..and my misfit way of life.. The radio played before it was angrily turned off. This, from 10 or so feet away, and by hand.
"Dammit." The voice was controlled to the point of total deadness (as always), but the overall impression of someone totally hosed and utterly used to it (but not appreciative) shone thru anyway.
The speaker's companion turned to her and said "Pretty close to home, eh, amiga?" She arched a eyebrow as she painted, sculpted, juggled, and made a sandwich.. at the same time. Being over a foot taller really sucked, but the 6 extra arms made it very worth it in Jane's view. "Hey, at least it's not as bad as that freakish book series they named the Virus after.."
The utterly well-toned but otherwise seemingly unchanged Daria Morgendorffer shook her head. "Not yet, you mean. Jane, this thing hasn't killed, that we have heard of, and I know it's only affecting carriers of two X chromosomes, but in the next iteration.. dammit! I will NOT talk like that!" She flushed with anger at her own choice of fears, knowing she'd affected the course of her illness. The results made it all too impossible not to see her flaws in sharper relief than ever.
Jane knew Daria took these impositions far more personally than the Lanes did, so she played the calm one. "Hey, amiga, it was only a comic book. Okay, you got the whole Richards act, use it! I don't mind, and I *don't* see you as being someone else, alright? Now, what was that about the next..?"
Daria shook herself a bit, thinking of changes and how her mother was still working up the courage to be seen in public, hawk wings and all. Probably wind up even more predatory and sharp sighted in and out of the courtroom once she gets over the shock.. what was that? Oh, yes. "The next generation, I should say. Even if this thing doesn't wind up changed in some girl into a version that affects the male human, the simple fact is it's in our germ plasm. Yours, mine, every female effected, and so far this thing's proven to be universally transmittable to females and by all vectors. It's safe to say that our kids are all going to be carriers, and between recessive genes meeting and viral flare-ups in the new.. Face it, Jane, we *will* be living la Vida Jokertown in 15 years.. if not a lot sooner." She stretched her arm for a cola, across the kitchen and over Jane's head to do so. "I just wish I had a more flexible mindset. I mean, seriously, Reed Richards?"
Jane smirked as she helped her friend settle down and wait out everyone else's traumas. She couldn't help but note "Amiga.. your longing for flexibility got you INTO this condition. Trust a artist, will you?"
The latest refugee hanging at the Lane place just gritted her teeth, saying without malice "Hate you, Lane."
"I know, I know.."
Janet Barch exulted in what was going to happen. She'd gotten some of the girls to come meet her for guidance on how to cope with the changes they'd gone thru. And once she let them near her long enough, Taking Back the Night would finally be a reality!
"Women! I know you all feel odd about the viral changes.."
The 7 foot tall olive-green and VERY stacked woman barely contained in a hastily bought spare muumuu of Ms. Johansen's spoke with apprehension, but none of her old terror of being regarded as a outcast. For Stacy Rowe, there was no longer any point in it. "Odd is not even scratching the surface, Ms. Barch. But I don't know what this meeting's going to do about it! Your note was anything but precise.."
Janet nearly yelled, but bided her time. Just a little longer, just a little.. "You'll understand in time, Stacy. Now, anyone else?"
Janet wanted to have them listen to her as prelude to her lowering the boom once enough time had passed, but the girls weren't exactly buying it. A girl that looked like a younger Madonna shifted to look more like Cindy Margolis as she said "Excuse me, but some of us have people we need to reassure, out there! Could you, like, get to the point?"
Brooke's notorious desire to change as needed for best effect was predictable in its effect on the viral path taken in her system, Quinn thought to herself. So she becomes a shapeshifter. All I can say is I am not playing that game if she decides to match the comics much further than that! She then waited out Barch's latest nonsense by examining the fire suppression sprinkler system and deducing its function. Ugh, Li might be able to load riot gas into those things. And I wouldn't put it past her! She really could kick herself, she decided, for having the hangups she did. Now she was stuck with insane techie knowledge, and likely more arcane things she could do with it. All because she loved and feared 'brains'. Terrific!
Janet looked at her watch, then she spoke sharply. "Alright, you stupid cows, I have had it with you all! You like the enemy, but now I can make sure you do right! You love me, you fear me, you'll be the man-mashers I like, and" Janet spewed it out like machine-gun bullets, striving to sink her new vocal and emotional claws into the girls and make sure they saw men the right way. She shivered recalling the way she could play with pet timmy last night, and the idea of finally bringing the Matriarchy to pass was.. Hang on, why aren't they falling under my sway?
Sandi Griffin lashed her tail, snarling a bit as the Cat manifested. She did as she'd done a couple of times before, shifting all the way from brunette haughty teen to midnight black panther, then back before her clothes could tear or hurt her. "I was going to ask you what you were on, but I got a good whiff just now. Your scent and vocal range is shifting as you change intent. Something like those pheromone colognes, hmm? Thing is, Ms. Barch.. it's not working on us. So good night. By the way. We AND our Guys get A+ for this year from you, or your career and freedom are over." With that, she swept out, followed by the unimpressed ladies.
The screaming hissy fit lasted for hours.
She sighed. It had been a fun life, but to go like this..!
She'd certainly had issues with all the trances and mind adjustments, but who wouldn't? The hell of it all is that while she was glad she'd gotten away from the madness when she had, Sarah Jane Smith grew to miss it more and more. Which is why the recently divorced and somewhat past middle-aged former Companion had decided to do a bit of free-lance work for the World Health Organization. She was unique in their opinion, having no obvious mental or physical changes to date despite definitely having carried the dreaded Virus. She was supposed to attract the interest of groups that had plans for or fear of the new nature of women, but the narrow-minded twits forgot that some women might well have plans of their own! Just typical of the medical professions, really. Beyond a certain level, High Science was out and out sexist in many places, Sarah Jane knew that from previous and odious personal experience. Give the Doctor that much, he may have twitted me, but it was never due to gender..
She was interrupted in her ruminations by the various hisses. Of course, tied down on a altar as she was with nary a stitch on to claim as clothing, it was understandable why she was trying not to think of these serpentine girls and their absurd desire to sacrifice the 'Last Normal' in hopes of invoking more changes like their own. She didn't bother trying to reason with them, as the stupid coven girls hadn't bothered to actually speak *to* her in the time since they lured her out and had her bitten by the sleep-snakes one could summon into being. She knew she'd been kept comatose for a while and she only hoped she hadn't been molested in her slumber, but if they had, at least she slept thru it!
Finally the leader of the group (who looked for all the world like a extra for Medusa of Battle of the Titans fame) ducked her head to Sarah's struggling form. Rather than the neck and a quick end, she had her snakehair bite at each palm and each sole.
Sarah Jane did deign to scream at the actual bites, then she set her jaw stubbornly and refused to panic. It was, after all, only death. The world went flat, then twinned and grayed as her vision went, finally tunneling smaller and darker until all things.. went away..
Sarah Jane blinked. Then she gasped. It was that she was alive at all that had her blinking, then her nakedness which had her gasping, with a tone that was.. off somehow. She looked around her, finding she'd been stashed in what looked like a half-melted plastic bag under some kind of wooden planking. Looking about, she sought and eventually found some newspaper among the inevitable rubbish found in all manner of places she found herself reviving in. Thus she strove to cover herself.. until she saw herself, that is.
Sarah Jane was no longer as she had been. Instead of the forty something English girl she was used to, the plucky lady was now seemingly native American, with bronze skin, heart shaped face, rather distracting curves for any man by her judgement, and she was apparently all of 18 years of age!!
"Oh, bloody hell! NOW how am I going to keep my apartment? Mr. Ferguson refuses to accept the Viral changes, he's kicked out every woman there! Hmm.. Maybe I can re-rent my own apartment.." Sarah Jane murmured this to herself mostly for the comfort of hearing her voice, however more melodic this body was. Upon investigation, she figured out she was under a large gallows of all things. "Well, I guess it's a place to lose a body.. I sure lost my old body here. Heh." She almost lost out to her suppressed panic, but managed to prevent hysteria by force of habit. As she pressed her hand to her now-generous chest, however, Sarah Jane felt something. Something disturbingly familiar. She checked again. Up a bit to the left, down a bit on the right..
"You have got to be KIDDING!" Sarah Jane's voice went far above her murmured tones of previous, and a bobby quickly ran over to make sure it wasn't a silly prank under the gallows for the Galleries. It wouldn't have been the first time after all.
As he looked under saying the horribly hackneyed "What's all this, then?" Sarah Jane Smith just prayed the double heartbeats she'd just confirmed didn't mean what she feared most. She still hated that damned Sonic Screwdriver.
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(Posted Wed, 09 Mar 2005 01:46)
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