The "Best" RPG Ever-38

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Nora stood in something resembling a grand cathedral, in between the end of two long rows of tall, white candles burning in every color of the rainbow, before a towering statue that threatened to scrape the roof. She was wearing a cermonial dress of some sort that was mostly obsucured by a white cloak on the outermost layer; it made her feel uncomfortable, disconnected from the world around her, but it seemed that dulling those senses was the point of the outfit. She was...supposed to be focused on the statue, or more specifically, who it represented.

A god, of course; one of those she had read about the other day at the library. Specifically, she who goverened nature, shaped like a centaur with a strong horse's lower body and the upper body of a beautiful woman. She had a scar across her horse half's right flank, represented in statue form by a long, deep cut hewn into that part of the stone, traditionally only after the rest of the work was complete. Nora's talent of reading and manipulating nature was like a frail echo of the goddess's own, and at the same time recognized by those here as a gift from her, to be used in her service.

Why was she here now...? Part of her felt as if she hadn't been here in years, and part as if this was just another step in the daily routine. But ultimately, it felt like this was because of what had happened last night, or...earlier tonight? There was noon sunlight coming into the cathedral, but a part of her knew it was really still night. She had meant to use the goddess's power for good, of course, to protect and heal others, and destroy abominations against nature—monsters, demons, undead, anything else like that. But it hadn't gone that way tonight, had it? Instead she'd been used by one, her hand turned against an ally. Was this...supposed to be penitence for that?

No...this experience, standing here in front of the statue, wasn't about apologizing. It was about doubt. This was...the day before she had left. Of course, she wasn't supposed to leave for at least another century, not until...something had happened, the idea of what was vague at the moment. Days before this she had stood here and planned the escape, thinking only of how useless it was to have a power like hers and spend her days here doing little more than gardening, listening to lectures, standing in this place. There were people hurting and dying out there, and even the priests here would be loath to follow her to the frontier, as dangerous as the journey was supposed to be.

This was the last time she stood before the statue, and she was saying goobdye. If the goddess didn't want her to leave, she could leave a message in her dreams tonight, or a vision to one of the priests, warning them to stop her. No such thing had happened, but then, the gods often seemed reluctant to stop a mortal who really wanted something, even to the point of allowing a follower to go directly against their wishes. It was just that if that happened, the god often felt it right to punish that mortal sometime afterward. Nora didn't feel particularly punished at the moment, but in the context of what had happened tonight, the doubt from back then that she should leave took on a new meaning: Should she have waited? Was there a risk of her power, the goddess's great gift, being wasted or misused further just because she hadn't learned everything here? But surely, the good she had done since leaving, instead of waiting around here for longer than some races even lived, was more than enough to make up for a few missteps. Was it?

Nora received no answer; the statue was as silent as always. But as she was about to remember turning and leaving this place, she did hear a dog...barking and whining outside. That hadn't happened before, a part of her said. It was worth investigating. She turned and left in more of a hurry than it felt she really had back then, but as soon as she began running between the rows of candles toward the exit, she awoke with a start, sitting up in bed, the feeling of too much covering her skin fleeing as the covers fell off of her torso.

The elf bolted upright, eyes wide open, and then turned quickly to the source of the noise. Zack and Katherine's beds, next to each other tonight, were empty, the former's looking like a real wild animal had stayed in it recently. And the wild animal the group knew best was on his hind legs, forepaws on Zack's bed, and he was barking and whining in distress, probably at sleeping through his 'alpha' disappearing.

Behind her, the witch gave an obnoxiously loud yawn. "Huueeehh~...what's all the ruckus about?" "Z-zack's gone." Nora stood up and went over to the wolf, bending over slightly and putting a hand close to the top of its head in an offer to comfort him. He paused to growl briefly at her, but then just pushed his head up to the hand and rubbed it a bit anyway.
"Oh, yeah. Kath woke herself up to get him to the healer."

"I see." She fixed her eyes on the wolf's, rubbing its head gently. "He's g-getting help. That's good. They'll be b-back soon." The wolf gave a mollified sort of whine and ducked back onto the floor, out of her reach again. He gave a soft bark that seemed like a 'hmph' and moved over to the door to go out and downstairs. Mika opened it for him.

"So, uh, how'd you sleep?"

"Well, I s-suppose. I had a strange dr-dream."

"Hey, if you don't like those you could ask our resident catgirl to bridge you into the multi-dream with me," she said. "Way more chill than a blast of subconscious confusion."

"Hmn." The elf responded neutrally, uncertain about the offer. Everything about the events and thoughts in that dream had felt so familiar, even though...she'd never really been to a place like that. And the bandits from before had said something about her being a priestess, right?

By the time they got downstairs, the two animal girls were on their way inside, and Zack seemed to be walking normally again, maybe even in something resembling good spirits. The wolf had been waiting at the door and practically jumped over to sniff his alpha up and down in greeting, before drawing himself back to a calm sitting position and pretending he hadn't. The witch ran up to them, Nora trailing slowly behind. "Good morning!" she said cheerfully.

"Morning, sleepyheads," said the psion. "You as hungry as we are?"

"Well, I did just eat last night," said Mika, "but I could go for some normal food too." They sat down at a booth up against the wall the stairwell was behind and started ordering.

After that was done, the witch said, "Now, I have an announcement. I want to call myself Mira from now on."
"Okay," said Zack. "Why?"
"Well, I feel like it fits my new look a lot better. Don't you?" He just shrugged.

"An-yway," the catgirl cut in, "We all have something we need to discuss."
"Last night," the knight nodded. "It didn't really go so well."

Nora looked away from the others, toward the rest of the tavern. "I'm s-sorry," she said softly.

"Hey, it's not your fault," Zack said. "Or.."
"I mean, it is a little bit, but not any more than it is mine," said Katherine. "I should be better than that at defending people against mental assaults."
"Or I probably should've done something about it," said Mira, "I mean, the mess wouldn't have started without my help."

Zack cut in, "The point is that it doesn't matter whose fault it is, or if it's even someone's fault in the first place. We just need to plan on how to prevent something like that from happening again. And.." He waved at Nora, trying to get her to look at him across the table. When she did he gave her a seroius look. "I know what it felt like too, okay? It's...I don't think either of us could really help it."

"B-but you actually did resist it," she said. "I...I c-could feel its frustration every time it looked into your eyes and nothing happened. I just...g-gave in right away. It made me f-feel something that I d-d-didn't understand, I was c-c-confused and...and curious and...I just, let it take over." She looked and felt on the verge of tears at this point.

Katherine tried to comfort her. "Nora, it's.."

"I t-t—" she started loudly, and then much more quietly but with the same intensity, "I tried to kill you! I really t—...tried. How can you..."

"Well, you're sorry, aren't you?" said the catgirl.
"Y..yes?"
"Then I forgive you. Just don't do it again or I'll make your head explode."

"I'll..I'll remember that." She calmed down a little. And then, nervously, the elf giggled a little bit. "Heheheh..."

Zack said, "What?" Unknown to them, Rose paused in the stairwell, hearing him say it through the wall.
"I d-don't know, this is all still v-very strange. Th-that kind of thing could never be a serious threat back on Earth. This whole s-situation wouldn't even make sense to a-any of us a week or two ago."

"I guess so, yeah." Zack leaned forward onto crossed arms on the table. "I'm really starting to miss having a job that's not 'risk your life and everyone else's daily'."

"Enough about that," said Katherine. "Strategy! I can buy some skills for putting a mental shield over everyone, but first and foremost we shouldn't be afraid to konk each other on the head a little if we get confused or charmed or anything else like that. Worst case we knock an ally out and they stop hurting anyone instead of continuing to come after the rest of us."

The dragon-girl hadn't moved, except to carefully maneuver her head so her ear was against the wall and the horn on that side wasn't inside said wall. The key word was Earth. Not dirt, a location that they'd been "back on" at some point in the past. A week or two? Rose tried unsuccessfully to do the math...it hadn't been an entire week since she'd arrived, she thought. This was not a one player game; they were talking about learning skills, like from a skill tree, like hers. Well, it hadn't felt like a one-player game anyway, every person she'd met had felt quite real. Was everyone she met just another player and nobody mentioned it because it was obvious to all of them? Or was it just...a few people, these four here? What about the other girls she'd met? The dragon-girl wasn't sure whether to bring it up or not, maybe someone would be mad at her for messing up their roleplaying or something. Roleplayers were weird like that sometimes. But here they were talking about it out of character in the in character tavern! But...

It sounded like they were stuck just like she was. Even if she brought up the subject, they wouldn't know a way to go back. Did she want to go back? It'd be nice to have the opportunity, to maybe lift the strange haze that hung over her mind from time to time. Rob wasn't really a fun person to be, though, honestly, and Rose was so much more...everything! There was something else, too...

If not everyone was a player, and if they didn't know who was or wasn't a player just like she didn't know...then they probably thought she was really a dragon from birth. If she asked them about this game business, if she told them the truth...they'd know it wasn't really her. It felt like this was really her, but in the eyes of anyone from Earth she'd just be Rob again. And in some ways she didn't like the idea of being Rob, and certainly didn't want to be seen as him while she was her! She liked being the cute, energetic dragon-girl they'd met, awkwardness and all. Besides, they would...they might not be as friendly to her if they knew who she really was, or had been...? It was fuzzy, she had a memory of being Rose for so long that it was hard to say that wasn't really who she was. So if that's who she was, then telling people she was Rob, from Earth, would then be what was lying, wouldn't it? It would give them the wrong impression, she concluded, and the impression they all had of her now was surely the right one, or at least the much more accurate one.

Grateful nobody had tried to use the stairs in the last few minutes, Rose stood upright again and shook her head slightly. That was right, she thought, that was the good way to think of it if not the only one. Fully convinced of what would be more honest now, she took the last few steps down. Oh, that sounded like the nice people who'd helped her find this town the other day, maybe she could say hello to them!

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Lynn stood at the the front of the group, before the counter in the guardhouse. They had a fresh paper from the quest board asking for someone to track and kill a "moderate-sized" pack of goblins. The guard at the counter, a Canis man, nodded after looking at it."We had some trouble with a bunch of goblins destroying and looting caravans not too long ago. Someone spotted some more goblins in the distance on the way into town recently, and we figure, best if they don't get a chance to fill the vacuum. But unlike the ones before, we don't know where their hideout is, or even where they are. You have any experience tracking?"

"I'm pretty sure we can do it," said Rayna, nodding.
"Alright." He dug around behind the counter and pulled out a small piece of paper showing a map with the location of the town indicated near the edge and an X near the middle. Pointing at that X he said, "This is about where the traders saw 'em. Pretty much the only starting point we've got." Then he offered it to Lynn, who passed it on the fox-girl. "Best of luck to you, ladies."

"We don't need luck," said Aria, crossing her arms and grinning. Then, after a pause..."but thank you." It was kind of a trained response of hers, but she realized afterward that it might sound rude.

"Mm-hm." The guard nodded, just seeming to take it in stride. The four of them headed out.

"We don't need luck?" Lynn echoed once they were on their way out of town, Rayna of course leading with the map.

"It's a thing I used to say when I was streaming and somebody wished me good luck, like for a speedrun or a high score attempt or something. I would say—'I don't need luck. I got skill.'"
"It sounds a little...arrogant," said Clera.

"It was always true, though," Aria said. She shook her head, knowing that explanation wouldn't be enough. "It's not about arrogance, see, arrogance is thinking 'oh, I'm better than everyone else'. It's about confidence and hard work. It's saying, I put in the hours, I know this like the back of my hand, I believe I can do it, luck be darned. If I make it because I'm lucky that's not good enough, see?" She sighed. "Folks who watched my streams understood what I meant because they saw all the work and practice and heard me talking about confidence a lot. Anyway, in this case I was thinking, we don't need luck—we just learned a bunch of new skills.

"...Heh, it's a little stupid of me though, I guess, I mean it's a reference nobody else but me was ever gonna get." She made a twirling motion next to her ear. "Blame it on my low charisma and intelligence scores screwing with my personality, I guess."

"Wait, your charisma's low?" said Lynn, headtilting. "Frankly your, uh, default form isn't any less attractive than mine or Rayna's—"
"Hmph," the fox-girl in front protested.
"—well, mine at least, anyway. And even if it was you could literally make yourself as beautiful as you want, because shapeshifting."

"Well, charisma means a lot of things," said Aria. "It doesn't matter how pretty a person is if they can't get along with other people at all. I think what little score I have is just from looks, 'cause I've been super awkward socially ever since getting turned into this. And I wasn't like that before, I mean, I had tons of friends and followers..."
"Just...how much is it affecting your behavior?" said Clera, sounding concerned. "Are you able to tell?"
"A fair bit, I think." She nodded. "I'll just blurt out something and then it'll take me a minute to realize I phrased it in just about the worst way possible, or that I shouldn't have said it at all. It's like who I used to be is still in my head, playing catchup with who I am now and going 'Aria, you big dummy, nobody was gonna understand you meant that!' But it doesn't matter." The shifter shook her head again. "I mean...you guys understand me, or at least try to, even when my mouth isn't as coherent as my brain. That's enough."

Two for One

Battle Vixens! - 3

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Episode 3: A Personal Visit

"Mnnh.." Her eyes slowly reopened as she recovered from being stunned. "W-wha..what did you...do? I feel so...weak."

"I'm not really sure. I didn't kill you though—and I won't." Blake dismissed her weapon (and heard sparking sounds nearby as the other girl's weapons disappeared as if from the same command) and swung back until she was off of her opponent, sitting on the ground with her legs bent backwards on opposite sides of her butt. It was an unfamiliar position but felt strangely natural. Her opponent slowly sat up. "Now maybe you'll just talk to me for a minute, huh?"

"I...I guess so." Her ears twitched, and she looked around.
Blake jumped slightly, realizing they'd just had a somewhat visible and loud fight, and she looked around herself, quickly making both of them invisible. There wasn't anyone visibly here, but surely someone in that house over there, or the houses they'd run over or around, might have called the police by now. "Err, rain check. Let's go somewhere the cops might not be in like five minutes." She hopped to her feet and offered her former-opponent a hand, which she took, rising more carefully to her feet. Well, at least she seemed to be able to stand. "Uhm...This way."

Blake started moving at a brisk but human-attainable pace, but stopped not long afterward, hearing the smaller girl panting heavily, and turned to see her bent over in exhaustion. She went over, putting a hand on the girl's back. "What's going on? You were running way faster than this before."

"I-I was...but I c—hh—can't anymore. I feel like I'm j-just a normal girl." She managed to stand up again.

"Okay, um..." There were sirens, distant but audible to her ears now. They couldn't just walk away, invisibility or not. Blake tried carefully picking the girl up; it was manageable, but only because she was so small and light. "Alright. Just hold onto me for a minute." The girl put her arms up around her shoulders, and Blake started off again, not a full-tilt run but a little faster than the "human-achievable" speed a moment ago. She found a small patch of trees after a minute or so of running, and stopped in the middle of them, setting her passenger down and sitting down in front of her in the same manner as before.

"Phew. This should be far enough for now," Blake nodded. "Nobody can see us so we're good if we keep our voices down. Now can you please tell me why you'd rather die than turn yourself in?"
"I-I..." She looked on the verge of tears. "They...they took my granddaughter!" she said finally, and did start crying, an immature-seeming sob that juxtaposed very strangely with her just saying she was a grandparent.
"They—? Who did it? You were, you stole money for a ransom?!" Blake said, finally catching on.
"Mn-hnh.." She nodded, and sniffed. "J-just enough to pay it, with what I had in savings. They took her a few days ago, a-and I told them I didn't have enough. They kept saying 'no police' and said I was holding out on them. W-when I woke up this morning and I could, do this," she made a motion to the current state of her body, "I thought, 'this is it, I can save her!'"

"You..?" Blake's left ear fell to the side in a bit of confusion. "I mean, I would've thought the same thing, but...by actually tracking them down and literally saving her, not stealing for it. If they think you can just get money whenever you want they'll keep asking for more! Or—wait, you're not even rich, right?" She shook her head. "What kind of stupid bad guys are we dealing with here?! You're supposed to kidnap rich people's kids if you want ransom money. Or at least someone in government or, something! I mean—"

Her rant was cut short at this point by another loud-ish sniff, and seeing the other girl rubbing a teary eye. "D-do you really think they'll keep asking for more? I d—...I just want to see my baby again." She sounded like she was really going to start bawling now, advice to keep quiet or not.

"H-hey, hey..." Blake put her hands on the smaller girl's shoulders, trying to calm her down. "There's no need for that, alright? Seriously, we have superpowers now. Or..." Her ears went down a little. "...I do at least, I'm sure I can figure out how to make yours work again though. Dealing with 'no police' ransom situations is supposed to be a thing you can do with those."
"I have no idea who they are, or where.."

"Look, I'm pretty good at tracking someone who doesn't wanna be found. I found you, didn't I? You get me to the last place she was seen, or like where their car pulled away or whatever, and I'll do the rest. We can find their hideout, get her out without them even noticing, and then you can like, electro-taze them until the cops get there! And..we'll figure things out with you and the police after that."

She seemed calmer, but still cautious. "Y-you don't even know me, or if I'm even telling the truth..."

"You could've literally stolen all the money this morning, but you only took as much as you needed. I saw it on the news. As for not knowing you, well—that doesn't matter at all! You need help, and I can help you." Blake nodded, giving a hopeful grin.

"Mnn..." The smaller girl's eyes started to tear up again. Then she surprised Blake by a tackling hug, and cried "Awwwhh!" The taller girl returned the hug with only a little awkwardness, patting her back a couple of times and trying to ignore the collar of her shirt getting wet. After a moment, they disengaged, and the small girl drew herself back out of personal-space range, looking a little surprised and confused. "I-I'm sorry, I don't know what...that's not how I normally act," she said, her face reddening with a blush.
"I wouldn't expect so," said Blake. "I think looking different comes with some kind of personality changes. It's okay, I've had some of those too." She nodded.
"O-okay."

"Now, this is how we should play it, I think," said the taller girl, crossing her arms and aiming for a serious expression but unintentionally landing at a cute frown. "We could track them down from where they first picked her up, like I said, but there's a quicker, easier option 'cause you paid them already." The smaller girl nodded. "They're gonna contact you soon for one of two things—'here's where to get your girl back', or 'we're greedy jerks and want more money now'. Either way, you send me a...you have a cell phone, right?" She nodded again. "Okay, you'll send me a text that says 'go time' and I come to your house and we go to where they want the pickup or drop-off, and then we can bust 'em from there." Another nod. "Alright, so the first thing we should do is get back to your house. Ready to hold on for a few more minutes?"

They reached the house, still invisible of course, with no problems, and he hadn't locked the door before going fox-girl, so they were able to go inside for some privacy. "Alright, now we just need to get each other as contacts," said Blake. "I left my phone back, uh...somewhere. So I'll give you my number and you can text me?"
"That sounds fine," said the smaller girl, leading the way into the bedroom she'd been a man pacing in before. But when she started to reach for the phone, she paused, lowering her hands and fidgeting a little bit. "Uh...um...problem."
"What?"
"They—if they call me they'll expect to hear my voice, not...not this one."

"Well, yeah. Sooo, turn back to normal," said Blake.
"I don't...I don't know how." She looked a little panicky on realizing this fully. "I can't—what I said to change before, to this and back to myself, I can't remember—I know what it sounds like but I don't know how to say it anymore!"
"Oh! Um, wait wait don't panic," said Blake, waving her arms. "When that...whatever it was, happened after we fought I learned how to say it. Maybeeee I can turn you back?"

"It's worth a try," she said, nodding.

"Okay..." With a deep breath, Blake said the other girl's phrase, hoping desperately it would turn her back to normal. When she did, some small arcs of electricty shot from her hands into the other girl, and she started growing bigger and taller again, her ears and tail retracting and her clothes reshaping...and soon, with a sigh of relief, the old man was standing there instead of the small girl.

"This is a relief, at least," he said, and took his phone. "Give me the number."
The remaining fox-girl nodded, and recited Blake's number. She didn't exactly have the foresight (or delusional whim, as it would have been before today) to have set up a secondary one for "being a superhero," and there was no time to do that now.

"Okay, I'll—wait," he said. Then, scratching his head: "We never actually introduced ourselves, did we?"

"Yee-eah, we were kinda busy chasing and fighting and all the other stuff," said Blake, putting a hand behind her head. "I'm...sorta uncomfortable giving out my real name like this, soooo, you can call me Light."

He nodded. "I understand your caution. I wouldn't trust me at this point, personally. Well, Light, it's good to meet you, though I wish it could be in other circumstances." He offered her a handshake, which she accepted. "My name is Gerald Nelson."
"Back at ya. I mean, sentiment's mutual. Umm, anyway I need to go back to normal for a while too, so it won't look like I'm missing. Text me as soon as they get back to you—we'll figure out how to make your powers work again when we meet up."

"I hope so," he said. "Though I suspect you can handle those scum who took my girl on your own if not."

She found herself blushing a little from the compliment. "Erm, yeah, maybe. I'll see you soon, anyway." Light fled from the house then, and returned to her own apartment complex, putting back up a 'Blake' illusion as soon as there were about to be cameras and witnesses. It was late morning, almost lunchtime now, and there was more of a crowd to avoid bumping into, but she managed to make it back to the bathroom without any incidents. It was empty again this time, but it was clear this wasn't going to work as a long-term solution.

Light went to one of the showers and drew the curtain, hoping to block the possible flash from changing back from being seen outside as much as possible, and tried saying her own phrase. It had the expected effect: Her body glowed brilliantly and she began refracting and changing back again, the order of changes from earlier that morning going in reverse until Blake stood fully clothed there in the shower, feeling slightly winded and suddenly very hungry.

He got himself out of there, and after recovering his breath he hurried back to his own apartment to check his phone, just in case the kidnappers had already called Gerald. Amory had left, so he was free to get his phone with the one text saying just "G" and add the number to his contact list, and then move on to preparing lunch. He hadn't eaten breakfast in all the excitement of suddenly being a superhero, but on top of that...the winded feeling, the gnawing hunger, maybe together meant that running around as Light and using her powers actually used up energy he needed to then get back as Blake. It was a possibility worth watching out for, at least.

Blake was on edge the rest of the afternoon, waiting for the text, but it didn't ever come. Eventually he was standing in his bedroom ready to go to sleep, and decided that setting his phone volume as high as it would go would have to do. They probably wouldn't call in the middle of the night anyway, right? And it was better to get a good night's sleep than risk being sleepy and mentally useless as Light whenever they did call. So he went to bed.

It was another dream like the first one...but he stood not in a grand audience chamber, but in a small, lavish bedroom that seemed to perhaps belong to the same castle. He looked around briefly before hearing something he didn't quite understand, and feeling suddenly compelled to speak his phrase. At once he did, and found himself shrinking down, his hair lengthening and the ears and tail growing back into place. There was no light show with this, just a guy suddenly turning into a small, cute fox girl, complete with his t-shirt refusing to change sizes, tenting out around her and its collar hanging over one of her shoulders, but his boxers choosing to soften and shrink into a pair of panties, tugging tight between her legs as her chest pushed back out to complete the transformation.

She blinked a couple of times, holding up an arm and looking down at herself, feeling a little confused. Was she dreaming about having changed today, or...? "Hello there."

"Wuah!" The girl jumped at a voice suddenly less than a foot away from her, right in front of her, and took several rapid steps backwards while processing the sight of its source, which had also just appeared in that same instant. It was...the woman from before. From the last dream, that is, wearing a nightgown which seemed as elegant and overly complex as the dress she'd worn on the stage. She had the same kind of condescending smirk as before, and her presence applied the same pressure to this room.

She chuckled to herself. "Hmhmnh. You weren't expecting a personal visit, I suppose."
"Um...no?" Blake..Light said cautiously. Had she done something this woman didn't like, and now..?
"Nothing like that, no," she shook her head. Okay, reading her thoughts then. That was...great. "Just the opposite. I'm here to congratulate you, dear." She held out a hand as if for a handshake.

Light looked at the hand and back at the woman's face, and stepped just close enough to take it if she stretched. The woman just held onto her hand for a few seconds and let go again. "You don't trust me," she said, nodding sagely. "You're wiser than a lot of people for that. But at least you can trust that if I wanted to do anything to you right now, I could have already done it." In a motion Light was unable to follow, she was suddenly standing barely an inch from the smaller girl, her hand on her head, rubbing it and scratching the bases of her ears. "See?" She shivered in spite of herself; she was surprisingly, deeply sensitive there, or perhaps just to the woman's touch, and it felt distressingly good. The woman just chuckled to herself. "Hmhmn, you're a cute one if I do say so myself." Finally Light was released from the hand, and stumbled back a couple of steps, her face burning with embarrassment.

"S-so, what do you, what are you congratulating me for?" she said, trying to sound respectful just out of fear of that power and whatever else it was the woman was willing to do to her to demonstrate it.

"Believe it or not, you're the first—and only one through the whole day—to defeat another I gifted in battle and not kill them." The woman crossed her arms. "Honestly, I thought your world more peaceful overall than this. The trouble hasn't even really started yet and so many lost just to each other. It does raise the stakes a bit, I suppose." The fact that she smiled at this suggested she didn't particularly care about the people who'd died personally, nor would she mind if whatever the "real trouble" was killed everyone as long as it was entertaining.

"Anyway, as a reward I thought I might explain what your spoils are from that victory, and how to use them. It's really quite simple but you can gain a little advantage from not stumbling into it all, at least."
"Oh-kaay..." Light had tried to say something more deferential but that was what came out. At least the woman didn't seem to mind.
"Now, when you knocked down your opponent and demonstrated full opportunity to slay her, but did not, her power—her gift from me—bowed down to you. It became yours, in a manner of speaking." The smaller fox-girl's mind was drawn to how Gerald's body had sent a bolt of lightning into her and then she had known how to say his phrase in addition to hers. "If you actually kill them, you get a much weaker version of their gift tacked onto yours, but gain complete and easy control over it. From a power bowing down to you, the advantages are different. You can call upon her power for brief momentary use as you like, by asking for it by name, and every time it will be at full strength. It's a little clumsier because they're not really yours as long as she lives, they just obey you. You see?"

"Um..yeah." So she could make lightning bolts and things like that by saying Gerald's phrase.
"But that's just the beginning. You can also command her powers to return to her in whole or in part for a time, and to leave her again...and the best part—you can ask them to change her."
"Ch..ange her?" said Light, unsure what that meant. She had been able to turn Gerald back to his original look today...
"Not just that," the woman shook her head. "If you don't like how she looks as a vixen, you can fix it. Taller, different clothes, a better figure maybe..?" She leaned forward a bit, bringing at least her head back inside of Light's personal space. "There's a limit, of course; really the changes you can make right now aren't all that extreme. But the more powers you rule, the greater the variety and intensity of changes you can make. You could even make those whose powers you own obedient to your every whim if you collect enough of them..."

Light's ears were down, her face red again; she wasn't really sure how to respond to this information. "Uh..."

"I know, you wish to be a hero, right?" The woman stood fully up again. "You're a clever girl, I'm sure you'll find virtuous uses for all that control. But I doubt you've never been at least a little bit curious. Either way, good luck to you. I'll be watching~." With that, she disappeared from the bedroom again, as suddenly as she had appeared. And Light was left to look around the room briefly before it too faded from view, and she felt herself lying down on her side, halfway curled up, with covers over her. There was light coming through her closed eyes, and she could feel it moving around in the room...

The fox-girl's eyes opened slowly, fluttered shut, and then opened wide again, and she flung the covers off herself, sitting abruptly up. She was—she was in Blake's room, in his T-shirt and a pair of panties, just what she'd been wearing in the dream. He had...turned into her in his sleep. Speaking the phrase even in the dream had done this..and it must have done it with a bright flash, too. Had Amory seen...?

Her ears twitched and turned around. The TV was on again, the news of course. So he was awake, and there was an unfamiliar girl in Blake's room. More importantly: Light quickly went after the phone and picked it up, and breathed a small sigh of relief that there hadn't been a text sometime in the middle of the night—she hadn't failed to respond when she was needed. That was good, at least. But...back to the problem at hand. There was a girl in Blake's bedroom, Amory was awake just outside of it, and changing back would cause a sudden flash. She couldn't say anything to excuse the flash beforehand because she sounded nothing like Blake; she couldn't walk out silently with Blake's image over her, he'd find it weird when his roommate didn't respond to anything. Even turning on the lights in the bedroom to make the flash seem less bright by comparison would draw a "Hey, sorry, did I wake you up" or something else like that which demanded a vocal response of some kind.

Eventually, the fox-girl decided on a course of action. She went into the bathroom. The fact was that she needed to do that anyway, and...being a girl made it feel a bit different in a way that was kind of, awkward. With the bathroom door closed, she thought while sitting down to take care of the problem, maybe the flash wouldn't be as visible. Maybe...if she whispered her phrase and timed it to happen right as she was flicking on the bathroom light it'd just look like that was what he was seeing. And Blake could explain the light sorta...flashed for a second at first, maybe a power surge or something, if Amory questioned it later. Good. Great.

The plan worked just fine. When Blake came out the door of his bedroom, the only thing his roommate did was look over at him and say, "Oh, man—Did I wake you up again?"
"Um..no, I was kinda planning to get up early today anyway." He went over to the chair Amory wasn't on and sat down; the news was still about the fox-girls—and yes, the anchor noted, they were apparently all girls. The crime spree had kept up, it seemed, and in places gotten much worse, but there were also several reports of them fighting against each other, or the bodies of some found stabbed, chopped or torn in half, headless, frozen in ice, charred beyond recognition...and on top of that, dozens of people going missing.

"The world's goin' crazy, man," said Amory. Footage started up now: A bunch of police had closed in on a girl next to a fire hydrant; with a wave of her hand she pulled a flood of water out and formed it into a globe around herself with tentacles that lashed out at them all at once. They replied with volleys of gunfire that just bounced harmlessly off the globe, and as many of them were choked or picked up and thrown away by solid arms of water the girl laughed insanely...until one of the shots, by luck or chance, pierced through the shield and got her straight between the eyes. She went limp and the water all fell to the ground at once, resuming its normal obedience to gravity. The man who had shot her stood there still in shock, his hands shaking, as something blue and fluid flowed out of her unbreathing chest and into his.
"Makes what's happened in our town seem tame by comparison," his roommate continued. "I mean, there were some reports of two of those girls fighting out in the suburbs but nobody found a body or nothin'."

The TV cut to an interview with the man. He said something unpronounceable—his phrase now, Blake knew, and probably the phrase of the girl he'd killed before that—and changed at once in a brief fluid-like motion, becoming a light-blue-haired girl. "I don't know how to explain it," she was saying, "but I pledged my life to protect and serve the people. That hasn't changed."

Blake jumped back to his feet, hearing a brief but extremely loud jingle from his phone. He got up and went back to his room to check. It was from Gerald; it said "go vine". A second later, a second text arrived which said "go time".
"What's up?" Amory called from the couch.

"Uh—I gotta go," he said back, pocketing the phone and heading to the door right away. "Catch you later."
"'Kay. Stay safe out there, man."

"Yeah."

A War's End

While this is yet another story, it falls under the category of "extended caption" rather than whatever the other category of stories I post here is called. So if you were longing for a caption this will hopefully fulfill that want.

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Mero awoke, and quickly realized he had gotten himself captured. Only a week ago he had proven his mettle and become the new alpha, and in that capacity had scouted a less-traveled part of their forest territory where some humans had recently been sighted. He had gone alone because if there were humans there, he had wanted to try and speak with them instead of just perpetuating the seemingly endless war between the two races. If he could just achieve a temporary truce, he had thought, that at least would be something.

For as long as Mero had been alive, some twenty-odd years perhaps, it had been on and off again: Skirmishes, fights, full-scale battles. The humans had their fields and pastures, and the Lupin (Mero's people) had their forests, and through all the fighting neither side had gained ground, or really anything at all. It was just an old grudge match nobody remembered the reason for; it was pointless, and it only lost to both sides people and resources that would be better spent elsewhere. Mero had recognized this for a long time, and his drive to become alpha was the opportunity to seek an end to the bloodshed.

But he had just gotten himself captured instead. Some human trick had produced a mist when he came to that part of the forest alone, and he had been a little too slow to hold his breath; it knocked him out, and now he awoke bound in tight ropes, with even a muzzle fixed around his head. He was a tall, strong, valiant Lupin, fully covered in thick gray fur, with sharp claws and sharper teeth...but little of that was going to help in his current situation; the muzzle barely allowed his mouth to open, and the ropes were stronger than he was. Really, it was surprising they hadn't just killed him if they were able to do all this.

He actually looked around the room he was in for the first time. He was sitting on stone floor (lying on it before waking) with strange markings all over it; there was no sunlight here, but a dim glow from th ceiling, and it smelled faintly of ash. A large door a ways in front of him was the only apparent way out of here...and as he looked at that, thinking maybe he could find a way to wriggle to it and out, it swung inward, opening, and a human man in a dark red robe walked inside.

"I thought you'd wake up by now," said the human, coming a little closer but not in the Lupin's reach even if he weren't still fully bound. He was a young man; as far as the Lupin knew of human age they were probably close to equal. Mero just growled, and the human knelt so their faces were opposite each other. "I'd like to apologize for my rudeness first of all. Or...well, I suppose you'd say that term doesn't even begin to cover it. But—I couldn't see any other way to ensure we could talk in complete privacy, and you not just tear my throat out."

Mero glared. "You have good reason to be afraid," he said; the muzzle did allow him enough space to speak at least.

"I know, you are the newest alpha. My sources suggested that you feel differently from how the old one did. About this war and hatred business, I mean."

"That would have been true before you did this to me."

"Oh come on, this is bigger than your pride. Isn't it? Years of hatred and death, for what?"

"You're just trying to deceive me. What, you want a pet? I'll die first!"

"No, no no no..." The human shook his head, looking distressed. "Look, I—I promise I'll get you back to your forest as soon as we're through talking, no matter what. Or, I'll untie you and you can do whatever you want to me. Just—hear me out. Talk to me as if I hadn't had to do all this, just for a moment."

"...Fine." Mero shook his head, and said something he'd been meaning to say to whatever human he found who would listen: "The fighting is pointless. When we fight amongst ourselves it is to grow stronger as a people, and there is a ban against killing. When we fight you, our strongest die and are maimed for nothing."

"Well, I share most of the same sentiments." The human moved to a sitting position. "I was recently elected—err, it's sort of like being alpha but we go about it differently. The point is that I'm the leader of the humans now. I want peace as badly as you do. But I think our people will have a hard time accepting it. They'll just elect someone else—or, in your case, you'll have an endless string of challengers for alpha—unless we can get both sides to stop hating each other."

"I do not fear such challenges," said Mero. "I would not be alpha if I were not already the strongest."

The human gave a serious, searching look. "You think you can change your people's opinion of us if the fighting stopped for long enough?"

Mero nodded. "They will bend to my will."

"I don't have the kind of power over my people you do. I have to get them to see your people as people before they can begin to understand. I want...I need your help with this. That's, the real reason I brought you here specifically."

"...How is it you wish me to help?"

"I'm...a wizard," said the human. "I know a lot of magic, 'human tricks', you might say. I studied it for a long time, and I found a spell which can...well, frankly it would make you appear more like a human. Not entirely, and not permanently; to be more accurate it would give you the power to change between appearing largely human and looking like your own kind. Humans are shallow; they'll listen to you if you use the form this spell would provide."

"Hmm." Mero detected something about the man's wording. "It would not give me the power to look exactly as I do now," he challenged after a moment's thought.

"Well, uh." The human shook his head, apparently trying to think of the right way to put it. "You would lose none of your strength and skill. But the spell is called the Maiden Ritual. It would...make you female, and that wouldn't be something you could go back and forth with."

"I see." There was a long pause as Mero thought. "Anything is worth it to stop the killing of my people. I still do not know whether I can trust you, as much as I want to."

"Maybe, uh...think of it this way," said the human. "My people elected me when I returned from learning a lot of magic, believing initially that I would use my powers to escalate the war and end it in the worst way it could for the Lupin. The mist spell I used could've as easily been deadly poison, but it was purely an ultimately harmless sleep effect. The floor in this room is inscribed with markings for the spell I mentioned; I could've cast it while you were asleep, or done any number of other things really. I didn't; I only restrained you so you'd hear me out instead of attacking me right away. I had to carefully adjust the sizing of what's on your mouth right now so you could still speak with it on.

"...You could have come to that part of your forest with a few of your best warriors, in case a human was really there. But you came alone. Because...you wanted to talk, right? In the same way, I chose at every point the least hostile action I felt I could, because I want the same kind of peace as you do, and just as badly."

Mero considered his words for a long moment. And then he said, "...What is your name?"

"Oh? Uh—Terin Asuron. I'm sorry, I meant to introduce myself before I went into all that."

"My name is Mero," said the Lupin. "You have my permission to use your spell, Terin."

"I—I do?" he seemed briefly shocked. "I mean—okay. I'm, I'm glad you're choosing to trust me. Let's try and make a peace that lasts. Just...um, I want to say hold still but the ropes are still there. The spell will get rid of them, though." He stood up, walked to the edge of the markings, and then turned again to face Mero. Then he began to speak in a language the Lupin did not understand, though evidently something in the room did since the outermost markings began to glow.

Mero watched with some interest as Terin waved his hands around a bit in the air, a white glow trailing each one. While he did this he continued to chant, and the glow spread inward through the markings steadily until reaching those just under the Lupin, and finally the glow spread upward along his body itself and the ropes on him. And then...the magic began to do its work.

The Lupin felt a curious tingling all across his body, and then he felt the ropes starting to loosen slightly. Looking down, he realized that most of his fur was starting to get shorter and thinner; then, the muzzle fell off, clattering a bit on the ground when it landed. Examining his snout now, Mero realized that it was slightly smaller and shorter than before, and indeed it was still shrinking.

The ropes loosened further now, and Mero could see that the cause was his body actually becoming smaller; his broad shoulders were narrowing, his frame diminishing, even his height was beginning to decrease. He looked up briefly to see his view of the world sinking. By now his body fur was little more than a thin coating, and he felt his hind feet starting to reshape themselves, the back part sinking down to the level of the front and reforming to the shape of human feet. The pads disappeared from the palms of his forefeet too, and all of his claws shortened and grew less sharp. And Mero's muzzle...he could barely see it before his eyes, and then he couldn't even see it at all. He felt a burst of tingling all across what had once been a snout as the fur fled it entirely, leaving soft, smooth skin. That burst spread downward, bare skin appearing on his shoulders, arms and chest, stomach, down through his lower body and legs. Some of his scars from past fights and battles remained, much more visible on bare skin than they had been through fur. His tail tingled too, but its fur had never actually shrunk, and now seemed to grow slightly thicker, at the same time turning fluffier and softer.

The upper part of Mero's head tingled next, as the fur there (which had also remained) suddenly grew up and out, becoming steadily longer and longer. The same tingling hit his ears, and they changed just as his tail had. He saw gray head-fur before his eyes, felt it tickling the strangely sensitive bare skin of the sides of his face, and then felt it spreading its way downward along his shoulders and then back.

The shrinking had continued to progress this whole time; when he looked down to see the long, soft locks of hair he now saw a slim, small, effeminate body with ropes loosely hanging off of it. But he also saw that what he had grown used to having between his legs his entire life was much smaller than it had been before, and as if in reaction to this realization it suddenly was hit with its own sharp burst of tingling, and began to shrink much faster.

"Aaah!" Mero surprised himself with an outburst in response to this; it felt...good? And his voice was higher than he was used to, maybe as high as it had been when he was a pup just inside of puberty. He wriggled on the floor slightly, his face starting to burn with heat, as he felt it shrinking more and more, slipping steadily inward. Now his hips pushed their way outward, his thighs grew thicker, and at the same time his stomach shrank still more, gently curving its way inward. "Ah..mmnn...Rrrf!" Higher and higher his voice went as he made increasingly wild, animal-like sounds, and then...

The Lupin's ears lowered, his tail beginning to wag faster and faster, as his sex now fully changed. The appearance of womanhood came along with an unexpected gift: a burst, a sample perhaps, of the kind of pleasure she was newly capable of feeling. Her whole body seemed to burn with warmth and pleasure as she felt her hips expanding out further, her stomach pushing in more, and now a new sensation of her chest gently tingling. "Aah..arf....rrf!" She let out a series of high, excited, girlish barks as her nipples grew slightly larger and taller, and then began to push forward, dragging surrounding flesh out along with them into a pair of small bumps. And then, as she let out a high, deeply feminine howl, those bumps rapidly bloomed out, becoming a nice big pair of womanly breasts, completing the change to her body.

The ropes, now in a loose pile on the floor around her, glowed faintly from the magic, and suddenly drew themselves upward, wrapping themselves around her bare body into a small, torn-up assemblage of close-fitting clothes. Lupin needed no clothes due to their fur, but now Mero was no Lupin, and the tight, soft bits of cloth felt strangely right on her new form.

Terin approached her cautiously. "Did it all work? How do you feel?"

Between sharp, rapid panting she said, "I..I feel.." Her mouth, still wide open as she kept panting, gained a hint of a smile. With a small wave of her will her hands became covered in fur again and gained claws, and then changed back. It was simple to control, and she felt she knew how to go back to a Lupin form just as easily.

"I..." Her blush deepened again and her tail began to wag again as her gray eyes turned up to the human leader. He was...nice-looking, and she rather liked his scent. More importantly, he was the first human she'd seen willing to try and forge a peace with her people. He had been so honest and kind this whole time, and she was...attracted to his intelligence, his thoughtfulness, the cute little nervous way he tended to talk.

Mero caught her breath finally, closing her mouth in a way that still showed off a couple of her longer fangs and letting it turn upward into a grin. Again her ears lowered to the sides of her head, and her tail's wagging by now had grown faster even than before.

The human seemed uncertain about this expression. "Um.."

With no further warning, she jumped and tackled him, knocking him to the ground under her. She would have been much taller than him before, but now they were just about the same height, maybe an inch or so to his advantage if you didn't count her ears. Her strong, slim arms were wrapped around his body, her new breasts pressed against his chest, and the instant her face was close enough in the middle of the tackle she had pressed her lips directly against his, an expression of deep affection which a Lupin's long muzzle never would have been capable of. He hesitated briefly in her arms, but in seconds he began submitting to her, returning her kiss enthusiastically with his arms wrapping around her small waist and holding her as tightly as he could.

Only when she was fully satisfied, probably several minutes later, did Mero finally release him from the kiss, pushing herself up with her elbows just enough to put a tiny bit of space between them. They panted for a long time, her enjoying the scent of his breath for a while. Then she gave him a teasing grin. "You did say I could do whatever I wanted with you after you untied me."

"Err..will the other Lupin, recognize you?" This issue hadn't really occurred to Terin before, by the way he said it.

"My scent is still the same. And if they do not, I will retake the position of Alpha again. This form will appease humans enough for them to listen?"

"I-if it doesn't, I don't know what would," he said, his blush brightening a bit.

"Good," she nodded. "We will bring peace to our people. And then...you will be my mate."

"Uh—um.."

"You do not like this plan?" she said, tilting her head slightly.

"I, just really flustered is all," he answered. And then, "I...Yes. I, I like this plan a lot."

Mero responded by giving him another kiss, this one longer and deeper than the last one. She felt his hands wander up through her soft hair, all the way to her ears, and then start to give them a good rubbing and scratching, and let out a few muffled barks through the kiss, her still-new womanhood bursting with more pleasure than she had known possible before.

When it was over, they separated, sitting opposite each other on the floor. Mero's tail was still wagging furiously, and both of them were giving the other a goofy, blushing grin. It was a while before Mero was able to stand again, and they took that time to work out a more detailed plan. After a more gentle parting kiss, Mero reformed her fur (though, she noticed, the long hair from the top of her head remained) and left to return to her people for a time.

A truce was agreed upon within a week. The wounds of war and hatred took far longer than that to heal, of course, but the truce being sealed by the marriage of the Lupin's alpha with the town's mayor made the tensions die down much faster than they otherwise would have. It was only a few months before some of the Lupin asked for the kind of power to change that their alpha had, a wish the wizard became good at granting, and within a few generations the two groups had largely become one, a new race neither human nor Lupin who came to call themselves werewolves.

Battle Vixens! - 2

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Episode 2: To Catch a Crook

The first step was to go to the bank, and then hopefully think of a good way to start tracking the suspect...Blake wanted to do her superspeed thing to get there, but of course a normal-looking girl showing off something like that would be really suspicious. She could make herself invisible, though, up to some street camera that would see a normal girl walking along the street by the bank.

Moving through the city at full speed, the wind whipping across her hair and the fur of her ears and tail, felt great! She could even do little parkour moves like running up walls, jumping from rooftop to rooftop or even wall to wall. Her body felt small and not strong, maybe even weaker than it had been before, but it had endurance; she felt able to run a marathon's worth of sprints and not even break a sweat.

When she thought to herself, Where is all this energy coming from? the first thing that occurred to her was the sunlight on her skin. She was...what...photosynthetic on top of everything else? Well, the part that had answered before said, it was less like she was converting the light into some other kind of energy and more like..despite solidifying since her body changed form...she was light, body and energy alike. When she spent up energy running, the sunlight just replaced it as it flowed into and through her.

The general theme of her powers was glaringly obvious from the start, but this latest bit of just how they were working led Blake to the equally obvious conclusion that she had a crippling weakness, and just what it was. It might not be a good idea to use this form at night, or in unlit areas, at least not without being careful. Maybe she wouldn't disappear out of existence in the pitch dark, but it would surely make it much harder to do almost everything.

In no time, she was where she wanted to be. After finding a good place to appear from, she casually walked out back in the normal-girl disguise, and stopped in front of the shop across the street from the bank—which, of course, was taped off as a crime scene. While her image window-shopped, the real girl checked for cars coming, crossed the street, and after concluding she couldn't actually jump high enough to get over the tape did a wall-run-to-jump to get around it instead.

Now...can I track someone who's been through here? She sniffed at the air a bit...her sense of smell was better, but it's not like she was a bloodhound or anything. No, she needed to think about how her primary power theme could be used to track someone. Light...right...light was how you see someone. It scattered all over the place from the bank robber as she dashed out of here and off along the sidewalk. But...some of it was absorbed, into that sidewalk and into the walls of the buildings nearby. That was how colors worked: Some was absorbed, and what was left reflected off.

The footage from the security camera on the news had had the time. She knelt to the sidewalk, trying to feel for energy that had been light about that long ago. She closed her eyes, trying to adjust what she was seeing...and soon, it worked. Blake opened her eyes, and was aware of a kind of dark fire-like glow surrounding them. She saw light where it had been absorbed into the sidewalk back then, and footprints, small-size tennis shoes, leading in and out of the bank. The rest of the world glowed in negative, with shadows and images of the culprit where her body had blocked or reflected the light earlier that morning, as well as the same for some bugs and birds and other pedestrians. But that girl's silhouette was fairly distinct—after all, she had tall pointy ears and a tail.

Once she'd worked out how to get this kind of vision, Blake could switch in and out of it easily. Which was good; she couldn't actually see obstacles in the way like the police tape while 'seeing' like that. She parkour'd back around the tape in the direction her target had gone, and then began following the trail, carefully flipping her vision back and forth and having her image follow along at a casual pace, crossing the street at a crosswalk when possible to bring it back in sync with her body's real position.

She adjusted the time forward to keep the trail fresh as she continued to track her quarry. The trail led her eventually to an alleyway—no cameras, of course. Then her target had somehow gone from on the ground to on a nearby roof, so she had to triangle-jump her way up there and follow along the rooftops. It was a short ways off to the backdoor of a store which was closed over the weekend; she gently tried the door and found it locked. The thief had gone in and out again, then to another alley, and then...she disappeared. But another person, much taller, was in her place. Obviously, if the girl's powers worked like Blake's, she turned it off at this point. The larger shoeprints continued on, not making nearly the distance the small ones had in the same time.

The trail led to another bank, far from the one that had been robbed, and then back out, and then...to a house. It was a small house out in the suburbs, and her ears informed her someone was walking around inside. Pacing..? Of course she had gone invisible again sometime after leaving the more crowded city streets, the image largely there so there wouldn't be anything strange to see if she bumped into someone, but she never actually had thanks to the parkouring and some rather good reflexes.

She began bending, directing, and reflecting the light: Just a tiny bit, hopefully a small enough amount that whoever it was wouldn't notice the house getting dimmer, and she had before her eyes a miniature, dim view of the inside. It was a pretty normal house...only the one person inside, and they...he was indeed pacing. Another boy being turned into a girl? Was sex reversal a thing with these powers? Blake shook her head, reminding herself to focus. There was a computer inside, a very old one with a CRT monitor. On closer inspection it overall seemed to reflect one person living alone in pretty modest means...well, of course, why would a person who already had a lot of money want to steal?

Well, it didn't matter—she just needed to bring him in. Except...well, the police were looking for a fox girl. So it would be better if she could get him to look like that and then bring her in, even if it was a more dangerous way to go about things. It meant giving up the element of surprise, but well, what kind of here sneaks up behind a person and clubs them in the back of the head anyway? So...Blake decided to get his attention. With a little flick of the wrist, some words in white, glowing text appeared on the wall he was facing: I know, and I'm waiting outside. Give yourself up.

Inside, the man shook his head. Her ears picked him up saying, "I...I can't. Please, just leave me alone." He sounded...pretty old. On closer inspection, the dim image she had of him did look the part.

She twirled the message into a new one: Don't make me come inside after you.

The thief made an angry, frustrated sound, and went to his front door. He walked normally enough, no limp or anything, so probably a decently healthy old man. He paused, looking out the window (but she was invisible), and then opened the door but didn't step outside.

Blake decided to appear nearby, because she was going to talk and he'd know where she was anyway. "You must've known by now there were other people getting powers. Didja think you'd get away with it for long~?" She paused, frowning to herself and shaking her head. That had come out a bit...differently from how it had been intended.

"I do not have a choice," he said, glaring at her.
She crossed her arms. "Are you gonna try to run? I can always track you down again."

He took the few steps to get outside, allowing his door to close behind him, and looked at her.

The expression she saw then was not the look of a guilty crook being caught; it was a pained, desperate look, the look of someone who knew that no matter what, they would regret what they were about to do. It made her pause for just a second instead of going to take him in, and that seemed to be all he needed.

The old man spoke, and she didn't understand it exactly. It was syllables that simply made no sense, sounded unpronouncable—it was his phrase. And as soon as he spoke it, her perception of the world seemed to slow right along with his.

A bolt of lighting struck him from the clear morning sky. His body seemed electrified but not hurt by it, arcs of electricity sparking all around him. He closed his eyes as he began to steadily shrank downward and inward. With a slight shake of his head, his gray hairs seemed to fall downward as if extra length had just been hiding, enough to frame his face, while a pair of tall ears the same light gray shade rose from his head. His pants split apart at the thighs, the top spreading into a skirt while the rest shrank and softened into a pair of black stockings, pulling close against rapidly slimming legs. The belt on the pants seemed to pop upward a bit from this motion, and grew twice as tall around his waist.

His shirt's sleeves slid down, its collar dipped, and every inch of exposed skin from his face through his arms to the bits of thigh the fluttering skirt showed instantly smoothed and youthened. Blake saw his frame push inward still more as the sleeves fluttered out into a kind of cape, and soon perceived a girl even shorter than herself, with the top of her head at Blake's chest. A tail burst out from her back in an audible fizzle of sparks, and when she crossed her arms and closed them as if to hold something a sword appeared in each, the left holding something closer to a knife or dagger while the right held one matching Blake's own.

One of the girl's eyes opened, and then the other; there was an air of fear about her, but not fear of the other foxgirl—of herself, perhaps? Again the whole change had occurred in an instant, and Blake only now had time to make her own sword appear. It wasn't a moment too soon, as the short thief-girl lashed out with the shorter sword and then the longer one, producing a wide arc of electricity with each; she was forced to duck to one side from the first and then block the second, thanking whatever properties her sword had that it didn't just conduct all that electricity straight into her.

And then—she literally turned tail and ran. Blake was still recovering from the force of the second blow, and by the time she realized what had happened the smaller girl had jumped atop her own roof, leaving an arc of electricity behind, and was running along it to get away. Apparently she could leap tall buildings in a single bound...or at least, normal sized ones.

Blake took the ground path, running around the building instead of over, and when her opponent landed she wasn't far behind. Maybe it was her smaller stride, or maybe a difference in their respective powersets, but the other girl was slower on foot than Blake and soon had to dodge a slash from her sword. The retort was quick, the short sword swiped blindly backwards to produce a wild spray of sparks. Blake had to dive to the ground to get away from them and by the time she rolled several feet from momentum and popped back up there were yards between them.

More buildings now, and the lightning-girl just sparked on top of one roof and over to another. Blake parkoured up and across behind her, but it only slowed her down enough to keep her from gaining distance again. Still, if she was just going to get a spray of sparks every time she got close, this wasn't a very good plan.

Her body went on autopilot, following the other girl's moves and deliberately avoidining getting to close to now, while she thought about it. She could just flash the girl's eyes so she wouldn't see her, or go invisible, but if her ears were as good as Blake's she'd just go by sound instead. No...the girl need to see something she wouldn't expect to also hear, and then hopefully be too busy adjusting for it to notice her persuer getting close. So when they got past this set of buildings Blake just put another building in front of the smaller girl, right where it would make sense to just now be seeing it.

The small, sparking girl seemed to take the bait, running straight for the building and trying to jump onto it. As the illusory house disappeared it left behind her opponent bouncing on the ground a few times from all the extra momentum gravity had given her after that miscalculated jump. Blake dashed around to in front of her and tried a swipe with the flat of her blade, but it met the other girl's katana as she stood back up. Holding Blake's sword in place, she looked around...they were in a hilly patch of grass on the outskirts of the town proper. With a quick motion and a burst of surprising strength, she pushed Blake's sword back entirely, knocking her off balance, and then sparked back several feet, readying her blades again.

She spoke for the first time since changing. "I-if you want to bring me in you'll have to kill me." She didn't sound as young as she looked; her voice was light and girlish, but deeper-toned than Blake's. "H-here, nobody else will get hurt." But there was a kind of unsteadiness to it, matching the touch of fear that had shown just after she changed.

"Isn't that a little—" Blake started to say, but the girl didn't wait for a response, going for a sudden X-shaped strike with her blades at the air, which produced a chaotic spiral of electricity toward everything in the general forward direction. Since she was in said, direction, Blake had to dive to one side of the attack and still felt the outer edges of it singing the fur on the tip of her tail on the way out. The small girl struck out at her aggressively, and she dodged back, remembering their considerable difference in strength from the sword clash. "Hokay then!"

The smaller girl wasn't as fast, so this was a good tactic, and she was able to dart around behind her again. A swift strike from there was met with the smaller sword, but Blake drew the sword back right away and struck from another angle, requiring a backwards block with the longer sword, and then kicked her opponent flat in the back.

"Aah!" Her swords disappearing into sparks, she turned the forward momentum into a front-flip, and unleashed a wide-branching strike of lightning from her palms back at Blake in the middle of it. This one hit, and Blake convulsed briefly and dropped her own sword instead of being able to capitalize on the awkward positioning. The smaller girl whirled around, her swords reforming from sparks of lightning originating at her wrists, and then they faced each other again, but the light-katana was on the ground.

Blake decided to use her own powers now rather than relying on swordplay, which really didn't seem to be working out all that well. She hopped back, went invisible, and made a few images of herself run off in different directions, hoping her opponent wouldn't think to use sound to track her too quickly. She took the bait, chasing after an image that ran right and slashing at it only for it to shimmer out of view. Next, the sword on the ground was recalled to light and drawn in along with much of the sunlight in the surrounding area, dimming the view considerably and forming a volleyball-sized sphere of white-red light above the impromptu arena.

Okay...lasers. Hopefully set to stun. Blake fired a single burst of concentrated light at the lightning-girl, which she saw coming and jumped aside of; it made a miniature explosion on the ground. A thinner, more constant beam was the next try; it set fire to the grass as it traced a winding path behind her. These had both looked awfully deadly to be honest, but in the middle of this shot Blake had an idea—an inspiration, even.

She was still invisible, but the extra images of her had disappeared due to concentration on the light-orb and lasers. Concentrating hard, she made an image of herself holding up her hands to direct the laser appear a few feet to one side of herself while continuing to chase the smaller girl with the laser. Her head turned at the appearing image, and she started toward it, her longer sword readied to strike. Blake—the real one—reformed her sword, turned it around so her natural movements would strike with the flat side, and when her opponent struck at her image she dropped the laser and made a swipe straight at the back of her head.

A reflex brought the smaller sword in the path of this strike, and Blake fired the heat-laser straight at it. "Mnngh!" Her opponent was forced to drop the sword as she turned around to counter; Blake caught the smaller sword, struck at her opponent with that to force her to block with the longer one, and then in the same motion Blake's own sword went straight for the forehead, and made a clean, sharp strike straight to it. It connected with a somewhat unpleasant Whap and the small girl was sent flying back and down to the ground, her other weapon leaving her hand and skipping across the ground a few times.

Blake automatically gave chase, landing with her knees on the other girl's stomach and tossing aside the smaller blade to grasp her own in both hands, bringing it up to the girl's throat—but it was still the flat end there, thankfully.

"Unh..." Her opponent seemed dazed from the blow to her head; her eyes fluttered slightly. Her body sparked with electricity, which made Blake flinch briefly until she realized..it wasn't hurting her. The arcs increased in intensity around her, flowing through the taller girl harmlessly, until finally a single stream of miniature lightning shot from the center of the prone girl's chest into Blake's, and she felt a rush like the one that had come with speaking her phrase and becoming a superpowered fox-girl for the first time.

Panting slightly, Blake shook her head. She remembered when the girl had spoken, sounds and words she hadn't understood, only now it seemed she did understand them. That memory of the phrase, those words, burned into her mind next to the one from the dream, another thought waiting at the ready for her use.

The sparking which had followed and surrounded her opponent from the moment she'd become a fox-girl stopped, leaving the world calm around them. Blake dismissed what was left of the orb of collected light, uncertain what had just happened...but when she looked back down at her former-opponent, she had the distinct impression that the small, gray-haired girl was now...powerless.

---

I feel like I'm slightly cheating the rules I laid out for myself a while back ("every other update should be something with an image, like a story with a major change or a caption") by posting this without something else between, because even though there is a change with an image it's not all that extravagant? But the response seemed to be very positive to the first one and I've written this one, and the next one is partway through too, and I don't like to just sit on stuff. If you didn't like this decision do feel free to let me know; I mean I'm probably going to get a caption together soon anyway but I like to see even negative opinions.

Battle Vixens! - 1

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Episode 1: The Gift

A vast, lavish, royal audience chamber with an empty stage at the front. It was full to the brim with people: Young, old, all races and nationalities. It should, perhaps, have been loud with the voices of every modern language, speaking in confusion to people who didn't understand each other. But it was eerily silent. Everyone, it seemed, could feel the same kind of pressure...a distinct impression that whatever was waiting behind the stage had power, real power, and demanded respect.

Soon, a tall, gorgeous woman, the source of that pressure, wearing a sprawling, royal kimono that only accentuated her curves, stepped out from behind the curtain. Two tall spikes of fur rose from the sides of her head, and an interminable carpet of fur spread out behind her lower back, all slowly flowing around like so many elegant streams. From her poured forth a deep sense of elegance, intelligence, strength, and, more than anything else...power.

Although many in the crowd should have been unable to see or hear her very well from where they were, or who they were standing behind, later every one of them would remember it as clearly as if she had stood right there, right in front of them. She smiled—well, it was more of a smirk, a condescending grin perhaps. "Your world is about to be in a little spot of trouble soon," she explained gently, her voice as beautiful and elegant as her appearance and bearing. "Lucky for you I noticed~. I'm giving you an opportunity to do something about all that...a little taste of power to hold on to in these trying times. Just say these words..."

And, a sound from her mouth, but not in her voice. In a multitude of voices, one voice for every person there, every one saying something not quite comprehensible to any of their minds. But to each one, a single phrase none of the others heard stood out clearly from the multitude, a phrase in a voice strangely familiar, yet not their own. Each one found themselves repeating what they had heard, echoing it in their own voices, and felt a small rush, as if just a small piece of that incredible power the woman on stage had been granted to them by speaking this phrase. From this memory the knowledge of how to speak the words stuck deeply into their minds, becoming something unforgettable yet not intrusive, a thought like a well-trained soldier standing at attention off to the side, awaiting its call to come forth.

After this one thing they all spoke, the chamber echoed briefly with their voices. Then there was silence, several seconds of it; it felt respectful, perhaps even grateful in nature. And after seeming to enjoy this for a moment, she spoke again: "No need to thank me, really. But I will be watching, and if you want to please me..." She held up a finger, wagging it slightly like a mother admonishing her children. "...Don't. Be. Boring."

And then, all at once, everyone woke up.

---

"...fifth incident of its kind throughout the country this morning, and the tenth one worldwide. Security cameras were unable to get a clear image in this case as the suspect was moving too quickly the entire time, but based on the footage it seems likely the person was between four and five feet in height, and wearing roughly the same kind of costume as the others. The police are recommending that anyone who sees the suspect call crime stoppers immediately and do not approach her, just as in every other case; she is believed to be armed and extremely dangerous..."

Amory had the TV on, the news, and Blake could hear it through the wall. It seemed his roommate was always up this early to watch the morning news, even on a Saturday. He got up out of bed and went to the door, opening it to the little living room of their college-furnished apartment.

From the couch, Amory waved. "Hey, I wake you up again, man? Sorry...I tried to turn it down this time."

"I'm just too light a sleeper, I guess." Blake couldn't make himself ask him outright to just mute it and read captions, or get the news from the Internet in his room, but he could hint that this arrangement of being woken up by the news instead of his alarm clock wasn't going to work for long. He took enough steps out to turn toward the TV and see it. "What're they talking about?"

"There's like some kinda international crime spree or somethin' going on," said Amory, waving at a world map with some points on it representing locations. "Buncha weirdos in like, anime fox costumes."

Blake scratched his head, thinking about his dream last night. At the same time, he realized all the dots seemed to be west of the college town he lived in, except for the one being placed on said town. "So...one of them here, too?"
"Yeah! They like, short-circuited the security and tore the lock off the vault and took some bills." The screen returned to some black-and-white, frame-by-frame footage of the street just outside the bank, showing a short blur of a person coming out the front door and running out of range, followed first by what looked like a large mass of light-colored hair and second by some wildly scattering arcs of electricity. "Weirdest thing is they didn't even take all that much. Don't even look like they brought bags or nothin'."

The newscaster cut in again: "We're just receiving reports from eastern Canada of another incident, continuing the pattern of moving from west to east from the international date line. Authorities across the EU and Asia have already been alerted in case this pattern continues, but it's unclear what the police of any nation are even able to do about these individuals..."

A little taste of power. That was what the woman in the dream had said. Superpowers? Blake thought. Moving faster than a camera, trailing electricity, and 'police can't do anything about it' screamed to him of a superhero's origin story—or a villain's, maybe. He could remember the words from the dream clearly, even though the figures of everyone around him were too vague to recall anything about besides that they were human.
"Uh, I can turn it down some more if you wanna go back to bed."

"No.." Blake shook his head. "I'm just gonna take a shower. Got some stuff to do today anyway."

All he could think about in the bathroom was the words, the dream, what was happening on the news right now, all over the world. Some people, probably not everyone, had been picked and handed power. They weren't all good people, if it lead immediately to a crime spree. Don't be boring. Maybe that talk about a threat coming was a lie, and she just wanted to see what kind of chaos would come from giving a random grab bag of people superpowers. Well...if that was it, then he had some too. He just had to say the words, and maybe he'd be able to do what the police couldn't—just like the heroes he'd been reading comics about all his life. It was...an exciting idea, if any of it turned out to be true.

But not here, of course. It might be some kind of flashy power-up sequence and Amory would notice. No offense to his new roommate, but he'd only known the guy for a couple of weeks, since starting freshman year and moving in with him. He might not even understand the importance of a secret identity, and Blake really had no idea how good he was at keeping a secret anyway. So, he'd need to go find some modern equivalent to a phone booth. Not anywhere there were cameras around, obviously, and not somewhere with witnesses either.

Putting on his clothes, Blake had an idea. The apartment had "public" bathrooms visitors and employees could use. This early in the morning, probably nobody would be in there; it would be easy to tell if there was someone, too. The door swung inward, so he could block it first and then see if the words did anything. It wasn't the most...dignified place to discover one's superpowers for the first time, but it was the closest place with the right kind of privacy, and he wouldn't be somewhere weird with no explanation for why he was there if nothing happened.

Back in the living room, he glanced briefly as the news showed the map again. There were more dots scattered around Europe now. "I'm going out," he said, waving to Amory.
"See ya. Hey, look out for cosplayers."
"I always do," Blake answered sarcastically, and headed out.

The biggest, heaviest thing available to block the door with were the big trash cans they used in hopes of only needing to take out the trash every other week or so. It wasn't ideal, as the cans were designed to roll, but he figured out with a little work how to make the wheels lock, only allowing the door to crack open a bit before more force would be needed, and then there would be a scraping noise from the wheels refusing to turn. A warning system more than anything, but it would have to do.

He went around a corner to the stalls, having already found the bathroom empty, and used the big handicapped one with a good amount of extra space next to the toilet. Hopefully—if this wasn't all crazy, if he wasn't just trusting some strange dream too much—he wouldn't accidentally break anything in here. But there were lots of male residents in the complex, and this bathroom was accessible from outside, so it still wasn't likely anyone would figure out it was him.

The excitement from before, the nervousness that it was all nonsense, had mounted together during his preparations, and now Blake's heart was pounding. He took a deep breath, reminded himself it wasn't a big deal if he didn't get superpowers—he'd lived without them his whole life, after all—and not to go off the rails if he did. Then he opened his mouth again to speak the words.

They were incomprehensible as before; the syllables themselves feeling like something he wouldn't physically know how to say if he hadn't been taught specifically how. And yet, at the same time, it felt familiar to him, like the words were somehow his. Speaking them brought an indescribable rush just like the one he'd felt in the dream, but that wasn't all it brought.

Blake's body and clothes both began to glow, a pure white light emitting from him. He held up a hand, trying to make sense of what he was seeing as the light grew brighter, far outshining the bathroom lights before long, but somehow not blinding his own eyes. He felt the glow now, too, as if his mind too pulsed with light, and then with an understanding of that light.

He felt like a hologram, like his whole being was light now, a bright glow producing only itself, like the sun. And to his surprise, he began then to change shape, like the light being refracted as it continued to shine. He grew shorter and smaller, his frame slimming down and the room rising up around him slowly. His hair streamed out, pure-white bangs appearing before his eyes, more streaks of white falling across the sides of his face and down along his back. His ears stretched up and out, and another ray emitted from his back, a long tail of thick white fur appearing all at once. The light forming the leggings of his jeans from the thighs down burst out away from him and then back around his torso, becoming a jacket; his shirt split down the middle, sealing itself back together with a row of buttons. His socks stretched their way up legs that were quickly becoming much slimmer than before, stopping just above the knees.

Blake felt a shift in the nature of the light that was himself—and all at once a girl stood there instead. She felt her chest gently spreading forward into a waiting bra, becoming a small but present pair of breasts; she felt her underwear beneath the shorts she had on now turning into a soft pair of panties. The shifting of her body stopped, leaving her at least a foot shorter than before, with narrow shoulders, slender arms and delicate fingers, a flat stomach with an inward curve to the sides contrasted by the gentle outward slope to her hips. Her long hair seemed right now, framing a small, round face.

The light that was now a girl solidified, its glow fading back to a mere reflection of the light provided around her. A silvery shimmer arranged into a vertical line appeared before her, and she reflexively reached out toward the bottom, both hands taking it by the hilt as it solidified into a katana. She stood, panting slightly from her earlier excitement and from the rush of what had just happened, feeling a brief spark of a fight-or-flight response on top of that and responding by readying the sword as if it were a practiced motion.

All of this, she realized as she remembered there was nobody here and slowly lowered the sword, letting her right hand catch it, had transpired in barely an instant to anyone else, a flash of brilliant light between the man named Blake and what she was now. And what..?
"Wh—wha..?!" Her eyes popped wide open, her hands letting go of the sword; it obediently shimmered back into light and disappeaered. "I.." She looked down at her body and then bent around to see a white mass of fur swishing behind her back, finding herself much more flexible and far better at physically balancing than usual as she did so. But none of that was the main concern at the moment.

"I'm a girl!?" her voice, rather high-pitched for every utterance since the words that had changed her, sounded even girlier in this expression of surprise. She patted her chest a couple of times, rediscovering the bra, and wiggled her legs enough to feel what was there instead of what wasn't there, and every indication showed she really had become the opposite sex.

Her face burned slightly; was she blushing? It probably looked...cute, too. "W-well..this is, at least a pretty good disguise I guess." Anything was better than continuing to think about suddenly being a girl, and more than that, really feeling like one somehow. What were her powers, anyway?

Another deep breath, and Blake looked around, her tall fuzzy ears twitching automatically. She could hear people in the halls, and in the floor above her, and water moving through pipes in the ground below, depending on which way they pointed. On deeper thought, her sense of smell seemed sharper than before, too, though thankfully the unpleasantness of the bathroom's bouquet didn't seem enhanced by this effect. Her new tail seemed eager to help her keep balance, and felt somehow effective at doing so. But that was all..icing, it seemed, something like a side effect of how she looked now, which was in turn a result of the actual power the woman in the dream had granted her.

The thing that stood out to her most was the light. She could feel every ray of light in this room, trace it back to where it came from, bend it and move it and alter it as she wished. With a wave of her hand and a small exertion of will she bent the light near her until the stall door displayed a reflection of her body, as if it were a perfectly clear mirror. After examining it for a moment with another blush (this one she could see and feel, and yes it did look cute), she closed her fists and made a pulling motion; the reflection disappeared and light throughout the bathroom dimmed as it was all absorbed into a small white orb held just in front of her. That was enough concentration of light to shape into a burning, cutting laser if she wanted, it felt like. She dispersed the light back to its normal place, causing the room to seem brighter for a few seconds before returning to normal.

And the sword...with a thought, it returned to her right hand in the same manner as before. It was light just as her powers were; she could disperse it into light at will no matter where it was and retrieve it from nearby light, but only into her own hands. She took a small step back to make space and then made a few short swings in the air with it; it felt lightweight (ha), balanced exactly to whatever her body's current build was. Blake had never touched a sword before in his life but she found herself moving with the precision and ease of an expert. The blade was razor-thin, deadly sharp with a point at the end made for stabbing, but its material was sturdy and durable.

Releasing the sword again, she paused to listen for anyone in the hall outside the bathroom and didn't find anyone. A smile slowly crept its way into her lips and then..."Heheh...hahaha!" she laughed, not loudly but not quietly. Girl or not, this was amazing! She really had superpowers! And they weren't some terrible uncontrollable awkward powers to need to get used to; they were as natural to use as breathing. She was sure speaking the words again should turn her back, but...she didn't feel ready to turn back just yet. A superhero's first discovery of powers isn't supposed to just be like "hey, that's cool" and then they go back to their normal life right away; they're supposed to run around, try them out, find somebody to help or something! She wasn't going to make the mistake of trying to make money off of a wrestling match or something, she was going to do some good before turning back.

Flinging open the stall door, Blake went to where the trash cans were, covering the distance effortlessly in about a second. She paused there, looking back and forward again as she realized what she'd just done—apparently the whole 'light' theme extended to super-speed too, not exactly light speed but certainly enough to do some very easy sprinting. Shaking her head and smiling again at how amazing that was, she started moving the cans out of the way.

The problem with the next step occurred to her at this point. Blake was on camera going into this bathroom, and someone paying attention would know he was the only one inside; if a girl with a fox tail came out it would give her away right away. Frowning and looking at herself in the mirror for a second, she realized the solution was simple. With an outward pulling motion of her hands, like pulling a pair of sliding doors apart, the image reflected from the new girl's body changed to become that of Blake. She looked at it in the mirror for a moment, thinking was I really that tall? but feeling somehow confident that her own powers knew what she'd looked like. She moved the cans the rest of the way to where they'd been before and stepped outside.

Next, Blake walked out of the building. She just had to be careful not to bump into anyone or say anything, both of which were pretty easy this early in the morning, and soon she was out on the street. She looked around, trying to discern whether any cameras were still watching, or witnesses for that matter; to her surprise a new aspect of her power surfaced to tell her the light she emitted wasn't being seen or recorded. So it was safe to drop the illusory boy...but then, it would look weird for a girl with fox ears and a tail to go running around town, wouldn't it? People like that were all over the news committing crimes; it was definitely a bad idea.

With a closing-doors motion, the fox-girl changed her appearance into one very close to the real one, but with no parts borrowed from an animal and...brown hair, she decided. Her clothes were normal-looking enough once all that other stuff was taken care of. After taking a second to give her eyes only a brief look at her own reflection she smiled slightly and nodded.

"Hmn hm hmm~," she bounced a bit on her feet, humming a few notes to herself in satisfaction with the illusion. And then..ears drooping slightly, she thought, why did I do that? It was kind of a silly, maybe even...girly thing to do. She really felt very much like a girl, it seemed, as if it were part of the package of new knowledge along with what her powers were and how to use them. Frowning and crossing her arms, she reminded herself that acting differently only helped people not know who she really was, and shook her head a bit, deciding not to worry about it.

Well, there were no criminals around to chase after. After all, why would someone commit a crime on a street next to a well-traveled college-owned apartment, shortly into the morning, with not just regular police around but campus police even closer? Duh. And Blake hadn't thought ahead to what she would do to find a crime to stop. But the idea occurred to her, and it was an obvious one of course but still..what if she could chase down the person who robbed the bank? There was a crime she knew had happened and hadn't and wouldn't be solved by the police, after all, and on top of that the person who did it had power just like she did, so maybe she was the only one who could stop them anyway! It was perfect.

---

And, a new episodic story begins! I feel like some kind of reference to Kampfer with regard to this story is inevitable, so I may as well bring it up myself. I have never actually watched Kampfer aside from a few small bits and basically the only thing I know about it is that some people in modern day become super-powered girls for some reason, and the main character is a guy who's one of those and also turns into a blue-haired girl. Suffice to say that wasn't really a major inspiration for this story, and any similarities between the two storylines aside from the really obvious (superpowered girls are involved and one of them is a guy when depowered) are likely to just be coincidental.

The idea for this story sprang up as I was looking for images to use in captions and stories and noticed a fair number of them that fell under the rough category of "fox girl with a weapon". I thought maybe I could stitch together a story using some of those images for the characters, and that's pretty much where it is now. Not a lot of plans have been made but I know what'll probably happen within the next 2-3 parts or so, so hopefully you like it enough to look forward to more.