Okay, Jon told herself, while she waited at the bus stop. You can do this. Just find the stone, and then everything can go back to normal. She could handle one day like this, right? Right.
She heard footsteps, and turned to see Karyn, still the cat-girl she had become yesterday afternoon. Karyn regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, then put on a friendly smile. "Hey!" she said. "What's your name?"
Jon half-smiled. "It's me, Karyn."
Karyn gaped. "Jon!? Seriously?" Jon nodded, and Karyn suppressed a laugh. "I-I'm s-sorry," she said, "I shouldn't be laughing at this, it's just..."
Jon nodded. "I understand," she said. "But thanks for not laughing. Karyn, I didn't leave the stone at your house yesterday, did I?"
Karyn thought for a moment, then shook her head. "Uh, no, I don't think so. You mean you don't know where it is?"
Jon shrugged. "Um, I'm not sure. I thought I had it with me, but I wasn't sure, so I thought maybe you had it, or I left it at school yesterday."
The cat-girl let out a low whistle. "We'd better find it before someone else does, if that's the case."
Jon nodded. "I think I probably would've left it in my locker, so I'll look there first. You just keep an eye out for it, okay?"
"Right."
The bus pulled up to the stop and opened its doors. Karyn climbed in, and Jon slithered after her. They made their way to the very back of the bus, where Jon coiled up in the storage are behind the back row of seats, and Karyn joined her, claiming what floor space wasn't taken up by Jon's tail.
Although Jon got more stares than she was comfortable with, her conversation with Karyn helped keep her mind off that issue, and the ride was otherwise uneventful. The bus arrived and everybody disembarked as usual. However, when Jon entered the school building, she was immediately singled out and greeted by one of the faculty, an older woman.
"You're Jon, right?" she said."Your mother called to let us know you'd be needing an examination. Come along, dear." She grabbed Jon by the hand and started tugging, gently but firmly. Jon turned to Karyn for assistance, but she seemed a little nervous.
"Uh, listen, Jon," she said, "I've really got to get to class, but I'll catch you later." Karyn turned to go, and Jon thought she caught a brief glimpse of her trying to hide a smirk. With nobody else to turn to, Jon reasoned that it would probably be best to just play along, and followed the older woman to the nurse's office.
There was another girl waiting in the office, also a naga. Her jet-black hair matched strikingly well with her banded red, black, and yellow scales. Her face and figure seemed familiar, but Jon couldn't quite place her. Jon moved a few seats down from her, trying at first to sit on the chair, as the other girl was somehow managing, then giving up after several awkward slidings off the cushion and just coiling up on the floor.
They sat there for a while, waiting. Jon wondered if she should say something, but couldn't come up with something that wasn't forced and awkward along the lines of "so, looks like you lost your body too?" Instead, she spent the time trying to remember which color pattern it was that signified the venomous...whatever kind of snake it was that the other girl was.
Presently, the nurse came out from the back of the room. "Ah, Ms. MacMillan, Ms. Madison," she said. "Glad to see you got here okay. I know this is probably a little awkward for you, but we just want to do a short exam to make sure there's nothing wrong with you."
MacMillan? Jon thought. The face and the build were right; could that other girl be Sarah!? Her hair was a different color, but then, Jon's had changed, too...
All doubt was removed when she opened her mouth. "Nothing wrong with me!?" she yelped, in what was unmistakeably Sarah's voice. "Look at me! I'm a freak! How can there be 'nothing wrong with me!?'"
"I understand this is upsetting for you," the nurse said, "but I'm talking about making sure there are no injuries or defects in your new body. You have to admit, being in a healthy unfamiliar body is still better than being in a sick one."
Sarah said nothing, but followed the nurse back into the examination area. Jon couldn't see anything through the curtain, but there weren't any unsettling noises, except Sarah's sharp intake of breath after the nurse had explained about the blood sample she was going to take. After a few minutes, Sarah slithered out of the exam area and the nurse motioned for Jon to come in, which she did.
The exam was mostly unremarkable. There was a lot of poking and prodding, but nothing too invasive, except for the one time the nurse pried apart the ventral scales over Jon's privates; that was unnerving, but it seemed to be only to make sure that things had turned out all right down there, and not to visit upon Jon any of the horror stories she'd heard from Karyn about ob-gyn checkups.
Jon also had a blood sample drawn, but she'd never had a problem with needles. She slithered out to the main part of the office as the nurse put both blood samples into some sort of analyzer. Once that had started doing its work, the nurse began filling out paperwork for them, with their new species, gender, hair color, and other statistics, with the "duration" field left noticeably empty. Not long after the forms were filled out, there was a short beep from the analyzer, and the nurse went to check the results.
"Well," asked Sarah, "how long before this is over with?"
The nurse sighed. "I'm sorry," she said, "but both your transformations are permanent."
Sarah began to freak out, clearly not okay with the idea of spending the rest of her lifebas a naga. Jon was similarily stunned for a moment, then got ahold of herself. Don't worry, she thought, this can all be over with as soon as Karyn and I find the stone.
Mikey, on the other hand, had no such reassurances to cushion the blow of learning that she was going to be a demon-girl for the rest of her life, and went into absolute hysterics. It was nearly one o'clock before she was coherent enough to leave the elementary school infirmary and return to class. Her mind reeled as she slowly walked back to the classroom, hooves clomping on the linoleum with every step, tail swishing behind her.
How would people treat her now? Would the girls see her as one of them? Would the boys tease her for being a girl now? Were people going to start expecting her to act all girly? Was she going to start acting girly? She didn't know, but it wouldn't take long for her to find out.
