The Department Of Keeping It Real - Chapters 6-7 free porn video

Below are chapters 4-5 of my novella, Keeping it Real! If you like what you see, check out my Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/OvidLemma) for unpublished chapters, release announcements, and Patron-only stories. Thanks for reading! THE DEPARTMENT OF KEEPING IT REAL VOLUME I: KEEPING IT REAL by OVID LEMMA CHAPTER SIX: A CARTESIAN THEATRE "Are you okay, honey?" Meghan said. Alyssa... Trevor... she shook her head. "What happened?" Her voice was different. She was different. "The shift came early? How..." "We're still trying to figure that out," Michael said. They were in the living room of the Bailey house, Alyssa lying prone on the couch with a wet compress over her head. Her parents' faces were knit with worry. Her head didn't hurt, though - it was just... muddled. She sat up and looked down upon herself. Long chestnut-brown hair obscured the view, but she could tell she'd grown more feminine, certainly in the breast department. Her face... she wasn't sure how much she could tell by feeling her face with her fingers. And she was definitely thinking of herself as 'she'... that was disconcerting. What the hell had happened? "Wait..." she said. "Honey," Meghan said. "We need your help..." They were in the living room of the Bailey house... and it was exactly like she'd remembered it from before the shift. Was that right? Was she misremembering? After all, she was thinking of herself as a her now, so not everything was the same up there... but she could remember all of boy- Trevor's memories (or so it seemed). The living room definitely looked small and out of place in the otherwise much-larger house... "Something went wrong with the shift," she said, getting to her feet. "I was over at Bryce's. How did I get here? Was it those... the guys with the satellite dish. They were CoReS, right?" Even her voice sounded different - slightly higher and softer. Easing to her feet, Alyssa was a bit pleased to find that she wasn't any smaller. If anything, she was a bit taller, almost as tall as her mother. "As far as we can tell," Meghan said, "CoReS injected some malicious code into our system, muddling up the shift and triggering it early. Maybe that's how you got in front of our house... we were afraid you'd got a concussion. Do you feel disorientated?" "Yeah," a little, Alyssa admitted. "You said you needed help?" "We do," Michael said. "The shift mucked about with some of our memories, and now we can't remember where the MORE headquarters is. Since you've already been there, we need you to take us there... that way, we can report on everything that's happened and get things fixed. Get everything fixed." "Can't you use your ARM?" She'd already used it more than once for finding directions in a new reality. "Also off-line, I'm afraid," Michael said. He showed Alyssa his onyx-black device. Its screen was dead. "Okay, I think I remember," Alyssa said. "Let's go." +++++ "Trevor! Trevor! Are you all right?" Somebody was shaking her. Alyssa sat up and put her hand to her head. There was a little bump there, but no major damage... a big hand was on her shoulder. She looked up to see... Bryce? It must have been Bryce, but he'd changed again. Which made sense. "What happened? I was just... I was at home? There was a shift..." Bryce nodded and helped her to her feet. He was huge, a full head taller than her and then some. He also looked a bit like old-Trevor had, which made some sense, given that Bryce's new body would be based off of an idealized version of Trevor's original self. "When the shift happened, I passed out, too," Bryce said. His voice was deep and his limbs were brawny. He pointed up to the second-floor window of his father's ranch house, perhaps slightly larger and nicer than yesterday's, but not by much. "I have no idea how long I was out... a few seconds, probably. When I came to, I heard a scream outside and saw you down there. Your ARM device was flashing all of these weird colors with an error message and you were shaking around like you were having a seizure or something. That happened for maybe thirty seconds before you woke up." Alyssa nodded. "I had a weird dream... my parents wanted me to take them to the MORE headquarters." She gasped. "I think I got brain-hacked while I was out... the ARM units can project through our neural links and the CoReS people must have done that to me!" "Shit. We'd better see your parents ASAP." They got onto Bryce's moped and zipped over to the Bailey residence, with Bryce using his mini-ARM to give him the new address. Alyssa sat behind him, her small arms barely able to circle his broad mid-section and her larger breasts conspicuously pressed against the middle of his back. She was even smaller than before, with pert breasts that verged on large and shoulder- length hair, coppery brown in color with burgundy highlights. A glance at herself in Bryce's side mirror revealed that she was no longer androgynous, not even a bit. She was beyond cute and well into the feminine end of the spectrum. The changes had continued pretty much as expected, right down to the little jeans shorts that rode up into her crotch as she held against Bryce. Wonderful. The Bailey household had continued its escalation into the upper-middle classes and was now an 'executive home' with a brown brick facade, little neoclassical columns in the front, and a long driveway ending at a little circle in front of the house. It spoke of a family that, if not quite rich, certainly lived well. "Jesus. I'm jealous," Bryce said. "Yeah?" Alyssa said. "Well you can sleep over as often as you like once we've got this all straightened out. My parents said they're cool with it." He chuckled. "Really? Now I'm super jealous." Alyssa hopped off and approached the door, fumbling around her jeans before realizing they had no functional pockets to speak of. She didn't have her keys or her phone or her ARM or... "Oh, right," Bryce said. He unstrapped the cutesy canvas purse incongruously slung over his broad shoulders and handed it to her. She fished around in it, finding everything she could have wanted and a lot more - birth control, condoms, and feminine hygiene products, for instance, in one of the little side pockets. "I can't believe I've still got a day of this to go," she muttered. If she and Bryce were only three quarters of the way through their shift transformations... old-Trevor's dream selves had been about as subtle as a silverback gorilla at the petting zoo. The rest of the Bailey family were already in the living room (well, except for Sydney, obviously), the sunken grotto of the open-plan main area appearing larger and certainly nicer than before, with a cavernous central roof boasting skylights and fancy-looking French moulding. Olivia took one look at the two of them entering the house, blinked, and elbowed Meghan, who'd just been engrossed in her ARM. "Oh..." Alyssa's mother said. "Um... Trevor and Madison?" "Bryce and Alyssa," Alyssa said. "I guess we're going with the new names now." "They certainly fit you better now," Michael said. "Come on in and sit down. We've got a lot to figure out..." "Actually, I've got some pretty important stuff to say that just might help with that..." +++++ Meghan was a wiz with the ARM device, or so it seemed to Alyssa. She'd never taken her mother for a technical person, but neither had she taken her for a reality-shifting secret agent. As much as she hated to admit it, it would seem that her parents could actually keep a secret a lot better than the kiddos. "How do you feel?" Meghan said, gesturing vaguely. "About all this, I mean. Are you getting any sensory residuals? Anything that might indicate being mentally compromised?" "I..." Alyssa said. She bit her lip and looked down at her changed body. "I'm not sure. I woke up and suddenly was thinking of myself as Alyssa when I was definitely Trevor before. I feel like I might have been overwritten..." Meghan nodded but said nothing for a minute, syncing her own ARM device to Alyssa's and running a diagnostic. "That sort of thing is common if you're awake during a shift - it's great for integrating with the new reality because your brain gets a bit merged with some hypothetical other-selves. It even happens a tiny bit if you're asleep, but this is a lot more. If you don't brace for it, yeah, it can change aspects of your lower brain." She tapped her own forehead. Meghan looked so young now - maybe mid-30s and stunning, low, thin eyebrows over intense eyes - a woman who abided no nonsense. "Everything up top stays the same. The neural interface sees to that. But a lot of things that people hold as pretty core parts of their identities aren't up there. Body identity, sexuality, and so on. Usually, it doesn't matter all that much because you're changing into a pretty similar body. Other times..." "Other times, you accidentally get turned into your own wet dream," Alyssa sighed. "Beautiful. So... do you know what just happened?" Both ARMs beeped and Meghan nodded thoughtfully. "I do now." She uploaded a pair of Priority 3 reports to the MORE headquarters. "CoReS hacked your ARM through its locking protocol. It's probably hacked Olivia's, too, but wasn't able to get to her for whatever reason. Which means I'll have to unlock both of your units to keep them from hacking you again." "You can do that?" Meghan leaned forward and kissed her forehead, a surprisingly tender gesture for her. "I might get in trouble for it but, yes, I can do it. But you have to be very careful with an unlocked ARM. If you go off willy-nilly submitting reports, tagging locations, integrating memories, and so on... we'll both get in trouble." "Okay, I understand that," Alyssa said. "And what about Bryce's ARM?" Her mother shrugged. "His has hard-coded limitations and he doesn't have a neural interface. There's no way they could hack his unit, and nor would they want to - frankly, it doesn't do much. There... you're all unlocked. If you have an emergency, just send a high priority report and your father or I should get it wherever we are." "You're going out? Now?" Meghan scrolled through the reports on her ARM. "Thanks to you, we know the location of the CoReS infiltration facility. Or we did... if we're lucky, it's still there." She cursed to herself. "And if management had let us unlock your ARM earlier, we'd have reviewed your report before it was too late to do anything about it." Alyssa nodded. "Can Bryce spend the night?" "He probably should," Meghan said. "Go check to make sure your room will suffice... otherwise, I think we have a guest room or two. Your father and I will be back before too long." Yes, her room would suffice. It wasn't any bigger than before, but the bed was larger, and everything was embarrassingly girly, from the flowers and quaint nature scenes of Alyssa's artwork lining the wall to the satiny peach of the drapes and the matching bedspread with its lace and flowers. The ensuite bathroom had sizable vanity and a dizzying array of cosmetics products. And Alyssa's studio was a full room just past that with a great big window overlooking the nighttime neighborhood. "Wow," Bryce said, testing out the bed. "You've got a pretty sweet setup here." "We should check out my parents' bedroom. I bet it's even more insane." "Won't they get mad? They're, like, spies or whatever. Won't they find out?" "They probably won't care," Alyssa said, a mischievous glint in her eye. "Are you saying you aren't curious?" Of course Bryce was curious, and so the two of them wandered in. The master bedroom was over twice the size of Alyssa's already-sizable room with an amazing master bath. It had a granite-topped double vanity and a fancy whirlpool-style tub sunken into the floor. The bed could easily fit five or six people, and they stumbled across a variety of toys in the wardrobe that hinted at a very diverse and active sex life. "Your mom and dad are pretty hot," Bryce said, wobbling a big blue dildo around. "And apparently into all kinds of stuff." "Ew," Alyssa said, pushing his arm away. But he wasn't wrong. They found no indication that her parents were anything other than an adventurous upper middle-class couple, though. Certainly not reality-hopping secret agents. Bryce had wandered into the bathroom and was filling up the tub. She padded in to see what he was up to. "I was thinking," he said with a cocky grin. "We should do a repeat of the other day." The other day, presumably, was when they'd had sex in Madison's parents' corner tub... before any of the shift nonsense happened (well... technically, it had been after the 'ordinance shift'). Alyssa wasn't sure, though... she'd never had sex as a girl and was more than a little nervous at the possibility. Would she even like it? Did she even like guys in that way? Then Bryce stripped out of his clothes and any doubt left her mind. Something about a trim, chiseled, well-endowed guy clicked, and Alyssa found herself stripping out of her own clothes, unbuttoning her shorts and sliding lacy black panties down smooth thighs. By the time she'd finished disrobing, Bryce was relaxing in the bubbling tub, looking on in appreciation. Alyssa posed in front of the vanity. Her face was adorably cute, sparkling hazel eyes, a little button nose, and expressive pouty lips framed by a tumble of coppery hair. Her body, though, while petite, was also mature. Smooth, well-formed, and sporting generous curves, it was easily the most beautiful naked figure that Alyssa had ever seen (at least in person). "Are you going to make me come out and get you?" Bryce asked. "Maybe!" Alyssa said. "Okay, then." Bryce stepped out of the tub, his sizable erection waggling at half-mast, and walked up to her. Alyssa giggled and made a show of wiggling away, but Bryce lifted her right up in his soapy arms and plopped her down in the bubbling water. He gestured toward his groin, frowning. "Now look... you've got me all worked up." "I'll have to do something about that," she said, motioning him in with her finger. Soon, they were going at it in Alyssa's parents' big tub, sloshing hot water back and forth (though, since it was a sunken tub, not much sloshed out onto the floor). Alyssa made little oohs and aahs in time with Bryce's thrusts, her body sending strange and wonderful signals to her brain. When Trevor had imagined his dream girl's body, he'd certainly done a lot to ensure its sensitivity... perhaps too much. Even with the transformation only mostly- complete, Alyssa was nearly overwhelmed by the sensations. She basked in those sensations, feeling complete as Bryce filled her up. She moaned at the sensation of soapy hands rubbing across her large breasts with their emphatic, rosy-tipped nipples. "Hey guys, do you mind if I... oh!" Olivia said. She'd just sauntered into the master bath in a skimpy blue bikini and now stood, just staring at the bathing couple mid-coitus. "Shit..." she said. For a moment, it looked like Olivia might be about to join them. She bit her lip and shuffled her feet, her tall, toned form not much shorter than Bryce's and every bit as smooth and well-proportioned as Alyssa's sexy little bod. A blush spread across her face, almost as embarrassed as her sister at the situation and, for whatever reason, she brought her hands to cover the crotch of her little bikini. "Um... hi," Bryce said, sliding both hands up to cover Alyssa's breasts. He hadn't disengaged from her and didn't give any indication that he was about to do so. "Sorry," Olivia mumbled and shuffled from the bathroom. "Oops," Alyssa said, giggling. "Oops," Bryce agreed, and resumed with thrusting. +++++ Afterward, they did a thorough job of cleaning up the master bathroom and, still giddy, retreated to Alyssa's room. On the way, she knocked on Olivia's door and called inside: "We're all done and cleaned up in there if you need the tub," Alyssa said. "I recommend the water jets." "Um... thanks," Olivia called out, her voice strained. It sounded like she might be 'busy' in there. Alyssa and Bryce retired to her room and went at it again, with her riding on top of him, bucking like a cowgirl and putting her bed through its paces, and again with her screaming away beneath him as he pinned her down with strong arms, and again, humping like rutting animals as Bryce felt her up from behind. It was around two in the morning when they finally slowed down, cuddling and kissing beneath her sheets. They heard voices in the hallway - her parents were home. "I'll be right back," she whispered to Bryce. "'kay," he said... he'd almost certainly be asleep before she returned. Alyssa popped her head out into the hallway and padded after her mother, tapping Meghan's shoulder and almost getting a face full of fist for her efforts. Meghan spun around and started to punch, only to stop herself at the last second when she recognized her oldest son-now-daughter. "I take it you didn't get them?" she asked. Meghan shook her head. "I'm afraid not." "How long have you been back?" Her mother shrugged. "Twenty minutes? Twenty-five? Enough to know that it sounded like you were having a very good time in there. I didn't want to disturb you." Alyssa blushed. Sometime over the past few days, she'd become quite vocal. It wasn't her fault that everything felt so good (well, technically speaking, it was entirely her fault) - and now she could see what the technician had meant about people not wanting to shift out of 'fantasy bodies'. There were more important things to think about than pleasure, though. "So what happened?" she asked. "You went there and... what? The CoReS facility wasn't there any more?" "It wasn't," Meghan said. "Just a regular house with nothing special. The MORE thinks they injected code into our shift to upgrade their own facilities to something with wider range and more capabilities." "That sounds kind of bad," Alyssa said. "To be honest, that sounds really bad." "It is," Meghan agreed. "And until they activate any of their devices, we don't have any way to tell where they are..." "That's not quite true," Alyssa said after a moment. She darted back into her room and retrieved her ARM. "They already hacked my ARM. If we let them do it again, they just might follow the honeypot." "We can't trace them from an ARM signal. The signal gets projected all over the resonance band." Alyssa didn't pretend to know what that meant - she didn't have to. "That's not what I was getting at," she said. "They want to find the Ministry of Reality Enforcement offices - presumably so they can get a better signal and make bigger changes, right? So what if they thought they knew where the place was? All we'd have to do is wait there... and then, when they show up, follow them back to their location." Meghan tapped a fingernail against her ARM and thought. "It won't work, Alyssa... you'll be in a dream. You can't control what happens in a dream - you might inadvertently lead them to the real headquarters." "I won't," Alyssa said. "You have to trust me. I've always had really vivid dreams, and I can do what I need to do in them. I'll test it out in the dream, and if I can't control it enough, I'll back out and you can wake me up." "Okay, let's say that will work. How will I know when to wake you up?" Alyssa sighed. "For a super smart technical-expert-spy, you're dumb, mom. No offense." "None taken," Meghan said with enough huff to make it clear that at least a little offense had been taken. "Tell me. What's your idea?" "You can program a prompt to come up in my visual system - like the one that 'let' me design the bodies I gave to myself and Bryce that first night. We can program messages to pop up every ten minutes - something like a simple math problem. As soon as I get one wrong, either on purpose or because I'm not thinking clearly, sever the connection and wake me up. Will that work?" "Holy shit, I think it might," Meghan said. "I'm going to consult your father for a second pair of ears - I want to make sure we haven't overlooked something and are exposing ourselves. But I think you've just devised your first covert operation, Alyssa." She leaned over and kissed Alyssa's forehead. "I'll be right back." +++++ Michael didn't see any problems with Alyssa's plan. In fact, he was enthused about it - a chance at honest-to-god counter-espionage work! He and Meghan set up the dream monitoring program while Alyssa waited in the living room. The place was absolutely cavernous and she found it a bit ridiculous that anybody might need such a large room in their home. Or such a large home, for that matter. "Okay, I think we're good to go," Meghan said. "We're going to use the neural feedback to ease you into a dream state - the command to do that is hard-coded into your biometrics so nobody - not CoReS and not even the Ministry - can trigger it from afar. As soon as you're ready, just tap the 'ok' button on your ARM." Alyssa nodded. As she was about to tap the button, Sydney padded down the stairs in her night shirt, her long chestnut-brown hair a sleepy mess. She looked to each of the three of them with more than a little ire. "What are you guys talking about?" she said. "We're um..." Michael said. "Talking to your sister about Bryce," Meghan said. "Good." Sydney said. "They were making a lot of noise. You know they had sex like a bunch of times, right? In your bathroom and then in Alyssa's room." "Our bathroom?" Michael said testily. "It's going to shift away anyway," Alyssa whispered. "That's why we're talking to her about it," Meghan called over, and then whispered to Michael: "I thought you gave her a sedative." "I did, but only half a dose," Michael said. "You two get started. I'll see to Sydney." Meghan looked to Alyssa, took her hands into her own, and set her face into a serious expression. "I'm proud of you," she said. "Whether you're Trevor or Alyssa, I think you're ready for big things. Just tap the button when you're ready. Okay?" "Okay." CHAPTER SEVEN: ELECTROLUX An explosion rocked the house. The loudest sound wasn't the explosion, really, but the crack of wood and glass and plaster immediately afterward. Alyssa shrieked as the roof collapsed around them. "Alyssa..." her mother said. Timber and brick had fallen atop the lower parts of her body and dust was slowly settling all around. Only her head, one arm, and part of her torso were exposed. "H... help," she croaked. "Mom! I'll get dad!" She rushed up the stairs, leaping over a collapsed section where three or four stairs had completely fallen away, and found her father impaled by a length of pipe, blood dribbling from his mouth. "H... help," he croaked. "I'm dying... get... you need to get ahold of headquarters. Otherwise, I'll die..." Alyssa nodded, tears dribbling down her cheeks. She rushed down the stairs, leapt over the gap, and sprinted back to her mother. "Alyssa... go to... MORE..." Meghan said, gesturing toward her purse. Alyssa nodded, grabbed the keys to the Jag, and rushed out to the garage. Within a minute, she was peeling out down the road, pumping the gas and squealing around the turns, her heart thudding in her chest. Her ARM buzzed. [Five apples, three chairs, one orange - how many fruits?] What kind of sense did that make? Six, obviously. This explosion and dying family thing was some serious business. She needed help! Alyssa made a sharp turn onto the Seneca Turnpike... fortunately, there was no other traffic on the road. None at all! Wait, yes there was, just a few cars. How did she miss those? Her ARM buzzed again as she pulled up to the Park residence - another odd question. [How many legs on three ants and three people?] Ants had six legs, right? So twenty-four, obviously. Why was her phone even asking her these questions? She had to see Ana about something important. She went right in - the door was unlocked. She had to muscle her way past rose bushes in the entryway and past Emilia Park praying in her nun's habit. It must have been strange, having a nun for a mom. "Ana! Where are you?" "Back here, puta!" Ana called. She and Lukas were sitting on Ana's bed playing her FIFA RPG on the wall- spanning screen. With a well-rehearsed combination, Ana summoned a giant Beckham to destroy the enemy midfielders. God, Ana was so cute with her purple hair and her tight little t-shirt... and Lukas... he'd been working out. Good on Lukas. Alyssa sat between them, leaning her head against Lukas's shoulder. He smelled really good. Ana reached over and started feeling between Alyssa's legs. Wow... that felt really, really good. Why wasn't she wearing pants? Shouldn't she be wearing pants? Wow, Lukas was big. His thing looked familiar, like Alyssa should have recognized it. She slid onto it and started bucking her hips. She and Ana were making out, too, as Lukas impaled her with his thing... it was unbelievably hot. Then Lukas stopped his pelvic motions. "Um, dude, your phone is buzzing," Lukas said. Right, her phone. Alyssa picked it up and answered the dumb question. Then her mom called her. "Hello?" "Alyssa... we're dying..." she said, her voice a hoarse rasp over the speaker. "Are... you going... to MORE headquarters?" "I am, mom," she sobbed. "I had to get some friends!" She looked to Lukas... how had he got his pants back on so quickly? Hadn't they just been fucking? Then the three of them were screeching off again in the Jag, heading north- northwest along the Seneca Turnpike, past strip malls, copses of trees, and hills. The MORE headquarters was close, she just knew it. She'd only been there once before, but she could recall all of the strange things there... so many people, so many lights... "Where are we going?" Ana asked. "We have to go northwest for about five more miles. There's a building - it's easy to miss from the road, but it's a lot bigger on the inside... I need to go there to save my mom." "You mom is dying?" Lukas asked. He reached forward from the back and started groping a boob. Just like Lukas! Maybe she should pull over... "Focus, puta!" Ana said. Right... no time for horseplay. They had to save her parents. [If you drive five miles east and seven miles west, how many miles from the starting point?] She was driving now, so that was easy. Five plus seven. No! Five minus seven. Two. Alyssa kept driving. They were really close now. There was almost no traffic on the road and they were driving around through hills and mountains. Then they came to the crest of a hill and the building was visible, domed up like a hangar and visible past the uniformed guys at the turnstile. "Do you have tickets?" the guard said. Alyssa waved her ARM at them and they seemed to think that was good enough. "Do you know where I save my parents?" she asked. The man pointed vaguely toward the big building. Inside was a confusing maze - even more confusing than she remembered it. There was a big light-up crescent with a bunch of people walking through. There were lights and bits of technology everywhere. She reached an area that looked like the cabin of an undersea vehicle and she walked up to the controls. "How do we get in?" Ana asked. "Easy," Alyssa said. She raised the periscope, pressed 8-6-7-5-3-0-9 on the keypad, and the undersea vehicle began to descend. "Our friends are all aboard," she said. "They'll be able to help mom and dad..." Her ARM buzzed again: [How many fingers in a dozen hands?] Lukas and Ana were gone. Where to? Maybe it didn't matter... she kind of wished they'd come back to fool around some more... a dozen times five... she knew that. But, for some reason, it just didn't seem important to answer it any more. Alyssa awoke in the living room, momentarily confused to find it intact and her parents very much alive and uninjured. Michael nudged Meghan, who'd been dozing off on the other side of the sectional. They both looked to her expectantly. Oh... right. She'd had a job to do. "Well?" Meghan said. "Did you do it?" "I did," Alyssa said. "They're going to be at the Electrolux Castle." +++++ Alyssa wanted to come along - after all, she'd been the one who got CoReS to think the Ministry office was at the Electrolux Castle. But Meghan expressly forbade it. Alyssa wasn't a trained agent and it might be dangerous. She went to her room angry, though she couldn't stay angry long next to Bryce. She slept for all of about an hour when Meghan tapped on the door. "Someone's at your door," Bryce mumbled. "Hmm?" Alyssa lifted Bryce's arm off of her and rolled out of bed. It was still before dawn. She squinted at her mother's knitted brow. "What?" "Um... we need you to take us to the Electrolux Castle," Meghan said. "Is this another hacked dream?" She pinched herself. Results: inconclusive. "Hi, Mrs. Bailey," Bryce said. He ambled up behind Alyssa. "Um. Alyssa said you said it was okay if..." "It's fine," Meghan said, waving him off. "Neither your father nor I have been to the castle before and... it's kind of disappeared from the maps. It's not on GPS. It's not on our ARMs. Even its online site is returning a 404 error." "Do you have any, like, old paper maps?" Meghan shrugged. "We looked. Apparently, new-us saw it fit to get rid of all of them... so no dice. So here's the plan: we follow you there, you drive right home. Ok?" Alyssa and Bryce shared a look. "Ok!" she said. It wasn't a secret mission, but it was a lot better than nothing. Step one was getting dressed appropriately. Alyssa hadn't had a chance to get a good look at new-Alyssa's wardrobe. It was expansive and feminine... very feminine... and more than a bit racy. She owned exactly two pairs of skinny jeans. Emphasis on the skinny. Lots of little shorts, lots of dresses and skirts, very few of them going anywhere near the knee, much less past it. There were also skimpy little gym shorts and plenty of yoga pants. She didn't figure you could go wrong with black yoga pants - they covered everything, were incredibly comfortable, and... And Bryce really, really liked the way she looked in them. She had to smack his hand away five times while she perused through tops. Yoga pants and a blue halter tank top that showed off her belly button piercing... which she'd only just discovered. Bryce ran a hand through her hair, pushing it back to examine her ears. "And three piercings in each ear and... stick out your tongue," he said. "Yup. One in your tongue." "Kinky," Alyssa said, grinning. "But this isn't even my final form." "You're such a dork," Bryce chuckled, rolling his eyes. "Are you coming down or not? We've got interdimensional terrorists to catch!" Michael called up from downstairs. "We're coming!" Alyssa called back. "We? Who's we?" "Me and Bryce!" "Jesus, can you people keep it down?" Sydney shouted from her bedroom. "It's not even six in the morning!" Michael and Meghan didn't protest too much about Bryce coming along. After all, if there was even the slightest bit of danger, wouldn't it be better if he came with? He looked like trouble and could probably be trouble, should the need arise. That logic was hard to argue against. Alyssa and Bryce took the big car - a luxury SUV from a car brand that she'd never even heard of before - while the Bailey parents followed behind in the Jag. She went over pros and cons of her current situation in her head: Cons: Turning into a walking sex bomb, losing most of her friends, dealing with pissed-off transreality criminals Pros: Having sex as a walking sex bomb, driving really nice cars, doing crazy spy stuff All in all, it was hard to see how the pros didn't outweigh the cons. After all, she got to keep her favorite friends and... she checked her phone... had many, many more friends as Alyssa. She just had no idea who any of them were yet. By the time they hit the Seneca turnpike, the sun was coming up and Bryce finally found a music station they both liked. If you'd asked a stranger what music they thought Alyssa might like, Billie Eilish, Zapota Flair, or Miley Cyrus might be at the top of the list. And, to be fair, she didn't dislike that stuff the way Bryce did. But her tastes hadn't changed (at least not much) from her life as Trevor... wailing blues rock from fifty years ago had her and Bryce screaming out the windows and doing air guitar to Slowhand. That was one of the things that Trevor and Madison had first bonded over in the 10th grade. "Isn't it the next right?" Bryce said. "No, the roads changed in the latest shift," Alyssa said, half-wondering how she'd known that. "Exit 17 loops back to the Electrolux like half a mile down." "Whoa! Look at Mrs. Navigator go." "I used to be really bad with navigation, but I guess I'm pretty good now?" "You still can't sing for crap, though," Bryce chuckled. "Hey!" They pulled into the big gravel parking lot of the castle five minutes later. It being seven o'clock in the morning, there were exactly three other cars there and the main building was dark. Meghan pulled up in the Jag and motioned her to roll the window down, which she did. "Thank you, Alyssa. Now, as discussed, the two of you head home. I want to hear you say it." Alyssa rolled her eyes. "Bryce and I are heading home now," she said. Meghan waited for a few seconds. "Well? Let's see it. Off you go!" Alyssa made a u-turn and started back to the highway. She looked to Bryce. "Heading only means going in the direction of," she said with a smirk. "So..." "So you wanna get breakfast and then head on back?" +++++ In Alyssa's opinion, there wasn't much point in being at the Electrolux Castle before nine o'clock when they turned most of the attractions on. You couldn't even buy a ticket in until seven fifty-five. Alyssa and Bryce drove two exits up the highway and got breakfast at a 'Jimbo's!' restaurant - a chain that neither of them had ever heard of but that tasted exactly like every other diner-style chain they'd ever been to. After Bryce finished his third(!) stack of pancakes and Alyssa gave up on ever finishing her bananas foster waffle, they drove back, pulling into the gravel lot at exactly 9:05. It being a Wednesday in late August, the place still wasn't exactly hopping. The parking lot had thirty or forty cars spaced over the front third of the lot with plenty of empty spaces yet to be claimed within that third. Alyssa parked in the H section and the two of them stalked about the parking lot. "Should we go inside?" Bryce asked. "My parents are inside. Do you want to get caught?" "They aren't my parents," Bryce stated. "Why should I care?" Alyssa stopped and put her hands on her hips. "I don't know, Bryce. Do your parents know you're shifting through reality and turning into a super hot guy?" "You think I'm super hot?" "I said turning into," Alyssa said. "We'll be in enough trouble if they find us out..." "Find us out what?" Alyssa pointed. A dark blue CES Industries truck had just pulled up into the reserved maintenance vehicle spot. A coveralls guy hopped down from the passenger seat, reached into the glove box, and slipped a .22 pistol into his coveralls pocket. Alyssa took a picture with her ARM and noted that she now had the option to send alerts to mission-relevant agents. She selected her parents and then sent them the picture. [CoReS guys with gun in parking lot] One of the coveralls guys noticed the two of them. He pointed at Alyssa just as she slipped her ARM out of view. "Hey! You two!" Bryce had the good intuition to look dumbfounded. "Us?" "No, the frost giant behind you. Yes, you! Do you have any idea what building this is?" "Um..." Alyssa twirled her hair. "It's, like, supposed to be totally abandoned. We were gonna, like, go inside to make out and stuff. But it looks super duper busy." The man rolled his eyes. "Fucking hades. Get the hell out of here before I tag you for trespassing!" As they turned away, the second coveralls guy mumbled, "should we detain them or anything?" "I'm not detaining two kids for..." and then they were out of earshot. [Blue coveralls bad guys going inside], Alyssa messaged. Alyssa was at a loss as to what to do and Bryce was hardly any help. She considered that: 1) the two armed coveralls guys were going into the Electrolux, 2) her parents were also inside and armed, 3) she and Bryce were not armed (and nor did they have any weapons training), and 4) therefore they were more likely to get hurt as hostages or hapless bystanders than to be of any help. "Let's check out their van," Alyssa said. She crept over to the CES Industries van and pulled at all the doors - all of them were locked, of course. She stood on her tiptoes to peer inside the windows... something that Bryce did not have to do. Aside from a police- style screen mounted to a hinged arm at the center console, nothing inside looked notable or suspicious. She took a close-up picture of their tags... "They're coming back!" Bryce hissed. "Shit!" Alyssa peeked around the van to see the coveralls guys strolling out of the Castle. She whispered, "Bryce! Give me your mini-ARM." "What?" "No time to explain!" He shrugged and handed it to her. Alyssa wedged the thing into the little hollow crossbeam of the van's bumper and then bolted. Bryce was a bright enough boy... he'd figure out what to do. Sure enough, he got back to the SUV around the same time she did, courtesy of his much longer legs. "Do you mind telling me what the hell that was about?" he asked. Alyssa wagged her own ARM device at him. "I can track it with my unlocked ARM. They'll take us right back to... shit!" she pointed. It was khakis guy... except he was wearing jeans now. And he'd added about twenty pounds of muscle since the last shift. "Jesus... that guy's massive," Bryce said. "What do we do?" "Follow the van," Alyssa said. "My parents can deal with jeans guy." [Buff blond guy in jeans heading in] [Pic attached - he is CoReS] [Bryce and I following CES van] [DO NOT follow the van], Michael texted back, immediately followed by Meghan: [VERY BAD IDEA] [Why are you here? Go home NOW!] [Following the van], Alyssa reiterated. She handed her ARM to Bryce and pulled out from the parking lot. The chase was afoot!