In Delphox Delilah's class, students learn to use magical spells in present day and historical applications. Owen and Karla, a budding Vaporeon and Nidoqueen couple, quickly learn that skipping ahead a few chapters isn't always a good way to get ahead when one such spell is used by accident.

This is an illustrated series of pictures to serve as a preface for, and accompany, the collab story "Afterhours Absorption" I wrote with !

Art by eos9!

Original Story

FIRST , PREVIOUS, NEXT

“Wonder how they’re holding up,” Richie said with a chuuu of concern. His soft, broad feet dug their toes firm into the carpet as he held his fuzzy chin up with both palms. His short, slightly chubby fingers papped against his cheeks, eliciting thrumming sparks from their bright yellow pouches. His ribs groaned, leaning against the arm of the sofa whose cushions went slightly concave, angled to Richie’s side with the weight of a certain passenger.

“They took, or, well, I suppose Mr. Owen did if we’re being pedantic about it, the initiative to approach us in the first place.” Black furred hands held up before her, a musty tome swallowed up in the padded palm of one, Delilah swiped a clawed digit through the air. Purple wisps of ether wafted off her fingertip as a fragile piece of parchment flipped itself over to the next page. “I’m sure they’re fumbling through best they can uncertainties and all. Worse comes to worse I can simply dispel the damage done come Monday when he lumbers into class.” Pinching at the frame of her glasses, she adjusted her eyewear atop her muzzle.

Richie let loose a small eep as gravity pulled him to the epicenter of the sofa, his tiny hips papping soundlessly against Delilah’s own, hefty, cushion-sized pair. He scrambled for constitution and sat up as straight as possible. The display earned an amused glance from the dynamic Delphox. “I guess you’re right about that, but still. Just makes me wonder if they’re really able to take care of it like you said they would!”

“I have my doubts,” Delilah sang with a lilt. Her eyes glowed with magenta ribbons of smoky excess, accentuated by the glassy lens of her spectacles. “Right now… it looks like they’re just getting home. I’ll check back in a few hours from now.” The Delphox snapped the tome closed between her thumb and index finger. Ruby red eyebrows arched, her eyes swiveled along their sockets and came to rest on the Raichu sidled alongside her. “If you were looking for a segue to air your own concerns and uncertainties now’s as good a time as ever.”

“M-my own?” Richie urped. Ah, damn. Owen’s mind wasn’t the only one she could read. The Raichu anxiously shifted in his seat with swivels of his tiny tush, wiry tail settling beside his thigh.

“Psychic Type and all,” Delilah shrugged with a smile.

Those equal parts curvy and pointed ears of Richie’s folded along the side of his head. “Is this gonna be a mental conversation or a spoken one? Bouncing back and forth is kind of a hassle.”

“I’m content with relying on the spoken word,” Delilah chirped. “Can’t let those massive ears of yours go to waste, now can we?” A thick, fuzzy, padded thumb came round to pinch those fanned and curved ears, caressing them with a gentleness surprising coming from the Delphox’s massive form.

“I-I guess not,” Richie meeped. His hands came to press his fanned ears to his head the moment Delilah’s fingers left them. “It’s just. Us. Together. It’s…”

Delilah’s jacket audibly strained. Drawing in deeply of the incense laden air inside her home, scented embers flaring to life within her nostrils, the Delphox’s chest inflated and pressed out against her constrictive clothing. “I was wondering when we would broach the topic. Doesn’t take a mind reader, or, heh, a casting of Mind Reader, to ascertain something troubled you.”

“Well I suppose if you already know what I’m going to ask…”

Delilah’s eyes settled firmly on her Raichu. “Humor me, won’t you? Besides, Richie. Communication is a part of any healthy relationship. It’s one thing to think these thoughts. It’s another matter entirely to willingly share them.”

A roll of Richie’s shoulders came to pass. “Alright,” he puffed. The words and tone betrayed an awful amount of uncertainty. How to phrase something uniquely if she could just read his mind? “It’s just the idea of you and I being so disparate in age, you know? Arceus alive, twice my age even. I’m still an undergrad, and you’re… well, a professor! You could be teaching me if I was enrolled in this class and not its TA.”

The Delphox brought a fist to her fuzzy chin. Perhaps it was less in thought than in quiet understanding. “But you’re not the one complaining. I know that much.”

“I’m not,” Richie admitted. His long, wiry tail flicked nervously. Oh, he knew, and she knew--but he still wanted to say it. His long, broad feet curved inward, settling upon one another with anxiously curled toes. “I always worry a little about how we’re seen, you know? ...How everybody else views us being together like we are. The students, the faculty…” The Raichu’s throat bulged as he swallowed hard. “My family.”

The Delphox nodded. It was clear through her words, her tone, her very telepathy that she felt the subject was not a topic of terrible concern to her. However, that it mattered to Richie was more than enough to sway her. Her own gargantuan poff of a tail, light-gold in color, sashayed as she thought about how to word her thoughts, and in what order they should come.

While she did so, the Delphox took her little lover into her broad arms, which easily groped around the width of his tiny form like furry tree trunks. With a light huff of effort, she plucked him up and plopped him onto her wide lap comprised of thighs that traipsed dangerously close to his own size. “I think you’d be surprised how few people actually know, Richie. You and I, we keep good secrets.

“I think everyone can see how hard you blush whenever you use me as some kind of demonstration during class,” the Raichu reasoned.

Cheeks puffed out Delilah couldn’t help but shift excitedly, the couch seesawing at her motions, at the sights, sounds, and sensations that accompanied semesters past. “...So you’re not wrong. Maybe I should phrase it this way. Is our relationship something you want kept secret? Am I someone you don’t want to be seen with?”

Richie’s arcing tail stood on end at the accusation. “No! No no no no. I’m just.” His sigh dragged on until his lungs emptied. “I’m just a shychu, is all.”

Delilah shifted on her seat, the chair’s cushion groaning in agony with rubbery squeaks. “I understand.” A hand as large as Richie’s head came up to stroke his massive ears, then fell to his head to lovingly caress him. She felt his smooth, silky hair pass between her thick fingers like blonde water, and sighed a breath of contentment. She hoped the sentiment would ease the blow of her next few words. “Let’s nip this in the bud then,” came Delilah’s lilac whisper. “You and I. Let’s traipse up to class tomorrow, your hand in mine, without letting go until we sit gingerly at our desk. Not for one moment do I expect us to care about who sees.”

Sparks arced out furiously from those yellow chu cheeks as Richie shuddered in a mixture of delight, despair, and disbelief. Teeth biting into his lower lip, his shoulders rising with his resolve, the Electric-Type bit the Zap Cannon and made his decision known. He raised an arm up along his side and squeezed his fingers at one of Delilah’s own. Gaping like a Magikarp, his lips flopped open and close before he chuuuued and simply leaned into his beloved.

“Why not practice now?” The Delphox said for him. She grinned when Richie resumed chuuuuing into her soft sides. “It was a very cute line you thought of there. The delivery could use some work though.”

---

Owen’s thickly-scaled blue arms raised to his lips, spoon entrenched firmly in his grasp, and lowered to the ice cream turbo tub wedged between his immense thighs. “So tell me one thing,” he rumbled deeply through mouthfuls of vanilla. “Why did I have to inherit your appetite too?”

“Probably because I can’t eat anymore!” rang Karla’s voice within his skull. The niggling thought of a Nidoqueen let her tongue roll across her lips and sighed contentedly. “That Miltank Menagerie is really somethin’ else isn’t it? Costs a friggin fortune, granted.”

The NidoVap grunted as his broad tongue poked out between his now pointed muzzle and mimicked her mental movements. “Would you stop that?”

“I wanna taste!” the Nidoqueen rumbled from within. Her purrs of pleasure reverberated against his skull as she vicariously tasted the rich, creamy textures of properly whipped ice cream. “So frankly no, I will not stop.” Fingers curled into a fist, she tapped at her bountiful chest and let loose a small brap of air. Karla couldn’t help but eheee when a ruinous belch roared across her imagined island getaway. Ripples coursed throughout the sand and the waves churned violently in the bay before her.

Owen rumbled in discontent as he felt that same ripple fill up his chest. “BRUUUURF!” An immense discharge of belches exploded from his lips. Shockwaves bled into aftershocks that rattled his furniture and surroundings; bits of debris crumbled from the ceiling; the shelves shook and quaked; the windows cracked in spiderwebbing patterns. “Karla!” Mmmffing, the Pokefusion shifted uneasily on the couch as his squishy water laden thighs solidified. Where they were once transparent they were now cerulean and solid in color. The clapping of his thighs had gradually shifted into clacks as his porous skin hardened into scales.

“Yes stop it! These are my thighs all these calories are going straight to, not yours!”

“Hah! Oh, relax, won’t you? I bet they’ll be mine once we split up again.”

“Which at this rate is never going to happen with how much you’re enjoying yourself,” Owen huffed, fat cheeks puffing slightly wider. “That and…” He held a hand up before his increasingly reptilian face and twiddled his bloated fingers. They scraped against one another noisily. The trimmed nails upon his fingers had swollen in size and had come to cover the tips of his digits entirely. “The more you assert yourself the worse, well, this gets!” He arched his brows when he heard a curious and feminine hrmmm echo inside his head.

“You don’t say?” Rising to her feet, scaly toes parting the warm sand into her bloated boyfriend’s mental machinations, Karla peered up towards the clouds. A strained braaaaaap and gale of heated air blew back her hair. The palm trees lining the beach rustled violently as Owen found himself coerced up and onto his feet as her windows into the outside world shifted. She timidly lifted her right leg and set it forward. A surprised grunt settled upon the sand and surf when the NidoVap lurched forward in response.

“Karla what the hell are you doing?!” Owen wailed as he ambled around their apartment against his own volition.