Jade 7 – OVER THE TOP

59: Ghoul, gator, gargoyle

Whateley Academy, “The Underground”

Tuesday, November 28, 6:53 PM

A rocky grey giant vied with a six-foot insectoid creature over the bean dip, while three different devil girls argued over whether the punch had been spiked.  Billy Joel’s Only the Good Die Young was belting on the sound system when the entry door slammed open and Thuban made his grand entrance, a girl on each arm.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “friends and comrades, the gargoyle is dead!  Long live the gargoyle!”

On his left arm, the dragon-man held a winged, tailed, blue-skinned monster.  She was also stunningly attractive, and had the type of figure commonly described as “stacked.”  This was her first appearance at a Faction Three meeting – that is, her first physical appearance.  She had been seen many times before as one of the lead characters in a cartoon serial that played nearly every meeting.  Every person in the room instantly recognized “Demona.”  The only difference was that this Demona was obviously still a teenager, not an adult.

On his right arm, the reptilian host escorted a completely ordinary looking Japanese girl, perhaps seventeen years old.  She wore a long sleeved white turtleneck, white gloves, and white pants.  This made her color-coordinated with Demona, who wore an artistically ragged white skirt and white halter.

“I regret to inform you that some of our previous members will not be returning, Lazuli the gargoyle will no longer be joining us.  Similarly, for those of you who were friends with the shapeshifter, Tool, I regret that she is also gone.  In their wake, I ask you to accept Lazuli’s successor.  I’m sure you all recognize Demona.”

“Who’s the norm?”

“I thought these meetings were for Faction Three only!”

“We don’t need her kind in here!”

The last came from a guy that looked like an oversized granite statue brought to life.

Jinn let go of Thuban’s arm and slid forward through the air, her feet six inches above the floor.  No one paid much attention to that – this was Whateley after all.

“Oh, come on, Igneous,” Jinn told the statue.  “We’ve got costuming class together!  You were there when I made this face!  Or maybe you didn’t notice ‘cause you were working too hard on your trench coat.”

While the rest of the group looked on, Jinn reached up and grabbed her hair, and then pulled her head off.  Or rather, she pulled the scalp and skin off her head, leaving a metallic white skull behind, bobbing on an articulated metal neck.  She kept her eyeballs and tongue, but that actually looked worse than a bare skull would have.  The apparently-living eyes and tongue gave the skull a touch of the grotesque that was lacking in simple bone.

“Honestly, what’s with you?” her skull face clacked at him.

Igneous looked down, shamefacedly.  “Oh, hi Jinn.  Didn’t recognize you in that white outfit.  You never wear white.”

She floated up higher, matching his six and a half feet of height.  Manipulating the inside pins and clips, she disconnected her “skull” from the neck bones, picked it up, and began banging Igneous on the head with her own skull.

“I – don’t – like – name – calling!”

Igneous, for his part, tried to shield himself with his massive hands.  “Ow!  Ow!  Okay, I’m sorry already!”

Jinn rotated in the air, holding her head out, Hamlet-style.

“So,” the skull chattered at them, “anyone else have a problem with me being here?”

The front row shook their heads, and there were comments from farther back in the crowd.

“You’ll do fine.”

“Gonna fit right in.”

“Still say she’s too normal looking.”

Jinn sighed.  “Lemme get my face on.”  She slipped the skin back over the skull in her hand.  Now holding her normal-looking but disconnected head, she turned to look at the F3 crowd.  Being both new and entertaining, she’d gathered a pretty good crowd.  “Anyone else object to the normal look?”

There were a few affirmative sounds from the audience.

“Okay, look, I can do this any way that works.  Let’s get a show of hands.  How should I show up at F3 meetings?  Normal, or creep show?  How many hands for normal?  Oh, not good.  Creep show?  Okay, I can take a hint.  But I’m still gonna wear my face!”

Still in the air, she began to spin like a top.  A tattered black cloak came out of somewhere (it was hard to tell with her spinning), then surrounded her cocoon-like.  A moment later she stopped spinning.  She still had her normal head and face, but wore a hooded cloak consisting of strips and tatters of ragged black cloth.  Under the cloak was an equally tattered gray gown covering a withered emaciated form.  Where her arms and legs poked out, they were nothing more than metallic white bone.  Several rusty chains hung over her body, bandolier style.  A perfectly normal-looking head was the height of incongruity on this body.

“There, that good enough?” she asked sarcastically, “or do you want me to poke my eyes out, too?”

“The eyes!  The eyes!”

“Nobody’s ever satisfied.  Okay, but just one.”  A skeletal hand reached up to her face and pulled out an eyeball, leaving a gaping black socket.  “You know, it might be better if I put it back in, only backward.”  She stuck the eye back into the socket so that no pupil showed, it was only pure white.  “Okay, now can I stay?”

The crowd was more agreeable this time, and Jinn floated back down to the floor.  It was time to mingle.

As usual, Sted and Jana were hanging out together.  Jinn spotted the centaur Sted right off, but it took a moment to recognize the black-furred catgirl she was talking to.  Peering closely, Jinn recognized Jana’s features.

“Ah ha!” She said, coming up to the pair.  “You told me you did a catgirl!  This is just the first time I’ve seen it!”

The catgirl flicked her ears back and then forward, preened her whiskers, then held a hand out to the centaur.  “Told you.  Pay up.”

“What?” Jinn wondered.

Sted spun her human half almost 180 degrees around, and plucked a ten dollar bill out of a saddlebag.  “We had a bet.  She said you were Lazuli.  I disagreed.”

“But…  you’re acting like I just proved it or something.”

“You did.”  Jana’s voice in this form was a sexy almost-purr.  “You’re acting like you know us, but neither of us have ever met Jinn.”

“And it’s kind of obvious,” the centaur added.  “I mean, it’s not like Tool switched rooms or anything.  She goes out one night and comes back a gargoyle.  That part is old news in Whitman.  The only problem was that she said that Lazuli got killed – her body disintegrated.”

“Uh…”

“And Laz always told us she was a fake.  She just never explained how.”  Flexing her claws out, Jana combed through the fur on her cheeks.  “So when Thuban walks in, he’s got Tool on one arm and you on the other.  He says Tool and Lazuli are gone but Demona is a replacement, then conspicuously says nothing about you.  And then you did that little show-off bit in front of Igneous.  If you can do that sort of stuff with bones and plastic skin, I figure you could do it with a life-sized gargoyle puppet, too.  Am I right?”

Jinn looked helplessly from one to the other.  “Uh…” she shrugged.  “Busted.”

“So what happened?  Tool insists on being called ‘Demona’ now, but she wouldn’t spill the beans.  She was kind of happy, kind of sad, and kind of guilty, all at the same time.”

“Well, it involves this witch named Hekate…”

What Jinn really wanted to do was spend some quiet time alone with Thuban, but he seemed busier than ever these days.  So it had seemed like the F3 meetings would be a good place to hang out with him.  After all, if his friends become her friends, they’d have more reason to spend time together, wouldn’t they?  Besides, they were an interesting crowd.  Her plan was to cozy up to a few of her new acquaintances, then loop back to be with Stephen (though she usually only called him that in the privacy of her thoughts).

Unfortunately, by the time she got back to him he wasn’t circulating the way he was supposed to, he was deep in conversation with Demona.  The blue-skinned girl was yammering on about something unimportant, and Thuban was listening intently.

Then Jinn noticed that, although his head was nodding intently, his attention was focused on something other than her words.  Maybe some people hadn’t noticed – some folks had an inexplicable aversion to a warm, human intelligence looking out of those reptilian orbs – but Jinn liked his eyes.  Which is why she quickly noticed that they were riveted on Demona’s breasts.

That wouldn’t do at all!  Exploiting the confidence she never seemed to have in her real body, she wafted up to her boyfriend and attached herself to his arm, making sure that her own assets were accidentally pressed into his arm.  “Demona isn’t stealing all your time, is she?”

“Huh?  Oh, no, she was just explaining—”  Normally more articulate, Thuban looked back to Demona for help.

As he turned away, Jinn took the opportunity to do a little “eye-popping” maneuver, swiveling both eyes forward toward Demona’s cleavage, then bulging them out of her skull.  Nothing too extreme, just an inch or so.

Demona drew back in surprise, and looked down, perhaps wondering if she had a stain on her outfit.  Unfortunately, it would be hard for her to see the skimpy halter, since her view was blocked by twin swells of blue flesh.  The gargoyle was puzzled for a second, and looked up to see Thuban’s riveted gaze.

“All this time…” realization came slowly “…you’ve just been staring at my boobs!”

In situations such as this, there are very few safe answers that a man can give.  Demona was both generously endowed and obviously able to support herself (as it were), the proof being that her skimpy garment gave little in the way of lifting support.  Furthermore, said garment was under a bit more tension than its designers might have recommended.  Finally, there was the fact that Demona’s movements had jerked her body forward, causing a motion that resonated hypnotically through the freely suspended masses at the front of her body.

Thuban could, perhaps, be excused for losing control for the briefest moment.  One of his most prominent traits was that he physically incorporated many of the advantageous characteristics of lizards and ophidians.  During this momentary lapse, he allowed his true nature to be displayed more openly.  An ever-so-slightly-forked lizard tongue slid out of his mouth, darting more than twelve inches forward, as if reaching for the jiggling orbs.

“Eeeee!”  The gathering girls all screamed at once.

Jinn squealed because he was only supposed to show his tongue to her!  Looking around, half the girls were glowing orange, and half were metallic lemon yellow.  Which meant that half of them were embarrassed, and half of them were feeling lust.  And that utterly confused her.  If they weren’t planning to kiss Stephen, why would they care what his tongue looked like?

What she wanted to do was yell out, “Back off!  That’s mine!”  She wasn’t entirely sure, but it felt right.  But with the ups and downs of her relationship with Stephen, she didn’t dare get too possessive.  Instead, she just clutched his arm tighter to her bosom and warned them, “Hey, find your own boyfriend!”

“That’s right!”

Jinn didn’t even need to turn her head to see – Demona had taken up station on the left arm, clutching his arm into her better-developed flesh.

Many things are attractive in a man – beauty, status, wealth.  Some traits are immediately obvious, others are hidden.  This is why many women use a quick shortcut to gauge a mate’s suitability, to wit: how attractive is he to other girls?

Thuban was already influential.  Everyone knew that he’s put Faction Three together.  And he’d had the money to spend to create their own private theater and party room.

But the girls in Faction Three were misfits and oddballs, their mutations making them into freaks, in their own minds most of all.  And almost all of them had been mocked about their looks, at least a few times.

Thuban’s master plan had been to create an artificial girl hostess, to inspire the girls and break the ice with guys.  His artificial hostess would be a familiar character, modeled after the attractive gargoyle-woman in the cartoon that everyone admired.

That plan had failed, with the elimination of “Lazuli.”

Now, a more familiar and more aggressive gargoyle had latched onto Thuban’s arm, while an attractive ghoul-girl (or something) had latched onto his other arm.  Both girls were clearly claiming ownership, and daring the rest to do anything about it.

Suddenly, every shy and insecure girl there shared common cause, if just for a moment.

Thuban had expected a pleasant evening.  Perhaps he could advance his business plans, slightly.  His latest investment venture was beginning to dominate his thoughts.  He’d planned to touch base with all the people in his Faction Three, then to move on to more important matters, which would in turn make him obscenely rich, which would grant him the ability to do even more with both Faction Three and the growing populations of dispossessed mutants.

They were ultimately his cause and obsession.  He knew what it was like to be shunned and reviled.

Chased and admired, though, that was new.

Perhaps this would be a good thing.

Then again…

As the gathered girls gazed at the gator-like guy, he made a quick comment that wasn’t the wisest thing he’d ever said.

“Calm down, everyone.  There’s no need to rush.  There’s time for all of us to get to know each other.  That’s part of what these meetings are for!  To give us all a chance to meet each other, one-by-one.”

It seemed reasonable on the surface.  Thuban was adept at speaking in a several languages, and the statement covered the basic points he’d intended, while simultaneously avoiding the delicate topic of flaunting his newly-acquired girlfriends in front of a group of frustrated and insecure teen-agers.  Unfortunately, what he said wasn’t quite what everyone heard.  What some people heard went more like:

“Calm down, girls.  We can take our time.  I’ve got time to meet all of you – that’s why I started these meetings, to meet you all, one-by-one.”

Jinn’s hair didn’t stand on end (though it could), but an ultrasonic shiver passed up and down her clothes like the spark on a lit fuse speeding its way toward a keg of black powder.  She glanced over to Demona, only to see the gargoyle staring back at her.

Jinn quickly calculated.  One rival or dozens of them?  That’s pretty easy to figure.

She gave a decisive nod to the gargoyle, who seemed surprised by the acknowledgement.  Demona nodded back a moment later, and the two of them turned to face the female hordes of Faction Three.

Thuban was officially the Twain Cottage “fixer”, and though he deliberately kept a low profile, those who knew of him considered him more than a little competent.  His tendency to be manipulative was easily past the level that would be labeled “control freak” in a normal human, but it hadn’t quite achieved the level labeled “mastermind” in mutant villains.  Still, he hadn’t gotten where he was without learning how to make contingency plans.  And now that his finely honed social danger sense was giving the first warnings of a looming catastrophe, Thuban’s hand slipped surreptitiously into the blue silk sleeve of his mandarin-styled jacket.  He depressed a concealed switch, and activated Contingency Plan Alpha.

Before the crowd of girls could surge forward, there was a piercing sound!  With a blare of trumpets, a column of scarlet water shot from floor to ceiling, rebounding into a complex pattern of spray.  As the trumpets changed to a triumphant march, a table slowly rose from a concealed opening in the floor.  Decorated in multiple tiers, like a wedding cake, the table rotated to display its contents to the watching crowd: Row upon row of snack offerings, cleverly prepared, cunningly displayed.  And in the center was a bowl of scarlet punch from which the now-shrinking fountain issued.

“Uh, correct me if I’m wrong here,” Demona observed, “but isn’t that just more cheese and crackers?”

“Not at all,” Thuban replied, smugly, as the trio made their escape to the far side of the room.  “This time, there’s also a veggie platter!”

60: The blue-skinned beast

Once the main hubbub died down, Jinn dragged the over-endowed gargoyle off into a corner.  “Okay, what’s the idea with making a move on my boyfriend?”

“Did he promise to be exclusive?” the blue-skinned girl shot back.  “’Cause from where I’m standing, he seems to be spending an awful lot of time trying to peep at my tits.”

Without hormones or other biological processes, Jinn emotions tended to be both slower and milder, but this was too much even for her.  “Which you’re taking full advantage of!  And maybe it’s not his fault!  I mean, how could he miss them?  They’re so…” words seemed to fail her, as she gestures with her hands in a semi-obscene fashion “…so huge!”

Demona reached out to lay a comforting hand on Jinn’s shoulder.  Unfortunately, she misjudged her own bust size.  The arm never made it, blocked by a now-jiggling mass on her chest.  “Oops.  Dang, I’m still getting used to these things.”  She paused to poke herself, starting an interesting series of oscillations going.

A feathered boy, walking past, noticed and was unable to turn away.  He ended up walking into a wall so hard that he apparently knocked himself out.

“Huh.  They’re kinda fun, you know?” Demona admitted, poking herself again to start another round of the quivering jell-o effect.  “Anyway, it’s only thanks to you that I’m here at all.  I wouldn’t want to take your boyfriend away.  I was just trying to save him from all those other girls.”

“Yeah, right,” Jinn muttered.  “But who’s going to save him from himself?”

“Listen,” Demona confided, coming closer to Jinn to whisper in her ear, “I’ll keep helping you out during the meeting.  We do need to keep the other girls at a distance.  But I’m on your side here.  We need to meet together in private to come up with a strategy, okay?  Maybe tomorrow, after class?  You could come up to my room, and it would be just the two of us.”  She spoke the words from deep in her throat, breathing heavily against Jinn’s ear.

“Okay then,” Jinn agreed.  “And thanks for the help.  But don’t go thinking that you and he–”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Demona promised.

That night, Jade (after re-integrating Jinn’s memories) tried to explain it to her roommate.

“But I still don’t get it,” Billie said, doing her best to be polite.  “Isn’t Thuban kind of … scaly?  I mean, what’s the big appeal?”

“That has nothing to do with it!” Jade insisted.  “I admit, that put me off a little too, at first.  But you know that self-hypnosis stuff that I’ve been doing?  I’m getting really good at it!  Anyway, I used self-hypnosis to sort of convince myself that the cosmetic stuff, like his eyes and scales, that shouldn’t really matter.”

“You sure you didn’t overdo it on the old brainwashing?”

“Well,” Jade was thoughtful for a moment.  “I don’t think so.  Anyway, after I could see past the exterior that stops everyone else, that’s when I saw how sad and lonely he was all the time.”

Billie rolled her eyes.  Fortunately, she was digging through a clothes drawer at the time, so her roommate didn’t notice.  She finally spotted her favorite nightgown – an extra-long cotton nightshirt that bore the words “tough chick.”  It was long enough and thick enough that she didn’t have to wear anything underneath, which was both more comfortable and a lot more convenient.  She could even fly in it and remain semi-decent.

Jade, on the other hand, had picked a frilly pink nightgown that was obviously aimed at the pre-teen market.  It was enhanced with an iron-on picture of Kimba the White Lion.  Jade had picked up a half-dozen of those a few weeks before, and gleefully applied them to many of her shirts and nightgowns.

“Y’know,” Billie casually mentioned, “people might not take you as such a kid if you wore stuff that was a little older looking.”

“But it’s cute!” the smaller girl protested.  “Besides, I don’t mind so much, so long as they take me for a girl kid.”

“That’s a safe assumption,” Billie commented dryly.  “No boy would wear an outfit like that.”

“Good.”

“So is this rival of yours one of those devil-girls?”

“No, her name’s Demona, but she’s got blue skin and she’s really a gargoyle.  You know, horns, wings, claws.  ‘Cept when the sun’s up, then she turns into a normal human.”

“Uh huh.”

“You know, if anyone would have sympathy for her, it should be you.  How many people are there that have experienced freak accidents that turned them into the physical duplicate of an animé character?”

“You’d be surprised,” Billie said.  “I know I was.”

“Well, I just feel a little responsible for her, you know?  It’s my fault she got turned into that … that monster!”

Billie finally cracked a smile.  “I thought between the scaly boyfriend and all those Faction Three meetings, you were learning to be more tolerant.”

Jade looked at her roommate intently.  “It’s not the blue skin or the wings or anything.”  She leaned closer.  “She’s bigger than Nikki!”

“Huh?  Nikki’s not that tall.”

“Oh, geez!”  Jade clutched her hands in front of her chest.  “You know – bigger!”

“Than Nikki?”

“Lots bigger.”

“She is a monster!”

“That’s what I’ve been saying!”

61: Inflated Egos

Whitman Cottage

Wednesday, November 29, 3:35 PM

Jinn was wearing her regular school uniform as she headed for Whitman after class.  Her last class had been martial arts with Jade, so she’d gotten a double-length charge after class.  She’d be good through the end of dinner, which should be plenty of time.  She skipped up the steps and pulled the ringer cord, then waited demurely outside.

A tall girl came out almost immediately, idly munching some sort of cookie.

“I’m here to see Demona?” Jinn said quietly.  “She used to be named Tool.”

“Oh, sure.  Come on in.”  She held out a cookie.  “Nilla wafer?”

“No thanks.”  Jinn smiled at her.  “I don’t eat.”

“Must be handy when you’re trying to lose a few pounds.”

“Well, you wouldn’t believe how fast I can lose weight.”

The other girl giggled.  “Yeah, I know how that goes.”

She lead the way past a common room and library, then a small kitchen, before finally heading up the stairs in the back of the cottage.  It was the same design that Poe had, but the furniture and decorations were different.

“You’re obviously not from Whitman,” the other girl said tentatively.  “I don’t think I’ve seen you walking from Dickinson either, have I?”

“I’m from Poe, actually.”

The other girl seemed to stumble for a moment.  “Really?  You seem really, uh, normal for a Poe girl.  I mean, no offense.”

Jinn gave a snort.  “We’re not all Amazon bodybuilders.”

“Or sex-demon-princesses.  Or naked elf models.”

“That wasn’t Nikki’s fault!”  Jinn got so irritated every time this happened.  “The modeling club set that up; she was just listening to her photographer.  And you can’t blame the posters on her at all!  Those were all the fault of that stupid Greasy and Peeper!”

“Friend of yours, huh?”

“Well… yeah.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind.  Well, here you go.  Tool’s room.”  She knocked on the door, then turned to go.  “See you around.  I’m Pamela, but they call me Sizemax.”

“Jinn Sinclair – Shroud.”

“Oh yeah – you got kidnapped by that other model, didn’t you?”

Jinn was about to respond, when the door opened and a well-endowed teenage girl looked out.  She quickly looked both ways, then yanked Jinn into the room and closed the door.  The strange girl had what could only be described as “big hair.”

“Uh… excuse me?  I’m looking for a girl named Demona.”

“That’s me,” the big-hair girl confirmed.  Then she smacked herself on the head.  “Right!  You haven’t seen me human, have you?  Call me ‘Dominique’ when I’m in human shape.  That’s the only shapeshifting I do nowadays – sunrise and sunset.  It’s kinda handy, ‘cause I heal up nearly any sort of damage.  And I keep the same figure and hair and stuff.  I mean, who else do you know with flame-red hair like this?”

“I can’t actually see colors,” Jinn admitted.  “And as for the color and the figure, well, this is Whateley.”

“Good point.  So what exactly did I promise you?”

“Well…” Jinn collected herself.  Might as well shoot for the moon.  “You were promising not to chase after Thuban.  But you’d help me fend off the other girls, and generally help me … you know, get him.”

“Right.”

The gambit seemed to have worked, since the girl seemed to be agreeing with Jinn’s conditions.  Dominique sauntered over to her bed and sat down.  The way she swayed her hips, Jinn could just tell that she spent a lot of time counterbalancing a thick tail.  Even though she was wearing the same Whateley uniform and pleated skirt that Jinn was wearing, when Dominique walked the skirt swished.

Dominique plumped down on the bed and then patted a spot beside her.  “Come, sit beside me and we’ll… talk.”

Feeling challenged by Dominique’s overbearing sexuality, Jinn was particularly conscious of her own walk.  She didn’t tart it up or anything, but she did try to step elegantly.  And though she was tempted to do her normal “sit in the air” routine, for some reason she felt like trying to look as normal as she could.  She carefully sat beside Dominique on the bed.

“Okay,” the other girl began, “we can start right there.  You definitely need some boob work.  Fortunately, I’m an expert on boobs.”

Jinn looked down at her chest.  She was proud of her figure!  And compared to being Jade, she was the lucky one – the one who got to be a girl.  So what could possibly be wrong with her breasts?

“I know they’re not as big as some…” she began.

“Naw, that’s not it.”  Dominique waved the thought aside.  “I know that not everyone’s as … gifted … as I am.”  She reached out to put a hand on Jinn’s shoulder.  “But there’s a lot more you can be doing, even with small breasts.  What are you, an A?”

“I’m a B-cup!  That’s plenty big!”

“Of course it is!”  Dominique moved the hand on her shoulder, patting her gently in a gesture that was probably intended to be comforting.

Feeling self-conscious, Jinn cupped her hands, lifting herself to give a fuller figure.  “What’s wrong with my breasts?”

“Nothing!  It’s just, there’s room for more … excitement, you know?  For example, guys like to see a bit more nipple.  I can hardly tell where yours are.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my … those parts!” Jinn protested.  Without being quite aware of it, she had pulled her arms over her chest, hiding the very area they were talking about.  “Besides, it’s not like I can change them, is it?”

“Depends,” Dominique said, casually.  “Let’s see what we’ve got to work with.”

“You want me to take my blouse off?”  Jinn’s arms scrunched in closer.

“Hey, we’re both girls, right?  Think of it like a makeover, which is pretty much what we’re doing here.  A boob makeover.”

“I… don’t know.”

Jinn thought about it.  If this were Poe, she’d think the other girl was trying to make out with her or something.  But this wasn’t Poe, which meant that her big-haired competitor wasn’t trying to seduce her or anything.

“Yeah, I can tell you’re nervous.  No problem.  Tell you what, I’ve got to change anyway.  I’ll show you what I mean, on me.”

“You’ve got to change?”

Dominique hooked a thumb back at her clock.  “Sunset today is at 4:13.  That’s only ten minutes.  Which means I grow wings and a tail, my hands and feet change – the whole deal.  If I don’t prepare, I ruin my wardrobe.”

“Oh, right.”

“I get these sort of spikes on my elbows and knees.  I found out the hard way that it’s really hard to get normal clothes off without tearing them.”

Dominique hadn’t even paused before she began unbuttoning her vest and then blouse.  A moment later, she was topless and putting away her clothes, while Jinn looked on in awe.

Dominique grinned.  “They’re pretty impressive, aren’t they?”

“Doesn’t that hurt, the way they bounce like that?”

Dominique shrugged, which set her oscillating with the two sides out of sync.  “A little.  Normally, for someone my size, walking around like this would be an invitation for early sagging.  But apparently my twice-daily transformation fixes stretching and sagging problems the same way it heals wounds.  So I’m just a bit more perky than you’d expect.”

“Still… isn’t there such a thing as too big?  I mean, no offense.”

Dominique put her hands on her hips and faced Jinn.  “Yeah, I know what you mean.  Some girls get back pain, but I think my ‘healing cycle’ fixes that up.  I’ve noticed that if I have sore or achy muscles, they feel fine again after a transform.”  She paused.  “Anyway, right after the spell was done, I was really messed up.  The tail was bad enough, but I have to spend extra attention on how to sit at the dinner table so I don’t bump my boobs.  And eating is quite the challenge with this shelf under me.  And I still sometimes bump into myself when I’m reaching for something.”

She looked down at herself, using her hands to heft her breasts.  “On the other hand, guys are practically falling over themselves to be nice to me these days.  And no matter where I go, I know that every male eye is on me, or at least, on my chest.  And most of all,” she squeezed herself a couple of times, grinning “I’m sure you’ve noticed how fun they are to play with!”

“Um… no.”  Jinn thought.  Did the girls in Poe play with their own boobs?  If they did, she certainly hadn’t seen them.  On the other hand, “I’m not exactly normal,” she admitted.  “For one thing, I can’t feel anything like pleasure or pain, hot or cold.”

“Whoa, that really stinks!” Dominique said.  “But… maybe it explains the lack of nipple action.  Here, touch mine, so you can see what I’m talking about.”

Jinn’s eyes practically crossed at that suggestion.  “Is that…okay?  This isn’t perverted or anything, is it?”

“Don’t worry about it!” Dominique reassured her.  She reached out and took Jinn’s hand.  “Here, put your palm underneath, like that, so you’ve got me between your thumb and index finger.  There!  Feel how I’m hardening up?”

Jinn was frantic.  This felt so naughty!  But the other thing she felt was Dominique’s nipple becoming much stiffer.  It hadn’t become that much larger, but it was almost as hard as a pencil eraser now.  Even the skin of the other girl’s areola had tightened up, showing a ring of even harder spots that stuck up like goose bumps.

“I’m thinking of a hot … guy,” Dominique said.  “And with you touching me like that, it’s really getting to me.”

“This feels really strange,” Jinn admitted.  “Interesting, but strange.  Does this happen very often, or just when you’re being touched?”

“Um … ah … not all the time—”

Jinn squeezed a little, judging the firmness, and Dominique gave a little gasp.

“Sorry!  Did that hurt?”

“Hurt?  Ah, no.  No, it didn’t hurt.”  Once the other girl’s eyes refocused, she continued.  “You should … uh … probably experiment around … oh! … with your hands on my tits.  I mean, if you really don’t feel pleasure or anything!  You should know how to act if, if Thuban was to touch you like this.  That’s what guys really get off on, touching a girl like this.  He’ll … ah, ah, ah! … want to hear you making sounds and stuff and being … appreciative.”

Jinn let her hand drop away.  “I’m … not so sure about this.  Isn’t it like we’re making out or something?”

Dominique gave her a somewhat dazed smile.  “Not at all!  It’s not like one of us is a guy!  It’s just training!  Anyway, even if your boyfriend did find out, it would only turn him on even more.  To a guy, the idea of two girls making out while he watches is about the hottest thing imaginable.”

“But you said we weren’t making out!  And he isn’t watching!”

“Oh, you want him to?  Anyway, he’ll think about it.  Guys can’t help thinking about perverted stuff, it’s the way their brains are made.”

“But… but…”  Jinn was more confused than ever.  Was touching the big-breasted girl perverted or not?

“Look,” Dominique began slipping off her skirt and then her panties as she talked “the goal here is to teach you how to be sexier in front of your boyfriend, right?”

“I guess.  I just wanted to make sure you weren’t going to try to move in on him.”

“Naw.  Oh, I might tease him now and then.  The guy’s got more cash than he knows what to do with, and it’s practically a crime for a girl to leave all that sitting there.”

Jinn’s mind was reeling under this barrage.  “That’s not as comforting as I’d been hoping for.”

Dominique grinned.  “Sorry.  I know I come off a bit slutty sometimes, but I’m honestly not as bad as I sound.  For example, I’m still a virgin.”

“You make it sound like it’s shameful or something.”

“Naw, I don’t mean to.  Frankly, the idea of cozying up to a guy that way still kinda makes me a bit ill, you know?”

“But—weren’t you just talking about having every guy’s eyes watching you?”

“Yeah, watching.  That’s different from touching.”

Now Jinn was totally confused.  “Can we just start over?  I think I’m getting confused here.”

Dominique, now stark naked, smiled.  “Sure!”  She took Jinn’s hands in hers.  “You were supposed to be playing the part of the boy, studying how I react when you did this!”  With that, she plastered Jinn’s hands on her chest.  “Oh, yeah baby, touch me!”

“No!”  Jinn jerked her hands away.  “You started talking about a makeover or something.  And how long are you going to be naked?”

Dominique glanced at the clock.  “Not long.  Maybe a minute or so.  Hey, you want to see a real makeover?”  She suddenly jerked, as if she’d been jabbed with a knife.  “Okay.  Watch this.”

The girl suddenly thrashed forward, and Jinn could see two huge growths on Dominique’s back.  The skin over the other girl’s shoulder blades was stretching and bulging outward, and the girl wasn’t taking it very well, either.  Her skin had turned ashen gray, and she was growling under her breath.  Suddenly, the bulges on her back burst like twin sores, and a confusion of glistening dark skin burst out.

“Rrrrrrraaaaaaahhhh!”

As spiked protrusions grew from the girl’s knees and elbows, her fingers hardened into clawed talons, and her legs – her legs changed completely, with the foot growing enormously larger, so that her heel moved up into position like a second, backward knee, in the fashion of many animals.  At the same time, her spine elongated, and a thick tail seemed to drop down behind her.

“Aaaaahhhh, that feels good.  Oh, yeah.  It’s good to be back!”  She snapped her huge wings out and flapped them twice to dry the residual fluids.  She stepped carefully twice, the flexed her hands and swished her tail.  “That’s so much better.  Okay.  Now I can get dressed.”

Stepping over to her dresser, the gargoyle opened a drawer and pulled out a ragged white skirt which she proceeded to step into with her oversized clawed feet.

“The trick is fitting it around the tail.  You know Rogers’ Fabric Boutique, in town?  That woman’s a genius!  The secret is Velcro, and a loop that goes just over the tail.  You need that to preserve modesty.”  She fastened the wide belt around her narrow waist, then picked up a ragged white single-shoulder halter top.  “I need special clothes to fit around my wings, too.”

She paused, still topless, and looked toward Jinn.  “Hey, you know my skin’s a lot tougher like this, but there are still a couple of spots that are sensitive.  Want me to show you?”

Jinn shook her head franticly.

“Coward.  Okay, one more lesson.”  She began putting on the halter.  “Jump up and down a couple of times.”

That seemed innocuous enough, so Jinn did as she’d been asked.

The other girl finished with her halter.  “Yeah, you need some help.  Here, watch me.”

The gargoyle bounced on her feet a few times.  Her oversized chest heaved and rebounded with each bounce.

“See?  You gotta have some bounce.  I admit, a B-cup isn’t going to give you as much action as I get, but you still need some movement.  You don’t have any.  It’s like you’re a manikin or something.  And you notice that I get a little bounce even with my halter on.  The guys are watching for movement as much as they admire size.  How’s the old saying go?  ‘It’s not the size of the boat, it’s the motion of the ocean.’”

Jinn had heard the saying somewhere.  “That was about boobs?  I thought—”

“Well, yeah, but same principle.  So that’s probably enough for today, unless you need more study.”

Jinn held up her hands.  “No, no, no!”

“Then you go work on things.  I’m not sure how – that’s your problem.  Let’s get together tomorrow and I’ll give you some more pointers.”

“There’s more?”

The gargoyle just rolled her eyes.  “Well duh.  What do you think keeps Cosmo in business?”

“Okay.  I guess.  So, uh, thanks Dominique.  I guess.”

“It’s ‘Demona’ when I’m a gargoyle.  Secret identity, you know?”

“Oh.  Right.”

At dinner, Nikki turned to Billie for an explanation.  “Is something wrong with Jade?”

The younger girl was eating with an intense mania, but her unblinking stare wove between the other girls at the table.  Her eyes were narrowed in concentration, and every once in a while she would nod to herself, as if in confirmation.

Like a lighthouse’s spotlight, the young girl’s roving gaze traveled around the table, coming to rest briefly on Nikki, then Billie, then moving on.

“Was she staring at my chest?” Nikki wondered in a fierce whisper.

“She was!” Billie confirmed.  Louder, she asked, “Okay, Jade, what’s going on?”

Jade turned to stare at them with an expression that was oddly intense for the normally good-natured girl.

“First,” Jade order dramatically, “Nikki, I need you to hand me the salt!”

“Here!”  Toni, always about three times more active than anyone around her, had practically jumped out of her seat to reach across the table.

“No!” Jade intoned.  “It must be Nikki!”

“Uh, if you say so,” the elf girl agreed, stretching slightly to hand the shaker over to Jade’s side of the table.

“Are you going to tell us now why you’re acting so weird?” Billie reminded.

“Just a minute,” the smaller girl said, giving a slight twitch as she closed her eyes.  “Let me line up all the observations…”  A moment later she opened her eyes and scowled at the other girls.  “Damn!  She was right!”

Before the others could demand more, she continued.  “So you know that I’ve been … seeing … Thuban, right?”

“Sounded like more than seeing,” Billie commented.  “You were describing some major kissy-face.”

“Not to mention all those love songs,” Toni added.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jade agreed “and Jinn is with him at his Faction Three meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Problem is, while he’s seeing me, he sure is looking hard at another girl.”

Toni nodded sagely.  “Wandering eye syndrome.  The bane of nearly every girl in the world at one time or another.”

“It’s worse, ‘cause the girl he can’t keep his eyes off of is Demona, the gargoyle-girl that I made in that spell.”

At the reminder of that, Nikki seemed to swell with anger.  “That Hekate!  She is so irresponsible!  We were discussing magical ethics today, and—”

“Later, Nikki!” Toni waved her off.  “Let her dish the dirt first.  Delay the discussion of details, doll.”

Several people around the table glared at Toni, who just gave them a cheesy grin in return.

“Anyway, you’ve seen her around at dinnertime, right?”

“What?” Billie asked, “you mean the winged, blue-skinned monster-girl in the tattered dress who has absolutely huge … tracts of land?  No, I must have missed her because she was so inconspicuous!”

Apparently Jade didn’t notice the sarcasm.  “Well Thuban sure didn’t miss her.  At one point last night I thought he was going to fall in, you know?”

Nikki nodded.  “No kidding.  Last week the models had to do a bit with the capes.  Have any of you ever done anything in public with Mega-girl?”

“Does the hot tub count?” Jade asked quietly.

“I was talking about with guys around,” Nikki said.  “I mean, it’s like those things were colossal eye-magnets, you know?  That girl couldn’t take a breath without being eye-groped by practically every boy there.  I wasn’t sure whether to feel angry or sympathetic.”

Jade nodded, suddenly serious.  “Maybe I should follow her around, to add to my notes.”

“Hold it!” Billie ordered.  “You’re back to the mysterious comments.  Give!  What the heck are you up to?”

“Well, it’s kind of embarrassing…”

Billie just looked at her expectantly.

“So I was talking to Demona and stuff this afternoon, and she was kind of making the same claim.  Not exactly that bigger is better, but that boys can’t help but look.  And then she gave me all sorts of pointers on what they look for.”

“Huh?”

“Give!” Billie demanded.  “We want details!”

Jade glanced at the Nikki’s amethyst pendant which was draped over the napkin holder and was currently glowing a ruby red.  Then she leaned forward.  “Well she claimed…”

The collective shout of “WHAT?!” briefly drew the attention of the cafeteria, but when the girls seemed to return to discussing boy-bands, everyone tuned them out again.

At the table, inside the anti-eavesdropping spell, the girls pulled back in alarm, half of them surreptitiously covering their chests with an oh-so-casually-placed arm.

“Well it’s true, mostly,” Jade claimed.  “I’ve been watching boys, and their reactions, and where they’re looking.”

“Look,” Nikki said wearily, “this isn’t exactly news.  As campus goes, my eyes are medium strange.  Wanna know how many guys notice?  Damn few.”

Billie, with her strange oval pupils, nodded.  “I hear you.  Even I’ve noticed that.”

Jade glared at her roommate.  “What was that?  ‘Even I’ve noticed’?  You make yourself sound like bad leftovers or something!”

Toni intervened.  “Look, there’s an easy way to solve this.  Here comes the queen of sex.  We’ll just ask her.”

Sure enough, Sara arrived at the table a few moments later, holding a cardboard box labeled “Dunwich Humane Society.”

“Maybe it’s time to go,” Nikki grumbled.  “I’m not sure if I can handle more puppies.”

“Well,” Sara began, “they’re not exactly puppies.”

“Kittens?”

“Over in Dunwich, they’re just called ‘strays.’”

Curiosity getting the better of her, Nikki lifted one corner of the box and looked in.  One glance and she slammed the lid closed, sliding back into her seat and looking a little pale.

“I didn’t know there were mutant animals,” she finally said.  “Was there a toxic waste spill or something?”

“Bad devisor seems more likely,” Sara commented.  She stuck her hand in the box, then withdrew it a moment later.  “Hmmm, interesting … flavor.”

“For once I’m not even bothered,” Nikki said.  “But now that you’re done with that, Jade has a question she wanted to ask you.”

“Me?  You fink!”

“Glad to help, if I can.  What do you want to know?  Magic, finance, perhaps a matter of lust?”  Sara gave a Groucho Marx waggle of her eyebrows, which had a very different effect from when Groucho had done it.

“Um, well,” Jade twiddled her fingers.

“Yessss?”

“How much do guys look at girls boobs, is bigger always better or does ‘bounce’ matter, and how much ‘nipple action’ is appropriate?”

Sara stared blankly for a moment.  “Um… well.”

“I can’t wait,” Toni said, with a poorly concealed grin.

“I guess we’ll find out if she deserves her rep,” Nikki agreed.

Billie blushed.  “Nice summation.  Crude, but nice.”

When Sara recovered her (simulated) breath, she didn’t mince words.  “Oooookay.  How much do guys look?  For teenage boys, time averaged, I’d say roughly 70% of the time.  BUT, that’s time averaged.  When they’re first getting to know a girl, it’s much higher.  Or if she’s a new girl.  Or an old girl with new clothes.  You get the idea.

“Second, size, bounce, and … did you say nipple action?  You mean like when you get cold and stuff?”

Jade nodded, deeply embarrassed now.

“Okay, those all fall into the same category – attracting interest.  You have to understand that anything new or different here will attract attention.  If the guys spot something they like, then there’s even more interest, and you get a second and third look.  Sometimes a twentieth or thirtieth look.  But it doesn’t have to be just size.  A low-cut blouse that shows cleavage will do more than simple size in a dumpy sweatshirt.  Likewise, there are clothing advantages you can exploit with smaller sizes, like going braless, or wearing something thin and skimpy like a camisole or tank top.  Then when they think they’ve seen it all, you come in wearing a tube top, with no visible means of support, and you get them all over again.”

Jade nodded seriously.  “So, if Jinn was wearing a nice tank top, and I was standing next to maybe Mega-girl, I’d have a good chance at stealing the attention from her.”

“Mega-girl?  Whooo, tough competition.  Okay, you’re going to want to work it all for this one.  A thin tank, showing plenty of shape, and giving some nipple definition, maybe a necklace dangling to draw the attention…”

Toni leaned toward Nikki and Billie.  “Can you believe this?”

“I’m not sure whether to throw up or take notes,” Nikki admitted.

“I’m just glad that you’ve got that anti-eavesdropping spell,” Billie said.  “Can you imagine if Greasy and Peeper got ahold of this conversation?”

Toni nodded.  “I’d rather just kill myself now.  Quicker, and much more merciful.”

“…I see,” Jade finished, seriously.  She gave a decisive nod, apparently to herself, and stood up.  “Okay, then I’ve got my work cut out for me!”  And she marched off carrying her tray.

Billie gave Sara a gimlet eye.  “Why do I think this is going to haunt me?”

“Jinn’s a ghost, right?” Sara mentioned, nonchalantly.  “Of course she’ll haunt you.”

“How’s Jinn involved?”

Sara gave an ironic grin.  “You know what Jinn is, don’t you?  She’s one of the most unlimited shapeshifters on campus.  And she’s a life-sized Barbie doll, that Jade can make walk and talk and can be.”  She grinned an evil, predatory grin.  “Now how could that, combined with what I was telling Jade, possibly cause any problems?”

The other three girls stared at her, as the horror slowly grew in their minds.  Then they made a mad scramble for the exit.

Jade was sitting on her bed in full lotus when they arrived.  Her eyes were closed and she seemed to be meditating.  Billie gave a sigh of relief.

Toni said, “We’ll have to remember, if Sara ever goes way evil on us, that she’s a little too good at psychological warfare.”

Billie nodded in agreement.  “Yeah, I keep thinking she’s got some sort of infectious sex attack or something—”

“You too?”” Toni asked.

“—uh, yeah.  Anyway, I forgot for a minute that we were talking about Jade.  I mean, get real!  It’s not like Jade is suddenly going to go horn-dog on us!”

Nikki arched a delicate eyebrow.  “Excuse me?  ‘Horn-dog’?  Wouldn’t that be more appropriate for a guy?”

As if on cue, Ayla walked in.  “What’s the party?”

And Jade’s eyes snapped open.  “Ayla!  Got any party balloons?  Can I borrow some?”

“Uh, not really.”  She thought.  “I’ve got some novelty condoms.  Devisor specials, for bricks.  Those might do.”

“Great!”

The little girl took the hand of the half-girl and skipped off.

Behind, the three girls wore identical expressions of befuddlement.

“Brick condoms?” Nikki repeated.  “No.  I don’t want to know.”

Toni tapped her chin.  “What I’m wondering is why Ayla has a supply of them?”

“Well,” Billie mused, “she is, um, male down there, and she can be a brick if she wants.  I mean, isn’t she supposed to be able to make herself as hard as diamond?”

Nikki pummeled her head with her fists.  “That is NOT an image I want in my mind right now!”

Jinn stood still in the room, wearing her hooded cloak and the ragged bikini made of the devisor fabric known as “ultra-black.”  The fabric made a sharp contrast with her chalk-white skin.

Jinn explained, while Jade used scissors to trim and adjust the outfit she was wearing.  The fact that the scissors penetrated through Jinn’s intangible skin didn’t seem to bother anyone there.

“I’ve been experimenting with variations on my costume and look,” Jinn explained.  “My most recent has been tattered gray.  It’s an okay look for a haunt – sort of washed out and faded – but it’s not what I want to look sharp.”

“What about the chains and tatters and stuff?” Nikki asked.  “And they always seem to be moving.  I assume you were trying to look creepy, but instead it came off as just sort of … busy, I guess.”

“You remember when I did that gargoyle spell with Hekate?”

Nikki nodded.  “I’m telling you, that girl is bad news.  You’re lucky you got out of that with your life and soul.”

“You’ve said that before…”

“And I’ll say it again!”

“Anyway,” Jinn continued, “Tool was an uncontrollable shifter.  She’d see something, and she couldn’t help shifting to match it.”

“Makes me wonder what happened when she saw a ripped guy,” Toni commented.

“Maybe that’s why she never let anyone see her.  She was always under a thick cloak.  But when I did the spell with her, I picked up some of that shapeshifting ability.  Or maybe disability.”

“Yeah,” Billie agreed.  “I remember it looked like you had cats fighting under your skin.  That seemed to mostly go away when you got the chains.”

“My problem isn’t quite like Tool’s was.  I don’t have to take the shape of whatever I see.  With me, it’s like I’ve got a hundred hands, and they all want to be fiddling with something.”

“Which is why you had the chains and tatters and stuff,” Toni realized.  “It’s stuff to fiddle with.  Hmmm, could be useful in combat.  I know that fighting anyone with more than two arms is always a challenge.”

“If I can work it into my style,” Jinn agreed.  “The problem is all the ‘busy’ stuff is no good for being with a boyfriend.  The chains and tatters and stuff distract him from what I want him to be paying attention to: me.”

“So how’d you solve the problem?” Billie wondered.  “’Cause this is practically your old look.”

“I’m keeping the chains,” Jinn admitted.  “I just won’t pop them out until I need them.  For the rest…”  She moved slowly, so as not to interrupt Jade’s fashion work.  She tapped her chest, right over her sternum.  “Inside the locker, I’ve got three dozen little lengths of string.  I’m practicing knots.  As long as I’m busy enough inside, I can keep calm on the outside.”

“This is a good look for you,” Toni said.  “Classic white and classic black.  I like it lots better than some of the grays you were trying.  You’re right, they were faded looking.”  She tapped a finger on her lips, lost in thought.  “This is better for the team, too, next time we see combat.”

Billie raised an eyebrow.  “How so?”

“She’s the highest contrast member of the team.  White and black, sharp edges, you could spot her a room that was nearly pitch black, and she’ll show up just as well under the noon sun.”

Billie nodded.  “And how’s that good?  Lily’s Star League costume is the same way.  They’re perfect targets, and that gold star on the chest tells you exactly where to aim.”

Toni grinned a feral smile.  “Have you ever looked at those costumes?  Nice work, armored and padded, bulletproof up to a pretty high caliber.  And the chest star is even more heavily armored.”

Nikki chimed in.  “Okay, so they gave themselves a weakness, and then compensated for it, right?”

Toni shook her head.  “Those guys are pure-good hero types.  Like Stormwolf.  I’ll bet they figure that, ‘If you’re shooting at me, you aren’t shooting at the civilians.’  But the real point is that they then draw the fire to a location of their choice – the protected chest piece.”

“I get it!” Jinn said.  “I’m invulnerable to gunfire.  Heck, I’m invulnerable to most everything.  So if I’m high contrast, and draw the big attacks—”

“That’s it,” Toni said.  “I need to talk this over with Hank, but we ought to make that a regular part of our strategy.  Come to think of it, Hank ought to get a high-contrast outfit, too.  Same reason.  He’s invulnerable, and he’ll draw the fire.”

“There!” Jade announced, speaking for the first time.  “I think that’s pretty good.  What do you think?”

“A lot like your old look,” Billie decided.  “Same gloves and booties, same cloak.  The scoopneck is new, and the outfit is a little skimpier.”

“I wanted something that was good for a formal occasion,” the young girl announced.

“Well, I guess it’s okay if they accept ‘superhero chic,’” Nikki allowed, dubiously.  “But where’s the big change?”

Jinn bounced on her toes.  “Notice anything?”

“What are we supposed to be looking for?”

“You’ve got bounce!” Toni realized.

Jinn nodded.  “Not a lot of it, with a B-cup.  That’s why I needed Ayla’s balloons.”  She cradled a hand under each breast.  “They’re filled with water, so I can get a feel for the weight.  Once I know how I’m supposed to move, I can get rid of the balloons.  My mind will just handle things automatically.”

Nikki scowled.  “That’s pretty degrading, isn’t it?  I feel like I should be indignant on behalf of all women!”

“Good effect, though,” Toni decided.  “Definitely draws the attention, which is what you wanted, isn’t it?  I’m just glad you went for something subtle and retrained.  With everything Sara was hinting at, I was afraid you’d go completely over the top.  This is good.”

Jinn nodded happily.  “Hey, fetch one of the hetero guys, okay?  I want to test things out on them!”

“Is Hank around?” Nikki wondered.

“No,” Toni answered.  “But Ayla is.”

“Is she a guy?” Billie wondered.

“Sure,” Toni confirmed.  “She’s just a guy with nice accessories.”

“Go get her.”

A moment later, Nikki came back, a skeptical expression on her face, dragging Ayla by the hand.  “I think she just wants you to tell her whether she’s hot.”

“Jinn?  Not quite my type.  I’m not into imaginary figments.”

“Really?”  Jinn bounced on her toes a couple of times, but Ayla apparently never noticed.  “Okay, then how about this!”  She slammed her hands together, intertwining her fingers in an complicated series of gestures that was halfway between sign language and mystic motions.

“Isn’t that—” Billie began.

“Yeah,” Jade agreed.  “I swiped the hand seals from Naruto.”

Jinn finished the rapid gestures and announced her technique:  “Super-size me!”

Before their eyes, the pallid girl’s bust expanded to C-cup, then D-cup, then beyond.

“Ha ha!  I did it!  I did it!”  She jumped up and down, and the hydrodynamic spheroids on her chest echoed that motion as well as they could, given the constraints of gravity and inertia.  Her newly trimmed scoopneck still maintained the bounds of modesty and decency, but only barely.

Ayla didn’t notice the thin trail of drool leaking from the corner of her mouth.  “Okay, that’s new.”

Toni slapped herself in the face.  “Did I say subtle and restrained?  I take it back.”

62: You can lead a horticulture

Toni saw it immediately.  “This is SO not a good idea!”

“Well,” Nikki drawled, “I’d normally convince her that she’s going to have balance problems, or back pain, or something like that.  But she’s just a TK entity, right?  So aside from being a walking offense to women everywhere, what’s the problem?”

“What’s the problem?” Toni’s voice was disbelieving.  The hyperactive girl usually didn’t descend to sarcasm, but she was bordering on that now.  “What’s the problem?  I’ll tell you what’s the problem!  She used magic to give herself bigger boobs!”

“Well, it wasn’t really magic—” Nikki began.

“That’s right, sempai!” Jade said, hopping up and down in pleasure.  “Jinn’s a shapeshifter, remember?  I used some meditation and self-hypnosis to adjust what I look like.  Then Jinn uses the spooky hand gestures to sow confusion and misdirection, the way Hank was talking about.  And then she just takes the new shape.  Pretty cool, huh?  And now I can compete with that top-heavy man-stealer!  I can beat her at her own game!”

“Look,” Toni patiently explained, “Nikki knows it wasn’t real magic, because she can see magic.  Most magic users can’t.  The rest of us know it wasn’t real magic, because we know you, and we figured out what you really did.  But imagine, just for a second, that a lot of people saw you and believed the misdirection.  Let’s say some girls believed you.  Or maybe guys would be even worse.  And they believe that you did this through magic.  In other words, they believe their eyes, they believe that there’s a spell out there to give girls enormous, unwieldy, parody-sized boobs.”

“They’re not that big,” Jinn protested.

“They are,” Sara said quietly, from where she was leaning against the wall.

Toni continued.  “The only problem is they don’t know the spell.  So they research.  They experiment.  I’m not sure whether they succeed or fail.  Either way it’s a nightmare!  Do you understand me now?  I’m telling you right now, I don’t want to be the target for some idiot mage’s balloon-boob spell!”

“Oh!”  Jade suddenly got it.  “You’re right.  Wow, that would be insane.  Do you really think it might happen?”

Ayla had been monitoring the conversation.  “Point: This is Whateley.  Need I say more?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jade agreed.  “Good, uh, point.”  She turned to Jinn.  “Better fix things.”

Jinn made another quick set of hand gestures.  “Revert!”

There was a brief puff of smoke (or chalk), and when it had cleared, Jinn was back to normal.  “I hadn’t thought, but you’re right.  Magic is just too dangerous.  And once we gave them the idea, someone would try.”  She thought.  “I like the Naruto-style hand gestures.  Maybe I’ll use them for combat techniques and the like.  It would be pretty good cover for what’s really going on.  But no more magical body-sculpting.”

“But I liked that look!” Jade wailed.  “You were bigger than Demona!”

Nikki massaged her head, as if fending off a migraine.  “Please tell me you didn’t really like that look.”

“Thuban seemed to like it well enough during yesterday’s Faction Three meeting,” Jade protested, with a pout.  “And didn’t I read about a study that found women’s salaries increased according to breast size?  I’d be rich in no time!”

Nikki handed the headache off to her roommate.  “I give up.  You try.”

“Look,” Toni began, “what if it wasn’t Jinn.  Let’s say Thuban got used to it, so he expected your real body to look like that.  And there’s ways to do it.  Implants, that sort of thing.  Although it would take a real quack to make ‘em that big.  Anyway, somehow or other, your real body ends up like that, permanently.  Imagine what it would be like.  I’ll bet you’d never run again.  Forget about martial arts.  And in a real body, your back would hurt.  Your breasts would hurt.  You’d get stretch marks and veins, and have all sorts of problems.”

Jade considered.  “But I’d be a real girl, right?”

With her keen sense for the flow of combat, Toni realized that she was seconds away from a resounding loss.  Using her masterful sense of tactics, she turned quickly to Sara.  “Your turn!”

The demon girl gave a smug grin.  “Look Jade, you like sugar, right?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Would you eat a spoonful?  Would you like it?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Do you want pure sugar, all the time, every day, every meal, and nothing but sugar?”

The younger girl shook her head.  “Of course not!  That’s stupid.”

“Mmm hmmm,” the pale girl agreed, without offense.  “How about sweets?  Cake, candy, pie, chocolate milk, candy bars, doughnuts and pastries, sweet-and-sour pork, prepared cereal, peanut butters sandwiches, coffee with sweetener.  Could you eat something sweet for every meal, every day, forever?”

“Yeah, I could do that!  Of course!”

Sara leaned down, closer.  “Okay now, here’s the trick.  Your boyfriend is the one eating.  Big boobs are sugar.  The other sweets represent the many other variations – clothing choices, lingerie, posture, they way you move, the way you brush against him, a deep breath, a lover’s touch, the drape of a veil.  But big boobs are simple, ordinary sugar.”

Jade thought about it a minute, frowning.

“Let me put it another way,” Sara said.  “I’m a shapeshifter, too.  And you better believe that I have a considerable interest in inducing lust.  I could alter myself however I like.  If I’m not sporting Triple-E breasts, it’s because I choose not to.”  Again she leaned in, flashing a glimpse of cleavage as she did so.  “And guess what?  I choose not to.  Think about that.”

With that, Sara straightened and turned to walk away.  It wasn’t actually a walk, so much as a slink.  “That’s how it’s done, girls.”

“Master psychologist,” Nikki breathed in awe.

“Dayum!” was all Toni could say.

Dai Kaiju groaned in irritation as his roommate continued to work at his desk.  “Give it a rest, Stephen!  The world’s not going to end if one of your plans has to be postponed for a day.”

The lizard man seated at his desk shifted his attention between a printout, two reference books, and three different LCD computer screens.  “No, this has to be finished tonight.  I need to finalize purchase of the property if they’re going to start construction on Friday.  And I’ve got a lead on the perfect man to head things.”

With a sigh, Dai reached for a blackout mask – the kind that day sleepers used to keep the light out.  “I’m still not sure that I really deserve a slice, but if I do, it’s for putting up with you and your late-night scheming.”

Thuban’s eyes never left the screens.  “Wealth and power, Dai.  We could be bigger than Merck.”

“It’s not going to fly without your girlfriend’s agreement, you know that.”

“Oh, she’ll agree.  I’m quite aware of the drives that compel her.”

Dai finished adjusting the mask so that he couldn’t see the glow of computer screens and reading lamps.  “Still, you might try asking her.”

“Not until I actually have something to show her.  Not until I can make her, make all of them, believe.”

“Your choice, buddy.”

Dai rolled over to sleep.  Thuban worked long into the night, finalizing legal agreements, designing facilities, arranging construction, hiring workers, and handling the hundreds of other arrangements necessary.

Demona settled himself in bed, listening as Tesla’s breathing dropped off.  His roommate was fairly normal – when she wasn’t giving off sparks.  And best of all, once she fell asleep it was like she was dead to the world.

Tesla started to snore softly, which was Demona’s cue.  He turned again.  That was one downside to this new body.  Back as Tool, he could just flatten out in bed, getting looser and more comfortable as he relaxed.  Nowadays, though, he had these gigantic breasts in front.  He could no longer lie face down.  But he had wings in back, which made it tricky to lie on his back.  He wondered how the other winged girls managed.

He lay on his back, wings spread so that one spilled out of bed and onto the floor.  He lay there and thought, and smiled, his eyes glowing slightly red as he did so.

His new body was a kick-and-a-half, he thought, idly tracing one pointed talon over a sensitive breast.  He’d always been obsessed with breasts.  It had been a bit of a problem, since he’d tended to shift into whatever he was thinking about.  On the other hand… so many girls!  Naked girls, bathing girls, dressing girls!

When he’d been the freaky “Tool”, his chances of any romantic activity had been pretty near zero.  But even so, a weird, sexy, interesting girl had shown him attention, and practically lost her life trying to help him.  It was only normal for him to be fixated on her now, wasn’t it?  And while the ghost might not be the sexpot that Lazuli had been, she was still quite attractive.  And so innocent!  That certainly added an element of spice.

Fortunately, his days of being a constantly shifting blob were over for good.  Now when people looked at him they were admiring, or intimidated, or even lustful.  He was really starting to enjoy it.

Both hands were now at work, sliding over his body.  He was learning so much about what turned girls on!  And while he hadn’t achieved his dream of becoming the strapping manly figure of Goliath, he found plenty of compensations in the form he did have.  Admittedly, he’d lost a certain organ of masculine pride.  That had been a shock the first time it happened as Tool.  After a few thousand uncontrollable shifts, you got used to it.  Having it gone permanently was unfortunate, but at least it could never give him away as he watched the other girls.  And what he’d gained in return was certainly … different.  Better in some ways, worse in others.  Slower to start.  He had to fantasize about Jinn for a bit before that special warmth began to grow.  That was one of the strangest aspects to this new body – all girl, all the time.  It was amazing that he’d had to become Demona to experience this, but as Tool, his gender had been constantly in flux.  Constantly.  Back in his original guy’s body, the goal, reaching release, that had been all-important.  But in his new body, that was all different.  The release itself was still good, but the motion itself was the best part.  He sometimes wished the release would never come.

Tonight he imagined Jinn, so innocent, so naïve, as he touched her and seduced her and eventually they had their way with each other.

And afterward, he lay there tingling and enjoying it, as he tried to figure out how he could get the other girl to show him her ghostly little pure-white breasts.  And with luck, who knew?  He might even get some.

It never occurred to him that the meaning of “get some” had changed for him, severely and permanently.

Thursday, November 30, 10:45 AM

Jinn looked like she was paying attention in physics class, but she was really lost in thought.  How could she get Stephen to pay more attention to her in tonight’s meeting?  For one thing, she wasn’t going to go with the “withered old hag” look again.  The other kids might have voted for it, but she knew it was a turn-off.  She could go as a white-skinned ghost.  But that wasn’t quite good enough for Faction Three.  The only one who looked normal there was Fubar, and out of everyone attending, he didn’t need to establish his credentials.

Hmmm, she could change her teeth so that she had fangs.  Demona had fangs.  They were kind of cute.  She shifted in her seat and snorted to herself.  Naw.  When Stephen stared at Demona, it sure wasn’t cause of her cute little fangs.

Maybe if she had a big pair of horns on her head?  She remembered a manga, Outlanders.  The lead heroine, what was her name?  Kahm!  She’d had a pair of horns, and she still looked plenty cute.

But… it wasn’t quite right for her.  She didn’t need to put on a fake costume to look more appealing.  She needed to figure out how to be herself, and be more appealing.

Jade sat in biology class and thought.  How could she get Stephen to pay more attention to her in tonight’s meeting?  Maybe if she re-designed Jinn’s eyes – made the pupil and iris a bit larger, a bit sharper green.  That wasn’t a bad idea.  And even better, she could mount a little battery-powered red LED inside the ball.  That way, she could turn the eyes backwards, and then make them glow a solid red.  That would help Jinn’s spooky look, particularly in the dark.  And in fights, it was good for Jinn to draw the attention, since she was invulnerable.  Red eyes would be nice.  Demona had red eyes, and they worked really well for her.

Jade shifted in her seat and snorted to herself.  When Stephen stared at Demona, it sure wasn’t cause of her glowing red eyes.

Jann hovered at the periphery of Jade’s skin and clothes.  She would occasionally dip a “finger” into her body’s skin to put them into telepathic contact.  It was just to monitor her other self’s thoughts.

She, too, was thinking about tonight’s party.  How could she look good for Stephen, while still being suitable and appropriate for Faction Three?

The trick was, she needed to be herself, only more so.  The “withered look” wasn’t really her, it was a cosmetic that allowed her to be accepted.  She needed some way to emphasize her weirdness, and hopefully the backstory she’d worked out with Sara about ghulahs.  She thought back to that story… shapeshifting air spirits formed of smokeless black fire… beautiful, with powdery white skin dressed in dark clothes… feasting on the bodies of the dead (or as she re-told the legend, the spiritual energy)… marrying men under false pretenses to bear children… eventually inspiring stories of the vampire and baobhan sith who would dance with men in faerie circles until they dropped of old age.

There had to be something there she could use.  Vampires were sexy, weren’t they?  But chalk white skin wasn’t enough to qualify for Faction Three.  Albinos and Goths got along fine in regular society.  Besides, Sara did Goth way better than she ever could.

“Alright!” Morrie cheered, as Jade walked into the maintenance center.  “The kid’s are here.  The day’s lookin’ up.”

“Hi Jade,” Stan greeted her.  “Lemme get the supplies.  You think Jinn can still handle the whole toolkit?”

“Yeah,” she said easily.  “I think it’s a permanent change.  It’s like she’s got a hundred hands these days.”

“Handy if you want to be a plumber or a mechanic.  How’s her strength?  We got a bunch of door jamb pieces that are about 250 pounds apiece.”

“She can handle that,” Jade confirmed, “but only barely.  How many do you need to move?”

“We got four doors to put in today, which is 24 sections to install,” Morrie said.  “We’ll be using the boat, taking ‘em a ways down the tunnel.  Be real nice if Stan and I didn’t have to do the heaving and toting at each stop.”

“No problem.”  She’d had a burst of development in the last week or so.  She was teetering on the edge of two different milestones.  Jinn could lift 298 pounds  and last for 113 minutes.  She was just shy of 300 pounds and two hours, and the wait was driving her nuts.  Still, she lasted long enough to manage two classes between charges, if they both timed it right.  That helped quite a bit.

Morrie pointed at a pallet containing rounded concrete and steel constructs.  “You load ‘er up, Lipscowycz.  I’ll get the guns for us.”  He opened the weapons locker and pulled out a pair of gigantic, oversized assault rifles, and then began to assemble two packs for additional ammo.  “I didn’t see any raptors this morning, but there were plenty of crocks.”

“Do I get a gun today?” Jade called from behind a curtain, as she changed into the overalls and waders.

“Naw.  Stan ‘n’ I can keep the varmints off a you.  You two do the work, and the two of us will do the target practice.”

“I love this part of the day!” Stan admitted.

Jade pulled her waders on, then charged Jinn into a pile of equipment on the cart.  Jinn no longer even bothered taking a human shape at work – it was more efficient to become an animated cloud of tools and parts.  Unfortunately, school rules made it so that she could only do that when she was hidden from sight, like in the tunnels.

“Couple more access doors and we’ll be done with the main tunnels,” Morrie told her.  “I’ll lay down suppressing fire at the door, hold it open.  Stan, you wanna secure the boat?”

The thin man grabbed his weapon and hopped through the door.  “I’m on it!”  Moments later, Jade heard the low crump of concussion grenades, and saw the rapid flash of automatic gunfire.

“Okay, I’ll get the toolbox.”  She saw Jinn rising up, in the form of six gloves.  “You start moving the hardware.”

The gloves began hefting large chunks of prefab concrete as Jade clambered through the armored hatch and climbed down into the flat-bottomed metal boat docked in the tunnel.

“So,” she asked Stan, in the silence between bursts of gunfire, “can we expect any surprises today?”

“Had some excitement earlier,” he calmly informed her.

“Really, what happened?”

“Well—”

At that moment, something like an enormous worm reared out of the filthy water.  Stan stitched it across the body with automatic rifle fire.  As the worm thing gaped in wide-mouthed agony, Stan chucked a grenade down its throat.  The worm vanished beneath the water, and a moment later the surface roiled as the grenade exploded.

“As I was saying,” he continued, “I brought a bag lunch today.  My wife packed a sandwich you wouldn’t believe!”

“That does sound interesting,” Jade agreed.  “Homemade?”

“Yeah, she’s got this special sauce…”

Jinn wafted along behind the boat, as it motored down the tunnel.  The water levels were slightly above normal.  It had been cold and icy for the last week or so.  That had largely melted on Sunday, and water was still trickling into the sewers.  In front and in back, the tunnel stretched in shades of gray twilight.  The only color came from the happy bodies in the boat and the occasional bright spots of larger animal life waiting in ambush.  She let Stan handle those, he seemed to be getting a extra glow of happiness each time he blasted away at something.

It was interesting, down in the tunnels.  Being a girl was nice, but lately it sometimes felt a bit restrictive to Jinn.  Her pensive mood really only hit when she had something to accomplish, like maintenance or combat.  She suspected it was a side-effect from the magic spell with Tool – she’d picked up some sort of shapeshifting restlessness, and sometimes she just wanted to be doing a hundred things at once.  Down in the tunnels she didn’t have to worry about protecting herself from greedy avatars, or trying to cling to a humanoid form, or anything like that.  Instead, she let herself go, handling an entire tool belt full of equipment and supplies.  Last week, she’d had five hammers going at once, and was feeding them each individual nails as necessary.  Jade handled more delicate work, but her physical body seemed ever more limited sometimes.

Stan and Morrie were still necessary to give instruction and direction, but lately they’d been treating her more like an apprentice who did the real work, while they supervised.  It let them hold the guns, relax, and talk, while she did the actual work.  Stan and Morrie saw it as a break; she saw it as an opportunity for self-discovery.

The boat began to slow, and she saw they were approaching a landing and side door.

She spread her six hands and prepared to begin lifting the concrete pieces out of the boat.

“Each section is numbered, people!  They’ve got to match up!” Morrie called.  “I’d help, but you know we can’t let anything escape out the door!”

Jade collected the miniature pieces and began assembling those, while Jinn moved the concrete of the jamb into place, and floated up the large steel door.

The entire door-and-jamb had been pre-assembled down in some lab, then broken apart for ease of installation.  At the same time, a tiny miniature had been created of both door and jamb – constructed at the same time, out of the same materials.  The miniature was crafted out of shavings from the full-sized assembly.  Jade’s job was to reassemble the miniature.  It constituted a “mystically linked” object (through the property of “similarity” or some such nonsense).  Once this was done, there would be linked miniatures for the entire tunnel system set up in the security building.  That way, a security guard could look at the miniatures and know the state of the full-sized match, out here in the field.

As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, Morrie commented, “it’ll be a sweet system.”  He paused to shoot off a small fan of flame.  “Every access point, covered at least four ways.  We’ve got the old network connections, to signal open or closed.  Really just a high-end burglar alarm.  And once we’re done with next week’s upgrades, we’ll have night-vision cameras on every entry, inside and out, as well as surveillance for the main tunnel sections.

“Fat lot of good that did for Halloween,” Jade commented, renewing the perennial discussion.

“Point,” Morrie conceded.  “But the stringers are putting in some new sort of encryption modules.  They said it makes the system lots tougher to spoof.  Least, I think those were the words they used.  I swear, mystics and computer people – can’t talk to either of ‘em.”

“I’m not sure if I trust the computers,” Jade said.  “My roommate had a computer go berserk on her, a couple of months back.  It tied to kill her.”

“Yeah.”  Morrie paused to spit.  “I’ve seen ‘em do that.  Man’s best friend, till they turn on you.  That’s why I follow a strict policy of never mounting any weapons on none of my computers.”

“You liar!” Stan called from deeper inside the tunnel.  “You just don’t know how to do anything more complicated than plugging in a printer!”

“It’s the principle that counts,” Morrie countered.  “Anyway, even if you don’t trust the electronic junk, and I don’t, you got that there ultrasonic alarm that goes off, whenever the door opens.  They got animals and machines and stuff can hear that, all over campus.”

“I can hear it,” Jinn said, from where she was lifting the door jamb into place.

“No shit?” Morrie looked at her with a moment of mild surprise.  “You never mentioned that before.”

“She never realized that other people couldn’t hear it,” Jade told him.  It had been the same for her.  Testing each door, the high, pure tone had issued when the doors opened.  Jann-sensei was always with her during maintenance work, and Jann had instantly linked to her, so it was like Jade heard the sound, too.  She’d never quite noticed that it was different from normal hearing.  It wasn’t unpleasant or painful, more like a very high overtone to the creaking sound some doors normally make.

Morrie nodded.  “Yeah, so we got the ultrasonic sound, which they told me doesn’t need power or anything, so if anyone manages to unlock a manhole cover, that’s going to go off, and good luck stopping it.”

“What was the chemical bit?” Jade wondered.  “I didn’t quite understand it, the last time you explained that.”

“That’s cause I was a little fuzzy on that myself,” Morrie explained.  “It’s right on the seal, between the door and the jamb.  The chemical builds up in a little pocket or something.  Then, when the door opens, the chemical leaks out.  It’s supposed to hold some sorta special smell.  They got an animal that can smell it.  Afro-gnome, I think they called it.”

Jade puzzled over that for a moment, scratching her head.  “A pheromone?”

“That’s it!  I think it’s the name of the creature.  Not quite a rodent, not quite a bug, a little bit of both.”

“You never heard of pheromones?” Jade asked in disbelief.

“Course not.  It’s something they came up with here at the school.”

“Now who’s the knucklehead,” Stan called out from the tunnel.  “Everyone knows about pheromones!  They’re armpit stink.  And, like, mating smells.  For animals and insects and stuff.”

“Insects don’t get armpit stink,” Morrie pointed out.  “And thank God for that!  Most a them bugs got six or eight armpits each.”

That discussion went around for the half hour it took Jinn to finish assembling the new door.  During the final test phase, Jade took special note of the ultrasonic tone, when the door was open.  Jann had no problem hearing it, but when they were unlinked, it was completely silent.

“What do you know,” she muttered to herself.  “You learn something new every day.”

“What was that?” Stan asked.

“Nothing.  Just admiring the new doors.  They should do a lot better job of keeping people out of our tunnels, right?”

“We’ll see,” Morrie said, skeptically.  “I can think of about a dozen ways to bypass these things, without even trying.  There’s all those people who do the ghost thing and walk through solid walls; there’s that guy that turns into gas; I figure if you just blow a hole completely around the door, you can pull the whole door out without even opening it.  Or someone can punch their way into the tunnel without using a door.  Or maybe—”

“We get the idea,” Stan said, wearily.

“Okay, you’ve got a point,” Jade agreed.  “But at least it will be tougher to sneak a whole army in, right?”

“Eh, we’ll see.  Ask me after the next invasion.  Bet they come up with a whole new pile of junk for us to install.”

She and Demona  didn’t enter on Thuban’s arms this time, but they did enter a half-step behind him.  The three of them abreast wouldn’t fit through the door.

Demona wore her usual outfit.  Jinn had worked extra hard, and was decked out.  First, she’d been productive today, creating both new eyeballs (slightly larger, with a more arresting color of green), and a new set of teeth that featured the cutest little vampire fangs.  And her outfit was perfect, in her opinion.  She wore her traditional hooded cloak (with the hood down, of course), full and imposing, and at ankle length.  Since she was charged into the cloak, it always swirled and swooshed with just the right amount of drama.  The material tonight was crushed velvet, in a midnight blue that looked black from most angles.  (She’d checked the color carefully, back in her real body.)  The top was a strapless corset made from the same material.  It had a modest V-neck which was extremely dramatic against her white skin.

The skirt was also full and heavy, swishing and flowing dramatically with her movements (often with a bit of help).  It was also done in the same crushed velvet.  Fortunately, she’d found that she could “hum” the material and instantly shake off most dirt and lint.

Her black hair and eyelashes matched the clothes for dramatic black.  The rest of her skin was pure, chalk white.  Her head and neck were solid, but she showed the merest hint of transparency at the shoulders and through her chest.  With the light behind her (difficult, because of her cloak) you could see that there was some transparency there, and in bright light you occasionally saw the structure of white bones inside the skin.

It was easiest to see in her arms.  They were opaque at the shoulders, growing more insubstantial as you looked down toward the hand.  As far down as her elbow the white skin was see-through, showing the bones beneath.  By her forearms, the skin vanished completely.  But her black gloves seemed substantial and hand shaped, even if the eye reported nothing more than skeletal finger bones that hovered inside.

Her midriff was bare, showing her spine and the upper points of her hip bones, but still giving the curve of her transparent white waist and the half-seen navel on display.

And her skirt was slit up the side.  It should have shown an enticing amount of leg, but there was nothing at all under the skirt.  Nothing but empty air.  Despite that, the skirt kicked and flowed, moving in response to the non-existent legs within.

Thuban’s reaction had been gratifying.  She’d met him in his room to escort him to the meeting.  He’d eyed her appreciatively.  The way he’d run his glance up and down her body had given her a sinfully good feeling.  Of course, with that particular yellow tinge to his aura, she’d known he was feeling at least a little lust.  Unfortunately, Demona had shown up moments later, and Thuban had repeated the check-out, with considerably more lust oozing out of his aura this time.

It was enough to drive a girl to distraction!

They entered the room, Thuban gestured for them all to split off, and then she and Demona had headed for opposite sides of the room while Thuban strode into the center.  They hadn’t discussed or practiced it, but they all peeled off to divide the room into thirds.  She wondered what that meant, and whether Thuban considered the two of them to be his lieutenants or something?

She was in fine form this evening, her full skirt and cloak flowing like an intelligent mist, as if they were both a part of her.  She almost chuckled at that particularly apt way of putting it.

She checked with an armor-skinned boy, who reminded one of an armadillo.

“How are you doing Keith?”

“Jinn!  Looking good!”  Both eye and aura were appreciative.

“Thanks.”  She meant it sincerely.  “Too … mundane for Faction Three?”

“No, I don’t think so.”  He thought for a moment.  “I don’t know.  You sure look better this way, instead of the prune look from Tuesday.”

“Thanks,” she responded in relief.  “I’m trying to be more real-me, you know?”  She gave him a smile of confidential understanding.  “And if I can look nice at the same time, that’s another benefit.  I think Thuban likes it better, too.”  She searched the room for the big lug, only to find him talking to Demona again.  And like usual, he seemed to have his overly long nose buried in her prominent cleavage.

“’Scuse me.  I gotta go take care of something.”

63: Getting in shape

Whitman Cottage

Friday, December 1, 3:43 PM

Dominique sat admiring as Jinn paced back and forth, ranting at her.

“I mean, it’s like you’ve got giant magnets hidden in there, and his nose is the iron bar!”

It wouldn’t be sundown for another half hour.  She was looking forward to doing the transformation strip-tease in front of Jinn.  In the meantime, she did her best to sit and lounge suggestively, inhaling just so.  Eventually, of course, it was possible that the build-up of horniness and frustration would cause her to explode.  In the meantime, she was determined to enjoy every advantage of her new form.

“Cut it out!”

“What am I doing?” Dominique said, arching her back.

“You know full well what you’re doing!  You’re not a gargoyle, you’re a succubus!  You do this on purpose!  Here I was, blaming poor Stephen, when it was all your fault!  You have some mutant mind control or something.”

Ignoring her, Dominique tried on a necklace.  “Does this look good on me?”  She turned away from the mirror, leaning forward toward Jinn.

“Oh, quit it.  You just want a chance to shake those things in my face.”

Dominique pouted.  “You don’t like me?”  She deliberately summoned up some crocodile tears.  “So many girls hate me because I’m well endowed.”

“My poor, sweet Stephen!  Trapped in the thrall of your hypno-boobs!”

Dominique smirked, looking down at her chest.  “They are spectacular, aren’t they?  I mean, before the change I had boobs in every shape and size.  And I do mean every.  Maybe all that experience helped, because this has to be the finest pair of the lot.”  She gave herself a little squeeze, enjoying the feel.

Jinn just grumbled to herself.

Dominique was puzzled.  “So why are you jealous?  I know you’re a shapeshifter.  And you don’t even have the minor physical limitations that apply to most of the rest of us shapeshifters.  You could have a pair identical to mine, or even bigger, even perkier, even more gravity defying.  So why don’t you?”  She suddenly got a crafty idea.  “If you’d like, I could help you practice…”

“No, no, and no.”  Jinn folded her arms under her B-cup breasts and huffed.  “I want Stephen to love me.  Me!  He should be interested in more than the size of my chest.  There’s a lot more to love than just rutting and lust.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t hurt to prime the pump a little.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Jinn decided.  “You aren’t a succubus, you’