(Lots of exposition, but does include some squishing/inanimate tf as well)

Danielle Owens sat on the balcony railings, her brunette hair billowing in the slight breeze. Looking up at the sky, the clouds seemed to ripple and race by as if travelling in a timelapse. She let out a shuddering breath. It had all been such a game before for her. Her fingers gripped the railing tighter to prevent her hands from betraying the overwhelming feeling of it all by trembling. She found herself wondering what exactly the orchestrator of their situation was doing right now. If they were watching. The witch began to understand all too well the feeling of being in the eyes of a true predator. The same dread and unease she inflicted on others as a pastime washed over her in unsteady waves that threatened her churning stomach with nausea. Danielle’s mind replayed the last several hours on loop, attempting to process this unsettling reality, and the implications it had on her life before today as well.

It began with a thunk.

Danielle’s glazed eyes suddenly refocused as she was clocked on the top of her head by somebody she didn’t immediately recognize. She shook herself and tried to regain her composure while taking stock of her body. Last thing she remembered she had attacked Sophie for lying about her sister’s whereabouts and gotten a nasty transformation for her troubles. Looking over herself, she was still coated head to toe in brown feathers that matched her hair color, and her feet were giant chicken talons. Smacking her lips together elicited the distinct clacking of a beak, but at least her mind had returned to her. With that check done, she looked around herself, her head performing the bobbing typical for a hen as she moved. Sophie was standing to the side, holding her enormous chest up with hooved hands while her obviously full udder bulged between her thighs. Her face was distended in a clear cow snout and her body bore fur in a typical Holstein pattern. Seemed like they’d gotten each other pretty good. But if she was over there, who had bonked her awake? Danielle’s attention snapped to the other figure in the room with them, who had been watching with an amused expression as the chicken-girl got her bearings. She was tall, dressed in torn shorts with leggings underneath, a black leather jacket, and had long hair that brightened to a sheer white near the ends. Her eyes glowed a supernatural blue and her stare bore straight through Danielle to pierce her very soul.

“Wakey wakey,” The woman before her spoke, snapping her fingers to get Danielle to pay attention.

“Bock-bwa… bock-” Danie struggled to get her body to form words, far too comfortable clucking for her liking, much to the apparent delight of the woman in front of her.

“Good question,” the woman feigned understanding in a very condescending tone, “I am Elliott, and you two are in a lot more trouble than I thought if this is your idea of teamwork,” she said, pointing at their current forms. As she pointed, though, their bodies seized up and became extremely rigid. Something… foreign gripped their bodies, unlike anything either girl had felt before. That description shouldn’t have applied to Danielle, if not for the fact that she did not really remember their last encounter. It certainly was not magic. Not like any the girls had dealt out or dealt with anyway. Danielle’s skin prickled with goosebumps, and the feathers began to fall off. First it was just one or two, but soon enough they sloughed off in large clumps, freeing up her skin to feel the open air again. Danielle’s lips softened and her feet began to shrink back down to their normal, five-toed selves. She flexed her newly reformed fingers and squeezed them into fists, enjoying the feeling of her returning humanity.

Sophie’s reversion was a little more… forceful. The easiest way to get rid of her enlarged chest and new udders were to unburden them of the milk that swelled them so much. Invisible hands gripped her teats, eliciting a sharp moo from the cow-girl as she felt them begin to rhythmically tug. A little dribble quickly evolved to a gushing fountain of milk, draining both the pressure and bovinity from the poor girl. Her face squished back down to something more human, and her moos began to transition to moans and pants as Elliott continued to work on her. When she was done, Elliott tossed clothes to the both of them. Neither girl said a word, faces red with embarrassment as they dressed themselves frantically.

“Got it out of your system, girls?” Elliott asked, raising an eyebrow at the pair of them.

“I don’t know, Dani, did you?” Sophie asked, still peeved at being attacked out of nowhere like that.

“I don’t know, Sophie, did Roxanne get taken here?” the witch snapped back.

“Enough!” Elliott barked, her voice acquiring a thunderous echo for a moment, causing both girls to jump a bit. She pinched the bridge of her nose, “I do not know what they expect out of the pair of you.” Elliott muttered with the tone of an exasperated parent.

“Who are you talking about?” Sophie asked, pressing Elliott, “You seem to know what’s going on here, so spill it.”

“There’s that bossiness I thought you had,” Elliott laughed, “I’m talking about who put you in this situation. You know, the mastermind? The one pulling the strings – the man behind the curtain, so to speak,” She said, “The culprit, perpetrator, schemer, author, orchestrator of your predicament. Catching on?” She gestured all around them, “Your world has been… pruned for the game to begin.”

“Can you start making sense?” Sophie sighed loudly, casting a gaze to Danielle as if to ask, ‘can you believe this chick?’ Danielle, however, was a little distracted. For just a moment, Elliott had let slip just how immense the energy bundled inside her body was. It was only a fraction of a second, but with how attuned Dani was to the supernatural, she could practically see how powerful the girl before them was. She practically had an entire sun’s worth of energy condensed into her body.

Danielle’s mouth was dry, but she swallowed hard and spoke, “So what happened to everyone?”

“Its more about what happened to you, sweetie,” Elliott cooed. She snapped her fingers and held out her hand. Sophie yelped as her body was yanked into Elliott’s waiting hand. Holding her aloft with one hand she squeezed Sophie’s body into a cube shape while she spoke, “Y’see, its like this,” she continued, squashing Sophie into a flattened rectangle by stepping on her cubed body. Elliott stretched out Sophie’s… legs? It was hard to tell with how compressed she’d gotten, but two rod-like objects were stretched out from the main rectangle of her body to stand her up. Elliott wiped her hand across Sophie’s front, turning it a stark white before producing a dry-erase marker from thin air. She started to draw a diagram on Sophie’s body as a visual aid, “Your world was like this, right? Nice and whole and filled with people. However, someone wanted to set things up for a game of sorts, so they took this section of your world and plucked it out. Isolated it from the rest of time and space.” She had drawn a little earth shape, then circled a little part of it, and drew an arrow pointed to her doodle of a squiggly shape with little buildings drawn in it. Next to that she put a dot and labeled it ‘you are here’ in the squiggly shape.

“But… what? Who could-mmmph!” Danielle started to speak, but suddenly found her lips shifting into a zipper that sealed itself shut, silencing her question. This change was heralded by Elliott making a ‘zip-it’ gesture.

“Hold your questions to the end, please.” She chided, “Now. They removed anyone unnecessary for their game from this sliver… Hence the lack of people. I am here because I can come and go anywhere as I see fit, which is also how I know all of this. So what? I hear you cry!” She turned with a theatrical gesture, “What is this game you keep talking about, Professor Elliott? Please, we beg of you, illuminate our simple minds!” She chuckled, “Gladly… You see, they connected this… sliver of your world to a number of other spacetimes,” she drew circles surrounding the squiggly shape and drew lines between the shape and each of the circles, “Think of this like a hub world. A home base, if you will, and these worlds…” she tapped each circle, “Are the levels. Each with its own rules and boss fight to overcome.”

Danielle was struggling to unzip her mouth, “Hmm- mmmph!”

“But what about my sister and that other witch girl?” she once again spoke with a dramatic flair, interrupting Danielle, “Well, my theory is that they are to be participants as well, but it would be a bit unfair to stack the starting team with 3 witches and whatever this girl is,” she knocked her knuckle on Sophie when she said the last bit, “So instead it’s a match made in heaven and a couple of contraband items I snuck in,” she said cryptically.

Danielle was in shock. This was all so bizarre, which was really something for a girl like her to think, but there was no way she could refute a single thing Elliott said. She finally got her lips unzipped, but her voice died in her throat.

“I can tell you’re going to need time to process this,” Elliott sighed, “Sometimes I forget how fragile people can be,” she chuckled to herself, as though it were an inside joke, “Alright. You can crash with me while you figure out what you want to do, let’s go.” she started walking away, leaving Danielle to grab the Sophie whiteboard and hurry after her. They walked in silence for what seemed like an eternity before coming upon a beautifully maintained estate replete with an ornate gate adorned with a rose pattern. The path to the wooden doors was lined with an immaculate garden, and the interior was astonishingly cozy. One would expect the cold, extravagant interior of some kind of millionaire mansion built more for photo ops than habitation, but it was warm, decorated with all kinds of hobbyist items.

“Oh! You’re back?” chirped a voice from an adjoining room. Peeking inside, the room was lined wall to wall with books and house a large, comfy looking chair and a dedicated fireplace that crackled with pleasant warmth. The owner of the voice leaned out of the door to this nook, smiling at Elliott. She was on the shorter side, serving to make Elliott seem even taller by comparison, with a softer build and freckles splashed on her face beneath her glasses. She wore her light hair at just above shoulder length as well as a hoodie and pair sweatpants, clearly dressed for a day inside. “And you brought more friends,” she chuckled a bit, stepping outside of the safety of her little den.

“Danielle and Sophie, Carla. Carla, Danielle and Sophie,” Elliott introduced them quickly, pulling Carla to her side, keeping an arm around her.

“And Sophie is the…?” Carla pointed at the rectangular object Danielle was carrying, still getting used to the mystical world Elliott inhabited.

“She was a great visual aid,” Elliott confirmed, “Head upstairs you two, take whatever time you want and let me know when you’re ready to get on with it.” She walked off with Carla in tow, leaving Danielle to carry Sophie up the stairs to a room that opened its door for her as though it were expecting her. “Want some hot chocolate?” Elliott asked as they rounded a corner.

“I’d love some,” Carla replied, causing both to laugh.

And so here Danielle sat on the balcony overlooking the side yard of Elliott’s estate in this city out of time and space, contemplating what all of this meant. It’d taken her a while to figure out how to change Sophie back – not because it was difficult, but because her mind was… distracted to say the least. She also leaned that the ‘contraband items’ that Elliott had mentioned where the Phone and stress ball that Nova and Chloe had been turned into by Sophie respectively. They were downstairs getting the same lecture that she had been given. A game, Elliott had called it. Someone, somewhere, maybe with powers as strong as Elliott’s, was playing with them. Using her sister as a hostage and dragging her friends into it all for some unknown reason. The thought of it was enough to get her blood boiling. How dare someone try to make a fool of her? She was Danielle Owens! She stared defiantly out towards the horizon, hoping that whoever started this whole thing was watching. They wanted a game? Bring it.

In some unseen corner of the world, deep into a wood shrouded in mist, in the center of a clearing sat a cottage overlooking a lake. Inside, a woman with a motherly, yet sinister aura about her smiled to herself. She tapped her pen on a piece of parchment in idle contemplation, watching Danielle through a crystal construct atop her dark wooden desk.

“I knew you would not disappoint me, darling,” she replied, "Shall we begin?"