Jon took a deep breath. Pity for Sarah McMillan of all people was a new feeling, so much so that the feeling he ought to stay there, and... take care of her, somehow, threw him off a balance a moment. But that wasn't the right answer here. Karyn was off doing god-knows-what with the device right then, and that was as much his fault as what had happened to Sarah. As much his responsibility to fix, and was in the grand scheme of things the much bigger problem.
"Sarah, look," Jon said, gently removing her hand from his arm. "I can't explain right now, but I know some things about that device and Karyn that I can't just ignore here. Things are probably just going to keep getting worse the longer we ignore them, so I really have to go. Okay?"
"But she'll just zap you," Sarah complained.
"I'm not going after her directly, Sarah," Jon countered. "There are other things I can do to play damage control that don't involve going against her face-to-face."
"Oh... well, um, maybe, can I come? With you?" Sarah asked timidly.
Jon sighed. "I'd rather you didn't. Like I said, there are things going on here that I'm not comfortable sharing yet. Okay? And besides, you still have friends! They can help you out here no problem, right?"
Sarah's face fell. "But... I'm just a loser now..."
"First of all, NO, you aren't," Jon reprimanded firmly. "And second of all, you definitely aren't a loser to them, you're Sarah McMillan! You're practically an idol to our school, your friends love you, don't they?"
Sarah was not cheered up. "I... don't think they do," Sarah replied sadly. "Not like that, anyway."
Jon was taken aback. "What? No way!" he exclaimed in genuine disbelief. "What about Biff!?"
Sarah didn't seem to understand. "What about Biff?"
"He's your boyfriend, Sarah: surely you can count on him to have your back here?" Jon asked. "As a matter of fact, Biff's a big guy. He's got, y'know, muscle, popular pull, and as much as I hate to admit it some smarts too." He's also a huge jerk, but Sarah doesn't need to hear that now, Jon thought to himself. "Couldn't you have him, I dunno, rough up Karyn a bit on your behalf? Not to be mean, but, y'know, to get the device from her, or get her to back off with the megalomaniacal scheming, or whatever?"
Sarah still looked very uncertain. In truth, Sarah knew this was the sort of thought that would've occurred to her almost subconsciously before -- as a matter of fact, the usual Sarah would probably have already been thoroughly searching her brain for someone she knew that could deal with Karyn for her, as well as how she could get them to do it -- but now it just seemed wrong to her. Not just that she might screw it up badly if she talked to Biff as she was (though that was certainly a concern), but just... wrong. Bad. Evil, somehow.
Jon sighed impatiently. "Listen, Sarah, I don't have all the answers here and I'm sorry, but I really, really don't have time to waste. Just call Biff, or go find one of your friends here. It'll turn out alright, honest! Now, uh, I wish you well, but I gotta go. See you soon."
And with that, Jon was gone. Sarah was alone, now. And more than that, she felt alone. Lost. As scared and weak and small as she had felt in a very long time.
Eventually, she pulled out her cellphone. Now it was an old, plain, lightly cracked affair as opposed to the top-of-the-line hardware in a cute pink case she used to carry around. Should she call Biff? Should she go find Melissa? Maybe even try to find Karyn or Jon before they go? For the first time in a long time Sarah felt like she truly didn't know.
What happened to the Japanese girl was... not what Karyn expected.
On the one hand, yes, she was cleaned up and "prettier": had on a full set of makeup, a clean stylish outfit, a well-defined aesthetic style to all her fashion and action, ticked off all the fundamental boxes for someone you'd expect to be "popular". But a layer above the fundamentals...
Cat ears? Really? Of all things, the device had given the girl a pair of fake cartoony cat ears on a headband!? Karyn couldn't believe it.
That wasn't all: the new Yuki (as Karyn would shortly remember she was named) had her hair dyed Pink, a soft flamingo pink cut, layered, and styled with the obvious intention of making the ears somehow seem natural; was dressed in an outfit that some pervy anime might consider to be a "schoolgirl uniform" despite being a blatant violation their own school's dress code; and behind her swayed a fake cattail apparently chosen to match the ears. Karyn had to admit that on some level, it looked good, and Yuki pulled it off well, but it was very very unorthodox, and didn't at all fit what Karyn had imagined a "Popular" Yuki would look like (which was mostly just the way Karyn looked, except not quite as flawlessly unquestionably sexy as Karyn was, obviously).
Things became a little clearer when Yuki pulled out her own top-of-the-line pink cell phone and started recording herself like it was the most natural thing you could possibly do in a strip mall's shoe store.
"こんにちは、みんな!" She said, waving and flashing a winning smile at the camera. Karyn had no idea what she said, but it had major "welcome to the stream" type energy. "今日もYukiです。お気に入りの店でかわいい新しいスリッパを買いに来ました..."
"So she's an internet personality," was all Karyn got from that mostly incomprehensible stream of bubbly falsetto Japanese. "And if I had to guess probably a decently popular one, too," Karyn thought, opening up her own phone to see if she could find Yuki online if she was streaming live. Sure enough, after a little bit of fiddling with parameters and refining the search based on what she knew about Yuki, she found the stream, where Yuki was streaming her little shopping trip to way-too-many-digit's worth of weebs and international viewers.
Karyn frowned. "Well, I guess that counts as 'Popular' in this day and age, but I had in mind something that'd be more... more..."
"Like me," she should've thought, or perhaps more "usable".
"...better," She ultimately thought. "I should try changing changing Yuki to something better."
Karyn toggled the gun over to "FASHIONISTA", took aim, and fired. This, too, did not work: Now, Yuki was a cosplayer, dressed as the absolute spitting image of the Sorceress from Dragon's Crown, and Karyn's new personality hated that she recognized where she was from right away. She sighed, turned the gun's setting over to "BITCH", and tried again. No dice. Yuki, dressed now like Ryoko from Kill la Kill, wasn't qualitatively much different than she was before; she'd mostly just snuck a lot of tsundere into her online persona.
Karyn tried a few more things, but by then it seemed clear to her that as long as Yuki was still technically "popular" the gun would just keep making her into more and more of a ridiculous overanimated stereotype instead of the little minion Karyn really wanted. On reflection, after the mishap with the older woman Karyn probably ought to have expected the gun wouldn't affect everyone the same way with the same setting; she hadn't quite turned out as Karyn had imagined either.
That wouldn't do. No, no, no, Karyn's perfect world was her world, not something to be shared with some Jap's competing brand of popularity. Karyn resolved to just ruin her life and move on: she picked the first thing on the gun that looked like it would destroy Yuki's social life, fired it at her, and left to go find someone else to change.
She didn't even spare a second look at how Yuki transformed.
