Chapter 1 - Who’s a Pretty Kittymonster?

“You want us to volunteer for the school’s haunted house?” asked Violet.  “What about trick or treating?”

Her best friend Bailey giggled.  “Aw c’mon.  We’re seventeen.  You remember the reactions last year, right?  Besides, our side job is making us some good money now, we can afford our own candy on the day-after sales.  Which means none of the icky stuff, just our favourites.”

Violet’s eyes went wide at the thought.  She was the shorter of the duo, and also the heavier.  Her sweet tooth was somewhat counterbalanced by all the tennis she played, but it showed.  “Nothing but miniature Mars bars?  Sweet.  Okay, so what’s the plan?”

“They’re looking for people willing to be Venned into something scary.  I was thinking we could do something wild like we see in Monster Wars.  The social committee has arranged for concealed transportation to the school so we would be able to do it without causing a panic!”  Bailey was bouncing with excitement.  “We’re way too far away to make it to the arena, but we could bring the games here!”

Violet frowned.  “I don’t think they’ll want actually dangerous shapes, though.  Right?  So we’d have to make the claws foam rubber or something like that.”

“So?  We still get to look terrifying, and scare everyone who comes through.  Don’t you want to be big and beastly?  Tower over the terrified guys?”

Violet licked her lips, and touched the shoulder where a bruise was still healing from a recent shove into a locker.  “And certain girls?  I want to be the most horrifying thing this town has ever seen.”

Bailey grinned toothily.  “You design it, I’ll Venn you into it.  But there’s a price.”

“Oh?”

“You have to design my body too.  Think you can do sexy and dangerous?”

“Sexy is easy, just make you look mostly like you,” said Violet offhandedly, making Baily blush and look away.

“I... uh, yeah.  But I want this to not look much like me.  Some sort of monstrous cat-thing, I think.”

“But still a little like you?” asked Violet.  “Might be tricky to show that in a big cat.  Should I keep your blonde hair?  Or those pretty green eyes?  I’m afraid that cute little nose has to go, though.”

Bailey giggled.  “Not the cute little nose!  Oh no, whatever shall I do?”

“Bite anyone who looks at you funny?” offered Violet with a grin.  “Or slap them around with your tentacles.”

“Tentacles?” asked Bailey.  “Have you already designed the body?”

“Mmmaybe,” admitted Violet.  “I have a pretty clear image, anyway.  Getting there will be tricky.  Not like I can just say ‘kitten’ and get something close, you know.”

Bailey giggled.  “That was a fun sleepover.”

Violet rolled her eyes.  “Except for the part where we were both too small to open the Venn Machine and had to make our way back to your house as kittens.  We couldn’t even get inside!  We had to wait out the timer and then sneak back in.”

Bailey laughed at the memory.  “Aw, cmon.  Admit it, that was fun.”

“It was terrifying!  We were so small...”  Violet’s voice trailed off on the last word and she got a distant look.

“Vi!  Hey, no fair scheming without me.”

Violet chuckled softly.  “I know how to make us extra monstrous.”  She looked around to make sure nobody was in earshot.  “I’ve been reading design tips from some of the people who make the monsters for Monster Wars.”

“Coool.  Can we try them out tonight?  Your mom won’t mind a sleepover tonight, will she?”

Violet shook her head.  “Nah.  It’s been another crazy week at work, she’ll be glad of the quiet.”

Bailey snickered.  “Right, like you’re soooo noisy.”

“You know what I mean,” said Violet with a blush.

“So she can bring home her latest boy-toy.  C’mon, text her and ask if you can stay here tonight.  And tomorrow night too, after we spend Saturday at the mall making clothes.”

Violet grinned.  “I have some new things I want to try out on my favourite model before the paying customers show up.”

Bailey clapped her hands excitedly.  “Sweet!”

Before long it was all arranged.  Violet would spend Friday and Saturday nights sleeping over at Bailey’s house.  Bailey’s mother was always happy to have Violet around, especially now that Bailey’s older brother had found an apartment of his own closer to his new job.  She’d even offered to let Violet rent out Gordon’s old room.  Violet hadn’t asked her mother about it yet, as she was scared that she’d accept far too eagerly.

After dinner, Violet thanked Mrs. York effusively.  Bailey’s mother chuckled softly.  “Think nothing of it, dear.  Any friend of Bailey’s is welcome here.”  

Violet helped Bailey clear the table and wash up afterward, then they retreated to Bailey’s room to scheme.  Violet had stayed over often enough that she had a few sets of pajamas stashed there, as well as sketching supplies for clothing design.

Multiple sheets of paper later, Bailey was staring at a loosely sketched version of a panther, with black fur lightly shaded in.  It had six legs, a long tail tipped with spikes, and four tentacles rooted in its shoulders.  “Oh, wow.  Can you do this and still have anything left of... me?”

Violet shrugged.  “I really don’t know.  There’s a reason I didn’t sketch the head, other than hating how I can never make them look how I imagine them.”  She pointed to a loose oval where the figure’s head would be.  “I mostly skip that bit when designing dresses.”  A few sketched-in lines suggested a collar around the beast’s neck.

Bailey shook her head.  “No collar.  This beast is not tame at all.  Rrowr.  C’mon, let’s go to the mall.”

“We can’t go yet, people might see.  We want this to be a surprise, right?”

Bailey flopped back onto her bed.  “Right.  Darnit.  I just want to try that body out now...  The muscles, the...”  She rolled over and peered at the drawing.  “So it’s really going to have tentacles?”

Violet nodded.  “Otherwise it’s just a big cat with extra legs.”

“Cool!”

While they waited for the mall to close, the girls lay on Bailey’s bed and flipped through the Monster Wars videos they’d downloaded from a dark-net server.  Violet rejected form after form, including some of her favourite fighters.  When Bailey asked why, Violet noted that she wasn’t looking for something that was optimized for combat.

“What are you looking for, then?”

“Something truly terrifying.  Like... oooh, this could be a good start.”

They watched the fight, a black-carapaced nightmare creature against something that looked like a mutant dinosaur with six limbs and armored plates.  The dinosaur shredded the black thing with ease.  “There.  That one.”

“But it lost!”

“Yeah.  But look at that.  Sleek.  Black.  In a darkened room, you’d barely be able to see it.”

Bailey rewound the video to the start, with the two creatures posturing before the battle started.  “Yeah...”  She snickered.  “Its head looks a bit like a sex toy, though.”

By the time Violet had produced several sketches from the video, it was quite late.  Bailey’s parents were long asleep, so sneaking out of the house was simply a matter of strolling to the front door and making sure not to slam it on the way out.  As a precaution against another kitten incident, they left Bailey’s bedroom window open a crack.

The mall was deserted except for one other couple heading away from the pair of Venn Machines sitting next to the drugstore.  Violet studied the pair, then grinned.  Once they were out of earshot, she whispered to Bailey, “I think they swapped bodies.”

“I could buy that, she was walking a little funny,” agreed Bailey.  “That could be fun to try sometime... wait a minute.  Our school says we have to show up in our own bodies.  But they’d never know if we swapped, they only bring out the iris scanners for big exams.”

Violet giggled.  “I doubt we’re the first to think of that particular trick.  You’d really have to trust the other person not to get you in trouble, though.  And they have to know their stuff for your classes.  Seems like a lot of work to show up at school in a different body.”

“I guess.  Instead, we are going to go there after hours in radically changed ones.  You ready for this?”  Bailey tossed a dollar into the Venn Machine and set it for eight hours.

“Please, we’ve done this how many times?” asked Violet as she stepped inside.

Bailey shrugged as she followed suit.  “I’ve forgotten.  Hundreds of times for clothes, plus at least a half dozen sleepovers where we made each other prettier.”

“And the kittens.”

Bailey giggled.  “That was fun!”

Violet rolled her eyes, and started working on Bailey’s new body.  Swapping her clothes for sleek black fur was easy enough.  Violet left Bailey’s head alone to start, and worked on getting the extra legs and tentacles right.  Once she had the basic body plan in place, she explored the neighbouring images until she was happy with that.  “How feral do you want your head?”

Bailey shrugged.  “Something that suits the rest, I guess?”

Violet tried a few changes, and cursed softly under her breath.  “OK, this version won’t look much like you after all.  Hard to make the species jump and retain much.”

“That’s fine, we can work on it later.  I wanna see!”

A moment later, Bailey had over twice as many limbs as before.  She peered back at her hindmost legs.  “They don’t feel right.”

Once the machines opened, Bailey trotted outside and up to the mirror in the drugstore window.  She saw what looked like a human with black fur.  It had the head of a cat, and the back half of a cat tacked on at her rump.  The tentacles hung limply down her back, and the tail swung back and forth as regularly as a metronome.   “I feel really weird.  Not like the kitten at all.”

Bailey ran a hand down her muzzle.  “This isn’t right.”  Her lips didn’t move when she spoke.

She tugged at her head, and suddenly it lifted right off her body.  Violet yelped.  “Oh, crap, it shouldn’t do that!”

Bailey tucked the cat head under her arms and shook out her long blonde hair.  She looked down at the head she was holding and laughed.  “You were supposed to change me, not turn my clothes into a costume.”

“I know, I know.  I'm too used to just changing clothes, not the person inside.”

Bailey giggled.  “Good thing, too.  Remember the first time we tried this booth?”

“And I turned you into a dress?  Yes, you keep reminding me.”  Violet sighed theatrically, then grinned.  “So this time I get to actually change you.  Maybe you shouldn't be teasing me or you might end up as a kitten-sized monster-cat.”

“Oooh!  That sounds like fun.  Could you wrap me up in your jacket and take me home like that?  I’d have all night to get used to my body.”

Violet rolled her eyes.  “You’re not going to let go of this now, are you?”

Bailey shook her head.  “Nope.  Come on, you know it makes sense.  If we want to show these bodies off at the haunted house, we can’t be stumbling around like klutzes.”

“We can’t both go back as mini-monsters,” said Violet.

“You’re sleeping over tomorrow night too, right?  Problem solved.  You do me tonight, I’ll do you tomorrow.”

Violet bowed to the inevitable, and soon they were back in the Venn Machine, with Bailey offering suggestions to make the body more animalistic.  “I don’t care if you can’t see my face in it.  My boobs are my best feature, anyway.”

Violet stretched out the torso of the monstrous form she was working on, trying for added flexibility.  She smirked to herself when she noticed the extra breasts that came along with the change, and added four more between the second and third set of legs.  All of them were sufficiently fur-covered to be decent without clothes.

Further tweaks added subtle dark-grey streaks to the fur, and dazzling yellow eyes.  She filled its mouth with pointy teeth and added spikes to the pads on the ends of the tentacles.  As an afterthought, Violet tried to turn all the pointy bits into foam rubber, and got Bailey to poke the floor of the Venn Machine until the image’s claws flexed properly.  “Are you done?” asked Bailey.

“One last step.  Shrink...”  Violet picked a smaller image of the monster, and repeated the process until it was the size of a cat.  “Perfect.”  She touched the green circle, and Bailey mewed at her in surprise, making Violet giggle.  “Come on, monsterkitty.  You wanted this.”

“Mew!” protested Bailey as the doors opened.  “Mew mew!”

Violet giggled at how much her little kitten was getting into character, and scooped her up into her jacket.  Bailey snuggled in against Violet’s chest for the jog back to her house.

Once they were safely ensconced in Bailey’s room once more, Violet let the sinuous kitten out of her jacket to explore.  Watching her wiggle around with excitement, Violet saw more ferret in her than kitten.

Bailey had gone quiet during the jog, and now made wondering mewling noises as she explored her room from her new perspective.  Then she jumped up into Violet’s lap and made it clear she wanted to be petted.

Violet giggled as she did so.  “Enjoying your time as a strange-looking cat?”

“Mew!”

“C’mon, you can talk to me.”

“Mew mew!”

Violet peered down at Bailey.  “Can you talk?”

The strange kitten shook her head.

“Oops.  I’ll... try to fix that for the real run, okay?”

Bailey shrugged, and rolled on her back for more skritches.  Her eyes went very wide when she felt what Violet’s fingers were running over.  “Mew?”

Violet pulled her hand back, stopping the skritches.  “Yes, there are eight of them.  What?  You said they were your best feature, I figured that more is better, right?”

The kitten snorted, then grabbed Violet’s hand in her paws and pulled it back to her chest.  The happy squeakling noises the kittymonster made soothed Violet’s worries, and she cuddled and scritched the kitty for what seemed like hours.

They woke the next morning to the smell of pancakes, and Bailey was human once more.  Bailey smiled languidly at Violet.  “That was amazing.  Thank you.”

Violet raised an eyebrow.  “For turning you into a monster?”

Bailey blushed.  “No, for...”  She wrapped her arms around her chest and at Violet’s surprised look her eyes widened.  “You didn’t realize?”

Violet went bright pink.  “W... were those kitty orgasms?”

“The best ever.  I’d ditch Tony for you, if you’re willing to do that again.”

Violet’s blush intensified, and her stammer got so bad that she couldn’t actually get any words out at all.

Bailey’s giggling broke the spell.   “You’re so innocent, Violet.  Have I shocked you with my bisexual ways?”

“B... bisexual?  You never said...”

Bailey shrugged.  “I’ve tried not to think about it.  You’ve seen how the queen bees treat anyone ‘different’.  Chelsea tormented Emmy so badly she had to change school districts to get away, just because she thought Emmy was ogling her in the showers.”

“Was she?” asked Violet.

“Probably,” admitted Bailey.  “She wasn’t very subtle about it when she checked me out.  You, on the other hand, don’t seem to ogle anyone.”

“It’d be rude!”

Bailey posed in front of her bedroom mirror.  “Do you want to ogle me?  It’s okay, I won’t mind.”

Violet ducked her head, and mumbled her answer.

Bailey crouched in front of her friend, taking Violet’s hands in hers.  “Really?  Holy crap, Vi, I had no idea.  I’ll stop teasing.”

“S’okay.  Kinda liked it.  Teasing is the foundation of our friendship.”

Bailey giggled nervously.  “I guess.  But teasing someone about their sexuality is way out of bounds.”

Violet finally looked up.  “Were you serious?  About being bisexual?”

Bailey rocked back, sitting on her rump with her eyes unfocused.  “God, Vi, I don’t know.  As I’ve said, I’ve tried very hard not to think about how cute I find some of the girls.”

“Some?” asked Violet, leaning forward and staring into Bailey’s eyes.

Bailey met her gaze.  “Yes, I think you’re cute.  Before last night, I would never have...   But Tony has never, ever, made me feel like that.  He just sort of paws at my boobs, and...”  Bailey blushed and looked away.

Violet snickered.  “I could Venn you back into that body, but normal sized, for your next date...  See how he handles it.”

Bailey laughed out loud.  “Oh, I can’t even imagine his face.  The bravado is mostly an act.  We went to a sappy movie last month, and I was a blubbering wreck by the middle of it.  Tony would have been too, I could see him tearing up, but he wouldn’t admit it.”

“I’ll bring the tissues to the next sappy movie.”

“It’s a date,” said Bailey, then giggled at Violet’s hopeful look.  “Not like that, silly.”

Violet nodded, and turned away to get changed so they could go down to breakfast.  When she was sure Bailey wasn’t looking, she wiped away a couple of tears.