Back of the Envelope

The Rest of the Story: The whole story can be found here.

This is Part III of my CRFH fanfiction. It's also the part where I reveal what's actually going on to the readers, although I keep the characters in the dark for a while. For those familiar with CRFH, the timing of events happens immediately after April's Secret.

As always, all the characters, the world(s), and the events referenced belong to Maritza Campos, copyright 1999-2008. Only the events of this story belong to me.

---

Crossing Over
Chapter 3

Dave yawned and blinked his eyes. What had happened? The last thing he remembered he had been lying in the grass, certain he was going to choke to death. Whatever he was lying on now, it was soft and cushioned, and he wasn't choking, although he felt groggy and weak. He tried to look around him, but everything was blurry, like he couldn't bring the world into focus. A face hovered close by, however, one with curly brown hair and blue eyes, and a rough, calloused hand held his own.

"Mar— Marg…" he mumbled, his mouth clumsy and unable to form the name.

"Shh. It's okay. I'm here. You—you're going to be all right."

"What the…?" It wasn't the doubt in the voice that shook him, but the timbre of it. That wasn't Margaret's voice. And the hand holding his was much too big. He pulled his hand free and pushed himself back, bumping his head against the cushioned arm of what he now realized was a couch that he was lying on. A startled meow reproved him, and the weight he hadn't even noticed on his stomach departed as Chester leapt to the floor. By the time he had managed to sit up, his back propped against the couch's arm, he was able to see clearly. The guy kneeling next to the couch was big, with more muscles than Dave had ever dared wish for himself. He had brown hair and blue eyes, but he was definitely not Margaret. He looked concern, unduly so for a stranger. There was another guy behind him, this one tall and wiry with blond hair and a goatee, and he was watching Dave with a wary expression, as if uncertain what Dave would do.

"Calm down, Dahlia," the brown haired guy said. "I know it's strange, but we'll get you back to normal soon, I promise."

"Who the Hell is Dahlia?" Dave said. "And who are you?"

"You—you don't recognize me—us—at all?" he said uncertainly.

"I've never seen you before in my life. Although..." Dave took a closer look at him. Now that he had calmed down a bit, he could see that there was a similarity to Margaret. Not just the hair and the eyes, but the shape of the face, the nose. "You do look enough like Margaret to be her brother. But you can't be; her whole family's dead." A brief spasm crossed the guy's face, but then it relaxed into a look of concern.

"I don't know a Margaret, but my name's Mark."

"And I'm Adam," said the other one. "And you are?"

Mark gave Adam an odd look, one Dave couldn't read. "My name's Dave. And my cat there is Chester. C'mere, Chester." Chester leapt into his arms, eager as always to be with his soul-mate. "What am I doing here? What happened to me? I remember being stung, but if that had been a bee I'd either be in a hospital or dead right now."

Adam smiled. "I'd guess that was a tranquilizer dart or something. We found you in the hands of the Satanists. They were performing some ritual in their apartment."

"Oh, God. What the xhlemphregomfortness were Steve and Waldo up to? Haven't they tried to feed my soul to demons enough times?"

"Uh, yeah," Mark said. "Could you wait here a moment? Adam and I need to talk about something."

"Sure. Thanks for helping me out, by the way. I like my soul where it is."

"Uh huh. Adam, let's go to the kitchen for a moment."

Dave watched them walk away. Something about Adam seemed familiar, although Dave couldn't quite place it. Not just how he looked, but something about how he moved, lightly, and ready to spring in any direction. Kind of like April when she was nervous. Dave shook his head. If they knew Waldo and Steve, then they were probably at the college. In fact, looking around the apartment, the layout was very similar to his own, or the girls'. The furnishing was sparse and functional, as was usual for guys rooming together. It was not quite the environmental disaster area that Dave's apartment tended towards, but then they didn't live with Mike. Still, move a few things around, add some completely unnecessary decorations and frip-frappery, and it would look just like the girls' place. He must be in the same building, then, which was odd, as Dave thought he had met most of the tenants. He didn't really know them all, but he'd seen them around by now. He glanced back at Mark and Adam, who were in an intense but quiet conversation, and wondered what they were talking about.



"Well, his mind is just as screwed up as his body!" Margaret exclaimed once they were out of earshot of "Dahlia."

"Are you sure she's Dave?" April asked. "If she thinks she's been a girl all her life, maybe it's because she has."

"I'd agree if he didn't remember most everything, even if it's all twisted around. Demons stealing his soul, Chester, Waldo and Steve, all the stuff I told him about my family. Only now all those things happened to Dahlia, Chelsea, and Mark. The memories are fake, but accurate."

"Well, what do you want to do about it? We have to tell her, right?"

"What do we say? Hey, Dahlia, you're really a guy named Dave whose been turned into a woman by those Satanists, and in the process your mind got all screwed around too. He's not going to believe that."

"If it's really Dave, weirdness and altered states of reality should be normal for him. Though… he'll probably freak out at first. That's standard Dave reaction to most anything strange and frightening. Of course, once you get him past the freaking out he's good to kick butt up until the point he collapses from pain and exhaustion."

"Even then he doesn't stay down. Once he regains consciousness, he'll get back up and do it again," Margaret said with a fond smile. "Believe it or not, he really is the toughest guy I know."

If you two could just get your act together, you could actually be happy together, April thought, but there was no point in rubbing salt in old wounds. "So we're agreed? We tell her?"

"Him, not her. Are you sure about this? If we screw up his mind worse than it already is…"

"If it is Dave, I don't think that's possible."

"Point. Okay, then…"

"Guys," they heard a voice behind them. "I appreciate the help and all, but I really ought to be going." Dahlia was standing in front of the couch, Chelsea in her arms. She still looked a little wobbly.

"Wait a moment, Dahlia," Margaret said. "We need to talk to you about something important."

"Huh? What is it? 'Cause I'd like to go lie down in my own bed for a while. I feel like my head's about to fall off."

"Where do you live, Dahlia?" April asked.

"I live in this building. At least, I think this is the same building. I'm on the floor just above Wendy and Stella."

"Okay, I'm just going to be direct…" Margaret began.

"No you aren't. Let me handle this, Margaret," April said.

"Okay, but if you don't get to the point quick, I'll do it for you."

"Ooookay. Dahlia, have you ever seen a blue mushroom?"

"Oh God, I hate those things. Don't tell me you've had a blue mushroom trip, too."

"Yes, we have. And you know how sometimes in those hallucinations, things can be completely weird, but it seems like it's exactly the way it's supposed to be? But really, it's that your brain can't remember the way things are supposed to be, so you just accept the hallucination"

"Uh-huh. What are you getting at?" Dahlia asked.

"Well, we think maybe you're experiencing something like that right now."

"You're saying this is a hallucination?" she said. "You're kidding. Where's the superhero outfits? Where's Hell? This is just too ordinary for an hallucination."

"Yeah, we're not saying this is an hallucination. What we're thinking is that you actually do know who we are, you just aren't remembering us correctly."

"Huh?"

"This Mark guy you mentioned. He's a real gun nut, really good with martial arts, very reluctant to let people get close to him?"

"Yeah. Do you know him?"

"Sort of. This is Margaret. She's a real gun nut, great martial artist, doesn't let people get close to her. Do you see where this is going?"

Dahlia frowned prettily. "No, not really. Are they related?"

"No, Dahlia, they're the same person."

"That's crazy," Dahlia said, hugging Chelsea so close she mewed. "You're not making any sense. You're saying, you're saying… what? That this is a blue mushroom trip and Margaret's really Mark, he just looks like a woman?"

"No, you idiot," Margaret said, interrupting. "I am a woman. You're the one…"

"Hold on, Margaret," April said, putting a hand on her arm. "No, it's more like when we were hooked up to the machine, where we thought we'd been friends with the kids from the Sci-Fi club for months."

"Hey, how did you know about that?" Dahlia said, wide-eyed.

"I was there. So were you. Well, sort of. The point is that our memories had been altered, we were remembering things differently than how they had happened. We think the same thing is happening to you here. This Mark you're remembering is really Margaret, you're just remembering her as a guy. When, in fact, she's a girl and she's always been one."

"That can't be. Mark and I had… we…" Dahlia was blushing bright red. "If he was really a girl, then that'd mean I was a lesbian, and I'm not. Mark can't be a girl."

"You're not a lesbian, Dahlia," Margaret growled. "Because up to an hour ago, you weren't a girl."

"Wha??"

"Subtle as always, Margaret," April said with a sigh. "What we're saying is that you're actually a guy named Dave, and Waldo and Steve—the Satanists you were calling Wendy and Stella—turned you into a girl and somehow mixed up your memories to boot."

"That has got to be the craziest thing I've ever heard," Dahlia said. "And I live with Rose. I am a girl and I've been one all my life. You're making this up. Did Michelle put you up to this? It'd be just like her."

"Yes, it's crazy," Margaret said. "But is it crazier than what we get mixed up in daily? Crazier than getting your soul stolen by Satan and ending up sharing it with a cat? Crazier than living with a werecoyote? Crazier than being a mutant freak with laservision?"

"Mutant freak?! I may have lived through some strange stuff, but I'm not a freak! Laservision? You really are crazy! If I had laservision I'd have blasted down that door by now." Dahlia said, angry, but she seemed scared too. "With or without it, I'm leaving. Don't try to stop me, or Mark will wring your necks."

"Okay, go," April said. "Your apartment is next door. Look around and then tell us that everything's like you remember it."

"I won't be telling you anything, because I won't be seeing you again. Good-bye, ladies," she said. She crossed the kitchen floor, skirting wide of both girls, whipped open the door and went out, slamming it shut behind her.

"Well, we flubbed that pretty bad," April said.

Margaret shrugged. "There wasn't any gentle way to do it. Once he realizes we're telling the truth, he'll be back."

---

This is a 1,943 word excerpt of a 17,474 word story.

For reasons probably having a lot to do with the Japanese manga Ranma 1/2, transgender stories (where one of the characters literally changes sex) are all the rage in webcomics these days. Aside from the numerous webcomics with it as a premise, a lot of otherwise normal webcomics have TG stories (It's Walky!, The Order of the Stick!, even Sluggy in a print story). College Roomies from Hell is not one of them: instead, CRFH has a TG universe, an alternate reality where all of the cast members are the opposite sex. This has only appeared in the daily comic once, but the cartoonist initially created, and fleshed out, this universe in the forums. This story is based on a cross over between the normal CRFH universe and the TG one, but for the first couple of chapters I teased my readers with the possibility that this was in fact a TG story. Aside from being a good gimmick for getting webcomic readers to read my story, it kept them from what this story is really all about. Which I'll tell you as soon as we get to that part, somewhere around July.

The Rest of the Story: The whole story can be found here.

The problem with writing a fanfiction is that it doesn't make a lot of sense unless the readers have the context to understand it. Mine is even worse, since you really have to be aware of things in the forum community, not just in CRFH. Still, I like the story. And if you want the quick rundown of events, you can try here, where I talk a bit about the comic.

As before, all the characters, the world(s), and the events referenced belong to Maritza Campos, copyright 1999-2008. Only the events of this story belong to me.

---

Crossing Over

Chapter 2

"Change him back. Now!" Margaret shoved her pistol up under Steve's jaw, forcing his head back.

"I don't know how!" Steve panted, his eyes crossed in an attempt to look at the gun. "That isn't what was supposed to happen!"

"Well, what was supposed to happen?"

"It was a B-b-banishment spell. You know, to send him to another plane of existence."

"Why the Hell would you want to do that?"

"It was the Boss's idea, to get Dave out of the way. He figured simple Banishment was something he wouldn't be protected against."

Margaret stared at him. Finding out Dave was protected spooked her almost as much as thinking he was a target. She still wasn't sure how much she believed of it all. Even the miracles could be some sort of infernal trick, but she was beginning to believe that Satan might be… frightened by something about Dave. That just made it more important to keep him from getting mixed up in what Satan was doing to her.

"Well," said Roger. "If they messed up the spell, then maybe they could reverse it if they just repeat what they did."

"Roger, I don't think casting the same messed-up spell twice is going to fix the problem," Margaret replied.

"You're right. Maybe they should do it backwards."

"Look, gun nut, our spell was fine before the cat and the coyote messed with it," Steve said. "That's what screwed it up. Even if we did exactly the same thing, the result of a miscast is random. We'd never be able to repeat it."

Margaret looked at Waldo, who was still standing with his hands up despite the fact that no one was paying attention to him. She had even let her aim drift so the gun wasn't lined up on him any longer. She quickly brought it back on target. Both of them were idiots and cowards, but Waldo was more of both. "Waldo, what do you think?"

"It's all his fault. I just did what he said."

"Okay, you two are going to come up with a solution," Margaret said. "If you don't have something in twenty-four hours, I'm going to have to hurt you."

"We can't do it at gun-point, you know," Steve said. "Why don't you leave us alone to work on it?"

"Why? So you can flee to another country?"

"I'm serious. We can't work with you here."

"Yeah," Waldo chimed in. "You're one scary chick. You make us nervous."

"Okay, I'll leave, but Roger's staying."

"What?" all three of them said at once.

"You can't leave us with him. He'll melt our brains," Steve said, while Waldo said, "He's so nuts he makes you look unnutty."

"Roger will keep an eye on you, and he'll go all werecoyote on you if you give him half a reason. Right, Roger?" Margaret said.

"Mmmmokay," said Roger. "But if they turn me into a girl I'm moving in with you."

"Fine, whatever. I'm taking Dave out of here."

"Wait!" Steve said. "You can't take her—him—away. We'll never be able to reverse the spell if we can't, um… study her, I mean him."

"Yeah, right," Margaret said as she holstered her pistols. She leaned down and rolled the still unconscious Dave onto his stomach, then placed her hands beneath his abdomen as she pulled him onto his knees. She wasn't sure what disturbed her more, the breasts, the long hair in her face, or simply the fact that Dave was much lighter than he should have been. Still, it wasn't going to be easy to manhandle him all the way up to the apartment. His head lolled as Margaret lifted him to his feet, then got in front to drape him across her shoulders in a fireman's carry. She straightened, then glared at Steve and Waldo. "Roger, if they give you any trouble, eat them."

"Ick. They smell like brimstone. I don't even want to think about what they taste like."

"Hey, you can't eat us! If you do, who's going to fix this?" Steve said.

"Yeah," added Waldo, just as eloquent as ever.

"You're right," Margaret replied. "But if Roger starts with your toes, there should still be enough of you left to do the job."

"Ugh. Margaret, I do not want to eat their smelly feet. Now an ear, that wouldn't be so bad."

"Okay, okay," Steve said. "We get the idea."

Margaret got Dave out the door, and headed to the elevator. Chester followed, mewing constantly. Something sounded off about it, but Margaret didn't have time to worry about that as she stabbed the up button on the elevator. The elevator was already on the way from the ground floor, and it arrived almost immediately. Margaret was just wondering how she was going to explain this if there was someone inside when the door opened and Margaret found herself face-to-face with April.

"Whoa," she said. "Margaret, what are you doing carrying that girl around? Who is she?"

"This girl is Dave," she said as she set him down on the elevator's floor, his back against the wall.

"You're kidding. I know he's into some weird stuff, but cross-dressing? I mean, again?" She knelt down for a closer look. "Okay, you're definitely kidding. There's no way this is Dave in a dress." She actually poked the left breast.

"Hey, stop that!" Margaret slapped her hand away. The elevator had reached their floor and the door opened. "Help me get him to our apartment and I'll explain."

They lifted Dave between them, one on either side, and carried him to the apartment. Holding him upright, it was clear that he was now shorter than either of them, and his feet hovered a couple of inches off the ground. By the time they lay him on the couch, Margaret had finished telling April what had happened.

"Wow, I had no idea that Steve and Waldo could do something like that," April said.

"I believe it," Margaret said. "They couldn't do it in a thousand years if they actually wanted to, but by accident? It's a wonder they haven't turned themselves into frogs by now."

"Nah, they'd turn us into frogs instead," April replied. "Every time anybody gets mutated or cursed or possessed, it's always one of us. Those two may be idiots, but somehow they ended up with the good luck while we ended up with the bad."

"Wow, you're cheery," Margaret said.

"Actually I am," she replied, with a brighter smile than Margaret had seen her wear in a long time. "Yes, it's weird, but we're still alive, and meanwhile things are certainly interesting."

"Okay, I think you've gone nuts. Are you sure you're okay?"

"It's just… I've been thinking. For the longest time I thought I was a freak. I didn't think I fit in where I grew up, and then I tried the real world, only to realize that I couldn't fit in here either. I thought that I was incomplete, not made for one place or the other. Then a friend reminded me that as weird as my life had been, it wasn't any weirder than what you guys go through on a daily basis. I'm really not an outsider here, but I came very close to making myself one by letting my anger with Mike get in the way of my friendship with the rest of you. And… I'm sorry."

"Apology accepted and I'm glad for you and all that, but can we focus on Dave here?"

April rolled her eyes. "Okay, okay. Well, aside from being a she, he seems okay. Chester seems to be taking this calmly." The cat had curled itself on Dave's abdomen and closed his eyes. "Uh, do you think it's just cosmetic changes, or do you think it's, you know, complete?" April was blushing a deep red by the time she finished.

"I haven't checked and I'm not going to," Margaret said, her face beginning to grow warm as well. "We can ask him when he wakes up."

"Wait a second," April said. "You said Chester ran into the circle as well?"

"Yes. Why?"

"I was just thinking that something seemed different about him." She reached down and picked up Chester, holding him up with a hand beneath each foreleg and looking at his exposed stomach. Margaret wondered what she was doing. Chester just stared at April curiously until she put him down on Dave's stomach again. "Well, that answers that."

"What answers what?"

"Think, Margaret! Chester ran into the circle as well. He seems different. That's because he is now a she too. And having had a close look at her, I think I can now say that the change is complete, at least for everything on the outside."

"Oh. Oh! I didn't even think to check. You don't think…"

"Shhh. I think she's waking up."

Margaret looked at Dave. His jaw was open in a yawn and his eyes were fluttering open, so she knelt down beside the couch and took his hand. It was small and soft and she almost dropped it in consternation, but she held on for his sake.

---

This has been a 1,531 word excerpt of a 17,474 word story.