By the time the smoke covering the Blue Vixen from sight had dissipated, so had most of the crowd.  At Rowan’s urging, the dancers all headed inside.  Ana, Gwen and Donna followed them up the ‘secret passage’ that led behind the stage.  After them, a stream of the curious were allowed into the main areas of the club.

As they arrived in the green room, Gwen asked Ana how long she intended to keep Ray as her bra.

Ana shrugged.  “He’s more comfortable than any other bra I own.  I bet he’d make a nice nursing bra...”

Donna studied Ana silently, while Gwen chuckled.  “You might want him there for the birth of his child.”

“Oh, he would be!” giggled Ana.  “But I take your point.  I’ll probably be missing his hugs before the week is out.”

“Then it’s probably for the best that Donna here didn’t make the transformation permanent.  He’ll start changing back in a week.”

“But Cobalt wished to be a bra for as long as I wanted...”

Donna’s smile was more of a smirk that didn’t reach their eyes.  “You just said you wanted a week.”

Ana sighed.  “Yeah.  I’d like more Cobalt time, though.  Can you arrange that?”

“Ask Ray,” replied Gwen after Donna’s silence grew too long.  “Cobalt is part of him, he can bring her forth at will.  Putting her away seems a touch harder.”

“True enough.  Ray can’t wriggle out without a little help.  I think he likes it that way.”  Ana bounced off to see Rowan about the dance schedule.

Gwen turned to face Donna.  “You’re grumpy about all that.  Jealous of the bra?”

Donna startled out of their thoughts.  “Not just the bra.  She’s going to be a mother...”

“Oh!  And you’re wondering how to make that happen, given you are currently stuck as a being of crystal and magic?”

“Something like that.”

Gwen hugged Donna tight.  “We’ll figure something out.  Not tonight, because tonight is about fun and creating new memories.  You have centuries to work it out.”

“Sidney doesn’t.”

Gwen nodded somberly.  “True.  But it still doesn’t need to be tonight.  Come on, let’s dance!”

Rowan grinned when Gwen asked to do a pair dance with Donna, and gleefully rearranged the schedule to get them up on stage next.  None of the other dancers objected, they were all just as keen to see what would happen.

As they approached the stage, Gwen got an impish grin.  “Remember some of our early acts?  You in street clothes, and me stealing them away as you chase me around?”

“Not... as such.  But it does sound fun.”

“Good.”  With a wiggle of her fingers, Gwen gave Donna flowing white robes and long feathery wings.  She held up a ring of light in her hand and as the music started she called out, “Come get it.”

Donna roared and raced after her, until Gwen chided her mentally, “It’s a show, not a fight.”

Faster than they’d have believed possible, Donna settled into a routine of darting for Gwen, barely missing the halo with a grab, and losing bits of their costume on each pass.  Before long, Donna’s robe was tattered and torn.  Gwen dove under Donna’s arms and yanked away a swath of white cloth, leaving the lower half of Donna’s outfit looking like a skirt.

A few more such exchanges left Donna sleeveless, and suggestive rents in her top soon added to the appeal.  Shining crystalline “skin” shone through the gaps.  Further exchanges diminished Donna’s outfit to little more than the bra and panties Gwen was wearing.

Just as the song was winding down, Gwen failed to snatch the halo away in time, and Donna got their hands on it.  Gwen used her grip on the halo to pull Donna in close for a scorching kiss just as the song ended.  The crowd cheered wildly at the display.

After a few beats of silence, Leo spun up Union of the Snake.  Gwen’s eyes gleamed wickedly, and she snapped the halo in half.  Donna looked confused until Gwen set the fragments atop her head as glittering ebony horns.  As they danced on, scales spread from the horns, converting Donna’s crystalline face into a scaly snake’s head, complete with broad cobra-like hood.

As they danced, Gwen tugged at one wing, then the other.  They came free from Donna’s back and vanished into bright sparkles that swiftly faded to black.  Then Donna set their hand in Gwen’s, and with a lurch pulled away, leaving the arm shining in Gwen’s hand before it too vanished in sparkles.  Gwen took the other with a grin, then glanced at Donna’s legs.  As the rolling tide of scales reached Donna’s hips, Gwen wrapped herself around those legs, pulling them together into a single column that became Donna’s tail.

Slithering to the beat, Donna wrapped Gwen tighter and tighter in her burgeoning tail, until the other dancer could no longer be seen under the growing mass.  As the song wound down Donna loosened their coils to reveal they were now empty.  Donna bobbed their head in a bow to the silence of the audience, then slithered her way ponderously off stage.  Fifty feet of tail slithered behind her.

Everyone gave her a wide berth, watching with wide eyes as she curled up in the middle of the floor, turning her coils into a sort of throne.  Once her head was perched atop them, a tiny Gwen-fairy appeared fluttering above her head.  “Come one, come all,” she cried out in a voice larger than her body.  “Tell the great beast of transformation your darkest dreams.  If we judge it wicked enough, we’ll make it come true.”

That created a stir that lasted long past the start of the next dancer’s set.  Many eyes returned to the stage, but a handful of longing gazes remained on the great serpent.  Donna locked eyes with one of them, and the young man in question staggered forward in a daze.  He looked to be in his early twenties, and his clothes had a spatter of paint on them, as if he’d come from a work-site.

“Tell uss,” hissed Donna in a voice that cut through the crowd.  “We ssee it in your eyesses.  Lay out your wickednesss, and be blesssed.”

“Blessed or cursed?” asked the young man.

Donna chuckled sibilantly.  “Yess.”

He bowed his head.  “I want to make my girlfriend helpless.  We’ve played at bondage, but I want to go further.”

“Ssay it,” whispered Donna encouragingly.

Braver now, he looked up to meet her eyes, could not turn away from the glittering darkness there.  “I want to be able to erase her limbs.  To touch them and have them melt away into nothing.”

“Iss your girlfriend here to agree to this?”

“I... don’t think she’d agree.  She’s at home, probably wondering where I am.”

Donna’s tongue flicked out at him, tasting the air.  “Ah!  I ssee her now.”  They went silent for a time, eyes still boring into the man’s while Dia traced the connection between the two and shared a brief, cryptic exchange with the woman.   He waited, helpless before their gaze.  Eventually, a glow built around his hands.  “Granted.  But there is a price.”

“Anything.”

Donna’s chuckle resonated through the room.  “Oh little one, do not go making ssuch lovely offerss to me, I might jusst take you up on them.  Sshe getss a gift, one you don’t get to refusse.  I think you’ll both enjoy it.”

Donna glanced down at the swelling in the young man’s pants and grinned wickedly.  “I’d hurry, before thosse no longer fit.”

There was some snickering among the onlookers as the young man’s eyes went comically wide, and he dashed toward the door.

Others approached Donna then.  One couple wanted to experiment with a threesome, and had talked about it with a friend, but they were hesitant about the complications, both emotional and simply the logistics of getting three people into a bed.  Donna’s grin grew very wicked, and a tendril of thought reached out to said friend, who was in the audience as well, hovering a few feet behind the couple.  A suggestion tickled that mind, and was reshaped and accepted.  The friend squeaked abruptly and vanished.  Before the couple could turn around, they felt Donna’s magic and something else wriggling under their pants.

Donna smiled at them toothily.  “This should be fun for all three of you.  It’ll last until you return to me to have it undone.”

“But... they...”

“Insisted on that term.  He didn’t want a one night stand, he wanted the chance to stick with you as long as you’d have him.”

“As my... oh wow.  This is going to be interesting...”

Donna’s smile grew ever more wicked.  “We could make it more so.”

The couple shared a glance, then grinned.  “Do it.”

Magic licked out at them once more, but nothing visible changed.  “Enjoy yourselves.”

They bowed and departed.  Their walk toward the door turned into a jog, and then a giggling madcap dash.

The last petitioner was an older man with greying hair and surprisingly young eyes underneath it.  He was in good shape for his age, with toned muscle visible under his shirt.  “I would ask a boon.”

Donna nodded at him, face an inscrutable mask.  “What dark ssecret liess behind your eyess?”

He chuckled softly.  “I see my wife as she was, before kids.  They are grown and graduated, off building their own lives.  She... does not see what I see.”

“There iss nothing dark about the wissh for youth,” mused Donna.

“We were more than young then.  I know I don’t look the type now, but we were wild and adventurous and I would sell my soul to have that back for a day.”

Donna’s idle regard turned into a terrifying glare.  “Do not make such offers.  Souls are very real.”

The man shuddered and dropped to one knee, head bent away from the gaze.  “I apologize for my poor choice of words.  I would instead offer to pay any price you name.”

“The price of magic has not changed with the changing of the Worldstone.  Everything or nothing.  I will not take your money.  Promise instead to do something amazing for someone you do not know.”

“Gladly.”

Donna’s smile illuminated him – quite literally, as their face glowed with magic.  “Oh, you do have an interesting dessire in there.  Accept thiss gift, and... mmm, return to play next full Moon, showing what you two have become.”

Two black latex collars appeared on a cushion in front of the man.  “But I...”

“One turnss the wearer into a latex dominatrix.  The other becomess her toy to ssculpt as sshe desiress.  You will not know which is which until both are buckled in place.”

His eyes widened.  “Dominatrix?  Even if I...”

“Yessss.”

“I accept your gift and geas with a glad heart.  Thank you.”  He bowed to Donna, picked up the collars, and strode determinedly out of the building.

Everyone else seemed to be far more intent on the dancers on stage and in the booths, none were looking at the enormous snake granting difficult gifts.  “Now what?”  Donna asked.

“I bet there’s a stack of fantasy slips waiting for us in the green room,” replied Gwen.

Donna blinked to the green room, causing only a brief ruffling of the activity there.  Dancers were always headed this way or that, repairing makeup, replacing costumes, and always, always talking.  For a time, Donna just took in the normalcy of it all.  They might not have specific memories of specific times in this place, but the fragments they did have fit the gestalt nicely.  It felt like home.

Rowan approached with a handful of slips of paper.  “Gwen thinks you’re ready to set up some fantasies.  I figured I’d start you off with some basic stuff to warm up, or do you want to get involved?”

“We involved ourselves enough on the floor.  Transforming eager dancers sounds like a good place for now.”

The requests were simple enough, though Donna often required prompting as to what a given celebrity request might look like.  Gwen started going through the stack ahead of handing the requests over, and prepared images before Donna asked for them.

After a while, Donna frowned.  “They’re not all like this, are they?  This or that person with big boobs?”

Rowan shrugged.  “The simple ones are, yeah.  We used to do singers, but Vanessa was the one that handled most of those...  I’m not sure anyone’s ready to try to fill those shoes yet.”

“You hit this same observation after somewhat longer last time around,” noted Gwen.

“Speaking of... I’ve noticed that I’m turning a lot of headband bodies into real people.  I think that all of the choir from That Night are human once more.  Deliberate?”  The question’s tone was light, but Donna’s arched eyebrow added weight.

Rowan nodded.  “They didn’t want to ask, but they’ve all been missing being human.  All but Kelly, anyway.  She’d be happy with a stable of fuzzy bodies and some toys.”

“Hey!  No, wait, that sounds perfect,” called the maligned woman.

Donna giggled, and a half dozen furry bodies shimmered into view and became paired with Kelly’s pendant.

“Woohoo!”

“But seriously,” continued Donna.  “They could have asked.”

“You’re a little intimidating.  And you were very very intimidating That Night.”

Donna winced.  “We should probably apologize for that.”

“Everyone understands the pressure you were under.  Might not understand why they had to be synthetic.”

“Ah.  There was a reason, souls heal better when wrapped in crystal for the first month.  We were in no frame of mind to articulate that then, but if you could tell them...”

Rowan glanced about at all the dancers listening in.  “I think you just did.  Any that didn’t hear directly will know soon enough.”

Several heads bobbed in agreement, and a few of the dancers approached Donna to apologize for their doubts, and thank her once more.  “We can go back to our normal human bodies after this, right?” asked one.

“Yes, of course.”

“After Crazy Eights,” suggested Gwen.

“Crazy eights?” asked Donna.  “Isn’t that a bit...”

“You don’t remember?” asked not only Gwen, but several of the other dancers around.  Gwen started to laugh uproariously, and the others followed after a hesitant glance in Donna’s direction.

Donna’s look of puzzlement turned into a frown, followed by a barked, “That’s enough!” that brought everyone to a standstill.  Quite literally, every non-goddess in the room was frozen in place.

“Donna,” chided Gwen softly.  “It wasn’t meant like that.  The idea of sharing the fun that is Crazy Eights with you, of all people, for the first time all over again?  It’s going to be such fun.  Oooh, and TV shows.  You’ve forgotten all about Star Trek?  Babylon Five?”

“I... remember that they exist?”

“Oooh, new things to watch in your copious spare time.”

“Dad would probably love to teach us about Star Trek again.  We used to watch it together, when Duncan was a kid.”

“If you’re done reminiscing, perhaps you could unfreeze everyone?” Gwen suggested.

Donna wiggled uncertainly, sending ripples down their long coils.  “Oh!  Right.  That.  Everyone... back to normal?”

Nobody moved.  Donna sighed, and put some force behind their words.  “You can move now.”

There were a few soft whimpers from some of the newer girls, and they scuttled backward.  The others just watched and waited.  Donna sighed again.  “Sorry.  That was uncalled for.”

“And accidental,” added Kelly softly.  “Yet we still couldn’t break away.  You’re scary.”

“Giant snake isn’t scary, but... yeah, we get it.  We can’t promise it won’t happen again.  But we can fix it when it does.  Is that enough?”

“Well girls?” asked Kelly, looking around.  The murmurs of assent weren’t exactly a stirring endorsement, but everyone did seem to be calming down.  “See?  Mostly better.”

Donna chuckled ruefully.  “Perhaps we should withdraw to a quieter space for a time.”

The Changing Room was still labelled as such, and Donna found the relative quiet within calming.  Girls would intrude, one at a time, fantasy slip in hand.  That felt much more manageable.

Just after midnight, Gwen slipped into the room and set out two card tables.  “Ready to play?”

“You’ll need to remind us of the rules.  And... the purpose?”

Gwen grinned, careful not to laugh though Donna could feel the emotion welling up even so.  “The stakes are what make it fun.  The first time, we bet a cup-size per round.  After that, things got more... inventive.  These days, winner gets to decide how the loser spends the rest of the night.  Sometimes the stakes got a little more... permanent, but we keep that to side bets these days.  Carmen and Tawny like to get each other turned into parts of their anatomy.”

“Permanently?”

Gwen nodded.  “And then swap around the next month.  To them it’s great fun.  To others... maybe a little terrifying.  Though if you wanted to offer the winner an ‘anything’, they’d be keen.”

“Anything?” asked Donna.

“As in, you will transform them into whatever they want, to the best of your abilities.  Which were, and are, pretty damned impressive.  And if they ask, make it their new permanent body.”

Donna nodded slowly.  “We can do that.  Let them in.”