Alexandra felt it. It was happening again. She knew this feeling the way one knew the
phantom pain of a removed organ. She knew this feeling how one knew the pattern of
scars across one's own back. She knew this feeling very very well.
"No please!" Alexandra pleaded to the fates hugging the sleeping Kathy, "Not again! Please
please please not again! No more!" The city was suffering the exact same fate as Prince
Karther's castle. The madness had come again. Alexandra only saw the smallest tell tale
signs so far, the slight shifting of the sand walls, the slightest wobbling of the floor. But
her connection to this city made it scream loud and clear, the same deafening madness
that had consumed the castle was now about to consume the city as well.
Alexandra knew Lisa wanted her to stay put, and she didn't blame the angel in the least,
the entire city was by now certainly a war zone. But Alexandra also knew that staying in-
doors now was paramount to staying in the belly of a sleeping dragon about to wake up.
Alexandra had been a laborer, something she had been proud of herself for, so while
moving the utterly helpless Jennifer and sleeping Kathy was a daunting task, it wasn't an
impossible one for her. Lisa knew Lisa's makeshift barrier wouldn't last long anyway, and
Alexandra knew it was important to get outside! It may have been out in the open, but the
buildings themselves could very well very soon become the enemy!
Alexandra sighed and shivered. She put the revolver that Lisa had given her into the links
of the lower half of her harm attire hidden underneath the overwhelming concealing
traditional female arab attire. She then took hold of poor Jennifer, and hold of Kathy, it was
a slightly heavy load but in a demented part of Alexandra's mind, she couldn't help but
think that Jennifer due to her missing arms was a lighter load. Alexandra kicked open the
door, the walls staring to look like they were being seen through warped glass in places,
and pawing it as fast she could with her fellow servant and what had once been her prince,
she ran for one of the palace's exits, hoping beyond hope that the walls and hallways
didn't start shifting their locations on her.
+++++
Vicki and Lucy were likely flashes of light with their weapons, Lucy a maelstrom of near
unpredictability, and Vicki a distinct that managed to be beautiful and lethal at the same
time. Lucy almost had a right to be reckless, the clouds of sand being kicked up around
them healing Lucy's damage almost instantly. And there was one other big problem,
'She's not like me.' Vicki thought, 'If I destroy her shell, there's nothing to bind her spirit to
this world anymore, she'll die. Or... I hope so.' It sickened Vicki to think so, but Lucy's
spirit had been turned into such a cobbled together mess that Lucy had a hard time telling
heads from tails while looking at it. 'It's even possible that Lucy... that you don't even
exist... sorry, not going to believe that.' The battle was proving a stalemate now that Vicki
no longer had her overwhelming advantage of having flight not actually based on
aerodynamics. But as the walls and floors of the outer palace around Vicki began to waver
Lucy continued to act more erratic.
"Come Vicki! Let's sing together! Our swords made such lovely instruments! The pose is
arranged by us and us alone isn't it beautiful?!"
Vicki had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, she knew PRECISELY where she had seen
this before, back when she was just a fennec kitesune humanoid, one of Karther's toys
giving her mind back by T'. When the castle had gone mad and the wolf beasts that
appeared assimilating anything in their path. It was enough of a distraction that Lucy
stabbed her through a lung, the pain she had endured while being turned from a mortal
soul into an angel made it feel like a nail jab in her palm by comparison, stocking, and
painful, but not nearly enough to disable her, in one motion she sliced off the arm Lucy
had used, and used the moments Lucy needed to form a new arm from the sand to get
some distance between them, and sped up the healing process of her body a thousand
fold, causing the hemorrhaging to stop and the blood from filling her lung but leaving her
with less oxygen going through her system all the same. They fight had already caused
them to move quite a distance at least visually from Luna's test of wills with Natalie.
'You're the strongest minded of all four of us sis', I know you can save her.' Vicki though
as Lucy fully repaired hopped, skipped, and jumped straight at Vicki.
Vicki created a napalm grenade and threw it at the charging sand vixen who twisted in the
air with her sandy wings avoiding the blast behind her. Vicki dove into a random room
now totally on the retreat. Lucy just giggled. Vicki flying still dove into the room, which
was a bath chamber, and brought up her arms and wings when another grenade came at
her. This however was a flash grenade and instead temporarily blinded her, Lucy slashed
every which way forming a web of sword slashes around her.
"Why the big flash Vik'? I was flyin', ya could have turned part of me into glass and I would
have made so many pretty stars when they hit the ground and went crash!"
"You're my sister Lucy." Vicki spoke telling Lucy precisely where she was, however Lucy
also hear the nearly undetectable sound of something being thrown and dodged to the
side as her vision returned, the wave of heat told her it had been another napalm bomb.
"Why do ya keep usin' the same toy over and over? That's boring! Ya can make anything!
Be more special!" Lucky got sight of Vicki and slashed with a swing of her scimitar at a
distance. Like the blade of a swiss army knife, the blade of the scimitar folded over and
over and over with more mass than it could have had before nearly decapitated Vicki who
redirected her blood platelets to the new cut on her neck even as she threw another bomb
at her demented sister.
"Boring! Boring!" Lucy said droing her scimitar and flying to the ceiling forming hand holds
since she couldn't hover, "Come to me sister, come to us sister, King Tamthis is all, King
Tamthis will give us paradise."
"No," Vicki said simply, "Someone else already has the market cornered regarding those
items." She threw another grenade. Lucy instantly let go of the holds, and flew side ways
when Viki threw another grenade at the floor. "And they make a lot better sales pitch than
you."
"Geeze biggest big sister! Your arm sure is bad!"
"Just have to keep trying!" Vicki declared.
"Not if you run out of steam first!" Lucy extended her other scimitar. This time Vicki
ducked down and felt the blade glaze her backside. She threw a grenade behind herself.
"Whao! Now you're aim is really bad!" Lucy sad who was in front of her. "You're not gonna
win so just give up."
"I'd ask you the same thing, but I know you're too violated in your mind right now to think
straight. You might be unpredictable right now Lucy, but there is a price to be
unpredictable."
"Oh?" Lucy tilted her head.
"Makes it really hard to plan ahead!" Vicki created two more bombs and threw them to
either side of her. "There.... it just ended Lucy."
"HUH-?!" Lucy blinked her solid black eyes several time.
"Tell me Lucy, what do you see all around you?"
The half-mad winged sand vixen did..... "Glass?"
"On all six sides of you..." Vicki sad calmly.
Lucy again blinked as reality came crashing down on her, "Uh-oh." Lucy made an instant
turn for the exit.
"Not happening." Vicki said simply proving how fast she really and grabbed both of Lucky's
arms. Lucy instantly willed her arms to sand more on base reaction than strategy. Vicki in
that moment sent head through them... and in a moment Lucy's arms were solid glass.
Vicki grasped the sand vixen in the world's biggest hug and there was an intense flash of
white light and intense heat. When the light faded, everything but Lucy's head was solid
glass, and Vicki had her head on the sand vixen's head. Lucy's black in black eyes were
filled with panic.
"Don't move, or you'll be a glass sculpture." That managed to somehow get into Lucy's
now unhinged mind.
In a swift motion, Vicki brought the cross to Lucy's forehead and Lucy's face became one
of innocent awe and Vicki's one of strained concentration.
'There's.... so much damage... I think I can at least sever her connection to the city...
maybe... it's such a mess... I can do this... but this isn't going to be simple.'
In the sanctuary of glass, effectively cutting them off from the rest of the city's insanity,
Vicki began the slow and tedious process of patching Lucy's mind back into a semblance
of what it was before the wolf phobia phantom had infested her and get Lucy her identity
as Louis back. 'I can work on restoring her body AFTER I know she won't jump at me with
intent to kill.'
++++++
Luna and Natalie's fight wasn't a material one, not in the least, their bodies were locked
and frozen in place, the sheer force from the conflicting efforts keeping the wolf beasts
away and preventing them from even getting close to their alpha and pulling the intruder
off her. The spiritual pressure pushing out from the two was enough to knock back those
bold enough to try.
Luna felt them trying to worm their way into her, but these curses had been made to alter
and warp mundane souls, not an angel of God. She wasn't worried about being turned
back into a puppet, what realistically concerned her was her shell giving out before she
could effectively heal Natalie.
'Come on, come on, come on,' Luna thought. She pushed harder, not materially, but
mentally and spiritually. As feared, Natalie hadn't just had another personality put over her
original one like when they had been Karther's toys. Instead Natalie's true self had been
warped and twisted into something like an beast. But it was still the soul of a sentient
being no matter what shape it had been placed in. Luna didn't have much sublimity, and
delicateness was something else she lacked. If only Lisa was here, she might have been
able to do something better! 'But she isn't! I have to make due!'
In reality, Luna could feel the beast slowly forcing it's arm muscles to move with the full
instead of crushing the life out of Luna by compacting her brainpan. She didn't have
forever.
'NATALIE! It wasn't the name you were born with nor is it a name you chose for yourself
but it's the name I know you by! No one ever choses their family, but I don't care! Natalie!
Come on! Recognize me! Your sister! I understand things now that I couldn't couldn't be
understood! I realize things that I didn't know where there to realize! I am Messenger! And
my message to you is this! You are you! You are NOT an animal! You are NOT a monster!
You are NOT a slave! You are NOT a weapon! I can now appreciate when a solider needs to
follow orders... but you get to CHOSE whose orders you're supposed to be following! Ugh!
That piece of meat in your head isn't built for processing what I'm saying anymore is it?'
Luna felt the monstrous sized claws on her head. 'Okay! Fine! Let's try another language!'
Luna cleared her mind of all things, all worries, no particulars, and the majority of
thoughts, leaving only the base emotions and base feelings behind, and spoke with them
to beast called Natalie's own heart.
'Sister... sister family.... sister love sister.... family love family... family.... sister... protect...
sister protects sister... family... family protect family....don't hurt... no hurt... don't hurt...
love... sister love, family love... no hurt, no anger, no hate, no fury, no fire, no flame.
Family. Sister. Love. Pack-mates. Litter-mates. Cub-mates. Family. Love. Cubs love. Pack
loves. Family loves. Sisters love.
We family. I pack. I sister. I love.
You family. You pack. You sister. You Love.
We family. We pack. We sisters. We Love.
The link broke.
The wolf beasts charged at Luna, Natalie howled at them, they stopped stopped obediently
dead in their tracks. Natalie licked Luna's face. Luna slowly opened her eyes at look at the
beast named Natalie. There was no blood lust for her in those eyes anymore. But as for
how much intelligent, Luna couldn't tell. Natalie's vocal vocal cords weren't even made for
speaking so she couldn't tell the angel weather she was herself again or merely was now a
creature that now saw the angels as pack members. Forsaking all pride, Luna hugged the
monsterous sized wolf woman, tears coming down Luna's furry face.
"I did as much as I could Natalie, I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry."
++++++++++
The child angel vixen looked up at the Super Ego, "So just to recheck, Tamthis, all the
parts of him not assimilated yet by Tommy, all abandoned the body?"
"Yes." The Super Ego said simply. "The Id successfully absorbed the Wolf King Beast and
Wolf Queen Beast personas at your urging. And you were as far as I can surmise, able to
pacify the earliest version of Tammie originally created by Karther as a slave, into an
aspect of Tommy rather than Tamthis. And your shed self it seems is integrating as well."
"Shed self?"
The Super Ego pointed the wolf/vixen Kryiel who had melted to reveal the cherub
underneath. The melted material was now reshaping into a humanoid form again. And she
merely stood there.
With a glazed look in her eyes.
"I don't believe it." Kyriel said in the now mostly abandoned mental living room. "I thought
that part would just vanish."
"Logically you should consider your fortunate. Her presence means that you are free to
go."
"Eh?"
"You were assimilated into Karther's collective Ego. That is what enabled clarity to begin to
emerge. However, you, the cherub Kyriel are free to go, while the Wolf/Vixen Kyriel is now
a part of Tommy's mind, though she lacks self meaning."
Kyriel was silent for a moment before saying, "Then let's give her some!"
Taking the twin curved blades in both her hands, Kyriel now marched up to the Ego and Id
unopposed and sliced the manacles off of the Ego who fell to the floor hard, the impact
jarring it slowly awake. Kyriel looked at the Super Ego. "Can you keep the Id in check?"
"I am the Super Ego, it is my purpose."
"That's right let me loose baby!" The naked wolf man grinned.
"... like it or not.. you're a rightful part of the mind of my mother's best friend... " Kyriel
cut the manacles. The Id instantly jumped from the wall knocking over Kyriel on her tail
and began to dance around and howled at a moon that instantly came into existence
overhead. "That's right baby the king is back! Bouya!"
"You are not needed at this time." The Super Ego gave the Id a vulcan neck pinch from
behind. The Id fell silent and for the moment docile, as much as the Id could at least.
Meanwhile... the Ego was waking up. He got to his feet... disoriented... he shifted between
he and she... and shifted between having fox ears and a tail and not. But, he she did look
at Kyriel and say, "You... you're... I felt you..."
"She is Kyriel. An angel of God. She was born from the angel Tabra/Tabris and your best
friend Jake/Janice fusing into a new person. She is the child of the both." It had been the
wolf/vixen Kyriel who had spoke.
"Jake's gone-?!" The Id said in clear alarm. "My best buddy is gone-?!"
"His family will need to be notified." The Super Ego thought calmly.
The Ego tried to ask more, but was wobbling. The Id and Super Ego came to his side,
helping him stand, he started again, "Then, who are you?"
"I am a regulator, of the magical power still in this body and within our mind. Of the
power Karther gave us when he changed us into his queen, before the super imposed
personas took on a life of their own and destroyed Karther due to an idiosyncrasy in their
programming. I am technically part of the Super Ego, since I deal with control. The
magical programming that Karther implanted in us and became Tamthis had fled this
vessel. Being forced to behold clarity, it chose to upload itself into the threads of mana
that are holding the city he created for himself and his collected population in check.
However since I can behold our power rationally, I know this'll drive Tamthis completely
mad, and those within his city as well, NPCs with broken programming. I am also currently
the houser of our memories of what we did while Karther's lover, queen, and later king."
The Id looked at the cherub vixen Kyriel, "Let's slice this vixen in two and get our buddy
back!!"
Kryiel felt now was a good time to leave.
"Illogical. It would be murder. Murder is illegal."
The Ego was silent, apparently having trouble deciding if it was Tammie or Tommy.
"You're having trouble became most of the personas Karther made for us were female... it
left lasting impressions on us. Brought our feminine side more to the surface... women has
a masculine side so it's nothing personal."
"A short time in a female body should not bring about the end of a lifetime of a male
existence." The Super Ego said and the Ego agreed.
'Alexandra. Vicki, Luna, Erica, Lisa.' Kyriel thought, 'It wasn't a short time for them.'
"We should deal with the most pressing threat of the Tamthis persona." The Super Ego
said.
"No one messes with me!" The wolf man growled.
"For the sake of the fennec kitesune race and people." The vixen/wolf Kyriel said.
"Yes." The Ego concluded.
+++++++
Tamthis' body, which seemed to be having an identity crisis again, shifting from wolf, to
fox, to human with fox ears and tail, and female and male shifting to boot half-hazardly
walked disjointedly near to Kyriel's shell... which was now that of a humanoid fox of half
the age of what it had been before.
Erica and Lisa were naturally on edge, but this was Tammie after all, short time or not one
of their sisters in there, and Kryiel was, apparently in there too... and Jasmine had said so,
and they knew beyond all doubt they could trust the senior angel's word.
Tamthis' body shuddered, and Kyriel got up on her hands and feet... she looked at her
hands and then her entire furry body... "This is no good." The child said, "None of my
armor is going to fit like this." She willed a light bow into existence, at least her weapons
would work.
"Sis'? Is that really you?" Lisa asked.
Kyriel looked up and smile and nodded. "Yep."
"Your shell's so cute!" Lisa gave the smaller Kyriel a hug.
Kyriel blushed, this was the first one on one hug she had been given in her entire life!
Jasmine wasn't all that surprised by this turn of even. Even if Erica was wondering why the
heck Kyriel was suddenly in the shell of a little girl!
"You can say 'I told you so.'" Kyriel said calmly to Jasmine.
"... I do not believe I will."
Erica and Jasmine, didn't let their eyes stray from Tamthis' body, whose stance was
wavering this way and that, holding his head. He shrunk down, his muscle mass and tails
decreasing. Finally, for the moment at least a humanoid kitesune male Tommy stood
before them, his loin cloth fell off him, too big for him now. He didn't really seem to
notice. "Ugh.... what's going on?..." He asked no one in particular trying to make sense of
his memories.
++++++++++
Tamthis was like a virus in his own city. The arabs had a saying, then you just need to go
to the mountain. Tamthis had done this, or rather Queen Tammia, who was now one and
the same again, had done this once before, drawing in all the magic and mass that had
accumulated in the city and absorb it into himself. Thanks to the meddling of the two
japanese kitesune, that was impossible now, their intrusion into the threads of magic had
rendered a second performance of this trick impossible. But Tamthis was determined and
instead simply brought his mind into his city, abandoning his body for now and would
reclaim it or simply create a new one at a later date.
This time at least, Keiko and Akane were prepared for another set of booby traps trying to
twist them into creatures that were outlets of Tamthis' insanity that had originally been
Karther's insanity before Tamthis had consumed it along with Karther's power.
Julio sadly was out like a light, and would be for the foreseeable future. There would be no
quick save from the miracle tick this time. And suddenly Keiko and Akane weren't simply
dealing with automatic defenses and booby traps, but a conscious will and design.
The locals meanwhile, were going from strange to stranger to bizarre! Children rod their
parents like they were horses, and was no game of 'Horsey.' A toddler became an old
woman in a matter of minutes then a manly sandstone statue. A chatting couple blurred
together into a giant animal that had the head of a wolf on one side and a fox. Others
simply walked backwards while talking sideways. The building along the main street were
the japanese kitesune were quivered and wavered like they were made of jello and join
together then disconnected like a mix of clay and construction blocks.
Kitesune were crazy, and so Akane and Keiko were able to ride with it, but their job had
just gotten much harder.