Mikey looked around the classroom. She was a bit surprised, given what had happened to her, Jon, Biff, and some other people she'd heard about, that the ratio of boys to girls in the class was pretty much normal. Was there something about their neighborhood that encouraged gender changes, or was this just one of thos things where randomness could have the appearance of order? She wondered.
In any case, the distribution of species (or whatever you'd call them) was much broader than before. There was a girl with the lower body of a snake, a centaur boy, a girl who appeared to be a living marble statue, and many more. There were also some seemingly ordinary or visibly but very minorly transformed humans present - Mikey thought maybe they had changes that weren't so visible - maybe they'd changed gender, but not race? Did that happen?
One thing she had noticed was that there was no wi-fi in the building. Part of that was of course that it was one of those Cold War-era public buildings designed to serve as a bomb shelter, and there was no way a mere wireless signal could hope to penetrate, but apparently there were no repeaters within the building, either. She wondered if that was deliberate, to keep students from looking up answers. If so, it was probably less in response to the existence of robots than it was to the proliferation of smart phones, she thought.
"A-are you a robot?"
Mikey turned to see a boy who seemed to be a plant. He had warm green skin and mossy hair studded with small white flowers, and looking down she saw that his feet were rather gnarly and root-like. "Uh, yeah," she said.
He regarded her curiously. "Huh. Are you, like, a super-genius or something?"
She shrugged. "Um, I'm good at math, and I have a good memory, but I don't think I'm really any kind of genius. I don't really know much more than I did before this or anything."
"Oh," he said. "I'm Bryan."
She smiled. "I'm Mikey."
He frowned. "Mikey? Did you used to be...?"
She nodded. "Huh," he said. "That's kinda weird. Do you hate it now, or what?"
Mikey thought for a moment. She wasn't exactly crazy about this, but it wasn't like it really impaired anything, and it hadn't changed her. "Nah," she said. "It is kinda weird, but...it's okay, I guess."
Jon was buried in a textbook, trying to avoid looking around the room. She'd seen that Sarah and Karyn were in the same class as her when she came in. Michael the raptor-girl was there too, looking at least a bit more neatly-groomed than she had out in the woods. But...now that her initial survey was complete, Jon was studiously trying to avoid paying any attention to anyone else. She'd noticed some angel-lookong chick among the other students, which was kind of interesting, but...what if she started looking at guys?
She knew it seemed over-reactive and paranoid, but at the same time, knowing that she was being unreasonable wasn't sufficient to make the fear go away. She'd noticed the angel-girl, mostly because she kept fidgeting in her seat every now and again, but she didn't really feel any attraction to her, just like she hadn't with Michael. The thought that her sexuality might possibly have switched targets kept nagging at her brain until she managed to quash it temporarily, then came right back later.
Why did this have to maybe be an issue!? She knew she could live through six months of this and go right back to normal, if it weren't for this one possible issue! It was so aggravating to think about that she was almost thankful for the distraction when someone said "God, what a freak!"
She turned to see Tiffany Saunders, one of the higher girls in the school's (former?) social hierarchy, looking down at her. Tiffany looked sort of like she always had, only much more so. Her body was exaggerated to just under the point of being cartoonish, and she moved in a manner that could be described as "assaultingly sultry."
Whatever Jon hadn't felt around other teenage girls, she was downright skeezed out by Tiffany. She seemed more like a succubus than the actual red-skinned devil-girl in the corner of the classroom, who was comparatively normally built and completely unassuming. Jon kept thinking she saw things out of the corner of her eye when Tiffany moved - sort of after-images in the shape of wings or horns - but she wasn't too sure on that.
"Someone set out the beer traps!" Tiffany sneered. "What rock did you crawl out from under?" Her remarks drew derisive laughter from some of the class. Jon cringed, trying to keep her face from getting flushed. Was she really going to have to play at this stupid pecking-order game now that she was a girl? She hoped not. She'd been able to stay out of the boys' equivalent, but that was mostly by avoiding sports, around which it tended to center around. How could she get out of this one? She'd have to ask Karyn.
"Seriously," Tiffany said, "they should make you carry a mop to clean up the slime."
Jon huffed. "Shut up, Tiffany," she snapped. Tiffany laughed. "Oh, it talks!" she said incredulously. "Shut up or what?"
Jon really didn't even know or care what she said at this point; she just wanted the annoyance to go away. Suddenly, she got an idea. "Or I'll crawl on you," she said.
"W-what?"
Jon put on her best crazy-person manic smile. "You heard me," she said. "I'm strong and flexible, and you're built like an hourglass on matchsticks. I don't think you could stop me. I'll crawl up and down your whole body. Every square inch. Then you can see what my mucus feels like for yourself."
Tiffany's eyes bugged out, and she backed away so hastily that she nearly tripped over a desk. "S-stay away from me, you freak!" she yelped.
Jon grinned to herself. This was hardly going to be the last of her troubles, but at least it was taken care of for now. She wondered how the others were doing. Zoe was off with the other eighth-graders, and Becka had gone with the second-graders - Jon had last seen her staring at another girl with rich purple hair tied into two large pigtails...
Jay and Toby had spent most of the morning getting the station back into some semblance of order. Things had been plenty hectic, what with the police on hand and the news team trying to process what had happened to their boss. Luckily, Jay was as on top of things as ever, and while Toby certainly didn't cut the same imposing figure she had as a 6'2" man, her voice, though changed, had lost none of its fire and authority.
Still, once things were back in order, she took the rest of the day off. She needed to go downtown and find some new clothes, but she also needed time to think about what to tell the kids, and...well, she just needed time to think, period.
She still didn't know what Charlie would think. She loved the boy so dearly...how could she cope if rejected her because of what he'd learned from her before? She didn't believe that would happen; Charlie loved his father as much as she loved him. But...the fear still nagged at her regardless. She wished it would go away.
Anna, their thirteen-year-old daughter, she wasn't as worried about. She'd stuck more to her mom, who had kept a bit more of a level head about the sun. Anna would probably be more weirded by the fact that her father was now a woman - but she could cope, Toby thought.
Toby arrived home. She went inside hesitantly, some part of her still afraid that she would contaminate the house, but she forced herself inside and shut the door behind her.
Terri was there to greet her. Toby stared longingly at her wife, still amazed and overwhelmed that their love was so strong. Beyond the surprise and shock, Terri hadn't even batted an eye when she learned of her husband's change - there was never so much as a thought of parting, that Toby could tell. What had she ever done to deserve this woman?
"How are you feeling?" Terri asked.
Toby sighed. "...worried. About our kids. Anna might take it okay, but Charlie..."
Terri nodded as they sat down on the couch. "It might be hard for him," she said. "He looks up to you, and it might take him some time to accept that you're really you. But you know how much he loves you, Honey."
Toby smiled. "...Yeah. I do."
Her wife smiled, and gently began to rub her back. "Have you thought about...what this means for us?"
Toby shook her head. "I...I don't know yet. I think we'll figure that out later; right now, I just want to know you're here, with me."
Terri smiled and embraced the younger woman. She could feel Toby quaking as tears trickled down her face. This was about as close as she'd ever seen her husband to openly crying, except when his father had died. "Shh," she said. "I'm here."
"I...I know you are," Toby said, her voice trembling. "That's the miracle of it..."
They sat in silent embrace for some time before Toby finally pulled back. She looked at her wife and sighed. "You're...still thinking of changing yourself."
Terri nodded. "I am."
"You can't," Tobey said. "It'll be hard enough for the kids to accept what happened to me..."
"I'll wait until they're ready, then," she said. "I won't be separated from you, Toby. Where you go, I go."
The younger woman sighed. "Terri, there's no going back from this."
"I know."
Toby shook her head. "I'm not going to be able to talk you out of this, am I?"
"No, dear."
She smiled in spite of yourself. "Terri, you're the best thing in my entire life, you know that?"
They embraced again, Toby's anime aura flickering over her wife's arms, showing them as part animated and part normal.
In a run-down urban district of the city, a certain hired gun was hurriedly packing his things. Dammit, he knew he shouldn't have taken the job! He'd just heard over his bootleg police scanner that they'd caught his last client, and he knew it was only a matter of time before they came for him.
He'd known the dipshit was a newbie from the moment he laid eyes on him. Everything about him from his "look at me, I'm being furtive!" posture to his nervous stammer screamed "rich twit finally giving in to his base urges." But he'd needed the money, and the job had seemed so harmless and risk-free...
He looked at the clock. Shit. It wasn't even noon yet. There was no way he'd be able to skip town and do it under the cover of darkness. He laughed bitterly. This was karma, wasn't it? Leave and be changed by the sun, or stay here and get arrested.
Not that there was really a choice, not with his record. Well, "he who fightsand runs away," he reminded himself...whatever awaited him in the sunlight, it couldn't be worse than what he'd get for a sentence.
