Tuesday, December 27, 2022

Vixen Society - Cycle 14

Vixen Society



Cycle 14
Angus walked into the little room on the top floor of the mansion, briefly surveying it. “So, you need me to say or do anythin' specific? Recite some chant or somethin'?”
“Uh, nope. You just stand still in the middle of the circle, and I pump magic through it..and it's supposed to just, do its thing.”
“A'right then.” He nodded, moving to place his feet about in the center of the glyph, and then stood with his arms loosely out to his sides, waiting.

Olivia took a moment to gather herself (and slightly tamp down her excitement regarding what was about to happen), then knelt at the end of the glyph near the door, placing her hand just on the outer edge and putting a tiny bit of her magic into it. A small section near the point of contact glowed a bit more brightly when she did so, which was what was supposed to happen. So, she slowly and steadily increased her output, watching the glow spread out along the complicated magical symbol until it had filled the whole thing, and then watching the glow brighten until she could feel that the enchantment was fully charged. Then, finally, she gave it the faintest push inward, toward the person standing in the middle, and stood up, brushing herself off briefly, to watch the results.

Angus watched the glow spread and brighten with the interest of someone who only vaguely knew what was happening but was impressed nonetheless. Then he jolted slightly upright at whatever sensation the magic beginning to enter him produced. “My..ain't that somethin',” he mumbled as the knowledge of how to cook and clean began to enter his head. His eyes glazed over with a slightly dazed look as all of the information poured steadily in, but he was brought back to himself soon afterward, shivering slightly at an undoubtedly odd tactile sensation.

The Kitsune watched with keen, eager interest as her older friend began to change, the complexion of his face rapidly softening, his unkempt facial hair vanishing away to leave the skin soft and smooth. The same thing was happening to all the rest of his skin too, evidenced by a loss of body hair visible through the holes and tatters in his clothes. This alone left his face looking a lot younger, but that impression increased even more as it began to reshape a bit, softening and rounding off. “Pretty..curious feeling..” he remarked. “Ain't bad at all, though...pretty nice, even...”

Angus's rough, unkempt hair began to change now too, the patchy, rough gray hairs paling and softening as they filled out and began to grow longer. Soon his hair had turned a pure, snowy white, gaining some generous volume and bounce; his bangs grew nearly to his eyes, and hair made its way down the sides of his face to frame it and make it look even more youthful..if not positively cute by now. “Saay..” he mumbled, reaching a hand up to run through some bangs and along his cheek as the locks in the back made their way down to his shoulders and only continued to grow. “Somethin' going on with my hair?”
“Uh, looks like it,” Olivia said, just barely able to keep up a facade of surprise and uncertainty about just what was happening.

By now, Angus had the looks of a young man—perhaps even a slightly effeminate one, going by his soft face and still-growing hair. He shuddered slightly once more, as the magic the kitsune had pumped into the glyph continued to rush into him and now got to work on its next set of changes. “O-oh..?” Right away he began to lose height, his eye level sinking below Olivia's in a matter of seconds. Not only that, but his frame visibly narrowed down, his body visibly slimming from his shoulders and arms down to his hips and legs. His clothes steadily grew looser and looser around him as he shrank down; his hands and feet even grew smaller as the limbs they were attached to shrank shorter and slimmer. He watched all of this with a visible fascination and curiosity, and fortunately none of the worry or panic that Olivia had been worried she might have to face. “M-my~yy..” he muttered as the shrinking slowed, his voice cracking strangely as it began to rapidly change. “Every~ything see~ems awful big all of a~a sudden..” It quickly youthened in tone and rose in pitch, already sounding like a young boy's by the last word of this sentence.

Angus's height finally settled with his eyes all the way down at Olivia's chest level. He had, at some point, reached a shrinking hand down to grab hold of one side of his pants and keep them on, but the opposite side was sagging enough to show a bit of his upper thighs beyond where the now quite overlong shirt reached down to. Alongside this change, his hair had continued to slowly, steadily stream its way out, and only now did it finally finish, the tips of those gorgeous, snowy white locks fluttering around his lower thighs. The glow of the glyph around him seemed to make his pretty hair and cute face sparkle; the latter was sporting the slight pink of a growing blush as something yet more began to change.

“Mm~m..mm~mmhh..” Angus slowly closed his eyes, his legs squirming forward and back. His voice continued to shift through the soft hums, taking on a decidedly feminine tone even as it matured ever so slightly. Olivia knew full well that his manhood was now withdrawing itself away, drawing an increasingly bright blush to his cheeks as it steadily shrank. “Mm~mmnnh..” His lips slowly curled up into an adorable grin as his voice lilted into a cutely high, yet mature soprano tone, and then they opened up just as slowly. “Mmm~aa~aah...”

“Aah~, aa~aaahh...” the girlish voice sang out as Angus's sex began to fully and completely change. “Aah, oo~oh..rr~rr..” At the same time, his ears suddenly burst outward and upward, brilliant white hairs erupting across them as they seemed to unfurl themselves out into a pair of huge, fluffy triangles. “Rr~rfh..aah, aa~aah...!” A soft, adorable bark came out of his..no, her lips, and as she softly cried out again, some of the new girl's teeth could be seen growing out into some sharp, yet adorable, wolfish fangs. “Aa~aah..y-yip, yip!” A long, slim line of snowy fur erupted out from her back, growing half of its length with the first canine yip, then gaining just as much length again with the second one. Already the new tail was wagging back and forth happily, the big fluffy ears twitching around cutely from the sides of her head.

“Oo~ooh, m-myy~yyyyh...” she murmured breathlessly as her body rapidly filled out with curves: Her hips and thighs pressed themselves out thicker, and her flat chest swelled forward into a pair of petite, yet completely unmistakable breasts. “Mmm~mmh..mrr~rRRFH!” She murmured again, ending in a cute bark, as her tail rapidly grew thicker and fluffier, until its girth at the widest very nearly exceeded that of her slender waist. And—just like that—the magic had transformed the old gentleman into a small, adorable wolf-girl!

But it wasn't quite done with her yet, of course; given its original purpose and behavior, it was hardly surprising at all what came last. The white glow remaining in the glyph swirled up and around the wolf-girl now, taking hold of Angus's ill-fitting, tattered clothing and rapidly rearranging it into a classic black-and-white maid outfit tailored perfectly to her beautiful, petite new form, complete with a bright red ribbon tied around the collar and a headdress that floated up to about her original height in the magical wind before floating gently back down and placing itself neatly atop her head.

Olivia watched in anticipation as the new girl slowly opened her eyes, revealing their color to have changed to a beautiful, piercing bright red, and blinked them a couple of times, looking around and taking in her newly lowered perspective—and then down at her new form and outfit. The grin appeared on her adorable face again then, as she gently lifted some of either side of the skirt in her small hands.


“Well now—ain't this somethin'?” she said, then giggled cutely. “Heheheh..!” After that, the wolf-girl gracefully glided up to the now-much-taller kitsune, reaching up a hand to lightly poke her nose. “I'm willin' to bet you knew it'd do all this now, didn'tcha?”
“Er..y-yeah, guilty as charged,” Olivia said, feeling some warmth on her face...her heart going a little faster. Somehow she was a bit nervous. “It's just—part of what the glyph does. But I figured, you know, it uh—it's no problem for someone with my powers to turn you back if you don't like it. The rest of the enchantment wouldn't be affected.”
“Turn me back? Are you kiddin'? I ain't felt this fulla energy in decades, missy!” She hopped backwards a couple of times and twirled. “Plus, I've never been a lady before, for sure! It's pretty nice, eh?”
“I-it sure can be, at least,” Olivia admitted, the slight giddiness and blush not leaving her.

“Anyhow, maybe you'd be more comfortable with a fellow young woman livin' in your house instead of an old man, wouldn'tcha?”
“I definitely don't have any problem with that,” the kitsune said.
“Heheh, perfect then! And hey,” she raised a hand to point an index finger at the side of her head. “Since my brain's all full'a recipes and how to use 'em now...Anything particular you want for dinner, 'master'?”
“Not re—uhh, what was that last part?”
The wolfish maid titled her head innocently (and very cutely). “'For dinner'?”
“No, no—you said 'master'?”
“Oh, well—” She put her hands on her hips. “I just thought, since I look like a maid and more'r'less work as one, maybe I'd act the part a little, 'sall.”

“There's not uh..you don't feel compelled to call me that, though, or anything, right? You can still say my name?”
“'Course I can, miss Olivia.” She crossed her arms. “What's got you so worked up?”
“Oh—nothing. It's just—there's supposed to be some...bad effects that'd force someone to obey me and stuff that were removed from the magic circle thing. If they..weren't, I'd totally have some complaints.”
“Ah, well,” she waved a hand dismissively. “You got nothin' to worry 'bout there, then! I'm only doin' what you say 'cause you're payin' me to!”
“Heheh..th-that works..anyway um..since you're the one who knows what all you can make now..feel free to surprise me?” Olivia shrugged. “I actually—maybe should take a shower or something, since I went looking for you straight from the gym.”

“Alrighty then!” The wolf-girl rubbed her hands, her tail wagging eagerly behind her. “I'll fix you somethin' that'll knock your socks off, master!”



As Miles turned the key in his dorm room's front door, Kiara heard the sound of some paws skittering around inside. “You got a pet, or is that an intruding squirrel I hear?”
“Ah..gawh, sorry. I shoulda mentioned, yeah—I have a cat,” he said, leading the way inside. “Beeeth! Beth?” The feline in question seemed to be hiding; if the Neko wasn't mistaken, it sounded like it was under the bed. “Well, anyway, she's just the prettiest little white kitty you've ever seen! But she's uh..I guess kinda shy about strangers.”

Meanwhile, Ella was already hard at work going around the apartment, trying to locate the origin of whatever it was she'd detected before. She prodded or picked up one item after another, only to shake her head, set it down, and move on. This carried on for more than long enough for Kiara to get bored and go sit in their host's computer chair, pulling up a game on her phone once again.

Eventually she couldn't help but ask: “Sooo...not finding anything?”
“It's not that, it's just—whatever it is, it's all over in here,” she complained. “It's like I can't pick out any one thing as having more of it than any other.” She reached up and pulled on her ears, a frustrated expression that only Kiara could really see—with the fox-girl's illusions hiding those traits from Miles still. “Rrgh, maybe I'm just not experienced enough with this stuff...”

While Ella went over to the opposite side of the room, a small white cat's head poked out from under the bed, looking briefly back and forth before fixing its eyes Kiara's way. What happened next was rather strange: The Neko heard the cat meow, in a perfectly normal, cat-meowing kind of way—but she also, simultaneously, heard speech. In a rather strange sort of way, she didn't hear a human voice, yet understood some words anyway. It was more or less the sense of “Hey, you.”
“Uh..” Kiara looked down at the cat, unsure whether that had been real.
But it happened again, making it rather difficult to deny: A sort of half-hiss came out of the cat next, conveying to Kiara a meaning like “What's this fox doing in my home?”

Miles noticed the white cat's head poking out at this point, and went to kneel in front of her. “Oh, hey Beth! You wanna come out and say hello?”
Seeming to be coaxed out by his voice, Beth strode out and (in Kiara's impression of things) permitted him to pet her a couple of times. She purred, and it sounded like the meaning was “Hello, my human.” Then she went around him to sit in front of Kiara and meow-hiss again. “Fox. Here. Why?”

“Uhmm...” Unsure what else to do, Kiara tried meowing back at the small white cat, trying to say something like 'can you understand this'?
Beth replied: “Weird accent, but yes.”
“So like..I can understand what she's saying or something?” Kiara reported. “Weird—I can't understand any other cats.”
“What, really?!” Ella came up excitedly, and the cat fled back under the bed, hissing. “Oh..whoops.”
“Uh, look—go outside for a minute. I don't think she likes you for some reason.”
“Awwh, okay,” the Kitsune shrugged and went out. After that, Beth poked her head out cautiously, then came out to immediately hop onto Kiara's lap.

“Whoa, hey! Wow, I guess she really likes you..” Miles said. “So you can understand her?! Does she like how, I mean uh..gaah...”
Beth meowed: “What is human so worked up about?”
“Umm..mrrowh.” Kiara tried with a few more feline noises: 'He wants to know if you like how he's treating you.' Then: 'Also, he's surprised I can understand you? I am too.'
“You are human-cat, of course you can understand. If I didn't like it, I would leave.”

“..Okay, she says if she didn't like how you were treating her, she'd leave.”
Then Beth hissed again: “Why is fox?”
“Um...mrowh?” 'Fox detected some kind of power near your human that he might want, and was looking for it.'
Beth replied: “Power? Only me here.” She stood and turned around in Kiara's lap to meow at Miles: “What does my human want with power?”
“Okaaaay, this just keeps getting weirder. I guess Beth is claiming to be the source of whatever Ella was sensing, and just asked me what you want.”
“R-really?!” Miles fell back to sit on his bed, looking a little shocked. “C-can you..tell her what I want? To uh..to look cute? Instead of scary?”

Kiara shrugged, and tried some more meowing. “Your human wants to turn into a cute girl instead of looking big and scary like he does now. Are you saying you could do that?”
Beth turned her head back. “Change my human's look? Easy. Will do it later.” After that, she stretched and hopped across onto 'her human's' lap, meowing up at him to pet her. Miles at least seemed to understand this command without translation.
“She said that's easy, but she'll do it later,” Kiara said. “I guess whenever she feels like it. You know, just..cat things.”
“W-well, that's okay! I had no idea you were some kinda magical cat, though, Beth...I thought you were just a normal, adorable kitty cat!” he said, scratching under her chin.
“I get the impression she likes it that way,” the Neko said. “You probably shouldn't go parading her around; she might just leave.”
“Oh, yeah, I know. S-still though..if she can help me look cute, then...!”



Tory was rather popular at work, of course. It was just as much fun teasing some of her coworkers as it had been teasing her friends the night before! But...all of it was just playing around. She'd picked her favorite mark already, and was quite eager to get back to work on him...or her, if she had the opportunity to make that happen. Between that and, well, actually doing her job, she didn't have much time to try to figure out why she'd been able to turn Den into an adorable dog-girl until after work was over and she got back to her house.

Carter, as it turned out, didn't know what had happened. She revealed in a few rounds of texts that she had really only intended the curse to turn Troy into a wolf-girl, with no specifics on appearance..and it wasn't strictly speaking a curse anyway, something Troy had more or less suspected from the start. Kitsune weren't necessarily incapable of cursing people, but Carter was actually a pretty low-power one with just one tail, and had borrowed some power from elsewhere to just make a slow-transformation enchantment, all while calling it a curse just to scare him.

That was all well and good, but it meant that Tory knew even less about what had happened than she thought she did. But fortunately, the blonde Kitsune shot back a little while later with a suggestion: Tory could ask the people who'd lent the power to change her in the first place. Apparently, their point of contact was, of all things, a phone app that supposedly gave out free advice. But it also let whoever was on the other side detect magic or something? Well, it was worth a shot, anyway, and unless Carter was playing an uncharacteristically mean prank, she wouldn't let Tory install an actual virus on her phone or anything. So the wolf-girl installed the app, and opened it up.

Welcome! What kind of help are you looking for today?
Okay, that sounded pretty generic. It might even not be a real person on the other end yet. Well—whatever, she could probably get someone by answering in a way no bot would know how to reply to.

hi, im carters friend, she said you might know why i was able to turn someone into a dog girl?

There at least wasn't the kind of instantaneous answer Tory might've expected of a bot. However, the pause was long enough to make her a bit impatient, and she'd gotten up to do something else when the phone pinged with a notification of a response.

Can you tell us anything else?
Any details about how it happened exactly?

She tilted her head briefly, then shrugged to herself. A little more information couldn't hurt.
so like
carter said she'd given me a 'canine curse', right?
which is why i look how i do now.
and i thought i was just 'sharing' and 'unsharing' that
since she did a little rhyme to curse me,
it felt right to do a little rhyme to share it
and undo it too

A rhyme, huh?

Then, a different anonymized name from the one Tory had been talking to chimed in: I think we've got a witch on our hands.

a witch? Tory asked, headtilting a bit.
but i'm like
a wolf girl.

That doesn't prevent you from being a witch

Yeah, I agree, the first one to answer said. Witches only display their potential while female.
Warlocks are the other way around.
Both can use existing spells, or sometimes just 'make up' spells with whatever feels right to them
And even if you have physical animal traits,
you're still "fully human" as far as magic goes.
If that makes any sense.

Either way, you're very powerful! the second one came back.
and it sounds like you've been having fun with it, too.

so like
is that bad? Tory wasn't really sure on the rules when it came to witches using their magic to transform other people...or whatever.

No no no, it's great! Keep it up!

Yeah!
the first one came back again.

A witch...? A wolf-witch. Canine witch, even. Tory kind of liked the sound of that. Even though she still very much had her sights set on Den, it...wouldn't be bad at all to change a few of her other friends into pretty canine-girls, if they were willing. But aside from that, it gave her some assurance that her managing to transform him and then turn her back hadn't been a fluke. She could pretty much do that to Den whenever she wanted!

...Whenever he wanted, she quickly corrected herself. But her tail didn't stop wagging anyway. She could turn him into a dog-boy too, if they wanted!



Olivia's new "maid" was already doing amazing work, judging by the delicious scent she picked up coming out of the shower. It was hard to say whether she could've smelled it all throughout the house without an enhanced sense of smell, but she enjoyed the anticipation either way. She hadn't realized how hungry she was before now...but she waited patiently for it to be ready rather than going to the kitchen to pester Angus anyway. Thankfully, the wait wasn't all that long.

"Dinner's ready~!" the wolf-girl called out. Olivia was tempted to teleport straight there, or at least come running, but restrained herself to just a brisk walk. The dinner in question was already served up onto two plates by the time she got there: Pork tenderloins wrapped in bacon, along with some accompanying sides, all in the kind of visually appealing arrangement Olivia had only seen on TV, on those "cooking contest" type of shows, before. The Kitsune was more than happy to dig in, and so too, it seemed, was the chef.

Once her mouth was no longer full for the first time, she said, "This is amazing!"
"Mm-hm!" Angus swallowed. "I did what I could with the ingredients around. You oughta take me along next time you're grocery shoppin', though—then I can really make some fancy stuff. By the way—I found myself cravin' meat an awful lot more'n usual." She ate another bite, then pointed at one of her fangs. "I get the 'maid' bit, but you know where all this came from?"
"Uh, from what I read—the magic circle's not necessarily supposed to do that, but it can have..side-effects like that depending on the person. Apparently the guy who originally made it was really annoyed by stuff like that, and kept trying to make it not do that, but never managed it. Do you uh...I mean, it's also nothing I can't undo if you don't like it."
"Pff, I'll keep 'em. 'Least for now. It's kinda exciting!" the wolf-girl said.

"'Nother thing. Since I'm lookin' like this and all...you mind introducin' me as 'Angie'?" she asked, smiling across the table at her 'master'. "Feel like it fits a cute young thing like me much better, is all."
"Uh, n-not at all." Olivia's heart rate had gone up again. "I mean, I changed my name when uh..this 'fox spirit' stuff wound up making me a girl." Angie was a very cute name indeed...was it her imagination, or was all that white hair and fur sparkling in the light of the sunset?
"Heheh..didn't feel like my place to say so before necessarily, but Olivia is quite a pretty name."
"Uh, th-thanks."

She waited a little bit longer, then asked: "Um, if you..want some more clothes that fit that, new look. I can kinda make or alter clothes at will. I mean—I'd just, give you money to shop for your own clothes, but my money's still kinda mostly tied up right now..."
The wolf-girl giggled softly, grinning. "Heheh..how 'bout you take me shoppin' anyhow, tomorrow afternoon, say? I can point out what I like best, then you make that happen when we get back. I ain't picky how my duds are made, anyhow."
"That works," the Kitsune nodded. Something about the idea of going out shopping with her cute maid made her feel rather happy all on its own, too...even if they weren't technically buying anything.

Once they were through with their meal, the wolf-girl grabbed the plates and quickly took them over to the sink to clean up. "You just go 'head and relax now, master~," she said cheerfully. "I got a few little things to tidy up, and then maybe I'll take a nice long bath m'self. Ain't had the opportunity in a good while, even if the magic thing went and cleaned me up already."
"Sure. Um, did you already have time to look around the entire house?" she asked, curious.
"Oh, nah. It's just—'sides teachin' me how to take care of the place, I got this sorta sixth sense in my head," Angie explained, pointing at her forehead with an index finger. "I can also turn things on 'r off without needin' to even be near 'em. Watch." She pointed at an adjoining hallway, and the light there turned off and on a few times.
"Cool!" Olivia was sure the detailed description of the glyph's effects had covered this, but it had probably been in the part with more technical language she hadn't fully understood. Either way, it was sort of like her house had one of those 'smart assistant' devices now...who was also a cute wolf-girl.



After Miles was ambushed by a catgirl and wound up having girls in his room, things seemed to calm down again for a couple of days. It was kind of surreal, after being told that not only was his long-time pet some kind of magically powerful being, but she was also going to turn him into a cute girl like he wanted...for everything to just abruptly go back to normal afterward.

Well, it wasn't entirely like it had been before. He stopped staring at the two of them from a distance, as promised, but they actually came to check up on him at lunch the next day, and Ella at least spared him a hello the day after that. It made him feel...just slightly better, that he'd made a couple of not-hostile acquaintances despite his own crushing failure at going to meet up with them normally. But...

The fact that nothing had happened yet had Miles questioning things more and more. The way things had played out...it wasn't impossible that Ella and Kiara were both playing a trick on him, pretending Beth was some kind of powerful being and that the catgirl could understand her. From every angle he looked at the pretty white cat, she seemed perfectly ordinary to him. He fed her, pet her, and changed her litter, and nothing much else seemed to change.

The main things that lent credence to that whole story were: Kiara had seemed genuinely surprised and confused to have understood the cat. She had meowed back, and Beth had moved and reacted in a way that strongly suggested—to Miles at least—that his pet cat was saying exactly what the catgirl reported her to be saying. It was a little difficult to explain, but—even though he couldn't understand words from Beth's feline sounds, he did feel like he often understood a little of what she was thinking simply from the way she acted. He'd just...known her that long, he guessed.

So: If it was a prank, then either Ella had somehow fooled both him and Kiara, or Beth was in on it. He didn't think there was any way for that first part to be true; while Ella seemed to have some kind of powers she wasn't willing to openly share the nature of, surely they wouldn't result in his own cat acting differently from how she liked to. Plus Ella just didn't seem like that cruel of a person to him, based on everything he knew. And the second was absolutely impossible; Beth would never betray him this way.

As bizarre as it would've sounded to anyone else, Miles knew with absolute certainty that his cat was his friend. Sure, she was a little standoffish as cats were wont to be, but she showed her affection and gratitude often enough for him to know how she really felt. If she'd really said that she'd change him when she felt like it, then she was definitely going to do it. It was just a matter of waiting for her to be in the right mood, right? Besides, maybe she was just covering for needing to build up the energy to make a change so drastic, with her pride making her not want to admit to not even being able to do it right away. To Miles, that sounded very much like something Beth would do.

Through this line of thought, he convinced himself not to worry about it one time after another over those few days. He went to bed that Friday night after convincing himself once again that it could happen any time now. Beth would take good care of him; the timing just needed to be right for her. Maybe tomorrow...

Saturday, December 24, 2022

Vixen Society - Cycle 13

Vixen Society



Cycle 13
Since she'd stolen the first shower, Troy thought it was only fair for her to make breakfast. She sat across from the adorable dog-girl, wagging her tail and looking her up and down. Den was blushing at the stares, but not complaining; if anything, she was giving just as good back.

“S-so uh..you can turn me back, right?” she said as the meal came to a close.
“I'm sure gonna try! I mean, unless you wanna stay like that?”
“Uh, no.” Den shook her head. “I mean—d-don't get me wrong, there's...things I definitely like about this. But—we haven't really...I mean, we don't. We h-haven't even been on any dates or anything! Right? I..l-like you, but I don't wanna rush in too fast.”
“Mmh...”

Troy nodded slowly. Her heart sank a little bit from knowing she'd have to turn her 'new pet' back and watch him leave for his own place again...but she certainly wasn't going to try to force her (or him) to stay. If the experience with Carter had taught her anything, it at least included that being pushy with someone didn't make them like you any more. Besides...maybe Den was right, and they'd both let impulses get the better of them the night before.

Soon she stood up in front of the dog-girl, gently placing a hand atop her head and trying to think how best to take back the shared curse. After a moment, it came to her. After softly clearing her throat, the wolf-girl said: “My curse I shared, from me to you~, I take back, and now undo~.” A soft red glow like the one that had converted her friend into a dog girl slowly formed around her and then flowed out, back into Troy. As it did, her body and clothes alike shifted all the way back to the form of the young man he'd been the day before.

“Phew...” He breathed a sigh of relief, looking down and inspecting his appearance. “Glad that worked.” It brought the wolf-girl a little bit of happiness that he looked...maybe slightly disappointed, despite the statement of relief.
“Uh, m-me too,” she said. It would've been bad to have stuck her that way, she kept telling herself—and hoping the lesson sunk in. She could always...let her catch go to play with him again later, right? Right...

“Well uh, I've gotta get to work soon,” Dennis said after a moment. “But—we'll talk. Let's, maybe actually go on a date soon?”
“Sure!” She grinned happily, wagging her tail. He was cute as a dog-girl, but..the blushing face he had on right now, as man, was pretty cute too. She could see...going on a date with him at least, for sure. And...maybe sharing the curse with him again, now and then, after that.

After her final guest left, the wolf-girl thought about things a little bit more. Well, she was most definitely happy staying a gorgeous woman with canine parts for the rest of her life herself, regardless of what happened to or with the people around her. Maybe...to fit the new look, maybe she could swap a couple of letters in her name to make it feel more feminine. Tory? She spoke it to herself a few times, seeing how it felt in her mouth and imagining hearing it out of other people.

But, as the wolf-girl continued to consider things, her mind went to another logical question. Curses usually didn't work the way she'd just used the Canine Curse Carter had given her, right? So...why was she able to do that, anyway?

...Maybe the Kitsune who'd done it in the first place would know.



“Hmmm....”

Ella walked around Miles in a slow circle. He wrung his hands nervously, not really sure what to think of a cute girl sizing him up like this. They had taken up a room in the library of the sort that was usually used for studying, and Kiara was standing in a corner, leaning against the wall and playing on her phone.

Ella stood on her tiptoes, leaning up at him. “HMMMMMMM....
“W-what is it?” he said, unable to take it anymore.
“Heheh! You get a pretty funny face when you're flustered,” she said, hopping back a step or so. “So like, I don't have the kinda power that can just poof you into a girl or whatever, but there's..something on you. Something powerful enough for me to 'smell' it, even though it's not close right now. Wonder what it could be?”
“Something...like a magic something?” This was definitely the first he'd heard of it. Given her reputation, Ella might've just been messing with him yet again...but he wanted to believe.
“Mm-hm! You hiding any super-artifacts in your dorm room or something? Hey, maybe we should go check!”

“You want us to go to a dude's dorm room?” Kiara repeated with a tone of annoyance.
“I mean, yeah? That's what ours was until just recently, right? Anyway, there's two of us! And I wanna know what the magic thing is. It smells a little like you!”
“Like me?" the catgirl said. "How?”
“I dunno! It's a new and unfamiliar thing! That's why I wanna know what it is!”
She sighed. “Fine, I guess. You mind, Miles?”
“Uh, n-no, not at all.” He was nervous about having two cute girls in his room, but... “I-I mean, if you think it'll help, I'll do anything!”
“Heheh..you might not wanna promise that to me~,” Ella said. “No guarantees, but I think it might be worth a shot at least!”



“Angus! Hey!” Olivia waved, then ran over, closing the distance with a certain satisfying ease. He'd been sitting on the sidewalk leaning back against a building, and reached up a hand for her to help him up.
“Hey there missy—whoop!” She didn't pull hard enough to hurt him, but he did stumble briefly once he was on his feet.
“Uh, sorry.” She rubbed the back of her head with a hand.
“'Sall right. But you seem awful excited, and it's a bit early for dinner, ain't it? Somethin' new come up?”
“Yeah, it totally did,” she nodded, grinning. “It's uh—you know how I said I'd come to you first if I was in a position to hire someone for something?”
“Sure?” It sounded like he might've forgotten, actually. But what mattered anyway was that she remembered.
“Well, I—uh. Actually, it's way easier if I just show you. You're free, right?”

The homeless old man looked around pointedly. “Seems my schedule's pretty darn clear, yep.”
“H-heheh. Okay, I'll—teleport us. It might be a little bit of a jolt, soo..” The kitsune gently placed a hand on his shoulder, and moved them both to a spot a couple of yards out from the front door of her new house. He stumbled briefly, then looked around, seeming slightly disoriented, before shaking his head and then looking slowly around, getting his bearings again.

“Well, this's a fancier neighborhood than I've been to in a while. What's here that's got you so worked up?”
“It's uh—that house,” she pointed. “Someone. Gave me, that house. No strings attached or anything! C'mon, c'mon!” With her hand still on his shoulder, she sort of tried to lead him up to the door. He took the hint, following her lead.
“No kiddin'? How'd you get so lucky?”
“Well, it's—it was one of the 'vixen society' people, actually. They..kinda heard me complaining about my apartment, and is the kinda person who just has something like this lying around collecting dust. Legally, I 'inherited it from an uncle', even though uh..I don't have any uncles.”

She took out her key and eagerly brought him inside with her, gesturing around at the big antechamber. He gave the view an impressed whistle. “Either this room's the whole place, or it's bigger'n in here than it looks out there.”
“Uh—yeah. It's bigger on the inside, literally,” Olivia said. “Magic stuff.”
He nodded—both of them had seen plenty of 'magic stuff' in the last couple of weeks, after all. “Well, I'm happy for ya and all, but—what's this got to do with a job for me?”
“That's the thing—this place is really big,” the kitsune said, “I mean huge. It needs—someone besides me to take care of it all. Plus some of the magic stuff here needs its own upkeep. But there's a thing, uh..a magic circle upstairs that's supposed to be able to give anyone the know-how to take care of it all. It just needs someone, willing to do the work.”

“That's where I come in, eh? Huh.” While she waited nervously for his response, Angus sort of scratched his head, considering. “I ain't got much experience in housemakin', but if you think this magic'll tell me how, and don't mind dealin' with any gaps it don't fill, that ain't so bad. What's the compensation?”
“Well uh—I can offer room and board for sure,” she said. “And..it's not much, but since I've moved out of my apartment, I can pay what I was doing for rent there.” Olivia's ears sank slightly while she quoted that number. “But uh—once...some of my debts get paid off, I can pay more! I dunno exactly how long that's gonna take, but..probably a few months for the small ones, or...a couple years for the bigger ones...”

She trailed off because Angus had his arms crossed and was giving an inscrutable, serious frown while he seemed to seriously consider his options. “Well now,” he said after waiting a moment. “That don't sound too bad. I've been gettin' worse than 'room and board' for a long while now, and it ain't what I like. And a paycheck like that oughta be a good supplement to my retirement, anyhow. If you'll have me, miss Olivia, I think you've gotchurself a deal,” he nodded.
Her ears sort of popped upright at the use of the word 'deal'. “Oh, r-really? That's great! Um, do you need any time to—uh, or any help moving anything?”

Angus raised his arms, looking at himself briefly, before shrugging. “Nah, I got it all on me already. If you don't mind gettin' me that 'on-the-job trainin'', I could start today.”
“Well—sure! I mean uh...I can't really pay you a sign-on bonus or anything, but I could totally start you off today and have your first paycheck by next Friday?”
“Alright with me.”

Olivia drew herself up and offered him a hand. “I..didn't really draw up a contract or anything, but—if we make a Deal, and shake on it. I'll stick to it. Okay?”
“Works for me.” He took the hand and shook it firmly. “It's how business oughta be conducted anyhow, with an honest handshake and keepin' to your word—I say.”
“H-heheh..I thought you might say something like that.”

“Soo..I'll take you to the uh..magic circle room, then?” She gestured in the direction of the stairs.
“Certainly.”



While they were packing up all of Luca's stuff and taking it down to the truck, Vincent came up next to their helper. “Listen—you have anything specific in mind? For how your ears and tail should look?”
“Uh—like how?”
“You want cat parts? Dog? Wildebeest? What?”
“Oh uh..you know, maybe just like you?” Ryker said. “I mean, your ears look pretty amazing, right? Not to mention the fluffy tails! I'm okay with just one-a those, though. But otherwise—yeah, like yours!”
“Hmm.”

She asked him again later. “You have any preferences for color? Length?”
“Well, y'know—I guess the same color as my hair?” he said. “The rest, like I said—like yours is fine!”
“Mine comes with fangs, you know, and a more sensitive nose. You want that too?”
“Oh, yeah, sure, that'd be awesome! Just like yours, dude.”

The same theme came up every single time the kitsune asked her catboy's furless furry friend for details: “Just like yours”. “Just like you”. That was the message that more or less sank into her head, and the more she heard it and really thought about it, the more a rather obvious 'literal genie' style of trick seemed to present itself to her. It was almost like he was begging for it! Especially when he talked about how cute she was and said something like “Yeah like the whole package? Totally!”

She eventually decided...she was going to do it. It was well within the terms of their existing Deal, after all, and...if he didn't like the results, it wasn't any harder for her to undo the prank and leave him with what he really wanted. If Luca or Ryker suspected what she was thinking of, neither of them showed any signs—but then, they were both fairly gullible anyway.

They just needed to finish up the move first. Maybe she'd even treat Ryker to dinner as an apology if the trick made him really mad.



and now she claims she was able to 'share' the curse with another of our friends.
turning him into a dog-girl
And also un-share it back again.
I might not believe her, but
checked with him and he said it happened too.

Carter didn't have to wait long for another response from the Society.

Well uh
that definitely isn't something we did.
There wasn't enough of a boost, and you don't have the power on your own for a spreadable curse, either.

sounds to me like your friend had some kind of hidden magical talent!
a little hard to know what kind exactly...

oh, maybe just ask her to install the app?

Yeah, that could work!

What,
Carter sent back, you can detect magic through people's phones?

uh, pretty much
I mean it's mostly just detecting potential to be a Kitsune we were interested in
but if this friend of yours can just girl and un-girl someone casually like that
it's probably enough for the app to catch a scent.

Okay...I guess we'll try that, then.

Friday, December 23, 2022

The "Best" RPG Ever-121




Hey, so, my recent near-hiatus of around a month and half probably hasn't escaped your notice. I can assure you that it wasn't by choice. I've been plagued somewhat by writer's block, but it's more been an issue of me getting sick every time that I otherwise had time and would've had energy to write. I've still been slowly chipping away at things, there just isn't quite enough progress to publish a lot of it yet. It's unlikely at this point that I'll actually finish the rest of Halloween Cheer this year; maybe I'll just wait and publish the whole batch next October, but don't be too surprised if I decide to release more captions from that throughout the coming year instead. Anyway, hopefully you enjoy this, and hopefully more soon!



As the party of five headed out to the west of town, they soon found what seemed to be a wall of dire wolves standing out in the distance. Coming closer, another few rows behind the first one were visible, the whole lot of them assembled in ranks like a besieging army. Finally, their approach was met by the wolves backing away from them to form a semicircular indentation around them. The monstrous animals were staring at them with aggressive looks, but were eerily quiet and calm otherwise.

"This is...m-more unsettling than such low-level opponents really sh-should be," Nora said, currently shifted to feline form for agility. Lupa, next to her, was holding a big battleaxe close while giving out a low, quiet growl.
"Welp. If we go any farther in they'll surround us," Aria said, leaning on her still-sheathed sword. She could sort of feel it pulsating in her hand, already ravenous for the animals' blood...but she restrained herself for just a little longer.
"We should probably be ready for that either way," the witch said. "Sooo...ranged assault on the count of three?"
"Sure!" Rose said.
"Ready," Nora nodded. "St-stick close, Lupa." The wolf-girl nodded, still growling.
Aria raised her weapon with the hilt in both hands, mentally preparing to unleash it.

Seeing that everyone was prepared, Mira counted, holding out her scythe blade-down and summoning a mid-sized pumpkin in front of her: "One, two, three!" She swatted the pumpkin like a golf ball, and it sailed through the air, landing in the middle of the ranks of wolves on the group's right and exploding on impact into a demonic conflagration. Nora drew out some electricity from a bracelet, arcing it through a bunch of the dire wolves on their left. Rose grew some thorned vines up around the monsters to their front, the beasts struggling as half of them were cut and crushed by the force. Aria unsheathed her weapon and formed its back half into a long chain in a single motion, throwing it into the vine-bound wolves and swinging the remaining front half of the blade back and forth through the survivors and dead alike.

All of the nearby wolves that physically could, immediately and in unison, howled. Some survivors of the attacks on the left and right rushed forward, as well as all of the ones too far away to have been hit by the first few attacks. As they came closer, Lupa threw her axe at the nearest group, sending them crashing back several yards and into all the wolves behind them, before taking out another one. Rose continued growing her vines into a mobile thicket, snagging, tripping and grabbing more of the wolves in front, Aria finishing them off with her blade-on-a-chain. Mira raised her scythe and cut through some of the wolves that started to come too close, drawing out her shadow-tentacles to swat away or grab and throw several more of them; Lupa similarly went to work hacking away at the ones that came close on her side. Nora focused electricity and fire on the beasts trying to come around behind them to finish the circle.

It seemed the entire army of wolves which had assembled was rushing in toward them now. While she continued the melee work, the witch chanted another spell, and when she was done a wave of demonic fire spread out in front of her, giving them some breathing room on her side. Then she formed and tossed more exploding pumpkins to clear out all the beasts that were getting too close for comfort, being careful not to send anything too close to the part or in the direction of Rose's thorny plants. Nora picked up the non-demonic fire resulting from the heat of the explosion nearest herself, pulling it close to take down the wolves coming at her, then pushing it back out to burn the monsters farther off.

"Heheheh..HAAHAHAHA!!" Aria reformed her sword to its original appearance and started dashing in circles around the party, chopping and slashing through all of the wolves that came close; Lupa followed a short way behind to catch anything the shifter's reckless momentum missed. Mira switched to making some magic circles to throw ice up over the two of them and into the distance to keep the numbers of the more distant wolves down, Nora went back to using lightning, and Rose kept growing her thicket into a distant circle around the group's position that slowed down and wounded the beasts as they came.

The onslaught continued for a minute or two more, until a howl from somewhere in the back of all of the wolves seemed to cause them to suddenly stop and step back. It sounded..odd, not like any normal dire wolf's, and kind of strained. "Hey, ge'back here!" Aria swiped her sword a couple of times, taking a couple of steps to pursue the wolves backing away. The witch quickly moved behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder.
"Easy. Something weird's going on."
"I know, I know," the shifter said, sounding impatient and frustrated all the same. "It's okay—sword's fed enough to stay in control..."
"New alpha," Lupa said, pointing with her weapon as the source of the strange howl stepped up into view, some of the wolves in the back parting to make way for it.

It looked to be...a person. More specifically, it was dark-furred Canis man looking extremely disheveled, wearing badly-damaged armor, with some obvious cut and burn scars on his body and face. His expression was...wrong: Wild, furiously angry, and exhausted all at once. And his eyes especially...Mira knew what she was seeing after a second, and quickly looked away from them.

"Hey, that's—Donovan! Right?" Aria said, somehow recognizing him from the sketch they'd seen on the quest board the day before. He was growling hoarsely and incoherently, still slowly walking toward them—approaching Rose's thicket barrier.
"He's crazy from chaotic magic. Like Kayriel and—"
"So put him to sleep then!"
"Right, right..."

While Mira chanted, he came to the plants, grabbed some of them in his bare hands (despite all the thorns) and tore them aside, continuing to walk. There was something..barely visible, resembling the wrongly-shifting colors of the magic that Jacob had lifted from the people with a similar affliction before, swirling around him. She tried throwing her curse at him as soon as it was ready, but he lifted his hand and seemed to wave it away before it could take effect. It wasn't just his arm moving; some of that magic moved along with him, and in addition to seeing it, she could sort of feel it pulsating as it swept her curse aside.

"Uh—shoot. Think we're gonna have to knock him out the normal way. Try not to kill!" While she said this, Donovan's growling grew louder, turning into something halfway between an animal sound of rage and an extremely pained yell.

"GrrraaAAaAAAHHHH..!" Rose brought some of her vines toward him to try and restrain him, but they withered suddenly when getting close—and contacting the aura of chaotic magic. Nora similarly made an attempt to stun him with some electricity, which bent around that aura despite her best efforts. Aria was busy struggling to make her weapon take on a more blunt form, so Lupa stepped forward, brandishing her axe somewhat uncertainly.

From halfway into the pained yell onward, Donovan's body swiftly twisted into a different shape: Growing three times as tall, covering itself in rough, sharp-looking fur, and finally erupting two extra limbs on each side, between the legs and arms. All eight of his limbs ended in the same kind of bladed claws by the time it was through. His face elongated into a muzzle, the mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth, and the eyes sort of breaking apart until they'd become four short, wide multicolor-glowing eyes in a row along each side.

"Are you sure we shouldn't kill him now?" Aria said as his monstrous new form started toward them, using its limbs like a spider's legs, and howled.
"Just keep the wolves off us!" Mira said, stepping forward and splitting her scythe into its dual-wielded form. When Donovan raised his legs to strike, she parried them with the blades and some of her shadow-tentacles, giving the shifter a moment to move aside and start slashing through his attendant wolves as they charged in toward the group once again.
Nora tried to arc some fire and lightning at him, which again bounced around his body. "I c-can't control anything t-too close to it!"
"Throw a rock and let go!" the witch advised.
"Uh, my plants don't like it either!" the dragon-girl reported.
"Then deal with the wolves!" Mira repeated to her. "Lupa, help me out here!"
"Yes!"

The wolf-girl, at least, knew what to do. She came at him with her axes turned backwards, aiming to hit him on the head. When he blocked with an extra limb, she turned the other axe forward and cut into it, making a surprisingly shallow gash for her level of strength. Nora compacted some dirt into a solid mass and threw it at his head, landing a square hit just behind it—so that worked, at least. Eventually Mira managed to toss one of her half-scythes up, grab it by the blade with a shadow-tentacle, and then slam its hilt down square into the top of his head, some of the weapon's inherent demonic magic singing the fur. He didn't slow down a bit from either blow to the head, this time just his head closing around half of his eyes and shaking it off before continuing to try to bite her.

"Okay, knocking you out isn't looking like a great plan..." From continued close contact, Mira had the sense that the sickening magic strengthening, transforming, and possibly controlling him was something tangible and near—like she could almost feel it directly. Perhaps he was using it in a way close enough to normal magic for her to sense it in an almost-similar way. So maybe it would be easier than the slippery, faint version of this chaotic magic she'd been trying to practice with before...

"Idea! Rose, Lupa—try to keep him busy. Knock him over or back if you can, bare-handed if you've gotta. I need to concentrate."
"Uh, okay.."
"Strength contest!" Lupa said excitedly, waving the dragon-girl over.
"R-right!"

Rose waited for one of his limbs to stab out toward her, then moved aside and grabbed it in an arm. She let him do it a second time while that one struggled to get out of her grip, then started trying to tumble him over onto his side or back by leveraging both of them. Lupa ran over to whack him upward with the back of her axe on the side the dragon-girl was trying to lift up, and between the two of them, they succeeded in making his side hit the ground with a hard slam. Rose kicked his muzzle repeatedly while Lupa pounced to knock him the rest of the way onto his back, kneeling on top of him and catching the limbs that came close to her in her hands, harshly twisting each one before shoving it away again.

Lupa...right. Her magic was supposed to work like a funnel to draw that choatic junk in and burn it up as fuel for her own powers. With luck, Mira might not even need to expel all of that concentrated magic in him herself. She just needed to form a channel and get it going in the right direction. She continued chanting, directing her magic to pierce into his prone body, yanking pieces of the foreign magic out while trying to be careful not to grab whatever was left of his own natural, non-chaotic energy. Every piece she managed to catch, she pushed at Lupa. Eventually there were several string-like strands of sickening, pulsating color connecting Donovan's big, monstrous body to Lupa's, and (while she didn't seem to consciously direct it) the wolf-girl naturally sipohened the magic out of him. He soon started to struggle a little bit less, and then his huge, monstrous form began to shrink, the extra limbs shortening and his fur thinning away.

Mira worked to maintain and continue making more of the channels out of him, but it seemed to be working quite well already. The surviving wolves were no longer in his control, fleeing now from everyone else's decidedly superiour firepower. Aria sheathed her weapon; Rose stepped back and turned away, her expression looking slightly sick. After a bit longer, Donovan was back to the relatively human form of a Canis, and slumped over unconscious. Lupa hopped up off of him, looking around.

"Wolves all gone. Victory!" She flexed her arms.
"Ugh..you feel okay, Lupa?" Mira asked. Besides doing the magic itself being somewhat tiring, something about...handling that...for so long, even indirectly, had her feeling slightly sick to her stomach too.
"Yes! This one feels extra great! Too bad all the prey's gone!"
"That's..good. Ugh, okay." The witch stepped a little closer to the unconscious Canis. "Not sure we got all of it, so you get to sleep a little longer." A quick incantation cursed him to sleep until she said the key word—the same curse she'd tried before, but successful this time.

"I'm glad that worked, but uh, it was like..super gross," Rose remarked. "I hope we don't have to do something like that again."
"I dunno, going by the evidence, I'd say that's part one of three," Aria said. "At best. Maybe two of four, come to think of it?"
"You and I both need to get practicing to be ready for the next one, then," Mira said to the elf.
She nodded, "Mmh. S-sorry I couldn't um, help m-more."
"No problem. But you should prolly check him for injuries, in case any of what we did to the..spider-wolf form carried over." Nora nodded, kneeling in front of him and getting to work.

"He s-seems...exhausted, but relatively okay. A f-few scrapes and burns, to b-be sure...but nothing l-life threatening." His recent transformation had destroyed what was left of his clothes, so Nora produced a blanket out of her inventory and draped it over him once she was through with her checkup.
"Hey Lupa—since you're feeling so great, maybe you can carry him?" the witch suggested, gesturing at Donovan.
"Okay~!" the wolf-girl cheerfully hefted him up across her shoulders, not the least bit bothered by his state of dress. After briefly surveying the area once more, Mira started leading the group back to town.

Something like this didn't just happen out of nowhere, right? It reeked of some kind of villainous scheme, maybe by someone they hadn't met yet...or perhaps even by someone they had. But the majority of people with obvious power around here were either fellow players, or else at least well-known and well-trusted allies, like the Captain. Except...

That strange, multicolor look of chaotic magic was like some horrifying anti-rainbow. They had met one person, and very recently at that, who made Mira think of rainbows. That Reiaza girl's hair...but then, that was just a color association, and a weak one at that. Chaotic magic was, visually speaking, not really anything like Reiaza's hair, it was just sort of a weak half-conceptual link between the two. That, and Belwin had made it sound like she was pretty powerful, enough to take down witches and warlocks at least. However...unless the Troupe of Strangers had a reputation of showing up around the same time as a bunch of monsters, there was no real link to be concerned about.

Maybe she'd just keep an eye on that magician girl anyway...

Sunday, November 13, 2022

Vixen Society - Cycle 12

Vixen Society



Cycle 12
"Why are you—"
"Bwuaah!"

One second, the catgirl had been way off in the distance, sitting on a bench with her friend, and then suddenly she was a foot or so away from Miles, looking very angry and saying something loud. He didn't take this jumpscare well at all, immediately jumping, flailing his arms, and falling over backwards onto the ground. Thankfully he didn't hit anything too hard when he landed flat on his back, but even the relatively soft ground was enough to make him want to sit up slowly and rub his head groaning.

"Oww..."
The girl who'd been a guy a couple of weeks ago was looking down at him with an angry expression on her face, but her ears folded down in a way that almost seemed like concern. She sighed. "You're not that hurt, are you?" Beyond that, he could hear the other girl—her roommate—laughing uncontrollably back at the bench.
"Uh..no...what..?"
"'Kay, so as I was saying—" She put her hands on her hips, appearing to need some effort to be as angry as she'd been at first. "Why are you staring at us? Huh?"

"I just—uh..." Miles stammered incoherently for a moment, noticing that the catgirl was hissing the way Beth would to say he'd better not get close or she'd claw his face up. "Y-you guys uh. Used to be guys, right? And..I mean like, how..?"
"You wanna know how we got turned into girls? Why, so you can change one of your friends and actually get a date?" Oof, she was a vicious one.
"Gawh, uh, no. I-it's for me," he said, and then completely fumbled a fuller explanation: "I-I mean, look at me. E-every time I—I mean, everyone always gets the wrong...but, if I at least looked not so..y'know, scary, then..."

The catgirl's expression softened a little bit; she let out a small sigh, dropping her hands to the sides. "I guess I can kinda see that. Well, sorry—we didn't find a magic thing that can just turn guys into girls whenever. I 'awoke' as a Neko for this to happen to me, and..something similar for Ella."
"C-could you uh, help me 'awake' or something, then?"
"I don't really..look, it's something that happens on a super individual basis. We didn't even expect it to happen, and we definitely don't have any consistent method or anything. Anyway, there's no guarantee even if you did awaken thaat you'd transform into a cute girl, and not like, stay looking mostly the same while turning into a fear demon or something...is that a thing?" she added in a small mumble afterward. "A-anyway!" She pivoted back to being angry, although still not nearly as much as before. "That still doesn't excuse you for acting like a total stalker!"
"Y-yeah..I'm sorry. Gawh, I just...you know, it's not just my looks...I'm real, bad at just..talking to people. A-and it's such a weird thing, I didn't know how to..come up to some total strangers just to.."

"Oh, stop looking so freaking pathetic already!" she interrupted him just as he trailed off. "At least get up off the ground." She struck out a hand and, when he took it, showed some surprising strength for her apparently slim build in yanking him upright. "We can..try to find something that'll help you if you're that desperate, I guess, but like..no guarantees, got it?"
"Uh, s-sure..."




The lawyer couldn't meet with Olivia until Tuesday, but insisted that everything would be very straightforward, and their business could be concluded within an afternoon or so. So she went about her usual routine Saturday—including having supper with Angus, but she didn't feel like it was right to mention the house to him yet. After all...it was, possible, that her mysterious Kitsune benefactor was just pulling a prank on her.

On Tuesday, she went to see him after work. He noted a few 'irregularities' and 'unusual requests' in her supposed uncle's will, but also that none of it was illegal—particularly he, the executor, wasn't supposed to enter the estate, just keep the keys, the deed, and a sealed envelope with its address and then hand them over to the beneficiary. He also mentioned that said uncle's money had been donated to various charities; the will had been quite clear that the property and its contents were the only things she was supposed to actually inherit. She just played along, signed all of the appropriate paperwork, and then drove out to the place after leaving the office.

From the outside, it just looked like some ordinary house in the suburbs, with a nice little garden and porch in the front and a fairly big, fenced-in backyard. But when the fox-girl opened the front door, she could feel the pressure of some kind of ambient magic acting on the entire building. Simply put—the inside was obviously bigger than the outside. Calling this place a house did it a disservice; it was more of a mansion.

A brief tour around found a big antechamber just inside the front door, a hallway which had several bedrooms on one side and two particularly large bedrooms on another, a library, some kind of ballroom, two of what were probably supposed to be lounges, a big kitchen, and a huge dining hall...all of which was fully furnished. Olivia couldn't believe at first any of this was real, or was really hers, but it slowly sank in throughout the tour. It also became quite clear what her benefactor had meant about needing assistance with the upkeep—it was hard to imagine how even a powerful Kitsune like herself could keep everything here tidy on her own.

Eventually she happened upon a room in the back of an upstairs hallway (because of course the place had two stories, plus a basement with what looked to be an empty wine cellar in it). The door to this room had an envelope taped to it with a letter inside; Olivia took the envelope down and opened it on her way into the room to take a look at both. The room itself was mostly empty, seemingly sized to be some kind of storage closet but with no shelving or furniture of any kind inside. It had the same kind of ornately-decorated walls as much of the rest of the house, a window in the wall across from the door, and what appeared to be a false fireplace over on one side. Most of the floor had a big, faintly glowing symmetrical symbol drawn on it, the obvious center of that symbol precisely in the center of the room. Looking it over, Olivia could feel a faint trace of magic from that symbol, which the glow seemed to be a visible expression of.

This seemed like a good time to consult the letter.
Olivia,
As previously stated, this estate requires assistance to keep up and running. The warlock who originally built it created this glyph for that very purpose. If a person stands in the center and sufficient power is channeled into the glyph, it will grant that target the knowledge, skill, and physical capabilities necessary to cook, clean, and otherwise maintain this house alone. As originally created, the spell would also cause the affected person to refer to the house's owner only as 'master' and to obey his or her commands by compulsion; I have modified the glyph to remove these unsavory effects. Such things were made highly illegal as soon as the veil was lifted, and have been frowned on for a very long time prior to that. I have detailed the full extent of the glyph's effects as it is now on the next page for your reference.
Note that the glyph will not endow its target with any particular motivation or work ethic. While it grants all of the qualifications one would need to be capable of doing the job, that job remains rather hard work, including cleaning and other such tasks which, while necessary, some people find demeaning, and so you may have some difficulty finding someone in this day and age who is willing to do such work. If you are unable to find a suitable candidate, there is an alternative method of upkeep, but you will have to supply some of your own power on a regular basis to keep it going, and will still have to manually handle a number of things yourself. I had minimal difficulty managing this estate myself, but it still consumed some of my time which I now prefer to spend elsewhere.

Enjoy your new den.

There could have been a signature at the bottom of the page, but there wasn't one. Whoever the real previous owner was evidently didn't want Olivia to know his or her name still, at least not yet. Regardless, this meant...

She was in a position to seek someone for a job. Or at least, she would be, if she could afford to pay them. Olivia frowned, crossed her arms, and thought about it for a moment before she realized: What she was paying for rent at her apartment right now would at least be a decent paycheck. That, plus full room and board, could at least be attractive to...someone sufficiently desperate. And when some of her debts were paid, or when she got a raise at her own job, then that person's paycheck could go up.

But who would be willing to work so hard for only room, board, and a somewhat meager paycheck? Who would be desperate enough for the offer to be attractive, yet also have enough of a work ethic to actually get everything done? These questions never actually crossed the seven-tailed fox's mind, because she already knew their answer. There was a fair chance that her benefactor had known the answer all along too, and was just being oblique about it as a bit of fun.



"Come here, c'mere!" Troy took Dennis's hand and eagerly pulled him with her to her bedroom. "Let's do it in here. Just—lie down there," she said, pointing.
"Uh, o-okay." He went to carefully sit on the side of the bed. "You seem r-really excited. Should I be uh..worried?"
"Not any more than you were before," the wolf-girl said teasingly. "I mean—if you don't want me to try this, that's fine. Let me know now and we can back out. I'd definitely hate to curse you without your permission, after all!"
"Uhh..." Still sitting, he looked around briefly, then back at her. "I mean..as long as you're pretty sure you can undo it. A-and will make sure it's undone even if you can't."
"Absolutely," she nodded confidently.
"O-okay then...you just, want me to lie down?" He turned around onto his back.

"That's it! Now let's see here..." The wolf-girl went and turned on a lamp on the nightstand, then turned off the overhead light. And then she more or less pounced, landing in a kneeling position with her knees on either side of his.
"Uhhhhhhh."
"Sorry, sorry. I'm just excited, is all," she said, grinning down at him with her tail wagging. "You're still okay?"
"S-sure...."
"Heheh..okay! Now then~..." the wolf-girl murmured in her deepest, sexiest voice, leaning down over her friend. She placed a hand on his hair. "Let's see..ah, got it! My canine curse I share with you~, so you can be a dog-girl too~." As she spoke, she slowly ran her hand through his hair.

To be perfectly honest—even though she was following along with some unaccountable instinct from start to finish—Troy wasn't completely sure this would do anything at all. Dennis's logical objections to this even being a possibility were right, they made rational sense—but it just felt to the wolf-girl like it was going to work anyway. She had allowed that feeling carry her all the way to this crucial point of actually testing it out, but she wouldn't have been too surprised or disappointed if she turned out to be wrong the whole time. Teasing Dennis this much alone would be worth it! However...it did work.

The same kind of bright red, fire-like glow that had come with the initiation of Troy's curse appeared in her hand while she brushed it through Den's hair. It spread onto his body like it was kindling and the glow was an actual fire, and by the time her hand reached what had been the end of his hair, it had already grown several inches longer. He was leaning his head up slightly, so she was able to keep her hand going, stroking its way down through his hair as it grew longer and longer, feeling its texture turn silky-soft and smooth as it flowed its way down. She even brought her hand down behind his back to keep going as it grew past his chest and waist, only taking her hand out from under him when the hair growth finally came to an end.

Now the glow pulled itself into Den's body, and he shuddered violently for a second. "A-aah..?!" Troy could see his face changing, losing all of its hair and turning soft and smooth, and she had a strong suspicion that the rest of his body hair and skin was suffering much the same fate. "Ah, m-mnnh..?!" She decided to gently stroke the hair trailing across the side of his face next, making his blush brighten even more, and watched as the next step of the change hit him.

"M-mnnn...ah, aa~aah...!" He squirmed awkwardly around as his body began to shrink, slowly at first but then going faster and faster. "Aa~aa~aah..!" As his face grew small and round, his body shorter and slimmer, his shoulders narrowed and his arms and legs thinned, Den's voice also went through a rapid change, its pitch rising higher and higher each time he cried out. "O-oh, mm~mmnnh, aa~aah..!" By the time his loss of height tapered off, he had shrunk to nearly a foot shorter than the big wolf-girl, and his voice was pushing its way out of tenor range and into the feminine. And, indeed...
"Ah, w-wa~aah..!" Troy was positioned in a way that made it easy enough for her to know that Den was..pretty excited. But that part of him that displayed his excitement—that made him male—had already shrunk considerably alongside his overall shrinking, and now it was getting even smaller. "Ah, aa~aah...!" His face turned beet red as his voice lilted up into a high, cute soprano tone, and Troy could see some adorable fangs growing into place in his mouth as he continued to cry out.

"Ah—ahh, ahrrffh..!" Den let out his first canine sound, a high, cute bark, as his left ear suddenly popped itself out past his hair, immediately becoming a soft, fluffy dog ear covered in dark fur. "Rrh, rrfh!" The next adorable bark came with a matching burst of growth and change to his right ear. "Aah, aa~aah, aaah..!" By now, his voice had settled at a high, cute soprano which was nonetheless definitely the voice of an adult woman. His manhood was nearly gone by now, and the way he was squirming around made it quite obvious that he was feeling some rather extreme sensations from it as it threatened to vanish away for good.
"Aaa~aaAAaaA~aaaAAahh...!" And, indeed... "Y-yip, yip! Oh, aa~aaAAaaahhnnn...!" Den's sex now changed, at the same time as a tail slowly pushed its way out from his lower back—a short, soft, adorable puppy tail that matched her dog-like ears and the cute, high doggy sounds she'd been making.

Troy couldn't resist. She leaned down, putting her hands on the new girl's ears and starting to play with them between her fingers. "O-o~ooh..y-yip, aa~aaAAAAahhnn..!" Den squirmed violently under her, her body rapidly growing wider, more womanly hips.
As the now much bigger girl leaned down some more, she could feel the softness of some tiny breasts adorning the dog-girl's chest, and couldn't avoid making a little noise of her own as she felt them suddenly push out bigger, squishing against her own enormous pair of globes. "O-oh, mm~mMMmmn~nnnh...!"
"Ah, aah, aa~aAAAa~aaahh...!" Her slender little arms reached up, pulling Troy willingly into a close hug that pushed her growing chest even closer to the bigger girl's own. "Aah, rr~rrRRfh..! AaaAAaaA~AAAHHHNNNnnnh...!" Den squirmed and thrashed violently under Troy, helplessly crying out as her breasts grew bigger and bigger, obviously enjoying the way their new sensitivity highlighted the feeling of the wolf-girl's body now pressed down close against her own.

"W-waa~aah..rrfh, rr~rRRfh..ah, aah, AAH..!" The steady growth slowed down, giving way to a few sudden bursts that came one after another. Finally, Den's breasts gave one last push of growth, drawing from her lips an adorably high-pitched "AWROOOO~OOO!" of a howl. Troy couldn't help herself, joining in midway through with her own sexy, deep-voiced howl.

Den was left panting heavily under her as the change came to an end, and Troy found herself a little bit out of breath as well. "W-wah...T-troy..! M-mnnh..." Her cute, high, breathy voice murmured incoherently, and she lifted her head a little bit to start nuzzling the tall, curvy wolf-girl still on top of her—and still held in her slender little arms.
"O~ooh..oh, m-maa~aahnnNNNnh..!" Troy had thought it felt good being a girl when she'd first changed, but this was on another level. She pushed herself down, close, against the dog-girl, petting her ears all the more vigorously, and letting her own tail curl down to twist itself around Den's, drawing some more adorable yips. She started to return the eager nuzzling too, as she felt the dog-girl's small hands running their way slowly through her hair and along her generous curves.

"Ah, aaa~aahnn...rrfh, y-yip!" From the way Den squirmed and blushed, she was clearly enjoying it just as much as the wolf-girl. Troy leaned her head up and gently nibbled the smaller girl's ear, drawing another soft "W-wah!" from her in reply, then some soft barking, and then a reciprocation of this gesture.
"M-mm~mmMMmmnnh..!" her deep, sexy voice came out once again to let Den know she was pleased. Troy was starting to feel very different about the short, curvy girl in her arms by now—no longer as a boy she was teasing, or someone to help her with an experiment, but as hers. She felt possessive and dominant at the very same time as she mentally begged the little dog-girl for more petting, more pleasure—which Den seemed to instinctively want to provide her anyway.

They went back to nuzzling, and this time one of Den's hands found it way to Troy's ears, and the other one started stroking her tail from the base to as far down its length as she could reach. "Ah, AWH YEAH! Mmn, oo~oo~OOO~ooh...!" The wolf-girl squirmed and thrashed, suddenly feeling helpless in the face of the bliss that the gentlest touch of smaller girl's tiny, delicate hands were giving her. For as much as Den was now hers, she was starting to feel like she belonged to the dog-girl right back. That feeling got stronger and stronger the more Den pet her, the more she cutely barked and yipped and made pleased little girly sounds, the longer Troy got to feel that soft, curvy body held tight against her own...


Before they knew it, both girls were completely spent. Troy was panting heavily, her nose on top of Den's cheeks, and the dog-girl was panting right back, her face and body feeling terribly hot underneath the bigger girl's. "M-mnnh...rrfh..." she barked softly between pants, and Troy couldn't respond with much either.
"Rrufh." She gently nuzzled the smaller girl's cheek, and pulled her along as she tumbled over onto her side. Their legs had gotten as tangled together as their tails were at some point, and she could feel soft cloth hugging tightly against Den's slender, shapely legs. There was a sleeveless sweater on her now instead of a shirt, hugging tightly against her big, soft breasts and falling far enough down her hips that her tail was flipping it up in the back. It was..pretty cute on her, probably, but Troy wasn't going to get to see it tonight. Both of them were just...far too exhausted to pull the slightest bit apart from each other.


She awoke the following morning to the feeling of sunlight on the side of her head, Den now on top of her, with both of them still holding loosely on to each other. "Rrfh," she barked low and soft, tumbling the smaller girl onto her side before peeling off of her to quickly make her way to her feet.
The dog-girl made a soft, confused "Mmnnh" sort of sound, falling onto her back without Troy holding her up, and her eyes slowly fluttered open, her face seemingly still alight with the remnants of all her blushing the night before.


"U-uh...wha..t...happened..?"
"Heheh!" Troy giggled, reaching her hands up to stretch before grinning down at the small, curvy dog-girl. "You mean you don't remember? I know I will, maybe for the rest of my life!"
"U-uh..." Den's blush immediately brightened. "Oh...uh...yeah. No, I-I remember...just."

She slowly sat up. "R-really weird, suddenly..waking up as a tiny..what? Dog girl?" She turned half-around to look at her tail, gently picking it up in a hand, as she said this. It slid off the hand and into a wag as she looked up at Troy again.
"Guess so!"
"Mmh..m-maybe it's just the...everything from l-last night talking, but...I know you said you'd take the curse back in the morning but uh..m-maybe you could leave it on me, uhm, 'till after breakfast?" Den said.
"Oh, you got it!" Troy said, grinning like she'd caught a big rabbit. "You're gonna have to wait on the shower, though!"
"H-hey!" The wolf-girl had already run into the bathroom and shut the door before Den could raise any real objection, leaving her alone with her new body for a little bit.



After work, Vincent waited in the parking lot for a minute or two, until she spotted her catboy approaching with another guy, a brown-haired man slightly on the tall side who looked fairly fit. He was wearing a t-shirt with what looked to her like a brightly-colored cartoon animal character on it, and he looked very excited to see her.

"Hiii! So, so...! This is Ryker. Ryker, Vincent."
"Hey."
"H-hi!" He was also fairly nervous. "D-dude, you're like, a Kitsune?!"
"Pretty much."
"Four tails, too? You guys're supposed to get super powerful after like, two."
"I do have some power," she said. "Luca told me you were hoping I could give you furry ears and a tail."
"Y-yeah!?"
"Well, I can do that. But I'd like you to do something for me first."
"Anything!" She wondered: Was every person in their graphic design department as excitable and gullible as Luca? Oh well, it was to her advantage in this case...and he'd be getting what he seemed to really want anyway.

"Well, Luca's moving house, and you look like you've got some muscle to spare. If you wouldn't mind doing a little of the heavy lifting?"
"Oh, dude, not at all! I work out," Ryker said, flexing one of his arms. "Plus I'm pretty good at packing stuff into boxes. I'm totally your guy!"
"..Good. Luca's place is a complete mess, so we could use an organizer anyway."
"H-hey!" the catboy protested; she reached across to tease one of his ears between her fingers, making him softly "mrow".
"Shush, you know it's true. Anyway—we're hoping to get the move done this weekend. I've already got a truck rental lined up. Once everything's out of his apartment and in the new place, I'll give you what you want."
"Awesome! You got a deal!" Ryker grinned excitedly. "Hey, can we shake on it?"

"Hmm...a 'Deal', huh? Sure." She took his offered hand, getting a strange feeling like she was signing a legally-binding contract with him. This...could be some kind of magic thing that was happening because of her being a Kitsune now. But it wasn't like she had any intention of going back on her word here in the first place. If he helped them move everything, it'd be trivial enough for her to make him furry like he apparently wanted to be. Maybe she could even offer to make him look however it was he specifically wanted to, as an extra reward.



The first thing Olivia had to do was move out of her old apartment, of course. With her ridiculous powers, it was pretty easy: She could practically reenact that scene from The Sword in the Stone of Merlin packing, but with less singing, dancing around, and shrinking objects. Well—she did make her furniture temporarily smaller so it'd fit in her car. At any rate, she only had to make a few trips to get everything over, and even after putting everything in what seemed like the most sensible location and re-growing her old furniture to normal, it felt like an awfully tiny amount. An emotion came to her, looking on it all, which was something like—Is this really all I had? It just felt so small all of a sudden, compared to the giant mansion.

Thinking about it, her old bed wasn't needed; she had already dove onto the huge, soft one in the main bedroom and immediately fallen in love. She had a certain attachment to her chair, but the couch seemed similarly inferior to what was already set up in the mansion, so it could go too. Since that excess furniture was more or less functional, she thought: Maybe there was somewhere it could be donated to? She'd have to look that sort of thing up; she hadn't really been in a position to donate a whole lot of anything for a long time, if ever.

Olivia then spent Wednesday night in the new place, getting accustomed to its big rooms and hallways. She didn't really have a way to use quite a lot of this space, she thought, and it was a little sad to see it all so empty. It was perhaps even a little bit lonely. Even...even with what she was planning to do soon, it still felt like it would be a waste to not use this big place for something. Well, she'd just have to think about what to do with it all...

Even though she'd turned in the keys as soon as she was done moving, the apartment wouldn't let her stop paying rent until Friday. Well, two more days wasn't too long of a wait, and then she'd finally have the former rent money free for something else. That meant she had to wait until then to hire someone to take care of this place. It didn't seem too bad after only a day or two of use, but it was easy to see how the dust could pile up. She was also quickly becoming familiar with some unusual, magic-based amenities that required their own manner of unusual upkeep. Even the whole 'bigger on the inside' thing that the building had going on apparently came from a big enchanted crystal in a hidden room in the basement that required its own special sort of maintenance now and then. If it failed, it wouldn't be in a manner which was dangerous to life or anything—but it would still be very inconvenient.

She didn't really know where to look, of course; she just set out from the gym Friday afternoon to go looking around the usual places, occasionally sniffing the air for a particular familiar scent. There was a kind of eager happiness welling up in her as she thought: Soon enough...she'd be able to make good on her Deal.