The Next Chapter: 15

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The Next Chapter
Chapter 15: How Will We Grow the Ranks?

Mid-afternoon on Monday, Camilla and Rob met up outside of the student center, both of them looking around. "So.." the catboy said after a moment, "Any idea what they look like?"
"Well, the email just said 'gray hair, can't miss me'. They know how we look, at least," she said, shrugging.

"Um..e-excuse me..?" A girl sitting on the bench by the sidewalk near them stood up; she'd had her head buried so far into a book that they hadn't really noticed her at all before then. She had waist-length brown hair, gray eyes behind some large, round glasses, and was fairly casually dressed, wearing a t-shirt and skirt. Her height and build were about average, at least for a girl in college.

"Are you..Camilla?" she asked very quietly.

"Yep, that's me. Though..?"
"Yo!" Another, much deeper female voice interrupted them, and turning toward the source, Rob found himself facing a woman who had to be at least six feet tall. Her hair, which cascaded out long enough to tickle her thighs, really was a deep shade of gray, and her eyes shone bright orange. Her bust was really something to behold, even partially hidden by a bulky sweater; for lowerwear she had on only a tiny pair of shorts, because apparently her legs weren't capable of getting cold.

"That's Allie—Alyssa, formally speakin'. I'm Beth, from the email," she said, taking a hand out of the sweater's pocket to wave.
"'Kay." Even Camilla needed a second to stare, being not particularly used to looking up at anyone's face. "I'm Camilla, he's Rob. Nice to meet you guys."
"Likewise~," the tall one said; Alyssa just quietly nodded. "Soo, not to rush things, but you said you knew a good place to play? Maybe some folks who'd be interested?"

"Yep," Camilla said. "Soo, you said you two are freshmen?"

"Hah, yeah," Beth strode over next to her friend, gently placing a hand on top of her head. "Allie here's more like a first-year sophomore, really." The shorter girl looked flustered by this, but didn't try to move away until the hand was off of her.

"Sure, but—I'll guess you didn't look into rushing any of the sororities, then?"
"Nah. Didn't really seem like we'd fit that life," Beth said.

"Well, there is a new sorority around that you might like a little better than the typical ones: Omega Zeta Kappa. Mainly, the house has a game room specifically for stuff like DND. If any of the members're interested in playing, you could use it as their guests. Though, you might also just want to join yourselves?"

"Hmmh. I guess you can't help but offer if you're a member, huh?" Beth said. "I appreciate you not being too pushy about it, at least."

"Actually, both of us are members," she said, gesturing Rob's way.

"Uh...pardon?" Beth looked between the two of them a couple of times; Alyssa put an index finger to her chin.

"Y-you have access to some kind of magic," the latter guessed after a second. "There are relatively few people walking around campus with real cat ears..."

"Yeah," Rob said. "So, OZK is pretty unusual. Like, this is the second chapter ever, and the first one started out as a fraternity specifically for nerds and artists. They accept guys too, but.."

"But it is a sorority," Camilla finished.

"Well—I guess that does make you unusual, at least," Beth shrugged. "I guess you were aiming to show us the place regardless?"
"Yeah. We're not really into DND or anything, but some of the others might be—so maybe you could meet some of them," Camilla said. "And see how the house itself looks while you're at it."
"Sure—makes sense," Beth said, nodding. "Lead on, then."

Along the way, Rob said: "So, Camilla and I are juniors. I'm in art; she's a business major. You two decided on your majors yet?"
"Chemistry," Alyssa sort of mumbled.

"Heey, I'm in art too!" Beth said just afterward—seeming to have intentionally waited until after her friend replied to say anything herself. "Graphic design, though I kinda just wanna make abstract paintings. What're you doing with it?"
"Mostly pixel art. I mean, I'm learning how to do lots of other things, but I've been doing that forever," Rob said.
"Neat."

"I get the impression you two met before college," Camilla said.
"Yep. Allie's pretty much my sister from another mother," Beth said. "She's also the best DM I know. We had a group all through high school; we've been talkin' about keeping that up online—you know, video calls and stuff. But nothing beats sitting around a real table with the physical people."
Alyssa nodded her agreement. "Plus, it'd help meet some other students with similar interests..."

Finally, they arrived at the front of the OZK chapter house. "Well," Beth said, leaning back slightly as she got a good look at it. "It's an impressive-lookin' building, at least."

"The impressive part's on the inside," Camilla said. "You've been living in the dorms for a couple of weeks, so—you might be pretty shocked by the difference."

"Uh.." Beth turned her head slightly, putting a hand to her right ear. "'s that why I just heard someone screaming inside?"

---

On his way out from a class Monday morning, Kyosuke encountered a fellow performing-arts student standing before a flyer calling for actors with an expression of utmost despair.

This wasn't someone Kyo personally knew, though he'd seen him around a few times, and was pretty sure this guy was in his second year. He had black hair, green eyes, and a fairly skinny build overall. "Uh, hey..you okay there?" the kitsune asked, approaching.
"Okay!? Do I look okay!? Look at this!" He gestured emphatically at the flyer. "This is one of my favorite plays! I know nearly every line by heart."

"That, sounds like good news?"

"Look closer—look closer! They're doing a 'genderswapped' version. So only the fairer sex need apply! Urrrrgh...!" He growled, grabbing the hair on the sides of his head and pulling like he wanted to make himself prematurely bald.
"Whoaaa, hey, let go of your hair—leggo!" Kyo batted at his hands until he stopped. "Now, listen—deep breaths, deeeep breaths. In-out, in-out—'kay?"

The guy humored him by taking a couple of deep breaths, then snapped: "I'm not having a panic attack! I'm just extremely upset! Something like this could be the ticket to the big time! Every season I'm not in a big role in a play is a step backwards! And I utterly despise the other one they're doing this semester, too!"

"Hmm, well, an actor's supposed to be adaptable, right? Surely a role in a play you dislike would be valuable experience," Kyo suggested. Then the guy pointed emphatically at the flyer to try out for that play, especially its title.

Kyosuke folded his ears down slightly on seeing that (not that the other guy could see them). "Ah. Yeeeaah, I wouldn't want to be in that either, if I was the acting type. Well, then—if they only want girls to try out, I guess that just means you'd need to be a girl."

"Wha—how? I cannot just change my sex with a snap of my fingers!"

"Weeeelll, magic does exist, you know? In fact.." Pausing to look around and finding the hallway thankfully unoccupied at the moment, the kitsune continued, "lemme show you something, huh?"

He slid the ring off of his finger, using just a little of his own magic mid-change to influence how his clothes were altered—and took care to remove the illusion hiding her furry ears tails around midway through, in a way that made them seem to 'grow out' as part of the transformation itself. As such, she wound up in a t-shirt, shorts, and some stockings.

"Heheh~. I've got the kind of magic you need."

"Uh..wow.." The other student was taken aback slightly, his face blushing just slightly at the sight of a cute two-tailed fox-girl where another fairly-normal-looking guy had been just a moment ago.

But then he snapped back to his senses. "How!? How'd you do that!?"

"Eeh, well, have you heard of the new sorority on campus? Omega Zeta Kappa? They accept male applicants too, under a certain condition. And membership comes with certain little perks~."

---

Fritz was hanging out with a couple of his friends after a late lunch on Monday, sitting at one of the tables outside the cafeteria. Gio (which was short for Giovanni) was a slightly overweight, average-height guy with blue eyes and blond hair. He'd gotten out his laptop to show off a demo he was working on for an emulated PS1 (which would eventually be tested and shown off using a real PS1). Ivan, Gio's roommate, was a huge guy with very dark red hair who seemed to have no trouble at all staying fit. At the moment, he wasn't really watching, instead sort of leaning back in his chair to stare up at the clouds. Fritz himself was the most average-looking of the three: Dark brown hair, brown eyes, average height, average build.

"So—what do you think?" he asked after it looped the second time or so.
"I don't think I get the demo scene," Fritz admitted. "It looks...neat, but what's the point? You sure can make an old console show a bunch of wavy lines and 3D textures and stuff, I guess.."
"Aww, come on. It's art, man!" Gio said, gesturing hard at the screen. "Like, making something amazing within stupid limitations is what art is. Plus the guys at Sony who made the hardware probably never knew it could do stuff like this."
"It's just something to do together," Ivan pitched in, still not looking at the screen. He'd probably seen it dozens of times in their room already.

"Yeah. A friend of mine over in Canada's working on the music to go with this one." The music with these things did usually sound pretty good, Fritz thought, but he'd be happy just listening to that instead of having to watch a bunch of lines dance around to the tune. "It's a remix of the one that was used for, like, the most famous demo on—whoa!"

Gio interrupted himself, quickly pointing and turning off toward Fritz's right. "Cutie alert!!" Both of the other guys turned to look. It definitely wasn't anyone they'd met before: A girl with short, light blue hair, brown eyes, and huge, feathered wings like those of a stork. She was very cute, too, with some nice gentle curves nestled into a short white-and-blue dress and some stockings, along with a huge white ribbon attached to the back whose ends fluttered lightly in the wind behind her.

"Huh, wow," Fritz said.
"You think those are real?" Ivan asked.

Gio started: "Hmmn, I mean they're not really big enough to even suspect—"

"The wings, dummy!" he interrupted.

"I think you're gonna get to ask," Fritz said. It seemed like almost as soon as they'd turned to face this girl, she'd noticed them and started walking very purposefully their way.

"Excuse me, gentlemen~," she said once in speaking distance. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am called Polaris," she said, placing a hand briefly on her own chest. "A junior studying magic. Who might you be?"
"Uuuuhhhhh..." Gio locked up completely.

"Fritz. Ivan. Gio," Fritz said, gesturing to the other two in turn. "We're all sophomores."

"'Scuze me for asking, but—are you like an angel or something?" Ivan said.
"A celestial I am," she said, emphasizing the correct word. "Created by the hand of Sol for the purpose of aiding humanity through their tribulations."

"That sounds kinda angelic to me," he said. "I mean—not tryin' to argue with ya or anything, though."

"Heeyyy, what brought you over to us, huh?" Gio said, having finally found his voice again. "My good looks, maybe? Or, are you curious about this stuff?" he gestured to the screen still showing the demo.

Polaris tilted her head slightly, watching that for a second or two. "That is a captivating display of..some sort, but I had no way of seeing it during my approach. Rather, I thought I sensed...hmmn." She glanced briefly between the three of them, before finally gesturing her left hand Fritz's way. "I'm quite certain it was you, sir."

"Uh, me? What'd you 'sense' about me?"

"It would be somewhat difficult to explain in detail. But you have an unusual signature of magic which I believe would be advantageous to a certain objective of mine."
"I don't..have any magic, though?"
"That's a common enough misconception, but everyone has magic of some sort. It's merely a matter of whether or not one has learned its use."

"What, really? What kinda magic do I have, then?" Gio asked, clearly wanting back in on the conversation. Polaris didn't seem to think this rude, instead taking a moment to stare at him and presumably 'sense' for whatever magic he had.
"..Nothing too unusual. 'Twould be little difficulty to learn some simple spells as you are now, with proper tutelage, but there also exists some potential for an awakening, given the right impetus and a sufficiently potent source."

"...I think I understood like half of that."

"Then I shan't waste more words." She turned immediately back to Fritz. "Now, if you are not otherwise occupied, I'd like to show you something."

"What kind of 'something'?" Fritz asked. Angel or not, Polaris was a bit weird. If she really was a magic major (or maybe even if she wasn't), there were probably some very dangerous spells or curses she could do, which made him feel uncertain about his safety if they went somewhere less public.

"It's not very far—still on campus. I'm in a certain sorority, and I'd like to..give you a brief tour of our facilities."

"Hey, can we come?" Gio asked, immediately interested in the idea of seeing a girls' dormitory.
"Don't include me in this," Ivan snapped. "I've got a class to get to pretty soon."

"Regardless, that would be no issue," Polaris said with a slight shrug. "The more the merrier, as they say."

He'd like it better if Ivan could come, but at least Gio coming along (despite it being for another reason) meant Fritz wouldn't be alone with this girl. He sighed slightly. "I guess I can see what this is about, then."
"Excellent~. Once you are prepared, please follow me."

Ivan stood up, getting his stuff. "Well, I'll see you guys later. Lemme know how this turns out, Fritz."
"Sure."
"Wha—hey! I can tell you what happened too!" Gio objected.

"Meant what I said," he said, then ignored his roommate's glare as he turned and swiftly left.
"You gonna pack up your laptop, or just leave it here?" Fritz asked after a moment of non-movement. Gio responded by immediately getting to work on that.

Including Fritz's roommate, the four of them had become fast friends right out of freshmen orientation back when their first year started. None of them had liked the idea of joining a fraternity, so they'd put up with the notoriously awful campus dorms for over a year so far—enough for even the worst parts to just feel like "home"—and had never walked by Greek row once. The GLO houses did all look pretty nice, and there were plenty of cute girls hanging around on the grounds of the sororities along the way to the one Polaris was in. This meant that at least Gio was enjoying himself.

The winged woman hurried to open the door ahead of the two of them, gesturing. "Please, venture inside. I'd like to display the impressive living space within."

"Uh, sure..." It was like she was trying to persuade them to live here, Fritz thought, but that made no sense. Guys couldn't join a sorority, after all.

When he crossed the threshold into the actual building, Fritz thought for a moment that he felt a brief jolt of static, like from shuffling on carpet and touching a doorknob. Only he hadn't touched any metal, and it was the wrong time of year to get static shock from one's own clothes. He jumped only slightly—neither of those with him noticing it—then briefly looked around before shrugging to himself. It must have been nothing.

She led the way through the halls, showing off a couple of rather impressive rooms for the use of the place's residents. After that, they ran across (presumably) another member of the sorority: A demon with purple skin and hair, complete with horns and a slim black tail ending in a spade-shaped spike. "Hey, Polaris," she said, waving; the celestial didn't seem at all perturbed by her presence. "Giving a tour?"
"I am indeed," she replied, and the demon continued on to another room.

"Hah..a demon and an ang—ah, celestial under the same roof, huh?" Gio said. "She's cute too!"

"Don't develop any hopeless ambitions," Polaris advised, "she's spoken for."
"Aww." He put on a dejected look for about two seconds before continuing to follow along on the tour.

Fritz thought he had to be imagining things. Since feeling that static shock earlier, he had the strangest sense...almost like he was walking through electricity. He'd put it down to his own imagination at first, and the sense had gone away for a minute or two, but then it had come back stronger. The concept didn't make any logical sense in the first place; electricity didn't just hang in the air like that, and they'd all be getting constantly electrocuted if it were anyway. But it seemed to him that it was there all the same, requiring him to push as he walked just a little bit to get through it. Come to think of it, that didn't make sense either; electricity shouldn't be a physical obstacle to motion.

A little while later, Polaris stopped to open another door. "This is a presently-unoccupied bedroom. I invite you to enter and behold its spacious size and copious amenities—bearing in mind that it is intended for the occupancy of two individuals." She'd been using verbose, half-archaic language this entire time; Gio often looked slightly confused by it until he could see whatever she'd been talking about. Fritz should've found this funnier, but he was too busy being distracted by the 'electricity' in the air around them. How did neither of them notice it?

Fritz felt something new from it, too, as he walked into the bedroom to take a look around. It didn't seem that it was actually doing something different, but rather that he was just now noticing: It wasn't sitting in place, with him having to push to get it out of his way; rather, it was constantly flowing around in all directions, but particularly toward, then across him. It was like it was...pressing, trying to get in. Again, electricity shouldn't work like that...maybe it was better to think of whatever this stuff was as, more vaguely, 'energy' instead. He stopped partway into the room, standing in place, because it felt like it was pressing harder than before, making it more difficult to keep walking. He realized after a second that he was panting slightly; even though he wasn't moving around, it seemed like it was taking a conscious, physical effort to keep that energy from pushing all the way into him.

"Uh...Fritz? You okay there, bro?"

Gio's voice felt kind of distant and echoey. Fritz closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. That energy wanted in so badly; he felt almost like he could just reach out and......

He did put his right hand out, closing it around a "clump" of the stuff, and then pulled it back towards himself. That did it. A sort of 'connection' formed, like an intangible wire going into his hand and through his arm, and the energy flowed easily and freely through it, into him. With some of it going in that way, the rest of it stopped pressing against his body, and he let out a small sigh of relief. Not only that, but the energy coming in felt..very nice. Freeing. Like something he could use to do anything he wanted. But first, it...

It wanted to do something of its own, first, before he could use it. That seemed...fine, he thought? It was confusing to be mentally negotiating with a probably-imaginary force, but...

Now that it had "permission", it went straight to work. Fritz could feel it racing up to his scalp, drawing his hair out into a flowing stream; the locks tickled his cheeks and lightly landed on his shoulders and back as they grew out. He could feel a faint tingling, making him shudder slightly, as his facial hair and most of his body hair retreated backwards into his skin, leaving it soft and smooth. It reached out to his clothes, pulling them tighter, and they in turn squeezed his body, making it shrink.

"Aa~aa~aah..." This felt..nice? His voice audibly softened and rose in pitch as he felt it happen: His arms and legs slimmed down, his shoulders narrowed, his waist flattened and trimmed. His pants split apart at the thighs, the top part pulling most of the way up his legs and becoming..awfully tight right between them. "O-oh..mm~mmh..." Fritz felt a heat in his cheeks and heard his voice shifting still higher as the power took hold of the thing making him male, and gently...but firmly..tugged it inward. A sharp tingling accompanied this change, making it grow excited even as it vanished away, and a high, cute "Aa~aah..!" came out off Fritz's lips as it disappeared completely, and the feeling of the power flowing around through his body was joined by a fuzzy feeling down there, and a gentle push into the pit of the stomach...changing that body into a girl's.

"O-oh..mmnfh.." That felt..nice. The new girl wobbled slightly in place, rubbing her bare lower thighs together, as she felt the power coursing through her make its final changes: Her hips pressed out wide and her butt puffed out behind her, her thighs plumped out a bit, and—of course—her chest filled itself out, pushing forward into the soft material of a t-shirt that had shrunk itself tight against her now-slender frame. It was..almost like...that energy belonged in a soft, curvy body like this; as her new breasts filled themselves out, she could feel the flow from outside coming to stop, but a similar energy welling up from inside herself, relinquishing itself entirely to her own control. This energy wasn't new, however—it had always been there, and she simply hadn't realized it.

"A~ah...mnfh..?" She blinked her eyes open, looking briefly around. Everything looked taller, especially Gio standing there in front of her. Looking down, she saw some bright blue hair trailing all the way down to her upper legs, some impressive, girly curves packed into a tight t-shirt, shorts, and thin black thigh-high stockings. Her elbows folded up, lifting some slender, delicate fingers up into her view. It would be later that she'd realize her eyes had turned a bright shade of pink. She slowly looked back up again. "Uh, wha..whaa..?"

"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!?"

---

Two things that the original OZK story had going for it were introducing lots of different characters with various personalities and dynamics going on between them, and (largely based on those characters and dynamics) a lot of humor. I feel like I've managed to start achieveing the latter, and here I'm trying to push for the former.

The ending of this chapter, if not the entire setup leading to it, is such a classical thing in this kind of story as to almost be a cliche. But I kind of feel like I made it work anyway? Hopefully, at least.