Author's Note: Sigh… I honestly wish that I had all day to write fan fiction. Nothing's more satisfying than being the master of your own plot. LoL Well, this was an unusually fast update. I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Disclaimer: Trey Parker and Matt Stone own this show… I surely don't.

Cartman Was Right

Chapter 2

How it Is

The first thing Kyle felt when he woke up was a dull throbbing somewhere in the middle of his forehead. He opened his eyes and then shut them a split second later as his nerves slowly began reacting to the overwhelming pain echoing inside his skull.

What the hell just happened? He thought to himself, but it quickly became too agonizing to use his brain.

"Jesus, dude…" a voice said, sounding distant and distorted as if it was coming from another world galaxies away.

Stan? Is that you?

"I think she's waking up." It was Wendy's voice that time that made it's way through his hazy mind like a bird through the fog. With a slight groan, Kyle cracked open an eyelid and realized that Bebe must've been somewhere in the room with him too. Stan Marsh suddenly appeared in his peripheral vision, looking like a grinning star falling from the ceiling.

"Hey! You're awake!"

"What happened?" Kyle asked, his throat uncomfortably scratchy and dry. He coughed a little to get his voice back to normal, clapping a hand to his forehead and finally becoming aware of the quilt that had been wrapped around him like a cocoon.

"Oh, thank goodness you're okay!" Wendy had appeared at his bedside with a glass of water, which he gulped down gratefully, savoring every sweet drop as it ran down his throat. "You've been out for nearly four hours!"

"Four hours?" he repeated croakily in disbelief, just barely beginning to take in his surroundings and not recognizing them as those of his own bedroom. He had no idea where the hell he was.

"Yeah, you two ran into each other headlong and were knocked unconscious." Stan smacked his hands together forcefully to demonstrate as he said this, and it made Kyle wince. "You guys must have really thick skulls." It was so typical of Stan to turn something like that into a joke, but Kyle wasn't really in the mood to be laughed at. His head felt like someone was using a jackhammer to split his brain in half.

"Shit, dude…" he murmured, massaging his eyelids with his fingertips. "I feel like I was hit by a truck…"

"I'm not surprised, actually," Wendy said, stroking his hair in a manner that reminded him of his own overprotective mother.

"Have you guys been here the whole time?" He was touched by his friends' concern for his well being.

"Oh, well… kinda," Kyle noticed that Wendy looked as though she had just recovered from a long cry and fidgeted a little as she said this. "I mean, we were both really worried!" She had taken a knee near his bedside and rested her palm somewhere on his middle on top of the warm blanket.

"It's not like I'm dying or anything." Kyle patted her hand with his, an action that caused the blanket to slip down past his shoulders. What he unearthed was enough to make the boy freeze in shock.

Protruding just slightly from beneath a red-knit sweater were two lumps that looked suspiciously like…

"Boobs?!" His hands flung themselves immediately to the site of interest just to feel if they really existed. Just as soon as he had made contact with the soft flesh, covered by what he suspected was a bra, he withdrew his hands as though he had just touched a scorching stove. These aren't mine…

"Hey… are you all right?" Stan's face had once again swam into focus beside Wendy, and he knelt down beside her. Kyle pulled the blankets up to his chin in fright and stared at the two of his friends with wide eyes without answering his best friend's question.

These are so not mine…

"Are you okay?"

He wasn't able to react with a coherent thought. It was as though a small alarm had gone off in the back of his brain, telling him ad nauseum: This is not right… This is so not right…

"W-What the hell happened to me?" he asked himself shakily in a voice that did not sound like his own. He coughed, but he had an ominous feeling that it wasn't going to help his case.

Wendy confirmed his worst fear. "Bebe, what's wrong?"

"'Bebe'?" he repeated blankly, pulling the blankets away from his body for the second time. "What are you talking about, I'm – " But he caught a glimpse of pink fingertips staring at him from his nail beds and beneath them the breasts that seemed to be mocking him in all their supple roundness. Suddenly, he was able to put two and two together. "Holy shit…"

Before Stan or Wendy could force him to lie back down, Kyle had already sprinted to the nearest bathroom down the hall and switched on the light. Bebe blinked back at him through the mirror. He touched his nose, and the reflection did the same. He opened his mouth.

So did Bebe.

He let out a scream that was shrill and high-pitched and immediately covered his mouth with his hands, eyes wide in horror. He dashed out of the bathroom to the front door as fast as a girl could run.

"Hey! What are you doing?" Stan had grabbed the back of his collar and forced him to pause to take a moment and recover; his windpipe – or, her windpipe – had been thoroughly abused. He skidded to a halt, noticing unpleasantly that Stan was now a full head taller than him; he could practically see up his nose.

"Stan, I need to – "

"No," he interrupted, maintaining a strong hold on his friend's upper arm much in a way a parent would hold onto a screaming child. "You need to lay down."

Kyle was seriously considering telling Stan that he was just trapped in a girl's body but decided against it when he realized how ridiculous it sounded. He struggled against the other boy, but his girl body was no match for his best friend. "God damn it!" And without a warning, he was flung over Stan's shoulder and carried back to the sofa.

"Sta-an," Wendy said, somehow managing to do that thing she always did, where she split his name into two syllables. "I don't think swinging her around like that is going to help!" But Stan had already laid Kyle down gently onto the sofa, patting her on the head in a parent-like manner that made the afflicted growl like a caged animal.

"Just chill out for a second," Stan requested with a hint of a baritone laugh in his voice, tucking Kyle in more snugly with the blanket than he had the first time; it practically bound his hands to his sides. To Kyle's dismay, his best friend took a seat right on his feet, preventing any further movement whatsoever. Kyle decided that his best friend would definitely make a bad parent; he would have to remember to tell Wendy about that later. "I think hitting your head made you get a little weird." Stan moved his pointer finger in a backwards motion near the side of his head.

"Yes, Stan. You're right. It did. Now get off!" He struggled to free his trapped appendages from the overwhelming weight but was unsuccessful.

"Stan, do you want to help me make some tea for Bebe?" Wendy called from the kitchen, putting water into an iron kettle and trying to figure out how to turn on the stove.

"Sure, Wendy," he answered before turning to Kyle. "Just sit here for a few minutes, yeah? Try to relax a little. She's been really worried about you." He jerked his head in his girlfriend's direction.

"Fine," he snapped, reluctantly settling back into his pillow to show Stan that he wasn't planning on going anywhere. In the back of his mind, he became a bit miffed with the knowledge that both of them had chosen to sit at Bebe's house rather than at his own.

However, as soon as Stan left the bedside, Kyle freed himself from the mummy wrappings that were his blanket and sprung up yet again. He bolted before either Wendy or her boyfriend realized what was happening.

"Bebe, what're you – "

"You guys, listen to me! Where's Bebe?" he asked urgently, stopping when he saw the identical confused look on his friends' faces. "I mean, where am I?! Er… where's Kyle's body?!" he asked, still panicked when he heard Bebe's voice coming out of his (or her) mouth and unaware of he fact that he probably sounded like someone who had taken one too many puffs on the magic dragon after escaping from the South Park Mental Institution.

"He's probably at his house… but I really think you should rest for just a second."

"No time!" And without further explanation, Kyle fumbled with the latch on the front door, flung it open, and departed down the street with only one thought: find Bebe.

Ignoring the sudden realization that he had forgotten a jacket back at Bebe's house, Kyle walked as fast as he could (which was not very fast at all due to his shorter girl legs) through the familiar streets of South Park, only this time viewing it from a height of five foot four.

To his extreme displeasure, another unpleasant thought crossed his mind as he made his way swiftly past the front of the high school: Cartman was totally and completely right… again.

"God damn it!"

Suddenly, he was able to make out a shape in the distance running madly in his direction with the force of a bull. He recognized the green hat as his own as the form got closer to him. The two kids stopped in front of each other, looked the other up and down, and then yelled out in disbelief at the same time. Then, they both looked down at their current bodies and practically burst into tears.

"Jesus Christ, dude! I'm a girl!" Kyle exclaimed, his hands again flying automatically to the front of his shirt and fondling the structures beneath it in disgusted amazement. "I'm a fucking girl!"

"This… is… not… happening!" Bebe moaned, pulling down on the flaps of Kyle's ushanka in frustration. "And stop touching those!" she demanded, glaring at her original body with spite.

"What the hell happened to us?!" Kyle asked angrily, removing his hands from his chest and fisting them at his sides. "What did you do this time?!"

"Why do you assume it's my fault?!"

"It sure as hell wasn't me!" Panic and confusion had clearly made both of them unable to access the logic centers of their brains.

"We were at school," Bebe responded frantically, closing her eyes tightly and trying to recall the memory from somewhere in the depths of her brain. "And I remember running down the hallway…"

"What in the world were you doing running around like a maniac?!"

"I was just asking Craig if he wanted to go to the dance!" she said, trying to justify her actions. "And… and all of a sudden, Tweek went all psycho-bitch, threatening to spill coffee all over me if I ever went near Craig again! You know, I'm beginning to think that they're gay for each other."

"Oh, really? You're just noticing this now?!"

"What's that supposed to mean?! Are you calling me dumb?!" she screeched, which sounded extremely strange coming from a boy's body.

"I guess it's implied, yes. I mean, you are blond." It wasn't one of his more calculated comebacks.

"Technically, you're the blond one, Jew boy! This sucks so hard. Of all the people in the world, I just had to switch bodies with you!"

Kyle decided to take the mature route and did not retort with an angry comeback, though there were a few he could have used. "Okay, okay," he reasoned, hands held out in front of him to steady his breathing and his outrage. "Just shut up for a second, and let me think. Fighting isn't going to get us anywhere."

Bebe, however, had no intention of following suit. "Oh, stop it, Kyle. Stop playing the mediator! You know damn well that you're just as pissed off as I am!" She looked positively livid.

"I know!" he ground out in response. "But I don't want to stay like this forever, so I'm at least trying to come up with a solution!" Honestly, Wendy never seemed to be this difficult!

"I want my own body back! I want it back right now!" Bebe yelled.

It was the strangest sensation Kyle had ever experienced. There he was, standing in front of himself and… watching himself throw a temper tantrum. It was like something out of The Twilight Zone. He tried and failed to get her to calm down before someone he knew walked by and saw his body jumping around and acting like a girl.

"You didn't tell anyone about this, did you?" he asked, dreading her answer.

"No! I got so freaked out that I bolted without thinking!"

"Okay… that's good." While he tried to get his voice to calm down, he could still feel his heart pounding furiously against his rib cage.

"That is not good! I'm a freakin' guy!" With that she proceeded to burst into loud and uncontrollable tears.

Kyle looked on in horror. There was no way he'd live it down if anyone he knew happened to walk by. "Let's get out of the street, at least!" he hissed as a car drove past. "C'mon, we're going back to my house." And with that, he dragged Bebe behind him back to the Broflovski residence. "Mom, I'm home!" he called reflexively after the two of them entered the house and removed their shoes. His own mother appeared from an adjoining room and gave him a weird look; he thought about how weird it would be to have some strange girl calling her "Mom."

The two of them froze when they realized the mistake, and then Kyle nudged his body with a rather rough elbow to the gut.

"Mom," Bebe began, sniffling and using her sleeve to wipe away the last of her tears. "Um… hi?" She gave a little awkward wave.

"Hi, Bubby," Sheila smiled and gave her "son" a kiss on the forehead. "Your father and I got really worried when you ran out of the house like that! Where on Earth did you run off to?!" Kyle closed his eyes and hoped that Bebe wouldn't laugh or say something rude to his mother.

"Oh, Mom… I just went to go find… stuff…" she answered lamely. Kyle bit his tongue; there was no way he'd ever get away with an excuse as unconvincing as that in a million years.

"And who's this?" Mrs. Broflovski asked accusingly, looking pointedly at Kyle, who she presumed to be Bebe. It was as if she had a female radar hidden underneath the beehive that she called her hair, and it was probably going haywire.

"Oh, this is Bebe," Bebe answered confidently with a bright smile. "She's pretty and funny… and she's much smarter than I am… Mom!" Kyle shot her a glare that promised something unpleasant like a kick to the shin or a slap on the face… if it wasn't his face, that is.

"No, I'm not, Mrs. Broflovski," he countered. "Kyle's the smartest person I've ever met! He's just so nice that he pretends I'm smart. That's how wonderful he is!"

"Oh, Bebe," Bebe laughed, still able to make her voice sound like music despite the switch in genders. "Don't be so modest. I wish I could be as smart as you… or at least half as good-looking!"

"That's nice sweetie," his mom picked up the laundry basket at the corner of the hallway and walked off, leaving the two teenagers to glare daggers at each other. "I have such a strange son…" she muttered to herself.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Kyle rounded on Bebe. "Real mature," he hissed angrily, feeling as though he could pound her into the ground, even though she was currently six inches taller than he was.

Bebe put her hands on her hips, causing one of them to jut out to one side in an extremely girly fashion. "I didn't make you reply, Kyle."

He ignored her. "You have to stop doing that!"

"Doing what?"

"You can't keep putting my hands on my hips like that! It looks really really gay!" He motioned for her to lower her voice. "Guys don't do that, all right?"

She responded with a scoff. "As long as I'm in this body, I'll put my hands wherever the hell I want to!"

"Just c'mon." Kyle muttered and headed up the staircase without a backward glance.

"Where are you going, Broflovski?!" But she obediently followed her own body up to Kyle's bedroom, snapping at Ike as she ran past him. Bebe rounded on Kyle as soon as the door was closed. "Well now what do we do, genius?!"

"Bebe, first of all, don't talk to my brother like that! He thinks you're me! You have to be nice to him!"

Bebe rolled her eyes. "Fine, fine." She sat down on Kyle's bed and fell backwards against the mattress, allowing her eyelids to slide shut. "What do we do?" she asked, sounding so lost and pathetic that Kyle couldn't help but feel a little bit sympathetic.

He sat down next to his own body, hesitating before giving it a comforting pat on the shoulder. It was awkward, to say the least, to be comforting himself. "I'm sure I'll think of something…"

She just groaned and closed her eyes. "I hope so…"

Kyle resumed standing and took up an impatient pacing around the room. "Okay… basically we just have to be each other for a while until I can come up with a solution."

"You mean we can't even tell anyone?!" The two of them both knew that Bebe was a horrible secret-keeper.

"Do you honestly think that any sane person would believe us anyway?" he asked in exasperation. He could imagine how his mom would react; he'd surely be institutionalized for even suggesting that he was really trapped in a girl's body.

"Okay, you're right…" Bebe sighed in resignation.

"Besides, that would mean Cartman would know he was right about this whole damn thing."

"Yeah, so?"

"'So'?" he repeated incredulously. "He'd probably try to force me to suck his balls or something."

"Who cares?"

"I care, dude! I don't want to suck Cartman's balls!"

Bebe rolled her eyes. "God, you guys are so stupid."

Kyle had to struggle to refrain from yelling at her. "Just… let me tell you about myself so that you can act like me."

Bebe laughed. "I already know how to be you." She grabbed a dictionary from a nearby bookshelf and cracked it open, putting it about a centimeter away from the tip of her nose. "Look at me! I'm Kyle! I like to read and ignore everyone who tries to talk to me because I'm such a know-it-all!"

"Well it's even easier to be you!" Kyle retorted, having gone red in the face. "I'll just walk around and flirt with anything that has a pulse! Ooh, Craig, Craig, help me, Craig! I just broke a nail!" he whined in a cruel but somewhat accurate representation of his female counterpart, flapping his hands in a way that made him feel extremely gay.

"I do not talk like that!"

"Well would you stop picking fights already?! I don't like you, and you don't like me, but at least I'm trying to cooperate with you!"

Bebe hung her head a little in shame. "Okay…"

"Right… well, the most obvious thing I can think of to say is that I'm a Jew, so you have to pretend you're a Jew."

"What?"

"I'm serious. You can't make or laugh at any Jew jokes, and you can't eat any ham or – "

"No ham?!" Bebe yelled in outrage. It was so loud that Kyle thought he felt his brain shake. God, she was so volatile.

"Yeah, Jews don't eat ham, Bebe. Get used to it." Without warning she dropped to her hands and knees and began crawling around the bedroom floor. "Now what're you doing?"

"Where's the damn fortune cookie?"

"What fortune cookie?" Kyle asked, puzzled. Here they were talking about ham, and she just had to involve Chinese-American comestibles.

"You know how you guys were talking about Freaky Friday yesterday?" She continued when he gave her a nod. "Well, I don't expect that you've seen the movie, but the mom and the daughter eat a fortune cookie, and then they switch bodies. But the fortune has instructions on how to switch back." Kyle had difficulty understanding the last part, as she had gone to look under his bed.

"There's only one problem: we don't have any fortune cookies!" he yelled. "Why don't we just… try to run into each other again?"

"They did that in the movie… It didn't work."

"This isn't a movie, it's our lives, okay? Look, it'll probably hurt like hell, but it's worth a shot." He went to one end of his bedroom. "Okay, go stand over there," he said, motioning to the opposite side of the room. "Ready?" Bebe nodded. "Go!" Kyle yelled.

The two of them sprinted toward each other and met in the middle with a deafening crash, landing heavily on the floor like two sacks of potatoes.

"Ow…" Bebe moaned, closing her eyes. "That was really stupid… I told you it wouldn't work. I told you…"

All of a sudden, the door flew open to reveal Kyle's dad wearing a look of concern for his eldest son. "Is everything okay? I heard a crash." He glanced over the two of them lying on the floor, dazed and looking blearily up at the ceiling. "Should I ask what you two were doing up here?" Gerald Broflovski put his hands on his hips and frowned.

"No, Dad," Kyle said before he could stop himself. "We're fine, you can leave." That earned the Jewish boy a raised eyebrow from his father, but the request was met, and the door was shut.

The two of them helped each other up. Bebe glared at Kyle, who was trying to get his new hair out of his face. "Great, now your dad probably thinks I'm some sort of hyper bitch or something."

"As if you even care."

"Good point."

"Now… okay, tell me about yourself. Or, your daily schedule or something. I don't want your family to think you suddenly got more retarded or something."

That earned him a glare. "Just remember to get up at six every morning and take enough time to – "

"Six?! I don't get up until seven!"

" – Do my hair and stuff," she continued, pretending that she had not just been interrupted. "Oh, and I never wear jeans on Mondays."

"You expect me to remember that?"

"The good news is, you can eat all the ham you want!" she smiled at him sarcastically and gave him an overenthusiastic "thumbs up."

"Fine," he grumbled. "Now I guess we should actually practice being each other."

Bebe consented, and the two of them spent the next hour learning how to be the other one. It took a while for Kyle to get used to the concept of actually picking up his feet when he walked, and Bebe had the same issue with walking with too much of a bounce in each step, but they eventually worked out all the kinks. Soon enough, they were able to act like each other well enough to fool Ike, who had walked past the room again to talk to his brother; Bebe successfully treated him with a decent degree of brotherly affection.

"Right, okay!" Bebe said an hour later with an air of confidence radiating from her person. "I think we can actually do this!"

"See? I told you it wouldn't be that difficult." Kyle didn't even bother trying to suppress the small grin that was tugging at the corners of his mouth as he pictured her smile underneath his physical exterior.

Suddenly Bebe's face fell visibly and turned into a mask of utter despair as she mulled over something disturbing in her mind. Something in her eyes frightened him slightly. "Kyle?" she asked.

"What?"

"What are we going to do about showering?"

"… Shit."

Author's Note: Haha, I'd have to say that the ending even made me laugh at my own story. xD Did you guys like it? I think it'll get funnier in the future… I've got this whole thing already outlined in my mind. I'm totally having fun writing all of this stuff! I hope you all enjoy reading it!

I know I could always address reviews with personal messages, but I kinda like doing it this way.

XxLoveStanxX I'm so glad you liked it! I love reading your reviews, LoL.

OrangeClock (wherever you are), I'm sorry that you find my story so humiliatingly distasteful, and I'm sorry that you were so perturbed by my atrocious use of the English language… But I think you should at least take comfort in knowing that you never have to read this horrible excuse for a story ever again. Good luck with that flaming thing you do; you seem to be turning it into an art. :)