Chapter Note: Well, I posted it a little early. The previous chapter got a lot of views and comments. Yummy comments...thanks. :)

Thanks Note: Again, thanks goes out to Elrod for his most excellent MAU universe and all MAU mistakes/transgressions are totally my fault. I am trying to keep this story as close to the MAU rules as possible, but I am afraid I may end up bending a few. Thanks also go out Beyogi, Landing and Grover for their sometimes real-time feedback and suggestions. Last but not least, djkauf for his magical editing.

Hector didn’t know what to expect when the door vanished and the red light washed over the two of them.  The crazy machine could combine their bodies, put their heads on one body, do nothing at all or turn them both into a pile of goo, but when the door reappeared and Natalie groaned in his arms; he felt an immense feeling of relief wash over him.  Then the weight of her body surprised him because Natalie felt like a feather in his arms before.  He didn’t have time to worry about that right now though; he had to get them both out of the machine.

He stepped out, his high heels making a clicking sound on the garage floor and his skirt felt tighter, more restrictive around his legs.  Natalie was starting to come around and supporting her own weight more, but he still had to support her body.  Greg noticed him struggling a little with Natalie’s weight and gallantly stepped forward to lend him a hand. Together, well, more Greg, the two of them got Natalie into the house and made her comfortable on their couch.

“What happened? Where am I?” Hector anxiously watched as Natalie began to stretch and sleepily mutter as if she was waking up from a long and pleasant nap versus a near death experience.  Then, her eyes focused on Hector. She blinked with confusion a couple of times, but then, her eyes snapped open and jumped onto the couch, ready to launch herself over the back and out of the house. “Stay back! I don’t know who the hell you two are or what you’re trying to pull here, but I am not going to go down so easily!”

This was getting out of control. Hector took a step forward. “Natalie, calm down...”

“Stay back! However you are. I’ll scream!”

“Please, Natalie, I know it looks weird, but it’s me, Jenna. Please, we’re not going to hurt you.”

“Bitch, You. Are. Not. Jenna...” Natalie’s flared with shock and she gasped with surprise. “Holy shit! You’re me!  Okay, I don’t know what kind of sick game you’re playing here, but it’s over. Where’s the phone? I’m calling the cops!” Natalie looked desperately back and forth between Greg and Hector.

Hector motioned for Greg to step back. “Look, Natalie. I’m really Jenna. I can explain, if you will calm down and let me, please?”

Natalie relaxed a little, but she still looked ready to bolt. “Go ahead...”

“Umm, well, that’s actually going to be a little hard and well, it’s kind of a funny story, but you see, I found this alien device and I kind of sort of changed myself into a woman, but then I met you, well, you bumped into me.” Hector could tell Natalie wasn’t buying it and he couldn’t blame her because even he thought he sounded like an idiot. “Okay, look. We were at the party and that asshole, Jason, slipped something into your drink.  Gina found me, I kicked Jason’s ass, you starting having convulsions, so I started to take you to the hospital. You threw up and stopped breathing on me, but I managed to get you breathing again. I wasn’t sure if you would make it. So, I brought you here and fixed you up.”

Natalie's eyes grew wide and she gasped with shock. “Oh my god. Did Gina put you up to this?” Natalie looked around the room as if trying to spot hidden cameras. “Am I being punked? Who did your makeup because you look exactly like me...”

“Smatalie, please. It’s not that...” Hector did not like where this was going.

Greg stepped forward. “Whoa there, umm, Jenna. She figured it out. No reason to keep trying. I told you that the alien body snatcher gag wouldn’t work. You should go get out of your makeup now because the footage we have, it kinda sucks. Not even worth keeping...”

Natalie reached up and tugged on her hair. “Oh my god! What in the hell did you do to my hair?!? You bitch! You better not have super-glued my wig! They are custom made from real human hair!”  She tugged on her hair a few times more. “Ow, oh my god, you did! That’s it, this shit’s not even remotely funny.  Get me outta this place and I want my fucking Louboutin’s back you stupid, fake little bitch!” Natalie snarled at Hector.

Hector didn’t know what to say or do. He didn’t plan for any of this to happen. Her words hit him hard. Harder than he expected because he realized that he liked her, liked and cared about her a lot.  He was a fake and he had lied to her. Lied to her worse than humanly possible because she still thought he was a woman and there was no possible way he could explain things in any way that would make things any better. It could only make things even worse. He felt the amazing connection they once had disappearing faster than a sandcastle when the tide came in.

His only impossible hope was that eventually, Natalie would realize what happened, that he, well, Jenna had saved her life, and forgive him. Well, forgive Jenna because as soon as Natalie was gone, he was going to turn back to Hector and never look back.

Thank god for Greg’s little improvisation because it gave them both an out, but it was not how he wanted the night to end.  Hell, he didn’t even know how he wanted the night to end because from the moment Natalie bumped into him, nothing went according to plan.  It was supposed to be so simple.  Try being a woman for an hour or two, realize it sucked, come home and change back and then, laugh about it a few days later.

Instead, he found the most amazingly smart, funny, caring and beautiful woman he ever knew, and thanks to the machine; he had lost her as soon as he found her.  As Natalie glared at him, he muttered a quick, “Sorry...” and woodenly marched into the garage to get out of his ‘makeup’.  He made it all the way to the door before the tears started to fall, but he didn’t care.

He felt so dead inside and he briefly considered asking Greg to take Natalie home for him using the excuse that it would take too long for him to get out of his ‘makeup’, but no, he had to change back into Jenna; if only to give Natalie back her shoes.  Why did she care about those things so damn much?  The way she was acting, a person might think those shoes were made out of gold, diamonds or something.

Hector placed his hand on the machine’s paw print and brought up his Jenna image, complete with the skirt and top Natalie let him have and not but not least, the shoes. The Louboutin’s as she called them.  With his Jenna image locked in, he stepped into the machine and activated it. When he stepped out, he felt strong again, but not any better emotionally.

He needed to drive her home, but his truck was a mess with all the puke.  Hector walked back into the house and Greg met him at the door. “She’s gone.  She ran out the front door saying she would just walk and call a cab. Well, she didn’t say it like that, but that was the gist of it. I wasn’t sure if I should try to stop her...”

“Fuck me to tears...” Hector couldn’t let Natalie try to walk. First of all, it wasn’t safe and if that wasn’t enough of a reason to stop her, it was 20 miles to her condo and no way, not with the shoes she was wearing. “Can I borrow your car? My truck has puke all over it.”

Greg nodded and pointed to the hook where his keys were hanging.  He looked a little unsure about what to do next. Almost like he wanted to give Hector a hug. “Umm, sorry man...I’ll see if I can do something about your truck.”

“Thanks...” Hector whispered and turned back toward the garage as his eyes begin to mist over. Greg was such a good friend and with the way he felt right now, he wasn’t sure if he deserved it.

It didn’t take long for Hector to spot Natalie. She had only made it to the end of the block and was sitting on the curb. It looked like she was crying and that made Hector feel even worse. He stopped the car, got out and sat down next to Natalie. She inched herself away.

“I thought I knew you. I trusted you and this is what you do to me. Play some sick prank on me?!”  Her shoulders began heaving as she sobbed.

Hector wanted so badly to take her in his arms and hug her, but he knew she would not allow that. “I’m sorry. I never meant for this to happen.”

Natalie turned her head to look at Hector. Her tears poured from her eyes. “Did Gina put you up to this? Was she in on this, this thing?”

“No, Gina had nothing to do with it. It, umm, it was all my idea...” Hector couldn’t continue because his throat closed up as tears began to pour from his eyes.  This crying shit sucks.

“Oh, that’s great!” Natalie suddenly stood. “Well, ha ha, joke’s on you, Jenna! If that is even your real name. I’m not laughing. What did you do? How did you get me to, where ever this place is? Wait until my chemo meds kicked in and then, when I was too tired to care, pretended to take me home?”

“No...It was...” Hector wanted to tell her the truth, but he knew she would never believe him now and maybe not ever.  Natalie was pretty pissed right now and he doubted she would believe truth because even the truth was too crazy to believe.

“You know what? I don’t care. I really don’t. All I want is to go home, get my shoes back and get on with my life.” Natalie opened the passenger door to Greg’s car. “Now, bitch, are you going to drive me or do I have to steal this car?”

Hector sighed. “Yeah...”

The drive back to Natalie’s place was silent and tense. Hector wanted to say something, anything that might bridge the gap between them, but he had nothing. The only good thing about having nothing was that having nothing meant he felt too dead and hurt inside to even cry. Natalie never said a word as she kept to herself, pressed against the passenger door in an effort to keep as much distance between her and Hector as possible.

Once they arrived at Natalie’s condo complex, Hector stopped the car, took off Natalie’s Louboutin’s, and handed them to her. “Call Gina when you get in. I’m sure she’s worried about you and no, she had nothing to do with this.”

“Whatever...” Natalie said as she slammed the door of Greg’s car and stormed away, never once looking back.

Hector waited until she made it safely inside her complex before he drove away. With a heavy sigh, he drove away. He kept an eye on the rearview mirror, hoping Natalie would run out, like in the movies and try to stop him from leaving, but she didn’t. The tears started falling shortly after. He felt them dripping off his cheek and onto chest, eventually, making a cold trail between his breasts.

He had never felt so happy to get home. His truck was no longer in the driveway, but he found it in the garage when he hit Greg’s garage door opener.  As soon as he spotted his truck and the booth, he quickly pressed the button to close the door before anyone could spot the booth and wonder what it might be.  Not that he expected too many eyes at 3:30am, but it didn’t hurt to be careful with that thing, especially now.

With bare feet, he let himself into the house via the front door. Careful to not make a lot of noise, he slowly closed and locked the door behind him. When he turned, Greg was standing in the entryway, waiting for him.

“Ahh!” A surprised squeak escaped Hector’s mouth.

“Sorry, but is everything alright?” Greg asked, concern for his friend plain in his eyes.

Hector sighed with frustration. “Yes, no, maybe...she still thinks it was some kind of prank and hates my guts. So, I guess things could be worse. I mean, she could have believed us, hated my guts and called the police on us.”

“Yeah, that would be bad. So, umm, I cleaned your truck. Smells good as new and no evidence if she does call the police.”

“Oh, thanks, I think.” Hector felt a giggle try to escape because the situation would be downright comical if this was a movie.

Greg ran his hand nervously through his hair. “Yeah, anyway, it wasn’t a problem. I got the MAU to whip up little Decepticon ‘bot. I modified him for cleaning and called him Wheelie. He’s got a bit of a personality on him and funny. So, anyway, I dropped the little bugger inside, closed the door and after a few swear words, he went into action. It was amazing how clean he got your truck!”

It didn’t really register with Hector what Greg had just said because he kind of tuned him out once he heard him say, ‘MAU’. “Okay, well, I guess I should go change back now...” Hector trudged past Greg and entered the garage.

Changing back proved to be harder than he thought and it wasn’t due to the machine acting difficult or not working at all.  Getting the machine to display his image only took a few seconds, but after he removed his hand from the alien paw print, it took him over 15 minutes of staring blankly at the holographic display of himself before he felt like doing anything.

He simply didn’t know what to do about Jenna and Natalie until he walked over to his truck parked in the other stall and studied the ghostly reflection of the girl in the side window.  She looked so sad with her tear streaked face, but she had to go.  She had no place in this world, not without Natalie.

His holographic image shimmered once, but appeared unchanged before it continued with its slow rotation. Satisfied with his image, he removed his hand from the alien paw print, entered the machine and after the blink, he exited the machine with a sad smile on his face.

It felt good to be out of that ridiculous skirt, not have breasts to deal with, not have to sit down to pee and best of freaking all, not feel like he was going to erupt into tears at the sight of a kitten.  Oh yeah, The Hector was back and the ladies better watch out because he was back on the hunt.  With a smile on his face and a cocky spring to his step, Hector turned off the light in the garage, closed the door and sauntered into his room. He felt too drained to bother with brushing his teeth, but he did perform a brief inspection to confirm that “The Hector” truly was back. He was.

He grumbled a bit about his broken alarm clock, but after he set his alarm using his cell phone’s alarm feature, he rolled over and instantly fell asleep.

When Greg rolled out of bed and got started with his day, he was surprised to discover that Hector had already left for work.  He kind of expected Hector to call in sick after his wild night on the other side of the tracks.  After he finished his breakfast, he collapsed the machine and hid it with the dirty clothes before he left for the office.

It was a sunny day and he felt surprisingly full of energy and alert after having such a stressful night with Hector’s friend showing up at the house covered in her own vomit and half dead. Well, she wasn't breathing when Hector brought her into the house. So, maybe she was dead.  Yeah, it was a pretty crazy night, but the IM he received from Michelle certainly helped cheer him up.

>Morning!  How was the club? :)

>Oh, I decided not to go. Hector ran into an old buddy of his and they decided to do something else.  How was your night?

>Good. It was nice to hang w/ my mom...sorry I couldn’t go w/ u :(

>Oh, that’s ok. Lunch?

>Sure! 11:30 work?

>Yep! No sushi, plz :-p

>:)

Greg felt pretty damn happy with himself and it showed in his work. He knocked out a record amount of paperwork and cleared a full day’s worth of transactions before 11am.  For once, his boss even smiled at him when he came by to tell him he was doing a good job.  Greg felt so motivated, sorry, ‘engaged’ after his boss’s little pep talk that he decided to waste a few minutes and call Hector to find out how he was doing.  A text just didn't seem to be personal enough after last night.  In addition to that, he also wanted to ask Hector about Michelle using the MAU for her costume tonight.

Hector answered after only a few rings. “Hey Greg, what’s up? Is everything okay?”

Greg thought Hector sounded a little down when compared to his usual self. “Oh, nothing. Umm, sorry about last night. I should have gone with you. You know, watched your back like you would’ve done for me.”

Hector surprised Greg by chuckling at him. “Yeah, Thanks, but now I totally understand why you didn’t and I don’t blame you at all.” Hector sighed. “It’s just that, well, I have had some time to think about it and I’m actually kinda glad you didn’t because then, Natalie would probably be dead right now.”

“What? How is that possible? She only went because you were there, the old time traveler’s dilemma. I mean, if I had been with you, then you wouldn’t have met her and not gone to the party, right?”

“Yeah, but she would have and she would still have been drugged by those jerks and she probably would have died, but maybe not, hard to say and nothing we can do will change it now.”

Greg thought Hector sounded a little more broken up about the chick than he expected. “I guess, so, I am going to guess that now is probably a bad time to ask, but about Michelle and you know....”

“Fuck man, after how badly I screwed up? How can I say no to you?”  Hector laughed. “If we aren’t arrested and our house isn’t covered in some UFO protective dome like they did in ET, then sure, not a problem!”

“Oh, that’s reassuring, thanks.” Greg replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Hehe, de nada! Anything else?” Hector asked over the beeping sounds of a construction vehicle backing up.

“Yeah, are ya still going to wanna go tonight? I mean, if not, I understand...”

“Hmmm, I dunno, maybe?”

“Okay, well, gotta get back to the grindstone. You know, all this paper is sooo heavy. Hasta la vista, punk!”  Greg cut the connection before Hector could respond, but Hector’s gasp at the very end told him he had achieved his desired goal.

Michelle surprised Greg by coming to his cubicle a few minutes before 11:30 to fetch him for their lunch date. “So, this is where you work?” She studied his cube decorations with a pleased smirk and a curious lift of her eyebrow. She pointed to Greg’s Optimus Prime action figure posed with a sharpened pencil to make it look like Optimus was using it like a sword.

“Oh, nice Transformers doll.” Michelle playfully poked fun at Greg.

Greg held clasped his hands to his chest as if stabbed in the heart. “Ouch, thy fair maiden’s arrow hath struckest a mortal blow upon her foe.”

Michelle’s smile lit up Greg’s little cubicle and caused him to stare at her with wonder, until the both seemed to realize that they were at one of those awkward pauses in the conversation.

“Yes, well...” Michelle was the first to recover when she pointed at Greg’s 2013 Avengers wall calendar. “Oh, I see you’re an Avengers fan...” She leaned over and Greg forced himself to ignore his spider sense warning as Michelle absently rested her hand on his shoulder and pointed to today’s date.

Greg noticed two things almost immediately. One, the general office noise died down a lot as the normal chatter stopped. He expected his nosey cube neighbors were listening to every word they could hear right now. Two, he didn’t care because he caught a whiff of Michelle’s subtle, yet delicate perfume and decided he enjoyed the scent, a lot. It was in no way overpowering like some of the other office ladies. It was so subtle that if she hadn’t leaned over him, he might not have ever noticed it.

“I see you have today’s date highlighted with the convention inked in. It looks a little old. I take it that you were planning on going without me?” Michelle coyly smiled down at him. Her hazel eyes sparkled with amusement.

“Umm, well, you see...” Greg felt twisted and tongue tied as he tried to figure out how to respond.  She was so beautiful and close that he didn’t know what to say.

Michelle giggled pleasantly. “Oh, it’s okay. Sorry, just messing with you. So, ready to go?”

“Yep!” Relieved, Greg stood and grabbed his car keys. “Umm, for the safety and wellbeing of our curbs, how about if I drive?”

“Oh, so it’s your turn to kidnap me this time?” Michelle pretended to be afraid as she purposely pitched her voice just loud enough for Greg’s neighbors to hear.

“So mean.” Greg mouthed to Michelle, much to her amusement.

Lunch turned out to be at a nice sit-down TGI-Apple-Chili clone restaurant with plenty of space between the walls and the parking lot. They both laughed over that important design decision since it would be exceptionally hard for a confused driver to smash their car through the walls at this place and it wasn’t something either of them would have noticed until yesterday.

“So, Catwoman? What’s your costume look like?”  Greg felt a little silly asking her that because he caught her smirk as he asked the question. “Well, besides like ‘Catwoman’, which one did you base your costume off of?”

Michelle drew out the suspense by taking a calculated sip from her drink before replying. “Oh, that’s good, because for a second there I thought you didn’t know what Catwoman looked like.”

“Ha! As if, because...” Greg stopped where he was going with that train of thought because he knew that telling Michelle, a woman he was very interested in getting to know better, that he thought another woman or in the case of the Catwoman character, women, was hot, he could wreck things before they got off the ground.

She grinned at him like the proverbial cat that swallowed the canary. “Go on? I’m simply fascinated by where you were going with that...”

“Well, since you have asked, I thought the costume, and strictly judging by artistic merit alone,  Julie Newmar’s Catwoman costume is the gold standard, Michelle Pfeiffer’s costume was twisted and edgy, but I have to admit that I really liked Anne Hathaway’s modern and high tech Catwoman costume.” Greg finished with a triumphant grin.

“Oh, you’re good, very good.” Michelle pouted. “Well, I wanted to do the new Catwoman costume, but it was kinda hard to find the material they used and once I did find it,  super hard to work with. So, I’m not super happy with it...”

“I might be able to help you with that, if you were willing to meet me at my house before heading to the convention.” Greg’s heart pounded in his chest. This was it. The big test of trust.

She smirked and slowly stirred her drink with her straw. “Not that I would suspect you of trying something, but what do you have? A loom or something?”

Greg chuckled. “No, nothing that high tech. It’s just a little gizmo my roommate found. It’s really good at costume design. See?” Greg willed the chest portion of his Spiderman suit to display as he sat up in his seat a little higher while pulling up his shirt for Michelle to inspect the visible portion of his costume.

“Wow, I don’t know which question to ask first. How big  a Spiderman fan does someone have to be before they decide to wear a costume under their work clothes or holy crap, this looks so perfect, how did you do that?” She paused as if trying to decide which way to go. “Yes, I think I will go with the, how did you do that?” Michelle asked as she leaned over the table and then, hesitated before Greg nodded for her to go ahead and try touching his costume.

Michelle ran her hands over Greg’s rock hard abs as she lightly pushed and pinched the fabric in an attempt to get a better feel. “Seriously, the texture and the colors on this are so good and your abs,” She quickly glanced up at Greg, surprised by her slip of the tongue. “I, I mean the fit, it’s incredible. How?”

“Thanks for noticing, I’ve been working out.” Greg smiled at her as she leaned back in her seat and blushed. “But, I told ya, we have a little gizmo and I even had to get special clearance from Hector just to let you in on the secret.” Greg tucked his shirt back into his pants.

“Wow, just wow...” Michelle whispered as she shook her head with wonder.

Greg couldn’t tell if she was wowing over the costume, his abs or maybe both, but her reaction felt pretty good. “So, ya coming over?”

“Hell ya! What’s your address and what time do you want me there?”

The end of the work day and the start of the weekend could not come soon enough for Greg. Time seemed to drag on forever, but he did find his coworker’s sudden interest in where he went to lunch very amusing.

As Agent L worked on jacking up their rental car, he swore up and down, left and right. He even invented a few new words. The cheap ass scissor jack sucked. The way Murphy was fucking with him right now, he knew they were on an active MAU event.  There was no other way to explain the seemingly random chain of bad luck that had seemed to dog them since last night.

First, it was their jet getting deadlined. Followed by having to fly commercial and as usual, their flight was delayed. Next, the fucking rental company lost their reservation and the only car available was a fricken tiny Toy’ Yaris. The damn thing might as well be a Yugo for all the space it had. It drove like a damn go kart and on the highway, it wasn’t only the semi’s that blew it off the road; it was also the full sized SUVs.  At least the damn thing was black.

Shortly after reaching the highway, it didn’t take long for the pair to get stuck in a monster traffic jam that further delayed them by two hours. Finally, with less than 100 miles to reach their suspect area, their fucking tire blew. Oh well, nothing they could do about it now except mount the spare.  Thankfully, it shouldn’t take too long and before they left the rental company’s lot, Agent L confirmed that the spare was inflated. He had a flat before and found the spare deflated and since then, he always checked the spare before embarking on any long road-trip. So, that was one less thing Murphy could mess with on this trip.

The lug nuts proved to be a bitch and a half, but the last one proved to be a total mega-bitch.  It took all his strength and righteous anger to get the bolt to spin, but when he did break it loose; he felt nothing but satisfaction at a job well done.  The bolt kept spinning and spinning and spinning. It spun far too easily.  Agent L pulled the lug wrench off and he was left with a nice and brilliantly shined, but thoroughly stripped bolt as tiny flakes of metal shavings dusted the wheel.

“Son of a @$@##!!!*@ &@^@%1!@^ @^@&&!^@)*& &@^# ^@^!#@**” Agent L screamed and kicked the stuck wheel with frustration.