A strange thought suddenly occurred to me, remembering my zoology class.
'Since when do female deer have antlers?'
As soon as I thought that, Noelle... shed. Well, not shedding her velvet, that would have way too gruesome to see bloody dry deer skin falling off her antlers. No, her ANTLERS were shed. She began jerking her head left to right, and the antlers cleanly popped off. The students all gave her a wide breadth, staring at the sight in bewilderment, but none of them screaming or running away wanting to call animal control.
"Oops! How embarrassing! But I couldn't take it anymore!" She took the antlers, and strapped them to her backpack like a kid might with a lost tooth, but then the antlers faded from existence. I didn't know why, but somehow, her shedding her antlers gave you a sense of relief. Like reality had a slight glitch that was now corrected.
We went our separate ways, and both changed into our gym uniforms... it likely would have been impossible to slip on her PE Shirt with those antlers anyway. So it was ultimately for the best.
Once in class, we took role class. Naturally, Noelle was there, and there was also,
"Killer." The couch called.
"Here!" The girl with dyed red hair waved. Her real name was Kelly, but 'Killer' had been her nickname since gradeschool... for good reason.
"Today is dodgeball!"
Uh-oh.
Killer gave me a random look, and I knew, I was her prey for today. I figured I'd have a lioness or a panther soon enough to deal with... I was surprised when her shoes and socks vanished, replaced by hooves. Her skin quickly covered in Palomino patterned fur... the hole in her PE shorts came along with her tail... which was obviously dyed red too. Her face pushed out into a muzzle, her teeth becoming flat... Her hair grew down her back, the red color obviously still a dye job. Her hand morphed, nails becoming armored segments covering the ends of her hands, soon she only had four fingers on each hand. Her ears became like reeds and moved to the top of her head.
But that wasn't the surprising part for me now. She got, SHORTER... but at the same time, she packed on more and more of the muscle! And it hit me, she wasn't a horse... she was a pony! And she was built like a tank! I'd heard ponies were surprisingly strong given their size, and Killer was obviously no exception.
And those muscles weren't for show, when a ball hit me dead center and knocked me off my feet! Noelle zipped over to see if I was okay, but Killer beat her to the punch before she'd even made it halfway.
"Oops! Sorry!" She trotted over to me and offered me a hooved hand. "I'm Killer, but you can call me Kelly if you want. Sorry about that. Wanna hang out?"
Should have known Killer would be that direct.