This branches into two storylines, with the alternate one marked with an A
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The Tall and Short Problems of a Cute Gamer Girl

[10]
For the Alt Branch [10A]

Giselle and Rachel found comfort on the bed in the master bedroom. Just sinking into it and calling an end to this already messed up day felt like a comforting prospect as Rachel wrapped up her sprawling, manly body and Giselle found a quiet corner with a pillow hugged to her. She marveled at the absolute wingspan of her spouse.

That used to be her? Well, it did feel sprawling, even from the inside. But the scale, a few days away, seemed extreme. Not that she wanted this trade of perspectives. She just wanted normalcy. Rachel reached across the bed and sought her hand. Giselle grasped it. They each wanted to yell again, with more punctuated curses. Giselle knew that Rachel had it in her. For the moment, however, they managed to find their feet, cover up a little, and search the side closet for clothing.

It didn’t take long to discover that they were each approximately the same dimensions the other had been before all this started. Giselle still had that slight cup advantage, but Rachel’s bras managed to fit her. Rachel‘s newfound, lanky thinness in Jeremy shape was a perfect fit for his clothes. All that settled, they returned to the edge of the bed and gazed at the innocuous paleness of the new toilet seat they just installed.

Together, they looked through the new instructions. They seemed practically the same as the ones that came with the other seat, but there was a lot of fine print to read. Giselle squinted at one part she noticed and read, “This toilet seat cannot threaten you in any way. It also cannot speak. In the event you hear it speaking, please contact FWP.com to reach a consultant who can assist you in remedying this situation.”

They looked at one another and soon resolved simultaneously, “Portal reference…”

However, Giselle filed away that notion as something they could include in an email to get a quicker response. That turned out to be the only item of note they discovered then when sifting through the document.

Returning to the bathroom, Rachel smacked herself on the top of the door. Giselle urged her to duck down for safety and he did it, but it didn’t come as easily and automatically to her as Jeremy with nearly two decades of being lanky. In there, Rachel said she wanted to check what they could do with the replacement seat now.

Giselle hated the idea. They had been blasted into a bad enough situation and fiddling with the cause of the latest complications felt like tickling a lion’s mouth or a nuclear core. But Rachel was going to do it on his own anyway, and she couldn’t abandon her.

Working methodically, Rachel placed the control section against the part she was supposed to, and it was a simple matter to unscrew everything and remove the seat. Once that was done uneventfully, she just reversed what was done and placed it back where it was supposed to be, with everything secure.

After all that was done, they each took a step back and waited. Nothing happened. Rachel used her length to get around every inch of the seat until Giselle had to gently rub a knot out of her lower back. Rachel clenched her fists and laid them on the plastic. ”Please…”

Nothing happened. She rolled over, to lay against the cabinets under the sink, and admitted, “I have no idea what to do.” Giselle actually had an idea, but she presented it as, “You may not like it.”

Giselle guided him to stand in front of the toilet and unzip Jeremy‘s pants. She found herself a little flush as she watched Rachel’s immensity stretch through the flap. From there, she just instructed Rachel to pee, which he was just able to do. Rachel found this way “more convenient“ but had some complaints about the dribble and comfort, comparing it to handling an ungainly garden hose. Giselle didn’t disagree but still would’ve gladly traded options.

Once Rachel finished and was about to do the next thing, Giselle caught her and firmly explained, “Just try to walk away.” The seat was still up. Rachel understood and turned towards the sink.

Before he got there, Rachel felt getting dunked into cold water with her rear hanging out. Extracting themselves from the bowl, was a woman wearing Jeremy‘s clothes like a tent. Rachel had been punished the same way as Jeremy that night that felt like forever ago now.

They put the seat down carefully and Giselle guided the shrunken Rachel over to the sink. Rachel felt disconcerted and woozy as she had barely managed to adapt to being over 6 1/2 feet tall and now she had to deal with being almost two feet shorter. Man Rachel had somewhat taken after her cousins, but with the funhouse mirror of being inspired by Jeremy for scale. Same as Giselle did her best to ignore the fact that she was original Rachel's height but retained bust and other subtle traits from her first female version. This meant that, even though Rachel had essentially been restored, she still didn’t quite look like herself.

Before they could do anything else, Giselle lifted the seat and straddled the bowl the best she could manage. She would basically have to fall over it to get the same effect, but she decided to pee lightly into a wad of paper and toss it in the bowl. She held her breath and turned away with the seat still elevated.

Triumphantly, she got dunked too. Between her legs, after what felt like so long, she had that crazy garden hose attachment that Rachel was so skeptical about. And the blasted boobs were nowhere to be found. Unfortunately, Giselle hadn’t been restored to original Jeremy form either. The man she became stood decently tall, especially beside tiny punished Rachel, but he was nowhere near 6 1/2 feet and had a weird blend of features from each of them. His hair also appeared fluffy and lighter, much like his mom Lily, but without the bright blonde coloration.

Still, the two of them celebrated with big, awkward hugs in clothes that no longer quite fit. Fortunately, trading outfits worked well enough for around the house, although Rachel would need their shopping finds for Giselle. It was still a mess, but not as big of it one at least.

Setting the seat down, Rachel checked the display that she previously used to determine how many days Jeremy was punished as Giselle. Jeremy already had a notion that they could run up the penalties until it effectively restored them. Ideally, they would want a different shape but that was at least an option for the meanwhile.

Giselle scrunched up her eyebrows and looked at the display after setting the control against it. It wasn’t showing the normal penalty with one day multiplied. Instead, Rachel looked in the pamphlet for how to interpret the pictographs and came up with a disheartening result.

“It’s stuck in some sort of provisional mode. This penalty is only for an hour, before it reverts.”

Jeremy gave an annoyed breath, but pointed out, “Then we just stack them up. One hour then two then four and up until whatever.”

Rachel shook her head. “Provisional penalties don’t stack, it says. It’s just one hour at a time. It can’t institute mounting penalties in that mode.”

One hour. Just one gosh darn hour. That was all the reprieve they would get from this mixed-up, topsy-turvy world. It barely seemed worth it. Jeremy cradled his forehead and inquired, “Does it say anything about getting it out of this provisional status? How do we set the mode we had before?”

That was a big question that Rachel just could not find an answer to anywhere in the book of instructions. She scanned diligently and repeatedly across everything she could see until she stopped at a section marked simply HELP.

Below, on the diagram of the parts focusing specifically on the toilet seat, the explanation of the seat was labeled, “Please help me, before the ones beyond walls find us.” Rachel had no clue how to parse that, but she showed it to Jeremy.

He squinted and flipped around the entire document, looking for another comparable note. Chewing on his lip, he proposed, “Could that have been put there by the creepy guy we met? Doesn’t seem likely, with how he was acting. Perhaps it had to be kept secret. So, what do we do about it?” Randomly, the plastic toilet seat made a sudden clattering sound as if it had been dropped down. But it was already down.

Rachel and Jeremy shared a look and questioned whether one or the other had slightly left it up. For safety, they each backed away and then crab-walked out of the room. The seat made no other sounds as they returned to the safety of the edge of the bed.

Pained, Jeremy expressed, “I really have to get to back work. Somehow, I have to reconcile the content from this week for vlogging, the streams, and the rest of the backlog of things we have recorded. I don’t have time to deal with reality going crazy and getting flip turned upside down on us….That’s the Fresh Prince.” Jeremy followed up with a familiar recitation, which made Rachel smile.

It was unfortunate that they didn’t have the opportunity to stop at one of the intriguing restaurants along the coastline during their trek north. Rachel had made a note of them for a later, less stressful occasion.

Adjusting their clothes again, Jeremy clung to the normalcy, even if it had to come in hourly increments that he couldn’t stack. Thinking back to the minutes already passed, they each set a close-enough alarm on their phones to remember. Mostly, the alarm was for Jeremy, who suspected he would get so into work only to realize “tits”. They could imagine it as a managed condition. Remember to take your hourly dose of sex fix when you fall into the other gender!

Some part of him wondered if this new level of a curse was just a financial scheme for that company’s pharmaceutical arm to offer a protracted, limited remedy.

Venturing out from the master bedroom though, they noticed some immediate differences. Herschel was there. And he wasn’t alone.

“TYCHO!!!” They swarmed the mostly-white kitty cat with what looked like a black painted mask across the upper half of his head and then a wobbly brush stroke of dark fur down his back and to his tail. The cat looked utterly confused and concerned beyond reason as they wrapped him up and held him in their arms.

No amount of tears felt like enough. Tycho had left them several years ago and it still hurt. He was only a few years old but had developed liver irregularities and vomiting which developed into even worse with aggressive cancer spilling throughout his little body. The night they had to say goodbye, he looked so tired and was running a fever like a fireball. He just wanted to be there and be held.

He was the smart cookie, the clever one who plotted and orchestrated a plan to uncap the massive food container, which should only have been possible with thumbs. Somehow, the dang cat figured it out. Not only that, but he made distractions to steal food on a whim. Poor Herschel tended to be the target as he was a lovey-dovey cutie but more Pinky to Tycho’s Brain so far as analogies Jeremy actually knew.

This made no sense to Jeremy, yet he didn’t want to move or breathe or do anything that might shake loose this beautiful version of reality where their beloved kitty cat made it somehow. Feeling around as the poor little guy still had no freaking clue what was going on, Rachel pointed out a mark along his back flank which looked long healed.

Jeremy pieced together, that because of whatever changes, they had to have caught the illness in time and had preemptive surgery for Tycho. Following that, a twisting miasma of melancholy circled Jeremy‘s heart. If they restored reality, as it was supposed to be, then this would likely be undone as well.