So… that was how it happened for Steven.
She had yet to have a good look at herself, given all the chaos of the convention. She heard the pitiable cries of people (as well as some being very delighted…) new wizards testing out their magical skills, playing with reality as if it was their brand new toy.
She stared at her arms letting them out from underneath the red robe. Fur… lots of reddish brown fur, with paler patterns around her stomach. Her tail caused the biggest inconvenience, being so large and bushy it was almost twice her own body size. She didn’t know where to put it most of the time, as it knocked everything around or moved around a crowed. Her size was also a great inconvenience…
She heard whispers from people around her thanks to the sensitive ears she now had. It looked like some kind of fox-woman. She looked a lot like Maid Marian.
“I heard some people turned into animals… they probably ran out and got eaten by cats or whatever now… guess we should be considered the lucky ones.”
Steven felt her blood run cold at those words. “No…” That wouldn’t happen. That couldn’t happen! She thought of it carefully. There were a lot of people missing… a great number, and mostly she was worried about the children. The anxiety was palpable to her as it reached a fever point. “I’ll look for them.” She decided. Though… there were far better and more suited changed people to do that. What could she do? … just run up a stupid tree.
Were these change… permanent?
“Hey! You are to report to the waiting rooms! We’ve got a lot of stuff here to work out!” A guard shouted. “Go on shoo!”
Steven felt her ears flattened. It was bad enough to be treated like a kid, but they were treating her like some sort of pet! She followed the security guard’s instructions and started walking, clutching her robe with her paw-like hands inside. She was bare foot- well- bare-pawed? Walking on her paws? Her hands were a little paw-like but she seemed to retain the use of her thumb… thankfully.
“I wonder if the security guard’s uniform counts as a costume…” Well, given what Steven had seen, it seemed to be what the costume ‘represented’ as much as what it actually was. So to a security guard doing a job… it was just a job. One wasn’t going to wear shoes and turn into a shoe-person. … hopefully. The rules of all this was giving her a headache.
Given how many had turned into wizards, surly it should be quite simple to get a magical spell to get back to normal, right? Even find the missing people with some kind of search spell… it was so infuriating that she knew all the possible spells that might help but she didn’t dress up as a wizard! Why oh why did she pick this of all things!
“Why can’t we leave!” A demon-woman shouted.
“The place is under lockdown! Nobody leaves until we account for all the transformations.”
“…like hell.” Then she disappeared. Teleported away much to the shocking look to the guard.
“I don’t think I can handle these freaks much longer…”
Steven felt sympathy for him. She wasn’t sure she could either, and she was among them! The entire place had been put under lockdown by the police. With the whole situation as confusing as it was, many welcomed the small semblance of order. With shows like ‘the Boys’ going on, The public had a pretty good idea of the ‘worst case scenario’… Steven wondered what they would do with the most powerful… What ‘could’ they do? Have them police each other? Many transformations were the equivalent of a nuke about to go off, with only other nukes stopping it. This was ground zero for something crazy to happen…
“Processing room up ahead, please be seated… or stand if you have to. Humans that way, Others this way.”
“Hmph… so that’s the system?” Steven guessed it was a quick way to quickly organise the changes… so she made her way to the ‘non-human processing line’… as bureaucracy quickly shaped into more sub-categories. Humans labelled magical, dangerous, normal, the same for each animal type…
Steven was lead in a room with a bunch of others deemed to need ‘further investigation’ before they could leave. There were no humans… and everyone looked at her as much as she looked at them.
The squirrel girl sighed as she sat on the chair, her tail hanging off to the side. She was only three feet tall… and looked akin to a child. An animal-girl of sorts. She didn’t ‘feel’ like she had become a child at least. She had very small breasts, barely noticeable. She was a mix of brown and red furs with some yellows… as close to animal as a human could be.
… and was a girl.
In the waiting room she was extremely nervous. These were some of the most absurdly powerful characters in fiction… and she was in a waiting room with them?
“Hey mammal!” A voice giggled. “Fancy seeing a fuzz-ball like you!” a rather ‘animated’ individual giggled.
“Uh…” Steven looked at her. “… an Inkling?” He stared at the strange yellow shaded squid-hair and rather ‘colourful’ aspects of the person. She had a bazooka filled with paint… no doubt the reason she was put under ‘further examination’. Everyone who had a weapon was getting them confiscated. Why couldn’t they remove it from her?
“Woomie! So, this is the world of humans… neat!” She giggled earnestly putting an arm around Steven’ shoulder. “We’ll be best friends! Just like fish and chips!”
Steven bit her lip. The inkling was ‘very’ in character. Maybe she had to use this as an opportunity to test how bad a mind can be affected. “Um- you know you’re not really an inkling, right?” She asked quietly as the inkling hugged her shoulder.
The inkling released her and suddenly shifted into her squid form, going almost 2-dimensional on the chair. The big eyes looking up at the ceiling. “Seems the universe has said otherwise.” The inkling explained. “It feels perfectly natural to me. I might as well enjoy it. I’m living my dream! I wanted to play the game forever, live in the world of splatoon for the glory of splatfest and a never-ending tirade of battle with my team!”
Steven groaned. The inklings were quite mysterious… it was a bit beyond his own sphere of knowledge on the specifics of their universe… but he knew a bit about them. What would one be like, unleashed into the human world? He smiled a bit and laughed, realising she would probably just end up a shopaholic.
“Okay, thank you all for waiting…” A voice called out. “We’re just going to make sure you can go through the quarantine and to your normal lives. Well- as normal as you can make it. If you qualify, you’ll get a card and be let out. To make sure the cards are not being traded we need to add your physical details… please be honest with it.” He approached the inkling. “Name?” He took out a paper.
“Heya! I’m Sea3foam!” The inkling responded with a giggle.
“Your… original name?”
“Hmph. I don’t think that really matters mister human.” She folded her arms indignantly.
The guard groaned and wrote the name down. It was hardly the most important thing anyway. “Uh… and you’re a girl?”
“I’m a body Type B!” The inkling smiled. “That’s what it says in the game anyway. I’m not a boy or a girl. I’m just B. Body Hash-tag B. You can put down that in the card. B.”
The guard looked like he was bursting a blood vessel. “Body… type… B…” He muttered while putting in brackets ‘girl’. “Okay, dangerous weapons…? What is that? Some kind of sniper-gun… we’ll have to confiscate that.”
“What? How am I supposed to defend my terf without my E-liter 4k with super scope function that comes with these handy bombs?” The inkling ‘somehow’ made a strange crystal bomb appear in her hand. It tumbled away, chaotically rotating on the ground with an eerie chime.
Steven stared at it. “Uh…”
“Four second count down I think…” The Inkling explained.
Steven quickly covered her face in her own tail. “Eep!”
“OH CRAP!” The guard shouted.
The ink-bomb exploded, as everyone in the vicinity was suddenly coated in yellow slimey ink. Steven’s tail was now a bright yellow.
“Hehe… it’s the current meta.” THe inkling explained. “I’ll fix it.” Suddenly she produced a weird vacuum suction that drew in all the ink. “There! Good as new.”
The guard gave a very angry look. “I’m… going to mark you as annoying, but not dangerous. Here, take your card.” Toon powers… infuriating but mostly harmless.
“Fresh!” The inkling smiled. “I get to leave! Ta-ta Miss squirrel!” The inkling did a ‘cool walk’ backwards to the beat of smooth criminal.
The guard sighed and looked to Steven. “What about you?”
“Uh… I’m Steven.”
“You seem normal… well except for being an animal… uh…” He ticked a box. “Boy or girl?”
“I- um-“ She looked to be sweating buckets. “Before… or after?”
“Oh- right. Well, just tell me what you are physically now… we need that for security sake.”
“…girl.” She whispered blushing glancing down. “It- It turned me into a girl!” She looked frustrated… distressed and so very confused.
“Hey chill would you? There will be time for all that but I got to process you through.” The guard quickly said. “Just tell me, what weird powers do you have? Let’s write them down and get you out and back home.” He was trying to help her… the struggling animal-girl looked so upset.
Steven stared at the wall suddenly, realising how bad things were. “…none. I… I don’t have… any.”
