The lid on Penny’s basket rose, as the little naga stretched out. She yawned, her jaw extending quite a ways before it finally closed again. The rest of the cast did their best not to stare. Though they had been working with Penny for as long as they had been members of the troupe, the sight was still pretty unnerving; even Tommy found it kind of creepy, but he did his best not to show it.
“And now, we’d like to give Penny and Copper another chance to shine,” O’Hara’s voice could be heard from the stage, “please, turn your gaze to our serpentine duo!”
“Time for our act two, Copper,” she said, picking up her pet. The snake slithered up her arm, and onto her head, curling in a ring around the top, and lifting his head above hers, becoming her “crown” once again.
“Break a leg!” Wesley said with a grin. Penny rolled her eyes with a smile, and slithered back onstage.
“Hello, boysss and girlsss!” She waved to the audience. Penny didn’t really need to draw out her “sssibilantsss,” but she didn’t mind playing to expectations for the crowd. “We hope you enjoyed seeing Ssspectra charm the two of us earlier. But did you know that we sssnakes can charm humans the same way humans can charm usss?”
Some of the children shook their heads, and others nodded.
“Would you like to see that?” Penny asked. A collection of nods and ‘yeahs’ responded, and the naga smiled. “Great! Who here wants to be put under our ssspell?”
There was no movement from the audience for a moment, before Katie raised her hand. Nate chuckled softly in the seat beside her. “You’re pretty brave, huh?” He stood up and raised his hand too. “I’ll go with you, and make sure they don’t make you do anything too humiliating.”
“Two volunteers? Exccccelent! Please, come on stage!” Penny motioned to the two children, and they made their way down the aisle before climbing up next to the snake girl. “So, what are your names?”
“I’m Katie.”
“And I’m Nate.”
“Nice to meet you. Mind if I assssk why you both chose to give up control for a little while?”
“I kinda wondered what’d be like…” Katie mumbled.
“And I just wanted to help her out if you tried to make her do something stupid.” Nate said.
“Aw, that’s really nice of you, Nate,” Penny said, “you two must be good friendsss.”
“Actually, we’re brother and sister,” Nate said.
“That will make this even more fun, then,” Penny said. She propped herself up on her tail, to give her some extra hight, held out her right hand. Copper slithered down from her head, and wrapped the end of his body around her wrist, letting the rest of his length dangle and sway back and forth like a pendulum. “Now, sit relax, and watch Copper swing back and forth. Baaack… And fooorth…”
The two children’s eyes followed the gentle sway of the snake.
“So ssslow, so calm, so truly relaxing. Just focus on Copper, and my voice, and realize how good it feels to just let go of your worries and stresses… Feel a soft, warm feeling rising up around you, making every muscle it touches feel so nice and loose. Starting in your feet, and moving up into your legs… Up your spine...”
Nate and Katie’s posture became limp, and almost looked like they would fall over.
“Keep ssstanding up,” Penny added quickly, “just stand there and relax… Loose and limp, but standing tall… Feel the warmth ssspread into your arms and hands, now. Just let them fall to your sides and hang there…”
The siblings’ arms both dropped to their sides, limply, barely seeming to move.
“Feel that warmth spread into your head, relaxing not just your eyes, and mouths, but your mind as well, so warm, foggy, and at ease… That’sss right… it’s just ssso easy to relax, when you follow my words. And the more you relax, the easier it is to just let go and follow my words… You can trust me to bring you deeper down, and going deeper down in trance makes it ssso much easier to trust my words… Isn’t that right?”
The two children nodded slightly. Penny smiled to herself. She enjoyed getting to use the more mundane hypnosis techniques alongside genuine magic when she could. Spectra had taught her a little hypnosis magic before, but gently guiding someone down into trance felt more fun than just snapping your fingers and having people do whatever you like. Still, the magic was useful for speeding up the normal techniques, which was all the more handy when performing live for an audience of children that might not sit still while you performed the more repetitive portions of an induction.
“Very good. Now, both of you, imagine a pair of strings, each one tied around your wrists, and is lifting your arms up, making you hold them out in front of you.” With hardly a thought, the children slowly raised their arms, holding them straight out.
“Now, feel a magnetic force drawing your handsss together. The force is getting stronger and stronger with each passing moment, with no way to resssissst.”
Kate gradually brought her left and right hands together, while Nate did so more quickly.
“Now, I’ll count backwards from three, and when I reach one, I’ll snap my fingers and you’ll wake up, but you still won’t be able to get your hands apart, or remember being tranced, until I say you can. One… Two… Three!”
Penny snapped her fingers, and Copper slithered back to a more comfortable position on her arm. Nate and Katie blinked a few times, as they got back into more normal postures… Save for the fact that neither could seem to separate their hands.
“Hey, what gives?” Katie asked, waving her arms in front of her, as she tried to pull them apart. “Did you hypnotize us already?”
“Maaaaybe…” Penny gave an innocent look, while the audience began to laugh softly.
“Oh come on!” Nate groaned, as he vainly strained to separate his hands. “This is stupid! Why are my hands stuck together? Did you stick glue to them or something?”
“Nope. Maybe you need to try getting something between them.”
Nate gave an exasperated grunt and sat down. He stuck his joined hands under his shoe, and tried to wedge them apart with his shoe, while the audience continued to giggle.
“That’s enough, now,” Penny said. She snapped her fingers “Sleep now… Deep sleep…” Katie’s eyes drooped again, and Nate tumbled backwards, his joined hands pulling his leg up as he did. “The magnets in your hands are gone now, you can let them go.” Both children’s hands flopped back to their sides, and Nate’s lifted leg dropped to the floor next to the other.
“Get up, Nate! Don’t lie down like that when the show’s going on!.” The crowd laughed again as Nate slowly stood up beside his sister.
“Say, do the two of you feel a little chill?” Penny asked. The two children crossed their arms over their chests, shivering slightly. “I think someone left the door to the tent open, and we’ve got a breeze coming in. And I think it’s getting stronger…”
Nate and Katie shivered a bit more, leaning to the side slightly, as if being pushed slightly by an invisible force. “Oh, I think the wind’s picking up now, getting stronger and stronger…” The kids shivered more, changing their footing to brace themselves. They leaned into the breeze, trying to fight the growing forces.
“It’s getting really strong now! It’s blowing trees backwards! You’d better hang on tight to something!”
The siblings struggled against the wind, grabbing onto a set of poles left from previous acts as their feet were blown out from under them. They hung themselves horizontally as the wind blew them backward, while the audience collectively oohed and ahhed.
“The wind’s finally letting up again, whew, that was a rough ride. Better just relax now…” Penny said, as Nate and Katie both found their footing and stood up again. Penny turned to the audience. “See, the mind’s a pretty powerful thing when you focus it properly. Hanging sideways from a pole like that might be hard most of the time, but when you put your mind to it, you can do a lot of things that might seem impossible.” She smiled wide. “And we’re going to show you something REALLY special now.” The little snake girl turned back to her volunteers.
“I hope you both feel happy to know you’re very good hypnotic subjects!” Nate and Katie both smiled. “In fact, you’ve both been such good subjects, I’m going to let you in on a little secret.” She slithered between the siblings and put an arm around each of them. “The two of you aren’t really human… You’ve just been hypnotized to think you are! In fact, we actually switched who’s the brother, and who’s the sister, too! Do you want to go back to your true forms?”
The two nodded slowly.
“Great! Alright Nate… Or should I say ‘Natalie?’ Time to let the tomboyish otter girl out again! And Katie, or ‘Kayden?’ Be the big otter brother your sister needs.”
Natalie felt a warm sensation filling her body. There was a shrinking sensation between her legs, and she started to feel more comfortable calling herself a girl again. She stretched up her body becoming slightly longer, and thinner, as she did so. Kayden, meanwhile, felt a growth down below, as his body stretched to match his sister’s.
“I bet you can already feel the fur coming back, and those silly human rags fading away, can’t you?” Penny asked. The two nodded, as they felt a coat of long, brown fur growing over every inch of their torsos, and a second, shorter coat growing underneath. It felt far too hot and itchy under their clothes, at first, but they soon felt the old rags fading away, as if they had never been there to begin with. There wasn’t a hint of embarrassment on either of their faces at their sudden state of undress, since their fur was enough to keep them decent.
They felt and saw the same brown fur spread down their legs, and felt a slight ache for a few seconds, as the muscles in their legs toughened up slightly while getting a little shorter overall. They could feel their toes growing longer, and a thin layer of skin forming between each digit, giving them webbing. They could also feel their soft, leathery pads against the stage floor as they grew on the bottom of their paws.
Next, the sensation of fur growing over their arms came to the two children. Like their legs, their arms felt as if they were shrinking back a few inches. They stretched out their arms and hands, feeling the webbing forming between each finger, while their palms and fingertips swelled with little black pads. Their fingernails vanished from their sight, short claws appearing in their place.
Their noses wiggled slightly, as they felt them swelling slightly, and saw them turning black, and a little damp. Every scent in the room seemed to become more intense for the children, though it began to feel familiar to them as they started to remember that this was how things should have been. Their noses twitched again as long, sensitive whiskers grew alongside the lighter-brown fur that was spreading over the front of their faces.
They felt a pressure in their jaws, as they pressed out slightly, pulling their blackened, rounded noses with them into short snouts. Their teeth ached for a brief moment, feeling as if they were being tugged upward, as they sharpened into fangs. Sounds seemed to become louder as they felt their ears moving upwards, becoming smaller and rounder. The original hair on their head didn’t get affected by the fur, but Kayden’s became shorter, and Natalie’s grew longer.
Finally, they both felt a pressure at the end of their spines, as if new vertebrae were growing in, one after the other. New muscle, skin and fur grew alongside these bones, giving each of the siblings a long, thick, yet flexible tail. Natalie and Kayden grinned wide with their new fangs, and swished their new appendages around excitedly, Natalie even wiggling her hips as she did, getting a laugh from some of the children in the audience.
Penny giggled as well. “Glad to see you’re both enjoying yourssselves again. Why don’t you tell each other how good your sibling looks?”
Kayden hugged Natalie tightly. “Aw, Natalie, you look so cute as your old self again.”
Natalie blushed, even with her eyes still a bit droopy from the hypnosis, and tried to wiggle out of her brother’s grip as the audience chuckled. “I don’t wanna be cute!” She pouted. “But yeah, you look a lot better with fur than as a human.”
Penny smiled wide. “Well, since you’re both sssuch cute otters, how about you show the audience your talent?” On cue, O’Hara wheeled out the clear tank of water from Wesley’s act back on stage, placing a ladder alongside it.
“Oh! I’d love to do some swimming!” Natalie cheered, even with her eyes still a little .
“Then go right ahead!”
The brother and sister gleefully rushed up the ladder, and dove in, swimming easily in tight loops around the pool, while the audience burst into laughter. The otter children were a little confused by the response from the audience, but they simply shrugged, and took time to enjoy playing in their natural element, giddily chasing and splashing at each other in the small space the tank allowed.
After about a minute, penny spoke again. “Ssstop!” The two otters stopped and began treading water at the edge of the tank. “Thank you both for your wonderful performances,” the copperhead girl giggled. “As fun as it’s been, now it’sss time to wake you up. When I count to three, you’ll wake up, and all my suggestions will stop affecting you, but you’ll be able to remember everything you did, and how it felt, under trance. One… Two… Three.”
Penny snapped her fingers, and suddenly, Nate and Katie stopped feeling their fur, instead feeling their drenched clothes clinging to their bodies. Looking down at themselves, they saw they were as human as they ever were… Feeling slightly embarrassed, the two climbed out of the tank, where O’Hara handed each of them a warm towel.
“You two made a wonderful pair of ottersss!” Penny said with a smile, giving each of them a hug. “I hope you both had fun! You both really got into character.”
“Th-thanks…” Katie stammered. “It was pretty fun.”
“Yeah,” Nate added, “I almost wish it wasn’t over. I mean, I know it wasn’t really real, but I liked it a lot.”
“I’m glad you liked it.” Penny smiled, then turned toward the audience. “Let’s hear a round of applaussse for our wonderful volunteers, Nate and Katie!” The children in the audience clapped as Penny took a bow, then motioned for Nate and Katie to do the same. The two children smiled, then bowed alongside her, their clothes still dripping slightly. They then walked back to their seats, eager to see what sort of acts would follow.
Penny slithered backstage, “sitting” in her basket again.
“Nice work out there,” Tommy said, “You make controlling people look so easy. I could barely even keep Rosewood under control during the last puppet show.”
“Well, maybe if you didn’t try to turn my dance acts into extreme stunts, I might not have kept tangling up.” Chelly said, moving the fox puppet’s mouth with her strings. The cheetah chuckled.
“I just wanted to spice things up a bit!” Tommy said defensively. “There’s no reason you CAN’T mix snowboarding and ballet.” One could almost hear the silent laughter of the Totem Triad while the other performers struggled to hide their own amusement.
“Oh, I’m sure Tommy.” Chelly shook her head. He was so cute when he was embarrassed. She picked up Rosewood’s puppeteer cross again, moving the vixen’s mouth as she threw her voice. “Anyway, Penny, I wanted to let you know how good you did too. Good guides are important for acts like these.”
“Heh, it’s no problem. I had fun, and I loved how much fun they were having when they were splashing around thinking they were otters.”
“Yeah,” Chelly said, setting Rosewood down in her chair again. “They seemed really into it. I almost kinda wish they really could be a real pair of otters, and have them be a part of our troupe.”
“It wouldn’t really work,” Wesley said, “I know your ‘acro-cat-ics’ pulls in a lot of attention, Chelly, but we’re supposed to be a magic show first. Having a couple of otters doing underwater flips might be cute, but unless we were actually changing them from humans to REAL otter-people, there’s not really anything ‘magic’ about a swim meet.”
“I hate to say it, but Wesley does have a point there,” Tommy said.
“Yeah, I guess,” Chelly said. “Still could be cool to have as a compliment to my act.”
“Don’t worry about it Chelly,” Penny said. “You and Tommy do great together already. I’m just glad I could let those two see what it’s like to be part of our troupe for a little while.”