Roll With It

ENDING 5

A wave of screams and cries of shock crested through the gathered crowd. On stage and dressed in her soft costume and peering through thick, essential glasses, Pearl gawked and blinked at the chaos unleashed throughout the room. Arm trembling, she let the trophy drop on the stage as helpers, presenters, and the audience moved like a spastic sea.

Looking down, May smiled at the barely-contained shape of her bust stretching her top. It was covered in an army of android singers on the march. And her breasts weren't alone as she looked all around her. Suzy was there but also the big guy with the backpack in his lap had long hair and boobs that popped up over her bag. In all directions, men had been replaced by girls, with sometimes-colorful hair, and girls had been swapped with boys possessing varying degrees of muscle. Fortunately, no one noticed them out of the crush of anarchy.

Miranda was sheltered by Nick from the onslaught of altered people trying to leave. He then moved to protect Clair, as simply wrapping her arms around her head was not enough.

Evacuating back to their rooms and being forced to stay there after a long trek, Miranda propped up her forehead and stared at the floor.

"We fucked up, right?" She asked no one in particular but did glance in May's direction. She had one leg up and the other down, as if she were posing for a photo. She shrugged and responded, "Best of all possible worlds for me. Golden ending." She brushed back her blond hair.

Miranda grabbed a pillow and resisted the urge to bury her face in it as she noted, "I can sorta understand why this happened. The last big command was to make a gender swap happen to us. And maybe there was a build-up of that so-called crystal energy you mentioned. But it changed...seemingly, everyone. But if it changed our families too and perhaps even all life on Earth and the universe then that opens up a plethora of conflicting and incongruous ripple effects. Is my dad now my mom and my mom now my dad?"

Lifting her head, May declared, "It's magic...which rewrites reality and turns people into fantasy creatures and you're trying to apply logic to it?"

Clair sat in the chair by the window with her legs tucked up under her. She sometimes looked down at herself but mostly she peered out the window. Traffic had clogged the Strip.

With a sigh, Miranda admitted, "Point taken. But we don't know how this works and we don't know when and if it will end." Suzy flashed a concerned look. She appeared quite distracted and had spent several long minutes in the bathroom mirror. Pearl attempted to scoot her chair closer to Clair but struggled to get enough oomph from her dainty legs. Nick offered to help with a push, which Pearl begrudgingly-accepted.

May scoffed, "This all started because of forever and trying to apply it to a human thing. I want to be with the one I love...forever. But a magic rock probably has a different perspective on forever."

With concern, Suzy asked, "It's...not forever?"

Miranda took a deep breath and admitted, "All I know is when I completed the roll, I wanted things to be settled for as long as possible. For...long enough it would be settled for the six of us. But only the six of us. So...maybe there are different time counters for us compared to anyone else affected? I can't sense anything from the die. It just feels...like it got rebooted, is probably the best word."

Showing off the die, it looked like normal, no more charcoal, but it also had a hint of shimmering color to it, like someone dipped it in the slightest dash of glitter.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

May shrugged. "Could be the rest of our lives and then some. Could be tomorrow."

Suzy placed a hand on the wall and took a deep breath. Pearl asked if she was alright and she gave a quick nod.

Skimming through the limited television stations the hotel offered revealed news programs reporting on the events all across the globe. Miranda blanched as May leaned forward to watch and judge which celebrities made for the best gender-swap. Then, she took to Twitter and Instagram to see the best photos posted by everyone of their "new equipment". She lingered on the various Gone Wild subreddits, as they actually had gone wild, and considered taking a few pics of her own. But plenty of time for that.

Suzy was actually the first to pose for photos and emerged as a selfie maniac. May listened vaguely as Suzy poured out an analysis of her feelings and a commitment that things would be different. Clair plopped on the bed and cross-examined her, searching to see if she was the cause of all this. May openly-admitted that she liked this but she had no hand in it. Well, so far as she knew.

Pearl clung to her bag and sifted through her clothes before changing in the bathroom. Nick was the last to make a stop in there but easily took the longest.

Getting back home was a mess requiring several extra days to navigate but everyone’s workplaces were similarly-impacted. At the comic shop where Simon worked, her altered manager already had several date offers from former and newly-minted boys alike. She played it cool. Family was a mess but that was no different for her than usual. Her frankness and winking-perversion paired well with her body.

Suzy emerged from the shock of day after day of being a girl with wide-eyes but also a wellspring of determination. She took charge of social situations and set up several resources online which May took full advantage of. Pearl remained good friends with Suzy but started hanging out with Clair more often. It freaked Miranda out that Clair was originally put back in school but she managed to dig through a quagmire of official paperwork to resolve her original identity. May didn't bother. Reality had given her May Athena Raley and she had no interest in dredging up Simon.

As the chaos resolved to a new order of things, Miranda discovered her weekend bedroom romp with Nick at the convention had longer-lasting consequences. She went through weeks of denial and a half-dozen pregnancy tests. May could've guessed that. It was a key gender-bending trope. Pregnancy was inevitable for transformed boys. She had fun recording all the living-tropes she met.

Acceptance was ultimately the key theme she witnessed. It was likely a gift from the reality die to the world that mass suicides and depression didn't swallow people up. Clair spent several weeks locked in her room before Pearl managed to bring her out. Pearl switched to contacts and brighter clothes than her convention persona. She also took up weightlifting and managed to place in her division. Nick became a stay-at-home dad to take care of their kids and keep game nights going.

And, for May, it was a golden age of transformation media (of which she contributed a little of her own, anonymously) as it burst out of diaries and online accounts from the recesses of the web to the mainstream. It did take even more of a drop in quality from what she usually enjoyed but she still considered it well worth it.