The two kitsune’s next stop was a small farm down in Kenya. The place was far from the desolate waste shown in many a charity brochure, having plenty of modern farming equipment (if a few decades out of date due to it being locally-run and on a tight budget). The owner’s whole family, plus a few hired hands, were all busy tending fields, caring for animals, and making sure the tractors were in working order.
“So, how come you never mentioned being into furries when we met?” Skyla asked, making off-the-cuff discussion as Tomoyo looked for her ideal candidate.
“I mean, I did in the timeline I remember before my change,” Tomoyo said. “You even used your magic to let me try out being a fox-girl for a day. At least, that’s how I remember it. I guess in the version where you were human, you never talked about it. Then again, in a world with no real anthros, being a furry probably feels a lot more embarrassing if you don’t know the other person is into them, too.”
“…Fair,” Skyla said. “So… any reason you made your fursona a goddess above goddesses?” Skyla chuckled to herself. “You definitely don’t seem worried about being a Mary Sue.”
“First of all,” Tomoyo said indignantly, “A ‘Mary Sue’ is more a term for an amalgamation of common beginner’s writing mistakes than it is for JUST making a character that’s super-powerful. Second, if you’re gonna dream an impossible fantasy for yourself, especially one you share with basically nobody but a few RP partners, why not? Go big or go home! Not like I expected it to actually happen.”
Skyla nodded. “I see what you mean.”
They paused, as Tomoyo found her target. “Now that I think about it,” Tomoyo mumbled, “I probably should have gotten around to a harvest goddess much sooner. Just about every culture with gods has one.”
When one of the hired hands looked up and noticed the two fox women, Tomoyo fired, and the young man stood upright, his slim body swelling into a broader, more mature and womanly figure as he grew brown fur, with shimmering golden markings resembling stalks of wheat trailing along his arms and legs. His toes hardened and turned black, bending into rounded hooves as his feet arched into a digitigrade stance. His hands underwent a similar, fingers joining together into three digits per hand, becoming thicker, and turning black.
His clothes unraveled, revealing her growing belly and changing sex, including her hefty breasts. A ropey tail swished out behind her, ending in a tuft of golden fur, while her face stretched out, her nose becoming larger, and her ears becoming longer and thinner as they poked through her long tresses of hair.
Tomoyo smiled. “Meet Neema-San,” she whispered to Skyla, “goddess of harvest and agriculture.”
All around Neema, the plants and animals on the farm became larger, and healthier, a blessing she had now granted this family for taking her in and feeding her when she had arrived in their town disguised as a doddering old woman many years back.
Skyla remained quiet as the divine bovine met her followers with an affectionate hug, with one of the children rushing to fetch food for her.
Tomoyo grinned. “I can tell you want to add the rest of the people here to our maid community…”
Skyla flinched. “Hey, I thought you said no more reading minds!”
“I don’t need to read minds. I could tell by the way your fingers were twitching.” Tomoyo laughed. “But I think Curt-Dono will worry about us displacing them if they end up back home, or that their maid ‘programming’ would make them feel directionless if they stayed here and never got to meet him. Neema-San can teleport, but that’s not an option for the rest.”
Skyla sighed. “You’re probably right. Somewhere else then? Closer to home?”
“Sure thing,” Tomoyo said, teleporting them again.
___
Back home, Curt sighed. He wandered the halls of his mansion aimlessly, trying to find some way to take his mind off how dramatically his life… No, at this point, it was the whole world that was changing, if Tomoyo was to be believed. And he was still wrestling with the implications of it all.
He’d hoped he’d finally get a chance to rest this weekend. To recover, get a grip on the changes to his life, his friends, his bank account, and the rules of reality as he knew them. He wasn’t complaining about the situation, per se, but he’d been hoping things would slow down a little. That he’d have a moment to catch his breath, if nothing else. Instead, things only seemed to be rocketing off to light speed.
Seeing the door to the entertainment room open, Curt figured maybe losing himself in a video game would give his mind a chance to rest. He stepped inside, only to see a firefly woman messing around with curtains and lamps. Not recognizing her from any of Skyla’s previous uses of the gun, Curt could only assume she was one of the goddesses Tomoyo had created.
He quietly reached for his cell phone, hoping to get a look at the copy of Skyla’s maid list to find her name, since he was “supposed” to already know it, but the firefly turned around before he got the chance.
“Oh, hello Master!” Her abdomen lit up at the sight of him. “Enjoying your afternoon?”
“Uh, yeah,” Curt said, not sounding terribly convincing. “What are you doing in here? I would have thought a goddess would have more important things to do?”
The firefly sighed and eyed him in a way that suggested they’d had this conversation before. “Well, you know how it is. A goddess of light and dark doesn’t have much to add in a world with sun and moon goddesses. Well, besides overwhelming cuteness.”
She playfully batted at an antennae, and struck a pose, before going back to adjusting the curtains. “I WAS chilling out and writing fanfic back home, ‘cause what else is a gal gonna do? But Skyla told me to make myself useful over here, and I saw the glare on your TV here would make playing games a pain, so, hey, why not adjust the lighting? Night of the WereWeevils can wait another hour while I help keep things livable around here.”
“Well, thanks,” Curt nodded, pausing as something in that previous sentence sounded familiar. “Wait… Did you just say YOU wrote Night of the WereWeevils? The Radiant Nest fanfic? You’re DivinePreyer?”
The firefly’s eyes lit up. “Master? You read my stuff? Well, this is a twist! Yeah, I’m writing that. One of the fun things about being on the internet is nobody has to know you’re a goddess. No people groveling or sucking up to you, or spitting on you for “thinking you’re better than them,” just leaving the kind of ‘this hurts so good’ comments any old fic’ll get.”
“That… must be nice,” he replied. He wondered how much some of his favorite stories might have changed, now that the author had apparently lived the life of a goddess, if not a very busy one. He also wonder what HADN’T changed. While he had enjoyed DivinePreyer’s more traditional tragic works, she’d also included some short stories focusing on her more… esoteric kinks. Kinks he definitely did not share.
“And I can favorite fan-art of me, and people’ll just assume I’m another fan. After all, a goddess would never favorite the WEIRD fan art of herself, would she?”
“I… See…” Curt mumbled, not liking where this was going.
“You’d be surprised how many people wish they could be eaten alive by a goddess. But I mean, if they want it…”
“You haven’t actually eaten anyone, have you?” Curt was certain the ray gun wouldn’t allow something like that. Then again, he’d been certain of a lot of things before this morning that he was less sure of now.
“Well, that’s a very personal question, now, isn’t it, Master? What a goddess and her followers do in the privacy of their kitchens is their business.”
“She hasn’t,” a new voice said, flatly.
Curt turned around to see a majestic quetzalcoatl poking her head through the door.
“Honestly Lucia,” the quetzalcoatl continued, “Master has enough on his mind without you scaring him for a laugh.”
“Oh come on, he can handle it,” Lucia said. “Right Master?”
The look on Curt’s face instantly made it clear that just because he COULD handle it didn’t mean he was in the mood for it.
“Right, Sorry,” Lucia said.
“Apology accepted,” Curt mumbled, before turning back to the quetzalcoatl. “Thank you…” He trailed off, realizing he didn’t know her name either.
“Angelica, Master. And don’t worry, us goddesses will understand a little ‘forgetfulness’ in light of recent events.”
“Uh, thanks.” Curt mumbled, as Angelica left.
“Well, uh, Lucia, if you want to go back to working on your story, you’ve got my permission. I’d like to see the next chapter as much as you.”
“Oh, Master, I could just eat this praise up.”
Curt’s expression flattened again.
“Sorry.”
___
Tomoyo used a little magic to make Skyla and herself invisible as they teleported into an R & D lab, watching as several engineers shuffled around a set of robotic assembly line arms that were, themselves, still in the process of assembly.
“It’s not usually a common thing for a pantheon to have a god of tech,” Tomoyo whispered, “But I thought it would make sense to have, if there’s a god of art, which is a man-made thing, why not a god of technology? I liked to imagine she upgraded herself as she helped inspire greater progress throughout the years.”
Tomoyo took the gun again, aiming at a woman who was laser-focused on welding a set of joints in the middle of the set. The woman’s clothes joined together into a green dress, a second set of sleeves appearing beneath the first, and her leather apron gained a flourish of frills. Thick black hair began to appear over her skin, with lines of bright green in circuitry patterns running down their sides. Her legs slimmed down dramatically, while growing longer, her feet becoming insectoid claws. A look of recognition appeared on Skyla’s face, having seen this particular type of change happen before, as a large spider’s abdomen began to swell up behind the woman, a second set of thin legs rapidly growing out to support the extra mass. Two new arms began to slide through the sleeves, a second set of welder’s gloves forming around their claws as if by magic. On her back, a device appeared, sporting more wires than Skyla could count, each reaching up into the ceiling and spreading out in a web pattern, connecting to dozens of other devices in what was slowly looking less like your standard R&D department, and more like a temple of technology, the people that were once her co-workers dressed a little more formally, as they watched their beloved goddess at work.
The fire of the welder’s torch went out, and the spider lifted her welder’s mask, revealing a fuzzy face with cute little fangs and four front eyes, each with some kind of magnifying scope or lens hanging nearby them to quickly get a better look at her work.
“And there’s Glyph-Hakase.” Tomoyo nodded. “Just like she appeared in my backstory.”
“Speaking of backstories,” Skyla asked, in a whisper, “was you becoming my mom part of that? Or is that one of the ‘pranks’ you pulled in this timeline.”
“I swear, I had nothing to do with that! Or Kasai being my mom!” It dawned on her just how much longer Antrhos would have existed in this timeline. Who knows how many children Kasai may have had over her cycles, now. “I think the gun just filled in the blanks for a couple details I hadn’t completely filled out. Or maybe it didn’t implement EVERY part of my story…”
Skyla looked pensive. Tomoyo could guess the issue of suddenly realizing you weren’t actually related to the family you’d had your whole life, and now your family tree was wildly different was getting to her.
Tomoyo smiled awkwardly, trying not to think too hard about the complications her sudden desire for Curt would bring on top of that, if Skyla found out.
One of Glyph’s side-eyes spotted Tomoyo and Skyla, despite their invisibility, but she appeared to ignore them, and resume her work.
A monitor next to the kitsune turned on, displaying a line of text.
“Figured you didn’t want my followers seeing you. Angelica, goddess of knowledge, is keeping me updated. Still on your goddess-making quest?”
Tomoyo hesitantly typed “yes.”
“Have time for some new minor maids for Master, too? Got candidates.”
Skyla nodded eagerly, and Tomoyo typed another “yes.”
“Cody & Penelope. Both in this crowd. Seen their online history. They’d do ANYTHING to be their ‘true selves.’ Your mind reading should help find them.”
“Uh…” Skyla held out a hand for the gun. “Would you mind pointing them out to me, and letting me do the honors?”
Tomoyo gave a fanged grin. “Go right ahead!”
Tomoyo pointed out a male programmer tinkering on a set of monitors in the corner, Skyla took the gun, and fired.
Thick, shaggy white fur grew over Cody’s skin, and his ears grew wider and flatter, moving up the sides of his head, before flopping down. His nose turned black, and wet, while his teeth sharpened, and his jaws grew into a short snout. His shirt and pants wove together, becoming a black dress, a white apron and a lace headband forming around him seemingly out of nothing right after. The new dress hugged his form as it became distinctly feminine, losing about a foot in overall height, her waist shrinking inward, while her hips and chest swelled to give her an impressive hourglass shape for her size. As her hands and feet grew paw-pads and little claws, a small tail slipped out the back of her dress, wagging furiously as she focused on her work. The maltese dog maid dutifully cleaned up her code, ensuring both her goddess and her master would only receive her best work. Yet despite herself, Connie couldn’t help but smile, at the feeling that some long-hidden desire of hers had been fulfilled, even if she couldn’t quite pin down what.
One change finished, Tomoyo quietly pointed to the next target, Penelope, a woman who looked to be in her forties. Another shot fired, and a splotchy mix of black, brown, and orange feathers began to grow all over her body, completely covering her skin right as any clothing not required for safety unraveled and vanished. Yellow scales grew around her thinning hands and feet, her nails growing into carefully dulled talons, as her toes grew longer, becoming the splayed feet of a bird. Two new limbs grew from her back, rapidly becoming covered in the same color feathers as the rest of her body, forming an impressive pair of wings. Her chest grew several cup sizes, hardly an aerodynamic figure, but the gun’s magic, or tech, whatever it was, would take care of that. Penelope’s ears shrank beneath her feathers, one moving slightly down the side of her head, while her lips and nose joined together into a short beak, and her eyes grew wider, turning a bright yellow Finally, two particularly large feathers poked out above her eyes, forming the distinctive “horns” of a great horned owl.
Elsewhere, in a house a few miles off, a teenage boy suddenly grew his own set of wings and feathers, just like his mother’s.
The owl maid seemed to stand taller, with more confidence and purpose, as moved about, carefully examining each of her goddess’s machines.
“Another set of dreams fulfilled!” Skyla smirked. “Look at them: blissful, calm, orderly, eager to serve!”
Had Tomoyo left her mind-reading abilities on Skyla, she’d have heard her continue: “and drop-dead sexy!” But the goddess could reasonably guess that line would follow, anyway.
“You’re really enjoying yourself, Skyla-Chan,” Tomoyo noted. “You’ve been wanting to cut loose with this, haven’t you?”
“You just guessing again, or are you mind reading?” Skyla asked.
“I got a few hints about it before I’d stopped listening.” Tomoyo shrugged. “You’ve been pretty reserved with it, considering Curt-Dono said he trusted you to use it responsibly.”
“…I want to show him I CAN be responsible with it.” She looked down. “Plus, if I use it too much, he might get overwhelmed, you know.”
“Yeah, I understand. I’d love to help expand the ranks of Curt-Dono’s maids, and the goddesses, too. A Master like him deserves loyal friends, and a little help. But, being worthy of that also means he doesn’t want to accept all of it.”
“And we could use the gun to help others, too,” Skyla noted. “It doesn’t have to be all one-sided.“
Tomoyo’s ears suddenly perked up, an idea crossing her mind. She searched the minds of mortals all over, then pulled Skyla to her side, taking the gun back. “Speaking of! Someone needs our help! Come on!”
___
In a flash, the two kitsune were outside again, this time standing in front of one of the town’s taller buildings.
“What’s going on? Skyla asked.
“Up there!” Tomoyo pointed to the top of the building. Skyla, and a few bystanders, craned their heads upward, gazing at a tiny figure on the roof.
Skyla squinted for a moment, before her eyes shot wide open. “He just put his leg over the railing! Is-? Is he gonna-?”
Before she could even stammer out the last word, the man put his other leg over the railing, let go, and began plummeting toward the ground. Only seconds in, he began flailing in a desperate attempt to grab something, anything, to slow his fall as survival instinct overrode whatever tragedy had driven him to jump, but it was too late.
An arc fired from the gun up into the air, meeting the man in the middle.
His change was a blur, faster than any Skyla had seen before. A shrinking body, covered quickly in pure-white feathers, a short, cute beak growing from the face, ears shrinking, hands and feet growing pink-ish scales and little claws, the sudden growth of wings and tail-feathers.
The flailing stopped, becoming a controlled dive that pulled up at the last second, with a giddy giggle, as a little dove toddler, clad in a white toga with black trim. She circled around the kitsune, and then landed beside them.
“Hello Tomoyo-Sama! Hello Head Maid Skyla! How are you two doing?”
“We were just going through town, making sure people stayed safe. Speaking of… Donna-chan, my little angelic messenger, I know you enjoy flying, but you should be careful about diving so close to the ground. Even if you don’t make a mistake and hurt yourself, you might hurt someone else, or spook them.”
Donna nodded. “I’ll be careful, Tomoyo Sama.”
As the dove girl flew off, Skyla released a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.
“That was incredible,” she panted.
“Thank you, Skyla-chan.” Tomoyo rubbed her chin. She wondered, idly, what was causing some shot with the gun to suddenly revert to children, but not others. While the explanation for the long-lived mythical creatures and her phoenix mother made some sense, some changes, like Skyla’s boss or now Donna, weren’t species with that excuse. Was it some failsafe of the gun due to them being near-death?
That led her down a different train of thought. She knew, since becoming a goddess, that death wasn’t the end. That, while painful and tragic, it was ultimately a part of the cycle of life. She knew, unless how the world worked changed dramatically, making everyone immortal would be trouble in the long term. But another thought occurred to her. “You know… Curt-Dono would never object to changes that save a life… And he’s more open to changing people who would want it, or would be better off for it.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, it would be hard for him to argue we aren’t doing good with it, if we actively seek out more targets like that, while we look for our new goddesses. We get the best of both worlds…”
“You know… I like the way you think. Let’s go!”
___
The two teleported to the local park, where a group of performers were trying to catch the attention of passers-by. Unfortunately, their tricks didn’t seem to appeal to the crowd, and the only person who stuck around to watch was an old woman, hunched over, as she sat on a bench on the other side of the street.
“There’s a perfect candidate,” Tomoyo told Skyla, pointing at the woman from a distance. “Her name is Sophie. She’s had her one-hundred and first birthday. Her body has been slowly failing her, and she never started a family. She could only be helped by a change.”
“Over a hundred, you say?” Skyla said. “That gives me an idea.”
She fired, and the years seemed to melt away. Sophie’s skin grew clearer, the wrinkles fading away as a layer of short, lavender fur. Her faded clothing wove itself into a full-length black dress, with a white apron and lace headband, the style simple, old-fashioned, and humble, the most extravagant item on her being a ruby necklace. Her shoes vanished, revealing her toes shifting into cat’s paws, with little retractable claws, and leathery pads, pads and claws her fingers gained, too. Her posture improved with each passing second, as if the weight of her age were being lifted off her shoulders, until she looked eighteen. Her ears moved up the sides of her head, turning triangular, and able to move independently. Her thinning gray hair turned brown as it became fuller. Her lips became less pronounced, and her nose turned pink and triangular as she grew whiskers and took a feline shape. Finally, a thin tail grew out a little hole in the back of her dress, splitting in two at the tip, and showing her to be one of the mythical Bakeneko.
Sophie continued watching the show, no longer concerned it would be one of the last things she ever saw. Her ear twitched for a moment, and she turned to look in Skyla’s direction. She smiled, and gave a friendly wave, before returning her attention to the show.
Skyla smiled to herself, then eagerly looked back to Tomoyo “Who’s next?”
Tomoyo spent the next hour leading Skyla across the park, from one “safe” target to the to the next. A pickpocket was reformed into a cute, generous dolphin maid. An unassuming, lanky young man became his secret bear fursona, her amazonian figure and sizable chest on full display. A blind woman grew bat wings through the back of her new dress, as her disability became little more than a distant dream. A man who’d been homeless for years found new employment as an adorable mare. A dangerously depressed girl became a beautiful butterfly. A boy bound to a wheelchair took flight as a cute little robin. A guy in a gang found new friends as a ferret. A woman fresh out of college, desperate for any kind of employment was hired on as a tall, busty anole lizard. And lastly, a furry artist’s “self portraits” became far more accurate, as she turned into a shark anthro in a surprisingly cutesy maid outfit.
“That’s ten,” Tomoyo said, taking the gun back. “Now, let me make one more goddess, and we’ll call it a day, for now.”
She took aim at a passing teenager, and let another bolt fly. In moments, the boy was shrinking, his body covered in black fur, with streaks of gold. His figure became slimmer, more petite, while his jaws stretched into a pointed snout ending in a wet, black nose. Her figure turned even more girlish, her hips growing subtly wider, while her clothes unraveled and vanished, replaced by a wide golden neckpiece and armbands. She picked up speed, one her new paws, her tail wagging behind her as she rushed to a nearby soccer field, watching as the game unfolded.
“And that’s Dina-Chan, goddess of games. One of the younger ones. Loves watching games unfold, and filling her followers with friendly, competitive spirit.”
The two watched with a smile as the nearby newly-made maids helped clear up the park’s trash, and the Game goddess cheered the children’s game on.
“This is GREAT!” Skyla cheered. “Beautiful, clean, devoted… It’s everything Curt deserves!”
“Exactly!” Tomoyo nodded. “We still need to be careful not to overwhelm him with too many, too soon. But with my mind-reading to help us find the perfect targets, we can steadily increase our numbers without him having to feel guilty about any of it!”
“It’s perfect,” Skyla agreed. “I just wish we could do more. And let him be involved. He wouldn’t want to miss all the changes, either. I wish there was some way to let him see what he’s missing out on, worrying about every little thing! We’re his maids! We’ll take care of any problem that comes up, if he’d just let us!”
“I know.” Tomoyo nodded, deep in thought. “Wait… let him see… That’s it!”
“What?”
“I’m thinking, if the other goddesses and I put our heads together, we could create a perfect storm of people that would be better off for being Curt-Dono’s maids. The hurt, the sick, the disabled. Those suffering depression, on the verge of ending it all. Those who don’t WANT to stress about thinking for themselves, and those that would rather have fur, feathers, or scales. Let him change them, and see the world improved by their coming under his wing. Maybe it would finally ease his worries, and loosen his trigger finger…”
“…One of the goddesses you made today controls sleep and dreams, right?” Skyla said. “We could use that for a steady stream of positive reinforcement as well. Show him all the ways things could work out for the better while he sleeps.”
Tomoyo stroked her chin. “That’s a good idea too…”
Skyla’s tails flicked back and forth a few seconds. “…It’s a big gamble… But I’d take it!”