“I’ll fly her there!” Billie said, leaving no room for
doubt. “Get that door open! Move it!”
56: Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how’d you like the play?
Whateley Academy, Crystal Hall cafeteria, November 25, 12:20 PM
Lunch was almost over by the time the quintet had showered
and changed and finally stumbled out for lunch. Those who would have normally
stopped by to wish the girls well or perhaps try their luck with Nikki or Sara,
steered away as soon as they saw the grim expressions on the girls’ faces.
They sat, arranged their trays, and Nikki set out her crystal
pendant before anyone even tried to speak about it.
“So… she’s stable?” Erin asked tentatively.
“Stable?” Billie had a powerful edge of anger, even now.
“Hell, she’s on her way toward being fully healed. The doc said they’d be
discharging her this afternoon, if she progressed at her current rate.”
“Did she ever wake up?” Erin asked quietly.
“Turns out that was just because she’d cast all of her
charges off,” Billie explained. “She can charge up three versions of Jinn –
she had some whacky naming scheme that I don’t really try to follow – three
copies and she’s pretty woozy on her feet. Four copies and she passes out.
That’s the way she goes to sleep almost every night, and I get to go to sleep
with a whole herd of her rummaging around the room!”
“You should tell her, if it bugs you so much,” Sara said,
quietly. She took a sip of some herb tea. She didn’t need it for nutrition,
but sometimes liked it for flavor.
“It doesn’t bother me!” Billie yelled. “What’s your
problem?!”
Toni reached an arm around the shorter girl and gave her a
comforting squeeze. “Is she going to be okay? For real?”
Billie sniffed, and stared at her plate of food. “Yeah,”
she finally admitted. “No physical damage at all, it looks like. ‘Perfect
regeneration.’ They’re debating the classification, but it looks like reg-4.”
She sniffed. “She got that from me, you know. She wasn’t like that before the
BIT-slicer. At least she got something from the whole mess.”
“So she’s… back to normal?” Nikki asked delicately.
“Four-foot-nine, eighty-three pounds, cute little girl with
something to hide,” Billie confirmed. “God, I yelled at her so bad. She
probably hates me now.”
“Oh, sure,” Toni drawled out. “Like that’s going to
happen.”
“She made me feel like I’d given her the most special,
precious gift.” Billie seemed to lose her voice for a second. “And then it
got taken away. Just stolen from her.”
Something cleared in Toni’s face, as she moved past sorrow
and into problem solving mode. “So, it was magic. Are you sure about that,
Nikki? And was it the demon fight last night, or has this been part of her
problem all along?”
“Jade said it was the spell from last night,” Billie said.
“That was supposed to ‘steal her body’ and it did, didn’t it?”
Nikki snorted, showing a first trace of her normal self.
“Pardon me, but what Jade knows about magic could fill a thimble, but only
halfway. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that what I felt
today was connected to Jade. And if Hekate cast that, then God help us all.”
“It might have been a summoning,” Sara mentioned. “Any
idiot can manage that, if they’re willing to provide the proper price.”
“Well this felt real old,” Nikki insisted. “Like… Five Fold
Court, old.”
“Some mystic thing?” Toni asked.
“I … I’m fuzzy on the details. It’s an Aunghadhail thing.
Like from back when she was alive.”
“Correct,” Sara confirmed. “The court banished my kind from
this world, then fell in turn to the fallout from that war. And there are
definitely survivors from that era. For example, Fey here. And you all know
Molly, Chou’s girlfriend.”
Erin almost choked. “She’s from this Five-fold Court
thing?”
Sara shrugged. “It’s hard to tell for certain. Have you
seen the shadowcat she summons? Sixteen feet long, about a half ton, winged,
night-black, goes by the name Rythax, and is a surprisingly good
conversationalist?”
“Hmmm.” Erin had an intrigued look. “I’d like to meet
him.”
“I only saw it once,” Toni admitted. “I was hoping that was
a bad dream.”
Tennyo rolled her eyes. “And you hang out with this thing,
shooting the breeze? Why am I not surprised?”
Sara sipped her tea again. “Yes, well, Rythax is definitely
a member of the Five-Fold Court. He seems reluctant to admit that the court
has lapsed, but considers such a situation strictly temporary and to be
remedied as soon as possible. All this despite the fact that the Court was
dead and buried so long ago that not even the elves remember the legends of
it. And if Rythax survived…”
“Other things may have, as well,” Nikki completed.
“What about the Old Ones,” Tennyo asked, ominously.
“Please,” Nikki begged. “Let’s not go there.
Especially in this place, or anywhere near Dunwich or where the Miskatonic
flows.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not a question of whether the Old Ones or their
trappings surviving,” Sara informed them. “Time doesn’t affect them. But as I
just said, the Old Ones, their servants and possessions were sealed away during
the time of the Court. Of course, there are always leftovers and loopholes. I
probably count as a ‘loophole.’ And Dunwich and this area are pretty heavy in
other leftovers. But it’s best not to go borrowing trouble when we don’t need
to.”
“How do you know all this?” Tennyo asked, suspiciously.
Sara pointed at Nikki. “I had cause to do some research on
my blood relation over there. Daddy was kind enough to provide some history
books and even a couple of novels.”
“The Old Ones wrote novels?” Toni boggled at the
idea.
Sara smiled. “I doubt you’d appreciate them. Even if you
learned the language and the writing didn’t drive you insane, they’re … well,
they’re for a select audience.”
“Uh huh.”
Tennyo finally noticed there was food in front of her, and
began to eat. Slowly at first, then with increasing speed. “Look,” she said
around a mouthful, “love the ancient history lesson, really, but can we
get back to Jade?”
Nikki nodded. “I think step one is to confirm whether or
not there really is a spell on her. If so, then if it feels anything like what
I felt, I’m sure that’s the answer. At that point, the genuine work begins.
What is the spell? Who cast it, and why? What powers it? What does it do?
Is it a curse, compulsion, geas, or even a blessing? Or is it something
stranger? Breaking it might be as simple as finding conditions for her to
fulfill.” She considered. “I might be able to tie this into some of my class
work. I’ll have to talk to Sir Wallace….”
“I never felt it in my earlier research,” Sara said, “so if
it’s real, it’s very subtle. But with these clues, I should be able to look
closer.”
“So what do I tell Jade?” Billie wondered.
“Tell her enough to give her some vague hope,” Toni
pronounced, “but not enough to be specific. Don’t give her anything that’s
going to push her over the edge again, if it doesn’t pan out. What the hell is
wrong with her? I knew she wanted to be a girl, but that was WAY over the top,
wasn’t it?”
“Weren’t you listening, at the Day of Remembrance talk?”
Erin said. “The girls who committed suicide because they couldn’t live with
themselves?”
“Yeah, but… Jade?”
“She wants it bad,” Billie admitted.
Nikki looked down at herself, as if truly seeing her
clothes, her body, for the first time in months. “We’ve all been through a
change in gender,” she realized. “I never wanted to be a girl. I never asked
for it, but now that I am one, I guess I’m adapting. I even … I like it, you
know? I guess I figured that everyone was adapting.”
“I guess I’m different from the rest of you,” Toni
observed. “I actually wanted this. But we need to know if anyone’s having
trouble adapting, hear? Any trouble at all. Talk to me, or talk to someone.”
She stared hard at Erin, while she said it.
The girl smiled behind her sunglasses. “Yeah, it still
weirds me out. But I’m enjoying the compensations.” She rubbed her cheek
against Sara’s arm.
*****
When they finally let her go at four PM, Jade had been
healed for about an hour. She’d sent Shroud out along with two other sets of
herself to clean up the autopsy lab. The fourth spirit she’d left on guard in
her own room. It was easier to heal when you were passed out and unaware of
the pain. Her mouth had hurt almost more than the damage between her legs.
She’d bitten the first half-inch of her tongue clean off. She might have been
unconscious at the time, but she’s still reacted. She even remembered that
part, sort of. She’d woken up choking on a mouthful of blood.
She’d never seen Billie so angry. It almost made her feel
worse than what had pushed her into this mess. She needed to apologize to her
roommate as soon as possible. Which reminded her that she still needed to
bring Thuban up to date, and apologize to him. And she should probably
apologize to Nikki and Toni and Sara and Erin, for the scare she’d given them.
She thought that healing sure built up an appetite. She
felt like she could compete with Billie tonight, during dinner.
The thought was like a dagger in her heart. Billie had been
so very angry. Jade was half expecting that Billie would let her in long enough
to pack, then send her walking. And if that happened… She didn’t know what
she’d do. Billie had told her in no uncertain terms that she was NEVER to hurt
herself like that again. And even if Billie kicked her out, she wouldn’t resist
her oneesan.
The way she saw it, Billie was the only family she had
left. Her mother had died years ago. Her father was alive, but Jade never
wanted to see him again. She had no brothers or sisters. But she did have an
oneesan. Not by birth perhaps, but by choice. By generosity and gift and
exchange and caring. For a while, she’d been actually genetically related, if
she understood the way the BIT-slicer worked. Since she still seemed to have
the regeneration, maybe she kept a little bit of Billie’s genes. If so, then
it was a gift to treasure, even if it had caused a few undesirable features to
grow back.
She trudged up the hill to Melville and then Poe, after
that. Soon enough, she’d be facing the music. She tried to keep her lip from
shaking and her eyes from watering. She’d be a boy, if only Billie wouldn’t be
mad at her.
The time passed faster than she wanted, and before she knew
it she was walking up the old wooden staircase, and walking past Boy’s Town
toward her room at the far end. It felt like walking to an execution, and it
was all she could do to hold back the tears.
She couldn’t just open the door, even though it used to be
her room. She knocked. And when Billie opened the door the girl just stood
there staring at her, her face a mixture of anger and sorrow and too many other
emotions for Jade to understand. Her resolve melted away and she flung her
arms around her oneesan, sobbing and begging her, “Please don’t throw me out!
Please don’t make me leave! I promise I won’t do it again, but don’t make me
leave!”
Billie’s arms wrapped around her and the other girl said,
“Throw you out? What are you talking about? I wouldn’t through you out. What
made you think that?”
And then everything was okay again. Jade held her roommate,
sobbing and saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” over and over again.
And Billie held her, the way a perfect older sisters always
does. The sisters who are taller and smarter and prettier, but they’re always
there to listen to you and protect you, and talk to you about sisterly secrets
as you grow up. And that’s the way that Billie held her right then. So
although Jade was crying, and everyone in the entire hall was staring at her
like she was a freak, all was right with the world as Billie held her.
*****
With three plates of chicken casserole inside her, Jade was
definitely feeling a bit bloated. She hadn’t come close to matching Billie’s
consumption, but as dinner came to an end things were beginning to feel like
they might go back to normal. Nikki and Toni and Erin all looked at her a bit
cautiously. Sara seemed fine with everything. Jade had probed her about it,
but the Goth princess had replied. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve seen people
who were really messed up in the head, and you don’t even come close.”
The comment, oddly enough, made her feel better. Maybe
because everyone stopped giving her looks, to focus their outrage back on
Sara. That was the way things were supposed to be, so it was okay.
She’d dressed in a long sleeve turtleneck and an ankle-length
skirt, to protect against the cold weather. It was one of her favorite
outfits, but it wasn’t working its magic today. No matter what she did, she
felt like a boy dressing up in skirts. She fussed with her hair a bit, and put
on a touch of light pink lip gloss, but the illusion still wasn’t working for
her.
After facing down Billie, she thought Thuban would be a
piece of cake. She decided to take Shroud along for moral support, and to
carry her home if she got too weak. Between the food and the drain of healing,
she was a bit woozy. Shroud was dressed in the “empty cape” look, because she
was having problems holding the shape on her face and limbs. It was
particularly noticeable when she used the chalk skin, but even with the plastic
skin it sometimes looked like gophers were chasing each other around inside her
body. Shroud had a black leotard to hide her metal skeleton and other
equipment, but the black leotard was silhouetted against a black cape, so no
one noticed if it ballooned out a little.
The two of them (her and herself) headed across campus and
made their way to Twain.
“Hey, it’s Ghost Girl and the kid. You guys looking for
Thuban again?”
Jade nodded.
“Hey, Carapace – visitors for Thuban. I swear, first the
redhead and now this. Dude gets more girl action…”
The turtle-boy stepped out of the common room. “Hi Jade,
Shroud.”
“Hi, Dai,” she returned.
“Uh, the boss was looking a bit pissed. You sure you want
to see him now?”
She gulped and nodded. “I’d better face the music.”
Again, the turtle-boy led them up to the regular rooms
rather down into Thuban’s normal cavern. Jade wondered if there was some
difference on who got to meet the Dragon in his room, rather than at his
throne.
Dai took a quick peek through the door, then waved Jade and
Shroud in, before quickly closing the door behind them. Thuban sat in his desk
chair as if it were a throne, and regarded them coldly.
“Sso…” he hissed “you engaged in an absolutely idiotic
adventure with Hekate, endangering my plan and the comittmentsss you previously
made to me. Is that what you’ve come to tell me?”
“You’ve already heard?” She shook her head. Of course he’d
heard. He was Thuban. “Tool told you, didn’t she?”
“Tool is no more! She insists that her daytime name is now Dominique
Destine.”
Jade was puzzled, so Thuban explained. “You haven’t sseen
those episodes of the sseriess yet. In the day, Demona transformss into an
ordinary human and takess that name as an aliass. At ssunset she transformss
back into her true form of Demona. That happened to Tool, and if it’s reversed
at sunset, it would appear that the she now does the ssame, although apparently
that’s the only shapechanging ability she still retainss. That and an
accelerated healing that happens during her shift. She sseemed to think you
had been killed. So explain yourself.”
Jade told about their agreement, and the spell, then held
out the invisible cigarette box. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why, but I’m unable
to animate Lazuli. That body is now one of the few things I can’t charge
into. Jinn is unable to take gargoyle shape at all, even in her powder form.
It’s like that shape is just forbidden to me now. Of course, she’s having
trouble maintaining her shape as well. Not as bad as Tool used to be, but bad.”
She reached forward to hand the box to Thuban. He made no
move to take it, so she placed it on the desk.
“I thought you’d be happy,” she said. “Someone in Faction
Three has achieved their lifelong dream, you have another person in the group
who will be pushing your ideals, and there’s now a real, live gargoyle there
full time.”
“Then you thought wrong!” Thuban roared. “The money and
effort I sspent constructing Lazuli, my perfect creation – wasted, all of it!
My agent within the group has been replaced by another, who has her own goals
and ambitions, believe me! It’s possible that the change has unhinged Tool’s
mind. She sees my Faction Three as her clan, to be controlled
and protected from humanity. Half the time she thinkss she is Demona, and
actss like it. The other half the time she sspends telling me that even if she
can’t be my ‘Angel of the Night’, we can ssstill join together to assume
absolute control over Faction Three! And you think I should be pleased?”
Jade deliberately kept a lid on her temper. It sounded like
he was mad because Tool was threatening to run for club president against him.
Admittedly, Tool was sounding a bit megalomaniacal, but that was fairly common
for mutants, particularly during their first few years.
“Look, I’ve said I’m sorry. I was trying to help, and Tool
sounds like she’s a lot happier. This was her dream!”
“And what about my dreams?” the dragon-man asked. “My own
agent, obedient to my guidance. Lazuli was the perfect girl, and the perfect
backup inside F3. Do you have any idea how much time and effort went into the
construction of Lazuli? Do you? And now she’s useless; nothing but a pile of
scrap.”
“Wait a minute,” Shroud noticed. “Lazuli had already been
constructed before I even agreed to the deal.”
“You say that as if you had a choice,” Thuban coldly
stated. “The truth is, there wasn’t a chance that you’d refuse, was there? I
gave you exactly what you wanted. I had the information, the ssolution, and I
even kept your sso-called friends from ssticking their noses too far in. There
was never a chance that you’d disagree. I paid for Lazuli with my money and
sweat. I created her, I shaped her, I owned her.”
Jade was stunned at what he was saying, but Shroud, more
resistant to the emotional onslaught, counterattacked. “Great! You want to
own Lazuli? Well congratulations, you do! You crafted the illusion, but
whatever there was about Lazuli that was real – that belonged to me! I made
her live! But now I understand why it wasn’t working out. You made me be
Lazuli, but it was your script, your setup, and you probably would have
dictated my emotions, if you could. I was Lazuli, but she wasn’t ever me! You
wouldn’t let that happen. Well you know what? I’m glad that I can’t be her any
more! But don’t worry, I’ll keep my promise. I’ll be there at the meetings to
support and encourage and lend a helping hand, even if I have to do it as
Shroud.”
“Why bother?” he shot back. “You sseem to do a good enough
job of thwarting me, entirely by accident. I’m not ssure I should let you
anywhere near Faction Three.”
Jade gasped at the fury in his voice, but again, Shroud took
up the argument. “That accident occurred directly in the line of fire, trying
to do the job that you first set. I was not only supporting someone from F3, I
was helping to grant her dream. Now she’ll be a better, tighter member than
ever, and she’ll probably support the faction until the day she dies! And by
the way,” she gestured toward Jade, “my little act of charity seems to have
cost me my own dream!”
“Oh, boo hoo,” Thuban said sarcastically. “One of the
beautiful people before, gone back to being just an ordinary beautiful person.
Ssspare me your tearsss. You don’t even know what ssuffering is. All I see is
that my processs came with a price. Succeed or fail, the price was for you to be
Lazuli. My Lazuli, the way she was meant to be. And now you’re unable to
pay.”
Jade hated that she couldn’t stop her tears. “At dinner
last night, I thought you were special! We were sharing our dreams,
talking about acceptance, and goals. I shared my secrets with you!”
She raised up her little eleven-year-old fist and shook it impotently at him.
“I’ll be at that meeting whether you want me or not! For them! For the price
that I’ve paid. For the friends I’m starting to know. But not for
you!” She took a gasping breath. “Last night, I thought you were… were…
something you’re not, obviously!” She turned on her heel to storm out.
Thuban had one last dig to get in. “And the pot calls the
kettle black, doesn’t it … Jared?”
Jade’s face went completely white. “I hate you!” she
yelled, wrenching his door open and then slamming it behind her.
Still in the room, Shroud considered, then withdrew a sealed
jar from inside her chest cavity. The jar was half full of blood and chunks of
flesh, cleaned from the autopsy lab. She carefully placed the jar on Thuban’s
desk, before she, too, turned to leave.
“It’s too bad your dreams didn’t go precisely as planned.
But don’t presume to judge my pain or suffering, or the strength of my dreams,”
she said. Then she closed the door behind her, quietly.
*****
Thuban, who had once been an ordinary boy named Stephen
Cheng Lee, sat back in emotional exhaustion. It wasn’t supposed to be like
this. He was supposed to be in control, cold and logical and ruthless. Had
his fantasies of a gargoyle lover affected him that deeply?
Jade was right in some ways. He had his own Demona now, a
perfect image from the cartoon, and between bouts of severe personality
confusion, she even seemed to have the hots for him. Impossibly for any place
other than Whateley, she was the Demona from the shows, and simultaneously she
was a real person with flesh, blood, and hopes and fears of her own. The conquest
would be both challenging and intently satisfying, and would fulfill his
fantasy utterly.
So why was he so upset?
Idly, he looked at the jar of brownish-red gunk that the
ghost had inexplicably placed on his desk. A glance was enough to identify blood.
The other shapes were harder, but once identification had been made, it was
impossible to un-see it. The flesh within was obviously an immature and
half-formed penis and testicles, literally sawed away from a body. Whose body
was immediately obvious, and the ghost’s words made perfect sense now.
He closed his eyes completely, unable to forget his own
hateful words.
She’d been walking. She didn’t look hurt. This had
to be less than twenty-four hours old, but she was up and walking around. Was
she a high-level regenerator, or did one of her mage friends have some powerful
healing spell? Or, in Whateley tradition, was there an even stranger
explanation?
He thought about a girl that no longer existed. A fun girl,
that accepted him, and discussed things that were and might someday be, and
laughed and smiled at him. A girl who no longer existed, and would never again
smile at him, even if she did.
*****
Jade wandered aimlessly, heading randomly in the direction
of Poe, but staggering through the campus grounds. Behind her, Shroud drifted
silently, now morphed into a new form that seemed to be half-seen cables and
chains and black skeletal arms, barely concealed within a cloak. Shroud seemed
to slip seamlessly between a human shape under the cloak and writhing
mechanical tentacles, as the balance changed moment-by-moment.
Jade wanted Bloodwolf and his goons to attack her again.
She felt her bracers. She was wearing enough explosives to blow the
lycanthropes sky high. Or maybe she’d let them attack her, shredding her
stupid face and stupider body. Violence or punishment, she wandered the campus
in search of it. But whether it was merely a quiet day or Shroud scared them
off, no one came forward to serve as a target for her fury.
She considered looking up Tool’s room, in Whitman. It was
past sunset. Had the girl shifted again, into the gargoyle form she so loved?
She should go and introduce herself, and explain how she hadn’t died, last
night. But in her current mood, she’d be just as likely to start attacking
Tool, and they’d end up as enemies for life. She realized that a part of her
wanted that. She wanted to go to Whitman and find Tool’s room, and fill it
with every single one of her missiles, blowing up the girl that had stolen her body.
She knew it was stupid, but she wanted to.
After an hour of wandering, she found herself at the back
door to Poe. She slipped inside, and down the stairs to the basement. Through
the soles of her feet as much as her ears, she heard the “clank – clank –
clank” of the weight machine being used at some absurd setting. She headed in
that direction. As expected, Hippolyta was inside. Alone.
Jade walked forward, knowing that Shroud would close the
door behind her. Lately, Hippolyta hadn’t been her normal angry self. She
seemed to have a surprisingly happy glow. It was time to change that.
“Hey, kid. What’s up? Your roommate ready for that
rematch? Hmm, maybe I’ll have to rethink some of that stuff.” The bodybuilder
didn’t pause in her reps, as she spoke.
“I’ve been making fools out of all of you,” Jade said,
looking straight into the huge girl’s eyes. “I’ve been in the girl’s
bathroom. I’ve been in the locker rooms during gym. I wormed my way into all
sorts of stuff. The sacred hot tub party. But I’ve been a boy all along.”
Hippolyta wasn’t so much angered as puzzled. “What are you
talking about?”
“I’m not a girl! I never was! I’m a boy. I always was a
boy, and I’ll always be a boy!”
Finally sensing the seriousness, Hippolyta lowered the
weights and stood up, rising to her full six-and-a-half foot height. “What’s
this about?”
“Don’t you hear me? I’m not a girl. I never was, never
will be. I’m a boy! I’ve been fooling everyone. Making fools of you.
La-laughing at you.”
The weightlifter’s eyes narrowed. “That isn’t something you
should joke about. You could get hurt.”
“Yeah?” Jade challenged. “Who’s going to do it? You?” She
rushed forward, aiming to punch the much larger girl right in the breasts. She
now knew how sensitive those were.
Instead, the larger girl caught her easily by both
forearms. She lifted Jade up to eye level. “Stop this, before I have to hurt
you.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Jade practically spit the words.
“You’re afraid of Tennyo. You wouldn’t dare hurt me … you … you coward!”
With that, she used her elevated position to kick Hippolyta as hard as she
could in the gut.
That brought an instant reaction. The muscular girl
released her and back handed her as she fell, knocking Jade halfway across the
room where she collapsed unconscious.
Hippolyta felt her stomach cautiously, then turned to stare
at Shroud.
“What the hell is this about?” she ground out, the anger
rising in her voice. “What’s with the boy story?”
“It’s true,” Shroud said, calmly. “She’s actually a boy.”
“Like Hell. This morning, she was stacked. That wasn’t a
boy.”
“The process failed. She reverted. This is her normal
body.”
“Then she has been fooling us all!”
“Yes.”
“And who’s going to stop me from ripping her – him to shreds?
You? I don’t think so.”
Shroud made no move.
“Well?” Hippolyta demanded.
“After what happened earlier, Billie made us promise not to
commit suicide. This doesn’t seem like suicide – not exactly.”
Hippolyta’s anger abruptly vanished. “Oh. And what exactly
happened earlier.”
Shroud shrugged, though it was hard to tell, with the way
she was squirming and writhing under the cloak. “We tried to cut all the boy
out of her. It didn’t work. She’s a regenerator, and the boy parts grew
back.”
“You’re shitting me.”
Shroud said nothing.
“Get out of here,” Hippolyta ordered. “Take her with you.
Take her back to that roommate of yours, and tell her exactly what happened
here. ‘Cause if you don’t, I sure will.”
*****
She decided to sleep in, Sunday morning. Shroud went out to
pick up breakfast for her, while Jade pulled the covers back over her head.
When that didn’t work, she zapped out a trio of charges to do some clean-up,
and homework, and stuff. Billie frowned at it, knowing full well what she was
doing, but didn’t openly object.
Jade let herself wake long enough to eat breakfast, then
knocked herself out again.
Roaming the room to do the dusting and cleaning that was too
noisy to do at night, she let her spirit assume its full, natural shape. She
wasn’t troubled by the creeping shifties problem that Shroud and Jinn had. It
was like her spirit knew that she couldn’t affect anything anyway, when she was
just an invisible ghost, so it didn’t bother to do the whole
overcompensating-shifting thing.
But she could see herself, and she could see the other
versions of her spirit, moving about the room. They were all naked, and while
their spirit bodies were a little fuzzy, they were all definitely female. The
way she’d always been. The way she believe herself to be. The way she wanted
to be.
It had been so simple and so right, back when she was
an exemplar. Back when she thought she was an exemplar. Her Body Image
Template was female. That was the way she was supposed to be, and why her physical
body was male was an unexplained mystery, but she knew who and what she was
meant to be. But now she had to accept the classic “shifter’s dilemma,” which
in its simplest form was, “If you can be anyone, who are you, really?” Any
shifter that could change their face, or make long-term alterations in their
body eventually had to face this. There was even a class in it, limited to
shifters, of course. Maybe next semester Shroud would have to take it. But in
the meantime, her mind was melting from the paradoxes. Was she meant to be a
girl? Is that what this spirit-body represented? Or was she meant to be a
boy, with this spirit-body being just an extension of her own perverse desires?
All she knew was that it hurt. It hurt bad. Like this, in
spirit form, as a girl, she could be happy. She could go about her life and do
things. Trapped in her physical body – that was hard.
She admitted to herself that she’d gone way over the edge,
the day before. The whole “cut the boy out” stuff was nuts. She’d known it at
the time. If she’d been serious, she would have gone to a legitimate SRS
surgeon. As if she could afford one. But she knew it wouldn’t work. Stuff
like that never worked for her. So she’d taken out all her frustrations on the
source of her trouble. And if she died, at least she wouldn’t have to wake up
as a boy again.
Billie watched the three of her. Probably all she was were
the gloves.
“Jade – Jinn, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she answered, her voice coming out from a small
plate on the glove.
“Don’t just say that! I want the truth!” Billie ordered.
“Tell me for real – how are you feeling?”
“I want to die,” she admitted. “But I’m thinking that
living as a spirit isn’t so bad. I’m still a girl like this – not that anyone
can tell.”
Another of her answered, “I’m thinking about the great
training I could do as a regenerator with a death wish.”
The third said, “I’m thinking of loopholes in the promises I
gave you.”
“No! No loopholes!” Billie said. “I don’t want you trying
to kill yourself in ANY way, got it? No loopholes, no picking fights, no
daredevil training, no stupidly heroic self-sacrifice. I want you to LIVE,
okay?”
The three of her nodded, even if Billie couldn’t see.
“I want you to promise me.”
She took it on herself. “We promise,” she said. “We’ll try
to live, not die. We won’t try to break the earlier promises, or find
loopholes, fights, or other ways to get killed.”
“Okay,” Billie agreed. “Don’t you get it? If you killed
yourself – I’d be really messed up over it. Don’t do that to me, okay?
Please? Besides, this is Whateley. I’m sure we’ll find some way to fix your
problem.”
She nodded again, and unconsciously moved to hug Billie –
momentarily forgetting that she wasn’t wearing a body. Her arms were supposed
to wrap around Billie, but they went through her, instead.
And it happened. Ever since Tansy, she’d been careful to
keep her naked spirit from touching other living people. This accident had
only really happened because she trusted Billie completely. Her naked spirit
passed through Billie’s body, directly contacting Billie’s own spirit. And
just like when Jann stuck a finger or part of her body into Jade, the two of
them were in contact and communication. It wasn’t a merging of minds, but it was
a sharing of thoughts and feelings. She could sense the terrifying and
dazzling depth that made up her roommate, and it overwhelmed her. How could
she not love Billie?
Jade? Jinn?
Sorry, oneesan. I talk to myself this way all the time.
I just never thought to do it with anyone else.
Is this telepathy?