A swirl of leaves spun endlessly around Ben as she frolicked through the trees. With each step she passed by hordes of flowers and dancing plants. She felt them alongside the grass under her bare feet. Her whole body was bare, for that matter, bringing her closer to the bare Earth.

The sun atop the sky cast a beautiful yellow light down onto the forest. A light that was never too strong, with a heat never too overbearing. Just enough for Ben to take in its loving embrace. In the distance she heard a waterfall. The constant sound of it plunging into the depths below was calming, almost therapeutic.

She lowered a tree branch, grabbing one of the fruits attached. Raising it to her lips, she took a bite, reveling in the sweet juices and natural sugar.

The Earth was so beautiful. Such a shame she’d never taken the time to notice.

Ben turned her head upwards, as if following an unspoken command. At first she wasn’t sure why, but soon, she saw it.

The floating island.

She knew in her heart that island held the pinnacle of nature’s beauty. She wanted… no, she needed to be a part of it.

Ben raised her hand toward the island. She wanted to touch it, even if only to feel the mist coming off the waterfalls. Just a single touch.

Her surroundings began to fade. Ben felt something get into her left eye. She tried to blink it away, and in doing so she found herself in her bedroom again, just as she was last night. Laying on the bed, with Jacqueline beside her.

She felt a fly leave her eye. She rubbed it in annoyance.

“Fucking flies.” She thought. She hated these little shits. All their windows were closed, how did it even get in here?

Not wanting to get out of bed, Ben took a folder off the nightstand and smacked it back down.

To her surprise, she didn’t hear the fly buzzing anymore.

She turned over the folder and saw the dead fly stuck to it. Well, looks like she wasted a perfectly good folder. At least it was empty. Getting out of bed, she went to the bathroom and tossed it in the trash bin.

She looked in the mirror and found herself smiling. It was probably stupid to be so pleased with yourself just for killing a fly, but Ben couldn’t recall the last time she killed one on the first try. Hell, she couldn’t recall the last time she killed one on the fifth try. Usually she just gave up. Maybe today was her lucky day. After all, yesterday had been her lucky night.

Last night… her smile grew wider as she thought of it. She turned back to the bed and saw Jacqueline sleeping peacefully under the covers. She never could’ve imagined pleasure would feel so good as a woman. She was really lucky she had Jacqueline there to guide her. She knew the ins and outs of this body better than Ben herself did.

Ben quietly threw on some clothes, doing her best not to wake Jacqueline up, then with a spring in her step, ran over to the kitchen. She’d never felt this energetic in her life. What better day to start early?

***

A very groggy Jacqueline woke up and willed herself not to roll off the side of the bed. She checked the time. The digital clock read 8:13 AM. Shit, she was going to be late for-

Oh right, it was Saturday.

She turned over to her side and saw Ben not in bed. Looks like she got up early this morning. A few rooms away she heard searing. Making breakfast too. Damn, she was really not giving her any time today.

Slightly annoyed, Jacqueline stepped out of bed. She could have stayed there but if Ben was already out making breakfast she might as well get up now. Only one day as a woman and already she seems to have gotten over it. Maybe she should congratulate her.

After quickly getting dressed, Jacqueline sauntered over to the kitchen and saw Ben cooking steak on the stove.

“Good morning.” Ben said to her.

“Steak? For breakfast? Really?”

“Why not?” She questioned. “Is there some rule saying I can’t? How much do you want?”

Jacqueline took a seat at the dining room table. “I’m good, not in the mood.”

“Suit yourself.” Ben laid another steak onto the skillet.

Jacqueline pulled up her laptop, which she left on the table last night, and took the time to find any remotely interesting news stories to read. She couldn’t find much. A local school was seeing reports of books moving around on their own, but it wasn’t interesting enough to keep her attention.

“You seem in a good mood today. What changed?”

“Maybe it was the orgasms.” Ben joked. “I’m feeling good today. Very good, I don’t think I’ve ever felt better.”

“Ever?”

“Never.” Ben confirmed with a flip of her tongs. “Just bursting with energy. Shit, I feel like a million bucks.” She slammed her fist onto the counter.

Jacqueline was a little taken back by her force. “It’s Saturday morning, Ben. Please calm down”

“I know. What better time to be active and involved.”

Jacqueline rolled her eyes. She wondered what the opposite of coffee was. Ben could really use it.

***

Ben’s hyperactivity did not tone down once she finished the steak. In fact, it only seemed to grow.

“I knew we had some good butchers around here.” She said. “Never gave them the recognition they deserved.”

Jacqueline tuned out most of what Ben said. She figured it was best not to feed into this.

“You’re right Ben.” She said, dejected. “They’re very good.”

“I mean, it’s a fascinating concept. I’m literally eating something that was a living, breathing being before.”

“Yes Ben, that’s what meat is.”

“Just think about it. This…” Ben pointed down to the steak, “used to be a living, breathing cow. Then it was killed, and its body was cut into this.”

Jacqueline peered over her laptop. “Are you feeling okay?” She looked down at the steak. “Since when do you take your meat well done?”

“What?” Ben asked. “…Yeah, I’m feeling fine. I’m just talking about these butchers. They take these cows and they slaughter them to death. They slice through all the blood and organs and sculpt their meaty insides into something beautiful.”

“Uh…”

Ben raised her hands and imitated stabbing and slicing. “It’s so brutal. Even a civilized species like us still savagely cut up animals like butter.”

“Ben… I don’t really want to talk about this right now.”

“Hold on! Just bear with me for a moment. Could you imagine if it were me in there? Cutting up animals and mutilating them like that? It’s insane to imagine.”

At this point Jacqueline was starting to become seriously concerned. “Are you actually okay?”

“I already said, I feel great.”

“You’re acting weird. Is something going on?”

“Yeah, something IS going on. And it’s great.”

Jacqueline watched Ben as she ate. She took large bites of the steak and swallowed them very quickly. She seemed able to tear down a tough, well done steak at a disturbingly fast pace. Did Ben even notice how she was eating?

Maybe Jacqueline was just imagining things. She might need to go catch some air.

She stood up from her chair. “You know, I have some errands I have to run today.” She said. “I better get to them.”

Ben stood up alongside her. “Where do you need to go? I’ll help you.”

“…No, I’d rather go alone.”

“Why?”

“I… just need some time alone. You understand that, right?”

Ben’s face went blank for a while, but thankfully she didn’t push.

“Yeah, of course I do.”

Jacqueline nodded slowly, grabbing her car keys off a key rack.

“I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

***

The moment Jacqueline left the house Ben sifted through her drawers to find a sports bra. It was a shitty thing to do, she knew, but she couldn’t stand the way her breasts felt against her shirt.

For about five minutes straight she had the bra around her chest and fiddled around with the straps in the back. She assumed years of taking off bras would’ve given her an edge but she quickly found it really didn’t. She was glad she was alone when she was doing this. There was simply no good answer as to why a twenty-four year old woman didn't know how to put on a bra.

When she was finally able to piece together what went where, her chest did feel better than before, except the bra was a little small. Did she really have larger breasts than Jacqueline? That was embarrassing. She would go buy bras her own size but she hoped she wouldn’t be a woman long enough for that to be a worthwhile purchase.

She saw the T-shirt she threw onto the bed and decided to leave it. She didn’t need it. She then briefly considered wearing one of Jacqueline’s athletic shorts, but her own gym shorts were fitting fine. She didn’t need them either.

She walked out the front door and looked on at the large abandoned warehouse at the end of the street. Usually it was a hang out spot for teenagers and college students to smoke weed, but no one seemed to be inside today.

And she needed a place to test her new energy.

So she began sprinting toward it. She never measured how far away the warehouse was from her front porch, but she’d gotten to the vast, open, empty hall pretty damn quickly. Much faster than she ever had before. Was that professional athlete pace? It felt like it. She wished she brought a stopwatch with her so she could tell.

She looked up at the ceiling. It was made of metal, just like the walls, and an array of rectangular bars stretching across from the ends of each side hung down from it. Since the warehouse hadn’t been used in thirty years, it was likely these bars were worn down and would not support her weight.

Of course, Ben wasn’t too worried about that, because she wouldn’t be able to jump thirty feet in the air and reach them.

Still, if only to satisfy that stupid part of her mind that had to see if she could, she bent her knees down and focused on one of the metal bars on the ceiling. Then, with all her force, she jumped in the air, reaching her hand up to grab it.

And then she did.

Her left hand was firmly gripped around the bar. It was fully supporting her weight. She looked down at the floor beneath her, seeing a long drop that absolutely should kill her if she fell.

She might’ve been able to imagine running as fast as a professional athlete, but there was no way she could’ve imagined this.

“Holy shit.” She breathed.

She wondered if the bar could’ve supported her old weight. She felt lighter than she used to be, which considering her apparent strength, should be impossible. Magic really was the middle finger to physicists and biologists everywhere.

Wanting to see how far she could take this, she lifted her right hand up and gripped the bar, then turned each of her hands over to the opposite side. The bar gave her an awkward position to do pull ups, but at the same time, she couldn’t think of a more badass place to do them.

Pull ups had never been her specialty, but she could still do about nineteen in a minute. People always told her that was impressive, but she had a hard time seeing it that way. At the S.I.D., nineteen pull ups per minute was hardly noteworthy.

Realistically, being a woman now, she should be doing less than that, but it was apparent this body did not care about how human biology should work.

When she started, she was fast. So fast she swore she was doing three pull ups every second. It was absolutely a superhuman pace. And she never stopped. She just kept going on and on and she never got tired.

She lost count somewhere in the nineties.

When she finally did stop, she found herself breathing heavily, not because she was tired, but because she couldn’t believe what she just did.

To think yesterday she was upset about losing her muscles. This body clearly didn’t need them. She’d only been able to read about superpowers before. Actually having them was a completely different experience she would not have been able to comprehend before this. She felt like a God.

She let go of the bars and let herself drop thirty feet down to the floor. She landed on her feet without any pain. She stared up at the ceiling, to the bar she was just hanging on, in awe. If that couldn’t kill her, what could?

She turned to the metal wall beside her, then to her fist. She ran up to the wall and began pounding it, hearing the echo throughout the building. It was already bent on the first hit, then even more so on the second. On the third, her hand had completely broken through to the outside.

She smirked. Oh, how Jacqueline would love to see this.