Beach Tails

Time for another "caption that turned out too long to reasonably edit into an image and thus became a standalone story"! Hopefully this will still make anyone pining for more captions happy.

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"Hey, check it out! The Sage posted again!" Jim pointed excitedly at his computer screen. He was a member of a private board whose users discussed and analyzed "magical incidents", fully believing those incidents to be real.

His roommate, Otto, was a little more skeptical. Well—not that magic was real, but rather that the obscure and bizarre incidents the board typically reported were. But a couple of months ago, someone had signed up with the username "The Sage" and, instead of discussing magic-related events after the fact, posted to cryptically predict them.

The first couple of predictions had been so vaguely described that nobody figured out where to go to see them. The Sage "graciously" pointed out what event had supposedly happened after the fact, and in at least one of the cases someone was able to find evidence of it which many on the board, Jim included, found convincing. After that, The Sage started making the puzzles a little easier out of either frustration at nobody figuring out the first couple or laziness perhaps, and usually most of the board would figure it out quickly enough to witness the event.

"What is it this time? More northern lights making pretty shapes?"

"Aww come on, our luck was amazing when we tried the casino at the time The Sage suggested."

"Yeah...that was a coincidence." Otto had bought a brand new, big, fancy stereo system with his winnings from $10 of bets. Jim had been much braver about following the advice and wound up with a hefty savings account. "Lots of coincidences."

"That many coincidences at once is solid evidence!" his roommate retorted excitedly. Otto was under the impression that this was some kind of scam furnished by "The Sage" him or herself, with several alternate accounts "reporting" things to be true that hadn't happened. Therefore, while Jim believed that every one of the twenty or so people who'd gambled in the exact time window The Sage's hints had pointed toward won big, Otto saw it as only their two minuscule points of data in an ocean of random events.

"Okay, whatever. What's it say this time?" Between the two of them, Otto was the one who actually tended to figure out The Sage's puzzles, with Jim always goading him to join in actually going to wherever the solution pointed to see the "magic". It wasn't because he thought said "magic" was legitimate, but because he enjoyed a good puzzle. And even after The Sage started making them "easier", they weren't exactly trivial; there tended to be some actual, decent brain teasers buried in this conspiracy theory/scam-riddled forum.

Jim pointed excitedly to the post. It was just the sentence "Tomorrow's a great day to go to the beach!" and an attached image: A photo of a vacant, but pleasant-looking, beach.

"Look, we only have until tomorrow to figure this one out!" he said. "What do you think?"

Otto sighed; it didn't seem like he'd be getting to relax tonight until he figured it out. "Lemme see that thing," he said, taking the laptop.

The photo actually had some faint lines running all over it, invisible without zooming way in on the several-megapixels-huge file. Otto eventually determined that it was an overhead map, and tried comparing it to some online map services. "Looks like it's another local one," he said. Many of the events The Sage pointed to were like this, difficult to impossible to reach unless you already lived nearby them. More evidence it was a scam, to Otto.

"Aww." The news deflated Jim. The "global" good fortune was, in fact, the only one of Sage's hinted events that the two of them had been able to both figure out and try so far, either because Otto was too slow to figure the others out or they were local.

But to his surprise, he discovered that the map actually matched some roads right near where they lived. "Hey, look," he said; his roommate leaned over his shoulder at the screen for a moment before gasping (re-inflating, Otto thought with an inner chuckle).

"It's here! It's in our town! There's not that many beaches nearby, right? Are any of them closed or empty this time of year?"

"I'm already looking into that," Otto sighed. What, did Jim think he was dumb? It took him a little longer, but eventually he found not just a vacant beach, but one for which the street-view feature of the map program showed a photo just like the one The Sage had posted, but with much lower resolution and (at least apparently) minus the hidden map. "...There." Not that he needed to point it out; Jim had been breathing down his neck the entire time.

"Yess!" Jim fistpumped. "A local event we can actually get to!"

"Um, not 'we'. I mean, you can go if you want, but I'm busy tomorrow."

"Really?" Otto had the day off, and of course his roommate knew that. "Busy doing what?"

"Not going to a beach just because some weirdo posted about it on an obscure forum. Like, literally doing anything else."

"Oh come on, it'll be fun! We'll get to see some real magic! The local events are always the more obvious, dramatic ones. Trust me, you come with me tomorrow, you are gonna see something! And then you'll have no choice but to believe The Sage!"

Otto sighed. "Okay, look. Fine. I'll go with you BUT. If nothing happens, then you don't drag me along on any more adventures. Deal?"

"Deal! Something will totally happen, though! Oh man, I can't wait...!"

The next day, they took Otto's car (with Jim paying for a full tank of gas; at least he could get something out of this) out to the beach, and stepped out. It looked like a pretty normal, nice, if strangely deserted beach. "Well, nothing's happening, let's go." Otto pretended to be starting back into the car, but turned back around when Jim complained.

"Oh, quit playing around. C'mon, let's go see if there's anything weird here!"

"I guess nobody else in our area's on the forum," said Jim, looking around. "Or at least, nobody who figured it out."

"Eh, it wasn't a very good one. I think anyone could figure it out with a little effort. Sooo, probably just nobody else nearby." It was a little strange how deserted this place was. It was a nice spring day, bright sunshine, somewhat cloudy but no threat of rain. A beach like this really ought to be packed with at least sunbathers or...something, right? Honestly, he was a little worried that coming to this place somehow was the trap the whole scam was leading up to, and he looked around with a touch of nervousness as they continued to wander around on the sand.

After a while, Jim stopped. "Hmm. I don't get it. Do we have the wrong place?"

"No way. This is exactly what was in the picture," said Otto. "I saw literally the exact view from it a few minutes ago."

"Well...we've looked all over. Maybe we're just supposed to wait for something to happen?"

Otto crossed his arms. "I'm not waiting around on this beach all day."

"Well...hmn. You know, we haven't checked the water. Maybe there's something magic about the water!" He ran over to the edge of the beach, looking around at the waves going in and out.

"...Just looks like normal water to me." Otto had taken a far less excited walk up to just behind his roommate.

"Yeah, but...what if you, drink it? Or, or just soak in it?"

"It's ocean water and my phone's in these shorts. I'm not doing either of those things."

"Hmm. Well, I'll try it then! My phone's in the car," said Jim, and then took a few quick steps forward, his sandaled feet splashing in the water. His steps slowed and then halted. "Hmmn?"

"What? You feel the magic?" said Otto sarcastically.

"I, don't know...I thought I felt something, though." Jim turned around, and paused, looking up and down at his roommate.

"What're you looking at?" But Otto noticed it too just after asking: Jim looked shorter than usual, and he was visibly continuing to get shorter.

"Ohh, this is it! Something's definitely happening, I'm shrinking!" he said excitedly, with an almost-manic grin.

"That's—that can't be a good thing. C'mon, get outta the water before something bad happens!"

Otto reached out to pull his friend back onto the dry beach. Jim grabbed his hands and tugged the other way. "No, no, look, this is it!" His shrinking started to accelerate. He wasn't just getting shorter, but thinner, too. "Something cool is gonna happen. I want you to be in on it too, come over here!"

"No way, I don't want something weird to happen to me, too!" Otto pulled back, leaning away; he couldn't get loose of the grip, and Jim was stronger than him. This tug of war wouldn't last long before he got pulled in...!

Except, with whatever strange thing was happening...Jim didn't seem to be as strong as usual. In fact, his arms looked thinner, less muscular, and..less hairy, too? What was happening?

"No no no, this is really neat!" Jim's voice sounded strange..younger? "You've gotta get in the water!" And still younger. He was almost down to Otto's chest height now, and his strength was diminishing more and more...soon he'd be well out of danger of being pulled in, and then maybe he could keep this weirdness from progressing any farther on Jim.

"I really don't need or want whatever that is!" said Otto, pulling back.

A young boy's voice from the shrinking guy's mouth cried, "Come ON!" With it came one sudden, sharp tug, much harder than he'd been pulling before now.

That was it; Otto had miscalculated and committed too much to his last pull. This sudden, sharp tug caught him off guard, and he lost his balance, stumbling forward straight into his friend, landing them both in the water with an audible, tangible splash!

He stood up and took several steps back, out of the water, trying to brush it off of himself, off of his clothes. Jim pushed himself up much more slowly, first sitting and then standing up. What...his shorts were really small all of a sudden, and they shared a pink-white horizontal stripe pattern with his shirt—also much smaller than it should be, showing off a rather slim midriff.

Otto realized with some fear that Jim appeared to be moving up toward him, slowly, and that he was not, in fact, regaining lost height. "Oh no..no no no.."

"Yeees!" Jim grinned brightly; his face was so small, so cute. And his voice was even higher, he sounded almost...!?

His trunks' leggings were vanishing away, the shirt's sleeves folding inward and its collar sinking down. His shoulders narrowed down even more as his blond hair suddenly spilled out across his cheeks, down onto those shoulders, and a little ways down his back. "Ooh, this is sooo cool!" A girl's voice, from a very girly face. And with the way the shorts were starting to tighten between Jim's legs, there could be no doubt of the impending femininity.

"Th-this really ihh—" Otto started, and heard a higher-pitched voice coming out. His shrinking was starting to accelerate now, just as his friend's leveled off. "Isn't my idea of co~oOl!" It cracked in the middle of the word, and was clearly higher afterward, sounding like he had as a young teenager. He was starting to feel a gentle tingling all across his body, and a feeling like his muscles steadily relaxing themselves more and more. Looking down at himself, he saw his own arms and legs slimming down and the hair on them retreating away. Also, a dark polka-dot pattern was spreading from the wet spots on his clothes to all the rest of them and seemingly causing them to start pulling tighter as a result. The beach sand rushed up toward him uncomfortably, and he looked back up, realizing Jim was making another sound, not exactly speech this time.

"O-oh..." He was blushing; now there was clearly a bikini bottom there instead of shorts, and who knew what had happened to his underwear; and a matching top, hanging awkwardly loose from his shoulders over a flat chest. But speaking of flat... "Ooh..aah, aah, aaAAaaah~!" Jim blushed brilliantly as the bulge between his legs shrank, shrank, shrank, and then cried out as it fully disappeared. Otto knew full well this was his own future, as he felt the beginnings of a gentle tugging down between his legs as his clothes continued to pull closer against his increasingly short, slim body.

"Th-this is, mmh~!" Jim said cheerfully. "I'm so glad I got to share this with you!" Her chest was beginning to puff out slightly.

"Sh-share!?" His voice sounded like a young boy trying to imitate his father, but he didn't care. "I didn't—I don't want to get turned into a, aah, aah~!" The masculinity fled his voice completely as he was interrupted by a sudden upward tug and sharp tingling from his ears (a bizarrely pleasant feeling!) followed immediately by an equally pleasant downward push from his lower back. All at once there was a long, slim black tail twitching around behind him, and his ears were tall, fuzzy, triangular, and equally twitchy as they poked up through his hair. "..a girl," he finished, already sounding like one. He could feel hair beginning to play across the sides of his cheeks as it grew, more slowly than Jim's had but clearly quite fast enough.

Jim's eyes sparkled delightedly, her smile only widening. "Oh wooow, do I get—mnnrrrrrh~!" Her eyes closed as her ears grew up, blond triangles of fur pushing their way up past her hair, and at the same time a long, fluffy yellow tail with a white tip emerged from her back, gently swishing back and forth behind her. While this happened, her hips pushed out and her butt ballooned backwards, and her chest (which had been making only relatively slow progress so far) suddenly pushed forward, beginning to really fill the bikini top she had on. She bent partway around to look at her tail with another happy grin and bright blush. "Oh, yes yes yeee~s!" she sang happily.

Watching this display only made Otto realize that his height was now nearly down to hers, but the shrinking had at least finally started to slow down. "Th-this is, this is so weird, and bizarre, and—and, why is the water doing this to us?!" he said, feeling hair start to fall down his back. His own clothes were rapidly losing coverage, the shirt slipping up off of his stomach while the shorts' leggings vanished. His face felt as warm as Jim's looked.

"I dunno, but isn't this cool?" she said excitedly. "It's—ahn~ —real magic, right here in front of us! Or—mrrrnh~ —rather, on us!" She was interrupted by two sudden forward pushes of her chest, stretching the top out a little bigger along with it each time, but didn't even let what appeared to be feminine pleasure stop her excitement at what was happening in general. "And it feels goooood~. Doesn't it!?"

"It—I, I.." he stammered incoherently. He was now done shrinking, her forehead at his eye level. With long, soft hair tickling the small of his back and his clothes rapidly approaching the exact shape of a bikini, he knew it wouldn't be long now. "Aah~!" His voice didn't continue to change after the tail had suddenly appeared, leaving it a low, deeply womanly alto; now it made an embarrassingly pleased sound as the tugging down below suddenly, for an instant, became far less gentle. It..did feel good, though... "Oooh.." His eyes, briefly closed, snapped open again. "N-no no no...I, I'm..! Mrrroooooooow~!!" Otto's sentence was interrupted by the pleasant, slippery feeling of his manhood melting away and being instantly replaced by something very different. And she instinctively responded to it with a feline noise, a surprised yet pleased one at that.

"You're a girl~!" the other girl cheered. A yellow flower had appeared in her hair. She walked up, her hips gently swaying back and forth along with her tail, her new breasts bouncing up and down, and pulled her arms around Otto.

The new catgirl blushed furiously, and even more at the feeling of those new breasts pressed against her own body. "W-wha..I.." Jim reached a hand up and gently rubbed her ears, keeping the other one wrapped around her slim waist. "Mnh, mrrrrh~!" And then...her own chest was starting to push itself out. "MrrrRRrrRRRroooooooooooooowwr~!" This was not a gradual-with-some-punctuations growth like Jim's, this was an instant, deeply pleasant blooming of her chest from totally flat to big, full balloons straining the material of the top, surpassing her friend's results by a noticeable bit. As if that weren't enough, she wriggled back and forth as her hips gently pulled themselves outward, plumping up into the lower third of a full hourglass figure. And just like that, her own transformation was done.

"Ooh, you turned out so pretty~!" said Jim. Otto's arms were..around her? She was returning the hug!? "And cute, and..!" She was interrupted by the audible flash of a camera.

"Eep!" Otto pulled away, pulling a loose strap back up onto her shoulder, as she and her roommate both discovered a camera where there definitely hadn't been one before all of this. It was an instant camera, and printed out the picture it had just taken; there didn't seem to be anyone around who could've made it take that picture, though.

The catgirl walked up to the camera and grabbed the picture, trying to get used to the way her body wanted to move around now..it made her feel good somehow; sexy, maybe. Did she...want that...!? It was a photo of the two of them hugging, and... "Were you trying to undress me?!" She waved it at Jim; what she'd thought was just a loose strap had apparently been intentional.

"Hey, I see your hand going somewhere inappropriate too," the fox-girl giggled, pointing out on the picture where her bikini bottom's string was slipping between Otto's right hand.

"Th-that was an..hey, there's something written here." Now noticing the back, Otto pointed it out to her friend.

"To keep your tail, pet your friend. Otherwise walk away, and all will be as it was. -L"

"As it..was? We can turn back?" said Otto

"Well, I don't want to turn back. So I need to pet you!" said Jim, grabbing her in another hug.

"Wha-wait, don't I get a say in this?"

"Well.." The cute fox-girl's face looked up at her friend's, giving a blushing but earnest expression from just a few inches away. "Don't you like it? Doesn't it feel good?"

"I—y-yeah, but this is, I'm..I mean.." Her hands were already creeping up toward the top of Jim's head. It was irresistible...the cuteness...that soft, fluffy-looking fur...!

"Eeheehee! You like this as much as I do," Jamie teased. Wait, Jamie..? Was that...was that her name? "Maybe even more, hmn?" Otto found herself purring again as a hand gently rubbed each of her ears from top to bottom, bottom to top. In this compromised, instinctual state and with her hands already so close to the other girl's ears, she began rubbing them too, and leaned her head forward just that little bit needed to begin nuzzling Jamie's cheek.

The fox-girl churred softly, pleasantly, forming an adorable duet with her best friend's purr. She found her memories being replaced—or, not exactly that maybe, the old ones were all still there—so more like overshadowed, maybe, by those of being Olivia...Olly, for short. She could remember growing up in a family of cat-folk, just like her best friend from middle school was from a family of kitsune...fox-folk, of course. And of course they'd decided to live together after finding out they were going to work in the same town, reconnecting after Jamie had moved away just before high school and soon finding some brand new things to like about each other.

Slowly, the slim black tail lifted itself, slid forward, and began to curl itself around Jamie's own soft, fluffy tail. The vixen let out a pleased "MrrrRRrrrh~!" and rubbed her nose a little more vigorously against the catgirl's cheek. They had come out to this beach for a little fun in the sun and waves, and after that, this had started happening. Pretty soon they were going to need to take a break to go back to the car, drive home, and resume in private. After all, even with this beach seemingly deserted all the time someone might show up at some point, and wouldn't that be embarrassing?

Olivia felt a small, soft hand leave her ears, sneaking in past her hair and running itself down her soft, smooth back, feeling the curve of it. She shivered, and then continued to purr a little louder as the hand rotated forward along the waist and traced its way down to her hip before letting go. Finally, they released each other, all except for the tails gently twined around each other.

"I think we made the right choice, Olly," said the vixen cheerfully; they started toward the car in lockstep, both of a mind to keep their tails together as long as possible.

"I don't know where you think I had a choice in all that," said the catgirl. "B-but, I...I'm happy, too," she blushed.

"Heehee~!" Jamie giggled, and ruffled the catgirl's hair, a less intense, quite friendly gesture. She needed to be less distracted to drive, and they could save the intensity for a little bit later, after all. Olly patted her head back in response, and then finally disengaged their tails to go around to the driver's seat.

There was a curious response that some people chose to give to The Sage's threads. It seemed to be some kind of a code word or something: "Tail Received." The Sage always responded with delight and congratulations to such posts, as if they were confirmation of some deeper puzzle being solved. Well, for once there was an even stranger variant tacked onto the post with the mysterious picture of an empty beach: "Two Tails Received." The Sage even got a PM with a picture in it this time, a scan of the photo, though they weren't entirely sure that any sort of proof was necessary. The response came fairly quick: "Have fun, girls!" along with a picture of Sage's own, this one of a dark-haired wolf-girl giving a winking salute. There also seemed to be a bespectacled, dark-haired catgirl poking her head in at the back of the shot, just out of focus.