Midas Journal 30

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Entry: May 29

It's a little weird to go to bed female, and wake up male. I guess it's equally as weird the other way around. But really, is it any less weird than kissing your girlfriend and then she starts turning you into a girl? I should probably stop trying to compare weirdnesses. I obviously open myself up to all those kinds of experiences by letting Brie have that power over me, and well, I've never minded.

Anyway, Brie sent me a text this morning saying "Surprise!" and then proposed we go out to the park right after school this afternoon, and maybe continue it into a proper date. I didn't have any complaints with that plan, although I admit there was something oddly specific about it. We met near the entrance to the park, walked around for a little bit, and then she wanted to sit next to me on a bench, winding her tail around mine. It was really nice—we just sort of talked about normal stuff; I think she appreciates how freaked out I can get by my power and everything surrounding it, and knows when to reel things back for a while.

That said, I did almost forget one of the reasons we were hanging out this afternoon until it walked up to us. Or rather, he walked up to us. "Hey!" he said, making both of us jump slightly; there had been plenty of people walking around near our bench who we'd felt free to ignore, after all. "Uh, sorry," he said next, tapping his index fingers together. He was a brown-haired guy with bright yellow eyes, and of course the ears and tail of a fox—also covered in brown fur, except for some white at the tips. I think he was a little on the short and scrawny side, but honestly not bad-looking or anything.

He continued: "It's just—um. How do I put this? You two are uh, werewolves, right?"

"Yees?" Brie said.

"And—well—you know La Lune, right?"
"I'm aware enough of the concept," I replied.
"Uh—it's just. Look, I've been, begging her for a while for...something, and last night I thought—maybe I had a dream from her! It was, uh," he started trying to explain while gesturing around vaguely-yet-excitedly: "the moon was in the sky overrr, definitely this park, and there was a giant oreo on the bench you guys are sitting on, and then there was a whole thing with like a branch growing flowers that I still don't get, but..."

"A, giant, oreo?" I repeated, still a little stuck on that part.
"Well—you—know—like, black and white fur? I guess? Am I, barking up the wrong tree here?"

"Kael," Brie said, gently brushing one of my ears between her fingers. I actually figured out what was going on at about this point, to be honest.
"Oh, right. Is the..'something' you want. To be a werewolf?" I asked carefully and quietly. My concerns about someone overhearing our conversation didn't exactly get through to him, though.
He practically interrupted my last word with a loud, excited "YES!" that got a number of heads turning our way, and then started chattering so excitedly and quickly that I couldn't even understand him.
"Uh, okay then—maybe, we can talk about this somewhere a little more private?" I suggested, halfway talking over him. I mean, my power seems to conveniently keep anyone from seeing it happen who isn't supposed to, but I had some concerns about our conversation being overheard, especially the...more awkward part.

"Uh, sure, yeah!"

I glanced at Brie for a second before we both stood up together—untangling our tails at the same time, which was the main reason I needed her help with that—and gestured in the direction of the little communal convention center building the park has that people mostly go in to use the restroom these days. "Maybe, uh, in there?"

Brie, thankfully, also ran interference—keeping herself between me and the odd Kitsune to avoid any accidental touches. Once we'd gotten around halfway there, I was pretty sure that no one who'd noticed his outburst was still listening, and that we weren't being followed, so I said: "Introductions first, I guess? I'm Kael, this is Brie," I said, gently patting the top of her head.

"Uh, yeah! Sorry, I got a little too excited and totally forgot to introduce myself! Guess that would've helped, huh?"
"Yeah?" I said pointedly.
"Oh! Right! Heheh. I'm Hayden."

"And you..are a Kitsune, but wish you'd been born a werewolf?" I asked.
"Yeah! That's, about how it is."
"Can I ask..why? I mean, not that being a werewolf isn't great, but aren't foxes like, magical immortals with eventual superpowers? You know we age, just uh, slower than humans."

"Oh, I-I know. It's just...I, I don't like. The deception stuff. Tricking people. And I'm no good at magic. I've always kinda felt like, I'm just..not a very good fox. So I don't think I'd ever grow any more tails, at least not for a really long time. And it's weird, knowing other foxes, and them like..expecting me to be like them? When I just don't, want to be. It's...it'd be worth it, to me, to be a wolf instead."

"You know there are honest foxes around," Brie pointed out, "and trickster werewolves. You don't have to live up to your kind's stereotype."
"I..yeah, I know," Hayden sighed. "It's just—I think werewolves are, a lot cooler? Like, being wild and strong, running around with a pack...I guess it's not un-heard-of for non-werewolves to join a werewolf pack, but...I feel like I'd fit in better if I was one."
At this point, we got to the building, and I opened the door, waving both of them inside.

"Look, I'm not gonna argue against what you want if you really want it," I said, coming in after them. "I was just curious. It's totally something I can do."
His ears popped upright in surprise. "You can!?"

"Yeah, I have a...weird kind of power. And I don't mind helping people with it. But there's one thing about it.."
"It exclusively turns people into girls," Brie said bluntly. "Not that you can't turn back, but it's a thing that happens."

"Oh. Well, that doesn't sound too bad. Have you..used this power a lot?"
"I could say that I have."
"And you've...turned people back into guys after using it?"

"I have..but, weirdly, not many people want me to. I don't know if you'd feel like turning back after I used it, either," I said, shrugging.
"Well, hey, even if I had no choice but to stay a girl, I'd still rather be a werewolf girl than a kitsune guy!" Hayden proclaimed. "So—what do you have to do to use this power? Some kind of incantation or something? A sacrifice?"

"Uhhh, no," I cut him off quickly. "I just..touch someone, who wants something badly enough. And it kind of..happens." I was extremely certain that it was going to happen at this point; my sense that my power was able to affect someone had only given stronger and stronger signals from him since we'd started asking him questions.
"Oh, really, that's all?"

"Yeah. It happens...by accident, more than I'd like." I think I could see in Hayden's eyes the realization that Brie and I had both been keeping my distance from him so I wouldn't touch him by accident. "I really prefer that people know what they're getting into if possible, though."
"Well, then—hit me! Pleeeaase?" he said, folding his ears down like a dog begging for bacon. "I'll do whatever you want for it, not kidding!"
"Um—please don't feel like you owe me anything," I said, taking a small step closer and reaching my hand across. "This power's weird enough to have without stuff like that..."

He was maybe half a foot shorter than me; between that and the..expression he had on in that moment, it felt 'right' somehow for me to pat the top of his head a couple of times. The effect was so immediate that I hadn't even gotten to the second pat before his hair had erupted out across his cheeks and shoulders. The second one seemed to cause him to shudder briefly, and the hair flowed out another foot or three to reach his hips. While I dropped my hand back to my side, I could already see his complexion changing, turning a little paler while taking away all of his facial hair—and what were visible of his arms and legs were going through pretty much the same thing.

"Wh-whoaa~aah..!" he let out, his voice cracking slightly as it started to change. "I, I'm re~eally...aa~ah..!" He was starting to slim down, his shoulders narrowing, his arms and legs getting thinner, and his face turning small, round, and cute; however, his height was increasing ever so slightly rather than shrinking. He shuddered again, and I could see the fur of his tail turning noticeably rougher, the white at the tips of his tail and ears starting to darken. This came with some canine noises from his mouth, a soft "Mm~mh, mrrfh..rr~rRRfh..!" of increasingly higher pitch as he shifted from male toward female, fox toward wolf.

At this point, Hayden's clothes changed. Just as quickly as everything else, his pants shrank shorter and tighter until nearly all of his legs were exposed, and his shirt lost its sleeves and pulled tight against his slim, girlish form. The last of the white disappeared from the fur at the tips of his ears and tail, but the inside of his ears paled to that same white; at the same time he let out a soft, high "Aa~aaAAAaaa~aah..!" as the shorts pulled uncomfortably close against a bulge between his legs...which then disappeared.

"Mnnh, mrrr~rRRFffh..!" A high, cute, girlish tone came out of Hayden's lips as her hips visibly spread apart, her thighs growing thicker. She squirmed around excitedly, her tail wagging and her ears lowering out to the sides of her head in delight, as her chest sprouted a pair of small bumps visible through the tight top. "Aah, oo~oOOOh..!" The growth of her breasts continued, pulling the top up off of her belly to reveal some muscle tone that I'm pretty sure hadn't been there before. Her arms and legs looked a bit more toned and fit too by now, come to think of it. I was already starting to remember meeting her as a werewolf girl named Haylie; the contents of our conversation over the last few minutes shifted around on me, too.

Her chest gave one last push forward, growing into an impressive rack; at the same time, she seemingly just couldn't help herself and howled: "Nnh, arf, rr~rfh, AWROOO~OOOH...!"

Just like that—after maybe ten or twenty seconds—it was over. She was left excitedly panting with a lot of red to her cheeks, slowly opening her eyes and putting on the biggest, goofiest grin ever; it was pretty cute, though.

"Ahah, w-wow..! M-my first howl as a werewolf~!" she said excitedly. Haylie was pretty much my height now; even though she was a girl, she was decidedly more buff than Hayden had been. And she tackled me with a hug. "Ooh, thank you sooooo much!"

"Uh..y-you're welcome, I guess?" I said, gently returning the hug before pulling out of it. Brie, thankfully, isn't the jealous type, and I think Haylie knew we were together, since she stumbled backwards a few steps with an embarrassed look on her face.
"S-so, c-can I? Um? Please?"

I was briefly confused as to what she was asking, until I realized that the 'new' memory of our recent conversation included her asking to join our pack. Something about La Lune guiding her to meet us through a dream or whatever.

"Uh.."
"Well, we're not the alpha," Brie said while my mind was busy trying to catch up, "but I suspect she'll like you."
"There is uh..a test. Our pack has an..unusual one," I said, recovering.

"What kinda test?" Haylie asked excitedly. "Really, I'll do anything!"

"Um.."
"Nothing huge," Brie answered for me. "Just some petting of—and by—our alpha or beta. It's more about establishing that you and whichever has enough mutual trust. Lucky for you, our beta's right here~!" she said, gesturing at me.
"Uhh.."

"So, I just need to—um, let you pet me?" Haylie said. "I don't mind!"
"Um—not here! Or like this!" I interrupted, sensing that Brie was teasing me at this point. "Definitely somewhere way more private, like uh, my house?"

"That's fine, I got no plans," she said eagerly. "What'd you mean 'like this', though?"
Brie answered for me again, saying "Oh, just—" before reaching across to boop my nose.

I immediately felt her power rush through me, and let out a helpless "Aa~aaa~aah" in an increasingly girly voice as I rapidly turned into Kaela. I think this set a new record between us for transformation speed—like two to three seconds from guy to girl.
Brie just talked over me, saying, "Kaela's more comfortable if you're both girls for the test. Me too, honestly."

Haylie was immediately (I think somewhat understandably) distracted by the sight of my sudden change. "Whoooaa, you can do that?!"

"It's a thing between the two of us, 'cause of her power," Brie explained. "Not that I think she'd mind changing you every now and then~."
"Uh, y-yeah," I nodded, still feeling a little overstimulated from the sudden transformation.

So...we headed for my place. Along the way, I asked: "Um, Haylie?"
"Yeah?"
"You um..you were a Kitsune because your parents were, right?"
"Uh-huh?"
"Are they...still...foxes? Or did I..?"
"Oh, no, I'm adopted in this version of reality," she said, dismissively waving away my concern. "With fox siblings still as 'natural' kids. That's pretty convenient; I mean—I love this, but I'd feel bad forcing it on my family or whatever!"
"Y-yeah..that'd be, I wouldn't like that, either," I said.

Brie...seemed to want to watch the 'test'. I guess she's whatever the opposite of the jealous type is sometimes. So, less than an hour from meeting her, I wound up on my couch with Haylie hugging me and rubbing my ears while my girlfriend sat nearby and watched. It felt...nice, I admit. She has some very pleasant curves, and she's..pretty strong; those muscles aren't just for show. It had nothing on—well, on Brie—as far as I'm concerned, but I could feel her gratitude, her excitement, her eagerness to jump into the 'werewolf life', I guess. Those things were even more clear once we switched roles and she immediately started softly yipping and nuzzling my cheek. I cut it off before too long, remembering what happened with Lue, and hurried onto my feet away from her.

"Pffh..okay, okay!"

"Uh—did I do something wrong? Too much?" she said, looking concerned with her ears folded down.

"No, uh. You—you did fine. You passed, I'd say. Just..."

"You super passed!" Brie chipped in. "Enough she was getting worried about making me jealous."

That wasn't exactly true, but I decided that nodding and pretending to agree was better than trying to explain any deeper.

"Oh, really? Awesome! So uh—now what?"

"Well um..obviously the final word is with Lue. So we kinda need to introduce you, and get her opinion and everything..."
"I sent her some texts earlier," Brie said, getting out her phone. "Let's see...looks like she's free. So, I'm guessing you don't have any conflicts?"
"Nope!" Haylie said, getting a kind of starry-eyed expression..I think at the prospect of meeting a real alpha.

That enthusiasm didn't seem quite as present when Lue answered the door. Haylie sort of tilted her head a little bit...but still seemed friendly enough throughout the introductions. Since it was just the four of us talking, I was able to tell her that Haylie had been a fox who wanted to be a werewolf badly enough for my power to work...

"A little like Chris then, huh?"
"Maybe not as extreme," I said. "Uh—Chris is our 'omega'. But really, just another pack member. I mean we don't really do ranks exactly aside from obviously the alpha."

"That's cool! I don't really wanna worry about power structure drama. But like.."
"You have some concern?" Lue asked her, probably having noticed it since that head-tilt early on.

"Uh—don't take this the wrong way, but. You're not really, what I pictured an 'alpha' looking like? I mean—you're super cute, but don't look all that strong, or like tall or imposing or anything?"

I thought about mentioning how extremely different Lue's full-werewolf form is, or maybe explaining to Haylie later just how much of a dominant personality she is...but those ideas were kind of stopped in their tracks because Lue had this huge grin on. And I could just feel from her that I didn't need to say anything, or really interfere at all—just watch the show.

"We are total strangers, after all, Haylie. I wouldn't push you into joining my pack if you don't feel like I'd be an adequate alpha," she said first.
"Oh! Uh, that's not really—"
"I know, you don't mean any insult. But I'd hate for you to have doubts. So how about I just prove my strength to you? You ever arm wrestled anyone?"

"Oh? Yeah, some of my older brothers when I was younger, or the guys from my school. Lately nobody'll take me up on it, though. Guys really hate to win to a cute girl, y'know?"

"I really do," Lue said. "So, give me a try?" She put her arm out with the elbow on the table between them. Brie and I only exchanged a very brief glance before both getting up and clearing the area.

"Huh? Well, okay—if you're sure."

I think they both had in mind just one go at first, but it quickly turned into best-out-of-three, and then best-out-of five, and then...

Don't get me wrong—Haylie lost every round. But she put up a lot more of a fight than I expected; I think Lue would have enough force to throw my entire body out of the chair if I tried that, even in 'guy' form. By the end of this, she was panting and huffing, and Lue looked like she'd put in...maybe just a little bit of effort. But either way, the former-Kitsune said, "Okay, yeah..you're the real deal. Sorry I ever doubted. But—like—the way you look!"

"No no, I actually appreciate being challenged for once," Lue said, stretching her arms out above her head. "And I'm up for a rematch any time. But as for looking the part—I'll be sure to show you my true form later."
Haylie headtilted again. "Huh? Oh wait—you mean like, wolf form?" Lue nodded.

"That's something to behold," Brie added.

"So, with that—you're more than welcome to our pack, if you'd still like to join us," our alpha continued.

"Oh—yeah? Sweet! Awesome! Yeah, please!"

"Okay, okay," Lue said through a slight giggle. "Let's shake hands and make it official."

Once they did, Haylie said, "By the way—can you tell me a little more about the others? Including that 'Chris'?"

"Oh, right," I said. "Yeah—Chris was a human guy, under the veil, who was so excited about the concept of werewolves that he managed to 'pierce' it enough to see that they were real."

"And practically begged me to bite him, which I obviously couldn't," Lue said. "Now she's our cute little omega. I'm sure you'll get along great."
"Sounds like fun already!" Haylie said.

So...I guess we have a buff, slightly hyperactive party girl in our pack now. I actually think she'd wind up being the 'beta' if we were going by sheer physical fitness or ability to fight each other like 'traditional' packs do—or, I guess, did in the past. And...I'm not really sure how to feel about nearly all of our members, sometimes including myself, being people my weird power turned into girls. That's not even just our pack, though, now that I really think about it—so I guess I just shouldn't complain. At least they're all fun to be around.

---

I should admit now, I'm pretty dry on ideas for exactly how to move forward with this story at this point. It's running right up against the end of the school year and the start of summer, and the biggest problem is I need to get Summoning up to about the same time-frame and sort out exactly how things move from there in, ideally, a more coordinated fashion. At some point I'm sort of obligated by continuity to have a big "Veil removal" event happen that would be concurrent to both stories.

Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this bizarre story as it's been so far. This part (obviously) uses a generated image.

Midas Journal 29

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Entry: May 28

For as long as I've been writing these, I've been under the impression that only I—and like, that one “alternate universe” me although I'm not entirely sure if she's he's rather, atm! still looking busy as you are lately, but yep!—can read them. So, today I found out that's not entirely true. Hi, other people! I guess you're used to reading all kinds of things people are keeping private, so I guess this isn't nearly as weird for you as it is for me. Oh well. You haven't exactly exposed any state secrets before now, so...

I guess I should try to explain how this started.

Adena was acting weird, every time I saw her this morning. Well, I say that, but it wasn't something anyone who didn't know her would notice. She's usually really excited and almost surprised still by her own power and status as a Kitsune; instead she seemed super self-assured and confident, like she was totally used to it. It wasn't anything really obvious, just these subtle cues here and there. Then, she sat in front of me at lunch and..didn't say anything too out of the ordinary then. But near the end she just seemed really interested in whether I had any plans this afternoon, and when I said she didn't, she leaned in and was like, “Okay. In that case, can you come to my place so we can talk in private?”
“Why?” I said. “What's going on?”
“Nothing bad, I promise,” she said with this weird kind of grin. “It'd be great for me if you'd come, though, really.”
“Well, uh, okay then?”

“Good.” The bell rang at this point, and I had the distinct feeling that she had timed the request very carefully just so she could get up and dash away the instant I agreed. This was a little terrifying, coming from her.

I considered not going. Or getting advice from Rio or something. But eventually I decided that she was my friend, so I should trust her, and anyway if anything really strange or bad was going on I would be able to handle it. I did send a text Brie's way, saying I would be with Adena that afternoon. I figured in the absolute worst case that I somehow disappeared, Lue was more than capable of destroying anyone who did anything bad.

She opened the door before I had a chance to get the doorbell and waved me in. I haven't actually been to her place before now. It's a nice place. Big, lots of rooms. I don't know for sure if it was like that “before” or her parents became richer due to one or both of them being Kitsune (she hasn't told me which, if either, is one, and they both look human...) She showed me to a seat on a couch in a little kind of library place. “You want something to drink?” she said.

“I'm...good. What's this about?”

“To the point, eh? Alright.” She moved around where she was standing in front of me, but a couple of yards off. “This may surprise you, so I'll ask you to please not react violently and reserve any questions for after I'm done, 'kay?”

“Uhh...sure?”

Adena nodded, and then...started smoking. I mean—not like, she pulled out a cigarette or a pipe or something. I mean like, it was like smoke was coming out of all her pores. It was very...directed smoke, going mostly along the walls and to either side of the couch and behind it (I looked back for a second when I saw it going that way). It covered the ceiling, and somehow made the room we were in seem much darker, even though I could still see her perfectly fine, just as if she was still being lit by the sun from the windows.

After that, she started...growing. She got taller, and, well, bigger in the chest and hips. She started growing extra tails, one after another, in a bunch of different colors. Her eyes were red and also glowing. This was not only surprising but kind of terrifying too, especially when she saw my reaction and just grinned like it was hilarious. Her clothes reshaped into a long kind of kimono thing, and after just a short few seconds I felt like I wasn't really looking at Adena at all, but someone else entirely. When it was over, she gave a small kind of, relieved-sounding sigh. “There we go,” she said, in a very deep, and not-Adena-like voice.

Since I've learned some magic, I've become aware of the magic power that other people have. I can sense a little bit from Rio, and Lue for that matter. A lot more than that from Giri and Ren, and even more from Threa. It's kind of a 'matter-of-fact' sense that doesn't bug me much, or intrude into my instincts or emotions the way normal senses do. In this case, though, it did. I could feel an intense, sharp kind of pressure coming off of this person, and it was terrifying. It was the best I could do not to try to find some way to escape, like using a teleportation spell to go back home or something. I assume that would've qualified as “reacting violently”, and I tried to assure myself that if she'd wanted to hurt me then none of this would be necessary at all.

“Before you worry, you should know that I cannot hurt you,” she said. “In fact my power is unable to touch you, from what I can tell.”

“Um...really?” It sure felt like it could touch me, and a lot more than that.
She nodded. “One of us tried, not long after your power appeared. It told him no while you were fast asleep, and ever since not even a simple messenger spell can reach you. Oh—I ought to introduce myself first,” she nodded, as if realizing she'd forgotten this step, and moved just close enough to extend her hand my way.

“I have no name—my position comes with costs, and losing that is among them. But my title is the Ruler of Foxes. I'm here as an emissary of the gods in general—well, most of them at least,” she said.

“Uh..Kaela.” I tried shaking her hand, but my arm was still trembling. “Guess you know that.”

“Politeness is still appreciated,” she said. “Now that we're acquainted, I'll sit down.” She turned and went to the opposite side of the couch, leaning half-against the armrest to face me.

“You should know that I am not physically with you,” she said. “I am borrowing the use of Adena's body according to an agreed-upon exchange between her and me. Essentially I can use her body today while she experiences something similar to sleep, and that only for the express purpose of maintaining the illusion of her being around—and, more importantly, to arrange this meeting with you. She'll remember the whole thing, unless there are parts of this conversation that you or I would prefer to remain private. My part of the bargain is a good way toward gaining her next tail. A formality, really—I cannot 'officially' just give someone a tail, but it isn't hard for someone in my position to arrange things where one with as few as she has can swiftly earn another one.”

I cleared my throat. “Um..no offense, but, out of all the gods, why would the one in charge of the uh, deception people be the emissary?”
She shrugged. “The others are afraid to make anything resembling physical contact with you, and I am the youngest—well, until recently at least—so risky jobs fall to me. Also, I wanted to meet you,” she added with a grin. “You're fun.

“If you're wondering whether you can trust me, well, you have all kinds of ways to test whether anything I tell you is true, don't you?” she said with this calm, friendly-looking grin. That expression was more terrifying than if she was baring her teeth at me. “So we both know that my lying won't help anything. Now, the first message, from certainly all of us, is please do not destroy us.”

“Destroy you?” I was surprised by the suggestion that I could.

“You know that your power can reshape the world,” she said. “We believe it would be trivial for you to make one where any one of us never existed. Or even to simply depower anyone you like into a mortal. I wish to convince you, first of all, that this would not be beneficial to do.”

“Right now, the world is stable. We do quite a bit to keep order—even those of us who like a little chaos prefer not to see major wars, or the deaths of large groups of people. Each one of us has important roles which the world would miss if we were gone; in my case the entire race of Kitsune would be rather lost, not if I personally were removed, but if my title disappeared entirely. But more importantly—our power keeps this world safe, and we aren't sure if yours can do the same.”

“You did just tell me I can rewrite reality,” I said.

She nodded. “The running theory at the moment is that, whatever you are, it is intrinsic to this universe, and perhaps linked to just one other. But we don't know—and don't want to find out, if possible—whether your power is able to do anything to things originating from other universes. You see, there are a great many other worlds out there separated by what we call 'Void'—something similar to but distinct from outer space.” (I got the impression right away that 'Void' should be capitalized.) “The Void is also populated with many serious existential threats to our or any other world. But the presence of powerful beings such as ourselves wards off most such threats from even approaching our world in the first place, and in addition that power is very effective at crushing threats which approach anyway.

“If you start trying to reorganize the pantheon, we don't know what kind of effects that will have. Any survivors may be angry enough with you to attempt retaliation toward those you care about, which would further prompt you to respond in kind, and...well. My point is that if you destroy one of us, you might as well do it to all of us. And then you must find a way to refill our roles, and quickly. We think it would be much better for everyone if none of that ever happens.”

“Uhh...I don't, really, want to hurt anyone,” I said. “Much less kill them, or..”
“I know,” she nodded. “But we do feel it's best for you to understand the situation fully. Naturally, none of us wants to go, or see our friends go. Oh, speaking of which, La Lune likes you too, and is very proud of Lue. You can tell her so if you want.”

“Okaaay.” I think she meant that she's friends with La Lune, which—speaking as a werewolf, is completely insane to me.

“We're also grateful that you haven't started raising yourself or your friends to godhood the instant it became available as an option,” she said. “And it's a blessing that your power really seems inclined to change as 'little' as possible unless directed otherwise. Really, I think you're better off that way for now; so much power thrust onto someone so young can be difficult to manage. Also, we aren't sure what would happen if you did that now, but it's not as if any of us could stop you, and we'd prefer to let you ascend yourself than try to fight it and, again, get destroyed.”

“I don't feel responsible enough to be a deity,” I said.

She grinned at me again like this was funny. “You're already far more responsible than most of us, but there's more to being a god than that. And you have 'more power' than we do, from a certain perspective, so it's really just a difference in how many people know that. At any rate, that is the first of my message out of the way. I promised to answer your questions, so do you have any so far?”

“Yyyeah, you said something about a god younger than you?” I said.

“Oh, yes. In a strange confluence of the universe which we think has little to nothing to do with you directly, a college student just a few years your elder recently ascended. I think you'd get along pretty well, but the others are adamant about not letting you meet her just yet. Not that we could really stop you if you wanted to,” she said with a shrug.

“Who are 'the others', exactly?” I said. “I mean, I know of some of the gods, but now that I know one is real I don't know which of the other ones I know of are real or not, or if there are others I've never even heard of.”

“Well,” she said. “You know La Lune; she and her brother Sol, god of the sun, are among the oldest and most powerful—therefore important. I am the 'god' of the Kitsune, for as much as the term applies. It's actually a title which any nine-tailed Kitsune can take on under the right conditions, but I have held it for a long while so far by currying favor with the 'real' gods and keeping my people reasonably happy. By the way, you and Brie are welcome to turn foxes any time you like; I guarantee you'd enjoy it! Aside from that, there is Bastet, who is more or less over the Neko race—they don't really 'worship' her per se, but there's an important relationship there—but also has a few other important roles, like presiding over dreams. The god of love—the best and the worst thereof—who has at least six different names, is another you can count as at least fond of you, if not an outright ally. And, there's the ascended dragon Ouroboros, who presides over greed, stability, cycles...but he's asleep this century, so you aren't likely to meet him anytime soon. That's about it, leaving aside various nature spirits and the like who could be loosely called 'gods' and receive some amount of power from 'worship'; but comparing us to them is like comparing..hmm, nuclear missiles to handguns. And, of course...the new one.

"Her name is Zotha, and she presides so far over 'change', 'gratitude', and 'unintended consequences'...more or less. I could send you a list of everyone's domains for you peruse later, if you'd like.”

“I think that'd be helpful,” I said.

“Oh, speaking of messages—I know you don't keep anything in it anymore, but you really ought to check your locker more often,” she said, a piece of paper just sort of appearing in her hand. She offered it over toward me. “This was in there last week.”

She waited patiently for me to skim over it. It seems like I managed to change someone without even noticing because my tail kind of lightly brushed him? Okay then. “Thanks, I think?”
“Heheh,” she chuckled. “Not even your own caution can get in the way of you keeping things interesting, it seems.”
“I dunno if that's the word I'd use for it...”

“On the next part of my message. We have been reading your journal,” she said.

“..Oh.” I guessed that explained why they knew what had been happening. Of course gods have some kind of crazy scrying powers, and it's not like I really did anything to protect this against magic anyway. I'm writing this all from memory in the middle of the night, by the way, so I guess if you send me a message to correct me on what exactly you said, that's fine, and maybe I will?

“Your motivations for meddling with the veil are honorable, it is generally thought, but we'd like to ask you not to rewrite history for it. We are as uncertain as you are of what would happen if you ask your power to go back in time and make that sweeping of a change. Rather, if it is your demand to lift the veil, we'd like the opportunity to arrange that in as orderly and non-destructive a manner as possible.”

“My..demand?” I repeated.

“That is what you want, is it not? No good fox or deity asks so much of someone as powerful as you are without expecting to do something in return. But.”

She leaned toward me a bit and put on a serious face that honestly looked kind of out of place for her. “As the one of our group who disliked the Veil the most when it was started, and still sees its many flaws, I must tell you. There is no removing it without some chaos and damage. And even if it were removed at once and immortality available to all, there are many who would not willingly take it. You yourself had a somewhat gradual introduction to the world of magic; imagine if it had suddenly all been dumped on you at once. Then imagine people who are less well-adjusted, less nice, less mentally stable, millions of them at minimum, all having that happen to them at the same time.” I tried to imagine that and felt my ears folding way back over my head. It did not seem good. “That is why this requires careful, detailed planning, more than you alone can probably manage. Please let us work on this in our own way, alright? Zotha is in on this as well,” she said with a small nod.

“Are you, planning this because I've forced your hand?” I said after a second. “I mean—you know I don't, want to threaten anyone into anything.”

“You're far too nice. But really, this is an excuse to do something some of us have wanted for a decade or two,” she said, “if not longer. You, along with Zotha, give motivation to those who had become complacent about the veil remaining the default state of the world forever to talk seriously with the rest of us about how best to go about lifting it, should it become entirely necessary. It isn't too many steps from there to all of us agreeing to enact those plans. But first, they must be made, and certain 'pieces' have to be put in the right place.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. Even though she was doing everything she could to assure me she wasn't really a threat, it was intimidating to say this to a god. Or, to whatever she is that's basically equivalent to one. “What about the people who die while you're doing all that planning?”

“Hmmh. Some of them will have been killed,” she said. “Even a world with magic is no paradise. We cannot maintain that people have free will and at the same time prevent all violent death forever. If anything, magic grants a great many ways to kill people that ordinary humans do not have. But I know that isn't who you mean.

“We can't directly prevent magicless people from dying, or at least appearing to die, without the veil itself dying a very premature death. But we can offer a 'reincarnation service' of sorts: Communicate with the mind of someone about to die a natural death, and let them decide for themselves whether to continue that way or be 'reborn' into the world elsewhere as someone new. In fact, Zotha is lending her power to just such an endeavor, using some manpower from a few of us older gods to help accomplish it. The only disadvantage is that, for now, those people's families must believe they really died, so the new identity is...a bit like being in witness protection, but with no chance of being recognized. But they are still alive.”

“That's...really good,” I said. I had a huge grin on, and my tail was wagging in spite of myself. “Even just that would be enough, if you never do drop the veil.”

“I disagree about it being enough, but I'm sure the others will be relieved that you're pleased with the temporary compromise,” she said.

“Now, there are two more things I wish to accomplish with this visit. First of all, a stable method of communication between you and the gods, which you will know is from us and we will know is from you. We had this made for that purpose.” The same way as the paper before, she pulled out what looked like a phone and offered it toward me. “It can do texting and voice, but it's specially enchanted to only communicate between us, to only allow you to use it, and to distinctly identify who is sending messages with it.”

I took it carefully, and the screen lit up right away. It only had a “call” and “message” function visible, but otherwise the screen didn't look very different from my actual phone.

“Surprised to see something that looks so modern?” she asked. “It was largely designed by some of Sol's people. Convenient, and helps it appear unimportant to anyone around you. Rest assured we only intend to use this for serious communication, and hope that you reserve it for that as well.”
“Y-yeah, okay,” I nodded. It's still a little hard to comprehend that I basically have a phone with a direct line to the gods, with what I understand of their level of power and importance. Obviously I haven't touched it since taking it home.

“So, what was the second thing?” I asked after taking a minute to put it away.

“It's more of a personal matter. A small request from me,” she said, “and from La Lune. A certain fox in your neighborhood has been praying to her because he doesn't want to be what he is, and sincerely wishes he'd been born a werewolf instead. I'd happily grant his desire and wish him the best, but it isn't in either of our power to actually do so; ordinarily a person's nature in that regard is very much fixed, and the extremely expensive magic that upends one's nature is too against any god's nature for us to cast or even lend power to the casting of, besides being indescribably risky to the person affected. You obviously have the ability to bypass such issues, after—I assume—explaining the usual caveat.”

“I guess I can do that,” I said. “How would I know this person? Or, what do they look like?”
“If you're agreed, La Lune will send him a dream tonight from which he'll know to seek you out. Perhaps we could've done this without asking, but she thought it best to at least mention it when we're already having a conversation.”

“Well, I probably would've helped anyway, yeah. So that's no problem.”

Something else occurred to me. “Why all this now?” I said. “I mean—I've had this power for almost two months at this point.”

She kind of shrugged. “A combination of politics and strategic thinking, more or less. Enough of the gods who are terrified of you have at this point been convinced that it's worth trying diplomacy, and anyway—if we understand things correctly—you are at this point in your own experience becoming accustomed to the world beyond the veil. You've met a demon and a dragon, and are building up your own repertoire of spells. You knew of a few of us already, and it would only be a matter of time before other mortals would help you assemble a list of the gods anyway, so the strategy of hoping you won't do anything to us if you don't know about us has outworn its use. So those who are worried, well aware that aggression hasn't worked and can't work and hiding is about to fail, can only agree to turn to diplomacy. I would also be lying if I said the tenor of some of your more recent entries didn't have Sol scrambling to get a word out to you before you made any major decision without our input,” she added with a grin that I think was at this sun god's expense.

Having finally delivered her various messages, the fox god woman moved on to asking if I had any questions. I struggled to come up with much, but—or, really because of that—I asked: "Is it. Can I, uh. Who's...allowed to know about our conversation here? Who can I, talk to about it?"
She sort of shrugged. "Whoever you like. Maybe the other gods don't think so, but I believe you have a reasonable amount of discretion when it comes to keeping your power a partial or entire secret. And I'm certain it would help you sort things out to speak with your significant other, at the least, if that's what you have in mind."
"Uh...yeah," I admitted.
"And you have the means to contact me—or the rest of us—if you think of any other questions to ask, or comments to make."

"That's true..."
"If there's nothing else for the moment, then, I'd be happy to relinquish Adena's body back to her control for the time being."

"I—yeah, maybe that'd be best," I said.

After a special-effects-show like the one that had introduced her, but kind of in reverse, the Ruler of Foxes turned back into Adena. She waved goodbye to me with a sort of soft chuckle, then suddenly went sort of partially limp for a moment, staring off into space. She snapped out of this like someone just waking up, shaking her head hard enough for her ears to flap around before shouting "DUDE!" and starting to gush about how awesome it was to have been 'possessed' by the Ruler for even just part of one day. I gave her a few minutes to basically nerd out about it before getting up and saying I really needed to go talk to Brie, and I think she understood how overwhelmed I was feeling, so she let me go.

Brie was...at least as excited to hear I'd been contacted by a god as she had been about me meeting a dragon. "That's amazing! They're real!?" I guess I should've seen that coming. It's funny, even people who've been 'outside the veil' their entire lives seem to encounter the gods so rarely that many of them don't know they exist as people rather than abstract concepts. Maybe they prefer it that way?
"Uh, apparently."
"Well, in that case I guess it was only a matter of time, with what you can do. I mean—I know I'd want to get a handle on a 'reality warper' if I was responsible for a whole entire world."

We talked for a while about it. Brie didn't have much in the way of new input, but it felt good just to talk about it to someone else..no, especially with her. It made the whole experience feel more real, and she had some of the same reactions I did to some of that info, which made me feel a little less crazy. After that, she uh..helped me take my mind off of things for a while, and offered to hang out with me tomorrow afternoon, and said she hopes we meet 'the mystery fox' together. I guess...she may want to watch my power work on him? And I guess I can't blame her. Anyway, if he's so dead set on being a werewolf, there's a pretty high chance we'll wind up with yet another new pack member, huh?

---

Wow, it's been a while on this story, huh? This part has been sitting around fully-written for...a long while. The next part has also been sitting around mostly-written for a while. At first this whole thing was stalled by not wanting to spoil some planned events in Summoning, but I got past those events and...still had trouble finishing things up for publication. But today I finally finished that one, which makes me feel ready to publish both. The next one will come out tomorrow.

Midas Journal 1 Redo

I think this demands a little explanation. 

A few webcomics I read have, at one point, gone back to their earliest few strips to re-do the art, usually as a brief experiment but sometimes with the hope of giving the entire comic a consistent look that's much better than the early stuff. I had a similar, but different idea here.

Basically, I wondered how the beginning of Midas Journal would look if it were a story I just came up with today, and wrote it in my more current, much better style. This is the result of that experiment, essentially covering what were the first 4 parts. Here's a link to the original first part if you want to do a comparison. I'll have a little more commentary after it.

---

Today is March 19.

When my parents were deciding my name, my dad wanted to call me "Kal-el", after Superman. My mom thought that was an impractical, stupid name that'd get me made fun of for all of my life, and suggested "Kyle" instead. The eventual compromise they made was naming me "Kael", which at least almost sounds like a normal name. At least when people don't hear how it's pronounced for the first time and assume I was named after a vegetable everyone hates.

Why did I write that?

Okay, let's try again.

Nobody should be reading this. But in case someone does, I assume something terrible happened to me, maybe before I even started writing it like me going actually crazy, so I'm writing this in the middle of the night when I'm supposed to be asleep, and burying it as deep in my computer's files as I can, so maybe my side of the story could be told. I dunno, maybe it could help find out what went wrong and keep other people from going crazy too.

Okay. To clarify, I don't actually think I'm crazy. It's just that I don't have a really good explanation for what's been happening lately. I think if I keep procrastinating on talking about what happened lately then the police detective or psychiatrist (ologist?) reading this is gonna get really bored and miss out on what I actually wanted to say.

Today is March 19. A week ago was March 12. That was also my 18^th birthday. Happy birthday to me! Right? It was Friday, we had a small party—I don't really have a lot of close friends, honestly, most of the people I knew when I was younger moved away for one reason or another—anyway, I went to sleep and I had a dream. I think it was weird, because it's the only dream I can remember having that I also remember what happened in it. I can remember it like I actually saw it, like I was awake to see it. I mean, not exactly...

It was a lucid dream, sort of. Even though I didn't feel like I had control over what was happening, I knew I was dreaming right away. Like: Yep, this is a dream. I saw a man touching some fruit, and it turned into pure gold, metal the whole way through. He picked up a cup to drink out of and it turned to gold, too. One thing after another was handed to him, from, I wanna say, "offscreen" even though obviously my eyes aren't a screen: Some kind of cone-shaped hat, a cat statue, some ice cream, a clock, a diamond, a mirror...each one was turned to gold by a touch from his hands. After a while, there was a kind of flash to white, and I woke up.

You probably don't think a weird dream that I can actually remember is a big deal. Well, I wouldn't be thinking about the dream if nothing else had happened. Carlos—one of my friends—stayed the night, sleeping on the floor under a blanket. I woke up to some bright light from the window—the kind that always screws up a perfect day of sleeping in, and gave up after flailing around for a while—he was still there. The other side of my bed was up against a wall, so I had to step out past where he was sleeping, practically on top of him, but I didn't want to wake him up and have him beat me to the shower. I managed to get around him, and I thought didn't touch him, but my bare foot did catch on the blanket for a minute.

It gets weird when I came back out. The part of the blanket my foot had been was pink. Bright, hot pink. And that pink was spreading like someone was pouring a big bottle of dye on the spot, and it somehow not staining anything else but the blanket. I couldn't help but stare, which...gave me a clear view of what happened next.

There was motion under the blanket that I wasn't sure how to interpret at first. In fact he was shrinking. Like—his feet were moving up toward his head without the rest of him moving, so he was getting shorter, and he was getting slimmer too, as the blanket seemed to get loose and find more room to fall down over him. This was until he made a slight "Mmh" noise which I thought sounded a little odd—a little too high in pitch, and kind of batted at the blanket, tossing it most of the way off (it was already mostly pink at this point). Then I could see that even more had changed: His skin looked soft and smooth, without any hair on it—including his face, which usually had some unless he'd just shaved the day before, and he hadn't. The hair coming from the top of his head looked longer, though, and it had a strange outward motion to it that I took a second to register as actively growing longer.

Now that the blanket was off, I could see how slim he'd gotten; his arms and legs looked small and soft, and his waist especially looked really flat and narrow. His shoulders had caved in a little too, and his face, on top of the skin looking soft, really looked kind of..pretty? It occurred to me at this point that he looked kind of girly. His boxers—the only thing he had on—looked oddly tight, too, and I started to see that his hips were actually growing wider, his thighs turning thicker too. Carlos made another soft "Mmh" sound, and what came out was a low, but very girlish voice. He pulled his arms up around his chest, and then...well...

Carlos took a sharp, high breath, and then kind of sighed, a little "Aa~ahh" sound that seemed very feminine to me. And..his shorts had shrunk suddenly close against his legs and hips, and also between the legs...what I'm trying to get at is that the half-asleep person I was staring at really didn't look male at all anymore. Then she made a soft, long "Mmmm" noise as her chest visibly puffed forward against her arms, clearly growing out into a big, full pair of boobs in just a few seconds' time.

Then she opened her eyes. "Wha're you lookin' at?" she mumbled, still in that deep, girly voice, and sat up, still keeping her chest covered with an arm. Her hair was almost shoulder-length, with a bit of blue at the tips, and she was blushing with a..really cute, teasing grin at me for a second before grabbig the blanket from behind her, pulling it around her torso and standing up. I was still too stunned and confused to react in any way other than staring, and she just giggled, moving toward the bathroom, stopping next to me and leaning in to peck my cheek once before continuing inside.

I was...still in shock and denial. I thought there was no way that had just happened, my male friend could not have just suddenly turned into a hot girl in the process of waking up. I'd known him for years and if that was a thing then I would've known by now. And even if it was some weird secret of his, why'd he—why'd she react that way to it happening for the first time right in front of me? It didn't make any sense. The only thing I could come up with was that I was dreaming, or had somehow managed to hallucinate the entire thing. I think I might have mumbled to myself "that didn't happen" a few times for good measure, just to try to believe it.

It didn't really help my confusion when Carlos came out of the bathroom near the end of my panic as...well...himself again. He noticed me watching him come out and was like, "What?" Like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. So what could I do? Now I didn't have any real evidence that anything weird had even happened in the first place.

"Uh...nothing," was what I managed to say, and went on with the day. It seemed like, after seeing that one bizarre thing, my life was back to normal.

Except, after he left I happened to go in my bathroom and...Carlos had dropped the blanket into the laundry basket. And it was still pink. I picked it up and looked at it, and couldn't help the feeling that maybe it always had been. Except—why would I buy a pink blanket, or why would my parents get one for me? Staring at the one remaining shred of evidence that something bizarre had happened that morning, it finally clicked in my head that the whole...change...had started on the blanket, and in fact from the point my foot had touched it. Which meant...well, I wasn't sure. But thinking through the day, I hadn't come close to physical contact with him again since that point. I made the decision right then and there to try to avoid touching him, hoping that would keep things normal. Even though, of course, I didn't really have any idea whether touching was important or why I thought it might be. Maybe that dream?

If that was the only thing that happened, I wouldn't be writing this. I would have gone on with my life, maybe never forgetting that incident, but after a while I would've stopped worrying about it. No such luck for me, I guess.

This Tuesday, March 16, it happened again. Not to Carlos, but well...

Let's say, I would call my family upper-middle class. We—and most of my friends really—live in the suburbs, where almost nothing ever happens. It's a safe neighborhood with a watch program, the police exist, all that sort of thing. This makes it especially strange that—when Carlos and I were walking home from school, in broad daylight, taking a cut through a narrow space between a couple of shops that we use all the time, we were mugged. Or—maybe I should say we were almost mugged. A guy came out from behind a dumpster wearing a ski mask and waving a handgun.

I know. What? That isn't the weird part. Well, not the weirdest part. What??? Right.

"Give me your money!" Both of us put up our hands. I don't think Carlos has ever had a gun pointed at him before, and I know I haven't.

"I don't have anything!" It so happens that neither of us carries any cash around. We don't need it, right?

"Come on! You kids have phones, right? Give it to me." He waved the gun back and forth slightly.

"Uh, okay." I got out my phone and sort of slowly reached it over toward him. I'm not sure, but I don't think Carlos was gonna give up his as easily. Maybe he would've yelled for help and hit the ground or tried to come around and hit the gun out of the guy's hand or...I don't know, something. The point is that didn't turn out to matter.

When he reached out and grabbed the phone from my hand, still pointing the gun my way, my fingers brushed across his hand. Just a little bit. He drew his hand back holding the phone and there was..it was like this glow had started from where the touch had been and was very quickly spreading up his hand toward the wrist. He noticed it too—he was looking at his hand, probably because it felt pretty weird, and then looked back at me and then at his arm again while the glow brightened and raced up to the elbow.

"What's—what the—" At this point the mugger's body was lifted into the air, just a foot or so, and in his surprise he let go of both the gun and the phone. They both...stayed, floating in the air, while the glow raced up to his shoulder and from there spread across his entire body, even covering his clothes. It was—it's kind of hard to explain, but it was like his body was giving off a bright light, but it wasn't blinding, I could see the outline and shape very clearly.

He yelled in surprise a couple of times as that shape started very quickly shrinking. He got shorter and slimmer by the second, his big, muscular body losing both traits very fast. The mask burst off of his face, turning into a bunch of sparkles in the air just in front of it, and then two long streams of hair pushed their way out near the sides of his head and the—what had been his mask went and placed itself near the top of each one, turning into a long ribbon tying it together. The rest of his hair grew out too, but not nearly as much—just framing his face and giving him some longer bangs.

He wasn't exactly yelling any more, but making some confused "Aah, aaa~aah," noises in a voice that sounded less and less mature, like it was aging in reverse. He had the build of a teenage guy at this point, but then he shrank even more, his shoulders narrowing and his waist trimming in at the sides, his arms and legs getting small and slender. At this point I realized that his clothes were kind of missing from his 'form', but the glow kind of made it where there wasn't anything to "see" from the lack of clothes either. Again, I'm trying to describe something too bizarre to really put entirely into words, but...anyway, I was having flashbacks to Saturday and it was kind of obvious where this was headed with that in mind.

His voice, in another confused "Aaa", sounded like a young boy's for a second, and then there was an eruption of sparkles up near his shoulders. This flowed down his body, taking on the look of an oddly loose short-sleeved blouse, growing ribbons up near the chest, and then continued its way down, spreading out into a skirt. The skirt kind of spread out to the sides as the hips under it grew bigger and wider. I'm pretty sure at this point he'd turned into a girl, as the sort of spreading motion came with a louder, more surprised "Aah!" in a very high, girly voice. Then a little more of it sort of dripped off the bottom of the skirt, landing on the thighs and spreading all the way down to the feet, clinging close to the legs—turning into a pair of stockings. Finally, her chest pushed out, seeming to grow into the top and fill it until it was fairly tight there—not huge, but definitely...well..a girl's chest, anyway.

The glow erupted off of her in a bunch of bright sparkles and she floated down to the ground. Her blouse was mostly yellow with green accents, the same green on the skirt, with white stockings, and the ribbons holding the twintails now trailing out from her head were a bright yellow, too. I hadn't even been keeping an eye on my phone or the gun, but—well, the latter was gone, replaced by some kind of brown briefcase-purse thing, and she caught each of them neatly in a hand as she landed.

It took me a second to realize just how much closer to me she'd landed, compared to where she'd "taken off" from. When she looked up at me (being much shorter than me now, after starting out a little taller), I made a short, confused noise (I think "Wah!") and stumbled back, falling over and landing sitting down.

"Oh, um. Excuse me," she said, moving slightly closer. "I don't know how I didn't see you. You dropped this," she added, offering me the phone back.
"Uh...thanks?" I took it, and then after a second realized her hand was still out in an offer to help me up. After a second's thought, I did. I felt kind of like she had just bumped into me..even though I knew that wasn't quite what had really happened.

"Really, it's my bad," she said, carefully helping me up. Her grip was a little stronger than I expected. "Are you okay? Oh wait, do you go to..Phalos High?"

"Yyeah," I said slowly in response to both. "Why?"
"Well, I just moved in a few days ago. Today was supposed to be my first day of school but I sorta, got lost looking for it. I can tend to be a little bit of a klutz, you know. Oh! Rio, bytheway." Her hand was pointed my way again—offering a handshake, which I carefully took.
"Right. Um, Kael."

This got a slight giggle out of her. "Like the leafy green?"
"I dunno, are you named after a city in Brazil?"

"Not exactly?" Her head tilted slightly, and I got the impression she was more confused by my annoyed snark than anything else.

"Nothing. It's K-A-E-L."

"Neat. And you?" she turned toward Carlos for the first time. I did, too; he looked a little pale, maybe still in shock. But he responded normally.

"Carlos."

"Good to meet you both. Aahm, I'd better be on my way home, but I'm sure I'll see you again. Bye!" She gave a cheerful wave and then ran off in the direction I'd been facing, the bag-thing the gun had turned into still in her hand.

We stood there for a long minute or two, staring the way she'd just run toward. Eventually he cleared his throat. Okay...did I hallucinate, or was that cute girl a..guy with a gun trying to mug us, like, two minutes ago?"

"...You saw that too?" He nodded.
"Did you...?"
"I, don't know," I answered slowly. "Nobody would ever believe this." I looked back and all around; there were no other witnesses, for sure.

"It's kinda hard not to though, actually seeing it."

"Let's..go," I suggested, pointing forward.

We were awkwardly quiet for a while. I mean—both of us could probably have died from that? It was hard to go back to normal talk. I was also trying to figure out whether I really had somehow been responsible for that. Again...it all started when I touched him! And if I can turn muggers into schoolgirls? How am I supposed to react to that?

I couldn't bring myself to say anything about Saturday. I was kind of glad he wasn't asking more probing questions, because I'm not a very good liar and Carlos probably could've figured out that, well, at least I thought it seemed like I was responsible for that happening, in some sort of weird way. I don't think I felt ready. Maybe I never would feel completely ready, but, well, I'm still grateful I had a few days to get more ready.

It's never good when someone says "Can we talk?" Or texts it, or whatever else. "Can we talk" more or less means "I demand that you tell me the truth about something and/or listen to how I feel even though it's gonna be super uncomfortable for you or me or both of us." Carlos hit me with a 'can-we-talk' today at lunch. Could we go to my house and talk? Sure, I said. I mean, I wasn't really doing anything else today. I was pretty sure he was thinking about what had happened Tuesday, and maybe remembering, in some way or another, the thing with the pink blanket. In light of that, I convinced myself after answering, he had a right to know. Even if it was a hallucination, at least he'd know what I thought I saw, right?

And thankfully my parents were out when we got there. I let him sit down, and then went and sat on the complete opposite side of the couch, waiting. He watched me do this, and stared for a minute or so, and then said, "Soo, Kael."
"Yeah? What do you want to talk about?" I said.

"Have you been, avoiding touching me this past week?"

"N...no."

He gave me a half-smirking skeptical look, like 'really'?

"Okay, fine, yes."

"Soo, why?"

I sighed. "I don't, know, how to explain it in a way that doesn't make me sound completely insane."

"Hey, maybe I can help with that?" He leaned his head on the back of the couch so he was looking mostly up at the ceiling. "I had a weird dream last Friday. Or, maybe it was more into the morning Saturday. Like, I remember waking up and..I was a girl. Weird, right? And it didn't bother me or anything. Actually, I really liked it. I felt—confident, happy. Really fit, full of energy." I guess I could mention he's usually been a little overweight, nothing major though. Before this conversation I didn't even know that it bothered him. "Think I looked in the mirror once in the bathroom and loved what I saw. If anything, it seemed like I'd looked that way for a while, somehow. Then I woke up and...it seemed like nothing happened? But I've felt a little disappointed since."

He waited some, and gave me a questioning look. "...Yeah. I, sssaw that too," I admitted eventually. "And then when you went into the bathroom I stood there telling myself there was no way what I'd seen was real. But now this, thing with Rio...I think whatever happened, happened because I touched him, and you. Or at least something you were touching, or wearing, or...I don't know. It doesn't make any sense, but..."

I also told him about the dream I'd had the night before. Somehow it seemed relevant. Carlos sat up again, turned a little in place to face me, and nodded once or twice. When I was done he said, "Well, why don't you try touching me again? Then you can see if you're right or not."
"Wh—but. You...if it 'works' you'd turn back into a girl," I said.

"Yeah. Maybe it'd be fun to try that for a while," he said. "I mean, you turned me back once, right?"
"But I don't know how I did that! Much less if I can do it again."
Carlos shrugged. "Well, then I'm stuck that way. Really, I don't think it's a bad way to be stuck if it's anything like how I felt on Saturday." He held out a hand in my direction, not far enough to reach me but enough for me to reach it without leaning toward him. "C'mon. Don't you wanna know if it's really you?"

I stared at the hand for a second, and back at his face. "Are you..sure."
"Yeah. Heh, I'm kind of excited to see, really."
"Oookaay..." I slowly reached out my hand and took his for a second, before sliding it back off again, pulling it back to my side. I think I felt something when I did, a little like some static jumping out but without any of the pain. Judging by the way he pulled his hand back and held it up to his face to look at it, I think he must've felt something too.

There was a second where nothing happend. Then: "Whoa!" Carlos jerked his hand slightly, jolting. Suddenly the hair was removing itself from his arm, in kind of a "motion" racing up from his hand to his shoulder. It continued up his neck to his face and (probably) along the rest of him. He shuddered slightly, pulling his arms together just in front of his stomach, and let out an almost relieved-sounding sigh as he started shrinking all over again.

"Aah—aa~aahh..." His voice changed rapidly, and I could see that he was getting smaller faster than before, his hair growing out quicker too. "Oo~oh, oh man, this a~actually feels pretty good," he said, turning his head up to look at me while he continued to slim and shorten down. His voice kind of cracked a couple of times like he was going through puberty, except it ended up a little higher and more feminine-sounding than before each time.

At this point his pants split off about at the thighs, the top part tightening and turning into a pair of gym shorts while the rest pulled much thinner and tighter, crawling down to his socks and up past the hem of the top and clinging to his slimming legs as a pair of long stockings. The tight pants showed a bump between his legs which was very clearly getting smaller, too. Then his shirt shrank too, pulling up off his belly and down from his neck, the sleeves disappearing entirely and leaving just a pair of straps hanging from his shoulders at the top. At the same time his jacket slid off of his slim shoulders and landed on the couch behind him, mostly just holding on by the ends of the sleeves still hanging across his upper arms.

By now his face and his hair were already just as I'd remembered them looking Saturday morning, and when he made another small "Mmmh" noise it was in that girl's low, but very female voice. He was blushing brightly as his waist narrowed more, his hips and thighs pushing their way out, and then let out a quick gasp as the bump disappeared from between his legs and I started to find it difficult to think of the person sitting in front of me as male.

She panted softly and shuddered again. "O-oh..aa~aahh.." she sighed as a pair of small bumps raised themselves up beneath the top. Then she made a slightly louder "Oooh" noise as the new bust quickly burst itself forward, seeming to stretch its material out as they went until it just barely held the big pair of boobs that resulted.

She panted softly a little longer, turning her head down to look at the new assets and up again at me, still blushing. She grinned. "Hey, that felt amazing!"

"Do you..how do you um," I tried, but it was hard to make words for a minute after seeing that.

"Heheh. You can call me 'Carla'," she said, standing up suddenly. "I've gotta go get a look in the mirror!" Sweeping her jacket up behind her, she ran off to my bathroom to do that.

Sitting there in mild shock, but shock anyway, I felt an odd sense that things weren't as abnormal as I knew them to be. From the instant she'd reintroduced herself with a new name, my brain seemed to start filling in the blanks that this wasn't just who she'd turned into in the last few minutes, but who she'd always been. It's a little hard to describe—I remembered everything that I did before, but also more, a second, more real version of those memories where she'd been a girl her whole life, or at least ever since I'd met her. Most things were basically the same (I have it in my head that Carla is a major tomboy), except that she had a habit of, well, teasing me or trying to make things awkward. Like Saturday morning, making sure to go to sleep after me so she could do it topless and mess with me the next morning, right down to pecking my cheek.

She's attractive, definitely, but I'm not...I think both of us know she isn't serious with any of that.

That really isn't what I should be thinking about right now. The point is, when Carla came back from the bathroom both of us felt like she always had been Carla. We compared notes and both had the same kind of double-memory, which now that I think of it is also exactly the same kind of thing as my memory of first meeting Rio. There's more evidence than just our memories that this is who she was too, including her ID and phone and my phone's address book, and we even tried kind of fishing for information from some mutual friends and they seem to think she's always been this way too.

Eventually it occurred to me to ask her. "Are you...okay? I mean, how do you feel about this?"
"I feel great!" Carla said, pumping her fist a little and giving a wide grin. "I'm serious, I feel amazing. Fit, beautiful, confident. Just like I said before. I don't know if I've ever liked my body before, or I mean—if Carlos did. I dunno how to explain it, but I love it. Really, thank you."

"I'm not sure if thanking me makes much sense," I said. "I mean—neither of us has any idea how this works, or..."
"It's obviously you though," she said, pointing. "And you agreed to touch me to try it out, and it worked! This is great."
"But...you're...I mean, what if it just makes you think you're okay with it? What if whatever this is screwed with your head to make you think you always wanted to be..that?"
Carla shrugged. "I guess I don't have a way to answer that right now. But at least we both know I wanted the same things before I was changed, and now I have those things and like them."
"But—" she put a finger on my lips.

"Shush! You have a power that can turn guys into hot girls! It saved our life three days ago! Quit being such a downer about it for a second, okay?"

I sighed. My concerns aren't going to go away just like that, but...she was right. I can't dwell on it constantly forever. And she really did seem to be happy, and I didn't want to mess that up for her. "Okay."

That leaves me where I am now. We started hanging out like we always have (? I guess that's true for "both" versions of my memory). It felt normal, and good. She's really cute, even if we're not interested in each other, and still fun to be around. But I don't know what's going to happen from now on. Am I going to change everyone I touch? That can't be, I've touched lots of people, guys and girls, in the past week. There must be something else to it. Maybe I can figure it out before I do accidentally ruin someone's life.

Anyway, that's it for tonight. I'm getting too tired to make sentences that even mean anything anymore. I feel insane and I hope this is the end of it, but I really get the feeling it's just the beginning. Good night, weird diary and whoever's reading it after I'm long dead (hopefully).

---

In addition to (I hope) much better writing overall, which more sharply characterizes Kael and his way of writing early on, there's a lot of this stuff that I'm inclined to write differently as a result of how I know things go in "the future". I've come to really dislike the old image for Carla and also for Sarah, besides which the latter turned out to have no part whatsoever in the story, so just cutting her out entirely seems wise. I happened to find an image which I think much better fits Carla's overall characterization, and also downgraded her from "best friend" to "a friend" because that turned out to much better reflect Kael's relationship to her in the later story.

Knowing the future also gives me the opportunity to play with foreshadowing things well ahead of time, including giving Rio a "magical girl" transformation because she turns out to be a witch (therefore, a girl with magic). There's maybe one or two other inconsequential transformations I might cut out later on if I were to redo the whole thing, but I suspect the overall story would mostly be the same. Maybe more of the transformations of "important" characters left in would get more varied transformations than they originally did, too. 

Anyway, this has been a fun experiment, but I suspect this is as far as I really want to go with it. There's too much new stuff I want to write to keep treading old ground for long.