When Stacy had finally pulled herself together, she was given the rest of the period off and went to the library. She did a little web browsing to take her mind off things, sticking to the kind of sites that wouldn't have scantily-clad women on the sidebars. Normally, that would just upset the librarian, but today it was Stacy who was likely to be uncomfortable. When the period was up, she went to her next class, where there were no naked girls to remind her of what had happened to her.
With her nothing keeping her problems in the forefront of her mind, she managed to finally tune out, and the rest of the school day went by in a blur. The drive back was almost as unremarkable, but Stacy kept having trouble adjusting the seatbelt around her breasts. She finally arrived home, shuffled inside, and plunked down on the couch, then set about trying to not think about anything. It didn't work very well; the more she tried to focus on nothing, the more random things kept flitting through her head, most of them about the events of the day.
Well, if thinking about nothing didn't work, perhaps she could focus on something besides what had happened that day. What was she going to be doing this weekend? There was the one new movie she was going to go see; she was taking, um...Rachel, that was it. Things were going well with Rachel, and Stacy was hoping to get her to go all the way within a few weeks. Which was good; she'd been in kind of a dry spell since breaking up with Tiffany, and she was getting pretty...
...oh God. Oh God. Stacy suddenly snapped back to reality, back to a full realization of what had happened to her and what it meant for her life. This was what they had meant, wasn't it? Her routine was so built around getting laid that they thought she couldn't...no. No. She would remain in control, no matter what. She'd find some way to change back, and until then she'd just have to grit her teeth and live with it. There had to be some other way she could fill time until then. Obviously, she'd look for ways to change back to male. That was it, that should be able to keep her busy enough to keep her mind off of sex. This was going to be difficult, but she had a handle on her sexuality; she could hold off any time she wanted.
Moroika spent the bus ride dreading her arrival. She had almost tried to take off on her own, like Jason normally would have if he didn't want to go straight home, but a 4'5" thirteen-year-old girl just couldn't bowl through a crowd like a seventeen-year-old boy could. It bothered her to think about it, but...at this size, the crowd intimidated her. As Jason, he had been able to rely on his size and stocky build to deal with anybody he didn't like, safe in the knowledge that nobody would dare to retaliate, but if Moroika tried anything like that, what was to stop people from hitting back? She wouldn't stand a chance against anybody over twelve!
And what awaited her at her new "home?" She only now realized that, other than what that bastard Singleton had told her, she knew nothing about otou-er, Mr. and Mrs. Hayashi. The dean had said that they were nice, but how did she know he was telling the truth? He'd already stolen her body and erased her life, why wouldn't he lie to her as well? And if they were anything like Jason's parent...she hated to think about it. She wanted to just all-out rebel, but what if they weren't as nice as she'd been told? She couldn't defend herself against them any better than the kids at school had been able to defend against her. She was so used to being able to just hit things and hide the evidence when solving her problems that she couldn't even think of what she could do in that kind of situation, other than the one thing she really didn't want to do: go along with it. That was what they wanted her to do, wasn't it? All that talk about second chances was just a lot of code for "become a good little girl and be nice." So if she did, wouldn't that mean that she was giving in? Letting them win?
Moroika was interrupted in her thoughts by the sound of air brakes. She looked up to see that the bus had stopped, and after a moment she realized that this was her...this was the Hayashi's stop. She didn't want to get off, but what else could she do? If Mr. Ald-her father even remembered Jason, there was still no way he would ever believe that she was his son, and even if she could convince him, living with him as a girl would be even worse than living with him as a boy. And while Jason had entertained the notion that he could get by on his own, with no adults to help him, there was certainly no way that Moroika could ever make that work. Maybe she could find a way to change back, but not if she had to spend all her time just trying to survive. As much as she hated the idea, the only thing she could do right now was to clench her teeth and bear it. She stood up and walked to the front of the bus, then walked down the sidewalk toward the Hayashi residence.
The late afternoon light streamed into Jon's room, illuminating and warming the part of the floor where Karyn was stretched out. Jon chuckled. "Anyone ever tell you that you look like a cat when you do that?"
Karyn gave him a look. "Yes. Now getting back to the topic, what are we going to do about all this? I admit that I don't know if we should return Stacy and Moroika to normal or not, but that's all kind of a moot point until we figure out how to do it in the first place."
Jon nodded. "Right. As for how we do that, well...hmm. What Ms. Fletcher said kind of implies that the stone worked on roughly the same principles as her methods, just more primitive, or something. So maybe if we find out about whoever created the stone and how they did it, we can get some kind of clue as to what's going on. Not much, maybe, but enough to work with."
"Huh, yeah," Karyn said. "Didn't your grandpa's note say it was Incan? I wonder how their magic worked."
"Well, he thought it was Incan, anyway," Jon replied. "But yeah, that would be a good place to start. Even if it's not Incan, if Ms. Fletcher is right about this 'System' thing, then there's really no reason a bunch of different cultures couldn't have tapped into it. Maybe all ancient magic systems more or less worked."
Karyn nodded. "Maybe the security was just really faulty back then."
"Hey, maybe. Good thinking!" Jon grinned. "That's...the impression I kind of got from her was that that was the way we'd have to think to figure this out. Maybe we can work it out, somehow."
"We'd better," Karyn said. "Two days in and I'm already tired of these things. I want my old hair back, too."
Jon smiled. "I suppose you kind of get used to something after spending a lifetime with it." His expression fell a little. "Say," he mused, "do you think we should let Stacy and Moroika know that we know? I'm sure they're even more upset than you; do you think it would help if they knew someone knew kind of what they were going through?"
Karyn arched an eyebrow. "I thought you didn't like them?"
"Well, they weren't nice people, no. But they might really need some help, I dunno."
She shrugged. "Huh. I suppose that could be. I guess Stacy you could talk to, but wouldn't it look a little weird for a senior guy to go up to a freshman girl and say 'I know you used to be a boy?'"
"Huh," Jon said. "Yeah, I suppose it would. Maybe you could talk to Moroika?"
"Maybe," Karyn said. "I think we ought to think about it a bit before we do that. You know, make sure it's a good idea. Helping people is cool, but do we really want to risk letting them in on this 'System' thing? Especially if they're still the kind of people you say they were."
"Good point," Jon said. "Okay, we think about it for a day or two, and see how we feel about it then."
