"Kitsune," Holly Phillips finally decided, her children Tommy and Alice looking over from the living space where they were still playing Rocket League. Their mother had on teal slacks and a white shirt for work. The night shift was less than an hour away and she'd have to leave soon. Holly's eyes looked David up and down. She was still red in the face from how long she'd been crying. "Well actually. Are Kitsune compatible with..." She trailed off, motioning broadly with her left hand at the man in front of her.
David Nicolaus Scott the Third was a wolftaur. His 'lower half' was more like a 'lower two-thirds', with the body of a wolf up to the neck there, though larger, like how a regular centaur would have a similar body that was horse. It had been modified be not just lupine but encompass both sexes, though he had no pronounced breasts on the upper, humanoid torso. He wore a carapace over his lower wolf torso, modified from a dark denim utilikilt and held up by belts. Over his humanoid upper body was a t-shirt which hung a little loose over his waist, a black QR Code printed upon it. He still had his smart watch on over his right wrist.
"As long as your shape-changing handles tauric forms," David smiled. "Or did you mean socially? Because I was gunna keep your mindset mostly unaffected since Kitsune are often tricksters and sometimes malicious—I'm reading through some of the Presets now... have you a color preference?"
"Not sure I'm keen on 'mostly'," she said, meeting his golden eyes with her green ones as she pushed her thin, rectangular glasses back up onto her nose.
"Well, if you want the knowledge and instincts to more innately understand how you form works, you'll need a bit of it. The parts of centaur and horse I kept were a lot about how to move and pace myself, I think... I still have the wolf instincts, though, when it comes to tracking, accessing danger, and so on..." He shrugged. "Still pretty sure I'm me, though this form could use a little massaging." He looked up from his phone and asked her again about coloring.
Holly nodded. "What do you think about a white fox with fur tattoos?"
Alice stepped up next to her mother, sliding her glass across the countertop towards Mr. Scott for a refill. "Like Alopex?" she wondered.
"From Ninja Turtles?" Holly asked. "Wasn't she orange? I don't remember markings."
David interjected. "She's been reading my comics... she looks different than the 2012 TV version. The current comics of TMNT has Alopex as a white fox with purple markings to her fur around her eyes like a mask." Alice nodded as David opened the door to the fridge with his right front paw. The bigger dew-claw was not unlike a thumb as he opened the door. Holly watched as David leaned towards the fridge, grabbing a container of grape juice with his right hand while still working on the Chronivac settings with his left. "Would you like markings like that?"
Holly blinked. "Did you just naturally use your lower front leg as another hand?" She asked as he poured Alice more juice. "Because a centaur would have had a hoof, so that's gotta be a unique movement."
"Well," he said, opening the fridge the same way again and using his right hand to replace the plastic jug back the fridge. "I modified the lower body so the front legs might double as hands... I just did it without thinking," he shrugged. Alice said 'thank you' and David motioned a salute to her with his free hand as the little girl went back to join her brother. David glanced from his phone to Holly. "Markings?"
"I've always wanted Celtic tattoos," Holly said. "Maybe as teal stripes over the white fur—I can't believe I'm entertaining this idea—with two tails, please." She looked down into her empty coffee mug, then wiped old tears from under her glasses.
David smiled and shrugged. "It's fun to try new things... and if you end up liking the form, you can just keep it. Eventually you'll grow into nine tails."
"How's that work anyway?"
"Depends on the mythos the Presets are presumably programmed from, but the two most common ways are... well, universally simply growing old, firstly. I mean, generally, Kitsune stop aging physically or even become more youthful with age... But, also, having some life-changing learning experience survived can sometimes trigger it as well..."
Holly smirked. "Get stronger every time I almost die?"
He chuffed, enjoying her anime reference. "Not quite that extreme." He rubbed his chin with his right hand. "A Celtic Kitsune...? I like it."
Those green eyes of Holly's held warmth. "Appropriate," Holly smiled, watching as David made swipes on his iPhone screen with the Emitter plugged in. He looked up at her, then cocked his head to the side, giving a canine question to her remark. "My father was an American of Scottish descent, as you know... my mother, he met while stationed in Japan."
David looked Holly up and down. "Huh. Neat. I actually would not have guessed that."
"Lack of slant to the eyes?"
"I mean... that and you're taller than most I've met from Nippon." He tapped a few final thoughts into the Chronivac. "Ready?"
Having been waiting after their last match a few seconds for the next game of Rocket League, Alice elbowed Tommy and pointed to their mom as she stepped back from the counter. The two left the lobby before the countdown finished.
"Is this going to hurt?" Holly asked, moving down into the living area as if she was going to need more space.
"Only if you want it to," David remarked. "There's actually a lot of types of transformations, like—"
"Magical Girl?"
David had been moving around the kitchen isle and towards the living space when she'd asked. Her suggestion was as quick as it was unexpected, and he actually stumbled as a quadruped. "I... uh. Maybe?" David remarked, having no idea. Looking at the Chronivac, stood on all fours as he preceded to look through all the transformation options again. "Yeah... actually it looks like that's an option." He grinned, then pointed the Emitter at her. "One magical girl-style transformation coming right up! Ready when you are."
"We both know I'm not ready," said Mrs. Phillips.
"You got this, mom," Tommy said. The boy wasn't interested in the 'girly' transformation style, but he wanted to see someone change shape. This was going to be cool like in the movies, but in real life!
"Yeah, mom," Alice agreed.
"Oh good. No pressure," Holly sighed, putting her hands together.
David blinked, suddenly fearing he'd gotten ahead of himself. "Hey," he said, putting a hand on Holly's shoulder. "There's no pressure here. I never want you to feel pressured to do something. This is just new and exciting to me... I've always wanted to transform and be transformed... but if this is too weird, you can always say no."
Holly had had in her life a lot of untrustworthy men say similar words to her and she paused. But ever since that rainy night three years ago, she'd put a lot of trust in David. At first, it was because she felt like she didn't have a choice... but he never pushed. Even though there was something different about him now that she couldn't quite put into words... that he was looking forward to her divorce ending, maybe? He seemed ready to have her...
Alice looked up at her mom. "It's a little scary, right mom?" she wondered, tugging on her mom's pants to bring her back to the moment. Holly wiped her face again out of habit. "But... what if. What if it helps?"
Holly smiled at put a hand on Alice's head, then looked to Tommy. "Well? What do you think?"
"Don't look at me," the little boy said, crossing his arms. He grumbled, and looked away. "I'm tired of dad winning fights. Kitsune have fire, right?" His green eyes turned to David who checked the Chronivac then nodded to the boy. "See? I wanna see a real Kitsune because I want a little fox person who can knock that dick around like he knocks you!"
Tommy watched as Holly looked to David, then Tommy. She sighed. "Tommy, that's enough. We're working through this—"
"—He already knows!" Tommy yelled. He huffed then turned to the side again, the eleven-year-old having been though some shit. "Remember all those times he helped you with your make-up? He knows dad hits you!"
Holly looked to David, tears at the edges of her eyes again. "That true? You've known and not been saying?"
David nodded. "I don't know how many other people saw it, but it was pretty clear to me even before these new eyes. My mom used to cover up her marks the same way," he revealed. "Taught me how to do the same for my own."
Tommy's head jerked towards the conversation he'd invoked. "Your dad hits you?"
"Tommy!" His mom jumped in a bit harshly, thinking the question inappropriate.
"'Hit'. Past tense," David corrected. "Though the scar over my eye is actually from on of my mom's bottles, not him. They're both pretty bad people," he said, more forthcoming than ever. "He liked to threaten with guns... which is part of how I put him in prison."
He inhaled a long breath then released it slowly. His golden eyes shifted back to Holly, looking down the length of his wolfen muzzle. "I never asked about the makeup because I knew its purpose... and I didn't want my sympathy about the issue to make me come across as... me trying to be a rebound. I've seen a lot of guys play like they're going to be a savior then be just as bad."
The little boy had been staring in silence for a moment. He'd seen his father hit his mother, but him? His dad had never actually hit him. Shaking his head, he huffed, dropping his arms to his side. "Hey, do I get powers if mom does?"
Holly smiled, admiring Tommy's ability at such a young age to change the topic. She then looked from Tommy to David who answered the question with a shake of his head, easily picking up the social cue that no one wanted to talk about this anymore. "Maybe if we had universal awareness off on most people," he offered as a thought. "Right now, your mom's transformation is exclusive and unique. For you to get it, you'd have to have been born after the fact and that's only if it applies with the kind of Kitsune she'll be."
Their mother looked between the two of them. "Do you guys want to be transformed?"
Alice and Tommy looked at each other. Alice covered her mouth, thinking. Tommy just shrugged. "Prolly. Being a Dragon'd be cool. Or, wait, can I be a car?"
His sister blinked. "A-a car?"
"Like KITT from that old show David likes."
"Ouch," David remarked. "Old, huh?"
Tommy crossed his arms again. "It was over before mom was born. Old." The kid motioned at David with his left hand. "Also, you're older than any dog I know... look at all those white hairs. Aren't you ancient for a wolf?"
The wolftaur blinked, then looked at his arms... he did have the aged color of an old dog. "Hm. Guess I should check that later," he considered. Turning his head, he looked to Holly. "OK, so. It's up to you wether they transform... and you too for that matter. We can back out of all of this... do it later... or never. We can still do it never."
Holly took a step towards David, putting a hand to one side of his muzzle. "But you really want this?"
"My want is not more important than yours, Holly. If we're going to try and make this work after the divorce, then you've gotta do what you want. If you don't like what I've become, I understand. I've been worried about it ever since I took the plunge... that you guys would look at me and not see the person you saw last Saturday."
Alice pipped up: "I like the fluffy!"
Tommy shrugged. "Mostly the same. You definitely seem more... what's the word? Decisive?" Tommy asked, pulling from his head some vocabulary from last year. David simply nodded in agreement to that.
Holly grinned, wiping under he glasses one last time. "Let me see what being a foxy lady is really like," she chuckled. "You can always undo it, yeah?"
David motioned to the Emitter's Revert Button with his right hand while it was still attached to the phone held in his left. "Undoes up to the last ten changes within the last twelve hours." He explained, making sure everyone saw it. "Works like Photoshop history."
Holly took a deep breath, stepping back from David. "OK. Hit me!" She bit her lip. "I meant... do it!"
"This is event-triggered," he advised, tapping the 'Change' button. The little light next to it turned amber to indicate it was 'in-progress'. "You'll have to start making sweeping hand motions or something to start the process."
"What? You mean like—" and Holly pulled up her left hand, making the peace symbol horizontally so that her index and middle finger were above and below her left eye respectively. When she began to pull her hand away from her face, she felt resistance. It was like she was pulling her hand through an invisible water source the weight was so great.
Holly's fingernails began to glow with teal energy, so saturated and opaque that it was almost hand-drawn. As her fingers moved away from her left eye, her pupils shifted narrow and vertical into slits, shifting colors from their usual green to something more aqua in color with a less defined black shape like a foxes.
Her fingernails extended into teal-colored claws, seemingly cutting gashes into the air where teal smoke began to rush forth. Holly pulled her other hand up to her right eye, doing the same split-finger motion there, and pulling her hand back so that the left eye matched the right. Stepping forward, the smoke near her face thickened, though her glowing blue-green eyes could be seen clearly through the fog as if their visibility was on a higher layer.
Alice and Tommy began watching intently as Holly began spinning in place not unlike a ballerina, using her claws to cut strips of cloth out of the air somehow. Her body all but faded from view in her personal smoke cloud. What remained was a colored rainbow of a silhouette, cycling through all the visible colors and a handful of colors visible only to David's eyes.
The wolftaur watched Holly pulled up one leg so that the knee was against her stomach. She then stomped downward, toenails turning into teal-colored claws as she cut ribbons from the air which quickly wrapped around her feet and became solid. They looked like some kind of cross between wooden sandals with a birch color, and military boots. The steel-toes clamped down over her clawed feet as she put one foot down. A moment later, she was doing the same with the other...
The ribbons that Holly had been cutting from the air began layering in white and teal stripes in a circle around her body. Though the three watching could no longer make out the specifics of Holly's form, it was clear she was shifting into a bipedal fox the way her legs bent. Her hips grew a bit wider, and the smoke at her backside began to reform into three fluffy clouds rather than one individual mass.
Reaching up with both hands, Mrs. Phillips pulled the ribbons in the air tight so that they wrapped closely to her body. Where her pants once were were now white-fur with teal markings along her upper leg. The ribbons had made her a dress with a low-cut skirt that covered her thighs. It pressed against her newly increased bust as she continued to pull the ribbons tight. One side of them folding over the other. The right side a solid teal while the left side, under it, was patterned in teal and white plaid. Three teal-colored gem buttons held the half-dress, half-kimono tight. Soon enough, the arms too solidified, wrapping more loosely at the sleeves where they flared outward.
Her left hand went up gracefully under her chin as she released the ribbons which were all but gone from the air. She seemed to coax out her own face into a vulpine muzzle, a teal nose at the end. As she spun, her right hand whipped one of the smoke clouds at her rear upward from beneath its base and it 'pooffed' from teal-fire quickly out into a furred tail. Twice more she did so, ending with three fox tails there, each one ending in a teal tip that looked like it had been dipped like a paintbrush.
Moving her hands upward, Holly pulled up her own ears into tall triangular points as whiskers solidified at the end of her muzzle. Behind her head, she took the last of the smaller ribbons and tied them into a white bow which held her now shoulder-length, teal-colored hair more up onto a pony tail. There was a hint of further teal markings in her solid white fur peaking out from under her dress at the sleeves and base. Above and below her eyelids were teal lines not unlike mascara and at the middle of her chin down the front of her muzzle from her lower lip, was a rectangle of teal as well.
As Holly finished spinning, her back was facing them, the low-cut dress revealing a large tattoo-like crest of the White family in teal within her fur. Reaching out with one hand towards the air, she looked like she was trying to touch something. She was quiet, though her three tails began to sway slowly back and forth together as she moved her hips. The tiny remaining smoky flames around her faded into the air like lost embers.
Tommy's eyes were wide. "Mom?"
She quickly looked back at him, those aqua-colored eyes taking in the appearance of her son, her glasses missing. Grinning across her muzzle with teal lips, she was suddenly upon him, hugging him tight to her new bosom. Her speed was such that David's carapace waved in the air current.
"It's still me," she said lovingly. "Oh my... your heart is racing." Holly leaned back from her knelt position in front of her eleven-year-old. "Honey, are you scared?"
"Nah, mom," Tommy insisted, pushing her off of him. Though, truthfully, the speed at which she'd shot right in front of him had freaked him out a little. "Just... yer fast."
Holly smiled, the color at her eyelids making little upside-down u's as she closed them. She then opened her eyes and looked at Alice. "And you...?"
Alice smiled white teeth at her mother, lunging at her backside. Soon enough, Alice was getting lost in the three tails coming from above her mom's rear. As she put her hands underneath them, Holly let loose a laugh which was the tone of someone being tickled.
"Well," David said, smiling at her. "What do you think? I think I may have overdone it with the teal."
Holly waved a hand out toward her purse on the couch. It unzipped itself with teal-colored flame and a small makeup compact few towards her. Tommy gasped as she caught it and flicked it open in her hand, looking at herself with the circular mirror inside. David blinked.
"Hm... I dunno. I like it," she said, those vixen eyes looking to David finally. Without thinking about it, she sniffed the air and licked her lips. "Not just a boy anymore, David?" He simply grinned, realizing he couldn't hide his arousal from her. Those quick footsteps were almost imperceptible as she was suddenly standing in front of him, now about six foot tall. Alice was spun a little and stumbled from the movement of the tails. Holly placed a hand on David's chest. "I take it you didn't know about the pressure or you'd have warned me?" she inquired.
"Pressure?"
"I can feel an energy in the air... eddies made by the Emitter... a flow of... what might I call it... fluid-power... something beyond the normal world."
"Magic?" Alice asked and one of his mom's tall vulpine ears flicked towards her. "Do you feel lay-lines?"
Holly put a finger to her lips as she looked over her shoulder at her girl. "Yes. Yes, that's it. Good work, pup." She ran a hand down so that her fingers were just inside the waist of David's utilikilt. "Magic and power. I'm magical now... and you are not." Licking her lips, she added an addendum, "But I sense you're wrapped up in it... a spiritual connection to the world that isn't magic."
David resisted the urge to look at the author in that moment, but Holly sniffed the air. She locked eyes with the wolftaur in a playful challenge. He didn't know what to do, though his instincts took this as one mate playing with another, taunting. Her eyes slowly slid towards us as if she was feeling out David's intention. She couldn't see us like he could, but her awareness of him could sense where he wanted to look.
"What's that?" she asked in sultry tone.
Alice and Tommy looked over, and saw nothing. One of them asked the question they were both thinking, but neither Holly nor David answered them.
"Uh... a higher power?" David offered.
"God?"
"They claim not... though they are all-powerful to us."
Tommy and Alice were still confused.
Holly grinned, fanning her three tails behind her in a wave of motion. "I asked for two tails, but three is nice."
David blinked at the change of topic, but took the opportunity to do the same. "The magic you feel... does it hurt? Can you use it to make yourself look human?"
"I just got this form and you want me to revert?" she asked, making 'tch' sounds as she waved her finger. "I think maybe I need a test run for this body." With that, she gripped her teal claws inside the collar of David's shirt.
"Mom!" Tommy yelled. Holly's ears went flat against her skull and she turned to look at her son. "You've got work in less than an hour. Dad already thinks your sleeping with David... don't actually do it," he said flatly.
Holly took in the wondrous scents of David's double arousal... one sweeter, one musky. "Hm. Let me see," she said, putting her left hand up to her face. Allowing the middle and index fingers of that hand to be placed above and below her eye, she pulled the air to the side. This time she dug claws into the air purposefully as if she was tugging on reality—which she basically was—and pulled to the side. As she did so, her form melted briefly into a teal smoke and then reappeared human. She looked very close to how she'd been moments easier, glasses and all. "Is this better?"
"For the humans? Yes," David smirked. "Also, you didn't shrink in size."
Alice pointed at her mother accusingly. "Boobs too!"
Tommy let out a laugh as his mom's breasts, ass, and overall height shrunk a little. Not completely back to her normal-sized five foot eight self, but close enough.
She grinned, putting a finger on David's lower lip playfully. "I'm gunna keep a little visible because I wanna... I just wanna," she chuckled. David put his hands on her hips. "But, speaking responsibly for two seconds... I'd like you to turn down my instincts just a notch before I jump that new bone of yours and get us all in trouble."
David nodded, the Emitter on the counter behind him. He pulled up the application on his phone and lowered the instincts by ten percent. Ten percent of what? It didn't really say. Still, there did seem to be something less feral in Holly's eyes when he looked back at her. "Better?"
"Good enough," she chuckled. "Wow... I... I should be going." Pushing away from the wolftaur, she picked up her purse and jacket. "I wonder if I'll get caught... exciting," she said softly, but David could hear. "One thing," Holly added, looking over her shoulder. "No permanent transformations for those two... not yet, anyway."
"But regular transformations?" Tommy asked. His mom nodded. Alice cheered. As Holly picked up her thermos and headed for the door, Tommy looked at David.
David bit his lip for a moment, being left with an eleven-year-old and eight-year-old concerning something he'd always had a sort of sexual feeling about. Indeed, he was certainly wet after Holly had been in his personal space with her vixen ways, his penis stiffened. He smirked, then shook the feeling away. He was a mostly-responsible adult, and if the children's media he grew up with was any indication, it was actually super-easy to do transformations without making them about sex...
He called after Holly: "Message me if something feels weird. The revert button should work from any distant, but if you need tweaks, I'll have to get closer!"
Holly looked back from the door. "Oh? You gunna drive with that body?" she laughed. David's feet took a few steps towards her, realizing her point. Automobiles were not designed for wolftaurs. "I'll be fine," she insisted. "Be good, all of you."
Tommy and Alice both said goodbye to their mom while David set a timer for eleven and a half hours, just in case. Moving to the windows, he and the children waved goodbye as their mother departed.
And with that, Holly Phillips headed off for her night-shift, leaving her children Tommy and Alice alone with her prospective mate, David. I guess the question left is: what happens now?