Professional

An office employee catches the bimboification bug, turning him into an ideal secretary for his boss. Explicit.

With a pile of forms in hand to take back to Legal, Tristan stepped into the hall and nearly bumped right into a woman tearing down toward the elevators as fast as her towering high heels could carry her. He staggered back against the wall as she gasped out "Sorry!" over her shoulder.

Tristan stared after her as she clicked down the hall. Her garishly bright purple leopard-print dress barely restrained her overtly sexual figure. Tristan didn't want to be rude, but at the very least, that outfit was unbelievably unprofessional. What did she think she was doing, coming into an office building looking like that?

He shook his head and followed the hall down to the elevators. By the time he reached them, the woman was gone and the elevator was ticking down toward the lower floors. He leaned in close and hit the up button.

Tristan watched his own reflection in the mirrored elevator doors. He had a short-trimmed head of dark hair, a boyish look, and a polite, almost apologetic smile. He sagged underneath the weight of the stack of papers as he shifted them from one arm to another. He worked in Legal, but he wasn't a lawyer, not even a paralegal. Just a clerk, which meant he took care of all the menial tasks that the people with law degrees were too busy to do.

The elevator doors rolled open and Tristan stepped inside, hitting the button for the nineteenth floor. As the doors slid shut, he wiggled his fingers and brushed them together. The woman in the ridiculous outfit had grazed them as she ran by. Sliding the forms over to his other arm, he was able to let go of the stack and hold his hand up in front of him.

Somehow, two of his nails—pointer and middle finger—had grown. A pair of smooth, white slivers stuck out beyond his fingertips, shaped and rounded as if they'd been manicured. Had he somehow...forgotten to cut two of his fingernails? He would have noticed at some point, surely.

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Contagiously gaudy fashion takes over an office worker's clothes and body. Mature.

There was purple in the corner of his eye. Alex paused, fingers resting on top of his keyboard. The white noise of the office receded and all he could hear was his own breath. He pulled his glasses off and turned them over. On the right side, they were thin steel rims. On the left, they were plastic, purple, and speckled with black spots. In the middle, where they met, the bridge swelled from metal into plastic.

The yelp caught in his throat. He flung the glasses across his desk and glanced quickly around his cubicle. No one had seen him. With two tissues as a buffer, he picked up the glasses by the good side of the frame and tossed them in his trash can.

He told himself that it was just his glasses, that it hadn't had time to spread. His hands fumbled with the top button on his shirt. He just needed a little air, he told himself. His shirt only clung to his skin because he was sweating a bit. He unbuttoned another button and took in a deep breath. Calm down, you're just anxious.

Alex pushed himself back into his work, trying to put his glasses out of his mind. It was fine. They were the only clothes of his that had gotten infected. He reached beneath his shirt and rubbed along his shoulder and collarbone. Something hugged his chest, softer than the usual firm cotton of his shirts. He glanced down, and caught beneath the white an outline of something purple.

It wasn't just his glasses.

The Pitch

A pitch for an advertisement for Cougr-Lite cigarettes. They'll bring out the cougar in anyone. Mature.

The cloakroom doors swing shut behind him. It's the most important party of the year, and he's young, strapping, and anxious to the point of shivering. He watches the door as he draws a handkerchief from his pocket and drags it across his brow. His nervous breathing fills the room. He tugs at his tie for air.

"You look like you could use a light."

He didn't think there was anyone in the room. He turns, startled, then freezes as he drinks her in. She's a lioness with a heavy gaze and a black velvet dress. Her hips are ready to tear free from her clothes. The way she's perched on her heels, she's ready to pounce. With her hair tucked behind her ears, long and straight, she wouldn't even spoil her hairdo if she did. Some part of him enjoys how intimidating she is, all curves and confidence and sly experience.

"Oh, that's fine, miss," he says, searching for words while his heart hammers. "I've got my own matches."

Her lips glisten, a patronizing smile. "No, not ‘a light'. A Cougr-Lite." She pushes the cigarette pack into his hands. He looks down at the silhouetted cougar, the fine lettering, the silver trim. He raises his head to speak, but she's already at the door.

"Whenever I need a bit more pride," the lioness says, "I reach for a Cougr-Lite."

With a flick of her tail, she slides her magnificent body out of the cloakroom. It's just him and the box of Cougr-Lites. Beyond the door, there's the buzz of conversation. He needs to be out there, but without his courage, that door might as well be a wall.

Suits You

A bull buys a swimsuit that turns him into a cow, though he's less put out by that than you might expect. Explicit.

Beau tapped his hoof-fingers on the counter, waiting while the clerk rummaged through the back room. Every minute spent shopping for a swimsuit was another minute he wasn't spending at the pool, getting appreciated for his hard-earned body. The shaggy-haired Highland bull was in the market for a new swimsuit because his old one just couldn't stand up to the strength of his squats.

The winged human came back from the back, holding a folded-up piece of black, satiny fabric. With a flick of her hands, she unfurled it theatrically, holding up the black one-piece. It was almost like a singlet--no, more like a woman's one-piece swimsuit. In fact, that seemed to be exactly what it was: low neckline, coming to a point in the crotch, showing off the hips.

"That's a girl's swimsuit," Beau said. He folded his arms on top of his thick chest, then spared a hand to swipe the overgrown bangs out of his eyes.

Mer-Made

Poor spellcasting turns both Stella and her boyfriend into mermaids. Explicit.

Michael opened the door to his Santa Monica apartment and found candles strewn across the counters and tables. Curled runes written on sheets of printer paper were stuck to the wall with masking tape.

'Not again,' he thought.

"Stella? Are you casting a spell?" he called. He dropped his messenger bag next to the door and took a few steps toward the hall. Stella stepped out of her studio, with two more sheets of paper in her hands and a roll of masking tape around her wrist.

"It's almost ready," she said, flashing her boyfriend a smile as she passed by. With a creak of tape, she tore off enough to stick up the last two runes on either side of their TV. Stella took a seat on the sofa, then looked up at Michael expectantly.

Michael walked up behind the couch and leaned on its back. "I thought you said after the vacuum cleaner nonsense you weren't going to cast spells."

She rolled her head back, so that she was looking at him upside-down. "I've been practicing. Just small stuff, but I haven't messed up again. This isn't even a dangerous spell, it's not going to go...'vacuum cleaner'." She gave him an upside-down smile and reached up to scratch his neatly-trimmed blonde beard. "Besides, this is a spell for you."

The Amazing Talia

A batty hyena magician kidnaps a feline superhero and turns him into her stage assistant. Mature.

As he walked through the lobby of the abandoned Verite Theater, Celsius was stopped by an usher.

"Can I see your ticket?" she asked.

Celsius was caught off guard, but the hyena girl in a red cap and jacket didn’t bat an eye at the ruined posters, or the splintered boards piled up near the concession stand, or the fact that chunks of the theater doors were missing. She didn't even notice that he didn't have a ticket.

"Right this way," she said.

With an arm behind Celsius's back, she swept him forward through the doors and into the ruined theater hall.

Celsius had been combing through unsolved, odd crimes for something to investigate. He had to put work into making a name for himself as a vigilante. 'Little brown cat with ice powers' was not a marketable superhero identity, so it came down to research and legwork. What he'd found was a number of thefts—cellophane, light bulbs, fabrics, a Halloween costume store, video equipment—that all had similar MOs. They'd all involved drivers who'd fallen asleep and had no memory of what happened afterwards.

The thefts were spread out over months; if you weren't looking for connections, you might not have pieced together that someone was stealing supplies for a stage show. And in Empire City, that meant it was time to go digging around in old theaters to figure out who was taking all this stuff, and what their plans were.

"Hey, I've got some questions for…you?" Celsius said. He whirled around, looking behind him, but the usher was gone.

Someone threw the breaker for the lights, and the theater lit up, pouring light down onto the right side of the stage. The whole stage had been repaired and re-finished. It stood out, almost unreal and pristine against the rest of the abandoned theater. The red velvet curtains on the right side ruffled.

"And now, for the very first time," boomed a woman's voice over the speaker system, "the amazing, the mysterious, the lovely, Talia Tsannarova!"