Sydney Moya

© 2015

All rights reserved

Synopsis

Ashley touches an alien artifact one day and an alien invades his body with incredible results.

Chapter four

Jav now set about embedding herself into Ashley’s life while her host was virtually catatonic.

That summer Jav stepped out as a girl and slowly developed into a young woman. She spent a lot of time with Marco Guildford, Ashley’s best bud who’d more or less accepted his friend’s forced transition in a far more mature way than most teens would have. His family had followed his lead and done the same. Their relationship remained unchanged, they were frequently at one another’s houses gaming, watching movies or just chilling. Their mom’s had made new rules about them being upstairs together behind closed doors which both of them found slightly embarrassing as neither of them thought that way of each other. In Marco’s eyes Ashley was still his best mate and nothing more.

He’d visited her at the hospital and when she’d returned home watching as his friend’s appearance changed.

“You dyed your hair then,” he noted when he found her with long auburn hair, “it’s longer too,”

She looked quite different he thought with different hair. Seeing his pal in a skirt and top was weird enough but the hairstyle was another step towards womanhood. A part of him was worried his friend would change too much for him to understand. He guessed it was something Lorna had got Ashley to do like the doctors had insisted she wear a skirt or dress for medical reasons.

“Yeah Mum thought it’d make a change. She thinks girls should have long hair and I dyed it so I don’t look like Reagan. It also reduces the likelihood of me becoming a bimbo,” Jav said with a grin.

Marco smiled, it was jokes like these that made him realise Ash hadn’t changed inside.

“So how are you feeling?”

“Weird it is strange being like this and having to sit to pee now. I’ll miss that and wearing a bra sucks,” Jav said.

He looked at her fascinated. He didn’t think he could have coped with the change which made him think Ashley may have been more open to it than he was

“I can imagine,” he said thoughtfully looking worried.

“Don’t worry I can handle it. It’s not like I was wonderful at being a guy so this will be a new experience,” said Jav freely.

“You were okay,” said Marco, “even if you were a girl underneath,” he pointed out.

Jav snorted, “Yeah right,”

“Serious. You weren’t half bad. Being a guy isn’t about being great at sports or being macho you know,” Marco answered.

In the Smith household things were changing subtly. It had taken Jav’s first period to jar Laura out of the shock that had gripped her since the issue of her oldest child’s gender had suddenly emerged. Helping her child out during her first period had brought home the reality of her oldest child’s femaleness in a way even the surgery and the aftercare hadn’t and she’d been forced to adjust her worldview accordingly as it was such a quintessentially female thing. She remembered what a stressful event her first time had been and imagined how much of a shock it must be to someone who hadn’t grown up expecting it. She vowed to do the best she could for Ashley. She’d informed her extended family about the change of circumstances while beginning to get her child new clothes as well as cosmetics. Jav’s pocket money increased while her ability to go out as before was curtailed.

Lorna reassigned the household chores so that both girls took turns helping with the cooking, cleaning and washing up. Ashley’s outside chores were given to Matt while she was recovering from the surgery but never returned. There was still a gap between Lorna and Jav stemming from the nature of their personalities and the fact that Lorna was subconsciously mourning the son who’d disappeared so abruptly. She was fighting to build their relationship though and some progress was being made as Lorna did care for her kids just like any mother.

Matt was surprised that his new daughter’s personality hadn’t changed. She still showed an interest in the car he was rebuilding and was still helping him out with it. They still chatted about their favourite football clubs prospects and were still close. Matt didn’t have to change much in their relationship except in learning not to say ‘son’ as often as he did or to use the wrong pronouns when referring to his child. Whenever he did this there’d be an awkward silence between the pair and he was trying to lessen his mistakes. It had been a shock to lose his son but he didn’t want to push Ashley away as Jav’s personality gave him hope that his child was still the same person deep down.

It was Reagan who couldn’t get her head around her new sister. She watched as Jav effortlessly became more feminine. She was amazed at how good she’d become at makeup and the wardrobe she developed in the weeks after her surgery. A big part of her had been thinking Ashley would be tom-boyish and clueless yet within a week of the surgery her sister was perfecting a look that could go straight into 17. Ashley only seemed tom-boyish around Matt and Marco, around Reagan and Lorna she was quite feminine which truth be told annoyed Reagan. She’d picked out a lot of nice clothes and had got hair extensions before dyeing her hair auburn. Reagan had no idea how she’d mastered makeup like a pro in such a short space of time. This new sister of hers was a complete stranger to her; Ashley was supposed to be a nerdy, scruffy boy with an obsession with football, PlayStation and cars. Strangely around her father and Marco that was exactly who she was, the brother of old. With their mum, Ashley seemed to be the naïve yet self-assured young woman and Lorna ate it up. It seemed like Reagan was the only one who could see that the beauty who’d been her brother didn’t seem to need any help from the house’s most experienced teen girl. Jav kept to herself and Reagan after her initial show of concern at her sibling’s predicament had reverted to type, basically ignoring her sibling or trying to as she failed miserably. The house was monopolised by Marco and Ashley as Reagan didn’t want to bring her friends into such a weird situation. She didn’t care to explain to her chums the changes in Ashley’s life.

She didn’t want to see it as envy, for the new girl was lovely without makeup or in jeans. She was slender and 3 inches taller than her at 5’8 with long legs that went on forever. Her breasts were now a B cup and were still growing and she was already comfortable with showing them off. They’d been down to London with their mum for some shopping and she’d seen the attention Ashley got from men and it was made her a bit cross, as it was far more than she got and things weren’t supposed to be like that. She had grown up being the only girl in the family and a good looking one at that. How could her brother turn into a beautiful girl who it seemed was well on her way to upending her?

Nana, Matt’s mum and the girls’ gran wasn’t one to notice the idiosyncrasies of her granddaughter. Ashley was still the sweet kid she’d known for 16 years and once the medical stuff was explained to her she happily accepted that her grandson was now her granddaughter and continued to spoil her.

The rest of the community wasn’t too bothered as the Smith’s hardly interacted with them. They lived in a dormitory town and Matt commuted to an industrial park 20 miles away. Lorna was a financial planner who worked from home and went into her firms London office twice a week. Ashley had just taken her GCSE’s and wasn’t intending on returning to her old school, a mixed private school. Reagan went to a different school and never brought her friends over so Ashley’s change wasn’t too widespread. Her friends’ houses were across town while in their suburb the Guildford’s were their only family friends. They had new neighbours who’d arrived at the beginning of summer and Ashley didn’t have any other friends besides Marco so this meant there was hardly any gossip.

Jav found this quaint civilisation fascinating. This race was still quite simple with only a basic understanding of basic mathematics. They seemed preoccupied with social hierarchies and from what she could see just fulfilling their basic needs. They had potential she acknowledged. She’d been studying her hosts brain and it was quite complex though underused. Humans clearly didn’t have the knowledge of how to maximise their brains. It seemed they were too busy surviving to discover this. She’d already begun tweaking her host’s brain firstly increasing the neuron activity in certain parts of the brain. This enabled her to make Ashley telepathic which was a useful skill humans seemed deficient in. She made sure to hide it from everyone she didn’t want her abilities discovered. Human’s it seemed were not very of anything different and would quickly destroy her despite her superior intelligence.

Her host wasn’t a worry though. Humans seemed very set in their binary gender system and society seemed to favour males like her host had been and didn’t tolerate switching. The shock of losing control of his body and then having his body made female was too much of a shock. Ashley was in a state of distress and perpetual shock at what he’d done. Jav felt sorry for him which was weird, she’d never realised hosts felt so strongly. Where she came from hosts were specifically bred for her race to use and didn’t have a sense of independence, their sole reason of existence was to serve the Ghjy ukkhis’dngvrytjgn. They didn’t have any other feelings to worry about. Human’s had strong emotions. Their lives revolved around themselves and Ashley felt robbed of his body and his life and Jav felt this keenly though she had no use for human morals.

Dealing with Ashley’s family and discovered that humans had very strong filial bonds that exceeded anything he’d seen judging from Ashley’s feelings about his family. This seemed typical of most humans as he observed the Guildford’s and watched the human’s entertainment.

They had a statutory maturity and Jav knew though that while Ashley could leave school, his parents expected her to go to university. Jav knew that her prospects for successful infiltration of this race depended on her not standing out too much so she was going to carry on with Ashley’s schooling. Chances of finding a mate also increased at school it seemed.

August came around and with it Ashley’s GCSE’s. Ashley had done fairly well with a mix of A*’s, A’s and B’s (mostly B’s). Her parents seemed fairly happy with the results and they sat down with her to discuss which school she was going to attend.

“I don’t want to go back to Whitemount,” said Jav carefully.

“I hope you’re not moving to St. David’s,” said Reagan from the other said of the room.

“She will go where she pleases Reagan,” said Lorna curtly.

“I don’t want to go to St. David’s mum,” said Jav, “I might end up with an attitude problem,” she said sotto voce making both her parents smile and Reagan frown.

“A sixth form college perhaps?” Matt said, “You’d be treated like a varsity student,” he added.

Ashley nodded, “I want to try the Rydings School. I want to get into Cambridge and they have excellent results in Further Maths, Physics and Biology and Chemistry.

The entire family looked askance at her. Ashley was the last person they’d expect such a difficult combination. She was just someone who coasted through school.

“Well this is a surprise,” said Matt.

“I know I was really preoccupied with everything. I wasn’t in a good place,” said Jav softly.

Lorna squeezed her hand.

“That makes sense but Math’s isn’t your strongest subject, how will you cope with Further Math’s,” asked Matt.

As an engineer he was a bit of a math boffin and he’d struggled getting his older child interested in the subject. Reagan showed a natural ability Ashley didn’t share. As it was he was quite pleased she’d obtained a B grade at GCSE.

Jav stood and retrieved one of her dad’s math texts from his university days.

“I’ve been studying. Pick a couple of questions you think a sixth former might struggle with,” she suggested.

Matt paged through the book and gave her the textbook pointing out which questions he wanted answered. He’d picked out some fairly difficult ones in the hope of proving his point and encouraging his child to do something more suited to her abilities. Jav had other ideas though. She breezed through the three questions giving perfect answers much to Matt’s surprise.

“How did you do that?”

“I’ve been reading those books since I was 13. The math’s at school is so dull I quickly lost interest in it. I can do it dad you just need to believe in me,” said Jav with a smile.

“Who are you and what have done with my child?” Matt said his face a mask.

A bolt of fear struck the imposter as she eyed Matt’s stern expression.

To be continued