Goblinization

from the Shadowrun Wiki:

“Goblinization began on 30 April 2021. On this day many humans (approximately 10% of the world's population), without any evident reason, transformed into Orks and Trolls, and Goblins.”

The Ork(,) King

Coppers with a tractor beam pulled over the ork, King, for driving at 224 mph down I-210.  “License,” a baton-wielding trooper can be heard on a video released to KTLA, “and fucking registration.”  Four coppers struck King with batons and kicks 39 times, each eliciting a painful squeal from the terrified ork.  Nothing was said of the 15 baton strikes that missed, whiffing harmlessly against the ground or (presumably) calloused ork hide, hard as stag-beetle carapace.  These stray blows did nothing to further the narrative, which was one of combat, crunchy in the extreme, recounted in 3 second increments.  

The White Queen

McKenzie Selene King, a 19 year old college freshman, gained 250lbs of straight prison bulk—ba-bop-bop-bop—in the time it took Phoebe Bridgers to sing about payphone ghosts and imposter syndrome.  She was on a night drive.  The shock, combined with the super-testosterone produced by her rapid descent into orkdom, resulted in her foot—swollen and immovable—becoming stuck on the accelerator.  She was accosted by four LAPD officers, who beat her savagely with batons.  //  The DisneyCorp stenogroNaut drawing the court proceedings worked frantically to depict Ms. King as both Belle and Beast.  The final product was “degenerate, a photobash of my daughter’s face and the headlines,” said King’s mother Elspeth, a GPT-4 engineer, as she hustled across the checkerboard floors of the courthouse avoiding the black spaces.

Toeing the Line

Riots were well underway on a Friday afternoon, as orks, trolls and everyone else galvanized by the King beating kicked holes through walls, police cars, and glass ceilings.  A cadre of masked Elves squinted through scopes, defending a place called KIM’S DEEP DISH PIZZERIA as if it were Helm’s Deep (“Show them no mercy, for you will receive none.”).  A wave of nausea crept over T’Kumseh Sherman as she slipped into her new pair of Air Jordans, hopping on one foot to avoid the broken glass that was everywhere.  Her five toes became three—up yours Quentin—and her brother, Grant, gasped.  “Motherfuck,” he said before tearing off around the corner.  

Cowabunga, Man

Misty Kim’s wave collapsed Friday night.  Days ago, she was hanging ten on a tsunami of Serotonin, mostly due to a Yalta-like experience in front of her mirror where the big three—eyes, brain, and mind—shook hands tenuously and admitted “fuck, you look decent.”  In a daring monday raid, she had hit the thrift shop very hard, Onyxia, and copped fishnets, doc martens, plaid skirt, the fuckin works.  Everything was fitting together in her life.  But then nothing fit, and nothing was good, and she stared blankly into the vast nothing of the hereafter from her comfortably numb position—hanged—in the bedroom above her father’s pizzeria, fishnets torn, tank-top busting open but like the wrong MCU character, doc marten sandals showing too much (and not enough) toe.  According to her eyeTap, the last thing she saw was the mirror, where the landscape of her body was once scrutinized and divided by familiar tyrants.  Reflected in it: a bloated, sunk-cost meatsack, and behind that, Bart Simpson—the revenant of recursive boyhood—matter-of-factly bursting from a poster, saying “Cowabunga, man!”