Lilly stared at her hand. It couldn'tve been that quick, could it? He must've cheated! But...how would you cheat at arm-wrestling? She couldn't think of a way...at least, nothing she wouldn'tve noticed. Was...was it just that he was heavier than her? Aw, that was no fair! She couldn't help it that she was small now!
She looked up at the wolf-boy nervously. He was grinning, his ears perked up straight. "Uh," she mumbled, "um, you don't...you di'nt, um..."
Bruce snickered. "No goin' back!" he said. "We made a bet, an' I won, fair an' square!"
Lilly frowned, looking poutier than she really intended. "I don' wanna hold hands with you!" she said.
The wolf-boy got a mischievous gleam in his eye. "Well, if you go back on it, I'm gonna tell everyone you're a cheater!"
The squirrel-girl gulped. "Y-you can't say that!" she said. "It's not fair, we didn't even shake on it or nothing'!" She wondered briefly why she felt like it mattered so much what a bunch of little kids called her, but...she didn't want to go around being called a cheater by her classmates, did she?
Bruce shrugged. "I can too!" he said. "We hadda bet, and you took me on, that's as good as shakin' on it! Are you gonna go back?"
Lilly cringed...
Tiffany took a deep breath as she tried to recall exactly how it had gone. "I...I don't remember much, really," she said. "It was morning, the day the sun changed...I woke up when it was still dark...or, it was dark in my room, or something..." She shrugged. "I wasn't really awake. But it was dark...but I guess there must've been enough light getting in the window to trigger a change, or something. I got up, and it felt like the darkness kind of...was around me..."
She hesitated for a moment, wondering why she felt nervous discussing this. "It was around me," she said, "it was like a dream, like I was still waking up or something. And it kind of...wrapped around me, in this dream, and pressed in. It made me a little frightened. And then it...it kind of felt like it was inside me, under my skin, and I could feel it crawling around under there while things changed...I guess I must've been dreaming while the change happened."
There was another, longer pause. Why were her hands shaking? "I..." she began. "I...there was this constricting feeling in my chest, like something was...was wrapping around things in there, tightening. At first I was scared, but then I wasn't...w-why wasn't I sc-scared? Why!?" She stopped herself. No, dammit! She wasn't going to just break down, especially over...over nothing!
But...looking back on it...how could she not have been frightened? She hadn't been able to breathe then, she felt endangered, somehow, and...she was just...consumed by fear, and yet the next moment, it had been gone...it didn't make any sense! She objected to its ever having happened...not that she wanted to be afraid, but she should have been, and she was mad that she hadn't.
"Uh," she said, trying to direct her thoughts back to the story, "I...I woke up from the dream, or I got back up, and...and I just knew that I had changed. I...I don't think I even bothered to look, I just knew, about it, about me."
The counselor nodded, eyeing her curiously. "What did you know, Tiffany?"
She frowned. "I knew that...that I was...better," she said. Words didn't do it justice. It wasn't "better," it was "BETTER" arising from the depths of the sea in firey letters as a monument to her...she winced. To her...glory...damn it, she couldn't even really grasp what she had felt anymore. She had known she was so far removed from humans and their petty affairs, somehow...and now she couldn't even perceive that, and it just sounded hollow...it sounded silly.
"I...I knew I had power," she said. Another word that failed to convey what had been conveyed to her, the full extent of her might, but...if she had been so mighty, how could her own teacher be so very far ahead of her? Was...was it just that she no longer grasped the depth of these feelings, or...was it...was it that...that maybe...it wasn't wholly true?
The counselor gave her a thoughtful glance. "Tiffany, you mention 'power' a lot," she said. "It sounds a lot of the time like you're referring to power over others?"
"Well, yeah!" the horned girl said. "I mean, I had influence, I could make people bend to my will..."
"Could you?"
She stopped short. "Well, I mean, I could intim..." What? Gah! She had forgotten...how many people had just seemed annoyed by it? She couldn't even make the stupid slug-girl back down! And Sarah had attacked her outright in the lunchroom...but she could, right? She had made her dad-
She winced as she thought about that. Her own father...the one person she'd successfully kept under her sway...and now it hurt to even think about what she'd done. How much of that was even due to a power so much as just...just emotional shock, that his own daughter would treat him that way...?
"...n-no..." she whispered.
The counselor nodded. "Tiffany," she said, "what I don't understand is why you would need this imagined 'power.'" Tiffany winced at hearing it put so bluntly, but...was she even wrong? The Gorgon woman looked her in the eye. "After all," she said, "you already had a knack for working the social structure you exist in, didn't you? Your grades are pretty good, too. And I believe you already had a drive for building and exerting influence; as I recall from your records, you ran for student government three times, and were elected...twice?"
Tiffany nodded thoughtfully. That was true...she had. She had done that without any special powers at all. She hadn't really expected the responsibility that came with it, but...it had been nice to be in a position like that.
"And I've seen you with a few different boys, back in the old school, so I would hardly say you weren't attractive then, whereas you seemed to keep entirely to yourself after your first change. Frankly, Tiffany, I'm not sure what you thought this change could give you that you didn't already have, on your own merits."
"But..." Tiffany sighed. Maybe...maybe she was right about that, but what now? "But I'm...I mean, look at me! How am I supposed to get anybody to listen to me now, when I'm a freak? And...no way are guys gonna be..." She trailed off.
"Do you really think so?" the counselor asked. "Your fellow students are also changed...some even more dramatically than you are. And by some of the other things Sarah said to you, it's possible that they view your new form more favorably than they did your first change, isn't it?"
"But..." She couldn't think of a counter-argument. Why was this all sounding like it made sense? She hadn't come in here for this, had she? But...was any of it wrong? She wasn't really so sure anymore...
"But...what am I?" she asked. "I...I know I was human, and then I was an...a...like a human..." She'd wanted to say "ascended human," or something to that effect, but...she was growing less convinced of that. "But what am I now? Sarah or Karyn, even Jon you can tell what they are. Me...I'm not anything. I'm just some kind of freak..."
The counselor shrugged. "It's true that you don't seem to fall into any of the usual categories for transformees, Tiffany. But that doesn't mean you're some kind of aberration. There are a number of other people out there who've been given unique forms, unlike the common change types. It's just part of how the sun works. Can I ask, do you actually feel uncomfortable with your new body, or is it just the unusual nature of the change that upsets you?"
Tiffany frowned. "Oh no. You're not going to tell me it's all in my head and I should just be happy about this."
The older woman looked a little offended. "Of course not!" she said. "My job isn't to make you into what I think you should be. But you came in here wanting to talk about it, Tiffany, and I'm trying to understand you so that I can know what we're talking about. I certainly understand that you'd be upset by undergoing a second transformation when the first must already have had a big impact on your life, and at your age it's perfectly understandable that you'd feel awkward for standing out by your unique change, but I'd like to know if those are the only problems you have with it."
She felt a little guilty at that. "I..." She sighed. "I don't know. I...I guess it's not horrible, I mean, I have all my limbs and everything...but..."
Tiffany smiled slightly, in spite of her mood. "The horn's a pain in the ass," she said. "It's always just where I can see it, so I keep trying to get a better look up at it, but I can't, because it moves with me...and when I'm not watching where I'm going it can get in the way...I put a hole in the wall the first morning."
The counselor smiled at that, but somehow Tiffany didn't feel that she was being made fun of. She sighed. "I guess...the thing that really bothers me is the lights."
The Gorgon raised an eyebrow. "The lights?"
Tiffany looked down at her body, hesitated, then undid the neck clasp and pulled the top of her robe open a bit. The lines on the tops of her breasts were gently illuminated, only really standing out against her pale skin, not the bright shine that the irritation of her normal clothing had caused. The counselor looked her over, curiously. "Interesting."
She frowned. "Yeah, well I wasn't really interested in having any tattoos, let alone glow-in-the-dark ones."
"I see," the counselor said. "So it's the idea of having body art that bothers you?"
She sighed. "I guess, yeah. It's...it's just freaky, okay? I'm not...one of those kinds of people, I'm me. But now I'm stuck with it anyway. I'm stuck with all of this."
Jenny was just wondering where Lilly had gotten to when the classroom door opened. There she was! Jenny rushed over towards her friend, then leapt back a pace when she nearly ran into the other student coming into the room, a boy with dog ears and a tail. Lilly looked kind of embarassed, and Jenny wondered why...until she noticed that they were holding hands.
It made her want to giggle, but she bit her lip and held back from saying anything...it wouldn't be very nice to laugh at her friend! Especially because Lilly was cringing and eyeing the boy nervously...she didn't need anybody to tease her right now. 'Sides, it looked like the boy was doing enough smirking for two.
She put on the best smile she could for the squirrel-girl, and was about to say something when the teacher spoke. "There you are. Lilly, Bruce, take your seats, please."
Bruce led Lilly over towards his seat, and she trailed behind, wishing she didn't have to do this...but Bruce sat a few seats behind and to the left of her. The teacher shook her head. "Your seat, please, Lilly."
"Oh, but she's gotta sit with me," Bruce said. "We had a bet, an' I won."
The drider-woman tried to suppress a smile, and gave him a knowing glance. "Bruce, you can make whatever bets you want, but I do expect you to behave in class."
The wolf-boy gazed up front at the teacher for a moment, then his ears drooped slightly. "Aw, no fair," he said, letting go of Lilly's hand. The squirrel-girl tried not to immediately dash over to her desk. She clamped down into her seat, gripping the desk and wrapping her feet around the chair legs as if something might physically pull her away and stick her over next to him. Thus secured, she turned to Bruce and flashed him a triumphant little smile.
He smirked at that, and she felt all embarassed again. She knew what that expression meant: it was a yeah, but I won expression...
