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"Um... Pearl?" said Marina, glancing sideways at her short, Inkling friend, chewing on a mouthful of sugary sweets. "Don't you think you should slow down a little...?"

"Who are you, my mum?" said Pearl, swallowing her mouthful and grabbing another handful of gummy candy. "I'm a famous musician, I can eat as many sweets as I like!"

"Yes, but, isn't this supposed to be our movie night?" said Marina. "I mean, you invited me and Agent 8 here and you're going to finish the snacks before she even gets here!"

"Oh, stop worrying, Marina," said Pearl, swallowing another mouthful. "I bought loads. There'll be plenty left when- Huh? Where did all the sweets go?" Pearl stared in shock at the empty bowl in front of her. She'd filled it to the brim with gummy snacks! Had she really eaten them all in the last ten minutes? She sank back into the sofa and sighed.

"Well, it's 8's fault for taking so long," she said, with a shrug. "If she'd wanted snacks she would have been on time."

"She is on time," said Marina. "I only got here early because I was recording with you, remember?"

"Then why did you let me sit here with a bowl of sweets?" said Pearl. "You should have known I wouldn't have been able to control myself around- Hey, stop giggling! If there aren't any snacks to share then movie night's gonna be ruined! What are we gonna do?"

"Don't worry about it," said Marina, with a grin. "I thought this might happen, so I brought this!" Saying that, the Octoling reached inside her top and produced something with a flourish. It looked like a calculator, but with a pair of blinking pink lights protruding from the top.

"Um..." said Pearl, after staring at for a moment. "How is doing maths going to solve the problem...?"

"Just wait and see..." said Marina, focusing on the device in front of her as she tapped something long and complicated at its buttons. "I've been modifying this calculator in my free time and I finally made it work. Now, if I put the code in correctly, then..."

The Octoling nodded at the string of numbers on the small screen and pointed the device at a magazine on the table. She pressed another button and a beam of bright-pink light shot from the small, blinking diodes, bathing the magazine in its glow before it vanished in a pink flash, leaving a cupcake in its place.

"What the!?" said Pearl, flinching backwards in shock. "The magazine... Why is it a cupcake!?"

"Pretty good, right?" said Marina, picking up the small, frosted cake and taking a bite. "I call it the transmogrifier! Just enter the code for whatever you want, point the device at anything and... Ta-da! It transforms! It can't make a whole bowl of sweets out of one object, but if we gather loads of leaves, or pebbles, or something, we can refill that bowl in no time! I'll just put in the code for gummy candy and..."

"Hey, let me have a try!" said Pearl, snatching the device from her friend as soon as she finished tapping the buttons. "I wanna see what kind of sweet it turns this table into!"

"Hey, give that back!" said Marina. "It's a highly sophistacted piece of equipment! It's too dangerous to mess around with!"

She grabbed the machine, but Pearl wouldn't let go. The two girls pulled against each other, trying to wrest the transmogrifier from each other's grasp until, eventually, it flew from both their hands. Both girls watched it tumble through the air, leaping forwards to try and catch it, but tripping over the coffee table in front of them, unable to stop the device as it clattered onto the wooden surface in front of them, landing face down and shooting out a beam of bright-pink light. A light that englufed both girls, who didn't even have time to scream before their entire bodies were engulfed in a blinding, pink flash...

...And then it faded. Pearl looked around herself in a panic, alarmed at how huge the room around her now seemed to be. She'd just been struck by that light which she'd seen a turn a magazine into a cake, but... she was still okay, right? She had to be! When Marina said her machine could transform anything, she obviously just meant objects, not people. There was no way she'd make a device that could transform an Inkling or an Octoling into food! ...But then, why did she feel so weird? Not just small, but soft and squidgy and... sugary. She was laying flat on her back, her body's shape feeling as though she were in squid form. But, if she was just in squid form, why could she feel a cavity inside her? A space that would be empty if it wasn't filled with thick, sticky goop...

The girl-who-hoped-she-was-still-a-girl was panicking now. What had happened to her!? Why could she feel her insides filled with liquid like that? She felt almost like a sweet filled with sugary, flavoured syrup... Wait. A sweet? Wasn't the transmogrifier set to transform its target into gummy candy? A thought entered her mind that made her want to scream, but she found, to her horror, that she couldn't. She should have released a soundwave-shattering shriek, but instead she lay there, staring up at the ceiling in forced, frightened silence. It wasn't just that she couldn't open her mouth, it was like she no longer had a mouth to open... That was enough! She needed to get up to take a proper look at herself! ...But she couldn't. No matter how she strained, she couldn't budge any part of her distressingly sweet-feeling self a single inch. She was completely inanimate!

Completely terrified now, the probably-no-longer-an-Inkling girl tried desperately - without being able to lower the head she wasn't sure she still had - to look down at herself as best she could. ...What she saw would have made her screech so loud that every window in her mansion would have shattered if she still had lungs. It was a sweet. It was her. Her familiar, Inkling's body was gone. Replaced entirely by a squid-shaped lump of pink, gummy candy. The machine did work on people, after all. She'd been transformed into a chewy, sugary sweet!

The girl-turned-sweet screamed inside her no-longer-existant head. This couldn't be happening! There was no way this was real! ...But it was real. She was no longer an Inkling girl, but a simple, bite-sized, delicious-looking piece of candy. The former-girl wanted to scream again as she realised that she'd just thought of herself as "delicious-looking". She didn't want to look tasty! Tasty sweets got eaten! She wanted to turn back to her normal, capable of moving self, not discover how it felt to be chewed and swallowed! She wanted to sing, to dance, to host Off the Hook with Marina, not to spend her remaining days worrying about her eventual ingestion! ...But she couldn't do any of those things. Not as the simple, sugary treat she had become. She needed to turn back right now! Where was Marina? She wouldn't leave her as a gummy snack, would she?

...But that was exactly what Marina was going to do, because she had no choice. She wasn't an Octoling anymore, after all. The former-girl looked down at her new, gummy tentacles and felt like crying. ...Except she couldn't, because her eyes were nothing more than moulded shapes in her squidgy, sugary, new body. She told Pearl the transmogrifier was too dangerous to mess around with and now look what happened! She'd been reduced to the form of an inanimate, edible sweet! This was so frustrating! The device should definitely be capable of restoring her old body and it was right there on the table with her, but she couldn't even move towards it, let alone operate it! All she could do was lay there, sinking into a sugary despair in forced, inanimate silence, hoping against hope that somehow Pearl had avoided the transformation and would find a way to turn her back to normal...

...But where was Pearl? If she was still herself and not a simple sweet like her, then she should be there, looming over her now-tiny, goo-filled form. ...But there was no-one there. If the transformed-girl still had a spine, a shiver would have run down it. Desperately, filled with dread at what she might discover, the new sweet look around at her surroundings as best she could. And that was when she saw it. A piece of pink candy. A gummy sweet just like she had become laying next to her, shaped like a squid with a chewy crown moulded on top. Pearl. It had to be her. The octoling-turned-chewy-sweet wanted to cry more than ever as she saw her also-transfomed friend laying, apparently-lifelessly beside her. They'd both been turned into sweets! What kind of horror and panic was running through the other former-girl's now-sugary mind? What hope did they have of ever turning back if they were both inanimate and probably-scrumptious?

"Hello?" said a familiar voice from the other end of the now-cavernous room. "Pearl? Marina? The door was open, so I let myself in. ...Where are you two?"

If the former-girl still had a heart, it would have leapt. Agent 8! She'd arrived! The Octoling girl suddenly appeared above the girls-turned-sweets, looking around in confusion. Maybe there was hope after all! Their non-transformed friend might recognise them and find a way to help! Desperately, the formerly-Octoling candy tried to call out to the giant-looking girl looming above her, but of course, she couldn't. She was just a sweet now and sweets cannot talk. All she could do was lay there, hoping that the still-Octoling girl would look down and notice them...

"Huh," said 8. "This is definitely the home theatre room, but there's no sign of them... Did I get the time wrong, or something?" The Octoling continued to look around the room, waiting for a few minutes, completely oblivious to the silent screams from the girls-turned-sweets beneath her. She shrugged.

"Well, I guess I'll come back later," she said. "They'll probably call when... Huh? What are these?"

The former-girls on the table watched as the Octoling leaned down towards them, her now-gigantic looking face dwarfing their tiny, brightly-coloured sweet bodies. Every sugary particle of the transformed-girls beings strained to tell her who they were, what had happened, that she needed to turn them back, but they couldn't say any of those things. They could only hope that the look of confusion on their non-transformed friend's face would turn into one of recognition.

"Hahah, these sweets look Pearl and Marina!" said 8, smiling widely. "That's pretty fresh! I guess they must be some new kind of Off the Hook merchandise!"

The new sweet's no-longer-existant hearts would have dropped at those words. All hope of escaping their inanimate, edible situation evaporated in an instant. They hadn't been recognised. Agent 8 just saw them as they now were. A pair of gummy sweets which resembled their former-selves. She thought they were pieces of edible merchandise! They didn't just look like Pearl and Marina, they were Pearl and Marina; not just a pair of sweets! ...But they were just a pair of sweets. Simple pieces of chewy candy that had no way of telling anyone that they had ever been anything more... Both transformed-girls sank into despair as they contemplated a lifetime of inanimate, sugary silence. Despair that immediately turned to terror as they saw their still-Octoling friend licking her lips...

"Hmm, I got kinda tired from walking all the way over here..." she said, unaware of the horrified internal screeching below her. "I could really do with a sugar boost. But which one to try first? I think... the pink one. It might be raspberry flavour!"

The sweet-which-had-been-Pearl screamed internally as 8 plucked her gummy, sugary form from the table, pinching her between her thumb and forefinger. She tried to struggle, to get away, to tell her non-transformed captor to put her down. ...But it was useless. The new sweet could do nothing to resist as she was lifted up, higher and higher towards her former-friend's face. Why was this happening to her!? She'd just wanted to watch a movie with her friends and now one of them was going to eat her! She wished she could still cry as her soon-to-be-devourer smiled and squeezed her newly-squidgy form, the formerly-Inkling candy feeling her gooey insides squelching horribly inside her, her gummy body feeling like it was ready to burst. How would it feel when that actually happened? When 8's jaws clenched on top of her, her teeth cleaving through her fruit-flavoured self, squirting out her syrupy insides into her consumer's mouth? She didn't want to find out, but she was going to. The Octoling's mouth was open and the former-girl was being lifted towards it, the gaping, tooth-lined black hole that would be the last thing she ever saw. Why had she picked her? Why couldn't she have eaten Marina instead!? ...Not that the other girl-turned-sweet's fate was any better. She'd heard 8 say she'd try Pearl "first", so she knew her turn to be chewed and swallowed was coming. She just had to watch her friend being eaten first.

"Wait," said Agent 8, suddenly stopping short when the pink new sweet was just a hair's breadth from her waiting lips, feeling her warm breath on her now-candy form. "This is Pearl's house, so these must be her sweets... Maybe she'll get mad if I eat them?"

She looked at the gummy transformed-girl in her hand, having no way of knowing just how unhappy Pearl would be if she popped it into her mouth. She hesitated for a moment, wondering if eating the sweet-she-had-no-idea-was-a-former-girl would be worth any potential telling off, then sighed, putting the girl-turned-candy back on the table.

"I'll just buy some of my own sweets on the way back home," she said. "Pearl should be grateful I didn't eat her snacks!"

The former-girl was grateful. Relief washing over her as she was placed back on the tabletop without even being licked or nibbled. She'd survived her potential devouring! She'd looked down the throat of a girl that was ready to eat her and had come away intact! The new sweet was so happy not to have been chewed up and reduced to a sugary mush slowly dissolving in her consumer's stomach that she didn't notice the non-transformed girl leaving, not until she heard the front door closing in the distance. ...Although, her leaving was a relief as well. She was just a sweet now and as long as she was stuck in this sugary, inanimate body, then having people nearby was going to be nothing but terrifying. After all, what else was anyone going to do with a sweet like the one she'd become other than eat it?

...Suddenly the girl-turned-sweet's relief at not being eaten vanished. She wasn't being digested, but she was still a sweet and that wasn't going to change. She was stuck like this. Doomed to spend the rest of her days in inanimate silence, waiting for the day that someone with less self-control than 8 came and picked her up... And if she never was eaten, what then? She'd just lay there forever, slowly rotting away to nothing as she was consumed by mould... She glanced sideways at the sweet-which-had-been-Marina beside her, wishing that they could at least talk to each other so she could say sorry for grabbing the transmogrifier...

Commissioned by . Hope you like it!

Description

"Um... Pearl?" said Marina, glancing sideways at her short, Inkling friend, chewing on a mouthful of sugary sweets. "Don't you think you should slow down a little...?"

"Who are you, my mum?" said Pearl, swallowing her mouthful and grabbing another handful of gummy candy. "I'm a famous musician, I can eat as many sweets as I like!"

"Yes, but, isn't this supposed to be our movie night?" said Marina. "I mean, you invited me and Agent 8 here and you're going to finish the snacks before she even gets here!"

"Oh, stop worrying, Marina," said Pearl, swallowing another mouthful. "I bought loads. There'll be plenty left when- Huh? Where did all the sweets go?" Pearl stared in shock at the empty bowl in front of her. She'd filled it to the brim with gummy snacks! Had she really eaten them all in the last ten minutes? She sank back into the sofa and sighed.

"Well, it's 8's fault for taking so long," she said, with a shrug. "If she'd wanted snacks she would have been on time."

"She is on time," said Marina. "I only got here early because I was recording with you, remember?"

"Then why did you let me sit here with a bowl of sweets?" said Pearl. "You should have known I wouldn't have been able to control myself around- Hey, stop giggling! If there aren't any snacks to share then movie night's gonna be ruined! What are we gonna do?"

"Don't worry about it," said Marina, with a grin. "I thought this might happen, so I brought this!" Saying that, the Octoling reached inside her top and produced something with a flourish. It looked like a calculator, but with a pair of blinking pink lights protruding from the top.

"Um..." said Pearl, after staring at for a moment. "How is doing maths going to solve the problem...?"

"Just wait and see..." said Marina, focusing on the device in front of her as she tapped something long and complicated at its buttons. "I've been modifying this calculator in my free time and I finally made it work. Now, if I put the code in correctly, then..."

The Octoling nodded at the string of numbers on the small screen and pointed the device at a magazine on the table. She pressed another button and a beam of bright-pink light shot from the small, blinking diodes, bathing the magazine in its glow before it vanished in a pink flash, leaving a cupcake in its place.

"What the!?" said Pearl, flinching backwards in shock. "The magazine... Why is it a cupcake!?"

"Pretty good, right?" said Marina, picking up the small, frosted cake and taking a bite. "I call it the transmogrifier! Just enter the code for whatever you want, point the device at anything and... Ta-da! It transforms! It can't make a whole bowl of sweets out of one object, but if we gather loads of leaves, or pebbles, or something, we can refill that bowl in no time! I'll just put in the code for gummy candy and..."

"Hey, let me have a try!" said Pearl, snatching the device from her friend as soon as she finished tapping the buttons. "I wanna see what kind of sweet it turns this table into!"

"Hey, give that back!" said Marina. "It's a highly sophistacted piece of equipment! It's too dangerous to mess around with!"

She grabbed the machine, but Pearl wouldn't let go. The two girls pulled against each other, trying to wrest the transmogrifier from each other's grasp until, eventually, it flew from both their hands. Both girls watched it tumble through the air, leaping forwards to try and catch it, but tripping over the coffee table in front of them, unable to stop the device as it clattered onto the wooden surface in front of them, landing face down and shooting out a beam of bright-pink light. A light that englufed both girls, who didn't even have time to scream before their entire bodies were engulfed in a blinding, pink flash...

...And then it faded. Pearl looked around herself in a panic, alarmed at how huge the room around her now seemed to be. She'd just been struck by that light which she'd seen a turn a magazine into a cake, but... she was still okay, right? She had to be! When Marina said her machine could transform anything, she obviously just meant objects, not people. There was no way she'd make a device that could transform an Inkling or an Octoling into food! ...But then, why did she feel so weird? Not just small, but soft and squidgy and... sugary. She was laying flat on her back, her body's shape feeling as though she were in squid form. But, if she was just in squid form, why could she feel a cavity inside her? A space that would be empty if it wasn't filled with thick, sticky goop...

The girl-who-hoped-she-was-still-a-girl was panicking now. What had happened to her!? Why could she feel her insides filled with liquid like that? She felt almost like a sweet filled with sugary, flavoured syrup... Wait. A sweet? Wasn't the transmogrifier set to transform its target into gummy candy? A thought entered her mind that made her want to scream, but she found, to her horror, that she couldn't. She should have released a soundwave-shattering shriek, but instead she lay there, staring up at the ceiling in forced, frightened silence. It wasn't just that she couldn't open her mouth, it was like she no longer had a mouth to open... That was enough! She needed to get up to take a proper look at herself! ...But she couldn't. No matter how she strained, she couldn't budge any part of her distressingly sweet-feeling self a single inch. She was completely inanimate!

Completely terrified now, the probably-no-longer-an-Inkling girl tried desperately - without being able to lower the head she wasn't sure she still had - to look down at herself as best she could. ...What she saw would have made her screech so loud that every window in her mansion would have shattered if she still had lungs. It was a sweet. It was her. Her familiar, Inkling's body was gone. Replaced entirely by a squid-shaped lump of pink, gummy candy. The machine did work on people, after all. She'd been transformed into a chewy, sugary sweet!

The girl-turned-sweet screamed inside her no-longer-existant head. This couldn't be happening! There was no way this was real! ...But it was real. She was no longer an Inkling girl, but a simple, bite-sized, delicious-looking piece of candy. The former-girl wanted to scream again as she realised that she'd just thought of herself as "delicious-looking". She didn't want to look tasty! Tasty sweets got eaten! She wanted to turn back to her normal, capable of moving self, not discover how it felt to be chewed and swallowed! She wanted to sing, to dance, to host Off the Hook with Marina, not to spend her remaining days worrying about her eventual ingestion! ...But she couldn't do any of those things. Not as the simple, sugary treat she had become. She needed to turn back right now! Where was Marina? She wouldn't leave her as a gummy snack, would she?

...But that was exactly what Marina was going to do, because she had no choice. She wasn't an Octoling anymore, after all. The former-girl looked down at her new, gummy tentacles and felt like crying. ...Except she couldn't, because her eyes were nothing more than moulded shapes in her squidgy, sugary, new body. She told Pearl the transmogrifier was too dangerous to mess around with and now look what happened! She'd been reduced to the form of an inanimate, edible sweet! This was so frustrating! The device should definitely be capable of restoring her old body and it was right there on the table with her, but she couldn't even move towards it, let alone operate it! All she could do was lay there, sinking into a sugary despair in forced, inanimate silence, hoping against hope that somehow Pearl had avoided the transformation and would find a way to turn her back to normal...

...But where was Pearl? If she was still herself and not a simple sweet like her, then she should be there, looming over her now-tiny, goo-filled form. ...But there was no-one there. If the transformed-girl still had a spine, a shiver would have run down it. Desperately, filled with dread at what she might discover, the new sweet look around at her surroundings as best she could. And that was when she saw it. A piece of pink candy. A gummy sweet just like she had become laying next to her, shaped like a squid with a chewy crown moulded on top. Pearl. It had to be her. The octoling-turned-chewy-sweet wanted to cry more than ever as she saw her also-transfomed friend laying, apparently-lifelessly beside her. They'd both been turned into sweets! What kind of horror and panic was running through the other former-girl's now-sugary mind? What hope did they have of ever turning back if they were both inanimate and probably-scrumptious?

"Hello?" said a familiar voice from the other end of the now-cavernous room. "Pearl? Marina? The door was open, so I let myself in. ...Where are you two?"

If the former-girl still had a heart, it would have leapt. Agent 8! She'd arrived! The Octoling girl suddenly appeared above the girls-turned-sweets, looking around in confusion. Maybe there was hope after all! Their non-transformed friend might recognise them and find a way to help! Desperately, the formerly-Octoling candy tried to call out to the giant-looking girl looming above her, but of course, she couldn't. She was just a sweet now and sweets cannot talk. All she could do was lay there, hoping that the still-Octoling girl would look down and notice them...

"Huh," said 8. "This is definitely the home theatre room, but there's no sign of them... Did I get the time wrong, or something?" The Octoling continued to look around the room, waiting for a few minutes, completely oblivious to the silent screams from the girls-turned-sweets beneath her. She shrugged.

"Well, I guess I'll come back later," she said. "They'll probably call when... Huh? What are these?"

The former-girls on the table watched as the Octoling leaned down towards them, her now-gigantic looking face dwarfing their tiny, brightly-coloured sweet bodies. Every sugary particle of the transformed-girls beings strained to tell her who they were, what had happened, that she needed to turn them back, but they couldn't say any of those things. They could only hope that the look of confusion on their non-transformed friend's face would turn into one of recognition.

"Hahah, these sweets look Pearl and Marina!" said 8, smiling widely. "That's pretty fresh! I guess they must be some new kind of Off the Hook merchandise!"

The new sweet's no-longer-existant hearts would have dropped at those words. All hope of escaping their inanimate, edible situation evaporated in an instant. They hadn't been recognised. Agent 8 just saw them as they now were. A pair of gummy sweets which resembled their former-selves. She thought they were pieces of edible merchandise! They didn't just look like Pearl and Marina, they were Pearl and Marina; not just a pair of sweets! ...But they were just a pair of sweets. Simple pieces of chewy candy that had no way of telling anyone that they had ever been anything more... Both transformed-girls sank into despair as they contemplated a lifetime of inanimate, sugary silence. Despair that immediately turned to terror as they saw their still-Octoling friend licking her lips...

"Hmm, I got kinda tired from walking all the way over here..." she said, unaware of the horrified internal screeching below her. "I could really do with a sugar boost. But which one to try first? I think... the pink one. It might be raspberry flavour!"

The sweet-which-had-been-Pearl screamed internally as 8 plucked her gummy, sugary form from the table, pinching her between her thumb and forefinger. She tried to struggle, to get away, to tell her non-transformed captor to put her down. ...But it was useless. The new sweet could do nothing to resist as she was lifted up, higher and higher towards her former-friend's face. Why was this happening to her!? She'd just wanted to watch a movie with her friends and now one of them was going to eat her! She wished she could still cry as her soon-to-be-devourer smiled and squeezed her newly-squidgy form, the formerly-Inkling candy feeling her gooey insides squelching horribly inside her, her gummy body feeling like it was ready to burst. How would it feel when that actually happened? When 8's jaws clenched on top of her, her teeth cleaving through her fruit-flavoured self, squirting out her syrupy insides into her consumer's mouth? She didn't want to find out, but she was going to. The Octoling's mouth was open and the former-girl was being lifted towards it, the gaping, tooth-lined black hole that would be the last thing she ever saw. Why had she picked her? Why couldn't she have eaten Marina instead!? ...Not that the other girl-turned-sweet's fate was any better. She'd heard 8 say she'd try Pearl "first", so she knew her turn to be chewed and swallowed was coming. She just had to watch her friend being eaten first.

"Wait," said Agent 8, suddenly stopping short when the pink new sweet was just a hair's breadth from her waiting lips, feeling her warm breath on her now-candy form. "This is Pearl's house, so these must be her sweets... Maybe she'll get mad if I eat them?"

She looked at the gummy transformed-girl in her hand, having no way of knowing just how unhappy Pearl would be if she popped it into her mouth. She hesitated for a moment, wondering if eating the sweet-she-had-no-idea-was-a-former-girl would be worth any potential telling off, then sighed, putting the girl-turned-candy back on the table.

"I'll just buy some of my own sweets on the way back home," she said. "Pearl should be grateful I didn't eat her snacks!"

The former-girl was grateful. Relief washing over her as she was placed back on the tabletop without even being licked or nibbled. She'd survived her potential devouring! She'd looked down the throat of a girl that was ready to eat her and had come away intact! The new sweet was so happy not to have been chewed up and reduced to a sugary mush slowly dissolving in her consumer's stomach that she didn't notice the non-transformed girl leaving, not until she heard the front door closing in the distance. ...Although, her leaving was a relief as well. She was just a sweet now and as long as she was stuck in this sugary, inanimate body, then having people nearby was going to be nothing but terrifying. After all, what else was anyone going to do with a sweet like the one she'd become other than eat it?

...Suddenly the girl-turned-sweet's relief at not being eaten vanished. She wasn't being digested, but she was still a sweet and that wasn't going to change. She was stuck like this. Doomed to spend the rest of her days in inanimate silence, waiting for the day that someone with less self-control than 8 came and picked her up... And if she never was eaten, what then? She'd just lay there forever, slowly rotting away to nothing as she was consumed by mould... She glanced sideways at the sweet-which-had-been-Marina beside her, wishing that they could at least talk to each other so she could say sorry for grabbing the transmogrifier...

Commissioned by . Hope you like it!