Ring 2.2: Kell

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Ring 2.2:
Kell

After lunch, Kevin returned home and took a good, long look in the mirror. As expected, Liam was right. He didn't quite look like he used to: Still the same old scrawny guy, but careful inspection made it clear he had grown a little bit. He partially wondered how he hadn't at least noticed the hair earlier, like in the shower. He promised himself that he'd pay more attention from now on--what was happening was fascinating, and he certainly wasn't going to do it twice.

Then he turned to the nightstand, the ring waiting there. He picked it up, looking at it briefly to wonder how something so small and simple-looking could hold such an amazing power. The admiring stare was brief, however: He was eager to make use of that power. So he slipped on the ring, and thought of Kell. He didn't have to go into any specifics or anything; the ring glowed almost instantly.

Kevin turned to the mirror, and took off the ring. There was a brief pause, as usual, followed by a slight tingling across his body. His skin became smoother, the body hair thinner and much shorter, and the color paled a little bit. When that was done, his hair began to grow, the red tint to its color quickly brightening. He slowly grew taller, especially his legs.

His shirt and underwear both began to shrink. The underwear pulled up off of his legs and began to grow tighter between them. The shirt's sleeves pulled in and disappeared, while the lower hem began to rise up off his stomach. Both were starting to shift from their original colors to a brighter red tint. He was a little surprised to see his hair continue growing past shoulder-length, but not particularly distressed.

Eventually his height settled, and the shape of his body began changing. His hips and upper legs grew wider, while his stomach (now mostly exposed by the shirt) became thinner. His shoulders pulled in a little bit, his arms thinning and fingers becoming slightly smaller. He observed these changes with a grin: He was starting to feel his confidence come back. It didn't matter what other people thought of him, he could do whatever he set his mind to. If he was comfortable with himself, everyone else would be happy to be around him. Things like that he'd told himself for years, but here and now it felt more real, less like thoughts he was trying to put into himself and more like ideas he was having.

By now his hair reached halfway down his back, and the flowing locks of red hair were starting to look next to impossible to manage. But that didn't concern Kevin. He could see his underwear's sides diminishing to strings, frills forming on the top part, but more importantly than that, he see it getting closer between his legs, and could feel a gentle pulling there to match the change he was seeing. He smiled as the feeling there faded, replacing itself with a very different one. Now she was Kell..almost.

Taking note of a couple of ribbons and some braids that had appeared in her still-growing hair, which was now down to her hips, Kell looked up to her shirt. It was pink, like the panties, and the hem had stopped moving once it had reached her still-flat chest. The collar began to open up and move down, leaving behind a couple of straps over her shoulder. At the same time, she could feel her chest starting to push forward just a little bit, and see it growing into two small bumps as the shirt's neckline pulled down past them.

The top of the shirt gained a bunch of frills, and soon the middle pulled down to a single point, a small white bow appearing to hold together the two sides. At the same time, her chest continued to fill out. As it did, she could feel her nerves vanish, her confidence growing, swelling with the forming breasts..until finally, the pushing finished, leaving her with an impressive bust, an amazing figure to match, and a smile on her face.

She bent over toward the mirror, now almost too tall for it. Her hair reached halfway down her legs now, but it had finally stopped, too. "Hmm..gonna need another haircut, I guess," she said. She went over to her dresser and got out some shorts and a t-shirt, gender-neutral clothes that Kevin could get away with buying and having in his room, even though they were slightly too big for him.

Flora had probably been right, she thought to herself while dressing. It wouldn't hurt to wear something a little more feminine now and then. And soon, she wouldn't have to worry about raising suspicion by buying something like that. Still, even these clothes came off as pretty flattering, since her hips were wide enough to make the shorts tighter up top, and the way the shirt hung off her chest made its size rather obvious.

---

"So am I still me to you?" said Kell, walking with Liam to his house.

"Sure. Are you you to you?"

"Definitely."

"Even with that hair?"

"It'll go back in twelve hours, and then I'm gonna make sure it doesn't grow this long again. I figured I might as well try it since I've never had absurdly long hair before."

"Li, I just don't think you know what it's like to have all those nerves all your life and then be able to throw them all away at once. I feels great. It's like a huge backpack full of rocks I've been wearing forever, and now I get to take it off and throw it away. I mean, I know I could've taken out the rocks one by one, but..you know..it's way better this way."

"Hah! Avenging my one-syllable nickname, are you?"

"Huh? Oh, I wasn't even thinking about that. But really, it's amazing, I'm not afraid of everything anymore! The only thing that's scared me at all when I'm like this is turning back. But, soon I won't even have to do that."

"So you're not afraid of anything, eh? Not even spiders?"
"Ha! I'll stomp 'em."
"Heights?"
"Well I'm not gonna walk a tightrope, because I didn't get stupider, but if I ever go to see the Grand Canyon I'm gonna actually see it."
"Crowds?"
She laughed. "No way! Like, last night I..oh, yeah, I haven't told you about what happened last night yet! The arcade thing."

"Of course, there were more pressing matters. So how was it?"
"It was fun. I made friends with some real girls. I mean..I guess I'd better stop thinking of it that way, but, you know, it was a bunch of people who like to game and everyone I met was pretty cool and fun to be around. Oh, and I got to show off on DDR."
"Great. So maybe ya won't choke the next time a competition comes around?"

"Yeah. Next time, I'm gonna win. Or at least get in the finals."

"Kell, you oughta know winners never settle for second place."
"Well, confidence obviously isn't the same as competitiveness. I'd just be a jerk if I couldn't live with being really good and not the best."

"Anyway, I met lots of cool people. Like, there was this girl Aki who was really short and slightly hyper. We managed to find a Rock Band set nobody was using and she was a great singer, even when she said she didn't know the songs. She was friends with, ah..Jenna, and Flora. Jenna was a master at Soul Caliber II, and pretty much every fighting game we played after that. Flora was kinda super-girly, and did more talking than playing sometimes, but she still didn't seem too out of place there. Um..and there was Sam and Sara and Lauren..I think I know them all from school, but I mean, I've never really talked to them before. And that's what's really great, I can actually talk to people now instead of awkwardly standing there with no idea what to say and eventually getting scared and running away."

"Hm..so those three you didn't know from school, did they say where they were from?"
"No, but nobody really felt the need to ask, either. Kinda lucky for me since I'm not really sure what I would've said if I was asked for more detail. I just claimed I was new in town and didn't go beyond that. Oh, hey! That'd be a good reason."

"A reason for what?"
"You could use the disguise ring to go to the free arcade night. Apparently they have it every month, and it's always all-girls, so.."
"Eh, we'll see. I don't know whether that's worth usin' up the one disguise. I mean, the arcade's open all the rest of the month, it just isn't free. And that's not a hurdle for me. You know I don't like to go into what I can afford."

"Yeah."

"..Liam?"
"Hn?"
"Thanks for being such a great friend. You're the best person I ever could've met."
"Hah, I'm not the best person. I wouldn't be so kind to ya if I didn't see something I liked."

"But that's just it. You can see stuff other people can't, you figured stuff out about me before I did and then helped me see it. I mean, I'm sure you know this stuff already, but I never really felt able to say it all aloud."

"Well, don't forget what I said this morning."
"Oh, I know. I don't think I want to be attached that way to anyone right now, anyway. I'm finally enjoying being me, so unless I'm just totally lovestruck I'm not gonna give that up to be someone else's girlfriend."

"Well, you shouldn't foreswear dating all the way, you know. All you gotta do is put it the other way around--whoever it is, make him your boyfriend."

"I know, I don't mean forever. Just, not right now. Definitely not before the whole 'becoming the mask' thing is done, and probably not for a while after that. But I'm trying to say you don't have to worry about me dating anyone, including you, for a while."

"By the way, speaking of this morning, I think you said something about you and me being human. But you also told me you were magic once..right? Am I imagining that?"
"Nah, that's what I said. I'm human, and I'm magic. You can be both. An' I'll flip over a house before I let someone tell me I ain't human just because I'm magic. People in this world think you're either human or less than it, and I don't have the pride it takes to say I'm more, so I'm not taking any chances on the semantics of it all."

"But you don't understand how magic works, either?"
"Nope. Nobody understands magic, Kell. Mages don't understand it, humans who happen to be magic like me don't get it, nobody gets it. The sooner you understand that, the readier you are to deal with it. Anyway, here we are." They had finally made it to Liam's home, and went inside.

Leading the way inside, Liam said, "So what do ya wanna do today?"
"Umm, I dunno. How about some DDR?"
"Heh. Sure. You know, I'm surprised being a totally different shape doesn't affect your skills at all."
"I think it has something to do with the 'perfect disguise' bit. It wouldn't be perfect if it didn't feel natural that way. And..it must preserve practice and knowledge and stuff."

"Sure seems like it."