The Next Chapter: 1

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The Next Chapter
Chapter 1: How Did We Get Here?

Edward lay awake in bed, staring up at the ceiling. He turned his head to one side to look toward the nightstand, at the alarm clock atop it displaying the time of 3:42 AM. Then he turned to the other side, where his roommate and best friend was evidently sleeping peacefully. It looked like he still hadn't changed at at all yet...

How did I let myself get roped into this...?

He turned over again, then wriggled around in the covers, knowing full well the answer to that question. He must have mentally rehearsed the full set of events leading up to this moment at least ten times tonight alone instead of sleeping like he was supposed to. But he couldn't help the insomnia, the nerves...knowing what would happen by the time he woke up the following morning. It was still a little hard for him to fully accept...

The two of them had been friends since middle school, always hanging out together. They'd eventually decided to go to the same college specifically so that they could be roommates, instead of each having to live with a complete stranger. It certainly didn't hurt that said college also had a very good reputation in both of their desired majors, of course. Jay was studying music, looking forward to becoming a classical director and/or composer, while Ed hoped to land a nice, stable job as a software engineer or IT guy or something after graduating in computer science.

A couple of weeks into their first semester, things seemed to be going reasonably well. They both had some serious complaints about their dorm and its rooms, however, and the number one advice the upperclassmen they'd met had was: Rush into a fraternity. In fact, it seemed like a lot of the friendlier people that either of them encountered were either in a GLO or planning to join one as soon as possible. It felt an awful lot like, if the two of them didn't rush, then they were going to be socially left out. So, naturally, they took the tour to see what all the fraternities had to offer. And everyone was friendly enough, but...

On their way out from the third frat house tour of the day, Ed sighed.

"Hey, what's with that sour note, man?"

"You saw all those guys, right? Now look at me for a half a second. Heck, look at you," he said with a slight gesture. Ed had short brown hair and blue eyes; he was a little on the short side for a guy, a little thin, and kind of scrawny. Jay had dark auburn hair, and was a little taller than average, but he was no more fit than his friend, instead sporting a bit of a belly and having an overall slightly chunky build.
"Okay, sure, they're clearly making a lot of use of that room full of weights and exercise machines," he said with a shrug. "So what? I think both of us could probably use the exercise anyway."

"It's not just their looks, though. Their whole—attitude. All testosterone. Bragging about sneaking kegs into their parties...with mostly underage guys attending. We're dealing with a bunch of party jocks, Jay."
"Yyyeaaah...but they're nice guys. They didn't say we have to be the life of the party or anything, right?"

"I think participation is implied," Ed said. "It was the same with the other two, too. Most of the guys in that second one are on the football team, Jay! Those are the kinds of guys who beat us up our first year of high school!"

"Sure, but, things are different in college! I think," he said with a small shrug.

Ed sighed again. "I mean—sure. They're nice, maybe more mature...a little bit. Maybe. But, like—we'd never fit in with guys like that! Both of us would have to totally change our personalities. I like me, how I am."

"Yeah, same," Jayden nodded. "Hmm. I guess we keep looking, then?"
"Maybe...I guess so. I'm just—starting to think every frat is like that. I mean, that's kinda the reputation. I was just hoping it was...overblown. Exaggerated."

"Well, maybe it is! I mean, if literally everyone joins a frat here, then there must be one that guys like us go to. C'mon, let's get lunch, and then we'll get back to it!"

The three houses they visited after lunch hardly seemed any different. One group even made a point of how many of them were in "nerdy" majors like math, computer science, and engineering, yet they were also mostly on the school's soccer or tennis teams. Edward left the last of those frats with his head hung a bit low, and even Jay seemed to be missing a bit of his usual optimistic energy.

"I don't think this is gonna work ooouut..."
"Eh, maybe joining a frat isn't all it's cracked up to be. All I know is, I want a milkshake after all that."
Ed turned his head partly Jay's way. "You always want a milkshake."

"Yeah, but, like. More, now."
"Guess I can't argue with that logic." With that, they started on their way out of greek row.

Ed would remember this exact moment as the point when the trouble started. "Hellooo! Excuse me, you two?" A woman sitting at a booth in front of one of the houses was yelling and waving at them, so they came over. "Hey theeere~," she said with a bright, friendly smile.

She was around average height, with waist-length brown hair and deep brown eyes, and a decent figure enclosed in a fairly stylish outfit: Strapless dress with a mid-length skirt, striped stockings, sparkly earrings. "I couldn't help but notice your shirt!" She was addressing Jay. "You a fan of Ursa Major?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah! I was at like...her third concert ever?" he said, nodding. "She's totally amazing. No label or anything, just started posting videos online and suddenly she's all over the place. I bought her first album, too—love every song on it!"
"Oh, me too, me too!" she said, still smiling. "Lemme introduce myself—I'm Nancy Tanner," she said with a slightly dramatic twirling-wave sort of gesture toward herself.
"Oh, uh, Jayden. Jay to most people."
"Ed," he added. "We're uh..freshmen here."
"Good to know~. I'm a sophomore myself," she said. "I don't suppose you two have been looking for a place to rush, have you?"

"Yeah, pretty much," Ed said.
"We haven't really found the right frat yet," Jay added with a slight shrug.

"That's too bad~. I might have a solution, though." She gestured to some of the material on the booth in front of her, advertising a GLO Edward hadn't heard of before: "Omega Zeta Kappa". On very slightly closer inspection, however, it was a sorority—which made sense given they were talking to a female recruiter. "Heh-hem," she sort of fake-cleared-her-throat, and then said: "If you're tired of party frats, jocks, mean girls—GLOs populated entirely by the popular kids who bullied you all throughout high school, thee~en: Oh Zee Kay is a place for artists and gamers and nerds, a shelter for outcasts and weirdos, with deep connections in the artistic world, creative industries, and the relatively-new magic-based type of careers. And shall I mention that Ursa Major's one of our alumniiiii~?"

"Uh..." Edward looked at his best friend, both of them exchanging a meaningful and highly confused glance. Nancy was very obviously reciting some kind of recruitment pitch...which, in the present situation, made absolutely no sense.

Jay broke a moment's silence, during which Nancy had maintained an unblinking, bright, teeth-gleaming grin toward both of them. "That's cool but uh..we're, y'know, guys? You're talking about a sorority here, right?"
"Hmn? Oh, sure," she said, making a gesture of waving off a trivially minor concern. "Obviously you aren't familiar with our history. The original—and currently only—chapter of the OZK started out as a fraternity. They made the switch using some of those connections to the magical community I was just talking about? Point is, whether you're male or female really isn't much of an obstacle. Actually, our freshly-built house" (she gestured vaguely at the large building behind her) "is enchanted to seamlessly fix that issue with basically no hassle~!"

"You..uh..so. That's the Omega Zeta Kappa house behind you," Edward repeated (and she nodded in reply to this), "and—you're saying it's enchanted." She nodded again.
"Mm-hm! Any man who sleeps inside, the enchantment makes a woman. Simple!"

The two of them exchanged another meaningful glance, this one featuring slightly less confusion with the mutual thought of are we talking to a crazy person taking up all of that vacated space.

Nancy understood this look well enough. "It's all in the brochures," she said matter-of-factly, picking one of them up and shoving it Jay's way. "And the legal paperwork and everything. I commissioned the enchantment myself and saw it happen. My older brother—I mean sister, tested it out, too, soooo. No problem~!"

He took the proffered piece of paper and opened it up where both of them could see it. Indeed, there was an entire section titled "Men welcome to join, but..." with a general outline of how OZK was a sorority and the house was enchanted. Not that something completely insane being in print made it any more likely to be true, but she'd also just casually mentioned something about legal paperwork...

Ed's brain trawled through their entire conversation so far again, and caught on something else strange that she'd said (although much less so than the more recent declarations). "Wait—you said something about the 'only' chapter? Like, at another college?"
"Mm-hm! I'm trying to start a new one here, is all~."
"But..you..." Jay sputtered, gesturing forward. "There's a house. Fully built. Sitting right there behind you."
"Yep," she shrugged. "I'm not likely to fail, but if I do, we'll just donate it to the college or something. And then theeeeyy get to figure out what to do with an enchanted building, heehee! But I don't think it'll be a problem, I mean, I've already got two prospective founding members besides myself...so if you two join, we'll already be halfway there~."

All that Edward could say to that, after a long pause, was: "...'Kay."

Nancy drew herself fully upright, crossing her arms and beaming. "I'm not gonna rush you two to a decision or anything—pun intended~! But think it over. You could be among the founding members of the second chapter ever of a very prestigious organization! And perhaps you'd like a tour later—our facilities are top-notch, practically a luxury suite compared to the standard college dorms you've been living in so far. If you wanna join a GLO, I don't think you'll find a better place to fit in with."
"We'd just...need to let your enchantment turn us into girls," Edward said.
To that, she just shrugged. "There're plenty of ways to turn back. Plus stuff that'd let you switch whenever you want. We just technically need the members of a sorority to 'all be female', and our agreement with the college is that if we're all girls when we wake up in the morning, then that counts~!"

Edward thought to himself: Back at that first meeting, Nancy had seemed charming, cheerful, excessively energetic, maybe slightly ditzy...and definitely somewhat insane. But there was a master manipulator behind all that. She knew just the right thing to say or do to get people to do exactly what she wanted. That had to be it, right? She'd gotten to Jayden starting with a mutual like of that indie pop starlet, poked and prodded to convince him, and then used him to convince his friend...

And so now here he was, lying in bed, knowing that when—that if he fell asleep tonight, it would be his last moments as a man for possibly a long while. And he finally realized (at 3:52 AM now): Jayden had already crossed that threshold. That meant, if Edward stayed up all night and backed out now, then he'd be male and his best friend—who he badly wanted to remain roommates with—would be a girl. That wouldn't work out at all! So...he had no choice...right? He blinked his eyes a few times, ending with them closed, and finally felt just how tired and sleepy he was. Maybe...he could put up with it...just for a little while. To stick with Jay.....

The next thing Ed knew, there was a little bit of bright sunlight hitting his eyes. Even though they were closed, the bit of light coming through the blinds was bright enough to notice, meaning: It was morning. For a fraction of a second he was confused, possibly slightly relieved, because he was still him, didn't seem to have transformed while he was asleep. But then he realized that his body felt oddly heavy and stiff, and refused to move more than just wriggling around a little bit. "M-mfh..?" And he could also feel a faint tingling playing its way across...quite specifically, the very thing that made him male. Was this...when it was going to happen? And how?

The answer seemed to be a resounding yes. The tingling grew steadily stronger, making him squirm around in place a little more as it seemed to stimulate that part of him a bit. At the same time, he had the very distinct sensation of it starting to get smaller. Then that tingling pulsed outward from the spot to his hips, and then simultaneously up his torso and down his legs, making him shiver. "Mm-mmh..!" Everywhere it went, that tingling started out faint and then quickly grew intense, usually lasting only very briefly before fading off once again. It persisted across his scalp and, a little more curiously, his ears. The former made sense enough when he felt soft locks of hair pushing their way out across his forehead and cheeks, then beginning to touch his shoulders: He was already getting the long hair of a woman.

"Mh..a-aah...!" Ed squirmed a little bit again, feeling a very slight tug as his manhood continued to shrink. This was followed by the feeling of his boxers suddenly pulling themselves very tight around his hips and legs—and of course between his legs. The sensation of tightness and pressure from that bit of underwear then seemed to spread out as well, the very same way the tingling had, until he found himself slowly wriggling around under a strange squeezing that covered nearly every inch of his body. "Mmm-aah...!" He then began to feel..the covers falling down around his body, as they suddenly discovered empty space where parts of him had been. And his feet were pulling themselves upward. "Aaa~aah.." In the soft, involuntary vocalizations he made in response to these sensations, his voice cracked slightly. "M-m~mmh..!" Squeaked. "Aa~aah..!" Shifted slowly, steadily upward in pitch. He was...shrinking, and his voice was changing...!

"Mm—mmh..!" As he slowly shrank, Ed started to perceive a difference in the amount of pressure on different parts of his body. He became aware of his face just gently being rounded and softened, while his arms and legs slimmed, his shoulders narrowed, and his waist trimmed itself slimmer. Some of his squirming made his legs rub against each other, and he could feel from this that their skin had suddenly become completely soft and smooth. Perhaps the result of all of that tingling at the start..? "Aa~aah..!" But speaking of that, his ears were still tingling; if anything, it was getting even stronger. They seemed to be one of very few parts of his body not being squeezed smaller, but instead felt as though they were..stretching out? The way he might have stretched his arms out if they felt a little stiff. It soon became obvious that, in fact, they were growing...!

"A-aah..mm~mmh..!" Ed's underwear hadn't stopped getting tighter. Its leggings had steadily grown shorter, and now were pretty much completely gone, only leaving a bit of cloth hugging either side of his hips. And...between the legs...there wasn't much left for them to press tight against. "A~aah...mmrrfh...!" A strange sound, almost like a soft bark, came from his lips in what was now a soft, high tenor tone, as the slight tugging he'd been feeling for a while now progressed into something a little sharper and deeper. "Mrr~RRffh..! Aah, aa~aaah..!" His squirming became a little more violent as his voice crossed up out of male range entirely. His ears spread themselves out a little more, and he could feel that the one now squished into his pillow was completely covered in soft, thick hairs...fur?! But there wasn't really time to think about that...!

That tugging sensation was giving way to the feeling of his manhood slipping its way inward. "Aa~aah..!" It was really happening! Edward found himself curiously excited as the moment he'd dreaded drew near. Perhaps it was just because all of the sensations that this change had caused—the tingling, the pressure, the tugging down there—were all bizarrely pleasant. He...enjoyed them..! And now, it seemed like the climax of them was coming. "Aa~aa~AA~Aaah...!" Indeed, the feeling of Edward's manhood melting away, and something completely different taking its place, was...indescribably pleasurable. "Mrrr-RUFFH..!" She found herself making another strange barking noise as an unfamiliar, fuzzy, tingly sensation hit her right down there, accompanied by a sudden burst of tingling and 'stretching' from a spot on her lower back right near the base of her spine.

"Aah..? M-mmh...!" Indeed, simultaneous to the new girl's hips beginning to spread wider, her bottom puffing out bigger and her thighs thickening, she was rapidly growing out a thick, fluffy tail to match those newly-furry ears of hers! It came out wagging, making the covers above it flap around a bit and making a soft noise every time it lightly hit the bed. And now her chest was tingling again! "Mm~mmh...!" Her voice deepened slightly again, landing on a mid-range alto, as the feeling of some bumps pushing their way up from her nipples, sliding across her shirt, brought on another rush of fuzzy tingling from her new womanhood. "Mm~mh...o-oo~ooh...!" Edward squirmed around, lost in the wonderful, girly sensations, as her bust slowly filled itself out bigger and bigger, finally becoming a moderate-yet-mature pair of breasts perfectly fit for her slender, petite build.

"H-ha~aah..." A high, cute, girly sigh came from her lips as she came down from all of the excitement, now fully transformed. "Hffh..." Her t-shirt had grown long sleeves, pulled tight against her slender frame, and split apart down the middle while she wasn't paying attention, with some buttons that would perhaps allow it to be closed up again; and her underwear, of course, was now a soft pair of panties that held completely flat between her legs. She turned over onto her back, fought briefly with the covers on top of her, then semi-accidentally tossed it all off in the direction of her feet. "Aaah..!"

With open air now touching her face, most of her front torso, and all of her legs, the new girl suddenly felt awfully exposed. She folded her arms to try to cover up. "Wh-wha...I-I..!?"

A high-pitched, cute, chipper voice said from the bed next to her: "Oh wow, you turned out super cuuuute!!!"

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So, here's another thing I've been working on during the long absence: A new story, whose title is a deliberate pun. Yes, it's a sequel to OZK, sort of. It didn't quite start out that way; the seed of the idea was just "people being transformed in bed/half-asleep". But when trying to think of a good premise behind that happening, things sort of clicked together into this ridiculous overall concept. I even took the time to make sure that the timeline made sense, for Ursa Major to have graduated and started her career by the time Nancy would plausibly be in college.

For this story, I'm generating lots of images. Not just one image when a person is first transformed, but also some images of people who weren't transformed; additional images of the people who were; and so on. I'm seeing to what degree that kind of thing is doable, but so far it seems to be "very much so".