(Featuring characters by JMD1961)

Tina and a petite mousegirl were sitting in Bradley Sherwood’s office, waiting for their boss to arrive.

The mousegirl looked down at her fuzzy body and sighed.  “Do I have to do this?”

“Who forgot the wrapper, and as a result left me naked in the Venn Machine when they changed me back?”

Amy quietly squeaked, “I did.”  

“And who was slow enough on the uptake that I ended up exposed to everyone in the mall?”

“Me again.  And I offered to be anything to make it up to you.  But I didn’t think you’d make me go to work like this!”

Tina grinned down at her girlfriend possessively.  “You’re so cute like this I just had to keep you.  And face it.  You love it when I’m this much bigger and stronger than you.”

Amy blushed, ducking her face into her paws.  “At home, sure.  Not at work!”

Bradley Sherwood strode into his office and shook his head at the sight of his three-breasted weather person and her companion.  “What is this about work?”

Amy straightened up abruptly and turned to face him.  “I... were you serious about letting me show up as a squirrel?”

“Ah, so it is you.  Still Andy, like this?” he asked gently.

“Amy, sir.”

“Amy.  As I said before, as long as you can produce good copy, I don’t care what you look like.”  Mr. Sherwood looked significantly at Amy’s paws.  “Can you type with those?”

Amy held up her paws and unfolded them, revealing dextrous fingers tipped with tiny claws.   “Twenty percent faster than before.”

“Excellent!  Stay that way as long as you like.”

“See, told you,” said Tina smugly.  “I get to keep my little mousie as long as I like.”

Amy squeaked and blushed again, while their boss’ gaze swung to Tina.  He studied her until she looked down at her hands, which were clutched together nervously.

“Amy’s appearance is not why I found you in my office before work hours.  Since things have been quiet, should I assume it has to do with why Janice isn’t making a scene?”

“Yessir.  She ah... confronted me at the Venn Machine last night.  I tried to dissuade her by setting the machine for a long time, but it didn’t work.”

“Because you called her a chicken,” added Amy unhelpfully.

Tina sighed and rolled her eyes.  “Long story short, we both lost, but Amy rescued me.”

“And Janice has no such ally.”  He chuckled softly, then frowned.  “I didn’t know it was possible for both people to lose.”

“I turned her into this weird metal snake, but she was still able to move, and she finished her change.”

“A snake?  How appropriate.  So what have you done with her?”

“She’s living in a terrarium at our place.  But... I mean, I know we kept her here as a cutout and all, I just... is it legal to keep her?”

Mr. Sherwood dragged a hand through his thinning hair.  “It’s... complicated.  I had legal do some research after your first show with Janice.  There have been some lawsuits, not enough to really set precedents solidly.  The government appears to be studiously ignoring the existence of Venn Machines, so there’s little help from that quarter.  The prevailing attitude is that if you step into one of those things uncoerced, you know what you’re getting into.  Attempts to claim kidnapping and the like for people turned into objects for long spans of time have been dismissed.  No person, no crime.”

“Oh!  That’s... so I can keep her?”

“Legally... as I said, it’s fuzzy.  That she’s an animal complicates it further.  Mistreatment of animals is a crime, so abusing or abandoning someone in Janice’s circumstances is still a major offense.  Keeping them as pets...  I don’t know.”

“She’s not really an animal,” piped up Amy.  “She’s all metal, even inside.  She’s more like some kind of complicated machine.”

Bradley shook his head.  “Talk to legal, they can help you figure it out.”

“Thanks, Mr. Sherwood.  Um, one other thing,” added Tina as she stood up.  “Can you make sure her storage locker keeps getting paid for?”

“Sure.  It’ll come out of what we owe her for the use of her image.  How long?”

“Three... years,” said Tina weakly.

Iron grey brows rose nearly into Mr. Sherwood’s receding hairline.  “Years?  Well, you’re lucky you had your friend with you.  Thank you.”

Tina blinked.  “For?”

“I’m retiring in two years.  Someone else gets to deal with the epic fit Janice will pitch when she changes back.  Now go, go!”  He shooed them out of his office.  “Some of us have work to do before the show starts.”

As they emerged from their boss’ office, Tina and Amy ran into Dirk Merino.  “Is the rumour true?” he asked without preamble.

“What rumor?” asked Tina with false innocence.

Dirk started at her intently, then his eyes widened.  “You did it.  You actually did it.”

Tina sighed.  “Yes, I sort-of beat Janice.  She won’t be back any time soon.”

“How long?”

“Three years.”

Dirk looked shocked.  “Three years?  How the hell did you get her to...  She’s gone for three  years?  I can’t...”

Amy snickered.  “My girl here told Janice she was chicken when she started to slither away from the fight.  She’ll be slithering for a good while longer, now.”

“Slithering?” asked Dirk, confused.  “What is she, a snake?”

“Yup.  A weird metal one.  We’ve got her in a terrarium at home.”

Dirk stared at Amy.  “And you can just... keep her like that?”

“That’s what we’re on our way to legal to find out.”

Dirk tagged along, and found out just how fuzzy the legal issues around Venn Machines had become.  There was something about implicit contracts, and more esoterica than any of them could follow.  “Boil it down for me, as if I had to report it on-air,” said Dirk at last.

The company lawyer shrugged his bony shoulders.  “As long as nobody comes looking for her, you’re fine.  Even then, if they don’t have a family connection, the police won’t do much in the short term.  Longer-term, she could end up in an evidence locker while it gets hashed out in court.”

“That has happened before?”

“One Blue-Green Dress vs. Carson, last year.  The dress ended up in a box in the police station until she changed back.”

“Oh yeah!  We ran a piece on her last fall,” said Dirk.  “She was so pissed at her father for putting her through all that.  I wonder where she is now?”

“Probably hanging in her friend’s closet,” said Amy with a shake of her head.  “She was really keen on it.”

Dirk laughed.  “You’re one to talk, mousie.  What’s up with that, anyway?” he asked as they headed back to the studio floor.

Amy blushed, and looked up at Tina.  “I like being the little one.”

“Hah!  You should give Tina tiger-stripes, then you could play cat and...”  He rolled his eyes as he saw their smirks.  “Figures.  It’d look hot on air, though.  Think about it.”

Tina’s grin grew wider.  “Think the boss would go for it?  Maybe we could get people to pick a cat species...”

“Or just try a new one every day and get them to vote like last time,” said Amy enthusiastically.

“Yeah!”

By the end of the week the four-breasted clouded leopard had by far the most votes.  After the last show was done, Amy and Tina rushed out to set up the form that Tina would be wearing for the next month.

Amy and Tina showed up at the studio’s usual watering hole, hand in hand.  Dirk waved at them from the bar, giving Tina a very comprehensive look over as they approached.  She laughed off the wolf-whistle, which made Dirk grin.

“You’ve gotten a lot more confident,” he said, saluting Tina with his drink.  “Is it the spots and ears, or something else?”

Tina grinned down at him from her new stature, and pulled Amy against her side.  The mousegirl barely came up to her waist.  “That helps.  Not living in Janice’s shadow helps more.”

Dirk nodded at that, but his smile didn’t make it to his eyes.  “I think almost everybody else at the studio feels the same way.”  He leaned in toward Tina and pitched his voice low enough that only she could hear it.  “How is Janice doing?”

“What do you care?” asked Tina.  “If it wasn’t for you pushing her, she wouldn’t have ended up a cutout for a month, then tried to turn me into her toy.  In a way, this is all your fault.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” replied Dirk in an urgent whisper, trying not to draw attention.  “It was funny at first.  The mighty Janice, reduced to a simple prop.  After a week, I wasn’t laughing any more.  Did you notice?”

Tina shook her head.  “You joked along with the rest of us.”

“I’m good at hiding the real me,” said Dirk softly.  “And the real me is worried about her.  How is she?”

Tina’s face fell.  “Not good.  She won’t eat.  We’ve tried everything snakes like.  Even a live mouse.”  Amy growled at that point, and Tina turned to her.  “Not now.”

“Fine,” muttered the mousegirl darkly.  “But I will have my revenge for that.”

Tina grinned toothily.  “I know.  Looking forward to it.”  She turned back to Dirk.  “We’ve tried all kinds of pet food.  All she eats are the wood chips, and she doesn’t like those much.”

“Have you tried asking her what she’d like to eat?”

Amy shrugged at that.  “We’ve tried using Scrabble tiles, but she just got frustrated with it and hissed at us, then started eating them.  Little hard bits of wood work better for her than the chips, so we learned that much...”

“Maybe Morse code would work better, if she can hiss.”

“Huh, we’ll try that.  Thanks.”

A few days later, Tina approached Dirk at work, and quietly thanked him for the tip.  “She’s picking up Morse code really quickly.  I guess she doesn’t have a lot else to do.  We leave her the TV remote, but you know what daytime TV is like.”

Dirk smiled briefly at the news, then covered up.  “Did you figure out what she can eat?”

“Charcoal briquettes, of all things.  Swallows them right down without even crunching them, and then she hisses like a teakettle for half an hour.  You should come see, it’s hilarious.”

“Ugh, there’s all sorts of binders and stuff in those,” said Dirk with a grimace.  “She’d probably like pure coal better.  I’ll pick some up and come by with it on Saturday, how does that sound?”

“Sounds great.  I think she needs more people than just the two of us to interact with.  She’s still skittish with me.”

* * *

In the weather segment at the end of Friday’s last show, Tina looked far more skittish than she had for weeks.  She put on a brave face as she detailed the forecast and gestured in front of the green screen, but her posture belied her, especially when she walked back and forth.  It was as if the floor was some foreign, uneven surface and she was continually checking her footing.

At the end of the segment the camera pulled back to reveal why.  Tina was standing in a giant pair of paw-like hands.  As the camera moved further back the hands were revealed as Amy’s.  The four foot tall mousegirl had played the role of Tina’s stage, a small green card acting as the tiny leopard-woman’s backdrop.

“Thanks, tiny Tina,” said Dirk from off screen.  “Looks like you’ve got a big date tonight.”  Amy giggled at that, but the comment made the tiny weather girl look even more nervous.

After the show was done, Dirk caught up to the two of them on the way out of the studio.

“Ready for your trip?” Amy was asking with a predatory grin, leering down at the tiny kittygirl in her paws.

“Trip?” asked Dirk, causing Amy to squeak and spin around, clutching the treasure in her paws to her chest.

“You scared me!” Amy accused.  “I could have dropped her!”

“She’s fine.  Looks pretty cozy there, in fact,” said Dirk with a nod to Amy’s chest.  Tina appeared to be burrowing in between Amy’s breasts.

“You’re not getting away that easily!” exclaimed Amy as she snatched up her little prize.

“Where’s this trip going?”

Amy blushed, but didn’t answer.

“Okaaay.  I’ll pretend I didn’t overhear anything.  Are we still on for Saturday?  I found this amazing artisanal coal place and have some samples for your snake.”

“Oh!  That’s sweet of you.  Sure, we’ll be around.  Drop by anytime.”

Dirk looked at the bright-eyed mousegirl and the way she was practically vibrating with ill-hidden excitement.  “Go have your fun.”

Amy scooted off like her tail was on fire.

Dirk was thus rather surprised to see Amy show up at the bar alone an hour later.

“Short trip?” he asked.

Amy blushed again and put her hand to her throat.  “Uh… Kind of, yeah.  Short but oh so much fun.  For me, anyway.”

To Dirk’s further surprise, Amy proceeded to order and down several of Tina’s favorite sickly-sweet mixed drinks in short order.  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“‘M fine,” slurred the mousegirl.  “Drinkin’ for two.  Dilutin’ the acids, y’know?”

“You’re not even half of one.  C’mon, mousie, let me take you home.  You’re in no condition to drive.”

Amy wasn’t in much shape for walking, either.  Dirk half-dragged, half-carried her to his car, where she passed out in the back seat.  His efforts to wake her once he’d arrived at Tina and Amy’s place failed, so he scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the door.

The night air helped wake Amy, and she fumbled through a voluminous purse for her keys.  “Are you going to be okay?” asked Dirk as she staggered through the door.

Amy nodded.  “Wha’ time is it?”

“Just going on nine.”

“I’ll be fine in a minnit or two,” slurred Amy.

Dirk watched her with raised eyebrows, and even so was unable to see the transition from Amy the mousegirl to Andy.  A suddenly much less drunk Andy, with the almost  unfamiliar normal human form of Tina standing beside him.  Andy hugged Tina tight, tears leaking from his eyes.  “I’m so sorry, I thought it would be fun and then you stopped moving and I got so worried...”

Tina rolled her eyes.  “I’m fine.  It didn’t hurt at all.  The changes to make me immune to pain worked fine.  You just forgot about breathing.  Turns out asphyxiating is really trippy.”  Tina’s eyes shone with an almost manic glee.

“You...  You ate her?” asked Dirk, stunned.

Andy ducked his head and mumbled something.  Tina laughed.  “Yes, the mousie caught and ate the kitty.  The first bit was so much fun I’d do that part again.  We need to work on the timing.  Somebody was too eager to get her teensy kittygirl into her belly.”

Andy shook his head.  “No way.  There is nothing you can say that will make me willing to put you... Mmph!”

Tina silenced him with a kiss and a tight squeeze.  “I’m fine, really!  If I have to I’ll turn you into a teeny mouse again and find somewhere more fun to put you than Janice’s terrarium.”

“May I see her?” interrupted Dirk softly but urgently.  “I have the coal samples in my car.”

Tina nodded, and Dirk was back in a flash with a small box in his hands.

“That’s coal?  It looks like a chocolate box.”

“It was a weird sort of shop,” explained Dirk as he followed Tin and Andy into their flat.  “I think it may have been at least half joke, selling artisanal coal to hipsters.  But I figured...”

Dirk stopped and stared at the giant terrarium that completely covered the coffee table.  A long brassy snake was curled up in a ball inside it, tangled upon herself to the point it was difficult to judge how long she would be.  Curiously, and unlike most snakes, its body was a uniform cylinder along its length, instead of a tapered and somewhat flattened one.

“Janice?” asked Dirk in wonder.

The snake’s head whipped around to face him.  It hissed, short staccato bursts.

“No, I’m not here to gloat.”

More patterned hisses followed, and Dirk held up the box.  “I brought something that might be more appealing than briquettes.”

Another brief burst of hisses emerged as Janice untangled herself and slithered closer to the side of the terrarium.

“Coal, various kinds.”  Dirk opened the box, revealing a half dozen small pieces of it.  “They didn’t have lignite, said it was barely better than peat.  But there’s several kinds of bituminous coal from ‘Gazkohle’ to ‘Magerkohle’,” he said, reading off from the little labels beside each pocket.  “Plus two samples of anthracite, one from Pennsylvania, the other from a small mine up in Canada.  And last but not least, meta-anthracite.”

Dirk held the last one up to show it to Janice.  It was shinier than the others, with an almost metallic lustre.  Janice batted the hatch of her terrarium open with her head, and lashed out, snatching the piece from Dirk’s fingers and nearly taking his fingertips with it.

Dirk shook his hand.  “Hey!  Did you know she can do that?”

Tina nodded.  “We tried a few different kinds of latches, but found out the hard way she can crack the glass with a bit of work.  She feels more comfortable in there – she likes it warm – so we’ve kept it for her to sleep in.”

Janice was making delighted little hootling noises over top of a sustained teakettle hiss.  Her eyes were closed in an expression of bliss.

“Better?” asked Dirk gently.

Janice nodded, hissing her thanks then something that ended with a rising, interrogatory tone.

“Well, there’s the anthracite, it’s pretty close to what you just had...”  Dirk offered up another piece, this time on the flat of his hand like offering a sugar cube to a horse.  Janice snatched it delicately from his hand and swallowed.

She tilted her head this way and that, considering it, then let off a long series of rapid hisses.

“I’ll leave the other anthracite sample, then.  Meta-anthracite is just about pure carbon, I could try getting some graphite samples.  That’s basically pure.”

Janice nodded excitedly.

“I haven’t seen her this happy in... well, ever.”  Tina looked between the snake and Dirk.  “You can understand all that?  She started hissing so fast I got lost.”

Dirk sighed and nodded.  “My big secret.  I was a huge ham radio nerd in high school.  That led to broadcasting, and...” he gestured to himself.  “All this.  But in high school, I was definitely not part of the in crowd.  It sounds like I was the kind of person that she’d have come down extra hard on.”

Janice hung her head and hissed softly, a low apologetic sounding whistle without the staccato of code.

“Looks like you’ve learned a lesson in humility finally,” said Dirk.  “About time.”

Janice stuck her tongue out at him and hissed.  Dirk just laughed.

The four of them went on to talk about their lives, with Dirk translating for Janice as her hissing rate increased steadily.  She’d occasionally glare at him when he was too liberal with the translations, and once went so far as to give him a nip on the arm.

Dirk winced.  “OK, I’ll stop teasing the pretty snake.  Might need to get my own scales for self-preservation.”

Tina giggled.  “Thinking of spending some time as a snake-boy to go with our pretty snake-girl here?”

“No!  I just meant... y’know, scales on my arms.  Where my jacket would hide it on air.  For the biting.”

Andy laughed.  “Methinks he doth protest too much.  I don’t know if I could get the scales just so, but I bet I could get you close.”

“I’d rather not spend the rest of my life in a glass box, thank you very much,” huffed Dirk.

“Who said anything about the rest of your life?” said Andy.  “Just the weekend.”

“I...”

“Or even just tonight.  We’ll give you two run of the apartment, go spend some quality time in a hotel room somewhere...”

The hissing snort from Janice ended that line of thought.

Dirk smirked.  “That’s about what I thought.  Seriously, me and her?”

Tina smiled back at him.  “Whatever you say.”

Andy yawned.  “Well, it’s been quite the night.  I’m beat.”

Dirk patted Janice on the head then pulled his hand back just in time to avoid a nip.  “Goodnight you three.”

When he was gone, Janice stared at the door for a long time.

“Missing him already?” joked Tina.

Janice let out a long hissing sigh, followed by staccato bursts.

“Woah, too fast!  I can’t understand you.”

A much slower series of hisses followed.

“Ah.  You miss being able to talk.  Yeah, I get that.  And that’s all it is?”

Janice nodded emphatically.  Tina just smiled.  “G’night, little snake.  We’ll get you some nice pure carbon tomorrow.”

The shiny metallic snake danced around excitedly.

* * *

Tina and Amy returned to work the next week as if nothing had happened, though Amy was even shorter than before, barely over three feet tall.  Tina was back to a more conventional height, though she’d kept the muscles and skin-tone of her giant clouded leopard body.  As part of the weather segment she’d show pictures that fans had sent in, mostly catgirls posing before some kind of interesting or scenic weather shot.  It amused her that of late the catgirls were looking as muscular as she was.  Even around the city she was seeing the occasional person with leopard-spotted hair or more.  Some even approached her to tell her what an inspiration she was.

Toward the end of the week, Tina approached Dirk with a new puzzle.  Dirk looked at the quarter-inch round stones in her hand and shrugged.  “I don’t know.  They look like rocks to me.”

“I’ve started finding them in Janice’s terrarium, ever since she started in on graphite rods for her meals.  It used to be there was just this kind of fine grit, but now...”

“She eats pure carbon, right?” asked Dirk, frowning in thought.  “Can I borrow a couple of those for a few days?”

Tina dumped all four into his hand.  “Keep them.  We’ve got a bunch where those came from.”

Two days later Dirk approached Tina excitedly.  “I found out what the pebbles are.”

“Oh?”

“Diamonds.  Flawless ones.  Cut, you’d get something between 1.5 and 2 carats out of them.”

Tina’s eyes went very wide.  “Holy crap.  Her scat is worth... uh, how much?”

“More than either of us make in a month.  Per stone.  How many does she make in a day?”

“I don’t know.  Two or three.  Holy...”

“Yeah.  We could be rich.”

“Don’t you mean she could be rich?”

“I...  Do we have to tell her?” asked Dirk.

“That by staying a snake she can make stupid amounts of money by eating?  Yes, we really do,” replied Tina heatedly.  “I don’t think we can keep her much longer, both Amy and I are starting to feel guilty about having her trapped.”

“She could leave whenever she wanted, from what I’ve seen,” said Dirk.  “If she’s staying with you, it’s because she feels like she belongs there.”

“She has to know,” insisted Tina.

“Fine.  Can you give me until Friday?  I’ve got something I need to prepare.”

“Friday, then.  She’d like to see you again.  She won’t admit it, but she really enjoyed talking to someone who understands her.”

Dirk grinned.  “I’ll be sure to bring some gauntlets for when she decides to nip me.”

“Offer to give you scales still stands.”

Dirk laughed, and shook his head.  “After what she did, I’m not going into one of those damned machines ever again.”

“Oh, right,” said Tina, crestfallen.  “I... it’s a lot more fun if you find the right person.”  She pulled Amy against her side, getting a giggle from the mousegirl.   “Or are the right thing for the right person.”  Tina’s grin grew wide as Amy’s blush coloured her ears.

“You two are awfully cute together.  Don’t you ever worry about what the other might do?”

“She turned me into an actual mouse and put me in Janice’s cage,” said Amy.  “Fortunately, Janice wasn’t hungry for mouse.”

“And then you ate her,” said Dirk, looking a little pale at the thought.  “How is that even possible?”

Tina shrugged, and leaned down to kiss the top of her sweetie’s head.  “I don’t care.  Until I splashed down, it was wonderful.  Like being hugged all over while on the craziest water slide ever.  I’m still trying to talk her into doing it again, this time with her in a form that doesn’t have a stomach.”

“I’ll... take your word for it.  I don’t especially want to become a snake snack.”

“For the best anyway.  The diamond would disappear when you changed back.  Wait, will all these diamonds disappear in three years?”

Dirk shook his head.  “I checked around a little.  The sort of guys who handle this kind of stuff check everything by chucking it into a Venn Machine first.  We tried that, and cancelling out of the change didn’t make them disappear.  After all, they’re not made by the machine, they’re made by something the machine made.  Real graphite to real diamond.”

“Cool.”

Dirk grinned.  “I can go one better.  See you Friday.”

Tina and Any skipped the usual Friday night run to the bar, and accepted a ride home with Dirk instead.  He’d had this weird grin through the entire broadcast, broader than his usual smirk, and it only got bigger as they drove.

“What are you up to, Smirk?” asked Tina as they walked up to the door.

Dirk laughed.  “Wait and see.”

“No teasing the snake.  She might draw blood this time.”

“You haven’t told her, have you?” he asked, as Tina dug out her keys.

“Nope.  You figured it out, you get the scoop.”

Dirk approached the terrarium.  “Hey Janice, I’m back.”

The snake’s head whipped around quickly, then she popped up the lid and slithered onto the top of the terrarium.  She hissed, [did you bring treats?] in morse code, slowly enough that Tina and Amy could follow.

Dirk shook his head.  “Something better.”  He held out a small round stone.  “Do you know what this is?”

Janice made a face and stuck out her tongue.  [poop]

Dirk held out his other hand, and slowly opened it.  Inside was a brilliantly cut diamond that was just a little smaller than the sphere in his other hand.  “They polish up nice.”

Janice stared at the glittering gemstone for a long time.  [diamond?]

“Pure.  Internally flawless, the guy said.  They’re worth thousands.  Each.”

Janice’s excited hissing was faster than Tina or Amy could follow.  Her eyes never left the glittering stone.

“Yes.  It’s worth... well, if you stay the full three years, it’s millions of dollars.  Assuming we don’t tank the market.  Even if we do, by that time we should be set for life.”

[We?] hissed Janice slowly.

Dirk looked nervous.  “Tina changed you.  I figured out what these were, and have the contacts to move them without pissing off the diamond cartel.”

[That’s not what I meant.]  Janice nosed the glittering cut diamond.

“I...”  Dirk stammered.  “I...  I missed you.”

In response to a rapid staccato hiss, Dirk sighed and nodded.  “Even the fighting.  Especially the verbal sparring.”

Dirk’s reaction to the snake’s next statement was wide-eyed surprise.  “The Venn Machine?  With you?  I...  Can you even use it?”

Janice shook her head and pointed it at Tina.

“What do you want me to do?” asked Tina.

Janice hissed slowly enough to be understood.  [Turn him into a snake like me.]

“I’ll try.  Getting the diamond thing again would be pure luck.”

“I haven’t agreed to that!” protested Dirk.

“You’re going to.  For her.  Just for the weekend.”

Dirk looked into the pleading eyes of the metallic snake, and smiled down at her.  “Yes.”