Omega Zeta Kappa 12: σ

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Mars sat on the bed, folding one hand on another over her lap. "So...the reason Kitsune are always pulling pranks on people, is so they can get more powerful?"
"Well—yes, but also no." Tielo hopped out of her computer chair again, pacing excitedly. "It's—I mean, there's definitely some people who do it just for that reason, but it's also like—a part of our nature. It's as natural as werewolves changing on the full moon, in a way, for a fox to have fun messing with someone. It's hard to explain, it's a little bit like an instinct but not exactly—and it varies from person to person how strongly it affects you. Bottom line, you don't have to do that if you don't wanna. I mean, from what I've heard the people who choose to not be pranksters and focus on other methods for advancement can tend to get tails quicker."

"So, if there's been immortals with godlike power and a 'natural urge' to screw with people running around for basically forever..why don't we hear a lot more about them?"
"Well—the thing is that, getting more powerful can sometimes intensify that 'instinct', but at the same time it seems to 'mellow out' the person too. It seems like by the time one of us gets five or more tails, we feel increasingly..not like doing something harmful or attention-grabbing. It's not that the tricks get pettier, it's kinda the opposite—they get much more subtle and long-term. For that reason, you'll sometimes hear people with five or more tails called 'Wise Ones'. There's just a certain attitude we start to get at that point, I guess..."

"Either way, though, we get stronger by doing things, and use that power to do more of those things. It sounds a little like a game, huh?"
"Sure," She stopped, looking across at the blue-haired Kitsune again, and nodded. "That's how I was raised, actually. 'Life is a game, play it well!' I think it's a healthy way to look at things as long as you remember that winning doesn't mean other people have to lose.

"Speaking of games, uh—" Tielo hopped back onto her chair again. "It's a little off topic, but I've always been curious. You seem to me like the kinda guy who gets bored with anything easily, 'cause you master it so fast."
"Mhm?" Mars didn't deny or confirm this assessment.

"Soo, why are you always playing those phone games? Have they got their hooks in you that bad?"
"Well..few reasons. For one, they're good at grabbing attention. It makes everything else more challenging if I split my attention between it and playing a game. That'd work with other handhelds, but it's cheaper with free games on a phone." Speaking of distracting—Tielo was staring right at her with her tail weaving back and forth behind her. Her eyes were practically sparkling, which was a bit strange—Mars didn't think what she was talking about to be all that surprising or interesing.

"So..it makes everything else slightly less boring. For another—they're not always without exploits, no matter how hard the devs try. It's fun to poke holes in something like that, and if I get banned for it, I can just pick up something else. There's literally hundreds of them to pick from."

"Which means, you've been 'tricking' those games all along, huh?"
"If you wanna call it that," she shrugged. "Finally—a lot of them try to attract players with pictures of cute girls. Or—supposed 'interactions' with them. I know it's not real, but that part still works on me anyway."

"Uh, r-really?" Tielo pushed her hands on the armrests to lean herself fully upright. "I mean, I never got the impression you were interested in girls at all. Orrr, anyone else, for that matter."

"People are more complicated than any game. Hard to disengage with, too," Mars said. "Anyway, nobody's ever actually seemed that interesting to me." Before now, at least. "Complex as we all are, it's still easy to put in certain stimuli and get predictable results in most cases."

"Really?"

"Sure. For example: I think you're very cute, too."
Tielo flushed immediately. "Uhh."

Mars continued unabated: "You didn't seem too bad right after I'd become this, but I think I like that look much better."
"Uhhhhhh." She locked up completely for a moment, then paused, tilting her head. "W-wait, are you just demonstrating that you knew how I'd react, or are you serious?"
"Can't I do both?"

"H-heheh, I guess you can! You really got me there for a minute there, though. Uhhm."

It didn't take much more prompting to drive Tielo toward her and into her arms so they could pet each other. Mars didn't feel particularly bad about 'manipulating' her into it, since she'd blatantly wanted something like this from the start. Either way, it was definitely a different experience both being a girl, and actually feeling someone else against her—to say nothing of the added stimuli from all that fur and instinctive reactions they both had due to being part-fox...

For once, she actually wasn't bored with it too quickly, as repetitive as it seemed to be on the surface. They actually wound up stopping when someone knocked on the door. It was entertaining to see Tielo try unsucessfully to try and save face in front of Kaden; Mars couldn't care much less what the tall readhead's impression of the situation was, and even then it seemed like she didn't actually care.

Once the short vixen shut the door and turned around, Mars had some curiosity to satisfy: "How come you know about 'Oni' and how they work?"

"Well, uh, I had some neighbors growing up who were Oni." She approached slowly, hesitantly, and Mars kept her arms loose and hands on the bed to either side of her. If Tielo wanted to sit back in her chair, or to pace, or to stay standing, or to hug her again right away—any of those was fine. "A-actually I grew up in a whole neighborhood full of mostly Yokai."
Mars tilted her left ear down ninety-ish degrees, a 'questioning' expression. "Not that I haven't heard the word before, but.."
"Yeah, there's lots of interpretations of the general idea in fiction. Some time back, 'Yokai' came to be the name for a class of 'magic people' who are somewhere between 'natural' types, like werewolves or Neko, and 'spirits', which are like much, much lesser gods. And it's confusing because we're not demons, even though the word can be interpreted to mean 'demon'. Examples include Kitsune like us, Oni, Tengu...we all have certain kinds of 'urges' or 'personality leanings' that are too complex and weird to be thought of as a mere equivalent to 'animal instincts'. Some people even say dragons should count as Yokai since they 'instinctively' want to hoard treasure and hunt down anyone who steals what's theirs. Anyway, you can say I had a pretty unusual upbringing—like, humans still under the Veil could neither see nor reach our town—but it was normal enough to me, y'know."

This conversation was briefly interrupted by the sound of a key being slid under the bedroom door. Tielo turned around long enough to register the meaning of the sound and hear Kaden's footsteps over to the stairwell, and then turned back toward Mars with a somewhat expectant expression—mostly in the ears, which was a curious thing for someone who'd only been part-animal for a couple of hours to recognize so easily. Mars just lifted her hands enough to give an invitation, and they were off again.

They did, eventually, break it off without the help of an outside force. Once the smaller girl was off of her, Mars stood up and stretched—arms, ears, legs, tail and all. "..You hear that conversation downstairs?"
"Um..which one?"

"..Sid, Quaid, and Xavier."

The walls of the OZK's bedrooms and bathrooms were magically soundproofed to dampen anything going outward substantially—something which was increasingly common with everyone being aware of how well beastfolk ears could pick things up—but 'public' areas like the halls were not. This particular conversation was an argument her ears had picked up on before they separated. It went something like:
Sid: "Hey. Heey!"
Xavier: "What do you imbeciles want? Can't you see I'm busy with important work?"

Quaid: "Oh yes, the vital importance of carrying a tube of paint. As for what we want, I assume you heard the news by now."
Xavier: "Indeed, Richard's reckless ploy has reached my ears too. You can count me out of such foolish, trivial endeavors."

Sid: "You'll have to move somewhere else if you stay male, you know."

Xavier: "As if. I'd like to see you two, or anyone else, try to move me from my sanctum. Vade and I bought a silver candlestick just for such an occasion."
Quaid: "I doubt Vade was actually involved in that decision."
Sid: "I bet it's not even real silver if you could afford it."
Quaid: "Anyway, he already took some potion."

Xavier: "Pffsh, of course he did. Vade wouldn't care if he was a mongoose. Now, leave me be, mangy wolves!"

..Followed by the sound of angry, stomping footsteps away. Mars had brought Tielo's attention to listen to this at around the halfway point, as they tried to explain that Xavier wouldn't be able to live in the sorority house as a guy.
"Well, that's Xavier for you," Tielo said. "He'll probably cave by the end of the week, though."
Mars crossed her arms. "I can make him take it today." She pushed up off of the bed. "You can watch, if you wanna—just stay out of sight."
Tielo headtilted cutely, not knowing where this was coming from. "Uh..sure?"

She went downstairs to the hallway where the conversation had taken place first. It would be necessary to have as little time as possible between a rash decision and the action which it prompted. The wolf-girls were still glaring in the general direction Xavier had left toward until they noticed the two Kitsune approaching. Then they lit up, Sid waving. "Yoo, Mars and Tielo."
"You two having fun being trickster spirits together?" Quaid added.

"It's always fun being a trickster, spirit or not," Tielo replied. "You two know what's up, riiight~?"

Mars interrupted this banter: "You're having difficulty with Xavier."

"Uh sure, if by 'difficulty' you mean he's being his usual stuck-up jerk self," Quaid said.

"I can get him to take the potion today," the blue-haired Kitsune repeated for them, crossing her arms.

"Well—as funny as that might be, we'll all get in trouble if someone forces that stuff down his throat," she replied.

"At the very least, Vade's master might turn you into a newt for a coupla months," Sid added.
"I don't think warlocks actually do that kind of thing these days..." said Tielo.

"It would be of his own free will," Mars said, disregarding the excess banter entirely. "I just need a bottle of the potion on hand for him to drink."

"Hmmn. Well—what do you think?" Sid asked.

"Prior experience says that if Mars claims she can do something, just believe it," Quaid replied. "Anyway, you'd be far from the first person to get a bottle for your 'friend'," she continued, using her hands to make some exaggerated air quotes.

Mars took the bottle and stuffed it into the center pocket of her sweater, which obscured it from view. She also took out her phone as she went past the werewolves, passively sniffing the air for the smell of certain varieties of paint. "You should keep out of sight at this point," she advised Tielo as they got a bit farther down the hall.

"Sure, sure—I know better than most people how annoying it is for an audience to ruin a perfectly good scheme." The short fox-girl slowed her walk, keeping well behind and apparently even applying some kind of illusion magic to cloak herself from view. The latter was maybe a bit excessive, but still appreciated.

Xavier was a sophomore obsessed with making 'meaningful' art. He came off as extremely prideful and generally sour toward everyone around him, to the point that some asked why he wasn't getting kicked out of the fraternity. Rich had needed to point out on many occasions that 'acting like a pretentious jerk' wasn't a bannable offense, and Erwin seemed to actually like the guy and actively stood up for him—even though he never had anything but harsh criticism for the older art student's works, calling them "shallow representational tripe" or other, similarly polysyllabic and unreasonable insults. But then—Erwin was the kind of person who looked for (and usually found) the good in anyone, and Rich both seemed to appreciate his ridiculous manner of speech and to just think his constant, yet ultimately harmless, lashing out was funny.

Despite his generally acrid personality, Xavier had never actively tried to hurt anyone. It seemed more like he'd become as prickly as he was out of a combination of social awkwardness and being picked on as a 'weirdo' throughout middle and high school, which was an experience many of the OZK's members could relate to. There were definitely those among the underclassmen who could be called roughly his friends, or at least "people he tolerated being around"—including both his notoriously lazy roommate Vade and Mars him/herself.

One of the larger second-floor rooms with no particular allocation had been commandeered by Xavier as a personal studio of sorts. Well—he tolerated basically anyone else working in said studio with (what was for him) minimal fuss, and didn't even mind certain people coming in to hang out as long as they were quiet enough not to disturb his work. He also kept a specific portion of the space fastidiously clear in case Vade needed it for something, even though he rarely ever did. Following the paint scent to the doorway of this space, Mars started a game on her phone (a different one from that morning which needed a bit of work today anyway), focusing in on it before heading inside.

Xavier turned dramatically toward the door as it opened. "WHO GOES—oh. Mars, correct?" He was medium height, gaunt, white-haired and pale-skinned, and always wore a scarf (today's was in red) so he could dramatically toss it behind him in disdain. At least—that seemed to be the article's purpose as far as Mars could discern. He was also wearing a big beret; Mars had never questioned why he wore that hat specifically while painting, because the response was probably something about how it inspired him—and it had never really mattered to Mars anyway.
"Mhm." She went over to her usual seat, a folding chair against the wall that offered a view of most of the room and the window opposite the door, and leaned back, crossing her legs, to relax.

"I had heard that that potion transfigured you into some sort of fox creature. You'd best not shed on my canvases!"

"I'll try not to." Then, after an appropriately long pause she lifted her tail up in front of her briefly. "I was thinking of trying to use the tip of this thing as a paintbrush sometime."

Xavier didn't turn away from his present point of focus. "If you're so eager to make a mess of yourself, go right ahead. But buy your own materials."

Several beats later: "I've learned that what I am now—a Kitsune—could pretty much stay young forever, without any outside help at all. If anything, we just get more powerful with age."
"Bully for you."
"Those potions aren't very reliable at keeping people 'human', I guess," she continued after another pause. "I've heard of several people getting weird new powers after being changed." Which was to say, she'd seen Kaden, and her ears had picked up conversations between several other people indicating they'd awakened as some kind of magic person, or at least wound up with nonhuman physical traits that they evidently liked.

More than any other reason, Xavier acted the way he did because it projected power. He wanted to be a world-famous, groundbreaking artist so that everyone would actually listen to what he had to say. He had no particular talent with magic, and his body didn't lend itself well to physical capabilities of any kind. Mars knew (due to being the one he went to first for help ever since they met) that he wasn't doing all that well in his 'academic' classes, so throwing himself into his art with the utmost of determination was probably the main reason he was making some good progress with it. It was probably what impressed Erwin about him too, actually. He'd once or twice blown up at Vade and Mars, and ranted about Rich, for all not taking what they 'had' seriously enough, but in reality he wouldn't know any better than either of them what to do with 'real power' or whatever. That didn't mean that he didn't want it, though. Art seemed to be a genuine passion of his now, but it seemed likely it had first begun as a mere means to an end which panned out better than any other means he'd attempted.

Mars didn't have to do anything but plant a seed, and then wait patiently for it to grow. And—if there was one thing that playing so many intentionally tedious, grasping phone games had taught her, it was patience. He worked away at the canvas, employing mostly black and red paint in an angry, abstract composition, and eventually set his brushes and palette down, breathing out in frustration. "I will not. Give satisfaction to those two fools." He was dramatically whispering this; Mars could never tell for sure if he meant anyone to listen to what he was saying when he did that, but it always came at a volume which anyone in the room (animal ears or not) could readily hear. Predictably, he wasn't thinking ahead to when they saw that he'd already taken the potion and turned into a girl—but that didn't really matter anyway.

He turned slowly in her direction. "..Not that I want it, but. I don't suppose you'd be able to spirit away any of that vile potion without their notice."

Flipping the phone entirely into her right hand to keep working on the game, Mars stuck her left hand into the sweater's center pocket and retrieved the bottle. "Already did." She casually set it on a neighboring folding chair. "You sure you don't want it? I just grabbed it to see if I could, soo.."

"W-well," he crossed his arms. "If you have no better use, then I see no reason not to accept. After all, half of the denizens of this abode have long been seeking an excuse to be rid of me."

"Here." Mars gently lifted the bottle and tossed it with a trajectory that was within his reach to catch, but which would land it neatly on the windowsill without hitting anything else in between if he missed. Not having the best reaction time, Xavier swatted and fumbled and bounced it in the air a couple of times, but did manage to get it in his hands rather than dropping it to the floor.

"You could at least furnish a proper warning before you do that sort of thing!" he said angrily.
"You caught it," Mars observed neutrally, returning both her hands to the phone.

"By the skin of my teeth, if that..."

He uncorked the bottle and sniffed it cautiously, then winced. "Blaagh, it smells absolutely caustic!"

"I've heard it tastes different to everyone," she said in reply to the implied question.

"Then it seems it does not wish me to drink it." He shook his head. "I will not be bested by a mere beverage."

Xavier took a fairly small sip of the substance and drew it back away from his mouth, looking like he was willfully suppressing a cough. His hair grew an inch or two longer at once, the motion causing his beret to seemingly fidget itself around; it didn't look like there would be any delay at all for his change. He took a deep breath as if steeling himself, and then a longer gulp, taking in the rest of the first third of the bottle's contents. His hair responded with more growth, enough to start gaining some wild, messy ends and trail out almost to his shoulders. If he noticed, he didn't react, instead glaring at the multicolored potion like it was a monster to be slain, and its terrible taste was its way of fighting back against his conquest.

His height sank downward an inch or two as he drank the second third of potion all in one gulp, his hair growing more slowly than before but not ceasing to grow as he held out the bottle and shook his head, making the increasingly long locks swish around a bit. Then he drank the rest of it, and at the same time lost another couple of inches of height and accelerated the hair growth noticeably, bringing it to around halfway down his back by the time the bottle was empty. Near the last of it he'd started to shudder slightly, and this progressed into a shaking violent enough to make him drop the bottle onto the floor about as soon as its contents were gone.

"G-gah! That was even more malevolently putrid than expected..nngh.." His body began to visibly shift its proportions now, narrowing his shoulders just a bit but filling in a little at the hips and thighs. His face grew fuller and rounder too; overall the trajectory was away from his previous, somewhat sickly-looking thinness and toward a slight and decidedly girlish, yet much healthier-seeming shape.

"Nngh—aaAa~aah..!" Still shuddering, he sort of half-collapsed slowly forward and onto his knees, his voice changing quickly as his hair growth and shrinking/reshaping continued. His face's skin softened and smoothed, becoming marginally less pale, which judging by another somewhat violent shudder was probably happening to the rest of his skin too. The end result, helped along by the long, somewhat unkempt white hair framing it, was an extremely cute, girly face.

The shuddering slowed, the white hair finally ceasing to grow as the tips of some locks landed on the floor, and Xavier panted softly as if from exertion. His hips and thighs continued to slowly expand while his clothes started to change: His pants thinned and softened to black cloth, the hems of the leggings pulling themselves down to wrap around his feet while they shrank close against some increasingly shapely legs. They became a pair of tights, and at the moment they pulled their closest a high, cute squeak came from his mouth and his face started to redden with a blush. His loss of height had left the hem of his long-sleeved shirt own past the upper thighs; now it seemed to try to correct this by splitting apart at the waist, the lower part reshaping into a very short skirt while the rest thickened into a coat, pulling itself a bit tighter around his torso in the process.

"Aa~aahh..." Xavier's voice, already very much a girl's, settled toward a mid-alto tone. His hands became smaller, with slim, delicate fingers and longer nails, and his blush brightened more as (clearly) a change of sex fast approached him. "Mnngh—nngh, gaa~aahh.." These cries were terminated by a high, girly gasp and a spasm of Xavier's whole body as this shift came, and then a low "Mnnn~nnnhh," one of the most pleased sounds Mars had ever heard from that mouth, came out as her eyes slowly shut. Her lower body thickened up a little more now, gaining some fairly generous curves, and at the same time some small bumps raised from her jacket at chest level, continuing to grow larger after they became visible.

"Mnn~ngh..aa~Aaaaa~agghh..!" While Xavier's breasts began to pick up speed, she bent forward, her hands on the floor, and squirmed in place. Suddenly a pitch black aura, like some sort of projected shadow magic, erupted out from her body. Mars could feel an unfamiliar sense of pressure from this aura—from Xavier herself, really—which remained even as it flickered and faded away from view again. While it did, her chest continued to push out, growing into a fairly generous bust and obviously furnishing her with some amount of girlish pleasure in the process—judging by some more soft, high "Aah" and low "Mnn~nnh" noises she was making the entire time.

Then it was over—seemingly as swiftly as it had started. Xavier gently pushed herself upright, slowly opening her eyes again.

 

"G-gods, Mars, you c-couldn't have left during that embarrassing display?!"
"You were making noises," the Kitsune said neutrally. "If I opened the door, someone would've heard you."

"Hff...fine." She slowly stood up, wobbling briefly in place—not that she seemed to have difficulty with her new physical shape, weight, size, or center of balance, just that certain parts of the transformation had left her a little weak in the legs. She stumbled backwards until she reached the windowsill, then leaned against it for support. "At least I know you don't deal in idle chatter."

She exhaled, looking down at herself, and even going so far as to cup her chest gently with one hand before running it down her side to the hips—while the other one prodded at her hair, taking off the beret and letting even more snowy white locks fall out of it down to her upper thighs. Her stature was around average—for a girl, which meant at least a head of height loss overall. "This hair is..abhorrent. And it doesn't appear that wretched potion caused any sort of 'awakening' in me at all!"

"I dunno," Mars said. "There was some sort of shadow thing for a second or two. And, I guess it's a new 'Kitsune sense' I don't know how to really read yet, but I can feel some kind of 'power' coming off of you that wasn't before."

"Hmph. I feel no different whatsoever." She lay the beret on the windowsill and flipped her scarf dramatically. "You lie to protect my fragile emotions?"

"If I lie to someone, it's not for that," Mars said bluntly.
"...True....but I've no evidence to believe you by, either."

The Kitsune just shrugged. "I guess I could prove it if I'd recorded the whole thing, but you'd like that even less."

Xavier crossed her arms—which she had to try about three different times to figure out where they should go relative to her fairly impressive bust. "..I would."

She pushed herself upright, evidently having recovered by now. "I suppose there's nothing for it but to consult an 'expert', then. We shall disturb Vade's 'beauty sleep' for this."

"Is that the royal we, or d'you want me to follow along?"
"Do whatever you like!" Xavier strode out of the room.

"Great work!" Once she was gone, Tielo appeared in a distant corner of the room. Exactly when the short vixen had entered was unclear, but there had been plenty of room for distraction of both other parties in the room during which she might have done so. "I dunno what to make of that 'special effect' myself. Almost makes me wish you had recorded it," she said, coming over to Mars.

She lowered her phone to look at the other fox-girl. "Did you feel that burst of...pressure or whatever?"

"Yeah. It feels sorta similar to an average mage, but the intensity is definitely more than I'm used to for one of those. Weird, though—most of the time, the only way for someone with no apparent magic talent to suddenly 'awaken' new power at that level is to turn into something 'nonhuman', like a Yokai or demon or whatever. Anyway, not bad at all for a 'first trick'!"

Tielo stopped in place, her ears and tail displaying a tiny bit of apprehension. "..Hey, you uh, wanna go grab supper somewhere?"
Mars shrugged. "Sure. You pick."

"Heheh, okay. Bet I know of some good places you haven't tried yet." Mars didn't usually go anywhere but the OZK kitchen or school cafeterias, so that was a fairly safe bet.