Alan woke up, coughing and spitting up water as someone rolled him to his side. The first thing he noticed was that he was absolutely desperate for air, breathing in and coughing and vomiting out more water until nothing more came up. The next thing he noticed was that he was goddamned cold. And wet. And naked. And lying on his side on a rocky, muddy slope. Someone was talking to him in a concerned tone. Eventually he realized it was Aaron.
“You with me now? Alan, are you-“
“Yeah… yeah I’m with you. What happened?” Alan croaked. He looked around with bloodshot eyes which ached with pressure from all the coughing. His body shivered involuntarily from being cold. With Aaron’s assistance he didn’t just sit up, he stood on shaky legs, slipping just a little on the wet sloped ground. They were on the shallowest slope of a curving river bank. The river was a couple of hundred feet across by his guess, flowing fairly quickly and with a little bit of choppy waves. It wasn’t loud, there were little to no rocks or branches causing a disturbance and creating the sound of running water. The banks seemed almost far too smooth. Artificial, perhaps? Though they were just mud, they were oddly devoid of plant life on both sides until the top of the bank, where trees and grass and shrubs hung themselves over the edge like an audience looking down into an arena.
“I dunno. I woke up in cold water. Thankfully I must have just taken a big breath because I only sucked in just a little bit. Managed to clear myself out, then saw you and the others.”
“The others? John and Lucy?”
Aaron confirmed with a nod and pointed down the bank. A ways down Alan could see two figures, small from the distance, supporting each other as they made their way down the slippery beech. One was definitely female shaped and doing their best to cover their private business. “Why the hell are we naked?”
“Where and how the hell are we is an even more pertinent question I think.” Aaron’s almost cheerful response both made Alan want to roll his eyes, yet reassured him that at least somebody was keeping a cool head. Aaron was their de-facto group leader for a reason. It took several minutes, but the four reconvened. Lucy was very unhappy about being naked. Alan was too for that matter, but he wasn’t letting it get to him. Neither was he allowing himself to peek at Lucy’s very fit, gently curvy body and healthy skin. The slight tan lines showed that Lucy barely ever even exposed any skin when she ran outside every morning. This was easily twice the amount of her skin he’d ever seen. Not seen, ahem, because he wasn’t looking when she wasn’t looking at him.
They made their way up the bank and started trying to make sense of the situation. John and Lucy had both managed to help each other to shore, though both had nearly drowned in the process. Aaron had done a lot of weird fad exercises as a tech exec, one of them had apparently been a cold water shock thing. He felt that was why he’d handled the undesirable wake-up the most. Once they were all up in the bushes and out of the breeze, Aaron suggested they all dry off as best they could with leaves, then found some bushes and trees which provided a modicum of privacy as they talked.
“Does anyone remember anything before it happened?” Aaron inquired. Neither John nor Lucy did, neither did Aaron, but Alan related the weird feeling when he’d woken up, the sensation that the world had paused, the pattern of light that came up through the floor. Each had their own theories, but being a group of somewhat nerdy people, the best explanation they came up with was also the hardest to believe.
They’d been isekai’d.
“Shit, I hope we get some crazy ass powers to make up for this BS.” Alan grumbled.
“And a harem of hot catgirls.” John added wisely. Everyone just looked at him, Lucy with particular disgust. “What? Tell me you wouldn’t want that? Tell it to me honestly.” Alan wiggled a hand to indicate his lack of surety on the subject, but Aaron surprised them all with a big shrug.
“I dunno. Never found anything really exciting like that before.”
“Really Aaron? Not even… I mean, uh, me neither…” Lucy’s hasty correction brought a few raised eyebrows and she hid fully behind the tree, allowing it more than her mocha colored skin to hide her embarrassed blush. Alan considered his own, somewhat jiggly, pasty, moderately blond hair covered flesh and sighed. Yeah, Lucy really didn’t have the most grounds for embarrassment here. Though he did have to admit being concerned that your friends were thinking about your ‘business’ in a ‘sexy’ way would be a bit disturbing. Oops, gotta… gotta think about something else before he leaves the cover of the bushes…
“Regardless, the situation isn’t going to be different. Water, we have, with the river. If we can, we’ll boil it. We can drink dew from the plants too, which might be safer than just the straight river water. Shelter may be important. The air is pretty tolerable now that we’re mostly dry, but it looks like its either just before or just after noon. It’ll be much colder at night. Plus potential predators.” Aaron was pacing back and forth, not even trying to hide his chiseled abs and… wow, how does he even walk with that… from view, seemingly totally unembarrassed. Amusingly, John, who was the most ridiculously ripped one of the three men, shrunk behind the bushes as much as he could.
“Food we’ll need too, though we can survive for two, three days before it really makes us unable to function. Not eating something toxic or poisonous is more important than eating at all. If you find any berries or leaves or roots that seem edible, we’ll have to do some tests. I’ve only done a couple of survival training sessions a year back, but I think I remember a few ways to try and check for safety. Even better if we can cook things.” So it was that they started paying attention to the strip of trees which ran along the upper bank around them. Just beyond it they could see a grassland of chest high grasses that seemed to stretch to the horizon, a singular mountain standing alone amidst the ocean of golden grasses.
This time they all shouted in concern as the disturbing feeling grew over them. Complex circles of intricate, circuit-like lines, appeared beneath their feet. Their yelling was all halted as they were frozen. Unlike in the apartment, it was clear this time that only their bodies were frozen, not the whole world. The wind still rustled leaves. The small sounds of waves still lapped against the shores and their ears. The soft, distant rustling of grasses which swayed with its own waves like an imitation of the river’s surface still whispered through the trees. Bird sounds and skittering of other life filled their niche too.
Alan found that he wasn’t exactly frozen, not completely. Rather, the hold was weakening. While his feet and legs were planted, he turned his head and torso in the direction of a gasping sound, to stare directly at the tall, thin warrior who was about to loose a steel tipped spear right at him from only about ten feet away. The… woman?... strained, trying to free herself, only the same circle of light was beneath her feet. When the spear finally left her hand, it plunged fruitlessly into the soft layer of leaf litter about halfway between them. The circles started to glow brighter.
The gaze from the warrior shifted just to Alan’s side and he followed it, just barely able to glimpse yet another glowing circle, within two steps of him. Devoid of any person though. The light flared brightly and he felt his whole body be torn apart, his mind inexplicably aware as it was ripped down to the smallest particle, then reassembled. A great deal of his mass was consumed into the process or siphoned off for some other purpose. When the light faded, Alan fell to his knees much more lightly than should have been the case. He stared down at his hands, unable to process what had happened.
Just out of sight, some twenty feet in another direction and behind a thick tree, Lucy was staring at unfamiliar arms, her usual skin color, but covered in a sparse layer of near black hair, ending in slender but definitely masculine hands.
Not far from Lucy and having been trying to get more than a glimpse, John sat on his butt and stared down at the delicate digits and much less than muscular limbs they were attached to. The pale skin ended at the bicep, where a short, rough material covered it. In fact, he was wearing clothes! Clothes that mostly covered… “OH MY GOD I HAVE T-“ His unexpectedly high pitched voice caused him to freeze up, this time not from any sort of magical effect.
“Everyone OK? Who was that yelling?” Aaron ran over to where his friends had been, following the unfamiliar woman’s voice with his arms up and a cautious, guarded stance. Rule number 1 of isekai novels, he felt, was that you might be in hostile territory from the moment you woke up. The typical, pseudo-medieval style clothing he suddenly found himself wearing? Taking that in stride, as best as he could. Much better to be clothed than naked if there was a fight. He lacked a weapon, but he had heavy boots on that fit perfectly. He could fight, so long as he didn’t have to fight someone with a weapon.
“Aaron? Aaron! It’s me, John!”
“…John.” Aaron looked skeptically at the fiery haired, fairly short woman who stood shakily where John had more or less been. The voice was unfamiliar, even if the accent, however briefly spoken, was at least as expected for John. The woman was, in truth, about the most beautiful he’d ever seen. It didn’t really move Aaron though. He’d just never been moved like that by anyone before. Objectively though he could recognize that societally, that woman would get allll kinds of attention.
“Yes, yes, it’s John. I… I HAVE TITS. WHY DO I HAVE TITS!”
“Ah, yes, I see that it’s you John.”
“Just like that?!” Lady John exclaimed with incredulity, while simultaneously pulling on the partially unlaced front of her tunic and staring inside. “Nice tits too.”
“John? John!? Stop staring… at your… ugh, what the fuck is up with my voice?” A huge man braced himself against a rough tree trunk, the bark crunching a little under his grasp.
“…and you would be… Lucy.”
“Of course I’m Lucy, who else, god my voice is so weird.”
“Dude, Lucy, I have tits-WOAH. Lucy, Lucy is that really you?”
“Yes its me you ass, why wouldn’t it be me?”
“Check in your pants.”
“What?!”
“Just do it!”
“Fine, creep, I’ll-WHY THE FUCK DO I HAVE-.”
--
Meanwhile, in a galaxy, far, far away. Rather, the same galaxy and like forty feet away.
Alan largely shrugged off the shouting. He could just see Aaron at a distance and recognized that the now clothed in mock Ren-Faire generic peasant outfit had relaxed his defensive posture. Whoever the other two people were that were shouting, they didn’t seem to be hostile. Given what Alan was looking at, they may even be his own friends. He was shorter. Not child short, but Alan had been a little over six feet before. Now he was probably half a foot shorter. Short for a man, generally. Even though he wore clothes similar to what he could see Aaron wearing, he could also tell that his body was slim. Fit.
He felt good. Like he could run a marathon. Actually do a pull-up. No, ten! Maybe more! His hands were proportionate to his size, yet much more delicate than they’d been before, while also feeling much stronger. The fingertips were… odd. A tickling instinct in the back of his mind led him to flex a muscle he’d never felt before, extending hooked cat-like claws out from the tips of his fingers. It shocked him, causing something to twitch on the top of his head. Allowing the claws to retract, he gingerly felt at the fluffy, velvety fur covered ears on the top of his head. Immediately he probed and confirmed a set of normal, human ears were still present. Well, actually, they felt a little pointed, though not dramatically so. Enough they would probably look weird. Not enough to scream ‘not human’. The fluffy animal ears though definitely did. They were pretty tall too, about half the length of his face additional past his skull.
His hair felt familiar. It took a moment to register it. It was something between cat and dog fur, rather than hair. Feeling his face and other exposed skin revealed no unusually hairy parts. Glancing in his shirt he also found a totally hairless chest. Oh, wait, totally hairless was different! Checking out little Alan… looked around the same, excepting that the pubic hair was definitely also fur now.
“White? Wait, is my hair… fur… white now? What am I a freaking anime character?” His voice was different too. It sounded a little like someone doing a pretty good impression of his regular voice. A little bit higher pitched. Younger sounding maybe. His body lacked the not-quite-grown-into feel and build of a teenager. Maybe he’d got about ten years back then? Early twenties? Close to twenty-five perhaps, given little Alan and assuming some things just didn’t totally and completely, uh, straighten out, until about twenty-five.
His vision was different too. If he was some kind of freak animal person, he’d expect to see fewer colors, but instead he saw ones that had never been visible to him before. Mostly in mosses and some mushrooms that looked like vibrant new tones to his eyes, whereas they’d been drab greens and browns before. Not even standing out to his notice. There was something else which was standing out though, which was the spear quite literally standing out of the soft ground, cushioned with years and years of leaf mold. Beyond that spear was a white haired person lying face first in the dirt.
Was that the elf?! She’d had… she’d had, uh, brown hair! Whatever had happened to him, had it also happened to her? He assumed it was a her. The elf, assuming elf is a thing, was tall, easily over seven feet, whip thin, long pointed ears that almost reached top of the hair. Long hair pulled back in a braid.
Unlike Alan, the person lying on the ground was wearing a kind of leather armor made from woven strips of the thick, durable material with metal sections woven into it. Just like the elf person. They didn’t seem to be conscious, but he couldn’t take a chance. They’d been about to throw that spear. A second or two later and he might have been killed. Wanting to secure the weapon before potentially waking his assailant, Alan crept forward as softly as he could. Oddly, his body seemed to have very good instincts, adapting very quickly to the soft floor and avoiding dried sticks and such. While he had a tunic-thing on over a rough and scratchy shirt, and similar pants, he wore no shoes. His feet felt at the ground and he froze anytime he felt a stick that could crack.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
In the end he moved very much like this thing he’d watched on YouTube once, called Fox Walking. It was something someone had talked about doing in order to move quietly and softly through natural areas. A means of walking without using your eyes to watch your step, so you could look around you and really experience the natural world as you moved through it. He’d tried it in his apartment. It’d been good for not stepping on the power brick for his laptop. There wasn’t much else to avoid though in a low clutter artificial environment. Nor much nature.
His hand grabbed the spear. With such obvious magical bullshit going on, he half expected it to shock him. Or talk. Or something. It just felt like a spear. The wooden shaft was incredibly regular in diameter, though there were small variations. Not machine manufactured then, just painstakingly carved and smoothed. Not a hint of splintering either. There were two spots that must be the favored handholds, which were slightly worn to a smaller diameter. He wouldn’t have even seen it without a close inspection against a flat surface, but he could feel it.
It pulled smoothly out of the earth. For his new, shorter height, and maybe even his original height, it felt a little bit long. She’d really been tall then. Holding it by the worn handholds, Alan pointed it at the body. He could see they were breathing. White hair, no, white fur, big fluffy ears reminiscent of those cute foxes in the snow you’d see on nature shows. Still tall, really tall. There was a holster for a knife at the persons waist. Should he try to grab it?
“Better call for help…” he whispered to himself. Turning only briefly towards the increasingly loud pair and an Aaron who seemed to be trying to calm them down, he shouted, “Aaron! John! Lucy! I need your help here!” Alan snapped his attention back to the unconscious form about ten feet before him, but they didn’t even twitch. Just kept breathing gently. Running footsteps came to a halt a little ways away as Alan held out a hand to them.
“Alan? Where the hell you get a spear? Did you just-“
“Look there, on the ground ahead of me. That person was in the middle of throwing it at me when that light hit us.” Pointing with his chin, he heard the staggered gasps and grunts of the others as they noticed the person. “They seem to be unconscious now, but they have a knife there.”
Aaron stepped forward, causing Alan to double take. He looked straight out of eight or so years back. So yeah, pretty close to twenty five it seemed, if they had all gone backwards the same…
“Is that John and Lucy?! John, you’re not a beefcake and got hella tan?”
“No dumbass, I’m Lucy.”
“I’m John.”
Alan blinked and shook his head a few times at Lucy the man and John the woman. John’s magically produced tunic was even flared out into a sort of skirt over his pants. The curves on that body… wow. He found his eyes being drawn repeatedly to the mild cleavage that implied a pretty solid set of Cs on a petite frame, topped with almost unnaturally fiery red hair-
“OH MY GOD. We’re our fucking game characters!”
Aaron ignored them. Of course Aaron, who basically just fashioned his characters after himself, wasn’t really changed. The three of them looked at each other for a long moment, before John and Lucy both said together,
“Oh my god…” before they were interrupted by a load groaning from up above and back a little. Even Aaron looked up from where he was creeping quietly towards that knife, gazing in further confusion at the white haired, white eared woman draped over a branch and looking like she was going to throw up any moment. Then she did. Dry heaving so much that she fell off the side of the branch and landed with a cry of pain and indignation in the soft earth, seemingly not badly hurt. Spitting and coughing, she tried to stand and fell over repeatedly. Eventually she just rolled herself partially to the side, looking at them from the ground.
“You called for me?” She said.
Four splashes and one thump against loose, sandy soil were swiftly followed up by startled and frightened shouts. Birds flew from the nearby trees, screeching their discontent at the sudden and loud intrusions. A creature like an otter splashed from the bank downriver into the water, disappearing below the water and not surfacing anywhere nearby. Not that the interlopers would have even noticed. Fortunately, two had landed in the shallows where the water was neither deep enough or flowing strongly enough to pull them along.
One of them bore the familiar face of Aaron, the one and only, but only if one spun back the march of time by nearly ten years and put another twenty pounds of muscle onto an already well built frame. All five figures sported utilitarian pants, tunic, belt, waterskin, a small pouch, and a small knife which would serve little purpose beyond the functional. The dull grey dyed wool over brownish rough spun linen undergarments did little to ward off the icy cold water. Aaron quickly assessed the situation, despite having been asleep until just a moment ago. It was his nature to do so and he’d done at least a decent amount of training as he’d entered into the world of the rich and targetable.
The three flailing and one limp body that presented themselves to his sight were entirely unfamiliar. A drowning person is a drowning person though, regardless of familiarity. The nearest was a tall, tightly built man. Though startled and coughing up water they’d partially inhaled, they were kneeling well free of any risk of drowning. Aaron moved on to the two who were being pulled along by the current and in much greater distress. One of them was doing a decent job of swimming, though the shock of the cold was clearly making it a tremendous struggle and they appeared to be vomiting water as they worked to keep their head above water. The other was in much greater trouble. A long shock of almost unnaturally red-orange hair was trailing along in the current as the woman failed to gain control of her situation.
Rather than jump in, knowing the shock of the cold water would cause him to inhale, Aaron ran along the shallows, grateful for the unfamiliar boots protecting him from the rocky bottom of the shallows even as they filled with frigid water to his toes. Getting alongside and a little ahead of the two, he waded in as quickly as he could, up to his chest. The cold hit him hard and he did indeed gasp involuntarily. Keeping his head above water and breathing heavily with the shock, Aaron pushed himself out. The young, man or woman he couldn’t tell, with far too much white hair, was mostly starting to pull themselves towards shore on their own. Aaron moved past them and grabbed the woman who was starting to sink despite her arms frantically splashing.
Panic could make you totally forget how to swim, unless you had truly well established muscle memory for it. Combined with the incredible and inevitable shock of the cold? Drowning could occur within minutes. Thankfully, he had reacted quickly and the woman was pulled up out of the water into the shallows in less than a minute of Aaron waking up in the unwanted and unpleasant bath. It was then that the adrenaline started to shift him from action to shakes as the redhead heaved and heaved, evacuating impressive volumes of river water onto the sand and mud bank.
“Is everyone OK? Nobody missing?” Aaron spoke his question loudly and with a level of authority his violently shaking body didn’t feel. He could see though that fear and confusion were the only things these three strangers were feeling. Three? Right, there had been someone unconscious or something. Four strangers then. “Stay out of the water, I’m going to check on the one on the bank over there.” He started to move, but hesitated and turned to the three again. “You and you, collect all of the loose, dry wood and grasses you can get and bring them so we can get a fire going. You,” he indicated the redhead, who he didn’t want to wander out of sight after she’d nearly drowned, “dig a shallow pit in a dry spot not near anything that can burn. If you can. No river rocks in it or nearby, they can explode when heated.”
Each gave some manner of nod or verbal acknowledgement. By taking charge with confidence, even if he didn’t feel it, it got everyone moving, working. Moving would keep them warm and motivated. The actual tasks would also help with the long term goal of preventing hypothermia and giving them a central location and purpose to allow him or them to figure out what the deal was with their situation. Aaron didn’t know if these four people knew each other or, frankly, how he’d gotten here. It definitely wasn’t like any dream he’d ever had. If he had to take a guess, he’d been drugged and dropped here as part of some sicko’s revenge against ‘evil corporate America’.
Shivering and warding off a panic attack, Aaron arrived very quickly to the still form of an average height, very slimly built woman lying on the river bank. She was breathing calmly and a quick inspection found no injury. Just… asleep. Huh. Well, if they’d drugged him, they might have done so to the others. He could try to douse her with cold water to shock her awake, but decided not to do so for now. It could trigger a medical condition or something. Plus, while she wasn’t emaciated, this woman had no excess body fat. He didn’t want to drop her body temperature too suddenly.
Since she was only average height and such sleight build, he was able to gently and carefully lift her with little effort, bringing her over to where the redhead was badly shaking and still coughing, dryly this time, as she used a flat rock and a stick to excavate a rough firepit. Aaron set the unconscious woman down a good distance away and started to help. By the time the other two began returning with armfuls of sticks and wads of dry grass, Aaron was satisfied they could make a fire without burning themselves down. At that point he quickly showed the redhead how to stack everything, receiving a chattering “Got it. Thanks Aaron” as a response.
He'd already gone twenty steps away, looking through rocks for the right types of stones, when his blood ran even colder. He hadn’t told his name to anyone, but the redheaded woman had used it. Heat… heat was critically important. Then he could interrogate them. Collecting a few palm sized stones and slipping them into the empty drawstring pouch on his belt, none of the clothing items even remotely familiar to his beyond basic form and function, he prepared for the worst. An appropriate rock was located, which would strike a good spark when struck in a glancing matter against his thin knife.
In this manner and with a great deal of patience and gentle, gentle breaths, he managed to light the kindling. The kindling burned quickly and hotly, but the deed was done, the sticks were burning. While he was starting it, the others had gathered a fair stack of branches and longs and had mostly broken them into burnable portions. They all sat in glorious, thankful silence as the flames licked and the hot wood crackled, warming them and drying their clothes. And chattering teeth, that was a constant among all four awake people. The fifth had been very lucky, perhaps, due to just sleeping, rather than taking a dip in icy water.
“Good thing it was early morning when this started.” Aaron noted, glancing up at the sun which had now reached its zenith. The day was cool, but not unpleasant. If not for their dip in frigid waters, it would be very comfortable. Perhaps even a little warm when the day’s temperature peaked. Instead though they were shivering and while their teeth were no longer violently chattering and the color was returning to their faces, reminding him that he’d forgotten something really basic. “Shit, we should have taken off our clothes.”
Two faces turned to him with an incredulous expression, but the third, the redhead, just bobbed in agreement. When the woman stood, it really drove home to Aaron that she was on the shorter end, with almost exaggerated curves that were more accentuated by still clingy, damp clothing. Her build was odd though, less like one of several short but curvy popular singers and more like…
More like she was muscled enough that it approached that border between athletic woman and bodybuilder. Not quite hitting that point of no longer being feminine, but leaving no doubt at all that she hit the gym and the gym whimpered a little. As the long fingers started pulling at the hem of damp clothing, peeling it away to reveal the only semi-opaque wet under layers, Aaron idly noted the looks of alarm from the other two. He raised an eyebrow to the tall fellow’s furtive and alarmed glances towards Aaron and the shorter fox-eared man. Those ears were suddenly and sharply trained forward along with keen eyes that, moments later, tore themselves from the scene with visible effort.
The guilt he saw in them as they landed instead upon Aaron was quickly masked. That shift in expression and the totally blank one that followed tugged at the back of Aaron’s mind. Just what was it about that which seemed so familiar?
“I can’t say I’m not a little surprised, but I’m not trying to trick anyone. We could suffer from hypothermia if we don’t dry fully.” To back up the assumed confidence which he was called to project, having taken the role, be it briefly so, as leader, Aaron began to peel off the layers as well. Interestingly this drew to him also a much too focused gaze, this time from the tall man. Only it was not quite so intense and passed very quickly. More schooled perhaps? As the others followed suit, shivering and looking rather uncomfortable with the situation, Aaron wondered at himself.
Would he ever find his own gaze so drawn to someone? Even for a moment? The redhead was holding a dripping woolen shirt while staring blankly at the strained front of her own rough linen underclothes. The evidence of the cold was pointedly obvious. Two pointed. He found at most a mild curiosity stir within himself. The shorter man with the ears had stripped down to the long linen shorts, boxers really, revealing a taught, muscled abdomen which too, failed to hold him for more than a moment.
The ears flicked back and forth. His eyes tracked their movements greedily and his fingers twitched in anticipation. A heat stirred within his chest and a fluttering excitement washed through him. He… he had to pet them…
But he shook himself from the desire. This man was no fluffy, friendly dog! No matter how soft his ears looked. No… no matter how… soft…
“Aaron… I…” The vivid imaginations of fluffy ears between his fingers were supplanted by a cold pit in his stomach, twisting his insides tightly. Eyes open even wider than her mouth, the redhead held up a hand before her face, shaking well beyond the shivering. Fingers tenderly felt at her own face with the exploratory touch of a stranger. Though it seemed beyond the realm of human physiology, her eyes managed to open even wider.
“How do you know my name?” His tone was commanding, but the opposite of reassuring. It spoke of the potential for danger and violence, promising that here, in this isolated place, lies would not protect you. The deer in the headlights turned to him, a stray lock of bangs clinging damply to the side of her face, extending from the almost too strong jaw which hung slack. She worked her mouth and tongue as if finding them suddenly dry.
“I’m John.”
--
Fingers combed through thick, half dry strands of hair. Had he not been so distracted by the conundrum before him, Aaron might have thought on how said hair had not been so thick for a long time.
“John,” his hand seemed almost disconnected amidst the numbness which filled him as he gestured at the redhead, “Alan” another waive lazily swung in the direction of the fox eared, white haired, short man with the taught bod, “Lucy” a look alone was sufficient, along with the process of elimination, to indicate the tall man with the dark hair and mocha skin. A tall man also rippling with muscle, visible even though he had refused to remove the undershirt which still clung to him. Her. Them.
“This is fucking confusing.” He didn’t know whether to shrug, throw his hands in the air, or start screaming curses. “Fuzzy ears, strange place in some wilderness, random unconscious girl… speaking of which, who the hell is sh- nevermind, none of you know, do you?” Shaken heads and shrugs were all he needed to confirm the response to that. “All this shit indicates some kind of isekai bullshit. I get that. It isn’t really sinking in, but I get that. Only, ONLY.” The clap of flesh as his hands met in a satisfying violent clash with each other echoed across the nearby running waters and the sloped bank opposite. “Why am I the only one who’s unchanged?”
“You’re not totally unchanged.” He-who-claims-to-be-Alan intruded. Aaron paused at the challenge, considering himself. He’d stripped down to his shorts and was getting well close to dry already, at least the exposed skin parts of him. Clothing, hair, that was another matter. They’d had a solid half an hour of working out their individual realizations. Alan was still a man, but he was shorter, smaller in stature, but, as the supposed Alan had put it, “tight as fucking Bruce Lee.” The whole white hair, young twenties face, and above all, quite literally, the prominent and large fluffy fox ears were very noticeable alterations. In a certain light and remembering his friend when they’d met in undergrad, this person did bear a very striking similarity to Alan, yet also enough difference to drive away the thought.
It was, really, the perfection. It was like Alan had dictated his own ideal version of himself too a sketch artist and they’d…
“Now that’s a thought!”
“What, that you’re changed?”
“Right, no, but can you explain? How am I changed?” Alan’s mouth open and closed several times before a frown worked its way across his face. The ears, cutely, flattened for a long moment, before springing up and turning full towards him. Lucy and John seemed to similarly consider the situation. It was in the end, Lucy who answered first, cutting off whatever Alan opened his mouth to say.
“You’re way more built for one. Taller too I think? It’s hard for me to tell since I’m… way taller now… but you seem taller.”
“Mmm, yes, I think you’re right. A bit more square in the jaw too?”
“Also he’s got a huge bulge. Way bigger than Aaron was ever packing before.” They all stared in silence at the supposed John. Supposed. There was no supposed about it, after that comment. Three long suffering sighs echoed out at once. Red faced and sputtering demands to know what the sighs were about, the redheaded, curvaceous, also ripped John railed at them about ‘toxic masculinity culture’ and how ‘it was the freaking twenty twenties, a cisgendered hetero-male should be comfortable with acknowledging another man’s “epic” bulge’.
Aaron took a moment to frown downwards as he peeked within the linen boxers. John was totally wrong, it wasn’t ‘way bigger’. Actually, it was a little smaller than before. The shorts just clung in a way that-
“Oh, guess you’re right, I am changed.”
“See?! A man would know when his bulge got bigger!”
“It got smaller actually, it’s just the way the shorts are cling-”
“The fuck you mean it got smaller!? How the fuck is that ‘small’!?”