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

[17]

For the Alt Branch [17A]

Before more slipped away, Giselle was able to confirm that she saw a little girl clinging to her hip as if her life depended on it. Hanako bowed her head.

Blessin brushed her streaked hair back while massaging her temple and neck. She remarked on a strange energy she felt in the air and swung her arms in a rough pantomime of swimming. The others looked around as if they might glimpse a phantasm or a trickle of light. Dale still seemed rather out of sorts despite being restored to his normal appearance.

Gwen looked as though she had some residual of Blessin’s discomfort. Finn sat with his hands clenched in his lap and every inch of him looked like bands of metal tightened to their breaking point. Giselle knew that he wished that he could’ve stood in her place for all of this. Same as Giselle wished that all the agony Rachel went through for over a decade since college could be placed on her shoulders instead.

She muddled through excruciating periods, nausea surging spells where ibuprofen and a heating pad barely took the pain down, and soul-sapping brain fog. Jeremy would tease that she already outclassed him for brilliance in any competitive intellectual pursuit, so he was goofily terrified of what a healed Rachel would be able to manage. The months of recovery after were slow but steady. He actually set aside the diligent machine of content creation to attend to her in every way, especially making a phone order platform for whatever she wanted while still bedridden with Herschel snuggling nearby.

He composed warbling, over-the-top country tunes with the careful awareness that for her surgical glue, he wasn’t allowed to make her laugh. Which was painful for him because that was the one thing he enjoyed most of all. When the toilet swap flipped things upside down, Giselle‘s nature was to remain the protector. To make sure Finn didn’t have to shoulder the full load, especially when they had to move. For many weeks, her stomach felt like there was a roiling tempest just beneath the surface and she tolerated it.

Giselle took care of more of the meals. She scooped for both cats diligently. She redoubled the old and new creative efforts. But soon, it started to slide.

She wasn’t exactly sure where and when the biggest change came. Especially settling into the new house, it still felt like she was a husband and Finn was the wife, but they had on strange costumes they needed to wear with just one-hour respites to pop off the masks. But one particular night, she felt a little silly and slipped on something like a nightgown after the video record of the day had signed off.

They toyed with pet names for one another until a quiet moment settled in and Finn slipped his arms around behind her. She wanted to bend around and make a joke or wrap her arms around him too. But he held her firm and caressed the soft places. A kernel of Jeremy within bristled like Herschel did when being held for too long. But that feeling soon started to settle. She didn’t have to do anything.

That submissive revelation sunk its tendrils deep inside her. More than any physical changes, that moment did far more to shock her. Even when she took an hour later, it felt like she was somehow broken. Her thoughts whirled about whether just being immersed in a different sex could fundamentally change your gender or self or perception or whatever was going on.

After that came the thoughts and possibilities that she could be a mom. After that came a silly stream where she snuggled Finn playfully, leaned against him sincerely, and actually spent a stream-viewer-unseen amount of time resting on his lap. The strangest moment came when she thought about the rigidness barely contained within his pants and it felt like an entirely different country. As though she didn’t have that herself all the time many weeks ago. As though she hadn’t spent more than three decades as a man. It was a joke between them that Jeremy only had the memory span of a few weeks. She never expected to basically forget what it was like to be a guy in that same span.

All that could’ve troubled her, along with how much she delighted in each new cosplay, despite the annoyance of getting the right look. But the unceasing constant was her bright love for the soul she shared her orbit with. It didn’t matter what roles they settled into or where they found their intimacy. They were together, no matter names, no matter how they looked, on their sickest day and on their healthiest, splitting the loot and their XP, and sometimes dropping a PK for shits and giggles.

Giselle assured Finn that she was fine. She did a couple of twirls after standing up from the couch and promptly banged her knee into the wood. Blessin cracked her knuckles hard and interlaced her fingers to squeeze her chin. “I’m quite concerned about the one vision. It could be nothing. But it could also be a glimpse into another world or another time or both. Your body language when you settled in made it quite clear you believed you were there. Which means something…This is so frustrating because I feel like I have a puzzle but not all the pieces.”

In comparison, Giselle didn’t feel like reading much into it. She saw a kid against her hip and then she saw a kid walking into a bathroom at a movie theater. Already, the vivid touches of what she experienced were fading to the haze of a dream minutes later. Dale lingered on the periphery of the group but sometimes glanced over at Hanako, clearly hinting he wanted to have another go but embarrassed to give voice to it. Gwen acted like she’d known Giselle for years, like a good and diligent friend.

She put her arm around her shoulder, she made sure she was all right, and she probed about how long certain things had been going on. Giselle responded that it was all a thing they kept quiet for weeks, a cursed toilet seat bought from a discount website with plentiful fine print. Then a trip north to meet with some creepy guy who used the name Cerberus and acted like he was a whistleblower or an insider who would rectify their problems. But then he used some weird remote control to freeze Dale and Finley in place.

Gwen especially puzzled over this, as though she were looking at an empty space in her memory plastered over with a poster instead of the real thing. She shook her head and listened as Giselle continued. Finn chimed in with the parts that Giselle couldn’t quite recollect. She noted that the creepy man said he was a lawyer who represented several entities along with Flush with Pride.

He said the company‘s purpose was to instill and spread a little chaos. To intentionally be faulty. And then he mixed up that he was “in the wrong one” as he thought they had kicked and damaged their seat whereas it just had a missing control.

Blessin’s head snapped to Finn. “What exactly did he say?” It had been a while, but Finn still was vividly aware that he said that he was in “the wrong one” and was going to wait several weeks until theirs was broken or something else. Giselle added that the guy was lanky and slender without being exactly like a Slenderman but still had a weird vibe. She also mentioned the last unexplained event before today involving a night terror demon.

The process of trying to remember the details felt like a scene on a deserted island with a survivor desperately rubbing what sticks they had together to ignite some frail spark of survival. It was a joke, it was just part of who she was as a man and now as a woman that her freaking memory didn’t want to play out all the details it should’ve.

She lost more movies to the ether than she watched. All the days of her life compressed like the vision of a ship traveling close to the speed of light. Only the efforts of daily videos allowed her to remember so many things that would’ve been forgotten. She envisioned one day watching them in her old age and not having any idea that she’d actually done any of these things.

Squeezing her hands together as if they might break if she let go, she cursed the fact that she didn’t keep a daily journal with a running commentary of everything she experienced from dreams to dialogues. Rachel did that for a while, but things had been in chaos lately and she just managed the overview of events. If only she had told her all the exact details of what she remembered. That…that…ohh!

“The creature said it appreciated my obedience. Don’t wake her up. Let her cries continue. Cerberus wasn’t really its name. It had another. Play along, be quiet, don’t make waves, and… it’ll all be OK.” Giselle felt like she had just suddenly speed-run an entire marathon in a few seconds. She panted with sweat suddenly appearing. And she was absolutely grateful that people were around her who could remember what she had just said because, once it left her mouth, all the details were gone. Giselle plopped back on the couch and rubbed her forehead.

Blessin had plenty to work with. “This all fits together with everything I’ve heard about Flush with Pride. I think. Shell company that contracts people. Mysterious apparitions like something from the inhuman MIB of paranormal folklore rather than pop culture. The ability to freeze and hypnotize, even though it’s a bit weird that he had a remote. Wrong place… He was in the wrong one. The wrong one. And then a spirit entity claiming the same name, as if that were its true form. Don’t wake her up makes sense now. He was talking about Hanako and her sister. Don’t wake them up. Don’t do anything that’ll make waves. But why? In humanoid form, he was accepting of a little bit of chaos. But the spirit doesn’t want it. And his name isn’t Cerberus. Why would it be though? Cerberus was the three-headed guard dog of Hades. Well, traditionally, three heads and a lot of snakes. And Cerberus is in the wrong one.…oh wait…shit, I think…”

But her next words were washed out by a dense rumbling carrying from outside. Giselle, living along the coast until recently, knew the constant sound of storms. She could immediately tell that this was no storm. It was visceral, feral, and animalistic. This noise was alive.

Everyone in the group perked up and looked around. Blessin especially was on edge. She rushed over to the front of the store and grabbed a bag behind the counter. The windows rattled, as though an explosion went off just down the block. But instead of a flash of light from a fireball, there was a rush of darkness. Blessin urged them all to get to the center of the building.

Through the cracks and crevices seeped an oily, black sludge. Crystals and gemstones dragged against its indistinct mass like razors, tearing and pulling chunks out. Dull, red eyes and teeth like a deep sea creature stretched forth. Its black flesh vibrated madly like a tortured pen scratching brought to tangled life. Gwen clasped her mouth in horror while Finn darted to Giselle‘s side. Dale shook his head and eyed the heavy chair.

For Giselle, it instantly felt like her entire abdomen was set aflame. That had been where the little kid was. Hanako joined her on that side and scowled at the dark presence. Blue, vivid sparks surged between her fingers. Blessin raised some jewelry, culminating in holding up a cross.

The presence settled into a looming mass in front of them. Its voice crackled with an unnatural energy but wasn’t overpowering like a beast or what Giselle might imagine from some otherworldly being. “You shouldn’t use that on me. I’m not the one you should be worried about. I’m actually just here to talk and tell you what you should know…”

[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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