Plush Paradise: The Novel



Plush Paradise: The Novel Act 1

By shadowlugia249

Author's Note: After the success of my balloon novel, I couldn't stop there. I had to keep going and I decided what better characters to use for a “sequel” than the plushies. I will be going above and beyond the call of duty on this one by using ten different characters in this story. Some characters will make a return from the balloon story, but some may be completely different and unique. Some of their personalities may be different this time around as well, so be prepared for something a little different. If this works, I hope to restart some of my earlier stories and finish most of them in the future. Enjoy!

Prologue

For the first time in ten years, wizarding Hall-of-Famer Karmen Aridos and his apprentice accidentally turned hybrid, Vega Firetail had finally set aside their differences and had decided to work together to restart Aridos' old business of selling enchanted items known as “Synthetics” to well-deserving people to help change their lives. After unknowingly becoming business rivals for the past few years, they had been reunited shortly after the catastrophe known as the “Rubber Revolution” by a series of strange events.

Vega had once been Aridos' young apprentice before an accident in Aridos' shop had permanently transformed him into an Anthro Red Fox. Rushing to judgment, Aridos had expelled him before Vega had been able to receive his wizarding license. Full of anger and injustice and lust for revenge, Vega had disappeared for a couple of years before setting up an illegal shop that specialized in the sales of special trinkets and potions that turned their owners into anthropomorphic creatures like him. Even though he was determined to ruin Aridos, who had not yet learned of his underground actions, Vega had made absolutely sure that he did not push things too far when it came to his customers. Although he loved to torment and draw out their experiences by playing tricks with their transformations, he would always reconcile and finish his projects before moving onto another customer.

For over eight years, Vega moved from area to area, selling his products and then using a special blaster rifle he had constructed to wipe the memories of those who remembered him. Had Aridos learned of his actions, he would have shut him down a long time ago. But Vega remained elusive until events shortly after the Rubber Revolution brought them back together. They had had a heated debate and Aridos threatened to turn Vega in, but at the last moment, a letter from Aridos' superior had arrived stating that if Aridos reported him, he would be stripped of his own magical license for good.

Aridos had had far too many warnings himself involving some of his merchandise being unleashed upon the world. In fact, he had closed down shop at least five separate times because of his projects endangering the world. He had even been the one that had sold the Synthetic that had started the Rubber Revolution. Although he had done his best to prevent it, the Synthetic had been unable to be purified and had slipped through his net.

So making sure to follow his superior's every word, Aridos had decided to set aside his dispute with Vega and the two of them joined forces to become partners in Aridos' new store, which they now called “Plush Paradise”. To make sure they did not split up again and anger “their” superior, they had given each other equal rights and privileges so that they could not disagree with each other.

So as a test for their newly-restored partnership, their superior had sent a series of plushies to their shop to distribute over the course of a month to their first customer. The customer was currently unaware that he was to receive these plushies, but soon, he would arrive and choose the first of many. He was currently going through a mid-life crisis as they prepared the order, so the pieces would soon be falling into place.

Now all they had to do was wait...

Chapter 1: Mid-Life Mayhem

Hooo... boy! Did I ever get it! I stumbled into my apartment and flopped down on the couch without even taking off my shoes. I was so beat after today that I wasn't sure how I would ever recover from this. And it wasn't just a regular long day; I had just had the mother of all royal chewings handed to me from my boss today that I was surprised I wasn't deaf from his booming voice after who-knows-how-long in his office.

What am I going on about? Well... let's just say it was an act of both desperation and stupidity at the same time.

My name is Lance Kane and I work at a company that specializes in the production of advertising artwork to put on display on anything you could think of. Phone books, buses, posters, shirts, hats, coats, billboards, you name it! We get the project that our clients want and our department of artists produces the slogan or logo that is to be displayed practically anywhere for any company. And as far as I was concerned, I was the cream of the crop.

Out of 20 different artists in the department, everyone knew that I was the best. My use of color, characters and typography was second to none with the others in the building. Whenever there was a difficult project to do or there was something that someone couldn't understand, they would come to me. I was the go-to guy for anything and everything artistic.

But even though I did countless other advertisements, I took pride in drawing only one thing – furries. I can't get enough of them. I would spend countless hours on the Internet, looking for any and all artwork that I could find that was related to furries. I would see so many different animals and creatures used that it was almost impossible not to find anything. From foxes to dragons and beyond, I would find whatever I could and download it onto my computer to print out and use for future inspiration.

But that was not the only thing I prided myself on. I also took special interest in certain characters from popular video games and media sources to spark my inspiration. A lot of them were furries as well. Out of every character I had seen in the world, I had narrowed it down to ten different characters that made me feel the most comfortable.

First, there was one of the most powerful Legendary Birds from the World of Pokémon – Lugia. Another one was the super-powerful white Windragon from a Japanese anime that never made it to America – Shiron. Next, another powerful Pokémon and one of the most intelligent yet misunderstood ones of all – Mewtwo. There was also the strange and curious creature who appeared in only a handful of games – the Dream Traveler, Klonoa. Another one was one of the most beautiful anthro foxes of all time that starred in the most recent Starfox games – the lovely blue Telepath, Krystal.

Another one on my list never starred in any games, but when I first saw him, I assumed he was in an anime that I never saw. It turns out that it was a completely original character made by an artist from the online communities, deviantART and Fur Affinity by the name of “cyber-zai” – the anthro cyborg dragon, Zai. Number seven on my list was one of the most intelligent furries I had ever seen, Sonic the Hedgehog's sidekick and friend, the two-tailed Miles “Tails” Prower. Near the end of my list was yet another original character that I found on the Internet – the lovely silver dragon, Sidian Silverhawke. At number nine was a Pokémon that I felt was the fiercest and most loyal one I had ever seen before – the Fire-Type warrior, Blaziken.

Finally, the most amazing of all of the others, there was the bizarre and magical winged beast that starred in the “World of Mana” games, the almighty Flammie. Out of all of them, Flammie was, in my opinion, the most powerful of all of them. I had never seen such a magnificent creature in all my life. And when I saw it for the first time in fully rendered 3D in the game “Dawn of Mana”, my heart nearly stopped. Not once had I ever seen a more beautiful and/or adorable furry since then.

You might be asking, “How do I know all this?” Let's just say that I dabbled in video games, furries and anime in my free time. I'd learned of these characters over the course of my lifetime and even grew up dabbling in the various medias they had starred in.

Getting back to my bad day, I was working on a small project for a TV advertisement one particular day, making distinct progress on it like always. I was looking forward to finishing this final project up today and sending it out to the client before quitting time. I was completely at ease with what I was doing and could not see anything coming between me and my goal.

But right in the middle of drawing the final project, I suddenly felt everything go out. My spirit and enthusiasm for drawing suddenly went dry and I found myself unable to continue. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get going anymore. I was stuck in the middle of my project and I couldn't get my inspiration going again.

Finally getting frustrated, I made a very stupid move that sparked all of this. I groaned to myself and crumpled the final project up in my hands, finally reducing it to shreds of torn paper. Most unfortunately, my boss had been making his rounds when he happened to witness my destruction of the project. Before I knew it, he had had me by the ear like a mother scorning her child and was dragging me off to his office in pain. He then threw me down on the chair in front of his desk and proceeded to give me the mother of all royal chewings.

In all my life, I had never heard anyone yell as loud or as long as he did that day. I was sulking in my chair, taking it all in as he practically threw his spleen at me for “corporate misconduct” and something about “destruction of company property”. I was so upset with myself that I barely paid attention to him and simply agreed with whatever he threw at me. He made so much noise that the floors above and below his office had stopped working completely to listen to him go off on me.

When it was all over, I ended up with a suspension without pay and a whole lot of make-up work to do. The only reason I didn't get fired was because there was a meeting coming up with a number of important clients and my boss was afraid to face them without his prime artist in business. Apparently, they had heard of me and had all wanted a project done by me by the time they met with the company. It would have been nothing big if it had been one, two or even three projects. But my boss had a really big mouth (I should know) and had bragged about my abilities to one too many different people. In all, I had to do a total of ten original projects during my suspension over the next month for the conference.

Normally, I would have welcomed a challenge and was certainly capable of accomplishing such an assignment, but the lost of my inspiration and enthusiasm had all but spelled the end for my career. After losing it so suddenly, I couldn't bring myself to even lift a pencil to draw even a doodle for the conference. I was sunk and in 30 days, I was dead meat.

That brings me to my apartment just a few hours after the yelling match of the century. I had crashed on my couch and was trying to think about how on earth I would be able to accomplish ten projects in a month without any enthusiasm. I was beating myself up for losing my inspiration, which I had never lost in my entire life, so I was at a loss for what to do. Not even playing my Gamecube or my Nintendo DS would help me pull out of this.

In fact, there was only one thing that would make me feel even slightly better at a time like this. I rolled off the couch and slumped into my spare room where I had my home computer. In the corner of the room was the thing that always made me feel better after a long day when my games didn't. A collection of 100 or so plushies was piled in a corner, just waiting for me to lie down on top of. And that's what I did. I took off my shirt and flopped down on top of the fuzzy pile, the plushies massaging every bit of my body that it touched and restoring some of my confidence.

I loved my plushies. I had spent a good portion of my life collecting them to use in my own personal fantasies when I was growing up. I had never had any friends before, so these plushies were the only ones I had to comfort me. I wouldn't sell any of them for any kind of money after all of the comfort and reassurance they had given me. Everything from dragons to tigers to foxes to cats and beyond was in that pile.

Well... almost everything. Even after all this time, there were ten specific creatures that I had never been able to find in a plush form that I considered worth my time and money. Can you guess?

Yep, they're the characters I mentioned earlier. Flammie, Blaziken, Sidian, Tails, Zai, Krystal, Klonoa, Mewtwo, Shiron and Lugia. I have been unable to find a decent plush for any of them. I'm not surprised with most of them. Most of them had only appeared once or twice, but were not popular enough to make it into plush form. The Pokémon and Tails were close, but I was either unable to obtain them or they weren't in enough detail to consider worthwhile.

But to get to the point, I had no idea what I was about to get into when I went to check my mail the following day...

Chapter 2: Flammie and Glory

After trying and failing to rekindle my enthusiasm for drawing, I finally gave up and went down to the entrance of the apartment complex to check my mail. I didn't know what I was going to do if I didn't start drawing soon. I was at the end of my rope as it was. If I couldn't keep my job by the end of the month, I was likely to spiral into a serious depression.

There were only two pieces of mail that particular day. One of them was your average electric bill, which I set aside for later. But the second envelope contained an address that was unfamiliar to me. It was from a place called “Plush Paradise” and according to the address, it was less than a block from my apartment.

I had heard of Plush Paradise. There was a rumor going around that the previous owners of my current apartment were somehow related to the strange shop just across the lot. The rumor was that shortly after anyone moved into that particular apartment, within six months, they paid a visit to Plush Paradise to purchase something there. And from a few days to a month later, the tenant had completely disappeared from the apartment without paying their bills or answering their phone or even doing anything at all. They said that the apartment was jinxed (jinxed; not cursed) which was the main reason why the rent on it was so cheap. I was never one to believe in rumors, but it had happened way too many times for it to be a coincidence any longer.

Despite the rumors, I had always wanted to visit Plush Paradise ever since I had moved in about six months ago. But for some reason, I always found myself unable to go there either because I didn't feel like it or something would come up. But to get a direct letter from the shop without even having been there sent red flags up in all directions. This couldn't be a coincidence; there had to be something about that rumor that was true enough for this to happen.

I didn't stop looking at the envelope until I had shut my apartment door behind me and sat down in my living room. Why would they be sending me something like this just like the rumor claimed? It just didn't make any sense. Well, I guess I'd better open it.

Inside, I found a piece of thick, yellowed paper that felt strangely like parchment and a small silver coin. I decided to read the letter first and worry about the coin later. It was just too coincidental to ignore.

Dear Mr. Lance Kane,

Congratulations! You have been chosen as the winner of our “Plush Paradise” sweepstakes. You have won the honor of selecting ten of our special, unique plushies to claim as your very own. So as not to overwhelm you, we have decided to have a three-day intermission in-between your selections. Our plushies are so lifelike that too many of them at once may be too overwhelming for you to handle.

To claim the first of your ten plushies, we have enclosed a special token that you must present to the store manager whenever you are ready. While you are there, you may select the next nine and the order in which you wish to receive them. Every three days after that, we will personally deliver the next one on your list to your apartment so that you will have a fresh face to enjoy every few days.

We hope you will visit us very soon, Mr. Kane. We look forward to your presence and our plushies are waiting to come home with you.

Until then,

Karmen Aridos and Vega Firetail

Managers of Plush Paradise

This was way too weird to be true. How on earth could all of this be true and all be meant for me? I had never won a single drawing in my whole life, much less one I didn't even enter. I was at a complete loss as to what to do.

But as I looked over the small, silver token that had been included with my letter, all of my confusion and suspicions were cast aside. I found myself actually looking forward to going to Plush Paradise and choosing ten special plushies to bring home. It was like a dream come true for someone like me!

Figuring I might as well start now, I pocketed the silver token and grabbed my shoes. The shop was within eyesight of my apartment and I didn't even need to cross any streets, so I didn't see the need to use my car. I thanked whatever good fortunes that were in play and headed out the door.

Plush Paradise was rather colorful for a small shop. It looked about as wide as my apartment complex but with only one floor. The outside was windowless but was colored like a mural where the colors were splattered on in no particular pattern. There was no sign to tell what the name of shop was, nor were there any of the basic utilities that you normally found on most buildings with central heating and plumbing. It certainly seemed worth a try. After all, I did “win” a contest. It was certainly something to give a decent chance to.

The inside of it was just as, if not more colorful than the outside. That and the fact that there were so many different plushies on display here that it was just nothing but eye candy in here.

I don't know when I had ever seen so many different unusual plushies. There were dragons of all shapes, sizes and colors, different Pokémon I had never seen on the market before such as Dialga, Jirachi and Celebi, exotic animals such as killer whales, white tigers, foxes and everything in the middle. I had never seen a store that had had this many different plushies with such high numbers to pick from in stock before. It was truly a place I could grow to like.

But what was truly amazing was what was on a rack in the exact center of the store. Ten different plushies were all seated around a central sign that said, “Win these plushies! Enter our sweepstakes and give these special creatures a home!” I immediately assumed that this was what I was going to win from the contest that I allegedly entered. But once I had taken the time to look over what I had “won”, my heart all but stopped.

There were ten different plushies seated around the central podium. In fact, they were the ten plushies I had been wishing I could have! Flammie, Blaziken, Sidian, Tails, Zai, Krystal, Klonoa, Mewtwo, Shiron and Lugia – every last one of the characters I had dreamed of meeting were all there! I couldn't believe my luck! I had won every last one of them! How coincidental was this?!

“May I help you?”

I turned around to see a pair of figures standing behind me. One of them was an aged, decrepit old man with more wrinkles than my great-grandmother. He only stood at about five feet tall with a distinct aged hunchback and his arms held behind his back. He had a bald, wrinkled dome with wisps of white hair all around his skull.

The other one, who had gotten my attention, was something I never thought could even exist. Standing at an impressive six-foot-six and wearing a full-body suit of black battle armor was a man that wasn't as much a man as he was a fox-man. I knew immediately that he was a fox because I could see a thick, bushy, flame-colored, white-tipped T.A.I.L. growing out of his backside and a real, vulpine head and face looking back at me! I knew that no normal human had a pointed, furry, whiskered muzzle complete with white and red fur and a round black nose. And above his fierce, golden eyes was a pair of pointed fox-like ears that twitched at the slightest change in the air-conditioning. He was humanoid in posture along with a pair of five-fingered human-like hands, although his feet were digitigrade-like in stance and pose.

I didn't know what to make of this strange furry. I had seen plenty of pictures of them in my career in furries, but I had never seen one in real life before. The fact that the old man next to him could see him slightly convinced me that I wasn't crazy, but I couldn't quite be sure.

“May I help you?” he said again in a firm, mature and masculine voice. “Or are you just going to stand there all day?”

I finally got my tongue untied, but what came out suggested it was still a little tight. “What are you?”

The fox-man looked down at his partner, who in turn looked up at him and nodded. He returned the nod and said, “I'm real, if that's what you're asking. My name is Vega Firetail and this is my business partner, Karmen Aridos. While he's quite human, I'm an Anthro Fox.” A quick scan of my stunned expression caused the corners of his muzzle to twitch into a smile. “I can assure you that you are not crazy.”

Now that he had gotten that out of the way, I finally got my head on straight and got down to business. I figured if he was really real that there must have been a logical reason why he was a walking, talking, humanoid vulpine. But then again, it was none of my business, so I let it be.

I took out the silver coin that I had gotten in the mail and held it out to the fo... Vega. It would be rude to keep calling him a “fox-man”.

“I got this in the mail from a contest I guess I entered. The letter that came with it said to bring it here to claim my prizes.”

Aridos said nothing as Vega took the coin from my hand and held it up to his eye level. The brief moment that he touched me told me he was indeed real. Vega examined the coin, turning it over and back for a few moments and then testing its authenticity by trying to sink his teeth into it. Judging from the fact that it did not bend or break under his rather impressive canines, I assumed he knew it was real. He then flipped it in the air, snatched it up again and pocketed it. He then turned and beckoned to me with a finger.

“Come with me.”

The old man remained where he was while I followed Vega to the only check-out counter in the entire store. Vega went behind it and reached under the counter for something. He then emerged with a stamp and an ink pad.

“Hold out your hand. I need to stamp your hand so that the ones you pick out will know they belong to you.” When I looked blank, he shook his head. “Don't worry. Only they will be able to see it and it doesn't even leave a mark. You won't even feel it after I apply it.”

That wasn't quite what I was worrying about, but I held out my right hand and Vega dabbed the stamp on the pad for a moment before reaching forward and pressing the rubber to my bare skin. Like he said, I could feel the stamp being pressed to the back of my hand, but once he had lifted it, you couldn't even tell that he had even put a stamp there. It was completely invisible and I couldn't even feel the ink itself.

Vega then put the stamp and the pad away and said, “There. Now they'll know it's you and no one else. Now, would you like to pick out your first prize?”

I still looked uneasily at the spot where the “invisible ink” was applied on the back of my hand. I had a sneaking feeling I had been marked for life, but there was no mark to prove it had happened. Finally giving up, I nodded to Vega and he and I went back to the podium where Aridos was tending to the plushies. He had just pulled something out of one of them and had pocketed it before I could get a good look at it. He then gave what I assumed was a wink to Vega and sauntered off to a door behind the counter, which he disappeared through.

Still suspicious of the old man's actions, I looked at the array of massive plushies sitting neatly around the podium. Vega saw me looking at them and gestured with his hand.

“All you have to do is choose the order in which you wish to have them delivered and you can take the first one home with you. That's all there is to it.”

This was a problem. I liked all of them about the same, but I couldn't decide in which order to get them. There were so many of them that I couldn't make up my mind on which one to choose first or which ones to choose next. I was at quite a quandary.

Then as if struck by divine intervention, I made up my mind. I had always liked Flammie the best out of all of them and the look of those adorable baby-blue eyes made me want to cuddle him even more. He would be a perfect start to my collection.

“I'll take Flammie first,” I said, reaching forward to pick it up. The feel of his super-soft white fur against my face made it feel so close to the real thing that I was more determined than ever to take this one home first. The only problem was... how was I going to get him home? The plush was easily my height and weighed about as much as a stack of textbooks. How on earth would I get this home without attracting attention?

Vega seemed to be reading my mind. “Allow me to help you with that. Bring her over here.”

The “three” of us went back over to the counter where Vega went under the counter again and retrieved what I assumed to be a gun used to put tags in clothing. I had to set the plush on the floor because he was so large. Vega then reached up to his ear and squeezed the gun like a hole punch.

It happened in an instant. One second, the plush was well over six feet tall. The next, it had been reduced to a more... portable version at about the same size as a regular teddy bear. I was in awe at the sudden transformation. How on earth was that even possible?!

Vega then stored the gun away and handed the Pygmy Flammie back to me. “There you go. When you get each of your new plushies, they will all have a tag like this one on them.” He indicated the plastic tie that had been driven through Flammie's ear. “All you have to do it cut it and pull it out and it'll instantly return to its proper size. There's nothing to it.”

The magic of Plush Paradise had only begun to amaze me. I had no idea what wonders these plushies had in store for me over the next month.

Vega and I then went back over to the podium with Vega carrying a roll of numbered stickers to place on my next nine plushies. I then looked over the others and thought over which ones I wanted and when. Wanting to save the best for last, I placed the number “10” sticker on the Lugia plush. I then figured that I wanted a Pokémon right after Flammie and put the number “2” sticker on Blaziken. Then from Blaziken to Lugia, I put numbers three to nine on the silver dragoness, Sidian, the two-tailed fox, Tails, the cyborg dragon, Zai, the lovely blue vulpine, Krystal, the bizarre and unusual Dream Traveler, Klonoa, the super-Psychic Pokémon, Mewtwo and the almighty Windragon, Shiron in that order. I wanted to have the more “powerful” ones later so that I could spend time with the ones that didn't have as much power first.

Now that I had chosen which plush would come to me and when, Vega took the Flammie plushie from me, carried it over to the counter and placed it in a plastic shopping bag, which he then handed to me.

“Thank you. Your second plush will arrive in no more than three days. Until then, enjoy your first prize! Have a nice day.”

“Thanks,” I said. And with that, I left the shop, carrying the first of what I felt would be the first of ten new friends in my time of crisis.

When Lance left, Aridos came out of the back room and stood next to Vega, the two of them looking at the exit door but not at each other. They stood there in silence for a while before Vega spoke up.

“Did you finish them?”

Aridos nodded. “I did. They'll all awaken on their own just minutes after their tag is removed. I think Lance is going to have one of the more finer experiences of his life.”

“Times ten,” Vega added. “They'll also have a surprise for him before the month is over. The only problem is... which one is He going to pick?”

Aridos seemed to have figured this out already. “That's an easy one. I made a little trip down memory lane and programmed it into the last one. A little connection and he'll be better off.”

Vega sighed and shook his head. “I hope you know what you're doing. If it happens too early, he might get suspicious.”

“Don't worry about it. They all have to be together for it to happen, and by then, he'll have made an impression and they'll all have moved on. With all the wealth he’s going to make, they'll all move out and then they'll tell him. He has no idea how much his life is going change in the next month.”

Vega sighed again. “Let's just hope everything works out. You know how He gets if it doesn't.”

But Aridos wasn't worried. “I've been with Him longer than anyone. I know He's never wrong, so there's really nothing to worry about. Just go with it and everything will be fine.”

To be blunt, Aridos and Vega had just discussed the events that would take place over the next month. But like the geniuses they were, they avoided speaking directly about it in case someone (Author's Note: That's YOU!!!) managed to overhear them and figured out what was going to happen, thus ruining the plot.

The point was that Lance was about to get the adventure of his life and it would all start with Flammie.

When I got back to my apartment, I brought the Flammie plush into the living room and set it on the floor while I went to every door and window and shut them. I didn't know why, but I had a feeling I was going to need every bit of privacy that I could get with this plush.

Flammie looked so cute sitting in the middle of the living room floor. I knew it was just a stuffed animal, but there was something about him that made him special. It was like he had that special spark of life that my other hundred plushies did not have. I could see it in his round, sparkling eyes that made me believe that somewhere under all that cotton, there was a real creature living in there.

Once I had gotten all the privacy I would need, I grabbed a pair of scissors and went to go cut the plastic tag off of Flammie's ear. I wasn't sure how fast he would grow back to his original height, so I approached him carefully so I wouldn't be caught off-guard.

I leaned over him and opened the scissors to clip the tag. Holding my breath, I gave it one quick clip...

...

...

...nothing happened. I thought it was broken, but I soon realized that the tag was still partway in his ear. I let my guard down slightly when I pulled the plastic thread out of his ear like a thorn and I soon paid for it.

Like a miniature explosion, the instant the plastic tie was out, I found myself on the floor without any memory of how I had gotten there. It had happened instantaneously. Once the tie was freed of Flammie's ear, he had immediately returned to his previous size. He went from 12 inches long to nearly seven times that height in a flash, pushing me down on the floor from its sudden growth spurt.

As I lay there, I scolded my own ignorance. I should have expected that to happen that fast after how quickly it had happened when Vega had put the tag there in the first place.

“Note to self: be more careful next time.” And with that, I sat up to get my first decent look at Flammie in plush form.

Flammie in real life was even better than seeing him in the Playstation 2 game, “Dawn of Mana”. He was covered from head to foot in the softest, purest and most beautiful white fur I had ever seen before. It was so blindingly white that it would have made snow look gray and it seemed to give off its own faint aura. In this position, Flammie was able to stand on his back legs and hold his arms down at his sides just like a human's posture.

From his chest, down his front and all the way to the tip of his tail was a line of thick, rugged, orange “plates” that gave him a kind of draconic look. It also added armor to his otherwise “tender” form. Each of his paws was massive and bear-like. The front two each had three short, nubby digits with a long, pointed, white talon on each one and a fourth “thumb” and talon on the appropriate sides. Even though his back paws only had three digits, every one had a tough pink pad underneath each one just like an animal should have.

The trait that made Flammie so unique was the fact that he had not one, but two pairs of large, feathery wings. Both sets of wings were roughly the same size, each one easily being three times his body width, which made his total wingspan almost 15 feet from one tip to another. In fact, Flammie was the only creature I had ever seen that had fur and feathers on its body. I wouldn't doubt that he was the only one that would have those characteristics in the entire animal kingdom, mythical or otherwise. However, I soon corrected myself when I realized that gryphons shared the “furred-and-feathered” quality, except Flammie had FOUR wings and looked more like a bear than an eagle or horse.

But Flammie's head and face were without a doubt the most amazing parts of his whole character. He had a mane of thick, matted, goldenrod-yellow “hair” that looked much richer than it had on Dawn of Mana. Also, his muzzle was shorter than most beasts, but he was adorable nonetheless. On each side of his short, beak-like muzzle was a large, white, pointed fang that stuck out of the roof of his mouth, making his look much more adorable than threatening. But below his deer-like ears was the trait that made him the most amazing creature I had ever seen.

In his early years, Flammie's eyes had been normal-shaped and baby-blue in color. But ever since Children of Mana, Flammie's eyes had gained new meaning and appearance. There was very little white sclera on the edges, but the round, blue orbs that were his eyes made it look like I was looking at two shining blue stars with numerous tiny blue rays of color surrounding his almost nonexistent pupils embedded in his skull. They seemed to radiate with magic, power, curiosity and innocence all at once with a twinkle that I didn't even know could be put into a plush. I knew his eyes were machine-stitched like a boy scout’s badge, but they were so convincing and magical that I couldn't believe they could put that kind of authenticity into a plush version. It was like I could look into those eyes and be lost in their splendor and infinite space forevermore. They were that impressive. What a feeling they gave me! And this was just a toy!

The Flammie plush seemed to stare at me with a kind of look that seemed to be trying to tell me something, but I couldn't figure out what. There was something different about this one than the other hundred “normal” plushies I had in my other room. It was like there was that particular spark of... something that I couldn't shake. Even though its eyes were the most amazing things I had ever seen on any Flammie item in the world, there was still something... unnatural about them. It looked like they were staring into my soul and had a particular feel of... something that bothered me.

I leaned forward to stare Flammie in his eyes as if I could tell what it was about them just by looking at him. I wanted to know what it was about this plush that was different than the rest of my other mortal ones. I felt that if I stared long enough at him, I could figure out what it was about him that made him so special.

Just when I was about to touch Flammie's muzzle from getting so close, I found out what it was. The sparkle in his eyes suddenly glittered and the plush actually smiled at me! Before I knew what had happened, it reached out with a flat, rubber-like tongue and licked me right on the nose, startling me to no end and forcing me to back off in shock.

“You know, it's not polite to stare,” he said in a soft, melodic... feminine voice? “But I'm yours forever, so I really don't mind.”

It spoke! It actually moved its muzzle and spoke! Not only that, but it blinked, smiled and spoke in a female voice!

“You... you're alive?!” I said, scooting off in disbelief. “How could this be?!”

But the plush was alive! It was alive enough to drop down on all four of its paws and walk over to me and return the stare. I had never been on the other end of a staredown before, much less with a plushie. Those sparkling blue eyes startled me as those bottomless blue orbs looked over me and did exactly what I did to it. Not only that, but I could hear air coming in and out of its unseen nostrils. It appeared to be... smelling me?

I was a little uncomfortable watching this plushie watch and sniff me out. But it seemed to like what it saw because it lowered its head and rubbed it against my chest like a pet showing its affection.

Feeling its golden mane against my face made me feel rather comfortable for someone who had never had a pet before. But I doubted that this plush couldn't exactly be called a “pet”.

Then like a dog showing it loves its owner, the plushie tackled me so that my back hit the floor and it was on top of me! What was it doing?! It was...

Say... that felt pretty good. When that soft, angelic fur touched the bare skin on my arms and face, I was sure I had never felt anything like it before. It was like a gentle breath of air on my skin. I couldn't stay scared of it while it massaged me like this.

“That feels… wonderful,” I said as it touched my face with its bear-like paw.. “I could actually get used to this.”

The plush didn't seem to mind massaging me like this. In fact, it seemed to be getting a kick out of me being in this mood. It continued to stroke me through the hair with its massive paw and gave my face good cleaning with its unusual eraser-like tongue. To the average outsider, we would have looked like casual lovers, but we weren't going that far at the moment. I was in absolute bliss from the feel of the plushie's amazing fur. And its wings were like those of an angel. The soft, feathery feel made it feel like I had won an angel instead of a plushie.

Finally, the two of us separated and the plush sat back on its hind paws, allowing me to sit up properly. I could not remember the last time where I had ever felt so comfortable and happy. All of my cares and worries had practically melted away in the few moments of bliss I had been feeling while under that wonderful plush.

“Wow...” I said, looking at Flammie with amazement. “That was… amazing! How do you make your fur and feathers so soft?”

The plush smiled and began to groom itself with its rubbery tongue. In-between licks, it shrugged and smirked at me. “I take care of myself. If you think that was amazing, wait until we get to know each other. I have many, many more things that I can show you during our time together.”

It had said all of that in the same sweet, melodic, feminine voice it had used earlier. I had to make absolutely sure of this, though.

“If you don't mind me asking... who are you? How can a plush like you even come to life like this? And... are you male or female?”

The plush licked its right forepaw and then ran it through its mane like a cat cleaning itself and then smiled at me. “I don’t mind, actually. In the order you asked; my name is Seryn the Flammie. I was created by Karmen Aridos and Vega Firetail of Plush Paradise, and I am a female Flammie. Does that help?”

I nodded. “It does, actually. Thank you... uh... Seryn.”

“Seryn” looked like it hadn't, though. “Don't be afraid. I'm all yours, so you don't need to hide anything from me.”

I blinked but finally spat it out. “It's just that I was expecting you to be… well… male. The Flammie that I’m used to is male. He was just called “Flammie” as well.”

Against my expectations, Seryn didn't seem offended at all. “Maybe in the game, he was, but in real life, there are male and female Flammies, and each one of them has a name.”

It took a moment for me to understand this. “You mean there are real Flammies in the world?”

Seryn shrugged and started to preen her upper-left wing with her nose. “Maybe and maybe not, but I'm as close to the real thing as you're gonna get around here. Am I not good enough?” She sounded somewhat offended and hurt.

I suddenly became defensive. “No! No, not at all! I mean, I've just never seen a Flammie in any form that I could communicate with, plushie or otherwise. I just wasn't expecting to have a plush Flammie come to life like you are now.”

Seryn looked at me with those endless baby-blue eyes of hers, unsure of what to say. I was wondering if I had insulted her somehow. This was an entirely new experience for me. But then, Seryn chuckled to herself and held her arm out for me to take.

“You're a funny human, Lance. You and I could really have fun living together.”

I wanted to ask her how she knew my name, but Common Sense told me to just ignore it. I didn't need to question everything about her. After all, she was a “living” thing and deserved to be treated as such. I took her paw and she helped me to my feet.

“That's better. Now, aren’t you going to show me around?”

I wasn't sure how to answer that, so I simply said nothing and walked down the hallway towards my room with Seryn walking on all fours behind me. She was somehow able to fold her wings behind her so she didn't knock anything off the walls or hit anything with her tail.

I started the tour of my house in one of the spare bedrooms that I rarely used. “I guess this room could be yours. There's not really anything here, but if you want, you can stay here along with any of the other plushies that are supposed to be coming.”

I could have sworn I heard Seryn coo as she walked around the empty room, kneading the carpet with her padded digits. She seemed to be getting a feel for the carpet of “her” room.

“It's something I could get used to. Is this room really for all of us? It's not quite that big for ten of us.”

I suddenly remembered that there were still nine more plushies in my prize that were coming. “Yeah... I'll have to do something about that. I don't know how much space you guys will take up, so I'll have to do the math when I get each of you.”

Seryn smiled and wrapped her tail around my leg. “Don't worry; I'm probably one of the largest of all of us. The rest of us will be at a much smaller scale than I am.”

That was a good thing. I didn't have nearly enough room to handle ten plushies that were Seryn's size and/or bigger. Then again, the only one that was possibly bigger than Seryn here was the Windragon, Shiron. I would probably deal with him when he arrived.

Seryn and I then moved down the hallway a bit to two different rooms directly across from each other. “If you look to this side, you'll find my bathroom. I doubt you'll be using it because water doesn't work well with plushies.” Seryn frowned at this. “What? What did I say?”

“You may not know this, but we Synthetics can make ourselves completely waterproof if we wanted to.”

“I... didn't know that.”

She shrugged. “That's okay. No harm, no foul. That's just the first of our impressive abilities.” And she left it at that. I wasn't sure what she was planning, but I hoped she didn't try anything sneaky on me.

“On your other side is my bedroom. It's small, but it's my own little piece of home.”

Seryn walked into my bedroom and looked around at all of the posters of furries and dragons all over my walls. She seemed to be thinking about something but then came back out and said, “Your dreams are about to come true sooner than you think.”

I was starting to get annoyed with her vague clues and promises, but then again, we had just met. I would probably figure her out later on.

Further down the hall, I showed Seryn my computer room where I kept all of my plushies. I didn't even get a word out before she let out a squeal and jumped right into the pile.

“Ooh! They're all so cute! I've never seen so many plushies in one place. All these cute and cuddly faces are just so darling! I could just eat them all up!”

Seryn seemed to be enjoying herself as she spread her wings and “swam” through my mountain of plushies. Since she was a plushie herself, I could understand her happiness.

“Comfy?” I said as she purred and cooed like mad.

“Yes, very. They're telling me you’ve taken very good care of them and they're only too happy to return the favor.”

I hesitated. “You can… talk to them?”

Seryn rolled around on her back and looked at me like a dog wanting its belly rubbed. “Well, yes and no. Yes, I can tell how they feel about you by the sounds they make and the softness of their skins. But no, they aren't exactly “talking” to me. I guess you can call it a “plushie's intuition”.

I couldn't argue with that, so I started to leave. But Seryn wasn't quite ready to leave just yet and the wail that came from her only confirmed that.

“Don't go! Come swimming with me!”

I was unsure what she was planning, but she seemed harmless enough, so I accompanied her in the plush pile. It was just like sitting on a cloud. Seryn seemed to possess an ability that made other plushies around her even softer and more enjoyable. I couldn't explain it, but I felt more comfortable laying her with her than I had ever felt on my own.

Seryn and I lied next to each other while she seemed to be massaging my stomach with her paw. The pure comfort and bliss I was feeling was even greater than when I had been under her earlier. It seemed I had never known true happiness before I had met Seryn the living Flammie Plushie.

As Seryn and I rolled around on the furry pile, Seryn rolled to one side to look at me with those eyes of hers again. “I've got another surprise for you. Wanna see?”

I figured it would be fun, so I agreed to it and braced for anything. Seryn started by rolling on top of me on top of the pile like she had done earlier so that we were face-to-face again. I wasn't sure what she was planning, but I was too comfortable to argue.

“Are you ready for this?” she whispered in my ear. I nodded and she grinned. “Okay. Here it comes.”

She looked at me in the eyes for a brief moment and then planted her furry muzzle on my lips in a powerful kiss. I was taken aback by her sudden advance, but I was so comfortable that my soul seemed to be melting into a sea of pure ecstasy and happiness. As the liplock continued, I felt my mind going blank and my senses going numb before I blacked out completely.

When I finally came to again, I didn't feel the same as I had earlier. I felt much... I couldn't really describe it. It was like a heavy feeling followed by a feeling of pure power. It didn't feel like me, but at the same time, it was me. What had Seryn done to me? That kiss had caused me to black out and awaken feeling very strange.

“Did you sleep well, Lance?” That voice! It couldn't be! That was... my voice!

I finally got my head on straight and looked at... me?! I was looking at a complete copy of my body, except I wasn't in my body! What was going on?!

“How do you feel now, Lance? Is my body a good host or what?”

I immediately tumbled out of the pile and then backed off. Sure enough, I was looking at myself, who was lying happily on the pile of plushies.

“Seryn... what... what's going on?! Why are you in my body?!”

“Seryn” rolled off the pile as well and then stood up. I noticed for the first time that she was now standing at a higher elevation than “I” was. But if she was in my body, then...

I looked down at “my” body. Sure enough, I was in her body! I was inside Seryn's actual mind and body! Her soft, pliable, cotton-filled Flammie body was now mine to control! Then that meant...

“Seryn...” I said in a perfect replication of her voice. “Did we... switch bodies?”

Seryn used my head to nod. “Yes, we did. It's a special ability that Aridos was able to include in each of us with the help of Vega. It was a little something new that plushies now have the ability to do. This now makes us just as capable as our Synthetic counterparts. What do you think? Can I work out or what?”

Now that I had the state of mind to understand this, I looked over Seryn's body in admiration. I did feel much better than I had ever felt as a human. Seryn's body contained no bones, muscles or organs, but that didn't seem to hinder her in the slightest. In fact, she was much more flexible and durable than my “worthless” fleshie body could ever be. I could even feel her body generating its own heat and her own fur was a comfort in its own.

“I... I feel great! I never knew plushies had things so wonderful!”

“I wish I could say the same about your body.” She seemed to be dealing with the fact that she no longer had wings or a tail. “Now I know why humans don't live as long as we Synthetics do. Everything's so... fragile.”

I used Seryn's face to blush as best I could. “Then why did you trade with me?”

Seryn shrugged. “I thought you'd be able to get a feeling for how we Synthetics live life while I try and iron out all the bugs in your body.”

“Hey! Take care of that body, Seryn! I've been using it for the past 20 years. It may be fragile, but it's the only thing that's keeping me alive apart from this. So if that body goes, then whoever's in it goes with it!”

Seryn raised “her” hands up defensively. “Take it easy. I didn't mean anything harsh. I just wanted to borrow it so I could study it for future events.”

““Future events”? What are you talking about?”

Seryn sighed and put her fingers in-between her eyes. “If I tried to explain it to you now, you'd never want to see me again. Don't worry; I'll take care of it and we'll switch back before too long. Until then, why don't you take my body for a spin and I’ll do the same with yours?”

I couldn't think of anything better to do, so I decided to head out into the living room and try out my new “toy”. I tried to walk on two legs out of the room, but my center of gravity wasn't the same as when I had been human, so I had no choice but to drop to all fours and go as a quadruped.

Once I had gotten used to walking on all fours, I used my legs to walk out of the room and into the living room. I instinctively knew how to use my wings and tail, so I was able to keep them tucked in far enough not to knock anything over. Seryn soon followed me out into the living room, but before I could start getting used to my new body, she suddenly stumbled and dropped to her knees.

“Seryn! What's wrong? Is my body too much?”

Seryn looked like she had just run a marathon. She was completely winded and having a hard time catching her breath.

“No... It's... our spiritual link. It's not... strong enough yet... to remain like this... for extended periods. We have to... switch back... before I run out of energy.”

“Aww...! But I feel just fine and I just got this body!”

Seryn shook her head and struggled to her feet. “I'm sorry... but we have to change back... my power... is at its limit. Maybe with... the others... we can strengthen it... I'm sorry.”

I saved her the trouble of trying to walk to me by going to her. Seryn dropped to her knees again and held my head face-to-face with her. She seemed to notice something, though.

“I have... such beautiful eyes... I never knew... they're amazing. Now I know... how you feel... let's do it.”

Her words somehow touched me spiritually. It must have really been something to hear about one of your own traits and another to see it for yourself without looking in a mirror.

Like she had done to initiate this, Seryn brought me close to her and the two of us kissed each other flat on the lips and muzzle. Like before, my mind and senses went blank for a moment, but I didn't black out for as long this time. The next thing I knew, I was back in my body, still awake and still focused enough to see the fatigue in her eyes.

“Thank you... for that experience... Lance... But now... I must rest... good-night...”

And with that, Seryn closed her eyes, curled up in a furry ball and fell asleep with her head over her tail. I didn't understand why she felt exhausted instead of me. But since she was out for the night and it was getting late already, I decided to turn in for the night as well. I stroked Seryn on the mane for a moment before giving her another kiss, but this one was on her furry forehead instead of her muzzle.

“Good night, Seryn. I'll see you in the morning.”

And with that, I went to my bedroom and got ready for bed before turning in for the night.

I woke up the next day feeling very cold for some reason. I had fallen asleep in my clothes on top of my covers, but even so, I had been warm and comfortable. Now I was freezing my skin off for some reason.

Speaking of skin, I soon figured out why I was cold. I was sleeping in my birthday suit with the door to the rest of the apartment wide open! I had no idea how this had happened, but I needed to get some clothes on quickly or I would probably freeze to death. It was late in September, so the temperature was at a premium lately.

But when I went to my closet, I was shocked to find that those clothes had vanished as well! There was nothing but clothes hangers in there!

“What the—?!” I said, scanning my closet. “Where are my clothes?!”

Ignoring the lack of decent clothes around here, I went to the reserves in my dresser. But lo and behold, there was nothing there, either! I was completely tapped out of linen! My entire wardrobe was missing!

I was starting to shiver, so grabbing the top cover off my bed, I wrapped myself in it and made my way out into the living room where Seryn was still curled up, fast asleep. This was a slightly odd situation, but I knew that Seryn would keep me warm. I knelt down to wake her up but stopped before I could do so.

I could see a small scrap of cloth sticking out of the corner of her muzzle. It was caught on her right fang, but there was something familiar about it. There was a faint design that looked like a logo. In fact, it looked like a logo that I had drawn.

Finally, it all made sense. It was Seryn that had... eaten all of my clothes! Ignoring the obvious, I shook the plushie awake while still keeping the blanket on.

Seryn purred sleepily for a moment and then looked up at me with a smile on her face. “Good morning, Lance. Did you sleep well?”

I wasn't sure how to approach this. “I did, but... did you have a snack attack last night?”

Seryn looked curious. “What do you mean?”

I was able to pull the scrap of cloth off of her fang and show it to her. “This. All of my clothes are missing. Did you have something to do with it?”

Seryn looked blank. Apparently, she had no memory of what had happened last night after she had gone to sleep.

“I can't remember. All I can remember was feeling very tired last night and then full and refreshed just now.”

Since she had no recollection of her events last night, there was only one logical explanation. “Were you sleepwalking?”

Seryn uncurled herself and stretched out like a cat. “I guess I did, but I just can't remember.” When she looked down at her torso, she suddenly looked embarrassed. “Uh-oh. I guess I did.”

When she propped herself up on two legs again, I could see what she was embarrassed about. Her stomach area was incredibly bloated like a pregnant woman but not much bigger than that. Her armor plates were stretched out a little, indicating a very full stomach full of what I assumed were my clothes.

“Oh, that's just great!” I said, standing up and going off. “My best friend just ate me clean out of my wardrobe! Now I have to go without clothes until I can go out in public and buy some!”

Seryn looked hurt. “I'm sorry, Lance. I didn't mean to. I must have been so exhausted from last night that I ate you out of house and home without knowing it.”

I was at a loss for what to do. I had no clothes left and the only way I could get them back was to go out in a towel or something like that to buy more.

But suddenly, Seryn's face lit up. “I think I have an idea. Hold on.”

She dropped down to all fours again and looked straight ahead for a moment. She seemed to be thinking about something. She then started taking deep breaths before hacking and retching violently. From the looks of it, she was going to throw up the clothes she had eaten just to make me happy.

But at the moment, I was just concerned for her safety. “Seryn, it's okay! You don't need to do that! Don't hurt yourself!”

But Seryn held up a talon and then pointed to the floor as she continued to retch and hack. I had no idea what she had planned, but I was about to find out. A large lump had appeared in her throat and was now making its way up into her mouth. With one more heave, she spat out a large white ball of cloth. I was taken off-guard by this, but she wasn't quite done yet. With another heave, she spat out another smaller white ball and finally, she produced a third ball, which was the biggest of all of them. She then sighed and collapsed.

“Seryn? Are you okay?”

Seryn coughed weakly a few times and then said in a raspy voice, “Yes.” She then cleared her throat and then stood up again. “It's always difficult for us to do that for the first time. Why don't you try them on? I made them especially for you.”

I made a face as she pushed the first cloth ball forward with her muzzle. “Gross! I'm not touching that! You barfed that up!”

Seryn looked hurt and let out a wail to express her sorrow. “Waaah! It's not as bad as you think! Just touch it; it's not even wet!”

I didn't want to hurt her feelings any more, so against my better judgment, I reached forward and touched the first white ball of cloth.

Sure enough, it was completely bone-dry. In fact, it was slightly warm as if it had gone through a spin-dry in a drier. What's more, when I picked it up, it opened up into what looked like a white cotton shirt. It was really something to see, but when I flipped it over, I saw that there was something more on it.

A large, black logo had been painted onto the front of the shirt. It wasn't like any shape I had ever seen before. In fact, I had never seen this type of ink used in all my life as an art designer. The logo took the shape of a star with a circle inside of it. And inside the circle were what appeared to be three “scratch marks” that went from the upper-left corner to the lower-right corner. What's more, there was a slogan underneath the logo in rainbow-glitter ink. It read: “Flammie and Glory Forever!”

“How did you do this?” I asked Seryn, looking over the logo. “I would never have come up with a logo like this and yet you made it in your vomit.”

Seryn smiled and picked up the third cotton ball, which turned out to be a pair of white pants with a feathery pattern burned into it that mimicked her wings. “It's a natural talent for plushies, I guess. I can use whatever clothes I've eaten to make brand-new ones out of thin air. I can even choose what I want on them and the softness or firmness of said clothing. In fact, watch this!”

She stood up on her hind legs and set her expression to that of mild concentration. I had no idea what she was planning, but I was about to find out. Something was happening to her. I could see her torso starting to change colors and lose its orange, rugged texture. Instead, she was forming a layer of white cloth that seemed to be blossoming from her “pores”. The result was that of a neat, trim white T-shirt with the same slashed-star logo on it with the words, “Soar Beyond the Skies” painted in gold lettering underneath it. And with a flutter, the shirt became loose and wavy as if Seryn herself was wearing it.

“What do you think? Can I accessorize or what?”

I stepped forward to look at the shirt. “Is that really real? Is it part of you?”

Seryn smirked. “No. I can take it off. See?” And just like that, she slipped her arms and head out of the shirt and removed it just like a normal piece of clothing. What was amazing was that there weren’t even any holes for her wings to poke through, yet she seemed to have no trouble using them as if they were attached directly to her back through the shirt. Underneath, her torso was pretty much unchanged like it had originally been.

The shirt was about two sizes too big for me due to Seryn's size, but she seemed to notice this and poked it with one of her talons. Some unseen force seemed to seep from her talon into the shirt, shrinking it from a XXXL to a regular XL – just my size.

I smiled as I took the shirt from her and examined it. “The magical creatures of this planet will never cease to amaze me.”

Seryn blushed and gave me the pants and the other cotton ball, which turned out to be a pair of very soft, feathery boxers. “Why don't you go try them on? I'm not going anywhere.”

I was excited to see how they felt on my body, so I handed the second shirt back to Seryn, saying, “Why don't you have a little breakfast? I really don't mind, actually.”

Seryn beamed as I returned to my bedroom to try on my new clothes. Once I had shed my blanket, I found that they were actually very comfortable. In fact, it felt like I was wearing Seryn's fur as clothing. The fine, neatly-woven fibers didn't look it, but they felt as if they were made of something much better than silk. And since nothing I knew of was softer than Flammie fur, Synthetic or otherwise, it was the only thing that I could compare it to.

Once I was nice and snug in my new attire, I returned to the living room to catch Seryn slurping up the last bit of the shirt she had just formed around her. She noticed me in her brand-new attire and seemed to be very proud of her work.

“What do you think?” I said to her, posing in her clothes. “Can I accessorize or what?”

Seryn scoffed playfully and allowed me to come over to her and hug her. Even through the clothes, I could still feel her unbelievably soft fur. “You're really something else, you know that, Lance?”

I chuckled and buried my face in her chest. “That's something I wanted to tell you. But what the heck! I'm just glad we can be together.”

Seryn and I remained locked together for a long while, sharing each other's natural body heat in a loving embrace. Seryn seemed to be purring deep inside her throat and chest, which made me relax even more. I had a feeling if I were to relax any further, I would probably be dead.

Just then, Seryn whispered something in my ear. “I can make it so we're even closer together. But it might be a little overwhelming for you at first, so it's up to you.”

I was too comfortable to refuse her offer, so I sighed and said, “Do whatever you want. I won't mind.”

Seryn seemed to be thinking about something for a moment. Finally, she said, “I'm not going to take any chances, though. Forgive me, but this will keep you from fighting it.”

I had a few seconds to figure out what she was saying before I felt one of her talons press into the side of my neck. Instantly, I felt as if I had been completely paralyzed. The muscles in my entire body froze up and went numb. I couldn't have moved even if I tried. I became so limp that Seryn had to catch me before I fell to the floor.

“I got you,” she said, lifting me back up. “Now, just relax, my dear. This will be over before you know it. Besides...” she added, licking her muzzle hungrily. “I want to see how you taste.”

I suddenly realized what she was going to do, but I was powerless to stop it. Seryn opened her muzzle wider than I had ever seen before and stuffed my head and shoulders into her mouth!

If I could have moved right now, I would have been screaming and kicking like mad to get away from the cannibal plushie, but I was currently disabled at the moment, so there was only so much that I could do.

I could feel Seryn's saliva on my face as her tongue lapped at my cheeks for a moment before she pushed me into her throat. I was scared to think of how good or bad I must taste to her, but she seemed to enjoy my “flavor” because she continued to swallow me whole. I felt her silken throat wrap around my head and shoulders and the strange muscles press against me, working me down her throat towards whatever stomach she had. All the while, she was now lapping at on my chest as she shoved more and more of me into her mouth. I could feel her throat coaxing me farther and farther down into her body. It was not a welcome feeling, but it was a reassuring one for some reason.

Then with a slurp, Seryn swallowed my legs and feet like a pair of thick noodles and I was fully inside her body. I was stuck inside her throat for about two seconds before it suddenly opened up into a dark, warm chamber that I only assumed was her stomach. I could not believe she had just eaten me even after the kindness we had shown towards each other! What could she possibly have been thinking to do this to me?

Finally, I was completely deposited into her stomach, which was dark and cramped, so I had to curl up just to be comfortable. It was only a matter of time before she digested me and she would finally be “satisfied” with her meal.

Just then, I felt the paralysis wear off and I was able to give her a piece of my mind.

“What did you do, Seryn?!” I yelled, wondering if she could even hear me. “Why did you do that?! I thought we were friends! Friends don't eat each other! GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!”

Seryn did hear me, but instead of feeling triumphant, she seemed rather indifferent. “Relax, Lance. I am not going to digest you. I don't know if you know this, but you'd have to be dead in order for my system to even begin to digest you. And even then, I wouldn't be able to digest flesh and bone. Only cloth and that's it.”

Wait... if she wasn't going to make me into a meal, then why did she eat me in the first place? When I asked her this, she cooed and patted her rather bulbous belly, which I felt from inside her.

“Synthetics often make meals out of their owners, but not always for survival purposes. We swallow them so that they may relax inside of us while we go about our daily lives. Just think of it as a little… “vacation” while you're in there.”

“But... Seryn...”

But Seryn beat me to the punch. “Tell me, Lance: How do you feel in there? Just take in your surroundings for a moment and tell me what you think.”

Now that she mentioned it, I did feel rather odd. It was completely pitch-black inside here, but the warm feeling of her natural body heat seemed to massage me internally and externally. It was like I had gone for a spin in a drier, but without the spinning. It was rather cozy in here and the walls of her silken stomach were rather comforting on my human skin. Another thing I was worried about was my air supply, but somehow, that didn’t seem to be a problem. Granted, the air was a little warm and it smelled strongly of what I guessed was Seryn’s “natural scent” of fresh cloth, thick fur and creamy vanilla, but it was oxygen nonetheless and I had as much air as I could breathe in here.

All in all, it was like I was back inside my mother's body before I was born, but this time, I could remember the sensations and there was nothing that was keeping me umbillically bound in here.

“You know… it... it's not so bad in here. I could actually learn to like it in here. Thank you, Seryn.”

From on the outside, Seryn smiled and rubbed her belly gently. “I'm glad you're happy, because from now on, you'll be spending every night inside one of us. You'll be our unofficial child and we'll take very good care of you. You'll never sleep in that stiff, hard old bed again.”

I should have argued this point, but I was too comfortable to complain. If that's what Seryn wanted, then that was just fine with me. It's not like she could hurt me while I was in here. It was just the thought of spending every night inside one of my plush friends from now on that concerned me.

“Okay, Seryn, you win. Can I come out now?”

Seryn chuckled and I suddenly felt her body head become much more potent. “No, I think you can stay in there for a while longer. Besides, I've got some shopping to do. Just relax and go to sleep. When you wake up, I will let you out. But for now, just enjoy your little incarceration. We have all the time in the world, so there's reason to rush.”

Her body heat was starting to make me feel drowsy. I realized she was putting me to sleep, but there was nothing I could do about it. I had no choice but to check into the Dream World early and let Seryn do her thing. She was the one in control at the moment, so I had to trust her to follow through with her promise to take care of me. With a yawn, I curled up even tighter and was asleep within a minute.

Now that Lance was fast asleep, Seryn could have a little fun. She had always wanted to see the outside world while she had been a simple dormant plush, and now she had free reign of her environment.

To start with, Seryn had to make herself look more “appropriate” if she was to go out in public. She remedied this easily by producing a white T-shirt and pants for her furry body. She formed the material around each of her four wings and massive tail. She might have been making herself decent, but she was a Flammie through and through – nothing would ever keep her from expressing herself whenever she wanted.

But there was still the matter of the large bulge in her belly where Lance was curled up, asleep. She didn't want to give people the wrong impression and make her appear pregnant (even though she technically was). So she tried a little experiment she had been taught to do in her creator's shop but had never tried yet.

To start with, Seryn took a deep breath through her mouth and was able to conjure up the beginning of the attack that had made her video game counterpart so powerful – the almighty Flammie Breath. But before she could fire it, she stored it in her mouth and then swallowed it. The energy traveled down her throat and hit Lance like a ton of bricks, vaporizing him on the spot. But before he could disappear entirely, she managed to save his mind and soul and tuck them safely away in her body. Lance was still alive, but there was virtually nothing that could wake him up now. She would be able to rebuild him later, but for now, the bulge in her belly had disappeared, making her appear just as fit as she had been before she had swallowed him.

Now that she looked like herself again, Seryn headed for the door and left the apartment to spend the rest of the day on the town.

Seryn got a lot of funny looks from people who saw her walking around the streets of Willmar. She didn't mind, though. As far as she could tell, she was a natural celebrity; the people just had to figure out where she had come from. She headed to the mall to spend the remainder of the day where she got the most attention of all.

Seryn was attracting a lot of attention from the locals. Some people who saw her would actually follow her for a while until she looked behind them and caused them to scatter. She didn't mind; except for Lance, humans were some of the funniest and strangest creatures she had ever seen before.

One time, she passed in front of a toy store where a little boy and his mother were just leaving. Both of them looked at her, but the boy seemed to know what she really was and went into a small fit of the “gimme's”.

“Mommy! Look at that toy dragon! I want that toy dragon! It's so big and pretty and it moves! I want it! Tell it that I want it!”

A dragon? Well... it wasn't the strangest thing she had been called so far, but it was, without a doubt, the most fitting. She knew the boy wanted to own her, but she was strictly spoken for. But the least she could do was give the little boy something to calm him down.

Seryn turned around and walked to the little boy, who had suddenly gone silent from shock when he realized she had heard him. He cowered behind his mother, who was looking apprehensive as she approached. But Seryn didn't mean any harm. In fact, she stopped about five feet from them and crouched down like a human beckoning a pet. “It's okay. I won't hurt you. I'm not that kind of plushie, anyway.”

The boy looked up at his mother like he was trying to make up his mind. He had obviously never seen a stuffed animal walk and talk before. His mom patted him on the back and said, “Go ahead. It sounds okay.”

The boy looked like he would have done anything but approach Seryn if he could help it, but he realized that he had had to run his mouth and now had to face the music. Seryn held out her arms and the boy carefully walked forward. She didn't rush herself; he would come when he was ready.

He finally sucked up enough courage to walk towards her. He took a few nervous steps before rushing in and hugging her like she was his mother. The real mom looked on in anticipation as Seryn picked up the boy and held him up high like he was her child before pulling him close to her for another hug. She then held him out at arm's length again and then placed him on her massive shoulder.

All the while, the boy was laughing up a storm as he enjoyed his free ride. To him, Seryn wasn't just some shmuck in a mascot costume. There was something about her that removed the fear that mascots in suits sometimes presented. It was the fact that she was so loveable and free-spirited that made her so fun to be around. And because she wasn't forcing herself on him like most mascots did, she was that much more fun to be around. As an added bonus, her furry suit was “real”, adding to her character.

“Wow!” said the boy, toying with her wings and running the soft feathers across his face. “You're really cool! That toy store never has anyone like you! Can I keep you?!”

His mom looked concerned. What was she going to do with a seven-foot, walking, talking plushie? So you could imagine her relief when Seryn shook her head and said, “Sorry, but I already belong to someone. He's waiting for me back at my house.”

“Aww!” The boy's disappointment was evident. “No fair!”

But Seryn wouldn't let the boy go home empty-handed. She wasn’t a cold-hearted beast. In fact, she didn’t really HAVE a real heart, per se. Either way, she brought the boy close to her and gave him a small, furry kiss on the cheek. The boy looked like all of his little dreams had come true at once. Seryn then set him back down on the floor and waved them off. The boy and his mother were about to leave when the mother suddenly had an idea.

“Would you mind if we took a picture with you and Jake? I'm sure he would like something to remember you by.”

By now, Seryn had developed a kind of affection for small children. She didn't mind at all and Jake stood next to her while his mother took out her digital camera to capture this moment. At first, the pose looked rather casual, but then Jake became restless and he wanted to pose properly with Seryn.

“I wanna sit on your shoulder again. Please, Miss Furry?”

Seryn smiled and happily lifted the boy back onto her massive shoulder so he could pose with her. She held up two talons in a peace symbol and winked just as the flash went off. They were now captured forever in the digital camera's memory and Seryn felt a sense of accomplishment for giving the little boy something to talk about.

“Thank you, Miss...?”

Seryn smiled sweetly. “Just call me Seryn. It was fun spending time with you. Have a nice day.”

Jake and his mother were barely a dozen steps away when he suddenly went into a flurry of questions that made Seryn blush as they walked away.

“Didja get my picture?! Miss Seryn was so cool! She looked just like an angel! Do they make giant teddy bears like her! I want to get one! What about...?!”

Most people would have been glad to get a little kid off their back after an episode like that, but Seryn was technically not a “person”, per se, so she worked a little differently. She had actually enjoyed Jake's happy-go-lucky attitude and couldn't wait to do it again.

She was just turning to leave when she was stopped by a voice from behind her. “Excuse me, miss! Can I talk to you?”

Seryn stopped and turned around. The manager of the toy store where this had all taken place in front of had overseen the entire event and had rushed out to catch her before she left.

“That was amazing! I don't know how you did that, but I've never had anyone look as happy as that little boy did when you were playing with him. What do you call your costume?”

“Costume?” Seryn looked blank. She wondered what a “costume” was but soon realized that the man thought she was someone in a suit. Not wanting to spill the beans just yet, she decided to play along. “Oh, this? I never go anywhere without my “costume” on.”

The man looked uncertain. “Doesn't it get hot in there from having it on all the time? And how do you get your costume to move like that when you talk?”

Seryn flinched. She hadn't expected this. Aridos never said that Lance should be the only one to know that she was a plushie, but she wanted to avoid telling him what she really was if she could help it.

“You'd be surprised what I can do with this thing. I've been wearing it for so long that I've thought of pretty much everything to add to it.”

The man wasn't sure what to make of this. Instead, he found his hand reaching towards Seryn's upper-left wing on its own. He wanted to get a feel for those soft, feathery wings for himself. But before he got that far, he realized what he was doing and pulled back.

But Seryn didn't mind. “Go ahead. You can touch it. I put a lot of work into perfecting them.”

The man also looked like all of his dreams had come true. He looked just as excited as that little boy had been to feel Seryn up close and personal He reached forward and took Seryn's upper-right wing gently in his fingers. He rubbed the soft feathers in-between his fingers and then ran the back of his hand through them. The plushie tried her very best not to make it look like she could feel his touch. If she revealed that she was a living, breathing plushie, he might have started asking unnecessary questions.

Finally, he removed his hand and gave his analysis. “That was amazing! I don't know how you did it, but that felt like I was touching real angel feathers.” Seryn blushed deeply, but the man wasn't finished. “I have a question for you. None of our other store mascots have ever been very compatible with the children. You wouldn’t believe the complaints I've gotten from kids and parents because of “incompetent mascots”. But seeing you handle that little boy and his mother suggests to me that you are very good with children. So...” He gulped, unsure how to ask her. “Would you like to be our new store mascot?”

Seryn didn't know how to respond to this. As much as she wanted the job, she was unsure how Lance would react if she just took the job without consulting him. She belonged to him, but she didn't know how he would respond to her spending her free time in the mall with other children.

Finally, she had to ask for a rain check. “I’ll have to ask my owner first. I'm not sure how he’s going to react to an opening like this. Can I get back to you on that?”

The man looked disappointed, but he held it in as best as he could. “If that's what it takes, then I'll wait for it. Whenever you're ready, you can come back and let me know.”

Seryn nodded. “I'll do that. Until then.” She then turned and headed back to the main entrance of the mall to head back home and let Skyle out of her.

On her way back, though, Seryn had to pass by her birthplace of Plush Paradise to get to Lance's apartment. At first, she thought nothing of it, but when she saw a figure flagging her down from the front door, she was too curious to ignore it.

The figure was none other than Vega Firetail – Aridos' business partner and Anthro Fox. Seryn wondered why Vega would be flagging her down in broad daylight. Lance wasn't due to get his next plush until tomorrow. Regardless, she walked over to see what was going on.

“Hello, Seryn,” said Vega as the Flammie approached him. “What brings you by here?”

Seryn smiled and shrugged. “I dunno. I swallowed Lance so he could spend the rest of the day and night in my belly. But then I wanted to have a day out on the town, so I condensed him enough where I wouldn't look out of place. I also have an opportunity to become a toy store mascot, but I need to talk to Lance about it. But other than that, not much.”

Vega detected the obviousness in Seryn's tone and returned her grin. “Sounds nice. I wanted to catch you when you first went by here, but by the time I got out here, you were already gone.”

“Yeah, I'm like that. So what's going on that you wanted to talk to me?”

Vega turned and motioned to a bag behind him. “I have Mr. Kane's second plush ready to go. I tried to give it to you earlier, but by the time I got out here, you were already inside the mall, so I thought I'd catch you on the way back.”

“May I see it?” Vega nodded and handed her the bag so she could get a peek inside. Judging from the smile on her face, it was a good thing. “He's going to have his hands full with him. But...” She hesitated. “How is he going to understand him?”

Vega chuckled to himself. “It's a really funny story. The last time we sold a Synthetic of this model, we faced that very problem. But it was easily remedied when one of the other Synthetics used his power to give him the power of human speech. So we simply copied that ability and now he'll be able to speak perfect English right off the bat.”

(Author's Note: He's referring to an incident back in “The Great Balloon Blowout”. Can you guess who it is?)

Seryn nodded and hooked the bag on her tail so she could carry it around easier. “I'm sure he'll love him. I just hope he doesn't... you know...”

Vega nodded. “I do know. Just don't give him a reason to and he won't. By the way, we heard about your “new” job and we're planning to back you up.”

Seryn blinked. “Huh?”

Vega touched the tip of his nose with a finger and then pointed to her. “As a promotion, we're going to make a collection of various synthetic Flammie plushies to sell at the store you'll be working in.”

Seryn looked concerned. “Are you sure? I don't know what people will say if they start buying enchanted plushies from a local toy store.”

“See, that's what's different about these ones. These are simply empty shells and completely inanimate. We're just selling them as regular plushies instead of enchanted ones. You won't need to worry about any competition any time soon.”

Seryn breathed a sigh of relief. “That's good. People might get suspicious if the saw more of me running around.”

Vega nodded. “It's all worked out in advance. Now, why don't you get on home? I'm pretty sure that Lance is going to want to see his new friend as soon as possible. But it's a little late for that now. Why don't you wait until tomorrow?”

“I'll do that. See ya!” And with that, Seryn spread her wings and flew the rest of the way back to Lance's apartment, the bag containing the second of Lance's ten plushies dangling from her paw underneath her.

Chapter 3: A Blaziken of Glory

I must have been out much longer than I thought because the next thing I knew, I was lying in my own bed, curled up under the covers, rather comfortable, but not as much as I had been while inside Seryn's stomach.

I was about to roll out of bed when I suddenly felt something pinning me in place. I turned my head to one side to see that Seryn was fast asleep right next to me, her left arm and wings hooked around me, holding me close to her warm body. I wasn't complaining – Seryn's wings made it feel like I was sleeping on a feathery cloud – but I had slept long enough. I didn't want to wake the sleeping dragon, but I had no choice. Seryn's grip was solid and I couldn't easily worm out from under her without waking her, but I was sure she would understand.

I carefully grabbed her arm with my hands and tried to lift it off of me, but Seryn seemed to know what I was doing and held me even closer. But when I turned to look at her this time, I saw that she was already awake, those bottomless baby-blue eyes looking deep into my soul.

“Do you have to get up?” she said in a disappointed voice. “I was actually having a rather good dream before you started moving.”

“I'm sorry, Seryn, but as much as I'd like to spend time with you, I have to try and get some work done or I'm going to be fired by the end of the month.”

Seryn stuck out her furry lip when she realized she had no choice. She finally unhooked herself from me and allowed me to roll out of bed.

“So, anything interesting happen while I was out?” I asked her, picking out clothes for after I got out of the shower.

Seryn paused for a moment and then said, “I got an opportunity for us to make a little extra cash.”

“Oh yeah? How's that?”

“The KB Toys in the mall wants me to be their mascot.”

This did not immediately register with me. How had she made it to KB Toys, receive a job opportunity and get back without anyone seeing or reporting her?

“How'd you pull that—hey hey hey!” Seryn had joined me in the bathroom and had closed the door while I was getting undressed. “You can't be in here!”

Seryn looked hurt and wailed annoyingly. “I'm not going to do anything! I don't have anything to be ashamed of! We may be opposite genders, but I'm a toy! You wouldn't refuse to let a toy sit in the bathroom while you take a shower, would you?”

She had a point. Unlike other females, Seryn had virtually nothing to hide or be ashamed of. And since she was technically a toy, I couldn't think of any reason why she couldn't just sit in the bathroom and talk with me while I was in the shower.

“All right, you can stay.”

Seryn chirped with happiness and watched me get undressed. It was strange to have a large, living stuffed animal watch you get ready for a shower. In fact, she was so curious, she actually joined me in the tub once I got the water temperature warm enough.

“What are you doing? I thought you couldn't be around water.”

Seryn purred and ran a paw over my bare back. “I never said that. You forget: I can make myself waterproof. Besides, I need a little bath after yesterday and I can help you wash.”

This was going to be a strange shower, but I allowed her to join me as long as she didn't try anything sneaky. As the water came down on me, the Flammie took the bottle of body wash and liberally applied it on her paw so that it seeped in-between her digits. She then started scrubbing me like a loofah sponge, running her pads over every nook and cranny of my body. I was enjoying the feeling very much.

I didn’t know how she did it, but there was a small, invisible barrier between Seryn's fur and the soap and water, causing the latter to just slide off and trail into the bathtub. But somehow, she was cleaning herself with her soaped-up paws just like a human did. Just the right amount of water was able to seep into her fur and mix with the soap to lather her up. The same thing happened with her feathery wings, cleaning her enough to make her fur and feathers regain some of their old sheen and glossiness.

When we were finally done, the two of us stepped out of the shower where Seryn simply shook herself dry, spraying everything with water.

“Hey! Watch it!”

Seryn chirped and gave my cheek a lick. “Sorry, love. I need to dry off somehow without pushing the water further into my skin.”

I sighed as she exited the bathroom, leaving me to get dressed in peace. Somehow, I just didn't get her. She was so strange and yet so loveable that I would never be able to figure out what it was about her that made her so special. True, she was a living, breathing plushie, but there was just something about her that I did not and would not ever understand, no matter how long we were together.

When I got out into the living room, Seryn looked at me and asked me, “So what do you think about me being a mascot?”

I wasn't sure how to answer this. On one hand, she would be getting out into the community and making countless children happy while also making me some money that I desperately needed. On the other, if anyone found out she was a real Flammie plush, they might treat her like they do with any strange beings and I might never see her again.

Seryn seemed to be reading my mind and came over to comfort me. “Don't worry about me. I'm a big girl. I can handle myself in the world. I was able to last all day yesterday, remember? Besides, I'll be back in time for us to...” What she whispered in my ear made me go numb and gulp loudly. “...enjoy ourselves.”

Her statement was so overpowering that I realized she could take care of herself. And besides, I could visit her anytime I wanted and no one would be any wiser as to what she really was... I think.

“All right. You can take the job. Just be careful while you're out there.”

Seryn smiled and gave my cheek a furry kiss. “Don't worry, love; I will. Oh, by the way...” she added, walking over to the end table by one of my couches. “I picked up a new friend for us while I was out yesterday.”

I forgot about her amazing powers of seduction and became interested in the bag she was looking at. “Really? I thought it was supposed to arrive tomorrow.”

Seryn shrugged. “One of my creators saw me as I was coming home and decided to give it to me while I was in the neighborhood. Here you go.”

She handed me the bag and I looked inside. The second of my ten promised plushies was sitting inside. It took me a moment to realize who it was.

“Blaziken, huh?”

“Yep. That's who you picked as number two when you took me home, remember? Just eight more to go.”

The Blaziken plush in the bag was not at its full size like Seryn had been due to the long plastic tie that was threaded though one of its long ponytails. Like with Seryn, the tie wasn't holding anything in place. Instead, I knew it was restraining its true power in a smaller, more portable version. Once I removed it, though, it would probably spring back to its real size.

“Well, he's not going to jump out of this bag on his own,” I said, pulling the plush out of the bag. “Let's bring him to life. Would you mind getting the scissors for me?”

Seryn nodded and went to the kitchen to grab the scissors I kept in my cupboard. Meanwhile, I had placed the Blaziken plush on the couch so that it was sitting neatly on top of the cushion. I didn't want it to fall over when I clipped the tag, so I put it in a sitting position so it would awaken without tripping. When Seryn returned with the scissors, I told her to stand back and approached the tag attached to Blaziken's ponytail.

“Ready?” Seryn nodded. “Here goes, then.”

With one quick motion, I snipped the thin plastic tag in half. One half fell off right away, but like with Seryn, there was still a little bit leftover that was restraining its growth. I quickly yanked the tag out of his ponytail and jumped back just in time.

Like a small explosion, the plush went from 12 inches high to over six feet faster than I could blink. Thankfully, Blaziken was not big enough to push me back that hard.

As the magic of the plastic tag started to wear off, I was able to get a few moments to examine my new plushie. Blaziken was a Fire-and-Fighting-Type Pokémon from the third generation and originated in the Hoenn region in Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald. He resembled that of a six-foot-tall, humanoid rooster (excuse me for lack of a better term). From the bottom up, Blaziken was covered in a fine layer of yellow down and fur. The color alternated to a fiery-red in a spiked pattern just below his knees. His feet were bird-like in shape and nature. He had two talons in front with a third one in the back. There was also a pointed gray spike on the back of his legs just below his knees whose purpose I had never found out.

I knew that those legs contained some of the strongest muscles I had ever seen before. Blaziken was easily capable of jumping over a 30-story building without even trying. And when he delivered one of his patented Blaze Kicks… that was often all she wrote for most enemies.

From his knees up to the middle of his torso, Blaziken was covered in a coat of fiery-red fur/feathers (I never knew which). Sticking out of his backside was a small tuft of red feathers that made up a small tail that went in a downward direction. But from his upper torso to his head, the Pokémon was covered in a kind of creamy-white plumage. There was a small ring around where it started that made it look like he was wearing a large shirt with a yellow “diamond” in the exact center of his chest. His arms, though, were still red up until just below his elbows. that part looked like the proverbial “crow's feet” – a set of gray, scaly rings that led up to his powerful three-clawed paws. I knew that when provoked, Blaziken could conjure a pair of miniature “bracelets” of live flames that burned for as long as he was in a fighting mood (and it was almost impossible for him not to be).

The white plumage wrapped all the way around his head except for his face. Two long, feathery “ponytails” grew behind him in a downwards, V-shaped direction. There was a small tuft of white feathers where the split occurred. But one look into any Blaziken's face told you that they were natural-born fighters. The fierceness and determination in those yellow-and-blue eyes told stories about the fights they had been in and the things they had seen. Blaziken also had a short, hooked, falcon-like beak with a pair of medium-length, red antennae lining it and sticking up like a pair of wild eyebrows.

That was pretty much Blaziken in a nutshell, so now that I got that out of the way, I could prepare myself for when he finally came around.

Blaziken's machine-stitched eyes remained blank for a few moments before that special spark of life appeared in them and he blinked, trying to get his bearings. He was trying to figure out where he was or why he was sitting on a couch in an apartment in the middle of a city.

Blaziken looked around in silence, taking in the sights of his new home and the ones he would be sharing it with. He noticed Seryn before me and the two of them locked eyes for a moment, their expressions blank.

Finally, Blaziken smiled as best as his facial features would allow and nodded to Seryn. “It's good to see you again, Seryn. How have you been?” I was shocked and amazed that he was speaking in normal English. Normal Pokémon shouldn't have been capable of such a feat, but then again, this Blaziken wasn't like any of the others. He also spoke in a deep, powerful, bass-like tone that matched his persona to a “T”.

Seryn seemed flattered that Blaziken was talking to her first instead of me. “I've been just fine with my owner, Lance Kane. He and I have been so busy since he awakened me. We've been having a blast getting to know each other.”

Blaziken then looked at me for the first time. I couldn't tell what he was thinking from that rock-solid expression. He seemed to be thinking me over before speaking.

Finally, he stood up and walked over to me. “So you're my new owner? Hmm...” I didn't like the dislike I heard in his voice. “No... this just won't do. You're perfectly fine as a human, but there's something about you that I'm not liking.”

I didn't know what to say. Was he supposed to say that? Did I really look that pathetic to him?

Blaziken turned back to Seryn with an indecisive expression on his face. “He's worthy enough, but he doesn't look it. Perhaps I should...”

Seryn looked from Blaziken to me and back again. Then to my surprise, she nodded. I had no idea what he was planning, but whatever it was, Seryn was in on it.

Blaziken nodded in return and then turned back to me. I gulped as his wrists suddenly ignited and he gave me a look that suggested he wanted to fight me.

“Hold still. This won't hurt a bit.” I was scared of what he was going to do to me, so I closed my eyes and braced for whatever he had planned.

I heard Blaziken take a deep breath and then felt a warm feeling surround me with a whoosh of warm air. I kept my eyes shut, but I knew that he had just breathed fire on me. My entire body had been engulfed and the strange flames were doing something that I could not feel.

For a moment, the warm feeling continued. But then, I felt it go out and I felt a little dizzy from the experience. Blaziken finally seemed to have done his job and said, “That's more like it. Now you look more like a true Trainer.”

I couldn't take it any longer. I opened my eyes and prepared for the worst. But nothing seemed to have happened. I looked from Blaziken to Seryn, who looked like she had just met the mate of her dreams.

“What?” I asked her.

Seryn giggled and walked over to me. “You look much more handsome and legendary,” she whispered in my ear. “Why don't you look down and tell us what you think.” Completely nonplussed, I did what she said and nearly passed out from the shock.

Blaziken had torched my old clothes and had replaced them with a set of black robes and pants that made me look much more important than I had ever looked before. I also had a pair of thick, skin-tight, black-leather boots around my legs and feet. What was more, I realized I was now wearing a long, flaming-red cape behind me. It seemed to be made of the same material as Blaziken's fur and it was rather fitting for someone like me.

“Wow...” I said, looking over my new attire in amazement. “This is... I don't know what to say.”

“Then you should see what he did to your hair,” added Seryn, blushing deeply.

“My... my hair? You didn't touch my hair, did you?” I was very proud of my hair. It was only about an inch long, but I had no sideburns and had no use for mousse and/or hair gel. I thought I looked good enough without it. I quickly ran to my bathroom to see what Blaziken had done to my hair, my new cloak flowing like liquid silk behind me.

This was one of those good news/bad news moments. The bad news was that Blaziken had messed with my hair. The good news, though, was that it now looked better than ever. It had grown out to a long, flaming-red mat that looked like something was holding in place above my head. It was a strange to see me in this attire, but I had to hand it to him; Blaziken had done a pretty good job. In fact, I now resembled that of the Dragon-Type Trainer from Pokémon Gold, Silver and Crystal, Lance. What a funny coincidence. My name was Lance and now I looked like a character named Lance.

I should have been angry at Blaziken for messing with my appearance, but he had actually made me look better than I ever had. This was actually an improvement for me and I couldn't wait to see what else he had planned for me.

I went back out into the living room to find Blaziken and Seryn talking about something. They abruptly stopped when they saw me coming. Seryn looked pleased at how I looked and even showed her affection by walking up to me and giving me a big furry hug.

“You look so cool, Lance. The girls will want to crawl all over you when they finally see you. And when it happens, you'll be irresistible.”

I had no idea what Seryn meant by that at the time, but I would soon discover that there was more to this new look than I realized.

“Lance,” said Blaziken, placing a paw on my shoulder. “Seryn tells me you two have been practicing trading bodies. Is that true?”

I nodded. “Yeah, but Seryn can't stay in my body for very long for some reason.”

He nodded as well. “I figured as much. That's probably because the connection between the two of you is limited by how many plushies you trade with. I might be able to help you strengthen your link with us, however small, if you want.”

“You can do that?”

Blaziken nodded. “I can. It may be just a little bit, but it'll help you nonetheless.”

I couldn't argue with that. “Okay. Let me have it.”

Blaziken smiled again and walked forward to face me eye-to-eye. I wondered how he was going to pull this off. I doubted he would kiss me; that wouldn't be right. But I was curious nonetheless.

As Blaziken and I stared at each other for a moment, his eyes suddenly flared and I felt my mind white out for a moment. This was the feeling of us swapping souls into each other's body. I could feel myself floating through the air for a moment, unable to see or think or feel before I came to rest inside Blaziken's body.

Once I was able to think again, I realized that Blaziken's plush body was much more powerful than I had realized. It was like pure, unadulterated muscle was concealed underneath the soft, cloth-like material that was his skin. I felt much more capable and powerful than I had ever felt before. I then realized that the plushies' fabric-based bodies were just a cover-up to their real power. They could do practically anything they wanted to as long as it didn't tear apart their soft and cushiony bodies. Now that was power!

“So... how do you feel?” said Blaziken using my body and voice.

I looked at my cotton-stuffed guns and looked over myself for a moment. “I... I feel great!” I said in his exact voice. “I never knew you plushies had it so great like this. You Synthetics will never cease to amaze me.”

Blaziken took that as a compliment. He nodded and spun around in place, swishing “his” cape gracefully. He then looked at me and chuckled. “How about I show you a thing or two about how to use my body before our time runs out?” I couldn't think of anything better to do. I took up his offer and Blaziken motioned to the balcony behind my other couch. “Let's go practice out here.”

Once we were on the balcony, Blaziken gave me the 411 on how to move as a Blaziken plush.

“The first thing you'll want to know is how to jump like me. Now, I can't jump as high in your body as I normally can, but I should be able to give you a pretty good idea. When you do it, you can't rely on just your leg strength.”

“How do you figure that?” I didn't see how it could be more complex than a simple jump.

“You need to work with the air and turn off gravity. You need to walk on it like you would a set of stairs, swim through it like water and jump through it like you would a trampoline. All you have to do is have faith in yourself and the rest will come naturally. Allow me to show you.”

Blaziken pointed to the roof just above my apartment. He then sighed and closed his eyes, apparently getting a feel for what my body could do without hurting itself. He then opened them again and did what I thought was impossible. He jumped onto the balcony railing and then neatly backflipped the 15 extra feet to the top of the roof where he landed neatly on his feet as if he did this all the time.

I was in utter shock. He had made that look so easy with a body that wasn't even his! I had no idea that “I” could do that!

“Easy as pie. Now you try it.”

I wasn't sure how on earth he had accomplished that, but if he could pull that of in my body, then I could certainly pull it off in his. I didn't rush it, though. I knew instinctively that if I rushed it, I would hurt myself more than I wanted to. Taking note of the air around me, I tensed my legs by bouncing up and down on them before I did my thing. Finally, I was able to focus enough to jump high into the air...

...

...

...um... maybe a little too high for a first-timer. I cleared the roof without a problem, but I kept going for about another 30 feet! That was a little too high for your average Blaziken to jump. The only problem now was: how do you land this thing?! I was coming down quickly and I knew that I had to land on my feet, but a sudden breeze blew my balance all out of whack and I was tumbling down to the ground without anyway to stop!

Just when it looked like I was going to be a Plushie Pancake on the ground below, I was suddenly plucked out of the air by none other than Seryn the Flammie. She had jumped into the air and managed to catch me before I passed the balcony and headed for the ground. What's more, I had been falling so close to the balcony railing that I would have likely hit my head on it before I hit the ground.

I sighed as Seryn flew me up and set me gently on the rooftop near Blaziken. I felt so ashamed that I had made him look bad in his own body. I didn't know what he was going to do, but I braced for the worst.

But Blaziken seemed to be more impressed than ashamed. “Wow. 40 feet. A little much, but not too bad for a first-timer. A few more training sessions and you should have it down pretty well.”

I blinked as I looked at him. “You're not mad?”

Blaziken laughed and shook his head. “Why would I be? That was higher than I had ever jumped my first time around. All you have to do was get your trajectory right and you'll be a natural.”

That was a relief. I was glad I had gotten constructive criticism instead of scolding disappointment. I felt I would be able to fine-tune my technique if I had a little more time.

But just then, Blaziken started to wobble. It looked like he had just had all the strength sucked out of his body and desperately needed to rest. He became so weak that he dropped down to one knee and started to have trouble breathing.

“Oy... I didn't realize how hard that fatigue hits you. I feel terrible. I think we should switch back now. Seryn, could you help me up; I can't move.”

I realized that my soul swap session with Blaziken had been about double what I had felt with Seryn, but it had only been 20 minutes total. And while I felt as fine and as fit as ever, I knew Blaziken had to get back to his own body before he ran out of energy. Seryn helped him get to his feet and enabled him to face me. The two of us locked eyes for a moment. It was “my” eyes that flashed this time. I never realized how brown my eyes were or that they could become so distinctive. The feeling of becoming a ghost in the ether overcame me for a moment before we found ourselves back in our proper bodies. But while I felt just as fine as I normally did, Blaziken was barely staying on his feet.

“Boy... that transfer takes a lot out of you. I need to rest before I do anything else. You don’t mind if I used your room, would you?”

I shook my head. “Go ahead. Seryn and I will be out here if you need us.”

Blaziken smiled weakly and tried to walk back to my room by himself, but he didn't have the strength to do so and stumbled to his knees. Seryn looked concerned and went over to help him.

“Thanks, Seryn. I owe you one.”

“Shh...” cooed the Flammie. “Just relax. I'll carry you to bed for you. You don't need to worry about anything while you're out. I'll take care of him.” I assumed she meant me as she picked Blaziken up in her arms and carried him into my bedroom. After disappearing inside for about a minute, she reemerged, closing the door behind her.

“He is sawing logs, the little dickens,” she said as she returned to the living room. If I didn't know better, I could have sworn she had just quoted a direct statement from “Ed, Edd 'n Eddy” – my all-time favorite cartoon show. How did she know what to say word for word? Huh.

Now that Blaziken was tucked away and Seryn and I were alone, I wondered what we could do for the rest of the day. Seryn seemed to know, though, and she closed her eyes for a moment, picturing something in her mind. Another brand-new T-shirt and matching pants began to appear over her body as if they were seeing through her cloth-like pores and emerging on her body, completely separate from her body like someone wearing a regular attire.

This time, Seryn's shirt and pants were a deep, emerald-green with a series of electric-yellow bolts of color streaking across them. The same slashed-star symbol appeared this time in matching yellow ink on each of her short sleeves with the slogan “Flammie and Glory Forever” riding up the sleeve to her shoulder areas.

Once she was done, she turned to me to show off her new threads. “So, Lance? What do you think of this look?”

I was looking at this new attire with interest, thinking about the type of clothing she was using. I was thinking about the inevitable conference with the ten different clients and about what I could use for my presentation.

“Say, Seryn... If I were to ask you to create clothes like this on the spot, would you be able to do it?”

Seryn grinned and nodded. “Of course. I can even pull them back in and come out with something new.”

I was interested. “Show me.”

The Flammie's talents were about to impress me even further. She held her arms over her head and quickly sucked in her breath. And just like that, her brand-new clothes were sucked straight back into her body, leaving her as Flammie-like as she had been before. She then took a slower, deeper breath and closed her eyes for a moment before all-new clothes began to form on her body. This time, her choice of attire was a collection of tie-died shirt and pants. What's more, she had even managed to control the tie-died pattern into her trademark slashed-star logo on the front of her shirt. There were also a series of black tie-died spirals winding around the legs of her pants.

I couldn't help but smile. “That’s just amazing, Seryn. If I can come up with designs like that, I'll have this entire project wrapped up in a nutshell.”

Seryn, though, had another idea. “What about using me for your project?” I stared at her. “What? It's simple, really. You take me and the rest of the plushies to your company and we'll pose and create different designer clothes. We'll pretty much own their companies when we're done with the presentation.”

I wasn't so sure. “I dunno. My boss might go a little nuts if he saw me walking in with ten different plushies to pose for his clients. He certainly yelled at me enough when my artist's block hit the first time and I destroyed a project that I was so close to finishing.”

Seryn, though, didn't seem to be bothered by this. “You don't have to say anything now – there's only two of us with you right now – but think about it. It could be the best choice you ever made.”

I didn't have the heart to tell her no then and there, so I did as she said and set it aside for future judgment. I would come back to it once I had gotten a look at all ten of my plushies and their choices in clothes.

As for now, Seryn and I were currently trying to find something else to do. Seryn had wandered over to the balcony door and was looking out at the city below us.

“Say, Lance... how about you and I go on a little moonlit flight tonight?”

I wasn't expecting this. “How would that work?”

Seryn smiled and pointed with a talon to the sky. “It's simple: You can ride on my back and I can fly around the city and/or countryside tonight. Blaziken's out for the night, so I guess I've got custody of you tonight. C'mon, it'll be fun!”

I didn't know what to say. “I don't have to go in your belly tonight?”

Seryn suddenly smiled wickedly. “Oh no, you're not getting out of that by a long shot. I just thought I'd let you ride on my back while we fly over the area. I like a little flight now and again, so who better to share it with than my owner, Lance Kane?”

I knew that Seryn meant what she said about not skipping sleeping inside her tonight, but I couldn't help but wonder how it was going to feel while flying on her back. “Oh, alright. I just hope you know what you're doing.”

Seryn simply grinned.

We spent the rest of the day watching some of my old, dusty Pokémon DVDs. I had downloaded, burned and watched them all once upon a time, but ever since I had gotten my job at the printing company, I never had time to watch them anymore. I was able to rekindle some of my old memories for this series. I had never been able to keep track of the episodes when they originally aired, but now that I had all of them in order on numerous DVDs, I could finally catch up with the childhood memory that got away from me.

All the while, I was sitting on the floor, lying back on Seryn's soft, cushiony body as she curled up around me, purring intently as I absentmindedly stroked her mane. She was so warm and comfortable and just like the “pet” I never had. She even served as a built-in throw pillow that kept up a comfortable warmth around the clock.

Finally, it began to get dark and Seryn kept glancing out of the window for the perfect time for us to go on our flight. She seemed to have an idea when the perfect time would be to go out and appeared to be waiting for the opportune moment.

But like I normally did at this time, I felt myself growing tired. It was getting late and Seryn hadn't said anything. I didn't even know if I would be able to stay up to go on our flight. If she didn't say anything, I was going to fall asleep and miss out.

“You're not getting tired now, are you?” she said as I yawned widely. “We haven't even started.”

“I just c-c-can't help it,” I said, failing to stifle a huge yawn. “I'm usually asleep by now.”

Seryn cooed and put her paw on my lap. “Then we'll have to fix that, won't we?”

I was too tired to be suspicious of what she was going to do. I closed my eyes, expecting to drift off to sleep, but a soft, sweet scent started to drift into my lungs. It was spicy and odd but at the same time smooth and sweet. I couldn't compare it to anything I had ever smelled before, but it seemed to be jump-starting my mind, slamming the door to the Dream World in front of me and gently pulling me back into reality. I suddenly felt like I had quaffed an entire case of Mountain Dew and I couldn't sleep even if I wanted to. I opened my eyes in time to see Seryn closing her mouth after expelling a soft, blue mist around me, which contained the unusual smell in it.

Now wide awake, I looked at Seryn, who returned to my side as a living throw pillow. “What did you do to me?” I asked her.

Seryn smiled and blew a small puff of the same unusual blue breath right in my face. It smelled exactly like what had kept me in the Real World just now.

“It's my Flammie Breath. I can use it to manipulate almost anything that I breathe it on. I just gave you a small whiff so I could keep you awake for a few hours more.”

I had no idea that a plushie could even have that kind of ability, which only confirmed that there was still a lot to learn about them.

Meanwhile, Seryn had decided that now was the time to head out on our flight. It was almost 11:00 at night and the moon was high in the sky at the moment.

“Come along,” she said, walking over to the door and beckoning me to follow. “I need a little more room if I hope to do this right.”

Having absolutely no idea what she just said, I followed her to the door and was about to head out when I heard a voice.

“You're not leaving here without me, are you?”

It was Blaziken. He had finally woken up and was standing in the hallway with his arms crossed. I wasn't sure what to say, but Seryn did it for me.

“You can come along if you want. I've got room for two.”

Seryn wasn't big enough for that to be true, so I wondered if she might have been planning something, but Blaziken shrugged and followed us.

“Nah, I don't need to fly with legs like these. I'll just come along so I can get some fresh air for a change.”

Seryn and I looked at each other and the two of us shrugged. “Fine with me,” she said simply, and the three of us quietly snuck out of the apartment to the parking lot below.

Once we were in full view of the almost-full moon, Seryn spread her wings and took a deep breath of fresh air.

“Ahh... I love the smell of a night like this.”

I couldn't smell anything other than the normal city smells that hung in the air, but Seryn obviously could, so I let it be. Blaziken also seemed to like the air out here at this time of night. I could see the enjoyment in his eyes and on his face.

Seryn was so comfortable that she spread each of her four wings to catch every bit of the moon's light on each of her super-soft feathers. But as she did this, I noticed something was happening to her. Her body seemed to be glowing a brilliant white that matched the moon high above us and she appeared to be growing. Her seven-foot plush body was growing very large very fast. It was like the moonlight was some kind of steroid for her, making her grow into a creature easily three times her old size. All the while, her fur and feathers continued to dazzle brilliantly in the moonlight as her size finally leveled out at about 30 feet from head to tail with ten of them being her tail.

The gargantuan Flammie looked down at me and Blaziken, who looked almost like ants in comparison to her. “How do like my true form?” Remarkably, her voice and tone were still the same despite her size. “This is how big we Flammies get when we're fully grown. I just have a little handicap that it only happens to me when I'm in the moonlight. So...” she said, lowering her paws to pick me up. “Shall we go?”

I didn't know what to say in the wake of the awesome creature. Now I knew how Keldric had felt when he had been standing in front of Flammie in “Dawn of Mana”. Seryn was absolutely incredible in this form. All I could do was allow her to scoop me up in her paws and transfer me to her back just above the joints of her upper wings. I felt my feet leave the ground for a moment, but I was not scared at all. Seryn would take care of me and that was all the comfort I needed.

Once I was nestled safely on her back, Seryn dropped to all four paws, taking care not to hit any of the cars in the parking lot. She looked down at Blaziken and smiled.

“Shall we?”

Blaziken nodded and took off running. I was surprised he could move that fast, even for a plushie. Seryn accepted his challenge and spread each of her four wings. Then with a kickoff from the ground, she began to pump each of her wings as one, gaining altitude in a relatively short time. In 30 seconds flat, we were a thousand feet above the city. I had to grip Seryn's massive neck fur from the rush of air that was blowing past me. My cape fluttered in the wind and nearly choked me before Seryn finally leveled out at around 2000 feet. I had closed my eyes against the sudden gain in altitude and was nearly choking Seryn in the process.

But Seryn didn't seem to be bothered by it. “You don't have to choke me. I have never crashed in this life or the last and I'm certainly not likely to start now. Open your eyes and have a look.”

Finally releasing Seryn's neck, I was able to look over her side at the world below. The only problem was that Seryn's shoulders and back were so broad by now that I had a hard time looking directly below me.

“I can't see anything! You're too big to see past!”

Seryn seemed to have a solution ready for this right away. “Then how about a little help?”

I had a brief moment to wonder what she was talking about before she bucked, sending me flying off her back and into freefall mode. I could not believe she had just done that! I was falling through the air without any way to slow down. Just when it looked like I was on my own, I felt eight thick digits grasp under my arms and pull me out of the air, stopping my fall rather abruptly.

When I finally had the sense to stop screaming, I was able to look up and see that Seryn had grabbed me in her paws and was now holding me below her as she flew on.

“Don't ever do that again!” I yelled up to her. “You could have killed me!”

Seryn simply looked down at me with those massive, infinite, baby-blue globes of hers. “Now is that something I would ever do to my owner?” Her insidious grin annoyed me slightly, but every word she spoke was true. She would never let anything happen to me and I knew it.

“I didn't think so. I will not let you go, so feel free to look down and take in the sights.”

She had a pretty good grip on my arms and I wasn't about to lose my trust in her anytime soon, so I relented and looked down.

What I saw nearly took my breath away. We were still above the city of Willmar, but the sights I saw all but made my heart stop. Willmar wasn't a city that had any tall buildings or skyscrapers over three or four floors, but the lights of the cars and buildings below us was like looking down at a constellation on the ground. There were so many lights both from the buildings and the few cars traveling around at this time made it look like I was staring “up” at the sky. Even though the stars themselves would always be the most amazing lights I had ever seen, the sight of the city lights below me certainly had its merits. It was truly a sight to behold, even though I was dangling from underneath a Flammie plush over 2000 feet in the air.

“Hi, Lance... Bye, Lance.”

I looked to one side quickly enough to see Blaziken peaking out at his highest jump at our level before he dropped back down to the ground.

“How did he do that?” I asked Seryn as we flew on. “The buildings down there aren't that high, so how'd he jump this high?”

Seryn chuckled. “The moonlight does wonderful things to our abilities. Blaziken can now jump more than double his normal height when he's in full moonlight. That's why I’m so large in the moon's light like this. We were created with special hidden abilities that only the moon can reveal.”

“Neat!” That was all I could say.

“Say, Lance... what do you think of this?”

Seryn stuck out one of her talons and tickled me lightly on the side. I was extremely ticklish and I couldn't exactly defend myself while she had my arms in her paws.

“Hahaha! Stop it, Seryn! That's not funny! Hahahaha! I'm ticklish! Quit it! I'm gonna—haha—fall if you—hahahahaha—keep that up!”

Seryn knew she had touched one of my soft spots but desisted nonetheless and wrapped the talon back around my arm.

“I knew I’d get a chuckle out of you for that.”

I groaned and continued to dangle from Seryn's paws as we flew out into the countryside. When we got out there, Seryn spoke up again.

“Now would you like to see the stars above us? There's no longer any glare out here, so I can let you ride on my belly and take in the sights.”

“Ride on your belly? How would that work?”

“Like this. Alley-oop!”

She rolled onto her back so that she was flying on her back and I tumbled onto her rugged chest plates. It was like lying on the world's biggest throw pillow. I was able to lie flat on my back as she flew on, looking up at the stars with me.

“See? I told you it would work. Now you can lie on top of my body and look up at the stars.”

As Seryn and I flew on, she placed her massive paw over my body like a giant blanket/pillow, and I was able to look up at the stars for the first decent time in years. I had never known the sky to contain so many marvels of the universe. There were so many stars that I could see out here in comparison to living in the city that I could have been lost in their wonder for almost forever. The comfort of lying on top of Seryn and the wonders of the stars above made me feel more at peace with the world than ever before. What's more, Seryn was looking straight up as she flew on so she could watch the stars with me and enjoy my splendor.

It was well past midnight when Seryn scooped me up in her paws and flipped back over on her front. “It's getting late, Lance. I think it's time for you to go to bed.

“Aww... no fair!” I said in annoyance. “I was just starting to have a good time.” This was a lie and we both knew it. I had been having fun almost from the start. I knew Seryn now wanted me to end my night in the most comfortable part of her she had – her belly.

“Oh, all right,” I finally admitted. “I guess it is time for me to turn in. Just be gentle.”

Seryn nodded. “I'm much bigger now, so I can get you inside much faster. Just hold on; I'm going to swallow you whole.”

I braced myself for what she had in mind and nodded. Seryn then flung me high into the air so that I was once again on my own. She then opened her maw wide enough that I would be able to enter it without much trouble. I dropped down onto her tongue and slid feet-first down her gullet, which had expanded with her size. It was like sliding down a dark, silky slide that finally emptied into a much bigger stomach in the end.

There was more than enough room to move in here now, but I wasn't in any mood to explore. I knew that when Seryn shrunk, her stomach would shrink with her and I would once again be curled up in a ball.

Once I was securely locked inside Seryn's belly, Seryn began to descend towards the ground. I could feel her suddenly change directions as we headed back to my apartment. Her body heat combined with her silken stomach were already starting to affect me. I was so warm and comfortable that I was soon drifting off to sleep. I was fighting a losing battle, but I knew that Seryn would never let anything happen to me.

She must have felt me yawning inside of her because she smiled and massaged her still-trim belly and purred deeply, soothing me off to sleep like some great soothing melody. “Good night, Lance. I will see you in the morning.

For some reason, when I visited the Dream World that night, I found myself standing in a white fog. This had never happened before, but then again, it was a break from the usual chaos that made up my Dream World. I could feel a warm, soothing sensation all around me, but somehow, it didn't feel like Seryn's body was doing it. There was something else out there that was making me feel this way.

I walked forward, hoping that what I was seeking would soon come to me. I knew that something was out there that would make me much more complete than I currently was. It was like it was a long-forgotten part of me that had yet to be awakened. It was me, yet it wasn't me. I needed to see it so I would be able to finally complete myself.

But off in the distance, there was something that made everything I had worked for all but worthless. A large, wide, stone door blocked my way. I knew that what I sought was on the other side, but it was firmly locked and would not budge an inch. It would be impossible to continue from here without passing through the door, even though there were no walls on either side of it.

The lock on this door was rather ingenious. Ten different symbols were arranged in a circle around a large red gem set in the middle of the door. Unfortunately, only two of them were lit at the moment. The light from them inside the gem was faint but not nearly enough to shatter it. Until I lit up the other eight, I would be unable to open this door and reach my goal.

The ten symbols seemed to ring a few bells in my mind, but I couldn't remember where they had come from. From the top and following counter-clockwise, the symbols were drawn as follows: a star with a circle in the middle with three scratch marks running from the upper-right to the lower-left, a flame symbol with a three-clawed foot in the middle of it, A pentagram inside a circle with a number of faint symbols around the parameter, an four-point diamond with two fox-like tails on it, another emblem with wings on the sides and a four-clawed paw in the center of it, a sideways fox with a small wing sticking out of the top of it, a cap with a Pac-Man-like symbol eating a dot on the side, a circular medal with a DNA-shaped spiral on it, another emblem with wings and a small tornado on it and a star with its points detached from the main segment.

(Author's Note: Recognize any of these symbols? I may have used some in other stories while others are from different games and such. No? Well, keep reading!)

At the moment, only the slashed-star and the fiery footprint were currently lit up. The rest of them were as dark and as dull as the rest of the door. I had a feeling that it would be some time before I would be able to activate the other eight, so I reluctantly turned and walked away, leaving the door behind as I returned to the Real World in disappointment.

Chapter 4: Hi Ho, Silverhawke... Away!

Seryn was still fast asleep and I was still inside of her when I woke up the following morning. It took me a moment to figure out why it was so dark and warm in my room before I realized that Seryn hadn't yet thrown me up. I could hear her snoring lightly all around me as she dreamed whatever plushies dreamed of at night.

I tried to move, but I suddenly realized I was not alone in here. There was someone else curled up next to me, sleeping like a log inside Seryn's belly. I could hardly believe Seryn had swallowed someone else and was storing them in her belly for the time being.

But what was different was that the second person seemed to be in a separate chamber than me. I knew that they were there, but there was a thin wall of soft silk separating me from them. It was like Seryn had created a second stomach especially for this person.

But now that I thought about it, it made some sense. Technically, Seryn didn't even have a stomach or even two to begin with. The only reason I was inside her was because she had magically created it when she had swallowed me in the first place. It could disappear and reappear whenever she wanted it to. Otherwise, she was nothing but stuffing and cloth. I guess it was a little bit more of the magic that had brought her to life.

Still, I wanted to know who was joining me inside this silky Seryn. I felt around with my hands until I felt the second person through the wall that separated us. I was able to feel around for a moment without waking them up. It was hard to tell who it was because their body was rather soft and plush-like. I had a hard time telling the difference between the wall and the person's body.

But then something clicked. Soft and plush-like? There was only one other person I knew who would have those qualities.

“Blaziken? Are you in there?”

I heard a low grumble as my partner turned over in his sleep. Pushing harder, I was able to jerk him awake, much to his discomfort.

“Who's there? I was having such a good dream. I just (indistinct)... fish lips.”

It sounded like Blaziken, but he must still be half-asleep from the inane muttering I was hearing. I had to be sure.

“Blaziken? How'd you get in here?”

“I did (indistinct)... FIVE DOLLARS?!?! Get outta here.”

“Blaziken!” I yelled, giving him a double kick through the wall. “Snap out of it!”

Blaziken seemed to jerk wide awake with this move and suddenly realized where he was. “Seryn's not up yet? Hmm… she must have really been out of it after your flight last night.”

“I can tell. But why did she eat you?”

I could feel Blaziken shrug. “I volunteered for it. I was so beat after my little romp through the countryside last night that I asked Seryn if she could eat me so I didn't have to run all the way back home.”

“I guess our little soul swap took more out of you than you thought, huh?”

“I guess so. I ran out of energy much quicker than I first thought. I shouldn't have pushed myself so hard last night after nearly wiping out during our swap.”

“It's pretty comfortable in here, I take it?”

Blaziken pawed the walls of his chamber and nodded. “I never knew Seryn had the stomach to handle both of us. But she sure knows how to keep someone comfortable while they’re inside her belly. I doubt we're doing much to help her physical state, though.”

He had a point. With two people inside of her, Seryn's belly must have been so bloated that she could barely stay on the bed. But she seemed to be comfortable enough to keep sleeping after the two of us awakening and moving around inside of her.

“I bet she can take it. I think she just needs to wake up now. Hey, Seryn!” I yelled, rolling around in my chamber. “Time to get up!”

But all I seemed to do was give her an internal belly rub because I heard her purr in her sleep and roll over so that it was Blaziken that was on top of me now.

“That's no way to wake a Flammie,” said Blaziken, rolling around. “Let a pro plushie show you how it's done.”

I felt Blaziken move around a little and then it began to get a little warmer in here. He seemed to be using his fire abilities to warm Seryn up enough so that she was no longer comfortable. I was actually starting to sweat from the heat, but thankfully, my chamber kept me from feeling the full heat of it. Unbelievably, it started to work. I heard Seryn's breathing shift gears and she seemed to be moving around a little uncomfortably. Once he was sure she was awake, Blaziken's fire faded out so that it was just the right temperature in here again.

“Ohh... I've got a tummy ache,” said Seryn, rather more playfully than someone would have said if they had said that. “I think I need to make some room. Did you two sleep well?”

I felt her patting her bloated belly as Blaziken nodded. “Like a log, I did.”

“Just as swell as always, love,” I added. “Can you let us out of here now?”

Seryn seemed to be delaying the inevitable, but she knew she had to let us out now. “Oh, all right. You'll have to wait your turn, though.”

I did so as Blaziken began to move up Seryn's throat and climbed out of her outstretched mouth to the outside world. Seryn licked her lips and patted Blaziken on the shoulder before she got around to getting me out.

“You taste even better the second time. Did you have fun?”

“Uh... Seryn?!” I barked, rolling around to try and get her to hurry up.

“Fine. Just hold on.”

I suddenly felt a pressure point below me as her stomach opened up and I was being pushed up her throat. The instant that fresh air hit my face, it was like I had jumped in a cool lake in the buff. Granted, it was very comfortable inside my Flammie friend, but it was always good to be out in the cool, fresh air again. Blaziken reached into Seryn's mouth and grabbed my hands with his paws, pulling me out as gently as he could. Seryn looked like she was throwing up a good meal as she sat there with me half-in and half-out of her mouth. But with one good pull, Blaziken managed to free me from my plushie prison and caught me before I tumbled onto the floor.

Seryn, meanwhile, was licking her chops like she had just tasted something sweet. “I will never get tired of eating either of you. My belly is always open if you ever feel like coming back.”

That statement kind of creeped me out, but I said nothing as I separated from Blaziken to get ready for my day. It alarmed me that Seryn took so much pleasure in eating and regurgitating us like clockwork. I had only read about that in fan fiction, but this was the real deal, so I had to take it and deal with it like they did in the stories.

Just when I was getting ready to go take a shower, I heard the doorbell ring. That was significant since my apartment didn't have a doorbell. But we had all heard it as clear as day, so I took a detour to go answer the door with Seryn and Blaziken following behind me.

When I opened the door, I was slightly taken off-guard when I saw the figure of the Anthro Fox, Vega Firetail at my door. I hadn't seen him since I had first stopped by Plush Paradise to take Seryn home. He was carrying another bag similar to the one I had carried my first plush home in.

“Good morning, Lance,” he said, bowing his head. “I'm here to give you your newest plush. May I come in?”

I wasn't sure what to say, so I improvised by stepping aside so he could come inside. He noticed Seryn and Blaziken, who were standing behind me, and a grin appeared on his muzzle.

“I see Lance has been taking good care of you two. Your coats are rather radiant and colorful. I take it you were in the moonlight last night, correct?”

They both nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Have you two been enjoying yourselves with Mr. Lance here?”

Seryn answered for the both of them. “Yes, Mr. Firetail. We've been having a blast. There hasn't been a day we've been with him yet that hasn't been worthy of memory.”

Vega looked from her to Blaziken, who nodded to confirm her story. “And have you been practicing your Soul Exchange ability?”

Seryn nodded but then looked uneasy. “We have, but we haven't been able to remain swapped for very long.”

Blaziken spoke up. “At best, we've only been able to stay separated for no more than 20 minutes.”

But Vega didn't seem to mind. “Don't worry; with more plushies, you'll be able to stay switched for longer and longer periods until there will be no limit to the time you can be swapped.”

This seemed to be a good thing because Seryn and Blaziken both looked relieved. Vega then turned to me and smiled. “You have done well so far. You are certainly worthy to give this next one a try. Shall we go sit down?”

I nodded and led the way through the apartment to my living room where I sat down in my chair while Seryn and Blaziken sat on an adjoining couch and Vega sat on the second one. He set the bag on the seat next to him but didn't open it right away.

“So far, so good, Mr. Kane. You've been taking exceptional care of Miss Seryn and Mr. Blaziken here like they were one of the family. If you keep this up, they'll all have something special for you before this is all over.”

I wanted to know what he meant by that, but he didn't elaborate on the topic. I doubted that Seryn or Blaziken would tell me until it was time, either, so I dropped it.

“The reason I'm here today is not only to deliver your third plush but to give you a warning.” I gulped when he said this. “Don't worry; you haven't done anything wrong. There's just a little snag with this particular plush.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Vega sighed and looked at the bag. “My partner and I seemed to have goofed when we brought this plush to life. It seems that the soul we used to bring it to life has developed a kind of feral attitude. It doesn't trust anyone that well and it may get a little violent when you first bring it to life.”

I didn't like the sound of that. “Can't you fix it?”

Vega sighed and shook his head. “I'm afraid not. Once the plush has been infused with a spirit, there's no way to remove it without completely destroying it. I'm sorry to say that this time, you're on your own.”

“What can we do about it?” wondered Seryn, twiddling her talons. “We don't want Lance to get hurt.”

“I'm not sure, but you'll have to think of something. This one is a little unstable, so I suggest that you restrain it before you remove the tag in its ear. I would love to help you, but I am needed back at Plush Paradise when I am done here. If you find a way to tame it, please let me know. I will use that knowledge to help in our research later on.”

None of us liked the fact that Vega would not be present when we brought this feral plush to life, but some things could not be helped, so we were on our own this time. One of the good things was that there were three of us to one of it, so the numbers game was a factor.

“I hope you are successful, so good luck. Here.” He handed me the bag with the problem plush inside it and stood up. “I'm afraid I must be going. I wish you the best of luck.”

And with that, Vega made for the door. But before he could open it, he paused with his paw on the door, apparently thinking. He then removed his paw and returned to the living room. Pulling a large, black blaster rifle from a holster around his right thigh, he placed it on the end table with a nervous look.

“If it comes to it, use this. Keep in mind that it must only be used in an emergency. It will not kill the plush, but it will wipe its memory and calm it down. This must be used as a last resort, so don't use it unless there is absolutely no hope for it. Its memory can be rebuilt, but I'd rather not go to that extreme. But I want this back when you're done with it, okay?”

The three of us nodded and Vega sighed before heading back to the door. With one more uncertain look, he left the apartment and closed the door behind him. We all looked uncertainly at each other before I reached into the bag and extracted the third plush in the series.

It was a dragon. To be more exact, it was one of my favorite dragons that I had seen on the Internet. It was Sidian Silverhawke from . And while at the moment, it was only a foot tall, it still had its finer details rather intact on it.

Sidian was a female Anthro dragon that had been created from the mind of an online artist known as Lindsey Huish. Unlike most dragons, Sidian was humanoid and bipedal in appearance. Her rich, leathery-fabric skin was a sharp metallic-silver that had been made very clear in one of Sidian's bios that had been drawn up for reference. She stood on two digitigrade legs that each had four sharp talons on her feet. Her long, narrow, prehensile tail was like some great serpent growing out of her backside. It was much slimmer than Seryn's was, but it looked just as if not more muscular than the Flammie's.

In her pictures, Sidian usually wore a long, thin blue veil over her loins, but the plush version seemed to have said veil attached directly to her loins, still giving it an accurate look while eliminating “them” completely. That was good. I didn't want to have a wrong encounter with Sidian on the wrong side of that veil. The veil was attached to a thin, white cord that wound all the way around her, piercing the thin, leathery membrane of her wings just above her tail and backside.

Speaking of her wings, Sidian's were some of the most amazing wings I had ever seen on a dragon. Instead of a simple bone along the edge with the membrane connecting her lower waist to her wingtip, Sidian had a set of four long bones that had the membrane connecting each of them like a webbed hand with a fifth claw in the center of her wing to give it a hand-like appearance on each one. They were magnificent wings, even though they were only six inches wide at the moment.

Getting back to Sidian's body, her six-pack abs were rather obvious. Not very many female anythings had a bod as chiseled as hers, but Sidian's bod seemed to take the cake. She also had a regular navel just like a human would have. But something that she had that not many others had was a pair of exposed breasts without the nips on them. This gave her a more “censored” look and made her appear that much more attractive without clothes. She also had two lean, muscular, humanoid arms with five fingers on each hand with a medium-length talon on each one. It may have looked like she never trimmed her nails, but there was a distinct difference between human fingernails and draconic talons.

Sidian's head looked much gentler than I doubted she was. She had a long, pointed muzzle with two thin nostrils on the tip and more pointed teeth than I had ever seen in a dragon inside her mouth along with a long, narrow, blue tongue. Her ears were distinctly deer-like in appearance and function. Their position alone could tell you what kind of mood she was in. Two long, loose, S-shaped, ivory horns grew out of the top of her head. This was the main difference between Sidian and her artist's counterpart, the jet-black Ebony Dagger, who was also created by Lindsey Huish but was not as popular. And instead of a crop of hair like most furries, Sidian had a long, thick mane of sterling-silver “head fur” (if you could call it that) with a trio of different ponytails in three different parts of her mane. Finally, two “gentle”, round, ice-blue eyes looked out in no particular direction from the plushie's dormant state. I had a feeling that those eyes would soon be staring a hole in all of us as we tried to “tame” her when I removed the tag in her ear. Real dragons were next to impossible to tame, and I was pretty sure, given what Vega had said, a plush dragon would be just as difficult to deal with. As a finish, there were a number of silver “bands” around various parts of her body such as her left wrist, her right ring finger, her left ankle and near the end of her tail. These bands were not jewelry, but they were fused into her body well enough that they appeared that way.

If it was any consolation, there was a thin, metallic chain around her neck. In its current state, it was too small to make out, but I was certain it was a metal pendant of some kind. If we ever tamed her, I would have to get a better look at it.

This plushie matched Sidian almost exactly. I just hoped that she was as gentle as she looked. We were going to need it when she came to life.

To begin, I took the plush out of the bag and placed it facedown on the floor. Seryn and Blaziken then stepped forward cautiously and knelt down on top of it so that one of their knees was pinning one of its bat-like wings to the floor. They were going to get much bigger, so they kept one knee up so that they could pin the rest of them when it grew to full size. They then took one of Sidian's arms with each of their paws so they were both pinning both arms with both paws. We had no idea how strong Sidian would be when she came to life, but we didn't want to take any chances.

Once they were in position, I came forward with the scissors to clip the tag in her left ear. This was it. Once this tag was out, we would have a few moments before all hell broke loose. Taking special care, I slipped the tag in-between the blades and clipped it. I then grabbed the loose piece first before pulling the rest of it out of her ear. And just like what had happened with Seryn and Blaziken, the instant the tag was removed, Sidian's size jumped from 12 inches to well over six feet. She was slightly bigger than Blaziken at about six-foot-six but not as tall as the seven-foot Flammie, Seryn. They took the few seconds we had left to apply further pressure to her arms and wings.

There was a tense few seconds when Sidian's finely-stitched eyes remained blank before they suddenly flared up with life and she began to struggle. I noticed that they had changed from ice-blue to piercing-red. That meant she was now in a fury that we needed to quench if we ever hoped to survive this.

Sidian was confused as to why her arms, legs and wings were pinned down, but once she looked up at me, the fury I saw in her eyes caused me to back up.

“Human! It's a human! Wait'll I get a hold of you! You think you can come in and claim my territory?! When I get a hold of you, I'll tear your liver out and stuff it down your throat! Why can't I move?!”

She looked up and saw who was keeping her pinned down. I had thought she would have been fine with seeing other animals like her, but this only seemed to infuriate the dragon even further.

“Let me go! You're in league with the humans! You reek of their odor! You're their servants and are going to kill me! Fight like the creatures you are and release me! I'll reduce you to gore once I get free of you!”

She apparently didn't know she was in a plush body, so trying to explain this wouldn't be very wise. Nevertheless, I sucked up my courage and knelt down to face Sidian and try to explain things.

“It's okay, Sidian. We're not going to hurt you. We're holding you down so you don't kill us before we can explain things. You don't need to fear us; we're only trying to help you.”

But Sidian didn't buy a word of it. “LIES!!! You humans are as crooked as your black hearts! You promise freedom when you give slavery! You make promises you can't keep and you think we dragons are just a bunch of wild animals! You are nothing, human! I can't wait to show you the error of your ways!”

I didn't know what else to say. It seemed that Sidian was a lost cause and the only way to resolve this was to use Vega's rifle to wipe her memory.

But before I could get that far, Sidian used some of her dragon ingenuity to escape Seryn and Blaziken's hold. Since no one was holding down her tail, that limb was still free to move around and she used it to her advantage. She wrapped it around one of Blaziken's ankles and pulled his leg out from under him. Blaziken slipped and his hold on her wing and arm was loosened. Then, showing tremendous strength, Sidian used her tail to pull Blaziken out from on top of her and flung him across the room before he crashed into my dining room table.

Now that her left side was free, she could move around much easier. Seryn tried to cover for Blaziken, but it was too little, too late. Sidian rolled onto her side and grabbed Seryn around the throat with one hand! Rolling the massive Flammie off of her, she rolled all the way over so that she was on her back. Still holding Seryn by the throat, she threw her off of her with one hand! The dragon's strength was amazing, even for a plush! Seryn went flying head over tail as she landed on top of the same table that Blaziken had hit on the side. But the only reason it didn't break was because she weighed less than a normal person of her size.

Now that Seryn and Blaziken were out of the picture, Sidian turned to face me. I could not understand what she was so furious about. What could humans have possibly done to her in her old life to make her this irate?

The two of us got to our feet at the same time, but I was trapped. Those wings had grown to a good 15 feet from tip to tip, which blocked any hopes I had of escaping. I couldn't reach Vega's gun, either, which was on the table behind her. All I could do was stare Death in the face as she approached me.

Then before I could blink, Sidian had tackled me back to the ground so that she leaning over me, her hand around my throat, choking off my air supply. And since I wasn't a plush and needed to breathe, I was in real danger here. Sidian's teeth were dripping with hot dragon saliva as she lowered her head closer to mine.

Then to add insult to injury, she stuck out her tongue and began to run it over my face, covering me in dragon spit and savoring my inevitable flavor. She seemed to take rather sick pleasure tasting me, making sure not to miss a single inch of my face. All I could do was close my eyes and pray for Seryn and Blaziken to get her off of me before she did what I thought she was going to do.

Finally, Sidian withdrew her tongue and placed a talon right over my Adam's apple. She then leaned closer to me and whispered very dangerously in my ear.

“You taste heavenly, human. I can't wait for the main course. Now... let me deliver unto you the Kiss that will spell your doom.”

I knew it was over, but there was nothing I could do about it. I was going to die at the hands of a berserk plushie and the only ones who could help me were unconscious...

...

...

...at least at first. Just before Sidian could slit my throat, a blast of strange violet energy slammed into Sidian's back, causing her to roar in pain and become instantly paralyzed. She slumped over me, moaning in agony. I was under the dragon for a few seconds before she was roughly pulled off of me.

Like the figure of some great angelic presence, Seryn the Flammie was standing over me, her fangs bared in a protective way. She had just saved me from certain death and wasn't about to stop there. Like she had with me on two different occasions, Seryn opened her mouth well beyond its usual stretch limits and shoved Sidian inside headfirst. Unlike me, she did not stop to savor her flavor. She just wanted to swallow her as quickly as possible before she recovered enough to hurt anyone again.

As she slurped up Sidian's tail like a wet noodle, I watched a huge bulge appear in her belly. Sidian had been deposited inside her stomach and was now in a place where she could no longer hurt anyone.

“Seryn... I... you...” I was completely speechless. She had just saved my life and I didn't know how to thank her.

Seryn's usual smile was gone. In its place was a very serious frown. Someone had directly endangered her owner and now there would be hell to pay for that. She was, in a way, my guardian angel given physical form. She lived, breathed and “bled” to protect me from anything that might threaten my life. Now that she had removed one such threat, she knew she had lived up to her true purpose.

Seryn didn't say anything but instead looked down at her belly, which had started to move around from the inside. Sidian had recovered and was thrashing around, trying to break free of her plushie prison, but the walls of Seryn's stomach were all but impossible to tear from the magic that held her together.

“Let me out of here, you beast! You can’t do this to me! You were working for that human and now you risked your life to save him! Wait until I break out of here! I will not be as merciful as I was to that human!”

Seryn, though, wasn't concerned in the slightest. “You're not going anywhere, dragon. And once I’m through with you, you won't remember any of this.”

Blaziken had recovered and now limped into the living room to join us. He seemed to be in on Seryn's plan to deal with Sidian and took his place in front of her.

“Ready when you are, Seryn.” His tone couldn't have been more serious.

Seryn nodded and took her place across from him. The two plushies stared at each other for a moment while Sidian continued to thrash inside her. Then Seryn opened her mouth and Blaziken did likewise. The latter blew a stream of unusual blue flame that traveled the length of the room and made its way down Seryn's throat. Seryn swallowed the flame and it would now be going to work on the trapped dragon. I could hear Sidian roaring and screaming as the flames reached her, burning and doing who-knows-what to her.

Soon, her struggling and screaming began to slow and grow quiet. She was succumbing to the power that Seryn and Blaziken had unleashed on her and there was nothing she could do about it. Pretty soon, she went quiet and still altogether.

The silence that followed this was one of the longest and “loudest” I had ever heard. Sidian had been neutralized and we were safe once again. Seryn seemed to finally realize how tired she was and quickly collapsed onto the couch, gasping and breathing hard as if she was in labor. Blaziken simply said nothing before grabbing Vega's rifle and went to the door before opening it and disappearing into the complex. I should have asked him where he was going, but I didn't trust myself to speak without breaking down and crying. He would be able to take care of himself for the time being. He was a big boy; I didn't need to watch his every movement like I once did.

I finally had the sense to go over and sit down next to Seryn on the couch, leaning over her and holding onto her like she was my mother and I had had a bad dream. Her soft, furred and feathered body calmed me down and enabled me to speak again.

“Thank you... Seryn... Thank you so much,”

Seryn smiled weakly and placed her paw on my back, running it up and down and comforting me even further.

“You are my friend, Lance. I would never let anything happen to you. I made a promise when I awoke that I would always watch over you until the very end. No one will ever harm you as long as I am with you.”

Just then, I realized that my face was still covered in plush dragon saliva. It smelled strongly of rubber and was rather offensive in my nostrils. I knew Seryn wouldn't mind, so I buried my face in her side and wiped it clean, allowing her smooth, furry smell to take the place of the rubbery one.

Finally, I wondered what had happened to Sidian. When I asked her, Seryn patted her belly and sighed. “She's asleep right now. The flame that Blaziken gave me works with my body to help purify and soften her heart. When she wakes up, she will remember nothing of this incident and be as tame as a young dragonlet. She will then be able to make a fresh start and join our family the right way.

I was both relieved and concerned that Sidian was still alive. I could not believe Seryn and Blaziken had been able to tame her just like that and make it as though nothing had happened today.

While we relaxed on the couch for the rest of the day, I found myself dozing off under Seryn's furry arm. She was just so “warm and fuzzy” (*smirk*) that I couldn't stay awake after today's events and Seryn soon lulled me into a shallow but well-deserved sleep.

I wasn't in a deep enough sleep to visit the Dream World, but it was enough to help me recover after my ordeal with Sidian. I managed to get rested enough to deal with what was going to happen next.

I suddenly felt myself being lightly shaken awake by Seryn. I was so comfortable that I didn't fully come to right away and slept on. But then a familiar potent yet pleasurable scent started to waft through my nostrils, filling me with new energy and allowed me to wake up to my fullest. I looked at Seryn and yawned, pulling her arm over me as if I didn't want to leave her just yet.

“Is it time to wake up already?” I said, looking dazily in her amazing eyes.

Seryn nodded. “Yes. I can feel Sidian stirring. She's going to awake very soon and I want you to be the first to see her in her new life.”

Sure enough, the dragon in her belly was rolling around a lot, telling me that Sidian was waking up. I was a little nervous as to how she would respond when Seryn regurgitated her, but all I could do was pray that her special magic had calmed her enough for her to live domestically. I reluctantly let Seryn separate from me and stand up, leaving me sitting on the couch as she prepared to “give birth” to Sidian.

Seryn took a few deep breaths while massaging her bloated belly, trying to coax Sidian up her throat so she could expel her. Her breaths were shallow and labored at first, but then I saw the bulge recede from her belly as Sidian began to move upwards. It was hard to tell where she was for a moment, but soon, I saw the dragon's head appear in Seryn's mouth, shortly followed by her shoulders, wings and the rest of her body. She was still half-asleep, though, but I doubted she would enjoy being thrown up onto the floor. So stood in front of Seryn to receive the stunned dragon as she flopped into my arms. Once Seryn had gotten her feet and tail out of her mouth, I was left with the dazed and bone-dry figure of Sidian Silverhawke lying in my arms, unable to stand on her feet at the moment.

Seryn licked her chops as though Sidian had tasted even better coming up than going down and went to go sit in my chair while these events unraveled. I was holding Sidian's dazed form in my arms as she slowly opened her eyes to see where she was. Since it was a little awkward standing like this, I spun around so I could lay her down on the couch. Even though she was a plushie, it felt like she weighed over 30 pounds for someone of her size and make.

Finally, Sidian managed to get her eyes open and focus at her surroundings. Her sharp ice-blue eyes looked around for a moment before they locked onto me. For a moment, man and beast seemed to be looking into each other's souls. It was almost like what had happened when I had looked into Seryn’s eyes for the first time. It seemed that we could tell a lot about each other just by looking into each other's eyes. Now that she had been tamed, Sidian's ice-blue eyes showed the soul of a gentle giant behind them. They also showed serious remorse for attacking me for no reason. I thought of this as odd since Seryn had said she wouldn't be able to remember that. But that was irrelevant now. Sidian was a brand-new plushie now and what was done was done.

Finally, Sidian spoke in a powerful yet gentle feminine voice. “I'm so sorry I tried to kill you, Lance. I guess I just wasn't myself. I don't know why I was so angry, but I apologize for my actions.”

I was not one to hold a grudge, so I simply put my fears of her out of my mind. “It's nothing, really. You're part of the family now, so don't worry about it.”

Sidian smiled sadly and finally sat up, her wings unfurling a little as she sat on the couch. She was really a gentle giant, so I didn't see why I had to hate her for acting on instinct.

“So this is my new home,” she said, looking around the living room with interest. “It's kind of small for all of us to live properly.”

I sighed and sat down next to her. “Yeah, it's all I can afford right now. If I could just pull through with my projects at work, I could probably afford a bigger house.”

Sidian's ears perked up at this. “Projects? What kind of projects?”

I went on to explain what had happened with my boss at the start of all of this and that I needed to come up with ten different logos and/or slogans for ten different clients at the end of the month or else I was sunk. I was in the middle of an artist's block as well, so I couldn't bring myself to lift even a pencil nowadays. Sidian drank in every word, thinking about what she could do to help.

“I have an idea. Why don't you do a project on this?” She indicated the metal chain around her neck that had been too small to see earlier.

I looked closely at the pendant. It was made out of very tough metal and took the form of a circle with a number of strange runes lining it almost “Lord of the Rings” style. And in the center of it attached to the inner part of the ring was a large metal pentagram. The whole thing was rather “hole-y” (no pun intended), so it would sink if it fell in any water, but it was rather curious and certainly sparked my interest.

While I was up-close and personal with the pendant, Sidian had been carefully stroking my hair with her clawed hand. I didn't notice this right away, but I soon realized how close I was to her and backed up. Sidian, however, merely chuckled.

“You don't need to be afraid. I'm pretty sure Seryn does that to you all the time.”

I agreed with that, but there was a key difference between Seryn and Sidian that made being around the latter more embarrassing. But before I could stop her, Seryn had caught on and told her anyway.

“It's the fact that he's never been around a “real” woman before, plushie or otherwise, so he's a little nervous when he sees a “naked” one touching him.”

If I had had the state of mind to, I would have hit Seryn for saying that, but somehow, Sidian didn't seem to mind. She wasn't embarrassed in the slightest and even flexed her stuffed muscles playfully for me to understand that it was just fine.

“I doubt that “real” women don't have a body like this, no matter how hard they try. I don't even think that “real” women are “real” dragonesses, so there's a difference between a naked woman and a naked dragoness.”

I was blushing up a storm by the time she had finished her analysis. I had never had a woman in my life before, but now I had two female plushies living with me with who-knows-how-many still to come. I guess I was just lucky is all.

As I turned away to get my bearings, Sidian and Seryn glanced at each other, exchanging unspoken words between them. They seemed to be silently discussing what they were going to do next while my back was turned. They both seemed to agree with what they were planning and nodded just before I could turn around.

Sidian stood up and placed her hand on my shoulder, looking at me for a moment. She then smiled and spoke up.

“How would you like me to show you my wardrobe? I've got a few new looks that I bet your boss would be drooling over by the end.”

I couldn't argue with that, so I agreed to it. Sidian nodded and closed her eyes, focusing on what she was going to create around her body for me.

Nothing happened. She opened her eyes and looked uneasily at me as her trim belly started to grumble.

“I'm sorry. I haven't had anything to eat since before I became a plush. You wouldn't happen to have any plushie food around here, would you?”

“Uh...” I wasn't sure how to answer this. The last time I had had any decent clothes, Seryn had eaten them all after her sleepwalking incident. “...no. I'm fresh out and I'm not getting paid until I finish my projects.”

Sidian’s ears drooped at this. “Oh... that's too bad. I was looking forward to a good meal when I woke up.”

Just then, the doorbell rang again. I knew this time that it was mine, even though I still didn't have a doorbell. A few knocks followed it, but they were a little muffled and were almost impossible to hear. Sidian followed me to the door to see who it was. But this time, I wanted to see who it was before I opened it.

“Who is it?” I said, trying fruitlessly to look out of the clouded peephole.

“Plushie Provision Delivery.” The name was unfamiliar but the voice wasn't.

“Blaziken?” I opened the door and sure enough, the Fire-Type Pokémon, Blaziken was standing in the doorway with a huge plastic bag in his right paw.

“It's me. I did a little shopping while I was out and brought plenty of food for everyone.”

I looked at the bag and noticed that it was stuffed to the brim with assorted clothes, towels, blankets and various other cloth-based products. If I had to guess just by looking at the size of the bag, I figured that there must have been 30 pounds of cloth in there, minimum.

“Where did you get all that? And... how'd you get the money for it?”

Sidian's eyes glittered when she saw Blaziken for the first time, but I had my back to her and missed it. Blaziken, meanwhile, picked up the bag with one paw and carried it into the apartment.

“I got a job while I was out. I am now a third-degree black belt at the Karate Masters Dojo in the mall. I was so good when they interviewed me that they gave me a decent signing bonus and even gave me this.” He pointed to a long, black, leather belt around his waist. There were three white stripes on either end of it, proving his accomplishments in the martial arts.

“I... I can't believe it. How did you pull that off? Is that why you were gone all day? What did people say when they saw you?” I couldn't stop asking questions.

Thankfully, Sidian placed a hand over my mouth and whispered in my ear, “Slow down, Jeff Gordon. At least let him unpack and tell us what happened before you yak his head off.” There was a small hint of admiration in her voice. I didn't realize it then, but I would soon find out that Sidian actually had a crush on Blaziken!

Blaziken was thankful for the break in my questions and carried the bag of “laundry” into the living room and dropped it in the middle of the room. He then acknowledged Seryn, who was also looking at the bag of clothes with amazement.

“Help yourself. I'm pretty sure you're both hungry after going without food for a while. I'll explain everything when we're done.”

With one of his claws, Blaziken slit open the bag, allowing the massive pile of brand-new laundry to spill out onto the floor. He then browsed the pile for a moment, selecting his favorite pieces – a pair of silver shorts and a gray shirt with two pairs of socks and a small hand towel – and then sat down on the couch before digging in.

Seryn and Sidian had never seen such a magnificent spread before, but they limited themselves to a small assortment of clothing and a pair of towels between them and then started eating. Sidian even went to go sit next to Blaziken to engage in a little dinner conversation.

I had never seen any of my plushies eat fabric in person before, so I was rather interested in how they did it. All of their teeth were made of plastic, but that didn't seem to bother them. They were able to bite off pieces of clothing, which came apart just like someone biting into a hamburger and they didn't even have to rip them. They came apart better than if I had taken a pair of scissors to the same pieces at three times the speed, leaving fresh, clean bite marks in the piece while they chewed them like regular food and then swallowed them just like normal people did with regular food.

While they were eating, I decided to go get something to eat as well. Being in Seryn's stomach twice already seemed to somehow give my body the nourishment it needed without consuming actual food, but the last time I was in there was this morning and I hadn't eaten since. So I grabbed a few hot dogs out of the fridge and nuked them for a minute before plopping them down on some buns and covering them with ketchup. I had almost forgotten what food tasted like after going so long without it. Seryn might have been able to give my body the nourishment it needed while I was inside of her, but nothing would ever replace the taste of a good old-fashioned Kosher American beef hot dog on a fluffy white bun and smothered with lycopene-rich Heinz ketchup (now in HD (*smirk*)).

While I sat at the table to eat, the others were just fine eating in the living room. Cloth didn't make any messes, so I didn’t have to worry about anyone “spilling” on my carpet. All the while, Sidian and Blaziken were talking up a storm in-between courses.

“So you're a brand-new third-degree black belt, huh? How'd you convince them to let you sign up?”

Blaziken chuckled as he popped one of the socks into his mouth and snapped it up in his beak. “That's really something I still don't understand. After I returned Vega's gun to him, he calibrated it somehow so that when he fired it at me, people wouldn't ask questions about a living, breathing plush. They would overlook the fact that I was a plush and treat me just like a normal person. And since I am very fluent in the martial arts, I was able to put on a display at my interview that automatically put me at a third-degree black belt. They were so amazed by my routine that they were practically begging me to join and even increased my signing bonus. I begin teaching the new kids in the morning.” He then looked over at me when he realized that I was listening. “I'm sorry I didn't tell you where I was going, but I was looking for some food and/or money for us and a martial arts job was the only thing I could think of. I hope you don't mind.”

I swallowed the bit of hot dog that was in my mouth and shook my head. “Not at all. As long as you're happy with your job and we're making some money out of the deal, it's just fine with me.”

Blaziken looked relieved as he returned to his meal. Sidian continued to admire him as she ate with him. I had a feeling that she was smitten with him. Come to think of it, I had once read a fan fiction story on the Internet where Sidian and Blaziken had been used together. In the story, Blaziken could only speak regular Pokémon, but Sidian had understood every word of it. Throughout the story, they had developed feelings for each other and eventually married at the end of the story.

(Author's Note: Doesn't sound familiar? It's actually a scenario I will be using in my own story, “Ruki Mood in More Mood Mischief”. Sidian and Blaziken star in it and will be very close to each other throughout the story. The story is far from complete, though, but it will include much more than just a simple crush. Keep reading!)

I wondered if that story might have been an omen for if and when the “real” Sidian and Blaziken ever met. Huh. Food for thought, I guess.

Seryn had remained silent this whole time, her deer-like ears flickering whenever something caught her attention. She seemed to be thinking about something but couldn't make up her mind for some reason. She finally seemed to give up and finish her meal in silence.

Once everyone had eaten their fill, we all chipped in and gathered up the rest of the clothes and help piled them into a laundry hamper that I had in my room. We would set these aside for later consumption when my plushies needed it. Now that she had been fed, Sidian could try and create some clothes for me again to try and break my artist's block. Seryn, Blaziken and I sat on the floor around her as she took center stage to put on a show for us. I noticed that she kept glancing in Blaziken's direction as she limbered up for her presentation. This only further indicated that she had a thing for him. Seryn and I glanced at each other with sly grins on our faces before turning back to Sidian.

Sidian reached her arms over her head, flexed her wings by snapping them through the air, applied pressure to her knees, stretching them out and then tied her tail in a knot and unraveled it. She certainly had what it took to be a model, but I doubted anyone had ever seen a muscular plush dragon limber up before.

“Okay...” she said at last, taking her position in the center of the room. “I've got something that’ll blow the stuffing out of your seams. Watch this.”

She spread her arms serenely and closed her eyes, new clothes starting to appear on her silver skin. I could see that she had chosen indigo as her dye of choice as thin, trim clothes appeared over her body. She was also donning some rather impressive shorts over her legs and waist at the same time. Finally, the clothes separated from her skin and she was able to pose in her new threads.

Sidian's shirt didn't go down all the way to her waist, leaving a good portion of her trim abs glittering below it. The shirt covered the rest of her and she even had a pair of long, black-sleeved gloves over her arms and hands, cutting off at the bases of her fingers so she had a “fingerless gloved” look. The shirt also had the same symbol as her pendant in the center of it and her long gloves were dotted with sparkling white stars.

Her shorts were also indigo in color and covered with white stars along with a pair of long, skin-tight boots that went all the way down to her digitigrade toes. Her tail, though, was unchanged and flowed freely behind her. In all, she reminded me greatly of Jessie of Team Rocket from Pokémon. The style was the same, but her choice of coloring and symbols along with the fingerless gloves were what made it unique.

Seryn, Blaziken and I applauded her for her style causing the dragoness to blush. “Did I really do that well?”

Blaziken smiled and got to his feet to compliment her. “You did, actually. Your choice of coloring and application of the stars is what made it so amazing. What do you think, Lance?”

I nodded. “Very nice. You guys seem to get better every day. I bet you could be the ones I need to help me survive the up-and-coming conference. How about you, Seryn?”

The Flammie got up as well and wrapped her arm around Sidian's shoulder. “You've got spunk, Sidian. You're going to help us go all the way for Lance here.”

As Sidian basked in the knowledge that she had impressed us, I suddenly had an idea. “You know... why should I be the only one to experience such wonderful plushies? I think I should get some pictures of you guys and put them on the Internet. I know of a web site that would treat you like gods or something if they saw you. What do you think?”

The three of them looked at each other, contemplating my offer among themselves before Seryn answered. “Sure. We could handle a little more publicity. When we're done, Sidian can make her contribution to the family and to you.”

Sidian smirked as I glanced at her. I had a feeling that she was going to do another soul exchange with me, but something told me that it wouldn't stop there. Regardless, I went into my computer room to grab my digital camera and a blank memory stick. I returned and the three of them were ready to go.

“Okay. Let me get a shot of each of you in a regular plushie position to warm them up. I need you to be as casual as you can be and without any clothes on. Sidian, would you mind going first?”

The Flammie chirped happily and sat down on the floor in front of the couch. I knelt down, getting the camera ready to take a normal picture of Seryn the way she had arrived. She waved to the camera briefly before she “zoned out” and became just a regular, lifeless plush leaning against the couch. That spark of life in her eyes had gone out and were as normal as a plushie's machine-stitched eyes should be. I knew she was still alive, but she was now in a kind of “dormant” state. I zoomed out to get her whole body in range and then snapped the picture. The flash went off and I got a regular picture of Seryn the Flammie in the camera's memory bank.

“Okay, Seryn, you can move again.” And with that, Seryn sprang to life again and patted my head with her paw to show her thanks. I then addressed Blaziken. “Can you sit on the couch and clench your paws so it looks like they were stitched that way?”

“I can do better than that.” Blaziken took a seat on the couch and ignited his wrist flames. But once he went dormant, the flames froze in place so that they appeared stuffed like the rest of him. He tucked his elbows a little ways from his sides so it looked like he had been manufactured in a fighting pose. I didn't have to kneel this time to get him in the picture and soon had a memory of a “casual” Blaziken on my camera.

“Okay, Sidian. It's your turn. I want you standing up against this wall over here. Can you unfurl your wings enough so they catch people’s eyes when I upload these?”

Sidian nodded and went over to the wall I wanted her to go to and stood in a normal stance that any normal plushie would come in. Once I had gotten her photo, she came back to life and we all checked the results.

Seryn then came up with an idea. “I think we should all pose with you so that they know we belong to you. What do you say?”

“Good idea. I'll have to put it on a timer, but you can all sit on both sides of the couch while I lie with you.”

They agreed and took their places while I set the camera up to take a timed shot. Once they were all dormant, I hit the button and then went over to plop down in-between Sidian and Blaziken with Seryn on Sidian's other side. The flash went off soon after that and I now had pictures of them all in their casual states.

Now that that was taken care of, I could now get pictures of them in any pose I wanted and even in their own clothes. I could even get in the middle of the picture and pose with them like normal people in a family photo. We took several shots with each of us being in different combinations, poses and clothes while each of us took turns being the cameraman.

Finally, we were ready for our big finale where all of us where Seryn, Blaziken, Sidian and I all stood next to each other and posed for the camera in one final shot. This would be sure to be the talk of the Internet for weeks to come. This time, it was Blaziken that set the timer before joining us in the final photo. He had to use his clawtip in order to hit the button because his thick digits weren't small enough to press the tiny button. Once he joined us, we all smiled and did a different pose for the camera. Seryn chose to lick my cheek, Blaziken used a fighting stance, Sidian spread her wings and looked serene and I wrapped my arms around Seryn and Blaziken and gave a casual smile. When the flash went off, I went to collect my camera and put it away. It was too late to upload them tonight, but I would do it first thing in the morning.

Seryn, however, wouldn't let me off the hook that easily. She patted her plated belly expectantly and gave me a mischievous grin. I knew what she wanted but tried to talk my way out of it anyway.

“Do I have to? Can't I do it with someone else tonight?”

Out of the two of them, Sidian looked more inclined to eat me than Blaziken did, but Seryn's mind was set.

“Sorry, not tonight. Maybe tomorrow night.” Sidian looked pleased but disappointed at the same time. She had wanted to have me sleep inside her belly tonight, but as of right now, Seryn was the unappointed leader, so what she said went.

“Oh, fine. Let me have it.” I closed my eyes and stood erect for Seryn to do her thing. She had gotten pretty good at swallowing me rather quickly and within 30 seconds of opening her mouth, I was once again sliding down her silken throat to come to rest in her warm and silky tummy. I didn't even object to it this time, but curled up and went right to sleep. It had been a long day for me and I just wanted to get some shut-eye after dealing with Sidian, the pictures and whatnot. I knew that by tomorrow night, I would be sleeping in a similar but different belly of one of my favorite, furry friends.

The next day, I awoke on the living room floor, my plushie friends all curled up around me. It was like I was in the middle of a giant furpile, but technically, only one of them had anything close to fur. Seryn must have decided to let me out early while they all curled up around me to lend me their body heat. They were all rather soft and cuddly, even for Sidian, whose skin more closely resembled that of smooth dragon skin. I knew they would always be my friends and would never stop at anything to make me happy and comfortable. They were really cool and I still had seven more plushies to meet and make friends with.

Seryn and Sidian's wings were stretched over me, keeping the sun out of my eyes while Blaziken's arm was wrapped around my side. I couldn't move an inch without waking all three of them, but I knew I had no choice. Rolling over in place, all three of them opened their eyes and smiled at me.

“Did you sleep well, Lance?” said Seryn, purring happily. “What do you think of our miniature furpile?”

“It's not exactly what would I call “miniature”, but it's comfortable anyway. I take it someone convinced you to let me sleep out here last night?”

Sidian chuckled. “That was my fault. I didn't want Seryn to have all the fun, so I whined and moaned until she gave in.”

“Not literally,” said Blaziken. “But close enough. I have to admit this lets all of us get a piece of you at night.”

“I see,” I said suspiciously. “Well, our next plushie doesn't arrive until tomorrow, so what do you say we make the best of it today and see what Sidian can do?”

We all turned to look at Sidian, who flinched slightly but smiled anyway. “Okay, you twisted my arm. Let's get some breakfast and we'll see what I can do.”

Seryn perked up. “Ohh! I'll cook!”

“Cook?” I said as Seryn stood up. “What do plushies know about cooking?”

Seryn smirked and ran her tail over my face. “More than you know. How do you like your eggs?”

“Uh... hard, I guess.”

Seryn nodded. “Hard. Got it. I'll cook you up a breakfast unlike any you've ever tasted before.”

Sidian also stood up, excited. “I get to make the juice!”

Blaziken also joined them. “I guess that leaves the bacon and hash browns for me.”

The three plushies then piled into the kitchen and went straight to work making me breakfast, leaving me lying here. I was curious as to how three plushies could make a human breakfast without making a mess, so I got up as well and headed for the shower while they started cooking up a storm. I was looking forward to the first home-cooked breakfast I had had in some time. Normally, I was on my way to work right now and grabbed whatever I could from the local gas station to munch on, so I was curious as to how my plushie friends would be able to put together a meal on their own, despite the fact that none of them had ever cooked before.

While I was in the shower, I heard a muffled knocking at the bathroom door.

“Who is it?”

“Seryn, love. I've got clean clothes for you, fresh from my cotton-filled belly. You wouldn't mind if we used the old ones as our breakfast, would you?”

I had been wearing that cape, cloak and boots for the past two days, but if they wanted to eat them, that was fine with me. “Go ahead! I don't need 'em!”

I heard Seryn trill happily as the door opened and Seryn walked in, taking my old clothes and replacing them with freshly-made new ones. I had turned my back on her when she came in, so I didn't see what she laid out, but she paused for a moment, cooing intently before she left and shut the door, returning to her breakfast duties.

When I finally got out of the shower, I was surprised to see a brand-new set of clothes sitting on the toilet. They were woven with a very expensive silver silk that was almost as soft as Seryn's angelic feathers. She had even made me a new cape and a new pair of cotton-stuffed silver boots.

“Well, Seryn,” I said to myself. “You continue to amaze me with your endless talents. Thank you.” I had a feeling she had heard me, but I couldn't prove it at the moment.

Once I was fully dressed in my shining new threads, I left the bathroom to see how the others were coming along with breakfast. Sure enough, they were already done by the time I got out there. Seryn, Blaziken and Sidian were all standing around my table with the plate of food sitting in my spot, awaiting my arrival.

“Man, you guys work fast,” I said, impressed. “I could never get a meal like this done as quickly as you three did.”

They all smiled. “Why don't you try some out now?” said Blaziken, pulling the chair out for me to sit, which I did.

I had half-expected my eggs, bacon and hash browns to be covered in plushie fuzz or something like that. But from the looks of them, there was not a single strand to be found. The eggs were perfectly fried with little to none of that extra brown “crust” that occurred from extra whites spreading out too thin in the pan. The bacon looked like it had been fried to perfection and appeared nice and soft, but not too soft just like I liked them. They also appeared to have been dabbed with a paper towel to remove some of the extra grease. Finally, the hash browns were evenly toasted so that almost every strand of potato was a rich, golden brown. A unique pattern had been drawn on top of them with the ketchup. It looked like a three-toed footprint that reminded me of Blaziken. He had done an exquisite job of handling the ketchup while drawing it so that no part of the symbol was distorted due to too much hesitation or “backup” from the bottle. Finally, a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice with little to no pulp in it was awaiting my consumption. All in all, it was a meal that most people wished they could cook and/or eat every day. Now I had to know how it tasted.

I was able to cut the eggs rather easily. The broken yolks had been distributed evenly and made the eggs nice and fluffy to cut with a fork. They were so accurately and professionally cooked that they almost looked like those fake plastic eggs that came in little kids’ play kitchen sets. I looked at the bit I had cut off on my plate for a moment before bringing it up to my mouth and biting into it. Seryn's expression was that of apprehension as I chewed it and then swallowed it before giving my analysis.

“I don't know how you did it, Seryn, but not even my mom could make eggs like this! I never even knew that eggs could have that much flavor! You did really well for your first time.”

Seryn looked relieved and ecstatic at the same time. So far, she felt she had passed. The chittering sounds that came from her throat could only be described as those of a happy Flammie.

Once I had finished the eggs, I turned to the bacon and the hash browns. The bacon was nice and juicy and there was hardly any grease left on them to dilute the flavor. The hash browns were even better. Since almost every strand had been browned evenly, they were nice and crispy and when mixed with the ketchup, they unleashed a harmony of wonderful flavors.

“These are wonderful, Blaziken! Whatever you did, don't change it.”

Blaziken grinned and nodded in satisfaction. He had done his job and he was pleased with my reply.

That just left the juice. I don't know how Sidian had squeezed them, but it felt like I was actually drinking a fresh orange instead of drinking orange juice from a carton.

“Thank you, Sidian. I could drink this all the time if it was possible. You all did a great job. Now that I know you can cook like this, I don't have to worry about making anything for myself.” I suddenly caught myself. “That is... if you don't mind.”

They all shook their heads as one. “Anything for you, Lance,” said Sidian. “We'll be happy to make you meals whenever you want. As long as you're happy, we're only too pleased to continue doing it.”

I nodded and took my plate, silverware and glass over to the dishwasher and put them inside. It wasn't quite full yet, so I let it be and would attend to it later.

As the three plushies turned and headed for the living room, I noticed something about one of them out of the corner of my eye that I hadn't noticed before.

“Hey, Sidian?”

“Hmm?” The dragon turned to me.

I walked over to her to make sure I wasn't seeing things. “Spin around. There was something on your back that I just saw.” Sidian did so and I was able to see what it was.

It was a long, metal zipper that ran from her neck all the way down her back to the base of her tail. It was positioned in-between her wing membranes exactly where her spine would be if she had had any bones. I hadn't noticed this zipper before, but I wondered if Sidian had.

“Did you know about this zipper here before?” I said, running my finger down the length of her back.

Sidian nodded. “That was what I had planned for you yesterday before we did our soul exchange. Next to Mewtwo, I'm the only one of us in the series that has one of these.”

“How does it work?” I asked, wondering how it could be the surprise she had had planned. “It's too small for me to climb inside you.”

Seryn answered this. “Actually, it's quite the opposite. See, when you unzip Sidian's zipper, you are able to climb inside her like a living costume.”

I looked at her in amazement. Blaziken spoke up. “It's true. You just climb inside one part at a time and when the zipper is pulled up to its full extent, the two of you will fuse together as one body until it's pulled down again.”

I looked at the zipper again and absentmindedly ran a finger up and down it again. Sidian's body shuddered as I did so and she giggled sheepishly.

“Quit it! That tickles! I can feel that, you know.”

“Oh... sorry.” I removed my finger from the zipper and backed up.

Sidian then turned around and curled her tail around my right leg. “It's not something to be scared of. All you gotta do is climb inside me and one of us can pull the zipper up.”

I wasn't so sure. “Will I fit? I don't want to hurt you or make you feel uncomfortable.”

Sidian chuckled and shook her head. “You won't. You forget; we're magic. We can do things with our bodies that you could never do with a normal plushie. I'm pretty sure that Seryn has made that clear by now.”

She had a point. I had been inside Seryn's belly three separate times by now, so climbing inside Sidian shouldn't have been a problem. I was just concerned because this was a little different than one of them eating me. In a way, it “was” eating me, but this time, it was through a different part of her body and the outcome was a little different than simply sitting in the comfortable darkness of a plushie's stomach.

Sidian seemed to be reading my mind. “Trust me; you'll fit. Why don't we get started?” She took my hand and pulled me the rest of the way into the living room. Seryn and Blaziken stood on both ends of the room as though they were expecting me to get cold feet and run away. But I was determined to stand my ground and follow through with this. The only drawback to this was that I was going to be borrowing a “woman's” body. If I had done it with Blaziken, it would have been a different story, but since it was Sidian, there were parts that I was still a little uncomfortable with.

Sidian turned around and pointed to the zipper on her back. “Would you do the honors, love? I can't exactly reach that spot.”

I gulped and grabbed the zipper handle before gently pulling it down the length of Sidian's back. All the while, I could feel her body shuddering as the metal bands parted way. When it was all the way down, she shuddered and told me what had happened.

“That felt really good. It was almost like someone giving me a spine massage. Well, now that it's down, why don't you climb on in?”

I wasn't really sure about this. When I had pulled the zipper down, I had half-expected to see Sidian's cotton stuffing poking out. But instead, there was a black void inside of her that seemed to have no definitive bottom to it. It was like I had opened up a portal in her back with no apparent end inside.

Sidian reached back with her arms and grabbed both sides of the gap and pulled them apart, giving me a little more room. I was surprised that that didn't hurt her, but she obviously knew what she was doing. Sucking up my courage, I placed my hand on one side of her back and lifted my leg into the black void.

It was like I was putting on a skin-tight costume with a silky lining. It was just wide enough to allow my leg to slide through it without catching on anything. What was more, there was no indication on Sidian's body that my leg was even there. Her leg and foot remained the same size and thickness as I felt my foot hit the bottom of the sleeve.

“There you go,” she said reassuringly. “That's one. Only three more and your head to go.”

Feeling like I had just conquered my biggest fear, I lifted my other leg into Sidian's hunched back and slid it neatly into place. It was an odd sight to see a human sticking halfway in and out of a dragon's back, but it was indeed true.

I just had my arms and head to go. I stuck the former into the black void and worked my way up to Sidian's hand. She had stuck her own arm out at the same angle as I did and her fingers moved when mine did. And soon enough, my other arm was all the way inside Sidian's own.

That just left my head. I knew Sidian would not let me suffocate, so I expelled the breath from my lungs and ducked my head into its place in Sidian's body. It felt like I had put on a skin-tight velvet hood. It was warm against my face and there was a spicy and pungent but oddly welcoming scent wafting into my nose and mouth. I guessed it was Sidian's natural scent, but I had never smelled it before on the outside, which cast doubts on what it really was.

I could feel Sidian moving around and my body moved with it. I couldn't see anything, but Sidian still could as she glanced over at Seryn.

“Seryn? Could you help me zip Mr. Kane up so he can't go anywhere?”

I wasn't sure what she meant by that, but I felt Seryn's paw on my back as the metallic zipper started to move up Sidian's back, sealing me inside her and preventing any last-minute escape plans I might have had.

But before the zipper hit its apex, I heard Seryn whisper into Sidian's ear. “Don't lose him. We're just getting started and it would be a tragedy if he never got out.”

This caused my heart to race a little as she closed the zipper all the way up. What could she have possibly meant by that? Was there something she wasn't telling me or was I being paranoid again?

The instant the zipper hit its peak, I felt a sudden jolt of electricity course through my body, crossing my heart and causing me to feel unbelievably light. It felt like the biggest static electricity zap I had ever felt and I felt my mind numb up for a moment before I blacked out.

When I finally came to again, I realized that my senses had returned. I could see, hear, smell, feel and taste again. But there was something oddly different about said senses.

I must have been looking through Sidian's eyes because everything around me looked much, much sharper than before. It was like someone had just turned up the sharpness and color settings on the TV screen that was my line of sight. I could see everything at a much sharper detail than before, but for some reason, everything had a slight silver hue to it.

As for my hearing, since I was now using Sidian's ears, I was now able to pick up sounds that I hadn't even come close to hearing as a human. I could hear the water flowing through the pipes in the walls and could even hear the soft, muffled sound of Seryn and Blaziken “breathing” along with my own. I realized that the only reason the plushies “needed” to breathe was to make them appear mortal instead of like a regular stuffed animal. There was actually no air going into their lungs and it just seemed to pass though their plushie skin like a sieve. It was what kept them from self-destructing should they ever be squeezed too hard. And since cotton absorbed air and then filtered it out through their skin, there was no threat of any of them creating any carbon dioxide to add to the atmosphere.

The strange draconic smell was now all around me. It seemed to radiate from my skin like natural body odor, but for some reason, it was anything but offensive. Since I now inhabited the body of a dragoness plushie, I could now smell a hidden scent that my body gave off as its natural essence.

As for feeling, my body now felt much more cushiony and plush-like. It seemed to be able to “breathe” on its own and I could use my fingers to feel just as if not better than I could as a human. There were unseen nerves under this plushie skin that made me able to feel just like a human would. If anything happened to cause me pain or any type of sensation, I would have felt it just like I would have as a human.

“Well, Lance, what you think of the sensations of living as a plush?”

That was Sidian's voice! I had heard it in my head as though she were talking directly in my ear! Weird!

“I never knew you guys could see and feel so much better than I could,” I thought back at her. “I've really been missing out.”

“If you think that’s something, wait until we get airborne.”

“Huh?!”

I suddenly felt Sidian take over control of my body before I could fully take in the splendors of being a dragoness. She looked around with me in the passenger's seat and noticed Seryn and Blaziken, who were still standing on either end of the living room.

“He's just fine. I just put him on the shelf for now.” She was using both hers and my muzzle to speak. “He'll get to drive when we head out.”

Seryn nodded at stepped forward, wrapping her paw around our shoulder. “I think you'd better let him drive before we do that or he might get a little uneasy in there.”

I already was and Sidian seemed to know it. She looked over at Blaziken, who had his arms crossed and nodded.

“Oh, all right. I'll stand down.” Then she privately said to me, “Don't break anything. I just had these claws done before I became a plush.” Typical.

Sidian then swapped positions with me so that I was able to control her body now. I was a little taken aback when she suddenly put me in control, but I was able to regroup and examine my new form.

There was only one word that could describe how I felt, and it's not what you think it was – pretty. I felt pretty in Sidian's body, much to her annoyance. I never knew that women had ever felt this way, much less a dragoness. It felt rather good to be able to walk around almost in the buff and feel the way Sidian did all the time. Add that with the pure strength of her toned, plush muscles, her long, flexible tail and her full, powerful muscles and Sidian was a natural supermodel, even though she was a plushie. I even flexed her tail a few times to get a feel for the new limb for myself. It was like the “woman” in me had been awakened.

“Okay, hot shot,” Sidian said out loud as she put me on the shelf again. “Gimme my body back before you hurt someone.”

“Jealous?” I thought to her. “I seem to be a natural at this. Afraid that I might outdo you?”

Sidian groaned and turned to Seryn. “Seryn, intervention, please, before I lose him in here.”

I had no idea what that meant, but I was about to find out. Seryn opened her mouth and a blast of pink energy flew straight at Sidian's head, but I was the one who felt it. It seemed to send my half of our mind spinning wildly before it came to rest back where it should have been. I was back to my regular old self rather quickly and I was able to think straight again.

“Okay, Lance, I think we should skip our soul exchange and flight and get you out of here before you get carried away. I don't trust you in my body just yet, so let's end it before it begins.”

I couldn't argue with that. Now I knew why only a few people wanted to have a gender change. The sensations and feelings could only be tamed by those who could handle it. And even though Sidian was a plush dragoness, just being in a body of a species of the opposite gender was a little much for a person like me. The sooner we separated, the better off we would likely be. But that didn't mean we still couldn't enjoy each other.

Seryn stepped forward and grabbed the zipper and began to pull it down. The instant it started to move, I felt the same jolt of electricity in my mind and I blacked out for a moment as our minds separated.

I soon found myself standing half-in and out of Sidian's body. I was soon able to withdraw myself from her body without catching on anything and then zipped up the zipper on her back again.

Then somehow, Sidian reached behind her and peeled the zipper clean off of her back like a fresh sticker without leaving a single mark to indicate it had been there at all. She then placed it in Seryn's paws and folded her digits over it.

“This thing is nothing but trouble on me. Why don't you save this for one of us who can handle the fusion?”

Seryn nodded and then opened her mouth, sliding the zipper down her gullet like a man swallowing a worm whole (I don't know why I thought of it like that). Once it was safely locked away in her stomach, she patted her belly and smiled.

“It'll go to a good cause. You have nothing to worry about.”

Chapter 5: Tails for Two

Just then, the doorbell rang again. Even though we all knew there was no doorbell for this apartment, we all went to answer it anyway. It was probably Vega, even though we weren't expecting our next plushie until tomorrow.

But even through the clouded peephole in the door, the person on the other side was too short to see properly. I finally had to open the door to see who it was.

There was a reason for that. The person who was visiting us was none other than the aged, wrinkled, hunchbacked old man that had been talking to the plushies back in the Plush Paradise shop. I hadn't gotten his name, but the plushies seemed to know who he was.

“Mr. Aridos!” said Seryn surprisingly. “We weren’t expecting you to arrive until tomorrow!”

Before I could speak, Blaziken had also spoken up. “It's an honor to meet you in this life. Please come in.” I looked at him, but he elbowed me in the side to tell me to shut up.

“What brings you here on this fine day?” said Sidian as she and Seryn made to escort him in.

But “Aridos” didn't seem to want to come in yet. “You plushies are always looking out for anyone you can. I can assure you, though, that even though I'm old, I'm very much capable of taking care of myself, thank you. Besides...” he added, looking down the hallways. “There's someone I wanted the four of you to meet.”

Seryn and Sidian retreated to stand behind me as Aridos called to the door at the end of the hallway. “It's okay! You can come in now!”

The door opened and I half-expected Vega to come walking through it. But it wasn't who I had expected. The small, innocent, furry form of Miles “Tails” Prower came edging around the door and timidly walked down the hallway to stand behind Aridos.

This was a red flag in itself. Not only was our next plushie a day early again, but it had already been brought to life. Why was he alive and walking around before he even made it to my apartment? And why did he look so scared? The Tails I knew was rather curious and always willing to try something new.

Aridos put his arm around the little kitsune's shoulders and then looked up at me. “May we come in? I have some things I have to tell you.”

If he wasn't in the state he was currently in, Seryn and Sidian would have been all over Tails, telling him just how cute and adorable he was. But given the circumstances, they stayed behind me so as not to appear intimidating to him.

We all backed up into the apartment to let Aridos and Tails come in. Tails took one look at Seryn and suddenly became scared out of his mind. He clung to Aridos' side even closer and tried not to cry. Aridos, though, simply patted his back and whispered in his ear. It seemed his words had a kind of soothing effect on the poor frightened plushie.

“Shh... it's just fine. She's not like him. She's not going to hurt you. Just relax and we'll take this slowly.”

Tails wasn't quite sure, but he stuck by Aridos' side as the two of them went to sit down on the couch by the balcony. Seryn couldn't understand what it was about her that had scared him silly like that. She hoped that Aridos would be able to explain everything to them and that Tails would grow to like her before too long.

Once we were all situated in the living room, Seryn, Blaziken and Sidian all stayed in the dining room while Aridos told me what had happened. They didn't want to scare Tails any more than they had to. Aridos let Tails sit on his lap as he held his paw and explained what had happened.

“I know I'm early in delivering Tails here, but there was a slight mishap in the shop yesterday after Miss Sidian left.”

“What happened?” I wondered.

Aridos sighed and allowed Tails to remain close to him. “It seems that a Flammie plush that we were experimenting with got away from us and wreaked havoc on the plushies all over the store. Many of my precious plushies were destroyed in its rampage, but we were able to salvage what was left of your collection and get them to safety before disabling the renegade plush. Unfortunately, the Flammie got to Tails before we could get him out of the line of fire. He was nearly destroyed and emotionally scarred, even though he was still dormant.”

“Oh... that's too bad. But... I can't tell that he was harmed.”

Aridos rubbed Tails' furry back for a moment, letting the kitsune plush relax for a moment. “You'd be surprised at what Vega and I can do to fix damaged plushies. He was pretty banged up, but we were able to fix him. Unfortunately, the tag in his ear had been removed in the attack, so he was awake while we were fixing him up. That's why he's so timid now; he doesn't trust Flammies anymore, but I was hoping that Miss Seryn could help him regain his confidence. Would it be all right with you?”

I figured I could handle it. It would be a little difficult with Seryn around, but I bet we could work it out so that Seryn and Tails could get along with each other. And if it meant that I would make a new friend out of the deal, then I was game.

“Sure. We'll take care of him so that he is one of the family before too long.”

Tails looked over at Seryn and nearly freaked out when he realized that she would be living with him and the rest of us. Aridos, though, simply lifted him off of his lap and got up off the chair.

“Okay, Tails... I must be going now. Lance is going to take care of you from now on. Now don't worry; the big Flammie will not lay a hand on you like the other one did. If anything happens, go to Lance...” He pointed to me. “...and he will protect you. I must be going now. I wish you luck.”

Tails didn't seem to want to leave one of the only people who had ever protected him. And living with a plush species that had nearly destroyed him didn't seem to help his mood. He was so alarmed that he spoke for the first time.

“But Mr. Aridos! What if they hurt me again? I don't wanna stay here with one of those Flammies again!” He had the exact tone and pitch of voice he had had in the TV series, Sonic X – cheerful and enthusiastic with a kind of child-like quality – even though his mood slightly disguised it.

Seryn, Blaziken and Sidian were whispering to each other for a moment while Tails was talking to Aridos and they seemed to reach a common decision. Blaziken then stepped forward and knelt down in front of the tiny, two-tailed Tails.

“Tails, my name is Blaziken. Do you see these arms and muscles?” He held out his arms and flexed his stuffed muscles, even allowing Tails to feel them for himself with his five-gloved paws.

“Yeah...”

“I'll tell you what: if Seryn scares you for some reason, you come to me or the big silver dragoness and we'll protect you, okay?” He was talking to him like he was a five-year-old, which seemed to work. The real Tails was actually eight, but Aridos and Vega must have set his age a little lower for some reason.

“Okay...” he said timidly. “Thank you, Mr. Blaziken.”

As Tails came forward to embrace Blaziken like his own father, Blaziken looked up at me and winked. I knew then that he would stick by his promise and “protect” Tails from Seryn, who had remained in the dining room to overlook the whole situation.

Aridos then got up and bowed to each of his creations in turn. “Well, I must be going. I have to help Vega clean up the shop after our little incident. Good day.”

And with that, he headed for the door and left the apartment rather casually, leaving the four plushies and me in the living and dining rooms.

Tails looked timidly around his new home while I took his details in. Tails was just like I remembered him from the countless Sonic the Hedgehog games he was in. Technically, he was just a two-tailed golden-furred fox, but some of the more detailed fans out there, including myself, had been known to call him a “kitsune”, even though he had none of the normal kitsune powers. Tails was covered in golden-yellow fur that had patches of white on his short muzzle, chest, the insides of his pointed ears and on the tips of his two trademark, bushy tails. I knew that the real Tails could easily increase his running speed and even fly – which was what made him so popular – by spinning his two tails in a circle rather fast – something that normal foxes couldn't even come close to replicating.

Tails also had two human-like, five-fingered paws that were covered with two white gloves that I could see were stitched to his wrists just like a plush should have. I had never seen Tails in any games without his gloves – much like Sonic, Knuckles, Eggman and the rest of the other main characters in the Sonic series – so it was highly unlikely that he would be taking them off in his plush form.

Tails' eyes, like most of his other game friends, were narrow and a bright, shining-blue hue to them. Right now, they radiated both fear and intimidation, but they normally contained both curiosity and what made him so free-spirited in the games.

We both finished our examination of what we were looking at at the same time, so I got up to walk over to Tails while he walked up to me at the same time.

“Welcome to our family, Tails,” I said politely. “My name is Lance Kane and I'm the one who won all of you in a contest.”

“Contest?” Tails looked nonplussed. “Does that mean that Zai, Krystal, Klonoa and the others are also coming here to live with me?”

I nodded. “That's right. We'll all be one big, happy, furry family when this is all over with. Say...” I noticed a badge on his furry chest that I had overlooked earlier. “What are you wearing there?”

Tails seemed to loosen up a little as he talked with me. He looked at the badge sewn onto his chest and smiled timidly. “It's my insignia. Wanna see?”

I nodded and leaned closer, but Tails simply peeled it off of his chest like a sticker, leaving a perfectly normal spot of plushie fur in its place. It was clearly part of his ability to make anything fabric-related on his body and then remove it without ripping his fabric-based skin. I looked at him with interest as he placed the badge in my hand so I could get a better look at it.

The diamond-shaped badge's background was a rich blue color that matched his eyes almost exactly. There was also a pair of identical golden-yellow-and-white-tipped tails that looked just like the symbol that the real Tails had painted on his Tornado 2 and Cyclone in both Sonic Adventure games. The badge was about as big as my pinky finger and was a little oddly-shaped because of the two tails trailing off of the main badge. In all, it looked like a machine-made merit badge that most people earned in their Boy or Girl Scout days. It even had a pale, unimpressive backside that came with most merit badges nowadays. There weren’t even any stray threads from it being attached to Tails' chest, which suggested that it was nothing more than a common novelty sticker to him.

“This is pretty good,” I said, looking over the badge with an impressed face. “Say, can I keep this?”

Tails looked up at me with a blank look before smiling and nodding. “Go ahead. I can make another one without much trouble.”

This unexpected gift seemed to make all of the other plushies jealous. They all came forward, offering me their insignias as well.

“Why should we be left out of this?” said Seryn, trying to push past the other two. “Take mine as well.”

“Mine, too!” said Sidian, who was in front and using her wings to block the others.

“Don't forget me!” added Blaziken, nearly tripping over Seryn’s tail as he pressed forward. “I've got a badge to give you, too!”

I moved Tails aside so he wouldn't get trampled by the stampeding plushies. “Okay, okay! One at a time! I'll take Sidian’s, then Blaziken's and then Seryn's badges in that order. You don't need to rip each other apart to please me!”

Sidian smirked and stuck out her narrow, blue tongue. A silver, circular badge with the same rune-covered circle and the pentagram in the middle was on it, which she peeled off and handed to me. Blaziken then stepped forward with his paw clenched firmly. When he opened it, a red badge with the three-clawed footprint inside of a flame symbol stamped on it was in his palm, which I took happily. Seryn brought up the rear by ruffling her paw through her mane and pulling out a white, star-shaped badge as the circle and the three claw marks on it in the middle before placing it directly on my shirt, allowing it to fuse in the center of my upper chest.

Feeling envious, Sidian and Blaziken also grabbed their badges back, knocking me to the floor in the massive fur pile before taking their badges and pressing them onto my shirt next to Seryn's in a clockwise circle.

“Okay! I get the point! You all want me to wear your badges! Now get off! I can't move!” They were climbing all over me to put the badges in their right places that I was pinned to the floor under their velvety bodies. They happily obliged and I was able to sit up. Tails had watched me go down and had somehow obtained his badge again.

“Would you mind if I...?”

He had been the only one who had asked, but I didn't hold that against them. “Sure. Stick it where you want.”

Tails smiled weakly and placed it in the 4:30 position on my shirt. When I finally got up, I saw that there was an “almost” semi-circle of badges around the center of my shirt. I had a feeling that the other six plushies would be able to complete the circle and make my collection look more complete.

But for some reason, the way those four badges were placed seemed somewhat familiar. It was like my shirt was like a door and the badges were parts of a lock that would eventually be opened. They seemed familiar, but I couldn't remember where I had seen there before.

Ignoring it, I got up and looked at my plushie friends. I now had four of them to enjoy my life with, which wasn't even at the halfway point yet. They were also starting to take up a lot of room in this small living room. I could only imagine how cramped it was going to be with the inevitable ten in here. Oh... boy.

Just then, someone's belly growled. It was kind of small and feeble, but it had obviously come from one of the plushies. And since Seryn, Blaziken and Sidian had already eaten, it could only have come from Tails. The timid fox looked embarrassingly at his furry belly as the noise died away.

“Are you hungry?” said Seryn, trying to be nice. But Tails still didn't trust her and froze on the spot, completely immovable.

“Seryn...” I whispered. “Please...”

The Flammie sighed and backed away, but Tails was still rigid until Blaziken approached and kneeled by his side.

“Would you like to have something to eat, Tails?”

Tails finally softened up and looked at “Mr. Blaziken” with a faint smile on his face. “Yes, sir. I'm rather famished.”

Blaziken nodded and escorted Tails into my room where I had put the hamper full of new clothes that Blaziken had brought home last night. Meanwhile, Seryn looked at me, sighed and shook her head.

“I don't know what I'll be able to do to make Tails trust me. I tried to be nice, but he's still scared of me.”

Sidian saved me the trouble of answering by hooking her wing around Seryn's shoulder and placing her hand on it as well. “Seryn, you need to understand that Tails has just had a life-threatening experience with a Flammie Plush. He's probably emotionally scarred whenever he looks at you. This is not your fault in the slightest, but we need to take this slowly. He'll come to trust you in time.”

Seryn looked hurt. There was almost nobody alive that didn't immediately love a Flammie when they first saw one. What could that other plush have ever done to scar him like that? And if there was a way to somehow subconsciously treat him, she would find... a... way...

“Say, Lance, would you mind if I paid a visit to Aridos and Vega at Plush Paradise for a while?”

I wasn't sure why she was saying this, but if she wanted to, I didn't see any reason not to let her.

“Go ahead. Just make sure you're back by tonight. I'm looking forward to sleeping inside you again.”

Seryn smiled, but on the way to the door, she pulled Sidian to one side and whispered in her ear. Apparently, she liked what she heard because she grinned widely and licked her chops hungrily.

“I'll tell him. Thank you. Good luck.” And with that, Seryn left the apartment to head to Plush Paradise, leaving a grinning Sidian for me to deal with.

“What's so funny?” I asked her as she walked forward, flaunting her fine body expertly. I didn't like the way she was coming towards me. Whatever Seryn had said to her must have made her feel extra-special for some reason. However, I stood my ground as she stood in front of me, her wings displayed magnificently.

“You're all mine tonight.” I wasn't sure what to say to this, but she wasn't done. “Our merging may have been a bust, but tonight, we'll do this right and you'll be snug as a boy in his plush.”

There was something about what she said that alarmed me. And then it hit me; she had said “a boy in his plush”, not “a boy and his plush”. This only meant one thing.

“Are you going to eat me?”

Sidian grinned widely, showing a fair number of fangs in the process. She leaned forward and gently whispered in my ear. “Yes.” And before she moved back, she gave my ear a small lick with her narrow, rubbery tongue.

I was a little nervous about this. Not only had she just tasted me, but I had never slept inside anyone other than Seryn before. The massive Flammie was one thing, but would Sidian even be able to open her mouth that wide? And what would my large body do to her physique? I found it difficult to picture her still maintaining a decent form with me inside her belly. Oh... boy...

As Sidian folded her wings and went to go sit down on the couch behind me, Blaziken and Tails came out of my room with Tails looking rather satisfied. His normally petite furry body now had a slight bulge in his belly area, which showed me that he had just eaten his fill of the clothes Blaziken had bought for everyone. And judging from the pair of half-eaten underwear in Blaziken's paw, there were still plenty of clothes leftover.

“Did you eat well, Tails?” I asked the fox as he sat down on the couch adjacent to Sidian.

Tails nodded. “Yes, I did. I never thought that clothes would taste so good before, but that was before I became a plushie. It's like there was a party in my mouth and everyone was invited. I feel so full now that... I...” He yawned widely, apparently having tired himself out during his meal. “...I need a post-lunch nap. I hope you... haaa... don't mind.”

I shook my head and he lied down on the couch before curling up and falling asleep. He looked so peaceful lying there that I whispered to the others, “Shh... let's get out of here and let him sleep.”

Sidian and Blaziken nodded and the three of us left the apartment. According to Blaziken, Tails would be out for the rest of the day, so we were free to spend the rest of the day out on the town.

Seryn, meanwhile, had gone straight to Plush Paradise to seek out a hunch about how she could help Tails conquer his fear of her. She knew it was still early, but maybe she could get the plush she wanted back to the apartment to help Tails overcome his fears.

Seryn stepped into the shop and listened to the bell tinkle overhead. It had only been a few days since she had last been there, but she had been dormant at that time, so she had been unable to appreciate all of the different plushies around the shop. She couldn't get over the fact that they were all so soft and cuddly like she was, but she was here for one particular plush, so she let the others be.

Aridos and Vega were not in the main area when she arrived, so she just decided to look and not touch. She was looking for a certain plush that she had heard contained one of the more unusual powers that Plush Paradise had yet produced.

Soon enough, she reached a rack in the back of the shop that contained Lance's prize plushies that he had “won” in the first place. Four of the spots were blank, which wasn't a surprise. They had belonged to Tails, Sidian, Blaziken and herself. And the last six were each numbered according to which order Lance wanted them.

The current order was: Zai, Krystal, Klonoa, Mewtwo, Shiron and Lugia. That wasn't going to work. She couldn't wait that long for Tails to accept her. She knew that if she wanted to make things work, she would have to do a little rearranging of the numbers to work in her favor. Feeling that she would have hell to pay from Lance for this, she fluttered up to the ledge and hovered there as she rearranged the order of the plushies.

“Can I help you, Seryn?”

Seryn's stuffed heart leaped into her throat as she was in the middle of trading two of the plushies' spots on the shelf and she fell out of the air and crashed in a furry heap. When she finally recovered, she looked up to see Vega Firetail standing over her, his arms crossed and a curious expression on his furry face.

“Vega!” she gasped. “I thought you and Aridos were out!”

“Aridos is. I'm not. I was in the back room working on something for another customer when I heard your wings flapping.” He sighed and shook his head. “Aridos had a feeling you would show up, so he put Mr. Kane's plushies on the top shelf so no one could reach them. I stayed behind because I can pick up the sound of plushies in movement, so the “invisible” sound of your wings was like a cacophony to me.”

Seryn looked ashamed as she picked herself up, bowing her head to one of her creators. “I'm very sorry, but I couldn't get it out of my mind.”

Vega seemed to know what was bothering her but didn't seem to hold a grudge. “Why don't you come with me to the back room? There's something I want to show you.”

Seryn was confused as to why he was being so nice to her after she had almost screwed up Lance's order, but she accompanied him to the back room anyway. But when she got there, she stopped dead in her tracks.

The back room looked like a plushie war zone. Bits and pieces of destroyed plushies and mounds of cotton and stuffing were everywhere. Not only that, but there were glass shards and potion stains all over the remains from the shattered potion flasks and beakers.

“What... what happened here?” Seryn was almost speechless.

Vega said nothing but motioned for Seryn to follow him to a corner where a glass case stood with a large plush hanging inside of it. When she saw it, she nearly fainted from shock.

She was looking at a much larger Flammie plush than herself, but there was something... different about it. Instead of pure-white fur and feathers, this one had shadowy-violet fur and crimson feathers. Its mane was also crimson and its pads and talons were a deep, sapphire-blue. It also had four fangs sticking out of the sides of the roof of its muzzle instead of Seryn's single pair.

But what was the most alarming part of it was that its eyes were anything but gentle. They were just like Seryn's, but they were a deep, dark, crimson-red. They radiated nothing but pure evil, but for some reason, Seryn couldn't detect any life behind them. It was like it had once come to life but had had its soul removed after the chaos in the back room.

“Seryn...” said Vega, seeing her shocked expression. “Meet your brother, Mana.”

“My... my brother?”

Vega nodded. “Yes. This Flammie was supposed to be your brother, but the soul we infused it with was nothing but pure evil. Mana went out of control and destroyed everything you see here. He didn't even make it out of the back room before we stopped him. The plush is now lifeless and will soon be destroyed, but I thought I'd show you why Tails is so scared of you.

“You see, Tails was being prepared for his departure back here when we brought Mana to life. The things he, Aridos and I saw are much too graphic to repeat. Tails nearly died in the attack, but we managed to stop Mana before he succumbed to his injuries. But the emotional scars he sustained were enough for him never to trust Flammies again. I'm sorry, Seryn.”

When Seryn looked hurt, Vega told her something else. “None of this was your fault, Seryn. You had nothing to do with this and you were powerless to prevent it and you should never say that you were responsible. This was just an unforeseen, unrelated incident that you could do nothing about. But even though Mana will never harm another living creature, his actions will be forever imprinted in Tails' mind. I'm sorry.”

Seryn knew that every word he spoke was the truth, but she just felt horrible that it had had to come to this. Her plan was looking rather shaky now, which cast doubts that she and Tails would ever be on the same page.

But to her, it wasn't over until it was over. She had to give her plan at least one chance if she was to be proven wrong.

“I don't care what Mana did to him. I'm still going to get through to him. One of Lance's plushies has to be able to help Tails. I just know it. Please, Vega!” she begged, turning to him. “Give me one chance! I need to get through to him. I can't rest until Tails conquers his fears and can trust me like he does with the others! Please let me try it!”

Vega could see the obsession in her eyes. She was as gung ho as ever prove her innocence to Tails that she would stop at nothing to get through to him.

Finally relenting, he sighed and crossed his arms again. “Fine. Tell me what you have planned.”

Seryn smiled hopefully and told him exactly what she had in mind. She told him every detail she had thought of and the exact plush she needed to help Tails trust her. Vega seemed intrigued that she had already put so much thought into this just in the past hour or so. It was one of the most ingenious plans he had ever heard in his long career as an anthro salesman.

When Seryn told him that the plush she needed would not arrive until much later than was scheduled, Vega looked rather reluctant. “Aridos isn't going to like that, but I trust that you know what you're doing.” He paused, thinking and swishing his tail from side to side. “Alright. Since you seem so certain about this, I'll make an exception. Tomorrow, I will send you the plush you need and then resume the order afterwards. But keep in mind that this is because the situation is so desperate, otherwise I wouldn't even consider it.”

Seryn looked immensely relieved that Vega had understood her plight and had made an exception in her case. “Thank you, Vega. You have no idea how much this means to me. Thank you so much!”

They shook paws and Seryn made to leave, but Vega suddenly realized something. “Seryn, wait! I have something for you!”

Seryn froze and turned around while Vega went to a desk to root through the drawers for something.

“Where are they? Aridos and I went to so much trouble to get them and I just had to misplace them! Where are they?!”

Seryn watched Vega dash from drawer to drawer, sifting though the contents for something he seemed to have acquired but forgotten where he had put them.

Finally, he flipped open a book that contained a hidden compartment and sighed with relief. “Finally! Aridos would have had my head if I had lost these.” He withdrew a large envelope with the flap folded in and gave it to Seryn, who blinked.

“These are for the six of you for reaching the halfway point in Lance's order. It's kind of a little thanks from me and Aridos for having such a wonderful time with all of you. When the order is complete, we'll have a little something extra-special for you, so keep up the good work.”

Seryn blinked and started to open the envelope, but Vega put his paw over it and shook his head. “Not yet. Lance will be able to explain it better to you. Don't give it to him until after you've solved your problem with Tails tomorrow. He'll appreciate it even better then.”

Seryn didn't like being left in the dark, but she knew that Vega knew what was best for them and stuffed the envelope down her throat to take its place in her stomach with Sidian's zipper. Once that was taken care of, she said good-bye to him and left the shop to go to the mall. She already knew that Lance and the others were out of the apartment, leaving just Tails there on his own. And since it would be a bad idea to have just the two of them alone in the same area together, she decided to take up that KB Toys manager's offer and become a mascot for his store. She could almost hear the kids' squeals of joy when they saw that she came back.

While all that was going on, Blaziken, Sidian and I had split up once we had left the apartment to go our different ways for a while. Blaziken had a martial arts session in the dojo in the mall and Sidian wanted to get a lay of the land and go for a flight around the city for a while. I, on the other hand, had taken my digital camera with the pictures I had taken of them, me and Seryn yesterday and made for the local library to upload them onto my page at Fur Affinity. There was nothing wrong with doing it at home, but I didn't want to disturb Tails, and since I had nothing better to do, I figured I might as well do it at the library.

I took the memory card out of the camera and used my USB 5-in-1 Memory Card Reader to upload the pictures onto the Internet. I had a feeling that within a few hours after I got all of these onto the site, my inbox was going to be absolutely flooded with people who wanted to know how I managed to “manipulate” and “pose” my friends into each of those amazing poses. I already saw a hitch in any possible criticism. I had taken so many different pictures and each of them had posed in so many different ways that the only way that they could move that way was if they were actually alive.

Before I had called it a night, Seryn, Sidian and Blaziken were wondering if they could take turns eating me and posing for different shots. At the time, I had thought that it would have been a little extreme, but when I was browsing Fur Affinity, I remembered that there was a “Pregnancy” section both of the tame and adult varieties. The bellies they were likely to get from eating me could very much classify them as “pregnant”, so what the heck! I was curious to see what people would think if I got a shot of a pregnant Blaziken. Since Tails was too small to swallow me properly, the only tall male left in our ranks at the moment was Blaziken. He certainly met the qualifications, so all we had to do was persuade him to swallow me and pose for the camera.

While I was uploading the pictures, I made very sure not to classify them under “fur suit”. If I did that, they were likely to be mistaken for people in suits. And although they were clearly moving on their own, some people might have viewed them wrong and that would tarnish the reputation I was trying to build for them. So instead, I classified them under “Dragon – Eastern”, “Pokémon – Tame” and “General Furry Art – Tame”. Since Pokémon and Flammies didn't get their own species category, I had to list most of Seryn's and Blaziken's pictures under “Unspecified” as the main theme. But the wonder about Fur Affinity was that you could have multiple characters in a shot and classify them as such. You could even write in your own themes under “Species”, “Theme” and “Gender”. I still don't know why Fur Affinity needed a tag like that last one if there were only two genders in the known world. Maybe they were talking about hermaphrodites and transvestites or something like that. (Author's Note: I really don't know, either.)

In all, I had taken about 30 different pictures with combinations of Seryn, Blaziken, Sidian and/or me in numerous different poses, so I had quite a lot of work ahead of me. Not only that, but I had to explain in some of the pictures why they were dormant in some and then alive in others. Thankfully, there was no time limit on a computer at this library once you reserved it, so I was able to take as much time as I needed. It would all be worth it once the world saw how wonderful each of my plush friends were.

Two hours later, I was finished and was just packing up to leave the library when I felt a soft, cotton-like hand on my leg. Turning around, I was surprised to see Tails standing behind me!

“Tails?!” I whispered. “How did you get here? I thought you were sleeping!”

Tails' two tails danced casually as he moved to my side so I could see him fully. “I was, but when I woke up, you guys were gone. I was flying around town when I picked up your scent and tracked you here.”

I never knew he could do that. Seryn and Sidian were one thing, but the real Tails hadn't been as animal-like as he had appeared.

“How long have you been standing there?”

Tails shrugged. “I just got here. I walked inside and you were just finishing up.”

I couldn't stay upset at him, but I was wondering what the other people thought of a living, breathing Tails plush talking to me like a little kid. I was already getting a few amazed looks, but there weren't enough people here to really cause a scene.

“Well, now that you're here, did you want to come with me to meet the others?”

Tails looked nervous for a moment. “We won't see that Flammie one, will we?”

I shook my head. “I don't know where she is at the moment, so not likely. Blaziken and Sidian said they would meet me in front of the mall in ten minutes, so Seryn is on her own right now. I don't know when she'll be back, but she probably won't be with the others, so you're just fine.”

Tails sighed with relief. “That's good. So can we go now?”

I nodded and packed up my things in the small fanny pack around my waist. The people who were keeping an eye on Tails watched in disbelief as I took his hand and the two of us left to go meet the others.

Sidian was already at the mall when Tails and I got there, but Blaziken hadn't arrived yet. It was a few minutes past our meeting time, but I had a feeling that Blaziken still had a class going on.

“Tails?” said Sidian as we exited the car. “I thought you were sleeping back at home.”

“I was,” said the fox. “But when I woke up, you guys were gone.” He then told her what he had told me. Sidian didn't seem to mind that he was with us, though. After all, plenty of people had already seen her, so what was one more plush for company?

“I had an idea that we could try when Blaziken gets off his shift,” Sidian told us.

“Tell me,” I said curiously.

“Well... there's a Build-A-Bear Workshop in here and I was wondering if we could go in and, you know, show off a little to the kids.”

This was both a good idea and a bad idea at the same time. It was a good idea because like Seryn, Sidian apparently loved children and would simply be in heaven when she saw all of the little kids in the store. But it was a bad idea because given the situation, the kids in the shop might want to have a dragon plushie for themselves and start whining their heads off to their parents. And since Build-A-Bear had nothing close to what I had, this might lead to some rather uncomfortable confrontations and we might be in over our head with unwanted publicity.

“I don't think that would be a good idea. People might get envious of you and want you for themselves. And you know how little kids are.”

Sidian seemed to catch on and her ears drooped from disappointment. But then they perked right back up as another idea popped into her head.

“What about Seryn in front of KB Toys? She's really attracting a crowd and we could really boost sales if we showed up.”

I liked that idea better, but Tails didn't want to have anything to do with Seryn. Felling him tug at my arm, I said, “It's okay, Tails. You don't have to talk to her. Just stay with me and she won't come near you. In fact, I'll take you to Blaziken's dojo and he'll protect you.”

This sounded like a horrible thing to say about the one who had forever changed my life to begin with, but given the circumstances, it was the best I could do.

“Okay. Let's go give Seryn some backup. I'll take Tails to Blaziken while you meet me in front of KB.”

Sidian nodded and we all headed inside the mall.

I had seen the dojo that Blaziken was teaching in many times before, but I had never been inside it until now. It was relatively simple for a modern dojo. There were a few weapons on display on the walls with a few Chinese knick-knacks, but it was still relatively simple. You could see the experts and the kids training through a window in the wall, which at the moment, Blaziken was putting a blue-belt girl through her paces.

When Blaziken saw us come in, the girl thought he was distracted enough to try a high-jump kick, but without even missing a beat, Blaziken leaned back, showing remarkable flexibility and seized the girl's leg with his paw before twisting it enough that the girl did a 540 in the air before coming to a rest in a heap on the mat. The masters of the dojo and the kids had obviously never seen that kind of counterattack before and let out a collective “OOH!!!” before applauding him politely.

Blaziken nodded to me and held up a claw to tell me to give him a moment before returning to the girl he had just spun around and helped her to her feet. “You did rather well, but you must never assume that your enemy will ever be caught off-guard by a simple distraction. If you rush your judgment, you could end up on the wrong end of a weapon or even worse. Other than that, you gave it your best effort. Just because your enemy might not be as flexible as I am, it doesn't mean that you can take them lightly.” The girl thanked her “sensei” and bowed before returning to kneel next to the other students.

“Now class, I would like you to meet my owner. He is the one who brought me to life and has been taking care of me since the start. Please welcome my owner and friend, Lance Kane!”

He motioned for me to come forward and the students and experts applauded politely. I walked up to Blaziken and he extended his paw for me to shake his. For a moment then, time seemed to slow down as everything and everyone around us seemed to stop, leaving just me and Blaziken with our hands locked.

“If it's about our meeting, I'm sorry. I was asked to give a presentation on my abilities as a plush and explain to the others not to try what I did.”

“It's okay. I had a feeling that you got held up. Sidian already went to KB Toys to give Seryn some relief. I just brought Tails by so that you could “protect” him from her. I'm not barging in on your session, am I?”

“Not at all. I was just finishing up training the students and then I can call it a day. You just leave Tails' well-being to me. When you're ready, you can head for home. We'll meet you there.”

“Thanks, Blaze. I knew you'd come through for me.”

Blaziken nodded and time seemed to return to normal. I was surprised at how powerful he was getting. He wasn't even a Psychic-Type Pokémon and yet he could move so fast that time itself seemed to stop. What's more, he could choose who would also be affected as well. Huh.

Now that time had returned to normal, Blaziken pulled me to his side so he could “show” me to the class. “Lance, this is my Intermediate class. They all have blue belts or higher. Say “hello”, class.”

“Hello, Mr. Lance!” they all sang in unison.

“Lance has been with me ever since I was brought to life. If there's any questions you'd like to ask him about me, please feel free to ask.”

Several hands shot into the air. I looked at Blaziken nervously, who whispered in my ear. “Don't be overwhelmed. Just tell them what they want to hear and I'll relieve you when they've asked enough.”

With that out of the way, Blaziken pointed to a young, Asian girl. “Karol.”

“What does he eat?” she said in a curious voice.

This was an easy one. “He eats clothes and any cloth-like materials he can find.”

There was a collective “EEW!!!” from the students, causing Blaziken to chuckle and pick up the question. “It may sound gross, but when you're a plushie, regular food doesn't exactly agree with you. In a way, clothes – dirty or clean – are like my three square meals. If you were in my shoes, you'd be surprised at how good they taste. Just don't try it yourselves,” he added as a warning. “You'll choke.”

Another hand went up. “Yes, Galvin?”

“How can he use fire moves without burning himself up? My plushies would catch on fire if I ever tried to do that.”

Blaziken and I looked at each other for a moment, struggling to fight back our laughter. We got the hilarity of the situation under control and I was able to answer his question.

“Blaziken isn't like any ordinary plush. Even though he doesn't look it, he's very fire-resistant and his own fire won't burn him. Technically, he's magic.” There were a few blissful looks floating among the students as I said this. On a hunch, I decided to up the stakes. “He can even set me on fire and I won't burn up. Want to see?”

There was a roar of enthusiasm from the students. They had obviously never seen someone catch fire without being severely burned or without heavy protective padding. Blaziken patted me on the shoulder and the two of us moved apart so that we were on opposite ends of the room. He stood ready as I casually waited for him to be ready.

Just then, time seemed to stop again as Blaziken gave me a suggestion. “Let's make this look more realistic. I know a wide variety of Fire-Type moves, so let me have it.”

I had an idea. “Do you know “Overheat”? That might get them believing.”

Blaziken nodded. “Anything you want. But to make it more authentic, you should tell me what to do so they think you're a Pokémon Trainer.”

I smiled. “Whatever you say.”

Time returned to normal and I nodded to Blaziken, whose wrist flames had not yet ignited. Thrusting an arm forward, I made like a Pokémon Trainer and yelled, “Blaziken! Overheat!”

Right on cure, his wrist flames ignited as he got “fired up” and he threw back his head for a moment and then let me have it. An incredibly-powerful beam of fire was expelled from Blaziken's beak, barreling towards me and hitting me as hard as he could. Even the experts on the other side of us were amazed that those super-hot flames had hit me and barely made me flinch.

But even though it looked like I was getting hit with real flame, Blaziken had enabled it to be more of a show. In reality, he had left out the “hot” element of it, which enabled me to only feel a blast of warm air. I was completely unharmed, although I was now a little warm in my cloak and cape right now.

Blaziken finally let up on his Overheat attack and left me standing as a living human torch. He hadn't damaged me at all, even though the flames were still a little warm. I stood there for a moment before I grabbed the side of my cape and swished it, extinguishing the flames and reappearing completely unharmed.

Tails was in utter shock as he sat next to the students. He had obviously just witnessed only one of Blaziken's many abilities. It seemed to give him enough courage to explore his own abilities a little more. He made a silent promise to figure out what powers Aridos and Vega had given him and would do whatever it took to understand them.

Following this amazing display, there was a roar of applause and cheers from both the experts and the students. They had just been given a rare treat and they were that much more determined to make their sensei proud and train and learn from him.

“Any other questions?”

Every single hand went up. I was shocked at the sudden flood of questions, but Blaziken had an inkling. “I'm sorry, but I can't tell you where you can get someone like me.” There was a disappointed moan from the group and all but one hand went down. “I apologize, but my creators only give plushies like me to people who meet certain qualities in life that they are in need with one. But...” He suddenly looked thoughtful. “I can ask them to give you an ordinary plushie to you kids. They won't be alive like me, but they will be better than any plushie you've ever seen before.”

This somewhat lightened the mood. True, they may never have the same experiences as the ones that I had been having, but at least they can have a plushie for each of them that would remind them of Blaziken and Tails.

There was just one more question from the girl that had kept her hand raised. “When can we go get our plushies?”

Blaziken needed to consult the two experts on this one. He walked over to them and bowed over them, talking quietly about that. They seemed to be considering when a decent opportunity would be.

Finally, one of the experts stood up and addressed the students. “After your next belt graduation, those who have increased in rank will be able to visit Blaziken's home and choose a friend for their very own.”

There was some positive whispering around the room as spirits were raised. Blaziken knew he had made an impression, but I knew he still had to consult Aridos and Vega about this.

Regardless, Blaziken bowed to the others and said, “That will be all for today. We'll continue our lessons on Monday. Good luck and keep practicing!”

Everyone bowed to him and Blaziken, Tails and I left the dojo together. Blaziken held Tails' hand as we walked to an intersection of the mall with some exit doors down one way and the rest of the mall down the others.

“Tails and I will head to Plush Paradise and talk to Aridos and Vega,” said Blaziken. “We'll meet you back at home after that.”

I nodded and headed down to KB Toys where Seryn and Sidian were working.

From what I could see, the kids were all over the silver dragon. They were actually paying more attention to her than to Seryn at the moment because Sidian was just temporary. They seemed to be enjoying the feel of her leather-like wings and were crawling all over her and/or taking pictures with their parents. She seemed to be a natural with children and was enjoying the attention very much.

I walked over to Seryn and stood next to her. “Looks like you've got some competition, Seryn.”

The furry Flammie wrapped her upper-right wing around me and smiled, her arms crossed as she watched the kids go nuts for Sidian. “I can see that. She seems to be enjoying herself rather well. I'm just glad that she's happy and enjoying the attention.”

I put my hand on her wing and looked at her. “You're not jealous?”

Seryn shook her head. “Not at all. She deserves to be the center of attention for a change. I'm not the kind of plushie to be jealous of any of my comrades, so I think we should let her be.” A few moments passed and then she added, “My boss signed a deal with Plush Paradise to sell some of their plushies here.”

“Is that so? Well, it looks like business is booming. But... where are they?” I looked around at the stuffed animal bin.

Seryn smiled. “They sold out in five minutes. Aridos and Vega now have to make more of them and more models to match us.” “Us” must have meant Seryn, Blaziken, Sidian and Tails, to name just the beginning.

Seryn looked at a watch around her wrist that she had been given by her boss. “Well, it looks like my shift is up. What do you say we head on home? I'd better break it to Sidian.”

I nodded and Seryn went to break up the crowd. The kids and Sidian were disappointed, but they knew that even a plushie had to go home for the day. Once the peanut gallery had cleared out, Seryn, Sidian and I headed for the exit.

But for some reason, Sidian said to Seryn, “You go ahead. We'll meet you later.” before taking me off to one side and holding a private conversation with me.

“What's going on, Sidian?”

“I can't wait until bedtime. I wanna eat you now!”

I gulped. Eating me at home was one thing, but we were out in public where anyone could see her and I going about our business.

“Sidian!” I whispered huskily. “We can't! People will see us!”

But Sidian seemed to have already considered this. “Not if we head for somewhere private where no one can spy on us. Come with me.” She grabbed my wrist and pulled me down the hallway to the main JC Penney's store. I had no idea what she had in mind, but if we were going somewhere private, it couldn't have been the bathrooms. She was steering well clear of that area and pulling me towards the changing rooms at the side of the store. All I could do was go along with her. Her grip was so solid that I couldn't break away even if I had tried to. She was just that strong.

Sidian pulled me into the main dressing room area and brought me into an empty stall. After closing and locking the door behind her, her ears flickered for a moment, listening for anyone who might be watching us. When she was sure that we were alone, she looked at me with a greedy look on her face, licking her chops in anticipation of her next “meal”.

“I've been waiting a long time for this,” she said excitedly. “Now I get to find out why Seryn enjoys you so much.”

“Sidian, I...” I tried to tell her, but she placed a finger on my lips, silencing me on the spot.

“Shh... Just relax and this will be over before you know it. Now...” She spread her wings wide and surrounded me with her fabric-like embrace. “Let me see how you taste.”

I nodded and closed my eyes as Sidian opened her mouth extra-wide so she could scoop up my head and shoulders with her massive jaws. The experience of being eaten was about the same as when Seryn had done it to me, so nothing was really new. But Sidian paused for longer intervals in-between gulps, running her long, rubbery, rope-like tongue over my finer details to savor my special “flavor” before continuing to swallow me. Before long, my feet got a fairly long tasting from Sidian as she slurped the rest of me up and swallowed me whole.

I hit Sidian's stomach before I was all the way inside her, but that was only because Sidian was smaller than Seryn. Within two minutes of when it had started, I was tucked away inside Sidian's silken stomach, curled up in a ball and relaxing intently. I noticed that her body heat was much higher than Seryn's, but it still wasn't uncomfortable. It felt like a sauna in there, but the soft silken walls of her stomach seemed to counteract that. If I didn't know any better, I could have sworn that Sidian was more comfortable than Seryn.

“Comfy, love?” she said, patting her massive bulge of a belly. “Did you go down all right?”

I sighed and curled up even tighter inside of her. “I am, dear. I was wrong to try and fight you. You are very soft and warm. I could grow to like it in here.”

Sidian smiled and stoked her internal furnace enough so that I found myself drifting off to sleep.

“Sleep tight, my love. When you wake up, a brand-new day will have started. I'm not going to let my “child” sleep in any place where he is not comfortable. I will see you in the morning.”

And with that, I was once again a visitor to the wonderful Dream World.

Sidian certainly looked pregnant now. Her belly was so distorted that she would never get back home without attracting unwanted attention. She looked like she had blown up her belly so much that she had swallowed a weather balloon. Even though she could disguise herself with clothes, she was way too fat to fly and too bloated to move very fast. She guessed she should have eaten Lance back at home where they could have escaped prying eyes. But there was nothing she could do about it now.

On the plus side, Lance had tasted absolutely heavenly going down. She couldn't remember when she had tasted someone so delicious and was determined to do it again. But on the down side, she was stuck in a dressing room over a half-mile from her home with no way of protecting herself. She was at a loss for what to do.

Just then, she heard someone knocking on the changing room door followed by a voice. “Sidian? Are you in there?”

She recognized the voice almost immediately. “Vega? Is that you?”

“It is. Let me in. I need to tell you something.”

Sidian undid the latch and the anthro fox entered the stall. But when he saw her massive, bloated belly, he looked thunderstruck.

“You didn't eat him yet, did you?”

Sidian nodded plainly. “I did. He tasted heavenly and he's now sleeping peacefully inside me.”

“Damn!” Vega said, more to himself than her. “I'm too late! Why did I have to get held up by that security guard?!”

“Is something the matter?”

Vega sighed as though everything had suddenly gone wrong. “Yes. You weren't supposed to eat Lance until the very end of this.”

“Why? He's perfectly fine now.”

“That's the problem. At first, it's all fine and dandy, but then the transformation and the rebirth begins.”

Sidian looked nonplussed. “I don't follow you.”

Vega sighed and sat down on the bench in the corner. “Let me explain. Aridos and I created you to be the one to ultimately convert Lance at the end of his plush adventure. But the only problem was that we couldn't delay it until when it needed to happen when we created you. In other words, you would have been able to swallow him without changing him. But something happened that rushed that ability. When we realized what we had done wrong, I tried to get here in time to stop you from eating him, but I got here too late.”

Sidian still didn't get it. “But why couldn't I eat him now?”

Vega shook his head. “The glitch in your body was that instead of depositing him in your stomach, he would be delivered straight to your womb. There' no way for him to get out until your body decides to finish the process.”

Sidian suddenly caught on. “You... you mean I'm... I'm really pregnant? He's going to be... my child?”

Vega reluctantly nodded. “I'm afraid so. He'll be a plush dragon in a few days' time.”

Sidian suddenly panicked and started grabbing at her stomach as if to literally rip Lance out of her.. “You have to get him out! I don't want to be pregnant yet! We're not done enjoying him as our owner! I want him to see the rest of us before he converts! Please! You need to get him out of me! He can’t transform yet!”

Vega looked melancholy, furthering Sidian's fear, but then he pulled out a long, pointed dagger. “I figured this would happen. I can get him out of you, but he will be bound to you. You will have to nurture him and feed him until the time comes to finally convert him.”

Sidian was ecstatic. “Anything! Just help him, please!”

Vega nodded and lifted the dagger up to her bloated belly. “You are going to feel this, Sidian, but it's the only way.”

Sidian knew she was going to feel pain, so she needed something to bite so she didn't attack Vega. Looking over at the door, she spotted a metal bar for hanging clothes attached to the door. Screwing the consequences, she used her awesome strength to rip the rack from the wall and place the metal bar in-between her jaws. She then whimpered and nodded to Vega.

“I'm ready.”

Vega nodded back and knelt down so that he was level with Sidian's belly. He then plunged the dagger into one side of her stomach and slid it all the way to the other side. There was a sound of tearing fabric and Sidian cried out in pain, nearly shearing the metal bar in half. Vega then stuck his gloved hands into her open womb and seized Lance's body, pulling him out and catching him before he hit the ground. Lance was still fast asleep, but Vega was just glad that he hadn't yet attached himself to Sidian's body.

“We were lucky. He had not yet bound himself to you, so he will not need to be nurtured to survive. He'll awaken without any memory of this. But Sidian...” he said, looking straight in her eyes. “You cannot swallow him again until I tell you! If this happens again, the damage may be irreparable. Plus, you can not let him know what happened here today. If Lance found out before it was to happen, he might not only abandon you but also all the other plushies. This cannot be allowed to happen. Promise me that you'll tell the others to remain silent about this.”

Even though her stomach had returned to normal, she still had a two-foot-long gash in her torso. But since this was not life-threatening to a plushie, she would be just fine.

“I promise. No one will ever know.”

Vega nodded and then placed his hand on the gash in her belly, muttering a few indistinguishable words to help seal it shut. Soon, it was impossible to tell that she had been split open, but the emotional damage was still unknown. Sidian was just glad she had been able to save him before it was too late.

“He's still asleep. How will I get him home now?”

Vega was about to answer when Sidian suddenly started coughing violently and clutching her chest. It looked like swallowing Lance had done more damage than they had thought. She roared in pain and cried, kicking her feet on the floor and wailing loudly.

“AAAAH!!! It hurts! It hurts so bad! What... what's happening to me?! Vega! Make it stop! I can't breathe!”

Vega knew that he had been too late to stop everything that resulted from eating Lance, but all he could do was pull his blaster rifle out of his holster and point it down at Sidian's head.

“I have to do this, Sidian. The pain will be too much if you remain conscious. I'm sorry.”

Sidian closed her eyes and prayed for the pain to stop. Something was happening to her that she couldn't stop, so all she could do was let Vega do what he had to do to comfort her.

That was the last thing she knew.

Chapter 6: Dreams Come True

(Author's Note: Since the order of the plushies was shifted around, there is a new one arriving as Number Five, but despite the name, it's not who you think it is. All I can tell you is that the character in this chapter did star in their own “Dreams Come True” story. Can you guess who it is? Keep reading!)

I never made it to the Dream World that night. For some reason, some kind of cataclysm seemed to lock me out of it for that night. All I could hear was a series of screams that I couldn't pinpoint where they had come from. Were they from the Real World or from the Dream World? They sounded like they were in pain, but I couldn't be sure. All I knew was that was one of the worst nights I had ever slept through in recent history.

When I finally woke up, I found that I was lying in my own bed with the covers under me like many times before. Whatever had happened that had caused Sidian to throw me back up, it must have happened right after we had gotten home. It felt like I was sleeping on wood compared to the comfort of Sidian's belly. I just wished that I could have stayed in there longer. She had been looking forward to eating me, anyway.

Rolling out of bed, I immediately noticed that something was wrong. The TV wasn't on and breakfast wasn't cooking like it had been before. My plushie friends were all sitting in the living room on both of the couches, silent as a graveyard. Blaziken and Tails were on one couch while Seryn was on the other. Something seemed to be bothering them, but they were too worried to tell me right away.

I suddenly noticed that Sidian was missing. She wasn't in the living room with the others. And since she wasn't one to just run off without telling anyone, I figured that this uncomfortable silence had something to do with her.

The moment Seryn saw me, her eyes were suddenly full of tears and she had gotten up to give me a massive bear hug. “Oh, Lance! I was so worried about you! Are you all right?”

I felt absolutely fine. There was no reason why I shouldn’t be. “I'm just dandy. Why?”

Seryn looked me in the eyes and then buried her furry face in my chest, tears leaking out of her eyes. “It's Sidian! Vega brought her back home yesterday and she was unconscious. We've been so worried about her since she came home that we haven't gotten any sleep since then.”

“Slow down, Jeff Gordon. Tell me... where's Sidian and what's wrong with her?”

Seryn let up in her wailing to turn me around and point to my computer room. “She's in there and... *sigh*… you'll just have to see for yourself.”

Worried that she had been attacked, I made a beeline for the room and swung the door open. Seryn and the others had remained behind while I took care of her. But what I saw was more confusing than I had ever been before.

It looked like Sidian, but there was something very different about her this time. Instead of being a bipedal dragon with webbed wings, she had grown incredibly to become a massive quadrupedal dragon with large, feathery wings. It was like she had undergone some kind of transformation overnight and was now in a much more different form. Her arms and hands had reverted back to draconic legs and five-and-four-clawed paws. They looked more like she was now quadrupedal than before. Her torso was much larger than before as well and a series of gray, diamond-shaped plates ran from under her throat down her front and to the tip of her tail. Her buff bod and breasts had disappeared and now resembled a true dragon's in shape and nature. Her neck was significantly longer and much sleeker like the rest of her body. Her tail had also plumped out and was much thicker as well.

The new Sidian was lying on top of my pile of plushies, fast asleep and apparently not dreaming well. She kept kicking in her sleep and kept growling and baring her fangs, lashing out with her paws at something only she could see. I could tell she was having a nightmare and decided to wake her up to put an end to her suffering.

“Sidian? Sidian! Sidian, wake up!” I said, pushing on her chest as she whined a little in her sleep.

Finally, she seemed to snap out of her trance and opened her eyes. She looked frightened and relieved at the same time as she tried to focus on her surroundings.

“Lance... what... where am I? I can't remember what happened to me.”

“Shh...” I said, kneeling down so that I could stroke her velvety scales. “It's okay now. You're awake and everything will be all right.”

Sidian whimpered as she looked over her transformed form. “Wha... what happened to me? I... I'm a... a...” She couldn't exactly tell me what she was, but I already knew.

“Yeah... you're a quadrupedal dragon now. I don't know what happened last night, but all the others would say was that Vega carried you in yesterday and you've been asleep ever since then.”

Sidian sighed and laid her head back on the plushie pile. A tear was welling up in her eye. “Oh, Lance. I've never been so scared in my life. While I was asleep, all I could think of was what had happened to you. All I could feel was pain and all I could do was pray for it to stop. I just wanted to wake up and let it be over.”

“It's okay,” I told her, stroking her mane and doing my best to comfort her. “Why don't you go back to sleep and I'll tell the others to take care of you?”

“No!” she cried in fear. “Don't make me go back there! My Dream Realm is full of nothing but fear and pain! I don't wanna go back to sleep! Please don't make me do it!”

I had never known anyone to be so scared of going back to sleep before. Usually, the Dream World was a place where you could be free of reality and pain, but the things Sidian must have seen must have scared her out of her mind. I didn't know what to do to make her feel comfortable anymore.

“Lance!” called Seryn from the kitchen. “We have a guest!”

I did my best to make Sidian comfortable and stroked her neck in reassurance. “Just relax, Sidian. You don't have to go to sleep; just try and stay calm. I'll be back soon.”

Sidian nodded timidly as I finally left her side to go check on the others.

Seryn was back in the living room, a brand-new plushie in her furry lap. But despite all odds, it wasn't the plush I had chosen as Number Five in my list. While it was suspicious, I didn't pursue the matter. In fact, this character might have been just perfect to help me with Sidian.

The character was none other than the original Dream Traveler, Klonoa. (Author's Note: Did you guess right? Klonoa starred in DCT 3 and DCT Anthology as the “Dream Traveler”. Just food for thought.) Out of all of the plushies I had chosen, to this day, I still didn't know exactly what Klonoa was. He had some cat-like traits while those long ears reminded me of a rabbit. But he was also human-like in nature and had the spirit of a young boy. His age was as of yet unknown, but he acted like he wasn't quite a teenager in his games. He had the enthusiasm and curiosity that the real Tails did but at the same time, he was as honest and as responsible as a number of other characters I have seen in my life.

“Is that my next plush?” I asked Seryn, walking over to take it. “That's funny. I thought I chose Zai as my fifth plushie.”

Seryn simply shrugged. “Maybe there was a mix-up? I dunno.”

I had a feeling that she knew more than she was telling me, but I couldn't prove it, so I let it be. I took the Pygmy Klonoa Plush from her and headed to the kitchen to grab my scissors again to cut the tag in his right ear. His ears were so thick at the ends that the long, plastic tag wasn't as visible as the others' ones had been, so I had to pinch it for a moment to get enough slack to cut.

Once the tag was cut, I carried the plush over to the living room and set it down on the floor before pulling the plastic tag out. I knew better than to try and pull it out while said plush was in my arms by now because the instant the plastic was out, the plush would immediately return to its original size. I took the ear in my hand and yanked the tag clear, jumping back as quickly as possible, just barely avoiding its sudden growth spurt.

Klonoa was about the same size as Tails was at just above four feet in height. His body was covered in a combination of black and white fur. His head, body, arms, legs and feet were black while his short, cat-like muzzle, the end of his short, tuft-like tail and the ends of his two-foot-long drooping ears were a snow white that wasn't quite as brilliant as Seryn's fur. But the reason that I couldn't be more descriptive is because unlike the others, Klonoa was wearing a full set of machine-made clothes. He wore a pair of small, red, lace-less sneakers and had a pair of blue shorts with a matching coat with a silver zipper. His petite tail stuck out of the back of his shorts, which made him appear more animal-like than he seemed. His five-fingered/short-clawed paws had a pair of golden-yellow gloves over them. The left one was just like any ordinary gloved hand, complete with the visible stitching along the sides of his glove.

But the right one had its fingers clenched around a large, golden, metal ring. This ring was what gave Klonoa his powers. It was a large gold-metal band that he could grasp in his hand with a large, green gem fused into the top of it like a normal-sized ring. The metal on both sides of the gem curled around the sides of it with the gem holding the entire thing together. This ring was the envy of the pirates Leorina and Tat in “Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil” and it was ultimately Klonoa's patented Wind Bullets that rang each of the five Ceremonial Bells scattered throughout Lunatea. And according to legend, it was Klonoa's ring that could open gates between the Real World and the Dream World. Klonoa was said to be the one who was the ultimate guardian of the Dream World and oversaw anything and everything that went on there.

The rest of Klonoa's body was what made him so unique. He had a short, cat-like muzzle with white fur extending a little ways off the sides of his face. His narrow, slit-like pupils were not quite orange but not quite yellow, either. They were right in the middle, but they radiated his freedom and innocence to those who took the time to look. On his head was his trademark blue cap, which was always turned backwards, giving him a “cool” look and allowing his two black “bangs” to stick out of the hole in the back of his cap. I knew that there wasn't much of a hairdo under that cap. All there was was a short, black, furry dome that made him look better with the cap on, so I wasn't missing out on anything special.

Klonoa's ears were what made him as amazing and curious as he was. The long, thick, black appendages dropped off on both sides of his head and made up about three-quarters of his height, which was only about four feet high. At each of the ends was a series of five nubby points covered in short, white fur that looked like an over-inflated glove on each one. The white pattern shifted back to black a few inches up in a jagged pattern, Those ears were always fluttering in some kind of breeze, whether there was one or not. In all, Klonoa looked just like a young kid but the powers and responsibilities he carried made him as trustworthy and as sincere as anyone I had ever met as of yet.

The Klonoa plush sat there for a moment while the four of us looked over our new friend, its ears quite still and trailing onto the floor. And then that special spark of life appeared in his eyes and he slowly started to come to. I was worried whether or not he would be able to speak English because in his games, he and the rest of the characters had been speaking what I called “Klonoan” (no pun intended). But as he started to focus onto his surroundings, we were about to find out.

Klonoa put a gloved paw to his head and shook the latter. “Ohh... Where am I? I feel like I just walked 500 miles.” He didn't seem to notice us yet and got to his feet. “But I feel so good that I could walk 500 more!”

Seryn, Blaziken, Tails and I looked around at each other, wondering if he had made a “Proclaimers” statement on purpose or not. (Author's Note: It's a band!) We then returned our attention to the curious Klonoa, who finally seemed to have noticed us.

“Hi there!” he said rather enthusiastically. “You must all be the plushies that I heard so much about. My name is Klonoa. It's nice to meet all of you.”

Not wanting to be rude, the four of us got up and introduce ourselves. Seryn went first.

“Hello, Dream Traveler. My name is Seryn the Flammie.” She spread all four of her wings and bowed gracefully.

Klonoa smiled and shook his head. “You don't need to be so formal. Just call me Klonoa.”

Blaziken went next. “They call me Blaziken. I'm a Fire-and-Fighting Type Pokémon. It's nice to meet you.” He placed his paw on his chest and bowed low, flaunting the other one nobly.

Klonoa seemed to like the powerful-looking Pokémon. “You look very strong. I can tell that you and I are going to be very good friends.”

Tails was still a little shy of the newcomer and didn't say anything. Klonoa seemed to understand, though, and walked over to him to shake paws with him.

“It's okay. You can tell me anything you want. I'm not the kind to attack anyone for no reason, so don't worry about it.”

Tails smiled feebly and hid behind Blaziken, not sure whether to talk to him or be afraid of him.

Klonoa then turned to me and nodded. “I know all about you. You're my new owner, Lance Kane, right?”

I nodded. “I am. It's nice to meet you for the first time, Klonoa.” We held out our hands and shook them firmly. His gloved paw was very thick but very soft and firm at the same time. “I wanted to ask you something, though.”

Klonoa smiled. “Go ahead.”

“What are you? I can't really classify you as anything I’ve ever seen before. You don't seem to have a species to call your own, so I'm not sure what to call you.”

Klonoa and I released each other's hand and he looked thoughtful for a moment. “You know, no one's ever asked me that before. I never gave it any real thought, either. I guess I can't be called a cat or a rabbit or anything of the sort. Hmm...” He paused, thinking hard. “I guess I'm a new species or something. There's really no name for someone like me, so I guess you can call me whatever you want.”

This wasn't quite the answer I was looking for, but if he really didn't care, I guess that was just fine. “I'll just call you a “Klonoa”. There's really nothing else to call you, if you know what I mean.”

Klonoa nodded. “I guess I'm “a Klonoa” now.”

Now that we had gotten that out of the way, I turned my attention to a more serious topic. “Klonoa, is it really true that you can travel to and/or from the Dream World with that ring?”

Klonoa examined the ring clenched in his right mitt. “It's true, indeed. I have the power to access people's dreams and have even helped to cure people of their innermost fears and problems that are somehow connected to said world. I've traveled all over the Dream World, helping and treating people with problems that you normally can't deal with because they are locked away in your subconscious.”

Both Seryn and I looked impressed at this ability, but Klonoa was currently occupied with me. “Then could you help me care for one of my other plush friends? She's absolutely terrified with falling asleep and visiting the Dream World again. Can you figure out what she's so afraid of?”

Klonoa nodded. “I guess I can take a look. I'm no demonologist, but I can see what I can do.”

I smiled and escorted Klonoa to the spare room where Sidian was lying awake on my pile of plushies. Seryn, Blaziken and Tails remained in the living room, waiting patiently for us to return.

Sidian was barely keeping herself awake when we came in the room. You could see the bags under her eyes as she tried not to yawn and close her eyes. Klonoa seemed to be amazed at the dragon's new form.

“This is different. I was told that Sidian would be a biped, not a full-fledged quadruped. Did something happen before I arrived to change her into this?”

While my back was turned, Sidian looked around me at Klonoa and frantically shook her head at him, telling him not to pursue the topic while I was in the room.

Catching on, Klonoa said, “Never mind. It's nothing that can be helped. Let me take a look at her.”

Klonoa walked around me and kneeled down by her side. Sidian was struggling to focus and did not object to him examining her. He took her head gently in his paw and placed the gem on his ring in-between her eyes, Sidian whimpered as Klonoa accessed her subconscious. Fortunately for her, only he would be able to see what was bothering her.

He took turns pressing his ring to her forehead, her belly and her neck in turn like a doctor listening to your pulse. He seemed to be able to hear what was going on inside her by pressing the gem to her body and didn't even have to lean in closer to listen better. I watched in amazement as he placed his paw on different parts of her body as well, apparently taking some kind of pulse. It was like watching a doctor at work, except that this one dealt with your subconscious instead of your physical health.

Finally, Klonoa stood up and gave me his analysis. “She has been emotionally scarred by something in her past that has returned to torment her. It has something to do with why she is a quadruped now, but I'm not entirely sure. I'll have to put her to sleep and access her Dream Realm to deal with the culprit.”

Sidian looked scared at this plan and wailed loudly. “No! I don't wanna go back there! There has to be another way! Please don't make me go back there!”

Klonoa sighed and turned to her. “I'm sorry, Sidian, but it's the only way. But I will do whatever it takes to protect you. And besides, Lance and the others will be right here for you, right, Lance?” He turned to me.

I nodded. “We won't let anything happen to you, Sidian. You can trust us.”

Sidian whimpered and leaned her head back on the plushie pile. “Oh... okay... As long as you're here for me, I'll do it.”

Klonoa turned to me again. “Go get the others and bring them in here. They need to be present so she'll be less likely to panic.”

I nodded and left the room to go fetch the others. “Seryn, Blaziken, Tails... Klonoa needs us to be with her while she's asleep so he can work on her. Come with me.”

Tails looked apprehensive about being in the same cramped room as Seryn, but Blaziken held his hand firmly to give him the courage to deal with it. They all got up to follow me into the plushie room where Klonoa was tending to Sidian.

“...won't tell him yet, I promise,” Klonoa was saying to her. “I know how much that means to you, so I promise not to tell.”

I knew better than to intrude in on their private conversation, but I had a sneaking suspicion that they were talking about me. But that was beside the point right now, so I dropped it and let it be.

Klonoa turned to us and nodded. “Sidian had been possessed by an evil spirit that has been created by her sorrows and troubles. I'm going to put her to sleep and go into her Dream Realm to deal with the culprit. I need you four to keep her from moving. No matter what happens, do not let her get away! She's going to be fighting me, but I need to get inside so that I can find what's bothering her. I'll be back in no more than ten minutes, but until then, keep her as immobile as possible.”

We all agreed, but Sidian was worried even more. Klonoa, however, seemed to know what he was doing and whispered in her ear.

“I promise you will not be harmed. I have never failed to cure someone and I'm not likely to start now. Now... go to sleep. The Dream World is calling your name.”

He then stood up and pointed his ring directly at her forehead. But before he started, he turned to the rest of us and gave us one last instruction. “The instant I disappear, restrain her. She's going to fight me, but I need to get through to help her. Do you understand?”

We all understood and nodded. Klonoa then turned to face Sidian and closed his eyes. A small, white Wind Bullet fired from his ring and connected with her head. Her eyes lit up with a strong white light as her mind was hit by the magical bullet.

Several things happened in the next few seconds. Sidian's eyes drifted shut and she plopped her head onto the plushie pile. At the same time, Klonoa practically exploded into a flash of white like a camera flash going off. A split-second later, all four of us piled on top of Sidian, restraining everything we could with our bodies. Seryn was the largest and held down her tail, her back legs and part of her right wing that wasn't pinned against the furry pile. Blaziken helped her out by holding the rest of her wing down and pinned her torso as close to the pile as possible. He also used his legs to partially pin down her front legs. Tails used what little strength he had to hold down her front legs to avoid giving those claws a reason to hurt him. I brought up the front and completely lied on top of Sidian's head and neck. Her horns were biting into my backside, but I tried to ignore the feeling and lied flat on top of her so she couldn't use her teeth or horns to inflict damage.

A few seconds later, we all felt Sidian buck from under us and try to get free. Klonoa was being attacked inside her subconscious, but we knew that he would be all right. All we had to do was keep the flailing dragon from breaking free and unintentionally hurting someone.

I felt Sidian's teeth latch onto my foot for a moment, but I quickly pulled it out of her mouth before she could inflict any damage to it. Unfortunately, this movement removed some of the restraint to her head and she started roaring and flailing her head wildly. Sacrificing some of her neck protection, I shifted my body up a little and pushed my knee into the side of her head, careful to avoid those teeth.

“Hold onto her now!” I said to the others as they struggled to keep her pinned down. “We can't let her get away!”

The others were doing their best to restrain the flailing dragon, but her strength was just amazing! I had never known dragons to be this strong, despite her size and the fact that she was a plushie. We could barely keep her from worming out from under us and breaking free.

Sidian continued to struggle greatly for about a minute before she suddenly went limp. She stopped moving completely and seemed to give up control of her subconscious to Klonoa, who seemed to have made it through to her. But we didn't move an inch from on top of her, worried that she might flare up again. All we could do was hope and pray that Klonoa could cure her before we had to put up another fight like that or worse.

“Good luck, Klonoa,” I said tiredly. “We have our utmost faith in you.”

Accessing Sidian's subconscious Dream Realm was nothing new for Klonoa, but never before had he encountered such resistance in someone that he was trying to help. The dragon seemed hell-bent on keeping him from accessing her Dream Realm and the pure power he had face on his way into it was just breathtaking. The only times he had ever faced a resistance even close to this powerful was when the owner of the subconscious he was in had somehow “trained” their subconsciousness to have some kind of “control” over their dreams. They were few and far between, but Klonoa had dealt with his share of these fighters.

Thankfully, he managed to make it into Sidian's Dream Realm without sustaining too much damage. He was lucky; he had faced lesser resistances and come off worse, but for some reason, he was almost completely unscathed after such a hell ride.

Klonoa had a routine for treating his patients. First off, he needed to find the subconscious version of his patient. They needed to stay at his side so that they could overcome their fears as well. Klonoa would only be able to progress deeper into her dream if Sidian would let him, so he needed to look for her to make any progress.

That first part was easy enough. Sidian's subconscious self was sitting on a bench near a running river, humming to herself. Since he was already inside the Dream World, he could communicate with his patients without sending them into “wake-up mode”.

“Hello, Sidian,” he said, walking over to sit next to the silver dragon. This form was still in its bipedal stage and seemed to be enjoying herself. “May I sit here?”

Sidian looked at the newcomer and nodded, patting the place next to her with her hand. “Go ahead, Klonoa.”

When Klonoa sat down, he noticed that Sidian's belly was very much bloated. He instinctively knew that inside there, the Dream World Lance was sleeping intently.

“Are you expecting?” he said casually.

Sidian smiled and patted her pregnant belly with pride. “Yep. He's gonna be my little dragonlet in just a few days' time. I'm so excited that we’re going to be a family.”

“How is he doing? Did you just eat him?”

“Uh-huh. I can still taste him in my mouth. All I can think of is what he's going to look like when he comes out.”

Klonoa turned in his seat and pointed to her bloated belly. “May I feel him?”

Sidian nodded. “Go ahead. I'm sure he won't mind.”

The Dream Traveler placed his hand on Sidian's belly and felt for any movement underneath her cloth-like skin. Soon enough, he felt “Lance” roll over in his sleep. Smiling, he removed his hand and patted Sidian on the shoulder. “He's coming along nicely.”

“Yeah...” Sidian didn't sound completely convinced, though. “He hasn't yet bonded with me, but it won't be long now.”

Klonoa suddenly felt the fur on the back of his neck prickle. Someone was coming and it didn't feel very welcome. His suspicions were confirmed when he saw a black-cloaked figure appear out of the mist and approach Sidian. He knew that this was the cause of her emotional disarray, but Sidian's subconscious seemed to recognize it as a friend.

“Hello, Vega,” she said calmly. “What brings you by here today?”

The black shadow that Sidian had acknowledged as Vega looked down at her distended belly and looked apprehensive. He seemed to be asking whether or not Sidian had already eaten Lance.

Sidian smiled and nodded. “I did, and he tasted heavenly.”

“Vega” had a few choice words to say about his timing and seemed upset that he hadn't made it in time.

“What's wrong with that? I just did what Seryn did.”

Vega went on to explain that there was a key difference between her and Sidian in the department of human-plushie vore and that she was now pregnant. But so far, Klonoa was invisible to him because he was a visitor at the moment.

Seryn suddenly looked fearful. “You mean... he's going to be...?!”

Vega confirmed that within a few days, he would be a full-fledged plushie and that it wasn't supposed to happen yet.

“You gotta get him out! It can’t happen yet! We're still enjoying him as our owner! Please get him out!”

Klonoa could feel the atmosphere in the Dream Realm changing. It was getting close to that critical movement when he would have to intervene. He couldn't act yet or the figure he called a “Nightmare” would see him and take both Sidian and him down with it.

He watched as the shadow drew a long, pointed, flaming dagger. He suddenly realized that this was Sidian's interpretation of what had really happened and that the dagger hadn't been on fire when it had happened in the Real World.

“Get him out! Please! I can't have him bound to me just yet! I don't want to lose him, but I don't want to own him yet!”

That crucial moment was approaching. Klonoa's fingers clenched the edges of the bench firmly, awaiting his time to strike. Vega lowered the flaming dagger to Sidian's belly and made to slit her wide open.

Then like lightning, Klonoa drew his ring and fired a Wind Bullet at the shadow, which teleported him and the shadow out of Sidian's Dream Realm and out into the main streets of the Dream World. He knew he would be able to destroy it out there where it no longer had no control over Sidian.

The shadow finally acknowledged Klonoa and spoke to him in a demonic voice. “What do you think you're doing, Dream Traveler?! The dragon is mine and you have no say in the matter!”

Klonoa, however, was not intimidated. “Nightmare SS204, by the power of the Dream World Protection Agency, you are under arrest for inducing fear on a Dream World citizen and threatening to overpower a citizen's Real World consciousness. You will come quietly or I will have no choice but to use force.”

The Nightmare, however, simply laughed at the Dream Traveler. “You think you have won?! I can still escape into any one of these Dream Realms and escape your judgment!”

But Klonoa was one step ahead of him. Pointing his ring straight up, he fired a super-powerful Wind Bullet that split in the air and spread out over the assorted Dream Realms. They were suddenly encased in an invisible but impenetrable barrier that locked every Dream World citizen in their Realms while he dealt with this Nightmare.

“You'll find that you have no choice in the matter, so you might as well come quietly!”

“NEVER!!!” The Nightmare made a lunge for Klonoa, who didn't even flinch. Instead, he lowered his ring to point it straight at the advancing Nightmare and fired again. This time, the bullet hit something and the Nightmare suddenly shrieked with fury. It started to swell slightly before rays of white light cut through it like daggers of light. It was powerless to stop the power of Light from cutting through it and ultimately detonating it into wisps of black light.

Klonoa remained posed for a moment before lowering his stance and blowing on the gem of his ring. “They always want to go out fighting. But when there's someone like me around, Nightmares don't stand a chance.”

He then started walking back to Sidian's Dream Realm, unlocking all of the other ones with another Wind Bullet in the process. He needed to make amends with Sidian, who was still frozen in time from the attack before he left the Dream World.

When he got back, he found the pregnant Sidian sitting and trembling on the bench. He went over to sit down next to her and gently patted her belly.

“It's okay now. He won't be bothering you again. You can return to the Dream World in peace now.”

But Sidian was still uncertain. “But... what about Lance? He's still inside me and he won't ever be the same again.”

One of the hardest things to do in the Dream World was convincing the citizens that they were dreaming, but for some reason, Klonoa had a gift for getting them to understand.

“Lance is just fine. He's back in the Real World safe and sound. The one in your belly is not the real him. You will be able to keep him in there until he has fully developed. He will be a very healthy and happy dragon plushie when he comes out, I can promise you that.”

Sidian looked down at her belly timidly before smiling and rubbing it gently. “Thank you, Klonoa. I promise to take good care of him and he'll be a plushie we can be proud of.”

Klonoa nodded. “It's time for you to wake up. Allow me to do the honors.” He pointed his ring at the same place on her forehead where he had entered the Dream World and fired. The Dream Realm flashed a brilliant white as both he and Sidian were ejected back into the Real World. Yet another Dream Realm had been made safe by one of the chosen Dream Travelers.

Sure enough, just ten minutes after he disappeared, Klonoa reappeared in the Real World in a flash of white. Not only that, but the rest of us felt Sidian's body shift from underneath us as if she had suddenly shrunk. Klonoa turned to us and nodded.

“It is done. You may release her.”

When we all got off of her, we were all surprised to see that Sidian had changed back into her bipedal form. Not only that, but when she opened her eyes, there was no fear behind them any longer. It was in that moment that I realized that Klonoa was the real deal and that he could apparently do the impossible. It felt so wonderful to have a plushie like him with us.

“Wha... what have I been doing all this time?” said Sidian, trying to figure out where she was. “I must have blacked out for a few minutes. I can't remember what I was doing during that time. All I could feel was a great fear... and then... a great happiness. That's it...”

As though they had traded bodies, Klonoa looked exhausted as he walked over to Sidian and sat down on the plush pile next to her. “I helped rid your subconscious of the Nightmare that haunted it. You will be able to sleep better tonight than you did last night. As for me...” He sighed deeply. “I need to rest before I do anything else. Traveling to and from the Dream World while fighting Nightmares takes a lot out of me. Will you let me sleep with you, Sidian?”

Sidian seemed confused as to his request, but she smiled and wrapped him up in her wing so that he was snug in a fuzzy blanket. She then turned to us and nodded.

“Why don't we take the rest of the day off? We deserve a rest after what happened. Please, Lance? Can we?”

I figured that after all they had been through today, they deserved a good rest. “Okay. Sleep tight, you guys. We'll close the door and go out for the rest of the day. Good night.”

And with that, Sidian and Klonoa curled up in each other and fell into a deep and well-deserved sleep. Seryn, Blaziken, Tails and I quietly left the room and got ready to go out for another day on the town. It was only noon and we all felt like we had done like Klonoa had said and had walked 500 miles. But unlike him and Sidian, the rest of us felt almost well enough to walk 500 more.

When we finally left the apartment a half-hour later, the four of us split up into two pairs again. Seryn and I decided to try out a power that she had suddenly become aware of while Blaziken and Tails went off on their own. We would all return home at the end of the day once Sidian and Klonoa had gotten some rest.

All Seryn had told me was that she had suddenly become aware of a new ability and that I was going to benefit from it as well, but other than that, she hadn't said much to elaborate on the topic. She just said that we needed “a little more room” to use her ability, so for the time being, she allowed me to ride on her back out to the countryside.

Incredibly, Seryn hadn't needed to use the moonlight to return to her full size. She had simply parked herself in the middle of the parking lot and had suddenly grown out to her full Flammie size. I was so amazed that I was completely caught off guard when she launched herself at me, grabbed me by the shoulders with her massive paws and took flight with me dangling from under her again. Unfortunately, the way we had been facing had caused me to face the wrong way while she carried me away. Seryn soon learned her mistake and promptly “remedied the situation”.

Before I could stop her, she had dropped me from under her at only 2000 feet, causing me to drop like a rock on my own for a while.

“SERRRRRRYN!!!!!!” I yelled as I dropped through the air. The enormous plush hadn't yet come to catch me, leaving me completely on my own.

But before I could hit the ground, she came swooping under me from out of nowhere, causing me to drop straight onto her shoulders without suffering the painful... “aftermath” of such a move. She then began to climb back into the air again with me yelling and complaining at her.

“What was that all about?! You can't just throw me around as you see fit! I'm not as pliable as you are! You almost killed me again!”

“But I didn't,” she said simply as she flew on. Realizing she had just beaten me again, I gave up and collapsed onto her furry back, rubbing her neck fur and taking slow, steady breaths. She had given me quite a run for my money there. Don't get me wrong; I loved Seryn very much, but sometimes, she got a little... reckless when she had me all to herself. She was just taking care of me just like I was caring for her.

As Seryn and I flew onward, she seemed to be doing some heavy thinking about what she had planned for me. She didn't say much while I stroked her neck fur. Apart from the various purring noises coming from her throat, she didn't make the usual noises I usually heard from her.

We were a fair distance from Willmar when I couldn't take it anymore. “Is something bothering you, Seryn?” I asked her.

Seryn seemed to have zoned out during the flight and didn't acknowledge my question right away. A few seconds passed before she realized I had said something.

“Hmm? Did you say something, Lance?”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you okay? You haven't been talking as much as you normally do.”

Seryn shook her head. “Sorry, I was thinking about how to utilize my new ability when we get there.”

“Get where? Where are we going, anyway?”

Seryn looked forward and pointed forward with a talon. “There. Take a look ahead.”

I did and noticed that we had reached the Twin Cities in no time flat. It normally took me two hours to reach said cities in my car, but Seryn and I had covered that distance in less than half of that. Wondering what on earth she had planned for me in the cities, I shifted my weight so I could look over her side to examine the buildings down below.

“What are you up to here?” I wondered.

Seryn smiled. “Just wait and see. Where's a good place to touch down for a while?”

I racked my mind for any place in the city where there would be enough room to house such a large plushie and then came up with an idea.

“How about the Spoon and Cherry Bridge? I've always wanted to visit that place.”

Seryn didn't even need to ask for directions. Instead, she went into a sharp dive straight for the place I was thinking of. I had to wrap my arms around her neck to avoid being blown off her back. My cape was tugging at my neck as the wind threatened to yank me clean off. Soon, though, she landed neatly in front of the Spoon and Cherry Bridge in the park with plenty of room to spare. She then lowered her head so that I could slide off her back at check out the bridge.

(Author's Note: Even though I live in Minnesota, I have never personally seen the actual Spoon and Cherry Bridge, so I will be using what I read about it to describe it. Sorry.)

The bridge was much smaller than I had heard it would be. I had expected a massive monument over a river, but the actual thing was no bigger than a small jungle gym and barely covered a man-made brook in the park.

“Well, that’s disappointing,” I said, looking at the bridge with a sullen expression. “I had thought it would have been somewhat bigger.”

The spoon itself arched over the small brook with a “large” cherry and stem in the bowl of the spoon, which only reached up about five feet high. It was one of Minnesota's historical landmarks, but seeing it close-up was actually less impressive than it had been in the photos.

“You shouldn't worry about the bridge, love,” said Seryn, still maintaining her massive form. “You should be worrying about what I have planned for you!”

I suddenly realized that she was hovering right over me like some great furry giant. Looking up nervously, I saw that Seryn was licking her furry chops hungrily.

“You're not going to eat me now, are you?”

“Yes and no. Yes, I will soon. No, just not right now. Now hold still. I need to do something before we start.”

I forced myself to look back at the bridge as Seryn backed up a few feet so she could lean over me and whisper right in my ear.

“Here it goes, love. Don't move.”

I gulped and closed my eyes as Seryn drove one of her pointed fangs into the back of my neck. It felt like I was being injected with a massive hypodermic needle. I could feel a warm, comforting liquid being injected into my blood stream as Seryn introduced some unknown chemical into my system.

But when she removed her fang, I clapped a hand to the back of my neck, expecting my fingers to come back bloody. But the reality was that there wasn't as much as a speck of blood. It was completely dry.

“Seryn, what...?” I said, feeling for the wound again. But before I could finish the sentence, I suddenly felt all “warm and fuzzy” inside as though I had been left out in the sun for a while to cook. It wasn't uncomfortable, but it was very strange. It just didn't feel as painful as it should have.

Before I hit the ground, Seryn caught me with her massive paw, looking down at my fading form. “What did... you do... to me?” I managed to say.

Seryn smiled. “This is just the first part of my new ability. You need to incubate someplace soft and warm for a while before it's complete. Don't worry; I'll take good care of you.”

I smiled weakly and closed my eyes, drifting off to sleep for the time being. While I was out, Seryn picked me up and gently slid me down her throat, slurping me up like a mouthful of noodles and depositing me in her stomach once again. While I was in there, strange and wonderful things began to happen to me.

The next thing I knew, I was still in Seryn's silken stomach, snoozing peacefully in her warm confines. I woke up after who-knows-how-long and stretched out as best I could.

But for some reason, my body didn't feel like it should. I felt much warmer than before, but it wasn't enough to make me sweat. My nervous system also seemed to have been recalibrated so that I felt things in a different way than before. It felt like my body, but at the same time, it was strangely different. It was like Seryn and I had done another soul exchange, but I was still in my body and hers at the same time. It just didn't make any sense.

“Seryn?!” I yelled. Are you still there?!”

A reassuring pat on my silken cell convinced me that she was still awake. “Yes, my love. I told you I would never leave you. How do you feel in there?”

“You know...” I said, trying to figure that out. “I'm not sure. I don't exactly feel bad, but at the same time, I don't feel like myself. It's like we swapped souls but I'm clearly in your body at the same time you are.”

Seryn cooed and she jiggled her bloated gut happily. “Then you're ready to come out. Wait'll you see my big surprise!”

Surprise? For some reason, I didn't like the sound of that. All I could do was watch and wait as Seryn began to regurgitate me once again. I could barely feel the walls of her throat sliding past me as she expelled me from her system once again, leaving me in a furry heap on the grass.

Seryn licked her chops like she had just tasted heaven once again. “I will never get tired of your taste, Lance. It makes my fur all soft and touchable.”

“Oh... kay...” I said, getting to my feet. “So, what about my surprise?”

Seryn tilted her head. “Haven't you figured it out yet? You are the surprise! Take a look at yourself!”

I looked down and let out a yelp of surprise that did not belong to me. It had sounded almost like Seryn in pitch and tone, but that was just the beginning. While I was inside her, she had transformed me into a full-fledged (wait for it... wait for it...) FLAMMIE!!! I was now the mirror image of Seryn in makeup and build but with noticeable differences.

My fur was a distinct, shining, “24-karat” gold color with the same orange plating down my front. The pads on my paws and all 14 of my talons were a shining, sterling-silver shade. Not only that, but I now had four – count 'em, four large feathery wings that looked like they were made of seraph feathers with their impressive silver hue. They were just as if not more beautiful than Seryn's pure-white ones, except instead of a green-and-blue lining on the edges, mine were lined with pure gold coloring that looked just like shining gold leaf. Finally, my mane had the same sterling-silver color to it as the rest of my other body parts. If I had been looking in a mirror, I would have seen that I also had shining-silver eyes as well.

But the strangest part was that my body didn't feel like it should have, besides the fact that I was a Flammie. I pressed my digits into my fur, feeling the flexibility of my skin and organs. It didn't feel like there was anything there except for a whole lot of... stuffing.

“Seryn...?” I said, looking at my Flammie counterpart. “Did you turn me into a... a plushie?”

To my utter bewilderment, she nodded. “Yes. For the time being, you and I are a complete set of authentic Flammie plushies. Did I go too far?” She suddenly sounded defensive.

I wasn't sure how to answer this. For the first time since the first of them had arrived, I was able to have a plushie body of my very own. It was very strange how she could have done this just by having me inside her belly for a while when nothing had happened while I was in there before.

“No... It's just... this is very... it's just... different, is all. But... how did you do this?”

Seryn smiled and pointed to the fang sticking out of the right side of her mouth. “All of those clothes have strengthened my body and have even given me a few extra abilities to play with. All I did was inject a special fluid into your body and then I stored you in my belly to incubate for a couple hours. When it was all said and done, viola! A brand-new Flammie plush for me to hug and squeeze... even if only for a while.”

“A while? What do you mean by that?”

Seryn sighed and shook her head. “If I had had it my way, you would be staying like that for a while, but sadly, the chemical only stays active for about six hours. When the time is up, you'll change back to your human form.” She sounded disappointed not to be able to use me as her plaything any longer.

With the fact that this was not permanent under my belt, I dropped down to all fours and walked over to my fellow Flammie. “Then what are we waiting for? Let's go have some fun while it still lasts!”

Seryn's mood suddenly did a complete 180. She looked like all of her dreams had come true and launched herself at me, tackling me to the ground and instigating a modified plushie wrestling match in the park. After she had expelled me, Seryn had reduced her size back to her “human” form so that the two of us would have the same size advantage for the time being.

Seryn pinned me to the ground and gave my face a lick before I smiled and used my tail to trip her up and get on top of her. With my new form, she had practically welded the manual to work it into my brain so that I understood every detail there was to exploit. This made my time with Seryn that much more enjoyable while the two of us were together.

While we wrestled in the grass, a few curious people had spotted our antics and had come to investigate. They didn't get too close in case we were wild, but they didn't seem to want to call the cops on us. As far as they were concerned, we were just a couple of living, breathing stuffed animals that were just having a little fun in the sun. As long as we weren't hurting or threatening anyone, they saw no reason to interrupt our fun.

Seryn managed to get to her feet first and ran off on all fours towards a fountain in the middle of the park. I quickly closed the gap and managed to tag her on the tail before she could slip away. She halted in front of the fountain and took a sumo wrestler-like pose, preparing to catch me as I approached. But I had a trick up my sleeve. Opening my mouth, I took a quick breath, causing a powerful pink mist to appear in my muzzle and then fired, hitting her hard in the chest and causing her to fall backwards into the fountain.

“Oops,” I said, scampering over to her. I had forgotten how water-absorbent a plushie's skin and/or bodies were. I had just knocked Seryn into a fountain and had gotten her soaked with who-knows-what that was in that water.

“Seryn?” I said, leaning over the outer rim at the waterlogged plushie. “Are you okay?” She wasn't moving and her head was completely submerged under the water.

But as I was reaching over to pull her out, her eyes flew wide open and a mischievous grin spread across her muzzle. She reached forward with both forepaws and gave a mighty yank, pulling me head over paws into the water with her. I was immediately drenched, but for some reason, I didn't feel my body absorb any of the water.

“Seryn, what...?” That was all I managed to say before she pulled me under the water closer to her and planted a big furry kiss on my muzzle. I was taken aback by her advance even though we were both halfway under the water.

Just like when we had first swapped souls, Seryn's kiss was very pleasing and inviting. Even though both our heads were both underwater, not one drop of moisture reached our bodies while we enjoyed our embrace. It lasted for about ten seconds and I was starting to enjoy it, so I was rather disappointed when Seryn broke the liplock and smiled at me from underwater.

“Our bodies are completely waterproof unless we say otherwise. We're completely safe in here, my love.”

“Oh... kay...” I was still reeling from her kiss. “I think we should get out of here. People are going to get suspicious.”

Seryn seemed to be enjoying her “bath” and reluctantly agreed to help each other out of the fountain and “dry off”. All we had to do was shake our coats out like a pair of wet dogs and we were instantly bone-dry. It was just another wonder in the world of plushies.

“That was fun. Wanna go for a real swim?”

I wasn't much of a swimmer, so I shook my head. “Nah. I'll save that for another time.” Seryn's ears drooped slightly. “But how about we go for a little flight in the moonlight? It's looking rather nice out tonight.”

Seryn looked up and realized that it was already dark. She had been so caught up in making me happy that she had completely lost track of time. Nevertheless, she smiled and nodded to me.

“Sure. After all, the best part of having wings, however many, is the ability to fly. Tell you what, I'll let you start and I'll follow, 'kay?”

I couldn't argue with that, so I spread all four of my wings and began pumping the upper and lower pairs together. I was airborne in seconds with surprising speed and accuracy. This wasn't as difficult as I had originally thought, but I wasn't at my full potential yet. With a few more pumps of my wings, I was soon high above even the tallest building in the cities. I looked over my shoulder to see Seryn flying after me, her paws thrust forward and a big fat grin on her face.

“You'd better move it!” she called to me. “I'm comin' to get ya!”

I knew she wouldn't hurt me, but I didn't want to be caught by her at such a low altitude. I immediately returned my attention forward and flew higher and higher, Seryn trailing behind me rather closely. We were playing a modified version of tag and were about to get the maximum altitude allowed without frost forming on our bodies when something happened that changed everything.

A funny ringing sound was coming from behind me. Both Seryn and I stopped and turned to look at each other. Seryn had heard the ringing noise as well and was looking down at her belly. The ringing continued and even though it was muffled, I recognized it as my cell phone ring.

“Seryn... you didn't eat my cell phone before we left, did you?”

Seryn blushed nervously. “Well... I kinda grabbed it and swallowed it just before we left. I didn't want the noise bothering Sidian and Klonoa while they slept, so I grabbed it to cancel out the noise.”

The ringing continued as I sighed and held out my paw. “Cough it up. Now that we have it, I might as well answer it, but that appetite of yours is going to get you in trouble someday.”

Seryn blushed and moved the ringing phone up her throat and spat it out in my paw. Then for reasons unknown even to me, I turned and swallowed it as well! The still-ringing phone slid down my throat and nestled right in my stomach.

(Author's Note: It's not one of my favorite shows, but I saw this scene on a Family Guy episode when Peter accidentally fumbles with his phone in the car and somehow swallows it. I missed that moment, but he apparently swallowed it and answered it like always later on.)

Seryn and I looked at each other for a moment, unsure of what had just happened, but I knew that if my phone rang much longer, it was going to go to voice mail, which I usually tried to avoid, so I “answered” it by punching the part of my stomach where it had settled.

“Hello?” Since it was inside me, the person on the other end would have no problems hearing me.

“Is this Lance Kane?”

“You're in 'im.” Seryn couldn't help but giggle at this comment.

“Yes, well, this is Amelia from Kelvin Printing Company.”

I knew who this was. “Hi there, Amelia. How's it been going without me there?”

There was a pause and then a whisper that was so low that I had to open my mouth so Seryn could hear her properly. “I'm not supposed to pick favorites, but almost everyone's been trying to bring you back early. They feel that Mr. Kelvin was wrong to suspend you like that and then put the entire conference criteria on your shoulders.”

“Almost everyone? How do you figure?”

“Mr. Kelvin doesn't want to admit it, but everyone knows that you are the best artist in the business. Our projects are suffering without you.”

“Yeah, that sounds like “Mr.” Skyle to me. He's so full of himself that he can't recognize true talent even when it is right in front of his face.”

“You didn't hear this from me, but Mr. Kelvin has been seen in his office, crying about the upcoming conference. But even though other people are willing to help, he wants to “teach you some manners” and make you do all the work.”

“Yeah, so what else is new?”

There was a sudden pause in Amelia's connection as someone (and I had a pretty good idea who) yelled in her direction, “Amelia! Did you get a hold of him yet?! I need to talk to him ASAP!”

“I just got through! Just give me a minute!” Amelia then returned to me. “Sorry, but Mr. Kelvin has something to tell you. I can guarantee that it won't be good, though.”

I sighed and nodded, even though she couldn't see me. “Put him on and let's see what the damage is.”

The line went silent for a moment before it reconnected and my boss, “Mr.” Skyle Kelvin picked up the phone.

“Hello, Mr. Kane. Enjoying your time off?”

I absolutely hated his casual and ignorant attitude, but I had to choose my words carefully or I would soon be out of a job.

“Yes, sir. I've been very busy so far.”

“Word out on the street is that you haven't.”

“What do you mean?” I didn't like the sound of that.

“People around the city have seen you in the company of massive stuffed animals on numerous occasions over the past two weeks. I thought I gave you an assignment to do, not spend your time with dolls!”

Seryn seemed insulted at being called a “doll” and opened her mouth to retaliate, but I shook my head and put a talon to my muzzle, telling her to be quiet.

“I've been working on the projects while I was at home, sir. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to finish before the conference.”

“I hope so, because I don't want to see a single doll with you until then. And don't even think of bringing them to work or I'll have your ass out on the streets faster than a snowball in a drier.”

I was really starting to hate his guts even worse than before. Seryn looked appalled, but she remained silent in case this turned ugly.

“Very well, sir, but might I ask to bring my... my muses to the conference? I seem to work rather well with them with me.”

I didn't expect him to buy this, but remarkably, he agreed. “Very well, but I don't want to see any lifeless dolls with you when you come back or else you're fired! Oh... that reminds me....” I didn't like the satisfaction he put in those words. “There's been a few last-minute clients in the conference.”

“Last-minute?” That was never a good sign. “What do you mean?”

“Five more clients have signed up for the conference. I am giving you the task of designing projects to present at the conference.”

I couldn't believe this! I hadn't even started and now he wanted me to do five more projects! It was like he wanted me to get backed up and fail! It was just too much to get done in the two weeks I had left in the month before I returned!

“But... but sir...!”

“That's not going to be a problem, is it?”

Seryn looked scared. I was so mad at him that I just wanted to tear him from head to foot if I ever saw him again. I could not believe the injustice of what he was doing to me. No one person had ever been able to get 15 projects done in a month ever! It just wasn't possible!

I was faced with a tough decision. If I accepted the assignments, I faced the possibility of never finishing them and getting fired in the long run. But if I refused, I was likely to get fired anyway and I would be out of a job much sooner than I had planned. I didn't know what to do.

But in my deepest moment of hopelessness, I was suddenly hit with a faint ray of hope. I knew that despite the odds, there had to be some way to overcome this and show my boss that I was no quitter. I was going to show him what I could do and it would be me that was laughing when I appeared at that conference with all 15 projects done. I knew I could do it; I just needed the right leverage.

“Okay, Mr. Kelvin, I'll take the projects. And I'll tell you something: I'll finish them all! I'll be the first to make company history by completing all 15 of your cruddy assignments and I'll make such an impression at the conference that you'll never want me to leave again! How do you like them apples?!”

“Wonderful. Just wonderful. I can hardly wait for you to come back. And to give you a little more breathing room, I pushed back the conference date another week. I'm looking forward to seeing you there and “making history”. Just make sure they're done by then.”

Apart from the extra week until the conference, the sarcasm in his voice was evident. He obviously thought that I had no chance to get everything done even with the extra week. But I was going to prove him wrong once and for all!

“I'll talk to you at the conference. Bye.”

I punched my gut again to turn off the phone and turned to Seryn. “I don't care what he says. Nothing is more important to me than you and the rest of my plush friends. I'm going to show him that I mean business once and for all. He'll be sorry that he ever messed with Lance Kevin Kane!”

Completely abandoning our promised moonlit flight, I started flying straight back to my apartment to regroup. I was filled with fresh determination – almost an obsession – to beat my boss and prove who the superior worker was once and for all. And I wasn't alone one bit. Seryn, Blaziken, Sidian, Tails and Klonoa were all there with me to help me through this crisis. They lived to care for and protect me and I did the same. One of these days, we would look back on this day and laugh at how seemingly impossible it had all seemed and how we were able to overcome even the worst possible circumstances.

But it was just the beginning...

END OF ACT 1

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