“Rhonda, you know what this means? What we have to do right now?”
“Yes, I think I do and I think I’m prepared.”
“Experiment.”
“Sex…-periment… Experiment.”
“How cheap do you think I am?”
“Don't you pretend like you aren't one of the main reasons I never got to score,” Rhonda deflected.
But Rhonda acknowledged that Abigail had the better idea. Testing the limits of her abilities before going all-out was a lesson she really should have internalized by now. That and she still had a date with May planned for the next day and Rhonda wouldn't want to squander her chances before asking May about her opinion on harem protagonists.
Meanwhile Abigail had dried her tears and pulled out pencil and paper to make notes. Rhonda tended to forget that she was in fact an honor student with Sofia being the only person to rival her back in middle school. She took her grades seriously enough to never try anything during exam season. If only all villains could be this accommodating.
“Let's start with how you can change yourself. I want you to create another pair of arms, as blandly human as possible.”
Rhonda was willing to indulge in Abigail's distraction from her issues for now. Her last change already left enough room for those. With less focus than her previous change, she was getting the hang of it surprisingly quickly, a pair of human arms sprouted beside her newest set of breasts. Ironically those were the most human part of her dragon-doll-slime-rubber amalgamation body at the moment.
“You claimed you can only make draconic changes, but that was clearly wrong. The breasts and arms are clearly human in nature. Change one of the new arms into slime and the other into metal.”
While it did go quite easily, the feeling of her flesh arm slowly losing cohesion and becoming pure, purple slime was something Rhonda didn't think she'd get used to anytime soon. Her right arm, though, gave her more trouble. No matter how hard she focused, even forcing herself to remember the night a few years ago she spent as a hood ornament, she couldn't get it to transform.
“Sorry, it won't change.”
“Hmm, interesting.” Abigail made a few more notes before the rubber dragon girl went back to chewing on the pencil’s eraser. Rhonda decided to save the question of this being cannibalism for later. “You were also affected by the mermaid pandemic, right? Let's try this, turn one arm into a doll, the other fish-like.”
Again Rhonda started with the left arm and solidified it into a white, ball-jointed doll arm without issue. And again the right arm didn't want to work with her. Not even half a dozen months ago she switched between normal legs and mermaid tail like it was second nature, but nothing happened now. Tentatively and without Abigail's prompting she attempted to have her legs fuse into a mermaid tail again, though nothing changed here, too.
“Nothing…”
“Just what I theorized,” Abigail spoke up. “If we assume that your sorceress powers… let's say, awakened because of our merge yesterday, then your transformation abilities are probably revolving around the spells involved in it. Your human base form and then we got dragon, doll, slime… and balloon.” Then she muttered under her breath, “Never let myself be convinced to a stupid magic ass job again…”
“So, that means I’ll only be able to do transformations along those forms?”
“I don't think so.” And without any prompting Abigail pulled out her wand and aimed a spell right at Rhonda's untransformed arm. The already familiar feelings of bones shifting, fur growing, fingers sharpening and a thumb disappearing could be felt by Rhonda. Looking down she saw a black fox paw.
“You could at least ask, you know.”
“Sorry, force of habit.”
“Well, at least Amelia’s going to be happy I got something from her too now.”
“Anyways, can you turn the opposite arm into a copy of the paw?”
To Rhonda’s surprise, it actually worked. Without much concentration the inanimate arm became flesh and blood again and shifted into another black paw. “Wow.”
“Just as I suspected. Your sorcery memorizes every transformation inflicted on you ever since its 'awakening’ and allows you to replicate them.”
“That means… I’m some kind of magic chameleon? That sounds so cool.” Rhonda struck her arms into the air in excitement. “That makes everything that happened to me almost worth it.”
“There's the possibility of there being an upper limit to how many transformations you can have ‘saved’ up. Not to mention you’ll pretty much have to be hit by every spell again if you want access to them.”
“I already said ‘almost’, you don't have to make it worse.”
“Next test, turn back into a human, would you please?”
“Why so polite suddenly? But sure, give me a moment.” It was hard to believe that it hadn't even been a week, but Rhonda, the formerly normal human girl who always complained about being the designated victim for transformations, had already gotten used to her weird form to the point she was somewhat disappointed that she was about to return to her plain body. One by one the extra and additional limbs receded and the strange mesh of various plastics and scales turned back into fleshy skin. On a whim she decided to at least keep the crimson hair, but aside from that the boring, old Rhonda from five days ago was back.
The half-dracomorph half-pooltoy stared at the normal human in front of her with a slack jaw.
“Yes, yes, I kept the red hair. You were right, I really do like it. Can we move on now?”
“Rhonda… haven't you noticed yet?” When Rhonda replied with just a confused head tilt, Abigail continued. “You’re back to normal despite the school curse.”
It took Rhonda a few more seconds to process Abigail's words. Then, “OH MY FUCKING HOLY GODDESSDAMN WHAT?! What?! B-But how?”
“It must be your sorcery. Think about it. No matter what we're turned into, the curse ensures that we're still able to attend our classes without drawbacks, which includes a witch’s inherent ability to use magic. It's as accommodating as possible, just like the principal explained. Your sorcery seems to be directly tied to transformations. Being able to turn into any mix of your previous forms is an inherent ability of yours now, which the curse can't prevent you from using. I highly doubt you could turn others back, but for yourself, you essentially became the perfect loophole to this curse.”
Rhonda stared at her own hands, as Abigail explained her theory, continuously opening and clenching them. Focusing on her own magic, HER(?!) own magic, she imagined her fingers hardening and being sharpened into points, as well as scales spreading over her skin. Without a pause in their movements her hands had turned into dragon claws. Then she imagined the same, but in reverse, and watched in fascination as her claws turned back into her normal hands.
What started as a light chuckle quickly evolved into roaring laughter, to the point Rhonda feared she might come off as a supervillain. But how couldn't she? This was the biggest irony of her life and for once she was coming out on top. Maybe she had been right after all. This school might finally be the point where she could turn around her crazy life for good. “This is so fucking awesome!”