Danielle's car finally arrived at the cabin in the woods. She quickly hoped from the truck to hug Curt, nuzzling her face against his before giving him a quick kiss. She took a step back and took in his appearance.
"Wow... You look about sixteen in human years," Danielle said, "I'm... probably about the same now."
Curt scratched the back of his head. "I got lucky... Two of kids from the school should be in diapers now, and Simone suddenly teleported to us as an egg."
Danielle ushered them to run to the car. "Quickly then, I made sure to bring the eight seater."
Pearl and Skyla climbed into the middle row, their current quadrupedal stance making it a bit awkward, especially with Pearl's belly looking like she could start laying any minute; her pregnancy perhaps being the only reason she wasn't getting any younger, already being an early teenager. Skyla meanwhile seemed to be staying at a similar age to Curt for whatever reason.
The back row of seats faced backwards, which allowed Naomi get a good look at the road behind them as they left, her and the Sleeping Alexis being placed next to each other in their own baby seats; both looking like if they got much younger they'd still be suckling at their mothers. Naomi had a constant blush on her face, noticeable even with so much pink fur, making it clear that whatever bit of her original personality she'd recovered would have wanted to be in any other situation than this; though her maid side made her sit calmly. Alexis meanwhile slept more peacefully than earlier, still heavily breathing, but not tossing and turning anymore. She had a constant dribble of silvery magical discharge going down her, staining both her blue fur and her dress alike.
Danielle was back in the driver's seat, she leaned forward to get her wings in comfortably now that they were down to her hips, before she settled back into the seat. Curt rode shotgun, carrying Simone's egg on his lap, still comforting her by rubbing the egg, knowing the storm still scared her.
Pearl looked at the phone she'd been using to handle much of the messages on her end. "Most of the others are meeting up at the train station by the bus load, its a good place to go if we don't expect to get out of range before we can't drive anymore... That, and you can fit a lot of people on there."
"Train station it is," Danielle said.
---
Marceline panted, having spent a surprising amount of time trying to fit a baby kraken onto a train after the evacuation... Without her getting cramped from squeezing herself so small for long periods of time of course. Marceline herself seemed to have shrunk enough that she only came up to just bellow Randy's chest, and for some reason, everything looked slightly... Off... Especially some weird light that almost everyone except the few unchanged humans seemed to be giving off. Even those that looked like relatively normal animals seemed to have a tiny spark of... Something.
"You sure you're not turning into some kind of mythic?" Randy asked, "I mean, you were kind of a 'taur already, its not like you'd have to change much for someone out there to consider you one."
"Makes sense," Marceline said with a smile, slightly euphoric between her all the people around her changing, and the fact she'd managed to help Cherry get out of town safety. She turned to see Kara looking not much taller than herself, and trying to hide her face from Marceline using her little mantis claws. "Come on, you're not exactly doing your best poker face here, you may as well show the class," she said.
Kara lowered her claws, looking embarrassed. "Don't make this a big deal, I know what you're like," she said.
Marceline beamed as Kara revealed a cute little draconic snout. Her compound eyes were still large and mantis like, but they'd turned a bright rose colour, and transparent, showing another pair underneath that looked around independently of her outer eyes. Bright strips of pink ran down the back of her head and down her neck, though a light green still covered her throat and her snout. The rest of her body was similarly altered, the legs beneath her abdomen were only a tiny bit thicker, and only vaguely more lizard-like, mostly from the four claw points sticking out of the tips; her abdomen was now striped with white and pink, flaring out a little like a flower, while a pair of bat-like wings with transparent flaps more reminiscent to that of her normal insect self slowly vibrated in a sort of nervous buzz.
"You're adorable, I'll say that much," Marceline said, "not sure what you're supposed to be though... Dryad? Nymph? Dragon?"
"ay-w'll say awl uf abwav," Cherry said, poking her beak out into the train car's entryway "dwarn wisp."
Marceline looked up, taking in how Cherry took up almost a quarter of the train car on her own. "We... Might want to get onboard from the other side."
---
A certain chimera had finally managed to get all the baby dragons from the school onto one of the train cars, it had taken most of them sharing seats, but this way they had left room for others in the rest of the train cars.
With a moment of relative calm, and the kids only mildly jostling, the three heads finally had a moment to themselves.
"Why am I the only one who remembers us always being like this?" the cat head said, "is it because I was just the muscle head?"
The sheep head sighed, "some of the elementary kids who changed remember better than some of the adults, so... I don't think so... Maybe its just... The open minded remember better."
The snake head looked back over at the other two. "What exactly do you remember of me in your version of events?"
The cat head blushed, looking out the window. "That's... Something a bit lewd to say in front of a train of kids."
Snake blushed at the implication of how much she liked being sat on... Elsewhere, a message on a ray gun about an update went unnoticed, as a whole school's worth of changed kids, and an uncountable others across both the town and across the world shot the counter right past the 500 mark.
---
Vicky wasn't sure how she was supposed to know if she was turning into a kitsune or not. Yet the trip to carry everyone to the train station to evacuate was making her nervous, perhaps as much as the baby double dragon sitting in the front row was at how small she was.
She had ended up shuttling a lot of people from the opposite side of the city than the mansion was on, so it was mostly those more recently changed by the storm, and a handful of humans. There were quite a few who were hit in the two kids' rampage, but Vicky just thought they were always like that.
As the bus stopped at the station, she got up. "Alright, everyone make sure your cloaks are secured, and move in an orderly fashion and try to move quickly under the cover of the station. Carry the infants and toddlers first, even if they only just got that way, we don't want them to get soaked in this seemingly magical rain."
Vicky sighed as they all got up, it slowly dawning on her just how many people were effected. How long before she could recognize everyone's new faces? Not long, sure, but she'd have to track a lot of them down.
---
"You're staying behind?" Myra said.
Mindy nodded her head. "We're barely effected by the storm, and someone has to keep the estate in order. Not to mention the city itself."
Myra sighed clutching her stomach. "Are you sure you're not just doing it to get some kind of souls of your own out of this weird event."
"That too is something Curt would wish us to do, but that's more of a gamble. The soul is a weird thing, I don't see us getting it just by trying to 'be more human' like the blanks... They at least have a mind to put back together, what we need to fix is completely missing," Mindy said. "If I felt anything I'd probably say that we hope you have a good trip... But that would be rather disingenuous as we are, hope being one of those emotions we don't have... So... Live a long life, and don't wind up like us."
Myra stepped into the train. "With everything that's happened today, I wouldn't be surprised if you proved yourselves wrong overnight," she said, "stay safe now... And try not to loose any more limbs," she said, eyeing the mute cat girl held together with tape.
Myra looked around her train car full of youthful maids born from her more recent collection of statues. They were all happy, and reminiscing on how nice it was as a statue, and how being living and breathing was almost a novel experience to them now... It started to feel like she had a new litter of kits again. Fitting, given the new life she'd agreed to carry.
---
Just before the first train was about to leave, Danielle's truck finally made it to the station, and they hustled over as quick as possible with their cloaks up so the rain wouldn't make them any younger than they were already.