Elizabeth liked Gina. Of all the roommates she'd had, Gina was one of the best, largely because they were friends. She knew that Gina would never lie or exaggerate something like this. Gina was so lawful and by the rules that one time she even reported herself for accidentally parking near a fire hydrant. Not in front of it, but near it. When Gina claimed something was an emergency, then it had gone past being a regular emergency, and was an all-hands-on-deck type of emergency. And what Gina was claiming the emergency was... Elizabeth didn't want to deal with any of that.
She had already planned to share the boxes of transformative vials with Gina - maybe not without trying a few more changes first, and definitely not without planning ahead exactly what to show off... But the situation had changed, and she didn't have time now to take the human vial. Elizabeth just hoped that Gina wouldn't panic or faint on seeing her. She unlocked the door and it swung open.
Gina leaned against the wall opposite the door. She looked into the bathroom as the door opened and as she saw Elizabeth gasped and turned to the wall, covering her eyes with her arm. "LIZ! WHY ARE YOU... urp... NAKED?!?"
Elizabeth grabbed both boxes and quickly slithered out of the bathroom. Both of her torsos made it out the door in just a couple of seconds. Once clear of the door, she halted her forward motion and started coiling her tail in the hallway, pulling it out of the bathroom as fast as she could. "Sorry Gina. I wassn't expecting you home and wass trying out ssome magic. It'ss real Gina, real magic. I'll sshow you later. Don't worry, everything'ss fine. I'm sstill Elizzabeth."
Gina looked down at the carpet and turned away from the wall. She stared at Elizabeth's tail as it surged out of the bathroom. "Yeah, sure. Urp. 'Magic'. You can show me your... urp... illusions later. And I.. urp... won't ask why they needed you to... urp... take off your clothes." As soon as the tip of Elizabeth's tail left the bathroom, Gina raced in and slammed the door behind her.
Elizabeth was confused and slightly surprised. Her 4 heads stared at the bathroom door, with varying levels of disbelief visible on their faces. That was not the reaction she had expected, not in the slightest. One head glanced down at the red and blue boxes she carried, just to confirm they were still real and tangible and not some horrible magical prank played on her. They were still secure in her hands, and with a deft motion with her 2nd pair of arms, she raised the lid of each box and confirmed they were still full of magic vials. Just before the lid of the blue box closed, she spotted the card the woman at the shop had given her.
Unsure what else to do, Elizabeth pulled the card out and handed it to her other torso. It had the phone number of the shop, but her cell phone was in her pile of clothes in the bathroom... Which she had forgotten to take with her. Her torso with the boxes slithered to her bedroom and inside to deposit the boxes. Her other torso slithered towards the kitchen counter where the landline phone was... And abruptly halted. She quickly discovered she didn't have as much freedom as she had hoped - She had moved her 2 torsos as far apart as she could. The length of tail from each torso's waist to the point where the two joined was about 20 feet. The two places she had just tried to slither her torsos to were about 50 feet apart.
Elizabeth sighed in quadruple and slithered her whole body further into her bedroom so she could safely hide the boxes in her closet. Looking through the eyes of her torso in the hall was peculiar: She was moving forward into the bedroom, she could feel it... But what she saw through those eyes was moving backwards, not forwards, as that torso was pulled backwards into the bedroom. She shook off the strange sensation and hid the boxes behind her dirty clothes hamper. Once she was satisfied they were safely hidden, she decided she should probably get dressed.
Her room was a nice sized 25 feet by 30 feet with plenty of floor space, a spacious 10 feet x 5 feet walk-in (now slither-in) closet, a comfortable futon bed/reclining couch, a desk with computer and several assorted peripherals, entertainment center, and a couple of bookcases with books, plushies and assorted collectibles. With her torso in the closet she started picking through shirts, looking for something she would like to wear over her new scales. Hmm, maybe a tube top, something without armholes so changing back won't need me to take it off.
As she picked through shirts, immediately ignoring any that had sleeves, something felt a little off to her. She couldn't quite put her finger on it. A ding from her computer momentarily pulled her attention away from digging through her perhaps overly large collection of shirts. Elizabeth moved her other torso over to the computer and read the notification: it was from one of her social networks and said that there had been a few comments on one of her recent photos.
Over in the closest she resumed looking through shirts, but at the same time she was curious. Without halting her shirt hunt, she carefully slithered around the computer chair and bent her tail so that it resembled sitting legs, then lowered he torso into the chair. She leaned forward, placing 2 hands on the keyboard and 1 on the mouse, and opened the notification. The page loaded slowly, so while she waited she checked an instant messenger and typed out a couple quick replies to messages from friends. In the closet, she finally found a tube-top. She KNEW she had a couple in there! Out at the computer desk, the page finally loaded and Elizabeth was shocked to see that her profile picture was not what she remembered.
Instead of that cute selfie she took a couple months ago, it was... also a cute selfie, but with her current form: 2 heads leaned inward and smiled for the camera while in the space between and behind her heads you could barely see 2 more heads making silly faces with their tongues sticking out. The picture that had gotten all the comments from her family also showed her current form: It was taken at a concert she went to, where she had sat in the balcony and leaned over the guard rail for a friend to take a picture from below. In this picture she was leaning over the guard rail much more effectively, her large snake tail easily and safely holding her entire front half as she leaned almost 30 feet past the guard rail, with 8 hands making the sign of the horns (rock symbol with 2 fingers up).
Elizabeth was stunned. Was this supposed to happen? The comments on the photo seemed completely normal - no-one mentioning anything about her being 90% snake tail, having 4 heads, or 8 arms. In the closet she finally realized what had seemed odd. All of her shirts had 4 sleeves or 4 arm-holes. She had been skimming through them so fast she hadn't noticed, but glancing back and checking random shirts, they were all that way. And the few shirts that had a tight neckline, had 2 necklines. She grabbed the 2 tube-top shirts she had found and slithered back to her other torso at the computer chair.
It was no trouble to put on the shirts, especially not with how well she was multi-tasking now. The heads on her torso sitting in the computer chair constantly stared at the business card from the magic shop. She wanted to know... needed to know... what was going on?!?
When Elizabeth opened her sock drawer and discovered it was full of skirts, she felt it was too much. Decency be damned, at least she was wearing 2 shirts! She slithered out of her bedroom and to the landline in the kitchen as fast as she could. Her hands shook as she dialed the number into the phone...