Biff walked in a daze as she left the hotel. She glanced behind… she wasn’t being followed. The world in a mere hour had changed. She had been so focused on her body and problems that would come of it and now she was thinking about… a future? How…
She had to take a moment to remember she had no idea where she was… though it wouldn’t be hard to find. Then she had to remember that she had wings and could easily fly up to see the way the roads all looked. A sweep upwards and suddenly she was aloft in the clouds. Her four feet dangling underneath as she surveyed the land beneath her. Emit did make her think of much but perhaps there was one thing in their conversation that she latched onto… one aspect that perhaps the shady dealer didn’t expect her to consider.
“There were other sphinxes before...”
This strange changes that took hold had happened in the past if perhaps very rarely. In ancient Greece it was said to have had many such people and they were treated with great respect in history. Some of them even worshipped as gods… the very thought! Why would she even feel like that would be appealing? To have people wait and do whatever she wanted… how did those people deal with it? It was a.. different age though. Biff never really wanted to ‘think’ she was better then anyone else… she wanted to ‘be’ better. She worked hard at sports and gym to be a footballer but now… now…
she was walking on four legs with a tail between her hind set. She was crawling on the ground with people looking down at her. Most intrigued some afraid and even a few laughing. Did Emit have a point? He had such a damn good point- why was it making so much sense!
The appeal of money… and the power that came with it. To convince other people to do enough for you? If one had enough money then one didn’t have a ‘need’ to do anything… but was that really a life? Did Emit even have a friend who would help him or was he surrounded only by butlers to do his bidding. Emit was a man who sold completely to the allure of wealth above… everything. His life was comfortable in that murky world but.. was it for her… should she step into that shadowy world and become some dark sphinx manipulating stock markets-
She could… if she had the power to see the future then she could pretty much do what she wanted couldn’t she? Though this power- this ability the- the trick- it wasn’t normal… it wasn’t natural and frankly it terrified her. Things that happened by chance- would they now be her fault if things went as they did? The vague impressions of the future only came to her in odd flashes of insight. When she was playing that game and saw all the passes and how to manipulate the game to win it was akin to being in a river… and she didn’t even know the game had stopped because the river kept on going. She was briefly lost in those torrents.
“I wish there was another sphinx around who could teach me,” she thought- but then again she wouldn’t wish this on anyone- not even her worst enemy.
She thought of going home but at the same time she felt unsafe. Even if her senses were telling her that there was no danger at all… she still wanted to be with someone. She wasn’t sure where she was flying and who she could trust but.. it seemed that her only friend at the moment was Jon.
The sphinx found herself looking at Jon’s house and remembering just how much of a family they were to each other. She flapped her wings and tapped her paw to Jon’s window.
Inside his bedroom Jon heard the odd sound. “Huh?” Something was scraping on the window pane. “Biff?”
“Yeah- just open up will you?” The sphinx said in an irritated manner. Doors, windows.. why did everything require hands!
Jon quickly opened the lock for her. A gust of air and the sphinx-girl was in his room. He held his breath as he watched the mythical creature crunch her huge paws onto the carpet. “Are you okay? After the game I was- well- we were all worried.” He guessed she was upset.
The sphinx batted her hair to the side. “Oh- right. That idiot Elliot. I completely forgot about it.”
“You forgot?” Jon blinked. Biff must have been utterly humiliated though… the things on that screen!
“I don’t care. Something bigger has come up and to be honest I don’t know who to talk to. I could talk to Sarah but I know what she’ll say. She’ll say no, play it safe and be all girly about it. I could talk to Collins but I also know her answer-”
“Because of… your future vision?” Jon probed.
“No! Because I know them. I know they want me to be something and I don’t know what the heck I am. I need someone who… doesn’t know me all that well.”
Jon gave a half smile at that. “Well… I’m happy to help. Just.. what’s the problem?”
Biff turned serious. “People- people saw what I did in that game. They are offering me money… huge amounts of money to tell them who wins in sports to gamble on. They are offering me a million dollars right now to tell them who will win in some big game tomorrow.”
Jon gulped. He stared at the sphinx in concern. “Do you… know who is going to win?”
“Yeah… I do.” Biff closed her eyes. “I couldn’t help myself. I peeked at the results when I was asked the question. Suddenly Biff cried. “What am I doing Jon! I’m so angry at this world- I’m my own man and always have been! Suddenly I’ve four legs no hands and a pair of wings like some monster-”
Jon suddenly hugged the woman. “You’re not a monster!” He gasped as his hands tenderly touched against her fur. There was a… warmth radiating from her. Focusing on her head he saw her humanity.. he tried to assure her but suddenly he felt tension. This was a lion’s body… huge paws...”
“You’re afraid of me too arn’t you,” Biff whispered.
“I was afraid of you as a human too,” Jon whispered to her pointed ear. “But.. that’s not important right now is it?”
“Heh… no.. I guess now.” Biff folded her ears. She was feeling weird being so close to… to Jon. Her head started to nestle into him. The scent that he now had- ah yes.. that felt right. She felt herself beginning to purr. “What should I do… should I just make a ton of money using my power in such a way?”
Jon hummed. “It’s not a… ‘bad’ idea as such Biff but...” He looked to the side and her body. “Is it really what you want to do?”
“What I want… am I ever going to get what I want?” Biff retorted back.
“Probably not but- you have to pick your battle there. I mean… your power is practically supernatural. If you use it just to make money it just isn’t very… heroic.”
“I’m not a hero!” Biff grumbled. “I was into sports and I wanted to be a footballer. Not to be some ‘super hero’ like a comic book. They don’t even portray them realistic. Even when they portray them to be realistic it isn’t realistic!”
Jon couldn’t help but smile at that. “Well- you got a point there but if it is your power… you can choose what to do with it right? You can use it to help people… or you can use it to help yourself. Maybe it doesn’t matter but for something like this… I dunno. You have to be you though in actions if not form.”
“Heh.. surprisingly profound from you Jon,” Biff admitted. “I’m a self centred jerk with the power to manipulate the stock market. I’m the worst person in the world to have this power. I shouldn’t have it I really shouldn’t.”
“But you do,” Jon sighed. “So it has to be right. You’re not really a self centred jerk any more. You have friends and people are looking out for you. Why not be yourself? Use your power to look out for them?”
“Look out for them…” Biff flattened her ears. Nobody ever looked out for her! Though when she thought about it… maybe some people have. Ms Collins.. Jon.. the football team (with one or two exceptions) the couch.. his teachers… she felt herself almost about to cry but held it back. She was not going to express such sentiments.
Biff couldn’t help herself as she threw herself onto Jon like a big cat. Her body on top- she needed someone… just a hug- maybe.
“Ah- Biff-” Jon cried out.
The sphinx looked down at Jon feeling… somehow a lot better. ‘maybe it’s a cat thing’ she thought. Still would it be wrong to indulge in feeling… better? She was starting to pant. A feeling stirring in her hind legs. What was this feeling- was she attracted to… to Jon?
What?!
Impossible.
No.
Improbable.
Jon looked at the sphinx who seemed stunned in shock. A bit uncertain he reached out and kissed her…
Elliot was in some kind of weird hell.
“I think these dresses would look nice on you,” her mother suggested.
‘yep… this is hell’ she was some kind of… robot-girl? Her visual system was occasionally overlayed with meta-data. She had no idea quite how it worked but somehow she was able to identify almost everything around her.
“I wonder how much all this will cost,” Her mother mused.
“Seventy three dollars and ten cents,” Elliot said without thinking about it. “I mean- yeah… that is how much it will cost.”
Her mother laughed. “Well it seems you have quite a good brain now!”
Elliot frowned. Her body was… so damn small- an illusion of youth given she was built artificially. She looked around the shop and started to identify where all the clothes came from. Somehow she could even see where it would be cheaper to buy? ‘Great I’m a comparison website’ she clenched her fists feeling the odd flex of artificial joints.
“Oh hello there!” A voice called. “Is this your daughter?”
Elliot stared at the woman. Her visual system quickly identifying everything about her. Name… Lucy from Identity badge. Cross reference proximate age, location, 87% chance her surname is Marin. Access point to the internet… granted? She could hear wifi somehow. She blinked as more information came to light about her pouring into her new brain in mere seconds. “I- um- hello.”
Lucy gave a smile. “You are so cute. Your hair is quite amazing dear. Would you like some hair clips for it?”
“No-”
“Well, we can’t seem to cut them, I suppose a few hair clips wouldn’t go amiss,” her mother thought. “Sorry hun, but we have to work with the way your new body works.” She ruffled her hair.
Elliot wanted to growl but her body didn’t have that ability. Suddenly she saw someone… some kind of… snake girl? It was the first time she had used her strange ability on another transformed person and found some weird … traces of something.
‘Snake girl. Temporal-spacial distortion detected.’ Elliot continued to focus on her. ‘Name… Anne Gales. Reality distorted.’ What were these odd words and symbols? Elliot glanced to her mother. “Mom can I uh… go talk to that girl...”
“Hm? Oh sure hun, I’ll just wait in the queue here.” She smiled. “Just don’t run off.”
Elliot walked awkwardly. Due to the command of her mother she found there was some kind of weird field around where she was allowed to walk. Her system somehow interpreted an approximate perimeter on how far she could roam. Why was her body forcing her to obey such things! She got closer to the strange snake girl “Excuse me… Anne?”
Anne looked to see the other girl and smiled. “Hi there. Do I know you?” The girl stared at the robot intrigued by her.
“No but- I- I need to talk to you. Look- I’m not really this… I’m not a… robot-”
Anne tilted her head. “Oh you changed too? Yeah I was there a few days ago… I’ve not seen you in class before. Do you go to my school?” She seemed excited to meet someone new. “It’s okay you are what you are...”
Elliot clenched her hands brushing against the sides of her blue dress. “No- look- I need you to help me. You changed your reality right? I can see it- don’t ask me how I don’t know that but I can tell you changed reality!” The doll-girl spoke with despair in her tones.
“Oh?” Anne looked to her suddenly surprised. “Yeah my reality changed… once I thought about it and realized I was okay with this. For some reason now I’ve always been a snake-girl to my parents. It’s.. easier now.”
“How can you be okay with that!” Elliot looked to her exasperated. “You don’t have any legs.”
“No legs and I’m also a girl now. Yeah I was a boy before but it’s okay.” Anne glanced around and suddenly launched her snake tail around Elliot. The robot girl was surprised but didn’t sense it was an attack. If anything it was more like a strange hug. “Some of the changed get a trick.. or maybe they all do I dunno- but you got a trick to see things those things...”
Elliot felt the snake tail coil around her. “Ah- what are you’re doing?” Her readouts started to look odd. ‘reality instability increased?’ There was an odd increase of energy around her. What the heck were these strange symbols in her vision?
“My trick...” Anne smiled. “I... I can help you if you want...”
“You- you can change me back?!” Elliot looked in surprise. What did she want in exchange?
Anne shook her head. “No… I can make it so that you were always this way.” The snake pulled even tighter. “Those caught in my coils for long enough will have their world reset. The harder I squeeze the more your core reality changes. If I did it hard enough you wont even ‘remember’ your old world. Want me to do that for you?”
“What? No- Please no- let me go!” To be a- a doll from the start of her life?! To have existed like this and probably ‘built’ by someone then ‘bought’ by her current family?! No! That was the worst thing ever.
Anne let the doll-girl go as asked, her coils slowly moving away. “Well, if you change your mind that’s what I can give,” she said with a sad smile. “To be honest I have no idea who would want my power but… that’s what I can do. I’m sure there will be changed who would like that. I make the changes retrospective from the world’s viewpoint.”
Elliot quickly did a diagnostic of her systems. Reality was stable again… there were no changes to her history- that she could tell. She was probably among the few who ‘could’ tell. She took a slight step back from the snake quite fearful now. “I want.. a cure. I want to get back to normal. I want.. to be me- again.”
“I can’t help you there,” Anne said softly. “Look… it’s better if you look at this differently. Something happened to you and it’s quite scary… confusing… maybe a curse or maybe a blessing- I decided to accept it when well-” She looked awkwardly. “I think I was given a choice… but I became curious about how my life would be as a snake girl. I even enjoy it now.”
“Enjoy it?! How can I enjoy being a robot! I’m not even alive- I’ll end up in a junk pile or something. Magnets attach to me!” She cringed as she pointed to her mother. “My mom is buying dresses for me! I need to get back to normal.”
“They look like nice dresses,” Anne said smiling.
Elliot groaned.. or at least bleeped something that might have been a groan. “Look- I saw something when I changed. I was… somewhere else. Things are watching us. We’re just entertainment to them!”
“Oh?” Anne glanced awkwardly. “Yeah… I guess that makes some sense.”
“You’ve been to other places then? To other worlds? Can’t we find some world where there is a cure?”
“I don’t know.” said Anne. “Look- give this situation a few weeks. You’ll be fine. Heck at least you don’t have to deal with periods. I have to deal with eggs at some point.”
“Urgh- you’re so gro-g-” ‘error. Word not appropriate. “You’re… not helping.” The doll girl squirmed. “I’ll find someone who can help me if you wont!”
Maybe she could access help on the internet…
Emit looked intently at three cards on his desk. Three ordinary playing cards. Dominique his square chested henchmen watched curiously. He didn’t really know what his boss was planning but he was curious. It seemed like he was shooting for something big by involving one of the changed in this way. Though it wasn’t the normal way of doing things.
“Boss… can I ask a question?”
Emit continued to look intently at the three face down cards. “By all means.”
“Well.. this sphinx girl is valuable… why don’t we just… take her?”
Emit gave a half smile at that. “Because it wouldn’t work.” He gestured to the three cards face down. “If I told you there was a joker among these three, how would you know for sure if there was?”
“… I would need to look at them all to be sure.”
“But if you could only see one.. you would never know unless it was the joker.” He turned slightly back towards the window overlooking the town. His wheelchair flowed as a well made machine. “The future is funny that way and… even a powerful magic such as reading the future must give way to boring physics.”
“I don’t understand boss,” Dominique muttered. “We know where she lives… we know her friends. We could just take her and force her.”
“We can’t” Emit shrugged.
“Seems sentimental to me.”
“Well she is a teenager so some sentimentality is not to be dismissed. However, we must know the game that is being played. We are dealing with a creature that can perceive the future. Once we have set a course she will likely know what it is. Therefore… an uncertain future is our greatest weapon… for these things are not yet determined. She might see an impression of a possible future the more likely it is to be. I have three plans and… I don’t know which one I will employ. She therefore can not see what will be because it will not yet ‘be’.”
“So… how are we going to bring her in?”
“She has to be baited… and I want her treated respectfully. She will be in the most beautiful gilded cage of her own design.” He gestured again to his cards. “Which one is the joker?”
Dominique grinned. “I think I would bring my own deck boss.”
Emit chuckled“Very wise. Though I am sure eventually the kid will understand this was all just… business. You go and watch the lobby to see if she decides to join us...”
With his henchman gone Emit was able to release a few coughs. He quickly brought some water and medicine to help with the pain. “Frankly… I would trade my wealth for a walk in the street,” he thought. Of course he long knew someone like him wasn’t going to be ‘given’ a new body… and nobody knew how to manipulate the Mist to tease such a thing out. It was very rare for it to affect adults but not impossible.
“With that sphinx… I can know how to manipulate the very bodies that people have… including my own.” He smiled. With Biff he would know exactly where to be and how to gain the body he most desired. He loathed to leave anything to chance and end up stuck as a tree or something- no such irony did not suit him. He would gain a body that would be superior to all other changed… with Biff’s help of course. Who knows, perhaps he could even have an entire harem of woman of all kinds…
Then by arranging the mist’s influence on his.. business rivals.. yes- it would all be quite useful indeed…
Biff felt so comfortable with Jon now. It wasn’t something she planned as such and her feelings were… mixed with an odd desire. Her scent was in this room and even on Jon. She ended up stretching, raising her heckles to Jon in a feline-like manner.
Jon stared in surprise and found himself.. aroused.
The sphinx girl felt an odd… sensation back there. She gasped a little as she quickly turned around. “Jon-” She blushed. “I- um-” She sat down quickly. This body was so damn awkward. She quickly made another horrible realisation… her unique anatomy was feeling ‘charged’ at this point and- well- she couldn’t do anything about it. Her confusion made her wonder if she ‘did’ want something. However the confusion and embarrassment of being this thing this.. inhuman creature down there… and back there...
Jon looked at her sympathetically perhaps sensing how distraught she was. He reached out and touched her hair, brushing down to her back. “It’s okay...” he said. “I guess it must be… difficult.”
Biff quietly felt her imagination going onto overdrive. What if she did want to have sex? Just the ‘wanting’ of it.. how would she satiate it? She couldn’t. Her body could only be satiated if someone else was… willing to do that for her. If she trusted someone else to do that… and they had to be completely wanting to do so- something which she was sure nobody would- Unless a very elaborate invention were to be made anyway- which was not something she wanted to explore.
Is this what Sarah meant? That she was now different in such a fundamental way… and yet Jon was clearly attracted! Why not simply… let-
No! Sheesh No. She wasn’t some girl!
Biff flapped her huge wings. “I’m- I’m going to go home.” She muttered.
“A-alright.” Jon gulped.
That was… awkward.
