Chapter 12: 5:00. Facing The Music (pt. 1)

I awoke the next morning to animalistic snuffling and an aggressively floral chemical odor; I wasn't as absolutely lethargic as I had been yesterday, and I could at least process that much. But that confused me more; had someone brought their dog into the dorm? How'd it get in the room? And why did it smell like...like...

"Who's that sleeping in my bed?" someone said.

It took me a moment to process this; from the sound, it was obviously a woman doing...whatever the opposite of falsetto is, trying to fake a big bass voice, but my brain ran just slow enough as I got (literally) up to speed that it actually sounded higher than it should've, which was all kinds of weird. And when I lurched up onto my hands and knees and looked for the speaker, I found her lounging on the desk in a leggy sexy-vamp pose, wearing brown footie pajamas and a bear's-head mask.

I stared for a long moment. It was something I'd expect to see in an incomprehensible Euro art film; plus, she didn't really have the legs to pull it off. "Wha...?" I slurred, staggering slowly out of bed. Things inside me gradually revved up as I tried to comprehend what was even happening. At least I'm not naked, this time, I thought. Underwear and one of the long camisoles weren't much, but better than yesterday...

The mystery woman slunk off the desk head-first, crawled toward me on all fours, and almost slid up into a standing position, right up in my face. Her movements were impressively fluid, but I was mostly just confused...and a little intimidated? She was only around my height, but her presence and mannerisms were weird and off-putting...

She put her hands to her "head" and, with a dramatic flourish and a mock-snarl, lifted it off to reveal a dusky-skinned, raven-haired young woman wearing a bear-ears headband. "Rrrrah!" she growled, as I stared in confusion; then, after a moment, she burst into a cackling fit. "Aw, c'mon, Silverlocks!" she said. "You're supposed to be terrified and run all the way home."

"Huh?" I said, completely baffled. I wondered if I still wasn't in sync with the rest of reality yet, and whether this would make any more sense if I was.

"Well, I'm a big, scary bear, aren't I?"

"Yyoou're-" I shook my head. "You're wearing footie pajamas." And you definitely have alcohol on your breath.

"Oh, come now," she pouted. "Where's your sense of imagination?"

I shrugged; at least now it was clear that she was just messing with me, whoever she was. "Mussst'vve left it in my other pajjjamas. Wwwait, you aren't...um, the roommate...?" I paused for a long moment, scanning through yesterday's memories; I really needed to get Tammy to wind me up. "Uh, Alicia, right?"

"No," she said, "I'm a bear. And you, young lady, have been sleeping in my bed."

I rolled my eyes and started towards the bathroom, but she slipped around to block me. "Aw, come on," she said, stamping her foot, "work with me here."

I sighed. This was not what I needed first thing in the morning; I could already feel myself beginning to run down for real. "Ahh, oh nnno, a bbbear," I said in a quarter-assed mock-terror voice, shoulders slumped. I made to leave, but she stayed put, clearly miffed that I wasn't interested in playing along. I was wondering what it would take to end this non-stupidly when the bathroom door opened and Tammy rolled up.

"'Lish," she said, after a single brief glance at us, "did you seriously do a whole improv-'n-costume thing just to screw with S-with her?" The pause didn't escape my notice, but I was grateful she'd caught herself; I already had to deal with one mischievous scamp wanting to toy with me because I had used to be a guy.

Alicia turned to face her and was momentarily taken aback by what she saw, but she recovered quickly. "Tammy," she deadpanned. "Love the new look - it's totally you. Don't tell me, was it a dare? You guys go to a body shop or something?"

Of course that's what she thinks, I thought. Rumors about "body shops" - shady underground clinics offering designer transformations for obscene prices, or providing new bodies and identities to criminals on the run - had circulated for aeons, even though anybody who knew anything about metamorphic science could tell that they were absolute malarkey.^*

^* (After all, it was a core problem in our field that every major government and the modern scientific community still had yet to crack - and promising the moon and delivering chaos was likely to get your kneecaps busted, on the fringes of the underworld. Not a sustainable business model.)

But Tammy was staring daggers back at her. I wasn't sure if it was Alicia's flippant attitude that had her on edge, or her own antipathy towards her new body (which I still didn't quite get.) Maybe both, I thought. No, probably both. She wheeled into the room and over to me, muttering untelligibly as she passed her roommate.

Alicia shrugged and stepped back as Tammy took hold of my key. "So that'-ot jus-or show," she said; I missed snippets with the world around me stopping and lurching back into motion as my classmate completed each turn and started the next. "In-esting."

Afterward, I stood up and stretched. Whether it was just a habit like sighing or it served some new purpose besides limbering up muscles I didn't have, it felt right, in my brain. Alicia took this as a cue to get back up in my face. "Alright, now really, Silverlocks, you must tell me what happened. Did you girls anger a witch? Were you abducted by...aliens? Or did you fall foul of a mad scientist?"

The latter, actually, I wanted to say, but that wasn't fair to Emma; she wasn't mad, just irresponsible. "Stop calling me that," I said, squaring my shoulders and straightening up. "And...occupational hazard."

She gave me a catty grin and started to say something, but there was a muffled squawk and a rustle of blankets from the other side of the room. We turned to find Emma's body standing over the bed, shaking someone under the covers to wake them up. It didn't seem to be working.

Tammy sighed. "Again, Katie?"

I could only assume this was the other roommate. "Does this, uh, happen often?" I asked.

She nodded in exasperation. "Drunk-Katie doesn't like sleeping alone."

"Absinthe brings out her inner child," Alicia put in. "In vino veritas..."

Tammy rolled her eyes, pulling back the covers. "Uh-huh, sure. Anyway, when she comes back in the wee hours, it's never her bed that she winds up in. Except now, I guess since there was somebody in it."

As we saw, Katie had insinuated herself between "some body's" body and head, and was snuggling the latter to her breast while the former fumbled around blindly attempting to free herself from the girl's clutches. How she stayed asleep through this, I had no idea.

Tammy sighed, took the hand on top of Emma's head, and tugged it away; then Emma fumbled over to her other half and lifted herself free. The sleeping girl reached out after her like an infant whose stuffed toy has been taken away, then stirred, half-opened her eyes, and groaned. "Wh-whatimezit?"

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"It's morning, dear," Alicia chanted, as if she were reciting some work or other, which I was pretty sure she wasn't. "The first morning of our new life, remember? We've so much to do, you can't lay there forever!"

Katie murmured something unintelligible and slowly roused herself; then she shook the cobwebs out of her head and looked around the room. "Hnnngh...Tammy? What did you do to yourself?" Tammy looked about ready to burst a blood vessel, but Katie looked at me, and then Emma. "Did...did you fall in with the wrong crowd? Was it a peer-pressure thing? Do we need to stage an intervention?"

She got out of bed and tottered to her feet, still woozy. She was tall (not a literal giantess, but tall enough for a young woman that I half-wondered if she had one somewhere in the family line,) with a farm-girl figure: sturdy shoulders, strong legs, and an ample but not over-large bust. Her skin was sun-kissed and her auburn hair was pulled into two very bushy ponytails, one per side. She carried herself like a nervous child who'd suddenly woken up in the body of an adult.

Next to her, I realized how petite I'd become; my perception was skewed from spending the last thirty-six hours with someone in a wheelchair and someone who'd been decapitated. I was annoyed by her fretting - did she really think we did this for fun? And someone who'd obviously been out of her gourd the previous night talking interventions was pretty rich...!

I didn't have time to brood over it, though. Emma stepped forward, a twinkle in her eye, and she'd put herself out of tail's reach. Some inner sense warned me that she was in troublemaker mode, and I just about sprang in front of her. "L-listen," I stammered, unsure what I was going to say instead, "this isn't...well, okay, it is what it looks like, I guess. But nobody...made...anybody do anything here."

I said it through clenched teeth. Honestly, I still considered this to be Emma's fault - it was her idea, after all - and I'd never hear the end of this from her. But it was objective fact that she hadn't forced us to participate. Cajoled us, sure, but I could've just turned and walked away, and I didn't. I could've decided for myself, like so many other times, but...

While I was lost in thought, Katie was taking in Emma's new form, trying to figure out how to look her in the eye. Emma helpfully lifted herself up to her level, but Katie was used to a higher vantage and got up on her toes. Emma adjusted again, and she gave up and turned back to me; she had no trouble looming over my small frame. I got a very strange vibe from her, fretful and wary but physically imposing; it reminded me why I always got nervous around horses. (Though she probably couldn't accidentally crush me if spooked.)

"Ugh," she moaned, putting a hand to her forehead. "You-you. What actually happened?"

"Lab accident," I said with a shrug. "We were running an experiment, containment failed, and this was the result." My voice began to fail toward the end, the vocal timbre giving way to weak hissing. Was Emma right? Did I require water to speak?

She turned to Tammy. "Rea-nngh...really?"

"Yes, really," Tammy said, exasperated. "Look, none of us are happy about this, but there's nothing sinister going on here. Just...chill."

"I don't mind it that much," Emma put in. Tammy gave her a withering glare.

"We're only concerned for you," Katie said, looking a little hurt. Alicia nodded. "After all, we'll be taking our leave this very day...!"

Now it was Tammy's turn to be concerned. "Uh, yeah. L-listen, um...are you girls sure this is a good idea...?" It was obvious she wanted the answer to be "yes," but also that she didn't think it was.

"Of course," Alicia said. "You simply can't understand what it means to us, to have our own space, our own domain..."

Tammy sighed. "Of course not. Just...look after yourselves, alright?"

"But of course," Katie replied, still wincing from the hangover. "And you, too..." That seemed to be all she had to say about it; having verified that neither Emma nor I were deranged kidnappers doing horrible things to their roommate, they got to packing up their stuff and hauling it out to (I assumed) their car.

"So that's them, huh?" Emma said, while they were outside; I took the opportunity to get dressed and get a glass of water. "They didn't seem that bad."

Tammy laughed. "You haven't seen drunk-Katie when she's awake. I didn't even know 'sloppy neurotic' was a thing until I met her. And weren't you the one who just got surprise-spooned by her?"

Emma grinned sheepishly. "Gonna be honest here, I didn't hate that - it was just a shock waking up in the arms of some stranger. But, heck, the feeling was kinda nice; I'm gonna have to remember it next time I'm dating anybody."

"Okay, fine," she sighed. "Look, I don't hate them or anything; I just don't wanna share living space with them. They're like...I dunno, not even 'theater kids' so much as trying to be their idea of what theater kids are like. I don't think she even likes absinthe, it's just Artistic."

Emma nodded. "Anyway, we should get going ourselves. We've got my stuff to move, and then we get to help Stu get migrated. Right?" she said, grinning at me.

I grimaced. Just because they'd made sound arguments for this didn't mean I was thrilled about it, but Emma was obviously excited. "Right, sure, fine, whatever," I said flatly, squaring my shoulders and stalking off towards the door. She ropes me into helping her move and she's still trying to tease me about this? I fumed - but I stopped short when I nearly ran into Alicia on the way out the door.

"Whoa!" she laughed. "Easy there, Coppélia!"

I frowned. "Don't call me that, either." I had a feeling that I was missing a reference, but I really didn't care.

"Aw," she pouted. "But if you're going to be living in a dorm full of girls, what shall we call you?"

I was about to fire back with a response when I picked up on what I hoped wasn't the implication I thought it was. "I, uh...what?" I said, hesitantly.

She winked at me as she slipped inside, putting a finger to her lips. "It doesn't take a great actor to recognize a bad one, Silverlocks."

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