And name now forgotten

Jesse watched the pair leave with a sense of trepidation… though for what reason he couldn't say. Franceska had always been the strongest rock in their group. Unassailable in her carefree good humour and unwilling to consider anyone outside her purview of kindness. He realised he had never seen her blanche at anything asked of her or offer shock to anything the world threw… until Beth's introduction that morning. That was what had unsettled him the most, he supposed and set off all this spark of curiosity: What could possibly have upset their own iron lady.

Out in the corridor, Franceska already had Beth pinned to the wall. Pressed up against the gasping image of one former student or another in the utmost throes of ecstasy. Fierce eyes sought any glint of recognition in the watery spheres that blinked back at her.

"Sean! What are you doing?! Where have you been?!"

Beth stared back at her in fear and confusion. Her head was still spinning from the moment of asphyxiation. From the continual strange and confusing sense of her body not being right. Not behaving in the way she expected to. Seeming longer and clumsier and more… dangly between the legs than it should be. She didn’t know who 'Sean' was. She wasn't entirely sure who 'Beth' was, for that matter. The only name which felt a better fit was being worn by someone else, along with the face that went with it.

None of it really mattered, of course… they'd told her she was Beth, so that was who she was. If anything made sense anymore, it was the continued fact that she was whoever those in charge wanted her to be. At least doing what she was told; dropping to her knees and serving a master. That gave a sense of grounding solidarity. However, here… pinned up against a wall and interrogated by someone she only half recognised… she was thrown back into the drowning depths of her own confusion. It brought up great waves of fear and sorrow from the very centre of her, and cast them sobbing into light.

The 'Queen of the Dropouts' looked at the deflated, blubbering thing in her grip and felt awful for it. This hadn't been her intention… and her heart now ached for the poor creature, half a foot taller than her though it was. She pulled 'Beth' close, into a tight embrace. Offering what consolation she could. It was clear there wasn't much, if anything, of the boy she knew left in this short-skirted shell. Which meant she was really just assaulting an innocent...

Another soldier lost. Another win for the enemy. They had known the Corpos were up to something. Seen the shifts in the patterns of power, even from their lowdown view from the gutter and her own meagre infiltration. Nothing had prepared her for this though. A complete transformation of one of her most loyal and capable compatriots into, what? Just another warm bag of mind-wiped jelly for them to shove their cocks into? What had they done to him?! It wasn’t as if they’d ever really gone into these little guerilla tactics with any real hope of winning… But this… This was something terrifying.

Franceska hugged her old/new friend closely… embarrassed at how she’d been treating her all day. Whoever ‘Beth’ was… it was obviously not her fault she happened to be inhabiting a body Fran had prior attachments to. And, if there was any hope of Sean still being in there somewhere… The spy in this den of wolves was going to need to keep her close.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…” She murmured, tears welling up in her own eyes. Finally letting out some of the guilt and horror she’d felt upon seeing the one she’d sent into danger reappear in skirt and stockings.

“You just reminded me… of someone I used to know. I’ll take you to see the nurse now.”