Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

Part Five:

Officer Ethan Haywood pulled in at the gas station on the way home to pick up beer for the weekend. It had been a long, tiring shift, and his muscles were sore from chasing down perps. As he crossed the forecourt, he didn't notice the young men congregating beside the automatic doors. And he certainly didn't notice the lady they were with. The youths were digging in their pockets for crumpled dollar bills, pooling them and passing them to the woman. She was a good few years older than they were, pretty, and counting the money.

But he had definitely not seen that, Ethan told himself. He just wanted to get home and put his tired feet up in front of the TV.

"Reckon we've got enough?" one youth said loudly as Ethan passed.

The woman spoke. "We would if Liam chipped in. Quit being a tight ass, man." She was tall for a woman, over 6 feet, on a par with himself. Not impossible for a woman, though not likely either.

One of the hoodlums, Liam presumably, replied. "Hey, I paid for the suit, didn't I? I'm invested more than all y'all."

That could mean almost anything, Ethan thought. People bought all kinds of suits. He was off duty. It was none of his business. Just let me get home and crack open a cold one. He moved quickly to the fridges, trying to ignore her reflection in the glass as she approached behind him.

His trained TFPD instincts were chiming in. For all her feminine appearance, she walked with a graceless, masculine stride. She began to pull crates of beer from the fridge, balancing the cold glass bottles on her exposed cleavage as if she didn't feel the cold at all against her skin. With a weary sigh, he cleared his throat and said, "Those your kids out front, ma'am?"

She gave a startled jump, beer bottles rattling in their crate. Her beautiful face didn't move, though her eyes flared with defiance. "Yeah? So what? What business of it is yours, old man?"

Ethan smirked. "I might be on the wrong side of thirty but I've never had a woman call me 'old man' before. What are you? 36? 37?" He looked her up and down. "See, the face is making me think mid-to-late 30s..." He pointed an accusatory finger at her cleavage. "But then those breasts are mighty perky for a woman your age, especially one on her seventh child - assuming those are your kids out front, of course."

"Get lost, creep," she muttered, slamming the fridge door.

"Do you have any ID on you?

"What for? It's my beer," she snapped, forcing her way past him on her way towards the counter with enough force to slam him back against the fridge doors. He snagged her arm, feeling the rubbery smoothness of her skin under his fingers. She whirled, though her clenched fist halted on the way to his face as he brandished his police badge. The masklike face remained fixed, passive, only her eyes widening in fear.

"TFPD," he explained, not releasing her arm. "We've had reports of someone selling stolen male-to-female skinsuits in the area. As an officer of the law, I'm required to do my due diligence in making sure you're not buying anything you shouldn't be. Personally I'd rather not, I'd rather be on my way home, but you and your buddies aren't exactly subtle."

"You're crazy, man. I don't know what you're talking about," she hissed. "You want to check for a zipper, huh? You gonna make me strip me in a gas station?"

"I'd prefer the ID. I showed you mine, you show me yours," he said, putting away his badge. When she remained defiant, he sighed. It wouldn't look good to start getting physical with a woman, even if she was a man. "It's just that this particular batch of skinsuit they stole was defective. It's the zipper, of course. Keeps getting jammed. Once you're inside, they're very hard to get out of."

"Th-they are?"

"That's not the worst of it. They filled these things with the wrong kind of lubricant. It's corrosive. Not a problem short term. But if you wear them too long, it eats away at the skin. And... other soft parts. Turns everything to jello. Eventually, you're just a sack of organs held together by a rubber skinsuit. Ah ah!" he interjected, as her hand leaped to the nape of her neck. "Best have a professional take that off. You can never tell how bad the damage is until you unzip. You wouldn't want your insides to become your outsides, would you?"

Her shoulders slumped in defeat. She handed over her ID. Justin Choi. Aged 19. Much too young to be buying alcohol.

"Shit. My mom's gonna kill me when she finds out," Justin moaned. He reached into the crate and held out a beer. "You don't think there's some other way we could, um, sort this out, officer? I mean, you could just let me off with a slap on the wrist, right?"

"That better not have been a bribe," Ethan replied curtly, ignoring the other implied offer beneath the words. It always amazed him just how quickly some men adapted to the perks of the female form when put under pressure. "You're gonna have to come with me to the station. We'll want to know who sold your buddy, Liam, that suit."

As Ethan turned to leave, there was a strange trick of the light. Perhaps it was the fluorescent lights shining off the laminated driver's license, or just the effects of a long shift on a tired brain. But he could have sworn he'd just seen a naked woman dive into the driver's license photo, long blonde hair streaming out behind her. He rubbed his eyes. There she was, ducking behind Mr Choi's head before leaping back out of the other side of the image. He looked up in time to see her sprinting through the various posters and advertisements on the store's walls in all her bare-skinned beauty, running as though her life depended on it. A second later, a dozen feral winged monkey-things came chasing after her with slavering mouths.

A second later, they had vanished.Even the limited flexibility of the rubber skinsuit face managed to convey the young man's shock this time.

"You saw that?" Ethan asked. Justin nodded. "At least I'm not going nuts." Ethan turned and strode for the door. "It's your lucky day, kid. Get out of here. Don't let me catch you wearing that thing again."

"Wh-what about that acid lubricant stuff?!" Justin squealed.

"I made it up."

Ethan retrieved his gun and the police radio from the glove compartment. "This is Officer Haywood to police dispatch. I need to call in a 10-... a 10-, uh..." He knew all the common TFPD ten-codes, like an X-change overdose or an explosion at the estrogen factory. This one was a rarity. "Dangit, somebody remind me what the code is for witches!"