A Second Generation Whateley Academy Adventure

Sprite 2: I Think I'm A Clone Now

by

Amethyst

 

 

Part Two

 

Beck Library – Rooftop
Friday, September 30th, 2016 – 9:20 p.m.

Cold autumn rain fell around me, pelting both me and the stone gargoyle that I was perched upon, but I hardly noticed as I stared blankly at the street below. The gargoyle was covered in bird shit, grime, and who knew what else that might make most people uncomfortable. I barely noticed those details, though, and I didn’t particularly care about them either. My PK shell kept me from feeling the worst of the rain, and at the moment, the situation seemed appropriate.

Why should I care about kneeling in shit when my whole life had become one giant, stinking pile of shit since Blythe had placed me in this clone and killed my old body before my eyes? Did this small discomfort mean anything when compared to everything else that I had gone through? What I was still going through.

After I finished talking with Marie on the phone, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by what she had told me. I needed to think about things, somewhere where I could be alone and unseen while I processed what I just learned. Somewhere that wasn’t my dorm room. So, I propped open my window just wide enough that I could slip outside to leave Hawthorne without being noticed, and flew aimlessly until I reached my current location. It looked like a good place for brooding, and if anyone had reason to do that, it was me.

I had almost gotten used to the idea of being a clone, even if I still had trouble facing that reflection in the mirror, mostly because I could console myself that even with my tiny, fairy-like body, at least I was human when it came down to it. Sure, I was a mutant, but I was a human mutant. Now, not even that much was true.

Now it seemed like I was going from being a sick copy of my former best friend to a sick copy of a mythical creature that I didn’t even believe truly existed yesterday. I was becoming a mutant Fairy. Go straight to what the fuck even is my life; do not pass Go, do not regain your humanity. I had no idea how to even start dealing with this and as I knelt there in the bird shit with the rain coming down around me and stared at the street below, I wondered whether it was even worth trying.

I took a deep breath, turned off my PK shell, and without even really thinking about it, I tucked in my wings and took that long step off the gargoyle. Air rushed around me, and my head was filled with that sudden buzzing that wasn’t quite a headache as I plummeted, uncaring, to the ground below. The impact, when it came, was much like that time that Blythe and I were fooling around in her pool one summer day and I did a belly flop from the low diving board.

There was a sudden slapping pain as I hit the water of a mud puddle with a splash, but nothing more, and not an injury to be had. Well, durability confirmed. “Fuck my life,” I thought bitterly as I laid there face down in the puddle. The water barely half-submerged me, but maybe it would be enough to…

“You know, we do have a pool,” a voice above me suggested helpfully.

I let out a sigh, blowing bubbles in the water in the process, and looked up to see a woman standing there with a sketchpad in her hands. She had dark hair and looked a little bit demonic with two-inch-long black horns emerging from her forehead, yellow slitted eyes, pointed ears, black fingernails that looked almost like claws where she held the sketchpad, and black scales on her forehead and cheeks. It looked like she also had a long black devil's tail.

Shit. That was the Imp, one of the teachers that Emiko had pointed out on my tour. As I hurriedly tried to get to my feet and figure out some way to explain myself, she surprised me by flipping a page in her sketchpad to show 7.5 written on it. I found myself sputtering water as I tried to parse what was going on here.

“A seven point five is pretty generous, I think.  You could have shown a lot more flair in the dive, but I gave style points for the landing, it reminded me of a certain coyote,” she offered with a smile. “Don’t be disappointed, it’s better than what you got from the Russian judge, and I’m sure you’ll improve with practice.”

“I… umm… slipped,” I tried uncertainly, not sure whether to gape at the woman or laugh at her audacity for only giving me a 7.5 when I fell off a building and lived without a single injury. I settled for a nervous laugh as I added, “Good thing I’m so durable and have a PK shell, huh?” I needed to get out of this as soon as possible, preferably without getting either detention or sent to Doyle for a long talk with their mental health team. That ‘slipped’ excuse sounded lame, even to me, especially since I had wings.

"Well, at least you've come down, I have that gargoyle reserved for brooding at nine-thirty," she replied. I was wondering if she took anything seriously when she offered, “Still, there are better methods of self-expression than gargoyle diving. Have you considered art?”

“I… uhh… no, not really,” I stammered as I wiped mud and water off myself as best I could and got back in the air so she wouldn’t be looking down at me.

“Well, consider it. I hope to see you in my class next term, Swan.”  Swan?

“Umm… my codename is actually Sprite,” I said in confusion, wondering if she had me confused with someone else. That would probably be a good thing, but it could also come back to bite me later if I wasn’t honest now.

“Yes, I’ve heard all about you, Swan, and I’ll be keeping an eye on you,” she replied with a nod, her voice carrying a more serious undertone now that gave me chills. “I look forward to having you in my class, but if you ever want to talk about art, or anything else, come find me and we can find a nice gargoyle somewhere. No more diving, though, save that for the pool.”

So, she wasn’t going to give me detention or march me off to Doyle? “Umm… okay… thanks.”

“Now we both have places to be, so I’ll say good night. It’s almost curfew, so off to Hawthorne with you, Swan. I have a brooding appointment to get to.” With that, she started shooing me in the direction of my cottage, and I was frankly still too confused to argue.

I didn’t sleep much that night. At first, while taking a hot shower before lights out to clean the mud off me and warm up, I was mentally beating myself up for being so stupid. Why the hell did I just step off a building (even if it wasn’t a very high one) and just let myself fall like that? Especially where someone could see me.

Now that teacher was probably going to be watching me, even if she didn’t report what happened to the shrink I was supposed to be seeing in the morning. She’d even said as much. How could I be so stupid?! What was I thinking?!

Honestly, I wasn’t thinking at the time. I was in shock and mentally numb from learning about this Fairy stuff. I just wanted my suffering to end. I couldn’t let myself slip like that again. I made a promise to Danielle that I would live, even if only to spite Blythe. The whole reason I agreed to come to this school was to get stronger, so I could someday bring my former friend and her mother to justice for what they did.

Yeah, this Fairy shit was a major blow, one that I still needed time to process, but I couldn’t let it make me miserable or let it be what killed me. If I did that, Blythe would win, and it would probably hurt my family. I hadn’t known them for long, and I wasn’t sure why, but Marie, Danielle, and Leanna cared about me, and they were a far better family than what I grew up with as Aiden. I couldn’t hurt them by giving up and doing something stupid like that again.

Even after I finished berating myself and made that decision, it only seemed to draw my mind back to the new hiccup in my life. I kept trying to think of what this Fairy thing might mean for me going forward, but I had no idea what to expect except for the allergy to synthetics and that I would have to avoid iron. I eventually came to the conclusion that I knew jack shit about Fairies. Were there other weaknesses or abilities that I might have to keep an eye out for? It was a long time before I fell asleep.

The Tunnels - Workshops
Saturday, October 1st, 2016 – 10:40 a.m.

I barely got any sleep, and first thing this morning after breakfast, I had my first appointment with Dr. Bellows. It was what he called a get-to-know-you session. Barring the most recent developments that I learned about last night, it seemed that he had been read into my situation, and he wanted to start by getting to know me and telling me a bit about himself and his experience.

I didn’t make it easy for him since I didn’t want to be there, and it felt like I was wasting an hour of my life. What kind of asshole makes an appointment for first thing on a Saturday morning anyway? I wouldn’t have shown up at all if it wasn’t made clear to me that I didn’t have a choice in the matter. So, I showed up, but I wasn’t required to actually talk to him.

I only became more wary after he told me about himself, making sure that I stayed well out of contact range. He was a goddamn psychic, and I didn’t want anyone poking around in my head. Oh sure, he claimed he wouldn’t do that without my consent, but my mind was the only place where I was still me. I spent the majority of that hour watching him warily and keeping my mouth shut, save for the occasional snarky retorts that I couldn’t hold back.

So, I wasn’t in the best of moods as I followed Polly through the tunnels after my appointment. Peter, or Lab Rat, as he was called on his MID, was most likely to be in his lab or the workshops since it was Saturday, and since he hadn’t been in his lab, we were now checking the latter. The workshops where the various gadgeteers and devisors could be found working on projects or making parts with the various machines there, I guess.

I could practically feel the eyes on us as I followed Polly in search of her twin brother, and sure enough, when I looked, that feeling was confirmed. Every person not currently completely engrossed in their work was watching Polly and me intently. I didn’t really have much time to consider that when we found our target, or at least I assumed he was our target since he looked like a male version of Polly, and upon seeing him, she exclaimed, “Petey!”

The boy with the rat-like GSD looked up from his work and sighed. “Sis, you know that the other gadgeteers and devisors don’t like it when you come to the workshops. I know you don’t mean to do it; you can’t help yourself, but every time you come here, things tend to disappear.”

“Petey, it’s important this time,” Polly protested in a pleading tone. “I promise, we won’t stay long, and I’ll try to control myself and my powers. I just need to introduce you to my new friend. She needs your help.”

Lab Rat sighed again, his eyes not leaving his sister. “Fine, Polly, let’s get out of the workshop then, I’ll follow so I can keep an eye on you, so keep your hands where I can see them. Every time you’re here and something important disappears, I’m the one who gets blamed for it.”

A few minutes later, we were out of the workshops and in one of the side tunnels, where Polly quickly made the introductions. “Vanessa, this is my brother, Peter. Petey, this is my friend, Vanessa, or Sprite. She’s new to the school and… well, as you can see, she probably has even bigger problems with everyday necessities than we do. Do you think your shrink ray can get stuff small enough for her?”

The Devisor looked me over as if working out various problems in his mind before Polly even got to mention them. His large mouse-like ears twitched as he rubbed his chin in thought. “Hmmm… maybe if I make a new one with an upgraded power supply, up the beam intensity, and narrow the confinement emitter…”

“Is that a yes?” I asked since I obviously don’t speak Devisor.

The question seemed to shake him out of his thoughts. “It’s a maybe. You’re much smaller than we are, and there’s a huge difference between shrinking things down to a little less than half scale and roughly one-tenth scale. I’ll need to fabricate new parts and create a new, upgraded version of the devise specifically to scale things down for someone your size. If nothing else, it should be an interesting challenge. Give me a few days, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Once Peter left us to return to the workshops, I found myself asking, “So, what was that all about? Those nerds in the workshops never took their eyes off us, at least the ones who weren’t lost in their own worlds.”

Polly looked away, a worried expression settling upon her features as she looked ready to collapse in on herself. For a moment, she said nothing. When the words finally came, they were hushed and reticent, and she almost choked as she forced them out. “I… I’m a kleptomaniac. I don’t mean to take things; it just happens when something catches my eye. I usually don’t even realize I took something until I find it in a pocket or my pocket dimension later. I try to control it, but it’s like my powers when I’m not focusing on them. I… I’ll understand if you don’t want to be my friend anymore. You wouldn’t be the first…”

I didn’t want to be her friend, but not for the reason she was thinking. It wasn’t her issues that concerned me, it was mine. On the other hand, this did explain why she seemed so desperate for companionship, she was probably looked down on, and not just because she was short. Yeah, I might be an asshole, but I wasn’t about to kick her when she was down because of something she has no control over. That was my greatest mistake, and I wasn’t about to repeat it.

“Those assholes don’t know what they’re missing,” I said cutting her off. I wasn’t about to tell her that I was going to be her best buddy, but I wasn’t going to tell her to take a walk either, especially when she already seemed so hurt. “You’ve been doing your best to help me out since I got here, even though I’ve been a bit of a bitch and tried pushing you away. Anyone would be lucky to call you a friend.”

“R-really?” she asked, wiping at her damp eyes.

“Yeah, so fuck those assholes,” I told her. “You obviously feel bad about it, and you don’t strike me as the type to steal or hurt others on purpose. If you do accidentally end up with something of mine, I'm sure you would return it, right?" 

"Oh, absolutely!" she replied without hesitation as she rapidly nodded her head. “I would never steal from a friend if I could help it, and I always try to return stuff if I remember where I got it.”

“Then I have no problems with you sometimes, accidentally, putting things in safekeeping for me. We misfits need to stick together, don’t we?” I said, doing my best to give her a reassuring smile that I wasn’t really feeling.

I might not be someone who wanted friends, but if she wanted to think I was her friend, then maybe I could handle having lunch with her now and again, like we had been since I arrived. It wouldn’t hurt me and might do her a world of good. She was a fellow outcast, so I could at least watch her back. We would be using each other, that was all. She would be using me to have someone in her corner, and I would be doing the same, and hopefully getting some Fairy-sized necessities out of the deal. It was a simple transaction.

Polly engulfed my tiny body in a hug, and I was suddenly glad for my PK shell and general durability. “You’re the best, Vanessa!”

“No. I ain’t that, never that,” I muttered darkly. I was, in fact, the opposite. I wasn’t sure whether she heard my reply, crushed as I was in her embrace. I let her have the moment and then suggested we go back to my room so I could call Becky to see if she had found someone to help with my hair. All the way back to Hawthorne, I tried not to think of Blythe. She’d said the same thing to me several times before I kicked her to the curb and stabbed her in the back. I was the worst.

Laird Hall – BMA Class
Monday, October 3rd, 2016 – 8:13 a.m.

I managed to survive the weekend and my first day working in maintenance. It was dirty work, and a lot of it was done in tight spaces, but as long as I did what I was told, things seemed to go okay. I feared for my life a few times, though, and it was a good thing that I was small, durable, and had my PK shell. Now, I found myself fearing for my life once again as I looked at my training partner for the day.

There was plenty to fear. Helsing was intimidating-looking before I saw her fight Grande on my first day, and now I knew that she was a damn good fighter too. She was also a member of the Goobers with Huntsman, and even if Polly insisted that she was one of the nice ones, they thought of themselves as monster hunters. Huntsman had made it very clear that he thought of me as one of those monsters, so I was understandably leery about fighting one of his teammates who was actually competent.

“You… uhh… aren’t going to shoot me with that gun, are you?” I asked with a leery glance at said weapon.

“Nah,” she replied with a grin, “I’d probably have better luck with a fly swatter.”

Okay, so we were joking, joking is good. “That was a joke, right?”

I breathed a sigh of relief as she confirmed, “Yeah, it was. Actually, I’ve been looking forward to doing some training with you since you joined the class last week, Sprite. You’re a small, fast, and durable flier, and I don’t often get to train against opponents like that. I can probably help you come up with some ideas on how to turn your size to your advantage in a fight too.”

Helsing was a beast to fight, and she kicked my ass when we weren’t using powers… a lot, though I did get to try a few things I had thought of since watching those videos of Tink. She actually encouraged me to think outside the box when sparring with her, and by the time we were done, I was beginning to enjoy pushing my limits. She was also as good as her word when it came to helping me figure out a fighting style that would work for me.

She suggested that when I couldn’t use my powers for some reason, I keep doing like Tink would and be a nasty and ruthless little gremlin, getting in close where my opponents would have trouble fighting me. She also explained when I should stay out of arm’s reach, while emphasizing to always fight dirty. Another thing she highly recommended was that I keep my head down and slightly forward and hunch my shoulders like a boxer. That way, if and when I get stepped on, it would force me flat, rather than driving me straight down like a nail. Thinking about the videos I had seen of Tink, I realized that she had been doing exactly that, probably to save herself a broken neck.

When I could use my powers, she suggested that I use my small size, flight, and speed to my advantage. I could use hit and run tactics to annoy my opponents by darting around and keep them off balance until I could land a big hit with my PK enhanced strength. I even had a few ideas now on how to help with that in a real fight if I could learn to control my magic and get a piercing or cutting weapon in my size.

We were headed to the changing room after class when I spotted Huntsman glaring in my direction again. I was a bit worried about him, even though he hadn’t tried to pull anything in a few days, which I suspected was because Marie had a talk with either the headmaster or security about him and my new status as an actual Fairy. What if he tried something again and actually got it right for once? Even a broken clock can be right twice a day.

I needed to know more about Fairies so I could protect myself. I couldn’t defend against weaknesses that I had no idea I had. Polly had told me that while Huntsman might be a nutcase, most of the Goobers seemed to actually know about this magic and supernatural stuff, and Helsing seemed okay and hadn’t tried to kill me yet. Maybe she could tell me things that would help keep me safe and learn more about being a Fairy.

“Hey, I was wondering…” I started uncertainly as I flitted alongside her toward the changing room door. “You… umm… seem to know a lot about supernatural creatures and stuff, right? I look like a Fairy now, so I was thinking I should learn more about them, especially if Huntsman keeps dogging me. Is there anything you can tell me about them?”

“Sure, I can help with that,” she offered cheerfully before a distant and absent expression settled upon her face, and her voice took on an almost mechanical succinctness. “The name ‘fairy’ can mean various things and has many different sources. The English fairy derives from the Early Modern English faerie, meaning 'realm of the fays'. Faerie, in turn, derives from the Old French form faierie, a derivation from faie, meaning 'the fates', with the…”

The sudden word salad of her reply came to an end as abruptly as it began as Helsing bit her tongue and winced, shook her head as if to clear it, and then started taking slow, controlled breaths. “I… sorry about that. How about I type up everything and email it to you later?”

O…kay, that was odd, but at least it seemed like she was going to help me. I wasn’t sure how much would actually be useful information, given what I had heard before she stopped herself, but it sounded like she might know some stuff. “Sure, that would be great. Thanks, Helsing,” I told her as we entered the changing room. We exchanged email addresses and then hurried to change clothes so we wouldn’t be late for our next classes.

The email that I got from Helsing late that night was like I imagined a university-level thesis paper would be. There was a lot of very detailed information on Fairies and, by extension, Sidhe as well, since the modern terms seemed to be largely interchangeable. It followed a logical enough order and went into different types and what was known about them, and while I did try to read all of it, I was most interested in what she called ‘the common pixie’. Each variety had its own section divided into 'known', 'likely', 'conjecture', and 'folklore' subsections.

There was stuff on habits, behavior, abilities, and social stuff, but for the most part, those all fell under either conjecture or folklore. The effects of cold iron and the allergy to synthetics were in the ‘known’ section, and while it was nice to have those confirmed, I was already painfully aware of one of those and didn’t want to risk the other. There wasn’t anything practical about living as a fairy, though, at least not that I didn’t already know or couldn’t figure out easily enough. I mean, it wasn’t hard to figure out that we could fly.

At least by going over the folklore, I could probably be prepared for anything else that Huntsman threw my way, which did comfort me a little bit. There was also something in the ‘conjecture’ subsection that I found interesting. Helsing theorized that ‘the common pixie’ had another sense that they used in aerial combat and to avoid predators. The idea was that our antennae worked similarly to those of a bug and allowed us to sense air displacement.

Not only did that give me some idea of what the hell my antennae were there for, but it also would explain those buzzing sensations in my head. Now that I thought of it, those buzzing ‘headaches’ usually didn’t last long, and they happened most often when other people were moving near me, though they had been getting progressively stronger since I started noticing them. If I could learn to make sense of this ‘sense’ and figure out how to determine range, direction, course, and the general size of what was moving and triggering the sense, then it could give me a big advantage in a fight.

That alone gave me a lot to think about as I read through the rest of the information that Helsing had sent me. For instance, under the ‘likely’ category was the fact that Fairies supposedly have a fast metabolism to keep up the energy for flying. I guess that explained why I was eating so much and hungry so often lately, and I guess it made sense since I was flying everywhere and using my powers constantly since I started at Whateley.

A lot of the stuff about other varieties of Fae wasn’t really applicable to me, but I did know one Sidhe, and it would be interesting to see how this stuff applied to Becky as well. I guess no knowledge is ever wasted, and the way my life was going, I never knew when some random knowledge or theory might come in handy. I stayed up much later than I probably should have, committing as much of the stuff I thought was important as I could to memory.

Hawthorne Cottage – Sprite’s room
Tuesday, October 4th, 2016 – 4:06 p.m.

Another day of classes finished; I found myself waiting for Becky so we could start our two-hour magic tutoring session. I don’t know why we were calling it tutoring, though, since she was essentially teaching me from the ground up. I was still having embarrassing hobgoblin issues, so aside from one or two attempts to use magic on the fly, we were mostly focusing on rune magic right now, though making spell slips that someone my size could carry around wasn’t exactly easy with the materials we had available.

A knock on my door signaled Becky’s arrival, so I flew over to the door and flexed my PK to open it as I touched the doorknob. With the door open, I found myself looking at Becky’s smiling face. “Hey, Vanessa. I’ve got good news and bad news for you, which do you want first?”

I was going to assume that that bad news wasn’t actually bad since she was smiling and sickeningly cheerful. She was up to something and probably trying to cheer me up again. She was supposed to just be my tutor, so why was she trying to be my big sister/friend all the time? I wasn’t interested in friends, and I already had two big sisters in Calgary to tell me that I needed to socialize more and let myself have some fun. I got that message loud and clear during Friday night’s phone call, thanks.

“Good news,” I said with a sigh, knowing she wouldn’t let it go until I gave her an answer. Becky was possibly the most persistent person I’ve ever met.

“Good news it is,” she replied cheerily. “No magic lessons today, we’re doing something else. The bad news is you’ll have to deal with… dun dun dun… people who aren’t me!” The last was said with a theatrical gasp and a look of horror on her face.

“Hey, I talk to other people. I do attend classes, you know,” I grumped.

“Where you probably sit in the back and keep quiet, hoping nobody will notice you,” she countered.

She was right, but I wasn’t about to admit that to her. “Look, if this is another attempt to become besties or something, I’m gonna have to say no. I’d rather just do our magic lesson.”

There was another theatrical gasp as Becky put her hand over her heart. “You wound me, Vanessa. You would refuse me when I went through all the trouble of finding someone to fix your hair? I thought you wanted that. Oh well, if you’re not interested, I guess I can have you practice writing spell slips for the next two hours instead.”

Dammit. She had me over a barrel on this. I shouldn’t have confided in her about the hair thing. “Fine,” I grumbled, “Anything to stop seeing that bitch that did this to me in the mirror.” The words had barely left my mouth when I realized my mistake and mentally cursed. “Shit.”

Becky’s eyebrows shot up as her eyes widened, and she said, “What?” She looked thoughtful for a long moment as a dead silence hung over us before letting out a long sigh and speaking again. “Okay. Between that reaction just now and those weird hobgoblins of yours, I think it’s safe to say that something is going on with you, something that’s made you afraid to trust people and…”

She was right, and yet she didn’t know how wrong she was. It wasn’t other people that I didn’t trust… okay, maybe that was slightly true to a point, but the person I trusted the least was myself. I didn’t trust myself not to go back to form and hurt the people who cared about me or whom I let myself care about. Just thinking about what I’d done, and could do again, was like a knife to the heart, and I found myself gasping for air as I thought about Becky finding out what a monster I really was. Maybe Huntsman had it right after all, and I should…

“Hey, stop that, Vanessa,” Becky’s voice cut into my dark thoughts. “Whatever you’re beating yourself up about, stop it right now. Look, I’m not going to make you tell me whatever is going on with you. You don’t need to tell me anything until you’re ready to. If I need to put in the time and effort to earn your trust first, then I’ll do that, because I think we could be good friends, and I want to be your friend and not just some tutor. Let’s just forget about this for now and go get your hair done.”

An awkward silence hovered over us like a dark cloud as I mechanically followed Becky to wherever she was taking me. I wasn’t really paying attention to where we were going until we arrived at Dunn Hall. I hadn’t gone there for anything except my tour with Emiko, and she told me that it housed a lot of the classrooms and workshops for non-standard classes.

The silence was broken as we arrived at a door, and Becky offered, “This is the salon. On Tuesday and Thursday, the students in the cosmetology classes offer inexpensive hairstyling, manicures/pedicures, and makeovers for students. On Saturdays, they do a whole spa day, but that’s a little more expensive. Don’t worry, though, when I told Suave about you, he offered to work on your hair for free.”

That was a relief since I hadn’t brought my wallet along. Even with my PK, bringing something bigger than I was with me everywhere was a pain in the ass and I was glad to be able to go out without needing to lug that or my laptop case along with me. “Wait, we have cosmetology classes? I thought this was a school for mutants, not some sort of trade school.”

“Not everyone has powers that are useful for hero or villain work, and not everyone has the interest either, Vanessa,” she chastised gently. “Like I’ve told you before, I want to be an entertainer. So yeah, in the junior and senior years, there are options for kids who want to have a career doing something other than putting on a cape and tights.”

She did have a point there, I guess. Still, I was a little concerned about having a student working on my hair and asked, “Do I want to know why he’s going to do it for free? This isn’t his first time doing it, is it?”

“Cutting the hair of someone your size, yes, but he’s doing it for free because he’s looking forward to the challenge. He’s got a lot of experience with… full-sized people. Suave is a senior like me, and he’s actually the TA for the hairdressing class and teaches the classes when the teacher, Ms. Rourke, isn’t at Whateley. That is fairly often since she has a salon to run in Berlin and likes to spend at least a couple of days a week there,” Becky informed me before opening the door to the salon.

The faint scent of chemicals hit me first as I followed Becky inside a room with rose colored walls and floor tiles of rose and dark purple in a checkerboard pattern. Just inside, there was a waiting area with comfortable-looking chairs and a coffee table with various magazines to read, and the wall I was facing looked like a proper hair salon. Six modified barber chairs faced a counter with what looked like a sink for each chair and a mirror above. There was plenty of space between chairs, and the counter to either side of the sink and mirror at each workstation was covered with what I assumed were hair products and the tools of their future trade.

I noted a couple of other doors but didn’t pay them much mind since there were a little more than a dozen other students in the room, and they had most of my attention since most of them appeared to be wearing what looked like pink lab coats. Those seemed to be older students, probably juniors and seniors, who were part of the cosmetology program that Becky mentioned.

One of those older students in pink caught sight of us and flounced toward us. He was of average height, looked like he might be part Latino, and had a slim but athletic build and a handsome face that screamed Exemplar, but his most noticeable feature was his hair. It was long, well past shoulder length, looked luxuriously healthy, and was a bright magenta color. After he finished prancing toward us, he enthusiastically kissed Becky on both of her cheeks.

“Becky! How are you, darling?” he asked as he took a step back and placed a hand on his hip as he began to spin a pair of scissors idly on the index finger of his other hand.

“You know me, keeping things hot,” Becky replied with a smile. “I brought you that challenge we were talking about on Saturday. This is Vanessa, the girl I’m tutoring. Vanessa, this is Jordan, though most people here at Whateley just call him Suave.”

Suave practically squealed in excitement. “Oh, I do love a challenge! You’re even smaller than I was expecting, but don’t worry, I’ve been practicing with dolls for the past couple of days. Soon I’ll have you looking fabulous!” He practically sang the last word.

“Umm… hi?” I really wasn’t sure what to say here in this guy’s… presence. I was so stunned that I couldn’t even summon a snarky comment, which was probably for the best. I tried not to have anything against gay people, especially since I was pretty sure I was a lesbian now, not that I could find girls my size to be attracted to, but Jordan was what my dad would have not-so-affectionately called a poof or a fairy. As in, ‘No damn son of mine is gonna be a fairy!’ That was something that he had made abundantly clear when he made me give up music and try out for the football team. Well, it looks like the joke is on you, pops. Trust me, I’d be laughing if I wasn’t the punchline.

Thankfully, Becky seemed to be used to his quirks and had this under control as we followed Suave to one of the workstations. “So, Jordan, like I said before, Vanessa said that her hair is coming in blue at the roots, and she’d like to have it all that color. Most dyes won’t work for her since she has allergies like mine, so I was wondering, how is Kiera coming along on her hair growth potion?”

“Honey, don’t worry, we are going to hook you up,” Suave promised with a limp-wristed gesture toward the chair we were approaching, where a blonde girl was waiting for us. She wasn’t an Exemplar, but she was fairly pretty and looked like she was of average height with a figure on the curvy side of average. In a normal high school, she would probably be considered a hottie.

Before either of them could introduce the blonde, she smiled at Becky and said in a Southern accent, “Ah hear ya brought me a l’il test subject, Becky,” and then her eyes locked on me, “Ain’t you a pretty l’il thang?”

“Vanessa, this is Kiera, or if you prefer using codenames, Lightwing. Kiera, this is Vanessa,” Becky offered, making the introductions.

“Lightwing?” I asked, somewhat off balance and wary from the blonde’s words, and seriously considering flying straight for the exit. “T-test subject? Sorry, but been there, done that with a crazy Devisor. Zero stars. Would not do it again. Maybe I should g…”

At least Kiera looked awkward about the unintended faux pas. She rubbed the back of her head sheepishly as she cut off my possible retreat with an apology. “Ah’m sorry, Hun. Ah didn’t know. My hair growth tonic is still in the developmental stage, but it should work fine for you Fae folk.”

“That’s my bad, I didn’t know either, and I should have explained,” Becky countered with a concerned look in my direction as I realized that I had just slipped up again. “Kiera is a Wizard like you and me, Vanessa. She’s only rated at Wiz 1, so she can’t do any big magic, but she’s very good with creating new potions, and she has one that should work with growing your hair.”

“Yeah, Ah probably wouldn’t even be considered dangerous enough ta need ta be here at Whateley, but there was a l’il incident with H1 when Ah first manifested these,” she said as a pair of wings very similar to my own in appearance appeared at her back, only hers seemed to be made of golden light. Well, that explained the codename. “Ah was able ta fly away, but Liberty is a small Mississippi town, everyone knows everyone, an’ gossip spreads faster than a greased pig at a barbeque. Ah wasn’t safe there anymore an’ Ah ended up here. Anyway, like Ah said, this potion is still in the testin’ phase, but it seems ta work fine for ya Fae folk.”

“Yeah, it’s probably something about Sidhe biology,” Suave contributed thoughtfully. “The potion works fine for Sidhe and Exemplar girls, but baseline humans and other mutants have a slight side effect.”

“Still can’t stop the rapid hair growth in unwanted places, huh?” Becky asked with a chuckle before turning to me. “I was one of the people who tested it for Kiera, and I was never so glad to be Sidhe as I was when I saw the results some of the other girls were getting. You’re Sidhe like me, and an Exemplar, so you shouldn’t have any problems, Vanessa.”

Except I wasn’t an Exemplar, that was just my cover story. If Marie was right, though, I was a Fairy, so at least Sidhe adjacent. Fuck it, whatever. What was the worst that could happen? I get hairy, and people start thinking I’m a guy again? “Let’s do this,” I said.

Kiera, who had been looking a bit depressed at the mention of the potion’s side effects, immediately cheered up and gestured to the workstation in front of us, where a little wooden doll chair awaited me on top of a stack of books. Once I was seated, she took an eye dropper and extracted some pink liquid out of a larger bottle, warning me, “Ah’m gonna have ta guess the dosage based on your body size, but this should be ‘bout right. Bottoms up, Hun.”

Before I could overthink it, I took the eyedropper from her and downed the contents. Wait, I was supposed to drink it, right? That’s usually what ‘bottoms up’ means. Thankfully, it seemed I was right since nobody made a move to stop me. It even tasted nice, kind of sweet with a faint cherry flavor.

Over the next half hour, I sat there as my hair rapidly grew out under Kiera’s watchful eyes. Becky went to go wait and read a magazine, but promised to stay in the salon in case I needed her, while Suave swished from chair to chair to check the work of other students who were styling hair or giving manicures or pedicures. My scalp and antennae were itchy the whole time, but Kiera had told me that itchiness in the scalp was normal and to tell her when it stopped.

While we were waiting for my hair to grow out and the potion to wear off, Kiera chattered away like we were the best of friends, but I guess that was normal for a hairdresser. She told me all about how she and her boyfriend planned to open a salon together once she graduated at the end of the next school year, and that she was trying to come up with a line of magical potions and salves for hair, skin, and nail care to help their business. I guess that her boyfriend was some sort of gadgeteer who made his own blends of shampoos and conditioners, as well as a line of various specialized tools for hairdressers.

When she mentioned this mysterious boyfriend’s name, I did a double-take as I looked over at Suave. “He’s straight?! I mean… umm… he…”

Once she finished laughing, Kiera replied, “Straight as an arrow, an’ just as long, Hun. Believe me, Ah know.” Through the mirror, I could see this distant, dreamy look in her eyes. “Don’t let his l’il act fool ya none. He just figures that since he loves playin’ with folks’ hair an’ has bright pink hair himself, he might as well lean into the stereotype an’ give folks what they expect.” I was still sitting there, stunned, when my scalp finally stopped itching.

One thing that neither of us had expected was for the short, chitinous hairs on my antennae to rapidly grow and fall out over and over until the itching finally stopped. I had quite the mess of shed antennae hairs on the little silk apron they’d prepared for me to wear by that time, but my antennae were now completely blue, if a somewhat lighter shade than my hair. That hair was now long enough that it was pooling around the base of my chair. Considering that there hadn’t been any itchiness or hair growth anywhere besides my head, I guessed that we could call this a success.

Then, Kiera turned me over to her boyfriend, who was eagerly waiting to cut my newly grown hair. Suave tooled up with some magnification glasses, and a weird-looking comb and a pair of scissors that looked custom-made for working on the hair of someone my size. Still, with those glasses and the tools, he looked like some sort of mad scientist, and I was a little concerned. “Umm… careful with the antennae, please. I kinda need those.”

“Of course, darling,” he said with an enthusiastic grin. “So, what sort of style can I interest you in today? Maybe a pixie cut?”

“I dunno, would you like to be a permanent soprano? Because I’m not afraid to climb up your pantleg and punch the fuck outta your junk until you are, and I’m pretty sure your girlfriend is happy with it the way that it is,” I shot back.

“Okay, maybe that suggestion was a bit too on the nose,” he conceded after a barely noticeable wince.

“Just, whatever, something easy to take care of that isn’t a pixie cut,” I told him.

Suave looked thoughtful for a moment before nodding and smiling, “I have just the thing in mind, darling. Now let me work my magic.”

The magenta-haired Exemplar worked quickly but carefully after cutting off a good portion of the now obscene length of my hair. He paid careful attention to detail and to avoiding snipping my antennae or ears, and so it was almost time for dinner by the time he was finished with me. I was pretty happy with his work, though, especially since he was doing it for free. In the end, I left the salon with my new blue hair in a layered cut, parted on the right side, and a little past shoulder length. It looked nice and a little wild, so I was sure to thank both Suave and Lightwing profusely as Becky and I left the salon to get dinner at Crystal Hall.

Crystal Hall
Friday, October 7th, 2016 – Lunch

In the week and change since I had started school at Whateley, my life started to settle into a pattern. Polly started joining me for breakfast before we started the day with BMA, then classes until lunch, where Polly and sometimes her twin brother, Peter, would try to keep me company again. Then it was back to classes again, followed by my magic studies with Becky, after which she would accompany me to Crystal Hall for dinner. Usually, after that, I was able to go back to my room to do homework and was thankfully left alone.

So, when I arrived at Crystal Hall for lunch, I was unsurprised to see the rat twins waiting for me at the entrance. Today, though, they both seemed to be excited about something. It wasn’t until we were all at our table and about to eat that I found out what had them so happy.

I regarded my very small piece of fish and salad distastefully as I grumped, “I would fucking kill to be able to eat a cheeseburger right now. Being vegetarian sucks, and do you realize how hard it is to eat stuff without silverware and not make a mess? Thank fucking God I didn’t opt for salad dressing this time, and forget soup.” It was not the first time this week that I had made such complaints, so the twins were probably getting used to it by now.

“Here, why don’t you try these?” Peter suggested as his hand loomed over me for a moment on the way to my tray, holding something between his fingers. A tiny bundle, wrapped in what looked like a little paper napkin, clattered onto the tray, and when I unwrapped it, I was stunned to see a knife, fork, and spoon. That wasn’t the most shocking part, though. The kicker was that they were perfectly sized for me. “Wha… how?” I managed to sputter.

“He finished it!” Polly squealed, barely able to sit still in her chair.

Peter winced at his sister’s volume, but grinned as he confirmed, “I finished the new version of my devise to shrink things down to your size last night, and we tested it on a few things, including those utensils and the napkin. So, is the size okay? They’re not too big or too small?”

I took the fork and knife, holding them in my hands and testing the weight and feel. “They’re… perfect. I… thanks,” I awkwardly mumbled.

“Well, now that we know the devise is stable and scaling things properly, it’s all yours. You can either pick it up at my lab before dinner, or I can drop it off at your dorm room sometime before curfew. If you come to pick it up, you might want to bring along someone to carry it for you,” he advised.

I was barely paying attention to what he was saying as tears stung my eyes. What the hell was I getting so emotional over anyway? It was just some fucking cutlery. Something so simple… something that I hadn’t been able to even dream of using normally since Blythe did this to me a month ago. Had it really only been that long? It seemed like it was longer somehow, but at the same time, sometimes it felt like it all started just yesterday.

I was still choked up as I tried to speak. “I… thanks again, I’ll be with Becky before dinner anyway, so I can get her to give me a hand. I need to ask… why… why would you do this for me? What do I owe you for this?” He had to want something for this, right? Nobody just does things like this for a stranger out of the goodness of their heart.

“You don’t owe me anything, I did this for the challenge, because my sister asked me to, and because you need it,” Peter told me candidly. “Polly and I know what it’s like to be small people in a big world, and you have it even worse than we do, so I couldn’t just let you suffer while I can do something to help you like I did for us. Besides, Polly doesn’t have a lot of friends; most people don’t see past the stealing and don’t realize that she doesn’t have any control over it. You’ve been sticking with her though, and I’m the big brother, I have to look after my little sister and her friends.”

Polly broke the seriousness of the moment by shouting, “Two minutes!  You’re only older by two minutes, Petey!”

“Still older, and that makes you the little sister,” he countered with a smirk at his twin as he crossed his arms over his chest as if proud to lord that fact over her. Then he turned his attention back to me. “A quick warning, Vanessa. The devise can shrink a lot of stuff you might need for everyday stuff, but it can’t do anything complex like living organisms, really dense metals, electronic devices, or machinery with a lot of moving parts.”

“What about clothes or packaged stuff, like… toilet paper and stuff like that?” I asked, my face bright red as I thought about how I never wanted to use the tips of cotton swabs for my period again.

Peter looked thoughtful for a moment before nodding. “Clothes would work if you’re not picky about the fit, but since you said you need them made from natural materials, you’re probably better off getting clothes through Rogers’ Boutique in town. The other stuff shouldn’t be a problem, and you should be able to shrink things in blocks easily enough. Just make sure when you lock onto the items that there isn’t anything there you don’t want shrunk. I’ll show you how to use it when you come to pick it up.”

Fox Hall
Friday, October 7th, 2016 – After Dinner

Fox Hall was absolutely massive, and I mean for a regular-sized person, not just tiny Fairies like me. When I was told it was the school bookstore, I was expecting maybe books, school supplies, and school uniforms, but this place was huge, and it looked like they had everything a student might need. Hell, I could have bought clothes here if they were made from natural materials and had space for my wings.

Both fortunately and unfortunately, they had practically everything that I needed for self-care. Fortunately, because I wouldn’t have to leave the school to get the important daily stuff that had been either tricky or downright impossible for me to use for the past month. Unfortunately, because I needed, like everything, and that was going to most likely put a serious dent in what little money I had saved up.

“Where do you want to start, Vanessa?” Becky asked as she grabbed a shopping cart. After helping me get the shrink ray to my room, she convinced me to come here to get what I needed while we were eating dinner and offered to help with bringing whatever we got back to my dorm room.

“The essentials, I guess,” I replied uncertainly. I wasn’t even sure what the essentials were. What actually makes something essential or not?

I was used to having everything I wanted or needed provided for me, and for the past month, getting anything more than roughly made clothes in my size and that didn’t cause an allergic reaction was almost a luxury. I knew that Marie and my new sisters were doing their best, what with the clothes Leanna made me and the little cabinet-house they were working on making and furnishing for me, but some things were just impossible to get for someone my size… unless you have a shrink ray. So, not only was I not sure what to get, I wasn’t sure what would be a good deal for what I did need.

Since we were in a bit of a rush, I let my tutor take the lead, and we bypassed the makeup section. I wasn’t interested in that stuff, even if people could notice I was wearing it at my size. We went straight to the health and beauty section where we picked up a hairbrush, comb, toothbrush, deodorant, a loofah sponge, and some small bottles of body wash, shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, tampons, and panty liners, toilet tissue, and also a nail care kit that Becky suggested.

I already had some tiny bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash that I had kept from the hotel in Boston, but there wasn’t much left, and that stuff was crap. Becky figured that I should rinse the bottles out and refill them with better quality stuff we bought there, since the smaller hotel bottles were easier for me to use and more portable. The shampoo, conditioner, and body wash were the same herbal blends that Becky usually bought for herself, and they would last me a long time if I didn’t shrink the bottles like the other stuff.

The toothpaste we got me was one of those smaller tubes for travel, and I didn’t plan to shrink that either, so I could get more bang for my buck. As for the deodorant, I would be keeping that full-sized as well to save money in the long run, and bought an ice cream scoop and a small and shallow plastic container for crafts that was about the same size as the scoop. Those I would shrink and use to portion out the deodorant in more manageable amounts for my size.

We also got some extra cutlery, a few dishes, and bedding for me, like proper cotton sheets and a pillowcase, a pillow, and a terrycloth bathrobe with a couple of towels and washcloths of the same material. I touched those first to make sure they were all made from cotton and weren’t going to cause an allergic reaction. They were fine, though, unless you count all this stuff costing me a large chunk of the airfare that I had gotten refunded. Still, I didn’t need to dip into my meager savings or allowance to buy all this stuff, so I was going to call that a win. I still needed to increase my wardrobe after all.

Becky helped me to get all the stuff back to my dorm, and once we separated all the shampoo, toothpaste, and stuff, we used the shrink ray devise to shrink it all down to my size, making sure to follow the instructions that Lab Rat had given me. The shrink ray looked like some doomsday weapon from a fifties sci-fi movie and was twice as big as the little cabin on my desk, but it was easy to use and did what it was supposed to do. I really needed to find a way to thank Lab Rat; what he had done was life-changing for me, and I didn’t like feeling like I owed him. It was bad enough that I felt like I owed Becky for everything she had done since I arrived.

Crystal Hall
Sunday, October 16th, 2016 – 1:30 pm

I headed into Crystal Hall, glad that the week was almost over. Lunch rush was over, but that was fine because I just wanted to eat my lunch, preferably alone, and then go back to my dorm room to avoid the outside world in general. Far too much had happened this week, and while you could say it had its ups and downs, there were far more downs, and I was hard-pressed to think of any ups whatsoever.

On Monday, I got summoned for powers testing. I guess the school does its own testing, and they’re supposedly more precise than other testing methods, so I got put through the wringer again to see what I was made of. Fairy DNA, apparently, but more on that later. I’m still classified as an Exemplar2 and PK 3, but they moved my Wizard rating up from 2 to 3.

You’d think that would be a good thing, right? More powerful than I thought and all that, but it was more frustrating than anything because it just brought to light with people other than Becky that I was still having massive hobgoblin issues. Every time the testers asked me to try a spell that wasn’t rune-based, it blew up in my face with a horde of hobgoblins. I might have been able to handle that if it was just random shit appearing, but no, all those little bastards were tailor-made to taunt me, poking at my most glaring weaknesses and insecurities.

They also insisted on testing my new ability to sense air displacement and adding it to my MID as one of my techniques. Sure, why don’t we just tell those fuckers at the MCO everything I can do so they can plot my demise easier. Because apparently, since my ‘death’ was announced and I came here, dear ole dad has gotten the MCO and the anti-mutant groups in Calgary in a tizzy. Marie and Danielle told me about it during our regular Friday night call, and they said things were starting to get tense at home.

And what followed the fun of being tested again? I got told that they wanted me to go to Doyle for some tests to follow up on the information sent to them by the hospital in Calgary. They wanted to poke and prod me, probably to make sure I wasn’t going to self-destruct or something, and do some follow-up DNA tests to see where I was at genetically speaking. They got back to me on Friday with the results, and it’s official, I’m a mutant Fairy now.

That wasn’t the worst of it, though; the worst day by far was yesterday. It started with my weekly session with Dr. Bellows, who was apparently in the loop about my new species status and wanted to talk about how that made me feel. Usually, I would just sit there quietly and wait for the session to be over, but I was in a pissy mood and the snark was strong with me that morning, so I let him have it with both barrels and said some things I regret. Not because they might have hurt him, but because I allowed myself to fall into his damn trap, and now he was going to start thinking he was making progress with me.

Then, when I was heading to Crystal Hall, that asshole Huntsman threw a fucking horseshoe at me while I wasn’t looking. It would have hit me on the head if I hadn’t felt the air displacement, and I just barely got my PK field up in time and landed in a mud puddle. I had to go back to my dorm room to change into one of my very few changes of clothes and dry off before I could go eat my lunch.

The hellish highlight of the week, though, that happened after dinner last night while I was on my way back to my dorm. I was still trying to shake off my foul mood from my session with Dr. Bellows earlier that morning and the horseshoe incident when I saw a guy and a girl making out. That was when I was hit by the thought, “Why can’t that be me?”

Not the girl, the guy, but at this point, I might just take being the girl if it meant being a normal-sized person again. Honestly, what could I expect from my life like this? Relationships? Who was going to be interested in dating a Fairy? People like those kissing idiots could have relationships, but not me.

They could find clothes that fit at the store, go to a restaurant and eat what they want, use a phone or computer that wasn’t bigger than they were, and open a goddam door without having to resort to superpowers. They didn’t have to worry about being stepped on, chased by household pets who could eat them in one bite, or having to ride in a goddamn pet carrier to get on a plane. What did I do to deserve this?!

“You know what you did,” I told myself bitterly. “It’s the same damn reason you can never have what they have. Because you could have had that, you had a girl who was in love with you, but you had to stab her in the back and drive her to insanity.”

In my heart, I knew that it wasn’t that black and white. Blythe had shown signs of obsession and unhinged behavior before I tried to push her away for her own good. I had gone too far, and while I probably didn’t deserve what she did to me, I had my share of blame for her current state and mine, but it wasn’t all my fault. That wasn’t the part of me that was doing the thinking right then, though.

I just saw what I couldn’t have, what I would probably never have again, and I could only blame myself. It was like a knife to my heart, but instead of having the decency to stab through and be done with it, those dark thoughts, self-accusations, and bitter truths slashed away again and again, intent on repetitious agony rather than putting me out of my misery. I couldn’t breathe and my chest burned with sorrow, rage, regret, and shame until I turned away from the two lovers and fled for my dorm room as swiftly as my wings would carry me.

I managed to hold it in until I got inside my room and then dove for the pillow on my bed. Not the bed in my little cabin, but the big bed, the one meant for normal-sized people who could have normal lives. I let myself sink as deeply into that pillow as I could and screamed and cried into it, beating it with my tiny fists over and over until I was hoarse, wore myself out, and eventually cried myself to sleep.

Yeah, not my best night, and now I was finally braving outside again to get lunch at Crystal Hall. I hadn’t eaten breakfast, and I called my work study to tell them I was feeling sick today. I just didn’t want to get out of bed, and it was much easier to wallow in misery there. Halfway through picking at my meal, I wondered why I had bothered coming to eat at all. I wasn’t hungry, at least not for something I could actually eat, and I’d already filled up on misery.

There was one thing I wanted that I could have, though. I’d seen the blue girl and those other kids selling those fancy chocolate bars for most of the week. Don’t girls usually drown their sorrows in chocolate when they’re depressed? Well, I’m a girl now, so why shouldn’t I do that too? Taking the folded bill I had brought with me for this exact purpose, I got in the lineup for the chocolate.

It seemed like this stuff was getting popular; there was a pretty long line, so it was quite some time before I made my way to the front of it. The blue girl kind of stared at me for a second and then shook her head, as if trying to determine whether she was seeing things, but after a moment, she smiled and asked, “Would you like to buy some chocolate?”

“No, I’m here to get you ready for the ball.” The snark escaped before I could stop myself, and I took a calming breath before trying again. “Yes, please.”

“Okay, we have four different flavors and they’re fifteen dollars a bar. Would you like milk chocolate, hazelnut, chocolate-coffee, or chocolate-chili?”

“Milk chocolate, please,” I told her after thinking about it for a moment and handing over the twenty. “And… keep the change.” It was as close to an apology for the sarcasm that I could give for the moment, and besides, it wasn’t like I had anywhere to put a five-dollar bill right now.

“Thank you very much! Here you go,” she replied, smiling as she held out the chocolate and took my cash.

I guess that meant I was forgiven. Grasping the chocolate bar that was bigger than I was with my PK and dragging it along behind me in my wake, I flew toward the exit. Intent on getting my loot home, and not paying much attention, I smacked right into someone else leaving the geodesic dome that served as a cafeteria.

He had a lean and somewhat athletic build, a kind of androgynous face, and dark hair with a single forelock that was platinum blond. He looked vaguely sad, too. No, that wasn’t right, he radiated a dourness that only people who were on a first-name basis with Misery ever had, like he had seen the worst the world could throw at him and was still standing because there was nothing else he could do. I knew that look, I saw it every day in the mirror.

I was about to apologize when I saw recognition in his eyes, and it was like he was a moment away from cracking a smile, but it was mislaid somewhere between his brain and his mouth. Instead, the word “Sprite” escaped his lips.

That made me realize that I knew this guy; that hair was pretty distinctive, even at this school. He was the guy I met on my first day, the one who started school that same day, didn’t bat an eye at my strange story, and offered to help me get my stuff to my dorm room before Emiko took over. I was pretty sure he had a name too; it was androgynous, like his face. I delved through my memories, trying to place his name, but it was a moment before I came up with it, and things were starting to get awkward.

“Hey, Shannon, I haven’t seen you around since our first day. How have you been settling in?” I asked, trying to be polite because he’d seemed like a good guy when we first met.

“Fine, you?” he replied with a shrug. Good guy, but way too serious, and this was me saying that.

“You know, the usual,” I offered quietly with a dismissive wave. “Things have been kinda crazy and sucked ass in equal measure. I’m being taught magic by a fantasy elf, I have a monster hunter trying to kill me; a mad scientist who looks like a rat gave me a shrink ray after his twin sister, who also looks like a rat and happens to be a kleptomaniac, introduced us; and I found out I’m not mutant who happens to look like a fairy but turning into a fucking honest-to-God real Fairy who happens to be a mutant. You know, that old chestnut.”

“I’ve been mostly keeping to myself,” Shannon countered as if this shit didn’t faze him at all, though I did notice a slight rise in his eyebrows as the Fairy bit seemed to catch his interest. What, was this guy training to be the straight man for chaos incarnate?

I was about to try to end the encounter and go back to my room to wallow in misery, but then I figured, doesn’t misery love company? Shannon was probably the most miserable person I had ever met, so if anyone could use a fr… person (almost used the f-word there) to hang out with and cheer him up, it was him. Besides, this chocolate bar was bigger than I was; there was no way I was going to eat it all by myself.

“So…” I started uncertainly, “I’m miserable, you’re miserable, and I have this giant chocolate bar from the Blue Girl Group. Do you want to go hang out somewhere and drown our sorrows in chocolate?”

That chocolate was the best damn thing I had ever eaten, and keep in mind that I grew up going to the best restaurants and we had a personal chef at home. I gave three-quarters of it to Shannon and kept the rest for myself. Even just a quarter of it was going to be enough to last me a week, even if I snacked on it constantly, which I was. It was just too tempting, and that night I totally pigged out on it after dinner too. Maybe girls were right about eating chocolate when you’re depressed; this stuff was the bomb, and it really was cheering me up.

In fact, over the next couple of days, I was having a little bit of chocolate after lunch, and after dinner, I was constantly snacking on it while doing my homework and stuff after dinner as well. I really needed to figure out how I could start carrying snacks around with me. This increased metabolism was killing me.

I was glad to have that chocolate to comfort me because over the next couple of days, my breasts were getting kind of sore and tender. I thought at first that I was going through a growth spurt since I was a growing Fairy and had been told to expect this girl puberty stuff. It was just another thing to blame myself and Blythe for. Stupid Fairy girl body, and its weird growth spurts.

By Monday night, I could swear they had gone up by at least a cup size in the past day, not that I had a way to reliably measure that at my size. Before, they had been barely a B cup, thankfully fairly small, barely noticeable, and not getting in my way or making things awkward. Now, when I looked in the mirror, they were a lot more obvious and had noticeably more weight to them. I was not a happy camper and drowned my sorrows in chocolate.

Laird Hall
Tuesday, October 18th, 2016 – 8:52 a.m.

This morning, I discovered that I wasn’t the only person showing considerable growth in my chest. And it was considerable, since my breasts had seemingly gotten even bigger overnight, and it felt like I was carrying a pair of Fairy-sized volleyballs around on my chest. In the changing room before BMA class, I noticed that Polly and a few other girls in class looked noticeably bigger up top as well, including Grande, who was frankly enormous and should probably register those things as deadly weapons. When we started class, several of the guys were conspicuously absent.

Practicing martial arts and sparring like this was torture. Yesterday had been bad, but this was infinitely worse, especially since I had nothing to support the melons on my chest. I really needed to get permission to go to that clothing boutique I was told about in town to get some proper clothes and undergarments. I couldn’t keep switching between my two uniforms and a pair of roughly made silk dresses all the time, and now it was painfully obvious that I needed some practical undergarments.

As we were changing after class, the assistant headmaster made an announcement about students experiencing breast growth, and basically, they had no clue what was going on, but it was happening all over the school. He asked us all to go about our day ‘normally’ and claimed that they would keep us updated. There was a moment of silence as quite a few of the girls who didn’t seem to have grown any tried to subtly look around to see who had.

“Well, that was fucking helpful,” I snarked loud enough for those around me to hear. “Gee, thanks for keeping us abreast of the situation.”

“Did you seriously just use a boob pun in this situation?” Polly asked, glancing down at her noticeably larger chest.

“Have you seen these things? I think I’m allowed,” I snapped back, gesturing to my breasts. I had a sinking feeling that today was going to suck. Maybe I should slip back to my room for some chocolate to cheer me up. At the moment, I didn’t really care if I was late for Power Theory.

Schuster Assembly Hall
Tuesday, October 18th, 2016 – Late Morning

“I feel like I’m in a fucking pandemic themed porno and they’re about to tell us all to disrobe,” I grumbled as I looked around me. All students showing signs of breast growth were asked to gather here, and it was quite the sight. Most of the girls here had some truly massive mammaries, and there were a lot more guys than I ever would have thought possible, most of them wearing baggy shirts and slouched over in an attempt to hide their new assets. The people who had gathered us here basically repeated that they had no clue what was causing this and wanted to discuss the medical staff’s concerns about future complications.

I spotted Emiko with a redheaded guy who looked vaguely like a goblin. Emiko was probably here to support her boyfriend since she was still flat as a board. Hell, her boyfriend seemed to have bigger breasts than she did, and he was probably only a B cup. I figured it was best not to bother them, especially after seeing the UV band on the guy; I didn’t want to accidentally snark my way into a fight. I had enough problems already.

Shannon was here as well and, at the moment, he looked like he gave zero fucks about what was going on. I flitted over to him while the other boys in the room were screaming bloody murder over the suggestion that they get fitted for bras. “I fucking wish they could find a bra in my size right now,” I thought bitterly. Luckily for Shannon, his breasts didn’t look too big. Sure, they were noticeable, but they weren’t huge or anything.

“So, you think these assholes in charge have any clue what the fuck is going on?” I asked innocently as I approached.

“I doubt it, they probably couldn’t find their own faces in a mirror,” he shot back after a brief glance at my minuscule, massive melons. Well, he could have been just looking in my general direction; it’s hard to tell sometimes when you’re as small as I am. “If they had a clue about the cause, or what to do about it, we wouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah, I thought as much,” I agreed. “At least you don’t have it too bad, they’re barely noticeable. What do you say we escape? I’ll punch you in the tit and if anyone asks, we can just say you got hit by the boob fairy. You won’t even be lying.” The last was said with a glance down at my chest.

“I’m not saying that,” the spoilsport countered.

Doyle Medical Center
Wednesday, October 19th, 2016 – Early Evening

The damn chocolate was to blame, Devisor chocolate, and now here I was, under observation and waiting for some kind of prognosis. A woman in a lab coat entered the room, and she was looking pretty tired and frazzled, but I guess that she had a lot of patients to see right now. “Hello, Vanessa, I’m Dr. Gutierrez, and I’d like to discuss treatment options with you.”

“Wonderful, just the words I always love hearing, treatment options,” I grumbled.

The doctor didn’t notice my complaining as she started her spiel. “You’re a unique case, your fast metabolism is a positive in this case because you are metabolizing the chocolate faster than anyone but the energizers. We’re seeing some reduction in your breast size, but not a significant amount. At this rate, your breasts will likely still remain quite a bit larger than they used to be. However, there is an antidote, a devisor drug that we’ve been using and seeing some success with and…”

“Have you read my fucking file at all?! My body was created by a fucking Devisor, who booby trapped my DNA, and your solution is to give me a devisor drug?!” I snapped as my heart raced in terror, my hands trembling from it, and fury burned in my chest. Even if I wasn’t a Fairy instead of a human now, using something made by another Devisor to screw with my body chemistry had all the markings for a terrible idea. Fucking Devisors! Hell, I was probably lucky that the chocolate didn’t kill me since that was apparently Devisor-made too. “Fuck that! There is no way I’m going along with this shit!”

“Vanessa, please, calm down. Because of your size, your options for treatment are very limited. For most of those affected, breast reduction surgery would be an option, but you’re just too small and…”

“Then I guess we’re done here,” I retorted, probably loud enough for half the hospital to hear, “because there is no way in hell that I’m going to let anyone mess with my body with something made by a fucking Devisor! Take your antidote and shove it up your ass!” I flew off the bed and out of the room, ignoring her protests.

Hawthorne Cottage - Sprite’s Room
Wednesday, October 26th, 2016 – 4:35 p.m.

I did a lot of moping after the chocolate incident. My breasts did deflate a little over the next day or two, but they were still much bigger than they used to be. I had gone from what would probably barely be a B cup to a D cup, and there was no going back. Polly, who seemed happy with her chocolate-induced growth spurt, tried to cheer me up, as did Peter and Becky, but I wasn’t in the mood for it and spent a lot of my free time with Shannon.

Shannon was worse off than me from that whole incident and I thought that bitching about it together might help us both. His breasts weren’t very big, maybe a B cup, but it looked like he wouldn’t be getting rid of the growths either. He had some weird reaction to the chocolate that nobody else did, and now he was essentially going through a female puberty instead of a male one. So, yeah, we both had a lot to bitch about.

Now, though, I was sitting on my bed and about to start my magic lesson with Becky. We were starting a little later than usual because she had taken me to Fox Hall to get some spell slips and other things she thought I would need for my magic studies. Seriously, that store has everything. She had run out of the spell slips she provided me with before, and thought it would be a good time for me to get some supplies of my own to shrink down to be usable for someone my size, or not in the case of the special inks which were fucking expensive.

While we were out, she also told me that she would be taking me on another excursion on Saturday. She had gotten permission to take me into Dunwich that day to solve my clothing dilemma, which was more pressing than ever now that I had breasts that badly needed support. She said that Cecilia Rogers, who owned the boutique in town, would be able to make everything I might need, even for someone as small as me with wings to worry about. I was both dreading and looking forward to the trip.

“Okay, Vanessa, let’s start with trying some on-the-fly spells without runes or spell slips. We haven’t done that in a while,” Becky suggested. I groaned, just knowing that this was going to go badly, but she did her best to encourage me. “You can do it, just focus your will on what you want to happen and let the spell fly. Don’t think of anything else but the spell. Try the light spell again, that one should be easy, and you should have plenty of essence for it.”

I focused on creating a ball of pink light as I drew on the essence inside me. No big surprise, I summoned hobgoblins again, this time eight fairies who all looked somewhat like me and had disturbingly enormous tits. Before either of us could react, they all swooped down to… hug me? Suddenly, I was being suffocated by an ocean of fleshy mounds closing in on me, and I couldn’t breathe. Vaguely, I could hear Becky saying something in the background, but I couldn’t hear well or make sense of it in my current situation. All I could hear was a chorus of chirpy, happy voices chanting. “One of us… one of us…”

“One of us…” It was my own voice mumbling those words as I came to. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been blacked out, but it probably wasn’t too long since Becky was trying to gently shake me awake with a pair of fingers. I gasped, filling my tiny lungs with air, and sat bolt upright to find that Becky was looking at me in concern.

Silence loomed between us for a long, awkward moment before the ginger-haired Sidhe gently said, “Vanessa, I think we need to talk. I’ve kept quiet about this until now because I was hoping that you might come to see me as a friend and open up on your own, but whatever this issue is, it’s seriously hampering your ability to use magic, and it obviously upsets you. As your friend, even if you don’t see me that way yet, I’m getting worried about you.”

“I can’t… I…” My words failed me as I looked away guiltily. She had been doing so much for me and had put up with my bullshit for a month now. For some reason that I couldn’t conceive of, she seemed to care about me, and no amount of trying to push her away seemed to change that. And these hobgoblins kept making things so fucking awkward, like every time it happened, I was accidentally baring my soul to her.

“Maybe I should just tell her,” I thought. It might be nice to get some of this stuff off my now ginormous chest, and I wasn’t going to talk to my shrink about this stuff. Besides, he probably already knew everything from my file. Best case scenario, she would see what a monster I truly am, realize that being around me would only hurt her in the long run, and would give up this delusion that we could ever be friends, or that I even deserved friends.

So, I told her. I told Becky everything. I told her about my awful parents and my life before as Aiden. I told her how I had betrayed my best friend, and how I had the best intentions, but it all blew up in my face. Then I told her about what Blythe and her mother had done to me: the kidnapping, transferring my mind into a clone of Blythe, treating me like some pet, and how I had eventually escaped thanks to the Cowtown Heroes. I even told her about the suicide attempts, my booby-trapped DNA, and how I was a Fairy mutant now instead of a human one.

By the end I could barely get the words out; my throat choked with emotion, my heart tightening in my chest, and my cheeks wet with tears from talking about things that were best left in the past. Still, I tried to tell the story impartially, with hindsight as my guide, but I just knew she would see me as the horrible person that I was. She would see that I deserved this fate, and to be alone.

So, I was surprised when she picked me up and held me to her chest in something like a hug. “You’ve suffered so much,” she said quietly as she held me to her chest. “You’ll get through this, I’ll help you. That’s what friends are for.”

That Saturday, Becky took me into Dunwich to Rogers’ Boutique after my appointment with Dr. Bellows to help me get some clothes that fit and which were made from cotton or silk, which wouldn’t cause an allergic reaction, including the extra school uniforms that the school paid for. Now I would have options, and proper undergarments, though most of my tops and bras were halter style to allow for my wings.

The clothes cost as much as I feared, but fortunately, I didn’t have to dig into my allowance or savings because Marie put some money in my account to cover the cost. She said that clothes were a necessity, and her responsibility as my adoptive mother. It also helped that I was getting some money from Venus. Inc for agreeing to be in their girls with GSD calendar. I was reluctant, but the money was good and there were benefits.

Miss Rogers also promised that she would have at least a few things ready for me later that afternoon to tide me over, and that the remainder would be delivered to my dorm room at Hawthorne in a few days. She said that she would prioritize the undergarments and the costume I had requested for Halloween. After she gave us a time to come back to pick up what she could finish for me today, Becky showed me around town a bit and took me to a pizza place for a late lunch, where we ordered a small vegetarian to share since I wouldn’t eat much at my size, even with my increased metabolism.

In the few days since I had opened up to her about everything, Becky started spending more time with me than before, trying to draw me out of my shell, I guess. She continued that while we waited for and then ate our pizza. She talked about her life and interests, her desire to be an entertainer, and her Elemental Dance Club, which she was still hoping I would join one day. She was extremely passionate about fire dancing and wanted to put on an amazing spectacle with her club before the school year was over.  

We talked about my life and interests too. I told her a little more about my adoptive mother, Marie, and my two new sisters, Leanna and Danielle, though to be fair, I hadn’t really known any of them for very long. I had briefly told her about how Dad had made me give up music to join the football team that day in my room, but now I told her how much I loved music, and how I used to play my violin or the piano when I needed to relax or think. Unfortunately, even if we shrunk down an instrument to my size, the size of the strings would probably make it so nobody who was normal-sized could hear my playing.

After the obligatory jokes about me being a five-inch pianist and playing the world’s smallest violin, Becky got a pensive look on her face. She remained deep in thought for a moment, and then her lips curled up in a predatory smile. “I’ll make you a deal, Vanessa. If I can get you an instrument small enough for you to play and be heard doing it, you do me a favor, as a friend, and join my club. I mean, I’ll try to do it for you anyway, but I would really appreciate it if you could join the club. We really need more members to make it official, and maybe you could play for us.”

I considered it for a moment, thought about the feel of a violin and bow in my hands, the tension as the bow slid over the strings, and the feel of my fingers dancing over piano keys and summoning the melody. I missed playing so much. I barely hesitated before replying, “It’s a deal.”

Hawthorne Cottage - Foyer
Monday, October 31st, 2016 – Evening

“You can’t seriously be going to the party wearing that,” I stated as I frowned at the collection of rags that Shannon was wearing. “Dude, you look like you bought that from a dumpster diver… and he ripped you off. He should have paid you to take those clothes off his hands. What are you even supposed to be?” Okay, I might have been a little bit grouchy, but I had been dealing with my period again since yesterday, and since I figured that shrinking down a bottle of Midol to make things easier was probably not a good idea, I had to deal with the discomfort.

Shannon sighed in reply. It wasn’t because I was dissing his hobo costume, or whatever it was, though. It was more like ‘How did you even convince me to go to this party in the first place? I was planning to stay in my room and brood.’ I was getting pretty good at reading his non-verbal responses. I’ve come to the conclusion that Shannon does a lot of brooding, whenever he’s not stuck in his imagination, that is, especially since the chocolate incident.

I could feel him on that, and not just because my own boobs went up at least two cup sizes, not that having them at all felt in any way normal yet. So, yeah, I was able to sympathize because I know from experience how much gender shenanigans suck, and I can be miserable with the best of them since Blythe took everything from me. He’s sort of a kindred spirit, though; we’re like the two musketeers of misery. Our whole weird friendship is practically built on it.

Apparently, I need friends. Marie, Danielle, and Leanna have been repeatedly trying to convince me to make friends at school since our first video call. Becky thought so too. That stupid shrink that the school saddled me with, Dr. Bellows, seemed to be on their side as well. Every session, he kept telling me that I need to stop blaming myself for past mistakes, make myself more ‘emotionally available’, and make friends who will accept me for who I am.

Personally, I think he wasted several years of post-secondary education. Who is going to want to be my friend and accept me for who I am? I’m a snarky and bitter science experiment who betrayed my best friend and drove her to insanity. Part mutant, part Fairy, and all asshole.

Still, I had to at least make it look like I was making an effort, at least until people figured out that I’m not worth the effort, so I was spending time with Becky sometimes, apart from our magic tutoring. I still wasn’t sure if agreeing to maybe join her club was a good idea, but what were the odds that she could actually do what she said? She still insisted on being my ‘friend’ even though I told her my whole story,  but it was a moment of weakness, and I kinda had to with all the weird hobgoblin antics whenever I misfired a spell. At least she didn’t judge me.

The rat twins didn’t judge me either, though they didn’t know nearly as much about me as Becky. They seemed like okay people too, even if Polly was a total klepto, and they’d helped me get some everyday necessities in fairy size, so I sorta owed them. It was thanks to them that I now had a toothbrush, hairbrush, and stuff, and could live an almost normal life.

As for Shannon, he knew the score; I had told him upfront when we met on my first day at Whateley that I wasn’t good friend material, but he had still helped me get my stuff to my room. He was a decent guy, or whatever he was these days. Besides, I felt like his current gender situation might be at least partly my fault. If I hadn’t shared my chocolate with him that day when we were both moping, then he might not have boobs, or at least a less obvious pair.

I wouldn’t call him a close friend, but there was this sort of easy acceptance and comfort between us. There was no pressure and no expectations from either of us; we just sort of took things as they came. If we happened to be in the same room, then we did it together. I’d have his back if he needed me, even if he needed a push to get out and have some fun.

Yeah, I was totally doing this for him, not because I wanted to see how damaged I really was. I used to love Halloween, dressing up in a costume and pretending to be someone else for a day, someone who wasn’t Aiden Mason. Of course, those costumes always had to embrace baseline normalcy. My father would have had an aneurysm if I dressed up as one of those mutant superheroes, so my costumes were things like pirates, ninjas, cowboys, and the like. Still, it had always been an escape for me.

Now, here I was, dressed as the pirate fairy from one of those Tinkerbell movies, and I felt… empty. The wonder of Halloween and the costumes had been stolen from me, just like everything else in my life. I was starting to get used to this new life, sometimes I didn’t even have to look twice at the mirror anymore, but at the same time, sometimes I couldn’t recognize myself anymore, and I’m not just talking about physically. At least I wasn’t still seeing Blythe in the mirror, not as often anyway, and less every day.

I tried to suck it up and at least look like I wanted to have fun, for Shannon’s sake. Finding a costume in my size had certainly cost me enough. No, not money, I had paid in pride. I had agreed to be in Venus, Inc.'s annual GSD calendar. I needed the extra money for clothes and magic stuff, and the gig paid and came with access to clothes in my size. They were willing to shell out the money for a Halloween costume for me and some other clothes for the photoshoots, and at the time, I had found it hard to turn down the offer of clothes that might actually fit me and which would be made from materials I could wear without triggering my allergy.

They even had a costume vault with some clothes and costumes that came in what they called Tink size. I was pretty sure where those and the school uniforms I got on my first day came from now. I had seen Tink in action after all, when studying videos of her for my BMA class.

Right now, my outfit wasn’t the problem, though. I wasn’t going to be seen hanging out with Shannon while he was dressed like that. I may not be obscenely wealthy anymore, but I do have standards. I had to wonder if he had chosen the crap costume just to get out of going with me.

No such luck, Shannon, we were going to go to the party and have fun, whether we liked it or not, and by we, I mean you. Thankfully, Becky had friends in the theater department, and with our growing ‘friendship,’ I could probably leverage that into something that wouldn’t be an embarrassment for Shannon to be seen in. I drew the rapier-shaped cocktail pick hanging from my hip and pointed dramatically in the direction of the drama room… probably. I might have been off by a compass point. Okay, maybe closer to two compass points.

“I’ve got you covered, Shannon! To the drama nerds!” I announced.

Shannon really tried to get out of it as we made our way there. Nope, I wasn’t going to let it happen. I was a magical Fairy after all, and dressed in rags as he was, Shannon was my personal Cinderella tonight. I would make sure that he got the pretty dress and was able to enjoy the ball, at least until midnight. Maybe I’d see if we could pull off an actual Cinderella costume, just for shits and giggles.

Using Becky’s name helped get me and Shannon into the costume room, but I couldn’t find him a Cinderella dress. We did find an Alice in Wonderland costume that was for growing girls and fit him decently, though, and Shannon didn’t even complain too much about it. See, he wanted to have fun after all. I was so proud, even though his expression said otherwise as he said, “Vanessa, you really didn’t have to help me with a costume. I would have been fine staying in my dorm room.” 

“Of course I did, what are friends for?” I shot back with more enthusiasm than I felt as we made our way across campus and toward the party. “I like to think that we’ve bonded and gotten pretty close since the whole chocolate incident. You could even say that we’re… bosom buddies, so it’s my duty to keep you abreast of what’s hip for Halloween costumes this year.” Yes, I’m an asshole, but we’ve already established that, and I was making fun of myself as much as I was Shannon.

“I hate you,” Shannon replied with a sigh. Of course, this meant, ‘I know you’re an asshole, but we’re friends, so I’m going to support you. Besides, you’re a Fairy and that shit is super cool ‘cause I’m a fantasy nerd.’ Sometimes with Shannon, you have to read between the lines.

“Less talky, more walky,” I insisted as I found a comfortable place to land on his shoulder. “It’s Halloween, the one night of the year when people like us fit in, so let’s go to that party and have some fun!”

 

To be continued…