I passed out when the Moment hit.
It didn't, in retrospect, take long for me to wake back up - no more than a minute or two - but once I had, it took me a moment to realize that something was amiss.
I sat up, then glanced down to try and figure out what w-
wobble
Oh.
Um.
Wow.
These things are huge.
...As 'embarrassing reactions' go, I've gotta say that that rates somewhere high on my list.
I stared for a moment while the image computed, then noticed a detail. I had been playing CoH, running Brightsky, whose costume was essentially a white unitard with sky-blue starstreaks.
Boobs. Check.
White spandex. Check.
Sky blue, eight-pointed star. Check.
Suspicious lightness at the nape of my neck. Check.
...I needed a mirror.
Standing up... should have been a production, complicated, awkward. On top of being seven inches shorter than I... had been... her - my skeleton was arranged different, my weight was distributed differently...
No ballast jokes from the peanut gallery.
...my body should, by all rights, have been completely unfamiliar.
And instead, I felt completely at-ease, like nothing had changed at all.
It was enough to put my hackles up, until I turned to the mirror and completely lost track of everything else.
Which sounds rather narcissistic, come to think of it - and honestly, really was exactly that.
I still have trouble reconciling the idea that that gorgeous girl in the mirror was me.
She stood rather shorter than I had until then - five feet, five inches, from what I remembered of... representing? Creating? ...building her in the game's character design engine, trim and sleekly muscled like a competitive swimmer. The unitard helped that impression, a surprisingly thick layer of stretchy white fabric, more like an arctic diver's drysuit than the stereotypical spandex bodyglove, but the bustline did at least as much to take it away.
I suspected that I would shortly have cause to regret not having made more than a token effort to control my hormones' effects on the design screen.
Her face was stunning; perfectly regular, with a sharp chin, high cheekbones, and wide silver-blue eyes, framed by a feathery, burgundy-red sheaf that looked, at a glance, like someone had compressed all the style and elan of the eighties into a single hairdo without getting a single drop of the absurdity.
I already knew what I'd see, but I still twitched my head to the side to check. The confirmation that my hair was well and truly missing did nothing for my mood - I think I can say with complete honesty that the stuff was my one physical vanity, and with nine years of growth and pampering it was long enough to reach my calves when I let it out and well worth the trouble of caring for.
And now it was gone.
Dammit.
breebeebeebeebeep!
I had turned and punched the phone on on reflex; it didn't occur to me that answering it might not be a good idea until after I had already spoken. "Hello?"
Hmm. Alto. And if I hadn't felt it coming from back in my chest rather than higher up, it almost might've been something I would have said before.
"Nathan? Is that you?" My mother sounded a lot more tenative than I could ever remember her being.
"...I..."
"There's a story on the news, about that game of yours. About people being..."
"Different. Yeah. It's kinda wierd."
"Are you all right?"
I thought about it for a moment, but it wasn't really a hard question. "I think I am, actually. It's... not really that different? I mean, a lot's changed, but... I still feel like me."
"As long as you're okay," she whispered, and I made a decision. Mom was one of nature's worriers, and having me in the middle of this was going to bother her terribly. I couldn't trust myself enough to stay in contact well enough to help her feel better, so...
"I'm fine, don't worry. And... do you think I could come home?"
"As long as you're safe to drive..."
"I'll see you in a few hours, then. I love you, Mom."
"Love you, too, honey. You be careful out there."
"I will. B'bye."
"Bye."
Hang on, Mom... My car's tank was less than half-full, I'd need gas, but I had cash and wasn't likely to get pulled over, so the driver's liscence not matching shouldn't be a problem... A t-shirt I could wear too large, but none of my pants would fit. A shame I didn't have a belt... unless something else here would do?
I rooted around my dorm room for a bit; came up with a sweater and a spare computer power cord. The bodysuit's gloves were seperate pieces and the boots could pass as civilian, so with my smallest pair of pants narrowly held up and the shapeless knit thing swallowing most of the rest of me, I looked... well, mostly like a model for the Salvation Army, but passable enough to go out in public.
Keys, wallet, toiletries, meds - would I even still need those? - current and spare paperbacks...
A minute after that I was sitting in my car while it warmed up, trying to get the seat and mirrors adjusted.
Then I went home, hoping I'd be able to stay awake for the whole trip.
So, the Moment is 10pm on Friday, right? Legendary meeting is Saturday afternoon?
Ja, -n
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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"