Please,
Before dismissing this chapter, please read the notes at the end. Then, if after reading BOTH chapter and notes, if you still want to dismiss it, THEN go for it.
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Tabitha Halberd was surprised when Luc Damocles called her after nearly two years. While Tabby and Luc were both born in Moon Lake, they were among the few natives to be born “normals”. The two were childhood friend and, at some point, even dated each other.
But while Tabby wouldn't date any other man in Luc's back, he knew she was bisexual and wouldn't do anything to stop her from doing it with other women. “You can even do it with any-were, I wouldn't mind becoming one” he had said.
Then came a night she drank too much and accepted a one night stand with a wereCAT, too inebriated to understand what it would mean regarding her relationship with Luc. When she explained to him what happened, she thought he would ask to become another kind of were-something, so they could have sex with hin without causing his death. Instead, he sank into a severe depression.
Feeling responsible, Tabby (who, ironically enough, was a tabby in her werecat form) arranged for him to have frequent appointments with a shrink, and at first it seemed to work. Then one day, he stopped going to his appointments. When she tried to confront him about it, Luc made a point to dodge her. When she finally cornered him, he claimed that ‘something had changed in him’ and he was ‘working on something that would help him live with it’. It only worried Tabby more, but what was she supposed to do?
So all Tabby did was sorrowfully look at him plunging himself in old dusty tomes at the library, in the kind of book that you can touch without gloves and are forbidden to even breath on without damaging them.
She tried to move on, to do it with other males, but in the end, she couldn't.
So when he had called after all this time, saying he had finally completed his project, she could only accept to see him. She didn't know what it was, but the last time he was this happy was before she became a werecat. That said, she was still disappointed that he was still a regular human.
— – - – —
Luc was happy that Tabby had come. When he called her he wasn't sure she would, but she did, so it was time for Luc to finally explain himself.
“I…” he hesitated, “I always imagined that, if we ended as weres, we would end up as the same species, to the point I couldn't imagine things otherwise. So when you became a werecat, it broke my mind, literally.”
“Thanks to Doctor Twist's help, I slowly reconstructed myself, at least until I realized how much the shock at changed me. Let say that some piece of the puzzle my mind had become got bended out of shape, so much that even myself couldn't recognize them”
“How so?” Interrupted Tabby.
“It's like… Like I'm someone else entirely. Constructed from the cinders of Luc Damocles, but someone else nonetheless. The biggest change being my gender. I… I don't identify myself as male, not anymore. And, while Dr. Twist insisted that a familiar environment would help me, if I go thought transition staying in Moon Lake is a big no-no.” Tabby knew it was true, that very few peoples who had sex with a were AFTER having gone through transition had survived.
“So I searched for an alternative solution” pursued Luc “and found it in those two potions.” Luc grabbed two little vials from one of his pockets, the first with a red liquid within, the other with a yellow one.
“If someone with a female specific strand of the were-virus, like a werecat drink the red potion and have sex with me after I drank the yellow one, then instead of killing me, it will change my sex to accommodate this specific strand,” explained Tabby's ex. “I'll understand if you don't want to be the one changing me,” claimed Luc “but with our past history, I thought you should at least know.”
She couldn't be sure, but Tabby believed those potions' recipes to have been forbidden. If it was the case no one would accept to help him, he could even end up in jail. But she also knew Luc well enough to know that, if they prevented him from using it, he would end his own life, one way or another, and she couldn't let this happen. “How should I call you, now?”
“Lucie, Lucie Damocles.”
— – - – —
Tabby had accepted that helping her long time friend was the best thing to do, regardless of the dubious morality of it. And Lucie seemed so happy with her new self… So why did Tabitha felt like she just lost something extremely precious to her?
Speaking of Lucie, she was currently too occupied examining her new body, crying tears of joy, to notice the sent of Tabby's sorrowful ones.
The new werecat was covered in black fur, short on most of her body, but longer on the top-half of her forelimbs and at the base of her tail. On said tail, the fur kept becoming longer and longer as it reached the tip. But the fact she used to be male still effected her, like proved her still blue eyes and A-cup breasts. True, while the eyes color was rather rare on a cat, it wasn't unheard of, unlike a were with a chest so small.
Lucie was about to thanks Tabby, who had time enough to dry her tears and hide her sorrow, but as soon as she looked in her savior's direction, the former man ended on her knees, rapidly changing into her new human self. She still had the same ridiculously small chest and, while her face was definitively a woman's one, her black hairs ended in a pixie haircut, giving her a very tomboyish look. But it wasn't what interested Tabitha right now, but Lucie's now solid blue eyes.
- – — – -
At first Lucie didn't understand why she suddenly found herself outside, in front of the church, wearing a blood stained wedding dress with a gun shot stranger in her arms.
Then suddenly she remembered: Her name was Jennifer Harper and was about to marry the love of her life, Harry Jenkins when a madman came out of nowhere and pulled a gun, crying “DIE MONSTERS” while shooting them.
In her desperation, she started screaming Harry's name, unconsciously changing into her were-fennec form.
- – — – -
The first thing Lucie noted upon returning to the real world, was that she was still in her human form. (She was a werecat and not a were-fennec, after all.) Then she realized Tabby was hugging her instead of awaiting her in bed. She slowly extracted her from the embrace, which prompted the worried friend to look Lucie in the eyes. The blue orbs had returned to the shape Tabby knew all to well, back to being Luc's lovely eyes.
Once Tabitha seemed reassured, Lucie started to tell everything she saw and felt in her ‘vision’, for lack of a better word. Tabby remembered Moon Lake some old legends about some sort of oracles who could get a glimpse of one possible future among manny, but until then she belived them to be nothing more than myth. She didn't know if Lucie really had become one of the oracles of lore or only hallucinated. But she still took Luc's cellphone and called Frances Twist, because the good doctor needed to know of this new development, and the sooner the better.
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Firstly:
I know this story as already an huge cast so far, but I got an idea for it that couldn't really work with existing protagonists. (As you probably noted if you have read it.) At first I was even going to add another psy, but in the end I considered it was better to reuse the one already present in this story.
Secondly:
As stated at the end of the chapter, what Lucie saw is only one possible outcome. The worst possible one, to be more precise, NOT the more probable one.
Thirdly:
I choose to write Lucie's name the French way (L-U-C-I-E) because I find it nicer than Lucy. (Maybe she does too, it could be why SHE write it like that.)
Lastly:
If you don't like this chapter as it is, but don't want to outright dismiss it, feel free to rewrite a new one based on it, I don't mind.