Vixen Society - Cycle 5

Vixen Society

---

  Beginning / Before / After / Last

---

Cycle 5

Kieran's life had definitely become more difficult over the past couple of weeks.

The first thing of note was, of course, that he was the "lucky" guy whose roommate had suddenly turned into a cute girl, just a little bit too late for any room assignments to change for anything other than emergency reasons. Besides that, he was responsible for keeping her secret—that is, that rather than Elliot having spontaneously awoken female one day due to some unknown magical mishap that was still under investigation, she had actually awoken, in the magical sense, into a pink-haired Kitsune, supposedly because of the advice of some weird app. They'd been roommates and more or less friends for over a year now, so he wasn't the kind of guy who could just spill something she wanted private like that, even to her parents.

Knowing that she was a Kitsune let him in on a view of her behavior that other people didn't get to see. Actually, it almost seemed like she wanted him to know what she was doing just to have an audience. She was so good at setting up weird little pranks with her newfound magic, despite how weak it was, that nobody ever seemed to realize it was her doing it. She was still taking that app's advice, too, and talking about hoping to grow a second tail soon.

Truth be told, he was a little bit happy for her—she was enjoying college more and seeing more success in her classes overall for a number of reasons. She was visibly a more confident and energetic person; she was actively seeking out ways to improve herself and have fun. And, of course, she was no longer having difficulty waking up in the morning.

But there was the rub. She no longer had any trouble at all getting up in time for classes. She didn't even need to set an alarm anymore! Kieran hadn't even realized just how much he'd depended on Elliot's constant alarms to get him up in the morning. Of course he could just set his own alarm, and after the first few days of accidentally oversleeping he did, but it didn't seem to be enough. Somehow or other, the added motivation of needing to help get someone else's lazy butt up out of bed seemed to have been a key ingredient in getting him up early. And while Ella was more than willing to try and wake him up to return the favor he'd done her throughout freshman year, her ideas for how to do so were...heavily prankster-flavored, one could say.

She would pry his eye open to an illusion of a horror movie monster standing over him in his bed poised to strike; she would give him the illusory sensation of a bucket of ice-cold water being splashed across him; she would gently guide him, in an almost-sleepwalking state, up onto his feet, to his dresser, help him change clothes and get ready for class, but in the process proceed to make certain that he put everything on backwards, inside-out, or even upside-down before pushing him out the door and locking it behind him. While these methods were certainly effective at waking him up most of the time, Kieran definitely suffered plenty from the fox-girl's pranks too in this way, maybe even worse than everyone else who didn't know it was her.

He didn't really understand himself what was happening. The second week after his roommate became a fox-girl, he started to wonder if he was going borderline narcoleptic or something. Besides what seemed to be an increasing difficulty waking himself up, he would just sit down on a bench outside after a class and konk right out, waking up half an hour later just in the nick of time to make a mad dash to the next one. To be fair, he didn't simply collapse suddenly for just no reason; he just seemed to find it easier and ever more tempting to just sit or lie down somewhere warm and doze off for a little while. Paradoxically, when he did this during the day, he always seemed to wake up automatically with at least just enough time to spare. And he found on Thursday and Friday morning that just letting himself take some naps during the day seemed to make waking up the following morning not quite so difficult, despite all of the advice he could find online about the topic.

That evening after supper, he sat in his computer chair in their room, chugging through homework he'd napped through his allotted time for earlier that week. Finding himself near the end of it, he stretched and yawned involuntarily.

"Hey, what's wrong? In need of another catnap?" Ella teased, leaning way back in her own chair to grin across at him.

"Bug off. I'll sleep when I'm done...hwaaah..." Kieran interrupted himself with another, audible yawn. "I can sleep in as much as I want tomorrow, after all."
"That's no reason not to take a breather. You work better when you're not tired, after all," she said. "I'll wake you up in a couple of hours to finish up, if you want."
"No thank you." He leaned into his computer screen and tried to get some more work done, but within a few minutes the words and images all began to blur together.

Kieran sighed—it was just no use. He resigned himself to taking a nap after all, getting up to go lie on top of his bed for a while. "Don't. Wake. Me. Up," he said, pointing at her as he sat up on the bed. "If I sleep 'till tomorrow, I'll just get it finished in the morning. Or at noon! I don't care when I get up tomorrow. Got it?"
"Got it~!" she half-sang cheerfully, grinning across at him again.

With that settled, he twisted around and lay back, letting the impending nap take him.

---

Oliver woke up hugging one of his tails, his face buried in its soft tip. He slowly moved his face across it, groaned softly a complaint about having to get up, and then sat up, rubbed his eyes, stood up and stretched. There was enough hair to get in his eyes and nearly reach down to his shoulders now; he was almost certain it hadn't been long enough a couple of days ago to be this long by now. But..looking down at himself after his stretch, he had a different concern to concentrate on.

It was unreasonable of Oliver to be disappointed that his body looked the same as it had before he went to bed last night—that hair aside. Yet he couldn't help but poke and prod at the fat with a small frown, thinking: I've made so much progress! I can't quit now... After a moment, he talked himself out of what might have become another unhealthy downward spiral: He'd made money, eaten steak and bought groceries yesterday instead of exercising, and he'd gotten a dose of 'thinning' during that second one anyway. Maybe—even though he knew that exercising never had the kind of drastic effects he was experiencing...maybe there was still some connection between his actually exercising and the rapid weight loss.

Well, he'd made a promise to himself anyway, and today he was going to make good on it. He went and took a shower, made himself a nice breakfast with some of those new groceries, and then drove out to the park, altering his clothes into some shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt when he parked. Then he got out and ran—all the way to the other side, and all the way back. He stopped in front of his car, and felt rather..surprised that he was already back.

It didn't feel like he'd done much of anything.

He wasn't tired or sore; he wasn't panting at all; what little sweat there was was just from the summer heat, not from exertion. It was a strangely...disappointing feeling, that he hadn't challenged himself enough. But—he'd said he'd exercise twice as much today anyway, so he turned and made the run again.

..Still nothing.

Oliver shook his head. This was no good. Where was that exhilarating feeling he'd gotten before? Why wasn't he out of breath? Had his health really improved that much over the past few days? Picking at the relatively small fat on his belly, he knew the answer to that one. And...of course it was great that he was so much healthier, but it wasn't enough. He needed to get better..he needed a challenge to help him grow stronger. And—several more of the same run would work, technically, but...maybe it'd be better for him to diversify his exercise a little bit?

He could afford the first payment of a gym membership. He no longer felt too ashamed to show his face at a place like that. They'd have a nicer running track than the park, in air conditioning instead of this muggy, awful weather—and treadmills, ellipticals, weights...maybe people with some sensible advice about how to more effectively exercise, given that he figured the miraculously rapid improvements couldn't possibly last forever without more normal maintenance.

Oliver drove to the gym, signed up for a month's free trial (so he could've done this without having any money yet, he chided himself), and went to try out a little of everything—all the while hiding his ears and tails, of course. He couldn't handle more than almost the lightest of weights; he nearly fell over trying a treadmill, but had better luck on an elliptical; he even attempted a few sit-ups and push-ups, but gave up on those fairly quickly as well. When he was starting to feel a little winded from all of that, he decided to round it all off with one more run.

Having a circular track he could get off of at any time instead of a back-and-forth run that had to end at his car was a boon. He could keep going, feeling the air whip his shoulder-length hair out behind him and run across the fur of his ears and tails, until he felt it come—a second wind. He didn't even realize how fast he was running now until he'd enjoyed that floating feeling for another three full laps and finally stopped, staggering his way off of the track to lean against the wall and heave in air, finally feeling the satisfying burn and exhaustion he'd been looking for.

That was when someone a little more experienced with exercise approached him to make sure he was okay, and took a moment to advise him about warming up before and cooling down after exercise. He thanked the guy, and gave the latter a try. His body wasn't immediately grateful when he did some of the recommended post-run stretches and such, but he was fairly certain this habit would help him if and when his body stopped magically curing all soreness in his sleep.

On his way back out and to his car, Oliver found that he was starving again. He wasn't after another steak necessarily—eating the same thing over and over would get repetitive and dull, after all—but his body was definitely craving some meat and calories anyway. He went for a big burger from a local place—reasonably affordable compared to the steak, but just as satisfying. The fries he had with it obviously weren't all that healthy, but..he was sure he could get into better eating habits soon. Maybe someone who worked at that gym knew something about nutrition...

Satisfied, stuffed, tired, and sore, Oliver felt moderately sleepy now. He carefully drove back to his apartment and flopped over onto a chair, leaning back and quickly dozing off.

He woke up a couple of hours later feeling refreshed—the soreness gone, and his shirt hanging loose on him once again. He stood up and stretched, feeling hair falling across his upper back as he leaned, pressing his fists against the back of his waist, and listened to a few satisfying pops as the tiny bit of stiffness from sleeping sitting up left him. When he straightened up from the stretching, he could swear everything looked a little..shorter than before? Maybe he was a little bit taller? No, he thought, he must have just straightened up into a better posture now that a ton of excess weight was no longer hunching him over.

Now that he was standing up, Oliver found that his shirt wasn't only loose around the abdomen, where he'd lost a noticeable bit more of fat once again, but it was also hanging a little awkwardly about his shoulders. Curious about this development, he altered his clothes to fit once more and found that his shoulders really did seem to be slightly narrower than he remembered. That was..odd, he thought as he carefully rotated his shoulders and rolled his head around for a moment, but it wasn't particularly worrying or anything. What did it matter, as long as he was getting less fat and more fit?

There were still some hours left to the afternoon, but Oliver didn't feel like going to the gym again—even though, physically speaking, he certainly could. It had been a while since he did anything on his days off besides sitting in his apartment, moping and watching TV, and he couldn't stand the thought of doing that right now. He really just...wanted to get out and do...something.

i uh

this is maybe kinda petty but

it's my day off, i already exercised, i don't want to stay home all day

what do i do?

You're asking us what to do because you're bored?

yeah

sorry

i guess i've just been too poor and too much of a loser to have any real hobbies for a while

sorry if it's too dumb

Not at all!

It's way better to be asking that out of boredom than hopelessness, after all.

And we certainly have some recommendations for fun.

You know how you can fool people into not seeing your tails, or you?

sure?

Well, you can do the same thing to fool people's eyes in all kinds of other ways!
Maybe a little bit of harmless pranking would be fun?
Or, if you wanted, you could probably find a way to use it to help people out...

huh

i hadn't thought of that...

Now that he was thinking about it, Oliver found the idea..surprisingly attractive. Making someone else's day more interesting, or exciting, or even helping them out...he could totally get behind that. He nodded to himself, smiling, and walked out of his apartment onto the sidewalk, looking for an opportunity.

---

Vincent wolfed (or maybe foxed?) down a fair bit of food first thing—she hadn't been kidding about suddenly feeling very hungry. However, it wasn't so fast that she didn't taste it, and she had to admit: Luca was a bad liar and a terrible prankster, but overall a pretty good cook. After taking a moment to swallow, sip some water, and breathe, she grinned across at his stunned, confused face. "Not bad. Hey, what—are you not hungry?"
"Uh..I-I mean yeah, I'm pretty hungry, but this is still..really..weird, right?"
"No duh it's weird!"
"How uh..how d'you know that app did...that?"
"'Cause I could feel it. About halfway through that transformation I started being able to sense whatever kinda power was flowing into me to cause it, and I knew the direction it was coming from—right there in your pocket," she said, pointing. "And what other reason would your phone be doing magic, besides a sketchy app I knew you had installed with a stupid long disclaimer that probably includes a warning about this specific possibility?"

She went back to eating—at a more normal pace this time, punctuated by brief glances across the table to see if her host was doing the same. The third or fourth time, he seemed to get the hint, and started actually taking in some food himself. Vincent thought: If he'd really wanted to prank her, he should've done all of that before on purpose and then done something like put an ultra-hot pepper or some soap in her food. But her sense of smell was decidedly more keen than it had been before, and there wasn't anything even slightly suspect in the food.

"S-so uh..why do you have four tails instead of just one?"
"You're asking me? Why don't you ask that app or whatever?" she gestured, but answered for herself anyway: "I'm pretty sure they mean power. I mean, besides whatever flowed into me to make me turn into a girl, I feel like something..wake up that might've been there all along, waiting for the right prompt. Which was apparently watching you acting like a total putz."
"Uh, y'know, maybe it was just waiting for you to laugh?" Luca suggested as an alternative. "And you know what? Even if uh, I wound up really only pranking myself, even if I look like a giant, dumb idiot-fool, I don't mind! J-just making you smile and laugh was all I was after in the first place!"

"Ohh, yeah? Well, was it worth it?" she asked, giving him a vicious, fang-exposing grin.

Luca's cheeks steadily turned red, and then he responded "..Y-yes." Then he turned his head down and dug into his food. Vincent couldn't decide whether she'd been trying to elicit a reaction like this, but she knew immediately that she liked it more than she should.

---

Kieran dreamed of sleeping.

It was kind of an absurd thing, the kind of thing that didn't make any real-world, logical sense. The dream was the kind where he could both experience something, and see it in third person, at the same time. And what he saw was a paradisaical life. He didn't have to worry about classes, schedules, or obligations. He didn't have to go anywhere or do anything that he didn't just plain want to. Instead, he would lie down to sleep when he wanted, wake up the instant he wanted to, and go exploring or running around wherever and whenever he liked. Someone else would take care of him, make sure he had food and was healthy—all those sorts of things. All he had to do was life his best life—and the whole entire world just let him do it.

It wasn't obvious at the outset, but gradually became clear, that Kieran wasn't human in this dream. He wasn't even vaguely humanoid. Instead, he was a cat. A fluffy brown feline was the one living its best life, not him—and yet, somehow, it also was him. The dream felt less like a dream over time, once this realization set in, and yet it became instead something more like a memory. It couldn't have been his memory, of course, logically speaking—but dreams didn't have much of a place for logic anyway. And—whether he was a cat or a human, whether this experience was really his or someone else's—Kieran found himself floating through this wonderful life, equal parts satisfied by his limited, single-dream experience of it and envious, wishing increasingly desperately to just capture some small fragment of that kind of life for his real one. He didn't really want to spend his whole life fiddling around, eating, sleeping, and doing nothing else—but he did want to preserve for his real life at least some fragment of the sense of utter relaxation and perfect rest that such an experience produced.

Like all dreams, Kieran's dream eventually came to a close. He woke up in the dream—a cat—and he woke up again a human, still in the dream. Finally, he woke up for real, in the real world—slowly but surely. Yet, as he did, he had the curiousest sense that maybe—just perhaps—his wish was going to be granted...

---

It didn't take Oliver very long to find ways to use his illusions to mess with people. He gave a guy driving with a phone in front of his face a scare by making it look like someone was standing right in front of his car when he started to move at a stop sign—not the full appearance of a person, just a sort of visual suggestion that lasted long enough for him to slam on the brakes, look around in terror, and (hopefully) reevaluate his habits. He confused a jogger by putting a small image just in front of her eyes of what was behind her, causing her to turn around—only to drop the illusion, making her stop and look both ways in confusion, shaking her head before going on her way. He made an illusion of a cute bunny rabbit for a lost little girl to follow all the way back to her worried mother. All of this and more he did while invisible, with varying bits of chuckling and grinning as he watched the results.

When he thought he might've had enough fun for now, and was starting to get hungry for supper, he started to walk back—visible again, though still hiding the vulpine traits—and that was when he had his most interesting encounter. He slowed to a halt as he saw him: An old man, thin and wiry with badly graying hair, sitting by the sidewalk with his back leaning on an adjacent building. His disheveled clothes and unshaven face made it pretty clear he was even worse off than Oliver ever had been, and so the younger man couldn't help but approach to greet him, turning to face him and slowly kneeling down to his eye level as they spoke.

"Hey..what's your name, sir?"
"Eh?" He started—a tattered, wide-brimmed hat having hidden the fact that his eyes had been closed—slowly sat up, and regarded the young stranger. "Angus, young'un. Not too many your age feel like giving me the time of day. And you?" He put up a hand, and Oliver shook it.

"Oliver, sir." It was true, the guy stank a little bit, and this was exacerbated by Oliver's stronger-than-human sense of smell, but he didn't care. It wasn't Angus's fault, after all. "I'm, just coming out of some tough times, but I guess you're in an even rougher patch than I was."
"I'll say!" Angus responded with some vigorous, righteous anger. "Nobody'll give me a job! I'm a veteran, for pete's sake! I know how to put in a good day's work. But all anyone lets me do, is sit here an' panhandle. Sleep in the dang homeless shelter! I got enough money, but they still won't lemme in to eat!"

"Oh?" Oliver let himself down to sit in front of the old man, tilting his head slightly. "Which restaurant's been turning you away?"

"You see that place, just across the street there?" Angus pointed, and the young man turned to look—it was an upscale restaurant, of course. "All it says outside is 'no shirt, no shoes', but I got a shirt and shoes, and they still say I 'ain't dressed appropriately'. Pah! So much for appreciating vets! So much for respectin' your elders!"

"Hmm." Oliver got a kind of grin he wasn't quite used to yet—feeling the anticipation of a particularly fun prank. "Tell you what, how about I introduce you to them? I bet they'll let you in, then."
"Eh? What, you some kinda big shot now, Oliver?"
"No, no—I just think I can persuade them to let you in anyway," he said, hopping back up onto his feet and offering Angus a hand. "Worth a shot, right?"
"Hmmmh...alright, sure." He took Oliver's hand and got up, going with him across the street to the restaurant.

As they approached the front windows, the Kitsune worked his magic—giving everyone but Angus an illusory view of him as a refined old gentleman: Well-dressed, clean, well-trimmed. He looked like himself to himself, but to everyone else like the kind of person who could very well own a restaurant like that one. It was also easy enough to magically hide Angus's unpleasant scent, so that that wouldn't give him away, either. While he was at it, Oliver jazzed up his own outfit a little bit for real—just to really sell things. He gestured for Angus to lead the way, and followed him inside.

"My friend and I would like a table for two, please," he said.

The host nodded. "Right this way, sirs." After he turned around to lead them inside, Angus looked back and forth between Oliver and the inside of the restaurant in amazement.

"Well I'll be."
"What'd I tell you?" he said, beaming.

"Huh. Heyy, since you got us in the door, why don't I treat ya, young'un?" Angus offered. "I wasn't kidding about having money, you know—the gov'ment gives me some payout for my time as a soldier, and I don't got a house note or nothin' to spend it on."
"I'll take you up on that, sure," Oliver nodded. Even if the old man was lying through his teeth and was going to bail on him as soon as he was satisfied, the Kistune didn't care—he could afford to foot the bill too, and for this opportunity to fool so many people, it would be worth it.