Oops

Megan’s apprehension grew and grew as she approached the library. She was not the type who was either used to drawing attention to herself, nor desired to. But she was drawing plenty of it now.

Part of that, she was sure, was her outfit; a previously conservative plaid green swing dress. At least it had been. She was sure it hadn’t been this short prior to its magical refitting, or quite so low cut on around her cleavage.

She felt like everyone in Bryant Park had their eyes on her, and she desperately hoped she wouldn’t run into anyone she knew. On a practical level, she knew that her only emergency contacts were her parents, and that nobody else would have any idea who she was. And in any case, the odds that she’d run into a familiar face among a sea of strangers in such a busy pat of town was so remote as to be improbable. But all the same, she dreaded the prospect of having to explain her new appearance to a friend, however imaginary that concern was.

Luckily, as Kipling once said, the worst liar proved to be her own fear, and she arrived at the New York Public Library without incident. Megan felt relief as soon as she stepped inside. This was her home turf; as familiar a place as any in the city. She was surrounded by the smells of an old building filled with old books.

And along with comfort, Megan regained her sense of purpose. She headed toward the reading room.

To Megan, it was the most beautiful room in the city; a long hall with tall, frescoed ceilings, polished marble floors and huge oaken reading tables. A line of chandeliers lined either side of the grand hall, bathing it with warm, soft light that made the room feel cozy in spite of its vastness. When she’d first seen it, Megan felt like she’d entered a fantasy castle, and even after several years of thrice weekly visits, it still managed to take her breath away.

As usual, over 40 people milled about the room. Some were examining the bookshelves lining the walls, while others sat reading or absorbed in their phones and computers. A few of the city’s unfortunates slept at ends of the tables; homeless people who knew the library as a place where they could spend a few hours unmolested. Others were tourists, easily identified by their awestruck expressions and waving phone cameras.

Yet somehow, despite the low bustle, the visitors all maintained a relative quiet, their combined voices never rising above a low murmur. At least it never did for very long. As one tourist exclaimed a noisy “Wow!”, the whip crack “Shhh” of a librarian cowed her back into silence.

It was none other than Megan’s target, who she’d decided on almost as soon as the challenge had been announced.

Of all the faces she passed in all the places she frequented, there were few acquaintances Megan admired as much as Glenda Shaw. A kindly old woman who she’d pegged somewhere between 65 and 80, Ms Shaw was one of the library’s matronly overseers. Megan couldn’t really pretend to know her, at least not with any intimacy, but they’d spoken often enough to be on a first name basis…and to pick up a few facts about her.

Though Ms Shaw could have retired long ago, she preferred to keep manning the library she’d loved and been a part of for decades. Once, several years into her pilgrimages to study here, Ms Shaw had confided her envy of Megan’s studies to her; that she’d admired the education young women like her could pursue, and wished she could have gotten it for herself. This was coupled with a warning not to spend too much time with books, though, lest Megan end up a withered old maid like her.

Well, Ms Shaw, Megan thought to herself, today I’m making dreams come true.

She approached the librarian’s desk, which was cloistered behind a large wooden gate. She stood about 30 feet away and watched the sweet old woman as she reached into her book bag and curled her hand around the pistol.

As soon as it cleared the bag and she began to raise it, the world slowed to a crawl. Megan watched in fascination as it entered a sort of slow motion around her, allowing her to take aim at Ms. Shaw and visualize her existence; the sweet old librarian who’d neither learned nor lived quite as much as she’d wanted, but had found purpose and happiness in spite of all that.

And, like Hannah before her, she found she could visualize a different Glenda Shaw. Unlike Hannah, who finely tuned the precise changes she’d selected for her first target, what Megan sent the way of hers was closer to a wish. A wish that she would be young, with her whole life ahead of her, and brilliant enough to follow any dream she desires. She wished for her to be fun, charismatic and vivacious, as well as beautiful and sexy.

This last was as much to give her a shot at winning the contest as it was to fill the missing parts of Ms. Shaw’s life. Megan knew she could never use the gun to hurt anyone. But she hoped that act of kindness (sexy kindness!) would be enough to help her over the finish line as well.

She concentrated on these traits, and as she pulled the trigger, time resumed at its normal pace.

The world blazed pink, and then it went mad.

*****

It took Lindsey some time to find her car. She’d thought she’d left it on one street, but it had been on another a few blocks over. Not a terribly long time; just 20-30 minutes or so. But time was decidedly not on her side right now, and movement even less so.

In her hubris, (and what, friends and neighbors, defined the life of Lindsey Kerrigan so much as hubris), she had assumed that the opening round of changes would be mild ones. Flirt with the contests? She’d have done that for free. Nipple piercings? Not her favorite, but she could manage. Sexual sensitivity? How bad could it be? The breast augmentation worried her a bit, but she ultimately took the plunge on it too. All told, the bonus points from the changes would be worth about half a victory point, so hey…why not take easy money?

She’d not expected the nipple chain to be quite so short as it was. It didn’t take much jostling to jerk at her nipples. That dovetailed nicely with the sensitivity, as each pull rocked her body with a powerful heatwave. This, combined with her body being so sensitive that even her shirt and skirt were driving her crazy, meant that her tits were always somewhere between “huge” and “may be used as a flotation device in case of an emergency”.

By the time she found her blue Subarau, they were closer to the latter than the former, having grown into heavy teardrops roughly the size of her head. She briefly imagined trying to get her seatbelt around them, and decided a little more finger painting was in order before she actually went anywhere.

She’d done that before she’d left. As soon as she was in her little hut, she slammed the door behind her, threw herself into the corner, hiked up her skirt and brought herself to orgasm twice. In addition to allowing her to think straight again, getting her libido under control reduced her boobs back down to their usual size. At least they had been before she’d meandered about two and a half blocks in search of her car, jostling around and yanking her motherfucking chain the whole way.

Once she had found it, she slid inside, thanking the lord for her father’s predilection for tinted windows. Pulling her skirt up and panties down for the second time in as many hours, she pushed her driver’s seat back, and went to work until she was gasping with relief once more.

She must have dozed for a bit, as the sun had lowered by the time she fully composed herself. She sat up with a groan, brushing the teal curtain from her face. As awareness took hold, Lindsey removed her phone and her pistol from her purse. The former she mounted on the custom port given to all Uber drivers. The latter she tucked into the door compartment in easy reach of her left hand.

She thought she had a brilliant plan. Uber had gotten her into this crazy show. Maybe it could help her win its first challenge.

Her plan was simple. Take rides until her allotted time was up, make conversation in her perky, Lindsey way, and use what she learned to change the first three people who gave her something interesting enough to work with.

That had been the plan, anyway, at least until she’d jilled herself into a mild coma. By the time the first rider order came (Amanda, no profile pic, 4.2 passenger rating) she was just tired.

*****

Later, once she’d actually had time to reflect on it all, Megan could analyze how the disaster had unfolded. But in the heat of the moment, everything had already gone to hell before she could even process what she’d done wrong.

She meant to fire her shot through the wooden gate at Ms Shaw, then immediately beam herself back home before any of the consequences could manifest themselves.

But Megan hadn’t held so much as a water gun since she was a little girl, and didn’t have steady hands under even the best of circumstances. When she pulled the trigger, there was a soft pink flash, just like there had been for Hannah, and a beam emitted that was almost too quick to follow.

Almost.

It was not too quick for Megan to miss the beam strike the brass, wedge shaped desk lamp Ms Shaw had been reading by, nor to follow it zip toward the ceiling an eye-blink later. After that it was lost in a blinding pink cascade that she realized, only belatedly, was the laser striking and refracting through one chandelier crystal and then another, until the the room was a blazing spider web of pink beams that crisscrossed the room like a mad security system from a heist movie.

What followed was pure pandemonium. No one was spared. A vagrant at the end of one table found her many layers of clothing shrinking against her body, until moments later, she was a beautiful, curvaceous blonde in tartan skirt and tight blouse. An older woman filming the frescoes became a pigtailed 20 something the same age as her thunderstruck, and now much more attractive, daughter across the room. One of the male librarians stared down in shock at her very busty, very feminine body, wrapped tightly in a form fitting sweater and smart skirt.

As the beams refracted and refocused, parts of Megan’s imagined change were conveyed onto their victims, others lost. The ambiguity of words like “fun”, “young” and “beautiful” we made manifest in strange and unpredictable ways.

Lukas Weber, a German exchange student pouring over a history tome, transformed rapidly into a brown skinned, long legged, large breasted African American Beauty. Across the table from her, shy timid Elise morphed from a slight sandy blonde into a brunette stunner with huge breasts, the law article in front of her forgotten as she bubblily admired the black hottie across the table. A couple studying different exams side by side clutched one another as they morphed into teenage golden haired beauties, identical even down to the loose dresses they wore.

In only a few seconds, everyone in the reading room had become a very hot, young, intelligent woman.

Megan saw very little of this. As soon as she realized what she’d done, she broke into a dead sprint toward the exit. Naturally, unaccustomed to sprinting as she was, she tripped, sprawling on the cold tile floor as the room erupted in screams.

Desperately, she wished to be back in the little hut on the Island, literally in another world from the mayhem she’d unleashed. Just before she vanished, she looked back toward the desk, where a gorgeous red haired woman who couldn’t be more than 20 examined her body in shock.

Well…At least I helped you, Ms. Shaw Megan thought dismally.

In the chaos of the suddenly transformed library, nobody noticed her disappear.

*****

Amanda, as it turned out, was a pretty but irritable looking college student. Or at least, Lindsey thought. She was a pretty shitty judge of age, and for all she knew, she could be 30. But Lindsey thought they were closer in age than further. She wore a stylish demin skirt, along with a t-shirt advertising some brand Lindsey didn’t recognize. Her young, pretty tanned face was framed by a short crop of wavy brown hair.

What mattered, at least insofar as an Uber driver was concerned, was the concerned, disdainful look she got as the passenger climbed into her back seat.

“Am I in the right car?” She asked, uncertainly.

“That depends,” Lindsey answered. “Are you Amanda?”

She looked uncertain for a moment, as though she’d heard the name for the first time. But she nodded in the rear view mirror after a few seconds.

“Groovy,” Lindsey said, before checking her mirrors and pulling out into traffic.

The woman was still regarding her strangely. Well, she supposed, that was somewhat understandable. Lindsey tried to put herself in Amanda’s shoes, imagining that she’d just been picked up by a very busty, very obviously braless, even more obviously horny teal haired weirdo. The thought made her snort out a laugh that only managed to make her passenger look even more uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry,” Amanda said, her eyes darting across Lindsey's chest. “Are you wearing a…chain?”

She said this last while making a gesture that looked a little like the sign of the cross. Lindsey tried, only somewhat successfully, to fight back a laugh.

“Yeah but don’t worry. It doesn’t like…impair my driving or anything,” She said.

This was not strictly accurate, but it felt like the appropriate thing to say.

Lindsey took a hard right, yanking her nipples in the process. She let out an involuntary cry, swerved a little, then corrected her course with breasts that now rubbed her upper arm.

If Amanda had been on the fence, she’d clearly toppled off on the wrong side of it.

“You know what, why don’t you let me out up here,” She said, pointing toward an occupied bus stop a half block up.

“I’m sorry,” Lindsey said apologetically. “I’m having a bit of a weird day.”

“Yeah. Sure. Whatever,” Amanda said. “You look like a fucking hooker, and I want out of this car.”

Welp, there’s volunteer number one!

Lindsey slid into the space, but before she came to a complete stop, grabbed the pistol, and turned quickly toward her passenger. She didn’t even know precisely what she wanted to do, but the world seemed to slow drastically as soon as she’d decided to fire. By the time she brought the gun fully around, she knew what she wanted.

The beam hit her between her breasts, which immediately plastered against her shirt. Lindsey could see the outlines of a nipple chain forming there.

Her green eyes went wide as she looked down at her breasts and their new ornamentation. Judging by her stiffening nipples, she was feeling her new sensitivity as well.

“So, listen, I’m kinda cursed. And I didn’t want to give you my curses, but you were being kind of a bitch about it,” Lindsey explained, “It’s gonna be really rough for like, a few more hours. A day on the outside, but I promise I won’t be this hard on myself going forward.”

But the last half of this was lost in an ear splitting scream. Amanda threw the door open and pelted out of the car.

“Hey, can you get the door!” Lindsey called after her.

But she was already running, panicked down 2nd Avenue. Lindsey could see the outline of her swelling breasts even from behind.

She shook her head, and leaned across her back seat, fumbling at the door. She gasped as the chain pulled again, and thought that she might need to find a parking garage or something before she took her next ride.