Max grabbed a handful of cheese puffs and scarfed them down as he used his other hand to input the finishing combination of buttons on his controller, activating his character’s ultimate move and ending the match. Zach groaned comically in good-natured defeat, setting down his own controller as his character was blown offscreen.
“How are you so good at this?” Zach chuckled as he grabbed a handful of the cheese puffs himself. “It’s not like you have time to practice. I know you study most nights.”
“Just skills, I suppose,” Max said with mock-arrogance. “I actually just know this one character. I’m garbage with everyone else.”
“Why don’t we switch things up, then?” asked a third voice. Both Max and Zach glanced back to see Hank sitting on Max’s bed, having been watching the match with interest to see who he’d be facing next. “I’ll play with my worst character if you play with your worst.”
“Deal,” Max agreed as Zach passed off the controller to Hank, switching places.
It was only six, and already, Max was on a winning streak. At this rate, he saw no end to such luck as the night wore on.
“When’s the pizza getting here?” Zach asked as he sat down on the bed, idly eying Max’s posters of models and movies.
“In half an hour, probably,” Max answered, already selecting the worst character he could think to pick.
In a few minutes, that same character had knocked the Player Two character offscreen in a nearly exact repeat of the earlier match.
“I suppose this night belongs to me,” Max chuckled, turning to hand the controller back to Zach, only to get a face full of fluff as the former threw a pillow at him. Max had a split-second to regret both his confidence and the fact that even though the three friends had no plans of sleeping that night in their gaming marathon, even if graduation was tomorrow, Max’s mother had insisted on supplying extra pillows and a couple of sleeping bags. Even worse, the extra pillows had all been bright pink, some with hearts, and one such pillow was currently thwacking Max across the face.
Max had no choice but to inhale the oddly scented pillow as it deformed around his head. It didn’t hurt, of course, but it did spell war. Stranger still, though, he felt a little light-headed from the surprise attack, errant thoughts swimming through his mind like whispering voices. Even if he couldn’t make them out, they sounded almost like giggling girls.
Grabbing the pillow and standing, preparing to return fire, Max shook his head to get the long locks of hair out of his eyes. This gave him pause, prompting him to furrow his brow. He’d had his hair cut just yesterday in preparation for tomorrow’s festivities, but now long locks of light chestnut hair swished into his vision and tickled the back of his neck.
Wait, chestnut? His hair was dark brown, or at least, it had been… Hadn’t it?
Max was broken free from his thoughts as Zach, apparently either not having noticed anything amiss with Max’s bizarre change in hairstyle or not having yet had the chance to notice, grabbed another pillow and prepared to use it as a shield against Max’s oncoming attack.
As if on instinct, Max raised his own pillow and smacked it against Zach’s fluff-filled defenses, sending a surprisingly tingle and warm jolt up his arms. Max’s t-shirt suddenly looked much thinner, somehow, and the arms both exposed beyond and within the sleeves seemed to be thinning as well. Hair thinned and receded, skin smoothing.
“What the--” Max began to say, noticing his voice sounded oddly higher, before Zach retaliated by throwing his pillow-shield at Max’s head. Once again, a soft pink projectile splatted softly and painlessly against Max’s face, sending yet more dizziness through his mind. The voice returned, sounding louder and much clearer now. They were definitely the sounds of giggling girls, though they also sounded somehow familiar.
“Zoey’s going to pay for that,” giggled a high-pitched voice in Max’s head, and it took her a moment… Wait, ‘her?’ Where had that come from? No, it took him a moment to realize that the voice was his own mind’s thoughts, his own response to the situation. But why was he thinking with a girl’s voice?
Max grabbed the second pillow without letting go of the first, now doubly armed with a defenseless Zoey--No, Zach!--on the bed. Max’s eyes widened when he saw that Zach’s own hair was now much longer, framing a softened face with longer-lashed eyes and fuller lips. What’s more, Zach’s slenderer neck led down to a chest that had the faintest signs of two mounds barely pushing out against his shirt.
Before Max could comment on the bizarre matter, he saw Zach looking behind him, and whirled around to see Hank coming in for another pillow attack from behind. The movement of turning so abruptly signalled the sensation of an odd swaying on Max’s own chest, and the feeling of thin, silky fabric rubbing across two sensitive nubs.
Against her--no, his!--better judgement, Max looked down to see what unmistakably looked like two small female breasts making little indentations in what appeared to be more of a pair of pink pajamas than a red t-shirt, becoming more like the latter than the former with every moment. Additionally, Max noted that the breasts, for what else could they be, looked bigger than those on Zach, at least B cups where his had seemed to be about A’s.
This momentary distraction provided just enough time to allow Hank’s attack--where had he even gotten one of the pink pillows?--to land full-on across Max’s head. Max could feel what was happening now as the pillow smacked against his face. He could feel his own lips plumping, his face softening, particularly around his cheeks. His eyelashes tickled as they thickened and lengthened and brushed against the pillow.
Max’s hair continued to grow the longer the pillow was pressed against him, tickling his neck, then sliding down his back, around his shoulders, tickling the swelling mounds of his breasts, which were beginning to weigh from his chest. They had to be at least C cups by now.
Max reached up with what felt like daintier, smaller hands and longer nails to snatch away the pillow from his face, having to drop one of his other pillows in the process. Moving it away saw long locks of bright blonde hair swaying in her (his?!) eyes.
“What’s going on?” Max giggled, not quite sure why he was giggling, even as his voice rose another octave higher. It was sounding increasingly like the feminine voice in his head.
“We’re having a pillow fight, dummy!” laughed Zoey. Realizing he’d just once again thought of Zach with a female name, Max whirled about, the feeling of heavier breasts swaying on his chest, to see that Zach now looked entirely like a young woman. The name ‘Zach’ was now certainly less fitting than Zoey, and somehow she didn’t seem to see anything amiss.
“Yeah, Maxine, stop spacing out!” giggled another female voice, this time coming from a young woman standing where Hank used to be.
No, not Hank, Maxine realized, but Harmony. She was Maxine, or at least this new reality insisted she was even if she remembered things differently, and she had invited her two best friends Zoey and Harmony to a sleepover before graduation tomorrow.
“No, this isn’t right!” Maxine yelled, trying to fight against the influences seeping through her mind, trying to insist that she was Maxine, a young woman, who liked boys, and makeovers, and would never dream of touching a video game.
But Zoey and Harmony continued to happily whack Maxine with the odd pink pillows over and over again, as well as each other, as this new reality cemented itself ever more firmly.
Maxine’s room turned a bright pink, posters of models and action movies rewritten as boy band and romance posters. The video game console and the television behind them turned into a smart phone plugged into a stereo, playing the latest pop song.
Maxine herself, meanwhile, continued to become increasingly feminine. Her shimmering blonde hair lengthened all the way down to her rounding, pert bottom, her hips widened, and her waist constricted. Thighs thickened softly, body hair receding. Finally, Maxine’s breasts stopped swelling once they were on the border between D and E cup, and a sharp tug and the following emptiness in her groin left her no doubt that she was truly all female now.