(AN: Was hit bad emotionally this week, at least twice. This is pathetic of me. And I had the
title for this chapter thought of since. I profusely apologize for this chapter. If you're still
out there unknown, let me know! Seriously, sorry about this pathetic mess of word salad. I
pray to high heaven I can get back in my groove after this fiasco. I REALLY REALLY hope to
get back on schedule. )
(AN: WHAO! S1!!!! I didn't expect someone to post a reply just when I was beginning to get
my brain back together! Whao! YOU DID however render a scene I wrote for Lilly and
Casandra redundant. But I'll take out mine since you still showed the twins as unique
individuals unlike the triplets and your stuff is too flattering to not use. And again, sorry
this addition is so chaotic. )
There were twenty eight mangled total. Sixteen pride. And twelve pack.
That was twenty-three pack members not counting the triplets, alphas, and Martha
unharmed. That left Roger and Robert's sub-packs being the only ones not having a
suffering spouse. The single wolves Sarah, Trinity, Sunny, and Luna made an extra four. So
that was twenty seven. With Darla and Julie helping now that was that twenty-nine to
help. This was before counting those who had dropped from exhaustion like Fran though.
With the triplets the only ones with full on medical training sans the triplets first-aid
lessons to the rest of the pack. And Mr. P didn't have hands, so his help was limited, and
the gargoyles were for the moment still on the island in case of unforeseen trouble and
the shadows were who-knows-where at the moment.
The alpahs, plus Roger and Fran were both out like lights, and Amethyst was with the gem
twins and the teens were on the island. In short, it was a mess. A complete and total one.
It was going to slow going for both lions and wolves for quite some time. It might have
been logical to just transport the lot of them to the hospital, but the medical wing at the
estate was made precisely for the wolves and the lions were best left where they were
rather than moving them.
The japanese she-wolves' 'condition' would have crippled them if not for their super
strength. And unlike the triplets of even Amethyst who very much large in that regard, the
Japanese wolves maternal material dove straight into parody territory and didn't look back.
It had been the entire point when they had been statues to have breasts double the size of
beach balls that looked positively ridiculous in spite of the she-wolves own towering
height. And none of the triplets were in a position to perform the surgery the japanese
wolves had discussed among themselves for so long to free themselves of their humiliating
curse. When growing up they had been enough to make even Ameythst jealous... if she
actually ever got jealous instead of telling them how great they looked. But they had never
stopped growing until after they hit adulthood, and they had all been early bloomers.
Maxine, Robyn and Millie wondered if Yomoto was also super sized down there, but where
told they were still too young to be thinking about such things.
Penny would have preferred to confirm that the wolf pack was indeed now harmless, but
her legs left her in no condition to go anywhere the day. Penny damaged legs were
something else reality would take longer to adjust to. Having gained her power just that
week, and having gone to the gallery wing set aside for curse victims to free Kathy and the
others and getting her legs tendons cut by the japanese wolves who were there for the
same thing would take time for reality to digest.
The pride was currently less than one third the size of the pack. But once the pride
members had interacted with their loved ones after being mended due to their power
(which was quickly becoming a subconscious power) this would be very much correct.
If Penny had been with the pride it would have been much simpler to have had her gotten
her damaged legs on Big Bad Island, but being at home with her restored fiancee and his
parents, that wasn't an option. Penny just wondered how long she could put off calling her
parents. 'The world is twisting about so fast, so hard, I feel like I'm going crazy... at least
Kirk's with me if I do go nuts.'
++++++++++++
Father Paul and Father Mike. Two men cursed, one to have a monkey tail, another to be a
naked orange ape, having come out of the affair intact had begun tirelessly preparing
more of the cure to finally end the curse now that they finally had the aid of those with
authority to use it, opposed to people who thought the curse was just something to live
with. The cure passed by Merlin the first, the 'man of the woods.' Of course Michel
insisted to his brother that he rest, but the cursed preacher was nothing if not dauntless
and signed to his brother he wished to help him. The sooner they closed the door on the
curse forever the better.
Neither brother even spoke, or even brought up the idea of using the game now that
witches' awareness was gone to use the game to restore themselves. Both had come to
terms with their fate. Both had accepted it. And Paul had pretty much gotten used to
having an extra set of hands.
+++++++++++++
Being effectively guests at Wolf Manor until their fathers and step-mother were back in
one piece, the eight lion cubs took to going outside, the one place that didn't feel crowded
or rushed. Moja and Tano with their sisters behind them observed the estate.
"It looks so empty without the gargoyles." Tatuli said looking around.
"I still think the fountain could use some figures." Said her sister Nneli.
"Why do I get the gut feelings we've been down that road before?" Mbili wondered.
That was when they notice Amethyst and most of the gem wolves being led outside.
"This could be interesting." Nane said interested.
+++++++++++++
Amber did her best to keep up with the others with zeal as they circled the herd to corral
them through the ocean's reflective surface, through the world within mirrors with Alice
and Abbey's help.
The insanity of Kurse's attempt to twist the entire world into a cesspool of chaos, and the
gruesome injuries all who had suffered save those who had been Kurse's puppets had left
everyone drained. Even after a goodnight's sleep everyone was still emotionally burdened.
Since the pack and pride had never been at odds, the reality shift would need a good
reason for why the herd had been transplanted to Big Bad Island to begin with.
+++++++++
Marie before meeting Lilly and Casandra, Betty and Lawrence.
After being turned into animal monsters, the children weren't exactly thrilled at the idea of
becoming something else. SO thankfully Marie wasn't bombard with questions on doing
magic favors being a white magic user.
She kept falling asleep, which she was pretty sure she'd keep doing until the shift in reality
was complete. The cruise yacht was going to take quite a while to reach it's port, leaving
Marie safe and sound with only crew and passengers until the ship came to port.
Maybe her naps was due to reality using her perhaps as a 'mortal' perspective. Maybe. Who
knew with chaos? But one cord, as her sanity danced on the edge, struck, as she felt reality
ever shifting to repair itself from the influx of chaos.
"Trevor and Queen... never were?" Marie, "No, you, don't!"
Some would call it campy to call what happened rape. They were wrong. The fear was
there, the pain, the lingering ghosts, and the horrid, overwhelming wrongful -shame-.
The sick memory of some base part of your body felling -pleasure- while your body, and
here mind spirit and soul, were all utterly and completely violated. Kurse's fun house
mirror of paradise.
No amount of revisions to reality could change what had happened. Samantha entrancced
and remade by Gamorah and Golgatha into the (first) witch Glass, and lured the the small
cruise ship to Big Bad Island, and -everyone- on board were remade into things of
absolute ddepravity to be the ring of protection to the dance of chaos.
And how reality was doing it's hardest to make sure those transforms that included
'always were' and 'memories revisions' for the pack and pride became as they should be in
time.
Marie remembered a story she had overheard once.
The lizard and dust.
If you turned a man completely into a lizard, fully and completely: was it any different if
you turned a man to dust, and swept away the dust and put a lizard in it's place and
claimed that was the man?
"But it would not be the same dust." Marie thought, "And I'm going to try my bloody
hardest to make sure this 'dust' remains with the other 'dust!' "
Reality couldn't be sued, arrested, put on trial, made to follow the rules of society as
defined by the local culture and law, it simply was. It wasn't good or evil, it was only doing
what came naturally to it, doing it's best to create consistency after the chaos that had
infected it. It couldn't be argued with, not pleaded with, not provoked with brave
speeches.
"Reality is neither kind nor cruel, it has no heart to be either. Reality has no plot or
agenda, no higher court to take it to."
Reality as a rule followed the path of least resistance when healing itself.
Marie wondered what penance she'd end up paying for twisting reality a certain way even
as it tried to heal.
A tabby queen, (as was the name for any cat who had had kittens), had come across the
cub Trevor, and thought him a tabby male, perhaps her sense of smell wasn't that good,
or maybe she trusted her eyes more than her noise, or maybe she was just that desperate
with so many males in Glendale neutered.
Trevor wanted the cat gone, and had tried several times, even when his makeshift
guardian Madan Serenity told him to be polite to the poor cat to be friends with her. It was
ironically what his sister Sabrina would have said too (or Nala as she loved to be called at
school as a joke on the famous movie even if she didn't even remotely look the part).
Queen as he named her didn't understand the aging progress difference between mundane
cats and liomans.
Trevor had dreams. Dreams where he was a mundane cat, had fallen in love with Queen
and had a litter with her. Needless to say for an eight year old going on nine these dreams
were very confusing and very odd.
With construction work being done on the front of the mansion, Trevor attempting to visit
his friends in secret with Queen following had ended in disaster. The four legged, titanic,
and elderly werewolf 'Mr. P', had smelled Queen and Trevor and not recognizing their
scents had attacked them, Queen was dead, eaten, and Trevor with his leg bitten through.
Trevor had wandered along bleeding until he collapsed and was found by Judas and taken
to the local catholic church.
Roughly at the same time Mary was confronted by a very dangerous man who didn't seem
to human, lioman, or luman. A tourbus with bad breaks saved her life who had been led to
the church by Judas who had reintroduced the two pack mates to each other. The two had
hugged each other not having seen each other in over a year since Trevor had vanished
into thin air papers calling it suicide.
Mr. P of course had profusely apologized for what had happened and even offered up his
own life in exchange to restore his honor but that offer had been thankfully been
declined.
Mr. P was old. Quite old. Maybe even well over a hundred if his world war one tales were
to be believed. But he was still muscular, didn't have a shade of gray on his black and gold
fur, and was still even going about on his four legs as towering as his great-grandson
Jensen near nine feet being the tallest member of the pack. (It was a bit of a joke on how
the lionesses were about nine feet on average and the male lions even larger!).
Terri and Sandi rumored he had found the fountain of youth at the price of standing up
right. Jasmine thought he might have very well have been THE Big Bad Wolf that european
fairy tales told about and their pack was named after. Though she was quickly and harshly
berated for that rumor given how Mr. P acted nothing like the titular cannibalistic stalker.
Megan chalked it up to just healthy living and suggested maybe he just had a genetic
condition that left him mutate into a quadruped in his elderly years opposed to getting
old and gray and a similar condition would pop up in the rest of the pack when they got
'his age' (whatever that was). This left began on the receiving end of Kaylee's wrath after it
gave the pups nightmares.
Then of course was the theory put forth by none other than Zelipe that maybe 'Mr P.' was
a REAL werewolf, one of the legendary shape shifters who appeared in the movies, but Mr.
P didn't really seem the blood-thirsty psychotic type that ALL sources said werewolves
were.
None of the lesser pack members knew which rumor if any was true. All anyone knew was
that while 'Mr. P' was no longer alpha male, when he spoke, all listened, including Jensen
and his eldest child (by several seconds) Jenny. Jensen still had a replacement tooth from
where he had foolish challenged his great-grandfather as Patriarch a short time before he
had married Kaylee and the triplets.
Mr. P himself just seemed content to be with his great-grand children being his protector.
+++++++++++
The shadows stood like the zombie puppets they were. Nothing on the inside, just
shadows with strings connected to the two pups Jenny and Bart. They had names of
course. But they only matter as far as the file name in a computer matter. It was simply
something to create the pretense they were people. Jensen had not wanted the shadows to
be caught underfoot during the war with the pride and had sent them away. Now they
were still victims of the curse, and there had been no reason for the pride or pack to be in
conflict ever. But that still left six shadows, three of them former males.
Reality's natural reaction was to remove any of the pack or pride having originally been
human what so ever, and both the pride and pack both being part of the same pack/pride.
Of course the pack had Wolf Manor (never formally Smith Manor), or Big Bad Manor or the
like to act as a central place for the wolf pack's commune. What reality would do to
conjoin the pride together besides the majority of them being part of the police force was
an unknown at this point since they would be linked to the wild game grounds the herd
would inhabit.
However the shadows were human, and while reality was trying it's hardest to remove any
link the pack or pride had to the game, the simple truth was that it could not do this
totally since reality could NOT advert or remove the destruction of Gaal's shade, or Kurse's
defeat.
Bart and Jenny had gotten their turns from a little boy named Billy who had gotten it from
his mother after she had Dared him to do his homework every night until he moved out to
collage, who had gotten it from a woman who had Dared her to become a nudist, do a
dance, and transfer a fortune to the other woman's checking account, and so on.
Billy had given them a harmless Dare thinking they'd use the Transform to make him a
wolf boy, but Bart and Jenny had biggest ideas.
The eldest twins were like almost the emperor of china had been, while they were not
prisoners per-say of their own home, Jensen made sure they were always protected, and
their time outside the estate's grounds was still always carefully monitored by any number
of loyal protectors.
Bart and Jenny were still as smart as before reality began to streamline existence, having
knowledge and IQs that were that of collage courses. Alice, and to a lesser extent
Samantha and Abbey, were masters of semantics, the beautiful structure of words.
Kevin and Marcy of course had to deal with growing up how all their siblings seemed to
have mutant super brain power while they did not. Thankfully both were still too young
and carefree to really give it much though.
They actually scared the other pups sometimes with how smart they were and some of the
adult wolves. The tutors weren't kidding when they said Jensen two eldest pups were
possible in fact smarter than their parents when it came to business and law.
It was Bart and Jenny, in light of recent events, who had confessed their acts to their
parents and to the police. Knowing they couldn't be taken seriously in the outside world,
in spite of their intellect. So, as children wanting recognition, they came up with their
clever if short sighted scheme. The pack had no humans in it's employ, it didn't need
them. The sheer ingrained altruistic loyalty of the pack members insured responsibilities
were seen to.
But being out and about, Bart and Jenny only needed to lure six hard working employees
of some of the pack's businesses, to them. And Bart and Jenny through them proved how
brilliant they really were. Which had, in this reality, set off the chain reaction of events.
Of course there was the fact it had been done by a pair of nine year olds. The idea both
had been under the influence of the malice of the curse rather than just being foolish or
selfish children was a much more palatable story for many rather than two children who
had used the power of the game to turn six people into their shadows on their own. After
all, they were children, they couldn't possibly understand the full scale of what they did,
could they? Whatever the case, given this was Glendale, and how those cursed and those
who cursed had been almost always turned a blind eye towards by the law, the only true
punishment Bart and Jenny faced was from their parents. And that was awe inspiring and
terrible.
In the aftermath, it was easier to blame the echoes of three wicked witches and their
familiars than it was to blame two children. This included the rest of the pack and their
parents. Of course, who was to say even this version of things would remain in place for
once, or weather reality had created this version of events just as a stop gap for a proper
assimilation of things?
Amy had awoken her brother after Martha had for the moment taken her eyes off of the
pup's bedroom (which seemed larger than before once again and now had five double
bunk-beds on the far side, then again, the entire manor and estate did with a larger
family and the resources of the various pack mates now in one basket as reality brought it
all together).
"Ammi?" Zelipe slurred.
Amy nodded, "Come on Zel-kun', we have something we need to do."
"Wha...?"
"Something wrong we need to set right... just because we're Big and Bad doesn't mean we
have to be awful." Amy took her brothers hands and let him along. Zelipe himself going
along for the ride as he felt he always did. It was always one of the others who led, he was
always the wallflower in the embrace of his mother.
With nearly everyone either outside or in the medical wing, the manor created the illusion
of being deserted. There was the giant she-wolf statue in the entry way of course. Zelipe
couldn't shake the feeling that it was looking at them amused even though Zelipe
remembered when the pack had put it together inside the house because it wouldn't fit
inside the front door in one piece. Zelipe didn't act when his sister just smiled and nodded
as if in recognition looking the giant statue in the eyes.
"Amy.. why do you always need to be so vague?" He asked his half-sister. While he had
been born a VERY short time before Amy (their mothers had gone into labor on the same
day), she always acted as if the elder sibling, leading along.
"... I'm not sure Zel-kun. I think I just think like that."
They came then to the basement. It was filled with lots and lots of junk various pack
members had no further use for and as a tradition were systematically sold off, most
recently off of ebay. The commune mentality of the pack helped this along.
Also standing in a line as if called there were six people in business suits, three women
who looked a lot like Jennifer The First had before becoming Jenny the wolf cub, and the
others who looked pretty much like Bartholomew Smith before becoming Jensen's son
Bart.
"So this is where Jensen-Sama and Alpha-Female-Sama have kept you."
"Sis... these are those people Jenny and Bart changed with the games... what are they
doing here?"
"They're here so we can free them. They can't answer yes or no to the game anymore
because they just puppets now. But their souls and minds are still there, simple now giant
mirrors for Bart and Jenny's wills and intents. And Bart and Jenny now that things are over
want to make amends for this..."
Zelipe nodded understanding as the two split up and began touching the statues.
However, Amy whispered one thing in her half-brother's ear, his eye went wide, then he
nodded though not fully understanding Amy's intent.
"You are a big bad wolf... like Martha's kind. You are a big bad wolf... like Martha's kind.
You are a big bad wolf... like Martha's kind. You are a big bad wolf... like Martha's kind.
You are a big bad wolf... like Martha's kind. You are a big bad wolf... like Martha's kind."
The six shadows eyes widened, and with it came recognition, awareness, and
independence, and a drive of self again, they were self aware before, but everything had
been just an echo of Jenny and Bart's intents before now, slowly, that was changing.
The fur grew first. Two of the men's fur was silver like Martha's only both with bluish
highlights. Another was gold (like Giselle and Gretchen). Two of the women were silver
with red markings (on her chest looking like a nurse's red cross), and silver with reddish
orange highlights. Their eyes blinked, and became a solid color like Martha's were, with
colors that matched their highlights.
Their faces grew into the familiar fang filled muzzles. Their fingers and toes became non-
retractable claws, which they quickly used to tear away the clothes that felt both alien and
restrictive on their bodies now even as they felt feeling other than urges to do as their
pups would have them do and satisfaction of a job well done and blind loyalty to the ones
whom they had been shadows of.
Two fully tails grew out of each of their rears. Their muscle masses increased, though
remaining agile and lithe, they also grew to six feet, then the men seven feet tall.
It seemed instead of having four nipples, for the the men something else had been
doubled like a pair of sheathed samurai swords. Did this technically make them
marsupials? Amy demented wondered if Martha now had two opening between her legs.
The one with silver highlights moaned, but not in pain as her body transmuted more, a
second pair of tails grew from her rear, then another. Then -four- extra arms grew from
her, as did four breasts, and finally, like a mirror trick, three heads from from her one
head, all three together possessing a combined consciousness. In spite of all this, nothing
seemed.. crowded on her... everything looking like it perfectly biologically belonged. The
first thing that entered her minds were, 'I hope Madam Martha isn't jealous of us. Though
maybe we should help the Beta-Females.' Unlike Martha however, she did not have the
third eye.
Only the orange-red highlighted one kept her hair which curled up into a upwards style.
The rest quickly became 'bald.'
The third eye appeared on the two males with blue highlights. The third female who also
grew a pair of arms but kept a singular head and one pair of breasts. The two blue
highlighted males like a mirror trick also soon had two heads, each pair connected to a
singular brain. Then came the two males second pair of arms. The one with blue and gold
highlights thought, 'I hope Martha thinks I'm beautiful.'
They knelt in the shredded remains of those clothes and looked at each other and
themselves.
Amy said, "In the name of Alpha Male Jensen-Sama. Speak the pack creed, and tell us
your names, fur color, and purpose." There was no point asking for family names, the
pack members didn't use last names, the pack was their family after all, it disrupted their
sense of unity. 'Please.' Amy thought, 'Let them have SOULS again!'