“Sure thing, let’s do it,” Tom said with a grin. “I mean, with the kind of control you seem to have with that thing, it’s not really like you’d have to ask, so I figure you’re probably gonna be honest about it. And you DID use it to give me this awesome form,” he gestured over himself, “so I do kinda owe you now. What’re the experiments you had in mind?”
“Well, first things first, I wanna see if this can work over a recording.” I brought out my cell phone. “I already took a video of myself swinging the coin and giving a couple minor suggestions.”
“Really?” Tom raised an eyebrow. “That kinda seems like one you COULD test on yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah, but I wanted to make sure I had another person on hand in case something went wrong. And since you already volunteered…”
“Okay,” Tom muttered with a handwave, “show me the video.”
I pushed play, and held up my phone, watching Tom’s face as he looked at the screen. I heard my own voice saying “You’re getting sleepier and sleepier.” Unfortunately, Tom didn’t seem to be nearly as enthralled watching the video as he did the original coin.
“Now, feel your hands getting lighter, and slowly floating up on their own, without even thinking about it or trying to move them on your own,” My recording continued. Tom’s arms remained by his sides. “...And then feel them become heavy again and drop to your sides when I count down from three to one. Three. Two. One.” Needless to say, Tom’s arms didn’t drop.
“And lastly, after I wake up, the next time I snap my fingers, and only that one time, you’ll stand up straight, salute, and say ‘yes Master,’ and then go back to normal, forgetting it happened. Now, wake up.”
I looked at Tom as I pulled my phone back. “Should I even bother with the snap?”
He shrugged. “Eh, give it a shot.” I snapped my fingers, and of course, nothing happened.
“I guess it has to be in person,” I sighed. “So much for the plan of sending a video to all the teachers in our school telling them to stop giving us homework. Okay, next idea: I read up about hypnosis online after I found this, and I wanted to see if this coin’s magic will still work if you don’t know anything about what I’m suggestin. You never watched Virtua-Mon, right?”
Tom shook his head. “Nah. I never even cared for Porta-Mon back when it was big. Why would I be interested in the copycat?”
“It wasn’t a copy-” I stopped and held back my rant. “Er, never mind, point is, you don’t know any of the monsters from it, right?”
“Well, I’ve seen Vulpamon plenty while browsing FurAffection.”
I sighed. Poor poor Vulpamon was infamous for appearing in way more furry porn than any other Virtua-mon. Not that I MINDED, per se, but there was more to the character than-
I shook my head. I was getting side-tracked. I started swinging the coin again. “Just watch the coin, and find yourself getting sleepy again.”
I watched as Tom’s eyes drifted half-shut, vaguely following the coin’s motion. “You’re starting to feel another change come over you. You’re becoming a BlastLycamon.”
Tom’s otherwise zoned-out face had a hint of confusion, but he stayed in trance. Not a big surprise, but it was good to know that the target needed to understand my order to have it work.
‘Wait,’ I thought, ‘what if it’s just not working because it’s a fictional creature, rather than a combination of a human and a real animal?’ I began thinking of how to test for that. I could have him turn into Vulpamon, since he did know about her, but given how he’d learned about her, he’d probably end up acting like a porn parody of her or something, and I didn’t want to put him through that, even if I could erase his memory of it. Maybe just manually describe the changes to his wolf form to make him more like BlastLycamon? Nah, too imprecise. Something else then. A mythical creature like Cerberus? No, not quite out-there enough. Then the idea came to me. Though it’d probably need a timed trigger to make sure he’d turn back even if he didn’t end up able to hear me.
“You’re feeling a different sort of change coming over you. A VERY different sort of change. Your whole body is already so relaxed, and soon, it’ll feel even more loose and limp. You’re changing into a living slime monster, able to feel, hear, see, taste, and touch, just as well as your human form, as well as instinctively able to move your slime body around, and mimic the shape of your human or wolf forms with it. If I don’t trigger or order you to turn back within two minutes, you’ll go back to your ‘normal’ wolf form automatically. Feel it start now!”
I saw Tom’s gray fur turn bright green, the hairs merging together. His body started to waver as it became shiny and slick. His clothes started to slip down, then slowly oozed through his now-semi-transparent body. I couldn’t see any signs of any remaining organs, but he was still standing up, still keeping the general shape he’d had before.
I snapped my fingers, then stilled the pendulum. “Wake up!”
He shook his head again, little bits of goop flying off his chin, plopping onto the concrete floor, and crawling back to his feet. He looks over his sloshing hand. “Woah.” His voice sounded like he was trying to talk underwater.
“How’s that feel?” I asked, reaching out and touching his hand curiously. The slime was thick, but had a bit of give when pressed.
“Extremely weird. I feel like I’m constantly moving all over the place, even when I’m standing still.” He took a few hesitant steps around, his clothes dropping out of his body. “Oh shoot!” He reached down to grab them.
“I don’t know if you’ll have any better luck getting them to stay this time,” I said. “If it helps, it’s not like you’re showing anything like this.”
Tom looked down. True enough his lower body seemed a lot less stable in its shape than his upper body. “Ugh, I guess you’re right.
“Well,” I continued, “we now know that this can make people into fictional creatures, and long as the person being changed knows what they are, which is pretty cool! That gives me another idea!”
Tom raised a hand to ask what the idea was, but the coin was already swinging in front of him again.
“Feel your body go loose and limp as you relax.” The moment I said those words, Tom suddenly collapsed into a puddle! “AAH! Tom, are you okay?”
The puddle let out a slow, sleepy “Yes,” then began to reform up into the shape of an entranced, but standing, wolf man, and solidify, the clear green substance going back to opaque gray fur. Good, the timed trigger I’d set in place was working as intended.
Well, the fact that a time limit could be set was handy, and that surprise that jolted me enough to remember to put up a safety measure for this next change, which would probably be the most risky. I tried to remember some of the safeties that I’d seen some hypnotists do in videos, and make a variation on that.
“Now remember that your subconscious is always the one in charge during hypnosis; you can never be made to do anything you don’t really want to do. Your subconscious knows how to keep you safe, and if you ever find yourself in a situation it feels is dangerous because of hypnosis, it’ll take you out of trance. So you can be calm and relax, knowing that you’ll be safe to follow my instructions when they are safe, and wake up and ignore or undo them if they are dangerous.”
I took a deep breath. “When I next snap my fingers, your body will turn to stone. You will become a living statue, with a stone platform to help you keep your balance. You will still be able to see, hear, feel things around you. And as long as you are a statue, your mind will remain in a calm, trance-like state, like you are already in. You will remain a statue for one minute, then automatically become flesh and blood again, and be able to recall the experience just as well as you could any given moment in your life.”
I nervously snapped my fingers, and watched as Tom’s fur became stiff, and hardened in place. He was locked into his vacant stare as his eyes were drained of color, the grey fur turning to a duller gray stone, his breathing coming to a halt. Below his feet, a concrete base formed.
I held up my hand in front of his face. “You’re still in there, right?” I knew I wouldn’t get a response, but I couldn’t help myself. I waited out the rest of what felt like the longest minute of my life, when I finally saw color returning to Tom’s face again.
“Okay, that was… actually even more relaxing than the trance. Didn’t even have to put in any effort into standing up. Or breathing, for that matter.” He looked around like he felt he'd forgotten something. “So, are we almost done? Going through all these changes so fast might start messing with me.” He rubbed his head.
“Well, the transformation part is done. I just have one or two more little tests to run.” I rubbed over the coin before looking back at him. “Any place you’d like to be right now?”
He looked up. “A trip to the beach might be nice… On the other hand, going like this would probably leave me smelling like a wet dog.”
“Hopefully, it won’t be an issue,” I chuckled. “Alright, time for a couple tests on how this affects you if I give a command about something you can’t control.” I swung the coin in front of him again. Once his eyes drooped, I spoke again. “Feel me petting your tail, now.”
His tail began to wag slightly, and I chuckled. Well, it was good to see he didn’t mind the idea. And that the pendant’s magic wouldn’t force me to pet him as part of the command.
I noticed something a little off about his tail as it moved, and looked behind him. Some of his fur, in a patch about the size of my hand, was being pressed down. This imprint traveled from the base of the tail, all the way to the tip, then vanished and started again. I reached my hand out above his tail, but I didn’t feel any invisible arm or hand petting him. Weird.
“I am no longer petting you,” I told him. The tail wagging slowed, then stopped.
“For this last part, after I stop talking, you’ll find yourself alone on a warm beach, and will stay there for one minute, or until I tell you to stop, enjoying the sand, waves, and breeze.”
I’d half expected him to either suddenly teleport away, or start walking up the stairs and out the door to head to the nearest beach himself, (which would’ve been a long trip,) but instead, he walked around the room with a smile on his face, his fur blowing in an invisible, intangible wind. After crossing a certain point, the fur on his paws began to sag and cling to him like he had stepped into the water. Which gave me one last idea to test.
“Looks like you just accidentally stepped on a crab, and it got angry and pinched your paws hard.”
“Yeow!” Tom’s dazed expression immediately faded as the trance broke. He looked down at his foot as the fur all sprang back to normal. “Dude, why’d you say something like that?”
“Sorry, it was the last thing I wanted to test. Does it still hurt?”
“Well, no.”
“Okay, good. I wanted to see if this trance would keep going if I put you in a situation where you’d be too physically or mentally uncomfortable to stay relaxed, but I couldn’t think of a good way to do that that wouldn’t risk you getting hurt or embarrassed. This crab thing was an easier idea. Now I know pain, at least, will stop the trance.” I looked over him, still in his wolf form. “Though it doesn’t stop triggers from previous sessions, I guess. Unless maybe those cause pain, but I don’t wanna test anything more than that.”
“Thanks. So we’re done now?”
“Yeah, that’s the last experiment!” I grinned, making a couple notes on my phone. “We’ve got a lot to work with now! We know it has to be used directly, and the person has to understand what you’re talking about. We also know that fictional creatures and inanimate objects aren’t off limits here, and that the magic part of this hypnosis doesn’t really activate for anything but the body of the person being hypnotized, so suggesting that they’re somewhere else, or somebody else is doing something to them, will make them feel all the other sensations-”
Tom interrupted. “So wait, I wasn’t teleported to a beach somewhere just now?”
I shook my head.
Tom rubbed his chin. “Huh. I don’t know if that’s really cool that you’ve basically got hypnotic VR, or if it’s lame that we couldn’t use this to teleport somewhere else.” He paused, then his tail started wagging again. “So, now that we’ve got the experimental stuff out of the way, what do you plan to do with that next?”