Chapter 1: A Secret Wish
Moonlight shone through the window as Mei lay awake in her bed. Though it was the dead of night and she'd just returned from a long day of temple duties and karaoke, the redhead couldn't sleep; the events of the past few weeks were still fresh in her mind. It all felt so… weird, and cool.
Just a couple months ago, she was a normal girl; a devoted 4*Townie alongside her friends, and a dutiful daughter to her mom. That all changed after she turned thirteen and somehow turned into a giant red panda.
Mei experimentally flexed her wrist through the light, shifting from a human hand to a furry panda paw with a poof of smoke. By refusing to seal it away, she'd become so integrated with the spirit inside her that she could change select parts of her body at will, another upside that she was still discovering new uses for.
Initially, she thought of her new form as a curse. And who wouldn't? It was fat, clumsy, and stunk something fierce. Even mom hadn't wanted to be around her that day!
And yet her friends didn't run. Sure, they were scared at first (as anyone probably would be when confronted with a giant red monster), but they quickly grew to embrace her new form once they realised it was still Mei under all that fur.
She smiled. Miriam, Priya, and Abby were the best besties she could ever ask for. They always came through for her, even when Mei threw them away in a misguided pursuit of her mom's approval. And she got to see 4*Town with them! She even managed to befriend Tyler after realising that, for all his bluster, he was just insecure about also being a 4*Townie.
None of this would have happened without the panda, Mei knew. Although the panda form wasn't all sunshine and roses (memories of her injuring herself trying to stop her transformations, attacking Tyler in an animalistic rage and almost being killed by her giant panda mom during the concert all haunted her dreams), it was all a part of her now, for better or worse. And even if it wasn't permanently bonded with her, she'd never trade it for anything, not when it brought so much happiness into her life.
A tinge of sadness came through. Although she chose to keep the panda, none of her family members did; not even mom, who still implored her to give up the form even after the stadium incident.
In that sense, Mei felt… alone. She self-consciously brought a strand of red hair to her eye with her untransformed hand. Her bright red hair stuck out among her peers' darker shades, and especially her own family's pure blacks.
For all intents and purposes, Mei was the only person she knew who could and would transform into a panda. Sure, Miriam, Priya, Abby, and Tyler would always have her back, and she'd be eternally grateful to them, and she loved her parents with all her heart too, but none of them would truly get to experience the shared joy of turning into animals together, to become a mystical beast capable of flying through the skies with newfound confidence.
All except for one. Sun Yee, her ancient ancestor with a love of red pandas, so much so that she was the one who gave Mei and her family the red panda blessing to begin with. And she seemed pretty happy when Mei chose to accept it as part of herself instead of casting it aside like the rest of her family did. And if Sun Yee was in tune with nature enough to grant her descendants this ability, then…
What if she could make my besties pandas too?
It was a completely spontaneous plan, one Mei realized on the spot, and especially something she couldn't let anyone else find out about. She'd gotten a bit more assertive since she gained her new form, but she knew her mom would kill her if she got caught out this late.
Before she knew it, Mei found herself - after carefully listening to ensure her parents were asleep, slipping on a skirt, tights, socks, and shoes and stuffing her bed with animal plushes to simulate a sleeping body in case Ming looked in - sneaking out of her bedroom window. She didn't even need her clothes to combat the cool night chill – her transformations left her with a warmth that never left her chest – but she never knew who she might run into this late at night.
Whipping from left to right, Mei quickly raced through the temple door and closed it quietly to make sure she wouldn't be interrupted. Turning back, she found her target: the shrine of Sun Yee. Captured in art, her great ancestor looked graceful in her love for red pandas. Spirits floated around the ghostly figure as depicted on the paper.
As she knelt into her usual position, Mei realized, right then and there, confronted with the shrine of her ancestor, that she had no idea what to say. Sure, she knew her way around a pitch - those business classes with mom really paid off -but how do you even bring this idea up to your long dead ancestor?!
Okay, first things first. "Uh… hey, Sun Yee." Smooth, Mei, real smooth. "Sorry about the time I tried to destroy this place…" Though she hadn't actually done anything beyond knock over a table (courtesy of Ming and Jin's interference), she still felt a bit embarrassed about her behaviour that day.
"Anyways, I've got this itsy bitsy request for you..."
Mei tensed under her ancestor's unchanging stare, before quickly composing herself. "Although I didn't see it at first, I now recognise how much your blessing has changed my life, and for that, I'm grateful."
She continued, after a breath to calm herself. "My life has gotten a lot more fun since I got the panda, and I love the new freedom mom's given me because of all it brought. I feel a lot happier with it, and that's why… why…" No turning back now.
"Sun Yee, I wish my besties could turn into red pandas too!" Mei yelled (quietly; she didn't want to wake her parents) while splaying her arms out. After a moment of awkward silence, she quickly dusted herself off and got back to the kneeling position.
"The red panda thing's been a lot of fun so far, and it'd be so cool if Mir, Priya, Abby, and I guess Tyler could enjoy it themselves. Back when I got the panda, I was scared and alone. Hurting myself just to be normal again… but they saved me. They loved me, no matter what. They showed me that the panda was more than some big, dumb, stinky furball. If not for my besties, I'd have sealed a major part of myself away like the rest of my family did."
"And yeah, they're not blood-related to me, but they might as well be. They're like my second family; I'd do anything for them, and they for me too. They deserve a chance to share that kind of joy I got from leaping through the skies and rooftops. The kind of joy we shared together back when I kept the panda."
"So I implore you, Sun Yee. Please show my besties what it's like to be a panda with your mystical panda powers!"
After her repeated declaration, the red-haired girl looked around expectantly for a sign, that anything might have changed.
Nothing happened.
After another awkward moment, Mei huffed and moved to leave. "Sorry I disturbed you, Sun Yee… it was a dumb idea anyway. I'll just go back to bed now…"
Unbeknownst to Mei, Sun Yee's portrait began to emanate a pale blue aura shortly after she returned to her bedroom. Miniature thunderbolts flashed as mist began to fill the temple room.
Four panda spirits phased out of the ground and continued upwards to the skies high above the temple roof. With shared mischievous grins, they all separated to meet their new hosts.
As Mei went back to sleep, Miriam, Priya, Abby, and Tyler all similarly slept soundly. Even the panda spirits' ethereal glows weren't enough to wake them as they arrived in their new hosts' bedrooms.
The spirits wasted no time entering their hosts, at which point the four friends' previously tranquil dreams morphed into strange, bizarre visions. 4*Town members and other crushes took new, haunting forms, animals made strange noises while contorting into grotesque creatures. A sharp red light illuminated the disturbing scenes in shadow.
They all twitched and jittered nervously, but none of them woke up, the spirits' magic doing its job to keep them asleep throughout the worst of it.
As the nightmares progressed, each of the four's prone forms began to levitate into the air, dropping their covers to the side. Their faces pushed out into muzzles as their teeth sharpened. Panda ears spouted from their heads as tails grew from their rears. Their bodies inflated to become larger and heftier. Their hands and feet morphed into paws, with little claws poking out. Fur grew all over their bodies. However, unlike Mei's family, which had long settled on the species' default reddish orange, each of the friends turned a different color; Miriam turned lime green, Priya an orange-tinted yellow, Abby a hot pink and Tyler a purplish blue.
While this was going on, each of the four's dreams culminated in one thing: giant panda spirits flying right at them.
By the time the spirits' glow finally dissipated, the four teens' forms were now those of giant, fluffy red pandas. Yet despite it all, none of them woke, and they returned to blissful slumber in short order, their nightmares soon to be forgotten.