Chapter Eleven - Long Game

For my first foray into magical symbology, I'd altered Michelle's behavior plan and negotiated a powerful blood pact - not bad! The only problem was that the book was still in my possession, and if anybody found it on me or discovered that it was missing from Doctor Sauvage's locked bookcase, we'd all be in deep shit. Especially me. So I devised a deviously intricate scheme to get Michelle's book back into Sauvage's office in three steps:

1) Put the book in my backpack.
2) Bring my backpack in during my Thursday shift with Helen Wheatley.

2a) This was because if I did it with a Tiffany shift, she'd definitely bitch about it.

2b) Plus, I helped Helen in the mornings before the doctor arrived for the day.

3) Slip the book out and put it on the doctor's desk when Helen wasn't paying attention.

That was it. Really. And it worked like a charm. When Helen was looking away, I slipped the book from my bag onto Doctor Sauvage's desk. Helen spotted the book almost immediately, muttered about Tiffany having left it out, and locked it back up in its proper spot with my adulterated (and adultifying) behavior plan for Michelle. Voila! No harm, no foul.

One book down, four to go... maybe five. I'd have to ask Cassie if there was anything she wanted. At the start of our time at St. Circe's, Cassie was dead set against getting changed, but the new Cassie seemed pretty content with being an outgoing, no-Photoshop-required amazon... well, maybe she wasn't amazon huge, but she was pretty muscled now, and when we stood face to face I was looking at nothing but boob.

In any case, I'd need to get to the other littles when I could. I slipped Michelle's book back into its spot (via Helen), and not a moment too soon - the next day, the doctor started her audit of the Beginner girls, and everything had to be in order! Of course, we didn't yet know whether the altered plan would pan out - whether it would work as intended and, if it did, whether the difference would be immediately detected and corrected by the faculty. But we had to know before I committed more time and risk to the effort. Michelle was squeamish about blood, but was otherwise a brave girl. She engineered an escape attempt two nights later, a violation that we knew would warrant the strictest sort of discipline. They might even send the dark riders after her.

"Why complicate things? I'd recommend against running away in the middle of the night," Simone advised her. "Just go after breakfast - claim that some bitchy thing Cecilia said triggered your trauma from the Harvest Formal and that you just panicked. Everything wrapped up in a nice neat bow, no need for... whatever it is that Natalie said."

"The dark riders - believe me, they're no bueno. You don't want to meet them," I said. "And that seems like a good plan. Run, get caught, and get punished. And, if they catch the altered behavior plan: deny, deny, deny. Okay?"

"Deny three times. Got it," Michelle said.

So she headed out along the cobblestone road after the next breakfast. And, being good little tattletales, Simone and I informed Ms. Sturm the moment we got to Best Behavior and she immediately sent out a school car (that is, one of the little electric golf carts - they were surprisingly fast) to round Michelle up. No dark riders required. They caught her right before she got to the woods and she surrendered at the earliest sign of pursuit, collapsing into a little sobbing mess.

"I'm glad my discipline is paying off, at least, in your girls," Ms. Sturm said with a sweep of her white-blonde hair and a hint of pride. "This one still thinks she's a little princess."

"Please don't be too hard on her," I said. "She was scared..."

"It's not for you to say, nor even for me. The headmistress will decide what befalls her."

Michelle's timing was excellent. She didn't even have to wait in the custodial closet. Being normal school hours, they took her right to the headmistress and she got her punishment tout suite, smacked across the wrists with a little magical stick (this is how most of the girls were punished). If the headmistress knew the symbols in the behavior plan had been altered, she didn't give any indication of it - and, indeed, I don't suspect anybody could know, as complex as that symbology is. Even an expert like Lily would take a good sit to parse out the physical implications of one of those long equation-like strings of transformative magic symbols. Big changes would be pretty obvious, but in Michelle's case, most of the symbols were the same and only the order and valence was switched up. I'd done a subtle job if I did say so myself.

Michelle returned to us that afternoon for Voice class - and it seemed that her singing voice had changed ever-so-slightly. She didn't look noticeably different, or at least you really had to look, but her body had been reverted a year in time and been promised a year of productive puberty in return. A few more punishments like that, and her behavior plan would be 'complete', and as soon as she that happened, she'd start maturing again. Good for Michelle. Now I had to get my hands on the other four plans.

+++++

I brought it up to Cassie in one of our not-infrequent shower sessions. The other Bigs knew well enough to leave us alone, so we had privacy. It was also a good time to get her in a clear-but-relaxed state of mind if I could get her attention after a big fuckall orgasm. I paid extra attention to her needs that evening, responding to her moans and groans, her tugs and pushes. My small fingers were nimble, able to coax pleasure wherever they roamed, out of her large, amazingly pert breasts, the smooth, taut skin of her inner thighs, and her slick, quivering folds. These days, Cassie got a thrill out of holding and squeezing me. She really got off when I pulled against her, when I pried away from her, or tried - she got a thrill at feeling me completely unable to resist her strength, of my little body surrendering to the pleasure of her touch. But I needed to guide things tonight, so I let her pleasure me first, getting my own erotic thrill at being dominated (whether that was from a latent kink or some residual of the school's magic, I'm unsure), and then my clever little fingers went to work on her. And, as she was crying out in climax, she took firm handfuls of my hair and pushed my head down - that was a first and, though I knew more than a bit about what to do down there, I wasn't sure she was ready for it. So I just nuzzled at her sex while continuing my fingerwork. That was enough for her. Afterward, I told her about my ongoing plans.

"You changed Michelle's behavior plan?" she asked, sighing and far too happy and relaxed to muster much anxiety. "You could get in super trouble for that."

"Yeah," I said. "But it worked... so I'm going to do all the other littles. Yours, too, if you like."

She frowned a little at that and brought me into a soapy hug. "That's sweet, but I'm kind of okay with where I am. I haven't got in trouble since I gave you that potion... and from now on, I'm just going to, I dunno, I'll do me."

"But I can still do you, right?" I asked, nuzzling against a breast.

"Well, duh. Friends with benefits." She pulled away from me and looked at me seriously, her eyes barely leaving my own. We stood in the spray, and the last of the soap suds washed off of our bodies. "Are you actually going to alter all the little plans? If you do, you're basically planning on doing away with the concept of littles without the administration's knowledge."

Uh-oh. Cassie was getting caught up in her head again. I took the loofah and started rubbing her down - a classic misdirection-by-orgasm technique. She started groaning, and I started talking. "We still have to be able to pass our behavior plans - those contracts are already set, and they'll know if they're violated. What I'm aiming for is getting around the intent of the plans without breaking any of the strictures. The other Bigs wouldn't notice much - we have to be on our best behavior... except for when we're getting punished."

"Punished to implement the new plans."

"Right."

"Sneaky. You're really going to do this?"

I nodded. I stopped my work on her taut midsection and looked up. "I'm going to try. I might need help."

Cassie pulled me into another shower hug. She kissed my forehead. "You're really brave," she said. "I don't think I'm that brave."

I shrugged. "I'm also four-foot-nine. I have to make up for it with chutzpah. So are you cool with it?"

"Yeah, I'm cool. Let me know if I can help."

+++++

The gears in my head were turning, and soon enough I came up with a way for Cassie to help me. She was a great ally to have, obviously: she could help us keep the other Bigs in the dark. But she could especially help with the one Big whom I needed to bring low: Tiffany Chalmers. She was Advanced, and therefore beyond our normal social orbit, and she still held some sway with Doctor Sauvage. She was a problem and I needed her to be as little of a distraction to my plans as possible. That meant keeping her distracted. Cassie was only too happy to help in this regard - she and Tiffany were jockeying for position on the crew team. Cassie gave her all during crew practice so that Tiffany had to work her butt off to keep her prized stroke position on the shell, and that meant Tiffany had a lot less attention to devote to little young me.

Meanwhile I had to scheme to get things situated for a book swap. Now that Doctor Sauvage had just about had us finished with the Beginner audit, we'd proceed to the Advanced students, and after that... who knew? I might have a few days to get everything accomplished, or I might have a few weeks. And, to best accomplish everything in that time, I wanted to have all of the books at once - perfectly understandable. But also completely undoable - while one missing behavior plan might go unnoticed, four missing ones would absolutely be conspicuous. My solution was: fake books.

"You want to make fake books?" Michelle asked. "That doesn't seem possible."

"I don't think it would be super hard," Simone said. "As long as we don't have to do any magic stuff. I mean, we all got a good look at your book, Michelle." She and Michelle exchanged a poignant glance. "Pretty plain on first inspection, at least. It's not exactly an illuminated manuscript."

"Yeah, but where are we going to get fake book stuff?"

Emi's face lit up and she raised her hand. "Oh! I know this one! I got, like, all kinds of things in Ms. Sturm's closet thingie. I could, like, totes borrow some."

Michelle rolled her eyes. "Will you remember all the stuff we'd need?"

"She's not dumb, Michelle," Helena said. "Remember? She can't help that she sounds that way."

Michelle frowned. "I just don't want to get caught is all."

Simone uncurled her long legs from the couch and stood. She was around six feet tall, half an inch taller than Cassie even, but weighed about what I did. That made her painfully, awkwardly thin. In her pajamas, it looked she was wearing doll's clothing - thin pipes of fabric that couldn't reasonably fit an average human being. But, as with all of our clothes, they fit her bony frame perfectly. She loomed over the much-shorter Michelle, frowning.

"We get it, Michelle. You got what you wanted and you don't want anything to fuck your windfall up. I understand," Simone said. "But what about the rest of us? Look at me! I'm going to be a bean pole forever, thanks to the school's magic. I have no tits. I have no ass. I have no muscle. I have the shape of a goddamn scarecrow... and I don't enjoy any food. Not anymore. It all has the emotional impact of, like... oatmeal. Do you think I like that any more than you like looking like some little kid?"

"No, but..."

"Exactly! No, but you got what you wanted. You got what you deserved... or the closest thing Natalie could get you. That's all the rest of us want, too. Don't we deserve that?"

Michelle looked genuinely taken aback. She leapt to her feet and wrapped her arms around Simone's skinny midsection. "Of course you do," she said. "You deserve that and a lot more. I'm sorry... I'm scared it'll all be taken away, I guess. But if we can't all have it, then maybe none of us should have it."

Helena joined them, her floral print pajamas contrasting against their dark ones. "We're Team little, right? No matter what, we're gonna stick together. Fuck the Bigs and fuck the school... we're gonna do this. Right?"

"Right!" Emi squealed.

"Shh!" Simone said - if not technically illicit, our evening meetings were frowned upon.

"Right." I said. I joined the group, nudging my way in between Helena and Michelle. "So you're all in? We're doing this?"

"If you can do the magic stuff... however you know how to do it..." Simone said. She was smart - really smart. I think she knew (or at least suspected) that I was receiving some sort of instruction that I wasn't allowed to divulge. But she also knew better than to ask. "If you can do that stuff, then we can do our part. Okay?"

"Go Team little," I whispered.

+++++

Emi sounded like a ditz, but she was pretty clever. She came through like a champ, returning from Ms. Sturm's supply closet unnoticed with all the items we might need to fabricate fake behavior plans: olive-green card stock, high-quality 28-weight cream-colored paper, wood glue, a few black felt-tipped pens, two 18-inch rulers, and two pairs of scissors. How she managed to fit all of that stuff into her backpack without badly folding anything or fumbling around like she was smuggling ten pounds of illicit stationery, I couldn't tell you.

Having received our payload, Simone and I set up a little workshop on my side of my dorm room, cutting paper to size, stamping it with pseudo-text so it might survive a casual flip-through, folding the green card stock to form the book cover, and then gluing the marked papers into each. This was pretty time-intensive, as we had to get the pages at exactly the right size and alignment and then carefully sand them down to be straight and flat just like the real plans.

Afterward, we recruited Helena to help us with the covers and spines of the books. They had to look like they were printed (or maybe typewritten), and she had by far the neatest handwriting of any of us.

"My handwriting used to be messy as fuck," she said - her use of curse words had taken a massive uptick lately, which I took to be a good sign. It meant, I hoped, that the old Helena was peeking out from behind months of conditioning. "My writing didn't get much better until they brought in Ms. Law and her conditioning tiaras, but boy did that work. What font, by the way?"

"We'll undo as much as the plan as we can - as soon as we get our hands on the books," I said. "Oh... and Times, I think."

Helena shrugged. "I can do Times. The girly stuff sucks," she said. "Not fonts... about my conditioning I mean... I don't like wearing super girly shit, but I feel the creepy-crawlies whenever I don't. I used to wear dyke-looking clothes just to piss off my folks, but I guess I pushed them too far. I don't mind girl clothes, like normal girl clothes, you know? Leggings and tank tops and skinny jeans… I'd just wear that shit when I wasn't trying to get a rise out of my old man. I'd maybe wear a no-frills dress once in a blue moon. But the pink frilly shit? I hate it, but it's the only clothing that doesn't make me feel like I have bugs in my skin."

"Sorry," I said. This was about the most I'd heard out of Helena in a month, so I didn't want to discourage her. She bent over one of the blank behavior books, a determined expression on her face. Her glossy black hair was pulled back with pink berets, the wavy locks reined in by five or six clips. Her school uniform, as usual, had extra pink, extra lace, and extra frills on it. Her dark complexion was done up with pink and with hints of metallic blue and purple.

"But I can deal with it. The clothes. What I hate is that I don't feel anything anymore - sexually, I mean. I used to like girls."

"Like-like girls?" Simone asked.

"Like-like," she confirmed. "My folks couldn't deal with that - they have the whole super-Catholic thing going on. My dad's a developer in El Paso, wanted me to be his little princess, and when I started obviously DTF on girls, he basically put me under house arrest. My quinceanera was a disaster - I tore off my dress and came out in cut-offs and combat boots, so I was grounded for a year - a year! I got out a lot, though, lots of parties. I love thinking about that feeling, those warm fuzzies of seeing a cute girl from across the room and getting that look that she's noticed me..."

"Yeah," I said.

"You're both into girls?" Simone said, rolling her eyes.

"You knew that about me," I giggled. "You know that me and Cassie have a thing - she's bi. I'm... um... complicated, I think. Bi, maybe? We have fun."

"I miss that," Helena said. "In my head, I still like chicas... my body, whatever they've done, it responds to boys... and it makes me want to throw up... like... during the formal, that boy took me into the back and I wanted to scratch his eyes out. I wanted to rip his balls off. He was on top of me and kissing me, and then he was fucking me. I was wet, too... my body loved it... it felt good, and I hated it so much..." she was crying on the behavior plan she'd been working on, tears splatting on the cardboard, smudging the ink she'd just set down. Fortunately, Simone and I had made two extras.

"I wish I was as brave as you," Simone said, pulling her into a hug.

"I'm not brave... I'm fucking weak. I couldn't stop him... and I couldn't even stop my body from liking it."

"You're strong, Helena - but when it comes to a fight between you and magic, magic wins," I said. "Right? It's not about being strong - it's about being smart. That's why we're gonna make it work for us. But first we need to finish these books so we can slip them in."

"Yeah..." Helena said. She pounded her fist against the leg of my study desk, her bevy of little silver bracelets jangling. "Fuck 'em. Maybe they can change what we look like, but they can't change who we are!" She finally noted the tear-smudged book. "I... I think I ruined this one."

"We have extras."

She'd just got to work on the next one when Cecilia pushed her way in. Normally, only Cassie or I (or a staff member) could open our room's door - the locks were magical. But maybe the door was a little bit ajar already, or maybe somebody had taught Cecilia how to bypass the door security - what can be done by magic can be undone by magic, as we're taught. She strode in, stared daggers at Cassie's empty bed, and then stared more daggers at us.

"Where's your Big?" she demanded. Her platinum-blonde hair was tied back in tight braids, and she was still in her athletic attire, lycra shorts taut against her firm body.

"How the fuck should I know, Cecilia?" I said.

Cecilia's resting bitch face was even more pronounced than usual, and my own face retorted with the closest thing I could make to severe stank-face (which didn't have much stank - there was a lot of pretty/cute to overcome). I was about to tell her off when I remembered that we were in a very compromising situation. She noticed that something was up, too.

"What are you three working on?"

She bent down and picked up one of our pre-cut, pre-stamped pages, covered with the dark marks of pseudosymbols. Cecilia's ice-blue eyes wandered in my direction before homing in on Simone... Simone, who was just about incapable of lying about anything.

"What is this, Simone?"

"Um..."

"Simone! What. Is. This?" Cecilia snapped.

"It's a surprise... it's supposed to be... please don't tell anyone about it!" Simone blurted out - all technically accurate. In the corner of my vision, I saw Helena easing the stack of fake behavior plans under my bed.

"That doesn't answer my question," Cecilia said. She wasn't the brightest girl ever, but she wasn't stupid. "Is this for the Winter Festival?"

Winter Festival? That was the first I'd heard of it - no surprise there.

"I'm... I'm not allowed to talk about it. We aren't."

"Ah," Cecilia said. She smirked, balled up the paper, and tossed it in my direction - I batted it away. "Whoopsie. Well... if you see your shower buddy, tell her I'm pissed off about what she did with Tiffany and that we need to talk. Do you think you can manage that?"

"I'll tell her you stopped in. Now please leave my room."

"Touchy!" Cecilia said. "Where's that holiday cheer?"

With that, she left the room, making one final Queen Bitch smirk before pulling the door shut with a click. I sighed and hopped to my feet, dragging my chair over and standing on it to approximate Cecilia's viewpoint - from where I was, the books weren't visible. Good - she hadn't seen them... probably.

"I thought we were fucked," Helena said.

"Good lord almighty," Simone said, "I think I peed myself a little."

+++++

The next step was to get our real behavior plans out of Doctor Sauvage's cabinets and insert our hopefully-convincing fake plans. Then I'd edit them as quickly as I could and make the swap back - no problem!

Since my interpolation spell had worked so well last time, I decided to make another go at it when I shared a shift with Tiffany. Even better, she was already out-of-sorts when she stormed down the hallway to unlock the doctor's office. She was scowling, drenched in sweat, and still in her crew uniform. When I asked her what happened, she snorted.

"That Beginner bitch, Cecilia, things she can take my crew team? My. Team." She said. She jangled around with the keys, unlocking the office on her third try.

"What about Cassie?"

"Cassandra Petersen?" she shrugged. "Nice girl. Very promising. Why?"

"No reason," I said, and I almost giggled out loud - Cassie had somehow turned Tiffany and Cecilia against one another. I guess her St. Circe's education really was preparing her for corporate America.

We went inside and got to work - I cast my interpolation spell over the three locked cabinets that housed all of the behavior plans. This was a pretty simple spell, even with my novice level of experience - a scrap of paper with four symbols on it... connect the symbols in a circle using India ink, pour a pinch of crushed glass into the middle of the circle, and then blow the glass into some of the still-wet ink in the direction of the target (in this case the cabinets). Voila! Interpolation! I'd done it the office once before, and the only trick now was finding three instances where I could take the thirty seconds I needed without Tiffany noticing - I'd already marked the paper, so it was just ink-glass-blow.

"Wow... um... why is everything out of order?" I asked. "Like, totally out of order?"

Tiffany frowned, stomping her slippers. "What the fuck, Natalie? Doctor S is going to flip her shit..." she sighed. "Come on, let's get these sorted."

I felt a bit bad about messing with Tiffany like this - she'd started treating me like an actual human being lately. Not a human being she particularly liked, mind you, but it had given me a glimpse into a side of her that wasn't 100% USDA-grade A misanthrope. Oh well - it was for the greater good. We went through the plans, stacking a few at a time. Whenever one got to the doctor's desk that I needed to swap, I did so: Simone... Helena... Michelle (I skipped her, obviously)... Emi... Simone again (ditto - no swap)... and two more rotations until I suspected that:

1) Tiffany was soon going to tire of this and figure out exactly what was up.

2) My behavior plan wasn't coming up.

Was it not even there for some reason? I wondered...

"Hey, uh... Tiffany?" I said. "These... uh..."

"Spit it out," she said.

"The behavior plans are changing back and forth between the shelves. I think Helen Wheatley's having some fun with us."

Tiffany slipped a plan out and then back again, frowning as the text changed before her eyes. She did it with a few more books.

"You're right," she sighed. "Why didn't you spot it sooner?"

Naturally, I didn't point out that she was in the better position to spot the ruse (nor, of course, that I was responsible for it). If she'd been paying the slightest attention once she handed the books to me at the doctor's desk, she might have spotted it earlier. In any case, I shrugged and waited for Tiffany to figure out how to undo the interpolation. I might have told her - there's a catch-all disillusion spell that Monique Besson taught me on our second or third session together in A010, and not a hard one at all. But I let Tiffany muddle through for four or five minutes before she kludged together a counterspell that was almost as good. She drew the symbols on her palm with the top of her finger, spat on the spot, and gave it a little flick, dispelling my interpolation. I took a good gander at the books while she was otherwise occupied. My behavior plan definitely wasn't there. Shit.

"What in the bloody blazes are you two doing?" Doctor Sauvage sputtered. "Why are all of my behavior plans strewn across my desk? You two have some explaining to do."

"Um..." Tiffany said. "Somebody did an illusion on the cabinets... we thought they were all out of order. Natalie said she thinks it was Helen Wheatley..."

"Is that so, Natalie?" the doctor asked, meaty hands akimbo against her slate-gray frock.

"I don't know who did it," I said in a small voice.

"Natalie!" Tiffany hissed. "You said..."

"I don't care. I don't care," the doctor said. "Just clean it up - now! I don't have time for this."

I left Doctor Sauvage's office that evening with three real behavior plans and my one remaining false one - unfortunately, my own. And Tiffany had gotten into trouble. That was as close to a complete success as I could have hoped for; I couldn't very well swap out a book that wasn't even there. Which begged the question: where the fuck was my book? Somewhere special, it would seem. I wouldn't discover its location for some time.

+++++

With the behavior plans in hand, I returned to my room, getting started with my edits that very night. I went through them, comparing their symbology with what I remembered from Michelle's and referring to my copious notes. I'd already made some guesses about what I'd need to add or alter - and, behavior plans being what they are, most of that was wrong. As a novice, I was a poor predictor at, for instance, what enchantments might cause somebody to become a six foot-tall twig. But I soon found out, scribbling notes all over the extra paper from our earlier endeavor with the fake books.

"Are you making decorations?" Cassie asked me.

Decorations? Really, Cassie. I sighed and looked back to her - she was in her crew outfit. Unf

I couldn't complain much, as she looked amazing in it, all curves and muscles sliding beneath lycra, but it struck me as odd.

"Cecilia was pissed at you earlier... you're pitting her against Tiffany?"

"Is it working?"

I giggled. "Seems to be. But what's this I hear about a Winter Festival? Is that coming up soon?"

"Soon-ish," Cassie shrugged. "Not for like a month, actually, but Dr. Clay is having us double-up on practice because she's A) freaking crazy and B) freaking awesome. Not sure which is more relevant. I'm surprised they didn't tell you about the festival in gymnastics."

"Okay," I sighed, pushing back from my desk. "Here's a list: A) how are you doing crew for a Winter Festival, and B) I'm not in gymnastics."

Cassie started shucking off her outfit, and I followed suit - I'd had a long day, too, and wanted in on shower time.

"You're not in gymnastics? I've been telling everybody you were."

"What?" I stomped my little foot. "No, I'm not in fucking gymnastics. Why would I be in gymnastics? Look at my boobs - I'd jiggle everywhere. Did you really tell everybody I was in gymnastics?"

Cassie shrugged. "I think you'd be good at gymnastics. You're super flexible and really short. And you'd look great jiggling everywhere."

"Well I'm not about to start a month out from a competition... and I have, like, no time." I thought about gymnastics - or, more specifically, about some of the St. Circe's girls doing gymnastics. Hmm - I really could stand to get in shape. "I haven't got the time," I stated again, trying to convince myself.

"Suit yourself," Cassie shrugged. "It's closer to six weeks out. And I thought you'd jump at the chance to get out of Ms. Sturm's class twice a week."

That pretty much sealed the deal. If two of the four weekly practices were during Ms. Sturm's class, then I was definitely going to do it. I needed two faculty signatures to join, but Dr. Clay and Ms. Law would sign off on just about anything I put in front of them. I genuinely enjoyed both of their classes and hadn't gotten disciplined even once in either one... plus, I suspected, Dr. Clay knew I was Cassie's roommate and wanted to keep her happy, too. From what I gathered, Cassie was a once in a generation talent in a shell (insofar as a high school crew went), and the only reason she hadn't been elevated to stroke was some sort of deal she'd struck with Tiffany. In any case, I was officially enrolled in gymnastics the next afternoon - I did need to get in shape, after all.

A part of me was a bit wary of joining gymnastics. It represented yet another base camp in my gradual ascent up Mount Girl. My best friends were teenage girls. I was enrolled in an all-girl's school. I had gone into Ms. Law's conditioning class whole-hog, and there's no way anybody would mistake my mannerism's for a man's now... and I'd welcomed that. And now I'd just enrolled in the school's gymnastics program. But(!), I told myself: A) I didn't have much choice but to make the best of a bad situation and B) best of all, I was learning real-fucking-magic. To wit: altering aforementioned teenage girl friends' behavior plans with aforementioned magic.

All told, it only took me two days of late nights and early mornings to edit the behavior plans of the other three littles, after which I secured blood pacts from each of them. I tried to be as ingenious as possible; Simone, for instance, would remain a plain-Jane beanpole until she ate dairy (which she normally didn't do at all, as she was lactose-intolerant)... at which point, her body would fill out.

"I'll be like I was before?" she asked uncertainly.

I shrugged. "If you want to be... or..."

"I can be curvy?"

"Yeah, that's the alternative," I said. "Thicc. Some muscle and high-density fat in the right places. There's a pretty straightforward formula for that - they give something like that to some of the skinnier Bigs."

"How thicc?" Simone held her hands in front of her chest to cup imaginary breasts and then slowly extended them outward.

"However many times you get punished. Don't be too bad, or you'll look like thicc edition Venus of Willendorf once you eat some string cheese. I'd say three or four times to look centerfold-ready."

"Ha ha... and thanks."

That was good enough for Simone and, if it was good enough for her, it was great with me. So sue me - I got a little thrill out of doing wish fulfillment for my friends and fellow littles. After what we'd been through, we deserved a bit of that... though mine would have to wait until I found my damn behavior plan. And to have any shot at real success, I'd have to return all of their edited plans back to Doctor Sauvage's office.

+++++

My interpolation spell had worked well enough the first two times I'd needed to swap out books and, though I might have hoped for a threepeat, it wasn't going to happen. First off, Tiffany was watching me like a hawk again - she'd spoken with Helen Wheatley and was, at the very least, not convinced that Helen was at fault. That was fine - Helen was a nice girl. But that left the doctor's other trainee assistant and myself as the only possible culprits, as it certainly wasn't Sauvage. If Doctor Sauvage had ever told a joke, it was surely drier than the Atacama. I'm fairly certain pranks are nowhere in her behavioral repertoire.

Tiffany was wary of me, and she definitely wasn't going to fall for another interpolation prank. However, if I could get a few minutes alone in the doctor's office, I could open the cabinet locks using the same technique I'd inadvertently come across before - the locks could be picked using the same anti-potion I'd employed to inactivate Emi's 'ditz' potion. I just needed five minutes - two minutes! Two would be enough.

"What if she goes to the bathroom?" Michelle asked during our pow-wow.

"She never goes to the bathroom during shifts," I said. "I think she's half camel."

"What if we could make her go to the bathroom... would she make you come along?"

"I don't think so," I said. "She'd probably lock everything up and make me do something routine... are you suggesting I use a potion on her?"

"Um," Emi said. She twirled a lock of golden blonde hair. "What about, like, coffee?"

Go clever Emi! That was perfect. I'd brew up the best, strongest, darkest damn cup of coffee I could and offer Tiffany a cup. I'd have a cup myself, I'd drink at least a bit, and I'd wait for the coffee to do its work and for her to run for the facilities. Then I'd have a brief but workable window to do my work. So the theory went. And if she didn't like coffee? We'd have to think of something else.

"Care for a coffee?"

Tiffany shot me a suspicious look, her Bettie Page eyebrows arching up. "Coffee?"

"The kitchen had some Brazilian nut roast special... I thought I'd grab you some while I was helping myself."

"What's wrong with it?" she asked.

"Um... nothing?" I said. "I have some sugar and cream if you want to add some..."

"Fine," she said. She grabbed the cup and sipped it, drinking the stuff straight black. I've heard that psychopaths like their coffee black, so maybe that says something about Tiffany. "Thanks," she added, her expression softening. Maybe not a psychopath.

We worked for maybe thirty minutes, the both of us sipping at our coffee. I made sure to sip mine less than hers but, even so, it was running right through me and giving my little bladder some serious urgency. Tiffany finished hers with a final gulp and no hint of discomfort - how? I still had half a cup left and was on the verge of squirming around in the pee-pee dance.

"I need the rest room!" I said suddenly.

Tiffany shrugged. "Cool?"

I rushed to the bathroom - not so much from extreme urgency (though it was pretty urgent) as because I didn't want to miss any time, just in case Tiffany had the urge, too. I pulled my skirt and panties down and hopped up on the toilet, releasing my stream with a sigh. I was maybe five seconds into evacuating when somebody else came into the bathroom and locked into the stall next to mine... was it Tiffany? I tried to gauge it... I bent waay down, my butt lifting off the seat (I really was flexible), and peeked under the stall: neutral school-issue flats. Shit. I wiped, flushed, pulled everything up, ran my hands under the cold water faucet for about two seconds, and dashed back to Doctor Sauvage's office.

Tiffany wasn't there. Wonderful - how much time did I have? A minute? Two? Had she been pooping? Coffee sometimes made me need to take a movement... no, that was too much luck to ask for. I dipped a straightened paperclip into my anti-potion and picked the first lock, slipping Helena's back, followed by Emi's in the next case, and then Simone's...

"Aha! I knew it!" Tiffany said, striding into the room. "You sneaky little bitch - you've been up to it the whole time, haven't you? Trying to get at your behavior plan?"

"I... I haven't," I said. "I swear."

"You can thank the stars the doctor isn't in right now... but you're still in deep, deep shit. We're going to Lily's office and you're going to spill the beans about everything you've done. I don't know how you learned all this stuff, but you're in such epically deep shit, you'll need a bathyscape to stay alive."

What Tiffany did next was extremely foolish: she yanked Simone's behavior plan from my little hands and tossed it onto the doctor's desk. Then she grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me two doors down to Headmistress Lily's office. I put up a token resistance, of course, but it was only symbolic. Tiffany was a lot bigger and immeasurably stronger than me - she had those hard-won crew muscles on a 5'11" frame, after all. We arrived at the headmistress's office in short order, me pulling back against Tiffany's grip, grunting and protesting the whole way, swinging my little backpack against her legs to slow her down - it didn't do much.

"Stop it... Tiffany! Let. Go."

"I've had enough of your shit, Natalie. I'm going to enjoy watching this."

Headmistress Lily, it so happened, was still in her office. She wasn't at all happy about being disturbed, but she opened the door magically, still seated at her desk. She looked up from her work and shot the pair of us an annoyed look. Her eyebrows went up: well?

"Headmistress!" Tiffany pushed me forward. "I caught Natalie trying to steal her behavior plan from Doctor Sauvage's office. Red-handed - she's been trying something sneaky for weeks."

"Tiffany Chalmers, isn't it?" Lily said. She ushered both of us into the dark-paneled interior of her office and indicated for us to sit. "That's a very serious charge... you say Natalie here got her hands on her behavior plan with... what? The intent to destroy it? To change it?"

"Yes, headmistress... something like that. I don't know what, but it can't be good."

"I see..." Lily steepled her fingers, her blue-gray eyes squinting in thought. "We cannot have students doing such things. Of course, it would require magical training to do any of these things, would it not. Natalie? Have you been training in witchcraft against my knowledge?"

"No, headmistress," I said.

"Hmm... Tiffany, what do you say?"

Tiffany frowned at me and then turned her defiant pout to the headmistress. "I know what I saw."

"Indeed? Would you be surprised, then, to know that Miss Bryce's behavior plan isn't even in the doctor's office? I've got it right here, in fact." Lily slid to her feet and eased over to her own secured cabinet, unlocking it with a moment's contact from one of her many rings. There were a dozen behavior plans in there, along with other documents. She produced one of them and slid it across her desk for us both to see: 'Behavior Plan - Natalie Bryce'. "Well? Miss Chalmers?"

"I... well, she had a behavior plan! I saw it right in her hands!"

"A behavior plan? In the doctor's office? Heavens! I'd hardly call that being caught red-handed," the headmistress said. "What were you doing with that book, Natalie?"

"Nothing! I mean, I was putting it back. I saw it out, and I know that Doctor Sauvage doesn't like loose volumes out and around, so I was going to put it back. I noticed that the cabinet was open, so I was just putting it back. I've helped organize the files a dozen times already..."

"That's a lie!" Tiffany spat.

"Well... I can't very well punish Natalie on the basis of hearsay, even yours, Tiffany. I suggest that the two of us return to the doctor's office and see what we can't deduce. What do you say?"

Tiffany looked to me once more and back to Lily. "Yes, headmistress," she said.

"Just the big girls. We'll just be a moment, dear," Lily said, giving me a condescending pat atop the head. "I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of things."

She and Tiffany exited - and Lily left, what I had to assume was deliberately, my behavior plan right in front of me. There was no way I could do anything with the handful of minutes their departure had provided me. But I still had my spare decoy book right next to me in my backpack - how foolish not to have checked that! Surely, an 'oversight' on Lily's part. I didn't have a decoy book with my name on it, but otherwise the extra was fairly convincing, even if you glanced inside. In a flash of inspiration, I took Lily's letter opener, cracked the glue of a decoy book's binding, cut the threads of my own book's binding, and yanked the pages out of both, swapping one for the other. Now the pages inside my own book were the decoy pages - not bound to the cover, but nobody would notice it until they actually tried to open the book. I slipped the decoy book back into my bag, swept the glue crumbles from Lily's desk, and put her letter opener back just in time for the headmistress to return, sans Tiffany.

"Well, Natalie," Headmistress Lily said. She sat down primly and flashed the most neutral smile I could imagine. "It seems that we've got things straightened out. I've just had a talk with Miss Chalmers and Doctor Sauvage - Tiffany will no longer be bothering you, as I've reassigned you to work under me and Doctor Sauvage has disciplined Tiffany in her own way - she's graduating this year, and I'll not have this bickering ruin her behavior plan. I've had enough of this ridiculous infighting."

"Yes, headmistress," I said. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet. I've heard you've signed up for gymnastics - wonderful, I say; I'm glad you're finally insinuating yourself into our school community. Too few littles ever do. But I keep my assistants busy, too. And as I've traded you for Miranda Song, I'll expect you to be just as fastidious, which is very. Plus, you shall have to prepare to transfer to the Advanced group."

I gasped. "The Advanced group?" I'd been at the school for three and a half months at this point - I knew that most girls spent a year at Beginner before they transferred and some took longer. Essentially, whenever a girl's behavior plan was deemed satisfactory, she was transferred to Advanced for refinement and a broader 'proper' education. Given my ongoing disciplinary problems, this was a deeply unusual move.

"As Doctor Sauvage has, no doubt, made clear, you have been a disruptive influence upon your fellow littles. She hopes that the Advanced Bigs will be more adept at reining you in. I've told her not to expect any miracles - beyond casual witchcraft, of course - but I essentially agree. I think a change will be good for your development as a student, both as a girl whose behavior plan will, no doubt, take quite some finagling to iron out, and as a witch initiate. You've proven yourself adaptable and talented, but you've a way to go before you're ready to go out into the world." Lily tapped her rings against the desk, taking a deliberate glance to my adulterated behavior plan and then to me. "Are we on the same pages, Natalie?"

"I believe so," I said, hopping off of the chair. "I should get ready for dinner."

"Indeed. And we'll start your assistantship under me next Tuesday. Use this boon of free time wisely, for extra hours will soon become much harder to come by."

She was right, and I did.