After David is caught at the wrong place at the wrong time, his entire life changes in ways he never could have expected. This is a fan fiction taking place in the Whateley Universe.

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Gary’s laptop was sitting in front of me, thanks to his generosity in letting me use it to get online. This was the first time that I’d been able to check my e-mail since Jackie and I had started this road trip, so I was eager to see if anyone had contacted me, not that I’d had contact with any of my friends since my manifestation.

For one thing, even if my old friends had e-mailed me, I wouldn’t have the faintest idea of what I could tell them. I was pretty sure that no one in school could possibly understand my situation, as proven by the general reaction when Amanda had been forcibly outed.

When I looked through my e-mail box, I was delighted to see that I had one from Dad, though I was a little nervous as well. After several seconds of hesitation, I opened it up.

‘Hey Dana, I just wanted to drop you a line to see how you were doing. I hope your new friends are treating you well and that you’ve made it to this mysterious school safely. It’s a little strange trying to get used to your new name, but I imagine that it’s even more so from your end.’

“No shit,” I muttered at that, looking down at myself and sighing. “I can’t even see my toes through my tits anymore.” That was a bit of an exaggeration, but I figured that by the time I finished filling out and reached the same size as Jackie, it just might be true.

‘Becky is really worried about you and keeps asking when you’re going to be home. I’ve told her that it won’t be for awhile, and that you don’t look like you used to. She doesn’t really understand yet, so if you could send me a picture it would help. I’d like to show her what her new big sister looks like.’

I leaned back for a moment, wondering what Becky would think about my new appearance. Knowing my sister, she’d probably be happy that I was now a girl. Fortunately, she was a tomboy so wouldn’t expect me to do hair and makeup with her. I shuddered at the very idea, thankful that my new estrogen laden hormones hadn’t suddenly made me interested in that stuff.

“But maybe,” I mused with a sigh. “Maybe by the time Becky is old enough, I’ll actually know about that stuff and can teach her.” I let out another sigh at that, not sure if that would be a good thing or bad.

‘I’ve been working on your Mom, and though I have made a little headway, I wouldn’t expect any big changes in her attitude too soon. Still, things have gotten a little better. We had a few…vocal discussions about her treatment of you. To my shame, not long ago, I probably would have agreed with her. But it’s one thing to say that mutants are dangerous and that you have to protect your family from them, and it’s another thing entirely when the mutant is your family. It really makes you stop and think about what you really believe…and what’s really important. I miss you and hope to see you again soon, maybe so I can get a chance to know the new you. Please keep in contact and let me know how you’re doing. Love Dad. PS, Henri said to tell you that he has a cousin who’s a mutant.’

By the time I finished reading Dad’s e-mail, I was actually sobbing and getting tears on the keyboard. That kind of thing had been happening to me a lot more often since my change, and even more so since my period had started. I quickly glanced around to make sure no one was watching me and then wiped the tears away as best I could.

“Stupid girl hormones,” I muttered. Fortunately, my period was finally ending, at least until next month. I shuddered at the idea of having to go through this again every single month. “Gross.”

After a few minutes, I wrote a reply to Dad, telling him that there had been a few unexpected delays in my trip, but not giving him any details. There was no need to worry him any more than necessary, and even though Dad was turning out to be more open minded than I’d thought, I didn’t want to push it by telling him that I’d been fighting the MCO and a group of super heroes.

When I was finished, I logged off and then went to find Gary. “Thanks for letting me use your computer,” I told him.

“No problem,” he told me with a grin. “I usually only use it for porn and my college course work. Speaking of which, I hope I remembered to wipe off the keyboard after last night…”

“Ewwww,” I responded, thinking about what he could have gotten on the keyboard. Then I grinned and asked, “So, do you have any good bookmarks?”

Gary gave me a smug look and told me, “I doubt you’d be very interested in my collection. It’s all hot girls and girl on girl stuff.” He was obviously trying to shock me with that, which made me chuckle.

“That’s perfectly fine with me,” I told him with a lecherous grin of my own.

Gary blinked in surprise at that, then shook his head. “I guess you’re even more like my sister than I thought.”

“She’s been corrupting my innocent mind with her evil influence,” I told him cheerfully.

“Yeah, that sounds like her,” he said with a broad grin.

After that, I left Gary and went to the kitchen where I found Jackie’s Mom, or Maureen as she’d asked me to call her. I’d been at their house for two days, and it still amazed me how well they’d accepted me. They were treating me like a lost cousin that they were welcoming back into the fold.

“Would you like something to eat?” Maureen asked me with a knowing look, already pulling out a plate full of cookies. “I know you’ll want a snack before you and Jackie leave.”

I nodded at that, happily accepting both the cookies and the offered glass of milk. As I began eating the cookies, I watched Maureen, wondering what it was like for her to have me here. After all, I looked like a younger version of her own daughter, so that must be really weird for her. Fortunately for me, she didn’t act weirded out at all. I guess that with Jackie for a daughter, she must have gotten used to a bit of weirdness.

I was definitely glad that Jackie had made the detour to come here and visit her family. It was nice to meet them and get to know more about her and where she’d come from. And best of all, Gary had been happy to tell me some embarrassing stories and give me a bit of blackmail material.

“I’m glad to have an ally against my villainous big sister,” Gary had told me with a great deal of amusement. “And now, I’m not the youngest one in the family.”

The whole family had been great and they’d all been really helpful. Yesterday, Maureen had even taken me out shopping at some of the local stores while Jackie stayed behind. I knew that Jackie would have liked to come along as well, but she’d actually been worried that the MCO might have some contacts in town who’d recognize her and report her to them.

“I still can’t believe that Gary might be a mutant too,” Maureen told me while I ate. “I mean, at his age…”

“I don’t know what his power is,” I admitted to her with a shrug. “All I know is that I can sense mutants, and my power tells me that he is one.”

“I don’t doubt you dear,” Maureen quickly assured me. “But I would have thought that he would have shown some powers…”

I nodded at that, thinking about yesterday. Jackie and I had worked with Gary for several hours, trying to determine what powers he had if any. She gave him something of the homestyle version of the power testing that Damocles had put me through, however, we hadn’t found even the slightest hint of a mutant power.

“Well, he does have that appointment for power testing this afternoon,” Maureen mused.

“And I wish I could be there for it,” Jackie said as she came into the room. “Unfortunately, it’s being done by a hero so I doubt I’d receive a warm welcome.”

“I don’t know,” Gary said as he joined us. “I think flamethrowers are pretty warm.”

Jackie snatched a cookie from my plate, then asked me, “Are all your things packed?”

I nodded at that, thinking of the clothes Maureen and I had shopped for yesterday, as well as Jackie’s old ‘hand-me-down’ clothes from when she was my age. After seeing that basement, it had looked like her parents had never thrown out anything that might be useful again, including tons of clothes that Jackie had outgrown while growing up.

“Ready to go whenever you are,” I told her.

“You just got here, dear,” Maureen told Jackie with a look of disappointment. “I don’t want you to leave already.”

“I don’t have much choice,” Jackie reminded her Mom. “Even if I didn’t have to get Dana to Whateley. It isn’t safe for me to be here like this. Not for any of us.”

“I know, sis,” Gary said, looking disappointed as well. “But it still sucks.”

Jackie’s Dad, or Thom as he’d asked me to call him, came in and gave Jackie a hug. “You’d better come back and visit when you do get a chance,” he told her firmly. “And you’d better keep in contact. We do have a phone you know…and e-mail.”

“Okay, Dad,” Jackie told him with a smile. “I promise I’ll stay in contact. Maybe if I got you two a divisor phone…”

The actual goodbye’s lasted for another half hour and consisted of several rounds of hugging, of which I was included. It was a little embarrassing, but also very nice. I actually felt as though I was part of their family.

“Thank you for having me over,” I told Maureen and Thom. “It was really nice meeting you all.” Then I turned to Gary and said, “See you later Ron. Make sure you take good care of Scabbers.”

“Bite me, Mini Me,” Gary responded with a grin of his own.

Then as Jackie and I finally left, she called out to Gary, “And don’t forget to call me as soon as you find out the results from your power testing.”

Once Jackie and I were on the road again, I told her, “You have a really nice family. Thanks for bringing me.”

“I’m glad I could,” she told me with a broad grin, obviously in a good mood. “I figured that if you’re going to be my little sister, you should at least know the rest of the family. Besides, you have no idea how good it was to see everyone again after all this time.”

“I think I might,” I said quietly, thinking of Becky and my Mom.

The train station was just under an hour away, and once we arrived, Jackie carefully parked our stolen car at the back of the parking lot, then we went to go buy our tickets. I was excited since I’d never ridden on a train before, but I was also a little worried that something else would go wrong. After all, bad luck seemed to have been trailing us for most of our road trip.

I wore my sunglasses and baseball cap as we walked through the train station, trying to avoid any more attention than necessary. However, the fact was that no matter how much I covered up, Jackie and I were both very attractive and that automatically drew another kind of unwanted attention.

“Don’t worry,” Jackie told me, trying to act calm and casual, though I saw the way her eyes were darting around the train station. “We’re perfectly safe here.”

“We were perfectly safe at that diner too,” I pointed out wryly. “And that motel.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she responded.

“And that restaurant where we met my Dad,” I couldn’t resist adding.

“Don’t worry,” she told me again. “Everything is…oh shit.”

“Oh shit doesn’t sound good,” I pointed out, feeling a little worried as I looked around. It only took me a couple seconds to see what Jackie had. “Oh shit.”

There was a small group of protestors standing right in the middle of the train station, half of which were holding signs. A single glance was enough to tell me that they were with Humanity First. Most of them wore pins with Humanity First logos, and several of the signs proudly proclaimed them to be with that group.

The signs said various things like, ‘Mutants are a danger to our children’ or ‘Help keep humans safe’. However, it wasn’t the fact that they carried signs that made me nervous. It was because they’d positioned themselves to intercept anyone who was actually trying to get to the train platform.

“You look like a reasonable and respectable person,” one of the protestors said as he stepped in front of a man and blocked his path. “Does it make sense to you, that dangerous mutants are actually allowed in school with our children?”

A woman with dark sunglasses was trying to walk around the protestors, only to have several of them block her path. They were smiling, but there was definitely an unspoken threat in their body language.

“Can you please remove your glasses,” one of the protestors asked the woman. “We’re trying to make sure no mutants sneak onto the train and blow it up.”

“The security at this station is almost non-existent,” another protestor stated. “We’re trying to draw attention to that dangerous mistake and are volunteering our time to help protect the passengers until they increase the security.”

Jackie and I stood back for a minute and just watched as the protestors passed out pamphlets, tried recruiting, and generally harassed passengers who were merely trying to get through. The pamphlets and recruiting attempts might have been annoying, but it was the fact that they were trying to search anyone for signs that they might be a mutant which made them a problem for us. Specifically, they were a problem for me. My eyes would instantly mark me as a mutant to them.

“This is…problematic,” Jackie said carefully. “We’re trying to avoid attention, so we can’t exactly push our way through those idiots.”

Suddenly, a voice yelled out, “Oh my God, that protestor’s eyes were just glowing. He’s a mutant spy.”

Every protestor instantly froze for a moment, then they snapped around and began staring at each other with clear looks of hostility and suspicion. For several seconds, the tension among the group seemed to grow and grow until it was nearly radiating off of them. All I could do was stare, sensing that something was about to happen.

“I knew you couldn’t get a girl that hot without using some kind of mutant power,” one man yelled at another, right before punching him. That was immediately followed by a female protestor accusing another, “I KNEW you stole that promotion from me…”

“Holy shit,” I blurted out as the accusations started flying like crazy, followed almost immediately by physical attacks. The entire group of protestors had suddenly turned on each other with a vengeance. They were punching, kicking, and generally forming into a brawl. Jackie just stood beside me, laughing. “What the…”

Then I saw the person who’d called out the initial accusation about there being a mutant spy among the Humanity First protestors, and she was walking straight towards us. “About time you two got here,” Emily said with an amused look.

“Emily,” Jackie exclaimed, giving her a hug and then a kiss. “What are you doing here?”

“I heard about the trouble you two got into,” Emily answered with a smug look. “You know, if you’d let me come with you in the first place, I would have been able to diffuse a lot of your problems before they happened.”

“So that was you?” I commented, gesturing to the massive fight that had broken out among the protestors.

Emily smiled as she absently adjusted her glasses. “Paranoia, suspicion, and hostility can be a rather potent mix.”

“Very impressive,” I told her honestly.

Up until now, I’d only seen Emily using her powers to keep people calm and relaxed, though I remembered that her original code name had been Riot Act. I suddenly had a much better picture of just how dangerous she could have been if she’d chosen to follow her original career path and become a villain herself. In fact, I suspected that it was a very good thing that she’d decided to go mostly legitimate instead.

“Oh yes,” Emily said, gesturing to the luggage cart that she’d been pulling behind her. “I believe you left this behind.”

I took a closer look at the luggage and was startled to realize that this was the stuff Jackie and I had left behind at the motel when the MCO had caught up to us. I stared at her, but she just had an amused look on her face, though it became smug when Jackie gave her a look of surprise.

“Let’s just get out of here before the police show up,” Jackie suggested. “Though admittedly, it would be fun to watch them arrest these idiots.”

By this point, the Humanity First protestors were completely distracted by each other, so we walked right past them without a problem. Still, I couldn’t resist watching as a middle-aged woman screamed profanities at a young guy, who was curled up on the ground while she kicked him mercilessly. I shuddered, deciding that these people definitely deserved each other.

Once we were past the protestors, Jackie finally turned to Emily and asked, “Okay, how did you know we were going to be here?”

“I do have a few resources of my own,” Emily reminded her, still looking rather smug. “Maybe next time you’ll think twice about leaving me behind like that. My powers might not be physical, but I’m not exactly helpless.”

“You can say that again,” Jackie responded with a chuckle, gesturing back to the fight that was still going on.

I just bit my tongue to keep from saying anything. Jackie had just given the perfect setup for a smart-ass comment, but it wasn’t my place to use that one. Fortunately, Emily seized the opportunity and repeated, “My powers might not be physical, but I’m not exactly helpless.” Then we all started giggling.