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Cher has to face the possible ramifications of her indecision.

Shifting Consequences--Chapter 28: Beyond Doubt By Zmeydros (Lucien Quinn) zmeydros.tumblr.com zmeydros (Twitter) Malfedrosti (Mal Twitter)

Cher's drive to the office is instinctual. Her mind is too fixated on running through the day and finding all the ways she could have done things better to pay attention to her route. She should have called Mallory the moment she saw that Zack and his friends weren't a threat. She should have given them a chance to run far earlier. She should have stood up to Mallory when she asked her to check out the gas station lead again. Mallory deserves a punch in the face... and so does she.

She grips the steering wheel as she imagines those mostly harmless young adults in jail or some sort of lab for the rest of their lives. If she wore makeup, her tears would have made vertical lines down her face. Due to Zack's electrical powers and Bella's magic, they'd probably get restrained and isolated.

Cher's stomach turns over as she thinks about them being forced to have sex with people so data can be collected. Or they may have their fluids milked from them for hours every day. That isn't the life they deserve and it's all her fault! Her jaw starts to ache as she clenches it harder. Bella, that beautiful herm orca who gave her so much joy, rotting in captivity.

Agents shocking her to make her transform. Her being questioned for hours. Her being accused of being some sort of terrorist. Bella may never have a meal she actually likes again. She may never get to give her gift to anyone else. Zack would be in the same situation. It's unbearable!

She should turn herself in when she gets to the office, she deserves to be locked up with them. For the next few hours, she tries to think about something, anything else, but she never quite manages to. She thinks about calling Mallory to ask for an update several times. The reason she never calls is that she's worried that her emotional state will show in her voice.

About twenty minutes before she is at the Twin Cities Office, she pulls into a rest stop and bawls. Thoughts aren't even coming to her mind. Just a tightness in her chest and a general feeling of powerlessness. It feels like a--panic attack!

It takes over ten minutes for the pain in her chest to stop and five more for the tears. She leans back in her chair and tries to think of something that would calm her down. She starts with deep breaths. Some of the tension lifts.

A few minutes later, she feels the dark layer of clouds in her mind start to lift as a ray of hope cuts through some of the tension in her body. There's no guarantee they got caught. Government agents are not trained in how to combat magic.

What will she do if they are caught, though? She feels sick to her stomach again. Then she'll turn herself in. No! If she doesn't care about what happens to her, she should try to get them out.

If she needs their help for her plans, it will be a long road to get their trust back... She can worry about the details later. She can't do anything if she stays in this rest stop wallowing in grief. She's not a child, she's a fucking FBI agent who hunts down kidnappers. Criminals are afraid of her.

She's spent the past few hours being pathetic. Now she has to turn on the car, drive over to headquarters and face her mistakes. Her indecision and emotional turmoil is what caused this problem. It's her duty to make it right. She can cry more later.

She pulls a tissue out of the center console and dries her tears before starting the car. As she gets back on the highway, she tries to focus on the little bit of hope she has. No matter how sure she is that the worst case scenario is the only scenario, she is often surprised by fortunate events.

Breathing deeply she tells herself, "If they got caught, I will maintain a professional attitude in front of my coworkers. I can only help them if I'm not under suspicion."

By the time she gets to the office, she is composed. She looks at herself in the rear-view mirror and notices that her face is a bit off. Her nose is too wide and her eyebrows are thicker. She tries to change it, but nothing happens. She concentrates harder, still nothing. Her heart rate picks up and she starts sweating.

Will they notice if she goes in like this? Why didn't she think to fix her appearance when she still retained the ability to do so? She hits the dashboard with her fist. Another mistake!

Doesn't she need to have sex with someone to get the ability to change? Walking into headquarters and taking someone into a supply closet is way too risky. She'd have to show her ID to get in in the first place. Should she go to a gas station and proposition a clerk? This is ridiculous.

Her phone buzzes. At first, she ignores it, but it buzzes again. As she's thinking about whether she wants to deal with other problems, it buzzes a third time. She glares at her phone and then picks it up. When she checks her messages, she sees three text messages.

"Mal: Masturbate"

"Mal: Say 'Pickled masturbation devices.'"

"Mal: ????"

She stares at the screen for a moment. Great, the entity that had her wondering about her sanity is back. Does she really want to masturbate on command?

"Mal: Transform."

She texts, "Do I really have to masturbate to transform? I am in a hurry."

"Mal: I never said to go all the way and you should be thankful, I'm changing the rules so all you need to do is masturbate a bit. You're still in the early stages and you'd normally need to have sex with another human to transform."

Cher remembers Bella casting a spell... "Didn't Bella cast a sustain spell?"

"Mal: You've only transformed once, there wasn't much magic for her to sustain in the first place. Her spell ran out a half hour ago. Around the time you started making a great teary lake upon your loins."

Sneering at the phone, Cher sends, "Will I ever have privacy again or are you just going to watch me for the rest of my life?"

"Mal: A thank you should have been your next statement. I'll let that slide like a bear plays hockey if you just go about getting yourself to transform now."

She shakes her head. What choice does she have? The more time she spends like this, the higher the chance someone will walk by and notice.

What about the cameras that watch the parking lot? Can they see her? Probably not that clearly... She starts the car. They probably can't see her face clearly enough to make out the subtle differences, but the movements of her masturbation might be obvious.

As she pulls out of the lot, she starts thinking about somewhere close she could pull off the road and start pleasuring herself. This is such a weird situation. An SUV drives by and she blushes just thinking about the fact that the driver of any tall vehicle could see into her car easily.

She needs privacy, but is there actually any to be found on the streets near here? The streets anywhere? Even if she pulled into a dead-end street, someone could come out of their driveway and see her. Where should she go? Her apartment is twenty minutes away.

The longer she waits, the less time she has do to damage control if Zack and his friends were captured. "Mal, did you have a place in mind?"

A samurai sword, with a blade of grass in place of the blade, appears floating above the passenger's seat. When Cher pulls over, it says, "Anywhere and everywhere?"

"That's not good enough. If I get caught for indecent exposure, I won't be of much use to your friends."

"You mean the people who amuse me?" The blade of grass wiggles.

"If I have to tell you, you owe me a small favor."

"What kind of favor?" Cher crosses her arms.

"I promise it will be of use to both of us." The blade of grass bows.

Cher thinks about asking for details, but the thought of a long conversation with an entity that shouldn't exist in the first place is unattractive. That and the only alternative she can think of right this minute is masturbating in a gas station bathroom. She probably wouldn't even be able to get horny in one of those. There is probably a simple solution she isn't thinking of. Should she really trust him?

The Jeopardy theme song starts coming from Mal's current avatar.

"Fine, I agree to your terms." She sighs, hoping she won't regret this. Her decision-making track record is pretty abysmal today already.

"Good. Gooooood... Now go up two streets and take a left."

Cher gets back on the road and takes a left.

"Turn right at the ugly-as-a-tree-without-a-face brown house up there."

She looks at the house, trying to understand Mal's description. It has old wooden siding that seriously needs paint, but since trees don't have faces, there's no way that could describe the ugliness. Even when considering the peeling paint on the window frames. She turns right.

"You're not very good at humor are you?"

Cher glances at Mal. "Sounds like you just answered your own question."

"Rhetorical rhetoric is one of my specialties... Turn right."

After Cher turns right, she sees a house ahead that is in a fumigation tent. "We're not going in there, right?"

"Of course we are."

"Okay, I'm canceling our deal."

"You are really bad at humor."

"Maybe you're just really bad at sarcasm."

"Oh really?"

"Yeah." Cher pulls over.

"You're killing me!" The sword hilt with the grass blade falls onto the seat. "Haven't you ever seen the owl meme where one owl says 'oh really' and the other says 'yeah really?'"

"Nope. I only look at RSS news feeds and respond to emails online."

"You left out looking at recipes, the forum where you discuss taking care of your Glock, playing that one game on Facebook where you tend to a f--"

"Look, if you want to waste my time, you may as well leave. I'm about done with you."

"You think you can just tickle your female parts for a bit and transform? It will take more effort than that. You need me."

"Then start giving me directions before I give up on you."

"Okay, go four houses past the one undergoing fumigation and get out of the car."

"This is not sounding promising." Cher starts driving again.

"No one's home and they forgot to lock the door. They won't be back for hours, so you can take your time." The hilt and blade of grass start spinning at about the speed of a second hand on an analog clock.

"They're safe." A warm smile melts away Cher's tension.

"What? Who?"

"If you needed me to do damage control for Zack and his friends, you'd be in a hurry, but you're being chatty and playful instead. You aren't worried, so I can stop worrying. They didn't get caught after all."

"No, no, I am a god, why do you think I care enough about mere mortals to worry about them?"

She pulls over in front of the house. "Because they are your main source of entertainment. If you're the god of Absurdity, you have to have someone to appreciate the absurdity or it's meaningless. You tried to keep me away from them and got me questioning my own sanity. It's obvious you care about them. It's also obvious that your influence is limited. I found them despite your meddling. Therefore your ability to meddle has limits."

"Oh really? Who says I didn't want you to find them?"

"I do. That tape on my gun, that was no small feat. You pulled that stunt without anyone noticing. You can mess with electronic devices, you could have stopped my car or any car that I tried to use to get to them from working. But you didn't; I bet there are rules for what you can and cannot do. I imagine the biggest limits are on how much you can subvert someone's free will."

"Whether I deny your claim or proclaim your correctness, you'll just use that to poke at more details I'm not ready for you to know yet. So, my response is: futuristic cyborg platypus."

Cher grins and sheds a couple tears before laughing in joy. "They are still free! I'm so glad!"

"Yeah, yeah, don't wear out your celebrator. Instead, get in that house and use your fingers as a vibrator. You'll be able to transform, get to your FBI quarters of the head and do some good." The hilt and the blade of grass turn into red dust that further dissipates into nothingness.

Mal might not be so bad after all. He may be a god, but he has needs and desires and that makes him an entity she can understand. And if she can understand him, he poses much less of a threat to her well-being. He may try to be absurd and unpredictable, but he has some foundational personality traits that will shape his actions.

She's spent enough time on him. It's time to masturbate in a stranger's house. Normally, she wouldn't do this, but she can't think of an alternative, and even though she doesn't want to admit it, she's getting hot just thinking about it. She gets out of the car and starts walking toward the front door.