Tell the Sisters

Tripp sighs. "Fine. Let's get it over with. But... please don't let them do anything weird to me, okay?"

Sam giggles. "Don't worry wittle Twipp, Sammy's here to pwotect you!" She pinches his cheek like a doting parent.

Some time later, Sam has called her three sisters, Amelia, May, and Holly, into their lavish sitting room to reveal the news. Tripp waits just outside in the hallway so that Sam can make the announcement as smoothly as possible.

"Why are we here," Amelia asks, bored. "I was in the middle of something, you know."

Holly agrees, in an equally peevish tone. "Yeah, you know the island is like, blowing up or something, right? All my friends from the States are calling asking about the monster thing from yesterday. I'd rather not do family time right now, thanks."

Only May remains silent, folding her hands neatly in her lap and letting Sam speak.

"Look, it's about the monster from yesterday. I..." Tripp thinks he hears a sigh, but from the other side of the doors it's hard to tell. "Just... look." A flash of light and several gasps tell Tripp that Sam's just transformed into Sparrow in front of her sisters.

"Holy cow.... - you?! You're telling me our little Sammy was one of the ass-kickers from yesterday?" Amelia says. She doesn't sound especially flabbergasted, though. More proud than anything. "Damn! But, how... And when did you... What?"

Holly cuts her off with her own line of questioning; "How long have you been 'magic' and when were you planning on letting us in on it? You know the sister rules: no secrets."

Sam puts her hands up defensively to quiet her sisters down. "Relax, I just got the job yesterday when that thing attacked. We crashed right after we got home, so you're still the first to know."

"We?" May asks with an inquisitive tilt of her head.

"Err, yeah... well that's the other thing... The other girl with me yesterday... Dove... She's actually..."

"No!" Holly stands up and claps her hands over her mouth. "Don't tell me... It's not...!"

Amelia raises an eyebrow. "I'm lost. Who is it?"

Sam finishes. "Dove is... Tripp."

There's an immediate outburst of noise - Amelia and May gasp and start asking questions over each other. Holly squeals like she just won the lottery and starts giggling - perhaps cackling would be a better word - like a cartoon villain. Sam tries her best to calm them all down, to no avail.

Tripp takes a deep breath and shuts his eyes. Sam was right - it was time to rip the band-aid off.

He takes one more deep breath then pushes through the doors. He barely makes it in two feet before he's surrounded and practically dragged to the huge L-shaped couch at the center of the room. He's poked and prodded from head to toe, squeezed and squished in all sorts of places. Just generally manhandled before he has time to speak.

"Tripp?! Is that really you?"

"Oh my!"

"This is too good to be true!"

He couldn't exactly tell who was saying what - his mind was turning to mush from all the stimulation - but he could guess.

Finally Sam - who was back as Sam and no longer Sparrow - managed to shoo her sisters off her friend and get them back to the couch. Tripp was left standing in front of all four of them. He suddenly felt like he was back in school giving a presentation in front of the whole class. He felt blush rise up in his cheeks and wondered if it was more noticeable in his girl form.

"Uh... w-well... it's me..." he said awkwardly. "I mean... I really am Tripp."

"You have awesome tits!" Holly blurted out. "What are you, like a D cup?"

Sam gave her redheaded sister a sharp elbow to the ribs. Holly yelped and glared at her sister.

"I thought the other magical girl had white hair. How come yours is black?" Amelia asked curiously. She had already calmed down considerably after the initial shock of finding out Tripp was Dove. It was nice to hear someone being so casual about the whole thing.

Tripp shrugged. "I dunno. Our magical forms are different than our non-magical forms. The bird that gave us these powers said it was different for guys, so Sam goes right back to her normal self, but I have, like, an interim form. Basically, instead of going from magical girl back to a regular boy, I go from a magical girl to regular girl, then back to regular boy. Does that make sense?"

"You met a talking bird?!?" May gasps, completely ignoring the rest of what Tripp had said.

"Wait wait wait! You're going to turn back into a boy?" Holly sounds annoyed, like it's an inconvenience to her. "Aw! How long do we have? I was gonna invite my friends to come see you and maybe sell tickets..."

Sam elbowed her again.

"Alright, that's enough, girls. You know how Tripp gets when he's overwhelmed," Sam stands up and takes Tripp by the hand. "This has been your intro to girl-Tripp. We just wanted to let you know that he - er, um... she?... will be here sometimes in this form, so don't be weird about it. Also, you have to keep our identities a secret or we'll transform and kick your ass, okay?" She started to pull Tripp towards the door.

"Wait," Amelia called from the couch before they made it to the hallway, "What do we call you when you're a girl? I mean, if we're supposed to keep your identity a secret, we can't call you Tripp, right?"

Tripp... hadn't thought of that. Plus if he had to go to school in that form, he would need to come up with a new name at some point, plus a backstory. Secret identities were complicated.

Sam thinks for a minute. "I think one of my dummy identities had a pretty good name... What was it again...? Oh I know! How about Dawn? It even sounds a little like Dove, and it's cute, too!"

And just like that, Tripp began a new chapter in his life as the girl, Dawn.