by Saless
Chapter 24

Sarah looked after Tiffany thoughtfully, wondering what the deal with her was. She shook that off and looked for Mike, just in time to see him walk in. "Hey Mike!" she called out and waved.

"Hey Sarah!" he called back, walking towards her. "Good day?"

Sarah nodded, "Yep. Really busy, but we've got one new hire so things should get a little better."

"Good. Ready to go?" he asked. Sarah nodded, so he led her out to his car. It was a quiet drive back to his apartment.

Jill was engrossed in another project when they got there, so Sarah went ahead and got dinner started. Mike sat at the kitchen table and watched.

"I've been thinking, maybe you should take that self-defense class." He said.

"You're basing that off of Kyle's attack? He would have gotten you just as easily as me in that situation!" Sarah replied indignantly. "I hope you're not suggesting I need self-defense classes because I'm a girl now!"

"Woah, not what I meant!" Mike replied with hands raised defensively. "I thought you should have taken them before, remember? I just thought you might be more willing to listen to reason now."

Sarah calmed a bit at that. "Yeah, well, if he hadn't blind-sided me, I would have been fine." She grumbled.

That comment was met with a raised eyebrow and an incredulous look from Mike, which was wasted because Sarah was intent on her work. "Really?! You think so?" he asked skeptically.

"Sure! I could have just girlified him! He would have been too preoccupied to be a threat after that." Sarah replied cheerfully. She seemed to relish the idea of turning Kyle into a girl, not that Mike blamed her.

"Then your secret would have been out." Mike pointed out.

"Not really." Sarah dismissed it with a wave. "No one would have believed he was Kyle after I girlified him, and if they did they'd think he was crazy or something. There'd have to be a video recording of it for anyone to believe it, and even then they'd probably think it was faked."

"Hmm, that's a point." Mike conceded. "I guess that ability is more useful than I thought." Mike paused a moment in thought and asked, "Is girlified even a word?"

Sarah shrugged, "Probably not, but it is now!" Mike chuckled at that.

Sarah buried herself in her work after that and Mike was surprised to notice that she was humming! He'd never heard her humming like that before. I guess getting her work situation resolved really made a difference. Too bad she didn't get things straightened out earlier. he thought.

"Hey Mike, why don't you get Jill? Dinner's almost ready." Sarah said. Mike nodded and went back to Jill's studio.

"Hey, Jill, time to get cleaned up for dinner!" he called out as he approached. It was best not to get too close before announcing his presence, he'd found, or he'd end up with a brush full of paint in the face.

"Okay, I'll be right there." Jill called out absently. Mike waited a couple of minutes before calling again. Jill had forgotten he was there and was startled. "Oh, yeah, I'll be right there." She said again. This time she closed up her paints and washed her brush. She followed him out to the kitchen and washed her hands. As usual, they still looked like she'd been finger painting.

"Hi Sarah, how was work?" Jill asked.

"Busy, but good. Are those hands really clean, or did you just run some water over them?" Sarah asked skeptically when she saw Jill's paint spattered hands.

"They're clean, really!" Jill protested. Sarah raised an eyebrow in doubt, so Jill gave them another scrubbing just to humor her. "Satisfied?"

"I suppose." Sarah conceded. "Get yourselves some bowls, dinner's ready."

They ate quietly, then went back to reading. Sarah had already dismissed several possibilities that Mike and Jill had found because they involved gods or because people tended to get transformed against their will in them. Mike was getting frustrated. "Come on, Sarah, how are we ever going to get anywhere if you veto everything?" he grumbled at one point.

"I'm not talking to any gods, end of story!" Sarah replied in annoyance. "And I'm not about to go asking for help from someone who routinely changes people against their will into forms they're not happy with!"

"What about this?" Jill asked, holding up another manga.

Sarah snorted, "No, Jusenkyo is too unreliable. Nobody ever gets what they were aiming for in that place, and I'd still need Chiisuiton water to lock myself in male form even if I did. It's almost as much of a crapshoot as your average genie wish!"

"What, I thought genie wishes were a good thing?" Mike commented.

"No Mike, they usually aren't. The genies usually interpret the wishes in whatever way amuses them. You might as well just wish for them to have fun for all the good it will do you." Sarah replied.

"That's true, I haven't read too many stories involving wishes that turned out well. Usually the best they get is to counter the other wishes with their last wish." Jill agreed.

Mike sighed. "Are you going to shoot down everything?" he said in annoyance. Jill shot him a warning glance. He grimaced but didn't say what was on his mind.

"We'll find something, just be patient." Jill suggested.

Sarah finally left to IM Erica without finding anything she was satisfied with.

"Why did you stop me?" Mike asked after Sarah left.

"You were about to say something you'd regret, that's why." Jill replied.

"How do you know that?" Mike grumbled.

"You were about to say something along the lines of, 'If I didn't know better I'd think you didn't want to change back.', right?" Jill said.

Mike frowned, "How did you know that? That's about word for word what I was thinking!"

"I just know you, that's all." Jill replied, but she wondered. How did I know? Could this be what Laura was talking about? she thought.

"What would have been so wrong with me saying that, anyway?" asked Mike.

Jill snorted, "You know what. Sarah would have been pissed!"

Mike sighed, "I guess," and dropped it.

"We're going to have to get Sarah's ID situation resolved soon, you know." Jill said a little later.

"How?" Mike asked.

"I don't know, but she needs to be able to get around on her own." Jill replied.

They discussed possibilities but came to no satisfactory conclusions that night.

Sarah logged on and talked to Erica, but she was tired from packing so they cut it short. Sarah wished Erica could be with her for Christmas, but realized that would just accelerate the ending of their relationship that she knew would come if she didn't get changed back.

Sarah looked through her bookcase, looking for something promising, but didn't find anything. Frustrated, she loaded the transgender fiction site and browsed. There were lots of complete transformations, but they were either restricted to male-to-female, or they were part of some infectious disease, or some other drawback. Sarah could understand why the authors wrote them that way, if transformations were common and easy, there would be no conflict for the story to revolve around. Even if someone was changed against their will it would be simple to change back. Still, she was frustrated by the limitations. The most unlimited transformation stories had all the power in the hands of one or a few people who were usually not very ethical. The last thing she wanted was to go to some wizard and end up a big breasted bimbo!

After hours of reading she was more frustrated then when she started. She gave up in disgust and went to bed, but it took her quite a while to get to sleep.

Sarah awoke late, unsurprisingly, and went slowly about the business of getting clean and dressed. After a quick breakfast of cold cereal she had grabbed her astronomy book before she remembered that the semester was over. Dropping her book back in her bag she went back to reading. She did find one story that had potential. It was more science fiction than fantasy, but Sarah figured that might be an advantage since all the magical approaches had failed.

Mike and Jill arrived while Sarah was reading the last chapters of the story. "Hi Sarah, what're you reading?" Jill said in greeting. Sarah had to wait to answer until after Jill released her from her greeting hug.

"Hi Jill, I found a science fiction story that I think could be useful." Sarah said, pointing at the monitor.

"Hmm, how does it work?" Jill asked, reading the synopsis of the story.

"A mother and her son get swapped into each other's bodies by an accident. A professor the mother knows figures out a way to duplicate the effect and switches them back. He uses it to help transgendered people after that. I think it could work." Sarah replied eagerly.

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