"Arun!" Lìadan's voice rang over the rocks, dismay clear in her tone. "Arun, you get leafs of green-blue flower in food, yes?"
On the other side of the ledge, in the dry hollow of the tiny island, Arun looked up from his laptop and the progress report he was typing up. "Uh. Yeah? You said it was alright to eat..."
"No, no! I say blue-green, not -- ahh. Bad -- wrong flower. Wrong."
Arun straightened up, alarmed, and scrambled over to look at her, half-expecting to find her or the pirate green and twitching. "Oh shit. Is it poiso...nous..."
In the shallow cove, Lìadan and Blue sat; Blue was frozen on the spot, a half-eaten plant cake still in hand. His tanktop was sliding down a still lanky, but now smaller shoulder, low enough to offer glimpses of round bumps that should never have existed on him.
"... What the hell?"
Dark eyes snapped up toward him, blank shock giving into predatory anger. "Yeah, s'what I'm wondering too. Got the wrong flower?"
Arun scowled. "Oh, get real, like I knew there's a flower on this planet that can give you..."
Boobs.
The words died in his throat, meaning catching up with him, and he swore again, more loudly. Blue was still sitting by the water with his bare feet in the waves, and his ankles were too thin now, oddly frail, his feet -- not tiny, he was too tall for tiny feet, but -- different. Thin and lanky, and the shorts were too large in some place and pulled taut in others, and the tanktop -- well, the spray and the sea wind apparently made things kind of nipply.
"... Lìadan? You. It's a hallucinogenic, right? -- Ah, it makes, I mean, makes people see false things?"
The mermaid twitched her hand to the side in that peculiar dismissive way that meant 'no, of course not' to her people. "Is Amazon flower, makes man woman."
Blue's skin was usually pretty pale, but right now it was a shade that would have deserved being called cadaverous.
"Shit, shit, shit." Arun clambered his way over the rocks, joined them down in the cove, still staring at the third member of their little group. "He's a -- he's a she!"
"Hadn't noticed," Blue gritted out, holding himself painfully still, as if moving would confirm things he couldn't stand having confirmed. "Why the fuck are you freaking out? I'm the one missing a few pieces."
"But it's -- mammal bodies aren't supposed to do that! And from eating a plant? It's not possible, okay, it's just wrong -- maybe it's water retention that makes you swell--"
Blue turned to Lìadan, spearing her with a dark glare he meant for Arun more than for her. "How long does it last?"
"Last? Like first, second, last?"
"--No, like --" Blue fell silent, frustrated, glared at Arun who was only good for talking and wasn't doing his job.
"Later, is he going to be a man again?"
Lìadan blinked, and then waved off their concerns, smiling. "Hm! A day, and a night, and a day, and maybe another day? Plant goes away for the -- from? From the body. Goes away, man again."
"... Oh. Well. That's good." Arun unbent enough to give a forced chuckle. "Great. It still shouldn't even happen, but at least it's not permanent. Cool?" He sneaked a glance at Blue, who was still sitting stiff and twitchy on his rock, but at least looked less brittle. He was clearly recognizable, but there was still something off about his face -- smoother forehead, rounder eyebrow ridge, smaller jaw... Arun was of the opinion that Blue wasn't all that overflowing with masculinity in the first place, but now, well, um. "So... Care to get up and see how this body works?"
Blue's glare looked even nastier like that, somehow.
Arun swallowed a snicker. "Come on. In the interest of science? What's different! The question has plagued mankind for centuries and no one was ever able to offer the voice of experience to end the debate."
Lìadan blinked and watched them, clearly confused as to what was going on. Arun just rarely smiled at Blue, and she didn't know a third of the words they used yet; she had to feel lost. Arun gave her an apologetic little smile, but he got the occasion to needle the pirate without fear of revenge so rarely.
"...What."
"Get up, walk a little, see what your balance is like? You're not going to stay on this rock for the next two days or however long it takes to run its course."
Blue reluctantly started pulling himself up, though he froze when Arun scrambled back to the dry hollow to get his laptop.
"You're going to take notes?"
Arun grinned, a little too cheerfully. "Hey, I have to keep accurate records of my experiences. Can't rely on memory, you know, numbers get fudged, timelines distorted..."
"... You're going to write a report on it? An official report?"
"Are you kidding? I'm going to write a thesis."
Arun didn't know if Blue's lack of balance was due to his new body or the unstable terrain; either way, with enough determination, apparently it wasn't too difficult to scramble up the slope and go for a tackle. Two seconds later, Arun was sprawled on his back, with rocks digging into his shoulder blades, his ass higher than his head by almost fifteen inches, flattened by a slim but stubborn girl who knew how to use her elbows, if he believed the one currently crushing his trachea.
"Here," Blue said, "For science."
Arun choked on the plant cake, coughing up bits and pieces; Blue mercilessly pressed his hand across his mouth, and refused to budge until the coughs had subsided.
Over the rocks, Lìadan called, a couple of words in her tongue that didn't really need translation.
"It's fine," Blue replied, his thin smile grimly satisfied.
Under him, Arun glared for all he was worth, and tried not to panic at the strange weight of breasts pulled toward his shoulders by gravity.
By the time Arun straightened up and made his way back to the top of the ridge, Blue was already down in the cove, still smirking faintly.
Lìadan politely hid her smile behind both hands when she saw Arun reappear, though her eyes did enough smiling that it didn't make much of a difference.
"... Yeah, laugh at me. It's all your fault, you know."
"Not! Yours. I say, careful! Blue-green, not green-blue. You wrong. Girl now." She waved it off. "Girl go away. Not sick, not oww."
"Yeah, unless one of us trips over his boobs and breaks a leg before tomorrow," Blue muttered, not quite under his breath. Since Blue hadn't much breasts to speak of, Arun felt fairly secure in the belief that his "one of us" actually meant him.
"Careful, the catty is getting to your brain," he snapped back. Blue's eyes narrowed; Arun didn't care. Huffing, he stared down at his own -- generous -- curves, shoulders slumping. "Well, at least when I'm sitting in the boat the utter lack of balance isn't going to bother me too much..."
"Oh -- wait, bad, bad!"
"What?" Arun stared at the mermaid, expecting her to announce another horror. "Cooked plants are more potent? The effect is permanent on two-tails?"
"Uhn? No, no. Is bad because girl pod now. No male. Drifter pod see, he says, ooh. Girl-mer, girl-two-tails, no male say no, I take!" She made clawing motions with her hands, fingers curved.
Arun and Blue exchanged a quick, uneasy look. "But we're two-tails, they won't want us, right?"
"Um." Lìadan leaned forward, peering at Blue, closer than she'd ever gotten to his male shape. "Good two-tail, not ew -- looks, likes it."
Arun choked on a startled snicker. "She's saying you're pretty."
"Arun too."
Arun stopped laughing.
"Not all..." she folded her arms and twisted her back weirdly, pretending to be deformed, paralyzed. "Still ew, legs, but up is good. Male pod, lots of males, no female, say -- is bad, other people say ew at them, but."
Arun could have lived a long time without seeing his cute, innocent little Lìadan push her middle finger in the thumb-and-index circle of her other hand.
"Down there still good for male, so eh. Legs, no legs, eh."
"So basically boning a cripple is still kind of disgusting for polite society, but when you're hard up for a fuck it doesn't matter too much," Blue translated. "Well, shit."
"What is 'hard up for a fuck'?"
"Nothing you need to know," Arun snapped before Blue could answer.
Lìadan pouted. "Say 'fuck' often. Is good word -- no, no good -- big? Need. Need the word."
"It's a bad word," Arun explained, rubbing his head wearily.
"... Word is bad how? Word is word, say thing -- thing that is or thing that is not or thing that maybe is. Word says bad thing?"
Blue was doing that carefully blank expression that meant he was laughing inside; no help from this side, not that Arun ever expected him to help.
"It's -- it's -- can we concentrate on the fact that we're currently girls here?"
"Oh. Yes. ... What is 'concentrate'?"
Sometimes Arun wished his hair were a little longer, so he could pull on it. Wearily, he slid down the slope, ending the short trip on his ass in the shallow water. Ow. Well, at least Lìadan wasn't laughing, but then she'd always been more surprised when his rock climbing didn't end up in a fall. "Concentrate. Think hard. Find a way, a plan."
"Hm. Find way for female, tell male 'go away'?"
"Yeah." Arun sighed heavily. There was cool water soaking into his shorts, in places that had no business being soaked. It distracted him enough that he didn't notice her leaning toward him on her hands until they were almost nose to nose.
"I know how. Easy!"
And then she reached past him, picked up the last bit of plant cake, and plopped it in her mouth.
Blue was tall as a man, but whipcord thin. Arun wasn't as tall, but stockier. Lìadan wasn't quite as tall as Blue, and not quite as broad-chested and thick-limbed as Arun, but for a not-quite-adult, she made a good try.
Blue and Arun stared dumbly as Lìadan curled her thick, muscular tail around herself, admired her strong hands and thick, sharpened nails, and shamelessly felt up her own chest and hips area. The many little braids were incongruous on a male; but the easy pride in her smile wasn't.
"Hohoho. My pod now!"
There must have been a way to make evil, gloating laughter sound cuter than Lìadan's did, but Arun wasn't the one who would be figuring it out.
"Hey," Blue interrupted gruffly. "By pod you mean...?"
Arun rolled his eyes. "It translates as 'family unit', but in fact it's closer to 'harem'."
Blue shook his head, bemused. "And 's all it needs? One merguy, a handful of girls, and you're a pod?"
"Oh, right, no pod yet," Lìadan replied, vaguely contrite. And then she smiled. "You swim, I catch, then pod."
Blue stared at her for almost a minute before pointing out the obvious. "... I can't swim."
Lìadan's hopeful smile turned adorably devious. "I know."