Monday, July 6, 9:31 AM EDT
I ended up taking a sick day in order to deal with the penguin and the voice in my head. Peggy, however, needed to be at work for a telephone conference with someone from her company's outsourced IT department, which was now based in Manila. Yes, the one in the Philippines. So I had to drive her to her office in Plainsboro by six thirty.
I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that Alistair insisted on coming along. I didn't argue, and Raye's presence in my mind exuded a palpable relief. I didn't blame her -- things were strange enough for her without being deprived of her one anchor to familiarity.
I, on the other hand, found nothing familiar in having a penguin around.
To his credit, Alistair was quiet for most of the ride. However, after I dropped Peggy off, he crawled into her vacated front seat with a nimbleness I wouldn't've expected from any creature with his height-to-girth ratio. "Seatbelt, please," he requested before I could put the car in gear.
I turned and looked at him. He looked back, and held up a wing. "I can neither reach the clasp, nor am I strong enough to draw the strap down across my body." He glanced rather forlornly at the end of the fin. "I am also somewhat deficient in manipulatory digits, which poses its own problems."
In the back of my head, Raye giggled. "Laugh it up, Blondie," I muttered as I buckled Alistair in.
"Ah, yes. Raye has always been amused by my... shortcomings."
I glanced over at the waterfowl. "Did you just make a joke?"
A beady black eye stared at me. "I do not know how you may have envisioned me, sir, but I am by no means devoid of a sense of humor."
I remembered one of the short pieces I'd posted in the forum and nodded. "Right. 'Your Personal Penguin' -- I'd forgotten about that."
"Indeed." Alistair seemed somewhat mollified by my concession.
"So..." I asked after several minutes of silence during which I turned off of College Road and onto Route 1 northbound. Merging into the light traffic occupied me for a few seconds before I continued. "What's next, o wise master?"
Alistair snorted. "Next, o featherless biped, we see if Raye exists only as a voice in your mind or still has a physical existence of her own." He paused pensively, then continued. "I can only assume the latter must be true, else I would never have been reassigned to this timeline."
I risked a quick glance to my right before returning my eyes to the road. "'Reassigned'? You know, that's something I never actually worked up for Raye's character -- where her powers, and you for that matter, come from. So spill. Who reassigned you?"
"That, Mr. Schroeck," the penguin replied snottily, "is Need-To-Know information, and you do not need to know."
"You know, herringwipe," I replied with the hint of a snarl, "You're lucky you don't taste like chicken."
"I am quaking in my non-existent boots," Alistair replied, perfectly deadpan, staring out the window at the Wall Street Journal building as it passed.
Raye squealed, grabbed up Alistair, and spun around energetically in the warm sunshine. "It worked! I'm me!"
And I'm me, said a male voice in the back of her head, with more good humor than snarkiness. So glad we got that straightened out.
After returning from delivering Peggy to her job, Bob and Alistair had decided to take the next logical steps in the back yard of their home. It wasn't the most private location -- on two sides nearby homes looked directly into it, while from where she stood, Raye could see all the way to two of the streets that defined the irregularly-shaped block and needed only move a few feet to see a third. However, all three of them agreed that it was better than risking the Schroeck home and its contents on any unexpected side-effects of their efforts. She idly noted that the grass was in want of a mowing; it tickled her ankles as she spun around, her arms full of penguin.
Alistair's voice suddenly cut through her wordless delight at being re-embodied. "Please put me down, Raye, I believe I am going to be ill."
I'd do it, Raye. Last thing you want now that you're out in the sun again is to get penguin barf on you.
"Oh, yuck."
Alistair had grass under his feet a moment later. He took a minute or two to recover from Raye's enthusiastic spin, during which Raye studied the yard behind the sage-green house. Not ten feet away, adjacent to a concrete patio that led to a sliding glass door, was a beige brick barbecue grill with a low attached wall running next to it. Overwhelming the wall was a positive explosion of giant purple, pink and white flowers on stems that all seemed as tall or taller than she was. "Wow," she whispered as she stepped closer and gently ran her fingers over the tissue-thin petals of one dinner-plate-sized flower. "Pretty."
Hibiscus, Bob said. And the bushes over there by the fence, those are Rose of Sharon. Peggy's very proud of those.
The bushes in question were even taller, and speckled with many pinkish blossoms, much smaller than the hibiscus but very similar in appearance.
Alistair coughed rather importantly, and as she swiveled back to him he said, "Well. We have determined that Robert can, by invoking your transformation incantation, effectively exchange places with you in your unpowered form."
I'd be happier about that, said Bob's mental voice, if we knew you could undo it, too.
"Bob wants us to try changing back," Raye promptly relayed. It had only taken one instance of calling him "Mr. Schroeck" before Bob insisted on less formal address. Raye had seized on it eagerly.
Alistair appeared momentarily flustered. "Ah... quite. I was going move on to invoking your transformation next, but yes, that is a valid concern, and only polite. It is, after all, his body mass you are using, presumably."
Raye nodded. "I don't want to feel like a thief," she said as much for her "host"'s benefit as for her mascot/trainer.
"Very well then," Alistair. "I'm sure you recall the mental trigger for the detransformation."
Raye didn't dignify that with a response, and instead simply steeled her will and invoked the change back. It felt strange to be doing this when not powered up, almost wrong, but she ignored the feeling and flipped what she thought of most of the time as a kind of mental switch.
The world went black.
When it came back, she was a passenger in Bob's head again. "Yay, it worked," Bob said with no small amount of satisfaction. "My wife thanks you, my mother thanks you..."
Raye giggled, and she felt, in a strange inside way, his answering smile.
"Okay then," he went on before Alistair could interject anything, "Let's give Raye the driver's seat again and see if her sharp pointy toys came with her."
"Quite."
Bob chuckled. "And I have to admit I'm curious to see if her invulnerability powers make her glow as much as she appears to in the game." He glanced down at the penguin. "If everyone's ready..."
Whenever you are, Bob, she "said."
He nodded, then raised one hand to the sky. "By the power of the Holy Sword," he intoned for the second time in ten minutes, "HENSHIN!"
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
I ended up taking a sick day in order to deal with the penguin and the voice in my head. Peggy, however, needed to be at work for a telephone conference with someone from her company's outsourced IT department, which was now based in Manila. Yes, the one in the Philippines. So I had to drive her to her office in Plainsboro by six thirty.
I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that Alistair insisted on coming along. I didn't argue, and Raye's presence in my mind exuded a palpable relief. I didn't blame her -- things were strange enough for her without being deprived of her one anchor to familiarity.
I, on the other hand, found nothing familiar in having a penguin around.
To his credit, Alistair was quiet for most of the ride. However, after I dropped Peggy off, he crawled into her vacated front seat with a nimbleness I wouldn't've expected from any creature with his height-to-girth ratio. "Seatbelt, please," he requested before I could put the car in gear.
I turned and looked at him. He looked back, and held up a wing. "I can neither reach the clasp, nor am I strong enough to draw the strap down across my body." He glanced rather forlornly at the end of the fin. "I am also somewhat deficient in manipulatory digits, which poses its own problems."
In the back of my head, Raye giggled. "Laugh it up, Blondie," I muttered as I buckled Alistair in.
"Ah, yes. Raye has always been amused by my... shortcomings."
I glanced over at the waterfowl. "Did you just make a joke?"
A beady black eye stared at me. "I do not know how you may have envisioned me, sir, but I am by no means devoid of a sense of humor."
I remembered one of the short pieces I'd posted in the forum and nodded. "Right. 'Your Personal Penguin' -- I'd forgotten about that."
"Indeed." Alistair seemed somewhat mollified by my concession.
"So..." I asked after several minutes of silence during which I turned off of College Road and onto Route 1 northbound. Merging into the light traffic occupied me for a few seconds before I continued. "What's next, o wise master?"
Alistair snorted. "Next, o featherless biped, we see if Raye exists only as a voice in your mind or still has a physical existence of her own." He paused pensively, then continued. "I can only assume the latter must be true, else I would never have been reassigned to this timeline."
I risked a quick glance to my right before returning my eyes to the road. "'Reassigned'? You know, that's something I never actually worked up for Raye's character -- where her powers, and you for that matter, come from. So spill. Who reassigned you?"
"That, Mr. Schroeck," the penguin replied snottily, "is Need-To-Know information, and you do not need to know."
"You know, herringwipe," I replied with the hint of a snarl, "You're lucky you don't taste like chicken."
"I am quaking in my non-existent boots," Alistair replied, perfectly deadpan, staring out the window at the Wall Street Journal building as it passed.
Raye squealed, grabbed up Alistair, and spun around energetically in the warm sunshine. "It worked! I'm me!"
And I'm me, said a male voice in the back of her head, with more good humor than snarkiness. So glad we got that straightened out.
After returning from delivering Peggy to her job, Bob and Alistair had decided to take the next logical steps in the back yard of their home. It wasn't the most private location -- on two sides nearby homes looked directly into it, while from where she stood, Raye could see all the way to two of the streets that defined the irregularly-shaped block and needed only move a few feet to see a third. However, all three of them agreed that it was better than risking the Schroeck home and its contents on any unexpected side-effects of their efforts. She idly noted that the grass was in want of a mowing; it tickled her ankles as she spun around, her arms full of penguin.
Alistair's voice suddenly cut through her wordless delight at being re-embodied. "Please put me down, Raye, I believe I am going to be ill."
I'd do it, Raye. Last thing you want now that you're out in the sun again is to get penguin barf on you.
"Oh, yuck."
Alistair had grass under his feet a moment later. He took a minute or two to recover from Raye's enthusiastic spin, during which Raye studied the yard behind the sage-green house. Not ten feet away, adjacent to a concrete patio that led to a sliding glass door, was a beige brick barbecue grill with a low attached wall running next to it. Overwhelming the wall was a positive explosion of giant purple, pink and white flowers on stems that all seemed as tall or taller than she was. "Wow," she whispered as she stepped closer and gently ran her fingers over the tissue-thin petals of one dinner-plate-sized flower. "Pretty."
Hibiscus, Bob said. And the bushes over there by the fence, those are Rose of Sharon. Peggy's very proud of those.
The bushes in question were even taller, and speckled with many pinkish blossoms, much smaller than the hibiscus but very similar in appearance.
Alistair coughed rather importantly, and as she swiveled back to him he said, "Well. We have determined that Robert can, by invoking your transformation incantation, effectively exchange places with you in your unpowered form."
I'd be happier about that, said Bob's mental voice, if we knew you could undo it, too.
"Bob wants us to try changing back," Raye promptly relayed. It had only taken one instance of calling him "Mr. Schroeck" before Bob insisted on less formal address. Raye had seized on it eagerly.
Alistair appeared momentarily flustered. "Ah... quite. I was going move on to invoking your transformation next, but yes, that is a valid concern, and only polite. It is, after all, his body mass you are using, presumably."
Raye nodded. "I don't want to feel like a thief," she said as much for her "host"'s benefit as for her mascot/trainer.
"Very well then," Alistair. "I'm sure you recall the mental trigger for the detransformation."
Raye didn't dignify that with a response, and instead simply steeled her will and invoked the change back. It felt strange to be doing this when not powered up, almost wrong, but she ignored the feeling and flipped what she thought of most of the time as a kind of mental switch.
The world went black.
When it came back, she was a passenger in Bob's head again. "Yay, it worked," Bob said with no small amount of satisfaction. "My wife thanks you, my mother thanks you..."
Raye giggled, and she felt, in a strange inside way, his answering smile.
"Okay then," he went on before Alistair could interject anything, "Let's give Raye the driver's seat again and see if her sharp pointy toys came with her."
"Quite."
Bob chuckled. "And I have to admit I'm curious to see if her invulnerability powers make her glow as much as she appears to in the game." He glanced down at the penguin. "If everyone's ready..."
Whenever you are, Bob, she "said."
He nodded, then raised one hand to the sky. "By the power of the Holy Sword," he intoned for the second time in ten minutes, "HENSHIN!"
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.