Natasha sighed, staring at her reflection in a darkened screen. Her phone was totally dead. She knew her friends probably weren't trying to reach her right now - they were off having fun. And she knew that when somebody got a really weird change, even if their clothes survived as part of their new form, whatever was in their pockets probably wouldn't. That wasn't the problem, anyway. The problem was that Natasha had gotten lost. She had no idea how to get back to the hotel from here.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted something gleaming brightly in the orange light of the setting sun. Natasha turned to look, and found that it was coming from the screen of an interactive kiosk, the type of thing that would give you directions at a shopping mall, conveniently placed as if to answer her prayers. Had that been there a minute ago? She discarded that thought immediately. It couldn't have just materialized in that spot... could it?
Natasha approached the device and tapped on its bright, glowing screen with a finger, hoping to activate it and see if it could help her out. But the tactile feedback she was expecting, the moment when she made contact with its surface never came. She stared blankly for a second or two before catching sight of her finger - or part of it. It looked as if it had been cut off just past the first knuckle, meeting the screen like there was nothing else beyond it. And sticking up from that point was an image displayed on the screen, one that looked like a crude representation of the same part of Natasha's finger that had gone missing.
Oh. Of course. Of course nothing in a place like this was going to be normal. Of course there was going to be magic at every turn. She hadn't expected to come out of this vacation unscathed, anyway. Natasha only smiled as she shook her finger and watched the image on the screen wiggle in response. It didn't really feel any different, as strange as it was to watch. And her dark brown skin contrasted sharply against the light blue background. Do your worst, she thought.
But the kiosk didn't seem to be doing anything. She wondered if it was alive, a Fruit user with a particularly inhuman new form, or merely something that someone had created using their new powers. It wasn't coming to life to explain itself and deliver an evil monologue, so Natasha had to assume the latter. Well, that was fine by her. She was more than capable of getting her own self into trouble. She certainly didn't want to be the only one coming home from this trip looking the same as she did when she left - or worse, the only one other than Hwan and Amber.
What could this machine actually do to her, anyway? She was very curious to find out. No longer satisfied with watching a single finger move around, she plunged her whole hand forward by a few inches. Sure enough, it disappeared, and a flattened facsimile showed up on the screen in its place. But the screen wasn't really big enough to display much more of her than that.
More importantly, Natasha still hadn't achieved her original goal of getting directions back to the hotel. When she did eventually walk away from this thing, she was going to need that. With one hand already inside the screen, she tried to reach for the desktop icon that would open a web browser. But when she moved her hand and had it pass directly over the little icon, she couldn't feel anything but open air around her. Her forearm sank deeper and deeper into the glowing box. And with every inch she pushed inside, the image of her hand grew smaller, which made sense when it was getting further and further away. But the desktop background still seemed so far out of reach. Surely she wouldn't be able to just crawl inside the small rectangular "opening"? But as soon as the notion crossed her mind, she knew she had to try it. She wasn't going to just walk away now.
Carefully, Natasha balanced herself as she lifted one foot from the ground. She managed to bring it up far enough to rest it on the lower lip of the screen, without pulling her arm out of it. The fact that the screen seemed to hold on to her, to resist any pulling motion back out of it, didn't cross her mind. She was teetering on the "windowsill", most of her body weight leaning up against the wall of the kiosk. She bent forward to try to get her upper body through, and as soon as her face started to poke through the screen... she felt as if she was falling through space.
Just as quickly as she'd lost her footing, Natasha suddenly got it back again. Now she was standing fully upright, and facing the opposite direction, staring back at the boardwalk that she'd just left. It didn't take much for her to understand what that meant. She had fallen into the computer and was now standing inside of the desktop. She'd expected the interior to be kind of like what Maddie had gotten into earlier, where everything was a flat, two-dimensional world. But this was clearly different. She could see how the desktop windows weren't just overlapping each other, they actually sat in front of and behind one another - even if each one was a two-dimensional floating rectangle.
As she looked down at herself, Natasha realized that she had gotten a similar treatment. Although she could easily turn around and move freely, her entire body was made up of little square pixels that all sat on the same plane. When she made even the slightest movement, new squares popped into existence and others disappeared. Now, when she wiggled a single finger - which was only a few squares across - she could feel each pixel as it was added to her body, or taken away.
The sensation was mesmerizing - Natasha could have stood there for hours, just playing with the individual pixels that she was now made of. But she soon remembered why she had come in here in the first place. The browser icon she'd been trying to reach - she could easily see now that it was mounted on the back "wall" of the space inside the computer. All it took was a few steps toward the back - hops, really, from one 3D layer to the next - to get to the point where she could touch it. As soon as she did, a window opened right in front of her, seeming to her like it was 10 feet wide.
She was about to look up a map of the area, but quickly realized that wouldn't be necessary anymore. If she was in a completely digital form now, there were easier and faster ways to get around. Instead, she slammed her palm against the button labeled "Email" and watched as a blank message box opened up. With a finger, she reached up to the top of the large box and traced an address directly into the "To:" field. Then all she had to do was press the paperclip icon. The window said, "Drag a file into the box to attach". Natasha steadied herself, then took a flying leap and jumped right in.
Instantly, the girl disappeared. A loading icon spun for a second, then was replaced by a single word: "SENT". With its work now done, the computer kiosk blanked its screen, and waited for the next person to come along.