"And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why this new Pride Dr.Pepper is the downfall of Western civilization. Thank you all for watching and listening, I'm Mark Owens, wishing good luck to America."

"That's a wrap!"

Mark unclipped the lav mic from his lapel as a PA rushed over and took the power pack from his belt.  The camera crew wheeled the cameras back into the storage area. The director walked up to Mark as he ditched the suit jacket he normally wore for his shows and threw on a black hoodie.

"Great job, Mark." The director said. "We should have that episode up by Wednesday."

"Can you make it Tuesday?" Mark asked. "I want to get onto this Dr.Pepper thing while it's still hot, ya know?"

The director nodded. "I'll talk to the editors and see what they can do." The director stepped off the set to help break everything down and get things ready for the next pundit who was gonna be coming in to film. Mark took a look around the set.

Muckraker had given him a pretty good set up. The set looked like a sort of old fashioned study, with dark wooden bookshelves sitting behind a huge wooden desk. The bookshelves were lined with thick leather volumes of philosophy and political science, although Mark hadn't even read most of them. The higher-ups had wanted a presenter with a more 'sophisticated' look than the more modern sets the other personalities at Muckraker had, so this is what he'd been given.

It was leagues better than the bedroom setup he'd had on Youtube before being picked up by the company. It was still crazy to think that he'd gone from ranting about SJWs and women in video games not being hot enough into a twenty dollar microphone to being part of a multimedia empire. Not a huge part of it, but a part of it. But that was soon going to change.

He grabbed the Dr.Pepper can he'd spent the last hour ranting about off the table and cracked it open. It had a Pride flag wrapped around it, but he took a sip anyway. At least the company hadn't changed the recipe. Mark half expected that they would put estrogen or something in it to weaken men. You could never trust organizations as woke as multi-national corporate conglomerates. Not that Mark would have stopped drinking Dr.Pepper even if they did put estrogen in it; he was sure that his natural masculinity would be enough to keep the hormones at bay. He stepped off stage and grabbed his work backpack as he continued this totally logical train of thought and smiled, knowing his days of ranting about corporate marketing were about to be over.

He had a meeting with Michael Stone, CEO of Muckraker himself. He'd gathered a few Youtubers and turned them into the conservative multimedia network in America. Stone had told him he was cooking up an idea for a new documentary, and he wanted Mark's help with it. He had been careful to never give away too much of what he was planning; he'd told Mark that it was gonna be about trans people, but he was always skirted around how, promising to reveal all in an in person meeting.

Mark emerged from the studio and into the clinical hallway outside. He went to the end of the hall, got into the elevator and pressed the button for the top floor.

Everything was coming up Owens.

 

***

Mark looked at his boss with a face that could only be described as befuddled."You want to do what?" he asked.

"Turn you into a woman." Stone answered.

Mark just slowly blinked at him, his mouth hanging slightly open.

"Ok, I know that's a lot, but I do have a Powerpoint." Stone said. He gestured towards the large screen hanging opposite from his desk, and Mark turned around to face it. It turned on, revealing the first slide of the presentation. It was titled "Growing A Pair: A Documentary". Mark looked over at Stone, who was chuckling as he reached under his desk and grabbed a remote.

"As you know, there have been many advances in hormone therapy and gender surgeries over the last decade." Stone said. "We conservatives have always been able to point to some discrepancy between trans people and cis people." He pulled up a slide that showed a Venn Diagram of characteristics between trans people and cis people. There were a few similarities, but also quite a few differences, mostly related to surgeries that some trans people got. "However, medicine doesn't seem keen on sticking to common sense these days, so now this diagram looks like this." Stone went to the next slide, where the Venn diagram had become a circle. "Now trans women can give birth, trans men got working Johnsons, and folks can get any combination of bits that they want."

Mark was nodding along. Mark knew that Muckraker's position on trans people was becoming increasingly indefensible. These advances in medical science were making it so even the most ardent gender critics couldn't tell the difference between someone born into their gender and someone who became that gender later in life. But someone had to protect all of Western civilization from the trans mob, and Muckraker had taken on that job. Not that they were doing a good job, but they were doing it.

"So, we can unfortunately no long argue whether or not these people are really their biological gender, but what we are neglecting here is the psychological side of things." Stone said, tapping his temple. "Why would someone change their gender?"

Mark cocked his eyebrow.

"Mr. Owens," Stone continued, "I am proposing the following." He changes slides once more, showing a rough timeline of two years with various bullet points set along it.

"You will undergo an advanced form of hormone therapy," he said, "turning yourself into a 'woman' in the process. We'll play this off as you becoming the first 'trans' pundit for our network, but we'll having camera crews following you during this whole process to expose trans healthcare; Doctors prescribing hormones willy-nilly, kids going into surgeries, all that jazz. You'll show how people are changing their genders just to feel good about themselves and get pity points, and how they're desecrating that most sacred institution of American life that us conservatives have always cared about: women's sports."

"I'm sorry, what?" Matt said.

"Oh, it's, uh, it's about halfway along the timeline." Stone said, pointing at the screen. "I want you to try joining a women's softball team to show how some of them are really just men who want to dominate a sport."

"I thought we were ditching the biological side of things?"

"No no no, this is still about psychology. Men are naturally competitive," Stone explained, "so if they find they can't effectively compete with other men, then they'll just change their gender so they can out-compete women. It's all very sound, I assure you, the public just needs some hard proof is all."

Mark took a deep breath and tried to sit up straight. It was...a lot. He took a deep breath.

"This isn't...mandatory, is it sir?

Stone laughed long and hard at that.

"No, no, of course not." Stone said. "It's just an idea I've been developing lately."

"Well sir, it certainly seems like a...challenging project." Mark said. "I mean, it's a two year commitment."

"Yes sir, but I feel it's a realistic timescale." Stone said. "If you came out the gate tomorrow with the 'I'm trans " stuff, it would give the game away. We need to build things up, make it believable."

"Well, what about the publicity? Having a trans person in our content is gonna drive some people away."

Stone nodded. "I've considered this, but trust me; we're gonna get all those people back and more once we drop the whole expose. Just imagine it, Owens; we could have twice as much people watching our stuff as before."

Mark considered this. He could kind of see the logic; controversy gets clicks, and this would be the ULTIMATE controversy.

"Oh, there's one more thing you should know." Stone said. "I'm gonna have Abigail Summers helping you out with this."

"Wait, Abigail? Why?"

"Well, I mean, if we want this to be convincing then we need a woman to show you the ropes, so to speak."

Mark leaned back in his chair. Abigail was this relatively new creator that they'd brought on when they realized they didn't have any female presenters. She mostly posted stuff like fashion videos and makeup tutorials, but she would sometimes appear on one of Muckraker's shows to talk about feminism and stuff like that. Mark had been skeptical of bringing her on, but Stone had said they needed to get women onboard because "You can't just leave half the population off the table."

"I don't know how I feel about that, sir." Mark said. "Abigail is...well she's fresh, and it doesn't really feel like she's part of the network yet."

"True, but she's also the only person we got who'd be willing to help you during all this." Stone said. "Remember, this has to be convincing."

Mark sighed. "Am I the first creator you've come to with this?" He asked.

Stone leaned back in his chair, a slightly sheepish look on his face. "No," he admitted, "I've been shopping it around, but no one wants to commit. Not even Nathan."

The mention of that name caused a burning sensation of anger in Mark's chest. Nathan Emerson was the Muckraker's top creator: his personal channel had the most subscribers, his videos got the most views on the main channel, and he'd even directed a movie for their streaming service, Muck+. Mark may have had a following, but around here Nathan had a whole cult of personality.

But...if the oh-so-great Nathan Emerson had turned down this project, this gave him a chance. A chance to finally close that million subscriber gap between them and finally come out on top and be the creator he always wanted to be.

"I'll do it." Mark said.

Stone looked surprised. "Really, Owens?" Mark nodded. "You understand that your body is going to completely change?"

Mark shrugged. "Hey, a pair up here instead of down there is probably gonna get me more viewers then I had before."

Stone cracked up at his little joke, and had to take a moment to wipe a tear from his eye.

"Owens," Stone said, "I think this is beginning of something beautiful."

 

***

Mark felt cautiously optimistic as he left Stone's office. This was a big shift in his career, but hey, you have to do what you have to do.

The plan was to post a short video to his socials announcing that he was taking a break from content creation for health reasons. In that time he'd go to an informed consent clinic, get the hormones, and let them do their thing until he looked sufficiently feminine enough to make a convincing debut.

 He walked down the hall and emerged into the waiting room of Stone's office. The elevator on the opposite wall opened, and out walked Nathan Emerson himself. Mark was willing to admit that Nathan had him beat in the looks department. Strong jaw with just the right amount of stubble, short brown hair that swept up into a quiff, and flawless olive skin. His face was practically designed to be put in front of a camera.

Nathan was looking at his phone when the doors opened. He looked up as he got out and saw Mark. Nathan grinned.

"Marky-Mark!" Nathan said as he put his phone away. "You had a meeting with the bossman?"

Mark just nodded."You going in for one?"

"Nah, I dropped my wallet somewhere and I'm just going around looking for it." Nathan said. Nathan stepped out of the elevator and walked up to him. The one thing Mark had on him was that he was just oh so slightly taller than Nathan. It was just an inch, but it was an inch that Mark held great pride in.

"Did he tell you about the, uh...project he's working on?" Nathan asked. Mark nodded again.

"And?" Nathan said.

Mark couldn't help but grin. The smug look on Nathan's face slowly disintegrated as he put the pieces together.

"Wait, seriously?" Nathan said.

Mark nodded.

Nathan suddenly looked concerned. He scratched his stubble and looked at the ground.

"You, uh, wanna talk about it?"

Mark cocked his eyebrow. "The guy who made a whole episode about how men are expressing themselves too much wants to play shrink?"

"No, I just," Nathan said. He sighed and cocked his head towards the elevator. Mark sighed and followed him into the box. Nathan pressed the button for the ground floor, and the elevator doors closed.

"Dude, you're gonna grow tits!" Nathan said, hissing the last word for emphasis.

"Well hey, having a pair up here instead of a pair down there might get me more clicks." Mark said with a grin.

The joke did not have the same effect on Nathan as it did on Stone. Nathan just pinched the bridge of his nose. "Look, I'm willing to take a paycheck from the old man, but his idea is nuts."

"Right, which is why it's gonna be great for my career. Stir up a little controversy, you know?"

"Mark, it's a nightmare scenario for any guy."

Mark shrugged. "I mean, I'll probably end up better looking as a girl than I've ever been as a guy."

Nathan's face scrunched up as though he'd just bitten into a lemon. "Mark, what are you even saying right now?"

"What, you've never been a little curious about what things are like for the other team?"

"Dude, do you know how much I'd be freaking out if I woke up one day and like, I had no muscles, no body hair, none of that?"

"Doesn't sound that bad, to be honest." Mark said. He'd never really worked out that much because he felt like the whole 'swole' look was a bit much, and body hair was something that had just always been kind of...there for him. He didn't feel like his body was all that important anyway; it was his mind that mattered the most.

As he had these very deep and normal thoughts about his body, Nathan shook his head. "Alright, well, shoot, guess you're gonna be a girl then." He rubbed the back of his neck. "You gonna like, wear dresses and stuff?"

Mark saw an opportunity. "What, you fantasizing about me already?"

"No no no no no." Nathan said as he held up his hands. "I just, I'm curious is all."

Mark held up his hands to indicate 'I dunno'. "Boss says Abigail is gonna help me figure out girl stuff, so I guess it'll be up to her."

"Shoot." Nathan said. "I guess, uh, just don't go full 'girly-girl' on us. Might make things weird."

Mark looked at Nathan carefully. Why was this guy that he'd been spending years competing with suddenly acting all concerned for him? Nathan wasn't even trying to look Mark in the eye, he just kind of nervously stared ahead at the elevator doors like he was willing for them to open. He normally had such a cool demeanor, but that had seemingly been stripped away. Mark took a second to revel in the fact that he had managed to throw Nathan freaking Emerson for a loop. Then the elevator doors opened, and Mark stepped out knowing that that smug jerk's reign as king of the hill was gonna come to an end.

 

***

Mark opened the door to his apartment. It was a spacious and modern looking single bedroom, with a large living room area with an attached kitchen. Although he could afford a bigger and nicer place with his income, Mark preferred to stay somewhere cheap and put his money towards more productive ends such as buying any video game he wanted whenever he wanted.

Mark walked over to the pantry, got a cup of instant ramen and began preparing it. As he did so, he started thinking over what he'd just signed up for.

While he spent a lot of time ranting about traditional masculinity, the whole thing had always felt more like a duty to Mark than anything else. Trying to get muscles, learning how to deal with women, hanging out with other guys, it had all felt like this...elaborate ritual to him. But he understood that he and all the other guys who did this stuff were part of something bigger, and that would make playing the manly man all worth it in the end. They were saving Western civilization (or something like that). But this whole project would be a chance to take a break from that stuff for a while. It'd be nice to not have to act like every conversation about sports was riveting, or that going to the gym was some sacred obligation.

The ramen was done, and Mark sat on his couch and put on some new Netflix show he'd heard about on social media, and began to dig in. This whole thing really wasn't gonna be that bad, he decided. Any man could handle being a woman. This was gonna be it, his big break.

And by the end of it no one would even remember Nathan Emerson.