The Next Chapter: 8

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The Next Chapter
Chapter 8: How Does It Work?

Kyo met up with Jay on Thursday morning for breakfast. They'd agreed to this over texts early into the day before, since her roommate had an early class anyway, but this meeting now had an additional and (as far as he was concerned) rather important purpose. "Hey! Still looking as beautiful as before," he said, coming up to her.
"Awwh, thanks," she blushed. "You uh, look great too?"
"Hahah. I could've told you that," he said, smiling back. Maybe a little of Polaris's vanity had rubbed off on him, but Kyo knew that he did look pretty good.

They went and sat down after a bit. "So uh..I've got some..news," he said.
"Uh-huh? You seem a little nervous about it," the fox-girl observed. "Something wrong?"
"Weeelll uh, I wouldn't say wrong exactly, but. Lemme just say how it happened," he said. "You've met uh, Polaris, right? Angel dude?"
"Yeah! I gave them a tour of OZK last Sunday," she said, nodding.
"Riiight. So that guy, is actually my roommate. And he didn't tell me anything about OZK until literally yesterday afternoon, when he announced that he was planning to join you guys."

"Oh, he is? That's great! I guess I gave a pretty good tour~," she said, smiling. Kyo truly hated to spoil such a pretty, happy face, but he really needed to let her know this...

"Uh yeah. The thing is—he kinda wants me to join with him? Even dragged me along to talk to your, like, boss lady."

"Boss? Oh, you mean Nancy?" she said. "So you wanna join too?!" her question seemed happily eager, not worried or upset. Kyo had to pause in surprise at such a completely, unexpectedly positive reaction.

"Uuuhh...maybe? I mean—I was thinking. Or just like, you know. Since we went on a date and all. It wouldn't be too uh, awkward, for that to happen?"
She tilted her head a bit; he wondered if the implications of him joining just hadn't occurred to her. "I don't think so? I mean, Ed's dating someone else in the sorority, so I dunno what the problem would be. We'd be in different bedrooms and stuff, after all."

"Yyyyeah, okay, sure. But, I'd also—you know—get turned into a girl, right? And, that wouldn't bother you?"
"Nope~!"

Her response was so immediate, and so cheerful, too. Kyosuke felt like he was being tricked by a higher-ranking kitsune. This wasn't at all how he'd expected this conversation to go; in fact, if she'd found the whole idea too awkward, he'd been fully prepared to just tell Polaris and his terrifying friend that he wouldn't be coming along with them.

"Heheh..you've got a pretty funny look on your face, there," she pointed out.
"Uhh. It's just, like, wow. I'd expect you to feel at least a little weird about it," he said, shrugging.
"Well, I mean like—there's a whole thing where you can just borrow a magic ring to turn back whenever anyway, except when you're asleep. Didn't Nancy mention that part?" Jay asked.
"I...don't think she did." Maybe it was part of the 'legal details and stuff' that miss Tanner had promised to go over with the three of them 'later on'.

"Besides, I bet you'd be super cute as a girl," Jay continued.

"Oh, uh...y-you think?" It was a little strange, but Kyo's mind and body alike both responded to this like it was a compliment about his looks from a cute girl he liked. It technically was that, in some ways, but it also really wasn't.

"Yeah! I mean, there's definitely some 'cute' in your looks already anyway, and you've got some really fluffy tails too," she said.

"Uh..h-heheh." He really wasn't used to being on the back foot like this, but that didn't mean he disliked it. "It's just, uh, e-even if I was, wouldn't it be weird for us to go on another date or something?"

"I don't think so?" she said. "I mean—I was a guy literally last week, soo, it's not like I've stopped liking the looks of a cute girl."
"Oh...yeah. I guess that makes sense," Kyo said. He had to admit, he'd nearly forgotten that fact of Jay's history already. She just seemed to 'wear' a female form so naturally and well that he figured anyone could be convinced she'd been born with it.

Jay leaned slightly in, talking fairly quietly. "If I could admit something a little weird, you know..."

"Yeah?"
"A part of me really wanted to pick Ed up in a big hug and pet her when I first saw her new looks. She's really cute, after all. But, like, since she's my friend and I know Ed's always been really touchy about, uh, being touched—I didn't. But, if you turned into a cute girl, you wouldn't mind that, right?"

Wow, Kyo's heart was racing now. He'd never imagined either of things things happening before—him being a girl or being 'hugged and pet' by someone else—but the concept of Jay doing that sounded really nice. "Uh...y-yeah. I think I'd like it, even," he admitted.

"Heheh..." Jay was blushing a little bit too, at least, as she nervously leaned herself back upright again. "So—then, you should totally join us!" she said.

"Okay, y-yeah. You've convinced me.

"Uhm...Polaris and Mary are planning to move in this afternoon, but Nancy said those of us who are uh...getting turned into girls...should leave some time open the next morning to get clothes and stuff. A-and I've got classes in the morning tomorrow, so, I guess I'll show up tomorrow night, then?"

"Great~! I'll look forward to it," Jay said.

"Yeah..." Now he was really looking forward to it, too.

---

"You know something?" Polaris asked, busily unpacking his bags.
"I know a lot of things," Mary retorted. She'd already finished unpacking, and was sitting leaning on the headboard of her bed playing on her handheld game machine. "Be more specific."
"I didn't mean it as a—oh, never mind," he said. "I was thinking, since it may yet be a long while before I can examine the inner workings of this building's enchantment...I ought to study it as carefully as I possibly can now, from the outside."
Mary didn't say anything for a while, and then finally graced him with a soft "Uh-huh."

"It's just that, it would be quite difficult to get a close observation of something while unconscious. But I believe I can do better."
"You always do," she said. "What's the idea?"

"It's quite simple, really," he said, going over to his bed. "There are only so many ways that an enchantment can detect whether someone was asleep. Does it mean 'in bed with eyes closed'? Apparently not, since evidently Robyn was affected while napping on a couch. So it must be some sort of detection of consciousness, or conscious thought." He sat down near the foot of it. "I expect that a sufficient depth of meditation will suffice instead, and allow me to experience the enchantment's effects while fully awake and aware."

"'Kay. You gonna do that now?"

"I don't see why not. If my theory is incorrect, I shall have to think of something else, in which case I should ensure I have as much time as possible for that," he said.

"You, want me to leave, then?"
"Not at all! If anything, it would bee better to have another pair of eyes on things. You may perceive something about the enchantment that I miss," he said.

"'Kay."

Polaris was pretty good at meditation, if he said so himself. It was a necessary component for certain applications of magic, after all, such as astral projection. He didn't require a specific environment or bodily position; he could get into a proper "thinking-less" state fairly quickly as long as there wasn't something more or less trying to distract him. In this case, he simply remained seated at the edge of the bed, his legs hanging off the front of it and his feet on the floor, and focused on a spot on the wall. For sound, he took up the partially-repetitive noise from Mary's game machine as she continued playing it: Sound from the speakers, soft clicking as her fingers continually pressed the buttons. As for touch, there was the slight warmth of the late-afternoon sun coming on from the window to the left of his bed. Something like that could lull a less alert person (or just about any Neko) to sleep, he figured. With these ingredients, he only needed a brief moment to push all thoughts out of his mind, focusing on the sight, sound, and touch. Then he was able to push away those sensations themselves as well, fading them out one by one, until it was very nearly...nothing at all.

The reason certain magics required a state like this, or were benefited by it, was partially because a mind currently refusing to acknowledge thoughts from within, and physical signals from without, could much more easily feel magic—both within and without. And, in this state, Polaris could easily feel the full extent of the enchantments on the building surrounding him. Sensing its flow all about, he found that it wasn't presently encroaching upon him to effect any sort of change yet. Even a brief period of ignoring those magic-based sensations produced no apparent shift in that ambient aura, which pushed him toward the conclusion that this wasn't quite how it detected sleep, or at least not all of it.

A little more observation, and he was pretty sure he had it. The enchantment was gently but noticeably flowing around, especially around the people in the building: Himself and Mary particularly, in this room, but he could actually tell just about where the other members of OZK were from the way that flow went around them. It was almost like it was probing, feeling for something specific...and that was it!

How did it know whether to transform someone at all, in the first place? It had to tell whether the person in question was male or female. Those two types of body, while largely the same magically, had at least some differences that arose entirely from the physical form; this had to be the case, or else witches and warlocks having access to their magic only while physically the "correct" sex would make absolutely no sense. And it had to tell whether he was asleep, but there was a much easier solution than trying to detect whether someone was conscious or not. Put simply: A sleeping person's guard is down. This would be true not only physically, but also magically; there had to be, Polaris concluded, a particular way in which one's magic resistance dropped while asleep, and that was what the enchantment was "feeling" for. In which case...

Getting it to change him—or for that matter anyone else—while fully awake and alert, was only a matter of lowering one's resistance in that particular way. Polaris, of course, knew quite a bit about how to raise his resistance to external magic, and generally had much better defenses than the common person, but needing to bring it down was something new. It was all the same principle, however, and he had the reactions of the enchantment itself to guide him. He pushed or prodded things just a little bit in what seemed like the right direction, and could tell he had succeeded when the enchantment's flow, for lack of better terminology, seemed more "interested" in him than before. Within a moment or so of reaching his conclusion, Polaris was able to invite the transformative magic in, with the satisfaction of having "fooled" it into "thinking" that he really was asleep.

Once it was flowing into him, it was quite the flood. Any individual not extremely magically capable and powerful would have a hard time pushing this effect out once it had started. Polaris came up out of his meditation to the physical sensation of a faint tingling all over his skin, and the feeling of the magic flowing into him already teasing its way outward again, causing the hairs of his head to slowly grow longer while his facial and body hair were thinned and shortened away.

"Ah...! I've got it," he said. "Easy enough for...mmh..." He shuddered slightly; the inward flow from the house's enchantment had suddenly stopped, and now what felt like his own power had started pressing his form inward, making him start to shrink. "for one of my~y caliber to figure out how it all wo~orks," he finished, his voice cracking slightly as it started to change. In fact, it really did seem to be his own magic transforming him. Rather than effecting a change from outside, the house's enchantment "empowered" the affected person by flowing itself into him, then semi-forced a transformative spell out of him using the inflowed magic as the spell's power source. What a fascinatingly clever way to go about it, Polaris thought!

"Mmh..aa~aah..." He only barely noticed some soft vocalizations coming out in a steadily changing voice. On the one hand, he was busy thinking through the implications of the enchantment's implementation, and on the other...well, the feeling of his body slimming down, his face growing soft and round, and the steady tingling between his legs as what made him male shrank away, were all threatening to become..overwhelming. Of course Polaris understood the theory of a transformation like this, and had heard about them before, but the actual, physical sensation of it really was something else! His wings unconsciously spread fully out as he squirmed around a bit in place, feeling his tank top and shorts tighten against his slimming frame. His heartbeat picked up, his breath came in rather fast, and his face felt warm with a blush...how very curious!

"Aah, aa~aah...mmh. F-fascinating..." A high, soft yet mature soprano tone rang out from his lips already. The shrinking down there had turned to a steady tugging, like his body was hungry for its own...part; Polaris was happy enough to let it feed, as nice as this felt. And so, in only a second or two, the celestial's sex changed, and she couldn't help a slight gasp at a sudden wave of sensation from the new shape her "down there" had taken on. "H-heheh~..." She giggled softly, feeling her hips starting to push apart, her bottom pressing into the bed as it grew larger and rounder, and her thighs likewise growing thicker.

As it was a spell she was casting, it would have been easy for Polaris to "customize" her looks a bit right now. Yet she felt no need to. The enchantment's effect almost seemed to have "asked" some part of her how she'd want to look (or maybe how she expected to look?) before she could have thought to answer: Naturally, she wanted to be gorgeous. Only a beautiful, curvy look would fit a person as brilliant and amazing as herself. Was it the same for anyone affected by this, even if they had no knowledge of magic whatsoever? That could certainly explain certain individuals' reluctance to take advantage of the easy offer of a means to change back...

After working on her lower body for a bit, the magic changing Polaris's body turned its attention to her chest. It erupted in a burst of tingling first, and then quickly pushed out a pair of small bumps centered on her nipples. As was to be expected, she was filling out up there, too. And she couldn't wait. Of course she ought to have the kind of bust that other girls would look upon with envy, and boys...well, men could stare if they wanted, she guessed. Polaris had never had a problem with people being so taken by his beauty that they simply had to stare, so it would be no different for her as a woman, now.

But the sensation of her chest pressing is way out, sliding across and pressing into the material of her tank top, forcing it to grow some more space to accommodate the growing bosom—that was really something else. She gasped a couple of times, and barely managed the self-control to let that air out with her mouth closed in only a soft "Mmm~mmh" each time, as her heart continued to race, and those feelings from her newly-feminine parts only continued. Maybe this had something to do with people wanting to remain female after joining OZK, or at least not minding it so much, she thought. However, from what she understood, it wasn't peculiar to this enchantment's transformation, so it probably wasn't the whole story...

She pulled in one more sharp breath at a final, generous pulse of growth, not only from her bust, but also a slight additional push from her lower curves, too. "Mmnnh...ffh." After carefully exhaling, Polaris found herself leaning partway back, her eyes closed, and so she pushed herself upright again, blinking those eyes open. Mary was still across from her, and still playing on her game, but she must have gotten a good look at some point. The celestial smirked across at her.

"Well, what do you think? Am I not the very vision of beauty?"

Mary's eyes very briefly flicked across Polaris's new form. "More like the vision of back pain. Hope you like guys staring at you."

"I hardly see that as a negative," she said, hopping down onto her feet and taking a brief look around the room. She'd lost...maybe only two or three inches of height, leaving her extremely tall for a woman. Perfect.

"I believe I've come to understand the enchantment rather well. Whoever set it up was extremely clever," Polaris said. "Did you notice anything?"
"Not really. It just looked like you transformed yourself."
"Ah, but that's the genius of it! It pushes enough power for the transformation in, then causes one's own power—overflowing as it is from that donation—to effect the change."
"That sounds...like it'd cause accidental awakenings from the overflow?"

"Perhaps, but I think there are measures intended to prevent that, as well." Polaris lifted her hands up into the air for a moment, stretching and letting her wings spread out to either side of her. "I only caught the faintest whiff of it since my magic is already very well-controlled, but it was 'trying' to vent the more chaotic parts of the power into the change. I expect that effect would be greatly pronounced on an ordinary human."

"Huh.

"Well, congrats, you're a girl now, I guess. You're not gonna try to take me shopping for clothes, are you?"
"Oh goodness no—your kind of fashion clashes far too much with my looks," Polaris said. "I'll see whether miss Tanner is busy, perhaps, since she offered to finance such 'necessities'." She started toward the door to the bedroom.

"You could just transform your own clothes to fit, the same as what you've got on did."
"Naturally—but why not take advantage to find some outfits that really accentuate my perfect beauty?"

"Yeah, sure. Have fun or whatever."
"I most certainly will~!"

---

Smug is Polaris's default emotion, probably. He named himself after the most important star he could think of. Celestials don't always, or even mostly, name themselves after literal celestial objects, but more of them (percentage-wise) do have such names than humans do.