
_____???????_____
Egg Hunter: Cluster Headache
¯¯¯¯¯???????¯¯¯¯¯
Chapter 6: This Is Not Who You Really Are
“Time for the grand tour!” Eternity roared in glee.
Hunter felt exasperated. It wasn’t enough for the guy to build what looked like the bridge of a spaceship at the entrance to his mind, but apparently there was more still beyond just this room. He glanced briefly at the blank screen and wondered what exactly Mamata was planning… he had already decided to give her the body though, so there was no use worrying about what he couldn’t control.
Couldn’t control… like how he couldn’t control his body right now. Like how he couldn’t force Mamata to give it back to him earlier. Like how Eternity had been able to rearrange the inside of his head without even needing his consent. Like how he couldn’t know if Eternity was even a real person instead of the product of malicious hypnosis with unrestricted access to his mind.
Maybe he should be worrying about the things that he couldn’t control.
“Ground control to Major Bun! Your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong. Can you hear me, Major Bun? Can you hear me, Major Bun? Can you hear me, Major Bun? Can you-”
“Could you stop that already!” Hunter said as he knocked a walkie-talkie out of Eternity’s hand. He’d been using it as a fake microphone. “Your singing sucks and your voice keeps cracking.”
Venting a bit like that helped calm Hunter down a little bit and gave him a small smile. Seeing the slight pout appear on Eternity’s face made that smile disappear just as quickly.
He should stop worrying about where Eternity had come from. He might have been annoying at times, but that didn’t mean that Hunter should be reacting to him with hostility constantly.
“... so you're going to show me around, right?” Hunter asked as he walked over to one of the three doors leading out from the bridge. There was one in the center of the room that was hexagon shaped and another to the right with an ‘out of order’ sign over it, but Hunter walked over to a large square shaped door to the left of them both.
As he reached for the big red button to the side of the door, Eternity shouted, “Stop! That’s the airlock!” Eternity’s shout didn’t come fast enough as Hunter had already hit the button.
With a whoosh, both doors to the airlock opened in quick succession and weak wind started blowing from behind towards the opening. Hunter turned to look at Eternity with an eyebrow raised.
Eternity looked embarrassed as he said, “I need to up the power on the fans… I wanted it to have a vacuum effect when you opened it, but… yeah, couldn’t get that to work.”
Hunter rolled his eyes as he walked to the edge of the airlock’s outer door and looked out. The starry sky that Hunter made was still above them and looking down was… just the normal gray void.
He was about to walk out to get a look at whatever they were in from the outside when an idea came to him. Hunter cleared his voice and tried to project it clearly as he sang, “This is Major Tom to ground control. I’m stepping through the door. And I’m floating in a most peculiar way.”
He could hear a giggle from behind him as he stepped out all the way and walked a bit. Turning back around, he could see that Eternity hadn’t actually made a spaceship. At least Hunter didn’t think it was one. The entire thing looked like a big metal cartoon dog bone with the bridge being on one of the nubs at the end.
It looked weird and out of place for this thing to just be sitting there in the gray void.
The guides said that I should try to make some concessions to make my headmates feel more welcome…
Hunter looked at the gray nothingness below him and focused his mind hard. As he focused, the starry skybox above him started to grow. The black, star studded, void of space started creeping downward and beneath him, replacing the gray void that was there before. After about a minute, all of the gray was gone and Hunter was now standing in the middle of space. It felt extremely disorienting to realize that he was standing on a completely invisible plane.
He started walking back to the dog bone, which now looked less odd to be floating in a void, but something still felt off. Hunter had put so much effort into making the stars look identical to how they looked from earth, so it wouldn’t make much sense for them to be floating around a random spot in space.
Hunter spent another few minutes in extreme focus. Expanding the skybox had been easy, after all the stars had already been created, the ones that weren’t above them were simply hidden from view and just needed to be made visible. This next thing though, he hadn’t created a model of the Earth in his head before.
Hunter focused on visualizing a picture of the Earth as best as he could. Trying to create it exactly as it looked in photos from NASA was tough when he wasn’t looking at a real photo and he was far from having a photographic memory.
When he was finished visualizing it as best he could, he willed that image to appear in the space directly below them. It was startling to see it appear beneath him with his own eyes. The Earth that he had created was massive, replacing almost half of the space that had previously just been gray, making it appear like they were in low orbit.
North America covered most of the surface, making Hunter think that he probably messed up the scale of the continent quite badly. Looking towards the equator, he also realized that there was nothing but ocean where the Caribbean islands should have been. Those things would have to be fixed at a later time when he had physical reference images to work with.
Hunter returned to the bridge to find Eternity on his back, floating a couple of feet off the ground. He was softly singing, “Hee~~~re am I floating ‘round my tin cann~~~. Faa~~~r above the mooo~~~n.” His voice was still cracking badly when he tried hitting high notes or stretching one of the syllables out.
Despite the bad signing, something about it was endearing. Hunter started singing along, trying to guide Eternity into the right pitch, “Planet Earth is blue, and there’s nothing I can do~”
Eternity’s smile grew wider as the two of them sang together. There was a sparkle in his eye and for the first time since he came in, Hunter felt like this was actually sincere and not forced. His heart skipped a beat at that smile. As a blush crept into his face, he turned away from Eternity to look at the other doors.
“So, um… you were going to give me a tour?” he asked.
“Yeah! Come on!” Eternity leaned up out of his floating position and ran over to the central door, dodging around a waist-high table that was inexplicably placed in front of it. There was a lever next to the door that he grabbed onto but didn’t pull right away. He waited for Hunter to come over and stand in front of the door before, “Alright now, 3… 2… 1… 0!”
As he finished his countdown, Eternity pulled the lever down with a dramatic flourish. Nothing happened. “Umm… take a step closer to the door. It’s proximity activated.”
Hunter rolled his eyes as he took a step closer and then another. Only after taking a third step and getting a foot away from the door did it finally slide open. Behind the door was a short hallway the same hexagonal shape as the door. It was only about 10 feet long and ended in an ordinary looking double door with a large number ‘6’ on it.
Eternity stepped up next to Hunter and frowned as if something else was supposed to have happened. “Umm… start walking forward and keep walking. The doors will open on their own.”
Doors as in multiple doors?
With a sigh and another eye roll, Hunter started walking forward. As he walked forward, the double doors with the ‘6’ on them opened outward to reveal another short hallway that seemed to stop in a dead end. The wall on the other side had a ‘5’ on it.
Realizing what was going to happen, Hunter walked forward at a constant pace without worrying about the apparent dead end. As he approached, seams became noticeable on the wall just before it opened up like a camera’s aperture. Beyond it was another short hallway and another door, this one appearing to be made of wood with a ‘4’ on it.
Hunter kept walking and as he did, the ‘4’ door fell open towards him like a medieval drawbridge. The hole-filled metal ‘3’ door beyond it slid upwards into the ceiling and the ‘2’ door that was covered in random bumps, spikes, and chains swung outward. The final ‘1’ door looked like the hatch to a bank vault. The crank wheel on the final door rolled on its own and as that door swung open towards him, Hunter found himself actually anticipating what he would find at the end of the hallway.
His excitement was rewarded with… confusion. Hunter wasn’t sure what he would see when the door opened, but a small movie theater wasn’t close to what he had been expecting. The row of seats that blocked his sight into the rest of the room were a dark silhouette. The only other thing visible was the large white screen that was probably framed in curtains, however everything other than the screen was so dark, he couldn’t even tell what color they were.
The surprise was enough for Hunter to stop in his tracks suddenly. He didn’t expect Eternity to bump into him from behind, causing him to stumble forward across the threshold.
Immediately, his view changed completely. Everything, including himself, became pure black as he fell into the room. His fall was broken though by an arm catching him around the waist. Turning around, he expected to see Eternity holding him , but he was startled to find the figure that had caught him was a completely black silhouette, just as Hunter himself suddenly was.
“Sorry! Sorry!” Eternity’s voice said in front of him. “You have a bad habit of stopping suddenly, y’know? Just give me a sec…”
The black figure let go of Hunter’s waist and started fumbling around on the wall near the door. With an ‘aha!’ the figure found something. Just as suddenly as everything going black, color returned to the world once again and Hunter found Eternity standing by the doorway with his hand on another lever. The large bank hatch was slowly closing back over the doorway.
Now that things looked normal again, Hunter was able to look around the room and see that it wasn’t actually full of movie theater seats, in fact there was only a single row at the back of the room, near the door. The rest of the room actually looked like a lounge of some kind with bean-bag chairs scattered around and a large kotatsu in the center of the room. A large glass dome above them, gave a great view of the stars above.
“What… what is all this?” Hunter asked. The entire setup seemed bizarre to him but it was all too random to have just been a product of Eternity’s imagination. There had to be a reference in this to something, but whatever it might have been was lost on him.
“Haven't you ever seen MST3K before?” Eternity asked. The look on Hunter’s face clearly conveyed that he hadn’t. “Oh… well it’s this old sci-fi show… more of a framing device really… It’s about this guy stuck alone on a satellite who has to spend all his time watching cheesy 80s and 90s B-movies and commenting on them with some robots he made. I made most of this place look just like the sets of the ‘Satellite of Love’.”
Something about that description sounded familiar, but it was definitely not something Hunter had ever seen before. It sounded like some kind of YouTube reaction channel. The fact that it was something from the 80s or 90s had Hunter feeling a bit suspicious about Eternity once again since he and Mark were certainly not old enough to have watched a show like that.
Maybe Zoey was right about Eternity having always been a part of Mark like she was, but if she was wrong… Eternity himself looked young, but if his story about being a psychic was true then who knew how old he really was in real life.
“This is the observatory slash lounge slash theater.” Eternity explained. “If you wanted to, you could just hang or you could start up the projector and watch something.”
“What could you even watch in here? I doubt you have a cable or wifi connection…” That thought got Hunter thinking. Would it be possible to create some kind of psychic construct that could receive internet signals inside the mind?
“Well… you can kinda only really watch memories… that’s the idea at least! Wanna give it a try!?”
The idea of that creeped Hunter out a bit. Would Eternity and Mamata be able to access his memories and just watch them whenever they wanted to like home movies? “Umm… maybe later. Is this everything?”
Eternity chucked at that, “Is this everything? Not at all!”
With that the rest of the tour continued. As they approached the door once more, it swung open automatically but the corridor of doors was gone now. Instead the hallway zigzagged like a train sleeper car.
As they walked, Eternity explained that the ‘door sequence’ only existed when the lever was pulled and pulling the other lever in the theater had deactivated it. The hallway on the upper level had bedrooms for Hunter and Mamata, but they didn’t go into them yet. Instead they exited back to the bridge and headed for the last door, the one that had the ‘out of order’ sign on it. It turned out that this one was an elevator that took them down to the lower level. There were only two levels to the ‘Satellite of Love’ for now, but they could expand it if they ever wanted to.
The lower level had a large, purely decorational, kitchen on one end; another zigzagging hallway with more rooms, one of which was Eternity’s bedroom while the rest were empty; and a large engine room that was also just for show. Hunter’s opinion was that the lower level seemed like it would probably be pretty lonely if Eternity was living down here all on his own with nothing that had practical usage to encourage himself or Mamata to ever come down here.
After the tour finished, Hunter let Eternity lead him to his room. Both of the bedrooms in the upper hallway were large and identical in size and since Mamata hadn’t set up one for herself yet, Hunter claimed the one closest to the theater for his own.
The room was large, square, and currently empty. There was a door leading to a connecting bathroom which was almost as large and included its own walk-in closet. Well… it was supposed to be a bathroom but just like the main room, there wasn’t anything in it yet. Aside from the walls and doors, the only thing in the room was a light switch and a switch which turned the ceiling and rear wall transparent to give him a view of the stars.
“Set it up however you want. I’mma go compile up some snack food!” Eternity said as he left Hunter alone in his new empty bedroom, “You want anything?”
Hunter shook his head. It wasn’t that he couldn’t go for some snacks, especially since in his mind like this he could gorge himself on however much he wanted with no consequence. He just had no idea what Eternity had meant. Compile? Was that some kind of sci-fi term or was it a cooking thing? Neither were areas that Hunter was super familiar with so the safe option seemed to just be to decline.
Hunter was alone for the time being but he didn’t have much motivation for decorating the room at the moment. He spent a bit of focus to will a king size bed into existence in the middle of the bedroom, just so he didn’t need to worry about that later when he would be more tired. There was plenty of space left over even with the oversized bed there.
He moved over to the bathroom and created an oversized bathtub and then added a large mirror to one wall. Catching sight of his own reflection startled him for a moment. He expected to see the same white rabbit form that he had created two days ago, but his reflection showed that it had changed quite a bit from how he had originally designed it to be.
His body must have shrunken at some point. He should have realized that he had been looking upwards at Eternity this whole time, and Eternity was already a pretty short guy when they had first met on Friday.
Despite the decreased height, his legs were longer and thicker than they had started, while his torso had shrunken. The fur all over his body, but especially on his chest was fluffier than it had been before too, and combined with the frilled shirt, gave him the impression of having a modest bust. That wasn’t even everything. His head, eyes, and ears were just a bit larger than they originally had been, giving his rabbit face a more chibi appearance.
It wasn’t surprising that Eternity had been mistaking him for a girl all morning if this was how he had been looking. A giddy feeling crept into Hunter as he thought about that for some reason.
But still… while the white rabbit was cute, from the beginning it had always been intended to be temporary. A special disguise created on a whim for the Easter season. Now that Mark knew that he had been going into their mind, there wasn’t much point in keeping this form.
With a sigh, Hunter walked forward, exiting the rabbit body the same way that he could walk out of his real body. Out of the avatar like this, Hunter existed as nothing but a humanoid shaped cloud of mist, roughly the same size as his real body. Being like this really drove home how short his rabbit body had become. It must have been only about 3 and a half feet tall now, ears excluded. As he was, the bedroom no longer seemed as oversized as it had originally.
How could he not have noticed such a dramatic difference in scale of everything when he was using that body…
With a thought, he recreated his old avatar next to the rabbit. It looked just like it had yesterday when Mamata was temporarily inhabiting it. This body bore a strong resemblance to his real self, with a few major differences. It was shorter than his real self, at about 5 foot 4, and had an androgynous figure making it look like a femboy version of himself with creme colored bunny ears and tail added to the mix.
When he had first created that avatar a few years ago, it had been designed as an idealized version of himself. One that could be as cute as he wished his real self was. Now though, it felt lacking.
Hunter started thinking about the new form that Mamata had created for herself and once again that pang of envy ran through him. She looked so much like him, but cuter than even his own idealized body had been. It made him feel inadequate. How could he improve his own avatar to capture that charm that Mamata had but he didn’t?
He knew that he wasn’t trans but… Fuck it! He was going to cheat.
With another thought, he created a third avatar in the bathroom. An identical duplicate of Mamata down to Geosha’s red dress that he had seen her in before. As he looked it over and thought of transforming it into his own, he couldn’t help but blush. His heart fluttered as a thought came to him… he didn’t have to transform it. He could just take it as is…
Despite being all alone in the bathroom, Hunter looked around guiltily before walking into the body, possessing it.
Instantly, he could feel how different this body had felt from any form that he had used before. It just felt right, despite the foreign feeling of weight on his chest and the even more noticeable lack of equipment between his legs. In this body, there was a feeling of contentment with himself that was entirely new.
It felt so good to be in this body but when he looked at his reflection, he couldn’t help but frown at it. Despite how much Mamata looked like his real body, he just didn’t see himself in that reflection.
Shame started flooding Hunter. Shame as if he had been caught wearing his sister’s underwear or some equally perverted violation of an unspoken boundary. But despite that overwhelming feeling, he didn’t want to leave this body just yet.
He took a deep breath to center himself. It must just be because he was impersonating Mamata. That is why it felt wrong. It wasn’t to do with the fact that he was currently a girl despite not being trans. All he had to do was stop looking identical to Mamata and surely that feeling would disappear.
He forced himself to stare at his reflection as he began changing Mamata’s clone. The first step to diverging from her appearance was obvious, but he didn’t want to do it just yet… Instead he focused his mind on shrinking this body to the same size as his old avatar had been. Being in a shorter body than his real one just felt right to him. As he shrunk down a few inches, he also had his breasts shrink as well, but not enough for them to disappear entirely. Just enough to drop from a C-cup to a more modest B-cup.
Hunter smiled once again as he admired his reflection. He no longer looked exactly like Mamata but instead looked like he could be her younger sister… or rather, his own younger sister.
The next change that he made was the big one. From the top of his head, foot-long creme colored rabbit ears sprouted as a matching fluffball tail grew out just above his pelvis, bound inside the tight clubbing dress that wasn’t made to accommodate one. In fact, the tail pushed the dress’ hem up a bit too far as that was already pretty short by design.
If it wasn’t for the inevitable fashion disaster that could happen at any moment, Hunter would have taken more time to admire just how cute the dress really was on him. It was a backless red dress covered in a floral mesh pattern that went from the cleavage up to where it tied into a collar to keep the entire thing from falling off. It had matching red mesh sleeves covered in ruffles that were barely attached to the rest of the dress and left his shoulders completely bare.
His problem now though was that the hem was designed to end just beneath the ass, and with his tail pushing on the fabric, that hem had lifted up past the threshold of plausible decency. Normally adding in a hole for the tail in clothing would have been a simple thing, but the backless design of this dress left very little fabric back there to maintain integrity. Frankly, it was a miracle that Geosha hadn’t flashed just about everyone wearing this thing.
The smart thing to do would have been to just change the dress to a different outfit, but instead Hunter took a moment to make the dress’ fabric grow and weave itself together a bit to fill in the lower back and give him the space he needed to add a hole for the tail. A feeling of release filled him as the tail popped out and was able to breathe again. He twisted around to see in the mirror how the tail complemented his very nice butt, but…
He frowned as he looked at the reflection. It wasn’t just the discomfort from his cramped tail that had been bothering him. The creme colored fur just didn’t pair as well with Mamata’s burgundy hair as it did with the brighter red dress and that was a pressing concern. He tried turning his hair a lighter red color incrementally but it just didn’t look right. When his hair had become as bright red as his mother’s, his frown had changed to a full on glare.
This had been what he had wanted as a kid right? To look like his mother and have her hair color? Instead of the pride that he thought he should have felt, he just felt disgust. Thinking about his mother and her constant criticism was ruining the good mood that he had going. He didn’t want to be sulking and he didn’t want any reminders about his mother so he turned his hair into his normal brown color. The brown colored hair that he had inherited from his father.
Instantly, the giddy feelings started returning. He was so cute and the creme fur on his hair wasn’t out of place anymore! But still… there had to be a way to make himself even cuter. His mind drifted to the hallucination that he had briefly had when he was cleaning off Mamata’s makeup. Without even realizing that it was happening, his bunny ears and tail changed to become a rich cocoa color.
When Hunter noticed the change, the glee that he was feeling doubled. This was it! The version of himself that he has seen before in that hallucination. The version of herself that he had seen. Ice poured through his veins as that thought intruded into his mind. This was wrong! This was so wrong!
Hunter knew he wasn’t a girl… he knew that he wasn’t trans. He had always known that! Imagining himself in a girl’s body was one thing but pretending that he was one was going too far. It was disrespectful to every trans girl that he had ever known and helped.
No one knew what they went through more than he had! He had felt the dysphoria that each and every one of them had felt and that was more than enough for him to know that that wasn’t something that he had ever felt himself. The discomfort he had felt in his own body and that desire to be more feminine that he had felt was minor… inconsequential… compared to what a real trans girl experienced.
He had felt it earlier that day… inside Mark’s body. That was what real gender dysphoria felt like! Those feelings were proof that someone was trans. It was proof that Hunter wasn’t trans…
Hunter stared at his reflection for a few moments longer. This couldn’t last forever though as there were still plenty of tweaks to make. Not just changing the sex to male, but also adjusting the facial features to not be identical to Mamata as well as picking out new clothes. He didn’t rush though. He wanted to soak in that feeling of longing for this to be his real body for just a little while longer…
“What’cha up to!?” Eternity suddenly called out from the bathroom door.
Hunter froze. He was caught red-handed and red-dressed. Shame flooded him once more since he knew he would never live this down. He couldn’t keep pretending to be a trans ally when word of this got out… and he had no doubt that a loudmouth like Eternity would out this transgression to Zoey or Karen if he got the chance. They would despise him…
“Can you hear me, Major Bun?” Eternity was starting that gag again, and to Hunter’s surprise he was right in the face of the white rabbit avatar, waiting for some response. The avatar stood there unmoving as a statute and Hunter couldn’t help but let out a giggle at Eternity’s antics. Hunter’s sudden giggle startled Eternity enough for him to fall backward into the mirror.
“Ah!? Wha-” He looked back and forth between all three of the avatars that stood around in the bathroom before his eyes settled on the real Hunter. “Is that you!?” He demanded as he approached Hunter.
Hunter started to sweat. Was Eternity about to start mocking him for copying Mamata’s body? Unlike the white rabbit which only looked feminine by accident, this body was actually a real girl’s body.
Eternity eyed his body up and down before a sly grin appeared, “Cute… very cute…” Hunter could swear that there was a hint of lust in Eternity’s eyes which sent chills down his spine. Was he going to blackmail him into doing something lewd to keep this all a secret? A slight shiver went through his body, but he had no idea what that could mean. It felt almost… eager for such a thing to happen?
“Let's go over to the theater!” Eternity declared, “I’ve got popcorn, and nachos, and slushies, and cookies all set up in there! Mamata and Mark are about to start watching that special on the new superhero and I wanted to check it out too with you. Let’s go!”
“...” That was it? That’s all he had to say about catching Hunter like this?
That was good wasn’t it? Eternity didn’t care that he was making a mockery of the trans experience. He could just switch over to his old avatar and they could just never bring this up again.
But then again… Eternity thought he looked cute like this. He thought she was ‘very cute’. She could just revel in those compliments for a bit longer. She could-
He!
Hunter was a ‘him’. He already fucked up twice and he wouldn’t allow himself to do it a third time. Pretending he was a ‘she’ would be an insult to the trans community.
But as long as no one knew…
“Just give me a second to put these other bodies in the closet!” Hunter said as she used telekinesis to lift the other two avatars and float them out of the bathroom. It was a feat that she would never have been able to perform in reality, but since she was being indulgent already, why not pretend like her powers were stronger than they really were. It was her mind and if she wanted to, she could be god-like… she could be a Goddess!
With those out of the way, Hunter put on the most charming smile that she could and followed Eternity out of her bedroom, over to the theater.
***
What the hell have I gotten myself into…
Hunter wondered as she laid back on one of the beanbags in the theater. This was fucked up on so many levels… well two levels at least, that she could think of. Pretending to be a she/her was exactly the thing that so many conservatives accused real trans women of doing. Not only that, she was deceiving Eternity with this act.
She looked up at the theater’s screen. Eternity had set it up to be able to project what her body saw and heard, just like the one in the bridge. Right now she could see that Mamata and Mark were on the living room sofa watching TV and Mamata was cuddling up against their side.
She couldn’t help but burn with jealousy at that, especially when she remembered that all the affection that Mark had shown her that morning was really meant for Mamata instead. And here they were putting on a show of acting all lovey dovey together. Well, two could play at that game!
She looked over at Eternity next to her on the beanbag. With the silver jumpsuit he wore underneath his bomber jacket, he didn’t look out of place in such a sci-fi themed setting. The goggles he wore above his forehead added to the look even more… so much that she was surprised that he didn’t go with more of a Star Wars theme for the place. He looked like a mix of a rebel pilot crossed with an old school cartoon astronaut.
It was a unique style to be sure and she could imagine that if he was a bit more rugged, he would actually look like quite the handsome space rogue. He had a baby face though, giving him a bit more of a boyish look. That combined with his short height, which she could only really appreciate now that she wasn’t a tiny rabbit, made him look less like a suave scoundrel and more like their son dressing up like daddy.
And he was currently stuffing his face with nachos. Yeah, no! Two were already playing that game, Mamata and Mark. No need to jump to anything crazy since that would make it four instead and the saying was two.
Hunter let out a sigh. He couldn’t keep doing this. He should just go back to his new room and change into a body that he actually belonged in.
Ooh~ ooh~! Hunter! You’re on TV~!
Mamata’s sudden mental shout caught Hunter’s attention.
Mamata and Mark had been watching a rushed documentary about their town’s new superhero, Alley Cat, that Channel 5 news had thrown together. There really hadn’t been much for them to cover though. Alley Cat hadn’t made her official debut yet so the only things that they had to show was from the few years that she had spent as a vigilante, before she even had superpowers.
It wasn’t a particularly impressive vigilante career either. There wasn’t much that a young woman with slightly above average talent in martial arts could really do to make a difference. Especially when she only ‘prowled’ the street fighting crime once or twice a week.
The documentary so far had mostly been some out of focus photos that random people had taken cut together with grainy footage that was taken with phone cameras. If you looked online, you could find some disturbingly graphic videos of Alley Cat brutalizing street thugs, but all the bloody stuff had been cut from this broadcast. Probably to make it more family-friendly.
Mamata grabbed the TV remote and rewound the broadcast by a few seconds. Sure enough, one of the photos that was on the screen had Hunter in it, walking right up to Alley Cat from behind.
“Met the new hero already, eh? What’s she like?” Eternity asked just before slurping on a slurpee that never seemed to run out.
Hunter vaguely remembered that day when he noticed the purses that Alley Cat was carrying. A few hours earlier, his former roommate Cathy had her purse stolen from her in broad daylight. After helping Cathy get home, Hunter had gone out trying to find the purse-snatcher himself but Alley Cat had caught them first. He was going to approach her to tell her that one of those purses belonged to his roommate but then… for some reason, he couldn’t remember actually talking to Alley Cat.
The photo right up on the screen showed that he did go up to her and he remembered that Cathy had continued to use that same purse after that day, but for some reason the actual conversation with Alley Cat was a complete blank. Weird…
“Umm… normal I guess? We didn’t really talk much…” Hunter responded, glossing over the fact that he had no idea what she was really like.
He had never really thought about Alley Cat much, even after people started talking about her gaining superpowers. The only thing that he really knew about her was that she frequented the same pizza place that Cathy liked and the employees there would mention it every now and then. He didn’t really have much reason to care about her.
“Lame…” Eternity responded in a fake deadpan. He couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice as he continued, “Come on, I bet you had some super cool conversation right? I mean, she’s a freaking superhero! Did you read her mind? No way you could forget something like that! What was she thinking about?”
As Eternity threw out question after question at rapid fire pace, he kept leaning closer and closer. Hunter couldn’t help but notice that there was a faint sheen on his lips. Was that condensation? From him drinking the slushie? Such an odd thing to happen in headspace like this where none of this was actually real. Did Eternity purposely make it so the slushie would cause condensation?
That was definitely the reason that Hunter would be staring at Eternity’s lips. He impressed himself with Eternity’s attention to detail as well as his own awareness of those details. It only took him a few seconds to come up with that justification for staring and in those few seconds, Eternity started biting his lips.
“Like what you see?” He asked with a cheeky smirk.
Crap! He caught me staring…
Eternity reached out towards Hunter’s chin and tilted it up slightly. Hunter’s heart started racing like crazy.
Was he about to…!?
Hunter looked into Eternity’s eyes. He had never noticed their color before… bright amber with streaks of green throughout them. They glistened with life the same way that Mamata’s did but his own didn’t. That stare was too much! He had to look away but with Eternity holding his chin, he couldn’t. The only thing he could do was shut his eyes tightly and wait in anticipation as Eternity neared agonizingly slow.
Goddamn it! He just had to have been fantasizing about crap like this earlier, didn’t he? Being jealous of Mamata’s intimacy with Mark and thinking that Eternity would blackmail and take advantage of him. Here he was, still using a woman’s body despite not being a girl, like a damn pervert.
Any moment now, Eternity was gonna… was gonna…
Why isn’t anything happening?
Hunter peeked an eye open and found Eternity inches from his own face, blushing just as fiercely as he was. But he wasn’t coming any closer. Hunter blinked in surprise and stared at Eternity.
“Umm… what are you…?”
Eternity pulled back just slightly and stammered, “I- I was waiting for you to make the first move?”
Eh? He was waiting for me?
Hunter wasn’t sure what to think. It was so strangely… gentlemanly, that he never would have expected that from Eternity. From the same Eternity that had slapped his butt and shoved him repeatedly. The man who was willing to force Hunter into a chair, despite him struggling. The one who openly admitted to lusting over his body and then laughed in his face when he confessed to being a man.
Could someone like that actually be showing him respect like this? More importantly… did Hunter even want to make the first move?
He liked Mark already, didn’t he? Would he want to lead Eternity on when he was already interested in another person? But that just brought Hunter back to thinking about the thing he didn’t want to think about. That Mark was interested in another person instead of him. Mark liked Mamata and thought that he was just a freak…
Fuck it! A kiss is not a commitment!
Hunter still didn’t make a move though, he was trying to build up the courage. Eternity was equally as still, giving him bedroom eyes and waiting for him to act. He seemed to have expected Hunter to take a while to overthink things through.
“Seriously~? They’re both bottoms~!” The sudden cry of disbelief snapped Hunter out of it and killed the mood entirely for him.
Mamata was there in the theater with them, standing at the door and looking at them in disappointment. “I thought something good was happening~ so I came to watch~ But you’re both too chicken to make a move~!”
Despite her dissatisfaction with what she saw, Mamata started coming closer. Her eyes shone brightly as they looked Hunter up and down and something about her expression seemed… predatory.
“Uh- Um-” Hunter wasn’t sure what to say. Was she about to come onto him too? Was that what that look meant!? He froze as she approached.
The predatory look disappeared as Mamata broke into a wide smile. “Oh my goodness~! You look so much like mom~! Just like the lil sister we never had~!!!”
Hunter shivered at the suggestion that he looked like mom. He had noticed the resemblance when he had first seen Mamata, but it had completely slipped his mind when he had created this avatar based on her.
Was he okay with the idea of looking like her? Sure, when he was still a kid he hated the fact that no one could see the resemblance, but did he still feel the same way? He had been too absorbed in the fact that this body was feminine that he didn’t consider any of the finer details to his appearance.
If others could see him like this would they say that he had his mother’s nose? Would they notice the delicate ears and the smattering of freckles that were barely visible on his darker skin? The things that so many other daughters had pointed out to them by family friends and strangers alike…
Was this body enough for others to truly see her as her mother’s daughter? As her father’s daughter? The idea that it could be felt strangely… euphoric. But could euphoria like that be enough to offset the pain that he felt when he thought of his mother? Now that he was aware of it, would looking in the mirror induce the same anxiety that threatened to overtake him at the mere sight of his harpy of a mother?
She couldn’t keep this body! Her stomach turned to ice at that realization. She had defaced herself by creating this mockery of an appearance. She wouldn’t ever be able to look at her reflection without her mother looking back at her… judging her for her perversion…
Why was he even thinking like this!? He wasn’t a girl so it wouldn’t be a problem at all to just go back to his old body. He knew he wasn’t a girl, his mom had told him so, so why couldn’t he just make such a simple decision to change without feeling reluctant?
He forced himself out of those thoughts. He knew that if they continued he would either break down in tears or into a panic attack… and that’s when he saw his mother coming at him. Before Hunter could even react, Mamata pulled him into a bear hug. Mamata had made her body the same size as Hunter’s real body, but since he has shrunken the one he was currently using, he was the perfect height for Mamata to nuzzle the top of his head while hugging him.
It wasn’t mom… it was just Mamata…
“Mmmm~ Baby bunny snuggles~!” For just a moment, her voice sounded flatter and less expressive… similar to when he first woke her up in his headspace. It also reminded him that she had hugged him the same way then too.
“I’m so happy for you sis~! Have you picked a name already~?” Mamata asked as she rubbed her cheek against one of his fluffy rabbit ears.
Oh no…
“I… Um… Uh…”
“Does she need a new name? Hunter is a fine name.” Eternity asked. His flirtatious look was gone and he had gone back to his normal casual attitude.
“Of course she needs a new name!” Mamata responded sharply.
“I… Um… Actually, I don’t… I mean, I’m not…”
“Well, how about something like Artemis or Diane?” Eternity suggested.
“The Greek and Roman Goddesses of the Hunt~” Mamata voiced out loud. She let up on the tight bear hug but instead held him tight with one arm while gently stroking his ear with the other. It felt amazing!
“N- no! I don’t…” Hunter tried speaking but couldn’t actually get a word out.
“She’s right~ It’s a bit on the nose~”
Mamata saying it was a bit on the nose was a huge understatement. Every trans friend that he’s ever had had always wanted to play the game of guessing what Hunter’s name would have been if he had hypothetically been born a girl. Most of them had suggested Artemis to him but only Chelsea had ever brought up her Roman counterpart, Diana. Hunter would have almost been impressed that Eternity had thought about her… if he had actually gotten the Goddess’s name correct.
The whole name thing had been brought up so many times that Hunter had naturally considered it. Even if it was just a thought experiment, he had taken it seriously and had a name in mind. Not that he planned to share it here… after all, he wasn’t really a girl so he didn’t need a girl’s name.
He wasn’t a girl and he wasn’t trans so he didn’t need that name… it was only ever just a game… he would never really be Shakari…
Why was that thought so depressing? He didn’t want to think about it.
“I don’t need a new name.” Hunter's voice was flat… impassive.
Mamata could instantly tell that something was wrong, but not what. She let him free from her hug and tried to examine him, but he didn’t give her the time. He started walking away, towards the door.
“H~? What’s wrong~? Speak to me~”
He ignored her and just walked out. If Mamata was in here, that meant his body was free. He could just return to it. Go back to his real body and just forget this whole thing for as long as they would allow him too.
Mark might not even realize that he wasn’t Mamata…
What would it feel like to just cuddle together and not let himself be overwhelmed with confusion like he had that morning?
It could be so easy… He just needed to walk to the bridge and enter the body…
Hunter went to his new bedroom in his mind, glad that he had the foresight to make a bed beforehand. The moment he collapsed into it, he broke down in tears.
He didn’t know why. Why did this hurt so much? Why didn’t he want to go back into his real body?
It must have been because he had no more energy to even walk all the way to the bridge. It was a long day and he had only gotten a couple of hours of sleep in the middle of the afternoon. He hadn’t gotten that much sleep the last few days either.
That had to be it… He was too tired. That was the reason why he didn’t return to his body and why he didn’t have the energy to change his body to one of the other avatars.
He was crying because he was tired…
He didn't… he couldn’t…
It was Eternity’s fault!
If Eternity hadn’t snuck into his body… if he hadn’t caught him experimenting in a girl’s body… if he hadn’t begged Hunter to help him return to his body…
If it wasn’t for Eternity, Hunter wouldn’t have cried himself to sleep on the evening of Easter Sunday…
-
As they are currently: Long chapters posted every one to two weeks (~7-10K words each) Votes: 21 60.0%
-
Shorter chapters posted two to three times a week (~2-4K words each) Votes: 14 40.0%
Honestly, just update when y'all feel comfortable, no need to worry about us, the fact that you're writing this at all is more than enough <3, keep at it you guys
Also, baby bun nyoooo, let ur older sister gibs u all da hugs u need, ders nothing wrong with wanting be cute smh my head.
I dont like Eternity, they're a massive wrench in the mix, and the poor bun has enough confusion and messy thoughts to sort through, they don't need someone coming on to them when they don't even really have a good grasp on who them is
.
Cluster headache couldn't be a more apt of a title
So is it just the chaos that he brings to the bunny's life that has you disliking Eternity?
@feigningfox its just a bit much tbh, you gotta take things slow with people like our little bun. Eternity doing stuff without permission rubs me the wrong way, they showed up uninvited and almost immediately started remodelling their mind, sure it seems like the bun is okay with most of it but with the unknown nature of where they're originally from and the fact that they're trying to woo someone who is very vulnerable and is struggling to figure themselves out it just... Feels predatory... And i dont like the feeling it gives it makes me feel uneasy.
maybe i'm just reading too deep into something that really isn't that complicated. Bleh...
@MorningStarlight oh no, not at all. Thank you for sharing that. I agree with everything that you said there except him coming off as predatory hasn't been on my mind. That wasn't something that was intended, but they're all flawed characters so it's good to see how other people interpret their portrayal