I was lucky enough to nab a commission from  silverclaw1 to flesh out that batgirl who posed for the the Batmigraine poster! You can view the batgirl head, in part, here and Silver's insanely brilliant new sequence. I combined the two with an edited repost of the batgirl's original story for fun all around

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The Tale of Erica Thorp

I don't want you to focus on how I look right now, okay? I know that you probably can't help it, that you're probably already looking, but don't. Okay? That's not the main thing I want to talk about. At least not until we get some stuff out of the way first.

My name is Erica Thorp, and I don't want you to get the wrong idea. I'm not a nerd, or a geek, or any of those things. I was on the prom committee, the afterprom committee, the cheerleading squad, the aftercheerleading squad, and every committee ever both in high school and college. It's very important that you don't think of me as being any sort of nerd or geek, because what I'm about to say might make you think that, and that would be a total mistake.

I'm a huge, huge fan of the Pouchster games from Tinendo. "Gotta Capture All Of 'Em!™" I know what you're thinking: in spite of the very specific instructions I just gave you, in spite of all the NOT-nerdy, ANTI-geeky stuff I just listed, you're already thinking of me as a nerdgeek or geeknerd with big thick glasses and clothes that don't match and braces into my twenties. Do I need to take out my college yearbook photo to prove you wrong? Look at all that blonde and all those blue eyes and that very trendy, very fashionable outfit! No glasses, no retainer, and no split ends! Don't look at the current me. Like I said, don't focus on how I look, I'm working on that.

Anyway, are we cool? Can you accept that despite my love of Pouchster that I'm totally not a nerd? Because that's a very important part of my story. Maybe the most important part. Not a geek either. We clear? We cool? Anyway, I had just finished planning the Oceanside State Homecomestravaganza with a committee of all the major power players on campus--the frat rats, the jock rocks, the nerdy birdies, and so on. Oh, they weren't actual rats or rocks or birds, that part's important too. Given the way the story ends you might think they were, but unless they got a major makeover during my current, uh, "gap year," they're still all human. At least technically, I'm not sure about if they were 100% or not. Some definite silicone valleys on the gals, FYI, and the jocks were at somewhere around a 50/50 meat/steroids ratio. The nerd were probably, I dunno, secret cyborgs or something. Probably.

Where was I? Oh yeah. After the meeting, where we planned the kickassiest homecoming that I never went to, I had another appointment, so I had to skip the bar hop and pub crawl and power hour that the Homecomestravaganza Committee usually went on after their biweekly meetings. I had to meet someone in the dark alley behind the student union. Wait, hold it, stop: I know what you're thinking, and it was not that kind of meeting. I'm not that kind of girl before, during, or after this story! I'm also totes serious with my BFF BF Claude at Eastern College, even though we haven't seen each other in a while and I've only described my, uh, "post-makeover" appearance using a series of artful euphemisms. So yeah, I wasn't meeting Claude back there, I was meeting my gal Friday. Yes, that's her real name, at least as far as I know. Friday was my in at the Pouchster Club on campus. I couldn't go in person, of course, since I had a reputation to keep up--and, like I said, not a nerdgeek--but I sent my stats with her and transferred the occasional lvl. 100 Chukapi to her to show off.

Friday also bought my games for me, since no way was I going into a geeknerd den to buy them and people sometimes check my browsing history. But she had something special for me that time: a rare prototype version of Pouchster Puce Version, not to be confused with Pouchster Teal Version, which has one different Pouchster, cuz "Gotta Capture All Of 'Em!™" (Not a nerd). I had paid Friday way, way too much cash for the Pouchster Puce Version prototype because it had a Pouchster that wasn't in the release version--but the code was in all the other games. So if I managed to catch a Helichiropter in the Leafleaf Province, not only would no one else have that Pouchster until Pouchster Bile Green Version came out in six months, but I'd be able to show off a lvl. 100 one to the Pouchster Club (through Friday) and rub all their faces in it (through Friday). I'm pretty sure Friday thought I had cracked my skull with how much I cackled at holding that little unlabeled cartridge for the Tinendo SD (in Japanese, but I can totes read hiragana and katakana at a fluent level despite the fact that I am definitely not a nerd).

When I went back to my apartment, I took the usual precautions to keep anybody from seeing me play. I closed all the blinds, disconnected my internet, turned off my phone, and put it in a lead-lined box I got during a trip to the Yucatan. That might seem excessive to some of you, but--no offense--some of you are probably nerds or geeks and don't have as much to lose as I did. I would have been the laughingstock of Homecomestravaganza if it even got around that I knew what a Tinendo SD was, much less owning one, much less having purchased it for more or less the sole purpose of playing Pouchster games. I also laid out as much high-energy junk food as I needed to keep me going through a marathon gaming session (naturally, I planned to yuck it back up before it added too much energy to my hip area).

I'm totes a badass at Pochster, so it wasn't long before I had the game in and booted up and had my Pouchster Master wandering in circles in the Leafleaf Province looking for a Helichiropter. It took eight hours of walking around in circles, but I finally found one, and stuffed that bad boy right in my Pouchster Pouch. But he had a parting attack, or something, this real high-pitched squeal that I could hardly hear. It went on for what seemed like forever, but I didn't pay any attention to it--I had to level that badass up to 100 and quick. So I pretty much ignored that screechy-screech, even though it gave me a nasty headache (squinting at that tiny lil' screen probably didn't help)…at least until my ears started to grow.

I could feel 'em twitching, but I thought that was just a reaction to hearing the Leafleaf Province music for the 1000th time. Pretty oblivious, I know, but I didn't really notice until I could suddenly hear my neighbors talking about grocery shopping on their cell phones. My neighbors two doors down and two floors up, that is. But yeah, all of a sudden my cute lil' round ears (which I've gotten some very nice compliments on thank you very much) were getting all big and nasty and pointy, and once they got started they kept going, taking all my earrings along for the ride. I was kind of surprised about that, but even more so when my nose got in on the act. Normally it's cool with just being a neat little button but all of a sudden it was getting so big I could see it without crossing my eyes and starting to get these weird little folds in it. I almost bit my tongue I was so surprised, and it's probably a good thing that I didn't because suddenly those teeth my parents spent years unsnarling with braces and whitening toothpaste were going all fang on me. I looked like one of those snaggletooth aliens from sci-fi (not a nerd) that looks human until they smile.

But I could have forgiven all of that--all of it--if I hadn't noticed some brown fur starting to grow on my chest, just north of the Girls. Not even blonde fur, but brown. Urgh.

Pouchster Puce Version pretty much had to be paused at this point, and the thing that made me decide to do that--and put my plans to humiliate the Pouchster Club on hold--was when a tail I was just starting to grow, that still looked like me even though it was a tail and getting brown pretty fast from all that nasty growing fur, punched through the butt of my very expensive pants. To those ears I was still growing, that pop might as well have been a cannon going off. And speaking of those ears, they were not only getting big, they were getting weird. Like growing these little ridges inside and somehow making me be able to hear people in the park two blocks away grumbling about their sex lives. My nose was curling up on itself too, getting even bigger and trying to outdo those ears in weirdness. I looked kind of like a big eary pig for a sec there, 'til those fangs I was growing broke the illusion and also I started to get furry brown sideburns. It tickled as that fur grew in, but the weirdest thing--and that's saying a lot given that my until-then fabulous and bodacious tan body was pretty much the Garden of Weird at that point--was that I could hear the fur grow.

If fur grows on your butt, and there's no one to see it, does it make a sound? Totes yes. Especially when it splits your pants clean through.

Gotta say I was pretty panicked at that point, mostly shouting really bad and unladylike words that came out all funny because I was kind of growing a muzzle. But the headache was so bad, I just couldn't move--not that I could've done much anyway. I'd seen those posters about the risk of Batmigraine, but it was too late to get my cell out of the lead box because, well, my fingers were kinda longer than they had been. Kinda too long to do much of anything, and if I was freaked out that my nice nails were morphing into icky claws and that fur was just everywhere, I was even more freaked to see that I was growing webs between them. And my hair…oh, my nice long blonde hair. It just got shorter and shorter--making the same noise as the fur I was growing only backwards. If it had stopped at a bob or a pixie cut it still might have looked kind of cute, but no, it didn't stop until it was basically the same length as the fur I was growing. And it was just a little blonde at the tip, so you could hardly even tell it had once been a glorious golden mane!

By the time my fingers were about a foot long and all webby, I had kind of figured out what was going on, but there wasn't any stopping it. Starting growing those webs all along my arms too, and that just shredded my poor shirt right up the sides. I got to see my boobs going all fuzzy, I guess, but that wasn't really worth a shirt that came from a pretty exclusive designer. My legs got more squat, almost like my big long wingy arms, still growing like my boobs in 8th grade, were making 'em shorter to get more space. It just ruined my jeans near the bottom, and of course I got to watch my expensive--both to have them done and to buy the lady's silence--custom Pouchster pedicure portraits destroyed as my toes went to claws. What? That's not nerdy, not at all, or geeky either. I just had to be careful not to wear sandals around cool people, that's all.

By then my ears were pretty much as big as my head, and my nose looked like someone had glued a big brown leaf to my face. All those bad words? Yeah, I was pretty much just howling and sobbing at that point. Well, what would you do if you had to watch and feel your movie star good looks go all batty? That's what I thought. Instead of the statuesque hot chick I was inside, suddenly the mirror was showing this bat-woman with fangs and fur and ears big enough for their own congressman. I mean, yeah, the migraine went away because I was pretty much changed by that point, and I could fly which was really great exercise for jamming my upper body. But I could already fly, and I didn't get frequent flier miles when I was the pilot and also a bat.

What am I doing now? Well, I had to take some time off from school--they see a giant bat-lady, people are automatically gonna think "nerd" or "geek" even though I've been very clear that I'm not. I called the authorities as soon as I could figure out how to (tip: use your feet, it's easier than trying to flap around those big wings), and they say they're working on it. It being getting me back to being pink and blonde, naturally.

They also say that the game was used to send coded messages to spies and also to give them the bat ears to hear 'em, but mine didn't send the right signal to change me pink. Seems awfully complicated even if it was an unbreakable secret code, though I guess they were right that the North Koreans would have no idea what to do with a Pouchster game. Aside from giving it to Kim Jong-Un, which would be pretty hilarious.

In the meantime, I've been chilling mostly. Trying to keep a good exercise schedule, and the diet I'm on as kind of a bat (hint: it's bugs) is really good for me; I've lost weight and I hope I can keep it of if and when they get me back to being a human. They say they're working on it, but it's a toughie.

Oh, and I did eventually get to show up the Pouchster Club. Once you learn to play the Tinendo SD with your feet, it's really not so bad! Plus I still have the cartridge...