The next few minutes were a blur. Jon's parents rushed upstairs and discovered what had hapened; they had heard Mikey scream when she realized what had happened to her. Both new girls broke down crying; Jon's were less bitter because she knew the stone could provide a way out, but she was still facing half a year as this thing she had become. Mikey, on the other hand, was completely inconsolable. Whatever was involved in becoming a robot had somehow not impaired her capacity for emotion (though it had removed her tear ducts from the process, and for all her sobs she was dry-eyed.)
Finally, emotionally exhausted, thirsty, and to some extent just tired of crying, Jon sat herself up and attempted to make her way to the kitchen for a drink. Moving without legs was a strange experience; somehow her brain knew what to do, but the sensations were entirely new: the gentle motions of her foot muscle sliding her steadily across the floor, the feel of the carpet on her new skin, the sticky, damp feel of the mucus layer in between. Jon was relieved to find that at least she didn't suffer any loss of speed; she moved about as fast as she normally walked, and it felt like she could probably move faster if necessary.
Between the mucus coat she'd been secreting and the crying she'd done, Jon was completely parched by the time she got to the kitchen. She opened the fridge and drank almost the entire pitcher of ice water before her thirst was finally quenched. By this time, her parents and Mikey had come downstairs as well. Mikey was still crying, but quieter; hopefully she was settled down, for the moment.
"Jon, honey," Mrs. Madison said, "I...I know this must still be a lot for you to take in, but we have a favor to ask. I don't know if you heard, but they've concluded that the changes only happen once; that means that you're able to go outside without anything worse happening to you. And, well, we need groceries pretty badly, and who knows when or how long the store's going to be open. So we need you to make a grocery run for us. Do you think you can handle the van safely?"
Jon contemplated her foot for a moment and shrugged. "Maybe," she said. "I...guess I can try, anyway."
Her mother smiled. "Thank you, honey. I've got a list of what we need, and here's some cash. Mikey, dear, I need you to go with Jon and help her...er, him get some food. Can you do that?"
Mikey sniffed and reflexively wiped her still-dry eyes. "Y-yeah," she murmured. She did her best to pull herself together, and her mom smiled warmly and hugged her. "Thank you," she said. "It means a lot to me that you can do this."
Jon and Mikey stepped out into the blazing sun, the shifting hues casting familiar surroundings in a strange new light. They looked around; the streets were nearly deserted, save for a few unlucky souls who'd been caught outside and decided to stay out and watch for any further strangeness. The two new sisters got into the van; Jon had some trouble fitting her sizable foot in between the seat and the floor, and had to keep most of it over below the passenger's seat, doubling the tip back to work the pedals. Mikey sat in the passenger's seat and rested her legs on it; Jon found it a little annoying and wondered what the point of this was, but thought that maybe Mikey was just looking for human (or at least, semi-human) contact right now. Who could blame her?
Jon's initial attempts at driving were extremely clumsy; the tip of her foot was not especially manipulable, and she was unused to controlling it on top of that. But she managed to avoid damaging the vehicle, and after a little practice she was able to get out of the driveway and down the street fairly well. She drove slowly down the block, making sure she'd got the hang of it, but stopped as they passed Karyn's house. Out in the front yard was a sight that would have been jaw-dropping the day before, but today it was just another piece of strangeness.
Karyn was sitting in her driveway, in a wheelchair. From the waist up, she looked just as she had when Jon had last seen her, just as she had for a long time, except for her wish-altered breasts and hair. Below the waist, though, she had eight large, sucker-festooned tentacles in place of her legs, the skin between them forming a sort of makeshift skirt around her pelvic region. She was staring up at the sky, each tentacle absent-mindedly drifting from position to position, occasionally wrapping around the wheelchair or each other.
Jon pulled up in the driveway and stuck her head out the window. "Karyn!" she said. "You, too?"
Karyn looked at her funny for a minute, then gasped. "Jon!?" she asked. "Is that you?"
Jon nodded, antennae bobbing. Karyn gasped again and wheeled over next to the car. Jon spent a couple minutes explaining what had happened at her house. Karyn didn't have much to share; she was the only one of her family transformed, as she'd gone out to get the paper for her parents while they ate breakfast. She gave Jon a meaningful look. "So," she said, "what do you know about how this happened?"
Jon sighed. "I..." she began, before realizing that Mikey was in the car. "I'll tell you later," she said. "Look, we're on our way to the grocery store to stock up on food; do your parents need anything?"
Karyn brightened. "Good question! I'll check." She wheeled into the house for a few minutes, then reappeared with a list and her purse. "Yep," she said. "Mind if I come with you?"
Jon smiled for the first time since her change. "Absolutely!" she said. "Need a hand?"
"No, I think I've got it." Karyn pulled open the side door and lifted herself into the seat, using her tentacles to assist. From there she skillfully folded up the wheelchair and lifted it in, mostly with her new appendages. "Lucky we had this from when Mom broke her leg," she said, sliding the door shut. "Otherwise I'd be dead in the water, out of the water."
"You can't move on those?" Jon asked. Karyn shook her head. "Not very well. Enough to get into and out of the chair or bed or something, but not well enough to move around efficiently. What about you? You're...?" She leaned to the center for a better look. "Oh. Wow. But you can at least get around, right?"
Jon sighed. "Yeah. I guess at least I can't complain about that."
Karyn nodded. "Well, small mercies. What about you, Mikey?"
The drive to the grocery store was extremely quiet. Traffic was almost nonexistent; the only obstacle was a semi trailer that had stopped across about a lane and a half. The driver was nowhere in sight, but the truck was undamaged, so at least he wasn't hurt. There were more transformed pedestrians when they got into the downtown area, but even so things were still pretty quiet. Jon pulled the van up in front of the store, helped Karyn get the wheelchair set up, and locked the doors.
The inside of the store was a lot less quiet. It wasn't quite pandemonium, but it was definitely active. Some brave soul had papered over the windows to keep the light out; Jon assumed that it was the shell-shocked young employee by the phone, the one with the lower body of a Utahraptor and the upper body of a young woman where the neck should have been, and the nametag that read "Steven." A large number of people filled the store; some of them, like Jon, were there for supplies, but most were seeking shelter from the light.
They were met just inside the light-safe zone by the store manager, a normally jovial older man. "Good morning," he said. "Let me explain our emergency policy for the moment. If you're here to buy groceries, it's business as usual. If you're trying to stay out of the light, which I don't expect you are, you're welcome as long as you behave civilly; we'll be having a free meal at 12:30 and another at 7:00. If you start abusing the staff or the other customers, or you shoplift, you will be forcibly evicted. Understand?"
The three girls nodded, and the manager let them in. They headed back towards the frozen-foods section to start their shopping, but were distracted by a girl in the produce, viciously cursing just barely under her breath. Jon didn't recognize her at first; the wings in place of arms, feathered legs ending in talons, and rainbow-colored plumage were unfamiliar, but the face and figure...
"Sarah?" she asked. She surveyed the figure again; it was indeed Sarah McMillan, transformed into a harpy and wearing only a sports bra, her other bits covered by bright red down. Sarah regarded her with a mix of curiosity and revulsion. "Who the hell are you?" she asked. "Wait, is that Karyn? Oh God, you're not what's-his-name - Jon, right?"
Jon nodded, unsure what to make of this. "Are you here to buy supplies?" she asked.
Sarah made a guttural noise of disgust. "Thanks to my parents, yes. I don't know how they expect me to do it with no f..." She caught herself as she noticed the little girl accompanying her two classmates. "...no arms, but I don't think they're even thinking right now. I think they're starting to lose their marbles. I could barely even get them to help me dress before they sent me out to get food so they don't have to go out into the big scary light themselves."
The other two stared at her, feeling pity for her for probably the first time. "They didn't...they didn't make you go out before you changed, did they?" Karyn asked. Sarah shook her head. "They're not that crazy. Well, not yet, anyway. My bathroom has a skylight."
Jon let out a low whistle. "Wow. Do you...do you need some help? We were going to be picking up a bunch of stuff anyway..."
The harpy shrugged. "Oh, hell, why not. Here, the cash they gave me is in my purse." She dipped one shoulder and slid the strap down her wing to where Karyn could grab it. "They didn't bother to write a list, but I think I know what we need."
The group, now increased to four, headed towards the frozen foods. Jon couldn't be sure over the noise of the freezers, but she thought she caught a barely-mumbled "Thanks."
