Scott stood - floated? - there for a minute, trying to wrap his brain around everything that had just happened. Having some weird change happen to his hair had been bizarre enough, but it had seemed like something that could be rationalized away as some strange illness picked up from his step-family, or maybe some side-effect of having those cactus-ey leaves in his diet, like that girl he'd heard about when he was a kid who turned orange after drinking too much "Sunny D." But this - having his entire body changed into a different form - this was on another level entirely. How could this have happened!?
And Dennis and his mother were saying things again, and he...she...? couldn't understand them, which was strange and terrifying in its own right. Surely she hadn't lost the power of speech, had she? She was able to form words, but they only looked at her confused, and she couldn't understand them, and it was so confusing...she was still reeling over the idea of never being able to talk to anyone again when she felt a tingling sensation in her...in her headband...? The strangeness of feeling sensations in body parts she'd never even had before aside, it was an almost mundane electrical kind of tingling, like he'd felt once when he'd accidentally touched an improperly grounded appliance. It faded away almost as quickly as it came on, and...
"Scott, dear, please! Are you alright? Can you understand me?"
The words sounded strange to her ears - it was like listening to someone speak a foreign language. And like a foreign language, it took a moment for her to properly put everything together and comprehend what was being said. But she could actually understand what Dennis's mother was saying, and she felt a wave of relief wash over her even as she was still trying to figure out what in the world was going on. Just being able to understand what people were saying to her made her feel so much less lost and alone...
"I...I understand," she responded. This, too, felt strange and foreign - she had to think, if only for a moment, before she could put the right words to the ideas she wanted to convey, and the sounds felt strange coming out of her mouth. Of course, there was also the matter of her changed voice - higher and softer than it had been mere moments ago, with a lilting, almost musical cadence to her speech. She had a sneaking suspicion that she was speaking with a trace of an accent, but it sounded normal to her...?
Dennis's mother nearly collapsed in relief. "Oh, thank goodness," she said. "We heard you suddenly talking in their language, and then you were looking at us like you couldn't understand what we were saying..."
Scott frowned. "I was...speaking Dalxin?"
Dennis nodded, staring up at her transfixed. "I don't speak it, but I recognize some of the words, and that was definitely it." He was unable to stop a grin from spreading across his face. "Dude, that was amazing! What did it feel like? Do you know how it happened? What's it like floating like that?"
"Dennis, please!" his mother said sharply. "I'm sure Scott is just as confused as we are, and she doesn't need this right now."
Dennis looked embarassed at being called out by his mother. "Um, sorry," he said sheepishly, staring at the floor, but still too fascinated to avoid glancing up at his transformed friend. Scott, however, was too thrown off by being referred to as "she" to notice. Now that the initial rush of confusion had settled down, that was what really drove the reality of the situation home. Somehow...somehow she had...well, become a she. A girl. Against that, the fact that she had also somehow become an alien seemed almost irrelevant, except for the way it was all part and parcel of this whole insane turn of events. Feeling overwhelmed again, she floated there, drawing up her knees and hugging them against herself. "<This can't be happening,>" she murmured to herself. "<This can't be real...>"
"She's talking in their language again..." Dennis observed, sotto voce. He felt a little bad about finding this so fascinating, especially considering that was his friend up there, but...well...it just was. It was amazing enough to know that the aliens existed and to find out what bits and pieces he could without being able to ask them directly. But having members of the alien race come into his life, even peripherally through a friend, and then witnessing something like this? It was beyond amazing. And that was even without getting into the fact that...well, Scott the alien girl was really quite pretty. Not an exaggerated cartoon like the girls in some of the games he played, but quite nicely built, and an actual 3D girl of flesh and blood...
Scott huddled there, feeling her softer, smoother skin pressed against itself, feeling her hair drape loosely over her shoulders, feeling her...her breasts...squashed up against her body, feeling her antennae bob gently on her head, feeling the hem of her dress hang down below her, feeling the cool air all up and down her bare legs as she floated there not touching the floor, and wondering how this could have happened, if there was any hope of undoing it, and what she was supposed to do if there wasn't. She heard Dennis's remark, but it wasn't anything she didn't already know - just another facet of this strange, insane experience...
"Scott, dear, are you okay?" Dennis's mother asked. "I'm sure this must be confusing for you right now, but we should probably get you home. I think your stepmother is going to have a lot better idea of what to do about this than we would."
Scott stifled a groan at the idea of having to deal with going outside like this, but she supposed it was true - if anybody in her life was going to have a chance of understanding what was going on, it would be Lalaxi. And the sooner she got back home and explained the situation, the sooner they could fix this...hopefully...
"<I gue>-um, I guess," she said, still taken aback by the sound of her new voice. But as she unfolded her limbs from her huddled position, she realized a problem with the idea - even standing up straight, her feet weren't touching the ground. She stretched one leg down as far as she could and just managed to brush the carpet with the tip of her toe, but that was it. No way was she going to be able to walk like this. She wondered how it was that her stepmother and sisters dealt with this kind of thing, but when she thought about it, she couldn't recall ever seeing them standing or walking on the ground. Even when Zomu was sitting at the table reading, she was only sort of hovering close to the seat of the chair rather than actually properly sitting on it.
She wondered how she was supposed to move around like this. She tried thinking of floating downwards, but nothing happened. She tried seeing if there was some muscle that needed to contract or relax, but all this accomplished was to make her feel silly. Finally, she decided to stop and think about how her new family members moved around. As far as she'd ever seen, it seemed like they mostly just sort of swooped around arching their bodies this way and that, sort of like a swimmer moving through the water, but without any actual stroking or kicking. Suspecting she was going to feel like an idiot whether or not this worked, Scott tried holding her arms loosely at her sides and curving her body into a forward arc. To her surprise, this actually did work; unfortunately, it just sent her head-over-heels and, by the time she managed to stop (by pulling her legs up against herself,) she was left hanging there almost upside-down, the hem of her dress perilously close to just sliding down over her waist.
Still, this was some kind of progress. Scott found that, despite being nearly inverted, she wasn't having any issues with blood rushing to her head or feeling dizzy. Not to say that it wasn't disorienting looking at the room from a completely unfamiliar perspective, and it was definitely odd to have her much longer hair hanging down onto the floor when down seemed a lot like up from this position, but it felt a lot less weird than it probably should have. Of course, it was far weirder feeling gravity tugging her new breasts towards - what would you call it? "Relative up?" - but fortunately they seemed to be fairly secure underneath her changed clothes.
"Dude, that was amazing!" Dennis said. "How'd you do that? What's it like?"
Scott felt a little irked at her troubles being a subject of interest for her friend. Well, she knew he meant well, but all the same...she sighed and shrugged. "I...don't know," she said. "I just did. I was just trying to copy what I'd seen them doing-" She stopped abruptly as she felt the dress giving in to the demands of gravity, reaching her hands up to her knees to catch it before it flipped down completely. Frowning, she thought for a moment and then arched forward again, twisting to one side as she did so that she righted herself and turned to face her friend properly. "This is all so weird," she groaned.
Dennis's mother gave her a sympathetic look. "I'm sure it is," she said. "I can't even begin to imagine what it's like for you right now, and I've been a woman all my life. But you need to hang in there, Scott. I'm sure if this is anything to do with the aliens, your stepmother will have some idea of what to do about it."
Scott sighed. "I hope so..." She stretched out her legs and tentatively pressed one foot into the carpet, finding that, as she'd expected, she only succeeded in pushing herself back off the floor; it seemed like walking was going to be completely impossible in this state. She sighed. Good thing the seatbelt will hold me down in the car so I can work the pedals, she thought, then frowned. "Ah, dammit..."
"What is it?" the older woman asked.
"<My identif>-my driver's license," Scott said, shaking her head as she found herself slipping into another language again. "If I get stopped on the way home, they'll never believe it's me."
"Huh, yeah," Dennis mused. "Though I guess your stepmom could probably sort that out too, if she's got diplomatic connections."
"Dennis, could you see her home?" his mother asked. "Even if her mother can take care of that, it'd be better not to have an incident at all, I'm sure."
Dennis grinned and nodded. "Yeah, sure! I haven't even been over since they moved, anyway."
Scott felt a little uneasy at her friend's enthusiasm again; couldn't he understand what she was going through right now!? Well, no, he probably couldn't, she realized; heck, she would never have been able to understand what it was like to suddenly have one's entire body remodeled without warning if she wasn't actually experiencing it right now. Anyway, he was trying to be helpful...
The two of them made their way out to the curb where Scott had parked. She drifted over the top of the family car to the driver's side, swooped down to door-level, and went to unlock it - then frowned, thought for a moment, and patted herself down. She grimaced. "For the love of..." She looked over to Dennis. "I can't find the keys," she said.
He looked curious. "Didn't you drive it over here?"
She nodded. "Yeah, but...they were in my pocket, but there aren't any pockets in...in this." She gestured down at the silvery dress she was wearing. Could they have just...disappeared? she thought. Cripes, I don't have my phone, either... She peered into the window and spotted a purse of the same material sitting on the seat. Great, she thought, jiggling the handle despite knowing perfectly well that she'd locked the car. Even though I didn't leave the keys in it, I ended up locked out of the family car.
Dennis shrugged. "Well, I guess we can take mine, and maybe your dad can come drive your guys' car back."
Scott looked at him in surprise. "Wait, since when do you have a car?"
Her friend looked pleased with himself. "Just a couple weeks ago. Mom thought it would be good for me to be able to run errands and practice driving and stuff, so she found something on the cheap." He shrugged. "I mean, I think it's nearly as old as she is, but...y'know, I guess a car is a car...such as it is. C'mon!"
He grabbed Scott by the hand and led her over to the little side driveway next to the little house he and his mother lived in. She frowned at that, feeling like a kite or balloon or something bobbing along behind him, not to mention feeling a little weirded out by the sensation of her now slenderer, softer-skinned hand caught in his fleshy, slightly moist grip. Then she saw the car.
"Such as it is" was definitely an appropriate assessment, Scott thought - it was a tiny, somewhat rust-pocked little hatchback that appeared to have been green at some point in the distant past but had since faded to a sickly, slightly yellowed teal color, with a little globe emblem on the hood. The headlights were set into recesses of plain black plastic, which made it look like the car had dark circles around its eyes. The antenna appeared to have broken off at the halfway point for who knew what reason.
"Does it run?" she asked.
Dennis shrugged again. "Um, more or less, yeah."
Feeling a bit of trepidation, Scott drifted over to the passenger door. There wasn't quite enough room between the car and the fence around the yard for her to comfortably situate herself, unaccustomed as she was to swooping and curling around like this, so she ended up reaching down over the roof to open the door, came to a sitting position above it, then grabbed the top of the doorframe and swung herself in feet-first. It was awkward and weird, but it seemed to work, although she did end up having to push against the roof to get herself close enough to the seat to buckle up.
Dennis, meanwhile, had opened the driver-side door and eased his bulk into the seat with some care; Scott was kind of astonished that he even fit in here at all. If the car had looked tiny from the outside, it was even more cramped inside; she could feel her antennae brushing against the headliner and she wasn't even that tall before she suddenly turned into a girl. She shifted around uncomfortably, unused to the feeling of sitting down in a dress and unsure how she was supposed to keep it from either getting too taut over her butt or bunching up around her lower back.
Scott had just gotten more or less settled in, the hem of her dress adjusted to a point where she thought she might be able to sit (float, whatever!) comfortably until the end of the trip, when Dennis finally turned the key and the car sputtered to life. She squirmed in surprise when he unwittingly brushed his hand against her bare leg while reaching down for the gearshift, and clamped her knees together tightly; she hadn't even realized that she normally sat with them that far apart. She only had a moment to think about it, however, before letting out a high-pitched yelp of surprise as the car suddenly lurched forward, grinding its gears in protest.
"Sorry," Dennis said sheepishly. "Still getting the hang of driving stick." He hesitantly made another shift and the car began to slowly accelerate out of the driveway and down the street. It was not, apparently, a powerhouse.
The rest of the trip went normally enough, although Scott spent most of it fidgeting around as she tried to find a way for the shoulder belt to sit over her breasts that didn't feel weird. She still hadn't quite figured it out by the time they actually arrived at her house; anyway, she had more pressing concerns, and pretty much launched herself out of the car as soon as she had the door open. Getting the front door open took a little doing - her initial attempt to brace herself against the frame and pull the knob away from it was just awkward, and she ended up simply holding the doorknob while arching her body back to move herself with it, which she was pretty sure in retrospect was how her stepmother and sisters did it anyway - but she was inside quickly enough.
However, she wasn't expecting the reaction she got. Scott hadn't really thought about it that much, being as distracted by the immediate realities of the situation as she was, but she would've expected that leaving home as her normal, human male self and then returning a couple hours later as a...an alien girl...would cause some degree of confusion and likely result in her having to pull out esoteric bits of family trivia that only Scott would know in order to prove her own identity. Instead, she entered the living room to find Layka hovering above the coffee table idly doodling something or other, and then wound up on the receiving end of a literal flying tackle as soon as her younger stepsister looked up and saw her.
"<Oh, wow!>" the green-haired girl said enthusiastically, hugging her around the middle and staring up in amazement. "<Big sis, you turned out so pretty!>"
Scott stared down at her in astonishment. She recognizes me!? she thought. Wait, "big sis?" She suddenly realized that the word was "danzi," and all along Layka had been calling her...
And then Zomu drifted into the room, still clad in nothing but her underwear. She gave Scott an appraising glance and a look of mild surprise. "<That was fast,>" she said, with a wry smile, reaching over to playfully ruffle Scott's soft pink hair. "<You look good, sis.>"
Scott's brain was doing cartwheels. Why were they not surprised by this? Why were they acting like they expected it!? "<What's going on here!?>" she spluttered.
Dennis, meanwhile, had made his way inside, only to find his attention torn between his transformed and suddenly very attractive best friend and his best friend's more developed and almost naked older sister. He'd seen Scott's stepsisters at school, of course, but never like this. His attention was also drawn by the very animated conversation the three of them were having, but with Scott suddenly speaking in the alien tongue again, he couldn't understand a single word of it.
"<What do you mean?>" Zomu said, eyeing her new sister curiously. "<It's your adoption, obviously. I mean, normally it takes closer to a day or two once the changes set in, but...>"
"<That's not...that...it doesn't...what!?>" Scott buried her head in her hands, her fingertips wedged slightly into the gap between her headband and her skull. This was insane...!
Then her stepmother finally arrived. "<What's all the commotion in here?>" she asked, before noticing Scott. She floated over and warmly embraced her transformed stepson over top of Layka's hug. "<Oh, Scott, you turned out beautifully!>" she said. "<I'm so happy for you, dear.>"
Scott stared at her, mouth agape. She spent a minor eternity flexing her jaw as she attempted to start to say something but couldn't make the words come out. "<Ah, Lal-uh, mom...!>" She shook her head, trying to clear her jumbled thoughts. "<Mom, what's happening!? How is nobody surprised by this? What is this!? Why am I suddenly a girl?>"
Lalaxi stared at her in surprise. "<What? Scott, dear, this is nothing out of the ordinary. Didn't you tell me just this morning that your father told you all about this?>"
Scott's jaw dropped. "<That's what that was about!? I thought...>" She trailed off, not even wanting to go into what she'd thought they were talking about. "<I mean, how is this even possible!?>"
As if to complete the sitcom pile-up that was currently Scott's life, the front door opened again and her father stepped inside. "Whew!" he said. "We were scrambling, but we managed to make it only a half-day. I told them this would happen if they didn't stick to the project plan..." He looked over to the small crowd centered around an unfamiliar pink-haired alien girl. "Lal?" he called to his wife. "Honey, who's this?"
Lalaxi looked at him in confusion. "David, this is Scott," she said.
He stared at her. "...Say what?"
