As he reached out toward the amulets dangling from the tree, Beau felt a strange sensation in the tips of his fingers. It was as though a magnet had been attached to each fingertip, drawing them closer and closer to a single amulet, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t resist bringing his hand to finally rest upon a maroon-colored amulet decorated with images of bright yellow flowers.
A warmth spread throughout his hand and up his arm as soon as his fingers brushed the amulet, and he unconsciously traced the gold embroidered writing along its front side.
“This one… This has gotta be the one,” Beau mumbled to himself, confidently giving the amulet a tug. Without any resistance at all, the hemp cord untied itself from the tree’s branch and released itself into Beau’s grip. His heart was pounding in his chest as he took another deep breath to prepare himself. “Alright, here goes nothing… Please, don’t turn me into a slug, please don’t turn me into a slug…”
With one quick motion, he tied the cord of the amulet around his neck and let it fall against the front of his shirt, watching it rise and fall with his excited breathing and patiently waiting…
Waiting. And waiting. And…
“Shit, is it broken? Did I get a dud?” Beau muttered, his excitement quickly deflating with each passing second. He’d definitely felt something when he’d reached out to touch it, but for all he knew he’d screwed something up and ruined it already. Not knowing what else to try, he tapped the amulet with one of his fingers a couple of times like he was rapping the side of an aquarium in a childish attempt to provoke some sort of reaction.
He got a reaction. The amulet began to lift itself away from his body, only barely staying tied around his neck thanks to the cord, and it then began to hum and vibrate in midair. The humming was quiet, and yet it was powerful enough to make the air around Beau’s entire body seem to shake like he was standing in front of a massive music speaker. Every hair on his body seemed to stand on end, his skin crawled, and the vibrations around him were enough to make his bones feel like they were being rattled into dust.
And yet, despite the experience being quite uncomfortable, it wasn’t painful; as the shaking of the air began to subside, the vibration of Beau’s body became a pleasant tingle that seemed to dart up and down his entire body, from the tips of his toes to the ends of his earlobes, touching every part of him in a seemingly random order before settling just below his stomach.
“...Whoa… That had to be magic, right? Like, the real legit shit, right?” he said to himself, glad that nobody else was around to hear him say something so profoundly stupid. But, despite there being a clear response to his prodding, there was none of the promised transformation that Fumie and Kyojiro had promised him...
At least, until Beau spotted the small black spot at the tip of his nose. Instinctively, Beau reached up to wipe the smudge away, but he could immediately feel it was not dirt. Leathery, cool, and slightly damp, he knew without a doubt that it was the blacked nose of an animal, similar to those of the kitsune he had already met since arriving at Shinden. But whether or not he was becoming a kitsune still remained to be seen. He watched as the tip of his nose began to stretch outward, pulling along with it his jaw as they reshaped themselves into a beastly muzzle, with tiny wisps of brown and black fur already beginning to sprout along its length and down his cheeks. With his tongue (which by now had stretched to fill the entire length of his long muzzle), Beau felt around and felt a row of sharp teeth, thick and powerful in the back of his jaw and razor-sharp and knife-like toward the front, and with an uncomfortable tugging sensation he felt as his incisors stretched longer and longer into a powerful and deadly pair of canine teeth that nearly poked out of his mouth.
Fascinated with his changing body, Beau reached up to feel his transforming jawline, feeling long, soft, and fluffy fur springing up between his fingers and it spread all across his entire face. The fur around his eyes was of a thinner texture and a deep black, while his cheeks and neck became almost unimaginably fluffy and soft with layers and layers of fuzz that colored in bands of creamy white to chocolate brown. Fur spread up around his scalp, with the hair on his head taking on the same soft texture his his fur but retaining some of its length and style, and with a sharp tug his ears shifted and slid up the sides of his head and pushed their way out from beneath his hair to reveal a pair of slightly rounded and pointed ears that twitched in the breeze.
“No fucking way, this is nuts…” Beau whispered with a massive grin on his muzzle, slurring his words a bit as he got used to moving his newly transformed lips and tongue around. Realizing his once in a lifetime chance to get this on video, he rummaged around in his pockets for his phone and whipped it out to try to turn the camera on. However, the phone slipped out of his hands and went flying through the air, smashing itself on the stones of the shrine’s courtyard. “Are you fucking kidding me!? Of all the shitty times for… Oh.”
The reason for Beau’s sudden clumsiness was immediately made apparent as he saw that changes already happening to his hands, which by now more closely resembled an animal’s paw than a human hand. His fingers had begun to shorten slightly while becoming a bit thicker, giving him a bit less manual dexterity than before, but the length was soon mitigated somewhat as his fingernails darkened and sharpened themselves into blunt, dog-like claws. Another coat of thin, black fur burst out from the backs of his new paws and slid up his arms in mere seconds, joining the thick fuzz around his neck before growing down over his chest so thickly that it threatened to burst the buttons of his shirt.
“Dude, all this fur is starting to make me look a little chubby…” Beau laughed to himself, undoing a few buttons of his shirt and letting the fur spill outward. As he patted the fur on his chest and belly, however, he paled slightly and began to probe deeper beneath his new coat of fur. Touching his stomach, he blushed when he felt a bit of soft fat begin to fill in over the tops of his muscles, giving his usually hard chest a slightly softer texture. “The hell!? Man, I worked hard for this body, don’t make me into a butterball! What the hell am I even turning into, anyway!?”
Still grumbling about his new love-handles, Beau watched with renewed fascination as his waistline began to stretch his sweatpants a couple more inches and his legs swell up with even more thick, warm fur all the way down to his ankles. Feeling another tingle at the tips of his toes, he kicked off his tennis shoes and grinned as he saw another pair of canine paws at the ends of each ankle, with longer, sharper claws lightly tapping the stones of the shrine’s courtyard as he felt the soft pads of his feet against the cold stone.
He could still feel the warm, humming sensation deep in his chest, telling him that there were still changes left to come, but he suddenly heard a commotion from behind him near the entrance to the shrine. He spun around to see a group of figures emerging from the forest and chattering happily and exuberantly in Japanese. Not human figures, but big, bulky, and extremely furry figures that looked exactly like whatever creature it was that Beau was turning into. Most wore simple modern-style clothes, while others wore traditional Japanese garments in a variety of bright colors, and a few even chose to wear little more than their own fur, but ever single one of them was hauling around bags and bottles filled with all sorts of food and beverages (which to Beau’s sensitive new nose smelled absolutely delicious).
The creature at the front of the group spotted Beau right away, and a massive grin spread across his muzzle and he called out happily with, “Aa, hayai ne! Nagatta tabishita ka?”
“Uhh… W-what? I don’t really understand,” Beau finally managed to stammer out as the group of animal-men quickly surrounded him, each laughing and occasionally slapping their bellies in amusement.
“I said, ‘Yer here early! Didja have to travel far?’” the first man spoke up in English as his exuberant laughter finally subsided. “But, it seems you’ve already answered that question, right? Didn’t know we had any American tanuki comin’ to the gatherin’…”
Tanuki? Is that what I’m supposed to be? Never even heard of one of those..., Beau thought, unsure what exactly he had gotten himself into. The man(?) who had approached him was clearly an older guy, with streaks of silvery-gray sneaking into his brown fur and with quite a bit more fat packed around his midsection than the others (though, Beau noticed, most of the tanuki around him seemed to be a bit on the heavier side, which he guessed was just how they were built rather than coming from a lack of fitness). However, the part about this tanuki that just screamed ‘middle-aged dude’ was the absolutely hideous Hawaiian shirt that was draped around his torso, its buttons stressed to the limit by the big tanuki’s thick fur and round belly.
“Good thing you made it here, though,” the bigger tanuki said happily, pulling Beau into a tight and friendly hug that pressed each of their bellies together. “I heard this place is gonna be a madhouse once all those tourists arrive in a few days. Say, what’s your name, pup?”
“Huh? M-me? B-Beau, sir,” the surprised younger man replied nervously, unsure how to break it to this fellow that the tourists had already arrived in droves.
“Bō! Now there’s a name for a tanuki! Yer momma picked a good name!” the older tanuki laughed, and the others gathered around joined him in another round of boisterous laughter. “Bet ‘ya got a big one of those, huh? Ahahahaha! Well, you can call me Uncle Jirokichi, or just ‘uncle’ if ‘ya like! We’re family, after all!”
“I don’t really understand w-” Beau began to protest, but before he could finish a loud voice echoed throughout the entire shrine and the group of festive tanuki turned in its direction.
“Dad! What the hell!?”
From the forest stomped another tanuki with his fur bristling and his eyes narrowed in Jirokichi’s direction. He was clearly quite a bit younger than the others, closer to Beau’s age if not a few years younger, wearing a bright hooded sweatshirt with what appeared to be a band logo on the front and with the fur on the top of his head dyed a bright blond and stylishly coiffed.
“Kentaro, m'boy!” Jirokichi called out happily. “You said you might not make it, didn’t you? You make this old dog a proud father!”
“Dad. You told me you’d check your text messages on your phone more often,” Kentaro growled as soon as he got near, and Jirokichi immediately chuckled sheepishly and took a few steps backward from his son.
“I-I swear, once I learn to use that thing, I’ll check my messages,” he apologized. “Anyway, I’m really glad you made it to the family gatherin’! Look, ‘yer cousin Bō even came here all the way from America! Ain’t that nice?”
Kentaro glanced at Beau, noticing the amulet around his neck before letting out a sigh and shaking his head.
“He’s not my cousin, dad. And if you’d checked the messages I sent you, you’d know that Shinden’s already opened up for the season! That guy’s a human that messed around with one of the transformation amulets and turned into a tanuki!”
The other tanuki in the clearing let out a shout of surprise, having assumed that they’d be free to party and celebrate for the entire weekend without worrying about any tourists interrupting their revelry. Once Beau finally found his voice, he managed to explain everything to Jirokichi and the others, but the friendly tanuki seemed far more apologetic than Beau was and were more than willing to let bygones be bygones. “As long as ‘yer wearin’ that fur, ‘yer a nephew of mine!” Jirokichi slurred drunkenly after a few big cups of sake, and before long the tanuki celebration was in full-swing with music, dancing, food, and lots and lots of alcohol.
Kentaro eventually managed to pull Beau away from the party and they found a quiet spot at the outskirts of the shrine’s courtyard to chat, with Beau making sure to grab a few cups of the booze beforehand.
“So… Dads, right?” Kentaro said with a smirk as he rolled his eyes at Jirokichi’s earlier antics.
“Totally. Good to know that tanuki parents aren’t any less embarrassing than human ones,” Beau laughed as the two young men sipped their sake.
“Oh, they’re way, way more embarrassing, if you ask me,” Kentaro sighed as he drained his cup. “It’s a tanuki’s nature to cause trouble, but my dad’s an expert at it… I figured he’d forget all about the resort’s opening, so I had to catch a train all the way from Tokyo to remind him…”
“Tokyo? You live in Tokyo looking like that?” Beau asked incredulously, looking up and down at Kentaro's furry body. “I mean, it’s a good look, but…”
Chuckling quietly, Kentaro picked up a leaf from the ground and carefully placed it on his head, then with a snap of his fingers and a sudden flash of light, the young tanuki immediately transformed himself. No longer a tanuki, Kentaro was now a handsome-looking young Japanese man, with deep brownish-gold eyes and smooth hair that kept its blond-dyed color. A short brown beard coated his cheeks, its color bringing to mind the fluffy brown fuzz that covered a tanuki’s muzzle, and the texture of his hair and beard were much closer to soft fur than to ordinary human hair.
“Ta-da~! Pretty neat, right?” Kentaro said proudly when he saw the look of awe on Beau’s face. “Tanuki are natural shapeshifters, y’know? Well, ‘natural’ might be stretchin’ it, since it took me fuckin’ forever to learn how to do it before I went off to college, y’know?”
Beau was certainly impressed, and he grinned as he heard Kentaro’s manner of speaking getting rougher and more casual as he began to relax a bit.
“So… Can I ask you something? What was your dad saying about my name? Something about Beau being a good name for a tanuki?” Beau asked, slowly starting to feel more comfortable in his new form. By now, his entire body had fully changed as far as he could tell, and he had particularly seeing the thick and incredibly fluffy tail burst from his backside to wag behind him.
“...Ugh, he said that? You’re kidding me…” Kentaro groaned, suppressing another laugh. “You really want to know? You’re sure about that?”
“...Now I’m not so sure… But, lay it on me.”
“Fine, but it’s a really bad joke,” Kentaro said. “Well, a bō is… well, a staff, I guess. Like a wooden stick. And since tanuki have big… well, you know… It’s a dick joke, I guess.”
“Tanuki have big what, exactly?” Beau asked nervously, his eyes slowly drifting down to the front of his already stretched out sweatpants.
“You seriously didn’t notice, dude? Tanuki like us have massive balls! I gotta buy my underwear special, and its the one thing I can’t really change when I turn into a human…” Kentaro sighed, patting the substantial bulge in the front of his own jeans.
And indeed, it now looked like Beau was smuggling a pair of oranges down the front of his trousers, with an almost obscenely large bulge extending from the front of his sweatpants. Reaching out with one paw, Beau gingerly pulled back the waistband and looked inside, seeing a truly massive pair of furry testicles laying between his legs, along with a thick and furry sheath of skin covering up a red and pointed canine member. Beau had always been proud of his size, but this was something else entirely. Hell, he wasn’t even sure how he’d be able to walk hauling around a package like this…
“A little suggestion?” Kentaro whispered, averting his eyes from Beau’s impressive endowment and blushing furiously. “Go commando until you can get something with a little more support. I can loan you a couple of XXXXL jockstraps if you don’t mind wearin’ one of my used ones…”
Fuck, what the hell have I gotten myself into…? Beau thought as he groaned and drained the last of his sake cup slumped backward onto the stone ground, staring blankly into the skies as he listened to the raucous tanuki celebration in the distance and Kentaro’s amused laughter next to him...