"So. Figuring out I wasn't a dude was…"
Clunk.
"…honestly more disorienting than it was letting…"
Clunk.
"…letting an applied theology student borrow my soul for a finals exam, but…"
Clunk.
"…somehow…"
clunk.
"…somehow it's more disorienting now than it's ever been before."
CRACK.
The sledgehammer crunches through the bundle of security cameras and calves them clean from the wall. Metal and glass crackle against the pavement, Karina heaving the hammer back towards herself. A second later the cameras switch on their arcane repair systems and immediately sling out cable tendrils, hooking to their former placement on the wall, tugging them over.
Karina winds back for a final blow—
crunchcrunchcrunch
—but Abigail's already on it. She just stamps down. A lot.
crunch.
She briefly pulls up her mask to wipe her brow. "Yeah, yeah I feel you on that." The angel wings on the mask's sides flutter. "Even when I started transitioning there was this, this surrealness to everything."
Reaching into her satchel, Karina throws over a flier. Abigail grabs it.
"I couldn't imagine my body was changing, I couldn't imagine that people from here on out would see me differently…" She jumps, suspends above the ground as the wings shimmer in the midnight dark, and slaps the flier above the stump of wires the cameras left.
"…I couldn't imagine I was finally going to be the right gender."
Brief finger presses and its stuck tight to the brick. The message is loud and clear:
DID YOU KNOW
that upholding normalcy is
as based on the consensus of 9 out of 10 doctors
considered CHRONICALLY UNRADICAL
and that 100% of FBI workers have untreated cases
of cranium-ass convergence?if you didn't, then what rock are you living under?
GET UIU OUT OF THREEPORTS
Loud and clear to anyone who happens to look down a single trash-bag encrusted alleyway at a single wall at the outskirts of the booming nightlife districts. The visibility leaves much to be wished for, but as the two stride out and down the streets to their next target, Karina can't find the mental room to care about it.
She sighs. "I mean. That's not wrong."
They spin to face away from a passing auto-rickshaw, angling the masks out of any passengers' prying view.
"It's bizarre that my body's changing now. More bizarre that a demon pact's doing it for me, instead of pills. Or whatever it is boring people do."
"Heh, yeah, tell me about it."
"So far it feels fine, even if I do cough up sulfur here or there. But it's not that…"
"Mhm?"
Abigail trails her hand along a stray UIU recruitment poster. The ink smears, swirling from bold statements of security to the elegant, gentle curves of clenched fist and raised middle finger. Karina glances pavement-wards.
"It's that, even now, I still don't trust myself to know if I'm really a girl or not."