There was a great stairway, there in the center of the vast, foamy plane; where above the red moon still hung, the black sun still bowed, and the stars still fell. The steps were hewn of a crystal, topped with boards of gold. They reflected pure amber light, their own halo that battled with invasive tendrils of crimson, making visible a bloody haze of ambience blanketing the whole of the shallow, watery plane. She followed the steps with her eyes. They stretched beyond sight.

Now, though, she could feel the red around her, the mist of scarlet like radiation— invisible, unknowable, until it could be contrasted. It caressed her, every inch of exposed skin, and she was wholly exposed. The crimson seeped into her pores like sweat in reverse, heating her, burning her, making her welt and blister with every passing second— reddening everywhere, scorching everywhere, except her eyes. Her eyes, still set on the endless stairway. Her only salvation.

She sprinted to it, sloshing in the ankle-deep seafoam, only for every step to swallow her more. The body-warm water rise to her shins, her knees, her ankles, she trudged on until it was up to her hips and she had to paddle forward, then she had to swim, then it was swelling up to her neck, to her eyes, great heaves of it rising high to batter her below the surface. The water breached into her mouth, forcing its way down until it was purging her insides. She thrashed against the current. Her eyes stung.

Something touched her sole.

She kicked, but her ankle was arrested by a hand, then another around her foot, then another around her shin. They tugged at her. They dragged her. The water was forced into her sinuses, into her tear ducts, into her ears, the sea wasn't drowning her— it was waterboarding her, and she wanted to lay back and take it. She wanted to be drowned, if it meant the crimson air wasn't poisoning her anymore, but her body's panic was animal. She was thrashing like humans had been evolving to thrash for millions of years: with desperation to survive, even if they didn't know any better.

She beat at the hands, kicked like a child, flailing and squirming until all at once their grips slipped, and she was squirted out of the water like soap from a wet hand. She landed on something hard and warm. She coughed up blood and water, then vomit, then pure acid. It all washed away onto a step of gold. She curled up on the warmth. She clutched herself. It felt like a mother's womb.

Then, she was hot. Too hot. She opened her eyes, revealing to herself the redness, the blisters, the poison air that needled in between the cells of her skin and pustulated like parasitic wasps— only now the taut boils started to crack and split, weeping a foamy red-orange that stuck to her like sap. Worse was that she didn't feel it. She found her gaze transfixed on her forearm, on a boil, only this one was long and erect like the egg of an insect. It twitched.

The skin of Weiss Schnee began to sweat with amniotic fluid. The egg split, and from it rose a tiny, buzzing thing. A locust.

She threw herself back, thrashing up a hard gold step and leaving a blood red one behind. She tried to push herself up, to sit up on the warmth of the step above, but her forearm simply collapsed at the wrist. She looked at it.

Each scar was gone. Her mortification, replaced. Where once would be the dense rungs of her purity, now was a hive of burst wombs. Her wrist was open to the air, red and yellow and white with flesh and adipose and thick, pungent pus. The flesh had been meticulously chewed through, and now they were inside her. The locusts buzzed and twitched in the chitinous orgy of her wound, their bodies hot with ecstasy, their mandibles axing into each other's skulls just as readily as they gnawed at the spongy marrow of her weeping radius.

She looked, and they were breeding in her other wrist. She looked, and they were chiseling into the trunks of her femurs. She looked, and their bodies were stretching holes through her peritoneum. Their mouths were scything into her guts. Eggs were filling her kidneys. Nymphs were birthing in her veins. Her progeny chirped and buzzed and vibrated with joy. She was a mother, now. Father would be so proud.

Something pulled at her. She could not see; her nymphs had long since discovered the succulent blue fruit of her eyes, and now used her scoured orbitals for breeding pools. She felt her body go up, though she left her moth-eaten lower half behind. Her back felt warmth, but only briefly. She was pulled again, and this time the warmth raged through the point of contact. It pulsed through her, dosing her, sterilizing her corpus. The buzzing went still.

"Come on."

Weiss jolted upwards, a word already forcing past her lips. "Ruby?"

Nothing answered. She was panting in the still air of an empty room. Her eyes darted around, shapes gradually refining from the darkness: footboard, dresser, chair, bookshelf, PERSONINTHEDARKWATCHING— no, no wait, that was an easel. There was a lamp that almost made her piss herself, too, but again— just a lamp. Nobody was watching her from the shadowy corners of the room, even if her monkey-brain was influencing her heart rate otherwise.

She frantically jerked her arms up, needing to check her wrists, but a taut metal sound rang out when she tried. She craned her neck over and found a set of handcuffs holding her tight to the bed. She puzzled, her brain slowly rebooting, reminding her how the linear progression of time works: she was here, she did not miraculously appear in this moment, something happened before that led her to this.

She let her head flop back down, and it landed in a very soft pillow. She breathed in deeply. That is about when the memories hit her.

Field Agent Malevolent Reconstitution ("Turning") Protocol

In the event that a Parley Field Agent (hereinafter "Hunter", "Huntsman", "Huntress", "Agent") is reconstituted ("Turned", i.e., Agent experiences phenotypic mutation as a result of direct or indirect action from an outside force) by a Corporeal Malevolence (such as Vampires, Dragons, Undead, Malevolent-Influenced Persons, and/or Dæmons), any Wound of Demon above Fourth Circleship, and/or any Wing of Angel below Subluceo Proximity, the following actions are to be taken by the Agent to the best of their ability, without exception, regardless if Agent is under pain of death, as accepted Standard Operating Procedure (SOP):

Agent will determine specific origin of reconstitution to the best of their ability. Whenever possible, Agent will seek immediate Parley medical attention.

In the event that Agent cannot seek immediate Parley medical attention, Agent is permitted to attempt self-reconstitution to the best of their ability.

In the event that Agent has proven incapable of self-reconstitution, Agent will self-terminate in accordance with the Self-Termination SOP.

In the event that reconstitution has caused severe and irreparable damage to Agent's psychological state, Agent will self-terminate by any means necessary.

Weiss pursed her lips. She found herself surprisingly lacking in tension, as if all the memories hitting at once had blown some kind of emotional fuse inside of her. She ran her tongue along her teeth, finding nothing out of the ordinary.

Turning didn't necessarily take all at once, or immediately— there was a horrible dearth in study material, since the Inquisition had burned most of it and outlawed any such 'unholy tampering'. She couldn't feel any pain in her neck, though, which meant she'd already healed it over with Vampiric regeneration. Weiss frowned.

She was chained to a bed. A very soft bed, in a room that was not a rusty old walk-in freezer. It smelled rather pleasantly of something citrus-adjacent. From this evidence, Weiss' high level of social aptitude informed her that her Vampiric captor was probably gonna come in and put his penis in her. For a number of reasons, she did not find the idea particularly appealing.

Welp. No two ways about it: she had to kill herself. Hopefully it'd take this time.

Weiss yanked hard on her handcuffs, feeling immensely disappointed that she had not Turned sufficiently to inherit any Malevolent strength. She yanked again.

"Hey! Hey hey, hey, quit it!"

A figure manifested from the dark— the easel, that motherfucker, it was a person! One with glowing yellow eyes and some kind of big freckles on their face, features indistinguishable against the shadow. They reached towards her, meekly showing their palms.

"Let me out. Let me out, now. I won't tell you anything, I won't give you anything, I'll starve myself to death before I let you freaks give me so much as a drop of blood. Get me out."

The person's eyes disappeared, and with the dark being so thick it took Weiss' eyes a second to distinguish their hand coming up to punch the bridge of their nose. "Okay. Yeah," they said with a sigh. "That's about what we expected. Perfect. You stay right here, okay?"

Weiss impotently yanked the cuffs. "Let. Me. Out."

"Yeah, uh, no," the person said decidedly, slinking to the other side of the room. "You look like you're gonna kill me or yourself if I do that."

"I can manage both."

"Oy vey," they muttered. "Look, I'll be right back, okay? Just— try to chill. You honestly look worse than she did, and I don't want you to hurt yourself when you—"

"Shut up and let me out, you bitch!"

They popped their lips. Without another word, they opened a door, slipped out, and disappeared.

Weiss yanked at her cuffs. "Hey! Hey! At least leave a goddamn light on!"

She yanked again, then sagged into the mattress. She breathed out a quick Hail Mary and made the Sign of The Cross with her chin. Early in the Turning process as she was, that didn't even hurt. After a few minutes, she heard footsteps.

The person peeked back in and flicked on the lights. Weiss hissed like a cave creature thrust into the sun. When she was done being flashbanged, she found the person standing in the room, arms crossed. They were taller than Weiss, but not to an impressive degree, wearing some kind of sleeveless black dress under a red, shamanic-looking poncho lined with golden bells like tassels. Their skin was brown, a little darker and rougher than Ruby's, with distinctive dark lines that ran along her arms like tiger stripes.

Weiss puzzled at them. At their face. It was a woman's face. But with a lot of stubble.

It was that moment that Weiss realized one of the many consequences of girlrotting in your apartment 24/7: she had never met a real transgender… person. A Trans. One whose wont is sexually atypical. Sexually as in, like, their sex— like dick or cooch. Because Weiss was definitely sexually atypical in the other way. Because she was gay. Except this person was, like, on a higher level among her fellow alphabetkin, right? By being, uh… a bearded… wo… man? She had boobs? But maybe he just hadn't, like, lost them yet? However that works? And the beard— maybe she just hadn't shaved in a while, and the hairs were dark so it was obvious? Or maybe he was, like, taking testosterone? But he didn't seem ripped. And a dress was an odd choice for a trans woman— uh— a woman becoming a man. Trans man. Shit. Uh. Fuck.

"Are you… do you…" Weiss squinted. "Have any preferences?"

They— the safe pronoun— blinked at her. "What?"

"I— it's just, um— I don't know any of your, um… people."

Two blinks, this time. At least, regardless of their transgenderism, they were very attractive. Weiss did not know how to feel about that.

She tried again, "The… um… I— I mean, I'm— I'm supportive— I support you—" phew. Thank God she managed to get that out. That was what mattered: covering her own ass. "In your… trans…sexual…ism."

Their eyebrows went very high, creasing their forehead around some kind of gem in the center.

"I— I mean, of course I'd be— ahaha— supportive. Cuz I'm gay. You can feel safe. Being… yourself. With your, um… beard. And dress. I… no matter what you are, I, um… uh… pride."

She tried to raise a fist in solidarity, forgetting this was most likely a concubine of her captor, but her handcuffs clinked in reminder.

They folded their arms and said, "Wow. She did not say it would be this bad. Jesus."

Interestingly, he-she-they didn't flinch at invoking that name. Instead, they turned to the still-open door and shouted, "Robbie!"

From beyond the threshold, another voice said, "Ready?"

"Yep. She—" they caught themselves and leaned down to Weiss, slowly enunciating, "Sorry, do you have any preferences?"

Weiss was floored. "I— uh— I— I'm, uh— she/shim—Imean sher—fuck—"

"Neopronouns, omigosh! Me too!" they purred. "Ze/zim, thank you!"

"Wait—"

Another person— a woman for sure— walked in: taller than either of them, platinum blonde hair, with a skin tone between pink and tan. Her eyes were such a soft lavender that Weiss wanted to strangle herself, and she wore a drab green long coat over a mute red blouse, complete with black pants and worn leather hiking boots. She was, to Weiss, painfully attrac—

"And he uses he/him," ze— the person, the first one, with the beard— told Weiss. "He's my husband."

He blinked at zim. Weiss blinked at zim, then him. "O-oh. Um…" she started, now rife with insecurity and self-doubt. "Hello. I'm… um… she…" fuck it, she was in too deep— couldn't turn back now and risk getting canceled by her own people. "Sher."

He looked at zim. He looked at sher. He said, in a voice that was perfectly acceptable as one belonging to a he/him. "Sienna."

Zey— ze— Sienna— turned zer (zis?) face away from Weiss. "C-cmon, hubby," ze said, voice suddenly destabilizing. "Th-this—this is—"

He (Robbie, right? God. Everything would be easier if she just went on a name-only basis) strode to Sienna, leaned down to zim, and flicked zim hard on the forehead-gem. He turned to Weiss.

"My name is Robyn," he introduced, sounding very near the end of his rope. "This is Sienna, and she is an asshole because her parents didn't hug her enough. Her pronouns are she and her. So are mine. Weiss, I imagine yours are too." Robyn's shoulders heaved in a huge sigh. "We're literally all ladies, here."

Sienna snickered. "Come on, Robbie! Have some fun!"

Robyn pushed her face away. "Shut up. Forgive me if I don't take quite as much joy from confusing the very recently comatose."

Sienna pawed at her. "Rob-bieeeee—"

Robyn palmed her face away harder, forcing Sienna back until she was the sole primary figure in front of a very bewildered Weiss Schnee.

Weiss looked at her, then at Sienna, then back at her. "So… you guys aren't married?"

Sienna shot her a glare, but Robyn answered first with a snort, "What, you think I'd let this creature put a ring on my finger?" She boasted her ten bare fingers.

Weiss, who still was not sure how the current events connected to her recent Turning, blinked. "I— w-well she's, um… very… attractive, it's just, um—"

Robyn's eyes flicked between Weiss and her not-wife, and one of her not-ring-bearing fingers reached over to drift along Sienna's scruffy jawline. "Oh— baby, you didn't shave."

Sienna finally expressed a modicum of surprise. "Shit, is it bad? I didn't—"

"Did you turn the light on when you checked the mirror?"

"Uh…"

Robyn flicked her head again. "You bonehead."

Sienna grabbed her wrist and bit the side of her hand, holding it between her teeth. Robyn flattened her lips.

"Really? Is that what we're doing? In front of the guest and everything?"

"Mfffmfmfmmmffm," Sienna replied.

Robyn merely rolled her eyes.

Weiss, unfortunately, was still full of questions, so her brain made her mouth ask, without any kind of established consent, "Then neither of you two are transgendered?"

Sienna lit up and let go, only to receive the hand again as it slapped over her whole lower face, sealing whatever insight she had behind Robyn's palm as the woman answered, "Sienna's a Werecat. The fuzz comes with it."

Weiss froze. "She's…"

She looked at Sienna, who had relaxed as her jaw moved back and forth in a weird and languid pattern. She looked at Sienna's arms. The tiger stripes. She looked back at Robyn, who was now staring at Sienna with narrowed eyes.

"She's a…"

"Could you quit licking my hand, you freak?" Robyn asked her not-wife, receiving a firm shake 'no' from Sienna. She sighed. "Yes, Weiss. She's a Werecat. As you can probably tell by her behavior."

Weiss, who had never owned a regular cat, much less a werecat, could not tell. "Uh… yes. I can see that."

Robyn rolled her other hand— the one not currently being licked. "I'm sure you have questions."

"Y-yes. Yes, I do. I…"

The door flew open.

Wearing pink sweatpants and a Sailor Moon t-shirt, Winter Schnee stood before her. In the flesh. Wide-eyed. Holding two armfuls of plushies.

She said, "Oh. Good. You're awake."

She said, "Didn't want to freak you out too fast."

She said, "Your girlfriend's in the living room."

She said, "Want one of my plushies?"

Weiss cocked her head. Weiss blinked. Strategically, so as to wake up and start choking out another Incubus, she willed herself to faint. When she opened her eyes again, she was still in a bed. Still handcuffed. Still watched by Robyn, Sienna, and…

Weiss nodded at the situation. Then she screamed. Then she passed out for real.