The Next Chapter: 5

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The Next Chapter
Chapter 5: Would You Like a Tour?

Early in the afternoon on Sunday, Jay was hard at work on her homework in her room. Day two of being a busty fox-girl was going pretty well, all told; she'd put on something a little more casual than the day before with a t-shirt, shorter skirt, and still some stockings, and rather enjoyed the look in the mirror. Even she had to admit it was strange how natural her body felt so soon after being transformed, from the smaller stature to the change in weight to having fur of all things—but it was nothing if not convenient!

Her ears twitched slightly—was that a knock on the door she'd just heard? Sitting up slightly and listening, feeling both of the huge furry triangles turn themselves automatically in that direction, she heard another brief knock, and could even faintly make out some voices talking. Who could that be? Visitors? Prospective members, maybe?

As far as Jay knew, she was the only one in the house at the moment. Ed and L'hoxifel had really hit it off the day before—something about how the rules of magic could behave kind of like a programming language—and had gone to the library after lunch to talk some more. Nancy had said she was going to be away for...something; Jay didn't remember what. And Camilla and her 'boy'friend were out, too. So—if someone was interested in maybe joining, there was nobody to show them around! Nobody..except the redheaded fox-girl herself!

After all, they did need more members to keep this place, and soon. While Jay considered her new looks to be a perk, the main reason she and Ed had taken them on in the first place was to get to live here. It definitely wouldn't hurt for her to do her part. So she hopped to her feet and ran off to the front door to greet whoever was there.

It was fortunate she'd made her decision as quickly as that, since what she heard through the door as she came up to it was one of the visitors saying "don't think anyone's home". She disabused them of that notion by quickly opening the door.

"Hiii~! Sorry, I was pretty far from the door when you started knocking." It was two visitors, both pretty unusual-looking: A tall guy with sky-blue hair and...wings??? And a more average-looking girl dressed up all goth-like in tights, a pleated skirt, and a black hoodie with a big white skull print emblazoned across the top. That part wasn't so weird, but she also seemed almost like a vampire, with a particularly pale complexion and black irises.

"That's quite all right," the guy said. "Should I surmise you live in this illustrious building?"
"Yeah. I'm Jay," she said, offering him a hand to shake, which he did.
"I am called Polaris," he replied.

When Jay tried to shake the goth girl's hand too, she looked at the outstretched arm with her head slightly tilted and both her hands still firmly in the pocket of her hoodie. But she did actually say something: "Mary." Probably her name? Jay took the cue to just drop her hand.

"Uh—not to be rude or anything, but, you have wings? Are you like, a real angel-person?" Jay asked Polaris.

"Celestial, and yes," he said with a slight nod, looking proud of that fact. "I was wondering whether I could get a closer look at the enchantment on this building?"

"Uhm..enchantment?" Jay tilted her head slightly. He must have meant the thing that turned any guy who slept inside into a girl, but she had no idea how one would 'take a look' at something like that.
"He means, maybe you could show us around?" Mary said.

"Oh, yeah, definitely!" the fox-girl said. She'd never met a celestial before; she thought that maybe they all talked funny like that, and Mary was with him to help translate his stranger turns of phrase. "Oh, you two must be interested in joining OZK, right? The house is amazing, with lots of great stuff in it! You've already talked to Nancy, I guess?"

"..Sure," Mary answered after a brief pause, just when it looked like Polaris had been about to say something else.

While showing them one of the vacant first-floor bedrooms, and a few of the other rooms, Jay noticed that Polaris seemed keenly interested in everything, while Mary seemed consistently bored out of her mind. This didn't much bother her; she'd found that some people (like Ed) just had a certain "resting emotion" that tended to show in their face and body language and so on. Even a negative one didn't necessarily mean they weren't having a bad time, although a positive one didn't necessarily mean they were enjoying themselves either.

"So uh—I'm a freshman music student," Jay said while leading the way through the halls, wanting to hear some notes in a voice other than her own. "What year are you two?"
"Juniors, both of us," the celestial said. "...Technically. I'm more assessing the college's new magic studies major than it is assessing me. And Mary is buried deep in the throes of a mathematics major."
"Yeah, I didn't get to cheat by being an expert when I was born," she chimed in.

"Come now, that's like a mouse complaining that a human 'cheated' for being born large and with opposable thumbs," he said. "I can't help that Sol created me to be amazing."

"Whooa, Sol 'created' you?" Jay asked, stopping to turn and face them. "Like, the sun god?" Polaris looked delighted that she was impressed by this concept, while Mary looked decidedly annoyed.

"Yeah, like literally every other celestial," Mary clarified for her. "They're always made, not born."
"Oooh," the fox-girl said, nodding.

"Be that as it may, I am most definitely among his very best work," Polaris said, placing a hand to his own chest.

"Sol doesn't decide their personalities, so don't blame him for this guy," Mary added.

"Uhh, sure? Anyway—"

They'd nearly reached the next place to show off (at least, based on Jay's memory of the tour she and Ed had received), so she went straight back to the tour.

Eventually, they finished with the first floor, so Jay began leading the way to the stairwell. "Well, I am most certainly right about one thing," Polaris commented. "Even a rough estimate of the floor space we've covered so far doesn't match with this building's outer dimensions."

Jay stopped, turning around again. "Uh—wait, really? How?"
"Magic," Mary deadpanned.

The celestial tilted his head slightly. "Do you mean to say you are a member of this organization, but don't kn—hmm. No, no, I suppose that does make sense. Obviously you weren't involved in this building's construction. But surely you suspected there was more here than there should be?"

"I guess? We were a little too busy being blown away by what was here to worry about how big the building is," Jay admitted. "I didn't really get that good of a look at it, either. But—so—you're saying there's Tardis magic? That's real?"

"Yep," Mary nodded; Polaris looked mildly confused. So she turned and explained it to him: "British sci-fi TV show. Phone booth that's bigger on the inside."
This explanation seemed to confuse Polaris a little. "What's a 'phone booth'?"

"It's a police box, actually," Jay said.
That clarification perplexed the celestial even more. "Police come in a box?"

"You see that?" Mary took her hand out of her pocket for a second to point at him with its thumb. "That look right there, is a big part of why we're still friends." Her face even had the faintest glimmer of what might be a grin alongside this.

"Heehee...that is a pretty good look," Jay admitted.

"I'll show you later," Mary said to him, and then to the fox-girl: "Anyway, yes: 'bigger on the inside' is possible with magic. Expensive, possibly really dangerous magic; only works on a fixed location or something like that; but it does make it possible."

"I guess..that makes sense?" Jay didn't have very much context for what magic could or couldn't do in the real world, but she figured these two had more experience with it than she did. And she already knew that something being 'expensive' definitely wasn't a hurdle to the Tanner family.

They continued on with the tour on the second floor, stopping off in the lounge for a break. Both of the guests seemed physically fine to keep going, but even being magicked into more-or-less fit body hadn't left Jay with boundless energy to run around on. She just made the excuse to herself that she was showing off how comfy the cushions were, since that wasn't the kind of thing that just pointing and waving could really convince someone of.

"So...you two are friends?"
"Yeah. Pretty much since Polaris got created," Mary said.

"My original purpose had to do with her," he added. "As always, Sol diligently identified a significant threat to humanity, and sent me to prevent that threat from becoming a harmful reality."

"Uh—a 'threat to humanity'???"
"Let's just say...I have a 'unique' magic potential," Mary said. "And a strong one...to where middle school angst, badly managed, could've been worse than an earthquake hitting the city. He had the option of just running me through with a spear and being done with it, though."

"But Sol clearly endowed me with far too much intelligence to take such a brutish and simple-minded approach to the problem," Polaris said quickly. "Naturally, I was able to solve it in a far more efficient and productive manner."

"I...guess that's good? Stabbing someone, sounds pretty bad," Jay observed.

"Some people could use a good stabbing," Mary replied, almost matter-of-factly. "So anyway, he's one of the few celestials made with a not-already-adult body, so that he'd fit in around middle schoolers. Maybe that's why he's still so immature."

"I am perfectly mature, just as I am perfect in every other way," Polaris shot back.

Jay had the feeling that occasional bickering like this was just how their friendship worked, but that still didn't mean she wanted to harmonize with it for too long. So instead (after briefly confirming that she didn't feel too tired anymore) she hopped to her feet. "Anyway—let's continue on with the tour!"

The reactions the two had to the second floor weren't very different from the first. Jay had spoken with them enough by now, however, to feel reasonably certain this was actually a good sign. Polaris would want to be around things that interested him, and Mary probably would make some kind of snide or sarcastic remark instead of remaining silent if there was anything she didn't like. Before too long, they were finished, and Jay managed to smoothly loop back to the stairwell.

"So—that's the second floor. The third floor is just some more bedrooms, and storage, and a meeting-room-type place," Jay said. "Nancy's the only one living up there right now, but she said once the chapter gets enough members to be officially recognized by the college, we'll elect a 'high council' or something, and they're gonna live up there?"

"I see.." Polaris briefly had an expression like he was thinking about something, then shared a look with Mary during which the goth girl just sort of shrugged. "Well—you really do have a wonderful living space, especially for mere college students to stay in. I'd say it would be far more fitting than an ordinary dorm room for someone of my caliber."
"Um—I'm sure Nancy mentioned this, but since OZK is a sorority, the building is enchanted to turn any guy who sleeps here into a girl," Jay said. "I mean, I didn't mind it a bit, but, just to let you know."

"Oh—you mean you got transformed by that?" Mary said.
"Yep!"
She tilted her head just slightly, her eyes looking up and down at Jay's appearance. "...Huh. Never would've guessed. Anyway, I guess we'll be in touch."
"Indeed—thank you for the wonderful tour!" Polaris gave a small, theatric bow, then led the way into the stairwell. Jay followed the two of them down, splitting off to go back to her room and get back to that homework; her ears could confirm that they went straight to the front door and outside, so there was nothing to worry about when it came to that.

---

"...and based on what I was able to find, this bunch of kitsune basically channeled their magic right through people's phones with that app. So I guess the idea of making a program work as a 'ritual' to cast magic isn't as original as..." Ed trailed off, her ears folding back slightly. L'hoxifel could feel the waft of moderate annoyance from the wolf-girl as she sighed. "...You've stopped listening and started staring at my ears again."
"Oh—heh, sorry." The demon-girl had her elbows on the table between them, and her cheeks leaning on her hands. "I just can't help it. Whatever confluence of your own genetics and the enchantment's effects was the cause, you wound up irresistibly cute."

"Rrrrgh. When you were giving us a tour of the house, I thought you were the 'normal' one."
"Nobody's normal, Ed," L'hoxifel said, sitting up. "We all just have different ways of hiding it. I have a little more insight into it, you know, since I can 'feel' people's emotions. You'd be astonished how different the way people really feel is from how they act most of the time."

"I guess...

"Wait, can you feel all emotions? Or just, anger or whatever?"

"I have a better sense for all the various kinds of wrath since that's what I feed off of, but all I need is a tiny bit of extra context to pretty reliably guess what else someone's feeling. Like, you're annoyed I keep looking at my ears, but you blushed when I called you cute...I think you don't mind the compliment as much as you want to."

Ed frowned. "It's just..still...really weird. I'm short and have fur and boobs and my body doesn't..respond to things the way I'm used to, sometimes. Jay seems like she's perfectly happy being a girl, but I just can't get used to any of it."

"You do know Nancy has a way for you to turn back into a guy whenever, right? I'm sure that was mentioned once or twice. I think it's something that'd let you look however you want, even, if you were unsatisfied with your looks before," L'hoxifel said. "I mean—you met our newest member yesterday, already shifted into a catboy."

"Yeeaah..I know. It's just—I know I'll have to sleep like this no matter what. And I think it'd be even weirder to ping-pong back and forth every single day for the next, maybe four years? I'd rather...at least get to where this feels like 'me', so I'm not constantly hurrying to 'go back' all the time. I thought, I'd like to at least give it a week."

"Hmm, maybe I should tell you...not that it's the hugest secret or anything..." The demon-girl leaned forward a little bit, lowering her volume (even though she was already doing some significant sound damping on the walls of this little library room as it was). "The whole, 'now I'm a girl and things feel weird' business..I do know what that's like."
Ed tilted her head (adorably) at this, trying to make full sense of that statement. "You...wait...? You," she raised a hand to point, "you mean you were a guy at some point, and got transformed to look like, that?"
"Mm-hm," she nodded. "To be accurate, I transformed myself. I used to be some six feet tall, and buff as heck. That come with some serious problems, though."
"Like what?" Ed was feeling some strong but involuntary resentment at the idea that the Thumos had 'thrown away' the kind of male form she'd have wished to have.

"Well, demons have a certain tendency to gravitate toward people who feel the kind of emotions we 'like'. We gain power from those feelings, and—for lack of a better way to put it—they 'taste good'. So imagine a big guy like that, in high school, hanging around the kind of people who get angry all the time. I got into so many fights, especially 'cause I had a bad habit of winding guys up so I could feed off of them a little more." She leaned back a little bit in her chair. "Don't get me wrong—I never started it really, and I always won, thanks to the unfair advantage of the other guy's anger constantly making me stronger. But I was in serious danger of being expelled after a while. This look is pretty much what I ultimately decided to do about it: Take on as harmless and cute a look as I could so that the people I feel attracted toward won't wanna fight me. It pretty much worked. I guess I could've gone back once I got to college and away from all those pubescent hormones, but like—I'm used to this now," she said with a shrug. "And I'd already agreed to room with Cammy by then, anyway."

"Uh-huh...I guess that's a solution to that problem. Kind of like using a sledgehammer on a screw, though," Ed said. "Hmph..I was the kind of guy who those guys would beat up, if they could find me."
"They'd never touch you if you looked how you do now," L'hoxifel pointed out, leaning in again.
"Some of them might do something way worse to a girl," Ed said.

"..Fair."

"...You're staring again," the wolf-girl said—and she indeed was.

"Heh, guilty. I thought I could get away with it since we weren't talking for a minute."
"Is this like a new thing, or..?"
"Oh, no way. I've been fascinated by anthro girls for a long time," L'hoxifel said. "Especially like: dogs, foxes, wolves. I haven't been around too many, though. I'm sorry, I know it's kind a rude, but it's so hard for me to not fantasize about how soft and warm those ears must be..."

Ed's blush came back, alongside a particularly strong wave of annoyance from her. "Hmmph. This is exactly what I was talking about before.."
"How so?"
"If a girl who looked like you said stuff like that to me before, I'd know how to feel. I mean—you're almost flirting, right? But even just physically, the way I'm responding is so...weird."

"You haven't met a demon before, though. None of that bothers you too much?"

"Not really. I mean—it was a shock at first, but you...you really pull it off, I guess." The annoyance faded off, but the blush didn't; Ed's tail started wagging too, if a bit slowly. "Being able to transform yourself to look good must be nice..."

"I didn't exactly sculpt this, you know," L'hoxifel said. "My control wasn't anywhere near that good back then. I just shoved a ton of power and effort into 'make me look harmless', and turning into a girl was kinda the result. So it's a happy accident—at least as much as how pretty you look, I'd say."
"'Pretty'..? That's new." Ed's ears folded down slightly, and she sighed. "I guess 'handsome' isn't an option, though."
"Not right now, sorry. But if you took on a male form that was part-wolf, I'm sure you would be~," L'hoxifel said. "I'll be real, you weren't that bad-looking before. Buuut."
"But you like wolf-girls, right...hmph..." Ed crossed her arms, frowning, but not really feeling all that upset. She was still blushing, and her tail was still slowly wagging back and forth behind her.

"Do you...would you...go out with me? If I was a guy, I mean."
"Huh? I'd go out with you right now, if you asked!" L'hoxifel said. "I feel like we've hit it off pretty well already anyway, don't you?"
"Uh—but...I'm. And you're."

"What, we're both girls? I'm more than powerful enough to change that if I wanted," the demon-girl said with a shrug, "and you've got an option for that too. It's really not an obstacle. I'll be up front with you, though, I'm gonna be hoping for an opportunity to pet your ears the whole time~," she said, leaning in a little with a big grin.
"Uh...y-yeah...that's still, weird. But. So. W-would you...like to, go out somewhere? Then?"
"Certainly~! Let's find somewhere more appropriate than the library, huh?"
"S-sure..." Ed's tail picked up a little bit of speed while she stood up. "Uh...it's too early for supper or anything...there's some coffee shops near campus, right?"

L'hoxifel hopped to her feet too. "Yeah, I know a great one! With a booth off in the corner we could use, you know, if they're not too busy right now."

"Um, s-sure...I'll, we can try that then.."