Reroll

The address isn't too terribly far… I walk, and download the video as I go… on my shiny new magic computer. Just one second of real time on that transformation… but at nine hundred sixty frames per second, I can play it back at thirty frames per second and it takes a good thirty two seconds.

So I watch in super high definition slow motion in my head as a wave of change goes over the gangly naked man, turning him into a cartoonishly-proportioned nude woman.  It starts at his head, his hair going from a darkish brown to a fiery red over the course of the video, exploding out and downwards as it does, snaking past forming hips  and curling down the legs until it reaches the newly-feminized ankles.

But the hair isn't all that changes, of course. His uneven, lightly-tanned skin pales and smooths out, all blemishes, scars, and body hair getting wiped away like an eraser on a whiteboard.  A line passes from his head to her toes: Before the line passes, there are moles, scars, pimples, and patches of lightly tanned skin next to skin that hasn't seen the sun in years. After? Pale skin, perfectly creamy smooth and even… other than some orange freckles left behind.

And his face too: His eyes slant as his nose shrinks, then his jaw narrows as his lips plump out and his eyelashes grow.  His neck stretches slightly as it loses what little fat it had, his pronounced Adam's Apple slipping into her now very feminine neck. Her shoulders narrow, her arms slim down, and for a short while she looks quite ridiculous with large masculine hands at the end of thin little arms, but the wave of change hits those hands soon enough, and they shrink to delicate little ones with long nails.

And his chest! It goes from lightly tanned with scattered hair, basically flat, to… well. The little hair he had goes away as his pecs start inflating, like there are balloons hidden there being filled with water, pushing the two tiny little circles on his chest out, and out, and out.  Those little circles also grow, and the little bumps in their middles poke outwards as the circle and bump set becomes a dark tea plate and spout set… and those orbs behind them just keep growing, until they're sized for playing basketball. I’ve had bigger, but they're still huge hooters.

They somewhat distract me from what his waist does, pinching in to become a tiny thing (although I’ve had smaller) that a man could easily wrap his hands around, as his hips and rear do the opposite, ballooning outwards to become giant jiggly jello jugs themselves… it's a pity the only camera was on her front; that rear view must be something to see.

Of course, there's also his rod and sack.  Nothing to write home about, maybe a little below average to start… which changes quickly, them shrinking and morphing, the sack emptying its contents into his abdomen, flattening out, and morphing into a plump pair of lips as the slack pulls in to form a cleft, a wet and inviting hole.  The rod, not to be outdone, shrinks down to a tiny button, his skin forming a hood over it, concealing it somewhat, not quite hiding her newly-formed gear, the new little joy button peeking out.

Her legs are also affected, of course, both bulking up at the top to work with her new hips, and slimming further down to become graceful calves.  His feet, finally, shuffle beneath her, going from big practical things for gripping the ground to dainty dancers' tools, perfect for pirouettes.  He also loses some height: About six inches or so… but that's the least of what most people will notice about her.

I also check the file properties: Bruce sent me the raw, uncompressed frames. The data here is exactly what the camera recorded: As far as I can tell, the only processing done was isolating the time segment, which makes this ripe for any tweaking or editing… which makes sense, it's professional production equipment.

It takes a few cycles of watching Marty become Mary to catch all the details… and I'm sure there's going to be many scientists pouring over these frames one at a time looking for clues on how magic works; I expect J5 News will make a bundle selling copies… hopefully to SCIENTISTS with a good set of ethics, but I fear Mary will need to deal with many a person who will see her blossoming in a less than favorable light.

And I'm feeling a little warm under my armor as I get to the address, a little baby blue two story house with a white picket fence on a quarter acre lot in the suburbs.  Invisible and incorporeal, I go up the pebbled concrete walk through the dark green, freshly-mowed lawn, and ring the doorbell… looks like Mr. Wizard here likes tech: It's a video doorbell.

Now, I could make it see me… but I don't want to: I'm playing a ‘not entirely by choice’ angle here. Of course, with it being a video doorbell, I don't really expect a response: He can see nobody's there.

He's apparently expecting that, however, and answers anyway: “Hello?” Yeah, same voice.

I talk back to the doorbell, but don't drop my sound suppression: “Hi, I'm here to see Merlin.” It's completely pointless, as I'm not letting the doorbell hear me, either.

“Look, if this is a prank…” I cut Marty off by pressing the doorbell again. He can see nobody's there, and yet, someone has to be to pressing the doorbell.

“Okay, that's going to be legitimate. I'll get the door in a moment….”

I wait patiently while he comes out and opens the door, then frowns, “I still can't see you...”

“Nor hear me,” I reply, not that he can hear.

“...which is odd, as I always see through everything. Huh.  Come in and sit down…” I walk past him, and sit down on a plain brown brown couch,  deliberately pushing down the cushion a bit.

I go ahead and get out a minion dressed up as my social form, having her talk for me without actually possessing her, “So yeah, you can see… or rather, can't… that part of why I use proxies so much.  You can't hear me when I answer you.  You wouldn't even feel it if I literally punched your face.”  Which I can do when incorporeal: There's an Alteration talent that can do it.

“What? You're invisible to touch?” He doesn't seem to be buying that one.

So I have my proxy speak, “Indeed. Sometimes it's inconvenient, but my power let's me do some interesting things, too.  Oh, and if you don't believe me on the touch Invisibility… look in a mirror.”

He pulls out a cell phone and opens the camera, looking at the selfie preview… and blinks a few times at the braids I put in his hair.

Thinking, he asks a logical question: “How does that even work?”

And of course, I give him the ‘logical’ answer: “Magic.”

And that bugs him, “I can SEE magic.  But then, I can also see invisible things, and recognize the true state of things. So I know I'm talking to a non-magical wisp of nothing...” he seems to be talking more to himself than my proxy.

I answer via proxy anyway, “Except that a visible, audible, solid nothing with no nearby equipment to generate it must be magical, and yet, you can't see the magic.” I have the ability to do it, so I suppress magical auras on all of my illusions out of habit.

“Which means your Myth interferes with magical senses - from other Myths, no less - as well as regular ones… which is why I can't see you directly…” Marty pauses, “but I did see your weight on the couch..”

I nod, and have my minion copy, “Essentially correct.” I was taking pains to interact, so he'll think “old reliable” (the trick of scattering a bag of flour about to put something you can see on top of something you can't) will work (it won't, because I'm incorporeal: He'd need magical flour, or I would need to choose to hold onto the flour by way of the Ghostly Grasp feat).

The wizard is quiet, so I have my proxy continue, “So I kind of get why Ralph and Vinny didn't want to protect the baseline humans: They both view them as prey, first and foremost.  The prior Lupus will go along with my designs to protect humanity because of the fight, and I'm pretty sure I’ve successfully walked this Vlad through how it's in his best interests. I don't have my head wrapped around why you seem to view the non-magical folks with such disdain, though.”

Merlin stares at my proxy in silence for a while, “Knowledge is a form of power. I'm unsure of the wisdom of giving you more.”

Hmm… “I understand you got where you are by a pastime among the more magical community of proxy duels….”

The wizard on the couch raises his graying eyebrows, “A wager, then? Hmm…” he considers, rubbing his chin with his left hand, “The winner gets one question for the loser, answered truly, clearly, and in enough detail for a proper understanding.  Does that sound agreeable?”

I think about it a bit, “You have a question in mind, and feel confident you'll win.”

He answers with just one word: “Exactly.”

Still thinking, I put constraints on things, “I'll need the rules explained properly: I've only heard about it from Ralph, and I won't really accept it as a loss if it was due to some rule I had no reasonable way to know.”

The current Merlin nods, “Perfectly reasonable; I'll explain the rules in practical detail, give you half an hour after that to prepare a suitable proxy, and will ignore technical violations of anything in the full rules that I didn't go over with you.”

Hmm. Marty is the literal world champion at this game.  Still… if I lose, it's just one question.

So I give my answer: “Works for me.”