When I got through the door of my house, I heard my mother almost immediately yell out my name, “Coby!”

“Yes mum?” I called back.

She stormed into the entrance hallway and stood there with her hand on her hip and demanded, “Where were you last night?”

“Uh, I went to a party and then stayed the night at Brook’s,” I said quietly.

“You stayed the night at a girl’s house? Without asking me?” she asked incredulously, her voice rising to a shrill pitch.

As if on cue, my dad walked into the entranceway as well, “Judy! Shut up woman. The lad’s in college now, of course he’s going to be sleeping around!”

Then he turned to me and eye’d me critically, “Good job son, finally tamed that beast eh? I was wondering when you would get around to it.”

Tamed the beast? What? Did he just cool Brook a beast? Fucking gross dad.

“Uh I-” I started meekly.

“Something looks off about you, did you let her put makeup on you or something freakish?” he asked, a frown beginning to darken his features.

“N-no dad! She didn’t!” I said in a rush, eager to quell his anger.

He nodded, “Good. Now go mow the lawn, you were meant to do it this morning but I’ll let you off the hook for now.”

“Oh… okay dad,” I nodded.

“Good lad,” he said, patting me on the shoulder as I walked past.

I trudged through the house and out into our backyard. I was emotionally worn out, as well as still vaguely hung over. That of course didn’t even register on either of my parent’s minds. I turned and looked back at our thoroughly average suburban home and grimaced. We were so gut wrenchingly white middle class it was almost comical.

I thought about my family as I got the lawn mower out and tried to start it. It seemed to be fighting me because it felt almost a little harder to pull the cord than usual. Maybe it needed a cleaning… anyway, my parents were from Alabama. They’d met in college down there, where they’d dated for a few years before getting jobs and getting married.

Dad had been working for a company that sold pesticide, where they had loved his work managing a team that tried to extend their reach to more farmers. They’d loved it so much they’d shipped him off to New Zealand, where he’d worked on breaching the market down there. I’d been about two years old when they moved down there, and I’d spent the first sixteen years of my life growing up in Auckland.

I’d loved living in the land of hobbits and rolling hills, but my parents had hated it. They were both deeply religious, and seeing my little teenaged mind being corrupted by the secular heathens of the small oceanic country had been too much for them. Dad had requested a transfer, mum had quit her receptionist job, and we’d moved back to the states. Specifically, to New York state.

My thought process was disturbed when I ran over a little bump in the lawn and the lawn mower stalled out. Damn, the dumb thing was always doing this. I wish dad would open his moth eaten wallet long enough to get the thing flattened out. Or get off the couch long enough to do it himself.

It took me a while to get it started again. I gave it some new petrol, thinking maybe the old stuff wasn’t working, checked the oil and everything. Turns out, I just wasn’t pulling it hard enough. I felt a bit weaker for some reason. Odd. My chest was warm and itched as well, like I’d been stung on each nipple by a bug.

When I was finally done, it was almost dinner, and I slouched my way back inside our standard issue suburban house. I could smell that dinner was almost ready, and although dinner time itself was usually a painful experience ever since my brother left home, I knew the food would be amazing. My mother was an excellent cook.

“Coby? Is that you? Dinner’s ready!” she called, as though she’d heard me thinking about it.

“Yeah let me wash my hands first!” I called back.

I did so, and then moved to the kitchen to grab my plate. Dinner tonight was roast chicken and vegetables. Pretty standard stuff, although it would be pretty yum.

“We’re in the lounge!” dad called in the tone of voice that said he was already grumpy having to wait for me.

I rushed in and took my seat at the table where my parents were waiting impatiently. Without speaking, we joined hands and said grace together. I wasn’t any sort of christian myself, New Zealand had cured me of that, but since my parents were followers, I had to pretend to be as well.

With grace over, dad took the remote and turned the news on. He liked having the news in the background while he ate and he frequently liked to comment on it. We’d made the evening fox news report just in time, hurray.

After this third Emergence, many are wondering if there will ever be an end to the chaos. In an alarming turn of events down in the pacific, two huge new islands have appeared after the latest storms off the eastern coast of New Zealand. We still have no information about these two islands.

Back in America, the so called super heroes of the OMR continue to take credit for keeping the worst of the awful night from reaching the populace, but here at fox news we’re skeptical. Just how much are the so called good Emerged actually doing to combat this ongoing crisis?

The United States of America is continuing to see a troubling rise in Emerged violence as yet another storm hits us. Many believe that there may perhaps be someone who is behind the events themselves, working to allegedly kill off the normal human population.

I wasn’t able to hear the rest of the report, because dad started up.

“It’s disgusting, all these Emerged running around like they own our country. Who gave them the right to these powers? Freaks, all of them. Those scientist people need to fix this mess. The world has gone to shit I tell you. First it was those gays and their rainbow flags poisoning our country, but this is worse. You have creatures running around that are part animal and part human! It’s like hell has risen up!” he ranted, angrily stabbing at his food.

“I’m just glad we got the kids out of that dreadful country a few years ago. You’re much happier here aren’t you Coby?” mum asked, expecting an answer I would be lying to give her.

“Yes mum,” I nodded, trying to recede out of the limelight again.

“Coby, I think I need to teach you how to build muscle. It’s always been a failing of mine, but you’ll never get a real wife the way you are,” he frowned.

“Oh… when you have time, if you want,” I said, knowing he’d never get around to it.

He gave me a satisfied nod, “Good, glad to see you’re starting to step up and take my advice. Your rebellious teenage years were fine, we all go through that, but now it’s time to be a man.”

“Yes dad,” I said with a fake smile.

I’d never been rebellious. I’d always done as I was told or faced the consequences of his anger. I was terrified of both him and mum. I’d realised fairly recently that the sound of footsteps in the house caused me anxiety, always wondering if they were coming to my room to scream at me about some small transgression I’d accidentally made.

What they saw as my rebellious teenage years, was really me learning everything I needed to do in order to not piss them off. I was fairly sure I’d gotten everything now. Don’t put my socks in the laundry basket inside out, always be ready to do any chores they wanted me to do, regardless of what activity I was dropping. Never speak out of turn, or show support for any of the minorities they hated. It was tiring, but it was easier than fighting them.

Changing the subject, mum asked me, “So Coby are you excited to be a Sophomore now?”

“A wha-” I started, then cut myself off. They hated when I forgot US culture or used Kiwi phrases by accident, “I mean, yeah. So excited.”

Mum frowned at me, but apparently didn’t think my slip up was enough to go volcanic over. Thank fuck.

The rest of dinner passed without much problem, but as I cleared mum’s plate away she inhaled sharply and looked at me.

“Coby. Did you drink last night?” she asked with an outraged grunt.

“U-uhh, n-no?” I stammered, trying to lie and failing.

“Coby Earl Hartley. Drinking before you’re twenty one is against the law and against god!” she said, her voice rising in pitch.

I looked over at dad, who also had a growing scowl on his face.

“I-I’m sorry!” I squeaked, unable to form a reply around my rising panic. The usual response to my parent’s ire.

“You... You… You’re grounded young man! For… for two months!” she said, spouting the words with an increasingly shrill voice.

I opened my mouth to point out that I was nineteen, almost twenty now and that grounding me was a bit silly, but luckily I caught myself in time and simply nodded.

“Just when I thought you were picking up your act too. You’re a disgrace, unlike your older brother. There’s a real man!” my dad growled.

“Exactly! Go and do the dishes! I don’t want to see you again!” my mother said with a swipe of her hand, as though she was wiping the filth before her from her sight.

I nodded meekly again and hurried to get the dishes done so I could rush back to the safety of my room.

Doing the dishes was hard. My breathing was ragged, and so was my heartbeat. It kept doing this thing where it would miss a beat, only to pound the inside of my ribcage with a huge beat after the missed one. Despite my shaking hands, I was able to get everything rinsed and in the dishwasher. The large dishes that wouldn’t fit in the machine had to be done by hand, and I was pretty sure I was going to get told off later for the less than perfect job I’d done on them.

As soon as I closed the door on my room, carefully set the makeshift lock I’d constructed in place. I’d bored two holes into the outside of the door frame that allowed me to fit a metal rod into each one. The door was unopenable once they were in place, and at last I felt remotely safe.

Except, even in the sanctuary of my own room, I wasn’t able to calm down. Why couldn’t I calm down? I’d always felt at least comfortable in here, so what was different? No… wait. I knew what was wrong, I thought with a groan, it was this body. Something felt different now. No, that’s not right. The feeling had always been there, but now I was aware of it.

Without really knowing why, I pictured my new form, the small feminine girl with the glowing eyes and freckles. In the space of half a second, I was once again in the body I had named Elsie. I breathed in and out slowly, trying to let the events of the evening go. It was no use though, when I realised I couldn’t go out and see Maddy or Brook for two months. That thought caused a wave of sadness to rush up within me, and I changed into my now baggy pajamas as tears began to roll down my cheeks.

Climbing into bed without even a thought for playing any games, I curled up under the comforter and let myself cry softly into the night.

****

After that night, I spent my time doing chores for my parents during the daylight hours of the next week. I’d build up stress and anxiety during the day, and then retreat to my room after dinner, where I’d bolt my door and change into my now preferred form. I just felt better as the cute girl named Elsie, rather than the gross boy named Coby.

Telling Brook about my grounding had almost been a terrible idea. She’d started threatening to barge into my house and steal me away, which she probably would have followed through on if I hadn’t warned her that my dad had a lot of guns and would be more than happy to use them on an “intruder”.

The conversation with Maddy… that had been hard. I hadn’t wanted to let on how much I hated my parents and how miserable I was living here, but I think she had picked up on it already. She was wickedly intelligent and I loved that about her. I’d be able to explain something without spelling out the complex ideas in point for point detail like with Brook. Things got out of my depth when she started talking about the games she played.

Madeline: So you play games? I like to play some games too. Not like the runny aroundy shooty ones though.

Elsie: Yeah! It’s like pretty much all I do. I play all sorts of different games. Except horror games. I can’t really do horror games.

Madeline: Do you play any paradox games? (◕u◕*)

Elsie: Yeah! I love Cities Skylines and Stellaris. Well, except when they updated Stellaris a while back. The new planet stuff confuses me.

Madeline: Oh? I can show you! If you want to play with me that is?

Elsie: O-oh! Yes! That sounds fun!

Madeline: Perfect! What’s your steam name?

Oh shit. My steam name was something distinctly masculine. Time to change that and clear my old names list. I’d have to choose something that was neither masculine nor feminine though, as I’d get no end of shit from my online friends.

I decided on the name Skate, because of my recently dropped attempt at skateboarding. I still had the skateboard hidden under my bed. When I’d first met Brook, she’d been really into skating, and I’d been dragged around by her to various skate parks. Somewhere along the line she’d talked me into buying one and suddenly I was scraping and bruising myself up on the concrete with her.

I linked her to my steam page and she added me.

Madeline: Skate?

Elsie: Ahhh yeah. Brook tried to make me skate for a bit. I can do an ollie but that’s it.

Madeline: Hehe that’s better than me! �_(ツ)_/�

Elsie: Haha, don’t recommend ay. It hurts.

Madeline: I am way too uncoordinated for that!!! Uhhhm, do you wanna like. Use skype or discord?

Elsie: Please not skype, anything but that. I’ll do facebook messenger over that garbage fire.

Madeline: Oh thank gosh! Same, totally hate that app. Ewwww. Hehehe.

Elsie: *high five!*

Madeline: *tries to high five but misses*

Elsie: lmao. Ok my discord is-

After she added me, she ended up teaching me all about the new features of the update to Stellaris. I had a blast playing through a large galaxy with her. There were some funny moments where neither of us would be willing to take a system because we thought the other might want it. We got into a very nerdy argument over one mineral rich system that was on the border between our empires. We had to pause the game and reason out which one of us it would benefit more, going deep into a math rabbit hole to determine it. She ended up taking it, but I could almost hear the pout when she claimed it. She was adorable.

So it was when a week after the third Emergence that I found myself locking my door ready for more playing games with Maddy. My parents had been focusing their animosity on the latest news that the thief known as Vulptrix had exposed a ring of low level businesses that were enslaving undocumented workers. The interesting thing I’d noted, was that her accomplice, a vigilante named Razorwind had features very similar to my own. She also had freckles and eyes that glowed. In fact, there had been a theory going around that there were new species of humans being born through the Emergence storms. It seemed myself and Razorwind were from the same species!

Still in my Coby form, I rushed to get onto my computer where Maddy was waiting for me. Walking past my desk to get changed into clothing that wouldn’t hurt when I changed into my Elsie form, I clipped my hip hard on the corner. Ow! That shouldn’t have happened, I was still in my guy form! I frowned and rubbed my hip. Why was I in so much pain these days? It felt like my Coby form was grumpy with me, all aches and pains, especially my chest, spine and hips.

Ignoring all the annoying aches, I got changed, in my clothing and my body, and hopped into the private discord server that Maddy had set up.

“Hey Maddy! I’m sorry I took so long! Mum made a dinner that was super dishes intensive so there was so much to clean,” I chirped, just happy to be in her electronic presence.

“Awwwwh. You’re such a good girl! I don’t mind waiting. I’m already hosting!” she said, a smile audible in her voice.

I sighed as the sound of her voice eased the anxieties I had accumulated over the day, “Okay! Starting the game now!”