Ken felt half-regretful about the way she'd acted towards Mikey; after all, he was just an eight-year-old boy, even if he did look seventeen, and what he had done was probably more through thoughtless self-centeredness than actual malice. But all the same, he had left his siblings, Ken herself, and probably Tina as well in quite a bind, not to mention any other unfortunates who stumbled upon a post-it from the pad he'd wished up. As much as she wanted to comfort the crying child upstairs, she couldn't just let him get by with such an act. But how the hell could she deliver an appropriate punishment when she couldn't even determine the full extent of the crime? She'd have to wait for Tina to get home, she supposed.
She didn't have to wait long. A couple minutes after she'd sent Mikey upstairs, Ken heard the front door open. Jon and Zoe got up, about to run and hide, but she motioned them to stay; delaying this confrontation wouldn't make it any easier. She stood in the middle of the living room as Tina walked in.
Tina looked at the woman for a moment. She didn't look like anyone Tina knew, but there was nonetheless something very intimately familiar about her, like she'd known the lady for years. Tina wondered what was going on as she struggled to figure out who she was looking at. "H-hello," she said. "Who are you?"
Ken stared at her wife. She didn't look any different, but if what Mikey had said was true, then it was probable that she wasn't technically female anymore. But the simple fact that Tina was still recognizably Tina was comforting; she might have to help Zoe and Jon deal with becoming different people, but she could still look at her wife's beautiful face. She sighed. "I'm Ken," she said. "Your husband."
Tina stared at the woman. What kind of crazy talk was this? But...something inside told her that that really was Ken. She remembered the strange little note she'd read on the way home. "Oh GOD!" she yelped, sticking a hand under her skirt. What she felt there was anything but what she knew should have been there, and suddenly the woman's story was looking downright credible. "Ken?" she asked, voice trembling. "That...that really is you, isn't it?"
Ken nodded. "Mikey did this," she said. "It's a long story, and Jon knows more of the details than I do. Why don't you sit down?"
The man-turned-woman and the woman-turned-part-man sat on the loveseat next to each other, neither one quite comfortable enough to get close to the other the way they normally did. The little girl on the couch, who, Ken explained, was Jon, told her parents the full story about the wishing stone and the note she'd found on the computer monitor. Tina could scarcely believe it. She knew her father brought back all kinds of strange rarities from his expeditions; she'd never quite lived down the reputation she'd picked up in high school as "Indiana Jones's daughter." But for one of those obscure artifacts to actually be magic...well, it would beggar belief in any other circumstances, and even in her present state it was almost too incredible for her.
"Well," she said, at last, "I guess it would be silly to play the skeptic here. The question now is what to do about all this. I guess the two really important things right now are getting rid of the rest of those notes, and figuring out any possible way to get us back to normal. I can't believe Mikey would be that thoughtless, though. Even a young boy should know better than to do something like this!"
Ken shrugged. "You'd think so," she said. "I don't know, maybe he wasn't taking it seriously until this happened to us. He seemed genuinely contrite when I sent him upstairs, although that might have had more to do with my yelling at him." She blushed; she really did feel bad about lashing out at her son the way she had; she was much more level-headed than this normally, but with all the things that had happened in such a short period of time, she'd been so overwhelmed that her rationality had temporarily deserted her.
Tina nodded. "Maybe we'd better go upstairs and talk to him," she said. "Just the two of us; you kids stay here, please."
Jon stood up and grabbed at her sort-of-father's hand. "D-er, m-er," she began, but Ken shushed her and chuckled, a sound Tina recognized despite the other woman's angelic voice, far different from her husband's normal quiet, gravelly bass. "I'm still your dad, Jon," Ken said, "no matter what I look like."
Jon nodded. "Dad," she said, "be very careful with the stone, please. It's really easy to screw up with it."
Ken nodded. "I'll be careful," she said. "Thank you for letting me use it, but we're going to have to have a talk about this when we get everything else straightened out."
Jon sat back down next to her new brother, and Ken and Tina went upstairs to talk to their now-oldest son. They found Mikey laying on his bed, clutching the tear-stained pillow, his eyes red. "I guess you hate me," he said flatly as they entered the room.
Ken sighed. "No, we don't, Mike," she said. "If I gave you that impression when I shouted at you, I'm sorry. What you did was stupid and thoughtless, not to mention poorly-planned, but you're still our son and we still love you."
Mikey buried his face in the pillow. "I didn't mean for it to get us!" he moaned. "It was just a prank, that's all!"
Tina put her hand on her son's shoulder. "And what did you think the other not-us people who read your notes would think?" she asked. "Was it okay to hurt other people, but not your family? Did you think they'd be any happier about it than we are?"
"I don't know!" Mikey wailed. "I didn't think!"
"Obviously not," Ken said, arms folded over her chest. "But even if you didn't think about it, you still caused us a lot of very big problems, not to mention anyone who found one of your notes. Speaking of which, we have to find the rest of them, before anybody else does. Do you remember where you left them?"
"I dunno," Mikey groaned. "Kinda all over the neighborhood. I got the pad, and I just kind of went crazy with it as soon as school was out. But you can't take them down, you'll have to read them!"
"He's right," Tina said. "I saw the one on the lamppost by the bus stop and I basically had to go over and check it out."
Ken sighed. "Well," she said, "I guess since you put them up, Mikey, you're going to have to take them down. But I suppose that answers the question of how we're supposed to punish you for this."
Mikey groaned. "I guess I deserve it," he said. "But...do I really have to?"
Ken nodded. "Yes. We can't let any more people's lives get screwed up than already have. You'll just have to hope that you end up as something manageable."
