Private The Maiden of Orochi

Jacquelyn's dorm was cold, not really a good place for cold-blooded people to stay if they like staying up, but it was perfect for Jackie as she loved sleeping in. But her slumber was interrupted when she heard what sounded like a cat. She groaned, shutting her eyes tightly. But she could still hear it. After about a minute of trying to ignore the sound, she sat up and rubbed her eyes. "Where is that noise coming from?" Her dorm had extra layers of padding to muffle the sounds of her craft after one too many complaints, so had a stray somehow found itself inside? The thought made her panic somewhat because if that cat decided to take a crap on her carpets, it'd take weeks to get rid of the smell. Then she found the source of the yowling in the middle of the room. A black cat which Jackie took a moment to realize was Gacha, Bastet's cat. "Gacha...? What are you doing here?" she groaned as she got up. The cat never made a single sound before, so this was a little strange to say the least. Jackie knew that the cat could phase in and out of the shadows, but she had never visited the dorm before, at least not without Bastet. Coming to the realization of that, she looked at the cat suspiciously, saying to herself, "I don't think I like this realization." She sprung up and put on a shirt before making her way out her door and to Bastet's, she knocked on the door twice, calling out her friend's name before letting herself in. That's when she saw her crawling on the floor. "What happened to you?!" she said, slithering over to Bastet as quickly as she could to give her a hand.

"Legendary essence?! You-?!" She looked at Bastet's lower half and shook her head. "I'll scold you about that later. Right now, how are you feeling? Are you hurt?" For now, Jackie just acted as support, keeping Bastet upright, or at least trying to. Jackie's skin was still a little cold to the touch but the situation Bastet was in was urgent enough in her mind to be fully awake despite it. She looked at the strange new serpentine body and felt a bit of herself recoil thinking how it must have felt to have your legs suddenly get squished and stretched into a tail like that.

"Well, if you find my body nasty, then yeah, it's pretty horrific down there, something you'd see in horror movies." Jackie snickered. "Well since you're not hurt I can say that it's almost unfair. Your scales look so pretty with the way they reflect light. Makes them look all silky." Jackie was still worried for Bastet, but she hoped that joking a little bit will stop any panic Bastet might feel when she sees her new body. "But are you sure you're not in pain? Because I can go get the nurse and be back here before you know it. I won't even stop by the vending machine."

If her reaction to her new tail was anything to go by, Bastet seemed to be alright. That was a huge relief to Jackie as she was ready to bolt out that door and drag the nurse here if she had to. The naga began to circle her friend to look at the tail. She did notice the little twitch, but it looked like Bastet didn't get the manual for operating the tail. "Uh... well, if you're not paralyzed, then I suppose your brain just can't comprehend how to move it yet... kind of like when I learned how to wink. You just gotta figure out which muscle to move. Hmm..." She stopped at Bastet's side and crouched down, putting a pair of hands where Bastet's thigh would have been. "Here, maybe if I put some pressure on you, you'll know which muscle you have to focus on." She pressed against the tail rhythmically as if giving someone CPR. "You feeling the muscles here?"

"Yeah, that's right. I forgot which technique helped, but I did hold one of my eyelids down while opening the other one, and keeping one open while I blinked." Jackie did something similar when she learned to cross her eyes, which was holding a finger up really close and focusing on that. Eventually, imagining that there was something really close to her face did the trick and she could do that on command. But back to the situation at play, Jackie saw that the tail was twitching a little more, which was some progress. "Alright, gonna press a little harder," She put more pressure in, and switched to alternating where she pressed, kind of like a cat kneading on fabric, only without the claws.