Naughty Magic - Chapter 20 - Revelations

Clarissa

“Soooo she knows?” I asked, looking between Rachel and Olivia, who’d just showed up on my doorstep.

…Well, I guess it was really more Olivia’s doorstep, seeing as how she was the one who lived there and all, but we were basically roommates at this point. Also her rented apartment was way nicer than my dorm.

Regardless of who’s doorstep they were on, the fact that they were coming together probably meant she knew. Which was confirmed when Olivia nodded her head, and let out a sigh. 

“Yeah.She uh… sort of saved me from a bad situation, so I didn’t really feel like I could hold anything back. Sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing to me, dude?” I asked, curious. “I’m not the one keeping secrets. Or ignoring texts, for that matter.”

“Yeah, but… now she knows you know?” Olivia pointed out, glancing between me and Rachel. “And didn’t tell her?

“I don’t really care that she was covering for you,” Rachel replied, shrugging. “Honestly, I don’t even care that you were hiding it from me. I mean, we’re basically strangers at this point… I’m more mad that you kept ignoring my attempts to get to know you!”

“Right… the texts,” Olivia replied sheepishly.

“The texts,” Rachel replied, accusingly.

“The texts!” I added, happily, causing the other two to look at me. “What? I wanted to feel included. And also this conversation wasn’t going anywhere. I’m guessing my main girl Olivia’s already replied, right? And you’re just not willing to forgive and forget quite yet?”

“I mean, she did repeatedly ignore me,” Rachel muttered.

“I did say sorry,” Olivia replied, awkwardly. “Can’t we just move on?”

“Maybe. If you promise to keep me in the loop going forward,” Rachel answered. “I want to be involved in this whole… taking down the magical thing.”

“Oh?” I asked. “We’re taking down the magical girls?”

“We are not taking down the magical girls!” Olivia insisted. Because of course she did. She was Olivia! Magic girl fan extraordinaire!

She was also a bit of an idiot, sometimes, so…

“How about we just rephrase it as saving them?” I asked her. “You know, from the mind control crystals? I mean, ignoring the fact that they sort of wanna kill you, they’re victims too, right?”

“Assuming Chrys is telling the truth,” Olivia replied. “I’m still not entirely convinced the crystals are evil, or that the goo is because of magic.”

“They are,” Rachel insisted. Which was… interesting.

“What do you know about it?” I asked.

“I… can’t say,” Rachel admitted, reluctantly.

“There’s a sort of magical non-disclosure agreement that goes up when a magical girl takes her oath. Olivia would have been under it, too, if things hadn’t gone south. Or north? North or maybe south east? However you classify the way that might end up with you dead, but also offers freedom and power unlike anything you’ve ever known.”

“Okaaaaay,” I said. “My potential concerns over your freedom and power aside… what’s all that got to do with Rachel?”

“...I swear, there has got to be a way to block out that damn spell,” Chrys muttered.

“Can’t Olivia eat it?” I asked. “Or void it or something? Magic and ooze cancel each other out, right?”

“More or less,” Chrys confirmed. “I mean, Olivia’s stabilization of the stuff might change the game a bit - like how it doesn’t automatically eat through anything it touches, around her - but… yeah. What did you have in mind?”

“Can’t you… I don’t know… cover us in a dome or something? Somewhere the spell can’t reach? Assuming it’s not directly on us anyways.”

“That’s… a brilliant idea! Olivia, why didn’t you think of this before?”

“Wha?” Olivia asked, pointing dazedly to herself.

“Nevermind, bad joke, just do it, would you? I’m eager to actually have a straight conversation with you.”

“I don’t think there’s anything straight about this particular gaggle of girls,” I pointed out, even as Olivia held up a hand. A moment later goo shot out, spreading itself thinly to form a cramped dome around the three of us.

“Sorry,” she said. “I think that’s the best I can do…”

“It’s fine,” Chrys promised. “Probably. Hopefully. Testingly… is anyone going to argue with me when I say that Rachel’s Pink Heart?”

“Rachel’s pink heart!?” Olivia demanded.

“Wait, what?” I asked. “You mean she’s a magical girl?”

“Former magical girl,” Chrys corrected. “But first, I just wanna take a moment to thank the creators for the fact this worked… and I do not usually thank those guys! They’re jerks who created us for profit. But this time? I’m just so damn relieved…”

“...Is it bad that I totally wanna start pretending I can’t understand after all?” I asked.

“Yes!” Olivia replied.

“Probably…” Rachel confirmed, though I noticed she had a smile.

Chrys didn’t even dignify it with a response.

“Well… now that we’ve got that out in the open,” I said. “What’s the next step?”

“Wait,” Olivia protested. “Will we even remember learning this after I take down the dome?”

“Only one way to find out!” Chrys pointed out.

Olivia shot me a nervous look, to which I responded with a casual shrug that maybe secretly wasn’t so casual. I didn’t really like the idea of having my mind fucked with, after all.

“Alright,” she said, taking a deep breath. A moment later the doom began to recede, the ooze sinking back into her hand.

“So…” I began. “First off. Is it just me, or are you conjuring ooze now?”

“More like I’m storing it,” Olivia explained. “Maybe? I don’t really know… I just. I apparently absorbed or stored my phone earlier? And my keys? And if I figured if I could do all that, then maybe I had more ooze in me than I thought? Whether that’s in storage form, or just… me being compact.”

“That seems like a pretty important distinction,” I pointed out. “Especially if you ever wanna store something living.”

“...Yeah, let’s go on the assumption I can’t do that, for now. I don’t really wanna think about the consequences…”

“Excuse me?” Chrys interrupted. “Can we please talk about the elephant in the room?”

…Was it bad that I really wanted to ask, “What elephant?”

“Yeah, we remember,” Olivia replied, before I could. “Rachel’s Pink Heart. As you’ve been saying… forever, I guess? Maybe? I’m sort of fuzzy on that.”

“Good enough! What about you, Rachel?”

“I… still can’t say anything I’m not supposed to,” Rachel replied. “But I’m pretty sure I can still talk about my former coworkers, if that helps? Just as long as I don’t actually put things too explicitly.”

“Great,” I said. “So what’s the plan?”

“The plan?” Olivia asked.

“For moving forward,” I specified. “I mean, we can’t just keep doing things as we have been, right? You going to school as a man? We all know what happened today.”

“Of course I’m still going to school as a man!” Olivia said. “I need credits, don’t I? I’ll just… not change all the way, I guess.”

“So you can continue being miserable acting like a dude?” I challenged, crossing my arms.

“Actually,” Rachel chimed in, “ I might just have an idea… My aunt’s girlfriend works in campus administration. I might be able to convince her to swap some things around if I tell her it’s for a trans friend… Just your name, though, mostly. You’d probably have to change your classes around a bit, too - thankfully we’re still early enough in the year that you can get away with it, I think. Though if you’re taking anything critical to your major…”

“She can’t even decide what her major is.”

“Uh… I’m not trans, though?” I pointed out. “Wouldn’t that be a problem?”

“What do you mean you aren’t trans?” Rachel asked, frowning.

“I mean… I’m a guy?”

“In a girl’s body.”

“I mean… yeah, but… I’m….”

“Certainly not cis?”

“I…”

“I think you broke her,” I muttered.

“...I need to sit down for a minute…”

***

Olivia

***

I sat heavily in my desk chair, staring blankly at the computer screen. It wasn’t even turned on. Not that it would have mattered if it had been. I wasn’t really in a mindset to pay attention to it.

Rachel’s accusation kept running through my head - that I wasn’t cis. That I couldn’t be cis. Because being a cis dude in a girl’s body was basically just being trans, with extra steps, wasn’t it? Except how could I be trans, without even realizing it? Wasn’t my body supposed to feel wrong in that case? Because it didn’t. If anything, it felt better than it ever had…

So what was I? A guy in a girl’s body who… didn’t mind being a girl? That still seemed more like gender fluid than cis, to me… I mean, at the very least, a cis guy shouldn’t feel better in a girl’s body, right? Even if it was just the slime messing with me…

Did I want to change back? Would wanting that make me a trans guy? Why did that sound so wrong? Why did this body feel so right? Righter than anything I’d ever felt… but… it wasn’t like people usually just felt good about being themselves, right? It was normal to hate what you saw in the mirror. 

Except that didn’t change the question. The question of whether I wanted to go back to hating what I saw in the mirror. Whether I wanted to transform into a guy, even at the cost of feeling crappy. Or was I happier staying as a girl?

Maybe… Maybe I was happier being a girl. Maybe I didn’t want to stop being one. Not because I was trans, of course, but because of the ooze and how it made me feel when I looked this way… Maybe I’d feel differently, if the ooze ever left me. Could I really claim to be trans, in that case? Despite knowing that my feelings on this body were probably artificial? That it could all go away at any moment?

…Did I want it to ever go away?

Did it matter if it did?

Yet staying… staying would mean being a girl. Being seen as a girl. Interacting with the world as a girl.

Maybe I was looking at things wrong. Maybe it didn’t matter whether I was trans or not. Maybe the only thing that mattered was what I wanted, right now…

So what did I want? To claw my way back to manhood? Or to embrace every good feeling being a girl had to offer?

“...Rachel,” I said. The word came out as a whisper, but that somehow didn’t keep the brunette from hearing me.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“I… think it might be a good idea to send that email. I think… I wanna try attending college as Olivia, for a bit.”

***

Violet Heart

***

“So we’re agreed?” White Heart asked, eyeing me and Red. “We’re going to the university together tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Red Heart agreed, meeting White’s eyes with a firm gaze. “If there’s any sign of that girl, we’ll find her, and we’ll take her down. Together.”

“Together,” I agreed, if somewhat reluctantly. Still, one way or another, I was determined to make that girl pay.

“Good,” White said. “Let’s start planning.”

~~~

Author's Notes

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So first off, the obvious question - yes, I released chapters of two separate series and then gave them the exact same title... It wasn't exactly intentional. It just worked out that way. I was not expecting this chapter to go the way it did, after all.

Speaking of... we're finally seeing cracks in Olivia's shell! Very big ones! Ones I totally didn't see coming! Even though it's got some similarities to how I myself hatched, once upon a time...

Oh well. It's good to see some progress!