As she turned the corner, she ran slap bang into Agent Luxury.

"Val! Sweetie!" Lux cried, sounding very relieved. "How'd you know I was heading to Medical?"

"I didn't, I'm out here looking for Pompom," said Val. "Careful with the towel!"

"Eh? Why?" Lux promptly grabbed the towel and whipped it off Val's head, revealing that the nurse was now completely bald and suffering from a bright blue rash on her exposed scalp.

"Hey!" Val snatched the towel back and putting it back on. "I'm assuming you're heading to Medical because something randomly weird has happened to you as well?"

"Damn right!" Lux said miserably. "I woke up this morning and ... well, remember Alan Rickman in Dogma?"

Val did. "Ewww! Yeah, I'd say you need to get down to Medical right now - but in the meantime, have you seen Pompom?"

"Who?"

"Uzumaki Pompom. Three-year-old, black hair, big dark eyes, 'bout six inches tall, cat ears? Currently invisible?"

Anyone other than Lux would probably have pointed out that she couldn't have seen him if he was invisible. "No, sorry, I'll keep a lookout."

(ooc: wherein my new agent meets my boarder persona)

Sitting on the edge of her bed, Portia McSweeney went over some important new facts.

She had a beard.

Great. Just great.

She usually had enough trouble keeping herself all lined up on a normal day. She was in FicPsych once a week to try to tease out memories of where she'd come from before being found in the cafeteria; so far, the only triggers they'd found were the battle scenes from "The Last Samurai" and the better and/or rantier Harry/Hermione shipping fics from the Harry Potter fandom. Add to that the fact that she could barely hold a projectile weapon without blowing her own rear end off and Intelligence was the only place she could fit in at the moment when what she really wanted to do was to blast, slice, impale and generally murder some Mary Sues.

But now she was a wizard. With a pointy hat. And a beard you could hide a chicken in. And a staff.

Perhaps this was the wrath of Rowling upon her: she'd only skimmed the plot of the last two Potter books loosely, she subscribed to fringe conspiracy literature (that purported that Epilogue!Harry had 5 kids by 2 different women)and fanfic was her pretty much her last remaining link to that world.

Then again, perhaps this was the fault of someone within the PPC, in which case she would pry the truth out eventually, preferably slowly and with great pain.

Perhaps... perhaps she should venture out and see what was happening. It couldn't be any worse than in here.

And if anyone laughed... well, maybe the big stick would come in handy.

(My first RP participation in the whole of ever. Exhilarating)

He had no idea what time it was, but he felt well-rested, and the Console wasn’t beeping, and that meant it was time to read. There were only a few chapters left in The Cavalier in White, and Doc was itching to find out who had stolen the titular painting. As he fished around inside his pillowcase for the book, Doc had the weird impression that the walls looked different somehow. The generic surface was a bit…never mind. He opened the book, stuck the bookmark behind his ear and—

Couldn’t read. The pages were all blurry. Doc rubbed his eyes, trying to wake them up. It didn’t help; the letters were still a greyish smear on the page. Confused, Doc squinted, looking around the room.

He saw the lines on the refrigerator door. He read the titles of his books on the shelf. He made out individual buttons on the Console. And for one very brief moment, Doc grinned in excitement. He didn’t need glasses anymore! He could see every—

His grin melted away as he looked back at the novel. He held it away from his face. He retrieved his glasses from their case, hanging from the bed board above his head, and put them on. Nothing he tried changed anything. His glasses were supposed to fix his near-sightedness. And overnight, Doc had turned far-sighted.

Agent Vania was awakened by a shriek from the bunk above her. Having stayed up late the previous night playing video games, she was in no mood to wake up early, especially if it wasn’t for a mission. She got up and peeked over the top bunk.

Doc was swaddled in blankets, huddled against the back of the bed, staring forlornly at a book in the center of his mattress.

[What’s the matter?] Vania asked, immediately aware that something was wrong with her voice.

“The Precious…” A tear slid out of Doc’s eye. “We can’t—wait.” Doc’s Gollum-speak immediately ceased. “What’s with your voice?”

[I’m not…sure.] Whenever Vania spoke, although her mouth hadn’t moved, and she had produced no sound, both she and Doc observed a grey rectangle appear, floating in midair in their respective ranges of vision. The boxes contained her words in white letters. Once she finished her thought, the rectangle would disappear.

[I seem to be speaking in—text box,] Vania decided.

“And my vision is all screwed up,” Doc whined. “I can’t read. What is going on?”

Vania swung her legs out of the bed and stretched. [This is one of many bizarre things that happen in PPC HQ sometimes. You’re just going to have to get used to it.]

“But what do we do now? Are we stuck this way?”

[Well, something is causing this. I imagine we can head out into the corridors, find out what’s doing it, and stop it.]

[BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!]

[Or—]

“—not.”

to be continued…

The former Fallout Ghoul sighed. "I am now a talking chicken." He said to no one in particular. Gurgan looked around the empty RaE lab where he had been napping-er, studying dilligently to become a full-fledged member of the PPC, yessirree, no napping here-and took a deep breath. "I did not enter this room as a chicken. I entered it as a ghoul." He let that sink it for a while then came to a realization. "I have never needed a smoke so badly in my 285 years of living."
Gurgan reached for the pack of cigarettes he kept in his boot...only to touch the yellow, scaly legs and claws of his new form. "Where are my boots?" Then it hit him. "WHERE ARE MY CLOTHES?" Then it hit him again. "WHERE ARE MY $#()$%*)@#$(*$ CIGARETTES?!"
The angry ghoul-turned rooster bolted out of the lab. (Or, bolted as best a chicken could. More of a fast strut, really.) Someone was going to pay!

Pending either her assignment to an Agent pair or her approval to become a full Agent, Intern Ally Malet spent her time in an empty Response Center, reading guidebooks to the PPC, memorising possible charge lists and repeating the Sunflower Official's list of reasons as to why she was never going to be allowed back in her home continuum with pride. Considering her former life as a citizen of District Eight in the Hunger Games-verse, this was a much better life, even if she had nearly nothing to do.

Ally strongly reconsidered this view the moment she looked in the mirror, that morning.
Her eyes were purple. Her skin, normally tanned from years of working out of doors, was soft and white. Her plain features had become beautiful, her strong, muscular arms now resembled that of an eight-year-old's, and her hair, usually very short and carrot-red, had become long and a rather vivid shade of green. In short, she now resembled the two things she despised the most- citizens of the Capitol, and Mary Sues.

Her eyes narrowed. For a moment, she considered her new appearance, before speaking in a low, flat tone.
"Someone is going to die for this."
Unfortunately for her homicidal plans, Ally found that not only could she no longer lift her prized axe, just trying to grasp it made her hands hurt. Cursing, she found her long knife, and after slipping her urple arm band on, she walked into the corridors of PPC HQ, looking for answers.

----
Grace Leon, an intern of DoSAT, was awakened from her light doze at her workstation by a rather loud explosion. Shrugging it off as just another day in DoSAT, she reached for her glasses and knocked them aside, frowning at her apparent clumsiness. After a few tries, she managed to pick her glasses up and put them on. The moment her hand came into view, she froze. Her hands were now huge, her fingers thick and stubby. Her eyes widened in horror and she let out a small shriek, frantically looking around for any spilt potions or malfunctioning machinery that could have caused it. Finding none, she got up and made her way to the exit, holding her hands out in front of her. On the way, she caught a look at herself in a shiny, reflective piece of metal, and let out another scream before running straight out of DoSAT.

----
Fingering the hilt of her knife, Ally was walking down the corridor for what seemed like the fifth time, until a screaming figure ran right into her, knocking her down.
"OW!" she exclaimed crossly, shoving the other figure off her and climbing to her feet. She looked around for her knife and saw it a few metres away. Once she'd grabbed it, she turned back to the person who'd run into her.

"My hair! My hands! My hair! Oh God, *my hair*!" the other woman gabbled.
Ally didn't see what was wrong. The woman, whose urple armband marked her as a fellow intern, had short white hair, nothing out of the ordinary. Her hands did seem grossly oversized, though.
Ally grimaced and tried to be comforting. "Er... calm down?"
"MY HANDS! MY HAIR!"
"What's so bad about your hair?" Ally asked, trying to make sense of it.
"It's just like hers..." the woman gasped.
Ally looked at her quizzically before deciding not to ask. "What's your name?"
"Grace. Grace Leon."
"Well, Grace, let's go see if we can find someone who can help. Maybe Doctor Fitz?"
"Sounds good," Grace nodded, managing to calm down. After a few seconds of walking, she said awkwardly, "I'm sorry I knocked you over."
"Eh, don't worry about it," Ally shrugged.
They kept walking, determined to find answers.

The Fisherman only realised that something was wrong when he woke up lying on the floor of his TARDIS. He went to speak, but found that his vocal cords didn’t want to work, or at least not in the way he expected.

“Whhhaat,” he managed to say in a gurgling voice after a few seconds. “Don’t tell me we crashed again.” As his head cleared and he stood up, he realised that something was very wrong. His skin felt very dry, as if he’d been walking in the desert for days, and Evie was nowhere to be seen. He activated the monitor, which showed that the TARDIS was parked in the Cafeteria at HQ.

“Hello?” a synthesized voice said. “Fish-face!”

The Fisherman looked down to see a round white ball with two handles and a pink eye looking up at him from the floor. He instantly recognised it as a Personality Core from the Portal continuum. Had Evie been… regressed somehow?

“What happened to you?” he asked. “How did you become a core?”

“You think my problems are bad,” Evie replied. “You’re a fish.”

“What.”

“Seriously. Take a look at yourself.”

The Fisherman flicked a switch on the monitor and gaped at what he saw. While he was still humanoid, his head was now distinctly fishy, with large eyes, blue scales, gills and a thin mouth and chin. He looked down at his hands. Still human-ish, but now scaly and webbed.

“What in the Worlds has happened to us?” he shouted.

“Maybe we should go outside, see if we can find any information?” Evie offered.

“Yeah, good point. Hang on though.” The Fisherman rushed off deeper into the TARDIS.

“That’s OK. Just leave me here!” Evie said once he was out of sight. “I’m fine with sitting on the floor. It’s sooo much fun.”

“That’s better,” the Fisherman declared when he returned a few minutes later. He had some sort of glass helmet on; it was open at the top and filled with water.

“Very fetching,” Evie said. “A fishbowl for fish-face.”

“Come on,” her partner replied, picking her up and heading out of the TARDIS.

Caleb was crouched in a ball in the corner of his OC, scowling murderously at nothing in particular. High, wailing sobs grated in his ears, doing little to improve his temper.

The connecting door to RC 273-B opened slowly, and Kestrel crept in with her forelimbs wrapped around her chest. For a moment she stood in front of the doorway, looking simultaneously enraged and humiliated.

"Yew too, then?" she growled.

Despite the lack of natural sunlight, the vampire was sparkling radiantly, and resembled a very irate, human-shaped diamond. "What do you mean, 'too?' you look fine."

With a scowl, Kestrel let her arms drop to her sides, revealing a pair of decidedly humanoid breasts.

"That's just wrong," Caleb remarked. "How about those rookies of yours?"

"Ash's stuck standin' on her--sorry, 'tis his right now-- head. Hope keeps requippin' mallets an' pies an' anvils, fings like that. Artie keeps talkin' in Parseltongue." Kestrel looked past him. "Where's Jack, an' who's that'un cryin' there in the corner?"

Caleb glanced at the pale, half-naked zombie crouched and sobbing on the other side of the room. "Jack got genderflipped."

Kestrel's eyes widened. "Wait, so Jack--"

"Is now a Witch."

Intern Kirill thought sourly as he looked down at his hand. The melted plastic and glass was fused to the bones in his right hand, and the remaining strings of charred flesh were starting to crack under the weight. He sighed, rolled his eyes, and stepped back through the SEP field in Gnat Alley and through the portal into PPC headquarters.

*POP*
Kirill quite suddenly felt different. One second he was a demon-worshipping sadomasochist with a coffee pot fused to the remains of his hand, and the next- he took stock. Still a demon-worshipping sadomasochist, he was sure, but the important part, the coffee pot part, had changed. His hand was suddenly whole again, with much lighter skin and fingers that were, in a word, more delicate than before. Ridiculously delicate. His entire body had a strange light feeling, as if he'd lost a lot of weight or become much strong stronger. The only exception was an odd strain in his lower back, and the strange sensation of his hair touching his ears (unusual in itself) far higher than his ears normally went.

The intern ran to the nearest bathroom and was worried when he found it quite quickly. If the Narrative Laws of Comedy were still in force, then finding the bathroom was inherently funnier than not finding the bathroom. This worried him. He stepped through the door, took a deep breath, and looked in the mirror.

He was an elf. Skin tone had gone from olive to milk-white, hair had turned blonde and added about eleven inches and- oh. He glanced down, realizing that the change was to more than race and species.

For a second, Kirill froze. His species, his mana alignment, his race, even his sex had been suddenly stolen by some catastrophic event, seemingly calculated to tear away at every facet of his physical identity. He was saved from total catatonia only by a single light of comfort: he now had breasts. This was going to require some examination.

"I'll be in my bunk," he said. No one was listening, but it seemed appropriate.

"I am not going out there."

"What, worried that somebody will see you with no clothes on?"

"No," Kay growled. "I'm worried that somebody will see me with no skin on and you know it." She folded her arm bones over her ribcage and did her best to glare at Emm, which was difficult without eyebrows or facial muscles.

"Personally I think it suits you," Emm said cheerfully. He patted the mass of flames his hair had turned into. "More traditional view of a Reaper, you know? Get you a black cloak, carry that scythe of yours and we could scare the hell out of a few people."

"Look. I am not wandering these halls as a walking skeleton, thankyou. I'm staying in here until I've-"

"Put your face on?"

"Ha. Ha. Ha."

"Tell you what. I've got a solution that should please everybody."

"And what would that be?"

Emm proceeded to yank Kay's skull from her spinal column.

"Hey! HEY! This does NOT please me! Put me back on my body this instant!"

"Well, this way you don't have to wander anything." Whistling, he tucked the skull under his arm as it... well, she... screamed dire imprecations at him, and went off to find whoever could have caused this mess.

I haven't yet asked for Permission, but could my agents play too?

Lee woke up feeling oddly claustrophobic. She fought free of the blankets tangled around her-- of which there seemed to be more of then usual --and tumbled to the ground. She lay there for a moment, trying to figure out why she was so winded. Her perspective didn't seem quite right; everything was about a foot higher than it usually was. Her ears flattened against her head as she looked up to see the console looming over her.

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

Lee padded over to the full-length mirror that hung between two of the bookcases and stopped dead when she caught sight of herself. She swore sharply, passing through several languages before she got a hold of herself. Right. Something had obviously happened while she and Ian were asleep, and-

Ian. Lee's eyes grew wide. What if whatever had happened had affected her partner as well? Lee turned away from the mirror, her own troubles forgotten in the face of the possible harm inflicted on her partner. The ladder up to Ian's bunk gave her a bit of trouble, but eventually Lee made it up. After a little bit of panting to catch her breath, Lee made her way carefully along the length of Ian's body, using her enhanced senses to search out any possible problems. She didn't find any until she reached his head; more specifically, his hair. One small, spotted paw darted out to touch it, and the changed texture confirmed her suspicions. It was time for Ian to wake up.

---

Ian. Ian, wake up, Glod-damn it. This is important.

Ian grunted softly and tried to roll over. A sharp Stop! and the feel of claws digging into the skin on his chest made him pause in his motions. He felt a slight weight pressing down on his chest, which made him open his eyes. His bleary gaze focused on a pair of bright green eyes.

“'Posa, get off,” he muttered, gently pushing at the cat sitting on his chest. She didn't budge.

I'm not Mariposa, Ian, the cat said, and Ian's sleep-fogged brain finally caught on to a few things that had been subconsciously bothering him. One, that the cat was speaking to him telepathically; Two, that the voice was Lee's; and three, that Lee now seemed to have regressed into the form of a mountain lion cub.

“What the hell happened to you?”

I have no idea, Lee replied, carefully getting off of Ian and sitting next to him on the bed. I woke up like this. I'm not the only one who's changed, either. Take a look at your hair.

Feeling rather apprehensive, Ian followed Lee's advice and looked closely at his dreadlocks in the mirror after getting out of bed. Lee followed after him, taking a more circuitous route to the floor, but getting there safely all the same.

“I have yarn for hair?!” Ian spluttered, running his hands over his altered hair. “I look like I'm wearing a Glodawful wig!”

I'm a kitten, Lee said in her best GlaDOS impression. With an agile leap, Lee hopped up onto a shelf and then onto the nearest of Ian's shoulders. Much better, she said, carefully balancing herself in a sitting position, her claws gently latching into the fabric of his shirt. At least this way I'm not liable to be stepped on.

“Comfortable?” Ian asked dryly.

Yes, Lee replied, purring a bit. Let's go and see if anyone else has been affected, or, at the very least, know what's going on.

“Good plan.”

With that, the two DMS agents left their RC and headed out into the labyrinthine halls of HQ.

((I got a little wordy with my reply. Sorry about that. Also, this is what Lee currently looks like. *grin*))

... the inhabitants of RC #88 were woken by a loud hammering on the door.

"FOXGLOOOOVE!" More loud hammering. "I know you had something to do with this! Get out here right now!"

"Mum, are you sure it was 'er?" asked Molly, who was leaning on Agent Skyfire as if about to fall over. She broke away and tried to take a step, and did indeed fall over. "Ow! I dunno 'ow she coulda done this."

"I don't know, but whenever something odd happens to us, it's usually something to do with those two, and I'm guessing Foxglove because, well ..." Skyfire pointed to her own fur, which had turned a particularly horrible shade of neon pink, spattered with blue spots. "She's the only agent I know who openly likes anything pink - Stormsong, for goodness' sake control him!"

Stormsong yanked on the leash to which Moses was attached. The four-year-old otter bobbed merrily against the ceiling, flapped his newly-acquired wings, and squeaked "I'm a bird!"

Is this one of those "pass the hatchet" games?