Karyn called Jon that night.
"Jon, I have some ideas," she said.
"For getting you back to normal?"
"Oh, I already figured that out, you're a smart guy, you probably would have gotten it eventually if you haven't already come up with it. But it's not urgent, and I was going to try out the changes for a little longer first. I mean other things."
"What's your solution, and and what other things?"
"Wish I had asked for biological specimens in jars of preservative rather than new parts of my actual body that are attached to me, and use the stone to make other magical artifacts."
"Wait, slow down. Don't hit me with two completely different ideas at the same time."
"You asked for them both so I gave you them both," she said hurriedly.
"Ok, the first one, oh wait, I think I know what you're saying, you wish you HAD big breasts and long blonde hair, and they could be things that you HAVE like you HAVE a car or a computer, so you'd just HAVE a collection of severed human body parts."
"Yeah, that's it."
"Cool. Yeah, that should square everything, there's no way that could fail. We can fix you whenever you want, if you want to try it for a little longer, just let me know, or I can just give you the stone for now, I don't want it to fall into the wrong hands, but I'm sure that if your hands are as good as mine."
"And then magic artifacts. Could a magic artifact that was created BY the stone be able to reverse its own effects?"
"I don't know. You mean like, let's say an antigravity gun, so you shoot something with the gun, and it becomes weightless, and then you shoot it again and it gets heavy again?"
"Yeah, something like that," she said.
"I honestly don't know. You'd THINK that would be allowed. After all, it's the gun that would have been created by the stone, so you'd think the only thing the stone wouldn't be able to do is destroy the gun. Except that you'd also think the stone wouldn't be able to create an artifact that is more powerful than the stone itself, capable of doing things the stone can't, otherwise you could just wish for another stone that CAN undo its own effects. And for that matter, you'd also think the damn stone could just undo its own effects too in the first place if it can do pretty much anything else, but apparently it can't. So I don't know. Neither way makes complete logical sense to me. But things involving the stone are where logic breaks down because I guess that's what magic is. I guess we have to try it."
Jon got out the stone. "I wish for an antigravity gun, which would make anything it hits weightless the first time you shoot it with the gun, and the second time, it gives the object its weight back, and you can just keep doing that, turning on and off the gravity on the object every time it is hit with no limit."
A funny looking gun appeared. Jon was cautious though, and didn't know how the beam, or whatever it shot out, would propagate, so he didn't want to test it in his room, lest it cause his entire house to become weightless, or for the beam to be so penetrating that if it was aimed just a little bit down, it might send large portions of the Earth flying into space. In fact, he was afraid that it would make the air weightless and cause large portions of the atmosphere escape into space too, so it might not even be safe to fire it straight up while outside.
"So does it work?" Karyn asked.
"I just realized that I need to fine tune how the gun behaves before I try it, it could be extraordinarily dangerous the way it is."
"You're no fun," she said.
"We'll try that one later, after I have cogitated about it a bit. Do you have any suggestions?"
"Yeah, a few. How about another one that changes the sex of anyone it hits."
"Let's NOT do something that requires you to test it on a live specimen first. Because if it IS irreversible..."
"Yeah, yeah, I get it, you're such a downer," she said. "Ok, how about a device for turning water into root beer, or root beer into water."
Jon paused for a moment. "You know what? That might just be stupid enough to work."
"Gee, thanks," she said sarcastically.
"Hang on, I'm putting down the phone to get a cup from the kitchen."
He got everything together, he filled it up with tap water from his bathroom, he wished himself up a magic rootbeer gun, and fired it at the water. The water turned brown.
"Well, the water turned brown at least."
"Have a taste," she said.
"Oh, thank you for encouraging me to throw caution to the wind and just gulp down any given mysterious brown liquid, your concern is touching," he said back.
"Oh come on, it has to be actual root beer, isn't the only question whether the gun can turn it back into water?"
"I was kidding. I'm tasting it now," he drank some. "It tastes like root beer to me. With high fructose corn syrup, I can tell. I should have asked for a DIET root beer gun."
"Beggars can't be choosers. I'm sure you could sell the gun as it is for a million dollars," she chided.
"Yeah, yeah, if I had the right buyer for it, one who had a lot of money and wouldn't ask questions about where it came from. Time to try turning it back into water."
He fired it at the root beer. It went clear. He sipped it. "It's water again." He hit it again. Brown. "Root beer again... water... root beer."
"Considering the human body is mostly water, what would happen if you shot a person with that thing?"
"Let's not find out. Though for that matter, ROOT BEER is mostly water too, so I'm hoping the answer would probably be, nothing would happen, since it wouldn't be hitting water OR root beer, since the definition of water as determined by the gun must be so narrow that root beer itself isn't already considered to be water, so I'd think a living thing wouldn't be considered to be water either. I'm still not going to test it though."
"Then you will never become root-beer-man, with mighty carbonated powers," she jabbed.
"I'd rather not infuse myself with 70 thousand calories worth of high fructose corn syrup which would nearly instantly kill me with diabetic shock, if I wasn't killed even faster by the carbon dioxide. But it looks like the test is a success. Items can be made that can reverse their own effects. PROBABLY items can't be made that can effect the effects of wishes directly made to the stone itself though, it would really surprise me if they could, because then it would REALLY raise the question of why the stone won't undo its own wishes. But we can try it to make sure. So for instance, that tree branch earlier, once it was blue, could I summon a gun that turns tree branches red and shoot the branch and turn it red that way?"
"So try that out too," she suggested.
By the end of the night, they had determined that indeed, wishes directly made by the stone could not be undone by artifacts made by the stone, and in addition to the dangerous antigravity gun that needed to be tweaked before being tested and the successful root beer gun, they now had a few others such as the aforementioned sexchange gun. Jon also now had a gun which gave you a set of cat ears and a tail, or removed them, but it also had a bunch of options, such as a slide switch to determine the tail's length from anywhere between 6 inches and 10 feet, some switches that let you forego the cat ears, or to keep your human ears in addition to them, and it could also optionally turn your hands and or feet into cat paws as well, a switch that also let you control the gender of the recipient, some dials that let you give them extra sets of mammaries/breasts and augment their size, and finally a switch that forced you to end every sentence with "nya". And finally, a gun that made your deepest desire come true, but only if it didn't cause others to be hurt. Also, they elaborated on the root-beer gun and made sure that it could not be used on living things.
But they also determined something else. Apparently, though a single magic artifact could be made to undo its own effects, not only could it not undo the effects of the stone itself, but they couldn't undo each others' effects. Namely Jon had tested the cat gun on himself to turn himself into a catgirl. But he could NOT use the sexchange gun to change himself into a male catperson, or back to normal. He needed the cat gun to change himself back to normal, and then the sexchange gun could effect him, but then the cat gun would be unable to change his sex. And what's more than that, the original magic stone couldn't undo it either. Which meant that only the original magic artifact that did something, would be able to undo its own effects. Not other magic artifacts, and not the stone itself.
The next morning was a Saturday. Karyn met Jon at the park.
"Hi Jonnnaiee-nya!!! Oh my godnya!!!" she squeaked. He had just shot her of course.
"Oh my god you're adorable," Jon said.
"Not funnynya!" she said, gently punching his chest with a playful jab from her right front paw in mock violence, her 10 foot long tail waving behind her. The thing was heavily muscled in order to support its own weight. It must have added 70 pounds to her body weight. It was also super-duper fluffy. Her usual musculature had also increased, just to be able to cope with that. Not drastically. She was just kind of ripped. She probably weighed 200 pounds now. She also had some extra assets besides that. Her original breasts were even larger now, her middle pair were about the size her original ones were a moment ago, and her third pair around the level of her belly button were about the size her original ones were the day before, before they were enhanced and accompanied by long blonde hair.
"Hold on, I'll change you back..."
"No! I... let me stay like this nya. You just took me by surprise nya. Also, that hurt a little nya. Say, do you suppose everyone remembers me like this nya? Or is that only with the stone itself nya."
"I don't know. You could call someone and try to find out," Jon suggested.
She tried to reach into her pocket. "This ought to be good," Jon thought to himself.
Her paw couldn't fit in her pocket. It was big and puffy. And even if she had gotten it in there, there's no way she would have been able to grab hold of her cellphone.
"I'm going to change you back now," Jon said.
"NO! This is fun nya!" Her big extra pair of ears on top of her head (for she had 4 ears in total now) swiveled, flattened, twisted around, in concentration.
"All right Jon, can you get the phone from my pocket nya?"
"Still don't want me to turn you back even then, huh. I have to give you credit," he said. He reached into her pocket and fished out her cellphone. He held it out to her. She tried to grab it but just pawed it into the grass.
"Nyaaaaa....." she said in frustration. She pawed at it as it was on the ground, trying to get a grip around it, to even flip it open with it still on the ground. She sat Indian style on the ground, which itself wasn't exactly familiar either since her feet had been changed into long fluffy paws too, her long tail pattering the ground behind her, just the tip twitching, and flicked the phone onto her lap. After a lot of effort with both front paws, she got the thing open, and cautiously unsheathed a single claw, and looking at it from the side, unable to see through her massive paws, carefully pressed some buttons, after getting it on speakerphone so that Jon could hear too.
"Hi Karyn, I'm kind of busy at the moment, could you call me back nya?" her mother answered.
"Wha what did you say mom nya?" she said in surprise.
"I said, mommy's kind of busy at the moment nya, can you call me back later nya?" her mother said.
"Never mind momnya, I actually already found the answer I was hoping for nya."
"All right sweetie nya, I'll see you later nya," her mom said lovingly and then hung up.
"Wow, it's not just you but your whole family?" Jon said. "This thing could be dangerous. Was your entire family having been cat-people necessary as a backstory for the reality-warp that explained your existence though? That seems excessive to me. And it opens the question, where did THEY come from if THEY needed to be catpeople in order to explain YOU."
"Who knows nya. He heee, come on Jonnya, show me yourself as a catnya," she coaxed.
"All right, that's only fair," he said. It was still set to all the same settings, including the gender set to female, as he shot himself with the cat gun. "There, happynya?" catgirl Jon said.
"Delightednya, oh my god you're so cute nya!"
"Well, now that we know that it's affecting our families nya, I think we should change back nya. It's all fine and dandy for us to mess with ourselves nya, but dragging others into our fun is just bad form I think nya," Jon meowed.
"Yeahnya, I guess you're right nya. But you've hardly been like this a minutenya, it seems like such a wastenya," Karyn purred.
"We can wish for refinements of the gunsnya, fix this problem of it affecting our families and then play with them again later though nya," Jon mewed.
"I guess so, all right, let's do it then nya... problem?" Karyn relented.
"Nya nya nya, it's just that with these paws, I'm having trouble pulling the trigger. Hold on, let me," Jon pressed the gun against her shoulder in a weird angle, trying to fiddle with it. "Darn it, I almost had it that time, grrrrr," she said. She was pressing it against herself and holding it in a very precarious way with her paws, when they slipped and the gun went flying.
It tumbled through the air, and the two of them watched it, almost in slow motion, as it fell onto the concrete sidewalk and broke into dozens of tiny pieces that all flew everywhere.
"Nya," Jon said in realization of the implications of this.
They were both silent for a few seconds.
"But I think I can still get rid of your long blonde hair if that makes you feel any better nya," Jon said hopefully.
