When James Tiberius Kirk awoke from a good six hours' slumber, something was wrong. Badly wrong.
He had breasts.
"Holy crap!" he gasped, pulling off his t-shirt and leaping out of bed. "Aw, shit," he said to his feet, spinning to face the mirror. Jim yelped in shock. His new assets were seamlessly attached to his torso as if they'd been there all his life; he tried to cover them with his hands, to push them back into chest, but to no avail. They were there to stay. Jim looked away from them to his face, and got another shock.
His features were softer, his skin smoother and his jawline stubbless. He leaned closer to the mirror to look at himself, checking for any more startling changes, his breathing becoming more irregular. A lock of golden hair fell over his blue eyes. He shook it back, noticing that his hair was now down to just past his chin. Jim could have sworn that it had been its usual short back and sides cut a moment ago. His eyes travelled back to his chest, where his breasts sat limply.
"Aw, shit," he repeated, feeling slightly faint. Pull yourself together, a voice in his head told him - then he realised that his last curse had not been in his usual tenor but a higher, honeyed tone, and yelled out in frustration. His head began to spin, and a faintness was coming over him.
He had just fully realised the implications of this.
"Please still be there," he said, whimpering slightly. Jim desperately pulled off his boxers so that he stood naked in front of the mirror.
It - his pride and joy - wasn't there. Something else was, though. Unnerved by what he saw, Jim tugged his boxers over his crotch again. Or rather, her crotch.
Jim Kirk was a female.
Collapsing on the floor, Jim's breathing quickened. He sat against the bed and counted slowly to ten. His breaths were slightly raspy now and he had goose pimples all over his body. In the mirror opposite, his breasts seemed to stare ominously at him. He crossed his arms. Calm, Jim, the voice in his head said to him.
Jim sat, counting, calming down.
Once he felt calm enough, he looked in the mirror again. "I need a bra," he said aloud, as if he hoped one would magically appear for him. What had Gaila told him about bra size estimation when they'd been seeing each other? Grimacing, Jim looked at his chest. Was 34B a good guess? Not that it mattered. There was no way he was going down to storage in search of lingerie or letting anyone know of his . . . predicament. He'd have to make do with what he had.
There was a first aid kit mounted on the wall above his chest of drawers, so Jim opened it and extracted a large triangular bandage. Rolling it, he created a sort of sling and bound his chest, not tightly enough to flatten the bulges on his chest but enough to hold them in place. He tied the bandage and tucked the excess into his cleavage, before noticing that his breathing had gotten panicky again.
He crouched down, breathing out slowly. I'm a girl for now, he thought. But I'll be a man again soon. Somehow, that seemed far fetched. Once relatively calm again, Jim pulled on his standard uniform of golden shirt and black slacks. The shirt clung to his torso and the trousers seemed a little tight around his hips. "I'm a woman now," he told his reflection in the mirror, aghast.
It was at that moment the intercom rang.
"Dammit, Jim, it's me. Open up," a voice hissed, as if it didn't want to be heard, "I need help."
"Bones?" he said, hoping his voice didn't sound too feminine.
"Open them damned door! I don't have time for this," Bones pleaded.
"One second," Jim said, wondering what reaction his friend would have to his new body. He slammed his hand onto a button and heard the door into his quarters slide open, then shut.
"Where are you, Jim?" McCoy called from the foyer.
"The bedroom," Jim squeaked, opening the door and stepping out of the room to greet his friend.
What he saw shocked him but reassured him in equal measure.
The medical officer stood helplessly in the middle of the room, an embarrassed look over his usually sarcastic face. Jim didn't know whether to laugh or swoon.
Bones' skin had, like Jim's, become stubble-free and smooth. His eyebrows were slightly arched in exasperation but that didn't stop Jim from trying to take in every detail the mysterious change had induced. The way that Bones' lips had filled out, or how his black-brown hair now fell in waves down to his shoulders; Jim's eyes travelled downwards and he drew in breath.
Bones had obviously not troubled to find a new uniform; his blue shirt was stretched taut against his chest and hugged his curves. Jim gawped at his friend's bust. His friend's waist seemed so much smaller than his hips and bust, but not too small - the balance was perfect - and his legs were long and tapered. Everything about Bones was contoured, as if he had been made on a potter's wheel out of slick clay. Jim just wished that he had been the potter, the one to run his hands around Bones' spinning form - he exhaled.
Leonard McCoy was the most blisteringly hot woman Jim had ever seen. Though not in the conventional sense, there was something there that would have given him the world's biggest boner if he still had a dick.
Trying to keep his eyes off Bones' boobs, Jim spoke. "You look nice," he managed, his voice girlish and slightly distorted. Bones snorted.
"Don't tell lies, Jim. What the hell's going on here?" He stuck a hand on one hip, running the other through his hair. Jim tried not to grin. The action was very feminine, but very Bones, and now Kirk could hear a very female tone coming through Bones' voice. It wasn't girlish and high like Jim's own voice, though - it was like soft caramel, with that unmistakable georgian accent resonating though it.
"If I knew how this had happened, I'd have said something," Jim said. "For now, I don't wanna have to think about it. Is everyone like this?"
"I don't know, dammit, I haven't seen anyone else yet."
"Normally the ship's swarming by now." When he got no response, Kirk tugged at his hair gently. "What am I gonna do about this, huh? My hair, that is."
"I don't know. Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a hairdresser! I could ask you the same."
"Well, you could put it up in pigtails," Jim teased, dusting off his uniform, even though it was spotless.
"If you put yours in cinnabuns," Bones muttered, wondering into Jim's bedroom and experimentally twisting his own hair around his ears. Jim snorted.
"It's not long enough. I think I'll just wear it loose."
"Are you serious?" Bones dropped his hair. "I expected you to be more discreet about this."
"There isn't much point in discretion. Especially for you." Jim's eyes lingered on Bones' full hips briefly.
"I guess you have a point. Damn, Jim, I really don't know right now."
"I think I could pass as a guy if I tried," Jim mused.
"Yeah, but what about me? I can hardly be inconspicuous. Look at me, dammit." Bones surveyed his body, looking at his bust. "These are at least a D!"
After much serious discussion, Jim and Bones decided to make their way to the bridge. Kirk was finding it hard for his eyes not to stray towards the sway of McCoy's mesmerizing hips and he had to shake himself to get out of the trance that looking at Bone's body for too long induced. Instead, he fixed his eyes on Bones' ponytail, which swung teasingly.
"I don't see anyone," Jim said, a hint of surprise in his voice, as they walked stiffly through down the corridor, still not completely comfortable in their new bodies.
"Well, if they're in the same state as us, I don't think they'd want to be seen," Bones said. He sounded pissed off by the whole affair.
"True." The pair stepped into an empty lift and Jim tapped a button. The doors slid shut and they began to move.
"I still can't get my head around this, dammit," Bones suddenly said, running a hand through his hair.
"Me neither." The doors slid open and the air rang with a chorus somewhat familiar voices.
"Captain?"
He wasn't ready for what he saw.
To his right, a tall, dark skinned man stood coolly with arms crossed, a look of disbelief on his face. There was something extremely familiar about the face, the posture with which they stood -
"Uhura?" Jim asked incredulously.
"Captain," Uhura said curtly, with an emotion in her - his - eyes that Kirk had never seen on her before. Was it embarrassment?
Jim shook himself, looking at Bones, whose mouth was gaping open.
"What the hell's going on?" he said in a strangled voice, turning around to avoid eye contact with Uhura's male self and ending up facing a far stranger face.
Spock's hair was neatly pinned at the nape of his neck, with the exception of two neat strands either side of his cheeks. His blue science shirt fitted over his relatively flat chest but there was a visible difference between the size of his hips and abdomen, and his face was unmistakably female. Jim looked at him in shock; it was his turn to gape when he saw that the vulcan didn't seem at all bothered by his unexpected gender swap.
"Captain, doctor . . . it would appear you too have experienced this strange anomaly." Spock's voice was high and flowing. It did't seem natural to Jim.
"Yeah, we damned well did," McCoy huffed.
"Everyone did," Uhura said helplessly, gesturing forwards. The vast majority of the crew were absent, but several people were sat in his place, looking at Jim and Bones in awe. A woman with glossy black hair and a gold shirt looked up at them.
"Sweet Jesus," Bones muttered, looking him up and down. "Sulu?"
"Very much so," Sulu grimaced, looking away awkwardly. Everyone exchanged glances.
"Is there not anything you can do?" Spock asked calmly. "It appears my crew mates are all finding this an extremely uncomfortable situation."
"Spock, I'm sorry, but this is completely out of my control," Jim proclaimed, looking around the bridge at his reversed gender shipmates. "I'm sorry, but I can't help." He was painfully aware of how girlish his voice was.
"Can no-one help?" someone said.
"Not anyone that I can think of," Jim admitted. There was collective muttering and Jim felt dizzy as the emotional impact of his own words hit him. No-one can help, he thought. I'm stuck like this.
It was at that moment that the lift doors opened and Jim heard Uhura and Bones stifle gasps.
"Has ze keptin been alerted to ze situation?" Pavel Chekov asked as seriously as he could with a piping soprano voice, stepping out of the doorway. But any seriousness that had been left was diffused by the fact that he was sporting the standard issue starfleet uniform dress in command gold and had two pigtails tied with yellow-gold ribbon bouncing around his shoulders. Jim sucked in breath, feeling faint.
Chekov stopped short when he saw Bones and Jim. "Bozhe moy!" He looked the Captain and CMO. Bones glared at him and Kirk looked at him, still in slight shock.
"Jim? Are you okay?" Bones asked, putting a hand on his friend's shoulder. Jim nodded weakly.
"Apart from the fact that no-one's themselves. It's just a lot to get used to," he tried to explain.
Then he passed out.