Living the Nerd Life (Cosplay/Nerd TF) (Patreon)

Patron commission for Eurowatch featuring their own OC encountering Lulu

A friend of Luna Lupa, a kitsune by the name of Europa, has a problem - she can't connect with mortal youth these days, and has come to Lulu for help. The wolfgirl, luckily, has a solution in mind to help her think like a kid again...

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There was no flash of light, or sudden shift in perspective; no feeling of displacement or distortion. The transition was completely seamless; one step, the woman was in her own world, and the next, she was somewhere different. Walking into the Arcane Sanctuary was in a way more disconcerting for the fact it was no more disorienting than walking into another room of one’s home than it would have been had it been a dramatic event.

For a short while, the woman walked amongst the shelves quietly, alone. There was a shift in the books up ahead, and from nowhere, a stone creature approached. Looking somewhere between a human with canine features and a living gargoyle with stone skin and gems for eyes, it startled the woman a bit, though she was careful not to show it. “Greetings. How do you do?” she asked calmly.

Any intimidation that the stone sentinel may have offered fell away as she grinned like an idiot, eyes shining. “Oh! You’re the first person to just say hi instead of being scared or busy! I’m really good, how are you!?” the dog-statue said cheerfully, stone tail wagging quickly. “I’m Gabriella, what’s your name?”

The woman calmed herself down a bit, before nodding, more to herself than anything. “My name is Europa. A pleasure to meet you. I was coming here to meet Miss Luna Lupa?”

“Oh! I’ll go bring her! Or you can follow me, whichever you feel like!” Gabriella said, before rushing off down the hall.

Europa followed after the retreating canine, keeping at a leisurely pace. She was in no particular hurry, at least not in the Arcane Sanctuary; it was a rather foolish idea to proceed recklessly in a place filled with magical artifacts, some of which were on hair triggers and eager to affect whoever they touched.

She couldn’t be sure if she’d happened to arrive near her destination or if the Sanctuary had shifted so that her destination became closer. Luna Lupa had tried to explain the strange geometries of the eldritch location to her once, but even to a being as old as Europa it simply did not make logical sense.

Whatever the case was, they found a break in the endless shelves and books. A cozy little clearing in a forest of wood and paper, with a couch, a few lanterns, and a desk currently occupied by a familiar figure. Luna Lupa - or Lulu as she was often called by friends - was seemingly oblivious to the presence of Gabriella and Europa, hard at work on writing whatever it was she was working on.

Europa politely coughed. While as a guest she might have expected better, she was an unannounced one, so a touch of impropriety could be forgiven.

Gabriella, on the other hand, was not subtle about drawing Lulu’s attention. “Luluuuuu! I have someone here to see you! She says her name is Europa!”

Lulu started upright, pulled out of her work all at once. She blinked in confusion for a few seconds, eyes big behind her glasses, before shuffling her papers aside and standing up. “Oh! Hello, I didn’t realize you were coming to visit again! It’s been… I don’t actually know, time is kind of wonky here…” she coughed and composed herself, patting down her tail and straightening up her lupine ears a bit. She curtsied - or at least tried to, since she obviously wasn’t used to the gesture. “Welcome to the Arcane Sanctuary. I would usually introduce myself at this point, but we’ve met already!”

Europa smiled a bit. “I appreciate the greeting all the same,” she said, finally relaxing and letting her tails free again - she’d kept them hidden to avoid them brushing against anything they shouldn’t; as a powerful kitsune, her tails were big and fluffy and probably would have knocked something over. “And I appreciate you having me as a guest.”

“Gabriella, can you get the tea ready? We can hardly have a guest like her without having tea!” Lulu said cheerfully, before gesturing to a table at the other end of the room. Europa blinked - she wasn’t sure if she just hadn’t noticed it, or if it hadn’t been there until Lulu drew her attention to it.

A few minutes later, the pair were seated and sipping from some fine teacups, while Gabriella ran off to check on other parts of the Sanctuary. “So, what brings you to my humble home?” Lulu asked, “How’d the medicine book go over for you?”

“Oh, it did it’s job quite well. It’s a bit old now, but I still take a peek from time to time.” Europa said, before taking a sip. Now that she was talking with Lulu rather than walking through the frankly rather ominous Arcane Sanctuary, she felt she could be a bit less formal. “This time, it’s a bit less… philanthropic, of a matter. More personal.”

Lulu’s ears perked up a bit and she tilted her head. “Oh? Now I’m curious.” she said, grinning and waiting for her to continue.

“I’ve recently taken a small girl into my home.” the kitsune said. “It’s not so much that I can’t care for her. She’ll never have to worry about where her next meal is coming from if I can help it. But…”

“But?” The wolf-girl prompted.

Europa sighed. “I am… not really all that familiar with modern people. Young boys and girls are an enigma to me especially, but after you live long enough you fall out of touch with just about everything that isn’t as old as you are.” she said. “I’m worried that I won’t be able to really connect with the girl. She’s just not like me.”

“Is she a human or something?” Lulu asked.

“Not quite,” Europa said. “She’s a fox, and she has some magical potential. But she isn’t a kitsune; even with all the training I could give her, she’ll never be half as powerful as I am or live as long as I do. How do I connect with someone who’s so… limited, compared to me? It’s not that I look down on her, believe me.”

“But it’s a bit hard to understand what’s going through their head.” Lulu said. “Like, to us, time has a way different meaning than it does to them. ...Granted, you probably live a lot more of that time than I do because the Arcane Sanctuary is frankly bizarre about this but- anyway point is, different priorities. Things that are easy for you might be hard for her, stuff like that. Right?”

Europa nodded. “That’s right, yes.” she said. “But a bit more too. How am I supposed to know what a girl thinks at that age? It’s been so so long since I’ve been a child! What am I going to do when she becomes a teenager? I don’t know how to deal with teenagers!” The kitsune said. While her voice was composed as ever, there was more energy in it as she laid out her troubles.

Lulu nodded. “So… what do you want? I probably have some parenting books sitting around, although I’m not sure how many there are for your rough sort of setting…”

“Ah, this time, I was thinking of doing something besides borrowing a book.” Europa said. “Kids aren’t really the sort of thing you can read about in a book and understand just from that! That’s no way to really get in their heads. So, is there maybe something a bit more hands-on we can do? Something that could help me understand how young mortals minds’ work?”

The wolf girl blinked a few times. Hm, something to get in a youth’s head, hmmm? Well, there were a few ways that she could go about it. She had enough artifacts for a variety of effects, from aging her down to mentally linking her to the kid and any number of other options. Lulu’s tail swayed back and forth with increasing speed as she came on to an idea. “Hmmm… sure! You want to understand how a mortal youth thinks, is that right?”

Europa nodded. “That’s the sum of it, yes. You have something that can help?”

“Not on me, but the Sanctuary surely does. I think I picked this one up not too long ago…” Lulu nodded to herself and started to stroll along, and Europa followed after her.

Shelves upon shelves of magical artifacts formed the halls they passed through, and Europa once again couldn’t help being impressed by the collection of knowledge. It was amazing Lulu didn’t go mad with power. “About how long should it take?” Europa asked.

“As long as it needs to.” Lulu said dismissively. “The Arcane Sanctuary isn’t to be rushed, but basically whenever I look for something specific it’s in walking distance.”

Europa looked around doubtfully. She looked up, seeing not only the shelves continue into the horizon, but onto the ceiling. If she squinted, she could swear she saw more people wandering around, with fluffy-looking tails like hers, but that must have been a trick of the light.

“Don’t think too hard about it.” Lulu chimed in. “Or any of the things you see further away than the next few bends. You’re probably better able to handle it than most but I don’t want to test that theory.” Her tone was lighter than her words implied it should be, but all the same Europa refocused on the path.

Eventually, Lulu stopped in another modest clearing in the shelves. One side was lined with books, while the other was display cases of knick-knacks and antiques. “Should be around here somewhere…” she said, roaming the shelves… “No… no… ah-hah!”

She withdrew from the case, bearing a pair of thick glasses that weren’t too unlike her own. “These were from a world that had a bit of a problem with too many magical-people ruling over the non-magical people cruelly, so this was made by a sympathetic wizard to assist in, uh, giving them some perspective. There’s a good number of artifacts like these, but this is probably the best for our purposes.”

Europa nodded, looking at the glasses as she took them in her hands. “I see. Interesting… I should put these on, yes?”

“Yep! It’ll feel a bit weird, but trust me, it’s nothing bad!” At least not that she couldn’t fix easy enough.

The kitsune shrugged, and slid the glasses on. For a moment, everything was blurry, and nothing seemed to be happening. “Hm. Is there a step I missed- oh!”

As Europa was speaking, she found herself somehow changing. The first thing to change was her height. She was a tall woman - but that rapidly changed, as she lost inch after inch of height, soon matching heights with Lulu and then becoming even shorter. Her face shifted subtly, the maturity of age shifting into awkward but earnest youth. Her bust seemed less able to fill her clothes, and her figure became less curvy and adult. She stumbled for a moment, as her proportions all of a sudden seemed all wrong, but managed to regain her balance.

The next loss was something a bit less visible. Europa’s clothes were relatively modest, and hid a strong and athletic body. But that didn’t seem to fit what the glasses wanted her to be - she felt her muscles fading away, and rubbed down there to find smooth skin where there had been hard-earned musculature. In fact, she suddenly felt like there was just a bit too much there, like she might need to do some more cardio to work it off!

Her clothes, hanging loose from her diminished body, seemed to shift next. It wasn’t quite as blatant a transformation as her body - there was just a bit less smoothness, a bit less luster, as their materials went from finest silks to whatever fabrics her new self had been able to discover. There were visible stitches, even a patch around the elbow of one glove. Europa suddenly quite clearly remembered tripping and ripping that the first time she’d tried to walk in heels - but that hadn’t happened, had it?

Her figure seemed to suddenly fill out again, and Europa gasped as her clothes were re-filled. Lulu tilted her head in confusion - where had that come from? Before realizing that this version of Europa must have been padding herself, and probably had some kind of bindings below to help with her hips.

The last shifts came quick, and the kitsune found herself in a daze. A minor headache - she brushed some hair out of her face, and while she did it revealed human ears that hadn’t been there before, securing a plastic band that ran up to the now-immobile fox ears. Her tails drooped, and she had a sudden spike of annoyance; she’d have to work on the wires meant to hold those straight again! She frowned a bit - that didn’t sound right… and around then, she had a heart-stopping realization. She couldn’t feel magic anymore; she was a magical being, she’d been surrounded by the stuff quite literally as long as she could remember, and now she felt absolutely none. Not even the magically-charged Arcane Sanctuary seemed anything more than a musty archive to her now distinctly mundane senses.

Before she could worry about it, though, she calmed down. What was she worried about? The last change was subtle. Her vision cleared; the glasses were no longer a hindrance but a necessity, correcting a youth’s poor vision. The headache faded, and she felt comfortable as herself again.

“Well, it looks like that went well! How’re you feeling, Europa?” Lulu asked.

The girl smiled brightly. “Oh! You recognize my cosplay!” she cheered. “I was so worried that I didn’t look sexy enough for the part, but you got it!”

Lulu blinked. “Oh, I thought you were Europa?” she said.

“Ehehehe, thanks~ I didn’t realize it was so convincing!” The teenager said. “I’m Eiko! You would not believe the hours it took to get this cosplay looking just right!”

Eiko was very pleased with herself. She’d convinced this cute girl that she was her favorite character in Tales From Rijikstad! Europa was everything Eiko wanted to be in life, she was sexy and confident, strong and clever, alluring and kind, mysterious and helpful to everyone. They even looked similar, if you looked past the fact that Europa was an immortal kitsune while Eiko was a decidedly non-magical human. That had been one of the things that had convinced Eiko to cosplay as Europa, the other being the hours spend browsing fan-art and discussion boards about her role in the game.

The cosplay had been hard to make - she’d saved her allowance for months and months to buy the materials. It had been agonizing to restrain her purchasing habits in that time, but it had been worth it. After too many youtube videos and practicing with some old shirts, she’d managed to make her dress. Then it had mostly been a matter of saving for the ears and tails, which was also painful but not quite as much after she had the first part.

“So, what kind of place is this?” she asked. “I was heading to the cosplay convention and I noticed this cute little antique shop! I could have sworn I didn’t see anything like it last time I was coming through, so I thought I’d check it out.”

“I see…” Luna said, nodding to herself. Well, she hadn’t expected it to go quite that far, but Europa had wanted to experience being a normal girl. Maybe this was good for her then. “Well, we’re still setting up - nothing’s for sale quite yet-”

“Oh, were you going to the convention too? Your cosplay’s pretty good! You look a lot like Luna Lupa!” Eiko said cheerfully, before wandering around the shelves. All these antiques and books looked really interesting…

Lulu blinked. Oh, so her memory had decided to add Lulu to this “Tales From Rijikstad” game? Interesting. But before she could respond, she noticed that ‘Eiko’ was reaching out to a mirror… “Oh, don’t touch that-!” she started to say, but it was too late.

The mirror was fancy, rimmed with gold and shined to perfection; Eiko saw herself quite clearly in the image, looking cute in her cosplay, and she saw the other cosplayer as well! As Lulu entered the view of the mirror, the gem set in it’s base glowed brightly.

The keeper of the Arcane Sanctuary knew the changes that were coming but couldn’t stop them; that mirror, when it had two people in it’s view, reflected any spells on one of the subjects onto the other. The first thing that it did was take away Lulu’s magic; she felt herself become weak and mortal, at least in comparison to the magical being’s normal self. Now even if she wanted to write herself out of the situation she couldn’t.

She blinked a few times, before rubbing her face. The colored contacts were really itchy and irritating, weren’t they? And distracting, she’d forgotten what she was thinking about completely. It must not have been important then, if she’d forgotten so easily. She didn’t pay any mind as her lupine ears stopped moving as they became a simple wolf-ear headband, or as her tail dropped from it’s conversion to an accessory. The metallic luster left her hair and her wolf parts; after all, what kind of person could afford a metallic wig for a cosplay? Besides, it would have just made her neck hurt from the weight!

The change rapidly progressed from there, her fancy dress losing it’s silky qualities as it became simple fabric. The young woman could remember quite clearly how she’d had to make it; the outfit was a complicated two-tone thing, and she’d had to get creative; she had actually cut the top off one outfit, and the bottom off another, then sewed them back together to make it! The stitches were still visible, but not that obvious, and she was honestly pretty happy with the result. And she had an inverse version of it too as a bonus!

Her figure couldn’t stay that mature, of course. Slowly, her breasts shrunk, and her hips narrowed in, and she lost a good amount of curves. A light dusting of freckles covered her face; that was probably from her mom’s side she thought… and she became a good deal shorter until she was of equal height with the original cosplayer.

The young lady grinned, striking a pose in the mirror. “We look good, Eiko~ Even in an outfit like that you’re super cute~” she said.

“I’m not going for cute, I’m going for sexy!” Eiko grumbled. “Europa is a mature beauty. You should be the cute one, Tsukiko! And you don’t even look like a proper Lulu! Why aren’t you in a maid outfit? And why did you go all wolfy instead of foxy? We could have gone as a matching set.”

Tsukiko giggled a bit. “Don’t you know? I’m going as Lady Luna Lupa, not Maid Lulu! The “Role Reversal” event was just a couple months ago, don’t you remember? Maybe you should have gone as Wolf Maid Europa instead. I bet you would have been adorable~” she said. Much like Eiko was enamored with Europa from the game, Tsukiko was super into Lulu. She was dependable and hardworking, but also sassy and a bit of a covert pervert - it was so much fun to watch her mess with the other characters!

“Ok, we’ll work on maid outfits!” Eiko said in a huff. “Next time, you come as Fox Maid Lulu to match me, and then the time after that I’ll go as Wolf Maid Europa to match you. Deal?”

Tsukiko laughed again, louder. Oh, but she loved when her bestie got all huffy like this, it was so cute! She grinned and stretched out a hand. “Deal! Shake on it!”

The two mundane teenagers shook, sealing the pact and deciding on their next cosplay projects. “Did you get your book? We need to go or we’ll miss the opening event! I need to get the code for the extra summons, Summer Europa will be on a rate up soon!”

“Yeah, yeah, I did!” Tsukiko waved off the concern. “I left the money already, so let’s go!”

The girls turned and went towards the way they remembered an exit being - they had to hurry, they had a convention to go to!

-----

Two women returned to the same open space some time later. No longer mundane teenagers but back to their magical selves, Europa looked quite embarrassed, while Lulu was all smiles. “Well, that was fun!” she said cheerfully, “It’s a good thing those glasses are a pretty temporary effect. Although maybe spending a week or two as teens would have been cool.”

“It was embarrassing, is what it was!” Europa said with a blush. “I wouldn’t stop gushing about myself! And I kept having weird thoughts. I didn’t know what ‘shipping’ was before, but I do now!” she said. Eiko, as it turned out, really shipped Europa and Lulu; apparently in whatever world it was where they were game characters, that was a particularly popular ship…

“Aw, don’t be like that~ I got a bunch of fun pictures!” she said. Lulu took out a device that, while Europa wouldn’t have recognized it before, she now knew was a “smart phone”, although the kitsune wasn’t sure why the magical object was supposedly smart. Lulu turned it so Europa could see her scrolling through the pictures Tsukiko and Eiko had taken, including more than a couple based on the “ship”.

Europa blushed scarlet, turning away from the pictures. “I-I guess parts of it were fun, but still! I didn’t think you would do something like that!”

“Well, it wasn’t supposed to affect me,” Lulu said, putting away the phone and taking the magic glasses out, “But it was fun that it did! Besides, you got what you wanted, right? Now you have a good amount of experience at being a normal, mortal girl. You were worried about time and couldn’t just magic your problems away. So I think it’s a success!”

“I… I suppose you are right…” Europa admitted. Eiko had been quite enjoying herself, and she still remembered how she was thinking then. Maybe it would be a help.

Lulu grinned brightly. “Of course I am. If you ever wanna try that out again, I’ll still have these glasses~ Another cosplay convention could be fun sometime!” She said, before returning the glasses to their case for safe keeping.

Europa swallowed hard, but nodded. Maybe she could use that to just have fun and not worry about responsibility for a bit… “A-Anyway! You will never speak of this to anyone else, understood!”

“Yes, Ma’am!” Lulu said with a joking salute. “Want some dinner before you go? I can probably conjure a really nice one.”