[Nexus] Home 13: Insert Silly Title Here

[Halae]

[Kate's Apartment]

Oh my, isn't that pretty? This one gives glowing points on her skin; bioluminescence. The pattern is one of simple cheetah spots along her back, face, outer legs and lower arms, but it glows a pleasing honey color, matching her hair. Which also glows.

[Murkus]

Vierzt laughs again and puts her down. Oh? Would you rather I act naughty?

"You can be naughty? I'd love to see that!" Gel says suggestively, leaning back and propping herself up on her arms. The heroine smirks at her oversized companion, pleased with him. He'd performed surprisingly well the night before, but with her 'tutelage' Gel was hoping for something more.

[House Hunting]

Kirk laughs and shakes his head. "Nah, not at all. I can hire some people for the upkeep without and problem." He looks around at the room they're in briefly. "I could almost get lost in this place, though. I'm holding you responsible if I have to climb out a window to get out."

"Just think of it as room to explore. I wonder if he'd let us spend the night, if we promised to behave," By the look on her face, Tina has no such intent. But she'll certainly say as much to their host.

[Gullara]

[House Hunting]

"There are many words I'd use to describe you, Fettina, but well behaved doesn't number among them. Not that I have any reason to complain." Kirk gives her a sly wink. "I'm sure we can convince him if I promise to keep you in check."

[Dark Elf Bard]

"You can be naughty? I'd love to see that!" Gel says suggestively, leaning back and propping herself up on her arms. The heroine smirks at her oversized companion, pleased with him. He'd performed surprisingly well the night before, but with her 'tutelage' Gel was hoping for something more.

Well, I can't do it by myself. I'm not experienced. Vierzt smirks.

[Lost_Deep]

Kate's Apartment

There. That's good.

Now Kate, clear headed, realizes that when she was pixie-minded she completely disrobed. She takes off the shirt, and tries to dispel the hourglass figure with her holy symbol... and it doesn't work.

Go figure.

That means that she is still going to have to alter some clothes.

She flops onto the bed and pulls the covers back on. She then tries to get some level of comfortable and fails. Part of her wants to wake up now. Just have this all have been some funky dream. Even a pixie dream...

No?

Fine.

Kate picks up the phone and calls Julie. She's going to ask to borrow some clothes, seeing as Julie's clothes would probably be about right on her right now. She isn't sure what else to do right now... she's going to need some kind of wardrobe, but not only would she need to alter her current one to fit her new size but she would have to figure out which pieces of clothing are tolerable and either stick to those or replace the others...

[Slii Arhem]

Kate's Apartment

Instead of Julie replying, before the phone can even ring once (and, Kate may notice, before the number is even finished dialing) a possibly unwelcome voice is speaking into the ear she's holding her phone to.

"I'm outside your door, please unlock it so I can come in. No, I didn't steal Julie's phone, that would be complete lunacy and we both know I'm above such petty insanities." Waldorf "hangs up" the call before it even properly begins, leaving Kate with a dial tone and little else for her trouble.

[Lost_Deep]

Kate's Apartment

Oy vey.

"Sophie, please let the archmage at the door in and tell him I can't come out of my room."

"Why not?"

"I'll tell you later," Kate sighs. She then gets up and goes about squeezing into something so that she can talk to Waldorf.

Sophie, however, opens the door to let waldorf in. She's just wearing a tank top, and looks at him skeptically. "Kate's in her room and says she can't come out."

[Slii Arhem]

Kate's Apartment

"That's perfectly fine." Waldorf says amiably as he walks through the threshold, "Since I'm no longer outside the containment barrier that keeps outside magic from bleeding through that it would almost certainly void your damage deposit for me to break, I can now just timewalk to her where I'm needed." It may need to be said that Waldorf, in his infinite wisdom, has decided to come to Kate's apartment dressed in a surprisingly well-tailored Santa suit, complete with a full black velvet bag slung over one shoulder and apparently causing him no trouble to carry.

And then he presumably winks out of Sophie's field of view to appear directly next to Kate's bed, grinning like a loon, "Ho Ho h-Oh dear, it's happened already? I suppose I'm just in time then. Merry Thanksmas!" He drops the bag, which thumps against the floor softly, and undoes the tie so he can begin to root through it looking for something in particular. Apart from the preliminary glance that let him see what's happened to Kate this time, he seems to be ignoring her.

[Lost_Deep]

Kate's Apartment

Kate's reaction is to yoink her comforter off her bed and use it to defend her modesty. However, it is still obvious that Kate has been altered into an exaggerated hourglass body shape. In addition, she has glowing cheetah spots on her body... and there are several pieces of clothes around, labeled things like "Shark skin," "Pixie mindset," "Freak heels," or "Manhood."

Sophie, somewhat annoyed, simply closes the door. Whoever this guy is, he doesn't have much respect for others.

[Slii Arhem]

Kate's Apartment

"Is that any way to react to old saint Waldorf, patron saint of annoyingly appropriate gifts? However, if you're going to be that way." Waldorf pauses from his gift-searching to reach up and pull his eyes out of his head, revealing them to be remarkably lifelike fakes, "Don't need the blasted things anyway, but at least now you can stop worrying about your modesty when there are presents to be had." He grumbles good-naturedly.

He pulls out a shoddily-wrapped bundle and whips his arm around behind him, holding it right under Kate's nose. The tag says "From Uncle Wally" in big cheery handwriting.

"That's from me, the rest of the bag is from Julie. she'll apologize for it all being late once she realizes I didn't deliver it before Thanksmas passed, but to do that I'd have had to walk here instead of relying on a magical watch to bring me here when you'd need it, so, you know, convenience. Merry Thanksmas, don't worry about getting me anything, I have that taken care of." Waldorf stuffs the eyes back into his head and sprints for the window, diving over the bed if necessary and aiming to break straight through the glass face-first before disappearing in mid-air just outside her apartment building, the glass likely repairing itself behind his explosive exit as soon as he's vanished.

[Lost_Deep]

Kate's Apartment

Kate is confused... and remains confused as the scene continues. The window re-constructing itself is probably the only thing that isn't actively confusing. However, she does accept the package and after Waldorf leaves she opens it and examines the contents of the other bag.

[Slii Arhem]

Kate's Apartment

The present from Waldorf appears to be a little rag doll in a hand-made striped long sleeve shirt and sensible jeans. On its head is a lock of Kate's hair, obviously taken a long time ago at some point, as it's pixie-braided and glowing. It looks every inch the voodoo doll, except for the fact that it has a pull-cord with a metal ring hanging out of a rip in its back.

There's a tiny card taped to its face that says "Pull Me!" in Waldorf's handwriting.

Julie's present is a lot simpler. It's an old oak dresser full from top to bottom with clothes, exactly the same as the last set of clothes Julie gave Kate only in winter-appropriate colors. Even if she isn't the nigh-omnipotent time-abusing madman that her relative is, the succubus could guess that things would mess up for Kate at some point, so more clothes is probably the best gift she can give.

How a full dresser fit into that santa sack without encumbering Waldorf or bulging obviously is left to the imagination.

Julie also taped a card to her present though, and it's much more seasonally appropriate, Happy Holidays Kate. I hope these clothes find you in good health and looking like yourself, but if they don't I'll be happy to alter them, or you, to fit. There is a set for your odded self and your more normal self, so it should pretty much double your wardrobe altogether. The dresser was the only thing I bought, so don't worry about the cost. Merry Thanksmas.

Love, Julie

[Lost_Deep]

Kate's Apartment

Man, now that thing that Kate ordered for Julie REALLY pales in comparison. And it's late.

On the other hand... Kate will examine the doll. She'll take off the note, and then turn it over, carefully, and pull the cord.

She's scared... but she needs to know what it does.

[Slii Arhem]

Kate's Apartment

Man, now that thing that Kate ordered for Julie REALLY pales in comparison. And it's late.

On the other hand... Kate will examine the doll. She'll take off the note, and then turn it over, carefully, and pull the cord.

She's scared... but she needs to know what it does.

Kate's Apartment

The cord comes free, and a little Thanksmas jingle starts up, accompanied by Waldorf's voice tinnily recorded on a voice chip hanging from the end of the string.

"Since we last spoke, I learned myself some voodoo! I thought I'd put it to use just for you, since you'll probably need it the most. If you stick this little doll with a pin, the magics inside it will restore your physical state back to a time earlier than now. You simply have to picture the time clearly in your head, and your state will be exchanged with the doll's. It takes some time to undo whatever strange changes have been commited onto it, but it will always eventually restore itself to how you see it now for another use. The more time you undo with it, the more it will take to be restored, and if you have to use it again before it's ready it wil-" The recording cuts out, apparently having run out of memory when Waldorf recorded it without him noticing.

That, of course, isn't all the doll does, as its rewriting of time and storage of the changes worked on Kate allows Waldorf to remotely study what has happened to her through the doll, and possibly learn what magics or supernatural forces are involved so he can twist them to his own ends. Not that Kate would know any of this, or that it's what he meant when he said he had arranged for his own present from her.

The doll recovers second-for-second the time that it takes back, so if Kate were to undo all the changes that have happened to her since she woke up it will be weirded up for an hour or so. It also repairs damage to itself at the same rate, so ripping it in half very quickly would cause it to mend just as quickly, while burning it up in a fire would take a few minutes to repair itself from. In any case, it's fairly hard to destroy despite how ragged it appears.

[Lost_Deep]

Kate's Apartment

"Thank you, Waldorf!"

Kate will then begin to rummage around her room... before discovering that she is missing something important.

"Sophie, do you have a pin?"

"No..."

Kate flops on her bed. "Don't you have any? You make clothes."

"All the pins belong to the company."

Kate sighs. Could something else work? Would something else make her bleed out and die? Blast it all!

Well, either she takes a risk or she lives with curves.

Kate undresses and finds her multitool. She bought it a while back, a spur of the moment purchase that looked really, really useful. She opens up to the skinniest blade, figures herself before she got dressed this morning... and stabs the little doll in the leg.

[Slii Arhem]

Kate's Room

*Poit* Goes the doll as the blade passes through its leg and it attempts to undo the past hour or so of dressing shenanigans that were worked upon her body, transferring them to the doll with timey-wimey-wibbly-wobbly stuff. There is probably a much more thorough explanation for what happens, but it's also a much more worrying one that tends to make brains hurt with the implications, so we're avoiding it.

When she removes the knife from the doll's leg, it will stitch back together good as new.

[Riss' Quarters]

With a sharp pang of guilt, Riss cradled her nereid in her arms as she felt tears on her skin. She didn't even consider this kind of reaction when she had been wondering how to touch upon this subject. Even more so, however, she felt a twisting of a dull pain in her stomach that she had caused her Misha this kind of distress. "H-hey now..'" she crooned as she brushed the nereid's hair back with a hand. "I haven't done anything yet. This is why I want your opinion on things because.. Because you see things in ways I don't and because your thoughts are valuable to me." the muse said, trying to find the right words to assuage the sudden welling of emotion. Coming up with nothing else beyond what she had said already, she went with simply holding her beloved close and whispering gentle, appeasing phrases to hopefully ease things along. The best she could do would be to just let Misha get it out of her system while she did what she could to sooth her.

Once Misha seemed to be feeling better, and not a moment before, Riss would place a gentle kiss on the nereid's forehead before trying to get her to raise her head just enough for their gaze to meet in the deep gloom. "I will do nothing that would make me want to give you up. Did you know that when I was first coming to terms with what I felt about you, I went so far as to find a logical reason for why I would want to stay with you? I know that the body does supply many influences on the mind like that but..." Stopping mid-sentence, Riss nibbled on the inside of her lip for a moment before trying something else. "This.. Might sound a bit off topic but would you like to move over to the pool I've made for a bit? I think it might help you relax, I mean." she said. While she wanted to explain to Misha how, in her particular case at least, some of the problems she sees had already been taken care of already, what was most important right now was to make her happy again. And, in accordance with that resolve, Riss would carry her nereid in her arms if she agreed on the subject of relocating. It would take a bit of additional power to her muscular enhancements that would leave her feeling a bit sore later but that price was one easily paid.

Riss' Quarters

Misha nods her ascent and smiles when Riss makes the effort to carry her to the pool, then murmurs, "I'm just going to be water for a bit, okay? I'll still be with you, I just think I need to not have a brain for a while, so I can think better. Keep talking, I'll be able to hear you." That wasn't very clear, but Misha's form discorporates into an equal amount of water that swiftly joins with the surface of the pool. Almost simultaneously, Riss will be able to feel the water around her body exert more pressure than it should in some areas, wrapping around her as Misha's own limbs would and simulating the feeling of the nereid's body perfectly under the surface while not showing any visible signs of her presence.

The nereid waits patiently like this for Riss to continue her explanation, slowly rubbing against the muse's skin with fluid movements.

[Lost_Deep]

Kate's Room

*Poit* and Kate is back to blessed, wonderful normality.

She gets dressed in the clothes that Julie got her, and goes about replacing the clothes in her closet and drawers that are affected with more from the new wardrobe. The wardrobe is then marked with a single sticky note: "Transforming". The now-misshapen doll is put in the bottom of her backpack, next to the potion of storms that she still has down there.

Kate will have to give proper thanks to Julie and Waldorf next time she sees them. The disaster dealt with, Kate heads out. As Kate puts on her shoes, she is reminded that the disaster is not entirely dealt with and that she's going to have to deal with some degree of oddness until she can get new shoes... and probably gloves.

[OrchestraHc]

[Lisa's Home]

"Nah, she'll just want to actually do it herself without any help. I'm sure she'll still like to drag you out there to skate with her." Lisa says. "And I'm definitely self taught. I did a couple classes once, but it wasn't for me. I did a lot better trying to figure it out on my own. I started by copying some of my mangas and went from there."

[Lisa's Home]

"My highschool classes were iffy," Emmi explains, "and I didn't really retain any of it. I've always learned better one on one so I learned more in the school art club."

[Meredit]

[Char's House]

Char has never actually had a slumber party so she scrambles around trying to figure out what to do. Eventually, she settles on food and tosses a block of cheese at Meredit.

Meredit chops up the cheese with two knives into little cubes. "Are we making cheese dip? Can I cut funny shapes to melt into the pot? A witch's hat?" She does not stop chopping to talk. "If you like musicals. I don't. The Wizard of Oz party makeover was fun though. It took hours to make our hair stick out like Munchkins and we took so long washing the hair gel out that the shower ran out of hot water." "And we had Wicked Witch shaped sugar cookies to melt into the punch. It tasted," she pauses, "terrible. It turned our tongues green too."

[Gullara]

[Lisa's Home]

"Oh yeah, I bet that'd be great. There's never been much of an art club or anything like that in my school. It's kinda too bad, but oh well." Lisa says.

[Dark Elf Bard]

Meredit chops up the cheese with two knives into little cubes. "Are we making cheese dip? Can I cut funny shapes to melt into the pot? A witch's hat?" She does not stop chopping to talk. "If you like musicals. I don't. The Wizard of Oz party makeover was fun though. It took hours to make our hair stick out like Munchkins and we took so long washing the hair gel out that the shower ran out of hot water." "And we had Wicked Witch shaped sugar cookies to melt into the punch. It tasted," she pauses, "terrible. It turned our tongues green too."

Quiet follows her nervously. Wh-what's cheese?

[Meredit]

Meredit wishes vegan parents would explain these things to their kids before sending them out into the world.

Wait. This little girl was going to ask Santa for parents.

"Cheese is made from milk which comes from animals. It doesn't hurt the animals to take milk from them."

She picks two cheese cubes out of the pile with the tip of a knife and cuts a tiny smiling face into one of them. She gives the smiley face cube to Quiet and picks up the other one. "Cheese is a good ingredient for cooking and it is tasty to eat on its own. Try it! It's soft." She eats too.

[lord pringle]

[Char's House]

Alright, dip. Char scrambles around before throwing some peppers and placing a pot on the stove. She stares at Meredit again as Char has no clue of what to do.

[Dark Elf Bard]

Char's House

Quiet nibbles on the cheese happily! Mmm, this is good! I've never had it before!

[DoomITP]

Love's House

Evan stretches.

Did you need to go somewhere?

[Meredit]

[Char's House]

"We need two pots. One fits inside the other. Heat up the big pot with water and I'll put the cheese in the small pot."

Meredit puts down the knives so she can mime along with what she's saying. "The small pot goes inside the big pot and floats. The stove heats the water and the water heats the cheese. That way the cheese will not burn. Quiet, can you find a small pot, please?"

Meredit whispers to Char, "We can't do any PG-13 party games with a little kid here. I guess we can dip vegetables instead of"

She giggles.

"cocktail weenies. But do you know a party game that's kid-friendly?"

[Dark Elf Bard]

Love's House

Evan stretches.

Did you need to go somewhere?

Yeah, we need to get my sister! The red-skinned girl giggles and pokes Evan. Wanna come?

[Char's House]

"We need two pots. One fits inside the other. Heat up the big pot with water and I'll put the cheese in the small pot."

Meredit puts down the knives so she can mime along with what she's saying. "The small pot goes inside the big pot and floats. The stove heats the water and the water heats the cheese. That way the cheese will not burn. Quiet, can you find a small pot, please?"

Meredit whispers to Char, "We can't do any PG-13 party games with a little kid here. I guess we can dip vegetables instead of"

She giggles.

"cocktail weenies. But do you know a party game that's kid-friendly?"

Quiet looks confused. What's PG-13?

[DoomITP]

Evan grins.

Sure. Why not?

[Murkus]

[House Hunting]

"There are many words I'd use to describe you, Fettina, but well behaved doesn't number among them. Not that I have any reason to complain." Kirk gives her a sly wink. "I'm sure we can convince him if I promise to keep you in check."

"But Kirk, then you'd be lying," Tina says with a silly little simper. She catches up to their guide some, and proceeds to ask, "Excuse me, but would be alright if we stayed the night here? To really make sure that we want it?" Surely he won't pass it up if it means a chance at selling this place.

[Treehouse]

Well, I can't do it by myself. I'm not experienced. Vierzt smirks.

"Well, you could always pick up where we left off," Gelley suggests, suddenly flashing a pearly grin.

[Tina's Place]

((*pokes Harnel*))

[lord pringle]

[Char's House]

Char fixes the pots before switching to party games. She runs to her room and places a Ouija Board and several necromantic talismans on the kitchen table. "People do things like this, right?" she asks Meredit.