Andy found himself in a daze, the daze to end all dazes, watching something going on. There was a rabbit-woman there, and a couple of...dragons, or something? And there was a human woman, too...he knew he knew these people, but it was like watching things happen on a TV across the street...so distant, so detached...
Now there were men as well; changed men, a something and a something. They were doing something to the bunny-girl, something...he couldn't tell. They weren't very attractive men, in any case...why would he think a thing like that? He didn't know, but it was all detached...he felt like a balloon, floating up and away and held down only by a string...
And now things were getting fuzzy...whatever they were doing down there, it was making everything...fuzzy...
Susan was trembling as the EMTs attended to her transformed husband. "Andy..." she whispered, "Andy, love...don't leave me...I won't leave you..." It was so hard to be staying back and not doing anything to help, but she didn't want to get in the way...
One of the EMTs turned to her. "She seems to be recovering," he said. "Her heart rate's coming down and the hyperventilation seems to be over for the moment. Still, we'd like to take her in for observation...in case she has any more panic attacks as a result of her change."
Susan nodded, breathing a little easier at last. The medics began to move Andy out to the ambulance, but stopped when she made to follow him.
"Ma'am," the leader, a whitetail deer anthro, said, "you can't go out there. You'll be-"
Susan shook her head. "Thank you," she said, "but I promised my husband I wouldn't leave him, and...I'm not going to."
The deer-man frowned. "No disrespect, ma'am, but this really isn't the time for rash decisions."
She sighed. "Look, thank you for your concern," she said. "But my children are changed, and my husband is changed, so I'd be doing this anyway. I will be at the hospital with Andy this morning; if I don't go with you, I'll take the car. Either way, if I'm going to be exposed to the sun, so be it."
The deer-man stared her right in the eye, but she didn't flinch. He sighed. "All right, but don't say I didn't warn you."
Susan nodded. "Girls," she said, turning to Alex and Sally, "be good while we're gone, okay? Call Mrs. Maple if you need help or have any trouble. Alex, you're in charge. Sally, listen to your sister."
At any other time this would probably have been a point of contention - but neither dragon-girl felt much like arguing after what they'd just witnessed. The medics loaded the unconscious rabbit-woman into the ambulance, and their mother followed, illuminated by the sunlight for the first time in weeks. The ambulance door shut before they had any idea what was going to happen.
The vehicle pulled away, but didn't turn on its siren. Alex sighed in relief; maybe that meant it wasn't serious enough for them to have to speed. She...she was still mad at her father, but she didn't want him d...dead...Alex felt a sinking feeling in her gut as it hit her just what had almost happened. Her dad...her dad could have died just now...she'd never actually had to face it like this before, she'd only been a very little boy when Grandma had died...
It struck her that yesterday, when she had been mad...she had threatened to expose him to the sun. If it had done this to him, if it had made him panic and almost die...what would have happened if she had? If he'd had to deal with his own child betraying him as well as with a change...
If she had done that...he might really be dead. If she hadn't kept her temper in check...if Maple hadn't been there to help her keep her temper in check...
Alex hugged her sister tight, just wanting someone to be with. Sally reciprocated, though she seemed a little less shell-shocked. "A-Alex?" she asked. "Is Dad gonna be okay...?"
Alex hugged her tighter still. "I...I don't know, Sally," she said. She wanted to tell her it would be all right, to take her fear away, but she couldn't honestly say it would be all right... "I don't know...he's...she's getting better, but I don't know what'll happen when she wakes up..."
Despite having been running a lot more errands in the past five weeks, Jon still hadn't quite gotten the hang of driving with her foot. It was certainly flexible enough to allow for enough control to work the pedals, but there was so much of it to fit into a space that was hardly designed to accomodate a slug-girl...still, she managed, at least.
Arriving at the mall, she flopped rather awkwardly out of the car, sighing in relief as her cramped muscle had space to stretch again. She made a quick inventory - wallet, phone, car keys - and locked up. She was wearing a jean skirt with sizable pockets in it - she hadn't yet taken to carrying a purse, and didn't really want to. Though she did have to admit, it had been a little weird carrying spare tampons in her pockets during her period...
Shaking that thought off (and only halfway noticing the sensation of her antennae following the movement,) Jon headed toward the mall. At least this was a concrete parking lot...asphalt got uncomfortably hot during the day, and with so much surface area in contact with it and so much moisture in her lower body, it tended to dry her out rather uncomfortably. Thank God her body was so quick to reabsorb water when she drank...
She arrived inside the food-court entrance and didn't have to look very far for Karyn; the cecaelia-girl tended to get a fairly wide berth from people who didn't know her. She waved to Jon, grinning happily, and Jon smiled back; it had been such a long time since they'd just hung out together...
"Hey, Jon-girl!" she greeted, when they were within speaking range. "How're you feeling?"
Jon shrugged. "Not bad, considering. You?"
Karyn grinned. "Pretty great, really. It's so good just to be going out for the sake of going out...we haven't done this in forever."
The slug-girl nodded. "Yeah, it has been a while. Uh, any specific things you want to do, or shall we just wing it?"
Her best friend smiled. "I have a few ideas, I think..."
Steve's mother coughed as she came upstairs to see what the commotion was about. "Steven," she gasped, "what the...?" She dashed over to Steve's room, shutting the door tight, then went back out into the hall. "Young lady, what on Earth were you doing!?"
Steve stepped back from the open window, trembling. "Mom! There was a b-b-bee! It...it was doing something on my head...I think it...oh God Mom I can't be pregnant! I can't, I just can't!"
Her mother sighed and held her panicking daughter to her. "Honey," she said, "I don't think that's likely to happen. You already have a part of your body clearly designed for bearing children, and it's not the flower on your head. Even if the bee did do anything there, I think at worst it might produce a fruit or some seeds...not a child."
The flower-girl tried to hold back tears. "B-but...what if it did!?"
Her mother sighed. "Well, dear, if by some miracle that happened...we'd just have to deal with it, I suppose. I know it's all still new and strange to you, Steven, but you're going to have to accept that this is just a possibility in your life. You can't go into a panic every time you see a bee just because of this."
She smiled fondly again... "There are things you're going to want a lot more than interaction with bees that could far more plausibly leave you with a child, you know. It's not a horrible tragedy - it's a perfectly natural thing that many women go through, many of them more than once. I don't think you're ready for it now, but it's not the end of the world if it does happen."
Steve gaped as she tried to process what her mother had just said...how could this be natural? To have something grow inside her and then break out like in Alien...how could that not be the end of the world!? She wanted to protest, but couldn't even find the words.
Her mother saw her expression and held her, gently stroking her hair. "It's all right, Steven," she said. "It's not going to happen."
Andy drifted lightly back to consciousness. He could hear a voice in the other room...
"She's in her early to mid-twenties, much like yourself."
There was another voice, indistinct, that was both familiar and unfamiliar. The first voice answered.
"I don't know. Some mental modifications have been known to happen, but very rarely with anybody over twelve. Uh, new age, that is. And they're usually minor anyway. Though I do admit, this area has seen an unusual number of outliers on all aspects..."
More words. Who was that? It evoked a response in him...
"Yes, we had some notes about her...problem. You'll remember, the time he came in with a minor concussion and a BAC of 0.17...no, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to dig that up..."
A pause. There was a sound like...crying, maybe?
"Well, anyway...what I can tell you is this - it's not unheard of for the change to alter the brain's dependencies...usually it has a lot more to do with diet, but it's not outside the realm of possibility that her basic physical need could be gone. That would mean no withdrawal symptoms, but...the psychological habits are likely to still be in force."
Another question. This was someone close to him, yet the voice sounded strange. Was it because he himself still felt fuzzy?
"Yes, exactly. It's like they say - there are no truly recovered alcoholics. Sometimes all it takes is one slip...in any case, if there was a discernable root cause...that needs to be addressed, too. Oh, she's awake. Just a moment."
The fuzzy feeling and the detachment were beginning to fade, and Andy found himself coming back down to reality, to his physical body...it felt all wrong, there were things where things didn't go and places where things should have been but weren't...
She sat up with a gasp, realizing what had happened. She stared down at herself - clad in a hospital gown, she could see her small breasts down the collar, feel the weight of her ears atop her head...
"I'm a monster," she whispered. One of *Them...*even her voice was changed.
"No," said a woman's voice. She looked up to see a doctor, a middle-aged woman with long antennae whose lower body was that of an enormous centipede. Andy shrank away in fright and revulsion. "You are," the doctor said, "a mostly-healthy woman, twenty-something, mild human-variant, rabbit subtype. Not a monster."
"No, n-no!" the bunny-girl said, her voice trembling. "You have to change me back! I can't be this! I can't be...you have to change me back! Susan! Where's Susan?"
"Susan stayed with you, as she promised," the doctor said. "But she had to expose herself to the sun in order to do so...Susan, why don't you come on out." From the other room there entered a Man...that set so many complex feelings going within her all at once...
He was pleasant to look at; perhaps not a model or a star athlete, but a nicely-built ordinary man, with short brown hair and a little stubble on his chin. The lower half of his body was a snake's tail, dark grey-green with black markings and a yellow-green underbelly. The tail...it completed the whole picture, sturdy and sinewy and flowing so perfectly with his...
What was she thinking? What was she thinking!? She was...oh God...
She burst into tears. "Ohhhh dammit dammit dammit DAMMIT I'm a...I'm a..." All the words she'd used on Maple came back to her...slut, whore...worse things she hadn't gotten around to saying but probably would have...and now she was the exact same thing. She couldn't be...and yet she was - she was getting turned on just looking at this man...
The words...the images they brought with...many of those seemed unfamiliar and disgusting, but the general concept...it lodged in her brain and didn't want to leave... She couldn't! She couldn't be this, it wasn't possible! She was a man, wasn't she? Even if the sun had changed her body...
Yet here she was. She had to fight this, to drive this out of her brain, but what chance did she stand? She...she hated to admit it, but she couldn't even summon up the willpower to stop drinking...how much less a basic, fundamental urge such as this? Maybe if it was just Susan...Susan she could trust. Sue wouldn't take advantage of her...she'd always been too good for Andy...
She buried her face in the hospital pillow, crying her eyes out. At least the emotional surge was washing away the hormonal surge...
