A Summoning, Part XXIV

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Part XXIV
~Tower~

Early in the morning, hours before sunrise, three Kitsune stood in a basement of an old science building, in a roughly triangular formation: Two facing a third, who was looking straight on at the space between them.

“Okay...ready?”

'Andrew' turned his head toward Steph, nodding and projecting—trying, in fact, to feel—a level of confidence that would've been impossible for him a week or so ago. “I've got this. Let's start.” The two other foxes began channeling magic toward him, and held out his hands, weaving it with some of his own. His body glowed white, his hair turning the same color and appearing to grow out much longer than it had been before, and his other three tails spilled out into view; the effort and concentration required to produce their desired effect made hiding these traits impossible.

Outside, a fair distance from campus, a roaring wind began, and clouds formed in the sky as if from nowhere. Meteorologists—those who were awake at the time, anyway—quickly took notice. Before long it became clear that a freak thunderstorm was on its way, with the potential to turn into something even nastier. It was headed, as though carefully targeted, right toward the center of campus. What woke many of those on campus who were ignorant of this development was the first booming peal of thunder.

Although it was an illusion, Steph could see the strain on Andrew's face. Maintaining the 'male' illusion was going to be even more difficult now that the storm was underway. He turned to the third fox in the room. “It's started, let's go. Hurry!” he pointed dramatically out the door, and she nodded quickly before running, stopping to go back and grab a backpack, then—nodding to Steph again—heading out.

Anika exhaled a sigh of relief, fully dropping the illusion—which looked like Andrew's body melting the rest of the way down to be hers. “I'm off too,” Steph said. “Just keep it up as long as you can.” She nodded, managing a slight smile in his direction despite her eyes being closed, and then he grabbed a backpack of his own and headed out to do the work.

Almost an hour later, the powers that be had scrambled to determine the possible severity of the storm, then canceled classes and sent messages to commuters not to come to campus at all that day if they could help it. This was not a decision taken lightly, as it was the sort of announcement they couldn't take back. Therefore, it was somewhat to the annoyance of many people on campus who had—for one reason or another—looked forward to having classes that day when the storm seemed just as suddenly as it had appeared to melt away, the clouds disappearing and the winds dying down, under the light of the rising sun. The campus was not really any worse for wear, just wet; even the few strikes of lightning had landed harmlessly and failed to start any fires or hurt anything. However, it had been somewhat redecorated during that period when nobody really should have risked going outside.

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On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Shane's alarm was set very, very early. It would buzz once and he'd turn it off right away, hopping out of bed, so his roommate—strictly speaking, the person renting the other bedroom of his apartment—wouldn't complain of the noise waking him too. Then he would quickly change clothes and head outside for a jog. Today was no different from any other Thursday for him—not until the thunder hit.

When the wind picked up, he didn't worry; if anything, it was a nice breeze. He was a bit over halfway through his jog, already having turned around to start heading back to the apartment, so anything that would cool him down a bit until he got back to shower was a welcome blessing. However, that sudden, loud crackling boom in the distance was a bigger concern. “Dangit, weatherman,” he mumbled to himself between breaths. Today was supposed to be a clear day. Well, he was already on his way home, so if it was going to start raining he should just pick up the pace and turn this part into a flat-out run. He was certainly capable, being on the school's track team among other things.

Unsurprisingly, Shane couldn't outrun the weather. Before long there were light drops of rain hitting him, which steadily grew heavier as he continued. Running into the rain was surely soaking him more quickly than walking would have, but—well—he was headed to shower and change anyway. The only shelter he wanted right now was that of his apartment, which drew ever close even as the weather turned worse. So the freak storm made this an unusual Thursday, a mildly inconvenient one at worst—at least at first.

As he kept running, Shane felt the weight of slick, soaking hair on the back of his neck sometimes. His forward motion drove it backwards away from his head, but its own weight and some gusts of wind from behind would make it swing forward. He was so intensely focused on running that it didn't occur to him that his hair wasn't supposed to be long enough to do that until he felt wet locks hitting his cheeks and shoulders, and when it did he kept running for another couple of yards yet before slowing to a halt as he tried to understand it.

He realized then that he was panting very heavily, his body feeling pushed to its limit. Shane thought, I'm supposed to have more stamina than this! but his aching muscles demanded this break all the same, forcing him to focus on something other than running for a moment. That something was the peculiarity with his hair, as he drew a hand up to run through it and found black locks all the way down his cheeks, unusually long bangs, and hair in the back even falling a few inches past his shoulders.

“Hfff...ffh, whh, what thh..?” he muttered, looking down at some of it and getting a second surprise: His t-shirt and gym shorts, both specifically chosen to be fairly tight on him so they wouldn't get in the way while running, looked unusually loose. The shirt seemed to hang off his shoulders strangely, and its hem was trailing down onto his upper hips instead of stopping just at the top of the shorts. Past that, the hairs on his arms and legs looked shorter than usual.

“What's..?” Beyond the soreness of his muscles and the water soaked onto his body, clothes, and strangely long hair, Shane also perceived now the force of the raindrops hitting him. It was a really peculiar thing; he felt as if the pressure was pushing his body inward, forcing it to become smaller...and, since he'd been looking down for several seconds now, he noticed a subtle upward motion of the sidewalk beneath his feet that suggested this wasn't his imagination.

“N-no way, no way..!” Shane snapped his head forward again, mentally declaring to his body that he'd stopped panting and therefore had enough rest, and began a less calm, more panicked run homeward. He felt like he was sprinting harder than before, yet the buildings to either side flew by more slowly as he continued. He felt the weight of his hair trailing farther and farther out behind him, and each time the wind whipped it forward the locks whipped lower down his back, along with those around his face occasionally threatening to temporarily blind him. His shirt began to tent out around him as he shrank down, the world around him growing bigger and bigger; his shorts started to feel like they wanted to slip off, and his pace slowed even more as he dedicated one hand to holding them up through his shirt. Worse still, his strides were getting shorter along with his legs, and the act of running itself became more difficult, like his well-honed muscles were losing their strength.

As his apartment came into view, Shane found himself slowing to an exhausted walk, panting heavily as his left hand kept hold of his shorts and his right fumbled for the keys. The top of the doorframe had been maybe a foot above his eye level when he left; now the doorknob was about at his chest. Furthermore, as he reached out his hand with the key to put it in the lock, he saw a slender, short arm ending in a small, delicate hand, the body hair completely gone to leave its skin soft and smooth-looking. He grabbed the doorknob, shoved it open and stumbled inside, still gasping for breath as he yanked out the key and tossed the door shut behind him.

The sound of air coming in sounded strangely high as he began to catch his breath, looking down at himself again. His hand slowly lost its grip on the shorts in shock, letting them drop to the floor, as he saw a small, slim body with narrow shoulders, slender arms and legs, and no trace of the strong muscles he'd built up all his life. His shirt hung awkwardly off of his right shoulder, its hem falling all the way down to his thighs, and his hair was long enough to reach past there, the tips of the locks tickling the back of the bare, soft skin of his legs. “W-whaa~aa..?” he muttered, and heard a high, girlish sound from his throat that made him clap a hand over his mouth.

“Shane?”

“Eep!” he squeaked, jumping slightly at his roommate's voice from his bedroom, and realized he'd just slammed the door loudly enough to wake someone. How was Ferris going to react to seeing him like this? He looked practically unrecognizable, and he felt..weird..

Shane's face felt warm; in fact his entire body felt a bit hot. He'd been running through freezing rain a moment ago, and though of course the exertion had kept him relatively warm, he shouldn't be feeling this hot while still soaked. Only..looking down, his clothes and skin looked rather dry. The long hair along the sides of his face and all the way down his back no longer felt slick, either, just...soft, like it was freshly washed a while ago, then fully dried. But—back on the topic of the warm feeling—Shane was aware of a vague, tingly, slipping sensation between his legs, and it was making his cheeks even hotter. “Aah..w-whaa..?” he mumbled; this new set of surprises made it impossible to focus on the problem of his roommate. Then, there was a high, gasping squeak from Shane's throat at a sharper, more sudden tug between his legs—followed by more blushing and confusion.

“Aah?” Shane felt strangely...empty down there, like something was missing. Squirming his upper legs together, something was gone indeed—his manhood! There was something else there, faintly tingling and making him—him?—blush more, and it dawned somewhat slowly on Shane that this was the sensation of being female. The weird feeling of being warm everywhere was gone, but what had happened just now, plus the deeply unfamiliar sensation following it, had her face burning with an even worse blush. While still in shock from that, there was a gentle sort of pushing from her hips and her chest as she gained the faintest of curves, her bottom rounding out slightly while a pair of tiny breasts grew into place under the very loose-fitting shirt. “Aa~aah..!” she cried softly, these further sensations seeming to agitate her newfound womanhood in a way that might have been pleasant were it not so bizarre.

And then—as if to emphasize that no matter how bizarre the situation, it could continue to get worse—Shane felt a sudden bursting, popping feeling from her right ear, drawing a surprised squeak from her mouth, followed immediately by another from her left which she let out a small, high “Aah!” of surprise in response to, and all of a sudden her ears were huge. She could feel her hair across just their bases, and faint air currents running across the rest, now covered in thick, soft hairs that made them extremely sensitive. They twitched and turned all on their own, easily picking up the sound of Ferris's bed creaking and his feet touching the floor. A spike of panic hit her as she realized that most recent noise had been louder than any of the others, and hearing it must have been enough to convince him to investigate..! But then, worse still, she felt a push as violent as the growing ears had been from her lower back, forcing a startled “Waah!” as she felt a long, slim appendage slip out past the back hem of her shirt, twitching back and forth as it grew nearly to the length of one of her arms. It was a catlike tail to match the huge, fuzzy triangular ears now spiking out from the sides of her head.

Ferris's door creaked open, and he looked out at her. Her hands both went to pull her shirt down, feeling suddenly very indecent with only the shirt on and a man—who looked very tall to her shrunken stature—staring down at her.

There was a long moment of awkward silence, during which Shane perceived the cutting feeling of her keys being squeezed into the palm of her hand, which had been clutching them tightly ever since the door shut. Her brain spun to life trying to think of ways to convince the person in front of her of her identity, perhaps using them, as he mouth spat out “F-f-Ferris!” in a desperate bid to gain the initiative in this impossible conversation.

“It's me! I ran out and I was on my way back and it-it started raining so I ran back and I was shrinking,” she said so quickly it might as well have been all one word, “and I kept running and it, I'm, I..!” She felt like she was going to tear up from anxiety, but Ferris wasn't running to call the police and she thought—or maybe just really hoped—she saw something in his eyes.

“Shane? Really?” It wasn't a skeptical 'really', it was disbelieving-something-which-appears-true 'really'. That was a good sign; he must have recognized her clothes, maybe?
“Yes! It's me! Look, I, I got in with my keys,” she said, holding her hand out with them. There was nothing too remarkable about Shane's key ring, but maybe her car keys would at least look correct to him.

“...Wow,” he said after staring at the keys, and at her in general, for a moment. “I mean, either it's you, or a really elaborate prank. I've heard of people spontaneously changing looks before, but uh..it's supposed to be super rare.”

“It wasn't spontaneous!” she blurted in protest. “It was the rain!” She felt absolutely certain about this somehow; it was just that weird sensation of pressure when she'd first really noticed she was changing. Anyway, something like this couldn't possibly just happen biologically, at random; something had to have caused it!

“Really?” Okay, that was a skeptical one. “Some normal rain turned you into a catgirl,” he said, taking a few steps toward her.

Shane felt her ears fold back in annoyance. “What, l-like that's less likely than it just, happening on its own?! I could feel it, it—I..!”

“Rain doesn't just make people catgirls, is all,” Ferris said, stopping a bit in front of her and crossing his arms, staring down to examine her again—making her feel nervous and exposed all over again. She tugged awkwardly at the shirt, thankful that her weirdly active new tail at least seemed content not to try and flip it up in the back. “Well, there's an easy way to tell if the rain really did it.”

“W-what? No!” He took a step to one side of her toward the door, and she quickly moved to intercept him. “Don't go out there!” He ignored her, easily getting around her shorter stride as she tried to stop him, opening the door and stepping out onto the doormat. “Ferriiiis!” she yelled, simultaneously feeling embarrassed at how high, squeaky, and weak it sounded, and hopelessly defeated as she saw he was already getting soaked, spreading his arms out skyward.

The small catgirl felt a growl in her throat—the lowest-pitched noise she'd made since reaching the apartment, but still higher than most of what had come out of her mouth since puberty—as she stepped over and reached out to grab up at his collar, yanking him back inside. This was going to make her arm a little wet too, but she figured—or at least hoped—that the rain had already done what it wanted to her and wasn't about to do any more.

She wasn't strong enough now to actually force him inside, but the sharp tug was still enough to throw him off balance. “H-hey!” Ferris stumbled several steps back, tripping over the threshold and falling down onto his butt. The catgirl found her reflexes perhaps better than before, allowing her to effortlessly dance out of his way and quickly shut the door against the thunderstorm still going on outside.

“...Ow. Yeesh,” Ferris chided, “you don't have to make such a big deal out of it.”

“That rain turned me into this!” she said emphatically, sweeping a hand down along her own embarrassing appearance. “Who knows what..oh no.” Her ears drooped as she realized that even the brief moment out there had, in fact, been enough, which meant she was effectively too late.
“What?” Of course, her roommate couldn't see what she was seeing—not yet.

“Your hair's growing! That's how it started for me, too!” In addition to visibly getting longer, Ferris's hair appeared to be paling in shade through progressively lighter browns.

He reached up a hand as it began to trail down his neck and cheeks, brushing through the wet hair quietly. “..Oh. Well, maybe it's just—” Ferris's head flinched as, seemingly in retort to the incomplete hopeful statement, his left ear visibly grew up past his hair, becoming taller and taller with short white hairs growing on it, until it looked like a giant bunny ear. “Uhh.” The other one followed, but with a less violent motion of his head in response.

“Okaay, so..” By now, his hair was a very light brown, passing shoulder length and not showing any signs of stopping in the back; overall the catgirl's roommate looked a lot less wet than he had a moment ago, much like her own miraculous drying-up after she got inside. “Maaybe it is the rain?” Ferris shrugged.

“How can you be so casual about this!?”
“Well, I mean, not like I can stop it, right?” Ferris began to get shorter and slimmer now; Shane could see the fat of his belly melting away and his body and facial hair seeming to run the process of growing out in rapid reverse. His clothes, rather than loosening on his shrinking frame like hers had, seemed to tighten themselves on him instead, making the changes all the more visible. “Soo, I'll just ride it out, and..” He trailed off, looking down toward the transformation himself while his hair—now a pure, snowy white like the fur of his ears—grew on past his waist.

Ferris's belly went completely flat, and his waist curved in at the sides. His shoulders narrowed, his arms and legs losing their fat too. “Mm~mmh..” Shane heard his voice changing a bit during this mumbling noise, and continuing to do so in some similar ones that followed. His clothes were changing shape, too, the shorts he'd worn to bed spreading their leggings out more and more until they combined into a single hole and the material began to fold itself into pleats all around his thighs. His shirt's sleeves grew longer and its collar dipped down, revealing another shirt suddenly present beneath it and a thin red ribbon tying itself around its collar.

“Mn~nnh..” Ferris's hips visibly pushed outward, his bottom growing bigger beneath him, giving him an increasingly feminine figure which—even while he was still quite male—sported deeper curves than the catgirl watching had. “Aa~aah..!” The noise from his throat was a bit more excited this time, a blush appearing on his cheeks, and his voice seemed to settle into a tone not quite as high as hers, and a little more mature-sounding. “Oh, oo~ooh..” He squirmed back and forth in place for a moment, letting out some rather feminine noises, as—obviously—his change of sex approached, and then gave a high, girly gasp when it actually happened, the blush growing much brighter than before.

“Mmh, oo~ohh..” The rabbit-eared girl's eyes fluttered shut at some sensation Shane couldn't exactly see the source of. However, at the same time she did see a small, round tail push its way out from the lower hem of her top, just above the pleated skirt her shorts had turned into. “Aa~AAaaah...!” Then, however, as Ferris cried out a little more loudly, the reason become much more obvious. Two bumps visibly pushed out from her chest, seeming to stretch and grow the material of her top—a bright orange sweater now, by the looks of it—to accommodate them. “Aaah~, oo, oh!” There was steady growth alongside some more sudden pushes as they swiftly surpassed the catgirl's bust size and kept on getting bigger, making her womanhood all the more obvious as they did. Then, with one fairly deep “Aa~AAaa~ahhnnn...!” the bunny-girl's breasts grew an entire cup size more all at once, and finally bounced gently into place as a seeming coda to their rapid growth into a mature woman's bosom.

“Hff..phe~ew.” Ferris's eyes opened, her cheeks still alight with a blush. “That was, well, something all right! I kinda like it though.”
“W-what?!” Shane couldn't react with anything but shock at her roommate's disposition as her lips curled upward in a pleased smile.

“Well, if I'm gonna get turned into a girl by the rain, at least it feels good, right?” Recovering quickly, Ferris pulled herself up onto her feet. In addition to being more mature-looking and visibly curvier—which Shane insisted to herself she was not jealous of—the bunny-girl was still half a head taller than her roommate—which was something to be jealous of, for sure.

“I-it doesn't matter how it feels! You, you just got turned into a chick! How is, how are we even supposed to—!?” Shane stammered uncomprehendingly. The fact that she'd been right about the rain being responsible for her change was deeply unimportant in the face of a situation which ratcheted upward in bizarreness with each passing moment. First the rain had made him a girl, then a catgirl, and then her roommate, and then Ferris was just okay with it like it was no big deal...!

The taller girl's rabbit-like ears lowered slightly in concern as she watched Shane's panicked, confused expression. “Hey, look. There's supposed to be people who can deal with weird stuff like this, so calm down, okay? We can go to them as soon as they're open.”
“R-really?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “Maybe they can even just—turn us back.”
“Really?” The catgirl was unaware of how adorable she looked, leaning forward eagerly with her ears popping up to vertical and her tail whipping around behind her—but if she had been aware, she surely wouldn't have cared.
“Yeah. But they're not open yet, 'cause you get up way before the crack of dawn. So: Are you hungry?”
“Um..” Food was the last thing on Shane's mind, and yet thinking about the answer to that question seemed to cause her stomach to audibly growl. “I guess so.”
“Let's get some food in us first, then,” Ferris said, reaching out and taking one of the catgirl's hands in her own slim, delicate fingers. The gesture would have been strange if they were still male, but Shane let herself be led this way over to the kitchen table to sit down without finding it the least bit unusual until she thought about it after the fact. By then, of course, her body reminded her that it was still physically exhausted from all the running and compelled her to take a moment just to rest while her roommate eagerly got to work making a breakfast for the both of them.

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It was a little after the thunder that the goddess Zotha awoke, not from the noise of the weather but from something else, a feeling beyond the senses she had had as an ordinary human. When she sat up in the bed, it also awoke her priestess, who sat up next to her with a quiet, tired groan. “Mnnh. Master? Something wrong?”

“Hmm.” Rather than responding verbally, Zotha mentally communicated the sensation she had more directly. The first conclusion to draw from it was that the rain outside itself was unnatural, magically conjured; however, this was not what had awoken her. Rather, it was a further feeling that something somehow similar to herself was being channeled through the rain—or perhaps, through the magic causing it. She was able to discern with some ease that there were two different actors here—one, weaker party, making the rain, and a vastly stronger one channeling something through it without the other's even noticing.

Jess nodded after a moment, comprehending all of this after a moment's processing. “..What do you think it is?”

“I think...someone's using the rain to transform people.” Zotha crossed her arms. “How I know that is another matter. I'm not 'actively sensing' anyone being transformed, but...”
“'Change' is your domain,” the priestess said. “So if someone uses their power to make a big change, it still falls under you enough to 'feel' it.”
“Yeah...” The goddess nodded in agreement, having thought of this at about the same time.

“Should we...do something? Try to stop it?”

“Hmmh.” Who had the power to hijack an already powerful, wide-ranging weather spell into doing something like this? That list seemed rather short. Thinking about it, Zotha leaned down onto her back again. “I don't think we need to go out there until it lets up. Then we'll be...very busy, I bet. So you should get some rest for now, little priestess~.”

“Mmh..okay.” Jess let herself down onto her pillow too, knowing from experience that she'd just be 'ordered' back to sleep anyway if she protested. In no time at all she went back to sleep, and Zotha put herself into the same state after setting herself to wake the instant the magically-summoned storm cleared up.

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In the realm of "stupid, arbitrary nonsense that I'm pretty sure didn't used to exist", I had to remove the "story" tag from this post because suddenly I'm only allowed to put 20 total tags on a post? Anyway, I thought that'd be the least important tag since the tag "summoning" already marks this as being a part of that story.