Robert stood nervously before the camera, wondering whether she looked...embarrassing or not. Her breasts felt larger with the support of the brassiere, to her, but at the same time, they weren't moving around nearly so much...would that make them less noticeable, then? She hoped so. In any case, she was here, she was going to...going to give an interview...going to present a voice in this controversy that was brewing around her. She didn't want this; she wasn't even sure what God wanted her to be doing in the church, much less any activism. And with...with the way she had acted before...
"Relax," the diminutive fox-woman said. "You'll do fine. Are you ready?"
The devil-woman took a deep breath and nodded. Jay shifted nigh-instantly into professional demeanor, standing straight and gazing pleasantly at the camera. She hoped Lisa was right; it felt odd to be wearing a jacket on top of a dress, but it did seem to look a little more natural and classy than the pantsuits she'd picked up after her change. "Robert Douglas is a pastor at Birch Lake Lutheran, one of the oldest buildings in the region," she said, turning to face her interviewee. "She was recently attacked by several members of the protest group. Robert, what are your feelings on the protest?"
"T-to be honest," Robert said, trying to think of what to say and not turn to stare at the camera, "I wish this had never started...I don't want to see this community overtaken by vindictive backlash any more than I want it to give in to prejudice against the changed. I myself have expressed sentiments I now regret; I don't want to be responsible for any more v...viol..." She trailed off, shaking as she tried to control her feelings, a little trickle running down her cheek.
"Are you all right?" Jay asked. "It's okay, we can do another take...or if this isn't something you want to go through with..."
Robert couldn't keep herself from crying now, as she sank to her knees, her changed legs folding up underneath her. "I...I d-don't know," she said. "I'm sorry...I heard some of...of what Miss Wilkins was saying, and...I want people to stop this, I want to see wrongs I participated in righted...but I don't want to see this become a war..."
"I understand," Jay said. "I don't think that she does either, but I understand your concern. You can think about it for a while, if you like, and decide what you want to do."
Lilly sighed. They were finally done with school; it felt to her like it stretched on forever, even though her teacher was nice and fun to listen to. She went to the coat rack at the back of the classroom and grabbed her coat; it wasn't part of the uniform, but her mommy had picked it to match. She smiled; it kinda looked nice that way, and it was comfy too.
"Hi Lilly!" Jenny smiled as she came back to grab her own jacket. "Ready?"
The squirrel-girl nodded uncertainly. "It's really okay for us t' do this?" she asked.
Jenny nodded. "I told my mom you an' I were gonna walk home together, and we might stop at the park for a while. So we can go look in the woods there, and they won't be worried."
Lilly smiled; that made sense, now that her friend explained it. They left the school and walked down the street a ways. "S-so," the squirrel-girl said, "who're we lookin' f'r?"
"Mommy said her name's Harriet," the white-haired girl replied. "She's Ms. Violet's niece, an' she's 'bout as old as us. But they don't know what she turned inta, so they don't know what she looks like now..."
Billy frowned; she knew all too well how drastically the sun could change someone. Still...they could look for her, right? I wouldn't hurt to try.
Jay was taking a moment to have a drink of water and straighten out her fur a bit when Lisa came back. "Hey," she said, "how'd it go?"
An expression of discomfort and annoyance crossed the deer-taur's face. "I do not like him," she said. "Real skeezy televangelist type. You know the kind. He almost manages to make them not sound like nutjobs...mostly by dodging questions and making implications about the devil-changed. I'm not really sure how much I got that we can use. And he called me 'little lady' like three times; I'm gonna need a shower after this."
Jay nodded. "You're a braver girl than I. We'll see if there's anything useful in there when we get back, I guess."
Lisa frowned. "Yeah...I was hoping he'd just go into an on-camera meltdown, though. I got to talk to the chief of police, he said Douglas's attackers were part of the group, but..." She sighed. "But the group disavows their actions, at least the attempted murder part, and he says there's no evidence to suggest they're lying...dammit, that could've been huge."
Jay nodded, then frowned. "Lisa...what are we trying to accomplish here?"
"Huh? Trying to put together a piece for the late news, last I checked."
"Yeah," the fox-woman said. "But...are we trying? I keep feeling gut reactions, like I'd just like to go off on some rant, or get someone else to do it for me and go 'there, that, that's totally right but you didn't hear it from me because I'm objective.' And you're kind of rooting for people to be considered criminal for associating with criminals, and...and I kind of share the feeling. I know we need to do better than that, but I don't know that I want to..."
Lisa shrugged. "Well...it's hard to be fair when one side of things is obviously wrong. You're kind of attacking them just by covering this, but it's not something we can just ignore."
"I know, I know," Jay said. "And I suppose it's naive to insist on maintaining mythical levels of intellectual purity and detachment from absolutely everything when we both know there's times where that's just not possible. Still...I have to wonder if...if we aren't compromised here."
"You mean like all those cop shows?" Lisa said, smiling slightly. "'You're too close to this one! You're off the case!'"
Jay grinned in spite of herself. "And then we go and do it anyway because we're the Mavericks Who Get The Job Done, yeah. I just can't help wondering...maybe we should've sent a couple of unchanged reporters. I mean, I don't think anybody at the station actually likes these assholes, but maybe they wouldn't feel quite so invested in this..."
"Well, we're here right now, not any of the others," Lisa said. "So I guess we just try to do the best job we can. If it's any consolation, you could just run a live feed of the protestors and it could be construed as an attack, I don't know that you can do much worse."
"Hey, don't be underestimating my wordsmithing skills," Jay said. "I just...I don't want to be 'the muckraker from Channel 7 who started a species riot' or anything. This isn't a powder-keg type of situation, not yet...I don't want to be the person responsible for making it one."
Lisa nodded. "Agreed."
