"Faster! Faster!" Eric yelped, as the van sped away from the disturbance. "Get us out of here! I can't go back - can't! I can't!"
Peter tried to keep his eyes on the road as his passenger flickered between human and...something else, he wasn't getting a clear look at exactly what. "Look," he said, "I'll take you as far as I'm going, but I'm just trying to get to a safe spot. I've got people waiting for me back in the town."
Eric wasn't really listening, He was too busy focusing on what was happening to him. The flickering felt strange...he didn't feel like one thing or the other, or like much of anything at all. It was sort of like an out-of-body experience, only he was still clearly attached to his body, which was still responding to his commands.
But there was something about the flickering...it wasn't going away, or at least not in the way he wanted. The further they got from the center of the town and into more normal Earth landscape, the less present his human male form became, and the more...the more solid the skunk-girl got. At last they were outside the apparent area of effect, and...she was back in her transformed shape.
"NO!" she shrieked, pounding the upholstery. "No no no no NO! I was human! I was a man again! Why? Why why WHY!?" She whipped her head around, long white hair flinging, and stared back at the flickering landscape. How did this even happen, anyway!? It was night out! The sun was nowhere in sight...was it just being back on Earth that gave her the form she had most recently had there, or what? How did that make any sense!? Yet it seemed to be the case...
"I have to go back!" she yelped. "I have to go back! Come on!"
The lizard-man stared at the teenage skunk-girl his passenger had become. "Are you nuts!?" he asked. "You wanna be human and impaled by a pillar or something?"
"I have to...I can't do this!" Eric wailed. Why did this have to happen? She was so close...so close!
Peter sighed. "Look, suck it up and wait this out. I'll take you back in when it's died down and I go to look for my coworkers, and you can figure out what to do from there."
The skunk-girl stammered for a minute or so, then sighed in defeat. "F-fine..." She knew she had to get back in there, back to where she could be human again, but not at the risk of her own life...
There was a sudden jolt, a brief shock through the ground, and suddenly the flickering stopped. The landscape was solid again, but somewhat different. Instead of being Earth landscape with patches of the other world randomly intruding, it was like they had become coherent parts of the landscape...still a little out of place, but worked in naturally instead of simply dropped in at random.
Peter let out a low whistle. "Guess that answers that," he said. "Let's give it a few minutes and see what's left."
Riley nearly collapsed from the effort, but managed to sit herself down on the floor. So much had just happened, and she had only vague ideas as to how any of it had manifested. Reality was joined in patches, the bonds strong enough that they would hold on their own, but other parts had simply refused to fuse, like air bubbles under wallpaper. And parts of the town's borders seemed to still exist within the other world...but on the bright side, that would at least allow anybody who might still be there to get back to Earth.
She wondered, though, if the sun there could still change people back as she'd heard. If that were true, then Hedgeton might become some kind of tourist destination for people who wanted to change back; maybe they'd even build some kind of colony within the alien world! But if she had managed to make Earth dominant, did that include the sun as well? She didn't know...probably the only way to find out would be to wait and see, but she didn't have any intention of changing back.
And there was the whole matter of time having gone a little crazy during her attempt...the house didn't seem to be affected, but who knew about the rest of the town? And who or what had told her to stop trying to join the two worlds? She didn't...didn't...
Riley felt herself picked up by her mom, cradled in his arms. She sighed, glad it was over for now. She was sure there were a lot of questions to be answered and a lot of things to be done, but for the moment, she'd done her part.
Mark grinned. She hadn't enjoyed herself this much since the sun changed. The evening was wearing on, but the music kept playing, and she had a while yet before her mom would want her back. The sensations of motion, rhythm, energy...it all blended together into a blur of enjoyment.
Granted, it had been weird dancing with a guy, and people were still giving her odd looks. And her sisters, though they seemed to have figured out what she was doing, were all still trying to get used to the feel of her breasts, hair, and wings all moving independently.
But she didn't care. She was really having fun for the first time in quite a while. Smiling, the angel-girl shut her eyes and lost herself in the dance.
