean, you really don't look 'Ivan'-ish to me."
"What're you gonna do?"
"I think I wanna girl name! Dunno what yet, though. Hmmn."
"Well, everyone calls you 'Gio', but that's like less than half of your whole first name."
"Right, yeah...Vanni? Vann uh..oh, I've got it! Vanilla," she decided. "That works, right?"
"Sure," the bunny-girl shrugged.
"And for you...Ooh, wasn't your middle name Sasha?" In fact, Gio had teased him about this for a little bit after their initial meeting—since Ivan's full name was on the forms they both signed in the process of becoming roommates.
"Yeeaah. That's technically a—"
"—guy's name? But it can be both, riiight?"
"Hmm, yeah, maybe. I guess it'd save me the trouble of making something up."
"Okay~! Sasha it is, then!"


Only halfway to the kitchen, the catgirl could smell sausages, and her ears easily picked up the sizzle of meat on a skillet. The pair entered the dining area to find Fritz and Hendrix sitting at a table, both in cute-girl form. "Morning~!" she said, heading their way.
"Whoa. Uh—Gio?" Fritz guessed, her eyes not leaving that huge chest.
"Morning, girls!" Hendrix said, waving.
"Got it in one," the bunny-girl said, coming up next to her roommate.
"Yeah, but—I wanna go by 'Vanilla' as a girl!" she announced. "And—Sasha!" she added, excitedly gesturing both arms the pink-haired woman's way. The latter shrugged slightly in response to a questioning look from Fritz.

"I guess that makes sense," the dog-girl mused. "Chick names, huh..I guess Lyrica went for that, too."
"I don't need two names to juggle around," Fritz said, crossing her arms.
The demon-girl they'd met during their tour poked her head through the door to the adjoining kitchen to briefly interrupt: "Morning~! Breakfast will be ready in just a minute."

L'hoxifel was supposed to be handling the "adjustment" for all four of them—that is, going with them to help buy clothes and other necessities for living as women. Fritz hadn't been sure that was necessary, but some gentle persuasion that it was basically free stuff whether (s)he used it or not had convinced him. They had already heard about the demon-girl's legendary cooking, so even Vanilla had enough patience to just take a seat and wait a couple of minute more for that.

She brought out some fresh-cooked sausages and biscuits, mustard, cheese, and juices. Then all five of them ate together.

"So—using a different name, huh?"
"Is that typical?" Fritz asked.
L'hoxifel shrugged. "Some do, some don't. I think it's less common now than it was with the veil intact, since back then there was a need to keep up appearances. That, or—maybe it's just that more people are getting transformed, so more of them are people with the disposition of not wanting to complicate things that way. I went with only a tiny change, myself."
Fritz stopped with her sausage-biscuit sandwich halfway to her mouth. "Uh...hold on. You went with—?"
"Mm-hm! 'Fel' is a more feminine-sounding name ending than 'Van', at least for demon names," she said.
"I thought you were one of the 'originally-a-girl' group, though," Sasha said.
"That depends on what you mean by 'original'?" she said with a slight shrug. "I have been since before college, at least.

"What do you think of your new forms, huh? I gather Fritz doesn't like hers too much."
"It's just—being a girl feels weird," she protested.
"Mine is great~!" Vanilla reported cheerfully.
"It's uh..fine," Sasha said. "I mean—a lot of it doesn't bother me, or I even kinda like, but.."
"But?"
"It's just that I worked pretty hard to sculpt those muscles, and now I'm back to square one again. I guess it's fine—I mean, when I get a ring the male form can be back to being built again, but I'm gonna have to work pretty hard for a while..."
"You just wanna be more physically fit? Like you were as a boy? I can do that for you," she said with a small shrug.
"Wh—really? You can just zap people fit, like that?!" Vanilla said.
"Well—it's not without its price. But doing it once in a while isn't a big deal," L'hoxifel said. "I did a little adjustment for Ed just last week. Let's call it a 'member perk' of OZK, at least while I'm a member."
"I'd appreciate it, anyway," the bunny-girl said.

"Uh—this is gonna sound weird but...can I watch?" Fritz asked, her cheeks an adorable bright red.
"Oh, 'cause of your copying power thing?" Vanilla said.
"Y-yeah..."
"It's her talent as a witch or whatever," Hendrix explained for the demon-girl.
L'hoxifel shrugged. "I don't mind if you don't," she told Sasha, who also shrugged.
"Sure, whatever. Let's just do it in here when we're done eating, I say."

And so, when they had finished breakfast, L'hoxifel and the bunny-girl stood across from each other. The former visibly concentrated, lifting a hand to gently touch Sasha's forehead while a bright purple glow appeared all over that hand. The glow moved to the target's head, spreading down across her body while L'hoxifel dropped her hand and let out a brief huff of air from the effort.

"Mmh...aa~aah...!" Once it had enveloped her, the glow pushed in against Sasha's body. Her arms and legs quickly and visibly tightened and toned. She gasped alongside a sudden upward motion as her height increased an inch or two, and her bust puffed out bigger; then she exhaled slowly as the big, ill-fitting t-shirt and boy-cut shorts she'd put on earlier shrank into a much more tight-fitting outfit, perfectly hugging her curvy frame. The shirt shrank maybe a little too much, its lower hem not quite hiding some solid abs now adorning a belly that had been completely soft a moment ago.

"Haha...yeah!" she put her hands on her hips. "That's way more like it!"
"Ooh man, I was already missing these babies," she said, gently patting her abs with a hand.
"Um..so..." Fritz mumbled.
"If you're not gonna say it, I will," Vanilla said.
"Your rack got a little bigger," Hendrix concluded.
"Oh..yeah? I guess so," she said, hefting one of the breasts under her hand. "Well, whatever—I was gonna have boobs either way."
Fritz said, "I have no idea how you're all so okay with this..."

"So did you learn how to do that with that talent of yours?" L'hoxifel asked.
"Huh? Oh, yeah, I think," Fritz said, shrugging. "I guess...I can try it later. On myself, or something," "Thanks."
"No problem~! Now, we need to get out of here to have any hope of finishing the shopping by lunch time!"


Maybe a little under an hour later, Vanilla was standing in a dressing room. She'd had some help putting on a bra and some girl-type underwear, and now changed out an ill-fitting shirt and those pajama pants for a pair of shorts and a white t-shirt that were made to fit people of her new sex. Once she'd pulled the shirt on, she looked to the mirror. "Oh...wow~..heehee..." She giggled slightly, lifting one hand and grinning at the girl in the mirror.
I actually look good in this! It's super basic too! It's like I can look good in anything now...!

After turning and walking a little in that outfit, she took it off, deciding to go adventurous. L'hoxifel had been nice enough to whisper her a few tips when she'd seen the catgirl picking these things off the rack...

"Hii giiirrrls~!" She came out of the changing room to greet the others in that one: A full-on sailor suit type of outfit, with a short skirt, stockings, and an azure-blue tie to match. Her three friends—all of which were wearing some kind of pants still—paused to stare.
"Are you sure this's our Gio?" Fritz said.
"Dead certain," the bunny-girl assured her.
"Am I the only one seein' sparkles?" Hendrix asked.

"Well, you do look good in that," L'hoxifel said. "I presume you're all wearing what you wanna leave the store in, then?" A brief chorus of assent followed, and they gathered their huge pile of new purchases to take out with them.

"Isn't wearing a skirt really weird?" The blue-haired 'witch' asked.
Sasha added, "Especially one that short..."
"Heheh...it's definitely different," Vanilla admitted. "I think I could get used it, though, especially for something so cute~! You'd both look great in something like this too, y'know?"
Fritz's cheeks flushed red. "Uh, s-sure..."
"I think we've created a monster," the bunny-girl concluded (joking (probably)).

Wednesday, August 19, 2026

The Next Chapter: 22




The Next Chapter
Chapter 22: How Did We Get Here? (Reprise)


Ivan shut off the lights and climbed into bed. Even in the dark with nothing to see, he could tell he wasn't in his dorm room anymore. The sheets and cover and pillow were all the same, but the mattress was like heaven compared to what he'd been sleeping on for the past few weeks, and the entire school year that had preceded the summer before those.

It was only now, lying in bed and expecting to fall asleep fairly soon, that he thought about it a little harder. Was this a mistake? He'd been thinking about sticking with his friends—especially with Gio. He'd been thinking about helping Gio down a path to a healthier lifestyle. But he hadn't really put a ton of thought into one, admittedly fairly important, thing.



Ivan crossed his arms. "I really can't believe I agreed to this."
"Whaaat? Getting cold feet already? Dude, we're just visiting our friends who live here now!"
"I know it comes naturally, Gio, but don't play dumb."
"Hahah!"

The two of them were standing a few steps out from the front door of the OZK building. It was afternoon on Friday, not long after both of their last classes had let out. Ivan had stopped to make his comment, and Gio had stuck with him. Their voices were joined by a third from behind: "Hey—you two holding a meeting on the lawn?"

They turned around to find a tall, white-haired wolf-girl in some shorts and a fairly tight-fitting t-shirt.
She seemed very fit and toned; Ivan could tell she'd put a lot of work into those abs. Gio had a different impression, and hurried to get a little closer. "Heeey, cutie! You live here?"
"'Cutie?'" she mumbled quietly, tilting her head a bit. "Well—I'm 'bout to move in, anyway. Name's Tokanwa."
Ivan sighed. "Ignore my friend here, please; he's not too bright. I'm Ivan, this's Gio."
"I can't help givin' out compliments when they're deserved, is all!"
"Huh." The wolf-girl shrugged. "I don't really go for 'cute', but I'll take it as friendly at least. I guess you guys know the deal with this soror? Soro? What is the short form anyway?"
"Pretty much," Ivan said. "A couple of our friends joined yesterday after some, uh, 'wacky events', so we're...visiting them. Do you want any help with your stuff?"
"Hmm, maybe—once I get my room settled with Nancy." She paused, her ears twitching and turning as she tilted her head slightly upward. "..Sounds like karaoke. That, or someone just decided to start singin' on their own."

That got Gio's attention. "C'mon, let's go in!" he said, waving excitedly. Ivan shrugged apologetically in Tokanwa's direction before following. His roommate at least had the presence of mind to stop with the door held open and let the others in before continuing on himself.

"You work out, Ivan? Kinda looks like it, though I've learned lately not to assume."
"Yep," he nodded. "You too, I guess?"
"Totally! I actually found out about this place during a morning jog. Ran into Ed then—you know Ed?"
"Not really," Ivan admitted. They had heard the names of a few members from Hendrix and Fritz, but hardly knew what any of them were like.
"They're upstairs, right? Where's the stairs again?" Gio asked.
"You're the one who's been here," Ivan reminded him.
"Maybe I should lead," the wolf-girl suggested.

They went upstairs, and then to a big sort of theater-like room, where—indeed—a group of the sorority's members had gathered for karaoke. At the moment, a blond dog-girl was sitting on a stool on the little "stage" and not only singing, but also playing a guitar in her lap, along to "All Along the Watchtower". Ivan hadn't actually seen Hendrix's new "girl form" before, but from a previous description and the context, he was pretty confident that was who this was. She also took a hand off of the guitar for a second to give the two of them a friendly wave as they came in.

Gio looked around the room; there was a mixture of guys and girls present, but definitely too many of the latter for him to comment on all at once (never mind the fact there was a performance of sorts going on right now), so he settled for a slightly-voiced gasp for now. Once the song was over, Hendrix hopped down to her feet. "Yo, glad you guys could make it. These're Gio and Ivan," she said, gesturing.

"Hey," Ivan said quickly.
"Hiii!" Gio waved. "Can I go next!?" A number of voices saying something along the lines of 'sure, I guess' was all the encouragement he needed, so he ran up to the stage, picked out his song on the computer (the Chalkeaters' "Trash Can Song") and launched straight into it. He wasn't the best singer, but he certainly had confidence. He was also enough of a goofball to have his audience more laughing than confused, even though several of them seemed unfamiliar with the context. He gave a big bow afterward, and hurried off the stage.

There was some general chatter after that—as they tried to decide who would go next—and Tokanwa came over to the back row, where Ivan was sitting. "Yo—is the offer to help me move in still good? I got my keys and stuff."
"Yeah, sure," he nodded. A big crowd like this wasn't exactly his style anyway.



"You, have got the prettiest, bright blue eyes I think I've ever seen."
"Uh—thanks?" Ed had no idea how to take this comment from the newcomer. Fritz had warned he was a 'huge flirt', but her eyes...had never been changed at all, by any of the transformations she'd been through recently.
"Heeyy, don't get me wrong. The whole package is totally gorgeous!" he said, grinning. "That's just the first thing I noticed, y'know?"
"Psst. Ed's already dating someone," Kyosuke (currently male) advised him with a light elbowing.
"Yow! Hey, I didn't mean nothing serious by it."
"Shh—Jay's starting!" Ed bit back an urge to point out the double negative, just focusing on listening to her roommate sing again.

It was, of course, another of Ursa Major's songs. Equally predictable was her basically knocking it out of the park, capturing the full attention of everyone in the room. Ed glanced around a couple of times—just a usual, nervous habit of hers—and noticed Nancy holding out her phone to record this particular performance. There was no way Jay didn't see it too, so if she had a problem with it, surely she would say so.



Tokanwa found a fast friend in Ivan, talking about their workout routines and diets and making time to exercise alongside school as they went back and forth from her car a few times. He was also majoring in biochemistry, which meant she would talk about her own studies a little bit without him immediately getting that look on his face like most people did. She was careful not to go too deep into it this time, and he actually seemed semi-interested, which was nice.

On their last trip to her room she said, "So—level with me. You guys tryin'a join OZK?"
He sighed. "Yeah. Gio really wants to, and won't do it without me. It'd be pretty lame if all three of my friends are in and I'm out. Besides, it'd be a pain for me to break in a new roommate at this point."
"I guess you're not too freaked out about being a girl some of the time, then?"
"Me? Guess not. Long as I stay fit, anyway," he said. "Gio's kind of mentally skated past that part, mostly. He's just excited about the place's amenities...and especially living in the same house as a lot of 'cute girls'."
"I can admire the honesty, at least. The vibe I got is that he's not serious enough to cause any trouble."
"I'd say so, yeah."
"Given what Nan told me 'bout OZK's history, I feel like a motive of 'living with cute girls' isn't even that outta line," Tokanwa pointed out. "Their first chapter started as a fraternity; you can bet some a' those guys stuck around for a reason like that."

They came to her door and set down the last few things. "..Yeah, right there's perfect. Phew. Okay—I got one more carload to get, and then I'll have officially joined," she said.
"Great. Lemme know if you need any more help. I guess I better go check on Gio," he said, heading off toward the stairwell.



In all the time arguing with Gio about this, Ivan had begun with a tacit assumption that his friend and roommate wouldn't want to turn into a girl. Probing that assumption so many times had seemingly proven it completely false; Gio knew he could turn into a guy at any time with that ring OZK would provide, and that was plenty good enough for him.

When Tokanwa had brought it up, he'd sort of brushed it off; the first thing to come out of his mouth had felt correct, but he hadn't thought about it that deeply, really. Lying in bed now, he tried to assess just how much being a guy really mattered to him. The possibility of having some magic transform him into a girl had never come up before this very week, so he honestly hadn't been mentally prepared for it. He didn't think very deeply about his own looks—other than working out to keep himself fit, and being fairly proud of his hard-earned muscles. Maybe his answer to Tokanwa was right after all: Girls were just as capable of being fit as guys, after all. That wolf-girl herself was even a prime example of that possibility.



"Whooaa, hi there!" Gio grinned. He'd been going along with his three friends out of the karaoke room, and paused upon seeing the winged girl standing next to another one he hadn't seen before. "She a friend of yours, Polaris?"
"Indeed—Mary is a long-time friend, as well as my roommate."
"Nice to meet ya, Mary!" He said, offering her a hand to shake. "You pull off that goth look better than anyone I've ever seen! It looks great on you."
"...Likewise." she paused the game she was playing just long enough to very slightly and briefly shake his hand. "Thanks, I guess."
"And duuude, is that a 3DS? You got any homebrew running on that thing?"
"...A little bit."
"Well, hey, I know some guys online working on a brand new game for it, if you wanna see what that hardware can really do!"
"Fair warning, it might melt your console," Fritz added, grabbing his friend's shoulder to lightly shove him along. "C'mon."
"Whoa, hey—I'm coming! No need to drag me!"

They continued from there to the lounge, for a meeting with Nancy that Fritz had helped set up for them. She gave them a brief interview: Basic introductions, why they wanted to join, and so on.



Thursday night, Ivan said: "Look—I get that it looks like a pretty nice place to live. Being real here, I do kinda get wanting to hang around with a lot of hot girls, too. But, like, with Fritz and Hendrix already members, we could basically hang there as much as we want without actually joining. You could easily ask one of 'em out or whatever. Is it really worth getting us both turned into girls just so we can live there? I mean, we've figured out how to handle living in this dorm, right?"
"Yeah, but...look. I mean actually look," Gio said with a gesture toward his body. "I'm not such a pleasant view to most girls. I might never meet anyonee into this no matter how charming of a personality I've got. With those rings that'd let us turn back into guys though...I mean, I could be fit. Or at least—not—so overweight, y'know?"
"I never got the impression your looks bothered you," Ivan pointed out.
"Well—not that much themselves. But, in how I get treated by people? A little."
He sighed. "I know what it's like to hate being overweight, and wanna improve. That's why I started exercising, and built up the discipline to keep doin' it. You know if you used this as a way to get fit, it won't stick without a commitment to work to keep it."
"Yeeeeaaaaah, I guess it wouldn't, huh?"
"Okay. I'll make you a deal. We can try to join—obviously up to them if they let us in or not. And if they do, and you get the body you really want or whatever—then you've gotta work to keep it. No backing out—you work with me to make time for working out regularly and put up with it."
"For real? Yeah, dude, I'll take that! It should be easier anyway, if I start out better than I am now! Right?"
"Yeah, probably."



"Listen: I am not in charge," Nancy explained. "I think this weekend is the time to fix this issue, so I won't be the one doing this anymore—especially if you two do join and put us at, what, fourteen members now? But anyway: I had time to plan ahead this time, so I've got a poll ready." She waved her phone in the air for a second. "I sent out something to all our members—now that most of 'em had a chance to meet you, is it cool to let you join. Just a yes-or-no, and I made it a package deal to simplify things since you definitely want in together in the first place. Fritz, you and Hendrix didn't get the text since I'm assuming you're both 'yes' anyway." He and the dog-girl both nodded. "So, just give everyone a few minutes to answer."

They chatted for another couple of minutes while they waited. "There's a group that's started playing DND," Fritz mentioned. "We kinda walked in on them for a couple of minutes yesterday."
"Sweet! You think they have room for one more?" Gio asked.
"That was the first session, so it might not be too much trouble," Nancy said.

Ivan said, "So uh—you're just hanging out as a girl now?"
"Hah—well, I only got to look like this in our dorm room 'till yesterday," Hendrix answered. "I thought I'd take this look around for a spin today, I guess. It's fun! A little weird to adapt to a totally different voice when singing, buuuut. There's loads of chicks in rock and roll, every one awesome! Plus I guess that Ursa Major chick might be taking advantage of a male form to like, be her own backup singer? That's what Jay says, anyhow; maybe that'd be fun too."


"..Okay, we have enough results," Nancy concluded after checking her phone again. "Basically everyone who's met you two said yes; a few who haven't abstained from voting. Nobody said 'no', which is ideal. You have a majority vote, so you're in if you'd like to be.
"Yeah!" Gio hopped to his feet and cheered. "Woohoo! We're in, dude!"
"Yep." Ivan stood up a little more calmly. "I guess that means we've gotta go move our stuff over. You didn't learn a Sword in the Stone-type packing spell, did you?" he asked Fritz.
"Uh..I learned how to pick stuff up with magic yesterday, but not very well."
"You shoulda seen that pillow hit the ceiling!" Hendrix added.
"Oookaaay, never mind."
"I'll help you guys move anyway," she said. "Lemme go get my ring to change, and I'll be right with ya."
"Yeah, I'll lug some stuff too," Fritz said. "As long as you carry your share."
"Hey, what kinda guy do you think I am?" Gio said. "It's my stuff, so I'll get all of it I can! Really appreciate the help, though!"



Hendrix liked being a girl, as far as he could tell. It was, maybe, just a new and exciting thing, which on reflection might be how Gio would see it too—at least at first. Fritz seemed to hate it, needing the temptation of access to a witch's phenomenal cosmic powers to even consider going back to that form. However...Ivan knew him to be a cautious person who disliked sudden change, so it was plausible that he was already in the process of warming up to it, and just reluctant to admit that.

He hadn't really asked how being a girl particularly felt. It would be a strange subject to bring up in the first place. A few of OZK's members, now that the two of them were officially joining, had given Gio and Ivan the warning that it might feel weird; the exhortation that it would probably feel 'good'; and the further warning that they would probably wake up very hungry. None of this really helped him understand what it would be like, or whether he would like the results or hate them.

Do I value being a guy? Ivan fell asleep with this question still not fully answered. But maybe this was for the best; it was very hard to even estimate the value of something like that before experiencing the alternative anyway.


He awoke to the sound of a voice he didn't recognize, a fairly deep female one. It seemed to just be some sleepy murmuring, a soft "Mrrrrnh" kind of sound, but (once Ivan was conscious enough to remember where he was and what was going on) it was a sign that his roommate's change had already happened—or was at least partway done. He squinted his eyes just the tiniest bit open, and found the same pitch darkness as when he'd first laid down; then he closed them again. There was just barely enough time for him to wonder why he wasn't a girl too by now before he noticed a warm, fuzzy feeling running all across his ears.

He tried to move, and succeeded in squirming a little bit in place. As that fuzzy feeling spread to his scalp and face, then began to flow down along his neck toward the rest of him, his ears felt like they were stretching out. He could feel them moving across his pillow as they got taller and taller; he shivered as the fuzzy sensation hit his torso and made a brief tingling race down his spine.
Now he managed to move one of his hands, slowly, upward, and it found some softer, longer locks of hair than he was used to on its way to examine an ear. Then he jolted again as his fingers found soft, warm fur—and the ear that fur was covering proved awfully sensitive to this touch. The base of his spine was still buzzing with that same fuzzy feeling too, even it faded from his torso and made its way out across his limbs. Something very slowly stretched its way out from down there, at the same time as his hand moved up from the base to the tip of a rounded, fuzzy ear that was at least as tall as the length from his wrist to his middle finger.

He shifted around slightly in bed, feeling the thing that had stretched out from his lower back rub across the sheets beneath him. It was covered in fur, too. And he could feel the soft locks his hand had encountered earlier making their way down his cheeks and starting to push their way down in between his back and the bed beneath him. The fuzzy feeling that had spread all across him had left him feeling warm and...comfortable. His ears and hair—and that tail—were nice and soft, and he felt kind of like he wanted more of that same softness everywhere.
"Mmh..." In response to this unexpected desire, his body began pulling itself inward. He shifted around a little more, feeling like that fuzzy warmth was touching him all over, resculpting his build. His arms and legs pulled slimmer and shorter, his face softening and rounding, his shoulders narrowing and his frame collapsing slowly inward. "Aah..aa~aah.." And he was getting shorter, too, made most obvious by the feeling of his feet pulling closer to the rest of his body even as he stayed fully stretched out across the bed. "Mm~mmh.." The soft sounds from his throat came out higher in pitch every time; he gradually became aware of a stronger warmth to his cheeks and his heartbeat picking up as this shrinking continued. And...down between his legs, the fuzzy feeling was getting very strong, pushing the part of him that made him male to get smaller—and yet, at the same time, seeming to stimulate it, causing him to grow still more excited...!

A high, boyish tenor came from Ivan's lips: "Ah..o~oh..mmnn~nnh..!" He squirmed around a lot more now, the changes to his body seeming to grow faster and more intense. Ivan could feel the softness sinking deeper into him, massaging his solid muscles in a way that made them want to relax. And so they did just that, steadily softening and weakening, as he continued to get smaller and rounder all over; he was too enveloped in the fuzzy, pleasant soft sensations all over to really register or worry about what was happening to all of the strength he'd built up over the past few years.

He could feel his underwear shifting, his boxers losing their leggings and pulling tight down there; even the material of that shrinking bit of cloth had turned velvety-soft. And now..there was a tugging, slipping sensation bringing even more heat to his whole body, as the underwear found more and more room between his legs to pull closer against. "Aah, aa~ah..!" His voice left masculine range now, lilting higher, softer, and cuter, as he felt the unbelievably, bizarrely pleasant sensation of his manhood melting fully away, his body's sex shifting completely to female.

"Mm~mm~mnnNNNN~NNNNnhh...!" The girly parts down there erupted in fuzzy, tingly, pleasant sensations just as soon as they had formed, making her squirm and thrash in place. All at once the new girl could feel her hips spreading wide, her thighs pushing themselves out a little thicker, and chest pushing itself out into a small pair of breasts. "Aa~ah..mnf...mm~mmh..." It was only a few seconds before her girlish figure had grown fully into place, the warmth that had spread all across her since the start of the change seeming to settle deep into her core to stay. "Hffh...mm~mmh..." A soft, not-quite-immature soprano tone echoed from her throat as she slowly settled down, enjoying the afterglow of all of the excitement and pleasant feelings the change had brought on. And no sooner had she managed to catch her breath than she felt totally exhausted and drained, and began to drift back to sleep...


In the morning, Ivan woke up in a soft, curvy body with bunny ears and a small tail to match. She sat up, slowly remembering the experience of change itself, and then jumped down onto her feet, hurrying over to the dresser to have a look in its mirror. Her shirt had changed into a long-sleeved dress shirt, completely unbuttoned, and her underwear was a pair of frilly sky-blue panties. She had already noticed a cape of brilliant hot-pink hair trailing into her vision, the tips of its locks touching her upper thighs; a pair of bright-yellow eyes also looked back at her in the mirror from a cute, brightly-blushing face. She hesitated for a second, then pulled the top apart to get a better look at her torso.
"Mrrrrgh." She growled a complaint quietly to herself; it was just as she'd feared. Her belly was soft, slender, and flat, with no trace of the abs she'd had as a boy just the day before. Her legs were likewise completely lacking in muscle tone, and—while there were shirt sleeves covering them—there was no doubt her arms were just the same.

Being a girl felt..nice? Being soft, cute, and curvy sure didn't bother her, to say the least. Bunny ears and a tail were certainly different, but seemed to just add to that pleasant softness and cuteness. The pink hair was...whatever; it made sense enough for a girl like the one in the mirror. But, now that she was awake, she was feeling very annoyed at just how not-physically-fit the magic had made her!



Gio is the type to go hard into the "rap/dubstep" section of that song with absolutely zero hesitation. Anyway, I guess the existence of gacha-based games proves this modern-fantasy setting isn't exactly a utopia.

Tuesday, August 18, 2026

The Next Chapter: 21




The Next Chapter
Chapter 21: Who Can Fix This Mess?


"Hmm hmm hmmmnn~..."

Beth passed by a girl who was walking slowly in the same direction and humming to herself. She was about average height, skinny, with exceedingly long light brown hair and half-closed eyelids. She seemed sleepy, yet content. Alyssa and Zurik passed by this person too, but after another few steps it was Beth who paused, turning around to do a little double-take. Her companions didn't stop until she said something.

"Hey—sorry, but. You look...super familiar for some reason?"
"Oh?" The stranger tilted her head slightly, and also opened her eyes just a bit more. From a front-on look, and that expression, it finally clicked.
"Oh, I know what it is! Did you ever, uh, model? Like for an artist?"
"Sometimes, yeah~." She spoke a little slowly, some of her words sounding like they were mid-yawn. "Pretty much exclusively for my body pillow, though."
"Your—uh—what?"

"Ooh, sorry~. I guess it's s'posed to be 'boyfriend'?" She smiled peacefully. "This'll be way easier once he finally gets around to proposing...then I guess I can say 'waifu' instead~."
"Uh...s-sure. So, your boyfriend though—is Xavier? That hot new artist known for super colorful, bright paintings, but who's all gloomy and moody in person?"
"Heehee, yeah, that sounds like Xavie~. Oh, I'm Vade, beeteedouble-you."
"Sure. I'm Beth, this's Alyssa and Zurik," she said. "What brings you to a college campus, then?"
"Oh, just wooorrrk," Vade said, her tone of voice betraying a tiny bit of annoyance at the concept. "Say, d'you know if this is the right way to the Omega Zeta Kappa house?"
"It is. We, were actually just headed that way ourselves."
"Really? Are you three members?"
"Nope—just guests. But invited ones!"
"We're, gonna play DND with some of the actual members," Alyssa pitched in.
"Cool~. I'll just follow you then, if you don't mind?"
"That's fine, I guess," Beth said.

She'd had a twinge of concern that this "Vade"'s slow walking pace might make them very late, but after the three in front had turned around and started walking, she glanced back once or twice to find the odd woman always the same distance behind them as she had been to begin with. The stranger thing, on further reflection, was that she usually didn't hear any of Vade's footsteps either. She just shrugged to herself after a while; it surely wasn't that important.

"What...um...kind of work do you do?" Alyssa asked around halfway from where they'd met to the house.
"Commissioned enchantments, spells, that kinda stuff. I'm a mage," Vade reported nonchalantly. "Apparently some of my work turned out to be a tiny bit defective...I guess."
"Your work...d-do you mean the house? How it transforms men?"
"Mmm-hmm. I mean—I totally can't take full credit for the design, but I'm the one they called in to fix that stuff."
"It's um...not going to start transforming people, while you're repairing it, is it?"
"No way—I'm lazy, but not stupid," Vade said. "I know very well to turn things off before working on them."

They split up once inside, Vade heading off toward the lounge while the others went upstairs and to the game room. Besides the three of them, Ed, and Jay, another couple of members had expressed an interest in playing: Kyosuke and Lyrica. Evidently both of them were kitsune with majors in the realm of theater; Lyrica had already warned that she might have to be an "only sometimes" kind of player if (she'd said "when") she made it into a play and rehearsals got busy enough.

They entered the room to find one large table set up for the day's session as previously instructed through some emails, and people crowding around another, smaller table in another part of the room. A wolf-guy Beth presumed to be Ed in "male form" was playing chess with that goth girl who'd had a shadow-arm on their earlier visit, and Jay (currently a girl) and a black-haired fox-girl with two tails (probably one of those two kitsune) were spectating.

"Check," Mary said right as the three of them came in, and then the whole group turned to briefly look. Maybe it would be more precise to say that Ed was losing a game of chess, going by the relative number of white and black pieces on the board.
"Uh, hey—we were just waiting," he said.
"Lyrica's running back here from class as we speak," Kyosuke added.
"Got it," Beth said. "Let's get the snacks and papers in place, then!"



"We're like ten minutes late..!"
"Sorry 'bout that," Hendrix said. "Teach just kept talking past when class was supposed to be over."
"No—it's fine. I know it's not your fault," Fritz said, hurrying to get the door to the OZK house open. "I just—really hate being late. But I guess, in this case...maybe they deserve for us to make them wait anyway!"
"Yeah, that's the spirit."

They headed inside, Fritz leading the way into the lounge—which he had seen on that tour a few days earlier, and which was the agreed-upon meeting place. Their arrival coincided with an unfamiliar person finishing her sentence: "..'till I actually see it for myself." The speaker was a girl with absurdly long, light-brown hair, who was lying all the way across one of the lounge couches across from a seated Nancy and Polaris. She sat up slightly as the two of them entered the room. "Ooh?"

The other two sat up slightly and turned toward the newcomers as well. "There you have it—just who you were seeking!" Polaris said, waving dramatically. "This is Fritz. Fritz, Vade."
"And this is Hendrix," Fritz added, gesturing.
"Uh-huuh..." she waved. "Nice to meet you guys." Her eyes seemed especially fixed on Hendrix. "Whaaat am I lookin' at here?"

"What do you mean? He's my roommate. I mentioned him in the call last Tuesday; did it not get passed on?" he asked, looking Nancy's way.
"Oh, I mean—I get that. But like..wow. There's a double-stack of super complex enchantments on him to do stuff that can be done just way simpler in one. Who cobbled that mess together?"
"I guess that'd be me? It's not like I have any idea what I'm even doing!"
"Huh? But you don't...ooooh." Vade nodded. "I get it. Prob'ly, anyway. Can you take your ring off so I can confirm though?"

Fritz sighed. "Fine.." He slid the ring off, and immediately started turning back into a girl again. The sensations of his hair growing, body shrinking, manhood disappearing, and then her curves pushing out into place seemed no less strange despite having endured them every night since Monday. But something new and different happened, too: His jeans split apart at the thighs, the top spreading into a dark blue skirt while the rest of the leggings merged with his socks into some long, dark stockings; his shirt grew long sleeves, a bra forming underneath it to catch her breasts just as they grew into place, and it turned into a dress shirt—complete with a bright-pink ribbon tying itself around the collar right as the transformation concluded.

"A..aack! What the heck!?"
"Wh-what happened to my clothes!?"
"Huuh? The ring always makes your clothes fit, whenever you change, to avoid embarrassment," Vade said. "I thought you'd used it a few times already?"
"Y-yeah, but—but it never put me in a skirt before!" she said, awkwardly tugging at the hem of that article of clothing.
"At least you're fully dressed?" Hendrix offered.
She blushed, remembering the past few nights when—of course—she had wound up in an open shirt that nearly threatened to show off bare breasts. "Rrrgh."

"Well~..putting that aside, I totally felt it once you became a girl," Vade said. "Just like I thought—you must be a witch! So how'd you make those enchantments on your friend, exactly?"
"I..I don't know! I just—like—tried to do what this crazy house did to me. A-a-and then, when that changed him by accident, I tried to do what the ring did to turn her back?"
"Huh..? Huuuh. Hmmn." Vade pulled herself mostly upright, giving Fritz a long, interested stare. "You mean to say—you imitated those magic effects? Successfully? After just seeing them in action once?"
"I..guess?"
"Buuuut, the exact method isn't identical. You only put an enchantment on, while the house's effect does something a little more permanent. Yeah, of course! That must be your 'specialty'! Hey, can you do this?" she said, lifting her right arm. A pillow on another couch in the room floated into the air in response to this motion, coming over toward her. When she dropped her arm, it stopped floating and fell to the floor.

"Uh..sure?" Fritz tried to do what she'd just seen, imagining she had the force and wanted to pick up the pillow with it. When she waved her arm to do that, a bunch of sparks appeared around the pillow, and it began floating upward. "Oh..wow..!" Then some more sparks erupted around it, and it shot into the air so hard that it hit the ceiling with an audible thump. "Uhh..!" She quickly let go, and it fell under normal gravity until Vade put out her hand to 'catch' it and give it a more gentle landing, floating it back over onto the couch it had come from.

"Pffheehee...that was a pretty good try! You've got a ton of power in you, maybe enough to be kinda dangerous? I'd seriously recommend, like, finding someone to teach you some better control. But being able to imitate an effect right away like that is amazing!"
"Sure, I guess..? You said something about a 'specialty'?"
"Yeah." Vade sat fully up, bringing her legs around to the front of the couch. "Normal mages, like me, usually have to learn spells and stuff to do magic. Witches and warlocks are special 'cause each one has a 'personal' way of doing magic that tends to make it 'just work'. Like, I know one witch who has to phrase her 'spells' in the form of a question. Or, the guy who taught me magic is a warlock who has to speak in palindromes to do it. Those're kinda hard to work with, though, so he mostly just learned to do magic like a 'normal' mage instead."

Polaris cleared her throat. "All of that aside, miss Vade—are you able to confirm why the enchantment affected Fritz, despite his being conscious at the time?"
"Oh, yeeeaaah," she nodded. "Seems like this might happen for anyone with a big enough store of untapped potential, who's super close to awakening in some way. That's totally not ideal, though, and I guess I'm gonna have to come up with a way to filter those people out. Uuugh, there's soooo many ways that can happen, though; there's no way I could just manually detect every single one."
"I may have already devised a workable solution, actually," Polaris said, gesturing proudly toward herself. "If you would permit me a look at the enchantment's source itself?"
"Really? That'd be super convenient," Vade said, smiling.

"Uh, hellooo? What about changing me back?! Or, fixing Hendrix?" Fritz said, waving at her roommate.
"Oh, right. Yeeeaah, we should do that first." Vade stood up. "Hmmh. Are you suuuure you wanna permanently become a guy again, though? You'd lose access to that amazing talent of yours. Besides, uhhm. If you had so much buildup already before, it might just cause you to 'pop out' again later."
"Pop. Out," she repeated.
"Yeah," Vade nodded. "Liike, you're just walking down the street, and someone in the next house over does something that puts out just a liiiittle too much ambient magic. Your own magic might just grab onto that and turn you into a girl all over again. You'd be way better off with something that'd let you go back and forth, plus learning to use your magic properly and stuff."
She crossed her arms. "...But I'd be stuck as a girl most of the time."
"No no! Just some of the time. Like, when you wanna, or when you wanna do magic," Vade said. "Look—my boyfriend's a witch, and is basically only a girl in private. But we don't have any more of 'that' potion, sooo...hmm. Oh, I've got it!" she said. "Can I borrow that ring for a minute?"
"Sure..?" Fritz held out the ring (which was still in her hand since taking it off), and Vade waved her hand to have it float over in front of her, keeping it in midair around an inch above the palm of that hand.

"Hmmmn...yeah. I can work with this." She squinted, a look of intense concentration taking over her face for a moment, and the ring glowed like it had been put into a furnace and was about to melt. After a moment, the glow faded off, and Vade let out an audible huff of air. "Okay! There. Now it'll work differently for you." She sent the ring floating over toward Fritz again; as it arrived, she observed that its color had changed to a similar shade of bright blue to her hair. "Putting it on will toggle to the other form; taking it off does nothing. So you won't have to wear it all the time no matter which one you want."
It landed in her hand, and actually felt slightly warm still. "Great...thanks. So uh, what about Hendrix?"

"Weellll. I mean, you can obviously change him yourself, right?"
"I'd rather not be in charge of that forever!"
"Okay okay~. Theen, we should just dispel both the enchantments. If I do that all at once, it might get kinda messy, but—you've turned the second one on and off a few times already, right? Just do that, to start with."

"Okay.."
Fritz carefully 'pulled' the magic that was trying to imitate her ring (or at least what it had been doing before), and a few sparks flew out of her roommate as he shrank and shifted, letting out a soft "Rr~rfh!" as he grew the usual dog-like ears and tail. Hendrix's pants pulled rapidly shorter and tighter as he turned into a girl, until they were a pair of tiny daisy dukes with some rips in the leggings; his shirt grew a huge collar to expose her neckline and cleavage.

"Heheh~.." she giggled slightly as the shift came to a close, leaving her back in that dog-girl form she'd spent the past few nights in.
"What!? Why'd you still get to wear pants?" Fritz demanded.
"I dunno? I'm totally showin' way more skin than you are, though," she said with a slight shrug.
"I-I guess.." she agreed, feeling a blush hit her cheeks again. "S-so you can turn her back to normal?" she asked, quickly looking Vade's way.

"Sure, but.." She tilted her head a little bit Hendrix's way. "Do you want that?"
"Uh, well, I dunno. I do like me the way I am—you know, as a rockin' dude. But this is pretty sweet too," Hendrix said, twirling a little of her hair in an index finger. "Could yooou...hook me up with somethin' like Fritz got, maybe?"
"I don't see why not," she said, shrugging slightly. "I'd just need another ring?"

"Well." Nancy stood up, finally interjecting. "Strictly speaking, those rings—altered or not—are only supposed to be for members of OZK. I mean, I gave Fritz one because him getting transformed was our bad, but if the newbie witch transformed her friend, that's kinda on you?" She crossed her arms. "I can support turning her back as a one-time thing, but I don't know how our backers would feel about giving away an expensive item like that just because you want it."
"Oh. So, like, what iiif...we joined OZK, then?" Hendrix said.
Fritz looked back and forth between them a couple of times. "What if—we—what?!"



Right after Ed lost his third chess game of the day, Lyrica arrived. Mary waved goodbye, saying that she had some homework to get to, and everyone gathered around the table for the game.

Behind the DM screen, Alyssa seemed to turn into an entirely different person. She was bold, dramatic, and sometimes loud, practically acting out all of the NPCs their party encountered. It also seemed like she was ready for absolutely anything, given how quickly and smoothly she reacted to events such as Jay doing something incredibly stupid or Kyosuke's character flirting with every girl he ran into.

Ed had chosen a fighter: Straightforward and simple. Kyosuke and Lyrica had gone with a rogue and bard respectively; Jay chose a sorcerer with wild magic; Zurik was a wizard; and (probably after seeing what everyone else had picked) Beth played a cleric. Each of their characters had come to some kingdom to earn a reward offered by its king for exploring some ruins, and the chancellor had insisted that they work together. Apparently there was some place called the "tomb of horrors" which had, a couple of centuries earlier, been full of treasures and traps and had attracted and killed would-be adventurers in droves. The trouble was that those same adventurers' remains were now walking out of the tomb's ruins as undead and making trouble. The group's goal was to at least find out what was causing that to happen, and ideally to stop it.

As they progressed through the ruins, Alyssa gave a surprising amount of detail—though not so much as to become tedious—about some obviously pre-solved puzzles and broken, disarmed, or already-sprung traps. They fought a few groups of those undead adventurers and dealt with a couple of still-partially-functional traps along the way; the only treasure to be found was some mostly-ruined old equipment those undead had been wearing. And then they came upon one last group of undead, who did not seem to want to fight. Instead the one whose head and mouth were most intact was clearly trying to talk, but in a language that no one in the party knew. Lyrica's bard managed to figure out a way to communicate through sign language, and it seemed like these undead knew something about what had raised them, and wanted it dispelled just as badly as the king did. This was where the session ended.



"Think about it, dude! You're gonna be a chick like half the time, right?"
"I mean—no! Not anywhere near half!
"But still some of the time, right? Like, if you wanna practice magic stuff in our room?"
"Maybe? I'm still not totally on board with that."
"Aww, c'mon. Seriously think about it. You've got a super-amazing talent, riiight? Besides, I could see your face when you just casually picked up that pillow from way over there..."

After the blond dog-girl suggested joining OZK, Vade had gestured for Polaris to follow, then floated herself up off of her feet and quickly out the door and down the hall toward the laundry room. The celestial took a moment to comprehend this cue, and then quickly made her own movements silent so she could vault over her chair and run to follow. Their voices trailed off as the two of them entered the room, drowned out by the noise of a running dryer.

"Not that I will deny my own desire, but—are you certain this was an appropriate time to leave?"
"Naah, it's all good," Vade said, taking out a key from her purse to open the door to an adjoining room—which Polaris knew was where some "mundane" utilities such as a hot water heater were stored. "Trust me, I've seen this kinda conversation before. She'll end up agreeing to join, and then they gotta go aaallll the way upstairs and back again to get another ring for the blondie."
"If you say so."

Vade floated into the utility room, going to a bare wall, and placed her hand on it. Some glowing white magic appeared outlining the hand, then spread out into a large circular sigil. "That's...I thought I looked for enchantments everywhere," the celestial said.
"Heheh~. It's 'powered off' unless it's actually in use, which makes it pretty hard to notice," the mage said. "It only accepts a few specific people's magic—plus one 'backup key' we keep someplace else, just in case." The sigil brightened, then spread its light out into a brief flash across a section of the wall in the shape of a slightly thin, tall rectangle; then that section of the wall disappeared, revealing a doorway into a narrow downward stairwell.

"Sooo like..we technically weren't supposed to build stuff underground," Vade said with a slight shrug, "but it's way safer if the focus for structural..stuff, isn't inside the place it's affecting. You can keep a secret, right?"
"Immaculately."
"Pfft. Zale would just love hanging around you." The mage continued floating her way down the stairs into a small basement cut into the house's foundation, Polaris right behind her. The room featured a few tall, hexagonal crystals, each glowing and floating in place. She identified their effects immediately, and followed Vade to one whose light was bright pink—which was responsible for the transformation enchantment. With a couple of gestures of the mage's hand, that one's glow faded out.

"Theeere we go. Now, what's your idea for fixing the problem?"
"I was able to directly observe the enchantment's flux when it affected Fritz. It was quite irregular for several minutes before actually entering him. Therefore, it should be possible to detect such an irregularity," Polaris explained.
"Oooh, of course! Reactive rather than proactive," Vade nodded. "Let the magic's flow do the hard work of detecting instead. Just the kind of solution I like."
"Indeed. I believe I have some concept of how to implement the detection and cutoff measures, as well..."



"I-it was a lot of fun...! Um, y-you're really good at this," Zurik said.
Alyssa smiled. "Thanks. I have a theory that one can get good at anything, given sufficient practice."
"That bunch is a lot of fun to play with," Beth said. "Already looking forward to next time. Aaaand I appreciate you not making me turn undead another twenty times."

They split off from him after that, and Beth gently elbowed her friend. "Hey. You were kinda looking back a couple of times as we left the place. Something up?"
"Um...n-nothing too extreme. It's just that..."
"That..?"
"Lyrica. Whenever I looked at her, I.."
"Uh-huh?"
She blushed a little with embarrassment "I really...really wanna hug her tail! I-it looks like a cloud made out of fluffy fur. I bet it's really soft, and warm too..."
"Pfft. I guess you'll have to console yourself with your stuffed animals for tonight," Beth said. "Still—we're totally gonna see her again. I guess you could ask her then?"

"I-I don't know...it seems like a, well, a sensitive topic, is all. I'm, u-uncertain how to approach it," Alyssa said.
"Eh, you're smart. You'll figure it out," Beth said, patting her friend's head. "At least talk to her one-on-one next time, yeah?"
"Th-that'd be a good start, I agree..."



Nancy knocked on the door to the game room, then strode in, Fritz and Hendrix (both back to being male for now) trailing behind her. "Excuse my interruption, but—those of you present who are members of OZK are enough to combine with existing votes into a majority, and I don't wanna be accused of making decisions like this by myself. We really need to elect a high council soon, at this rate. Anyway—these two are Fritz and Hendrix. Due to some exceptional circumstances which are entirely Polaris's fault, they already have female forms, and want to join OZK. Introduce yourselves?"

Fritz fidgeted his hands for a moment. "Uh..hi. I'm a sophomore in pre-law...and apparently a witch or something," he added quickly under his breath.
"Yo! I'm Hendrix, and I'm gonna be a rockstar," his roommate said almost immediately after, just as some of the sorority members (who all had animal ears) were reacting to that last statement. He made a brief 'air guitar' gesture, as if to further demonstrate his intentions.
"Oh, hi! I know you," Jay said, hopping up to her feet. "You're in choir, right?"
"Yep."

The two of them endured a barrage of questions after that—largely from the three fox-girls. Kyosuke was not willing to let go of the subject of Fritz being a witch, and seemed impressed to hear of his "copycat" talent, eager to see it for herself. Lyrica wanted to know if either of them "gamed", and Fritz admitted that he did "a little". After some chatter back and forth, the group more or less seemed to agree that they were cool with the two newcomers joining. On their way out, Kyo strongly urged Fritz to get with her later to meet "some of the magic profs". After that, they were off to get supper before heading their dorm room to start moving out.

This really wasn't how Fritz had expected this afternoon to go. But...the house was a huge upgrade from their dorm, and at least the people he'd met so far seemed like the kind of nerds he could get along with.

But...how were Gio and Ivan going to take this news?