Dan blinked, looking at the screen, before shrugging.
“Got nothing?” Liam chuckled. “We did that to you and you aren’t gonna, you know, retaliate?”
Dan looked at her hands, the darkness on the back, flowing into the lines on her palm, were so alien and new that it sent her head spinning. But under the confusion, a natural confusion, trying to rationalise what she was looking at with her concept of herself, there was something unexpected in her moods. It tangled low in her gut, making her heart skip a beat. Without a shadow of a doubt, Dan - now Urmila - was excited.
Steadying themselves, Mila smiled, clearing their throat.
“I’ll get you back,” she chided, “but not yet. Maybe if you turn yourself into an OC I will just post it to Twitter, let them do the rest.”
“Alright Satan.” Liam shook his head, laughing in an attempt to mask his shame, and the fact one of his OCs was falling off a list of auto compiled suggested forms. “I think I might… I mean, we can keep it mild, right? No need to go all out?” Mila looked at her sister, Adam sat on her lap, before they gave Liam a synchronised shrug. “How about this?”
>Target: Blessed, Liam. Transformation: mild feminization.
Liam looked up at the two sisters, stifling his shame with awkward laughter again. While they shot back a reassuring smile, he couldn't bring himself to look at it too long.
“I-I’m not gay or anything.” He blurted, deleting the option. “I’m just experimenting.”
Again, the three shared a look, only this one was more telling, before all three gave him a smile.
“Do you want some alone time?” Mila asked, only for little Adam to squeak. The plush was the only one in the room with experience battling their sexuality, and sneaking out of the closet door. Siya was the only other non-straight, but that door was only half-open.
Leaping from Mila, the tiny goat-creature flumped with another squeak, scrambling onto Liam’s lap, sitting on it with his arms crossed. An unspoken understanding radiated from the two of them, and soon even Siya was picking up on it.
“Mila?” She mewed, hand grasping her sister’s. “Do you think we could, um.” She was blushing, gesturing to the door. Mila nodded, sliding out of the room, the last thing she saw was Liam leaning back, letting out a sigh.
--
Mila had never struggled so much, just trying to climb the stairs. Their clothes sat unchanged, hanging so loose moving required constant micromanagement, pinning the jeans up with her hands. It was, however, a distraction from the other distraction, the new emptiness low in tube core of her being.
She shook her head as they slipped into her room, trying not to think about it. Thankfully it was a bastion of normality, a fixed point in time before Dan dove into the machine. A large but messy bed in one corner, computer humming away in another, a wardrobe recessed into the wall, and a low dresser that was a dumping ground, next to an overflowing hamper. It did, however, highlight how bereft he was. Even if those clothes were clean - or clean enough to be wearable - none would fit.
“Do you think Chell knows?” Siya said, sitting on the edge of Dan’s bed. Her room wasn’t much cleaner, but she sat bunched up like she was trying to avoid the mess. Mila, in response, shook her head again, hitting her with a wave of dizziness.
“There was those rules, and one of them was, erm. Sorry, can I lie down? This is all finally hitting me.” Slipping past Siya, Mila crawled into her bed, eyes clasped as she tried to breathe it out. Each heave rubbed her nipples against her top, so much it was all she could think about.
I really am a girl, she thought.
“I really am a woman.” She said.
Before she could grasp it, Mila felt her new sister settle at her side on the bed, body forming against hers, her hands clinging onto Mila’s arm. Siya, a chronic non-smiler, was so happy she glew.
Plans raced over Siya’s mind, a new way of life exploding with opportunities, the defensive sibling she longed for finally laying there. Her eyes searched through Mila’s puzzled look, that reassuring smile, DAN’s soothing balm of a smile, on a face finally like her own. She touched it at last, a little tear emerging in Siya’s eye.
“If you start crying our sister will kick off.” Mila said, brushing the tear. “And she’ll know, you are in makeup.”
Siya nodded, letting Mila return to blankly experiencing the new reality. She looked up at the ceiling, nerves tingling over every spot of her new softer frame, a wave that went from her slightly pouty lips, over her her bronze shin, only for the tide to break against her vagina.
In response, a new moisture tingled.
“O-okay then!” Mila stammered, fidgeting towards the distraction that was her sister.
“‘Okay’ what?” Siya asked.
“Nothing. So, Chell probably will know that I am Dan, as the rules said we aren’t allowed to fuck with the memories of people that know about the machine. And, I mean, I can’t remember being your sister. I think there are one or two memories I would like to remember.” Mila held a hand aloft over them, the loose sleeve of her oversized hoodie sliding down her arm. She turned the dainty new limb in the light of the low sun, heart skipping as Mila’s brain tried to rationalise her lingering old concept of the self. Her bronze skin, in that amber light, glew. “Some things I am probably gonna fuck up.”
“C-can I teach you?” Siya beamed. Mila, of course, nodded, watching Siya excuse herself, bouncing onto her feet and shooting out of the door. Mila, for the first time, was left alone with her new body.
They pulled out the hand mirror from their bedside table, using it to look at themselves properly, but not being able to look anywhere else but at their new face. They were pretty. Siya was pretty, despite her occasionally worries, and she was a copy of her, near identical but for a small scar near her ear. Dan had got that while skating, and it was another little bastion of normality, but one that left Mila with a growing undulating torrent underneath their new skin, spreading out onto the room, like all that old Dan stuff was just a little bit embarrassing.
They laughed, Siya’s face twisting with Dan’s smile. They always knew they were a bit of an embarrassment, the new perspective probably just pushed it to the fore.
Mila began touching their face, coming to terms with it. Mila wasa much softer-skinned individual, and unline Dan her chin was almost completely hairless, though only almost. There was the normal peach fluff most ladies had, but Mila ansio had Siya’s stray dark hairs at the back of her jaw. It was all plucked, but Mila could just about feel were it should be.
After the eyes the next thing to keep Mila’s attention was her lips, which were much fuller than the ones they were used to, their whole mouth something they were still getting used too. Talking was reflexive, an automated action they didn’t need to think about. Their tongue, however, sat too large for their mouth, and while that was a reality for all tongues in Mila’s mouth it felt annoying, and yet also oddly exciting.
They stuck their tongue out at themselves, pulling an ugly face that looked cute with Mila’s new features, chuckling cutely. They smiled again, and this time the expression was more of a mixc of Dan’s warmth, and something else. It wasn’t Siya’s smile, that was always very forced or earnest, this was something new, something that she could see as Mila’s, and something that was very sexy.
Their loins tingled again, her new lower lips alive, needy, wanting, and rather than escape it Mila lay there, letting it happen. It was normal, they told themselves, it's natural, no need to feel shame in it. Just let it happen.
WHAM.
Dan’s door flung open, sending Mila scrambling to her feet, as a wall of wood screeched into the room. It took a moment, but Mila soon realised that it was Mila’s wardrobe.
“The fuck are you doing, uh, sis?”
“We need a mirror, a big one.” Siya chuckled, sliding the wardrobe in. “None of your stuff fits too, so it makes sense to use my clothes instead.” The wardrobe sat in the middle of the floor, as Siya emerged with a bag full of makeup and toiletries. “And your room and bed is bigger anyway.”
“How will this help me learn how, you know.” Mila mumbled, red faced as she sat back onto his bed. “Be a - uh - asian?”
Siya, fully emerging into the room, shot him a look as she began setting up. She was more red-faced than Mila.
“Well, it's uh, not.” She opened up the wardrobe, floor length mirror on the inside. “I’m not that, hm. I live with white people, which is, well, you know how Chell is. It's only recently that I’ve really talked to the community, and even then it's really bad for me. Most of the community support stuff is tied with Hinduism, and I’m, well.”
“A spooky witch?”
“Atheist.” Siya began sorting through things, eyeing up outfits. “But yeah, I like witchy stuff. I hang out with other asian girls, and they help, but I’m still trying to find something less spiritual. My union has an asian man like me, and we’ve been talking about forming a group of ‘survivors of white families,’ but it's just us two this far. There is my… our aunt, our Mataji’s sister, but she is a bitch. Our Mataji’s family hates our side because we are all too common.”
Mila nodded, her eyes scanning through the clothes, distracted by the colours. Even with her goth aesthetic Siya was still more brightly dressed than Dan ever was.
“Okay, so, I presume this is here so that you can, instead, teach me how to dress and wear makeup.” Siya smiled, nodding. Siya and Adam both liked testing makeup out on Dan, so her excitement was thoroughly unsurprising. “Then my next question is why didn’t we just go do this in your room?”
“Mine is smaller,” Siya said as she sat at her sister’s side, “and you have a double bed. If we are gonna live and work and get changed anywhere it's going to have to be here.”
Mila looked back at her sister, looking for a punchline that never came.
“You want to sleep here?” Mila asked. Siya nodded, leaning her head on her sister and pushing the mirror so that it faced them. Siya had the biggest grin on her face, her hands on her double, while Mila looked back, the weight of the next few days falling onto her.