Becca huffed, trying not to get angry. They'd been playing for a few minutes now, and...Mikey was just too good at it! Was it because she was a robot? She didn't want to assume that Mikey was cheating, but...
The gynoid could tell that Becca was getting a little upset, and she felt bad about it. She was only following on the information from her position and velocity-tracking routines...but then, neither of the other two had those, did they? She was a little torn...it didn't seem like it should be cheating to use your natural abilities, but it was hardly sporting like this...
I dunno, guys, she texted to the fairies, what do you think?
Effie thought. "Hmm...I don't know," she said, "I guess...maybe try it without the tracking routines?"
Dennis frowned. "Aren't those kind of necessary?" he asked. "She still needs to navigate properly..."
The Windows ME fairy nodded. "Yeah, she does," she mused. "But...if she could generate rules to avoid hitting Becca, she should be able to come up with an alternate visual-tracking approach more like what humans have..."
The DOS fairy thought on it. "Right, so...no radar, for starters. Visual-only...do you think that'd be close enough?"
"I dunno," Effie replied. "Maybe...if it were set to weight the tracking more by position relative to the last snapshot than absolute coordinates? I dunno, I'm not an expert on this..."
"And if it underclocks the targetting system..." Dennis mused. "Right now that's running faster than a human can establish a lead..."
Good enough for a start, Mikey sent. She tried to concentrate again...
The robot-girl found that her normal tracking systems had been temporarily disabled. The result of her attempt seemed more or less convincing as a substitute human-like system, but...wow. She hadn't realized until turning off her new systems just how much they added. This...she couldn't even track objects behind her anymore...suddenly Mikey was acutely aware of how limited her field of vision was.
But...it did work as intended. Maybe she wouldn't be so overqualified now...
"Sorry, Becca," she said, feeling a little embarassed. "I didn't realize it, but the way I normally work is overpowered for this. I'm trying something a little more human-like...wanna try again?"
The blue-haired girl nodded, smiling. Even if she didn't win, as long as she could have fun playing with someone...
Mikey looked back to Caitlin...she wondered how much of a potential problem she really was. The statue-girl had said she weighed about 150 pounds, and a 150-pound human wasn't so much of a threat, but she was 150 pounds of nearly-solid marble in the form of a young girl, nearly twice the density...she couldn't remember, did density affect the force of an impact? She might have known, but that calculation was among the code that was currently disabled. They'd better keep playing it safe for now...
They got back into the game a little tentatively, but both Mikey and Becca were pleased to find that the young gynoid's new approach was quite a bit more balanced. Becca was still having a bit of trouble keeping up; she was more used to athletics than Mikey, but she was more familiar with football than soccer - but even so, it was a lot more fun now.
"Hiro," Steve thought to herself. Bet he likes going by that. To come on over and start kibitzing when she'd barely even started playing...was it because she was a girl now? Or was he like this to other people? She didn't know; she didn't think she'd seen him around before. Actually, she hadn't seen him at all, she realized, only heard his voice.
If only she could get the peace and quiet she'd wanted...but she could hardly stop him from joining in. Oh well, maybe he'd play a round and then go on to his own things...she hoped. He waited until she'd finished what she was using for a practice lap. She knew the layout pretty well, but it was good to have it fresh in her head. Hiro dropped in his quarters and sat down, and the flower-girl steeled herself for the challenge.
Hiro was off like a shot from the starting line, pedal to the floor. Interesting, Steve mused, as she applied somewhat more moderate acceleration. Those ones are always cocky...wonder if I can use that? She was more into the game than the psychological aspects of multiplayer, but she wasn't going to discount the potential advantage...especially not with her slightly-wounded pride at stake.
She focused on driving for a bit, but tried to keep an eye on what her opponent was doing. He did seem a bit impulsive, but he knew more or less what he was doing, she had to give him that. Still, his habit of alternating heavy acceleration with quick braking to avoid collisions was holding him back, and before too long they were bobbing in and out of neck-and-neck.
She finished the first lap slightly behind him, but only slightly - they were still close to each other. This could go either way, she thought - but what if she lost? Would he treat her like she didn't know anything, because she was...a girl?
Max lead her guests into the back of the house. Sitting in the den were a man and a woman who could only be the cat-girl's parents. Jon was a little surprised that her mother was clearly of Indian descent...but then, she was no anthropologist, and Max's features were feline to the extent that trying to place her visually into a standard ethnic group was pretty much futile.
The slug-girl wondered how this kind of thing would change people's self-identity, in the long term...obviously appearance wasn't the sole factor in someone's identification with an ethnic group, but it was a factor. Would transformees still think of themselves as being Caucasian or Hispanic or whatever they had been, if they were now as much or more feline or avian or electromechanical? What about their children? Would different types of transformees form their own subcultures?
She didn't know. She wasn't planning on things being as they presently were for very long anyway, but Karyn had made an interesting point about people who didn't want to change back...and if she went along with that, questions like this were still going to be perfectly relevant even after she changed the sun back.
"Welcome home, Max," her mother said, distracting Jon from her train of thought. "Did everything go well? Who are your friends?" She spoke with just a hint of an accent.
"Things went pretty good, Mom," the cat-girl replied. "This is...um, this is Jon, and Karyn, and Tim - I met them at the mall, and we...kind of got to talking, and I wanted to show them Basty..."
"We're not intruding, are we?" Karyn asked. Max seemed a little hesitant, but then, Max had seemed a little hesitant ever since they'd met her - the only time she seemed to be in complete self-assurance was when she was interacting with her cat.
Max's mom smiled. "Not at all. It's very nice to meet you all. Can I get you anything?" They politely declined.
"If you don't mind my asking," Max's father said, standing up to greet their guests, "do any of you attend the new day-side school? Max hasn't been to class since the sun changed, but once she's ready we were thinking of sending her there..."
Jon shrugged. "All three of us go there. It's...it's a little jumbled up in some ways...they're putting all the grades into one building right now. And there are a few students who are being a problem..." She shuddered involuntarily as she thought of Tiffany. "But...it's pretty good, overall. The faculty are definitely trying to do a good job."
"That's good to hear," the human man said. "We were a little worried it'd be some kind of token effort."
Max gasped. School!? She hadn't even thought of that! Going back to school as...as this? What would people think? If the guys her age figured out that she had...that she had six breasts, would they...harass her for it? What would the girls think of having a classmate who used to be a boy?
Jenny tried to think about the question. "Can you teach me to be strong too?" Could she? "What good is being a girl?" Did she even know?
"I...I dunno," she said. "I...I'm only just learnin' to be strong...I still get kinda scared by stuff, and I'm not 's strong as I should be..." She thought back to the complications with fighting the monster today, and the way she hadn't been able to make the kind of jumps she should be able to. Did that mean she wasn't good at being strong?
"An' I...I dunno," she said. "Bein' a girl...it's okay. I dunno what's 'specially good about it...I guess people might be a bit nicer t' you, maybe...my mommy says I'm pretty, too..." After all, everybody at the police station had been fond of her when Muriel had brought her in...would they do that for a boy?
The squirrel-girl blinked, not sure how she felt about that. Being treated nice would be nice...but she didn't want to be a girl in the first place, and that sure didn't make up for it! And she sure didn't want to be "pretty;" it was bad enough to think of growing up into a lady like her mom or someone, but to be a pretty little girl...how humiliating!
Jenny could tell how her new friend felt about that, at any rate. "B-but you don't hafta be all girly!" she said. "They don't make you wear dresses or nothin'...my mommy doesn't, I don't think..." She hadn't seen Muriel in a dress, at any rate.
Billy sighed, her tails swishing. She didn't want to be this...even if it was okay, like Jenny said...but she didn't have much choice...
