Don't Touch Anything Chapter 2

                                           Don't Touch Anything
                           A Sailor Moon TG story By JanusDaGuardian
                             Chapter 2: Hypothesizing the Impossible  


*Disclaimer: I don't own the Sailor Moon franchise. Sailor Moon is owned Toei Animation and Naoko Takeuchi. Please support the official release.*


Jason's stunned silence quickly changed to random sets of compulsive pacing and nervous head scratching. When he had entered the room moments prior, he did not expect to witness such a  spectacle as what he'd seen, and now he had a, cute, crying blonde girl, whom he, judging from what he'd seen, assumed was a newly-transformed version of his formerly-Hispanic friend. Between the girl's looks, her disturbingly-cute outfit, and her heart-wrenching sobs, his thought patterns had been thrown into a complete disarray as he tried desperately to figure out what the next course of action should be. Having never experienced nor ran a scenario like this in his brain, he had very little success...

“I could try that... but then... Well, what if I...? No, no...”

Kyle, his male peer and close friend was now a she, and a very unusual she at that... How this could've happened, aside from the ominous lead via the impressive light show, eluded him to no end. One explanation after another filtered through the vast databank of information he'd accumulated over the past 10+ years at the speed of light only to come back with a string of realistically-impossible hypothesises, most of which, to his knowledge, couldn't even be tested from what he knew of the scientific realm. Thus, his “inner-net” search came back as a frustrating “inconclusive”...  

Beep-beep-beep! Beep-beep-beep! Beep-beep-beep!

Apparently, the corndogs were done now. The frozen veggies would've been right behind it too had Jason not just littered the floor with them in shock... He couldn't see it being his fault though. Had he not been made so desensitized over the years by the average subjection of video games, Hollywood presentations, and magazine covers, he might've fainted on the spot from seeing what he'd seen...    

Jason finally stopped pacing the floor and gave off an exasperated sigh as he tried to calm his current mentality and his beating heart. “Kyle, listen...” He glanced over at the blonde girl sitting on the floor nearby, only to look away when the girl looked right back at him with a teary-but-expectant-look on her face. “I-It's... not that bad. I mean...” Jason lost his train of thought again.

“Of course it's bad, Jason! Look at me! I'm short, I'm scrawny, I'm dressed in this ridiculous outfit, I'm white, and I'm blonde!” she wailed.

“I think you're more like a yellow-ish white... Like a pretty half-Asian gir-- Oh, shit! I didn't mean that, Ky! Just don't--”

“WAAAAH!!”

With that, the girl's waterworks resumed their task of drenching the wooden floor with shiny, feminine tears, leaving Jason to stupidly smack himself in the forehead. “Nice going, J. Now she's never gonna stop...”      

Jason shifted his body as if to resume his back-and-forth pacing only to feel his foot bump into something light that wasn't nailed down. When he checked to see what it was, he discovered that it was a small slip of paper, resting inside a perfect circle of thawing veggies on the floor.  

The paper read in big, bold letters:

God, you are hopeless! Just bring her some food and tissues already!          

Jason didn't know how he could've missed that while he was pacing floor moments prior, which kinda begged the question of how the note had gotten there, but, whether it had been there all this time or it was placed there when he and the little crying girl weren't looking, the slip of paper was right about one thing: he was only making things worse by just standing there and trying to sympathize with someone when he honestly had no idea how to do that in this situation...

“I'll be right back,” Jason said.

Of course, Kyle wasn't going anywhere. She-- He was physically immobile by his current mental and physical state, and Jason really couldn't blame him...

At first glance, before whatever just happened, Kyle might be considered a stereotypical high school star; he was easily the best on the team no matter what sport he played, his personality allowed him to make friends easily, even amongst some of the arrogant masses that comprised the Senior student hierarchy of their school, and both his looks and easy-going demeanor made him a pretty big hit with the girls, both above his grade level and below it... Now, aside from the compulsive switch between her local Californian English tongue and her Mexican lingual heritage, there was almost nothing to recognize her by. Hell, if Jason hadn't seen what he saw, Jason might've threw her out onto the streets, lost, bewildered, and miserable, suffering from a mental meltdown that was borne from an unprecedented situation... or at least unprecedented by “real life” standards...                  

Jason's hands shook so much it made a bit of a mess, but he successfully managed to drizzle some mustard on all three corndogs, followed by just one getting ketchup. He made a small detour to the hallway closet to grab a box of tissues, ignoring how his actions felt too scripted to enjoy for a minute as he grabbed a couple gourmet chocolate balls from the secret stash that Mrs. Ford thought was well hidden inside the kitchen freezer. Them, he returned to Ally's room.      

The blonde girl with the long blonde pigtails was just how Jason had left her; bawling her eyes out and staining the expensive wooden flooring, so Jason placed the plate of goodies on the floor in front of her, kneeling down at first to place and open the box of tissues. He then sat down, folding his legs Native-American-style, then went about getting Kyle's attention with a couple snaps of his fingers.

“H-Hey...” Cringing at his croaking voice, Jason cleared his throat and tried again. “Hey! Kyle!”

Kyle dropped her hands, revealing a cute but miserable face with big blue eyes still full of tears, the edges just starting to show hints of red from the crying. Glistening drops of the salty liquid still hung at some of the edges as her lips continued to quiver. She was a very sorry sight, so much so that Jason found it incredibly difficult to look her right in the eyes.

“C-Crying can take up a lot of energy. Or, at least, so I've heard. The corndogs are done, so you should probably try and have a couple bites. It might make you feel better if you do...”

Kyle sniffed and slowly nodded her head. Her hands grabbed a couple tissues first, folding them together before blowing her nose.

Jason snorted and covered his mouth to hide the smile. This girlish rendition of a masculine nose blow honestly amused him, but he bit his tongue just enough to lessen the chance of setting her off again, which was the last thing he wanted to happen.    

After drying her eyes a bit, the pretty blonde girl before him reached for her first corndog and took a bite.

Upon hearing a yelp, Jason shot a glance back and found that Kyle must have tried for a bite  that was a little too big for her because her lips were now slathered with mustard and her cheeks looked pretty full. The corndog must've been pretty good, albeit a little too hot and juicy because she yanked the piece of condensed meat and batter right back out of her mouth with a very-girlish squeal, fanning her tongue with her hand.

“Ah! Ah! Ah!”

This was the second time she'd almost made him laugh in the last half-minute, and it was getting harder and harder to resist the urge each time...  

“Are you okay, Kyle?” Jason snatched up one of the gourmet chocolate balls from the plate and handed it to her.

She took it without hesitation and popped it right into her mouth the instant she undid the wrapper.

“Those things just came out of the toaster oven. I thought you knew that, but it looks as though you just burnt your tongue.”

“Ow! Ah! OW~!”    

Jason felt a little guilty now, having just indirectly burned the poor girl's tongue. At first, he was afraid that she might be upset with him, but then he remembered that she was his girl-ified friend and caught himself slapping his own forehead instead. Of course she wasn't mad. At least not at him...

“I'll go get you a cup of ice or something...”

Kyle reached out and tugged down on his shirt. The last time she did this to keep him from leaving, Jason bruised his knee and hip from being forced off-balance, but, this time, she was lacking her usual male-based strength and, thus, only really succeeded in getting his attention. “No, no. Stay here. I want you to sit with me for now, even if it's just to watch me eat and talk...”

Jason didn't know how to respond to that, given that it was said in such an adorable voice, but he stayed as requested and placed his hands on his knees.  

Kyle tried her luck with corndog again, blowing on the end of it through her small, pink lips to cool it before biting into it again, taking only a small fraction of what the first bite was this time.

She didn't react as much on this try, except for the “Mmm”-type sigh and a slight, closed-mouth “juggling” of her food. That's when Jason noticed the saliva mixed with the mustard at the corners of those closed, pink lips.

A very dirty thought crossed Jason's mind, and it lasted about as long as it took Kyle to take her second bite of the cornmeal-battered delicacy and glanced up at him in a fairly erotic fashion... Then, Jason averted his gaze, mentally bashing his head against a concrete wall for letting his red-blooded fantasies invade his frontal cortex while his friend was in an unsolvable pickle. For extra measure, he placed his hand over his groin...

Kyle kept on eating, but all ten of Jason's fingers were now rippling tensely against his knee-caps, wishing that she'd just hurry up and finish. Between not having anything to do, watching his athletic friend transform into a beautiful girl-- who looked to be around his age-- and watching said girl eat something that looked disturbingly-close to...-- well, you know...-- he had become about as tense as he could've possibly become without fainting. In an effort to distract himself from this insanity, he started reciting something familiar that he'd just picked up in a book, not realizing that by doing so he was drawing attention to himself...

“... Lithium, 6.94 grams. Sodium, 22.99 grams.

“Jason...?”

Potassium, 39.10 grams...”

“Jason--”

“...85.47 grams. Cesium, 132.91 grams...”

“Jason!”

Jason snapped to attention. “Yeah?! Huh? What?”

Kyle chewed and swallowed the last bit of her second corndog before answering. “You're gonna blow a gasket if you keep on that chemistry class crap. Knock it off!”

Apparently what Jason thought were just his inner, inaudible thoughts working through a Chemistry table of known elements was actually his lips muttering at a barely-audible level, prompting him to give a half-hearted “Sorry...” in reply.

The blond-haired girl sighed and covered her face with her hand, shaking the former all the while as her tone grew a little quieter and softer. “Ay dios maltose... I know you're stressed out. I am too, but, with all due respect, I'm the one with the inverted-pancake here, so... Just try and relax for me, okay, J?” she said, emphasizing what she was saying with a purposeful relaxation of her shoulders.

Maltose? Inverted pancake? Jason couldn't help but cock his brow at Kyle's choice of words, but the mixed expression of concern and frustration on that girl's face compelled him to nod softly and acknowledge that he'd at least heard her request, despite his lingering tension. “Okay.”  

Kyle went after the last corndog as well, causing Jason to react slightly, moving his lips like he was going to object, but nothing but except air came out of them.

After another minute or so, Jason worked up the courage to talk again. This situation was only going to get more awkward if the silence persisted, and he had more than I few questions he wanted to ask Kyle. “So... aside from the obvious, how are you feeling?” Jason asked. “I'm guessing your stomach is fine since you're eating my corndog now, too. Are you hurting anywhere?”

Kyle carefully chewed and swallowed her next bite before responding. “I guess I'm feeling kinda...sluggish? Like if I've just had a big meal, or woke up too early.”

“So you're feeling kinda lethargic?”

Kyle shrugged as if to guess that was the correct word. “I'm also not happy about the clothes. I mean, from the neck to the crotch, I'm feeling a little restricted...

“For the first time, I feel pretty much exposed all over, even though these are supposed to be clothes, I'm guessing... It feels weird not having as much body hair at the moment, too.

“Then there's a noticeable breeze right between my legs, right beneath the...” Kyle caught herself gesturing just a little too much while answering these, causing her to blush when she made the connection between Jason's attentive eyes and her fingers as they subconsciously made a move towards the skirt flaps that blocked her leotard-ed crotch from view.

Kyle glared at him and snatched up the last chocolate ball. “Never mind...”            

Jason shook his head, trying to refocus his thoughts. “Okay, so 'tired', 'uncomfortable', 'mortified'... Can you still walk?”

Kyle blinked, looking somewhat perplex by the sudden change mid-sentence. “Huh?”

Jason uncurled his legs and attempted to stand before cringing and shaking his left leg. “Dang, feels like my leg has already fallen asleep...” he sighed. “If you can make it to the living room, I'd rather continue this somewhere I'm not sitting on a wooden floor the entire time...”

Again, Kyle looked confused by Jason's lead, but she swallowed the last bit of corndog and tried following suit, only to yelp and collapse onto her side, legs extending outwards on the other side. Between the heeled boots and what Jason guessed was the result and lack thereof of circulation, Jason forgot the plate with the three mouth-cleaned popsicle sticks and chocolate wrappers on it, as well as the vegetables that littered the floor, and simply concentrated on getting his girl-ified friend--and her remarkably nice legs...-- off the floor and out into the Ford living room.          

Once Kyle was comfortably seated on the couch, which prompted her to sigh in a manner that caused Jason's heart to flutter, Jason took his seat at his assigned reading chair as he prepared his next round of questions.

“So, what do you think caused all of this exactly? Did you find anything strange in Ally's room?”

Kyle paused and stopped looking him in the eye. “Huh...? What do you mean...?”

Jason narrowed his eyes. This was one of the more obvious ways he could tell his friend was hiding something. Another would be off-keyed whistling, which came with a comedic effect... “I suppose I could go down a list of plot elements from current and past sci-fi and fantasy transformation stories, but I doubt that would help us very much, considering you've probably never heard of most of them, and I think most of them are honestly either extremely boring, confusing, or even down-right stupid, so let's just try to get some leads here for a second... Before you turned into... what I'd hazard to guess, is a half-decent recreation of one of Ally's favorite Japanese cartoon characters, what happened?” With that, Jason closed his hands together and settled back into his seat. “Every detail you can recall might count for something later, so keep that in mind. Don't take too long either, Kyle, or else you might run the risk of mixing your memories with some false information...”

Kyle made a face like she didn't care much for his stern, pushy conditions, but she seemed comfortable enough to share anyways despite this, which made sense to Jason since he doubted very much that his best friend enjoyed his current disposition, given what she'd already told him...

Kyle furrowed her brow in concentration. “I'm guessing I should start with me exiting the bathroom...”

Jason nodded. “Sounds fine...”

“Well... I glanced into the kitchen and noticed that you weren't there anymore, but I heard you downstairs, so I decided, just to pass the time, to take a peek inside Ally's room...”

Kyle paused to see if he would say anything about this. His eyebrows did lower a bit in displeasure, but he otherwise waited patiently for the rest of the story, queuing for her to continue by briefly raising his eyebrows and his interlaced fingers.

“I looked around the room a bit, wondering why everything looked kinda messy. Given what you said earlier about your sister living in an apartment now, it looked strange to me...”

“I'm guessing this was around the time I came back upstairs from the basement, right?” Jason said.

Kyle nodded. “That's when I found this thing,” she said, pointing to the circular jewelry attached to upper-torso. “It was a necklace and pendant when I first saw it. Same gems, but definitely not what it looks like now. Now, it's like a, uh...”

“A broach...?”

“Yeah, that... Anyways, I went to take a closer look at it--”

“Choosing to look with your hands, I'll bet...”

Kyle visibly slumped at this, most likely out of slight exasperation for Jason's increasing amount of interruptions, rather than outta shame. “Then, let's see... the pendant started to glow... It attached itself to my neck and... Oh, yeah, a girl!”

“'A girl?”

Kyle started nodding enthusiastically to herself, as if she'd just remembered something really important. “Yeah, a girl's voice. She shouted something like, “'Moon Power... Make-'something. Come to think of it, my voice kinda sounds like what I remember hers sounding like at the time.” She shrugged. “In any case, that's when my clothes made a sudden disappearance, and then I ended up looking like this...”

Jason furled his brow. “That's it?”

“Give or take a few creepy facts, yeah, that's about it...”

Jason sighed and leaned backwards, his mind piecing together as much of the interesting stuff he'd just heard whilst attempting to fill some of the gaps with lesser ones he'd either gotten from Kyle's testimony or what he'd garnered from his recent observations. Unfortunately, there were still some pieces missing that he doubted Kyle could answer. One of which included, if his guess was correct, which fictional character Kyle's current form most depicted and why.

Fishing into his pocket, Jason got his cell phone and set about texting the only person he could think of that might have a clue about this...

Kyle's body shifted at this, followed by a worried, “Wait! What are you doing?”                  
       
“I'm gonna try texting Ally, see if she might know something.”

“You thinking she did this?” Kyle asked.

Jason exhaled, his lips displaying a wry smile, indicating that his Godfather impression was finished for now and that he was back to his neutral self. “I doubt it, but she might know who you look like right now, if your body is, indeed, based on someone or something that doesn't exist.”

Kyle frowned at Jason's emphasis on the word “something”, but she didn't look like she took it too hard. “Well, I doubt I'm anything artificial, unless I'm suppose to be something outta the Ultraman games, or one of those awful knockoffs...”

After reviewing his spelling and punctuation, Jason sent the text and closed his phone. “Okay, it's probably gonna be a bit before she answers. I think she's at another Expo today, so you might wanna try--”

Jason's phone vibrated, causing him to lose his train of thought and nearly drop the phone in surprise. Where Kyle's somewhat-annoying chuckle would usually be was a feminine giggle that followed his surprised reaction. Strangely enough, it felt more embarrassing hearing a girl's voice in that same scenario.

“Hee-hee, wow, that was quick! What did she say?”

Jason read the text, but, for whatever reason, he chose not to read it out loud. After a moment's worth of thought, he fired off another text, this time, holding his phone at the ready.

Once again, the reply came within twenty seconds of his own, which was hardly fair since Jason's phone required as many as three button presses to produce even one freaking letter of text, whereas Ally's phone likely had a full keyboard touch-screen. Not to mention, his sister hardly bothered with proper punctuation.

The next reply from his elder sister caused Jason to glance over at Kyle, his gaze sternly shifting both up and down her body and prompting Kyle to curl herself up into a nervous ball upon the couch's cushions. “What are you looking at?!”

“Nothing bad. Just hold still...”

Jason slowly typed in his next text, cringing here and there, and sometimes groaning in irritation as he went about erasing some of his mistakes within the text. Soon enough, he had what he thought was a decent follow-up, including something he remembered Kyle mentioning when she recounted the events before and during her rather magnificent transformation...

The last reply from Ally came a lot slower than the rest, possibly five to seven minutes, causing Jason to rap his fingers on his armrest for most of that time while Kyle began fidgeting with her outfit's skirt, as if she only just realized how incredibly short it looked on her slender figure...          
       
When the text finally came, Jason got up from his seat and marched back into the hallway, right back into Ally's veggie-covered bedroom. He knew where to look next as he found the black wire trash bin just around the door's threshold, which was still filled with several DVD cases and disks, and a book with a white cover, which was torn almost completely in half.

Jason carefully removed the two pieces of the latter-most items he'd discovered, taking great care in not ripping it more and made with examining them for clues.

The clue that he found was so obvious and profound that he almost smacked himself in the forehead for having not remembered seeing the images the last time Ally was viewing it in his presence. On one cover, which Jason guessed to be the back of the book, was a gorgeous depiction of a familiar-looking girl posing in a small, frilly outfit, both of which matched Kyle's current look to almost the last detail, aside from the air-headed-- and arguably-super-cute--, open-mouthed smile. The other cover depicted the same girl, only drawn comically smaller, but the one thing both covers shared was a title, which apparently also answered Jason's follow-up question involving the girl's labeled identity.

“'Sailor Moon'... by 'Naoko Takeuchi'...”