Release - Part 2

To Part 1

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Vezin felt a little nervous. While he accepted that the person he was going to meet was only 'partially' his wife, and was elated to have her alive and no longer suffering in any way that it could be done, it had also been made clear that her memory may be imperfect, or even broken entirely. It would break the selfish part of his heart if she were alive again, but didn't recognize him at all. Or if this 'new person' built of the two of them hated him, or...

His worries were interrupted by the little orb of pink light in front of him brightening its glow, dimming, brightening again, three times in a row: A prearranged signal from the witch. Immediately he stepped forward, reappearing in the room his wife, trapped in crystal, had been kept in for all those years. Lyra was standing there, and also a girl who was largely the spitting image of her, with a only a few slight details' difference. "Hello—?"

"Vezin!" His worries and nerves evaporated when the first thing the blond-haired fox-girl did on sight was call out his name and practically pounce a third of the way across the room to tackle him into a close hug. He hurried to gently return the embrace, letting a feeling of relief wash across him as she gently nuzzled his cheek for a moment.

"M-my dear...you're alright," he said quietly, a couple of tears coming down his cheeks.
She pulled her head back off of his cheek to face him, smiling. "Indeed I am! I've lost..some memories, but I think not the most important ones. May I..?" He quietly nodded, and she planted a brief but loving kiss on his lips before letting go and hopping back slightly.

"Listen..I'd like you to call me Joanna," she announced. "One thing I am missing is my 'old' name, and 'Johann' hardly fits...but overall, I feel it's better this way. You can remind me what it was once we're used to the new one, perhaps. Any objection?"
"Not at all. That's a lovely name," he said, nodding.

"And—it's gratifying to know how much you've done to try and help me..but do you know I only have one tail now to your nine?"

"I..thought as much might happen," he admitted. "I can certainly help you along in that regard, if you'll allow me."

"We'll see. First—what sort of Deal did you make with this witch in the first place?"

"There are some..historical artifacts she's most interested in. I agreed to help seek them out. And.."
"Wait, allow me to guess—you already found one, to prove your sincerity," she said, a hint of sarcasm in her tone
"Well..."

"You do love doing things that way," she said, "even did it with me, now I think of it. Well, now I'm curious what's got such a powerful person so interested?"

Vezin turned Lyra's way, quietly summoning the item he planned to give her from his private collection into his hands. He had some idea of her interest, but wasn't certain how much she really wished to share—and, even though he'd happily give away all secrets he knew to his wife anyway, it'd still be rude to do it in front of their owner.

"Let's see.." Fortunately, Lyra appeared willing to share; she was just trying to think of the best place to start. "You're both aware there are multiple Earths, right? And universes in general?"

"Indeed," Vezin nodded. Joanna jumped slightly.

"That's...huh, I feel half-surprised? I don't remember specifically being told that, but it feels familiar anyhow," she said. "That is—Johann certainly didn't know that, but then, Kitsune were a surprise to me 'till today!"

"Well, I'm..let's say, not from around here," Lyra said, "I've been to lots of places, and observed many more, and the ancient civilization I'm interested in is unique to this particular Earth—yours. They don't seem to have been around for very long, and took up a pretty limited geographic area, but the fact that they existed at all is a little odd all on its own."

"It sounds as if there is another reason for your interest?" Vezin said, walking closer and offering her his piece. It was a broken-off chunk of a wall with some pictographs on it; the person he'd acquired it from thought they were Egyption heiroglyphs, but they were clearly nothing of the sort.

"I guess I can let you in on it, since you're helping me out," Lyra said, carefully taking the piece of wall from him and staring into it for a couple of seconds before continuing. "They appear to have had some level of, let's say, premonitional knowledge of certain major events in your world." A translucent pink bubble appeared around the piece in her hands, and then the whole thing vanished—likely to her own abode. Then she waved her hand to one side, making the image of another chunk of wall shimmer into view next to her for the two foxes to see. "For example: This one I found earlier says something about, 'Descendants of the sun...conflict, or 'attack' as a verb...demons and monsters. That sound familiar?"

Vezin nodded, his ears folding down slightly. "The war.."

Joanna tilted her head. "Wait, which one?"
"The very same one I lost you to," he explained to her. "A group of humans—descendants of celestials, who were made by 'the sun', took up a 'righetous war' against us 'monsters'. The demons' help was indispensible in resolving the crisis. Although.."
"Yes, that wording makes it sound like the 'descendants of the sun' were on the side of right," she nodded.

"That's the way it is with a lot of prophecy," Lyra said. "Even knowing that the grammar clearly places them as the aggressors, your first instinct is to assume they're meant to be the heroes, compared to some 'demons and monsters'. This isn't the only major event they seem to have predicted either, although in most cases it's nearly impossible to tell what they're talking about until it actually happens.

"The piece you just handed me says something about the touch of—hmmh, a few words I haven't seen before, I think the last one is something like 'rejection' or 'defense'? Then, the sun...and then it says 'the moon bears a new...'" The witch paused, tilting her head slightly. "The last word's usually used for something like 'powerful', but here it's in the place of a noun."

"So, overall: Something—we aren't certain what—involving touch, rejects the sun, and the moon bears a new power, or 'powerful one'," Vezin said.

"Something like that. Obviously it must be talking about Sol and La Lune, but the rest of it doesn't make much sense to me," Lyra said with a shrug. "Maybe some more fragments will help, or maybe it'll only make sense in retrospect, like the rest of them. Either way, I'm very interested to see what else they had to say."

Joanna said, "So, I take it you're intending on traveling around the world looking for more of their stuff to handle your end of the bargain?"
"Indeed," Vezin nodded.
"Then—let's go together! I've got a pretty limited view of the modern world from Johann, and the other part of me hasn't been anywhere in over half a century. Adventuring around the world sounds like an awful lot of fun~," she said, smiling beautifully and wagging her tail a bit.
"Well—certainly. If you'd like to so much," he nodded. Then, to Lyra he said: "I will contact you the moment I find anything of interest."
"Heheh, very well. I'll leave you two alone, then," Lyra said, starting toward the door. "Don't mind me—I know the way out."
"I'd have guessed as much."

Vezin turned to the girl who was, at least partially, his wife, and gestured at the door out of the room she'd been trapped in for so long. "Shall we?"

"Certainly!"

So he led the way across the hall toward a much more pleasant room, a sort of lounge with plenty of comfortable seating. While they walked, Joanna said: "I wonder, if you'd let me borrow some of your power? While there's such a gap between us, at least."
"Anytime you like," he said, nodding, as they came into the room.
"Well, what about...right now? There's just one thing I'd like to try out with you, if you don't mind."

Turning toward her, Vezin found the blond vixen standing with her arms behind her back and a small grin on. It didn't take a genius to figure out she had some trick in mind, but—to see her as happy as that, he'd be tricked by her a thousand times. "Very well," he shrugged, granting her unrestricted access to his power.

She smiled a little wider, and came up close to him. "Alright~! Hold still a moment, would you dear?"

Vezin's heart raced as she pulled her arms around him again in a close hug, her fingers touching his ears for the first time in so many years. He shuddered slightly as she began exercising his power through her hands, sending a tingling down through his ears to the top of his head. It ran down his scalp to his face, and from there flowed down through the rest of him. His arms wrapped around Joanna as this happened, and he gave in to an urge to start nuzzling her cheek as she continued petting his ears, a soft, low vulpine churring coming from his throat.

The old fox could feel the tingling progressing into a gentle pressure all across his body. One of Joanna's hands moved from his ears to his hair, brushing through it as it started growing longer and longer. In the front it brushed across the fox-girl's hair with the motion of his nuzzling, and in the back he could soon feel its weight on his shoulders. At the same time, he could feel that pressure starting to shrink his form. His frame softened, his shoulders narrowing and his waist, arms and legs all slimming down; his clothes fell steadily looser around him as it happened. Joanna's weight had been entirely in his arms at first, but he felt it leave him as his height diminished. First her toes, then the balls of her feet, and finally her heels landed on the ground—leaving him just as short as her.

"Mmh—mrr~rrh...!" Vezin's cheek rubbing against Joanna's felt softer and smoother than before. His churring voice rose in pitch, starting to sound decidedly less masculine. He could feel through his clothes the slight weight of hair as far down as the small of his back. "Mnnh—aa~aah..!" And now..a tingling, slipping sensation began to hit him between the legs. It wasn't hard to guess what she was doing to him by now, but he was also..enjoying it to a rather unexpected degree. Joanna nuzzled him back, her tail curling itself around his, and kept on petting his ears, as he felt the thing between his legs steadily shrink smaller and smaller, his form slimming the rest of the way down to a slender, effeminate shape. The resulting looseness of his clothes didn't last, however, as the suit he had on began to pull closer and tighter around his small frame, reshaping itself to fit what he was turning into...

"Mrrh, nn~nngh..!" A dark, sultry alto tone emerged from Vezin's throat as he felt the change down below progressing into one final, sharp tug down there. "Mrr~rffh..! Oo~OOO~OOh...!" Finally, the gray-haired Kitsune's sex changed, and immediately she was hit with a burst of wonderful, fuzzy feelings down there, at the same time as her pants and undergarments pulled snug and flat right between her legs. "Mmr~rrfh..!" Her hips pressed themselves outward, her thighs and bottom growing plump—all of which pushed against the suit bottom, making it grow just enough to fit them while staying tight. Then her chest erupted in a burst of tingles, just as something tickled the base of her tail and made her let out a high "Y-yip!" That something turned out to be her hair, the bright gray locks now falling far enough down for their tips to touch her there.

But she was, of course, much more occupied by what immediately followed that tingling, as her chest immediately sprang to life. "M-mrr~rnnh..!" A bump rose up from under each nipple, pressing her shirt, vest and jacket all out at once as they quickly grew larger and larger. "O-oo~ooh..!" The way Joanna was holding onto her made the growing breasts press directly into hers, a very strange yet pleasant sensation all its own. "Aah, aa~aah...m-mmr~rrrnnh..!" The feeling of her breasts blossoming out larger and larger treated the newly-female fox to still more fuzzy, pleasant feelings down between her legs, and she helplessly squirmed in the other girl's arms, alternating between human and vulpine noises to express these intense feelings. But before she knew it, her breasts were giving one final, hard push, drawing a helpless high, breathy "Aa~aah...!" from her lips as her girlish pleasure finally, satisfyingly resolved...and then, at last, the change was finished.

"Mm-mrr~rrnnnh...!" Vezin helplessly nuzzled the blond vixen for a moment longer.

"H-heheh..!" Joanna giggled, rubbing the other girl's ears in return, before finally letting go and pulling herself back enough to get a good look at her. "My goodness, you look good in that!" she announced—not clarifying whether she meant Vezin's curvy new female form, or how it looked wearing a tight, female-tailored suit.

"I-I'm glad you think so...this was, quite a surprise," Vezin said slowly, trying to get used to hearing a deep alto tone ring out from her own lips.

Joanna had done a little more than just shift her form; while the tail she'd had out before was just as present as ever, the other eight were now partially sealed, able to reapppear only with the other fox's permission. The power from them was still present, of course, but it still made her feel a little more vulnerable. Joanna..probably had in mind for them to 'match' available tails, a next-best thing to them having close to the same actual number.

"N-not that I'm..complaining, but...what ever gave you the idea to do this?"

"Well, I just changed from male to female, and somewhat enjoyed it," Joanna said. "And—I'm a 'new person' after all, and you must have changed some in the years since we last knew each other. I thought it might be nice to get to know each other anew on this adventure...and perhaps it'd be nice to give you something unfamiliar to enjoy it with?"

"Unfamiliar..yes, I've certainly never tried this before," she admitted. "Did you have in mind..being the 'husband'?"
"Mmh, perhaps later. For now, I rather like it like this," Joanna said, coming near again and pulling her into another tight hug. "Don't you~?" she asked teasingly, a teasing, blushing grin on her face—which was not two inches away from the other girl's.

"Er...yes..."
"Heheh..you're exceedingly cute, looking so nervous," she said, rubbing one of Vezin's ears again.

"M-mrr~rrh.." This time, she couldn't help returning the favor, even as her head slid forward to start nuzzling Joanna's cheek again.

"Aa~ah..oh, that's nice too! Mrr~rh..."

They stayed like that for a minute or two, wordlessly enjoying each other's affection, before Joanna finally let go of her ears, using that hand to stroke down through her long hair instead. Vezin slid her hand down to hold the other girl in her arms, feeling her chin lean against a shoulder. "I'm thinking..maybe a new name would fit you, too. How about Ziva?"

"I could..get used to it," she said.

"That settles that, then! Maybe we can set out tomorrow. For now..would you like to lie down for a bit?"
"Y-yes...my legs are, feeling a little weak..."
"Heheh~! I don't know if I could stand without leaning on you right now, either! Come along, then...!"

Joanna gently guided Ziva over to one of the couches and down onto it, landing on top of the gray-haired vixen. Immediately they were back to petting and nuzzling, their tails winding around each other. This was...very different from how things had been before. But Joanna clearly liked it this way, and Ziva was quite happy too...if anything, happier than ever before!

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Ziva's image was generated, of course. I just couldn't find anything drawn that quite matched what I wanted for her, which contributed a lot to my writer's block for even part 1 of this story.

Lyra's a pretty important character in my "multiversal setting", but tends to be off in the background of most stories; she kind of prefers it that way. She's been mentioned before here and there as "the pink witch", and just about anytime in a caption/story that someone shows up with bright pink hair and is never named, it's probably her. I thought it'd be fun to have a small story that properly semi-introduced her.