Playing With Dolls By Nomdreserv (WG, AP, TG, MC)

Re: Playing With Dolls By Nomdreserv

Postby TheoW » Fri May 25, 2012 10:46 pm

Part 9

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Maia asked Callista, unable to get used to seeing her usually imposing older daughter reduced to the size of a young girl. She still didn’t feel right leaving her alone, but needed to leave for work.

“I'm fine,” Callista insisted, not entirely truthfully. The fact was, although she assumed it had to be a side effect from one of the size-changing spells she’d been boasting about, she still couldn’t understand how the magic had rebounded on her this way. “I’ll try a couple of standard meditation and reversal spells after you’ve gone. If they don’t work…”

“You don’t think they’ll work?” Maia’s fear flared.

“I'm sure they will,” she lied again. “But if for some reason they don’t, I can always call the problem in. That’s one of the great things about the Institute – they’re always there to help you.”

Her mother nodded uncertainly. “I know. I wish Danae could see it that way.”

“Dani still has … problems with everything that happened. I'm sure she’ll come around.” She hesitated. “Mom, this may not be the best time to bring it up, but, well, I'm pretty sure Dani may be smoking. I'm sure I could smell cigarette smoke when I came in last night, and I saw an empty pack in the garbage.”

Maia froze. “Cigarettes?”

“Yeah, a pack of Virginia Slims.”

“Oh,” she almost sounded relieved. “Dani didn’t smoke those. She likes … I mean, those aren’t …” Her voice dropped in embarrassment. “Those were mine.”

Callista’s eyes went wide. “You’re smoking?”

Maia squirmed. “I know, I know. I don’t understand why, but I suddenly got this strong urge … curiosity about it. Like a craving. And then I tried it, and … and I don’t know. I still hate it, but I need to do it.”

Callista eyes narrowed again. “When did this start?”

“Just a couple of days ago.”

“From nowhere? You just suddenly had to smoke?”

Maia hated to have her own failures worry or distract Callista from more pressing problems. She came over and kissed her on the forehead.

“Now, don’t worry about me. I'm old enough to take care of myself. And if I pick up a couple of bad habits along the way, so be it. You’re the one we should be worrying about. Are you sure you’ll be all right here alone by yourself? I can take a personal day, you know.”

“Mom, you don’t need to treat me like a little girl. No matter what I look like. I’ll be fine.”

“I know, I know. It’s just … well, I made you a lunch, and you have my phone numbers. I’ll call to see how you’re doing.”

“Mom!”

Callista hurried Maia away before her mothering could get any more juvenile. She was acting like Callista was a little kid staying home sick from school.

Of course, once she was alone in a seemingly giant-scale kitchen, she didn’t feel so confident. Callista tried to wrap her hand around the warm coffee mug in her hand. It felt huge and heavy, and she actually used both hands to raise it and take a sip. She couldn’t believe how big everything seemed – her clothes were loose (and they were hand-me-ups from Danae’s youth!), her feet didn’t even reach the floor when she sat on a chair, and she had to reach up to the table and counters. With her reduced figure, and with her mother now close to a foot taller, she really did feel like a little girl again.

But unlike most little girls, Callista was also a mage in training. She was pretty sure her power hadn’t reduced with her size, and it was time to put it to the test.

* * *

It was when she sat down that Danae first noticed it. She had reluctantly set her things down and settled into her seat for English class, when she noticed her shirt felt a little tighter around her stomach. She looked down and was surprised to see a small but noticeable tummy bulge stretching her shirt. O course, most people showed a little bulge like that sitting down, but this was certainly more than Danae could ever remember seeing. She surreptitiously probed the bulge and found it was soft but quite solid – a real tummy that seemed to scream at least an extra 5-10 pounds that shouldn’t be there. She assumed it must be the way her borrowed shirt fit, and was just something she hadn’t noticed before (she almost never weighed herself).

At first, the sight alarmed her, most particularly the prospect of dieting to get rid of it, but then she relaxed and smiled. With her dolls and new power, she could get rid of the extra weight in a matter of minutes that evening. In fact, it might be even more fun to give it away to someone else. She scanned the room and decided Jennifer was an appropriate target – she was famous for her flat tummy and defined abs. Wouldn’t she be surprised to wake up tomorrow with the one lost and the other hidden under a new layer of fat?

Feeling a little better, she was still faced with her own self consciousness for the time being. She sat up as straight as she could and sucked her stomach in a little. That was better – the bulge was barely visible. She maintained the posture half-consciously while listening to their teacher talk about Jane Austen, one of her favorite authors. English class, or more properly literature, was one of the few subjects she actually enjoyed.

It was, perhaps, that interest which kept her from noting the way her stomach slowly began to creep out again despite her controlled posture. She fidgeted a little unconsciously as her tummy slowly expanded like rising bread dough, further stretching and finally lifting her shirt a little, exposing her new, soft middle. It wasn’t until class had almost ended that she suddenly noticed that her bare skin was beginning to graze the desktop in front of her.

She looked down in alarm and was shocked at her appearance. She had a real belly bulge now, her tummy sticking out almost as far as her breasts. She pulled her shirt down and sucked her stomach in hard, trying to hide the changes, while glancing around to see if anyone had noticed. Gaining 20 pounds during class would be pretty hard to explain, no matter how many candy bars she could claim to have eaten. The other students seemed fortunately oblivious, and Danae hunkered down to disguise the changes until class was over, and she could get someplace more private to examine the full effects of the inexplicably rapid weight gain. What the hell was going on?

Discussions about Sense and Sensibility were forgotten while she waited for the last minutes of class to tick away. She had her arms wrapped around her stomach, and could almost swear she could still feel it swelling beneath them, doughy and soft but always pushing out just a little farther and farther with each breath, making her nervousness swell as fast as her tummy. When class finally ended, she all but jumped from her seat – feeling sick at the way her new tummy drooped and jiggled as she released it - and grabbed her things to run out. Before she could get away, however, a girl named Simone called her name and hurried from her seat in the back.

“Hey, I just wanted to say I loved your hair. That is soooo rad and different.”

“What?” Danae asked nervously, trying to grab enough of her hair to get a good look. When she brought a hank forward, she all but shrieked.

Her hair was quite thoroughly and unmistakably grey.

“Oh my God!”

“Totally,” Simone agreed. “Like, no one thinks to go grey. Did you do it yourself, or did someone do it for you?”

“I … I don’t know.”

“What? Come one! Don’t be so secret. I just want to try it. How can you not know?”

Danae suddenly noticed she was looking Simone straight in the eye. She glanced down and saw her new jeans dragging the floor, even as her new tummy overflowed the waistband. She looked back up with desperate eyes.

“Quick, how tall are you?”

“Huh?”

“Tall. How tall are you?”

“Um, like I don’t know. Five-seven, five-eight?”

“Oh, shit!” Danae hissed, grabbing her pack and all but running off.

Simone stared after her, then shrugged and turned to one of her friends. “Like, was that the wrong answer or something?”

“I told you she was weird.”

* * *

Callista sat motionless, concentrating and focusing as much as her limited training made possible, hoping to discover the cause of her shrinking. This was a ritual taught to neophytes early in their training and designed to calm them in the case of magic gone wrong; however in her case, her natural power and an affinity towards healing magic which she had already manifested made the effort more than a simple exercise in control. She could almost sense the magic suffusing her, and had even made some abortive attempts to counteract it. But the nature of the spell eluded her. She couldn’t recognize any of the standard spells she had used during her training, and the magic was certainly resistant to standard countermeasures. At the same time, there was something oddly familiar about the magic – something that tugged at her subconscious.

This familiarity might explain the magic’s resistance to reversal. It was almost like she was fighting herself, a feeling that frightened her and made her extra cautious at the same time. Maybe the magic really was emanating within her, either accidentally from some interaction between the sanctioned size spells she’d experimented with combining with her inherent chaotic nature, or (and this was even more alarming) something she was subconsciously inflicting on herself. Danae’s comment about always wanting to make herself smaller resonated in her head. It had happened overnight while sleeping in her old room. And there seemed to be effects beyond simple size changes. Maybe coming home had triggered something more than a figurative return to her youth.

She put the vague sense of recognition to the side and tried once more to simply take control of herself and force the issue, using her own natural magical abilities to override whatever spell had been placed on her. Releasing her natural power, however, always made her uneasy. She had spent most of her life suppressing her power, and the dangers she assumed came with it, and she feared losing control every time she let it loose. In fact, one of the reasons she had gone to the Institute was in the hope of damping her natural power entirely. If she never used chaotic magic, if she never gave in to natural impulses, if she never “lost control,” then she might never become …

Well, she didn’t want to admit to herself what she would become, but suffice it to say that the demonic side of her heritage was never far from her mind.

But for now, that heritage gave her a weapon most mages lacked – a natural resistance and ability to counteract external magic. Trying desperately to retain control, she relaxed her mind and dropped her normal mental restraints. She felt an answering tingle, as her innate power surged and seemed to grapple with whatever external magic was affecting her. She could feel the flux move around and through her body. The tingling increased, and she thought she could actually feel her body moving slightly, as though growing imperceptibly. And then…

Callista gasped and felt a thrill of fear that made her blood run cold. Her concentration broken, the tingling stopped, and she felt whatever power had been moving through her body dissipate. She gasped and collected herself. She had felt it again – that odd sense of familiarity she couldn’t quite place. But this time, there had been something more – much more, and completely unexpected – something that left her shaken and confused. For a second – just the briefest flash – she had found someone else in the room with her: an unrecognized and mysterious male figure who seemed to be looking directly at her, his keen interest … no, that wasn’t the right word … his hunger undisguised. The next second, the vision was gone.

But not the resounding fear it had produced.

Shaken, Callista abandoned trying to reverse the magic on her own. Whatever the source of the magic, she no longer had any doubts as to how dangerous it was.

* * *

And far away, a figure snapped his pocket watch closed and frowned. That had been a near miss, though he was confident he’d broken the connection before being observed. He hadn’t expected any neophyte to be capable of farsight like that, and resolved to be more cautious in his direct observations.

Which was unfortunate, since monitoring seemed more important than ever. The magic surrounding Danae had changed since the spell she’d cast on her sister, and he could no longer read its lines properly. He opened his watch again, stared several seconds with increasing exasperation as though unable to find what he wanted, then closed it more resolutely. He would have to hope for the best, or wait until the sight lines cleared.

His confidence remained high, but he was clearly irritated and frowned. The girl had been foolish to target her sister until she was stronger. Bold, but foolish – her better judgment overcome by jealousy. A smile broke through his expression of anoyance. Of course, it was those very qualities of daring and envy which had helped make her his so quickly and thoroughly. And those same qualities should make sure she ended up exactly where he wanted her.

He felt better, and slipped his watch into his pocket. Perhaps it was time to choose a few new victims to help pass the time.

And with that thought, he was in a crowded mall many miles away. No one seemed to notice his impossible arrival, but mere seconds after setting up a small stand with bright costume jewelry and knickknacks, people were stopping and happily examining them.

The modern human world was a wonderful place indeed. Malls were the best hunting grounds ever conceived, and he sometimes wondered if they might actually be truly diabolical in design. The qualities of shallowness, vanity and rampant consumerism they engendered practically delivered his victims to him.

And as if on cue, a 16 year old girl picked up a medallion to ask about the mysterious inscription on its face. Medallions – you couldn’t go wrong with medallions.

* * *

Danae ran into the hall, ignoring the odd looks some students were giving her. Had the magic backfired? Or - her blood ran cold, but it seemed to make sense in her new paranoid world view – had someone else gained access to similar magic? Could Amber have ratted on her? Could the other girls have found Tim or someone like him and be wreaking revenge?

She was so distracted, she almost ran straight into Kim and Amber, who both seemed to have taken up station to specifically intercept her after class, as if jealous of each other’s time. In fact, if Danae had been thinking clearly, she would have wondered if they had even gone to class, so desperate did they seem to see her again.

Which made it even odder when they almost missed her entirely. After the collision and mumbled half-apologies, Danae had started away again before Kim recognized her.

“Hey, Danae! Wait up. I …”

Kim’s voice froze as Danae turned to acknowledge her, and her eyes went very wide indeed.

“What did you do to your hair?”

Danae brushed at her hair nervously, as if stroking it might change the color back.

“I, um…”

Kim was staring with unabashed surprise and criticism.

“Well, it sure looks different. I … I guess it’s kind of cool.” The truth was, the grey hair changed Danae’s appearance completely, making her look years if not decades older. There even seemed to be some lines around her eyes and mouth, adding to the illusion of age, and Kim had assumed at first she was a teacher or supervisor. “But how the hell did you change it during class?”

“Umm….a spray?” Danae finally hazarded.

“Ohhh.”

Danae relaxed as Kim seemed to accept that as making sense. Although Kim’s aesthetic disapproval was obvious, at least the hair color helped distract from the other physical changes, and Danae made as though to run away again.

Amber, on the other hand, saw an opportunity to advance her position and jumped straight into ass-kissing mode.

“I LOVE the hair!” she enthused. “It’s so punk and fresh. It’s fabulous. It’s fantastic.”

“Shut up, Amber.”

“Yes, ma’am.” She squirmed uncomfortably at Kim’s disgusted glance, then turned back to Danae desperately. “Can I get you something? A drink? Some water? Some coffee?” She glanced at Danae’s tummy bulge, increasingly obvious despite her efforts to hold it in. “Some donuts?”

“Go away, Amber,” Danae ordered, in no mood for the mindless sycophant she had herself created.

Amber’s face fell, but as she started to reluctantly slink away, she paused to gaze adoringly at Danae’s backside. She stopped and started, then breathed softly and adoringly.

“Oh, God! It’s even bigger!”

Danae heard her and whirled around, using her pack to cover her ass. A quick pat and inventory at the same time confirmed Amber’s assessment – her bottom clearly stuck out farther and much wider, noticeably stretching the seat of her jeans.

“Go away, Amber!” Danae repeated.

Amber looked like a puppy being scolded away from a particularly delicious looking bone, but reluctantly obeyed, casting a few adoring glances backwards as she departed.

“Danae, what the hell is going on?” Kim demanded when most of the students around them had dispersed. Her eyes narrowed even more. “Are you wearing different shoes too?” She was unconsciously trying to rationalize Danae’s loss of height, even though she hadn’t knowingly registered it yet.

“No. Look, I just need to be alone for a while, OK?”

Kim looked worried. “Alone? Like, for how long?”

“I don’t know. Just give me a few minutes.” She hurried away, heading for the little-used bathrooms outside the gym, leaving Kim confused and anxious.

While she walked, Danae tried to take stock of what was happening. She was clearly shorter, based both on the heights of the students she passed (she was probably back down to average girls’ height) and on the way her jeans now dragged the floor. Unfortunately, the length was the only part of her jeans that was still too big. Despite the normally larger size, the jeans were tight in the thigh, her tummy stretched the waist and bulged slightly over the top, and the seat was incredibly tight across her expanded bottom. Her whole upper body was jiggling with every step.

Except one place, and that was the one that counted most.

She didn’t want to be obvious about it as she walked, especially since her increasingly bizarre appearance was drawing more and more attention, but repeated glances downward confirmed that her breasts were much smaller than they had been, especially given how much they should have been enlarging with her weight gain. They were all but eclipsed by her expanding tummy, and if anything seemed to be getting smaller and smaller as her belly grew. It was their smaller size that allowed her shirt to still come close to fitting, though that was small consolation indeed.

Her shoes also seemed uncomfortable, as if they were too small, which no doubt explained why she kept half-tripping and stumbling over her own feet. That and a slight blurriness to her vision. She had to squint a little to see clearly, and she wondered why things kept swimming in and out of focus as she looked at them.

She reached the restroom, deserted this early in the day as expected, and gratefully dropped her pack. Another oddity – after enhancing her musculature and size earlier, her pack had seemed almost weightless. It seemed to have added pounds steadily throughout the morning, and now seemed even heavier than usual, as though she had even less strength than normal.

But Danae wasn’t worried about why her pack seemed heavier, she was more concerned with the more obvious changes in her body. Her first glance in the mirror left her shocked despite her suspicions. Her hair was completely grey as expected, but it looked even older than its color: thinner and hanging listlessly. It framed a face that still looked young, but not teenager young – in addition to the early hints of wrinkles Kim had noticed, her nose and ears were noticeably larger, and her chin was more prominent, changing the lines of her face. She was still recognizable, but it was like looking into a time-warped mirror. There was also an additional familiarity beyond her own features, brought out by the altered lines. She looked like … like …

Oh God! She looked like her mother!

Now, this in itself wasn’t a bad thing. Maia was a handsome woman, especially for one established in middle age, but even ignoring the horror any woman faces when she recognizes maternal similarities (magnified a hundredfold in a girl desperate to prove her own uniqueness and individual identity), this wasn’t a look approaching anything Danae wanted at the age of 16.

Nor was the rest of her look any more pleasing. As she had already guessed, she looked to have gained about 20 pounds, and all as excess fat. Based on her loss of height, she was probably about the same overall weight she’d started the day at, but the change in her body type and the distribution of the weight was startling – she’d gone from tall and athletic – nearly Amazonian – to short and dumpy in the course of an hour. Callista’s clothes fit worse and worse: too long and too small at the same time. She opened her shirt to confirm the still hidden but suspected changes. Her breasts were decidedly smaller, and her bra cups looked sadly deflated over them. Even stranger, their shape had changed. She would have expected them to sag more because of her increased fat, but instead, they seemed rounder and closer to her chest. Almost like when …

The realization chilled her, and she pulled a bra cup away from her chest to get a better look. Sure enough, her breast was not only much smaller but less well defined. The area around her nipple was puffier, and the nipple itself was lighter in color. Again, the odd sense of familiar yet different. They were her breasts, all right.

From when she was 12.

And they looked like they were still heading in the wrong direction. They shrank a little more even as she watched, as though embarrassed to be seen. She let her loose bra cup fall back over it to hide the continuing transformation, and reluctantly turned her attention to the rest of her body.

She undid her painfully tight pants with a relieved grunt, though she worried if she would be able to button them up again, then shimmied them down. So far, most of the weight gain seemed to be centering in her lower body, making her look disproportionately bottom-heavy. She had a real tummy now, and it sagged softly over her too-small panties. Wide hips with developing love handles also threatened to overwhelm her underwear, and her spreading bottom had already started to swallow the back into a makeshift thong. Her legs were almost unrecognizable, especially in comparison to what they had been so recently. Her thighs, which just that morning had been model-long and beautifully sculpted with defined muscles, now looked doughy and thick, with a hint of skin dimpling. The toned, hard diamonds of her calf muscles had disappeared under a layer of fat, but more than that, Danae suspected the muscles themselves had almost disappeared – her calves were much rounder and obviously softer, even when she tried to tighten the muscles by standing on her toes.

There were other changes there that bothered her just as much. Her shoes felt about two sizes too small and pinched her feet. She had a noticeable growth of hair on her lower legs, as though she hadn’t shaved for weeks or even months, yet there was no sign of hair above her panties, and she suspected that area was also taking a journey back down memory lane to keep her breasts company. Even more alarming, there was a slight bulge near the top of her slit which had no business being there at all.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” she muttered, trying to suppress the panic that naturally accompanied the growing discoveries. She couldn’t panic – she had to think this through. How could this have happened. Everything had been going perfectly until …

Of course. Callista. The memory of the unexpected pain from casting last night’s spell drove the other suspicions from her mind. She was responsible. Once again what should have been a warm, sisterly consideration was replaced by distrust and hostility. It might have been deliberate (she could just imagine her sister chiding her about “what a lesson this should be”) or accidental (the natural power Callista had and which Danae so envied – it wasn’t fair!), but she had no doubt Callista was responsible. The question was, how to handle it?

Since the magic she’d directed at others seemed to be rebounding in various forms, her first thought was to get back to her dolls and undo as many changes as possible, hoping to return herself to normal, or at least try to neutralize the Callista doll before the effects could spread.

She was trying to struggle back into her ill-fitting pants again while she considered how best to get away, when she was surprised by the door opening. She jumped into a stall to hide, but it was Kim’s voice that followed after her.

“Danae, are you in here?”

Danae froze in panic. What could she do now?

Copyright 2005 by Nomdreserv
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TheoW
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Re: Playing With Dolls By Nomdreserv

Postby TheoW » Fri May 25, 2012 10:59 pm

Part 10

Callista tugged her shirt back down, too distracted to notice it creeping up. She was on her way to one of the satellite facilities for the Institute’s help centers, where she hoped to find a mage experienced enough to discover the reason for her shrinking and the troubling vision she’d had while trying to reverse it.

She’d been forced to use the bus, which added to her feeling of helplessness. Not that she would have been sure about driving anyway – at the moment, she was probably physically too short to drive, especially without attracting potentially disastrous attention. (She looked like a 12 year old, and most 12 year olds tend to be a little conspicuous behind the wheel). Not only would that call unwanted attention to her in and of itself, but she looked nothing like her license if she were actually stopped or questioned.

But there was something else too – a change in her attitude or confidence. Driving seemed … scary. Or at least intimidating. And not quite right. Like something her mother did.

No, there was no way she could drive to get around. It was like she had been stripped of adult privileges along with her size. She looked out the window and watched the world go by – it seemed awfully big and scary all of a sudden.

Not that taking the bus left her much less self-conscious. Her small size and Danae’s old clothes combined to make everyone assume she was a preteen, and she’d already faced two pickup attempts by junior high boys, and some suspicious looks from older riders, apparently distrustful of ne’er-do-well kids cutting school (or, perhaps, reacting to the instinctive antipathy people felt towards demons, even when not consciously recognized – it was something both Callista and Danae had long since come to recognize).

This reinforced her insecurity. She actually felt like a naughty kid again. She didn’t know how much was simple loss of size and how much was embarrassment at being seen like this, but somehow adults actually seemed very, very intimidating. She found herself avoiding their gazes and trying to look as small and inconspicuous as possible.

She tugged at Danae’s old t-shirt, which was riding up on her again. Odd, but all of her clothes seemed to be much tighter than when she’d first put them on. Maybe she wasn’t quite as small as she’d thought at first. Her shoes were becoming uncomfortable, and her jeans were now skintight (which might have helped account for the repeated pickup attempts). Still, she was almost at the Institute contact for the area, and wouldn’t have to wait much longer to get some answers.

And preoccupied with that thought, she absent-mindedly tugged her shirt down once again, not noticing that it wouldn’t reach her jeans anymore, leaving a slim but slowly growing patch of bare tummy as it retreated.

* * *

Danae heard Kim step farther into the room.

“Danae?” Kim asked again, stopping outside the closed stall. “Are you in here?”

“Yeah,” Danae admitted, her voice fluctuating as random size or age changes suddenly overtook it. “But, I'm, um, not feeling well.”

“Danae, I want to help you.”

Danae would have loved to hear those words and obvious sincerity under almost any circumstances. Except these.

“I, um, really think I should be alone, Kim. I’ll try to catch up with you later.”

There was a pause. “Dani, I know something really weird is going on. I'm not just going to walk away.”

The fact that claims of sickness and desire to be alone in a bathroom hadn’t chased her away seemed to confirm that very point. Danae hesitated as how to answer.

“And I still want to help,” Kim added.

Danae took a deep breath and opened the door. She hadn’t been able to button her jeans over her new tummy or pull them over her hips, and as a result, her expanded belly hung in display despite the fact that her jeans now trailed the floor. Her shirt was alternately tight and loose, and in just the opposite way a woman’s should be – too small for her belly and too large for her dwindling breasts. Her changed hair and extra weight fortunately distracted from her loss of height, or Kim would have noticed Danae was slightly shorter than she was now. The clothes did hide the other ongoing changes, but Kim gaped anyway, her mind trying to reconcile how Danae had looked just this morning with this altered version.

“Wh…?” she started to ask, before shaking her head. “Danae, what the hell is going on?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Danae answered truthfully. “But I really, really need to get home. Now.”

Kim stared in shock a few more seconds before nodding resolutely.

“We’ll grab my brother’s car. I've got a spare set of keys.”

Ten minutes later and they were halfway home. They rode most of the way in silence, Danae desperately hoping her transformations would stabilize and concentrating as best she could in an unpracticed effort to stop them, and Kim once or twice trying to get her to open up and talk about what was happening.

“Come on, Dani. What’s wrong?”

“I’ll be fine as soon as I get home,” Danae insisted.

Kim shook her head. “These last few days are just totally bizarre. You know something, don’t you? Does this have something to do with Jessica and the others?”

Danae shook her head, feeling her stomach rumble ominously. Her shirt started to stretch again. At least her shoes weren’t hurting as much. In fact, there had been a strange tingling there the last few minutes, and now they felt too large.

“This is totally freaky,” Kim continued. “It’s like magic or something.”

“Magic?” Danae squeaked in alarm, her voice jumping an extra octave as it chose that moment to go back through puberty. “What makes you think it’s … I mean, I wouldn’t… um, I mean, that’s impossible. Magic, ahem.” She cleared her throat, trying to get her voice down in a familiar register.

Kim, meanwhile, just glanced at her strangely. She had just been trying to make light of the increasingly strange situations at the school the last few days. She hadn’t been serious about the magic comment.

Until now.

* * *

When she stepped off the bus, Callista noted many odd or lingering glances following after her. She self-consciously tried to tug her shirt back down and pulled at her jeans, which were really digging into her side now. Her shoes were pinching, and she wished she’d worn one of her own pairs despite how big Danae’s had seemed this morning.

Luckily, the storefront doubling as an Institute access was only a couple of blocks away. She walked there as quickly as her pinching shoes allowed, only half noticing that the adults and people on the street around her no longer seemed as tall or intimidating as they had just an hour before.

She entered the antiques and curios store (many help centers for the Institute doubled as retail stores, not the least because most mages still needed a “day job” – very few were on salary, and using magic for financial gain was strictly prohibited). She looked quickly around to check the handful of customers and two attendants, then walked to the counter, catching the eye of the woman behind it. The woman must have been pretty short herself, since Callista stood only least an inch or two smaller despite her condition.

“Hi, I'm Callista. Are you Carrie?” she asked. When the woman nodded, she added. “I called.”

The woman nodded, but she looked at Callista strangely. She spoke softly. “Right. The, um, problem. Let me just take care of a couple of things, and we’ll see what we can do.” In a louder voice she added. “Yes, I think we have one or two of those brooches, but they haven’t been fully inventoried. If you’ll just step here in the back.”

Leading Callista to an inner office, she instructed her to wait until she could take care of the legitimate customers. She looked at the way her jeans and shirt were riding up and shook her head.

Callista noticed the gesture and directed her eyes the same way. Recognition finally overcame the spell haze. No wonder her clothes were feeling so tight! Everything looked about two sizes too small. She was sure they hadn’t been that small when she’d put them on, which meant the spell was wearing off on its own, or her earlier attempts at reversal had produced some effect. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed it earlier, but suspected the magic had helped cloud her mind.

By the time the apprentice mage came back, Callista was fidgeting in a combination of discomfort from her too tight clothing and awkwardness about the situation.

“Hi, I'm Carrie,” the woman said, introducing herself more formally. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Hi again. I'm Callista.”

Callista stood to shake Carrie’s hand, and in so doing, realized she must have still been growing. She now overtopped the woman by about 4 inches. Her clothes clung to her like a second skin, her t-shirt had shrunk into a tight belly shirt and was on its way towards a tube top, and her jeans were at mid calf. The button of her jeans chose that moment to pop under the strain of her expanding hips, leaving even more of her skin exposed, not to mention the little girl panties which suddenly looked ridiculously inappropriate. Her toes were visible bulging and stretching the strained material of Danae’s shoes.

The woman stood holding Callista’s hand, feeling the strength in that powerful handshake, looking doubtfully at her Amazonian height and physique, and at her woefully undersized clothes.

“Nice to meet you, Callista,” Carrie said, gazing up into her eyes. She seemed a little confused. “Um, what did you say your problem was?”

Callista crossed her arms nervously over her chest. Her burgeoning breasts were clearly outlined by the incredibly tight, undersized shirt and bra she’d borrowed. The training bra looked absolutely absurd as well as overmatched.

“I’m, um, shrinking,” Callista answered.

“I … see.” Carrie’s confusion now seemed touched by fear. Although anyone from the Institute was deemed automatically safe, it was natural to wonder if she might be dealing with someone unstable given her dress and claim. Renegades sometimes discovered outlets and attacked the less experienced mages for supplies as well.

“No, really,” Callista continued urgently. “An hour ago, I was only this tall.” She held her hand up at waist level, inadvertently understating her previous height and making it seem even less plausible.

“Ah, well, ok then,” Carrie nodded nervously. “Guess you got better, huh?”

“Well, maybe. I don’t know.” Callista said, fiddling with her clothes nervously. She didn’t know that the secondary effects of Danae’s spell making her feel like a little girl hadn’t fully dissipated, making her afraid or even unable to articulate her case properly. “I mean, I was short. Really, really short. And my little sister was bigger. And I had to wear her clothes. And she was wearing mine. And I felt like a little girl again. And I wanted to call mommy, ‘Mommy,’ um, I mean, my momm, my mother, ‘Mommy.’ And I even wanted to suck my thumb.”

Her hand moved halfway up as though to do just that, an automatic gesture out of frustration.

Carrie’s nervousness only intensified as the story spilled out. “Did you?”

“Yeah, and there was this scary guy, and .. and I think he has something to do with it.”

“A scary guy?”

Callista knew she wasn’t explaining the situation properly, and brushed at her face and hair in frustration. The gesture briefly exposed her ears, which she usually took pains to keep covered by her hair. The gesture, however, caught Carrie’s attention, and her eyes widened in shock. The remnants of concern disappeared from her face, replaced entirely with fright. She backed away a step, as though to bolt the room at a wrong move.

“You…you’re … you’re…” she gasped, pointing towards Callista’s ears. Her eyes swept nervously up and down Callista’s body, looking for other telltale signs. Only now did she actually remember that she’d heard that name whispered or snarled in discussions. (Callista was rarely referred to by name amongst the Institute members – detractors preferred dehumanizing vagueness or pejoratives.) “You’re that demon! The one they let in.”

Callista felt the burn of recognition color her cheeks.

“Yes, but…”

“Get out!” Carrie ordered, summoning her courage and resolution. She wondered if this was supposed to be a joke or a threat. Demons loved to play with their targets before striking.

“But…”

“Get out!” she repeated, pulling a necklace up from her chest. “I have my wards active. You can’t hurt me.”

“I'm not trying to hurt you. I told you, there’s something wrong with …”

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong – that someone decided to let you loose in the Institute. How dare you show up with some ridiculous story about shrinking? Look at you! Wait, are you shrinking me?” The last was added with a horror of certainty. She patted herself frantically and tried to gauge her clothes without a mirror. “Oh my God! You are! I'm shorter already! I can tell!” She wailed miserably, and looked ready to run shouting from the room.

“Calm down,” Callista urged frantically, hearing someone coming. “You’re not any shorter. You’re …”

Carrie’s partner entered the room.

“What’s going on? We can hear you out …”

Carrie grabbed at her friend’s shirt, staring wildly into her eyes.

“Beth, quick! How short am I?” She looked them both up and down in comparison. “Oh no! You’re my height! We’re both shrinking!”

“What?” Beth gasped.

Carrie pointed at Callista. “She’s shrinking us!”

Callista felt a surge of anger. “I am not shrinking you. I'm the one shrinking!”

Beth looked at Callista’s undersized clothes and Amazonian physique with obvious skepticism, and then turned back to her frantic friend. “I don’t understand, is she the one who called about…”

“She’s a demon!” Carrie announced. “She’s that demon we heard about.”

There was a sharp answering breath, and Beth looked at Callista in an entirely different light - admittedly, not with Carrie’s obvious fear, but with unmistakable wariness and hostility.

“Is that true?”

The same burning swept through Callista’s body. The question always carried the weight of fear, disgust and disdain. It was like being asked if she was a serial murderer or child molester.

“Yes.”

“I told you!” The triumph immediately yielded to panic. “Am I much shorter yet? Oh my God! I don’t want to be a midget!”

“I'm not shrinking anyone,” Callista reassured them in exasperation. But I could, she added angrily to herself, briefly imagining the tiny women’s attitudes changing as her shoe descended on them. She suppressed the flare of her darker side and held her hands out appeasingly. “Look, I just came here for help.”

“Help? For…shrinking?” Beth asked.

“Yes.”

It was obvious Beth didn’t feel the same panic as her partner, but equally clear she felt the same enmity and lack of sympathy. On the other hand, Callista was a member of the Institute. They couldn’t turn away a member in need. Except…

“Well, it’s obvious whatever affected you has worn off. Or are you supposed to be 12 feet tall normally?”

“No,” Callista admitted, feeling a fresh burn. Beth probably did half expect a demon to be that tall.

“In that case, you don’t need our help any more, do you? You might as well get going,” She concluded triumphantly. She turned to her quivering partner. “Carrie, calm down. You’re fine.”

“But she…she’s …” Carrie stammered, pointing accusingly.

“She’s leaving,” Beth suggested firmly, catching Callista’s eye meaningfully.

Callista felt the lingering flushes of anger and humiliation as she stared angrily for a few seconds. Her cheeks still burning, she nodded in defeat and walked towards the door in silence, wondering if Danae was right in her attitudes about the Institute and those who controlled it. Her steps were constrained by her ridiculously tight clothes, mincing her gait. She felt the zipper on her undersized jeans slowly working its way down, an added insult to the injury, and only hoped there was a clothing store nearby.

As she passed the two women, she heard Carrie mutter something under her breath, and not something we have any desire to repeat, involving as it does an extremely unpleasant combination of a noxious material and a specific segment of female anatomy. Callista’s shoulders stiffened, not anticipating such a nasty and gratuitous insult from the previously cowed mage.

Beth heard it too, and was frankly just as much shocked. She looked at Carrie in surprise, then shot a hand out to touch Callista’s shoulder.

“Wait.” She hesitated, obviously struggling with her own feelings, before forcing a smile. “I’m sorry. We’re being rude, and you obviously came for help. Please sit down and tell me what’s been happening.”

Carrie looked at her friend in shock. “Beth, what are you doing?”

“The same thing we’d do for any other mage in trouble.” When Carrie still stared unhappily at the turnaround, Beth added sharply. “Why don’t you take care of the store while we talk.”

Now it was Carrie’s turn to stalk from the room in embarrassment.

And watching her leave, somehow, Callista didn’t mind her too-tight clothes and mysterious condition quite as much as before.

* * *

Once they were at Danae’s house, Kim insisted on staying with her, although Danae tried to get her to go back.

“No point in us both going AWOL,” Danae argued. “I'm used to suspension.”

Kim shook her head, still thinking Danae’s problems were too mysterious to ignore. “Not until I'm sure you’re OK.” She smiled. “That’s what friends are for.”

Danae felt warmth at the reassurance, but a thrill of alarm the next. She was now noticeably shorter than Kim, and unless she could do something to reverse it, the changes would be impossible to ignore.

“OK, but at least stay downstairs until I can, um, take care of something, all right?”

Kim agreed, and they walked in together, Danae pulling her clothes as tightly as possible around her body to camouflage how huge and baggy they were. First, she had to make sure she was alone. She called out to see if Callista was home. When there was a hopeful silence, she checked the kitchen and family room, then ran up the stairs, losing a shoe along the way (and revealing she now had the feet of a six year old), and to her bedroom, confirming Callista was out. Immensely relieved, Danae went into her own room, locked the door, and retrieved her magical apparatus.

The instructions had included a ritual for “emergency” spell reversals, and Danae read that section again. Of course, there was no indication for her specific problem, but she still hoped that if she broke the spell she’d cast on Callista, the rest of the magic would right itself.

She picked up her Callista doll, shocked at its appearance. The doll had grown in size, no doubt reflecting Callista’s ability to resist the magic Danae had used. The little girl clothes she had placed on the doll were distorted and torn, no doubt also breaking that part of the spell. Danae fumed, automatically, if unjustly, blaming Callista for all of her new problems. Her sister was far less helpless than she had imagined, though this proof of her natural ability did nothing to improve Danae’s mood.

For a few seconds, Danae felt such a surge of resentment wash through her, she actually considered new, more dramatic ways to humiliate her sister, risking whatever backlash resulted, before discretion triumphed over jealousy. She brought the wand to the doll and carefully touched it three times along the face, chest and legs, while reciting the prescribed incantation.

She thought she was ready for it this time, but even so, the shock of pain traveling back up into her hand made her cry out. She managed to keep her hand on the wand this time, forcing the magic to continue, even though it felt as though she was squeezing a live electrical wire. There was a new jolt of pain, as though someone had turned the voltage up, a cracking sound, and then…

The pain was gone. Even more importantly, the picture she’d used to activate the Callista doll had separated from the doll’s face, and drifted to the floor beside it. The doll had already returned to its blank, generic form, and with it, Danae hoped, the uncontrolled connection to her sister’s magic had been broken. Only now did she consider whether severing the magic to Callista would actually reverse the spell.

Not that the prospect of her sister permanently being so much smaller really bothered her…

While the feeling slowly ebbed back into her tingling hand, Danae examined the wand, concerned by the ominous cracking sound during the ritual. There was the barest hint of a linear fracture along the mid wand shaft, but it otherwise appeared intact. Danae had to assume it would still work properly.

Even though she hoped breaking the spell on Callista would halt the changes to her own body, she decided to reverse some of the other magic too, just in case. In particular, the spells channeling age and weight had to be broken. She set the other dolls out and prepared to go to work.

A knock at the door made her jump.

“Danae?”

“Kim! What is it? What do you want?”

“Are you all right? I heard you shout.”

“I'm fine. I'm … just changing.” (How true that was.) “Um, maybe you could go down and get some drinks? I could really use one. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

“Well, OK.” Kim sounded unsure about leaving her, though how much of this was real concern and how much was residual from the spell Danae had cast binding her was open to question. “But if you’re not down in a few minutes, I'm coming back up.”

Danae hurriedly set up the first set of dolls. She looked at the one representing Ms. Jameson, briefly feeling a flash of her old enjoyment wondering how the school principal was adjusting to a life back in diapers, then she remembered the current urgency and touched the wand along its body while reciting the incantation.

Nothing happened.

With rising fear, she tried it again, but without any more success. The same thing happened with the other dolls. Fighting panic, Danae tried the more familiar ritual of activating a doll, using her own picture and the Callista doll she had just blanked.

To her surprise and relief, the doll quickly transformed, once again becoming a miniature replica, right down to the unpleasant changes of the morning. Apparently the magic hadn’t deserted her after all. Perhaps she just hadn’t mastered the reversal spells.

She looked at her doll unhappily, dismayed by the changes wrought from the chaotic turn of the magic. The figure was short and plump, with the nearly flat chest and undeveloped sex of a young girl, but the gray hair and skin of an older woman. Her chubby legs were marred by dark sprinklings of luxuriant hair, completely at odds with a little girl’s tiny feet at the bottom. And even on this miniature scale, the abnormal size of her enlarged clitoris was obvious, poking out at the top of her bare and otherwise undeveloped cleft like an immature cock. She was a freak.

There was no way she could face Kim looking like this. But even if the reversal magic wasn’t working, there was nothing that said she couldn’t make new changes to her body, counteracting the earlier ones, at least until she could get Kim to leave. Danae had a dim understanding that mixing magic was dangerous, and in particular, layering chaotic magic on top of chaotic magic was asking for trouble, but the urgency of her situation overwhelmed it.

She went to work with clay, cloth, and pencil rebuilding and mentally visualizing her restored body, then activated it with the wand while willing the changes to happen as fast as possible. She felt a strong but reassuring tingle followed by an entirely new and alarming burning pain pass through her body, and gasped as it drove the breath from her lungs. The pain increased exponentially, making her cry out between clenched teeth. This transformation was different from the others, and she had a flash of panic as she realized it was now totally beyond her control. Pain wracked her from head to toe. She fell onto the floor, helpless and quivering. Bones creaked and cracked. Her skin crawled as if alive, and ripples and undulations made it look like her entire body was filled with Jell-O.

Downstairs, Kim heard another faint cry, followed by a thud on the floor and immediately moved to the bottom of the stairs to hear better. The following, seemingly ominous silence made her as nervous as another crash would have, and she called upstairs.

“Danae?”

No answer. She repeated the call more urgently, and then started running up the stairs. She reached Danae’s bedroom, found the door locked and pounded on it.

“Dani!”

Still not hearing anything beyond some rustling and gasping breathing, she debated calling 911 or just trying to break the door down herself. Just as she had braced her shoulder to try forcing it, the door opened, leaving her astonished and flat-footed.

Danae stood in the doorway smiling at her. She was wearing a t-shirt and shorts, and seemed completely at ease, though a careful observer would have noticed the sheen of perspiration across her face.

“Hey, what’s the big deal? I told you I was changing.”

Kim stared in amazement. Changing was an understatement. Danae’s hair was back to its normal dark color, and she somehow seemed to have lost 30 pounds along with her previous clothes. The shirt emphasized her breasts, and bared a little of her tummy, showing only a small residual of the gut that had been hanging over it minutes before.

“How…how did …?” Kim just gaped and pointed.

“What this?” Danae asked, indicating her hair. “I told you – it was just a spray. I decided I didn’t like the old-lady look after all and wiped it off.”

“But … but …”

“And those clothes looked awful on me – made me look totally fat. I should have known better than to borrow my sister’s things.” Danae smiled, as though it was no big deal, hoping the hammering of her heart was well hidden. Her breath also caught as she tried to mimic a normal pattern of respiration rather than gasping and panting as the after effects of her rapid transformation subsided.

“But you …”

“Oh, and I think I was a little bloated. It’s amazing what a couple of Midols will do in just an hour.”

Kim’s eyes narrowed. “Danae, what the hell happened? Those noises. The way you look…”

“What about the way I look?” Danae asked almost hopefully. She was projecting her own desires as strongly as she could.

You look tota… you look …you…” Kim floundered. She was going to say ‘totally different,’ but found she had almost let slip ‘totally hot.’

“Yes?”

Kim shook her head as though to clear it. “Nothing. You’re telling me nothing weird is happening?

“Nothing,” Danae insisted with wide-eyed innocence. Then her expression changed. “Except we have to decide what we want to do with an unexpected day off and a house alone to ourselves.”

Kim still felt overwhelmed and confused, but now that Danae seemed to be all right, a little anger seeped to the surface.

“You know, you really had me worried. I thought something was really wrong.”

You have no idea, Danae thought, feeling her pulse slowly coming back to normal. With the crisis seemingly averted, she felt her sense of control and mastery settle back into place. She even allowed a seductive glint to come to her eye with her answering smile.

“Well, let’s see what I can do to make that up to you.”

* * *

Danae’s earlier thoughts regarding her principal might have lingered longer had she known that the once formidable Ms. Jameson was currently bawling miserably while turned over the knee of her erstwhile secretary. Her little-girl dress and panties had been pulled down to her ankles to allow Ms. Richards better access for the bare-bottomed spanking.

“We do not use that kind of language, young lady!” Richards scolded her.

This referred to an unfortunate but undeniably colorful diatribe Ms. Jameson had loosed upon being discovered while trying to phone for help.

“I’m sorrrrrrryyyyy,” she wailed, sounding every bit like the frantic little girl she looked. Once again, stress seemed to have dissolved any tenuous holds Jameson had on her adult discipline and sensibilities. Any kind of emotional or physical strain seemed to send her right back psychologically to six years old.

Richards had to admit, being able to humiliate her tyrannical boss this way was incredibly satisfying, especially being able to turn her own preferences for zero-tolerance and corporal punishment back on her. This was the third spanking she’d given her since finding her transformed in that inexplicable manner, and she was enjoying this one almost as much as the first.

She was enjoying it so much, in fact, that she didn’t notice as the tiny bottom underneath her hand began slowly growing. She noticed Jameson felt a little heavier across her knees, but just shifted her to better redistribute the weight. She didn’t notice the young girl’s legs slowly lengthen, reaching closer and closer to the floor, or see the way her chest suddenly blossomed as it lay across her thigh. The pert buttocks slowly expanded beneath her hand, seeming to swell with each swat. They rounded and pushed out, forming a delightfully heart-shaped target.

Ms. Jameson felt increasingly strange. Her secretary’s blows seemed to hurt less and less, and for some reason, both her tormentor’s lap and the room around them seemed to shrink with each second. She felt the little-girl panties around her legs tighten until they bound her like a cord, while her dress shrank and tightened into an undersized shirt. She felt her chest pushing into Richards’ thigh, as though two pillows had interposed between them.

She felt something else too – something completely unexpected and shocking. She felt wet.

Not wet like her recent problems with incontinence. The very familiar, warm wetness of sexual arousal. She began rubbing her hips against her secretary’s lap, feeling sudden pleasure from both the contact and – shockingly – from the spanking itself.

Richards noticed the way her erstwhile boss had stopped yelling and struggling, except for a little residual rubbing back and forth. Her spanks became less and less vigorous as she finally realized how much bigger and heavier Jameson had become. She stopped concentrating on the spanking and finally paused long enough to get a good look at her.

And most particularly at the decidedly grown-up woman’s bottom she was now spanking.

It was twice its previous size - full, round and womanly, and glowing red from her spanking. Even more distressing, there was a fully developed and obviously damp womanly cleft adjacent to it. Richards could see the pubic hair even from this angle. A glance to either side showed a woman’s legs – bare except for a rubber-band like pair of overstretched panties binding them – now reaching the floor (and helping reduce the weight from her lap, keeping the changes hidden a few seconds longer). The dress encasing her upper body did little to conceal the fully developed breasts and body of a grown woman.

More specifically, her grown up boss, full-size and fully restored.

And still lying across her secretary’s lap, receiving a spanking. Richards gasped and cried out.

“Oh my God! Ms. Jameson!” She tried to struggle out from underneath her, panicking and preparing for the worst. “I, um, had no idea.”

Ms. Jameson stood up slowly, seeming almost reluctant. She looked absolutely ridiculous in her torn dress – the top barely managed to cover her breasts, the middle was ripped halfway around, leaving even more skin exposed, and the bottom didn’t even reach her hips any more, leaving a clear view of her pussy. She still had her undersized panties twisted around her legs, a perfect symbol of her continued humiliation over the last two days.

This is where Ms. Jameson should have unleashed the full torrent of her pent-up anger, humiliation and frustration. Indeed, she had been silently anticipating just this restoration of power and privilege the last 24 hours during her ordeal. And no doubt half-expecting just such a reversal of fortune, Ms. Richards now sat almost shrinking away in fear. She only hoped Jameson’s wrath would only cost her the job and not her freedom.

Except, Ms. Jameson didn’t look angry – she looked confused. For something neither of them could have anticipated had twisted things around yet again. Ms. Jameson had just undergone a maturation process that normally took 20 years in a matter of minutes, including those critically important adolescent years in which so much of a person’s personality, character, and even their sexual preferences are crystallized. More importantly, she had been under the influence of notoriously unstable chaotic magic, which allowed her old self to be dissolved or reformed capriciously and permanently. She had undergone all this while having her naked bottom actively spanked by another woman.

And she now found that she loved it.

Indeed, she all but flooded her pussy at the memory and nearness of it. To Ms. Richards’ astonishment, her usually arrogant and imperious boss dropped to her knees in front of her and clutched her legs tightly.

“Pl…please, ma’am. Spank me some more.”

“What?” Richards gasped.

Ms. Jameson looked up with adoring and glittering eyes, her lust and desire for humiliation equally obvious.

“Please, ma … mistress. I've been such a bad little girl.”

She wiggled her still glowing pink ass fetchingly while she pleaded, and Ms. Richards was surprised to feel an answering rush of sexual excitement on her own part. The expressions of dominance and pleasure returned to her face, transformed into very adult versions indeed.

“You have indeed,” she said slowly, hardly daring to believe the turnaround. Her voice grew harder but was also laced with desire. “A very naughty, little girl. Turn around.”

Ms. Jameson whimpered in excitement, and shuffled around on her hands and knees, brazenly presenting her naked bottom for further abuse.

And it was difficult to tell who cried out harder with pleasure with the next loud slap.

* * *

“Let…me…go!” Jim growled helplessly, pinned in Janice’s arms.

“Not until you tell me your cup size,” Janice teased.

“I don’t have a fucking cup size!”

“Yeah? What do you call these?” she reached around and squeezed his breasts.

The truth, of course, was Janice didn’t care what size Jim was. She just got off on teasing him about his new breasts. Though there was also a slight edge of jealousy, since she could tell he was bigger up top than she was now. The other factor that made it irresistible was getting back for years of domination and teasing that was inevitable from an older – and much larger – brother. If you could still call him a brother. He was looking more and more like a new sister, and a smaller one at that. Even so, she remembered years of merciless tickling, teasing, and various torments all brought on simply by nature of his natural size advantage, and it was a thrill to be able to physically dominate him.

Strangely enough, this had become even easier over the last few minutes while they were wrestling. It was almost like he had lost even more of his strength while trying to fight her, or somehow she’d gotten stronger – he sure felt easy to manhandle now.

Though perhaps “manhandle” wasn’t the best term. Jim had already reached the stage of looking unmistakably female, but now that she saw him closer, she noticed that even his face and hair looked feminine, as though the transformation had begun a new phase. Only his family, witness to the ongoing transformation, could have possibly recognized him as himself, let alone the recent starting linebacker for the football team.

“I'm gonna tell!” he whined.

“Try it!” she shot back, releasing him with a snort of contempt. She shook her hand from the strange tingle she’d been feeling while holding him, like some kind of static shock. “I’ll tell Mom I found you going through my underwear to find something to wear. Ahem.”

Her voice had broken during the last part of her speech, sounding deeper and rougher, and she tried to clear what she was assumed was something stuck in her throat.

His eyes widened. “You wouldn’t.”

“Why not? You look pretty ridiculous in your own clothes.”

It was true – they looked even larger and baggier on him now, as though he’d lost a few more inches of height during their struggle, and his sweatpants were threatening to slide off. She could swear he was even shorter than she was now.

“I do not!” he stamped his foot, looking every inch the petulant teenaged girl his body suggested.

“Look in the mirror … girlfriend.” She felt a weird tingle at her groin as she continued toying with him, followed by a slight pressure unlike anything she’d experienced. She unconsciously reached down between her legs to adjust the angle slightly.

Jim’s eyes narrowed again over what he assumed was a derisive gesture directed at him – and what he didn’t have. He made an angry noise and even angrier gesture and ran off to lock himself inside his room. Janice chuckled and retreated victoriously to her own room.

“Every brother should be a sister sometime,” she laughed to herself, frowning as her voice broke again, even deeper this time. “Damn! I must need a drink or something.”

She stopped as she passed her own mirror. Weird. It was probably just from recent comparison to Jim’s new boobs, but her own breasts sure looked smaller than they should. She drew her shirt tighter and thrust her chest out. That seemed to help a little, but they were still definitely underwhelming. What seemed even odder was that her shirt otherwise looked and felt tighter than usual, particularly across the shoulders.

She noticed a few other oddities and stepped closer for better inspection. Her face looked different – her nose and chin more prominent, and her eyebrows darker and heavier, like she’d forgotten to tweeze them recently. She tried clearing her throat again and noticed how much more prominent her Adam’s apple was.

Almost like …

Fear transformed her face. She pulled her shirt up and pressed her hands against her chest. Her breasts WERE smaller and only half-filled her bra. They felt softer too, as though the internal tissues which gave them structure had dissolved, leaving only small pads of fat. They sat on her chest wrong, since her upper body looked wider and more angular, and her arms were obviously more muscular, explaining why overpowering Jim had been so easy.

Fighting her rising panic, she tugged her jeans down. A moment later, and she screamed.

And no wonder. The longer, stronger legs she could have dealt with. Even the noticeably darker, thicker hair on them. But that rapidly swelling bulge pushing the front of her panties out was another matter entirely.

And Jim’s doctor, about to be presented with another emergency visit, was in for a rather “big” surprise.

* * *

“Just leave me alone,” Allison insisted. “No one believes me.”

“Well, Ms. Brantley, you have to admit, it’s kind of hard to believe,” the young nurse’s aide insisted, moving to take her blood pressure and pulse. She giggled nervously. “You do look a little older than 24.”

She shook her head over the strange delusions patients could have, especially some of the older ones. As she attached the pressure cuff, however, she made a surprised cry, one immediately echoed by Allison.

“Ow!” they both complained.

The aide assumed it was just a static shock, but made sure to carefully inspect her equipment before trying it again. She held Allison’s hand to manually take her pulse while they waited, then put the cuff back on.

“There, that’s better,” she announced. “Hey, your pressure actually seems better today.”

Allison started to announce how little that mattered to her, when she noticed something odd. The aide, who radiated the freshness of youth and vitality the way only a woman just past her teens can do, looked a little different – just a little less “fresh” or vibrant. The natural rosiness of her cheeks faded into a neutral skin tone, and the barest hint of laxness came into the skin, making small crinkles when she smiled cheerfully about the pressure reading. Allison’s mind raced, but made an intuitive jump.

“Could you check again?” she asked sweetly.

“Sure,” the aide smiled, highlighting her new laugh lines. She started the procedure again, and Allison watched with bated breath.

The lines became more pronounced and fixed. The slight laxness in the skin progressed to the point that her cheeks sagged slightly. Her shining hair became duller and dryer.

Changes became more obvious other places. Her pert young breasts grew larger but softer, more “womanly,” and finally drooping as they overweighed the cute little bra designed for fashion rather than practicality. Her candy-stripe dress became tighter as her hips and tummy spread, and small gaps appeared between the buttons. By the time she finished and turned to leave, Allison could see that her ass had also jumped about two sizes, making the dress decidedly undersized and lifting the back immodestly.

Dr. Smith, a young woman fresh out of her fellowship, swept into the room, radiating confidence.

“And how’s my patient today?” she asked with obviously fake cheerfulness.

“She’s fine, doctor,” the aide announced. “Her pulse and pressure are back down to normal.”

“Ah, thank you, um, Susie, isn’t it?” The doctor looked a little confused.

“That’s right,” the aide giggled, the affectation seeming less cute in a 30-something woman than it had in a girl just out of high school.

“Yes, well, um, you should think about getting some rest. You, um, look tired.”

Susie wrinkled her brow at the strange suggestion (and it didn’t take much to get it wrinkled now). Dr. Smith was acting weird. And she had no intention of “getting some rest.” In fact, she had plans for an all-nighter with her friends after work.

Though now that she thought about it, she did feel a little tired…

Dr. Smith watched the aide leave. She would really have to speak to the girl about appropriate dress. Though perhaps girl wasn’t the best term – Susie was apparently older than she’d assumed at first. Quite the opposite problem for, Allison, her new patient – a woman in her sixties or seventies convinced she was only 24.

Though, now that she turned to talk to her, she realized she might have overestimated her age as much as underestimating Susie’s. The woman sitting in the bed was hardly in her twenties, that much was obvious, but she might be nearer to 40 than 60. Meeting her yesterday, she would have sworn her hair was entirely gray, but now she realized it was mixed gray and brown. Her face looked much better in this light too, younger and less wrinkled. Heck, even her breasts looked a little perkier.

And perky was definitely the term for Allison changed attitude. She seemed to be looking at the doctor with a mix of wild hope and something close to hunger.

“Oh, doctor, I'm feeling so much better today. And … and I realized how foolish I've been. No wonder you all thought I was crazy.”

“Hmmrph, well, we don’t use the term ‘crazy’ around here,” Dr. Smith informed her archly. “But I am glad to hear you’re feeling better. Perhaps now you’d be willing to tell me your real name and history, ‘Allison’?”

“Oh, yes, certainly, doctor,” Allison nodded. “I have just one request.”

“Yes?”

“Well, it’s so comforting having all you wonderful people here trying to help me, but I just feel so nervous and embarrassed. Would … would you hold my hand while I talk?”

Dr. Smith was a little surprised, but quickly nodded. Anything to help the patient make a breakthrough. Allison seized her hand with surprising intensity, as though determined not to let her get it back.

“Well, it all started a few days ago. I was … um … playing shuffleboard and … you don’t mind if I take a while, do you, doctor? It’s kind of a long story.”

Dr. Smith forced a smile and sat down next to the bed, doing her best to look interested. It was best to let patients proceed at their own pace for something like this. She nodded automatically as Allison blathered on, soon losing interest, and absent-mindedly brushed a stray lock of hair back into place.

A stray lock of hair she wouldn’t have recognized as her own, and would have been alarmed if she had, for she was justifiably proud of her luxuriant, golden blond, and the hair that seemed to thin and fade with every passing second showed more and more hints of a depressingly ordinary gray mixed in with the fading blond.

* * *

“This is so unfair,” Jessica complained, her portly body barely contained within the examination gown.

“Now then, Jessica,” the nurse comforted her. “Your mother is concerned by your rapid weight gain. That’s all.”

“It’s just some water retention,” Jessica insisted. “And I was too skinny before anyway.”

The nurse didn’t say anything. It was hard to believe the corpulent teen sitting on the examination table could ever have been too skinny. The too small gown highlighted the size of her large, sagging breasts and the rolls of fat pushing out her belly. Her thighs squished softly and heavily against each other.

“Now then, your last weight was …” The nurse goggled. That couldn’t be right. Jessica would need to have gained more than 80 pounds in a couple of months. “Well, let’s just check your blood pressure. You know, obesity carries all kinds of associated health risks, including high blood pressure and…”

Jessica had zoned out and ignored the sermon. Why was everyone making such a big deal out of a couple of extra pounds? She admitted she had seemed a little heavier than usual, but that seemed to have resolved. She was totally hot.

Though she did wonder why the hospital gown was made so darned small. It was like it was designed for a kid.

The nurse was still preaching the risks for overeating when she let out a small cry. Both pulled back their hands at the electric shock. She checked the blood pressure cuff for exposed wires and took another reading with a new cuff.

“You know,” she prattled. “We have some excellent dietary consultants here. They can help you learn about proper nutrition and wise eating habits.”

Jessica rolled her eyes and tried to ignore the moralizing. Then, she looked back with some surprise. She blinked and looked again.

It was almost like someone had put an air hose in the nurse’s dress as a prank. Her breasts were slowly swelling and pushing further out, as though each breath she took in remained inside and expanded them. She developed increasingly impressive cleavage while bending over and checking Jessica’s blood pressure. By the time she stood up, her breasts were straining the buttons on her uniform.

Perhaps because the expansion was being restrained there, it seemed to move on to other areas. Her tummy, which had been impressively flat and trim, softened and began to fill in, then rounded out, producing a small bulge that further strained the uniform. The back tightened and deformed as her butt grew, lifting her skirt and threatening to expose her behind. Her thighs and calves filled in, and her white nurse’s stockings became tighter and tighter. Her face rounded, and a second chin started to wobble as she talked.

“So, as you can see, proper eating habits and nutrition are a lifelong goal. And one you’ll feel better about yourself for.”

Jessica nodded, her eyes wide in surprise. Had the nurse really gained weight before her eyes like that? It seemed impossible, and she assumed the nurse had really been heavier than she had thought at first. It was weird the way your eyes could play tricks with you like that.

The nurse wrote her findings and excused herself to get the doctor. Before finding her though, she decided to make a side trip to the candy machine. She suddenly had the worst craving for something sweet. She tried to adjust her skirt and top, which seemed to be riding up and tight on her, and decided that – just for a treat – she would get one of the big bars. Or maybe two, so she could try a couple of kinds. Come to think of it, the machine didn’t have any of the really big bars. It might be better to actually go to the gift shop and stock up on several goodies. Just as a treat this once.

* * *

Stephanie sat on her own examination table unhappily.

“’Stephanie!’ Not ‘Steven’,” she insisted for the third time.

“Yes, well,” the doctor cleared her throat. She was a serious-minded young woman trained in physiology and psychology, who specialized in sexually dysfunctional patients. “Let’s assume the changes happened as you say. There are some rare forms of genetic mosaicism, or delayed development of sexual characteristics secondary to sex hormone resistance. But even if you transformed as you say, the fact remains that you’re more male than female now. Perhaps we should come up with a new name”

“I don’t want a new name!” Stephanie screamed. “I want to be a girl again!”

A nurse entered the room. “The DNA analysis,” she reported, handing a paper to the doctor.

She frowned. “But this is standard XX? How can that be?”

The nurse shook her head. The doctor signaled her to leave.

“Let me examine you one more time,” she said to Stephanie, lifting the gown and receiving a small shock when she did so.

It just didn’t make sense for her to have a perfectly formed penis, but as the doctor lifted the gown, she saw it was still there. And it really was perfect. So big and thick. She hadn’t noticed how large and perfectly shaped it was before. The tingle moved through her body and her unexpected arousal deepened. A woman could really get herself off on a tool like that. She wondered what it looked like erect.

“Stephanie, um, ah, I’d like to conduct a little experiment. Just to test functionality, you understand.”

“Doctor, it’s perfectly ….oooohhhhh.”

Her protest was cut off as the doctor began stroking her penis with her hands. Once again, Stephanie was overcome with how wonderful it felt. Her cock began to swiftly harden.

“Doctor, no….it’s … it’s getting harder,” she warned, already feeling the loss of control again. She began to look at the doctor in a new light.

“Yes, it is,” the doctor reported happily, feeling her own clinical side dissolving away. God, what a cock! She became overwhelmed with desire and dropped to her knees, sucking it into her mouth.

“Oh, no, noooooo….yesssssss!” Stephanie moaned. The feeling of the doctor going down on her was overwhelming.
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TheoW
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Re: Playing With Dolls By Nomdreserv

Postby TheoW » Fri May 25, 2012 10:59 pm

“Mmmppphhh,” the doctor agreed, sucking eagerly. Perhaps she was conducting another experiment to see just how functional Stephanie’s cock was.

Stephanie’s penis was rock hard, but even as the doctor worshiped it, she knew she wanted more. All thoughts of the doctor as an authority were gone (on both sides). Stephanie looked at her with only one thought left in her mind.

“Turn around,” she ordered gruffly.

The doctor hastened to comply, whimpering happily, and already tearing her skirt off. Her soaked panties followed, and she lay over the table exposing her wet, ready cleft to Stephanie’s tool.

Stephanie wasted no time in obliging her, driving her long, hard shaft deep inside and making the doctor come in the first of a whole series of orgasms. And while she pounded in and out, preparing to deposit her “sample,” the doctor screamed in pleasure, most particularly since she seemed to be feeling more and more incredible pressure on her clit with each thrust.

Almost as though it was growing.

* * *

The doctor who came to speak with Jessica was young and very thin, a testament to her own rigorous eating habits and exercise. She wore an expensive silk top that only someone as model-thin as she was could pull off, a sensible skirt, expensive shoes, and jewelry (treating teenager for overeating was a very lucrative specialty). She was talking to Jessica severely.

“So you see, chips and sweets are the worst things you can fill up on. I suggest a selection of raw vegetables – carrots, celery etc. to keep you full.”

“Yuck, vegetables,” Jessica made a face. “How about pizza?”

The doctor shuddered. “As a treat, once in a while. Consider broccoli and raw vegetables with some dipping sauce instead.”

She paused, scratching at the spot where she’d felt the shock while examining Jessica. It still tingled, which was odd.

Even odder, she was finding her own recommendations about vegetables and eating less persuasive. Jessica’s mention of pizza made her hungry for a large pie with extra cheese. Her stomach actually growled at the thought. And maybe some beer to wash it down, though she tried to avoid alcoholic beverages because of their excessive calories. Even thinking about beer seemed to make her stomach swell slightly, and she drove the idea out of her mind.

She tried to keep her thoughts and desires on broccoli, but found her imagination drenching the vegetable with a heavy cheese sauce instead.

“Here are those menu examples,” the nurse announced, handing in some papers.

The doctor nodded, frowning. It was very important to present the right kind of healthful appearance to the clients, and she hadn’t realized how much weight Julia had gained recently. She could barely squeeze into her uniform, and that candy bar wrapper so obvious in her pocket was hardly the example to set their clients. She would have to speak to her about that.

She also tugged at her shirt, as the silk seemed to be stretching and tightening across her chest for some reason. Yes, she would have to speak to her about those candy bars…more particularly, where she got them. The doctor hadn’t treated herself to a candy bar in ages, and suddenly felt she should. How else to understand her client’s desires than to experience them? Yes, that was it – she should really let herself go and have a pig-out party tonight, just to remember what it was like. It wasn’t like one night off her regimen would cause any real problems.

And so saying, she continued with her spiel to Jessica, even while she tugged at the stretching silk blouse (no longer looking so fashionable thanks to her expanding chest and tummy) and her increasingly tight skirt.

* * *

Amy Stetten opened her door impatiently, blowing a big bubble with her gum at the same time. A stern woman dressed in a conservative suit stood outside. Her eyes widened in shock.

“Ms. Stetten?”

“Totally,” Amy acknowledged, primping her overblown platinum-blond hair. “Like, who are you?”

“My name is Melinda Ricci.” The woman held her hand out automatically for a polite introductory handshake, then pulled it back as though stung as a static-like electric shock jumped to her hand.

“Oops, sorry,” Amy giggled. “Maybe I was, like, brushing my hair too much or something.”

Ms. Ricci flexed her hand to clear the strange aftershock from the contact. She looked at Amy’s over-bleached hair, over-made face, at the giant breasts barely contained in an undersized tube top, and the micro-miniskirt that barely covered her pussy, then shook her head.

“I wouldn’t have believed it. Charlotte described your new appearance, but I assumed it was some kind of joke.”

“Charlotte?” Amy screwed up her face.

“My daughter, Charlotte. On of your students.” When Amy still showed no sign of recognition, she assumed she had to be explicit. “Charlotte Ricci.”

“Oh, sure. Charlotte. Skinny little thing with no boobs, right?”

Ms. Ricci’s face was a mask of indignation. “How dare you discuss my daughter’s small boobs … um, breasts like that.”

“Got them from you, huh?” Amy asked, sizing up Ms. Ricci’s rather undistinguished profile critically. “Mini-tits.”

The mother flushed crimson. “How dare you? My tits are perfectly fine, thank you.” This time, her strange terminology regarding her breasts didn’t even register.

“Whatever,” Amy shrugged, preparing to close the door.

“Now, you wait one minute, Ms. … Ms. Stetten,” the mother continued, briefly pausing as she felt a momentary wave of dizziness. “I think you should know that your behavior is entirely unaccepible …. unrecepatable …. It’s, like, totally skeevy, you know? And I am going to … to …um, I'm going to …” she trailed off, staring at Ms. Stetten’s magnificent and barely restrained breasts, while unconsciously hugging her own chest rather mournfully. “So, like, did you get implants or something?”

“Uh uh. I just woke up with them. Aren’t they, like, fucking awesome?” she shook them for emphasis, setting up a magnificent jiggling that took a full minute to subside again.

Ms. Ricci’s throat felt unexpectedly dry. She watched Amy’s chest shake hypnotically.

“Just woke up with them,” she repeated weakly. “That’s…that’s impossible.”

Amy was watching her oddly and suddenly giggled.

“What’s wrong?” she demanded, trying to dispel the clouds that seemed to be settling around her thoughts.

“I can see your nips,” Amy announced.

Ms. Ricci looked down and realized she was right. For some reason, her nipples had erected. They were almost painfully stiff, and even looked to have grown to twice their normal size. She crossed her arms self-consciously in front of her chest and tried to rebuild her righteous indignation.

“Well, it doesn’t matter if you can or not, because, I am going to go straight to the school board and … and, um…” She stopped again, and looked down in disbelief. There was a slowly growing pressure underneath her arms, almost like …

“Oh, look!” Amy pointed. “You’re not as small as I thought you were.”

“Oh my God!” Ms. Ricci cried. “My tits!”

Her consternation was well founded. Indeed, the objects in question were slowly growing before her eyes, in a clearly impossible manner. Clearly impossible except that she could feel her bra tightening and binding her as they pushed and stretched it. Could see the swelling globes overflowing the cups, and watched in astonishment as her carefully tailored business suit became increasingly distorted. The lapels of the jacket were pushed out, then apart as her burgeoning boobs popped out between them, the buttons of her shirt underneath showing more and more strain and barely keeping it together as gaps revealed more and more deliciously creamy breast flesh.

Her astonishment with this transformation almost disguised the others. The skirt of her suit felt tighter as her ass ballooned into a proper bubble butt. Her legs lengthened, making her skirt shorter. Her fingernails lengthened from her normal practical cut to uselessly long, as well as turning an improbably shade of sparkling violet as polish she had never seen before materialized on top of them.

“Ooh. How are you doing that to your hair?” Amy asked.

“What?” Ms. Ricci gasped, grabbing at a lock and trying to see it. It was lightening before her eyes, becoming a matching shade of platinum blond to Amy’s.

“Wow, you’ve got real boobies now,” Amy said in appreciation. “That is, like, so cool.”

Ms. Ricci grasped at her chest in disbelief, her thoughts seeming to swirl and lose focus.

“My boobies…um, titties, um … what’s that word? I can’t seem to think…” The buttons on her shirt began popping open one by one.

Amy nodded, snapping her gum loudly. “I know just how you feel. Thinking’s hard.”

By this time, Ms. Ricci’s transformation seemed to stabilize. She was taller, younger, bleached-blond, and impossibly stacked, with DDD sized breasts which overwhelmed her bra and shirt. She tried to cover herself with the jacket, but it was much too small. However, the motion brought her hands into contact with the exposed flesh of her oversized breasts, and the resulting jolt dispersed whatever remaining thoughts and protests were in her head. She smiled at Amy.

“Omigod! My boobs are fucking awesome! Charlotte is, like, going to be so totally jealous.” She laughed as she remembered Amy’s description. Charlotte was such a skinny little thing. “Mini-tits.” She giggled at the term. It was totally correct. However, as pleased as she was with her sudden upsizing, she looked at her business skirt and jacket with newfound disgust. “Ewww! And my clothes are, like, totally grody. I look like someone’s mother.”

To be honest, the effect of the oversized breasts hanging naked out of the undersized jacket front didn’t really suggest anyone’s mother (sigh – at least not in my experience), but Amy seemed to understand perfectly.

“Oh, totally. You should, like, borrow some of my things. My clothes are totally hot. Hey, we could go out together. I know this great little bar. The guys are, like, really, really friendly. And they even give you free drinks if you take your top off.”

Ms. Ricci giggled. “Like I wouldn’t do that anyway.”

Amy laughed, offering her a piece of gum. “Totally.”

And giggling and chewing together, the two women walked off to plan their evening.

* * *

Callista felt yet another tingle surge through her body, much stronger this time. Beth had tried to help as best she could, but whatever was affecting her was clearly beyond her experience as well. They had agreed to call in one of the full-time and more experienced mages from the Institute to investigate.

That left Callista frustrated, but right now, she had the more pressing need of a change of clothes. She was nearly back to her original size, and threatening to burst out of Danae’s borrowed things. She hurried into a Gap she’d seen, and walked as quickly as she could in her painfully tight shoes towards the back. A woman looked up as she passed.

“May I help you find …?” she started to ask before pausing in surprise.

And with some reason. Callista now made an unusual figure indeed. Her shirt was at least three sizes too small and had pulled up to completely expose her stomach. It was so tight that it clearly outlined the way her breasts were overflowing the undersized cups of the training bra she had borrowed. Her jeans were knee-level now, and looked like they were painted on. And even at this distance, the woman could tell they were unbuttoned, apparently too tight to close.

“Oh, hi,” Callista faltered. “Um, no thanks, I’m just looking for…”

Her answer was interrupted by a small gasp. It almost looked like she was taking in a deep breath - the opening of her jeans spread further apart and the zipper slid down, while her shirt rose up. There was also a slight tearing sound from the sleeves of her shirt, overstretched beyond reclamation. It looked like her toes were about to burst through her shoes. The woman was so surprised at her opening clothes and shocked expression, she didn’t notice as Callista seemed to jump a full two inches in height at the same time.

Callista tried to laugh it off.

“Um, growth spurt,” she offered, grabbing some new jeans and hurrying towards the changing rooms, her gait distorted by trying to walk in the impossibly tight jeans.

The clerk shook her head. What some girls wouldn’t wear to get attention.

* * *

The medical profession seemed to be having a bad day.

At the eating disorder clinic, arriving patients found that the whole staff seemed to be suffering from the very problem they claimed to treat. Receptionists were dressed in ridiculously tight dresses that rode up unflatteringly around thick thighs and ballooned behinds. The nurses’ uniforms looked painted on, many showing gaps between the buttons, revealing glimpses of bountiful, soft breasts overflowing their bra cups, and full tummies that stood out round and jigging. Even most of the doctors seemed overweight, making their otherwise fashionable dress look unprofessionally tight and undersized. Everyone seemed a little flustered and out of breath, as though they weren’t used to carrying around this much weight.

And despite every attempt to be courteous, professional and didactic, almost every patient would find their problem was much, much worse after meeting with them.

* * *

At the psychiatric observation wing, Dr. Anderson was surprised to see how tired and worn everyone looked. Almost every nurse, secretary, aide and physician looked haggard and wan, as though they’d ages a decade or two over the course of a day. He was particularly surprised to see that Dr. Smith, who was several years his junior and usually full of energy, was dragging through the end of her shift, looking exhausted. To his surprise, he noticed for the first time that she had a few gray hairs mixed in among her blond, really astonishing for someone in her twenties. Though admittedly, at the moment, he would have assumed she was twice that age.

“Oh, and Ms. Brantley checked out AMA.”

“What? The delusional old lady?”

“Yes,” Dr. Smith hesitated. “Though I’ll admit, she didn’t seem as old as I thought when I first saw her. In fact…” She drummed her fingers, knowing how unbelievable what she wanted to say would sound. She chose to skip it. “In any case, she was very nice. Insisted on going around and shaking everyone’s hand before she left. Very sweet. Her daughter…or maybe it was her granddaughter – she looked like she couldn’t have been more than 16 – came by to help her leave.” Another pause and wrinkling of the brow (and it wrinkled very easily indeed now). “Come to think of it, once her granddaughter showed up, I never saw her again. But she seemed much better this morning.”

“Very good.” He patted her hand paternally, surprised to receive a mild shock in return. “You should get some sleep. You look tired.”

“I feel tired,” she admitted, rubbing her legs soothingly. She looked down at her unexpectedly bony knees in alarm. “Um, can you get arthritis in one day?”

He laughed, assuming it was a joke. “No.”

“Then I'm even more tired than I thought. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

* * *

The doctor who had been examining Stephanie brushed at her skirt in concern. She still seemed to be leaking fluids after her shameful, inexcusable and completely inappropriate encounter with her new patient, and her bottom felt squishy. Perhaps that explained why her clit was still so swollen. She had been absolutely astounded by how large it looked when she went to clean up, and even now, she could see a slight bulge in her skirt from where it stood out.

She hoped no one else guessed what had happened. She had already arranged for Stephanie to have a private room while she stayed at the clinic (for the nature of her affliction, the doctor told herself, but more to insure their own privacy). She couldn’t believe she’d let herself go like that. It was like the girl’s cock (she now admitted Stephanie’s story might be true) had some kind of magical power over her.

She adjusted her seat again and smoother her hair. One of the nurses (a remarkably pretty one, with a smoking body – funny the doctor hadn’t noticed that before) handed her a paper. The woman looked at the doctor’s still slightly disheveled hair and clothes with obvious disapproval.

The doctor seemed distracted, staring straight ahead. Only after a few seconds did the nurse realize she was staring at her breasts! Something she never expected from another professional, let alone another woman.

“Doctor!”

The physician looked at her very strangely, a weird gleam appearing in her eye. And then, to the nurse’s horror, an even stranger bulge began to rise from the doctor’s skirt lap.

“Doctor!” she gasped again.

There was no mistaking the intent or gleam which now hardened in the doctor’s lustful eye. And there was no mistaking the increasingly distinct bulge that tented her skirt.

But somehow, as though by magic, at the moment of realization, the horror she felt disappeared, replaced almost immediately with overwhelming lust. She looked down again with smoldering, desirous eyes.

“Oh, doctor,” she moaned, her voice as transformed as her attitude.

And minutes later, the “doctor-nurse relationship” took on an entirely new meaning.

And the nurse would be the next woman to find out what a hard-on felt like.

* * *

“This has been so much fun,” Kim said, finding her voice after another round of laughing. “It’s totally worth whatever trouble we’ll get in.”

“I agree,” Danae said, feeling happier than she could remember. She and Kim connected on so many levels. Even sitting and watching lame TV while drinking and making jokes was heaven. In fact, the only way it could be better was …

She paused, watching the way Kim brushed her hair back into place. She was so beautiful, and nice, and funny. And desirable. Could Kim ever feel that way in return? A sweet, desperate longing for something more was filling her, and she leaned in a little closer.

Kim saw the movement and hesitated. Just for a second, she seemed ready to reciprocate, keeping her head in position except for turning it slightly as though to accept Danae’s offer, but at the last moment, she pulled back. She arranged her hair again nervously, and spoke rapidly to cover her discomfort.

“So, maybe I’d better be going. I need to get my brother’s car back and everything.”

“Let him walk,” Danae said, leaning back to give Kim some safe space again. Damn! Why did it have to be so difficult and awkward? She was sure there was some interest there.

“And how about your mom and sister? What happens when they find we spent the whole day here?”

“They’ll never know. Callista doesn’t know when I'm supposed to get out, and my mom … well, I don’t think she’ll notice if I don’t want her to.” She smirked mysteriously at this comment. It also gave her another idea. “Hang on.”

She raced upstairs, closed her door, and set out the dolls. She made a Kim doll, and then set it down own against her own other, holding hands like they had before.

And then, she moved them even closer, so that the Kim doll’s lips touched her own.

Her heart racing, she ran back downstairs.

“How about another drink?” she offered.

Kim seemed to look at her strangely. A flush moved into her cheeks.

“Um, ok. I really should get his car back but, um…” She trailed off awkwardly, her eyes fixed on Danae as she went to refill their glasses.

Danae sat back down on the couch next to her and offered a toast.

“To us.”

“Us,” Kim echoed softly. Her cheeks pinked even more and she watched Danae drink without touching her own. She felt her own pulse unexpectedly quicken. “So, um, what we were doing before…or, you know, what we almost did..”

“You mean email the crank video dedication?” Danae asked mischievously.

“No, no. After that. Just now, when I, you know, got nervous.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry about that. It just seemed so right. You’re such a wonderful person, and now that we’re friends, I couldn’t help myself. But I know some people can freak out. It comes with the territory, you know? I won’t try it again.”

Kim squirmed nervously. “No!” She paused at the unexpected strength of her reaction. “I mean, you don’t have to do that. It’s not your fault. And … and a little kiss between friends is fine, right? Doesn’t have to mean anything more than that?”

“It doesn’t have to,” Danae allowed flirtatiously.

“And sometimes girls practice together anyway, right?” Kim was playing with her hair, hoping she didn’t seem too desperate. “You know, to get better at it.”

“That’s the excuse.”

Kim’s blush deepened. “So, if, like, you know, you, um, wanted to…” She leaned forward slightly, her lips moistened and her eyes closed.

Danae felt a surge of triumph and another wave of desire. She almost felt like teasing Kim a little longer and prolonging the moment, but the young girls’ nervously excited face and new anticipation were just too irresistible. She leaned forward and gently touched her lips to Kim’s. There was a slight, nervous sigh as Kim received the kiss, then a deeper breath, more relaxed and pleased. She held the kiss, savored it, and then began kissing back enthusiastically.

Kisses deepened. Hands began to roam places they probably shouldn’t have. Danae felt Kim’s nipples harden as she brushed her fingers along her chest.

And then, unfortunately, the front door opened.

Both girls jumped in surprise. They resorted disarranged clothes and brushed their hair back into place. Both tried to hide their rapid breathing and racing hearts, though neither could disguise the deep blushes on their faces as Callista walked into the room.

“Cal!” Danae called in an overenthusiastic and you-are-so-not-interrupting-something greeting. Then, her eyes went wide at seeing her sister back to full size. Even though she’d assumed it would happen, the change was still impressive. “Oh, wow, you’re, like, um, better.”

Callista nodded, then glanced nervously at Kim, unwilling to discuss it further in front of a stranger.

“This is my friend, Kim,” Danae explained.

“Nice to meet you, Kim,” Callista smiled.

Kim was looking at her in confusion.

“You’re Callista? But, like, when I saw you this morning, you were, um …” She started to hold her hand a few feet above the ground but stopped. That was ridiculous. She must have seen someone else.

“You’re home early, aren’t you?” Callista asked Danae.

“What? Oh, no. It was just a half day. Teacher meetings.”

“That’s nice. Listen, I just stopped home to change. I had some, um, problems with my clothes.” The girls finally noticed her odd assortment of ill-fitting emergency purchases. “I'm going to meet Mom and let her see everything’s all right.” She turned to Kim. “Kim, would you like to stay for dinner? We can bring something in or all go out together.”

There was something very suggestive, yet relaxed about the way she said “together.” She also added a warm but slightly conspiratorial glance to Danae as she asked this. Kim missed it entirely, but Danae caught it and felt a shock of recognition. Callista knew. Her sister knew exactly how she felt about Kim (and, presumably, women in general) and was not only comfortable with it, but actually seemed eager to accommodate them.

While Danae stared in surprise, her feelings towards Callista undergoing yet another change, Kim shifted nervously.

“Well, um, I need to return my brother’s car, and I have the game tonight.”

“That’s fine. Maybe another time then. I'm sure we’ll be seeing more of you, and it was very nice to meet you.”

Callista walked upstairs to her room. Kim looked after her. Despite her intimidating physical appearance and odd choice for clothes, she seemed nice.

“Hey, your sister’s cool,” she told Danae.

Danae was still looking in confusion towards where Callista had disappeared and nodded.

“Yeah,” she admitted, still surprised. “She is.”

Kim still hadn’t left when Callista returned and said goodbye, and Danae noticed she kept stealing embarrassed and hungry glances at her, presumably still under the influence of the spell. She suspected Kim couldn’t be satisfied until she had moved the dolls apart again.

Then again, why would she want her to be? Kim was still breathing a little irregularly, and her eyes kept straying to Danae’s chest and legs, apparently with previously unrealized interest. The magically facilitated kiss seemed to have awakened all kinds of new feelings and possibilities.

As if in confirmation, Kim shifted uneasily in her seat. Danae could have sworn she was rubbing herself a little, and the front of her shirt revealed that her nipples had stiffened again. She leaned forward, touching Danae’s leg in a friendly but intimate gesture.

“Danae, I …”

She seemed ready to begin another passionate kiss, but this time as a prelude for even more. Her hand was trembling as it caressed Danae’s leg, but suddenly stopped. She leaned back, flushed and alarmed.

“Danae, I don’t know…maybe I should leave. I feel … feel weird or something. I think I just need some time to think this through.”

The depth of feeling in her eyes told Danae all she needed to know. She felt incredible elation and frustration at the same time. The desire was obvious. She suspected the attraction (though magically facilitated) was genuine, and went beyond simple friendship. Indeed, she wondered if that might have been part of the reason Kim finally approached her after a few years – she might have finally worked her way subconsciously through her conflicts and was ready for exactly this.

But now to have her get cold feet when they were so close to something she was sure would be wonderful. She couldn’t wait for second thoughts and missed-chance-regrets, not when she knew it was right. She wouldn’t let Kim make a mistake by being afraid. She couldn’t allow that.

As Kim started to get up, Danae held her hand. She could feel Kim’s conflict and attraction by the way she squeezed back.

“Wait. Before you go, let me just take care of one thing.”

“What?”

“You’ll see.”

Kim was confused, but also obviously torn. She nodded, and Danae ran upstairs one more time to her room. This was it. She even made a mental promise to herself to stop using the dolls if this worked the way she hoped. With trembling hands, she lovingly picked up the Danae and Kim dolls. She gently kissed the Kim doll, and let her tongue move across the doll’s chest and upper body, imagining Kim’s excitement growing and crystallizing towards Danae. She gave the doll’s sex the gentlest flick of her tongue, visualizing Kim’s arousal growing beyond control. She knew the magic worked. She was in control. And it would be the most wonderful thing in the world.

Just to be sure, she finally positioned the Kim doll with its face between the Danae’s doll’s legs. No point in not making sure the intention was clear.

She had just finished positioning the dolls and making the appropriate incantation, when she heard a sharp hissing of shocked breath behind her back. In sudden, sinking panic, she realized she hadn’t closed and locked her door this time.

She turned slowly, sickeningly, and found, just as she knew she would, Kim standing in the door, her face a white mask of shock and disbelief. Her eyes darted wildly from doll to doll, seeing the transformed images of her classmates.

“I…I…” she stammered. She had been flooded by sudden, overpowering arousal while waiting, and couldn’t wait for Danae to return. She assumed it meant her doubts had finally disappeared, and she had come to tell Danae that she didn’t have any more fear or confusion about what she wanted.

And then she saw the dolls.

Stephanie and Jessica - their bodies perfectly matching the bizarre changes that had astonished everyone the last few days. A little girl that resembled Ms. Jameson – and she remembered the rumor about Ms. Richards dragging a screaming little girl away. Danae holding some kind of wand, just like a witch from a bad movie. She remembered Danae’s reaction when she mentioned magic on their way here, and the suspicion her answer had created.

And then, she saw the Kim doll, burying her face between Danae’s legs.

Her eyes widened even further. Her face changed from white of shock to blotched as alternating waves of red and white reflected the boiling emotions within her. Her lip trembled.

“Oh…my…God.”

Danae stood up and tried to hide the dolls behind her.

“No! Kim, wait. You don’t understand.”

Kim simply stared as she finally found her voice, albeit unnaturally low and controlled.

“You…you did it. You did all this. Oh my God! You’re really a witch? YOU’RE A WITCH!”

The last came out as a shout as her voice lost its control. It also demanded a response, and she stared at Danae with bulging eyes until she reluctantly admitted a slight nod. Kim swayed slightly in shock. Danae was a witch.

“Kim, please. I can explain.” She held out her hand imploringly.

Kim shot her own hands up defensively, ready to strike out in horror.

“Get away from me, you freak!” Her eyes swept the room again, with its (literally) damning evidence. Her whole body was trembling, but with disgust and rage, and in a parody echo of the excitement she’d felt mere minutes before. “My God! Wait until everyone knows. They’re going to kill you.”

Danae paled. She knew Kim was speaking dramatically and metaphorically, but in truth (and based on historical precedent), she might be literally right.

“No, Kim, wait! You can’t tell anyone about…”

Kim was staring at the Danae and Kim dolls again, her chest heaving.

“And that!” she screamed. “That’s what you think of me? You’re turning me into your sex slave?”

“Noooo!” Danae wailed. “I like you. I thought you liked me. This was just to help us along.”

“Help us?” Kim spat. “HELP US? You were going to rape me!” Her eyes reflected pure hate. “Help us! No wonder I've had these weird feelings the last few months. No wonder I kept looking at you and thinking about you.”

“No,” Danae cried, tears beginning to stream. “You don’t understand. That was…it must have been real. I only started using magic on you a few days ago.”

“Only started a few days ago?” Kim mimicked savagely. “Yeah, I’ll bet.”

“No, really!”

“Oh, and that makes it all right then, doesn’t it? You’ve just been twisting me a couple of days? I've seen what you can do in a couple of days.” She nodded in fury at the other dolls. “Destroy a few lives, here and there. Why not?”

“No, you don’t understand.” Danae fell to her knees. “It was just to teach them a lesson. I was going to change them back.”

Kim stared a few seconds. “What about my changes, Dani? The stuff you’re making me do? Were you going to change me back too?” And when Danae had to hesitate even longer before she could answer, she added in a whisper. “I thought so.”

She started to turn away, but Danae ran to stop her.

“Please, wait. I never meant to hurt you. I … I love you.”

Kim laughed, her rage and bitterness still overflowing.

“Love? Is that what you call it? Is this love for a witch? When you humiliate people? Control them? Twist them into … little sex puppets for your amusement?” It seemed an apt description for the dolls.

“It was different with you.”

“Yeah, right. Get the fuck away from me, Danae. I could never love you. Not after … this.” She swept her hand around the room contemptuously. “It’s horrible, it’s perverted, and …and it’s the real you, isn’t it? Oh my God. You’re sick, Danae. I'm only glad I found out in time. Before we did something that … that disgusts me to even think about now.”

Danae slumped, utterly crushed. She shook her head in denial, tears still streaming.

“No, please…”

“I only hope they can help you when they take you away. You and your whole family.”

Danae stiffened. The tears stopped.

“My…family?”

“Don’t tell me they don’t know about this. I’ll bet they’re all witches. I heard stuff about your sister. Now it all makes sense.”

“No, she isn’t. They’re not!” Danae imagined Callista’s and her mother’s reactions when they found out. “Please! I’ll make everything right again. Just don’t tell them.”

“Them and everyone else.”

Kim hesitated long enough to make sure Danae was properly crushed by the threat. Danae, for her part, was looking around hopelessly. Everything had gone so wrong so quickly. There was all the evidence for her short-lived triumphs and hopes – the dolls, the wand, the ring…

She froze, her eyes darting back to the ring Tim had given her. She had forgotten all about it when she got so caught up in her voodoo magic. What had he said? A love charm? How did it work? Could it work?

Making sure Kim was still there, Danae darted across to her table and picked up the ring. Kim assumed she might be preparing to flee, and was thus surprised to see her turn with an unexpected look of calm in her face.

“Kim, I'm sorry. About this mess, and about us. I really, really like you.”

Kim shook her head. “Danae, I could never like you after this. Never again. Goodbye.”

“Kim!”

Danae matched the exclamation by tossing the ring. Surprised, Kim moved to catch it reflexively, not even recognizing it. She opened her palm, saw the ring lying on it, blinked once, twice, three times…

And then, all the anger and animosity seemed to dissolve away. Her face relaxed, a happy but strangely empty smile forming on her face.

“I'm sorry for scaring you, Danae,” she said, coming back into the room and – to Danae’s astonishment – sitting on the bed. “Please forgive me.”

Danae watched her uncertainly.

“Kim, are you all right?”

“I'm fine. Now,” she clarified. She looked at Danae with openly adoring eyes. “I love you!”

Danae felt alternating waves of relief, disbelief and some renewed excitement.

“You do?”

“Uh huh.” She started to lift her shirt up. “Would you like me to make love with you now?”

“What?” Danae was flabbergasted. “Um, no! Kim, what are you doing?”

Kim shrugged. “Sorry. I thought you wanted me naked.”

Danae still couldn’t quite figure out what was happening. Apparently, the love charm had worked, but not in a way she had anticipated.

“Do you want to be naked?”

Kim shrugged again. “It doesn’t matter what I want. Only what you want.”

A new fear began gnawing Danae’s inside.

“Aren’t you still angry?”

“I can’t be angry at you. I love you.”

“Um, that’s great. I, um, love you too.”

Kim giggled and started to pull her shirt off again. “That’s good. Can we get naked now?”

Danae held her arm, suspending the shirt tantalizingly above her exposed breasts.

“Maybe we should talk first. About how you feel.”

Kim managed to pull her shirt off despite Danae’s restraint. She reached for her bra clasp.

“I told you how I feel. I love you.”

“Um, yeah. But what else? What about all this?” She indicated the hateful dolls.

Kim looked at them without emotion.

“Whatever you do is all right with me. I love you.”

Danae gritted her teeth. The refrain was beginning to grate on her.

“But what about the stuff I did to you? I made you kiss me. And I was going to make you …” She paused, realizing she was finally admitting it to herself. “I was going to force you to have sex with me.”

Kim laughed. “You don’t have to force me to have sex with you. That’s what I live for.” She finished removing her bra, revealing a glorious pair of perky teenaged breasts.

And for the first time she could remember, Danae had no interest in them whatever. She swallowed hard, trying to force back the bile that rose with her sickening fear and increasing certainty. She had a sudden insight into who and what Tim really was – and for the first time in her life, knew real fear for it.

“Kim, stop. Stop getting undressed.”

Kim stopped, her hands down at her side, making no move to cover her nakedness.

“Kim, remember? You said I was going to rape you?”

The empty smile never flickered. “That was silly of me. Please forgive me.”

“No!” Danae caught her voice and tried to stay calm. “I mean, I don’t have to forgive you. You didn’t do anything wrong. You’re supposed to forgive me.”

Kim’s smile was fixed. “I forgive you.”

“Not like that!” Danae closed her eyes, trying to stay calm. “OK, let’s think about this. What…what about your other feelings? Besides that you love me?” She threw out the last as preemption when Kim seemed ready to announce it again.

“What other feelings?”

“Well, anger, fear, something. Aren’t you worried about what I've been doing? About what I just did to you?”

“You didn’t do anything to me. I love…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. You love me. Oh, God…” Danae seemed to sag again. “What about your brother’s car? And you have to get ready for the game tonight, remember?”

The smile stayed as fixed, steady and empty as ever.

“Your family. Your friends…”

The smile was unfazed.

“Um….music!” Danae said in triumph. She held up on of the CDs they had argued about. “Remember how much you hate this group?”

Kim blinked. “I can’t hate them if you like them.”

“Yes you can! Remember how much you hated their lyrics? Their music?”

“None of that matters anymore,” Kim said sweetly.

“It does matter!” Danae shot back. “It’s … it’s what made you you.”

“I'm better now.”

And with that simple-minded declaration, Danae knew utter despair.

When Callista and their mother arrived home, they found Danae sitting ashen-faced and miserable in a kitchen chair. She looked up at them with dark-circled, haunted eyes, and – although she was sure she had cried herself completely out an hour ago – promptly burst once more into tears.

And seeing her face, even without knowing anything else, Callista immediately knew that same despair.

* * *

Some time later, Danae was still shaking and crying, as she tried to tell the story through again.

“And…and the magic started to go wrong. And I'm so sorry I used it on you! And I … I used it on Kim. And at first, it was wonderful. And then…and then…” A huge sob. “I just wanted her to like me again.”

She broke down completely, unable to keep repeating the story, physically sick every time she even thought about it.

Callista was holding her tightly.

“It’s all right, Dani,” she lied. “I understand. And I've already called the Institute. They’ll be able to fix this. You’ll see.”

Danae was rocking back and forth.

“No,” she cried softly. “It can’t ever be fixed. I can’t ever be fixed. I'm…I'm a monster.”

“Never!” Callista assured her. “You just made a wrong choice. We all do.”

Their mother didn’t seem so ready to dismiss Danae’s self assessment. She was still dealing with the shock of what had been done personally to her, but even more with the enormity of what her younger daughter had been capable of. And one other detail kept sticking in her mind. She cleared her throat.

“But why did you do all that? The kissing. And use a love charm on her? Why would you want Kim to …” She was going to mention sex, but changed her mind. “To fall in love with you?”

Danae just cried harder. Callista looked at her mother a little more severely than she should. This hardly seemed an important point under the circumstances, but as long as they were finally bringing things into the open, they needed to make sure nothing was held back.

“Mom, Danae is a lesbian.”

Maia gasped, her mind reeling yet again. Indeed, she seemed far more devastated by this news that she had about the horrors the magic had wrought.

Because she understood magic.

“Dani, is this true?” she asked.

Danae nodded, afraid to look up.

“A … a …” Maia struggled to even say the word. “You’re gay?”

Another nod. This time, Danae lifted her head a little, hopefully.

And the expression she saw on her mother’s face only started another despairing torrent of tears.

* * *

Far away, someone else saw those tears and grimaced in distaste. He approved of Danae’s anguish, of course, and her despair was absolutely delicious (and as an unexpected bonus, he suspected he now had a way to get to the mother), but the overall plan had been overturned. The Institute was already alerted, and he would need to go underground (perhaps literally, in his case) until their attention was elsewhere.

Such a shame. Things had been going so well. And she had been capable of so much more - was still capable of so much more, he corrected himself. He had little doubt as to her real nature or her future, no matter what temporary setbacks they might suffer.

He could afford to be patient. He had all the time in the world.

And as if to prove the point, he closed his pocket watch with a satisfying click and promptly disappeared.

* * *

The team searched through the abandoned store front that Danae had identified as Tim’s. There were two full CSA agents, a trainee, and Gregor. The agents were scanning the walls and remaining furniture with crystalline lenses and wands, while the trainee watched respectfully. One of the agents was a middle-aged man, a veteran close to retirement named Dawkins, while the other was much younger, a rookie named Rogers. The trainee, a very serious looking black-haired young woman, kept stealing glances at Gregor, who wandered about in a deceptively nonchalant manner. She had heard some interesting stories about him.

“Long gone,” Dawkins confirmed. “A few residual traces. Natural teleportation I’d guess. Untraceable.”

“As I feared,” Gregor sighed. “Not a very satisfying conclusion to let him escape.”

“What do you think we’re dealing with, sir?”

Gregor’s eyes sparkled mischievously. “I think that’s a good chance for your new partner to show us what he knows. Rogers, what do you think?”

Rogers scowled, as though he’d been presented with a pop quiz in an unpopular class.

“Demonic, obviously, rather than a renegade. Probably a low level demon based on the way it cut and ran.” He paused, then added provocatively. “If it exists.”

“If?” Gregor asked sharply.

“Speculation, sir.”

“Careful, Rogers,” Dawkins cautioned.

“Not at all,” Gregor reassured him. “I encourage it. Feel free to speculate.”

“Quite frankly, I wonder if we can even trust the girl,” Rogers continued. “I mean, she’s a demon herself. Even if she didn’t make the whole story up as an excuse, there’s the real possibility that they were partners. They could have been working together until the spells went bad, then she turned informant to save herself.”

“Ah.” Gregor nodded, but his smile had faded. “Certainly an interesting theory.”

“We’re still trying to track down all the secondary victims and effects. That chaotic magic was completely out of control. Probably deliberate.”

“Perhaps. Chaotic magic is notoriously difficult to predict or control. Still, I suspect most of the victims were accidental.”

“But not all of them. She admits she cast those spells of her own volition. That’s bad enough, in my opinion.”

“She’s a lonely, frustrated girl,” the trainee cut in. When they all turned to look at her, she blushed but continued bravely. She had never met Danae, and had been shocked at the briefing when they’d come to investigate the disaster, but somehow still felt she understood her. “As if high school wasn’t bad enough – I mean, everything’s a big deal when you’re a teenager, remember – it’s that much worse when you’re alone. And to get a chance to turn the tables? Go from no one to someone? Heck, if someone had offered me a chance to get back at people when I was sixteen, I would have taken it.”

Rogers glared at the interruption, but Gregor smiled again.

“Excellent point.” He looked her over a few more seconds, and then added. “Care to make your own speculations about our elusive target?”

She hesitated, feeling Rogers’ anger at being shown up burn across the air between them, but emboldened by Gregor’s smile, she continued.

“I agree about the demon part, but I think we’re looking for something much more powerful – an archdemon or even a true devil. He seems to be more interested in corruption than pain. He probably gains power from his victims – both directly from his recruits and indirectly through their victims – especially through moral inversion or perversion. That’s where the old idea of ‘selling your soul’ originated.”

“Superb!” Gregor crowed. “Go on.”

“The pocket watch Danae mentioned would be unusual for a mere affectation. I suspect it represents a hard physical focus, either connecting him to his victims or an anchor to our world, like the traditional lamp for a genie. Using an anchor makes him virtually invulnerable to physical attacks, though it has the weakness of giving anyone holding it control over him, and if it’s destroyed, he’d probably be banished automatically. If we ever meet him, that should be our primary target.”

Gregor pretended to be overcome.

“Amazing! Absolutely outstanding! Rogers, you could learn a thing or two from your trainee.”

“Yes, sir,” Rogers grumbled through gritted teeth, while flashing poisonous stares at her.

“Oh, sorry,” she blushed. “I didn’t mean …” she started to apologize to Rogers, but when she saw that his anger made that impossible, she turned back to Dawkins instead. “Sometimes I get carried away, sir. It’s all speculation.”

“And brilliant speculations, I should say,” Gregor put in heartily. He paused and winked, adding more quietly. “At least since they correspond to mine. Well done. Brava.”

She blushed again.

“You should make an extraordinary agent,” Gregor complimented. “Are you taking a professional name or keeping yours?”

“I’ll probably take one,” she admitted. “More traditional and kind of fun. But I thought I’d wait to choose one until they assigned me a partner.”

“Good point. And a good partner is vitally important. I’ll speak to Zhukov myself.”

He shook her hand enthusiastically, then went back to examining the residual magic traces. Dawkins also gave her a brief congratulatory nod, though he didn’t entirely approve of the way she’d shown up Rogers.

And if it were possible for Rogers himself to view her more venomously, the implication about preferential treatment from Zhukov was all that was needed to make it so. It established both a personal and professional enmity that would come back to haunt her.

But at the moment, Yuri had no way of knowing her reputation had just been established.

Gregor came back over to speak quietly with Dawkins while she and Rogers were occupied.

“Is that typical for her?”

Dawkins nodded.

“Amazing.”

“Yes. She’s very bright. A little shy though. And …”

“Yes?”

He shrugged. “Not sure about her mental toughness. You know she only joined the CSA because she’s been turned down for Institute membership twice already?” (The Institute gave preferential admission to anyone serving in its quasi-military wing.) “She wants to be a sorceress, not an agent. And a little too cerebral for my tastes. I know you’re big on theories, but sometimes an agent needs to act quickly. She’d be too busy studying an avalanche to keep from being buried beneath it.”

“Still,” Gregor said, the single word apparently counting as his entire argument.

“True enough. She could be special. Maybe if they pair her with someone a little more physical. More action oriented.”

Gregor’s eyes were glinting. “You know, I saw some of the new applicants last week, and there was one … hmm. Castellan wanted to reject her immediately because she gave him such a hard time during the interview, but Petain and Zhukov both liked her, and I thought she was very … lively. Yes, I think I’ll have a word with Zhukov about them both.” He glanced at Rogers. “Would you like me to say something about him as well?”

Dawkins glanced at his partner, and though his eyes didn’t register any great degree of affection or respect, he shook his head. “He’s all right. Better than some. Besides, I understand he has a powerful patron on the Council.”

Gregor nodded grimly. “Just as I feared.”

Dawkins sighed, realizing his job was pretty much over without a chance to find their elusive quarry.

“Do you think you’ll be able to reverse everything’s that happened, sir?”

“What?” Gregor asked distracted. “Oh, yes. Well, no. Very good team on it. Should be able to undo the physical changes. We can change their memories, too, though I hate using mind control.” He shuddered. “But reverse it? Never. You can’t go back again, no matter how much you want to.”

* * *

Danae never saw Gregor during his investigation (she saw a very nice woman named Chira, and a very unpleasant man named Javert, who were assigned to debrief her), and didn’t hear his comments to Dawkins, but she would have understood the sentiment perfectly.

Flash forward a month. Danae sat on a bench, pretending to eat her lunch, alone and ostensibly ignored.

To all appearances, the school was back to normal. Well, pretty much normal. People remarked that Ms. Jameson seemed brighter and more spontaneous now – she laughed and actually had fun with her job, betraying an almost girlish enthusiasm. She was almost never seen without one of her trademark lollipops, but those were a minor vice compared to her new attitude.

And, admittedly, some people whispered about the new relationship between the principal and Ms. Richards, her secretary. But that was really no one’s business but theirs.

Jessica found she still had a little bit of a weight problem – a tendency to gain easily, and a weakness for sweets and junk food – but since most of the weight seemed to settle into her breasts and bottom, none of the males who eyed her lustily seemed put off by it.

But strangely enough, Jessica never encouraged any of them. In fact, she seemed to ignore all of the available boys. Friday and Saturday nights were spent in sleepovers with her best friend Stephanie. In fact, they spent almost all their free time together. Their parents, relieved at not having to worry about boys taking advantage of their daughters, were amazed and relieved they spent so many, long, quiet hours together.

Though Stephanie’s mother did wonder occasionally at the odd stains in Stephanie’s panties. They almost looked like…

But that was ridiculous. Stephanie wasn’t even going out with any boys these days.

And as another plus, she had developed a real appetite for salads, asking her mother for fresh cucumbers (the bigger the better) at least three times a week.

Amber showed an amazing new fluency in Spanish, which served her well. Perhaps in response to this, she also showed a fascination and near obsession with Hispanic culture, even going so far as to change her dress style and hobbies. She continued in gymnastics, but didn’t have the same enthusiasm or ability she’d once shown.

On the other hand, she could watch the other girls – especially those incredibly cute, pert little bottoms – for hours on end.

Tim showed up again, apparently none the worse for the many rumors that followed him. He still played football, but what really made him amazingly popular with the girls was his newfound sensitivity and open emotionality.

Though there were a few nasty rumors that he developed those traits to compensate for a certain under-endowment that would ordinarily have left him less popular with the females.

His sister, on the other hand, became much more aggressive in her social life, but not in a traditional style. She hung out and laughed with the boys, drinking, swearing, watching sports – and even other girls. She also came to excel in several sports herself, physically outclassing most of the other girls.

Perhaps it was jealousy then that she never wanted to share a locker room with them, and refused to be seen naked after meets.

Ms. Stetten returned to teach, but now favored high (and often revealing) fashions and lots of makeup. People openly speculated about her apparent implants, but even more distracting were the rumors which constantly swirled about her regarding her new, amazingly active and “varied” social life.

Charlotte, one of the students in her class, seemed particularly upset about these, at least since they often involved her mother.

And she would turn bright, embarrassed red if anyone used her new nickname, bestowed by her mother: “MT.” She refused to explain what it referred to, but would simply clasp her arms across her chest awkwardly and hurry away.

Perhaps the least successful reversion, at least at first impression, was Allison, the counselor. She was never seen again, and simply faxed her resignation into the school. The next week, however, her niece, “Allie,” transferred into the school. She was an unusually bright, cheerful 14 year old, who acted as if being a teenager and freshman in high school was the absolutely coolest and best thing that ever happened to her. She also seemed unusually knowledgeable about the students and cliques, and had ingratiated herself with the popular girls in very short order.

All in all, however, the Institute had done a pretty good job, at least as far as they could against powerful chaotic magic like that which had been unleashed. And no one consciously remembered what had happened.

But unconsciously…that seemed another matter. Officially, Danae’s position was unchanged, and her blame unrecognized. True, her teachers treated her even more coldly than they had before, recognizing her work as required, but never encouraging or interacting with her otherwise, even the few she had gotten along with before. And in one sense, her position had improved. Although still a social outcast, the other students – in particular, Stephanie and her cohorts – ignored her rather than persecuted her. She wasn’t sure if it was an unconscious fear or respect, but they clearly wanted nothing to do with her, even for the pleasure of teasing her.

Which left her more alone than ever – a sort of half-ghost haunting the school: ignored, hated or feared in turn.

She was sure she had ruined her family situation as well. True, Callista and her mother never openly reproached or punished her after the initial. They seemed determined to put it all behind them. But Danae knew they never could. She knew how disappointed Callista was about her succumbing to dark magic, and even more about her using it on their mother. She pretended otherwise, but Danae knew better.

Her mother’s attitude had definitely changed as well, and she couldn’t hide it like Callista did. There was a new wall between them, and the old warmness – the love, friendship, and trust (Danae only now realized how precious those had been) which she had been lucky enough to share with her was gone. Danae wasn’t sure how much of the change was her use of the forbidden magic, how much was the betrayal her mother felt at being manipulated so coldly, and how much was the trouble she had dealing with Danae’s “problem.” Perhaps what hurt the most was that Danae suspected it was mostly the last.

And then there was Kim.

Danae had approached her shyly but hopefully the first week after the debacle, planning simply to say hello and ask how she was. Kim had been talking happily with several of the other cheerleaders when she had seen Danae approaching.

The look she had given her had frozen Danae in her tracks. She still felt an almost physical kick in the stomach every time she remembered it.

Kim had no conscious memories of the fateful week. The mages had made sure of that. But even so, on seeing Danae, Kim’s face had locked into a frozen mask of hostility, her eyes cold and terrible.

She hated Danae. She didn’t know why, and she didn’t care. She hated her.

Danae recognized it without a word spoken between them. And, of course, she had no one to blame but herself. She was wrong to even attempt restarting the friendship. She turned away at once and never tried again.

Danae didn’t blame them for hating her. She was a demon bastard – a monster. She had finally seen that for herself, and she hated the knowledge but accepted it. Somehow, they had realized that before she had. She could never fit in, nor should she hope to. They should hate her.

Just as she hated herself.

And so, Danae sat alone on a bench, pretending to eat her lunch, shunned or forgotten. She watched students laugh and love, and knew she could never be a part of it. It was better for everyone this way. Alone.

Utterly alone.

END

Copyright 2005 by Nomdreserv
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Re: Playing With Dolls By Nomdreserv (WG, AP, TG, MC)

Postby CelebrityChanger » Mon Jan 08, 2018 4:54 pm

The more I recall of the scene in American Pie where Shannon Elizabeth is on the webcam, the more I think that that IS how Jim looks in his moment on the bed...
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