I guess I thought I could be part of this, I never had this kind of thing before

“That was so good!” Morgana’s face was glowing as a relaxed smile spread across her lips. She patted her stomach as she walked down the street with a skip in her step.

“I’m glad you liked it,” Nick said with a smile of his own, reflecting the relief he felt. So far things were going well between him and Morgana. He could only hope that the date would continue like this. The coffee breakfast was a nice way to reset the mood, and the perky goth seemed far less apprehensive and nervous.

She turned back to him, blushing a little. “…You were right,” she admitted with a sheepish smile on her face. “I was… kind of hungry this morning. I was just being stubborn.”

In the moment it had been too embarrassing to admit, but now that the issue had been resolved her guilt over her earlier dishonesty was hanging over her head.

Nick honestly didn’t mind. But he was glad that Morgana was being so considerate of him. He gave her a reassuring smile.

“I’m just glad you’re feeling better,” he said. “Are you sure that was enough?”

Morgana’s blush deepened again as shame crept into her expression even as she tried to maintain a calm face. “That… it was fine!” She assured him, shaking her head firmly. “It… it was fine. Don’t, um… worry…”

He could see that she was getting worked up, but he also wasn’t sure how “fine” it really was. Caught between two different responses Nick found himself at a loss for what to say. And it seemed like Morgana realized that, because she bit her lip and **** herself to be more upfront with him.

“The truth is… I don’t… have a very big appetite,” she admitted. “I never have. As you can… probably tell.”

Sheepishly, she gestured at herself, “showing off” her rail-thin body for Nick’s assessment. He could see the strained expression on her face and understood how tough this probably was for her, and felt sympathetic towards her plight; after all, given her overjoyed reaction when she’d received her transformations, it was obvious that she didn’t think very highly of her original appearance, particularly her body’s proportions.

“Morgana…”

“…Y-yes?” Morgana squeaked, looking anxiously at him. She braced herself for criticism, knowing she deserved it. After all, her scrawny body wasn’t anything special! What would he tell her? That he preferred her original look? No, he was sweeter than that, he’d probably tell her that she was fine this way, but that he was still looking forward to when her transformation suppression wore off and she was back to her old self.

“This may be rude… but there’s something I always wanted to ask you but never really had the chance,” Nick said quietly, and the somber expression on his face gave Morgana pause.

Morgana knew all about Nick’s tortured past. The solemn expression on the jacket of his book cover was one of the things that had captivated her; an author so young and yet so haunted, with such a morose and deep gaze in his eyes… it filled her heart with wonder!

She could see that same deep, meaningful look in his eyes right now! It was like he was gazing into the depths of her soul! Morgana’s heart skipped a beat and she tried to prevent herself from swooning. If she couldn’t look the part of a cool and confident goth girl, at least she could maintain her composure, right?

Sweating, she channeled her inner Dawn, pushing imaginary glasses up her nose as she held her ground and did some math equations in her brain. Single digit multiplication, her specialty!

“…You can ask me, if you want,” she said, brushing one of her twintails over her shoulder in an effort to appear nonchalant. Her lips quivered unknowingly to her. “I’m pretty cool about that sort of thing, what’s up?”

Yeah, right, Nick wished he could believe her but he knew that “cool” wasn’t a word that described Morgana, in any definition of the term. Even right now her face looked like it was over a hundred degrees!

But knowing how much she was trying to change as a person, he decided to indulge her. If she wanted him to treat her like a confident, unflappable girl instead of a hot mess, he would oblige; after all, it was the only way he could think of to help her become the person she wanted to be.

Even though he feared the answer, he asked the question regardless. “Morgana, you were really happy when you got your transformations, right? The, um…” It was a little awkward to ask, but Nick powered through, clumsily cupping his hands over his chest to mime giant boobs. “Body transformations that you negated.”

Morgana kept blushing but nodded in confirmation. “Yeah, they… they were so wonderful,” she murmured dreamily. She had spent so long checking out her appearance in the mirror those first few days here- even though she no longer looked like that, she could see herself perfectly in that appearance.

Nick swallowed. “So… you… must not have liked your appearance… like this,” he said, knowing he wasn’t doing this right even as the words left his mouth. He felt like his stepmother right now, unable to say what he wanted to say correctly.

The wince she made crushed him.

“…Why would you ask that?” Morgana tried to conceal the disappointment in her quivering voice. She took a step back and brought her arms in close, hunching over in a vain attempt to shield her unsightly appearance from him. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? I’m… I don’t have any boobs like this… I’m an A-cup, and just barely. And my ass is flat, and… and I have such bad acne…”

The one part of her that wasn’t flawed was her teeth, and even then their straightness was a result of years of extensive orthodontic work that had made her the laughingstock of her middle-school. “Cyber Jaw” was a name she doubted she’d ever live down back in her hometown.

She looked up into Nick’s eyes, searching his face for answers. Why would he ask her such a thing? Why… why would he…?

…But what Morgana saw seemed to defy all of her expectations. He looked sad, and sympathetic to her plight. But not in the way she’d anticipated. That look in his eye, it was like…

…Like he truly didn’t understand her pain.

Nick stepped closer and she almost backed away again, only to stop herself at the last minute. This was why she’d gone out with him like this, right? This was why she’d spent 9000 BP, some of it borrowed from Dawn, before meeting him.

So she could face him as the meek, ugly girl she’d used to be and see how he treated her. So she could know for sure how he really felt about her as a person.

But Morgana never imagined that the way he looked at her would hurt this much.

“…Morgana, I understand that you don’t like your body very much,” Nick said, sounding like a complete jerk wording it that way. “But I don’t understand why.”

Morgana stared at him in confusion. What… was he stupid or something? Or just blind? She rubbed her eyes, trying to make sense of it. He does see what I look like, right? Scrawny boobs, spindly little legs, pimples? …Wait, is this my Sotto Voce transformation kicking in?! Oh no, I should have thought of that! We’ve been talking so much he must be incredibly horny now! So horny that it doesn’t matter how ugly I look, he still wants me like that!

It was a hole in Morgana’s plan that she was only just now realizing.

The flustered and frantic goth was so panicked that she didn’t even realize that Nick couldn’t care less about something like that. Yes, her transformation was arousing him- and the lack of relief from his earlier encounter with Amelia certainly didn’t help- but that had nothing to do with what he was saying.

“I think you look cute, Morgana,” he said, hoping he could make up for his clumsiness earlier.

Morgana stared at him, stunned.

“…Cute?” The dumbfounded witch’s mouth fell open. “I… look, cute, that… that’s not… you think I’m cute!?”

“Yes,” Nick said. “Don’t get me wrong, there’s an obvious difference. With, with your transformations, yeah, you look… amazing. There’s no question about that.” What his state of arousal WAS doing was stripping his words of their subtlety.

Morgana blushed, feeling the hunger in his eyes.

“But I think you’re cute like this, too. I mean… you suppressed your transformations today because you wanted to see how I treated you, and I’m trying to show you… that… that I don’t really care that much,” Nick stammered out. He really wasn’t doing this right. “I mean… when it comes to a date… it really doesn’t matter to me what my partner looks like, you know?”

“So if I looked even uglier, if I wasn’t wearing makeup, that wouldn’t change anything?” Morgana huffed, not believing him.

Nick winced. This was a verbal trap that he’d set up for himself without realizing it, like a fucking moron. If he said no, then she’d just keep escalating out of stubbornness until it got to the point of “Well, what if I dunked a bucket of acid over my head and melted my skin off, would you still date me then?”

Morgana was a pretty **** person when she got worked up, he got to see that for himself when she went wild on her family with the transformation gun back in that challenge.

So he pivoted.

“You were happy about those transformations because you’ve never been happy with your body, then, is that right?” Nick approached her. “If I’m being honest, I was actually surprised by your response. See, up until you came on the show, I was really against the transformations that were going around for everyone.”

Morgana blinked, surprised to hear that. “…Really? You were?”

Nick nodded, chewing on his lip. “Mhm. See, most of the girls… they really weren’t all that happy with their transformations. Sure, now they’ve gotten used to them, and before that, there were definitely a couple of cases where someone like Kim or Carly or Gina was at least okay with a transformation they got, but… you were the first time I ever saw someone so happy about being transformed. It was like you were being given what you always wanted. And that… it stunned me a little, to be honest.”

Morgana blushed, smiling an awkward smile. Those first few days on the island, that entire first round she was here, it was a very strange memory for her, one that made her cringe to remember if she was being perfectly honest.

“…It really was like a dream come true,” she admitted. Without even realizing it she’d started to relax again, letting her arms hang down at her sides while Nick looked at her body. She unconsciously presented herself to him. “All through middle school and high school I saw pretty girls go through puberty, their breasts coming in, their hips getting wider, and me, well… I just grew taller and thinner, you know?”

She looked down at her meager chest, and sighed. It had been quite a while since she’d been able to see the tops of her shoes without bending over.

“I always felt invisible compared to them,” she sighed, playing with her hair. She raised her eyes up and looked at Nick. “Except when I was being mocked or picked on…”

Nick winced. Morgana had really had it rough in school, the poor thing. No wonder she’d leapt at the chance to leave her life behind and come join him. He remembered how lonely she’d looked holed up in her room, all by herself. That amazed gleam in her eyes when she recognized him, and the joy when he told her he was taking her away.

Most of the women in his harem had been brought to this island under duress; even if they’d all grown to like being here for the most part, Morgana was by far the most eager to be a part of this. It was rather overwhelming.

And very endearing.

“It’s weird, you can say it,” Morgana mumbled sheepishly. “I’m weird… wanting to come here, wanting to… be transformed…”

“It’s weird,” Nick said in spite of himself. “I-I mean… not in a bad way, it’s just… …Look, I’ve always had stuff I didn’t like about my body too,” he admitted, looking down. “This morning I left early to go work out with Dani before our date, because I’m trying to get in shape.”

Morgana blinked and he saw her nose twitch slightly, reminding him far too late that he’d never taken that shower he’d meant to. Oh well.

Nick’s face reddened. “I never thought about a transformation to make me muscular, or better looking, or anything… although there was a transformation vote for me, once, before you showed up…”

“That was where you got your Skeleton Key transformation, right?” Morgana recalled. She wasn’t there, but she’d heard about it from Dawn. And she was glad that one had won; before getting her Like a Virgin transformation Morgana had been very nervous about actually having sex for the first time. If not for that transformation of Nick’s she was worried that it would have stung pretty bad.

“Look, this is all coming out super wrong,” Nick sighed, wondering why he’d even brought this topic up in the first place instead of trying to continue the date. All the momentum they’d built up from the café had withered away by this point. “I just meant to say that I think you’re really cute, even with small boobs and a skinny body, alright? I don’t think you needed your transformations to make me be attracted to you, is what I mean… agh, this is coming out so twisted…”

He really wished someone would just shoot him now. Where was Dakota popping in to cause trouble? Or Nola, for that matter? He would even take an impromptu date crash from Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin, even if she’d be a pain in the ass to separate from later.

But no such salvation was coming for him, unfortunately.

Still… maybe he didn’t need it.

Morgana was smiling, after all.

“It’s okay,” she gently assured him, shaking her head. Her face was red with embarrassment but she was still happy. “I understand what you mean, alright? Don’t worry.”

Nick sighed in relief. “Oh, good… because honestly, I’m not sure if I even fully understood what I was trying to say…”

That got her to start giggling. She’d gotten so worried about his response, but an incoherent ramble like the one he’d made actually soothed some of her own doubts.

And wasn’t that what was really important?

“So what now?” She asked him. “Do you think… you would prefer me like this?”

She clasped her hands behind her back and stood up straight, pushing out what small amount of chest she had for his perusal.

Honestly, she wasn’t sure what answer she wanted him to give.

No… that wasn’t quite accurate.

She wanted the truth from him, that’s what she wanted.

Nick looked her in the eyes and prepared to give it to her, even though he knew it might hurt her to hear.

“Morgana… to be perfectly honest? I… I don’t think I would prefer you like this,” he admitted to her, already wincing in anticipation of the wince he expected to see.

But Morgana didn’t even flinch. She just blinked.

“I mean… I kind of expected that,” she admitted. “Let me guess- you prefer my other self, because I’m happier like that, right? With big boobs, looking like a sexy witch?”

Morgana knew Nick’s dodges well enough by now. He would avoid answering the question by changing the rules; make it about her instead of him.

“My favorite outfit is whatever you like to wear most!”

An answer like that was cheap, and yet very effective.

Nick blushed. He could feel her stare burning holes in him, and he knew she was giving him an out, in a strange way.

“That… is a part of it,” he admitted, not taking the easy way out of the question. Morgana wanted to hear how he felt, and she was going to hear it. “But that isn’t all. You want to know my preferences? What I find attractive? Well… I liked you having big boobs. That’s the truth, Morgana. I do think you looked… more attractive that way.”

Nick wished he could lie to her. Just be the charming guy who would coddle her with praise and flattery to make her feel better.

But Morgana was working so hard. She was being diligent and she had gone to such lengths to present herself like this for their date.

He didn’t want to spurn her efforts with a lie. So even if it made him sound like a jerk, he had to be honest with her.

Morgana did look surprised to hear that. She didn’t expect such a blunt response from him, especially about her breasts.

She was so stunned that it took her a second for her to start blushing. She quickly covered her chest and looked down, her mouth flopping open and closed as she tried to process what he was saying.

“That, uh…”

“But that doesn’t mean I’m not attracted to you like this, either!” Nick clarified swiftly, not wanting her to think that the only thing he cared about was her body. “For me, I have a pretty wide range of… preferences. I think you look cute like this, and I think you look hot the other way. And cute, too, you’re also cute like that, um…”

“N-no, I-I get it…” Morgana’s face was burning now, the compliments were coming too fast for her to handle them. Nick could see smoke rising from her head.

He worried that he’d messed up somewhere… but he needed to be honest, right?

With a sigh, Nick slumped his shoulders and scratched his head.

“Talk about twisted,” he grumbled to himself. “Sorry, just… I know you don’t want me to see you as just a sex object… that response must not have helped very much, huh?”

Morgana giggled an awkward, uncomfortable giggle, like the kind of giggle you made when someone told a very inappropriate joke that you nevertheless found funny.

“No, it… it’s okay!” She hastily tried to assure him. “The fact that you’re so twisted up about this… that… it actually makes me feel a little better…”

Nick blinked, surprised. “It… it does?” He asked cautiously.

Morgana nodded slowly. “Yeah… uh… it’s like, um…” She scratched her cheek. “Like… you’re being really considerate of my feelings… knowing I’m self-conscious about my appearance… and if you only cared about my looks, you wouldn’t really bother… right?”

She knew that Nick was a nice guy. Seeing him panicking like this for her sake just reinforced it.

Nick sighed in relief. “That’s good,” he said, nodding. “I’m glad you… feel better about all this, then.”

Morgana nodded back to him. An awkward silence hung over their heads. “Yeah, it… it’s good, uh-huh…”

The silence returned.

“…Thanks, um, for saying I’m cute,” Morgana added. “Looking like this… it’s a relief to hear that my old self was cute to you.”

“No problem, it was easy,” Nick said without thinking, and Morgana blushed again.

Hopefully they could get the date back on track soon, before they both died of embarrassment.