A Second Generation Whateley Academy Adventure

Scamper 1: Pop Goes the Weasel

by

Amethyst

Part One

Milagro Middle School
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Friday, January 15th, 2016 – 3:05 p.m.

I walked down the crowded hall toward my locker, thankful that the school day was finally over. It was when I was almost halfway to my goal when a voice said in Spanish, “Get out of my way, fatso,” and I was roughly shoved aside. It was a voice that I recognized, and even as I fell to the floor and lost my grip on my books, I hoped that today Esteban would be content to leave the bullying to merely a shove and a nasty comment.

Usually, he wasn’t so kind, and it involved a swirly or some kind of public humiliation, and he wasn’t the only bully that I had to deal with either. Mostly they stopped at anything too physical when there were witnesses around so they wouldn’t get sent to the principal’s office. As long as there weren’t any blows exchanged, most of the teachers would just put it down to boys being boys and have everyone go about their day as if nothing had happened.

I was an easy target, to be honest. At five foot four and one hundred and sixty-five pounds, I was short for my age and more than a little overweight. I was Carlos Melendez, the depressed fat kid that everyone at school seemed to enjoy seeing suffer.

Today was shaping up to be a terrible day. One of Esteban’s buddies had snatched my phone during lunch to run off with it and throw it in one of the toilets and when I went to retrieve it I was given a wedgie and a swirly. I had also been feeling terrible all day long; sick with this uneasy feeling that hovered in my chest all day and feeling itchy in the weirdest places, mostly my ears and tailbone. Now this was happening.

I scrambled to pick up my books, only to have the last one, my math book, kicked down the hallway before I could get it in hand. Tony Marsden ended up snatching it up and what followed was a game of keep away as he and his friends tossed the book around and I tried to keep hold of what books I still had and attempted both begging for the book back and trying to intercept it. Eventually, they got tired of their game and tossed my book in the nearest garbage can for me to fish out.

I headed to the nearest bathroom to try and clean off my soiled textbook as best I could and as I was doing so, I couldn’t help but catch sight of my reflection in the mirror. It was an image that I had grown to hate over the years; short, fat, dull brown eyes, messy shoulder-length brown hair that I just never seemed to have the energy to go get cut, and skin that was lighter in tone than most of the other Hispanic kids in school. This time, however, something caught my attention.

My eyelashes seemed longer and thicker somehow. I wondered if this could be an early sign of puberty starting to hit and the thought made me shudder. I tried not to think about that, and what it might mean, as I hurried to finish cleaning off my book so I could escape my reflection.

By the time I managed to clean the various gunks off my math book, get to my locker, and get my backpack stuffed with the weekend’s homework, I was emotionally and physically tired from the encounter. I had also missed the school bus, meaning that I would have to walk home. Just great, I would have asked what else could go wrong, but I was well aware by now that when you tempt fate, it answers.

It was a long walk, but thankfully, it wasn’t too hot outside. As it was, by the time I reached the corner store on the way home to get a cold drink and some snacks for the weekend, I was sweaty, exhausted, and had to take a puff from my inhaler. Fortunately, I only had to walk another block from the corner store while carrying bags filled with chips, candy bars, and soda.

Yeah, I know, not the best eating habits. Keep in mind that I didn’t get out much and the depression and loneliness that were my only true constant companions weren’t all that conducive to a healthy lifestyle. When I was depressed, I gave in to comfort food, and back then, I was always depressed. You would be too if you were treated like I was at school every day and still preferred it to being at home.

“You’re home late. Where were you?” my mother coldly demanded in Spanish, her eyes boring into me. We usually spoke English, but we were fluent in both languages, and she often flipped to her native Spanish when she was angry or upset.

I shrank away and, as always, was unable to look her in the eyes as I stammered out a response. “I… m-missed the bus… h-had to walk.”

“Hmmph, that better be all that happened,” she stated before adding, “That’s the second time this week. If I find out it’s more than that then I’ll start the paperwork to have you homeschooled so you can’t get into any more trouble. You’re just like your father… can’t be trusted.”

“That’s it, Mom, some guys were harassing me after school, and I missed my bus. I promise that’s all that happened,” I vowed as I clenched my shaking hands and forced myself to look her in the eyes.

“Men,” she spat bitterly, this time in English. “Fine. I’m leaving for my meeting so make yourself something for dinner, but you better be downstairs and quiet when I get back. I’m having friends over.”

Three hours later…

I reached up to adjust my noise-canceling headphones as best I could so I wouldn’t have to listen to whatever was being said in the living room above me. I knew what they were talking about, of course, well enough that I probably could guess the entire conversation, but I had no interest in hearing about how men are the root of all evil, can’t control themselves, and how women should be in charge of society for everyone’s sake. I heard enough about that from my mother when she didn’t have her friends from FFF over.

Feminists For Freedom takes about as militant a stance on feminism as you can get. They don’t want or need men in their lives and if you have a Y chromosome, you’re the enemy. So, as you can probably guess, it really sucked being my mother’s son. I often wondered if she would love me more if I had been born a girl, maybe she could have at least liked me, but I couldn’t see that happening in any world.

My mother never wanted or needed kids, I was an unwelcome surprise, and she made sure that I knew it. She often ranted about how she had been making it on her own well enough before finding out that she was pregnant with me. She was the personal assistant for some rich CEO in Silicon Valley but then she had to quit her job when she found out she was pregnant and started to show. She moved us to Santa Fe not long after I was born and some kind of deal was made with my father.

I didn’t even know who my father was, only that my mother loathed him more than anyone else on the planet, and that there was some kind of child support arrangement in place that paid for our house, made it so Mom didn’t have to work, covered all the expenses in raising me, and a certain amount was set aside every month for both my allowance and a deposit into my savings account. Some people in my situation might fantasize about the parent they didn’t know, dreaming of being the child of a rock star or celebrity, but not me. I had too much grief from one parent to hope for another.

I would never measure up; I was a constant reminder of everything wrong in her life. I often wondered why she didn’t just give me up for adoption or have me placed in a foster home, but that answer was obvious, it was the money, and since we were Hispanic, child services didn’t really give a shit as long as I was taken care of, and my basic needs were met. There was no obvious abuse, so they were happy not to have another foster kid on their hands.

Did you notice how I specified ‘obvious abuse’ there? My mother was careful to keep the abuse to the mental and emotional variety, and only when we were alone, so she never left a mark on me. All my scars were on the inside.

The most ‘physical’ that the abuse ever got was when I misbehaved and she would lock me up alone in the time-out closet for a few hours when I was little, but she usually remembered to set me free again before an entire day passed. My phobia of enclosed spaces was just another battle scar from the war that had been my childhood living with my mother. Whenever we were out together, or meeting with people though, it was like she flipped a switch, suddenly becoming the very model of a loving and attentive parent. Mom really missed her calling; she could have gotten an Oscar by now if she was working in Hollywood.

I could only dread how much worse things were going to get once I hit puberty, and I became what my mother hated most, a man. At least until now, I was technically still a child so she could at least stand being in the same room with me, but I turned fourteen a couple of months ago and I knew the clock was ticking toward when I would start showing signs of puberty other than an occasional growth spurt. She already seemed to be mentally preparing to distance herself more from me since I was thirteen and she had me move all of my stuff into the unused recreation room in our basement.

I think she wanted me out of sight and out of mind, especially when she joined the FFF last year, and I still wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. On the one hand, I got privacy, a pretty big personal living space, and my own bathroom, and I didn’t have to deal with my mother as much on a daily basis. On the other hand, the windows were small and barely let any light in, so the only way out was up the stairs and Mom had the door at the top rigged with a motion sensor so I couldn’t try to sneak out after curfew.

Curfew for me was six o’clock, I had to be home by dinnertime every night, even on weekends, and wasn’t allowed out after that without a chaperone. For someone who would rather not see me except during meals, and sometimes not even then, my mother took an awful lot of interest in my comings and goings… if I actually came or went anywhere, which I didn’t. In Mom’s eyes, I was a man, or soon would be, and couldn’t be trusted not to ruin some poor girl’s life like my father had ruined hers, or at least that’s what she kept telling me.

That draconian curfew made it very hard to make friends, and I was already facing a sizable social handicap from being the depressed fat kid. Why was I fat and depressed? Do the math, I hardly ever get to leave the house without my overbearing mother, I get bullied at school, and when I’m home, I get to either deal with my mother’s brand of abuse or spend most of my time in my room hiding from the world, eating junk food, and losing myself in my music and video games. My life is a recipe for being overweight and unhappy.

Sometimes it felt like I was barely treading water in life and all my limbs were lashed to unbearable weights that were trying to drag me down and drown me. Great, now I was getting depressed again. “Stop it, Carlos,” I chided myself. “Think positive, it’s only four more years until I get out of prison and can move out on my own.”

I reached up to adjust my headphones again and scratch the itch in my ears as best I could without completely removing them. They were supposed to be the best noise-cancelling headphones available and I had just gotten them last week, but I would have wondered if I was having some kind of allergic reaction to them if my ears hadn’t been itchy all day for some reason. The headphones didn’t feel quite right over them either, but adjusting the band seemed to help a little.

With the problem seemingly fixed, I focused once again on the music provided by my randomized playlist. I had tried playing a game earlier, but with the way I was feeling off all day long, it kind of killed my mood for gaming. Maybe I was coming down with something. I tried to ignore it as I lost myself in the music until I was tired enough to sleep.

Two months later…
The Melendez Residence
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Monday, March 21st, 2016 – 6:30 a.m.

My alarm clock blared, and I sleepily slapped away at it as I tried to wipe the sleepiness from my eyes with my other hand. I did not want to get out of bed and go to school. Not only was I tired, but I was feeling achy all over, something that had been a common occurrence over the past couple of months and made me wonder whether I was going through a growth spurt. It would be nice not to be so short.

It was a couple of minutes later before I managed to crawl out of bed and trudge toward my bathroom, idly scratching at one of my itchy ears. After getting some relief, my fingers lingered on the soft, fuzzy protuberance. Wait… fuzzy? Suddenly, I was very awake and hurrying into the bathroom to turn on the lights and look in the mirror.

Brushing aside some of the shaggy hair that usually covered my ears, I could only stare in shock for a moment at what I saw, my heart racing with fear. Both of my ears were covered in a thin coat of brown fur that matched the color of my hair, and even when I tried to mentally subtract the fuzziness, they seemed slightly rounder and higher up on the sides of my head than they should be. That was not normal.

I looked like some sort of monkey-man. Was this why my ears had been so itchy lately? I quickly reached down for the other spot that had been persistently, annoyingly, itchy as of late, my tailbone. My heart just about exploded, and I struggled to breathe against the sudden tornado inside my chest when I found a noticeable lump beneath my questing fingers.

My morning shower was forgotten as I gaped at my reflection in mounting fear and horror. There was only one possible explanation for this; I was a mutant. I half-collapsed against the sink as my mind rushed back to what had happened at my school last year with Mindy Meyers.

Mindy was a grade ahead of me and she got these weird slit-pupiled amber eyes and started growing scales over her skin. I had seen her once in the hallway after her changes started. I thought the scales were kind of pretty, sort of an iridescent green, but she looked miserable, and I knew that she was being bullied even more than I was. A group of kids started calling her Víbora and the name stuck.

Things came to a head when Mindy was alone in the bathroom with a group of the meanest girls in school and they got brave. They beat the living crap out of her, but she tried to fight them off and bit one of them while trying to get free. Mindy was hospitalized and the girl she bit nearly died from the venom in Mindy’s bite. The last rumor that I had heard said that she had disappeared from the hospital and the MCO was looking for her.

Just thinking about what poor Mindy had gone through had me terrified to go to school today. I could barely stand, and my hands would have been shaking if I hadn’t been gripping the sink hard enough to make my knuckles turn white. My vision blurred as I stared into the mirror and desperately tried to fill my lungs with enough air.

A noise from upstairs shocked me out of my mounting panic attack and once I had closed my eyes and managed to take enough slow and steadying breaths to calm myself down, I realized that panicking wasn’t going to do me any good. I needed to figure out what was happening to me and get a handle on it so I could come up with a plan in case my mother freaked out.

Honestly, I had no idea how my mother might react. I mean she already hated me, but I wasn’t really sure how she felt about mutants in general. If things got worse, I could always make a run for it. I had my savings account that I hardly ever needed to touch because of my allowance, and it would probably be enough to get me somewhere relatively safe if people found out and reacted badly.

Maybe I was still safe, and nobody had noticed anything yet. I probably wouldn’t have noticed myself if my ears weren’t suddenly furry this morning. I was pretty sure that their shifting upward had been gradual enough and they were usually covered by my shaggy hair. I was probably safe for now. If people had noticed, my life would have become even more lonely and miserable than it already was.

Okay, I was pretty sure that nobody else had noticed that I was changing yet. My mother tried to ignore my existence as much as possible except at meals or when she needed to take me to doctors’ appointments or something. I tended to wear loose hoodies at school and was exempt from gym class due to my asthma, so I doubted that my classmates had noticed anything either, except maybe my weight loss.

Thinking about it, that might have something to do with this whole mutant thing too. I had mixed feelings about the whole thing when I first noticed I was losing weight six weeks ago. On the one hand, I was terrified that it might be a sign of puberty kicking off. On the other hand, I was feeling more energetic, and slightly less depressed, and dared to hope that nobody would ever make fun of my weight again.

The weight loss had been steady, despite me not changing any of my eating habits. In fact, I was pretty sure that I was eating more now than before, and I had been especially craving meat a lot lately. I had lost most of my flab without even trying to, except for a bit of the fat around my chest and hips that was particularly stubborn. It almost looked like I had breasts, especially with how much my nipples stuck out and how the area around them had gotten darker, puffier, and took up more surface area. That was more than enough reason for me to keep wearing baggy clothes for now since I didn’t want to get bullied about having man boobs.

Maybe there were other changes that I hadn’t noticed until now. I tried to think back as I stared at my face in the mirror to examine it critically. My face had lost a lot of its chubbiness and seemed softer somehow and my eyes seemed a little larger, though maybe that was due to the long and thick eyelashes that they sported.

The color of my eyes and hair hadn’t seemed to change at all though and I was still slightly paler than my mother with similar Hispanic features. I still had that small birthmark just to the left of my lips, though it seemed smaller and darker now, almost like a beauty mark. The lips themselves seemed a bit plumper too, which was weird with all the weight I was losing.

Having taken an inventory of my facial features, I tried to think of other things that I might have explained away as something else over the past couple of months. For one thing, I couldn’t remember the last time I had to use my inhaler. I couldn’t think of anything else off hand though until I gazed down at my… hand. My finger and toenails had seemed thicker and harder to cut recently and, now that I was looking down at my right hand, the shape looked different too. Was I growing claws?

I couldn’t think of anything else at the moment, so I tried to put those thoughts aside and focus on rushing through my morning routine. Looking at my watch, I realized that I had taken so much time with my panic attack and self-observation that I was going to have to forego my shower and would have to hurry if I was going to get something to eat and catch my bus on time.

I quickly took a leak, though that had me questioning if my junk had somehow gotten smaller. It was probably just a figment of my imagination, so I tried to shove that disturbing thought aside. I was freaking out about this whole mutant thing, so I was probably going to imagine all sorts of changes in addition to whatever really was changing.

After quickly washing up and brushing my teeth, noting that my canines seemed to be getting longer and sharper, I rushed out of the bathroom to get dressed. Bumping my hip painfully on the doorframe elicited a hiss of pain but I needed to hurry so I quickly limped toward my dresser and snatched up some more of the clothes that I had grown out of last year but still kept around; underwear, socks, track pants, a green hoodie, and a pair of sneakers.

I really needed to think about getting some new clothes because my rapid weight loss had been making things fit awkwardly, and it only seemed to get worse by the day. Even these older clothes didn’t seem a very good fit. My hoodie was loose in the shoulders, but a little tight in the chest, which chafed uncomfortably against the fat there and irritated my nipples. The underwear and pants were both too loose around my waist, but too tight in the hips and butt, where I hadn’t lost as much weight yet. The legs seemed a bit too long on me now as well, which was weird, and even my socks and shoes seemed a bit too big.

I didn’t have much time, so these clothes would have to do for today. I had to tighten the waistband of the track pants as tight as it would go, but I managed to get everything fitting well enough that nothing should fall off or cause an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction. After making sure that the hood of the hoodie covered my ears and most of my messy hair, I made a mental note to go clothes shopping as soon as possible while I headed upstairs to grab a quick breakfast.

Fortunately, I managed to avoid my mother that morning as I scarfed down a quick breakfast of cereal and even managed to make it to the bus stop on time. During school, I was able to avoid any situations that could have exposed me and kept my head down for most of the day. It wasn’t until I finished putting my books in my locker at the end of the day and was heading outside to catch my school bus that things went sideways.

I was halfway toward the exit when I was shoved hard from behind, almost crashing into the girl who was walking several paces in front of me. Before I even realized what was happening, I managed to right myself mid-stumble and swung around, almost in the same instant, to whirl on my attacker with my fists raised to defend myself. Had I given myself away somehow today?

Usually, I would have probably fallen and hit the floor, or the girl in front of me. This time though my body had reacted before my brain started to process what was happening, and I was relatively sure that neither my sense of balance nor my reaction time had been anywhere near that good before I started losing weight and changing. My mind was racing, trying to figure out how I had given myself away, worried that even if I hadn’t earlier, I might have just done so with my sudden reaction.

Esteban stood there and, for an instant, he looked mildly surprised before his expression settled back into the usual arrogant smirk he wore when he was bullying someone and had them right where he wanted them. Okay, that wasn’t unusual, so maybe he was just surprised that I hadn’t just fallen on my face and seemed ready to defend myself. That was confirmed when he jabbed me in the flab on the right side of my chest and sneered at me as he taunted, “You wanna have a go at me, Fatty?”

I winced, but not just because fighting him would have been likely to give me away. It was mostly from the pain that the light jab had caused in me. Shit, that had hurt, almost as much as that time I’d been kicked in the balls. That should not have hurt that much, my fat should have padded the blow, right?

I couldn’t help letting out a hiss of pain as I winced from the blow and fear clutched at my heart. I wasn’t as scared of taking a beating since it wouldn’t be my first rodeo, as I was of having someone see my ears or accidentally using some weird mutant power that I had no idea that I had, let alone how to control. I was trembling as visions of those scenarios ran through my mind and I verbally stumbled as I forced myself to reply, “N-n-no.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so, Fatso. Now get out of my way,” Esteban replied with a laugh as he sneered at me again and his friends laughed along with him. Then he stepped forward, shoving me aside. I let myself fall this time, mostly in relief that things hadn’t escalated, and watched him and his friends continue down the hall, still laughing at me. Only once they were out the doors did I get back to my feet, though I waited a good ten minutes before heading for the exit myself so I wouldn’t risk another encounter with them outside.

I missed my bus, but thankfully, the pain from Esteban’s jab to my chest had faded away and he and his friends weren’t waiting for me outside. The walk would probably do me good anyway since I was so filled with nervous energy from the near miss at getting beat up again or people finding out that I was changing. I needed to burn off some of that energy so I thought I might give jogging or running a try, at least for a little bit.

After securing my backpack, I took off at a leisurely pace. It was uncomfortable, especially with the way the fat on my chest was bouncing and the fabric of my shirt was rubbing against my nipples like sandpaper with every step. Still, for some reason, I found myself wanting more. I wanted to move faster, burn off some of this nervous energy, and feel the wind in my face.

I picked up the pace, going from a light jog to a full-on run and I didn’t think that I would be able to run for long since my faster pace only made my chest feel more uncomfortable from the bouncing fat and rubbing fabric. Well, I didn’t think I’d be able to keep that pace up for long anyway. As nice as the weight loss was, it would probably take me a while to build up a decent amount of stamina.

It was as those thoughts rattled around in my brain that I noticed something to my right. “Wait a second, did I just pass that car? No, I must have been imagining…” I passed another vehicle and realized that I wasn’t in the school zone anymore either. I was on the major street that would take me most of the way home and could see the corner store I often stopped at coming up fast. “Just how long was I stuck in my head?”

I slowed my pace and glanced at my watch, which announced the time as 3:48. That… wasn’t possible. It was five miles from school to home, a walk that usually took me a little over an hour. If I had missed my bus, that meant it was sometime after 3:30 when I left the school. Had I really breezed through it at a run in ten minutes or so? The school bus wouldn’t even be showing up until almost four o’clock.

Panicking, I ducked out of sight into the alley before the corner store, then took a cautious look around to make sure that nobody was paying too much attention to the alley’s entrance. Seeing that there weren’t many people around, and that those I could see seemed to be focused on whatever it was they were doing, I breathed a sigh of relief and leaned against the wall of the building behind me. Then I tried to gather my thoughts and take an inventory.

My chest was sore and protesting the jiggling and friction that it had been subject to while I was running, but I was barely breathing heavily from the run itself. I didn’t even seem as tired as I thought I should be, and if it weren’t for the discomfort it had caused, I would have wanted to run more. I wanted to move, not hide in some alley. I was hungry though, a point my stomach made very clear by growling audibly.

“Dammit,” I muttered. As much as I really wanted to run, jump, and explore more about whatever powers I had, I knew that it would be a bad idea, and not just because of the discomfort it would cause. I had been very lucky while I was running around and spacing out that I hadn’t caused an accident, or been hit by a car, and showing off powers like that in full view of other people could bring the MCO’s attention upon me. The mere thought of that made my decision for me as my thoughts flashed back to Mindy Meyers, the last mutant to show up at our school.

I could still remember the day that the MCO showed up at school after she had disappeared from the hospital. Those men had been scary, and they had the school hold an assembly. They had treated Mindy like a criminal, instead of the victim who had been attacked by five girls, and asked anyone who might know where she had gone, or any of her other ‘victims’, to come forward. The whole time, the known bullies who had attacked her stood there with them smugly, like they were heroes or something.

Yeah, it was probably better not to get on the MCO’s radar until I could get an MID. With that in mind, I took a deep breath, stepped out of the alley, and then made my way into the corner store. I killed a good ten minutes in there by taking my time getting some snacks and drinks. I barely paid attention while paying for my purchases and, thankfully, Mr. Reyes, the old man who owned the store, didn’t try to strike up a conversation today.

He knew by now that I wasn’t very good at being social and had anxiety issues. He still tried sometimes, probably to try to get me to come out of my shell, like the last time I was there when he asked if I was losing weight. Today though, he seemed to realize that I wasn’t in the mood to attempt it, so I was soon out of the store and on my way home.

With each step closer to home, thoughts of telling my mother what was going on weighed heavier and heavier upon my mind. I had been dreading it all day, but I knew deep down that trying to keep hiding things was only going to end in disaster. By the time I reached for the handle of the front door, my hands were trembling, and I was struggling to control my breathing as fear’s icy grip clutched my heart, and a storm of anxiety brewed inside my chest.

No, I needed to do this, I needed to tell Mom about this and get her to make me an appointment with my doctor. I took several minutes while on the verge of a full-blown anxiety attack, just standing on the doorstep with my hand wrapped around the door handle as I attempted to calm myself down and mentally prepare myself. Then, taking one last deep breath, I opened the door and stepped inside.

Mom was watching something on television and basically ignored me as I stepped into the living room and put my bags by the door down to the basement. They nearly fell from my hands; they were so slick with sweat from my escalating fear about the conversation to come. Maybe I should just take my stuff downstairs and save the talk for dinner. It would give me more time to think about what I wanted to say.

No. I couldn’t put this off. The longer that I let this go without telling my mother and trying to get ahead of the situation, the more likely I was to be discovered and have this whole thing blow up in my face. I needed to just man up and get this over with.

Taking another deep breath, I walked over to the couch and managed to haltingly get the words out. “Mom… I think I need to… umm… see a doctor.”

She didn’t even look in my general direction as she harumphed. “Again? You just had a checkup three months ago.”

“Th-this is s-serious, Mom,” I stammered as I summoned every ounce of courage I had. “I think… I might be a mutant.”

Mom snorted at the M-word, but she still wasn’t looking at me so I couldn’t tell if it was in disdain or for some other reason. After a long moment, she grumbled, “Fine. If it’ll get you to shut up, I’ll make an appointment. Now get your worthless ass out of my sight until dinner.”

I deflated with a long sigh and did as she asked, grabbing my bags of snacks and heading downstairs. She truly cared for me so little that not even the possibility of being a mutant put me on her mental radar for more than a moment. At least she didn’t react any worse than usual, which I guessed was a good thing.

Lucía Melendez smiled to herself as the boy fled downstairs. A mutant? Really? Arthur would have a stroke if he found out that his own flesh and blood, his son, was becoming what he hated the most. It was justice in a way. It almost made her happy at the thought that he would be paying to raise a mutant until the boy was eighteen and out of her hair for good.

Arthur Pond. Even after fifteen years, the mere thought of his name was still enough to make her hide within herself in shame and self-loathing. Memories of the night that her former employer had her stay late and then forced himself on her still haunted her dreams at night. She had been a virgin, saving herself for marriage, and he took that from her.

That wasn’t all he took. Her confidence was gone after that as she sank into the depths of depression, shame, and self-loathing for months. She stopped caring for her appearance and her health and just tried to get through each day, hoping for a way out of the misery her life had become. She never dared tell anyone about the rape. Arthur Pond was a rich, powerful, and influential man in Silicon Valley, he could have easily crushed her beneath his boot had he wished it.

It wasn’t until four months later, when she began to really show, that she even realized she was pregnant. By then it was too late for an abortion, and she had a big fight with her parents, devout Catholics that they were, about her condition. They called her a slut and demanded to know who the father was, but she was too ashamed and terrified to tell even them what had happened. That fight was the last contact she had with her parents. She wanted nothing more than to get away, to leave that life and get out from under the thumb of the man who had taken everything from her.

She found enough courage to get a good lawyer, got a paternity test done to prove that Arthur was the father, and threatened to take him to court and tell the media. It was a bluff, something she would have been far too humiliated to do back then, but it worked. He had been newly married when her child was conceived, and the last thing that he wanted was stories of his unfaithfulness being splashed all over the tabloids.

Her lawyer, Natalie Geller, got Arthur to settle out of court without much trouble. It was an arrangement that would have him purchase a house for her in another city and make monthly payments to cover her living expenses and the expenses of raising a child. Natalie even pushed to have him include a set amount to go into a savings account for the child.

She moved to Santa Fe and started a new life and, at first, she tried to be a good mother to her child. Maybe if the boy had been a girl instead, she might have been able to love her, but he was born a boy. A boy who would grow up to be a man, just like his father, something that was painfully obvious with every diaper change. It only got worse as he grew older, she just couldn’t look at him without seeing Arthur and remembering that night.

Lucía did her best to shake off the memories and calm her racing heart. “No, I’m stronger now,” she told herself. “Arthur is terrible, all men are terrible, but I will never be a victim again. I’ll make him pay tenfold for what he’s done, and this settlement is only the start. Once the boy is grown up, and the payments stop coming in, I’ll expose him. I’ll tell the media, and anyone who’ll listen, what Arthur did to me and that his bastard son is a mutie freak. It will be worth taking the boy to an appointment to see if it’s true.”

If he truly was a mutant, then all the better. She wondered how much the tabloids would pay for what she had on Arthur, especially if paternity tests proved that his bastard child was a mutant. How much would Arthur pay to keep it quiet? It didn’t matter since she had no intention of doing so. She didn’t care about mutants one way or the other, but Arthur hated them more than anything, and what better way to make him suffer and publicly humiliate him than this?

She needed to keep the boy close though, until he turned eighteen and the money ran out. She couldn’t afford to have him run away because of this mutant business. It would be worth it in the long run to try to spend more time with him and treat him better. She could keep him in her corner and eventually turn him against the bastard who fathered him.

If the boy started to become a visible freak, then she would have him home-schooled until the time was right. She should probably do that regardless. She could keep a better eye on him that way, and make sure he wasn’t getting into any trouble or harassing any innocent girls. When he was eighteen, she would tell him who his father was and start putting the pieces in place to get her revenge on Arthur Pond.

With that thought almost bringing a smile to her face, Lucía looked up their family doctor’s contact info on her phone and pressed the call icon. She made sure to sound like a loving and concerned mother as she said, “Hi, this is Lucía Melendez calling, I need to make an appointment for my son, Carlos… Well, Angie, we think he might be a mutant… No? Oh, I understand. Yes, please, I would appreciate that. This is all a bit frightening, and I’d like to know what can be done to help him through this.”

Butterflies were dancing a conga line in my stomach when Mom called me upstairs for dinner. She had made enchiladas tonight, so maybe she was in a better mood than I thought. She wasted no time, I had barely sat down and taken a bite before she started talking, though she still couldn’t seem to look directly at me. “Doctor Davies has no experience with mutants, and she doesn’t want to deal with any. Angie gave us a referral to some woman in the Phoenix area who specializes in mutants.”

I finished my mouthful as she explained, and my mood fell. Driving from Santa Fe to Phoenix would take anywhere from six to eight hours and I figured that my mother was as thrilled about the thought of spending that long in a car together as I was, which was not at all. “I’ll have to figure it out on my own then, I guess,” I replied with disappointment. There was no way that Mom would be willing to take me all the way to Phoenix for an appointment.

“Hmmph… you have an appointment for Friday, they were able to squeeze you in,” she told me, looking more at her plate than me. Wait, she actually made an appointment in Phoenix for me? I was so stunned that I nearly dropped my next bite of enchilada and couldn’t find the words to reply at first. Then she added, “After dinner, I want you to tell me why you think you might be a mutant so I have the proper information to fill out the forms that Dr. Deville’s receptionist will be sending me.”

Something was definitely weird here. Not only had my mother made an appointment in Phoenix for this, and seemed to be taking it seriously, but she had also made my favorite meal for dinner, and she seemed almost concerned. I swallowed my uncertainty, along with my mouthful of enchilada, and mumbled, “Okay, Mom.”

The remainder of dinner was spent quietly, and afterward, I told my mother about how I had been losing weight, not needing to use my inhaler anymore, and the weirdness with my ears. I didn’t tell her about the incident running home today though, or even the thought that I might have super speed since I was worried that she would give me shit for using powers in public. It wasn’t a sure thing anyway. Sure, it was weird, but I had been zoned out the whole time and could have teleported for all I knew.

She did look at my ears, which seemed enough to convince her that my concerns were genuine, and thankfully she didn’t seem interested in looking me over for any other changes after that. I would rather save the embarrassing physical examinations for the doctor who I would likely never have to see again after this appointment. This Dr. Deville would likely just confirm I was a mutant and send me on my way to figure everything else out on my own. Nobody in Santa Fe seemed to want anything to do with mutants if they could help it, except maybe to persecute them, so I doubted things would be any different in Phoenix.

Given my fuzzy ears, and a mysterious newfound concern about me being bullied at school, Mom decided that I wouldn’t be going back to school tomorrow, or anytime soon. She was going to pull me out of school and get me set up for home lessons and, while I was relieved that my condition was now less at risk of being exposed, I wasn’t too keen on having what little time I had to spend outside of the house and away from my mother disappear entirely. I suppose things could have been worse, she could have made me stay in school, where I would be discovered sooner or later.

I was just hoping that I wasn’t psychic because I had this nagging feeling that my life was about to change for the worse. My mother’s strange turnaround to being concerned with my welfare wasn’t really helping matters either. Worse yet, I had a bad feeling about this doctor’s appointment in particular, like I was going to find out something that would change my life forever. “Of course you are, Stupid,” I chided myself as I tried to sleep that night. “You’re a mutant, and on Friday you’re going to learn what that means and how it will change your life.”

Claremont Road
Mesa, Arizona
Friday, March 25th, 2016 – 11:34 a.m.

Since my appointment was just after lunch today, Mom began our little road trip from hell in the afternoon yesterday and we stayed at a hotel after getting into Phoenix just after ten o’clock last night. We could have gotten here a lot faster by plane, but neither my mother nor I wanted to risk going through MCO checkpoints until we found out what was going on with me and I got a MID card. I ended up sleeping for most of the trip, just to avoid awkwardly spending a long time in the car with her while conscious, and then played games on my phone while she slept in our hotel room last night until falling back to sleep.

Now we had left Phoenix proper and had made our way into the southeastern part of Mesa, after turning off University Drive East. Dr. Deville’s practice was supposed to be located here, in a neighborhood called Claremont Road. The neighborhood looked like an older and somewhat poorer one that was on the border of other, wealthier, neighborhoods nearby, but from the brightly painted storefronts and clean streets and sidewalks, it seemed that the people here took pride in their neighborhood.

It was a very strange place, and only seemed to become stranger still as Mom looked for a place to park and have lunch before my appointment. It wasn’t the apparent tidiness or pride in the neighborhood that made it strange though, it was the people. Everywhere I looked, there were mutants. Not just any mutants either but really obvious ones.

Okay, maybe not everyone was an obvious mutant, but one out of three people I saw walking the sidewalks had some sort of GSD that made it pretty clear they weren’t baselines. They weren’t even trying to hide it either as if this neighborhood was some mystical sanctuary for people who were different. People like me. There were too many, with too many differences between them, for me to even keep track of.

We had just passed a large community center when, just in front of us and leaving a building labeled as Evolution Rocks Greater Phoenix Headquarters, I saw a woman with goat legs and horns on her head who was wearing a pair of short shorts and a bikini top. I mean, it wasn’t that surprising since it was so warm out. I wouldn’t want to wear anything heavy on a day like this either if I had all that fur on my legs, but she was absolutely flaunting her differences with no shame whatsoever.

Everywhere I looked there were people like her, just going about their business as if this was a perfectly normal day and they were perfectly normal people. Perhaps for them, here in Claremont Road, that was even true. There was even a man who must have been at least seven feet tall, and who looked like a humanoid tree, sweeping the sidewalk in front of a shop called Redwood Flowers.

I also caught sight of a base for a local high-profile super team called the Elementals, I had heard about them a bit, even spending most of my time hiding in my basement in Santa Fe. Then there was the openly mutant man who looked like a humanoid rhinoceros and was equally as tall as the tree man I saw earlier. He was wearing a tailored three-piece suit, and he kept an eye on the passersby as he seemingly stood guard as some form of bouncer in front of a restaurant called The Odd One.

I had to wonder if this was a glimpse at my destiny as Mom parked in front of what seemed to be a bakery/coffee shop called Mana From Heaven. Was this going to be me? Was this my future? Looking for a place like this to live, where I could fit in without being judged? How extreme were my changes going to get? I had a bad feeling that my changing ears and shocking weight loss were only the start of things.

The café and bakery seemed to specialize in baked goods and coffees, and if the proprietors were mutants I couldn’t tell, but they did serve simple meal items like sandwiches on fresh-baked bread. We both had grilled ham and Swiss sandwiches and, while Mom had the coffee that she seemed to desperately need, I got an ice-cold soda. I tried to avoid conversation as we ate, but Mom was in her public, mother-of-the-year, persona and was trying to be upbeat and tell me that there was nothing to worry about as my appointment edged ever closer.

It was weird, like some episode of The Twilight Zone. Mom had been leaning into the whole supportive parent thing ever since I had told her about the whole mutant thing, and honestly, it was freaking me out a little bit. She was acting like some sort of pod person as if my telling her that I might be a mutant had helped her find some use for me she didn’t have before. I was constantly on edge around her while waiting for the other shoe to drop.

While we were eating our lunch, an actual superhero stopped in, while in costume, to get a sandwich and coffee for lunch. He wore a grey costume with a mask that gave the impression of rabbit ears. The lady behind the counter, and several of the other diners, greeted him as Jackalope and it seemed that he had a good reputation in the area, going by how friendly people were with him.

After eating the best chocolate éclair that I had ever tasted for dessert, Mom and I left the café/bakery and my now creepily cheerful mother suggested, “It’s such a nice day, we have time, and the doctor’s office is only a block away and around the corner. Why don’t we walk and enjoy the sunshine?”

“Umm… sure, Mom,” I replied, even as I tried to sink further inside one of my now oversized hoodies. I was wearing it, despite the warm weather, because it felt comfortable, familiar, and cozy. It helped me to feel anonymous and safe, even in a neighborhood as undeniably odd as this one.

As we walked down the street toward the office where my appointment was, I saw more odd mutants with obvious GSD and a few more strange landmarks as well. Third Leg Tailors had me blushing and cringing further inside my hoodie at the obvious double entendre and when I stopped to look inside the window of a joke and games shop called Games A Jack Ass Plays, I was only mildly surprised to see a humanoid donkey man behind the counter of the shop. At this point, nothing in this neighborhood surprised me anymore.

“Oh, look, an ice cream parlor!” Mom pointed out with an unnerving amount of cheer as we walked down the busy street. “Maybe after your appointment, we can stop in for a cold treat.”

“Yeah… that sounds… nice,” I answered warily as I followed the direction of her gaze toward a shop called Cool Cat Creamery. The shop boasted large windows, and the inside was filled with cozy little booths and an old-fashioned counter with barstools. Behind the counter was some sort of white-haired cat-girl wearing a smile and an apron over her clothes. Beneath the name of the shop on the sign, it advertised that they served 21 different flavors plus soft serve, sundaes, milkshakes, and ice cream floats.

Five minutes later, we were stepping inside the health clinic of Dr. Deville, the door opening to a large and cozy waiting room. Mom took me straight up to the receptionist, a woman with shiny silver hair, pebbly lavender skin that sparkled like tiny crystals, and spindly hands with ten slender fingers on each instead of the usual five. Her nametag said ‘Stacy’ and she smiled as we approached, revealing a mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth.

I was startled a bit at her smile, and I think Mom was too, but she quickly recovered enough to say, “Hi, we have a referral from Dr. Davies in Santa Fe for my son, Carlos.”

The strange woman offered in a friendly tone, “Don’t worry, I don’t bite. We’ve been expecting you, Ms. Melendez, I just have a couple more forms that I’ll need you to fill out. We squeezed you in for quarter after one, Carlos, and there’s one other appointment before the doc sees you, so you can have a seat and get comfortable while your mom fills out the forms.”

I nodded since words wouldn’t seem to come to me at first in the presence of this slightly terrifying but friendly woman, and quickly tried to find a place to sit. The waiting room was half full already, and most of the people seemed to have some form of obvious GSD. There only seemed to be one other person who was even close to my age though, but I didn’t sit close enough to her to start a conversation since she didn’t seem to be in a very good mood.

I couldn’t really blame the girl for that since she stood out the most amongst the other people in the waiting room, almost as much as the receptionist. Whatever her mutation was, it did a number on her. She was pretty, but definitely in a very exotic way that could never be considered anywhere even close to a baseline. She looked to be somewhere between twelve and fourteen and had mint green-colored skin. She nervously played with her long hair which looked more like flowering vines than actual hair, and flowering plants seemed to be growing from her bare upper arms and shoulders.

I was still making a conscious effort to not stare at her when Stacy called out, “Clover, the Doc is back from lunch and will see you now. Just head into examination room one.”

In response, the girl who I had most definitely not been staring at stood up and passed the receptionist with quiet, “Thanks, Stacy.” As she walked away, I couldn’t help but notice the six thick vines that seemed to originate from her back and swayed behind her.

It was five minutes before my mother finished her paperwork and came to sit beside me, and another ten minutes after that before Stacy called me for my turn with Dr. Deville. Mom honestly looked torn for a moment over whether she should stay seated or come with me into the examination room. Hoping to stave off the potential humiliation of the latter, I forced a smile and tried to sound genuine as I told her, “I’ll be fine on my own, Mom.”

Feeling relief flooding my chest as she nodded and remained seated, I made my way to the reception desk, and Stacy, who led me to exam room #2 and motioned inside. “Just get changed into the gown on the examination table, Carlos. Doctor Deville will be with you in a few minutes.”

The room was not like the examining room that I was used to with Dr. Davies. Sure, there was the usual stuff like the examination table, the paper gown to wear, and stuff like the blood pressure checker, but there were also a bunch of odd-looking machines and doodads that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. Those machines made me a little nervous as I began to get undressed, like I was in a mad scientist’s lair.

I had just gotten undressed, put the paper gown on, and sat on the examination table when a dark-haired Caucasian woman who was wearing a lab coat stepped into the room. She was pretty and looked too young to be a doctor, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. No, what caught my attention was the pair of red devil-like horns sticking out from her hairline, and the matching red, spaded tail that swished behind her as she turned to close the door.

Upon seeing the direction of my staring eyes, she didn’t get awkward or self-conscious about it. Instead, she gave me a warm smile and attempted to set me at ease. “Good afternoon, Carlos, I’m Dr. Deville, or at least that’s what it says on my MID. Like you, I am a mutant. So, I have a pretty good idea of what might be going on in your mind right now.”

“Can you…” I began to ask.

“Read your mind? No Carlos, that isn’t one of my powers, I’m a Devisor. I created all the devises in this room to help people like you find out what’s going on with their bodies, how they might be changing, and to ensure good health going forward. As for why I’m telling you about myself and my work, well, you probably won’t feel comfortable having a complete stranger just start poking and prodding you out of the blue, right? Better the devil you know…” she trailed off with a smile as I realized she was making a joke at her own expense.

“You just…” again I couldn’t quite finish that sentence. She really had me on the back foot here, but at least she seemed nice.

“Made a GSD joke?” she teased with a devilish grin. “I’m going to tell you what I tell all my patients who suffer from GSD, Carlos. Having GSD isn’t easy, but it can be easier if you can start to accept yourself and try to find the good in it. You need to take your situation and own it or others will do it for you, and they probably won’t be as good-natured about it. Now, I have your file from your previous doctor, and the forms that your mother filled out, but why don’t you tell me what changes you’ve been noticing and then I’ll give you an exam.”

Somehow this strange woman had disarmed me so quickly and thoroughly with her straightforward and caring approach that I actually felt comfortable with her. I liked this doctor. So, I told her everything. I told her about the weight loss, the constant itchiness, my ears and tailbone, and even the strange incident with my speed or whatever it was while running home on Monday.

She made a bunch of notes while I was talking and once I finished, she began the physical exam. She was sure to tell me what she was doing at all times, even if it was things I was already familiar with, such as listening to my heart or checking my blood pressure. I began to get just a little weirded out though as she frowned at my chest and asked to examine it as well. For some reason, her poking, prodding, and other actions there were even more uncomfortable than when she examined my junk.

Another thing that I found extremely concerning was my height or lack thereof. I would have expected to have grown a bit since I manifested, but I hadn’t so far. In fact, from the peek I had at the measurement before she jotted it down, it looked like I actually lost over an inch in height which had me terrified about whatever I might be turning into.

Dr. Deville also scanned me by having me step inside some of the larger devises I didn’t recognize, or by running the smaller ones over my body. Then she finished things off by drawing blood and taking a few of my hairs for DNA testing. Once she was finally done with all the tests she could conceive of, she told me that she wanted me and Mom to come back at five o’clock so she could go over what test results she had before we headed back to Santa Fe and left me to get changed back into my clothes.

I followed my mother inside Cool Cat Creamery and then up to the counter where the white-haired cat-girl who seemed to run the place was talking with a man in a blue costume with white trim as they exchanged cash for a milkshake. They seemed friendly and familiar with each other and the man was asking her if there had been any trouble around the neighborhood today.

Apparently, there hadn’t been, which was nice to hear since that meant the neighborhood was probably safe and all with heroes taking an interest in the community. The man took his milkshake and said, “Well, I’m off on patrol. I’ll see you later, Kelly.” Then he gave me and Mom a friendly smile as a shimmering patch of distorted air materialized beside him and he stepped through. I figured that he must be another local hero, like the one I saw earlier at Mana From Heaven.

“Seeya later, Port!” the cat-girl replied, giving him a farewell wave as he passed through the strange portal. Then her attention was on the next customers, which would be me and my mother. “Good afternoon, what can I get you, Ma’am?” she directed at Mom.

“Hmmm… I think I’ll try your blueberry parfait,” Mom said after a moment of consideration.

Kelly the cat-girl nodded and smiled as she entered it into the register and then turned her attention upon me. “And for the young…” For a moment she looked uncertain and a bit confused as she sniffed the air, before finishing off with, “Miss?”

I just gaped at her for a moment in stunned silence. Did I really look like a girl to her? I knew I had those big eyelashes and stuff, but was it really so hard to tell I was a guy? I cast a sideways look at my mother, and it looked like she was torn between being insulted for her entire gender and feeling the need to violently correct her or keeping quiet so as not to make a scene.

The latter seemed to win out and I hurriedly placed my order to get past this extremely awkward moment. “Umm… I’ll have a chocolate milkshake, and a banana split please.”

Mom gave me a sideways glance as she put on a smile, paid for our treat, tried to recover from her shock, and got back into the part she was playing. “I’ll go pick out a table for us, Corazón. Do you mind bringing our order once it’s ready?”

“Sure, Mom, I don’t mind,” I replied. I honestly didn’t mind since I seriously needed a few minutes away from her and whatever act she was putting on the past few days with me. She literally just called me ‘Sweetheart’ which felt like electric eels slithering down my spine as she said it. I tried to keep up my own act and hoped our order would take more than a few minutes to get ready. This forced closeness was giving me the heebee jeebies.

Kelly gave me an apologetic look as she went to prepare our order, probably because she could sense the awkwardness of that moment, being in the same zip code and all. She finished Mom’s parfait first, so I took it to the table Mom had chosen before heading back to the counter to wait for my order. It was as I was returning to the counter that the pair of doors behind it swung open and a very striking mutant girl, probably not much older than me stepped out.

She was wearing a parka, which she quickly took off and hung on a hook by the doors, revealing that she was wearing a long skirt, sneakers, and a camisole underneath. The latter showed off a lot of skin, or rather, it would have if her skin wasn’t completely covered in scales. It seemed like her face and body were completely covered in those iridescent green scales, making her reptilian amber eyes stand out. In place of hair, a mane of pure white feathers topped her head with a pair of golden horns sticking out from her ‘hairline’ that were almost as shiny as her scales.

As she hung her parka, I caught a glimpse of white feathers, similar to those atop her head, running along the back of her spine and the serpentine tail that emerged from a hole in the back of her skirt. “Kelly, we’re almost finished with the inventory back there,” she told the cat-girl. “I was starting to get sluggish from all that cold though, so Frosty sent me to see if you needed any help here up front.”

For a moment, I just stared at her in shock. I didn’t stare because she was beautiful, even though she was gorgeous and very striking. No, I stared because I recognized those scales and those eyes. She didn’t have the tail, or those feathers, when I saw her last, just those haunted amber eyes. Even her scales had only started appearing in small patches on her skin before the incident that put her in the hospital before she disappeared. Her face had changed quite a bit though, and now being completely covered in scales changed it further, making her almost unrecognizable.

“M-M-Mindy?” I sputtered in confusion, not thinking as the words left my mouth.

The exotic mutant whirled around to face me, amber eyes narrowing in suspicion before casting a sidelong look at the white-haired cat-girl. The older mutant woman continued putting together my banana split and gave her a shrug and a look that said, “It’s up to you.”

Before I realized what was happening, Mindy had my wrist in an iron grip and was half dragging me toward the restrooms. A glance toward my mother showed her immersed in something on her phone and eating her parfait as I was pulled along. Damn, Mindy was strong, making it damn near impossible to resist as she pulled me along, though thankfully, she only kept her grip strong enough to secure my arm and not seriously hurt it.

My eyes went wide, and I started to quietly protest as she dragged me toward and through the door into the ladies’ room. “Mindy, no… wait! I’m not…” I quietly protested.

The moment we were inside she turned to me and hissed, “Don’t call me that! I’ve left that life behind and I can never go back! Now, who the hell are you, and how do you know me?!”

She looked pissed, and I unconsciously took a step back as I shrank away from her, though her grip on my arm remained. “C-C-Carlos Melendez. We were in the s-same school last year… b-before those bullies ganged up on you and you disappeared. I… I was w-worried the MCO might have got you.”

Her eyes narrowed again, but I couldn’t be sure whether it was due to suspicion or her trying to recognize me. “Carlos… he was the…” she stopped herself before saying anything that could be taken as insulting. “He was bullied as much as I was. I didn’t know he had a kid sister.”

I mentally facepalmed. What was with people thinking I was a girl today? And I know I’m short, but really? First Kelly, and now her. And she had even dragged me into the ladies’ room! “I’m not his kid sister!” I snapped back. “I am Carlos! I started rapidly losing weight about two months ago and then this week, this happened!” Since she still had my left wrist in an iron grip, I lifted my right hand to show her one of my ears.

Those amber eyes widened as she looked at my fuzzy ear, and her death grip on my wrist was released. “You’re a mutant too?”

“Yeah, and I was terrified that I might go through what you did last year when I saw what was happening with my ears. I told my mom, and we got referred to some doctor here who specializes in mutants and GSD.”

“Dr. Deville,” Mindy replied with a nod. “I’ve been seeing her since Kelly took me in.”

“H-how did you get away?” I asked uncertainly. I was half afraid that she had wound up dead somewhere before I recognized her eyes and the iridescent green of her scales.

“I finally figured out my powers,” she replied with a sigh, looking away from me. “They only thought I was an Exemplar 2, but I guess I have regeneration too and the beating helped it to kick in, so I healed faster than they were expecting. I discovered that I could fly too, so I flew out the window of my room the night they took me to the hospital and kept on flying until I ended up here. Kelly took me in, kept me mostly hidden until my changes were complete, and then she helped me get a new identity as her cousin and a MID.”

“I… I’m glad you’re safe,” I told her awkwardly. “I know we didn’t know each other very well, but I know what it’s like to be bullied, and nobody deserves what they did to you. I always wondered, and worried, about what might have happened to you.”

“Umm… thanks,” she said, suddenly looking down at her feet. “Until I got here and bumped into Kelly, I didn’t think anyone gave a shit about me since I manifested, not even my parents. Please, don’t call me Mindy though…”

“Umm… yeah, sorry about that, I guess it could blow your cover,” I replied sheepishly as I rubbed the back of my head.

“Not just that… I would rather forget that Mindy Meyers ever existed. I’m not her anymore. You can call me Megan or Cloud Dragon, that’s the name on my MID.”

“Your secret is safe with me, and I won’t call you… that other name again,” I vowed,

“Cool, thanks. I wish you luck with the whole mutant thing, Carlos, I know what a rough ride it can be, especially at first. If you need anyone to talk to… well… we should exchange numbers. Kelly keeps telling me that I need more friends than her and Frosty. Friends closer to my age. She’s been trying to get me to talk to the plant girl who sometimes helps out her dad in the flower shop. I guess she avoids people too.”

“I think I saw her earlier at Dr. Deville’s, and she didn’t look too happy,” I agreed.

We quickly exchanged numbers. I wasn’t sure if anything would come of it, but I’d never really had someone I could consider a friend before and she was so exotically pretty. It wasn’t like we could hang out or anything, even if my mother wasn’t watching me like a hawk whenever I was rarely allowed out, there was just too much distance between us. It would be nice to have someone to talk to about this mutant stuff though, someone who had been through it before too.

With our information exchanged, I washed my hands and left the bathroom to retrieve my frozen treats. Mindy… err Megan promised to wait a few minutes before leaving so my mother wouldn’t get on my case about being alone with a girl. Fortunately, Mom wouldn’t be able to see which bathroom door I was emerging from where she was sitting, and I soon claimed my frozen treats and joined her at the table.

Mom was still immersed in something on her phone when I sat down, probably exchanging messages with her gal pals in the FFF since she wouldn’t be there for their meeting tonight. I wasn’t sure what excuse she gave them for being out of town, since I don’t think she’d ever told them she had a kid, let alone a male kid, but I didn’t really care either. I was quite happy to have nothing to do with those feminist extremists.

I focused instead on enjoying every delicious spoonful of my banana split. It was heavenly, and the milkshake was nicely creamy, chocolatey, and frothy. I could see why this place had so many customers coming in while we sat there and enjoyed the frozen goodness. Not a lot of them were staying inside like we did, but this was Arizona, and days like this where it was merely pleasantly warm instead of blisteringly hot were probably few and far between.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t spend all day there eating ice cream and exchanging subtle glances with Megan as she worked. All too soon, my ice cream and milkshake were entirely depleted, and Mom’s attention had returned to the real world… and me. She put on that fake, practiced smile and fake-enthused, “It’s such a nice day out. Since we have time before we have to be back at Dr. Deville’s, let’s explore the neighborhood a bit and enjoy the sunshine. Then we can get an early dinner before going to see her about the results of your tests.”

Spending the afternoon with my mother was strange. I was used to her putting on the Oscar-worthy performances of being a doting and attentive mother, but now it was like she wasn’t just trying to convince the people around us, but me as well. She had been doing that since I revealed the whole mutant thing. It had me weirded out as we left Cool Cat Creamery and browsed the various and unusual businesses of Claremont Road.

You know that feeling you get when you’re watching a horror movie, the music keeps dialing up on the suspense, and you’re mentally walking on eggshells while waiting and trying to brace yourself for the jump scare or gorefest you just know is about to happen? That was how I was feeling while spending the afternoon with my mother. I was constantly on edge as I waited for some mysterious horrible event that I just knew was coming. Except it didn’t, and the continued waiting had me becoming more and more on edge the longer that it went on.

For that whole afternoon, I was a bundle of tension trying to pretend that everything was normal. It was like I was a bow, string drawn back taut, and an arrow notched and ready to let fly, but nothing was jumping out to attack or give me a target to unleash my pent-up worries upon. I was all potential energy, waiting for a release that would never come, eternally at the ready for whatever evil was hiding in the shadows and poised to strike at my heart.

As hungry as I was, I figured that I would have to force myself to eat when we stopped in at The Odd One for an early dinner. There was both a bar and a restaurant, but we were seated on the restaurant side after waiting to be seated. Right there, beside the ‘Please wait to be seated’ sign, was another sign that said that the establishment has a strict, ‘No Costumes’ policy that would be enforced by the bouncers.

Yes, bouncers, as in plural. There were more of them than just the massive well-dressed rhino-man who was stationed outside, each of them equally well-dressed and intimidating in size and stature with notable GSD to keep the peace. I counted two more that I could see, one stationed in the restaurant section and another in the bar. It wasn’t just the bouncers either, all the employees that I could see had some sort of visible GSD.

We got a fairly private little booth and Mom ordered the chicken Caesar and a glass of wine while I got a bacon double cheeseburger with fries and a Dr. Pepper. Our waitress was a young Asian woman with black canid ears atop her head and a huge, fluffy tail of the same color who had introduced herself as Jasmine. I tried not to stare at her ears and tail as I wondered if I was going to end up looking similar. Not a girl, of course, but you get the idea.

Once Jasmine had left with our orders after delivering our drinks, things got uncomfortably quiet and awkward at our table. Mom couldn’t seem to look at me and I had no idea what to say to make the awkwardness end. After a pregnant silence, she sighed and forced herself to meet my eyes.

“Carlos…” she began, her tone and expression pained. “I… haven’t ever told you about your father. There’s a reason for that and… I can’t tell you now, but I want to tell you when you’re a bit older. For now… just… know that he hurt me. For years I’ve been taking it out on you… unable to look at you without seeing his face. I know that’s unfair, and I haven’t been the best mother to you, but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking this week, and I want to change that. You’re my… child, and I should be better. I want to be better… for you.”

You could have walked up to me on the street and slapped me with a fish, and I would have been less in shock. I had never seen my mother so... hesitant, and she had to stop speaking as she wiped away tears from her eyes and cheeks that were making a mess of her makeup. “Mom, I…” I didn’t know what to say, my mouth and brain seemingly frozen in shock and uncertainty.

“I want us to try to be closer…” she stopped again to wipe away tears and blow her nose. “… if you’ll give me a chance. I probably don’t deserve it, but I *sniff* want to be the mother I should have been to you all along. Will you give me another chance?” She looked guiltily down at the table as she asked that question and dabbed again at her raccoon eyes.

For the longest time, I sat there staring at her, completely flabbergasted by what was happening. Could I really believe her? I had always wanted to find out what was wrong with our relationship and somehow fix it, but that desire was warring with experience.

Still, I had never seen my mother in this state before. She had never allowed herself to get emotional in front of me except for anger. Now, here she was, crying and her makeup job was completely obliterated, something that she would never usually allow people to see. She didn’t like people seeing her as weak.

My experience was telling me that I needed to be cautious here, but at the same time, this was my mother. She had given birth to me and raised me on her own for all these years. Sure, she hadn’t been the best mother, but if she really was willing to try harder to be better from now on, could I just slam the door in her face when all I had ever really wanted was a parent who loved me?

My chest and throat were tight with emotion and, despite my desire to act tough here, I could feel tears carving trails down my cheeks as well. I could barely get the words out between the sobs that were on the horizon but had so far not revealed themselves. “I… we can… give it a try... Mom.” After that, we both needed to take a moment to collect ourselves and Mom had to go to the ladies’ room to fix her face. By the time she returned, our dinner had arrived.

Between the tense afternoon, that strangely emotional dinner spent in my mother’s company, and my nerves about what I might learn from Dr. Deville, by the time we got back to Dr. Deville’s clinic I was a bundle of raw and exposed nerves. We got there at five o’clock and had to wait fifteen minutes before she was finished with her last patient, but Stacy led us into some sort of office and tried to make our wait comfortable. When Dr. Deville finally joined us, she was flipping through stuff on a tablet, which she quickly connected to a display screen for our benefit after sitting behind the desk.

She opened up by saying, “It’ll take a while to get the DNA tests back, but between the physical exam, the blood tests, and the ultrasound and other scans I did, I have a fairly good idea of what is going on with you, Carlos. Given the shifting of your ears, your developing claws, and the growth at your tailbone, I believe that you will have at least some GSD, probably animalistic in nature, and I’m seeing a lot of oddities in your bone structure as well. I believe that you’re an Exemplar and you’ll likely continue to shrink a bit more as you get closer to what your BIT has in mind for you. I’m afraid that those won’t be the worst of the changes you’ll have to adjust to though.”

Mom remained quiet at my side, her expression impassive, as I frowned at the thought of getting even shorter, but she placed a hand on mine to reassure me that things would be okay. I was already half-expecting to turn into some variety of furry though, so while concerning, it didn’t quite come as a surprise. I was far more concerned about how she ended that summary though. “W-what do you mean by, ‘That’s not the worst of it’?”

The doctor sighed and gave me a sympathetic look. “Looking at the ultrasounds, your current hormone levels, some of the changes in your bone structure so far, and your fat distribution, I’m afraid that you’re what we call a Changeling, Carlos. You might have been born male, but your BIT seems to be for a female form, and it’s changing your body to match. That isn’t just fat on your chest, those are breasts, probably a solid B cup already.”

I gaped at her, unable to speak, or even think of a response to that as a hurricane touched down in my chest, stealing my breath and my ability to make any sound other than the terrified squeak that slipped out of me. Even my mother’s impassive expression broke down into confusion and worry as she asked, “Is this… permanent? Can anything be done?”

Dr. Deville shook her head sadly. “Anything we tried to do to prevent this would be counteracted by Carlos’s BIT,” she said before turning her attention toward me. “I’m most concerned by the progression of the changes so far. This seems a bit fast if you truly did manifest only two months ago as you surmise. You either manifested earlier than that and didn’t notice at first due to the lack of external changes and obvious powers or there’s another possibility. It could even be both. There’s an unknown organ that I spotted in one of the ultrasounds and that, combined with things that you told me, lead me to believe that you’re an internal energizer. That Energizer ability could be accelerating the change as well since you haven’t been actively using any powers yet.”

“W-what does that mean?” I stammered after finally finding my voice again.

“I anticipate that you’ll be completely female by the end of the year, possibly sooner,” she told me gently.

After that, I was too stunned to speak anymore and listened with half an ear as Dr. Deville explained things to my mother and told her what to expect, and what she would do to help. Normally she would want to monitor things by having me come in every couple of weeks for a checkup, but that just wasn’t feasible with such a long drive for us to get here. Instead, she made a new appointment for me just before Christmas and told us to try to monitor my changes and call her if we found anything that was concerning.

Dr. Deville was going to provide a letter that would help us to legally change my name and gender on my birth certificate and other documentation. She suggested that we get me some new clothes that would fit my changing body shape better but cautioned us not to go too crazy. At least, not until my changes were closer to being finished since we couldn’t know for sure how much I might shrink, and my growing tail was likely to complicate things too.

Once she had thoroughly explained things, Dr. Deville provided my mother with the promised documentation as well as some information handouts that she created recently regarding living with GSD and being a Changeling. Then she let us out of the now-locked clinic and told us she would see us before Christmas and be available by phone if there were any emergencies. After that, Mom decided to make the long trip home right away and I didn’t argue since I was still in shock.

I don’t even really remember getting into the car, let alone the trip home. It was all a blur to me as I was shell-shocked and lost in trying to process what I had been told by Dr. Deville. I wasn’t just turning into some mutant furry, I was turning into a girl too, and in my stunned state, I honestly wasn’t sure how I should feel about that.

Lucía glanced at the boy out of the corner of her eye while driving. Her attention was mostly on the road ahead, in more ways than one, as she allowed herself a rare, genuine smile. This trip had brought her better news than she had even dared to dream.

Not only was the boy going to become an obvious mutant, but a girl as well, or at least a convincing copy, at least from what the doctor told her. He would never be a real woman, of course, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t still be useful. This wouldn’t affect her long-term goals either since Arthur had no idea, or interest, whether her child was born a boy or a girl. In fact, she could turn this new twist in her favor. It also made her act in the restaurant earlier well worth the brief embarrassment of appearing weak.

She would continue to play the concerned mother and help her new ‘daughter’ to adjust to being female. She could use this opportunity to bond with him, to get him to sympathize with her. When the changes were complete, the boy was likely to be even smaller than he was now at five feet and two inches and shouldn’t prove any sort of danger to real girls with that small size.

He had no truly dangerous powers either since Dr. Deville believed that he was only a low-level Exemplar and internal Energizer. She would need to get him tested eventually, but for now, it was best to isolate him, to get him to depend upon her and look to her for safety. He was already a nervous coward and that would likely get worse when he was smaller and had to worry about men as much as any real girl did. It was a good thing that his loving mother would keep him close and safe from harm.

Once the boy was convincing enough as a girl, she could introduce her daughter to some of the other women in Feminists for Freedom and take ‘her’ to a few meetings as well. Her friends there suspected that she had a child, maybe more than one, but she had been careful so far to not confirm it. She would do so once she had the boy prepared and convincing enough as a girl, that she could tell them that her daughter suffered from social anxiety and hadn’t wanted to be around people, especially after manifesting and while getting used to being a mutant.

The others in Feminists for Freedom could help her to indoctrinate the boy, so long as they didn’t suspect the truth. But who would believe that such a small and timid girl was once a boy? With their help, she could make him see how horrible and evil men truly were, and then it would be child’s play to turn him against Arthur.

Perhaps, with the right conditioning, he could someday even fill the role that the organization had been looking for, a high-profile hero to fight for their ideals. It was something that they had been talking about for weeks now and it had come up again in her brief chat with some of the girls earlier this afternoon. This was something that they really wanted to push toward if they could find the right woman, or girl, who believed in their cause. The boy could become that ‘girl’ if things were handled right.

When she was done, he would willingly expose himself as a mutant and Arthur’s child, and with paternity tests to prove it, the media would eat it up. It could even bring attention to their cause if she could keep the fact that he was a changeling, and wasn’t born female, quiet. Then she would tell her story and take everything that Arthur held dear, just like he had done to her.

To Be Continued