“Okay,” Marisa said. “We have lots of pizza and lots to drink and lots of munchies to keep us going for however long the madness lasts. Mamakitty is safe and sound up in my room with her babies and absolutely everything she needs, and won’t even notice if we aren’t around. But where the heck is Claudia?”

“She promised to be here,” Harley said, checking her laptop’s power cord and adjusting its position on the dining room table. “Trust her.”

“I do, but it goes live in, like, ten minutes!” She was already anxious enough about this. Even though she’d gained full motor control over her tail and ears less than forty-eight hours after the visit to Tavi, she still couldn’t keep her tail still instead of twitching in agitation, and her ears kept trying to flatten halfway. This needed to happen, she wanted it to happen, but she couldn’t quite keep from wondering whether she was trading years of hard work for the chance to be herself.

Her Discord server was buzzing with regulars speculating about the video that was about to premiere and what announcement could be so dramatic that it called for that. Any time she peeked in on her phone, her mods had it under control.

Well, minus one. After she’d given them an advance viewing two days ago, one had informed her that he was deeply disappointed that she had destroyed her image as safe and wholesome and non-threatening, and he was done with her. That had hurt, even though two others had jumped in to tell her that she looked cute and happy, and a fourth confessed to some jealousy and wishing that her employer would accept a morph like that. What was so terribly unwholesome about her kitty morph, anyway? It wasn’t like she’d even gotten into anything about being submissive or the details of whatever it was forming between her and Harley and Claudia that felt so good and natural and somehow both rock-solid dependable but so fragile she was terrified of shattering it. Time remained a frustrating factor, but with all three making a deliberate effort, she was hopeful that it could be worked around.

Claudia and Harley both had mod powers everywhere she could give them. She hoped fervently that it would be enough.

The front door opened, and Claudia called, “Just me! Sorry!”

Marisa hastened down the hall to meet her and help her with not one but two laptop bags and a heavy backpack.

“I got caught up trying to help a user who’s having a problem with an app and wasn’t watching the time. Sal basically grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and dragged me out to his car and dumped me on your doorstep, and Angie stepped in to help the user. The whole gang are sending love and cheers and support. Juanita says to take no crap from anyone, and Darin says the mod who dissed you is a loser with no appreciation for art.”

Marisa immediately felt better. “They’re wonderful.”

“I agree. But so are you.” Claudia stole a quick kiss, grinned at her, and headed for the dining room. “My old laptop’s less powerful than my new one but it does have some custom upgrades so it’s more than able to keep up with comments for you. And I’ve got overnight stuff, whatever isn’t already here, ‘cause you’re right, I probably won’t make it home. Oh, the hardship, having to sleep here.”

Harley’s queen-sized bed, they’d discovered, allowed three to sleep—if they were friendly and okay with some snuggling.

Plus it left Marisa’s room to the rather skittish cat who had been rescued pregnant and just wanted a safe quiet place with her litter for the moment. Once she felt safe, they could look at starting to socialize the little ones and help her adjust, but not today. It should be interesting to find out whether her purr helped.

They hastily finished setting up. A tablet, a bit older than any phone present but larger and up to the task, was set up where all three could see it so they could keep track of where they were in the video. Three laptops, around the dining room table. A scattered handful of assorted fidget toys for working off stress—if there was any time around typing. A kitchen full of supplies. Possibly they were over-preparing, but Harley had pointed out that even afterwards they would probably all need some downtime to decompress, and having everything at hand would make that easier. Claudia’s “old” laptop was still fast enough that Marisa saw no difference between it and her desktop computer in the basement—and it meant she could be here with the other two.

“You know some of this is going to be seriously savage, right?” Marisa said, watching the timer on her phone count down. Less than two minutes. She wiggled in place, checking that her tail was through the right gap in the back of the chair and wouldn’t get uncomfortable.

“Let me think,” Harley said. “Claudia, are you over the age of twelve, and have you ever been on a social media platform before?”

“I certainly hope I’m over eighteen, actually,” Claudia said with a grin. “And I might have encountered social media a couple of times. We knew that when we agreed to do the video with you.”

“I know,” Marisa said. “Just nerves. I’m usually the good girl no one objects to, aside from usually preferring girlfriends.”

“Whereas Claudia and I,” Harley said, “have longer histories on the fringes and more experience dealing with haters.”

“Thanks. I don’t know how you two put up with me. You’re so calm about this.”

Harley sighed. “I will be much less calm if my mother calls. I have tried repeatedly to get ahold of her and she keeps telling me that she’s busy and she’ll talk to me next week once her garden club finishes with their fundraising-for-tree-planting thing, which would normally be fine and I have to respect the effort they put into it, but she does sometimes watch your channel, so...” She rolled her eyes. “That will be exciting if it happens.”

“We have friends,” Claudia said. “And backup. And I betcha a lot of Ris’ audience is going to be just fine with all this. The spike you got when we all started telling people there was a big announcement coming is probably going to drop some, but it’ll be okay.”

There were already people in the chat for the video, and some of them had even said something beyond claiming first. Under a minute. Marisa took a deep breath and reminded herself that she set the tone and that meant she had to stay friendly and positive. She maximized the chat window on her screen and took the plunge.

«Hi, folks! Everyone ready for big news about the future of this channel?»

The replies were immediate, including several hoping that she wasn’t going to stop or switch to a pay-only model or quit doing explanations.

«None of those,» Marisa assured them. «I promise.»

“You have some very enthusiastic fans,” Claudia observed.

“Yes. And I’d hate to lose them.”

“Showtime,” Harley said.

On the tablet, they watched the final ten-second countdown, then the video started.

The title screen had changed. Tavi had immediately and with great delight given her blanket permission to use the watercolour sketch she’d done as a preliminary of Marisa’s cat morph. Likewise, she’d given Marisa the doodle she’d done of a capital M with the top points as cat ears and one lower leg trailing into a tail—she’d added a collar with a bell to the latter, in fact.

And then it resolved into the usual scene of her setup in one corner of the basement. It was pretty much always the same angle and lighting, since there was minimal outside influence and even less need to move things around between videos. She’d spent ages on her set; she’d made a few recent changes, but didn’t have much budget available for dramatic ones. So it was still her simple corner, with a set of shelves against each wall with miscellaneous objects on them that were vaguely tech-related and interesting or attractive without being distracting, now with a few cute cat toys as well just for fun. The wall was still the same soft blue she and Harley had painted it soon after moving in—Harley volunteering to help had been unexpected but welcome and had made it both easier and more fun. The soundproofing she’d been able to do in a rented house was limited but adequate, invisible on camera with the exception of a few acoustic panels around the shelves.

She had a table that was the right height for her, where she could display whatever she was talking about, and she always kept a few quiet, non-intrusive fidget toys on it to play with while talking; she had decided that if it helped her stay relaxed and focus on what she was saying, it was worth it, and no one who mattered seemed to mind. The table had been plain white plastic, previously. Now, in carnation-pink, Tavi’s modified M had been spray-painted onto the table and onto Marisa’s sky-blue t-shirt. Against it, her calico skin showed beautifully. She had a kitty-collar on, this one blue and pink, but the bell had nothing inside it; as much as she had missed the jingle, it would make recording audio just impossible.

Harley and Claudia were in it with her, on either side. Video-Claudia’s sleeveless, high-necked matte-black shirt showed the curves beneath without being racy, and highlighted her silver arm and makeup; the table mostly blocked the view of her side-slit red skirt and her silver leg and metal foot, although not entirely on one of the two cameras, if someone were paying attention.

Video-Harley was back in jeans, but they fit very differently over her new curves; with suggestions, she’d chosen a black off-the-shoulder top with a bit of a ruffle along the top edge, which left the scales on her arms and chest partly visible and allowed a hint of cleavage. A silver chain with a lock-and-key pendant was bright against her skin and scales. Marisa had done her makeup for her, over Tavi’s helpful permanent base, Harley admitting that she had a lot to learn on that front, and pulled the front of that long dark hair back for her.

The day after they’d been to see Tavi, Harley had largely emptied her room of masculine clothing and accessories and donated them. Any attempt at suggesting patience or waiting just a little to be sure she was really happier as a woman had been met with the same calm certainty, so Marisa had given up and helped. At the same time, Harley had added a few further items to her new, if mostly second-hand, wardrobe. Replacing it entirely on a finite budget was going to take time, unfortunately, but they could work on that, and the women of WyrdTech had promised to see what they could do.

Video-Marisa smiled at the camera and raised a hand in a wave. “Hi, guys! First things first. Possibly, if you’re observant, you might have noticed I look a bit different.”

The chat exploded with a tangle of WTF? and Wow! and variations, none of it really anything concrete to respond to.

“Some things happened lately that I’ll tell you about eventually, but long story short, I found myself doing some questioning about who I am. And, well, you’re not any more surprised than I was! Still me, just with calico skin and kitty ears and tail. I am absolutely loving it and I’m keeping them. Octavia Whittaker is an artist, isn’t she? She did my watercolour from the intro, too. So from now on, this is what you get, folks!”

Several comments agreed about Tavi’s artistry.

Marisa saw one comment: «WTF? U were cuter b4! Plzzzzz change back!» and replied to it with, «No. My body, my choice, and I love this.»

Someone who simply came up as Sky replied to the same one with, «Why on earth should she give up what makes her happy just to make a stranger happy? She’s srsly cute NOW. Open your mind.»

She was immensely proud of Harley, and a bit humbled at the same time. After years of avoiding cameras of all kinds, Harley had agreed to be in the video, with the promise of more in the future, in large part to support her. Plus it was a way of showing off the new self she was so thrilled by, but a lot of the motivation had been support. There she was in the video, her attention on video-Marisa, and doing an amazing job of looking calm despite everything.

Claudia, well, never happy with how she looked on camera, had still embraced the idea with her usual enthusiasm for any new experience, and had expressed great delight in how it had turned out and impatience to do it again.

“On to other business,” video-Marisa said briskly. “I will still be doing videos reviewing products and explaining common or relevant tech for regular people, but I’m going to have some help. This is Harley.” She pointed with both hands to her right, and video-Harley waved. “She has an amazing blog, the link is below, where she writes intelligent and reliable articles about all kinds of high-tech stuff and new developments in technology and does reviews on anything from games to operating systems to hardware. And sometimes she beta-tests things. So she’s generally way ahead of most regular people as far as what’s going on. She’s been one of my best sources of info for, oh, coming up on a couple of years now, and I’ve been able to help now and then with her articles, especially if they involve multimedia, but we’re going to be doing some more deliberate collaborations. Possibly involving her explaining things in techno-jargon while I translate it for real people. Or possibly involving both of us testing out something new that we’ve never used before, just to see if we can figure it out between us. We have a lot of ideas, and those should be a lot of fun.”

In the chat, she saw a wave of comments that were probably Harley’s followers, including, «Whoa, Harley, I thought you were a guy, not a seriously hot chick!» Harley just thanked them and suggested not making assumptions. The ones she’d met at tech conferences were a bit trickier, but they did get the idea eventually, especially once Harley agreed that Tavi was an artist. Otherwise, she handled specifics about the future of her blog smoothly.

Marisa answered an «Ok, cool... can I rub your belly, kitty?» with, «Nope, only my own humans are getting near that without the claws coming out.»

“Humans?” Claudia chuckled.

“Eh, close enough,” Marisa said.

“And over here,” video-Marisa said, swivelling to point to video-Claudia with both hands, “is Claudia. She’s a dev from the company WyrdTech, which makes a bunch of apps I’ve reviewed with high ratings on reliability and intuitive use and practicality. Actually, I met her when I emailed WyrdTech about some thoughts on their apps that came from my reviews and discussions with you guys about them, and WyrdTech listened and implemented a lot of it.”

In the chat, a number of users cheered, some of them screen names Marisa thought belonged to WyrdTech themselves.

Around explaining to several people that she was fine, not under or in need of psychiatric care, had not been forced, and was not under the influence of too much online catgirl media or anime, Marisa said, «Hi, WyrdTech! :-) » and got several rapid greetings in reply. A couple of them came up so fast that she doubted they were actually typed.

“Whatever we feasibly could,” video-Claudia said cheerfully. “And we took notes for further development of current and future apps. What’s the point of making them if they aren’t easy and comfortable for everyone to use? And we got a lot of positive feedback, so hey, win-win all around. We like sensible, concrete, clear suggestions.”

“This is what you could call a responsive company. She’s also a tech-witch. WyrdTech is nine people in total, all of them witches, although not all tech-witches. She’s going to be joining me for some videos explaining where apps and other software come from and how they’re developed and why they don’t work on every device equally or even at all, and also we’re going to try to clarify what tech-witches do. No, they are not the reason that the balance in your bank account is dropping every time you look or the reason your social media account was locked after you said something rude. Possibly we’ll do other things, who knows? Maybe we’ll do videos of all three of us playing games or something, or reviewing something from three different perspectives. You can let us know what you might like to see. No hurry, we’ll be around.”

Marisa saw multiple comments about the sexy silver cyborg in the chat, but Claudia had them well in hand; Harley, similarly, had the comments about the red-scaled woman on video-Marisa’s other side under control, with a mixture of dry humour and honesty. Several times, she saw Sky, and someone whose screen name appeared only as RNBen, calling people out on overly-personal comments, while otherwise having a friendly chat with the more open-minded.

“There will be other collaborations coming up, too. A new friend who’s a nurse asked me to review some medical apps so he could point patients that way, and I’m making him help me with it because I can’t evaluate some aspects of them, so watch for that. Possibly there will be more than one, because there are a lot of medical apps out there. If there are any you want us to tackle specifically, let me know, okay?”

“Oh hell, there’s my mom in the chat,” Harley muttered.

“Keep breathing,” Claudia said. “You’ve got this.”

Marisa saw it at the same time, just an, «Oh my» and braced herself.

It was followed, after a pause, by, «Oh, Marisa, you look adorable like that!»

And, a little below that, «Harley, love, you look so happy!»

“Wait, what?” Harley said blankly.

Claudia giggled. “Divide by zero.”

«I wonder if I can tell Octavia she did a really lovely job,» Harley’s mother said.

Sky jumped back in with, «Harley’s family?»

«Harley’s mom,» came the correction.

«I haven’t had parents approve of my long-term morphs all that often,» a commenter who simply came up as Tavi said. «Thank you.»

“Can you do without me for a few?” Harley said, reaching for her phone. “I think I really seriously need to call my mom. Like, right now.”

“Go ahead,” Marisa said. “Tell her I said hi and thanks, eh?” Several other commenters cheered for Harley’s mom’s reaction, one saying they wished their mom was that cool.

“Yeah. I will.” Already looking for her mother’s number on her phone, Harley moved to the living room.

“That,” Claudia laughed, “absolutely rocks. I’ve never had a chance to meet her but I really want to, now.”

“She’s great,” Marisa said. “She drops by now and then. I really like her. She never acted like if we’re sharing a house it means anything else. Wasn’t expecting that, though.”

The video, of course, had continued while they’d dealt with that; video-Marisa was covering some other basics about schedule and content and the income necessary for her to continue doing all the above. But then, that was part of why they’d recorded it, so that interruptions wouldn’t mean a break in the flow of the basic information.

Many of the comments didn’t really need a response, were simply reactions; a few of them were outright rude. Sometimes those ones vanished before she even got a good look at them, but that was fine by her. A quick check on Discord revealed that her mods there were so far managing to keep order, although she worried that they were stretching. It wasn’t just a few that were vocally hostile; some of the most positive were defending her rather aggressively, and a few were so positive they were actually insulting, fetishizing one or more of the trio. Interestingly, Tavi was quite active there, and having a conversation about morphing as art around attempts to calm the defenders who were getting carried away and calling mod attention to the inappropriate comments.

And then Marisa’s phone rang.

She glanced down.

“Well, hell. There’s my mom.”

“Go ahead.”

“I can’t leave you with this alone!”

“I’m about to skip the keyboard and plug in directly, so I don’t need to worry about typing speed.”

Marisa spun her borrowed laptop towards Claudia while she got up and picked up her phone. “Here. Anyone from WyrdTech you trust to have a level head, give them mod status, in the video chat or on Discord. Use your own discretion. Give it to Sky and all, too, if you want, they’ve been pretty active. Tavi on Discord, especially.”

“Got it.”

Marisa hit the connect button on her phone. Fortunately, she could still hear it just fine with her ears several inches higher, although she’d always preferred speaker anyway. Harley was in the living room, so she went to the kitchen. “Hi, Mom!”

* * *

It felt like hours later that the three of them collapsed on the couch in a tangle of bodies and limbs.

“Well, we survived,” Claudia laughed. “And if you aren’t going freakin’ viral within twenty-four hours, I’ll be really surprised, after all that.”

“If we aren’t,” Marisa corrected. “No matter how many times you keep telling me it’s my channel, if you two are on it a lot, and getting more attention because of that, then it isn’t just me.”

“Split hairs later,” Harley said. “At some point I need to tell Mom when she can visit when you’ll be here, Claudia. I can’t bloody believe that her whole response was basically that she’d been wondering about my gender for years but wanted to give me space. Dad’s grumbling about having to admit that Mom was right but he’s not exactly shocked either. And they want to help with expenses for clothes and ID and all. I mean, what the hell?”

“Just be grateful,” Marisa said. “My mom thinks I need a psychiatrist and to find a better crowd to hang out with because my current friends are obviously leading me astray.”

Claudia batted her silver-lined eyes at Marisa innocently. “You’d think you were hanging around with people who are, Idunno, tying you up all helpless and stuff.”

Marisa laughed. “I know, right? On the other hand, my Nani—the grandmother I like, not the one who lectures me about getting married—sent me a short email that basically just says she’s proud of me for absolutely everything, so there’s that.”

“She really sounds awesome. Besides, your current crowd includes a crazy-powerful morph-witch and her family, who are too cool for words, and the tech company that’s going to be releasing a groundbreaking device before too much longer, and two people who love you madly and are going to be right here for you no matter what. What on earth does she want that’s better than that?”

“Beats me,” Marisa said. Finally, she could feel herself relaxing enough that her purr was starting to rumble softly deep in her chest, just because... because. “I don’t think there’s a way to top that.”

“Phones and computers off for the rest of tonight,” Harley said. “Food. Drink. Brain-dead entertainment while adrenaline levels drop, optionally involving cuddling and/or ropes. Bed, possibly not immediately to sleep. We can follow up on today tomorrow, nothing’s going to change between now and then that needs our attention.”

Prysmcat

I hope you had fun dropping back into this world! Should I be trying to think of other stories set in it?

So what happened at the barbecue? I wondered that too and decided to write it, then realized after I’d started that it wasn’t really contributing to the story as such, so I cut it out. But I never delete anything, and I was having so much fun that I wanted to just let it go and watch it develop wherever the characters decided to take it. I thought maybe some of you would enjoy it as well. This is a very casual, unstructured, unhurried kind of behind-the-scenes scene that probaby breaks every rule of writing, just watching our two trios hanging out. Don’t expect anything big to happen because it won’t. If that’s not your thing, feel free to skip it. :-) But if you want to see how the Learning Curve trio are doing, then check out the bonus chapter that'll be coming up soon!