Epilogue 116 - Foxed Out

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...Previously...



George Tumbleweed stood in the parking lot of the Pendleton Mall-Mart in awe of the display before him. His friend Angela Morgan called him very excitedly for reasons he didn't understand at first. He had to ask her to slow down, as her speech kept slipping into what he could only assume, thanks to his limited knowledge of subtitled anime, was Japanese. She told him that she had learned a wealth of new powers and to meet her at midnight. 

George had seen Angela's powers firsthand back on Halloween night. Together, they fought off a zombie horde in the location he was standing in front of now. He helped in every way he could, but he couldn't help but feel just a hint of envy whenever Angela swooped down on her broomstick and hurled a fireball into a reanimated corpse. She had even cast a spell on his baseball bat, imbuing it with fire. It was pretty cool, but it just wasn't the same. But her powers now were in a whole different league.

When he met Angela at the appointed time, she was standing in the middle of the parking lot in her familiar human form. She was wearing a purple kimono. Before George could ask what she was doing standing around in a bathrobe, he saw a quick flash of yellow peek out from behind her. Then another. And another. Angela snickered to herself and disappeared in a puff of smoke. She reappeared in front of him looking much different. She was taller than him now, with long golden hair, nine golden tails, and the head of a fox. This was her true form now, she explained. A kitsune.

"Gesundheit," George replied. 

Angela laughed, and began to explain the spell she had inadvertently cast that afternoon. Shapeshifting, save for the telltale tails, was just one of her newly acquired powers. "To show you the rest, I'll need to take one precaution," she said, waving a paw through the air, making the sky shimmer. "It's a shroud. No one will be able to see what I'm about to show you except you and me. We don't want any 911 calls coming. Now hold onto your eyepatch!" For no other reason than that he liked it, George always wore that single element of his pirate costume. Otherwise, he just wore his usual sweater and cargo pants from the army surplus store.

Angela's new powers were like a fireworks display. Plumes of flame and bolts of lightning shot from her tails as she bounced nimbly across the parking lot, leaping onto nearby treetops and even the roof of the Mall-Mart itself. "Now for the big finish," she declared with a confident wink. "Watch the moon!" George did just that. Angela somersaulted into the air, and her tails trailed behind her in a perfect circle. She spun in the air so quickly that she seemed to hang in place as a second moon.

George applauded as Angela leapt from the sky. She stood before him and took a bow. From what George had seen, he wouldn't be at all surprised if she really had just fallen from space.

"What did you think?" Angela asked.

"That was incredible! I mean, I thought you could do just about anything before, but this... Wow!"

"George, you're going to make me blush right through this fur!" Angela held her paws up to her muzzle, fluttering her eyelashes showily. "Anyway, down to business."

"Business?" George asked.

"Yes," Angela answered directly. She sat down on nothing --hovering, really-- with her legs crossed and paws folded in a very businesslike manner. (Businesslike for a fox in a kimono, anyway.)

"I asked you and you specifically to come here for a reason. Remember how back on Halloween, I was all about stopping Winifred from taking over the human world?"

George simply nodded.

"And remember how after Halloween, I just kinda got swept up with going to school in Underborough, and having sleepovers at Pale Manor, and going to parties at Bel Brimston's place?"

"Yeah, that part of it had been going on for a while, now that you mention it," George replied, stroking his chin.

"I admit it. I lost focus. Even if I hadn't, though, I still wasn't powerful enough to actually do anything about it," Angela said, her tails swaying. "Now I am powerful enough! Buuuuut..."

"But what?"

"We made kind of a good team against those zombies, didn't we?"

"Well, yeah!"

"I don't want to take our world back alone, George. You're my oldest friend, and you're also my only human friend. What would you say if I told you that I could give you powers like mine?"

The raising on George's eyebrows nearly pulled off his costume eyepatch. "Are you serious?!"

"What do you say, George?" Angela leaned in, her tails wrapping around George like a golden hand. "Do you want to be powerful? Like me?"

"Y-yeah! Let's go!"

Angela placed her left paw against George's back, sending a bolt of energy through his spine. George felt his senses becoming more acute as his ears stretched, sliding to the top of his head. He felt goosebumps as short, red hairs grew from every follicle on his body. His already long mullet began spilling onto his shoulders. His army surplus sweater began to feel looser as his cargo pants dropped to the parking lot, exposing a pair of slender, fur-covered legs. George opened his unpatched eye. "What... what did you..." George clapped a pair of paws over the unfamiliar female voice that came from his her elongated mouth.

"You made me into a fox! And a girl! A fox girl! What is this, the Internet?" George asked indignantly.

Angela didn't respond, trying to conceal her face with several of her tails. But even if she had a hundred tails, it wouldn't have covered her grin. Unable to contain it any longer, she burst out laughing. "HAHAHA... Heh... Ohhhh, forgive me, Georgie! I mean, I did say 'like me,' right?"

Georgie did not say anything, instead inspecting her two red tails.

"No, hey, Georgie? For reals, I am sorry, but playing tricks kinda comes with the whole fox package. For what it's worth, I meant all that stuff I said about being a good team. And I really did give you powers like mine."

"Not as many tails," Georgie noted.

"I said 'like me,'" Angela reiterated.