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Vee wiped the sweat off her brow as she walked into the women’s locker room at the local gym, Fitness Dicinyamouf, exhausted from a particularly heavy workout. Ever since Willow introduced her to powerlifting all those years ago, Vee had taken it up as one of her many hobbies, and as a basilisk she held some very impressive PRs. At least by human standards. Vee wasn’t entirely sure what the maximum limits for her biology were.
But right now, Vee just needed a good stretch. Vee walked around the locker room, double and triple checking to make sure it was empty. Once she was sure she was alone, Vee breathed a sigh of relief and allowed her disguise to drop. Inhuman ripples of muscle waved down her entire body. Her orange workout clothes merged seamlessly into her tan latina skin, shifting their color into seafoam green scales with the occasional patch of white. The “dyed” tips of her dirty blonde hair slithered up to her scalp, turning her entire hairdue into a sweaty mess of deep blue curls. Now uninhibited by her yoga pants, Vee’s legs zippered together as they rapidly doubled in length and curled along the floor, granting her a long, serpentine tail. The only things that remained unchanged were the towel draped around her shoulders, her teal septum piercing - her way of reclaiming the enchanted chain that once pierced through her tail fin - and, of course, the obsidian engagement ring given to her by her awesome fiancé, Masha.
Vee lifted her arms over her head and stretched. Stretching out her sore muscles after a workout always felt good, and after having gone particularly hard today, the stretch felt so good it got her entire body to shiver. After a few seconds Vee let go of the full body stretch and moved on to more specific stretches, like for her forearms and shoul-
“Oh shit, snake lady!”
“ EEP! ”
Vee jumped at the sound of the sudden intrusion, bolting around and coming face to face with another woman who’d just entered the locker room. She had dark brown skin and wavy black hair tied back into a simple ponytail. Her simple sports bra showed off a set of rock hard abs and some frankly beef-tastic arms, the latter of which were covered in various tattoos. But the most striking feature of this woman was her eyes - or rather, eye. A black eyepatch stretched across the woman’s face, covering her right eye from view. Her left was a fiery red-orange color Vee had never seen in any other person, neither the Human nor Demon Realm.
“So are you some sort of Naga?” the woman asked with a shockingly casual tone. “Or are you more like a Medusa? No, wait, Medusa is the name of a single character. The species name was, umm…” the lady scrunched up her face and snapped her fingers, trying to find the right word. “Gorgon! That’s it!”
“I’m a basilisk, actually…” Vee said, failing to understand this woman’s complete lack of surprise or panic.
“I-I’m sorry,” she stammered out in confusion, “are you not freaked out by my appearance… at all?”
“Oh of course not!” The woman responded kindly, before looking around and leaning in as if she was sharing a devious secret. “As a fellow shapeshifter myself, it would be rude of me to judge, now wouldn’t it?” The woman finished with a wink and a smirk, making Vee blush a little.
Then the woman’s words really hit her. “Wait, you’re a shapeshifter too!?!” Vee exclaimed loudly, then frightfully clamped her hands over her mouth after hearing her voice echo through the small locker room. “Sorry, sorry,” she said. “I just… I almost never have a chance to visit my sisters in the Demon Realm, and no one else in my circle of friends is a shapeshifter…”
Vee trailed off in embarrassment, shyly rubbing one arm with the other. This prompted the other woman to let out a boisterous laugh.
“Oh, I like you, kid!” she wheezed out as her laughter slowly died down “You’re funny.”
“H-hey! I’m no kid!” Vee stuttered indignantly. “I’m like 25 years old!”
“Oh, damn, a year older than me!” the woman said. “Wasn’t expecting that from you, shortstack!”
“D-don’t call me that!” Vee tried to cover her growing blush with her hands. “Only my fiancé can call me that…”
“Okay, sorry, I’ll back off.” The woman chuckled as she said that, but the fact she actually took a step back from Vee made her believe she was being genuine.
“Now, if you don’t mind me asking,” Vee tried to steer the conversation back to its original topic, “What kind of shapeshifter are you, exactly. You’re clearly not familiar with basilisks, considering you couldn’t identify me…”
“Hmmm,” the woman hummed as she scratched her chin in thought. “I’m honestly not sure what I am. I just kind of woke up one day and bam! Powers!” A mischievous grin spread across the woman’s face, and she leaned back in to whisper to Vee.
“You wanna see what my other form looks like?” she asked, “Maybe help me narrow down what I could possibly be?”
“Oh, sure, I can help!” Vee said enthusiastically. “My sister’s brother always gives me lectures on demonology when he visits, so I’ve become pretty knowledgeable myself!” The basilisk placed her hands on her hips and allowed her own smug grin to grow across her face.
“Wouldn’t your sister’s brother be your brother, too?” the woman asked.
“Kind of, but not really?” Vee said, unsure herself. “My sister is under shared custody between two moms, but I’ve only been adopted by one of them, and our brother was adopted by the other… We do still share a sibling-like relationship, though, soooo...” Vee shrugged, accepting that any answer she gave would be weird.
“Huh, okay then,” the woman seemed to accept that too. “Now, you ready to see my other form?”
“Yes, let’s see it!” Vee pumped her fists in excitement, a smile growing across her face at the idea of meeting another non-human person who’d managed to fit into human society.
That smile dropped the instant she heard the sickening sounds of bones snapping and flesh tearing fill the air. Vee’s eyes widened in horror as she watched her new friend’s skin peel off like the skin of a banana, revealing a mess of unorganized muscle and sinew writhing around like worms in a compost bin. What was once a normal-looking human woman collapsed onto the floor as an amorphous pile of bloody gore, with spikes of broken bone sticking out haphazardly in all directions. Across the entire mass, what must have been hundreds of orifices opened up, revealing gaping caverns lined with rows upon rows of razor sharp teeth. A sound akin to nails on a chalkboard started ringing out as pitch black spittle dripped out of the thing’s many mouths, leaving acid burns where they fell on the floor. Tentacles of flesh radiated out from the main body, wriggling around as if with minds of their own. One brushed up against Vee’s tail on accident, leaving behind the horrifically familiar feeling of fresh blood on her scales. In the middle of it all, that fiery red eye had grown to a size rivaling Vee’s entire head. That gaze seemed to bore through the basilisk’s very soul…
“So, what do you think?” the creature asked with the exact same voice as the woman that once stood in its place. Vee didn’t know if that was better or worse than the deep, echoing nightmare voice she’d expected.
“O-oh…” a shiver shot through Vee’s spine at the sight. “Oh my Titan… you’re horrifying! ”
“Oh, I see…” the thing’s single eye drooped down. With a vomit inducing squelch sound, it rapidly pulled itself back together into the form of the woman Vee had so eagerly spoken to just seconds ago. Her eye was still downcast, the rest of her face furrowed in a mixture of sadness and anger. “I should have known this would happen…” the woman sighed bitterly. “Sorry for bothering you, Basilisk Lady. I’ll get out of your hair now…” With slumped shoulders, the woman turned away and started walking towards the locker room exit.
A completely different kind of horror filled Vee as she watched the woman walk away. She’d been absolutely terrified of informing her friends from Reality Check of her true nature, she’d put off telling them for months before Luz, Camila, and Hunter finally pushed her to come out, all because she was terrified of the exact reaction she’d just given her new friend!
Vee’s nature as a basilisk didn’t matter to June! Sure, she freaked out at first and called Vee a monster, but after realizing Vee was still the same person she’d defended from the sparse bully at Summer Camp, June apologized for her initially hostile reaction and vowed to kick in the teeth of anyone who gave her trouble again. Vee had chosen not to comment on the fact that kicking someone’s teeth in was exactly why June had been sent to camp in the first place.
Vee’s nature as a basilisk didn’t matter to Brett, who unbeknownst to her was actually already aware of what she was! He’d apparently gotten up in the middle of the night to raid the dining hall for a snack, when he’d come across Vee in the process of shedding her skin. Sure, he’d lost his appetite when he saw her eat her own shed, but he still remained friends with her without ever saying a word of what he saw. He was chill like that.
And Vee’s nature as a basilisk certainly didn’t matter to Masha! If anything, it made Masha even more excited to be close with her. It took less than a week after coming out for Masha to ask Vee on their first date, and ever since the two had been so sweet and doting on each other that they regularly gave Lumity a run for their money.
So why should her new friend’s nature as… whatever she was matter to Vee!?! She was clearly a good person, and being rejected for being herself was clearly just as much a sore spot for her as it was for Vee. Having made up her mind, Vee pushed through her fear-induced paralysis and lunged forwards to grab the escaping woman’s arm.
“Wait, I’m sorry!” She shouted desperately. “I am so, so sorry I said that, I didn’t mean to make you feel like that. Yes, I admit I was scared by what I saw, but that was no excuse for calling you horrifying. I still want to help you, I swear.”
The woman looked at her apprehensively, seeming to not fully trust what the basilisk was saying. “Are you sure? You seemed pretty freaked out by my other form. Hell, you still seem freaked out.”
“I’ll get over it.” Vee insisted. An idea struck her, and smirked as she went with it. “As a shapeshifter myself, it was rude to judge.”
That got the other woman to laugh again, freeing Vee of the last little bit of fear that transformation had struck her with.
“Turning my own words against me? Hah! I love it!” The woman clapped Vee on the shoulder, and she did her best to hide the flinch the force of blow gave her. “Okay, I trust you, Basilisk Lady!”
Vee then heard the sounds of two approaching women gossiping together. Knowing the chances of these two also being shapeshifters was literally less than zero, Vee rapidly shifted back into her own disguised form just before they entered the locker room.
The two women paused and looked down at the floor in fear and disgust. Looking behind them, Vee and her friend saw that there was still a sizable puddle of blood from when the latter had shapeshifted earlier.
“Umm, what the fuck!?!” one of the new women shouted. “Why is there blood all over the floor!?!”
Vee began panicking, struggling to come up with an explanation that wouldn’t get her and/or her new friend arrested.
“Well, um… you see… er… um…”
“I’m on my period.”
Vee turned shocked at her new friend, seeing that she managed to say that with the most stone-still, dead-pan face Vee had ever seen. She dared not even imagine what playing a game of poker against this woman would be like.
“Ugh, eeew!” The other two women exclaimed in unison. They both left the locker room in a hurry, presumably to complain to Fitness Dicinyamouf management.
Vee felt a light nudge to her side from her new friend. “We should probably get out of here.” she said.
“Thanks for coming up with that excuse.” Vee said as they walked out to the parking lot to their respective cars. “I don’t think I could have ever said that with a straight face.”
“Hah!” her friend barked out a sharp laugh. “Don’t mention it! It was technically my blood, anyways.”
“Wait, shit!” the woman exclaimed when she made it to her car - a small silver convertible with an “ask me about my cat!” bumper sticker - and she smacked her own forehead with her palm. “We never gave each other our names!”
Vee’s eyes widened when it struck her she was right. “OMT yeah, how could I forget?”
“Well, I’ll go first, since I’m the one who initiated our first meeting.” Vee’s friend said, sticking out her hand to be shaken. “My name’s Angelica Holyman.” A chuckle escaped Angelica’s lips as she said that. “Pretty ironic name, all things considered, but I’m sticking with it!”
Vee let herself chuckle too, glad Angelica could find some humor in the horrificness of her other form. “Yeah, it’s pretty ironic, but I think it fits.”
Angelica smiled wider than Vee had seen at any point today. Smiling right back, Vee placed her hand in Angelica’s and gave her fellow shapeshifter a hearty handshake.
“I’m Vee. Vee Noceda.”