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

[15]
For the Alt Branch [15A]

Giselle‘s first reaction was to break down giggling as she managed, “Yeah, that’s… uh, that’s not possible.“

To Giselle’s surprise, the New Age store worker referenced Sarah in the Bible with a knowing expression. Maybe she shouldn’t have been that surprised, but she expected a different analogy. Weaving her words so as not to embarrass Finn, Giselle explained, “We have only ever been together. Me and my husband here. He has… We’ve been to a medical doctor about…”

Finn folded his arms and stated simply, “I am shooting blanks, as they say.” Giselle curled back her lips and gestured to Finn instead of saying anything further. The worker twisted a few expressions on her face before resolving, “Well then, either you have a few private matters to discuss about your relationship or we should all be waiting for Angel Gabriel to announce the good news.”

Giselle sometimes wondered why women got into catfights. This was not an instance of that, as she could eagerly imagine throwing down. But she kept that thought process to herself. Gwen relayed that she trusted her friend to be truthful and asked if it could be anything else, since it might connect to what they were here about.

The worker gave her name as Blessin Cross and Giselle barely resisted rolling her eyes so hard that she almost spun around.

“This conversation is not conducive to finding a resolution”, Hanako expressed. “We were attacked by a creature of cold darkness. Can you tell us how to keep it away or not?”

Blessin sighed and folded her arms. ”I’m sorry for making a big deal out of this, but I pride myself on my intuitive skills. If I’m reading something wrong about your pregnancy, then I very much would like to resolve that for you and for me. So, you have some sort of dark entity attached to you?”

Giselle bristled at the fact that this person wasn’t relenting on the whole pregnancy idea, but she let it slide for the moment and took a deep breath to collect together all the elements. “We have been affected for just over three months by a strange toilet seat purchased online by my spouse. At first, it punished me by turning me into a woman. Then, after we sought out a professed representative of the company for a replacement seat, we tried to swap them, and I defaulted to this and my spouse to what you see with him. A spidery, tall black mass creature threatened us about it and then several weeks passed. Today, this kid emerged from the toilet seat, and the one that we swapped changed. The toilet seats have spirit creatures inside them that are fueled by human emotions from transformational situations. These creatures are trapped and used by the dark entities we’ve encountered. Just a short time ago, one appeared in a changing room like blocking out a mirror. In fury, I was able to summon a mass of blue electrical energy. And here we are.” There were definitely further details that Giselle knew she could’ve elaborated on, but she figured that was enough of a mind screw introduction.

Dale, who was standing nearby, folded his hands in front of him and fidgeted. With concern, he inquired, “So… Is this for a D&D campaign or something?”

Gwen gripped her chin but didn’t say anything specific. Giselle expected Blessin to totally blow them off, but instead, she sighed and rotated her neck before noting, “And I hoped I’d never have to deal with another one of these. Flush with Pride brand? Please tell me you didn’t…you know… with a toilet brush.”

Toilet brush? Giselle raised an eyebrow. Blessin grabbed a very tall bottle of what appeared to be Polish vodka from a side shelf behind the counter. She waited while the woman poured herself a sizable amount into a tall shot glass and downed the entire thing without skipping a beat.

“We got it from Flush with Pride, yes. No toilet brush. Is there a way to contact that company?”

With a rueful smile, Blessin told her, “They don’t actually exist. Not even as one of those phony shell companies the big boys like to use to hide their troubles. Oh, they have an email and all the official stuff. But if you dig around, a whole lot of people conveniently can’t really talk about them. I don’t think they’re from around here. They do have a major warehouse on file about four hours north. Not far from the big to do.”

Washington DC. Giselle wasn’t happy about this. She just wanted a normal, boring life where she worked way too long on a handful of normal videos, and she didn’t have to worry about whether her boobs were taped in a certain direction to give the right appearance in an outfit for a photograph. But normal also meant giving up on Tycho…

Dale asked around, “Aliens…? And toilets?”

With a sigh, Blessin tucked her hair back and remarked, “I could say more. However, I haven’t seen anything in what you’ve told me to dissuade me from a variety of notions, especially to exercise a certain degree of reticence in telling you what I may know. You’re gonna have to give me something.”

Hanako approached. “I may be able to help, in that respect.”

She proposed a demonstration on someone present. Giselle‘s eyes flicked towards Dale. She had thought about this kind of thing concerning him a few times. He was a good friend through the years from college, but Jeremy sometimes liked to play jokes on him. They were balanced with surprise treats as much as tricks. But him peeking at her cleavage more times than could be considered simply incidental or accidental, definitely raised him as the most likely prospect.

Hanako addressed Dale directly and asked him if he had her permission to ”use him”. She also went to Giselle for permission. Giselle nodded, but Dale was immediately confused, asking, “Is this some sort of New Age thing?” Hanako looked to Giselle, who elaborated, “She’s going to use an ability to help you… Get in touch with your feminine side.”

That was quite a notion to say out loud. Giselle wished that it would’ve felt weird for her but, at this point, it really didn’t. Dale flashed a few teeth with a sideways smirk. He pushed his glasses up and shrugged while answering, “Sure. So long as she doesn’t dress me up or anything.”

Dale had a scruffy beard and an overfilled chin. He made Giselle think of Peter Jackson but younger, with more of a Southern trucker feeling. They’d actually first watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy not too long ago. Hanako reassured everyone that this would only be for one hour. She could set it even shorter but noted that this would be the most comfortable.

Hanako twisted her hand like turning an invisible door knob. Giselle was the first to notice the cluster of blue sparks across her fingers. Blessin was the next, as she scrunched up her forehead and drew her hands in.

Dale‘s transformation was remarkable and yet not as shocking as a six-and-a-half foot man going to a less than five-foot girl. He did drop to around five feet tall. His scruffy face softened to a pale pink luster while retaining its fullness. His nose melted away into a pert little shape barely holding up his glasses while his tight puffy lips swelled into what looked like a pout. Dale retained his general body shape but with his hips jutting out and his thighs swelling slightly.

He made for a curvy woman with much of his excess bulk going right to his chest. Giselle found herself vaguely horrified that each breast swelling Dale’s chest appeared massive enough to challenge her head. His clothes just stayed on.

“Oh my…Jesus!” Was about all that Dale had to say in a rising, squeaky girlish voice. Giselle paid attention as Hanako appeared to relax and draw in an invisible vapor wafting from the newly-voluptuous Dale. She was also aware of the fact that something was flowing into her as well, settling towards her side and abdomen. It excited that strange, blue static charge like an ionized glow.

Blessin took a deep breath and muttered, “Ditto… let me help you.” She hustled over and took poor Dale by the hand. Giselle helped on the other side, and they assisted her in stepping cautiously in her new shape. At the back of the store was what looked like an apartment spread across a couple different levels. Blessin rummaged around the side and came up with a black cotton Lycra top and a pair of jeans. She explained that they were her sister’s from a while back but might fit her.

The jeans were an easy fit. The top had a little bit more trouble as a little band of soft belly showed despite how she tugged it down. Above, Dale showed off a vast scope of cleavage and the swath of her breasts utterly dominated her chest. She squirmed in place as Blessin also used a little tie to put her hair back.

When she was decent, Dale urgently squeaked out, “This isn’t permanent, right?”

Giselle reassured her it was just for an hour, as Hanako relayed. Assuming Hanako was being truthful, but she didn’t say that out loud. Dale relaxed a little with that and Blessin gave her a moment in front of her full-length mirror beside the closet. She also told her that if she needed to use the restroom there was one at the end of the hall. It wasn’t too long before Dale rummaged around in her clothes from before for her cell phone and took a few quick photos. Giselle wasn’t terribly surprised.

Blessin led her away to ask, “All right, no more doubts. How can I help you?”

That was encouraging but also painfully open-ended. Giselle ambled back towards the store section and asked, “You thought that I was a certain way. Can you figure out what’s actually going on with me?“

They rejoined the group as Finn and Gwen did their best to occupy Dale‘s time until he turned back with little trinkets and quiet distractions. The big question soon got an easy answer as Hanako chimed in, “I believe we have found my sister. I sensed when I triggered Dale’s emotions that someone nearby was also drawing emotion. It was into Giselle. Earlier when she protected me, I sensed that familiar presence. When the monster showed up, like me, I believe she did her best to escape but because of the transfer, she didn’t have enough energy to take on a form like mine.”

Of course, Giselle immediately wanted to know how they could free her sister from this. Hanako shook her head. “She is at a set stage. She did not want to burden you, but I doubt she had any choice. She needs your help to finish her lifecycle, to grow up or to die. Her life is solely in your hands.”

No pressure, Giselle told herself. The existence of some strange ethereal spirit organism which escaped the tyranny of nasty shadow beasts that wanted to eradicate all of them was now her responsibility. In a way, that still felt suspiciously like a pregnancy. Although, it wasn’t like she kicked the darn thing like that weird Cerberus guy said. Maybe her life would’ve been better that way.

She had a sneaking suspicion about the answer to her next question, “What do I do to make sure she doesn’t die?”

Hanako made it clear, “She is nourished by human emotions, same as me, same as the rest of our kind. And the most potent form is punctuated by transformation. The shock to a human, the surprise of their soul. It’s how we live. It’s how we grow from what we began in quiet, to the hope of sharing a place with humanity.” Blessin listened to this part in particular and glanced towards the back wall with a variety of strange, ornate books.

Giselle caught this and pressed her, “You have a thought. One of those mostly accurate intuitions?” Blessin ignored the qualification and dug through several shelves until she came to a certain point. She bowed her head.

“Yeah. I have a few thoughts. Here.”

The book was roughly bound and appeared to be a custom job. The cover art struck Giselle first as it appeared as a full impression of what she may have glimpsed out of the corner of her eye. A many-limbed shadow beast, like ferocious scribbles on a page, barely confined to a single black mass overwhelmed the sketchy cover. The title, which sounded rather silly, read “Shadow Crawlers: Dark Beings from Beyond”. 

[Since this is meant to be interactive, feel free to suggest ideas and prompts for future/alternate branch storylines. Some branches are already written but this will allow me to best pick new/alternate ones. I'm currently mostly rolling dice.]

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