While Sarah walked back to her room, wanting her mate's opinion on what to do next, she congratulated herself on convincing Cody to simply call her ‘Sarah’ even if, as the castle's witch she technically IS his mistress.
But Sakura and Juuko, being more in phase with the haunted castle thanks to their nature as cursed dolls, didn't like that very much. They needed to ensure the castle's repopulating got back on track and in order, and for this they needed to use their mistress' temporary distraction.
“Juuko-chan, we need to launch ‘Operation: Incompatibiliting’. Call our gorgon's girlfriend,” ordered Sakura.
Juuko took a piece of solid plastic from her pocket. It was shaped like a downscaled smartphone with a sticker for screen, but as Juuko made her wooden finger slide on it, it changed like a real screen would. “‘Operation: Incompatibiliting’ is a go!”
As soon as Juuko pressed ‘call’, Sakura took the toy-smartphone and make a gesture to her subordinate to let ‘the boss’ handle things. Then, in a perfect imitation of Cody's human voice, the commander of the cursed dolls said “Emily? It's Cody. You'll never guess what I discovered while exploring the old castle: A room full of figures and paintings of birds! I wish you could see it. You're coming? Cool! Ill wait for you in the entrance, then.”
When Sakura failed to hand the phone back to her, Juuko asked “Err… Sakura-sama? Can you give me back my phone, please?”
“When your former self dared mine and its friends to enter, you confiscated everyone phones, preventing me from having one. As your superior I can't let you have a phone and not having one, can I?”
- – — – -
Across time and space, there is a family, it seems no matter the universe, they are destine to go on a vacation, and once on that vacation, be transformed. In some realities they went to TF Park USA and had their DNA scrambled, in others they went down a cursed roadway that turned them into pool toys, others they simply moved to a town full of werebeasts. They were often not even exactly the same family, but the name, Anderson, remained. It was their fate. It was always a couple and their two children, sometimes it was two boys, other times two girls, and on some instance one kid of each gender.
In this case, it was the parents: chubby John and beautiful Sharon, both middle age, and their children, Derrick 16, and Julie 12.
The Castle itself sensed these humans in particular were fated to be changed into something else, that it could sense them so far away was proof of it. So, with its growing power of two cursed dolls, two werewolves (one with the magics of a witch), and one male gorgon, it lured them closer.
The children were not happy about having to travel on Halloween night, and actually had their costumes on as their parents had promised to stop at a few houses on the way to their new house. They would never reach it, but they would arrive soon at their new home.
After taking one too many wrong turns, the family saw several (outdated) signs advertising the 'haunted castle' and the children grew excited.
- – — – -
Emily waited 10 minutes outside the castle, in the cold. When Cody failed to greet her, (as did everybody else, for that mater) she entered by herself, stomping furiously. What she didn't notice was how she got entangled in magical wires placed here by Sakura and Juuko.
Thanks to said wires, the two cursed dolls weren't only able to control Emily's every move without said girl realizing it, but also her feelings. Sakura and Juuko used this fully, turning Emily's current anger into pure rage while orienting her toward the cursed mirror's room.
After his little chat with Sarah, Cody hadn't expected Emily to come so soon, the witch seemed to have more urgent matters before converting his girlfriend. Still he wouldn't have objected to this change of priority, if it hadn't resulted in a furious Emily.
While his fear had made the mirror glow green, thus changing him into a gorgon, from his hiding place behind it, he could see it now glowed a pale yellow. Discretely looking at Emily, he then saw she was growing feathers instead of scales. Scared, and not liking this development in the slightest, move toward her and stole a kiss.
Just at this time, Emily's transformation ended, causing an instinctual movement that, by pulling on some wires, caused the cursed dolls to fall on the ground, rendering them unable to control the new monster because of how loose the wire became.
Thanks to this, Emily's rage abated, something helped further by Cody's kiss. Instantly knowing who's lisps where on her owns, regardless of their surprising coldness. The kiss become passionate, the fathered girl not bothered in the slightest by the new shape of her boyfriend tongue. Its only once the kiss ended, their eyes opening, that they fully realized how much each other had changed.
In fright, they both got to opposed sides of the room, looking suspiciously. After all, harpy eat snakes, and a snake eating a bird wasn't unheard of, just like some kind of birds could eat snakes sometimes.
Until Emily realized she wasn't human anymore, and it was more than likely the gorgon in front of her played a role in it. For a time she admired her new body, the wings that now replaced her arms, the talons that now replaced her feet… Finally, with tears of both joy and sorrow, she said “As a human, I cruelly caged birds, pretending to do it by love for them… Thanks for freeing me from my cruel ignorance, for making me something far better than a stupid human. A shame you're going to eat me…”
“How could I eat the ssexsiesst bird ever?” Instantly asked Cody.
Blushing, the harpy slowly flew toward the gorgon before wrapping her wings around his neck and seductively whisper in his ear “I find your newfound speech impediment terribly cute, you handsome gorgon.” After what they started working on the first harpy/gorgon hybrid.
While the haunted castle was all for creating new kind of monsters, all the drama and love involved in this particular case would have made it puck, if only it could. The two cursed dolls for their part had, alas, no difficulty in puking.