With a grunted “Hup!” Phian heaved the rubbery body out of the tank where it had just been completed, spilling water down the front of the white tank top and denim shorts he was working in. His latest creation was a roughly double-scale giant cuttlefish with its mantle-end abruptly cutting off flat.

Focusing, he let it levitate, then stepped back with his hands on his hips to admire it, immensely pleased with himself. At the moment, pure white and only dimly illuminated by the halogen bulb over the tank, with exposed organs on one end, it looked ghostly and kind of gross. The magician saw the satisfying result of many days of hard work, and potential for great beauty and fun.

He couldn’t wait to see how it would be received!

He nudged it with his hands to make it stand vertically, then scanned his surroundings for a magic cloth sheet. Met mostly with the reflections of the single light off several other glass tanks, he held out a hand and mentally called for one, which snapped right to it.

This he draped over his project, then tapped its side twice. Sturdy flesh gave way like dangling cloth. He whipped the black sheet away again to reveal in place of the incomplete oversized cephalopod was a white skirt, sitting in the air as if around a woman’s hips and draping nearly to the floor.

With an eager grin on his face, he snatched the skirt from the air and tossed the sheet upward, stepping into the dark silk surface as it drifted toward the floor, going to the assistant this trick was perfect for.

He nearly tripped coming out the other side, needing to take a second to dislodge himself from curtains pulled taut on this side, all while blinking against a harsh increase in light.

The beginnings of a greeting fell away as he searched an unfamiliar room for the person he was trying to greet. A cough brought his attention to the floor where a nude Penny laid on a tarp on the floor. She had three legs and three arms, her usual left arm missing, and was twisted around to look up at him with some confusion. She glanced at the woman she was with, then back to Phian to give the unspoken question some direction.

The other woman was the most confused of the three. Her shiny, blue hair hung most of the way down her back. She’d painted one of Penny’s legs a lovely gradient from blue to purple, and had been in the middle of working on the second, laid across her lap, which was similarly adorned only with a few smears of paint. Her wide eyes flicked between Phian and Penny, clearly hoping for an explanation.

With his eyes still adjusting, it was difficult for Phian to look straight at her. Her torso was curiously composed of water-filled glass.

Multiple simultaneous realizations competed for space, and came out together as a jumbled mess. “Oh, hi, I- I’m inter- Oh! You’re... I don’t know- I’m sorry.” All hope of handling this gracefully lost, he bowed down and offered his hand to this new woman for a shake, and an apologetically strained grin. “My name is Phian. Nice to meet you.”

The stranger glanced at his hand and moved to return the shake, but pulled back as she noticed the paint on her own hand, opting for a wave instead. “Uhm, hi,” she replied uncertainly. “I’m Julia.”

“Penny and I are friends,” Phian explained. “I am a magician, and sometimes, she assists me.” Excitement took hold again as he returned to the purpose of his intrusion. “I’ve just completed a very special prop and couldn’t wait to have her try it out!” He straightened, holding the skirt out to his side to display it for them.

Penny perked up, now listening more eagerly.

“Although I may have to. Sorry for interrupting your…” his eyes explored the room he could now see clearly. It appeared to be a professional photography studio, with bright, hooded lights and a camera focused on the three of them. The curtain he’d stepped through on arrival was the backdrop. “...photoshoot?”

"Yeah, that... that is what this is," Julia confirmed, quickly glancing at the camera. However, her focus then turned to the skirt. "So, your very special prop... is a skirt?" she probed, squinting at it, trying to figure out what was so special about it.

“Yeah,” Penny interjected at last, “I was expecting some big cabinet or box to climb in.”

Their interest rekindled the fire behind the magician’s eyes to full blaze. “It is! Here, I’ll show you!” He swung his arm wide, then dropped to a knee to press the waistband to Penny’s back, as if to lay the skirt along her lower body. He needed it around her, though… so it was, wrapping naturally around her in spite of the direction it had come from.

He spared barely a moment before he was off again, drinking in their reactions with delight as he stepped back to the curtain, reaching around it and into his workshop to retrieve the black sheet.

“Wait, how did…? What?” Julia stammered in surprise.

Penny, meanwhile, lay grinning in anticipation.

Restraint, he reminded himself, entering performance mode as he returned, a measured stride and soft smile hiding how giddy he was inside.

He dropped the sheet, letting it settle over Penny from waist to toe, then snapped his fingers.

For a moment, there was stunned silence and stillness. With Penny’s lower body still across Julia’s lap, they’d both felt something change.

Hesitantly, Julia reached for the edge of the sheet, and lifted it just enough to peek underneath. "Penny, your legs are... wait, what the hell is that?" She yanked it aside and gasped, clearly astonished and freaked out by what she found. "Oh my god, you're a colossal squid!"

It was Phian’s turn to take pause, as his mind processed what she’d said. Colossal squid? Weirdly specific, for…

Penny flicked up her new lower half experimentally, three inner tentacles momentarily licking out through the outer ring. Her face lit up in joy, and her mollusc half shifted from white to orange, apparently in expression of the same. Catching this, she began to experiment, shifting back to the blue-to-purple gradient Julia had been painting. “More like an octopus… maybe… oh! A cuttlefish?” She flashed yellow in this moment of realization.

“Yes!” Phian confirmed, snapping his fingers. “A scaled-up giant cuttlefish. It took some work, since even the largest cuttlefish are a bit too small to fit, and then, I was going to take you… to…” he trailed off. There had been a plan. This definitely wasn’t it.

He glanced over his shoulder at the backdrop curtain, then nervously at Penny’s aquatic half. “There was a pool…” he murmured.

"A scaled up giant cuttlefish? That's pretty cool, actually,” Julia remarked thoughtfully as she watched Penny play with her new abilities. “Wait, if she can do this now, then god dammit, I did not need to spend all that time painting her legs!" she huffed and planted her fists on her hips.

Phian began a distracted apology, but Penny spoke up first. "Hey, you were doing a great job,” she reassured her. “And if I had known that it was coming, I would have just asked to wait." She twisted around to give Julia a comforting hug, before giving a little dry cough.

The magician froze. She’s drying up, his thoughts began to race.

“Oh,” Julia uttered in mild surprise. “Well, thanks.”

Phian’s eyes darted around. Back through the curtain? “I was supposed to bring her to the pool first. She needs water, I- I forgot-” he took a few steps, looking for a window. “Is there a-?” His eyes snapped to Julia’s altered torso.

“Fishtank.” He held out a hand and the black sheet snapped to it. “Sorry! This wasn’t what I intended!” He tossed the sheet over the now very confused-looking Penny. Her surprised yelp was cut short and bubbly as he snatched it aside across Julia.

A compressed Penny now stared out from behind the glass of Julia’s stomach, face wreathed in tentacles. The cuttlefish-maid gasped a few alarmed, watery breaths, then relaxed, settling into a pleased, cozy smile, lower half turning pink.

Julia swayed, off-balance and uncomfortable from a sudden shift in weight. She looked down with a groan. "Woah! What the? Oh, god, my stomach... Are you okay in there, Penny?"

With a squeak of skin against glass, Penny’s face slid down, then up in some approximation of a nod, and she burbled something incomprehensible.

"Okay, I'll take that as a yes."

Still a bit wobbly, Julia managed to stand, first sticking her arms out to the sides for balance, though Phian was quick to offer her a hand, which she took with a quick “thanks”.

The fishtank woman twisted and turned to check different parts of her torso, finding Penny’s belly pressed against the bottom of the tank, arms tucked into her sides, cuttlefish parts wrapping up around the back and rising into her glass chest. Experimentally, she swished her body back and forth.

Penny did her best to steady herself, pressing her hands against the inside of the bellyquarium, but slid around the other woman’s insides nonetheless. Though her chromatophores had settled to a comfortable blue, she showed flashes of pink as she was jostled.

"Oh wow, this is such an odd feeling," Julia said with a smile.

Finally, Phian relaxed, shoulders slumping. “Oh, thank goodness.”

Julia bounced playfully a bit, sloshing Penny around, then turned to Phian. “Can I ask you a question?”

Phian quirked an eyebrow. “Of course. I think I owe you more than that,” he chuckled.

“Now what?”

“Err, uhh…” Phian glanced awkwardly back at the curtain. “We could go to a pool, and let her out. Set up for more pictures, with that color-changing tail.” He turned back to her with a smile. “We can do whatever you want to do.”

"Oh, uhm, hmmm, I don't know. What would you like to do, Penny?" she asked, looking down.

A confused “Blorp?” was her passenger’s reply.

Phian snickered. “She seems to be having a great time as she is!”

“I guess,” Julia conceded. “Well, how about we, uh…” she gestured toward the camera, “...take some more pictures?”