Angela found that pressing buttons on the control console keyboard was a little hard with the inch-long manicured nails that were now on her fingertips. She had to resort to hunting and pecking, tapping out commands individually with the tip of the nail on her right index finger.
"What are you changing?" Tiff asked from over her shoulder. Angela turned to look. "Wait, you want to be a guy?"
"That's gotta be a mistake," said Katie, from over Angela's other shoulder. "Come on, just leave it alone, and let's go."
"No, you don't understand --" began Angela, and suddenly the basement was plunged into pitch darkness.
The three girls screamed.
"I told you it was weird that the electricity was still working!" exclaimed Tiff.
"Jeez," said Katie. "Where's that flashlight?"
"Hang on, hang on," said Tiff. A few seconds later, an orangish glow emanated from the flashlight in her hand. "Okay, come on, let's go."
"But the chamber," Angela weakly protested. "I mean, I'm not --"
"It's sure as hell not gonna work without electricity," pointed out Katie.
Angela couldn't argue with that. She followed the other two back through the darkened basement and up the stairs. It wasn't until about halfway up that she realized that, although the design of her shoes meant that her heels were about 6 inches higher than her toes, walking that way seemed perfectly natural.
The girls walked through the hallway on the main floor, not quite as dark because of the sunlight barely peeking through the dusty windows in each room. They stopped short near the front door when they heard men's voices coming from outside.
"You think someone's gonna get fired over this?"
"Jeez, I hope not. Paperwork goes missing all the time."
"Yeah, we've disconnected it now, and I guess that's what matters."
"Good thing you noticed the lights on in this place when we were driving by."
"Come on, let's go. This place is giving me the creeps."
Footsteps on the porch began to head away from the house. Cautiously, the girls crept up to a window and peered out. Two men in work uniforms and hard hats were walking up the sidewalk, toward a van parked at the curb with the local electric company's logo on the side.
"So they turned the power off," gasped Angela, putting a hand to her mouth and then jerking it away after feeling the unfamiliar enlarged lips beneath her fingertips.
"No shit, Sherlock," whispered Tiff. The men got into the van and drove off. "Come on, let's go."
The girls cautiously opened the front door, and not seeing anyone else around, closed the door behind them and hurried up the house's sidewalk and out to the street. Now that they were in daylight, Angela had trouble tearing her eyes away from her bouncing cleavage.
"You act like you haven't seen your own tits before," Katie observed, once they had walked down to the corner.
Angela sheepishly smiled. Her mind was already racing. Could she get a generator down to the basement to power the transformation chamber and allow her to turn back into a guy? She decided it would depend on how much reality had changed as a result of these transformations, and --
"Earth to Angela," said Tiff. "The light's green."
As the three girls crossed the street, Angela started to look around. Okay, the cars and houses seemed the same, the streets at this intersection were still named Elm and Jackson -- and then she saw someone at the far corner who was waiting to cross in the other direction.