As the orderlies put out the handful of embers remaining from Kasai’s rebirth, Skyla could be heard apologizing to her boss over the phone again. “Sorry about the yelling boss… I just… I just heard about an emergency situation from a friend… No, I won’t need to go right now. Y-yes, boss, I’ll get right back to work.” The fox’s face appeared on the video screen, mouthing the words 'Release me!' before the call ended. Anna stifled a giggle. She’d be there soon enough, but she had waited for so long for Curt to give her permission to make more maids, and she wanted to have a little more fun with it before sharing.
She looked over the garden. The remaining seniors seemed surprised by the sudden fireball Kasai had generated, but they didn’t seem nearly as shocked or concerned as Anna and Skyla had initially been, as if a phoenix dying and being reborn before their eyes were no more abnormal than a car backfiring. The couples went back to their conversations, while the remaining woman went back to her book. Anna would have loved to change all of them, but the gun’s paradox prevention disqualified the two male parents (who were likely also grandparents, by this point). And while she did have permission to use the gun as she liked now, she couldn’t stand the thought of ignoring her Curt’s suggestion to avoid changing only half of an older couple, after what he’d done for her, even if she didn’t really agree with the reasoning behind it.
Thus, there was only one target she could pick in good conscience: The woman reading on a bench by herself. Glancing at the title of the book, The Last Unicorn, Anna grinned. She had been hoping to make at least one horse, after all!
Carefully holding Kasai in one arm, Anna took aim.
“Anna-anesan, what’s that?”
“It’s a special machine that helps us find Curt’s friends,” Anna said. Cassidy cocked an eyebrow at this, but Anna ignored it, and pulled the trigger.
Another green bolt of lightning arced from the tip of the plastic gun, and struck the woman, who didn’t react at all as she started to slowly shrink, her navy blue shirt and lighter blue pants shrinking down along with her. Her aged form was looking healthier, as the years seemed to melt away. Her wrinkled skin was smoothing over, and her blue eyes brightening.
Though nobody could see it under the woman’s clothes, her chest was flattening, and her once shriveled body began to put on a bit of baby fat. What’s more, short, white fur was beginning to cover her whole torso. Her clothes themselves, meanwhile, started shift as well. The threads of her shirt and jeans began to weave together at the waist, the different shades of blue shifting into a uniform soft cyan color. The two pant legs joined together to form a dress, the redundant material from the middle of what once were the legs adding extra length and width to the skirt.
Under that skirt, the white fur began to cover the increasingly little girl’s legs, extra tufts growing around her ankles. Said legs were also growing a little longer, while the bones in the ankles shifted, giving her feet a digitigrade stance. Speaking of her feet, they grew quite long and thin. Her shoes disappeared, revealing that her toes were joining together, their fusing nails growing larger, thicker, and turning an mother of pearl color, becoming a cloven hoof on each foot.
Her arms were changed next, as the short fur spread over their reduced length length, longer tufts forming near her wrists. Her hands stretched slightly wider, and her fingers began to pinch together; the pinkie and ring fingers on both hands seemed to slowly merge into a single, thicker digit, the index and pointer fingers doing the same. Her thumbs, meanwhile, grew even wider. The fingernails on each digit grew thicker and wider as well, turning the same mother of pearl color as her hooves.
A little hole appeared in the back of the girl’s dress, as the shrinking seemed to finally stop, leaving her looking about two or three years old by human standards. Through this hole, a long, thin tail began to stretch out, growing to around a foot long as it swished back and forth. White hair climbed up the thin appendage, staying fairly short, until it reached the tip, where it became a large, fluffy tuft. At the same time, a white apron suddenly materialized in front of her dress.
The young girl’s jaws began to stretch out as the fur spread up her neck and face, nearly doubling the length of her head as they formed a distinctly equine snout. Her nose stretched out and merged with it, her nostrils growing wider as the skin turned darker. Her ears shifted up to the top of her head, stretching a little longer than they had been when she was a fully grown human, before reaching a point. And of course, in the center of her forehead, an elegant, spiraling horn rose up. Anna was surprised to see the girl’s hair apparently remained gray as it grew out into a flowing, lucious mane, but as the unicorn filly tilted her head to look above her book, her hair seemed to shimmer like silver, compared to the previous dull grey it had been before. She smiled and waved when she saw Anna was looking over to her.
“Hi Anna!” She stood up, holding her book under her arm as she clip-clopped over. “Hi Kasai! I saw you go FWOOSH!” She waved her little arms around, doing her best to imitate the noise of the fireball. “That was so cool! You feeling better now? I wanted to ask when you first blew up, but the adults told me to wait ‘til they stopped the fire.”
The little Phoenix nodded. “Yeah, Emma-chan. I feel good.”
The unicorn filly jumped up in glee. “Oh yay, you remember me!”
“Uh-huh.” Kasai nodded again.
“Wait,” Anna said, looking down at the filly, “she didn’t remember you before?”
“No, she remembered me,” Emma said, “But I got scared she’d forgot, ‘cause Carrie and Kathy said phoenixes forget a lot of things when they burn up. It’s sort of like Ham-knee.. Um… Am-nee...” She stumbled over her last word.
“Amnesia?” Anna suggested.
“Yeah, that!” Emma nodded. “I’m so happy she didn’t forget me! We used to play together lots when she was little. Then she grew up, and went working as a maid, and I helped her and lived with her! But then she started getting old, and she couldn’t work or play with me anymore, and she felt sick too. I kept coming here to see her until she burned up, but now she’s little again, and we can play and do maid things again!” Kasai clapped her wings in agreement.
Anna realized that Kasai must have been aging at a normal human pace before, for that to make sense. But then… Kathy and Carrie were 'teenagers' at seventy-three after being changed into dragons. Emma must have been around that age, herself, but she still didn’t even look older than five… Just how long did unicorns live?
Cassidy smiled and picked Emma up. “Glad to see you both get a chance to be together again.” She turned to Anna. “So, I guess that’s everyone, right?”
“Yep!” Anna nodded. “So, Emma, Kasai? Are you ready to visit Head Maid Skyla at work today?”
“Yeah!” The two toddlers cheered.
“Great! Then let’s get going before we miss the bus!” And with that, the two cat women made their way out.
---------
As the four got on the bus, across town, Meredith was helping Curt set up his portion of the presentation on his team’s next major project. Curt tested the laser pointer a couple times, idly wondering if Anna or Cassidy would now be vulnerable to its allure, before turning his attention to testing the projector.
“Hey Curt,” a male voice said, as its owner walked into the conference room.
“Oh, hi Dave,” Curt replied, as he adjusted the room’s projector. “Did the boss give you something to do for this presentation, too, or are you just here fashionably early?”
Dave chuckled. “Hey, nobody’s gonna say I’m slacking if I stopped early to make sure I didn’t miss the meeting.”
Curt smiled and shook his head. “Well, I can’t fault your honesty.”
“Having Meredith help you out again, eh?” He looked over to the literally mousey miad. “Well, they say money can’t buy happiness, but it certainly gets you some good help, doesn’t it?”
“Y-yeah, I guess it does.” Curt nodded. He still felt a bit guilty that he didn’t have enough to pay all these women what they were worth. Sure, they enjoyed working for him, but he didn’t want to cheat them out of a living, either.
“It’s an honor, Master,” Meredith curtsied.
“So, you setting up any fancy balls or dinner parties at the mansion, to go with all these maids?”
“Mansion?” Curt cocked an eyebrow.
“Oh, right, I forgot,it’s not 3 square acres of indoor area alone, so I guess it’s not REALLY a mansion,” Dave chuckled. “Always so humble.”
“Yeah, heh…” Curt chuckled awkwardly. Dave seemed like he was joking, but it still seemed like a really weird thing to say. His house wasn’t that big, after all, no matter how many maids he may have 'hired.'
But still he had to focus on the presentation for now, he could worry about what to do with the ray gun again once his shift was over.