Perfectly Normal Swim Day

	“It took ya long enough!” Karina called out from some distance in the lake. Ning and Catherine, a tigress and vixen respectively, watched the ebony-furred wolf disappear into the water with a flash of her new fluked tail.

	“Someone’s really enjoying being a mermaid,” Catherine commented, stepping one footpaw into the cold water, untying her hair from its usual braid and letting it fall around her shoulders. Off in the distance, the tail of the arctic fox Aileas appeared from below the surface, as did Lehua from the shoulders up as he waved to the two new arrivals. Both of them had already been turned into a mermaid and merman, respectively, by Karina, who was swimming towards the couple as they slowly waded into the lake. She got to them when the water was deep enough for Catherine to start floating instead of walking on the lake bottom, making a swift, tight circle around the couple. Catherine felt a tingle race up her spine, looking down to see Karina making another pass in front of her, splaying her fingers and spreading her hands apart. The vixen felt her legs and tail first stick, and then fuse together into a single limb, with her fur disappearing into her skin, which took on its orange-and-white color scheme, while her feetpaws were turned outward, flattened and stretched into a tail fluke, which left her with the smooth, strong tail of an orca. With that finished, Karina set off the next part of the spell to alter Catherine’s lungs so that she could breathe both water and air.

	Karina took her hand and pulled her below the waves, and she unconsciously took a deep breath of water, and wasn’t bothered by it. “How do you like your new form?” Karina drawled, swimming around Catherine to admire her work.

	“As much as I thought it would!” the vixen replied, noticing that her speaking didn’t cause any bubbles to form.

	“Good, now I’m goin’ to convert Ning.” She turned to the tigress, who had moved somewhat further out and was now treading water as she watched the wolf and vixen.

	The last rock was put into its place by Lehua, marking the completion of their underwater fort. “Has anyone figured out a name for this thing yet?” Aileas asked. Behind her, Karina looked at the rest of the group and shrugged.

	Catherine made her I-am-thinking noise and swam inside. A minute later she emerged with a bright smile. “I got it! How about Siren’s Court?”

	A few nods and looks went throughout the group. “Great name, honey!” Ning declared.

Catherine, the Champion of Darkness

	The interior of the fortress was cold and dark, like any other typical evil lair. The so-called “Champion and Ruler of All Things Dark” was in here, somewhere. The sounds of three sets of iron boots echoed through the vast halls, and shadows cast by magical flame played along them. Slowly, cautiously, the trio, a rat knight, a deer fighter, and a rabbit druid advanced further into the fortress. Suddenly, the sounds of their boots were complemented by a booming, distorted voice that seemed to come from everywhere. “That is far enough,” it said. Three trap doors in the floor opened, one directly beneath each adventurer, and down they went.

	Catherine, a vixen in shiny black and silver armor, with the obligatory “spikey bits” all over it, leaned forward on her elaborate shiny black throne, staring across the hall at this latest group of fools, who were piled up in an iron cage that hung from the ceiling from chains. Their leader, the rat, stood at once, leaning against the side of the cage facing Catherine. “You!” he said. “The Champion of-”

	“You don’t need to say my title, I’ve heard it plenty enough times,” Catherine leaned in her chair, her armor casting faint yellow-orange reflections in places where the flames’ light didn’t quite reach.

	“How could you have possibly caught us?” the rat demanded.

	The vixen rolled her eyes, looking up at her new captives from her throne. “Because you did precisely the same thing the last would-be heroes did, and the ones before them.”

	The deer spoke up. “Not that that matters, we’re getting out of here, and we’ll-!”

	“Yes, yes, I’ve heard that all before, as well. If this is the best your kingdom can offer, maybe I’ll just ignore it instead of conquering it like the last two out of pity!”

	Now the rabbit made her voice heard. “We’ll stop you, I don’t know how, but we’ll stop you.”
	Catherine dismissively waved her hand. “Do you three have anything to say that I haven’t heard many times before? How are you even going to stop me? You’re in an enchanted cage, even though you’re all about to somehow break free of it.” She leaned forward slightly, having seen all of this play out before, beat for beat. As if on cue, the rat pulled out a sword that was also enchanted, and with two mighty swings, there was a very large hole in the side of the cage facing Catherine, through which the trio climbed out and dropped the half-meter to the ground, and they proceeded to flee from the stronghold.

	“Well, that was easy,” Catherine said, examining the shiny, bright green gem she had just extracted from a castle’s vault. The guards couldn’t even slow her down as she went for it. The joy of another victory was only slightly dampened by the approaching sound of three pairs of iron boots. She rolled her eyes and turned around to see the trio from many weeks ago.

	“We,” the rat huffed, “we found you.” He raised his oversized sword, but couldn’t hold it steady for he was so out of breath.

	“This is it for you!” the rabbit and deer said at once, raising their own weapons.

	“Or not.” Still holding the gem, Catherine simply pushed the rabbit and rat apart from each other as she began her trek back to her fortress. “Next time, try to get where I’m going before I do.”

The Prospectors

	A lone asteroid, like so many others, continued its slow, gentle tumble, as had been the state of its existence for billions of years. That, however, was about to change. The elongated spheroid’s dark side was suddenly illuminated by powerful searchlights that swept over its surface, aided by unseen radar pulses. A spaceship was approaching, barely lit up at all from being in the asteroid’s shadow, and the very low reflectivity of its surface, giving much of it a ghostly appearance, while its aft end was softly illuminated by its still-cooling nuclear thermal rocket.

	In the ship’s control room, two anthros, a lion and a malamute, alternated between looking up at the rock and down at their instruments. The malamute, who was the mission commander, tapped their screen, which was centered on a crater right over the rock’s center of rotation. “I think that’s a good spot to drop a probe,” they declared. The lion tapped in a command from her station, and the ship shuddered as a probe detached from the side. The two anthros watched it fly by, and a small cloud of dust that rose a few minutes later announced its touchdown. “How does it look?” The malamute looked over to the lion.
	“All systems look good, the probe has a good grip.”

	“Very well, hit it.” With the push of a button, the probe sent a sound pulse into the asteroid, beaming back the resultant seismic data as it came in. Back on the ship, jaws dropped to the deck despite the lack of gravity. Earlier sample missions had suggested this thing was rich in metals, but nothing suggested that it was to such an extent! “Get ready to stop this thing’s rotation, this rock is coming back with us!” The malamute immediately pushed themselves aft towards the communications station, their excitement making them forget about the intercom. From almost the exact center of the ship, the malamute changed directions and went feetpaws-first into the ship’s rotating section, designed to simulate half-Earth gravity for the sake of the crew’s health. “Casey!” they called out. “Get a message to Earth, this asteroid is what we’re here for.”
	“Yes, captain,” the ship’s communication’s officer replied.

	Not long after, five out of the ship’s crew of eight, including the captain and flight pilot, were in their EVA suits, watching as more probes that had been landed earlier, of a different, larger model and equipped with heavier thrusters, worked to stop the asteroid’s rotation. With that out of the way, the ship slowly moved in on its maneuvering thrusters, its bow unfolding into a large claw built for this exact purpose. It grabbed onto the asteroid with no difficulty, and the crew took their time to re-board their ship, admiring their work so far.

	Once everyone was back aboard and strapped in, the malamute ordered the pilot to begin their return to Earth.

Catherine, the Hat

	“That’s perfect,” Catherine the vixen declared, holding a gardening tool called a large bypass looper. She carefully inspected the apple tree she was working on to make sure that it had been properly trimmed, and was satisfied. This was the last thing she had to do for her wife’s large garden. She looked over her shoulder and spotted her wife, Ning, moving in her general direction, holding a different gardening tool over each shoulder. The two met in front of the tool shed to put everything away.

	“Good job, dear,” Ning huffed, putting a hand on Catherine’s back. They were both somewhat tired. “Let’s head back in.” The couple crossed the last bit of distance in the garden, then over a small stone bridge, then entered Ning’s Victorian-style mansion through a back door.

	They promptly collapsed onto a couch in the living room, Catherine ending up resting her head on Ning’s abdomen. “I saw that you had that look on your face, honey,” the vixen pointed out. The tigress shifted slightly so that she could sit upright. “You’re about to turn me into something again, aren’t you?”

	“You got me, I will, and I’m sure you’ll love it.” Ning ran a hand through Catherine’s long, dark, humanoid hair that was tied into a braid. Due to how Ning’s magic worked, that’s also how she cast a transformation spell on her wife. Catherine shuddered as the magic took hold, the first change being her hair disappearing by retracting into her head and becoming normal fur. The shrinking came next, her body becoming ever smaller until she was less than a fifth of her normal size and was thus swallowed by her own shirt, and her skeleton quickly rearranged to force her into a quadrupedal form. Her vocal cords changed so that she could only produce the sounds of a normal red fox, and with her changes finished, Ning pulled her out of the shirt. “Well?” Catherine made a happy sound as Ning held her in both arms against her chest. “I told you, you’d love it.” Still holding Catherine, Ning stood up and started searching for her camera. She found it quite easily, and started using her telekinesis to get it to a good position. She pet Catherine over her head the whole time, until she suddenly broke loose and climbed onto her shoulders, then atop her head, where she sat down with her tail curled around her front. Ning couldn’t see the smug look Catherine now had, the kind that only a fox could have, at least until she finally snapped the picture and examined it. She got a good laugh out of that.