"Hey, we're here!" Avery - leading the Broflovski brothers through the front door - called out to the empty living room. Throwing his stuff next to the couch, indicating that they should do the same, he called out again, "Hunter?! We're here!" Checking down the hall, he saw the bathroom light was on. He looked over at Kyle and Ike, "Bathroom. So, you guys want any snacks?"

Ike followed Avery into the kitchen, inquiring in a somewhat demanding way that might have made Kyle think of Cartman, had he actually been paying any attention. Like most teens his age, Kyle was almost permanently plugged in to some kind of electronic device whenever he didn't want to be somewhere, although in his case, it was more often than not books on tape than actual music. But he did realize after a moment or two that he was alone with a rather full bladder, so he moved from the living room to the open hall, where he began to open doors at random. The first two were bedrooms, one as neat as a hotel, the next full of model planes and books on auto-mechanics. Figuring that one of the next two portals would be the bathroom, he reached first for the left-hand knob, but speculating that it was his luck to be another bedroom, turned the right-hand knob instead.

Well, he was right that this was the bathroom, but because the light was off, he had figured that it was unoccupied. Just like the person staring back at him had figured the rest of the house was, hence the lack of a towel. Letting out a blood-curdling scream that raised the fine hairs on the back of the neck, Hunter quickly rushed to cover up his body with his hands, but it was too late for Kyle to unsee what had just been seen...

Dazed with eyes the size of dinner plates, the red-headed ginger Jew fell back against the opposite wall, spine colliding with a metal protuberance in the otherwise smooth surface, mouth hanging slack. He was so startled by what he was seeing, his earphones hung limp against his shoulders. Drawn by the sounds of the scream, both Ike and Avery practically sprinted out of the kitchen to find themselves standing in the hallway, where Avery started to yell out as if he had just seen his mother naked. Covering his eyes with the speed of a cobra, he tried to run back out of the hall, running into Ike and bouncing off of the walls as he went. Ike, having never seen Hunter before, grinned.

Gathering his wits just enough to act in a manner that was both friendly and brotherly, Kyle tried to stand between Ike and Hunter, blocking the later from sight, but it was too late - the damage had already been done. Using the shield of Kyle's back, Hunter darted across the hall and hid in his room. Probably to die of embarrassment...

Trying to get a last glimpse before the bare body vanished from sight completely, Ike attempted to peek around his brother, "Dammit, Kyle, I want to see!"

Meanwhile, Avery was still flying around in the living room, knocking things over at regular intervals. Apparently, he had become temporarily blind by the sight of his sibling. CRASHHH! How much glass was around these people's house?! Kyle didn't envy the kid, but he wasn't too far behind him in terms of shock...

"Ike, make sure your dumb little friend is ok." Kyle's voice didn't sound right in his own ears. But after seeing that, was anything right? Had it ever been? Was the world suddenly thrown off its axis, or had it always been there on a steady tilt? He thought he knew, but this was just so shocking he could barely wrap his head around what had just transpired.

More than anything else in the entire world, Kyle wanted to just sink down into the couch in the living room and just disappear until everything made sense again, but he couldn't, because it sounded as if there was a soft crying noise coming from the room Hunter had ran into. Dammit, why did he have to be the one to care? Why couldn't he just let it be and leave well enough alone? Honestly, that was the very reason he kept himself plugged in! It would have been more than easy enough for any one of the other guys to just walk away, the lucky bastards. Gathering what had remained of his nerves, Kyle bravely brought himself to the door.

Taking a deep breath to brace himself, Kyle knocked on the door, only half expecting a reply of some kind, "Hunter?" There was a small sniffling noise. "Are you descent?" Seriously, Kyle was in no rush to see what he had seen again. Maybe someday, but not today or even this month (foreseeably this entire year was no good).

Something was moving in there. "Go away, Kyle!" It sounded like a small pillow or plush toy had been thrown at the door. It certainly wasn't a wet towel...

Oh yeah, like he wanted to be standing here?! Consoling really wasn't his favorite thing in the world, especially when he had no idea what to say or how to act. Forget the fact he was trying to talk down a virtual stranger that he had only just met that day. "No."

"Please?" It sounded like Hunter was standing at the door now, whispering desperately through the wood.

"No!" Damn him and his stubbornness.

Hunter unlocked the door after a moment of utter stillness. "Fine!" It swung open slowly, as if this were a horror movie and he was some kind of monster, revealing that he had put on a light blue camisole and black boxers. If there had been any doubt about what Kyle had seen, there was none now, not in that top. Hunter's eyes were already a bright red and still swimming in tears. "There, now you know my secret! Happy?!"

Cartman would have been over the moon to discover this, but then again, Kyle wasn't that annoying fat-ass. Speaking of tubby, knowing this only made it that much funnier that he had taken it to the face. And that much sweeter that he was off the team. But on that note, this revelation just made gym a hell of a lot more awkward. Hunter seemed to be following that train of thought.

"Trust me, it's just as awkward for me as it is for you." He shivered, "Normally I just have a signed note saying that I can't change with the other boys due to severe insecurity, but because my paperwork is still being processed, I didn't have much of a choice today."

That was only minimally comforting to hear, and also some major bullshit, because all of the guys had at one time or other tried to bail on changing together. However, that wasn't the only problem that Kyle had found in this charade. "Don't the adults know that you're a girl?"

Hunter sighed as she launched into an explanation, "It's not my fault that it went this far... Because of my name, everyone just assumes, and after a while, I realized that it was just easier to go with, so I did. I'm not proud of it, but Kyle, do you realize how hard it would have been for me if people knew what I really was? People would have treated me differently, would have judged me and forced me into some other role. Can't you understand why I don't come clean? Why I can't?"

Oh, he understood alright - being Jewish, he dealt with stereotypes all the time, but he didn't think about gender stereotypes and how much they could affect someone. So Kyle understood her predicament very well. Better than she might have expected in fact. "What about your family? Do they know what you do?"

She looked in danger of crying again. "My family? Ever since my mom died, my dad's been too busy working to pay us much mind, and Avery doesn't know. Not yet."

Thinking once more of the way that Hunter had looked at Kenny throughout the day, Kyle had to wonder what she was going to do about his friend. "What about Kenny?"

Hunter looked at Kyle as if he were trying to pull some sort of con. "What about Kenny?"

"You like him." It wasn't a speculative statement or question, but a simple fact of truth.

Frowning, Hunter shook her head, "Even if I do - and I'm not saying that I do - there's no way that he could ever like me. I've gone through something like this before, so I know that I'm just better off being just another one of the guys than getting my heart broken as some cross-dressing freak." Alarm flashed in Hunter's eyes, "You aren't going to tell him my secret, are you?"

"No, it's not my place." Besides, Kyle knew firsthand what it felt like to care about someone that could never know that you liked them. It had gone on for years, being too afraid to ruin anything, so instead he lived in the friend-zone, pining away day-by-day.

"I guess it won't matter though if you tell the school." She added thoughtfully. "And I suppose I'm not in any position to ask you to wait long enough for me to tell him."

Kyle looked at Hunter, at the sadness in her eyes. They looked so familiar, those eyes, as if the reflection in the mirror had become real. "I'm not. I'm not going to tell the school that you've been lying about being a boy. The only person that you're hurting is yourself, and hopefully you'll realize that before its too late."

Hearing his decision, the girl looked at him sideways, as if seeing a boy for the first time, "You're not going to rat me out? Why?" She looked at him darkly, "I'm not going to play that 'I won't tell them: if you sleep with me' game, so if that's your angle, you can just forget it! I might not have the straightest moral compass, but it isn't that broken."

So what is Kyle's angle? Who's secret is going to come out next? Will it be Wendy's? Officer Barbrady? Kenny? Or someone else's? And who is going to see Hunter naked next? Craig? Token? Officer Barbrady? Tune in next week to find out!

I do not own South Park, that's all on Matt and Trey, but I do own Hunter and Avery!

[Edit: 9/13/14 - Stuff has been improved.]