"Wanda!" Tabby rushed forward and hugged blackish gold lioness, "look at you! You should have called me! Let me know what was going on."
Wanda's answer caught Tabby by surprise, as reality began to alter around them an as Wanda's "true love" powers activated.
"I'm sorry, brother," Wanda admitted, "things just happened quickly. Alpha Jensen and Kaylee came with Alice to the station when Madame Serenity was explaining to Gillie how the game could finally be killed to ask for our help against Kurse, who had attacked the Pack and enslaved part of it on an island in the middle of nowhere. I didn't have time to call you."
Instead of sounding somewhat startled by Wanda's use of a male gender term, Tabby answered, her voice already dropping into a deeper register.
"I could have helped," Tabby told Wanda, running a much more masculine looking hand along the bottom of Wanda's muzzle.
"It all happened too quickly," Wanda answered as she watched Tabby's shoulders widen and her chest shift from feminine breasts into very male pectorals.
They were silent for a moment or two as Tabby's clothes vanished to reveal Tabby's clitoris lengthening and shifting into a penis. Once her gender had firmly established itself as male, the next phase of the transformation began. Wanda watched silently as blackish gold fur began to grow on Tabby's body and protective sheath formed around her presently flaccid member.
"I'm sorry Tad," Wanda said to the transforming male, "I know you've always looked out for me."
"I may not be an officer," Tad told her and bent down to rub his nose to the tip of Wanda's muzzle, "but you're still my sister. Until you take a Prime Mate, I will always wish to protect you... as Pride mates and litter mates always do."
Wanda nodded and looked on as Tad's musculature and size began to enlarge. He grew taller as his feet grew longer, becoming digitigraded, though his hips remained aligned to allow for both bipedal and quadrupedal stances. Claws appeared at his fingertips, before retracting. A long blackish gold tail grew out from behind him, tipped with black fur.
Tad looked down on Wanda as his ears rounded and moved to the top of his head, and as his now black hair began to lengthen and wrap around his head and neck and onto his upper chest and back. Once his black mane had grown in, Tad's now golden eyes looked down to see leonine muzzle push out into his line of sight.
"Just as mother wants us to," Tad finished and rubbed the tip of his muzzle to Wanda's.
"Thank you, Tad," Wanda managed a weak smile.
"Are you seeing anyone?"
Tad glanced over to see Lexi and Nellie looking at him from their beds.
"Not at the moment," Tad commented, "though right now is not the time for flirtation."
The two sisters sighed. As they did so, a tired looking Jeff, Gloria, Maxwell, and Sonia made their way to the blackish gold male.
"Tad, are you needed anywhere today?" Maxwell asked.
"Today is a day off for me, it's why I came looking for my sister," Tad answered.
"Could you help Fran?" Jeff asked, "we helped yesterday, and we're exhausted now."
"I can, for today, at least," Tad told the two older male lions.
"Thank you," Sonia and Gloria yawned.
"You don't mind if I help, do you?" Tad asked as he turned to look at Fran.
"Help will always be accepted," Fran answered, "Just do everything I, Joy, or Ingrid tell you."
"Yes, ma'am," Tad said politely and then turned to Wanda, "and a Felman was calling for you. I think she wanted to ask something about Trever's family address. I told her to send the letter to the station, thinking one of you guys would deliver it to the family... as I didn't know you were all here and so badly hurt."
"I'm sorry Tad," Wanda said again.
"It's alright," Tan answered, "I think Gillie has the letter presently."
+++++++
"He's alive?" Gillie asked after a few moments.
As part of the first reality, she had remembered stories of her grandfather serving as Glendale's chief of police, and then remembered the betrayed venom in his parents voice when they discovered that it had been Jessie Smith that had used the game on him. From what he had been told, the transformation of his grandfather into a teapot had startled and practically broken his grandmother, whom she had never met in the old reality, or at least wouldn't have known if she had met her.
Jessie Smith's tenure as police chief was not one that many officers looked on fondly. True Jessie Smith did maintain law and order, but he also played a lot of political games that drug Glendale's police force through the proverbial mud. Marred by corruption, Jessie Smith left the force in bad shape that took years to repair.
And part of that was what had gotten Gillie, as Gill, into police work. She had been determined to find the teapot that her grandfather had been turned into and insure that people like Jessie Smith never used the game for such things again... which had been another source of Gillie's frustration in the original time line. She had worked hard to try and insure that no one did anything big with the game... and along came Kyle Perkins and Jennifer SMITH, using the game to turn the town into Lupman and forcing him to sacrifice twelve officers into Leomen.
How the Pride in the new reality didn't go to war with the Pack over that was beyond Gillie. Penny had said that it was a wolf named Jessie that had done it in the new reality. Whether or not Jessie and Jensen were still related by blood was unknown to Gillie, though in reality that link was gone. Mr. P in the original time line was Jennifer I's grandfather and Jennifer II's great grandfather, and Bartholomew Smith's grandfather-in-law.
In the new reality, Mr. P was Jensen's grandfather. Essentially Jensen had switched places with his mother in the family line, and something very similar also went for Bart. If Lupmen had last names, Jensen and Bart's surname would be the same as Patrick's and Jenny's, removing both of them from the "Smith" family.
"He is alive," Penny insisted, "he should be getting breakfast with Mother Glen and the others right now, if you want to meet him."
Gillie looked over to see that Robert had already lead "Tabby" away, which meant that by now Tabby was either a male lion or Wanda's blood sister. Gillie then sighed and bent down and hugged Penny. She didn't like it that Penny had transformed her grandfather into a leoman, as it also likely explained her own mutation... if a direct ancestor was a Leoman, it would only be logical to assume that she was a Leoman... although Gillie still wondered why she changed genders, but family was family. And if Jacob's idea of hypnosis worked, she'd finally be able to adapt to all these changes in reality.
"I've already eaten, but I'll come," Gillie spoke, "I have always wanted to meet my grandfather."
"And grandmother too," Penny commented.
"What?"
"Nothing," Penny only smiled.
++++++++
"That lupman that Marie Cruz called Jack couldn't have been "Jack the Ripper"," Lawrence commented after a few moments, mostly to his aunt, "He would appear in London until the eighteen hundreds, we're still in the sixteen hundreds."
"Doesn't mean there were similar criminals earlier," Betty commented, "what made "him" famous was his letters to the London police, which would be unusual, I think. Wouldn't most criminals prefer anonymity?"
"Could we please get away from that topic," Maddex spoke, "this story is already dark enough with drawing in discussions on one of the most barbaric murderers in history. I do not want my daughters having nightmares."
"Then perhaps it may be better for us to pause and let them go to the outside world," Marie spoke slowly, "as we are now rapidly beginning to approach the time when the point of the story could generate nightmares."
"No, please let us stay," Cassandra whined, "we'll be brave."
"Yes, we'll be brave," Lilly added.
"The witches weren't nice," Samantha spoke up, "they were mean and nasty, evil and vindictive. They hated us. They hated the Pride. They hated Glendale. I could feel it radiating off of them when I was Glass... and why I desperately wanted my sisters to save me. Bart, Jenny, Mary, and Kevin could have helped save me too, but they were too frightened by my initial attack..." Samantha sniffled, "I doubt they'll forgive me."
"Your half brothers and sisters have already forgiven you," Marie told Samantha, "they told me so in their dreams. They love you as much as Alice and Abbey do."
"You were in their dreams?"
"I'd come to apologize to you, and sensed their turmoil," Marie spoke, "and since Amy wasn't there to help, I thought I would lend a paw."
"Thank you, Marie," Samantha told the other glass wolf pup.
"We'll be brave," Cassandra and Lilly pleaded.
"Alright, but if it gets too dark, Samantha will be taking us to the outside world," Maddex told them, "Lawrence and Betty can give you a "G" version when your older."
"May I continue?" Marie asked.
The others nodded.