Neasa balanced on a long aspen branch that stretched over the river. It looked precarious, and would be for anyone else, but the petite Elfqueen had grown and strengthened the limb with her magic and stayed safely positioned thanks to her supernatural balance. She squinted as she peered into the flowing water below and drew a living arrow. A green shoot sprouted from the fletching and tangled itself around the arm of her bow. The head of the arrow was a narrow barb like the end of a fish hook.
Neasa pulled the arrow back, aimed, then adjusted for the bending of light due to the water, and fired. The surface of the water exploded into white and pink foam as the impaled trout struggled desperately while Neasa pulled it in by the vine connected to her arrow.
A blue figure surged out of the water and grabbed the dying fish, dragging it under. Neasa was pulled in behind it with an alarmed cry of, "You bi-" A splash cut off the rest of the profanity.
Isaac and Elena ran to the edge of the river and tried to see through the churning surface. There was a lot more red.
The river calmed and the Elfqueen's head broke the surface. A root from the tree she'd been perched in stretched out for her to grab hold. She was pulled to the shallows and when she had footing she hurled a limp Salalexis to shore. The lizard pokegirl was twitching with another of Neasa's living arrows embedded in her ribcage. "Ball!" Isaac threw the capture device. Neasa glared at the rocking, multicolored sphere. "When you put her up for sale, make sure you include that she can swallow an entire trout with one gulp. That must be worth extra."
Isaac looked the waterlogged Elfqueen over. She was soaked and bruised but not bleeding. He smiled in relief. "I'll be sure to put that in the notes. Come on, let's get you up by the fire."
Neasa shook her head. "Just put me through a healing cycle. That'll get me dry and we can move downriver." She gave a wry smirk. "Can't count on you and Jin trapping us anything to eat, after all."
Isaac was glad Jin wasn't around to hear that barb. So they didn't have the best sense of how to make use of the hunting devices when they were freshmen cadets. They'd learned. "Vardan radioed in that Veliobora got some KATTLE, slightly flattened. We're good on meat for dinner."
Neasa scowled. "I still want to catch more fish. We're contributing meat tonight." Under her breath she muttered something about ranging kilometers while airborne.
Elena scoffed. "My icebox is fully stocked, why don't we teleport home and grab some bacon and chicken?"
"That ruins the challenge of coming out here without packing any rations, Elena," Neasa answered.
It was Isaac, Jin, Neasa, Oleksandra, and Anahita from Isaac's group, Elena and Chandrakanta on their own, Astoreth with Nadezhda, Nino, Sveta, Yevheniya, Veriko, Pazuzu, and Augusta, Gabi with Mandi, and Vardan and Catalina with Andreaa, Sabina, Chiyome, Zali, and Veliobora. Twenty-four mouths to feed, although one mouth belonged to an individual that massed nearly fourteen times an average woman.
Procuring food occupied so much of their time any feral hunting tended to be incidental, like the Salalexis that pulled Neasa into the river.
"Because potential starvation is such fun," the Grandelf responded with annoyance.
They returned to camp with several strings of river fish. Neasa found the opportunity to command the river grasses to catch her prey for her. Plus there were a couple buckets of freshwater shellfish and some wild leeks and onions. Catalina and Veliobora were the first to greet them. The daughter of the Dragulescu family was dressing the gene modified sheep her massive Drakaina had killed. The four meter dragon type pokegirl was lying on her belly nearby. Catalina lifted an organ, Isaac guessed liver, probably. Broad, flat, and dark flesh colored. She looked it over before tossing it to her pokegirl. The crash of Veliobora's jaws snapping shut could be felt through the air. Catalina then stuck her hands out to the colossal dragon type. The Drakaina licked the blood off her mistress' fingers with delicate and dexterous tongue strokes using the tip of the long, muscly appendage.
"Oh good, you have fish. This old ewe is going to need to be stewed overnight to be palatable." Catalina appraised Neasa's haul as she wiped her hands off on a rag.
"Sorry mistress," Veliobora said in a shockingly sweet and high pitched voice. "I focused on the biggest ones."
Catalina patted the reptilian snout. "Meat is meat, my dear Veliobora." Veliobora nodded her massive head and then lifted herself up onto all fours. Like many of the incredibly large Drakaina, she typically avoided standing upright.
"How did Gabi and Astoreth's groups do," Isaac asked out of curiosity.
Catalina made a dismissive gesture. "They stayed close to camp, so nothing special. Carrots and mushrooms. Berries. Some wild grains but I don't think Gabi will succeed in producing bread like he- she claims. Jin is also trying her hand at brewing some healing draught out of some herbs and Great Grapes they gathered."
Elena's ears twitched. Isaac looked over to the Grandelf. "What's up?"
"She won't have enough time while we're out here, but brewing potions reminded me of something. An issue Denys raised with me. It can wait until we're back. We should get started on dinner. Fish boil, you think?"
-
Nadezhda watched the dust cloud diminish in perceived size as the rumble of hooves through the ground faded. She was frozen in disbelief for a moment more and then growled and squealed while dancing in frustration. She cried out to no one in particular, "How do you catch anything?!"
"Told you it wouldn't work," Jin said with a smirk as she watched the retreating Ponytaur herd. She was hunting with Astoreth's group today, all of them dressed in matching black fatigues provided by their employer/guardian. Save for the nudist plant type. Maid outfits would be laughably impractical and none of them wanted to risk their casual clothes getting dirty or damaged. Pazuzu and Augusta remained at the camp.
Jin shared her experience in hunting. Astoreth was offering little guidance these past few days. "It's hard out on the plains, everything can see you coming. There's a reason we hunt the riverbanks and trees. You're lucky the Rapitaur decided to run." The young Succubus actually had Astoreth to thank rather than luck. The infernal veteran was standing back like her wards requested, but the evolved centaur pokegirl was convinced to choose flight over fight because of her imposing presence.
"We had no idea feral hunting was this much work," Nino muttered unhappily.
"We thought you just run into them and fight," Sveta said in the same displeased tone. If not for their different coloration, the two psychic influenced Youma could be mistaken for the same person.
"Some do," Yevheniya the Cardian said with her deadpan and lightly gravelly voice. "Ones you would prefer they run."
"Do you think they taste good?" Everyone turned to stare at Veriko for a second without saying anything. The Hellcat was constantly revisiting the fantasy of running out of food and needing to resort to cannibalism to survive. At least feral-eating, which she swore was treated differently among some of Sapphire's nomad groups.
Everyone turned their attention back to the wilderness without dignifying the sous chef's question. Jin made her way over to their pensive guardian. "Star-nee," she began to address the elder infernal with childish sing-song. The blue skinned infernal's gold eyes flicked to the Fiendish Enchantress but Astoreth gave no response otherwise. "Star, is something wrong?"
Nadezhda whirled around. "Call her Mistress or Lady Astoreth!"
"I'll call her Lady Astoreth when she acts like Lady Astoreth," Jin shot back. All of the young infernals were struck dumb as Astoreth suddenly burst into laughter. She was so consumed by the involuntary reaction that she had to sit in the grass.
She nearly vanished underneath the heads of the wild grain stalks.
"Lady Astoreth!"
"Star!"
"Mistress!"
The multitude of voices all started voicing their concerns differently but all ended with the same words, "-you accidentally changed."
Astoreth continued laughing in her reduced, passive form. The young maids all looked at each other in confusion. "Wait, you all knew," Jin asked the others.
"Yes, you all know," Astoreth said through a tight voice, still light with spontaneous joy. "Thank you all for keeping my secret. It wasn't an accident that I changed. I'm fine. I'm fine… now. Thank you, Jin." The small and vulnerable infernal laid back in the grass. "Someone… someone I knew died recently. Someone I used to think was family but… I didn't really care about her at all. Yet here I am, berating myself for not properly mourning her. For not being able to redeem her." Astoreth fixated on a cloud that was drifting high up above the plains and all of the young pokegirls were silent. Their only response to her opening up to them was to drift closer to her with tiny, shuffling steps.
"If you all wouldn't mind, could you keep watch for a few minutes," Astoreth asked. She was surrounded by the younger members of her household, out in the middle of nowhere with her trusted friends close enough to arrive in a matter of minutes. She was with her family. "I just want to relax for a bit."
-
Two Oleksandras stood facing each other in the warm light of the camp fire, although one was free of the subtle geometric seams that crossed her body. This unblemished Oleksandra armored up, only wearing boy shorts, and studied the plain, overlapping and form fitting plates. "Huh," the imposter said with a voice that resembled Oleksandra's in its general tone, but held far too much energy. "Guess I can't copy your template." Her movements as she shifted and twisted to study herself were far too animated and enthusiastic to pass for the genuine article as well.
Gabi the Battle Angel retracted her armor. "Anyway, now for the main event," the transformed Titto declared and then scrunched her face in concentration. Her right ear started twitching incessantly. "Leksya, how do you turn this thing off," she asked while moving her hands up to pen in the overly active appendage.
"I do not understand your question. I do not have any issues with the activity level of my ears." Oleksandra's ears tipped back slightly as she responded with her typical even tone.
Gabi shook her head, causing the temporary rabbit ears to flop back and forth before they stood straight and still. "Whatever. Improvise, Gabi." The look of focus returned and the right ear resumed twitching. The borrowed face of Oleksandra started to shift subtly. The eyes spaced apart minutely and enlarged slightly. The bridge of the nose widened, and the tip flattened as the rest drifted down to form a muzzle. Light orange fur sprouted to cover all of the skin that was exposed. The crown was still longer, coarser, and deeper red, but there was no clear hairline as the various types of hair covering transitioned in a blend. Along with these changes the feet elongated and the toes altered to become paw-like.
Gabi spun in place and then posed in a showy stance, arms stretched out and feet spaced wide. "Ta-da! What do you think?"
"Bunny," Pazuzu squealed in sheer delight. Gabi smiled and wiggled her borrowed rabbit ears towards the pokekit.
Oleksandra studied the image of her as an anthropomorphic rabbit woman. "I do not recall if this was my appearance before evolving or not. My memories are not very clear. I also never encountered a mirror or other reflective surface to study myself."
Gabi the furry bunny girl's ears fell to the sides as her stance became defeated. She turned towards another member of her audience and leaned forward and then brought her hands up in front of her chest like a rabbit rearing up on its haunches. "What do you think, Isaac?"
Isaac studied the figure presented to him. Most of the body was the same in silhouette, still human and female. Still lithe, leggy, with athletic tone. The fur was clean and even with a healthy shine. He could still read the expressions of the face as well as he could a human one. There were some commonalities among all mammalian expressions. "It works," was his only reply.
Gabi stooped over in even greater defeat. "It works? What does that mean, it works? How come Pazuzu is the only one who appreciates my effort?"
Isaac shrugged. Like he had explained to Anahita, his definition of beauty was rather broad, and after getting over the shock of encountering anthropomorphic humanoids many months ago it was simply another way in which humans appeared. "I don't know. If this is how Leksya looked she'd still be someone I'd like being with. It's still beautiful, just in a different way." Gabi blushed, though only the rosey color filling the exposed skin of the rabbit ears on the transformed Titto gave it away.
Gabi's form shrunk down, fur receded, and color vanished until she was standing as her pale, neutral presentation. She scratched her cheek. "Anyway, who next?"
"Do me next!" Jin jumped up with a shout.
Gabi smirked. "Out here in front of everybody or somewhere private?"
Jin cocked her head to the side and stared. "What?"
"What?" Gabi responded in the exact same way while grinning like a fool.
Jin's ponytail flared as she shook her head. "Whatever," she said as she thrust out her hand. "Turn into me, but with huge boobs and massive muscles and demon wings and horns and a third eye like Isaac's. Oh, and blue skin, no red! Oh, and a tail too. Like, a thick dragon tail, like Veliobora's. And claws, really big claws I could shred people with."
Gabi was staring flatly and bobbing her head with every new item listed. Finally the Titto reached out and took the Fiendish Enchantress' offered hand. "Is that all?"
"Tattoos! All over like Anahita's but black and tribal."
Gabi looked over at the Seraph with a quizzical expression. "Anahita has tattoos all over? Except for her hands I've only ever seen from the neck up."
"Oh they're awesome," Jin answered for the celestial shrinking away from the sudden focus of everyone's attention. "They're all gold and make this really intricate illustration of a temple on an island in a lake." Jin's eyes suddenly gleamed in the fire light. "Hita-chan, the bet you lost! You have to wear something skimpy for everyone to see your tattoos!"
"You never said I would have to show myself to anyone," Anahita protested with a distressed cry and deeply colored face. She focused on Vardan and Catalina. She whimpered, "There are other humans here…"
Jin waved a hand dismissively. "Fine, not everyone. We'll sort it out. Anyway, Gabi, get transforming."
Gabi threw a mock salute and then took the Enchantress' hand and drained a small amount of her abundant energy. The Titto's hair darkened to black, became more fine, and grew longer. Her eyes darkened to near black and the upper eyelid morphed to gain prominent epicanthic folds. Her hips widened and her breasts grew while her height reduced a few centimeters. Now there were two Jins.
The Jin who was Gabi then sighed and closed her eyes in concentration while reciting Jin's list of requested features. "Okay, huge boobs," they grew as large as Chandrakanta's. "Massive muscles," her form swelled to the proportions of a ‘roided out bodybuilder, stretching the skin tight and bulging the veins near the surface. The only soft and round features were now the ridiculously mismatched breasts. "Demon bits," membranous wings sprouted from her back while two huge, curved horns grew from the temples. "Red skin," the hue shift spread across the body like rings of ink getting soaked with water. "A dragon tail," Gabi's voice was starting to carry a strain to it as the meaty appendage grew from the rear. She had to pull down her shorts to prevent it from tearing the seams of her leg holes. "And tat…" Gabi's transformed body started to tremble. "Tat-toos…" Black spots started to color the surface and then fade in an uneven rhythm. Sweat started to run down the transforming Titto’s forehead.
Gabi suddenly deflated and reverted back to her neutral state with an exhausted sigh. She collapsed into a cross-legged seated position. "Phew, sorry Jin. That was too much of a stretch."
Jin squatted down next to the Titto. "It's okay, it sounded better in my head. I, you, it kinda looked like a short devil guy with fake boobs."
Gabi chuckled. "I was trying really hard not to become just that. It would have been easier if I wasn't trying to stay you at the same time. Anyway, I'm beat. Show's over for tonight." Everyone sitting around the fire applauded, which energized the Titto enough to stand and take a bow before she returned to sit next to Mandi.
-
Jin grinned wickedly as she felt the volatile blend of energies forming in her palm. The raw magic of a Mana Bolt with the vital energy of a Ki Blast. It was unstable but could pack an incredible punch, and the Fiendish Enchantress was excited to see how hard the hybrid technique would hit the oblivious feral Onyx she had in her sights. The high durability of the rocky giant made her a perfect target.
Jin threw the condensed orb with a wide horizontal motion. The field necessary to contain the energies chaotically attempting to separate from one another made it resistant to changes in momentum.
Jin watched with gleeful anticipation as the bright sphere streaked through the air, then her mouth dropped open in disbelief when the ad-hoc technique lost cohesion a couple of meters before its target and exploded in an air burst.
Gabi threw a pokeball at the Onyx who fell over backwards from the surprise of the sudden blast, and the pokeball rocked a few times and then stopped. The feral Onyx was captured. Without even being hit.
"What?! Why did she stay in? I didn't even hit her!"
Gabi laughed. "Well, you certainly scared her and she must have decided it was safer in the ball. They do that sometimes, reaction to conditioning cycles."
Jin made a face as the two of them moved up to pick up the occupied pokeball. "Ugh, I can't stand those. Thankfully Isaac got me a quiet ball right away. I don't like being in it but at least I don't hate it." Jin thought Anahita was crazy for preferring time within a ball. The Seraph used the total sensory depravation as a tool for meditating sometimes.
Gabi nodded. "Yeah, some tamers swear balls with cycles make ferals fight harder. I bet it comes down to the girl." The Titto snatched the pokeball off the ground and stowed it away in a pack.
Jin put her fists on her hips. "So how come the sergeants made such a big deal about not giving pokegirls empty balls when we were in the academy but you come and tell us it's how the Voronas all hunt when they're on their own?"
Gabi sighed. "It's the best way to hunt, but it's not technically legal. Some PLC restriction or they crack down on pokeball manufacture. There's conspiracies that if a league ignores the PLC regulations too much, the Shadow League sets up a menace attack on their soil."
"Shadow League?"
"Secret PLC police. They don't really exist. I don't think. There are some weird coincidences out there, though. Anyway, the pokeball rule. It's not enforced anywhere in the league but the academy has to be extra cautious. Sometimes we get a cadet who's actually a spy for somebody or another who wants to shut us down."
"That's stupid," was Jin's only response.
"Yup," Gabi agreed. "But they can't be as good as we are, so they try to drag us down to their level." The Titto grinned. "Can't stop the Vorona from flying free."
Jin looked speculative. "I've been wondering, how?"
Gabi grinned before answering. "Simple. We do everything better than the league people do. Make it so that they can't afford to interfere with how we want to live. Only the Iliescues produce more food than we do, but they don't contribute nearly as much to the security of the league. In fact, the Iliescues hire the Vorona to protect most of their farmlands from ferals. We patrol the Dnipro River for pirates and guard the border with Crescent Moon against their crazy raiders." Gabi beamed with pride while explaining all of this, then shook her head. "The humans just don't get it. They take everything they have for granted. Threshold, losing all of that… but we get a second chance. Because of the Vorona Corps. Because way back, Renata Wronski promised her daughter she wouldn't ever be enslaved by the leagues, no matter if she was a fertile human or a pokegirl. Can't stop the Vorona from flying free."
-
Isaac picked up the splintered sticks and frayed green twigs. Another ruined trap.
He supposed it was a sign that they were placing them successfully. There was a clump of fur and smear of blood, but something had come along and stolen their prey before they came to collect it. An easy meal for whatever the responsible feral was.
He looked over to Oleksandra, who along with Anahita were the pokegirls accompanying him for this part of the day. "Leksya, you picking up anything?"
She was armored up so her ears didn't flop as usual when she shook her head in response. "Negative. No contacts on visual, thermal, or audio. The remains of the prey item are ambient temperature, suggesting destruction of the trap was not recent."
Isaac sighed. It was the same story everywhere they had set up traps. He speculated that maybe the feral robbing them had enhanced olfactory senses and was following their trail that way. During the night, maybe. One way to find out…
-
Oleksandra's ears stood straight up. She held up three fingers and then pointed with all three digits towards the northeast. It was dark and they were out here for the sake of curiosity and vindication. They'd set the traps in a tighter cluster, all within range of Oleksandra's BATTLE template augmented senses.
It was two more minutes before the contacts the Battle Angel detected were close enough for Isaac to hear. Just a twig snapping and a canine whine. A Lupina cautiously nosed towards the trap they had left with a steppe lemming carcass. When the wolf pokegirl was satisfied she raised her ears and tail up, which signaled for the two small pokekits that had stayed back it was safe. The two little Lupina bound up to the trap and let out tiny excited yaps.
From where they were hiding, Oleksandra raised her armored right hand and produced her rotary cannon. She looked to Isaac and her ear tilted questioningly as the weapons barrels started to spin. Isaac waved her down and the weapon was stowed away. He wasn't authorized to have pokekit balls in his possession and wasn't heartless enough to only take the adult Lupina, stranding the kits. He'd report it to the rangers and they'd eventually pass knowledge along to a hunter that specialized in capturing ferals with dependents.
The human had his pokedex out to make use of the specialty lenses to see in the dark, so he keyed it to record the scene. It was cute watching the two pokekits prance excitedly around the potential meal.
It was less cute when they both grabbed the carcass in their jaws and, with violent tugs and shakes, tore the dead rodent in two.
The natural method of allocating meal portions.
-
Isaac sneezed, hard. The sort of sneeze that causes the entire upper body to convulse with the force of the involuntary expulsion of air. He sneezed again, and again. Gabi and Mandi watched him with a mix of confusion and concern. This was not the result they were expecting.
Isaac sneezed a few more times and then was finally able to get his airways to calm down enough to breathe normally, after ridding himself of the buildup of mucus. "Ugh," he mumbled with a miserable snort as he looked down at himself. "It didn't work…"
"I don't understand why not. You said you don't have immutable form, right?"
Isaac rubbed the tip of his nose hard enough that he could hear the cartilage produce popping sounds as it shifted under the force. "I don't have any known blood traits according to the tests."
"But your eye…"
Isaac shrugged. "There aren't any known blood traits that give a third eye." He didn't get into the fact that it was some sort of illusory projection that didn't tangibly exist. His blood tests didn't show any markers for psychic or magic ancestry either. If it wasn't for Doc's age and ambivalence towards worldly matters Isaac might be under a lot more attention by the league's medical community.
"Most people don't voluntarily become inflicted with gender dust." Catalina commented from where she was leaning against her husband while stroking the crown of Veliobora's massive head, which was resting in Zali's lap "What made you decide to risk it?"
"It's just the temporary variant, what risk is there in that," Isaac asked.
Catalina shrugged. "There are rumors of boys thresholding from gender dust exposure. I've never heard for sure if it happens or not."
"Well, like I said, I don't seem to have blood traits." Catalina didn't look convinced, which was a little ironic. Or would it be hypocritical? Anyway… "As for why, I just remember being curious about it for a long time. I don't think it's that big of a deal to wonder about being different than you are. The idea just stuck with me though. I think part of it is… thinking maybe I would have been treated better if I grew up as a girl. But maybe there's a lot I don't know and it could have been worse. Anyway, I wasn't expecting Mandi to learn the technique for me to try it."
Mandi spoke matter-of-factly. "Isaac told Master that he was jealous of Master's ability to change forms. Being a girl is a different form for Isaac, so Master used the technique teacher on Mandi."
"A pokegirl who turns into a boy with a tamer who turns into a girl." Catalina said with a grin. "What a pair you two are."
Gabi gave a surprised little laugh and then looked down at the ground. "I never really become a boy. Yeah, I can change my appearance enough to fool anyone without a dex, but it says right in the entry for the Titto. I can't change my biology. Even if I look like a log, I've still got all of my same organs and, well… Sex organs are organs." The Titto looked up, smiled apologetically, and gave a tiny shrug.
"Wait, so then how do you have a penis?" Jin blurted out the question without any indication she gave any thought to how it might be received.
Gabi scratched her cheek. "I just, move things around… Stretch things out. Thicken up the skin so I'm less sensitive…" Jin gained an introspective expression that shifted towards disturbed before she shook her head to clear away the thoughts.
Vardan cleared his throat after the awkward silence followed that revelation for a bit too long. "To be honest, Isaac, you looked a little more disappointed than I think not having your curiosity satisfied."
Did Isaac look disappointed? Was there more to it? "Well… I did say it sort of stuck with me. I mean, I've got a personality that isn't the most masculine. Mostly I'm really neurotic."
"Excuse me," Catalina challenged as she became incensed.
"I'm making generalizations." Isaac hastily said in his defense. "Human females, averaged out as a whole, are slightly more neurotic than males, and the trait of neuroticism might be linked to just sensitivity in general. Like, women can see more color variations than men."
"Wait, they can," Vardan burst out. "So when Catalina teases me about the color of my shirts…"
"Yes, I told you, love. They do not match." Catalina smiled. "Okay, so there is perhaps something to what you are saying, Isaac. Are there other differences?"
Isaac nodded. "Women also tend to be more agreeable on average. Compassion and politeness. Well, that makes sense evolutionarily because women were the caretakers because women had to breastfeed the infants. You need to be gentler with vulnerable babies. So these traits can be present in both sexes, but women high in these traits were more successful in passing on their genes. So much that it became ingrained in the idea of women."
Isaac sighed. "So I'm a little disagreeable, I think. So I'm not exactly 'womanly' in that way but the fact that I'm so high in neuroticism, it makes me attracted to the same traits that women are, I think. So who I'm attracted to, who I am… It all sort of… connects. I guess it's that.
"I mean, if I found someone I wanted to spend my life with, I'd want to try to have kids with them. I would think they're a good person, hopefully they'd think I was a good person, and the best way to get more good people is to have two good people make more people. You know? So I could look for a woman that has the masculine traits that attract me," he subconsciously looked to where Astoreth was silently listening, "or… it's not realistic but if I could be the female then I could find a man… I guess that's it…"
Isaac suddenly was very aware that something about this all was very disappointing. Maybe the body he had, maybe something else. Vardan interrupted his examination of this feeling with a tut between his teeth. "Tsk, be fruitful and multiply…"
Isaac looked up and focused on the other male. "Hmm?"
Vardan shook his head. "Sorry, just… remembering unpleasant memories. It was one of the verses my father would pull out to shame me, as if I had no interest in women. Although that wasn't his favorite.”
Vardan lowered the tone of his voice like any father learned to do when speaking sternly. "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman, such a thing is an abomination." Vardan glared into the embers of the fire. "It doesn't exactly leave room for interpretation."
Isaac smirked and decided to play devil's advocate. "Sure it does. Maybe God was just reminding any ancient gay Israelites not to forget the reach around." Vardan and Catalina looked at him in utter shock while Gabi burst into raucous laughter. Mandi smiled and let out a small insincere twitter to show that she was in agreement with her partner even though she did not understand the humor.
Catalina's face was still warring between showing outrage, shock, and certainly not humor. "You can't possibly believe that was the intention of that message."
"No," Isaac replied. "I don't. I think it was an ancient tribal law based on a religious covenant that rooted in the context of the time. Maybe it's because there's a lot of health risks for anal sex that vaginal penetration is less vulnerable to in a culture that believed diseases were divine punishment or the work of evil spirits. Maybe it's defining their culture as distinct from the other Mediterranean cultures of the era, a lot of which practiced homosexual domination. There's one hell of a story involving Horus, Set, incestuous gay rape attempts, and some special salad dressing. Maybe it's as simple as wanting everyone to be having straight sex to grow the population. There were a lot more people dying back in those days." Isaac shrugged. "My point is, your dad's an asshole."
Catalina put her hand on his shoulder and leaned into him. "Isaac is right, my love. Your father is exactly what he says." Vardan gave another weak smile and leaned his head against the top of his wife's.
Isaac looked away from the pair, feeling pangs of jealousy surfacing again. Gabi was still focused on the extra-dimensional human so the socially perceptive Titto noticed the expression. She jumped up and declared, "Well I still want to see what Isaac looks like as a girl. Since he can't transform, why don't I do it for him?" The shape shifter grinned. "What do you say, Isaac? Want to be a part of Gabi's Metamorphic Minstrel Show?" Mandi applauded enthusiastically. It always helped to have a plant in the audience.
The others added their enthusiasm for the idea. Jin mock-chanted 'girl Isaac' a few times while Vardan, Catalina, and Neasa expressed more reserved eagerness. Veriko said something about a maid outfit. Elena and Astoreth watched the antics with mild bemusement, and so Isaac decided to not be a spoilsport and rose to take his place next to the Titto performer.
Gabi grinned broadly and slipped completely into her showman persona. "Now that we have our volunteer, I'll need your hand and a little bit of your energy, sir. Don't worry if you feel a little light headed, that just means I like the way you taste."
"I wanna taste Isaac," Veriko heckled from the 'stands.'
"I already got to," Nadezhda boasted while nudging the Hellcat in the ribs. Astoreth silenced any further interruptions from her wards with a look.
Isaac offered his hands and felt a chilly, suction sensation from the Titto's light grip. "Huh, you taste like Nadezhda," Gabi remarked before she shot up in height, broadened in the shoulders, gained a slight amount of color to her skin and more to her hair which was shortening. Her eyes became mostly blue and her jaw squared up with the rest of her facial bones.
The transformation was complete and there were two Isaac's standing in the middle of the ring around the campfire. Gabi was standing in silence with a general lack of expression. A couple of seconds went by without any word or action from the normally very animated Titto.
"Gabi?" Isaac leaned over to look straight into the eyes of his doppelganger. "Gabi, are you okay?"
"Do you see them," the transformed Titto asked with a haunting lack of affect in her voice. Isaac was about to ask what but a small cut opened up on Gabi's forehead and a red eye looked out from within.
Apprehension flooded Isaac's mind and instantly grew to dread. "Gabi change back," Isaac ordered the Titto.
"Do you see them?" Gabi repeated the question, the voice she borrowed from Isaac carrying a hint of distress from the trembling her transformed body was beginning to experience.
"Don't look at them, Gabi, change back, now," Isaac half shouted.
"Isaac," Gabi whimpered in her own voice, "I…" she was cut off by a sudden convulsion. Several more red, inhuman eyes bloomed across her face and shadowy tendrils surrounded in distorted light sprouted from her mouth as her head snapped back.
"CANDI!" Someone with Isaac's voice yelled as Isaac's body moved without thought. His left arm shoved his fingers, then hand, then forearm down the Titto's throat. There was a disturbing lack of physical interaction between the masses. The rational observer of Isaac's mind ignored the unnatural insubstantiality and rather noted that he was doing this because the metamorphic pokegirl needed to 'spit it out.' Whatever it was.
Gabi wretched and the eldritch appendages came free from her mouth, pulled out in Isaac's grip. The eyes that had manifested receded into her forehead and then came out on the end of the tendrils. The stalks twisted and burrowed into the flesh of Isaac's arm. They writhed and curled and seemed to double in size during the brief fraction of a second they were exposed to the open air. Isaac focused all of his will on constraint of his own person, which seemed to extend to whatever it was he had yanked out of Gabi. He suddenly felt as if he was falling backwards from the force of the tug, backwards and upwards.
Far, far away.
For a moment he felt as if he could see himself, and Gabi, and everyone else starting to stand up in alarm at what they were witnessing. A still frame but in three dimensional space. Then it was like he blinked and the afterimage of an entire cosmos was on the back of his eyelids. He was off somewhere in a colorless fog that was also an empty expanse that stretched out forever and further.
He was alone. Very alone. More alone than should be possible.
The only thing in all of the existence of this place. He was a singular, isolated consciousness, unrestrained and expanding, infinitely so. Soon, in nothing more than a moment, because every moment contained infinite moments and not a single moment at all, he would be everywhere. Everything. Nothing. Nowhere. He would be unconstrained by any force he could imagine and anything he could imagine would become a new force.
He squeezed his eyes shut, or whatever was the equivalent of denying his perception in this place and this state of being. He didn't want to be here and be this. He couldn't. He shouldn't. He would fail, he would ruin it. Everyone would be better off if they didn't need him, if he wasn't around. He had nothing to contribute, he was nothing but a negative force.
He ruined everything.
There was a flicker of perception of himself standing on a white stone island, then he felt a rushing, falling, and shrinking sensation. He crashed back into his physical body and he saw a spark of something shining in Gabi.
An explosion of unmaking spiraled out from the center of the camp circle. Chandrakanta's image wavered and the Megami grabbed many of the onlookers and pulled them to safety as she was suddenly in several places at once. Extra arms with their junctions to her shoulders composed of prismatic light rather than flesh stripped pokeballs off the belts of Vardan and Catalina, recalling their girls while depositing the humans in the safe space between the curving arms of destruction.
Augusta pulled Pazuzu out of the way of danger, but the pokekit resisted and with a loud shout exclaimed, "Mister Squiggles!" She threw her dingy rag doll into the center of the destruction and it vanished rather than be pulled apart into individual fibers like everything else. Not even her caretaker took notice of the peculiar actions of the peculiar pokekit she was responsible for in the chaos.
Astoreth and Elena reacted on their own, pulling those near them to safety as well. Only the bonfire, the chairs, and portions of the yurts were caught in the arcs that rent reality apart.
Isaac and Gabi were safe within the eye of the storm. The Titto was returned to her neutral state of being, small, pale, and androgynous. She collapsed against Isaac and descended into a coughing fit with tears streaming down her face. Isaac took her head in his hand and lifted her face to examine it. "Gabi, Gabi are you okay? Say something Gabi."
The shape changer groaned, which transitioned into "-nuh throw up…" Gabi shoved herself away and doubled over to expel the contents of her stomach. Just the natural contents of a normal person restricted to a mostly liquid diet. It was a little strange to feel relief at witnessing regular vomit. Isaac's intuition informed him that Gabi was okay though.
Chandrakanta's duplicates vanished as she ended her use of the Full Bunshin technique. She resolved standing between Vardan and Catalina and after handing the dumbstruck humans their pokeballs back, her ethereal arms vanished with a twinkling of light. The Megami dashed through the suspended cloud of particles separating the observers from Isaac and Gabi. "Isaac," she called out to the man in the center of this phenomenon.
She froze and stood up straight when Isaac turned to her, then she closed her eyes and sighed with a sad smile. "You've changed again."
Astoreth and Elena pushed through the hanging dust as well and both of them stopped in their tracks to take in the new Isaac. He wasn't noticeably taller this time, but filled out. More matured, more defined in his shoulders and jaw line. Like he had just entered the prime of being a man, somewhere in the mid-twenties.
His left eye was like a solar eclipse, a black disk surrounded by a ring of harsh light. The right side of his face was a colorless and dark cloud, except for the multitude of red eyes that opened and closed with crackles of lightning; never remaining in one location between blinks. His left arm was no longer a single arm but many. They twisted and twitched and knotted around one another or passed through each other like shadows. They dripped a red, writhing fluid that dissolved into nothing in the air and the non-flesh was striated and colored the crimson shade of a flayed body.
"Isaac," Elena said while stretching her hand out towards him tepidly. He didn't respond, all of his eyes were fixed up into the sky above. "Isaac are you okay?"
Isaac closed his eyes, at least the two natural ones, and clenched a fist while the twisting tightened on the appendage that was no longer an arm. He breathed in deeply, his chest swelling, and then held it. Suddenly he was back to normal. "We're okay" he answered in a voice that was his but with a little more reverberating bass. "Everyone else?"
"No one was hurt," Chandrakanta answered. "Isaac, what happened?"
"I don't know," he responded. He had an idea, but he didn't really know for sure. He looked at the ruined tents and sadly stated, "Guess I ruined the camping trip…"
“Isaac, it wasn’t your fault,” Chandrakanta said with her typical compassion.
Isaac laughed bitterly. “Right, we’ll just add this to the list of things that aren’t my fault…”
Everyone packed up what there was to pack and what was destroyed was piled up and carried to The Pit near the Vorona farms in Dnipro by teleport.
Augusta was scanning the campsite after everyone else had already been taken to their homes. Astoreth returned for her and Pazuzu. "Augusta, what are you still looking for?"
"Pazuzu lost Mr Squiggles but she won't help me look."
Pazuzu folded her arms defiantly. "I find Mr Squiggles, no lose him. No need that Mr Squiggles no more. He not a real Mr Squiggles so I throw him in a hole. Mama want Mr Squiggles back."
Astoreth shook her head helplessly. They could come back and look for the knotty clump of rags once the pokekit was worried. It probably was caught up in the destruction anyway. What a silly thing to get hung up on. She teleported the last of her two charges back to her home and went to her office. She had asked Chandrakanta to wait for her there. “You wanted to speak with me, Star?”
“Pay up,” the infernal said with a smirk.
“Excuse me,” the Megami responded with a tilt of her head and finger to her chin.
“That didn’t look like a kingly being of godly proportions to me.” Astoreth’s grin broadened. “Pay up.”
Chandrakanta reached into her cleavage and produced a standard league credit note of sizable value. “I cannot believe you.”
(-[|]-) End 17.2 (-[|]-)