[GearRyu]

Thanks for the continued views, my fellow processors! It's good to see this story getting such a positive review from the commentators too. By the way, if you have any questions as the story is going along, I'll see what I can do to answer them. I won't do any plot reveals, but mostly everything else is fair game.

Also, I hope you all enjoyed your New Years Eve. It's 2009! Let's make it the best we can!

Chapter 3
?And you may ask yourself, ?Well, how did I get here??
?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? ? Am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself,
My God! What have I done??
~?Once in a Lifetime,? Talking Heads

Better than Ever

When Cranberry awoke the next day, the previous evening had all but faded from memory. She stretched in the chair, wondering why she had fallen asleep in it? naked.

She stood up and swished her tail back and forth. She felt good. Exceedingly so. What time was it? ? who cared? She didn?t care? ? Breakfast! That would clear her head? She sat at her breakfast table and poured herself some milk. She proceeded to saturate it with part of a box of sugar and ate the glucose-heavenly substance. Then she stood up and went to get dressed.

This was when she consciously noticed things were odd. First, every shirt she tried on was snug. Getting the shirt over her head was easy. Over her shoulders, arms and chest, material size became a problem. She panicked a tad when she heard the stitching give as she tried pulling the third one on. The problem persisted with her other garments. She had to dismiss the idea that her clothes had shrunk. She normally liked most of her outer garments just a little bit baggy? she pawed around for her signature fedora and army jacket, but they were missing. She bit her lower lip in nervousness, drawing a bit of blood, but the wound healed seconds later.

She walked to her bathroom and looked into the mirror.

Cranberry?s reflection stood a few centimeters taller than Cranberry remembered herself and her petite frame now seemed voluptuously toned. Perhaps her tail and legs were slightly longer, her breasts a little bigger, and her ears somewhat perkier. Her muscles felt larger, which explained some of it. She was not certain how, but she was different and it frightened her; plus, her hair had grown several centimeters, allowing the blonde roots of her dyed-cranberry hair to show visibly.

?My hair,? she grumbled and tugged at it. ?Argh. I just had this dyed again three weeks ago! Freaking?! I cannot go to class like this,? she growled, and slammed one of her paws into the glass pane of her mirror, shattering it to a score of pieces.

?Woah, calm down?? she told herself.

?Calm down. You can handle this. Pressure never gets to you?? Cranberry took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Then she closed her eyes, took a resolute step forward, promptly stepped on a broken shard of glass, and kicked the sink pipes hard.

**
By the time the janitor had fixed the leak, Cranberry?s day was just getting started. She had missed enough class trying to keep the bathroom from flooding and destroying the dorm room she called home, plus factoring in that she had somehow slept past noon? AND she now needed a new wardrobe, hair cut and dye, and to find her fedora and jacket, ESPECIALLY the fedora. It was her favorite?

She forced herself, with some difficulty, into jeans and a shirt she wore two days ago and an old pair of running shoes. It was about as comfortable as being shrinkwrapped and looked about as modest. Grown just a little? she told herself. Some perfectly reasonable explanation for it and nobody in class would notice. Nobody in a class of 20 people who saw her, the only sphinx they probably ever associated with, every day. With a heavy sigh, Cranberry picked up her books and headed to class. She pretended she didn?t hear a very slight snap in one of her jeans? stitches along the lower leg. Nobody would notice?

**
People were staring. If she thought it was just because she was a sphinx, she could have dealt with it. But it had everything to do with the little changes she had been experiencing. Under their collective gaze, she felt the pressure to respond in some way. So she did. The split-second her ultra-sensitive hearing picked up the first tick of the ending bell, or the first syllable of ?class dismissed?, she was out the door no more than three seconds later. She zoomed from classroom to classroom at top-notch speed, doing almost everything except bounce off the walls.

A little part of her wanted to do just that. Show off. Why should she care what they thought? But she resisted the impulse. That had been a problem today. Her impulses had been subdued for the past some-20 years, but today they would not shut the hell up. Her patience had dissolved into a firm grip on a heavily greased rope. And the increasing snugness of her clothing was only making it worse. After her second class, she itched at her shirt and heard it tear against the swell of her left breast. She kept her arm down over it for most of the rest of the day.

**
The day drifted into afternoon. The sun hovered on the horizon, refusing to wink out on the spectacle. The stress of class, stares, the memory lapse, body changing and missing clothing finally got to her, and she left in the middle of class to go to the prey hunting center. She had to unwind. She nearly knocked some guy?s head off in one of the classes. That was bad. That was not g- TURKEY!

A flurry of yellow and white leapt forward and seized the turkey by its neck, broke it, and held it aloft.

The speaker phone came on. ?Congratulations, Ms. Pawis. You have bagged your fifth turkey. One hundred euros will be transferred from your account.?

Cranberry dropped the turkey. One-hundred? Five turkeys? She looked at her feet and scanned the area. There were the remains of four turkeys sitting in the area. Oh God. She had lost control. A heavy sigh on her lips, she picked up the last turkey and headed out the door back into the rear lounge area of the prey hunting center. Just then, the speaker phone came back on.

?A-mazing! Five turkeys in less than a minute. A new record. Ms. Pawis is our Hunter of the Month!? Cranberry went home, quickly. Her clothes were torn up and she felt it most prominently on her curves. Everywhere else, it was still tight, as the clothing clung to supple muscles that hid beneath her smooth fur, but which flexed with hidden strength. Clothes shopping tomorrow. She could forget class for right now. Get her hair dyed. Have some cereal. Get some sleep. ? At least Winter Break was next week.