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As Gianna walked carefully along, keeping an eye out for danger and trying as hard as she could to make her footfalls sound as softly as possible, a note of anger began to creep in alongside the pervasive, ever-present fear that... thing had seen fit to plunge her into. It was all because of it, that she had to endure her perilous and vulnerable situation, stripping her of her power, her invisibility, her gender, even her own damn name. She kept thinking it, but try as she might, her mind would not let the name and person of Giancarlo stand in reference to herself. In fact, the only way she could consider her name, who she was at all, was thinking of the name as some outside person who had existed: Giancarlo, strong, powerful and cunning, the kind of person who took what he wanted and was never refused.

Now, though, she was suddenly Gianna, a person and body that somehow felt like a pale, inadequate, inversion of her former self. It was scary, and strange, and when she got right down to it, it just plain sucked. Even the simple act of walking was weirdly different, parts that had previously been taut and precise now swaying and jiggling. The damn boobs bouncing up and down on her chest and the way they shifted against her weight was disconcerting enough that she now had to think about each step and how to stay in the proper rhythm. She'd always thought before that women swished and swayed their tails just as another way of showing off, but in practice she was beginning to realize that it had more to do with counterbalancing the strange geometry of their bodies.

And the spade, the goddamn spade, the horrid mark of vulnerability that lay between her legs as a constant reminder of what she had lost, what was despairingly missing... as much as she wanted to, its presence was all but impossible to ignore. Unlike other species, where as far as she knew things pretty much lay flush with the surrounding fur, the spade protruded noticeably, and with every movement of her hips the thing seemed to be rubbed or tugged or squished, and unlike other parts of her it was sensitive enough that every one of those sensations could be felt clearly, not sexy really, just... strange and just nigglingly intriguing enough that there was no way not to focus on it. How in hell did women even stand it? Were they just so used to it that it wasn't even noticeable any more? Did they actually enjoy it somehow, wearing tight clothes so that they could feel that gentle motion, so that it could constantly keep them in some state of excitement or sub-arousal? Or had that thing, that horrible bag of bones, enhanced its sensitivity just to drive her mad?

Of course, even those thoughts served to remind her just how much her perspective would have to change. After all, women were no longer someone she could refer to as "them," some group of others about which she could make judgments and assumptions; she was now part of that group, as the thing squishing between her thighs made all too clear. Not that she'd had much choice in the matter, but it was made even more horrible by the way that the thing had made her accept it. Forcing a new name, one that her mind had implicitly accepted, changing her life to make her conform to it, making her, in some weird way, even like being in this weak, inferior form. The vulnerability and fear were there, true, but she's expected that it would feel physically awful as well. All that weird stuff, churning and doing who knows what inside women's abdomens, the weakness and squishiness, and somehow Gianna felt like things would have been more coherent, less dissonant, if she'd felt the way she'd anticipated. But while parts of her moved in weird ways, there was nothing directly, physically awful about any of them. Maybe it had more to do with the thing's meddling, but the clothes were perfectly fit and comfortable as they moved and stretched with her motions, the cool air felt oddly good against the fur on her midriff, and the feminine parts that she knew extended up from her hips and into her belly didn't feel grumbly or weird - instead, her belly overall felt cozily warm and weirdly right somehow, in a way that it never had before. In fact, her new body as a whole felt weirdly suffused with energy, in some ways less precise, but lighter, quicker, and more agile. While she had lost some strength, she seemed to have made up for it in endurance - her legs felt as though, once they got the proper motions down, that they could jog for miles. Of course, the man who had been Giancarlo was also more than well aware of the downsides of that female endurance - there had been more than one time he'd held onto a woman for an endurance session, and even without being in heat, when properly prepared he'd seen them take multiple back-to-back knottings, hour after spade-stretching, pussy-pounding, knot-swelled, cum-flooded hour, and aside from the wonderful, desperate tears and the thick gobs of cum slowly oozing out of them, they'd seemed physically none the worse for wear. Heck, he'd even left one of them overnight tied spreadeagled on the bed, just so he could watch her twist and strain against the ropes trying to sleep through the nightmares he'd implanted in her, only to be surprised the next morning that her spade, which had been sloppy and stretched and swollen angrily red as it had stayed yawningly gaped when he'd roughly yanked his knot free for the fifth time, had by the next morning returned to its tight, petite, perfectly puffy form, looking so snug and enticing that he'd defiled it a couple times more before sticking her with the syrette, dosing her discarded panties with pheromones and tugging them back up around her cum-soaked spade, watching the wet spot form around it with glee before driving her out and setting her exhausted, terrified, barely cognizant ass down in an alley behind a local pub.

Gianna ground her teeth as the memories of her past life, of the past life of the rapist Giancarlo, flooded through her mind. It was infuriating to know that she would never again be able to enjoy that sort of feeling, that sort of raw dominance against someone so helpless and intimidated, and how at risk she was of experiencing it all from the opposite end, something that gave her stomach-gnawing fear as much as Giancarlo's escapades had given him a sense of thrilling power.

Of course, Gianna realized, a slow, menacing grin spreading across her face, perhaps that was something the thing who had changed her hadn't counted on - she may have lost her body, her face, her name, maybe even forced to like some of it, but deep down, she was still mainly the same person she'd been before: same proclivities, same memories, same honed and very particular skills. True, there were some she couldn't really make use of - framing a woman as being in heat was no longer a particularly useful survival skill in her form, especially with the ease which some of those implements could be used against her, case in point the pheromones splashed against her leg that she'd been desperately trying to rub off as she walked. On the other hand, though, she did have plenty of skills that could be. She knew how to hide in the shadows, how to move from cover to cover, how to lurk and stalk, how to be always keenly aware of her surroundings to keep from being surprised by some unnoticed cop or samaritan. She even knew how to move all but invisibly through crowds while keeping a close tail on her prey, but given the lingering pheromones and her bright, form-fitting, impossible-to-ignore outfit, using such a skill seemed unlikely to succeed. There were plenty of empty alleys and backstreets between there and home, though, so keeping to the shadows would be a more than potentially successful strategy. She might be cursed with this body, cursed with some weird voodoo target on her back advertising her to horny, rapey men, but if she could avoid them and keep to herself, she knew she could succeed, knew that her skills were more than up to the task. She may not have been able to call herself that, but she wasn't going to simply give up to being a vulnerable woman; body aside, the spirit of Giancar- Gianna- the man who had once been called Giancarlo was still very much alive inside her, and she was going to find a way to win. She was going to show the thing who was boss, avoid its stupid attempt to trap her, get home and figure out how to get back on top. Maybe she couldn't win outright, maybe she couldn't change herself back - perhaps there was some otherworldly shaman or something out there who had the same mystical power as the bag of bones that could somehow change her back, but modern science was only partly up to the task. Even if she couldn't change back, though, she'd still find some way to win, to get revenge on that awful boneheap, to reclaim the sense of power and superiority that had been so apathetically stripped away by the thing.

First things first, though - there were still a number of miles to go, miles that could contain any manner of dangers for a petite, lone woman out at night alone, and Gianna knew she would have to be at the top of her game if she was to get through them, especially so because she didn't even have a weapon - the man that had been Giancarlo had been intimidating enough that he'd rarely needed one, and the thing certainly hadn't proffered any assistance on that score. Aside from her teeth and bapping someone with the pathetic-looking little purse, she would likely be overpowered in combat with her new, underwhelming frame. That meant she had to be as completely aware as possible, moving softly and slowly and carefully, always having an ear out for even the slightest sound of someone approaching, and constantly scanning for all the available hiding places in the vicinity to make sure she had one she could dart to in time before being discovered. In a weird sort of way, she realized when she thought about it, it was a little like the stealth games she'd played in high school, with instant peril as soon as you were found out. The young Giancarlo had played them seriously, looking for how the lessons could be used to stalk people more quietly and effectively, but now the stakes were far more real than some "game over" screen. Here, failure more likely than not meant getting far more acquainted than she wanted to with how the spade felt squishing in other, far less comfortable ways, and worse than that, it would mean letting that horrible thing win, and probably watch, chuckling in its terrorizing, bone-clattering way, as she was violated. No, she would need to be at the absolute top of her game - which meant learning as quickly as she could what her lithe, quick new body could do, how to balance and control it, and how to use every possible asset it possessed to her advantage. And so she set off, blending into the shadows, taking on one of the most difficult hunts of her life, even if it was actually in reverse: she was now, in effect, the hunted, and her goal was not conquest but a desperate, evasive bid towards awaiting safety.

For a while, Gianna's plan seemed to work, moving from concealment to concealment through the narrow streets and mostly deserted alleyways, her innate ability to find avenues where she could move unseen keeping her undetected despite the conspicuous colors of her clothing, avoiding the occasional creeper, transient or drunk who happened to be wandering around there. As she moved, she began to get more comfortable with her body's different angles and range of motions, her steps becoming quicker and more assured. For all its obvious visibility, the clothing did have a certain compensatory advantage - conforming as it was, from a sonic standpoint it was nearly as effective as a spysuit, making no rustling sounds that might have given her away.

The city, however, was not exclusively made of deserted backstreets, and she knew that the next area was a bit more heavily trafficked, a commercial district of mainly open-plan strip malls backing up on each other, the alleyways in between sealed off by security gates with barbed wire on top. With the right pick set, such things might have been compromised, but at the moment Gianna had very little to work with, and her clothing was brief and tenuous enough that she had little desire to risk compromising them further by trying to climb over. Instead, she would have to walk through, avoiding the groups of people out on the town as much as she could. She scanned the streets ahead, trying to make her way along past the malls where the fewest shops still had the lights on.

As she walked past a row of seemingly shuttered storefronts, however, she was startled by the sound of a door swinging open just a few feet in front of her, and the raucous voices of a group of people who were soon stumbling into the street - apparently, one of the poorly lit storefronts was actually an anonymous, poorly-advertised dive bar with darkened windows and not so much as a neon beer sign to indicate its presence. She immediately darted back to shelter in the shadow of a nearby storefront, this one truly closed for the night and covered with a metal security grate. Even as she did it, she realized the risk of her decision - if she was spotted and one or more of them wanted to corner her, the boxed-in foyer offered no good route of escape, but it seemed better than trying to run, and providing an obvious, clearly visible target in motion. Indeed, a couple of the guys noticed the quick blur of movement in their peripheral vision and glanced over searchingly into the gloom, one of them sniffing noticeably as he tried to pick up the still-noticeable scent of the pheromones that had resisted Gianna's attempts to rub them off of her leggings.

The glances around, though, seemed to be more curious than intentful, and Gianna soon saw why: the group contained about five drunk guys and a trio of even drunker girls, stumbling their way towards the narrow pool of a nearby streetlight. The guys were dressed in the sort of professional casual typical of younger, more tech-oriented workers, although even the slimmest of them was reasonably built; the girls seemed more dressed for a night on the town, wearing dark halter tops and snug, tubelike miniskirts, two of which had been pulled out of place enough - through dancing, stumbling, or perhaps a "helpful" male tug of the hand - to portray the part of the sexy, satiny panties that cradled comfortably voluptuous buttocks and snugged up against the crotch and spade in between. The display, of course, was holding the mens' interest, which explained the quick abandonment of their curiosity.

Gianna watched as they wobbled slowly and drunkenly onward - she had to wait for them to leave in any case, and for some reason her eyes were raptly focused on the group and its dynamics. The guys obviously had one thing in mind, and the ones walking to either side of the exposed women regularly brought a hand up to touch the enticingly panty-clad posteriors, caressing and squeezing and lightly slapping. The women, somehow able to keep standing, nevertheless noticed it, seeming to alternate between trying to laugh it off or playfully slapping the hands away. The hands kept reappearing, though, lingering ever longer, and when the women continued to bat them away, their motions were less and less playful. They were drunk enough, though, that they quickly had to choose between fighting off the hands and continuing to wobble their way forward hesitantly in their high heels. Soon, the hands didn't even bother retreating, squeezing and fondling with impunity, and by the time the group finally turned the corner one of the women was making a cute little whimper that seemed to hold notes of both annoyance and arousal, as one of the hands had slid over and was pushing in, blatantly and unashamedly, against her crotch.

Gianna stayed hidden in the alcove for a moment longer, as conflicting thoughts and instincts swirled through her head about what she'd just seen. After all, for the most part her mind was still essentially that of the man who had been Giancarlo, who had been a man in just such a scene many times. After all, while the conquest wasn't nearly as much fun, girls who didn't know their limits and got drunk off their asses were usually easy prey, and good for a quick but only marginally satisfying release; it was about as easy as it got to get into their panties, and women didn't seem to have performance problems of the whiskey-dick type that plagued men, with many getting sloppily wet after a good bit of insistent manhandling. On the other hand, it was a lot less fun humping a woman who was so dazed out that there wasn't fear, arousal, or really much of anything in her eyes and on her voice, and it felt at least partly insulting when their inebriation caused them to pass out halfway through being raped. Of course, the man who had been Giancarlo hadn't blamed them for it, knowing that it was the fault of the drink and that he couldn't expect much of a conquest, but the few that had started snoring in the midst of it had gotten a few extra rough, unconscious rage-knottings for their trouble.

From that perspective, then, there was a certain jealousy at not being part of what was sure to be a good, fun time, and an imagination that wanted to glean arousal by wondering exactly how it would turn out. Would the women end up together or apart, bedded, spread and knotted in one of their flats, panties pulled aside up against a wall in an alley, bent over and forced down against the damp wood surface of a picnic table in a nearby park, feeling the cool air against their quickly exposed spades and sobering up just enough to realize how screwed they were before that hot pink tip started spreading them open...

If Gianna had actually still been Giancarlo, then, that's how the thoughts would have continued, enjoying the sense of arousal that they generated. Only now, though, there was nothing to be aroused with, at least not in that way, and in its place there was the troubling realization that she had more in common with the women being molested than the guys doing the molesting - in fact, if things had worked out differently, if the women hadn't been there and it was just a pack of drunk guys on the prowl, she was more than aware that she could have been the woman between them, futilely fighting off ever more aggressive gropes before one of them tired of it and tugged her leggings down while unzipping his fly. That conflicting thought was as paradoxically horrific as the other had been titillating, and Gianna groaned at the realization. All those delicious fantasies, all those delicious conquests, seemed ashen an appalling from that new perspective - it was much harder to appreciate dominance fantasies when you were stuck in the role of the inevitable victim of them, and Gianna hated the thing that had transformed her even more for adding that harsh, opposite edge to her fantasies.

And now that she was stuck in this form, what fantasies were there left to have? There was no penis left to dick with, to be dominant with, no huge muscles to intimidate, just a stupid feminine spade the seemed only capable to having things done to it, not by it. And that, of course, was the most terrifying part of all, the instinctual part of her mind that was most tied to her new form, and the fantasy that it had pushed forward unbidden at the end of her consideration, fleeting but still vivid: what it would be like to have that strong male hand caressing her most intimate parts, fighting past her token resistance, how thrilling it would be for her to have made him so wild with desire that he had to have her despite her protestations... Gianna was able to force it out before it got any further, but not before it had managed to set a weird little spark between her legs which made the crotch of her panties even more intriguing and annoying against her spade. Whether the man who had been Giancarlo had been right about women's deep, instinctual fantasies, or whether it was yet another mindfuck pushed upon her along with her new form, it was troubling enough to make Gianna pick up her pace. She had to get out of there and back home, away from danger, away from distraction, and find a way to regroup and somehow find some way to fix this messed-up body, with feminine features and instincts that were the disturbing opposite of what they should have been.

As she moved on, though, trying to focus, the conflicting emotions continued to nag at her, tugging back and forth in the background of her thoughts. It faded from being as immediate and horrible as it had been, but the noise was still distracting enough, taking up mindshare that was desperately needed to keep an eye on her surroundings and herself in the shadows. As a result, her bright ensemble caught just a bit too much light as she moved along a deserted street, and the shuffling footsteps behind her were noticed just slightly too late to allow her to properly react to the male hand that reached out and grabbed her exposed ass through her tight leggings, giving a tight, shocking squeeze as she felt the fingers sink in against her plush buttock.

Unlike the troubling fantasy, however, the squeeze was not thrilling or enticing, just creepy and uncomfortable, leaving her butt feeling sore and abused as she darted forward out of his grasp, turning quickly on her heel and facing him, snarling, as the hurt translated into a spark of anger that momentarily overrode her fear. Gianna still had enough male pride left that the groping was as humiliating as it was hurtful, and she had no intention of giving in or letting it stand.

Of course, what she actually could do depended on the type of man she was facing. The one in front of her, though, was not a particularly impressive specimen - still stronger and heavier than her new form, to be sure, but not exactly musclebound, and didn't look the type that would be all that sure about how he would handle himself in a fight. He wasn't falling-down drunk, but inebriated enough to be noticeable, and had no problem leering at the anger coming off Gianna.

"Heeya, babe, no need to get like that over a little pat," he said, stumbling slightly as he played his eyes over her form, and Gianna could feel herself flushing with shame when she remembered how little of her overall form her current ensemble left to the imagination. "Jus' a little compliment, you know. Ass so fine like that, you know it's gotta be appreciated." He reached down with his hand, making an obvious pointing gesture at his crotch. "Fine little number like you needs to be shown a good time, right? No need to be shy - come on over here and I'll take care of you. I got just what you bitches want, and you know you want it." He sniffed the air again, licking his lips. "Can't fool me, girl - I know the mood you're in. Ain't no need to fight it - daddy's here now, and all you gotta do is let me work my magic."

Gianna growled again, this time with disgust. This joker wouldn't know how to intimidate a housefly, and while his stupid sleazeball pimp routine might work on some drunk idiot slut who really was in heat, Gianna wasn't at all in the mood. Her indignant rage only built, both at being in the position she was in and at the man's rank incompetence in an arena where she had once been one of the elite, and she had no intention of letting him get the best of her - she could only imagine what it would to to her pride and her mental state if she lost to, if she was taken by, such a completely pathetic jerk. Still, when it came down to it, the guy could probably still overpower her and was close enough that running would be dicey - plus, judging by the clouded insistence in the guy's eyes, he probably wasn't going to be satisfied with just talking for much longer, and didn't seem to be particularly impressed or intimidated by her tough expression.

Fine, then, she though - there were other ways around that. If you couldn't rely on your strength for physical intimidation, you could still strike fear by resorting to the mental sort. And, Gianna well knew, a lack of direct intimidation could always be made up for by compensatory viciousness. The man who had been Giancarlo hadn't always been the biggest kid on the block, but he'd always been the one who'd go the furthest when he go enough of an upper hand to issue a beatdown, a trait that led to him quickly being feared despite his lack of bulk. Now, in a similar situation, Gianna knew she could put that knowledge to her advantage.

She stormed up to the man, grinning predatorially at the stupid grin that was spreading across his face - the dope actually thought she was coming over to give him some sugar. He didn't even bother to protect himself when her hand darted down towards his crotch, probably thinking she was going there to warm him up for what he really wanted. It was child's play, then, to jam her hand up against him, quickly finding the shape of his scrotum against the loose fabric and wrapping her thumb and index finger in a circle at its top, tugging down while the rest of her hand squeezed in around his balls with every bit of strength she could muster. It wasn't as much as the grip she had once possessed, true, but it was more than enough to get the man's painful attention, especially when she curled her fingers and dug her blunt claws in. It was more than enough to bring the man down to her level, half-doubled over and whimpering from the sudden pain, and she ground her muzzle into one of his exposed ears. She growled right into it, in a flat, eerily controlled tone, higher than it perhaps should have been but still holding some of its intimidating characteristics.

"Do you have even the slightest fucking idea who I am?" she said menacingly, punctuating each syllable with an extra tug or squeeze. "Do you really think I'm the kind of person whose ass you can grab and get away with it?"

Gianna tensed, knowing the next moments would be critical. It was something she wouldn't have tried on a bulkier or more confident-looking man, as someone like that would probably have just laughed at her inadequate attempt and thrown her off, or maybe just punched her in a rage until she had to let go, and then overpower her from there. This one could still react dangerously, but after a couple of moments of squirming in her grasp, she felt him try to shrink back from her, trembling.

"I-I'm sorry, I didn't know, I didn't know you were a Maren chick, honest! I know this ain't my place, all right? Just don't cut it off, please! I ain't a dumbass like Johnny, I'll skedaddle no problem, you'll see!"

The man's reaction momentarily took Gianna by surprise. She knew, of course, of whom the man was speaking - Los Marenicos, or Marens for short, were a gang that ran various rackets, mostly drugs and numbers, in certain parts of the city. Even in the low light, her powder-blue ensemble could hardly be mistaken for the Marenicos' trademark navy blue, but apparently her manner had been convincing enough that the vague similarity had been enough to sell it. Might as well play it up, then...

"Yeah? You're better than Johnny, huh? You know what happened to the last guy who grabbed my ass?"

"I d-dont need to know, okay? Look, I know I screwed up, all right? I can m-make it up to you, somehow..." She felt his head trying to move around, probably trying to scan the alley for the additional bangers he must have thought were lurking in the shadows.

"Just empty your pockets, pendejo." The man hurriedly complied, and when she finished hearing the sound of his possessions clattering on the ground beside him, she shoved him back towards the wall of a nearby building.

"L-look, I need my ID and stuff from work, but you can have the cash, the cards-"

He shut up as Gianna picked up his wallet and threw it at him, following with his phone and a handful of change, which clattered back onto the ground around him. "I'm not robbing you. Just want to make sure you're not hanging onto anything you might be thinking about trying to do something stupid with." She picked up the pocketknife the man had dropped, a dinky butterfly knife that he probably showed off in front of his friends with. She expertly flicked the thing open in a casual, expert motion and letting the blade glint in the light in front of him before closing it back up and sticking it in her purse. "I think that'll be much safer with me, don't you agree?"

"S-sure, ma'am!" the man replied, shrinking back against the wall. "I, uh, I'll just be-"

"Get the fuck out of here while I'm still in the mood to let you."

The man took off as quickly as his drunk ass would allow, stumbling away down a side street. As his footfalls faded off into the distance, Gianna allowed herself to breathe a huge sigh of relief. If that gambit hadn't worked... that was something she truly didn't want to think about. Still, while it wasn't the cleanest of victories, she still felt a certain sense of pride. That jerkwad sack of bones had stuck her in this body, at a huge disadvantage, and despite her best efforts the supposed curse had already tossed her into two dangerous situations, but so far her skills and determination had allowed her to defuse both. Changed body or not, lingering curse or not, it seemed that her actions were still free enough to determine her own fate, and it only increased her drive to make it back safely and get started on what she hoped would eventually be an even more complete victory.

Gianna managed to make it through the next few neighborhoods and to the edge of the city proper with little more than a few slightly close calls, both of which she managed to evade quickly and quietly. She knew, though, that the next part had the potential to be even tougher. Gianna lived not exactly in the suburbs, but her neighborhood was a little ways out from the town proper, and the access was mainly through an artery that connected the two through a small greenbelt area. It was more a highway than a road, and while there was technically a small pedestrian pathway that ran along the sides, it was isolated and poorly lit. The advantage was that at this time of night, aside from cars the area would be mostly desolate, but that also meant that if she did come across anyone, there would be no one around to help. The pathway was also open, with several dozen meters between in and the treeline, meaning that there was nowhere to hide from any possible assailants. On the other hand, the prospect of cutting through the woods at night didn't seem any more appealing - without a flashlight or a GPS, it would be far to easy to get lost, and given her current condition, even with the knife she was wary about trying to fight off actual wild animals. Or there was a cab, but Giancarlo at least hadn't been carrying around much in the way of cash, and if the curse did in fact decide to start stepping up its game, there was always the possibility of a male cabbie noticing her form and the condition that the pheromones hinted at, meaning that such a ride could just as easily end turned off down a secluded dirt road, with her involuntarily bent over the hood or forcibly spread in the backseat. Those scenarios, of course, were easy enough to imagine, as they were ones that the man known as Giancarlo had often used - less actual cab driving and more an apparently kindly offer of a ride home from the bar, but with effectively identical results.

The road, then, was the best of her limited options, and she started out on the pathway, jogging and picking up speed. It was time to truly test her new body's endurance, and she headed off down the road, hoping against hope that none of the passing cars, especially those with male occupants, took any particular interest in her. That didn't stop her from flinching every time one drove by a little closer to the shoulder than normal, or seemed to be slowing as it approached her, only to speed up again. In fact, she only made it about a third of the way down the desolate stretch before a car did, in fact, pull to a halt along the shoulder next to her. Gianna froze, debating whether it made more sense to reach for the knife concealed in her purse or make a break for the nearby woods, but when the dome light came on, it revealed something other than what she had expected. Instead of the predator she was sure was there, it revealed instead that the person reaching for the passenger door handle was female: a Labrador woman, similarly petite, perhaps a few years older and dressed in what looked like the female equivalent of a business suit. In short, the kind of person that the man known as Giancarlo would have set firmly in his sights, but at the moment, her presence was a considerable sight better than the alternative. It was enough of a surprise, in fact, that Gianna just stood there, watching as the woman looked her over and began to speak, the concern evident in her voice.

"What are you doing out here, running alone this late at night? Haven't you watched the news? It's been dangerous for women out here recently..." Of course, Gianna was well enough aware of that - after all, her erstwhile male form had certainly been responsible for at least some of the leading edge of that particular crime wave. Still, though, she could hardly use that truth as a response - one that in her current form wouldn't even be sensical. That being said, Gianna realized that there was, in fact, a recent truth that might be applicable.

"I'm just trying to get home. The man I was with abandoned me, and he said he was paying, so..." Gianna gestured at her diminutive purse. "It sucks, but I figured that a run might be nice, and I could see if my endurance is getting better..." Not exactly the truth, but close enough to it.

"Oh, you poor dear!" The woman replied, her concern even clearer. "Where do you live? I'm just going home myself, and I'd rather see you get home safe, too, if I can..."

Thinking quickly, Gianna gave out the address of an apartment complex a couple streets over from her own - her natural caution led her to never give out her actual personal details, at least not to someone she didn't know and trust. For Giancarlo, it had been a survival tactic to make it even harder for his conquests to track him down, but Gianna also knew how such a reciprocal error had often been exploited, especially against women who had been foolish enough to not only give out their address, but also to betray the fact that they lived alone in isolated enough places for Giancarlo and a set of lockpicks to occasionally prey on them.

"You know, that's barely out of my way at all. C'mon, hop in, and I'll get you there."

In this particular instance, Gianna didn't particularly hesitate - being safe in a car, with a woman she could probably control on her own (and certainly could with the knife hidden away in her purse) was certainly preferable to running along the side of the road and hoping that some creeper in a pickup truck didn't spot her there. She was cautious enough, though, to take a careful look towards the back seat and confirm its emptiness before settling in on the passenger side. As the car began to pull back onto the road, she breathed a small sigh of relief at the respite from the dangerous game the bone-thing had set her into, even as the majority of her that was still Giancarlo, in spirit if not in name, grumbled and raged internally at the missed opportunity. There she was, next to a beautiful woman that Giancarlo could have easily overpowered, a woman that could have been carjacked and taken into the woods, where all sorts of fun would have been in store.

Now that she was in the exact same boat, though, Gianna couldn't help but feel a certain sense of gratitude toward the woman, which made the denial of Giancarlo's perverse scenario all the more frustrating - and, to Gianna's surprise, for a moment the scenario she'd imagined seemed reprehensible in response to the woman's kindness, even if before Giancarlo would have easily taken advantage of it. Of course, the woman never would have pulled over for Giancarlo in the first place, so it was a moot point - better to just accept her kindness and relax. Getting home safe, after all, was Gianna's primary objective for now, and as long as it was met, that would be good enough, other opportunities aside. After all, even going down that treacherous route, it wasn't like she could do what she wanted to anyway - not with that blasted spade between her legs instead of the equipment that should rightfully be there.

"What's your name?" the woman beside her asked, quickly shaking her out of her train of thought.

"Gianna."

"I'm Lindsay. Gianna... has a nice ring to it. Not quite exotic, but not mundane, either." The woman, Lindsay, looked over at her before returning her gaze to the road. "You know, the guy who went out with you is an idiot. I mean, looks-wise you're at least on par with me, so I can't really see someone hotter coming along that he'd just drop you for. Although..." the woman paused for a second, trailing off. "At this point, I'm going to get you home either way, but I'm not going to appreciate it if you're putting me on."

Gianna gulped - apparently, it hadn't been wise to let her guard down after all. "What do you mean?"

"What I mean is, that's an odd outfit to be wearing on a date. Going out for a run, maybe, but not for a night out on the town. You know, if you were exercising and just lost track of time, I wouldn't have faulted you for that - you don't need to make up some other story."

Gianna thought about going for the bait, but it seemed unwise to switch up the story again - if she got caught in another lie, it would be even harder to weasel out of without causing an incident. The last thing she wanted was was to have an encounter with the police that night - especially since they could legally put her in handcuffs and lock her in a patrol car, which if the curse was correct would lead to a perilous situation that she would be even less able to control or stop.

"It wasn't my idea. My boyfriend... I guess this stuff turns him on, so that's what he asked me to wear, and I thought maybe it would impress him..."

"And that's it?" Lindsay tilted her head a little, as if she were just noticing something. "If I'm not mistaken, I can smell some heat on you. I can't think of a guy who'd want to ditch a woman who was in that way, unless..."

Unwittingly, the woman had given Gianna the out that she needed, and as soon as she realized where the conversation was going she seized on the opportunity. The only question was, could she really sell it? Giancarlo, though, had seen enough aftermaths of his actions, seen the way that the victims looked and acted, that she thought it might be possible.

"Look, I just... it was stupid, okay? He was horny and I was stupid, I wasn't thinking clearly, and..." she paused, trying to make a sound like a choked-back sob and hoping that it was convincing.

"Oh..." The woman nodded in understanding, seeming to be eating it up, and Gianna decided to try and play it a little further.

"We ended up behind a club, and I was just so... bothered, you know, that when he got close I didn't really want him to stop. When we were done, though, he wasn't, so he pulled me away somewhere else, and... he just did it, over and over, not rough, but I didn't want to after a while, part of me just wanted to stop but I couldn't find my voice to say no. When he finished, I just felt... angry, humiliated, so I yelled at him, and then he just called me a stupid slut bitch and left me there, laughing about how I was alone and how many other guys would take me tonight as he walked away..." Again, just enough truth to lend some emotion to the story. After all, that was how the boneheap had effectively left her, and to say that she was humiliated and simmering with fury would be an understatement. The rest was cobbled together from a few reactions culled from Giancarlo's memories - after all, a good portion of his encounters had not been brought about by brute force, but by moving too far and too fast with vulnerable women who couldn't figure out how to react before he was already in the process of spearing their spade, and by that point it was far too late - once he was in, there was nothing in the world that would have stopped Giancarlo from finishing what he had started.

The emotions running through her were still strong enough that Gianna actually managed to eke out a couple of legitimate sobs and a handful of tears over her wretched condition, even as doing so made her feel even more pathetic - Giancarlo would never have allowed himself such a display of weak, cowardly emotion. In this situation, though, it was just enough, and judging from the way that the woman's expression had morphed back from suspicion to concern, she was definitely buying it. After all, it was the perfect thing to say - it was easy to understand why a woman wouldn't want to talk about such a thing happening to her, which meant that lies and suspicions from before now had both a logical and emotional explanation.

"Oh my gosh," Lindsay replied, her own voice wavering. "I didn't mean to... are, are you all right? Do you need to see a doctor or anything? Forget about whether it's out of the way or not, I'd be happy to..."

She trailed off as Gianna shook her head. Definitely not a good idea to overplay that part of it - the last thing she wanted was some doctor poking around between her legs. "No, I mean physically I'm fine, the... heat tends to take care of that. Mentally, though, I just... I know you're trying to help, but I really don't want to talk about it right now. I don't care who was at fault right now, I just want to put it out of my mind and forget it happened."

Lindsay nodded. "Okay. I know how heat can get you - believe me, there are nights when I probably could have said the same thing. Everyone deals with it in their own way, but... at least tell me you're not seeing this guy again."

"Not if I can help it." Again, also the truth, assuming the creepy stack of femurs even was a guy, although Gianna assumed it had to have some sort of genitals to be getting off on its attempts at sexual torment.

"Good. Guys like that don't deserve... well, they don't deserve any women."

Gianna felt the car slowing, and realized that they were already approaching the address she had specified - what seemed like a considerable distance on foot was far less than in a car. True, she hadn't remembered the precise placement of the address, and it was still several blocks away from her apartment, but the streets looked quiet, and were residential and suburban enough that there usually wasn't a lot of danger lurking.

Gianna went to open the door, but before she could Lindsay put a hand on her shoulder, and as Gianna turned back towards her she noticed her holding out a small scrap of paper.

"My number. I know you don't want to talk about it right now, but if you need to later, give me a call. Sometimes it's several hours before it really sinks in and those emotions start coming on strong. I know, you probably have someone else to talk to, but just in case... well, we've got to stick up for our sisters, even ones we don't know yet, because there aren't a lot of guys who will. I hope you feel better soon, and that you find a guy who knows how to think with more than his dick."

Gianna accepted the paper, mumbling some hopefully sincere-sounding words of thanks as she got out of the car, and watched as its brake lights faded into the distance, strangely filled with emotion. A part of her felt a certain inordinate pride in her ability to manipulate - even in this inferior form, she'd managed to use every bit of her cunning and deviousness to avoid the fate she knew the boneheap was trying to force on her. At the same time, though, she felt dirty and pathetic, as though in spinning such a story she was somehow giving in to her status as a woman, even used in that particular way. Lie or not, it seemed almost like an admission of powerlessness, something that Gianna had no intention of conceding. Plus, if such a story was common enough to be a trope most women who had gone through heat were familiar with, Gianna could only dread the possibilities that could arise when such a condition eventually came to her. All the more reason, then, to find a way out of this as quickly as possible. First things first, though - only a few blocks remained between her and a night of guaranteed safety, and once she was back, there would be the opportunity to recuperate and find a way to tackle the situation from a renewed position of power.

As predicted, though, the last few blocks went by uneventfully - however the stuff that had been put on her worked, it at least didn't seem able to make threats appear where they otherwise wouldn't. A quick sprint up a flight of stairs, and Gianna was soon leaning against the inside of her apartment door, panting but exuberant. Minor victory or not, the first round went to her - despite its devious desires, she had passed the thing's first cruel test with relative ease. Of course, that didn't change the fact that she was still a woman, but it was a start, a successful battle that could, perhaps, presage victory in the greater war. Somehow, she knew, she would be victorious - maybe not that night, but eventually Gianna would again become Giancarlo, and when that happened, he would find a way to show that stupid sack of bones what it was like to face someone with real power.

At that moment, however, there wasn't nearly enough energy to do much more than imagine such a complete victory. Now that she was safe, and the adrenaline of the situation quickly fading, the exertion of the day began to catch up with her - after all, it wasn't every day that she had to deal with being transformed into a woman, having her world flipped upside-down, and then running an ostensibly rape-filled gauntlet to safety. Now that she had made it, the exhaustion felt nearly overwhelming, and nothing seemed like a better idea than to kick off her shoes and track down a very inviting bed.

Gianna padded through the apartment, shedding some of the frustratingly female clothes as she did so, grumbling as she fumbled while trying furiously to get the leggings off. Men, at least, had enough good sense to wear that sort of pants that could be simply removed, instead of having to be effectively peeled off of one's body. The stupid, girly T-shirt went next, and after a great deal more fumbling with unfamiliar closures the bra went as well, although the feeling of the breasts wobbling around as she moved wasn't much better. The panties, while still too female, were comfortable enough that Gianna didn't have enough desire to fight the exhaustion and track down something better. Instead, she simply flopped forward onto the bed, grimaced at the sensation of her breasts squashing and still-too-sensitive nipples rubbing against the sheets, rolled over onto her back, and waited for sleep to come with half-lidded eyes that soon completed their closure. Exhausted as she was, the sleep came quick and deep, the horrendous turn of events that the day had held finally, blissfully fading away.

As Gianna's consciousness faded, though, another shape did the opposite, fading into the barest visibility amongst the soft shadows in the corner of the dimly-lit room. If the thing had anything equivalent to reasonably understood emotions, its impassive bone-stack of a head did not betray them. It would not have been incorrect, though, to detect a hint of amusement in the boneheap's general mien. As it was, the night had been even more eventful, if perhaps not as tittillating, as the boneheap had anticipated, and had only confirmed the thing's confidence that it had chosen a worthy candidate for its meddling. While having the transformed woman now known as Gianna taken roughly and messily by the first group of men she'd come across did have a certain sort of direct appeal, at the same time it would have been a little bit disappointing to see such a supposedly adept criminal fail so readily at controlling that unfamiliar form. Conversely, then, watching as Gianna snuck and bullied and lied and schemed her way to safety had actually been properly thrilling, and seeing her take the situation so seriously, seeing her bring all of her skills to bear, had only made the boneheap more excited. After all, having someone so spirited would make everything, even breaking that spirit, even more fun, and hearing her conversation in the car, skimming her surface thoughts of confidence, of battles and victories, had given the boneheap a whole host of new ideas. At the moment, then, it was content to watch her sleep, biding its time, admiring her casually bared breasts and carelessly splayed legs, the panties doing little to conceal the spade that stretched out their fabric. Why, if a burglar happened to sneak in that one window where the lock never fastened quite right, and saw her displayed there like that... but no, such a thing would be far too easy, and far too random, to be truly effective or satisfying. There were much better things in store, if the boneheap played its cards right. Things that could be... savored.

--

When Gianna awoke the next morning, it only took one quick glance down along her body to dispel the notion, the hope, that the events of the night before had all been part of some strange, vivid nightmare. The breasts were still there, mocking her from their position high on her chest, and below the heather-grey fabric, from erstwhile boxer briefs inexplicably converted into a pair of unquestionably female bikini panties, lay flat along the lines of her pelvis as a harsh reminder of the comfortable bulge that was there no longer. Even worse, somewhere above the parts that had replaced it, a familiar need was beginning to manifest itself. Gianna grimaced as she realized the last time she'd taken a piss was at some point last night before encountering the bone heap. The need, then, was urgent enough - as much as she wanted to ignore the female parts of her, she knew that at least one aspect of them would have to be used.

Grumbling, she got up, swearing at the feel of her breasts shifting about as she moved and shuffling her way into the bathroom. The toilet seat, of course, was down, something that Giancarlo would never have left like that, but its position didn't stop her from acting on habit for a moment and standing in front of the thing, fumbling with the fabric snugged along her pelvis and wondering where the fly was before remembering that there wasn't one - women, of course, couldn't do anything as simply as that. Instead, they had to actually pull down their underwear and sit there to do their business every time, yet another example of how annoyingly inefficient and inferior they were. Guys, after all, could piss anywhere, but women had to have some complicated routine even for that most basic of requirements.

Well, fuck that, Gianna thought. She wasn't going to debase herself by sitting down to piss like some little bitch. Maybe she was no longer a man, technically, but there was no reason to surrender all of her male dignity.

She used a foot to flick the seat back up, and then straddled the toilet bowl, hooking a finger along one of the crotch seams of her panties and pulling the fabric over to bunch along the edge of her thigh, exposing the spade. It was a practiced, expert motion, one that Giancarlo had done many times, albeit from a different angle; any number of tipsy women had lost their balance and leaned over against something, taking a moment to steady themselves with their ass jutting out, to find out just how expert he really was. It only took a second or two to flip up the skirt and tug the thin strip of fabric to the side, while the other hand easily slid his manhood out through his fly - by the time they even felt a hand holding them down and had reason to fear, their spades were already stretching around him, and their night of fun had begun. It seemed almost perverse, then, that she was being reduced to using such a technique on her own body, for something so mundane. At the same time, though, her determination persisted - at the very least, she would pee like a man.

At least the general location of the need was roughly the same, and there seemed to be similar, if vaguely different, muscles that were clearly tensed in order to hold the stream back. Gianna didn't really know where, exactly, that stream actually emanated, although she was fairly sure it was within the spade somewhere - that particular part of the female anatomy wasn't one she'd bothered to learn about, largely because it wasn't a part that a dick could be squeezed into. Still, as long as she was over the toilet, it ought to work just fine, as there was no place for it to go but down.

Gianna relaxed the muscles, sighing with initial relief as they worked as advertised and the need began to dissipate. Unfortunately, it took less than a second to realize that things weren't going as planned. The urethra, apparently, wasn't just right there on the surface, but was buried between two pads of the spade near where they came together at the top. Perhaps if she'd been willing to put her fingers on the damn thing, easing the pads apart to expose it, there might have been a stream, but what came out was more like the spray from a broken sprinkler head, wide and random and uncoordinated, with droplets splashing all over the place: in the bowl, onto its edge, onto the floor, on her panties, and worst of all, onto the fur on her thighs. Grinding her teeth in frustration, she fought and successfully won the battle to temporarily halt the stream again, although she knew she couldn't hold it for long. She threw the seat down, growling, and plunked her butt down on top of it, seething with rage and humiliation at the warm liquid soaking into her thighs as she took the rest of her piss in the standard, submissively female fashion. That damn boneheap - was there any dignity it wouldn't see fit to steal away?

Once she was finished, she could feel wetness lingering and squishing uncomfortably between the pads of her spade, and had to submit to the further humiliation of patting at the puffy thing with a handful of toilet paper, hating the sensation of touching the sensitive flesh and the fact that she now had to wipe herself each and every time she had to use the bathroom. On top of that, she still had to deal with the rest of the mess. She kicked off her wet, offending undergarment and used its sodden fabric to wipe up around the toilet. Cleaning herself was another matter - but then again, she was now officially naked, so she might as well take a shower and be done with it.

She climbed into the shower stall, taking the handheld showerhead and running the warm water across her fur, trying to carefully rinse everything off before lathering up. Some of the water wasn't directed quite right, though, and splashed up between her legs, causing her to jump as the spade became acutely aware of the water's heat. Cursing the things and its sensitivity, she finished rinsing off and lathered up, studiously avoiding touching anywhere higher than her upper thigh - she had little desire to mess around with it more, as each time she felt it there it was a reminder of what she had lost.

The breasts, though, were another matter, rolling around squishily in her hands as she tried to soap them up. She hated that they were just there, without the ability to do anything on their own - she couldn't direct them to move like an arm or a leg or a tail. All they could do was sit there, passively reacting to the movements of her chest or the squeezing of her hands. They were so unequivocally, iconically female that Gianna found it appalling to have them attached to her, as they seemed to only emphasize the weakness and passivity of the female form she was trapped in. Their nature was just another sign of how, at their core, men were active and women were reactive. In their most important interactions, men were designed to do things to other people; to grasp, to fondle, to insert, to ejaculate. Women, though, were designed to have things done to them; to be pursued, to be captured, to be groped, to be penetrated, to be forced into climax only in reaction to, and to react against, the male presence that was dominant inside them. To Giancarlo, that worldview had been correct and immutable, an inequality that had been the driving force behind his actions; now, though, called Gianna and unbearably female, that worldview seemed to be a horrible prison locked around her. She despised being in that form, chafed at being forced into that role, and hated that the things on her chest were always there in her vision, taunting and reminding her of her situation. She squeezed them hard in frustration, yelping at the pain that her sudden, hard touch had caused, and ground her teeth again at the fact that the action had sent a perverse little thrill of excitement running down her chest and into her belly.

Frustrated and depressed at the reality of her naked body, a reality that was impossible to ignore while constantly feeling the changed contours of it under her fingertips, she finished up as quickly as she possibly could, activating the shower stall's blower jets and feeling the blasts of hot air as they worked to dry off her fur, clamping her thighs together and grimacing as the open triangle above left her spade exposed to be tickled by the directed breeze. She moved her hands down in an attempt to block it, suffering the indignity for a couple of minutes until she was dry, before walking back towards her bedroom.

As soon as she walked in, she realized that the blinds were partly open. Even though the window looked out onto a usually empty alley, and while Giancarlo hadn't given a shit if someone had seen his bare ass walking around before, Gianna had little desire to put on a show for any unlikely creepers who happened to be passing by. Hastily drawing them closed, she flicked on the light, even as her alarm simultaneously buzzed on the bedside table. Of course, it had to be a work day, which meant she'd have to go in as she was - Giancarlo, at least, had used his last remaining sick day for the month in order to go on an extended prowl. Assuming her financial situation was the same as Giancarlo's had been, if she wanted to make rent it wouldn't do to take any time off without pay, so she'd just have to tough her way through it. First, though, she had to get dressed, and she quickly strode over to the dresser and yanked open the drawers in the hopes of finding something suitable, and maybe even reasonably masculine, to wear.

It only took a momentary glance into the underwear drawer to realize that the changes the boneheap made hadn't ended with the clothes she had been wearing. Instead of the thoroughly male undergarments that had been there before, the drawer was now filled exclusively with panties - and not just the modest, plain white, bulk-pack type, either. There were dozens, in all sorts of different colors and materials, but as Gianna apwed through them, she quickly noticed that they had certain things in common: specifically, they were either skimpy, incredibly girly, or oftentimes both. One she grabbed at random had frilly little flares along all the seams, and several more were edged in lace; another handful had ribbons tied in cute little bows where the sides of the waistband were supposed to be, apparently to provide even easier access to a garment that already wasn't particularly hard to circumvent. There were even several pairs with pastel-colored figures, hearts and ponies, kittens and unicorns, emblazoned across the seats - because, she figured, the sadistic bastard probably thought she'd have even less confidence with something cute stretched across her butt, just begging to be patted.

The one quality they were all lacking, of course, was proper coverage - a search for anything even approaching male underwear, or even standard panties, soon proved fruitless. The closest she could find were some sleek hi-cuts and low-waisted bikini panties of the kind she'd been forced into wearing before. There were plenty of those, and even more that managed to have less fabric, including some that seemed little more than a series of strings trailing away from a strip of fabric just big enough to cover a spade. Gianna held one of the anemic things in her hand, shuddering. Who in the world would want to wear such a thing? From her prior experience, though, she knew full well why women wore them - if they were eager to seduce someone, something provocative that left nearly nothing at all to the imagination would certainly do the trick. Gianna, however, had no desire to do anything of the sort - in fact, if she could help it, she preferred to do the exact opposite. Grunting in disgust, she threw the scrap of fabric back into the drawer. Like it or not, though, she knew she had to pick something to wear - even if it wasn't much, the more barriers there were between the outside world and her point of vulnerability, the better.

She pawed through them some more, at least taking a small amount of pride in stirring around the neat rows of panties into the random mess that was the natural state of the typical male underwear drawer. Finally, she found something that seemed at least barely acceptable - a pair of stretch cotton bikini panties in an inoffensive cream color, without any embellishments save for a small, light purple bow embroidered just below the front center of the waistband. Leaning over and poking a foot through each opening, Gianna pulled them on, feeling the light, stretchy fabric snugging into place around her hips, and the lined crotch panel stretching to conform around her spade. Once they were in place, though, they felt just right, as the clothing had the night before, and Gianna cringed inwardly at how easily her body accepted the comfort of something so intimately feminine. Of course, she knew that the vile sack of bones had done something to her to make her feel that way, but it was depressing nonetheless, yet another in a stack of tiny humiliations she was forced to endure along with her new form.

Not wanting to dwell any more on the drawer of feminine horrors, she slammed it shut and began to look through the others, swearing that after work she would head out and buy something more, well... manly. The problem was, as soon as she had the thought, her mind seemed to suddenly reject it out of hand as ridiculous - why would she want to own something ugly and boyish when she had so much cute, sexy, comfy stuff right here? The thought and counterpoint were so incongruous that Gianna literally shook them off. Where the hell was that sort of nonsense coming from? Maybe she was a woman, physically, but was she being forced to think like one now, too?

Of course, upon further reflection, she remembered what the boneheap had said about the clothes its weird curse would allow her to wear - and how the curse had made her not want to wear anything but ridiculously feminine stuff. This was probably that same aspect of the curse at work, then. Problem was, how was she supposed to prevent being stuck with a bunch of, of... panties and things like that? She tried considering it again, and once more, both with the same result. Finally, on the next try, she managed to break through and get to the point of wanting to go clothes shopping - but as soon as she did, all she could think about buying were leggings and skirts and other feminine nonsense, which wouldn't fix things at all. Grumbling, she gave up on the notion, resigning herself to looking through what was on hand and finding something that wasn't too intolerable, and hoping that somehow the boneheap had slipped up somewhere and left a few pieces of Giancarlo's old clothing strewn about somewhere.

On the initial look, though, everything she could see was brand new, and not in any way manly. The shirts were only marginally better than the underwear drawer, more pastel babydoll and midriff tees, snug mock turtlenecks and things that had shoulder straps instead of proper sleeves. In any case, none of them looked appropriate for work - she'd have to hunt through her closet for that, probably. The other drawers weren't much help, either: one contained, instead of the usual boring white sweatsocks, several pairs that were considerably more dainty and feminine, and the other contained a handful of abbreviated sports bras and brightly-colored spandex workout shorts, a few with actual legs to them, but most barely extending past the lower line of the crotch. Grinding her teeth, she slammed each drawer back in turn, before stomping back over to the closet - although, given the state of her clothes so far, she didn't hold out a lot of hope that things would be better there. At least, she hoped inwardly, crossing her fingers, let my work uniform be normal...

Her initial assumption, though, was depressingly correct. Upon reaching the closet, she quickly discovered that not only were the work coveralls in question completely absent, so was anything that even managed much of a passing resemblance to pants. There were a few pairs of something that looked similar to jeans, but they were made of something soft and stretchy instead, the denim appearance little more than a pattern applied to the fabric, complete with the printed-on illusion of pockets and a "button fly" with decorative, useless metal discs applied to the seamless front. In fact, upon closer inspection, just about everything with two leg openings hanging in the closet turned out to be some sort of leggings, or equally stretchy capris or workout gear like the pair she'd had to peel off last night. Of course, there were plenty more garments with only one - skirts and dresses in various configurations, the longest of which probably ended several inches above the knee, and the shortest would probably have managed to flash the tip of her panty-clad spade even if she was standing perfectly straight, and would undoubtedly reveal much more if she dared to bend over or sit without her legs tightly crossed or pressed firmly together. They were accompanied by various dress blouses, and some combination of the two seemed to be the closest she had to professional attire. That didn't make sense, though - after all, none of this stuff was what a mechanic would wear!

Gianna suddenly had a sinking feeling, and she gulped nervously as she turned around and worked to track down where her purse had landed. After fumbling about for a moment, she pulled it up from the floor, and hastily fished out her wallet in search of a business card. As soon as she found it, her heart sank a little - the lying sack of bones apparently hadn't let her keep her old job as it had said. True, it was with the same employer, but her new title now read "Service Advisor" instead of mechanic. She knew what that meant - instead of getting her hands dirty in a car's inner workings, she'd be sitting behind a desk telling clients what maintenance they needed and explaining after it was finished why said maintenance had cost that much, a task probably and depressingly helped along by her new form. At least it was technically a managerial position, which meant the pay didn't suck, and she knew it could have been worse - she could have been given the job of receptionist, stuck in the front office with that pervy jerkbag cashier.

It meant, though, that her professional attire really was supposed to involve a skirt - of course, the boneheap couldn't have provided her with a nice pair of female dress slacks, as that apparently wouldn't be sexy enough for it. She didn't have a choice, though, not if she wanted to stay on top of her bills and keep her life stable while she tried to figure a way out of this feminine mess. As miserable as it was, she began sliding the skirts along on her hangars, trying to find something suitable. While she knew that most women decided on their wardrobes based on some intrinsic sense of fashion, her goal, as with the underwear, was simple enough: try to find the longest, plainest, loosest, most tolerable thing possible.

Ultimately, though, Gianna was only able to meet some of those criteria. Out of the limited options available, she finally settled on a plain black side-zip tube skirt, the length about as conservative as the closet had available, which wasn't saying much. The only skirts that seemed looser were abbreviated little flouncy things, of the sort that a stiff breeze would probably cause to reveal far more than Gianna cared to show. She paired it with the plainest white blouse she could find, one that apart from some lacy accents could almost pass for a regular male dress shirt - well, if it weren't for the fact that the collar was different and the top couple of buttons simply weren't there, probably to make sure that the thing revealed just enough cleavage to provide ample titillation. It also meant that she'd probably have to wear one of the regular bras with it, as the cleavage gap would make a sports bra too obvious, and the thin fabric would do the same for otherwise uncovered nipples.

Gianna ground her teeth, grimacing at the notion of having to agonize over female concerns like that. It was suddenly no wonder that it took women so long to get dressed, not when they had to deal with all this nonsense! It had to be done, though, and Gianna gathered up all the disparate parts, rustling and zipping and buttoning until they were all in place. Of course, she hated the idea of wearing the stuff, and this time how constricting it was - the shirt wasn't too bad, but the skirt's length had its own drawbacks - coming partway down her thigh as it did, its tight, unforgiving form meant that she couldn't even take a full, proper stride in it without it constricting uncomfortably. She hated it even more as the boneheap's stupid curse kicked in, and all of a sudden she loved how snug it felt against her hips, knowing how it hugged all of her curves, and how sexy it should make her feel. Gianna, though, was not in the mood to feel sexy. In fact, she wouldn't have minded feeling close to invisible, but there wasn't a shred of clothes in the place that would allow for such a thing, and she couldn't go to work wrapped in a bedsheet - besides, the damn thing would probably find some insidious way to make her sexy in that.

Frustrated enough with all of the clothing nonsense, Gianna just grabbed the first reasonable-looking pair of shoes she could find and slipped them on, raiding the refrigerator for anything quick - the time spent on the tedium of dressing her female self had already eaten away at the time before she had to leave for work. Luckily, despite all of the other changes, the boneheap hadn't seen fit to mess around much with her diet, and there were still a few slices of cold pizza hanging around on a top shelf. Gianna gulped them down, sure that the display was the opposite of ladylike and inordinately proud that there were at least a few masculine behaviors that hadn't been entirely stripped away.

Once she locked up and headed down to the garage, she was heartened to find that there was at least one additional remnant of her life as Giancarlo, lover of women and all things automotive. She'd been half-worried, heading down, that even though her keys looked the same the sadistic sack of bones would have magically changed her car into a pink "new" beetle or maybe even worse, something slow and exposed and pathetic like a Vespa. Sitting in its spot, though, waxed and gleaming and sporting every inch of its properly muscular lines, was her unsullied pride and joy.

The car practically screamed muscle, from its classic 1970s trim to the turbocharger intake port on the hood that led down to the 425-horsepower V8 engine. Giancarlo had overseen the refitting of the classic chassis himself, customized down to every detail, from polished chrome rims to a racing-tuned spoiler that edged out a couple more MPH above stock on the high end. It had actually been raced a couple of times, pulling down an impressive 12.98 seconds on a quarter-mile drag, and even in normal, "civilian" use its classic lines and perfect polish turned heads everywhere it went - helped along by its metallic red paint job. Not only had it been a rolling advertisement of Giancarlo's expertise as a mechanic and rebuilder, it had helped him convince any number of women to climb into that front passenger seat - and once they were there, he had them, one way or another.

Gianna opened the front door, but started grumbling once she stuck her head in and looked around the driving compartment. Both the bucket seat and the pedals had been adulterated and adapted, with extra extensions and padding. Giancarlo had done a few adaptations like that himself, but looked down on all of them, seeing them as tainting a muscle car, the quintessential symbol to him of manhood, so that it could be driven by a woman - probably some ditz who just thought it was cool and wouldn't even know how to handle such a thing. Now, though, her own car was subject to the same humiliation, although she knew, as much as she hated it, that the adjustments were the only things that would let her operate it with her new, more diminutive frame.

Waiting until her anger receded to a low boil, she stepped in and took her seat, not loving the way the seat felt against her with the padding - too snug, not enough room to lean and move for more precise maneuvers. Still, at least everything still worked and was within easy enough reach, and the full, powerful roar of the engine as she cranked it to life suddenly made it all worth it. She quickly peeled out of the garage and was on her way, leaving a patch of rubber behind after taking a racing jump as soon as one of the traffic lights kicked green. The boneheap might have taken one of her favored outlets, but at least she still had one way to feel reasonably, well, manly, and it almost felt like giving that horrible thing the finger as she made good use of the car's power, probably committing at least a half-dozen traffic infractions on the way to work - luckily, the cops weren't out in force yet, and the drive, while exciting in most respects, was at least uneventful in that one.

The service department where Giancarlo and now Gianna worked was in a large and fairly well-renowned regional domestic car dealership. Working there had provided several benefits over an independent shop, including the ability to refer to himself as a clean, respectable 'certified service technician" over the grungy image that most people associated with mechanics. Of course, now she was just a service advisor - better pay and respect than some lowly secretary or receptionist, but still someone who sat at a desk and talked, not the kind of person who did the real work, the kind of work that Gianna would much rather be doing, at least assuming her female frame could handle it. In all honesty, she probably could - everything was automated enough these days as far as what heavy lifting was still required, and she'd heard of successful female mechanics, although Giancarlo hadn't been particularly impressed. She probably could have kept her old job, but apparently not if that stupid pile of bones had anything to say on the matter - apparently mechanics weren't in a position to get ogled enough for its tastes.

Gianna parked in the employee section of the lot and walked over to the doors leading into the service department, suddenly feeling self-conscious and a little too naked. She was about to interact not with strangers, but with people she knew, and instead of doing so in a loose-fitting set of coveralls, she had to make do with an ensemble that was just about as feminine as possible. Just walking along, she could sense the fabric of the skirt hugging her, and feel a stiff morning breeze ruffle the fur on her exposed cleavage and along her thighs, which the "professional" skirt only managing to cover slightly more than a third of the distance between her waist and her knees. Even in the bright sunlight, in a well-trafficked area, she still felt too uncomfortably like prey - certainly, to Giancarlo's eyes, she would have been a prime candidate. At least she'd made sure the damn knife was still in her purse before she'd left. Even so, feeling her thighs rub together beneath the skirt, with no proper pant legs of any type between them, served as a troubling reminder of vulnerability - from the right angle, there was only the thin fabric of her panties, a little crotch-straddling strip which she knew all too well how easy it was to quickly tug aside, standing between spade and the outside world. Grimacing, she regretted her decision not to seek out some other... legwear to wear under it, as inadequate as it would have been. Of course, the only useful thing it would have done was to provide for slightly more modesty, as the stretchy things rarely had anything more than an elastic waistband to hold them in place - while certain things like real, proper pants might give you some extra seconds of struggling when things went south, she knew from Giancarlo's experiences that they were just as easy as underwear to rip apart or pull down. That of course, was the irony of having been a rapist - while most women, at least the non-victimized ones, probably went through life mostly oblivious to such things, Gianna had no choice but to be keenly aware of every feminine vulnerability.

The service bay was a wing that led off from the dealership's main showroom and offices, double doors leading from the curbside pull-up into a small reception area, and a kiosk-like room that housed the cashier and receptionist. Beyond that there was a narrow sort of hallway, with the parts counter on one side and open-plan alcoves with the walk-up service advisor posts on the other. At the end of the hallway was the manager's office, and doors leading into the supply warehouse and the service bays. Normally, Gianna would have walked straight through, but the service bays were no longer for her - instead, one of the service advisor desks was empty, surely waiting for her to take her post. From the doorway, she glanced over at the stool-like swivel chairs that the advisors could sit at, wondering about just how much she might inadvertently expose if she sat on it the wrong way. At least, she thought, the desks were designed to be used equally well standing, with ergonomic mats beneath the terminals to allow someone to do so comfortably. At least she could do that without worry - thankfully, the boneheap hadn't replaced the few pairs of shoes she'd had with nothing but high heels.

She heard a voice, also female, saying her name, and she looked over to see Amanda, the receptionist, smiling and waving in her direction. That was certainly new - as Giancarlo, he'd walked through the same area day after day with little more than a curt nod from anyone on the front end, if that. Now, though, Amanda was waving her over to the reception counter as though she were a close friend. Maybe, somehow, that was one of the things that had changed along with her conversion to Gianna. Still, it was a curious enough change that Gianna found herself walking over.

Amande leaned forward, her hands moving animatedly with a nervous energy that apparently came with her Pomeranian ancestry. "Hey, Gianna! How was your weekend?"

"Oh, it was... transformative." It came out before Gianna really thought about it, and winced internally as her comment seemed to bring a knowing smile to Amanda's face.

"Ooh, really? Now this guy, I've got to hear about. It takes a lot to get that kinda praise out of you..."

"No, that's not it-" she began, but Amanda cut her off.

"Um, speaking of guys, I think you'd better look behind y-"

SMACK!

Gianna jumped as a hand landed smartly on her backside, a jolt that caused her to jump up in surprise and whirl around, hurt and suddenly furious. Giancarlo, it was certain, didn't have to deal with any of that nonsense, so why should she? Of course, the person she ended up glowering at was Hugh, the pervy little troll that served as the repair department's cashier. His ancestry was part corgi, and he compensated for his slightly diminutive size with various types of aggression, assuming that the inherent cuteness that his ancestry also supplied would allow him to weasel out of most of it. Penny-ante harassment, therefore, was one of his favorite stocks-in-trade, and the corporate culture there did little to dissuade him. Giancarlo, in fact, had kind of admired the little guy's spunk, although disdaining his lack of ambition for more intimate action. Now, though, being on the other end of it, it didn't seem nearly as amusing.

"You sick little son of a bitch! Don't you know who I am?"

He looked taken aback, although apparently more by the last part. "Um... pretty sure you're still Gianna, right? Didn't think you were crazy enough to have multiple chicks yakking around in that dome of yours..."

Of course he didn't know who Giancarlo was, Gianna realized as soon as he spoke. Thanks to the damn boneheap, the only place Giancarlo still existed was in her own memories. Like it or not, she'd have to get used to the Gianna... persona, she guessed, at least for now - trying to go about things like she was still Giancarlo probably would end up with everyone thinking she was nuts. Then again, what did she know about being a woman? Eh, screw it, she thought, balling her fists.

"I'm not crazy, you little shit. The hell makes you think it's okay to touch me?"

To Gianna's disappointment, Hugh didn't really seem afraid of her - in fact, his expression looked more ticked off than anything else.

"Jeez, you don't have to flip about it. Besides, I always thought you liked that kinda thing. What's got you in full bitch mode today? You preheating or something? 'Cause if that's the case, I got no problem steering clear for a few days. Maybe catch you in a more... receptive mood, know what I mean?" He winked at her, grinning, before walking past as though there hadn't even been a confrontation at all.

For a moment, Gianna looked after him, seething, although in all honesty it wasn't just Hugh she was pissed at. He was an asshole, to be sure, but to her disgust Gianna realized that, in part, he was actually right - as much as her mind hated to admit it, she'd felt a little thrill tense down her spine at the impact, one that lingered at the base of her tail in an uncomfortable, almost arousing way. For causing her to sense yet another downside in her new body's responses, Gianna was tempted to deck him anyway, but thought better of it - doing it there would get her fired for sure, and that was the last thing she needed at the moment. Problem was, though, she couldn't really do anything about it, either. What could she do, complain to the management?

The management, of course, meant Jonah - assistant manager of the repair department, auto restoration enthusiast, all-around manly man, and the closest friend that Giancarlo had had. Half husky, half timber wolf, he wasn't the biggest guy ever, but he'd had a couple inches on Giancarlo; not a bodybuilder but still more than reasonably built nonetheless. He and Giancarlo regularly swapped stories, drinks, and occasionally women, but usually the paid or drunkenly loose types - Giancarlo had trusted Jonah more than most, but not quite enough to bring him along on any truly risky or other-than-legal adventures. Of course, that led to the obvious question: in this new form, were they still friends? And if so, how had that relationship changed? Like Giancarlo, Jonah didn't exactly have the most progressive of attitudes towards women, so she didn't even know if he was even capable of having that sort of friendship with them - certainly, she couldn't recall meeting any during the time Giancarlo had known him.

In any case, it looked like Jonah was in his office with the door closed, so no need to deal with that particular situation just yet. That being said, though, she did still have a job to do, and she knew that any minute now, the terminal on her service desk was going to be flashing up the particulars for her first appointment of the day.

Gianna paused for a second, puzzled. How in the world had she known that? Now that she thought about it, though, she realized that she knew exactly how to use the terminal to pull up customer information, print out quotes... all the usual tasks that a service advisor would perform. In that respect, at least, the boneheap hadn't left her hanging. She still hated the idea of doing what she thought was a lesser job than the one Giancarlo had had, but it was nice to know that she wouldn't have to be fumblingly incompetent at it as well.

She made her way over to the empty desk. Sure enough, her name was written on a small nameplate propped on the edge of it. Her prediction about the terminal had also been correct; there was already a customer scheduled for drop-off in a few minutes, and glancing out the window she could already see a vehicle pulling up along the curb of the repair intake's center island.

And so her workday began - going over scheduled repairs with customers, making recommendations, printing quotes and having the curbside staff send cars down to the service bay. For the most part it was boring work, the kind she could do in her sleep, and as a result she did it on autopilot - which, unfortunately, left her mind open to become aware of other things, especially those involving the customers she was helping. Of the handful of guys she saw, only one managed to meet her eyes through the entire interaction; the rest, of course, were looking just a bit lower. The women, on the other hand, ranged from indifferent to glaring, apparently not thinking much of her exposed cleavage. Hey, it's not like I wanted it to be! she felt like shouting back at them - in fact, it was really the last thing she wanted, but thanks to the boneheap, she was stuck with it, at least for the day. Maybe, she thought, she really would go shopping afterwards - she might be stuck with something feminine, but there had to be something a little less exposing. Of course, thanks to the thing's curse, the shirt would probably end up showing them off in some other way, but at least they'd be covered.

More troubling than that, though, was what Gianna realized between customers. She'd noticed it a little the night before, in the car, but had been so busy with everything else that she hadn't thought much of it. Now, though, it seemed all but confirmed - as indifferent as some of the women were to her, she was nearly as indifferent to them. She'd helped one particularly attractive Basenji woman, and while she'd certainly noticed her attractiveness, it hadn't been accompanied at all by the sort of response Giancarlo usually had. In her position, he wouldn't be nodding politely - rather, he'd be leering unashamedly, and sporting a hard-on in his pants that a particularly keen eye would have noticed despite his subtle, leg-shifting attempts to hide it. Of course, as far as she knew, she didn't have the equipment any more to get hard. She thought canine women had some thing that was kind of equivalent to a clitoris, but it was buried inside somewhere, and it had never seemed particularly important before - Giancarlo had never really been that concerned as to whether the women he was with got off during their encounters, and if he did, it had only been for the additional humiliation of forcing something like that out of them. In any case, female arousal worked much differently, and it was a feeling Gianna didn't have any intention of purposely activating any time soon. She had enough trouble already, and she was quite certain she'd rather get through the rest of her work day without seeing what it felt like for her body to prepare itself for being fucked.

Unfortunately, such a scenario didn't seem to be in the cards, for as soon as there was another lull in customers, the door to the manager's office swung open and Jonah headed over towards her. True to how Giancarlo had known him, he was ruggedly handsome, with smooth, coal-grey fur, a chiseled muzzle, and a burly chest that his fitted dress shirt was designed to accentuate. As Giancarlo, his looks had been grudgingly acknowledged, but as soon as Gianna got a good look at him, the reaction was much more pronounced: her breath momentarily caught in her throat, and her heart felt almost like it skipped a beat. All of a sudden, her body was flooded with several different feelings, including a weird, thrilling tension coursing through her that was impossible to mistake for anything other than arousal.

Still, for all that, it wasn't really at all like what she had felt as Giancarlo. That kind of arousal had felt like a surge of power, a jolt that darted between his biceps and then headed straight down, tensing just above his balls and instantly working his sizable erection out from its sheath. This, though, was more diffuse, and seemed to spread all through her core, a tingling, flushing burst of heat, combined with a sense that was almost like butterflies in her stomach, only somehow situated slightly lower down. Suddenly, the room felt about five degrees too warm, and she was uncannily aware of the sensation of her bra straining somehow against nipples that suddenly seemed to be pushing back against it - she might no longer have the equipment for the most obvious kind, but she was unquestionably becoming erect in a certain sense. As much as she hated to wear the thing, she was suddenly glad that the bra was there - she knew that without it, her strange, feminine arousal would be overwhelmingly obvious. As it was, she was flustered enough at the sight of him that he was standing in front of her and halfway through his first sentence before the words really began to sink in.

"...rocking that skirt as always, Ginny. I swear, we shoulda used you to model alongside the cars in our ads. You've always got that perfect mix of racer girl and straight-up hotness going on." He looked back at her, grinning in a way that made her more than a bit uneasy. Then again, the way she was feeling, she'd be uneasy no matter how he looked at her. In fact, it took a few seconds before the meaning of his words sunk in, and even then, with the other emotions swirling around she couldn't really get a good sense of indignation to break through, and take her momentarily aback. He couldn't be serious, could he? There was no way at all that he'd have ever talked to Giancarlo that way. To add to the confusion her body was feeling, now she couldn't even tell what kind of relationship she had with the man who up until a day ago she felt like she'd known better than most anyone else.

"Wait, what?"

"Hey, I'm kidding, I'm kidding! Besides, if we did that, we'd get you in one of those racing suits, like, ah, what's her name? You know, the chick that just won Daytona. Now that would sell some cars. Besides, we both know you're too damn good behind the wheel just to be some eye candy. Hell, those models are just a buncha teases, anyway, right?. Probably can't even give decent head. I mean, you know I prefer a real woman any day. Kind that isn't afraid to get a little dirty." His grin only increased, and Gianna had a feeling that he had a particular person in mind when he was saying it - not usually a problem, but she had the sneaking suspicion that the person he had in mind was also the one he was looking at. And the horrible thing about that was, while her mind was still disgusted and halfway offended at the idea, she knew that her body still wasn't on the same page. Looking him over, she'd caught a glimpse of the bulge that his tailored dress pants didn't exactly disguise, and when she had, she'd felt yet another uneasy thrill - this time, though, it was a little lower down, and instead of going away, had kind of just fizzled into a weird, tingling sensation that seemed to be focusing gradually tighter and tighter in between her hips. It was a feeling that was distressingly hard to ignore, even as she knew that she desperately didn't want to have it progress any further. Still, she was flustered enough that she was having a hard time deflecting the conversation. If she couldn't pull off indignation, though, at least she could redirect him.

"Um, well... I'm, uh, I'm sure I'm flattered and all, but we're working now..."

"Yeah, yeah... I guess we are. Damn, though, you're not usually this serious about stuff..." Jonah trailed off, but didn't seem to be particularly moving on either, his eyes scrutinizing her chest unashamedly.

"You know, something looks different-"

"Hey! Um, was there, uh, something you needed?" Gianna interjected, suddenly worried that the brassiere wasn't doing quite enough to disguise her arousal, but still half-afraid to look down and assess the situation herself.

"Oh, yeah. No big deal, but the printer in my office is out of toner, and Amanda's on break or something. Man, whenever I actually need something from that chick... You mind popping into the storeroom and grabbing it for me?"

"Sure..."

"Great! When you get a chance, but you are free for the next few minutes..." Coming from her boss, it was a little more than just a hint.

"Okay, I'll get right on it."

"Attagirl!" Jonah replied, slapping her shoulder lightly before turning around and heading back to his office. As he did, though, Gianna could have sworn that he actually winked at her. At least he hadn't been as bad as she'd expected - she knew that with Amanda, he was something less than solicitous. And, for that matter, at least he was going back to his office, so she didn't have to look at him any more and produce any further weird feelings - although, to her chagrin, she caught herself just as unashamedly checking out his butt for a few seconds as he walked back, a behavior which left her grumbling about her body's bizarre about-face in attraction as she headed down the hall towards the storeroom.

The storage room was kind of a catch-all for anything the business needed that didn't directly involve auto parts. The walls were lined with shelves carrying everything from printer stuff to janitorial supplies, and the middle of the room had some free-standing ones, and clusters of three-, four-, and five-high filing cabinets to store files from the various departments. Overall, the effect was that of a cramped little mazelike room, and Gianna cursed in a very unladylike manner as she bumped her bare knee on the side of one of the filing cabinets as she looked around for the toner. It was in the back, of course, tucked away along the end of one of the low shelves.

Gianna leaned over to fetch it, her mind continuing to grumble about the previous encounter. Why the hell couldn't things have been the same? Now, instead of a good, reliable friend, someone who might have been able to help her through this, there was someone she had annoying, unwanted feelings for, just to complicate things further. And who did she have in his place? Amanda? It wasn't exactly like Giancarlo had had a whole lot of close relationships with women, and of his other friends, well... Gianna wasn't sure they could be trusted at all around anything with tits. Of course, as Giancarlo, friends hadn't been a huge concern, given his capability to take care of himself. As Gianna, though, she unfortunately wasn't so sure - especially considering she was still trying to get used to all of her new body's responses. Not to mention dealing with how differently everyone she knew was treating her...

As she considered that, though, finally getting her hands on the correct toner cartridge, she realized that she'd probably have to deal with it once again - while she'd been distracted enough she hadn't really heard the storage room door open, she could hear the approaching footsteps of someone coming up behind her. They stopped, of course, just standing there and breathing heavily, which meant it was a guy - and considering she was bent over, she realized, depressingly, just what they were probably looking at. Before she could lean back up, though, she felt another firm pat on her backside, and she dropped the stupid toner box and whirled around, guessing who it probably was. Maybe Hugh could get away with it outside, but this was an enclosed storage room with no one else to see it. She might be smaller, now, but Hugh certainly wasn't a fighter, and there was no question she could at least intimidate him into cutting it out.

Halfway around, though, her nose warned her that the scent was different, and when she came all the way around, she stopped in her tracks. The man standing behind her wasn't Hugh, but Jonah, close enough that she nearly ran into him, and close enough that his masculine face nearly filled her entire field of view. And once again, just as it had before, her indignation faded away to be replaced by a strange befuddlement, as the weird, aroused tension tightened up again in her abdomen. Dammit, why did it have to be him? If it was Hugh, or any of the other male service advisors, she knew she could have just told them off, but Jonah... she still didn't quite know what the new deal with him was, and the fact that she remembered enough from being Giancarlo to care about him as a friend made everything much more difficult. It certainly caused her to hold her tongue about what had happened, and probably to look back not as severely as she ought to.

"Dambn, Ginny, but you're a sight for sore eyes. Seeing you like that... heaven, I tell you. You have no idea how much I look forward to Mondays, now. Then again, maybe you do..."

He shot a hand out to land on the shelf next to her, blocking her off to one side. She leaned back instinctively, realizing that something was up, but her swirling thoughts somehow not warning her in time. Jonah's face was moving forward, though, darting in nearly as quickly, and against the shelves there was no more room to lean back as he wasted no time pressing his muzzle firmly in against hers.

Gianna gasped in response to the sudden contact, and realized a moment too late that that was exactly the wrong thing to do, as it cracked her muzzle open just enough to allow his tongue to flick in and slide across hers. The sensation was sudden and alien, like nothing she'd quite felt before - Giancarlo had used his tongue, sure, but he had of course always been the aggressor. Now, with this slimy thing probing in her mouth, all she could think of was to use her own tongue to try and push it back, but that only made things worse - the more her tongue touched his, the more she sensed its smooth wetness probing against her own, not only did it start to feel somehow good, but all of a sudden those feelings from before were coming alive again, the not-quite butterflies tensing low in her belly, her nipples suddenly rock-hard and straining forward against her bra. When his tongue finally pulled back after a few more moments of frantic-desperate wrestling, her breath was suddenly puffing out hot and fast, her heart thudding in her chest as a flush of warmth seemed flash across everything between her neck and her thighs. And all of a sudden, just like that, she was even more befuddled than before - standing in front of her was the man she'd previously known as a friend, a man who she'd had nothing but respect for, a man who'd always been there for Giancarlo, and certainly a man who'd never just up and, and kiss him!

"W-wha-" she said, the feeling of strange befuddlement further clouding her mind as something baser, something involuntary, momentarily seemed to take hold - even as Jonah cut her off with another, thankfully quicker kiss.

"Shh... I know you've been waiting for this as much as I have. No more words - your body's already talking, and it's not hard to see what it's saying. Besides, you got nothing to worry about - the door's locked, no one's gonna come in, and no one's expecting us back for a while. We got all the time we need."

What her body was saying? She was pretty sure what she wanted it to say was "stop," but her arms were still dumbly at her sides. She brought them up, resting them on his chest as he moved in closer, realizing that he was already undoing buttons on her shirt. She needed to push him off, tell him to get away, that she was Giancarlo and not some, some random woman that he was suddenly far too close to, but her whole body felt tense and she couldn't seem to get the words out, her arms barely finding enough strength to push lightly against him - and before she could get out of her own head and muster a more forceful shove, she felt a hand sliding under her shirt, and then fingers pressing underneath he edge of her bra.

She gasped as the fingers encircled her, pushing in and squeezing - not hard enough to be painful, just hard enough to feel, and in just the sort of way to send a mild, hateful thrill shivering down her chest. She wanted to pull away, but even as she did he moved in closer to compensate, and there was still really nowhere to go. She needed, desperately, to push him back, but for some reason her body wasn't responding. Or rather, it was, just not in the way that she wanted it to. The strange, diffuse tension seemed to spread, and everything rapidly seemed more intense - when two of his fingers found her nipple, and tugged gently on it before rolling it between them, it was like the volume of touch on it had been somehow turned up. In that moment, at least, it seemed almost as intense as when Giancarlo had had his dick sucked, a lightning bolt of sensation that seemed to shoot itself straight down towards her loins a split-second later.

All of a sudden, the sensation was the only thing in the forefront of her mind, the only thing she could concentrate on, and she felt rigid, somehow, all but rooted to the spot as he continued touching her. The flushing sensation only increased, and more and more it seemed to dip even lower. She squirmed between him and the shelves behind her, still feeling too tensed to speak and not daring to let out the sounds she suddenly, horribly wanted to make, even as the sensations began to be accompanied by something that was truly, incomprehensibly bizarre. Deep inside of her, between her hips, it felt sort of like something was... unfolding, opening up somehow, tingling into awareness. As it did, it was accompanied by a feeling of uncomfortable, weirdly liquid heat, as the awareness spread to the sensation of the spade below, still nestled into her panties. It couldn't be getting erect, she was pretty sure about that, but it somehow felt bigger than normal, the fabric pulling more tightly around it. All of a sudden, though, it all came together in her mind, and the befuddlement momentarily cleared as she realized what was happening. As much as she'd wanted to avoid it, she knew it was coming to pass - thanks to his aggressive advances, her female body was now unquestionably aroused, and was rapidly preparing itself for him. For having him inside her... Suddenly, along with the other intense feelings, there was also a real sense of building panic as she knew for sure where things were heading. This wasn't just some kind of fooling around - he was getting her ready, and fast, which could only mean one thing.

As she tried to squirm out from against him, though, as she tried to somehow shut out the sensations and figure out a way to fight back, she felt fabric rustling and bunching up against her. Looking down, she saw that he'd already hiked her skirt up around her waist, and she could see the cream fabric of her panties flashing between them. Already his hand was sliding down, brushing against the fur on her thigh before the fingers turned upward at the top before sliding onto the crotch of her panties. She tried to rock her hips back, tried desperately to take that sensitive and suddenly vulnerable part out of his reach, but she could only arch back so far before her butt bumped up against one of the shelves, and all Jonah had to do was angle his hand upward to compensate.

Then his hand was on her crotch, right there against her spade, only the thin layer of fabric between them. And it was far, far too thin - even through it, she could feel the heat of his fingers as they pressed in, rubbing against her spade in a quick, practiced motion. There was nowhere else to squirm, and suddenly nothing she could do as he manipulated the sensitive part, feeling the flesh squish and yield beneath his touch, feeling weird little sparks dance between her thighs as the warmth suddenly blossomed between her legs, leaking out profusely and coating her spade with an intense, slick warmth. For a moment, everything felt strangely, incomprehensibly good as her body responded to the intense, massaging feeling, but then the panic flashed back tenfold as the fingers pulled momentarily back and tucked under the thin strip of fabric, nudging it aside to press against her directly. She felt one of the fingers press in harder, towards the center, and for a moment felt it sink in somehow, and she felt the spade tremble weirdly around it for a moment, hot and uncomfortably wet, before the fingers pulled rapidly back, leaving her hips feeling suddenly shaky. Then the fingers suddenly appeared, a few inches from her muzzle, and she could see the slick coat of moisture that permeated them, and smell the thick, feminine scent that she realized with horror was now her own. Jonah could see the wetness too, of course, and she knew he knew what it meant - he flicked his tongue across them, grinning a confident grin, even as his other hand slid down to stroke the more than noticeable bulge in his pants before starting to unzip the fly.

Grinning even wider, he took a step back, as if to admire his handiwork - Gianna standing in front of him, flushed and panting, her blouse undone, thighs exposed and panties in disarray, swollen spade poking out around them, wet and ready. And for a horrible, unimaginable moment, her mind seemed ready as well, instinctively telling her that all she had to do was spread her legs a little more, cock her hips forward a bit to get her spade at the right angle, and the man would do the rest. That only lasted for a moment, though, before a much clearer warning sounded. Getting fucked, after all, was the last thing she wanted to do, conflicting feelings from her body notwithstanding. This was crazy! She was... was still Giancarlo, somehow, and things like this weren't supposed to happen to Giancarlo! And now that he was back away from her, now that his hands were no longer on her and confusing her with their incomprehensibly compelling touch, she had finally found what might be the last possible window of opportunity to escape.

She moved forward quickly, tensing her weight on one leg and pushing off to dart off to the side, trying to get behind him and find a clear route to the door. At least, that's what she tried to do. The move came off much more stumbling and awkwardly, as something that her body had done had also served to make her hips feel weird and her knees strangely wobbly. Even with the skirt pulled up and not interfering with her motions, all she managed to do was to sort of stagger forward a couple of steps, before Jonah's arms caught her from behind, wrapping around her waist and tugging her backwards against him. She felt his muzzle nuzzling in against her neck, managing to find another sensitive spot and sending another unwanted thrill through her, squirming involuntarily against him even as she felt something hot and hard poking in against a depressingly squishy buttock. She was more than well aware of what that was, and how close it was to where she desperately didn't want it to be, and the wholly inadequate struggle she tried to muster against him was all but lost against his solid body, leaving her trapped in his tight grasp.

"Mmm, you know me so well," she heard him breathe against her neck, his voice low and thrumming. "Know how I like it when you play just a little hard to get..." he nuzzled her again, in that sensitive spot, and to her horror she let out a moan that was soft but audible for a moment before choking it off and clamping her muzzle shut. No... he couldn't just... he couldn't just win, not like that...

Her feet, though, were already leaving the ground, hovering just above it as his strong arms cinched around her waist and lifted her up, the room bobbing around her as he took several shuffling steps forward, his cock poking at her butt with each stride. They ended when her abdomen bumped up against the waist-high cluster of filing cabinets - Jonah stopped just short of them, so the impact wasn't much more than a bump, but as a result of his grip and her precarious position, she still felt herself tipping forward on top of it. He let her down as she tilted over, releasing his arms, and as he did so she tried to counteract her trajectory and find a way to straighten up, to properly regain her footing, to find some way, any way, of getting out of the increasingly desperate situation. One of his hands, though, was suddenly against her back, pushing her down, while his other hand curled around her hip and yanked that part of her sharply back and up. Between the two forces, her tenuous balance was lost as quickly as it had been regained, and only a pair of flailing hands kept her from landing bodily against the top of the cabinets. The end result, though, left her bent over them, her ass hanging out over the edge, and her panic rising to a crescendo.

She tried to push back up, but the hand was now in the the small of her back, just above the base of her tail, and all she managed to do was to arch her back up a little and get her head away from the metal. She cast about for something, anything, but the was nothing more than a cold metal expanse in front of her, with nothing to grab, nothing to use, nowhere to go. She was trapped, pinned against the cabinets, her mind reeling with horror as she realized what was now all but inevitable. After all, she was still Giancarlo enough to know how this went - once the girl was pinned, once you were in a position of power, there was nothing she was gonna be able to do to stop you from getting what you wanted.

Incongruously, tauntingly, as she lay there bent over the filing cabinets, memories of Jonah and Giancarlo flashed through her mind: hanging out, working on cars, drinking and high-fiving and catcalling women, cheering at football games and drinking some more. To go from all that, to go from what had seemed almost like a brotherly bond to a guy who barely had a handful of words for her before working her up and bending her over in a fucking storeroom... it was hard to even comprehend, but it was happening, and there was no way to deny it. Maybe she'd been right the first time - when it came to being "friends" with women, Jonah really only had one idea of how that was supposed to be.

She had to say something, had to do something, had to break out of this, this... what was it? Paralysis? Stupid, female desire? She didn't even know what it was any more, but even if she was trapped like this, she had to speak up, at least. Just yell out, tell him no, tell him she didn't want this! Maybe he'd stop, maybe he wouldn't, but at least he'd fucking know. She tried to shake it off, tried to breathe in, but his hand was already tugging on the waistband of her panties, and she felt them sliding off, felt the fabric peeling off her sopping crotch, felt them slide down to tangle around her knees. All of a sudden, there was nothing left, just her exposed spade sitting there, the moisture on it cooling subtly in the air, and then something hot poking right into the center of it and pushing forward, all but taking the words out of her mouth. All she could manage was a soft, barely-there "Nnnhh..." as it nestled in between, centering itself just right...

...And then, all of a sudden, everything seemed to be dominated by an intense, stretching sensation. Belatedly, she tried to clench down on whatever she could figure out down there, tried to somehow hold herself closed, but it didn't do a damn thing - the spade just squished, and stretched, and yielded as the head shoved past it and plunged inside, and then everything else did too, every part of her inside just seeming to somehow give way and give in, unseen stuff that seemed to come more starkly into existence as the cockhead pressed against it, everything weirdly squishy and stretchy and yieldingly female until the head pushed past and stretched things taut behind it. Terrifyingly, it felt almost as though his cock was molding her body around it to conform to its shape, and again she strained her muscles in some last desperate attempt to force it out somehow. What muscles there were there, though, seemed somehow more diffuse, and all they seemed to do was ripple gently beneath the surface, kind of hugging at the intruding cock they were supposed to be discouraging.

Then Jonah's other hand came down on her butt with a hard slap, sending another, less voluntary spasm clenching through her, and all of a sudden he was thrusting the way canines did - not slow and gentle, not some steady, planned rhythm, but quick, hard, frantic bucking, the flared tip barely even getting halfway back out of her before slamming back in again, the juddering, jackhammering thrusts reverberating through her entire body. She could feel her buttocks quavering back and forth at the rapid motion, her whole body rocking forward on her elbows, her breasts whipping back and forth like demented pendulums as each slamming impact between her legs sent shockwaves emanating through her entire body.

The cock thudded into her again and again, each stroke firing off another round of crazed, alien sensations, as each savage thrust or quick pullback seemed to find some sensitive thing or other to rub far too intensely against. Within a few thrusts, the feelings were quickly becoming overwhelming - unlike what Giancarlo was used to, of being in control and setting the rhythm, the cadence was suddenly being directed by someone else, and it was a terrifying, powerless sensation to have those strokes building to an intensity that she couldn't do anything to regulate or even slow down at all. They were already coming so fast that she couldn't even properly react to what she was feeling - by the time her body had registered the sensation from one of the thrusts, before she could even begin to come to terms with it, another one was already happening, overwhelming the first one. The thrusts kept coming, again and again, and all she could do was rock and gasp for breath, hating the hands holding her in place, hating the feeling of Jonah against her and in her, hating the intense stroking sensations he was forcing out from deep inside her, flashes of heat and intensity that she couldn't help but somehow enjoy even as she felt humiliated about how out of control he as forcing her to feel. Her body stretching and yielding and letting itself be forced to respond, it felt almost like she was losing a little bit of Giancarlo, of his power and dominance, with each thrust - and she couldn't even bear to think about what might be replacing it - especially when she noticed that in response to some of the thrusts, she could feel her own hips automatically bucking back to take him in even more quickly and deeply. Either way, no matter what she wanted, the feelings were building to a crescendo, each stroke becoming more intense, so much that she could barely think straight - the only thought that lingered in her mind was that she was going to come, in some pathetic, feminine way, and that her first orgasm as a woman was going to be forced out of her by the guy who had once been her best friend.

All of a sudden, the thrusting stopped, the tip halting hot buried somewhere deep inside her, the top edge of his knot squishing uncomfortably against her already-spread spade. For a single, horrifying moment, she thought he was going to try and knot her, but all he did was stay perfectly still, making a couple of grunting noises as she tensed weirdly around the shaft her insides were stretched around, throbbing with anticipation of a sensation that had suddenly, agonizingly stopped. Then she felt the shaft make a quick, vibrating throb against her, and her heart sank as she realized what was happening. She was still gasping, though, and while her mind was suddenly screaming pull out, pull out, for the love of god PULL OUT, all she could manage to get out was a weak little whimper.

The throbbing within her intensified, and then she felt it pulsing against her, spurts of heat splashing inside with quick, depressing regularity, the wetness seeming to cling to her insides and coating them, the foreign wetness pumping out and oozing between the space between them. It felt horribly alien, this stuff feeling like it was permeating her insides, splashing and smearing and feeling messy, squishy, and absolutely disgusting, even as it did nothing at all for her suddenly frustrated insides, begging for the stroking stimulation that had been cut of prematurely, leaving her high and dry and probably developing the closest female equivalent to blue balls as his stuff kept splashing into her again and again. Then, abruptly, it stopped, he gave one more brief, perfunctory grunt behind her, and then his cock slid out of her, the head lingering for a moment behind her swollen spade before coming out with a barely audible but still horrible wet "pop." All of a sudden, it was over, and all she could do was lie there, desperately trying to catch her breath, feeling violated and dirty and incontrovertibly betrayed.

She felt the hot, sticky head of his cock sliding along and ruffling the fur on her inner thighs, first one and then the other, as he used her to wipe himself clean. Then he gave her one more final slap on the ass, not the type that stung, but with enough force that she could feel the now-plush flesh of her buttocks jiggle and reverberate horribly for a couple of seconds afterward.

"Damn, that was awesome. Really got into it, but I guess that's what happens when you're pent up like that." Jonah paused, panted behind her, and all she could do was look down at the cold metal surface of the filing cabinet below her. There was no way she could meet his gaze. Not after what he'd just done. Not after what she'd horribly, inexplicably, somehow let him do.

Still reeling from what had just happened, she felt him pawing at her, poking at her shoulder. "Wow. I knew I was on a roll there, but damn, I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've left you speechless. You almost always get a choice word in afterwards..." His hand thankfully retreated, although, if she hadn't still been gasping for breath, she'd have been more than willing to tell him off - even if, in some bizarre parallel reality, she'd wanted what he'd just put her through, the only reason she'd be speechless was the shock from just how thoroughly unsatisfying he'd managed to be. "Um, yeah, so, I guess I'll, um, give you some space, let you get cleaned up and stuff. Just, uh, don't take too long - if I remember the schedule right, you've got another appointment in about five..." And just like that, he took off, leaving only the sound of his fading footsteps as he walked away. No further ceremony. Not even a kiss. Not even really, honestly asking how she was doing, just the clueless assumption that she wanted and enjoyed it. He was just done, and walking away, with everything simple and complete in his mind. At one time, in fact, that could have been Giancarlo; unburdened, unconcerned, everything nice and simple, satisfied and squared away. For Gianna, though, it most definitely wasn't.

She just leaned there for a moment, bent over the filing cabinet with her ass in the air, feeling stunned and shocked, humiliated and betrayed. The awful, sadistic boneheap had been right in its initial assessment: it was hard to imagine a much more literal reversal of fortunes. Last night, she'd been Giancarlo, only minutes away from initiating a rape in an alleyway; now, not even a full day later, not only was she female, she'd just been forced through nearly the most intimately female thing possible. There she was, skirt pulled up and panties pulled down, her abused, exposed spade on display behind her, and a belly full of uninvited, sticky warmth, literally the picture of the aftermath of a violation. And for all her supposed street smarts, for all her little triumphs and evasions of the night before, the combination of someone she knew and some unpredictable, hormonal feelings she hadn't known what to do with had been all it took to do her in - confused and befuddled by them, she hadn't even put up a real fight, just bouncing between one overwhelming thing and another until she was bent over and fucked like some stupid, clueless, emotional bitch. And for a moment, she wondered if maybe, somehow, she was - she couldn't imagine any way that the Giancarlo she had been, even diminished, could have fallen so far, so fast.

Groaning, and trying desperately to throw off the despairing feelings and find some way to regain her feet, to get back on track, even after such a rapid and humiliating defeat. Even with the next appointment aside, she knew that she had to get herself back in some state of order. If Jonah had left, it meant the door was probably unlocked again, and someone could wander in at any moment. The problem was, even standing took some effort; her legs still felt wobbly from arousal, and the inside parts of her female stuff, between her legs, was still aching and twitching weirdly, causing her hips to give a humping, instinctual little buck every so often.

She steadied herself, leaning against the filing cabinet, as she looked around for anything useful within reach to clean herself up with. Unfortunately, nothing was readily apparent - there were some cleaning supplies buried somewhere in the back, but she had no intention of trying to shuffle over to them with her panties around her thighs. If a guy happened to come in, and see her with her spade exposed like that, she could only imagine the result, and definitely wasn't in the mood for a repeat. Instead, she grudgingly cleaned up as best she could with her hands, wiping up what she could from her thighs, although when she tried to clean up between her legs, she didn't get very far - the pounding had only seemed to serve to make the spade somehow even more sensitive, and when an innocuous-seeming probe caused her hips to give another rapid, shivering buck, she decided to leave well enough alone. Instead, she sighed and pulled her panties back into place, at least slightly covering up her shame, although the feeling of her spade squishing wetly against the fabric wasn't exactly encouraging.

At least, though, she could walk around better, and her legs felt like they were solidifying under her - well enough, at least, to walk around and find a handful of printer paper she could use to wipe most of the spunk off her hands. Throwing the slimy, disgusting wad that resulted into a wastebasket, she used her at least somewhat cleaner hands to un-bunch her skirt from around her waist and pull it back down, smoothing it mostly into place. She did a quick once-over, patting down any exposed fur that looked ruffled or otherwise mussed, knowing that she only had a couple of minutes left before someone would probably come looking for her. Finally, everything seemed, at least, more or less like it had been before, and she ventured out of the storage room. As she crossed the threshold, though, she realized that she hadn't even gotten the toner she'd gone in there for in the first place. Her first thought in response, though, was definitely an emphatic fuck that. That bastard Jonah had just raped her; he could get his own damn toner.

No matter how she felt, though, angry or hurt or humiliated, the day went on, and there was already a customer waiting at her desk to be helped. She went over and did her job, helping him, and the next one, and the next one after that, but it was a struggle to keep even a professional facade up while she helped them. If anything, her emotions felt even more out of control now, and small wonder - unlike Jonah, who could just wander off and be done with it, she was still dealing with the aftereffects of what had happened. As much as she hated it, the space between her legs still felt... alive somehow, itching and throbbing, but the worst of it all was that feeling of being somehow open, of being yawningly empty, aching with frustration and lingering tension that hadn't been released. The sensation was tauntingly horrible, mocking beyond belief - not only had she just been raped, been made humiliatingly powerless, but hadn't even gotten the most basic thing out of it, unwanted or not. Being raped, and then having that feeling, that awful notion that what she needed most was for him to come back and finish what he started, to pound her insides again at least to the point where she freaking got off and didn't have to be frustrated... she couldn't even put into words the extent of how profoundly humiliating it was. Of course, it wasn't like the irony was lost on her either - before, as Giancarlo, he'd licked his chops while thinking of how his victims would feel after he'd jabbed them with his heat syrettes, how humiliating it would be for them to have just been raped and suddenly be begging for it. Now though, on the receiving end of it, it didn't really seem sexy at all. In fact, what really seemed to stand out about it was how much it sucked.

And that, she quickly realized, wasn't even the truly worst part of it. It took several minutes of being upright for it to really begin to the point where she could feel it, midway through helping the first customer, but the sensation that arrived quickly became the most humiliating of all. Ironically, if Jonah had gone at her full force and shoved his knot in, it probably wouldn't have happened at all. In that deep, Giancarlo knew, and the tip mashed in against something and spurted more directly into a woman's womb, where it would tend to stay, something that had surprised Giancarlo his first few times moving from porn to actual women - when he was done with them, there had barely been anything dripping out afterwards. Jonah, though, had only been after a quick release, so his com had spurted all over her inner walls, but gone no further. Now, though, gravity was taking hold, and as she talked, trying not to miss a beat, she felt the awful, slow-motion dripping sensation of a thick rivulet of cum oozing down between her legs, then another and another, tracing horrible trails along her frustrated inner walls as they made their way to the bottom, where they pooled around the base of a spade that was still swollen and not even close to being all the way closed. Midway through the second customer, she could even begin to feel the sticky, slimy stuff beginning to leak out of her, coating the inside edges of her spade and dripping down into the crotch of her panties, gradually soaking in to make them feel sticky and damp too. Combined with the stuff that still matted the fur on her thighs, spread around but not really cleaned, and the whole area felt dirty, miserable, and abjectly humiliating. She'd rather have pissed herself, really, than been made to feel like that - and even worse, she realized, she could even smell it if she sniffed just right. Thanks to the skirt, her spunk-smeared thighs were exposed to the open air, and if she could smell it, other customers probably could too. In fact, the last customer before another lull, male of course, started giving her some uncomfortably knowing looks, and even though he didn't say anything, she could tell what he was thinking, and he was of course completely right - she'd just been completely, thoroughly, humiliatingly fucked, and now her shame was on display too, olfactorily at least.

As soon as she had a chance for another break, she hightailed it to the bathroom, almost choosing the wrong one in her haste. Even having to go into the ladies' room was humiliating in and of itself, and it was just about the last straw - sitting in a stall, her stupid feminine skirt and panties around her knees, pawing at her thighs with wads of toilet paper even as she could feel the drips and hear the slight plunking, splashing noises as Jonah's cum oozed disgustingly from between her legs, the frustration and humiliation built up to a head. If she'd still been Giancarlo, she'd have been punching the walls, or yelling at the top of her lungs, something like that. All she felt, though, was weak and powerless and pathetic, and before she knew it a different sort of despairing emotion welled up within her, along with the tears that pooled in the corner of her eyes. A moment later, she was full-on bawling, pawing at her eyes as he chest wracked with sobs, the feeling of her boobs rocking on her chest with each sob only serving to make her cry harder. In that moment, she truly did feel like a little bitch, the lowest of the low, raped, humiliated, crying, and pathetically female - everything that Giancarlo had hated, and now, as Gina, was being forced to endure.

Her sobbing had lessened somewhat when she heard someone knocking on the stall door. She quieted up quickly - as bad as it was to feel that way, it would be even worse to be seen by her coworkers like that. Was that something she could ever live down?

"Hey, Gianna, is that you? Are you all right in there?" It was Amanda's voice. Of course - it was the ladies' room, a place where none of her male coworkers would be brazen enough to venture.

"Yeah, I'm fine..."

"Bullshit." Not the response she was expecting. "C'mon, girlfriend, I know you don't like to talk about stuff that much, but you don't cry like that unless something's seriously fucked up. Really, how are you?"

Gianna thought about lying again, but if Amanda had already heard that much, it probably wouldn't work. "Not good."

"Yeah, I can tell. Okay, just... take your time, all right? If anyone asks I'll just tell them your stomach's off or something. I'm gonna be here, though, so when you're ready, come on out of there and we're gonna talk this through. Seriously, all right?"

"Fine..." The last thing Gianna really wanted to do was talk to someone, but it seemed, at least for the moment, unavoidable. She grabbed some more toilet paper and used it to wipe away the remnants of her tears, then pulled her clammy, sodden panties back into place and the skirt back on top of them.

She opened the stall to see Amanda leaning against the counter, looking into the mirror as she brushed something onto her fur. It was practically clichéd - women gathering in the bathroom to powder their muzzles and talk about feelings and other frivolous girl stuff. When Amanda turned back towards her, though, she looked anything but frivolous - the concern on her face was obvious, serious, and genuine.

"Oh my gosh, Gi', you look like a total mess! Here, let me help you with that..." Suddenly, Amanda's hands were on her face, brushing at and smoothing down the fur. "There, that's better - presentable, at least. Now, seriously... what's going on? It's not about the weekend, is it? That bastard didn't just dump you or anything did he?"

Gianna just shook her head, trying to figure out some way to get out of talking to her coworker, even as her emotions threatened to well up again. "No, no, it's not that, it's just... it's nothing, it's..."

"C'mon, don't give me that! We're friends, right? You know you can trust me - I don't gossip, at least never about anything serious. I can take it, really, and I can see just from looking at you that you've got something you need to get off your chest. Please, just... talk to me..."

Gianna didn't know what it was - the pleading, maybe, or the way Amanda was looking at her, or just how emotional she was, but all of a sudden, everything started to come bubbling out, and it was all she could do to keep from sobbing again as the words started tumbling out of her mouth. "Jonah, he... he told me to get something from the storeroom, and when I turned around he was there, and he... he just... it all happened so fast, and his hands were on me, and he... he raped me..."

"He what?" Amanda replied, looking stunned. "Oh my god... did he hurt you? Force you? What happened?"

"I, I don't even... I don't know, I don't even know if you can even call it rape, really, it all just... everything just happened so fast, I didn't even know what to do, there were just all these... feelings... and it just happened, one thing after another, and I was so stunned from one thing that the other thing happened before I could react, and then I was bent over and he pulled them down and I didn't want to, but then he was in me and I couldn't move and everything was just, I was just overwhelmed... I didn't want to, I know I didn't want to, but I just froze. I don't know how, I don't know why, it just felt like everything was going crazy, and by the time I could even think straight enough to fight back, to say no, it was too late, it was way, way too fucking late... And now, I just... his stuff is in there, and I just want it out, I want it to never have happened, and I just, I just..." she trailed off into a series of quick, loud sobs, that burst out of her before she could hold them back. Even then, though, even sitting there sobbing, her mind managed to flash back to the car ride the night before, to the sob story she'd cynically spun. It was almost a weird sort of deja vu, hearing it pouring from her mouth again - only this time it wasn't bullshit, wasn't some stereotypical nonsense she'd invented based on some stupid notion of how she thought women were, but a horrible truth that she'd never imagined she'd end up proving firsthand.

Looking up, she could see that, somehow, Amanda was almost crying too - and instead of saying anything, at first, she just threw her arms around Gianna and hugged her.

"There, there... let it all out, okay? I'm right here."

Gianna did, for a while, feeling strangely comforted by Amanda's embrace. It was certainly something she wasn't used to - the weird catharsis of sobbing, or, for that matter, a woman holding her willingly of her own accord. It was still such a painfully female thing to do... although, there in her arms, Gianna began to realize that maybe she couldn't feel that way about women, at least not right now. However she acted, whatever front she tried to put on, that she was female was now a matter of fact, and a very clear one at that. So maybe, in this case, she could take slight advantage of one of those aspects - the lack of the kind of male pride that forbade showing feelings or accepting the emotional support of others. It was hard to deny that, at that moment, support was something that she seemed desperately to need.

"I just don't get it," she said, leaning on Amanda's shoulder as the sobs finally subsided. "I'm a- I mean, I'm a strong person. I do the things I want, when I want them. I don't just... roll over like that. But I was there, and I just... why couldn't I fight back? Why did it get so out of control?"

"Oh, honey," Amanda said in a knowing tone of voice. "I know it's hard to acknowledge sometimes, especially in the modern world where it's supposed to be all about empowerment and things like that, but sometimes that's just what it means to be a canine woman. I mean, even putting heat aside, there are some days when your body just gets that need, the kind of itch you can't scratch on your own, and sometimes when that need shows up, it doesn't really care what you say, doesn't let you get a word in edgewise. And guys, well, in a situation like that, they're only thinking with one of their heads, and even if they weren't, they don't know how it is. They wouldn't even know the right questions to ask, or even when to ask them. Sometimes there's just no one to blame - not you or the guy, you know? Sometimes things are just meant to happen like that, and all you can do is roll with them."

Yeah, sure it was meant to happen, Gianna thought. There was no way to prove it, of course, no obvious evidence, but she had a feeling the damn boneheap probably at least encouraged it somehow - maybe hid in a corner somewhere in there, laughing or jacking its bony cock or whatever the hell it was that got the twisted fuck off. Still, it wasn't quite what she'd expected to hear, especially not from another woman. But then again, it also hadn't been what she'd expected to feel. In fact, Giancarlo had never really thought much about how women's sexual desire worked at all, as it had never really factored in for him - it hadn't mattered whether or not they truly desired him, so long as he got what he wanted. He knew about heat, sure, but only as a factor that made women even easier to victimize. He'd never really considered that women could have the same sort of powerful desire that men did. Was it really just something like that? Some strange passion that just got out of control? Had her body, in some way, almost raped itself? The more she thought about it, though, the stupider it sounded. Yeah, maybe there'd been some desire that was a part of her new form, and maybe she hadn't really known how to handled it and had fumbled her response, but it had still been Jonah pushing forward every step of the way.

"It wasn't meant to happen. Not like that. There wasn't..." she trailed off, not sure what she could say was missing. Love? That had never factored into it with Giancarlo. Compassion? Not that either. Caring? Respect for another persons needs or desires or protests? Hell, by Giancarlo's standards, Jonah was practically a wussy fucking romantic.

"Yeah, I know," Amanda replied, gently stroking her back. "Sometimes you think it's supposed to be more, but get your mind wrapped up in that, and you just tie yourself in knots. Sometimes it's just about sex, about some momentary instinct that does its thing and runs its course, and it doesn't mean anything more than that. You just gotta leave it, maybe shoot the guy some dirty glances next time you see him, and move on. Er, speaking of that, you're not scheduled to have your heat any time soon, right?"

"N-no, don't think so..."

"Then yeah, you shouldn't have to worry about pregnancy or anything. And since they crushed the last STD a couple years back, there shouldn't be anything else that comes of it. Guys can sure be messy, though, and they don't ever think about who has to clean that mess up, and out for that matter, afterwards. Hmm, speaking of messes..."

Amanda let her go, and as Gianna stepped back, she noticed her coworker seemed to be eyeing her up and down, especially at about waist level. Gianna cringed inwardly, not appreciating being eyed up yet again, but it seemed to be for a different purpose.

"Yeah, yeah, I guess we're roughly the same size when it comes to that, so it should be fine." She turned back to the counter, fishing around in her voluminous purse. "Ah - there they are! Always be prepared - a good motto for women to live by, if you ask me." Her hand came back up, clutching a plastic sandwich bag, and inside, folded neatly, was a pair of plain white cotton panties. "Sometimes, when my heat comes, I can get kinda overly lubricated, you know? So, because of that, I've always got some spares on me." She tossed the bag over to Gianna. "Here. I know it's a little weird, but they're clean, and probably new - I tend to toss ones like those if they get messed up. Pretty sure I've got some heat pads in here too if you want, in case, you know, you think there's any more to come out. I know it can suck sometimes, afterwards, but at least this way you don't have to feel it against you the rest of the day."

"Thanks," Gianna replied, and realized that she actually meant it - after all, it was the first genuinely nice thing anyone had done for her all day amidst all of the other misery.

"No problem. After all, that's what friends do, and what kind of friend would I be if I didn't help you through this? I know some women can just shrug this kinda thing off, but sometimes, having someone there to help can make all the difference. Besides, you'd do the same for me."

She would? More and more, Gianna wondered just what kind of notions, exactly, the boneheap had put into people's heads about the "Gianna" who apparently had been made to exist before, in some kind of manufactured memories that had been given to everyone Giancarlo had known. Apparently, the female version wasn't quite as much of a bastard, but then again, it was beyond strange to suddenly have new relationships that had never been there before. Friends now with Amanda, someone Giancarlo had barely given a second thought to, and Jonah... what were they supposed to be, anyway? What kind of relationship was Jonah under the impression they were in? Lovers having an illicit office tryst? Fuck buddies? She didn't even know, but whatever it was, it was immediate, volatile, and had to be brought to a complete halt if she was going to both keep her job and what was left of her sanity. How was she supposed to even sort that out, though? The last thing she knew about was how to handle the complexities of managing ongoing relationships that weren't based primarily on getting drunk and doing stupid shit until one or the other sobered up.

"Yeah, of course," she replied, as it seemed like the thing to do, whether or not she truly felt that way. Then again, having a friend right now didn't seem like a bad idea, even if only for tactical reasons. She'd sometimes wondered why women often tended to go around in groups, but it made sense - Giancarlo had usually gone for women who were alone or unaware enough to be pried away from their friends, and she probably wasn't the only woman to have discovered how being alone with a man, even one you thought you knew and trusted, could escalate quickly. She wouldn't make that mistake again, though - not if she could help it. She might have been blindsided the first time, but now that she knew about the feelings, the points of stimulation, she could better acclimate and guard against them. At least, she hoped she could - her time as Giancarlo had made her more than aware that certain behaviors could be coaxed from the female body regardless of desire.

"So... you feeling better?" Amanda asked, and Gianna nodded.

"Yeah... I think so." In fact, come to think of it, she was feeling better - or, at the very least, less sorry for herself. The humiliating despair had faded to a feeling of, well, general suckiness, and in its place a familiar emotion, one often used by Giancarlo, was beginning to simmer. Amanda... she was okay, but as for Jonah, her erstwhile friend... relationship or not, he had something coming to him.

"Good to hear. Well, I've gotta get back out there - think my break's just about up, and you probably have to get back to - at least you're wearing a skirt, so changing won't be too much hassle. And hey, if you need to talk more after work, or just want to come over, grab a drink, whatever, just let me know, okay? I'm not gonna let you be miserable over this."

Gianna nodded again, and Amanda packed up her purse and took her leave. Gianna ducked back into one of the stalls, and realized that in a way, Amanda had been right about the skirt - if she'd been wearing leggings or something, they'd have probably gotten gunked up too, if Jonah hadn't torn them in his haste, so all she had to do was swap the panties out. The new ones felt a little weird, but at least they were clean and dry, which admittedly made her feel immensely better. She still couldn't ignore what had happened to her, but at least now she wouldn't have a disgusting reminder squishing against her every time she took a step. Of course, there might still be stuff in her to leak out, but the sensation, and the frustration, had by then mostly subsided. As she exited the stall, she looked at the balled-up mess in her hands, the cream fabric soaked with the combined product of their sex. The smell of it was hauntingly familiar - before, she knew, it had been one of Giancarlo's favorite scents, but now it was hard not to associate it with the ignominy of her humiliation. She wadded it up further, and nearly shot it into the wastebasket, before thinking better of it. They didn't have a full-time janitor for the employee areas, and so they sometimes took turns cleaning it up - and there was always the possibility of it being Hugh's turn. The last thing she wanted to think about was him doing something with her soiled underwear, and maybe getting some ideas from it... Instead, she tucked it back into the now-empty plastic bag and stuck it in her own purse. Maybe, if she was in the right mood, she'd toss it down on Jonah's desk and tell him to clean up his own damn mess.

She went back out, and was able to get through the rest of the day without further incident. Jonah, somehow, had apparently picked up on the fact that she was pissed at him, and didn't see fit to duck back out of his office for the rest of the afternoon - he apparently snuck out early while she was wrapping things up with the final customer of the day, and by the time she looked back over the door was open and the office was dark and empty. Somehow, being denied the opportunity to confront him only managed to piss her off more, and those familiar feelings simmered closer and closer to the surface.

By the time Gianna returned home after work, her tears had long dried up, and the overwhelming feelings of shame and guilt and humiliation had faded into the background - as had the uncomfortable sensation of the cooling spunk, although she could still faintly feel the sensation of something lingering inside her, the sort of feeling that she, that Giancarlo, was never supposed to even have a chance of feeling. Along with it, though, her sense of simmering rage was building to something familiarly white-hot, even if it wasn't as potent as it had once been. She had never felt so vulnerable, so betrayed by her own body before, even as she knew it wasn't entirely to blame, and the building rage meant that it was time to give that blame somewhere else to land.

She slammed her apartment door open and stormed inside, fuming. It was all that, that... thing's fault! If it wasn't for its random intervention, she wouldn't be facing such a humiliating reality. She'd still be working as an actual fucking mechanic, she'd still be on top, in charge, the one with the power, the one who got what they wanted and always got away with it. And now she had to be a victim? And not by choice, either. She knew that she was better than that, more capable, more alert, weird hormones or no. They were no way, no way she would have just frozen up like that, just let things happen without protest. At least, not unless something else had been affecting her...

"trUe. slight assistance."

She turned around, the horrible, eerily melodic hammering speech of bone on bone sounding quietly behind her. Sure enough, there it was, lurking behind the couch in the corner of the living room: a misshapen sack of something, hood flopped over the top, with just enough of a gap in the center for a sliver of the stack, bleached bones packed tightly against one another, to show through.

"You- You son of a bitch!" Gianna snarled, her whole body tensing. "This is all your fault!"

"fault irrelevant. blame irreleVant. parentage irrelevant. situation happened. helped aLong, a little. words spoken, in car before. not able to say no. idea uSed today. couldn't resist." The statement was followed by a subtle clattering, which Gianna could have sworn was the thing's version of laughter.

"You sick fuck! Let me guess. You were hiding somewhere near where it happened, watching. Probably got off to it, didn't you?"

"no capacity for climax. enjoyed nonetHeless, though." The thing paused, as though considering something. "hmm. congratulations in order. first tiMe as female. high marks for performance. earned three points."

Gianna looked at the thing incredulously. "P-performance? How can you call getting raped a performance? And what the hell do you mean, points? What is this, some sort of fucking game to you?"

"exactly. too boring if just happens. decided on coNtest. no loss. win-win."

"What? What the fuck are you talking about?"

"simple. game of points. per person. per encounter. finger penetrates spade, one point. penis penetrates, two. ejaculate dePosited inside, three. tied by knot, four. extra performance, extra humiliation, extra points. get taken. earn points. both win. get five hundred, compete in bonus round. chance to earn tesTicles back."

Gianna shook her head, even as she mentally tallied up what it meant. Going all the way, even with the ultimate humiliation and femininity of getting knotted and being trapped on the end of a guy's cock, would have to happen over a hundred times. If that fucking boneheap thought she was going to tolerate that, it had another thing coming.

"This is bullshit! You can't force me to go through that... that fucking nightmare again, much less a hundred fucking times, before I get to change back!"

"can. already have. terms set."

Gianna didn't agree with that assessment, not in the slightest. "Oh, yeah? Well, what kind of a fucking contest is it anyway? I get points, but every time something happens to me, you're the one who's winning! How about all those times I beat you last night? Defied your fucking curse? I oughta get something for beating you!"

The boneheap shifted under its sack, momentarily quiet before resuming its clattering speech.

"prospect limited. intriguing nonetheless. fine. evade cursed encounter, get half point. survive week as woman, taken or not, point. don't care. curse taking efFect. evade some. not nearly all. much entertainment ahead. defy all expeCtations, bonus in... seventeen linear months. get taken aNyway, sooner. become eager bitch slut, quicker still. all outcomes enjoyable."

"Yeah? And you won't meddle any more? Give me a fair shot to win this my way?"

"no. not fair. curse stays. unavoidable in full effect. will compel situations. avoidance for all months impossible. avoiDance for week unlikely. spade penetrated. knot tied. inevitable. plus, tactics limited to normal for women." A bolt of something blue and sparkling shot out from the opening in the robe, seeming to impact in the center of Gianna's muzzle and suddenly it felt like freezing tendrils were zigzagging through her mind. "better. now abHor guns, less capaBle with knives. use pepper spray, stun guns. neither reliable."

The boneheap seemed to shuffle forward a couple of steps, the hood tilting slightly as it seemed to regard her carefully.

"You, you... what the hell kind of game is this, anyway? After all this, you're just gonna rig it so I lose?"

"not lose, exactly. ought to know. giancarlo master of rigged game. misunderstand purPose, anyway. sex. rape. both inevitable. not about avoiding. about seeing reaction. change in behavior. resoLution of mental turmoil. not about being woman. about what becomes."

"Wait. You just... this whole sick experiment of yours is just to watch me get raped and see how I react? How do you think I would react? How would anyone?"

"differently. know rape. know poWer. can contrast with current situation." Gianna wanted to interject, to get the damn boneheap to say something, anything, more useful or conciliatory than it already had, but the thing was already sinking into the corner, fading from view. "visit soon. observe inTerim. should be interesting." The thing made another of its awful, clattering laughs, and then, just before it faded entirely, it apparently decided to sadistically provide one additional message.

"heat. soon. within a week."

Gianna screamed, hurling her purse at the corner of the room where the mocking sack of bones had been. How in fuck was she supposed to fix this? The answer, of course, was that she couldn't - at least not yet. Still, the idea of playing the horrid thing's game was repugnant to her. She'd already been fucked, already been raped - shouldn't that be enough? She'd been fucked, left hanging, humiliated in the most female way possible - didn't that show the thing that she'd learned her fucking lesson?

But then again, was that really even what it was all about with that thing?. It wasn't the kind of monster out of a fairy tale or something, the kind that always had some sort of moral message behind it. Maybe it really was just some kind of sadist, and all it cared about was watching her squirm. And even if it hadn't messed with her, whatever it was, it didn't play by the kind of rules she'd thought the world was governed by - even if she could somehow shoot a gun, she doubted that even blasting the thing in whatever passed for its head would solve anything. And besides, if she did somehow manage to kill the thing, then how was she going to turn back?

Even so, the alternative to finding some way to confront it earlier wasn't just being a woman, it was fucking as one, getting penetrated and pumped and filled, over and over and over again. Five hundred stupid, miserable, humiliating points, translating to dozens and dozens of penetrations and violations, dozens of situations where she felt like she didn't even have control or ownership of her own fucking body... The horrific irony of it all was almost physically painful. Even if that thing had been out to literally make her pay for her sins on her back, it was still excessive. It wasn't like Giancarlo spent all his time going around raping - even with his precautions, doing it too frequently would have been risky - and while he hadn't been the most caring or gentle lover, plenty of his encounters had been consensual. Even if he'd raped fifty different women, which was probably high, by the boneheap's calculations she'd have to pay for it twice over, at least. Where was the justice in that? Of course, she knew, there wasn't any - it was either play by the boneheap's rules, or stay a woman indefinitely - and being a woman, especially one that went into heat, meant getting fucked eventually either way.

As aggravating and infuriating and hopeless as the whole situation seemed, she knew full well that she wasn't going to solve it tonight. There would, however, be other days, other opportunities, to find some new way to take the thing on whenever it decided to next show up. The thing she really hated about waiting for it to play out, though, was the sheer, frustrating powerlessness embodied in her current situation - how humiliating and pathetic it had felt to be taken, to have her body used against her will, to have those, those... feelings forced through it, with the full knowledge that it could happen again, and probably with any guy that noticed her, something that was hard to avoid wearing nothing but exposed, displaying, flaunting clothing. It was as angering as it was disgusting, and for the boneheap to take more and more choices away from her, to take away even a real attempt to fight back, was all the more horrifying.

She didn't really know how she was supposed to feel about the whole thing, about what had just happened and what she still had to face - she supposed women were supposed to get all depressed and weepy about it, but she'd already had more than her share of involuntary crying for the day. Really, above everything else, what it felt like the most was that she'd just had a really, really, profoundly shitty day - and when that had happened, for Giancarlo at least, there had only been one way of dealing with it. Well, two, but even thinking about plowing a woman no longer had the same allure, especially when the woman in line for plowing was her.

What Gianna really needed, then, more than anything else, was a motherfucking drink.