Kaze, a gray tabby anthro, was the last to take a seat at the booth. Out of all of his bandmates, their drummer, the ebony-furred wolf Karina, was visibly the most exhausted. It had been a very long and draining concert, but they all agreed it was worth it. Now, they were resting on the way home at a local magical ice cream shop, the Life-Changingly Good, which was run by a mutual friend. The band leader and trumpeter, the red fox Catherine, had an especially good time despite not being too big of a fan of having a crowd’s attention. “So,” Catherine started, “I’m not sure if this was just me, but I think I was starting to slow down a little on the last couple of songs.”

The saxophonist, Lehua, who was also a red fox, shook his head. “It was just you.” Aileas, an arctic fox and the band’s trombonist, was literally nose-deep in her ice cream while Kaze, the bass guitarist, rested his head on his hand like how he often did when thinking up a new song.
Karina looked up from her double-scoop waffle cone, not noticing that some of the slowly-melting mint-colored treat had gotten onto her nose. “I may need to take a break from this band stuff for a few days, my wrists are hurtin’ somethin’ fierce,” she drawled.
“Yeah,” Catherine agreed. “I think we could all use a bit of downtime.”
Kaze nodded. “So, what effects do each of these have?” He gestured vaguely across the table towards Karina’s ice cream.

“It depends on what flavor you get,” Lehua answered as he looked out the window that the booth was situated against. “Each one does something different. The duration varies from one serving to the other for some reason, too.”

“Why else would each flavor have the name it does?” Catherine asked. Already, the potion in her ice cream was beginning to take effect, as her ears were becoming rounder and closer to her head. She couldn’t see that, of course, but she did notice her snout widening. Her cheeks started losing their definition while her head rounded out, and that’s when she noticed Lehua standing up from the table as an entire second torso and pair of legs started growing from his backside. So, he chose to become a taur, Catherine mused. As her own body reshaped, Catherine gained a new pair of glands right below the base of her tail, which itself became somewhat flatter. Her changes finished with her claws and feetpaws reshaping, leaving her as a skunk anthro.

“Looking good, Catherine,” Aileas commented. She and Kaze didn’t order anything themselves, and thus their forms stayed.

“Why thank you,” the newly-made skunk replied. Karina, meanwhile, was feeling one of her now large, round ears with one hand. Her snout had also become a lot shorter and triangular, and her teeth had evidently reshaped, as her upper incisors were now protruding from behind her upper lip. It was noticed by her friends that her shoulders and arms had become a bit slimmer, followed shortly by her legs, and then her own feetpaws changed into those of a mouse. Her transformation finished with her tail lengthening as the fur on it disappeared, and just like that, she was now a mouse.
“Not bad!” Catherine commented. “Should we head out now, clear this table for whoever comes in next?”

“That’s a good idea,” Lehua said, looking down and behind at himself as he tested his new balance.

“Should I order something myself the next time we stop by here?” Kaze asked, looking between Karina and Lehua.

“You should!” his mouse friend replied.

“Well, I’ll see you guys later,” Catherine announced as she bent backwards slightly, stretching her back and legs. “I just remembered I need to get some things from the store.”

“Bye, Catherine,” Karina and Aileas said as the skunk turned to leave. She waved back at them.

At the front counter, another customer, formerly human, was screaming hysterically about how the ice cream had turned her into a rabbit anthro and was threatening to sue the store. The shop owner, the skunk Immanuel, simply looked in her direction and quietly tapped the sign next to the menu, the one that stated that everything sold there was transformative, that he had legal permission for it, and all customers effectively agreed to it when they bought something. The rabbit’s tantrum kept going, however.


The first thing that Catherine put in the grocery basket was a brush, as her last one was lost in a separate transformation-related incident. She pulled the list from her pocket to check it before tucking it back, and slowly headed to the produce section, trying not to drag her feetpaws due to exhaustion, wondering to herself why these baskets had to be so awkward to carry. And then the loud thud happened, very close by. Catherine looked across the checkout lane that she was passing, and saw a group of three humans, one of whom had thrown one of the cash registers on the ground, smashing it to pieces, and all were kicking the money that was inside all over the floor, yelling over “very slow service” despite that cart that appeared to be theirs, almost full of items with many more on the conveyor belt before the scanner and where the cash register was a moment ago. Worst of all, the eldest of them, a middle-aged looking man, was just filming it! She looked around the store, and found that, fortunately, the staff was already responding to the call from the cashier that was running that lane. Catherine slightly tightened her grip on the basket, took a step back and turned, and she heard a ripping sound behind her, then a moment later, the conveyor belt from that checkout lane went flying over her head, and various groceries landed all around her, some more hit her back and limbs. She stopped and turned around, and was greeted with a phone shoved in her face, its camera light glaring directly into her eye. The man holding it had a stupid grin on his face. “Look at this useless manager! She’s just walking right away-”

“I don’t work here,” Catherine said firmly, stepping back with one foot. “Get out of my face. And while you’re at it, maybe you should knock that off,” she gestured towards the scene.

“No, don’t give me that, you’re clearly lying.” The human stepped forward, putting the camera right in her face again. “See this, everyone? She’s totally lying to get out of-” With a flick of Catherine’s wrist, the man was teleported quite a ways away, almost across the store.

The skunk turned her attention towards the other two, who were now yelling at the staff about the slow service they were getting or something, not noticing Catherine approaching from behind them. “What is wrong with you two?” she demanded, only then realizing some sort of pasta running down her arm. She brushed it off. The two who were causing the scene turned towards her. The younger one opened her mouth to start screaming, but the skunk did not allow it. Her eyes glowed a harsh white and the human made a mistake of looking into them. All activity stopped to watch her as her body shrank and contorted into a metal and plastic box with a sloped top and a tiny rectangular display made from her head. Catherine, as her eyes ceased glowing, casually knelt down, picked up what was now a cash register, and set it right where the previous one had been. Several employees immediately started collecting the money that had been in the original before it was destroyed. “Now,” she turned towards the other one. “She’ll turn back in a couple of weeks. That should teach all three of you.”

“Until then, you should leave,” the manager ordered the remaining hooligan, making his presence known. “You and the other one filming this will get out now.”

The remaining human turned towards Catherine with a smug look. “See? You got yourself fired, so turn my sister back right now. The customer is always right, after all.”

“Excuse me?” She tilted her head. “I do not work here, does this look anything like a uniform?” She gestured to the staff with their polo shirts, dark slacks, and black aprons. The outfit she wore to the concert was a blouse and dress pants, black with white trim.

Those words went ignored. “I can tell you’re the manager, lady, and you just got yourself-”

“No, I mean you.” The real manager stepped between them. “You will get out right now, as will the other one.”

“No!” He stomped his foot. “I’m staying in this store until my sister turns back!”

Catherine stepped around the manager. “Well, if you insist.” No one could stop her as she looked into his eyes, and again, her own lit up. Immediately, the human’s body bent around forwards, feet and hands touching and merging, and then his body flattened into a single, long sheet of rubber. Again, the glow from her eyes ceased, and with another flick of the wrist, the checkout lane had a new conveyor belt. With that done, and the staff looking a mixture of shocked and thankful, she resumed her shopping.

The guy with the camera caught up to her as she dropped a bag of carrots into her basket. “I’m going to get you fired for all of this!” he bellowed, again shoving the phone in her face.

The skunk rolled her eyes. “For the last time, I don’t work here. Goodbye,” she knew that she didn’t quite have the energy to deal with this one like the other four, so with a flash of her eyes, the man was paralyzed long enough to let her make her purchase and leave. The cashier mouthed the words thank you to her, and she nodded. “I brought my own bags,” Catherine remarked as she pulled a fabric bag from the basket, undid its zipper, and pulled out a few reusable fabric bags.


“This form is very cute,” Catherine’s wife, Ning the tigress, remarked, brushing her between the ears with her fingers. They were sitting out back in her mansion’s garden, looking into the dense forest that surrounded both. Catherine had untied her braid and let her hair down for once, which wasn’t a frequent occurrence.

“Thank Immanuel for that, Ning.” Catherine held her tail over her lap, watching her hands disappear into its thick fur. “I think I will have it for about three days. I think you should try it sometime!”

“Sounds fun. Maybe soon-”

“Hey! You! Skunk girl!” someone shouted from over the fence. She and the tigress turned around. Somehow, a different human, a woman in business attire, had found her way up to the mansion despite its isolated location. “Why isn’t your office picking up my calls?”

The two anthros looked at each other. What office? “What are you talking about?”

“That ice cream shop you work at! My nephew turned into an otter because of it!”

Catherine was near the fence now. “That’s my friend’s business, not mine. Now-”

“You will shut that store down at once or I’m going to sue you for everything you own!”

The skunk and tigress both rolled their eyes. “Like I just said, I don’t work there.”

“Do you even know where you are?” Ning interjected. “A well-maintained mansion in the middle of nowhere, no one knows who lives here, and a lot of would-be adventurers have disappeared here because its owner - me - does not appreciate uninvited visitors. Have you read even a single work of Gothic horror?”

“Listen, do what I’m telling you, right now, or you’re getting sued, and you’re going to lose everything!”

“What is it with you people ignoring the giant legal notice in that store?” Catherine quipped.”Actually, never mind. You really need to leave.”

Instead, the woman jumped in the fence, ready to start berating Catherine right in the face, but she froze when Ning put a hand on her arm. “I have just the thing for you,” she said coldly. From where her hand held it, black fur began to spread up and down the woman’s arm, and from there, it quickly covered her body, turning white on her chest, inner legs, the front of her neck, and a stripe running from her scalp to the base of a big, fluffy tail that had just burst into existence. She became ever so slightly taller as her feet reshaped into digitigrade feetpaws, destroying her shoes while padding appeared on them and her hands, with her nails reshaping into small claws. Her face stretched out into a muzzle as her nose turned into a small, pink button on the tip of it, and the physical changes ended with her ears moving upwards and turning concave. Ning finally took her arm off, and the woman settled into a neutral stance as her eyes lost focus, a secondary part of the spell changing her mannerisms to be much more polite and friendly, as well as forgetting the way to the mansion. With that done, and her now apparently becoming much more aware of her surroundings, Ning traced the ground with one toe, using the corresponding claw to cut a portal into the ground, which widened enough that the recently-remade person fell into it to be sent somewhere else in the town, and then it collapsed and disappeared. “That’s better,” she said.

“Alright, shall we head in and get dinner started?” Catherine was already turning, but Ning stopped her. She took Catherine’s tail in her arms, and buried her face and upper torso in it. Then, she started petting Catherine’s tail, her hands sinking up to their wrists in the thick fur.

“It’s very fluffy,” she remarked.