(Mass TF, People to Various)

Linda loved the mall, and didn’t care who knew about it. This had always been true in her life, and no news warning would stop her. Sure, she knew that Reality Shifters existed. But why would she let that stop her?

“After all, my boyfriend is a cop.”

Linda blinked. Did she say that last part out loud? Weird, that “isn’t like me. Uh, what’s going on?”

A small, nervous smile started to spread across her face. “This has to be some kind of joke, right?”

Mercifully, nobody seemed to have noticed… For now, at least. She tried to calm herself, but couldn’t shake the feeling that “I’m about to be some kind of cosmic joke, aren’t I?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. There’s plenty of people that don’t seem to think there’s anything funny about what I do.”

The voice was a woman’s, “and a cute one too from the sound of it.”

“Aw, thanks!”

Linda turned to find a blue-haired girl with a ponytail smiling at her. Before Linda could ask her anything, the girl spoke in her same self-assured manner.

“Hope you don’t mind, but I like to play with people’s brains, a bit. See if I don’t have you say everything out loud, how’m I supposed to know that it’s really working?” The stranger smirked.

“W-wait. You can’t do this,” Linda smiled unsurely, “I mean, my boyfriend’s a cop.”

“So it sounds like he’ll need a good dog to watch the house while he’s out.” The woman waved her finger to and fro in Linda’s face, like a hypnotist twirling their watch.

“Uhm… Dog? Wait, ah duhn,” Linda suddenly found it very hard to talk, with her tongue hanging out of her mouth. “Mwuh he wun wanna dawwguuhuh…”

“Oh? Well, you don’t need to worry about that. I’m still working on all that body stuff, so you’ll still look like you. Isn’t that great? You can bark at intruders AND still be a trophy in the bedroom.”

That wasn’t how that worked, but Linda wasn’t capable of iterating that anymore. Her thoughts were draining out from her mouth with each panted gasp, and even though she felt panicked, “nuh kin do ‘neethun bout it… Uhh… Bout? Bowt. Bow wow… Hehe.”

She barely registered her hands slapping against the mall’s tile. Her head already thought that felt more natural than standing on two legs anyways, so it wasn’t like she was missing out on much. The only thing she was missing was that nice feeling when her butt wagged, so she started to wiggle it back and forth excitedly.

“Ha! Another one bites the dust. Well, hopefully you won’t bite, that’s an awful habit to break,” Gloria smirked down at the drooling woman… Whose name she actually hadn’t gotten. “Aw, crap, I’m really bad at that, huh?”

She pouted, reaching into her bag and grabbing a collar at random. It was engraved with the name ‘Princess’, which was about as good as any. Gloria brushed some of her hair behind her left ear, waving her finger slowly to and fro, making sure to get the dog-brained woman’s attention.

“Hey, your name’s now Princess. Got it?” Gloria put just enough emphasis behind her words to make them into a reality. Probably. Honestly, she still wasn’t sure how her powers worked, and what was needed to change someone’s mind.

Finger wagging and a stern tone certainly seemed to do the job, so she stuck with that. Maybe someday she’d be able to work out how to change people’s bodies, but that day was a ways away.

Naturally, this made it a complete surprise when a monkey snatched the collar from her hands.

Gloria blinked, hearing a cry from behind her. She turned, watching as a cute guy dropped down into his clothes, fur blooming from his muscled arms, which were rapidly losing their tone.

“Hey, what-”

A bolt of what felt like lightning crackled across her body, sending her every hair on edge—then giving her much more hair than that. She looked down to her hands, gawping as her smooth fingers grew the calluses needed to swing from trees, and as the backs of her hands started to sprout fur.

Irritatingly, it was the same shade as her natural hair color, a dark brown that would take at least a week to bleach out… No, how could she be thinking about that now? She frantically pressed her hands against her face, feeling much more than there used to be.

Her jaw had stretched, sliding her nose along with it. She now sported a wide pair of nostrils that was all too capable of smelling the musk of her own fur, and the espresso-scented panting of Princess behind her.

“Hooh-AAH? Ulp. EEK!?” Gloria tried to talk, but it was like trying to rap in a foreign language. No matter how much she wanted her throat to form familiar consonants and vowels, they just wouldn’t leave her mouth.

Another shock struck her body, this one with enough force to send her onto all fours. She felt her shoulders and hips pop and crack. A series of snaps from her tailbone heralded the growth of a fifth limb, one that she might honestly start using more than her legs.

“NAAH AAH!” Gloria flailed on the floor, kicking off clothing that was much larger than it should have been. Clothe-thing? Cloth things? They were weird on her, and she wanted them off, so she stripped—and felt ashamed, for some reason.

No, that wasn’t right. She should feel ashamed. She wasn’t some kind of animal, was she? Gloria itched at her underarm stupidly, driven by instinct more than by thought. No, she couldn’t have been… This wasn’t right. It didn’t feel like-

A third crackle of electricity brought another simian screech to her lips in the same instant it erased her mind.

(Which is odd, all things considered.) Raphael looked to the gun in his hands. It might have looked like an old 80s toy, but he couldn’t deny its effects. (Until now.)

Curiously, he fired it at the woman who was acting like some kind of dog. She let out a bark as her body twisted into a simian’s, arms and legs spasming as they thinned. She didn’t paw at her body though, instead rolling onto her newly-furred back as though asking for some kind of treat.

“So, it isn’t broken.” Raphael adjusted his glasses. That was for the best, because developing this had taken the better part of his life. (And it would be an absolute pain to try to try to assemble another of these. Let alone finding the volunteers.)

He turned his attention to the brown-furred simian with blue hair. She seemed to have begun to amuse herself by scratching dopily under one of her breasts, then sniffing at her unkempt nails. His nose crinkled, not of its own volition.

Given that every human he’d changed so far had transformed almost instantly, this one had an unnatural resistance. It could only mean that she was one of these so-called ‘betters’ that the news had been reporting about.

“Really, that’s the best that a Reality Shifter is capable of? A pity, because I’d half-expected them to be… More.” He made sure to lace each word with sarcastic venom, in hopes that she’d swirl herself back to human to verbally spar with him.

In that, he was (once again) miserably disappointed. It seemed none could match his brilliance, not even this whole ‘new breed of humanity’ whose arrival had so wonderfully coincided with the creation of his life’s work.

“A pity, but I suppose it’s good to know thorough research and science will still trump these fantasies every time.” He looked out to the rest of the mall, wondering who’d be his next victim. (So many beautiful people, so little time.)

Then his head became a balled-up sock. He didn’t have time to react to it, and in the few instants he had to feel it, the only emotion he could process was confusion. All of his senses went dark at the same time, with no brain to process them.

Somehow, he could still tell that his face was cottony soft, and stitched by too many threads for a sock to count. He couldn’t smell, but he knew that his head had an embarrassingly flowery detergent about it. Then everything went numb. Raphael wondered what-(…)

Gardenia giggled as the toy clattered out of the sock-headed man’s hands. She flicked her wand towards him again, and his body twisted like a wrung cloth. Each time something on his body turned, a knot of fabric split it off from his body, thumping to the ground as yet another sock.

They were all white, which was a bit of a disappointment. Usually interesting people split apart into socks of all different softs of colors. But monkey-man was all plain and white.

“Really? Does it always have to be socks?” Lily yawned at her side. She gestured with her own wand towards the monkey that was panting like a dog, who stiffened and fluffed up into an adorably cute plush Golden Retriever. “At least try to have some originality.”

“Socks are plenty original.” Gardenia puffed out her cheeks. “You’re just mad that your curse-ees don’t know what it’s like to be deFEETed.”

Lily glared balefully. “I’ve half a mind to curse you for that, you know.”

“And if you did, you would not have an instant to defend yourself from my own retaliation,” Rose tutted. The stern woman folded her arms, nodding towards Violet. “You two should really stop your quibbling and be more like her.”

She’d chosen a bad time to say that, because Violet had begun to giddily wind a stranger into a ball of yarn.

Violet was standing above the woman—a Mundane ‘security officer’ from the looks of it—and was stirring her wand about like she was cooking a stew. With each circle of the enchanted wood, the helpless Mundane further unraveled from the feet up, her very essence turning into yarn that spooled itself into Violet’s palm.

It only took a few minutes until she now sported a rainbow-colored ball the size of a softball. Violet tossed it in her hand, a deranged giggle slipping from her lips before she started to play with it like a cat.

“Ahm, as I was saying,” Rose blushed the same shade as her namesake.

“You were saying you want us to act like the resident nutjob, got it.” Lily winked. “Any Mundies you need turned into spheres?”

“Apparently we are not supposed to call them that anymore.” Rose huffed, much to the amusement of the pair before her. “And you know very well that was not what I meant. It is simply that you are more agreeable. You do not see her every snipping about with either of you.” Still, she didn’t stop blushing.

Gardenia giggled and hugged Lily. “You’ve got a lot to learn. Lily and I were best friends even before we joined the Petal Coven. This is just how we show we’re close.”

“You show proximity by making wordplay-based jokes that upset one another?” Rose blinked.

“No, just Gardenia, but she’s weird like that. I guess you’re weird too. They really don’t have puns back in the century you came from?”

Whatever words Rose was about to say next were drowned out by four loud pops in succession, like firecrackers.

Gardenia winced, waving her hand where her wand had burst. “Hey, wait, that can’t be good, can it?”

Lily’s reply was heavy breathing, like she’d just run a marathon. She couldn’t control it. Her chest was rising and falling, and each time it rose, her face smoothed a little more. She wasn’t exactly square-jawed before, but now she sported a heart-shaped face with almond eyes.

She also now sported a coat of fur from the neck-down. It was thick and fluffy, which matched her fluffy paws. Paws…

They were as big as her head, and their pads looked so, so appetizing and delicious. Lynn’s eyes glazed as she pressed her tongue against them, hearing a cry from Gardenia. But she didn’t care. Her paws felt so leathery and soft against her tongue, and she could feel her wet tongue against them…

“Rose, help her!” Gardenia wailed, turning to where Rose was to find the woman had vanished. Then she heard a faint scuffing against the ground, and looked down to find a twitching goat from the neck down with the same face that Lily now sported.

The goat was only recognizable as Rose thanks to the clothing it wore, which vanished into the air as though the air itself had become caustic. As the fabric vanished, the goat’s hooves started to quietly scrabble against the floor as though drumming out some sort of beat.

“Hey, hope you don’t mind!” A woman’s voice called. “I’ve got to give you the same face so it works better.”

Gardenia pressed her fingers against her own cheeks, finding her cheekbones were a little higher than she was used to—and her chin was sharper too. That wasn’t good. If she’d already changed so much without realizing, what else could have-

Gardenia clutched at her udder with fingers that were stiffening into hooves, eyes wide. “N-no way…”

Rose had changed them plenty of times, enough to know how to protect themselves from things like this. Or at least, so Gardenia had thought. But now Rose had a stranger’s face, and was twitching on the ground like a fainting goat.

And Gardenia… She looked down to the embarrassingly big pink tit between her legs. She could swear that she felt the udder within it slosh. It had four long heavy teats that thumped against it with every motion she made, like they wanted to humiliate her.

Indeed, it was very clear she was as helpless as the others, which made her only hope the one who’d best taken to these lessons… Though she hated to rely on Violet for anything.

Unfortunately, said witch happened to be stupidly pawing at her own round belly. Maybe her unhealthy obsession with spheres had been something of a red flag. Violet had always been on the skinny side, no matter much she tried to eat.

Now she was properly stuffed, stretched into a thick panda’s body, and evidently loving it. The more she pressed her bulging hands to her heavy belly, the more her gaunt features changed to match the other witches’.

It was so surreal that Gardenia almost missed the woman who was rubbing Violet’s back, clearly taking as much joy in this as Violet herself. As though sensing Gardenia’s gaze upon herself, the woman looked up with a grin. “Evening, ladies. I’m Lynn with two n’s, and your names are now Maya. Easier to keep track of that way.”

Maya-Cow blinked. No, that wasn’t right. Her name was Maya. No, it was… Oh no. She desperately looked to Maya-Dog, who had begun to chase her own tail; then to Maya-Panda, who was busy experimenting with squishing her breasts against her gut like she was trying to create some kind of furry Oreo.

Maya-Panda had never been right in the head.

Though then again, maybe that was good in its own way. After all, it meant that she didn’t need to deal with the horrifying dread that now gripped Maya-Cow’s mind.

“Why?” She groaned, hunching over at the waist, bending so low her udder slapped at her thighs. “WhhuhhMMROOOO!?”

Maya-Goat had finally regained control over her body, and was trying to stand. Then she heard the loud sound, crossed her eyes like an idiot, and fainted dead away again. The skin of her cheek slapped at the floor, and her arms and legs twitched pitifully, like she was being electrocuted by existence.

“MUUHRRROOO?” Maya-Cow begged for another answer, even as she felt idiotic animal content start to smooth over her brain.

By way of response, Lynn flicked her arms up above her head, then brought them down to wrap around her own waist.

The four animals with the same human face slammed into one another like they were magnetized. There was a bright flash of light, and a horrible twisting sensation in their bodies. No, in their singular body.

Maya blinked, looking down at her new paws. She felt as big and fat as a panda, but her arms were distinctly canine. A cowlike tail swished against her udder, and she craned her neck around to see a goat’s legs trembling as they tried to support her body.

She remembered being four different versions of herself. She remembered each of their lives up to that point, though these memories were fragmented and split apart by the animal parts of their brains. Animal parts… Wait, would that happen to her too? But she just started to exist, there was no way-

“Speak, girl.” Lynn smirked.

“Bwuhuhuhhmmeh-ehehehhRRROOOOOOoof!” The chimera bleated, mooed, and barked in the same breath. Apparently the sound was enough to trigger something in her goat legs, which collapsed beneath her udder, pinning them beneath its heavy, sloshing mass. Her massive paws thumped at the ground, but didn't have a hope at moving the bulk of her belly combined with the weight of her udder.

Or at least, normally they wouldn't. But thanks to the pressure on her udder, she found herself leaking a puddle of milk beneath herself. It was slick enough against the mall's polished tiles that she was able to drag herself away, leaving a creamy trail behind herself.

“Witches like you can be such a pain,” Lynn tutted, watching her new creation crawl away. “Always on the hunt to get rid of any competition. Worst of all, the only way to keep you from just regenerating is to combine your magic into a single body. Which sucks, because it’s what I’m worst at.”

The chimera let out another bleat-moo, followed by a bark-growl.

Lynn rolled her eyes. “Really. The first few I made into mixed mutts, a Cerberus here and there. But I found out the hard way that the only way to make it happen is to give you all the same human baseline… And even then, the fur or scales or whatever have to at least kind of match.”

She knew that she was talking to a creature dumber than a rock, but she didn’t care. It was healthy to vent sometimes. At least, that’s what her therapist had said, before Lynn had turned her into a rat. Not that she hated the woman or anything. She’d just promised that the woman would end up as her worst nightmare by the end of their session.

Lynn blinked. Which… Honestly, was odd for her. She wasn’t cruel. At least, she thought she wasn’t. She didn’t remember being cruel. At least, not until she’d started to change people. And sure, it had started with her cheating husband, her asshole of a boss…

But now? Now she was changing even strangers. Sure, witches were fair game given that they hated her, but what if they didn’t know why either?

Lynn had a troubling thought, for just a moment. What if the ability to shape reality was just some kind of alien experiment, and whenever they were done, they’d just reshape everyone on the planet as they saw fit?

Was that why she’d taken on this vicious streak? Was that why she didn’t feel anything about turning people who’d been just like her into… Well, anything?

No. That was ridiculous. She couldn’t bother worrying about-