Jasmine walked through the hall of this new building in a daze. Something had happened that she didn't understand, and now she was in a strange new body. It was a lot like the body of a female human, but some bits of her own body remained, like her ears and tail. She wasn't sure how it had happened; one minute she'd been coming to see the boy who fed her, and the next her whole body was changing. And somehow she knew a few more things than she had before; this was a place where growing humans would go to learn things, and...she was supposed to be going here?
That didn't make sense; she wasn't a human. But then again, she kind of was, now. But there had been that human who thought she shouldn't be there, even though it seemed that she was, and so she'd had to make a wish that it would be okay for her to be there. But how had she known that? It was like there was some other creature inside her as well, who knew all about this...this "school" she was in and this stone she was carrying, and how to speak the human language to use it.
There was the second wish she'd made, too; the males were all paying attention to her, but for some reason it made her feel uncomfortable. She should be enjoying the attention of the males; she knew that much, although she'd never experienced those herself, having been..."spayed" when she was very young. Now she had felt a little bit of the feelings she'd been missing, but it had felt wrong somehow. And so she'd made a wish for a "bra," which kept these "breasts" of hers still. She'd seen them before; the two human females at her house had them, but she'd never known what they were for until now. Somehow, it seemed like she was learning anything she wanted to know from the other creature; was it the other creature who was uncomfortable?
Yes, that was it. The other creature was a male, or had been before this change. It was his body that had been changed, and he wanted it back. Jasmine suddenly felt frightened; if he took her new body back, where would she go? She was determined not to let him take over, but she couldn't quite shut out his influence. He was panicking, she could feel it, and he was guiding her to...it wasn't the litterbox, but it was something similar. She didn't to use the...the "bathroom," but now the other creature was getting back control of this body. Jasmine was very scared now, and began struggling to get back in control.
Jon was panicking for all she was worth. He'd stepped onto the teleporter, his cat had joined him, and all ofa sudden she was a teenage cat-girl at her school. This would have been bad enough by itself, but somehow Jasmine was inside her head, trying to get control of their new shared body. Jon was managing to keep her out of the cockpit for the moment, but what if she did get control? Jasmine was only a cat, but Jon could feel someone reading bits and pieces of knowledge out of her brain; it was like Jasmine was learning things from her.
She had to get this resolved before Jasmine figured out how to get and keep control, but she couldn't do any wishing in public view; she was just lucky Jasmine had known to make those first couple wishes under her breath. So she was heading for the bathrooms, in hopes of getting enough privacy to put a stop to this. She dashed into the girls' bathroom and tried to ensure her control long enough to make a wish.
Staring back from the mirror was a teenage girl with a slender build, a modest figure, long tawny blonde hair, and the ears and tail of a cat, covered in light calico fur. She was dressed in ill-fitting men's clothing, except that she had a bra on undeneath her shirt. A pretty dight, but not one Jon wanted to be seeing in first-person. She clenched the stone and hoped she could keep control. "I wish," she said, "that I would..."
"...be wearing the kind of clothes the males like," Jasmine finished. Suddenly, her male clothes were replaced by a somewhat low-cut black tank-top and a matching black skirt that, while not extremely short, showed a fair bit of leg. She smiled; she knew that she still had to make the other creature give up control for good, but she did want to make sure she'd be getting attention from the boys. But she probably shouldn't have delayed; now that annoying other creature was trying to get ahold of her new body again. Who was he? Why wouldn't he go away and leave her alone?
Suddenly she knew. It was the boy who fed her. Her body and his had been merged when she'd come to visit him this morning, and he was trying to get control so he could change back. Jasmine almost felt bad; she wasn't a dog, she didn't have their blind idiot loyalty to any creature that fed or petted them, but the boy had always been kind to her, and she was as fond of him as was acceptable for a cat who valued her autonomy. She didn't want to have to make him feel bad.
But she had no choice. This was her body now, and she knew all kinds of things she hadn't known before, and she couldn't give it up, not even for him. She'd try to think of a way to make him happy with this arrangement, but she'd have to secure her control first. And this regret she was feeling was making that difficult, difficult enough to where the boy was getting control back.
Karyn had just ducked into the ladies' room to take a bathroom break when she saw Jasmine standing by the mirror. She and Jasmine had been friends for as long as she could remember; they had met so early in life that she hadn't even realized there was something weird about being friends with a cat-girl. Years later, she and Jasmine had found out that Jasmine was the result of a bizarre and highly illegal genetics experiment; the family Jasmine had grown up with were her adoptive parents, who'd raised after a raid on the lab where she was created. But by that point, Karyn didn't care about the strangeness of it all or the taunts from the otherkids; Jasmine was her best friend, and nothing was going to change that. For most of her life, Karyn and her cat-girl friend had looked out for each other.
But something was wrong. Jasmine seemed like she was off in her own little world, fighting with herself, alternating expressions as she stood in front of the mirror. What was happening to her?
Jon finally wrested control from her cat, and clenched the stone tighter than ever. "I..." she began, but the words just wouldn't come. "I...I..." She desperately wanted to wish Jasmine out of her head, but somehow Jasmine was tenaciously holding her back from actually doing so. Suddenly, she became aware that Karyn was standing just behind her, staring at her in the mirror. She turned to her friend. "Karyn!" she yelped, holding out the stone. "Help me!"
Karyn had no idea what Jasmine's problem was, but something was clearly very wrong. She took the stone and thought for a moment. "I wish," she said, "that I knew what was going on with Jasmine."
She gasped as the answer formed in her brain. So Jasmine had originally been a boy and his cat? She didn't know what to do. She wanted to side with the cat-girl she knew and loved, but she couldn't bring herself to betray the Jon she now remembered, her other best friend. Caught between two loyalties, which one should she choose?
