An Original Transformation

Part 10

Still, I asked, “Doesn’t it feel amazing though that we’re here? Not just that you’re able to be your true self but that we shared in tonight from where we started. We literally ran into one another as I was thinking about transformation stuff on my first day of public school.”

Fleur settled even more. “Here feels nice. It’s amazing to be here but that’s life. That’s chance. Think of all the people you didn’t accidentally meet… I know my psychologist has dozens of patients my age as well as many younger and older. Things turned out well for me. But others, those who have been through so much fighting to get approved…I cry when I think of them. It’s not amazing for them. It’s a struggle with the frail tracings of hope in the distance.”

I bowed my head and looked away from Fleur. Still, so much of her life I didn’t understand but I knew with all my heart I didn’t want to see her cry. I was afraid that my feelings were leading her to that point. I clenched my mouth and didn’t say anything but a softly-whispered apology. Fleur brushed my neck again.

“It’s okay. I have the biggest, weirdest dreams of all. I want to spread it all around like Katsumi. I’d take my psychologist’s patient list…for a start…and just imagine a blast of energy from my fingertips and then no more tears.” She brushed at her forehead, staring at the glow of the park lights around us.

Fixing her eyes on me, she explained, “When I say forever with you, it’s like the same dream. You have tears about your dreams. I could see your relief in the mirror. You wanted transformation and it was just so restrained that it’s like you need forever just to catch up with it all. But I know it’s not meant for you. And that’s okay. We’re not the same person.”

It felt a little clearer listening to Fleur. She was right that I didn’t really want it to be forever. It would be daunting. This was a different body than what I saw myself as. This was different than what I felt inside, but that was alright because it was a transformation, turning me into something that I’d never been before. That wasn’t a way to spend the rest of my life, especially if it made Fleur sad.

“What do you think of me as a girl?” I stretched out one leg a little in something resembling a pose. Fleur’s anxiety seemed to fade away as she gave me an intentional gaze.

“I definitely approve”, she remarked with a smirk. “And I especially love how you’re still you but so cutely changed. If we had a little more privacy….well, I’ll leave that to the imagination.”

Blush spread across the warmth of my face as I whispered little discoveries about my sexual feeling to Fleur and she teased back things she knew too. The imaginary faucet was slipping and all I could do was adjust my legs and let a current of thoughts carry me. In particular, I imagined Fleur as a man. Not as the Max I saw in pictures but as a guy who still carried the softness Fleur preferred, along with a feeling which kindled something inside me that *surely* nanites were responsible for…

Fleur pressed her head against the clothes in the bag. She said she would try being a man. She was nervously resolute and concluded the clothing would be the better one than the root beer because of the option of an immediate rather than time-delayed switch-off.

I cheered her on as I felt the switch on my hoodie. I thought about what might happen if I decided to switch it on and take a long swig of the drink too. Likely, it would be nothing because my current nanites would take priority, causing the others to do nothing. Potentially, they could override the old ones and leave me with a different female body. Or they could regard me as a girl for real and turn me into a random guy. Beyond that were possibilities unknown.

Fleur eventually stripped off her gloves, showing her hands as they trembled and clenched. She took a long breath and batted away a few random gnats stirred up by the strong lights above us. She pressed her hands together as though massaging invisible soap into them but resisted the urge to rub them.

A sudden breeze carried the trails of mist from far off sprinklers along with smatterings of vicious dust. Brushing back her hair, Fleur made a slow process of preparation before abruptly slipping on the hoodie she’d bought for herself. It fit her loosely before she flicked the tab.

The shift was subtle but clear. Fleur’s hair shortened slightly but still held a girlish cut with a swoop. Her cheekbones jutted but no more than hers sometimes did in the right light. Her chest flattened completely but her hips still spread like they usually did. As she was dressed, I wasn’t sure if she had changed at all.

Even a gently deeper echo to her question, “How do I look?” didn’t strike me as a huge change. She worried over the sound of it as I reassured her, “You look very nice. Hardly even changed.” Though the male pronoun now applied, I kept the female one in mind because it still seemed right for her.

I watched her hands. She didn’t scratch but she held them like they were under a hot stream of water. She brushed at her elbows but kept her nails out of it. I encouraged her to breathe. She did, but not easily.

Each breath was like a push for her. She looked ahead, at something I couldn’t see and tightened her altered body before saying, “I am still and always me. Fleur. I am Fleur no matter what changes happen.” She had a moment where she looked ill, but it soon passed as she settled back against the grass. She plopped down and nearly bonked herself with the bottles. She gave a little laugh and an “Ow…” for that as I leaned close to her.

It dimly occurred to me that I was a complete girl cuddling up close to a boy. An effeminate boy, at best, but I could tell from Fleur’s expression, as she adjusted her pants, that she was just as complete. Chaotic little fantasies danced in my head. But I held the mass of them down to a simple question, “May I kiss you?”

Fleur looked at me with her eyes slightly darkened with discomfort. She clenched her fingers and then relaxed them. Her answer was a careful trace of a smile as she parted her lips. My kiss had no skill behind it, but I held her close and tried to not think so much. Shivers fought with my thoughts and slipped the grip on that imagined faucet. I thought more than I expected about what we each had in our pants.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

But I kept it to a kiss as I released Fleur. She shifted and wrapped her arms around me. One by one, the lights nearest to us switched off as the evening games dwindled. Plenty of lights remained in the distance for us to see by but they were far enough away for a handful of stars to resolve as more than muddy blurs.

Cuddles eased into reminiscing about fragments of worlds we’d half-created and left to live on their own. With some of them, it seemed Fleur was turning over something truly significant in her mind, like some great secret. I worried about it but only a little. I knew she would tell me when she felt right to do so. Eventually, Fleur called her mom to pick us up.

Fleur as a boy lasted only long enough to show her mom before she flicked the tab and restored herself to normal. I fingered my tab but did nothing with it. She kept her gloves off for the ride back. We made chitchat as I filled in the events of the evening. For an nth untold time, I pined for Fleur’s mother as my own.

Once at Fleur’s house, I had a little bit of time to myself. I kept the hoodie as I walked into the bathroom and locked the door. The mirror over the sink revealed no more than the one in the pastry shop had. But I was able to linger over my image and cup the tab. On a whim, I pressed it hard.

I expected to see a sudden, unfamiliar boy or a random different girl. Instead, I saw the same person as a moment before. I tabbed the hoodie a few more times off and on while checking to make sure if the nanite confirmation light was on (it was). No matter how or how many times I tabbed it, my appearance didn’t change.

It had been a cheapie hoodie. Still, nanites from Vietnamese garment factories needed to be just as carefully-tested as those from any state-of-the-art clean room in a research lab. Likely, the nanites talked to one another and the ones in the hoodie wouldn’t work till the mass of other nanites I had going in my body were finished

I slipped off the hoodie and watched the way my clothes shifted underneath. I felt naughty. I was watching a girl changing clothes. I knew it was me, but the reminder still didn’t hit me automatically. I brushed my hand a little but with nowhere near the roughness of how Fleur used to scour her gloved hands.

After posing a bit more and ignoring the toilet, for the time being, I returned to Fleur’s room and plopped down beside her. We took a few more photos and I sorta tried on some of her clothes in the same way we’d tried on clothes in the store. I noticed her gloves were off and her nails were away from her wrists. Still, her hoodie was sprawled in a different room, like a cast-off skin.

Random games and a quick movie rounded out the evening before I found myself getting drowsy before bed. By this time, I knew I didn’t have much more than an hour before the nanites wore off. Fleur kept nudging me to shower, saying, “It’s your mountain to tackle.” I made stammered excuses, but she wasn’t hearing them. She’d gone further than I ever expected her to go and I owed her to at least take a few steps.

I did deep breathing every step of the way. I tried to imagine myself as the people I saw in videos who gave uncommon reactions. The sort of confident reactions which felt more like acting, yet more genuine at the same time. It seemed like a good plan but standing before Fleur’s bathroom door dashed it all away.

Still, I had to do it.

I kept the lights overhead dim and I worked by the spill of the outside street lamps. This also seemed like a good plan because I’d do what I needed to do but without the wash of intimidating sights. I didn’t consider how much my imagination would compensate.

I didn’t see the curve of my naked chest, but I glimpsed the darkest traces around my form. And I felt the cool, sharp air awaken even the most private corners of my body as I tried to fumble for the faucets.

Blasts of scalding, numbing heat chaos with muffles of steam nearly made me scream, but my flailing fingers finally brought back lukewarm order.

I kept my necklace in place, not sure if it had any instructions for getting wet, but I was able to keep it out of the stream. My temporary tattoo didn’t waver or peel. My arms, however, quivered with every move.

I tried not to think too much, lest the imaginary details overwhelm me. Still, despite it all, I knew I was cheating. Fleur had taken the most intimidating step and faced it. I knew she would be utterly disappointed if I didn’t at least take a look and try to see what had changed.

Waiting till the end of the shower, I wrapped up in the nearest towel and shivered before the shadow-traced mirror. Reaching a hand over, I slipped the towel to the floor with a blast of steamy chill and flicked on the light switch.

After my eyes burned in their sockets and I blinked away the pain, I saw it all. I’d seen enough to know. I’d seen reactions which still made me nervous to consider, the kind of reactions that just tickled everything for me. But this wasn’t an online video. This wasn’t a story that someone posted online. This was me standing naked before the mirror.

I watched the sharp-red points of my nipples pressing out from my breasts. I followed the sloping line of the edge of my chest. In my head, I could see the way my flesh had been before and other ways it could be. It was hard to be objective like when inspecting a quality transformation, especially when my eyes darted between my legs.

I was a girl. That sentence alone was enough to stir a thousand wild thoughts and feelings. I kept trying to return to the distance that clothing provided me, a vision of a girl that passed over me in the mirror. But feeling the cold and the changes to my body as I looked at the girl reflected back at me, I couldn’t separate her from me.

Fear spilled into my bones like a high wave. It crashed through me, but the calm followed. Yes, I was a girl, but I was still me, like seeing two images superimposed. I was insecure, sentimental, obsessive, a boy who never got enough of the curve of a breast through a woman’s clothes. At the same time, I was this beautiful and unique woman who had been created. And I had those same sorts of breasts exposed to the steam-settling air.