Moontouched 24

Donna gestured expansively and a card table big enough for everyone in the green room materialized in front of her.  She fanned out an oversized deck of cards in her hands, and grinned toothily.  “Who’s in?”

Most of the girls eagerly found spots at the table, but Zoey was hesitant.  “You’re serious about permanently changing the loser?  Until... well, until when?  Just until next month, then we can ask to be something else?”

“If you’re still able to ask, sure.  But if you can’t, like Tawny there...”  Donna indicated the tattoo sprawled happily across Carmen’s belly.  “Well, you’ll just have to wait until your new owner decides she’s tired of keeping you.  If you guys want to play with fire, why go for half measures?”

“Ah.”  Zoey fidgeted with her arms, popping one off to expose the robotic workings underneath, then clicking it back into place.  “I don’t think that would be fair to Liana.  I’m out.”

The others murmured among themselves.  Carmen sighed loudly.  “Are you all chicken?  What’s the worst that can happen?  I mean, do you really think I’m going to keep Tawny like this forever?”  She stroked a talon over her belly.

“That was kind of the impression I got, yeah,” said Zoey.  “What would you turn me into if you won me?”

Carmen looked her over, leering at Zoey’s lithe body.  “Something small and rubbery and fun, I think.  You’d get lots of use, and by the time a month was up, you’d be begging to stay.”

Kate laughed at Zoey’s shiver. “That sounds like my kind of fun, not hers.  You’re on.  Deal the cards, Donna.”

Donna swiftly spread the cards to all the players.  Rowan stayed out of the game, and sent Zoey out to dance with Ray and show him the ropes.  Donna didn’t deal cards for herself, either.  “I need to stick around to actually do this stuff, remember?” was all she said when Carmen asked why.

“What about Gwen?” asked Kate.  “She could play, even though she’s just your boob.”

Donna smiled and looked down at where Gwen’s face was perched on her chest.  “What about it, Gwen?  Want in?”

Donna’s boob shook itself back and forth.  “Nah.  You need me more than I need to play.”

With that decided, Kate led off.  “Six of robots.  I like your choice of suits, Donna.”

Donna chuckled.  “Oh, yeah.  Anyone who doesn’t win or lose has to pick one of their leftover cards, and I’ll give them a short term change on that theme.”

That triggered a lot of grins around the table, and some reshuffling of the cards in hands.  Play proceeded quickly, with some giggles when the six of boobs was played, and more when a long string of kittens and vixens came out.  Neysa and Nissa, on either side of Carmen, seemed to be blessed with lots of aces, two, and fours, and would either reverse the play before it got to Carmen, or make it skip right over her.  Others had used their queens to give Carmen cards, to boot.  As a result, when Kate played her last card, Carmen had more cards in her hand than she’d had at the start of the game.  She slapped her cards on the table with a growl.  “Fine.  What’s it going to be, Kate?”

Kate looked Carmen over speculatively.  “I know what I want for myself, but what shall I... oooh, perfect.”

Donna smiled at Kate.  “Some form of robot?”

Kate nodded.  “Not quite as emphatically robotic as before though.  More like what you did for Zoey, except full-body.  So that when I put on my person skin, I can go outside.  But at home I can take the skin off, and look like a sexy robot.”

“I can do that.  Anything else?”

Kate shot Carmen a dark look.  “She gets to be my skin.”

There was a soft ooooh from all around the table. Carmen’s eyes went wide, then she started to laugh, short sharp barks.  “Ironic, considering what I did to Tawny.  Are you going to keep her, too?”

“Of course.  She’s part of you, and looks so pretty like that...”

Carmen’s smile became more honest.  “Ah.  Good.  I’d hate to be separated.”  She turned to Donna.  “Do it,” and was starting to crumple as the words left her mouth.  While that was happening, everyone turned to watch as silver poured across Kate’s body, shiny and bright.  Her body seemed to suck in slightly, throwing muscle and ligature into sharp definition before turning them into pistons and cables, exposing joints and metallic bones.  Her hair was the last to go, getting absorbed into her head and leaving it a smooth, shiny dome.

When it was done, Kate turned to the mirror and posed, testing out her limbs.  “Mmm,” came her perfectly synthesized voice, without moving her lips, “I like it.  Can you add some glowy bits?”

“I already did.  Multicolour LEDs throughout your body.  Try thinking about making your arm glow... yeah, like that.”

Kate was giggling, and flickering patterns of green and red chased across her body.  “Bit late for Christmas, but I think I’m going to go dance like this anyway.”

Donna picked up the deflated pile of pink flesh that was lying where Carmen had been. “Don’t forget your skin.  I bet that’ll make a striptease to talk about...”

Kate giggled.  “Eee!  I totally have to do that.”  She wriggled into the skin with its built-in wig, pulling it up and smoothing it over her face.  She stared at herself in the mirror, amazed.  “I look human again.  This is so cool!”  She hugged herself, and thanked Carmen softly.

“There’s just one more thing that would make it perfect,” mused Kate.  “But I don’t know if you can do it.  I liked being Unit Kate, but I also like being able to think for myself... some of the time.  Can you add a switch that goes between the two?  Say, at the back of my neck?”

Donna paused, lost in thought.  “I... let’s see if she’s still there.  Unit Kate, can you hear me?”

Kate stood ramrod straight.  “Unit Kate is functional.”

Donna grinned.  “Ah, that was easier than I thought.  You spent a long time like this... now, find the differences, bind to a sub-processor, and add a power switch...  No, a shunt.  Unit Kate, report status.”

“This unit is fully functional, and has been online for one minute, twenty-seven seconds.  How may it serve?”  Unit Kate’s voice was much more emphatically synthetic than Kate’s had been, with few of the harmonic overtones created by a real windpipe.

Donna touched the button that had finished forming at the nape of Kate’s neck, and the cyborg girl stumbled, almost going to her knees before managing to grip the counter in front of the mirror.  She drew in a long shuddery breath despite not really needing to breathe at all.  “Oh, woooow.”

“Are you OK?” Donna asked softly.

“I was there.  Stuck behind my eyes while Unit Kate was in control.”

“And?  Did I get it right?”

Kate grinned, and squeezed Donna tight in a powerful hug that would have broken ribs if Donna hadn’t shifted them into something soft and rubbery.  “It was fucking fantastic!  Can you tweak it so my Kate-brain slowly winds down and sleeps after being disengaged?  So I can feel my humanity slipping away, bit by bit?”

Donna wheezed, then nodded after Kate let her go.  “I can.  Watch your strength, though.  That hug would have bruised ribs on anyone else.”

Donna cupped her hands over the back of Kate’s head for half a minute.  “OK, I think that will do it.  About an hour until the fade starts, then a few more hours before the CPU you reside in goes into passive recording mode.  You’ll remember everything that happens when you wake up.”

Kate kissed her soundly on the lips.  “You’re amazing.  Thank you.”  She danced out of the room, taking the place of Ray and Zoey who were just coming off the stage.

Next Donna went around the table.  Everyone had already picked a card, except for Beth, who was still muttering, “Vixen or kitty?  Kitty or vixen?”

Donna grinned.  “Why not do both?”  Beth grinned up at her, and nodded.  Her deerlike features were replaced with feline ones, muzzle and ears, fur down her arms.  But from the waist down, her fur turned blue.  Swishing at her backside was a long, blue vixen’s tail.

Beth bounced over to the mirror, tail arcing behind her as she went.  “Oooh!  It’s pretty.”  Her hands had taken on the same blue shade as her legs, as had the tips of her ears, and her feet and the tip of her tail were black-furred.  “I like blue.”

Next came Ronnie with the five of boobs.  Instead of growing them five cups larger, Donna multiplied the ones already there, adding a row of three below the usual two.  Ronnie grinned, then wondered how she’d cover up to dance.  Donna pointed her at the box of veils.

Neysa added two long, furless tails.  She thought they looked a little creepy, but when she swished them in counterpoint to her hips, she grinned.  “Mmm, I can work with this.”

Nissa dropped the seven of wings on the table.  “This should be interesting.”  Her arms flattened and became wings in fiery red, and two more pairs emerged from her shoulders as well, in orange and yellow.  A single green wing poked up out of her hair like a crest, and she giggled.  “The dance of the seven wings... this will be a hoot!”  When her nose reshaped into an owl’s beak, she giggled even more.

Pat dropped a queen of robots on the table.  “Hit me.”  Her mousy body stayed mostly the same, except for the odd exposed gear and joint.  The biggest change was a giant clockwork key sticking out of her back, which made her smile.  “Can someone wind me up?”

Ray shook her head as the table vanished.  “Looks like I missed out on all the fun.”  Rowan glared at him, and made a comment about his gambling habits.  Ray just shrugged.  “If the stakes aren’t financial, I’ll be fine.”

Donna fanned out the cards in her hand, backs toward Ray.  “Pick a card, any card.”

Ray grinned, and pulled one.

“Aww, the ace of vixens,” said Donna.  “I guess you’re stuck like that a little longer.”

Ray pushed the fan of cards down, so he could see the fronts.  All but one of them were the ace of vixens.  “What’s this other one?” he asked as he pulled it out.  “Ace of kittens?”

“Since you asked...”  Donna gestured theatrically, and Ray started to change.  A minute later, he was a tufted lynx-girl, the spitting image of Ana.

Ray’s eyes widened as he saw his new form.  “Oh, wow.  Ana’s going to get a kick out of this.  It’ll only last a week, right?”

“If that’s what you’d like.”

Ray grinned, scampering from mirror to mirror to check herself out.  “We’re going to have such fun...  Does it really have to be only a week?”

Several of the others looked at Donna, and Neysa spoke up.  “No.  She’s figured out how to do permanent changes, too.  Kate and Carmen are both like that for as long as Kate wants.”

Ray looked at Donna sharply.  “You figured it out?  I know you were looking at the underlying structure of how changes like Kate’s became persistent.  Could you fix Isolde, now?”

Donna tilted her head to one side, eyes going unfocussed as she sought out the bat-sized succubus.  She was dancing on one of the tables near the bar, and from afar Donna studied her nature.  “Yes.  There’s a sort of... scuff mark in reality where someone spends a long time in a body.  The indent in reality for her normal body is gone, but I can see where it was.  I could put her body back, exactly as it was.  But...”

“Her mind?” prompted Ray.

“Yeah.  Silver might force the issue, but I’m starting to really hate how it screws with people’s minds.”

“Ah.  Well, she does seem mostly happy as she is.  Without the silver, perhaps she’ll find her way back?”

Donna sighed, and sat down.  “Maybe.  Pat said she was at least open to the idea of being human for a while.  That could help.”

Ray offered to go find her, and headed out toward the bar.  The others were all busy with their own new changes, and Neysa most of all in trying to fit them all into the dancing schedule.  Everyone wanted to go on as soon as they could, and soon most of them were trooping up to the stage en masse for an enesmble number.

Donna sat alone with her thoughts, until her breast piped up.  “If you hate silver so much, why is a certain crystal covered in it?”

Donna sighed.  “I’m going to make up a silver box for her, like the bottle.  Maybe I can get some of Ray’s silvered glass for the front, so she can see.”

“How are you going to do that?  You can’t even touch silver any more.  Can you transform things into silver, now?”

Donna studied that thought for a while, then tried it.  One of the bras on the counter beside her went silvery and metallic, but when she touched it she could pick it up.  “Nope.  Looks like silver, but it’s not.  I think it’s made of nickel, instead.”  She shook it out, keeping the silvery look but making it soft again.

“Pretty.  But not a solution.  If you can get your hands on some sheet silver, I can help make the box.”

Donna nodded, and patted her breast, making Gwen coo softly.  “Thanks, love.  You’ve been a huge help tonight, I don’t think I’d be sane right now without you.  What she did...”

Rowan cleared her throat.  “Just what did she do?  I’ve seen the news.”

Donna winced.  “How bad?”

“They still don’t know.  At least fifteen buildings are damaged, some to the point where they’re going to have to be torn down and rebuilt.  They aren’t talking about the number of dead, suspiciously so.  Over a hundred people have been taken to the hospital with varying degrees of burns and smoke related injuries.  Most are expected to live.”

Donna let out a soft sigh of relief.  “Well, that’s something, at least.”

“What happened?”

“I...”  Donna couldn’t meet her gaze.  “I hesitated.  I had her on the ropes, thought the fight was over.  That I’d won, without taking the final step. Then she broke out and started killing, using the deaths to fuel the fight.  It got... bad.  I had to sacrifice my humanity to win.”

“Ah.  How many died?”

“I don’t know,” Donna whispered.  “Brunhilde didn’t know, but... hundreds.”

Rowan was silent for a time, digesting that.  “You need to talk about this.”

Donna nodded.  “I just... don’t know where to start, or how.  I did my best, I really did.  But to have a slip cost so much...  I’ve been trying not to think about it all night.  The card game helped.”

“You need to deal with this.  I have Doctor Sakurai’s emergency contact number, I should call her.”

“It’s so late... she’ll be asleep.  Can’t I just do a few fantasies first?”

Rowan shook her head. “Talk first.”  She was already dialling.

Donna sighed and waited as Rowan explained that she’d been at the epicenter of the news story that Doctor Sakurai had also been watching.  Rowan turned to Donna.  “She says she’s still at her office.  How soon can you be there?”

“Seconds.”

As Rowan was relaying this answer, Donna was shrinking, and soon flitted off toward the familiar location.  A few seconds after arriving, she was full size again, grinning as she saw that Arwen was still on the phone.  “Hi!”

Arwen turned with a yelp of surprise, then smiled.  “She’s here.  Talk to you later, Rowan.”  She hung up the phone, and gestured to her couch.  “I’ve seen the news.  How can I help?”

Donna sat heavily.  “I don’t even know where to start.  Basically, a couple hundred people are dead because I tried to stop the ‘midnight arsonist’ on my own.”

“Could anyone else have done better?”

“I... no.  Not that I know of.  If I hadn’t, she’d have kept going, and gotten worse.  This is... months of her depredations all concentrated in one night, and ended.”

“Did you do the best you could given what you knew at the time, not what you know now?”

Donna sighed.  “I don’t know.”

“Yes,” said Gwen firmly from Donna’s chest.  That drew a funny look from Arwen, who’d only casually glanced at Donna’s naked body and mostly talked to her face.

“Gwen?  What are you doing there?”

“Keeping Donna together.  No, keeping her real.  What she had to do to stop Brunhilde was... extreme.  Donna, can you give me my body back for a bit?”

“Okay...”  Donna stepped out of the fleshy body she’d gotten used to, appearing as a translucent image of herself.  She held her form together for several seconds before parts of her started to flicker in and out of existence, returning as simple crystalline forms.  A few seconds later, she stabilized, mostly, as a ghostly pillar of crystal.

Gwen reached out to touch Donna, and the contact helped her to solidify.  A slight nudge turned her into a crystalline version of her human body, and Donna very carefully sat beside Gwen on the couch, making sure to maintain contact.

“I’m... not really myself any more,” said Donna in a fluting, crystalline voice, her lips unmoving.

“I...  Wow.  I’d say this is outside my realm of expertise, but...”  Arwen’s brow furrowed.  “It’s not, not really.  You’re having body-image issues, it seems.”

“I guess you could put it that way.  My body always reflects my thoughts, instantly.  A moment’s distraction and... poof.”  Donna flickered out of existence, then returned looking fully human.  “The crystal is just... sort of where I drift to.  I think it’s my natural form, now.”

That led into a tangent about the nature of ‘natural forms’ and just how easily Donna could now manipulate them.  She explained to Gwen and Arwen how the various shapes a person could take formed a sort of multidimensional space, and that their native form acted as an attractor in that space, sort of like how a weight resting on a mattress would create a dip where it lay for a long time.  Staying in a new form for a long time created a new divot, and eventually the old would fade.

“But what I learned tonight was that the mattress itself can be changed.  Push it up here, pull it down there... it’s not even hard, but it does take enough concentration that I don’t think I could do it accidentally.  At least, I hope not.  As I get more practice, I fear that might change, too.”

“So why not do that to yourself?” asked Arwen.  “Change yourself into a form you’re happy with, and make that your natural form.”

Donna smiled. “Oh!  I suppose...”  She closed her eyes, and her form flickered several times.  “Uh, Gwen, could you stabilize me like this while I work on it?”

“Of course.”

Donna focussed a moment longer, then sighed.  “Bother.”

“What?”

“My mattress is gone.  See, different people have thicker or thinner mattresses.”  At the others’ skeptical looks, she sighed.  “Analogy.  It’s not exactly that, but it’s close.  People who don’t want to change, they resist it more.  It’s like they have a thicker mattress with deeper indents.  Gwen here, who has become really easy to change, has a really thin mattress.  Her indents are shallower, and it’s easier to move her ‘spot’ around on the mattress.  Mine was thinner than that, and tonight it... well, it disappeared.  So instead of the mattress, my form rolls across a concrete floor.  I can change myself in an instant.”  Her form flickered and became a busty blue vixen, then a snaky version of herself, then human once more in the blink of an eye.

“So that’s kind of fun.  But the downside is... that floor has a divot in the middle, and it’s shaped like a crystal.”  Donna’s body turned transparent and ghostly once more, then there was a pillar of ghostly crystal on the couch beside Gwen.  “This is... this is my natural form,” the crystal sang.  “And forever will be.”

Arwen studied Donna’s new form, standing up from her chair to crouch in front of it.  “You’re really very pretty like this.  Are you happy with this shape?”

“I...  I think so, actually.  It’s very... grounding.  I don’t have to focus to stay like this, or pretty much any crystal shape.”  Donna condensed herself into a shimmering crystal star, perhaps a foot across, and floated herself over to sit on Gwen’s lap.  “But what kind of life can I have like this?”

Gwen tugged, and Donna merged with her body again.  “You can have a life like this.  We’ll figure it out,” said the breast.

Donna bit her lip.  “This body is nice.  But I can’t take your life away, Gwen.  That wouldn’t be fair, not after all you went through to help me.”

“Not forever,” said Gwen.  “But we both need to get back on our feet.  My apartment is gone, so I need a place to stay until I can figure out what’s next.  You need a body that won’t disappear if you sneeze.”

“Are you sure?”

Gwen giggled.  “It’ll be a new perspective on life.  If Tawny can handle being a tattoo for who knows how long, I can handle being a boob.  If you wanted to make this my native form for a while, that’d be OK.”

Donna winced.  “Good.  ‘Cause I kind of did that a while back.  Sorry, I was desperate to hold on to you.”

“It’s OK.  After all, nothing is ever permanent with either of us around, right?  I’ve watched you do it enough times, I bet I could change someone’s native form, too.”

Donna put a hand to her brow dramatically.  “What have I unleashed upon the world?”  Both of them giggled.

Arwen shook her head.  “You don’t seem traumatized.”

Donna sighed.  “I...  Distractions help.  Hearing both of you say that I couldn’t have known what would happen helps, too.  After all, it’s not like I did it...  The blood is on Brunhilde’s hands, not mine.”

“Even if she doesn’t have hands at the moment,” quipped Gwen.

Arwen of course had to have the story of that, as well, and was amazed that Brunhilde was still alive, for certain values of alive.  “Why didn’t you kill her?”

Donna snorted.  “Wasn’t for lack of trying at first.  I didn’t know my attack would heal her and turn her back to human.  Then after that, she was helpless before me.  What I did to her was terrible enough.”

Arwen dug that story out too, bit by bit.  Donna was crying by the end, and apologizing to Gwen all over again.

“I was so afraid I was turning into a monster,” Donna said, once she’d wiped her tears.  “I... it’s still close, there.  It wouldn’t take much anger to create insane amounts of damage.”

“Have you ever acted out in anger, before this?” asked Arwen.

“I... rarely.  The worst cases were more out of pain than anger, and once when I felt cornered by my ex-wife.  I’m not proud of those moments.  I ended up taking an anger management class for a while as a result of them.”

“And what did you learn there?”

Donna straightened herself up.  “To learn how anger felt, so I could catch myself before I did something awful.”  She sighed ruefully.  “I guess I need to work on that again.”

“Indeed.  It’s very late, but I’d like to see you tomorrow.  Call me any time, I’ll make room in my schedule.  You’re in a delicate state, and I want to give you all the attention you need, just like I did with Roger.”

Donna’s face fell.  “About that...  We’re not sure, but we think Olivia was taken and... well, eaten by the crystal entity under the hospice.”

“Olivia was the name Roger took when you turned him into a woman, yes?  Ah, this is sad news.  Not the first patient I’ve lost, but... thank you for telling me.  I had worried when she didn’t come back.”

Donna got up and offered Arwen a hug.  “I am sorry.  I saved the ones I could, but...”

“You can’t save everyone, Donna.  Nobody can.  If you take nothing else from this talk tonight, take that.  You saved all you could.”

“I guess.”

“You did,” piped up Gwen from the middle of the hug.  “I felt how much you gave when we saved the ones in the burning buildings.  You saved a lot of lives last night.  Pretty much everyone who made it to a hospital did so because of you.”

“Hold on to that,” said Arwen, then she stifled a huge yawn.  “I’m sorry, I’m really out of steam here.  Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Donna shook her head, and stepped away from Arwen.  “I’ll be able to hold it together.  But I will come talk to you tomorrow.  Well, later today anyway.  Before I go, is there anything I can do for you?  You enjoyed the last few changes, and doing that kind of stuff is by far my favourite part of all this.”

“I...  Hm.  Being a toy for my sweetie was fun, but I also need to be able to work, and get home.”

“I could give you doll parts where it won’t show...  Some inflation valves for your chest and rump, and rubberized bits elsewhere...”  Donna offered, temptingly.

“Okay.  If it will make you happy.”

Donna grinned hugely, and nodded as the magic flickered out to start the changes.  “It does.  I hope it makes you two happy too.”

Arwen moaned as she felt the changes start.  “Oooh!  If it feels like... Oh my god!  What are...  My belly button?”

Donna giggled.  “A bonus.  Have fun!”  She waved jauntily as she shrunk away to a point, and flitted off.