Being a girl is not a superpower...

 
Ultragreen
3- Weirder Than Usual
by Erin Halfelven

She screamed.

Her sudden outburst caused George to launch himself into a head-down run. Unfortunately, he was still facing the wall. He smashed into a shelf containing a few bottles of something, bounced off, landed on his wide butt and collapsed in a pile of multi-colored goo, moaning incoherently.

Shel leaned forward, gasping, reaching, touching. The newer, smoother, softer-looking skin of her upper belly continued down to a cleft between her legs, the soft folds of a pre-pubescent girl just out of sight. Hands trembling, Shel investigated down there and discovered something she had never seen or felt before—her own very feminine private parts.

She snatched her hands back and did squeal this time then burst into tears. “The machine turned me into—into—into a girl!” she hiccoughed. She collapsed onto the platform again, this time on her back. She thumped her head on one of the orange lines she had drawn but didn’t seem to notice. “Whattamaye— hoosa— howda?” she gabbled.

George spasmed on the floor beside the platform, and the two of them made nonsense noises for almost a minute.

“Am I crying?” Shel thought. “I guess I am.”

George sat up first, wiping what appeared to be finger paint off his chin. “Hass why I covered ‘oo up,” he said, still not looking around.

Shel nodded without lifting her head. Her tears had run out the corners of her eyes and onto her temples, but she had stopped crying. “I think I’m a girl now.” She frowned. “Being a girl is not a superpower,” she added. It sounded a little petulant even when she said it.

George laughed one of his in-and-out laughs, turning it into a red-faced choking fit.

Suppressing a nervous giggle, Shel sat up to examine himself/herself, avoiding the critical area. “At least I didn’t grow tits,” she mentioned. It was true. Her chest was as flat as Sheldon’s ten-year-old sister’s was back in Burbank, California.

“Ack,” coughed George.

“My skin is smoother and softer,” commented Shel.

“Ack, hack,” said George, still not looking around.

“I don’t know if I look any different.” But… Shel didn’t say anything about how she felt as if the green light had filled her up, that she might be glowing with it inside her. That she had seen a world where everyone was female and glowed green.

Without being asked, George shook his head. No, he was not going to turn around and inform the new girl about whether she looked like her old self or not.

Shel looked at where she had left her clothes on the other side of the platform. “I think my stuff should still fit.”

George’s head did a circular wobble on his wide, fleshy neck.

“You’d better go upstairs to that bathroom we found and get that paint off you,” she suggested to him. She reached across to pull the tarp back over most of her body, up to her chin. “I’ll stay down here and get dressed.”

Her best friend didn’t move at all for a bit. “You gonga be okay?” he finally asked. Unlike Sheldon, his voice had started changing six months ago, and at the moment, he did not squeak at all and sounded oddly older than just thirteen.

“I’m fine,” said Shel, surprising herself. “I feel great, like I’ve got tons of energy or something.” It must be the light inside her, she thought.

George got to his feet and shambled out of the room, snagging a small bottle of paint remover on the way and a yellow bar of industrial soap. “Maybe i’will wear off,” he said.

“The paint?”

“You being a girl….” Still not looking back, her friend trudged out of the room.