Growing into the Job, Post 578: IM SO MAD AT YOU

Finally back after her drive, and thinking it was just about the right time, Ashleigh Monroe texted her sister from the common room of the KGD house at Westhall University...

Ashleigh didn’t put her phone down right away. She let the screen dim on its own, not even reading Melissa’s last, furious, typo-riddled message still glowing faintly in her palm. Spelling errors, no punctuation, all in caps. Doesn’t the girl have Spellcheck? Anyway - predictable escalation curve, she smiled to herself.

So that’s where we are, she thought, spitting away a stray, lingering piece of fur and leaning back against the arm of the old leather couch, lounging in the Kappa Gamma Delta common room. She crossed one ankle over the other and reached for her water. Her mind was already replaying the afternoon. A sequence: cause, effect, variables introduced. Variables amplified. The result had been…clarifying.

She hadn’t expected that degree of response from him, Melissa’s boyfriend, the doctor. She’d anticipated heightened sensitivity, yes. Accelerated feedback loops. But the way everything had aligned - the saturation, the timing, the outcome - it had felt less like improvisation and more like uncovering a rule that had always been there.

Ash exhaled slowly through her nose.

Proof of concept, she thought. No - proof was sloppy. This was validation. Pink Panther plus Missy’s Bioactive Factor and Protein Profile in the Formula? Well, not to mince words: magic.

“Hello, Ashleigh,” smiled Mee-Yeosin - Mimi - their Korean KGD sister who was here overseas studying at their coven for the semester. The lithe, bosomy girl had just entered from outside, and looked headed for the kitchen. “You are missing Sam Packer?” she asked with a mischievous glint and her strong accent, “I know that I am.”

Ashleigh laughed, and the two chatted for a moment before Mimi stepped away, leaving Ashleigh again alone with her thoughts. Mimi, though - and Sammi, and Emily, and maybe some other sisters - might prove helpful. She might need some accomplices, early on, all considering. 

She began to think. 

Her sister, Melissa, was an engine. That much had been obvious for years. Melissa moved through the world bending things toward herself without ever meaning to, powered by instinct and appetite and an almost heroic inability to reflect too hard on consequences. People reacted to her, changed for her. Rooms adjusted their temperature. Systems rearranged. Lately, it had gotten worse.

With him today, her sister's old fart of a boyfriend, Ash had simply…isolated a condition.

She tilted her head, considering the faint tremor of guilt that surfaced at the thought. It was there - small, insistent, inconvenient, this feeling that she shouldn’t be doing what she was doing. This was her sister, after all, not just some Super Weapon in the upcoming Battle of the Sexes. Ashleigh acknowledged the pangs of conscience, though, the way she did most feelings: noted, catalogued, set aside for later review. Melissa, though, wouldn’t see it the same way she did. Melissa never did.

You’re going to hate this, Ms Miss, Ash thought fondly, Right up until you don’t.

Our mother, on the other hand…

Ash straightened a little at that thought - which was almost a voice in her head. Mom didn’t care about feelings. Mom cared about leverage. About inevitability. About what the world was becoming and who would be standing at the center of it - or towering over it - when the dust finished settling.

This would interest her.

Not the details - not yet. Ash was careful about pacing, and the idea she had was maybe a little weird, a little out there. You didn’t lead with conclusions; she would start with curiosity. With possibility. With the suggestion that - since something vast was already moving - why don’t they choose to guide it?

And Melissa?

Ash’s smile softened, just a fraction.

There was something almost cruel about how perfect her sister was for this - how effortlessly she could become something more without ever asking to. How easily she could be elevated, adored, and yet protected from the uglier edges of what that elevation required.

Ash knew that this plan would make her a hypocrite, and would be her manipulating the trust her less-than-sharp-witted sister had put in her. She also knew it would make her useful.

She sat up on the couch and reached again for her water. Amazing how therianthrophy always made her so thirsty.

I should talk to Mom, she decided. Not tonight. Not urgently, not excitedly. Calmly. Like someone bringing good news they’d already double-checked.

In her lap, the phone buzzed again with another message from Melissa. Ash didn’t look at it this time.

Some things were better handled in person. And some plans - really good ones - were worth letting unfold slowly.

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Confused? Might make a little more sense if you're familiar with GITJ's tangent story Seeking Approval. Then again, might not.

Thanks again to Joyce Julep for the Pink Panther plot device.