Report 04 – “Dice”
Training Report for 828214
The following is a report on Case 828214 as handled by employee 1020-S4 (Hazel Coffey.) This report is to be reviewed for training purposes only and is not to be reproduced, sold, edited, or taken out of a professional context. The following is a slightly dramatized and deeply informative prose version of Case 828214 and the measures 1020-S4 took to handle the situation. Do not attempt to replicate. All instances that mention the game system played have been replaced with the name Dragontime. For additional information please refer to lawsuit ‘TFCC v. WIZARDS OF THE COAST.’
It was later in the afternoon after their employee lunch break. Hazel and Livana were back at Livana’s desk and continuing to review previous calls throughout the day. Hazel had her head down focusing on typing at Livana’s workstation, filling out tickets she had compiled throughout the day and comparing them to example tickets Livana had produced to assist Hazel with her writing. Livana lifted her head from her phone and gave a tiny little smile as she watched Hazel through the reflection of the monitor. A monitor reflecting another monitor.
“So, how do you like it here?” Livana asked, barely lifting her eyes away from the screen.
Hazel was caught off guard by the question and had to think for a moment. She looked down at her hand and the sheen of the glossy metal she was made of. She closed her hand as if surrounding something she wanted to keep. Her eyes turned into a singular loading circle on her panel face before reconvening as two individual pupils. With a forced smile she said, “So far so good! I mean… it isn’t perfect. I know I’ve messed up a few calls and there was also that note from the manager…”
“Eh. I wouldn’t let it get to you. We’re going to get feedback like that from time to time. Still, we really aren’t supposed to be treating Permanency as this catch-all solution. Every time we set someone up with it, it costs the TFCC a lot of money, keeps a specialist very busy reviewing their case, and it also means we’re leaving another person out there in the world transformed into something weird.”
“Yeah…” Hazel sighed and opened her hand, letting it go.
“Our goal is to try and get as many people back to normal as possible,” Livana nodded. “You did great work with some of those calls, but you need to remember just because they like what they’ve turned into doesn’t mean they should stay that way. But still, those were honestly some weird calls to get trained on. Normally it isn’t so… emotional. I personally agree with what you chose.” Livana’s smile couldn’t help but grow and Hazel’s spread to match, taking comfort in her trainer’s words.
Before they could take too much comfort in the conversation, Livana’s monitor suddenly lit up with a call notification.
“Shit, I didn’t think I set us to ready. Hazel, you should take this one. We need to keep getting you trained up.” As Livana handed the headset over, she seemed to notice something and quickly covered her chest before Hazel could notice. “Dammit. Hazel, do this one alone for a sec—I need to check something!” And Livana sprung out of her seat and raced out of the cubicle towards the bathroom.
Hazel looked at the headset laid on the table as if it were a cobra hissing at her, the ringtone coming out muffled and distant. Hazel reached out slowly and grabbed it, slowly bringing it to her ears. The ringtone played over and over, a constant spiral of anxiety. She had to answer it. Hazel took a deep breath to calm herself and steadied the headset on her mechanical head.
Click. The call was answered.
“Transformation Control Center! This is Hazel! And how can we help you—”
“I’M. LAYING. AN EGG.”
“H-huh?!” Hazel went stiff in her chair. “Right now?”
“YEAH, IT’S COMING OUT RIGHT NOW. This shouldn’t happen, right?! People don’t just lay eggs for no reason! What should I do?”
Without anyone nearby to help, it was up to Hazel to reason out what might be the appropriate response for a human adult laying an egg. But she didn’t have to fix it, just do the grunt work before a specialist takes a closer look. Start with the basics. “Alright… ummm we should start by…” Hazel reached over the desk and grabbed a heavy three ring binder. Livana had gone out of her way to print out some of the digital documentation so Hazel could look over it quicker.
The TFCC – Transformation Scenario Guidance Outline was a collection of documentation created in order to assist new employees in various scenarios. While it was made by various staff and scientists, it was only what typically worked in certain situations and still required the discretion of the employee. Livana normally didn’t need it herself since usually she wasn’t doing the broad diagnosis work and was given incidents that were narrowed down to magic, but for a newbie it would be very helpful. Hazel went to the glossary and found the word egg and then flipped to its page.
“Okay,” Hazel spoke as professionally as she could into the microphone on the headset. “Scales or feathers?”
“Um…?! Neither? Listen, there is an egg–”
“Scales or feathers?” Hazel repeated in the exact same tone.
A rustle of clothing filtered through the speaker. “Holy… S-scales. Scales.”
“Okaaaay…” Hazel thumbed through the next two pages. “Have you eaten any coins?”
“No?!”
“Cough for me?”
The caller coughs.
Hazel flipped through two more pages. “Okay… You must lay the egg. Take deep breaths.”
“Really?! I mean… alright…” A deep breath. Sharp inhales. A knock at the door.
(The following is a detailed record gathered after the incident was resolved. The context provided explains how it is the caller reached the point they laid an egg.)
Marla M was, by all accounts, a well-regarded and very intelligent woman. Host of an actual play TTRPG show (Six Sided Stories), lauded game designer, and DM-for-hire she was by all accounts well regarded in her community of painstakingly crafted experiences and expertly portrayed campaigns. All of this was extra impressive considering English was her second language. As a girl, she fell in love with the fantastic adventures of fantasy books and the game Dragontime and used them to grow more familiar with the language as well as the types of stories she liked to tell. Serious, compelling, dark fantasy with well thought out characters and compelling narratives.
However, eventually Marla grew exhausted with this part of her life and grew hungry to try something new. She put her primary campaign, New Varlia and Her Foes, on indefinite hiatus citing writer’s block and began a short series of one offs featuring systems she was excited to try with a rotating cast of online friends who were excited to try something new. Despite this, Marla realized that trying to circle around a fire for too long often just results in getting burned all the same. After a failed attempt to record an episode of her show, Marla officially began a vacation, her first in her five-year content creation adventure.
She was certain it would be a long time until she ever played a tabletop game again. That was until one day she received a message from one of her local friends. Her friend Cindy had decided she was going to try and run her own Dragontime game and was wondering if Marla wanted to tag along and “get a chance to be a player for once.”
By all accounts, Marla was in no mindset to accept it. She later admitted that she had almost said no, but by impulse built up over years of her career she agreed to it instead. She began penning an immaculate and deeply woeful apology letter asking to be released from the game. However, she became stuck on how to phrase a certain passage assuring Cindy that they would remain friends and so failed to finish her final draft of her multi-page apology.
The Saturday afternoon when she was due to play arrived. She was tempted to bring along her usual content creation dice since they were absurdly expensive, but all they did was remind her of how exhausted she was of the game and the videos she had failed to film. She instead reached for an unopened pack of plastic dice she had purchased at a convention.
She wore a comfortable long skirt, a tall neck pale white sweater, and her favorite gold earrings. Her black hair was sleek and without any curls of note. Such hair was so long and immaculate that it was more akin to camouflage hiding that there was even a person there, save for the parting of her bangs that allowed her face to shine through.
Knock knock. Cindy answered the door, the short freckly tan girl with the curly black hair grinned up a storm. “There ya are Marla! You’re early!”
“I wanted to drop by early in case you needed any help cleaning up before the others get here. Trust me, I know what it is like to host, and there are a million things people take for granted.”
“Vacuumed last night! Relaaax. Come on in!” Cindy opened the door wider, and Marla stepped inside and set her laptop back down on the couch. “I got a third cat last week; hope you don’t mind.”
Marla glanced under the couch and saw there was a pair of yellow eyes staring back at her. She leaned down and tried to offer a hand, but the being nestled beneath the couch had no interest in revealing itself to her.
“Is this the new one?” Marla asked.
“Nah, that’s just Toby. He likes to hide.”
“Ah. And the second cat?”
“Yeah, he’s a bit of a hider too, but Andrew is a sweetie.”
“Right…” Marla shrugged. “I don’t think I have ever seen your cats. Like, actually seen them. Are you sure you didn’t get the litterbox just for yourself…?”
Cindy burst into a little giggle and shook her head. “Also, sorry if I’m a giggly mess. I did like, half an edible a little bit ago. I was SO nervous for today! I’ve never DM’d before so…”
“Well, if you need any advice, just let me know, I don’t mind!”
“Reeeelax!” Cindy leaned over closer to Marla. Cindy never had much of a sense of personal space but when she was high it escalated into cuddles and grabbing. “We are just going to play and have a lil fun. And you are going to DM as little as possible. We’re playing without encumbrance, and we can rewind the fight if you guys start losing.”
Marla had felt a little tinge of advice clouding up above her head. She always felt that it was better to keep playing even if you lose the fight since it can lead to an interesting story! The DM should plan for that! And encumbrance can be interesting too! But, she held her tongue.
The other two invited to play eventually arrived in their own time. There was Elliot, a short blonde-haired guy who worked at a nearby game studio, and Verlee who was between jobs and between dye jobs based on the brunette tones washing up from the roots of her otherwise colorful purple hair. Marla had seen these people at Cindy’s birthdays, but she never really considered them her friends. She only had Elliot’s messaging information because he had a very pleasant voice that Marla wanted to use for a social media post teasing one of her episodes. Verlee was the girl who vomited at Cindy’s birthday two years ago. Apparently in Cindy’s friend group, Cindy’s birthday parties were considered intense, powerful moments in time that either bring doom or fortune. (See C3818142. Do not seek out C3818148.)
Greetings were affable and cordial. These were the people she was going to be collaborating with for a time after all. Though it was a bit strange to be playing casually. She was used to talking to people with robust social media presence, hours upon hours of video about how they play, and everyone operating on a similar understanding that their interactions were to be polite and a certain standard of play was expected for the sake of quality. This was… different.
She smiled at Elliot and complimented his attire and asked about work, though Elliot was unable to share much since his game studio was working on a project deep underneath the thumb of a tight NDA. Marla had signed a few NDAs before, so they had that much in common. Verlee was pleasant but Marla couldn’t help but just see a girl about to drink half a bottle of rum after her fourth beer again. Verlee shared that her previous job as a receptionist was a poor match but that she already had an interview lined up for a bank that she was confident would treat her better. Marla vocally wished her the best, but she wasn’t so confident inside her own mind.
“Alright!” Cindy declared. “Everyone! To the table! It is time to adventure!” She clicked play on her laptop and the Bluetooth speakers positioned around the home began to pipe in music.
Adventure Calls by Victor Avadale, Marla thought. Available for free, Creative Commons, the first song that comes up when one searches for tabletop adventure music. I wonder if she clicked on the playlist…
The little team of adventurers gathered around the table. Cindy had her bag of chips behind her screen. Verlee had her bag of chips on the floor next to her chair since her portion of the table was occupied by dice and character sheets. Elliot had his family sized bag of chips seated on his lap with his materials equally prepared. Marla, chipless, set her thin laptop down on the table. She could hear Cindy’s dinosaur of a laptop spin its fans hot as it struggled with the computational power needed to play a song.
As soon as the laptop lid was lifted, Marla was met with a flurry of character sheets that she had prepared to pick from, as well as her calendar reminding her that this was the time she would usually be preparing to start the stream for her main show. She hadn’t bothered to turn it off since she was going to be returning to it any day now. She looked over the characters and thought carefully about it. Would she play as Lysanthir, the tortured elven rogue? Or perhaps the dashing Aavon, the mysterious fighter struggling with his inner demons that come out in combat? She even had a lawful good paladin ready in case no one was willing to play a healer.
“Cindy?” Marla asked, unable to break the tie in her own head. “Do you know which character you would like me to play as? I had emailed you the list.”
“Oh yeah?” Cindy smiled… and then… “OH SHIT! I did not check the email! Um, let’s just go over it right now. What all do you have?”
“Well, I have a rogue, a fighter, a paladin…”
“I have paladin covered,” Elliot nodded.
Marla thought a bit more on it…
“Are any of your characters a kobold?”
“A kobold?” Marla asked.
“Yeah, the cute little lizard-y guys!” Cindy laughed. “Sorry, I was reading the monster book last night in bed and I saw how cute they were! And then I checked and turns out you can play as them! I miiiight have prepared a little extra story for someone who picks it. So…”
“Well, if you need a kobold!” Marla felt her mind click into place. The content needed her to do this. This was how she was going to get along with everyone. Her fingers slid across the trackpad and replaced the word elf with kobold. The name didn’t really work for a kobold since it was quite elegant. “Hmmm, just need a new name now and we should be good. I just swapped my rogue over.”
“What about Sneaks? Because he’s a rogue!”
“That’s a bit on the nose…”
“C’mon, just relax!” Cindy beamed.
Marla nodded her head and replaced the text. And it felt… nice. “Sneaks it is. Sneaks the kobold.”
When interviewed, Marla revealed she did have a slight history with kobolds. Her second character she had ever played as was a kobold. She fell in love with their lore and became a zealous defender of lore accurate kobolds. She cited “puppy dog syndrome” as the main affliction plaguing many less serious tables, leading to games where kobolds were silly short stacks who yapped too loudly and leaned too far into the goofball antics of cartoons and forgot the interesting dragon obsessive cultic lore of the proper kobolds.
Once everyone was assembled and prepared, Cindy reminded everyone of the purpose for their game. “Have fun, be nice, don’t yuck anyone’s yum.” The table was in agreement. “With that in mind… let’s get started!”
A few clicks later, and the mood was set. A new song began to play (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHA_4wfQhE8&t=5677s ) and Cindy delivered the opening narration. “Since the tavern was closed, you all meet up at the festival! Games are being had, songs are being sung, and a hot centaur guy is walking down a back alley with a fairy, excited to figure out how it will work. You meet in a secluded part of the festival, away from the music and able to speak to each other without worry. Word has it that the festival may soon be under attack. You have all been hired by the mayor of this town, Seymour Almonds, to assist in protecting the festivities. Rumor has it a weapon will be smuggled into town and that some of the guards might have been paid off to assist. As well, some say the tavern is closed not just to avoid cliché openings, but also because the owner is complicit and planning on releasing whatever has been groaning and growing inside their basement. So…? What do we do?”
Marla wasn’t… entirely fond of the comedic angle, but she had to admit it was a nice change of pace. At the time, she was entirely unaware of any changes that she was going through, and the table was seemingly incapable of noticing them, so she didn’t feel or see that her ears had begun to grow pointed.
Elliot the paladin thought it wise to begin their adventure by investigating the tavern. Verlee the fighter was looking at her phone while the narration was delivered but once politely given summarization was more than willing to agree with Elliot. Marla laid her chin in her hand and thought through it carefully. “Well, there’s a good chance that the mayor could be tricking us, right? Maybe this is a scheme of some kind. Who told us about the groaning in the tavern?”
“Um,” The DM double checked her laptop for a detail she did not write. “Yes, it was him.”
“So, maybe he wants us to take out whatever is happening in the tavern and deal with some sort of weapon shipment that might go to some sort of rebels? It sounds a bit too fishy for me.”
Verlee didn’t seem as impressed. “Aren’t you being a little too smart for a kobold?”
“Excuse me?” Marla scoffed. “I’m just saying what might be going on. It might not be a bad idea.” She looked at the DM for confirmation. Cindy, for her part, was lost in thought before struggling with her decision making.
“I think that’s a good idea. But, it would be funny if you played up the silly kobold part a bit more. As long as you’re having fun, Marla.”
“Play it up?” Marla blinked. “I don’t really know how you’d want me to do that…?”
“Well, just think like a kobold does!” Cindy smiled. “Kobolds are like… funny little creatures. They like to eat, and worship big dragons, and go yap yap yap! Can you go yap for me? Marla?”
“T-that…!” Marla blushed. She blushed a lot more than she should have from just a little tease. Cindy was looking at her like her eyes could drink her heat. Marla felt a strange buzz not many people could make her feel and her smile clumsily curled like a pasta noodle twirled onto a fork. “Y-yap.”
“Good girl! Good kobold!” Cindy laughed, the rest of the table joining into the applause, enjoying the jape. But, to Marla, it felt like something more. Same as the changes before, the little nub of a tail began to protrude out of her, slowly slithering past the hem of her pants that were seeming less suited for her by the second.
The game continued for some time. As they navigated the scenario, Marla’s attempts to overthink the scenario and try and predict where the story was going out of character was continuously yet gently redirected by the DM towards focusing on being just a simple kobold having fun. It flustered Marla who didn’t understand why she was enjoying the feeling of being talked down to by a friend like that. Normally it irritated her, criticism and expectant fans had driven her to solitude, and yet when it was coming from Cindy it felt safer and more fun.
She reported that the more she played the looser her mind felt, almost as if she was getting drunk on having the simpler thoughts reinforced. Eventually while at the tavern Cindy had brought up that there was a big plank of meat being roasted over the stove in the back. Marla felt her pointed ears rise and her eyes hyper focus. “H-how does it smell,” she asked. There was a little rasp in her voice, though no attempts to clear her throat could remove the sudden quality to it.
“You mean the meat?” Cindy smiled. “Does little kobold want some meat?”
“N-no!” Marla raised her hands up. A flush spread on her face. She felt flustered. No one else could see it, but she felt an invisible camera pointed at her face, digesting every curve, every twitch, every single bead of sweat and reformatting it into opinions. Vast networks of spiderwebbing conversations taking one single moment and spreading it thin. She had to stress, she had to be careful, she had to be the best. Icons of people who found her plot holes, drama creators making their pay speculating if she was still friends with X or if she found Y annoying whenever she kept joking during scenes. Marla turned from the lens and looked at Cindy. “Just… tell me how it smells.”
The other two party members snicker as Cindy pulled down her laptop lid to lean over the table. “Heavenly. Your little nose perks up and detects the savory juicy scent of fresh beef roasting over the fire. The scent of wood and smoke mingles with that delectable aroma and makes your mouth water.” Marla gulps as her teeth turn pointed and sharp and her nostrils flare and her mouth widens into a scaly maw. “Herbs are laid overtop the delectable feast, the scent of thyme titillating you.”
“Y-you used delectable twice…” Marla panted.
“Oh, well that’s just how delectable it is!” Cindy snickered. “Don’t you wanna cut a little piece off?”
“So bad… I mean…” Marla’s eyes darted to the left of her DM to look for the audience before the background blurred and the meat came into focus in her mind’s eye. “I pull out my dagger… and sink it into the roast.”
“The juices inside bubble out and drip over the herb and spice encrusted surface. It runs over the sides and makes the fire crickle crackle and snicker at you. Hungry hungry kobold~” Marla’s tail erupts the rest of the way, her feet shorten so as to no longer touch the ground. “As you hop you feel your thighs jiggle and tail wag~” And Marla felt her pants get tighter around her thighs, seams starting to rip apart to let the pink scales show through. “You slice off an edge piece, a satisfying subtle crunch and you see the soft pink interior with a smokey grey ring around it. You bring it to your mouth and sink your fangs in to the meat. And you feel sooo good.”
“S-so good…~” Marla sunk back against her chair and let her hands fall to her thighs. She didn’t remember why, but her fingers explored a little more and pushed against her crotch. In that moment she was completely absorbed into the game.
The little critic in her head silenced itself and the peanut gallery nested around her every action never chimed in. Marla’s kobold happily munched on her meat whilst the other party members handled the rest of what was going on. They investigated the tavern only to discover that the tavern keeper was nursing back to health an injured dragon that had crashed in the forest a while ago. Of course, Sneaks got very excited at the mention of that and spent some time with the dragon while the other two party members went to go investigate the shipment rumors and prepare to protect the festival.
When it was just Sneaks with the dragon, the dragon revealed that they needed someone they could trust to carry on their legacy. Sneaks began to get very excited, and as the line between Marla and Sneaks vanished, Marla also became incredibly excited. “Please,” the dragon whispered. “Loyal kobold. Will you carry it for me?”
“Of course, of course! Oh, mighty dragon! Oh, great scales! Let me! Let Sneaks help, yap!”
Suddenly, Sneaks’ belly grew rounder, slowly growing out, a great and worthy weight forming warmly inside her. It felt good, amazing, like she was finally given a divine purpose. The kobold couldn’t believe how lucky she was. That was, until Cindy accidentally leaned in too close and shut her laptop, cutting out the music and ambience. Marla looked around, confused and lost. And then she noticed that her pants were ripping and that her shirt was struggling to fit around the strange growth her stomach had experienced.
The others in the group were looking at her, but not as if she looked strange, but as if she was acting strange. Marla threw herself from her chair and urgently eyed for the bathroom. “Um um! Sorry! I need one second!” And she raced over to the bathroom.
She sat on the toilet and tried to clear her head. Sneaks and Marla were two different people but the lines between them were growing cloudy. Alone in the room, Marla was able to focus and let the oil and the water of her mind separate out into two distinct shapes. Without Cindy describing who Sneaks was, Marla was free and returned to a more human mindset. The gift of clarity came however with two shocking realizations. One was that the heavy sensation in her stomach was moving downwards and her loins were preparing for something big, and the second was a phone number that she could call to help with her situation.
Her pants fell from her shapely legs and her thighs spread apart. She saw the head of an egg crest and in a hurried panic she dialed the number that had burst through the fog. The phone rang for a few moments before finally, a woman’s voice said “Transformation Control Center! This is Hazel!”
And from there the call took place with Hazel concluding from her reading of The Transformation Scenario Guidance Outline that Marla had no choice but to lay the egg. The knocking at the door continued as Marla took heavy breaths.
“Everything alright in there?” Cindy asked through the closed door.
“Y-yep!” Marla gasped. “Just… doing my best!”
“Okay! Just wanted to check, Sneaks! I’ll let the table know we’re taking a break.”
At the mention of the name Sneaks, Marla felt her head get a little fuzzy and her ears grow more pointed. “Y-yap… Feels so… G-good…” With her mind absorbed by the sensation, the rest of the labor became very easy. Her hips widened and the scales spread and grew across her body as her humanity gave way to the fantastic elasticity that a kobold would need in order to lay such a sizable egg. The egg harmlessly departed from her loins. It rolled off the side of the seat and gently fell to the carpet below. Marla stared down at it in a long reticent haze. Her eyes were lulled and focused, gazing at the egg as if were awe itself.
“Ummm…?” Hazel spoke through the phone laid on Marla’s lap. “Are you still there? Did you lay the egg…? It’s okay if you didn’t! I think…?” She flipped a few pages ahead.
“Sneaks laid it…” Marla smiled. “Yap… it’s so big… Sneaks did such a good job. Yap yap.”
“Okaaaay… Is Sneaks what your… family named you?”
“Named myself. Sneaks likes to sneak.”
Hazel squinted from the desk but quickly wrote the name down on some scratch paper she had off to the side. Without Livana nearby, she was left to the vertigo of the million questions spinning in her head and unnavigable journal of possible causation. She returned to the survey for post egg laying advice and diagnosis. “Do you know where you got the egg?”
“Dragon… gave it.”
Hazel nodded her head. “Ah, I see.” She peered at the TSGO book again. It stated:
If the subject’s explanation for ovulation / fertilization is nonsensical there is a high possibility of either a Magical or Chaotic source. Magic and Chaos are always difficult to differentiate, though typically it is best determined through intent and causation. Does someone mean them harm? Is there an egg themed witch nearby? Or perhaps an egg holiday that has cursed them somehow? If motivation is cloudy and there is no person with clear intent to cause it, there is a possibility it is Chaos. Chaos transformations are specifically the logic of the world itself bending and changing, sometimes to please a strange being, but often for the sake of absurdity. How does one determine if the world is changing? Compare and contrast.
Hazel read ahead, wishing she had asked the girl her real name earlier since “little slices of reality” often helps to ground those who are going through a Chaos transformation. “Okay… Sneaks, you’re a kobold, right?”
“Yessss…” She giggled and rubbed her chest. “With scales and ears and yap yap yap~”
“Umm, good! Very good! So, are you okay going outside of the bathroom and checking with that lady who was knocking earlier? Letting her know you’re okay?”
“Showing her the egg?”
“Huh? I mean…” Hazel scrolled the pages for what you’re supposed to do with the egg.
“Sneaks did a good job! Want to share!” But silence. “Please! Yap… YAP! YAP! SHARE EGG! SHARE EGG!”
“Yeah! Yeah, it should be fine!” Hazel caved entirely. The door opened and the sound of little clawed feet clacking on the tile floor and then giving way to carpet sounded. Sneaks rushed out of the bathroom holding the egg in her arms and the phone perched on her shoulder. She rushed over to Cindy and gave a big smile.
Sneaks wagged her tail happily, admiring how big it was and how nicely it accentuated her very large lower body. Cindy took the egg and looked. “Yap!” Sneaks swayed. “Laid it!”
“Very nice! Good work, Sneaks. Oh, are you on the phone?”
“Sneaks can hang up!”
Hazel would’ve choked if she breathed. “No! Sneaks no! Do not hang up! Sneaks?! Are you listening? Sneaks?!”
Sneaks had laid the phone down on the table. She was in Cindy’s lap getting pet and praised. Cindy couldn’t stop toying with the kobold whilst the other members of the game were off in the other room getting snacks. Cindy pushed the laptop aside and laid her own snack down on the table. “Are all kobolds this big?” Cindy asked, squeezing her hands into Sneak’s rear.
The kobold had to think about it before looking back at Cindy befuddled. “Are… we?”
Cindy paused to think before nodding her head. “Yup! I’d say so! Kobolds are best when they’re cute and kinda hot! Mmmph… I just can’t believe how good you look.” The more she touched Sneaks the harder Cindy found it to hold herself back. They had a game to return, and yet Cindy operated with fewer restraints than Marla had. She leaned in closer and lifted Sneak’s tail. Her mouth spread and her tongue drooled excitedly.
Only a few decibels of the disarray reached Hazel through the phone. She had to figure out what she could do, and she likely didn’t have time to rush over to someone else for help. She barely had any good information from the phone interview and still wasn’t sure if it was Magic or Chaos and she was scared of getting yelled at for sending it to the wrong person. She remembered from a few calls that Livana’s computer had little spells it could cast somehow from a program. Hazel scanned the desktop but couldn’t even remember what the program was called since Livana had only shown her it the one time. She had no idea where the program was and even if she could open it, she’d have no idea how to even use it! But… Hazel had a different idea.
Hazel turned up the headset’s microphone volume and cleared her synthesized throat. “Ahem… YAP!” A head poked out of a nearby cubicle. “YAP!… Y-YAP! YAP YAP YAP YAP!!!” Someone investigated Livana’s cubicle just to see Hazel barking into the microphone and getting more into it. “YAP!!! YAP!!!”
As Cindy licked, the snack began to echo the sound coming from the phone. “Y-yap! Yap!” Her tail began to wag, making it hard for Cindy to keep going. “Yap yap! Sneaks hears a ‘bold! Yap yap!”
“Oh? Is that who is on the phone then?” Cindy asked.
“Maybe…?” Sneak’s eyes went dull again. “Sneaks can’t remember now…”
Cindy lifted the phone. “Hello? Is this a kobold?”
Hazel, shooing away the people who gathered over to the booth (likely cautious about a possible Cross Call Contamination Event), wasn’t sure how to reply at first. “Umm… Maybe? Who am I speaking with?”
“Cindy!”
“Cindy! Nice to meet you!” Hazel put on her waitress voice and gave a big smile hoping it’d squeeze through the microphone.
“You’re very loud!” Cindy held the phone a little bit away from her ear.
“Oh, sorry!” Hazel adjusted the volume on her headset and continued to speak. “Listen… Sneaks wanted me to check on something with you…” Hazel dragged out her words as she skimmed the book some more. Step 1. Establish facts. “Does Sneaks have any social media? Video channels?”
“Weird I think they do but I can’t remember it very clearly. Six… Sided? Tales? Or something like that?”
Hazel typed out the words frantically on her phone, her PC woefully unequipped with any access to the external internet as a precaution. A few adjustments to her search and Hazel was able to find Six Sided Stories online. And there she was able to look through the last few videos. The comments were filled with critique, people asking the host to try harder with her story, notes about jokes that weren’t quite hitting, and the last few comments that had garnered the interactions to scrape up to the top of the pillar of words were woeful ones in funeral timbre asking when Marla might finally be back to DM. “Who is Marla?”
“Oh?” Cindy laughed. “Marla is my dear friend! But she’s always too hard on herself. She runs this channel but she’s really strict with herself.” Cindy pet the kobold as it climbed down from the table to sit in her lap facing her. “You should see the stuff she says about herself in her private social media. She’s always so… mean to herself. I invited her over today to play a game to help her let loose a little.”
“May I speak with her?” Hazel asked.
Cindy nodded her head, but in that moment felt a profound confusion. Chaos is an overlay of another reality, an attempt to cover the previous one, like a folding flap in a picture book. When those affected by Chaos try to reach out to facts covered by the new reality, they will often feel a strange fog and struggle to remember. This is why it is so vital to resolve Chaos transformations quickly. The longer Chaos is allowed to reign, the harder it is to lift the flap and see what is below. Cindy looked down at the kobold in her lap with a strained expression and handed the phone to her.
“Yap?”
“Marla? Is that you?”
“M-Marla?” Sneaks shivered. She didn’t like hearing that name. “No Marla! No!”
“Marla, hi! Look…” Hazel could hear low growls on the other end of the phone and glanced back at her phone. “Listen… my name is Hazel. And I’m a huge fan! Really! Especially some of the goofier episodes!”
“… Really?” Sneaks asked back. “I don’t get a lot of people who actually watch the funny stuff. Only ever ask about New Varlia and Her Foes yap yap yap…!”
“Well, there’s hundreds of us, thousands,” Hazel scrolled through the video list and saw it. New Varlia and Her Foes would pull in a million views every episode, and there tucked in the corner were the little spinoffs and silly episodes barely breaking a few thousand or so. “Marla, you’re so creative and smart and talented. I get you must feel pressured all the time to focus on what other people want from you… but sometimes you should remember that doing what you like is good too. Even if everyone doesn’t loves it, because those people who do love what you do for yourself are the ones who really, really love you. Because they want you to be happy.”
“Not every video I put out was good…” Marla said, struggling to keep her tail wagging, going limp in Cindy’s lap.
“Why does good… matter?” Hazel asked. “I was… a terrible waitress. I was the top post on the Fail Waitress forum. I tripped and fell all the time and broke a lot of eggs.”
“Eggs, yap?”
“Shit!” Hazel shook her head. “I mean glasses! Listen, the point is, yeah I sucked at that job, but I didn’t go home and feel grief for every customer. Who cares what they thought!? I do the waitressing to do what I actually want to, and that’s for me.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because, something is happening to you right now. It made you lay the egg and if you let it, it’ll take you and it won’t give you back. Marla, you’re a person worth being, and you don’t need to be a kobold for people to love you.”
Marla looked at Cindy who just smiled back at her, of course able to overhear it all. Marla sighed. “Would it be alright if I stayed a kobold for just a little while longer? It felt… really nice. You’re right… but still… I could just take a break from being me for a second. I could be some silly little horny thing and just… it was nice!”
Hazel eyed the computer and the ticket she had open for the call. “I mean… I can try? I will have to refer you to something called Permanency, a program for people who—”
The phone suddenly made a sharp sound.
“Hello.” A woman’s voice, firm and rich, yet so cold. Hazel felt like a roof with too much snow on it. “Marla, was it?”
“Um, yeah, is Hazel still there?”
“Yes, she’s listening in. This is Director Garnet. Is your friend Cindy still there?”
“Yes, I’m in her lap.”
“Did Cindy always have a tail?”
“Of course! Cindy is a big strong powerful dragon! I thought it was kind of crazy at first but—” The call was ended. Hazel watched the call go dark.
She sat there in a tense silence. Livana returned from five minutes later from her extended restroom retreat. Hazel was too shocked to notice that Livana’s bust size was a bit larger and she was struggling to hide a blonde bang of hair.
“Hey, sorry I was gone so long. How did the call go?”
Before Hazel could reply, a message appeared on Livana’s screen from Rvyi asking for Hazel to come back to Ryvi’s office. Hazel read it and wordlessly stood up, eyes wide. She turned and walked the slow path over. Livana at this point reviewed the ticket C4-828214. The editing history showed that Director Garnet had taken over the ticket and escalated it.
When Hazel arrived at Ryvi’s office, the eldritch manager was much less jovial than usual and had put away all of her devices and prepared her office for Hazel’s arrive. Hazel sat on the chair as if it might bite her. Eye contact was difficult but she had trained herself to look at other people as long as possible when you felt guilty, so you’d look less guilty.
Ryvi sighed and explained to Hazel why she was called over. “Occasionally… The Threat Relations Department will randomly listen in on calls to make sure there isn’t anything going wrong. Director Garnet overheard your call and realized you were about to suggest Permanency again. As well… you hadn’t checked for if the transformation was contagious.”
“I’m sorry…”
With a careful sigh, Ryvi leaned forward. “We’re concerned about this part of your work, but we’re still in your early days and our training has never been perfect. Director Garnet has suggested that we assign you to shadow our Go Team in order to learn more about transformation events. So don’t worry, don’t worry!” Ryvi smiled. “Just a quick look at how they handle things and it should help you handle calls even better! You know what else Director Garnet said?”
The pause was long because Ryvi wasn’t going to continue until Hazel replied. “What?” Almost a whisper.
“She said that you excel at the human element and display wit. That’s promising Hazel.”
Following this meeting, Hazel returned to Livana’s booth and continued to review calls, taking a break from taking them herself while her mood recuperated. Livana told Hazel that the Go Team would be an interesting trip but that she would be fine. Starting tomorrow she would report to their department and prepare to follow them.
Approximately 15 minutes following the termination of the call, Rapid Response Team 013 (Colloquially known as The Go Team) arrived at the site of the transformation event. It was determined that all members of the game had been infected by the Chaos and began to transform into various aspects of the game they were playing. None knew their original names and each displayed an intense desire to breed and surrender to escapism. Agent Jade assumed her magical girl form and defeated the dragon guarding her harem. Once defeated, each member of the game was taken back to the TFCC and delivered to Medical and Reversion.
It took a week for each to have their identities reinstated and ensure that it was safe for them to speak with each other again or be in contact with any of the intellectual properties that may have triggered the transformation. It was determined that the Chaos Entity known as The Dungeon had given Cindy Q the ability to manipulate reality. She was safely captured and reformed before her abilities were fully manifested.
Each person was returned to their normal lives with special doctors’ notices excusing them from any absence whatsoever. Marla eventually returned home but remembered the sweet girl who had spoken with her on the initial phone call. Because of her interactions with Hazel, she found it a bit easier to return to being Marla once the Chaos was gone.
As of this time, Marla is still uncertain when she will return to her content creation. She has voiced interest in playing recreationally again soon to “nurture her spark.” The last we have learned, she was working on a new campaign about players turning into kobolds and having to figure out how to prevent the changes from fully manifesting.
This concludes the Training Report on Hazel Coffey and Case C4-828214. Thank you.
TFCC
KEEPING YOU, YOU