I want to thank Lilith for taking the time to help me refine this story and for letting me post as a canon author.
Three Cheers for Lilith Langtree!

Maria was at a party but she wasn’t having any fun. No one was paying any attention to her. Or rather no boys were paying attention to her. She wasn’t usually happy getting attention, it made her nervous, but this once she’d been actually hoping to be noticed. Her friends had all chipped in and paid for her to visit a dermatologist as a birthday present. He had told her that what she thought was either acne or a persistent rash was actually eczema. He given her a skin cream and a list of common irritants that might be causing the flare-ups.

Her dad had tried to get her to one but he was a single parent and barely making ends meet so he could never quite afford it. She was going to school free because he taught at the school and he made sure she had the basics but she was sure she was the poorest person in her class. That plus the eczema is why she normally didn’t want to be seen.

She sighed, it looked like even when she wanted to be noticed she was invisible. After her skin had cleared up her girlfriends had convinced her to go to Janie’s sweet sixteen party. They’d given her a makeover and loaned her a dress and everything and she’d arrived halfway hopeful only to find nothing had changed. Boys occasionally started towards her but as soon as they got close they seemed to lose interest and went to talk to some other girl. She eventually went to the bathroom to see if something was wrong.

Looking at herself in the full length mirror she sighed. There was nothing wrong with her makeup, it was applied better than she could manage and she hadn’t smudged it nor was there anything wrong with her dress or her shoes. So it must be her. She was simply too bland. Brown hair, brown eyes, and an average figure. A little too hippy and her thighs could use more work but the dress hid that.

She sighed again, “I must be too plain to even bother talking to.” She only realized she had spoken out loud when a voice answered her, “Is that why you’re hiding in the bathroom?” She looked and her friend Briana was standing in the doorway. “If it is, “ Briana continued, “then you need to leave because that is SO not true.” Briana grabbed her hand, “Come on,” and pulled her out of the room and on to the dance floor.

While dancing she forgot her troubles with boys, ‘I wish I was gay,’ she thought. I’d have no trouble dating someone as nice as Briana or any of my other friends. As they danced several boys watched them but she didn’t notice any of them and if she had she would have been convinced they were looking at her friend.

After a few dances they left to go something to drink and a boy came over and asked Briana if she wanted to dance. She smiled at the boy but answered, “No, I’m going to sit out the next few but my friend here still has energy. Maybe you should ask her?”

The tall boy looked over at her and she made herself meet his eyes hoping her luck was about to change but fearing it wouldn’t. He gave her that up and down look that guys do and then met her eyes. Her emotions spiked and then he just wandered off not even bothering to say anything.

Maria was crushed and Briana was livid, “That was just terribly rude! I’m going to go set him straight. He can’t just dis my friend like that!”

Maria mumbled something about it being okay but Briana stalked off after the boy leaving her alone. Maria went to get some punch but it smelled alcoholic so she passed. As she left the table she decided to leave the party too and walk home. She’d come by car with her friends but it wasn’t too far to walk, not really. She grabbed her coat without anyone seeing her and started for home.

She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she didn’t notice the women walking up behind her until one of them spoke, “You are lucky we found you. It’s not safe for a girl to be wandering the streets alone at night.”

Maria spoke over her shoulder determined not to stop walking, “You’re from the party? I’m not going back, it’s just too embarassing. I’m going to go home and put on my own clothes and eat a pint of chocolate ice cream.” Her voice was bitter but determined. She was also planning to skip school the next day and possibly forever.

“What happened?” said the voice. She couldn’t place it which was weird but it had to be somebody from the party right? Why else would they care?

“I got ignored by the boys as usual,” she sighed. “I swear it’s enough to make me wish I was gay!” She blushed because it was the first time she’d said that out loud. But the girls behind her didn’t react badly, they just sped up until they were walking on either side of her then one of them said, “Or enough to make you wish you were a guy?”

“Heh, yes. Then I could show the assholes how to do it right!” They passed in front of a house with motion sensors and she got a good looking at the two girls. They might be about the same age but she’d never seen them before, either of them. She stopped, puzzled but not scared; they hadn’t harmed her or anything. “Who are you?”

“I’m Lili and this is Heather,” the girl who’d been doing all the talking said pointing to the other girl.

“Hi!” Heather waved at her with a bright smile, “I’m sorry you’re upset but soon you’ll get a whole new start! Cool huh?”

“Heather, let me explain please?”

Maria groaned, “All this day needs to be perfect is for me to be kidnapped by some freaky cult or something.”

She would have continued but the first girl interrupted, “No, this is not a kidnapping. We just want to explain something to you. Are you hungry? We could buy you something to eat.”

“Good, then you can buy the ice cream. There is a place up ahead that’s still open. But I know the owner so if you try anything there...”

“Perfect!” Lili replied, “Let’s go.”

Once there she ordered the biggest, gooiest sundae on the menu. It wasn’t like she needed to watch her weight anymore. If she never had a boyfriend then she could indulge and spend more time studying. This was a good thing she told herself. She missed the most of Lili’s speech trying to convince herself until one of them said, “... and intersexed.”

“What?” How could they know that? Her doctor had promised never to tell! “How did you find out?” she whispered urgently as the guy behind the counter frown at them. Maria smiled at him and he went to cleaning up.

“We are all were born that way. Haven’t you been listening?”

Maria blushed, unwilling to admit she hadn’t been, “Well it’s just two unimportant bits. The doctor was worried they might interfere with puberty but they didn’t so who cares.” She paused to eat some minimarshmallows covered in caramel and chocolate. “I’m going to die a virgin anyway. Can you tell me one thing that’s more important than that?”

They did and she fainted face first into her sundae. Things might have gotten sticky then but Lili telepathed the sitch to Ray who managed to divert the 911 call from the ice cream place and he and his team were the “EMTs” that showed up and carried her out into a very realistic looking ambulance.

Looking down at the unconscious girl Heather said, “Look on the bright side! Now we have the perfect cover for her disappearance!”

“Well that is true and at least I think she’ll be listening when we explain this time,” Lili agreed. “Let’s get going. If she comes out of it before we get to the Center I’ll restart my spiel. If not someone else can do it. I don’t why you had me come along on this one anyway.”

“It’s because of her power. When she’s scared she disappears,” Ray replied.

“Invisibility?” she asked.

“Not really, according to Dani she just seems to make people stop noticing she exists. It’ll triggered by fear at first but maybe we can get her to do it at will. If she can learn that she’d be a great asset. Kris figured a good telepath would be immune so you got to make first contact, being our best telepath and female.”

“That might also explain what she was so depressed about,” Lili added. “If every time she got scared people forgot her then whenever a guy she liked came close he’d forget she existed and that would just make her more scared and nervous the next time until it snowballed.”

“Oh god,” Heather replied, “that would royally suck. I hope we can help her get a handle on that.”

“We’ll do our best,” Ray said.

She came to as they were parking in the Center garage, “Man I had the weirdest dream.” Then she noticed she was strapped to a gurney and glared around at them.

“It was no dream, you have manifested a psychic power and will soon become a boy,” Lili said. She started to add something when she noticed that Kris had been right as usual, the others were acting like the girl wasn’t here. “Hey!,” she said, snapping her fingers in front of their faces, ‘Help me get her down from here.” Seeing their faces as they realized what happened was pretty funny.

“We are going to need a way to defend against that,” Ray said frowning and purposely not looking at her.

“Duh,” Heather replied, “just don’t meet her eyes.” She shrugged, “It can’t be that hard. People do it in vampire novels all the time.”

“Alternately we could just try not scaring her,” Lili said. Leaning over to look at Maria she said, “We are taking you to the infirmary. You’ll be safe there and after your change someone will come to help orient you.” With a lopsided smile she added, “If you think you can pay attention I’ll give you the basics on the way. Are you willing to listen now?”

“Yeah, sorry about before,” Maria blushed again.

“There was a water bottling facility on a river once. It closed around seventeen years ago. Well upstream from this bottling plant was a company called Genetech. Both are also no longer in business. The company got hit by a group of fanatics. The group’s name is not important but among the other damage they did was dumping test tubes down the sink. The sinks emptied in to a lake and the normal filters while good enough for their purpose were not good enough to filter out what was in those test tubes. The lake fed in to the river and the river into the bottling plant. Are you with me so far?”

“Yes, am I going to die some of horrible disease?” It would be just my luck Maria thought.

“No, but as you may or may not have known your mother drank the water from there while pregnant and in a nutshell that is why you have to come with us.”

“So that’s why we all have this power and why we all have … extra bits?”

“We don’t all have the same power. It’s always psychic but it varies greatly but otherwise you are correct. I used to be a guy once, so did Heather if you can believe it, and Ray was a girl once just like you.”

Maria looked at Ray and couldn’t quite believe it, “So by this time tomorrow...” she trailed off.

The boy nodded, “Next time you wake up you’ll have male genitals.” He patted her shoulder, “These ladies will take good care of you and I have to head back to my room and start writing the report.” He waved at Heather and Lili and he took the next left while the rest of them went straight. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll fit in fine.” He called over his shoulder. As they went the two girls made sure she knew the basics and by the time they finished she was in the infirmary.

A nurse walked over with a syringe, “This will put you out while you change. You are lucky you have a subtle power otherwise you’d be in the bunker and much less comfortable. Now before I give you this shot I’ll tell you a few things that might help. If you have a positive attitude going into the change it will help and if you have a mental image of what you would like to look like that might influence things as well.”

“Might?” she asked.

“It depends on how hard you imagine it we believe. Also I should caution you not to over exaggerate the image as you will be living with the consequences. If you can’t settle on a good image then don’t try.” She gave Maria the shot then unstrapped her and assisted her in removing her clothes and jewelry. As she helped the increasingly sleepy girl into the hospital bed she said, “I’ll be monitoring from the next room. If the shot wears off or you need anything just call out, okay?” Maria nodded sleepily and the nurse kissed her forehead before leaving.