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It was August 20th, 2013 and Helen Magnus's 276th birthday was fast approaching, now only being a week away. For the past month, everyone kept asking her for what she'd want for a gift. Since the woman was notoriously hard to buy for as she practically had everything already, asking her directly was the only way to really get her anything that wouldn't be a failed surprise. Every year, Helen kept insisting that people shouldn't get her anything as she's had so many birthdays and the novelty of it has long wore off. This however didn't stop the team from trying every year to still get her something as a group to celebrate it.
That something showed up in the form of a photo that caught Helen's attention. In the background of the photo was a private aquarium, and in the aquarium tank Helen noticed a rare abnormal species of color-changing clown fish. When she visited the owner, they declined to let her have access to the one they had but they did tell her where they had found it. The owner said they had found a small colony of them on the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef and passed along the GPS coordinates. They had been out on a diving tour and saw the pretty fish, wanting to add it to their collection. Being the rich s.o.b. that the owner was, they were able to convince the Australian government to let them keep one of the fish in exchange for a donation to help fund reef protection programs.
Helen knew the owner had no actual clue as to the significance of the fish and how rare it actually was, but she did and she wanted to get a pair to breed back at the Sanctuary. Getting these fish for her was the opening that the team had been waiting for. Will and Kate (who finally got her diving certification) volunteered to retrieve it. Ashley, who had returned to live at the Sanctuary a year ago after finally getting tired of living as a ghost away from home, offered to teleport them to the boat dock while she spent the rest of her time there being a tourist browsing through the nearby breezy seaside town. Helen saw the trip as opportunity to bond with her daughter, and decided to tag along for a nice lunch out.
The overall timing during the short trip had been very decent. After spending about an hour and a half wandering through shops and another 45 minutes eating lunch, they had just finished their last bites of their meal when the call came through from Will and Kate for pick-up. When mother and daughter had made it over to the dock, they were made aware of a small unexpected complication. During Will and Kate's short debrief, they recounted that the retrieval process had been quite uneventful up until a certain point. They had made it out to the spot, Kate stayed up top to keep pilot of the boat as anchoring would damage the sensitive coral reef, and Will suited up into his scuba gear. He then flopped into the water and went down to get at the very least one smaller male clown fish, and if permitting, a larger female. If he couldn't grab a female, Helen told him to get a second male as the larger of the two male clown fish would eventually change sexes.
What ate up most of their time however, was that Will initially had a hard time finding the small colony of clown fish. After spending an hour searching, the fish finally stopped hiding from him and started swimming about. After much patience, Will was able to finally lure a small male into his net bag and pulled it closed. To his surprise however, was that this male had an aggressive female mate. Will didn't know that it was breeding season for the colony and the female took none-to-kindly to having its partner captured. The female angrily swam around Will, pecking at him. Fortunately, Will's wet suit protected him from the majority of the bites. Unfortunately, the wet suit ended at his wrists, leaving his hands exposed. The fish bit into the soft flesh of his right hand, breaking the skin slightly. The bite wasn't terrible, but it did sting like a papercut from all of the saltwater. Eventually Will had enough of this fish and ultimately caught it in a second net bag after wrangling with the abnormal for another 15 minutes; constantly missing it as it quickly swam about him every which way. It was almost as annoying to him as trying to swat a fly that won't stay still. When he finally surfaced, Kate helped him into the boat, placed the fish into the awaiting transport containers, and then drove them back to the dock and made the call to Ashley.
Will wasn't too worried about the tiny bite, but the doctor in Helen wanted to make sure that it was properly cleaned, and like with every abnormal creature accident, she ran a blood panel. The results came back normal with no sign of his body having gained any infections or parasites from the pretty creature. Will himself said he felt fine and then gave the bite no more thought.
Two days later however, Will started to display noticeable symptoms and body changes. At the end of a date with Abby, he found that he couldn't get an erection that night. Early the next morning when he woke, he had sensitive nipples, formation of breast tissue, and noticeable size reductions not only in his height, but also in his penis size. By that point, Will freaked out and ran screaming down the halls, yelling "MAGNUS!" at the top of his lungs over and over again until he finally burst into the kitchen, finding her sitting with Ashley and Henry, eating breakfast. From all the commotion Will had made throughout the building, Kate and Bigfoot had raced into the room a few moments after him to see what he was screaming bloody murder about; Kate had legitimately thought that Will had finally lit his hair gel on fire this time.
The look of sheer worry on Will's face made the issue not discrete in the slightest. Everyone followed Magnus and Will down to the lab and waited outside of the infirmary door as Magnus did a complete physical exam, taking note of the changes before asking him to dress again. Afterwards the entire team hovered around the computer monitors waiting for the results of the blood tests she set with widened search parameters. The results showed marked hormonal changes from the tests she ran just a few days before. Being thorough, genetic tests were also performed and the results from those tests were the most damning.
Helen turned to the group at large and told them what she had concluded about his condition. "By the looks of it Will, you are physically transforming into a woman." Everyone went wide eyed and slack-jawed. Kate, Bigfoot, Ashley, and Henry all turned and stared at him; incessantly looking him up and down as if he were completely different.
Will went bright red. "WHAT?!" he panicked. "HOW?!" looking around at everyone's expressions, not exactly liking being the center of such attention and scrutiny.
"I've determined that it's a result from the clown fish bite. The female carried a virus that introduced an RNA strand into your genetic code, causing your body to not just deactivate your Y sex chromosome, but to completely remove and destroy it from your cells. Not only that, but it's also forcing your remaining X sex chromosome to duplicate, giving you a Barr body, and to revert your phenotypic masculine traits back into being phenotypic female ones."
"You can stop this right? Do just like you did before with the cillobar?" He pleaded.
Helen tried not to offer up false hope, but still wanted to express confidence. "I will certainly do everything in my power. Your recommendation of using the spores to reintroduce your DNA containing your Y chromosome sounds promising, though not a full solution. I want to also explore other treatments as well, such as trying to create an anti-viral to stop the further replication of the virus; to prevent it from affecting your newly reintroduced Y chromosomes."
However, just like with his encounter with the cillobar, his transformation was shockingly fast. A week had passed since he first got bit and his metamorphosis into being female was complete, along with structural brain changes. His sexual desires switched from pretty much mostly female interests to being mostly male, causing issues in Will's relationship with Abby. Will no longer felt any attraction to her outside of just wanting to be a platonic friend. Physically, Will went from standing at 5'9.5" all the way down to 5'4", an inch or two under Ashley's height. He had a B-cup, less course body hair, shoulder length wavy sandy blonde hair, lack of facial hair with his facial features overall softened giving him a small jaw, his voice got slightly higher in tone as his Adam's apple disappeared, his hips widened, his muscle mass decreased, and the newly added layer of body fat gave his smaller frame a few new curves, especially in the thighs that he never had before. Reproductive system wise, besides the visual obvious, a pelvic exam and MRI confirmed the fully formed features of a completely intact female reproductive system; no trace left behind of being previously naturally born male what-so-ever.
He was now a she. And she did not like that. At all. The worst news came when all of Magnus's treatments to reverse this condition failed, her practically labeling Will's condition as incurable. The cillobar spores worked too slowly to replace Will's DNA and nothing Magnus created worked to prevent, slow, or stop the virus from spreading and altering those 'fixed' cells. This virus was determined to keep its host exactly the way it wanted, permanently ingraining itself into its being and not leaving.
Because of this, Helen had the not so fun job on her birthday to notify the rest of the Network about this accident, blasting Will's condition across all of the Sanctuaries to let everyone know that only female crew members were to have any contact with this particular species of clown fish. Testing samples showed that the virus completely ignored organisms with true female physiology. On the fish tank enclosure, a bright orange warning label was stuck to the outside glass, barring any males from touching it, leaving in the immediate vicinity only Ashley, Kate, and Helen the ones who could feed and openly handle the fish.
It took a week to come to her, but Ashley had finally landed on a moniker for the new creature and nicknamed the female fish "Betty" after "Betty Boop", and in this case "Betty Oops" because of what it did to Will. When she announced it in the lab, Kate and Henry openly snickered, thinking it was funny. Helen too, having to quickly catch herself and clamp a hand to her mouth, respectfully turning away so Will wouldn't see the smile creep up her face. Will, not so much, considering how much all of his wardrobe just completely changed; requiring all new sets of clothes and now having to wear a bra, use panty liners, and apply women's deodorant among other things. The most drastic change that constantly messed with Will's head was the new concept of how to go to the bathroom; wetting himself a few times forgetting that he couldn't stand to pee. Will cursed himself for volunteering to go get the fish for Magnus now, but on a brighter note, while it was still a detriment to him, it did however at least make Helen's 276th birthday quite interesting and rememberable.