She grinned, and rather surprisingly, threw her arms around me.
“Um… Sarah? You alright?” I asked. This disease was supposed to make her into a guy, not into a moronic bimbo.
“Awesome! Never been better! Why?” she said, literally bouncing on the bed.
“Er, you do realise your life as a girl is, you know, nearly over?”
“Yup! So I gotta make the most of it! Also, you’re cute. Why haven’t we fucked before? Let’s do it now! Yes, let’s!”
I was really out of my depth here. Being a virgin at 15 presumably has its good sides, but I have yet to see ‘em.

Netherworlds
Chapter 2
By Taveena

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Author's Note:I figure you guys don't care too much about the game - it's really just meant to be another social medium, so I cut back on it a little this time. I'm a little disappointed by my chapter ending, but it was the best way I could think of to wind up this part...
 
 
Naturally, as I plodded home from school that day, I wasn’t in a good mood. I mean, sure, Sarah was - and always (hopefully) would be my friend. This kind of thing is going to jar up the relationship.

No, no, not that kind of relationship… see, one of the main problems with being a teenager? Everything has a dirty meaning. Even things that don’t, do if you mishear them… there was one time, when Sarah was chatting to Kara. Kara had just joined scouts or something. I misheard an offer to “polish her boots”.

I was relieved to find out that the final word didn’t have two “B”s in it, but also kinda disappointed. But that’s how life is, right?

So, yeah, I had a bit of a crush on Sarah. But I had a bit of a crush on every girl I met. She’s been a great friend… what the hell, I sound like I’m writing a eulogy! She doesn’t die, anyways, so I guess I can talk about her in present tense. Would this change everything? Would she stop hanging around me? If she was a guy would that mean she’d stop liking Netherworlds? Will we ever get to kill Tharik’lor?

Shit. My friend’s about to go through what’s probably the second most traumatic period of her life and I’m thinking about a bunch of bloody ones and zeroes in the shape of a serpent.

It’s been 5 years since BS was released. It was only rampant for a few weeks, and in that time, about 4000 people were infected. We thought it was safe. Seeing this happen was like seeing the 9/11 bombers hit your house - scary, personal, and unstoppable. Urgh.
I kinda shrugged it off. Today I was at my mum’s, which meant guaranteed broadband internet. Score. I guess.

Mum loved me more than dad did, which wasn’t hard. She tended to lavish her attention on Kara, though - I don’t blame her for it. She just doesn’t really get boys - she was really hoping for a daughter. She got me. She got her wish though, in the end. Kara, the little bundle of joy.

Mum lives in a smallish apartment inside Melbourne proper. It was really expensive rent, but she stayed above it easily - she’s a divorce lawyer. It’s depressing how much money she makes. She sued dad out of so much, he’s horribly in debt to her - I can’t believe they were ever married.

I reached the bus stop that would take me in to the city. It was always late, and hardly a bust stop. It was a sign, next to a swimming pool. They got annoyed at me if I sat in the entrance steps. So I usually just stood around. In front of the sign. For about an hour. Waiting for the god…damned… bus!

So, yeah, eventually I get into the city. It’s wet. People say stuff about Melbourne. Sometimes, it’s good. But we don’t really have any major attractions, like the Harbour Bridge or the Opera House. We’ve got the ripoff of the London Eye. Woo. Right now, Melbourne is wet. You know, because of the rain. But it’ll probably be around 40 degrees Celsius (90-100 Fahrenheit, I think. Don’t quote me on that) by dinner. “All four seasons in one day”, they say, or they say they say, but I’ve never heard them say it, whoever they are. The bastards.

Yeah. I’m ranting. Maybe thinking about this whole thing too much is a mistake. Or maybe thinking too little.

Damn it.
 
 
I walked into the house, and rather awkwardly hugged my mum. I was now taller than her - a fact she disliked heartily - but she was still taller than Kara, who’d apparently arrived before, and was sitting on the couch - against all reason, texting, typing and watching TV all at the same time. She grinned as I entered, and I smiled half-heartedly back.

“Hey, mum. How’re things going?”

“Oh, good, good.”

After going over other scintillating topics such as, e.g, the weather, I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“Mum. Sarah has BS,” I said, interrupting her rant on… something or another.

“BS? Oh. Gender Displacement Disorder,” she said.

“She hasn’t lost it, it’s just changed!” I protested.

“What the name means is that her old gender is being pushed out of the way for the new one. I’ve been in a few cases with that. Naturally, most marriages can’t survive such a change,” she said as she shook her head disapprovingly. “Now, it’s fairly obvious you’re somewhat distraught about this. It won’t do you any good to worry about it - perhaps you should just go and play your game. She might be on the same level as you.

Poor Mum. Totally clueless about online games.

“Okay. I will…”
 
 
In my mum’s house, although the internet is considerably better, the graphics are ramped down a fair bit. It’s a bit annoying, but it has advantages.

I brought up the usual character window. Liara was standing there, smiling at me as always. My slightly sulkier other characters hung around at the back, chatting, and I think one of them was hitting on another. It’s kind of funny, how they put so much effort into such a simple screen. I double clicked Liara, ready, once again, to enter the Netherworlds.
 
 
Tharik’lor didn’t go down.

None of the useless trash mobs did, either.

Sarah wasn’t on.

We got a useless pick-up tank. They had no idea how little health they had.

We got flattened.
 
 
The next day, I woke up on my front, really uncomfortable for some reason. I was really cold last night.

Then I noticed the time. It was 11:30 AM.

I groaned. Mum had either forgotten about me, which I doubt, or she’d let me sleep in.

She’d never let me sleep in for something NICE.

It turned out I was right. After lounging around in bed for an hour or so, playing around with a graphic calculator (seriously, have you SEEN the graph for sin-1(sin(x))+tan-1(tan(x))? Freaking awesome! Yeah, I’m a bit of a nerd, just not by consensus) Mum came in.

“You’re wondering why I let you sleep in?” she said, as I opened my mouth, “We’re going to the hospital. No,” she said, as I was about to raise an objection, “not for a checkup. Or anything of the sort. I thought you might want to visit Sarah.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. It was surprising - mum had read exactly what I wanted. It was about as unnerving… as… something really unnerving. I don’t know. Unnerving but nice.

So I got ready fairly quickly, you know, normal stuff. Bowl of cornflakes for breakfast. The usual.

Mum seemed to be hiding something, but for the life of me I couldn’t work out what it was. What really confused me was when we stopped by EBGames. And we bought a Wii. For me. Not my sister. My OWN Wii. I asked why, and Mum shushed me, and then talked me into buying a few games for it - she said she didn’t want anything too violent, though. That I suppose I can understand… Mum’s a little squeamish. She was hesitant about getting PacMan in my cereal a few years ago.

So, in short, so far today, my Mum had let me sleep in, pulled my out of school, bought me my own console and 3 or 4 games to go with it, and is now taking me to hospital to see my friend.

Awesome as that is, I got the feeling that whatever was going to come next would more than compensate for it, and I’m not talking about my… wossname, tense switching. Past and present tense. Yeah… I’m not much of a storyteller.

So, we arrived at the Children’s Hospital, where Sarah had been for the last 28 hours or so. After a bit of an argument with the nurse at the counter, she directed us to where Sarah is. She was in a ward on the something floor. She was in the cancer ward.

I took a few deep breaths. Just because she was in the cancer ward, doesn’t mean she has cancer. This is the first time this has happened in Victoria. Of course they’d put her there. I relaxed, almost. I was still stressed as hell - I’d never seen someone partway through a transformation, just the before and after pics some people posted on Wikipedia.

When we got to the room, I was glad Wiki hadn’t had pictures. I was even more glad to find out I wasn’t looking at Sarah. It turned out that the rooms here were pretty big - but we’d got them wrong. Fortunately.

Eventually, we found the right room. It was - duh - roomy. Better than a normal hospital room, I suppose.

Sarah called me over, and I was relieved to see she almost looked normal. Her cheekbones had sunk a tiny bit since I last saw her, and it’s possible her boobs had shrunk a bit, but I tried not to look.

She grinned, and rather surprisingly, threw her arms around me.

“Um… Sarah? You alright?” I asked. This disease was supposed to make her into a guy, not into a moronic bimbo.

“Awesome! Never been better! Why?” she said, literally bouncing on the bed.

“Er, you do realise your life as a girl is, you know, nearly over?”

“Yup! So I gotta make the most of it! Also, you’re cute. Why haven’t we fucked before? Let’s do it now! Yes, let’s!”

I was really out of my depth here. Being a virgin at 15 presumably has its good sides, but I have yet to see ‘em. So, I’m really confused.

“C’mooon, let’s do it! Fuck me!”

“Uh, Kara? What the fuck are you doing?”

A nurse, who’d been tending to one of the cancer sufferers, came over. “Sorry about Kara here. We’ve put her on a certain anti-depressant. When we first brought her in, she was a wreck - she tried to commit suicide. Twice,” she said, adding “So who are you, and why’re you visiting Sarah?”

“This is Aaron and his Mum. They’re awesome. Can I fuck Aaron now?” piped up Sarah.

“Uh… is this normal?”

“Unfortunately so. The only antidepressant we have that has any affect on these sufferers removes potential doubt by ramping up their sex drive. It’s a little odd, but it’s the only successful treatment we’ve found.”

“Wait, what? You mean, you can cure her?”

“No. I just mean keeping her from being suicidal.”

“Oh,” I said glumly. Bubbly as Sarah seemed, the suicide attempts said something different.

It was a bit of a downer, but it’s not like she was gonna die or anything. I still don’t understand the point of the day.
Sarah’s new enthusiasm began to tire me, so I said bye. Me and my mum headed for the exit.
 
 
So, we were driving home. It had been an freaking awesome day - even though I knew it was the antidepressants, it was good to see Sarah happy. Maybe some of my good-feeling-ness had worn off by the time we got to the doctor’s.

“Mu-um! You said there wouldn’t be any checkups!”

“Not at the hospital. Look, I’m a bit worried about you, to be honest - your teachers told me bout your dizzy spells, and I think it might be something serious. I had a look at Wikipedia while you were asleep this morning, and… oh, screw it, Aaron. I think you have BS too.”

I blinked.

“What?”

“None of the changes are showing up yet, but you’ve been exposed to Sarah for few days and the disease is contagious even in its incubation. We’re gonna need to pull you out of school for a while, at least until we know what this is.”

Shit.

Reeeeaaally shit.

Okay, positives. I’m not certain about it yet, I’m out of school for a few days, I got a game console out of this, and even if it IS true, I’m gonna be with Sarah through the whole thing.

Negatives. I might turn into a chick.

Shiiiit.

So, messed up past/present/future tense aside, I was terrified. I gotta admit, I still am.
 
 
About half an hour later, filled with mental expletives and another bizarre purchase, we got to the doctors. This time my mum - and I’m serious - bought me some condoms. I didn’t really understand why, I wasn’t planning to take Sarah up on her offer any time soon… and not just because it’d be difficult if we were both-

EW ew EW ew EW. No. Can’t think of that. Mustn’t.

So, the doctor’s clinic was fairly crowded. There was one kid, maybe 8 or 9 with a broken arm. A girl who threw up every minute or so. Some guy with horrible burns on his hands.

I felt fine. These people needed a bit more than a doctor. So why was I being brought here? A couple dizzy spells aren’t much, in comparison to what these poor guys were going through.

See, my local doctor is pretty small. There were two doctors there - but most of the people here really should have been in hospital. While we were waiting, I can’t really do my dizzy spells in the past tense, it just doesn’t work. So I had one. My thoughts went cloudy, I started swaying, and most of the world faded out. Then it got painful - my bones started groaning. Rubbing against each other, and the muscle. Fucking agony, I tell you. Like sanding yourself from the inside out. It’s horrible… and then I heard a snap. Not a crack, or a crunch. A snap. Yeah, I screamed. Something in my leg broke. It turned out to be my hamstring, which meant - joy - I couldn’t move my leg without getting in even more agony. I wasn’t paying much attention, even as Mum called 000 (emergency phone number in Australia, for all you non-Australians here). It hurt so much. And my bones were still grating against each other - and I couldn’t cope with it. So I didn’t, and I blacked out, just as the paramedic van showed up a few minutes later
 
 
So I was blacked out, apparently. It was like sleep. But the pain stayed, and I had no mouth, throat, nothing. It was horrible. It felt like it lasted hours. It ended, though.

There’s always a few seconds of “Where am I?”ness that happens if you blacked out. I seriously have no idea why, probably why I came to on a hospital bed. I couldn’t feel anything, I guess I was drugged up pretty bad, cuz I couldn’t move either. My leg had a sort of cut down it that wasn’t there before.

I hadn’t noticed it yet, but I couldn’t hear anything either - the only sense I seemed to have was sight. Maybe taste, but I wasn’t able to test it.

My hearing returned, and with it my thoughts. I remembered the snapping I heard. I remembered what happened before I “snapped”. I remember why I was there. I groaned, pretty loudly - my leg was throbbing.

I heard the end of a conversation “ - problem, or whether it will help. Ah, he’s up.”

He. That was a good sign. Looks like I was safe - from BS, anyways. I was seriously worried there.

I was seriously worrying too much. Anyway, I was near Sarah - hopefully she wasn’t as ramped up as yesterday. I tried to pull myself up, and my leg… well, I’d say “twinged”. But it seems like such a huge understatement! It… was horrible. The pain was just unbearable. And - even though I tried to stop it - I started to cry. It hurt so much. My mum came over, and started hugging me. Even though I’d given up on that a few years ago, it felt so relieving to have her there.

So, yeah. I was a bit of a wuss. I’ve never broken a bone before - worst that’s ever happened was something that seemed like appendicitis, but fixed itself after a few hours. So I have no idea how much a bone would hurt - and I’m pretty sensitive most of the time. I tried to avoid sports - not just because I suck at them, and I go out of breath easy, but because I get hurt. So, you know, it’s painful.

So. I was in the hospital. Not far from here, presumably, was Sarah. Hopefully she’d stopped being a sex obsessed nymphomaniac (is there any other kind?) by now. Then again, I doubt suicidal Sarah is much better - she went through a goth phase. I’m relieved it only lasted a month.

The fact of the matter was that despite everything going on right now, I was bored. I tried to reach over to the remote lying somewhere to the left of my bed. My arm hit something plastic - and… I pulled the little PSP to my face. It had Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories in it.

It had a card. I was almost dreading what’d be inside it.

Turned out to just be a little “get well soon” card.

Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

I hope.
 

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To Be Continued...