The "Best" RPG Ever-99

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Tsaron burst into place next to Bimorphaeus, looking somehow completely out of place in the setting next to his younger self at first. "Finally! Ezra, I noticed somebody walking your dream and thought, 'that doesn't look normal'. So..I.." His focus shifted slowly to the other him at this point; the deity was looking at him with a neutral expression. "Ah, hello there."
"I got tired of holding you," Bimorphaeus stated. "Well—it's all right; eventually I'd have asked her to relay some of this to you anyway. You've both got some of the same questions, after all." Tsaron looked dazed and stumbled back a step or two as he was suddenly hit with the entire mental recording of their conversation—since the point where Ezra realized it was a dream—at once. "Now, one of us is going to have to change, or this will quickly become confusing."

In a fluid, incomprehensible motion, Bimorphaeus changed his appearance, the entire concept of his being within the dream, to that of a tall, white-haired Canis woman in gleaming armor, swords sheathed on either side and a spear hanging from her back. "..How's that?"
"You just had to pick another of us, eh?" Ron complained.

"What happened to her, anyway?" Ezra asked.
"You didn't hear?" he said. "She fell leading some of her order's finest in taking down a particular gigantic, blood-hungry demon...? One which some clerics had to seal away afterward? She even gave some particularly inspired suggestions for what the seal should do to whoever draws the blade before that battle, you know."

"When was this?" Tsaron gave her the year. "Oh. I was busy weeding out corruption in a kingdom half the world away at the time. Though I'm surprised I didn't hear about it afterward."

"The less famous a sealed blade is, the less likely it is to be drawn," Tsaron said.

Bimorphaeus cleared her throat, getting both of their attention again. "That answer your question well enough? Although I might add she had many children before her passing, who went on to be parts of many noble lines...you may have met one or two of her descendants since then, and not even realized."
"Oh."
"...Of course," Tsaron agreed. "You all do seem to love your coincidences."

"Not everything's on purpose," she said with a slight shake of her head. "Now, as I was saying before you interrupted...we had no choice but to go looking for a new group of heroes, and fast."

"So, that bunch? They're your new heroes," Ron said. "Why kidnap a bunch of live people from the same world again, if dead are so much easier and other worlds might have, I don't know, stronger or otherwise better people?"
"There are a number of reasons," the goddess said. "Young people are more positive and hopeful than those who've recently died, for one. For another, all the best candidates for our new criteria—which I will go into in a moment—were alive at the time, as that concept applies. This, can be a bit confusing to the uninitiated: We can look upon your world in a manner which allows us to keep it 'in stasis' relative to us, or in a manner which moves it forward in time at any gradient we like. But we cannot affect your world in any way which would amount to time travel; once we've seen past a certain point we can only interact with that point or later. Whether those we selected would still be what we wanted by the time they died, we were uncertain, so we chose not to risk it. As for why we chose not to seek help from another world..."

"Well, we considered it," she said with a small nod. "Yours is not the only one we found in the initial search with a similar language group to ours, and there were a few candidates with people openly wielding magic, which would make them more adaptable to our world and likely more initially powerful as well. But as we were making our plans, a particular traveler of worlds approached us. This being..what we are to you, she is to those who are that to us," she said, "at least in terms of power and age. She advised us that the more worlds one seeks help from, the more visible one becomes to other worlds. And there are things waiting among those other worlds which would make our current difficulties seem like a fly to be swatted by comparison. She also...

"Well, are you aware of what happened to Valorum?"
"He got killed," Ezra said bluntly.
"Ceres said it was 'more than that', but didn't exactly have time to elaborate," Ron added.
"Right. His...soul was damaged, a feat we hardly considered possible. 'Damaged' is an understatement, really; you saw the way his body was shredded by that hit he took, so you should imagine something similar done to the soul. Amidst everything else we were trying to do, Demaeus was desperately trying to put him back together again. Being somewhat more of an expert with that kind of thing, she offered to take that soul off of our hands to find a way to heal him, in exchange for giving us some help constructing the vessels needed to bring people between your world and ours alive and unharmed. Given that healing him was our goal in the first place, the deal was clearly, intentionally lopsided. We did not argue."

Neither of them said anything for a moment, simply taking this in. She continued: "I should explain what was so difficult about that in the first place. In your world—between your planet and others, you have 'space'. Space is dangerous, more or less, because it is empty. But the way between your world and ours is not through 'space'; if you can imagine a direction other than the three usual ones, traversing between the two requires going that way. If you go that direction, the region between worlds is often called 'Void'.

"Unlike space, Void—or at least the part of it surrounding both of our worlds—is dangerous because it is full. Anything trying to traverse the Void must contend with a constant, neverending torrent of immensely powerful, undirected magical energy whose full force annihilates most things, and even small amounts of which can twist and warp living creatures. This energy is called 'Breach' by most everyone with languages similar to ours; its presence around a world tends to protect it from certain kinds of threats, so it isn't entirely a bad thing.

"Souls are bound together tightly enough to withstand Breach untouched, which is why bringing the dead through is so much easier. We needed to create vessels which would be essentially 'airtight' against Breach in order to bring our new candidates through safely. As I said, the traveler gave us some information on how to build them, but we needed a dry run to ensure that everything was working properly. For that, we chose a dog whose owner had recently died, which would have probably suffered afterward regardless. Our first attempt at the seals...were not perfect," she said. "What resulted looked no different from a beast monster—a dire wolf, to be exact—so we left it with other dire wolves, deep in the frontier, not expecting to see it again."

"You're talking about Zack's little pet, aren't you," Ron said; Bimorphaeus nodded.

"Somehow that intense concentration of magic eventually resulted in the formation of a unique soul, with beneficial properties that even Sophol didn't predict. When he wanted personification, we jumped at the chance to grant the same kind of power we had the rest of the new group of heroes."
"...Which you still haven't explained," Ezra pointed out. "What about this group makes them worth the trouble?"

"Well, as I said before, you were chosen for your demonstrated abilites—what you had thoroughly proven yourselves capable of throughout your lives. This, we imagined, would make you fine heroes. It did not," she said flatly. "When you go looking for power and skill, you find people willing to wield it in all kinds of ways. For our second try, we needed something else—and ultimately settled on your model." With this, she pointed at Ezra in particular.

"Mine." It was half a question.

"Not—just you, of course. But certainly not him," she said, without being clear which 'him' she meant. "Ceres and Valorum, and the one whose appearance I take now, all similarly demonstrated the kind of qualities our heroes would really need to have. We are fortunate to have more or less accidentally selected so many; otherwise things would have exploded in our faces with far more force than it already did.

"What we realized—and it sounds terribly idiotic to have to point it out—is that heroism is a trait of one's character, not of one's power."

"So, what," Ron said, "This bunch of self-absorbed kids have better character than me? Because they are willing to rush into all sorts of danger for no good reason?"

"You've got the order backwards," Bimorphaeus said, "and you're missing some pieces besides. Each one was chosen for a different reason, to suit a certain purpose. That is why keeping all of them alive, for as long as possible, is vital to our current plan. To explain what those are...hmm.

"Mortals tell tales that I am a poor communicator, but the truth is, I am the best of the lot. The other gods have no idea what it is like to be one of you, much less the best way to make a mortal understand something. Divested of any physical form, the very thing I continue to exist in is the collective thought of every being on our world," she said. "Nonetheless, words are sometimes simply inadequate. I would prefer, with your permission, to simply show you what we saw in each of them."

"I have no objection to that," Ron said; Ezra nodded agreement curtly.
"All right. Come with me." She gestured to follow her along the path from Ezra's memory to somewhere—symbolically and mentally—else, and began to walk. The two of them followed into a more dreamlike experience than the relatively rational conversation of the past several subjective moments.

First there was Zack—as they knew her, a Canis woman in the armor and equipment of a knight. "In" him was a vision of a single defining event: A child standing obliviously on a road, facing away from an oncoming car just cresting a hill—just now coming into view, moving too quickly and seeing too late to brake to a complete stop. From one side, a figure suddenly ran in, grabbed the child and dove back-first out of the way, tumbling along the concrete as the car zoomed by, brakes screeching.

The figure stood up, becoming a bit clearer—an average-looking, dark-haired man helped the child onto its feet, and after making sure they weren't hurt yelled something about being careful and keeping off the road. At this point some other figures approached, including the car's driver, and—noticing this—he turned and ran before anyone could find out who he was. The incident was reported on the news, some witnesses being interviewed on a TV set in the front office of a warehouse. The same man from before came into a nearby door, some of the workers noticing some damage to his clothes and scratches on his arms—and laughed when he told them flatly that he'd tripped in the parking lot on the way there.
"Hey, if it was on the property, you should see if you can get anything outta worker's comp, Zack!"

The second was Katherine. A tall, broad-shouldered man sat behind a DM's screen (and although the "audience" might not have understood what that was, for the purposes of the dream they did now) with a crowd of people sitting at the table before him. He was describing worlds, people, and creatures, putting the players into one situation after another that forced them as well as their characters to work together and get to know each other better.

He stood up, going into a neighboring room where two or three of the indistinct players followed or already waited. There were introductions, calm discussions, outright fights—in each situation he was doing the same thing: helping them understand each other. With his aid, strangers became friends, bitter feuds were defused and dissolved, and relationships were patched together that might have otherwise fallen apart. Perhaps he wasn't even aware of what he was doing, motivated only by wanting everyone to have a good time and relax instead of carrying the weight of the rest of the world into the game with them.

Everyone was welcome at Vinny's on game night, and one way or other, he made them feel welcome, too.

Mika, or Mira—whatever her name was, the witch appeared in both of her available appearances at once. Her explanation was different from the previous two, showing not a person in a location but simply an avalanche of words. Conversations, one after another, flooded by. It was clear that the same person who had become the witch was party in each of them, giving words of encouragement and support to people dealing with all kinds of situations—and one very important kind of help in particular.

The friendships visible through those conversations were strong, in fact enough so that when someone was thinking of hurting themselves—fed up with the world, terrified, or just off their meds—somehow it always came out in a private conversation to him. The shield of anonymity made them feel free to discuss their darkest thoughts without fear of someone "reporting" them. Every time, he encouraged people whose faces he'd never seen and—usually—whose voices he'd never heard to seek help, with frequent but not totally perfect success.

Whoever they met him as, whatever false representation by a virtual avatar they saw, the person behind that mask was always a shoulder to cry on, somebody to lean on...someone to talk to, if nothing else was needed.

For the tall elf girl Nora, a young man could be seen growing up in casts and crutches, both his parents and himself terrified of the slightest jolt or trip. With each injury came hospital visits, and sometimes long stays in the same buildings as families whose kids were at even greater risk. As he came to be one of the older patients, he became known to the younger ones as a source of knowledge, wisdom, and hugs—if you were slow and careful about it, anyway. To them it seemed like he knew a little bit of everything; whenever a child had questions, they'd come to Norrin first, before the adults, because he always seemed to explain it better. He would be sitting there, nose in a book, and then set it aside as soon as anyone came near to talk to him.

To all of them, he was just like an elder brother; he'd been here before, knew the routines and would happily help anyone new introduce themselves to the group. He even helped out with the work now and then, when it was deemed unlikely to risk harm to his ever-fragile bones. More than anything, Norrin was a frequent source of calm and stability to children and families facing upheaval and turmoil.

Lynn and Rayna were together, as they always seemed to be. The two of them had worked together for a long time before, too, hosting a show focused around examination and careful thought. They could be seen questioning every assumption, reasoning through any problem that faced them. Careful discussion and contemplation led them to the truth of many matters—admittedly, often trivial ones, but these were mere practice for the occasional speck of insight into more serious matters.

Ray and Lyle argued and researched and pondered until they found the truth, no matter how ugly that truth was. Once or twice they uncovered real corruption and exposed it to the world at large, and when they found some truly worthy of help, they sought to help them however they could.

"Don't give up!" a man's voice came from behind Aria. "Never give you. You can do it." Will's power lay in a boundless supply of determination, spilled out in words of encouragement and expressed and demonstrated publicly for all who cared to look and see. He gave of his time, effort, and self to see that others could survive, and simply watching and listening to him was enough to give some a fighting chance.

Two scenes at once played for Dr. Ian Kellen: In the first, he was enraged, furiously upbraiding a fellow doctor for his carelessness with another person's life, which—whether it had or not—could very well have cost that life. In the other, his hand was on a shoulder of a young surgeon who'd failed, telling him that he'd done all he could and not to let this turn him away from the practice for good. In both the doctor's essence was revealed: An absolute, uncompromising ethic when it came to the value of human life, a passionate drive to see that others took lives under their care just as seriously, and a gentle kindness toward those whose attitudes proved worthy of the vital occupation they had taken up.

At the end of this was Rose, the dragon. A shy, mildly overweight young man was seen sitting alone at home, quietly working a job behind a computer with nobody talking to him, or walking through the streets deliberately looking away from everyone around him. Yet, also, he quietly handed in donation after donation: Food, clothes, bedding, whatever was needed. He stood behind a counter, ladling out soup to hungry people; he followed instructions meticulously to help build shelter for the homeless. For every opportunity to give, to do good or help others, he seemed to take it and throw the full weight of his efforts and resources behind it. Hardly anyone he helped knew his name, but their gratitude for what he gave spoke volumes all the same.

The dream took on a more solid, coherent appearance again, as they came to the end of the symbolic "road" to be standing out in the backyard of the house Ezra had recently had built for the group. Bimorphaeus stopped just in front of the door inside and turned around to face the two old heroes, letting out a small sigh from the effort of expressing all of this so efficiently. "Does that answer your question?"
"I suppose it does," Tsaron said, "although I believe we both have just a few follow-ups."

"I see it's true that every one of them was male," Ezra said. "Is there a reason for that?"
The goddess shrugged. "For the most part, that just happens to be who fit our needs best. Apart from that, Aphera thought it would be best to have everyone the same sex to..avoid romantic attachments among each other, and encourage them to get to know the people of this world instead."
"So why did you turn all of them into girls?" Ron asked right away.

She sighed again, this time in annoyance. "I refuse to be held responsible for that.

"It began this way: The only person we trusted to be a 'mentor' to a possible witch or warlock would not accept a male apprentice, but would be willing to change one into a witch instead. So we put in only 'witch' as an option...which wound up being chosen. Then, the same witch who was her mentor was also going to do the same thing to the knight, during an event which was deemed necessary to send someone who would otherwise be tied to an order somewhere deep inland out into the frontier. Then there was that ward on the blade which would change the sex of whoever pulled it and then seal off their memories, and one of them chose that too. The empathic soul most compatible with Ian also happened to have stray fire magic wandering the world, and we knew we could only take advantage of that if the soul was in a sufficiently familiar body, so the merging ritual also molded him to an appearance similar to hers.

"So with nearly half of them being changed one way or another, Aphera suggested we should do the same to all of them, to give them a predicament in common and draw them together somewhat. Also, I believe she had her eye on potential 'matches' for all of them—which she argued would give them further motivation to carry out our task beyond their natural inclination—and those of highest compatibility, who would also be conveniently helpful for other reasons, turned out to mostly be male. I was against the idea; Sophol sided with his wife of course; and Haestra and Dimaeus both said 'do what you want'. So here we are." She put up her hands helplessly for a second, then dropped them again.

"That brings me to something else," Ron said. "Why...more importantly how, do they have traceable history and memories of hailing from here, being that they, like us, are from Earth? You did no such thing for us."
"For why: Another matter of giving them more attachment to this world—motivation. This part I somewhat agreed with," Bimorphaeus said. "While they were in transit from your world to ours, we put them in a kind of stasis and attached their minds to some very convincing simulacra. At each juncture we asked the original mind what it would do, to determine the simulacrum's reactions and behavior to various events. At the end, we did a kind of merging to give their bodies the appearance and memories they should have if they had always been what the simulacra presented—but I was careful not to privelege the 'new' memories over their original ones. Essentially, the memories refer to events that really happened, and their actual minds are the ones which made the decisions leading to those events. It was a careful balancing act, but appears to have worked out reasonably well.

"This is true of all of them but two exceptions: It was determined that Clera's soul provided enough 'attachment' to this world without the added help of more memories, and that juggling three 'minds' at once would be too confusing for the resulting person; and the age Rose needed in order to have the level of power we wanted stretched back to before we had made the decision to bring in the new heroes, so we just set her simulacrum in her forest slightly before your town was founded and layered several copies of memory of 'doing nothing in her forest' over that of her past experience with people and hid her and the forest from perception until she was actually present."

"I thought her head looked a lot more muddled than the others," Tsaron commented. "You're aware she's a bit unstable, aren't you?"

"Well..some things are bound to get a little twisted when you try to turn a complete introvert into an extrovert," she said with a slight shrug, "as was deemed absolutely necessary for their success. At this very moment, some of that 'twisting' is in the process of being healed, so you needn't worry too much about her."

"Now hold on," Ezra interrupted.

"Yes?"
"When you said all that just now, you talked about everything that happened in the lives of their 'simulacra' as though it was inevitable. How were you able to guarantee things would turn out the way you wanted if you're not the ones calling the shots?"

"Ah. That would be Sophol's department," she nodded, shifting to Rayna's appearance. "There exists scrying magic to see how relatively minor and imminent events will turn out, but such things are incredibly unwise to rely on. Soph, though, he sees everything in the greatest of detail. He has watched the world for a very long time, long enough to produce highly accurate models of how people will behave in certain situations; how battles and conversations will turn out—so on, so forth. Put enough of those models together and he can tell you—to an astonishing degree of accuracy—how likely almost any arbitrary event is."

"Really?" Ron crossed his arms. "So how likely is it that these new heroes succeed at...whatever it is you wanted us to do?"

Bimorphaeus cleared her throat. "There are some unknown factors which are difficult to fully account for, I'm told. If everything goes exactly according to our present plan, it's around seventy percent that things go the way we want them to."
"That low, eh?"
She nodded. "It was more like sixty-five before Lupa's unique traits were understood. And bear in mind, too, there are...parts of said plan which you or they may not agree with. We're taking on some serious risks along the way to even having that high a chance of success in the first place. Even given the success of all the intended preparation, it's only, mmn...twenty-seven or so that all the heroes make it out alive? To say nothing of the other people expected to be involved."

Ezra and Ron exchanged a glance, both thinking the same thing—and the goddess surely knew it: This sounded like a battle. Perhaps there were other tasks with a high likelihood of claiming lives, but the insistent use of the term "hero" and the consistent choice of giving every person, even those entirely disinterested in or outright opposed to it, some measure of ability and experience in combat made it almost certain that some sort of fight was on the horizon.

"...So you gave each of them—plus Lupa—the same kind of potential you did us," Ezra stated. "How and why are they filling it so quickly, then?"

"I believe you have an idea of why," Bimorphaeus said, switching forms again—this time to look like Randall. "We are desperate. We're running out of bloomin' time. We need them to be as strong as possible when the time comes. As for how, well, we're simply dumping our own power onto each of them, using their experience in battle and other means of self-improvement—such as the little witch's demon-eating—as catalysts. Conveniently, all of them except the doctor already had a good semantic conceptualization for these sudden jumps in power and skill, so we simply adopted that as our way of allowing them to choose the direction of that growth. We're in no danger of dying or fading away, mind you, but by the time we're done it will be a little difficult to achieve other miracles for a long while."

"If you're willing to dump yourselves into others to do this, then why not just take care of it yourself?" Ron said, his annoyance at the god visibly piqued by the latest form.

"Because we can't. Nothing from, or intrinsically of, this world can achieve what needs doing. And that's as much as I can say on the matter for now."
"Painful information, is it?" he said.

"Who...do you think it is that makes certain information painful?" Bimorphaeus said. "Again, you've got the cause and effect reversed. A long time ago, we tried to get mortals to help us understand something related to your task, and simply knowing the truth was enough to drive some—though not all—mad. Sufficiently prepared minds will have a low risk of this, and there is reason to believe you all from Earth will be totally immune to it, but there is no reason to risk all of you knowing too soon in case that isn't correct. Anyway, I've been busy preparing their minds and steadily easing the pain off of related information for you and them. Please be patient; it's easy enough to add or remove pain to certain knowledge for everyone but incredibly delicate to do it for just a small group of people."

"Now, I think that about covers it. Do you have anything else to ask?"
"...Is there anything else you're keeping from us that you don't 'have to'?" Ezra said.

"Hmm. There is one thing I could tell you which I think would upset you some," he said, indicating her in particular. "Then again, you've always been difficult to predict."
"Well, what is it then?"
"I admit, I...don't really want to say it. It feels unfair for me to be the one who tells you, actually. Look, I'm absolutely certain you'll figure it out for yourself whenever you're ready to tell them you're from Earth," he said, holding out his hands.
"...Fine." If he was so reluctant to share it, then at least it couldn't be something important to their survival or success. "I suppose that's it, for now. But one of you had better find a way to answer anything else important we need to know. None of this 'silence for centuries' nonsense again," she said with a severe expression.
"I think I can get the others to agree with that," he said. "It shouldn't be such a jolt for you if one of them comes in rather than me, although..don't expect them to be quite as eloquent as I am."

The "Best" RPG Ever-98

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Ezra knew that he was dying, and was more or less at peace with it—at least as much so as any man could be. There had been a time in his life when he feared death, hated it, railed against it...but in his present condition he couldn't help but see it as something of a relief. Spending another year in a hospital bed wasn't his idea of living anyway, and he was weary of worrying and taxing his family at this point. He had lived a long, full life, watched the world go through one upheaval after another, and his children were so old now that they were beginning to have grandkids of their own. Not many of his peers, he understood, retained their minds as long or as well as he had, so he could only feel fortunate and grateful when his eldest daughter held his hand, telling him about the boy her son had had recently, and drifted off into a sleep he would likely not awake from.

Yet that wasn't exactly the way of things, it seemed. He did awake, just not where or how he might have expected. He was lying on his back, the surface beneath him hard, and cool, but not freezing. Opening his eyes slowly, there was a glaring light from above whose source seemed impossible to correctly place. More importantly, however—it didn't seem that he was in any pain. He didn't feel weak, or tired, just...normal. Healthy? At the very least, he had no trouble sitting up and looking around; he was still in his hospital gown, and the only other object of interest in the strange, white room he found himself in was a pedestal cast in the same color with a thick, hardcover tome laying closed on the right half of its top. Shrugging to himself, Ezra slowly pushed himself up off of the floor—which was far easier than he thought it should have been—and walked over to the pedestal.

"Read this," he read aloud from the cover. Unusual though it was, his throat and voice working properly was hardly a surprise against everything else at this point. "A'right..." Turning the cover open, he found a message seemingly handwritten in careful, rigid letters across the book's first two pages:

Welcome!

We regret to inform you that you have died. However, this is no afterlife. Our world has need of people from yours, and you are among those we have selected to ask for help as a result of your existing skills and experience. We are willing to grant you a new life and a limitless potential to supplement these.

If you prefer to remain deceased in your own world, you may take the doors behind you.

Ezra paused reading a second, turning to look behind him. There were indeed a pair of doors faintly visible on the wall back there, although he was fairly sure they hadn't been there a moment ago. He resumed reading:

Otherwise, the remaining pages of this tome contain descriptions of the varieties of potential we can provide you with, in order from what we believe to be the most compatible with you to the least. If you wish to help, and have found the potential which you feel suits you best, please place your hands palms-down onto the pages describing that potential in order to receive it and move forward.

"'Potential', eh?" The idea of other worlds had occurred to him before, but being contacted—much less somehow posthumously "borrowed" by one—was far from his range of possibilities. However, if he doubted that whoever wrote the message had the power to do what it was they were suggesting, he needed only look to the current health of his body compared to how it had been before. It was hard not to believe, with that, that they would be capable of more—whoever 'they' were.

Did he want to go back, and stay dead? It wasn't a choice he'd been offered before, so it was one he was thoroughly unprepared for. He had already made his peace with his death back on Earth, so receiving a new life on this new world was only a gain for him—the rest of what he might hope for in a new life lost already. More importantly...they needed his help.

It was difficult to place, but reading the carefully written, dryly worded text gave Ezra a distinct sense of desperation—of dread from the writer. If whoever it was had the power to bring people back to life and from another world, no less, and yet were unable to handle whatever it was they needed him for themselves...it had to be important. It might be something that impacted a lot of people of this other world—and, no matter the world, people were people. If there was one ethic or code that Ezra had always lived his life by, and tried his best to teach in his children or any other young person he encountered, it was that when you see someone in need, you try your best to help them. If this really was an entire world of people who needed his help...then, reward of a new life or not, he needed to help them.

Turning to the next pair of pages, he found the left page to say “War” in large letters, with depictions of all manner of medieval weaponry adorning it besides. The opposite page appeared to have a more detailed description, but Ezra slowly shook his head and moved on to the next two pages rather than reading it through. “I've had enough of war in one life,” he said quietly to himself. The next pair of pages depicted the potential of “Speech”—the imagery on the left including a silhouetted noble and jester, someone whispering in an ear, and a few musical instruments besides. This one's description Ezra elected to read:

The power over expression and communication of all forms. The ability to inspire, demoralize, or deceive. The capacity to understand the hearts and minds of others, and to bend them to one's own ends.

Ezra considered this a long moment, but turned the page to see the next few options before making his mind up. These were “Light”, then “Mind”, “Sight”...none of their descriptions seemed as good to him as “Speech” had been. Finally he returned to those pages, staring at them a moment longer. “Solomon chose wisdom,” he said to himself, and then carefully pressed his hands onto the pages. He thought perhaps this would cause some observer watching through a one-way window or camera of some sort to take note and reveal or open a new door in a different direction; what he didn't expect was for the book to glow bright blue and send spirals of that same light snaking upward along his arms, up his neck and down his body.

"Whoa, there!" Ezra stumbled back in surprise a couple of steps, taking his hands off of the book. This didn't seem to stop whatever was happening, as the spirals of light constricted themselves around his body, palpably squeezing him briefly before seeming to sink into his skin. "..Ah." Holding up a hand, he could see that his body itself seemed to be glowing the same shade, joined by a not unpleasant tingling which appeared to be signalling the fading of wrinkles, sores and other blemishes from his body—not that he could see most of that, but it was easy enough to guess it was happening from his arms and the exposed parts of his legs.

He next felt something like a hand running through his hair...more hair than he ought to have. Reaching his own hands upward, he found much longer, fuller hair than he was supposed to have floating up around his head; it felt soft and well-groomed, not at all the scraggly mess of a year's worth of hospital bed-head it would have remained if left alone. Moving a hand down as the tingling faded off, he traced the contour of his chin and found it covered in soft, smooth skin, cleaner shaven than he thought he had been in his entire life.

Whatever was making his hair float up in the air like that began to give up at this point; long locks in the same dark brown he'd had as a younger man slid down through the air and fell across his forehead as bangs, then down his cheeks and onto his shoulders before continuing to fall down along his back. He couldn't help running a hand through it again, pulling one of the longest locks around from the back to examine it. Why were they making it so long, he wondered—whoever or whatever 'they' were.

The blue glow had gradually brightened as his hair fell downward, and now Ezra felt a pressing, squeezing sensation all across his body; it covered more of him and seemed somehow deeper than when the spiraling light had first constricted around him, and it had a visible effect almost right away. "Hm...shrinking," he muttered, the pedastal being the only clear reference point for his rapid loss of height. He'd always been pretty well on the tall side before, but...this felt like an overcorrection. Besides that, looking down and patting along the sides of his gown he could see that he was getting thinner and narrower, his arms and legs slimming down as well, rather than merely shorter.

This was about the point where he noticed the pressure getting a little bit sharper in one particular area. "...Ah. 'New life', eh..?" he muttered, sensing something he'd had all his life starting to withdraw itself away in preparation to disappear entirely. Well—while he'd always enjoyed being a man, who didn't wonder what it was like on the other side from time to time? As long as he was being—what, reincarnated?—there were certainly far worse possible results.

Something cold seemed to run across Ezra's neck. "Aah!" He jerked back slightly, startled; the coolness faded to a slight tingling as the shrinking down there continued. "Mmm~mm. Oh, I see." His voice was changing, the masculinity fading out and the pitch rising ever so slowly. "Awful strange feelin'..mm~mmh," he hummed, listening to the change continue. His voice slid steadily over to a dark, mature alto as his body's shrinking finally tapered off; even with very little to refer to, he couldn't help feeling he was going to end up extremely, almost unreasonably short. Then..

"Hhhh!" Ezra gasped at a sudden motion between the legs. "...Ah," she muttered, feeling an unusual tingling down there along with a mild upward motion toward the pit of her stomach. "Yep..there it goes." Her face felt a little warm as she tried to get used to the sensation of being..."flat". It wasn't unpleasant or even particularly uncomfortable...just very unfamiliar. Looking forward, she could see that her height had finally stabilized, too, but the feeling of her body starting to press outward much the same way it had inward during the shrinking made it clear this wasn't quite the end of the change.

"Hmmn." She put one hand on her chest and the other against the side of her hips, feeling each start to press itself outward. The feeling of curves steadily filling themselves into place was strangely pleasant, as her hips spread apart, steadily shifting her body's stance and balance, and her chest gained two small, soft fleshy bumps for the beginning of a pair of breasts. "That's...something.." she muttered, feeling the mammaries spread out larger and larger, new, sensitive skin moving across the material of the hospital gown and feeling the slight press of her hand against it as it needed to cup out more and more to fit the growing globes. It became increasingly clear she was due to carry quite a load, but it was hard not to enjoy the feeling a bit—even as the warmth of a slight blush on her face steadily intensified into the heat of a blazing fire.

"Mh—mmn~nh." Finally, Ezra's body finished changing, leaving her with a voluptuous figure indeed; her hand slowly drew away from the enormous pair of globes adorning her chest to slide down the sharp inward curve of the side of her waist and beyond that to her wide, womanly hips. She realized she was panting, and tried to catch her breath, dropping her hands to the sides and looking down to assess her new appearance more..calmly, if it was possible. Even through the gown—which was starting to glow blue itself—it was clear: When she was a younger, unattached man, she might have killed to get with a girl this pretty. At least with all that talk of 'potential' they hadn't reduced her to a child or anything; she felt young again, full of energy and even ambition—though what sort exactly it was hard to put her finger on—but was clearly still an adult.

No more time for that now, as her clothes began to reform. The gown's sleeves and lower portion both tore off, pulling away and turning entirely to blue light before returning, wrapping themselves around her arms and legs and changing into armored leggings and gauntlets with long cloth gloves and gartered stockings beneath. The central mass turned to light on her body before reforming into a tight-fitting top with a detached collar and a deep cut between that and the bit around her generous chest, a very short skirt that revealed a bit of her thighs above the armored leggings, undergarments appropriate for her body's newfound sex and figure, and even a sort of cape flapping itself out behind her back. Last of all, she saw that the book on the pedestal had turned entirely into the same bright blue light, and now it quickly flowed over to her, placing itself on her left side as a long sheath attached to her clothes, complete with the hilt of a sword sticking out of the top and all the expected weight for such a hunk of metal.

Despite being aware of the weight of metal on her arms and legs—and from that sword as well—Ezra found it all terribly light to her new form, as though she'd been carrying the likes of it for years. She drew the sword, holding it upright and regarding it suspiciously. Its balance and weight felt comfortable to her; although she had never handled one before she immediately felt she understood the basics of using the weapon effectively. “Guess there ain't no escaping some war after all,” she muttered to herself, watching the reflection of the fair, young, altogether unfamiliar face in the lustrous metal of the flat of the blade. Her eyes were most unusual now—one green and the other red.

Well—she had already made her decision, and seemingly received the benefit for it. Ezra sighed, putting the weapon away as she strode forth toward a new set of doors in the wall before her, mentally preparing herself to see what sort of world it was that required her help, and to contend with this strange body she'd been given...

Days and weeks—as much as a month or two—blurred by, before stopping abruptly again. She was walking on a path, next to a tall elvish psion named Ron, in the middle of a conversation. "I just don't see no sense, in changin' our names," she was saying. "With our bodies so altered, they're all we have left of our old selves."
"Well, sure," the tall elf said, putting up his arms. "But at the same time, it's an opportunity to name ourselves, to something that suits us or fits our new identities here a bit better. Our astronomer friend is still honoring Earth, or at least something reasonably close by..though she hasn't decided which one to go with quite yet. I'm pretty sure Randall agrees with you, or at least doesn't care to put in the effort so long as the—ahem—other ladies still like him."

"Is he still obsessin' over that?"

"Heheheh. You should've seen the look on his face, Ezra. Maybe I'll just show it to you sometime we're not busy walking. At least it got him to stop flirting, right?"
"Didn't do much for the other two ladies."

"I could tell him they're the same way if you want. Not sure he'd buy it, though."

"What about you, then? Thinkin' of some other name?"

"Well, everyone likes to call me some variant of 'Ron', so I figure something that can still be shortened to that would be best. Maybe 'Tsaron'."
"Ron." Ezra stopped in her tracks to glance up at him. "That sounds ridiculous."

"Hahah, that's just what I thought you'd say! But ridiculous is the flavor of things for all of us now, in my opinion. Besides, it sounds nice and mystical. As for the surgeon.."

"What do you want?" she cut him off.

"Hmm?" Ron was (understandably?) confused, stopping instead of resuming the walk and prompting her to take a few quick steps to keep up, like how this was supposed to go.

"You heard me. How much of this do you intend to force me to relive?" Ezra demanded, taking a couple of steps back and giving a far less friendly glare. "What is your purpose for this? To torment me like you did Randall? Am I going to have to watch him tear Valorum to shreds again!? Or Ceres bleeding out?" Even though it meant very little, Ezra drew her sword and pointed it up at his neck. "I'll ask you again: What do you want?" she said, her voice flat and dead-serious.
"...Oh." Something about Ron's face changed; the confusion was gone, as though he had just realized something. There was no fear either, instead a sort of organized, self-assured calm that surpassed that of even the real one's usual demeanor.

"I am terribly sorry to have distressed you," he said, dropping his hands to his sides. "I needed to come in myself, you see, to speak in person. I have no body, you know. When I am outside, I can see a dream for what it is, and shape its experience and meaning as needed. But with no 'real self' to keep me tethered, entering a dream means taking on whatever role it gives me. I chose some deeply familiar memories for you in hopes of catching your attention quickly...which it would seem I did," he continued, placing a palm on the top blade of her sword and pressing down to lower it, suffering no injury in the process.
Ezra sighed, letting go of the weapon entirely and crossing her hands. "Do I have to repeat myself again?"
"Well—I wanted to talk. You...wanted to talk," he corrected, pointing. "Right? You have questions, and I can answerrr...some of them," he said. "Not that I don't know the answer to all of them, but..there is some information which—while I believe you are ready for—the others won't allow me to tell you. They don't want that knowledge getting out into other minds yet, and for as much as I don't believe you would, they fear you telling the wrong person the right thing too soon."

"Fine," she nodded slowly. "Fine. So: What are you gathering the others to my town for?"

"To complete the mission we set you on long ago, with the aid of some new heroes," Bimorphaeus responded. "...The mission I still cannot tell you the details of, for the reasons I just outlined."

"So we failed."
"I don't think that's fair to say," he said. "It is...our failure. Mine. I volunteered to be the one to contact you, despite the added difficulty, so that I could at least try to apologize. That man..." The god wearing Ron's skin shook his head and sighed. "I saw all of his mind, as I did everyone's, before we chose you. He had some dark, sick, twisted fantasies in there, but never in his entire life had he acted upon them. I convinced...myself first, and then the others, that he never would. We needed...we thought we needed somebody with medical experience, to be a healer for you. We offered him the Potential of Light, or Empathy, or...a number of other things, all of which he turned down in favor of that one. It was concluded that pairing his old skills with the new ones of that sort would make for a versatile member, so we let him do it. The fact that he would grow much faster than the rest of you was known, but Sophol estimated it at a very low risk—based on the evidence of my, erroneous, conclusions."

"You didn't kill him. Or try to stop him," Ezra said. "Strike him down where he stood, once it was clear what he was doing. How long did you know before we did?"
"Not...long," Bimorphaeus said evasively. "We helped where we could, but he was already extremely powerful, enough that intervening ourselves was a high-risk option. We thought we would try to help you take him out, keeping as many as possible alive, and then...plan B."

"Plan B," she questioned by way of repeating.

"When we chose you, we thought we were selecting heroes from Earth. People with exceptional skill, ability, and/or intellect, who would be able to put Potential to its greatest use. We assumed a transactional way of doing things was best—a new life and great power in exchange for what we needed done," he said. "It was our first try, getting help from another world. We chose to claim the souls of people who were dying, and bring them here, as this was by far the easiest and safest way, and seemingly the least obtrusive to your world as well. We chose to do it a long time before you would be needed, in order to minimize the power we would spend granting you that Potential and maximize its chances to grow. And...to hedge our bets. We thought..." Bimorphaeus shook his head slightly, "we thought, if you didn't work out, we could buy ourselves all the time we needed to get new heroes. About this, we were wrong.

"Sophol perceived new information which...you understand, I cannot go into much detail, but...our 'plan B' to buy ourselves new time? It wouldn't work; at least, not sustainably. We would be spending more power than we could afford to delay things nowhere near enough to build that power back up again. And we had never thought up a 'plan C' because we were always supposed to have more time..." For a deity, he looked suddenly very tired and worried for a second or two. "This was right after you took him down. Our best-laid schemes were shattered, and while your group was tearing itself apart we were still trying to pick up the pieces and work out what to do about it."

---

Well, this one's been a long time coming. This image has been in the folder for this story since I started it, although it was a little while before I worked out all the details. I had planned on placing this whole thing at part 100, but simply ran out of things for everyone to do before getting here. And of course this came out to be far too long to even fit reasonably in a single "part", so it's been split. At any rate, we can consider 98-99 to be a sort of "end of a season" thing at least, before things crank up again at 100, which is at least something. Stay turned for 99 tomorrow.

Wishing to Dive Headfirst Into

"Miranda! Miraaaannnndaaaaa!!!" Carlos saw her in the hallway; with her brilliantly blazing long red locks, it was easy to identify her even from the back. But he was pretty far away, and she didn't stop when he called, and by the time he did catch up to where he thought she was, she had turned a corner and promptly disappeared, now nowhere to be seen.

"Darn!" he punched the air in frustration, disappointed in himself. Everyone else found that girl so easily, it seemed—the very moment you wanted to talk to Miranda, the rumor went, there she was—but after no less than a week of trying, Carlos just didn't seem to be able to reach her. She'd be off somewhere in the distance, sitting perfectly still, and then—poof—the moment he looked away or tried to approach her, she was gone, vanished into the crowd or—when that was unavailable—thin air itself! Some of his classmates swore she was in the same classes he shared with them, but he could never find her even there! And now this...

Carlos slumped forward in defeat, another attempted meeting with the mysterious woman aborted. Maybe she wasn't even real, he thought, somehow a collective delusion of the entire campus including himself? But no, there was simply too much evidence: He'd seen the amazing things she could do, and had done, for people, for himself time and again. Carlos picked himself up again, redoubling his resolve. Next time he'd get her to talk to him for sure!

That was when a voice came from far too close to him to not have been noticed its owner before. "Bwaulg!" He jumped, shuddering, and rapidly turned to the source of the voice, all before properly processing the words.

"What do you want?" And there she was: Miranda herself, standing with her arms firmly crossed together not three feet away from him, the annoyance as plain on her face as it had been in her voice.

Carlos stared at her, wide-eyed and unbelieving, almost past the point of rudeness. "It's really you! You are real," he said happily, fistpumping. He knew she was upset and was aware this reaction of his wasn't helping matters, but his absolute elation was overriding whatever sense of propriety he usually had.

"Of course I'm real," she said. "Is that what this is? Somebody wagered with you that I did not exist?"

"Noo, nononono," Carlos held his hands out, shaking his head violently. "It's just—you're kinda hard to get a hold of, is all. A-and I really wanted to talk to you!"

"Why?" she asked, still affronted. "You are not in any pain that needs my advice."

"Yeah, but...you're so cool!" He waved his hands out toward her. "Always helping everyone out with their problems. Plus you're magic too, right? I mean, I've met people who said you did impossible stuff for them."

"That is...meant to be a secret," she said with a slight shake of her head. "I...suppose I have not been so discreet about it lately."

Her arms uncrossed and her expression softened somewhat for the first time. "It is true. I am a somewhat accomplished witch."

"That's so awesome!" Carlos spouted. "Can you teach me?" he further blurted. "Like, magic and stuff? I want to be able to help people out like that too!"

"Heh.." Miranda chuckled softly. "Well, you certainly aren't shy about your desires. However..." She shook her head. "I will tell you a secret better kept than my powers, but you must not repeat it. In truth, I am far older than I appear to be. The college employs me as a covert counselor of sorts, and in addition to payment I am allowed to audit whatever classes I like to keep up the appearance of a fellow student. Every six years or so I take on a new appearance and name to maintain the act. So I don't want for money, besides which I am no teacher of spells, and hardly in the market for an apprentice at the moment. Whether you even have potential for the kind of magic I use is unknown, and by your age even a fairly strong potential would be difficult to properly train."

Carlos visibly deflated throughout this explanation, especially the last sentence. "Aww..."

"I'm sorry if I bugged you or anything," he said sadly. Maybe he could find someone else who knew magic and wanted to teach him, he thought.

"Hmm." Miranda had fixed him with a searching look while he wasn't looking; Carlos tried to stand up straight and look innocent, although he was uncertain what she was—possibly—suspicious about. "Why do you want magic of your own?" she asked finally.

"Well—like I said. It's so cool. There's so many ways you can help people with magic, when nothing else works. Right? That's why you use it, isn't it? I bet I could even save some people's lives if I knew the right spells and stuff!"

The witch nodded slightly, but her expression turned a bit dark. "I do not want to crush your hopes. However...If you became desperate for power, even with noble intentions, there are many who would prey on that desperation and harm both you and others in the process. Perhaps it is best I don't leave you be."

"Oh." Carlos wasn't sure he liked the sound of that. "You gonna obliviate me or something?"

"Obliviate?" She stared blankly back, understanding the reference at all.

"Uh...make me forget we had this conversation or something...?"

"Of course not," she shook her head.

"The problems I listed still stand, but I believe there is a way around them. With my enchantments in increasing demand around campus, I could use a familiar. This would entail me channeling my magic through you, which would eventually awaken whatever potential you have as well as grant you familiarity with my spells sufficient to cast those that fit your nature yourself."

"That sounds so awesome," he said with a grin. "Um—aren't familiars usually like, animals or something though?"

"The most powerful familiars are humanoid," Miranda explained. "Although I would deceive you to not admit to a high likelihood you gain some animal traits as a result of the status, you would remain capable of essentially everything you are now."

"There's no downside, then!" Carlos concluded aloud. "I'd love to be your familiar!"

"Heheh," she chuckled again, finding his energy amusing if not infectious. "Calm yourself, please. While it would be a temporary state of affairs, it's not to be taken lightly. I want you to take at least until this weekend to mull it over before making a firm decision; I require about that long to prepare for the necessary ritual anyway. Give me your number, and I shall text you directions to where to go if you still wish to go through with it."

"Okay!" Carlos said, and rattled off his number right away, while she was still busy digging in her purse for her phone.

"Heheh, hold on a moment!" Miranda said. "Allow me to—there." Her phone in hand, she said, "Again, please. Slowly. And what is your name?"

"Oh! It's Carlos," he said with a nod. "Uhhh." Then he went through his number again, as slowly as he could manage. This time she got it.

The place she had him go was a particular office inside one of the campus's administrative buildings, which from the outside had all the look of a maintenance room or perhaps some unused space. Her texts had indicated the door would be unlocked, so he carefully opened it to find something very different on the inside.

It seemed—bigger than should fit in there, for one thing. There was an area of the room with an entire couch facing a big screen, a corner with a computer chair in front of a long desk, and a wide open space in the middle with a pentagram inscribed in a circle faintly glowing red on the floor. Just on the other side of that pentagram was the witch, still in the same sort of casual wear as the day before, but in the faint glow her usual mysterious presence was enhanced into a downright mystical appearance.

"You are here," she said, stating the obvious. "Please, shut the door behind you."

"O-okay." Eager as he was, Carlos couldn't help some nervousness at the imposing sense of power radiating from Miranda just now, lending her a sort of firm, commanding aura. He carefully shut the door and took a couple of steps inside.

"This is my 'office', for lack of a better term," the witch explained. "It is space allotted to me by the college, although I essentially only come here when I am not meeting with anyone. It has some comforts, but I usually spend little time here, favoring my own home. Nonetheless, I think this is the best place for the ritual."

"Well...sure," he agreed blindly. "Is...that what the circle thing's for?"

"But of course," she nodded. "I have prepared everything necessary. Allow me to explain the procedure: First you must step in the center of the magic circle," she said, pointing. "Hold it," she said, putting out an arm palm-first as he began to step toward it. "Allow me to finish explaining before you do so."

"Oh. Uh. Sorry."

"It's all right. Your eagerness is part of your charm, after all," she said.

"Now: Becoming a familiar is a mutual contract. Once you are on the circle I will use it as a focus to channel my magic through you and grant your nature better compatibility with mine, as is necessary for a familiar to have. This is likely the point at which you will take on some animalistic traits. You can back out afterward if your mind changes, and be returned entirely to as you are now. After that, I will begin the contract spell. You will completely understand the terms and conditions, and be given an opportunity to accept or reject my contract. The point of no return comes if you should accept; although I have prepared a contract which allows us to nullify it harmlessly, that is only possible after a period of adjustment which could last anywhere from a week to a full year, depending on several factors which I am unable to accurately measure. Do you understand?"

"Yeah," he nodded slowly. It was a lot to take in, but she had explained it so carefully and well that he couldn't help but understand. Did she really think she couldn't teach anyone anything, or was that 'I am no teacher of spells' thing just part of her efforts to rebuff him, he wondered. "I still wanna do it. So, can I..?"

"Yes," she nodded seriously, "Proceed."

Carlos stepped carefully toward the glowing circle in the ground, and then carefully picked his foot over all the glowing red bits to plant it squarely in the center without touching them, followed by doing the same with his other foot. Maybe it wasn't necessary, but he didn't want to screw up all her careful preparation, after all!

"Brace yourself," Miranda instructed him, and when he nodded that he had, she began softly chanting in some incomprehensible tongue. It was fascinating, somehow, to hear, as though he understood something ineffable of their meaning even though any literal translation was far from him. The circle began to glow brighter, and lines traced inward from each point of the star toward the center, stopping where they reached Carlos's shoes and seeming to flow the red glow upward across his body. Before long he saw the glow make its way down his arms to his hands, and was aware of it covering his head, too. Then there was a sensation like something warm pressing itself inward onto—and into—his skin.

It felt unbelievably pleasant, like a warm, friendly hug from a gigantic teddy bear. Carlos found himself wrapping his arms around his body as if instinctively wanting to return that invisible hug, and let out a small, pleased "Mmmh" as the warmth seemed to sink deep inside him, right down to the bones.

He felt as though he was melting from that warmth, and yet it wasn't uncomfortable—just the opposite in fact. His point of view sank downward as his height diminished; he could feel his body pulling itself inward, slimming and narrowing everywhere. Looking down, he saw his sweater billowing out around him, slipping off a shoulder as it rapidly narrowed and softened. "Mmmh" came from his throat again as he found he enjoyed the shrinking; it felt like he was simply meant to be much smaller than he had been, and now that error was being fixed. Looking forward periodically, he saw Miranda's forehead, then her eyes, then her chin, all rise past his eye level as the warmth steadily melted him away.

It was not merely size he was losing, either, as Carlos's pleased sighs and "Aaah"s and "Mmnn" sounds came in steadily higher and higher pitches. He was aware of his manhood wilting and shrinking away from the warmth as if it, too, didn't belong. His pants and boxers both slipped down his legs, revealing soft, smooth skin on shapely limbs, curvy thighs tapering down to slender ankles. His hips, too, looked rather wide compared to his slender frame, and he knew from the sensation of warmth across his skin that his belly was flat with a sharp inward curve to the sides. His hands had slipped out of view under the cuffs of his sweater, which now fell loosely across his tiny, skinny arms; its collar was halfway down his left shoulder, only the opposite side hanging on his neck keeping the whole thing from falling off like his pants had.

"Mmh, mmMMmmh..!" Carlos became abruptly aware of a couple of little tugs between his legs. In a high, girly voice he murmured in response to each one, feeling the warmth being joined by a blush all across his face. His bright blonde hair fell out across his shoulders, tickling the exposed one, then two especially long tails loosely slid their way down across either side of his back, down past the hips to the exposed bit of his thighs, tickling the smooth skin there, too; the very tips of those locks darkened to a near-black shade as though singed by the fiery warmth within him. "O-oh...mnh.." Two more little tugs, not that there was much to feel them with at this point. Then Carlos's ears tingled, and they began to do something which felt like stretching, impossible as that was for something normally stationary on the sides of his head.

"MmMMmmnh." Away his manhood slipped. "MmmMMMmmrrRRrrrhhh~...!" As Carlos's sex fully changed, she found the pleased noise from her throat—much to her surprise—suddenly erupting into a distinctly feline purr. Her ears stretched up and up, newly grown fuzz on them sliding across her silky-soft hair, erupting past that hair and beginning to twitch around, picking up the subtleties of the motion of air across them and detecting distant sounds with their suddenly powerful hearing.

"Mnh, mrrr~rrrh...!" She purred again, feeling a distinctly pleasant sensation in the new equipment between her legs as a tail slid its way out of her lower back, a slim line of soft fur spilling past the hem of her sweater in the back to begin twitching from side to side periodically in a further feline expression of pleasure as it grew to a length no less than half her (quite diminished) height. "Mrrh, mroo~oww..!" Next she felt her tongue moving strangely—growing ever so slightly longer, it seemed—and a sensation in her teeth which was later explained by the discovery of some sharp, slightly longer fangs taking the place of her human canines. The feeling of being distinctly a cat washed through her as she let out another delighted "MrRRrroooOOooww~!" at the feeling of her chest gently puffing forward into the material of her sweater, stretching the suddenly tight top as the two little bumps rapidly bloomed out into a mid-sized pair of breasts that felt nice and big on her tiny, petite figure. This, too, gave her the most wonderful feelings deep between her legs, making her appreciate womanhood—in addition to cathood—all the more. She briefly felt something sliding its way back up her legs as the changes to her body finally stopped, followed by the pull of a snug, soft pair of panties against the sides of her hips and the strangely blank spot between her legs. Finally, she felt something just touching the hair of the corner of her head and some soft material tying itself around the new tail a bit before the tip—both of which she would later see to be floral accessories accentuating her newfound cuteness.

"Mew...aah..?" Carlos opened her eyes and blinked a couple of times, having a brief oblivious episode where she wondered why Miranda was so tall all of a sudden that the witch's impressive chest was right at her eye level. Then she looked down and instantly felt very exposed by the sweater hanging barely to the top of her thighs, and tugged down on it with her tiny, delicate hands, her cheeks flushing, ears spiking straight upright, and her tail twitching wildly in shock. "Waaah!"

"Heheh," Miranda chuckled at this reaction. "I thought for sure you'd turn out to be a puppy, but it seems a feline form fit you better. It's all right; we're both girls here, after all,” she said with a mischievous smile.

"Wh-why?!" Carlos demanded first. Then: "I-I mean..um. Why did, why am I a girl?"

"Well," Miranda said, "Being a witch, my magic is inherently feminine. I suppose it should have come as no surprise that you would accept it so completely as to not even resist that part; it ultimately makes you far more compatible now than you otherwise would be. But—as I said, we have not committed to any contract yet; I could retract my magic and return you to normal now, if you wish."

"N-no way!" she said excitedly, leaning forward. "I-I was just um. Curious and surprised, is all, like maybe you should've warned me or something! But it's totally worth it!" Her tail went into overdrive during this outburst, expressing her panicked energy better than anything on her face could.

"All right, all right. Settle down," Miranda said, holding out a hand. Somehow this instantly made Carlos feel calmer, and she leaned away again, standing upright.

"Now...Are you prepared?" Miranda asked.

"Yes," Carlos nodded with as serious an expression as she could manage.

"Then, let us begin."

Miranda began chanting again, in that fascinating almost-language. Carlos's ears twitched as she listened, her attention drawn far more closely to the sound of the witch's voice this time and her mind seeming much closer than before to comprehending that ineffable meaning. This time, it was Miranda's body which glowed first, brightening to the same brilliant red as her hair—which now floated up all around her as though weightless—and lighting up the entire room. The witch's eyes, she realized, were covered with that light as if emitting it themselves. Then Miranda raised her arms up, palms pointed forward and in toward Carlos's body, and streams of the luminous magical light flowed from those hands straight into Carlos's center, making the catgirl glow just as brightly before gently lifting her off the ground, floating her up just enough for her face and the witch's to be at the same level. Their eyes then met and—instantly—Carlos understood.

As Miranda's familiar, the witch's magic would be channeled through her very being in order to amplify and focus it, which would significantly enhance its power and versatility. This flow would prevent Carlos's own magic from expressing, preventing her from using it for whatever she would have otherwise been able to for as long as she was a familiar. In exchange, Carlos would have access to Miranda's magic for her own use, and it would naturally keep her body healthy, young, and unnaturally resilient to both physical and magical harm for the contract's duration. Additionally, the flow of magic would give each of them constant access to mental communication with the other and an intuitive sense of the other's intentions. The contract could be nullified and its effects immediately dispelled by either party, but since doing so before the flow completely stabilized would risk great harm to both of them, this option would only be available after that point.

Miranda was offering the contract, which meant she had already assented to its terms. Carlos could feel the spell pressing on her mind for a yes or no answer as to whether she also agreed to it. The diminutive catgirl hardly hesitated at all before saying Yes! as loudly in her mind as she could, and immediately felt the contract taking effect, the bright red glow sinking into her body as a pleasant warmth again while she was gently set back down onto her feet. This time the warmth seemed to settle and remain inside her, a constant, pulsing sensation of Miranda's power and will flowing into and through her and back again. Both of them took a deep breath and let it out slowly in sync as the rest of the spell's glow faded off, leaving only the relatively faint illumination of the magic circle to light the room.

Well, how do you feel? Miranda's voice came to Carlos's head despite the witch not moving her lips a bit.

"Amazing!" her familiar shouted excitedly. "I can do magic now, right? Ooh, watch this!" She held up her right hand and snapped it, producing a small flame floating above her upheld palm.

"Heheh," Miranda put a hand up to her chin, unable to suppress a giggle at the adorable catgirl's enthusiasm and her big, goofy grin. "It is impressive you've taken to its use so quickly, but please put that out. I don't want to have to explain why we set off this building's smoke detectors."

"Oh!" Closing her hand, she instantly dismissed the fire. "Whoops. Heehee."

"There's a good girl." One of the witch's hands reached over and was rubbing Carlos's ears before she could react to the motion. She purred, surprising and embarrassing herself, blushing but lowering those ears in submission, leaning into the petting with her tail twitching happily back and forth.

"Waah!" Carlos snapped out of it just as suddenly, pulling herself back upright and her ears popping straight to vertical again. "Wh-what was that?!" she demanded; the contract had felt like an 'equal partnership' sort of thing, and some portion of her newfound feline instincts also yelled that she was 'not a pet!'

"Sorry. I fear some of your youthful impetuousness is rubbing off on me through the connection," Miranda said, suppressing a laugh at her reaction. "You did enjoy it, didn't you?"

"Nnn..yes," the catgirl said, the truth coming out past her embarrassment and confusion.

"Then I see no reason to deny you the experience. It is just us here, after all," she said, coming around to put an arm over her cute little familiar's shoulders.

"I...I guess so," she agreed slowly, letting herself be guided over to the couch and sat down nice and close to the tall, gorgeous witch.

Before she knew it, the catgirl was purring again, eagerly pulling herself up around the witch in a close hug and even permitting her to run a hand gently down along her tail. She nuzzled Miranda's cheek affectionately in appreciation, and was a little surprised to find the witch nuzzling her right back.

Now then, Miranda's voice came to her mind; their present position did make it a little tough to speak aloud, after all. Do you wish to keep your name, or use a new one? I'm a little partial to Catrice, myself.

That's... she sent back, finding this way of communicating as easy as breathing. I wanted to say you can't just name me like some pet, buut..III...actually really like that one.

Catrice it is, then, Miranda replied cheerfully, a bit of that mischievous smile evident in her mental voice. So, Catrice, perhaps we should learn a little more about each other. Where do you hail from?

By the time they parted ways, the two of them knew as much about each other as a couple of old friends, and Catrice was embarrassingly, hopelessly addicted to the witch's gentle petting. She made her way back to her apartment, thankful for her previous lack of a roommate. Tonight would be her last time there—it would include packing up her things to take them all to a new home with her witch—so she tried to think of some magic tricks she could safely test out while she was by herself to get used to using Miranda's magic. Maybe there was a spell or two that could help with packing, she mused, or at least something to conveniently convert some of her gigantically oversized old clothes into something more fitting to an adorably petite catgirl like herself...

Jeanie's Roomie

The sequel to Gene's Jacket!

The "Best" RPG Ever-97

 First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

Once she was asleep, Katherine walked over into Aria's dream as usual. "Hey. You were up late," the shifter said, standing up from her usual meditation stance and stretching. "Is Zack all right?"
Taken slightly aback by the unexpected expression of concern—with that windup, Katherine was sure she was about to say something teasing—the psion nodded slowly. "He'll be just fine. In fact, he wanted to visit us here tonight. You ready to start pulling people in?"

"You know it!" The shifter gave an energetic thumbs-up.

First Katherine got Rayna and Lynn, letting each one acclamate while she set up a section of the dreamscape to have the seating of their house's living room, and then reached over toward Zack. Even though her own body was...right up against his, it just felt easier to start with whoever was nearer to Aria instead. Maybe that made sense, as she was the 'host mind'. Either way, she pulled at the wolf-girl's mind while the other three were on their way to the seats.

It wasn't a pleasant scene he brought with him. In the same shape as his waking body, wearing armor stained in places with blood, Zack was holding his sword up as if preparing to defend himself against a massive pile of fresh-looking corpses in front of him, at least twice as tall as he was. Aria made a face toward the psion which more or less said 'are you sure he's okay', while Rayna and Lynn paused to glance briefly at the nightmarish vision and then exchange a further glance with each other.

Katherine could swear one or two of those bodies looked entirely too familiar. "Zack!" she yelled to get his attention, floating closer to him.He jumped, turned around with his sword still raised, hands shaking, and looked back and forth in a quick, panicked motion before realizing where he was. "...Oh." He visibly calmed, lowering the weapon and then letting go of it, which caused the sword to disappear entirely. His armor began to melt and soften into cloth, transforming slowly into his usual sort of casual wear.

"Well, that's a new one," Aria said. "You okay?"
"Yeah," he nodded. "Better now that I know that's not real," he said while pointing back at the bodies but visibly refusing to turn and look at them again. "Can you, uh," he said toward the psion, "...get rid of that or something?"
"Sure, no problem." With a wave of her hand, Zack's "part" of the dream-space was overwritten by more of Lynn's, turning into a further length of grassy plains under bright sunlight. The wolf-girl visibly breathed a sigh of relief, able to feel the nightmare setting disappearing without even looking. "Thanks."

Now Zack had the mental focus to shift his body into a male Canis form—although, the others noted, still long-haired and rather on the short side, with a distinctly feminine face. Even Aria declined to comment on this aloud while he walked over to the others and slumped down onto a free seat of the couch. "FFFffff."

"I guess you were right about getting a nightmare," Katherine said while she got busy pulling Nora in also. "You wanna...talk about it?"

"Literally anything else," he shook his head. Rayna and Lynn exchanged a look: His voice was unchanged from the deeply womanly alto of his waking body. Again, nobody commented. "It's just the same stupid junk as before, anyway." Nora quietly walked over and took a chair, silently waving hello to everyone.

"Okay, here's something," Lynn said, sitting up to face Aria while the catgirl floated up to an empty space to join them, reclining herself in midair. "Where'd this whole 'never give up for anything'...thing you were yelling about come from?" she asked the shifter.

"Well...I dunno," she said with an arms-up shrug. "I've just...kinda, always been like this. For as long as I can remember, I've always had this, obsessive drive to not let anything beat me, or keep me down. That's...not a very satisfying answer, though, is it?"
"Well—it's fine if it's true," Zack stated. "Not every little thing has to have a great reason."

"I can still talk a little more about it though, I guess.

"Tell the truth, I've actually mellowed out quite a lot in recent years. It used to be kinda unhealthy. Like, I'd risk doing real, permanent harm to my body and/or livelihood just to get a better time or score or whatever. Eventually, I realized that was stupid, and I set some ground rules and forced myself to follow them. Y'know how I did that?"
Zack crossed his arms. "...You treated 'following the rules' as your new challenge."

"Yep! It's amazing, it really is. I had this, like, gradual epiphany that I am the one who decides what I am obsessively trying to accomplish. It turned this—thing—that I always used to feel had control over me, into a sort of power, a freedom to accomplish whatever I really wanted to. I set the goals," she said, pointing her hands up at her face. "Me. Nobody else. And then that unstoppable determination gets them done. From that point on, I won't let anything or anyone control me into doing something I don't wanna do. And I will never give up on doing something I really believe in."
"Yeah..." Zack nodded slowly. "I could feel that. When Kath sent your...that, to me. It's an amazing thought, but maybe too intense for me."

"Please, Zack," Katherine said. "You're at least as stubborn as she is."

"No one asked you."
"So anyway," Aria continued, "Once I had this—I dunno. Philosophy? Worldview? General...concept, thing, in my head. I started saying stuff like that in my streams. 'I can do this; we can do this.' 'You can do it'—anytime someone in chat talked about some goal of theirs I thought was a good thing. At first I was a little embarrassed when people pointed out how much I was saying stuff like that. Like—it's super cheesy, right? 'My name's Will and I'm all about willpower'," she said in a somewhat mocking tone. "That was about when, uh..."

Aria reached a finger up into her hair, twirling it around a bit in a sudden burst of apprehension. "Well, one of my regulars came in one day with some bad news: He'd just been diagnosed with cancer. I mean bad cancer—not that there's good cancer but like, on the scale between 'benigh spot we can remove in outpatient' and 'get your affairs in order, we'll try to make you comfortable,' it sounded closer to the latter. He uh...wasn't sure if the pain of treatment was gonna be worth it. You know what I had to say about that, though.

"Mayyybe it wasn't good advice, objectively speaking. I sure didn't try to argue logically. Just—every time he showed up I'd ask him if he was getting treatment yet, and tell him not to give up. The whole chat got in on it, too. I feel a little bad, I think we might've bullied the poor guy into agreeing to some kinda experimental treatment. But I mean, he did keep showing up in chat while we were doing that every singe time. Eventually he disappeared for like a...month or two, and when he came back they were still trying to get it out of him. Coulda gone either way at that point, but as of the time I came here—years after he was supposed to have died even with treatment—he was fine. Bad stuff all gone and not come back yet."

"Sooo, I made it my cause after that. Did lots of charity streams on the weekends, have people donate to give me ridiculous challenges to try. Took some time off work to go to the big marathons they had raising money for charity research and stuff. I, honestly just couldn't believe my stupid obsession that used to be all about winning was getting passed on to other people and maybe even saving lives somehow."

"...What?" Lynn looked like she wanted to say or ask something, which Rayna was plainly waving at her not to. "Hey, come on, I can take it," Aria said, pointing a thumb to her chest. "There's a massive demon in my head over there—" she waved vaguely toward the cliffside "—constantly sharing his wonderful addiction to blood with me with an intensity that would drive lots of other people insane. I can handle an awkward question or two."

Rayna crossed her arms, glaring at her friend with her ears lowered in annoyance, but shook her head 'go for it, I guess'.

"I don't want to cast any doubt on the good you're saying you were doing," she started.
"...Not that that's going to stop you..." the fox-girl interjected.
"Just—if you want to give money to stuff like that, why go through an extra three steps for it? Technically, you could spend the same amount of time working to earn more money and everyone donating through you could just donate themselves instead. Right?"
"Ah. I've had this one before," the shifter nodded with a smirk. "First of all: Technically yes, but no. A human isn't an economic machine that can put endless hours in and get the same money out for each one. You need downtime to be effective at whatever you actually make money from, and that's what streaming is for me; always has been. So whatever time I'm donating is being more productive, not less. Second: Obviously I donate out of what I do make. Third: You have no idea how many people would never just give money but would donate to something special like that. Even people with charitable dispositions need an incentive or excuse to get started sometimes, and then there's just people with disposable income who wouldn't donate a cent to the charity normally but are willing to pay to get to make me do something silly on-stream and watch the results. And if you think of it that way, what I'm doing already is working for the donation money, and probably getting a lot more than I could with a 'real job'.

"Now, why were you so scared of that one?" she said to Rayna. "If I couldn't answer something like that I would've quit a long time ago."

"Because we had this argument ourselves at one point. Not for the exact same reasons, but..."
"Our audience was giving us more money than we actually needed," Lynn said. "Not to brag or anything, just a fact. We decided to do a thing where we'd have them help us pick out from a list of thoroughly vetted charities to give some of that extra to."

"Vetting done by our personal crack team of researchers, AKA ourselves," the fox-girl added. "We caught some stuff nobody else had. But first we had an argument that lasted about two months about every little detail of the setup and our motivations for it."

"I guess even you get tired of arguing with her about something after long enough," Zack said.

"We don't argue, we discuss," Rayna said. "But usually the topic changes a lot more often. Not her coming up with new objections to the same thing, or repeating old ones every time we got together for a recording session."

"Well, this was important," Lynn said. "I just didn't want anything left out when we went public with the idea."

"Anyway," Katherine said, "enough of this heavy stuff. We almost got some SNES" (she pronounced a single word rather than letters) "games similuated accurately last time."

"Uh—simulated?" The tension between the two evaporated instantly as they and Aria began excitedly explaining this to Zack, who looked Nora's way briefly and received a slight shrug in return.

---

Rose took the suggestion of staring at the stars somewhat seriously, slowly lying onto her back with her head up toward the clear night sky. Mira shrugged to herself and quietly took up much the same position, waiting patiently for either the sound of her friend talking or falling asleep.

"They have stars here," she said after a long while, as though just realizing it. "Other planets too, maybe? I dunno much about that stuff."
"In principle, this 'universe' could be very different from ours," the witch said. "Their 'stars' could be something other than the supermassive fusion reactors we're used to seeing from Earth. But I doubt it. The sun seems like a pretty ordinary main-sequence star; moon looks like a round moon; the maps and charts I've seen seem like they belong to a roughly spherical planet rather than some crazy discworld thing."

"You think it's the same space? Is Earth in one of the galaxies out there?" she pointed vaguely upward.

"Couldn't say."

"...Wonder if, like, anyone's ever tried going into space here. Or if that's even a concept they have," Rose said.

"Nothing I've heard of—the 'me' from here, I mean. It would be much easier with magic, but a lot of the same huge physical challenges of making a body survive in space probably exist here, too. Society has to really want to go to space to do it. Helps if there's a couple of big, wealthy nations in a cold war with military motivations, too."

"Hmmh."

After a while longer, she sat up again, and Mira joined her, getting to a cross-legged position facing Rose. "Hey..you ate that demon and stuff, right?"
"Mm-hm. Turns out it was two of them somehow, too, which brings my grand total to six."
"What kinda powers did they give you?"
"Weelll. It's mostly potential for powers—expansion of the skill tree and some free points to spend in it, none of which I have just yet. I can control the tentacle thing's 'ink magic' at least as far as dispelling it where it already exists, but I'd have to put some points into a new skill to be able to make it myself. Don't think I want that particular power, though. Oh, but—I can do this," the witch said, holding her arms out to the side. Four shadowy, partially-translucent tendrils starting a bit thicker than her arms and tapering to rounded tips flowed out from between her shoulder blades, near where her wings were based, and wriggled around above and below each of her arms. "Think I can stretch and fine-control them, pick up stuff...nothing too heavy at their base level, though. If I put effort in—or buy some levels—I can have more of them, too."

"Neat," Rose said, grinning. It was clear she would've had a more enthusiastic reaction, but she was tired, and yawned loudly.

"Mngh. I'm like, super tired all of a sudden."
"Adrenaline finally wore off, I guess." The witch dismissed the shadow-tentacles. "Using magic is physically taxing, and I think even a dragon has her limits," Mira pointed out. "I guarantee you'll feel better after you get some sleep."

"Yeah..prolly." She yawned again, more quietly. "I jus'...don't really want to face tomorrow yet. I dunno."

"You're under no obligation to tell everyone else you're from Earth right away. Or even talk to them. I can head back and tell them you're okay if you just wanna stay here a little longer."
"Mm..noo. They already know anyway, right? A-and, I want to tell them. I wanna show them I'm okay." Rose shook her head. "'m just...not sure if I am, yet."

"That's just the exhaustion speaking," Mira said kindly. "You don't have to make any decisions until you've had that rest, and then we can go from there, okay?"
"Alright, alright." Rose shook her head. "Sheesh, mom." She flopped forward into the grass. "I'll go to bed already iiif that's wha..." She yawned again. "Y'rilly wan'..."

Almost as soon as she closed her eyes, the dragon-girl was fast asleep, steadily curling herself together into a comfortable ball on the ground. Mira shook her head with a slight grin, then shrugged and lay herself down on her side, carefully tugging a wing out of the way before it could be under her. While not nearly as tired—especially after absorbing the energy of two demons that night—she never had been the sort to have difficulty falling asleep.