You wander into what looks to be a large, decaying greenhouse. Broken glass lies at your feet, and the plants have all long since died.

I carefully avoid the glass, stepping close to it but not quite close enough to risk being hurt. The dead plants around me all look like they might have been pretty if I'd seen them alive. Instead, they're wilted things, and I really have no concept of what they might have looked like so long ago.

I sigh. "This place looks fan-tucking-fastic." I look at the other side of the greenhouse. "Is there something over there?" I ask.

You see something that looks like a dead human being on the other side of the room, hanging from something that actually looks like a living plant.

"What the hell?" I exclaim. I make my way through the greenhouse, still avoiding that broken glass. I'm not wearing shoes, and the smallest piece could be a bigger problem than I want to deal with. "What is that?" I ask as I get closer to the plant.

You see the dead human and realize it's the one you saw a week ago.

"That guy... Wait, no, that's, hold on a second."

What?

* * *

I looked across the table at Trevor. "You said the guy I met a week ago got on a ship and left the surface. How would he have gotten back here and murdered by a plant?"

Trevor glared at me over his DM border. "If you'd let me continue, I'd explain it."

I shook my head. "No, no, remember, he couldn't breathe in this area, because of all the spores."

Kayla giggled. "He's right."

"Do you see his helmet on, Chris? He's pretty obviously dead!"

"Yeah, but why would he be here anyway?" I asked.

"I just said I'm gonna explain it!"

Kayla whistled. "Boys, please, calm down."

I slumped in my chair. She was right, of course. "Fine, explain it."

He cleared his throat.

* * *

You see the guy you met a week ago; he's so very clearly dead and he looks like he died in pure pain. The plant is clearly absorbing him.

I gulp, then reach toward the plant. My fur is standing on end, which probably makes me look like some sort of weird puffball.

The plant reacts to you, tries to lash out.

I pull my hand away, yelping in response. I have no idea what this thing was, but the idea that it wants to eat me doesn't exactly sit well with me. Of course, I don't know that it wants to eat me, but that seems the likely prospect.

I reach into my bag and pull out my laser knife. I slowly put the blade to the plant and hear it sizzling and crackling. I need to pull the guy out of there, see what killed him. I assume it was the plant, but I couldn't actually be sure until I investigate it.

Your knife overheats.

The knife grows hotter in my hands. It doesn't take me long to drop it on the floor of the greenhouse, breaking some of the larger pieces of fallen glass. A few tiny slivers of glass hit my bare feet, and I wince in pain. "Sonuva..." I sigh. "Okay, what absurdly stupid thing could I do now?" I ask myself.

"You could always talk to it."

I spin around and see... And see... And. See?!

Oh, yeah, sorry. You see Kayla's character.

I see a man about my age, but not human. He's clearly some kind of cat-like creature, though standing only on hind legs. He's almost obnoxiously tall, at least a good head and a half taller than I am, and his clothes suggest he's a hunter of some kind. He's wearing boots, unlike stupid-ass me.

* * *

"What the hell is your guy, again?" I asked her.

She sighed. "He's a Felung, one of the cat races that populate the southern hemisphere."

I nodded. "Right, right."

Trevor asked, "Can we stop metagaming?"

"Yeah, yeah, fine."

***

The man moves close to me and sniffs me. "Um, what are you doing?" I ask.

"You're not from around here," he says; "your scent is so very different."

I blush, almost subconsciously. "Uh, yeah, I'm from the northern hemisphere."

He takes my hand. "But you're not a Felung?"

I shake my head, then pull my hand away from his. "No, I'm a..."

You're an Ocelore.

"An Ocelore; our species is native to the north."

"And are all of you this..." He kneels down, his toothy grin right in my face. "...Pretty?"

I gulp again. "I would say I'm more cute than pretty, but I guess somebody else could be the judge of that..."

I don't feel secure around this guy at all. I kneel down and pick up my laser knife, but find it broken too badly. I instead slip it back into my bag. I stand back up to find him still right in my face. "So, girl, what are you here for?"

I gulp again. "I'm looking for someone. Someone who hurt my family."

"And where are they?"

"If I knew, I wouldn't be looking."

He pats me on the shoulder. "You're a funny one." He walks past me and pushes the human's body into the plant further. "You'll want to leave soon. This mantrap plant doesn't like beings that try to hurt it, and doesn't much like to listen to me when I ask it to stop."

* * *

"Hold on a second," I said, "why is the plant yours?"

Kayla shrugged. "I dunno. It was on my character sheet. 'Owns a mantrap plant'. Ask Doug, he wrote these up."

I should have remembered that. Doug had planned on GM'ing this session, and refused to let us write up our own character sheets. Also, why he'd settled on me playing the girl was a question I would have loved getting an answer for, but Doug was fucking weird. Trevor was supposed to be playing Kayla's character, but when Doug didn't show up, Trevor had to GM.

"Where the hell is he?"

Trevor shrugged. "I dunno, he said he was gonna be here." He yawned. I was suddenly just as tired as he looked, and that was weird to say the least. "Say, you guys wanna pick this up tomorrow?"

Kayla yawned as well. "Yeah, that's fine. My folks are outta town for the weekend, so we can do this at my place tomorrow."

I asked, "Isn't your brother gonna be pissed at you asking two guys over to your house for D&D?"

She rolled her eyes. "I don't give a shit. He has girls over all the time, and he's usually porking them. You guys are my friends, and it's gonna stay that way, so he has no reason to bitch."

Finally, I yawned. "Good. If we're all decided, I'm gonna head home and get some shut-eye."

"Me, too," Trevor said.

"Me, three," announced Kayla.

* * *

I awoke to the sounds of birds chirping frantically, wind racking the house and what sounded like my stomach on overdrive demanding food. From the sounds of things, that thunderstorm we were promised a few days ago was finally hitting us. Yay, I guess. Good thing I was only two blocks away from Kayla's house, otherwise heading over there might have been a pain in the ass.

I sat up and yawned, then proceeded to rub the sleep out of my eyes. I was still tired, almost obnoxiously so. It was like a night of rest had given me no rest at all. Whatever, I just needed to wake myself up somehow, that was all. After that, I'd head to Kayla's house and hang out with her until Trevor decided to wake up.

If possible, I'd work up the courage to ask her out. It might not work out, seeing as she seemed to view me more as a friend than a potential boyfriend, but the worst that could happen was we'd have a few awkward moments and then go back to being friends. Hopefully. Okay, maybe the worst that could happen would be us not talking to each other for years to come, but I felt our friendship was stronger than that.

I stood up and felt somewhat strange. My center of gravity felt a little off, and I swore I was carrying around a little extra weight, though altogether I felt lighter. I was confused, but I was also still tired and probably not completely in control of myself yet, so hopefully everything would make sense when I woke up.

I stumbled my way into the bathroom and turned on the faucet. I splashed the coldest water I could on my face and was quite relieved I didn't numb myself doing so. I immediately felt better, too, so I'd clearly had the right idea when I walked into the bathroom while half asleep and feeling weird about myself.

Then I looked at my reflection and screamed.

I was looking at an orange furred cat-like creature, with wide yellow eyes and a hint of an overbite. My face was rounder, softer looking, and definitely less human than it should have been. My ears were sticking out of the top of my head, poking through my hair. Not my fur, my hair. I still had a full head of hair. Wavy blonde stuff that looked nothing like my old hair, but hair nonetheless.

I noticed the shirt I'd gone to sleep in looked really baggy on me. At the same time, it was kind of tight in exactly one area. That area was pushed out in such a way that I knew exactly what I was looking at. My newfound boobs weren't exactly huge (I was maybe a cup size larger than Kayla, who was actually harrassed by the rich bitches at school for being flat-chested), but their weight was so new to me that they felt bigger than they really were.

I wasn't even going to think about what I knew was hidden away in my now ill-fitting underwear, nor did I want to remove said underwear, though I needed something that fit better.

I looked down at the rest of me and saw that the orange fur that covered my face was all over the rest of me, too, just as I expected it to be. I looked kinda stupid standing there in clothes that didn't fit right, covered in orange fur, with a tail hanging behind me.

It took me a few minutes of staring the in the mirror to realize I knew exactly who I was. I'd somehow become my D&D character. I didn't know how, I didn't know why, I really didn't actually care, I just wanted a way to change back before someone saw me.

I needed to call Trevor or Kayla, see if something like this had happened to them or if I was the only victim of whatever the hell this was. I ran back into my bedroom and nearly tripped on my shorts sliding down my legs. Thankfully, I managed to fall onto my bed, which was softer than the floor. I pulled off my shorts and then reached for my phone.

Hey, are you OK? read a text from Kayla. Clearly, she'd woken up first.

No, not really. I'm my RP character now, I texted her.

Oh, shit, I'm coming over right now.

I almost didn't want her to see me like this, but at the same time, I needed to know what had happened to her, too. I tapped my contacts and found Trevor, next. I tried sending him a text asking if everythng was okay, but it failed to send for some reason.

As I waited for Kayla, a million thoughts crossed my mind. Why had this happened? Who did it? How did they do it? The closest thing to an answer I could come across was Doug, as he’d been the one to write up the character sheets, but he couldn’t do something like this, could he?

Could he?

I didn’t know, and the whole idea sounded absurd, but no more so than being covered in orange fur and being the opposite gender. He probably wouldn’t even be my first suspicion if he had been at the session yesterday.

And he was supposed to GM.

Had Doug somehow gained magic powers and was using them to live out his crazy homebrew campaigns in real life? Or was I just going crazy and trying to force an answer where none existed?

I really didn’t know.

Twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang. I quickly pulled my shorts back on and held them up as best I could. I took the stairs carefully, as I felt off-balance the whole time, but I made it to the door before the sixth ring. I braced myself to see Kayla's D&D character in front of me when I opened the door--

--But I didn't. Kayla stood there, exactly as she always looked, her book bag slung over her shoulder. "Holy shit, you really are."

I pulled her into the house. "Okay, but why aren't you?"

She shrugged. "I dunno. I had this weird dream about this happening, though. You turned into your character, I was normal me, and then I woke up just before Trevor showed up."

My eyes widened. "You don't think... You don't think Trevor is your character, do you?"

The doorbell rang again, and the two of us turned to look at the door. I heard myself gulp. "I wonder if that's him..." I said, my voice tiny.