The shower did hit the spot once I'd managed to beat  down the urge to just keep the shop closed and indulge myself with the white-haired minx of an apprentice about two hours before we were supposed to open up.  I came out of the back, pristine as a rose, and still gloriously naked as I tossed a towel at Zasha. 

"Go get cleaned up.  Shower's upstairs, get completely dry and brush out your hair.  When we open I expect you to look absolutely pristine."  I managed to thwap the towel dead center of her four breasts, lodging it perfectly in the crosshairs of her cleavage.

"Hey!" she looked confused for a second, then sheepishly extracted the towel from between her lovely twin breast pairs and shook her head, chuckling.  "So ah, what do I do for clothing? My old ones don't exactly fit anymore."

"We'll get you fitted for a proper uniform outfit later, but for the next couple days, we shall be doing business 'au naturale," I smirked and spread my hands beside my head while my lower pair grandly swept downward, indicating my gloriously unclothed, hermaphroditic form.

Her eyes went wide.  "Naked, at work, for several days... with customers?"  Her voice had a rather panicked edge.

"Of course, haven't you ever been into a proper Alchemy Artistic establishments?"  My poor girl had not one clue just what she'd signed up for.  Properly breaking her in was going to be fun.

"Well, yeah.  I've been in a few of them when associates and friends went in to buy things."  She gave me an odd look.  "Everyone had clothing, and looked fairly normal."

I actually laughed.  "Dear I said Proper Alchemy Artistic, it's a designation recognized by the movers and shakers, the wealthy, high class and business oriented.  This isn't a standard operation.  I cater to the elite of the city, as well as a few others in direct competition with Nuveri Kas, Alora Mekina and Tash Vaklan to name a very specific few."

"I have no idea who those people are."  My apprentice, everyone.  She was completely bereft of culture and awareness.

"Well then, what to your understanding comprise a true master of alchemy?"  This was a question I rarely asked.  Most of the people who'd tried and failed to keep my attention long enough to become actual alchemically trained apprentices never asked questions, or admitted ignorance for fear of disappointing me.  Zasha, however, while sharp and delightfully borderline nymphomaniacal when she got going, was about as subtle as a marching army.

"So far as I have ever been able to tell, the best alchemists with the most reliable results are the ones who don't wind up transforming themselves and are able to stay relatively normal."  She looked very curious.

"Good answer, and more honest than any of your predecessors ever came up with."  I beckoned her closer, took her hands and traced my body with her fingers, not in a sexual way, but in an exploratory way.  This was a lesson, not seduction.  "What do you feel, any imperfections, poorly joined alterations, things that don't seem to fit the image I choose to offer to anyone?"

"No," she looked thoughtful.  "That was one of the things I actually noticed while we were... yeah."  She got a little sheepish as her mind drifted back to the three hours of bodily explorations we had shared that mostly involved me hip-deep in the succulent pussy Mikaela, her best friend, existed as until the next time they slept.  "Mikaela says she thinks you mean true masters sculpt themselves, to show off their skill by making themselves living art via transformation."

"Oh my."  I slipped to a knee, looking at the soft folds of labia between Zasha's thighs.  I knew she could see and hear me, despite her lack of eyes and ears.  I leaned in and gently slid my tongue across her labial "mouth" as a gentle reward and I was rewarded with a pleasured quiver and warm happiness from the helpless little pussy.  "First time anyone has gotten it right."

I stood up, and smirked.  "Exactly as Mikaela surmised.  If you can change yourself in a controlled fashion it's a sign that you absolutely know what you're doing.  All of my transformed employees, from my own body and the people comprising it's myriad parts whom you introduced yourself to rather intimately, to Katja in the window and yourself are, at some point, expected to become living works of art.  It's a show of skill, your particular appearance, and the seamless, alternating transition of yourself and Mikaela between master of your own body and helpless prisoner in your own pleasurable skin are an advertisement of sorts on top of being an absolute delight to reshape."

"So if I ask, you'd turn me into a work of art, to showcase your skill?"

"I would, but I'd much rather you do so yourself after a period learning how to do the work.  I admit, I cheated, and I know you are well aware that I'm a Half-Demon."  She nodded at my words.  "But still, that's a plus if I'm to be for hire for transformations for people who will pay to have their fantasies fulfilled."

"What should I do to myself, to prove skill?" 

I shrugged.  "That, my dear, is really up to you.  Nuveri Kas is a Naga after her transformation, a perfectly scaled representation of a classic gorgon, albeit with a serpentine tail instead of legs, and her snake-hair and tail are comprised of several volunteers when she and I were competing in Freya's Realm many years ago.  Both of us developed an early love for fusion  in the home town of Sadar.  Allanda's influence, I'm afraid."

"Who is Allanda?"  Zasha looked genuinely curious.

"I'll tell you when you're clean.  Go.  Wash.  Off with you."

You can tell when someone is motivated to get a job done by how they move to deal with a task.  Zasha veritably scampered off like she intended to get clean as fast as she could.  She had to slow down because her tits were bouncing frantically off of each other, and she had to slow to a fast, graceful walk to keep the four globes from doing more than wobbling sensually.  She'd learn.

Since she was new to feminine hygeine (and I had left a list of instructions upstairs, both to see if she could follow instructions, and to determine just how terrible her reading skills actually were) I figured I had right up until I opened the shop doors to get some administrative work done, and get some letters responded to.

I actually hate the deep push to more modern implements of messaging, or sterile, impersonal offices and transformation areas.  I prefer the personal touches, from a shop that seems half-store, half exotic massage parlor intended to make people feel welcome.  My living quarters were, of course, upstairs so I liked people to feel like welcome guests in both a home or business.  I prefer hand-written letters delivered by courier as well, and I had taken great pains to learn proper penmanship and calligraphy, a practice that served me very well when I had first started my business closer to home.

Among other things, I had to pay the bills for the business, and keep the books in order.  That I was less artistic about but the letter from Aveline Wylder, one of the city's more prominent philanthropists, did warrant that very personal touch.  She was also one of the women who graced my shop shortly after saying yes to her husband's proposal of marriage, hardly an imaginative alteration, though certainly lucrative.  She had wanted to look supermodel perfect, with the caveat of wanting actual curves rather than boyish frailty for her wedding day. 

Aveline was an enthusiast for the various organizations that helped the needy and the more handicapped transformees.  The allowance given by her husband for her charitable contributions included Regina, the Black Company Search and Rescue teams who would enter demon-infested regions like Karma's realm to attempt rescues, or at least provide closure to families who needed to know what happened as well as the oddity called the Sisterhood of the Vulva.

The letter was an invitation to the fundraiser gala, an event she hosted once a year to assist the sisterhood's relief operations and fund the alchemical mixes.  I had received an invitation last year, and had auctioned off some of my lesser, safer mixtures for the cause and donated the proceeds to the sisterhood while enjoying a rather nice tax break on the side.  It seemed this time was different, and she had received her husband's blessing to fully join her most favored charity organization's ranks while remaining married to him.

She was asking that I conduct the very public initiation and transformation at the gala.  Far from the typical spoiled and vapid "philanthropist" trophy wife who did the work solely for the prestige and social status, I had found Aveline to be sharp-witted, engaging and genuinely involved with her varying charities.  She was also an unabashedly sexual woman whom after meeting her, I had no trouble imagining her wearing out her husband in grand fashion.  But she was joining an organization of men and women whom were dedicated to transforming themselves into perfect receptacles to provide relief to people and creatures who lived with the sexual frustration of being unable to engage in relations with more normally-proportioned men and women.

I decided that, for a friend, I could afford a bit of extravagance to make her wishes come true, and more.  The letter I wrote was florid, elaborate, and promised that if she set aside the role of host for me for the latter half of the party, I would make the gala's fundraiser memorable and an event talked about for years to come.

When I was done, I actually did a thing I despised, and picked up the phone.  I wanted to talk to the man behind the funding, and arrange this event and the climax which I wanted to be Aveline's transformation so that she wouldn't have to worry about her husband's approval in the nights to come after the game was played out.

The sisterhood of the vulva was, by and large, not one of my primary customers as charity organizations could almost never pay the extravagant fees charged by any of the best body sculptors, and even if they could, they could do ten with the funds required to purchase a single stable elixir of stabilized Dcum from myself by going through more economical routes.  Despite this, I did favors for Aveline for them in the form of transformative elixirs and aphrodisiacs geared for their societal proclivities and she greased the wheels of body art fashion to get my work showcased in places that normally took decades of proven work to get into.  The end result was excessively profitable for me, and all it cost me was time and some resources that required a fraction of the investment that her patronage brought me.  This sort of gala, and high-profile transformation in public could absolutely make or break an alchemist's career.

As I hung up the phone, I had an appointment for an assistant who I assume had been voluntold to come be a demonstration model for the basic outline of the transformation he and I had hammered out as acceptable while still fulfilling the purpose she intended, and would refine.  It was terrifying to think that Herald Wylder had turned out to be as sharp, engaging and interesting as his wife was.  I had perhaps three days to hammer out all of the details, but that was hardly an issue for me.  I'd done more with less in the past, and I intended to cheat of course.

"So who is Allanda?"  Zasha emerged, still gloriously naked, with a hairbrush mere minutes before the shop was to open.  She was lovely when cleaned up, and her hair was untangled and she was taking her time with the hairbrush, delicately insuring it looked good.

"Allanda," I spoke as I got up and circled my apprentice, trying to step carefully as not to arouse the pussies in my heels too much lest I leave juice spots all over my clean floor, inspecting her and taking a whiff.  "is an Avatar of Freya.  A living prison for those who would commit rather heinous crimes in my hometown of Sadar.  She's an erotically delightful amalgamation of vagina-tipped breasts, pussies and cocks with serpentine cock-hair like a gorgon, and a pussy for a mouth, but the special part about her, is when she has a condemned criminal brought to her, she gives them one last night of bliss, like a final request before an execution."

I smelled the wrong perfume, she'd used the wrong shampoo, obviously, and she'd only suppressed the scent of wild sex.  Nails were unpolished, lipstick not applied, and not even an attempt at makeup.  She was also shuddering at the 'last request' bit.  She'd followed a few of the simpler instructions, the ones with mostly one-syllable words, to the letter, however.

"When that night of passion ends, the criminal is gone, absorbed into one of her many pussies, or penises that decorate her body.  They get off lightly to some, trapped in an eternity of ecstasy, but the rub is, they're stuck in her for a literal eternity, nothing more than soft and firm sex organs to be used by lovers as they will.  My body is actually sculpted in homage to her, as I did meet her once, and the encounter left an impression, one I actually cherish."

"So, that's why you're obsessed with body part fusions?"

"Probably," I smiled.  "They are my absolute favorite medium of transformation.  There is little sweeter than feeling the emotions as someone reduced to little more than a penis, or vagina, breast or ass as they take in their new existence, realize what has happened, as they're put to their first proper use."

"you do realize it's terrifying when you wax poetic about turning people into helpless toys and sex orifices and make it sound like it's something everyone should try at least once, and actually bleed temptation into the air, enticement that I imagine waaay to many people get taken in by."

"Your perception and insight are exactly why I decided to keep you."

"Now I'm really scared."

"As you should be," I purred.  "Go flip the open sign, and set Katja into a provocative pose, dear.  Then grab me the large book off the shelf in the next room and bring it to the desk.  It'll be the one you can't read a title for that has sigils instead of letters on it."

She nodded and moved to her tasks then stopped as I spoke again.  "And Zasha, we need to go over how I expect your hygeine tasks to be completed in the future."

I decided that I had made the right decision in my apprentices when she failed to offer any excuses, and simply nodded.  "Yes, Mistress Alisaundra, I will try to do better in the future."

I quietly checked her work after she "set" Katja.  The living mannequin had been set in a pose and expression evocative of a woman pretending to try covering her modesty while skeptically evaluating whether a lover was worth the time it had taken to disrobe.  Exactly the kind of imagery I wanted to evoke.

As she brought the heavy, earmarked, post-it-note infested, comment-ridden tome to the desk I beckoned her over.  "It appears, my dear, that we have to get something resembling clothing for you sooner than I thought."

"Oh?"

"We will be attending a gala for the Sisterhood of the Vulva, one of my regular patrons and sponsors has invited me to conduct her initiation transformation, and I intend to make a rather lovely spectacle of the process, rather like some of the transformation shows people love."

"Sisterhood of the Vulva?  Aren't they the people who change themselves into vaginal orifice farms to provide relief to transformees or something?"

I nodded.  "Although for the nonce, I'd prefer if you'd attempt to be more respectful in your descriptions in the future.  This is a rather important opportunity for this shop."

"Would we be expected to show up transformed ourselves?"

"In your case, no.  In my case, I have enough pussies to be the centerpiece of an orgy to begin with so if I do anything it'll likely be minor.  I don't wish to steal the show away from my friend."

"Fair enough."

The shop door rang, and two women, one middle-aged and still fairly attractive, and one young woman in her mid-twenties with her.  Both were fairly attractive, though nothing extravagant.  I was guessing older sister/baby sister as their body language was all wrong for mother and daughter.

Zasha, bless her heart, actually took the initiative and let out her inner street hustler as she beamed a smile at the pair and spoke, "Welcome to Casual Wickedry, Ladies, my name is Zasha, and I'm here to help with anything you require.  Do you have an appointment?"

I said nothing, merely raising an eyebrow as my girl engaged the customers.  In my morning lust-haze I had pretty much forgotten that I had specifically hired her as a greeter and had failed to coach her in handling customers.  Her initiative and proper handling told me an abundance of her practical experience she had claimed.  As she did her magic I began paging through my formulae for interesting vaginally-themed transformation elixirs and such for the gala.

"No, no appointment, we were sent here by Mathilda Reyes, the manager of The Lover's Retreat."  The older woman clearly knew what she was doing, and I instantly recognized the establishment.  Mathilda Reyes was a brothel owner, one of the more prominent ones in the city, surrounding townships.  She maintained cool business relations with all of the major players in the body sculpting scene, and her Lover's Retreat was a fantasy playground featuring exotic creatures of myth, legend and sensual fantasy.

Mathilda had actually tried to entice me to work for her, given my transformations and proclivities.  But I got a lot of work from her despite my polite refusal.  Some of her more popular attractions, such as the trio of koi mermaids who were known for their lack of discrimination when choosing lovers, a serpentine naga dominatrix who would coil and constrict her lovers, even as she made their sexual fantasies come true and the six-armed, hermaphroditic masseuse so popular amongst stressed businessmen and women had come from my shop.

"Please have a seat, and Mistress Alisaundra will speak to you as soon as she is ready.  Can I get you anything for the moment?"

"No, thank you."  The two women looked rather bemused with Zasha's nudity, and the younger one shot a glance to me as my upper-right breast yawned, sticking his tongue out briefly then smacking his lips gently.  Her eyes went rather wide at the sight.

I set two bookmarks into my book, then set it aside, standing and looking at the two women.  The elder of the two was at the cusp of "still in her prime" and "Ready to go over the hill."  Her dark hair spilled in wavy curls to her shoulders, and her once-tightly lithe form had a bit of middle age sag creeping in, though it was clear she took care of herself.  She had lovely skin, a  smattering of freckles and beautiful green eyes.  It was obvious why Mathilda had decided to send her to me.

"Retirement day from the local scene?" I asked.

She smiled and nodded.  "I actually enjoy the work, unlike most of the girls, but it's getting harder to keep up with the ones still in their early twenties."

"And you?" I asked the younger one. Her hair was straight and black, but her eyes were wide, and doe-brown.  She was clearly unused to seeing someone like me naked.

"I... ah..."  She was trying to shake herself back to reality, having been staring at the lips on my breasts which occasionally did things, and the cocks my fingertips were as well as the one between my legs.

"New to the business?"

She nodded.  "I asked to go with Skye here because she told me about how much she loved her job, and how she was looking forward to going to the Retreat."