The City of Elkins, all seven thousand odd people of it, sprawls around a bend in the Tygart River, one of the many small rivers that have carved narrow floodplains through the high country of the Appalachians. Originally the town was called Leadsville - pronounced like 'to lead to water' - until, a bit before the turn of the twentieth century, one Senator Stephen B Elkins (D-WV) moved his coal company and rail operations into the area and essentially took over. The Tygart Valley, while fairly roomy by the standards of eastern West Virginia, is still small enough that even a fairly small town will find itself running out of room and spreading up the sides of the surrounding hills.
From where I parked my car on the street, I could look to the left, through the trees, and see the entire town. The house I'd lived in half my life loomed on the bank to the other side. Two steps from the street to the sidewalk, five through the retaining wall to the level of the yard, then another, single step for the slope of the yard and a dozen to climb up to the porch and the front door. The door itself, as usual for the summer, was open, with the screen door closed to keep the bugs out.
I took a deep breath and stepped inside, moving quietly through the entry foyer with its stairway to the second floor, then left through the square, mostly-for-company living room and back from there into the smaller room with its couch and two armchairs facing the television.
I was just about right on time, and I'd emailed that I was coming, so, as expected, Mom and Dad were waiting for me. Less expected was the fact that my sister was there, too, perched on the couch. None of them noticed me right away - ninja stealth, of course, they were civilians - so I had to speak. "Hey," I said - and waited.
What they saw when they looked up was a young woman, somewhere in the high-school-to-co-ed bracket, in a white t-shirt - silkscreened 'Heart Breaker', with appropriate graphic, close across the bosom and too lose everywhere else, like any other top bought off the rack - and better fitting jeans, with Sachie's boots and armored trenchcoat, enormously tall and spectacularly built in both the muscular and other senses of the phrase, with very straight silver-white hair cut to frame her lovely face and dark indigo eyes you could fall into.
There had been a couple moments involving mirrors where I'd felt like I had.
My father looked up, round, jowled face startled. "Who are y-"
He stopped, shocked. "Nathan?"
I grinned, the same sheepish expression that - I hoped - would be recognizable as his son's. "Yeah."
The first few minutes were... awkward, though I perched in what had been Nathan's preferred spot - on the lip of the stone mantleplace, where it projected out above the level of the floor of the older front section of the house. The mannerisms were different, though - I crossed my legs at the knee, now, rather than propping one ankle on the other knee, and, as my sister pointed out, I fidgited a lot less. Eventually, though, I'd managed to reassure them that the person they remembered was still present, however different-looking.
For the record, I didn't use any genjutsu or other 'active' technique to do that, nor do I feel any particular compunction about the more passive manipulations of tone and posture, guilt-trip and affection, that I did employ. Making sure they were safe and happy couldn't be done if their brother and son disspeared into the blue, and was too important to be left to random chance and misunderstanding.
When the conversation eventually turned to my own plans for how to deal with these changes I'd gone through, I admitted my intention to essentially lay low until the early shocks of this 'Virtue Event' had passed and evened out, impersonating my original face until I was sure it was safe to be publicly 'known'.
It took a demonstration of the transformation technique for them to believe I could pull it off, of course.
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
From where I parked my car on the street, I could look to the left, through the trees, and see the entire town. The house I'd lived in half my life loomed on the bank to the other side. Two steps from the street to the sidewalk, five through the retaining wall to the level of the yard, then another, single step for the slope of the yard and a dozen to climb up to the porch and the front door. The door itself, as usual for the summer, was open, with the screen door closed to keep the bugs out.
I took a deep breath and stepped inside, moving quietly through the entry foyer with its stairway to the second floor, then left through the square, mostly-for-company living room and back from there into the smaller room with its couch and two armchairs facing the television.
I was just about right on time, and I'd emailed that I was coming, so, as expected, Mom and Dad were waiting for me. Less expected was the fact that my sister was there, too, perched on the couch. None of them noticed me right away - ninja stealth, of course, they were civilians - so I had to speak. "Hey," I said - and waited.
What they saw when they looked up was a young woman, somewhere in the high-school-to-co-ed bracket, in a white t-shirt - silkscreened 'Heart Breaker', with appropriate graphic, close across the bosom and too lose everywhere else, like any other top bought off the rack - and better fitting jeans, with Sachie's boots and armored trenchcoat, enormously tall and spectacularly built in both the muscular and other senses of the phrase, with very straight silver-white hair cut to frame her lovely face and dark indigo eyes you could fall into.
There had been a couple moments involving mirrors where I'd felt like I had.
My father looked up, round, jowled face startled. "Who are y-"
He stopped, shocked. "Nathan?"
I grinned, the same sheepish expression that - I hoped - would be recognizable as his son's. "Yeah."
The first few minutes were... awkward, though I perched in what had been Nathan's preferred spot - on the lip of the stone mantleplace, where it projected out above the level of the floor of the older front section of the house. The mannerisms were different, though - I crossed my legs at the knee, now, rather than propping one ankle on the other knee, and, as my sister pointed out, I fidgited a lot less. Eventually, though, I'd managed to reassure them that the person they remembered was still present, however different-looking.
For the record, I didn't use any genjutsu or other 'active' technique to do that, nor do I feel any particular compunction about the more passive manipulations of tone and posture, guilt-trip and affection, that I did employ. Making sure they were safe and happy couldn't be done if their brother and son disspeared into the blue, and was too important to be left to random chance and misunderstanding.
When the conversation eventually turned to my own plans for how to deal with these changes I'd gone through, I admitted my intention to essentially lay low until the early shocks of this 'Virtue Event' had passed and evened out, impersonating my original face until I was sure it was safe to be publicly 'known'.
It took a demonstration of the transformation technique for them to believe I could pull it off, of course.
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."