This is a fused branch of the storyline finishing both the main storyline and the alternate.

The Tall and Short Problems of a Cute Gamer Girl

[END]

Giselle jerked up in bed, as though someone had awakened her with a whisper. Her eyes were full of tears she didn’t remember crying and her heart was full of frantic concern as she looked to her right at the empty spot next to her. A tempest of sickening horror burned through her as new tears refreshed the old. She whimpered desperately.

“Are you up? Are you okay?” A deeply familiar voice called out.

She gingerly sat up in bed. Finn peeked in through the doorway. “You are up. I was gonna let you sleep a little longer. I have a surprise.”

Springing from the bed, Giselle staggered to her feet and grabbed as much Finn real estate as possible in a hug. Finn wobbled but held steady. “Whoa. Hello there. Zombies again? How did they eat me this time?”

Giselle felt momentarily puzzled until a memory settled into her thoughts of random nightmares involving a zombie apocalypse worse than anything they ever played for a stream and her husband as the first victim. She shook her head and explained, “I just needed a hug. I don’t know. What happened last night?”

She looked up at her calm husband. What most noticed just looking at him was his odd right eye. It had a faint scar crossing above the eyebrow which drew attention to the fact it was a sharp blue contrasting the left’s subtle green. Giselle liked to say that such a rare look truly made him one in a million. Finn was more practical and commented that it was closer to one in sixteen hundred.

“Last night? Well, we finally went ahead and told the metaphorical kiddies online you were preggers. And finished off that Pokemon Diamond co-op mod and a quart of licorice mustard ice cream you were craving last week.”

Giselle rocked her head and quietly remembered. She loved both flavors, but they only worked together for two scoops max. She knew that she would start to show in her cosplays soon, so they figured they might as well get it out. For years, they swung back and forth about children. Adopt or have. Lily and Gerald were still healthy enough to be energetic grandparents even though Giselle and Finn fashioned themselves metaphorical grandparents to online young'uns.

The question was always answered with to check back in five years because of work, travel, and psychological exhaustion. Then came the nasty “durian” times, as Finn sometimes quipped. The world as a bubble about to pop. Putting off time with her parents and quiet dreams and so many other things. No more. She had her birth control implant removed and it was pretty simple after that.

She marveled at how little she ached and got sick. Gwen and Dara were immensely jealous, despite neither even approaching the idea of pregnancy. Giselle rolled her eyes at the “preggers” invocation before dropping a full “Am I gregnant?” rendition.

“So, what’s the surprise?”

“Okay, so there’s actually several. First…”

Giselle wondered if she needed to close her eyes. She just turned a little and Finn passed a massive hunk of electronics to her. Giselle recognized it immediately.

“The Steam Deck arrived! Oh my gosh! The dang thing looks like a bee stung it. Or rather a bee bit my Switch, now my Switch is big! That’s wild!” Yet another casual Simpsons reference from Giselle since they started watching the show.

Finn had their professional Steam account loaded and all of Giselle’s favorite shooters already on the handheld. They would need to use it for content next week, but he encouraged her to put it through its paces. Not that she needed any encouragement, already sorting through the UI.

“And this…” Finn unfurled a vibrant, green blanket that stretched from his shoulders to the floor. It was gorgeous, but she was more interested in the gentle plush feel and absolute size of it. The two of them could snuggle up under it together. They had some blankets but none quite so deliriously nice. She held the blanket across her front like a dress stretched too long.

Naturally, her mom and her sewing circle made it as a housewarming gift. It was hinted at when they visited for Thanksgiving but apparently needed a little more time. And it came at the right moment. Late fall had sunk in heavily with a touch of unseasonable frost for this end of the Carolinas. She looked forward to the comfort of wrapping her distended guts in its plush warmth.

Of course, Finn still had one more surprise up his sleeve and beckoned her to follow him over to the kitchen. On the table was pink, transparent Tupperware packed to the brim with assorted cookies. She puzzled at this one, since Lily hadn’t yet hunkered down for her bake-a-thon of goods and sugary sweets. Finn casually announced this came from Hannah Cohen and her little sister, Marie.

They were their closest neighbors and often scampered over to see how they were doing. A couple weeks ago, they even invited them to join in a stream. The girls were the last push Giselle needed to resolve that she could survive being a mom. For all those girls had been through, they remained irrepressibly cheerful and spunky. Marie was born without a right eye and Hannah had surgery on her ovaries when she was three. But Giselle refused to treat them like they had lost something because the girls never saw it that way. Hannah had a cool scar across her belly and Marie got to wear pretty pirate eye patches.

The bonus surprise was that the girls hadn’t left when they dropped off the cookies but rather stayed behind to surprise her and show them off. Gleefully, Marie gripped Giselle‘s midsection and declared, “Hello, mommy!” Giselle felt brightly hot but not bothered by that. Clearly, the girls tuned in to the stream last night. Hannah effervescently explained what each cookie meant from the stars for the Conways’ love of astronomy to an angry mole in subtle reference to their favorite video game series.

Giselle thanked the girls tremendously for the cookies as Finn spread butter on a pan and started breakfast.

—-

From far off, Giselle heard a sound like butter frying in a pan. The smell was missing though. It soon resolved to rushing water as the tap to her right give a little squeak before turning off. She stretched her legs up and down with a few wary pops. They brushed across one another smoothly. That was familiar but struck her as concerning.

With her eyes gingerly opening, she shifted the blankets and let her body settle. Soft jiggling, the kind she learned to ignore, traveled through her senses. She wasn’t surprised to see Finn return to the room. But it brought her a wellspring of relief when she saw his face with his right eye restored. It was a sharp blue more like the Hanako’s, but she was grateful for it. Finn quietly marveled at the restoration and gently inquired, “Jeremy?”

“Not anymore. Giselle.” She had been Giselle for over three months, so sitting there in that body wasn’t a surprise. But a certain gravity centered around her, which wasn’t an in-joke about her boobs. Before, she didn’t know or understand any of what was going on and she clung to the possibility of restoration, no matter how slight. Now, this current moment felt as settled as any day of her life before. “I’m a woman…”

The words escaped but still orbited her thoughts. Urgently, Finn listed off possibilities of what they could do. They would have to track down Blessin for answers. See what everyone else remembered and perhaps even head back to the warehouse and whatever else. There were so many possibilities. Giselle gave a nod for show.

Breakfast soothed her so much. But she could feel the empty spot without Tycho. The three months they’d been gifted by having him back were moments she knew she would treasure for the rest of her life, but she lamented over whether them leaving for a freaking sleepover with Finley and then an exhausting run through a crazy underground facility was worth it. The cats had plenty of food but the open question of what Tycho‘s final moments were like in this reality refused to leave her.

It hurt the most to see Herschel wander the places that Tycho frequented as though his brain was working out why the morning was so strange. She held him in her lap as much as he could tolerate. Eventually, they got in contact with Gwen, who had as many questions as they did. In place of Dale, they all gawked at the voluptuous Dara. The poor girl was only getting used to the idea of having a very affectionate boyfriend when Dale hadn’t had a date since college.

Searching for the New Age store revealed an empty building that looked like it had been abandoned for years. No Blessin. The family she was closest to, especially a gun-loving, unmistakably-gay older brother, Llewelyn Campbell, wasn’t sure where she had gone, just that she vanished one day.

Finley remembered everything too and expressed clear certainty that Blessin wasn’t coming back. He couldn’t exactly say how or why this notion was so clear to him, but he just accepted it. Throughout their explorations and wanderings, Giselle was sure she saw two young girls who looked just like Hanako and Mari the last time she glimpsed them. But the vision was as ephemeral as a dream and refused to stay with her.

She resigned herself to the reality that she might never see them again but held the calm that wherever they were, they were happy and safe.

—-

In some worlds, Jeremy and Rachel woke up together. They embraced, delighted, and puzzled over Rachel‘s blue right eye. In a harsh number, they were alone or separate, sea-tossed with no shore to connect them to what they knew and sought. In others, Giselle and Rachel found one another. And Jeremy reached Finn. The kaleidoscopic permutations of the realities had not only spun off into untold possibilities but every flutter of thought and shake of atoms burst into an endless fractal of new creation, untempered and unrestrained by dark forces.

Despite the confusion of familiar and unfamiliar combinations, the firmament of their love never wavered. They were each the one for the other, no matter how the world decided their bodies or distance. Among the constants was the empty New Age store. Of several variables were Dale or Dara. Where Dale remained, he actually had a fledgling crossplay interest. Finley sometimes remembered Blessin and other times she was just a flutter in his thoughts, like a kind dream.

—-

Giselle awoke in an unfamiliar bed. Rachel wasn’t nearby but her right hand, with strikingly pale nails, gripped the covers. She scrambled to her feet and cried out. She didn’t know this house. Only after frantic yelling did Rachel finally meet up with her.

She resigned herself to this possibility. Trapped at eleven with her wife as her mom. This was her world. Rachel found herself significantly more successful than even the kicked-seat timeline. They had a nice house to the north where several of Rachel‘s college friends lived nearby and often looked out for Giselle. It also meant a new school. Even searching, she could find no trace of Britney. But they were able to track down Blessin.

The New Age store was there, same as before, untouched, no ruin of the world, no disappearance of the strange lady. They had tea together in the back room as Blessin worked to piece together the fragments as much as they did.

“It was largely the other me’s plan. I never really had a dream, but she urged me to use what abilities were at my disposal through Emmanuelle. Her presence was always subdued but deeply affecting.”

Emma still lived in the neighborhood but had no memory of her past or her time disguised as Blessin’s hair. Blessin resolved to keep it that way, “She’s just a little girl now. I carried her all that time and just I’m grateful she made it. The other her understood with the other me that one of us had to go. They both sacrificed, so we could be here.” She made the most of it and had been slowly dating Finley, even though they never properly met before.

It didn’t take much more than a little light pendulum swinging for Blessin to track down what became of Olivia and Athena. They lived by the beach, remarkably close to Giselle‘s childhood home. It was easy to see Olivia‘s sacrifice.

She wore a simple, prosthetic hand, which was especially good for scooping up sand. Athena, who had more spunk than Giselle recalled, teased her older sister but always made up. Giselle stayed and watched from afar without interrupting. Their parents looked nothing like them, probably an adoption.

Giselle wanted desperately to run over and remind them or remember together the lives they shared together in a silly school and then underneath the ground with a dozen spinning uncertainties. But she stayed back and watched. They were happy, they were safe.

When the life Giselle found herself in weighed on her, like when trying to make friends with young people several generations out of sync, Giselle reminded herself that there were so many other versions of her out there. Some probably Jeremy, some stuck as 33-year-old Olivia, and maybe others that had been turned into a cat.

But this world was hers. And for those she loved, for what she had lost, and for what she still had, she solemnly promised to live the best life.

Extended Ending 
[This is included because I started this in a choose-your-own-adventure format, so stories never end. This is how it would/will continue.]

Further down the beach, a shadow passes between the sun. It has the shape of an 11-year-old girl who feels much older at this moment, burdened by uncertainty and stress. She looks like a ghost drawn in charcoal. Vast distances away and yet barely a footstep from where she stands, she lingers in a focused, driven state of mind.

Her hair, once light and fair like the classmate she considers her greatest friend in the world, twists and curls in stark shades of bone ivory and midnight black. “Giselle…Giselle… I know you’re here. I can feel you. They’ve ripped us apart. They’ve taken everything from me. But they don’t understand… We are connected. I made sure of it with my spell. I will always find you, Giselle. Because we’re best friends forever. Britney and Giselle. Just wait. I’ll be there soon.”

In Britney’s outstretched hand rested a wiry, twisted thin strand of blackness spasming and shaking while rooted to her skin. She whispered, “That’s a good dog. Find my best friend and I’ll give you anything you want…”

[I can't think of any other Q's to ask but feel free to offer up any lingering questions and I will try to resolve them or present ideas of how I would or want to continue things]