Jon woke up a bit earlier than usual for a Saturday; she wasn't really sure why. Certainly not because she'd gotten more sleep than usual. But awake she was, nonetheless. Still sprawled out on her bed, she stretched this way and that, working the kinks out of her back and shoulders, and slid her top half down onto the floor, peeling her lower half off of the mattress cover and pulling it down to join the rest of her. It wasn't exactly a dignified way to get up (in fact, she was a little embarassed by it, as she thought it emphasized the "slug" aspect of her change,) but it was easier than sitting up in bed and trying to work herself loose while maintaining her balance. Doffing her long pajama top and pulling on skirt, bra, and shirt, she cracked her neck and headed down the hall into the bathroom to straighten her hair out.
She was busily working out the miscellaneous tangles that had gotten into her hair over the course of the night when she saw Mikey standing outside the bathroom. Jon did a double-take when she noticed that the robot-girl's green hair had suddenly and inexplicably grown down to the floor, and followed it up with the rarer triple-take when she noticed that Mikey suddenly looked older. She whirled around, this time finally remembering to take her rather fixed base into account, and not hitting a hard limit on how far she could turn. "I, uh..." she stammered, as she brought her slug half around, "what happened to you?"
The young gynoid chewed on her lip a little nervously, shifting uneasily on her newly-altered legs. It was one thing to experience this, but actually sharing what had happened with her family...that was a little stranger. "I, um...I kinda...grew up a bit," she said. "I've been reading about some other androids that have had stuff like this happen..."
The slug-girl blinked in surprise, still trying to put all the pieces together in her mind. So...so robot-changed (or at least some of them) had some parallel of human body maturation? That...that was weird and didn't make any sense to her except in the way that having them be passably human-like to begin with made some sense, but she figured it was certainly better than Mikey having to be perpetually twelve years old to all outside appearances. "Uh, huh," she said. "Wow. It, uh...it didn't hurt, did it?"
Mikey shook her head. "No, nuh-uh. It just felt kinda strange and surprised me, that's all." She shifted her legs again, trying to adjust to her slightly broader hips. "It still feels kinda strange, actually," she said.
Jon nodded. "I bet. Normally you'd get more of a chance to grow into it. Though even then, it's pretty weird. Probably." She herself hadn't gone through a directly comparable experience, but puberty as a guy had had plenty of its own weirdness. She looked over her younger sister again - a little taller, a little more adult build, a little less baby fat in the face. Not by a whole huge lot, but certainly a lot more than a human would experience - in the time that would normally take, she'd easily have started to get used to things. She tried to take a guess - was Mikey twelve and a half now? Thirteen? But it was useless, she never was any good with ages.
Mikey nodded. "Yeah, I guess. But...I guess it's okay," she said. "I, um..." She bit her lip, and would have blushed a little if she'd possessed the mechanism to do so. "I kinda don't mind if I can grow up like you," she stammered.
Jon was a little confused at first as she tried to work out what her little sister meant, then a little stunned at the idea that she was just as much the "big sister" figure to Mikey as she'd been the "big brother" figure before, when Zoe had been the only girl in the house, then a little weirded out by the idea. Finally, shaking it off, she felt a little bemused and touched. She put an arm around the young gynoid. "Aw, thanks," she said. "But...do you really not mind it?"
Mikey thought for a moment, then shrugged. "I...I guess I dunno how I feel about it," she said quietly. "I dunno if I like it, but it doesn't bug me or anything. And...I guess if I'm gonna be like this, then it'd be nice to grow up nicely like this." She looked up at Jon - though between her increased height and Jon's low-riding stance, they weren't too far from eye-level with each other. "Is...'s that okay?"
Jon paused, then smiled. "That's just fine," she said. Internally, she marveled at the variety of reactions she was seeing in people - Mikey wasn't like Haru, who seemed to actively prefer her changed self; instead, she was just so calm about it. Not indecisive or afraid to express an opinion, just...tranquil. Honestly, Jon felt a little envious. For all she'd been through, grappling with her own guilt at being responsible for all this, and the hassles and confusion of her own change...but it was okay. She'd get all of that put right soon enough. "You could use a haircut, though," she mused.
Mikey nodded, smiling sheepishly. "I was gonna," she said. "But I can't see behind me. Could you do it for me?"
Jon suppressed a snort, remembering a particularly ill-fated attempt to help Zoe with her hair when they were little. "I, uh, I'm no good at that," she chuckled. "We should probably get Mom, she's gotta see this anyway."
Adam looked around for a plank between the dock and the ship...woman...thing, but there didn't seem to be one, and the distance was a little too far for her to try and just step aboard. She thought of excusing herself, but it felt like a shame to just leave her, and she really was kind of curious. A running jump, maybe...and then she had a different thought. She didn't feel like trying to fly, but that didn't mean her wings couldn't be of some use. She spread them, flexing them a little nervously - the first time she'd actually had them spread out anywhere near their full extent, except when she'd done her preening after her shower - crouched, and sprang, thrusting down and back. She was taken off-guard by how easily she lifted off the ground, but managed to keep her head, and landed with only a bit of a stumble on Edina's deck.
She stepped gingerly forward, not sure if the ship-girl could this, or if her talons would be anything close to comfortable if she could, but there was no complaint from the figurehead up on the prow. She didn't seem to be an especially large ship, even by sailing-ship standards (though Adam had to admit she was no expert on that subject,) but she certainly wasn't someone's little afternoon-outing sailboat, either. She took a little look around the deck, and noted that there didn't seem to be a wheel - evidently nobody steered Edina but Edina herself. Having done this, she made her way up to the prow. "It's, um, very nice," she said to the figurehead, wishing she knew enough about this to make some less inane conversation.
The carved woman smiled. "Take a look below, why don't you?"
The harpy felt a little weird as she approached the entrance to the interior, but again, she didn't want to just say hello and then bail. She went inside and took a look around. It was a little dimmer than she liked, but not gloomy; it was a warm, comfortable kind of darkness. And there was a curious feeling to the interior - while it was all laid out in familiar architectural patterns, the narrow passages, the way the trim was carved, and something about the color of the wood all gave it a strangely organic feeling, as if she was inside a living thing. Which, she supposed, she was.
She came at last to what looked like a little dining room, and was surprised to see a replica of the figurehead, this time fully human in shape, "seated" on a bench at the forward end. "Th-there are two of you?" she asked, surprised.
Edina chuckled. "That's one way of looking at it," she said. "Both of us are me. But there's nothing stopping the me up top from saying hello to someone else if they should happen by, while the me down below speaks to you. I suppose it's going to be very useful if I ever have passengers, to have two of me."
Adam nodded, a little weirded out by all this. "Passengers?" she asked. "You, uh, you think you could do that?"
"Well, there's certainly nothing stopping me," the ship-girl replied. "Certainly I'm not using my cabins for anything. But I don't think I'd just want to ferry tourists or anything, and I'm not sure how many other people would be interested."
"Yeah, I suppose," Adam said. She brightened. "Though if the sea-changed get their city built, I suppose you could take their families out to visit them." Then she frowned. "But...I dunno, I mean...you don't have a motor or anything, do you?"
The woman scoffed. "No, but the winds don't cost four bucks a gallon, do they?"
"Oh, huh, I guess not." Adam stayed quiet for a minute, pondering the situation. "You seem awfully calm about this whole thing," she remarked.
Edina laughed. "Oh, this is the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me, no mistake about that," she said. "But...if the Sun had to get me...there's a whole lot worse things that it could've done." She smiled. "As strange as this is, I'm never parted from the sea now. I can be out here as long as I like, I can go anywhere I want - I can sail to anywhere in the world, and never have to come back if I don't feel like it. That's freedom, little chick. I'm freer even than a bird like you - you still have to eat. But you're pretty liberated yourself, you know."
Adam couldn't help but laugh, a little bitterly. "Easy for you to say, you haven't seen me try to dress myself, or bathe myself, or eat without making a mess of myself..."
The carved woman shook her head smiling. "Oh, no doubt. But in the grand scheme of things, that's all secondary, isn't it? Social niceties. Where it really counts, you're free, kid. You've got the wind to carry you, and the wings to sail it."
Riley rolled out of bed late in the morning. She hadn't slept well last night; she'd been uneasy ever since...something...yesterday afternoon. Still in her pajamas, she trudged downstairs in search of breakfast.
Her father-turned-mother was there, digging into a very heavily glazed cinnamon roll with her coffee. The blue-hair anime woman smiled at her daughter. "Morning, Riley," she said. "Feeling better?"
Riley shrugged and nodded. "Tired," she mumbled. "But I'm not all nervous like I was."
Toby nodded. "Well, that's good, at least," she said. "But if you're that tired, you might want to take a nap. You might have a busy afternoon ahead of you."
Riley frowned, both Charlie and Anna racking their brain, trying to remember what their dad was referring to. "Huh?" she asked.
"Don't you remember?" Toby said. "We got a call from the mother of the other magical girl Hawkins knows about. She's bringing Jenny over to meet you."
