Jon had managed to hold in the panic of being suddenly changed into something completely different by holding onto the hope that the stone could set things right, but now that she knew she was going to be stuck like this for at least half a year, she couldn't hold it any longer. She let out a scream, half out of rage and half out of fear, and slumped onto the floor in the middle of a sunny patch of carpet. She was too distraught to even think straight, and it barely registered with her when she heard the sound of feet running up the stairs and down the hall.
It wasn't until she heard a gasp and felt a pair of hands shaking her, trying to get her attention, that Jon realized what was about to happen. She attempted to bolt upright, but her new body wasn't built for levering herself up from a prone position, and after a moment she gave up, rolled over, and attempted to shove the interloper away.
She could see that it was Mikey, and she could see that he'd been pushed to the edge of the sunlit patch, but not off. "Mikey!" she snapped. "GET BACK!" Mikey just stared for a moment, but his eyes suddenly went wide, and he scurried backward into the darkened part of the room. Jon hoped that he would be safe; that was only, what, fifteen seconds? She'd been sitting in the sun for three minutes before she changed, so hopefully...
Mikey got an odd look on his face. "Jon?" he asked. "I feel...funny." Jon cursed under her breath, her eyes beginning to well with tears. First her, now Mikey. Even if the stone was able to fix this, they were going to have to spend half a year as a slug-girl and a...
Her train of thought trailed off as she found herself wondering what Mikey was becoming, and she sat herself up. She didn't want to watch her little brother be transformed, but how would he feel if she turned away from him? She forced herself to look.
At first, the changes seemed subtle. Mikey's skin took on somewhat of a satiny texture, and the irregularities in his face and body structure evened out. Jon wondered what was happening, until he blinked; when his eyes opened, he had the tell-tale lens-pupil Jon had seen on the TV broadcast, the lens a deep green color. Mikey suddenly clutched his head, but it wasn't just his ears that changed. His hair began to grow rapidly, falling down his back until it reached halfway to his wait, and changing color from his normal red to a light green, complementing his eyes. There seemed to be some changes to his face, as well, though they weren't especially pronounced.
Mikey's disorientation ceased and he removed his hands from his ears. While the newscaster's altered ears had been more along the lines of simple plastic domes, Mikey had full-fledged antennae, white plastic rods jutting up from a cylindrical base that looked rather like an earphone cup. This was all strange enough, but there was something about Mikey's altered face that gave Jon a sinking feeling. Then he spoke.
"Jon?" Mikey said. "What happened?" The voice had changed; not drastically, but enough for Jon to recognize the same kind of changes that had happened to her not five minutes before. Mikey, in addition to becoming a robot, was a girl.
