Consolidation
 | This story is a work in progress. |
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| Currently unnamed | |
| Preceded by: | Window of Opportunity |
| Succeeded by: | None yet |
| [[Image:{{{icon}}}|30px|center|Icon]] | New additions will start with the first sentence of green text. I am entertaining suggestions for a title for this series. |
By Jon Buck
"Look, I need to make at least thirty more medallions by the end of the month. I don't have time to teach anybody, Jenny. I just... I can't." Brian wasn't angry, exactly. Frustrated yes, since I had pressed on this issue relentlessly for the past hour. The bare fact was that somehow he was the most experienced magic-user among us "animals". I'd stirred him up so much he was pacing around his mini-tardis tree's living space.
"If you show us how you do it we can take the pressure off," Donna said. She had only swallowed half the Crystal Light in her glass. "I know I've always been curious how it works. I mean, why do we end up female even at One? It'd be possible to be a human male on one end of the scale and a female deer on the other, wouldn't it?"
"It's a second order effect," the raccoon-mage replied. "I honestly expected the same thing you did when I first started passing them out when I didn't have a medallion of the proper sex. It flips your original gender to match the creature you bond to. I don't know hot to reverse it." He shrugged helplessly. "Sorry, girls."
"Doesn't matter," I replied with a dismissive wave. The cool air inside the raccoon's home played around my bare skin and nipples. He was really quite a handsome fellow, and those raccoon ears of his were kind of cute. I had to admit that those were some very feminine thoughts, and attributed them to my new hormone mix. Humans have instincts, too. And the three of us had remained quite nude. "We're adapting well to the gender-flipping, Brian. Honestly, we are. Let me explain myself one more time.
"We're losing through attrition alone. Either because we have former humans going to Eleven, or even because of predation. Most of us are deer, or something small enough for the coyotes and cougars to get, or the predators we do have get knocked off by humans. Right?" I said.
Brian nodded, then took another sip of his drink. "The animals have gotten harder to catch, too. They have to be bound into the medallion."
"Why so many deer?" Donna asked, folding her arms under her bosom. "You'd think that cougars and coyotes would be a better choice for the Resistance. Hunting instincts and all that."
"Practical reasons," he replied. "Whitetails are very, very numerous. They're easy to trap alive. They're also very close to human-size. Believe it or not, conservation of mass is still important. There are drawbacks, of course. I've tried making more raccoons, but it's just too hard to trap my own 'people'."
He gave me a measuring look. "What else did you have in mind, Jen?"
"We're going to have to go over Barry's head," I said.
"That's not going to go over well in some quarters. He has his sycophants and yes-men, even among the mages. But most of us know just how ineffective he is."
"Okay," said Donna. "Does this mean you agree, Brian?"
At long last, he was finally convinced. "I don't like cutting back on my medallion production so much, but you're right. We need to stop the attrition among those present right now," he said. "I'll teach the mages that are willing. Then... what was next?"
"I'll need whatever you created to turn us morphic when we came in here in the home base tree's entrance. Everyone gets 'morphed. Everyone. We need to stop living like animals and remember what our purpose is. Outside home base, we can stay furred up and on four legs. It's necessary for the subterfuge. Inside is human civilization. Period."
Lucy chose that moment to appear in the tree's entrance spot, flat on her back like Donna and I. My cervine companion had gone outside and sent out a telepathic call for her, including some instructions. "Yow," the golden vixen yipped. "Now that's a trip! I hope I'm not too late, all." She stood up, and noting that everyone else was a One, pulled herself as human as she could get. Her bushy tail swished behind her, then wrapped it around her front shyly. "I feel like a furry centerfold. Can someone fill me in? I called up everyone I could..."
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