Topic: Lady Margolotta's School for Unconventional Women
A commission from Esunalily.
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Chapter 1: A Strange Accident
Crystal Dunn yawned and stretched, growing bored of reading the bundle of pages on her lap. She'd been trapped in this damn truck for over six hours now and had at least another three to go. At least her half of the driving was over. She'd had the harder leg, maneuvering the big truck through the heavy morning traffic around Atlanta. The roads had been stop and go up until Charlotte, where her assistant Angelica took over.
"If that paperwork is boring you too much, you can always take another driving shift." Crystal's assistant remarked from the driver's seat.
"No thank you." Crystal replied, trying to adjust her position on the uncomfortable bench seat of the truck. "You just want more time to finish that ugly fabric monstrosity you call a sweater.
"It's for Melanie." Angelica said, referencing Crystal's other assistant. "That girl's so skinny she's going to freeze come winter."
"With the new grant money we got, perhaps we can afford to turn up the heat instead."
Crystal shifted around so she could see through the small slit into the truck's covered cargo area. Sitting in the center, protected by an army of straps, was a large, roughly spherical stone. Almost four feet in diameter, it contained a swirling mix of colors that seemed to move whenever the light shifted. The person who found the rock had no idea what it was. Neither did the government geologists he turned it over to. They determined it was some sort of gemstone, but were stymied beyond that.
That was how Crystal had ended up with the stone and the money to examine it. She'd worked as a geologist and gemologist after graduating school for almost ten years before being invited back as a teacher. In the two years since Crystal had turned the small lab they gave her into a cutting-edge center of mineral science. She'd developed a special scanner that could identify trace elements and impurities without needing small samples. This had come in handy, for example when she'd been able to confirm the authenticity of some gemstone jewelry without needing to destroy the settings. The scanner was also able to work with rather large items, such as their current project.
Crystal spent the rest of the trip alternating between reading the incredibly dry government report, examining the forested mountains around them, and staring at her driving assistant. If you had to describe Angelica in a single idea, she was a hippy who was born too late. The young woman was always wearing a multitude of bright colors, like today's red and purple plaid shirt. Her long wavy brown hair was barely contained by a headband and usually sported at least one flower somewhere.
Finally, the truck and its passengers arrived at the place that Crystal had come to think of as home. Lady Margolotta's School for Unconventional Women was, as the title suggested, unconventional. It had been founded over a hundred years ago by the titular Lady Margolotta Barton, who had inherited her significantly older husband's fortune when he died prematurely. Lady Margolotta had some…unusual ideas about a woman's place in society. She'd founded the school to teach women to stand on their own, without men, and advocated for their acceptance into the business and scientific worlds when most people considered a woman's place to be at home in the kitchen. There had also been rumors of…sexual nonconformity. Certainly Lady Margolotta was never seen without her secretary, Chastity, by her side. A miscast name if ever there was one.
A hundred years later, what had drawn Crystal to the school was it robust STEM department for an all-women’s college. These days, such schools tended to be rare and artistic leaning. She liked some of the quaint old customs, like both students and staff rooming together on campus or the uniform requirements. And without the distractions of boys or modernity, she could focus on her degree and get out into the world. Ten years later she'd returned, burned out of the world and ready to help the next generation.
The truck trundled across the Half Horse bridge over Sunny's stream, which was only a trickle this late in the fall. Beyond that were the great stone gates into the campus, complete with obligatory gargoyles. A further few minutes of driving took the pair past the outer ring of cottages, around administration building, and into the back of the Curie science building.
"You start undoing the straps, I'll go fetch Melanie." Crystal told her assistant as she climbed out of the truck. It was a quick walk into the red brick building, with the teacher rubbing her hands to warm them against the autumn chill.
It was just after eight in the evening, but Crystal was unsurprised to find her second assistant dutifully flitting about the underground lab. Melanie was tall and thin in the way of a flagpole, five ten and barely over a hundred pounds. Her black hair fell in loose ringlets to the tips of her shoulders, partly hiding the glasses always perched upon her nose.
As Crystal stepped into her lab she saw that Melanie had prepared everything needed for the tests she planned to run tomorrow morning. The girl might consider herself more of an artist than scientist, but she was a stickler for details. A useful thing for an assistant, though Melanie tended to get lost in her own head occasionally.
"Melanie." Crystal called, breaking her assistant from her spell.
"Oh, Ms. Dunn. Sorry, I didn't hear you come in. I think I've got everything you requested put together. How was the trip?"
"Long. Between the traffic and Angelica's choice of music…" They both chuckled. The other lab assistant's love of terrible folk songs was a constant source of amusement for those who knew her. That and terrible headaches. "We need to unload the truck tonight but we'll save the rest for the morning."
"I figured Professor, after that long of the drive. The Dean, Ms. McKenzie, inquired if she could stop by and see how the testing was progressing. After all, this is a significant grant for her school. I tried to call you about it, but your phone went right to voicemail."
"It was probably when we were lost in the mountains. Oh, well. Come on Melanie, we need to get back to Angelica before she falls asleep waiting. With all the sugary drinks she consumed, when that girl crashes we'll never get her back up again."
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"How goes the testing, Crystal?" Dean McKenzie asked as she stepped into the professor's lab the next morning.
Crystal was at a station checking numbers while her two assistants scurried about. "We've managed to confirm most of what the government told us. This thing is quite literally harder than a rock and doesn't match the profile of any known mineral combination."
"Hopefully you'll have a bit more luck. How close are you to being ready for the scan?"
"About five minutes. We've mostly been waiting on your arrival."
Five minutes later the four women stood behind the protective glass screen of the control center portion of the lab. Through it they could see out into the testing floor and the strange stone that sat in the scanner. "And that wraps up the pre-scan checklist." Crystal said, setting aside her clipboard. "Angelica, if you would."
The young assistant hit a few buttons in the control panel. On the scanner, a series of metal rings lowered to engulf the stone. Each of the dozen rings was heavily laden with sensors that would hopefully tell the group what they were dealing with.
"Rings in place. Turning on the sensors…now."
There was no obvious change in the testing chamber, not the Crystal expected any. The energy waves her machine used were outside the range of human vision. "Any readings yet Melanie?"
"Nothing yet."
"Then increase power to 50%."
Back and forth they went, with Angelica slowly upping the power and Melanie receiving no new information. By the time they reached 100% with no results, Crystal was disappointed. "Damn, we're having as much success as the government boys. Shut it down Angelica, we'll have to come up with a new way to test this."
Angelica hit more buttons on her console. She stared at it for a moment, then hit them again. And a third time. With a frown Angelica said, "Professor, I think we have a problem."
"What kind of problem?" Crystal asked, coming over.
"I tried shutting down power to the sensors, but my commands aren't going through. If anything, more power is flowing in."
Crystal's heart sank as she saw the numbers. At this rate they'd start blowing out sensors any minute. "Keep trying to shut it down."
"Professor!" Melanie called. "Something's happening."
"Are you finally getting some readings?"
"No, to the stone. Look."
Crystal glanced over and saw her assistant was correct. The colors inside the stone had started to swirl like a multicolored whirlpool. Crystal had no idea what this thing was, but she was becoming more and more convinced it was not just a rock.
"Angelica, how are those shutdown procedures coming?"
"I'm trying, but nothing's responding. I've keyed in the emergency shut down twice and the stone is still somehow pulling power from the system. If we don't do something soon, the whole system could overload and…"
Angelica couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence, but Crystal knew the missing word was explode. She'd built the machine in the lab, she knew what it could take. If the readings on her assistant's station were correct, Crystal was amazed it hadn't failed already.
Crystal's hand drifted up to her throat, where a small chunk of blue crystal hung from a silver chain. It was a graduation gift from her friend and mentor, the famous and sometimes infamous Dr. Blake. Her mentor had always been a man for unconventional solutions, so what would he do in this situation? If too much power was getting in and he couldn't stop it via the computer, Crystal knew Dr. Blake would go to the source. A stupid and dangerous plan, but in this situation Crystal didn't see another option.
"Crystal, where are you going?" Dean McKenzie yelled as Crystal dashed back into the testing portion of the lab.
Crystal was too single minded to answer. She only had a few more moments to stop this catastrophe and she wasn't going to waste them with words. Crystal skidded to a stop beside the main power conduit for the lab and pulled it open. There was a large breaker lever on the inside and she hauled it
down into the off position.
Overhead, the lights flickered and died, leaving the room bathed in the light of the glowing stone. "You did it Professor." Angelica called from the control center. Her words barely had time to echo across the room before her voice turned fearful. "Professor, the computer's down but I'm still getting readings from the passive sensors. Somehow, the stone is still pulling in power."
Crystal stepped back hurriedly as the breaker box started to hiss and spark. So much for that plan. Somehow the stone was able to suck in enough power to bridge the fuse gap. She needed a bigger gap, something it couldn't jump. A moment later Crystal found herself standing over on the of the thick power cables that supplied juice to her scanner. In her hands was a large, flat tipped shovel. Before her brain could catch up with what her body was doing Crystal raised her improvised weapon high and brought it down on the cable.
The first hit merely damaged the protective plastic outer coating. The second fractured it, revealing the coiled innards of the power cable. The final hit split them in twain. Ignoring the tingling she could feel from her feet, Crystal kicked the severed end away to break the connection permanently.
"Get down." someone yelled. Crystal barely had time to look up at the stone, whose colors were swirling madly, before something large and heavy impacted her back. As she was dragged to the floor there was a blinding flash of light and what felt like an angry giant swatted Crystal into the wall. She impacted badly and the blackness of unconsciousness swallowed her.
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Crystal sat up with a groan. She had the mother of all headaches and her body ached like it hadn't since Angelica invited her to go rock climbing for her assistant's birthday. What had happ…one blinking look around the room told Crystal exactly what had happened. She was in her lab, which looked like it had taken a blast from a stick of dynamite. Even dimly lit by chemical emergency lights, that much was readily apparent. Everything not bolted to the floor and a few things that were lay tumbled against the walls. In the center of this chaos was Crystal's scanner, now a wrecked and twisted jumble of metal. Of the stone that had stood inside it seconds….minutes….hours before, there was no sign.
At a groan from around her legs Crystal looked down to find the Dean slumped beside her. The back of the woman's jacket was perforated by dozens of small pieces of shrapnel. In a panic Crystal checked herself for such wounds, only to slump in relief when she didn't find any. She remembered something slamming her down before the explosion. It must have been the Dean, who had taken the brunt of the explosion for Crystal.
Crystal checked the Dean's wounds again. She had a few fist sized pieces of metal sticking out of her back, but didn't seem to be bleeding heavily. Crystal knew better than to try and pull them out, that would only make any internal bleeding external. She needed to get help down here and fast. But first, Crystal needed to get the lights back on and check on her two assistants.
She stumbled over to the breaker box, which had luckily survived the carnage intact. Crystal lifted the lever back into the on position and prayed the system was still intact. A moment later about half the overhead lights flickered back to life. The rest were either broken or burnt out. Even so, it was major improvement over the chemical lights.
"Angelica! Melanie!" Crystal called.
"In here." replied the former.
Crystal stumbled back into the control room to see it in not much better condition than the lab. The thick glass had held, preventing shrapnel, but the blowback had overloaded most of the computers in the room. Even with the power restored only one machine was active, the screen a fuzzy blur of computerized nonsense. Angelica was on the ground, half under her fallen chair, and there was no sign of Melanie.
"Angelica, are you alright?" Crystal rushed over and helped her assistant up and into her chair.
"Bit woozy, but that will pass. I'm more worried about you. What possessed you to run out onto the testing floor during an experiment like that? You could have gotten killed."
"At the rate that stone was sucking in energy, we might have died anyway when it finally discharged. I was lucky, the Dean shielded me from the worst of the shrapnel. She looks stable for now, but we need to get her to the medical center. Have you seen Melanie?"
"She ran out of the control room that way." Angelica gestured to the room's other door. "Said something about having an idea."
Crystal staggered over to the door and opened it. This part of the lab was used for pre-scanner testing and storage, separated only by a half wall from the exploded scanner. It too was a mess, with only a small cone of safe haven behind the wall. Strangely, there was no sign of her assistant.
"Melanie!" Crystal called again. Silence.
Crystal's heart sank. Her assistant wasn't in the open, which left the piles of debris shoved up against the walls. This included several heavy filing cabinets that the teacher knew she couldn't shift on her own. As much as it pained Crystal to leave her young assistant behind, she knew she had to care for those she could right now.
Crystal made her way across the lab and over to the door to the hallway that led upstairs. But when she pushed on it, Crystal found it stuck fast.
"Great, just damn great." Crystal tried her phone next. The screen was cracked from her hard landing earlier and it wouldn't turn on no matter what button she pressed. Either more internal damage or the explosion had an emp effect as well. Things kept getting better and better.
Putting her phone away, Crystal returned to the lab. "The door's stuck." she told Angelica. "And my phone is busted."
"Mine too." Angelica held up the blackened brick of her own phone. "And as to why the door won't open...I think I might know why." The assistant pointed to the wall behind her.
Crystal turned and studied the sign on the wall. Her team had picked it up after dealing with some possibly radioactive rocks last year. Big, bold, red letters spelled out IF YOU CAN READ THIS, RUN. Beside it hung a bag of popcorn. Both items were a bit of a joke, at least they used to be. Now, instead of just the stenciled outlines of the letters they were fully filled in, and the bag of popcorn was fully popped. Both led to an uncomfortable conclusion.
"Whatever happened, there must have been a massive surge of radiation." Angelica repeated the thoughts running through Crystal's mind. "We wired another sensor into the door locks, in case there was a leak while we were away. I don't think any of us expected to have a surge this bad while in the lab."
"Well now we have." Crystal barked angrily. "We're stuck in here until someone comes down to check on us, the Dean needs medical attention, Melanie is missing…" Crystal put a hand to her throat, reaching for her crystal necklace. It was normally a great comfort for her, a point of calm she could focus on. But now, all Crystal found was her empty neck. "And now my necklace is gone. Damn, damn, damn."
Crystal paced back and forth, trying to think of a way out of their predicament. She stopped a minute later when something caught her eye. Angelica had started to look a little green. Not sick, but the actually color. There was a large splotch of green on her cheek, and more popping up like aggressive freckles on her arm.
"Angelia, your skin." Crystal exclaimed.
"My...skin?" The assistant held her arm up to her face and for the first time noticed the fact she was turning a decidedly non-human color. What skin not under assault by the green onslaught paled. Angelica tried to stand but had only made it a few feet in Crystal's direction before she stumbled. The teacher barely managed to catch her before the young woman hit the floor. "Professor…what's happening to me?" Angelica asked weakly.
Crystal had no idea. Only in bad cartoons did radiation turn you funny colors. A dose like they had just been exposed to should have killed them, not started to turn Angelica into She-hulk.
"Professor, I can't feel my legs…and my arms, something is happening to my arms."
Angelica wrapped Crystal's forearm in a deathgrip. It was forceful enough to come from a professional wrestler instead of a slip of a young woman. Crystal found her arm tugged forward as Angelica's arm started to shrink. Now Crystal got even more confused. Massive internal hemorrhaging or other effects of intense radiation exposure shouldn’t cause limb deformities like this.
Angelica's arm was half its former size and her grip tightened to the point her nails ripped off chunks of Crystal's skin. Instead of pain, the teacher found a growing…itching sensation coming from the wound. Crystal managed to tug herself free and examined her forearm. Angelica's nails had dug long furrows that were bleeding faintly. Crystal licked her fingers and wiped away the blood, trying to gauge the depth of the gouges. What she saw took her breath away.
Instead of flesh, the cuts in her skin revealed blue crystal underneath. It reminded Crystal of the charm she wore around her neck…only this was impossible. She was a person, not some strange crystal alien. And yet it seemed the definition of impossible had shifted today, as evidenced by the transforming woman in her lap.
Setting Angelica down, Crystal stumbled to the mirror mounted above the sink in the storage area. The corner was cracked from an impact, but apart from that it was more than up to the task of displaying Crystal's terrified reflection. The teacher held her arm up to the glass, which didn't reveal it to be some sort of trick. Gingerly, Crystal gripped a chunk of loosened skin and tugged. It came away easily, revealing more of the blue crystal underneath. It was less like skinning a person and more like removing a wrapper from a candy bar.
As if a hole had broken in a dam, Crystal suddenly felt itchy and dirty. Sleeping all night on a bed of horsehair before going mudding didn't come close to the sensation. Like a shot Crystal dashed over to the lab's small emergency shower, shedding clothing along the way. Crystal was fearful it might have been damaged in the explosion, but water flowed down around her when she pulled the lever. Crystal lacked a scrubbing instrument, so she was forced to use her hands. Long strips of flesh fell to the floor as she tried to rid her body of the confining ick encasing her.
Some minutes later Crystal came back to herself. The panic receded and she shut off the water. Crystal held up one hand and watched the droplets run down her new inorganic skin. Her arm was no long round, instead it had ridges combining flat planes into an octagon. The same with her fingers. At the joints was some sort of silver material, which flowed like a liquid to allow for movement.
Needing to see more, Crystal stepped out of the shower. At her feet was a horror show's worth of human skin in large patches. A normal person might have been sick, but Crystal idly noticed it as a person walking their dog might briefly acknowledge an interesting collection of rocks. She made it to the mirror and spent several long minutes examining her new body.
Crystal's frame remained humanoid; with four limbs, a torso, and a head. Her arms still looked remarkably human, if you discounted the odd shape. Her upper legs looked similar as well, but she lacked feet. Instead her lower legs ended in wide flat pads like an elephant. While her limbs looked like raw stone, Crystal's torso and head looked to be elegantly carved. Her body showed off curves she hadn't possessed since she'd been the age of her lab assistants. Crystal's face was just as detailed as her old one and it was disconcerting to see something that should be immobile shift with human facial expressions. She even still had hair of a sort, a luminous growth of short pink crystals that gave her a spiky punk doo.
But Crystal wasn't solely made of her namesake. In a way she was like her lost necklace, a chunk of crystal wrapped in silver. The liquid material held together all her joints and ran in rivulets around her body like tattoos. It formed into an elaborate geometric pattern from the pads of her feet all the way up to the solid silver pools of her eyes. Crystal opened her mouth and saw her tongue was now silver to match her lips. She licked it across the white gemstones of her teeth. Reaching down below, Crystal found her crotch was also made of the flowing metal cupped within a ring of pink crystal.
As strange as she now looked, Crystal found herself growing at peace with her new body. She wasn't dying, which was a relief. As a lifelong seeker of pretty rocks, to somehow become one wasn't the worst fate in the world. Even if the rest of the world might have difficulty adapting to her…
Oh damn, Angelica. Crystal rushed from the mirror back into the control center. She'd been so caught up in her own changes she'd totally forgotten her assistant's plight. Crystal skidded to a stop, mouth hanging open, as she took in Angelica's new form.
Like Crystal, Angelica was barely recognizable as the human she used to be. The majority of her body was now a two foot wide tube that stretched almost ten feet. With its dark green coloring, it looked like the world's biggest vine or a trunk without bark. On the end closest to Crystal were three long, skinny root like structures. On the other end was Angelica's armless torso. She still had breasts, but they were shaped more like the bulbs of a tulip. Below that she had a half dozen more pairs running for almost four feet down her chest.
Angelica's head looked fairly normal if you ignored the green coloring, with the exception of her hair. She now had two huge brown tendrils hanging down from the back of her head like the roots on the other end of her tube-like body.
"Angelica?" Crystal asked hesitantly.
"Holy stones, Crystal?"
The teacher nodded. "I'm living up to my name more than ever. But look at you. You look like some sort of pagan earth goddess."
"It feels really strange, but not in a bad way." Angelica curled her snake like lower body for support. "The worst thing is not having any arms. I can control my hair roots and the ones at the tip of my tail, but everything feels off."
Crystal shrugged. "It beats what could have happened. We should be dead from the radiation, instead we end up looking like freaks from a bad cartoon."
"Or possibly a porno." Angelica giggled. "You do a have a bit of the alien space princess going on."
It felt good for Crystal to laugh, it helped distract her from the current situation. "I better go check on the Dean."
"I'll come too, once I get this slithering thing down."
With Crystal's help, the pair made it over to where Crystal had left the Dean what felt like hours before. Only now, a radically different woman lay there. She reminded Crystal of the ship's android from the Mass Effect games her younger brother loved to play, only without the visor. Her skin was made up of dozens of metal plates and the Dean's short bob haircut appeared to be a single piece of metal.
As Crystal turned the android woman over she saw something that definitely wasn't part of the game’s character. The new Dean now sport a second set of arms and breasts below her originals. "Dean McKenzie, Dean McKenzie, can you hear me?"
There was a loud burst of static and Crystal had to fight reflex to drop the Dean and cover her ears. A blue glow appeared in the gaps between the android’s plates and with a faint whirring sound she sat up. "Oow, how long was I out?" The woman's voice was accented with the tinny sound of a machine.
"I don't know." Crystal answered automatically. "Most of the electronics down here got fried in the explosion. I'm amazed we still have this many lights."
The Dean blinked several times, her eyes opening and shutting the like iris of a camera. "Ms. Dunn, either I suffered a head trauma or you are currently made of blue crystal."
"The latter, unfortunately. Everyone down here seemed to have been changed. Yourself included, Ma'am."
The Dean looked down and for the first time seemed to notice her changes. Crystal had to admit the Dean took it a lot better than she did. "People used to call me the iron lady or a heartless android, I guess that's now correct in a literal sense. What about the others?"
"I'm here, Dean McKenzie." Angelica said, slithering into view.
"Your love of plants seems to reflect your visage as much as Professor Dunn's reflects her love of crystals. I wonder what that says about me. What about your other assistant?"
"I haven't seen Melanie since the accident."
Crystal couldn't bring herself to say what she thought might have happened to her younger assistant, but before her thoughts could travel too far down that path there came a voice from behind her. "I haven't seen me either. I've been having a hard time doing that lately. Seeing, I mean. It might have something to do with my lost glasses. Can someone please help me find them?"
Crystal jumped at the unexpected voice and spun around. It was Melanie and just like the others she'd suffered a transformation. The old Melanie could have hidden behind a moderately thick lamppost. This version would have a hard time hiding behind a fridge. The most accurate term Crystal could think of was BBW. Thick thighs, a bulging belly, and breasts that could aptly be described by many different spherical items from the fruit and vegetable aisle.
But while Melanie's massive growth was a large change, it was not the most obvious one. The one that took that crown was the fact she now appeared to be made of some sort of goo or jello. She was semi-transparent, giving a pink tint to the wall behind her. Crystal could see why Melanie was having a hard time with her glasses, they were currently floating inside her head. There were a few other small pieces of debris scattered inside her body, including what looked like half a burned sock floating around her knee and a section of torn blouse masquerading as her scapula. To counter the fact she was totally naked, Melanie seemed to have shaped herself into a parody of the schoolgirl uniform every student wore; skirt, blouse and all.
"Melanie. Oh thank god, I thought something terrible happened to you." Crystal rushed over and engulfed her student in a hug. The assistant's body gave slightly under her grip, making Crystal feel she was squeezing a large balloon.
"Nothing ever happens to me, I'm boring old Melanie. Can you help me find my glasses Crystal? My vision is all strange. It's too…pink."
"Umm, I don't know how to tell you this Melanie, but they're inside your head."
To Crystal's surprise, Melanie pressed a hand to her temple. The goo of her body squished together and the glasses slid toward the side of her head. Melanie extracted them with a squelch and settled them back on her nose. "There, much better. Wow Crystal, I like the new look. Very apt."
"You're looking a bit different yourself, you know." Crystal probed, amazed at how calmly Melanie was taking this.
Her assistant shrugged. "Mom always told me to stop eating so much jello or I'd turn into a pile of it. Turns out she was right. In a way I'm glad, as the debris had me twisted up in all sorts of uncomfortable ways. Do you know if the mirror in here survived? I want to go see my new look."
Crystal pointed mutely and Melanie practically skipped off. The change of character was disconcerting. Melanie wasn't exactly gloomy before, but now she was almost at the point of giggling like a schoolgirl.
"She's certainly different." Angelica echoed Crystal's thoughts. "What are we going to do now?"
"I would like to leave this place, if at all possible. I need to ensure the other students of my school weren't harmed."
Angelica gave the Dean a disappointed look. "We're locked in. We'll have to wait until someone undoes the safety from the other side."
The Dean studied her hand, idly wiggling her fingers. "I may have a solution for that."
She reached out and placed her hand over the door's locking mechanism. Crystal thought she saw some of the Dean's blue glow siphon off and flow in between the keys. A moment later the door opened with a loud click.
"Handy." Angelica punned. Crystal merely nodded. The Dean turned around and addressed the two women. "Ms. Dunn, I need you to get on the phone to your government contacts. They need to know what has happened here. I will contact the rest of my staff and ensure there are no other incidents or strange changes. Some of the girls might not take odd transformations as well as we did."
Crystal thought back to peeling off her skin in a panic. "I understand Ma'am. We'll get right one it."
The Dean turned and marched away. "Let's just pray this was an isolated incident. God only knows what will happen if the whole school was affected."
If they were Crystal thought as she followed the Dean's retreating form, then our troubles have just begun.
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The following chapters take place after the accident, but not necessarily in the same order unless otherwise mentioned.
