Jeff gritted his teeth and fumed. Stupid, stupid! How could she be so...ARGH! Belle just had no sense...but then, that was why he liked her. She was one person he knew he could rely on to not be trying to take advantage of him, because it would never occur to her to do so. He tried to look out for her in return, but she made things so difficult, sometimes...and now she'd gone and done who-knows-what to herself...
His mind reeled with the possibilities. What if she'd become some kind of freak, something that he couldn't help but find disgusting? Did the Sun do that? What if a kid? What if...what if she became a guy!? He shuddered. And then he felt bad for shuddering; wasn't he supposed to be protective of her? She was his girl, after all; yet here he was feeling preemptively disgusted about things that he didn't even know had happened yet! But he could hardly help it...if she had...had...argh, he didn't even want to think about it!
He pulled at his hair again and clenched his hands at the air, frustrated and angry, and angry about being angry, and frustrated about being angry about being angry, and then he found himself starting to tear up and was angry about that...why did this have to be so complicated? Why did everything have to go wrong all the time? He couldn't keep anybody he wanted around, or if he could it would be Belle and she'd get herself into trouble and he wouldn't be able to do anything about it because of the stupid Sun, or it would be Ricky and she was too perfect for him to even be able to draw her, and...and...
He vigorously thumped his head down into his mattress and gave a long, irritated groan.
Ricky walked along briskly, trying to balance out keeping up a decent clip with not winding down her mainspring too fast. The part of her that drove her to obey these commands felt that the matter was urgent and she should hurry, but she knew that if she tried to sprint all the way to...wherever it was she was going, she was likely to run down partway there again, and she did not want that to happen again, especially without someone trustworthy there to help her.
She wondered where exactly Belle was, anyway, but she had no idea. Apparently Jeff could impart to her the knowledge of what he wanted her to do without telling her verbally, but he couldn't impart information he didn't have. Still, from the phone conversation it'd sounded like Belle was on the way over, so she must be somewhere between her house and his. She frowned, her mind coming back to her situation. Why, why, did she have to follow his orders, of all people's? Just because he had her key...why did she even have that? It was bad enough having to depend on other people to wind her, but to have a weakness like this...how was that fair!? How was this in any way an appropriate fate for her!?
A little voice somewhere in the back of her mind spoke up, then. Is it really that different?
She balked, nearly stopping dead in her tracks. "Sh-shut up!" she whispered, the words nearly lost under the metallic harmonics that the act of speaking produced, but she was already following that train of thought through to its logical conclusion. Haven't you always let people tell you what to do? She winced. Just the other day, at Jeff's, before she'd changed...he hadn't wanted to be around Razor. He hadn't even wanted to be there, except for the possibility of meeting the mermaid. But when it came to it...he'd gone along with what Razor told him to do, hurting the very person he came to see, with hardly more than a protest...and that wasn't the only time, either. Not hardly. Any time it came to it, any time he faced having to say "no" or deal with rejection for not doing what people like Razor wanted him to...
She stifled a bitter chuckle. No, it was completely appropriate, really. She was a doll, she was a puppet for others to command, because that was what she'd always been. And now she'd spend the rest of her life that way, just like she probably always would've...
It doesn't have to happen that way.
Of course it did! She was compelled-
You're not forcibly made to do anything.
...but...it made her feel like she needed to...
But you don't have to submit to every urge without question. That's how you got into trouble over those pictures, among other things.
...but...it was hard...to resist...
But wouldn't it be worth it?
Ricky felt a sort of gradual change-of-the-wind in her mind as this internal discussion went on. At first it seemed impossible to even consider, then it seemed like a theoretical possibility, but not one she herself could ever manage, and then she began to start thinking that maybe she could, after all. It was just a feeling, it wasn't even like she was physically handicapped, she'd just turn around and go h-
And then she remembered why she hadn't just turned and walked away when Jeff had started ordering her around. She felt uneasy enough just not doing what he'd told her - actively disobeying was even more uncomfortable. Not in a physical way, but she felt very uneasy doing so, like it had felt to put off going to the bathroom too long and be struck by a high-tension adrenaline panic, only without the visceral quality of actual adrenaline in an actual circulatory system. If she were better at this, if she were only better at this kind of thing...
But...she wasn't...she'd never had much practice at reigning in her urges, and now she was paying for it. Besides...what if Belle did need help? She remembered how frightened she'd been when she changed, and when she found out that she needed someone to wind her...what might Belle be going through right now? It wasn't as if she was Ricky's girlfriend, but...well, she wasn't very bright, and it would be awful if something happened to her...
Turning back around, she walked on, key slowly turning behind her. The urgent ticking in her head that had flared up when she tried to resist subsided, for the most part, though she did still feel a sense of urgency. If she could only just find...
Ricky's attention was suddenly drawn to a small figure on the edge of the sidewalk a few yards away. She went over and knelt down next to it, then gasped.
The figure was a girl, no more than eight inches tall. She was nearly the spitting image of Ricky, a doll-like construction of metal and fabric with a winding key sticking out of her back and slowly re-winding itself - she must have run down out here. She was dressed very similarly to what Ricky's clothes had become during her transformation. Unlike the dream-sisters from last night, though, she wasn't an identical copy of Ricky, even apart from the difference in size. Her face...it took a moment for Ricky to place it, but she realized that it was basically Belle's face - in fact, it was a closer resemblance than Ricky had to her old self, since Belle had always been a girl. Her hair, like Ricky's, had an iridescent quality to it, but where Ricky's hair tended to be pale pastels centered around a creamy off-white, Belle's was vivid purples and greens; if Ricky's hair was mother-of-pearl, Belle's was a soap-bubble.
Ricky hesitated a moment before picking her up and looking her over for any sign of injury - but she was alright. For reasons she couldn't quite explain, Ricky felt affectionate toward and protective of the little doll-girl in a way she'd never felt towards the unchanged Belle. She held her carefully in one hand and started winding her key, trying to think back on the gentle way her dad had done it. Belle's eyes started flicking this way and that, and she moved in brief spurts when Ricky released the key between turns, trying to start saying something.
When she'd finished, Ricky set the tiny clockwork girl down. Belle looked up at her, eyes wide. "Oh...ohmygawd, you're the robot!" she said, then stopped. "Is...ohmygawd, is that my voice?" Indeed, while Belle had always had a higher-pitched voice, she was now solidly in the Speedy Alka-Seltzer register, though the timbre and inflection were still recognizably hers, aside from the brushed-metal quality that Ricky's voice had also taken on in her change. Ricky supposed this had to do with her change in size.
Belle looked down at herself as if realizing for the first time what'd happened, holding up a fabric-covered hand to her face and craning her neck back to just catch sight of her key out of the corner of her eye. "I...I'm a robot!" she gasped. "Like you! D-did...gawd, did I, like, catch it from you!?" She didn't seem exactly angry about the idea, but she was visibly upset. Ricky felt sorry for her. "No," she said. "It doesn't work that way, I don't think." Besides, why would she have changed size, if that were the case? Ricky frowned. "Wait, you didn't know?"
The tiny doll-girl shook her head. "I...I felt somethin' start to happen, and I realized I was shrinkin'...I didn't wanna get stuck out here without somebody to protect me, so I started runnin'...but I got too small to run fast, and then I...I just stopped movin'..." She started to shake a little. "Gawd, I w-w-was so s-scared!" she stammered.
Ricky picked her up and held her, which seemed to calm her down a little. She could feel the rapid ticking of Belle's internals, running at a different tempo than her own. She nodded knowingly. "Don't run if you don't have to," she said. "It runs your mainspring down faster." Belle looked up at Ricky. "'s...'s this mean I...I have to get people to...like, wind me up?" she asked. "All the time?" Ricky nodded. "You'll re-wind eventually if you sit still," she said, "but it's a lot faster to get someone to help you."
Belle sighed, a sound like someone brushing a finger across the tines of a toy piano. "D-did...did Razor send you?" she asked. Ricky nodded. "I'm supposed to take you back to his house." She sighed...now there would be two of them stuck under his control...then she thought of something. "Wait," she said, "where did you start to change?" Belle looked at her blankly and shrugged. "Well, which way is your house, then?" Ricky asked.
Jeff was starting to get antsy. Where were they? What if...what if Ricky had wound down out there, or something? God! Stupid useless clockwork girl, having to be wound up just to be useful...like his old dog, or the mermaid, it was like anything cool he got wound up putting demands on him instead of anybody doing anything for him...god!
He was still fuming about this when he heard someone coming up the stairs. As far as he knew, his parents were still asleep - was Ricky back? Sure enough, the clockwork girl walked in, carrying...what was that, that couldn't seriously be...?
Ricky set Belle down on the desk; the tiny clockwork girl looked around, still getting a handle on seeing the world from this perspective. Jeff gasped and stepped closer. "No...no, no..." he murmured, feeling his stomach turn. For this to happen...it was one thing for someone like Ricky to become this, but for his girlfriend...he tried to imagine making out with this little doll-girl, or even just being together...she wasn't even a foot tall, dammit! And she was...tiny, delicate, perfect like Ricky was...unapproachable, untouchable...and he hated himself for feeling upset by that, but how could he not? And...and she would have a master key, like Ricky's, and people could...he felt sick. This wasn't how it was supposed to be! He cared for Belle, but now she was this...this doll-thing...
"R-Razor?" said the tiny figure, her voice high and tremulous. "Y-you okay, baby?"
He groaned. It...it couldn't be helped...there was nothing he could do. He hadn't been able to keep her from doing this to herself, but...somebody had to look out for her...
"Where's her key?" he asked Ricky. The larger of the two clockwork-girls shrugged. "On her back."
"Not that one," he said, irritated but too stunned to display it. "The other one."
Ricky frowned. "I don't have it."
Jeff moaned. "Rrgh...you lost it!?" If someone else got that key...
She shook her head. "I didn't lose it. It's somewhere safe. It's just not here."
He growled. "God, don't you get it?" he snarled. "She can't look out for herself, dammit! She's..." He stopped himself. He hated it when other people made fun of her, he didn't want to...to call her...an idiot, not in front of her...but he was right! Belle couldn't look after herself, she hadn't even had the sense not to go out in the sun! He had to take care of her...he had to protect her, even from herself...
Ricky felt a tension building inside her. In an almost automatic action, she sprang forward and slapped him across the cheek, hard.
It was mostly the combination of overall situational shock with the surprise of it that sent Jeff reeling back from the blow, though Ricky didn't quite realize that her exterior was shaped metal plates covered with fabric rather than muscle and skin now. He stared at her. "Wh-what...the hell!?" he stammered.
Ricky scowled at him. Belle wasn't exactly like her dream-sisters, but she was of a kind with her, and for him to be demanding that... "I'm not doing it!" she snapped, the metallic overtones of her voice much more harsh and grinding than musical now. "Y-you...you...you treat people like things, and you think they're just their for you, and you make me do things and now you want me to help you control her like you control me!? NO! I'm...I won't!" She was shaking; it felt uncomfortable and wrong for her to be speaking so rudely, but if anything that just made her more upset with him.
Jeff stared at her, wide-eyed. "Y-you...you're supposed to be my friend!" he stammered. She was...how could something so perfect and delicate become so scary?
Ricky gritted her teeth. "You ordered me to be your friend!" she said. "And you know what? A friend isn't just going to stand by and let you be an...an as-a JERK!" She couldn't quite bring herself to say exactly what she was feeling, but there was enough emphasis behind what she did say that she got the point across.
Jeff stared at her in silence. She...she...didn't she get it? All he wanted was to...to protect Belle...to look out for his girl...but now the clockwork girl was violent and angry and yelling at him and she said that was being his friend...other people just tried to take advantage of his money, she was...god, she was terrifying! And that was friendship? How could...how could she...
The tension, the internal conflict, the shock of the situation and of being attacked by someone who was supposed to be his friend, and the harshness of her words all muddled up into a knot inside of him. Looking for something to say and not coming up with anything, Jeff found himself starting to cry.
