Shorter chapter today, but that's fine - it's supposed to be an in-between-arcs sort of thing. It would've been funny if I'd waited another week on this one, granted (Christmas in July!), but I'm already planning on taking a week off on posting next month. I'd rather not do that for two of them.

Chapter 18 – Christmas

Christmas was a bit more of a quiet affair than it was last year, but not by much in Sixer's opinion.

A part of him suspected it had to do with Maria not giving gifts directly from her subspace and instead doing something else entirely.

She checked their library of fiction and gave more booksfor Christmas instead.

"Hey, you found Dungeonjavelin! That's so cool!" Dipper picked up the book off the top of the three he'd just unwrapped. "I've only heard about these ones!"

"They're re-printing and re-releasing them, so I figured I'd snag a couple while I had the chance," Maria explained. "Almost reminds me of the Dragonlance books that were released in my dimension, but these ones are a bit different."

"Do you have copies of those?" Tyrone looked up from what looked like a dungeon master's manual.

"I might. It's been a while since I sorted through the digital database I have." Maria made a face. "I wish that my books as physical copies, though. That would have been nice."

"Considering how long you have lived for, I am not surprised you had to switch from physical copies to digital ones," Stanford commented. "But there really is nothing like a good book."

"Agreed." Maria nodded.

The rest of the day was mostly spent reading – or, in Journal's case, sulking because he didn't get to make off with the books everyone else had received and add them to his collection. Maria did get him a few thick old tomes she'd found at the Gravity Falls swapmeet over the summer, though, so the book demon wasn't as vocal about it as he could have been.

"What'd you get, Maria?" Mizar asked. "You haven't shown off your stuff yet."

"Hm? Oh, yeah." Maria grabbed a box that was sitting nearby and pulled out a red, square cloth with a winged sphere embroidered on the corner. "Palkia sent me this…huh."

"That big pink dragon that we saw when we clobbered Cipher, ya mean?" Crescent asked. He frowned his green eyes at the item. "What'd he give ya that for?"

"I'm not sure. The note that's with it says it's meant to do something if I wear it where I wore my old one…so long as I've got my badge pinned in the usual spot. Huh." Maria reached into her jacket and pulled out the same winged sphere that was embroidered into the corner, except this was a metal pin. She stuck it to the corner where the embroidery was. "I wonder what it is, though."

"Why not try it on?" Mabel asked. "That's the only way to find out, right?" She leaned over her collection of magical wizard school books that Maria had dug up from somewhere in a used bookstore. "You don't think it's gonna do anything too crazy, right?"

"No, I don't think so." Maria raised the bandanna around her neck and started to tie it behind her.

Sixer's ears perked up as Maria finished tying the bandanna. She pulled her hands away as the others watched.

For a moment, nothing happened.

And then Maria felt a prickle start at the base of her spine and work its way up to her head as her limbs thinned and her fingers pulled back into her hands, forming paws.

Maria's surprise only increased when white fur covered what she could see of herself.

"Holy Arceus." Maria turned and looked behind her at the nine, red-tipped tails that were behind her. "The shifting I was expecting, but this?"

"You can talk looking like that?"

Maria felt the fox-like ears atop her head swivel, and she looked over at Star. "I well…kinda? Most of what you're hearing is my current speech being translated because of my Badge." She nosed at the winged sphere attached to the bandanna. "When you're a Guildmaster, it's easier to talk to humans than if you were at any other rank. Pika can do this."

"You're beautiful."

Maria turned her head sharply and stared at Sixer in surprise.

He pulled into himself a little as the others looked over at him in surprise.

"I-I was about to say the same thing," Stanford spoke up, glancing at his counterpart. "Is…that a Pokémon you've taken the form of? You look…incredibly similar to a kitsune."

Maria eyed Sixer for a moment longer, then looked over at Stanford and nodded. "Yeah. This is a Ninetales, a Pokémon that has similar to kitsune. But…I'm used to being something smaller. A Vulpix, which turns into a Ninetales."

"What does that one look like?" Dipper leaned forward, looking interested.

Maria raised a white-furred paw as her nine tails swayed back and forth behind her, and a mirage of a small, six-tailed red fox materialized.

"Aww, that's so cute!" Mabel clapped her hands together. "And it turns into that? That's so cool!"

"But…the change isn't something that happens overtime…right?" Sixer looked up slowly, his ears perking up slightly.

Maria blinked at the question, then nodded. "Yeah. I would have needed to come in contact with something called a Fire Stone in order to evolve, but I guess Palkia decided I didn't need one."

"It looks like you're about the same size as Grunkle Sixer's," Pine spoke up. "You have a different feel of power than he does, though…"

"Grunkle Sixer can shift too?!" Mabelcorn almost got up and did a happy dance, but Sphinx raised a lion paw and kept her lower unicorn half from dancing around and accidentally kicking someone in the face. "That's so cool! Why hasn't this come up before?"

"You…haven't asked?" Sixer offered.

"I already knew about his other form," Maria spoke up. "But I didn't see it as something that needed to be brought up at the time, since it was right before the end of summer."

The curious looks of the others faded almost immediately.

"I could…show you, if you liked," Sixer spoke up.

"Really?!" Mabel looked over excitedly.

"If you're comfortable with it," Maria spoke up. "Nobody's forcing you to do anything, Sixer."

Sixer paused at Maria's statement, then nodded slowly. "I…might as well, since it's come up." He lowered himself into a crouch, and then his body shifted as well.

Maria had seen this happen before, but seeing it happen again wasn't any less incredible. It also gave Maria an indication of what most of her own transformation into a Ninetales looked like, as Sixer's body was forced into a different shape.

Sixer shook his fox form out and sat down, looking around the room as his ears swiveled in response to the quiet gasps from the others in the living room. His six tails curled around himself and over his paws, hiding them from sight.

"So cool!" Mabel exclaimed in delight.

"You're almost as big as Maria is, Grunkle Sixer!" Dipper spoke up. "I-I mean – the tails have a factor in that, and it looks like you're an inch shorter than she is?"

Maria and Sixer looked at each other, Maria tilting her head slightly. "Hm. That would be something to test." She rose to her feet and took a few careful steps forward. "I think I'll stay looking like this for a couple hours to figure out how to walk in a form this big. It's weird."

Sixer moved to the side slightly, clearing Maria a space so that she could sit down next to him and compare heights. Sure enough, at the shoulder, Maria was slightly taller than Sixer.

"This is unexpected," Sixer admitted. His voice carried a low growl to it.

"It certainly is," Maria agreed. Sixer's eyes widened in response, his ears flicking up.

"What'd Grunkle Ford say?" Star asked.

"Just that this was unexpected," Maria replied. She paused when she saw the stares. "What?"

"You never said anything about being able to understand common creatures," Stanford commented. "That's quite fascinating."

"I wasn't able to understand him before," Maria replied. "It might be something specific to this form."

"Well, I think it's great!" Mabel declared. "Now you guys can do lots of cool things together while looking like that! Like do magic and stuff like that!"

"That may be, but I don't want to push things too far when I haven't been a Pokémon in a long time," Maria replied. "I'm gonna have to get used to moving around like this first, and then adjust my fire abilities accordingly. It's been a while since I've spat a proper flamethrower like this."

"Do you…"

Maria turned to look at Sixer curiously.

"Do you think it's likely I could do the same?" Sixer asked.

"You mean you haven't tried?"

Sixer shook his head.

"What's he saying?" Mizar asked.

"He's just wondering about using firepower when looking like this," Maria translated. She looked back at Sixer. "And I'm definitely cool with teaching you how to do that. We could probably figure it out together, later."

Sixer tilted his head slightly, then nodded.

"Um…" Dipper frowned. "How are you going to change back from that? Or are you stuck like that now?" He motioned to Maria's appearance.

Maria frowned at the question. "There was a note in the box…" She got to her feet and moved a little more quickly across the room, back to where she had been sitting before. Her tails lifted up behind her slightly, in order to keep from dragging across the ground.

When Maria reached the box, she nosed aside some of the tissue and reached the paper she'd put aside when she'd opened the present. The red and white sphere on the side with Palkia's footprint in the middle caught her attention the most. "Here we go…oh, of course he wrote this in footprint runes."

"Footprint runes?" Stanford leaned over.

"It's a Pokémon-specific language that is something of a dead language. Makes sense that a Legendary would know how to use it. Thankfully I know how to read it…oh, there we go." Maria nodded, then reached up with a paw and tugged on the bandanna.

The knot came undone, and as the bandanna fell to the floor, Maria's transformation reversed. In seconds, she was sitting on the floor in human form again, shaking her head as some of her hair tried to fall over her face.

"There we go." Maria pushed her hair back behind her ears and picked up the bandanna. "This could be pretty useful in the future, especially if I go back to the Pokémon realm and decide to reconnect with the Guild or the other regions that I've been to." She tucked the bandanna into her jacket with a smile that almost looked nostalgic. "I'm going to have to thank Palkia for this, especially the Ninetales transformation. I didn't think I'd ever end up becoming one."

"It must have something to do with how long you've lived," Stanford remarked.

"Maybe." Maria shrugged. "It would be something to ask him later."

Sixer shifted back to human form as well. Maria caught him staring as he finished the transformation, but he averted his gaze quickly and started looking over his own gifts with a strange intensity. Like he didn't intend to meet her gaze right at that moment.

Maria frowned at the movement, but decided against pressing. She shook her head slightly instead. "Let's see what else I've managed to get for Christmas this time…if Palkia got me something, I wonder who else might have…."

The rest of the day passed by in a joyful, bouncy blur as the large family of Pines showed off their gifts and settled down into reading the books or messing with whatever else they happened to get.

Maria pulled away from the rest of the group to give a small, wooden box more attention than she'd been able to give before. It looked like something that had been crudely made, and while it had Odin's gift tag attached, it didn't look like something he might have made.

She opened it, and sucked in a quiet breath.

The contents of the box had a black-and-white photograph of a young woman with her hair done up in a ponytail, wearing civilian clothes from a time period Maria wasn't entirely familiar with. Even though there wasn't any color, she recognized the woman by the shape of her face, and the expression she had.

Maria turned the photo over.

"Liz Carlsdale, Amestris—"

The date was smudged out, but Maria felt an emotional pull at her core all the same.

She carefully put it back in the box, closed the lid, and sighed quietly.

I miss you. So much.

In her grief, she forgot to consider Sixer's blurted compliment of her Ninetales form, and how sudden and odd it had been.