Aetuornos Beta I-2

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Intermission II

Carthan's second time playing, on Monday afternoon, was quite a different experience from the first. The town was deserted of players or employees, and perhaps hardly anyone was even playing at this time of day, so Jesse wandered back toward the forest new players spawned into. She was fortunate enough to run into a wolfman soldier by the name of Hatchet, who (true to his name) dual-wielded handaxes and had five or six spares so he could throw them, too. The two of them never managed to find any other players, so they just bought some healing items from the nearest religious site, then wandered the land taking out monsters and hanging out.

"No difference in your vital signs from last time. Not that there was much doubt—you are the expert on the spell after all—but it certainly seems like you were right."

The Neko nodded, waiting for them to take all of the equipment off of him again. "So, you think you've got enough data, then?"
"One never has enough data. But, well—I can certainly understand if you're tiring of all the monitoring equipment. And anyway, it's better to know the health effects on a large population than just repeated tests on a single individual, and we've got plenty of other people testing the device and the game too..."

"Is something on your mind?" the lead designer spoke up as the medical worker trailed off.
"You could say that." Carthan crossed his arms, let out a brief breath. "Being someone else in that game reminded me how it feels to be young, and how much worse this body is to live in these days. I'm used to how I am now, so I didn't miss it so much before."
"Ahh, yeah. I guess I don't have the experience to comment on that. Is it stressful coming back to the real world?" she asked, concerned.

"Not at all. It just, got me thinking...you know, there's a rejuvenation service in town this week."

"Oh? Ohhh! You're thinking of having them work on you?"
"..Sure. At least thinking of it. But if you still need more health data, making myself young so soon might be an issue?"
"No nonono, not at all! I'd hate to delay you taking care of your health just for us. Anyway, we got enough data from you personally, right?" she turned to the medical worker, who shrugged affirmatively.
"I have the same sentiment. Keep yourself alive first," he said.

"Well—I'm far from being at any real health risk, you know," Carthan said. "My kind doesn't age as quick as humans. But I'm glad if it won't be hindrance, anyhow. One less thing on my mind."

---

Yaboth was in an unusually good mood, as it turned out. "I got a date!" he exclaimed.
"Oh, yeah?"
"Well uh—I mean it's more like, I got her number and she said I could ask her..uh, invite her over for dinner maybe?"
"You're a great cook, right?" Marcus said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "The stomach's one way to anyone's heart, if you ask me."

"Heheh, m-maybe. But, it's..slightly complicated I guess. And I sent her a text this morning but she hasn't replied yet."
"Cold feet?"
"Well, no..I hope not, anyway. She's busy, and maybe...well, supposedly really shy."
"'Supposedly'?" Marcus didn't wait for an answer before interrupting himself. "Bah, too personal, right? Anyway, we'll get started on your usual routine today, eh?"
"Yeah, sure..."

---

Annabel bolted upright in her tiny bed, scaring the black cat lying on her belly into leaping halfway across the room, landing neatly on its feet and giving back an annoyed meow. Already reaching for her phone, she waved and said, "Sorry, sorry!" to the animal. Examining the screen, she learned quickly that it was upside down, but even then she could still read the time, and..she'd way overslept! But the thing that had woken her up was that phone ringing. She quickly turned it right-ways-up and answered.

"Yellow! Annabel Washington, freelance witch, at your service~." She'd given this greeting to any and all unrecognized numbers so many times that she could do it perfectly now despite being literally half-asleep.
"Uh, A-ann? Hey, it's..Chris."
She sat up a little more, playing around with her hair with her free hand. "Chris? Holy cow, I haven't heard from you in years! I heard you were like a super-famous, big-time artist now, riiight?"

"Yeah, uh, I-I guess so. And, you uh..g-graduated from witch school, I guess?"
"There's no Hogwarts in the real world, sadly, and nobody'd take me as an apprentice outta high school, soooo...self-taught. But, still doing pretty well for myself. So, what brings you back into my life, huh?"

"Well um...t-there's something I want..uh..a little on the, w-weird side I guess. Magical in nature, and y-you're kinda...well, I thought you might know someone, is all..."
"You heard my greeting, right? Chances are I can do it. Hey, maybe I'll even give you a discount!"
"Oh, tha—uh, that's great."

"So what do you need?"

The other end of the line was silent for a long moment. She double-checked that the call hadn't disconnected before bringing the phone back up to her ear. "I uh..I'm l-looking for, a p-potion or something that could maybe, temporarily turn me into a girl..?" he said, his voice descending into a nearly-inaudible whisper toward the end.
"Oh wow, I'd never guess you were into stuff like that," she said.
"I-i-it's not like—!" Annabel could practically hear him blushing furiously over the phone. "I mean, it's..c-complicated..th-there's this uh..and..."
"Oh relax, I'm just playing. Your reason doesn't matter to me. But I guess you'd prefer this to be something discreet, huh?"
"Y-yes. I-i-if possible."
"That shouldn't be a huge problem.

"If I'm doing it, though, I don't think a potion is the best solution. You'd like to, maybe, be able to turn into this, 'alternate form', and back, whenever you need to?"
"Y-yeah."
"I'm thinking something wearable with a 'disguise' enchantment might be best, then. Something you put on to change, and go back whenever you take it off?"

"Oh, th-that would work great," he said.

"How soon do you need it?"

"Uhmm...s-sometime this week? I-I'd like to know, when it's, when I'll have it, so t-that uh..I c-can make certain, arrangements..."
"Okay, let's see..." The witch flicked through her mental to-do list, trying to see how to fit this new task in...

---

Tuesday was a busy day at work for Carthan. All the people on the software side were busy putting the finishing touches on the nobility update and everything that came with it. For him, it was time to have a lot of feedback and data from everyone who'd played so far explained to him so he could take the time the server was closed tomorrow to tune things on the magical side as well. There were some new pod units going out to people who'd just bought into the beta as well, and he was insistent on personally giving each crystal at least a cursory once-over to be certain the enchantments were set up properly. Some of these humans just didn't understand how incredibly hostile magic was to the entire concept of mass production.

As a result of all of that work, he didn't really have time to play today. They certainly wanted him to keep it up as a man (or woman, as it were) on the inside, adding his own feedback to whatever comments he heard from fellow players, but that was best reserved for days that weren't quite so busy. The one-day-or-so break between the upcoming server update and when they planned to begin addressing the inevitable flood of feedback from new players and about the new features and equally inevitable bugs would be one such opportunity.

That afternoon, Carthan left work and paused, pulling out a piece of paper with some directions scribbled on it. This wasn't the way home; as tired as he was after a full day's work, he had an appointment to keep. He memorized the paper's contents, pocketed it and began following them.

Eventually, he arrived at one of those buildings that sold fireworks every new year, costumes every Halloween, and just seemed to sit empty half of the time otherwise. For the moment, however, it had another purpose.

"..Ah, you'll be...Carthan, right?" The interior of the building had some temporary 'walls' and 'doors' separating it off into sections, little more than heavy curtains with soundproofing enchantments on them. "You've got...ah. Stella. Right this way," the man at the desk pointed to one particular entryway.
The Neko nodded. "Thanks."

He headed inside to find a fairly young-looking girl standing, facing a big whiteboard attached to the opposite 'wall', some modern-style magical schematic diagrams whose meaning he maybe half-recognized. She had a long cape of brilliantly white hair hanging across a pair of huge, white-feathered wings that prominently spread out from her upper back: A Celestial, no doubt. "Hello?"
"Ah!" She jumped slightly, then turned around to face him. "Oh, hi there, sorry about that." She didn't look any older from the front, with a small, almost childishly round face and bright, purplish eyes.
"Afternoon. I'm Carthan."
"Yes, yes—good to meet you," she said, hurrying up to shake his hand in both of hers. "Stella."

"I see they picked someone my size to handle me," the Neko remarked.

"Heheh..I suppose so." She giggled softly—so, at least, she had a sense of humor.

"Now let's see..I need to get you some papers to read and sign." She hurried over to a desk on one side of the 'room', picking up a small stack of papers and offering it over. "This is basically just acknowledging that you understand the service we offer, that it's free, what we'll do for you if something goes wrong, and please don't sue us. Not that things going wrong is very common."

Carthan nodded, taking the pages and flipping through them carefully. "I've sure heard of people winding up looking different from how they expected," he said. "You've had some unhappy customers try to sue you over that?"
"Not for the most part," the winged girl said. "But our legal team insists that all the bases are covered, and I'm somewhat inclined to agree."

"If you look there—" she pointed to one of the paragraphs on the second page—"we'll work to undo anything 'non-standard' that happens, if desired. Which is to say, our treatment is only meant to reduce a person's age to 'young adult'. If that's successful, but you're not happy how you look at that age, there are plenty of ways to customize your appearance elsewhere. That simply isn't part of our service.

"But—it's a big effect, changing someone's age, and especially doing it properly to ensure that no 'old-age' health problems stick around by the end. Magic that changes people is vastly easier than it used to be because there's a patron deity for it now...but not without a trade-off. The bigger of a change you want, the more difficult it can be to precisely control every aspect of it. If your body winds up different from how it 'should be' because of wild magic creeping in, then we'll do everything in our power to undo that. But we'll also leave anything alone that you don't want changed, or if you want some other change that's about an equal amount of work to undoing the non-standard stuff, we'll do that too."

He read through the legalese as best he could, confirming that it was more or less expressing the same sentiment. "And this is all for free?"

"Yes," she nodded. "After all, if someone was paying for a younger body, then I think they'd be reasonable to want more customization options."

"That's understandable. I don't want anything more, anyway."

"Good, good...ah, right! Will you be upset if the clothes you have on get altered? If wild magic affects anything, it almost always goes after clothes too. We've got some spares in the back you can change into if you're wearing something you'd rather be left alone..."
Carthan took a brief look down at his present attire and shrugged. "I've got two or three more just like this at home," he said. "Shouldn't be an issue."

Thinking about it, anything he'd heard about someone winding up different from just a younger version of themselves seemed to be secondhand—he couldn't recall hearing any complaints directly from the 'customers' themselves. 'Wild magic' was an unfamiliar term to him, but he suspected that it also had something to do with that new patron deity. That, or it was just a new term for some already-known phenomenon. Either way, he didn't find any other questions or concerns on reading through the rest of the document; for being an evidently airtight legal disclaimer, it was surprisingly short and clear for a layman to read. He nodded to Stella, took an offered pen, and signed at the bottom before handing the papers back.

"Okay, all good." The Celestial nodded, setting the papers down on the desk. "Now, this shouldn't take long at all—just stand still a moment while I cast the spell."

"Sure," Carthan nodded.

After taking a few steps back, the winged girl spread her arms and quietly chanted something. The Neko's ears twitched slightly as he listened; he wasn't sure that what she was chanting quite sounded like a spell to him—more like the kind of so-called incantation that human fiction sometimes thought spells sounded like. It wasn't a distinction that just anyone would pick up on, but...

But nonetheless, it did seem to be doing something. Carthan noticed a faint white glow suffusing his body first, and an accompanying warmth after. As it made its way to his back, particularly the spine and down the length of his tail, he couldn't help a slight shudder. A wave of faint tingling followed quickly after, spreading in from the tips of his tail and ears to his scalp and spine, then flowing down the rest of his body. Curiously reaching a hand up to his face, he felt the skin smoothing and softening, wrinkles vanishing off along with some bits of facial hair.

"Mnnh—" He dropped his hand downward again as an unaccountable instinct had him rotating his shoulders, stretching his limbs, leaning his head back a bit and even pushing his ears and tail out as far as they would go. "Mnnrrr~rrrhh.." A soft, low purr rumbled in his throat as he felt stiffness and soreness ebb away, like the warmth was massaging every one of his muscles at once. The sensation was unimaginably divine, as physical youth seemed to steadily push its way into his body from without. But as he brought his head upright again and looked around, he found that the stretching hadn't only loosened him up that way, but physically grown his body by at least a few inches.

"M-mmhh...!" No sooner did he notice this than he found himself arching himself back, pressing his fists against the back of his waist, and stretching out even more—even taller. Now his ears and tail were no longer holding stiff, the former lowering and the latter swishing around rapidly behind him. He realized that his heart was racing, and began to notice the sensation of hair softly tickling his forehead and cheeks and the back of his neck. He shuddered once again as the tingling briefly came back even stronger than before, running across his skin just once before settling in one specific place—between his legs.

By now, Stella seemed to have finished her incantation, and yet the change seemed to continue. Carthan was at least a full head taller than the Celestial, who now looked up at him with a sort of concerned curiosity in her expression. "Mrr~rrooowwh...? " A confused mew came from the Neko's lips as he felt that tingling progress into a sort of tugging, slipping sensation that kept his ears low, his tail mobile, and made his face begin to burn with a blush. Meanwhile, more hair made itself known as a light weight across his shoulders. Looking down, he found his body rather more slight and slender than he might have expected after all of that growth, with narrow shoulders and a flat, slim waist. His hands looked unusually small too, and of course he could now easily see that his shoulder-length hair had darkened to the same deep shade of gray as his fur—the color it had always had before age paled it.

"Mn—mm~mmmhh...rrrr~rrrhh.." Some confused murmuring from the Neko's throat turned into a purr, during which he could hear his voice changing, shifting into a somewhat higher register and taking on a noticeably feminine tone. No wonder, as he could feel his manhood melting away now, a surprisingly intense yet pleasant sensation even though he'd already felt a far weaker, simulated version of it once before.

"Rrrrh, aa~aaahh.." A deep, mature alto rang from Carthan's throat as his sex fully changed now, drawing the heat of a sharp blush to her cheeks as she felt a wave of deep, fuzzy, pleasant sensation down there. "Aa~aahnnn....!" It was positively irresistible, and along with it came a gentle push from her hips, a faint tingling across her chest—as curves began to grow into place to complete her womanhood.

"Mm~nnnhh," her voice lilted high, well past the ceiling of its prior range, as she felt her chest gently pushing forward, a pair of sensitive breasts sliding across the soft cloth of a bra which..hadn't been there before. "Mmrrroo~ooowhhh.." A satisfied, feline mewling, just about as high-pitched, came from her as she felt a slight motion and fluttering of her clothes: A bit of growth to the hem of her shirt and a rapid lengthening of the sleeves, a skirt spreading out around her hips and thighs while the rest of her pants split off, softened and tightened into stockings. Beneath that was a pair of panties pulling flat and snug between her legs, simultaneous to one last wave of fuzzy, warm pleasure down there that accompanied the last bit of growth to her bust, drawing a high, half-sighing "Haa~aahh..." from her lips.

Carthan gasped in quickly, then let it out slow, taking another deep breath to calm herself down as she slowly opened her eyes—wondering just when she'd actually closed them in the first place. Her perspective on the room around her, and the Celestial standing right across from her, felt strange and alien, like everything had suddenly gotten much smaller and she was now towering high above it all. Really, she was only slightly on the tall side for a girl, but the shift was still fairly jarring for someone so used to her previous height. She slowly brought a hand up to the hair trailing down next to her cheeks, noticing the tips of some locks touching the base of her tail, and carefully prodded at it.

"I've gotta say, I haven't heard of this happening to anyone else," she said, recovering most of her composure despite her heart still beating a little fast and the warmth of a blush still on her face. Her right hand was now combing down through the full length of her hair, trying to get used to the feeling. It was long, soft, and pretty, and she really had missed it all being the same color as her fur, if only a little.

"Uhh, yes. This is pretty unusual," Stella said, tilting her head slightly. "I wasn't that surprised to see you getting a little taller, but a change of sex? Well, it's still not unfixable, if you don't like it. But I wonder why?"
The Neko dropped the hand running through her hair to cross her arms, thinking. "Anything you can tell me about how 'wild magic' works?"

"Let's see—my understanding is that it tends to act on a person's desires and expectations, to some extent. But it can still be highly unpredictable, even beyond that. I can't imagine there's any reason you'd see 'yourself, but younger' as a woman instead of a man.."
"Ah. Well, I would know of a reason for that," Carthan said, immediately drawing Stella's curiosity.

"Are you familiar with Aetuornos? The VR game that came out recently?"
"Uh, a little? I understand that it's supposed to be a very immersive experience."
"I've been playing that some recently. My, player character," (she slowly remembered the correct term for it) "is a young woman. Truthfully, some of my motivation to go through with this came from that reminding me what it's like to be young."
"Oh. Well, I could certainly see that doing it, then," the winged girl said, nodding. "Either way, though: Do you dislike this? Want it fixed?"

The Neko slowly dropped her arms to her sides. "...I don't know. I suppose you'll tell me there are plenty of disadvantages to being female, but I don't object to this too much. And, being taller, is something new and intriguing to me as well."
"Hmm. For something this extreme—I can see where you would need some time to be certain," Stella said. "Either to adjust or to realize that staying this way was a mistake. Maybe you'd like to give it a week and come back to me if you want it reversed?" She went for her desk.

"That seems..better to me," the Neko said, nodding. In the excitement of the moment—right after feeling that pleasure that only a woman could feel, at an intensity that the virtual world wasn't capable (or at least wasn't designed) to imitate—she might not be thinking clearly enough to make a good decision. The height, however..she was fairly certain going back to being shorter was not something she wanted.

Stella grabbed a business card. "Okay. Then, you can call this number later on and let me know how you feel about it then," the winged girl said, offering it to her. "I don't care if you need two months to decide; it won't be all that difficult for me to get back to this area if I need to."

"Thank you," Carthan said, nodding.

On her way out, it occurred to the Neko that most of her clothes wouldn't fit her now. Of course she needed undergarments for the new...feminine features, but also—the especially inconvenient thing about having grown, rather than shrunk, was that most things would actually be tight or short rather than having the option of wearing some oversized shirts over everything and putting the shopping trip off. However, becoming young again had (perhaps unsurprisingly, on reflection) left her feeling rather energized and invigorated. So she made her way to the stores to at least get a few days' worth of clothes that would fit her new form properly.